Class _Li BooL^ Copyright N° CDFjlRight DEFosa / THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC. THE FIEST CENTURY OF THE KEPUBLIC: A REVIEW OF AMERICAN PROGRESS BY The Rev. THEODORE D. WOOLSEY, D.D., LL.D. ; F. A. P. BARNARD, LL.D. ; Hon. DAVID A. WELLS; Hon. FRANCIS A. WALKER; Prof. T. STERRY HUNT; Prof. WIL- LIAM G. SUMNER ; EDWARD ATKINSON ; Prof. THEODORE GILL ; EDWIN P. WHIPPLE; Prof. W. H. BREWER; EUGENE LAW- RENCE ; The Rev. JOHN F. HURST, D.D. ; BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT ; AUSTIN A. FLINT, M.D. ; S. S. CONANT ; EDWARD H. KNIGHT ; and CHARLES L. BRACE. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 18 76. y Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. History, as it is usually written, touches only the state. The grand- eur of state affairs and the magnitude of national vicissitudes, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ambition of political leaders and the an- tagonism of parties — transferred, it may be, in some mighty crisis, from the peaceful senate to the martial camp — afford the material and the per- sonages of a drama so exciting, and of so popular a character, that the writer who most skillfully embodies these elements becomes the peer of the statesmen and military heroes whom he has glorified. But this social form or structure which we call the state, while it enfolds all other social forms, and sets its imposing seal upon the modest undertakings in indus- try, art, and learning, which constitute the life of the people, yet does it receive from this popular life all of its vitality, dignity, and meaning. Especially is this true of the republican form of polity, because that form more immediately and perfectly represents the people. The thoughtful publicist, therefore, who, from a retrospect of the past century should seek to estimate our present condition as a nation, or our outlook for the future, would direct his attention not to our political an- nals, but to the industrial, aesthetic, intellectual, and moral development of our people. He would not refer to state papers, to the congressional record, to the history of the great parties that have upon various issues divided the nation, nor to our military capabilities as manifested in three great wars. His inquiries would relate rather to the part taken by the American people in the remarkable material progress of the last hundred years, — to their inventions, their manufactures, their development of the resources of the soil — agricultural and mineral, — their commercial activity, their increase in population, their educational institutions, their advance- ment in science and art, their literature, their humane enterprises, and their moral and religious culture ; while in such a review he could not 8 PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. ignore the important political experiment undertaken by this people in the formation and maintenance of the union of states under a federal con- stitution. The work here submitted to the reader is precisely such a review as we have above indicated, of our progress during the first century of our national life — the result of inquiries undertaken not by one, but by a score of publicists, each one of whom is, in the field occupied by him, a special- ist of the highest authority. Such a work, considered as the production of a single writer, would be impossible, since in nearly every department the review is the condensation of the results of life-long research and spe- cial study. A perusal of the table of contents, including the subjects of inquiry and the names of the authors, will discover the value and impor- tance of the work as a comprehensive literary exposition of the century. The grand exhibition at Philadelphia is international, and not entirely American ; it is limited to the disj)lay of the material symbols of progress ; and it is confined almost entirely to the results of present activity in the various fields included in its representation. The exposition attempted in this work is an indispensable supplement to that exhibition. It connects the present with the past, showing the beginnings of great enterprises, tracing through consecutive stages their development, and associating with them the individual thought and labor by which they have been brought to perfection. It connects with the outward fact its formative idea. It is, moreover, in the main American ; though, in certain fields, it was found impossible to wholly separate American from European enter- prise without violent dislocation. Nearly all of the papers here published were originally contributed to Harper's Magazine ; the scheme of the entire series, and the plan, to some extent, of each paper having been determined upon before a sin- gle word was written. These papers during their serial publication have elicited the approbation of intelligent readers throughout the country. The successful execution of a project of such magnitude, and involving so important contributions from so many of the most eminent writers of America, has been generally accepted not only as adequate to the great anniversary occasion that suggested it, but also as an unprecedented event in the annals of periodical literature. Occasional articles in a mag- azine are usually of merely temporary importance; but these papers, con- taining information never hitherto collected and organized into one his- torical body, are a valuable contribution to the permanent history of our PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. 9 country. An unusually large amount of space was given to the depart- ment of Mechanical Progress, but not disprojDortionate, when it is con- sidered how characteristic of the century has been the advance in this field, and how largely other progress has depended upon it. The same consideration justifies the elaborate and extended treatise on Scientific Progress. In the department of American Literature, too, it was im- possible to present a satisfactory review, or, indeed, any thing beyond mere generalization, within the limits allotted to most of the papers. Each of these longer treatises, including also those on Population and Monetary Development, is in itself a volume of valuable information. The scheme of the work is as novel as it is comprehensive, no similar undertaking having ever been attempted. While it is not overweighted with cyclopedic details, it traces, in every field of industrial and mental activity, the larger outlines of progress. The results of this retrospect of a century's growth, in those fields which suggest a comparison between our own and the contemporaneous development of other countries, are such as to awaken a feeling of just pride in every American citizen. And the reflections naturally deduced from these results, as to the characteristic features of our people, contra- dict those which are drawn from a superficial review of the social and political abuses of the day, and are re-assuring as to the hopeful future of the Republic. A carefully prepared analytical Index renders the contents of the vol- ume available for reference, and gives it its full value as a comprehensive review of American progress. Franklin Square, New York; July 20, 18*76. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION: COLONIAL PROGRESS. By EUGENE LAWRENCE. The Declaration of Independence. — Character of the Signers. — The Condition of the Colonies. — Wealth and Population. — Social and Political Charac- teristics. — Colonial Agriculture, Manufactures, and Commerce.— The Slave- trade.— Western Pioneers and the Savages. — Education and Keligion. — Journalism and General Literature Page 17 II. MECHANICAL PROGRESS. Bt EDWARD H. KNIGHT. Mechanical Progress a Characteristic Feature of the Century. — Agricultural Implements. — The Steam-engine and its Applications. — Steam Navigation. — The Locomotive.— Cotton Manufacture. — Iron. — Engineering. — Wood-work- ing. — Elevators. — Domestic Machinery. — Safes. — Fire-arms and Ordnance. — The Telegraph. — Electroplating. — Electric Light. — Fire-engines. — Atmos- pheric Railway. — Balloons. — Weighing - machines. — Gas. — Silver. — Ice. — Sugar. — Porcelain. — Glass. — Paper. — India Rubber. — Meteorological In- struments. — Anaesthetics. — Artificial Limbs. — Aquaria. — Matches. — Musical Instruments. — Type - founding. — Type - setting Machines. — Stereotyping. — Electrot yping. — The Printing- press. — Folding - machines. — Addressing - ma- chines.— Printing for the Blind. — Engraving. — Lithography. — Photogra- phy. — Photolithography. — Miscellaneous Photo - processes. — Photomicog- raphy 39 Illustrations. — Patent-office, Washington ; Newcomen's Steam-engine ; Watt's double-acting Steam- engine, 1769 ; Rude modern Plows ; The Origin of the Hoe and the Plow ; American Plow of 1776 : Plows, 1785-1874; Howard Wheel-plow; Fowler's Steam-plow; Reaping in Gaul, first to fourth Century a.d. ; Gladstone's Reaper, England, 1S06 ; Bell's Reaper, England, 1S26 ; "Champion " self-raking Reap- er ; Meikle's Thresher, 1786 ; American Threshing-machine ; English Threshing-machine ; Single-acting Cornish Pumping-engiue ; Symingtou's Steamboat, "Charlotte Dundas ;" Pulton's Steamboat, "Cler- mont," 1S07; Bell's Steamboat, "Comet," 1812; Screw Steamship "City of Peking ;" Trevethick and Vivian's Locomotive, 1S05 ; Evans's Locomotive ; Blenkinsop's Locomotive, 1811 ; Hedley's Locomo- tive, 1813 ; Dodd's and Stephenson's Locomotive, 1815 ; Stephenson's Locomotive, 1829 : English Loco- motives ; American Locomotive (two views) ; Whitney's Cotton-gin; Spinning-wheel; HargreavesV Spinning-jenny; Arkwright's Spinning-machine; Mule Spinner; Crompton's fancy Loom; Iron Fur- nace of the Kols, Hindostan ; Modern Blast-furnace; Puddling-furnace; Danks's Mechanical Puddler; Rolling-mill for Iron Bars; Nasmyth's double-frame Steam-hammer; Bessemer Plant; Perkins's Transferring-press and Roller-die ; Whitworth's Millionth Measuring-gauge ; Caisson at Copenhagen : Caisson of the East River Bridge, New York; Floating Derrick, New York ; Floating Dock "Bermu- da;" Perronet's Chain-pumps, France; Current Water-wheel, London Bridge, 1731; Heading of the Excavation, Hallett's Point Reef, East River, New York; Iron Arch Bridges; The Illinois and St. Louis Bridge ; Iron Truss and Lattice Bridges; Portable Circular Saw; Baud Saw; Moulding-machine ; Gen- eral Wood-worker ; Blanchard's Spoke Lathe ; Singer Sewing-machine; Lamb's Knitting-machine; Tay- lor's Machine Gun ; Morse Apparatus, Circuit and Battery ; Morse Key ; Morse Register ; Duplex Tele- 12 CONTENTS. Illustrations — Continued. graph; Electroplating; Electric Light; Steam Fire-eugiue, "Washington, No. 1 ;" Diagram of Gas- works ; Stetefeldt's Roasting - furnace ; Carre's Apparatus for Ice -making; Modern Sugar Process; Centrifugal Filter; Glass-making in Egypt; Successive Stages of Cylinder Glass; Pulping- engine : The Barograph ; Condell's Artificial Arm ; Egyptian and Cuneiform, Ideographic and Syllabic Char- acters ; Phonetic Languages of Asia ; Phoenician and Egyptian Writing j Bruce's Type-casting Ma- chine ; Casting-pan; Stereotyping — Plaster Process: Moulding-press — Clay Process; Beating-table — Papier-mache Process ; Stereotype Mould-drying Press — Paper Process ; Black-leading Machine ; Elec- trotyping-press ; Electrotyping Bath and Battery ; Benjamin Franklin's Press ; Lord Stanhope's Press ; "Columbian" Press; "Washington" Press; Principles of Action of Power -presses ; Adams Press; Campbell's Single-cylinder Press; Gordon Job Press; Walter's Perfecting-press ; Bullock Perfecting- press; "Victory" Perfecting-press and Folding-machine; "Hoe" Web Perfecting-press; Chambers's Folding -machine; Addressing - machine ; Lithographing Hand -press; Hoe's Lithographic Printing- machine; Bellows Camera; Enlarging Solar Camera; Stereoscopic Camera; Osborne's Copying Came- ra and Table ; Woodward's Micro-photographic Apparatus ; The Lord's Prayer. III. PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. By the Hon. DAVID A. WELLS. What are Manufactures? — Sources of Information. — Progress from 1607 to 1776. — Cause of the American Revolution. — Progress since the Revolu- tion. — Number of Persons employed in Manufacture. — Social Condition of Laborers Page 147 IV. AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. By Professor WILLIAM H. BREWER. Early Introduction of Foreign Plants. — Relation of Mechanical Progress and Scientific Discovery to Architecture. — Changes in the Use of Agricul- tural Implements. — Application of Chemistry to Agriculture. — Improve- ment in Fertilizers. — Draining and Irrigation. — Grazlng and Stock-rais- ing. — The Cheese Factory System 174 V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES. By Professor T. STERRY HUNT. Distribution of Coal. — The Petroleum Industry. — Iron Mines and Iron Manu- facture. — Copper-mining. — Gold and Silver 185 VI. COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. By EDWARD ATKINSON. The True Function of Commerce. — Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations." — Lessons from the History of the Dutch Republic. — Abolition of Restrictions upon Commerce between the States. — Other Injurious Restrictions still En- forced. — Our Great Centres of Manufacture and Agriculture. — Our Na- tional Commerce. — Concentration of Population in Cities and Towns. — Influence of Commercial Activity upon Modern Life 200 CONTENTS. 13 VII. GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. By the Hon. FRANCIS A. WALKER. The Early Settlements, 1607-1660. — Settlements in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, 1660-1688. — Settlement of Georgia, 1733. — Western Settle- ments, 1754-1790. — Population in 1776. — The First Census, 1790. — Extension of Settlements since 1790.— Cities. — The Centre of Population. — The Arith- metical Process of the National Growth. — The Geographical Process of the National Growth. — The Pacific Coast Settlements. — The Post-office. — Our Foreign Elements. — Interstate Migration. — The Population of 1870 Page 211 Illustrations -Map showing the Acquisition of Territory, 1776-1S68; Map showing the Progress of Settlement East of the 100th Meridian , Map showing Progress Westward of the Centre of Popula- tion from Baltimore, 1800-1870; Maps Illustrating Iuterstate Migration; Map showing Density of Population. VIII. MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. By Professor WILLIAM G. SUMNER. Barter Currency in the Colonies. — Early Paper Currency. — Financial Meas- ures of the First and Second Continental Congresses. — The Bank of North America. — The Financial Situation at the Close of the Revolution. — Es- tablishment of the Treasury Department. — The National Bank, 1791. — Pas- sage of the Mint Laws, 1786. — Financial Result of the European Wars, 1791-1815. — Effect of the War of 1812. — The United States Bank, 1816. — President Jackson's Opposition to the Bank. — Suspension of Specie Pay- ments in 1837. — Situation of the Banks in 1840. — Paper Money in the West. — Discovery of Gold in California. — The Panic of 1857. — Financial Legisla- tion DURING THE ClVIL WAR. — THE NATIONAL BANK ACT OF 1863. — THE PRESENT Situation 238 IX. THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. By T. D. WOOLSEY, D.D., LL.D. Moral and Historical Influences. — The English Colonies in America. — Auspi- cious Time of the Emigrations. — Equality" of Condition among the Set- tlers. — Preparations for Union. — The Confederation. — The Constituton. — Sectional Differences. — The Civil War. — Reconstruction. — Sources of Danger opened up by the War. — Concentration of Power in the Fed- eral Government. — Universal Suffrage. — The Influx of Foreigners. — Financial Delusions. — Political Corruption. — The Need and Hope of Re- form 260 14 CONTENTS. X. EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. By EUGENE LAWRENCE. Early* Attention given to the Subject. — The American Plan of Education. — Common Schools in New England. — The Struggle for Free Schools in New York. — The Sectarian Question. — The Common-school System in Pennsylva- nia. — Educational Institutions in the South. — Education and the Press. — The Educational Problem of To-day. — General Tendency of American Edu- cation Page 279 XL SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. I. THE EXACT SCIENCES. By F. A. P. BARNARD, D.D., LL.D. Aid rendered by Government to Scientific Investigation. — Scientific Associa- tions. — American Contributions to Mathematical Science. — Astronomy. — Physical Astronomy. — Comets. — Auroras. — Meteoric Astronomy. — Meteor- ology. — Sound. — Light and Heat. — The Spectrum. — Photography'. — Produc- tion of Cold. — The Microscope. — Electricity- and Magnetism.— Voltaic In- duction. — Magneto -electricity. — Induction Coils. — Static Electricity*. — Chemistry 294 II. NATURAL SCIENCE. By Professor THEODORE GILL. First Steps. — Societies and Local Development. — General Explorations. — Min- eralogy. — Botany. — Zoology. — Paleontology. — Geology 337 XII A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. , By EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. Colonial Thought as represented by Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Frank- on. — The Authors of the "Federalist:" Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. — Fisher Ames. — Poets, 1776-1810: Timothy* Dwight, Philip Freneau, John Trumbull, Francis Hopkinson, Robert Treat Paine, Jun., Joel Barlow. — Early- Writers of Fiction: Susanna Eowson, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Charles Brockden Brown. — Theological Writers of the Calvinistic School. — Ethan Allen's " Reason, the Only Oracle of Man."— Tom Paine's Writings. —English Revival of Letters, 1810-1840.— Wordsworth's Influence in Amer- ica. — William Cullen Bry-ant. — Richard Henry Dana. — Washington Allston. — Washington Irving. — James Fenimore Cooper. — Joseph Rodman Drake. — Fitz-Greene Hai.leck.— James K. Paulding. — Reaction against' Puritanism and Calvinism in New England. — William Ellery' Channing. — Andrews Nor- ton. — Orville Dewey*. — John G. Palfrey. — Ralph Waldo Emerson. — Theo- CONTENTS. 15 dore Parker. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. — John Greenleaf Whittier. — Oliver Wendell Holmes. — James Russell Lowell. — Julia Ward Howe.— Charles Sprague. — Nathaniel Parker Willis. — James G. Percival. — Edgar Allan Poe. — Bayard Taylor. — George William Curtis. — History and Biog- raphy: Jared Sparks, the Adamses, Hamilton, George Bancroft, Richard Hildreth, William H. Prescott, John Lothrop Motley, John Foster Kirk, George W. Greene, John W. Draper, James Parton, Henry Wilson, W. T. Sherman, George Ticknor, William R. Alger.— Political Orators : John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Charles Sumner, Edward Everett, Abraham Lin- coln. — Essayists and Humorists : Henry D. Thoreau, A. Bronson Alcott, Walt Whitman, George H. Derby, Charles F. Browne, S. L. Clemens, Bret Harte, William D. Howells, Charles Dudley Warner, Thomas Bailey Aldrich. — Later American Novelists : Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cather- ine M. Sedgwick, William Ware, R. B. Kimball, Donald G. Mitchell, Sylvester Judd, Thomas W. Higginson, Maria S. Cummins, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, J. W. De Forest, Edward Everett Hale, Louisa M. Alcott, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, William G. Simms, Theodore Winthrop, J. G. Holland, Mary J. Holmes, Marian Harland, Augusta Evans Wilson. — Remarkable Poems. — Theological Writ- ers. — Miscellaneous Page 349 XIII. PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. By S. S. CONANT. Early American Artists. — John Watson and John Smybert. — Absence of Public Galleries of Paintings. — The American Art Union, 1839. — The National Academy of Design, New York City. — Academy of Art in Philadelphia. — Painting in Water-color. — The Artists' Fund Society. — Portrait - painters : Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Charles Wilson Peale, J. W. Jarvis, Chester Harding, Gilbert Charles Stuart. — Prominent Palnters of the Present Century. — Historical Painters: John Trumbull, Washington All- ston, Emanuel Leutze. — Landscape Painters. — Genre Painters. — American Sculptors: Horatio Greenough, Thomas Crawford, Hiram Powers, J. Q. A. Ward. — Engraving. — Drawing on Wood. — Caricature 399 Illustrations. — Paul Revere ; John Singleton Copley ; Benjamin West ; Gilbert Stuart ; Colonel John Trumbull; Alexander Anderson ; Rembrandt Peale; Washington Allstou ; Thomas Sully; Pro- fessor Morse ; Henry Iuman ; Thomas Cole; Horatio Greenough ; Hiram Powers ; Thomas Crawford ; John F. Kensett. XIV. MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. By AUSTIN FLINT, M.D. Educational Institutions. — Medical Associations. — Medical Literature. — The Great Medical Events of the Century. — Vaccination. — Discovery of Aus- cultation. — Medical Use of the Thermometer. — American Contributions to Medical Progress. — Ovariotomy. — Hunter's Operation. — Beaumont's Obser- vations in relation to Digestion. — An.esthesia. — Important Improvements in Practical Surgery. — American Contributions to the Materia Medica. — General Indications of Progress 416 16 CONTENTS. XV. AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. By BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT. The American Library op Law. — Jurisprudence in Colonial Times. — Written Constitutions. — The Twofold System of Courts. — Our Admiralty Jurisdic- tion. — Patents and Copyrights. — Extradition of Criminals. — Bankruptcy. — The California Land Claims. — Rights of Married Women. — Homestead and Ex- emption Laws. — Mechanics' Lien Laws. — Protection of Animals. — Reformed Procedure. — Codes and Revised Statutes. — A Brief Retrospect Page 434 XVI. HUMANITARIAN PROGRESS. By CHARLES L. BRACE. The Prisons. — Overcrowding of Former Prisons. — Imprisonment of Debtors. — Severity of Penalties. — County Prisons. — Reform of the Prison System in the United States. — Religious Instructions. — Secular Teaching. — Libraries. — The Treatment of Criminal and Unfortunate Children. — Prevention of Children's Crimes. — Treatment of Lunatics 454 XVII. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. By the Rev. JOHN F. HURST, D.D. Religious Antecedents of the Early Settlers. — Love of Religious Liberty one of the Motives to Revolution. — Religion and Politics in the Revolution. — Independence of the Clergy. — Our Denominational Life. — The Protestant Bodies. — Roman Catholicism in America. — Home Missions. — Great Religious Revivals. — Practical Character of our Religious Developments. — The Uni- tarian Protest. — The School Question. — Conclusion 473 THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC. i. INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. FIFTY-ONE doubtful and divided men, of infinite variety in opinions, educa- tion, and character, met in the hot days of July, 1776, in that plain room at Philadel- phia where was decided the chief event of modern history, to found a republic. They were about to reverse all the inculcations of recent experience, and to enter at once upon a new era of uncertainty. From all the models of the past they could borrow little, and they overleaped barriers that had af- frighted all former legislators. Not Crom- well and Hampden, not the plebeians of Rome and the Demos of Athens, not the re- publicans of Venice nor the Calvinists of Holland and Geneva, had ventured upon that tremendous stride in human progress that would alone satisfy the reformers of Amer- ica. Educated in the strict conceptions of rank and caste which even Massachusetts had cultivated and Virginia carried to a ludicrous extreme, they threw aside the ar- tificial distinction forever, and declared all men equal. One sad exception they made, but only by implication. Rousseau had said that men born to be free were every where enslaved ; but Adams and Jefferson demanded for all mankind freedom and per- fect self-control. Yet still the same dark shade rested upon their conception of inde- pendence. But in all other matters they were uniformly consistent. In all other lauds, in all other ages, the church had been united to the state. The American reform- ers claimed a perfect freedom for every creed. Men trained in the rigid prelatical rule of Virginia and the rigorous Calvinism of Massachusetts joined in discarding from their new republic every trace of sectarian- ism. Religion and the state were severed for the first time since Constantine. Of the many important and radical changes that must take place in human affairs from the prevalence of the principles they enunci- ated a large part of the assembly were prob- ably unconscious. Yet upon one point in their new political creed all seemed to be unanimous. The people were in future to be the only sovereigns. The most heterodox of all theories to European reasoners, the plainest contradiction to all the experience of human history, they set forth distinctly, and never wavered in its defense. The En- glish Commons had been content to derive all their privileges from the condescension of the crown. The people of France were the abject slaves of a corrupt despotism. Two or three democratic cantons in Switzer- land alone relieved the prevalence of a rigid aristocracy. All over Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia the people were so contemned, derided, and oppressed as scarcely to de- serve the notice of the ruling classes. The few ruled over the many, and slavery was the common lot of man. Nor when the re- formers of America proclaimed the sover- eignty of the despised people, torn- and dis- membered by the tyranny of ages, could they hope to escape the reproach of wild enthusiasm, or to be looked upon as more than idle dreamers. Yet the chiefs of the republican party were men so resolute, pure, sagacious, as to deserve the esteem of the most eminent of the Europeans. Touched by a secret pang of admiration for an integrity which he did not share, the historian Gibbon, in the midst of a stately review of the miseries and the joys of all mankind, confessed the sentiment while he clung to his salary and his place. 18 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. Robertson and Hume, bound to the scheme of royalty by pensions, honors, and official station, dropped a sigh for that independ- ence which they were never to know. Adam Smith lent the Americans a full and gen- erous sympathy. Fox, Burke, and Barre", Wilkes, and even Chatham, joined the brill- iant but narrow circle of the friends of America. On the Continent philosophers and poets, princes and statesmen, watched with a singular attention the revolt of the New World against the traditions of the Old. Voltaire from his Swiss retreat, or in the assemblies of Paris, rejoiced over "Frank- lin's republic." Vergennes was amazed at the blindness of the English ministry, and the folly of their king. And when the story of Bunker Hill and of the rising fame of Washington came like a sudden illumination over the Atlantic, all Europe began to study with critical interest the characters and the histories of the men who had already shown a consciousness of their natural rights and a power to defend them. The congress of deputies at Philadelphia was no longer an obscure and isolated assemblage ; it was plainly laboring upon a grand political prob- lem under the scrutiny of all mankind. In the following sketch of the progress of the colonies up to the period of freedom I shall endeavor to describe the country as it appeared to Adams and Jefferson, Chatham and Burke, its poor resources, its savage ter- ritory, its isolated and divided people. Noth- ing, indeed, gives us a clearer view of the mental vigor of our ancestors than that they should have foreseen and secured the union of so many distant settlements into, one grand nation, 1 and should have predicted with John Adams that the day of independ- ence was the opening of a new era of hope for millions yet to come. A notion had pre- vailed among Europeans that America could only be the parent of degenerate and feeble races. Buffon had suggested and Raynal confirmed the theory. No man of intellect- i " A voluntary association or coalition of the col- onies, at least a permanent one, is almost as difficult to be supposed; for fire and water are not more heter- ogeneous than the different colonies," says Burnaby, Pinkert., vol. xiii. p. 751. Yet in 1T42 Kalm saw the coldness of the people toward England. Pinkert, vol. xiii. p. 461. He was even told that in thirty or forty years they would form a separate, independent ^tate. ual ability, no poet, philosopher, or states- man, Raynal said, has yet appeared in the New World. Franklin, Washington, the two Adamses, Jefferson, rose up before mankind almost while he spoke. Yet whoever sur- veyed the slow advance of civilization in the wilderness under the restraints and dis- couragements of the English control might scarcely wonder at the doubts of the French philosophers, or hardly see in the long chain of feeble settlements the future homes of civ- ilization. At the founding of the republic the colo- nists were accustomed to boast that their territory extended fifteen hundred miles in length, and was already the seat of a power- ful nation. But of this vast expanse the larger part even along the sea-coast was still an uninhabited wilderness. 1 Although more than a century and a half had passed since the first settlements in Massachusetts and Vir- ginia, only a thin line of insignificant towns and villages reached from Maine to Georgia. In the century since the Declaration of Inde- pendence a whole continent has been seamed with railroads and filled with people, but the slow growth of the preceding century had scarcely disturbed the reign of the savage on his native plains. On the coast the province of Maine possessed only a few towns, and an almost unbroken solitude spread from Port- land to the St. Lawrence. A few hardy set- tlers were just founding a State among the Green Mountains destined to be the home of a spotless freedom. In New York, still infe- rior to several of its fellow-colonies in popu- lation, the cultivated portions were confined to the bay and shores of the Hudson. The rich fields of the Genesee Valley and the Mo- hawk were famous already, but the savages had checked the course of settlement. It was not until many years after the war of independence that the fairest part of New York was despoiled of its wealth by a care- less agriculture. Schenectady was a front- ier town, noted for a mournful doom, and even Albany and Kingston were not wholly secure from the stealthy invasions of the In- dian. Pennsylvania, a frontier State, com- paratively populous and wealthy, protected New Jersey and Delaware from their as- saults; but Pittsburg was still only a mili- i Holmes, Annals. Bancroft. Gordon. Ramsay. THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. 19 tary post, and the larger part of the popula- tion of the colony was gathered in the neigh- borhood of the capital. 1 Woods, mountains, and morasses filled up that fair region where now the immense wealth of coal and iron has produced the Birmingham of America. 3 The southern colonies had grown with more rapidity in population and wealth than New York and Pennsylvania. Virginia and the Carolinas had extended their settlements westward far into the interior. Some emi- grants had even wandered to Western Ten- nessee. Daniel Boone had led the way to Kentucky. A few English or Americans bad colonized Natchez, on the Mississippi. But the settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee lived with rifle in hand, seldom safe from the at- tacks of the natives, and were to form in the war of independence that admirable corps of riflemen and sharp-shooters who were noted for their courage and skill from the siege of Boston to the fall of Cornwallis. The Virginians were settled in the Tennes- see mountains long before the people of New York had ventured to build a village on the shores of Lake Erie or the Pennsylvanians crossed the Alleghauies. But still even Vir- ginia is represented to us about this period as in great part a wilderness. 3 Its own lands were yet unctdtivated, and its territory near- ly clothed in forests. And in general we may conclude that the true boundary of the well- settled portions of the allied colonies did not in any degree approach the interior of the continent. In the North the line of culti- vated country must be drawn along the shores of the Hudson River, omitting the dis- persed settlements in two or three inland districts. The Delaware and a distance of perhaps fifty miles to the westward included all the wealth and population of Pennsyl- vania. The Alleghanies infolded the ei\ il- ized portions of Virginia, and North and South Carolina can not be said to have reached beyond their mountains. So slowly had the people of North America made their way from the sea-coast. But little was known* of the nature of the 1 Before 1795 there were few settlements north of the Ohio. Cincinnati had then only ninety-four cab- ins, and five hundred inhabitants. 2 Hist. Col. Penn., Day, p. 59. 3 Winterbotham, TJ. S., i. Great part of Virginia is a wilderness, says Burnaby, Pinkert, xiii. p. 716. 4 Holmes. Bancroft. The French Jesuits had ex- country spreading from the borders of Penn- sylvania and Virginia to the Mississippi. It was called the Wilderness. It was usually painted in the fairest colors by those who had explored it. The table -laud near the Ohio was supposed to be one of the fairest and most fertile portions of the world j 1 the rich plains of Kentucky might support a na- tion ; and the forests, the meadows, and the valleys lay waiting to be possessed. But the fear of the savage still guarded the tempting region. The dark and bloody ground had no charm for the pacific settler ; the wilder- ness was pathless, and it was a journey of twelve days in wagons from Baltimore to Pittsburg. But of the immense and impen- etrable regions beyond the Mississippi our ancestors had scarcely formed a conception. 2 It was a land of fable, where countless hosts of savages were believed to rule over endless plains, and to engage in ceaseless battles. Long afterward it was thought that the vast tide of the Missouri might in some way min- gle with the waters of the Pacific. 3 The great Northwest, now the granary of the world, the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and the rivers of Columbia were all unknown ; nor could the most acute observer, shut up in the narrow limits of the Hudson and the Del- aware, suppose that within a huudred years the Atlantic would be joined to the Pacific by frequent highways, or that the frightful solitude beyond the great river would be the centre of a throng of vigorous republics. Within the cultivated districts a popula- tion usually, but probably erroneously, esti- mated at three millions were thinly scatter- ed over a narrow strip of land. The num- ber can scarcely be maintained. The New England colonies could have had not more than 800,000 inhabitants ; the middle colonies as many more ; the southern a little over a million. New York had a population of plored the country, and hoped to rule it. Parkman, Pioneers. 1 "The Ohio," says Winterbotham, i. 189— twenty years later — " is the most beautiful river on earth ;" but as late as 1819 Michigan was thought to be a worthless waste, and Cass first explored its rich fields. Life of Cass, p. 79. 2 St. Louis was settled in 1763, but was still a small frontier town, scarcely known to the colonists. 3 New York Hist. Magazine, August, 1871. "The Missouri has been navigated for 2500 miles ; there ap- pears a probability of a communication by this chan- nel with the western ocean." This was said in 1803. 20 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. 248,000, and was surpassed by Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, and was at least equaled if not exceeded by North Carolina. Its growth had been sin- gularly slow. The small population of the union was composed of different races and of almost hostile communities. There was a lasting feud between the Dutch at Albany and the people of New England, for it was believed that the former had held a corre- spondence with the Indians during the re- cent war, and purchased the spoil taken from the New England villages. The Ger- mans settled in Pennsylvania retained their national customs and language, and were al- most an alien race. Huguenot colonies ex- isted in several portions of the country. The north of Ireland had poured forth a stream of emigrants. Swedish settlements attract- ed the notice of Kalm along the Delaware. In North Carolina a clan of Highlanders had brought to the New World an intense loyal- ty and an extreme ignorance. The divisions of race and language offered a strong obsta- cle to any perfect union of the different col- onies. But a still more striking opposition existed in the political institutions of the various sections. In the South royalty, aristocracy, aud the worst form of human slavery had grown up together. In no part of the world were the distinctions of rank more closely observed, or mechanical and agricultural industry more perfectly con- temned. In New England the institutions were democratic, and honest labor was thought no shame. In the South episcopa- cy was rigorously established by law ; in New England a tolerant Puritanism hatl succeeded the persecuting spirit of Cotton Mather and Wiuthrop. In the period before the Revolution it was the custom to look upon the southern colonies as the land of wealth and material splendor. Their soil produced the chief exports of the New World; their system of agriculture, however abhorrent to the feelings of the more cultivated Northerner, was attended by a remarkable success ; their population grew rapidly; they held a ruling position among the colonies in the eyes of all stran- gers. Virginia had so far surpassed all the other colonies as to seem almost the mother and mistress of the whole. Her own people had named her the " ancient dominion," and her progress was so rapid as to suffer no hope that New York or Massachusetts could ever rival her wealth and power. The popula- tion of Virginia alone was half a million — more than twice that of New York. 1 Her exports of tobacco, com, and other produc- tions reached a value of nearly three mill- ions of dollars. Her ample territory was penetrated by navigable rivers, and it was supposed that the James and the Potomac must at some time form the outlets for the commerce of the West — a hope from which the Hudson seemed forever cut off by the difficulties of transport from Albany to the lakes. 2 But, with all its advantages, Virginia was weighed down by influences that care- ful observers saw must lead to a speedy decay. No colony, indeed, was apparently less likely to become the founder of a re- public and the patron of human equality. Through all its earlier history Virginia had been noted for its intense loyalty to the Stu- arts and its hatred of every element of re- form. The planters of Virginia ruled over their abject commonalty with a severity that the English aristocracy had never for many generations equaled. All those feudal re- strictions and abuses which the Massachu- setts colonists had come to the New World to avoid had been brought over to Virginia by its earlier settlers, and fostered into more than European strength. The church estab- lishment was supported by the colony, and all religious toleration was unknown, at least to the constitution. Nowhere had ecclesi- astical tyranny been so fostered by the gov- ernment. The industrial classes of Virginia had been kept by law in stolid ignorance, when Connecticut had enforced the educa- tion of all its citizens. Governor Berkeley had boasted, in 1671, that the colony had nei- ther printing-presses, colleges, nor schools, and had prayed there might be none there for at least a hundred years. His wish had nearly been fulfilled. In 1771 the common- alty of Virginia were noted for their igno- rance and brutality ; the gentry alone con- ' Holmes, 1732, Annals and Note. The population of Virginia was estimated very differently by different observers ; but Holmes inclines to the largest num- ber. The census of 1T90 seems conclusive. It gives Virginia 876,000, while New York had but 340,120, Pennsylvania 434,373. See Ramsay. 2 Winterbotham discusses the question, and decides in favor of the Potomac. VIRGINIA. 21 trolled the politics and managed the finances of the colouy. Virginia, too, had heen the first of all the colonies to import slaves, 1 and had set an example that had been too eager- ly followed. She had practiced both white and colored slavery. The English govern- ment had early made her borders a convict colony, and the records bear frequent ac- counts of highway robbers who had been reprieved that they might go to Virginia; and on one occasion London sends " one hun- dred of its worst disposed children, of whom it was desirous of being disburdened," to be apprenticed in the colony. 2 The ruling class iu Virginia were the planters. They were often cultivated and intelligent men, who had been educated in English universities or in the best schools of their native land. Their possessions were immense, and had usually come to them from their ancestors. Entails prevented any division of the family property, and it was a common complaint at the time that all the land of Virginia was held by a few hands. Mechanical, agricultural, or com- mercial pursuits were forbidden by custom to the planting class. It was thought be- neath a member of the great families to en- gage in trade, and Scotch emigrants and for- eign adventurers pursued a gainful traffic, engrossing the wealth of the country, while the land-owner slumbered in indolence and fell into poverty on his ancestral estate. The towns of Virginia were small and wretched, fever-stricken and neglected. The wealth of the ruling families was wasted in build- ing immense mansions in the solitude of their plantations, where they emulated the splendors of the English country-seats, and exercised a liberal hospitality. One of the wealthiest of the lauded proprietors was Lord Fairfax, the early patron of Washing- ton. In his youth he had cultivated letters, and it was even rumored that he had writ- ten for the Spectator. His estate in Virginia contained more than five millions of acres. 3 The fine mansion, Belvoir, seated among 1 Gordon, i. 56. Mr. Bancroft has traced with his usual accuracy and force the course of this infamous traffic. Hildreth, i. 565. 2 Calendar, State Papers, English, 1618, 1623, p. 10, 118, 552. 3 Sabine, Am. Royalists. Fairfax and Sparks. Life of Washington. the fairest scenery of the Potomac, where he lived with his brother, and Greenway Court, which he built in the Shenandoah Valley, where he died, in 1782, were scenes of frequent festivity. But the accomplished lord was ardently loyal ; his property, val- ued at £98,000, was confiscated at his death, and the land he had selfishly withheld was divided among the people. The fair widow whom Washington had wooed and won with stately assiduity was also a large landed proprietor. But the Revolution broke up the system of entails, and gave a new im- pulse to the prosperity of the colony. Notwithstanding the establishment of episcojiacy, the growth of dissent had been rapid iu Virginia, and at the opening of the colonial struggle the Dissenters were more numerous than Churchmen. That valuable race, the Scotch-Irish, had settled in large numbers within its borders. Education, too, had made some progress. William and Ma- ry's College, sluggish as had beeu its advance, had sent out many cultivated men. Liberal principles and a love of freedom had never been wanting to the people. Eminent Vir- ginians had already become shocked at the fatal results of slavery, aud there were no stronger advocates of abolition than Jeffer- son aud Lee. Throughout the whole colony there was a plain desire for enlarged polit- ical progress, and, happily for Massachusetts, her wrongs were felt nowhere more deeply than among the Virginia reformers. Nor was the project of independence any where more favorably received than by that large class of the population who had felt in their own lives the evils of a tyrannical govern- ment. Her immense territory, which reach- ed, at least in theory, over the mountains to the Mississippi, and through the whole val- ley of the Ohio, her wealth and commerce, her population, greater than that of any other colony, and, above all, the rare abilities and patriotism of her citizens, made Virginia the centre of reform, and perhaps the most effect- ive instrument in binding the whole coun- try into a perfect union. Happy had she followed the teachings of Jefferson 1 aud the example of Carter, and destroyed slavery when she cast aside feudalism. ' Jefferson proposed the abolition of slavery in Vir- ginia, but found it expedient to withdraw his project. 22 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. Less corrupted by European traditions than Virginia — a laud where the Euglish aud the German, the Swiss, the Scotch-Irish, Quakers, the children of Skye, and the sad hosts of Africa were mingled strangely to- gether — North Caroliua had early shown a wider liberality of thought than her power- ful neighbor. Caste and rank had less prev- alence ; her people were industrious, and her prosperity great. North Carolina was al- ready the fifth colony in importance; the population reached nearly two hundred and fifty thousand. 1 South Carolina, less popu- lous, but with nearly twice as many slaves as whites, was noted for the haughty manners of its planters, the ignorance of its people, the high education of some of its leading- men, their open dislike for slavery. No South Caroliuiau of any intelligence at this period but lamented that so dark a stain rest- ed upon his native colony. Maryland, too, possessed a weight in the country in 1775 that must seem strange to the modern politician. It possessed a larger population than either New York or the Caroliuas. Its Roman Catholic planters were sometimes intelli- gent aud liberal. Maryland still belonged to the heir of the Calvert family, but its people cared little for a degenerate race whose early excellence had faded away. A colony of Scots from the north of Ireland had settled at Baltimore, and were probably of greater value to the rising State than most of its planters and all its proprietors. But slavery, an established church, 2 a pro- prietary government, a rigid division of rank and caste, had apparently linked Ma- ryland so closely to Virginia and the South in politics as to give little room for the progress of freedom. It was, indeed, the first colony to express a wish to withdraw the declaration of independence when sud- den reverses fell upon the republican armies. The four New England colonies, separa- ted from the South by an immense distance, and a journey of many days, aud sometimes weeks, by sea or land, were altogether dif- ferent from their ueighbors in politics. 3 > I have usually adopted Ramsay's numbers, which seem confirmed by the first census, i. 146. a Episcopacy was rigorously established in Mary- land after 16S8. 3 Dwight, New England, paints some years later the virtues of his countrymen. In Connecticut, he says, Two of them, Connecticut and Rhode Isl- and, were free from all internal control from England, elected their own governors, and practiced a democratic republicanism. 1 In Connecticut, at least, all men were already equal, all were educated, and slavery was abolished practically. In Massach usetts the governor was appointed by the English king, but his salary was regulated by the province ; yet the Massachusetts people had been rapid- ly advancing in political knowledge ; mental cultivation had always marked their chief men. Their Puritan clergy had produced many of the early authors of America; they were usually wise, austere, and patriotic. Liberty, even in that imperfect form in which it existed under a colonial rule, had shown its fairest results in New England. The people were prosperous, the govern- ment well administered, the courts pure, the clergy respected, the general morality above that of any other community. The senti- ment of human equality had already pre- vailed over the influence of Euglish caste and Puritan theocracy; a bold, free nation had arisen, not quite so numerous as the Dutch, who had defied the arms of Philip II., or the Swiss, who had overthrown the Hapsburgs, yet capable even alone of found- ing a republic that not all the powers of the Old World could overthrow. Its population was purely English, its manners republican and plain, its people accustomed to labor aud to reflect. The middle colonies were less democratic than New England. New York, like Vir- ginia, had been weighed down by a sys- tem of entails and by immense landed es- tates that limited immigration. It is stated that the German colonists were so badly treated by its land-owners that they imbibed a lasting hostility for its people, moved away in large bodies to Pennsylvania, and pre- vailed upon all their countrymen to follow them. They hoped to make Pennsylvania a new Germany. 2 A kind of colonial aristocra- cy had grown up in New York. Its Dutch " there is a school-house sufficiently near every man's door," i. 17S. See Hildreth, i. 508. » Palfrey, New England, ii. 567, 568, notices the un- exampled liberality of the two charters. 2 Large numbers of Scotch-Irish also came to Penn- sylvania about 1773. Holmes, Ann., ii. 187. They came from Belfast, Galway, Newry, Cork, 3500, with no love for England. COLONIAL PROGRESS IN AGRICULTURE. 23 population were, however, attached to free- dom, and the presence of a royal governor and council had not teuded to iucrease the respect for English institutions. Strong religious differences had already agitated the people. The Episcopal Church was op- posed to the Presbyterian, and Calvinism led on the way to independence. In Penn- sylvania the proprietary government was conservative, and opposed to violent meas- ures. New Jersey, rich, highly cultivated, and prosperous, was strongly affected by its Presbyterian college at Princeton, and was naturally opposed to prelatical Eugland. It is indeed curious to notice how largely the religious element entered into the dispute between the king and the colonies. 1 The English revolution of 1688 was re-enacted in America, and King George dethroned be- cause it was feared that he meant to assail the consciences of the people. Men felt that should the king succeed in conquering them, he would have a prelate in every colony, and a rigid rule against progressive dissent. In the middle colonies the Presbyterians led the way to freedom ; in the southern the liberal Churchmen, Huguenots, and Scotch Presbyterians. Thomas Paiue, in his famous argument for separation, relied much upon the fact that the people of America were in no sense English, but rather a union of dif- ferent races met for a common purpose in 1 the New World, and resolute chiefly to be free. It was this common aim that produced that harmony which was so seldom inter- rupted between the various inhabitants of the different colonies, aud which formed them at last into one nation. In the course of a century within their narrow fringe of country the colonists had transformed the wilderness into a fertile aud productive territory. 3 Agriculture was tin ir favorite pursuit. Travelers from Europe were struck with the skill with which they cultivated the rich and abundant soil, the fine farm-houses that filled the landscape, the barns overflowing with harvests, the cat- tle, the sheep. The northern and middle 1 J. Adams to Morse, December 2, 1815; and see Gordon, i. 143. Mr. Whitefleld tells the colonists in 1764 their danger. 2 Burnaby, Pinkert., xiii. 731, notices the flourishing condition of Pennsylvania, and observes that its court- eous people are "great republicans." colonies were famous for wheat and corn.' Pennsylvania was the granary of the nation. In New Jersey the fine farms that spread from Trenton to Elizabethtown excited the admiration of the scientific Kami. 2 Long Island was the garden of America, and all along the valleys opening upon the Hudson the Dutch and Huguenot colonists had ac- quired ease aud opulence by a careful agri- culture. The farm-houses, usually built of stone, with tall roofs and narrow windows, were scenes of intelligent industry. While the youug men labored in the fields, the mothers and daughters spun wool and flax, and prepared a large part of the clothing of the family. The farm-house was a manu- factory for all the articles of daily use. Eveu nails were hammered out in the win- ter, and the farmer was his own mechanic. A school and a church were provided for al- most every village. Few children were left untaught by the Dutch dominie, who was sometimes paid iu wampum, or the New En- gland student, who lived among his patrons, and was not always fed upon the daintiest fare. On Sunday labor ceased, the church- bell tolled in the distance, a happy calm set- tled upon the rural region, aud the farmer and his family, in their neatest dress, rode or walked to the village church. The farm- ing class, usually intelligent and rational, formed in the northern colonies the sure re- liance of freedom, and when the invasion came the Hessians were driven out of New Jersey by the general rising of its laboring farmers, and Burgoyne was captured by the resolution of the people rather than by the timid generalship of Gates. The progress of agriculture at the South was even more rapid aud remarkable than at the North. The wilderness was swiftly converted into a productive region. The coast, from St. Mary's to the Delaware, with its inland country, became withiu a century the most valuable portion of the earth. Its products were eagerly sought for in all the capitals of Europe, and one noxious plant of Virginia had supplied mankind with a new vice and a new pleasure. It would be i Burnaby, p. 734. " The country I passed through," he says of New Jersey, "is exceedingly rich aud beau- tiful." = Kalm, Pinkert, vol. xiii. p. 448, notices the rich farms near Trenton. 24 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. useless to relate again the story of the growth of the tobacco trade. Its cultivation in Vir- ginia was an epoch in the history of man. Tobacco was to Virginia the life of trade and intercourse ; prices were estimated in it; the salaries of the clergy were fixed at so many pounds of tobacco. All other prod- ucts of the soil were neglected in order to raise the savage plant. Ships from England came over annually to gather in the great crops of the large planters, and Washington, one of the most successful of the Virgiuia land-owners and agriculturists, was accus- tomed to watch keenly over the vessels and their captains who sailed up the Potomac to his very dock. 1 The English traders seem to have been often anxious to depreciate his cargoes and lower his prices. Virginia grew enormously rich from the sudden rise of an artificial taste. From 1624, when the pro- duction of tobacco was first made a royal monopoly, uutil the close of the colonial pe- riod the production and the consumption rose with equal rapidity, and in 1775, 85,000 hogsheads were exported annually, and the sale of tobacco brought in nearly $4,000,000 to the southern colonies. 2 This was equal to about one-third of the whole export of the colonies. Happily since that period the proportion has rapidly decreased, and more useful articles have formed the larger part of the export from the New World to the Old. One of these was rice. A Governor of South Caroliua, it is related, had been in Madagascar, and seen the plant cultivated in its hot swamps. 3 He lived in Charleston, on the bay, and it struck him that a marshy spot in his garden might well serve for a plantation of rice. Just then (1694) a ves- sel put in from Madagascar in distress, whose commander the Governor had former- ly known. Her wants were liberally re- lieved. In gratitude for the kindness he re- ceived the master gave the Governor a bag of rice. It was sown, and produced abun- dantly. The soil proved singularly favora- ble for its culture. The marshes of Georgia and South Carolina were soon covered with rice plantations. A large part of the crop > Washington to his factor?. 2 Pitkin, Commerce U. S. Doyle, American Colo- nies, 1869, has gathered together many useful details. 3 The legend is told by Pitkin, 101, and Ramsay. was exported to England. In 1724, 100,000 barrels were sent out from South Carolina alone. In 1761, the value of its rice crop was more than $1,500,000. Its white popu- lation could not then have been more than 45,000, and it is easy to conceive the tide of wealth that was distributed annually among its small band of planters. They built cost- ly mansions on the coasts and bays, lived in fatal luxury, were noted for their wild ex- cesses, and often fell speedy victims to the fevers of the malarious soil. Indigo, sugar, molasses, tar, pitch, and a great variety of valuable productions added to the wealth of the South. But cotton, which has grown through many vicissitudes to be the chief staple of British and American trade, was, at this period, only cultivated in small quan- tities for the use of the farmers. It was spun into coarse cloths. But it was not un- til Whitney's inveution, in 1793, that it could be readily prepared for commerce, and to the inventive genius of Connecticut the South- ern States owe the larger part of their wealth and political importance. Extensive as had been the results of the labors of the American farmer at this period, he had achieved the conquest of the wilder- ness in the face of dangers and obstacles that seemed almost overwhelming. None of the appliances of modern agriculture lay at his command. His tools were rude yet costly, his plow a heavy mass of iron, his cattle expeusive, and at first scarcely to be obtained. The fevers and malaria of the new climate, the sharp frosts, the unknown changes, even the not infrequent earthquakes and celestial phenomena, must have covered him with alarm. Before him lay the dark and pathless wilderness, behind him the raging seas. A whole ocean separated him from his kind. In front the savage hovered over the advancing settlements, and not sel- dom filled the thin line of cultivated country from Albany to Savannah with the tidings of fearful massacres. Often the frontier families came flying from their blazing homes, scarred and decimated, to seek shel- ter from the unsparing foe. Yet more cruel or more unfriendly than the terrors of the wilderness, the climate, or even the sav- age, seemed to the colonists the conduct of their royal government in England. In- stead of aiding the struggling settlers in ENGLISH RESTRICTIONS ON COMMERCE. 25 their contest for lite, it had treated them as objects of suspicion and dislike. A fear that they might plan at some future time a sepa- ration from the mother country governed all the English legislation. 1 Hence laws were early imposed upon them that might well have checked the whole progress of their agriculture. They were forced to purchase all their supplies from England. They were scarcely permitted to have any commercial intercourse with any foreign country, or even with each other. 2 They were obliged to send all their tobacco, sugar, indigo, rice, furs, ores, pitch, and tar directly to England, and there accept the price the English traders were willing to give. It was forbidden them even to send their produce to Ireland. These jeal- ous restrictions must have kept many an acre from being planted, and prevented that rap- id progress which free trade could alone in- cite. Franklin showed clearly that in this way the colonies had always paid a heavy tax to England, of far greater value than any stamp act could ever give, and that the English merchants and traders had already grown rich by the onerous burdens they had laid on America. 3 Had the colonial ports been opened to foreign traffic, every article must have risen in price, or the demand for it increased beyond conception. But the English had always treated the colonists with a severity like that which Spain once practiced in South America, and which she now exercises over the Creoles of Cuba. Cor- rupt and worthless Englishmen were sent out as governors, councilors, judges, and even clergymen. They looked with disdain on the colonists they plundered, and hastened back to England to defame the reputation of the abject race. It is plain that most Englishmen looked upon the Americans as serfs. They had no rights that Parliament could not abrogate, and no security even for their own earnings. England plunder- ed the American farmer almost at will, and robbed of his just profits the sturdy laborer in the valleys of Vermont, and the 1 England now treats her colonies with the gentle- ness advised by Burke and Franklin, and her authors condemn the old tyranny as strongly as Americans. Mr. Doyle, of Oxford, has produced a careful essay on the progress of the colonies, 1S69. 2 Ships might sail for wines to Madeira and some Spanish ports, under certain restrictions. 3 Franklin to Shirley, December, 1754. wealthy rice planter in the swamps of South Carolina. The commerce of the colonies flourished equally with their agriculture. It was chief- ly in the northern colonies that ships were built, and that hardy race of sailors formed whose courage became renowned in every sea. But the English navigation laws weighed heavily upon American trade. Its ships were, with a few exceptions, only al- lowed to sail to the ports of Great Britain. No foreign ship was suffered to enter the American harbors. The people of England were resolved to prevent all foreign inter- ference in the trade of the colonies, and the American ports were rigidly shut out from the commerce of the world. Isolated from the great centres of traffic, and even from exchanging many articles with each other, bound by a most oppressive monopoly, re- strained by a selfish policy, the colonists yet contrived to build large numbers of ships, and even to sell yearly more than a hun- dred of them in England. The ship-yards of New England were already renowned. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were seats of an important trade. Ou the island of Nantucket the whale-fishery had been es- tablished that was to prove for a brief pe- riod the source of great profit, and a school of accomplished seamen. The spermaceti- whale was still seen along the American coast, but the New England whaler had already penetrated Hudson Bay, and even pierced the antarctic. The Revolutionary War broke up the trade, and the English captured two hundred of its ships, besides burning the oil stored on the island. 1 In consequence of the rigid navigation laws, smuggling prevailed along all the American coast, and swift vessels and flaring sailors made their way to the ports of France and Spain to bring back valuable cargoes of wine and silks. Boston was the chief seat of ship-building, and its fast-sailing vessels were sent to the West Indies to be exchanged for rum and su,y;ar. In 1743 2 it was estima- ted that New England employed one thou- sand ships in its trade, besides its fishing barks. But when the laws were more strict- ly enforced, the shipping trade of Boston de- 1 Pitkin. Mrs. Farrar's Recollections, p. 2, whose father was a chief sufferer. 2 Holmes, Annals, 1743. 26 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. (•lined. British war vessels watched the co- lonial ports, and cut off that large source of wealth which the colonists had found in an illicit commerce with Spain and the West India Islands, and it was with no kindly feeling that New England and New York saw the gainful traffic destroyed which had brought them iu a stream of French and Spanish gold. 1 The rude English officials not seldom made illegal seizures. Every cus- tom-house officer was turned into an inform- er, and no cargo seemed altogether secure. There was no redress except in an appeal to England. Yet the American commerce still flourished, even within the narrow limit to which it was confined, and the colonists bore with admirable patience the exactions and restrictions to which they were subjected in order that New York and Boston might not compete with London and Bristol. In fact, the navigation laws had prevented altogeth- er that natural and healthy growth which might have made the colonial sea-ports even in 1775 considerable cities. But twenty-four thousand tons of shipping were built in the colonies in 1771, and the whole exports were in 1770 three millions of pounds sterling, and the imports about two and a half millions. It was noticed that the value of the tobacco exported was one-fourth larger than that of the wheat and rye. 2 The rise of American commerce had seemed wonderful to Burke, Bane", and all those Englishmen who were capable of looking beyond the politics of their own narrow island ; but no sooner had America become free than its trade doubled, trebled, and soon rose to what in 1775 would have seemed incredible proportions. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia became at once large cities, and England was enriched by American freedom. One gainful source of traffic to the coloni- al and British merchants had been the slave- trade. Immense numbers of these unwill- ing emigrants were forced upon the colonial markets, chiefly by the inhuman policy of England. A strong feeling of disapproba- tion fur this species of merchandise had ear- ly grown up in the minds of the Americans, and Pennsylvania, New England, and even South Carolina were anxious to discourage it by imposing a heavy tax on slaves. But 1 Gordon, i. 153. 2 M'Pherson. Pitkin, p. 11. the English Parliament abrogated all their humane legislation. No sentiment of Chris- tian mercy seems to have moved the bishops, lords, and accomplished statesmen who held the control of the American trade. The En- glish merchants insisted upon their mon- strous traffic. In one year six thousand slaves were brought to South Carolina; fif- teen thousand were forced upon all the colo- nies. It is at least an indication of the higher degree of civilization to which the inhabitants of the New World had attained that they were the first to exclaim against the horrors of slavery, and that they taught the English intellect one of the most strik- ing principles of modern progress. If in any particular men have risen beyond the cruel selfishness of the earlier ages, it is in the recognition of the principle that human slavery shall no more be tolerated. The Peunsylvauians as early as 1713 protested against the barbarous traffic. 1 One of the chief grievances of New England was that the English were resolute to force slaves upon them ; and when the colonies became free, they proceeded at once to indicate a period after which no more Africans should be imported into America. They were the first to fix the ban of civilization upon an infamous traffic, which had been sanctioned by the usages of all ages. If they did not abolish slavery itself, it was be- cause the cruel legislation of English states- men had implanted the evil so deeply in the midst of the new nation that nothing but a fearful civil convulsion could eliminate and destroy it. In manufactures the colonists can be said to have made but little progress. The En- glish government had rigorously forbidden them to attempt to make their own wares. A keen watch had been kept over them, and it was resolved that they should never be suffered to compete with the artisans of En- gland. The governors of the different colo- nies were directed to make a careful report to the home government of the condition of the colonial manufactures, in order that they might be effectually destroyed. 2 From their authentic but perhaps not always accurate survey it is possible to form a general cou- i Memoirs Hist. Soc. Penn., vol. i. part i. p. 362. George Fox had always disapproved of slavery. 2 Report of Board of Trade. PROGRESSIVE MANUFACTURE. 27 ception of the slow advance of this branch of labor. South of Connecticut, we are told, there were scarcely any manufactures. The people imported every thing that they re- quired from Great Britain. Kami, indeed, found leather made at Bethlehem, in Penn- sylvania, as good as the English, and much cheaper. He praises the American mechan- ics; but, in general, we may accept the re- port of the governors that all manufactured articles employed in the family or in trade were made abroad. Linens and fine cloths, silks, implements of iron and steel, furniture, arms, powder, were purchased of the London merchants. But this was not always the case in busy New England. Here the jeal- ous London traders discovered that iron foundries and even slitting-mills were al- ready in operation ; that fur hats were manu- factured for exportation in Connecticut and Boston ; that the people were beginning to supply their own wants, and even to threat- en the factories of England with a danger- ous rivalry. The English traders petitioned the government for relief from this colonial insubordination, and Parliament hastened to suppress the poor slitting-mills and hat manufactories of our ancestors by an express law. 1 The hatters, who seem to have espe- cially excited the jealousy of their London brethren, were forbidden to export hats even to the next colony, and were allowed to take only two apprentices at a time. Iron and steel works were also prohibited. Wool and flax manufactures were suppressed by strin- gent provisions. American factories were declared "nuisances." No wool or manu- facture of wool could be carried from one colony to another; and, what was a more extraordinary instance of oppression, no Bible was suffered to be printed in America. 2 Under this rigid tyranny American manu- factures had sunk into neglect. Massachu- setts had ventured to offer a bounty on paper-making, and some Scottish-Irish had introduced the manufacture of linen ; iron furnaces had been erected in various parts of the country, and its immense mineral wealth was not altogether unknown. But it is safe to conclude that from Maine to Georgia no species of artistic manufactures existed with- in the colonial limits. The farm-house and i Pitkin, T. 2 Bancroft, v. 266. the spinning-wheel were the only centres of a native industry which the British Parlia- ment could not suppress. Of those two great sources of American progress, coal and iron, the latter had assumed some impor- tance. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Vir- ginia had begun to produce pig-iron in an imperfect state. The ore might be exported to England, and even Ireland, and it was already known that the colonies could pro- duce such large quantities of the metal as would supply their own wants, aud perhaps those of Europe. 1 As they were not suffered to manufacture even a nail or a pin, a wheel or a plow, England made immense profits by returning the raw irou to America in various articles of trade. Coal was known to exist within the colonies, and was mined in Vir- ginia. 2 Speculative observers foresaw the day when furnaces and factories might spring up along the banks of the Delaware and the Potomac, and the mineral wealth of the country be made to contribute to the prosperity of the colonies. But of that im- mense and inexhaustible store-house of the finest coal the world possesses which lies in the Lehigh Valley and upon Mauch Chunk Mountain our ancestors could have had no conception. No one supposed that beneath the rude and pathless forest, on lands that seemed destined to perpetual sterility, cov- ered with savages, and terrible even to the hunter, there lay mines richer than Golcon- da, and stores of wealth beyond that of Oi- muz and the Ind. Or had any statesman of 1775 ventured to predict that on the site of Fort Pitt, in the heart of a terrible wilder- ness, at the junction of two impetuous streams, was to spring up, within a century, a city where coal and iron, lying together in its midst, should be the source of a bound- less opulence, he would have lost forever all reputation for discretion. The journey from the Delaware to Pittsburg was long the ter- ror of the Western settler. It was long after the Revolution that a hunter who had been out all day on Mauch 1 Kalm, Pinkert., xiii. p. 473. Pennsylvania, he thought, could supply all the globe with iron, so eas- ily was it procured. " But coals have not yet been found in Pennsylvania [p. 405], though people pretend to have seen them higher up," he says. 2 M'Parlane, Coal Regions. The mines near Rich- mond were worked long before the anthracite bed ot Pennsylvania was discovered, p. 514. 28 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PEOGRESS. Chunk Mountain, and had found no game, and who was returning weary and disheart- ened to his cahin, with no means to purchase food for his family, struck with his foot as he passed along a black crystal. He stooped and examined it. 1 The first specimen of that priceless mineral which has transformed the wilderness into a populous nation, and con- tributed to the comfort of millions, lay be- fore him. The rain fell fast. The hunter was tired and hungry. Yet he took up the apparently worthless stone and carried it with him to his cabin. Mauch Chunk then lay bare aud bleak, the haunt of wild beasts and savage men, and had not the hunter pre- served his shining mineral, might still have hidden its secret stores for another decade. He showed the specimen to a friend ; it was taken to Philadelphia. The mountain was explored, and a company formed to work the mine. But it was at first unsuccessful, and many years elapsed before Pennsylvania be- came conscious of its hidden treasures, and discovered that it possessed mines richer than those of the Incas and perennial fount- ains of industrial progresSo The unlucky discoverer, it seems, reaped little profit from his good fortune. His land was taken from him by a prior claim. He died in poverty. Great companies, possessed of enormous cap- ital, and spanning with their combined rail- roads half the continent, now encircle the Mauch Chunk Mountain with their avenues of trade. Coal has been found heaped upon the sides of the hills, and compressed in huge masses in the valleys. The richest and al- most the only bed of anthracite in the world has been discovered beneath the path of the solitary hunter. The wild men of the woods and marshes were to our ancestors objects of interest as well as terror. 2 In the earlier period of the colonial history their numbers had been ex- aggerated, and it was believed that a hun- dred thousand painted savages might at some moment throw themselves on the white settlements. But it was found at length that one nation was alone formidable, and that an Indian empire had risen beneath the shadows of the forest that resembled in its i Mem. I'cnn. Hist. Soc, i. part ii. p. 317. 2 The Indians had the vanity of all feeble intellects, and thought themselves the superiors of all mankind. Colden, i. 3. extent, its cruelty, and its love of glory the most renowned of European sovereignties and conquerors. In the seventeenth century the Six Nations had their seat in that fair and fertile portion of New York that reaches from Albany to Lake Erie. Onondaga was their capital. A single sachem ruled with un- disputed authority over the obedient league. 1 A passion for conquest and a love of martial fame had led this singular confederacy to exploits of daring that seem almost incred- ible. They held in a kind of subjection all the territory from Connecticut to the Mis- sissippi. The wild tribes of Long Island obeyed the commands of Onondaga; and even the feeble Canarsie, on its distant shore, trembled at the name of the Mohawk. Under the shade of the endless forests, over the trackless mountains, and across rapid riv- ers, the war parties of the Six Nations had pressed on to the conquest of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and all Virginia yielded to their arms. 2 They fought with the Chero- kees on the dark and bloody ground of Ken- tucky. The Illinois fled before them on the fair prairies, now the granary of the conti- nent. The savages seem to have resembled the extinct races whose bones are found in the prehistoric caves of Kent and Dordogue. They were cruel, aud rejoiced in the tortures of their captives. Their wigwams were filthy and smeared with smoke, adorned with scalps, and hung with weapons of war. Cun- ning aud deceit formed a large part of their tactics. They rejoiced td fall upon their ene- mies by night and massacre the flying in- habitants of the blazing wigwams. Yet in their rude society the savages manifested the elements of all those impulses and pas- sions that mark the civilization of Europe. 3 They were fond of fine dress, and their wom- en produced rich leather robes, glittering with decorations in colored grasses and beads, head coverings, adorned with feath- ers, and moccasins of singular beauty. They danced, they sang, with a skill, vigor, and precision that Taglioni might have envied or a Patti approved. The Iroquois boast- i Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, p. 88. Onon- daga was the seat of government from the earliest period. 2 Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 13. They pen- etrated to Virginia in 1607 ; in 1660-1700 the French assailed them. 3 Schoolcraft, 135-139. Morgan, 384. THE INDIANS. 29 ed that they had themselves invented twen- ty-six different dances. They exchanged visits from wigwam to wigwam, and prac- ticed a courtesy that might have instructed Paris. They had their orators, who polished their sentences with the accuracy of Cicero. With a simple faith they worshiped the Su- preme Spirit ; and yearly, in February, when the germs of life were opening, met to re- turn thanks to their Maker that he had preserved their lives for another year. A white dog was sacrificed, prayers were of- fered, hymns of thanksgiving sung, 1 and on the wild shores of the Seneca or Cayuga lake a natural worship hallowed the savage scene. Of the numbers of the Indian tribes it is of course impossible to form any exact esti- mate. But it is believed that in the height of their power the Six Nations never possess- ed more than seventeen thousand warriors, and that in the year 1774 they had scarcely two thousand. Their whole number was then estimated at ten thousand souls. 2 Their wars with the French and with the native races had rapidly reduced their strength. It was stated by Tryon at this time that the wilderness from Lake Erie to the Mississip- pi could furnish twenty-five thousand war- riors, and was inhabited by one hundred and thirty thousand Indians. In the South the Cherokees were the ruling race, and might, with their allies, produce several thousand men. It was with these fierce and relentless warriors that the English hoped to devastate the long line of frontier settle- ments from Lake Ontario to the Savannah. Twenty thousand Indians, it was thought, would fall upon the unprotected colonists, and with the scalping knife and the musket force them to submit to the British king. Nothing more incited the colonies to inde pendence than this unheard-of barbarity. It was when all the distant settlements were threatened by an Indian invasion that they resolved upon perfect freedom ; and even the patient Washington when he heard the news could not restrain his malediction upon the cruel tyraut, and urged au instant separa- ' Morgan, 39. They even confessed their sins of the past year, we are told. Their belief in witchcraft, omens, dreams, is told by Schoolcraft, p. 141. They had a vampire, he thinks. 2 Campbell, Tryon County, p. 24 and note. tion. 1 In periods of peace the Indians had afforded the colonies au important branch of trade. Furs and skins were exported in large quantities to Europe, and the most successful trappers were the Six Nations, who brought their wares to Albany, and the less warlike tribes who dealt with the mer- chants of Fort Pitt. Gold and silver were of no value to the savages. They would only receive their payment in wampum or strings of shells 2 — a currency that passed freely over all the continent — or in powder, shot, and muskets, rum, and sometimes arti- cles of dress. A fine uniform or a glitter- ing coat was sometimes exchanged for large tracts of land. A string of periwinkle shells, purple or white, was valued at a dollar ; and the first church in New Jersey, it is related, was built and paid for from contributions in wampum. 3 New York and Albany in the early Dutch period had almost adopted the currency of the savage. There are, in- deed, marked traces of the influence of In- dian customs and superstitions among the whites. Their omens, dreams, and intense belief in witchcraft, their incantations and spells, seem to have convinced Cotton Mather and the New England divines of their close connection with the spirit of evil,* and help- ed to increase the sense of a present Satan in the neighboring forests. To the wild hunters of the border the savages taught their keen study of nature, their caution, and their impassiveness. The frontiers-meu borrowed their moccasins, hunting shirts of leather, and caps, their patience of cold and hunger, and rivaled them at last in the pur- suit of game. At the close of the Revolu- tion the power of the Six Nations was broken forever. They had taken the side of the En- glish, except only the friendly Oneidas, .and the last of the Mohawks found a refuge in Canada. 5 The other tribes sold their pos- sessions, and nearly all moved away. Can- andaigua, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, gave names to flourishing white colonies from New England, and with the destruction of 1 Washington to Reed. Reed, Original Letter, p. 66. He denounces "the tyrant and his diabolical minis- try." 2 Schoolcraft, p. 358. 3 Colden, i. 11, notices that they had no slaves. They adopted the captives they saved alive. 4 Satan was believed to haunt the New England woods in the form of a "little black man." Cotton Mather. s Morgan, p. 30. 30 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. the Indian rule New York rose rapidly to the first place in population and power among its sister States. Next to the Indians, along that wide fringe of border land that skirted the banks of the Hudson, the declivities of the Alleghanies, and the western counties of the Carolinas on the brink of the Wilderness, lived the hardy race of the pioneers. The home of the woods- man was usually a log-cabin ; his chief wealth his musket and a family of healthy chil- dren. Far away from the centres of civili- zation, more familiar with the manners of the wigwam than of the city, generous, fan- ciful, fond of nature, and of the trees and riv- ers, mountains and plains, around him, al- ways ready for change and new adventure, the pioneer lived in ceaseless excitement, and sank at last to rest under the green sod of some untried land. His life was, indeed, never secure from the treacherous assaults of the wild men of the woods. The Indians were as fickle as they were mobile and act- ive. The pioneers, trained in constant watchfulness, produced some of the most noted and possibly the most eminent of the men of the Revolution. Washington him- self was in his early youth educated in the arts of frontier life. Poor, self-instructed, accurate, 1 truthful, at nineteen he had as a surveyor studied the wilderness west of the Alleghanies, and learned the life of the woods. At a later period he traveled on foot with a pack on his shoulders from Winches- ter to the Ohio, through the heart of the for- est. Later still he led the provincial troops through the woods and mountains, and be- came famous as a commander; and when the fate of freedom rested on him alone, his experience in the forest and the wilderness guided him to the victories of Trenton and Princeton. Daniel Boone, the founder of a State, was a more accurate example of this wayward class. From his cottage on the Yadkin, where, surrounded by wife, children, and comparative ease, he might well have lived content, an irresistible desire to ex- plore the mysterious wilderness drew him away. He climbed the tall Cumberland Mountains, and saw with a kind of rapture, he relates, the lovely plains of Kentucky, 1 The careful drawings of the self-taught Washing- ton show the methodical nature of his mind. See Sparks, Life. the buffaloes cropping the rich meadows, the flowers blooming in the waste. 1 He descend- ed iuto the paradise, was captured by some Indians, Avho came upon him and his compan- ion from a cane-brake, escaped, was found by his brother in the wilderness, to his un- speakable joy ; and when his brother left him, built a hut, and lived alone, he declares, in inexpressible happiness. From the summit of some commanding hill he delighted to trace the windings of the Kentucky through its ample plains, or hunted for his daily food through the teeming woods. " Through an uninterrupted scene of sylvan pleasures," he writes, "I spent my time." 2 He resolved to return to North Carolina for his family, and found a settlement iu the smiling waste. He sold his farm. With wife and children and a small band of settlers, he climbed again the wild Cumberland Mountains. The Indians attacked the small party, his son fell iu battle, but the ardent pioneer persisted in his vision, and founded Boonesborough, on the banks of the Kentucky, in the wilderness he loved so well. A small stockade was built. It was attacked by the Indians. Booue was taken prisoner iu a warlike expedition, but in- stead of torturing him, the Shawanese adopt- ed him into their tribe and treated him as a brother. Again he escaped, aud in his wood- en fort at Boonesborough sustained a siege that had nearly proved successful. The sav- ages were repulsed, peace aud liberty came together, and the bold pioneer died in the scene he had looked upon with rapture, the founder of a new nation, and surrounded by a grateful people. 3 Such were the men who led the way to the frontier settlements, who first crossed the Alleghanies, who penetrated beneath the shadow of Lookout Mountain, or ventured into Cherry Valley, when the Six Nations still ruled over Western New York. They formed a long line of isolated colonies, and disputed with the savages the possession of the wilderness. Behind them, protected by their necessary vigilance, the more peaceful settlers cultivated their ample farms and lived in prosperous ease. Yet the border 1 Filson*s Kentucky. Boone's Narrative. 2 Narrative, p. 36. 3 Filson, p. 49. " He lived at last," it is said, " in peace, delighted by the love and gratitude of his coun- trymen." THE CLERGY. 31 land was never safe from a hostile invasion. When the English first incited the savage tribes to a general rising the whole frontier was penetrated by a series of murderous at- tacks. The settlers on the outskirts of North and South Carolina fled from their blazing homes or perished in an unsparing massa- cre. The Indians who followed Burgoyne filled New York with slaughter. Vermont and New Hampshire* trembled before their threats. Cherry Valley armed in its de- fense. 1 The fate of Wyoming has been told in immortal song. The shores of the Hud- son were no longer safe. Brandt and his band of savages penetrated into Orange County, and the massacre of Minisiuk alarm- ed the Huguenot farmers in the rich valleys of the Shawaugunk and the Dutch in the hill country around Goshen. As the savages pressed on into Orange County they came to a school-house which was yet filled with its children. They took the school -master into the woods and killed him. They clove the skulls of several of the boys with their tom- ahawks ; but the little girls, who stood look- ing on horror-struck and waiting for an in- stant death, were spared. A tall savage — it was Brandt — dashed a mark of black paint upon their aprons, and when the other sav- ages saw it they left them unharmed. Swift as an inspiration the little girls resolved to save their brothers.'" 1 They flung over them their aprons, and when the next Indians passed by they were spared for the mark they bore. The school-master's wife hid in a ditch and escaped. It was amidst such dangers that our ancestors founded their new republic, and forced on the course of progress. Within the more cultivated portions of the country the most influential person in every town was usually the clergyman. In New England the authority of the ministers was no longer what it had been in the days of Cotton and the Mathers. A revolt had taken place against the spiritual hierarchy which had opened the way for intellectual freedom. But the New England pastor was distin- guished always for virtues and attainments that gave him a lasting prominence. In his 1 Campbell, Tryon County, is full of the trials of frontier life. a Eager, Orange County, p. 391. It was July, 1T79. youth he had passed through a spiritual ex- ercise which had fixed him in the path of virtue. He examined his own nature with the accuracy of a Pythagorean. He had laid down rules to himself that formed the guiding principles of his life. Sloth he ab- horred ; he resolved to lose no moment of time ; to do nothing that he should be afraid to do in his last hour; to consecrate him- self to the service of his Maker. 1 The image of ideal virtue had dawned upon him in its surpassing loveliness, and he wandered away into the still woods and pleasant fields filled with sweet visions of the divine Messiah. Yet he knew that the world was full of trouble and vexation, and that it would nev- er be another kind of a world. It was thus that Jonathan Edwards meditated in the dawn of his intellectual youth, and many another ardent follower of Calvin. The New England minister was fond of scholas- tic theology. He keenly pursued the deli- cate and refined distinctions of election and grace, of free-will and predestination, but seldom wandered far from the decisions of the Geneva school. Yet he had learned self- control, and was well fitted to direct the ci induct of others. Elected by the voice of the people to the ministry of a town or city congregation, his scholarship and his decis- ion gave him a political and personal influ- ence that he was not afraid to use. 2 The clerical families were often connected by the closest ties of relationship, and the pas- torate descended from generation to genera- tion. The Cottons and Mathers ruled over Boston for nearly sixty years. Edwards was the grandson of a clergyman, succeeded to his charge, married a clergyman's daughter, and married his own daughter to the Rev. Aaron Burr. Yet the people of Northamp- ton, where he was settled, with the largest salary in New England, rebelled against his authority. He removed to Stockbridge, and became at last president of the College of New Jersey on the death of his son-in-law, Burr. These cultivated men were usually ardent 1 Edwards, Diary and Life. 2 The minister was sometimes obliged to rule bis people with no tender hand, and violent controversy often arose, which sometimes "came to hard blows." Life of Edwards, i. 464. The people of Northampton were of "a difficult and turbulent temper,"' etc. 32 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. patriots. But their patriotism was no doubt stimulated by the dread of a religious rather than political tyranny. A fear prevailed in all New England that Parliament and the king were resolved to impose bishops upon each of the colonies, and to enforce by law the ritual of the Church of England. White- field had warned the colonies of a coming woe. The imprudent conversation of young Episcopal ministers in Connecticut and Bos- ton added to the apprehension. Archbishop Seeker had suggested the idea of an Amer- ican episcopate, 1 and the project was al- ready entertained in England of reduciug New England to a subjection to the nation- al Church by lavish bribes to its independ- ent clergy, and by the reform or suppression of all the colonial charters. Cambridge had even been suggested as the seat of a colonial bishop, and an Episcopal church had already sprung up beneath the shadow of Harvard College under the auspices of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in America. Then Mayhew of Boston began a series of publica- tions that sounded an alarm throughout the country. He felt the danger; he saw the unscrupulous nature of the men who ruled in England. The " overbearing spirit of the Episcopalians" 2 he brooded over, until he almost felt once more the clerical tyranny from which the gentle Robinson had fled, and which had impelled the Mayflower over the stormy sea. " Will they never let us rest in peace," he cried, " except where all the weary are at rest V Is it not enough that they persecuted us out of the Old World V Yet Mayhew was still sufficiently loyal to hope that King George was " too good and noble" to suffer it. When the controversy with England began, Mayhew was ever ready to support the liberties of his country, and his pulpit resounded with patriotic exhortations. Almost every Con- gregational minister was equally faithful. Like the Huguenot and the Covenanter, they even fought in the ranks, and sometimes led their townsmen to battle, and fell among the first. The clergy of the middle and southern col- onies were persons less distinctly the leaders 1 Gordon, i. 143, gives the general apprehension and the plan. 2 Mayhew, Second Defense, p. 64. 3 Observations, p. 156. of the people than in New England. The Episcopalian ministers were often mild and amiable men who cared nothing for politics. They were inclined to the English rule, but were not unwilling to share the fortunes of a new nation. Some, however, were bitter and relentless in their Toryism ; their violeuce helped to bring discredit on their cause, and their religious intolerance led them to their ruin. In New York tlie Dutch and Presby- terian clergy were often eminent for their virtues and their scholarship; their churches in the city were to the eyes of our ancestors splendid, their salaries high, their congrega- tions numerous and attentive. The Presby- terian church in Wall Street, the new Dutch church, and even the old, were scarcely sur- passed by Trinity and St. Paul's. Meantime a new religious influence had been impressed upon the nation by the preaching of White- field, and in 1742 a revival had swept over the country that never lost its effect. Vil- lages and cities had been stirred by the im- pulse of reform. Many strange and some not attractive scenes had followed it. Children held their meetings for prayer apart. 1 Wom- en had been roused to unreflecting fanati- cism, and imposture and hypocrisy had flour- ished in the general excitement. Yet it was acknowledged that every where morality had received a real impulse at the hands of faith. The clergy themselves profited by the general movement, and became better fitted to guide the people. The Roman Catholic clergy at this period had lost much of their early intolerance. The Society of the Jesuits had been abolished, a series of moderate aud reputable popes had ruled at Rome, and reform seemed about to invade the councils of the Vatican. The fanatical reaction of the nineteenth century had not yet begun. In the towns and villages the lawyers shared with the clergy the intellectual influ- euce of the time. Many of them were well- read and accomplished men, who joined to their technical knowledge a considerable ac- quaintance with letters, or were noted for their natural eloquence. John Adams had prepared himself by a careful study of his profession to defend with legal accuracy the rights of his countrymen. William Smith, 1 Edwards, Life. CHIEF CITIES. 33 of New York, was known as a faithful his- torian as well as jurist, and formed the in- tellect of John Jay. Colden wrote well. In Virginia Patrick Henry had won his first renown by an impassioned appeal against the avarice and the ambition of the Estab- lished Church. Jefferson had trained him- self by practice in the courts before he es- sayed to condense in a brief memorial the rights of man. Nothing indeed is more re- markable at this period than the nicety and clearness with which the various points in dispute between the colonies and England were discussed in every part of the country, and the superiority in argument which the legal writers of America showed over their opponents in London when they treated of the professional elements of the controversy. Otis and Adams reasoned with calmness and force, while Johnson raved and Mansfield blundered. In the grand argument which the American lawyers addressed to the suf- frages of the civilized world there was a depth of reflection and a wide acquaintance with the principles of the common and in- ternational law that proved to acute observ- ers their just claim to freedom. No one could think such men unworthy to found a state. The chief cities of our ancestors were all scattered along the sea-coast. There were no large towns in the interior. Albany was still a small village, Schenectady a cluster of houses. To those vast inland capitals which have sprung up on the lakes and great rivers of the West our country offered no parallel. Chicago and St. Louis, the cen- tres of enormous wealth and unlimited com- merce, had yet no predecessors. Pleasant villages had sprung up in New England, New Jersey, and on the banks of the Hud- son, but they could pretend to no rivalry with those flourishing cities which lined the sea-coast or its estuaries, and seemed to our ancestors the abodes of luxury and splendor. Yet even New York, Philadelphia, and Bos- ton, 1 extensive as they appeared to the colo- nists, were insignificant towns compared to the European capitals, and gave no promise of ever approaching that grandeur which seemed to be reserved especially for London > Burnaby describes Boston as the most cultivated of the American cities. Dwight thinks New York " magnificent" at a later period. 3 and Paris. In 1774 the population of New York was perhaps 20,000 ; that of London 600,000. The latter was thirty times larger than the former, and in wealth and political importance was so infinitely its superior that a comparison between them would have been absurd. Boston, which has crowned Beacon Hill, pressed over the Neck, and even covered with a magnificent quarter a large surface that was once the bed of the Charles Eiver, was in 1774 a town of 15,000 or 18,000 inhabitants, closely confined to the neigh- borhood of the bay. The Long Wharf may still be seen on the ancient maps ; the Com- mon was used as a public resort ;* the Han- cock House was illuminated at the repeal of the Stamp Act, and the Sons of Liberty raised on the Common a pyramid of lamps, from the top of which fire-works lighted up the neighboring fields. But Beacon Hill was still used by its owner as a gravel- pit, and it was feared by the citizens that he might level it altogether. The Boston of 1774, which proclaimed freedom and de- fied the power of England, would scarcely rank to-day among the more important coun- try towns. New York was more populous, but it was still confined to the narrow point of land below the Park. The thickly built part of the town lay in the neighborhood of Whitehall. Some fine houses lined Broad- way and Broad Street, 2 but to the west of Broadway green lawns stretched down from Trinity and St. Paul's to the water. Trees were planted thickly before the houses ; on the roofs railings or balconies were placed, 3 and in the summer evenings the people gathered on the house-top to catch the cool air. Lamps had already been placed on the streets.* Fair villas covered the environs, and even the Baroness Riedesel, who had visited in the royal palaces of Europe, was charmed with the scenery and homes of the citizens. Extravagance had already cor- rupted the plainer habits of the earlier pe- riod. The examples of Loudon and Paris had already affected the American cities. The people of New York drank fiery Madeira, i Drake, Boston, 685. 2 Riedesel, Mem., iii. 170, etc. 3 Kalm. Riedesel, Mem., iii. 170. Watson, Annals New York, p. 227. A stage ran to Philadelphia in 1776. 4 New York, Miss Mary L. Booth. Gordon, i. 138, notices the heavy taxes of Boston— higher than those of London. 34 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. and were noted for their luxury. Broadway was thought the most splendid of avenues, although it ended at Chambers Street. And twenty years later, when the City Hall was built, it was called by Dvvight (a good schol- ar) the finest building in America. 1 The streets of New York and Boston were usual- ly crooked and narrow, but the foresight of Penn had made Philadelphia a model of reg- ularity. Market and Broad streets were am- ple and stately. The city was as populous as New York, and perhaps the possessor of more wealth. It was the first city on the continent, and the fame of Franklin had al- ready given it a European renown. 2 Yet Philadelphia when it rebelled against George III. was only an insignificant town, clinging to the banks of the river ; and New York in- vited the attack of the chief naval power of the world with its harbor undefended and its whole population exposed to the guns of the enemy's ships. The southern cities were yet of little importance. Baltimore was a small town. Virginia had no large city. Charleston had a few thousand inhabitants. Along that immense line of sea-coast now covered with populous cities the smallest of which would have made the New York and Boston of our ancestors seem insignificant, only these few and isolated centres of com- merce had sprung up. The wilderness still covered the shores of Long Island, New Jer- sey, Delaware, and the Carolinas almost as in the days of Raleigh. To pass from one city to another along this desolate shore was, in 1775, a long and difficult journey. Roads had been early built in most of the colonies. In Massachu- setts they were good, except where they passed over the hills. In New York a good road ran through Orange and Ulster coun- ties to Albany. That between New York and Philadelphia was probably tolerable. In the southern colonies but little attention was paid to road -building, and even those in the neighborhood of Philadelphia were often almost impassable. A stage-coach ran in two days from New York to Philadelphia, but the passengers were requested to cross over the evening before to Powle's Hook, that they might set out early in the morn- 1 Dwight, Travels, iii. 329, notices the magnificent style of living, etc. 3 Watson, Philadelphia. ing. 1 Sloops sailed to Albany in seven or eight days. 2 From Boston to New York was a tedious journey. In fair weather the roads of the time were tolerable ; but in winter and spring they became little better than quagmires. There was therefore but little intercourse between the people of the dis- tant colouies, and in winter all communica- tion by land and water must have been near- ly cut off. Had it been told to our ances- tors that within a century men would ride from New York to Philadelphia within three hours, or pass from the Atlantic to the Pa- cific in seven days, that the passage from Boston to Charleston would be made within three days, or from Liverpool to New York within ten, they would have placed no more confidence in the prediction than in the speculations of Laputa. Nor did they dream that Franklin's discoveries had made the closer union of the human race still more certain. The northern cities were usually built of brick or of stone, and many of the farm-houses were of the latter material. 3 The former had been imported from Holland for the first New York buildings ; and even Schenectady, a frontier town, was so purely Dutch as to have been early decorated with Holland brick. In the country stone was easily gathered from the abundant quarries on the Hudson or along the New Eugland hills. Many large, low, stone houses, with lofty roofs and massive windows, may still be seen in the rich valleys opening upon the Hudson, almost in the same condition in which they were left by their Huguenot or Dutch builders, and apparently capable of enduring the storms of another century.* Brick-making was soon introduced into the colonies, and the abundant forests supplied all the materials for the mechauic. Fortu- nately no palaces were built, no royal parks required, no Versailles nor Marly indispensa- ble to our ancestors, no monasteries, no ca- thedrals. A general equality in condition was nearly reached. Not five men, we are i Advertisement, The Flying Post. Watson, Ann. Phil., p. 257, notices the bad roads. 2 Trumbull, Mem., p. 26. 3 Kalm. Burnaby. Mr. Stone's valuable edition of the Riedesel memoirs throws much light upon the con- dition of the colonies. * Early New York (1669) " was built chiefly of brick and stone, and covered with red tiles." Brodhead, New York, ii. 153. MANNERS AND MORALS. 35 told, in New York and Philadelphia expend- ed ten thousand dollars a year on their fam- ilies. The manners of the people were sim- ple ; their expenses moderate. Yet nowhere was labor so well rewarded nor poverty so rare. Franklin, who had seen the terrible destitution of England and of France, pro- nounced his own country the most prosper- ous part of the globe, and was only anxious to protect it from that tyranny which had reduced Europe to starvation, and snatched their honest earnings from the hands of the working classes. He saw that those who labored were the best fitted to govern. The wages of the farm laborer in the northern colonies was probably three times that of the English peasant, and the general abun- dance of food rendered his condition easier. Fuel, however, before the discovery of coal, seems to have been sometimes scarce and dear. Kalm notices that complaints of its dearness were frequent in Philadelphia — now the seat of the chief coal market of the world. 1 Wines and liquors were freely con- sumed by our ancestors, and even New En- gland had as yet no high repute for temper- ance. Rum was taken as a common restor- ative. The liquor shops of New York had long been a public annoyance. In the far- ther southern colonies, we are told, the planter began his day with a strong glass of spirits, and closed it by carousing, gam- bling, or talking politics in the village tavern. Our ancestors were extraordi- narily fond of money, if we may trust the judgment of Washington, who seems to have found too many of them willing to improve their fortunes from the resources of the im- poverished community. 2 But in general it must be inferred that the standard of pub- lic morals was not low. In comparison with the corrupt statesmen of England and France, or with the members of the English Parliament, who were nearly all willing to accept and to give bribes, the American pol- iticians seemed to the European thinkers the most admirable of men. Washington rose above his species, and Franklin, Sam- uel and John Adams, Jefferson, Gadsden, and Lee were wise and prudent beyond example. Our generals and soldiers, when compared to i Pinkert, xiii. 40T. 2 Washington to Reed, Reed's Original Letters, p. those England sent over to conquer them, were evidently of a higher and purer race. Burgoyne, 1 Howe, and the greater part of their associates shocked the rising refine- ment of colonial society by their gross vices and shameless profligacy as much as by their inhumanity. Gates, Arnold, and Lee, who imitated them, were exceptions to the gen- eral purity of the American officers, and of these two were English -born and one a traitor. The desire for a higher and purer life was indeed the finest trait of American politics and society. The Declaration of Independ- ence embodied the real feeling of the people. They were anxious to promote human equal- ity, to enforce the common brotherhood of man, to cultivate refinement, to escape from the gross vices of mediseval barbarism which still covered all Europe. They had learned the necessity of religious and political toler- ation by the slow course of experience. In the opening of their history religious tolera- tion had been uuknown. New England had persecuted Episcopalians, Quakers, Dissent- ers. Stuyvesant, in New York, had sent Quakers in chains to Holland, and been re- proved by his superiors at the Hague. Vir- ginia was bitterly intolerant, and by the boasted constitution of Maryland in 1649 the Socinian was deemed worthy of death, and whoever reproached the Virgin Mary was fined, imprisoned, or banished. 2 But these harsh laws were gradually swept away, and in 1775 a practical toleration prevailed in all the colonies. No one of any intelli- gence any longer desired to propagate his faith by penal laws. An equal progress had been made in politics. Virginia was willing to abandon its entails and its oligarchy ; Massachusetts to assert a democratic equal- ity ; New York to break down its colonial aristocracy forever. All the colonies united in throwing aside the restrictions of Euro- pean prejudice, and by a remarkable revo- lution provided for the creation of a re- 1 Riedesel, Mem., iii. p. 125. Lord Auckland was constantly intoxicated. Burgoyne and his mistress spent half the night drinking Champagne while his troops were starving. Such were the morals England taught to the colonies. 2 Bozman, Maryland. Lord Baltimore probably hoped to make Maryland a purely Roman Catholic colony, but in 1649 England would not permit it, i. p. 351 ; ii. p. 662. 36 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. public, in which the people should be the only rulers. I shall conclude this imperfect sketch by a brief review of the intellectual condition of America. It had produced no Sbakspeare nor Milton, it possessed no poets and histo- rians ; but it is quite probable that the North- ern States of America were better educated in the ideas of Milton and Sbakspeare than even Englaud or France. Of the people of New England the larger proportion could read and write, while of the two centres of European civilization the great majority of the population were sunk in hopeless igno- rance. From the dawn of its history New England had insisted that its people should all be educated; and New York and Penn- sylvania had not lingered far behind it. 1 Connecticut imposed a heavy hue upon ev- ery father of a family who had neglected to teach his household the elements of knowl- edge, 2 Massachusetts had enforced a similar provision, and even South Carolina had di- rected a school to be planted in every town- ship. It was the aim of the New World to open the minds of all its people to the light of literature, and to cultivate the whole com- munity. It sought mental as well as polit- ical equality. But in France aud Englaud the royal governments found no leisure and had little inclination to teach their people. It was only in Protestant Holland and Ger- many that men were yet allowed to learn the " sweet influences" of a rule of letters. In their eager and resolute desire to make knowledge free to all, our ancestors at once planted in the wilderness the printing-press. Three years bad not passed after the land- ing of the first colony in Pennsylvania when the clank of the machine that had reformed •Europe aud discovered America resounded under the shade of the primeval forest. 5 It was with knowledge rather than arms that the followers of Penn hoped to found their state ; and nearly fifty years earlier Massa- chusetts had erected its first printiug-press at Cambridge, and had consecrated New En- ' Ramsay, i. 26. Palfrey, ii. 45. 2 Ramsay, i. 78. In Connecticut the parent neglect- ing education was fined twenty shillings. Baroness Riedesel noticed that all the women of New England could read. The Virginians of the back country she finds ignorant and " inert." They sometimes exchange wives, are cruel to their slaves ; but she was no friendly judge. 3 Thomas, Printing, and Bancroft. gland to literature and thought. Our an- cestors were plainly resolved that the New World should be a land of printers. Pam- phlets, sermons, political pieces, resounded through the wilderness, and at an early pe- riod Cotton Mather alone had printed in England and America three huudred and eighty-two of his own productions. In the opening of the eighteenth century (1704) a weekly paper, The News Letter, was publish- ed at Boston. 1 It was then the only news- paper printed in British America. It was a foolscap half sheet, and was thought suffi- cient to contain all the news of the day. In 1725 William Bradford issued at New York the New York Gazette, a foolscap sheet. The two Franklins, James aud Benjamin, edited at Boston the New England Courant; and suits for libel, imprisonment, aud fines were the reward of several of the early editors. James Franklin was in jail for four weeks ; Zenger, of the New York Courant (1733), was also soon in the grasp of the law. But through all its early trials the printing- press passed successfully. The newspaper became as necessary to the colonists as their daily food. In 1775 four were printed in New York, and as many each in Philadelphia and Boston. The free school proved the best ally of the printer, and popular education laid the foundation of a nation of readers. The power of the press was soon manifested. Reform and revolution followed in its path. Yet the rude machine at which Franklin and Bradford labored seemed to lag behind the wants of even an early age ; to print a few hundred copies of a small sheet required in- cessant toil ; and Faust himself must have looked with amazement aud awe upon one of those giant printing-presses that in our day consume their miles of paper, pour forth ten thousand huge sheets of accurate typog- raphy every hour, and relate the story of mankind. 2 Various colleges or schools for the high- er education of the people had already been planted in America. Harvard had long held a high renown even in Europe, and had been 1 Mr. Hudson, in his interesting account of Ameri- can journalism, notices a previous newspaper, in 1690, which had the unusual fate of lasting only one day, p. 44. 2 The invention of Hoe's rotary press has made the cheap newspaper possible, and cultivated the minds of millions. COLLEGIATE INSTITUTIONS. 37 fostered by liberal donations from English Dissenters. In its earlier history it had been unlucky in its principals : one had proved to be a Jesuit, another a Baptist. 1 To preside over Harvard was a favorite aim of Cotton Mather that was never gratified. Many of the eminent men of the colony had been cultivated in its careful course of study. Samuel and John Adams were its graduates, aud it had long been the school of Massa- chusetts and of Boston. Classical learning still formed the foundation of all mental training, and no one was thought capable of professional excellence who was not learn- ed in the languages of Greece and Rome. Yet it is worthy of notice that Washington had never construed a line of Virgil, and was wholly self-educated, and that Franklin learned his pure style and strong passion for letters and science in the composing- room. Dartmouth College had been recently founded to teach the Indians, which it fail- ed to do. Yale was more flourishing. Co- lumbia College, in New York, founded in 1756, had but two professors and twenty-five students ; but among them were to be num- bered John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. In New Jersey Princeton College, under the presidency of Dr. Witherspoon, a cultivated Scotchman, flourished, though with a poor endowment ; 2 it had sixty students and fine buildings. In Virginia William and Mary's College had been founded with an ample liberality by the two sovereigns whose names it bore ; it was endowed with a large income, and was designed to make Virginia a scene of wide intelligence. But the region of slavery could not be made favorable to mental progress. The college languished ; 3 its students were few ; it is chiefly memora- ble as having furnished Jefferson with some facilities for study. In all the American colleges it is doubtful if three hundred students were educated an- nually. More scholars are now gathered at a single university than in the year 1775 were found in all the famous seats of learn- ing of the country. Yet the colleges, how- * Winthrop. 3 Burnaby, Pinkert, xiii. 733. Princeton College had only " two professors besides the provost." ' 3 Ramsay, i. 263, notices its decay. Burnaby, Pin- kert., xiii. p. 714. ever imperfect, were still of real value to the people. They spread an acquaintance with the chief masters in science and letters, and helped to supply the press with literature, aud diffuse knowledge. Yet of the earlier American authors who attained fame, the chief had never passed through a regular course of study. Irving had gathered the charms of his perfect style from nature and practice in the newspapers. Cooper, Hal- leck, Drake, were self-educated and refined. Pure literature, in fact, is seldom taught in colleges, which have usually been little more than professional schools. The chief aim of education must always be to excite in- quiry and awaken the slumbering faculties. A just conception of its purpose our ances- tors had formed. They saw that there should be no limit to the spread of knowledge, and hoped that a system of instruction would grow up among the people that would prove a lasting bond of union. Their extrav- agant vision has been in part fulfilled. The common-school system has flowed from the germs which the Puritans, Huguenots, and Dutch planted in the wilderness, and the college is gradually assuming a more popu- lar character. 1 In the period of the Revo- lution, with one or perhaps two exceptions, the colleges were firmly on the side of prog- ress. Harvard gave its brightest geniuses to the cause of freedom, its transatlantic Hampden to fall at Bunker Hill, its Adams to found a nation. Yale was rigidly patri- otic. Princeton College, under Witherspoon, formed a bulwark of independence. Yet the influence of the colleges was only a faint impulse compared to that of the general in- telligence of our educated people, and that strong passion for liberty which had grown up from the simpler school-house and the modest library. Books, which had discovered America and first disturbed the wilderness, were not want- ing to our ancestors. The booksellers sold freely the new works of Johnson, Burke, or the famous Dr. Goldsmith, and one Boston house numbered ten thousand volumes on 1 In cities, it is said, colleges seldom flourish, yet the eagerness with which students avail themselves of the advantages of the Boston Latin School or the New York Free College, a school of mines or a pop- ular law school, shows that utility must be one trait of the collegre course. 38 INTRODUCTION.— COLONIAL PROGRESS. its shelves. Several public and private libraries already existed. Kalin mentions the collection of excellent works, chiefly En- glish, in the public library founded by Frank- lin in 1742 at Philadelphia. The wealthier people of the town paid forty shillings cur- rency in the beginning, besides ten shillings annually. Several smaller libraries were also fouuded near it. Boston showed a " more general turn for music, painting, and the fine arts" than either of the more south- ern towns. 1 But literature still hesitated to flourish in the New World. Mather, Edwards, sermons, pamphlets, newspapers, were the chief sources of the mental prog- ress of our ancestors. It was idle to look for a Homer or Shakspeare in so wild a land ; 2 nor is it likely that a fourth epic will be sung for many a cycle. But reading was a characteristic trait of the whole people, and curiosity and inquiry the chief impulses of their civilization. In military affairs the colonists had shown courage and capacity. New England troops had grown famous at the conquest of Louisbourg, the siege of Ha- vana, and the fall of Quebec. While the En- glish ministry were denouncing them as a feeble, abject race, more intelligent observ- ers in England knew that the colonists were only cowards in cruel and inhuman deeds. Virginia's troops had fought bravely in the wilderness, and Washington was the most renowned of the colonial commanders. In military stores, guns, powder, arms, the country was deficient ; nor did its people suppose that they would ever be drawn into another great war. Around the thin line of settlements occu- pied by our ancestors a circle of various and almost hostile races hemmed in their prog- 1 Burnaby, Pinkert., xiii. 747. 2 Ramsay, i. 275. Its earliest poems were in Latin. ress. Between the austere and Puritanic New Englander and the loose, profligate, 1 yet often courageous clergy and people of Quebec there could be no friendship. Can- ada refused to join in the cause of independ- ence. Its French population turned with aversion from an alliance with heretics and Saxons. To the westward the Canadian and clerical influence governed all the Indian tribes. The Mississippi was held by the Spaniards and by a few English planters who steadfastly refused to join the colo- nists. 2 New Orleans, recently transferred to Spain, was at first unwilling to sell arms and powder to the boats that had sailed down the great river from Pittsburg. The English in West Florida were hostile to the colonies ; Spanish Florida was still unde- cided. It was with no confidence in any exterior aid that the colonists looked out upon their beleaguered territory in the hot days of July, 1776. On every side around them they saw the impending horrors of a war of extirpation. Canada teemed with military preparations ; the savages were aroused through all the wilderness ; the cit- ies on the coast were threatened with sud- den ruin ; Howe was already landing on Staten Island; disunion tore the ranks of the reformers. Yet on the 2d of July, 1776, a bell rang cheerfully over Philadelphia that spoke the liberation of America. Samuel Adams had won his cause. 3 The 2d of July seemed to John Adams the grandest day of all the ages. 1 Riedesel, Mem., iii. p. 87. Macgregor, Progress of Commerce, i. 141, notices the immorality of the Cana- dians. One minister of state stole £400,000. 2 Gayarre, Louisiana, Spanish Dominion, p. 109. Fi- nally the Spaniards attack the English. 3 Samuel Adams, to his disciple and kinsman John, was the " wedge of steel" that split the bond between England and America. J. Adams to William Tudor, June 5, 1817. So Jefferson looked to Samuel Adams as his guide and teacher. II. MECHANICAL PROGRESS. UNITED STATES PATENT-OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D. O. IT is no common century. Compared with its predecessors, it appears rather as a contrast than a development. It is not easy to state its relation to the past in terms of progression, since it may be said to have leaped into existence, and an adequate state- ment describes radical changes rather than evolution. The search for the " lost arts" is an agree- able literary and scientific ramble, with nooks containing treasures which well re- ward the explorer ; but one's eyes must be sadly out of focus if the distant, laborious ingenuities of remote ages are more distinct in the field of vision than the majestic works of the present. A locomotive is a more preg- nant fact than a pyramid or a sculptured cavern. The subject is one to which it is not possible to do full justice, even in a vol- ume, either by a general sketch or by par- ticular instances. We purpose to take a rapid preliminary survey of the field of me- chanical activity, and then to devote tne principal portion of our space to details re- specting a few prominent subjects, thereby enabling the reader to form a judgment from the sum of the parts, instead of a superficial estimate from a cursory glance at the mul- titudinous whole. The inquiry, whether it proceed by a gen- eral survey or by investigation of detached portions, will reveal the following facts : 1. No nation has had exclusive concern in the production of any one class of inven- tions, and yet we need not go beyond the area of the English-speaking nations to make a thorough exhibit of the mechanical progress of the period under review. 2. Nations allied by ties of blood and simi- larities of tone, temper, taste, and opportu- nity develop in parallel lines which continu- ally inosculate. This is well illustrated in the tools and methods of the machine-shop. England and America are rich in coal and iron, have the same incentives to industry, and the machines of each are largely the growth of successive improvements from the respective nations, in each of which a host of inventors are laboring at the solution of the same problems. 1 3. Peculiar conditions of peoples, even of the same race, elicit distinct varieties of tools and methods. This diversity is exem- plified in the appliances used in America for subduing the wilderness and cultivating lately cleared land, as compared with the husbandry implements of Britain. Our people in the colonial period were generally engaged in husbandry, lumbering, trading, hunting, and fishing. The exports were grain, meat, naval stores, tobacco, and pelts. But few mechanic arts were carried on systematically, except ship-building. Car- i It is onr purpose in this series to treat of American progress in the various fields of activity. But in this field of Mechanical Progress, as in some others, it is plainly impossible to exclude what has been accom- plished by other nations.— Ed. 40 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. pentry, blacksmithing, and tanning were regular trades. In the cities other indus- tries engaged attention, but in the country the clothes, hats, and shoes of the people and the harness of the horses were made by the people at their houses in the winter or in seasons of inclement weather. There were some other industries in a few favored localities — some paper mills in Mas- sachusetts and Pennsylvania, some cloth mills at Boston and Germantown, Pennsyl- vania. Beaver hats were made in a few places ; linen, at a settlement near Boston ; glass was manufactured in Massachusetts and New Hampshire ; the hand card, the spinning-wheel, and the loom constituted almost always a part of the furnishing of country houses. The roads were bad, the equipages clum- sy, as they were, indeed, in England at that time. Twenty -four gentlemen's carriages were owned in Philadelphia in 1761. Coun- try squires and patricians rode in their coaches and four, or even six, when the jour- ney was long or the season unpropitious. Postilions and outriders were the acme of style. Judge Reed, of Pennsylvania, import- ed a skillful "whip" for his four-in-hand. The country wagons and the agricultural im- plements were rude and ineffective. Carts, plows, and hoes were made by the country mechanic of such material as he could pro- cure, little metal being used in either. Strips of iron made by hammering out old horseshoes were the facings of the wooden mould-boards of plows. The laws of England had rigorously maintained the dependence of the provinces, forbidding all important works in iron, and the war found the people unprepared to supply their sudden needs. The war was to a large degree fought by men in homespun and hunting shirts, armed with the frontiers-man's trusty rifle. When peace rendered possible commercial and mechanical enterprise, a new era dawn- ed. Many things which the colonists had cheerfully imported from the mother coun- try began to be made at home, and many industries which had been repressed by law to keep the colonies subordinate and de- pendent began to be developed. In 1787 the first cotton mill in America was built at Beverly, Massachusetts. In 1789 Samuel Slater introduced the Arkwright system of mill spinning. The exportation of machin- ery from England was successfully prevent- ed, and Slater was obliged to make the card- ing, drawing, roving, and spinning mechan- ism from memory. In 1783 Oliver Evans had introduced his improvements in grain mills, and a few years afterward his steam- engine — the first double-acting high-press- ure steam-engine on record. In 1785 Rum- sey, and in 1788 Fitch, had their boats on the Potomac and Delaware respectively. In 1787 Jacob Perkins had his nail-cutting ma- chines and dies for coin. In 1794 Whitney's cotton-gin, and in 1797 Whittemore's card- sticking machine, came to the help of the cotton interest. Other inventions followed in rapid succession. The progress above noted occurred within fifteen years after the treaty of peace. It is doubtful whether on the 4th of July, 1776, there were more than two steam-engines in the thirteen colonies, one at Passaic, New Jersey, the other in Philadelphia. The New- comen engine was as yet only partially sup- planted by the Watt, and offered but mod- erate inducements for any purpose except pumping water from copper and lead mines, whose rich ores paid for the wasteful use of wood or coal. The great advance in machinery, and es- pecially our own active part in it, is very re- cent. Persons yet alive remember the first crossing of the Atlantic by a steamboat, the Savannah. Those yet in the prime of life recollect the opening of the first railway to passenger traffic. Horatio Allen drove the first locomotive which was imported. Thus the century under consideration, from a mechanical point of view, is most readily segregated from its predecessors. It is not saying too much to assert that at its com- mencement the coal of England was scarce- ly valued except for household uses. As to the coal of America, its extent and its util- ity were not even suspected. Machinery as yet was not. The steam-engine of New- comen was pumping in some few mines in England. This engine condensed its steam in the cylinder beneath the piston, cooling the cylinder at each stroke, and using the condensation of the steam as a means of producing a partial vacuum, in order to ob- tain the value of the atmospheric pressure above the piston. The duty or valuable ef- STEAM-ENGINES OF NEWCOMEN AND WATT. 11 NEWOOMEN'S STEAM-ENGINE. feet of the NeAvcomeu engine in 1769 was 5,500,000 pounds of water raised one foot high by one bushel of Welsh coal. Watt's inventions were made between the years 1769 and 1784, and before the year 1800 the duty of the Cornish engine was quadrupled ; by 1840 it was again quadrupled. Watt add- ed to the steam-engine the separate condenser and the air-pump. By the former he avoided the cooling of the cylinder before each ef- fective stroke of the piston ; by the latter he made the vacuum more perfect. He sub- sequently made the additions of the parallel motion, of the steam-jacket to the cylinder, and of the cylinder cover, and made the steam act positively against the piston, instead of mere- ly using it to produce a vacuum. Afterward he made the engine dou- ble acting, that is, used pressure of steam on the sides of the piston alternately ; then he increased the strength of the parts, the rapidity of the stroke, and the pressure of the steam. Coal, the black slave, had been chained below from time immemorial, and Watt contrived a way of setting him to work. Up to this period there had been scarcely any progress ; after it hosts of in- ventions crowd upon the scene and clamor for notice. The Watt pe- riod inaugurates the century whose progress in the mechanic arts is under consideration. The utilization of coal in the production of steam for driving machinery is the turning-point in the history of mechanical develop- ment, and made possible improve- ments in various other directions. If there had been no Watt, Smeaton, Ark- wright, Hargreaves, Cartwright, Cort, Mur- doch, Whitney, Trevethick, and Stephen- son, the victory of Colonel Clive at Plassey might not have proved the precursor of the occupation of the whole of Hindostan. But for the machinery which by gradual accre- tions gave to England an increased power of production more than equivalent to the addition of a population equal to that of China to her industrial forces, the farther works of Clive, the victories of Hastings, Comwallis, Wellesley, Napier, Hardinge, and Gough, would not have occurred, and in their places would have been mere raids or desultory expeditions, half commercial and half military, after the first burst of con- quest and spoliation. This accession of labor was in a shape more tense and patient than even the en- during Chinaman, for its muscles were of iron, its food could be dug from the earth, and when at last worn out, it could be worked over again, and had not to be boxed, labeled, and sent back to be deposited near the tablets of its ancestors. watt's double-acting steam-engine, 1769. 42 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. The capacity of the steam-engines of En- gland may be otherwise stated. It is esti- mated that the great Pyramid of Ghizeh oc- cupied the labor of 100,000 men for twenty years in the erection alone. The steam- engines of England, worked by 36,000 men, would raise the same quantity of material to the same height in eighteen hours. Thus reckoning ten hours to the day, and three bundled working days to the year, three thousand pyramids might be erected by the steam-power of England in the period occu- pied by the builders of that of Ghizeh. The multiplication, in the course of years, by flftyfold of the working power of En- gland caused such an enormous increase of material that privy councils, armies, and fleets vied with each other in explorations by sea and land. The Northwest Passage, which has a literature and a history of its own — a history exultant and yet sad — only meant a short road to India around one end of that terribly long continent which barred Europe from sailing westward to Asia. There is no more truthful accessible test of the comparative ingenuity of periods in a given country than the number of patents granted therein. Our national patent sys- tem has been in operation only since 1790, but that of England is much older. The following table gives the numbers of patents granted in decades for the two centuries. Previous to 1790 patents were granted by individual States, as to Fulton, Fitch, Rum- sey, Evans, and others. Decade ending England. Decade ending England. United States. 1680 49 1780 297 1690 55 1790 512 1T00 101 1S00 675 ' 306 1710 20 1810 936 1,086 1T20 45 1820 1,125 1,748 1730 94 1830 1,533 2,986 1740 48 1840 2,710 5,488 1750 85 1850 4,666 5,942 1760 99 1860 25,201 23,140 1770 221 1870 35,079 79,612 The factory system is the growth of the century now closing. When Richard Ark- wright was traveling over the hills of Lan- cashire, buying the tresses of the country lasses to make wigs, and Hargreaves was working at the rudimentary carding -ma- chine, the artisans of the country worked each in his little shop. The wool-stapler dealt out his lots of wool to the carders and spinners, who took it home and returned the agreed-upon quality and weight of yarn ; to another set of workmen the yarn was ap- portioned for weaving; other tradesmen finished the work. The same practice pre- vailed with the hardware makers and iron- mongers; the nailers of Wolverhampton, the artificers of Birmingham, the cutlers of Sheffield, the carpet-weavers of Axminster — each received at his house a quota of mate- rial such as he or his family could make up in a few days, and returned the finished work to his employer. It is easy to imagine how this may have been managed, for it is only within a comparatively few years that the business of boot and shoe making has been aggregated into factories and performed by machinery. In the factory the labor-saving machines which have superseded the laborious baud operations are employed in great numbers with comparatively few attendants. The steam-engine, fed by coal and water, or the water-wheel, provides the power required, and the duty of the attendant is to supply the constantly recurring need for fresh ma- terials, to mend breaks, or repair faults. In- stead of being a mere fashioner of a piece at a time, the workman becomes a supervisor of nearly automatic machinery, whose appe- tite for material he is required to anticipate and satisfy, and whose occasional eccentrici- ties it is his duty to correct. The development of the cotton manufac- ture furnishes the best and perhaps earliest example of the factory system. Arkwright appears to have worked at his cotton ma- chinery for several years, and in company with several partners, who successively fur- nished means and then tired of the project, before he erected the mill at Nottingham, which was worked by horse-power. This mill was erected in 1770 ; another one was established in 1771, in which the machinery was driven by a water-wheel. So new was the idea of employing other than hand or foot labor that his spinning-machine was long known as the " water-frame," and the product as the "water-twist." His other improvements were patented in 1775, and thus the century starts with Mr. Arkwright fresh upon the track, leading in a race the success of which has changed the aspect of our commercial and social systems. Arkwright, in spite of fraudulent tres- passers and expensive lawsuits, lived to see THE HOE AND THE PLOW. 43 the perfect triumph of his ingenuity and sedulous care. His suits developed the con- ditions and situations which taxed the wis- dom of the judges, and elicited the decisions and maxims that have given shape to the patent system of England and the United States. Arkwright v. Nightingale, the King v. Arkwright, are cases that form the " hard pan" of the Patent Law. We shall see how well the facts of the various branches of invention arrange them- selves within the period we are considering — how the rank and file of inventions array themselves in battalions, brigades, divis- ions, on one side of the bine chronological. Turn we to steam in its original form as a pumping engine, or to its subsequent duties as a transporting agent on water or on the land, or as a driver of machinery ; or look we abroad to other lines of enterprise and industry — the manufacture of cotton and wool, the production and manufacture of iron, wood-working machinery, hydraulic engineering, the manufacture and applica- tions of gas, electricity in its various forms and applications, the construction of instru- ments of measurement and precision, do- mestic machinery — we find that each group forms in regimental order within the bounds we have indicated. This, though unexampled, was not fortu- itous ; the time was ripe. Yet there was but slight indication beforehand of the new departure. It was as if by a mysterious im- pulse all started at once, the utilization of the buried stores of coal by means of the Watt engine being the great fact of the new dispensation. The field is too great to give even a brief account of each division, and a few must be selected as examples from which the gener- al progress may be deduced. AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. There is no apology needed for beginning our review with farming imple- ments. Howev- er disinclined a citizen may be to blister his hands by chopping fire-wood or mauling rails, he freely admits the respectability of the employment and its ancient fame. Ad- mitting, then, the precedence of the hus- bandman, we will first look at the principal agricultural tool — the plow. This tool has never outgrown its resem- blance to the forked limb which was first used as a hoe and then as a plow. With such tools as they could muster, men shaped the tough limbs and crotches of trees iuto implements. The forked piece (A) was trimmed and became the hoe (B), a thong binding the handle and blade portions to prevent their splitting apart. We give pic- tures (C) of two ancient Egyptian hoes now in the Berlin Museum. A similar one may be seen in the Abbott Museum, New York. Two suitable sticks (D) were notched and lashed together. Two other resources of a people destitute of metal are shown (E, F), one, of the South Sea Islanders, the blade made of a scapula, the other made of a wal- rus tooth on a handle. It is shown (G, H, I) how men made plows from similar mate- rials ; one limb formed the share, the other the beam ; or (as in I) one the beam and the other the handle and sole, with a point which forms the share. The actual change in the plow for more than thirty centuries has been but local. The greater part of the world uses a plow much like those pictured on the palaces of Thebes. Those used in our colonial period were a very slight departure from that pat- tern. The plow was of wood ; it was formed of pieces whose shape adapted them to be- come parts of the structure. The beam, standard, and handles — if the plow had two, THE OBIGIN OP T1IE UOE AND THE PLOW. 44 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. BTJDE MODERN PLOWS. A, an East Indian plow. B, a modern Egyptian plow. C, a Mexican plow. D, a Chinese plow. E, an ancient British implement, which yet survives in the western wilds of Scotland. The latter is pointed with iron, and may have been the origin of the bull-tongue plow, more familiar to men of '76 than to the farmer of the present day. which was not always the case — were of seasoned stuff; the mould-board was a block of wood which had a winding grain approx- imatiug the curve required. The accompanying figures show a num- ber of plows yet used in some foreign coun- tries. These differ in no essential respect from plows shown on the tombs of Egypt, the vases of Etruria, the bass-reliefs of Greece, and the medals of Rome. The plows of the south of France, of Spain, of Calabria, Greece, Turkey, and Syria are very simi- lar. The plow of the past is now utterly abandoned by us, and we have a new tool of a different material, still, however, preserv- ing the peculiar family feature ; it will never get over the resemblance to that primordial limb. The plow of 1776 was all of wood except the wrought iron share and some bolts and nuts whereby the parts were fastened to- gether. The standard rose nearly vertical- ly, having attached to it the beam and the sole-piece. On the nose of the beam hting the clevis ; the mould-board and sbare were attached to a frame braced between the beam and the sole. The wooden mould- board was sometimes plated with sheet- iron or by strips made by hammering out old horseshoes. A clump of iron shaped like a half spear formed the point. It was known as a " bull plow," " bull-tongue," or " bar-share" plow. Two pins in the stand- ard formed the handles, and it required the strength of a man to manage it. The work was slowly and ill performed by cattle. The shovel plow, which until lately was the principal plow of the South, and is yet largely used in furrowing out ground for hoed crops, such as corn, cane, and potatoes, and in tending the same, is clearly a deriva- tive from the old crotched stick. The order of improvement is about as fol- lows : Some time in the last century a cer- tain plow was imported into England, prob- ably from Flanders, which had been long far in advance of England in gardening and horticulture. Queen Elizabeth used to get salads from Flanders as a change from the interminable beef and beer. This imple- ment was known as the Rotherham plow; but whether the name was a corruption of Rotterdam no one knows. It was a very tidy implement in shape, but was all of wood, with the exception of a sheet -iron covering to the working parts. This re- quired frequent renewal. James Small, of Berwickshire, Scotland, introduced the AMERICAN PLOW OF 1776. MODERN PLOWS. 45 plow (a) with a cast iron mould-board and a wrought iron share. His was the first cast iron plow. He made the shares also of cast iron in 1785. Thomas Jefferson from 1788 to 1793 stud- ied and experimented to determine the prop- er shape of the mould-board to do the work effectively and offer the least resistance, treating it as consisting of a lifting wedge and an upsetting wedge, with an easy con- necting curve. Newbold, of Burlington, New Jersey, in 1797 patented a plow with a mould-board, share, and land-side all cast together. Peacock in his patent of 1807 cast his plow in three pieces, the point of the colter entering a notch in the breast of the sbare. Ransome, of Ipswich, England, in 1803 chilled the cast shares on the under side, so that they might keep sharp by wear. Jetbro Wood, of Scipio, Cayuga County, New York, patented improvements in 1819. He made the best and most popular plow (b) of its day, and was entitled to much credit for skill and enterprise, but lost his fortune in developing his invention and defending his rights. He, however, overestimated the extent of novelty in his invention. He seems to have thought it the first iron plow. Its peculiar merit consisted in the mode of securing the cast iron portions together by lugs and locking pieces, doing away with screw-bolts and much weight, complexity, and expense. Wood did more than any oth- er person to drive out of use tbe cumbrous contrivances common throughout the coun- try, giving a lighter, cheaper, and more ef- fective implement. It was the first plow in which the parts most exposed to wear could C^V HOWARD WUEEL-PLOW. plows: 1785-1874. a, Small's, b, Wood's, c, Gibbs's. be renewed in the field by the substitution of cast pieces. In 1820 Timothy Pickering, of Salem, Massachusetts, first recognized the impor- tance of straight transverse lines on the mould-board. The shape was such that it might be cut from a conical frustum. In 1854 the Gibbs plow (c) had its straight transverse lines horizontal, the surface from which it might be cut being a cylinder with its axis horizontal. The Howard plow shows the favorite style of plow in England. The long stilts give great power to the plowman. The wheels determine tbe depth accurately, except in short and sudden rises and hollows. It is impossible here to describe the mi- nor improvements of this implement, great as is the sum of their importance — the roll- ing colter, the wheel which takes the place of the sliding sole, adaptations for setting the plow for depth and for land, to prevent clogging, etc. Aaron Smith, of En- gland, first made that form of double plow which has a small advance share and mould-board to turn over the sod, followed by the usual share and mould-board to invert the furrow-slice, and thus completely bury the surface soil. It is _^[ji^l5s@ES!3E21 &^^£ inches wide, and 63 inches deep. Water space, 3 inches sides and back, 4 inches front. Grates, cast iron. The cylinders are horizontal. Valve motion graduated to cut off equally at all points of the stroke. The tires are of cast steel, and the wheel centres of cast iron with hollow spokes and rims; the wrist pins of cast steel, the connecting rods of hammered iron. The truck wheels are 28 inches in diameter. All the principal parts of these engines are interchangeable. The steam-pipe (e) has two branches, each entering one of the boxes containing the valves by which the flow of steam to the cylinders is controlled. In the same engraving is shown an ex- press engine (C) designed by Gooch for the Great Western Railway, where an unusual rate of speed is maintained. The boiler has 305 tubes, two inches in diameter. The cyl- inders are eighteen inches in diameter, and twenty -four stroke, the driving-wheels eight feet in diameter, the heating surface of the fire-box 153 square feet. There is also an illustration (D) of an express engine de- signed by Crampton for the narrow gauge. The first locomotive run on rails outside of England was the " Stourbridge Lion," made by Stephenson, and brought from En- gland for the Delaware and Hudson Canal and Railroad Company by Horatio Allen. This was in August, 1829. It was soon found that English locomotives, adapted for gentle curves, were ill suited for the exi- gencies of American railroads, where curves of as small a radius as 200 feet were some- times employed. Mr. Peter Cooper devised an engine which solved the difficulty. This was also in 1829. The first railway in the United States was one of two miles long, from Milton to Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1826. The cars were drawn by horses. The Baltimore and Ohio was the first passenger railway in America, fifteen miles being opened in 1830, the cars being drawn by horses till the next year, when a locomotive was put on the track, built by Davis, of York, Pennsylvania. It had an upright boiler and cylinder. The Mohawk and Hudson, sixteen miles, from Albany to Schenectady, was the next line opened, and the cars were drawn by horses till the de- livery of the locomotive " De Witt Clinton," which was built at the West Point Foundry, New York. This was the second locomotive built in the United States ; the first was made at the same shop for the South Caro- lina Railway. The above engraving represents a central longitudinal section of an approved form of American locomotive engine as made at the Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia. The ordinary speed attained on English railways is greater than that usual in this country. The Great Western Ex- press, from London to Exeter, travels at the rate of forty- three miles an hour, including stoppages, or fifty-one miles an hour while actually running. Midway between some of the stations a speed of sixty miles an hour is attained, and on u*~ AMERICAN LOCOMOTIVE — END ELEVATION AND TRANSVERSE SECTION. 60 M E( ' 1 IANICAL PROGRESS. experimental trips seventy miles an hour has been reached, or nearly thirty -three yards per second. Very high speed has been attained on special occasions on American roads, prob- ably fully equal to any time ever made in England. For instance, it is stated that a train conveying sonic officials of the New York Central Railroad made the distance from Rochester to Syracuse, eighty-one miles, in sixty-one minutes — said to be the fastest lime ever made in America. The lite of a locomotive engine is stated in a paper read before the British Associa- tion at thirty years. Some of the small parts require renewal every six months. The boiler tubes last live years, and the crank axles six years ; tires, boilers, and fire- boxes, seven to ten years; the side frames, axles, ami other parts, thirty years. During this period the total cost of repairs is esti- mated at $24,450 in American money, the original cost of the engine being $8490. It therefore requires for repairs in eleven years a sum equal to its original cost. In this time it is estimated t hat an engine in average use has run 220,000 miles. COTTON MANUFACTURE. Cotton was known to the ancients as tree- wool, being mentioned by Herodotus, Pliny, and many others. It was introduced into Spain by the Arabs, and flourished as long as religious toleration existed in the penin- sula, ami from this land it reached the less civilized parts of Europe. "When the best part of the inhabitants was expelled, when the University of Cordova became a thing forgotten in the peninsula, when the mem- ory nf Alha/cn was lost, and the era of the Pedros and Philips commenced, then the Cotton-plant too faded away, and all the in- dustries growing out id' this beautiful staple expired. Cotton was, however, known to the Mexi- cans when discovered by Cortez. This man without ;i conscience sent of his stolen goods to Charles V. "cotton mantles, some all white, others mixed with white and black, or red. green, yellow, and blue; waistcoats, counterpanes, tapestries, and carpets of cot- ton; ami the colors of the cotton were ex- tremely tine.'" 1 1 Clavigero's Conquest of Mexico. Although there are several native Amer- i < ■ : i ii \ arieties of cotton, our plant is a native of India, and it has formed the staple mate- rial of garments there from time immemorial. Cotton goods were made in Manchester in 1641, of " cotton-wool brought from Smyrna and Cyprus." Cotton seed was brought to England from the Levant, taken thence to the Bahamas, and thfence to Georgia in 1786. The first cotton mill in America was at Bev- erly, Massachusetts, 1787. Slater's mill w r as erected at Pawtucket in 1789. Slater was an apprentice of Strutt and Arkwright, and introduced into the United States the Ark- wright system of associated and combined machines, being the founder of the New England factory practice. The success of these mills is referred to in the report of Al- exander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasu- ry, 1791, who proposed to remove the duty on cotton, as it was "not a production of the country," and to "extend the duty of seven and a half per cent, to all imported cotton goods." The beauty and softness of the goods made of this material, which was new to the people of Europe, recommended it to per- sons of means and taste, and the importa- tion from India assumed large proportions. The names of calico and muslin, from Cali- ent and Moussoul, indicate clearly enough whence the market was supplied at an early day. The English manufacturers struggled against many difficulties, three of which may be named — the lack of snitable machinery; the opposition of the wool trade, which in- duced the authorities even to hang crimi- nals in cotton garments to render the goods unpopular ; and the lack of supply of cotton. The cotton from the boll yields only from one-quarter to one-third ginned fibre, and the labor of removing the seed by hand seemed at this critical moment to set a lim- it to the production, or at least render it so expensive that the goods could not come into general use among the masses of the people, who were used to being tolerably well fed and housed, and could not live on twopence a day and support their families, like the Hindoos. It is true that in India a sort of roller-gin had been in use from time immemorial — one which pinched the fibre and carried it away from the seed, whose size prevented it from passing between the COTTON-GIN AND CARDING-MACHINE. 61 rollers; but this was comparatively slow, and does not appear to have been known in America, where the hand-picking was in vogue. Besides, it is only suitable for cer- tain staples of cotton. The great need of the producer and the manufacturer was a machine to remove the cotton from the seed with rapidity and economy. At this juncture appears Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, who in 1794 patented the cotton-gin. The name gin is short for engine, and is a frequent curt expression for a handy machine. Whitney's saw-gin (A) com- prises two cylinders of different diameters mounted in a wooden frame, and turned by a handle or belt and pulley so as to rotate in opposite directions, the brush cylinder the faster. The smaller cylinder carries on its circumference from sixty to eighty cir- cular saws, and the larger cylinder a series of brushes. The teeth of the saws pass in between a number of bars, forming a grat- ing. The cotton, as picked from the pods, is thrown into the hopper; the saws strip the fibre from the seeds, which fall through the bottom of the hopper, while the wool is cleansed from the teeth of the saws, and de- livered by a sloping table into 1 a recepta- cle below. A more modern and complete form of the machine (B) is shown in our en- graving. The crop of cotton increased from 189,316 pounds in 1791 to 2,000,000,000 pounds in 1859. Whitney and his partner received $50,000 from the State of South Carolina, and a tariff of so much per saw per annum from the States of North Carolina and Georgia for a short term of years. After the gin come the opener and scutcher, which separate the locks of cotton, remove the dirt, and convert the tangled fibre into a light and flocculent bat or lap. The ma- chines of this stage of the process have a number of names, the marks of the rough humor of the Lancashire men among whom they originated. They were known as wil- lowers, from the practice of beating with willow wands, or as devils and wolves, from their toothed drums, which tore the locks apart, the fibre passing from one to anoth- er, and the dust and dirt being carried off by a suction blast, or falling through the meshes of wire-cloth into a box beneath the machine. wiiitney's ootton-gin. The carding-machine reduces the mass of cotton to a fleece or sliver, the fibres laid parallel, so that they may bo drawn and twisted into a yarn. Hand cards were not superseded by machine cards until about 1770, although attempts had been made at carding -machines by Lewis Paul in 1748, and by Hargreaves in 1760. To the latter, to Arkwright, and to Mr. Peele, the father of the first Sir Eobert and the grandfather of the statesman, the invention is ascribed. It was hardly possible that this necessary link in the chain of machines should long lack a discoverer. Lewis Paul in his patent of 1748 had a number of parallel cards on a bed, or on a cylinder, with intervening spaces. It was used in connection with an upper card or a concave, and when the strips were full they were taken off, and the roving removed from each. Peele in 1779 introduced the cylinder. His machine had strips of card around the drum to give separate slivers or carclings, and a can, which rotated on its base, to give a slight twist to the rovings. This was per- haps the first roving can. The card-sticking machine was invented by Amos Wliittemore, of Massachusetts, and patented by him in 1797. Next in order of operation, though the first to feel the rising tide of invention, was the spinning machine. In ancient Egypt, G2 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. SPINNING-WHEEL. Phoenicia, Arabia, India, Greece, and Rome the distaff and spindle were the means of spinning. The spinning-wheel may have orig- inated among onr cousins of Hindostan, as it was certainly known there at a somewhat distant period ; it appears in our illuminated missals of the fourteenth century, but only among the lady population, being used by spinsters and matrons of rank. The great bulk of the spinning was by the distatf, which indeed is still used in many parts of the continent of Europe. Among English- speaking peoples it survived latest iu the flax-wheel, in which a continuous thread was spun from a tussock of combed flax held upon a distaff at one end of the machine. So far as we are concerned, the commence- ment of our century finds the spinning of cotton and wool in the condition of many previous ages and centuries ; it was done upon hand spinning-wheels. This was true as to work done for the household and that which was done in the way of business, be- ing distributed by the spinning masters of a neighborhood to the operatives, who did the work at their own houses. When Har- greaves invented the spinning-jenny in 1768 cotton and woolen mills were unknown. The wool being carded into rolls in which the fibres were arranged in one direction, the spinner attached the end of one to the spindle, which was then revolved by whirling the large wheel, a band passing over the periph- ery of the latter and over a little pulley on the spindle. The left hand of the opera- tor drew out the roll as it was twisted, the degree of its elongation and the hardness of the twist depending upon the distance it was pulled out and the number of revolutions. In practice, the spinner steps back a dis- tance after setting the wheel a-whirling, and, when the twist is satisfactory, by shift- ing the yarn from the point to the shaft of the spindle, and then setting the spindle again in motion, the yarn is wound upon the spindle, excepting the end of the yarn, which is left projecting from the point for the attachment of another roll. Another feature must also be noticed, as it has a very close bearing upon what was followed in the most perfect known spinning machine, the mule, of which more presently. The spin- ner, after drawing out the roll, giving the wheel a whirl, and walking backward from it, dropped the roving, and then, advancing to the spindle, took the roving between the finger and thumb ; then, giving a rapid rev- olution to the wheel, she walked backward away, allowing the roving to slip through the grip with just such friction as would secure the required tightness of twist. This done, the yarn was wound upon the spindle, and the double process repeated with an- other carded roll. This was the way with wool, and subse- quently with cotton; but it Avas not until the rising demand for cotton yarn occurred that machinery was invented to supplement the individual exertions of the spinner. Machinery was first applied to silk, but the material was expensive, the demand limit- ed, and the process essentially different. Lewis Paid led off in this line of invention in his patent of 1738, in which he introduced the idea of successive pairs of drawing roll- ers for elongating the roving, the speed of the consecutive pairs increasing so that each pulled upon the roving between it and the preceding pair, the eventual extension de- pending upon the relative rates of the in- crease of speed of the successive pairs. He also gave to one or more of the pairs of roll- ers a revolution in a plane at right angles to that of their individual rotation, so as to give a twist to the yarn. This invention is said to have originated with Wyatt, Paul being only a promoter; however that may SPINNING-JENNY. 63 have been, it was not successful, owing, doubtless, partly to want of skill in the making, and also to intrinsic difficulties, for the same invention, in a modified form, was patented in 1848, and bad a fair trial on a large scale in Rhode Island before it was finally abandoned. In 1758 Lewis Paul tried again to adapt machinery to the work. This invention was the precursor of the bobbin-and-fly frame. He seems to have been unfortunate in his combinations. The cardings being attached endwise, are fed between rollers which deliver the long sliver to a bobbin, which takes it up faster as to length than it is delivered by the roll- ers, and so stretches it according to the quality required. There is an indistinct intimation of a flyer in the drawing of this machine in the stretch between the feed rollers and the bobbins. Had he put the drawing rollers of his former patent to the feed rollers and bobbin of his new one, he might, perhaps, have forestalled Arkwright. Hargreaves's spinning-jenny was the direct outgrowth of the spinuiug-wheel, unlike the Paul drawing head, which had a radical- ly different construction. Something had to be done to meet the increased demand for cotton yarn. James Hargreaves was the man for the occasion. It is said that the first suggestion in the right direction was caused by the upsetting of a spinning-wheel by one of his children. It continued to run when the spindle was vertical. Here was the solution. He had frequently tried to spin several yarns at once on as many spindles, but the latter being horizontal, the yarns interfered. He made a machine in 1764 with eight vertical spindles in a row, fed by eight rovings, which were held by a fluted wooden clasp of two parallel slats. The ends of the rovings being attached to the spindles, the wheel was revolved by the right hand, rotating the spindles, and the clasp which lightly clipped the rovings was drawn away from the spindles, paying out the rov- ing, which was twisted by the rotation of the spindles, and stretched by the retraction of the clasp and the amount taken up by the twist. When the clasp reached the back of the machine the yarn was wound on the spindles, the clasp resumed its place near them, fresh rovings were pieced on to the ends of the former ones, and the work was repeated. The clasp was, as it were, a long finger and thumb to hold a row of rovings, and the machine was eventually made to con- tain as many as eighty spindles. Hargreaves spun in secret so much yarn that the jeal- ous workmen broke into his house and de- stroyed the machine. He deviated a little from his first design in drafting the specifi- cation for his patent of 1770. He there had a series of bobbins holding stubs — soft rov- ings having but little twist — which pass from thence to a row of spindles, all ro- tated from a common driving-wheel. Be- tween the two, with divisions for the slubs, was a clasp, which was managed by the left hand, to bring such a pressure upon the rov- ing as the required twist might warrant. A presser-ivire regulated the winding of the yarn on the spindles in the intervals of spinning. It being proved that he had sold several of his machines before his application for a patent, the latter was set aside, and he nev- er was reasonably remunerated. When the machine of Arkwright, which is next in order of date, came into use, the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves still held its superiority in yarn, the product being used for the weft, while the water-twist of the Ark- wright roller-machine was used for the warp. Subsequently the principal features of the jenny were embodied with others selected HAKOBEAVEB 8 SPINNING-JENNY. C4 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. ark wright's spinning machine (from the original drawing) from the Arkwright drawing frame to form what was playfully termed the mule, by which name it is universally known up to date. It was said also that until the inven- tion of the Arkwrigkt machine cotton yarn was seldom used for warp, owing to its soft- ness ami weakness, the jenny not giving a sufficiently hard twist to hear the strain of the loom. Goods were therefore usually made, at the period referred to, with a linen warp and cotton woof. Arkwright's invention for " making of weft or yarn from cotton, tlax, and wool," patented 1769, was the most brilliant of its time and class. It was designed to be driven by horse-power, a band from a drum on the master-wheel shaft giving mot ion to the va- rious parts. It was much improved in later years, and was driven by water-power after its success justified larger operations. This soon followed, and in 1785 steam-power was first applied to cotton spinning. The cotton rovings were wound upon large bobbins at the lt.uk upper part of the machine, and were drawn from them by four pairs of drawing rollers, which, moving with a gradu- ated accelerated speed, elongated the rov- ings, and passed them to the flyers and spindles on the lower part of the machine. The four essen- tial parts of this apparatus have not been dis- pensed with in ordinary spin- ning, and con- stitute the hob- bin-and-fly frame, or roving -frame, which bids fair to hold its ground for spinning or- dinary numbers to the end of time. The drawing rollers were sug- gested by the Lewis Paul ma- chine of 1738; but the flyers and the general combination are of the highest order of merit, and are to be attributed to Arkwright. Reference has been made in the introduc- tory remarks to the factory system initiated by Arkwright in his cottou mills, 1768-1785. Arkwrigkt was the first man to associate consecutively the various processes in cot- ton manufacture under the same roof. This series of machines for carding, drawing, and roving was patented in 1785, and from Ark- wright's period we date the origin of the factory system. This was the year after the ratification by Congress of the definitive treaty of peace signed at Paris, and four years before Washington became President. Thenceforward the system had but to grow and extend; to grow, in bringing oth- er departments of the cotton manufacture, and eventually those of wool, flax, and hemp, into the same method; to extend, in respect of its boundaries, geographical and economical — the latter by the inaugura- tion of parallel practices in other interests, such as the working of metal, leather, and wood. The invention of cotton machinery was no exception to the general rule: Arkwright did best what had been attempted before. Arkwright had his Lewis Paul, just as Fulton MULE SPINNER. 65 had his Symington and Enmsey, and as Ste- phenson had his Trevethick and Hedley. Many other improvements might he cited, such as Jenks's ring-and-traveler spinner, if we had the space. The list of spinning ma- chines closes with the mule, and at present there is nothing better to offer. The per- fected mule has been called the " iron man" from the wondrous skill with which it oper- ates. Apparently instinct with life and feel- ing, it performs its allotted course as implic- itly as a mere water-wheel, but the exqui- site provisions for timing — what may be called the opportuneness of its movements — give it an air of volition and prevision. These features belong to the automatic mule, or the self-acting mule, as it also called. It was not thus in the original mule of Cromp- ton. In this the main features were present, but were brought into and continued in ac- tion by the care and judgment of the opera- tor. Samuel Crompton was a young weaver when he applied his mind to the solution of the problem how to make a machine which should avoid certain faults present in the Hargreaves and the Arkwright machines. This he succeeded in doing in 1779. He placed his spindles on a traveling carriage, which backed away from the roving bob- bins to stretch and twist a length of the rov- ings, and then ran back to wind the yarn upon the spindles. The immediate object was to deliver the roving with the required degree of attenuation, and twist it as deliv- ered. The work of this machine was finer than any heretofore produced, and the im- proved self-acting mule still maintains its superior character. Even at the first it was called the " muslin wheel," as its yarns ri- valed in softness the finer kinds from India. Crompton took no patent for it, but was re- warded with a Parliamentary grant of £5000 thirty -three years afterward. He died in 1827. Previous to the invention of the mule few spinners could make yarns of 200 hanks to the pound, the hank being always 840 yards. The natives of India were at the same time making yarns of numbers varying from 300 to 400. By the best constructed mules yarn has been made in Manchester of number 700, which was woven in France. The illustra- tion will give an idea of the machine, though 5 MULE SPINNER. it has not the complicated parts of the self- acting mule. The mule of Crompton had only twenty to thirty spindles, and the distance traveled by the carriage was five feet. The distance traveled is now much greater, and some mules carry 1200 spindles. The drawing and stretching action of the mule spinner makes the yarn finer and of a more uniform tenuity than the mere draw- ing and twisting action of the throstle. As delivered by the rollers, the thread is thick- er in some parts than in others ; these thick- er parts, not being so effectually twisted as the smaller parts, are softer, and yield more readily to the stretching power of the mule ; by this means the twist becomes more equa- ble throughout the yarn. The mule carriage carrying the spindles recedes from the rollers with a velocity some- what greater than the rate of delivery of the reduced roving, the rapid revolution of the spindles giving a twist to the yarn, which stretches it still farther. When the rollers cease giving out the rovings, the mule spinner still continues to recede, its spindles still revolving, and thus the stretch- ing is effected. When the drawing, stretching, and twisting of the yarn are thus accomplished, the mule disengages itself from the parts of the car- riage by which it has been driven, and the carriage is returned to the rollers, the thread being wound in a cop upon the spindle as the carriage returns. The specific difference between the action of the throstle and the mule is, that the 66 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. former has a continuous action upon the roving, drawing, twisting, and winding it upon the spindle, while the mule draws and twists at one operation as the carriage runs out, and then winds all the lengths upon the spindles as the carriage runs in. The auto- matic disengagement is the invention of Roberts, in 1830, and of Mason. The jenny and the drawing frame being fairly at work, the cry was now, " What is to become of the yarn ? there will not be hands enough to weave it." The Rev. Ed- mund Cartwright set himself to the solution of the problem, and took out a patent for a power-loom in 1785, and a second in 1787. He was at great expense, and worked under the disadvantage of being a poor mechanic, having very little judgment in the propor- tion of parts or the convenient modes for the transmission of motion. One of the great difficulties in his way was in the fluffy and spongy character of the warp, and in the necessity for stopping the loom to dress a length of warp. This was avoided by the invention of the sizing and dressing machine of Radcliffe, of Stockport, in 1802, which took the yarns from the warping machine, carried them between two rollers, one of which re- volved in a reservoir of thin paste, then be- tween brushes, which rid the yarns of super- fluous and uneven paste, then over a heat- ed copper box, which dried them, and then wound them on the yarn-beam of the loom. The power-loom was only extensively adopt- ed about 1801 — the year of expiration of Cartwright's principal patent. He received £10,000 from Parliament. The justness of Cartwright's claim to the power-loom maybe appreciated when it is stated that his loom, patented in 1787, has automatic mechanical devices to operate all parts. It was a memo- rable success for a man of letters, whose first attempt at a power-loom was made in 1784, before he had ever seen a loom. Eventually, by the exertions of Horrocks, of Stockport, in 1803, and the adaptation of the steam- engine to the work, the power-loom became fixed in use. Jacquard, of Lyons, France, Roberts, of Manchester, England, and more lately Bigelow, Crompton, and Lyall, of this country, have brought the machine to a de- gree of perfection which is a marvel to the uninitiated, and an object of respect to those who happen to be a little better informed in technical matters. It may be mentioned that the mill atWal- tham, Massachusetts, erected in 1813, was the first in the world in which were combined machines for all the processes which convert the raw cotton into cloth. The mills of Ark- wright, at Cromford, in Derbyshire, erected 1771-75, and that of Slater, at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 1790, had no power-looms. Crompton is a name twice famous in the history of the manufacture of fibre. His loom, represented in the accompanying cut, is not a loom for cotton, but a more compli- cated structure for figure -weaving, as in carpet-making. The Jacquard loom is the most distiuct- OUOAIl'TON B FANCY loom. WEAVING AND DYEING. 67 ively curious in the list of looms. Jac- quard, of Lyons, is reported to have con- ceived the idea in 1790, and in 1801 he received from the National Exposition a bronze medal for his invention of a machine for figure-weaving, which he patented. The appendage to the loom which consti- tutes the Jacquard attachment is to elevate or depress the warp threads for the recep- tion of the shuttle, the action being pro- duced by cards with punched holes, which admit the passage of needles which gov- ern the warp threads. The holes in a card represent the warps to be raised for a cer- tain passage of the shuttle, and the needles, dropping into the holes, govern the forma- tion of the shed so that the required threads of warp come to the surface. The next card governs the next motion of the warps ; and so on, the required color being brought up or kept up, as the case may be. For figured stuff, from the finest silk to the most solid carpet, figured velvets and Wilton carpets, we are indebted to the genius of Jacquard, who made it possible to do by machinery what was before an expensive operation requiring skillful hands. While the art of the dyer is as old as Tyre, and the colors of antiquity are not, perhaps, excelled in lustre and stability, the variety has increased, and the modes have become more numerous and cheap. Dye baths and mordants were well understood in India two thousand years ago, as were also one or more styles of calico-printing, includ- ing chintz patterns and the resist process, which helped to make the fortunes of the Peele family. Pliny refers to the skill of the Egyptians as "wonderful" in imparting to white robes a number of colors by steeping " with dye- absorbing drugs" (mordants), after which the goods take on several tints when boiled in a dye bath of one color. Cortez was met in Mexico by people who wore cotton dresses with Dolly Varden patterns in black, blue, red, yellow, and green. These instances, which are but a tithe of what offers, show that calico-printing is old enough, and, indeed, it was practiced as a profession at Augsburg at the latter part of the seventeenth century, about which time it was introduced into England. Hand proc- esses, however, were all that were known. Their nature it is not so easy to determine, but Robert Peele, a farmer of Blackburn, in- vented the method of printing by blocks, each cut out to correspond with its part of the pattern, and laid in apposition by means of register pins. This may have been about 1776, a year or two before his inveution of the mangle and the cylinder carding-machine, the roller principle of which seems to have suggested the calico-printing machine (1785), which has its pattern engraved on the face of a cylinder, and which, with various im- provements in detail, remains in use to the present day. The object he chose for his first attempt at hand-printing was a pars- ley leaf. The women of his family ironed the goods, and he was long called, without intentional disparagement, " Parsley - leaf Peele." In this machine the pattern for each color is engraved on a cylinder which revolves so as to chip its lower surface in a trough of color ; the face of each cylinder is scraped clean by a blade called a doctor, leaving the color only in the engraved lines ; the cloth passes against the cylinders in turn, and re- ceives a portion of its pattern from each. By an American improvement the number of cylinders which may be applied to each web is increased to twelve. The mode of engraving the cylinders has undergone a complete change since the invention by Ja- cob Perkins, of Massachusetts, of the roller- die and transfer process, in which a design on an engraved and subsequently hardened steel die is impressed into the copper cylin- der in repetition to any required extent. Robert Peele was also fortunate in secur- ing two very valuable processes, known as the discharge and resist styles. The latter he is said to have bought of a commercial trav- eler for £5, and to have made £250,000 by it. The discharge style is a process in which the cloth is printed with a material which prevents the mordant from becoming fast, so that when the dye is applied and the cloth washed, the dye is not fast at those places. The resist style is one in which the cloth has a pattern printed in paste, and is then dyed in indigo. The paste resists the color- ing matter, and these parts are white on a blue ground when the cloth is washed. The name of Peele, the self-taught dyer and mechanic, and his son and grandson, the 68 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. two sir Roberts, the latter being the states- man who was killed by a fall from his horse in 1850, are indissoluble associated with the cotton manufacture, and more specifically with l he carding and I he calico-printing. Early memorials point to the use of stone and flint, of oopper and bronze, before the era of iron commenced, though the extraction of iron from its ore and its forging into shape antedate the historic pe- riod. Moses and the Hebrew chroniclers, 1450 TOO B.C., Jol>, Homer, Ezekiel, Hesiod, Aristotle, Thuoydides, Xenophon, Diodorus, and Pliny refer to the metal. It has been found by Belzoni, Vyce, Abbott, and Mari- ette in positions which indicate its use at the building of the Pyramids and the erec- tion of the Sphinxes, and by Layard at Nimroud. The production of iron in large quant Lties is, however, quite recent, and the casting of it was an unexpected result inci- dent to the enlargement of the furnace, tho increased power of blast, and perhaps in part to the working of certain ores which w ere not so tractable under rude methods. Pure iron is almost infusible, and the an- cient processes succeeded in reducing the metal to a spongy condition, the impurities being removed by fluxes in the form of a slag, and by subsequent hammering and reheating. The product was a steel, and was produced in one process from the ore. In many parts of the world very widely separated the same methods were used. In small cold-blast furnaces rich ore is heat- ed in contact with incandescent charcoal, the viscid mass being hammered to remove earthy impurities. This plan is yet prac- ticed in India, Africa, Malaya, Madagascar, and formed the " Mass of iron, shapeless from the forge," offered by Achilles as a prize at the funer- al games of Patroclus, recorded in Homer's Iliad. Dr. Livingstone refers to the iron-smelt- ing furnaces of the tribes encountered in his Expedition to the Zambesi. The articles produced by these peoples are hammers, tonus, hoes, adzes, fish-hooks, needles, and spear-heads. The assagais of the Caffres are made of iron similarly procured, and of excellent quality. The ivootz of India is still produced in the manner partially described by Aristotle when speaking of India, and by Diodorus Siculus, referring to the iron ores of the island of Ethalia. IKON FURNACE OF THE KOLS, HINDOSTAN. Our illustration represents a blast-furnace of the Kols, a tribe of iron smelters in Lower Bengal and Orissa. The men are nomads, going from place to place, as the abundance of ore and wood may prompt them. The charcoal in the furnace being well ignited, ore is fed in alternately with charcoal, the fuel resting on the inclined tray, so as to be readily raked in. As the metal sinks to the bottom, slag runs off at an aperture above the basin, which is occupied by a viscid mass of iron. The blowers are two boxes with skin covers, which are alternately depress- ed by the feet and raised by the spring poles. Each skin cover has a hole in the middle, which is stopped by the heel as the weight of the person is thrown upon it, and is left open by withdrawal of the foot as the cover is raised. Variously modified in detail and increased in size, these simple furnaces are to be found in several parts of Europe, the Catalan and Swedish furnaces resembling in all proba- bility those of the Chalybes, so famous in .Marathon (490 B.C.), and those of the fdbrioa or military forge established in England by Hadrian (A.I). 120) at Hath, in the vicinity of iron ore and wood. The brave islanders met their Roman invaders with scythes, MAKING IRON WITH COAL. 69 swords, and spears of iron, and the export of that metal from thence shortly afterward is mentioned by Strabo. During the Roman occupation of England some of the richest beds of iron ore were worked, and the debris and cinders yet ex- ist to testify to two facts — one, that the amount of material treated was immense ; the other, that the plans adopted were wasteful, as it has since been found profit- able to work the cinders over again. During the Saxon occupation the furnaces were still in blast, especially in Gloucester- shire. The early Norman sovereigns were so in- tent upon skinning the Jews and Saxons that it became dangerous to succeed in any business, success inviting the barons to plunder. Accordingly we find in the time of King John that iron and steel were im- ported from Germany. The business lumbered along for some centuries, the government tinkering at it now and again, the exportation being pro- hibited in the fourteenth century, and the importation of iron in the fifteenth century. The direct method of obtaining wrought iron from the ore prevailed until the com- mencement of the fifteenth century, and then gradually gave way to a less direct process, but one more convenient in the handling of large quantities. Furnaces, operating by the aid of a strong blast, to melt the iron and obtain cast iron, which is carbureted in the process, were in use in the neighborhood of the Rhine about 1500. A second process in a forge hearth was used to eliminate the carbon and other impuri- ties, and the result was wrought iron. The statement is shortly made, but it took several centuries to accomplish it with wood, and several other centuries to devise means for substituting pit-coal for charcoal. In the reign of Elizabeth blast-furnaces were of sufficient size to produce from two to three tons of pig-iron per day by the use of charcoal. In the small works the iron was made malleable before being withdrawn from the blast-furnace, and in larger works was treated by the refinery furnace. Wood becoming scarce, and a number of furnaces having gone out of blast, in 1612 Simon Sturtevant was granted a patent for thirty-one years for the use of pit-coal in smelting iron. Failing in his proposed plans, he rendered up his patent in the fol- lowing year. Successive persons applied for a patent for the same, the government continuing desirous of encouraging the de- velopment of home resources. Dudley in 1619 succeeded in producing three tons of iron per week in a small blast-furnace by the use of coke from pit-coal. The parties who yet possessed plenty of wood, and with whom the production of iron was fast be- coming a monopoly, urged the charcoal burners to destroy the works of Dudley, which was done. Dudley's patent was granted for thirty-one years, which would bring it to 1650, the time of the Protector- ate, when England had a ruler fit to succeed Queen Bess. The celebrated statute of King James, limiting the duration of patents to fourteen years, was passed in 1624. Dud- ley's petition for an extension was refused. Iron of poor quality continued to be made in districts where wood Avas scarce, and of good quality from charcoal in places where forests yet remained. The demand for iron continuing to grow — a natural effect of ad- vancing civilization — iron was imported from Sweden and Russia in large quantities and of excellent quality. The forests of these countries gave them a natural ad- vantage over England, whose forests had by this time become thinned out, so that the use of wood for iron smelting had been forbidden by act of Parliament in 1581 within twenty-two miles of the metropolis or fourteen miles of the Thames, and event- ually was prohibited altogether. The art of making iron with pit-coal and of casting articles of iron was revived by Abraham Darby, of Colebrookdale, about 1713, and was perseveringly followed, al- though it was but little noised abroad. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1747 it is referred to as a curiosity. The extension of the iron manufacture dates from the introduction of the steam- engine, which increased the power of the blast, and the blowing engines, driven by manual, horse, or ox power, were henceforth operated by steam-engines. The dimension of the blast apparatus was increased from time to time, and about 1760 coke was com- monly used in smelting. In 1760 Smeaton erected at the Carron Works the first large 70 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. MODERN BLAST-FURNACE. blowing cylinders, and shortly after Boul- ton and Watt supplied the steam-engines by ■which the blowers were driven. Neil- son, of Glasgow, introduced the hot blast in 1828. Aubulos, in France, in 1811, and Budd, in England, in 1845, heated the blast by the escaping hot gases of the blast-fur- nace. In the smelting of iron four tons weight of gaseous products are thrown oft* into the air for each ton of iron produced. As a means of estimating by comparison the value of the hot blast, some facts may be mentioned. Mushet states that at the Clyde Iron-works, before the introduction of the hot blast, the quantity of materials necessary for the production of one ton of pig-iron was, Calcined ore 1% tons. Coke 3 " Limestone % ton. In 1831, when the system was coming into use, the blast being u-arm, Calcined ore 2 tons. Coke 2 " Limestone % ton. In L839, with a hot blast, Calcined ore 1% tons. Coke 1% " Limestone % ton. The saving in fuel being nearly one-half. In addition may be mentioned the fact that ant lira cite coal and black band ore are intractable under the cold blast, but the former yields an intense heat and the lat- ter a rich percentage of good iron with the hot bias' . The (alder Works in 1831 demonstrated the Heedlessness of coking when the hot blasi is employed. Experiments in smelting with anthracite coal were tried at Mauch Chunk in 1820, in France in 1827, and in Wales successfully by the aid of Neilson's hot-blast ovens in 1837. The experiment at Mauch Chunk was re- peated, with the addition of the hot blast, in 1838-39, and succeeded in producing about two tons per day. The Pioneer furnace at Pottsville was blown-in July, 1839. The first iron-works in America were es- tablished near Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. In 1622, however, the works were destroyed and the workmen with their families massa- cred by the Indians. The next attempt was at Lynn, Massachusetts, on the banks of the Saugus, in 1648. The ore used was the bog ore, still plentiful in that locality. At these works Joseph Jenks, a native of Hammer- smith, England, in 1652, by order of the Prov- ince of Massachusetts Bay, coined silver shillings, sixpences, and threepences known as the " pine-tree coinage," from the device of a pine-tree on one face. The coinage of these pieces by Massachusetts excited the ire of the king, who, as Junius said to the Duke of Grafton, " left no distressing exam- ples of virtue even to [his] legitimate pos- terity." The king indignantly declared to Sir Thomas Temple that they had invaded his prerogative by coining money. Sir Thomas, who was a real friend to the colo- nies, took a piece out of his pocket and pre- sented it to the king. " One side was a pine- tree of that kind which is thick and bushy at the top. Charles asked what that was. ' The royal oak, Sir, which preserved your I'UDIlI.IMO rUBNAOE. PUDDLING. 71 BANKS 8 MEOUANIOAL ITDIII.EIi. majesty's life !' The king resumed his good humor, calling the colonists a 'parcel of honest dogs.' " By dint of successive efforts, cast iron was produced in something like sufficient quan- tities to meet the demand, the furnaces en- larging as the blowing engines increased in power. The next step was to simplify and expe- dite the processes by which the cast iron was made malleable. In 1780, two years before the conclusion of the peace between Great Britain and the Federal government, Henry Cort invented the puddling furnace, which he patented in 1784, and which revolution- ized the business of making malleable iron. The charge of iron, say 540 pounds, is placed on a hearth in a reverberatory chamber whose bottom and sides are lined with re- fractory slags rich in oxide of iron. When the iron is melted, the slags rise through it and float on the top. The oxygen in the silicates combines with the carbon in the iron, decarbonizing it, the puddler stirring it vigorously to bring the carbon and other impurities of the iron in contact with the oxidizing flame. The iron granulates and throws off carbonic oxide, and eventually agglutinates, or, as the puddler says, " comes to nature." A deoxidizing flame is then used to protect the iron while it is being made into balls, which are shingled or squeezed to remove slag and compact it for rolling. The bed of Cort's furnace was of sand. Eogers, some years afterward, made the bottom of iron, and lined it with cinder. The operation of puddling is a great tax upon the strength and endurance of the men, both on account of the violent labor and of the exposure to the intense heat of the furnace. Mechanical puddlers have been substi- tuted for hand labor with some success. The rotating hearth of Danks, of Cincin- nati, has attained more celebrity in this country and in England than any other fur- nace for that purpose. The barrel-shaped chamber lined with refractory material is '////////////^///'/^^^^ EOLLING-MILL FOB IKON BAKB. 72 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. placet! between the furnace and the chim- ney, and the iron, after it has become melt- ed, is rolled round and round as the chamber revolves, and thereby all parts are in turn exposed to the action of the flame. The ball from the puddling furnace is dragged or rolled to the steam or trip ham- mer or the squeezer, where it is compacted and has the dross driven out of it, making a bloom. In this condition it is shipped from some iron-works, while others carry it a step farther before putting it upon the market. Here occurred the next great necessity. Was the bar-iron always to be brought to shape by the hammer alone? Again Cort came to the rescue with the invention of the mill with grooved rollers, which he pat- ented in 1783. The yearly value of this im- provement in England and the United States amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. Years after the death of the unrewarded Cort the rolling-mill was made to form plates for armor of ships of war. In 1842 the late R. L. Stevens, of Hoboken, New Jersey, commenced the construction of an iron-clad Avar vessel under an agreement with the government, which has not yet been completed. In 1855 some armor-clad floating batteries were used by the French in the Black Sea. The La Gloire, launched in 1859, was plated with rolled iron of 4^ inches thickness, and was the first large iron-clad. The first English armored ves- sel, the Warrior, had the same thickness of armor. The thickness has since been much increased: the Bellerophon has 6 inches, the Hercules 9, Peter the Great (Russian) 12 to 14. The plating of the Monitor turret was 9 inches, the WeehawJcen 11, laid on in sever- al thicknesses. Armor plating has been rolled in England of 15 inches thickness, carried by the Glatton turret. The turret of the Peter the Great is 16 inches — one thickness of 14 and one of 2 inches. While the capacity of the rolling-mill has seemed adequate to all calls, the business of the forge has also had its grand achieve- ments, resulting from the use of the steam- hammer. Tliis was invented by Nasmyth about 1838, and patented in 1842. It is true that there existed a description of Devereau's hammer in 1806 which recited the main features, but it seems to have excited no attention, and to have been fol- NASMYTH 8 DO0ULE-FHAME STEAM-HAMMER. lowed by no hammer. To Nasmyth we are indebted for it ; even he had to work against prejudice, which prevented its being used in England until after it had been tried in France by some more appreciative persons, whose attention had been in some way di- rected to it. The helve of the steam-hammer is the piston-rod of an overhead steam-engine, by which it is lifted. To drop it, the steam which lifted it is allowed to escape from below the piston, and the force of the blow is, in some hammers, increased by admitting the steam above the piston, which adds the force of the steam to that due to the weight and fall of the hammer. The sizes vary, having a very wide range, the weight of the hammer varying from 50 pounds to 80,000 pounds, the stroke from six inches to six feet. They are single or double acting, have sin- gle or double frame, according to size, and all have a capacity for giving a blow of any re- quired fraction of their full power, and using any part of their range of stroke. The an- vils are made as heavy as 250 tons weight. The series of operations is here complete down to the point of shaping the metal while hot by rolling or by forging; but a great and hitherto unrealized improvement was sought by which the metal might be puri- fied by chemical means. Inventors in Eu- rope and America attacked the problem, but it was reserved for Bessemer to give it form, substance, and success. The process consists in placing a charge, say five tons, of molten iron in a vessel placed on trunnions, and known as a convert- THE BESSEMER PROCESS. 73 or, the bottom of the vessel having channels to admit in divided 'streams a blast of air which passes through the melted metal, its oxygen entering into combination with the silicon, carbon, phos- phorus, sulphur, etc., forming gaseous com- pounds, which are lib- erated and driven up the chimney. The iron is melted in cupolas and tapped into the convertor, which is a pear - shaped vessel about fifteen feet high and nine feet diam- eter, hung upon trun- nions, to one of which the apparatus is at- tached which rotates the vessel in a vertical plane ; through the other trunnion passes an air-pipe which is continued down the outside of the vessel and opens into a chamber at the bottom which communicates with the main cham- ber through 120 holes, each three-eighths of an inch in diameter. These holes are in fire-bricks, and the vessel itself is lined with refractory material. The vessel is turned partly down, the mouth being presented upwardly to take its charge from a ladle suspended from a crane and sweeping in the arc of a circle between the cupola and the convertor. The blast is then turned on, the vessel righted, the ai>* pressure preventing the iron entering the blast holes, and the spout being presented to a canopy which leads the evolved gases up the chimney : this is shown at a b. The sil- icon of the pig-iron oxidizes first without very intense flame, but as the carbon begins to burn the heat rises to 5000° Fahrenheit, and the light is so brilliant as to cast shad- ows across sunshine. In fifteen or twenty minutes the marvelous illumination ceases more suddenly than it began, and this change in the flame indicates the critical moment BESSE.MEB PLANT. of the elimination of most of the carbon. The blast is stopped, the convertor turned on its side, and six hundred pounds of melt- ed spiegeleisen are turned in. The reaction is instantaneous and violent. The manga- nese of the spiegeleisen combines with any sulphur that may remain in the bath, form- ing compounds which pass into the slag. It also decomposes in the slag silicates of iron taking the place of the iron and returning it to the bath. Finally, the carbon and man- ganese together reduce the oxide of iron formed during blowing, and which would affect the malleability of the iron. This done, the monster, as if weary of swallow- ing boiling iron and snorting fire, turns its mouth downward and disposes of its con- tents into a kettle upon a turn-table. This act is shown at c d. The ladle on its turn- table e is then swung over the moulds /, ranged round the semicircular pit like a row of Ali Baba's wine jars, each capable of hold- ing a bandit. The glowing metal is drawn into the moulds from a tap hole in the ladle, 74 MECHANICAL PKOGRESS. and as each mould is filled the molten metal is covered with a steel plate and a packing of sand. When the ingots have solidified they arc tipped out of the moulds and car- ried away by tongs or traveling cranes to the shops, where they are hammered or rolled into the required forms of bars, rails, plates, and what not. The product is usu- ally a grade of steel, though the quality may bo varied by changes in the details of the process. Like Arkwright, Bessemer has become very wealthy, and for every dollar he has made, his country has been enriched by hundreds. The actual working process in America has been materially improved by Mr. Holly, who is consulting engineer of the principal Bes- semer works in this country. This was a great improvement for most purposes over the old process of cooking the iron in the puddling furnace to deprive it of its silicon and carbon, tilt-hammering the ball to a bloom, rolling the bloom to a bar, cutting the bar in pieces, and build- ing it with charcoal solidly into a cementa- tion furnace, where it might absorb carbon to constitute it steel. This old process is still pursued for the finer qualities, the blis- ter-steel produced from the cemented bar being several times worked before it be- comes the best cast steel for our finest cut- lery. The process of making cast steel was invented by Benjamin Huntsman, of Otter- clifF, near Sheffield, England, in 1770, so that this great invention comes practically with- in the century. The blister-steel is broken into pieces, fused in crucibles of refractory clay or graphite, made into ingots in cast- iron moulds, and then rolled. But the convenience of casting iron into shape, instead of laboriously forging it into the varied and sometimes difficult forms re- quired, is so great that a process for making cast-iron articles malleable became a great necessity. This was invented in Sheffield by Samuel Lucas, and patented by him in 1804. The process is as follows : The cast- ings are inclosed in iron boxes, and sur- rounded with pounded iron-stone or some of the metallic oxides, as scales from the forge, common lime, or other absorbents of carbon, used either together or separately. The boxes are placed in the furnace, sub- jected to a strong heat for about five days, and allowed to cool gradually within the furnace. The time and other circumstances determine the depth of the effect. Thin pieces become malleable entirely through- out, admit of being readily bent, and may be slightly forged ; thicker pieces retain a central portion of cast iron, but in a soft- ened state, and not so brittle as at first. On sawing them through, the exterior coat of soft metal is perfectly distinguishable from the remainder. In the processes of hand forging, an- nealing, and tempering we have nothing to claim over the methods or the produc- tions of former ages and other nations, such as the Arabs and Persians. As with the processes involving the pro- duction and refining of iron, and the shaping of the heated metal by casting, forging, and rolling, so with the shaping of the cold met- al by turning and planing — all the important improvements are within the century. The lathes and boring-machines of the time pre- ceding Watt were rude and small affairs. The steam-cylinder invented by Papin about 1690, and first used successfully by Newco- men and Galley in 1711, was so ill bored that its piston required to be covered with water to prevent leakage of air downward, and hence the Newcomen engines were always vertical. Watt's first engine, with a cylin- der eighteen inches in diameter, was built at Kinneal in 1770. In 1775 he entered on a partnership with Boulton, who took a two-thirds share in the patented engine, which worked with one-quarter the fuel used by the Newcomen engine performing similar work. Boulton was a man worthy of the occasion, and the works at Soho equal to the demand. The mature conceptions of these great mechanicians required a far finer style of execution of work, and a set of workmen arose who introduced exactness and system into the shop. Kamsden, about 1770, in- vented the micrometer-screw dividing-en- gine for graduating astronomical and sur- veying instruments, and reduced the error in ascertaining longitude by the Hadley quadrant to one-fiftieth. Bramah, in 1784, produced his lock, which was in its day a marvel of skill and finish; also the hydraulic press and the numbering machine for bank- notes and pages of account-books. Boulton LATHES AND PLANING-MACHINES. 75 and Watt, in 1788, were celebrated for the perfection of their mint apparatus, coining the silver of the Sierra Leone Company, the copper of the East India Company, and send- ing two complete mints to the Emperor Paul I. of Russia. In Bramah's workshop Clem- ent and perhaps Maudslay were trained, one the inventor of the planing -machine, the other a builder of marine engines, who gave them shape when as yet steam navigation was in its infancy. Roberts of Manchester gave his attention to the perfecting of ma- chinery for working in fibre, Whitworth es- pecially to machine-tools and instruments for measuring with mathematical accuracy. We shall have occasion to mention present- ly the perfecting of the modes of manufac- ture, and to show the part America took in the matter. The first turning-lathe was vertical — the potter's wheel — and was employed upon plas- tic material. After many centuries of use in this way, the spindle was made horizontal, and it was employed on wood. Its use on metal is comparatively modern. The screw- lathe is still more recent. One is described in a French work of 1578, and another in an English work of 1694. They were, how- ever, rather bench tools for watch-makers and jewelers than machines. The work of originating correct screws, and perfecting the screw-cutting lathe, was taken in hand by Plunder 1701, Ramsden 1770, Robinson of Soho 1790, Donkin, Allan, Roberts, Whit- worth, and others. The new era of the lathe commenced when the slide-rest was added. This was the invention of General Sir Samuel Bentham, about 1791. His par- ticular forte was in wood-working machin- ery, but the slide-rest once invented would be readily adapted to the metal lathe, and the slide-lathe soon followed. The application of a screw to the slide-lathe so as to render it capable of both sliding and screw-cutting was the next important improvement, and a great amount of time, perseverance, and capital was expended in endeavoring to perfect this portion of the lathe. After this the surfacing motion was intro- duced, and also the use of a shaft at the back of the lathe, in addition to the regular screw, for driving the sliding motion by rack and pinion, instead of both the mo- tions of sliding and screw - cutting being worked by the screw alone. Thus step by step improvements were gradually brought forward; the fore jaw and universal chucks and other important appli- ances were added so as to render the lathe applicable to a great variety of work, even cutting spiral grooves in shafts, scrolls in a face-plate, skew wheels, and also turning articles of oval, spherical, and other forms. Whitworth's duplex lathe, with one tool act- ing in front and the other behind the work, was invented for turning long shafts, cast- iron rollers, cylinders, and a great variety of work where a quantity of the same kind and dimensions has to be turned. The planing-machine was an outgrowth of the slide-lathe. Instead of the object turn- ing upon centres against a tool, it is dogged to a traversing - table and moves against the tool in a right line. This machine-tool has dispensed to a great extent with chip- ping and filing, and is at the bottom of all successful fitting of machinery. It is next in importance to the lathe. It was invent- ed about 1820, several excellent mechanics having about the same time worked at and solved the problem — Clements, who was a workman in Bramah's shop, Fox of Derby, Roberts and Rennie of Manchester. Bra- mah had, as far back as 1811, employed the revolving cutter to plane iron, adapting to metal the form previously used on wood- planing machines; this is the nulling-ma- chine lately so much improved and so de- servedly esteemed. The first planing -machines were moved by a chain winding on a drum ; the rack and pinion, and eventually the screw arrange- ment, were substituted. Clements's ma- chine, described in his letter to the " Society of Arts" (vol. xlix., p. 157 et seq.), included the reciprocating bed, guided and moved hori- zontally and automatically with a greater or lesser stroke. It had two cutters capable of being directed backward and forward, and at different elevations, so as to cut at each motion of the bed. The cutters were fixed in a sliding head, and were shifted automat- ically at the end of each stroke, horizontally or vertically. The cutters could be canted to any angle to plane either side of the work. It was, in fact, the planing-machine of the present day. 76 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. The next great improvement in the ma- chine was the "Jim Crow" planer of Joseph Whitworth, of Manchester, 1835. This has the self- reversing cutter, which "wheeled ahout and turned ahout and did just so," operating both backward and forward with one tool without waste of time. Other adaptations known by special names can not be overlooked. The jack, a small ma- chine, named from its quick, handy ways and compact form. The slotting - machine and the key-grooving machine, by Roberts of Manchester, have mortise chisels recipro- cated vertically by an eccentric, while the wheel to be slotted is laid horizontally on the lathe and fed toward the cutter between each stroke. The milling-machme has been referred to. It is only of late that it has been esteemed as it deserves and made much use of. The s/irtpn^-niachine is one in which the object is chucked on a mandrel, the tool traverses above the work in a line parallel with the axis of the mandrel ; the latter be- ing slightly rotated between each stroke constitutes the feed, and the result is a cir- cular or curved shape attained by straight cuts. The machine-tools of the present day are a marvel, and the work turned out by them excels in quality and quantity any thing conceivable by the worthies of the first part of the present century. Watt, for instance — to select the most prominent of the men who combined to revolutionize the world of industry while smaller men were making all the noise in the manufacture of " holy alli- ances" which hardly survived their framers — Watt would have been infinitely gratified and astonished at the development and per- fection of the machine-tools of the present day. He would see in them the cause and the effect; the ponderous and yet delicate machines driven by the engines which they had created ; the tools the makers and yet the agents ; the engines the movers of the tools by which they came to exist; their growth parallel in fitness, proportion, and magnitude, which are the elements of beau- ty, grace, and majesty. A word as to the constitution of the ma- chines themselves, of the means by which they are fashioned and adapted to perform their specific duties with smoothness, direct- ness, and economy of power. The system of making the component parts of a machine or implement in distinct pieces of fixed shape and dimensions, so that corresponding parts are interchangeable, is known as assembling. The term is, howev- er, more strictly applicable to their fitting together after being separately and accu- rately made according to fixed patterns, and constantly compared by gauges and templates which test the dimensions. This system of interchangeability of parts was first introduced into the French artil- lery service by General Gribeauval, about 1765. He reduced the gun - carnages to classes, and so arranged many of the parts that they could be applied indiscriminately to any carriage of the class for which they were made. The system was afterward ex- tended into several of the European serv- ices and into that of the United States. The first fire-arm attempted to be made on this system was the breech-loader of John H. Hall, of North Yarmouth, Massa- chusetts, 1811, of which 10,000 were made for the United States, $10,000 being voted the inventor in 1836, being at the rate of one dollar per gun. Some of them were cap- tured in Fort Donelson, February 16, 1862. They were probably the first breech-loading military arms ever issued to troops. The extent to which the system of gauges was actually carried with the Hall arm is not accurately known, but it is doubtless true that the principle was first brought to a high state of system and accuracy by Col- onel Colt, of Connecticut, in the manufac- ture of his pistols. Among the most impor- tant of the extensions of the principle has been the making of special machines to fashion particular parts, or even special portions of individual pieces, so that each separate part may be shaped by successive machines, and bored by others, issuing in the exact form required. This plan requires large capital, and will not pay unless a great number of similar articles be required, but has been extensive- ly introduced into this country, and from hence into England, and to some extent on to the continent of Europe. All the gov- ernment breech-loading fire-arms are thus made. The greater number of the military arms of Europe and Egypt are thus made in the United States for the various countries. BANK-NOTE ENGRAVING. 77 The Snider gun, a modification of an Ameri- can model, is made at the Enfield Arsenal, England, on special machines made for that purpose in duplicate at the Colt Works, Hartford, Connecticut. Pratt and Whitney, of Hartford, are just completing for Germany a full set of special machines and gauges for the manufacture of the Mauser rifle, adopt- ed by Prussia for the confederate German States. The first watch made on this plan was the " American" watch of Waltham, Massa- chusetts, the system extending down to the almost microscopic screws and other small parts. All the prominent sewing-machines are so made ; the same with Lamb's knit- ting-machine, and probably others. Many kinds of agricultural implements, including plows, harvesters, threshers, and wagons, are made of interchangeable parts. The system has been carried into locomotive building ; about seven grades of engines, it is understood, are employed on the Penn- sylvania Central Railroad, corresponding parts of a given grade being precisely simi- lar, so as to fit any engine of the class. This is the American system of assembling. While upon the subject of instruments of precision, one or two instances may be given where the result was a marked suc- cess and affected large interests. The American system of bank-note en- graving is the invention of Jacob Perkins, of Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1837. Previous to his time the engraving, whether of ornament or lettering, had been simply cut by hand upon the plate, which was then printed in the copper-plate press. Perkins's system is to engrave the design on separate blocks of softened steel, which are subse- quently hardened. Each block so engraved is used to make a raised impression on a softened steel roller, which is rocked upon it under very heavy pressure. The roller is then hardened, and is used as a roller die to impress the steel plate from which the notes are printed. Each part of the face and back of the note is upon one or another of the roller dies, whose separate impressions upon the plate combine to make up the whole design, roller after roller being used after adjustment to its proper place over the plate. The table is provided with complete adjustments of peculiar delicacy. PERKINS 8 TRANSFERRING PRE8B AND ROLLER DIE. The invention was introduced into En- gland by Perkins, but did not become pop- ular. In Ireland it fared better. In this country it is supreme. Postal and revenue stamps are so made in all instances. England makes them for the varied and widely separated nations of her vast empire. America, which originated the system, makes them for other nations in all quarters of the globe. The postal stamp itself, though now a necessity, is an affair but of yesterday, as it were, and was an outgrowth of cheap postage, for which let us thank Divine Providence and Row- land Hill. Another triumph of the century is the watch. The invention of the compensation- balance of John Harrison covered the period 1728-1761. He died in 1776. Arnold and Earnshaw brought it to something near perfection. Harrison's fourth chronometer was sent in a man-of-war to Jamaica, which it reached five seconds slow. On the return to Portsmouth, after a five-months' voyage, it was one minute and five seconds wrong, showing an error of sixteen miles of lon- gitude, and within the limit of the act of Parliament of Queen Anne, passed in 1714. This amount of accuracy has since been very much exceeded. He received the grant of £20,000 in installments, the reward of forty years' diligence. The American system of watch-making, by gathering all the operations under one roof, making the parts as largely as possi- ble by machinery, each part being made in quantity by gauge and pattern, and the 78 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. THE GREAT EQUATORIAL — UNITED STATES NAVAL OBSERVATORY pieces afterward assembled, dates back to 1852, but was afterward perfected, arid the number of parts reduced from 800 to 156. In the year mentioned A. L. Denison and three coadjutors started the business in Roxbury, Massachusetts, thence moved to Waltham, Massachusetts, where the busi- ness now occupies a large factory, employs 700 hands, and turns out 80,000 watches annually. This is the pioneer establish- ment. Others are in operation at Elgin, Illinois; Springfield, Massachusetts; New- ark and Marion, New Jersey. Achromatic lenses were first made by John Dollond, of London, 1758. The discovery rendered the telescope of high powers possi- ble. Without going into the optical prin- ciples involved, it may be stated that with refracting telescopes before Dollond an in- strument of quite moderate magnifying pow- er was 100 feet long. The equatorial of the Washington Observa- tory is the largest re- fractor in the world. It was made by Alvan Clark and Sons, of Cambridgeport, Mas- sachusetts, the glass being cast by Chauce and Co., of Birming- ham, England. It was mounted in Novem- ber, 1873, is thirty- two feet long, and, last and most impor- tant of the statement, it has an objective of twenty-six inches di- ameter. With two other in- struments of precision we may close this part of the subject, both means for accurate measurement : 1. The contact level invented by Repsold^ of Hamburg, in 1820, as improved by Wiir- demann, of Washing- ton. It is an adapta- tion of the spirit-lev- el, for the production of exact divisions of scales, and for the determination of very minute divisions of length. It consists of a delicate level pivoted at its middle and across its length with a small tilt-weight at one end, which tips always in one direc- tion. From the centre of the level down- ward extends a short rigid arm, with a plain polished surface perpendicular to the chord of the level against which the con- tact is made. The carrier of this instru- ment is either fixed or mounted in a slide governed by a micrometer screw. If, now, the end of a rod terminating in a hardened steel point be advanced horizontally till it hears against the contact arm, the level will gradually assume the horizontal position, and the movement of the bubble, as indi- cated by the scale upon the glass, will de- pend upon the relation of the radius to which the level tube is ground and the length of the contact lever. If the latter INSTRUMENTS OF PRECISION. 79 be half an inch long, and the radius of the glass tube he 400 feet (levels for astronom- ical purposes are ground to a sweep of 800 and 1000 feet radius), the relation between the lever and radius is as 1 to 9600, and as J^ of an inch can be readily read from the lever scale, ^aifooo of an inch (9600X50) will be the difference in length which each such division on a scale indicates. 2. Whitworth's micrometer gauge is ca- pable of measuring to rSnnTT of an inch. The principle of its action may be readily understood by the micrometer screw D, which is a pocket instrument made to meas- ure to fjfeo of an inch. The screw has fifty threads to an inch, the head having twenty divisions on its circumference ; consequent- ly a turn of the head through one division advances the screw J^ X s 1 o = io 1 oo OI " an mcn - The millionth measuring instrument, shown by three views, A, B, C, has two head-stocks with a V groove between them, in which the square bars b c are laid, as is also the standard of the bar d, of which the length is to be tested. The sides of the groove and of the bars are worked up to as true a plane as possible, and are kept at right angles to each other. The ends of the bars are also made square with their sides, and brought to true planes, the ends being canted to present circular instead of square faces. Through each head-stock runs an accurately pitched micrometer screw, by which b and c are driven along the groove. The screw on the side of b has exactly twen- ty threads to the inch, and is turned by the wheel /, the circumference of which is di- vided into 250 parts. Consequently, by turning the wheel forward one division the bar is moved g^o o °f an inch. The other screw has a similar thread, is driven by a worm-wheel of 200 teeth, into which gears a tangent screw h, having fixed upon its stem the graduated wheel g. The circumference of this wheel being also divided into 250 parts, a movement of one division corresponds to a traverse of 20 x so o x 53o =Too5o oo of an iiQcl1 °n the bar c. Fixed pointers enable the exact movement of wheels / or g to be read off, so that this extremely minute difference in the length of any bars may be detected, provided the micrometer screws exert an equal pressure in every case. whitworth's millionth measuring gauge. This equality of pressure is secured by a very simple and beautiful arrangement. Between one extremity of the steel bar un- der comparison and the sliding bar a small steel piece with true parallel sides is intro- duced. This piece is called the feeler, and its ends, e e, rest upon two supports on the sides of the bed. When little or no pressure is exerted on the bar d, the feeler falls back of its own weight if one of its ends is raised. A slight pressure prevents this falling back, and the friction between this piece and the ends of the bars becomes a very delicate measure of the pressure to which it is sub- jected. ENGINEERING. How shall we condense within the limits of the section of an article even a list of the engineering devices and expedients which distinguish the century nearly closed from any which has preceded it ? The pyramids, temples, and obelisks of Egypt, the graceful architecture of Greece and of the Freema- sons of the Middle Ages, the Roman roads and aqueducts, make the fame of the past. The present has a new set of devices, and its modes and structures are utterly beyond the conceptions of ancient times. We will pass over the works which differ MECHANICAL PROGRESS. in no essential respect from those of the past. Quays, sea-walls, and breakwaters were fa- miliar to the Mediterranean nations, and our canals differ from those of the ancients only in having locks — not a small advance, by-the-way, and one for which we are in- debted to the Italian engineers, the brothers Domenico. The canal of Sesostris — re-open- ed by Pharaoh Necho about 605 B.C., again by Ptolemy Philadelphia 300 B.C., once again by the Caliphs, and abandoned when Vasco da Gama circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope — conducted the water of the Red Sea to the Nile near Belbeys, the Bubastis Agria of the Romans. It was ninety-six miles long. The track of the present Suez Canal only follows the former course to the Bitter Lakes, and then passes to Port Said on the Mediterranean. The sand and earth of the old canal were drearily excavated by fellahs who toiled with wooden shovels and bas- kets. The steam-dredges of M. De Lesseps were sixty in number, of two kiuds, and de- posited the 400,000,000 cubic yards of mud and sand on banks at a regulated distance from the canal. The Pharos of Alexandria, said to have been 450 feet high, was a beacon to the road- stead of Alexandria. This city was built by what might have seemed the whim of a man who in the pleuitude of his power came to Rhacotis, a place occupied by a lit- tle group of hovels, and spread his Macedo- nian cloak on the ground for the plan of a city to bear his name. He saw it rise in his mind's eye, and gave his directions for the avenues, the Serapseum, the Bruchion, and other public buildings, took up his line of march for the teeming East, and never saw Alexandria. Yet posterity approved his judgment, and his city has embalmed his name. One of our contributions in the line of light-houses is the dovetailed block system introduced by Smeaton in 1760 at the Ed- dystone, copied by the Stephensons at Bell Rock, in the Frith of Forth, and at the Skerryvores, and still later at Wolf Islaud. Others are the screw-pile and the truss- frame systems, which are convenient in many places where the column of mason- ry is not suitable. Farther, the mode of lighting is much more eminently superior to the past than is the mere structure. When Smeaton had finished the Eddystone it was lighted by twenty-four tallow-candles stuck in a hoop. Even the Tour de Corduan, put up with so much expense in 1610 at the mouth of the Garonne, was for a long time lighted with burning logs in a largo cres- set. The catoptric system of lamps with parabolic reflectors was introduced into the Tour de Corduan soon after the invention of the circular- wick and centre -draught lamp by Argand, of Geneva, in 1784 — a lamp which made the effective illumination of light-houses possible. The dioptric system, by lenses, was at- tempted in England at the South Foreland light in 1752 and the Portland light in 1759, but failed for want of skill. It was revived and improved by Fresnel in 1810. It was adopted in the Lundy Island light in 1834, and is the best light, having several grades of size, according to importance of posi- tion. In pile-driving we have better machin- ery than the Romans, who, however, made good work in bridges built on piles, and in constructing coffer-dams for building stone piers in river-beds. Elm piles driven by the Romans at London were in good order when removed to build the abutments of London Bridge in 1829. Caesar threw a pile and trestle bridge across the Rhine in ten days. Trajan's bridge across the Danube was 4770 feet long, having twenty semicir- cular arches of 180 feet 5 inches span each. The piers were of stone, the superstructure wood. There were also many bridges in Rome. For working beneath the surface of the water we, however, have several methods unknown to the ancients, and, indeed, only used to valuable purpose within the centu- ry. The first use of the diving-bell in en- gineering was by Smeaton in 1779. It had been used for a century or two as a curios- ity or in reclaiming sunken treasures, and had been much improved by Halley and by Spalding in 1774, before it came into Smea- ton's hands. The pneumatic caisson, which now forms so important an aid in sinking piers to sol- id foundations beneath river-beds, is the invention of M. Triger, of France, where it was first used in sinking a shaft for a coal- pit through a stratum of quicksand, to reach BRIDGE-BUILDING. 81 the coal-measures in the vicinity of the river Loire, in France. It con- sisted of a tube made in sections, so as to be extended as the shaft deepened. The lower end was open, and divided by a floor with a tightly fitting trap- door from a middle chamber, the ceil- ing of which had a similar door. By means of an air-compressiug pump the water was kept out of the lower chamber, where the men worked, and the buckets were handed up through the floors to the top, the middle cham- ber forming an air-lock, which was al- ternately in communication with the working-chamber below and with the air-chamber above it. The figure shows a caisson used some years afterward in building the piers of a bridge at Copenhagen, Den- mark. A much improved and ex- tended plan was adopted by Captain James B. Eads in building the river piers of the Illinois and St. Louis Rail- way Bridge across the Mississippi ; and by Colonel W. A. Roebling for the piers of the suspension-bridge across the East River, New York. In each of the last-mentioned cases the cais- son is a very heavy structure, de- signed when it reached the solid rock to remain there, be built up full of masonry or concrete, and then sup- port the pier which was built upon it as it descended ; the Triger caisson, after its function as a pneumatic ex- cavating chamber was completed, formed a lining for the shaft in a treacherous soil ; the Copenhagen caisson was lifted as the pier built at the bottom progressed upwardly. CAISSON AT <:<>!'KNI1AGEN. The next illustration shows an East River caisson. The mode adopted for getting rid of the excavated material in the New York caisson is the invention of M. Fleur St. Denis, CAISSON OF THE EAST RIVER BRIDGE, NEW YORK. 82 MECHANICAL PEOGRESS. FLOATING DEBlilOK, DEPARTMENT OF FUBLIO I>OOKS, NEW YORK, chief engineer des Chemins de Fer de l'Est, in France. It consists of a water -shaft whose lower end is submerged in water in a basin, and which is traversed by a dredg- ing bucket or grapple, according as mud or rock has to be raised. The condensed air in the other part of the interior of the cais- son keeps water excluded, and makes it hab- itable for the workmen. In the St. Louis caisson the sand, mud, and stones as large as a hickory-nut were driven out of the collecting basin in the floor of the working chamber by means of a powerful jet of air which lifted a column of water in a tube, and with it the finer excavated material, the pipe discharging it over the side into a lighter. The docks of some principal sea-ports are a marvelous feature both in character and in extent. London and Liverpool are cele- brated for tidal docks. The first named had a particular object in grouping the mer- chantmen of special trades togeth- er in basins where the access be- tween vessels and warehouses might be free, and within walls which were guarded by the cus- tom-house authorities. It was also desirable to produce more wharf room. The high tides of the Mersey render the port of Liver- pool very inconvenient for river and lighter work, and make tidal basins a necessity. The quays of Montreal are the best in America. The large floating derrick of the New York Department of Public Docks picks up a block of 100 tons, is towed to the place of deposit, and then lowers the block into the position it is to occupy in the new river wall. The dry-docks of the principal naval stations of the world are a great engineering success, and would have vastly astonished Archimedes, who had no resource but a bank of earth to embay his vessel, and then pump out the pond. The floating dock Bermuda is an iron vessel of a rectangular shape, with a rounded bow and a strong caisson -gate at the stern. The vessel has a double skin, with a large in- tervening space. Into the inner basin a ship is floated while the dock is partially submerged ; the caisson being closed, the water in the dock and space intervening between the two skins is pumped out so that the interior may be dry to allow work on the vessel, and the jacket may have suf- ficient flotative power to carry its load. The Bermuda was built in England, and was towed to Bermuda by war vessels. This dock cost $1,250,000, and has the fol- lowing dimensions : extreme length, 381 feet ; width inside, 83 feet 9 inches ; depth, 74 feet 5 inches. The weight is 8350 tons. The dock is U-shaped, and the section throughout is similar. It is built with two skins fore and aft at a distance of twenty feet apart. The space between the skins is divided by a water-tight bulk-head, running with the middle line the entire length of the dock, each half being divided into three FLOATING DOCKS. 83 .IJA. FLOATING DOCK " BERMUDA. chambers by like bulk-heads. The three chambers are respectively named "load," "balance," and "air" compartments. The first-named chamber is pumped full in eight hours when a ship is about to be docked, and the dock is thus sunk below the level of the horizontal bulk-heads which divide the other two chambers. Water sufficient to sink the structure low enough to per- mit a vessel to enter is forced into the bal- ance chambers by means of valves in the external skin. The vessel having floated in, the next operation is to place and se- cure the end caissons, which act as gates. When the water is ejected from the "load" chamber, the dock with the vessel in it rises, the water in the dock being allowed to de- crease by opening the sluices in the cais- sons. The dock is trimmed by letting the water out of the "balance" chamber into the structure itself. The inside of the dock is cleared of water by valves in the skin, and it is left to dry. When it becomes neces- sary to undock the vessel the valves in the external skins of the " balance" chamber are opened in order to fill them, and the culverts in the caissons are also opened, and the dock sunk to a given depth. From keel to gunwale nine main water-tight ribs ex- tend, further dividing the distance between the two skins into eight compartments ; thus there are altogether forty-eight water- tight divisions. Frames made of strong plates and angle-iron strengthen the skins between the main ribs. Four steam en- gines and pumps on each side — each pump has two suctions, emptying a division of an " air" chamber — are fitted to the dock, and these also fill a division of the " load" cham- ber. When it becomes necessary to clean, paint, or repair the bottom of the dock, it is careened by the weight of water in the " load" chambers of one side, and the middle Line is raised about five feet out of water. The Royal Alfred, bearing the flag of the admiral on the station, and weighing 6000 tons, was lifted by this dock, her keel rest- ing on a central line of blocks arranged on the floor of the dock, the ship being shored up with timbers all around the top-sides. Steam-pumps are important among the engineering devices of the day. The neces- sity of pumping water from mines, from ponds in draining, or from sunken vessels, coffer-dams, or wet excavations, has given great importance to that special application of the steam-engine. The Cornish engine has already been re- ferred to, but there is a host of machines for use on shipboard, for wrecking, at rail- way watering stations, and used by manu- facturers who require water in large quan- tity. Perronet was the greatest engineer of his 84 MECHANICAL, PROGRESS. PERRONET's OHAPELETS (CHAIN • PUMPS) AT ORLEANS, FRANCE. time, the builder of the famous bridge of Neuilly, and many other structures in France, the finest of their day, some of which yet re- main witnesses to his skill and perfect taste. It is understood that his masterpiece, the bridge of Neuilly, was partially destroyed by the French during the German invasion, to render it impassable to the enemy. This was the first level bridge. The Waterloo Bridge, by Rennie, is even a more magnifi- cent example. This is men- tioned to introduce the fact that the chief engineer of the ponts et chaussees in the reign of Louis XVI. had no better con- trivance for pumping out his coffer-dams than a chain-pump — the old noria, the na ura of the Arabs, "the wheel broken at the cistern" of Eccles., xii. 6. Better made, it is true, but the same otherwise. Perronet's chapelets (d) — so called because the buckets were strung along on a band like the beads of a rosary — were worked by horse- power at Orleans, twelve at a time being employed, making 140 revolutions per hour. The pallets acted as buckets, and passed at the rate of 9600 per hour, e and/ are views of another chapelet of Perronet, driven by a water-wheel in the stream outside the coffer- dam. The current water-wheels used for raising water for the city of London, 1731, were under the arches of London Bridge, and gave way to the Boulton and Watt engine. For drainage purposes with moderate lifts we have much improved lately, and princi- pally since 1840, about which time the cen- trifugal pump came into notice, the first form being an inversion of the turbine, the wheel being driven by steam to raise the water in the vertical chute. In the fens of Lincolnshire for low lifts the scoop-wheel is much employed. At Haar- lem Lake, Holland, are the largest punip- ing-engines in the world, perhaps. They are three in number, have annular cylinders of twelve feet diameter, with inner cylinders of seven feet diameter. One engine works eleven pumps, and the others eight each. Each engine lifts sixty-six tons of water per stroke to a height of ten feet ; when pressed each lifts 109 tons per stroke to that height. Running economically, each lifts 75,000,000 pounds of water one foot high for ninety-four pounds of Welsh coal. The net effective force of each is 350 horses ; the consumption of fuel is two and a quarter pounds per horse-power per hour. The surface drained by the three engines is 45,230 acres, an aver- age lift of the water, depending on the state of the tides, being sixteen feet. All other drainage enterprises sink into insignificance CURRENT WATEB-WnEEL, LONDON I!RIT>OE, 1731. ENGINES FOR TUNNELING. 85 beside those of Holland. They include an area of 223,062 acres drained by mechanical means. Prominent among the engineering enter- prises of the day are the tunneling of mount- ain chains and the removal, by drilling and blasting, of submarine obstructions. It is just about 250 years since gunpow- der was first used in blasting by the Ger- man miners in Hungary ; now it seems strange that any great enterprise in rock should be attempted without it. The pa- tient labor of the men who chiseled their way through a mile of rock near Vicovaro in making the second Roman aqueduct, the Anio Vetus, is rather sad than exhilarating when we consider the unpaid labor of the poor slaves who hewed out the tunnel. Two vast jobs of tunneling ranges of mountains have lately been completed — the Mont Cenis and the Hoosac tunnels. An- other, larger one is in progress — the St. Gothard. In each case the work was done, or is being done, by drills operated by com- pressed-air engines, the escaping air at the workings being an element of great value, as it provides fresh air at that point and establishes an outward current. This whole business of exhausting air, compressing air, and using the comparative vacuum or the positive pressure, is very new. It is true, Otto Guericke had an air-pump in 1650, and Samuel Pepys says, February 15, 1665, of his visit to the Royal Society at Gresham College, " It is a most acceptable thing to hear their discourse and to see their experiments ; which were this day on fire, and how it goes out in a place where the ayre is not free, and sooner out where the ayre is exhausted, which they showed by an engine on purpose." These were but chamber experiments, and air used in an engine can not probably be traced back of Glazebrook's English patent of 1797, which had the principal features of the modern approved forms. Stirling's en- gine, 1827, was used at the Dundee Foundry, Scotland, for some years. Medhurst patent- ed in 1799 the device of condensing air to be used at the workings into reservoirs at the bottom of the shaft by engines at the sur- face. Bompas had an air-driven carriage in 1828. The rock-drills at the Bardonneche end of the Mont Cenis tunnel were driven by air compressed by a curious apparatus de- vised by Sommeilleur, the volume of air com- pressed daily being 826,020 cubic feet, giving 137,670 feet at the drills under a pressure of six atmospheres. Air-pumps condensed the air at the French end of the tunnel. Air, steam, and gunpowder are working hand in hand through the mountains and under the water. Now 18,500 pounds of gunpowder in three charges, simultaneous- ly fired, tear at one crash 400,000 tons of chalk from the face of Round Down Cliff, near Dover ; now twenty-three tons of pow- der in kegs heave the roof from the previous- ly excavated cavern 50 by 140 feet beneath the Blossom Rock in the harbor of San Francisco. Jumper drills have long been pegging away at the works in the East River, where dangerous rocks and reefs are being removed to a safe depth, or cut away to improve the approaches or prevent dan- gerous currents and eddies. The works at Hallett's Point are among the most impor- UEADINU OF THE EXCAVATION, HALLETT's POINT EEEF, EAST EIVEB, NEW YORK. tant of these, and here the headings are driven radiating like the sticks of a fan, and are joined by cross galleries which leave square pillars to support the rock ceiling on which the sea beats. The gal- leries are numbered, and embouch into a common area (a), whence the excavated ma- terial is lifted by cranes ; c is the shore line. The roof will come off some day with a bang, and the fragments will fall into the pit, and may be removed thence by grappling. Closely allied to this work is that of bor- ing Artesian and oil wells. These also seem to belong to us of "the latter days," although it has always been the case that wells dug in some strata become Artesian. If the source of supply be high enough, they MECHANICAL PROGRESS. IRON ARCH BRIDGES. eras Station of the Midland Counties Railway, England, are eminent in- stances. The former was constructed by Buckhout, and is 652 feet long, 199 feet 2 inches between walls. It covers about three acres. The St. Pancras Sta- tion has a span of 240 feet, a length of 690 feet, covering five platforms, ten lines of rails, and a cab stand twenty- five feet wide. The use of iron in structures marks the work of the century. Engineers have in their adaptation of the new ma- terial contrived a new set of forms and parts, and made an entirely new set of calculations. The genius and skill Avere not wanting before, we may say, but the previous century had not the iron in quantity. Bridge-building affords a remarkable group of structures in iron. There are a is a representation of the cast-iron arch bridge of 600 feet span projected by Telford for crossing the Thames. b was a bridge of cast-iron sections, 500 feet span, proposed four forms, the arch, truss, suspension, by Telford for the Menai Straits in preference to the suspen- tubular. The projects become more and sion-bridge of 570 feet span decided upon by the commit- tee, c, the middle arch of Southwark Bridge, 240 feet span, more bold. The first iron bridge was one of cast- run over, as at Artois, from whence they are named. If the Chinese of the province On-Tong- Kias did really bore the flowing wells to a depth of from 1500 to 1800 feet, we must admit that we have but few to exceed that depth. London's Trafalgar Square wells are only 393 feet ; they soon reach water seams in the chalk. The well at Calais, France, is 1138 feet ; Donchery, Ardennes, 1215 feet ; Grenelle, 1802; Passy, 1913; brine well at Kissingen, 2000 ; Belcher's sugar refinery, St. Louis, 2197. The Columbus, Ohio, 2700 feet, and St. Louis County Farm, 3235 feet, are failures as Artesian wells. Iron has entered largely into modern struc- tures, and the time seems near at hand when important buildings will be made of brick, iron, and cement. Sir Joseph Paxton made a long step ahead in 1851, when he construct- ed of iron the building to which England invited the representatives of all nations. The constructors of iron houses in our cities must abandon the attempt to imitate in iron the shapes which are proper to such mate- rials as brick and stone. The great success, so far, is in roofs. Those of the Grand Central Railway De"p6t, Forty- second Street, New York, and the St. Pan- iron sections across the Severn at Colebrook- dale, in England, erected in 1779 by Darby and Wilkinson, unless we may mention a foot chain-bridge seventy feet long across the Tees in 1741, and credit the chain-bridge in a mountain pass at King-tong, in China. In 1796 Wilson erected an iron arch bridge 100 feet above the water over the Wear at Sunderland. In 1818-25 Telford spanned the Menai Straits by his so-called chain- bridge. Iron rods with coupling links form the catenary. Southwark Bridge (c) over the Thames is or was a structure of three arches of cast-iron voussoirs, and was erect- ed in 1819. The highest bridge in the world is the Verrugas Viaduct, on the Lima and Oroya Railway, in the Andes of Peru. It is 12,000 feet above the level of the sea, 575 feet long, and formed of three iron truss spans on iron piers. The bridge lately built across the Missis- sippi at St. Louis has a compound system of steel tubular arches supporting the truss and road-beds. It has three spans of 497, 515, and 497 feet respectively. The middle arch has but one fellow in the world, that of Kuilinburg, in Holland. Its engineer is Captain Eads, and it has lately been opened SUSPENSION-BRIDGES. 87 amidst great rejoicing. It has a double- track railway upon the lower level, and a roadway thirty -four feet wide and two footways each eight feet wide upon the upper level. The Illinois roads which con- verge upon this viaduct have freight de"- pdts near the water, but the passenger trains pass through a tunnel 4800 feet in length beneath the river-side part of the city, and reach the up-town dep6t. Each span consists of four arches, having two members each, an upper and a lower one. Each member is of two parallel cast-steel tubes nine inches in exterior diameter set closely together, and each made in four segments, whose junctions form ribs. The upper and lower members are eight feet apart. The whole structure is stiffened by systems of diagonal, vertical, and horizontal braces. The arch formed a very important mem- ber of many wooden bridges, and still does of some iron trusses. Another tubular arch bridge is that of the Washington Aqueduct across Rock Creek, erected by General Meigs. It has a span of 200 feet and a rise of twenty feet, and con- sists of two ribs, each composed of seven- teen cast-iron pipes, flanged and bolted to- gether. The pipes are lined with staves to prevent freezing, and have a clear water way of three feet six inches. Through them passes the water for the supply of the city of Washington. The Fairmount Bridge across the Schuyl- kill is 100 feet wide, was built by the Phce- nixville Bridge Company, and is the finest example of an iron truss bridge in this country. Those Chinese prevent many a broad and full statement by having anticipated the Western barbarians in so many things : gun- powder, the mariner's compass, movable- type printing, paper of rags, glazing of pot- tery, silk, and boring for gas and brine. Suspension-bridges also have been long used in China and Thibet. One noticed by Tur- ner, near Tchin-Chien, was 140 feet long, on four catenary chains ; one in Quito, ob- served by Hmnboldt, was of rope four inch- es in diameter, made of agave fibre ; one in Aligpore, in Hindostan, is 130 feet in length, and made of cane with iron fastenings ; Hooker notices several in Nepaul ; Scamozzi refers to suspen- sion - bridges in Europe in 1615. The suspen- sion - bridge was waiting for iron. The first iron sus- pension-bridge in Europe, possibly in the world, was a chain - bridge across the Tees in 1741. Telford threw one across the Menai Straits, 570 feet, in 1820 ; it is of rods with coupling links. The Fribourg Bridge, 880 feet, was erected in 1830. The Ni- agara Railway Bridge, 821 feet, was erected by Roebling, 1855. The Wheeling Bridge, across the Ohio, 1010 feet, erected by Ellet, was blown down. The Cincinnati Bridge, across the Ohio, was con- structed by Roeb- ling in 1866. It is 1057 feet be- tween piers ; each cable has 5180 wires, each laid with a given strain to bear its part of the load. This was a grand conception. The weight of wire is 1,050,183 pounds. The new Niagara Bridge, just be- low the basin of the falls, is 1264 feet span, 190 feet high, and was erected in 1869. W n 1 Q i -i ) m 88 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. nA -j.j-^il^;:j. .':.:" : : ■ - - ~r: ' . ' . ■ ! : ; j ;-.v . above the water ; that no centring should be used to temporarily obstruct naviga- tion. Stephenson made the first estimates, and Fairbairn brought into use his great knowledge in the strength of materials and skill in the disposition of parts to bear strains to which different portions of a structure are subjected. The tubes are respectively 260, 472, 472, and 260 feet, the larger ones weighing about 4,032,000 pounds each. The tubes were built on floats, towed to their positions, raised by powerful hydrostatic jacks, the masonry beiug built beneath them as the lifting proceeded. The jacks rested on beams on the ledges of the towers. The lifting chains weighed 224,000 pounds each, and were of sis-feet sections, which were taken out, a section at a time, after each lift was made, and the tube rested on the masonry beneath it while the pis- ton of the jack descended ready for an- other lift. The pressure of the water beneath the ram was 2% tons per square inch. The tubes were lifted 100 feet above tide-water, ascending in high per- pendicular grooves in the faces of the towers, which were closed up by masonry as the lifting proceeded. It was opened IKON TRUSS AND LATTICE BRIDGES. I0I> tFattlC LU 1850. a, b, c, are forms of trusses for moderate spans, a, The Victoria Bridge at Montreal had rectanuglar-tube bridge b iron arch and lattice girder nQ h ext remely heavy work. It is 176 bridge, c, strut girder bridge, d, the principal span of •> J the Kuilinburg Railway bridge over the Leek, a branch of feet less than two miles long, having the Rhine It has nine spans; the one shown is 515 feet twellt y-five spans, the centre one 330 feet, total length, 492 feet clear span. Its only rival in length ° r ' is the middle span of Captain Eads's bridge across the the others each 240 feet long. The centre Mississippi at St. Louis, e is a truss bridge over the Avon span is 60 feet above the summer level f in England, the mid length resting on a cluster of screw piles. * ne water, and has a slight descent to- ward each end. The cost was £1,250,000. But one of the bridges mentioned above was standing when the old bell of the red brick house in Philadelphia rang out, "Pro- claim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof!" The solitary ex- ception was the chain -bridge across the Tees. This bridge has long since passed away, was but a solitary precursor of the coming age of iron bridges, and in mode of structure chains have given way to wire, first of iron, then of steel. WOOD-WORKING. In no department of mechanical progress has the advancement been more thorough than in the machinery for the working of We are now waiting for the completion of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, 5862 feet between termini, 1600 feet between river piers, and 80 feet wide. The tubular bridge erected at Conway, Wales, preceded that over the Menai Straits. Succeeding them is the Victoria Bridge across the St. Lawrence River at Montreal. The principle of all is the same : a tube of rectangular section forming a hollow gird- er. The material is cast and wrought iron, so disposed as to secure the valuable feat- ures of each kind. It was demanded that trains should be permitted to cross each way simultaneously at full speed on the two tracks; that it should be 100 feet THE CIRCULAR SAW. 89 POKTAItI.E CIRCULAR SAW. wood. Up to the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century what were the tools and modes of the wood- worker ? With the axe, adze, pit-saw, whip- saw, handsaw, chisel, and rasp excellent work was done; but it may be said that, with the exception of a few saw -mills, there was no machinery for wood-workiug. How infrequent were the saw-mills may be gathered from the fact that one established in England in 1663 by a Dutchman was abandoned from fear of personal violence on the part of the populace, and in 1767 one at Limehouse, in the eastern part of London, was destroyed by a mob of saw- yers who considered their craft in danger. The writer distinctly recollects when logs and tree trunks were habitually sawed from end to end, to work them into dimension stuff, by two sawyers, one standing on the log and the other in a pit beneath with a veil over his eyes to keep out the sawdust. And what a hard-working, sad, drunken set these sawyers were, and how the top-sawyer bossed the wretch in the hole, who pulled down, while he above, with shoulders like an Atlas, swung his weight upon the handles above ! This lasted well into our century ; but now we have a host of saw-mills of various kinds working on the most exten- sive scale at the great lumbering centres, and machines for special work in all cities where the stuff thus roughly "got out'' into square stuff or merchantable lumber is sawed into plank, dimension lumber, slats, scale-boards, veneers, and what not. The circular saw was introduced into En- gland in 1790, bvit its inventor is not known. General Sir Samuel Bentham, the most re- nowned of all inventors of wood-working machinery, and to whom we shall have to refer several times, patented in 1793 the bench, slit, parallel guide, and sliding bevel guide. The machine has now attained an excellence and completeness which leave little to be desired. In the stationary form of the machine the saws are either single or in gangs. The portable kind has an upper saw to complete the kerf made only partially through the larger logs by the lower saw. Such is known as a double saw. The log carriage travels on ways, the feed being by a pinion meshing into a rack beneath the carriage. After the cut the head-blocks are simul- taneously moved up, bringing the log a dis- tance nearer to the saw equal to the thick- ness of the board desired, plus the width of the kerf made by the saw. Very rapid and handy are these saws, but the men of '76 never dreamed of such a thing. We had rude gate saws driven by flutter wheels, or geared up for motion from a larger wheel. There was then no premonition of the saw- 90 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. mills which hum in all c-iir ports and huzz in all the forests of the land. The veneer saw, a peculiar adaptation of the circular saw, with thin segmental teeth on a thin hub of large diameter, was invent- ed by Bramah. Nor must we forget the scroll-saw, also uamed a jig saw from its rapid vertical mo- tion. It has a narrow thin blade which eats its way in a wonderful manner through the stuff which is moved against it, sliding on the surface of a flat table through which the saw reciprocates. The band saw is for BAND 6 AW. the same purpose, but is a steel ribbon with a serrated edge, and runs on two band wheels, one of which is driven by the steam-power. The planing-machine for wood assumed three shapes before it settled into its pres- ent preferred form ; indeed, there are yet two kinds. General Bentham's machine, patented in 1791, was like an immense plane pushed over the surface of the board. Bra- mah's machine, 1802, is what is called the traverse planer, the cutters being on the low- er edge of a revolving disk, which revolves with its vertical arbor above the board, which passes beneath it. The more com- mon and generally useful form of the plan- ing-machine has revolving cutters on hor- izontal axes, which work the top of the board. By an extension of the principle another cutter may work the lower surface, and two others on vertical axes dress the edges, or square stuff may be dressed on all sides, or one or more of the cutters may have such conformation as to plane mouldings on the stuff. This is the moulding-machine, whose use- fulness it is hard to exaggerate, but the admirable Bentham and the equally useful and perhaps equally brilliant Bramah would gaze with keen zest upon the outgrowth of their genius and pains. Another form of moulding-machine has a vertical shaft, with cutters of the conforma- tion required protruding through a table, so as to work the edges of the stuff brought against them, directed by the hand or by a guide. The joiner, or general ivood-tvorker, is anoth- er of the late additions to the shop. The number of years it has been in use can al- most be counted on the fingers of the two hands. Though the term may not have been so intended, yet it is well placed, for MOULDING-MACHINE. MORTISING-MACHLNES AND LATHES. 91 it holds a very commanding rank. It planes flat, mould- ing, and beaded surfaces; it rips or crosscuts ; it bores and counterbores ; it mortises and tenons, executes squaring-up, grooving, tonguing, rabbet- ing, mitring, chamfering, and wedge-cutting ; it is a jack- of-all-work, the handy man of the shop, "with unflagging en- ergy and singular versatility. It well represents tbe mature mind of the ages, being a mitl- tum in parvo, the combination of a set of separate machines, possessing the attributes of each, which it is ready to turn to account at any time, not always together, but in rapid succession at short notice. The mortisiug-machine may have had a precarious exist- ence before General Sir Sam- uel Beutham, but we have no trace of it. Ben tkam describes the self-acting machine in his patent of 1793. His descrip- tion includes the operation by which a hole previously bored is elongated by a chisel into a slot, and also the mode of making the mortise by a rotating cutter during the traverse of the work. He also had a pivoted table for oblique mortising, and a double or forked chisel for making narrow parallel mortises. Brunei's machine for mortising the shells of ships' blocks was made for the British Admiralty in 1804. The block is chucked in a carriage, and has an automatic feed movement by means of a screw. The chis- el (or chisels for blocks with more than one score) is in a vertically reciprocating slider in the frame above. The latest improvements in mortising- machines have much increased their capaci- ty and range of work, special machines be- ing made for various duties. One principal feature is that for bringing the chisel into action and determining its depth of stroke by simply pressing upon a treadle, the chisel being quiescent as soon as the foot is lifted, and this without disconnection with the motor. ;. .,.., :«f.,r.' . * ,:■>■■ / J GENERAL WOOD-WORKER. The tendency of the age is to rotary mo- tion. The first machine in the world, per- haps, was the throwing wheel of the potter. In the oldest of the Egyptian paintings the creative spirit, Knep, is represented as turn- ing man upon the potter's wheel. The Greek tornos does not appear to have been much superior to the pole lathe which was used by our ancestors, and is yet the useful machine of the Kabyles of Africa and the mountain- eers of the Carpathians. In this the work is rotated in one direction by a treadle and a cord which winds on the mandrel, and in the other by the recoil of a spring pole. Our ancestors did not use turned work to any great extent ; the hatchet and the drawing- knife fashioned the furniture of the rustic ; a rather smoother mode of preparation fell to the lot of that made for the gentler born. Now the turning lathe is the machine of speed ; broom handles are turned, and pails, clothes-pins, and the very commonest of ar- ticles. The wood-turning lathe preceded that of metal many centuries, as that for clay long 92 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. blanohard's spoke lathe. preceded the wood-lathe. We pass at once to the lathe for turning irregular forms, in- vented by Thomas Blanchard, of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1828, and since much im- proved by himself and others. It is made for turning spokes, axe-han- dles, gun-stocks, and various other crooked and difficult shapes. The illustration shows it as adapted for turning spokes. These have very different shapes at different parts of their lengths, and spokes for different kinds of vehicles require very different shapes and proportions. Like the job of standing the egg on end, suggested by Christopher Colon to his curious friends, it is very easy to understand when explained ; but it was a very ingenious contrivance and a great acquisition. The model is placed upon a slowly rotating mandrel at top ; a tra- cer rests against each side of it, and governs the motions of the cutter frame, causing the revolving cutter to advance or recede to or from the stuff which is chucked between the centres of a mandrel below, and caused to rotate in correspondence with the model above. The cutter frame has a longitudi- nal motion along the frame, its cutter pass- ing from end to end of the stick, and cut- ting more or less deeply in exact conformity with the model above. The piece to be cut is not shown in position, as it would hide the view of the cutter head. It would not be fair to omit the state- ment that Condamine, De la Hire, and Plu- nder mention lathes in which the cutter is governed by a tracer passing over the irreg- ular surface of a model ; also that Brunei's machine for making the groove around ships' blocks for the ropes by which they are at- tached to the rigging has a revolving disk of brass with two cutters which receive their direction and depth from a shaper placed parallel thereto. The first important collection of special wood-working tools was the machinery for making tackle blocks, invented by the elder Brunei, and made by Maudslay, 1802-08, for the British Admiralty. Fortunately Gener- al Bentham was at that time inspector of naval works, and so it only took twelve months to obtain the sanction of the com- missioners to the adoption of the plans of the three excellent masters. The machines are in three different sets, three in a set, for making different sizes, each set having a certain range of adjusta- bility as to the sizes of blocks turned out. Altogether they make 214 sizes and kinds. With two additional machines for making dead-eyes, two for making iron pins, and one large boring machine, the number of machines is fifty. They were set up in 1808 ; cost $230,000. The saving over hand labor is variously estimated at from $83,000 to $150,000 per annum. Brunei, "the in- genious American mechanic," as Tonilinson calls him, received £1 per diem for superin- tendence, £1000 for the models, and £17,000 for his head-work. The factory system is now in full vogue with wood-workers, and they can not desire a more honorable and thoroughly excellent triumvirate of leaders than Bentham, Brunei, Maudslay. Our space will allow of scarcely more than a recapitulation of the remaining achievements which distinguish the pres- ent century. ELEVATORS. The elevator, as an ordinary apparatus in a hotel, business house, or building devoted to offices, is an American institution. The man-engine and the hoisting platform or cage have been for nearly a century the or- dinary means of ascending mining shafts ; the cage has more lately been introduced into factories to save the operators the labor of climbing, and now the winding apparatus has been much improved, the car luxuri- ously furnished and lighted, and safety de- vices introduced to prevent overwinding and to arrest descent if the rope breaks. There are three principal forms : 1. That in which the winding drum is driven by a ELEVATORS. 93 steam-engine, the rope passing over a pulley above the shaft, and thence downward to the suspended cage. 2. The hydraulic ele- vator, in which water from the city main acts upon a ram with great force, and fleets, as the sailor might say, the blocks of a com- pound tackle, drawing upon the rope which passes over the sheaves at a rate propor- tioned to the number of sheaves involved. 3. The direct hydraulic lift; in this the platform is supported by a piston working in a cylinder into which water is admitted from the city main. This requires a piston as long above the lowest floor as the height to be lifted, and a well or cylinder as great a depth below it. As the water runs into the cylinder it acts against the lower end of the piston, and when the platform is to be lowered, a faucet is opened, which al- lows the water to escape. It is safe, and is probably a French invention — the Ascenseur Edoux. Besides these, there is a peculiarly Amer- ican system of hoisting and storing grain, forming a prominent feature in the views of our sea-board and lake cities. An eleva- tor-leg, as it is termed, reaches into the bin or well into which the wagons or cars have been discharged, or into the hold of the vessel. This leg is the extension device round which passes an endless belt with cups, each of which runs up full of grain and discharges into a hopper above, where the grain is weighed, aud from whence it passes by spouts to the various bins. From these it is drawn, when reshipped, into cars or vessels. In the American practice the grain is dis- charged into the hopper of a weighiug ma- chine gauged exactly for one hundred bush- els ; by opening a valve the contents are sent by a spout to the bin, the valve closed, and the elevating process resumed. Seven thousand bushels an hour are thus weighed. An elevator at Milwaukee is 280 feet long and 80 feet wide. The total length of the great driving-belt, urged by a 200 horse- power engine, is 280 feet, that is, the half, extending from cellar to comb, is 140 feet, and the down half is of course equal to it. This belt is 36 inches wide and three-quar- ters of an inch thick, and is made of six plies or thicknesses of canvas, with sheets of India rubber laid between them. It drives nine receiving elevators, or belts set with buck- ets, each of which lifts the grain 140 feet. The buckets are made of thick tin bound with hoop-iron, and are well riveted to the belt at intervals of fourteen inches. They are 6 inches across the mouth, 18 iuches long, and when full each contains a peck. They do not usually go up quite full, but, allow- ing for this, there are 100 pecks (25 bushels) loaded on one side of the belt whenever it is at work. If all nine are running at once, as is often the case, the quantity of wheat lifted on these swift-running belts is 225 bushels. The established weight of a bush- el of No. 2 Milwaukee spring wheat is 55 pounds. This would make the total lift of the receiving elevators during the time they are at work over 12,000 pounds. The bins into which this wheat is poured are of great size, being 60 feet deep, 20 wide, and 10 across, containing 12,000 cubic feet. The total receiving and storing capacity of this building is 1,500,000 bushels. Of the crop of 1869 it received 7,000,000 bushels. In discharging into the lake grain ves- sels, as soon as a ship is moored beside an elevator the hatches are removed, and great spouts extended over them from the bottom of one of the bins described. The gate is raised, and a torrent of wheat pours down. The loading power of these spouts is 12,000 bushels an hour. A vessel with a capacity for 18,000 bushels may be loaded in an hour and a half. The Oswego and Ogdensburg schooners, and vessels destined for the Welland Canal, usually take from 12,000 to 20,000 bushels. The Buffalo vessels are lar- ger, often receiving 30,000, and in a few cases 45,000 bushels. No other mode of handling grain has ever been devised which affords such facilities for unloading, weighing, storing, loading, moving from one bin to another for exam- ination or for ventilation. A hundred years ago the shovel, sack, and the hoisting chain, or else the wheelbarrow, were the usual fa- cilities of the grain merchant. DOMESTIC MACHINERY. Domestic machinery is not the least impor- tant of the features which characterize the present age. The sewing-machine is an American inven- tion of the last forty years. As was pre- 94 MECHANICAL PKOGRESS. viously remarked of reapers, the European attempts at making machines to supersede the hand method served to exhibit the dif- ficulty of the problem, but in no important degree to solve it. The shoe-sewing ma- chine of Thomas Saint, patented in England in 1790, had a single thread, which was driv- en by a forked needle through a hole pre- viously punched by an awl, and was then caught by a looper which held the loop so that it was entered by the needle and thread in their next descent, making a cro- chet stitch. The feed and the stitch-tight- ening movements were automatic. The sewing-machine of Thimonnier, of Paris, was used in 1830 for making army clothing. Eighty of these machines, made of wood, were destroyed by a mob, which regarded them as an " invention of the ene- my." They were afterward made of metal. Adams and Dodge, of Monkton, Vermont, in 1818, and more especially J. J. Greenough, of New York, in 1842, added improvements. Walter Hunt, 1832-35, made and sold lock- stitch sewing-machines, but neglected to pursue the business, which consequently at- tracted but little attention at the time. His extreme versatility prevented success ; his inventions absorbed his time, and he seem- ingly had none left for securing the pecun- iary results of his genius. He just missed, and by mere inattention, one of the grandest opportunities of the century. Elias Howe, with inferior inventive abilities, but with an adaptedness to follow out a single object persistently, and with business ability, reap- ed the field. The world, as we have had oc- casion to remark previously, thanks the man who gives an improvement into its hands. The name of Elias Howe is indissolubly as- sociated with the success of the sewing- machine. This machine is no exception to the ordinary rule that an invention is a growth rather than an inspiration, and the discussion on the relative merits of invent- ors has been both voluminous and acrimo- nious. Examiners, commissioners, judges, each in their turn have found it a very knot- t v question how to apportion the respective credits. It is no small matter to conceive the need and apply one's mind to the intri- cacies of the problem. Then come the de- tails. The original machine had a simple needle, and made a running stitch ; next we see a machine which made a succession of loops, forming a crochet stitch ; here the ma- chine paused a while. A score of years was passed in devising modes of feeding, contin- uous or intermitting, by various arrange- ments of parts. The greatest advance up to that time was the lock stitch, invented by Hunt, and made by passing a shuttle containing a lower thread through the loop of an upper thread carried down through the cloth by an eye-pointed needle. This was also the feature of the " Howe" machine. Following this were many improvements, variations, and nice adjustments, such as A. B. Wilson's four-motion feed and rotating looping -hook, the latter of which draws down the needle thread, and drops through it the spool containing the lower thread. There is no room here even to recite the prominent improvements. Finally, the ma- chine is much indebted to the skill and en- terprise of the mechanics and tradesmen in whose hands it has grown to the won- derful proportions it now exhibits. With- out impugning the genius of the earlier in- ventors, it may still be said that the present proximate perfection of the machine is due to the men who took up the work where Howe left it. The original Howe machine had a curved eye-pointed needle attached to the end of a vibrating lever, and carrying the upper thread. The shuttle, carrying the lower thread between the needle and the upper thread, was driven in its. race by means of two strikers carried on the ends of vibra- ting arms worked by two cams. The cloth was attached by pins on the edge of a thin steel rib called a baster-plate, which had holes engaged by the teeth of a small in- termittingly moving pinion. This was the feed, and clumsy enough. Space permits but one illustration, and the Singer is given as a representative ma- chine. The well-known table and treadle are omitted, and the principal working parts only are shown. The motion derived from the treadle is imparted to the hori- zontal shaft, and communicated in two di- rections to the needle bar and to the shuttle driver. Various subsidiary movements oc- cur which are tolerably familiar to our read- ers, and need not be explained at length. About 2000 patents have been granted in (j2> SEWING-MACHINES. 95 BINGEK SEWING-MACHINE. the United States for sewing-machines: one improvement after another, until there seems to be no end to the devices. Some have reference to special parts, others are adaptations of the machine to new uses and materials to which it had not before been accustomed. If required to point out three mechanical contrivances upon which the most extraor- dinary versatility of invention has been ex- pended, the writer would most unhesitating- ly instance the harvester, the breech-loading fire-arm, and the sewing-machine; each of these has thousands of patents, and each of them is the growth of the last forty years. Although each of these was on trial, and to some extent a success, previous to 1850, yet it may be said, in general terms, that their celebrity and usefulness date from about that time. The Hussey and M'Cor- mick reapers were largely introduced to our countrymen by their success at the London World's Fair in 1851 ; the breech-loaders were forced upon an unwilling Ordnance Bureau by the exigencies of the late war, the demand of the public, and the stern de- termination of some civilians who were in authority ; the first valuable working sew- ing-machine was the " Singer," made in the fall of 1850. Last year (1873) about 600,000 sewing - machines were made and sold ; 232,444 of these were of the " Singer." The security of patents has encouraged men of talent, capital, and enterprise to en- gage in the sewing-machine business, and as much as $40,000,000 is now estimated to be employed in that manufacture. The retail prices of sewing-machines bear no proper relation to their cost, but the prices to the consumer result from the method of selling by means of a system of agen- cies and traveling canvassers, to the latter of whom so large a profit is allowed that they can afford to sell them on time, on tri- al, or on payment by installments. There are cheaper means, as with ordinary tools and articles of consumption and wear, of bringing the producer and consumer togeth- er ; but in the sale of sewing-machines no substitute has been found for the personal solicitations of canvassers, who scour the country with their wagons, and receive for their pay one-half of the purchase price. The organization of the corps of agents by the general agent absorbs another fifteen per cent., so that the manufacturer receives only about thirty -five per cent, of the price. This system will not last longer than the necessity for personal effort at the homes of the people ; and when it becomes an estab- lished want in every family, as it is now an 96 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. actual need, the price may be expected to come down to what will afford but a usual profit upon the capital and skill employed. The principal patents have already expired, aud the business will soon be open to com- petition, when the best devised and con- structed machiues will be sold merely on their own merits, without the adventitious aids of exclusive rights to sustain prices. The business of boot and shoe making has received a fillip from the introduction of machinery, enriching the manufacturers and cheapening the product. Without oc- cupying room by even naming the machines which furnish the shoe factory, it may be stated that the M'Kay sewing-machine was the result of three years' mental labor and hand-work, and involved an expenditure of $130,000 before a practical working machine was completed and put in operation in 1861. Since this time 225,000,000 pairs of boots and shoes have been made on these machines in the United States, besides many millions in England and on the continent of Europe. A very skillful operator has occasionally sewed as many as 900 pairs in a day of ten hours, and any good operator can easily sew from 500 to 600 pairs per day. The knitting-machine is another form of iron-fingered curiosity, which will knit at an unexampled rate, and with admirable evenness of tension. It is singular, too, the variety of stitch that may be made on the machine by certain peculiar dispositions and combinations of the needles. We must not forget the apple-parer, which was quoted some thirty years since in En- gland as the last comical vagary of the fun- ny and awkward American cousin. A par- ing bee may be had without apple-parers, but it takes much longer to empty the ap- ple baskets and fill the kettle with the quar- ters, which are stewed in boiled cider to make apple-butter for the winter pies and " sass." It was no chance thought or mere whim that set our folks to work. American patents for apple-parers were granted in 1803, 1809, 1810, and since that time about eighty patents have been granted for other implements for the same purpose. Besides this we have for the cook and kitchen-maid the almond-peeler, pea and bean shellers, peach and cherry stoners ; raisin - seeders, bread and cheese cutters butter-workers, sausage grinders and stuff- ers, coffee-mills, corn-poppers, cream-freez ers, dish-washers, egg-boilers, flour-sifters flat-irons, knife - sharpeners, and lemon squeezers. Then we have for the dairy maid the milking-machines, milk -coolers, churns, cheese-presses, and a number of oth er aids to leisure. LAMB'S KNITTING-MAOIIINE. SAFES. 97 We have, moreover, the baby-jumper and baby- walker for the nursery, and a wonder- ful variety of brooms, mops, carpet stretch- ers and fasteners, for the footman and house- maid. Nor must the washing -machine, another strictly American notion, be disregarded. There are hundreds of patents. The typical forms are few ; the variations on these forms are most amusingly numerous. The ins and the outs of invention have been wonderful- ly diversified. The typical forms are, agi- tators, rubbers (reciprocating and rotary), centrifugal, pressure-rollers, pounders, dash- ers, plunger and balls, and the circulatory system. The wringer, consisting of a pair of rub- ber rollers, is a necessary laundry imple- ment. SAFES. In former times strong rooms and iron- bound oaken boxes were used to hold the cash and the muniments of merchants and families. Such chests were fastened by let- ter locks, which are the predecessors of our permutation locks. These boxes were hard- ly burglar-proof, and no defense against fire, but were a security against peculation by dishonest servants. About 1776 began the manufacture of sheet -iron safes, banded with hoop iron crossing on the outside at right angles. These were fastened by locks throwing several bolts, and also by a bar with hasp, staple, and padlock. Cast-iron chests were used in 1800. Attempts were previously made to render strong rooms fire-proof by building the walls double and pouring in gypsum ; but the first attempts at fire-proof portable safes were early in the nineteenth century, and con- sisted of wooden boxes covered with sheet iron and riveted bands, and an intervening thickness of gypsum. After various experiments, in which the wooden box was saturated with potash lye or alum to render it incombustible, and was coated inside the sheet-iron casing with clay, lime, graphite, or mica, the boxes were made of iron inside and outside, with intervening non-combustible material, and known as "double chests." Such was the fire-proof safe patented in England in 1801. Asbes- tua was used in 1834. Chubb in 1835 at- 7 tempted to make the safe burglar-proof by lining it with steel or case-hardened iron plates. In 1843 Wilder made a safe of heavy plates of iron, with a filling of hydrated gypsum. Hydraulic cement, steatite, alum, and the neutralized and dried residuum of the so- called soda-water manufacture, were suc- cessively used. Another idea was to connect the inter- vening space of the safe with the water main, to prevent a charring heat from reach- ing the contents when the outside became exposed to fire. Lillie used slabs of chilled cast iron, and flowed cast iron over wrought -iron ribs. Herring made safes with boiler-iron exteri- or, hardened steel inner safe, and the inter- space filled with a casting of franklinite over rods of soft steel. The American safe of the best quality is really a first-class production, and is not equaled elsewhere. The locks are also won- derful specimens of ingenuity, worthy of an extended notice. Safe-deposit companies iu our principal cities have ranks of safes with curious unpickable locks inclosed in a room with grated doors, lighted by gas, and watched by attendants. These are rented to private parties. Various plans have also been devised to give notice of tampering with the safe — electro -magnetic alarms, whistles sounded by setting free a body of compressed air im- prisoned between the air-tight walls, gen- erating asphyxiating gas in the chamber to choke the burglars. It is a race between the skilled mechanic and the equally skill- ful professional thief. FIRE-ARMS AND ORDNANCE. From the old wall piece or arquebuse with which the Swiss defeated Charles the Bold in 1476, to the Sharps, Eemington, Win- chester, or Maynard rifle, or the Parker shot- gun, is a great step. So of the pieces used by the cavalry of 1554, and named from Pis- toja, to the Colt or the Smith and Wesson revolver of our day. Equally great is the advance in ordnance from the cannon used at the siege of Cordova, 1280, and those with which Ferdinand captured Gibraltar from the Moors in 1308. The bore of the larger 98 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. cannon down to the middle of the fifteenth century was as great as any modern pieces ; but they carried large stones, had small powder chambers like a mortar, and could not possibly have withstood the modern charges of powder. The bronze gun Tzar Pooschka, cast a.d. 1586, had a bore of 36 inches ; its projectile was said to weigh 2000 pounds, but its powder chamber had only 19 inches bore, only about 1 to 3.6 the area of the ball chamber. Its weight was 86,248 pounds. The bronze gun of Bejapoor, a.d. 1548, had a calibre of 28.5 inches, weight 89,600 pounds ; that of Mohammed II., a.d. 1464, 25 inches, weight 41,888 pounds. The modern guns are of scarcely equal calibre, seldom of greater weight, but are of very much greater strength, and the force of the projectile, due to its velocity, may be said to be out of comparison greater than that of those pieces of antiquity. The Woolwich (England) 35-ton gun weighs 79,084 pounds ; the large Armstrong (Big Will), 50,400 ; Krupp's 14-inch, 100,000 ; Rodman's smooth-bore 20-inch, 116,497. Ev- ery body is casting heavier and heavier guns, and these figures will not long represent the condition of things. The latest advance is in the guns for the British armor-clad Inflex- ible, which has armor 24 inches thick, and is to be furnished with four guns of 81 tons weight each (181,440 pounds). The total length of this gun, including the plug-screw at the breech end, is 27 feet ; length of bore, 24 feet ; calibre not determined, but either 14 or 16 inches. The ball of the piece, reck- oned at 14 inches calibre, will be from 1000 to 1200 pounds, the charge of powder one- sixth of the weight of the ball. The 1000- pound shot, at an initial velocity of 1300 feet per second, will have a punching force of 11,715 foot-tons, the ball of 1200 pounds a penetrative force of 14,058 foot-tons. Eight years ago the English 7-ton gun was con- sidered the limit of production. Entirely new sets of tools and plants have succeed- ed each other, as the 35-ton and 81-ton guns have been produced. In getting gracefully back again from the great guns of the world to the military and sporting arms, we may pause a moment to regard a class of weapons which partake of the characteristics of each, known as ma- chine guns, having a plurality of barrels, and mounted upon a carriage. The first hint of these was a piece upon a tripod, having a chambered breech revolving behind a single barrel. This was patented in England in 1718. The clumsy contrivance which Fieschi used in filing on Louis Philippe had a row of barrels fired simultaneously, and anticipated in the horizontal arrangement of its barrels the Requa battery in this country and the Abbertini mitrailleur of the continent of Europe. The mitrailleur of the French has a cluster of barrels, in whose rear is placed a chambered plate, each of whose chambers corresponds to one of the cluster of barrels, against whose rear it is locked before firing. The most efficient weapons, all things considered, are the Gatling battery gun and the Taylor machine gun. The Gatling gun, invented by Mr. J. R. Gatling, of Indianapolis, has now a regular place in the military equipment of the United States and of England. It has a revolving cluster of parallel barrels, in the rear of each of which, and rotating therewith, is its own loading, firing, and spent-capsule- retracting mechanism. The usual American ammunition with metallic capsule and the fulminate in the flange is used. The bar- rels and the mechanisms for loading and firing are rigidly secured upon an axial shaft, which is revolved by means of bevel gearing and a crank. The ammunition is fed in at a hopper. Each barrel receives its charge as it comes to the top in the course of its revolutions, and fires as it comes to its lowest position, the firing being thus consecutive, and with a rapidity depending upon the rate of rotation of the crank. The complement of the hopper, 400 cartridges, may be fired in one minute if desired. The gun is manufactured at the Colt Works, Hartford. The Taylor gun is the invention of Mr. Taylor, of Knoxville, Tennessee, and has a cluster of stationary barrels, in the rear of which is a chamber to receive the cartridges ; these are secured in a charging block, and forced into the barrels by a lateral move- ment of the vertical handle seen in the en- graving. This handle is attached to an os- cillating sleeve having internal studs, which work in spiral grooves in a sliding breech cylinder. The latter carries plungers, one for each barrel, containing central firing FIRE-ARMS AND ORDNANCE. 99 TAYLORS MACHINE GUN. pins, retracted by rotation of a crank shaft carrying suitable tappets, so that the bar- rels may be discharged in rapid succession. The piece is built at the Remington Works, Ilion, New York. The military and sporting rifles and shot- guns of our country have no superiors. The trial at Creedmoor (1874) between the Amer- ican and Irish teams did not prove the suj>e- riority of the breech-loader over the muzzle- loader, nor conversely ; nor is there any dif- ference worth mentioning between a string of 931 (Irish) and of 934 (American) in a pos- sible 1080. It proved, however, the excel- lent character of the guns and the steadi- ness, sight, and skill of the men on both sides. The value of the breech-loading gun has been determined by other considerations than the actual shooting force, as rapidity of loading, the avoidance of shifting the gun end for end in loading, and also of assum- ing positions in handling which expose the marksman. The American style of fixed am- munition, carrying its fulminate in the base of the cartridge, has also a great conven- ience, and has riveted the former conclusion of the greater value of the breech-loader. The cartridge was introduced by Gustavus Adolphus, who was killed at Lutzen iu 1632. It at first only contained the powder, the bullets being carried in a bag. The idea of using sheet metal for cartridge cases origi- nated with the French. In 1826 Cazalat pat- ented a metallic cartridge case, drawn from a single piece of copper, and having an opening in the centre of the base for the communication of fire from the fulminate, which was covered with water-proof paper. Lefaucheux and Flobert, of Paris, improved and introduced the metallic cartridge, but it has received its final improvements in this country, being, in fact, a prominent feature in what is known as the American system. The systems of breech-loading are three : the " movement of barrel," the " movement of breech block," and the "revolver." Of these genera there are thirteen species and twenty-six varieties. Of the different modes there are about 1050 patents in the United States Patent-office, beginning with the pat- ent of J. H. Hall, of North Carolina, in 1811, for a rising breech block, which slipped from behind the bore to allow the cartridge to be inserted at the breech. Ten thousand of these arms were made for the United States government between 1811 and 1839, and some of them were captured at the taking of Fort Donelson. While it is true that the use of breech- loaders dates back to the sixteenth century, that form of arm being almost as old as the muzzle-loader, the actual use of breech-load- ers on a large scale in military service, or the habitual use of them by sportsmen, is quite modern. The Hall gun of 1811, men- tioned above, was manufactured on a small scale, and appears to have been locked up in arsenals, where it was forgotten. The needle-gun was introduced into the Prussian service to a limited extent in 1846, and into the Danish and Norwegian soon afterward. The Schleswig - Holstein war was fought with needle-guns. The French Chassepot 100 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. is reputed to have been first used in the Italian struggle in the Garibaldi times. Previous to our own war of 1861-65 our principal breech-loading arms were Sharps's, Burnside's, Maynard's, Merrill's, and Spen- cer's. The number of breech-loaders pur- chased by the United States government be- tween January 1, 1861, and January 30, 1866, is stated to have been as follows, arms of which the purchases were below 10,000 be- ing omitted : Buraside 55,56T Gallagher 22,728 Joslyn 11,261 Merrill 14,295 Maynard 20,002 Remington 20,000 Sharps 80,512 Henry 30,062 Spencer 94,156 Starr 25,603 Some of the above have fallen out of public notice ; the Sharps, Maynard, Rem- ington and Winchester (known during the war as the Henry), Ward-Burton, Colt, and Springfield have taken front rank as mili- tary and sporting rifles, while the Parker, Maynard, and Remington are the prominent shot-guns. Reference has been made to the American system of assembling the parts, which are made interchangeable, and also to the development of the system by Colonel Colt, in the manufacture of his revolving- chambered pistol. The Smith and Wesson arm is made by the same process. In 1866 Prussia with breech-loaders de- feated Austria with muzzle-loaders. A few years afterward the Prussian Zundnadelge- tvelir and the French Chasscpot struggled for pre-eminence on the soil of France. It may be added that, with a single ex- ception, the main features of all the prom- inent military rifles originated in the Unit- ed States. The exception is the European needle-gun, which is never likely to be used here. The English " Martini-Henry" gun is but a modification of the American " Pea- body." Six hundred thousand of the Mar- tini-Henry gun are now being made for the Turkish government. The "Winchester Repeating Arms Company," of New Haven, Connecticut, is making the ammunition for these guns. Four thousand tons of lead have been cast into bullets for the car- tridges, and the boxing costs $100,000. These cartridges will freight eight vessels of 500 tons each. The first metallic car- tridge used in a military arm was that of Dr. Edward Maynard. It was a cylindrical water-proof cartridge. TELEGRAPH. When the men of 1776 threw down the gage of battle, there were no means of sig- naling news other than by such semaphores as had existed in one form or another for 2500 years past, and are yet used by the Indians of the plains. Visible signals by swinging arms mounted on the tops of masts or of elevated buildings signaled the events even of Trafalgar and Waterloo along the Falmouth and Dover roads to London. In a less pretentious way, concerted fires and smokes by night or by day were made by the nations of antiquity, as recorded by Homer and Jeremiah ; by the Highlanders, as recounted by Scott ; and by the Indians of our Western plains, as lately described by General Custer. The semaphoric system of Polybius was adapted to spell out messages letter by let- ter. Signaling by flags and lanterns is em- ployed in military and railway practice. The electric telegraph preceded the elec- tro-magnetic by many decades. Gray, in 1729, noticed the conductivity of certain bodies; Nollet soon after passed a shock through 180 men of the French guards, and a line 100 toises in length ; Watson observed that the transmission of the shock through 12,000 feet of wire was practically instan- taneous, and signaled an observer by this means. Then came a number of experi- menters, each of whom added something to the stock of knowledge on the subject. Le Sage, of Geneva (1774), had a wire for each letter, and pith-ball electroscopes for the ex- cited agents. Lamond (1787) had a single wire and concerted movements of the pith ball. Cavallo, in 1795, proposed to trans- mit letters by combinations of dots and spaces. The next year Betancourt con- structed a telegraph between Madrid and Aranjuez, a distance of twenty-seven miles. The messages were read by the divergence of pith balls. Then came the discoveries of Volta, Gal- vani, Oersted, Ampere, Faraday, and Henry. The experiments of the first two mentioned are at the bottom of the discoveries in dy- namic electricity. Oersted, in 1820, ob- served that the magnetic needle had a tend- ency to assume a direction at right angles to that of the excited wire. The farther experiments of Oersted and Ampere, and TELEGRAPH. 101 the discovery of Faraday that magnetism was induced in a bar of soft iron under the influence of a voltaic circuit, and that of Sturgeon, in 1825, that a soft iron bar sur- rounded by a helix of wire through which a voltaic current is passed is magnetized dur- ing the time such current continues, gave rise to the first really convenient and prac- tical system of electro-telegraphy. One dif- ficulty remained — the resistance of the trans- mitting wire to the comparatively feeble current engendered by the voltaic battery. This was overcome by Professor Henry, who, in 1831, invented the form of magnet now in use, and discovered the principle of combina- tion of circuits constituting the receiving mag- net and relay, or local battery, as they are fa- miliarly known in connection with the Morse apparatus. The effect of a combination of circuits is to enable a weak or exhausted circuit to bring into action and substitute for itself a fresh and powerful one. This is an essential condition to obtaining useful mechanical results from electricity where a long circuit of conductors is used. In 1832 Professor Morse began to devote his attention to the subject of telegraphy, and in that year, while on his passage home from Europe, he invented the form of tele- graph since so well known as " Morse's." A short line worked on his plan was set up in 1835, though it was not until June 20, 1840, that he obtained his first patent, and nearly four years elapsed before means could be procured, which were finally grant- ed by the government of the United States, to test its practical working over a line of any length, though he had as early as 1837 endeavored to induce Congress to appropri- ate a sum of money sufficient to construct a bine between Washington and Baltimore. Morse's first idea was to employ chemica 1 agencies for recording the signals, but he subsequently abandoned this for an appa- ratus which simply marked on strips of pa- per the dots and dashes composing his al- phabet. The paper itself is now generally dispensed with, at least in this country, and the signals read by sound — a circumstance which conduces to accuracy in transmission, as the ear is found less liable to mistake the duration and succession of sounds than the eye to read a series of marks on paper. Professor Morse deserves high honor for the ingenious manner in which he availed himself of scientific discoveries previously made by others, for many important discov- eries of his own, and for the courage and perseverance which he manifested in en- deavoring to render his system of practical utility to mankind by bringing it promi- nently to the notice of the public, and he hived to see it adopted in its essential feat- ures throughout the civilized world. The attention of Wheatstone in England appears to have been drawn to the subject of telegraphy in 1834. His first telegraph comprised five pointing needles and as many line wires, requiring the deflection of two of the needles to indicate each letter. His first dial instrument was patented in 1840. Modifications were, however, subsequently made in it. The transmission of messages was effected by a wheel having fifteen teeth and as many interspaces, each representing a letter of the alphabet or a numeral, and thirty spokes corresponding to this, and forming part of the line. The circuit was closed by two diametrically opposite springs so arranged that when one was in contact with a tooth the other was opposite a space, when the transmitter was turned until op- posite a particular letter and held there, a continuous current being produced, causing an index on the indicating-dial at the other end of the bine, which had thirty divisions corresponding to those of the transmitter, to turn until it arrived opposite the letter to be indicated. The revolution of the index was effected by clock-work, the escapement of which was actuated by an electro-magnet at either end of a pivoted beam, the ends of which carried two soft iron armatures. One of the line wires, as well as one of the contact springs of the transmitter, and one of the electro magnets of the indicator, were afterward dispensed with. A magneto-electric apparatus was sub- sequently substituted for the voltaic bat- tery. The single-needle telegraph of Cooke and Wheatstone is caused to indicate the letters and figures by means of the deflections to the right or left of a vertical pointer ; for instance, the letter A is indicated by two deflections to the left, N by two deflections to the right, I by three consecutive deflec- tions to the right and then one to the left, 102 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. MORBE APPARATUS, CIRCUIT AND BATTERY. MORSE REGISTER. and so on. This is extensively employed in Great Britain and India. Bain, in 1846, patented the electro-chem- ical telegraph, which dispensed with the relay magnet at intermediate stations, and subsequently Gintl, in Austria, and Bonelli constructed telegraphs of this class varying in details from that of Bain. The above diagram shows the system of indicator, relay, local battery, lines, and key. The middle figure shows the key, which is worked by the sender of the message, and the lower figure the register, by which mo- tions of the stylus under the excitement which renders it temporarily magnetic are recorded on the paper in dots or dashes, according to the length of time during which the circuit is maintained. This is the principal instrument in America and on the continent of Europe. Room fails to tell of the autographic systems of Ca- selli and Bonelli ; the printing telegraphs of House and Hughes ; the automatic tel- egraphs of Edison and others. The duplex telegraph, by which messages are sent over the same wire in contrary di- rections at the same time, is so strange that ilil „ 3IB | DUPLEX TELEGRAPH. a diagram and short description will be given. Several plans of duplex telegraph have been proposed. The device selected for illustration is that of Stearns, of Boston, which is based upon the plan of Gintl, of Austria, 1853. The relay, or receiving in- strument, is composed of two pairs of elec- tro-magnets (m m) acting in opposite direc- tions upon a common armature lever (A). The key is the armature of an electro-mag- net which is in a local circuit controlled by a Morse key (E). LB is the local battery. The main battery (MB) current is equally divided between the relay magnets (m m), one-half passing through one set of mag- nets to the line I, and the other half passing through the other magnets and a rheostat (B), equal to the resistance of the main line, to earth. The relay magnets are thus equal- ly excited, and their influence upon the ar- mature neutralized, so that the outgoing current gives no signal at the sending sta- tion. A current received, however, traverses only one set of the electro-magnets, destroy- ing the equilibrium, and causing a signal. The key is so constructed that it closes one circuit to the earth before breaking another, thus always preserving the continuity of the circuit, a condition essential in systems of this kind. A condenser ( C) is placed in a shunt circuit to the magnets in the short or home circuit, in order to neutralize the ef- fect of the extra current on the line mag- nets of the relay. ELECTROPLATIXG. Electroplating is an invention of the cen- tury. Volta himself experimented about 1800. Cruikshank noticed the corrosion in one wire and the precipitation of metallic ELECTRIC LIGHT. 103 ELECTROPLATING. silver on the other when passing the " gal- vanic influence" through the wires in a bath of nitrate of silver. Wollaston experimented in 1801. Spencer made casts from coins in 1838. Jacobi, of Dorpat, soon after gilded the iron dome of the Cathedral of St. Isaac, at St. Petersburg, with 274 pounds of ducat gold, deposited by battery. The art has grown into use, and now baser metals, in the shape of articles for household service, are cased with silver; electrotyped forms are used as printing surfaces ; nickel is de- posited on numerous articles which are ex- posed to damp, and on others to add to their beauty, as with movements of watches. It is impossible to enumerate the uses and ap- plications, and not easy to exaggerate the value of the art. ELECTRIC LIGHT. The electric light is eminently the child of the century. In its production and its uses it touches nowhere upon the knowledge or the methods of the men of the previous pe- riods. It is a pure gain of the present. The bright spark from the electrical machine had been observed by Wall in 1708, the Leyden- jar was invented by Cunceus in 1746, and the experiments of Dufay, Nollet, Gray, Franklin, and others soon gave valuable re- sults. Another whole series of observations and inventions founded upon the discoveries of Volta and Galvani was necessary before the transient spark was succeeded by the in- tense and unremitting light developed be- tween two pieces of carbon placed at the positive and negative ends of a voltaic cir- cuit. The electricity may be developed ei- ther by a battery, or from magnets in con- nection with a series of helices arranged on a rotating wheel, the latter source be- ing preferred for light-houses and in other situations where permanency is intended. The battery is the usual source for lect- ures in theatres having no regular labora- tory. The electric light was first brought into notice by Greener and Staite in 1846, in an arrangement by which small lumps of pure carbon nearly in contact, and inclosed in air- tight vessels, were rendered luminous by cur- rents of galvanic electricity. The break in the continuity of the circuit at this point causes resistance, generating intense heat and the consumption of the carbon, which is accompanied by an extremely brilliant light. As the carbon burns away, one or both of the pieces require to be advanced, and the chief difficulty was found to be in maintaiuing the points at such a distance from each oth- er as to render the light continuous. This is now effected by means of an electro-mag- net and clock movement, the duty of the latter being to bring the points together as they are gradually consumed, while the magnet checks the clock action when not desired. This light is very largely used in the lect- ure-room. It was introduced into Duuge- ELEOTEIO LIGHT. 104 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. ness Light-house, on the southeast coast of England, in 1862; at La Heve, France, a year or two later. It was used in the ex- cavating chamber in the base of the deep caissons of the St. Louis Bridge ; during the excavation of the docks at Cherbourg ; on various festal occasions in cities of America and Europe. FIRE-ENGINES, ETC. In fire-engines America has hardly a rival. When our century commenced a clumsy hand-engine was employed, a gradual im- provement upon the mere syringe which was used from the time of Trajan down to the sixteenth century. At Augsburg, about 1518, force-pumps were mounted on wheels and worked by levers. At Nuremberg, in 1657, the town engine had a cistern and pump mounted on a sled ; the brakes were worked by twenty-eight men, and threw a stream through an inch nozzle to a height of eighty feet. The Van der Heyden broth- ers about this time much improved the de- vice. Newsham's engine, about the end of the seventeenth century, had the double- acting force-pump with air chamber. This was not superseded till about 1832, when our personal recollections commenced, and about that time improvements were rapidly made which culminated in the gorgeous hand-engines with which we ran, of which we boasted, and, lamentable to say, about which we fought. Steam-power forcing -pumps for extin- guishing fires were in use long before port- able steam fire-engines. The first steam fire-engines were perhaps those mounted on barges on the river Thames, and which were moved or towed to fires occurring on the river front. Next was undoubtedly the portable steam-engine of Captain Ericsson. This was made in Manchester, England, about 1830, a little after he constructed the " Novelty" locomotive, which contended for the prize on that famous day in 1829 on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. He also made a steam fire-engine in New York in 1842-43. But, after all, the steam fire-engine as a fixed and valuable fact hails from Cincin- nati, Ohio, where the talents of the brothers Latta and Mr. Shawk, inventors and build- ers, were seconded by the enterprise of STEAM FIRE-ENGINE " WASHINGTON. NO. 1," BROOKLYN, NEW YORK. FIKE-ALAKMS. 105 Miles Greenwood. The " Citizens' Gift," one of the first successful engines, was built in 1853, and in 1866 was still among the most useful of her class. Since that time the principal cities of North America have been supplied with steam fire-engines ; also many of the largest cities of England, and some few on the continent of Europe. The American system of fire-alarms is like- ly to work its way gradually into the cities of Europe. It is one of those things which are difficult to introduce, and impossible to dispense with when once tried. We can not imagine such an impertinent and ab- surd proposition as to go back to the old times when the flames of a burning house were the signal to the watchman in the tower of the engine-house. The fire-alarm telegraph first in use was merely a connection by Morse telegraph be- tween fire-alarm stations. This was in use in New York and Berlin in 1851. The pres- ent system is founded upon the patented in- vention of Farmer and G'hanning, 1857. Mr. Channing wrote upon the subject in 1845, and in 1848 Mr. Farmer devised a means of ringing bells by electricity, and in an exper- imental trial that year the bell in the tower of Boston City Hall was rung by an operator in New York. The fire-alarm telegraph was first put up, in the year 1852, in Boston. The primary requisites of a fire-alarm telegraph system are a telegraph line, a central receiving station, and a number of signal boxes suitably distributed for trans- mitting an alarm. When there are a number of such boxes, as in most cities, they are not arranged upon the same circuit, but upon several circuits connected to some central station. The signal boxes generally used contain a spring or weight and gearing, rotating a circuit-breaking wheel and a fly for regu- lating the speed. The circuit wheel in one form is provided with projections, upon which a spring presses and closes the cir- cuit, which is broken as the spring passes over the intervals between the cogs ; in another form the surface of the wheel is smooth, an insulating material being let into the wheel so as to break the circuit. A train of gearing, upon one shaft of which is a cam or lug, operates the pivoted ham- mer. This gear is held in rest by the ar- mature of a magnet acting as a detent; so every time a current passes, the armature allows the gearing to revolve, and the ham- mer strikes once. At the same time the smaller alarm gongs are struck in the en- gine-houses. In the houses the horses are kept ready harnessed. At the end of the halter strap (where halters are used) is a ring through which a bolt upon the manger passes, securing the horse ; from the bolts a string or lever passes to a weight or spring kept inactive by the gong-hammer lever; the first stroke releases the weight, which, falling, pulls the string or lever, withdraw- ing all the bolts securing the halters, and loosing the horses. When halters are not used, but the horses are turned into box- stalls, the latter have sliding gates, which are raised by the same kind of devices. In the strictly automatic system there is no operator at the central station, but a re- peater of very complex organization, having connection with all the various circuits, so that, an alarm coming in on any one cir- cuit, the repeater is prevented from receiv- ing from any other circuit (to avoid inter- ference of signals), and caused to repeat the alarm automatically upon all the cir- cuits, including the various alarm devices. A register is also used with the repeater. ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAY, ETC. The "pneumatic tube and atmospheric railway are other achievements of the century. It can not be said that they have come into extensive use for passengers, but for small parcels and letters they have been in suc- cessful use for fifteen years in London. Dr. Papin, of Blois, in France, suggested the idea about the end of the seventeenth century, but, like some other children of his fertile brain, it never grew up. Medhurst in 1810 patented the idea of forcing a car- riage on a pair of tracks along an air-tight tube by means of compression of air be- hind it. Vallance in 1824 patented the other mode, exhausting the ah- in front of it. The idea was carried out at the Sydenham Palace, near London, where an ordinary railway carriage with a somewhat elastic piston traveled in an elliptical tunnel eight by nine feet in its minor and major diameters. The same idea is earned out in Beach's short 106 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. tunnel under Broadway, New York, which has heen visited by many of our readers. Out of this grew the atmospheric railway, in which a piston traveling in a tube is con- nected to a carriage running upon rails out- side, a long valve filling a slot in the top of the tube being displaced by a bar de- pending from the carriage, and falling into place again behind. This plan had many modifications, and was actually employed on two railways, but afterward abandoned — from 1844 to 1855 on the Kingstown and Dalkey, Ireland, If miles ; from London to Croydon, England, 10 miles. Good speed was attained, heavy grades readily ascend- ed, collision was impossible, but it was too liable to get out of order. The atmospheric brake for railway cars is another recent feature, and has only at- tained its present excellence after many attempts. As many as twenty-four patents were granted from 1841 to 1865 for brakes actuated upon each car by a single impulse by the engineer, many of them employing air or steam as the means of applying the shoes to the car wheels. The Westinghouse brake employs air as the means of transmitting power to the brakes. This is condensed to the required extent into a reservoir by a steam-pump upon the locomotive. From the reservoir it is conducted back beneath the cars of the train by pipes connected beneath the train by flexible tubes and valved couplings. Un- der each car is a cylinder to which the com- pressed air is admitted forward of a piston, the stem of which is connected to a bell- crank attached to the brake levers by rods, so that when air is admitted by the en- gineer to the pipes connected to the cylin- ders under each car, the brakes of each are simultaneously applied. One test may be mentioned. September 18, 1869, a train of six cars descending the Horseshoe Bend of the Pennsylvania Cen- tral Railway, a grade of ninety-six feet to the mile, at the rate of thirty miles per hour, was brought to a stand-still in 420 feet — seven car lengths. Blowers and blowing engines are but forms of air-compressing or air-exhausting pumps, but it is bard to overvalue them. They in- crease the draught in metallurgic furnaces ; furnish vital air to close and fetid places, such as mines, cisterns, holds of ships ; sup- ply warmed, cooled, moistened, or medica- ted air to public buildings, schools, hos- pitals, etc. ; furnish a drying atmosphere to lumber and grain kilns and powder mills ; assist in evaporating liquids and removing the steam from the vicinity of the boiling solution; raise liquids on the principle of the Giftard injector, as in oil wells and sub- aqueous caissons ; assist in the dispersion of liquids, as in atomizers and some forms of ice machines ; remove dust and chips from saw-mills and planers, the fatal dust from the stones and glazers of cutlers ; sup- ply breath to organs. The blower of three centuries since con- sisted of one open-ended box slipping into another ; it was used for furnaces in that very remarkable city, Nuremberg, and was an improvement over the ordinary bellows. Later, about 1621, a bellows was used con- sisting of a valve oscillating in a sector chamber. The fan-blower dates from 1729. The water-bellows was invented by Horn- blower. The first powerful blast machines were probably those erected by Smeaton at the Carron Iron-works, 1760. The furnaces grew larger in size, and more powerful blowers were needed. Watt's engine came just in time to crown the whole affair with success and revolutionize the iron trade. Neilson invented the hot blast in 1828. Power blowers are now used. The forms are piston ; fan ; vertical open-ended cylin- der plunging in water ; pair of wheels, with alternate vanes and packing surfaces, and rotating in concert. BALLOONS. Aerostation is almost all within the centu- ry. Since Icarus fell into the ^Egean Sea very little advance has been made in flying machines, the flight of Daedalus from Crete to Sicily being altogether the most success- ful on record. Some presume to doubt this. Ballooning was rendered possible upon the discovery of hydrogen gas by Cavendish in 1766. It is true it had been produced before, but was not understood or used. Dr. Black the next year suggested its use for aerosta- tion. The brothers Montgolfier ascended by a fire balloon in 1783 ; the ascensive power was obtained by heated air rising GAS. 107 from a fire made in the open month of the balloon. Pilatre de Roziere and the Mar- quis d'Arlaudes repeated the experiment the same year. MM. Charles and Robert infla- ted their balloon with hydrogen gas, and as- cended 9700 feet and reached a distance of twenty -five miles in one hour and three- quarters. Ascensions after this became fre- quent. Pilatre and Romaiu tried to com- bine a hydrogen balloon with a fire balloon ; the expanding gas reached the fire, the whole was consumed, and the aeronauts per- ished. Balloons of observation were used by the French army at Liege and Fleurus in 1794. This was repeated at Solferino in 1859, and with our Army of the Potomac. The most remarkable ascent for a long time was that of Gay-Lussac, in 1804, who reached the height of 23,040 feet. Glaisber, it is said, afterward ascended to a height of seven miles. Green, in 1820, introduced the plan of inflating with the ordinary illuminating gas of the streets. The history of the balloon since this time embraces many names — Wise, King, Lowe, and Donaldson in this country ; Gilford, Go- dard, and De Lome in France. M. Godard conducted the balloon postal administration during the siege of Paris. Wise's trip from St. Louis is the longest on record, nearly 1200 miles. WEIGHING MACHESTES. Probably no invention, if we except that of the locomotive, has to so great a degree expedited the transactions of commerce as the platform balance, invented by the Fair- banks Brothers about 1830. The business of making these weighing machines has grown to enormous proportions. From the Fairbanks manufactory at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, 50,000 scales are sent out annual- ly to all parts of the world. GAS. Illuminating gas was unknown, except as a surface emanation or a laboratory produc- tion, in the year 1776. In China from time immemorial the natural flow of carbureted hydrogen has been used for lighting, and for boiling the brine yielded by salt wells. Sim- ilar convenient applications have been made at Fredonia, New York, Portland, on Lake Erie, Wigan, Scotland, in lighting, and at Kanawha, West Virginia, in evaporating brine. Gas emanating from a well 1200 feet deep is used at the " Siberian Works," Pitts- burg, under the boilers and in the puddling furnaces. The fire - worshipers of Persia have regarded such emanations with high respect, and the holy fires of Baku, on the Caspian, have a great local fame, and are thus maintained. Gas was first obtained by the distillation of coal in 1688 by Dr. Clayton ; Boyle refers to it in that year. Watson, Bishop of Llan- daff, 1756, Lord Dundonald, 1786, distilled coal and tar and burned the issuing gas. Murdoch was the first to light a building l'l.VliEAM OF GAS-WORKS. 108 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. with it. He thus lighted his house and of- fices at Redruth, Cornwall, in 1792. In 1798 he lighted with gas the works of Bonlton and Watt at Soho. He illuminated these buildings in 1803 in the rejoicings for peace : Trafalgar, Austerlitz, and Jena, within four years afterward, are a curious commentary. Murdock's name stands at the head of the list as the man who reduced the idea to practice. In 1804-05 he lighted the cotton factory of Phillips and Lee, Manchester, with a brilliancy estimated to be equal to 3000 candles. This was a grand success. In 1803 Winsor lighted the Lyceum Thea- tre, in London, and obtained a patent for lighting streets by gas. He established the first gas company. The first street lighted was one side of Pall Mall, in 1807 ; Westmin- ster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, in 1813 ; London streets commonly were Ught- ed in 1815 ; Paris, the same year ; Baltimore, 1816; Boston, 1822; New York, 1825. This is all very recent, and yet how far into the past the dim period of street oil- lamps seems to have retreated! The mode of making illuminating gas is pretty gen- erally understood. The coal is baked in re- torts, and the gas flows therefrom in com- pany with other vapors, which are removed by successive operations. It is conducted first to the convoluted pipes of the con- denser, by which it is cooled and the tar precipitated. Thence it passes to the wash- er, where the ammonia is seized by the wa- ter, allowing the gas to pass on to the puri- fier, where it is deprived of its sulphur and carbonic acid by dry lime, or latterly by the hydrated sesquioxide of iron. Clegg in- vented the purifier and wet meter in 1807 ; Malam the dry meter in 1820. SILVER. The silver processes now adopted in our Western Territories are the result of long care and observation, with chemical analy- ses — the union of experimental test and sci- entific deduction. Amalgamating pans and barrels are made in great variety ; roasting furnaces and processes have been adapted to the varying characters of ore and the means at command for treating. One of the most satisfactory of tbe latter must stand as a representative of the whole family, as it is not possible to stetefeldt's boasting fuenaoe. treat the matter either at length or in de- tail. The Stetefeldt roasting furnace for silver ores containing sulphur is what is technical- ly known as a shaft furnace ; the ground and stamped ore is dusted in a shower into a vertical shaft, up which the flame of a fur- nace is directed. The ground ore is mixed with salt, and pulverized at the stamp battery. The pulp is carried by a conveyer to the feeder at the top of the shaft, and shaken through the sieve so as to fall in a shower through the flame of the gas entering at the side aper- tures low down in the shaft. The principal portion falls to the bottom, but the finer matter passing over is exposed to a dame arising from the mingled air and the car- bonic oxide of a charcoal fire discharging into the downcast shaft leading to the series of chambers in which fine metallic dust is eventually deposited, and from which it is removed from time to time. In the furnace shaft a double decomposi- tion takes place, which converts the sulphide of silver into the chloride, in which latter condition it is brought, as one may say, within the grasp of the mercury. In the presence of sulphurous gases from the sul- phide of silver the chloride of sodium is de- composed, and yields its chlorine to the sil- ver, forming the chloride of silver, while the sulphurous gases uniting with the soda form sulphate of soda, which is washed out with the tailings. The material from the furnace is ready for the amalgamating pan. Ice is one thing in which Americans rev- el in the summer-time. No other nation lays in such a stock, or so peremptorily de- mands an abundant supply. American ice ICE-MAKING MACHINES. 109 FERDINAND CARRE'S CONTINUOUS APPARATUS FOB IOE-MAKING. ■ ~ ^ ^ ' is sold in London, Calcutta, and a hundred places be- tween the two. Usually the ice is "har- vested" on ponds or rivers in the North, and the business has created a whole set of pe- culiar contrivances for scraping off the sur- face and removing snow ; sawing the sheet into blocks without quite detaching ; split- ting them off ; floating them to the hoist ; elevating them by endless chains ; delivering them to the men who stow them in a solid mass occupying the whole interior of the barn. More specially noticeable, however, are the machines for congealing water into ice, and which are commencing to work at a price below that at which the ice can be gathered and transported. Speaking in short terms, there are four modes of making ice — vaporization, radia- tion, liquefaction, and sudden reduction of pressure. Vaporization in a partial vacuum formed the basis of Dr. Cullen's attempts in 1755 ; in 1777 Nairne used sulphuric acid to absorb the vapor rising from water in an exhausted receiver. Edmond Carry's apparatus is on this principle, and is used to produce the carafes frappe'es so common in Parisian res- taurants. In the continuous operation of Ferdinand Carre" ammonia is employed as being more volatile than water, and under ordinary atmospheric pressure permanently gaseous. The apparatus is somewhat com- plicated, but effective. The water is in cans in a bath of uncongealable liquid, cooled by zigzag tubes, into which the liquid am- monia is conducted to expand, and thereby convert the sensible heat of the surround- ing bath into latent, due to its assumption of the gaseous condition. There are many modifications of the vaporization principle, but no room to tell of them. Liquefaction is another mode, and snow and ice are used in connection with salts. Combinations of salts are also used. Ma- chines are also used in which air is exhaust- ed by a steam-engine from a receiver, the expansion of liquid into a gaseous condition drawing heat from the water sufficient to congeal it. SUGAR. Sugar is mentioned by Dioscorides and Pliny as a kind of honey obtained from cane, and was introduced into Europe by the Arabs. The first mention of it in European annals is in the account of Nearchus, who commanded the fleet of Alexander. The Crusades added to the European knowledge of it, and in the twelfth century it was grown in Sicily. Thence it was taken to Madeira in 1420, and thence to the Canaries, to Bra- zil, and to San Domingo in 1506 ; to Barba- does from Brazil in 1641. It is a native of the East Indies, and its name is from the 110 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. MODERN SUGAR PROCESS. Sanskrit, sarkara; Persian, schdkar; Hindos- tanee, schukur; Arabic, sukkar. Eanda (can- dy) is also Sanskrit. It was used for many centuries as a vehi- cle in medicine before it became an article of food. For the refining processes we are indebted to the Venetians of the sixteenth century. As time passed, the clarification, defecation, and crystallization proceeded on a gradually improving scale, boiling, set- tling, filtering, white of egg, skimming, bone- black, etc., being used. Loaf-sugar was first made in Venice. The vacuum -pan is the invention of Charles E. Howard, an English refiner, about 1813. In this a partial vacuum is obtained over the sirup, so that it will boil at a much lower temperature. This not merely saves fuel, but prevents charring and discolora- tion of the sugar. The modes of handling the sirup, so to speak, are also much simpli- fied and assisted, the cane juice, by means of pumps or by gravity, flowing from the mill to the filters, to the defecators, to the CENTRIFUGAL FILTER. filters again, to the vacuum-pan, and to the cooler. Another very important aid in sugar-mak- ing apparatus is the centrifugal filter, pat- ented by Hurd, of Massachusetts, 1844. In this the magma is placed in a foraminous cylinder, and rotated with great rapidity, so that the liquid portion — the water and the uncrystailizable sugar — is expelled by cen- trifugal force, leaving the granulated sugar in the cylinder. This really beautiful contrivance has since been adapted for many purposes as a drainer filter, and as a substitute for the clothes- wringer. PORCELAIN. Porcelain, although not finer in texture than the Chinese article of many ages back, nor of more graceful and agreeable shapes than the vases of Etruria and Greece, has, as far as we are concerned in the art, made almost all its progress within the century just passing away. Wedgwood's improvements, 1759-70, date the commencement of a new era for us, although Bottcher was half a century earlier, and founded the works of Dres- den. The establishment of the porce- lain - works at Sevres, in France, was somewhat later. In Prussia, Austria, Russia, Bavaria, and France the works are governmental. Staffordshire, the old home of Wedgwood, is the centre of the English works, whicli are all private ven- tures; the exports being largely to the United States. GLASS-MAKING. Ill ■tW M GLASS-MAKING IN EGYPT, 1500 B.O. GLASS. Gfass was known in ancient Nineveh, and was skillfully worked by the ancient Egyp- tians, though it was mostly ornamental, and did not probably enter much into the com- mon uses of life. Pliny describes the mode of making it, and it was used all down through the ages to our own time. It is ouly within the last three centuries that its use has become common. The manufac- ture of blown glass was introduced into England in 1559 ; plate-glass in 1673. Cylinder glass was made for some scores of years before it was introduced into En- gland in 1846, just in time for the great Ex- hibition building of 1851, which was design- ed by Sir Joseph Paxton, and roofed with cylinder glass made by Chance and Co., of Birmingham. The process is as follows : The workman collects a mass of glass («) around the end of his blowing tube, and then distends and rounds it by blowing and rolling it on the marrer, or flat cast-iron table. The subse- quent operations consist iu reheating, blow- ing, and swinging, until the diameter and then the length of the cylinder required are attained, the glass successively assuming the forms b c represented in the figure. In the fourth stage, where it has assumed a conoidal form (d), the point is very thin, and the blower, having filled the shell with air at a pressure, places it in the furnace, when the expansion of the air by heat causes the conoid to burst at the apex (e). The edge of the hole is then trimmed with shears, and enlarged by the pucellas, a peculiar hand tool, which resembles a pair of spring sugar- tongs with flat jaws. The cylindrical form (/) being then perfected, the cylinder is ready to be removed from the blowing tube, a circular piece of glass coming away with the tube, so as to make an opening in the other end of the cylinder. This separation is effected by a red-hot bent iron, in which the cylinder is turned round a few times, so as to expand the glass at that point (g). A drop of water on the heated line makes an instant fracture. The cylinder is then split by a diamond, or by means similar to that which removed the disk from the end (/(). Flatting and annealing finish the process. These are accomplished in separate fur- naces, or apartments heated by the same furnace. In the combined form the flatting furnace consists of consecutive chambers heated by a furnace beneath. The cylinder is placed on the heated floor of the flatting furnace, with the cracked side uppermost. The heat of the furnace causes it to soften and spread out, when all the curves and lumps are removed by a straight piece of wood fastened crosswise at the end of an iron handle, and wetted before applying. The flatting stone is made very smooth, as any inequalities are transferred to the glass. The sheet of glass is then pushed into the SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF CYLINDER GLASS. 112 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. annealing chamber, where it is set upon edge, and left to cool gradually. The operations of making crown and cyl- inder glass are exceedingly interesting, and have some marked peculiarities. Wonder- ful is the command attained by skill over the plastic stuff, and in no other art except pottery is there such a growth beneath the hand of the operator. The lower illustration shows the men, each one on his platform, one swinging his prolonged bulb above his head, another blowing and swinging it beneath his feet, while a third is observing the operation of heating the glass, which he keeps constant- ly turning round by means of the rod to which it is attached. In articles of bijouterie and virtu we have nothing to claim of elegance or beauty over the Venetians of centuries back. In glass- cutting the most interesting of modern in- ventions is Tilghman's sand blast, by which a stream of sharp sand or emery is directed upon glass to drill it, as may be required, or to sink a pattern into it, or sink a panel around a raised pattern. It is also used for drilling stone, and even the hardest varie- ties, such as agate and porphyry. PAPER. As Pliny remarked in the first century of our era, " All the usages of civilized life de- pend in a remarkable degree upon the em- ployment of paper ; at all events, the remem- brance of past events." This he said of the material obtained by splitting apart the successive folds of the papyrus stalk, a reed growing plentifully then in the marshy grounds of Egypt, but which is now some- what rare. Paper, as we understand it, was not then known to the Mediterranean nations, and perhaps not out of China. Paper made by the maceration of rags was introduced into Europe by the Spanish Saracens during the eighth century. It was, of course, made by hand, as it is in Asia at present. All paper-making machinery is included within our century. By the hand process the rags, being sorted, washed, and bleach- ed, are cut in pieces, and then ground or beaten to a pulp. This was done in mortars till the invention of the rag engine in Hol- land, about the middle of the seventeenth PULPING ENGINE. century. As now practiced, the beater or pulping engine grinds the rags into pulp, which is transferred to a vat. By the hand process, which is extinct in Europe and America, except for some grades of drawing and writing papers, the paper- maker dips into the vat a shallow triangular frame, known as the mould, having a closely woven wire-cloth, a sort of flat sieve with wire meshes. Lying upon this is an open rectangular frame like a slate frame, and known as a deckle, which forms a margin for the sheet of paper to be made. He dips the two into the pulp, and withdraws them in horizontal position, the mould being full. The water drips away as the man shakes the mould to felt the fibres, and he transfers the soft sheet to a sheet of felt, over which he lays another sheet of felt, on this a sec- ond sheet of moulded pulp, and so on, until the pile is high enough to be pressed. It is a second time piled, without the felt sheets, and again pressed, then sized, calendered, and made into reams. Ten centuries passed and saw the civil- ized nations of the* world making paper thus. A few years after the commencement of our century, Robert, a Frenchman, devised a machine for making a web of paper from pulp. Before 1800 he had made it succeed in a degree, but it took a number of years and the brains of many co-workers before valuable results were attained. The scene of the effort was shifted from the paper mill of Francois Didot, of Essones, France, to the works of the wealthy brothers Fomdrinier, in England, who were assisted by Donkin in bringing the machine to perfection. In the Fourdrinier or flat web machine the previously prepared pulp is introduced into a vat, where it is thinned with water pre- viously expressed from the sheet during its formation, and agitated by means of a ro- tary stirrer. Passing through a peculiarly formed strainer, the invention of Ibbotson, by which it is freed from knots, the pulp, in a stream the thickness of which is regulated INDIA RUBBER. 113 according to that of the paper to be made, falls upon an apron, which conducts it a short distance to an endless wire-gauze flat web, by which it is carried forward and over a box partially exhausted of air ; this flat- tens the web of paper, and partially extracts the water. The width of the sheet is gov- erned by traveling deckles or side straps, which prevent any portion of the pulp from passing away at the sides of the wire-gauze. The web is then conducted upon endless blankets between two sets of rollers, which express most of the remaining water, and partially obliterate the marks of the wire- gauze, and dried by passing between several pairs of hollow steam-heated rollers, being finally wound upon a roller at the farther end of the machine, or delivered on to anoth- er machine by which it is cut into lengths. In 1809 Mr. Dickinson, an English paper manufacturer, invented the cylinder machine. In this a hollow brass cylinder perforated with holes and covered with wire-gauze is substituted for the flat web of the Fourdri- nier machine. The air is partially exhaust- ed from the cylinder through its hollow jour- nals, producing the same effect as the vacu- um box over which the web passes in the Fourdrinier machine. The remaining part of the process of manufacture is very simi- lar in each. Combinations of the two sys- tems are found : a web of cylinder paper, which is strongest in one direction, and one of Fourdrinier paper beiug united ; also a number of webs united before drying to form a heavy paper or card - board ; or a fine web of pulp has fibres of silk strewed upon it to be imbedded in the paper to form a paper for fractional currency. The qual- ity of paper depends mainly upon that of the material, though the making is respon- sible for the evenness of its thickness and the smoothness of its surface. The best quality made in this country is hardly so good as that made from the longer fibres of silk or broussonetia by the Chinese ; but our best is from new — that is, unworn — linen stocks, the clippings of garment making. Cotton rags are not so good, and old, worn rags, partly rotten, are worse. After this we reach still commoner material for stout brown paper, such as hemp and old rope, and the cheapest of all is straw, for wrap- ping paper. 8 INDIA RUBBER. What would the men before '76 have said to the India rubber manufacture ? The sub- stance was first brought to England from Bra- zil as a curiosity early in the eighteenth cen- tury, and about 1776 it seems that Priestley suggested that it was " excellently adapted for removing pencil marks from paper." It was dissolved in turpentine, and used by Peal in 1791 as water-proofing composition for fabrics. Hancock and Mackintosh, about 1823, were the first to apply the gum to the uses of water -proof clothing. The gum was placed between two thicknesses of fab- ric, and was a sticky affair at the best. The business never really prospered until the discovery of the vulcanizing process by Good- year, the subject of his patent of June 15, 1844. He preferred the proportions of twen- ty-five caoutchouc, five sulphur, seven white lead; but these quantities and the nature of the substances employed were varied by Goodyear himself and by his successors. The same may be said of the heat employed in combining the substances, this beiug gener- ally proportionate to the degree of hardness required in the vulcanite. The history of invention does not furnish an instance of greater persistence under dis- couragement than is afforded by the strug- gles of Charles Goodyear. It was a purely tentative process. He first mixed the gum with half its weight of magnesia to dry it and remove the stickiness ; but the com- pound softened. He then tried India rub- ber sap with magnesia, with better results. Next he tried surface treatment with nitric acid. This scheme, which seemed promis- ing, was overthrown by the financial crisis of 1837. After a number of attempts, Good- year shifted on to the line previously trav- eled by Hayward — the use of sulphur. Hay- ward had mixed and covered the rubber with sulphur, and exposed it to the sun's rays, producing a superficial hardening. While experimenting with some goods which had been thus made and returned as rotten, a piece of it was charred by contact Avith the stove, and the result was sufficient to indicate to the alert mind of Goodyear that what was needed was the baking of the rubber and sulphur together. He then de- voted himself to details, the proper propor- tions for given qualities of goods, the mate 114 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. rials to be added to give color and solidity, the uses to which this admirable compound may be put. The results of his genius, care, and persistence are all around us. METEOROLOGICAL INSTRUMENTS. The meteorological instruments of the pres- ent day derive much of their public interest from the tri-daily report of the numerous stations to the Signal-office in Washington, where the generalizations are made, and from whence conjectures for the following twenty-four hours are transmitted. The principal instruments are the anemometer, for direction and rate of the wind ; the barome- ter, for the atmospheric pressure ; the ther- mometer, for atmospheric temperature. Weather-cocks for indicating the direction of the wind are as old as the sailing of boats, but an instrument for measuring its force can be hardly said to have existed before 1776, when Lind invented an anemometer, which has been long since superseded by those of Whewell, Ostler, Robinson, and oth- ers. The present anemometers are self-re- cording. The barograph, or registering ba- rometer, used at the Chief Signal-office, War Department, Washington, is shown in the figure. The barometer is in a dark case, with the mercury column exposed at a slit through which the light of a lamp passes. At the farther end of the machine, shown at the left in the cut, is a cylinder wrapped with sensitized paper so as to blacken with light. This cylinder and its paper cover are moved by clock-work so as to rotate once in forty-eight hours. The image of that part of the slit above the mercurial column is thus caused to form a continuous dark band of irregular width on the paper, becoming narrower as the mercury rises and widen- ing as it descends in the tube, the width of the band indicating not only the relative changes, but also the absolute height of the barometer. A shutter operated by the clock- work cuts off the light for four minutes at the end of each second hour, leaving a ver- tical white line on the paper. By the expansion of a zinc rod on each side of the barometer tube, in connection with a glass rod and lever, the thermometric changes are made, and the true barometric indications, with corrections for tempera- ture, are photographically recorded. The strip after remaining forty-eight hours is taken off, the unaltered nitrate washed out, and it is filed away, an enduring rec- ord of the condition of the barometer for two days. The thermometers are read three times a THE IiATCOGRAI U. ARTIFICIAL LIMBS. 115 OONDELL B ARTIFICIAL ARM. (Longitudinal section of left arm.) day, but may be made similarly self-record- ing. Maximum and minimum thermometers are a usual furnishing of observatories. The differential thermometer of Leslie is a hy- grometrical instrument for ascertaining the degree of aqueous saturation of the atmos- phere by means of the dew-point. ANESTHETICS. The use of anaesthetics has been brought to system, and new agents of ascertained strength and effect have been devised. For- mer ages used stupefying drugs and poisons which struck directly at the vital force. Cannabis indica was used in the Orient, man- dragora by the Greeks and Romans. The modern anaesthetic agents are cold, deutox- ide of nitrogen, chloroform, ether, hydrate of chloral, and some others of less note. From the times when Morelli, in 1674, at the siege of Besancon, invented the tourniquet, andPere" (1550) introduced the ligature and dispensed with actual cautery to arrest the bleeding of the stump, no such act has been accomplished for maimed humanity as the introduction of a safe anaesthetic. As Charles IX. said when he hid the Hugue- not surgeon in his royal chamber to guard him from the assassins on the night of St. Bartholomew, " there is only one PereV' Palissy, another Huguenot, was similarly shielded by Catherine de Medicis, the queen - dowager, as there was " only one potter." Palissy died in prison eventually. Ether was known for many centuries before Drs. Morton and Jackson, of Boston, brought it into notice as an anaesthetic in 1846. Chlo- roform was discovered in 1831 ; first used as an anaesthetic by Dr. Simpson, of Edinburgh, in 1847. ARTIFICIAL LIMBS. Artificial limbs and other prosthetic appli- ances have advanced with the line — artificial hands and legs whose simulation of the nat- ural is so close that a casual observer will not notice the difference. The artificial arm illustrated has three motions derived from the stump, the arm being secured by bands to the body. The forward motion of the stump flexes the fore- arm, the phalanges are closed and opened by a sort of rotative motion which draws upon a cord, and the backward motion of the stump gives extension to the fore-arm. A man with only four inches of stump may with this arm take his handkerchief from his pocket, wipe his nose, pick up a marble from the table, and put it in his pocket. It does not take as long to learn the use of it as it does to become accustomed to the natural arm; but then the practice with the latter begins with very early life, and when the use is acquired it is much the better of the two. Artificial arms, ears, eyes, feet, gums, hands, legs, noses, palates, pupils, and teeth are all to be purchased closely matching the remaining parts, or made to any shape de- sired in cases where no natural portion re- mains to protest against want of uniform- ity. Mechanical dentistry is one of the tri- umphs of our time and country. Not only is excellence in the art a very recent achieve- ment, but it is more thoroughly understood here than elsewhere. Pepys's diary records that his wife's " tooth was new done by La Roche, and was indeed pretty handsome," but it was probably a piece of ivory or wal- rus tooth. AQUARIA. Aquaria have been constructed on a scale sufficient to show aquatic animals and plants in their natural condition, and with a reasonable degree of freedom. The mode of aerating the water by a jet of air intro- duced into and ascending in bubbles through the water has much simplified that part of 116 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. the matter. The proper understanding of the reciprocal duties and effects of the ani- mal and vegetable tenants lies at the bot- tom of the success with an aquarium. The office of the flora is to abstract the excess of carbonic acid gas due to the breathing of the fauna, and restore the oxygen, as with the terrestrial flora. Then certain animals which feed on decaying vegetable matter are put in the miniature pond to act as scav- engers to the community. The demonstra- tion of these conditions is due to R. War- rington, 1850. N. B. Ward is also not to be forgotten. An aquarium 36 by 150 feet was constructed in 1860 in the Jardin d' Acclima- tion in Paris by Lloyd. The same person erected a large one at Hamburg. An aqua- rium at Manchester, England, has 750 feet frontage. The aquarium of the Paris Ex- position was a large and effective one. That of Brighton is on a grander scale than any other. It occupies ground 100 by 715 feet, the general structure being a quadrangular series of tanks with plate-glass sides, and a central roofed apartment lighted through the tank sides so as to give the idea of be- ing under water. The tanks have fresh or salt water to suit the tenants, and vary in size from 11 by 20 to 30 by 55 feet. An aquarium car lately went from New England to San Francisco with young fish for stocking the Pacific rivers. MATCHES. The old-fashioned match was simply a wooden splint dipped in brimstone, and kin- dled from a piece of tinder set on fire by a spark from the flint and steel. The tinder was sometimes ignited by an air-compressing pump. In other cases the matches were tipped with chlorate of pot- ash, and set on fire by plunging in a vial containing asbestus saturated with sulphu- ric acid. Dobereiner's lamp, in which a hy- drogen jet is brought in contact with plati- num sponge, and a coil of platinum wire kept red-hot by alcohol, were also sometimes employed, rather, however, as curiosities than devices of general practical use. Lucifer-matches have now superseded all other appliances for producing an instanta- neous light, throughout the civilized world at least, and have become an article of manufacture employing an enormous capi- tal. They are made by sawing or splitting blocks of soft wood into splints, which are dipped into a composition containing either phosphorus or chlorate of potash as a basis, and dried. Eound matches are made by forcing the splints through plates having circular aper- tures, which at once cut out and compress them ; the machinery employed cuts as many as 30,000 splints per minute. These are sold by the hogshead to those who make a spe- cial business of applying the composition, which is also effected by machinery. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. Musical instruments should not be over- looked. They have advanced within the century equally with the other subjects stated. The organ is as old as Ctesibus of Alexan- dria, who lived in the Ptolemaic period. The pressure of air was obtained by a sort of water-bellows, the pipes were but very few, and the compass of course quite limit- ed. Down through the ages we find that it had a precarious existence. Haroun-al-Ras- chid and the excellent Gerbert of Rheims are two of the great names associated with its possession and use. The missals of the Middle Ages show a variety of clumsy con- trivances for evoking sounds from pipes by machinery, but excellence was not attained much before the time of Father Smith (re- ferred to by Pepys), who crossed the Chan- nel to repair the damages occasioned in the English churches by the Parliamentary sol- diers. Since this time the instrument has been much enlarged, its power, compass, and capacity increased, perhaps without increas- ing its sweetness. The great organ of Haar- lem has sixty stops and 8000 pipes ; one at Seville 5300 pipes. The organ of the " Al- bert Hall of Arts and Sciences," London, has 111 stops, 14 couplers, 32 combinations, and about 9000 pipes. The organs of the Bos- ton Music-Hall, Baltimore Cathedral, and Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, are among the largest in this country. The parlor organ is an outgrowth of the accordeon, which was introduced in Europe in 1821. The first metallic-reed musical in- strument was the EoJodlcon, by Eschenberg, of Bohemia, 1810. The rocking melodeon was a large accordeon on a stand. Carhart, PRINTING. 117 in this country, has done more than any one else in the improvement of this instrument. He introduced the exhaust plan in 1846. Previous to this the air had heen forced through the reed slits, and is still so in Eu- rope. His first instrument had four octaves, but they were afterward increased. Mason and Hamlin in 1855 had instruments with seven octaves, four sets of reeds, and two manuals. The piano is the successor of a whole se- ries of stringed instruments, dating from the harp. It is a prostrate harp, whose strings are beaten by hammers actuated by keys. The citole, clavicymbalum, virginal, spinet, and harpsichord occupy the period from the fourteenth to the eighteenth cen- tury. The piano-forte was really invented by Christofori, of Florence, 1711, but it was near the end of the century before it had attained excellence enough to supersede the spinet and harpsichord, the strings of which were twanged by plectra. The grand point to be attained in the piano, or as it was ear- ly called, the hammer harpsichord, was for the hammer to fall back immediately after strik- ing the string, so as to allow the latter free vibration. The improvements in this instrument are marvelous, and our country is in the front rank of ingenuity and excellence. The names of Broadwood, Collard, Erard, Stein- way, Chickering, Knabe, with many others we can not find space to name, go to an ad- miring posterity in company. PRINTING. The art of taking an impression from an inked stamp is of great antiquity, being found in the most ancient Egyptian and Assyrian remains. Of yore the rude king who smeared his hand with red ochre or the soot from a burning lamp, and then made the impression of his palm and digits be- neath a grant of land, was a printer in his way in thus putting his hand to the docu- ment. Then came seals, engraved in relief or intaglio, and delivering an impression of the design upon bark, leaf, or skin, either white marks on a dark ground or dark on a light ground, according to the character of the engraving. Seals containing the pro- nomeus of the Pharaohs, each in its car- touch, rewarded the early explorers in the valley of the Nile, and more lately the stamps and tablets of the recorders of the cities of Mesopotamia have been disinterred by thousands. The impressions, having been made in plastic clay, and then baked, have endured without injury a sepulture of twen- ty-five centuries. They exhibit the kindred arts of engraving and plastic moulding. It may be safely assumed that they were also used for giving printed impressions, but such memorials are, in the nature of the case, less permanent. Some of the ancient stamps in the British Museum are of bronze, and have reversed raised letters, evidently intended to print on bark, papyrus, linen, or parchment. To this stage of progress various nations of the world had advanced, and yet it can hardly be said that printing, as we under- stand the word, had been thought of. This evidently originated in China, but it is not certain that Europe derived it from thence. The first notice that we find of printing is in the Chinese annals. Du Halde cites the following from the pen of the celebrated Emperor Van Vong, who flourished 1120 years before Christ. This was about the time of Samuel the prophet, and a little be- fore Codrus, the last of the Athenian kings. " As the stone 'Me' [ink, in Chinese], which is used to blacken the engraved characters, can never become white, so a heart blackened by vice will ever retain its blackness." Other Catholic missionaries concur with Du Halde in supposing printing from blocks to have been invented at least as early as 930 to 950 b.c. The plan adopted was to take a block of pear-tree wood, squared to the dimensions of two pages of the work. On the smooth surface of the block the written pages are inverted, and the paper rubbed off, leaving the ink on the block, which is then delivered to the engraver, who cuts away all the parts not inked. No press is used, but the surface being inked by one brush, the paper is laid upon the block and dabbed down by a dry brush ; the sheet is lifted, carrying the ink with it, and is folded with the blank sides in, one side only being printed ; the folded edge be- ing outward, the Chinese or Japanese book looks like one with uncut leaves. The first four books of Kung-fu-tze (Confucius) were thus printed between 890 and 925 a.d., and 118 MECHANICAL PROGEESS. M/Jff^EIEQir m " /wv~* ^vwv^. wT^y III I I • A. A © /// I I » I I • ... * ^ &a£ (woman) Lisan (tongue) Umman (army) JSar Bab - ilu - ra - Tci as-ri ka- an - su. Xing of Babylon lord- paramount. SH N ■ Till] WWWN.A L B 3> S' ^\ Hieroglyplic. ^ ~-? l_^ Q, C5, Hieratic. \/\j \sj I £. £± Phoenician. EGYPTIAN AND CUNEIFORM, IDEOGRAPHIC AND SYLLABIC. the description equally applies to the mode yet practiced. The same system -was used in Europe in the thirteenth century for printing playing- cards and ornamenting fabrics ; later, the works known as block books, each page be- ing an engraved block like those of the Chi- nese. Such was the Biblia Pauperum, one of the earliest of European block books, com- piled by Bonaventura, the chief of the Fran- ciscans, in 1260. In manuscript form, as a book of forty or fifty pages of illustrated Bible scenes and passages, this Poor Man's Bible was a favorite for five centuries. It was printed as a block book about A.D. 1400. The Speculum Humana Salvationis of Roster, of Haarlem, to whom the credit of the in- vention of printing has been hence ascribed, was also a block book. Volumes by the score have been written on the rival claims of the cities of Mentz and Haarlem to the inven- tion of printing. From a careful examina- tion of. the subject it would appear that Mentz has the prior right, and that the gen- eral verdict in favor of Gutenberg is cor- rect. About the year 1041, a period wben Ed- ward the Confessor was King of England, another forward step was made in China. A blacksmith named Pi-Ching invented a mode of printing from plates formed from movable types, each of which represented a word. The types were about the thickness of a half dollar, each had a word on its face, and they were arranged in order on a backing plate, to which they were attached by mastic. The Chinese have never advanced beyond ideographs, or word signs, in which arbitrary symbols (d) are made to represent things, qualities, or actions. The language has no elasticity, and, like the Egyptian hieroglyph- ics (« b), is incapable of fulfilling modern re- quirements. In this respect it is like the ancient Scythic cuneiform (e) ; but the gen- ius of the Mesopotamian nations could not be thus cramped, and the language gradu- ally took on the syllabic form : the cunei- form of the second period (shown in /) is a transition form. The Persian cuneiform was substantially syllabic. Other languages of Asia early assumed the phonetic form, in which signs stood for sounds, though it was many ages before the vowels were written definitely. The Phoenician (/<), which is the basis of all the principal alphabets of Eu- rope, had its twenty-two letters 700 B.C., when the black basalt stone was used to celebrate the successes of the King of Moab. i is a portion of the inscription in hiero- glyphic and demotic from the Rosetta Stone. That which the Chinese were incapable of doing, from the nature of the case, was done by John Gutenberg, who was born in 1400, at Mentz. In company with Faust and others he printed several works with wood- en types and wooden blocks : the Alexandri Galli Doctrinale and Petri Hispani Tractatm in 1442 ; and subsequently the Tabula Alpha- betica, Catholicon Donati Grammatiea, and the Confessional in. In 1450 the Bible of 637 leaves was printed by Gutenberg and Faust with cut metallic types. Faust retired from partnership with Gutenberg in 1455 and be- EARLY PROGRESS IN PRINTING. 119 came allied with Schoeffer, and they published in 1457 the Codex Psalmorum with cut metallic types ; the Burandi Rationale, published by them in 1459, was the first work printed with cast metal types. Gutenberg took other partners, and published the Catholicon Jo. de Janua in 1460. He used none but wooden or cut metal types till the year 1462. Gutenberg died in high honor in the year 1468. Peter Schoeffer, of Gernsheim, the partner of Faust and former workman of Gutenberg, was the inventor of cast types, the greatest invention of any of the series. It may be mentioned that, in the early stages of the art, sheets were printed but on one side, and the backs of the pages pasted together. The pages were without running title, run- ning folio, or direction word. The forms were usually folios, sometimes quartos. The character was a rude Gothic mixed with an engrossing char- acter, and designed to imitate hand- writing. Scarcely any division was made between words ; the orthogra- phy was arbitrary and irregular; ab- breviations, in imitation of cursive writing, were numerous ; punctuation was confined to a double dot (:) or a single one (.), afterward a stroke (/), known as a virgule, was used for a slighter pause, and grew into a com- ma (,). Capitals were so sparingly employed that the beginning of sen- tences and proper names of men and places were not thus distinguished. This honor was reserved for paragraphs, and here the space was left vacant by the printer that the illuminated capitals might be put in by hand. This was soon changed. The era of Leo- nardo da Vinci, Albert Diirer, Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Vandyck, of Benven- uto Cellini, Galileo, Kepler, Shakspeare, and Bacon, could not long endure medi- ocrity. The type-founders and printers were worthy of the occasion, and their work leaves little to be desired on the score of sharpness and color. The letters of their books have a vivid blackness that makes one who takes an occasional excursion into D^a nin3!pzr)3Tis "DiQ u'wn dtiV ;*f*A-j3't/t-??-wAMB PEESS. proved, and still has a high reputation. Its movement is based on that of the hand- press, and gives a perfectly flat impression by lifting the bed of the press and its form against a stationary platen. Sheets are fed to the press by hand, and taken away by tapes and a fly. One thousand sheets an hour is a full speed for a large Adams press on book forms. It is shown in the figure by a longitudinal vertical section : a is the bed, which is raised by straightening the tog- gles, b 1) ; e is the platen, d the ink fountain and ink-distributing apparatus. The ink- ing-rollers, e e, pass twice over the form, and are attached to the frame of the tympan, /. The segment g serves to straighten the toggles, and cause the impression ; h is the feed-board, i the drive-pulley, and k a gear wheel, with a pitman rod to g ; I is the fly. Single-cylinder presses, such as Hoe's, Pot- ter's, Campbell's, etc., have a flat bed, which is geared to reciprocate at an even speed with a revolving cylinder. Sheets of paper are fed to the cylinder, which carries a pre- pared tympan. The inked form runs along with the sheet until it is printed, when the form is retracted and inked again. In some machines the cylinder stops after the im- pression is delivered. The Campbell press is remarkable for sev- eral fine points of adjustment. The opera- tion is controlled by the sheet, which, when CAMPBELL'S SINGLE-OYLrNDEH TKESS. 132 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. GORDON JOB PKESS. badly fed, is thrown out. The registering is operated by a small valve through the agency of points, making an electric circuit through point-holes in the sheet. When the press fails to point, the exhaust apparatus is brought into action, operating a bolt at- tached to a diaphragm, which locks up the impression. It has other peculiar features well worth mentioning if space permitted. America produces a remarkable variety of handy job presses, known by the name of the makers, as the " Gordon," or by names which constitute trade-marks, as the "Globe," "Liberty," "Universal," etc.— a fa- vorite device both with books in the early days of the art and with presses for a hun- dred years past ; witness the " Columbian" and "Washington" hand-presses. One in- stance may be given. The form in the " Gordon" press is secured in a chase, which is clamped to the bed, b, of the press. This bed rocks on a pivot at c, and comes into parallelism with the platen, p, when the impression is about to be given. The platen rocks on the main shaft, d, which is propelled by pitman and intermediate gearing from the treadle, i. The arm, m s, is the roller - carrier, which swings on a pivot, r, and carries the rollers, n n, alter- nately over the form and the revolving disk, t, which distributes the ink : g is a counter - weight to balance the swinging bed and attachments, and operate the mova- ble fingers by a spring bar, a : v is the feed- board. The iceb press is a later thought, and bids fair to supersede all others for large editions and long numbers, where great nicety is not required. It is not yet expected that for fine work and cuts it will supersede the flat- surface and reciprocating-bed presses. The "Walter" press prints the London Times and the New York Times. A roll of paper, a, three miles long, reels off over the pulley, b, which serves to keep it taut. It then passes by the wetting rollers, c c, and over the cylinder d to the first type cylin- der, e, between which and the blanket cyl- inder, /, it receives its first impression. Following the direction of the type cylin- der, it passes between two blotting cylin- ders, and is then delivered to the second printing cylinder, g, receiving the impres- sion at h. It is then cut by a knife on the WALTER 8 PERFECTING TRESS. WALTER AND BULLOCK PRESSES. 133 ' buxlook" perfecting press. cylinder i. The sheets are finally piled by two persons on the paper-boards, k Jc. The speed of the Walter press is 11,000 printed sheets per hour. The " Bnllock" press, so named from the inventor, the late William Bullock, of Phil- adelphia, carries the forms upon two cylin- ders, requires no attendants to feed it, and delivers the sheets printed on both sides. The paper, in the form of an endless roll, is moistened by passing through a shower of spray. A single roll will contain enough for several thousand sheets, and the print- ing operation, including the cutting of the paper into proper lengths, proceeds uninter- ruptedly until the roll is exhausted. The roll of paper having been mounted in its place, the machinery is started, unwinds the paper, cuts off the required size, prints it on both sides at one operation, counts the num- ber of sheets, and deposits them on the de- livery board at the rate of 6000 to 8000 per hour. The roll of paper, a, is cut into sheets by a knife on roller & acting against the cyl- inder c. The sheets are seized by grippers, carried between the impression cylinder, g, " victory" perfecting press and folding machine. 134 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. "uoe" web perfecting tress. and the form, e, receiving the first impres- sion. The printed sheet then follows the large cylinder, g, to the second form, receiv- ing its second impression from this form acting against the large drum, g. From the large cylinder the sheets are automatical- ly delivered to the receiving hoard: i is a counting device or arithmometer. The iuk- ing-rollers are shown above the inking cyl- inders, beneath which are the ink-troughs. The starting lever is shown on the right. The "Victory," like those just described, receives its paper from a roll. The names on the parts will obviate the necessity of specific description. The paper is led over two wetting boxes, and then over two hot copper cylinders, and entered between the first type and impression cylinders. Here one side is printed, and it thence goes to the second type and impression cylinder, where it is backed. It then travels to the cutting and folding cylinders, where it receives a transverse fold, and meantime the doubled paper is passed to a serrated knife, which cuts the first printed sheet from the web. A second blunt knife again folds the double sheet, which is carried by grippers to a vi- bratory frame, entering each alternate sheet to the respective pairs of cross-folding roll- ers, which deliver the sheets to tapes, which carry them to a swinging delivery frame, by which they are deposited in a pile on the table. This machine will damp, print, cut, fold, and deliver about 15,000 per hour of an eight-page newspaper of fifty inches square ; or it will damp, print, cut, fold, and paste a cover of four pages on a twenty-four page paper at the speed of 7000 per hour. The " Hoe" web perfecting press is one of the lately established and successful candi- dates for public favor. The paper is print- ed from a roll containing a length of over four miles and a half, equal to 10,000 papers. The machine has three pairs of cylinders geared together. A roll, having been pre- viously damped, is lifted into place by a small crane, and the paper from it passes between the first pair of cylinders, the cir- cumferences of each of which are just equal to the required length of the sheet. One of these cylinders has its periphery covered with stereotype plates of the matter to be printed, and is supplied in the usual manner with an ink fountain and distributing roll- ers, which, as the cylinder revolves, apply the ink to the stereotype forms. The other cylinder is covered with a blanket, and as they revolve together, with the paper be- tween them, they print its first side. The paper then passes on between the second pair of cylinders, and presents its blank side to the stereotype plates of the second type cylinder. It next passes to the cutting cyl- inders, the periphery of one of which has a vibrating and projecting knife that at each revolution enters a groove in the opposite cylinder and severs a sheet from the roll. The sheets are successively conveyed by two series of endless tapes to a revolving cylin- der, which retains them until six (or any desired number) are collected upon it, when they are delivered in a body to the sheet flyer. A circular cutter cuts the double sheets into single copies. A counter is attached which shows the number of sheets printed. The machine oc- cupies a space of about twenty feet long, six FOLDING MACHINES. 13£ feet wide, and seven feet high, and delivers 12,000 to 15,000 perfected sheets per hour. These machines have a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic, being used by the London Lloyds' News, Standard, and Telegraph, while five of them are now building for offices in the United States and two for Australia. FOLDING MACHINES. As an improvement oc- curs in one of the machines of a series, every other one has to mend its pace to keep up. So we found it with the ginning, carding, spinning, and weaving of fibre ; so it was with the smelt- ing, puddling, rolling, forging, turning, and planing of iron : one improvement begets another, and a halting member of a series which retards the speed becomes the object of so much solicitude that it shall go hard but he ere long outstrip his brethren in the race. Machines for folding newspapers and sheets for books follow naturally in the wake of the presses. They are made of various kinds for octavo, 16mo, and 32mo ; also for folding 12mo, cutting off, pasting, and inserting the inset ; in some cases pla- cing it in a cover, and doubling it up into compact shape for the mail wrapper. The book-folding machine illustrated is for octavo work, sixteen pages on a sheet, eight pages on a side. The sheet is placed on the table so that two register points pass through two holes in the sheet previously made on the print- ing-press. The folder comes down upon the folding edge, the pins give way, and the sheet passes, doubled edge first, between a pair of rollers, which compress it ; tapes de- liver it to a second table beneath, where a second and a third folder act upon it in turn, and it is delivered into a trough at the rate of 1500 per hour. With 12mo work imposed in two parts of sixteen and eight pages respectively, the ma- chine cuts them apart, and folds the larger OUAMBKRS'8 FOLDING MACHINE. part like an octavo ; the smaller folds but once, and is then " inset" into the octavo portion, which forms the "outset." The two-sheet folder and paster, for large twenty-four-page periodicals, folds one sheet of sixteen pages, 30^ by 45£ inches, insetting the eight pages within the sixteen, and past- ing and trimming all, delivering a complete copy of twenty-four pages ready to read at the rate of 1200 per hour. It will fold eight pages alone, sixteen pages alone, with or without pasting or trimming, or will fold, paste, and trim the eight pages, insetting without pasting them in. Machines of this general character are also made for folding, pasting, and trim- ming, or for folding, pasting, trimming all around, and putting on a cover of different- colored paper. The Christian Union is fold- ed, inset, and covered in this manner, four of these machines being attached to a four- cylinder " Hoe" press. ADDRESSING MACHINES. Addressing machines are of two general kinds ; one cuts the addresses from printed and gummed strips and attaches them to the paper. The Dick machine works in this way. The other mode is to set up the addresses in a galley, and bring them successively to a spot at which the enveloped papers are consecutively presented. The machine illustrated is one of many of 136 MECHANICAL PKOGRESS. ADDRESSING MACHINE. the latter class. It prints with ink on the papers or wrappers at the rate of 3000 per hour. The names are set up in long narrow galleys holding fifty or seventy-five each, and after inking with a hand-roller, these are placed successively in the channel of the table, and are pushed along by the apparatus till each name in turn has come under the impression lever, which is worked by the treadle. The motion of the galley is auto- matic, and the machine indicates a change of post-office by the stroke of a bell, so that the papers may be thrown into separate piles to be bundled for mailing. The "Forsaith" addressing machine also operates in a very satisfactory manner. PRINTING FOR THE BLIND. The art of printing in raised letters which may be distinguished by the touch origi- nated and has been developed Avithin the century. The first successful efforts in this direction were made at Paris in 1784 by the Abbe" Valentin Haiiy, who in the same year founded " L'Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles," the first institution ever estab- lished for the instruction of the blind. Various systems of forming the embossed characters have since been introduced, which may be divided into two classes — the arbi- trary, arranged exclusively with reference to the supposed greater facility with which their forms may be distinguished by the touch, no attempt being made to imitate or- dinary printing; and the alphabetical, in which the letters resemble those ordinarily employed. Prominent among the first are those of Lucas, Frcre, Moon, Braille, and Carton. Lucas's system is composed of a series of dots, curves, and straight lines, each of which represents a letter, distinguishable by its form or the position in which it is set. Many contractions and abbreviations are employed, and though it is claimed to be easily read by the touch, its bulk and the frequent ambiguities arising from the pecul- iar system of abbreviations are objection- able. Thirty-six volumes are required to contain the Scriptures, which in the Amer- ican lower-case alphabet are comprised in eight. Frere's system is phonetic, thirty-six char- acters being employed, each representing a simple sound. Moon, himself a blind man, represents the letters of the ordinary alphabet by charac- ters, each composed of but one or two lines. The printing is read alternately from left to right and from right to left. Braille's system is that generally employed in France : the letters are formed by combi- nations of dots varying in number frorn one to six. Carton's system also employs dots, but arranged to more nearly resemble the letters of the Roman alphabet. Among those known as alphabetical are — The French, a combination of lower-case and capitals. Alston's, English, has modified Roman cap- itals. Friedlander's, American, Roman capitals of the kind known as block letters. That of Dr. S. G. Howe, principal of the Institution for the Blind at Boston, Massa- chusetts, employs an angular form of lower- case for all the letters except G and J, which are capitals. This character is used at most of the institutions in the United States, and many valuable works have been printed in it. Mr. N. B. Kneass, of Philadelphia, himself a blind man and a publisher of works for the blind, employs lower-case like that of Dr. Howe and block capitals, under the title of " Kneass's improved combined letter." ENGRAVING. The early history of engraving concerns the inscriptions on stones ; the " iron pen," and inlaid " leaden letters" in the rock, re- ferred to by Job, if that be a fair under- standing of the passage. Contemporary with this are the carved and lettered obe- ENGRAVING. 137 lisks of Egypt, the tablets of Assyria and Etruria, the engraved gems in the breast- plate of Aaron, perhaps the leaden plates inscribed with Hesiod's " works and days," which were so long preserved at the fount- ain of Helicon, in Bceotia, as recorded by Pausanias. From inscriptions the Greeks proceeded to engraving maps on metallic plates; and the brass plates containing the Roman laws were complete enough for printing, but it does not seem to have been thought of. The history of engraving is the history of print- ing ; but we must not repeat it here. The art of engraving is naturally divis- ible into three orders — metal, wood, stone ; the latter better known as lithography, and considered separately. Engraving on metallic plates originated with chasers and inlayers. It can not but be that such artists took proof in dirty oil on rag or leather, but no impression of in- trinsic value was had until the time of Fini- guerra, a Florentine artist, in 1440. Euclid was printed with diagrams on copper in 1482. The copper-plate press was invented in 1545. Etching on copper by means of aquafortis was invented by F. Mazzuoli, or Pahnegiani, in 1532 ; mezzotint engraving by Von Siegen in 1643 ; improved by Prince Rupert, 1648, and by Sir Christopher Wren in 1662. Stipple engraving — also called "chalk en- graving," from the resemblance of the work to crayon drawing — was invented by Jacob Baylaert in London in 1769; engraving on steel as a substitute for copper, by Jacob Perkins, of Philadelphia, in 1819. The present century has not devised much that is new except the ruling machine by Wilson Lowry. Plate engraving flourished in England from 1800 to 1850, but photography and li- thography have gradually pushed it aside, since which the skill has decayed and the demand fallen off. Until this decadence persons of average taste would claim that though our predecessors excelled in rude vigor, our execution was as good as that of the earlier masters, and our effects bet- ter, the connoisseurs in the antique to the contrary notwithstanding. Nor will it avail for such to quote Gilford's sarcasm, " We want their strength : agreed ; but we atone For that and more by sweetness all our own." Wood-engraving originated in China, as we have had occasion to observe before ; its first uses in Europe were in ornamenting paper and fabrics, afterward for making playing-cards. The earliest known wood-cut with a date —the St. Christopher of 1423— is in the Al- thorpe Library, England, which, it may be stated in passing, contains the most valu- able single volume in the world, an edition of Boccaccio printed at Venice by Valdarfer in 1474, of which no other perfect copy is known. It sold at the Duke of Rox- burgh's sale in 1812 for £1260. The art of wood-engraving was much improved by Durer, 1471-1528 ; by Bewick, 1789. It has gone on improving ever since, by fits and starts, but always onward. The great use made of it by the Illustrated London News is an era ; its advance over the Penny Encyclo- pedia affords a good means of judging the rate of progress. Our best illustrated peri- odicals and books are triumphs of the art. LITHOGRAPHY. The art of engraving or drawing on stone, so that printed copies may be obtained there- from in the press, originated with Alois Sene- felder, of Munich, 1796-1800. The invention was not a mere accident, as recounted in the common myth of an absent-minded man, a piece of limestone, and a waiting washer- woman, but was the result of earnest, per- sistent, and intelligent work directed to an object kept steadily in view. The stone used for lithographic work is a compact sedimentary limestone of a yellow- ish or bluish-gray color, which comes from LITHOORAPHIO HAND-PRESS. 138 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. the Solenhofen quarries in Bavaria. It is ground by moviug one stone upon another with sand between them, and then polished with pumice-stone. Upon the stone thus prepared the design may be produced in four ways : 1. It may be done with a fluid, watery ink. 2. With a solid crayon. 3. By a transfer from an inky design on paper. 4. By engraving with an etching point. 1. The ink is essentially a soluble soap col- ored with lamp-black, applied with a pen or hair-pencil. The stone is then etched with a weak acidulous solution, decomposing the soap, combining with its alkali, and setting free the fatty acid in contact with the par- ticles of carbonate of lime of which the stone consists, forming an insoluble lime soap which no washing or rubbing can re- move and no fatty matter can penetrate. The stone is then flooded with gum-arabic water to incapacitate the clear parts from receiving ink when wetted. The stone is now placed in the press and made ready. With a sponge and abundance of water ex- cess of gum is washed off, and, while still wet, the drawing is washed out with turpen- tine applied with a rag. This appears to ob- literate every thing, but a close inspection shows the work as a pale white design on the face of the stone. The stone is now rolled up by passing a roller charged with printing- ink over its face, which is still damp ; the greasy ink adheres to the white design, while the clear gummed damp face takes no ink. A sheet of paper is laid upon it, the tympan closed, and the stone pulled through. The operations of damping, inking, and printing are then repeated in succession. 2. The work by lithographic crayon is upon a grained stone, the surface of which is even- ly roughened by grinding with very sharp and even sand of a grade according to the fineness of grain required. The crayon is of soap, wax, and tallow, and it is used on the stone as a drawing chalk is upon rough Whatman paper. The subsequent processes in preparing the stone are the same as those before described. The process gives oppor- tunity for much artistic taste and display, the broken surface of the stone preventing the continuity of the lines, whose depth of color will depend upon the pressure of the crayon upon the rasping surface. 3. The transfer method consists in placing the design on paper and then transferring it to the stone. The writing, for instance, is done on ordinary sized paper, but preferably on paper prepared with a coating of gela- tine, which may be colored with gamboge. The written sheet is damped, laid face down on the stone, and pulled through. The ink adheres to the stone, which is treated as be- fore. 4. The engraving method differs from the preceding. The surface of the stone is treat- ed with gum-arabic water, which, when dry, is colored to allow the succeeding work to show. The design is then scratched in with needles or diamond points, and the face of the stone flooded with oil, which is absorbed by the stone where the etching points have laid it bare. The coloring matter and ex- cess of gum are washed off, and the lines are rilled with ink, the gum protecting the clean surface. The paper is laid on, and the stone pulled through the press, the sheet lifting the ink out of the lines. It is not usual to print from the engraved stone, but to transfer an impression therefrom to an- other one and print in the usual way. There are many modifications of the art : a tint is rubbed on dry, and distributed or rubbed off according to the lights and shades of the design ; by another mode the surface is covered with a solution of asphalt and crayon, and scraped off for the lights. The list might be much extended. Until a comparatively recent period all lithographic printing has been upon hand- presses, but lately a successful lithographic printing-machine has been made. Hoe's machine is a stop-cylinder press, that is, one in which the cylinder comes to a stop pend- ing the adjustment of the sheet. The pa- per is fed to grippers on the cylinder from the inclined table above. The traveling bed on which the stone rests is drawn un- der the cylinder by a crank and connecting rod from the end of the frame below, and the cylinder, after being thrown into gear, is rotated at the same time (carrying the sheet with it) by a rack attached to the side of the bed. At the end of the stroke the cylinder goes out of gear, and remains stationary and locked during the return of LITHOGRAPHY. 139 HOE'S LITHOGKAPUIO PRINTING-MACHINE. the bed and stone, the latter passing under a cut-away part of the cylinder, so as not to come in contact with it. In place of a tym- pan the cylinder is covered with a thin rubber blanket. The inking of the stone is effected by parallel rollers (from three to six) in front of the cylinder, upon which are heavy riding rollers of iron, the latter being made to vibrate laterally to aid the distribution of the ink. These inking-roll- ers are covered with leather, like the ordi- nary hand-rollers for lithographic printing ; they receive their ink from a table which travels with the bed, and are driven by a rack or friction pieces on the sides of the bed. The ink is fed to the table from a fountain at the end of the press, and dis- tributed by a number of oblique-lying roll- ers, also covered with leather. The auto- matic damping arrangement is at the back of the cylinder. It consists of a shallow trough containing water, partially immersed in which a cylinder of wood is made slowly to revolve. An absorbent roller is held in contact with the surface of this roller for a longer or shorter time, according to the amount of water required upon the stone, after which it carries its increase of moist- ure over to a heavy riding roller, which again gives it up to two damping rollers covered with linen, which traverse the stone as it passes beneath them, just before it meets the inking-r oilers near the cylinder; the feed of water admits of adjustment as to quantity while the press is in motion. The pressure in this press is adjusted by means of butting screws, which lift or lower the bed in the traveling carriage ; these screws are turned by a key from above. When the sheet is printed it is conveyed by an intermediate cylinder provided with grip- pers to the fly at the end of the press, and there deposited, face up, on the pile of print- ed work. This press, though by no means identical with European machines of the same class, may be regarded as furnishing an illustra- tion of the essential features of them all. The introduction of the lithographic pow- er-press has totally remodeled the litho- graphic trade throughout the world within the short period of six years (1868-74), in- creasing the possible production about ten- fold. It has lowered the cost of, and in fact rendered possible, large editions from stone which in former times found their way to the type press, with very inferior re- sults. .By this change the general public have profited largely. Chromo-lithography, the highest develop- ment of the lithographic art, differs only from the ordinary processes in the imposi- tion of a number of impressions in different colors from as many different stones upon a sheet of paper, the combination of colors making a finished picture. An outline draw- ing is transferred to each stone required to complete the picture, so as to secure exact- ness in the co-relation of all parts on each stone. Upon these stones the artist draws 140 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. the different tints and colors, the number varying with the character of the picture. Mr. Prang's famous chromo, " Family Scene in Pompeii," occupied forty-three stones. An artist must have a high degree of skill in drawing, a tine feeling for and thorough knowledge of color, and must be able to tell \\h;ii number of stones will be required, what the order of the tints and colors, what effect one tint will have upon the succeed- ing ones. Careful register is required, so that each color may fall in its proper place in the picture. Senefelder died in 1834. Every phase of the lithographic art described in the fore- going was indicated, originated, or practiced by him. The development and perfection of the present day, in every branch of his great invention, would gratify and astonish him infinitely. He would gaze in amazement at the lithographic power-press printing thou- sands of sheets daily, and would be lost in admiration at the sight of a chromo which he would confound with the original paint- ing, and which his art has placed within the reach of every one. All this he would readily comprehend ; j>/jofolithography alone would be to him a mystery and a revelation. PHOTOGRAPHY. The art of photography is entirely em- braced within the century. The solitary fact bearing upon the subject, and known to the world previous to 1776, was that horn- silver (fused chloride of silver) is blackened by exposure to the sun's rays. It is now known that many bodies are photo-chemic- ally sensitive in a greater or less degree, but some of the salts of silver and chromic acid in conjunction with organic matter are pre-eminently so, and are used practically to the exclusion of all others. Scheele in 1777 drew attention to the ac- fcivity of the violet and blue rays as compared with the rest of the spectrum ; and Ritter in 1801 proved the existence of dark rays be- yond the violet end of the visible spectrum by the power they possessed of blackening chloride of silver. Wollaston experimented upon gum-guaiacum. Wedgwood, previous to 1802, was the first to produce a photo- graph, in the technical sense of the word; this was a negative of an engraving which was laid over a sheet of paper moistened with a solution of nitrate of silver. Such a picture had to be carefully preserved from daylight, or the whole surface woidd black- en. Neither Wedgwood, nor Davy, who ac- companied with observations the memoran- dum of Wedgwood to the Royal Society, devised any mode of fixing the image. From 1814 to 1827 Joseph Nicdphore Niepce, of Chalons on the Sa6ne, experi- mented on the subject. In the latter year he communicated his process. He coated a plate of metal or glass with a varnish of as- phaltum dissolved in oil of lavender, and ex- posed it under an engraving or in a camera ; the sunlight so affected the bitumen that the parts corresponding to the white por- tions of the picture or image remained upon the plate when those not exposed to light were subsequently dissolved by oil of bitu- men and washed away. This was a perma- nent negative picture. In 1829 Niepce as- sociated himself with Daguerre. In 1834 Fox Talbot commenced his inves- tigations, and in January, 1839, announced his calotype process. He prepared a sheet of paper with iodide of silver, dried it, and just before use covered the surface with a solution of nitrate of silver and gallic acid, and dried it again. Exposure in the camera produced no visible effect, but the latent image was developed by a re-application of the gallo-nitrate, and finally fixed by bromide of potassium, washed and dried. A negative so obtained was laid over a sensitized paper, and thus a positive print was obtained. This was a wonderful advance. In the same month, January, 1839, Da- guerre's invention was announced, but was not described till July of that year. In the daguerreotype, which has made the name of the inventor a household word, and furnish- ed a test of skill in all the spelling schools of the United States, polished silver-surfaced plates are coated with iodide of silver by exposure to the fumes of dry iodine, then exposed in the camera, and the latent image developed by mercurial fumes, which attach themselves to the iodide of silver in quanti- ties proportional to the actinic action. The picture is fixed by hyposulphite of soda, which prevents farther change by light. Goddard in 1839 introduced the use of bromine vapor conjointly with that of iodine iu sensitizing the silver surface. PHOTOGRAPHY. 141 BELLOWS CAMERA. The addition of chlorine was hy Claudet in 1840. M. Fizeau applied the solution of gold, which combined with the finely divided mercury, and in part replaced it. In 1848 M. Niepce de St. Victor coated glass with albumen, and treated it with ni- trate of silver to sensitize and coagulate it. The film hardened in drying and furnished a negative from which pictures might be printed by light. The collodion process, by Scott Archer, of London, was one of the most remarkable inventions of the series, and has made pho- tography the most important art industry of the world. A plate of glass is cleaned, floated with collodion, sensitized with io- dides and bromides, usually of potassium. It is then plunged in a solution of nitrate of silver. Metallic silver takes the place of the potassium, and forms insoluble io- dide and bromide of silver in the film, which assumes a milky appearance. The plate is exposed in the camera, and the latent image developed by an aqueous solu- tion of protosulphate of iron, the picture gradually emerging by a dark deposit forming upon those places where the light has acted, the density of this de- posit being directly proportional to the energy of the chemical rays. When suf- ficiently developed, the plate is washed with water, and fixed by washing away the free silver salt by a solvent, such as the cyanide of potassium or hyposul- phite of soda. This removes the milky character of the film, and leaves the pic- ture apparently resting on bare glass. To produce positive photographic prints from such a negative a sensitized sheet of j>aper is placed beneath the negative, and exposed to the sun's rays. The light passes through the negative in quantity depending upon the transparency of its several parts, and produces a proportion- ate darkening of the silver salts in the albuminous surface of the paper. The paper is now washed to remove the unaltered ni- trate, toned by a salt of gold, fixed by hypo- sulphite of soda, washed, dried, mounted, and glazed. The solar camera is used for making en- larged prints from a negative, a is an ad- justable portion, having a central aperture at which the negative is exposed to the rays entering at the window, b ; c is the lens ; d the board for the paper enlargement. Space can not be spared for even the reci- tation of the names of the various processes which have from time to time been promi- nently before the public. Some of these were invented in the infancy of the art, and have been long superseded by more perfect methods ; others yet survive for certain purposes. The amurotype is a thin collodion negative on glass made by a short exposure, and de- veloped so as to produce as white a deposit as possible on the lights. Such a picture is not looked at by transmitted Light, nor is it valuable as a negative ; it is to be backed up with a black surface, generally a black varnish, and regarded by reflected light only. Under these circumstances it appears as a positive, the deposit reflecting and the black backing absorbing the light. Pictures of this kind are rapidly made, and finished di- rect from the camera, as is the case with the daguerreotype, while the cost is very much less. They are, however, very inferior to ENLARGING SOLAR CAMERA. 142 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. good positives on paper, and bad to make way for the latter as the negative process improved. Ambrotypes are rarely to be met with now, but ferrotypes, or tintypes, as they are sometimes called, are produced by a per- fectly analogous process, the substantial difference being tbat the collodion picture is made directly upon a thin iron plate cov- ered with a black enamel or lacquer, which protects both its surfaces from the action of the negative bath, and acts the part of the black backing used in the ambrotype. Ferrotypes are still in vogue, the quickness with which they can be produced and their exceedingly small cost making them popu- lar with the public. Cameras provided with a large number of lenses are employed in their production. The trouble and difficulty in the efficient working of collodion negatives out-of-doors created a desire for a means of preserving a collodion plate in a sensitive condition, so as to render it unnecessary to coat, sensitize, and develop the plate where the landscape is taken. Accordingly a number of preserv- ative and dry-plate processes have been in- vented. No dry process, however, gives re- sults fully equal in quality to the work from wet plates, but they offer other advantages which can not be ignored. The stereoscopic camera used for field work has an arrangement for instantaneous exposure of the two lenses, which admit pencils of beams to the plates in the binary chamber. Shutters are placed in front of each tube, so arranged that by touching a spring they are simultaneously rotated, bringing for an instant of time a hole in BTKISEOSOOriO CAMERA. each shutter in correspondence with the tube, admitting rays of light from the object to the sensitized surfaces in the interior. The first daguerreotype portrait from life was taken by Professor John W. Draper, of New York, in 1839. An announcement of it was made in the London and Edinburgh Phil- osophical Magazine in March, 1840. A full account of the operation was subsequently published in the same journal. He also took the first daguerreotype view in Ameri- ca, a view of the Church of the Messiah, from a window of the New York University. In his laboratory Professor Morse learned the art. Daguerre made an unsuccessful attempt to photograph the moon. Dr. J. W. Draper succeeded in 1840 in obtaining a photo- graph of the moon on a silver plate with a telescope of five inches aperture. He pre- sented specimens to the New York Lyceum of Natural History in 1840. Professor G. P. Bond, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, made photographs of the moon in 1850 with the Cambridge refractor of fifteen inches aper- ture. Many others followed. Mr. Ruther- ford's photographs of the moon are most excellent. Mr. Delarue, in England, must also be mentioned. PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY. Photolithography is a mode of producing by photographic means designs on stone from which impressions may be obtained in the ordinary lithographic press. The first attempts in this line were by Dixon, of Jersey City, and Lewis, of Dublin, in 1841 ; they were followed by several in- ventors in Paris, Vienna, and Rome. Their experiments were with resins di- rectly upon stone. Joseph Dixon, 1854, was the first to use organic matter and bichro- mate of potash upon stone to produce a pho- tolithograph. Poitevin was the first to rec- ognize the fact that bichromated organic matter altered by light took the greasy ink from the roller. No great measure of suc- cess was attained by operations with resins and directly upon stone. The various gela- tine processes have been more successful. Wit hunt ignoring the value of some of these, not particularly described here, it will be well for brevity's sake to describe the best process, and but one. OSBORNE'S PROCESS. 143 OSBORNE'S OOrTING CAMERA AND TABLE. J. W. Osborne patented in Australia Sep- tember 1, 1859, and in the United States Juno 25, 1861, a transfer process, in which he pre- pares a sheet of paper by coating one side with a mixture of albumen, gelatine, and bichromate of potash, and dries it in the dark. This is exj)osed under a negative, whereby a visible change is produced, the brilliant yellow of the sheet, due to the salt of chromium, being changed to a chestnut- brown. In addition to this visible change, the organic matter becomes insoluble. A coating of transfer-ink is now applied to the whole exposed surface by passing the sheet through the press, face down, upon an inked stone. When the sheet is removed the pho- tographic picture is almost invisible. The sheet is then floated, ink side upward, upon hot water, the action of which is to coagu- late the albumen, rendering it insoluble, and to swell and soften the gelatine, causing the part affected by light to appear depressed by contrast. The sheet of paper so floated is next placed upon a slab, and the superflu- ous ink rubbed off by a wet sponge. This operation develops the picture. The sheet is then washed, dried, and transferred to the stone in the usual way. The coagulated al- bumen forms over the whole surface of the paper a continuous film, which adheres strongly to the stone during the transfer process, preventing any shifting and conse- quent doubling of the lines. This is, for all practical purposes, the first successful photo- lithographic process, and has been used in the Crown Lands Survey Office of Victoria since September, 1859, in the publication of maps. Substantially the same process is used in the Ordnance Survey Office of En- gland. The duplication and copying of drawings for the United States Patent-of- fice has been for some years performed by this process, which, in accuracy and speed, leaves nothing to be desired. The copying camera employed in making negatives from drawings is shown in the figure. The camera (containing the nega- tive plate) and the plan-board, on which is tacked the drawing to be copied, are adjust- able on a table, which is tilted on its truck to give the drawing a good presentation to the light. The focusing is done by a thin metallic belt, giving a rapid and positive movement on either side of the problemat- ical focus. The table is always brought into a horizontal position in focusing, the end of the camera box being covered by a hood, under which the operator stands. So placed, he controls the positions both of the plan- board and the lens, and has the ground glass always at a convenient distance from him. In copying at or near full scale the position 144 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. of the lens affects the size of the picture, making little change in the sharpness of the focus, which latter operation is then done with the plan-board. When a large re- duction is required, the position of the plan- board affects the size, and the focusing is done with the lens. MISCELLANEOUS PHOTO PROCESSES. Besides the processes which have been described under the titles Photography and Photolithography, there are a number of oth- ers which should not be entirely overlooked. The processes yet remaining to be stated depend upon the use of gelatine. Mungo Pontou in 1839 first discovered the sensitiveness to light of a sheet of paper treated with bichromate of potash. Bec- querel in 1840 determined that the sizing of the paper played an important part in the change. Fox Talbot in 1853 discover- ed and utilized the insolubility of gelatine exposed to light in the presence of a bi- chromate. Dissolve gelatine in hot water, add to the solution some bichromate of pot- ash and dry it; the compound is sensitive to light in a way different from ordinary pho- tographic paper. If a photographic nega- tive on glass be laid over a sheet of this pre- pared gelatine, the portions shielded from light by the dark parts of the picture will dissolve as readily as before, while the parts acted on by light will form a tough tawny substance unaffected by hot water. From this point the gelatine processes naturally divide into two groups. 1. The first group includes carbon printing. Poitevin, in 1855, was the first to use carbon combined with gelatine as a vehicle, avail- ing himself of its insoluble character after exposure. This process is as follows : Paper is coated with a compound of bichromate of potash, gelatine, aud lamp-black dissolved in cold water. This paper is dried in a dark room, exposed beneath a negative, and the parts not affected by the actinic action of the light dissolved off by hot water. The resulting picture is a positive print in black and white, of which the shades are produced by flit- carbon of the lamp-black, blackest where the lighl acted must freely, and with all the various shades according to the rela- tive translucency of the different portions of the negative. Poitevin subsequently in- troduced a process for carbon printing un- der a positive. The process was materially improved by Swann about 1861. He trans- ferred the film, after exposure, to another surface with the face downward, so that the dissolving was effected from its back, after which it was retransferred to the paper, on which it remained. 2. The picture is produced by the action of light on bichromated gelatine, and is made («) to produce a print capable of being trans- ferred ; or (6) to serve as a printing matrix, from which impressions may be taken by the ordinary lithographic means; or (c) to obtain an impression in relief which may be printed from in the ordinary printing- press. (a) The first success in this line resulted in the process of photolithography, which has been considered. (b) Paul Pretsch in 1854 discovered and utilized the quality which a sheet of bi- chromated gelatine possessed of not swell- ing in water after exposure to light. Poite- vin, 1855, was the first to recognize the fact that bichromated organic matter altered by light took greasy ink from the roller. Tessie" du Motay and Marechal, in 1864, were the first to print from a photographic image on bichromated gelatine as from a litho- graphic stone. The Albert-type, named from Albert, of Mu- nich, the autotype, the heUotype, by Edwards, now worked by J. R. Osgood, of Boston, and many others might be cited, differing in minor respects. Edwards, in the heliotype, produced a movable film; by the addition of chrome-alum to the gelatiue a tough, tawny, insoluble sheet is formed, capable of standing rough usage, and yet retaining its property of being acted on by light in the presence of a bichromate, and of re- ceiving and refusing greasy ink. The sheet is exposed under a negative, mounted on a metallic plate, the superfluous chemicals washed out, and then printed from with lith- ographic ink on an ordinary platen printing- press, being damped between each impres- sion, as in ordinary lithographic printing. (c) Relief-work is produced in several dif- ferent ways, but can not here be described. Niepce de St. Victor in 1827 led the way by an asphalt inn and etching process. The photoglijptk process of Fox Talbot, PHOTO-MICROGRAPHY. 145 1852, was another etching process. The pho- togalvanograph of Pretsch, 1854, depended upon the swelling of the gelatine after ex- posure ; a matrix was taken in gutta-percha, and from this a cameo plate was obtained by electro-deposit. The phototype belongs to this sub-class. Poitevin in 1855 had a process somewhat resembling this, in which he obtained a cast by the use of plaster hardened with protosulphate of iron. Os- borne in 1860 transferred the inked gelatine sheet to zinc, and etched to make a relief. In the Woodbury process, from which such excellent results have been obtained for il- lustrating the Medical and Surgical History of the War, the gelatine picture in relief, ob- tained by light, is placed in contact with a sheet of soft metal, and subjected to heavy hydraulic pressure. This gives a picture in reversed relief and depression. Such a mould is deeper in the places answering to the shades in the original picture, and con- versely, shallower in the lights. It is filled with a solution of colored gelatine in hot water; a piece of paper is placed on top and pressed down with a level lid, so as to squeeze out the superfluous gelatine. The paper is then lifted, bringing with it the colored gelatine, which forms the picture. PHOTO-MICROGRAPHY. The co-application of the microscope and photographic process has led to wonderful results, which we may briefly illustrate by an example. Merely referring to the early attempts of Donne", and the experiments of Gerlach, Albert, and Maddox in Europe, and of Rood and Rutherford in America, we may describe the plan adopted by Colonel J. J. Woodward, M. D., of the United States Army Medical Museum in Washington. He dispenses with a camera and ground glass. The operating-room has two win- dows, through one of which sufficient yel- low light is admitted to enable the oper- ator to work ; the lower part of the other window is provided with a shutter four- teen inches high, the upper part being blackened. In the shutter is a hole in which is inserted a tube, a, through which the solar light reflected from a plane mirror, b, or, preferably, a heliostat, is thrown upon the achromatic condenser of the microscope, c, which is placed on a 10 shelf at the window of the dark room. The light reflected through the tube, which is provided with an achromatic lens of about ten inches focal length, is thrown upon the achromatic condenser, d is the focusing device ; g f, the negative holder and its stand. For powers from 200 to 500, a ^-inch ob- jective without an eye-piece is used, the power being varied by increasing or dimin- ishing the distance of the sensitized plate from the instrument. A cell filled with am- monio-sulphate of copper, which absorbs the non-actinic rays, is interposed between the large lens and the condenser, and a hood is drawn around the instrument to prevent any loss of light. For objects magnified less than 500 diam- eters the time of exposure, being less than a second, is regulated by a sliding shutter placed before a slit in front of the micro- scope, the width of the slit being adjusted to correspond with the required length of exposure. For powers between 500 and 1500 a jJg-inch objective is employed, dis- pensing in general with an eye-piece or am- plifier, and placing the sensitized plate at a distance not exceeding three to four feet from the microscope. In the case of objects having very minute details, however, it is frequently advantageous to employ an eye- piece or amplifier rather than enlarge a neg- ative taken with a smaller power. Though natural sunlight is to be pre- ferred, it may be sometimes necessary, when this is wanting, to employ artificial illumi- nation. For this purpose the electric, the magnesium, and the oxy- calcium lights have been used with success. Of these the WOODWARD'S MICRO-PHOTOGRAPHIC APPARATUS (WITH SOLAR LIGHT). 146 MECHANICAL PROGRESS. electric light is the hest, and for its pro- duction Dr. Woodward employs a Duboscq lamp, operated by a battery of fifty small Grove elements, ten in a cell. OltJl 3oM\,Vi which, aAi m> AecvMn AaUovbicL 0-e. Vii% 7a\. mil frttfmtrn eafofru Ifub ckoii on dadty yitaa cma xtaum^ W-aMd lead uf rw+ fakh 4emfi?ah bui dtufrt/ts THE LORD'S PBAYEE. The accompanying figure is a fac-simile of a photograph obtained by the instrument just described. It is an enlargement on a scale of 617 diameters from a writing on glass by Webb, of London, for the United States Army Medical Museum. The writ- ing was executed with a diamond point by an instrument of Mr. Webb's invention, and known as a micro-pantograph. The glass slip also contains the following inscription in a larger writing: "Webb's Test. The Lord's Prayer. 227 letters in the 5 J ? x ;jj r of an inch, or the r og^s* of a square inch, and at the rate of 29,431,458 let- ters to an inch, which is more than 8 Bibles, the Bible containing 3,566,480 letters." The area within which the prayer was written was micrometrically verified by Dr. Woodward, who found that it and the above inscription were contained within a space 1^5 of an inch square. According to a statement made in 1862 by Mr. Farrants, president of the Micro- scopical Society of London, Mr. Peters has succeeded in writing the Lord's Prayer so as to be distinctly legible, with sufficient magnifying power, within the space of asMoo of a square inch. III. PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. WHAT ARE MANUFACTURES ? IN a general but correct sense all prod- ucts suitable for use, resulting from tbe applications, through human hand or brain, of the forces of nature to matter are man- ufactures, and each person who takes part in effecting or directing such applications is a manufacturer. Thus the laborer in the field who prepares the soil, scatters the seed, and harvests the grain, the wagoner, the railroad employe^ or the sailor who trans- ports it to the mill, are, in truth, as much the makers {facturcrs) of the flour as the men who, standing at the door of the mill, receive the grain, pass it through machin- ery, and when changed in form pack and deliver it to the consumers. No one of all these intermediaries between the first step in the so-called process of production — i. e., the leading or drawing forth {pro and ducc) — and the final use of the product, which we call consumption, at any time makes any thing in the sense of creating, but is only the agent, more or less skilled, for directing one or more of a series of movements, each of which differs from the other in degree, but not in kind. For convenience, how- ever, all these movements are economically divided into groups or classes, under such general names as agriculture, mining, com- merce, the fisheries, and manufactures — the last name being more especially applied to designate those movements which have reference to the changing or elaborating, through the aid of machinery, of those forms of product which have been the result of previous movements effected under the de- partments of agriculture and mining, and to some extent also of the fisheries. SOURCES OP INFORMATION. In the sense of the definition, as thus giv- en, there are no available data for making any thing like a complete exhibit of the gradual development of the manufacturing industry of the American people, not only, as might be expected, for so much of the period of their history as is antecedent to the adoption of the Federal Constitution and the full organization and adjustment of the affairs of the new nation, but what is more remarkable, and at the same time not generally known, for so much of the present century also as is antecedent to the year 1850, at which date the govern- ment of the United States for the first time, through the census, attempted to ascertain, with even approximative accuracy, the ex- act industrial statistics of the country. The requirement of the Federal Constitution (adopted in convention in 1787) that an "enumeration" (of the people) "shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years" — being the first provision of the kind instituted in connection with the constitution of any government 1 — only con- templated the obtaining of information re- specting population for the ulterior purpose of apportioning representation and direct taxation. The returns, accordingly, of the first census, taken in 1790, and of the sec- ond census, taken in 1800, afforded no infor- mation whatever concerning either the ag- gregate wealth of the country, the occupa- tions of the people, or the nature and value of their annual product. It is to be noted, however, that previous to the enactment of the census law of 1800 some public citizens, engaged in scientific and philosophical pur- 1 Moreau de Jonn6s, a distinguished French econo- mist, refers to this provision of the Constitution of the United States in the following language: "The United States presents in its history a phenomenon which has no parallel. It is that of a people who in- stituted the statistics of their country on the very day when they formed their government, and who regu- lated in the same instrument the census of their citi- zens, their civil and political rights, and the destinies of the country." This eulogium was, however, hard- ly warranted ; for there is no evidence that the framers of the Constitution in creating a census ever contem- plated any other object than an enumeration of the people, as furnishing a basis for the apportionment of representation and direct taxes. But " they build- ed wiser than they knew," inasmuch as they provided an instrumentality by which in the future the most vital questions pertaining to the political and social interests of the state could alone be answered. 148 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. suits, sought t( prevail on Congress to make the census of that year something more than a mere enumeration of the popula- tion ; and two learned societies, namely, the American Philosophical Society, of which Thomas Jefferson was then president, and the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sci- ences, Timothy D wight, president, sent in memorials on the subject; but beyond re- ferring the memorials to a committee there is no record on the part of Congress of any further action. In ordering for the third census, that of 1810, Congress, however, for the first time en- acted that, in addition to enumerating the people, it should be the duty of the mar- shals to take also, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, an account of the " several manufacturing establishments and manufactures within their several districts," and set aside for this service the sum of $30,000, out of an aggregate of $150,000 pre- viously appropriated for the general pur- poses of taking the census. This latter sum, although seemingly small, was nevertheless considered to be amply sufficient to cover all the expenses of the third census ; and in comparison with an expenditure of nearly three and a half millions authorized by Con- gress in connection with the taking in 1870 of the ninth census, strikingly illustrates the change in all the elements of national development effected between the two peri- ods. As further illustrating the same point, it may be also interesting to note that the report of the first census was comprised in an octavo pamphlet of fifty-two pages, and that of the second census in a folio of sev- enty-eight pages, while the report of the ninth census required three large quarto volumes of 679, 851, and 806 pages respect- ively, besides a statistical atlas. As the first attempt to set forth the con- dition of American manufacturing industry in detail, the results of the third census were looked for by Congress and the country with no little of interest ; but when the industrial returns were sent in they proved so imper- fect and discordant that the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures on the part of the House of Representatives, to whom they were referred, reported, through one of its members, that it was impossible to arrange them in any form which would bo "alike useful and compendious." In accordance with a joint resolution they were therefore referred to the Secretary of the Treasury — then Mr. Gallatin — with instructions to place the entire returns in the hands of some person competent to make a digest of them; and for this purpose the Secretary subsequently selected Mr. Tench Coxe, of Philadelphia, who in 1813 submitted a re- port, which, although from necessity most imperfect, was nevertheless of great interest and value. How imperfect the material placed at the disposal of Mr. Coxe really was may be inferred from the circumstance that not even an attempt was made under the census of 1810 to take an account, under the head of manufactures, of the capital em- ployed, raw material, number of hands, or cost of labor ; but only the number of man- ufacturing establishments, the character of the machinery used, and the quantity and value of certain staple products, and of even these last the statistics collected were so ir- regular as to be nearly worthless. In 1820, on the occasion of the taking of the fourth census, an effort was again made to obtain statistics of industry ; but when the returns came in they were again found so discreditable that the Secretary of State was only constrained by the mandatory character of the law to permit their publi- cation ; and the House of Representatives, after debating the propriety of suppressing the entire document, refused to pass a reso- lution providing for its public distribution. The result of these two unsuccessful ef- forts was that in providing for the taking of the fifth census the attempt to collect any industrial statistics whatever was whol- ly abandoned ; and although in 1840 sched- ules for obtaining statistics of industry were issued to the marshals engaged in taking the sixth census, the results obtained were regarded as of little or no importance. The act of 1850, however, under which the seventh, eighth, and ninth censuses of the United States were taken, in the years 1850, 1860, and 1870 respectively, marks an era in the history of American statistics, inasmuch as it not only incorporated provisions of law looking to the obtaining of results of sub- stantial value relative to domestic industry, but also for the first time so insured the of- ficial observance of the law that it became SOURCES OF INFORMATION. 149 possible to recognize the returns to a cer- tain extent as standards for making com- parisons and deductions in the future. And for such a result a debt of national gratitude is due, more than to all others, to the Hon. Joseph G. Kennedy, under whose superin- tendence the work of the censuses of 1850 and of 1860 was chiefly performed. But commendable as were the returns of the census of 1850, those of 1860 were much more comprehensive and accurate ; while the ninth census, taken in 1870, under the su- perintendence of Hon. F. A. Walker, was not only very far superior iu every respect to any previous census of the United States, but also compares favorably with any work of the kind previously executed in any coun- try. At the same time it ought to be known that the returns of the ninth census were very far from being as complete and useful as they could and would have been had not personal and partisan spirit, overruling all considerations of national good, mainly on the part of one man, prevented Congress from adopting a new law, carefully prepared by a committee of the House of Representa- tives (with the assistance of the best statis- ticians of every department in the country), and subsequently passed by the House al- most unanimously, and so compelled the performance of the work under the old law, one of whose provisions required the enu- meration and valuation of slaves, when the institution of slavery had for years been abolished. But in addition to the reports of the cen- sus, the materials available for the prepara- tion of a history of American manufacturing industry are exceedingly varied, and if not complete, exact, and accordant, are at least invested with a high degree of interest. For the earlier periods, or for the first one hundred and fifty years of our national his- tory, the few particulars which can now be gathered are to be sought for mainly in co- lonial statutes and records, private corre- spondence, minutes of councils and assem- blies, local histories, and individual biogra- phies. In 1791 Alexander Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, in obedience to a resolution of Congress, submitted his famous report on domestic manufactures and their relations to the new Federal government, in which, without entering into details, he gave an enumeration of such branches of in- dustry under this head as seemed to bim at that time to be permanently established in the country. Hamilton's report was follow- ed in 1813 by the work of Tench Coxe, of Philadelphia, above referred to ; while in 1816 Timothy Pitkin, a Representative in Congress from the State of Connecticut from 1808 to 1819, published, under the title of A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States, including also an Account of Banks, Manufactures, and Internal Trade, what at the time of the appearance of the first edition, and long subsequent also to the second edi- tion in 1835, held rank as the most compre- hensive and authoritative commercial and statistical work of American origin. At present the most complete repertory of facts concerning the rise and progress of Ameri- can manufactures is to be found in the work of the late Dr. J. L. Bishop, of Philadelphia, entitled A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 — three volumes; in addi- tion to which there have also been from time to time important publications by various au- thors on specialties of manufactures and the mechanic arts, as Thomas's History of Print- ing, White's Memoirs of Slater, Batchelder on the Cotton Manufacture of the United States, Munsell's Chronology of Paper and Paper-mak- ing, as well as numerous statistical reports from special industrial associations, as the American Iron and Steel Association, Nation- al Association of American Cotton and Wool- en Manufacturers, etc., etc. Within a com- paratively recent period, also, many of the States have prepared and published, every five years subsequent to the national cen- sus, very full details of their local domestic industries ; and as the principle that healthy legislation can only flow from an exact knowledge of the condition and wants of the people has gradually obtained public recognition, the establishment of distinct bureaus of statistics, reporting every year with great minuteness of detail the particu- lars of all important industrial occupations, is beginning to be regarded as an indispen- sable adjunct of all State governments. With this brief review of the sources of information available for studying the his- tory of our national industrial progress, at- tention is next asked to the subject of the origin and development of American manu- 150 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. factures from the period of the first settle- ment in Virginia, in 1607-8, to the dissolu- tion of the colonial system by the Declara- tion of Independence and of nationality, in 1776. PROGRESS FROM 1G07 TO 1776. And in reviewing the pertinent facts of this period the circumstance that in the first instance most forcibly arrests atten- tion is the strong natural tendency exhibit- ed from the very outset by the people who colonized and built up the American States to multiply and diversify their industries — a fact in striking contrast with and in oppo- sition to the opinion so assiduously main- tained by a school of American economists that such a result, among an intelligent people, inhabiting a country of varied re- sources, does not tend to occur naturally, but is rather the direct offspring of legis- lative direction and interference. Thus, for example, the second vessel dis- patched by the London Company, in 1608, to the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (founded the previous year), brought num- bers of persons skilled in manufactures, of whom says the historian (Stith), "No soon- er were they landed, but the President dis- patched as many as were able, some to make glass, and others for pitch, tar, and soap- ashes ;" and the very first manufactory established within the territory now con- trolled by the United States was a "glass- house" (furnace) in the woods of Virginia, about a mile from the settlement of James- town. And it is further interesting to note that, with the exception of a cargo of " sas- safras" gathered in the vicinity of Cape Cod in 1608, the first export from the Brit- ish North American colonies consisted in great part of what in the most technical sense are termed "manufactures;" or, to use the quaint language of Captain John Smith in his letter which accompanied the invoice, "of trials of pitch, tar, glass, frankincense, and soap-ashes, with what wainscot and clapboard as could be forwarded." Bever- ley in his History of Virginia, writing of the condition of affairs twelve years later, or in 1620, also says : " Many of the people became very industrious, and began to vie with one another in planting, building, and other im- provements. A salt-work was set up on the eastern shore and an iron-work at Falling Creek, on Jamestown River, where they made proof of good iron ore, and brought the whole work so near a perfection that they sent word to the company in London that they did not doubt but to push the work, and have plentiful provision of iron for them by next Easter." From the very first, under the popular im- pression probably that the country was par- ticularly adapted to the production of silk, special efforts were made in nearly all the colonies to direct and divert the attention of the people to this particular industry ; and it is recorded that the first Assembly that convened in Virginia under a written con- stitution, in 1621, especially occupied itself with considering "how best to encourage the silk culture." In 1662 also the Virginia Assembly, with a view of encouraging man- ufactures, offered prizes for the best speci- mens of linen and woolen cloth, and a spe- cial prize of fifty pounds of tobacco for each pound of wound silk produced in the colo- ny ; and it was also enjoined that for every hundred acres of land held in fee, the pro- prietor should be required to plant and fence twelve mulberry-trees. Silk culture in Georgia also so largely occupied the atten- tion of the first colonists that a public seal was adopted bearing as a device silk-worms engaged in their labors ; while bounties for the encouragement of the same industry were repeatedly offered by the colonies of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, North and South Carolina. The extraordinary ef- forts thus made resulted in some degree of success. Small lots of Virginia silk were sent to England as early as 1660, and, ac- cording to tradition, formed part of the coronation robes of Charles II. Raw silk for a considerable number of years became also one of the regular exports from Georgia, and for the eighteen years next subsequent to 1750 the amount so exported averaged about 550 pounds per annum. In Con- necticut the production and manufacture of silk was made a matter of special legis- lation as early as 1732 ; and in 1747 it is re- corded that the Governor, Mr. Law, had a silk coat and stockings entirely of domestic manufacture. It is, however, a most inter- esting and suggestive circumstance that this specialty of employment, which from the first settlement of the country was par- COLONIAL PROGRESS. 151 ticularly selected as worthy of attention, and as such did receive for nearly two hundred years from the various colonial and State authorities an amount of encour- agement, through special legislation, great- er than was bestowed on any other interest, is the only one of the great industries which has never been able to attain to a healthy condition of existence on the North Ameri- can continent, and to-day only exists in the United States in virtue of a degree of legis- lative encouragement far in excess of that demanded and received by any other indus- trial interest. But zealously as did the first settlers of Virginia engage at the outset in manufac- tures, the characteristics of the territory upon which they located, in respect to fer- tility of soil and mildness of climate, proved antagonistic ; and obeying the promptings of self-interest, which are always a far bet- ter and surer guide than legislation for de- termining what occupations individuals as well as communities can best follow, they in common with the population of all the oth- er Southern colonies early became planters rather than artisans. And from that day to this American manufacturing industry has found its greatest development in other and less fertile localities. It has also been noted as somewhat prophetic of the tastes and tendencies of the different sections of the future nation into which all the colo- nies were subsequently blended, that the first book written and the first book print- ed in what is now the United States were in verse — the one a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, by Mr. George Sandys, Treasurer of Virginia, and the other the Bay Psalm-Book, in New England. Strenuous efforts were indeed made by the authorities to arrest the tendency of the people of Virginia to engage in agriculture rather than in manufactures or commerce, and in 1689 it was even ordered that all the tobacco grown in the colony in excess of a certain quantity should be destroyed. But this and other efforts, like the offering of prizes for the encouragement of the produc- tion of textile fabrics, proved of no avail. Tobacco grew most luxuriously, and in 1617 readily commanded three shillings per pound, and the Virginians soon found that it was, at least for the time, more advantageous to buy manufactured articles with the pro- ceeds of their crops than to manufacture for themselves. On the other hand, in New England the circumstances of a sterile soil and a harsh climate were antagonistic to agriculture and in favor of commerce and manufactures, and from a very early day powerfully contrib- uted to give to this section of country a supremacy in respect to the two last-named branches of industry which no subsequent influences have ever seriously impaired or threatened. The branch of manufacturing industry to which the attention of the New England colonists was first, and as it were naturally, directed, by reason of the inex- haustible wealth of their forests, was the manufacture of lumber, for which there was a constant and remunerative demand in England and throughout the West Indies. Ship-building commenced in the Plymouth Colony within three years after the landing, and the business subsequently received a great impulse by the overthrow of the mon- archy under Charles I. and the establish- ment of the Commonwealth, which led the colonists to apprehend that the incentive to emigration, and the consequent sailing of ships from England, being diminished, they would be thereby left dependent on their own resources for interoceanic communica- tions. "The general fear," says Governor Winthrop, in his journal, " of a want of for- eign commodities, now our money was gone, and that things were like to go well in En- gland, set us on work to provide shipping of our own ;" and the business was prosecuted with such vigor that within ten years after the launching of the first vessel ever built in Massachusetts, namely, on the 4th of July, 1631, the General Court passed the follow- ing resolution : " Whereas, the country is now in hand with the building of ships, and therefore suitable care is been taken that it be well performed, it is therefore ordered that surveyors be appointed to examine any ship built, to see that it be performed and carried on according to the rules of the art." In the year 1676, just a century be- fore the Declaration of Independence^ 550 vessels are reported to have been built in Boston and the vicinity, of which 230 ranged from 50 to 250 tons burden ; and in 1731 the trade of Massachusetts alone employed 600 152 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. sail of ships and sloops, having an aggre- gate of 38,000 tonnage— one-half of which traded to Europe — in addition to over 1000 sail and from 5000 to 6000 men employed at the same time in the fisheries. In 1640 the General Court of Connecticut enacted as follows : " It is thought neces- sary for the comfortable support of these plantations that a trade in cotten tvooll he sett upon and attempted, and for the fur- thering thereof it has pleaced the Governor that now is (Edward Hopkins, Esq.) to un- dertake the finishing and setting forth a vessell with convenient speed to those ports where the said commodity is to be had, if it be pheasable," etc. ; and in 1642 the Court further apportioned the amount of cotten wooll that each town should take from Mr. Hopkins, the share of Hartford being £200 worth. In 1666 also the Assembly of Con- necticut, with an exceptional degree of wis- dom, which Great Britain long afterward imitated, as did the State of Pennsylvania in a degree in 1772, exempted ship-building from all local taxation. The business of constructing ships for home use and for sale in foreign countries was also exten- sively followed in nearly all the other col- onies, and in Maine and New Hampshire especially the manufacture of spars, masts, and ship timber for export early became a leading and profitable industry. The first saw-mill in New England is be- lieved to have been erected as early as 1634 or 1635 on the Salmon Falls River, New Hampshire, near to the site of the present city of Portsmouth. The first water-mill in New England is supposed to have been put up at Dorchester, Massachusetts, as early as 1628 ; and in 1633 another was erected in the Plymouth Colony by one Stephen Dean, which he engaged should be sufficient to " beat" corn for the whole colony. The number of mills of various kinds that exist- ed in that part of Massachusetts which is now Maine as early as 1682 may be inferred from the circumstance that a tax was im- posed that year on mills for the defense of Fort Loyal against the French and Indians. The first Van Rensselaer sent from Holland to Albany as early as 1631 a master mill- wright and two small millstones for a small grist-mill. The first grist-mill in Pennsyl- vania was erected by Colonel John Printz, Governor of what was then called New Swe- den, in 1643. Virginia as early as 1649 had four windmills and five water-mills, besides many " horse-mills," and for a considerable number of years exported large quantities of breadstuflfs to her sister colonies and to the West Indies. The first printing-press in what is now the United States was set up at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1638, only eighteen years subsequent to the landing of the Pilgrims in the wilderness. The first thing printed was The Freeman's Oath, a broadside ; the second, an almanac, in 1639 ; and in 1640 the first book, "the Psalms newly turned into metre," or The Bay Psalm-Booh, as it was called — a work which is said to have gone through seventy editions. William Penn landed in his new territory of Pennsylvania in 1682, and four years later a printing-press — the third in the colonies — was at work in Philadelphia. The first press established in the Province of New York was in 1693, none having been allowed there during the rule of the Dutch. In Virginia the art of print- ing was not encouraged, and in 1683 is said to have been actually prohibited, while in 1671 Sir William Berkeley, of Virginia, re- turned thanks to God that there were nei- ther free schools nor printing in the colony. "For learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best govern- ment." The same year Governor Dongan, of New York, on the renewal of his commis- sion, was instructed " to allow no printing- press." The first printing-press in Con- necticut was established at New London in 1709; in Rhode Island, at Newport, in 1713-14 ; in Delaware, at Annapolis, in 1726 ; in South Carolina, at Charleston, in 1730 ; in New Hampshire, at Portsmouth, in 1756 ; in North Carolina, at Newbern, in 1757; in Georgia, at Savanurth, in 1762 ; and in what is now the State of Maine in 1780. The first printing-press in the territory west of the Alleghanies was set up in Kentucky in 1786; the second, at Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1793 ; and the third, probably, at Marietta, Ohio, in 1795. The number of printing-presses in the colonies at the time of the Revolution is believed to have been about forty. The number of separate works printed in the PAPER MANUFACTURE. 153 provinces up to this period can not now be ascertained; but the Philadelphia Library contains as many as 459 works printed in that city alone prior to the Revolution. The first book-binding in this country ap- pears to have been an edition of 1000 copies of the Bible, published at Cambridge in 1663, which was followed by a second edition of 2000 copies in 1685. The work was perform- ed by one John Ratlifte, who came from En- gland expressly for this purpose. His price was about 3s. Ad. per volume, and one Bible Avas as much as he could bind in one day. The manufacture of paper of any descrip- tion was not established in any of the colo- nies until full fifty years after the introduc- tion of printing, the first paper mill having been erected in the vicinity of Philadelphia by one William Rittenhousen, a native of Germany, about the year 1690. The first pa- per mill in New England was established in the town of Milton, near Boston, in 1730, by Daniel Henchman, Peter Faneuil, and oth- ers, with a privilege in the nature of a pat- ent for ten years from the General Court of Massachusetts, on condition that they should make in the first fifteen months 115 reams of brown paper and sixty reams of printing-paper, and the third year writing- paper of a superior quality. In 1732 the following advertisement appeared in the weekly Rehearsal, of Boston : "Richard Fry, Stationer, Bookseller, Paper-maker, and Rag merchant, from the city of London, keeps at Mr. Thomas Fleet's, printer, at the Heart and Crown, in Cornhill, Boston, where said Fry is ready to accom- modate all Gentlemen, Merchants, and Tradesmen with setts of Accompt books after the most acute manner for twenty per cent, cheaper than they can have them from London. I return the Public Thanks for follow- ing the Directions of my former Advertisement for gathering rags, and hope they will continue the like Method, having received upward of Seven thousand weight already." The early scarcity of paper in the colo- nies is illustrated by the following curious advertisement, which appeared in the Bos- ton Evening Post in 1748 : " Choice Pennsylvania Tobacco paper is to be sold by the publisher of this paper at the Heart and Crown, where may be also had the Bulls or Indigencies of the present Pope, Urban VIII., either by the single Bull, Quire, or Ream, at a much cheaper rate than they can be purchased of the French or Spanish priests." The explanation of this was that several bales of " indulgencies," printed upon very good paper and only on one side, had been captured by an English cruiser from a Span- ish vessel, and being offered at a very low price, had been purchased by the Boston printer, who saw an opportunity for profit by printing ballads or other matter for his customers upon the backs of the pontifical documents in question. It is also to be noted that about this time Robert Salton- stall was fined five shillings by the General Court of Massachusetts for presenting a pe- tition on a small and bad piece of paper. In 1768 Colonel Christopher Leffingwell erected at Norwich the first paper mill in the colony of Connecticut" under the prom- ise of a bounty from the General Assembly. Two years after he was accordingly awarded twopence a quire on 4020 quires of writing- paper, and one penny each on 10,600 quires of printing-paper. Having attained such a degree of success, it is recorded that the government patronage was soon afterward withdrawn. In Pennsylvania the Dunkers, who set- tled in Lancaster County, very early gave their attention to the manufacture of paper, and also set up a printing-press. During the Revolution, and just previous to the bat- tle of the Brandy wine, messengers were sent to their mill for a supply of paper for car- tridges. The mill happening to be out of unmanufactured paper, the fraternity, who held their property in common, sent back as a substitute to the Continental army sev- eral wagon loads of an edition of Fox's Book of Martyrs, and from the paper supplied by the pages of this work the cartridges used in the battle were in part manufactured. 1 About the year 1770 the number of paper mills in the provinces of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware was reported to be forty, this department of manufacturing in- dustry having especially developed in the vicinity of Philadelphia, which was at that time the centre of literary activity for the colonies. It was a business, moreover, in which Dr. Franklin was greatly interested ; and he told De Warville, a French traveler who visited America in 1788, that he had himself established as many as eighteen mills. The business of the manufacture of " pa- per-hangings" commenced in the colonies 1 Bishop's History of American Manufactures. 154 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. about the year 1760, and in 1791 it was one of the branches of domestic industry, ac- cording to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, which were well established. Samples of home manufacture, which were highly approved of, and which found a ready sale, were exhibited to the New York Society of Arts and Manufactures as early as 1765. The household manufacture of textile fab- rics — of cotton-wool, linen, and silk — was al- most coeval with the settlement of the con- tinent, and the same circumstances which have been before* noted as favoring the building of ships also greatly encouraged the development of these other industries. We are accustomed, and with good reason, to regard the tide and volume of immigra- tion which has flowed from the Old World to the New since 1850 as something most remarkable, but the largest comparative im- migration which this country has ever ex- perienced occurred during the first half of the seventeenth century, between 1630 and 1640, when nearly every year added a num- ber of individuals nearly or quite equal to the previously existing population. The result was an extraordinary demand for provisions, not only for home consumption, but also for the West Indies, with which trade had been greatly fostered by the en- terprise of ship-building and the exporta- tion of lumber, and the attention of the colonists, especially in New England and in New York, was largely directed to the raising of cattle, and in the former also to the prosecution of the fisheries. Governor Hutchinson, indeed, records that at one time the price of cattle in the colonies rose as high as £ •-'•">, and even £28, per head. The ces- sation of immigration in 1640, consequent upon the cessation of persecution in En- gland for religious non-conformity, caused an immediate and excessive decline in the price of cattle, and as suddenly cut off a leading source of -provincial revenue. At the same time, with their thus impaired means of purchase, the diminished inter- course with England also caused great un- certainty in respect to the supply of cloth- ing, for which the colonists had been up to tliis time almost wholly dependent upon the mother country. What next happened, as told with quaint simplicity by the early his- torian of New England (Hubbard), striking- ly illustrates the state of things in which a resort to manufactures becomes a necessi- ty in a new country. After describing the manner in which their necessity first came upon them, he continues : "Now the country of New England was to seek of a way to provide themselves with clothing, which they could not obtain by selling cattle as before, which were now fallen from that huge price forementioned to five pounds apiece; nor was there at that rate a ready vent for them neither. Thus the flood which brought in much wealth to many persons, the contra- ry ebb carried all away out of their reach. To help themselves in this their exigent, for the necessary sup- ply of themselves and their families, the General Court made order for the manufacture of woolen and linen cloth, which with God's blessing upon man's endeav- or in a little time stopped this gap in part, and soon after another door was opened by special Providence ; for when one hand was shut by way of supply from England, another was opened by way of traffic, first to the West Indies and Wine Islands, whereby, among other goods, much cotton-wool was brought into the country, which the inhabitants, learning to spin and breeding of sheep and sewing of hemp and flax, they soon found out a way to supply themselves of cloth." The first regular or systematic attempt to manufacture cloth, particularly woolen, was made by a company of Yorkshire immi- grants who settled at Rowley, Massachu- setts, where in 1643 was erected the first fulling-mill in the North American colonies. The manufacture of cordage was entered, upon in Boston as early as 1629* In the New Netherlands (New York), although the primary object with the mercantile com- pany which planted and governed that col- ony was trade with the Indians, yet the characteristic industry of the Dutch prompt- ed to a very extensive household manufac- ture of linens, woolens, and hosiery; and Denton, the earliest writer in that province, says (1670) of them, "Every one make their own linen and a great part of their woolen cloth for their ordinary wear." Under the auspices of William Penn, the manufacture of (linen and woolen) cloth was one of the first branches of industry undertaken in his new colony ; and among the articles men- tioned as produced in Pennsylvania as early as 1698 (which daily improved in quality) were druggets, serges, camblets, and a va- riety of other stuff, giving employment to dyers, fullers, comb -makers, card -makers, weavers, spinners, etc. The general prog- ress made in the manufacture of fabrics dur- ing the first century of the existence of the North American colonies is also indicated by IRON. 155 a report which Colonel Heathcote, a member of the Council of the Province of New York, made to the English Board of Trade in 1708, in which he says that he had labored to di- vert the Americans from going on with their woolen and linen manufactures, which are already so far advanced that three-fourths of the linen and woolen used was made among them, " especially the coarse sort ; and if some speedy and effectual ways are not found to put a stop to it, they will carry it on a great deal further, and perhaps in time very much to the prejudice of our manufac- tures at home." And a letter written from New England to the Board of Trade in 1715 dwells particularly on "the very consider- able manufacture" (in the colonies) " of ker- seys, liusey-woolseys, flannels, buttons, etc., by which the importations of these provinces has been decreased fifty thousand pounds Tier annum." The smelting of iron ore was one of the industries attempted by the first settlers in Virginia ; but both the iron-works and the " glass-house," which had been erected, were early destroyed by the Indians, who, although not versed in any system of po- litical economy, nevertheless ever showed themselves the most persistent enemies of diversified employments. In New England preliminary attempts to establish the man- ufacture of iron were made in 1630, and in 1645 regular works were established at Lynn. Of these last the old historian (Hub- bard) says, contemptuously, " That instead of drawing out bars of iron for the country's use, there was hammered out nothing but contentions and lawsuits ;" but, notwith- standing this disparagement, the operations commenced in this locality are believed to have been conducted with a degree of suc- cess for a period of more than one hundred years. ^One of the first, if not the very first pat- ent granted in this country was by the General Court of Massachusetts, in 1646, to one Joseph Jencks, of Lynn, " for y e making of Engines for mills to goe with water, for y e more speedy dispatch of work than for- merly, and mills for y e makiug of Sithes and other Edged Tooles," the Court having pre- viously passed a law that there " should be no monopolies but of such new inventions as were profitable to the country, and that for a short time only." The same Mr. Jencks, who is claimed to have been " the first found- er who worked in brass and iron on the West- ern Continent," 1 also made for Massachu- setts, at his iron-works, the dies with which the " pine-tree" shillings and other coins of the colony were stamped ; and for the city of Boston " an ingiue to carry water in case of fire," which last construction was years in advance of any use of fire-engines on the continent of Europe. Pig-irou began to be exported from the American colonies to England as early as 1718, when a record is made of a small lot of three and one-half tons received from Vir- ginia and Maryland. By 1728, however, pig- iron had become a regular and important article of colonial export, and some years later the exportation of bar-iron also com- menced, and from this time both pig and bar iron continued to be annually exported from the North American colonies until aft- er the breaking out of the Revolution. From the official returns of the British Custom-house (which are still extant, and have been published) the exact amount of such exports received in England at differ- ent periods from 1728 to 1776 was as follows : Years. Pig-iron. Bar-Iron. 1728 29 Tons. 1127 2404 2274 3244 2554 5303 2996 316 Tons. "ii 196 389 1059 2222 916 28 1732-33 1745 1754 1764 1771 1775 1776 In addition, there was also some pig and bar iron exported from the colonies during the same period to both Scotland and Ire- land, though probably in no very consider- able quantities. Contemporaneously with the manufac- tures above noticed there were also estab- lished throughout the provinces manufac- tures of leather, of bricks, pottery, and glass, of distilled and fermented liquors, of hardware in various forms, of candles, snuff, gunpowder, copperas, and a multitude of other articles, so that at the close of the first century of their existence there was hardly a branch of useful industry common in Europe which was not practiced with more or less of success in the British North 1 Lewis's History of Lynn, 156 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. American colonies. In fact, so successful had been the attempts of the colonists to manufacture that the jealousy of the moth- er country began to be awakened at a peri- od considerably anterior to that mentioned, for Sir Josiah Child, although a much more liberal and intelligent politician than many of his countrymen at that day, in a dis- course "on trade," published in 1670, de- scribes New England as having come to be the most prejudicial plantation of Great Britain, and gives for this opinion the sin- gular reason that they are a people " whose frugality, industry, and temperance, and the happiness of whose laws and institutions, promise to them a long life and a wonderful increase of people, riches, and power." TRUE CAUSE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. And here we come for the first time upon the true cause of the American Revolution, which is now well understood to have been not so much that the colonists were denied representation in the central government, or that they were unduly restrained in re- spect to any liberty of their persons, but rather that their rights to property were continually interfered with, that they were denied the privilege of freely buying and selling wherever and whenever they might see fit, and of following the occupations which seemed to them most remunerative. On the other hand, the acts of Great Britain, viewed in the light of the investigations and experiences of another century, are suscep- tible of a much less harsh interpretation than it has been the custom to put upon them. Thus England, during the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and even later, held, in common with the rest of the civilized world, a most firm be- lief in the doctrine, which had come down from the Middle Ages, that no one nation or individual could get gain from commerce or trade except at the expense of some other nation or individual, and that therefore the surest way for a nation or individual to prosper and grow rich was to sell as much and buy as little as possible, and to endeav- or to obtain gold and silver in exchange for what they did sell in preference to any oth- er products. Stated in the abstract, and in this last third of the nineteenth century, these doctrines seem very strange and most absurd; and yet the United States is the one nation of all others claiming to be en- lightened which to-day by her commercial system fails to recognize or practically de- nies the great economic axiom that no na- tion or community can sell to any great ex- tent except in proportion as it is willing to buy ; that all trade and commerce must be mutually advantageous, or it would not ex- ist; and that after every fair mercantile transaction both parties, however varied their nationality and residences, are richer than before. It is also a mistake to suppose that the American colonies were planted with the least reference to the pecuniary or person- al benefit of the colonists themselves. The mode was simply this: The King of En- gland, on payment to himself of a certain sum, granted a tract of land of American territory, together with a charter, to a joint- stock company of English merchants and adventurers, who sent out a colony to cul- tivate the lands and gather their products for the pecuniary benefit of the stockhold- ers. It was clearly an enterprise for mak- ing money — as much so as are the railroad and other corporations of the present day — and the colonists were regarded as merely the hired servants of the company. This was the method after which all the colonies were established, and if the colonists pos- sessed any political privileges it was be- cause they wrenched them from the unwill- ing hands of the corporators. For proof of the correctness of this position reference is made to the pages of all the American his- torians, and to the still stronger testimony of the great Adam Smith, of Scotland, who, while the American Revolution was pro- gressing, declared that England had found- ed an empire on the other side of the At- lantic for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers — a policy which he de- nounced as fit only for a nation of shop- keepers. Entertaining such views respecting the nature of trade and commerce and the use of colonies, nothing, therefore, was more natural and legitimate than that England should regard her transatlantic plantations as instrumentalities for the promotion of her own interests and aggrandizement exclu- sively, and that when the enterprise of the RESTRICTION ON COLONIAL INDUSTRY. 157 Americans in respect to certain branches of manufacturing industry seemed likely to be prejudicial to similar industries of her own, she should attempt to shackle and restrain their progress. It ought also to be borne in mind that if Great Britain acted unjustly toward the colonies, she was at least con- sistent in both her home and her colonial policy, and framed the former, equally with the latter, in strict accordance with the then narrow commercial spirit of the age. Thus, if it was forbidden to the colonists to export woolen goods, or transport wool from one "plantation" to another, there was at the same time on the statute-book of England a law which made it felony for any English- man to export any sheep from the kingdom, or to purchase or transport any wool within fifteen miles of the sea without permission of the king, or to load or carry any wool within five miles of the sea, except between sunrising and sunsetting. And again, if the colonists were not permitted to carry any article of produce on the seas except in British ships, the necessity was about the same time announced in Parliament by the Lord Chancellor of going to war with the Dutch, and of destroying their commerce, because " it was impairing ours." On the other hand, in respect to all those colonial industries which were not regarded as antagonistic to British interests, the ac- tion of Parliament was generous and consid- erate. For example, the cultivation of to- bacco was forbidden in England by highly penal enactments, for the sake of securing a monopoly of that product to the Southern colonies. Liberal premiums were also of- fered and awarded for the cultivation and exportation of colonial silk, indigo, hemp, flax, and for the promotion of the fisheries ; and in 1750 an act passed Parliament to encourage the exportation of pig and bar iron from his Majesty's plantations in Amer- ica, whereby all duties on the import of the same into Great Britain were removed, although maintained in respect to the im- ports from all other countries. Neverthe- less, the one most important fact in connec- tion with this topic is that it was the rapid growth of colonial commerce and manu- factures, conjointly with the attempt of Great Britain to interfere with and sup- press them, which led to a gradual and in- creasing alienation and final violent sepa- ration of the two countries. The first important act which operated as a restriction on the industry of the colonists was the so-called " Navigation Act" of 1650, which, although primarily intended, to use the words of Sir William Blackstone, "to mortify our sugar islands, which were disaf- fected to Parliament, and at the same time clip the wings of our opulent and aspiring neighbors," the Dutch, nevertheless struck a heavy blow at one of the foremost indus- tries of the colonies, namely, ship-building. By this act and its extensions in 1661 and 1663 it was provided that no article of colo- nial produce or British manufacture should be carried in any but British ships, and that the colonists should not be allowed to pur- chase in any but British markets any manu- factured article which England had to sell. Following the enactment of these purely commercial restrictions, it soon also became a policy on the part of Great Britain to dis- courage all attempts at manufacturing by the colonists in competition with similar British industries ; and it was in pursuance of this policy that in 1696 the management of the affairs of the colonies was by royal order committed to a Board of Trade, under the title of " The Lords Commissioners for Trade and the Plantations." Henceforth the vigilant nation of shop-keepers would not be content with watching and control- ling the shipping and trade of American ports, but must lay its hands on all the man- ufacturing industries of the colonies. The royal governors were required to report yearly to the board on the state of the prov- inces, and to do all in their power to divert them from setting up and carrying on man- ufactures. But reports and recommenda- tions were not sufficient to repress the in- dustrial enterprise of the Americans, and three years after, the board having received complaint that the wool and woolen manu- factures of the North American plantations began to be exported to foreign markets formerly supplied by England, an act was passed by Parliament which, after declar- ing in its preamble " that colonial industry would inevitably sink the value of lands in England," prohibited thereafter the move- ment of any American wool or woolen man- ufactures not only to foreign countries, but 158 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. also as between one colony and another. And in 1731, as complaint of the increasing divergence of trade from its prescribed chan- nels by the action of the colonists continued to be made by British merchants and manu- facturers, the House of Commons again took up the subject, and ordered, through the Board of Trade, an inquiry " with respect to laws made, manufactures set up, or trade carried on" (in the colonies) "detrimental to the trade, navigation, and manufacture of Great Britain." The report made in pursu- ance of this order in 1731-32 furnishes some curious particulars respecting the state of manufactures at that time iu America, al- though it was known to be so incomplete that the concealment practiced was made the subject of complaint in England. The return of one officer, for example, stated that it was extremely difficult to obtain any true information, and, furthermore, that the As- sembly of Massachusetts Bay had had the boldness to summon him to answer for hav- ing given any evidence whatever to the British House of Commons respecting the trade and manufactures of that province. The Governor of New Hampshire reported that there were no settled manufactures in that province. The Governors of Connecti- cut and the Carolinas made no returns, and the Governor of Rhode Island confined his report to matters not connected with man- ufactures. Massachusetts was reported as having manufactures of cloth, a paper mill, also several forges for making bar-iron, some furnaces for cast and hollow ware, one slit- ting-mill, and a manufacture of nails. The Surveyor -General of his Majesty's Woods wrote that they have in New England six furnaces and nineteen forges for making iron ; that many ships were built for the French and Spaniards ; and that great quan- tities of hats were made and exported to Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies. They also make all kinds of iron for shipping, and have several still-houses and sugar-hakeries. Immediately after the reception and pub- lication of this report, or in 1732, it was en- acted by Parliament that "no hats or felts should be exported from the colonies, or be laden upon any horse or carriage to the in- tent to be exported from thence to any oth- er plantation or to any other place whatev- er ;" limiting also the number of apprentices at the business, and forbidding any black or negro from making hats under any cir- cumstances. Nor was this all, for in 1750 a bill was introduced into Parliament de- creeing that every slitting-mill in America should be demolished; and although this bill failed of passing the House of Commons by only twenty-two votes, a subsequent act did pass, that no new mills of that descrip- tion should be erected. It is most important and instructive to diverge for a moment at this point from tracing the development of American man- ufactures, and briefly notice the effect of the long-continued restrictive legislation of Great Britain on political and commercial morality. The multitude, of arbitrary laws enacted to force the industry and commerce of the colonies and the British people into artificial and unnatural channels created a multitude of new crimes ; and transactions which appeared necessary for the general welfare, and were no way repugnant to the moral sense of good men, were forbidden by law under heavy penalties. The colonists became thenceforth a nation of law-break- ers. Nine-tenths of the colonial merchants were smugglers. One-quarter of the whole number of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were bred to commerce, to the command of ships, and the contraband trade. John Hancock was the prince of contraband traders, and, with John Adams as his counsel, was on trial before the Ad- miralty Court in Boston at the exact hour of the shedding of blood at Lexington, to answer for half a million dollars' penalties alleged to have been by him incurred as a smuggler. And if good old Governor Jon- athan Trumbull, of Connecticut (Brother Jonathan), did not walk in the same ways as his brother patriot in Massachusetts, then tradition, if not record, has done him very great injustice. There is also on rec- ord a letter of Alexander Hamilton, written in 1771, at the time he was in mercantile business as a clerk in the West Indies, indi- cating an entire familiarity with a contra- band trade carried on by his employers with the Spanish colonies. But men like Hancock and Trumbull had been made to feel that government was their enemy; that it de- prived them of their natural rights; that in enacting laws to restrain them from la- AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 159 boring freely, and freely exchanging the fruits of their labors, it at the same time enacted the principle of slavery, and that therefore every evasion of such laws was a gain to liberty. Furthermore, the continuance of such a policy as was adopted by Great Britain to- ward the colonies, and the spirit of resist- ance which was as naturally evoked in turn on the part of the colonists, could tend to but one end, namely, war and revolution; and in 1775 war and revolution came. The population of the colonies at about the time (1670) that their progress in man- ufactures began to excite the jealousy of Great Britain was probably a little less than 200,000. In 1714 the Board of Trade, for the pur- pose of aiding their judgment in respect to the condition of affairs in America, caused a census to be taken of the colonies, which re- turned a population of 434,000 ; and another in 1727, which gave an aggregate of 580,000. Mr. Bancroft estimates the total popula- tion of the colonies in 1750 to have been 1,260,000 ; and in 1770, five years previous to the outbreak of the Revolution, at 2,312,000 ; of whom 1,850,000 were white and 462,000 black. PROGRESS SINCE THE REVOLUTION. The immediate effect of the war of the Revolution, by cutting off all except casual and uncertain commercial intercourse with Europe and other countries, was to impart a fresh impulse to such manufactures in the colonies as were then established, and to call into existence some new ones. The immediate effect of the return of peace (in 1783), on the contrary, was most disastrous to nearly all business interests, and more es- pecially to the mechanical and manufactur ing industries. But such a result could not well have been otherwise. The country had been subjected to a long and impoverishing war ; it was exhausted of men as well as of means ; labor was scarce and high, and the burden of debt, both public and private, was most onerous. It has been the custom of many writers in treating of this period to attribute the disastrous condition of affairs 1 which was immediately incident to the close ! of the Revolution to an unrestrained influx . of foreign commodities; but that this agen- cy was not in a high degree potential for mischief is proved by the circumstance that the average imports of British manufactures into the couutry for several years previous to 1789, notwithstanding a great increase to the population of the States, was consider- ably less than the average of several years preceding the war ; and also that when the first tariff on imports came to be enacted under the Constitution, the rate establish- ed on all textile fabrics was only five per cent., and on all manufactures of metal but seven and a half per cent. But the manner in which importations were then made was undoubtedly most mischievous. There was no national government, and the division of the powers of government among thirteen petty sovereignties rendered the adoption of uniform laws impossible. Each State accordingly had its own tariff and regula- ted its own trade. What was binding in Massachusetts had no validity in Rhode Isl- and, and what was subject to duty in New York might be imported free into Connect- icut or New Jersey. Practically, therefore, no revenue could be collected on imports. Great Britain, also, seeing that as a nation we were commercially helpless, not only re- fused to negotiate a commercial treaty with us, but by an Order in Council excluded our ships from their ports in the West Indies, and, as the government of the States was then constituted, we had no power through retaliation to compel reciprocity. Yet, ac- cording to one who participated in the acts of the Revolution, and was one of the most sagacious observers and writers of the peri- od — Peletiah Webster, of Philadelphia — all the sufferings and evils which the country endured from all other agencies were insignificant in comparison with the misery that resulted from the introduction and use of an irre- deemable paper money, and the consequent irregularities of the entire American fiscal system, his exact language being as follows : " We have suffered more from this cause than from any other cause of calamity. It has killed more men, perverted and corrupted the choicest interests of our country more, and done more injustice, than even the arms and artifices of our enemies." And again he says, "If it saved the state, it has vio- lated the equity of our laws, corrupted the justice of our public administration, ener- 160 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. rated the trade, industry, and manufactures of our country, and gone far to destroy the morality of our people." But let the causes have heen what they may, there is no douht that for a hrief pe- riod subsequent to the close of the war the industry of the country was greatly depressed. The establishment of a stable government, however, by the adoption of the Constitution at once gave to affairs a new aspect. The wretched system of dis- trust, jealousy, and weakness, which had before paralyzed all enterprise, and sunk the revenues and credit of the Confedera- tion to the lowest point, disappeared, and fresh energy was infused into all depart- ments of business. "American labor," says Dr. Bishop, " at this period began steadily to change its form from a general system of isolated and fireside manual operations — though these continued for some time lon- ger its chief characteristic — to the more or- ganized efforts of regular establishments, with associated capital and corporate priv- ileges, employing more or less of the new machinery which was then coming into use in Europe." The population of the country increased from an estimate of 2,945,000 in 1780 to 3,924,000 in 1790 ; and it is curious to note that the percentage of decennial increase of thirty-three per cent, thus established in this decade maintained itself with approx- imative uniformity for each subsequent decade from 1790 to the breaking out of the rebellion in 1860. In an address before the "Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufac- tures," August, 1787, by Mr. Tench Coxe (aft- erward Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury under Hamilton), the great progress in agri- culture and manufactures "since the late War" was particularly dwelt upon. In Con- necticut, at this time, according to this au- thority, the household manufactures were such as to furnish " a surplus sold out of the Staff. New England linen had affected the price and importations of that article from New York to Georgia." In Massachusetts the importation of foreign manufactures was less by one -half than it was twenty years before, although population had great- ly increased, and considerable quantities of home-made articles were shipped out of the State. In one regular factory of the latter 'State there were made as much as 10,000 pairs of cotton and wool cards, 100 tons of nails in another, and 150,000 pairs of stuff and silk shoes in the single town of Lynn. In the course of the address, pattern cards, embracing thirty-six specimens of silk lace and edgings from the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, were exhibited. In Rhode Island the number of regular factories was stated to be " great in proportion to its pop- ulation." Mr. Coxe, however, greatly dep- recated the wasteful use of foreign manu- factures, and as an illustration stated that the importation into Philadelphia alone of the finer kinds of coat, vest, and sleeve but- tons, buckles, and other trinkets cost the wearers annually sixty thousand dollars. The sale of spinning-wheel irons from one shop in Philadelphia in 1790 amounted to 1500 sets, an increase of twenty-nine per cent, over the sales of the previous year. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, then the largest inland town in the United States, there were in 1786 about 700 families, of whom 234 were manufacturers, in which number were in- cluded 14 hatters, 36 shoe-makers, 25 tailors, 25 weavers of cloth, and 4 dyers. Within ten miles of the town were four oil mills, five hemp mills, one fulling-mill. Frederick and Elizabeth, towns in Maryland, and Stanton and Winchester, Virginia, were also impor- tant centres of domestic industry, the last- named being famous for its manufacture of hats. There was also a manufactory of glass at Alexandria, Virginia, which, according to the French traveler, De Warville, exported in 1787 glass to the amount of 10,000 pounds, and employed 500 hands. In 1789 Mr. Cly- mer, of Pennsylvania, stated in Congress that there were fifty-three paper mills with- in range of the Philadelphia market, and that the annual product of the Pennsylva- nia mills was 70,000 reams, which was sold as cheap as it could be imported, and that, too, in the absence of any duty. The com- piler of the Bibliotheca Americana, published in London in 1789, states that the people of North America manufactured their own paper in sufficient quantities for home con- sumption ; and the report of Secretary Hamilton the following year also repre- sents the paper manufacture as one of the branches of American industry which had HAMILTON'S REPORT. 161 arrived at the greatest perfection, and was "most adequate to national supply." And yet De Warville a few years previous wrote that on account of the scarcity and dear- uess of labor and of rags, the Americans could not for many years to come furnish sufficient paper for the prodigious consump- tion caused by the increase of knowledge and the freedom of the press. 1 An estimate made by Mr. Coxe in 1790 fixed the annual value of the manufactures of the United States for that year at more than $20,000,000. It is also curious to note that he took as the basis of his computation the returns of the manufacturing industry of Virginia, which then included Kentucky. As Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Coxe also asserted, about this period, that the manufactures of the United States were certainly greater than double the value of their exports in native commodities, and much greater than the gross value of all their imports, including the value of all the goods exported again. In January, 1790, President Washington delivered his first annual message to Con- gress, and it is noted that he was dressed at the time in a full suit of broadcloth, manufactured at the woolen factory of Col- onel Jeremiah Wordsworth, at Hartford, Connecticut, " where all parts of the busi- ness are performed except spinning." In this message the subject of the promotion of manufactures was commended to the at- tention of Congress ; and acting upon the suggestions of the President, Congress there- upon ordered that the Secretary of the Treas- ury " prepare and report a proper plan or plans for the encouragement and promo- tion of manufactories as will tend to ren- der the United States independent of other nations for essential, particularly for mili tary, supplies ;" and in accordance with this order Mr. Hamilton in the following year (1791) submitted his famous report, twice printed by order of Congress, on American manufactures. In this report the Secretary, after discuss- ing at length the relations of agriculture and manufactures to each other and the state, the importance of manufacturing es- tablishments as agencies for augmenting the 1 Bishop's History of American Manufactures. 11 produce and revenue of society, the then existing obstacles in the way of the exten- sion of American manufactures, the neces- sity of the adoption of a policy of encour- agement toward them by the state, and the unity of interest between the different sections of the country, presents in general terms an exhibit, classified under seventeen heads, of the manufacturing industries in the country, which had at that time made such progress as in a great measure to sup- ply the home market, and which were also carried on " as regular trades." Among these the Secretary enumerates manufac- tures of skins and leather, including under this head leather breeches and glue; flax and hemp, but not cotton ; iron, and most implements of iron and steel ; bricks and pottery ; starch and hair-powder ; manufac- tures of brass and copper, particularly spec- ifying utensils for brewers and distillers, andirons and philosophical apparatus ; tin- ware " for most purposes ;" carriages of all kinds ; " lamp-black and other painter's col- ors ;" refined sugars, oils, soaps, candles, hats, gunpowder, chocolate, silk shoes, and " wom- en's stuffs ;" snuff, chewing tobacco, etc., etc. " Besides these," he continues, " there is a vast scene of household manufacturing, which contributes more largely to the sup- ply of the community than could be imag- ined without having made it an object of particular inquiry." But as indicating how limited an idea of the actual and future re- sources of the country was even then pos- sessed by a mind so intelligent and com- prehensive as that of Alexander Hamilton, the following memoranda from this report are also exceedingly curious and pertinent. Thus, for example, under the head of coal, he notes "that there are several mines in Virginia now worked, and appearances of their existence are familiar in a number of places." " There is something," also says the Secretary, "in the texture of cotton which adapts it in a peculiar degree to the application of machines," and in a country in which a deficit of hands constitutes the greatest obstacle to success, this circum- stance particularly recommends its fabrica- tion. American cotton, he adds, can be pro- duced in abundance ; and " a hope may be reasonably indulged that with due care and attention" its quality will greatly improve. 162 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. Under the head of " the means proper to be resorted to" by the government for the promotion of manufactures, the Secretary, after enumerating and discussing the va- rious agencies " which have been employed with success iu other countries," gave his recommendation in favor of a system of "pecuniary bounties," and offered in support of t lie same the following reasons : " 1. It is a species of encouragement more positive and direct than any other. " 2. It avoids the inconvenience of a temporary aug- mentation of price, which is incident to some other modes. " 3. Bounties have not, like high protecting duties, a tendency to produce scarcity. " 4. Bounties are sometimes not only the best but the only proper expedient for uniting the encourage- ment of a new object of agriculture with that of a new object of manufacture. The true way to conciliate these two interests is to lay a duty on foreign manu- factures of the material the growth of which is de- sired to be encouraged, and apply the produce of that duty, by way of bounty, either upon the production of the material itself, or upon its manufacture at home, or upon both. In this disposition of the theory the manufacturer commences his enterprise under every advantage which is attainable as to quantity and price of the raw material, and the farmer, if the bounty be immediately to him, is enabled by it to enter into a successful competition with the foreign material." He accordingly recommended the imposi- tion of additional duties on imports, the pro- ceeds of which, after satisfying the national pledges in respect to the public debt, he pro- posed should constitute a fund for paying the bounties which might be decreed, and for the operations of a board to be estab- lished for promoting arts, agriculture, man- ufactures, and commerce. The members of this board were to consist of certain officers of the government, and were to apply the funds derived from the sources indicated to assist the immigration of artists and man- ufacturers, to promote the discovery and introduction of useful inventions and im- provements, and "to encourage by premi- ums, both honorable and lucrative, the ex- ertions of individuals and of classes in relation to the several objects they are charged with promoting." The bounties thus recommended were not, however, in- tended by the Secretary to be permanent ; for, as he remarks, their " continuance on manufactures long established must always be of questionable policy, because presump^ tion would arise in every such case that^ / t litre were natural and inherent impedi- ■ i incuts to success." j He also dwells at considerable length on a topic too often overlooked, namely, that it " is not merely necessary that the measures of government which have a direct view to manufactures should be calculated to assist and protect them, but also that those which collaterally affect them in the general course of administration should be guarded from any particular tendency to injure them;" and under this head especially asks atten- tion to " the unfriendly aspect of certain spe- cies of taxes toward manufactures." Among such he enumerates, first, all poll aud capi- tation taxes, which, if levied according to a fixed rule, operate unequally and injuriously on the industrious poor; "second, all taxes which proceed according to the amount of capital supposed to be employed in a busi- ness, or of profits supposed to be made on it, are unavoidably hurtful to industry : men engaged in any trade or business have com- monly weighty reasons to avoid disclosures which would expose with any thing like ac- curacy the real state of affairs, and allowing to the public officers the most equitable dis- positions, yet when they are to exercise a discretion without certain data they can not fail to be often misled by appearances ;" and finally, continues the Secretary, in words that deserve to be printed in gold on the walls of every legislative assembly, " arbi- trary taxes, under which denomination are comprised all those that leave the quantum . of the tax to be raised by each person to I the discretion of certain officers, are as con- . trary to the genius of liberty as to the max -J ims of industry." ' Although this celebrated report of Alex- ander Hamilton both at the time it was made and since has been regarded as a mod- el of clear and unanswerable reasoning, and was also unquestionably of great service to the country, yet it is well known that his specific recommendations of bounties in pref- erence to protective or prohibitory duties, and also for the repeal of all duties on im- ported cotton as a raw material of manu- factures, were not complied with ; but that, on the contrary, the system of protective duties on imports which then prevailed in Europe was gradually established in its place, and from that day to this has been continued. The period of the adoption of the Federal COTTON MANUFACTURE. 161$ Constitution, in 1789, marks also the period of the commencement of the manufacture of cotton in the United States, as a regular and systematic in contradistinction to a do- mestic and irregular business. Cotton had indeed been grown for many years previous throughout the Southern sections of the country, but its use up to 1789-90 had been almost exclusively domestic, and even for this purpose the quantity produced was in- adequate to supply the home demand. In fact, so little suspicion was entertained of the particular adaptability of the soil and climate of the Southern States for the cul- ture of cotton, that when in 1784 an Ameri- can ship entered Liverpool with eight bags of the fibre as a part of her cargo, the same was regarded as an unlawful importation, on the assumption that so large a quantity could not have been the produce of the United States. And as late, furthermore, as 1792 the cotton product of the United States was regarded as of so little value commer- cially that John Jay consented to the in- corporation of a provision (afterward re- jected by the Senate) in the treaty that he negotiated with Great Britain that "no cotton should be imported from the United States," the design on the part of Great Brit- ain being not to interfere with the cotton culture of the United States, but to secure for her own mercantile marine the exclu- sive movement of cotton from the West In- dies. Mr. Tench Coxe, in common with other members of the "Pennsylvania Soci- ety for Encouraging Manufactures," seems, however, to have early foreseen the future importance of cotton to both American ag- riculture and manufactures, and when the Convention for framing the Constitution assembled in Philadelphia his earnest rec- ommendations to the Southern delegates on the subject induced many of them, on their return home, to make personal efforts to interest their constituents in extending the cultivation of the fibre. The inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Compton, and Cartwright for carding, spin- ning, and weaving cotton by machinery were introduced in England between the years 1768 and 1788 ; and although at first were so much opposed that the iuventors were afraid to work openly, and had in some instances their lives threatened and their machinery destroyed, yet Parliament very early appreciated the national importance of ^lejkeveral inventions, and in accordance wrUHpliarrow spirit of the age, enacted in 1774, ;iM subsequently, most strict prohibi- tions of the export of any textile machinery from the kingdom. These statutes, which were vigilantly enforced by the British gov- ernment, together with a law against enti- cing artificers to emigrate, for a time proved most serious obstacles in the way of the in- troduction of the new English textile ma- chinery into the United States, although many most ingenious efforts to evade the law were made by oiu* countrymen. Mr. Tench Coxe, who omitted no opportunity to promote the cotton industry, at one time, for example, succeeded, after no little trou- ble and expense, in having secretly made in England models of a full set of Arkwright's machinery, but they were unluckily seized and confiscated as they were on the point of shipment. The information sought for was, however, gradually obtained, and in 1786 Hugh Orr, of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, a pioneer in American manufactures, noti- fied the Legislative of Massachusetts that he had in his employ two Scotchmen, broth- ers, by the name of Barr, who had some knowledge of the new cotton machinery. Thereupon the Legislature appointed a com- mittee to examine the men and find out what they knew, which committee subsequently reported in favor of a grant of £200 to the Barrs to enable them to complete certain machines, and also as a gratuity for " their public spirit in making them known to the public." Six tickets in a State Land Lot- tery, which had no blanks, were accordingly voted to the Scotch brothers by the Legis- lature, and out of the proceeds the first " stock card" and " spinning-jenny" made in the United States were constructed. These machines were deposited by the order of the General Court with Mr. Orr, who was allow- ed to use them, as some compensation for his exertions in the matter, and was also re- quested to exhibit them and explain their principles " to any who might wish to be informed of their great use and advantage in carrying on the woolen and cotton man- ufacture." The subsequent year, 1787, a company to manufacture cotton was organ- ized at Beverly, Massachusetts, with one or 164 PROGKESS IN MANUFACTURE. more spinning-jennies, imported or made from the State's models, and a carding-ma- chine, imported at a cost of £1100; and about the same time also several other cot- ton manufactories were projected or start- ed — at Worcester, Massachusetts ; Provi- dence, Rhode Island; Paterson, New Jer- sey, and other places ; none of which, how- ever, for want of skill or proper machinery, appear to have been successful. Meanwhile (1789) there arrived in New York a young Englishman, not twenty-two years of age, whose name, Samuel Slater, was destined to become famous in the man- ufacturing annals of the United States. He had been apprenticed at an early age to Jedediah Strutt, a partner with Sir Richard Arkwright in the cotton-spinning business, and had afterward served the firm as clerk and general overseer, until he had rendered himself perfectly familiar with the manu- facture of cotton as it was then carried on in the model establishments of Great Brit- ain. The reason which has been assigned for his emigration to the United States was a notice in the newspapers of a grant of £100 by the Legislature of Pennsylvania for the introduction of a new machine for carding cotton, and of the establishment of a society for promoting the manufacture of cotton. But be this as it may, the 18th of January, 1790, found him at Providence, Rhode Island, entered into partnership with the firm of Almy and Brown, under an agree- ment to construct the Arkwright series of machines, and carry on with his partners the manufacture of cotton by the improved methods. In consequence of the restri ctions on the emigration of artisans and the ex- portation of models and machinery from Great Britain, Mr. Slater did not on leaving home inform his family of his destination, or take with him any patterns, drawings, or memoranda that could betray his occupa- tion, and so lead to his detention. But so thoroughly was he master of his profession that by the 20th of December of the same year, having discarded all the old machin- ery previously used by Almy and Brown in their attempts to manufacture cotton, he had constructed, chiefly with his own hands, the whole series of machines on the Ark- wright plan, and had started three cards, drawing and roving frames, and two frames of seventy-two spindles. The machinery was first set in motion in an old building which had been used as a clothier's estab- lishment ; but in 1793 the new firm built a small factory, which may be considered as the first really successful cotton mill in the United States. The only thing then wanting to insure the rapid development of the cotton manu- facture not only in the United States, but throughout Europe, was an abundant sup- ply of the fibre at a cheap rate ; and this the invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whit- ney in 1793 at once supplied. For some years previous to this the price of cotton in the United States was about forty cents per pound, and it required oftentimes a day's labor to separate a pound of the clean staple from the seed. In 1795 Georgia cotton of good quality w T as offered in New York at Is. Gd. (thirty-six cents) per pound ; and at that time cotton continued also to be im- ported. When Slater first began to spin he used Cayenne cotton, but after a few years he began to mix about one-third of Southern cotton, the yarn produced being designated as second quality, and sold accordingly. The total cotton product of the world in 1791 has been estimated at about 490,000,000 pounds, or about a million bales, appor- tioned as follows : United States, 2,000,000 pounds; Brazil, 22,000,000 pounds; West. Indies, 12,000,000 ; Africa, 46,000,000 ; India, 130,000,000 ; the rest of Asia, 190,000,000 ; Mexico and South America, 68,000,000. Of the product of the United States at that time Georgia supplied about half a million pounds, and South Carolina a million and a half. In 1801 the product of the United States was estimated at 48,000,000 pounds ; and from that time the progress of the cul- ture of cotton is indicated by the following table : Yeare. Pounds. Years. Pounds. 1801 1811 1821 1S31-32... 48,000,000 80,000,000 180,000,000 :;.'.;.. ,000 1839-40... 1849-50. . . 1859-60... 1872-73... 834,000,000 958,000,000 2,241,000,000 l,v.'4, ,0110 It will thus be seen that the largest crop of cotton ever grown in the United States was in the year 1859-60, just previous to the outbreak of the rebellion; yet it has been demonstrated by Mr. Atkinson that in that year the amount of land occupied by the growth of cotton was less than two per COTTON MANUFACTURE. 165 cent. (1.634) of the territory of the United States which is especially adapted to its cultivation. In 1799 Mr. Slater built his second cotton mill, on the east side of thePawtucket River, in the limits of Massachusetts, the first mill ever erected in the State on the Axkwright system ; and by act of the Legislature the same, with all its appurtenances, was for a period of seven years exempted from taxa- tion. Until this date the improved meth- ods of manufacture had been confined to Mr. Slater and his associates, but after this men who had been in their employ, and bad learned the construction and operation of the machinery, left them, and commenced the erection of mills for themselves or other parties, and before the year 1808 fifteen cot- ton mills on the Arkwright basis were in successful operation in different sections of the country. The first cotton mill west of Albany was erected in the neighborhood of Utica, Oneida County, New York, in 1807-8. In 1807 the whole number of spindles in the United States was estimated at 4000 ; in 1808 the estimate was 8000 ; and in 1809, 31,000. From this time until 1840, apart from the annual estimates of the domestic consump- tion of cotton for all purposes, the statistics of the growth of the cotton manufacture in the United States are very deficient and uu- reliable. In 1815 the three States of Mas- sachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had 165 factories and 119,510 spindles. In 1831,795 factories and 1,246,500 spindles were reported for the whole country. In 1840, by the census, 2,285,000 spindles ; in 1850 (for New England only), 2,728,000 spindles. After this the data are reliable, and are as follows: 1860, 5,035,798 spindles; 1870, 7,114,000; 1874 (July 1), 9,415,383, of which 8,927,754 were returned for the Northern Stales, and 487,629 for the Southern. The recent rapid progress of the Southern States in the manufacture of cotton is indicated by the fact that in 1869 this section of the country had 225,063 spindles in operation, and in 1874, 487,629. The progress of the whole country in spinning spindles from 1870 to 1874 was about thirty-three per cent. The aggregate and average per capita man- ufacturing consumption of cotton in the United States since 1827 is shown by the following table : Years. Pounds. Consumption per Capita. 1S27 49,489,796 79,597,896 113,058,919 161,435,000 263,190,642 306,582,808 450,877,823 145,935,000 447,216,000 5C7,5s:;,s7;{ 4.22 5.31 6.68 8.15 11.34 11.40 14.32 5.21 11.57 13.50 1S35 1840 1845 1850 1855 1S60 1869 1ST4 In 1794 the price of Slater's cotton yarn, No. 20, was $1 21 per pound. In 1808 the price of the same number was $1 31. Power- loom weaving was first successfully intro- duced into Great Britain in 1806, previous to which time all weaving had been per- formed upon hand-looms. The first power- looms in the United States were put in op- eration at Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1814, and it was at the mills of the company at this place, also, that the spinning and weav- ing of cotton were for the first time com- bined in any large establishment. In this same year the price of cotton yarn was re- duced by the operations of the Waltham Company to less than one dollar per pound. In 1823 the "domestics" of the Waltham Company — which at about this time extend- ed its operations and built the first mill at Lowell — had become so popular that they were counterfeited by foreign manufactur- ers, and in 1827 it is recorded that the de- mand for American cottons in Brazil was considerably affected by imitations of them made at Manchester, England, and offered there (in Brazil) " at lower prices, although they could be made as cheaply in the United States as the same quality could be produced in Manchester." It is also a noteworthy circumstance that in 1850 in New England the ratio of cotton spindles to population was that of 1008 spindles to each 1000 in- habitants, while in Great Britain for the same year the ratio was 1003 spindles to 1000 inhabitants, so that at this period New England in respect to cotton had compara- tively exceeded Great Britain in its manu- facturing industry. From 1850 to 1860 and from 1860 to 1870 the number of spindles in New England increased much faster than the population, averaging in 1860 1265 and in 1870 1478 to each 1000 inhabitants. The most important cotton manufactur- ing States of the Union, arranged in the order of their consumption of cotton for the year 1874, were as follows : Massachusetts, 166 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maine, New York, Maryland, Georgia, New Jersey, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Virginia. Few or no cotton factories exist in the States of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kan- sas, Nebraska, California, or Oregon. The following table exhibits the amount and character of the principal products of the cotton manufactories of the United States for 1874 : such as lumber, sugar, ashes, wine, bricks, indigo, hemp, and the products of the fisher- ies, was at least $172,000,000, or including products of the nature specified, $198,000,000. In 1810, also, Mr. Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury,. reported to the House of Rep- resentatives that the following manufac- tures were carried on to an extent which might be considered adequate to the re- quirements of the United States for con- sumption, as the value of these products Statement of the Kinds and Quantities of Cotton Goods manufaotueed in the "United States fob the Yeab ending July 1, 1874. Threads, yarns, and twines lbs. Sheetings, shirtings, and similar plain goods yds. Twilled and fancy goods, osnaburgs, jeans, etc yds. Print cloths yds. Ginghams yds. Ducks yds. Bags 32,000,000 520,000,000 204,000,000 481,000,000 30,000,000 14,000,000 5,000,000 99,000,000 131,000,000 90,000,000 80,000,000 107,000,000 3,000,000 16,000,000 1,000,000 610,000,000 284,000,000 5S8,000,000 33,000,000 30,000,000 6,000,000 18,000,000 97,000,000 22,000,000 149,000,000 707,000,000 306,000,000 588,000,000 33,000,000 30,000,000 6,000,000 Besides the above, there is a large produc- tion of articles, like hosiery, etc., composed of mixed cotton and wool, for the details of which there are no satisfactory statistics. Among other notable improvements which were Invented and brought into use about the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution were those of Oliver Evans, of Pennsylvania, in respect to the manufacture of flour, the importance of which may per- haps be sufficiently indicated by saying that in all the subsequent progress of invention no radical change has ever been made in the system of "milling" machinery as Mr. Evans devised it, and that it constitutes to- day the mechanical basis upon which all the extensive flour mills of the United States and Europe are operated. The more spe- cial results of the invention were a saving of one-half the labor of attendance, a better product of manufacture, and an increase of about twenty-eight pounds of flour to each barrel above the method previously in use. As has been already stated, the value of the product of American manufactures for the year 1790, as estimated by Mr. Tench Coxe, was about $20,000,000. The census of 1810 fixed the total value of the manufactured products of the coun- try for that year at $127,000,000, but Mr. 'Coxe, to whom the returns were referred by resolution of Congress for revision, was of the opinion that the aggregate, exclusive ' of all products closely allied to agriculture, annually exported exceeded that of the for- eign articles of the same general class an- nually imported, viz., manufactures of wood, leather and manufactures of leather, soap and tallow-candles, spermaceti oil and can- dles, flaxseed oil, refined sugar, coarse earth- enware, snuff, hair -powder, chocolate, and mustard. The following branches were also reported as so firmly established as to supply in several instances the greater and in all a considerable pai't of the consumption of the country, viz., iron and manufactures of iron, manufactures of cotton, wool, and flax, hats, paper, printing types, printed books, and playing-cards, spirituous and malt liq- uors, gunpowder, window glass, jewelry and clocks, several manufactures of hemp and of lead, straw bonnets and hats, and wax- candles. 1 Accepting the estimates of Mr. Coxe, it also appears that the annual value of the manufactured products of the 8,500,000 pop- ulation of the United States in 1810, less than thirty years after the close of the Rev- olution, was in excess of that of Great Brit- ain, with her accumulated capital and ex- perience, in 1787, when the population of the United Kingdom closely approximated to the same figure. The immediate effect of the war of 1812, by increasing demand for all necessary prod- ucts, and at the same time cutting off all 1 Bishop's History of American Manufactures. AFTEE THE WAR OF 1812. 107 foreign imports and competition, was to im- part a most unnatural and unhealthy stim- ulus to American manufacturing industry. Capital, especially under the form of joint- stock companies, and often without the ex- ercise of the most ordinary prudence or fore- thought, hastened to inaugurate a host of new industrial enterprises. Mill privileges readily commanded most extravagant fig- ures, wages rose from 30 to 50 per cent., and raw materials and manufactured goods from 50 to 200 per cent. Cottons which had sold before the war at from 17 to 25 cents per yard, found purchasers by the package at 75 cents per yard ; and salt, which was, in 1812, 55 cents per bushel, commanded iu Oc- tober, 1814, $3 per bushel. The number of cotton mills in Rhode Island and in Massa- chusetts within thirty miles of Providence, at the commencement of the war in 1812, was about seventy ; at the close of the war, in 1815, this number had increased to ninety-six. So long as the war continued there was for nearly all these enterprises an apparent great prosperity, to magnify and inflate which an almost unlimited issue of paper money also powerfully contributed. All the banks in the country, save those in New En- gland, suspended specie payments in 1814 ; and the Federal government, finding itself short of revenue, early in the course of the war commenced the issue of Treasury paper. But as specie disappeared and redemption was abrogated, not only public and pri- vate banking associations, but manufac- turing and bridge - building associations, and even individuals, issued paper notes, which rapidly passed into circulation, and were largely taken by the public. Iu one session, that of 1813 - 14, the Legislature of Pennsylvania chartered forty-one new banks, with $17,000,000 of capital ; and ac- cording to one writer of the time, "the plenty of money was so profuse that the managers of the banks were fearful that they could not find a demand for all they could fabricate, and it was no infrequent occurrence to hear solicitations urged to in- dividuals to become borrowers, under prom- ises of indulgences the most tempting." The result was that the money of the coun- try in a great degree lost its value, and its depreciation, enhancing the prices of every species of property and commodity, appear- ed like a real rise in value, and induced all manner of speculations and extravagance. The editor of Niles's Register characterized "the prodigality and waste as almost be- yond belief," and speaks of the furniture of a single private parlor in one of the Eastern cities as costing upward of $40,000. On the other hand, Mr. Mathew Carey, of Phila- delphia, writing in 1816, called this period " the goldeu age of Philadelphia," and says, " The rapid circulation of property, the im- mensity of business done, and the profits made on that business produced a degree of prosperity which she had perhaps never before witnessed." And in another portion of the pamphlet from which the above lan- guage is quoted he further declared " that never was the country in a more enviable state." With the return of peace, and the conse- quent cessation of demand for commodities on the part of the government, the fall of prices, and the resumption of importations, all this bubble of prosperity, however, col- lapsed with great rapidity, and the country entered upon a period of prostration and stagnation of all industrial effort which has had no parallel iu all its history except possibly during the darkest hours of the Revolution. Expecting large demands aud high prices for commodities, English and American merchants imported enormously as soon as practicable after the ports had been opened ; but the markets becomiug soon overstocked, prices, under forced sales, declined to such an extent as to prove ruin- ous uot only to the importers, but also to a large proportion of the injudicious or high- cost manufacturing establishments whicb the war had stimulated into existence. To remedy this state of things, Congress in 1816 enacted the first strong protective tariff", al- though the average rate of duty imposed by it on all imports was only about twenty- five per cent., and on only a few articles was in excess of thirty per cent. It is in- teresting also to note that this measure was proposed and mainly supported by South- ern members of Congress — especially on the ground of encouraging the manufacture of our own cotton — and met with decided op- position from the people and Representa- tives of the North, whose capital and labor 168 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. were at that time largely interested in com- merce and navigation. But whatever may have heen the ulti- mate effect of this tariff, its immediate ben- eficial influence in restoring prosperity to the manufacturing and other interests of the country proved far less than what was anticipated. On the contrary, the stagna- I ion of every kind of trade and industry, in- stead of diminishing, continued to increase, and did not reach its maximum until four years after the war, or in 1819. Specie pay- ments were resumed in 1817; and as a legit- imate consequence no small proportion of the paper promises to pay, which had been so recklessly issued and so profusely circula- ted as money, without security behind them for their payment, rapidly became worthless in the hands of the holders. The United States Bank, which at that time was the great financial regulator of the exchanges of the country, became also involved, through imprudent or dishonest management — los- ing through its Baltimore branch alone $1,671,000 — and in attempting to save it- self wrought such new mischief that the previous financial and industrial disasters of the country became almost insignificant in comparison. Rents and values of all real estate and merchandise were enormously depreciated. The population of Philadel- phia decreased 10,000 between 1815 and 1820. At Pittsburg flour was one dollar per barrel, boards twenty cents per hundred, and sheep one dollar per head. Farms were mortgaged and sold every where for one- half to one-third of their value. Factories and workshops were every where closed; and in August, 1819, it was estimated by some authorities that as many as 260,000 persons, formerly dependent on manufac- tures, were absolutely without means of support. After 1819, although the depression of prices continued through 1820, affairs began to improve. In this latter year the site for the city of Lowell was purchased, and be- tween 182] and 1827 it. is noted that thirty new col ton factories were erected in the State of New York alone. But from the epoch of the great financial and industrial revulsion following the war of 1812 down to the year L850 there are no reliable data for exhibiting by decades, or for shorter peri- ods, the aggregate progress and results of American manufacturing industry. Some specific details of interest may, however, be mentioned. Thus, in 1821 the value of the manufac- tured products of the United States exported was equal to 28 cents per head of the entire population. In 1825 this value had risen to 51 cents, from which it declined in 1830 to 41 cents. In 1835 it was again 51 cents ; in 1840, 58 cents ; in 1845, 53 cents ; in 1850, 60 cents ; and in the period from 1851 to 1861 it attained the highest figures iu our in- dustrial history, namely, $1 40 in 1854 and $1 53 in 1860. Since the outbreak of the war, however, this representative value of exports of manufactures has not in any one year risen as high as $1 per capita for our en- tire population. In 1820 the total value of the books pub- lished in the United States was estimated at $2,500,000, and the relative proportion of British and American books consumed was estimated by S. C. Goodrich (Peter Parley) at seventy per cent, of the former to thirty of the latter ; but before 1850 the proportion of foreign books to American consumed in the country had become very inconsiderable. The mechanical inventions by which the cost of the manufacture of paper was great- ly reduced, through the substitution of ma- chinery producing a continuous sheet, in place of the old hand process by which sin- gle sheets were made successively and slow- ly, had their inception unquestionably in Europe at about the commencement of the present century, but the credit of so simpli- fying and enlarging the machinery as to make it practical and thoroughly efficient undoubtedly belongs to American paper- makers, John Ames, of Springfield, having been especially noted for his useful inven- tions. In 1800, "by the baud process, it took three months to complete the paper, ready for delivery, from the time of receiv- ing the rags into the mill." 1 At the present day twenty-four hours are amply sufficient. In 1820 the annual value of the product of the paper manufacturing industry of the United States was estimated at $3,000,000; in 1829, $7,000,000 ; in 1844, $16,000,000, by 600 mills ; in 1854, $27,000,000, by 750 mills ; 1 Munsell's Chronology of Paper and Paper-Making. IRON INDUSTRY. 169 in 1860, $39,428,000; and in 1870 (exclusive of paper-hangings), $48,675,000. The iron industry of the United States divides itself into two periods, one dating from the first settlement of the country to the end of the year 1862 ; the other extend- ing from 1863 to the end of 1873. The first period was one of gradual hut continuous growth ; the second was that in which the iron industry was stimulated into an extraor- dinary growth and activity, first by the war, and then by railroad building on the most extensive scale. The fact that both pig and bar iron were included among the regular exports of the country for many years prior to the Revolu- tion has been already noticed. After the war the progress of this industry was for a time very rapid, and in 1791 Mr. Hamilton in his report says, "Iron-works have great- ly increased in the United States, and are prosecuted with much more advantage than formerly." We find it also recorded at about this time that " a dangerous rivalry to British iron interests was apprehended in the American States, not only in the pro- duction of rough iron, from the cheapness of fuel and the quality of the iron, but also in articles of steel cutlery aud other finished products, from the dexterity of the Ameri- cans in the manufacture of scythes, axes, nails, etc." In 1810 Mr. Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, in a report on manufac- tures, classed that of iron as firmly estab- lished, and estimated the quantity of bar- iron produced to be 40,000 tons, against about 9000 imported. According to the census of 1810, there were 153 furnaces in the United States, producing 53,908 tons of iron, and four steel furnaces, producing 917 tons of steel, the importation of steel for the same year being reported at only 550 tons. The commercial and financial revulsions which followed the war of 1812-15 affected disastrously the iron manufacture in com- mon with all other industries ; but that it did not entirely interrupt it is shown by the fact that some new establishments of great importance went into operation at the time of the greatest depression ; and in 1816 the total import of pig-iron was but 329 tons. By 1824 the iron production and manufac- ture were both very active, and the pig-iron product of this year undoubtedly exceeded 100,000 tons. For 1832 it was reported at 200,000 tons. The first furnace for smelting with anthracite coal was built in 1837, but at the close of 1843 there were twenty an- thracite furnaces in successful operation. The first important demand for iron in the United States for railroad purposes com- menced in 1835, during which year 465 miles of road were constructed, followed by 416 iu 1838, 516 in 1840, and 717 in 1841. In regard to the production of pig-iron in the United States during the decade from 1840 to 1850, a period characterized by extreme variations in the tariff" policy of the government, there has been no little of controversy ; but the most careful investigation yet made into the subject (that of Hon. W. M. Grosvenor) leads to the conclusion that the product of 1840 was about 347,000 tons, and that it increased from that figure to an aggregate of not more than 551,000 tons in 1846, and 570,000 in 1848. Subsequent to this date the progress of the pig-iron industry may be accurately indicated as follows : 1850, 564,755 tons; 1855, 784,178; 1860, 919,770; 1865, 931,582 ; 1870, 1,865,000 ; 1873, 2,695,000. In 1865 the production of cast steel in the United States was 15,262 tons ; in 1873, 28,000 tons. In 1868 the production of pneumatic or Bessemer steel was 8500 tons; in 1873 (esti- mated), 140,000 tons. The recent progress of that department of the iron industry cf the United States engaged in the manufac- ture of rails for railroads is also indicated by the following statistics of annual prod- uct : 1849, 24 ; 314 tons ; 1855, 138,674 ; 1860, 205,038; 1865, 356,292; 1870, 620,000; 1872, 941,000 ; 1873, 850,000. In 1840 the consumption of iron in the United States for all purposes was estima- ted at about 40 pounds per capita ; in 1846, at about 60 pounds ; in 1856, at 64 ; and iu 1867, at (approximately) 100 pounds. The per capita consumption of Great Britain and Belgium alike for this latter year was 189 pounds ; and of France, 69-i pounds. For the years 1872-73 the per capita con- sumption of iron in the United States has been estimated as high as 150 pounds ; and that of Great Britain, at 200 pounds. It is more difficult to present the details of the growth and development of the wool- en manufacture of the United States than 170 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. those of almost any other great domestic in- dustry ; and this, in a great degree, for the reason that no other industry has been sub- jected to such violent and radical disturb- ances by reason of financial and commercial revulsions, and by the frequent changes in the fiscal policy of the government in re- spect to the tariff. Previous to the Revo- lution this branch of manufacturing was so successfully established that its progress was regarded with probably more of jeal- ousy and apprehension by Great Britain than that of any other colonial industry, and most stringent efforts were made by Parliament to check or suppress it. After the war the business generally changed its "home" or "domestic" character, and be- came more and more of a " factory" enter- prise, and developed rapidly, down to the period of the " embargo" of 1808. Before the " embargo" American woolens were made for $1 06 per yard, equal in fineness and quality with British goods of double the width, costing $3 50 per yard. The immediate effect of the embargo and of the subsequent war was to greatly stim- idate the manufacture of woolens ; but wool was so high and scarce as to command in 1815 $4 per pound, while broadcloths were as high as $18 per yard. The detailed ac- counts of one factory established at Goshen, Connecticut, in 1813, which have been pre- served, show that the proprietors purchased wool at $1 50 per pound, and sold cloth of a quality which at the present time would not command over $1 per yard, for $10 ; and, further, that the ultimate end of that factory after the war was an entire loss of the original capital, and three times as much more in addition. In the prostration of all business interests that followed the war the woolen industry participated, but yet not more largely than did that of cotton ; and it recovered so vig- orously that the capital invested in it was reported to Congress to have more than doubled between 1815-16 and 1827. From t his time, although the woolen manufacture has continued to increase, and at the pres- ent time has attained to a large develop- ment in almost every department, its record on the whole has been one of disaster rath- er than of success ; and the annals of Con- gress from 1827 onward are filled with ap- plications by representatives of the woolen interests for legislative relief, and with most pitiful statements of lack of profit, loss of capital, and abandonment of business. The explanation of this curious result in great part is that no one country produces all the different kinds of wool, which in variety of character may be said to range from the coarsest hair to the finest and most glossy eilk; and that in order that the manufac- ture of woolens may be conducted successful- ly, it is absolutely essential that the manu- facturer should be allowed to freely select his raw material from the peculiar products of every climate and soil, and at juices com- mon to all competitors. But such a condi- tion of things, through legislative interfer- ence, has not been given to American wool- en manufacturers in one single year since 1827 ; added to which there has been no sta- bility in the duties imposed on imported fabrics of wool, the tariff on the single ar- ticle of blankets, for example, having been subjected to five radical and sudden changes during the period from 1857 to 1867 inclu- sive. The extreme and rapid variations in the price of American wool (upon Avhich the American manufacturer has been obliged to mainly rely) since the year 1827 also strik- ingly illustrate how unstable have been what may be regarded as the fundamental elements of the business. Thus the average price per pound of common " fleece" in New York for the year 1825 was 33 cents ; in 1830, 22 cents ; in 1835, 33f cents ; in 1839, 38 cents ; in 1842, 19 cents ; in 1850, 35 cents ; in 1853, 41 cents ; in 1858, 30 cents ; in 1863, 67 cents ; and in 1873, 40 to 90 cents. By the census of 1840 the capital invest- ed in the manufacture of woolens in the United States was returned as in excess of $15,000,000, employing 21,000 persons, ami producing goods to the value of $20,696,000. Since 1850 the progress and condition of this industry as returned by the census are shown by the following table: Number of establishments Hands employed Capital invested Value of product 1,559 39,252 $.28,118,000 $43,207,000 1,260 41,360 $30,862,000 $61,894,000 2,891 93,108 $108,998,000 $177,963,000 AGGREGATE ANNUAL PRODUCTION. 171 In 1850 the Federal government for the first time attempted to ascertain through the machinery of the census with any ap- proach to accuracy the exact condition and annual product of all the various industries of the country, not, however, including any establishment the value of whose annual product was not in excess of $500. The amount of capital at that time invested in manufactures in the whole country was re- turned at $553,123,822, and the value of the annual product (including fisheries and the products of the mines) at $1,019,106,616. By the census of 1860 the aggregate capi- tal employed in manufacturing for the whole country was returned at $1,009,855,715, and the gross value of the total annual product at $1,885,861,676, an increase as compared with the aggregate of 1850 of about eighty- eight per cent. By the census of 1870 the aggregate manufacturing capital returned was $2,118,208,000, and the gross value of the total annual product of manufactures $4,232,325,442. Reducing the census state- ments of these values of the annual product to equal terms respectively, the increase in the reported values of the products of man- ufacturing industry for the decade from 1860 to 1870 was one hundred and eight per cent. But of this increase fifty-six per cent, was computed to represent merely the enhance- ment of prices in 1870 over those of 1860 by reason of the inflation of the currency and other general causes, leaving fifty-two per cent, as the actual increase in the value of production. Of this latter increase it was further estimated that about twenty-eight per cent, was due to increase during the decade in the amount of labor employed, and twenty-four per cent, to the applica- tion of steam or water power, the intro- duction of machinery, and the perfecting of processes. But the evidence is unquestionable that the returns of both the census of 1860 and that of 1870 in respect to the aggregate value of the annual product of our manu- facturing industries were much less than the actual facts warranted, and that if prop- er account had been taken of the omissions and deficiencies in the estimates of the pe- riods above given, the true value of the an- nual manufacturing product for 1860 would have been about $2,325,000,000 in place of $1,885,000,000, and for 1870 $4,839,000,000 in place of $4,232,000,000. Careful investigation has also shown that the data upon which the amount of capital invested in manufactures in the United States has from time to time been estimated under the census have been too unreliable and imperfect to authorize any but the most general conclusions; and furthermore that the results of any inquiry by Federal or State officials looking to the obtaining of accurate information respecting invested capital must, from the almost universal un- willingness of persons interested to give in- formation, be ever most unsatisfactory, if not wholly worthless. Thus the estimate under this head, based on the official returns of the census for 1870, was, as before shown, $2,118,000,000 ; but this sum, in the opinion of the Superintendent of the Census, Hon. F. A. Walker, did not in fact truly repre- sent more than one -fourth of the capital which actually contributed to make up the gross annual value of the manufactured product returned for the year 1870. RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF THE MANUFACTUR- ING INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES. The following detailed statements, com- piled from the returns of the census of 1870, indicate the relative importance of the great manufacturing industries of the country : Leather (including the dressing and tan- ning of skins, the manufacture of boots and shoes, saddlery, harnesses, belting, hose, pocket - books, trunks, bags, and valises, but excluding all other manufactures). — Hands employed, 202,613 ; capital invested, $133,902,000; value of annual product, exclu- sive of value of material used, $162,872,000. Lumber (planed and sawed). — Hands em- ployed, 163,511 ; capital invested, $161,406,- 000 ; value of annual product, exclusive of value of material used, $120,201,000. Flouring and Crist Mill Products. — Hands employed, 58,448 ; capital invested, $151,565,- 000 ; value of annual product, exclusive of value of material used, $77,593,000. Pig and Bar Iron Manufacture (including pigs, blooms, and iron forged and rolled). — Hands employed, 78,347 ; capital invested, $119,860,000 ; value of annual product, ex- clusive of value of raw material used, $70,272,000. Clothing (ready-made). — Hands employed. 172 PROGRESS IN MANUFACTURE. 118,824; capital invested, $52,743,000; value of annual product, exclusive of value of ma- terial used, $69,600,000. Manufactures of Cotton (including batting and wadding, thread, twine, and yarns). — Hands employed, 136,763 ; capital invested, $140,900,000 ; value of annual product, ex- clusive of value of raw material used, $64,828,000. Manufactures of Wool (including woolen and worsted goods, wool carding, and cloth dressing). — Hands employed, 93,108 ; capital invested, $108,998,000 ; value of annual prod- uct, exclusive of value of material used, $66,745,000. Machinery. — Hands employed, 83,514 ; cap- ital invested, $101,181,000 ; value of annual product, exclusive of value of material used, $57,597,000. Carriages and Wagons (including building and repairing of railroad cars, children's wagons, and sleds). — Hands employed, 71,772 ; capital invested, $53,941,000 ; value of annual product, exclusive of value of material used, $56,565,000. Agricultural Implements. — Hands employ- ed, 25,279 ; capital invested, $34,834,000 ; val- ue of annual product, exclusive of value of material used, $30,593,000. Paper (exclusive of paper-hangings). — Hands employed, 17,910 ; capital invested, $39,362,000 ; value of annual product, exclu- sive of value of material used, $18,648,000. Stoves, Heaters, and Hollow Ware. — Hands employed, 13,325; capital invested, $19,833,- 000 ; value of annual product, exclusive of value of material used, $14,345,000. Hats and Caps. — Hands employed, 16,173; capital invested, $6,409,000 ; value of annual product, exclusive of value of material used, $12,587,000. Silk (including sewing and twist). — Hands employed, 6699 ; capital invested, $6,242,000 ; value of annual product, exclusive of value of material used, $4,415,000. It thus appears that the preparation and manufacture of leather ranks first in impor- tance of the various manufacturing indus- tries of the United States, and that the in- dustries represented by the planing and sawing of lumber, and by the "milling" of cereals, take precedence over the primary manufactures of iron and over the great textile industries of cotton and of wool. NUMBER OF PERSONS EMPLOYED. By the census of 1870, 11,155,240 persons, twenty years of age and upward, were re- turned according to occupations. Of this number 2,500,189 were engaged in manufac- tures and mining, being a gain of twenty-eight per cent, since 1860, or five and one-half per cent, more than the ratio of decennial in- crease in population. The number em- ployed in agriculture was at the same time returned at 5,151,767, and in trade and trans- portation at 1,117,928. SOCIAL CONDITION OF LABORERS. The data and material for describing the condition of laborers engaged in the manu- facturing industries of the United States at different periods are very meagre. During the colonial period and the early days of the republic there was but little accumula- ted national wealth, but what there was was probably distributed with more of equality than has ever prevailed in any other large community of which we have a correct his- tory for any lengthened period. At the commencement of the present century there were probably a smaller number of individ- uals in the country, in proportion to the whole population, who possessed an accu- mulated capital of $5000 than there are at the present time who possess $100,000. But if there was but little accumulated wealth in the early days of our national history, there was but little poverty, and conse- quently but few social distinctions, and the natural resources of the country then as now afforded remarkable facilities to all who were willing and able to work for earning a comfortable livelihood. With the gradual accumulation of wealth, the utili- zation of natural forces through the agency of machinery, and the great improvements in the means of transportation, the consum- ing power of the masses has also greatly in- creased, and many things which were once regarded as luxuries have come to be con- sidered by even the humblest in the light of necessities. But it can not, at the same time, be doubted that the general tendency of events during the last quarter of a cen- tury of our national history has been to more unequally distribute the results of in- dustrial effort, to accumulate great fortunes in a few bauds — in short, to cause the rich SOCIAL CONDITION OF LABORERS. 173 to grow richer ani the poor poorer. Such results, however, can not he referred to any- one cause, but they are primarily due to an abandonment of that spirit of economy which so pre-eminently characterized our ancestors ; to a marked decrease in the effi- ciency of labor ; to a continual, if not in- creasing, use of artificial stimulants ; to the crowding of population in large industrial and commercial centres ; to war ; to the in- terference of legislation with the freedom of trade ; and latterly, to the use of an unsta- ble, fluctuating medium of exchange, which all experience shows is one of the greatest curses that can befall the laboring popula- tion of any country. As elements for estimating the social con- dition of laborers in the manufacturing in- dustries of the United States, the statistics of the wages paid in different occupations are most important ; and from the great mass of information on this subject which has recently been collected and published the following general items have been se- lected. Thus in Pennsylvania, the leading State in the production and fabrication of iron, the average earnings per annum in the different manufacturing establishments of the State for the years 1872-73 (as reported by the State Bureau of Statistics of Labor) were as follows : foremen, $638 per annum ; skilled workmen, $536 ; laborers, first-class, $402; laborers, second-class, $332; females above sixteen, $228 ; youths, apprentices, etc., $150. In Massachusetts for about the same pe- riod the average wages reported in the cot- ton-manufacturing industry were, for men, $403 per annum; women, $268; children, $134. In the silk industry the average earnings per hand in the most prosperous establish- ments probably approximate $335 per an- num as a maximum. In the woolen industry the average daily wages of 5500 operatives in the mills of Massachusetts were reported for the year 1871 as follows : men, $1 62 per day ; women, $112; young persons, 94 cents; children, 64 cents. In any limited review of the progress of a great nation for a period of one hundred years, in respect to any one of its leading departments of industry, much that is inter- esting and suggestive must of necessity be wholly omitted, and many things treated most superficially. But a general conclu- sion to which a study of all the facts con- nected with our national development from the time of the founding the first colonies in the wilderness to the epoch of the Decla- ration of Independence, and from the estab- lishment of peace and the adoption of the Federal Constitution to the present hour, is that the progress of the country, especially in respect to its manufacturing industry, and through what may be termed its ele- ment of vitality, is independent of legisla- tion, and even of the impoverishment and waste of a great war. Like one of our mighty rivers, its movement is beyond con- trol. Successive years, like successive afflu- ents, only add to and increase its volume, while legislative enactments and conflicting commercial and fiscal policies, like the con- struction of piers and the deposits of sunken wrecks, simply deflect the current or consti- tute temporary obstructions. In fact, if the nation in all respects has not yet been lifted to a full comprehension of its own work, it builds steadily and detenuinately, and, as it were, by instinct. IV. AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. THE early colonists of the United States were largely agriculturists, or became so within a very few years after their ar- rival. A hundred and fifty years before our Independence, agriculture had already a promising foot-hold in several places within our present domain ; a full century before the same date in our history the settle- ments were quite widely extended, near- ly all the useful domestic animals and cul- tivated plants of Europe had been tried on our soil, and most of those we now have were already in successful use. New and peculiar problems were present- ed to the new settlers. In the New World they found every thing new. The wild plants were new to them, and the good or bad qualities of each could only be learned by experience, for whether a plant was to be a valuable forage plant or a pestilent weed could not be foretold. Their crops as well as their flocks were subject to rav- ages by new enemies. Emigrants from near- ly every part of Europe brought with them the useful plants they had known at home. But from whatever country they came, and wherever they settled here, they found a climate unlike any they had known before. In the North they encountered a most try- ing climate, where an almost arctic winter was followed by a semi-tropical summer; the severity of the winter prevented the success of some of the crops which flourish- ed well during summer, while the drier air, clearer sky, and more fervid sun of summer proved unpropitious to others. The warm- er parts, too, were unlike the warmer parts of Europe. As a consequence, the adapta- bility of each crop to our climate had to be tried for itself in each locality. This great experiment went on until one by one these questions were settled. Some crops, after repeated failures, were abandoned, and oth- ers found their appropriate localities. Hemp, indigo, rice, cotton, madder, millet, spelt, lentils, lucern, sainfoin, etc., were tried and failed in New England, as did other croj)S in the Southern colonies. Not only the plants of Europe, but many from Asia and the East Indies, were tried, including such spices as cinnamon, also various commer- cial plants. Some of these crops, on ex- periment, failed entirely. Others flourish- ed after a fashion, but proved unprofitable ; others flourished with peculiar luxuriance, and with characters unchanged; and still others, under the new conditions, assumed new characters or excellences. Before the war of the Eevolution these trials had been made along or near the coast from Maine to Texas, and so completely had this century and a half of experiments solved the great problems of adaptation, acclimation (and often naturalization), that not a single im- portant species of domestic animal has been profitably introduced since, and but one plant, sorghum, since added is of sufficient importance to be recognized in our official statistics. The agriculture of most civilized coun- tries is based on the rearing and use of cer- tain domestic animals, and these in turn depend on the pastures and meadows. The only exception to this is where the cultiva- tion of commercial plants greatly predom- inates over all other crops. The forage grasses used in Europe were practically in- digenous there, and were such as ages of cultivation or use had adapted to the condi- tions there found. In Great Britain, and perhaps also throughout Northern Europe, the actual cultivation of their native grass- es only became common toward the close of the last century. Before that they knew lit- tle or nothing of seeding lands to grass, and their pastures and meadows were fostered rather than cultivated. Such cultivation, however, had sprung up in the colonies much earlier, and from dire necessity. Of nearly 300 species of grasses now known to be indigenous to some part of the United States, very few indeed seem well adapted to cultivation. Perhaps more than nine- tenths of the forage of to-day in the culti- vated parts of this country is furnished by plants introduced. How and why the arti- AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS. 175 ficial production of pastures and meadows and the cultivation of the true grasses sprung up in the American colonies north of the Chesapeake, how the grasses which we derived from Europe, half wild, were caught and tamed, as it were, and sent back for cultivation, is an interesting chapter in the history of American agriculture in colo- nial times, hut it requires more space than we can give it in this review, and is only alluded to because of its relation to stock- raising, to be noticed later. Agriculture as an art had reached nearly as high a point a hundred years ago as it occupies to-day, but agriculture as a science has nearly its whole history in the century we are to consider. Science belongs to no particular nation; and thus it is that we can not consider the agricultural progress of the United States entirely independent of that of other lands: it forms too inti- mate a part of the agricultural progress of the age. The century is especially characterized in history by mechanical invention and by the growth of the so - called natural sci- ences, these two beiug intimately related ; and it is through them that all the greater changes have occurred. The mechanical progress of the century has been so fully treated in previous papers that its relations to agriculture will in this be treated only incidentally ; but all im- provements in tillage, in planting, in har- vesting, in preparing for market, and in transportation are related to the subject under consideration. The " Centennial of Chemistry" was cel- ebrated in both Europe and America in 1874. The specific branch of that science, agricultural chemistry, belongs properly to this century only. Through its influence have come more philosophical theories of the rotation of crops, of the nature and use of manures ; and the whole commerce in and manufacture of " commercial fertiliz- ers" is the direct result of this science. It has, moreover, thrown great light on the nature of the soil and its tillage, on drain- ing and irrigation, on the nutrition and fat- tening of animals, and the production of wool, flesh, butter, and cheese. Moreover, chemistry, in its extensive applications in various manufacturing processes, has intro- duced new uses for agricultural products as raw material. The biological sciences have aided in their way. The laws of vegetable and animal growth are better understood, and by the application of this knowledge old varieties and breeds are improved with more ease and certainty, and new ones are made at pleas- ure for specific uses. In noting our agricultural progress along the three ways indicated, that produced by mechanical invention comes naturally first, but the three classes of improvemeuts are parallel, and each blends with the other along nearly the entire course. The first and most obvious aid of mechan- ical invention has been to lessen the amount of human labor required to produce a given amount of agricultural product. For many of the processes new machines have been devised, and in those cases where old kinds of implements or tools have remained in use, they have been improved in quality, aud usually cheapened in price. The simpler tools of a century ago were made mostly on the farms where they were to be used, or by the neighboring mechanic. They were usu- ally heavy and costly to use, that is, costly in labor. With the specialization of labor, and the use of special machinery for the purpose, the manufacture of agricultural implements has become a great industry, the last national census enumerating over 2000 establishments, the value of whose products for that year amounted to over $50,000,000, the value of the product in 1850 having been less than $7,000,000. The val- ue of the farming implements in use on the farms in 1870 was about $337,000,000, while in 1850 it was only about $152,000,000. These figures of manufacture and use at these two periods indicate extraordinary progress in agricultural operations in those twenty years. This will be more apparent if we consider, in a general way, the different processes. First, as regards the implements of tillage, we may say that either old ones have been improved or new ones devised. Scarcely one remains in its old state. Some of the improvements economize power, others ma- terial, and others time : and what the aggre- gate cheapening of labor in tillage actually is it is impossible to say. A single laborer 176 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. can certainly till more than twice the acre- age, and with some crops three, four, or five times as much. Beginning with the im- provement in hoes and simple tools, then passing to iron or steel plows, cultivators, horse -hoes, pulverizers, crushers, etc., the entire process of tillage has been modified, and animal power performs much that was then done by human muscle. Steam tillage is on trial, or at least steam plowing is, but is not yet common enough to be considered more than a limited experiment. Drilling machines for planting certain crops were used to a limited extent before the Revolution. In Eliot's "Fifth Essay on Field Husbandry," published in 1754, he says : " Mr. Tull's Wheat Drill is a wonderf nil Invention, but it being the first invented of that Kind, no Won- der if it be intricate, as indeed it is, and consists of more Wheels and other Parts than there is really any Need of. This I was very sensible of all along, but knew not how to mend it. Therefore I applied my- self to the Reverend Mr. Clap, President of Yale Col- ledge, and desired him for the regard he had for the Publick and to me that he would apply his mathemat- ical Learning and mechanical Genius in that Affair; which he did to so good Purpose that this new mod- elled Drill can be made for the fourth Part of what Mr. TulVs will cost." We find that a drill for spreading manure was soon afterward devised, and various drills have been in use ever since. The history of the above drill has been repeat- ed in numerous instances. The more intri- cate and expensive machines of Europe have been simplified and cheapened here, and thus brought into quicker use. The threshing machine and reaper were both undoubtedly invented in Great Britain, but in America they were simplified, cheapened, and, to use an Americanism, were made handier, hence more practical. Although drills thus early came into use, nearly all the planting was done by hand until less than forty years ago, particularly for the ce- reals. Now drills or sowers of some kind are in almost universal use on the larger farms. The improvement for harvesting has been much greater than for either tillage or plant- ing. Previous to 1850 the scythe and sickle were the almost universal tools for cutting, and the common use of the modern reaper and mower dates back but about twenty years. Labor has always been dearer here than in Europe, hence the sickle was never so much used as was the scythe. As to what its capacity was here we have no pre- cise data. Experiments and estimates pub- lished by the Highland Agricultural Society in Scotland in 1844, and approvingly quoted by standard authorities on British agricul- ture later, give " the average quantities of ground reaped by seven persons, on an aver- age of ten hours' work," as one to one and a half acres of wheat, and two to three acres of oats and barley. (A bandwin of reapers con- sists usually of seven persons, who cut, bind, and stook the grain.) By the use of the cradle in this country, one and a half acres of wheat was not a large day's work to be cut by one man, raked, bound, and stooked by two others, but this was doubtless above the average. With hay, two acres per day is a reasonably large amount. At a recent meeting of a certain State Board of Agri- culture, in a discussion concerning hay, the belief was concurred in that "hired labor with a scythe mows much less than one and a half acres per day per man on the aver- age." It is safe to say that a man with a team of horses and modern mower or reap- er will average about six times as much as with a scythe. Under the best conditions more is done (we hear of fifteen or twenty acres sometimes), but the average would be not far from this estimate. With our hay crop nearly every step in the process has been changed. The horse-rake came into general use before the reaper, the tedder and horse-fork later. A century ago all the processes were by hand labor ; now the only labor performed in the old way is pitching on the load, loading, hauling, and stowing or stacking, and each of these is done with improved tools. To obtain the most profitable yield of hay or grain, it must be cut and secured at just the right time, hence with most crops this has always been considered the most critical period, and the labor then required brings the highest wages. If cut too early, it is immature ; if too late, it deteriorates or wastes. Moreover, it is then especially subject to damage by unfavorable weather. Taking all these into account, it is seen that the actual gain to agriculture by the use of the various harvesting machines can not be measured by merely noting the relative areas operated on by a man PREPARATION FOR MARKET. 177 in a given time by the old methods com- pared with the new. With the great crops of cotton, Indian corn, potatoes, and tobacco there has been no such great advance. With cotton, the nature of the crop and the prolonged har- vest forbid hope for much improvement, and a similar condition exists in the case of tobacco. With potatoes and Indian corn there have been many attempts, with but very moderate success as yet. Intimately connected with the harvest is the preparation for market ; and in this the progress, as a whole, has been even more marked than in either of the processes al- ready noticed. The most illustrious exam- ple is seen in the cotton crop. In no other case has tbe cultivation of a great staple by people of European civilization depended for its success upon the solution of a single and simple mechanical problem. We hear of cotton being planted in our colonies as early as 1621, and again, in the Carolinas, in 1G6G, and during the century after the last date it is often spoken of. It was tried over and over again along nearly the whole extent of the colonies. Eliot, in his " Second Essay on Field Husbandry," published in 1749, tells of his experiments with it in Con- necticut. It appears to have been, how- ever, a rather rare garden plant until just after the close of the Revolutionary war, when it was introduced anew, and soon aft- er that its field cultivation began. But its production was extremely limited by tbe cost of getting it ready for market. Hand labor was expensive ; and so long as a la- borer could prepare but a single "pound per day" there could be no great breadth of culture, no matter how fertile and cheap the soil, how favorable the climate, or how complete the means of tillage. The inven- tion of the cotton-gin in 1793 placed it on the same level with other field products. Since then the rapid increase of its produc- tion is one of the marvels of the century. A single generation saw the crop grow from nothing to be the great commercial plant of the world, constituting, some years, five- sixths of our entire agricultural exports. The relations of this growth to the civil- ization and prosperity of many countries, and especially its relations to our own so- cial and political history, furnish perhaps 12 the most romantic chapter in the retrospect of agriculture. Threshing machines for our cereals were practically unknown here before the pres- ent century. We infer from the journals of that day that they came into somewhat common use in Great Britain between 1810 and 1820 ; their universal use there was still later by some years, the flail continu- ing to be a common implement down to 1850. The dearness of labor and other reasons caused the flail to be used relatively less in this country than in Europe, yet it was not a rare implement by any means down to 1830 or later. Grain was, however, usually trodden out with horses, or threshed by dragging over it a great roller armed with large wooden pins. This was an approved implement, and received the official recom- mendation of at least one agricultural soci- ety as late as 1816, and the writer has seen it in use as late as 1835. In the better farm- ing regions of the Middle States, early in the present century, eight to twelve bushels of wheat per day were considered a good aver- age for a man to thresh with a flail. Thresh- ing was largely done in the winter, and where horses were used to tread out the grain, twenty -three to thirty bushels per day for three horses and a man and boy were common results. The average was perhaps not much above the lowest figures here given. To illustrate : in a specific case in 1826, on one farm in a prosperous and old farming region, 1300 bushels of wheat were threshed, the grain winnowed, and the straw drawn from the barn to a neigh- boring field, in twelve weeks, two men and five horses performing the labor. This was considered, in that neighborhood, good work. Before 1825 threshing machines were very rare in this country, but between that date and 1835 their use spread rapidly, and be- fore 1840 comparatively little of the cereal grains was threshed by other means. For cleaning grain the hand fan was extensive- ly employed in 1776, but fanning-mills came into common use long before threshing ma- chines. The first threshing machines mere- ly threshed, next separators were added, and then " cleaners ;" and now the grain is threshed and cleaned for market in one operation. Horses were the universal power 178 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. applied until quite lately. Now steam-pow- er is extensively used, particularly in the Western States and in California. Horse- power, however, is still in general use. What the possible capacity of the modern thresher is, when working under the most favorable conditions, although an interest- ing question, is not the one we have to con- sider here, but rather what is the average of good work, or work that can be common- ly hoped for by good farmers. The larger machines are mostly employed in doing cus- tom work, and time is lost in passing from farm to farm, and in the delays which are unavoidable in work affected by so many conditions. A steam-thresher, under such conditions as they have in California, will thresh, in actual practice, from 40,000 to 100,000 bushels of grain in a "season" of three months. With such a machine, oper- ated by a gang of eighteen hands, whose combined wages (in the year 1874) would amount to forty-three dollars per day, 2000 bushels of wheat per day is fair work. A recent agricultural journal states of the act- ual practice that the " full capacity of such a machine is 1500 sacks a day, the average work about 1000, holding over two bushels each." This means that the grain is thresh- ed, cleaned, put in sacks, and the sacks piled up ready for removal by cars or team, and amounts to over a hundred bushels per day per man. Vastly larger figures are cited for short periods under exceptionally favor- able conditions. The agricultural papers of the same State mention incidentally, as a local news item, a horse-power machine which averaged 1500 bushels of wheat per day for thirty-one successive days, moving on twenty -eight different farms in that time, and speak of another (also horse- power) which in 1874 threshed and cleaned 80,400 bushels iu fifty-two days, of which 11,300 bushels were threshed in five and a half days. The effect of these improved methods is best seen by noting the total saving of the several processes. A hundred years ago, to cut a hundred bushels of wheat required about three days' work (which could not be delegated to other power) ; to bind and stook it, four days; to thresh and clean it, five days, which, with the other processes be- tween the standing grain and the merchant- able product, would amount to some fifteen days' actual manual (and mostly very hard) labor for each hundred bushels. The av- erage was doubtless more than this, that is, a day's labor would not get more than six or seven bushels of grain through these processes. The president of an agricultural society in California in 1866 stated that on his farm that year 40,318 bushels of grain (three- fourths of it wheat) were harvested, thresh- ed, cleaned for the market, and stored in the granaries in thirty-six days, including all delays, with an average of twenty-two hands. This is an average of about fifty bushels per man per day for the entire crop. Much larger figures are reported in other cases of later date ; but the exact data are not at hand. While such progress has not marked the gathering and preparing of all the crops, yet it has extended to so many of them that all the more laborious processes have been revolutionized. It must be borne in mind that mechanical invention has not only aided agriculture, but that in turn it has been stimulated by the wants of agriculture, and some of the most profitable patents have been in this direction, and we get a vivid idea of the demand and supply of new methods and ap- pliances in the fact that the Patent-office issues about twelve hundred patents per year relating to agriculture. It is through the aids of mechanical in- vention, including the means of transpor- tation, that what is known as " the Great West" has been so rapidly settled and its products made accessible to the world. That soils became exhausted by cropping, and that the exhaustion could be checked by manuring, were facts well enough known from remote antiquity: the philosophical reason why was left for agricultural chem- istry to discover. So soon as chemical analysis became established on a reasonably sure foundation, and chemistry began to as- sume the character of an exact science, practical applications to agriculture began to follow. Chemical experiments relating to this art had been made earlier by Arthur Young and others, but agricultural chemis- try, as the science we now know it, began with Sir Humphry Davy. He first lectured AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY. 179 before the English Board of Agriculture in 1802. He experimented on guano, phos- phates, and various other manures, and an- alyzed them. He lectured again before the Board of Agriculture in 1812, and these lect- ures furnished the basis of his Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, published in 1813. This work was extensively read, and was translated and printed in several languages. During the next thirty years there were numerous experimenters, and it was a pe- riod rich in discoveries in chemistry. Spren- gel made many analyses of the ashes of plants about 1832, and then came the works of Johnston, Mulder, and others ; but it was left to Liebig to bring order out of the great mass of experiment and theory which had accumulated, and to really place agri- cultural chemistry on its present founda- tion. His Chemistry in its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology appeared in 1840, and soon after Boussingault published his Economic Rurale. Johnston published his Lectures on the Applications of Chemistry and Geology to Agriculture in 1844, since which time works on this department of science have been particularly numerous. While the science has had most of its development in Europe, America has not been without its workers, and the later writings of Pro- fessor Johnson have been republished in Europe in the English, German, Swedish, and Russian languages. " The art of manuring" was a favorite theme in olden times, and it was an art brought to high perfection ; but it follow- ed experience only. With the aid of chem- istry the art assumed the features of a sci- ence. Manures known before were used to better advantage, rare ones brought into greater prominence, and new ones devised. The introduction of turnips and clover into extensive cultivation in England about the time of the American Revolution, and the great rise in rents soon after, produced a radical change in the systems of rotation and tillage, and the discoveries in chemis- try came in at just the right time to supple- ment this. Bones had long been used, but their special merits were pointed out by Davy, and soon their use became very ex- tensive. Then followed the manufacture of superphosphates. To show what great and speedy chancres were wrought through these means, where mechanical invention had but little to do with results, a single illustration may be given. A light-house, known as the Dunston Pillar, was built on the Lincoln Heath, in Lincolnshire, about the middle of the last century. This was said to be the only land light-house known. It was built to guide travelers over the bar- ren and dreary waste, and it long fulfilled its useful purpose. This pillar, no longer a light-house, now stands in the midst of a fer- tile and wealthy farming region, where all the land i3 in high cultivation. For twen- ty-five years no barren moors have been in sight even from its top. Turnips and phos- phates were the principal means through which this great change came. In this country the abundance of fertile soil and its cheapness, and the cost of labor, while inducing the use of improved implements and machines earlier than in Europe, hin- dered rather than accelerated the use of chemical aids. It was easier to break new land, particularly if it were prairie, than it was to renovate the old. For a long while bones were extensively exported from this country to England, but since the year 1850 the use of commercial fertilizers has been rapidly increasing, until now it has reached immense proportions. The history of the use of guano is some- what similar to that of the phosphates. This material has been in use as a manure on the western side of South America for centuries, and from time to time its merits were spoken of in European publications. 1 Its use, however, remained local until it was prominently brought into notice by the modern agricultural chemists. How early it was brought to Europe can not now be as- certained. Sir Humphry Davy experiment- ed with it as early as 1805; but it was not until after the recommendations of Liebig that it began to be an article of commerce. A few casks were imported into England in 1840 " as an experiment." It was followed by 2000 tons the next year, and in sixteen i In The Art of Metals, written " in the kingdom of Peru, in the West Indies, in the year 1640," translated and published in London in 16T4, it is said that " out of the Islands of the South Sea, not far from the City of Arica, they fetch earth called Guano," etc. And then follows a description, and the statement that it is used for manure, and that the fields are " put in heart there- by for 100 years after." 180 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. years its aggregated sales in Great Britain were reported at 100,000,000 of dollars. Its use began in this country somewhat later, the aggregate imports previous to 1850 amounting to less than 30,000 tons. At present it supports a vast commerce, regu- lated by special national treaties, and em- ploys hundreds of ships and millions of capital in its transportation. Along with the importation of guano and the development of beds of mineral manures and their preparation, comes the manufacture of commercial fertilizers, one of the most rapidly - growing of our in- dustries. This enterprise is of very re- cent origin in this country, but in 1870 more than four millions of capital were employed in this branch of manufacture, and the value of the products amounted to $6,000,000. The official estimates place the present product several times higher. Gypsum, which was not included in the above estimate, was used sparingly in co- lonial times, but to most farmers it was then an unheard-of substance. It was prominently brought into notice by Benja- min Franklin, after his return from France, but its rapid spread kept pace with that of the cultivation of clover between 1810 and 1830. At the last census there were 321 mills, the value of the ground product amounting to about §2,500,000, a part of which, however, is applied to other uses in the arts. From the nature of the case, the actual value of these new aids to American agri- culture can not be shown statistically. For obvious reasons, their greatest effect is as yet seen only in the older States and in the South. Throughout the North, where the farm-yard is, and perhaps always will be, the great source of farm fertilizers, these commercial manures come in as an auxil- iary : but farther south, and in those re- gions where the cattle roam the fields throughout the year, preventing farm-yard accumulations to any considerable extent, the case is quite different. As cotton and tobacco, the two great commercial crops, have been heretofore cultivated, exhaustion was inevitable. The history of a region com- prised, of necessity, first the settlement, then its rise and wealth during the increas- ing growth of the crop, then a period of prosperity of longer or shorter duration, regulated by the original fertility of the soil, and finally the inevitable decline. In actual history, many great plantations be- came so completely impoverished by crop- ping with tobacco that they were abandon- ed and returned to forest again, and more to sparsely peopled, impoverished places. The exhaustion by cotton-growing was similar, although not always so complete. The necessity of new lands for this crop when it was "king,'' and the connection of this necessity with political events, are fa- miliar to every student of our history, while its relation to fertilizers was gen- erally ignored. Here, as in Southern Eu- rope, "great political and social events had their foundation in the dunghill." The theory and largely the practice of tobacco and cotton cultivation are now changed, and we see no reason why, by the new methods, the profitable fertility of the soil may not be maintained indefinitely. Official reports in Georgia estimate that "the planters of that State pay over $10,000,000 for fertilizers"' annually; and single towns in the Connecticut Valley, where tobacco is the leading crop, in ad- dition to the home fertilizers, pay from $30,000 to $50,000 a year for those from outside sources. To follow up this subject in its relations to the price of real estate, to vegetable or "market" farming near our cities, to other manufactures whose waste products are utilized, to the great question of the use of sewage and its relations to public health, would lead us entirely beyond the limits of this paper. Draining and irrigation, although strictly mechanical processes, have been the subjects of much chemical investigation. Thorough under-draining was practiced to some ex- tent long ago, but has only come into ex- tensive use during the last sixty or seventy years even in Great Britain. In this coun- try its use is more modern. Xoah Webster, in an agricultural address published in 1818, speaks of " the art of draining wet lands, which is now in its infancy in this coun- try." John Johnston, a Scottish farmer still living near Geneva, New York, was the first in the United States to use tiles, about 1S35, making the tiles by hand after Scotch mod- VARIETIES OF CROPS. 181 els. The few under-drains made earlier, as indeed many made since, were of stone. John Delafield, a neighhor of Mr. Johnston, and a man noted for his interest in agricul- ture, imported a tile machine in 1848, the first one in this country. The practice is now common enough, but there are no sta- tistics to show the amount of land drained. Irrigation has only come into any consid- erable use in those Western regions where the rain-fall is insufficient for all the pur- poses of agriculture. It is as yet carried on, for the most part, on a small scale and by private capital. Vast schemes are dis- cussed or projected, but we must leave their results to the future. We have already alluded to the class of improvements introduced through or aided by the biological sciences. We have al- ready said that a hundred years ago all our specks of field crops, except sorghum, were already in cultivation here. While this is true, the number of varieties of these crops then was less. A neighborhood would know perhaps three or four varieties of each spe- cies, rarely more. About that time many farmers began to grow more kinds, in order that if one failed because of a bad season, others might succeed. Old varieties were slowly improved by careful selection of seed, but the occurrence of new ones de- pended on accident, or on causes not then understood. Late in the last century and early in this the facts relating to the pro- duction of new varieties of cultivated plants began to be studied by new methods, and, through the observations and experiments of botanists and gardeners rather than by farmers, the laws came to be better under- stood. As a result of this knowledge, vari- eties are now multiplied almost at pleasure, and the kinds in cultivation, or at least known, amount to hundreds or even thou- sands for each species. As an example, we may mention potatoes. Deane, in his New England Farmer, a dictionary which profess- es to contain " a compendious account" of " the Art of Husbandry as practiced to the greatest Advantage in this Country," pub- lished at Boston in 1790, says, "No longer ago than the year 1740 we had but one sort, a small reddish-colored potato, of so rank a taste that it was scarcely eatable." He then enumerates twelve varieties known up to the date of writing, which had originated in various countries, some in the Old World. The paucity of kinds was often spoken of by writers before the Revolution. Guided by the knowledge since gained, a single American experimenter claims to have pro- duced and tested 6000 different varieties. Other crops have a similar but not quite so striking a history. Several hundred varie- ties of wheat were grown and tried by one farmer in the Genesee Valley all in thirty years. This has given so ample means of selection, of choosing just the best kind for each soil and condition, that there is doubtless a great actual increase in pro- duction due to it, but its most obvious effect is to give us a choice as to quality. With fruits this application of science has had even more remarkable results than with grains. Although but few field crops have been introduced since 1776, this is not true of field weeds. Some which actually came ear- lier only became numerous and troublesome later, and others were then introduced. Several local traditions exist in the New England and Middle States of weeds intro- duced by the British armies and their allies during that war, which have spread and maintained a foot-hold ever since. On the other hand, it is questionable if science has aided in the suppression of weeds except in a very general way. Columbus, on his second voyage to Amer- ica, brought various kinds of domestic ani- mals with him, and importations have been frequent nearly ever since. In our own colonies there were many importations, and from several countries, from the north of Europe direct and from Southern Europe by way of the Spanish-American colonies. The live stock in existence at the time of the Revolution was the mongrel progeny of these numerous importations. There is no question but that the domestic animals in- troduced from Europe rapidly deteriorated here. Various travelers have borne testi- mony to this, and indeed it was to be ex- pected. The pastures of Europe were such as fostering care for ages had made them, and, as already said, of peculiarly nutritious grasses. The early colonists found only crude grasses, and no natural meadows bet- 182 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. ter than the salt-marshes near the coast or the coarse sedges hy some of the streams. The pasturage in the forests was meagre. In the winter, straw, corn stalks, or in places wild marsh hay and the browse of the woods, were all the miserable animals had. Spring usually found the flock or herd reduced in numbers, poor, and weak. Too often the farmer's first work of the spring morning was to assist the weakened creatures to rise to their feet, and several native plants had reputation for strengthening cattle so that they could get up alone when weakened by the winter's starvation. The colonists ear- ly learned to plant grass seed from Europe, and to plant corn for the animals. Tur- nips, so valuable in the north of Europe, were of little value here. In the South they did not flourish well ; in the North they grew well enough, but being very watery in their nature, and the winters being so cold, they froze very readily, and thus their value was greatly diminished. Maize was made to Take their place, and sometimes beans were sparingly cultivated ; but with this crop, again, we had to learn by experience and disappointment. The field bean of Europe did not thrive well here. It struggled for cultivation for more than a century, and was finally abandoned as a field crop. Oth- er kinds of beans, however, partially took its place. Clover was introduced from En- gland quite early last century. Eliot speaks in its praise as early as 1747, but for some reason it did not come into common use un- til sixty or seventy years later. It is, there- fore, no wonder that all kinds of live stock deteriorated, that they fell an easy prey to the wolves, and that they only began to thrive successfully after so long experiment and so bitter experience. It must be re- membered, too, that the laws of breeding were not then well understood ; but special attention was given to this practical ques- tion during the last half of the last century. Sebright published about 1773, and Bake- well's experiments were then in full prog- ress ; and although he died without giving the secret of his successes to the world, the results were seen and many of the condi- tions known. In this period the breeding of all kinds of animals received special at- tention, and while the more scientific prob- lems were being solved abroad, the colonists here had solved those of forage, acclima- tion, and adaptation. Several of the more valued breeds of neat cattle were established early in the Old World, and improved during the period spoken of. Pedigrees began to be carefully looked after. The first volume of the En- glish Short-horn Herd-Book appeared in 1822, but its pedigrees began at about this period, or a little earlier. Only thirty animals are recorded that flourished in 1780 and earlier ; and while the blood of unrecorded animals afterward came in, for present purposes the pedigrees of all the thousands of thorough- bred short-horns date back to about that time, theoretically at least. Precisely when the first importations of this breed were made to this country is uncertain. It is now believed that they occurred very soon after the Revolutionary war, and there are traditions of several importations before 1800. Soon after that date importations began in earnest, and have gone on ever since. The first volume of the American Short-horn Herd-Book was published in 1846, the thirteenth in 1874, and in the series are recorded some 33,000 pedigrees. Certain strains of this breed have thrived peculiar- ly well here, and the sale of one herd, Sep- tember 10, 1873, at New York Mills, was doubtless the most extraordinary cattle sale that has ever taken place any where. At this sale 109 head sold for about $382,000, or an average of over $3500 per head, the high- er prices being $40,600 for a cow, and several sold for over $20,000 each, a calf but five months old selling for $27,000. The Devons were also introduced early, and previous to 1840 were imported more abundantly than the short-horns, and have perhaps had as wide an influence on the improvement of American cattle as the last-named breed, or even a wider. Now all the more distin- guished breeds of Europe are successfully bred here, and some five or six of the more numerous or important have American herd- books now published. The effect of all this has been to enor- mously elevate the quality of American cattle ; and so completely has the mongrel or "native" stock been improved through these that in certain agricultural societies where premiums are offered for the best " natives" it is found that all that are offer- LIVE STOCK. 183 ed as such are, in fact, " grades," having had an infusion of better blood witbin three or four generations. Even the Spanish cattle of Texas and California are being rapidly changed and improved through and by these better breeds. The history of American horses is in most respects similar to tbat of the cattle. There was at first deterioration, but in a less de- gree, then a slow improvement through se- lection and better feeding, then a more rapid improvement through better breeding and the importation of better stock. The race of trotters is peculiarly American. It originated here, and is here found in its greatest development. It appears to have followed and been caused by the introduc- tion and improvement in light carriages. The thorough-breds of Europe, the race- horse and the hunter, are essentially run- ning horses. For American uses trotters were needed ; various causes tended to make them popular, and in the last fifty years the breed has been made. It has a large infusion of the English thorough-bred in it, yet few noted trotters are thorough- breds. The gait and speed are in part the result of training, and are in part hereditary. There has been a constantly augmenting speed and a great increase in the number of horses that are fast trotters. But a few years ago the speed of a mile in two ami a half minutes was unheard of; now per- haps 500 or 600 horses are known to have trotted a mile in that time. There is no question but that, as a whole, the quality of American horses has greatly improved in the hundred years. It was be- lieved that the great increase of railroads Avould diminish the number required, but, as a fact, the reverse is true. American sheep before 1776 were all coarse-wooled and mostly very inferior ani- mals. In Europe the fine-wooled breeds were shut up in Spain, and various causes prevented the exportation of the English improved coarse-wooled breeds. Eliot, in his " First Essay" (1747), says : " A better Breed of Sheep is what we want. The English Breed of Cotswold Sheep can not be obtained, or at least without great Difficulty : for Wool and live Sheep are contraband Goods, which all Strangers are prohibited from carrying out on Pain of having the right Hand cut off." Before 1800 there were a few importations of improved coarse-wooled sheep, and very many importations since. Merino sheep were carried into Saxony from Spain in 1765, into France about 1776, and England about 1790. Three merinoes were brought into the United States in 1793, but the person to whom they were presented not knowing their value, they were eaten for muttou. In 1801 or 1802 a few more came, and there were several small importa- tions from Spain aud France before 1815. The Saxon merino was introduced in 1824. Various causes led to wild speculation more than once in fine-wooled sheep in the United States, but they have increased now to many millions, and some of the most noted flocks of the world have been or are here. Indi- vidual animals have sold as high as $10,000 and even ,$14,000. Both for fineness of fibre and weight of fleece the American wool is celebrated, and the finest fibre yet attained was from sheep bred in Western Pennsyl- vania about 1850. Since that time weight of fleece rather than excessive fineness has been bred for. The great pastures of Texas and California at home, and of Australia and South America, are now in competition iu the markets of the world, but the wool produced in some of the older States, par- ticularly in the Ohio Basin, is especially sought after by the manufacturers of the fiuer goods. The statistics of live stock in the United States as given in the last census are con- fessedly very imperfect, hence no numbers are here quoted except the aggregate value, which was estimated as amounting to up- ward of $1,500,000,000. Incidental to this branch of our subject, we may mention an American invention, the cheese-factory system. This was first put in operation in 1851 by Mr. Jesse Williams, in Oneida County, New York. Down to April, 1860, twenty-one factories had been started. Then the increase was so rapid tbat by the end of 1866 there had been 500 factories erected in the State of New York alone, and the capital incidentally employed in the farms and stock amounted to at least $40,000,000. In 1870 there were over 1300 factories iu operation in the country, pro- ducing about 55,000 tons of cheese. The 184 AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS. system is still growing here, and has ex- tended to foreign countries. The great improvements that have taken place in transportation, Avhich make it pos- sible for the wheat of Iowa and California to compete in the English markets with that raised on the Atlantic sea-hoard, and which place Iowa in competition with New England, have operated to specialize farm- ing. The large farmer of to-day raises fewer kinds on his farm than did the small farmer of the last century. This specialization al- lows the use of the higher appliances and the use of capital as the former system could not. The true farms have doubtless grown in size, on the average. The early settlers of necessity could till but small farms. The tax lists of Long Island for years between 1675 and 1685 show that in nine English towns the average land-hold- ing was about twenty-two acres, and in the five Dutch towns about thirty-seven acres, or for the whole fourteen towns it was twen- ty-five and one-third acres, and at that time over ninety per cent, of the tax-payers were laud-holders. The national census of 1870 enumerates 2,660,000 farms, only six and a half per cent, of which were of less than ten acres, and more than half of the whole num- ber contained over fifty acres. The cash val- ue of the farms, implements, and live stock was placed at upward of $11,000,000,000, and the total estimated value of all the farm productions at about $2,448,000,000. Of the 12,500,000 persons " engaged iu all classes of occupations," 6,000,000 were engaged in ag- riculture. We have absolutely no statistics of the agriculture of the colonies at the time of the Revolution ; therefore the actual fig- ures of progress can not be given, and we refrain from estimates. Agricultural newspapers, societies, schools, and literature hardly had an existence be- fore 1776. Less than forty newspapers were then published in the colonies, none of them agricultural. In 1870 there were ninety- three agricultural and horticultural news- papers and periodicals, with an aggregate annual issue of 21,500,000 copies. Agricultural societies were organized just after the Revolution ; exhibitions or " fairs" began between 1810 and 1820. It is believed that there are now 2000 agricultural socie- ties, clubs, and boards of agriculture organ- ized and in operation. Their annual "re- ports" amount to very many volumes. A few tracts and essays, which altogether would make but a single small volume, were the entire special agricultural literature the colonies produced. The agricultural liter- ature of to-day is confusing by its quantity and variety. Agricultural professorships were estab- lished in Europe some time last century, and the first agricultural school began in 1799. In this country, Samuel L. Mitchill was made " Professor of Chemistry and Ag- riculture" in Columbia College, New York, in 1791, but there is no record that he gave special instruction in agriculture. In vari- ous colleges professors of general chemistry treated more or less of agricultural chemis- try. After special preparation for the office, John P. Norton was appointed " Professor of Agricultural Chemistry and Vegetable and Animal Physiology" in Yale College in 1846, perhaps the first actual professor of agriculture in an American college. His instruction began in 1847, since which time numerous other similar professorships have been established. Agricultural schools and colleges were talked of for many years, and a few made an actual or nominal beginning before 1850, and several before 1860. In 1862 Congress appropriated certain lands to establish or aid schools in the various States, " without excluding other studies," to "teach such branches of learning as are related to agri- culture and the mechanic arts." Stimu- lated by this, and aided by private and State aid, about forty schools are now in existence, trying in various ways to fulfill the purposes for which they were establish- ed. The most of them are recent, and they are mainly important, in this account of progress, because of what they indicate rath- er than what they have yet accomplished. A few of the older ones have, however, al- ready had considerable influence, and all are ready for the coming century's work. V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES. TO write the story of the development of the mineral resources of the United States during the last century would de- maud a volume. The whole history of the new States and Territories beyond the val- ley of the Mississippi is little else than that of the opening and the working of their rich mines of gold and silver since 1849. But this region was not a part of the national territory at the time when our survey com- mences. While the Spaniards, greedy for that wealth which proved their ruin, plant- ed their colonies from Mexico to Chili aloug the western portion of the continent, rich in precious metals, our Euglish aucestors fixed their homes in a portion which, though not destitute of mineral resources, offered no tempting prizes to the miners of that early day. The records of our colonial peri- od have little to tell beyond the workiug of some iron ores along the sea-board, and at- tempts on a small scale to mine ores of cop- per and of lead. The first half century of our national existence does not add much to this record, and the history of the mar- velous developments in the working of the coal, petroleum, iron, and copper in our East- ern regions, and in the mining of gold and silver in the West, belongs to the present generation. It will be found convenient in our inquiry to follow, with a few exceptions, the geo- graphical division just indicated, and to Xjoint out for each of these regions separate- ly the general results already obtained in the development of its mineral wealth, con- sidering in the first place the territory which stretches from the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic. It is in this division of our territory that are found the great stores of coal and iron, be- sides vast supplies of petroleum, salt, cop- per, aud other minerals of less importance. Geologically described, this eastern half of the United States is essentially a great ba- sin of paleozoic strata nearly encircled with azoic crystalline rocks, and has been aptly described as a great bowl filled with miner- al treasure, the outer rim of which is form- ed by the mountains of Northern New York, the hills of New England, the Highlands of the Hudson, and their southward con- tinuation in the Blue Ridge nearly to the Gulf of Mexico. Thence, passing to the east- ern base of the Rocky Mountains, it extends northward, and by the Great Lakes around the northern rim of the bowl to the point of departure. Within the area thus inclosed lies the vast Appalachian coal-field, with its dependent areas of anthracite and semi-bi- tuminous coal, the lesser coal-fields of Mich- igan and Illinois, and the still more western one to which the coals of Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas belong. It includes, more- over, formations containing petroleum, salt, and lead, besides much iron, though not less abundant stores of the latter metal are found in the surrounding crystalline rocks. The coal deposits of the great paleozoic basin furnish the mainspring of our princi- pal mechanical and commercial enterprises, the great source of motive power, and the chief means of reducing and manufacturing our iron. If to this we add that the value of the coal now mined in the United States is equal to that of all the iron, gold, and sil- ver produced in the country, we have said enough to justify us in assigning it the first place in a survey of our mineral resources. The forest growth supplied the demands for fuel of the early English colonists, to whom the treasures of the great basin were little known, and the first attempts at mining mineral fuel were in the coal-field near Richmond, Virginia, one of several small areas which lie over its eastern rim, or be- tween the Blue Ridge and the sea. This coal of Eastern Virginia occurs in what are known to geologists as mesozoic rocks, and belongs to a later age than the bituminous coal of Pennsylvania, which, however, it re- sembles in quality. It was probably first mined as early as 1750, and after the war of the Revolution was exported to Phila- delphia, New York, and Boston, until with- in the last thirty years. Other coals have 186 THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES. since replaced it in these markets, and it is now mined chiefly for local use. The anthracite of Eastern Pennsylvania was first discovered, it is said, in 1770. In 1775, just a century since, a boat-load was taken down to the armory at Carlisle, and in 1791 the great open quarry of this fuel near Mauch Chunk was made known. From its unlikeness to the Virginia coal, and the difficulty of igniting it, the Pennsylvania anthracite encountered much opposition. Tradition tells us that a boat-load taken to Philadelphia in 1803 was broken up and used to mend the roads. But it slowly found its way into use ; and from a pam- phlet published in 1815 we learn that the coal from the Lehigh had been several years on trial in Philadelphia, where it had been compared with the Virginia bituminous coal, and, from the testimony of iron-work- ers, distillers, and others, was to be pre- ferred to it for durability and economy. Oliver Evans had, moreover, at this time tried the anthracite with success under the boilers of his steam-engine, and had also insisted upon its advantages for domestic purposes. Notwithstanding these results, the new fuel found its way very slowly into use, and in 1822 the total production of the anthracite mines was estimated at 3720 tons, against 48,000 tons of the coal from Richmond, Virginia, then its only rival. Fifty years later, or in 1872, the official re- turns give for the exportation of coal from the anthracite region not less than 19,000,000 tons, besides about 2,500,000 tons for local consumption, while that of the Virginia coal- field for the same year is estimated at 62,000 tons. The late Professor Silliman, who vis- ited the anthracite region in 1825, and pub- lished his report of it in the following year, was the first to appreciate the real value and importance of this deposit of fossil fuel, which he then spoke of as a great national trust. The small detached basins of the anthra- cite region have together an area of only 472 miles ; but the immense aggregate thickness of the seams of coal, varying in different parts from fifty to one hundred feet, and es- timated at an average of seventy feet for the whole, makes this wonderful region of greater value than Western coal-fields whose extent is measured by many thousands of square miles. Mr. P. W. Shaeffer, who has calculated the cubic content of these an- thracite beds, estimates it to have been at the time when mining was commenced equal to 26,361,070,000 tons, from which one- half may be deducted for waste in mining and breaking for market, and for losses from faults and irregularities in the beds, giving of merchantable coal 13,180,535,000 tons. If from this we subtract the amount produced by the mines from 1820 to 1870, estimated at 206,666,325 tons, we had still in store at the latter date a supply of 25,000,000 tons a year, or more than the present rate of consumption, for 525 years. The large waste in mining this precious fuel is due in part to the difficulty in work- ing seams of unusual thickness, often in highly inclined positions. Moreover, the loss in breaking and dressing for the mar- ket, which demands the anthracite in regu- larly assorted sizes, is very great, and the waste from these two causes amounts to about one-third the entire contents of the veins, while in Great Britain the average loss in mining and marketing ordinary coals is not over one-fifth. The great value of our American anthracite is due in part to its peculiar qualities, its hardness, density, purity, and smokelessness, which render it pre-eminently fit for domestic purposes and for iron smelting ; but in part also to its geographical position. Its proximity to the Atlantic sea-board, which is almost destitute of coal, to our great cities and wealthy and populous districts, and, moreover, to some of the most important deposits of iron ore in the country, has already led to an im- mense development of mining in the an- thracite region. The New England States, Eastern New York, New Jersey, and East- ern Pennsylvania look to it for their chief supplies of fuel ; great systems of railways and canals have been called into existence by it; and a vast iron-producing industry has grown up, dependent upon the anthra- cite fields, which now furnish nearly one- half of all the coal mined in the United States. It results from the course of trade that large quantities of anthracite find their way westward by railways, canal- boats, and lake steamers, freights in that direction being very low at certain seasons of the year. Thus there were brought to APPALACHIAN COAL BASIN. 187 Buffalo in 1873 about three-quarters of a million of tons of anthracite, the greater part by railway, of which Chicago received over half a million, or nearly one-third of its entire coal supply. Smaller quantities of anthracite find their way down the Ohio River to Cincinnati and beyoud. The chief coal supply of the regions to the west of the meridian of Washington comes, however, from the great Appalachian basin, which, underlying much of the west- ern half of Pennsylvania aud of the eastern third of Ohio, West Virginia, and a part of Eastern Kentucky, stretches through East- ern Tennessee as far as Alabama, embracing an area of coal-bearing rocks estimated at nearly 58,000 square miles. Along the east- ern border of this vast field of bituminous coal there are in Pennsylvania and in Mary- land several small areas which furnish a semi-bituminous coal, intermediate in com- position, as in position, between it and the anthracite of the East, and now very large- ly mined. The best known of these outlying basins are the Blossburg, on the north, and the Cumberland, in Maryland, on the south ; but there are between these other similar areas of considerable importance, such as the Broad Top, Johnstown, Towanda, and Ralston, the production of the whole being about 5,000,000 tons of coal annually, of which nearly one-half comes from the Cum- berland and about one-fifth from the Bloss- burg. This latter was first opened by a railway in 1840, while an outlet from the Cumberland field to the sea-board was es- tablished by the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- road in 1842, thus bringing for the first time the bituminous coal of the interior to tide- water, and displacing in Eastern markets the coal of Virginia. These semi-bitumi- nous coals, very rich in carbon, and yet pos- sessing the property of coking in the fire, are much esteemed for iron-working and for generating steam, for which they are large- ly used on our railways and ocean steamers, besides which great quantities are convert- ed into coke for iron smelting. These valu- able coals, like the anthracite, are confined to small areas, and will be exhausted in a few years, or at most a few generations. The Cumberland basin, at its present rate of working, will not last thirty years, and the time is not far distant when both the anthracite and the semi-bituminous coals of Pennsylvania will become augmented in price from their rarity. Its geographical position has led us to mine and consume first the most valuable portion of our coal, which, under different circumstances, it would have been wise to have replaced in part by other and more abundant varieties. In this connectiou it should be mentioned that on the southeastern border of the Ap- palachian coal-field, in Montgomery County, Virginia, are found small deposits of semi- bituminous and anthracite coals, both of good quality, which were mined to a con- siderable extent during the late civil war. Another area of anthracite demands our no- tice, which, like the coal of Richmond, Vir- ginia, is outside of the great basin. It is situated in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, where it occupies an area estimated at uot less than 500 square miles, and includes, in various parts already explored, beds of an- thracite from ten to twenty feet in thick- ness. This coal-field was discovered in 1760, and attempts at working it were made as early as 1808. The geological peculiarities of the region, the somewhat broken con- dition of the coal, and, above all, the com- petition of the anthracite of Pennsylvania, have retarded its development, so that the total production was estimated in 1872 at 14,000 tons, being from a single mine at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where this coal is employed for copper smelting. There is no doubt that this important field of an- thracite will one day be found of great val- ue to New England. The supplies of true bituminous coal which are found in the great Appalachian field are practically inexhaustible, and the mining of it is rapidly assuming propor- tions second only to those of the regions along its eastern border, which it is des- tined before long to surpass in its produc- tion. The bituminous coals may be divided into three classes, close-burning or coking coals, free-burning splint or block coals, and cannel. Of these the former are the most abundant, and for the greater number of purposes are used in their raw state. Un- like the anthracite, however, they are not fitted for iron smelting and for many other metallurgical operations unless previously converted into coke, for the production of IKS THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES. ■which they are not all equally adapted. While some are too sulphurous, others con- tain too much ash, are too poor in fixed car- hou, or yield a coke deficient in weight and in solidity. In view of all these circum- stances, the value of a superior coking coal is very great, and a striking example of this appears in the Pittsburg seam, as it is called, of Western Pennsylvania. This re- markable coal seam, to the south of the city whose name it bears, attains near Connels- ville an unusual thickness, and yields a coke of unsurpassed quality, which is not only the foundation of the iron-smelting in- dustry of the western part of the State, but finds its way in large quantities to Cleve- land, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, and even as far as Utah, where it is used to smelt the silver-lead ores of that region. Pittsburg is at present the great centre of the Western coal trade, and in addition to the large amount consumed in its own manufactures, distributes coal iu various directions by railway and river, sending vast quantities down the Ohio to supply the cities on its banks, and even to the Lower Mississippi. The amount of coal received at Pittsburg in 1872, in great part by the Monongahela, was over 115,000,000 bushels, which, at twenty-eight bushels to the ton, is considerably over 4,000,000 tons, and the annual increase for three years up to that time was at the rate of thirty-five per cent. To this we must add the amount of coke re- ceived, which doubled annually for the same three years, and equaled in 1872 nearly 44,000,000 bushels, the product from coking about 2,600,000 tons of coal. The total esti- mated production of bituminous coal for Pennsylvania in 1872 (including about 3,000,000 tons of semi -bituminous) was 10,442,000 tons, and if to this we add the 21,500,000 tons of anthracite, we shall find that this State alone furnished in that year more than two-thirds of all the coal mined in the United States. The figures from offi- cial sources fail to give the full amount of coal used for local consumption, but the en- tire production of the United States for 1873 is estimated by Macfarlane at not less than 50,000,000 tons. The check which all our industries, and especially the working of coal and iron, sustained throughout the year 1874 has produced a temporary fall- ing off in production, so that the figures for 1872 and 1873 are really a fairer index of our progress than those of a later date. Next in importance to that of Pennsylva- nia is the coal production of Ohio, which was estimated in 1872 at 4,400,000 tons. Owing to the want of proper railway communica- tions the coal deposits of this State have as yet been but little worked. It is in Ohio that the free-burning splint or block coal (which appears to a limited extent in the Chenango Valley, on the western frontier of Pennsylvania) finds its greatest develop- ment. This coal, which is extensively mined in the adjacent parts of Ohio, chiefly in the valley of the Mahoning, is prized not only on account of its freedom from ash and sul- phur, but from the fact that it can be di- rectly used iu the blast-furnace for smelting iron ores without previous coking, and it has given rise to an important iron indus- try in its vicinity. The supply in North- ern Ohio is, however, limited, and it is rap- idly becoming exhausted. A much more abundant deposit of a similar coal, under very favorable conditions for mining, has lately been made known farther southward in the State, in the Hocking Valley, where it is, moreover, accompanied by large beds of coking coal. The coal of Ohio is destined from its geographical position to become of great importance : lying on the northwest border of the Appalachian field, as the an- thracite and semi-bituminous coals of Penn- sylvania do upon its northeast border, it has to the north and west of it a vast, wealthy, and populous region, with growing indus- tries, and demanding large and increasing supplies of coal. The extension southward of the Appala- chian coal-field through West Virginia and parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama is known to abound in valuable beds of bi- tuminous coal, which have lately attracted considerable attention. Since the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad the coals from the valley of the Kanawha are finding their way, to some extent, to the sea- board and into Eastern markets, but with this exception the vast coal deposits of this great Southern region are as yet mined only to supply the limited local demands. Among the important uses of bituminous coal is the manufacture of illuminating gas, WESTERN COAL FIELDS. 189 for which purpose immense quantities of coal are distilled. The annual consumption for this purpose in the cities of New York and Brooklyn is estimated at about 400,000 tons. Those coals which yield large quan- tities of pure gas of high illuminating pow- er are greatly prized. The Eastern cities are in part furnished with gas coal from Cape Breton, but the greater part of the coals for this purpose is got from Western Pennsylvania. Excellent gas coals are, how- ever, obtained in Ohio and in West Virginia. The State of Michigan includes a coal ba- sin with an area of not less than 6700 square miles, but the beds of coal which it contains are few, thin, and of inferior quality. For this reason, and from the fact that the State is cheaply supplied with superior coals from Pennsylvania and Ohio, the coal of Michi- gan is worked only to a small extent for lo- cal consumption, the estimated production for 1872 being but 30,000 tons. The Illinois coal basin, which underlies the greater part of that State, and extends into the western parts of Indiana and Kentucky, has an area of not less than 47,000 square miles. Along its eastern and western borders in Clay County, Indiana, and near St. Louis, are found deposits of an excellent block coal like that of Ohio, adapted for iron smelting ; but with this exception the coals of this great basin are generally sulphurous and in- ferior in quality, and command in the mar- ket of Chicago a price much below those of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Chicago received in 1873 over 1,600,000 tons of coal, of which about two-fifths only were from the adja- cent coal-field, the remainder being brought from the two States just named. The first working of coal in Illinois dates from 1810, and the production of the State for 1872 was equal to 3,000,000 tons, while Indiana furnished 800,000, and that portion of the coal-field which lies in Western Kentucky 300,000 tons. The coals of the great field west of the Mississippi, which extends through Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas, are mostly of inferior quality and in thin beds, but are of great local importance in these sparsely wooded regions. In the State of Arkan- sas, moreover, there is found a superior semi-bituminous coal, approaching to an- thracite in its character. Further west- ward, in the Rocky Mountains and thence to the Pacific coast, from the confines of Mexico to Canada, are extensive deposits of tertiary coals or lignites, which, though in- ferior in quality to the coals of the Appala- chiau basin, are, in the absence of better fuel, employed for generating steam and for do- mestic purposes. They are, however, very variable in quality, and some beds have of late been found which are fit for the manu- facture of illuminating gas, and are even ca- pable of yielding a coke suitable for met- allurgical processes. These coals are mined in Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, and again on the Pacific coast in California, Oregon, and Washington Territory. Of the coal supply of San Francisco in 1873, which equaled 441,000 tons, about sixty per cent, came from these deposits along the western coast, the remainder being from Australia, England, and the Eastern States. The petroleum industry of the United States was in its beginning closely con- nected with coal, since it was the produc- tion of oils from bituminous coals which led the way to the utilization of the native min- eral oils. It had long been known that tar and oily matters could be extracted from coals and from shales impregnated with coaly matter by subjecting them to a high temperature, these substances, although not existing ready -formed in the coals, being generated by the decomposing action of heat. A product thus obtained was known to apothecaries more than a century ago by the name of British oil ; and in 1834 experi- ments on a large scale were made in France by Selligue to manufacture illuminating oils by the distillation of shales, with par- tial success. In 1846 similar results were obtained by Gesner in New Brunswick ; and in 1850 Atwood, of Boston, prepared a lubri- cating oil from coal-tar. At the same time Young, of Glasgow, was experimenting, and in 1850 introduced into the market, under the name of paraffine oil, a product from cannel-coal. The first works for this man- ufacture in the United States were estab- lished on Long Island in 1854, under Young's patents for manufacturing oils from the Boghead coal brought from Scotland, or from American coals. From this point the industry spread rapidly, and in 1855 and 1856 works for the distillation of oils from 190 THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES. coals were erected in Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well as along the Atlantic sea-board, where the principal material em- ployed was the mineral from Scotland just named. In January, 1860, there were in the United States not less than forty factories, the total daily production of which was about five hundred barrels, chiefly of burn- ing oil. This was sold in the market with the trade name of kerosene, or simply as coal oil ; and lamps suitable for burning it having been devised, it became widely used, i But this industry of the distillation of coal was destined to have a very short duration, for the oil wells of Pennsylvania, opened in 1859, furnished in 1860 not less than 500,000 barrels of petroleum — a production far ex- ceeding that of the coal distilleries. It was soon found that from this mineral oil prod- ucts could be extracted in all respects simi- lar to those from coal, and the result was that from this time the manufacture of coal oil was abandoned, and the works which had been erected for this purpose were changed to petroleum refineries. The early history of petroleum is curious. Known and employed for burning from re- mote antiquity in the Old World, no process for its purification had been devised, and it was therefore at best but an indifferent and cheaper substitute for animal and vegetable oils. The first attempts to refine it for com- mercial purposes are believed to have been made by Young, of Glasgow, in 1847, on pe- troleum got from Derbyshire, iu England, from which he prepared a lubricating oil, and it was the exhaustion of this supply which led him to improve the methods for the extraction of oils from coal. Meanwhile, in the United States, the ex- istence of sources of miueral oil had been known to the Indians of New York and Pennsylvania, who prized it as a medicine, for which purpose it became familiar to the early European colonists under the name of Seneca-oil. It appears to have been an ob- ject of research to the aborigines ages ago, since in the oil regions of Western Pennsyl- vania are found pits or wells apparently dug for the purpose of collecting the oil, careful- ly timbered, and affording from the growth of the forest upon the site evidences of an antiquity of from 500 to 1000 years. As early as 1819, in boring for brine on the Muskingum River, in Ohio, from a depth of 400 feet were obtained large quantities of mineral oil, which was a source of great annoyance to the salt-makers. At this time attempts were made to use the oil for illumination, but, from the want of proper lamps, it was not found to be adapted to the purpose. In 1854 the suc- cessful manufacture of oils from coal caused attention to be drawn to the possibility of utilizing these native oils, and the Penn- sylvania Oil Company was formed for the purpose of manufacturing the petroleum found at Oil Creek, in Venango County, Pennsylvania. The chemical investigation of the material was committed to Professor B. Silliman, Jun., and his report to the com- pany, which appeared in April, 1855, has been the point of departure for the immense industry of petroleum which has grown up within the last twenty years. In this re- port was described the conversion of the crude petroleum by fractional distillation into products differing in density and in vol- atility, the manufacture from it of a burn- ing oil of great illuminating power, of an oil capable of supporting a low temperature and fitted for lubrication, and also of paraf- fine. He farther showed the importance of distillation in a current of highly heat- ed steam, and noticed the breaking up of heavier into lighter oils by continued heat — processes which have since assumed a great importance in the manufacture of petroleum. Notwithstanding these remarkable re- sults, little was effected for some years ; the supply of petroleum was limited to that which could be gathered from the surface of the water in the locality, and from its cost it could not compete with the product of the distillation of coal. At length an at- tempt was made to repeat the early experi- ment of the Muskingum salt-works, aud a well was bored by Drake, the superintend- ent of the Pennsylvania Oil Company, from which, at a depth of seventy-two feet, a supply of oil amounting to ten barrels or 400 gallons a day was obtained, which was sold for fifty-five cents a gallon. This was in August, 1859, and the successful trial was soon followed by many others not less so. The history of the wild excitement and speculation which followed this discovery, and the great accession of wealth to the re- PETROLEUM. 191 gion, is familiar to all. Wells were sunk which yielded from 100 to as much as 2000 barrels of oil daily, often without the la- bor of pumping. Of oue well it is recorded that it afforded 450,000 barrels of oil in a little over two years, while another is said to have given not less than 500,000 barrels in a twelvemonth. Petroleum was soon discovered not only over a wide district in Pennsylvania, but in Eastern Ohio and in parts of West Virginia and Kentucky, and even in Indiana, as well as in Western Can- ada. In I860 the production rose to 500,000 barrels of forty gallons each, and for the dec- ade ending with 1870 it amounted to not less than 35,273,000 barrels of crude oil. Of this by far the greater part came from Penn- sylvania, for of the 6,500,000 barrels pro- duced in 1870, not less than 5,569,000 were from that State, the production of about 3000 wells, which is an average of only about five barrels daily for each well. The wells in Venango County, where this industry began, were generally from 600 to 800 feet in depth, but with the partial ex- haustion of these the scene of operations has been removed to more southern dis- tricts, where the oil supplies are found at greater depths ; and the wells in Butler County, now the great seat of production, are from 1200 to 1500 feet deep. The crude oil is carried from the wells to the points of refining or of shipment through iron pipes. Some of these bines are fifteen and twenty miles in length, and one is in proc- ess of construction from Butler County to Pittsburg, a distance of about forty miles. It has even been proposed to convey the oil by a series of conduits and reservoirs across the mountains to Philadelphia. The processes for refining the crude pe- troleum and preparing from it various com- mercial products have been perfected by much chemical skill. The loss in refining amounts to about ten per cent., and the av- erage product of illuminating oil from the crude petroleum of Pennsylvania is about sixty-five per cent. The other products are dense lubricating oils, light naphthas, and paraffine or mineral wax, of which a barrel of crude cil yields about five pounds. The abundance of the Pennsylvania pe- troleum and the skillful manner in which it is refined have led to a general exporta- tion of these products to every part of the civilized world. Already in 1861 we find the shipments of petroleum from the Unit- ed States to foreign ports equal to nearly 28,000 barrels of forty gallons each, and for the ten years ending with 1870 the expor- tation was 14,465,000 barrels. By far the greater part of this was shipped in the re- fined state, and its average price for the term of ten years was estimated at twenty- five cents a gallon, thus representing an ag- gregate value of over $144,000,000. The in- crease in the amount exported has been regular and constant. That for the calen- dar year 1870 was 3,495,800 barrels ; for 1872, 3,754,060 ; for 1873, 5,937,041 ; and for 1874, 5,878,578 barrels, of which about nine-tenths were refined oil. This large increase in the exports of 1873 and 1874 shows the very considerable aug- mentation in production which has fol- lowed late discoveries of new and produc- tive oil districts in Pennsylvania. These have been attended by a great reduction in price. From fifty-five cents the gallon, at which the first crude oil from the wells was sold, it soon fell to twenty cents, and to six- ty or seventy cents for the refined oil. In 1872 its price in New York had fallen below twenty-four cents, in 1873 to below nine- teen, and in 1874 to a small fraction over thirteen cents, the crude oil in New York having fallen in the same three years from about thirteen to less than six cents the gallon. Of crude oil forty-three and a half gallons are counted to a barrel, yet its price in Western Pennsylvania in 1874 was from sixty to seventy-five cents a barrel at the wells, and from eighty cents to a dollar at the delivery pipes. Even at the present re- duced prices the annual value of the petro- leum product of the country is very great. The export for 1874, chiefly of refined oil, at the mean price of 13.09 cents the gallon, equals .$30,825,268. The present annual con- sumption of the United States is estimated at 1,500,000 barrels of refined petroleum, which, added to the export for 1874, gives a total of 7,378,000 barrels of refined oil. The estimated production of crude oil for 1874 was not less than 10,687,930 barrels, or 29,282 daily. Already in 1870, when the produc- tion was considerably less than at pres- ent, it was said that the petroleum wells 192 THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES. of the United. States yielded in a week an amount of oil greater than the entire annu- al production of the whale-fisheries of New England at the time of their greatest pros- perity. American petroleum has now al- most entirely replaced the products of these fisheries, and furnished to the whole world a cheap and admirable means of illumina- tion. Petroleum abounds in many parts of the Old World, but attempts to compete with the product of Pennsylvania have not hitherto been very successful. The same remark will apply to the petroleum found in Santa Barbara County, California, which is refined there to a limited extent for do- mestic use, and yields, besides a good burn- ing oil, one peculiarly fitted for lubricating purposes. We now proceed to notice the history of the iron industry of the United States, which is as yet confined to the region east of the Rocky Mountains, and must be consid- ered in connection with the coal upon which it is to a great extent dependent. The great supplies of iron ores to the east of the Ap- palachian coal-field are, first, from the beds, chiefly of the magnetic species, but occa- sionally of red hematite, which abound in the Adirondack region of New York, extending northward into Canada (which furnishes a considerable quantity of ore to the Ameri- can market) ; while southward, in the mount- ain belt from the Highlands of the Hudson to South Carolina, are great deposits of sim- ilar ores, extensively mined in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Within the eastern rim of the basin and parallel with it is, in the second place, a belt of iron ores, chiefly brown hematite, which is traced from Vermont along the western border of New England, and assumes a great develop- ment in parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama. Further west- ward, within the great basin, are found the red fossiliferous ores which lie near the summit of the Silurian series, and are traced from Wisconsin eastward through Ontario and Central New York, and thence south- ward, parallel with the Alleghanies and in pioximity to the coal, through Pennsylva- nia, as far as Alabama. Besides these are to be considered the great deposits of iron ores belonging to the coal measures, in- cluding those of the lower carboniferous. These ores, which are carbonates and limon- ites, occasionally with red hematite, abound in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. They are wanting or rare in the middle and western coal-fields of the great basin ; but between these, in Missouri and Arkansas, there rise from the thinly spread out paleozoic strata mountains of crystal- line rocks, which include immense deposits of red hematite and magnetic ores of great value. Farther northward these crystal- line rocks, with their metallic treasures, are concealed beneath newer strata, but they re-appear, charged with great quantities of these same species of iron ore, in the north- ern peninsula of Michigan, whence, sweep- ing eastward through Canada, the chain of crystalline rocks bearing these ores is continued to the Adirondack region of New York. In the colonial period, and even during the first years of the republic, the smelting of iron ores was confined to the eastern rim of the great basin, and indeed the first fur- naces erected were for the reduction of the limonite ores which occur in small deposits along the Atlantic border and outside of the limits above defined. We find an at- tempt to make iron at Jamestown, in Vir- ginia, as early as 1619, and a little later a furnace was erected at Lynn, Massachu- setts. As early as 1717 pig-iron was export- ed from the colonies to England, and the increase of the iron industry excited the jealousy of the British iron manufacturers, so that in 1750 an act of Parliament forbade the erection of rolling or slitting mills in the colonies. Before the time of the Revo- lution we find numerous blast-furnaces from Virginia as far as Western Massachusetts, smelting the limonites, and in New Jersey and Pennsylvania the magnetic ores of these regions. A considerable portion of the iron of this early time was, however, made in bloom- ary furnaces, by means of which malleable iron is obtained directly from the ore, a method of no little interest in the history of our manufacture. A similar process be- longs to the infancy of the metallurgic art, and is still practiced among barbarous na- tions, where the mode of making pig-iron in the blast-furnace is unknown. A modifica- tion of this direct method survives in the ANTHRACITE FURNACES. 193 Catalan forge of Western Europe, and in the last century another form was known in Germany, where it is now forgotten. The German bloomary furnace found its way to America, and was employed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania at least as early as 1725. This furnace had the great advantage that its construction required but little skill and little outlay. A small water-fall for the blast and the hammer, a rude hearth with a chimney, and a supply of charcoal and ore, enabled the iron-worker to obtain, as occa- sion required, a few hundred pounds of iron in a day's time in a condition fitted for the use of the blacksmith, after which his prim- itive forge remained idle until there was a farther demand. To this day such furnaces are found in the mountains of North Caro- lina, and furnish the bar-iron required for the wants of the rural population. An interesting episode in the history of American iron manufacture is afforded by the attempts of the early explorers to utilize the black iron sand which is found at many points along our sea-board, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Capes of the Chesapeake, and early in the last century, under the name of the Virginia sand iron, was the subject of unsuccessful attempts to treat it for the extraction of iron. At length the Rev. Jared Eliot, of Killihgworth, Con- necticut, grandson of John Eliot, the apos- tle of the Indians, after many experiments on the iron sand which is found in consid- erable quantities on the south coast of that State, succeeded by the aid of the German bloomary in resolving the problem, and made blooms of malleable iron of fifty pounds weight, for which discovery he was in 1761 awarded a medal by the Society of Arts of London. He informs us that his son had, moreover, been able to convert this iron into steel of superior quality, and would have es- tablished a manufactory of it but for the act of Parliament passed at that time pro- hibiting the production of steel in the col- onies. It is curious to see this forgotten discovery brought up again in our day, and applied to these sands on the southern shore of Long Island, and more successfully at Moisie, in the Lower St. Lawrence. Still more worthy of note is it that this prim- itive bloomary furnace, discarded in Eu- rope, has been improved by American in- 13 genuity, enlarged, fitted with a hot blast, water tuyeres, and other modern appliances, so that in the hands of skilled workmen in Northern New York it affords for certain ores an economical mode of making a supe- rior malleable iron, of which about 50,000 tons are thus produced yearly. A large part of this product is consumed at Pitts- burg for the manufacture of cutlery steel of excellent quality. The first half century of the republic saw but little progress in the manufacture of iron, and the total amount produced in 1810 is estimated at only 54,000 tons, which is not equal to the present annual yield of four or five of our modern blast-furnaces. During this period charcoal was the only fuel em- ployed, and the first great step in our iron manufacture was the use of anthracite. At- tempts were made to employ a mixture of this fuel with charcoal at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, in 1820, aud at Kingston, Mas- sachusetts, with the anthracite of Rhode Island, in 1827, but the way to the solution of the problem was finally prepared by the introduction of the hot blast in 1831, and in 1833 a patent was granted in the United States for the smelting of iron with anthra- cite by the aid of a blast of heated air. The first successful attempt to use anthracite alone in this country seems to have been in 1838, near Mauch Chunk, with a furnace twenty-one and a half feet high, producing two tons of iron daily. From this the in- dustry spread, and in 1840 there were six furnaces employing this fuel, and making each from thirty to fifty tons weekly of pig- iron. To-day our anthracite furnaces are many of them sixty and even eighty feet in height, producing from 250 to 300 tons of iron in a week. Of 680 furnaces in the United States in 1873, 226 consumed an- thracite, and produced nearly one-half of all the pig-iron made. From its purity, hardness, and ability to resist the weight of the charge, this fuel is unrivaled for the purpose of iron smelt- ing. This coal supplies the furnaces of East- ern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and to a great extent those of Eastern New York and of Maryland ; but as we approach the cen- tral region of Pennsylvania its use is grad- ually replaced by that of charcoal and of coke from the semi-bituminous coals, while 194 THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES. further westward the coke of the true bitu- minous coals, of which that of Couuelsville is the type, is the principal fuel, until we reach the western border of the great Appa- lachian field, where, in Ohio, are found the free -burning splint or block coals, which can be used in the smelting furnace in the raw state either alone or with an admixture of coke. The ores of the coal measures of Southern Ohio, known as the Hanging Rock district, have hitherto been smelted with charcoal, which is now being replaced by the block coal of the region. Similar coals on the eastern and western borders of the Illinois coal-field are also used for iron smelting. The relations of the ore to the fuel are of great importance to the development of the iron industry. Thus of the ores of Lake Su- perior a small portion only is smelted with charcoal in the region, and by far the great- er part is brought southward by the lakes — some to Chicago to be smelted with the coal of Indiana, and much more to Cleveland, where it is met by the block coal of Ohio, and in still larger quantities is carried south- ward to the mines of this coal, chiefly in the Chenango and Mahoning valleys, or as far as Pittsburg, to be smelted with the coke of that region. In like manneT the rich ores of Missouri find their way to the block coals of Indiana, to Southeastern Ohio, and even to Pittsburg, filling the returning ves- sels which have gone down the Ohio River laden with coal. In the East the iron fur- naces consuming anthracite are not direct- ly in the coal region, but scattered through the eastern part of Pennsylvania, and the adjacent portions of Maryland, New Jer- sey, and New York, sometimes, moreover, at points more or less remote from the ore beds which supply them. In the valley of the Hudson the anthracite comes half-way to meet the rich ores of Lake Champlain, and even on the shores of this lake may be seen large blast-furnaces smelting the ores of the vicinity with the help of the anthracite brought as back freight by the vessels car- rying the supplies of ore southward. The ores from the crystalline rocks, on account of their greater richness, can support the cost of a longer freight than the poorer ores found within the paleozoic basin, and they have, moreover, the advantage in many cases of yielding a purer iron. The early manu- facturers of Bessemer steel in this country were under the necessity of bringing their supplies of pig-iron from Cumberland, in England, and ores have even been brought from Spain and Algeria to be smelted with anthracite for the manufacture of Bessemer pig metal. Recently, however, it has been found that by careful selection the crystal line ores from our Eastern regions may be made to yield a pig-iron suitable for this purpose, while the region beyond the Alle- ghanies gets its supply of Bessemer metal from the ores of Lake Superior or of Mis- souri. The iron ore shipped from the northern peninsula of Michigan in 1873 amounted to 1,178,879 gross tons, in addi- tion to about 100,000 tons smelted in the region. This, at an average of sixty per cent, of metal, equals considerably more than one-fourth of the total iron product of the country. The history of the growth of the iron manufacture in the United States within the last fifty years exhibits a remarkable progress. From a production of 54,000 tons in 1810, it had become 165,000 tons in 1830, 347,000 tons in 1840, and 600,000 tons in 1850, as near as can be estimated. In 1860, it had reached 919,870; in 1870, 1,865,000; and in 1872, 2,880,070 tons ; while the diminished production of 1873, 2,695,434 tons, shows already the effect of the depression under which the iron interest of the country still suffers. Of the production of 1873, very nearly one-half was made in Pennsylvania, and not less than 1,249,673 tons with anthra- cite, while the total amount of charcoal- made pig-iron was only 524,127 tons, to which is to be added 50,000 tons of malleable iron made by the direct process in bloomaries. The importation of foreign iron and steel for 1872 was 795,655 tons ; for 1873, 371,164 tons ; and for 1874, less than 200,000 tons. From the figures for 1872 and 1873 we may conclude that the consumption in the Unit- ed States was then equal to about 3,500,000 tons of iron yearly. The great demand for iron in this coun- try for the purposes of railway construction, together with the high prices in Great Brit- ain in 1872 and 1873, led to a large increase in the number of blast-furnaces. In the two years just named eighty-three furnaces, COPPER MINES. 195 some of them among the largest in the conn- try, were finished and put into blast, and the whole number in operation in the au- tumn of 1873 was estimated at 636, hav- ing a capacity of producing not less than 4,371,277 tons of pig-iron, while a later es- timate from the same source, the American Iron and Steel Association, gives in July, 1874, a capacity of 4,500,000 tons, or about 1,000,000 more than the greatest consump- tion yet reached. Even at the previous rate of increase, many years must elapse before the country can consume such an amount of iron, and with the general prostration of business, and especially of the iron trade, in 1874, we are not surprised to find that a very large proportion of these furnaces is now out of blast, and that the selling price of pig-iron at the beginning of 1875 was below that at which it could be made at some of the furnaces. For the future the iron man- ufacturers of our country must strive for progress not only in the selection of ores and fuels, but in improvements in the con- struction and the management of furnaces, in all of which directions great economies remain to be effected, as the results obtain- ed in late years by the skill and high science of British iron-masters abundantly show. In this way we may hope before long to ri- val not only in quality but in cheapness the iron products of other countries. With the boundless resources of coal and iron which our country affords, it is only a question of how soon we can successfully contend with Great Britain in foreign markets. The en- tire iron production of the world was in 1856 about 7,000,000 tons, and in 1874 it was estimated at 15,000,000 tons, of which, at both of these periods, about one-half was furnished by Great Britain. It is supposed by Mr. A. S. Hewitt that at the end of the century the demand will amount to not less than 25,000,000 tons. The present immense production is already taxing heavily the re- sources of England, which obtains a large proportion of its purer ores from foreign countries, and a period will soon be reached when she can no longer meet the world's increasing demand, for the supply of which no other country offers advantages com- parable with the United States. The day is therefore not far distant when, in the words of Mr. Hewitt, all rivalry between the two nations in iron production must pass away. So long as the business of iron smelting was prosperous, and the profits were, as has been the case for the past few years in most parts of the country, very large, considera- tions of economy in the production of iron were too much neglected, but for the future all this must be changed. It is probable that before long we shall see some of the old furnaces and furnace sites abandoned, and a transfer of capital and skilled labor from many of the present centres of produc- tion to points where iron can be made at lower rates. Questions of freight of the raw materials will be closely considered, and new fields will be sought where the associations of ores of iron with coal suitable for smelt- ing them will enable pig-iron to be pro- duced more cheaply than where both the ore and the fuel are brought from afar. In districts like Fayette County and the Johns- town and Broad Top coal-fields in Pennsyl- vania, and along the western outcrop of the great Appalachian coal-field in Eastern Ohio, where the characteristic iron ores of the coal measures are more abundant than farther eastward, and are accompanied with coals suitable for their reduction, these conditions for the cheap production of iron exist. While the ores thus found in proximity to the coal are adapted for the production of all the or- dinary qualities of iron, the increasing ex- port of coal from this western border to the regions northward and westward permits the bringing back at low rates of freight of the rich ores of Missouri and Michigan, which are adapted to the making of Besse- mer steel. The southward extension of this great coal-field into West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and Northern Ala- bama also offers great facilities for the cheap manufacture of iron from native ores, which will at no distant day be utilized. The copper mines of the United States next claim our attention. Throughout the crystalline rocks which form the eastern border of the paleozoic basin ores of this metal are pretty abundantly distributed, and are now mined and treated for the ex- traction of the copper in Vermont, Pennsyl- vania, North Carolina, and Eastern Tennes- see, besides which ores from other localities along this belt, and from various regions to 196 THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR MINERAL RESOURCES. the westward of the great basin, are brought to Baltimore and to the vicinity of Boston for reduction. The total production from all these sources, which has never been greater than at present, is, however, estimated at less than 2500 tons — an amount inconsider- able when compared with the production of the mines of Lake Superior. In these, unlike the mines just mentioned, and, in- deed, unlike most others in the world, the copper, instead of being in the condition of an ore — that is to say, mineralized and dis- guised by combination with sulphur or with oxygen and other bodies, from which it must be separated by long and costly chemical processes — is found in the state of pure met- al, and needs only to be mechanically sepa- rated from the accompanying rocky matters previous to melting into ingot copper. The history of the copper region on the south shore of Lake Superior is famous in the an- nals of American mining. The metal, which in many cases is found in masses of all sizes u]} to many tons in weight, was known and used by the aboriginal races, and the traces of their rude mining operations are still met with. The first modern attempts at extract- ing this native copper, in 1771, were unsuc- cessful, and it was not until 1843 that the attention of mining adventurers was again turned toward this region. Numerous mines were opened, and a period of reckless specu- lation followed, which ended, in 1847, in the failure and abandonment of nearly all the enterprises which had been begun. They were, however, soon resumed under wiser management, and have been followed up with remarkable success. At first the op- erations were chiefly directed to the ex- traction of the great masses of native cop- per which were found distributed in an ir- regular manner in veins or fissures in the rocks, and yielded in some cases large prof- its ; but with the exhaustion of these a more abundant and regular source of supply has been found in layers of a soft earthy mate- rial, known as ash beds, containing metallic copper finely disseminated, or in beds of a conglomerate of which pure copper forms the cementing material. The successful working of these two kinds of deposits has been arrived at only by well-directed skill in management, and by mechanical appli- ances which diminish the costs of mining, crushing, and washing the rock, and reduce to a minimum the inevitable loss of copper in the waste material. No mining industry illustrates more strikingly than this the im- portance of such economies. A rock which may be made to yield one part in a hundred of metallic copper can, under favorable con- ditions, be treated with profit, and the res- idue in such a case may still contain one- half as much more copper, which is lost. A mine in this region a few years since yield- ed annually, from the treatment of 1,200,000 tons of rock, 800 tons of metallic copper, be- ing at the rate of two-thirds of one per cent., and this amount, at the price of copper then prevailing, was just sufficient to pay all the costs of extraction. The residues showed by assay the presence, in a finely divided state, of as much more copper, and it is ev- ident that a greater perfection in the proc- ess of extraction, by which one-half of the copper thus lost could have been saved, would have yielded 400 tons additional, which, inasmuch as the costs of mining, crushing, and washing were already paid by the first 800 tons, would have been clear profit. One of the best-known mines in the region, which has been worked with con- tinued success since its opening, in 1849, produced, in 1872, 1138 tons of fine copper, to obtain which over 100,000 tons of rock were mined, and over 60,000 tons of this se- lected for stamping and washing, so that the copper yielded was only 1.12 per cent., yet the profits of the year's working were $200,000. It would be foreign to our plan to describe modes of treatment, but state- ments of results like this serve to show what may be obtained by the application of skill and science to mining industry. At the Calumet and Hecla mine, the most re- markable one of the Lake Superior region, from 700 to 800 tons of rock are now treated daily, and yield about four per cent, of me- tallic copper, which, when converted into ingots, costs about thirteen cents the pound — a price far below that at which it can bo extracted from the less rich deposits of the region or from the ores of the metal by the ordinary process of smelting. This mine produced of ingot copper, in 1872, 9717 tons, and in 1874, 9918 tons, of 2000 pounds. The crude copper from these mines, as delivered to the refiners, who melt it into ingots, yields GOLD AND SILVER. 197 on an average about eighty per cent, of met- al — a fact to be borne in mind in consulting the statements of production, which are gen- erally given for the unrefined product. The amount of copper yielded by the Lake Supe- rior region from its opening, in 1845, to 1858 is estimated at 18,000 tons. From about 4100 tons in the latter year the production has shown a progressive increase, with some slight fluctuations, to the present time. It equaled, for 1873, 18,514 tons, and for 1874 not less than 22,235 tons, making an aggre- gate for the past thirty years of 217,134 tons, which at eighty per cent, equals 173,704 tons of ingot copper. The total yield of ingot copper for the lake region in 1874 is esti- mated by Caswell at 17,327 tons, to which he adds for the production from the ores of the metal 2375 tons, making a total production for the United States of 19,702 tons of cop- per. This exceeds considerably the domes- tic consumption, and accordingly we find that there were exported in 1874 not less than 4500 tons of copper. The supply of native copper from the mines of the lake region will probably continue to increase, and in years to come the working of the great deposits of copper ores which abound both in the Eastern and Western portions of our country will add largely to the pro- duction, so that henceforth the United States is destined to furnish considerable quanti- ties of copper to foreign markets. The price of this metal is subject to remarkable fluc- tuations. Thus from fifty-five cents the pound iu 1864 it gradually fell to nineteen in 1870, rising again to forty-five cents in 1872, and, falling once more to nineteen in the summer of 1874, rose to twenty-four cents at the close of the year. It yet remains to speak of our mines of gold and silver. Although gold is distrib- uted in greater or less quantity throughout the mountain ranges which form the east- ern rim of the great basin, its presence was not made known till 1799, when it was discov- ered in the soil in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. For the next twenty-five years small quantities of gold were gathered by washing from the earth at various points from the Potomac to Alabama ; but it was not until 1825 that the precious metal was found in veins of quartz both in North Car- olina and Virginia. The whole amount of gold got from this Southern region up to 1827 is estimated at only $110,000 ; but with the opening of the gold-bearing veins a rapid increase in production took place, and in 1837 branch mints were established by the government in North Carolina and in Georgia, where they existed up to the t iine of the late civil war ; before which, howev- er, the gold production of the region had greatly fallen off, these mines having been deserted for the richer ones of the western coast. The whole amount of gold from this region for three-quarters of a century up to 1873 is estimated at about $20,000,000 ; but for the last year mentioned it amounted only to $100,000, the chief part of which was from North Carolina. The great supply of precious metals has come from the Avestern half of our territory. The vast region from the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific presents geographical features very different from those of the great Eastern paleozoic basin. Its numerous nearly parallel mountain ranges, to which the collective name of the Cordilleras has been applied, are rich in mineral treasures, which, as pointed out by Blake and by King, may be described as arranged in parallel zones, coinciding with the mountain belts. Along the Pa- cific coast range are deposits of quicksil- ver, tin, and chrome, while the belt of the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades carries a range of copper mines near its base, aud a line of gold-bearing veins and gold alluvions on its western flank. Along the eastern slope of the Sierra lies a zone of silver mines stretching into Mexico, and including the great Comstock lode of Nevada, while silver ores abound in the subordinate ranges between the Sierra and the Wahsatch. The silver-lead ores of New Mexico, Utah, and Western Montana, and the still more east- ern gold deposits of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, follow the same general law of distribution. We can, with- in our present limits, do little more than note some of the principal points in the his- tory of the opening of these mining regions, and give some figures which serve to show the vast mineral wealth of the Cordilleras. The gold of California was noticed by early Spanish explorers, and was again dis- covered on the Colorado River, just a centu- 198 THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUK MINERAL RESOURCES. y ry since, in 1775, but attracted no attention till its rediscovery early in 1848, when the existence of very rich gold alluvions was made known. A rapid immigration to the region at once followed, and it was re- ported in August of that year that the daily production of gold was from $30,000 to $50,000. It was not until 1851 that the gold-bearing veins were discovered, and the larger part of the gold of California has been got from the placers,, as the alluvions are called. It is from the partial exhaust- ion of these that the production has of late years considerably diminished. In 1848 it was estimated at $10,000,000, and reached its maximum of $65,000,000 in 1853. In 1870 it had fallen to $25,000,000, and reached $19,000,000 in 1873, but rose again in 1874 to $20,300,000. The total yield, since the open- ing of the mines in 1848, amounts to more than $1,000,000,000. The working of the gold-bearing veins and of the deeper allu- vions or placers has of late been systema- tized and greatly improved, and from the abundance and richness of these, and the persistence of the veins in depth, this re- gion may be expected to produce great amounts of gold for generations to come. From California explorations were soon carried both northward and eastward, and in addition to the gold of Oregon, Idaho and Washington Territories, the vast silver deposits of Nevada were made known. It was in 1859 that silver ore was first discov- ered on what has since been known as the Comstock lode — a vein which, viewed in the light of recent developments, is one of the most remarkable known in the history of mining. This lode, of great breadth, has been traced for a length of over five miles, and worked for more than four miles, in some places to a depth of 1500- feet. The ore has not been rich, seldom yielding over fifty dollars to the ton, and often less than one-half that amount, yet such has been its abundance that the production of the vein from its first working, in 1860, up to 1868 was $81,500,000, and up to the close of 1874 it had yielded a total amount of about $180,000,000, with very large profits to the miners. The bullion extracted from these ores contains an amount of gold equal to about one-third of the entire value. Other silver producing districts, second only in importance to that of Virginia City, which is the site of tho Comstock lode, have since been discovered in Nevada, and the value of the bullion from the State in 1872 amounted to not les3 than $25,000,000, of which $13,500,000 were from this lode. For the calendar year 1873 it equaled $31,666,000, of which $21,756,000 were from Virginia City ; and the returns for the first half of 1874 showed a still in- creasing production. During the latter months of that year remarkable discov- eries were announced in the Comstock lode, which surpassed all previous developments in that region. An enormous mass of ore, in great part below a depth of 1500 feet, was exposed, far richer than any thing hitherto found in the lode, and said to yield an average of many hundred dollars to the ton. Some of the published esti- mates of the value of this discovery were probably exaggerated, but there seems lit- tle doubt that the amount of treasure re- vealed exceeded the whole production of the lode up to that time. The existence of silver-bearing lead ores in Utah was known as early as 1863, but the first attempt to develop them was made in 1870, when a few thousand tons of ore were shipped from the Emma mine eastward over the Union Pacific Railroad. In 1872, however, the production of this region had reached a value of $3,250,000; in 1873, of $3,750,000; and in 1874, very nearly $6,000,000. The ores are in great abundance, but are often not rich enough to support the cost of transportation, while, on the other hand, the rarity and high price of fuel render their treatment on the spot very costly. The average value of the ores exported, chiefly to the eastern and west- ern sea-boards, in 1873 was $115 a ton, be- sides which a large quantity was reduced in the region, yielding what is called base bullion, that is, lead carrying silver and some gold, and valued at from $200 to $250, the lead being there estimated at about $50 the ton. In some establishments in Utah the precious metals are extracted from the lead before shipment. The fuel there used is in part charcoal and in part coke sent from Pennsylvania. The lead furnished to the United States markets from the silver-lead ores of Utah and Ne- vada in 1874 is estimated at 26,000 tons, THE GOLD SUPPLY. 199 while the lead production of Missouri was 15,000, aud that of Iowa, Illinois, and Wis- consin only 5500 tons. The silver production of the United States was altogether insignificant until 18G1, when the Comstock lode gave $2,000,000 of silver, since which time there has been a steady increase to $36,500,000 in 1873, giving a total production of $189,000,000. It is probable that for some years to come the supply of silver from the mines of the Cor- dilleras will be much greater than in the past. Already within the last four years the immense production of silver in this country has considerably reduced its price in the markets of the world, and the effect of recent discoveries can not fail to be a still farther depreciation of its value. The history of the mining of our gold and silver would be imperfect without a notice of the quicksilver of California, as it is by its aid that nearly the whole of these pre- cious metals, with the exception of the sil- ver of the lead ores, is extracted. Quick- silver ore was discovered in California as early as 1849, and the mines opened soon after have not only continued to supply the wants of the immense gold and silver indus- try of the West, but since 1852 have furnish- ed large quantities for exportation to Mex- ico, South America, China, and Australia. This amounted in 1865 to 44,000 flasks of seventy- six and a half pounds each, or 3,366,000 pounds of quicksilver. The in- creased demand for this metal for the treat- ment of our silver ores, and the diminished production of the mines, have since reduced considerably the exportation. In no other region of the globe, however, is the ore of quicksilver so widely distributed as in Cali- fornia, and there is reason to believe that from the opening and working of new de- posits the production will soon be much increased — a result which will bo stimula- ted by the present high price of quicksilver and its scarcity in foreign markets. We have noticed the falling off in the yield of gold from California which began in 1853. It was not until 1860 that sup- plies of this metal from other districts ap- peared, rising from $1,000,000 in that year to $28,000,000 in 1866, since which time there has been a gradual falling off from these also, so that while for 1873 the gold of California equaled $19,000,000, that from other sources in the Western United States was $17,000,000, making a production of $36,000,000, that of the entire world being estimated at $100,000,000. Dr. R. W. Raymond, to whom we are indebted for these figures, gives the entire gold product of the country from 1847 to 1873 inclusive at $1,240,750,000 ; and if to that we add his calculation of the silver pro- duced up to that date, equal to $189,000,000, we shall have $1,429,750,000. Adding to this the figures for 1874, which exceed a little those of 1873, we have a grand total of over $1,500,000,000 of gold and silver as the pro- duction of the territory between the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific since the opening of the mines of California in 1847. There are many mineral resources in the United States besides those already men- tioned which might justly claim a place iu a sketch like the present. Among them are the ores of chrome, zinc, lead, and nickel, now extensively mined; the extensive salt deposits in New York, Michigan, Pennsylva- nia, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia, which now supply to a great extent the markets of the country ; the mineral phosphates of the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina, which are not only manufactured into fer- tilizers for domestic consumption, but large- ly exported to Great Britain ; and the gran- ites, marbles, sandstones, roofing slates, and other materials of construction, which are now the objects of large and profitable in- dustries. We have, however, selected, in preference to any of these, coal, petroleum, iron, copper, silver, and gold, which, from their great pecuniary value and their di- rect connection with material progress, have been among the most important elements in our national growth and prosperity. VI COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. WHOEVER desires to understand the commerce of this and other lands, and to perceive its true order and mean- ing, must first consider what words stand for — what commerce and manufactures real- ly are in their simplest form. One to whom the word "manufactures" hriugs only the conception of vast factories for the working of cotton, wool, or iron has but the faint- est idea of what constitute the true man- ufactures of the nation; and one to whom the word " commerce" brings up only the image of an ocean steam-ship laden with goods and wares from distant ports, or a train of cars drawn by a powerful engine bearing many tons of merchandise to far- away places, has an equally faint impres- sion of the vast scope even of our inland traffic. Commerce is an occupation in which men serve each other ; it is an exchange in which both parties in the transaction gain something which they desire more than the thing they part with. It may sometimes be that the desire which is satisfied on the one part or the other is one that had better not be served : that is a question of morals with which we are not now dealing. Such ex- changes are, however, the exception. The traffic in commodities that work permanent injury constitutes but an insignificant pro- portion of the vast exchanges of the world; true commerce in useful things lies at the very foundation of human welfare. Unless a good and wholesome subsistence is possi- ble there can be neither spiritual, intellect- ual, nor aesthetic culture, and such a subsist- ence is only possible to the mass of men by means of an exchange of products. All com- merce is the aggregate of small transactions. The milkman who brings the daily portion of milk to him who dwells in city or town represents a commerce of vast proportion, almost equal in this country, in its aggre- gate value, to the whole sum of our foreign importations. The value of dairy products consumed in the United States or exported in the form of cheese and butter is more than four hundred million dollars. The milkman is the representative of one of the branches of commerce which has grown to this vast proportion during the century, and in which the people of the United States have shown the greatest originality. The cheese factory represents a manufacture born of thrift and enterprise only, and our exports of cheese exceed ninety million pounds a year. How little the true function of commerce has been understood may be proved by the fact that only within the century has it been admitted among English-speaking peo- ple that there can be any mutual service in the matter. In this country even to this day this truth is but obscurely perceived, and hence the nation with which we have our largest transactions, our mother coun- try, is often called our natural enemy by otherwise intelligent persons, because she tries to supply some of our needs at a low cost to us ; yet had the true nature of com- merce been comprehended a hundred years ago, war betweeu us and England would have been as impossible then as it would now be infamous and absurd. It was a want of knowledge as to the true function of trade that caused the Revolution. The year 1776 witnessed the publication of two documents of very great importance to the welfare of humanity, one of a purely public character — the Declaration of Inde- pendence of the United States of America ; the other, the work of a single man, a poor Scotch professor, a treatise on the causes of the wealth of nations, by Adam Smith. It may be affirmed almost with certainty that had the book been printed fifty years ear- lier, the Declaration of Independence would never have been issued, because the wrongs which made it necessary would have been remedied without resort to war. Had the simple principle, of mutuality of service been accepted, had it only become a part of the common knowledge of the English and the colonists that all commerce, whether among the people of the same state or between dif- ADAM SMITH'S " WEALTH OF NATIONS." 201 ferent states and nations, only exists and can only be maintained because it is profitable and beneficial to both parties, no English ministry could have been supported in the measures which were undertaken to prevent the establishment of manufactures and to restrict the commerce of America. It was the enforcement of these measures through a long series of years that gradually sapped the allegiance of the people of America, and finally led to the violent resistance of acts of minor importance, which in themselves would have been insufficient to provoke re- bellion. The colonists were ready to pay money, but resisted the perversion of the power of taxation. Viewed from a commercial stand-point, the war of the Revolution, therefore, was a terrible blunder, caused by a series of erro- neous theories as to the true nature and function of trade on the part of the English statesmen who had controlled the govern- ment of Great Britain during the previous century. They were imbued with the false idea that in commerco what one nation gained another must lose, and their policy in deal- ing with their colonies was controlled by the same false assumption. Their great navigators had been many of them only buccaneers under another name, their mer- chants and ship-owners fouud no infamy in the slave-trade, and their conquests in the East had begun in motives of personal and selfish aggrandizement. Throughout their history it had become apparent only to a few obscure students or to one or two en- lightened merchants that there could be greater gain in liberty than in restriction or slavery. How much of the true spirit of liberty our Puritan ancestors gained from the Dutch among whom they dwelt so many years might be a question well worth inves- tigating. The policy of the rulers of En- gland in regard to their own people was of the same character as toward us, and it may not be charged against them that they en- forced upon us any more injurious or unjust measures than they inflicted upon them- selves. To the student of political science no lesson is more clearly indicated by the acts of Great Britain during the eighteenth century than the extreme danger and unfit- ness of restricting the control of government and the right of suffrage to the possessors of property only. Through a long series of years England was governed by those whose claim to rule was based mainly upon the possession of property ; during this period war was chronic, the profession of arms the one that gave the most influence and dis- tinction, and the theory of government was the rule of the few for the alleged protec- tion of the many, but the result was the privation of the many and the aggran- dizement of the few. The profession of the merchant and the tradesman was considered ignoble, and many of the great commercial and manufacturing cities were not represented in the govern- ment. Even the rude lesson imposed upon England by the success of the American col- onies in achieving their independence was not at once comprehended, and for fifty years more she struggled with economic er- ror, and under a false system of social phi- losophy sought to regulate and control the commerce of the world by restrictive stat- utes, carrying on gigantic wars, and burden- ing the English nation with the larger part of that enormous debt which even to this day retards its progress, and is one of the main causes of the poverty of so large a por- tion of the inhabitants of the British Isles. Not until 1824, or nearly fifty years after the publication of the Wealth of Nations, did its truths become so well understood as to cause even the beginning Cf reform ; at that date, under the lead of Huskisson, began the se- ries of changes which have relieved English commerce from the shackles of meddlesome legislation, but only within ten years has even her commerce been truly free and pros- perous. In 1820 there were over two thou- sand acts on the statute-book of Great Brit- ain unrepealed, which had been enacted at various dates for the regulation of commerce. It seems passing strange that England should have maintained her false theories in the face of such evidence as was present- ed in the history of the Dutch Republic. A century before Adam Smith's work was pub- lished the great merchant of London, Sir Josiah Child, gave his list of reasons why the Dutch were more prosperous than the English. His reasons sound strangely mod- ern, and are even in advance of our thought. He gave them in the following order : 202 COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. Firstly. " They," the Dutch, " have in their greatest councils of state trading merchants that have lived abroad in most parts of tho world, by whom laws and orders are con- trived and peaces projected, to the great advantage of all men." Have the United States yet learned this first rule of prosperity during our first cen- tury of life as a nation ? Secondly. "Their law of gavelkind, where- by all the children possess an equal share of their father's estate." Thirdly. " Their exact making of all their native commodities, and packing of their herrings, cod-fish, and all other commodi- ties." Fourthly. "Their giving great encourage- ment and immunities to the inventors of new manufactures and the discoverers of new mysteries of trade, and to those that shall bring the commodities of other nations first in use and practice among them." Fifthly. " Their contriving and building of great ships to sail with small charges." Sixthly. "Their parsimonious and thrifty living." Seventhly. "The education of their chil- dren, as well daughters as sons ; all which, be they of never so great quality or estate, they always take care to bring up with per- fect good hands, and to have the full knowl- edge of arithmetic and merchants' accounts ; and in regard the women are as knowing therein as the men, it doth encourage their husbands to hold on to their trades to their dying days, knowing the capacity of their wives to get in their estates or carry on their trades after their death." Eighthly. "The lowness of their customs and the height of their excise, which last is certainly the most equal and indifferent tax in the world." Ninthly, "The careful providing for and employing the poor." Ten till y. "Their use of banks, which are of so immense advantage." Eleventhly. "Their toleration of different opinions in matters of religion." Twelfthly, "Their law-merchant, by which all controversies between merchant and tradesman are decided in three or four days." Thirtcenthly. "Their law for the transfer- ence of bills of debt from one man to an- other." Fourtcenthly. " Their keeping of public reg- isters of all lands and houses sold and mort- gaged." Lastly. " The lowness of interest on money with them." The jealousy on the part of England of the prosperity of the Dutch had, prior to the date of the last publication by Sir Jo- siah Child in 1691, caused them to enact the navigation laws, and these laws had then already caused two wars, as the result of which the first funded debt of Great Britain took form. The same jealousy con- tinued, and the same ignorance of the true theory of trade led to the enforcement of the navigation acts and the restrictions upon the trade of the American colonies. Resist- ance ensued, and the colonies became a na- tion. But the people of the mother country failed yet to see the error of their system, and again attempted to enforce the same bad laws against us, thus leading again to the last war with Great Britain. At last, slowly and surely, the English people learn- ed the lesson that the malign effect of such restriction was as injurious to themselves as to the people whom these acts had made their enemies. One by one they were re- pealed, and with each repeal England went onward toward the end she had failed to compass before. In liberty she has suprem- acy over every sea. We also have succeeded in what we aim- ed at ; we have maintained our navigation laws ; but our ships are few and scattered, our steam marine has mainly existed through subsidies, and our flag is unknown in har- bors and cities where the flag of other na- tions daily comes and goes at the mast-head of a gallant ship or a noble steamer. We have the lesson yet to learn. A hun- dred years hence, by which time it is to be hoped the people of this nation will have intelligently grasped the simple theory of trade, it is not to be doubted that the dec- laration of principles by Adam Smith will be recognized as of supreme importance to the human race, while the Declaration of Independence will be looked upon even by the citizens of this country only as an im- portant incident in the history of the An- glo-Saxon people, and the war which then ensued will be proved aud acknowledged to have been caused mainly by a want of INTERSTATE COMMERCE. 203 knowledge of that economic science of which Adam Smith was the first great expounder. If the people of this nation could but now respond to the grand forecasting of that true and humane statesman W. E. Forster, who lately visited us, and form an Anglo- Saxon alliance for the liberty of commerce, for the repression of slavery, for the doing away of privateering or piracy upon the seas, the end of all war among civilized people would be at hand, and the grand vision of the prophet would be realized— "They shall beat their swords into plow- shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks." To him who shall among us succeed in making this vision a grand and living truth will come deserved fame as great as ever yet belonged to any one among us ; but that good time has not yet come, and will not come until the simplest principles of polit- ical science are made a part of common ed- ucation. We do not undervalue the Declaration of Independence when we recognize the fact that the vast material progress in this coun- try during the century now about ending has ensued from only a partial realization of the principles of liberty therein contained. Our fathers threw off the fetters of British domination, but continued the restrictions of English thought, and they thus hamper- ed themselves and us from within with the very trammels they had resisted from with- out. It was not until the framing of the Con- stitution in 1787, and the adoption of the provision that no State should enact any law restricting commerce between the States, that even a true union was established. Never before that time had commerce upon a grand scale, and through vast regions dif- fering widely in soil, climate, and condition, been freed from restriction. And because of this partial liberty has the material wel- fare of the people of this country been so well assured as to blind them to the evils of the system that has prevented an exten- sion of our foreign commerce on an equally grand and profitable scale. Although the framers of the Constitution itself may not have fully comprehended the importance of this act, or the truly scientific basis on which they built, they did so organize and assure a system of absolute free trade be- tween the States that even the corruption of slavery failed to break the union. The Union exists to-day partly because the people of the West would not permit the traffic of the great Southern water-way of the continent to be under the control of a foreign nation, lest it should be obstruct- ed by custom-houses. When they present- ly realize the other fact that it is as impor- tant to them to have the traffic of the great Northern water-way through Canada as free from obstruction as the Southern water-way now is, another onward step will be taken, and another barrier to our full prosperity will fall — not this time, however, by violent means. In treating the subject of our commercial progress during the past century, it is not worth while to waste time and space upon mere commercial statistics which any one may compile, but rather to note the changes in policy and method that have occurred, and to see how far we are behind the posi- tion we might have held had we not been in some measure blinded to our opportu- nity by the very ease with which we have achieved great though but partial success. As was once said of the policy of Austria in its treatment of Hungary, the bad line of custom-houses with which we have sur- rounded ourselves has caused us "to be smothered in our own grease." Long an- terior to the year 1776 the infant manufac- tures of America had come into existence, and had obtained such a vigorous growth as to cause the utmost jealousy in the moth- er country. In 1750 the production of iron and steel and the manufacture of steel tools and iron wares had become so well estab- lished in America as to induce hostile legis- lation, and England prohibited the erection of rolling-mills and steel furnaces, and at- tempted to stop the domestic commerce in and the export of their products. This was one of the many acts which culminated in the separation of the colonies from England. The records of the owners of the Cornwall Iron Mouutain, in Pennsylvania, prove the working of the ores long anterior to the Revolution, and one of the carefully treas- ured documeuts now preserved in the office of the mine is the account current between the former owners and the commissary-gen- eral of the patriot army, wherein they are 204 COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. credited by the government -with shot and shell, and charged with Hessian prisoners at thirty pounds a head, whose services they bought for the term of their being held as prisoners of war. Our ancestors were clothed in homespun, and the endeavor to stop commerce in wool and woolen cards was one of the most vex- ations restrictions imposed by the mother country. Our forefathers established a prosperous traffic among themselves, and sent commer- cial ventures in their small vessels to vari- ous ports of the world. But this was not to be permitted. The laws of England for- bade her colonies to trade with the colonies of France and Spain. The power of taxa- tion was invoked to prevent it. Naval offi- cers were made custom-house officers, not so much to collect revenue as to stop traffic altogether, just as the civil officers had pre- viously attempted to stop our manufactures. What we have failed to perceive is that the measures Avhich only provoked animos- ity when imposed from without are equally mischievous when enacted within. We have not yet learned that restrictions upon commerce are most injurious to those who enforce them, and by continuing the same navigation acts we have compassed the very result that Great Britain failed to accomplish by war. In one century we have reduced ourselves from the position of a dreaded maritime people to a position of comparative insignificance upon the sea. At the end of a century of vigorous life and effort we remain but a province, unable to keep our own flag at the mast-head of any fleet of modern vessels. But let us turn from this sorry picture of perverted force and ignorant striving to im- itate the long since discarded methods of England, to the far more satisfactory con- sideration of the result of our domestic com- merce and the prosperity that has ensued from its unrestricted character. It has been fortunate for us that within our own limits we possess such diversity of soil, climate, and condition as to have prevented the re- strictions upon foreign commerce from pro- ducing the same bad results as the restrict- ive policy caused and culminated in in Great Britain in 1841. At that time "the system which was supported with the view of ren- dering the country independent of foreign sources of supply, and thus, it was hoped, fostering the growth of home trade, had most effectually destroyed that trade by re- ducing the entire population to beggary, destitution, and want. In the manufac- turing districts mills and workshops were closed, and property daily depreciated in value; in the sea-ports shipping was laid up useless in the harbor; agricultural la- borers were eking out a miserable existence upon starvation wages and parochial relief, and the country was brought to the verge of national and universal bankruptcy." As we are now about to enter upon the hundredth year of our existence as a na- tion, this dark picture will only partially apply to those identical branches of indus- try which the government has especially attempted to promote by restrictive stat- utes. Depression rules the hour among the mills, the mines, and the iron-works ; strikes prevail in the factories ; bloodshed is com- mon at the mines ; but the stove-maker, the wood-worker, the tinsmith, the wagon-build- er, the blacksmith, the plow-maker, the mill- wright, the harness-maker, and thejr com- panions are busy and tolerably well employ- ed, and these are the ones who constitute the vast army of manufacturers who must exist in every civilized community. It is true that the depression in a few great branches of industry more or less af- fects all others, but it is also true that those special branches of industry are now the most depressed that have been most pro- tected, as it is called, by the government during the last half of the century just ending. We have only to glance at the vast force of free and industrious manufacturers and artisans, who are to be found in every cor- ner of our fair land, to perceive how a free inland commerce thrives and how true man- ufactures flourish in spite of and not because of the restrictive statutes. The great centres of manufacture and of agriculture are not to be found where they are usually sought, and the true and great diversity of our industry and the extent of our commerce may be most fully realized by tracing them out. The census of 1870 gives us the data, and by it we find that the centre of manufacturing industry is in TRANSPORTATION. 205 the city and county of New York, whose product of manufactures in the year 1870 exceeded $332,000,000 in value ; next conies Philadelphia, $322,000,000; next, St. Louis, $158,000,000 (in 1870, since increased to $239,- 000,000 in 1875) ; and then follow Middlesex County, Massachusetts, $113,000,000 ; Suffolk County, Massachusetts, $112,000,000 ; Prov- idence County, Rhode Island, $85,000,000; Hamilton County, Ohio, $79,000,000 ; Balti- more County, Maryland, $59,000,000 ; Essex County, New Jersey, $52,000,000 ; San Fran- cisco, California, $37,000,000 ; and in smaller sums we find the manufacturing arts wher- ever cities, towns, or villages exist. Again, in agriculture the pre-eminence is not to be found in the West, where it would usually be sought, but in the list of coun- ties producing the largest aggregate value each in its own State we find that Pennsyl- vania is at the head, while others follow in the following order : Lancaster Co., Penn 950 sq. miles. . .$11,815,008 St. Lawrence Co., N. Y.... 2900 " " ... 9,508,071 Worcester Co., Mass 1500" " ... 6,351,411 Hartford Co., Conn 80T " " ... 6,220,911 La Salle Co., Ill 1050" " ... 5,502,502 Oakland Co., Mich 900" " ... 5,154,231 Burlington Co., N. J 600" " ... 4,908,839 Then follow the rest of the champion coun- ties in agriculture, indicating as little of the commonly assumed order as to position and section as the manufacturing and mechanic arts. The exchanges of the products of these counties and States constitute our national commerce. It has been estimated that the aggregate of values moved over our seventy thousand miles of railroad in a year is over ten thousand million dollars, and for this service and for the transportation of passen- gers the sum of five hundred and twenty- six million dollars was paid in the year just ended. Yet all this vast movement is but for the supply of the simplest wants, and the utter futility of attempting to regulate or direct it by statute can be fully realized when we consider that it only exists because men choose to exchange bread for boots, beef for hats, pork for clothing, timber for dwellings, or the like. Thus commerce be- tween States differing as widely as almost any section of the earth's surface in soil, climate, and condition, also differing widely in the rate of interest, in the incidence of local taxation, and in the wages of labor, has yet called into existence our seventy thousand miles of railway, costing nearly four thousand million dollars, by means of which exchanges of goods were made last year estimated at two hundred million tons. Free commerce between the states of a great continent has induced this diversity of em- ployment, and this establishment of manu- factures in the immediate neighborhood of agriculture which assures prosperity to the mechanic, the manufacturer, and the farmer alike, while at the same time progress in the method of transportation has caused neigh- borhood to consist not so much in proximi- ty as in the elimination of time. This free- dom of commerce, and the division of labor that ensues from it, have led to certain re- sults in the distribution of population which call for a passing notice. The production of the cereal crops upon which our whole prosperity now depends has ceased to be a matter of manual labor to any great extent, but is carried on by means of machines of complex character requiring few hands to tend them in proportion to their product. Had it not been for these new methods the war for the preservation of the Union would have been almost impracticable, be- cause the million of men who were at one time in the loyal army could not have been spared without risk of famine ; but iu fact such had been the increased power of pro- duction and transportation that during the war, had the crops alone been considered, it would not have appeared that a single man had left his home upon the fields. A further result has come in this, that as a less number of hands are needed in the field, a greater number may be employed in the arts, and herein is an explanation of the greater relative increase in the manufactures of the country than in the products of agri- culture. This, again, has led to a far great- er concentration in towns and cities. The tendency to concentration has been to some extent counteracted by the homestead and land-grant system under which the public lands have been distributed, but it is to be doubted if even this cheap land has caused any great increase in the relative number of the agricultural population ; the new lands have been settled by a portion only of the immigrants from abroad, and by 206 COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. the farmers from the East, who have only changed their place and their method of work. Men who have once been engaged in the arts or manufactures seldom return to the field, but the country lad does seek the town or city. It can not be doubted that this concentration in cities and towns will continue, and that population will be more and more condensed in narrow spaces, drawing their subsistence from long dis- tances, and exchanging, in ever-increasing abundance, the comforts and luxuries which they produce, for the food and fuel they consume ; and with this condensation will come the more pressing need of solving the method of governing and administer- ing great cities ; of draining and ventila- ting, and of providing for the imperative necessity of parks, play-grounds, commons, and other wide, open areas, in order that, with these vast material gains that accom- pany free commerce and the division of la- bor, there may not be a grave loss in the moral welfare and in the physical vigor of the race. The interdependence of our States and the service which each renders to the other find most homely illustration in a subject not fitted for poetic treatment, nor likely to appeal to the imagination — commerce in hogs. The great prairies of the West grow corn in such abundance that even now, with all our means of intercommunication, it can not all be used as food, and some of it is con- sumed as fuel. It often happens that the farmer upon new land, remote from railroads, can get only from fifteen to twenty cents per bushel for Indian corn, at which price, while it is the best, it is also the cheapest fuel that he can have, and its use is an evidence of good economy, not of waste. Upon the fat prai- rie lands of the West the hog is wholesome- ly fed only upon corn in the milk or corn in the ear; thence he is carried to the colder climate of Massachusetts, where by the use of that one crop in which New England ex- cels all others — ice — the meat can be pack- ed at all seasons of the year ; there it is pre- pared to serve as food for the workman of the North, the freedman of the South, or the artisan of Europe ; while the blood, dried in a few hours to a fine powder, and sent to the cotton fields of South Carolina and Geor- gia to be mixed with the phosphatic rocks that underlie their coast lands, serves to produce the cotton fibre which furnishes the cheapest and fittest clothing for the larger portion of the inhabitants of the world. Here, then, is commerce, or men serving each other on a grand scale, all developed within the century, and undreamed of by our ancestors. The vast plains of the West, enriched by countless myriads of buffalo, can spare for years to come a portion of their productive force. Commerce sets in motion her thousand wheels, food is borne to those who need it most, and they are spared the effort to obtain it on the more sterile soil of the cold North. Commerce turns that very cold to use. The refuse is saved, and commerce has discovered that its use is to clothe the naked in distant lands. Borne to the sandy but healthy soils of Geor- gia and South Carolina, it renovates them with the fertility thus transferred from the prairies of Illinois and Indiana, and pres- ently there comes back to Massachusetts the cotton of the farmer, the well-saved, clean, strong, and even staple which commerce again has discovered to be worth identify- ing as the farmer's, not the planter's, crop, made by his own labor and picked by his wife and children, to whom only a few short years since such labor was ignoble, and be- cause thus well saved worth a higher price. Had the custom-house officer stood upon the Hudson River and said to the farmer of Illinois, " Your corn and meat must not come here, lest by your cheap labor you ruin our farmers," as the custom-house officer of the United States now says to the farmer and miner of Canada, when they try to send food and fuel to New England ; had the tax- gatherer watched at the bar of the harbors of Charleston and Savannah to make the obstruction greater, lest the meat packed in New England should affect the price of the poor freedman's pigs, and lest the fertilizers made in Boston and Philadelphia should stop the phosphate works of those cities, as the custom-house officer of the United States now attempts to stop the refuse salt of for- eign production, even when only needed as a manure; had the revenue official of Mas- sachusetts stood ready to make the cotton more costly, as the custom-house officer of CONSUMPTION THE GAUGE OF PROSPERITY. 207 the United States now doubles the price of the wool of Canada — this commerce could not have existed, the men of the West could not have rendered service to New England, nor they to their Southern brethren, nor they again to the people of all lands and all climes. The century has witnessed the establish- ment of the culture and exchange of cot- ton, the extension of civilization over the prairies of the West, and the infinite and complex movements which we feebly try to grasp throughout all their ramifications, whereby the huugry are fed, the naked clothed, and the soil that has been burned over and scathed by slavery renewed and made more productive than ever before ; yet one of the chief instruments in this vast benefit, by which the general struggle for life has thus been made less arduous, has been nothing but a herd of swine. Turning a moment from this homely phase of progress, let us glance at another vast change. Early in the century a few small ships or barks sailed from New England, lad- en with muskets, beads, tobacco, and bales of red flannel, their destination the North- west coast. Upon the voyage the goods were made up into packages containing each one musket, a few yards of flannel, and a small portion of beads and tobacco, each package the price of a bale of fur skins. Arriving at their destination, the vessel was laden with the furs thus bought, and then she slowly wended her way to China, where teas, purchased at about the same ratio of profit, were taken on board, and, after a long period passed without be- ing heard from, the ship returned to Boston or Salem. Under this system tea was the luxury of the few ; now it is the comfort of the million. And how does it now reach the consumer? A telegram from St. Pe- tersburg to New York or Boston calls for supplies of wheat or barley for the Russian troops on the Amoor River, the merchant in Boston or New York sends the message to San Francisco, the grain is laden upon a vessel there, the banker's credit furnished by the Russian government is transferred in a moment to China or Japan, and within a few weeks the tea of China or Japan, brought over the Pacific Railroad, is being consumed in Chicago in exchange for the wheat or barley of California, of which the rations of the Russian troops may at the same moment consist. Were it not for the barriers that we main- tain between ourselves and other nations, by which most of our manufactures are made more costly than those of other coun- tries, orders not only for wheat and cotton and other crude products of the soil, but for the finer products of manufacturing indus- try, would be telegraphed for in the same manner, and we should serve the need of untold millions now almost unknown to us, receiving back that abundance of foreign comforts and luxuries of which we are in part deprived by the folly of economic su- perstition. We are deprived of them under the pre- tense that our laborers can not afford the consumption of foreign luxuries, but that all such importations impoverish the country. The end of all commerce is an abundant and general consumption not only of the nec- essary articles of subsistence, but of the comforts and luxuries of life ; and the ma- terial prosperity of the country is to be gauged by the amount of its annual con- sumption more than by the magnitude of its accumulations. The figures of the census, by which it is attempted to measure the wealth and progress of the people, are utterly falla- cious if taken by themselves, the true measure of material prosperity being the amount of comfort and of luxury that the wages of workmen, relatively equal in in- telligence and skill, will purchase at dif- ferent dates and in different places. A century since the man who now enjoys leisure and abundance, and whose hours of labor are not overlong, would have been forced to work the livelong day for a bare and coarse subsistence, while many of the ig- norant emigrants who now swarm through- out our land would have starved had they then attempted to come iuto the colonies. The great difference in the condition of the mass of the people a century since and at the present time consisted in this, that then nearly all knew how to get moderate comfort from little means, partly because the labor of that day was nearly all of a kind that stimulated intelligence ; there was much drudgery, but not the routine and 208 COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. monotony which now mark the condition of those who do the commoner sort of work. The Irish servant of to-day can obtain for her wages better clothes and more of them, is furnished with better food and more of it, and is better and more comfortably housed than the mistress of the house a century since ; and these changes have come because the division of labor, the extension of com- merce, and the improvements in means of transport have brought distant places near, and have increased production. The work- man in the iron furnace, the weaver in the mill, the man who tends the machine in the boot factory, earns higher wages and may be able to live far better than the black- smith, the cobbler, or the carpenter of old time. But he earns his subsistence in a far different way, and the abundance that he may enjoy may not be an unalloyed benefit. Why is not the man or woman of to-day who performs the drudgery of the world equal in thrift and intelligence to those who once did the work which they now do ? The reason is not difficult to find. The cobbler then used his brain as well as his lapstone ; the blacksmith was an artisan, a leader in the church choir, aud a chief speaker in town-meetings ; the carpenter of that day was a craftsman ; with poor tools, unaided by machinery, he was com- pelled to hew out his dwelling-place, and he built it firmly and well ; the house and the man were built up together, and each was strong and true. The housewife spun and wove the very cloth in which the family was clad, and as the web was woven, thrift and intelligence made part of the warp and woof. Each man and woman was the " builder of a brain" as well as of a home, and there could be no comfortable subsistence without true man- hood and true womanhood. Commerce has changed these conditions, and we are now at one of the half-way places. The same labor and the same intel- ligence that then gave but a subsistence gained with arduous toil, but with much mental vigor, will now suffice to procure an ample ••onipetence and exemption from toil. The craftsman of the old time is the master of to-day, the housewife has become the mistress of a mansion; but the toiler of to-day is not the equal of the toiler of old time, and he could not then have subsisted at all. Commerce, invention, and the divis- ion of labor have increased abundance, but have also, to a considerable extent, sepa- rated the functions of those who work with the head from those who work with the hand ; they have raised a large portion of the community to a higher plane of comfort and luxury than could have been even dreamed of a century since, and in so doing have made a place and created occupations for those who could not then have existed at all in regions or countries which now have a dense population ; but these occupations are of a new kind, and many of the methods by which this comfort and abundance are obtained tend to deaden the intelligence and to promote a merely animal existence. May it not be that one of the causes of the uneasiness of those who toil, and who con- stitute the laboring classes of some sections, comes from the monotony of their work rather than from the want of material com- fort? Man can not live by bread alone, and ten or eleven hours a day spent in watching a machine, while they may yield more bread and meat than the hand spin- ner and weaver of a century since ever earn- ed, may yet be devoid of that use of the mental faculties that alone makes existence tolerable. Where the operation of the machine tends to relieve the operative of all thought, the man or woman who tends it risks becoming a machine, well oiled and cared for, but in- capable of independent life. The culture of the past was more diffused, but it was obtained by means of the very toil that was needed to gain subsistence, because the work itself called upon all the faculties, and was not a matter of routine ; the culture and re- finements of to-day come from leisure and opportunity more than from the develop- ment of men in the necessary work of their lives. May it not be possible that one of the causes of the great demand which exists for bad and sensational books and for excit- ing amusements comes from the dreary mo- notony of many of the necessary occupations of men and women, and that one of the most essential developments of commerce or of mutual service in the future will be in the direction of more ample provision for whole- some amusements ? As has been well said EESTRICTIONS UPON EXCHANGE. 201) by an eminent and truly orthodox divine, "Amusement is a force in Christian life;" and unless this need is well served by the saints, we may be very sure that it will be ill served by those whose title is not saintly. How to provide cheap and wholesome amuse- ments for those who toil is one of the great problems of commerce which must be solved. We have said that much of the necessary work of the laboring people fails to develop character. In a higher walk of life, even the merchants of former days, though their ventures were small, their vessels of but few tons, and though their gains would only have been those of the small shop-keepers of the present time, yet seem to have been men of a larger type and of finer mould than the great tradesmen of our time. The mer- chant's work then called for foresight, en- ergy, and a wide comprehension ; but steam and the telegraph are great levelers, and the success of the merchant of to-day depends more on routine, method, and capital. The grander men of this time, who would once have been great merchants, are now the builders of railroads and great works, the tool-makers and the machine-builders, the masters of the arts of all kinds. On the other hand, the theory of Malthus that population gained luster than the means of subsistence, and that men must die of war, pestilence, and famine in an ever-increasing ratio, finds as yet no warrant in the expe- rience of men. Commerce has eliminated time and distance, while invention and dis- covery have yielded greater and greater abundance for each given portion of time devoted to the work of procuring subsist- ence ; and the one great fact which espe- cially indicates the progress of commerce in the century just ending is this, that more men may now live, and need not die, on any given area in the civilized world than was possible a century since. This is as true of parts of our own country as it is of other countries. The "progressive desire" which distin- guishes men from brutes has been met by ever-increasing power of satisfaction. But it is not sufficient to have achieved only the means of living: life must be made worth living to each and all. We have said that the nation is at one of the half-way points : division of labor and 14 the extension of commerce have increased the supply of all that men need for subsist- ence, while altering the conditions of much of the work, so that it has become monoto- nous drudgery. On the other hand, the uses that have been found for refuse and offen- sive substances have led to inventions that have removed the degrading conditions from many kinds of necessary labor. If we consider society as a pyramid, the constant rising of the apex has opeued the way for a broader and firmer base of useful employment, and it can not be questioned that the constant tendency is toward a steady reduction of the necessary hours of labor, and a constant increase of the oppor- tunity for mental stimulus in the hours of leisure ; hence, as the labor of production becomes more and more a matter of machin- ery and apparatus rather than of individual exertion of brain and muscle, the capability for enjoyment which all covet but few at- tain will surely come for the mass of men, but it must come from culture and educa- tion outside their work, and not in the work itself. Hence it follows that the need of our time is not so much the promotion of greater abundance of material thiugs, be- cause the abundance exists even at this very moment to the extent of plethora, but the removal of the obstacles which exist in the form of meddlesome statutes and constant attempts to hinder, by restrictive methods, that free exchange by which alone can even abundance be made a blessing. It is a fact not to be gainsaid, that even at this moment the only conditions requisite to a comfortable subsistence for man or woman in this country are prudence, intel- ligence, health, and integrity. The question is not one of the supply of the things needed, but of the method of obtaining them; and yet our ever-increasing wealth is accompa- nied by increasing poverty ; the attempt to protect, foster, and promote certain specified branches of industry by restricting exchange has enervated and emasculated those to whom the artificial stimulus has been given, and has obstructed the progress of those whose occupations could not from their very nature be included in the attempt to protect. Added to these removable causes of harm we have another more subtle and vicious 210 COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT. cause of a false and unjust distribution of the abundance of material things that we produce. We shall enter upon our second century of life as a nation under the curse of bad money. The most essential tool of our trade, the medium by which all the ex- changes that constitute our commerce are made, is the dishonored promise of the na- tion. Issued under the stress of war, it continues to inflict the curse of war long after peace and plenty have become assured. Of it may be said, as was said of the legal- tender paper money of the Revolution, that it has polluted the equity of our laws, and turned them into engines of oppression and wrong; that it has corrupted the justice of our public administration ; that it has en- ervated the trade, husbandry, and manufac- tures of our country ; that it has gone far to destroy the morality of our people ; and that it has done more injustice than the arms and artifices of the enemies of the Union for whose subjugation it was issued. Thus does it appear that the century just ending, the first of the strictly commercial age, has been marked by greatly increased power over the productive forces of nature, and that the promises of the future materi- al welfare of the nation are grand indeed. What we now need is greater liberty and a broader education, with instruction in what constitutes the true use of leisure, in order that there may not be the shadow of truth in the charge sometimes made that for a large portion of the community leisure is now but another name for license. The legal obstructions to our true pros- perity are maintained by the influence of the rich, and not of the poor ; not willfully in the face of better knowledge, but because they are still misled as to the true function of commerce. We have provided well for the common education of the poor, and that provision is now our salvation. When we shall have as fitly provided for the higher education of the rich, when we shall have reversed the old order, and it shall be the conviction of every man born to fortune that only the idle man is ignoble, then will the merchant, the tradesman, and the man- ufacturer fill their true places in the order of events. Then will come the time when peace and good- will may reign among the nations of the earth, and when by means of free commerce there shall be for the millions yet unborn not only material comfort and welfare, but the opportunity fully enjoyed for general culture and refinement, coupled with mental and spiritual progress never yet attained. VII. GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. OF the five maps which illustrate the present paper, the first exhibits the ac- quisition of territory by the United States from 1776 to the present time. The second shows the areas actually covered by popu- lation at each alternate decennial census from 1790 to 1870. The third presents the movement of the centre of population, the " star of empire," if the reader please, across the face of the country from east to west, upon the line of the thirty-ninth degree north latitude, from its first recorded posi- tion, twenty-three miles east of Baltimore, in 1790, to its resting-place in 1870, forty- eight miles east by north of Cincinnati. We said its resting-place : we should have said its last recorded position, for the time has not yet come for it to stand in its place above any favored town or city in the land. Its course is still westward ; and while we write it is pressing on with an equable motion of seventy or seventy-five feet a day in a direc- tion generally west, but also slightly north. The fourth map is illustrative of interstate migration; showiug the habitat at 1870 of the natives of New York and of South Caro- lina severally. The fifth exhibits in three degrees the density of population within the area settled at 1870 east of the 100th meridian. If we examine the first of these maps, we shall find ten divisions of the existing ter- ritory of the United States noted thereon ; but these, for our present purpose, may be consolidated into seven, namely : the origi- nal thirteen States ; the original Western Territory (embracing the territory north- west of the river Ohio, Kentucky and Ten- nessee, and the Mississippi Territory) ; the French cession of 1803 (called Louisiana) ; the Spanish cession of 1819 (Florida) ; the Texan annexation of 1845 ; the Mexican ces- sions of 1848 and 1853 ; and last, though, perhaps unfortunately, not least, the Rus- sian cession of 1868 (Alaska). Of these the first comprises 420,892 square miles, and contained in 1870 about eighteen millions of inhabitants ; the second com- prises 406,952 square miles, with thirteen and a half millions of inhabitants ; the third, 1,171,931 square miles, with five and a quarter millions of inhabitants ; the fourth, 59,268 square miles, with less than two hun- dred thousand inhabitants ; the fifth, 376,133 square miles, with about eight hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants ; the sixth, 591,318 square miles, with about the same population as the fifth ; the seventh, 577,390 square miles, with but four or five hundred white inhabitants. 1 Although the Spanish and Mexican ces- sions comprise towns which far antedate the earliest settlements within the original thirteen States, it is to the latter that we must first turn in any attempt to broadly grasp the history of population within the United States. But we shall fail to reach the full significance of the situation if we only give to ourselves, as reasons for treat- ing this portion of territory first in order, its present population, exceeding that of any other section, its earlier political de- velopment, or its more conspicuous figure in American history. It is not more, but rather less, on account of these than on ac- count of the actual contributions which this section has made to the population of each one in turn of the other geographical divis- ions of the United States, early or recent, that the writer on population must turn first to Jamestown and Plymouth, or he will read his theme backward. St. Augus- tine (1565) and Santa F6 (1582) were, indeed, planted before English Cavalier or English Puritan sought the more northern lauds for settlement ; but St. Augustine and Santa Fe were a barren stock, and the populations that to-day occupy the regions in which these were planted in the sixteenth century 1 These statements of population are exclusive of Indians, who are not embraced in a census of the United States. On their account there should be add- ed to No. 1 about six thousand souls ; to No. 2 about twenty-six thousand ; to No. 3 about one hundred and sixty thousand ; to No. 5 perhaps thirty thousand ; to No. 6 about eighty thousand ; and to No. 7 about sev- enty thousand. 212 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. THE THIRTEEN STATES. 213 have poured forth from States founded in penury and neglect long afterward. When the great province of Louisiana came to us, in 1803, more than three centuries after the discovery of the maiu-land of America, it contained, from the delta of the Mississippi to Puget Sound, scarcely twenty thousand white inhabitants. That this vast territory now contains more than five millions of in- habitants, who will by 1880 be eight millions or ten, is not due to the robustness of the stock which Jefferson annexed with the soil, or mainly to direct immigration. 1 In like manner, when we received Florida from Spain by the treaty of 1819, not consum- mated, however, until 1821, the white popu- lation was but twelve or fifteen thousand, so slight had been the fecundity of the Spanish settlements. And when, in 1822, Congress directed the Postmaster-General to make provision for a post-route from St. Augustine to Pensacola, that officer was obliged to report the next year as follows: "Diligent inquiry has been made, and it does not appear that there is a road between these places on the route designated on which the mail can be con- veyed. There are Indian paths which pass through different Indian settlements, but none, it is under- stood, that extend for any considerable distance in the proper direction." And so late as 1850, the first date for which we have the statistics of nativity in the United States, it was found that of the free inhabitants of Florida more had been born in the original thirteen States than in Florida itself, while less than six per cent, of the free inhabitants were of for- eign birth. The Texan annexation, again, now contains about 830,000 souls ; but when Texas revolted from Mexico, it contained probably not more than 40,000, of whom by far the greater part had come, in antic- ipation 2 of "manifest destiny," from the States. In 1850, of the free inhabitants scarcely more than one -third, including, of course, an undue proportion of chil- dren, were natives of Texas. In the same way the first Mexican ces- 1 At the southeastern extremity only are the effects of direct immigration traceable in any marked degree. New Orleans has been to some extent supported by arrivals from Mexico and the West Indies, as well as from France, Ireland, and Germany. = Indeed, the immigration into Texas had been large- ly for the very purpose of wresting the country from Mexico. sion, when taken possession of by the Unit- ed States, embraced but a small white pop- ulation. Of tliis tract it is true that, in the furious excitement caused by the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848, it was set- tled more largely than any other had been by direct immigration. Yet of the first eighty thousand eager gold-hunters who pressed into the valleys of California, more than three-fourths were born in the East, of whom one-half, as nearly as might be, were natives of the original thirteen States, while probably not less than two-thirds of the remainder would be found to be cis- appalachian in their origin, could we go but thirty years further back. Of the second Mexican cession, the Gads- den purchase of 1853, embracing the terri- tory south of the river Gila, iu Arizona and New Mexico, little can be said any way. Two or three hundred whites, insecurely guarded by perhaps as uiany soldiers, as yet constitute the population of this treeless, trackless desert. Twenty-three degrees to the north, under the very " shadow of the pole," lies, securely frozen up, the latest purchase of the United States, a region as large as Great Britain, France, Spain, and the German Empire com- bined, all the eligible portions of which are now devoted to the preservation in theory and extermination in fact of fur -bearing seal. It is not so easy to show statistically the derivation of the people of the original ter- ritory of the United States from the original thirteen States, but it is, at the same time, less needful. Our history from 1763 onward is full of the migrations from the Atlantic slope into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, at first through the passes of the Allegha- nies, and later by the lakes and around the southern extremity of the great coast chain. And even of the vast immigration from Eu- rope which has helped to build up these nine interior States between the mountains and the river, no small part, perhaps the greater part, has been received from the original States, not merely through their ports, but after a period of residence, accli- mation, and often even of naturalization at the East. So incessant had been the fresh supply of Eastern blood, so little had the " Great 214 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. West" of two or three generations ago been left to the propagation of the stock then planted there, that, so late as 1850, seventy- five years after Kentucky was founded, more than one-fourth of the free inhabitants of these nine States had been born east of the mountains, while, if the adult inhabitants only had been taken into account, the pro- portion must have greatly exceeded one- third, if, indeed, it did not reach nearly to one-half. If thus the early settlements in what we shall always know as the " Thirteen States" were vastly more prolific than those made by the Spaniards and French at the south and southwest, they also greatly surpassed in the vigor of their growth the settle- ments to the north and northeast, whether by the French or the English. In 1754, when the thirteen colonies aggregated of whites and blacks nearly a million and a half, New France, though planted at the same time with Virginia, had scarcely a hundred thousand people, mainly collected on the St. Lawrence, between Quebec and Montreal. " At the time of Queen Elizabeth's death (1603)," writes the annalist of America, "which was 110 years after the discovery of America by Columbus, neither the French, Dutch, nor English, nor any other nation excepting the Spanish, had made any per- manent settlement in this New World. In North America to the north of Mexico not a single European family could be found." 1 Between 1607 and 1733 were founded all the original States of the American Union. The order of their settlement and the main facts of their growth in population while colonies of Great Britain are, if not essen- tial, at least important to a comprehension of their history as independent States, and still more to an understanding of the origin of the twenty-four equal members of the Union which have come into existence since 1789. 1607-1660. By a natural grouping of the facts of our early settlement, one who chooses to regard the growth of population merely, irrespect- ive of grants, charters, and political insti- 1 Holmes's Annals, i. 123. tutions, may consider the colonies in three classes — those of New England, the middle colonies, and those to the South, from and in eluding Maryland. The first permanent settlement within the territory of the original States was at James- town, Virginia, on the James River, 1607, by a colony of about 100 English. For twelve years the colony grew slowly, so that but 600 persons, men, women, and children, were counted among the inhabitants at the be- ginning of 1619. During the two years which followed, however, the number was increased nearly sixfold. At the outbreak of the civil war in England the population was estimated at 20,000, which was probably in excess of the true number. Mr. Bancroft explains as follows the lia- bility to " glaring mistakes in the enumera- tions" in the Southern provinces : " The mild climate invited emigrants to the inland glades ;" " the crown-lands were often occu- pied on warrants of surveys without pat- ents, or even without warrants ;" " the peo- ple were never assembled but at muster." The settlement of Maryland was closely connected with that of Virginia. In 1631-32 Captain William Clayborne established small settlements on Kent Island, in Chesapeake Bay, and also near the mouth of the Susque- hanna. In 1634 a colony of about 200 En- glish was planted at St. Mary's, on the main- land, under Leonard Calvert, brother of the proprietary, Lord Baltimore. Virginia and Maryland were the only colonies of the Southern group which were planted prior to the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. At that date they were estimated to contain respectively 30,000 and 12,000 inhabitants. Passing northeastward to New England, we find the first settlement made in 1620 by a body of about 100 English at Plymouth, withiu the present limits of Massachusetts, constituting what was, until 1692, known as the " Plymouth Colony." In 1643 this col- ony had grown to contain seven town- ships. In 1628 a colony was planted at Salem, on Massachusetts Bay ; in 1630 and 1633 large accessions were received ; in 1634 the settlements were reported as extending thirty miles from the capital ; 1635 was a year of rapid extension ; by 1636 popula- tion had reached the Connecticut, and NEW ENGLAND SETTLEMENTS. 211; Springfield was settled. There were now twenty " towns," and the colony was divided into three "regiments." During the sum- mer of 1638 twenty ships arrived with 2000 persons. The colony was divided into four counties. Iu 1640 it was at its highest point of prosperity within the period we are con- sidering. " The number of emigrants who had arrived in New England before the as- sembling of the Long Parliament is esti- mated to have been 21,200 ; 198 ships had borne them across the Atlantic." 1 Hil- dreth adds : " The accessions which New England henceforward received were more than counterbalanced by perpetual emigra- tion." 2 The Puritans in England, instead of flee- ing before Acts of Conformity, were now engaged in reforming church and state to suit themselves. In 1660 there were three towns on the Connecticut Kiver within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. For the first settlement of New Hamp- shire, Mr. Bancroft assigns the date 1623, permanent plantations being then establish- ed on the Piseataqua. Dover and Ports- mouth are among the oldest towns in New England. The province grew at first very slowly. Of the first settlements within the State of Maine, Bancroft remarks (i. 331): "It is not possible, perhaps, to ascertain the pre- cise time when the rude shelters of the fish- ermen on the coast began to be tenanted by permanent inmates, and the fishing stages of a summer to be transferred into regular establishments of trade. The first settle- ment was probably made ' on the Maine,' but a few miles from Monhegan, at the mouth of the Pemaquid." The probable date as- signed is 1626. In 1636 Providence, in the present State of Rhode Island, was planted by Roger Will- iams and five companions. In 1638 the "Rhode Island Colony" was established on the Isle of Rhodes by William Coddington and eighteen associates. Six years later Rhode Island and Providence plantations were united in self-government. In 1633 trading posts were established within the limits of the present State of 1 Bancroft, United States, i. 415. = Hist. United States,!. 261. Connecticut, both by Dutch from New Neth- erlands (New York), and by English from Plymouth, the former at Hartford, the latter at Windsor. During 1635 removals took place from Massachusetts to Wethersfield and Windsor, and in 1636 these towns, with Hartford, were occupied, constituting the " Connecticut Colony." In 1645 there were eight taxable towns within the colony. In 1633 a settlement was made at New Haven, which, with its adjacent towns, con- stituted the " New Haven Colony," until it was united with the Connecticut Colony by charter of Charles II. The consolidated colony contained nineteen towns, distrib- uted among four counties. We have thus shown the beginnings east of the Hudson of four of the original thirteen States, prior to 1660. At 1640 these contained twelve independent com- munities, with not less than fifty towns or distinct settlements ; but before the Res- toration a consolidation had taken place, which reduced the separate jurisdictions to six. 1 Of the central group of colonies New York was first settled. The Dutch had for some years maintained trade with the natives at Manhattan and up the Hudson River. In 1623-24 "New Netherlands" was planted, and a permanent settlement, called New Amsterdam, was made at Manhattan, the site of the present city of New York. By 1656 the village had been laid out into sev- eral small streets ; 1660 found the Dutch still in possession, as well as disputing the title to Western Connecticut. The popu- lation at that date of New Netherlands, which in 1647 was hardly 2000 or 3000, even including the Swedes on the Del- aware (Hildreth, i. 436), had risen to about 10,000, of whom 1500 resided, in New Am- sterdanu One part of the present State of New York, however, has a history which direct- ly connects its settlement both with New England and with the central group of colonies. Long Island was first settled at its west- ern end, under the protection of the Dutch, and a number of towns were a little later i midreth, United States, i. 26T. 216 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. planted there by this people. 1 The eastern portion of the island was settled about 1640 by Puritans from Lynn, Massachusetts, and from the New Haven Colony, and these set- tlements grew rapidly to meet those advan- cing from the west. The island was parti- tioned by the treaty of 1650 between the Dutch and the English, and so remained un- til the fall of the Dutch power in 1664. In 1631 a small settlement had been made by the Dutch near Lewistown, within the present State of Delaware, but the young colony was entirely cut off by Indians a year later. In 1638 a company of Swedes and Finns, under the then renowned flag of Sweden, arrived in Delaware, and built a fort near the mouth of the creek, which they called Christiana. The Swedish settlements soon extended northward almost to the pres- ent site of Philadelphia. In 1655, however, the fear of Swedish arms had so far abated that the Dutch from Manhattan accomplish- ed the subjection of Delaware to the domin- ion of Holland. This completes the tale of colonies plant- ed within the limits of the thirteen States prior to the Restoration. Thus at 1660 the only English colonies were those of New England, Virginia, aud Maryland, estimated to contain in all not more than eighty thou- sand inhabitants. 1660-1688. Within a few years from the Restoration the Dutch colonists of New Netherlands (New York), as well as the Dutch, Swedish, and Finnish residents of Delaware, were brought under English dominion, and the colonies of New Jersey and Carolina were planted. Settlements had been made in what is now New Jersey very early in the seven- teenth century. Dutch, Swedes, and Finns, English, Dutch again, and again English, had successively appeared and disappeared in the course of the early contests for the sovereignty of the soil. " Here and there," says Bancroft, 2 " in the counties of Glouces- 1 Anabaptist refugees from Massachusetts settled Newtown and Gravesend, under Dutch protection. So numerous were the English-speaking inhabitants of the Dutch part of the island that an English secretary was appointed. — Hildreth, i. 417. 2 Hist. United States, ii. 316. ter and Burlington a Swedish farmer may have preserved his dwelling on the Jersey side of the river, and before 1664 perhaps three families were established about Bur- lington ; but as yet West New Jersey had not a hamlet. In East Jersey a trading station seems in 1618 to have been occupied at Bergen. In December, 1651, August Her- man purchased but hardly took possession of the land that stretched from Newark Bay to the west of Elizabethtown ; while in January, 1658, other purchasers obtained the large grant called Bergen, where the early station became a permanent settle- ment. Before the end of 1664 a few fam- ilies of Quakers appear also to have found a refuge south of Raritan Bay." In 1664 the settlement of New Jersey be- gan under conflicting grants. There were soon four towns — Elizabeth, Newark, Mid- dletown, and Shrewsbury. In 1676 New Jersey was divided as East and West New Jersey, the latter being purchased by the Quakers, who settled Burlington the follow- ing year. In 1682 the towns of East Jersey were supposed to have 700 families ; those of West Jersey perhaps as many persons. In 1663 Carolina was granted to eight proprietors ; but it would appear that Al- bemarle had been settled already 1 by the growth southward of the Nansemond set- tlement just on the borders of the Virginia grant. Two or three years prior to the grant, moreover, it would appear that a settlement had been effected by men from New En- gland on the southern bank of Cape Fear River. Whatever remained of this settle- ment was, however, absorbed by a colony planted near the same spot in 1665 by the exertions of the proprietary, and which so prospered that in 1666 it embraced 800 per- sons. In 1670 a company, brought out in three 1 "Perhaps a few vagrant families were planted within the limits of Carolina before the Restoration." —Bancroft, ii. 134, 135. The historian Grahame charged that scarce any his- torian at his day had correctly given the facts relating to the early settlement of Carolina. " Even that labo- rious and generally accurate writer, Jedediah Morse, has been so far misled by defective materials as to as- sert {American Gazetteer) that the first permanent set- tlement in North Carolina was formed by certain Ger- man refugees in 1710."— Hist. United States in North America, ii. Ill, n. GEORGIA, VIRGINIA, AND THE CAROLINAS. 217 ships, settled on the Ashley River, at " Old Charlestown." In 1671-72 Dutch both from New York and from Holland arrived at the Ashley River settlement. Subsequently, it would appear, to both these dates — perhaps 1679 or 1680 — the colonists generally passed over to the west bank of Cooper River, and set- tled on Oyster Point, which became the city of Charleston. In 1681 Pennsylvania was planted. The growth of this colony was rapid. In the first three years " fifty sail" arrived with settlers. Thus, prior to 1688, the period of the great Revolution in England, we see settlements made within the territory of all the origiual thirteen States except Georgia. The whole population of the colonies at this time was about 200,000, "of whom," says Bancroft, 1 " Massachusetts, with Plymouth and Maine, may have had 44,000 ; New Hampshire and Rhode Island, with Providence, each 6000; Connecticut, from 17,000 to 20,000— that is, all New England, 75,000 souls ; New York, not less than 20,000; New Jersey, half as many; Pennsylvania and Delaware, perhaps 12,000 ; Maryland, 25,000 ; Virginia, 50,000 or more ; and the two Carolinas, which then included the soil of Georgia, probably not less than 8000 souls." 1688-1754. In 1733 Georgia was settled and Savan- nah founded by Oglethorpe, with about one hundred and twenty persons. In 1734 Au- gusta was laid out. The immigrants of this year were computed at six hundred. In 1835 a colony of Highlanders planted New Inver- ness, in Darien. In 1736 Oglethorpe brought out three hundred emigrants. But though perhaps the most auspicious- ly founded of all the colonies except Penn- sylvania, the growth of Georgia was not rapid, and more than twenty years after its settlement we find the Board of Trade estimating its white inhabitants at but 3000. 2 i Hist. United States, ii. 450. 5 Grahame {Hist. United States, ii. 403, n.), referring to the many inconsistent statements of the popula- tion of the colonies at different dates, says: "Even writers so accurate and sagacious as Dwight and Holmes have been led to underrate the early popula- tion of North America by relying too far on the esti- Meanwhile we find the other twelve col- onies growing very unequally, both as we compare one colony with another and as we compare one epoch with another. 1 In Virginia the number of " tithables" ( i. e., free males above sixteen years, and slaves above that age of both sexes) had been esti- mated in 1691 at 14,000 ; in 1703 the number was computed at 25,023 ; in 1754 the " tith- ables" had increased to nearly 100,000. In the Carolinas the growth bad been rap- id in both the white and the black popula- tion. In 1700 5500 white inhabitants were counted. In 1723 the white inhabitants of that part alone which became South Caro- lina were estimated at 14,000 ; the slaves (negroes and a few Indians) at 18,000. 2 In 1729 the crown, having bought out the pro- prietors, formed Carolina into two distinct royal provinces, North and South Carolina. In 1730 the negroes of South Carolina were estimated at 28,000. This sudden increase in the estimate of their number may have been in some measure due to the alarm mates which the provincial governments furnished to the British ministry for the ascertainment of the num- bers of men whom they were to be required to supply for the purposes of naval and military expeditions." The reason suggested for the probable disparagement of the early population of the colonies has not a little force. 1 In his History of the United States, vol. iv. p. 128, Mr. Bancroft expresses the opinion that " he who, like H. C. Carey, in his Principles of Political Economy, Part iii. p. 25, will construct retrospectively general tables from the rule of increase in America since 1790, will err very little." The writer must dissent from this opinion. The approximate regularity of increase from 1790 to 1860 was due to the fact that the accession by immigration bore a very small proportion to the total population. Thus, Professor Tucker places the for- eign arrivals at 50,000 for the period 1790-1800, 70,000 for 1800-10, 114,000 for 1810-20, and this with an ag- gregate population rising meanwhile from four to nine and a half millions. Moreover, that immigration tended more and more to uniformity as between indi- vidual years. In the period before the Revolution, however, to which Mr. Bancroft refers, the average annual foreign arrivals unquestionably bore a much higher ratio to the existing population, and the im- migration was very spasmodic and without system. Thus in 1750, when the total population of the thir- teen colonies was, by Mr. Bancroft's estimates, a mill- ion and a quarter, we have an account of 5317 persons arriving in that single year in the single colony of Pennsylvania; and in 1729, when the total population must have been about 650,000, we find 6208 persons ar- riving in the same colony. Where disturbing elements of such magnitude enter, subject to no law that any one can presume to state, such computations as Mr. Ban- croft suggests become most fallacious. 2 Hewatt, i. 30S, 309. 218 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. aroused by a plot for a servile insurrection. 1 In 1738 there was another attempt at servile insurrection, and the negroes were now esti- mated at 40,000. a Mr. Bancroft makes the number but little greater in 1754. Both the Carolinas meanwhile received large acces- sions of Irish and of French Protestants from Europe, of Puritans from New En- gland, and of Dutch from New York, so that in 1754 the white inhabitants of the two col- onies were estimated at twenty-two times the number stated for 1700. If we follow Mr. Bancroft's classification, and place Maryland with the middle colo- nies, we find this group in 1754 exceeding New England in the ratio nearly of five to four. Of the middle colonies, Pennsylvania had, in the sixty years since its settlement, become by far the most populous. New England, during the period we are considering, had increased nearly fivefold. Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire had now considerable populations ; and the beginnings of a new State, though not to be reckoned among the immortal " Thirteen," had been made, in 1724, by the establish- ment of Fort Dummer, on the site of Brat- tleborough, within the present State of Ver- mont. It is natural that on the verge of the Seven Years' War, which broke the power of France on the American continent, the historian should pause to review the prog- ress of settlement ; and accordingly we find Mr. Bancroft summing up thus, for the year 1754, the population of the several colonies : "Of persons of European ancestry perhaps 50,000 dwelt in New Hampshire, 207,000 in Massachusetts, 35,000 in Rhode Island, and 133,000 in Connecticut : in New England, therefore, 425,000 souls. " Of the middle colonies, New York may have had 85,000 ; New Jersey, 73,000 ; Pennsylvania, with Dela- ware, 195,000 ; Maryland, 104,000 : in all not far from 457,000 To Virginia may be assigned 168,000 white inhabitants ; to North Carolina scarcely more than 70,000 ; to South Carolina, 40,000 ; to Georgia not more than 5000 : to the whole country south of the Potomac, 283,000.... " Of persons of African lineage the home was chief- ly determined by climate. New Hampshire, Massa- chusetts, and Maine, may have had 3000 negroes ; Rhode Island, 4500; Connecticut, 3500: all New En- gland, therefore, about 11,000. New York alone had not far from 11,000; New Jersey about half that num- ber; Pennsylvania, with Delaware, 11,000; Maryland, 44,000: the central colonies collectively, 71,000. In Virginia there were not less than 116,000 ; in North i Holmes, i. 547. = Holmes, ii. 10, 11. Carolina, perhaps more than 20,000; in South Car- olina, full 40,000; in Georgia, about 2000: so that the country south of the Potomac may have had 178,000."' These estimates yield totals of 1,165,000 whites and 260,000 negroes. 1754-1790. Pitt's war with France ensued. In 1763 his Most Christian Majesty by treaty relin- quished to England all his rights to terri- tory east of the Mississippi and north of thirty-one degrees north latitude. Popula- tion had gone on increasing all the time in spite of the war, but the triumphant con- clusion was instantly followed by an exten- sion of settlement in every direction. The presence of the French military posts in an unbroken chain from the Atlantic through the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, and the fear of the Indian allies of the French, had repressed in a degree even the adventurous courage of the English-Americans. W T hen once this pressure was removed, popula- tion bounded forward with astonishing alacrity. On the extreme Northeast, in Maine, where settlement had been retarded by six succes- sive Indian wars, " old claims under ancient grants began now to be revived, and new grants to be solicited." 2 The counties of Cumberland and Lincoln were erected in the year following the rjeace. Settlements stretched unrestrained along the coast to- ward the Penobscot, and population soon became almost continuous, even to Nova Scotia. To the North, the New Hampshire side of the Upper Connecticut witnessed a rapid immigration ; while the other bank, contested then between New York and New Hampshire, became the scene of a petty warfare between rival patentees, possession and law being generally invoked against each other. Population also began to seek the borders of Lake Champlain, and to force its way through the forests to the lakes of Central New York. To the South again, Georgia and South Carolina were now increasing in population and extending their settlements w r ith unex- ampled rapidity. In 1752 the population i Hist. United States, iv. 127-129. * Hildreth, Hist. United States, ii. 510. WESTWARD EMIGRATION. 219 of Georgia had been computed at 9000. In 1775 it was estimated to be 75,000. About the latter date the colony was divided into eight counties — four along the coast and four up the Savannah River. But it was to the West, between the par- allels which embraced the colonies of North Carolina and Virginia, and upon lands in- cluded within their charters, that the great- est movement in this period took place. Notwithstanding the exclusively agricul- tural character of the industry of these colonies, inviting a wide extension of pop- ulation, the Blue Ridge had been, so late as 1731, the western boundary of settlement. From that time forward, however, settlers gradually penetrated the mountains north of the James River, and found homes in the valleys beyond, until in 1751-52 the further- most wave of population had reached the base of the Alleghanies, and here for a time was stayed. But the Virginians and North Carolinians of that day knew better what lay beyond that mountain barrier than did the British Board of Trade when they sent Captain John Smith up the Chickahominy to discover the Pacific Ocean. By the ex- plorations of Colonel Wood in 1654-64 sev- eral of the branches of the Ohio River had been made known, though for fifty years it still remained the general belief that the Alleghanies themselves were impassable. In 1714, however, Lieutenant - Governor Spottiswoode, of Virginia, led in person, "with great parade and solemnity," an ex- pedition for the discovery of a passage across the mountains, which was crowned with such complete success that Spottis- woode was hailed by the Virginians with acclamations " of grateful and, indeed, hy- perbolical praise, which exalted him to an approach to the glory of Hannibal." 1 The statesmen of Virginia early saw that the long French line might be thrust through with fatal effect if settlements properly cov- ered with military force were pushed across the mountains. It was the attempt of Gov- ernor Dinwiddie to seize the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela in 1754 which brought on the war which ended in the con- quest of the Ohio Valley. Yet even after the peace of 1763, which 1 Grahame, iii. 69. gave all this country into the undisputed possession of England, subject only to Indi- an claims (and curiously enough, and in this connection importantly enough, it hap- pened that no Indian tribe at any time had title to the territory immediately west of Virginia, which subsequently became the State of Kentucky), the home government persistently discouraged emigration to the West ; and by proclamation of October 7, 1763, " it was ordered that, except in Quebec and West Florida, no public lands should be taken up beyond the heads of the rivers inhich flotv into the Atlantic." Thus the Alleghanies were set as the boundary of American enter- prise ; and the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi were to be locked against the intrusion of the pioneer. But little did the pioneer reck of procla- mations. His axe and rifle were his patent, and, looking down on the richest soil of the world, he was not likely to be long hindered by minutes from the Board of Trade. Hardly was the proclamation issued when the banks of the Monongahela were occu- pied by emigrants from Pennsylvania, Mary- land, and Virginia. In 1768 James Robert- son planted his North Carolina colony on the Watauga, in the present State of Tennes- see, and soon the Clinch and Holston valleys experienced the influx of emigrants from across the mountains. In 1769 began the romantic exploits of Daniel Boone upon the "dark and bloody ground" later to be known as the State of Kentucky. Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Lexington appear to have been founded by 1776. In 1788 the settlement of Ohio was begun by the establishment of Marietta on the left bank of the Muskingum. In two years 20,000 persons were reported to have passed the Muskingum on their westward way. 1 The surrender by France of the territory east of the Mississippi had brought within the jurisdiction of England in 1763 not a few settlements whose age, while it can not al- ways be precisely ascertained, gives them still most respectable standing among the present towns of the United States. There was Detroit, in the present State of Michigan, reported, though erroneously, 1 Holmes's Annals, ii. 370. 220 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. to contain in its immediate vicinity as many as 2500 Europeans, destined to become in the very year of the surrender the prime object of the famous " conspiracy of Pontiac." The non-Indian population within the present State of Illinois was, according to Mr. Bancroft, not more than 1358 persons, of whom more than 300 were Africans. Indiana had but one settlement, Vin- cennes, of nearly equal age with Detroit, with 400 to 500 inhabitants. To the loyalty of the people thus trans- ferred by the fortune of war, Mr. Jefferson bears the following testimony : " Having been Governor of Virginia when Vincennes and the other French settlements of that quarter sur- rendered to the arms of that State twenty-eight years ago, I have had a particular knowledge of their char- acter....! have ever considered them as sober, honest, and orderly citizens, submissive to the laws, and faith- ful to the nation of which they are a part."— To William M'lntosh, January 30, 1S08. Nor was the settlement of the newly ac- quired territory limited to the northern por- tions. President Stiles preserves account of extensive migrations in 1773 to reinforce the existing settlements on the Mississippi at and about Natchez. But while population was thus spreading over the vast territory opened up by the peace of 17G3, the older settlements, espe- cially at the South, 1 were also growing rap- idly, and even the war did not suffice to check the progress of population in com- munities where but a small proportion of the fertile lauds was yet taken up, and where every added man was added strength to the State. 2 "From many returns and computations," 1 Mr. Hildreth calls the years immediately succeed- ing 1763 " the golden age of Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina." 2 Our fathers very early set themselves to figuring out their coming greatness through this rapid increase of population. The works of Franklin and Jefferson abound in allusions to the growth of the past and pre- dictions of corresponding growth in the future. Mr. Jefferson especially delighted to dwell on the possibil- ities of increase. " A duplication in little more thar twenty-two years," he writes in his first annual mes- sage as President after the second census. "In fifty years more the United States alone," he writes to Humboldt in 1813, "will contain fifty millions of in- habitants." In 1815 he Btates it to Mr. Maury as forty millions in forty years, and in sixty years eighty mill- ions. The time is already up, but the eighty millions are not forth-coming. The truth is that no expecta- tion is so unreasonable respecting a geometrical ratio of increase as that it will continue. says Mr. Bancroft, "I deduce the annexed table as some approximation to exactness :" Year. Whites. Bl.i.-ks. Total. 1750 1,040,000 220,000 1,260,000 1754 1,165,000 260,000 1,425,000 1760 1,385,000 310,000 1,695,000 1770 1,850,000 462,000 2,312.000 1780 2,383,000 562,000 2,945,000 At the first glance it will seem incredible that in the decade which bore almost the entire brunt of the Revolutionary struggle against England population should have held its own not only, but have made an advance of nearly thirty per cent. Yet much can be said in favor of this estimate for the period 1770-80. 1770-73 witnessed a rapid and continuous immigration, espe- cially from Ireland and Germany, which provided a great resource during the long- continued drain which followed in the years of war. In 1773 especially we have accounts of wholesale immigration from Ireland into Pennsylvania, New York, and the Carolinas. 1 The outbreak of the Revolution and the union of the colonies, which, in 1776, declared themselves States, required that the popu- lation of each should be at least approxi- mately ascertained for the apportionment of the fiscal burdens of the war. The num- bers, as then settled, " exclusive of slaves at the South," Pitkin gives as follows : New Hampshire 2 102,000 Delaware 37,000 Massachusetts... 352,000 Maryland 174,000 Rhode Island. . . . 58,000 Virginia 300,000 Connecticut 202,000 North Carolina . . 181,000 New York 238,000 South Carolina . . 93,000 New Jersey 138,000 Georgia 27,000 Pennsylvania.... 341,000 Total 2,243,000 The slaves being then estimated at 500,000 (ibid.), the total estimated population at this time was 2,750,000. In the Convention of 1787, which framed the present Constitution of the United States, it became necessary to use the estimated population of each State for another purpose, namely, that of deter- mining provisionally its representation in Congress pending an actual enumeration. Mr. Curtis, in his History of the Constitution 3 i Holmes's Annals, ii. 183. 2 New Hampshire complained that her number was too high, and in 1782 caused an actual enumeration to be made, by which it appeared that the number of her inhabitants was only 82,000. Congress, however, re- fused to alter her proportion of taxes on that account. — Pitkin's Statistics. 3 A statement differing from this slightly in respect to several of the States, and decidedly in respect to THE FIRST CENSUS. 221 (vol. ii. p. 168, 169), gives the following table as that " used by the Federal Convention :" New Hampshire 102,000 Massachusetts! 360,000 Rhode Island 58,000 Connecticut 202,000 New York' 238,000 New Jersey 138,000 Pennsylvania 360,000 Delaware 3T,000 Maryland, including three -fifths of 80,000 negroes 218,000 Virginia, 1 including three-fifths of 280,000 negroes 420,000 North Carolina, 1 including three- fifths of 60,000 negroes 200,000 South Carolina, including three- fifths of 80,000 negroes 150,000 Georgia, including three -fifths of 20,000 ne- groes 90,000 2^573,000 Add for negroes omitted 208,000 Total estimated population 2,781,000 Georgia and New Hampshire, is given in Elliott's De- bates (i. 194), as found among the papers of Mr. Briarly, a delegate to that convention. 1 Massachusetts, it will he remembered, then com- prised the territory which in 1S20 became the State of Maine ; New York that which in 1791 became the 1790-1870. The first census of the United States was taken in 1790, fourteen years after the Declaration of the Independence of the States, and determined the population to be 3,172,006 whites, aud 757,208 blacks. Pretty much as a matter of course, great disappointment was felt at the result, and dissatisfaction at the methods of enumera- tion was loudly expressed. Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, in sending copies of the published tables to our representa- tives at foreign courts, was careful to im- press it on the minds of his correspondents that the returns fell far short of the truth, and even went so far as to supply the omis- sions which he assumed by entries " in red ink" (see letters to William Carmichael, Au- gust 24, 1791, and to William Short, August State of Vermont ; Virginia that which in 1792 became the State of Kentucky ; North Carolina that which in 1796 became the State of Tennessee. 222 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. 29, 1791). The results of later censuses, however, substantially establish the accu- racy of the first enumeration, and show that the dissatisfaction was due to overstrained anticipations. The following table (antici- pating the formation of State governments in Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennes- see) exhibits the result by States : Delaware 59,096 Maryland 319,72S Virginia 747,610 North Carolina... 393,751 South Carolina . . . 249,073 Georgia 82,548 Kentucky 73,677 Tennessee 35,691 Maine 96,540 New Hampshire . . 141, 8S5 Vermont 85,425 Massachusetts 378,787 Rhode Island 68,S25 Connecticut 237,946 New York 340,120 New Jersey 1S4,139 Pennsylvania 434,373 The second map which we present exhib- its the areas actually covered by a popu- lation of two inhabitants or more to the square mile at each alternate decennial cen- sus. The deepest shading (No. 5) indicates the settlemeuts of 1790. The aggregate area covered by population at that time was 239,935 square miles, which, 1 with the population then returned, would yield an average of 16.4 inhabitants to the square mile. This inhabited area stretched from the thirty-first degree north latitude in the south of Georgia to the forty-fifth degree north latitude in Maine, while its extent in- land was comparatively insignificant. The following table shows the number of miles on each parallel of latitude occupied by population at each alternate decennial cen- sus, measuring from the Atlantic coast west- ward to the 100th meridian. Degree of North 1790. 1810. 1830. 1850. 1870. Latitude. 47 79 209 46 15 50 230 45 30 392 392 437 858 44 226 279 299 404 777 43 339 425 485 816 1137 42 234 568 691 984 1248 41 238 471 663 1107 1325 40 358 584 912 1140 1252 39 270 565 1038 1043 1224 38 425 707 871 1032 1193 37 344 706 797 1018 1134 36 462 682 878 1057 1057 35 384 391 961 1030 1030 34 302 362 707 938 938 33 175 230 554 9S9 1055 32 30 227 742 929 1008 31 10 240 634 860 991 30 150 323 725 785 29 255 372 23 80 140 27 25 26 65 1 Statistical A tlas of the United States, 1874 : article, "The Progress of the Nation." We shall, from this point forward, freely use the Statements made in that article without the affectation of an acknowledgment. Examining the figures for 1790, we find the average settlement inland, along the fif- teen degrees of latitude on which there was then population, to be but 255 miles, while if we exclude the forty-fifth and the thirty- first and thirty-second degrees, which were most scantily populated, we shall still have an extent inland of but 313 miles, one-half at least of which, the writer is disposed to believe, had been covered with population 1 since 1763. We have said little of charters and con- stitutions, and have sought to carry forward our account of the growth of population in the American colonies without much regard to the greater or the smaller politics of the time. But one effect, of a political charac- ter, due to the geographical relations of the population just noted, fairly comes within the scope of this paper. It is that, by rea- son of the location of settlements coastwise, the tendency toward a union of the colonies under a common government had, from the first, been reduced to a miuimum. If, on the other hand, we imagine the colonies to have been originally planted on the Missis- sippi and its principal tributaries, the Red, Arkansas, Missouri, and Ohio, we can not but be struck with the reason, and almost the imperative necessity, for an early union, which would have been found in their geo- graphical relations alone. Especially as we recall how quickly the free navigation of the Mississippi became a vital issue with the first few thousands of pioneers who pushed across the Alleghanies after the peace of 1763 to make their homes in the valley of the Ohio, how constantly ever after, until the final adjustment of the question, that region was embroiled by contests arising out of disputed rights, and how ready these sons of Massachusetts, of Virginia, and of Carolina were reputed to be to fling away even their allegiance before submitting to be " cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in," by the grasp of another sovereignty upon their only outlet to the sea, it becomes scarcely possible to believe that the thir- teen colonies, had they been planted in any order within the great Mississippi system, could, even under the tempering and con- 1 That is, to the degree necessary to allow of its representation on this map, namely, with at least two inhabitants to the square mile. SEGREGATION OF THE COLONIES. 223 trolling supervision of the crown, have re- mained for so much as one human genera- tion at peace with each other without some common form of government representing their own free and perennial consent. War must, in spite of all the restraining influ- ence of the crown, have furnished the only relief for the stifling sensations of the inte- rior colonies, or else, as with English good sense and good feeling would have been more likely, some form of union for general purposes would at an early date have been resorted to. But the colonies were not planted upon the Mississippi, which for more than two hun- dred years after the discovery of the main- land remained, we can not say unknown, but avoided by immigration, its difficult ap- proaches and its tedious navigation below the Isle of Orleans giving it the unpromis- ing name of " Malbouchia." It was on the coast, from Georgia to Maine, that colonies were planted in the seventeenth century. Now the Atlantic slope is made up of scores of distinct river basins, within each of which colonies might have been planted in practi- cal independence of each other. As mat- ter of fact, the malignant force of circum- stances 1 and the more effectual ignorance and stupidity of the home government com- bined to involve the colonies in many dis- putes ; yet still it remained true that each colony had its own coast-line and harbors and its own water-courses, sufficient to en- able it to maintain its commuuication with the outer world without the leave of any other colony. Massachusetts and Connect- icut did, indeed, quarrel for a while (1647- 50) over the dues levied at the mouth of the Connecticut River (Say brook) on goods destined for Springfield, and retaliatory measures were for a short time resorted *o. New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey might quarrel, as, indeed, they have, in a feeble way, even since the adoption of the Constitution, 2 over the navigation of the 1 Such as the cutting into two of the Massachusetts and Connecticut grants by the Dutch occupation of New York. 2 Over the matter of the exclusive right of certain patentees of New York to navigate the waters of New York with vessels propelled by steam. Mr. Webster summed up the situation as it existed in 1824 as fol- lows: "The North River shut up by a monopoly from New York ; the Sound interdicted by a penal law waters of New York Bay. Virginia and Maryland had cause of dispute, traditions of which survive even to our day, in the petty war of oyster-men over their conflict- ing rights upon the Chesapeake, Potomac, and Pocomoke ; and several of the colonies had reason to complain that their neighbors took advantage of superior power and bet- ter geographical location to tax their prod- ucts. 1 But in none of these, or other in- stances that might be cited, were the actu- al or possible injuries of a vital character, tending to destroy the existence, 2 or even in an appreciable degree to impair the growth, of the colonies suffering them. It is in this attitude of natural independ- ence that we find the explanation of the fact that no popular sentiment in favor of an American nationality appeared in the early days of our colonial history. Even the ever-dreaded hostility of the French and their Indian allies was insufficient to furnish a motive to union. Virginians were content to be Virginians, Carolinians to be Carolinians, New Yorkers to be New York- ers. None seemed to aspire to be Ameri- cans. The partial confederation of New En- gland in 1643, an occasional joint expedi- tion or contribution, 3 and tbe abortive con- vention at Albany in 1754 were all that came of the common needs and common dangers of the colonies, until the one overwhelming necessity of a common resistance to the wrongs of the mother country, which should have been the common protector, assembled the Continental Congress of 1774. THE EXTENSION OF SETTLEMENT SINCE 1790. Group No. 4 on the map already referred of Connecticut; reprisals authorized by New Jersey against citizens of New York."— Argument in "Gib- bons and Ogden." 1 Virginia had taxed the tobacco of North Carolina ; Pennsylvania had taxed the products of Maryland, of New Jersey, and of Delaware.— Curtis, Hist. Const, i. 290. 2 Delaware would seem to afford an instance in con- tradiction of this remark. But Delaware originally formed a part of Pennsylvania, being known as " the lower counties on the Delaware." From 1703 it en- joyed a separate Legislature; but it continued to have the same Governor as Pennsylvania— a fact which generally sufficed to prevent that antagonism of in- terests which otherwise might have arisen from the geographical relations of the two colonies. 3 Maryland was the most southern colony which contributed to the defense of New York in 1695.— Bancroft, iii. 34. 224 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. to exhibits the settlements of 1810 ; group No. 3, those of 1830 ; group No. 2, those of 1850 ; and group No. 1, those of 1870. The following table shows the areas which are thus represented on the map, reduced to figures, in square miles. For 1850 and 1870 we have, however, for convenience of com- parison, added the settled areas west of the 100th meridian, which are not on the map. Tear. Total Area of Settlement. Population. Average Density of Settlement. Persons to a square mile. 1790 1810 1830 1850 1870 239,935 407,945 632,717 979,249 1,272,239 3,929,214 7,239,881 12,866,020 23,191,876 38,558,371 16.4 17.7 20.3 23.7 30.2 This table excludes the nearly eighteen hundred thousand square miles of territory belonging to the United States (without reckoning the area of Alaska), which have either no population at all, or else are so sparsely populated that the settlements can not be exhibited on the scale taken for our map. The following table shows the degrees of latitude and longitude within which the solid body of settlement was at each period comprised, the plan of constructing it being to exclude all patches of settlement, or even considerable tracts, which were separated from the main body by vacant spaces, leav- ing thus only the solid mass of continuous settlement reaching from the Atlantic west- ward to the frontier for the time being. Year. EXTENT OF CONTINUOUS SETTLEMENT. North Latitude. West Longitude. 1790 1810 1830 1850 1870 31° _^5° 29° 30'— 45° 15' 29° 15'— 46° 15' 28° 30'^6° 30' 27° 15'^7° 30' 67°— 83° 67°— 88° 30' 67°— 95° 67°— 99° 67°— 99° 45' CITIES. The population of 1790 was very largely rural. Of the 226,085 square miles which were covered with population, 166,782 had between 2 and 18 inhabitants to the square mile ; 59,282 had between 18 and 45 ; and but 13,871 had over 45. Of cities of 8000 or more inhabitants, there were at this date but six : Philadelphia, with a population of 42,520 ; New York, with 33,131; Boston, with 18,038; Charleston, with 16,359; Baltimore, with 13,503 ; Salem, with (in round numbers) 8000. Of the six cities named only three had been the first-chosen seats of population. Salem had been settled in 1628 in prefer- ence to Boston ; Calvert's company sought St. Mary's, and not Baltimore ; "Old Charles- town" had to be abandoned to found modern Charleston. Of the six, Philadelphia, though founded nearly sixty years after New York, early took the lead, remaining the chief city until near- ly 1810. As early as 1696 it is described as containing 1000 houses, mostly of brick, and doubtless all then as decorous in aspect, and appearing as incapable of being out of the way, as their successors at the present time. At 1750 the population of the city is put at 13,000.' New York, which had grown out of a few trading huts on Manhattan Island, had come in 1677 to be a smart village of 350 houses, with perhaps 3000 inhabitants. In 1696 the number of houses had increased to 594. In 1759 there were 2000 houses, with perhaps 12,000 inhabitants. By the colonial census of 1773 the population was determined to be 21,363. Boston had a rapid growth at first, which was checked by the almost entire cessation of immigration about 1670. In 1700 1000 houses are reported ; in 1765 the number had increased only to 1676, the number of inhabitants being 15,520. Baltimore had not been laid out until 1729. It was incorporated 1745. It re- mained, says Hildreth, but a petty village for twenty years afterward (ii. 414). Of cities now noted, Providence, Portland, Albany, and Richmond were then smart towns. Newport, though past its greatest prosperity, was still a considerable place. Norfolk was coming to be known for its ex- port trade. Savannah was as yet of little account. It was described in 1754 as con- taining " about 150 houses, all wooden ones, very small, and mostly old." 2 The begin- nings of Detroit have already been spoken of. Mobile, New Orleans, and St. Louis were as yet foreign territory. Mobile was little more than a Spanish garrison. The site of New Orleans, a pestilential swamp, had been cleared in 1718 by the Mississip- pi Company, under " the reign of Law" in France. In 1769, after the transfer of Lou- isiana to Spain, New Orleans was found to 1 European Settlements in America, ii. 254. a Hildreth, ii. 454. GROWTH OF CITIES. 225 contain 1801 whites, 99 free colored, 60 dom- iciliated Indians, 1225 slaves. 1 St. Louis had been founded in 1764 as the emporium for the fur trade of the Missouri and Mis- sissippi valleys. President Jefferson, writ- ing of it to Colonel (afterward President) Monroe, May 4, 1806, says, " St. Louis, where there is good society, both French and Amer- ican, a healthy climate, and the finest field in the United States for accpiiring prop- erty." The aggregate population of the six cities at 1790 was 131,472, being 3.4 per cent, of the total xiopulation of the country. There are now twenty-nine cities which have a larger population than the largest at 1790 ; 226 cities and towns as large as Salem then was ; the aggregate city population of to- day is 8,071,875, being 20.9 per cent, of the total population. The following table shows the growth of the city system from 1790 to 1870 : THE CENTRE OF POPULATION. It has been said that the average extent inland of population at 1790 was 313 miles, if we exclude the three parallels then most scantily populated. If the density of popu- lation over the settled area had been every where uniform, the centre of population 1 would have been easily found. But, in fact, so irregular was the settlement of the At- lantic slope, so far as it was occupied at all, that very elaborate calculations require to be made in order to ascertain even approxi- mately the point at which the population would, so to speak, have balanced. Entering into these calculations, we fiud the denser settlements immediately on the coast, and especially the sea-port cities, drawing the centre of population far to the east of the geographical centre of the then populated tract, and fixing it about twenty-three miles east of Baltimore. Since that date the cen- tre of population has moved a total distance of 399 miles, being, as nearly as possible, an Year. en IES BY CLASSES, ACCORDING TO SIZE. 8UU0 to 12,000 to ao.oou to 40,000 to 75,000 to 125,000 to 250,000 to 500,000 and over. Total. 12,000. 00.0(10. 40,000. 75,000. 125,000. 250,000. 500,000. 1790 1 3 1 1 6 1810 4 2 3 2 11 1830 12 7 3 1 1 2 26 1850 36 20 14 7 3 3 i i S5 1870 92 63 39 14 8 3 5 2 226 The next table exhibits the aggregate city population at each specified date, in comparison with the total population of the country : Year. Population of United States. Population of Cities. Inhabitants of Cities in each 100 of the total Population. 1790 1810 1830 1850 1870 3,929,214 7,239,881 12,866,020 23,191,876 38,558,371 131,472 356,920 864,509 2,897,586 8,071,875 3.4 4.9 6.7 12.5 20.9 average of fifty miles every ten years. The following table exhibits the position, by latitude and longitude, of the centre of pop- ulation at the beginning of each decennial period, with its location approximately by reference to important towns, and indicates the number of miles which had been trav- ersed in the westward movement of the preceding decade: Year. POSITION OF CENTRE durintr preceding Decade. North Latitude. West Longitude. Appr oximate Location by important. Towns. 1790 39° 16.5' 76° 11.2' 23 miles E. of Baltimore. 1800 39° 16.1' 76° 56.5' 18 ' W. of Baltimore. 41 miles. 1810 39° 11.5' 77° 37.2' 40 ' N. W. by W. of Washington. 36 " 1820 39° 05.7' 78° 33' 16 ' N. of Woodstock. 50 " 1830 38° 57.9' 79° 16.9' 19 ' W.S.W. of Moorefleld. 39 " 1840 39° 02' 80° 18' 16 ' S. of Clarksburg. 55 " 1S50 3S° 59' 81° 19' 23 ' S.E. of Parkersburg. 55 " 1860 39° 00.4' 82° 48.8' 20 ' S. of Chillicotbe. 81 " 1870 39° 12' 83° 35.7' 48 ' E. by N. of Cincinnati. 42 " Total.. 399 " Speaking roundly, it may be said that at 1790 one-thirtieth of the population was in cities ; at 1810, one-twentieth ; at 1830, one- sixteenth ; at 1860, one-eighth ; at 1870, one- fifth and more. i Bancroft, vi. 296. 15 1 By the phrase " centre of population" is common- ly intended the point at which equilibrium would be reached were the country taken as a plane surface, it- self without weight, but capable of sustaining weight, and loaded with its inhabitants, in number and posi- tion such as they are found at the period under con- sideration, the individuals being of equal gravity, and each consequently exerting pressure on the pivotal point proportioned to his distance therefrom. 226 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION, The tremendous leap from 1850 to 1860, eighty-one miles, is due to the sudden trans- fer of a considerable body of population from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, con- sequent on the gold discoveries, twelve in- dividuals in San Francisco exerting as much pressure at the pivotal point, say, the crossiug of the 83d meridian and the 39th parallel, as forty individuals in Boston. The third map exhibits to the eye the movement of population which is stated in figures in the foregoing table. THE ARITHMETICAL PROCESS OF THE NATIONAL GROWTH. The arithmetical process of the national growth has been so fully set forth by a score of writers on population that we shall give but little space to its exposition here. The table following exhibits the ratio of increase, by ten, twenty, and thirty year periods, from 1790 to 1870 : Year. INCREASE PER CENT. In Ten Years. In Twenty Years. In Thirty Years. 1800 35.1 1810 36.3 84.2 1820 33.1 81.5 145.1 1830 33.5 77.7 142.3 1840 32.6 7T.2 135.8 1850 35.8 80.2 140.7 1S60 35.6 84.2 144.4 18T0 22.6 06.2 125.9 THE GEOGRAPHICAL PROCESS OF THE NATIONAL GROWTH. We find in a recent review so good a gen- eralization of the process of our national growth geographically that we can not do better than quote it, premising that the de- scription has reference to a series of maps like No. 5 of the present series (following), one for each census of the United States, showing the location and density of popu- lation at each date by shades of the same color. The writer says : "The feature which this series of plates brings to view most strikingly is the constant tendency to the formation beyond the general frontier line of detached patches of color in localities favorable to population, at first of insignificant proportions, but increasing during each decade ; the subsequent projection of branches toward the main body, which itself seems to develop sympathetically in the direction of these out- lying masses ; the formation of a broad connecting band ; and finally the complete absorption of the out- lying groups by the advancing main body, which in the mean time has been deepening in tint simultane- ously with the extension of its area. The foregoing process, in continuous action, seems to be the normal law of growth of our population, and its operation can be distinctly discerned to-day in the feelers cau- tiously thrown out from the east along the lines of the Missouri, the Platte, and the Arkansas rivers to- ward the Rocky Mountain settlements in Colorado and New Mexico."! The process may perhaps be illustrated by supposing an overflow from one of the banks of a lake of a definite volume of water, the overflow then to cease. The ground beyond the bank may seem to be level, but the wa- ter quickly discovers a slight depression through the middle of the plain, and flows out along this as a channel until, sooner or later, it finds a shallow basin, into which it drains, leaving perhaps here and there a small pool along its former channel. Now let us suppose a second overflow to take place : the water pours as before into the interior basin, but that basin now be- gins to lose its original shape. By little and little, broad shallow tracts upon one side of it are covered with water, while on all the other sides narrow arms are stretch- ed out, marking certain natural channels whose depression below the general surface the eye perhaps could not detect ; and as we pass back along the path of the overflow to the lake we find the few pools become many. Now let a third overflow take place : new shallow expanses will be added to the original basin ; some of the arms will bo extended around to meet each other, em- bracing spaces which still remain dry ; new arms will be stretched out in new directions, and the channel by which the water over- flows from the lake will now stand full, and even begin to overflow its banks in turn, send out its arms, and annex broad shallow expanses of water on either hand. Still an- other overflow, and the whole land would lie under water, and the margin of the lake be carried clear across the plain and estab- lished, for the time at least, on the other side. Such we conceive to be the process by which the geographical extension of our population has taken place, and had a cen- sus been taken every two or three years, and the results carefully noted down, we do not doubt that this process would be shown in almost uninterrupted action from 1776, or even from 1660, to the present time. 1 International Review, Jan.-Feb., 1875, p. 133. GEOGRAPHICAL EXTENSION. 227 228 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. TEE PACIFIC COAST SETTLEMENTS. But while the description thus given of the formation of bodies of population out- side the general frontier and their ultimate absorption in the mass of settlement ap- plies with substantial accuracy even in such extreme cases as the Tennessee and Ken- tucky groups of 1790 and the Mobile and New Orleans groups of 1810, the settlements on the Pacific coast followed another course, and have never come within the scope of this law. The "Louisiana" which Jefferson pur- chased in 1803 embraced, as appears on our first map, not only a vast extent of territory on this side of the Rocky, or, as they were then known, the Stony, Mountains, but also the present Territories of Washington and Idaho and the State of Oregon beyond. There were then no white settlements in Oregon outside of the trading stations, nor was there any population worth regarding until the gold discoveries of 1848. In 1824-25, however, a strong effort was made in Congress to secure this territory as against the conflicting claims of Great Britain by both a military occupation and a political organization, settlement to be encouraged by grants of public lands. It is not our purpose to trace the history of this bill, which was lost in the Senate, but the course of debate elicited expressions of opinion from honorable members which are not without interest and instruction to us to-day. In the House, Mr. Smyth, of Virginia, com- bated the notion that the limits of " the fed- eration" could ever be safely extended be- yond the Stony Mountains. He conceived that the principle of union from mutual in- terests might bind together all those who should inhabit the Mississippi Valley, as their produce would all seek the same out- let. He would concede that the federation might ultimately be made to embrace " one or two tiers of States beyond the Mississip- pi," but, in his judgment, the federative sys- tem ought not to be extended further. In the Senate, Mr. Dickerson, of New Jer- sey, offered a slashing opposition to the bill. The project of a State upon the Pacific was an absurdity. " The distance that a mem- ber of Congress from this State of Oregon would be obliged to travel in coming to the seat of government and returning home would be 9200 miles If he should travel at the rate of thirty miles per day, it would require 306 days ; allow for Sundays, forty- four, it would amount to 350 days. This would allow the member a fortnight to rest himself at Washington before he should commence his journey home It would be more expeditious, however, to come by wa- ter round Cape Horn, or to pass through Behring Straits, round the north coast of this continent to Baffin Bay, thence through Davis Strait to the Atlantic, and so on to Washington. It is true, this passage is not yet discovered, except upon our maps, out it will be as soon as Oregon shall be a State:' Mr. Dickerson's geographical eloquence was too much for the friends of the bill, which, on his motion, was laid upon the table. About 1850, however, the United States government was brought to provide for four longitudinal bodies of settlement west of the 100th meridian. But though these groups of population came at about the same time under the control of the United States, they were of widely different age and history. The easternmost (in the present Territories of New Mexico and Colorado, between the 103d and 105th meridians) represented the old Spanish settlements on the Rio Grande, extending to its source in the Rocky Mount- ains, and containing about 50,000 whites, of very various degrees of whiteness, now brought by cession, as the result of the Mex- ican war, under the flag of the United States. The second line of settlement (in the present Territory of Utah, along the 112th meridian) was the result of the flight of the Mormons across the plains in 1847-48. The remain- ing two lines of settlement were drawn west of the Sierra Nevada, close by each other, being scarcely distant a degree in longitude, the one at the foot of the Sierra, the other at the base of the coast range. These set- tlements were the result of the gold discov- eries in California in 1848. Two years suf- ficed to fill the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin and the Willamette with a population of 100,000 of all races and con- ditions of men. Though these two lines of settlement were in their general course dis- tinct, they were yet united by one broad THE POST-OFFICE. 229 band of population reaching from San Fran- cisco to Sacramento and Stockton. Such were the settlements west of the 100th meridian in 1850. They then com- prised about 33,600 square miles, occupied by a population of an appreciable degree of density. Ten years later their population had risen to about 620,000, covering about 100,000 square miles. In 1870 the popula- tion west of the 100th meridian had risen to a full million, covering about 120,000 square miles. Each of the four lines of settlement still remains distinct, though each has grown greatly since 1850. The easternmost now stretches from the Mexican border, across the whole extent of New Mexico and Colo- rado, into Wyoming, in a narrow, irregular fashion, embracing in all about 140,000 souls. The Utah group now extends from the north- ern border of Arizona, a little way across the northern boundary of Utah, into Idaho. The population, Saints and Gentiles, has now risen to 90,000. The two California groups have extended themselves longitudinally — the westernmost from the thirty-ninth de- gree of latitude south to the thirty-third ; the other from the thirty-fifth parallel, with but slight interruption, northward to Pu- get Sound. In addition to these four longitudinal belts of population there are at the present time perhaps 150 patches of settlements, comprising each from 100 to 300 souls, with a few of even greater importance, scattered over the face of the vast region west of the 100th meridian. A little ingenuity and the use of a somewhat heroic method of treat- ment would undoubtedly suffice to refer nearly all of these to one or another of the seven longitudinal zones or chains of min- eral deposits 1 which are recognized by our explorers and geologists. 1 This generalization was first made by Professor Blake, and has been more minutely brought out by Mr. Clarence King, as follows : " The Pacific coast ranges upon the west carry quick- silver, tin, and chromic iron. The next belt is that of the Sierra Nevada and Oregon Cascades, which upon their west slope bear two zones — a foot-hill chain of copper mines and a middle line of gold deposits. These gold veins and the resultant placer mines ex- tend far into Alaska, characterized by the occurrence of gold in quartz, by a small amount of that metal which is entangled in iron sulphurets, and by occupy- ing splits in the upturned metamorphic strata of the Jurassic age. Lying to the east of this zone, along THE POST-OFFICE. Perhaps no better illustration could be found of the increase of population and the extension of settlements than is afforded by the history of the Post-office in the United States. In 1692 a royal patent constituted Thomas Neale Postmaster-General of Virginia and other parts of North America. Holmes says that under Neale's patent nothing whatever resulted, on account of the "dispersed situ- ations of the inhabitants." 1 Hildreth says, " A colonial Post-office system, though of a very limited and imperfect character, was presently established under this patent." 2 In 1695, says Bancroft, letters might be for- warded eight times a year from the Potomac to Philadelphia. 3 In 1710 Parliament passed " an act for es- tablishing a General Post-office for all her Majesty's dominions." The Postmaster-Gen- eral was authorized to keep "one chief let- ter office in New York, and other chief of- fices at some convenient place or places in each of her Majesty's provinces or colonies in America." A line of posts was estab- lished from the Piscataqua to Philadelphia, " irregularly extended a few years after to Williamsburg, in Virginia, the post leaving y Philadelphia for the South as often as letters enough ivere lodged to pay the expense. The postal communication subsequently estab- lished with the Carolinas was still more ir- regular."* In 1753 Dr. Franklin was appointed Post- master-General 5 for America, and held the office till 1774. Of his administration of the office he writes in his autobiography : "The American office had hitherto never paid any thing to that of Britain Before I was displaced by a the east base of the Sierras, and stretching southward into Mexico, is a chain of silver mines, containing com- paratively little base metal, and frequently included in volcanic rocks. Through Middle Mexico, Arizona, Middle Nevada, and Central Idaho is another line of silver mines, mineralized with complicated association of the base metals, and more often occurring in older rocks. Through New Mexico, Utah, and Western Montana lies another zone, of argentiferous galena lodes. To the east, again, the New Mexico, Colora- do, Wyoming, and Montana gold belt is an extremely well defined and continuous chain of deposits." 1 Annals, i. 444. 2 Hist. United States, ii. 181, 182. 3 Hist. United States, iii. 34. * Hildreth, ii. 263. 6 At first jointly with William Hunter. 230 GEOWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. freak of the ministers, we had brought it to yield three times as much clear revenue to the crown as the Post- office of Ireland." In 1774 William Goddard, a printer, of Bal- timore, proposed a plan for a " Constitution- al American Post-office," and, after much agitation of the subject, a service was act- ually inaugurated under Goddard's manage- ment ; but it had brief continuance. After the outbreak in 1775 the colonies were for a time driven to their own individ- ual efforts for maintaining the Post-office. 1 On the 26th of July, 1775, however, the Con- tinental Congress resolved that a Postmas- ter-General be appointed for the "United Colonies," who should hold his office at Phil- adelphia, where the Congress was sitting. We ask special attention to the phraseol- ogy of the resolution fixing the general scope of the postal service : "That a line of posts be appointed, under the direc- tion of the Postmaster-General,/rom Falmouth, in New England, to Savannah, in Georgia, with as many cross posts as he shall think Jit." The expression shows the situation of the population as stretched along the coast, with but little extent inland. In 1790 the number of post-offices in the United States was seventy-five ; the aggre- gate length of the post-roads, 1875 miles; the amount paid for transportation of the mails, $22,081 ; the gross postal revenues were $37,935, and the expenditures $32,140. Mails were conveyed but three times per week between New York and Boston in summer, and twice in winter, occupying five days in transit. 2 Only five mails per week were exchanged between New York and Philadelphia, requiring two days in each direction, the weight rarely, if ever, exceed- ing the capacity of horseback mails. The number of letters transported during 1790 probably did not exceed 300,000, and the > The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, May 13, established a postal system, with routes from Cam- bridge to Georgetown, in Lincoln County, Maine ; to Haverhill; to Providence; to Woodstock (Connecti- cut) by way of Worcester ; and from Worcester, by way of Springfield, to Great, Barrington ; and to Fal- mouth, in Barnstable County. Fourteen post-offices were set up. New Hampshire, May 18, established an office at Portsmouth. In June, Rhode Island estab- lished post-routes and post-offices. 2 In 1792 we find Mr. Jefferson, as Secretary of State, writing to Colonel Pickering respecting the practica- bility of sending the mails 100 miles a day. Op., iii. 344. annual transportation (counting every trip) was about 350,000 miles. In 1870 there were 28,492 post-offices ; the length of post-roads was 231,232 miles; the amount paid for transportation was $10,884,653; the postal revenue was $19,772,220 ; the expenditures, $23,948,837. In 1870 the number of let- ters carried in the mails was not less than 590,000,000, and the aggregate of distances traveled amounted to 97,024,996 miles. 1 In 1870 the letter-carriers of Manchester, New Hampshire, delivered more letters than con- stituted the whole burden of the postal serv- ice in 1790. In 1835 the total steamboat transpor- tation of the mails aggregated 906,959 miles, the railroad transportation, 270,504 miles. 2 In 1850 the steamboat transporta- tion was 2,659,656 miles, the railroad trans- portation, 604,396. In 1870 the steamboat transportation had risen to 4,122,385 miles, the railroad transportation 3 to 47,551,970 miles. The following table exhibits the growth of the postal system, by five-year intervals, from 1790 to 1870 : Number Length of Number Length of Year. of Post- Post-routea Year. of Post- officea. in Miles. offices. in Miles. 1790 75 1,875 1835 10,770 115,176 1795 453 13,207 1840 13,468 155,739 1800 903 20,817 1845 14,183 143,940 1805 1558 31,070 1850 18,417 17S.672 1810 2300* 36,406 1855 24,410 227,906 1815 3000 43,748 1860 28,498 240,594 1820 4500 72,492 , 1865 20,550 5 142,340 1825 5677 94,052 1870 28,492 231,232 1830 8450 112,774 [ 1 Postmaster-General's Report, 1870. 8 Transportation by four -horse post-coaches and two-horse stages, 16,874,050 miles ; on horseback and in sulkies, 7,817,973 miles. 3 We find General Jackson's Postmaster-Genera!, Amos Kendall, engaged in 1835 in the same warfare with the railroads which so enlisted the passions and the energies of Mr. Creswell. Mr. Kendall, in his re- port of that year, informs Congress that he does not propose to pay the exorbitant rates demanded by the companies. "He will sooner put post-coaches or mail-wagons on the old roads, and run them there until public opinion or the force of superior authority induces the associations which have been permitted to monopolize the means of speedy conveyance on their routes to abate their terms." 4 This and the two following entries have much the appearance of guess-work, and are perhaps explained by the following somewhat remarkable expression oc- curring in the report of the Postmaster-General for 1823: "As near as can be knoicn from the records of this department, there are about 5142 post-offices es- tablished. Means have been taken to ascertain the exact number." 1 The reduction is explained by the war of secession. CONSTITUENTS OF OUR POPULATION. 231 THE CONSTITUENTS OF OUR POPULATION. It will have been noted that the result of the national enumeration at 1790 showed the proportion of whites to blacks to be a little more than five to one. The following table shows the number of parts in each 100 of the total population sustained by the col- ored element at each successive census un- der the Constitution, and, secondly, the de- cennial rate of increase within the colored element itself: Year. COLORED. Percentage of total Population. Percentage of Increase during preci ' Qg Decade. 1790 1800 1810 1820 1S30 1840 1S50 1860 1ST0 19.3 18.9 19 18.4 18.2 16.8 13.3 14.1 12.7 32.32 37.05 28.58 31.44 23.40 26.60 22.07 9.21 The rapid falling off in the rate of increase from 1860 to 1870 is the feature of this table which will at once arrest attention. Un- fortunately we can not know how much of this is due to the effects of war from 1860 to 1865, when a violent and unprepared emancipation was wrought, not so much by the proclamation of the Executive as by the operations of armies, drawing after them vast bodies of the blacks to be crowded into camps and cities, uninstructed and unpro- vided, to perish by disease and privations in uncounted thousands ; how much to the effects of emancipation upon habits of life, occupation, diet, and location during the pe- riod following the return of peace. Had Congress in a proper view of the prodigious change which had passed upon the United States, and of the especial need of statis- tical information for directing the recon- struction, social, political, and industrial, of the South, provided for a census in 1865, we should have been able to see just where and in what condition the war left this race, and where and how the state of peace took them up. But that opportunity has gone by. The number of colored persons counted in the census of 1870 was 4,880,009. Few of these were found north of the forty-first degree of latitude. OUR FOREIGN ELEMENTS. The statistics of the foreign elements in the United States are historically very in- complete. For only three censuses, 1850-70, has the " place of birth" been returned with enumeration. From the former of these dates backward to 1820 we have only the tables compiled from the passenger lists of vessels bringing immigrants — data notori- ously imperfect. Before 1820 we have only scraps of evidence on the subject. In one sense, substantially all the white inhabitants within the present United States were at one time foreigners. But in the days when the population was mainly re- cruited by immigration the word " foreign- er" was never applied to an Englishman, nor generally to a Scot or Welshman, nor always to an Irishman. Thus we find it re- corded of the Rhode Island Colony in 1680 : "We have lately had few or no new-comers, either of English, Scotch, Irish, or foreigner '8. m The population of the thirteen States was mainly composed of Englishmen. Mr. Ban- croft (vol. vii. 355) speaks of the colonies in 1775 as inhabited by persons " one-fifth of whom had for their mother-tongue some other language than the English." The or- der in which other nationalities contributed to the numbers of that pppulation the same writer indicates as follows: "Intermixed with French, still more with Swedes, and yet more with Dutch and Germans." The French were mainly Protestant refu- gees. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, William III. dispatched to the colo- nies large numbers of those who had sought a home in England. A few of these came to Massachusetts, 2 where some of the most illustrious names of subsequent history speak of the virtues of the Huguenots. In 1690 a large number of these refugees were sent out to Virginia, and in the same year many arrived in Carolina. In 1698 another con- siderable body arrived in Virginia. Even prior to these dates the French had appear- ed in New York. "When the Protestant churches in Rochello were razed," says Mr. Bancroft (ii. 302), " the colonists of that city were gladly admitted, and the French Prot- J Chalmers, i. 282-2S4. 2 Holmes cites an act of the Legislature of 1692 pro- hibiting any of the French nation to reside in any of the sea-ports or frontier towns within the province without license, the reason assigned for the rule being that with the French Protestants " many of a contrary religion and interest" had obtruded themselves. — An- nals of A merica, 1. 441. 232 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. estants came in such numbers tliat the public documents were sometimes issued in French as well as in Dutch and English." The persons of Swedish stock referred to by Mr. Bancroft as found iu the colonies in 1775 were largely the descendants of those who settled Delaware. Of these Mr. Ban- croft says, in another part of his history (ii. 297, 298): "The descendants of the col- onists, in the course of generations widely scattered and blended with emigrants of other lineage, constitute probably more than one part in two hundred of the present pop- ulation of our country. At the time of the surrender they did not much exceed seven hundred souls." The fecundity which Mr. Bancroft thus assigns these Swedes is only surpassed by that which Mr. Hildreth (i.267) assigns to the twenty-five thousand, or few- er, original emigrants into New England pri- or to 1640 — " a primitive stock from which has been derived not less, perhaps, than a fourth part of the present population of the United States." Mr. Hildreth must have formed his notions of the average capabili- ties of the early New Englanders from the contemplation of exceptional cases like that of Obadiah Holmes, the Anabaptist, who was publicly flogged about 1651, and is reputed to have had five thousand descendants in 1790. But of all the European nations outside the British Isles, "the chief migration," says Mr. Bancroft (i. 450), " was from that Ger- manic race most famed for love of personal independence." The commercial enterprise of Holland had already planted many thousands of her sub- jects in the "New Netherlands" when the dominion of the last of the colonies passed to England ; nor did Dutch or German emi- gration cease, but it rather increased, when New York lost scout, burgomaster, and sche- pens, to gain mayor, aldermen, and sheriff. We have said that South Carolina, in its earliest settlement, received accessions of Dutch both from New York and from Hol- land. Before the downfall of the power of Holland on the Continent the Dutch had also appeared in Connecticut, and for a time disputed with the English the sovereignty of the soil even to the Connecticut River, but their few colonists were overwhelmed by tin- rapid invasion of the English. To Pennsylvania the Germans resorted. until, in 1764, Durand, iu a report to Choi- seul, wrote that " Germans weary of subor- dination to England, and unwilling to serve under English officers, openly declared that Pennsylvania would one day be called Lit- tle Germany." " Like Pennsylvania and the Carolinas," says Mr. Hildreth of New York in 1749, "it contained a great admixture, but those of Dutch origin still constituted a majority." Of all the German states, the misfortunes of the Palatinate made it the largest con- tributor to the population of the New World. When Hunter came out in 1710 as Governor of New York, we find notice of his bringing with him 2700 of this unfortunate people. Large numbers of the Palatines settled also in Carolina, upon the Roanoke and Pamlico, and many were cut off by the Tuscaroras in the savage rising of 1712. " We shall soon have a German colony," wrote Logan of Pennsylvania in 1726, " so many thousands of Palatines are already in the country." Even after the adoption of the Constitu- tion, and the removal of the seat of govern- ment to the banks of the Potomac, we find a proposition seriously entertained for bring- ing over Germans to furnish the labor ljr building up Washington city. 1 The Swiss also appeared in considerable force among the early settlers of America. Newbern (as we now write it), on the Neuse, speaks of old Bern, on the Aar. In 1730 Swiss immigrants founded Purysburg, the first town on the Savannah ; and Grahame speaks of considerable accessions to the same State from the same source iu 1733. "Asylum for the oppressed," of all nations and all religions, as America had become, the Moravians found their way in large numbers to our shores. Of Oglethorpe's 300 recruits in 1736 more than one-half were of this faith, to which their brethren who preceded them had already witnessed by raising their "Ebenezer" on the banks of the Savannah. Pennsylvania, however, was their chosen country of refuge during the eighteenth century. It will readily be believed that help in building up so many youthful colonies, from whatever quarter it came, was eagerly wel- comed by the English population, and that 1 Washington's works, xii. 305, 306. BRITISH IMMIGRANTS. 233 foreigners were not long excluded from the full privileges of citizenship. The first co- lonial naturalization act of which we find notice was that of Maryland in 1066. Vir- ginia followed in 1671. Pennsylvania nat- uralized the Swedes, Finns, and Dutch of Delaware. Carolina nattiralized the French refugees she received in 1696. The English Privy Council was long trou- bled by the scope and effect given to the co- lonial acts of naturalization, by which aliens were vested with the power of exercising functions which they were disabled from performing by the Navigation Acts. At last, by act of Parliament in 1746, a uniform system of naturalization was established, on the basis of seven years' residence, an oath of allegiance, and profession of the " Prot- estant Christian faith." Of the inhabitants of the British Isles by far the largest contribution, next to that of England, was from Ireland. This immi- gration, though somewhat spasmodic, had reached a vast though indeterminate total before the Revolution. The Irish settled all the way from New Hampshire, where Londonderry was founded in 1719 by a col- ony of about 100 families from Ulster, to Carolina, where a colony of 500 arrived as early as 1715. 1 The author of European Set- tlements in America speaks of the population of Virginia in 1750-54 as " growing every day more numerous by the migration of the Irish, who, not succeeding so well in Penn- sylvania as the more industrious and frugal Germans, sell their lands in that province to the latter, and take up new ground in the remote counties of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. 2 These," he adds, " are chiefly Presbyterians from the north of Ire- land, who in America are generally called the Scotch-Irish" (ii. 216). It is probably to some colony thus planted that Jefferson referred when he wrote (Op., vi. 485) of "the wild Irish who had gotten possession of the valley between the Blue Ridge and the North Mountains, forming a barrier over which none ventured to leap, aud could still less venture to settle among." 1 A small colony under Fergnsson had preceded them, arriving as early as 1683. — Bancroft's Hist. United States, ii. 1T3. 2 Especially in the northwestern counties. — Hildreth, ii. 416. But Pennsylvania was still the especial' centre of attraction to the Irish before the Revolution. In 1729 there was a large Irish migration to Pennsylvania. The years 1771-73 appear also to have witnessed a wholesale movement of population from Ire- land, especially the northern counties, into this province. Of these large numbers found their way to the region of the Monongahela and the Alleghany, and formed the pioneers of a vast population in Western and South- western Pennsylvania. We get a lively im- pression of the importance of this element a little later, when we find in the letters of that vehement Federalist, Oliver Wolcott, Jun., the formidable "whisky insurrection" of 1794 attributed almost wholly to the Irish of Pittsburg and viciuity. Thus : " The Irishmen in that quarter have at length pro- ceeded to great extremities ;'" " Pennsyl- vania need not be envied her Irishmen," 2 etc. They might be in a strange land, but in making war upon the excise they found no unfamiliar or uncongenial occu- pation. The Scotch were then, as they are now, every where, though not largely in New England, nor generally in colonies any where. In New Jersey, 3 Georgia, and North Caro- lina we find, perhaps, the most prominent mention of the Scotch as a distinct element of the population. One exception to the rule that the Scotch did not tend to settle in colonies was found in the case of High- land soldiers of the British army discharged from service in America. New York, as the only considerable State of the thirteen which was originally formed under any other flag than that of England, might be supposed to have possessed the lar- gest foreign element, proportionally, of all ; and, indeed, from the first, not only was New York "a city of the world," with a citizen- ship " chosen from the Belgic provinces and England, from France and Bohemia, from Germany and Switzerland, from Piedmont and the Italian Alps," 4 but the Hudson, from ' Gibbs, Adm. Washington and Adams, i. 156. 2 Gibbs, i. 15T. 3 In 1686, in defending their charter, the proprietors of East Jersey urged that they had sent out several hundreds of persons from Scotland. * Bancroft, ii. 301. The Bohemians survive unto this day. 234 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. the bay to Albany, was settled -with a most motley population. But Pennsylvania long disputed with New York the honor of having the most curious- ly and variously composed population, and at the date of the Revolution indisputably carried off the palm. Chalmers says that Penn found the banks of the Delaware in- habited by 3000 persons, Swedes, Dutch, Fin- landers, and English. Those he brought with him and drew after him were only more widely assorted. "The diversity of people, religions, nations, and languages," says the author of European Settlements, "here is prodigious. Upward of 250,000 people," is his summary for 1750, "half of whom are Germans, Swedes, or Dutch." At a little later date within the century General Washington wrote: "Pennsylvania is a large State, and from the policy of its founder, and especially from the great ce- lebrity of Philadelphia, has become the gen- eral receptacle of foreigners from all coun- tries and of all descriptions" (Op., xii. 324). The large accessions from other countries than England, received by the Southern colonies from Maryland to Georgia>, have al- ready been sufficiently noticed. The States which now represent these colonies are those which have fewest foreigners. On the other hand, of all the colonies, those of New England received the smallest proportional accessions from nationalities other than pure English, and earliest expe- rienced the cessation of immigration, even from England. "The policy of encouraging immigration from abroad," says Hildreth (ii. 312, 313), " which contributed so much to the rapid advancement of Pennsylvania and Carolina, never found favor in New England. Even the few Irish settlers at Londonderry be- came objects of jealousy." In 1796 we find Washington writing to Sir John Sinclair as follows (Op., xii. 323, 324) : "Their numbers are not augmented by foreign em- igrants; yet from their circumscribed limits, compact situation, and natural population, they are rilling the western parts of tbe State of New York and the coun- try on the Ohio with their own surplusage." It is to this long cessation of immigration into New England that Madison refers when, writing after the fourth census (1820), he says: "It is worth remarking that New England, which has sent out such a continued swarm to other parts of the Union for a number of years, has continued at the same time, as the census shows, to increase in popula- tion, although it is well known that it has received but comparatively few emigrants from any quarter" (Op., iii. 213). Of the immigration between 1790 and 1820 we know little precisely. Dr. Seybert esti- mates the total arrivals at 250,000, but the very form of the estimate reveals the in- adequacy of the data from which it was constructed. With 1820 begins the record of arrivals at our ports. The following ta- ble shows the immigration for the period 1820-50 : Year. Total. From From Germany. | British Isles. 1820-30 1830-40 1840-50 151,000 599,000 1,113,000 8,000 152,000 435,000 82,000 283,000 1,048,000 With the seventh census begins our exact account of foreigners in the United States. From this it appears that of the total pop- ulation at 1850 nine and a half per cent, were of foreign birth, at 1860 thirteen per cent., at 1870 fourteen per cent. At the several dates named the several specified nationali- ties contributed as follows to the total for- eign population : Nationality. 1850. 18(50. 1870. 1'er cent. 43.5 26.4 13.9 6.7 0.81 fer cent. 38.9 30.8 11.5 6.0 1.7 Per cent. 1 33.3 30.4 ! 11.2 | 8.9 1 4.4 J Swedes, Norwegians, and The foreign immigrants to the United States have placed themselves mainly between the thirty-eighth and the forty-sixth degrees of latitude. 1 The meridian of the western boundary of Pennsylvania divides this for- eign population into an eastern and a west- ern half. i The geographical relation of the foreign and col- ored elements of the population is complemental in a high degree. Taking the States of Delaware, Mary- land, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri as consti- tuting a central zone neutral to the two elements, we have the following numerical proportions for each 1000 of the population : Colored. Foreign. Northern and Northwestern States 14 ... 197 Central States 132 .. . 91 Southern and Southwestern States 415 .. . 22 Some of the foreign elements are themselves in turn complemental in their location. Thus two-thirds of the Germans are found west of Buffalo, two-thirds of the Irish east of it ; the Scandinavians are mainly west of Lake Michigan, the British Americans east of it. FECUNDITY OF FOEEIGN ELEMENTS. 235 103 101 89 97 95 B7 AS S3 III 79 T7 75 7a 71 69 67 6S 103 101 99 97 95 93 91 89 83 85 83 81 79 77 75 73 71 THE FECUNDITY OF THE FOREIGN ELEMENTS. In addition to the 5,500,000 foreigners residing in the United States, there are 4,167,616 both of whose parents were foreign, 786,388 more who had a foreign father and a native mother, 370,782 who had a native father and a foreign mother, and by conse- quence there are 5,324,786 who have one or both parents foreign. Very grave statistical blunders have been committed by some very pretentious writers on population, who have sought to establish the comparative sterility of the native white popul ation of North America. The follow- ing sentence, quoted from a paper read be- fore the British Association in 1856, contains in substance a doctrine which was for a long time generally accepted in Europe, and has even been repeated on this side the Atlantic : "From the general unfitness of the climate to the European constitution, coupled with the occasional pestilential visitations which occur in the healthier localities, on the whole, on an average of three or four generations, extinction of the European races in North America would be almost certain, if the communica- tion with Europe were entirely cut off." Our space would not serve for the discus- sion of this question did it require to be ar- gued at length ; but Dr. Edward Jarvis, of Massachusetts, has so completely exposed 1 the successive mistakes in figures and falla- cies in reasoning by which this most dis- paraging conclusion 8 was reached, that it is only necessary to refer to the subject here i The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1872 . 2 Mr. Frederick Kapp, formerly of New York, now of Germany, who has perhaps done more than any one else to give currency to these views in Europe, reached the conclusion that of the free population of 1850 but thirty-six per cent., and of that of 1860 but twenty- nine per cent, was American in the sense of being de- rived from inhabitants of the country at 1790. No re- sult on this subject has been too monstrous to receive credence from the press of Europe. 236 GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. iu order to assure our readers, who are liable at any time to meet statements of this char- acter floating through the press or stranded iu the proceedings of scientific associations, that there is not the shadow of a statistical reason for attributing to the native Ameri- can population prior to the war of secession a deficiency in reproductive vigor compared with any people that ever lived upon the face of the earth. INTERSTATE MIGRATION. It will have been observed that the early colonists did not wait for a common form of government before inaugurating that system of internal migration which has been one of the most marked features of our national history. Almost as if from love of change, they moved up and down the coast by turns, or from a half-settled East to a wholly unsettled West. We have already had so many occasions to notice these movements of population that under the present title we will speak only of those wholesale migrations which are revealed by the census since 1850, when the "place of birth" came first to be recorded. The Edin- burgh Review of July, 1854, so well sum- marizes the results of the seventh census in this respect that we condense the statement for insertion here. 1. In the Free States the movement was generally due west — from New York, for instance, to Michigan and Wisconsin, and from Pennsylvania to Ohio. And so strong was this passion that the West itself sup- plied a population to the further West. Ohio had sent 215,000 to the three States beyond her ; Indiana had retained 120,000 from Ohio, but had sent on 50,000 of her own ; Illinois had taken 95,000 from Ohio and Indiana, and given 7000 to Iowa. 2. The migration from the central Slave States had followed the same general law of a westerly movement ; but it had taken also a partial northwest direction into the Free States. 3. In the planting States the move- ment had been mostly within themselves, taking a southwesterly and westerly di- rection. 4. The American-born population of Tex- as had come principally from the Slave States; that of California from the Free States ; that of the Territories more from the Free than from the Slave. The census of 1870 shows the internal movements of population to be not less but more wholesale and incessant than at 1850. Our fourth map shows where the natives of New York and of South Carolina severally were found within the United States at the date of enumeration. The reader will be struck by the conformity to the rules laid down by the Edinburgh reviewer in his Nos. 1 and 3. A map showing the habitat of the Kentucky-born population, which our space does not allow us to introduce, shows that this one of the former " central Slave States" still conforms in its emigrations to the rule laid down in No. 2. The following table shows by even thou- sands for each State at 1870 (1) the number of persons residing in the State who were born therein ; (2) the number residing in the State who were born in other States and Territories of the Union ; (3) the num- ber born in the State who were residing in other States or Territories. The figures on the left indicate the rank of the States in population. State. (1) (2) (3) Alabama Arkansas California.... Connecticut. . Delaware .... Florida Georgia Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky. . . . Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota . . . Mississippi. . . Missouri Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey .... New York North Carolina. Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania . . Rhode Island . . South Carolina. Tennessee Texas Vermont Virginia > West Virginia/ Wisconsin 744,000 233,000 170,000 350,000 95,000 110,000 1,034,000 1,190,000 1,049,000 429,000 63,000 1,081,000 502,000 551,000 630,000 903,000 ' 507,000 126,000 564,000 874,000 19,000 3,000 242,000 575,000 2,988,000 1,029,000 1,842,000 37,000 2,727,000 125,000 679,000 1,02S.(I,!0 389,000 244,000 1,545,000 450,000 243,000 247,000 181,000 73,000 21,000 73,000 139,000 835,000 491,000 561,000 253,000 177,000 163,000 27,000 68,000 201,000 409,000 153,000 253,000 625,000 74,000 20,000 46,000 142,000 257,000 40,000 450,000 42,000 250,000 37,000 19,000 212,000 368,000 40,000 91,000 240,000 230,000 55,000 12,000 137,000 39,000 15,000 274,000 290,000 321,000 89,000 11,000 403,000 63,000 149,000 176,000 244,000 66,000 13,000 139,000 171,000 5,000 2,000 125,000 149,000 1,074,000 307,000 807,000 6,000 675,000 45,000 246,000 404,000 26,000 177,000 584,000 97,000 THE POPULATION OF 1870. The situs of the thirty-seven and a half millions of our people who at 1870 were west of the 100th meridian is shown sep- DENSITY OF POPULATION. 237 101 BO 97 95 93 91 B9 B7 85 B3 a 79 77 73 73 n 6P «7 US arately in our fifth map. The solid mass of continuous settlement here represented cov- ers more than 1,150,000 square miles, lyiug between 27° 15' and 47° 30' north latitude, and between 67° and 99° 45' west longi- tude. The average density of population over this vast tract is 32.7 inhabitants to the square mile. This population is, how- ever, shown not as an average, but in three degrees of density of wide range. Of the four great river systems, the At- lantic system, with 304,538 square miles, contains 14,207,453 inhabitants, or 46.6 to the square mile ; the northern lake system, with 185,339 square miles, 4,399,604 inhabit- ants, an average of 23.7 ; the Mississippi or Gulf system, with 1,683,303 square miles, 19,111,804 inhabitants, an average of 11.3 ; the Pacific system, an average of but 0.98 inhabitants to the square mile. Such is the story of our population, told with more figures of arithmetic than fig- ures of speech. Speculation on the future would here be alike impertinent and vain. Whether the writer who tells of the in- crease and territorial expansion of our popu- lation at the second centennial of independ- ence shall describe the settlement of six hundred thousand, cr twelve hundred thou- sand, or the whole of the vast domain yet uninhabited — whether the flag of the Union shall wave over fifty States and a hundred millions of people only, within our present borders, or over a territory co-extensive with the continent and populous as Eu- rope, may be left in all trustfulness with the Power that hath thus far guided the career of this young nation. As I write, my eye falls on the motto of Connecticut, lifted up first in a savage wilderness, and lifted up since in many a day of battle : Qui transtulit, sustinet. Yea, and will sustain. VIII. MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. EMIGRANTS are never of the capitalist class, while the great need of settlers in a new country is capital. All forms of capital are required, and the only question is what make-shift will do to-day, and what requirement can be postponed until the morrow. Value money is that form of capital which, under such circumstances, seems to be the most dispensable ; but it can not be disposed of, any more than a community could sell all its wagons, boats, scales, measures, and other tools of trans- portation and exchange, unless some sub- stitute is provided. Hence various substi- tutes are adopted whenever they can be devised, and the monetary history of the United States from the first colonization until now is a history of experiments with cheap substitutes for money. Barter currency wa3 adopted very gen- erally in the colonies from the first, rates at which goods should exchange being fixed by law. Taxes were collected in kind, and fees were established in barter. In New England the aborigines had a currency of beads made from clam shells (wampum or peag, or warnpuinpeag), which the whites adopted and used among themselves and with the Indians, the rates being fixed by X>rices demanded in wampum by the Indi- ans for furs, and by the prices which the furs would bring in England. Wampum became overabundant, depreciated, became broken, and was abolished as a nuisance about 1650. In 1652 a mint was established at Boston, which went on coining "pine- tree" coins for over thirty years, although, as the mint was illegal, its coins were all dated 1652 to conceal the continuance of its operations. The charge for minting was ex- orbitant, and the English mint law of 1663 having made the importation and exporta- tion of coin free, and the law of 1666 hav- ing abolished all charge for coining, the Massachusetts mint law served to drive the precious metal away. The coins were call- ed shillings, etc., but were twenty-five per cent, below sterling of the same denomina- tion, giving par of silver 6s. 8d., New En- gland currency, per ounce. This became the standard, but the barter currency being still legal, the silver coins which were not exported (and there was a severe law against exportation) were all clipped. 1 In 1704 a proclamation of Queen Anne fixed the rates of Spanish and other foreign coins for the colonies. The Spanish dollar, or piece of eight, was rated at 4s. 6(7. Hence sterling was changed into dollars at two- ninths of a dollar for a shilling, or f!4| for £1, which remained the "par" until Janu- ary 1, 1874. New England currency being twenty-five per cent, worse, £1 in New En- gland currency was $3 33. A Spanish dol- lar, or piece of eight, in New England cur- rency was 6s. In 1686 a bank was proposed in Massa- chusetts, but its history is obscure. In 1690 paper notes were first issued by that colony to pay for an unfortunate expedition against Canada. 2 The issue was moderate at first, and canceled year by year. In 1704 the redemption was postponed two years, and after that there was no stopping. Issues were made to pay the expenses of govern- ment, and other issues to loan on mortgage, carrying out the scheme for getting rich by printing and borrowing, which starts up ev- ery generation over again. There were spe- cial " hard times" in Massachusetts in 1715, 1 A mint was established in Maryland in 1661, but nothing is known of its history. 2 Among the authorities on the colonial currencies should be mentioned the following : Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay (very intelligent and cor- rect on finance) ; Douglas's Summary (unequal, but val- uable) ; Holmes's A nnals. Other old histories are gen- erally occupied with other than financial interests. Arnold's Rhode Island takes full account of trade and finance. A pamphlet published at Boston in 1740, and republished in Lord Overstone's tracts, 1857, Dis- course concerning the Currencies of the British Planta- tions, is of great value. Special works are Pelt on Massachusetts currency, Bronson on Connecticut cur- rency, Hickox on New York currency, and the collec- tion in Phillips's Colonial and Continental Paper Cur- rencies. These last all pursue chiefly the antiquarian interest. Branson's is the only one which shows a knowledge of financial science. EARLY CONGRESSIONAL ACTION. 239 17-20, 1727, 1733, 1741, 1749. Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey first issued bills in 1709 for the second expedi- tion to Canada. In 1714 New York issued £27,680 in bills of credit as a "back-pay grab." Pennsylvania first issued paper in 1723. Franklin urged more issues, and wrote in favor of them. 1 Maryland issued bills in 1734, to be redeemed in sterling in three payments, at fifteen, thirty, and forty-five years. These payments being discounted, exchange rose to 250. Virginia used to- bacco-warehouse receipts as currency until 1755, when she issued paper, and pushed it to great excess. North Carolina was a very poor colony, and her currency was greatly depreciated, although not over £52,500 in 1740. South Carolina issued for war pur- poses in 1702. Rice was a barter medium. The only colony which ever resumed was Massachusetts. In 1745 the New England colonies made an expedition against Cape Breton, and took Louisbourg. The issues to pay for this rose to £2,466,712, nominal value in New England currency, in Massachusetts alone. Parliament ransomed Cape Breton, and Massachusetts imported her share of the ransom in silver and copper, redeemed her notes at eleven for one, and became " the silver colony." In 1751 Parliament forbade legal-tender non-interest-bearing notes for New England, at the prayer of Massachu- setts, and in 1764 for all the colonies. Gold circulated by weight, not being legal tender until 1762, when a law was passed in Mas- sachusetts making it a tender at 2^-fZ. silver per grain. This was five per cent, more than it was worth, and silver being unjust- ly rated, was exported, and became scarce. Issues within the act of Parliament con- tinued to be made in the older colonies, and in 1775, when the representatives of the New England colonies met to prepare for war, Massachusetts agreed to allow their bills to circulate in her territory, because they had nothing else. The First Continental Congress met at Philadelphia September 5, 1774. Its first measures were not military, but renewed the commercial war which the colonies had tried before, which was believed in long afterward, but which always accomplished 1 See vol. ii. of his works. harm to the enemy at the expense of ten- fold harm at home in local and class bicker- ings. Trade was thrown away just when wise policy dictated to keep it, and even fight for it. After December, 1774, nothing was to be imported from any part of the British Empire ; and after September, 1775, nothing was to be exported to the same. English goods were needed for the army, and came by way of the European conti- nent and the West Indies ; and lumber and tobacco went out the same way. The Second Congress, May 10, 1775, set about making war, but it had no power to tax, and therefore no power to borrow. New York proposed bills of credit of the old kind, to be redeemed by taxes, and this plan was adopted. The first issue was ordered June 23, 1775— promises to pay 2,000,000 Spanish dollars. The issues were apportioned among the colonies on an estimate of population, and they were called upon to redeem the quotas assigned them by taxes. Rhode Isl- and, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire alone did this entirely ; New York, Pennsyl- vania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia did so in part. The issues went on, how- ever, and in January, 1777, the depreciation began, although it was not admitted by Congress until September. 1 During 1777 all means of coercion by pub- lic officers and private committees were used to enforce the legal-tender character of the bills and to keep down prices. Some crimes were perpetrated in the name of liberty in this connection. In September, 1779, the is- sues were $160,000,000, and Congress prom- ised that they should not exceed $200,000,000. The depreciation was twenty-eight for one (silver, 2800). In March, 1780, silver was at 6500. a Congress recognized a depreciation of forty for one, and recommended the re- peal of all tender laws, and issued six-year six per cent, notes. The Register of the 1 Monographs on the Continental currency have been published by Henry Phillips, 1866, and J. W. Schuckers, 1874. See also the article in Harper's Mag- azine for March, 1S63. On the social effects, see Pe- latiah Webster's Essays, 1791. He gives the deprecia- tion from a merchant's books. Another table is given in Niles's Register, November 23, 1833. 2 In 1780 and 1781 an officer's mess bill included sug- ar at $14, $16, and $18 per pound ; twist, $10 per yard ; three brushes and a blackball, $95; a black silk hand- kerchief, $75; eggs, $12 per dozen.— Niles's Register, August 5, 1S26. 240 MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. Treasury made a report to Congress in 1828/ in which he put the suni of the issues at says $200,000,000/ and he puts the value at $36,000,000 in specie. He estimated the cost of the war at $140,000,000. Another state- ment from a Treasury report of 1790 gives 0357,400,000 old tenor and $2,000,000 new tenor. These were partly re-issues. The same report estimates the cost of the war at $135,100,000 in specie. 3 In fact, as John Adams wrote to Niles, 4 the history of the Revolution [especially of its finances] is lost beyond recovery. The hills went on dej)re- ciating, being really only negotiable paper, until the spring of 1781, when Morris took charge of the finances on condition that he might conduct them in specie. Then the notes became waste paper. Some were re- deemed at one hundred for one in Hamil- ton's funding scheme. These notes were a greater obstacle to independence than the British arms; so much so that the enemy counterfeited them as a war measure. The French money was a greater aid to inde- pendence tban the French fleets and forces. After the paper money had exbausted the patience of the people, Congress had to col- lect taxes in kind to supply tbe army. It could not have been worse off for money at the outset, and would have had enthusiasm to help. The miseries of those days were enhanced by the failure of the crops of 1779 and 1780. The war was now carried on by loans from France, Holland, and Spain, which were ob- tained on French credit. Specie brought by the French and English came into circula- tion as soon as the paper was dropped, and trade with the English was winked at be- cause specie was obtained by it. So much for non-intercourse. In 1780 a compauy of gentlemen in Phila- delphia took government bills of exchange, and issued notes to purchase supplies for the army. December 31, 1781, they were incorporated by resolution as the Bank of North America, Congress having finally or- ganized, November 1, under the Articles of 1 Twentieth Congress, First Session, State Paper 107. a Works, is.. 259. 3 Pitkin, A Statistical View, etc. (New Haven, 1835), p. 27. * Register, January 18, 1817. Confederation. The validity of this act be- ing questioned, the bank obtained a charter from Pennsylvania in 1783 for ten years, with a monopoly ; capital, $400,000. In 1785 the State charter was repealed, on account of political and business jealousy. In 1787 it was renewed, without the monopoly. This was the first bank which issued convertible notes. It was of great use as a fiscal agent of the government, and very successful in its operations. Gouge says that it put on false pretenses of strength, but its history is so obscure that it is impossible to verify or refute these charges. The peace found the finances of the Con- federation and of the States in confusion. The Confederation was a shadow which no longer had dignity. It could not collect revenue or adjust its accounts, which were found in inextricable confusion, showing recklessness and carelessness, or worse, as a result of the numerous boards and officers among whom the responsibility had been divided. The States were likewise strug- gling with paper issues, which they retired by taxes, heavy in nominal amount, but small in value. In Massachusetts Daniel Shays led a body of armed men to Worces- ter, and from there to Springfield, to pre- vent the court from sitting. This body was dispersed by force, but leniently treated. In the same year (1786) 1 Rhode Island is- sued paper, as a measure of bankruptcy, with a stringent tender law. In 1789 the paper was at fifteen for one, and the State debt had been called in, and either paid in this currency or forfeited. Then the assump- tion by the general government being as- sured, the State stocks were returned to the holders who had been paid off, and in 1791 and 1795 they all participated in the stocks allotted to the State. 2 The war-protected industries were now prostrated. Commerce was restricted by the English navigation laws from its old path to the British West Indies, contrary to 1 In a speech in the Senate, March 24, 183S, Judge White, of Tennessee, described the currency of " Frank- lin" (East Tennessee and West North Carolina) at this time as consisting of raccoon-skins. Counterfeiting consisted in attaching raccoons' tails to opossums' skins. The collectors practiced this fraud on the Treasury. 2 Arnold's Rhode Island, ii.,at the end. Richmond, The Revolutionary Debt repudiated by Rhode Island. THE NATIONAL BANK. 241 Pitt's policy. 1 The commercial treaty pro- posed by Adams in 1785 was refused, and so both from within and without the necessity of union and nationality was enforced. The first measure of Congress was for tax- ation. The act of July 4, 1789, specified pro- tection as one of its objects. It laid duties of five per cent., fifty cents per ton on for- eign ships, and ten per cent, discriminating duty. Thus the United States failed to take the enlightened position on foreign trade which consistency with their other doctrines seemed to prescribe. Other acts followed on an average every other year for the next thirty years, by which the duties were in- creased and extended. September 2, 1789, the Treasury Depart- ment was established, 2 and Alexander Ham- ilton was appointed Secretary. He made a report on the finances January 14, 1790. The Confederate debt was $42,000,000 domestic and $11,000,000 foreign, and the debt of the States $25,000,000. The Confederate domes- tic debt, including officers' half-pay commu- tation (a very unpopular thing), was fund- ed at par, the market price being 15. The State debts were assumed, and funded against strong opposition, the location of the capital on the Potomac being assured in order to gain the consent of Virginia. Pen- sions and the funding of crops of exchequer bills had been two great abuses in England for a century, and were regarded with (bread here. Hamilton next proposed a national bank, which was established by act of March 3, 1791, with a capital of $10,000,000, $8,000,000 subscribed by individuals (one-quarter in specie, three - quarters in United States stock), and $2,000,000 by government. Its charter was for twenty years. It issued no notes under $10. Eight or ten years later the government sold its stock for twenty- five, twenty, and forty-five premium. A bubble speculation followed the founding of the bank. 3 1 Pitkin, 189. 3 A full history of the finances would include ton- nage, post-office, and tariff. These, however, are ex- cluded, except in cases where they affect the finances generally, from the present account. The only attempt to deal thoroughly with the financial history of the United States is Von Hock's, Die Finanzen und die Fi- nanzgeschichte der Ver. St. (Cotta, Stuttgart, 1867.) 3 Niles's Register, May 9, 1835. 16 March 3, 1791, an excise was laid on spir- its, wbich led to a rebellion in Pennsylvania in 1794. In 1794 other direct taxes were laid, and in 1797 stamp taxes. July 14, 1798, direct taxes were apportioned on land, houses, aud slaves. These taxes were all repealed in 1802. Questions of coinage were taken up as early as 1781. January 15, 1782, Robert Morris made a report (said to have been prepared by Gouverneur Morris) proposing a coinage. 1 July 6, 1785, the "dollar" was adopted. August 8, 1786, a mint law was passed, which was modified October 16, 1786. During 1790 both Hamilton and Jefferson 2 prepared papers on coinage, and September 2, 1792, the mint law was approved. Silver was first coined in 1794, and gold in 1795. The silver dollar was to weigh 371.25 grains pare metal, and the gold dollar 24.75 grains pure metal, thus rating tbe metals as 15 to 1. Silver was to gold in England as 15.2 to 1, and here it was probably as 15.5 to 1. Little gold circulated here before 1820, and after that none. The silver dollar having less value than the gold dollar, was the only one which debtors paid. The calamity of Europe in the wars from 1791 to 1815 was the opportunity of Amer- ica. It could not be enjoyed without expe- riencing the usual fortune of neutrals, nor without in its final results showing that the best gain of a nation comes not from the quarrels of its neighbors, but from their peace and prosperity. We were led to try another commercial war, and finally to un- dertake actual hostilities "for free trade" (i. e., of neutrals during war) "and sailors' rights," being forced to this by votes from south of the Delaware, while the ships and sailors in the North and East asked only to take their own risks. April 14, 1814, the re- strictive acts were finally repealed. Daniel Webster characterized the whole system in a sentence whsn he said it was " pernicious as to ourselves, and imbecile as to foreign nations." 3 The idea was by withholding trade to get a consideration in hand, viz., the promise to restore it, and then to offer this to either belligerent to induce him to 1 Sparks's Diplomatic Correspondence, xii. 81. Amer- ican State Papers, vii. 101. 3 American State Papers, vii. 105; xx. 13. 3 Speech in the House, April 6, 1S14. 242 MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. relax his hostile regulations. Mr. Canning treated this with thinly veiled contempt. His position was, If it is a threat, I do not notice it ; if it is something to sell, I decline to buy. The embargo and war had " encouraged domestic industry," and had come to be con- sidered by some as beneficent forces. Com- merce had developed in an unexampled manner. The customs revenue fluctuated greatly, but rose from $3,400,000 in 1792 to $13,300,000 in 1811, actual receipts, long credit being given from the time of importa- tion. Lands figure as a source of income from 1796; $21,000,000 were due on arrears (credit being given) in 1820, 1 of which $14,900,000 were canceled before 1830 by surrendering lands. The Post-office was es- tablished May 8, 1794. A single letter cost six cents for thirty miles ; over 450 miles, twenty-five cents. Between 1794 and 1830 the Post-office produced revenue except in 1808, 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823, 1828, 1829, 1830. 2 Between 1837 and 1874 it produced revenue only in 1837, 1848-1851, and 1865. 3 January 1, 1791, the foreign debt was $12,800,000 ; the domestic debt, $62,600,000 ; total, $75,400,000. The act of August 4, 1790, set apart the surplus revenue from du- ties to pay the debt. The act of May 8, 1792, appropriated the revenue from lands to that purpose. The act of March 3, 1795, increased this fund, and named it the " sink- ing fund." The act of April 29, 1802, raised the sinking fund to $7,300,000 per annum. Two acts of November 10, 1803, raised loans of $13,000,000 to pay for Louisiana, and in- creased the sinking fund to $8,000,000 per annum. By the treaty of January 8, 1802, in fulfillment of section six of Jay's treaty, the United States agreed to pay £600,000 (at $4 44) to discharge ante-Revolutionary debts of Americans to Englishmen. The foreign debt increased until 1795, but was extinguished in 1810. The domestic debt increased until 1801. The Louisiana pur- chase carried it to its maximum in 1804 (January 1, total, $86,400,000). It was re- duced to $39,000,000 September 30, 1815.* A bankruptcy law was passed April 4, 1800, but it was repealed December 19, 1803. 1 Nilcs\* Register, February 5, 1820. * Pitkin, 33S. 3 Postmaster-General's Report, 1874. 4 Treasury Report, 1815. The following table shows the develop- ment of banking, 1 the Bank of the United States being omitted : Year. | No. Capital. Cirrulntion. | Specie. 1791 3 Jan. 1,1811 88 " 1815 208 $2,000,000 42,600,000 82,200,000 $22,700,000 45,500,000 $9,600,000 17,0110,000 Banks at this time were political engines. Niles often says that the old United States Bank gave favors only to black -cockade Federalists in and after 1798. Pitkin says that bank was Federalist, and finds it natu- ral that the Jefferson ian Democrats would not recharter it. McDuffie 2 repeats the as- sertion of political character in the old bank. Clay said that its stock was largely held by foreigners and noblemen, 3 which proves that it brought capital here which, at that day, would not otherwise have come. The charter expired March 3, 1811. The re- charter was lost in the House, January 24, by one vote, and in the Senate, February 20, by the casting-vote of the Vice-President. The bank closed up its affairs, and paid back its capital at 108£. 4 A large number of State banks at once sprang up. February 12, 1820, Secretary Crawford estimated the paper in circulation in 1813 at $62,000,000, and the specie at $8,000,000 ; the paper in 1816 at $99,000,000, and the specie at $11,000,000. For the latter year Gallatin estimated the banks at 246, with $89,800,000 capital, $68,000,000 circulation, $19,000,000 specie. 5 Duties in 1804 were twelve and a half, fif- teen, and twenty per cent. The " Mediter- ranean Fund" was then raised by addition of two and a half per cent. April 3, 1812, in preparation for war, an embargo was laid for ninety days. The exportation of spe- cie was forbidden, all duties were doubled, 1 Gallatin, Considerations on the Currency and Bank- ing System of the United States (Carey and Lea, Phila- delphia, 1831). Others give four banks in 1789, count- ing one in Maryland. a Report on United States Bank, April 13, 1830. 3 Clay's report against the first bank (Senate, March 2, 1S11) would have made a good Jackson document in 1832. * Pitkin, 421. The last dividend was in 1834 (Xiles's Register, September 13, 1S34). s The best account of this period is given by Will- iam Gouge, History of Paper Money and Banking (Philadelphia, 1833). Historically very correct and trustworthy, but theoretically marred by indiscrim- inate hostility to banks. See also Condy Raguet's Currency and Banking, 1840, Appendix II. WAR DEBT OF 1812. 243 an additional duty of ten per cent, was laid ou foreign ships, arid a tonnage duty of $1 50. This made the duties twenty-seven and a half, thirty-two and a half, and forty- two and a half per cent. The Mediterra- nean Fund expired in 1815, and the duties were twenty-five, thirty, and forty per cent, until July, 1816. July 22, 1813, a direct tax of $3,000,000 was laid. July 24 excise I axes and licenses were laid, which were extended by acts of January 18 and February 27, 1815, but an income tax was defeated January 18, 1815. Another direct tax of $0,000,000 was also laid. On December 23, 1814, postage was raised to twelve cents for one sheet less than forty miles ; this was repealed Febru- ary 1, 1816. The internal taxes were rerjeal- ed in 1817. The loans contracted were : April, 1814 ; the banks of the District dur- ing the invasion, August 27 ; those of Phil- adelphia, August 30, 1814 ; those of the Mid- dle and Southern States, within a fortnight later ; those of Ohio and Kentucky paid spe- cie until January 1, 1815; the only one in Tennessee went on until July or August, 1815 ; a few in Maine stopped early in 1814 ; the rest in New England did not suspend at all. 1 Banks now multiplied faster than ever, and the old ones increased their is- sues. The notes required elaborate quota- tions, and brokers had a rich harvest in ne- gotiating them. Mles's Register from 1814 to 1820 is filled with complaints and objur- gations about the "shavings." The Secre- tary of the Treasury found the greatest em- barrassment from this state of things. The New England people paid all their dues to Date of Act. 1 Interest. Amount authorized. Amount issued. Rate. March 14, 1812 August 2, 1813 March 24, 1*14 March 3, 1815 (for funding interest- bearing Treasury notes) February 24, 1S15 (f<*r funding non- interest-bearing Treasury noles) 6 6 6 6 111,000,000 16,000,000 1,500,000 25,000,000 12,000,000 $7,860,500 18,109,377 8,498,581 15,661,81S 9,745,745 -j 3,268,949 -j Par. SS 80 90 to par in Treasury notes. Par in Treasury notes. 163,144,972 Five and two-fifths per cent. Treasury notes outstanding September 30, 1S15 $14,686,600 Non-interest-bearing Treasury notes, about 1,500,000 Temporary loans 1,150,000 Total cost of the war, ascertained to September 30, 1815, about 80,500,000 These items, with the temporary loans, made the debt for the war $80,500,000, and the total public debt, September 30, 1815, $119,600,000. » These loans were contracted at 80-90 in paper, depreciated twenty per cent., and after 1814 all the income of the government was in the same paper. 2 March 19, 1813, Governor Snyder, of Penn- sylvania, vetoed twenty-five bank charters ; March 21, 1814, forty charters were passed over his veto. Banks multiplied on every hand, especially in the Middle States, where they speculated in government stocks. The system was generally to deposit stock notes for the capital, issue notes even beyond this. and loan them on accommodation paper. Bridge and other companies in this way got their capital from the public. The New Orleans banks suspended in 1 Treasury Report, 1815, with review of the finances of the war. See also Treasury Report for 1827, and a letter of Gallatin in Niles's Register, February 21, 1846, on the finances of the second war. 2 Crawford's Report, February 12, 1820. the government in Treasury notes worth 90. The government had to pay in New En- gland in specie all that it owed there, while it nowhere received a specie revenue. At the same time the Boston merchants found that the Baltimoreans had the advantage of them in trade, for while the Bostonians paid duties in Treasury notes at 90, the Bal- timoreans paid in their own bank-notes at 80. So little was the "exchange" under- stood that the Secretary (Dallas) complain- ed because he got bids for the loan of March 3, 1815, which "varied according to the ar- bitrary variations of what is called the dif- ference of exchange." The object of this loan was to fund Treasury notes. The Sec- retary fixed the price of his bonds at 95, ei- ther in Treasury notes or " cash," i. e., bills of suspended banks. The result was that the large subscriptions were made where the currency was most depreciated, and were made in " cash." Where the currency was 1 Gouge's Journal of Banking, quoted in Macgrej or's Commercial Statistics, iii. 987. 244 MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. about at 95, the subscriptions were paid half in " cash," and half in notes. Where the cur- rency was worth more than 95, the subscrip- tions were all in Treasury notes. The Sec- retary's own table shows this at a glance. 1 In the disorder of the currency, Eppes (on behalf of Jefferson ) proposed a government paper money fundable in stock, such as was issued in January, 1815, and never circu- lated. Dallas, the Secretary of the Treas- ury, October 17, 1814, proposed a national non-specie-paying bank. Calhoun proposed a bank on Treasury notes, but which should never suspend specie payments. Dallas's scheme passed the Senate, but was defeat- ed in the House by the double vote of the Speaker (Cheves). A plan for a bank to be prohibited from suspendiug passed, and was vetoed January 30, 1815. Dallas's paper scheme passed the Senate again, but was defeated in the House by one vote on Feb- ruary 17, the day the news arrived of the . Peace of Ghent. It was heard of no more. At the next session Calhoun re-introduced the bank, the charter being Dallas's work. It was passed April 10, 1816. The bank was to have $35,000,000 capital, $7,000,000 to be subscribed by government in five per cent, stock, $28,000,000 by the public, of which $7,000,000 was to be in specie and $21,000,000 in six per cent. United States stocks. It was to pay a bonus of $1,500,000 in one, two, and three years. It was to issue no notes under $5, and was forbidden to suspend un- der twelve per cent, penalty. Votes were to be given at elections of bank officers by an intricate limitation, varying according to the number of shares held, and directors could serve only three years out of four. This bank was to correct the currency and to control the exchanges, which no bank can do or ought to do. It was to be the financial Providence of the country, bring exchange to par, and keep it there in an im- mense sparsely settled country with defect- ive means of communication. Its capital was far too large, and there was no reason for putting part of the capital in stocks. Finally, there was no reason why the gov- ernment should have shares in it. April 30 Congress voted that specie pay- 1 This report (1815) was very correctly criticised by Mr. Nathan Appleton : On Currency and Banking (Bos- ton, 1S41), Appendix D. ments ought to be resumed February 20, 1817, and that government ought to accept only specie or its equivalent in payment thereafter. The banks refused to resume before July, 1817. The stock of the Bank of the United States was taken in July in such a way that a Baltimore clique, taking advantage of the rule about voting, got votes enough to control the organization. 1 By subscribing as attorneys they got 22,187 votes out of 80,000, and they subscribed only $4,000,000 out of $28,000,000. In November the stock was at $42.50 for $30 paid. The organization took place October 28, fifteen directors being Democrats and ten Federal- ists. The directors allowed, December 18 and 27, discount on the pledge of stocks, by which the specie payment in the second in- stallment (January 2) was evaded. Wild stock-jobbing now began, especially among those inside. After February 20 all stock was discounted at par (65 paid). " The dis- counts, the payment of the second install- ment, the payment of the price to the own- er, the transfer, and the pledge of the stock were, as it is termed, simultaneous acts." August 26, 1817, they voted to discount on the stock at 125. The third installment was partly paid in bank-notes because gov- ernment stock was at a premium in notes. August 28, 1818, the bank refused to re- ceive or pay its notes except at the offices specified on the note, and also refused to col- lect drafts, etc., except for exchange rates, thus abandoning the attempt to "equalize exchange." In April, 1819, it refused to transfer funds for the government except at exchange rates, thus disappointing another expectation in regard to it. The bank was going on just after the pre- vailing fashion. Instead of restraining, it joined the race. The Secretary in 1817 said that he had paid off all the United States stock in the capital of the bank, and he paid off $13,000,000, which seems, therefore, to be the amount paid in, instead of $21,000,000. The rest was bank-notes or stock notes. This redemption turned the whole capital into a shape demanding use, and led to a pro- digious expansion of credit. The State banks agreed to " resume" if the bank would extend 1 The story is told here consecutively. The doings inside the bank were not made known until the inqui- ry in 1S19 and Cheves's report in 1822. LIQUIDATION UNDER DIFFICULTIES, 1819-1823. 245 its discounts at New York $2,000,000, Phil- adelphia, $2,000,000, Baltimore, $1,500,000, Virginia, $500,000. There never was any re- sumption in fact. 1 August 8, 1817, the pres- ident and cashier were authorized to dis- count $500,000, and subsequently to discount $2,000,000, between discount days, in their discretion. September 30 they were au- thorized to renew notes so discounted. The stock was then at its highest, 155-156!. From July, 1817, to December, 1818, the bank imported $7,300,000 in specie, at an expense of over $500,000. Congress appointed an in- vestigating committee, on the rumor that things were not all right, and because the bank had not helped the currency. They reported 2 January 16, 1819, exposing the facts here detailed. The president of the bank and the managers at Baltimore re- signed. March 6, 1819, Langdou Cheves be- came president. He fouud the bank bank- rupt, but already engaged in vigorous efforts to contract its obligations. These meas- ures were continued. The loss at Baltimore was $2,000,000, the whole loss $3,000,000. February 25 Congress refused to order a scire facias for the forfeiture of the charter. Maryland, Ohio, and Kentucky had at- tempted to tax the bank, but the tax was declared unconstitutional. 3 In Ohio a tax of $100,000 was collected by force September 16, 1819, but ordered restored, after long liti- gation, in September, 1821.* Meanwhile the commerce, industry, and finance of the world had been finding their way back to the ordinary natural forms and channels of peace, and away from the un- natural developments of war. This did not take place without shocks and confusion throughout the commercial world. The United States had, for insufficient reason, plunged into the general melee, and the re- sult was that not only was their commerce first unnaturally distorted and then crush- ed, but also their home industry had sought unnatural developments, and their finances had been thrown into confusion. In 1816 paper money yet prevailed in Europe, and was depreciated more than ours. The ex- 1 Crawford's Report, February 12, 1820. 2 See the report and documents in Niles's Register, vols. xv. and xvi., series 1. 3 4 Wheaton, 316. 4 Final action and history of the case, 9 Wheaton, T39. changes were favorable to the United States, and a golden opportunity was offered for re- sumption. In 1819 efforts were being made all over Europe to resume, and masses of metal were moving from country to coun- try. In the midst of this state of things came the real, though not publicly known, break-down of the bank. Its efforts to re- cover itself prostrated the whole industry of the country. Prices, which had risen fifty or one hundred per cent, since 1814, fell even below the former level, and a grand liquida- tion set in, which ran through some three or four years. In 1820 exchange on England rose to 105 and 106, which carried off gold, the par of gold being 102.72, or, with expenses, 105. Par of silver was 106 (at 15! to 1), or, with expenses, 108. In fact, silver was then de- pressed to 16 for 1 by the demand for gold in England, and it took 110 to draw silver from bere. Exchange rose at a leap from 106 to 110, and then to 112 — rates which the living generation could hardly remember. Every gold coin here was drawn away, for there was no such profit on any thing else exported. The re-adjustment was not com- plete before 1822 or 1823, and it was not brought about without great suffering. 1 In 1823 land was worth forty or forty-five per cent, less than in 1806, and sixty or sev- enty per cent, less than in 1817 ; 2 thousands in actual suffering; families living on one dollar per week ; 3 women earning six and a quarter cents per day. The distress was all used as an argument for protection. The indiscriminate rage of men like Gouge and Niles against " banks" dates from this period. Niles again and again speaks of banks just as one would speak of gambling hells. There were three kinds of paper afloat in 1819 : first, notes of incorporated banks with more or less pretense to solv- ency; second, notes of banks which had no other reality than a counting-room, books, and a plate — their notes were circulated at a distance, and when they came home the bank ceased to be ; third, counterfeits in enor- mous quantities, though they differed from the second kind only in stealing a name 1 Valuable reports on coinage, etc., by Lowndes, H. E., January 26, 1819, and J. Q. Adams, February 22, 1821. 2 Mles's Register, August 23, 1823. 3 Xiles's Register, May 17, 1823. 246 MONETAKY DEVELOPMENT. some oue else bad invented, instead of in- venting a new one. The amount afloat can not be guessed at. Niles 1 said tbe number of banks was put at 397 on unknown au- thority. Tbe bomilies about extravagance and protecting borne industry, and tbe praise of tbe old simple times, tben began. Tbese times bave never been since tbe earliest co- lonial days, when people were so poor that tbey could buy nothing. Since tben they bave bought all tbey could, and as tbey have been getting rich fast, they have al- ways had far more good thiugs at the end of any twenty years than at its beginning. In 1817 the sinking fund was raised to $10,000,000 per annum, and more, if possible, leaving $2,000,000 in the Treasury. In 1816, 1817, 1818, and 1819 this sum was paid, and in some years much more ; but in 1820, the rev- enue having declined, $2,000,000 were bor- rowed from the sinking fund, with many apologies. In 1821 it was curtailed over $3,000,000, but without any apologies. It showed that the sinking fund is simply what can be saved and paid, nothing more or less. During the next decade the scene of in- terest is in the West. Kentucky, Tennes- see, Illinois, and Missouri tried stay laws, tender laws, property laws, and paper issues iu every form. Kentucky tried the experi- ment most thoroughly ; the others desisted sooner. A history of Tennessee banking was given by Judge White in a speech in the Senate March 24, 1838. s In the East things soon returned to order, and the next years were generally quiet financially. The agitations were in regard to protection. The revenue was good, the public debt was being paid, canals were be- ing built, and although there was, in regard to all these things, much which a conserva- tive economist would disapprove, yet there was perhaps nothing but what must be tol- erated in a new and poor country. It may suffice here to mention the following impor- tant incidents : In 1819 it was proposed to issue a government paper money. Secretary Crawford reported against it February 12, 1820. In 1820 a loan of $3,000,000 was con- " August 29, 1818. 5 A short history of banking in the separate States is given in a series of articles in the Bunkos' Magazine, vol. xi. tractetl, and in 1821 a loan of $5,000,000. July 2, 1821, a committee of stockholders of the bank reported its losses at $3,547,838 80. October 1, 1822, Mr. Cheves reported on the state of the bank when he took it, and his efforts to save it. The Suffolk bank sys- tem was organized in New England in 1824. The investments of foreign capital here, 1823-1825, were estimated at from $30,000,000 to $38,000,000.' The great crisis of 1825 in England did not have great effect here. In 1826 there was a great collapse of unsound banking institutions in various parts of the country. Many such had been organized at New York, and in New Jersey opposite. Sev- eral of the projectors were condemned to the penitentiary. Andrew Jackson became President March 4, 1829, and proceeded to reform the gov- ernment. In the summer of that year com- plaints were made by New Hampshire pol- iticians that the branch of the bank at Portsmouth was presided over by Mr. Jere- miah Mason, a friend of Mr. Webster. The administration sought to induce Mr. Biddle (president of the bank since January, 1823) to remove Mr. Mason. He refused, and this is the earliest germ we can find of a great war. Mr. Biddle was in the position of resisting an alliance of Bank and State. 2 The Mes- sage of 1829 astonished the nation by ques- tioning the constitutionality and advantage of the bank, whose charter would not ex- pire until March 3, 1836, and proposing a bank on the revenues and credit of the nation. The bank had lived down the odi- um of its early history. The Committee of Ways and Means reported April 13, 1830 (by McDuffie), in favor of rechartering the bank at the proper time. The Committee of Fi- nance of the Senate reported March 29, 1830, that the currency was good, and in a fair way to improve. " They deem it prudent to abstain from all legislation, to abide by the practical good which the country enjoys, and to put nothing to hazard by doubtful experiments." In November, 1830, Mr. Gal- latin published the article on the currency above referred to, in which he showed that i Niles, November 22, 1823; June 12,1824; January 22, 1S25. 3 J. Q. Adams's Report, 1S32. The history is given consecutively ; incidents which did not become public- ly known until later are put iu their proper place. THE BANK EECHARTERED. 247 the bauk had been very useful. These doc- uments no doubt represented the opinions of the educated and business classes at that time. The revolution of 1830 in France, political disturbances elsewhere on the Continent, and the disturbances which preceded the Eeform Bill in England were then causing much capital to be sent to this country. The new canals just opened, the railroads just beginning to be built (for horse-power), the application of anthracite coal to the arts, and numerous improvements in all branches of production afforded ample op- portunity of applying this capital here to advantage. The same improvements in En- gland tended to an unprecedented increase of capital, which sought investment here for the next eight or ten years. It was under these circumstances that the President set about an " experiment" with the currency. The Message of 1830 repeated the opiuion of 1829 in regard to the bank ; that of 1831 was milder. Janu- ary 9, 1832, the petition for a recharter was presented. A special committee having been appointed in the House, a majority re- ported against the recharter ; McDuihe and Adams both made counter - reports. The charges against the bank were, first, that its assets consisted largely of accommoda- tion loans in the West, which were created by "race-horse" bills, and were worthless. (There was too much truth in this ; the branch drafts since 1827 had been mischiev- ous.) Second, extending favors to Con- gressmen. (This was admitted and defend- ed.) Third, using political influence. (It appeared rather that the administration had tried to use the bank politically.) The re- charter passed, but was vetoed July 10, 1832. In 1830 $3,000,000 of the $7,000,000 five per cent, stock of the United States which was in the capital of the bank was redeem- ed, and in 1831 the remaining $4,000,000. By treaty of July 4, 1831, France agreed to pay the United States 25,000,000 francs as indemnity for spoliations after 1806. The Secretary drew on the French Finance Min- ister for the first installment, due February 2, 1833, and sold the bill to the bank. The French Chambers had made no appropria- tion to carry out the treaty, and the bill was protested, but taken up by Hottinguer for the bank. The bank claimed fifteen per cent, damages, and reserved the sum with interest ($170,041) from dividends due the government July 17, 1834. The government gained the suit to recover this in 1847. ' The government desiring to pay off the three per cents in 1832, the bank assumed and carried them a year longer. The Pres- ident expressed his fears that the public de- posits were unsafe in the bank, in his Mes- sage, 1832. The majority of the Committee of Ways aud Means found the deposits safe, but the minority made a strong attack on the bank on account of the Western loans. These were rapidly reduced. During the summer of 1833 overtures were made to the State banks to receive the pub- lic deposits. August 19, 1833, the govern- ment directors of the bank made a report showing large expenditures by the bank for printing and distributing documents during the campaign of 1832. These consisted of Gallatin's article, the minority reports of Adams and McDuffie, et al. 2 Meanwhile the national debt was being rapidly paid, and a surplus was to be ex- pected after 1835. The opposition desired to divide the public lands, in order to cut off revenue, and to go into internal im- provements, in order to increase expendi- tures, but not to reduce the protective tar- iff. The tariff of July 14, 1832, was finally modified by the act of March 2, 1833, to re- duce duties until 1842. The pound ster- ling was rated at $4 80 for customs pur- poses, standard weights and measures were distributed, 3 and the credit on duties was shortened. September 18, 1833, the President read in his cabinet an argument against the bank, showing why the deposits ought to be re- moved. Duane, who had only been Secre- tary since May 29, refused to remove them. He was dismissed, and Taney appointed, 4 by whom they were transferred. The amount i 2 Howard, 711, and 5 Howard, 382. s Keport of directors on " A Paper read in the Cab- inet," December 3, 1833. (Nilcs's Register, December 14, 1833.) 3 The weights in use at the various custom-houses varied sixteen per cent. The proportion of the bushels in use was: Bath, 74; Portland, 76; Saco, 80; Boston, 78 ; New York, 781 ; Philadelphia, 781 ; Baltimore, 771 ; Newbern, S7|; Charleston, 78 ; Savannah, 76. (Xilcs's Register, January 5, 1833.) * He was not confirmed. 248 MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. was $9,800,000. The Secretary of the Treas- ury is in an ambiguous position, being dis- missible as a cabinet officer, and yet charged with independent responsibility. The six- teenth section of the bank charter gave to him power to remove the deposits. This act caused great alarm, being apparently a bold and self-willed, but not intelligent, act. Credit was disturbed, and the winter passed iu commercial distress. In February, 1834, the President, in answer to a deputation from Philadelphia, 1 sketched his new pro- gramme. He would crush the bank, try the plan of using State banks as fiscal agents, introduce a metallic currency, and use spe- cie only for the government. The radical weakness of this plan was that he could in no way control the State banks, though they should do far worse things than the Bank of the United States had done. Bank of the Ignited States. ary 1. Loans Circulation Deposits.. . Coin 44,000,000 16,200,000 17/209,000 L0,800,000 1832. 1833. 1834. 4 « i| I 66,200, 61,600,000 84,900,000 21,300,000 1T,5oo,(l0i) 19,200,000 22,700,000 20,300,000 10,800,000 7,000,0()o| 8,900,000,10,000,0001 Small banks now sprang up in great num- bers to claim the deposits, and they urged political reasons generally for being granted a share. 2 December 3, 1833, Taney gave the reasons for removing the deposits : First, the Exchange Committee of the Board of Direct- ors governed the bank. (This was a well- founded complaint. It was the arrange- ment which made the final catastrophe of the bank possible.) Second, the bank had meddled in politics. Third, selfishness in de- ferring the three per cents and demanding damages on the French draft. December 9, the government directors reported that they were excluded from knowledge of the affairs of the bank. March 28, 1834, the Senate re- solved that the President had " assumed upon himself authority and power not con- ferred by the Constitution and the laws." April 15, the President sent in a protest against this resolution, which the Senate re- fused to register (27 to 16). The resolution was " expunged" January 16, 1837. April 4, 1834, the House resolved that the bank ought not to be rechartered nor the deposits re- » Niles, March 1,1834. 2 See Xiles's lieyister, April 8, 1837. stored, and raised another committee. Of this the majority reported, May 22, that the bank had refused to submit to investiga- tion; the minority reported that the com- mittee had made unreasonable and improper demands. February 4, 1834, the Senate appointed a committee which reported, December 18, fa- vorably to the bank. The Message of 1834 reviewed the controversy and renewed the old charges. June 28, 1834, the coinage was altered so that the silver dollar should weigh 412£ grains, 371.25 grains pure, and the gold dol- lar 25.8 grains, 23.2 grains pure, rating the metals as 15.99 to 1. The standard for silver was 0.900 fine ; for gold 0.89922. This ex- pelled silver, rating it as much too low as it had before been too high. Another mistake was made at the same time by rating foreign coins too high, so that they were a cheaper tender than American coin. This prevent- ed them from being sent to the mint. The act of January 18, 1837, brought both metals to the standard 0.900, and made the gold dol- lar 23.22 grains fine. From this time par of exchange with England was 109£, or £1=$4.8665. A gold eagle, coined before July 31, 1834, was worth $10,668 in eagles coined after that. The new banks opened a period of specu- lation in 1834, which went on through 1835, growing wilder and wilder, seizing on cot- ton lands and negroes, city lots, Western lands, and every form of stocks. 1 The ad- ministration, it is true, prevailed on the fol- lowing States 2 to forbid notes under $5 : Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina, In- diana, Kentucky, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Alabama. Connecticut had forbid- den $l's and $2's; Mississippi and Illinois had no notes under $5 ; and Missouri had no bank of issue ; but the exchanges were kept favorable by exporting securities (import- ing capital), and the position was one of unstable equilibrium. The specie in the country was $64,000,000. The prevailing be- lief was that bank issues could be extended to any amount, if only there was one-third the amount in specie behind them. » Niles, May 9, 1835. a Treasury Report, 1S3B. THE FINANCIAL CRISIS IN 1836. 249 The directors of the bank 1 ordered the Exchange Committee, March 6, 1835, to loan the funds of the bank on stock as fast as it was called in, in order to facilitate the wind- ing up. The branches (of which there were twenty-five) were sold, and bonds taken pay- able in from one to five years. In the win- ter of 1835-36 it was suddenly proposed that Pennsylvania should grant a charter to the bank, and a bill was passed February 13, 1836, doing so, but joining the charter with internal improvement schemes and a repeal of some taxes. The conditions were very onerous. Thus instead of winding up March 3, 1836, the bank went on as the United States Bank of Pennsylvania. Under the resolution of March 6, 1835, $20,000,000 of its capital had been loaned on stocks, and it had its bonus to the State to pay, the shares of the government to pay back, and the cir- culation of the old bank to redeem. The Exchange Committee had complete control of the bank. 2 In the winter of 1835-36 the rates for capi- tal advanced under great fluctuations, such as always occur on a bank-note currency with an inadequate coin basis. The great fire of December, 1835, at New York led some to propose a bank of $5,000,000 for the suf- ferers. Niles said, " To make a bank is the grand panacea for every ill that can befall the people of the United States, and yet it adds not one cent to the capital of the com- munity." 3 During 1836 speculation went on, although rates for loans were twelve to twenty per cent, per month throughout much of the year. Prices were so high that wheat came here from Europe. It was said that the canals, etc., had drawn laborers away from agriculture. In the fall the Bank of En- gland refused to discount for bankers who were granting American credits, and those houses reduced their acceptances from £20,000,000 to £12,000,000 during the win- ter,* producing still greater distress here, both directly and indirectly, by the fall in cotton. The public debt was all paid January 1, 1835, and a surplus of over $40,000,000 accu- mulated during 1836. The administration 1 Report of 1841. a Ibid. 3 Register, January 2, 1836. 4 Morning Chronicle, in Niles's Register, April 29, 1S37. having done all the harm it could by scat- tering this over the Union in forty banks, the opposition now undertook to withdraw it from the banks and distribute it to the States in the ratio of Congressional repre- sentation. The bill passed June 23, 1836. It ordered the surplus over $5,000,000 Jan- uary 1, 1837, to be deposited with the States. The Message of 1836 contained a criti- cism of this proceeding which was unan- swerable, although the three great men, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, all favored the scheme. July 11, 1836, the Secretary of the Treas- ury issued a circular forbidding the receipt of any thing but specie for public lands. Congress passed a resolution jiractically re- scinding this. It was sent to the President March 2, and he sent it to the State De- partment to be filed at 11.45 p.m., March 3, 1837. February 25, 1837, the United States Bank offered to pay oft" the public shares at $115 58 per share, in four installments, September, 1837, 1838, 1839, and 1840. March 3 Con- gress ordered this offer accepted, and it was fulfilled. Early in March Herman Briggs and Co., of New Orleans, failed, on account of the decline in cotton. J. L. and S. Joseph and Co., of New York, failed as soon as the news reached New York. This was the begin- ning. The whole Southwest was pros- trated. At New York one failure followed another among those who held Southern funds. Mr. Biddle had before acted as financial Jupiter, and to him prayers were now addressed. He came, March 28, and sold post-notes for mercantile paper at 112, which notes brought in cash 95. They were payable in Europe, and were remitted to settle, instead of shipping specie. In April news came that three great houses granting American credits, Wilson, Wildes, and Wig- gins, had become dependent on the Bank of England, and were being carried on a guar- antee from the City. The panic now re- commenced, and ran on increasing until May. May 8 a run on the Dry Dock Bank caused its suspension. The other banks were forced to suspend on the 9th and 10th. The Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other banks followed as the news spread. Each city professed that it could have held out, 250 MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. but was forced to yield in the general in- terest. In May news reached England of events here in March, and post-notes instead of money. The great question was: Can the Americans pay ? The amount of American debts falling due June 1 was, to the tbree W.'s, £3,800,000; to other English houses, £5,000,000; to France, £1,500,000. Total, £10,300,000. The American houses were allowed to fall June 1. They failed for £2,000,000; £1,300,000 was covered by the guarantees, and £700,000 fell on the bank. 1 An arrival of $100,000 in specie sufficed, how- ever, to restore American credit and to turn the tide. Extensions were granted, securi- ties were negotiated, and in general long- credits secured. On the suspension gold went to 107, all specie disappeared, and the country was flooded with shin-plasters. The premium on gold was greater in the South and West, being 120-125 in the Southwest. There were said to be $80,000,000 in specie in the country, which Benton said would be its " bulwark" against financial disaster. Thus, between those who misused paper and those who held the superstition of gold, the advo- cates of sound doctrine were either wanting or their voices were drowned. May 3 a committee of New York mer- chants went to Washington to ask the re- call of the specie circular, delay in collect- ing duty bonds, and the calling of an extra session of Congress. The first the President (Van Buren) would not do, the second he could not do, and the third he thought use- less ; but the necessities of the government forced the last. Congress met September 4, and passed bills to collect the deposits of the suspended banks, to delay the collection of duty bonds, and to issue Treasury notes. Three installments of the deposit had been paid. The fourth ($9,000,000) was yet in the banks. As to calling back any of the $28,000,000 which had been " deposited," no one proposed it. It was with great difficul- ty that the payment of the fourth install- ment was deferred until January 1, 1839. It was not paid at all. The Treasury Re- port of 1838 showed $2,400,000 still due from suspended banks. 1 London Times, in Giles's Register, July 22, 1S37. The bank had really had very little grounds for the position it had assumed as public benefactor. It was itself a borrow- er. A ring of officers and their friends were using the funds of the bank, putting securi- ties in the cashier's drawer, and taking out cash. These transactions passed examina- tion day as "bills receivable." In July, 1837, the bank began to speculate in cotton, of course through outside firms, but, as Mr. Biddle said in his letters to Clayton, 1841, it was to meet the post-notes of the bank. He also thought that he could carry cotton to get a price. Mr. Jaudon was sent to Lon- don as agent for the bank September 22, 1837. He executed some sensational trans- actions, the consequence of which was that he was regarded as a reckless and danger- ous man. The New York banks tried all winter to get a general agreement to resume, but with- out success. The New York law allowed the suspension for one year. May 10, 1838, the New York and New England banks resumed. The New York banks had pursued a policy of contraction on all their liabilities which at the time was regarded with great disfa- vor, and was unfavorably compared with Mr. Biddle's policy of "repose" under the suspension. It produced health, however, and brought New York out of the troubles of the times at least three years before Phil- adelphia issued from them, and with far less suffering on the whole. The Philadelphia banks delayed until the Governor forced them to resume, August 13, 1838. Mean- time Mr. Biddle was writing plausible let- ters to Mr. J. Q. Adams to manufacture pub- lic opinion. Perhaps his head was turned by the position of financial Providence to the country. It would not be strange. In the summer of 1838 he enjoyed his high- est prestige. Mr. James G. King induced the Bank of England to send £1,000,000 in specie here, and some of it was sent, which w r ent into the United States Bank, and was thought a great victory for Mr. Biddle. He was said to have carried the merchants of Philadelphia, the great corpo- rations of the country, and the public im- provements of Pennsylvania through the crisis. 1 The great bank was, however, an 1 New York Express, in Xiles's Register, May 12, 183S. SUSPENSION OF BANKS IN 1839. 251 unwieldy hulk, which was already strauded, and Mr. Biddle's bravado was only prepar- ing a more humiliating downfall. He had become president of the bank at the age of thirty-seven, succeeding Mr. Cheves, who was considered too conservative. He had been urged on to bold methods of banking, flattered as to his success, and encouraged to assume unbusiness-like duties and re- sponsibilities. 1 December 10, 1838, he wrote his last letter to Mr. Adams, in which he finally abdicated for the bank the position of financial Providence. March 29, 1839, he resigned the presidency of the bank, leav- ing it, as he said, prosperous. During 1838 its stock had reached 123. When he resign- ed it was 111-113. July G, 1838, an act was passed by Congress to prevent the bank from re-issuing the notes of the old bank. The notion of controlling the cotton mar- ket, which has been mentioned, was embod- ied in a circular of June 6, 1839, proposing a grand national combination to " bull" cot- ton. It was issued by Mr. Wilder, who de- nied that the bank was in the plot, but it appeared in 1841 that this was a prevarica- tion. The Manchester Guardian* spoke of it as " the most rash and insane speculation of modern times." The mills closed up, the price fell, and the speculators were ruined. $1,400,000 had been gained previously by the clique, of which $800,000 had been di- vided. The residue and $900,000 more were now lost. 3 In August Mr. Jaudon was in great straits for money, and was calling on Biddle and Humphreys, of Liverpool, to get money at any sacrifice of cotton. The bank here was selling post-notes in New York, Boston, and even smaller cities. In August it drew all the bills it could sell on Hottin- guer, and shipped the proceeds in specie to meet the bills. The object was to force the New York banks to suspend.* The drawee had given warning that he would not hon- or any bill unless he was covered. Septem- ber 18, 1839, bills for 2,000,000 francs were presented, for which the specie had not ar- rived. They were refused, but the Eoths- 1 Contemporary criticism was all colored by party feeling. The most just and intelligent criticism, com- bined with sound financial doctrine, is in Mr. N. Ap- pleton's pamphlet On Currency and Banking, 1841. 2 Quoted in Niles's Register, July 27, 1839. 3 Biddle's first letter to Clayton, 1841. * Biddle's second letter to Clayton, 1841. childs took them up, 1 and also some 8,000,000 francs more which were out, Mr. Jaudon finding security. The fact of the protest was known in New York, October 10, 1839, but the Phila- delphia banks had suspended the day be- fore. They were followed by all the banks South and West, and by those of Rhode Isl- and. The New York and other New En- gland banks did not suspend. This was the real break-down of credit. There was no recovery from this, except through a liquidation, which went on during 1840. The Pennsylvania Legislature set January 15, 1841, as the day beyond which the pen- alties of suspension should be enforced. January 1, 1841, the bank published a list of its assets, from which it appeared that its capital was locked up in a lot of the most doubtful securities on the market. A run on the banks began as soon as they opened, January 15. In twenty days the United States Bank paid out $6,000,000, and the other banks $5,100,000. February 4 they all suspended again. The United States Bank had just loaned the State $800,000, and it held over $2,000,000 of Michigan bonds which it had not paid for. It had paid or loaned to Pennsylvania $12,000,000 since the charter was granted. 2 Suits were now brought against the bank in such number that all hope of recovery was destroyed. Three trusts were established to wind it up. A committee of stockholders reported April 3, 1841, and gave a history of the bank for six years, for, as they said, " The origin of the course of policy which has conducted to the present situation of the affairs of the institution dates beyond the period of the recharter by the State." Mr. Jaudon bor- rowed $23,000,000 in Europe between No- vember, 1837, and July, 1840. After that he borrowed $12,200,000 at an expense of $1,100,000 for discounts, etc., and the ex- penses of his office were $335,937. The for- eign debt of the bank was $15,000,000. One firm had had over $4,000,000 of cash from the drawer between August, 1835, and Novem- ber, 1837. Jaudon, Andrews (first cashier), and Cowperthwaite (second cashier) had owed the bank $300,000 or $400,000 each, and 1 The Messager in Niles's Register, November 2, 1839. 2 Memorial to Pennsylvania Legislature (Xiles's Reg- ister, February 2T, 1841). 252 MONETAEY DEVELOPMENT. settled by handing over stocks, etc. The losses on cotton had been repaid to the bank by the clique in doubtful securities. The stock in April, 1843, was quoted at ll. 1 January 1, 1846, the notes still outstanding ■were $3,400,000. Every one seems to have dropped the bank suddenly in disgust, and it is even more difficult to get information about its obsequies than about its earlier proceedings. In a Treasury Report of January 8, 1840, it was stated that there were 850 banks and 109 branches, of which, in 1839, 343 suspend- ed entirely, and 62 partially, 56 had failed entirely, and 48 had resumed. The Phila- delphia banks resumed March 18 or 19, 1842. a precedent was fortunately avoided. The States and Territories without debt were New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Delaware, North Car- olina, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Those which at any time failed to pay interest were Penn- sylvania, Maryland, Louisiana, Indiana, Illi- nois, and Arkansas. Those which repudiated part of their debt were Mississippi, Michi- gan, and Florida. Pennsylvania suspend- ed in 1842. l Her debt, January, 1843, was $37,900,000. She resumed in February, 1845. Mississippi plumply repudiated $5,000,000. Louisiana repudiated $20,000,000, but the banks finally assumed or provided for it. Michigan settled up by disposing of her Comparative Bank Statements. I No. 1820., 1830.. 1834. , 1835.. 1836. , 1837. . 1838.. 1839.. 1840. . 1841.. 1844.. 1845. . 1848* . 308 330 506 704 713 788 829 840 901 697 3 791 Capital. 137,100,000 145,100,000 200,000,000 231,200,000 251,800,000 290,700,000 317,600,000 327,100,000 358,400,000 197,000,000 200,800,000 44,800,000 61,300,000 94,800,000 103,600,000 140,300,000 149,100,000 116,100,000 135,100,000 106,900,000 74,300,000 44,800,000 97,000,000 125,200,000 Deposits. 75,600,000 83,000,000 115,100,000 127,300,000 84,600,000 90,200,000 75,600,000 57,000,000 88,300,000 87,300,000 19,800,000 22,100,000 43,900,000 40,000,000 37,900,000 35,100,000 45,100,000 33,100,000 25,800,000 46,900,000 43,200,000 49,200,000 American credit held good abroad until 1839. Loans were negotiated during 1838 with as much success as ever. The " depos- its," however, had seduced the States into great expenditures for improvements, and into debts. The debts of the States were about $200,000,000 in 1840. The amount of American securities held in England was over £20,000,000 sterling in 1837. 5 In 1839 the credits given in 1837 were not all met, and some States defaulted. Doubts of the credit of the States arose. Mr. Webster was in England, and gave the Barings an assur- ance of the constitutionality of the debts. 6 An effort was made in 1840 to have Congress assume the State debts, but so mischievous 1 Table from Bicknell's Reporter in Niles's Register, September 30, 1843. Twenty-three stocks are given. A share of each would have cost, in 1836, $2839 62 ; in April, 1842, $708. s Branches included. In 1840 one hundred and one banks and branches are estimated. The statistics have value only as general indications. 3 Twelve more, with capital $7,300,000, not reported. Niles, February 7, 1846. * Bankers' Magazine, in Niles, February 26, 1848. 5 London Bankers' Circular in Xile.s's Register, March 25. 1837. Garland's estimate, $110,000,000. Niles, July 21. 1838. « Niles, December 28, 1839. public works. Maryland suspended in 1842, but resumed in 1848. The delinquencies of interest in 1844 were over $7,000,000. 2 Some on the other side sneered at republicanism and Yankees on account of these defaults. 3 Some here cared little for the losses of for- eigners. They gravely mistook the value to a young new country of its credit, its pow- er to borrow capital of old countries. The debt began to grow again as soon as it was extinguished, and the accounts show indebtedness every year after 1835 (when some $30,000 of old claims were outstand- ing). After 1837 the Treasury notes, which were authorized from year to year, raised the debt to $32,700,000, January 1, 1843. After that it was reduced to $15,500,000, January 1, 1846. The Mexican war carried it up to $63,000,000, January 1, 1849. The Texan indemnity of $5,000,000 was passed September 9, 1850 ; $15,000,000 were paid to Mexico in five installments, and $3,250,000 1 See Sydney Smith's letter to Congress in M'Cul- loch's Dictionary of Commerce, article " Funds." 2 Niles, October 12, 1844. 3 Webster's letter to Biddle. Niles, September 12, 1840. DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. 253 of her debts to American citizens, assumed under the treaty of February, 1848 ; $7,000,000 were paid for the Gadsden purchase of De- cember, 1853. The debt reached $68,300,000 January 1, 1851,but was reduced to $28,600,000 January 1, 1857. The Sub-Treasury, after having been ve- hemently discussed thoughout Van Buren's administration, was established July 4, 1840. At the special session which assembled May 31, 1841, the Sub-Treasury was abolished, two national bank bills were passed and ve- toed, a bankruptcy act, a revenue act rais- ing duties to twenty per cent, throughout, and a land distribution act, with proviso that it should not be executed at any time when duties were over twenty per cent., were passed. The bankruptcy act was sign- ed August 19, 1841, and repealed February 25, 1843. At the same special session the Secretary reported that $2,620,500 had been lost within twelve years by the defalcations of public officers. At the regular session, 1841-42, a temporary and a permanent tar- iff were both vetoed because they provided for violating the proviso in the land dis- tribution bill. A third tariff of high pro- tective duties passed, and laud distribution was cut off. The duties were to be collect- ed on the " home valuation," and no credit was to be given. In 1842 the pound sterling was rated at $4 84 for customs purposes. August 6, 1846, the independent Treasury was re-established, and the operations of the government were prescribed to be car- ried on with specie. The result proved the system wise and sound. The government had nothing to do with banking, and very little to do with the money market. The paper money disease broke out next in Ohio, Iudiana, and Illinois. The Fort Wayne Times 1 gives a description of the currency of Indiana in 1843, which is in- structive as to some doctrines of " redemp- tion." State bank paper was the stand- ard. " Scrip" was issued for the domestic debt of the State, and was receivable for State dues. " Bank scrip" was a State issue to the bank to reimburse it for payments to canal contractors. " White Dog" was a State issue to pay for canal repairs, and was receivable for certain lands at its face and 1 Giles's Register, September 30, 1843. interest. " Blue Dog" was a State issue for canal extension, receivable for canal lands and canal tolls. " Blue Pup" was a shin- plaster currency issued by canal contract- ors, and redeemable in " Blue Dog." Quota- tions (State Bank being standard) : scrip, 85-90 ; bank scrip, 85 ; White Dog, 80-90 ; Blue Dog, 40; Blue Pup— I 1 In 1845 the quotations of Illinois currency were, State Bank, 42-45 discount ; Bank of Illinois, 50- 55 discount ; Cook County orders, 18-20 dis- count ; canal indebtedness, 60-75 discount ; railroad scrip, 60-75 discount; Bank of Michigan, 85 discount ; Michigan or Indiana State scrip, 10-15 discount. 2 In the summer of 1845 the business sta- tus was said to be : stocks neglected, much building going on for the "new communi- ties" which were coming across the water, money abundant, exchange at par. 3 In 1846 and 1847 the potato famine in Ireland sent us thousands of emigrants, and in 1848 the revolutions on the Continent sent thou- sands more. The potato famine also gave us a market for grain, and saved us from a share in the financial troubles of 1847. Tho repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and our own more liberal tariff of that year, gave wider scope to industry. Railroads were extended already, both here and in Europe, far enough to affect production and exchange. The tel- egraph was just coming into general use. Ocean steam navigation was rapidly extend- ing. Upon this set of circumstances came the discovery of gold in California in 1847. At once a great emigration thither of ad- venturous men began, and also a great spec- ulation in exports thither. The gold diggers found that they ran into hardship, danger, and toil to pursue an industry which was pre- carious at best, and that the same amount of sacrifice would have gained more com- forts at the East. Their industry nourished the gambling spirit, and their gains changed hands first over the gaming table. The traders were little better off after a few years. The market was alternately glutted and empty, and the gains of one period were swallowed up in the losses of 1 The Ohio nomenclature was wider still. "Yellow Dog," " Red Cat," " Smooth Monkey," " Blue Pup," and " Sick Indian" (Niles'a Register, June 28, 1845). More particular descriptions are wanting. a Niles, June 28, 1S45. 3 Niles, June 14, 1845. 254 MONETAEY DEVELOPMENT. another. It was the great industrial world which gained by this new supply of the me- dium of exchange, which came just when it was needed to sustain the new development of industry and commerce. The first ex- change of the metal was for food and man- ufactured articles. It presented a new and sharp demand for agricultural and manu- factured products. New fields were opened, new factories built, not here only, but in all the commercial countries. The new and enlarged industries brought richer returns than before both of wages and profits, not on account of the money, but on account of the whole industrial expansion which the new supply of money facilitated, and the possibilities of which already lay in the im- provements mentioned. The returns in all these industries being large, the demand for luxuries was extended, and the importa- tions of wines, cigars, silks, etc., rapidly in- creased. The accumulation of capital was also rapid, and credit institutions which sought to facilitate its transfer sprang up in all civilized countries. They never have been able, under such circumstances, to re- frain from credit creations in addition to the capital which passes their hands, and they did not refrain in this case. In the United States all the old tendency to over- issues, heightened, as it unquestionably was, by the usury law, and also the general use of accommodation paper, were at hand to assist such a movement. 1 After two or three years of low discount rate and cheap food, there followed in 1853 rumors of war and a bad crop in England. This caused high prices for wheat here and a renewed speculation in Western lands and railroads, which issued in 1854 in a formal crisis and panic in Wall Street. Some Cal- ifornia traders also found their affairs at a crisis, but generally the mercantile commu- nity held firm. The indebtedness for for- eign importations was large, and the invest- ments of foreign capital here were rapidly increasing. The Secretary of the Treasury estimated them at $200,000,000. 1 As an example of the comprehensive and philo- sophical study of commercial crises, from which alone any correct knowledge of them can be derived, men- tion should be made of Max Wirth's Geschichte der Handetekrise.n (Frankfort, 1874), from which some sug- gestions are here adopted. During 1856 the discount rate of the Bank of England was high, the harvest being poor and the importation of wheat great. In the spring of 1857 it was feared that the harvest here would not be good, but during the summer it turned out so well that the fear was lest it might not bring a price. Suddenly, on the 24th of August, the failure of the Ohio Life and Trust Company, of Cin- cinnati, an old and highly esteemed institu- tion, with liabilities for $7,000,000, was an- nounced. It had loaned its means to new railroads, and then borrowed more to lend. This incident passed, however, without caus- ing general alarm. The banks knew best what it meant. They reduced their loans in New York city from $120,000,000, August 22, to $67,000,000, October 17. This produced a crisis. The whole fabric had been built up on bank credits, and it was ruined when they were withdrawn ; but the banks fear- ed for themselves, so it was said that the panic broke out in the bank parlors. On the 12th and 13th of September the Phila- delphia banks and others of the South and West (except of New Orleans) suspended. Mercantile failures now commenced, and fol- lowed day by day, the panic increasing, as money Avas locked up by any one who could get and keep it. The run on the New York city banks for note redemption began on the 9th. On the 13th an agreement was made to open a run on them for deposits in order to force them to suspend. Eighteen succumbed on that day, and thirty-two more the next day. One did not suspend. The New England banks followed immediately. The Constitution of New York forbade the Legislature passing any law to allow a bank suspension, but the judges of the Supreme Court agreed to grant no injunction against a bank unless there should appear to be fraud. The Northern and Eastern banks re- sumed in December. The Pennsylvania Leg- islature authorized suspension until May. Of nine banks at New Orleans only four sus- pended for a few days. This crisis was short, sharp, and severe. It never touched the productive powers of the country. It is the only one in our his- tory on a currency approximately of specie value. The recovery was rapid, and the reaction healthful. The losses were very great, but it was only a bad stumble in a THE SITUATION IN 18G1. 255 career of great prosperity, and it simply- taught sobriety and care. The number of bankruptcies in the Uuited States and Can- ada was 5123 ; liabilities, $299,800,000 ; 3839 bankrupts, with $197,000,000 liabilities, were expected to pay forty cents on the dollar ; 435 resumed, and paid in full $77,100,000 ; $143,700,000 were a total loss. Fourteen rail- roads 1 suspended payment on $189,800,000. Cotton manufacturers suffered severely by the fall of cotton (sixteen cents to eight and a half cents) and by the depreciation of stock. The American securities held in Europe at this time amounted to $400,000,000. The tariff had been lowered by act of March 3, 1857, and the revenue suffered, of course, from the financial crisis. Indian wars had also increased the expenditures. Treasury notes were issued by act of De- cember 23, 1857 ; loans were authorized Juno 14, 1858, and June 22, 1860. The debt January 1, 1861, was $90,500,000. There were on the same date 1605 banks, with $429,600,000 capital, $207,200,000 deposits, $91,300,000 gold, $202,000,000 circulation, and $696,700,000 loans. The election of Mr. Lincoln was followed by movements toward secession and politic- al alarms. There ensued limitation of busi- ness, contraction of credit, reduction of en- terprise, and some hoarding of gold. Prices were reduced, the foreign exchanges fell, gold began to be imported. During the winter the Southern States seceded, and the political excitement increased. South- ern collections became difficult, and then ceased. The failures during the year 1861 were 5935, for $178,600,000. The Morrill tariff had passed the House May 10, 1860. Protection had been adopted in the Chicago platform. After the depart- ure of the Southern Senators the tariff pass- ed the Senate, and was approved March 2, 1861. It was soon buried deep under the financial legislation of the war. Part of the loan of June 22, 1860, had been offered in October, 1860, but some of the sub- scribers withdrew after the election. De- 1 Wirth treats his readers to an account of the pur- chase of the Wisconsin government for $872,000 by the La Crosse and Milwaukee Railroad (p. 341), and he translates a number of confessions of American ras- cality from the newspapers of the post-panic period, when extravagances in that direction were in order. cember 17, 1860, $10,000,000 Treasury notes were authorized : $5,000,000 brought 88 ; in January $5,000,000 more brought 89 and 90. February 8, 1861, a loan of $25,000,000 was authorized ; on March 2, another loan of $10,000,000 was voted, or Treasury notes to the amount of this and all unissued loans : $35,300,000 were issued. In March Secreta- ry Chase refused bids under 94. In May $5,000,000 Treasury notes were sold under onerous conditions, and May 25 the banks took $6,400,000 in bonds at 85 to 93, and $2,200,000 Treasury notes at par. July 4 Congress met in extra session. On the 17th they voted to issue $50,000,000 non-interest- beariug demand notes, receivable for all dues; also 7.30 notes; also a loan at six per cent, to fund the same ; and August 5, another loan. The Secretary proposed a di- rect tax of $30,000,000. Congress voted and apportioned $20,000,000, of which $8,000,000 fell on the seceded States. August 5 the tariff was extended. After Bull Run the six per cent, stocks were at 88£. August 19 the banks agreed to take $50,000,000 Treasury notes under conditions unfavorable to the government, and two months later to take $50,000,000 more. In November they took six per cent, bonds at 89, under still harder conditions. The morale of the nation was now high. The war feeling was strong, and the enthu- siasm had only settled down into determi- nation. The Secretary of the Treasury reported an enormous deficit, and did not propose any way to deal with it. He look- ed wistfully toward paper issues, but re- jected that plan. He proposed a national bank system, but such a moment did not seem propitious for reconstructing the bank- ing system of the country. A run on the banks and an export of specie began in De- cember. On the 30th all the banks sus- pended. Specie was at one or two per cent, premium. December 24, 1861, duties on tea, coffee, and sugar were raised. February 12, 1862, $10,000,000 demand notes were issued, like those of July 17, 1861. February 25, 1862, $500,000,000 of 5-20 bonds were authorized. The same act established a sinking fund of one per cent, on the debt, and provided foi the issue of $150,000,000 of non-interest-bear- ing notes (" greenbacks"), legal tender, con- 256 MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. vertible into six per cent, bonds. This was the Legal Tender Act. It was passed as a temporary war measure, under the stress of necessity. There was necessity for money, a necessity which had been neglected three months too long, but there was no necessi- ty for a legal tender law. It was another illustration of Daniel Webster's saying, when a paper bank was proposed in 1815, "A strong impression that something must be done is the origin of many bad meas- ures." The old demand notes were to be withdrawn. As they were received for duties, they bore the same piemium as gold. The Secretary was also authorized to receive deposits at five per cent, to the amount of $25,000,000, raised March 17, 1862, to $50,000,000, July 11, 1862, to $100,000,000, and June 30, 1864, to $150,000,000, and six per cent, interest allowed. July 11, 1862, $150,000,000 more legal tenders were voted, and the provision of the act of February 25 for funding them in six per cent, bonds was omitted. Those of February 25 were to be recalled. The first issue of legal tenders was in April, 1862. As they were issued, gold rose and all specie disappeared. An effect was produced at first just like that noticed above as following the opening of the California mines, but the paper did not distribute itself over the world. It threw American prices out of relation to those of the rest of the world ; that is to say, it dis- turbed all the relations of value and ex- change, both internally and externally. July 1, 1862 (just a year too late), an act was passed laying internal taxes. This was extended by acts of March 3, 1863, June 30, 1864, March 3, 1865. The last provided for a commission to investigate the subject of internal revenue. March 17, 1862, an act was passed author- izing the purchase of coin, which was nec- essary until the " old demand notes" were all paid in. The act of March 1, 1862, au- thorized certificates of indebtedness. July 14, 1862, duties were raised " temporarily." The act of July 17, 1862, provided for an issue of stamps to be used as " change," but they were inconvenient, and the act of March 3, 1863, provided for $50,000,000 of fractional notes. February 25, 1863, the National Bank Act was passed, authorizing $300,000,000 of bank capital, to be distributed, half of it by banking capital, and half of it by popula- tion. An act approved July 12, 1870, added $54,000,000, and provided for withdrawing and redistributing an excess above the quo- ta held in New York and the East. This last was found impracticable. The act of January 14, 1875, removes all restriction on the amount of capital. The $54,000,000 were never taken up by those who had not their " quota," but are now in a fail* way to be taken up by those who before had an ex- cess. Banking capital does not go by heads nor by square miles. October 5, 1865, there were sixty-six na- tional banks in operation. The system rap- idly absorbed nearly all the banks. The law required that country banks should hold fif- teen per cent, of their circulation and depos- its in greenbacks, and that the banks in the large redemption cities should hold twenty- five per cent. The banks were afterward allowed to count their reserves with their redemption agents as part of this reserve up to three-fifths of the required amount. The act of June 20, 1874, did away with this reserve, as far as circulation is concerned, and substituted a five per cent, reserve to be kept at Washington, where the redemp- tion takes place. The Comptroller of the Currency report- ed, December, 1874, that 2200 banks had been organized, 35 had failed, 137 wound up, 2028 remained. December 31, 1874, there were 2027 banks in operation ; cap- ital, $495,800,000 ; loans, $955,800,000 ; bonds to secure circulation, $412,900,000 ; specie, $22,400,000 ; United States Treasury certif- icates of deposit, $133,500,000; legal tend- ers, $82,700,000 ; five per cent, redemption fund, $16,900.000 ; circulation, $332,000,000 ; deposits, $682,800,000. In his report for 1862, the Secretary sus- tained his legal tender paper money by all the old paper money fallacies. He set his face against the " gold speculators." March 3, 1863, a tax of one-half per cent, was laid on time sales of gold, and six per cent, per annum also for the time the contract had to run. June 20, 1864, gold trading was for- bidden. Gold rose from 199 on the 21st to 230 on the 23d, and fell to 207 again. The act was repealed July 2. Nevertheless Mr. Stevens introduced a bill, December 6, 1864, CONGRESSIONAL RESTRICTIONS ON THE CURRENCY. 25: declaring gold and paper equal, and laying a fine equal to the amount of the proposed transaction, and imposing six months' im- prisonment ou any one who should contract to sell notes for gold. This was tabled, but, January 5, 1865, he tried to introduce the bill again. The opposition was so great that he withdrew it. It was not because he did not know of the English acts of 1811 and 1812, and the fame of Mr. Vansittart. He did know of them. He specified those acts as laudable precedents, and wanted to imitate them, and he called Mr. Vansittart " the great financier." Gold reached its highest point, 285, in July, 1864. Sales of American government stocks in Germany began in the summer of 1864. Loans were being contracted contin- ually which it is not thought necessary to enumerate here. They were being " float- ed" by the redundant paper in the hands of the people. The debt, June 1, 1866, was $2,800,000,000. The greenbacks out were $402,100,000. The national bank notes were $280,000,000. The fractional currency was $27,300,000. In May, 1865, gold fell to 140. The act of June 30, 1864, limited the amount of greenbacks to $400,000,000, and such part of $50,000,000 more as might be needed to redeem temporary loans. A gen- eral resolution in favor of contraction and resumption passed December 18, 1865, by 144 to 6 ; but a measure allowing the Secretary to withdraw $10,000,000 in six months, and thereafter $4,000,000 per month, was lost, and only passed, on reconsideration, by 83 to 52, April 14, 1866. This stiff and arbitrary measure had no principle of sound finance in it except that it went in the right direc- tion. If the Secretary had been allowed a tithe of the immense discretion allowed in creating debt and issues two years before, he could have withdrawn $200,000,000 in two years without annoyance, for at that time every one expected it, and there was no credit structure yet built on the inflated paper. The crisis in England in the spring of 1866, and the war on the Continent in the summer of that year, caused some stringency here, and set the gold premium in activity. In February, 1868, McCulloch's contraction was suspended by order of Congress. He had reduced the greenbacks to $356,000,000, at which point they stood until October, *17 1872, when Mr. Boutwell, who affirmed that the $44,000,000 so withdrawn were under his control, issued $5,000,000 of them to cor- rect a stringency in Wall Street. It took him all winter to get them back. The sum remained $356,000,000 until the crisis of 1873, when it was raised to $382,000,000. The act of January 14, 1875, set that sum as the limit, allowed national banks to be formed to any extent, and to issue notes for ninety per cent, of the bonds deposited, and greenbacks to the amount of eighty per cent, on the additional notes issued are to be withdrawn until greenbacks are reduced to $300,000,000. March 2, 1867, for the third time in our his- tory, a general bankruptcy law was passed. March 3, 1865, the tariff was raised to com- pensate for internal taxes. July 13, 1866, in- ternal taxes were re-arranged and somewhat reduced. This is the act under which Hon. D. A. Wells became special commissioner. The office expired by limitation June 30, 1870. Internal taxes were reduced by the acts of March 2, 1867, which exempted in- comes under $1000 ; February 3, 1868, which repealed the tax on cotton ; July 20, 1868, which reduced and re-adjusted the taxes; and by the act of July 14, 1870, which was a grand reduction. The income tax expired by limitation in 1871. The act of July 14, 1870, also reduced duties somewhat (pig- iron $9 to $7 per ton). Up to this time the protective system had been steadily extend- ed by acts which have been left out of the present review as belonging more to com- merce than finance. The duty on tea and coffee was repealed in 1872, and a ten per cent, reduction over a number of important articles was made. In the session of 1874-75 two acts were passed increasing and extend- ing duties. The result is that the balance which should exist between internal and customs duties in a sound system of taxa- tion has been more and more destroyed, that the customs duties have been placed too high and on too many articles to be productive of revenue, and that there is no system or principle in the present taxes at all. They weigh very heavily on the peo- ple without furnishing adequate revenue to the government. The act of March 3, 1865, provided for fund- ing Treasury notes in 5-20's. This went on through 1865, 1867, and 1868. Hence 258 MONETARY DEVELOPMENT. the 5-20's of those years. The act of July 14, 1870, provided for issuing $200,000,000 in bonds at five per cent., $300,000,000 in bonds at four and a half per cent., and $1,000,000,000 in bonds at four per cent., in order by ex- changes to reduce the interest paid. This is now being partly carried out through the "Syndicate." March 30, 1867, $7,000,000 were paid for Alaska, and July 8, 1870, four per cent, certificates for $678,000 were is- sued to pay Massachusetts her old claims against the United States from the war of 1812. The principal of the debt Jan- uary 30, 1875, was $2,242,301,082 43, besides $64,623,512 issued to railroads. By the act of March 3, 1863, the Supreme Court was to have ten members, and a new judge was appointed. The act of July 23, 1866, provided that no new appointments should be made until the number of judges was reduced to seven. By the act of April 10, 1869, to take effect the first Monday in December, the court was to consist of eight judges and a chief justice. The case of Hepburn v. Griswold, 1 involving the con- stitutionality of the Legal Tender Act as to contracts made before its passage, was de- cided in conference November 27, 1869, by the Chief Justice and seven associates. One of these, Judge Grier, resigned February 1, 1870, and the decision against the constitu- tionality of the act as applied to the con- tracts mentioned was announced February 7. Judge Strong was appointed February 18, 1870, and Judge Bradley March 21, 1870. The re-argument of Knox v. Lee, involving the decision just mentioned, took place in December, 1870. 2 Judge Miller read the de- cision of the majority affirming the constitu- tionality of the law, Chase, Nelson, Clifford, and Field dissenting. 3 In September, 1869, a corner in gold was made which belongs to the financial history of the country, for it was the legitimate fruit of the existing financial system. It issued in a panic September 23 (" Black Fri- day"), when the Secretary of the Treasury intervened by a sale of gold to put a stop to the proceedings of a clique of character- less speculators. A panic in stocks follow- ed, and a number of important failures. 1 8 Wall., 626. 2 12 Wall., 457. 3 See 12 Wall., 528, note. The coinage law of February 21, 1853, fixed the weight of silver coins for frac- tional parts of a dollar at 384 grains to the dollar, 0.900 fine ; legal tender for five dollars. It also put a seigniorage of one-half of one per cent, on gold coined. The effect was to send gold to England or France, where there was no seigniorage and lower mint charges. 1 The act of February 12, 1873, reconstructs the coinage and mint laws entirely. The only silver dollar is the trade dollar of 420 grains standard, not meant to circulate here, but in the East. It is worth one dollar when sil- ver is at $1.14285 per ounce standard, which is just about the present price. The frac- tional coins were made to weigh 385.8 grains to the nominal dollar, so that two halves should just equal a five-franc piece. These coins are issued at $1.24414 per standard ounce, or 803f ounces for $1000, and are le- gal tender for five dollars. The gold dollar is yet the dollar of 1837, 23.22 grains fine, 25.8 grains standard. The act of 1873 made the charge for coin- ing gold one- fifth of one per cent., but the second section of the act of January 14, 1875, repealed this, and left coinage of gold en- tirely free. The law of March 3, 1873, fixes the pound sterling for customs purposes at $4.8665, and prescribes that exchange be quoted $4 86, $4 87, etc. The stringency which had occurred in the fall of 1871 and 1872 was significant of the approaching absorption by expanding credit of the legally limited amount of pa- per currency. In the summer of 1873 the Granger agitation at the West frightened investors from railroad bonds, and crippled the enterprises which depended on the con- tinuance of these investments for funds. The rebuilding of Chicago and Boston had also caused a great absorption of circula- ting capital. September 8 the New York Warehouse and Security Company failed, followed by one or two firms involved in railroad construction. Confidence in per- sons known to be burdened in this way was impaired, and a run on them for deposits began. September 18 Jay Cooke and Co. succumbed to this demand, and a panic fol- lowed. The country depositors began to 1 The best criticism on this is in Ernest Seyd's Sug- gestions in Reference to the Metallic Currency of the United States. London, 1871. THE OUTLOOK. 259 run on their banks, though without pan- ic. The country banks called for their bal- ances, and the city banks called their funds in from the brokers. On the 20th the Un- ion Trust Company suspended, followed by two or three other banks and trust compa- nies. The panic on the Exchange was so great that the Exchange was closed, and remained closed for ten days. The Gold Exchange closed on Monday the 22d, gold at 112. On the 20th the Associated Banks formed an alliance by which seven per cent, certificates were issued for seventy-five per cent, of the value of securities deposited by any bank, which certificates were good for Clearing-house balances ; $22,000,000 of them were issued before the tide turned. The President and Secretary were in New York on the 21st, but refused to draw on the $44,000,000. The Secretary ordered bonds to be bought as a measure of relief, and $12,000,000 were bought. This deple- ted the cash on hand, and before January 1 he was obliged to issue over $26,000,000 of the $44,000,000 for current expenses. This carried the greenbacks up to $382,000,000. The suspension of paper payments by the banks lasted until November 22. Mean- while the crisis was affecting industry in all forms. It produced a general doubt of the status and of the future. Hours of la- bor and wages were reduced and workmen discharged. The lack of reviving courage and enterprise has been very marked, and is due to nothing else than the general feeling that there can be no permanent cure until the financial problem is solved. The failures in 1873 were 5183, liabilities, $228,100,000 ; those in 1874, 5830, liabilities, $155,200,000. The act of January 14, 1875, specified January 1, 1879, as the day for re- suming specie payments. The people of a new country are not like- ly to be very careful financiers. They have no traditions to carry down the warning of the past. They are not trained to look back or to look forward. They do not look back, because the great achievements of yes- terday only provoke a smile to-day. They do not look forward, because they trust their power to deal with whatever may come. We must not expect what is incon- sistent with the conditions. If we look to the past, there has been great progress. The theories on which the colonists based their paper " banks" obtain attention from no so- ber men to-day. The banks, whatever their faults, are not like those of 1816, nor yet like those of 1836. On the other hand, we are still struggling with the problems of currency and taxation and debt. A stu- dent of our past history can hardly expect that these will be solved by a heroic effort, but by a long and painful growth up to the conviction that financial make-shifts do not- pay, and that the first condition of dealing successfully with difficulty is to get free exercise of the national productive powers. IX. THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. THERE are some states and forms of government which have heen slowly building. themselves up for ages, while oth- ers are the artificial results of political the- ory. Tha first find support in historical causes and in past political habits. Hav- ing grown with a people, and being expres- sions of their national life, they are in little danger of overthrow from within, and pre- sent so great a resistance to aggression from without that nothing but a very superior force can destroy them. The states which are constructed on theory or after an ap- proved model, without being rooted in old habits, are much less sure of continuance. If enacted constitutions do not meet the wants of the nation, they have little self- preserving power, they awaken no enthu- siasm, they point back to no history on which a people's pride loves to dwell. Es- pecially is the life-power of institutional nations great. Those ancient institutions which are connected with the habits and affections of a people, and those local ones which carry the spirit of self-government into the smallest territorial divisions, and which are at the opposite pole from central- ization — these possess a tenacity of life to which no constitutions founded on the rights of man and on the almost mechanical working of functions of government can possibly attain. If in the course of time it should be found necessary to make changes in the form of government, such institution- al nations can make them without changing their political habits. The state puts on another dress, and seems to have passed through a revolution, but the revolution is confined to form ; the essential spirit of the polity remains as before. Yet even a nation wonted to self-govern- ment and to political reflection can not hope to escape changes of a different kind from those that generally give birth to revolu- tions in free communities. The changes to which we refer do not proceed from political causes in the first instance, although such causes may help tbem in their growth ; but they are to be ascribed to moral and social changes affecting large masses in the socie- ty. They resemble, on the great scale, those silent alterations in individual character when a man finds his old ways of thinking not so satisfactory to himself as they once were, or when he acquires the means of pleasure or of show of which in his youth he was destitute, or when he forms rela- tions and enters into intimacies with men of a class or of habits to which he was a stranger before. By-and-by he finds his old principles giving way ; he was not aware of the direction in which he was drifting until, perhaps, the work on his character or his faith is nearly done. In the same way the influences of changes in the relations of property when there is immense capital in the hands of a few by the side of a great proletarian class, or of a transition from sim- plicity of life and habits to showiness and expensiveness, or of changes of religious faith and moral principles undermined by social or philosophical causes, and giving way to skepticism or profligacy on the part of many — these influences may go on with- out being noticed or feared for a long time but are really more to be dreaded than po- litical revolutions. Changes from causes like these are hard to be estimated, not only because they are slow and silent, but also because the people themselves are the sub- ject of the change, and the new generations have no exact standard within their reach by which they can compare the present with the past. Their effects, again, on political institutions as well as on social life can not be prevented. You might as well try to keep a stream from running downward as to pre- vent these consequences altogether. Take an example : the feudal system could keep its sway over a nation as long as the feudal lords held all the land, and there was no, or next to no, personal property ; but as soon as the towns became great centres of manu- facturing and commerce, as soon as large merchants could lend money to kings and so turn the fortuue of war against the no- HISTORIC CAUSES OF POLITICAL GROWTH. 261 bles, so soon a new estate was in its germ, which, in the nature of the case, would de- mand a place in the political system, and could not long he kept out. Such an in- stance is a plain one, because the external side of life is visible to all, and is easily measured by the historian. But what shall we say of a general loss of religious faith in a nation, of the decay of simplicity, of integ- rity in public and private affairs, of honor, of respect for the institutions or habits of forefathers? Shall we not say that these changes in a people's moral principles must have an effect upon their capacity to endure political restraints, to bear political free- dom, to deal soberly with obstacles in the way of prosperity, to respect the relations of private life, to be orderly and contented amidst the inequalities of fortune? In forecasting the dangers to which na- tional union or liberty is exposed, in esti- mating the probabilities for the future of good or evil growing out of causes already active or now beginuing to act, in endeav- oring to form a judgment on the continuity of political habits, in discussing the ques- tion whether a community has a self-re- forming power when evil is already admit- ted into its system — we must look at moral and historical influences both. These may be coeval and concurrent at their origin, while afterward a new set of causes may come in and act either together or on oppo- site sides. If they are found in decided conflict — the historical, for instance, being conservative, and those of a moral nature destructive — the tendency will be toward national weakness and decay, unless there is life enough left to reform the body-poli- tic. Or they may come iuto existence at different epochs; and in general it is true that new moral influences, themselves the results, in part, of changes in society, ap- pear after states are fully organized, and amidst great public as well as private pros- perity. Bearing these remarks in mind, let us look at the development of our institutions from the time of the first English colonies on- ward. For one of the most hopeful things to be said of these United States is that we are what we are not chiefly by any forecast of our own, still less by any intention to form a great English-speaking nation on this side of the water, but because histor- ical causes which could not be foreseen shaped and moulded us into a tolerably homogeneous and compact people. This is the only nation of civilized men of which it can be said that we passed through all the stages of our life, from birth onward, through revolution to self-government and political greatness, in a natural progress, so that what some call historical accidents stand out, in our case most especially, to a man who sees a God in the world, as His guidance and purpose to make something good out of us: which purpose we can thwart, but one is filled with hope by believing that it is real. Among the advantages which the English colonies had at their commencement deserve to he mentioned the nationality of the first colonists, the time at which they emigrated, and their general character. We are not disposed, on the score of race, to claim a superiority for the Anglo-Saxons over the inhabitants of other parts of Eu- rope ; nor can we believe that if there had been no Norman conquest, no check on the kings by the nobles, no parliaments, no op- position to papal interference by statutes of prcemunire and against provisors, no Prot- estant Reformation, the English race would have of course developed itself by its inher- ent energies into something great and good. It was, in fact, owing to national decline that William of Normandy succeeded in his con- quest of Saxon England. But we rejoice that the first colonies were composed chief- ly of Englishmen, because they brought with them the habits and traditions of a land "Where freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent." It was not in England, as on the Continent, that the towns needed to conspire with the kings against an oppressive nobility, or that the nobility gained privileges exclusively for their own order, leaving the others to take care of themselves, but the Magua Charta and all the securities of freedom that fol- lowed it were for the benefit of all. Then; the Parliament at an early day separated into two Houses, and by its power of grant- ing or withholding taxes, which was derived from feudalism, came to have a material part in making the laws. It was there that the town privileges and habits of local self-gov- 262 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. ernment maintained themselves with more permanence than on the Continent. There arose a numerous yeomanry, holders of small portions of land in their own rights — a class which since the emigrations has almost dis- appeared in the old country. There, too, the freemen were called to act on juries, and felt that they were part of the power of the country. Thus the colonists brought with them habits of self-government and the spirit of free Englishmen, which were not likely to fade out of their characters in the new wilderness life where they were forced, in great measure, to model their own insti- tutions. The time of the emigrations was the best possible for the formation of new self-gov- erning communities. If they had begun in the century before the Reformation, when the civil wars of England had destroyed a large part of the upper classes and barba- rized the people, the star of empire setting its way westward would have shed a baleful light. Little intelligence, no learning, small acquaintance with the arts, no religious thoughtfulness, and an ill-defined feeling of political rights would have presided over the birth of the new settlements. If they had begun in the middle of the eighteenth century, when England had fallen to its lowest degree of moral and religious degen- eracy, and when the old yeomanry were be- ginning to disappear, these States would have been founded by a less hardy class, with purposes in changing their homes that were less noble, and with less of the vigor- ous manhood required in the conquest of nature. It is a remark of the political economists that the best prospects for suc- cessful colonization belong to an age anteri- or to division of labor on a great scale. Men whose lives are spent in one process of man- ufacture are not well fitted for all the vari- ous employments of a settlement in the wil- derness, where every one must know a little of the numerous arts of life, or succumb in the conflict with unsubdued nature. The time which determined the character of the American colonies was prior to the great modern triumphs of mechanical invention. We have also great reason to be thankful for the average character of the early colo- nists. M. Guizot, in speaking of the English and French revolutions, contrasts them in this respect : that the English occurred in a religious age among a religious people, while the French broke out in an age when the human mind doubted, or denied with ex- treme boldness, every thing that had been settled before. The first colonies belonged to that religious age, and though it would not be true to say that religious liberty was the only motive of even the Puritan colo- nists, yet it was a very strong motive, and it furnished the best conditions for the rise of a God-feariug and liberty-loving nation. For they who planted first of all the church, and the school by its side, who within a few years founded a college, as a pattern for all that should afterward arise, might indeed be narrow in some of their views and prac- tices, but they were the best possible pio- neers of a coming host of freemen. So, also, the Quaker settlements were dictated by the desire to enjoy their religion in peace, away from the oppressive laws of England and of its colonies ; their leaders were among the best men of the mother country. The Catholics of Maryland founded their colony for the sake of religious freedom. The Dutch of New Netherlands did not, in- deed, emigrate for this purpose ; but they belonged to a noble race, in whose memories the times of William the Silent were still fresh, and their settlements at the end of his son Maurice's life were favored by the more liberal of the two political parties. The more southern colonies did not, it is true, have motives in their emigrations much beyond the ordinary ones that lead people away from their homes. Some, more- over, who joined them at an early time add- ed any thing but character and strength; yet the chivalrous spirit and the attach- ment to English institutions which animated the best of the settlers in that quarter were to become valuable elements in the forma- tion of the national character. Besides the classes of colonists just men- tioned, two others deserve to be spoken of, although, on account of their small num- ber and the later date of their emigration, they contributed comparatively little to the qualities which mark the American people. One of these were the Huguenots, who came in the greatest numbers soon after the revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes, and who, mak- ing small settlements in New York, Massa- FORTUNATE CONDITIONS. 263 chusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina, have given to the country a numher of honorable and important families. Larger and more compact settlements were made by the Scotch -Irish Presbyterians of Ulster in New Hampshire, Western Pennsylvania, and North Carolina — a class of inhabitants of whom their descendants have a right to be proud. Another most fortunate circumstance in the early history of the country was the substantial equality of the early settlers. They nearly all belonged to that industrious middle class which is the strength of a na- tion. A few servants came with the more opulent of the colonists, and a few younger branches or near connections of noble fam- ilies established themselves both in the Northern and the Southern settlements, but not enough to have any sensible influence either on the spirit or the destinies of the land. It was fixed well-nigh a century be- fore the Eevolution that if such an event should happen, and the colonies become self-governing, there could be no strife of orders to add complexity to the struggle with the mother country. Still, again, it deserves notice that the slowness with which population and wealth increased during a century and a half con- tributed to the steadiness, the simplicity of manners, and sobriety of judgment of the people. The colonies went into the war of independence with a population of less than three millions. There were no towns con- taining twenty -five thousand inhabitants at the peace in 1783. There were no cen- tres of business in the last century such as now exist. Merchants in some of the small- er villages of the Eastern States imported their goods directly from England ; as, in- deed, it was the custom in parts of the South for the planters of a district to re- ceive their annual supplies from the old countries and send back their tobacco and other commodities in the same vessel. In regard to social distinctions it may be said that they were more marked than now. Cer- tain families here and there had a pre-emi- nence conceded to them, which rather grew out of old ancestral respectability than out of wealth, which was acknowledged willing- ly and accepted without pride. In a few large places a style prevailed which wanted the show and expense of our times, but ap- proached nearer to the style of true gentle- manly living. This was a tradition from the usages of the upper middle class in En- gland, which was as natural, as much ex- pected from persons of a certain standing, as plain living was from the mass of the people. In those families, however, who set the mode, thrift, domestic economy, a training of the daughters for housekeeping, are believed to have prevailed which are now passing away. As there was slow growth, with no perceptible change, steady habits grew up in political as well as in social life. Take the colony of Connecticut for an ex- ample. Three Wyllyses of the same family were Secretaries of State in succession all the time from 1712 to 1810, and the middle one of the three for sixty-one years. One member of what is now called the House of Representatives was elected by his town to seventy-two Legislatures in succession, that is — since there were two annual elections — through a period of thirty-six years. It was comparatively rare for a minister to leave his parish until death called him away. Capital accumulated so slowly, and families were in general so large, that strict economy, the parent of many civic virtues, was almost a necessity. Men were free, and felt themselves to be equal, but marks of respect were voluntarily rendered to per- sons in public stations. When on Sunday the service was over, the minister and his family went out of church first, the congre- gation all rising, and in some places bow- ing until they had passed through the aisle. The display in dress was very small, but if the thick brocades which are now shown here and there as having belonged to a grandmother or a great - grandmother afford a criterion for judgment, materials were chosen which would last almost a life- time, while the ordinary household garb was very simple. If habits such as partic- ulars like these show to have existed did indeed prevail, they mark a character con- tented with the present, averse to innova- tion, neither anxious nor speculative — the best possible character for hardening and toughening a people in preparation for fu- ture struggles. And here, again, our good fortune in having had no aristocratic class in the proper sense of the term may be re- 264 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. ferred to as another cause of simplicity of manners. For if there had been but a mod- erate number of noble families with large incomes and domains distributed through the colonies, their mode of living and dress- ing would have been the ideal, and would have made many dissatisfied with their mod- erate means. It might have been as it has since been in the new settlements of some of the Western States, where a very small percentage — say, five or eight per cent. — of slaves was diffused through the dis- trict. This small ratio was enough to bring white labor into disrepute. So, in the case supposed, a sprinkling of persons belonging to a noble class might have been enough to affect injuriously those solid and homely virtues which are the strength of a country. And here we are reminded of the one bit- ter drug poured into our cup — the institu- tion of slavery and the importation of blacks from Africa. The bringing over of indent- ured apprentices, of convict laborers, and of " redemptioners" was a small evil, for in fifty years they were lost in the population. But when, in 1620, a Dutch vessel brought twenty negroes for sale into James River, a new element of race and population was in- troduced, which has had, and may yet have, a vast and disastrous influence on our his- tory. This is not the place to pursue this gloomy subject to a great length. We sim- ply remark that the separation in interests and traits of character between the North- ern and Southern States was intensified by slavery far beyond the bounds of a healthy difference ; that the uniformity of interests produced by it in States where it existed gave them the power of combination, made them the political masters of the country, and opened the way for burning jealousies ; that the wearing out of the soil by the ag- riculture of slavery demanded new lands for its spread; that it tended to degrade the lower class of whites where it was predom- inant ; and that it was destined to come in- evitably into conflict with ideas of personal rights and with those religious feelings which demanded security for the sacred- ness of family ties in the negro race as well as for their mental and moral elevation. The conflict came, and was indeed awful. Had there been less blindness and more trust in the final triumph of justice, it would have been earlier and less severe. But that which more than all things else determined the future of this country was the number of colonies, together with their general similarity and their important differences. If there could have been one vast colony, under one government, extend- ing along the whole line of coast from the French possessions to the Spanish settle- ments in Florida, it might have been strong and prosperous possibly, but the present United States would not have grown up on such a foundation. There was a necessity of just such a series of colonies as were act- ually planted, all animated by a common English feeling, and speaking the common English tongue, yet settled for different rea- sons, and, in a course of many years of self- government, developed into different enti- ties, as well as having distinctive character- istics. The Northern and Southern groups of these colonies, alike among themselves, yet differing each from the other in their cli- mates, industries, institutions, and religious peculiarities, might have formed the nucleus of two nations if English feeling, influences from the mother country, trade, and many common interests had not brought them to- gether more than the causes of an opposite nature tended to keep tbem apart. The colonies lying between these extremes had no common likeness; indeed, before the ces- sion of New Netherlands to the. English they had no common bond of union, and after- ward, although best situated for purposes of commerce, were more fitted for some time to follow than to lead. We will make the supposition that wheu the Southern colonies admitted slavery, New England had thought it a sin and a shame ; even such an opinion could easily have prevented the two ex- tremes from meeting. As it was, slavery ex- isted every where, and not being regarded as a wrong or an evil until the Quakers be- gan to teach a higher morality, no such cause of separation existed. We will make anoth- er supposition, that the colony of New Neth- erlands, lying like a wedge on the coast, with the best sea-port within its borders, settled originally by colonists not under- standing the English tongue and not edu- cated under English political institutions, could have retained its nationality until no COLONIAL PREPARATION FOR THE UNION. 263 power could have conquered it. In this case a most serious problem would have offered itself in the course of time — either the East- ern and Southern English colonies would have pursued their destinies apart, or, if they could have acted in conjunction with the Dutch colony, difficulties from language and institutions might have prevented a perfect union. Thus we see that the colonies were pointed toward confederation by their his- tory, and "were almost prevented from es- tablishing any other kind of government throughout the course of centuries. One cluster of confederates, or more than one, seems to have been the only possible polit- ical alternative if they were ever to sepa- rate from the mother country. Two or more clusters, so far as we can interpret the prob- abilities of things, would have been most disastrous, as containing the seeds of strife, and sowing them for all the future. Another point connected with our colo- nial history deserves notice. We were not only prepared by the circumstances of our history for a confederation or union of States, but were educated for it by our re- lations to the mother country. The colo- nies all had law-making assemblies formed somewhat after the pattern of the Houses of Parliament, and the larger part of them chief executive officers holding their places, without any popular election, by appoint- ment of the king. At first, indeed, several colonies chose their own chief magistrates, but on various pretenses they were divested of this power, until at last two of the colo- nies subsisted under what was called a pro- prietary government, and two of the smaller alone retained their original free choice of all public officers. The royal Governors cer- tainly did not tend to establish friendly re- lations between the crown and its American subjects : witness the strifes between these magistrates aud the Legislatures in Massa- chusetts and Virginia. The proprietary gov- ernment in Pennsylvania was perhaps less acceptable, as placing it in the hands of a private man by hereditary right to fill a kind of secondary throne, with the power of vetoing the acts of the Legislature. The two chartered colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island certainly had no occasion to find fault with their independence ; but they were brought up by their very privi- leges to be on their guard against any inva- sion of them, and could see little use in their distant connection with the crown. The exigencies of self-defense often call- ed for common counsels on the part of neigh- boring colonies, so that the minds of the people were accustomed to congresses gath- ered for objects in which all shared alike. The great contest between England and France for supremacy in North America ex- cited the' liveliest interest through the col- onies ; they looked on the French not only with the eyes of Englishmen as hereditary foes, but as allies also of the red men, and as willing to incite them to any treacherous act against the frontier English settlements. The prelude to the seven years' war was marked by the uufortunate expeditions of the Virginians and of Braddock, in which Washington was schooled for his future post. The critical years 1757-1758 saw regiments from the Northern colonies joining Aber- crombie and Lord Howe in their expedi- tion against Ticonderoga and Crown Point, while large quotas were sent from New En- gland to aid General Amherst in his attack on Louisbourg. There were thus scattered through the colonies numbers of officers and soldiers who had seen service. When the critical blow was struck, and Quebec be- came English — when, finally, by the peace of 1763, all the French territory in the North changed hands, and in the West the Mis- sissippi nearly to its mouth became the boundary between the two nationalities, we may easily believe that the colonies felt an increase of security, and would be the more ready to resist aggressions from the mother country because they stood in no fear of the power of France. Thus far we have seen historical causes preparing the colonies for self-government, on a certain plan, if ever the connection with the mother country should be broken. The declaration of independence and the war of the Revolution, after this prepara- tion, were owing to faults and blunders of the mother country, and to the political doctrines of the eighteenth century. Of this breach we will forbear to speak. To say little of it would be to do injustice to events so supremely important in our his- tory ; to say much of it would turn us aside from our main subject. The colonists had 266 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. as much loyalty to the mother country as could justly be expected from men who had chiefly protected themselves, who had been denied their privileges as Englishmen, and had been used rather as sources of commer- cial benefit for Great Britain than helped in their progress toward becoming self- sustaining parts of the empire. The war was undertaken soberly, regretfully, with no side issues in view, and with no rancor toward England in the hearts of the peo- ple. This want of rancor is shown by the fact that many of the best officers, Wash- ington himself, Hamilton, Knox, and a host of others, remained English in their feel- ings, and were attached to the traditions of the mother country; and that the lead- ing civilians who had urged on rebellion, and had been the counselors of the country in the war, were afterward charged with undue partialities toward England. Prob- ably no revolution did its work with more conscientiousness, and fuller persuasion of its rightfulness on the part of the people, with less of a spirit of blood, with fewer bitter remembrances of the enemy, than this. It deserves to be noticed, as showing the sober temper of the war, that a regi- ment formed from volunteers in one part of a county took one of the parish minis- ters with them as their chaplain, as if it had been a church meeting adjourned to another place. It was a blessing for which we can never be too thankful that an experiment at con- stitution-making was set on foot in the war, and was tried long enough to show its de- fects, and point the way toward something better. It was nothing but a league of States, with no Executive, with one House in Congress, without a Supreme Court, with- out the power of regulating commerce with foreign countries or between the States. This last defect especially it was that de- manded a new instrument. Tbis new in- strument was made to remove difficulties which were felt; and, as Mr. Edward A. Freeman, in his history of confederations, justly remarks, was made in no conscious imitation of any other constitution. This learned and able historian of federal gov- ernments, writing in 1863, when he looked on the Union as permanently dissolved, says of it: "The American Union has actu- ally secured for what is really a long period of time a greater amount of combined peace and freedom than was ever before enjoyed by so large a portion of the earth's surface. There have been and still are vaster des- potic empires, but never before has so large an inhabited territory remaiued for more than seventy years in the enjoyment at once of internal freedom and of exemption from the scourge of war. Now this is the direct result of the federal system." If we have succeeded in making it clear that our present Constitution was almost an inevita- ble result of historical causes— that is, of Divine Providence — we shall be led to value it more than if we were to look on it as a product of successive workings of human wisdom. It is impossible that any constitution should at all times be equal in its bearing upon all interests and all parts of a coun- try, and equally impossible that it should not admit in some points two interpreta- tions. The parts of the country which were more devoted to trade wanted a strong gov- ernment ; the parts where the people lived within themselves, in the pursuits of agri- culture, felt in general less zeal for some im- provement on the old Confederation. There grew up naturally a jealousy of powers con- ferred on the common government as re- stricting and opposing the powers of the separate States ; with this the principle of strict construction of the Constitution of the United States was united; and thus two parties coeval with our present gov- ernment arose — the Federal, and the Repub- lican or Democratic. The former had a cer- tain leaning toward England, and dreaded the principles of the French revolutionists ; the other admired France and distrusted En- gland. After twelve years of control over public affairs, during the Presidencies of Washington and the elder Adams, the very upright party of the Federalists was driven out of power, partly in consequence of blun- ders and dissensions within itself, partly be- cause it did not fully understand the temper of the people, while a still greater blunder on the part of leading members of it in the Eastern States led to its final extinction. The Democratic party, under Southern leaders, held the government from the be- ginning of the century for sixty years, not THE DOCTRINE OF NULLIFICATION. 267 without internal differences and divisions, arising from sectional interests and other causes. As it often happens, the name rather than the essence of the original party was preserved ; new issues had driven out the old ones from the field of politics. Tariffs were altered from time to time, the Southern States being almost unanimous for free trade, and the North preponderating toward protection. Through all the changes the country flourished by emigration, by the rise of manufactures, in its marine, in its wealth. The great West, growing vaster in its dimensions, from the time of the purchase of Louisiana until it reached the Pacific coast, began to give signs of grasping at the hegemony and controlling the policy of the country. But meanwhile a spiritual cause, without power at first — a cloud no bigger than a man's hand — arose above the hori- zon. Slavery had been preached against by a few, protested against by the noblest of the Quakers from the days of John Wood- man, acknowledged by all to be unrighteous in itself, and yet was endured in the hope that emancipation at length would quietly dissolve a structure which ages had built up, and which could not fall without a re- construction of society. The cotton-gin and the ample lands of the Gulf States, in- cluding the latest acquisition. Texas, offer- ed it a boundless field to spread over, and opened the prospect, whenever a new State should be formed in which there was an ap- preciable infusion of the slave element, of new strength added to the Southern su- premacy. In the extreme South this was a smooth path toward supremacy, but was not so easy on the borders, where slave and white labor came together. As early as 1820 the problems of the future developed themselves, at which time a dividing line was drawn by the Missouri Compromise be- tween the two interests. Next appeared the doctrine of nullification, and the at- tempt of the leading Southern State, South Carolina, to establish a practical check on the action of the general government by that of one of the States. It was maintained at first that there resided a power in each State of the confederation to judge whether a law of the United States was constitu- tional, and to resist within its own territory the operation of such laws as were judged to be otherwise. In 1832 an ordinance was passed declaring the tariff law " null, void, and no law," and forbidding duties on im- ports to be paid within its jurisdiction after a certain day in the near future. It so hap- pened that the President at this time was a Southern man of great popularity and of sin- gular energy, who not only felt that such a doctrine of nullification, if carried out, would be a death-blow to any union, and was en- tirely unconstitutional, but had personal reasons for doing his utmost to oppose it. In his opposition he carried for the time the greater part of the South with him ; it was understood that he was ready to use all the forces at his disposal in executing the law ; and the message on nullification which was issued in his name in 1833 was a most val- uable state paper in refutation of the doc- trine that a State has a right to decide for itself that the Constitution has been vio- lated, and so deciding, to secede from the Union or to declare a law void. The storm thus raised was blown over by the help of a tariff compromise, but the opinions already spoken of spread through the Slave States more and more, in a great- er ratio of increase, perhaps, than the prin- ciples of abolition and the political party founded upon them grew at the North and West. Here a controversy began which nothing — no prudence at the North, no de- nunciation, no interests of traffic — could put down. Every fugitive slave reclaimed added to the force of the feeling against slavery. Formerly it had been hoped that in time slavery would give way to serfdom, and in the end to full freedom ; but as the abolitionists appealed to the conscience and to our American theory of human rights, it was necessary to construct moral defenses on the other side. Instead of confessing the wrong of the institution, and asking for time to prepare for its abolition, it was sup- ported by the authority of Scripture ; it was the redemption of men from heathenism in Africa; it brought with it relations most kindly and humane between an abject race and an enlightened one ; it kept out much of the vice too easily discoverable in the cities of the Free States. This was the be- ginning, evidently, of the last phase of the controversy between the two parts and two interests in the country ; for how could there 268 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. be any compromise when sncli diametrically opposite sides were taken ? And as the foes of slavery grew bolder, the apprehension of what might come to pass at some future day grew stronger among its friends. Perhaps, too, they must have been aware, and have half confessed to themselves, that whether their pleas on behalf of their institution were tenable or not, there was an incon- sistency between the apologies and those fundamental notions which the whole Un- ion once avowed. It was too evident also that there must be a division, affecting all questions of politics, and becoming more pronounced from year to year, growing out of this question of questions, which could be neither settled nor avoided. We pass by transactions of great impor- tance, such as the affairs in Kansas and the question of slavery in the Territories, and come down to the opening of the war. Why was it, when Southern men and Southern interests had controlled the country for gen- erations, when the North and West were di- vided, and probably would always continue so, that the die was cast in 1860 for secession and dissolution ? The Presidential election had been far from a decided expression of public will, and wise adjustments taken in time might at least have delayed a disrup- tion. There were, as it seems to us, two leading causes. First, the progress of ideas, and the prospect of an increase in the fu- ture of the number of Free States, without any counterbalancing weights in the other scale, were sure to fix the policy of the coun- try for the future. Secondly, the temper of the Northern States was not well under- stood, just as at the North the South was thought to be threatening rather than pur- posing. It was supposed that the North could not act as a unit nor by great major- ities, and that a party against the war would paralyze the movements of the government. Even the North had some distrust of itself. This is not the first instance in which great masses of men have failed to comprehend each other or themselves, nor will it be the last. But it was found that the preserva- tion of the Union, all over the North and West, had an importance attached to it in men's minds which had not been thought to exist. Nor was it the commercial value of the Union that seemed so precious, as if the navigation of the Mississippi, the free intercourse, as before, in every direction through the whole territory, needed to be maintained at all hazards, but it was the Union as an idea, and as involving the fu- ture peace of this laud for generations. In the spring of 1862 the writer of these words was standing on the highlands above Cin- cinnati, and looking over toward the Ken- tucky side of the Ohio. Then first a deep impression was made on his mind of the ter- rible results likely to follow disruption, for the line of that great river would divide free soil from slavery for hundreds of miles. And when the boundary should be fixed, who would or could prevent fugitive slaves from crossing it ? Who would not resist their pursuing masters? Who could pre- vent a thousand border difficulties which might give rise to war ? Wherever the two republics met there would be desolation or chronic warfare, obstructing the prosperity of some of the fairest regions in the world ; there would be bitterness and national ha- tred ; a blight would come over vast tracts, unless, perhaps, by slow degrees, slavery should restrict its limits, and allow its an- tagonist to encroach on its domains. Nor were such evils in the future worse than the loss of a great Union over which one constitution reigned, where common princi- ples of justice were supreme. Such feelings were found in multitudes of minds; but they could not partake of them who had clung to their State as the highest object of their pride and allegiance. The war had its course. At its close the problems offering themselves for solution were nearly as grave as the problem with which it began, and more difficult. The Union had been saved at the cost of over- throwing society at the South, and now the question of reconstruction came before the country under conditions which de- manded the highest wisdom and modera- tion. A new race was called into political existence : the slaves had been turned into freemen. What was to be their political status ? If they should have no voice in public affairs — if they, while acquiring civil rights, should stand by and see the most ig- norant of the whites voting and determin- ing State politics and making constitutions, what would be their security for the future ? CONFLICT OF RACES IN THE SOUTH. 269 If, on the other hand, political power were given to all indiscriminately, blacks and whites, the evil might he as great. What a strange state of things to bestow the fran- chise on immense multitudes who had not the knowledge requisite to vote intelligent- ly for the lowest local magistrates, who could be combiued into a party which black or white demagogues could mould and guide according to their will, and against whom it might be necessary for the whites to form an opposite combination in order to save themselves from ruin ! Never, perhaps, since the world began was there such a dreadful alternative on so large a scale. Above all was this true in those States where the numbers of the races were nearly equal, or where the blacks were even in a majority. In the process of reconstruction it was managed that the suffrage should be granted to this race wherever States con- taining slaves had joined in the secession ; and a new motive for conceding the suf- frage was supplied by the Fourteenth Amend- ment to the Constitution, which provides that representation in Congress shall de- pend on the number of active or fully quali- fied citizens. Thus suppose the number of male inhabitants of a State over twenty- one years of age to amount to 150,000, and one-third of them to be disfranchised by an amendment of its constitution on account of want of sufficient property — which dis- qualification would chiefly affect the ne- groes — the representative quota for Con- gress must be dimiuished by one -third. Few States would be willing to submit to this reduction of political power in the gen- eral government, and so, probably, it will never take place, if otherwise it were prac- ticable. We regard the Fifteenth Article of the Amendments as most just and de- sirable, namely, that rights shall not be abridged on account of " race, color, or pre- vious condition of servitude ;" but in the constitutions of the restored States, and by the Fourteenth Amendment, universal suf- frage in its worst shape, with its worst con- sequences, is fastened, perhaps necessarily, but unfortunately, on these restored re- publics. This condition of things is now one of the worst evils that we suffer. We concede that it may have been necessary, but that docs not take from the dangers which attend upon it. We will look at some of these dangers, disclaiming most solemnly all party motives or wishes in what we are to say. The greatest of them all is that the two races, through the States where slavery for- merly existed, will be separated by party lines, and will look on one another with re- ciprocal distrust. '.Sectional differences are bad enough, as we have found in our past history, even when able men managed the parties ; but differences of race, intensified by the jealousies and distrusts of politics, are tenfold worse.'^) In the present case they tend to increase in intensity and bitterness, because the ignorant mass that has just been rescued from slavery must fall under the influence of fear of what will happen if the management of State affairs passes over permanently into the hands of their adversaries. They feel their weakness ; they have inferior power of combination ; they have small means of self-protection. They are also to a considerable extent under the influence of cunning leaders who seem to have unlimited power of acting on their fears. Brawls will unavoidably break out in many neighborhoods, which will grow into feuds and local quarrels, and will in re- port be magnified or extenuated, as it may happen, in their importance, so that the country will not know what to believe or disbelieve in regard to them. As for the blame to be imputed to the one or the other side, that is a small matter. We do not be- lieve that the colored race or their leaders of like origin would bo or have been the first to encroach on the rights of the white race. And we wish that one could not be- lieve that there has been & policy or under- standing on the part of many leading whites in some of the States in question to the ef- fect that the colored people must be pre- vented by terrorism from enjoying the bene- fits granted to them in the new amendments. But the evils to which we refer lie outside of the immediate occasions of strife between the races ; it will reach beyond existing par- ties. How can there be harmony between them under any future division of parties, when, in addition to difference of race, dis- trust, suspicion, past feuds and antagonisms, will continually foment disquiet ? If it be said that unprincipled whites are corrupt- 270 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. ing the blacks arid poisoning their minds, it may be very true, but how is the nuisance to be abated ? Will not the eagles be gath- ered together where the carcass is ? In brief, the cause of all that has taken place or is to be apprehended lies not in particular or local provocations, nor in the leaders of to- day, nor in the imbittering of a most mild and inoffensive race by the war, but it is one that is likely to last as long as meas- ures, now never to be set aside, shall have run their course and borne their fruits. " The end is not yet." Until this state of things shall end, if end it can, this unhappy part of our Union, in- jured in its property, with its old landhold- ers impoverished or driven from their homes, with its institutions shattered, must lag far behind the other parts in most of the essen- tials of prosperity. That section is full of undeveloped resources : its exhaustless beds of iron and coal, its soil yet unbroken, or capable of vastly increased production, its mild climate, must invite capital and labor, if those timid forces could be assured of safety and protection. LPerhaps the solu- tion of the problem for the South may come from this source, from a new emigration not compromised in old strifes, and able to act in the end as a mediating and a reconciling power. J We pass on to another source of danger which the late war has opened up, or at least made more apparent — to the increased power of the general government. We have already had occasion to speak of the subject of the powers given by the present Constitu- tion to the United States as exciting alarm in many, and as giving occasion to the birth of the old Republican or Democratic party. But, as it often happens in politics, that party, when it came into power, was not faithful to its convictions or principles. Thus, when the purchase of Louisiana was opposed by the Federalists as being a stretch of the Constitution, this was not wholly de- nied by the Democrats, but justified by the circumstances of the case. Thus, too, in the war of 1812, when the Federal Governors of the New England coast States, while con- senting to furnish the quotas of militia call- ed for, claimed to judge when an actual in- vasion of their soil had taken place, and refused to put the troops under officers of the United States, pleading their unques- tioned rights under the Constitution and the law, the anti-Federal party, then hav- ing the government in their hands, de- nounced this action as disloyal and uncon- stitutional. Further, the Hartford Conven- tion — an innocent scheme with an ugly look — was taxed with treasonable or disloyal designs, although without good reason ; and yet the secession in 1861 justified itself by this unwise measure of a party which the States joining in the secession had for that very measure strongly denounced. But aft- er the Peace of Ghent the parties returned to their original principles, or, rather — as one of them had nearly expired, aud the other was divided within itself on questions of sectional interest — the parts of the coun- try where they had respectively predomi- nated went back to the old positions of a stricter and a freer interpretation of the Constitution, to the Federal and the States- rights theories. In the interval between that peace and the attack on Fort Sumter things ran commonly in the States-rights channel. The general government seemed to be weak ; and foreigners, as they specula- ted on our government in those days, thought that the great danger was that State power weighed most in the balance. It is true that the Supreme Court put a curb on the acts of several of the States, and that General Jack- son would undoubtedly have crushed nulli- fication by armed force if necessary ; but his vigorous measures only put off the operation of a theory which even then involved the power of a State to secede from the Union. Yet even while the general government was regarded as weak in conflict with the State power, it showed an increase of strength of an indirect sort in the way of patronage and of influence on private per- sons. The appointments within the gift of the Executive grew in value and number, and already, if we mistake not, members of Congress had begun to regard it as their right to nominate to offices within their dis- tricts, to be the President's almoners, if we may give that name to their business. Still this accumulating power was rather politic- al than governmental ; it would not have excused the Executive of the United States from transcending the constitutional limits; it was strictly constitutioual, although used THE STRENGTH OF THE EXECUTIVE. 271 for party purposes. If the framers of our in- strument for uuitiug the country could have had a vivid impression of its vast extent, they would perhaps have put some check on the appointing power. But they built the house without dreaming how many serv- ants the large family would require. The appointing power is a means to an end, to the reward of partisans, and those the neediest generally and the most selfish. As such it is corrupting, and the interests involved in it are strong enough to resist all attempts at reformation. Its bad influences on party and on personal honor can not be removed without some change in the Con- stitution, and such change party feeling it- self would resist. The ill success of civ- il service reform is mortifying enough, and disheartening for the future. The strength of the government, looked at apart from its indirect influences, never appeared formidable until the war called it fully forth. Then first the Executive seem- ed to have a new quality, which might be compared with the dictatorial power con- ferred by the Senate of Rome on the consuls in the well-known formula that they do their best to prevent the republic from suf- fering any detriment. Then first the com- mand of immense armies, the arrests of sus- pected persons, the control over vast sums of money, the arbitrary use of telegraphs, and, after the war was over, the government of the Southern States by military officers, and the reconstruction of those States, re- vealed an accumulation of authority which was unsuspected before, and pointed to a possible military despotism in the future. Then, too, the power that Congress author- ized of suspending specie payments and issuing legal tenders showed that in emer- gencies financial measures could be set on foot which could involve the country in un- told distress, and even in bankruptcy. Since the war, also, the disturbed condition of one of the Southern States has induced the Pres- ident, on his own responsibility, to use mili- tary power in a case of very doubtful con- stitutionality, to say the least, and to inter- fere for the restoration of order in a way that can not be justified. The upright in- tentions of the Chief Magistrate we do not intend to question ; the subject, interesting as it is, concerns us only because a very dangerous precedent may be set for the fu- ture. The question may be asked, and is asked, whether there is any danger of mili- tary despotism. And as this could not exist without consolidation, it can be ask- ed, also, Is not consolidation, which, at the founding of the republic, one party dread- ed, and would have prevented by constitu- tional limitations if the other had thought it more than a bare possibility — is not this to be the ultimate goal of our Union? This is what those who look at us with no sympathy for our institutions profess to re- gard as a future probability. Within a few months we have seen the following ex- pression in a foreign paper commenting on affairs in Louisiana : " The President is ex- hibiting how easily a military despotism could be built on American institutions." Thus the same Constitution which a few years ago, as looked at through foreign spectacles, could not resist the weak power of the States, or bring back a recalcitrant Governor into his proper relations to the general government, is now allowing, it is said, the general government and the " one- man power" in it to trample on the rights of the States, and to threaten the extinction of liberty. Do these opposite charges, made at different times, refute one another, or is there a real and a new danger before us, and that, too, when the army of the United States does not contain one soldier for every thousand of the inhabitants of the country ? So great a change as that from our pres- ent Constitution to an imperial despotism, or, in other words, to an absolute democ- racy under one man, may not seem to many worthy of serious apprehension ; and we share this opinion so far as to think that, in itself considered, a revolution so great, so without precedent in the English race, is entirely improbable. Before it could be ef- fected there would need to be a strong party in favor of it diffused through all quarters of the Union. No sectional dissatisfaction would be adequate to bring it about. To attempt it would involve the probability of two or more confederacies, and of a war be- tween them with an uncertain issue. To effect it would require taxation on a vast scale, or the borrowing of money to such an extent as would involve speedy bankruptcy. There are now no questions on which the 272 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. Union could be territorially divided without the uprisiug of a great majority against a small minority. Capital, in its connections all over the land, is a bond of union. Tlie mouth and course of the Mississippi, the avenues to the Pacific, the communication with Europe by Atlantic ports, must be open to all. An empire on the coast seems equal- ly impossible with a great interior empire. The ouly cause of essential change that seems deserviug of being taken into ac- count is a general loss of reverence on the part of thinking men for the institutions of the country, a wide-spread conviction that we have failed in our experiment. When- ever such a humiliating day shall arrive, the same conviction might lead toward peaceable reforms and modifications ; but a military despotism, after the experience of France and Rome, and with the political leanings of our race, is not likely to be one of them. It is, however, possible, we admit, that at- tempts may be made to substitute laws of the Union for State laws in some very im- portant departments of legislation, and that in case of their success the prestige aud effi- ciency of the general government would be greatly increased, to the detriment of State power. Some of us are old enough to re- member the time when the Cumberland Road was a bone of contention between strict and free constructionists ; but now the talk is to put all telegraphs aud all railroads under the supervision of the Unit- ed States, as, with far less constitutional objection, banks of issue sustain relations to the States no longer. It might also be highly advantageous if in the depart- ment of international (or, if such a word might bo allowed, interstate) private law harmony could be introduced, which could be effected ouly by general agreement be- tween the States, or by an alteration of the Constitution which should invest Cougress with uew law-making powers. The laws concerning marriage, legitimacy, divorce, be- quests, guardianship, the rights of married women, aud the rights of aliens ought ra- tionally to be uniform through the Union. This is the direction, as we understand, that the constitution of Switzerland is taking. From a loose confederation it became a strict one, a " Bundesstaat," and now still newer powers in legislation are to be or have been conferred on the central govern- ment. But what we dread is that the Union is becoming so great a tree, with such thick foliage, that the States, like shrubs, will lose their healthy growth under its shade ; that instead of being protected, they will wither. If we look at government patron- age, already so vast a factor in all political calculations and bargains, and add the pos- sible enlargement of the sphere of United States law, demanded with the more reason on account of the great number of the States, and then bring into account the sway of an ambitious man at the head of the govern- ment takiug advantage of some local diffi- culty, we shall not regard the anti-Federalist dread of consolidation as wildly unreasona- ble. Washington and Hamilton, with their compeers, were right in wanting a stronger government in place of the shackling old Confederation. That was the only sound statesmanship at that time. But when a measure of Mr. Jefferson's enlarged our do- main, and set the precedent for an immense further enlargement, the danger took anoth- er direction. The very party which felt the apprehension set causes at work which alone made it to be reasonably apprehended. There is now possibility enough of such enormous powers being accumulated at Washington as ought to make men look narrowly at that tendency. For our part, at the present, we should rather endure some inconveniences from hasty or ill-considered laws of some State or States than seek a cure which might itself be a source of ill. We would print e pluribus in as large letters as unum. At this point of our progress we pause a moment to make the remark that we owe our protection against the tendency to con- solidation to our historical development. The settlement of the country in the first instance by separate colonies, which were kept apart long enough to form distinct characteristics aud to feel their independ- ence each of the rest — this is obviously the force that resists perfect fusion and com- pactness. The nice balance aimed at in the Constitution may not last through all changes in society and in public interests ; the scale that holds the rights of the Union and that which holds State power may al- ternately outweigh each other ; but the true UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 273 lover of his country will aim to keep them as far as possible in equipoise. Meanwhile, if uniform legislation is demanded on points where all the States ought to have one pol- icy, let it be reached by a common under- standing. But surely the end of a war, when State power fell into the background, and the Union was, as it ought to have been, prominent before the eyes of all, is no time to carry the old Federal principle to an ex- treme which the venerated founders of the Union never contemplated. The danger of consolidation, if there be any, is future, and must be the result of slowly moving causes, of long misgovern- nient, and of a demand for more energy and uniformity in our system. The dangers which many fear and have feared from the democratic cast of our institutions are, if real, more immediate, because universal suf- frage is upon us, aud can never be gotten rid of as long as the country shall endure. The history of the extension of the suffrage in this country since the independence is a very instructive one, if it could be set forth in detail. It is sufficient here to say that most, if not all, the older colonies had at that time in their laws a qualification for voting based on the possession of land, which continued in many of them long afterward. By degrees this became a form, that is, young men who wished to become qualified for votiug received deeds of laud, which were reconveyed soon after the elec- tion to the friend who had helped them. At length all native-born white males twen- ty-one years old could vote, on taking the freeman's oath, after a certain brief term of residence in a State or town. Then natu- ralized citizens received the same privilege. Meanwhile free blacks, who at one time could vote even in some of the slave-holding States, as North Carolina, were deprived of their privileges in some of those which held no slaves ; such was the case in New York and Connecticut, in the latter of which States a colored man of great personal worth, the owner of a considerable proper- ty, was disfranchised by the constitution of 1817. Now at length every where, if we mistake not, colored persons are put on an equality with whites, and naturalized for- eigners with persons native born. The sin- gle exception known to the writer is the 18 limitation of suffrage in Connecticut to those who are able to read — a rule by which almost no one is excluded. So generally is it held that citizenship and the right of suf- frage are co-extensive that the first now passes with the greater part of Americans as a natural right, like the right of property or of contract. There are very many who believe that the earlier state of things was far bet- ter, but very few who believe that the pres- ent state of things will ever be altered. We must carry it with us through all our na- tional existence, and endeavor to educate all voters into the ability to judge what is best, aud into the spirit of conscientious citi- zenship ; meanwhile, accepting the situation, we may look at the evils which it brings with it. These are more apparent in large towns, while in the country a restriction of the suffrage would make little difference. They are increased by the habit of many substantial citizens of staying away from the polls, either owing to a kind of despair on account of the small influence of a single vote, or to the engrossing interests of busi- ness. And thus whatever be the bad re- sults, the higher classes of society are in a good degree responsible for them. They are increased also by the number of foreign- born voters, who can be led in masses by their more intelligent countrymen, and who thus render possible a number of inferior demagogues ready to sell votes for offices, and able to make themselves necessary to their parties. In this way differences of na- tionality are perpetuated long after aliens have become naturalized ; and even the di- visions in their old homes across the water survive their changes of abode. It is sure- ly a most unnatural thing that there should be in communities where rights are the same for men of every kind of nativity these po- litical sects, depending on something re- nounced and abandoned. Nor could we find such parties within parties, carried down even to the second or third genera- tion, unless the means of combinatiou lay within the power of men who have their own ends in view. The voters themselves have no need to unite for self-protection against native-born Americans, either for relief in taxation or for securing their priv- ileges in other respects. It is the interest of all that these foreigu-born citizens should 274 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. grow rich, that their children should be well educated, that all places of trust should be opeu to them, when they are found worthy of political or social houors. f_Here, then, is one danger and source of peril, that while native Americans act po- litically as individuals, the naturalized citi- zens act in masses under demagogues as their leaders, as if they were iuvading ar- mies rather than men seeking for homes and for quiet. Only in one instance have native-born citizens formed a political par- ty, and the ignominious failure in this case showed that it was unnatural and outland- ish. Of the religious factor in massing cer- tain classes of men together we have a word to say soon; we add at present the single remark that these demagogical influ- ences retard the assimilation of the new- comers to the old, and prevent the com- plete harmony of the people?) In this state of things, to which universal suffrage gives rise, one party, at any one given time, will naturally attract the dema- gogues more than the other; that is, one will be, or affect to be, more in sympathy with the foreigner or the poor, or with lib- erty and equal rights; the other, more in sympathy with the interests of property and civil order. Both may be intensely self- ish and equally one-sided. But they can not co-exist without acting on one another. They discover each the other's arts, means of success, and projects. Naturally they try to counteract plans by similar plans of a questionable character. They make plat- forms on which they do not intend to stand. They propose candidates who are ignorant or pliable, instead of tbose who are sturdy and experienced in legislation. There must be understandings that such and such per- sons of service to a party are to be reward- ed in due time. These and many more of the obvious evils of parties, such as the cau- cus system, unanimity forced by the whip, as it were, discreditable compromises, are either owing to the universality of suffrage or are greatly increased by it ; and there is no present prospect of their discontinuance. We make no complaint of parties as such ; they are necessary and useful in a free state; they act as watchmen and as checks upon each other ; but we maintain that the more ignorant the constituencies are, the greater is the tendency on their part to misplaced confidence in designing men, to jealousy and strife of classes, to the election of inferior politicians, to the turning of politics into a trade, to misgovernment, and, in our case at least, to the banding together of emigrants into factions founded on their nationalities. Nor do we mean to charge the mass of voters in the country with political corruption, which would be a slander. They want good government ; they are ready for sacri- fices, as we saw only a few years since; they have no direct interest in the results which they procure; they are in great meas- ure far less open to bribes than the political leaders themselves. The great evil is that, without intending or foreseeing it, they raise up a crop of politicians who are strik- ingly unlike the mass of such as elect them, and who are fast bringing the name and work of a statesman into contempt. But if the extent of the suffrage has so much to do with the degeneracy of political men, and if this can never be abridged, what remedy is there, and what need to talk of the evils? The remedies must be applied in detail, or they must be such as will grow out of a greater general intelligence, espe- cially on subjects of political science, or there must be an increased moral and re- ligious purity, which will work a cure of our evils in an indirect way. Of these gen- eral remedies we don't intend to speak. We simply remark that here and there a cure can be applied to some of the most glaring evils. If our Legislatures have been ex- posed to temptations by special legislation, a remedy can be applied, as has been done in the amended constitutions of several largo States, by taking away to a great extent from these bodies the power of granting special incorporations; if the towns, as has been done, abuse their charters, and come under the control of venal, corrupt men, their powers can be abridged or controlled ; if judges, as now elected in many States, are inferior men, for this too, it is to be hoped, a cure may be provided. The whole power of burdening States and towns with debt, as well as the taxing power, ought to have limits set for them in the States by public law. We are reminded here of another danger which is thought to be threatened by an in- FINANCIAL PERILS. 275 flux of foreigners. This land, once almost exclusively Protestant, is the refuge now of five millions of Catholics, more or les9. It is odd enough that some of those very people who saw in four millions of slaves a provi- dence bringing them within the influence of Christianity, now see a frowning provi- dence providing these Catholics a home in a land founded and nourished by Protest- ant principles. There may be great hopes of converting this country to the mediaeval religion. That religion will, of course, grow by natural increase, and causes new in our age may aid it, although what the Pope's newly developed infallibility will have to do with it we fail to see. Of this we are sure, that if any new vigor and spread of the Catholic faith, any aggressive action, should appear in this country, it would unite all Protestants of all hues more than any thing else could do, and would probably promote among them a catholic spirit far more than it would promote Catholicism out- side of them. Other evils which usher in this second century of our national existence arise from the late war and the financial measures of the government. The war was undertaken, we are proud to say, without bitterness, in a spirit of loyalty toward the Union, and with a deep sense of the immeuso evils of a permanent disruption. Never was a war marked to a greater degree by compassion for the wounded or by a more merciful treat- ment of prisoners than this of ours. And when did a nation, of its own accord, with- out the force of treaty, forgive the authors of a war more generously — we might say, with more dangerous forgetfulness of inju- ries? All classes who are not ordinarily roused to excitement by a sense of wrong joined in supporting it. The vast body of the religious people of the North and West felt its necessity and justice. Never did prayer for the country arise to the God of nations more unceasingly and more fervent- ly ; never did men, especially at the West, risk their lives with a fuller conviction of the rightfulness of the struggle. Such a war, like all wars, might have evils attend- ing it. Some of the officers may have en- tered the service to better their political chances in the future ; looseness of life and of principle may have been learned by a few; the obligations of the citizen may have been unlearned by a few more. But it is certain, we think, that if the war had ended without leaving any other besides its own direct evils, its bearing on life and manners would have been, on the whole, good. Cer- tainly the winning side, as it looks back on the morality of its cause and of the meas- ures for making it victorious, has no reason for shame. But war can not stand alone : Mars and Mercury must go together ; and the con- trivances of the latter to raise money are more than a counterbalance to the blunt honesty of the former. Whether the war could have been waged without a suspen- sion of specie payments, whether there were not reasons which justified that measure, aside from the financial ones, we will not stop to ask. Our work is to look at facts and their issues. The fact is that irredeem- able paper and a vast debt, beyond all power of payment for years to come, were introduced ; and as the ease of carrying on the measures of government for the time banished anxiety, the ultimate difficulties were not duly weighed. At the beginning of the war there was a general settling of balances between debtor and creditor; the money so returned to its owners was lent to the government ; and when the bonds of the public debt had increased in value, and the confidence of capitalists abroad in our securities was restored, these were sold at an advantage to parties across the water. Meanwhile, especially after the end of the war, new enterprises were begun, some of them immense in extent ; new debts be- tween individuals were contracted ; private persons were eager to go into enterprises which promised large returns ; banks were willing to lend to speculators and stock- jobbers ; every body wanted to get rich without labor or capital. Had there been no suspension of specie payments, but little of all this could have taken place; had there been an honest, intelligent attempt after the return of peace to resume specie payment at some future day, with the right machinery for it, instead of the puerile measures that were actually adopted, the country might now be rejoicing that the unavoidable crisis had passed over, and might look with rational confidence toward 276 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. the future. But this was too great an ef- fort for a speculating generation, too great for political leaders. Nearly the whole of our present evils, except those which arise from the reconstruction of the Southern States and the character of political advent- urers in that uncertain field, are the direct or indirect results of the coudition of the currency, of the fluctuations in the value of specie as measured by the legal tender. To this we must ascribe a large part of the speculations of recent years, the necessary reactions, failures, and shrinking of values, the depression of the mercantile community in consequence of greater economy on the part of consumers, and the dread of the fu- ture. To this are owing in a measure the vast fortunes acquired since the war began, the power of great houses to depress and drive out of the field smaller ones, the im- mense extravagance and show, the almost contempt for the virtues of thrift, modera- tion, and forethought — virtues so important and efficient as even in heathen lands or under bad governments to secure a happy, unaspiring middle class. To this, again, we must refer the uneasiness and strikes of laborers, at least in part, and the general feeling pervading the producers in one sec- tion of the country that they are oppress- ed by transporters, and can by legislation change the laws of profits. To this, too, in large part, we must attribute that in- tensely excited worldliness which appears on all sides; those frequent outbreaks of crime, especially of dishonesty, which will soon be regarded as matters of course ; that venality, that want of honor, which are in- juring our principles as well as our reputa- tion. These last vices call for more extended consideration, for just now they are imputed to the legislature of the nation. Formerly if there was a member of Congress who came there with "itching palms," he could do but little in the way of gratifying his propensity. There was nothing to steal; there was no chance for corrupt bargains, and there was little suspicion of corrupt practice. Our poverty was our integrity. The new state of things is mainly owing, not to a lower set of men brought into the sen ice of the country as legislators, not to the unwillingness of Congress itself to ferret corruption out, but to the means held in the hands of great corporations to influence votes. These means, again, are owing main- ly to the financial condition of the country ; and if there be increased venality — that is, if Congressmen half a century ago would have resisted similar temptations — this, again, is mainly owing to the overstimulus of the covetous spirit which the last ten or twelve years have engendered. The suspicions felt in regard to the hon- esty and honor of Congress have derived strength from what has become known and what has not been discovered. At first there seemed to be an unwillingness to probe an ulcer; then the facts that came to light, while revealing crime on the part of a few, involved many in suspicion ; and finally the disclosures of the winter of 1874- 75 made it seem as if the money paid to agents at Washington for a subsidy to a line of steamboats must have passed into many hands. Here, then, we have guilt charged on a very few, suspicion resting on many: and this is just the worst state of things possible. If forty members of a political body were found to have taken bribes and were expelled, it would be better for the country or State than if five were detected and two hundred were under suspicion, al- though the suspicion might be wholly groundless ; for a general distrust of men in public stations is most disheartening and demoralizing. Unj ust doubt of human char- acter in general destroys the motives to probity arising from example, if it be not already the fruit of a corrupt heart. And here we can not refrain from saying a word on the conduct of public journals as it respects the charges against public men. Our leading journals contain men in their editorial corps who may compare advan- tageously with any members of Congress. But some of them, in their anxiety to give the first news, are not equally anxious to find out whether it be true or not; they trust too implicitly to the reports of corre- spondents ; or they have, perhaps, grudges which make them unfair. To be fair would be to be moderate. It would not do to be gentlemanly, for strong words would need to be weighed. When we read the vilifica- tions of Congress and other political bodies, one thing at least we are sure of, that the NEED OF POLITICAL REFORM. 277 writers ought to be believers in the doc- trine of total depravity, for seldom were such charges made even by stiff Calvinists against individual men as these journals, otherwise most respectable, sometimes make upon large bodies of leading politicians. It is much to be regretted that individual character should be attacked without the best reasons ; for while it is of very little importance that this or that man keeps his hold on the public confidence, it is of im- mense importance that our representative system should be trusted in. When that is thought to be venal we lose the hope of good government, and our reverence for in- stitutions, so much prized once, vanishes ; we become ashamed of our country, make a feebler resistance to causes of disorganiza- tion, and fall into despair. In asking ourselves what means lie with- in our reach that we may recover ourselves from evils partly temporary, partly arising out of our political system, we look first at the possibility that the sentiment of honor may be purified and quickened. It has been thought by De Tocqueville that for the growth of honor in a country there must be men of rank and birth, who are enabled by their position and traditions to know what is honorable, and who would sink into con- tempt within their own class if they fell be- low the standard. To the English idea of honor belong especially the virtues of cour- age, truth, and straightforwardness ; or more generally honor consists in a nice sense of personal rights, of that which is due to oth- ers and owed by them to ourselves. Is it too much to hope that a noble and manly literature in the future may raise the stand- ard of character through the whole people, so that a truckling, deceitful, dodging poli- tician shall be thoroughly despised on nil sides, and be obliged to renounce his po- litical hopes on account of his meannesses ? Is it too much to hope that such a principle of honor, without the pride that often goes with it, may be incorporated into our law of social morality; aud that religion, which has a most intimate and inseparable con- nection Avith genuine morality, may take up this principle also, and may leaven society with it, so that a trick or a lie may be utter- ly abhorred by merchants, by politicians, by young men entering into life, by all who can corrupt others or be corrupted them- selves ? O for more men in public life with the character of him of whom the poet speaks : " Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with Eternal God for power ; Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow Through either babbling world of high or low; Who never spoke against a foe !" And even if this sentiment should not al- ways put on its most spiritual and ideal form, if reputation rather than character and reality of life should be its aim, if it should occasionally resort to that barba- rous, revengeful, and unmeaning practice of dueling which has now happily become almost obsolete, could this be a worse evil than that truth and honesty should not be brought into greater respect than they seem to have now ? Of course, with the feeling that there must be a higher tone of character, in case our politics are to be redeemed from their deg- radation, must be united the removal of those demoralizing influences growing out of the war, of which we have already spok- en at length. When the time will come for this reform is still uncertain. Such is the want of uprightness at present in making pledges that we can put no full confidence, either in the party heretofore dominant or in that which expects soon to be dominant, that opinions or platforms or declarations of Congress and of law in regard to specie pay- ments will be respected. But a time for this must come, we know, first or last. When that time comes, and when the race diffi- culties shall be settled, much of our ground of fear for the future will be removed. The question then remaining, which can not be settled now with entire certainty, because we can not accurately separate temporary political evils from permanent ones, is no less a one than this, Is there such a poison in the political system that there is no cure for it ? Must the Union, made less than a hundred years ago, go to pieces or run into a degeuerate form of polity within the next hundred years ? The question depends upon the general good sense and uprightness of the people, whether, if evils arise that can be removed, they will remove them, or, if those evils are owing to some radical cause, they will be ready for a radical cure. All 278 THE EXPERIMENT OF THE UNION, WITH ITS PREPARATIONS. our future, then, hangs on the strength of the moral and religious causes at work or that can be used for the elevation of the American character. And in the prospect there is, aside from religious faith and hope, the consoling thought that the great mass of the people is not corrupt ; so that, as a good constitution of body resists and overcomes disease, so a sound general character of the nation may contain in itself a self-reforming power. No one, we think, ought to doubt that there is a latent force that can resist political evils and preserve the system who thinks what was endured in the late war, and with what readiness the people bore their burdens. \We are more afraid of the centres of wealth than we are of the scat- tered country population, of the temptation to be rich than of the middle and poorer class, of the half-cultivated and self-indul- gent than of those whose advantages for education have been small, of morals im- ported from Europe than of emigrants from Europe. Dangers we have of our own, to- gether with some of those that stand in the path of older communities, and seem to threaten the very existence of modern so- ciety. But we have hopes, too, of our own which the rest of the world does not share. God grant that these hopes may not be mere visions, and that no new darkness may cloud our future ! X. EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. THE conception of a community so gen- erally educated that each one of its members should know and fulfill all the du- ties of a good citizen, should obey the laws without constraint, and practice humanity, honesty, and propriety, should be trained to virtue, and cultivate self-control, is one that has suggested itself to most eminent legis- lators from the dawn of history, and is, in- deed, so engaging a notion as to commend itself to every intelligent mind. The igno- rant must be governed by rude violence ; the cultivated rule themselves ; and the fertile fancies of the Greek thinkers were early filled with projects for enforcing a univers- al education. None of them, however, suc- ceeded except perhaps the Spartan legisla- tor. 1 The idea made no strong impression upon the Romans. It was adopted by the Israelites and the early Christians, and was almost perfected in China. The Arabian caliphs founded a school in every village. 2 Charlemagne and Alfred strove to teach the savage Germans and Saxons. The Papal Church of the Middle Ages taught in its monasteries ; and the private schools of Eri- gena, Gerbert, Abelard, Duns Scotus, and a series of early school-masters saved educa- tion from sinking into monastic dullness. But the true parent of the modern system of teaching was the Reformation. Luther urged upon Germany the necessity of gen- eral instruction, 3 Calvin filled his followers with mental activity, and it was in the Protestant states of Germany that the gov- ' Plutarch, Numa, asserts that "the fair fabric of justice" raised by Numa passed away rapidly because it was not founded upon education. Education was the leading principle of the institutions of Zaleucus and Pythagoras. Plato in the Republic, Aristotle in his Politics, enforce the same conception. 2 Renan, Averroes, chap, i., describes the flourish- ing literary condition of Spain under the Arabs. And Charlemagne perhaps emulated the free schools of Haroun-al-Raschid. See Bginhard, Vita Caroli Imp., c. 33. 3 Luther said if he were not. a preacher, he would be a teacher; and he thought the latter the more impor- tant office, since, he lamented, it was easier to form a new character than to correct one already depraved. ernments first assumed the task of educating all the people, and of fulfilling that concep- tion of the duty of legislators which had dawned upon the active intellects of Greece. The government became the school-master, the nation a community of pupils. Prussia, Saxony, and several of the lesser states have carried on the theory to a wide limit. No one is suffered in Prussia to go without an education. In many districts it is impossi- ble to find a person who can not read and write. Yet it must be remembei'ed that it is only since the beginning of the present century that Prussia has made its chief ad- vance in education ; that it was after the disasters and the shame of the Napoleonic invasion that the king, the queen Louisa, and the minister Stein renewed the public schools, emulated the zeal of Pestalozzi and Zeller, aud forged that intellectual weapon which was to cleave the armor of their tri- umphant foes, for it is allowed that the common schools and their teachers have chiefly produced the unity and progress of the German race. The idea of popular instruction was brought to the New World by our ances- tors in the seventeenth century, and has here found its most appropriate home. Pu- ritan, Hollander, Huguenots, and Scots or Scottish - Irish, they had seen that most of their stiff erings and persecutions had sprung from ignorance and blind fanati- cism. They had become in Europe the most intellectual and studious of its peo- ple, and, amidst the bleak forests of New England and the middle colonies, planted almost at their first landing the printing- press and the school. Knowledge they thought the proper cure for social evils. It was the school-master and the school- house, they believed, that could alone save them from sinking into barbarism, and re- vive a more than Attic refinement in the dismal wilderness. Massachusetts and Con- necticut early passed laws that might seem severe even to our present conception of the duties and powers of the State. Every 280 EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. father of a family was obliged under a considerable penalty to see that his chil- dren were taught to read and write, and were instructed in the elements of morals and religion. The provision was apparent- ly enforced, and it is possible that the peo- ple of New England in the seventeenth cen- tury were better educated 1 ban those of any European nation. In the present century Germany has outstripped Massachusetts. But the honorable race is still to be run, and it may be hoped that the next and all succeeding centuries will witness a gener- ous strife among the nations which can do most to cultivate the popular intellect. As school-masters alone can legislators hope to be successful. Mental equality is the foundation of popular sovereignty, and we must conclude with the Greek philosopher that no political institutions can be made lasting without the cement of a common education. In the American plan of education the national government has no further share than to give liberally from its public domain to the State or Territorial schools, and by its Educational Department at Washington to collect and distribute important informa- tion. 1 Each State controls its schools in its own way, directs the course of education and the formation of the school-districts, sometimes prescribes what is to be taught, provides the way in which the school funds are to be raised, and governs by general laws. The local municipalities levy the school taxes and elect the school officers. These officers appoint the teachers and fix their salaries, build school -houses, govern and support the schools. Thus the people of each school - district choose their own school officers, and the schools are wholly under popular rule — the true source of their rapid growth and general excellence. In no part of the Union has education been so carefully and assiduously cultivated as in New England, and nowhere have its results been so important and remarkable. Wealth, industry, and good order have fol- lowed in its train. Massachusetts, although 1 Theory of Education, Washington, 1S74, p. 10, etc. The generosity of the general government to the puhlic schools has never wavered, and but for its fore- sight and liberality they could never have spread so rapidly over the new Territories. its soil is sterile and its climate severe, main- tains a larger population in proportion to its territory than any other State. All New England is prosperous beyond example ; and it has ever been the custom of its chief statesmen to attribute this rapid progress and general activity to the common schools. Of the early New England teachers Ezekiel Cheever, almost in the dawn of its history, holds a conspicuous place. Cotton Mather compliments him as the civilizer of his coun- try. He was a scholar, learned, accurate, judicious; a severe and unsparing master, tall, dignified, and stern. He taught in the middle of the seventeenth century in Con- necticut, and was afterward transferred to Boston, where he died at ninety-four. He was the founder of schools, and three gen- erations of intelligent men were formed by his careful hand. He gave the Latin school at Boston its early excellence, and his ardent labors as a school-master for seventy years justify Cotton Matber's unstinted praise. "Educated brain," we are told, "is the only commodity in which Massachusetts can com- pete with other States," and to its long line of eminent school -masters New England owes its wealth and progress. Yet it has only been by a slow and often doubtful toil that in its natural home American education has attained its final excellence. The wild new laud before the Revolution was incapa- ble of reaching more than the elements of knowledge. When it became free, its emi- nent men were all the firmest friends of ed- ucation. The two Adamses and their asso- ciates in all the New England States felt that their labors in the cause of freedom were incomplete, and even useless, unless they could teach all the people the duties of good citizens. But even in Massachusetts until 1834 the common schools had been comparatively neglected, their means of support were insufficient, the teachers were often incompetent, the school -houses rude and inconvenient. But in New England the principle had always been admitted that it was the duty of the State to educate its children, and in 1834 a fund of $1,000,000 was raised in Massachusetts to aid the towns in their educational labors. From that time a steady progress has been observed not only in Massachusetts, but through all New En- gland. Gifted and laborious educators have NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK. 281 given their lives to the perfection of the common - school system. Mann, Barnard, and their ahle coadjutors have raised the New England States to a high rank among the communities that teach the people. A normal school was opened in 1839 at Lex- iugton ; Massachusetts has now sis. Con- necticut and Ehode Island have made equal progress. Yet it was only a few years ago that Connecticut still demanded rates, and that the school-houses of Rhode Island were still imperfect. 1 In some districts of New England poverty and the thinness of the population prevent the perfection of the system. In Madawaska, Maine, where the currency is in articles of trade, and the brief summer scarcely supplies the people with necessary food, they are aided by the gener- osity of their fellow-citizens and are wholly exempted from school taxes. Massachusetts expends more money upon its schools than any other State in propor- tion to its population. Its teachers are bet- ter paid, its school buildings generally more complete, and its people more carefully in- structed. Of 292,481 persons in the State between the ages of five and fifteen in 1873, the average attendance at school was 210,248, or more than seventy per cent. 2 The rate of attendance constantly increases, new schools are founded every year, new buildings provided, and the normal schools and colleges send out annually a succession of well-trained teachers. The whole popu- lation of Massachusetts is probably a mill- ion and a half. They laid out last year in the various expenses of the public schools $6,180,848 64, or about twenty-one dollars for each person of school age. A cheaper mode of education could in no way be de- vised. In private schools the cost of in- structing as many children would be four or five fold, and the public schools of Mas- sachusetts are already better than any pri- vate schools, or are rapidly becoming so. But even in Massachusetts a rigid compul- sory law is plainly necessary. Its unedu- cated population give rise to three-fourths of its crime, and an inilux of foreigners has 1 The fine engravings of new school huildings that adorn the latest educational report from Connecticut are worthy of general study. In fact, all the educa- tional reports of the various States are full of interest. 2 Secretary's Report, 1ST3-74, p. 113. already filled it with a dangerous, because uncultivated, class. Connecticut, which has recently set in action its compulsory law, is probably in advance of any other State in the rate of attendance. 1 It has long been a centre of manufactures and of inventive progress. Its wealth and influ- ence increase rapidly, and its capitalists have discovered that the public school is the sure path to good morals and order among those who labor. Hence they en- courage education, and press on the im- provement of all the instruments of pub- lic teaching. In New York the growth of the common- school system has been slow, and its advan- tages only reluctantly admitted. I shall re- view its progress briefly, since in no State has the struggle for victory been more la- borious or the triumph of the friends of knowledge more complete. 2 There was always a desire for education prevalent among its people, even when they were no more than a band of trappers and traders, and an accomplished school-mas- ter was one of the earliest importations from the shores of Holland. The free school still exists, founded by the Reform- ed Dutch Church, in the city of New York, not long after Boston had been planted on its three mountains. The Dutch clergy- man usually kept a school, and the Dutch immigrants were probably not altogether illiterate. But in the opening of the sev- enteenth century the idea of a common ed- ucation for all the people was still a phan- tasm and a Utopian vision ; it was scarcely thought possible, or even desirable, to teach the laboring classes or to raise a whole na- tion to an equality of knowledge. Through the colonial period, and for a long time aft- ter the Revolution, the people of New York possessed no means of education except a village school and an incompetent teach- 1 Connecticut attributes its inventive genius to the public schools established by its "fathers." See Re- port of the Commissioner of Education (Eaton), 1872, p. 47, and Connecticut Report of Board of Education, 1874. Of the effect of the compulsory law, says one school visitor, " In one of the largest villages I found the increase" (in attendance) "was sixty-seven per cent." 2 Randall, Hist. Common Schools of New York. Boese, Hist. School System of the City of New York. New York State Reports. New York City Reports. 282 EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. er, a college and a few classical seminaries, and its chief political leaders, as the State increased rapidly in wealth and population from 1787 to the close of the century, felt the pressing want of some method of gen- eral instruction. / George Clinton, Governor of New York in 1795, suggested and laid the foundation of its common schools. He was one of those discreet and rational intellects that had sustained his country through the Revo- lution with unchanging firmness, and had learned amidst its perils the value of men- tal progress. Like Washington, Jefferson, or Adams, he had discovered that an igno- rant people could not he a free one ; that the education of the wealthy class alone was fatal to human equality; and in his message to the Legislature of 1795, Clinton recommended to the people " the establish- ment of common schools throughout the State." It was a period when such a sug- gestion was so new and so surprising as to have little chance of general approval, aud the conception of a State expending its revenues in teaching was scarcely heard of out of Saxony and Prussia. New En- gland had in part developed the idea, hut to the people of New York it was altogether novel. The State was poor, and still in its feeble infancy; the savages still occupied a large part of its domain west of Albany ; its chief city was yet a small though rapidly advancing town ; no great canal had joined the Hudson to the lakes, and the wealth of a continent had not yet found its natural outlet to the sea. But Clinton's suggestion was at once adopted by the intelligent Leg- islature, and a sum of $50,000 was set aside to be divided among the towns and coun- ties in proportion to the number of their electors, and each county was required to raise by taxation a sum of money from ev- ery town equal to one-half the amount al- lowed by the State. Such was the founda- tion of the common-school system, and for a time it flourished with singular success. In 1798, in sixteen of the twenty -three counties, 1352 schools were already opened, and 59,660 children had received in them at least some share of the public tuition. But the limit of the appropriation expired in 1800, the schools were suffered to languish, and the system was practically abandoned. Soon, however, two remarkable men took up the cause of education, and forced it upon the attention of the people. Jede diah Peck, of Otsego, a native of Connecti- cut, and Adam Comstock, of Saratoga, de- serve to be remembered among the chief benefactors of New York. Peck was a plain uneducated farmer, a religious en- thusiast, who exhorted and prayed with the families he visited ; was modest, meek, diminutive in size, and almost repulsive in appearance; yet his active labors in the cause of knowledge show that he had not only cultivated himself, but was incessant- ly teaching others. Comstock, not more highly educated, aided him with equal zeal. They asserted every where that free- dom, morality, and religion could only be supported by general intelligence. They pressed their theme upon the Legislature and the people. Peck was anxious that a school fund should be provided, like that of his native State, Connecticut, and he found a ready ally in Governor Clinton, who in 1802 again urged upon the Legis- lature the renewal of the common schools. But the people were no longer willing to be taxed for the diffusion of knowledge. Po- litical troubles were impending, the State was poor, and all that the friends of educa- tion could obtain was a grant of the pro- ceeds of certain lotteries, known as " Liter- ature Lotteries," or the sales of the State lands, and three thousand shares of the capital of the Merchants' Bank of the city of New York, to found the nucleus of the common-school fund. Twice Mr. Peck's bill to authorize the towns to tax themselves for school purposes failed in the Legisla- ture. But a strong impulse toward gener- al education had now been awakened in England by the success of the Lancaste- rian system : the Dissenters, and chiefly the Methodists, had lent their influence to a new effort to teach the poorer classes, and the movement was already felt in the New World. [The city of New York in 1805 founded its free -school society, and the Mayor, De Witt Clinton, with many other patriotic citizens, gave his aid to the cause of the popular education with valuable as- siduity!""] The Lancasterian system was in- troduced, and the free schools made consid- erable progress. De Witt Clinton, whose ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM IN NEW YORK. 283 sincere zeal for science, art, literature, and freedom lias affected the prosperity of his native State more, perhaps, than any other cause, and who lived to prepare and per- fect a great engineering work, which for that early period seems almost incredible, must also be ranked among the most emi- nent of the friends of the common schools. He was never weary of urging forward mental progress, and filling the minds of his contemporaries with the conception of a complete form of national education. Peck, Comstock, and Clinton at last, aft- er a brave contest against ignorance, were successful, and in 1812 a bill passed the Legislature of New York founding anew a common-school system that was to remain in action until 1842. A sum was given to every town for school purposes. The town was obliged to raise an equal amount by taxation. No district was to be left with- out its school-house, and no village without its teacher. The commissioners recom- mended the plan to the people by point- ing to the necessary connection between knowledge and virtue, and by invoking the sacred name and authority of Washington. It was, in fact, in a period of singular gloom and public danger that the machinery of public education was first set in motion in New York. A barbarous war was raging on the frontier and over the seas ; English cruisers swept the commerce of the republic from the ocean, and American privateers re- taliated with more than common success. Poverty once more pressed upon the people. Yet in periods of public danger men see more clearly their true interests, and amidst the perils of war our ancestors founded the fairest of the fabrics of peace. Peck, Clin- ton, Comstock, were sustained by their fel- low-citizens, and in 1813 Gideon Hawley became the superintendent of the common schools of New York. He was a young law- yer, active, intelligent, and cultivated in letters ; and for eight years his energy and zeal kept alive the onward progress of edu- cation. Peace had returned ; the vast re- sources of the State were slowly developed ; the savages were removed from the interior counties ; the famous wheat fields of the Mohawk and the Genesee rose into won- derful productiveness ; a vast system of internal improvements was projected by Clinton that was to prove the source of boundless progress to the nation as well as the State. Yet the labors of the friends of education will probably outlive the mate- rial achievements of this busy period. And it is as educators that HaAvley, Peck, and Clinton may be remembered in distant ages as the founders of the prosperity of New York. The common schools advanced in general favor amidst much opposition. Hawley's vigorous hand kept them from falling into decay, as they had fallen in 1800. In 1819 there were already nearly 6000 school-dis- tricts, and it was estimated that almost 250,000 children had been placed upon their lists. In 1820, of 302,703 children of the proper age, 271,877 were taught in the schools. The uumber was still greater in 1821. Yet here the valuable labors of Gid- eon Hawley came to an end ; a political op- position removed him from office, a person of inferior talents was put in his place, and thus New York repaid the services of its great benefactor by a cruel ingratitude. But the immense fabric which he had helped to rear could not now be torn down, and De Witt Clinton, the Governor of the State, resolutely pressed on the cause of education. The control of the schools was transferred to the Secretary of State, Yates, an intelligent and able man. The number of districts in 1822 was 7051, and 351,173, out of 357,000 children, had been taught during the year in the public schools. Joseph Lancaster visited the United States in 1818, and had been received by De Witt Clinton with signal interest, and his meth- od of teaching was at that time the popular one ; his presence at least gave new cour- age to the friends of knowledge, and the genius of Pestalozzi and the example of European educators were felt in New York. It was said that its education was even more general than that of Connecticut, which had a larger school fund, and where the common-school system had been longer in use. Yet the idea of a free and public educa- tion for all classes of the people, a common source for all of equality and union, had not yet been openly avowed, and the division of castes was still maintained in the public schools. Those children whose parents were 284 EDUCATIONAL PROGKESS. too poor to pay the rates were called charity scholars ; in some districts they seem not to have been admitted at all to the schools. The right of every child to a free and full education by the commuuity was seldom al- lowed. It may well be supposed, too, that the instruments of education were at this early period in its course (1822) very imper- fect and rude. The school-houses were oft- en bare log-huts in the country, or narrow and pestilential rooms in the cities and towns ; the teachers were uncultivated and incompetent ; the school-books worthless and worn ; the whole fabric of education a vast misshapen pile that needed the skill of a master-architect to found it securely. Such a man was De Witt Clinton. To no single intellect is New York so widely indebted for its progress, vigor, and refinement; and in every part of his native State some trace of Clinton's energy and foresight may be found. He had just completed the great canal which had tested for so many years his courage and endurance amidst ceaseless opposition and unsparing assaults; he had seen the waters of Lake Erie mingle with the Hudson ; he had been every where the founder of libraries, colleges, academies of design, and centres of art ; and now he had been chosen Governor by a spontaneous im- pulse of a grateful people. One of bis latest labors was to perfect the public schools. He urged (1826) the founding of schools for teachers, the extension of the course of study, the creation of school libraries, the increase of teachers' salaries, careful inspec- tion, the higher education of womeu. None of those improvements that have since been adopted seem to have escaped his clear perception ; and he founded all his projects upon a single principle. " I consider," he said, " the system of our common schools the palladium of our freedom." Not long after, Clinton died suddenly. But his ideas live among us, and his successors have seldom shown any indifference to the cause of popular education. The states- men of all parties have united in advancing the popular intellect. Spencer, Marcy, Dix, Flagg, aided in the organization of that im- mense scheme of public instruction which has ruled the fortunes of the State, and suc- cessfully resisted the assaults of various foes. Iu 1832 there were 9690 school-dis- tricts, and 514,475 children had been taught in the public schools^ Only about ten thou- sand of the school age seem to have lost the advantages of education. But in the city of New York the extraordinary growth of the foreign population now began to lead to a struggle that was to rise into singular importance.; For many years Ireland had poured out its excess of population upon New York, and the Irish immigrants had at first seemed willing and even eager to become thoroughly American and republic- an. They sent their children to the public schools, and were liberal and patriotic in politics. But unhappily a less discreet pol- icy was advocated by their priests, who founded a number of private schools, and required that they should be supported by a donation from the public funds. The Irish population do not seem to have fol- lowed their guidance implicitly, and have always profited largely from the system of common schools. But Bishop Hughes urged on the sectarian contest with unyielding rigor, his priests and many of his people followed him, and already in 1840 that vio- lent struggle had begun which seems fated to extend throughout the whole Union wher- ever the indiscreet counsels of the papacy can drive its Church into an opposition to the civil administration. The question was whether the public schools should be converted into a series of sectai'ian institutions, whether each sect should have its own schools, whether the Bible should at least be excluded from the public teaching, or whether the common schools should resemble the government un- der which they had grown up, and take no- tice of no difference of religious or secular opinion. In the one case they must be re- modeled upon the plan pursued in Europe ; in the other, they must remain wholly Amer- ican. Iu one, separate churches or sects would be recognized and maintained by our government ; and in the other, the sects would be held in complete obedience to the civil law. The question was debated with earnestness. A single sect alone demanded a change in the principle of free education, and even of that one many of the most in- telligent members were satisfied with the equity and liberality of the American sys- tem, and the common schools have retained SUCCESS OF THE COMMON-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 285 their unsectarian character in spite of the ceaseless and often dangerous assaults of their foes. Still more important advances were now made in the material and nature of public instruction. From 1842 the sys- tem rose rapidly to a completeness which had scarcely been looked for. The culti- vated zeal of the Hon. Horace Maun, from Massachusetts, lent new ideas and a fresh impulse to education in New York; and at a distinguished convention of superintend- ents and others, held at Utica in 1842, the various topics of the important theme were discussed with fresh animation. It was shown from recent statistics that crime de- creased with the advance of education, and that the more perfect the schools, the less costly would be the prisons and the alms- houses. It was shown that knowledge should be free to all the people, and that all the people should, if possible, be educa- ted in the same schools. The defects of the common schools were pointed out — their imperfect buildiugs, uncultivated teachers, worthless books. Emersou, from Massachu- setts, told of the value of the normal school which had beeu established in his own State, and showed that the teacher should be the highest and most cultivated of his con- temporaries. Horace Mann enlarged with all the eloquence of his intellect upon the grandeur of the work in which they were engaged. And from the convention of 1842 education began to assume a more scientific form among us and to penetrate more deep- ly among the people. A normal school was now (1844) estab- lished at Albany, the first of those excellent institutions which have raised our public teachers to a high standard, and which seem capable of being made the source of a great moral advance. The aim of the normal school is to produce a perfect teacher, to soften the manners, refine the taste, and cul- tivate the faculties of those intrusted with the care of children. Time has proved their usefulness, and may raise them to a still higher excellence. It is not impossible that our normal schools may at last educate our professors, and produce our most active men of letters. District libraries began now to be improved and widely extended, teachers' institutes were formed, the fabric of educa- tion was enlarged and amended; but the system was still in its infancy, and the prin- ciple of a common education provided by the state, and possibly enforced by it, had not yet become familiar to the people. The school- houses were still, in many districts, painful- ly rude ; of 7000 only 2000 had more than one apartment, and in some counties they were wholly unfit for scholastic purposes. Instead of beiug the finest and most impos- ing building in every town and village, the school-house was often one of the rudest and least convenient. In many counties the school rates were still exacted, and par- ents refused to send their children to schools where they were looked down upon by their wealthier neighbors. The principle of free education had not yet been admitted in New York ; and when the friends of education pressed upon the State Convention of 1845 the duty of the Legislature to provide for the instruction of the community by a gen- eral taxation, the motion was defeated, and the system of charity schools was maintain- ed for another twenty years. It was not until the rebellion and the disasters of the civil war had forced men to see more clearly their own interests that an efficient and universal system of common schools was extended over the State. For fifty years the idea of public educa- tion had been slowly unfolding itself in New York. The finest intellects of the State had been employed upon its development ; from Peck and Clinton to Dix, Spencer, Seward, Young, Flagg, Greeley, Morgan, an endless array of accomplished citizens had joined in the school conventions, and lent aid to the growth of the intellect. Already in 1845 the Hon. Horace Mann could say, " The great State of New York, by means of her county superintendents, State Normal School, and otherwise, is carrying forward the work of public education more rapidly than any oth- er State in the Union or auy other country in the world." And the Hon. Henry Bar- nard, of Connecticut, thought its system su- perior iu many particulars to any other he knew of. But the county superintendents were abolished in 1847, and the common schools began at once to decline. Their enemies were active, and a violent struggle arose upon the question of free education. A free -school act was passed in 1849, yet still clogged by rate bills and assessments. 286 EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. In many instances in the country wealthy property owners refused to be taxed for ed- ucation. The free schools were assailed with new energy by their opponents, and the Ro- man Catholic editors demanded the repeal of the free-school law. They required the schools "to be subject to the clergy;" oth- erwise, said their leading paper, they will be " a source of demoralization and public nuisances." A large party joined the oppo- sition to the schools. But the people rose in their defense. Fish, Hunt, Phelps, Wool, Nott, Greeley, and a throng of able men led the party of education. The elections of 1850 decided the question in their favor, and in 1851 the principle that the State must educate all its children was sanction- ed in theory by the popular vote. Meantime — for I must pass rapidly over the history of this great struggle of the in- tellect — within the next ten years the school - houses grew into convenient and costly buildings, supplied with all the re- quirements of careful tuition. The normal school gave out a succession of intelligent teachers. In 1861 there were 11,400 school- districts and 872,854 pupils ; but it was no- ticed that the school libraries were neglect- ed, and the books often wasted and destroy- ed. One normal school was not sufficient to supply with teachers ten thousand schools, and the odious rates were still exacted. The war came, and the graduates of the common schools were found among the foremost de- fenders of the Union ; and amidst the ter- rors of a civil convulsion, roused by heroic ideas, the people of the State in 1862 threw off forever all the lingering prejudices of the past, and declared education free to all as the light of heaven. The common-school idea was adopted in all its limitless expansion, and the State proclaimed itself the mental parent of all its children. The people ad- mitted that they had no higher duty than to see that no one should live among them without an education ; but it was some time before they could learn that ignorance was a crime against society. From the declara- tion of the principle of universal public in- struction the schools of New York have flour- ished in the midst of a thousand foes. The great influx of uneducated foreigners has exposed them to a mass of hostile voters. They have been assailed by secular and cler- ical influences, and have sometimes suffered from indifference and neglect. But the aboli- tion of the rates and the improvement of the system have drawn in a growing throng of pupils, and already in 1869, 1,161,155 children had been taught in the normal schools, acad- emies, colleges, and private schools of the State, and, what was somewhat dishearten- ing to the friends of education, 300,000 be- tween the ages of five and twenty-one had attended no school at all. An ominous cloud of ignorance had gathered under the very shadow of the common schools. A compulsory law, passed by the Legisla- ture of 1874, has completed, at least in the- ory, the public-school system of New York; and it is probable that succeeding genera- tions will see nearly all their children gath- ered in the school-house and the academy. Nor does any where a more effective and imposing machinery for general education exist, nor does any community expeud its money more bountifully upon the elevation of the popular intellect. New York gives $11,000,000 annually to public instruction. A free college in the city of New York is filled with the best students of the public schools. A fine normal school for female teachers adorns the metropolis ; and in ev- ery part of the State the normal colleges produce every year a great number of ac- complished instructors. The school-houses in the cities are often palaces of education, filled with the latest improvements in the art of teaching. The teachers' salaries are slow- ly advancing ; the reputation of the profes- sion rises with the higher cultivation of its members. Yet it must still be allowed that some errors have crept into the system, and possibly the whole theory of education may yet be in its infancy. The school-houses in the country districts are too often imper- fect, unadorned, and rude. They should al- ways be centres of taste, comfort, and con- venience. In the city schools too many branches of knowledge are taught at once. It would be wiser to perfect each scholar in the simpler elements. If religion can not be taught in the schools, the moral nature should be especially instructed, and no pupil should leave the public care without having acquired the conception of kindness, gentle- ness, modesty, as well as mental power. In this the example of the teacher is the chief EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH. 287 guide, and the highest literary culture and the purest characters should alone he suf- fered to form the dispositions of the youug. Eepuhlican simplicity should he inculcated from the cradle— a contempt for European follies and the glitter and display of for- eign barbarism. It may he hoped, too, that, through special schools, trades, industry, and all branches of labor will form at last a part of the education of every American. Pennsylvania, like New York, has passed through a long struggle to reach its present educational advantages. It has also adopt- ed the common-school system in its widest limit. 1 Its school property is of great value ; it expends more than $8,000,000 annually upon its schools ; it has no general school fund, and derives all its school moneys from taxation. It has seven State normal schools and a great number of excellent technical schools and private colleges. This wonder- ful community, enriched by the boundless gifts of nature, is also one of the most wide- ly educated. The spirit of Franklin has ever filled it with mental activity. New Jersey is already emulating Pennsylvania and New York. Its common schools are fast rising in excellence. The four Middle States (for even Delaware has shown marks of progress) have already joined in a gener- ous enthusiasm for knowledge. But if we turn to the Southern portion of the Union, the prospect is less encoura- ging. It is not that the first settlers of the South were less intelligent or cultivated than those of the North. Some of them were Huguenots, learned, thoughtful, heroic in their devotion to their faith ; some were Scottish- Irish; some Quakers, or Friends. The most intellectual races of Europe were represented on our Southern coasts. And after the Ke volution, Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Lowndes, Gadsden, and Eutledge would have held it their noblest mission to spread knowledge among the people. But slavery intervened. The great designs of Jefferson and Gadsden were never to be per- fected. With slavery a notion grew up that knowledge was only the privilege of the ruling class, and that tradesmen, mechanics, 1 Pennsylvania Report, 1873, p. 12. Only one dis- trict, a small one, was without its common schools in a population of 4,000,000. Pennsylvania has adopted the system of free education in its widest extent. and slaves were better left in ignorance. While the Northern States seized upon the mighty engine of education to win ease and industrial progress, the Southern States suf- fered their free schools to perish, and even for their higher education looked to the North or to Europe. The rebellion threw open the South to a new intellectual move- ment ; a system of common schools has been introduced into every Southern State ; the colored aud even the white laborers of the South are said to be anxious to make use of this opportunity to raise themselves by an intelligent education to the condition of men. Yet we are told by the report of the Commissioner of Education that the com- mon schools are not favored by an influen- tial class of the people. They seem to lan- guish in most of the Southern States.M The condition of the Southern people is one of extreme ignorance. Of the 5,643,534 persons in the Union wholly "illiterate," 4,117,589 are found in the Southern States. Of course these " illiterates" are nearly all native born. The subject is one that may well employ all the intelligence and observation of the South, for it is education alone that can give good order and prosperity to its people. Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky are al- ready laboring to provide a general and ef- fective system of instruction. It is certain that the extension of common schools over the whole South and a general education of its people would double the value of its lauds, and foster more than any thing else foreign immigration. But if the common-school system has been forced to make its way slowly against the opposition of caste and sectarianism in the North and East, and was nearly banished from the South by the long prevalence of slavery, in the new States and Territories of the West and the Pacific coast it has won an almost immediate popularity. 2 Here among the settlers of the wilderness its value was at once perceived. The school- 1 So in Georgia they were closed in 1872. Report of the Commissioner of Education (Eaton), 1873, p. 69. And in Texas in 1S73 they were "abolished," and have scarcely been re-established. 2 Yet even in the Western States the labors of a series of patriotic men alone have saved the common school and university funds, and made education free. See Tenbrook, American State Universities, p. 141, and p. 118-120. 288 EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. house, the church, the newspaper, tele- graph, aud railway have grown up togeth- er. Nowhere has the American plan of education been found so perfectly suited to the wants of a progressive people. No- where were ever such vast and complete educational systems so rapidly perfected as in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, or in the newer States of the northwest. Through all this wide, populous, and pro- ductive territory, the granary of half the world, caste and sectarianism have been laid aside forever; by a spontaneous move- ment of the people education has been made free to all; such great sums are lavished upon the teachers and their schools as nat- urally startle our European contemporaries, and the money of the people, which in Eu- rope has been expended usually upon priests and kings, has here been devoted to the cul- tivation of those who earned it. Ohio spends nearly ten millions of dollars annually upon its public schools, Indiana and Illinois to- gether a sum not much less. The fair, con- venient, primary school house shines out upon the prairie and in the forest ; the higher school houses of Chicago or Cincin- nati are unsurpassed in New York or Bos- ton ; the science of teaching is carefully studied in a host of teachers' institutes, and with republican liberality the West and the great Northwest care for all their children. 1 This remarkable enthusiasm for education penetrates all the nation ; it has become the distinguishing principle of American progress. 2 In the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and in the midst of the gold and silver bearing peaks of Arizona and Colorado, the free school is the sentinel of civilization. In Tucson or Denver the love of knowledge has survived the preva- lence of what is usually thought the stron- ger passion, and the cities of the miners are seldom without their public school. The most splendid of our high school buildings is said to be that of Omaha, seated on a lofty bluff over the Missouri. California has pro- duced a system of education so complete and valuable as may well serve as a model for all older communities; its teachers are 1 In all these States a sectarian party exists, but the majority favor free education. 2 See Ed. Report, 1873. Minnesota and Iowa are filled with the educational spirit. made examples of propriety and tenderness, its scholars are taught integrity and moral excellence ; sectarianism and caste ave for- bidden to divide the people, and the pros- perous State is already feeling in all its industrial pursuits the happy influence of the common school. Thus the American system of education pervades and covers every section of the Union. By the spontaneous impulse of the people it has been made the foundation of our political institutions. It has grown up with little direction from the general gov- ernment. It has flourished in the cities and in the wilderness ; it spreads its golden links from ocean to ocean, and holds in its embrace the destinies of the republic. A few statistics will show how immense is its influence and how important its results. By the census of 1870 it appears that an army of nearly 200,000 teachers conduct the public schools of the Union ; of these, 109,000 are females. The number of schools was 125,000, and has no doubt largely increased. Fifty-eight millions of dollars 1 were raised in 1870 by taxation to educate the people — a sum nearly as great as the annual cost of a European army. There are also endow- ments and other sources of revenue, making the whole amount spent upon the common schools $64,000,000. The number of pupils in 1870 was more than 6,000,000. Thus the annual cost of each scholar enrolled was apparently only about ten dollars. Many of these pupils have attended only for a few months at the schools, others have been ir- regular and inattentive. Yet the fact that 6,000,000 children were brought under the control of the common-school system in one year, and learned some, at least, of the pro- prieties of life, is sufficient to show its im- mense influence upon the young ; and it may be estimated that at least half the number were thoroughly instructed in the common branches of knowledge. When we look over the returns of our il- literate population, of the great mass of ig- norance that has grown up at the side of the common schools, we might at first conclude that our popular system of education had 1 These figures must now (1875) be largely increased, and it is probable that 170,000,000 yearly are raised for school purposes by taxation alone, and the number ed- ucated has risen in proportion. EDUCATION AND CRIME. 289 wholly failed. Few civilized countries pre- sent a more lamentable scene of intense and almost savage dullness. Our illiterate population over ten years of age numbers 5,600,000. And an unfriendly critic, the London Quarterly Review, April, 1875, seizes upon this singular contrast as a ground of attack upon the American system of teach- ing. Yet the assault fails wholly. The great mass of our illiterates are in the for- mer slave territory, where the common schools were never suffered to come, and where a large part of the people were for- bidden by law to learn even to read and write. Slavery has produced more than 4,000,000 of our illiterates. 1 Of the re- mainder, who live in the Northern and West- ern sections of the Union, one-half are due to the neglect of England to educate its poorer classes. Our German immigrants are nearly all well educated. The English and Irish can seldom read or write. Of the 1,300,000 illiterates in the Northern States, 665,000 are foreign born, and they come chiefly from Great Britain. Thus, excluding the former slave territory, we have only 690,000 native-born illiterates, and of these a large number are the children, no doubt, of foreign parents. If we allow 500,000 as the number of native-born Americans who have escaped the influence of the common schools, we shall not possibly fail in liberal- ity. The people of the Free States number at least 26,000,000. Only one person out of fifty, therefore, among us has been untouch- ed by the influence of the public school. Reaching over the wild wastes of the new States and the thick crowds of our cities, the common-school system, often imperfect and rude, has been almost as thorough and effective as the older systems of Germany and Holland. Wherever it extends, crime diminishes, the morals of the community improve, and taste and culture flourish even in the wil- derness. An absurd charge is sometimes raised against the public schools that they are "godless and immoral." Some recent statistics taken in Massachusetts show that eighty per cent, of its crime is committed 1 Compendium of the Ninth Census, p. 456, and Re- port of the Commissioner of Education (Eaton), 1872. In 18T0, of 28,238,941 persons of age to read and write, more than one-fifth were illiterate. 19 by persons who have had no education, or a very imperfect one, that a still larger pro- portion have learned no trade, and that not far from seventy-five per cent, of its crim- inals are of foreign birth ;' intemperance, the natural resource of ignorance, is the parent of the greater part of this crime, and ninety-five per cent, of it is hereditary, transmitted from depraved and unculti- vated homes. A similar condition of things exists in New York and the Western States. If all the children of the community could be well educated and taught productive trades, crime would be diminished by more than one-half; and so effective already have been our common schools that they have reduced the criminal class among the native population to a small figure, and se- cured the peace of society.. The reports show that uneducated foreigners produce three-fourths of the crime and pauperism of our large cities. It is plain that the money expended upon the public schools is not laid out in vain. The seventy millions we give annually to education is the wisest outlay a nation ever entered upon. The influence of the common schools penetrates through all our social system, teaches equality and republican principles, offers the elements of commercial knowl- edge, and creates the reading public. The press plainly lives in the rapid progress of the teacher. Our common schools have produced a throng of readers, such as was never known before — countless, bountiful, and never satisfied. The periodicals and newspapers printed in the United States very nearly equal those of all the rest of the educated world. In 1870 it was esti- mated that 7642 were published in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in our own country 5871. 2 Since that time our publications have increased, it is supposed, nearly to an equality with those of all the world besides, and our forty millions of people read as much as all the rest of the hundreds of millions upon the same globe who can read at all. To our free institutions much of this in- 1 Report of the Commissioner of Education (Eaton), 1871, p. 549. Rep., 1872, p. 589. Rep., 1873, p. 173. Of 102,S55 criminals in England only 4297 could read and write well ; only 206 had had a "superior" educa- tion. 2 Hudson, Journalism in America, p. 773, 774. 290 EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. quisitive spirit is due ; but to the common- school system we owe the capacity of grati- fying our curiosity and cultivating a general knowledge of the condition of our fellow- men. It is estimated that the number of copies of newspapers and periodicals print- ed in Great Britain in 1870 was 350,000,000, and an equal number in France. 1 The census returns show that in the same year 1,500,000,000 copies were printed in the United States. Our readers consume and pay for a periodical literature twice as great as that of the two populous centres of European civilization ; and the census reports show how closely the progress of a demand for newspapers is connected with the advance of the common schools. Where there are no public schools, there are no newspapers ; where the teacher leads the way, the press follows. In uneducated Georgia, for example, 2 with a population of nearly 1,200,000, there are only 123 newspa- pers and periodicals ; in Massachusetts, with a population of nearly 1,500,000, there are 280. The circulation of the newspapers of Georgia is 14,447,388 ; of Massachusetts, 107,691,952. In educated Ohio the annual circulation was, in 1870, 93,000,000 in a pop- ulation of 2,662,681. In uneducated Texas, fivefold as large as Ohio, with a population of 885,000, the circulation was 5,813,432. Only seven copies of a newspaper are print- ed yearly in Texas for each inhabitant ; in Ohio, 35 ; in Massachusetts, 74 ; in Ala- bama, 9 ; in Pennsylvania, 67. The total numher of publications in North Carolina, we are told, would allow only one paper to each inhabitant every three months ; 3 New York prints 113 copies a year for each of its people. California stands next in this proportion, and allows eighty-two copies a year to each inhabitant. Its people probably con- sume at home more newspapers in propor- tion to their numbers than any part of the world — a proof that the emigrants to the Golden State have been well educated, and their common schools effective. It would, indeed, be ungenerous to pursue further this 1 Hudson, p. 774. 2 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1871, p. 561-563. See Compendium of the Ninth Census, p. 510. 3 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1871, p. 559. contrast between the literature and intelli- gence of the different portions of our coun- try. Temporary obstacles have divided us in this particular. We may reasonably trust that the common schools will win at last an equal victory and control in every sec- tion of the Union. These two great intellectual agents, the schools and the press, indissolubly united, have produced the physical progress of the country. They have built railways, canals, steamers, telegraphs. Our people converse with each other through their newspapers, and hold their consultations in open day. Publicity has become a part of our national life. Like the Roman patriot who desired all his acts to be seen and known by his countrymen, we throw open all our doors and windows to the public. All is activity with us, curiosity, and vigilance. It would be quite impossible, indeed, to trace in a few pages the achievements of the common schools. They have extended the duration of human life among us, 1 checked disease, cultivated cleanliness, founded new States, planted cities, indicated the sites of future capitals. The publisher finds the purchas- ers of his books in their graduates, the mer- chant and manufacturer depend upon their silent energy, the churches are filled with their pupils, and the lecture-rooms gratify the curiosity excited in their midst. Mill- ions of active intellects, the offspring of the public schools, listen to the sweet strains of Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier, muse with Bancroft on the thrilling exploits of freedom, or wait to hail the new bard and the rising thinker, whether he comes from the Sierras of Nevada or the crowded cities of the East. I That the common-school system is still imperfect no one can doubt :'it is a vast ma- chine, whose various parts are capable of ceaseless improvements.. Truancy prevails to a great degree, and can only be removed by a general compulsory law. The teachers in many parts of the country are themselves imperfectly trained, their salaries are often miserably low. Men have not yet learned i So Haushoffer, Statistik, p. 200. Wo die Civiliza- tion die grossten Portschritte macht, beobachtet man auch die grosste Abnahme der Sterblichkeit. We want more careful statistics on this Lice point, as on many others. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 291 that it is cheaper and safer to build school- houses than ships aud forts, and that good schools are always profitable. But the idea is rapidly spreading, and it can not be long before our school-houses will be every where models of neatness, and our teachers at least as well paid as our judges or constables. In one direction the system is destined to make an extraordinary advance. The plan of technical and industrial instruction is already beginning to make great progress among our educators. It has long been found in Europe that the elements of a trade could be rapidly acquired in childhood. Germany, Austria, and Belgium have all their industrial schools, where manufactur- ing, masonry, building, carpentering, engi- neering, are taught practically, and where young men, while they study history and geography, may also learn a trade. 1 The educated artisans of Germany already sur- pass those of all other countries. If we wish to preserve our equality with the European workman we must turn the vast powers of the common schools to industrial instruc- tion. Already the subject has met with careful attention among us. Schools of sci- ence have long been in use, but they scarce- ly reach the industrial classes. In 1862 Congress gave a liberal endowment of land to each State to establish these schools of labor. 2 New York received 990,000 acres, Ohio 630,000, and every State its share, pro- portioned to its population. Various excel- lent institutions have been founded. Illi- nois has a flourishing industrial university. Michigan led the way in opening these schools. 3 Nearly all the States have em- ployed the national gift in some useful man- ner. But the chief problem of our future educators will no doubt be how to make ev- ery common school the means of spreading a knowledge of the arts, and to join invari- ably with every education some useful pur- suit. There is no reason why our working classes should not also be our most highly educated classes, the most intelligent, the » J. W. Hoyt, Report on Education, 1870, p. 118- 127, notices the "building schools," agricultural, com- mercial, etc., of the Continent. Lace-making, clock- making, and all the arts are taught. a See Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1871, p. 425. 3 See a careful account of the Western higher schools, Tenbrook, American State Universities. most refined. What the republic requires is the healthy mind in the healthy body ; and regular physical labor should always be joined with mental. To unite these condi- tions in our national education will no doubt be more than ever the aim of the teacher. Gymnastic sports are useful ; ridiug, leap- ing, rowing, are not to be neglected ;' but labor on the farm, in the factory, with the mason or the mechanic, will prove of signal value in producing health of mind and body, and the experience of foreign schools shows that children learn with eagerness and pleas- ure the elements of all industrial pursuits. Every child must at last be taught some useful trade. In the higher grades of education our system is capable of a wide improvement. Our method of grading the schools is every where imperfect. Mr. Matthew Arnold pre- sents an attractive picture of the organiza- tion of the higher schools of Prussia. 2 Step by step they rise from the primary schools, through a course of instruction suited to ev- ery pursuit in life, until they blend with the Berlin University, the most perfect, it is sup- posed, of all the means of intellectual im- provement. 3 The gymnasia, pro-gymnasia, real schools, and upper burgher schools af- ford instruction for the merchant and the scholar. The gymnasia prepare the stu- dents for the university, the real schools for other pursuits. In the latter the modern languages take the place of the ancient. The thoroughness of the Prussian system is due to the strictness of the examinations, the regular promotion from grade to grade, the necessity of a university degree to the acquisition of a profession : and it is certain that our own schools may well borrow the strictness of the Prussian. No one should be permitted to take what is called a " de- gree" without proper preparation. To win a degree should be made an object of real value and interest. It should be part of the duty of government, if it assumes the charge of our national education, to see that it is 1 In London it is even proposed to teach swimming to the school-children. 2 Higher Schools and Universities in Germany, p. 7. " I believe," he says (p. 44), " that the public schools are preferred in Prussia on their merits," etc. This feeling must also become prevalent with us. 3 " The most distinguished and influential university in the world," says Mr. Hoyt. Report, p. 349. 292 EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. ■well done, to enforce thoroughness, and pro- vide for an adequate return for its outlay ; and this in Prussia is secured by a system of rigorous examinations. It is somewhat mortifying to be assured that, after all our generous outlay upon our common schools, we are still surpassed in some particulars by the Europeans, and that even our costly school buildings in Boston and New York are excelled by those of Ber- lin, Vienna, and London. 1 The village school- houses of Switzerland are said to be un- equaled in grace and simplicity. They are surrounded by gardens or play-grounds, and imbedded in flowers. In London, where land is cheap, a large play-ground is pro- vided for the children ; and several of its new school-houses are so convenient and admirable that they may instruct even our most successful builders. And of the for- eign teachers, especially those of Germany, we are told that they are graduates of a uni- versity, acquainted with the whole range of letters and science, and carefully instructed in the art of teaching ; that they have giv- en themselves to their profession from early youth with ardor, and improve each year by active practice. They form a dignified com- munity of state officials. They have usu- ally, at least in the higher grades, adequate salaries, and a pension in sickness or old age. In Holland the teachers have already become the most respectable class in the community; and in Prussia their value is allowed by a most intelligent government. Yet we can have no doubt that many of our American teachers already equal in attain- ments even those of Holland, and that our great army of instructors is rapidly improv- ing in discipline and skill. Our teachers are already often the purest and wisest part of our people. When their profession is made a safe and profitable one they will seldom leave it. Our best teachers already give their whole lives to their pursuit, and it is chiefly those who are badly paid who seek some other means of living. It must be the aim of our system to make the teach- er's employment permanent. i Massachusetts Report, 1873-74, p. 35. Mr. Phil- brick's criticism is often just, but I fear his notion of the happy condition of the European teacher is not well founded. In Prussia the primary teachers are badly paid. The tendency of American education is evidently to constant and valuable prog- ress. [Our schools and teachers are far bet- ter than they were ten or twenty years ago. Our school buildings are finer and more com- plete, in general, than those of any European nation, except, perhaps, Switzerland and a part of Germany. 1 Of infinite grace and va- riety, these palaces and cottages of educa- tion adorn all our land. Normal schools are springing up in all the States with singular rapidity ; practical learning is making con- stant advances among us. We have already discovered the defects of our system, and are laboring to amend them. But the question is already presented to us whether the na- tional government should not provide for the common welfare by insisting upon the general education of the vast mass of our illiterates. In the instance of the colored people, it seems a duty imposed upon the nation to educate them all ; and the im- mense influx of uncultivated foreigners and the large body of uneducated whites at the South demand some immediate remedy for a pressing danger. The safety of the gov- ernment requires that it should enforce and support every where popular instruction. Where a State fails to educate its people, the national government has plainly a right to interfere, and a general system of public instruction might be formed which would enforce every where thorough and practical teaching, uniformity in study, and mental equality throughout the nation. Our col- leges and universities must finally form a part of the national system, and offer a free education in the highest branches to every intelligent citizen. The extraordinary cheapness of the Amer- ican school system, 2 its effectiveness, its ad- mirable influence upon morals and public order, its equity and liberality, have been 1 A great mass of information may be found in the reports of Mr. Eaton, the National Commissioner of Education, and the value of his bureau is already ap- parent. It has spread many striking facts. 2 The elegance and convenience of such buildings as the Worcester High School, the Omaha palace, with its Mansard-roof and graceful spires, the New York Normal School, or the infinite series of magnificent school buildings reaching from ocean to ocean, would scarcely seem to admit of the idea of cheapness, yet the cost of a single Versailles or Blenheim would sur- pass all that we have laid out thus far on school- houses. EDUCATIONAL PROSPECTS. 29,3 proved in every part of the Union, and, like a prudent family, the nation educates its children in common. The chief excellence of our system is that it teaches pure repub- licanism. In private schools and colleges the principle of human equality upon which our country leans for safety is sometimes for- gotten. Foreign impulses, frivolities, fash- ions, barbarisms, may at times corrupt our youth, and reach even the pulpit and the press. But the public schools bravely re- pel the wave of European reaction, and are founded upon the immutable principles of 1776. In the public schools Samuel and John Adams, Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin speak to us with the fresh ardor of the dawn of freedom, inculcate a rising humanity, and demand for their new repub- lic a plain advance over the savage blind- ness of the past. So long as our public schools nourish, the country is safe. So long as American ideas are taught by ac- complished and patriotic teachers to each new generation, the republic will ever live, f When falls the common-school sys- tem, freedom perishes and reason dies."! Possessed of this admirable instrument, we may teach with irresistible clearness the principles of 1776, and the second century of the republic may witness a rapid growth of knowledge among us unequaled among nations. XL SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. I.— THE EXACT SCIENCES. THE condition of the British dependen- cies in North America during the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries was by no means favorable to the growth among their inhabitants of a high order of intellectual culture, whether literary, aesthetic, or scien- tific. During a large portion of this pe- riod, the colonies were but feeble and iso- lated settlements dotted at wide intervals along a sea-coast a thousand miles in length, and separated from each other by vast stretches of unbroken forest. Even when in the lapse of time these natural barriers had been more or less completely broken down, and the infant communities began to mingle with each other along their bound- aries, the territory redeemed to civilization formed still but a narrow fringe along the margin of a wilderness of unknown extent, and its occupants continued every where, except in the immediate neighborhood of the original centres of population, to be sub- ject to all the hardships and privations of a pioneer life. To these natural disadvan- tages must be added the anxieties and oft- en serious molestations arising out of the immediate contact of the colonies upon their extended frontier with the aboriginal inhab- itants of the continent — tribes of savages with whom their relations were always pre- carious and often hostile ; and out of the wars in which Great Britain was more or less constantly engaged with the Continent- al powers which had also their outposts on these shores. These were strifes in which the colonies became embroiled in spite of themselves, and in which, while they had every thing to suffer, they had nothing whatever to gain. When along with these things we consider the absence upon this continent, during the entire period preceding our Revolutionary struggle, of all the aids indispensable to the prosecution of original research by the scholar or man of science — - as, for instance, libraries, archives, collec- tions, museums, laboratories, observatories, universities, and eyen living expositors of the knowledge already existing — it should surprise us not so much that in the early dawn of the republic our people had not yet won for themselves a lofty name for their achievements in letters or in science as that they should have been, as they were in fact, generally well educated in the rudiments of knowledge, so that such a thing as gross ignorance was hardly known among them. In any review of the progress of science, therefore, during the first century of the re- public, the period which lies between the declaration of independence and the close of the eighteenth century may, without dan- ger of any important omission, be passed over in silence. There were men, it is true, in the colonies and in the newly emanci- pated States whose native abilities and dis- tinguished attainments as astronomers or physicists won for them a reputation which in their time reached to other lands, and which has since come down to us; but these, though they were masters, were not originators, and their names are but inci- dentally connected with the history of sci- ence. Of this class David Rittenhouse is an honorable example. His scientific activ- ity is illustrated in his numerous communi- cations to the American Philosophical So- ciety, of which he was a member, and in the presidency of which he succeeded Franklin — communications which display not only a powerful but also a remarkably versatile mind; and his singular ingenuity and ex- traordinary mechanical skill are attested by his orreries, still to be seen in the College of New Jersey and the University of Pennsyl- vania, which, according to the account giv- en in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society, show the movements of the heav- enly bodies for a period of five thousand years, and their positions in each year, month, day, and hour, with such accuracy as not in all this time to differ sensibly from those given by the astronomical tables. Toward the close of the century the cele- brated Priestley, whose discoveries entitle him to a high place among the original in- ENCOURAGEMENT BY THE GOVERNMENT. 295 vestigators of his day, made our country his home ; but as the successes to which his fame is due were achieved before he left his native country, and as his later years were mainly occupied with the profitless task of defending a no w long exploded theory, which his own discoveries had already rendered in- defensible, and which his contemporaries were every where even then abandoning, he can not be counted as having materially contributed to the advancement of science in America. Another illustrious name be- longs to this time, which should have been ours, but which was lost to us by influences not wholly unlike those which gained us Priestley. Benjamin Thompson, afterward Count of Rumford, was an American who early in life abandoned a home and a coun- try which his fellow-citizens had made in- tolerable. Received into the service of a foreign prince, his force of character, activ- ity of intellect, and singularly practical turn of mind at once commanded apprecia- tion, and secured to him a position which enabled him to achieve a noble reputation not only as an efficient administrative offi- cer and a zealous philanthropist, but also as an original and sagacious scientific investi- gator. To Rumford belongs the immortal honor of having boldly announced, before the close of the eigbteenth century, a truth which the world was not very ready to re- ceive till near the middle of the nineteenth, a truth which lies at the foundation of the mechanical theory of heat, and through that theory leads to the grandest generalization in the history of science — the truth that heat is a mode of motion. Now that this truth has come to be universally admitted, America may be justly proud that its dis- covery was made by one of her own sons. 1 Before proceeding with the history of sci- ence in America during the nineteenth cen- tury, it might be proper, would space per- mit, to notice the extent to wbich its growth has been encouraged by the fostering baud of the government, and the modes in which 1 Bacon and Locke, it is true, spoke of heat as mo- tion ; but with them the view was a pure hypothesis ; with Rumford it was a demonstrated certainty. Speak- ing of the paper in which it was communicated to the Royal Society, Professor Tyndall says: "Rumford in this memoir annihilated the material theory of heat. Nothing on the subject more powerful has since been written." this encouragement has been shown, and also to enumerate the principal organizations through which its votaries have endeavored to promote its progress by associated effort, and the channels of publication through which the results of their labors have been given to the world. With these materials an interesting chapter might be written, for which, however, we can find no place here. That the government of the United States, though it has as yet made no systematic and permanent provision for promoting scientific investigation, has not been wanting in lib- erality when solicited to lend its occasional aid to special objects of scientific interest, will be evident when we call to mind the Wilkes exploring expedition of 1838, the Lynch Dead Sea exploration of 1848, the solar parallax expedition under Gilliss in 1849, the expedition of the Polaris in 1871, and the more recent provision for the dis- patch of parties to distant parts of the world to observe the transit of Venus of 1874. But besides these instances, in which the advancement of science for its own sake has been the exclusive aim of Congressional appropriations, many other examples may be mentioned in which legislation has been indirectly favorable to the same end. The Coast Survey is, from the necessity of things, a scientific institution and a school for train- ing scientific men. The same is true of the public survey of the great lakes, of the boundary commissions, of the exploring ex- peditions in the heart of the continent, of the Naval Observatory, of tbe Nautical Al- manac Office, and of the special commissions from time to time created for investigating experimentally certain questions regarded as practical, which have nevertheless im- portant scientific relations, such as the heat developed in the combustion of coal, the te- nacity, rigidity, and other useful qualities of different descriptions of iron and steel, the causes producing the explosions of steam- boilers, and others of like character. Though we can attempt no history of sci- entific associations or organizations, there is one exception which may properly be made to this rule. The Smithsonian Institution is an organization unique in its character, which for the past thirty years has held a peculiar relation to the science of the coun- try, of which it has been, also, one of the 295 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. moat powerful promoters. In the language of the will of its founder, an English gentle- man of wealth who had never visited this country, it has for its large and liheral ob- ject " the increase and diffusion of knowl- edge among men." The fund from which it derives its revenue is bequeathed in trust to the United States of America, and its affairs are administered by a Board of Regents ap- pointed principally by the Senate. During the infancy of the institution there was at one time danger that, instead of being made an instrumentality for the increase of knowl- edge by the encouragement of original re- search, it would become merely a depository of objects of interest in natural bistory or archaeology, and of books of general litera- ture, exhausting itself thus in the creation of a museum and a library. To this it was proposed to add a show of diffusing knowl- edge by means of popular lectures delivered annually in Washington during the winter. Such lectures were, in fact, given down to about 1860 ; but the danger menaced by the other part of the project was averted by the earnest zeal and conclusive logic with which the purposes of the founder were set forth and defended by the able secretary of the institution, Professor Joseph Henry. Thus for a long period of years the institution has employed all its available income in defray- ing, in whole or in part, the expense of orig- inal investigations, and in publishing the results of these, and of any others independ- ently made which, after careful examination by expert judges, have appeared to be sub- stantially valuable contributions to knowl- edge. Under the title of Smithsonian Con- tributions to Knowledge there have now been published nineteen large quarto volumes, embracing elaborate monographs on a large variety of subjects in exact science, in nat- ural history, in ethnology, and in linguistics, including among them the important astro- nomical researches of Walker, Newcomb, and Stockwell, the ingenious discussions of rotary motion by General Barnard, the elab- orate investigations of terrestrial magnetism by Bache, the grammar and vocabulary of the Dakota language by Riggs, and the explorations of the North American earth mounds by Squier and Davis. In addition to its usefulness in provoking scientific research, of which it would be dif- ficult to measure the value, the institution has also fulfilled, and is now fulfilling, a most important function in acting as the organ of a widely extended system of scien- tific exchanges between our own and foreign countries. Its correspondents and agents are scattered every where throughout the civilized world. Plants, minerals, books, specimens in natural history, objects of ar- chaeological interest — every thing, in short, which belongs to the material, or is service- able for the illustration, of science is through its instrumentality expeditiously forwarded to the remotest destination, without any ex- pense, except that which attends the local delivery, to sender or receiver. No such agency any where else exists. The degree to which it is promotive of scientific activ- ity, not only by stimulating individual ef- fort, but by bringing distant individuals into frequent communication with each oth- er, and inducing systematic co-operation, need hardly be insisted on. In passing now to the proper history of science itself, it is necessary to remark that of a subject occupying so broad a field only the merest outline can here be given, and that that outline can embrace only such portion of this history as is properly Amer- ican. Convenience also suggests that each department of science, or group of allied sciences, should be considered separately. In the pure mathematics our country has an honorable, if not a very extensive, record. The number of men who deserve to be call- ed truly eminent as mathematicians in any country or in any age is always compara- tively small, and the number of those whose eminence is due to real originality of genius is smaller still. It accordingly happens that of those who are most spoken of in their own time for the presumed profundity of their mathematical knowledge or their ingenu- ity in the use of mathematical methods the larger proportion leave behind them no per- manent monuments of this imagined and perhaps real greatness. Among the men distinguished for their mathematical ability whom our country has produced there are nevertheless a few whose published works have been substantial contributions to the advancement of their favorite science, and have won for them a celebrity destined to be enduring. In this honorable record no name ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY. 297 stands higher than that of Nathaniel Bow- ditch, whose voluminous and lucid commen- tary on the Mecanique Celeste of Laplace not only eclipsed the multitude of his previous admirable performances, but drew from ana- lysts and physical astronomers of the highest eminence abroad most enthusiastic expres- sions of commendation. Professor Benjamin Peirce, of Harvard University, a pupil and friend of Bowditch, still in the vigor of life, stands hardly second to his master in the originality and value of his contributions to mathematical literature. His Analytic Me- chanics, which is professedly an attempt to consolidate the latest researches and the most exalted forms of thought of the great geom- eters into a consistent and uniform treatise, is more than it professes to be. It is rather an attempt — successfully accomplished — to carry back the fundamental principles of the science to a more profound and central origin, and thence to shorten the path to the most fruitful forms of research. The most remarkable and most original of Pro- fessor Peirce's publications is the descrip- tion of a new mathematical method, called by him " Linear Associative Algebra." This method seems to be a step in the direction of quaternions, but a larger one. It there- fore oversteps the power of human concep- tion to grasp its essence, while its visible machinery is algebraic, and in the modes of its use it has analogies both with alge- bra and with quaternions. The method is of too recent origin to have been largely developed in its capabilities or tested in its applications. Of other eminent mathematicians whose labors deserve a more extended notice our limits allow but a mere mention. The alge- bra of Professor Theodore Strong, the mem- oir on "Musical Temperament" by Professor A. M. Fisher, the essay of Professor A. D. Stanley on the "Calculus of Variations," Professor Patterson's " Calculus of Opera- tions," Professor Newton's memoirs on ques- tions of higher geometry and on transcend- ental curves, General Alvord's " Tangencies of Circles and Spheres," Professor Ferrel's " Converging Series," and his investigation of the movements of the atmosphere, Gen- eral Barnard's " Theory of the Gyroscope" and "Problems in Rotary Motion," are all valuable contributions to mathematical sci- ence. The "Problems" last named treat chiefly of the earth's rotation, and the re- sulting precession of the equinoxes, em- bracing a discussion of the relation to pre- cession of the earth's internal structure, and refuting conclusively the deductions of a very celebrated investigation of this sub- ject by the late W. Hopkins, while demon- strating, ou other grounds than his, the ex- istence of a thick rigid crust. ASTRONOMY. There are several distinct departments of astronomical science which are often pur- sued independently of each other. The eld- er Herschel occupied himself chiefly with discovery ; Tycho Brahe, with the accurate determination of the places of known ob- jects. Our gifted countryman, Mitchell, was especially interested in devising new meth- ods of observation and record ; our esteem- ed fellow-citizen, Mr. Rutherfurd, with the application of photography to astronomy. Some astronomers, like Newton, Lagrange, and Laplace at an earlier period, or like Ad- ams, Leverrier, Peirce, Newcomb, and Stock- well in our own time, have engaged in the theoretic investigation of the laws of celes- tial motion, and of the action of the heaven- ly bodies on each other. Others — and the number is large, including at present De la Rue, Huggins, Lockyer, Faye, and Secchi abroad, and Young, H. Draper, and Lang- ley among ourselves — have been busied in the fascinating study of solar and stellar physics. Finally, comets and shooting- stars, and the recently detected connection between these two seemingly very differ- ent classes of bodies, have been a subject of long-continued study, fruitful of inter- esting results, to a series of observers, among whom are most prominent at pres- ent Professor Schiaparelli, of Milan, and Professor Newton, of our own country. In connection with discovery, an interest- ing chapter might be written on the his- tory of the agencies to which discoveries are mainly due, that is, of observatories — a history which the limitation of our space necessarily excludes. Half a century ago such a thing as an astronomical observato- ry was unknown in the United States. At present the number is considerably greater than the necessity. Though the work of the observatory is the basis on which the 298 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. theory of the existing universe must rest, it is not a work which needs to be indefinitely repeated. With the very superior instru- ments which the skill of recent times has furnished, a few observatories, judiciously distributed over the earth's surface, are all that the physical astronomer requires. There are at present in the United States not fewer than thirty astronomical obser- vatories, probably more. If so many had been needed, they would still in many cases have been founded in vaiu, since no suitable provision has accompanied their erection for maintaining them subsequently in use. Some of them, connected with the colleges of the country, have, perhaps, been made sufficiently useful for purposes of instruc- tion to justify their erection ; but it is per- fectly clear that the founders in general have been laboring under the delusion that an observatory when once brought into ex- istence will somehow work itself. It has accordingly happened that, except in the case of the Naval Observatory, at Washing- ton, that of Harvard University, and, in its earlier period, tbat of the Cincinnati Obser- vatory, the responsibility for the use of the instruments, provided at great expense in these various establishments, has fallen upon men overburdened with heavy duties as in- structors, occupying the greater part of their time by day, and rendering continuous sys- tematic observation by night physically im- possible. Notwithstanding these disadvan- tages, several of the gentlemen here referred to have found time in the midst of their dis- tractions to render so signal services to as- tronomical science as to connect their names permanently with the history of its prog- ress. There exists, however, no adequate provision, and in general no provision at all, for the training of observers and the support of observation ; and hence much of this costly apparatus has been hitherto comparatively useless for the purposes of practical astronomy. Still less has there been a provision for what is now the most urgent necessity of the science — the encour- agement and maintenance of a class of as- tronomers of a superior order of scientific culture, devoted to the study and recon- struction of theory. This is a considera- tion to which the. benefactors of this no- blest of sciences, who have provided it with so many instruments of magnificent proportions as monuments of their liber- ality speaking to the eye, would do wisely in the future to turn their attention. Some of the most interesting of the as- tronomical discoveries of the century have been due to the keen-sightedness of Ameri- can observers. The great telescope of the Cambridge Observatory was mounted in the summer of 1847. On the 16th day of Sep- tember, 1848, it was the means of rendering for the first time visible to human eyes the eighth satellite of the planet Saturn — the eighth in the order of discovery, though the seventh in the order of distance from the planet. Five satellites of this planet had been discovered in the seventeenth cen- tury ; two more, very close to the ring, were seen in 1789 by Sir William Herschel, who, as illustrated in this example and in sever- al others, seems to have been endowed with an almost preternatural keenness of vision ; but his observations were not confirmed un- til his son, more than forty years after (1836), rediscovered one of them, and caught a sin- gle doubtful gliinpse of the other. Ten years later (1846) Mr. Lassell, of Liverpool, recovered the remaining one. The new sat- ellite discovered by the Messrs. Bond is faint- er than either of these two extremely diffi- cult objects, though more distant from the planet than any other, except that known as Iapetus. Between this satellite and Ti- tan, the next interior, a wide gap had been noticed to exist, Titan revolving around the primary in a little less than sixteen days, and Iapetus in more than seventy- nine. Bond's satellite, which has received the name Hyperion, has a period of a little over twenty-one days, so that it is compar- atively near to Titan, and leaves still a large seemingly unoccupied space between itself and Iapetus. It is remarkable that Hype- rion was noticed by Mr. Lassell on the 18th of September, only two days after its dis- covery by Bond. The most wonderful object in the uni- verse, as well to the physical astronomer as to the observer who surveys the heavens only for the gratification of his curiosity, is the double or multiple ring surrounding the planet Saturn. The ring is certainly dou- ble, a wide space separating the inner, broader, and brighter from the outer, nar- SATURN'S RINGS. 299 rower, and less bright. Small stars have sometimes been seen between the ring and the planet. Some very good observers have occasionally noticed what appeared to be lines of division in the breadth of both the rings, and these appearances, together with the deductions of theory as to the conditions necessary to the stability of the system, have led to the general belief that the rings are not rigid solids. Until the year 1850, how- ever, only two rings had been suspected to exist, unless by occasional and temporary subdivision. But on the 11th of November in that year there was noticed by the Messrs. Bond a shadowy appearance interior to the broad ring, which led them to suspect the existence of a third and almost nebulous ring, having a breadth about two-thirds as great as that of the narrow or outer ring. Subsequent observations confirmed them in this belief; and the same appearances were later noticed by Dawes and Lassell in En- gland. An interesting question hereupon arose as to whether this dusky ring was of recent formation, or had been noticed but not understood before. It was ascertained that Galle had meutioned appearances of a similar kind in a memoir published in 1838 ; and Father Secchi testified that such had been noticed in the observatory at Rome as early as 1828. Mr. Otto Struve also adduced evidences from the observations of J. Cas- sini in 1715, and those of Halley in 1720 and 1723, that the obscure ring had been no- ticed by those observers, and assumed by them to be a belt upon the planet itself. Mr. Struve created some excitement in the astronomical world by stating that on a comparison of the measurements of the ap- parent distance between the inner edge of the broad bright ring and the planet's disk made by his father in 1826 and by himself in 1851, together with an examination of similar measurements by Huyghens, Cas- sini, Bradley, Herschel, Encke, and Galle, he was satisfied that the inner edge of the bright ring is gradually approaching the planet, while the total breadth of the two rings is constantly increasing. This propo- sition was too startling to meet with ready acceptance by astronomers generally, and up to the present time the question remains where Struve left it, with, however, an ap- parently growing disposition to accept his conclusions. If it is true that the ring is slowly subsiding toward the planet, the hy- pothesis is not without plausibility that Bond's dusky ring may be composed of loosely scattered fragments, which, from causes possible to assign, have been accel- erated in their descent beyond the general mass. The astronomical discovery next in inter- est deserving mention, as an American con- tribution to science during the century, was remarkably enough made in the immediate neighborhood of the observatory which the successes of the Messrs. Bond had already made famous. Mr. Alvan Clark had just completed the great telescope of eighteen and a half inches designed for the Univer- sity of Mississippi, and now at Chicago, when on the night of January 31, 1862, his son, Mr. Alvan G. Clark, directing the instru- ment toward Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars, detected almost in contact with it a minute point of light which he recog- nized immediately as a companion star. Curiously enough, a well-founded suspicion had long been entertained that this star is double. Minute as are the annual proper motions of the fixed stars in the heavens, they are in general uniform and well ascer- tained. But the motion of Sirius was long ago discovered by Bessel to be affected by an irregularity such as would be produced by the action of some other body revolving with it around a common centre. The or- bit of the imaginary attendant star had, in fact, been inferred by Peters, of Altona, and Safford, then of the Cambridge Observatory. No scrutiny with instruments then existing had, however, been successful in detecting this attendant, when the newly finished glass of Mr. Clark made it visible without effort. After its discovery it was seen with the Harvard equatorial and others of less power, but not till 1866 with the 9|-inch Mu- nich glass of the Naval Observatory. This admirable discovery, or more properly the construction of a glass capable of making a discovery so difficult, was rewarded by the Academy of Sciences of France by the pres- entation to Mr. Clark of the Lalande Medal — a prize annually decreed to the author of the most interesting discovery of the year. Several comets have been discovered by American astronomers, among which may 300 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. be mentioned, the first of 1846, discovered February 26, 1846, by William C. Bond, of which the elliptic elements were determined by Peirce, giving a period of ninety-five years. The comet known by the name of Miss Maria Mitchell was first seen by her on October 1, 1847, at her private observatory in Nantucket. Two days later it was also seen by De Vico at Rome, and Mr. H. P. Tuttle at Cambridge. The comet 1862, III., which was discovered by Mr. Tuttle July 18, 1862, and by Mr. Thomas Simons, of Al- bany, on the same evening, but later, be- longs to the August stream of meteoroids. An interesting fact in regard to Miss Mitch- ell's comet is that, four days after its discov- ery, it passed centrally over a fixed star of the fifth magnitude without in the slightest degree obscuring it. For a brief time the star was, in fact, so truly in the centre of the nebulosity that it appeared like the proper nucleus of the comet. Of the swarm of minute planets which occupy the place between Mars and Jupi- ter, where the law of Bode indicates a mem- ber of the solar system to be missiug, about one-third have been discovered by American observers. It is remarkable that all of this numerous group, now amounting to no few- er than 153, belong to the nineteenth centu- ry, the first to be detected having been dis- covered on the eveniug of the first day of the century, January 1, 1801, by Piazzi, at Palermo. Three others were discovered within the seven years next succeeding, after which nearly forty years elapsed with- out adding to the number. Up to the close of 1850 the total number known amounted to thirteen only. Within the twenty-five years which have since elapsed there have been discovered 140 more, or about six per annum. It is to be observed that discovery in recent years has been greatly facilitated by the Berlin star maps and other celestial charts, in which every star down to the ninth magnitude is set down. When an ob- ject is seen which is not in the map, there- fore, the probability is great that it is an as- teroid, and the question will be settled by a second observation on the following night, or even a few hours later on the same night. The first American astronomer to detect an asteroid previously unknown was Mr. James Ferguson, of the Naval Observatory, by whom the thirty-first of the series, now known as Euphrosyne, was found on September 1, 1854. Two others were subsequently dis- covered by him, making three in all. Be- sides these, there have been discovered one by Searle, two by Tuttle, sixteen by Watson, and twenty-two by Peters, making a total of forty-four, all discovered within a period of about twenty years. Practical Astronomy. — The automatic reg- istration of time observations by means of electro -magnetism is an improvement in practical astronomy due to American inge- nuity. The merit of its first suggestion has been somewhat in dispute, but the earliest experimental demonstration of its feasibil- ity was certainly made by Professor John Locke, of Cincinnati, who in 1848 intro- duced a clock provided with a suitable mechanism into the circuit of the electric telegraph between Cincinnati and Pitts- burg. The distance is four hundred miles, and the experiment was continued for two hours, during which the beats were regu- larly registered at every station through- out the whole line. The application to astronomical observation immediately fol- lowed. In recognition of the value of this invention, Congress awarded to Dr. Locke the sum of ten thousand dollars, and or- dered a clock of the same description to be constructed for the Naval Observatory. As a recording instrument, the ordinary tel- egraphic register of Professor Morse was at first employed. More convenient forms of apparatus were subsequently devised by Professor Mitchell, Mr. Joseph Saxton, of the Coast Survey, and Messrs. W. C. and George P. Bond, who introduced the regulator which has since been so almost universally em- ployed in these instruments, known as Bond's spring governor. More recently (1871) a printing chronograph has been in- vented by Professor George W. Hough, of the Dudley Observatory, which records to the hundredths of a secoud, and saves to the observer who employs it the labor and time required for deciphering and record- ing in figures the indications of the regis- ter in common use. Tlie electro-magnetic method of recording transits was adopted without delay in the observatories of the United States, and soon after found its way into those of Great Britain and the conti- IMPROVEMENT OF INSTRUMENTS. 301 nent of Europe, where it was known as the American method. Of its great value in promoting accuracy it is not necessary to speak ; but only those who have had expe- rience in observation can adequately ap- preciate the degree to which it has lighten- ed the labor of the observer. Previously to its introduction the clock divided with the object viewed the observer's attention, and the necessity for unceasing vigilance was exhausting in the extreme. If nothing else had been gained by it but this, the benefit would be incalculable. The introduction of the electric chrono- graph into observatories furnished a very simple means of determining differences of longitude between any two places connect- ed by a telegraphic wire. These determi- nations are made by comparing the exact times of transit of a given celestial object over the meridians of both places, a single clock giving the times for both, or by trans- mitting time signals alternately in opposite directions compared with the clocks at both ends. The earliest observations of this kind were made in January, 1849, between Wash- ington and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The method has since been brought into very extensive use throughout the world. In 1867, and again in 1871 and in 1872, it was employed to determine the difference of longitude between Greenwich and Wash- ington, by means, in the first instance, of the Anglo-American cable, and, in the sec- ond and third, of the French, from Brest to St. Pierre, and Danbury, Massachusetts. It may be interesting to compare the results thus obtained with those of the great chron- ometric expeditions of 1849 and 1855 be- tween Cambridge and Liverpool — expedi- tions which, in the words of Mr. W. C. Bond, "for the magnitude and completeness of their equipments have not been equaled by any of the similar undertakings of Euro- pean governments. Even the 'Expedition Chronometrique' of Struve was on a scale much less extensive." In 1855 fifty -two nautical chronometers were transported six times between Cambridge and Liverpool, giving nearly three hundred individual lon- gitude determinations. The difference of longitude obtained was 4/t. 44m. 31.8s. Pre- vious expeditions had given 4/i. 44m. 30.6s., showing a difference between the two of 1.2s. The cable results (omitting hours and minutes) were : 1867, 31.00s. ; 1871, 30.96s. ; 1872, 30.99s., the largest discrepancy being only four one-hundredths of a second. In observing for longitude, the velocity of propagation of electric impulses in the wires of the circuit becomes a matter re- quiring attention, and thus the telegraph has become the means of throwing light upon this interesting question in physics. The results obtained have differed very widely, being dependent on difference of material of the conductor, difference of cross- section, and largely upou differences of sur- rounding conditions. In the ordinary iron wires of the American telegraphic lines the velocity seems not to exceed fifteen or six- teen thousand miles per second. Improvement of Instruments. — Until about 1850 the observatories of the United States were furnished with instruments of foreign manufacture exclusively. Since that time the telescopes of American opticians have rivaled, if they have not surpassed, in ex- cellence those of the most celebrated con- structors of the Old World. The 12^-inch equatorial of the Michigan University is one of many admirable instruments produced by Mr. Henry Fitz, of New York, an ingen- ious artisan, who was removed by a prema- ture death just as his reputation had been firmly established, and as he was preparing for a bolder attempt than any of those in which he had been previously so successful — the construction of an objective of twen- ty-four inches aperture. Mr. Charles A. Spencer, of Canastota, New York, in the year 1848 suddenly acquired an extraordinary celebrity for superior skill in constructing objectives for microscopes. Having proved himself to be without a superior in this field, he turned his attention to the con- struction of telescopes with a success no less signal. One of the most remarkable examples on record of a career commenced without previous preparation, rather late in life, in a most difficult art, and leading in the end to the highest eminence, is to be found in the history of Mr. Alvan Clark, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who undertook in 1844, without thought of going further, to assist his sou, a lad of seventeen, in the grinding of a metal speculum. The earlier years of Mr. Clark had beeu spent upon a 302 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. farm. After the age of twenty-two he had occupied himself with engraving for cali- co-printing, and subsequently with portrait painting, which pursuit he followed for ten years with eminent success. In assisting his son, his object was to further the aspi- ration of the youth to become a professional optician, and this he hoped to accomplish by himself learning in order that he might teach. After several experiments with met- als, he was encouraged by Professor Peirce to undertake a refractor. The son hesita- ted ; the father allowed himself to be per- suaded, and his boldness was rewarded by such a degree of success as to lead him grad- ually to abandon all other occupations and to become a professional optician himself. The great excellence of his work was first justly appreciated by Mr. W. R. Dawes, of Haddenham, England, a distinguished as- tronomer, possessed of a keen vision, and a critical judge of instruments. Mr. Dawes had purchased two or three glasses of seven or eight inches aperture of Mr. Clark, and had made him well known in England be- fore his own countrymen became aware how superior an artisan they had among them. In February, 1860, the sum of $10,000 was appropriated by the trustees of the Univer- sity of Mississippi to defray the expense of an object-glass for an equatorial telescope to be placed in the observatory of that in- stitution. The writer of this article was intrusted with the responsibility of select- ing the artisan in whose hands this impor- tant work should be placed. His choice fell upon Mr. Clark, and instructions were given that the glass should be made of sufficient size to exhaust the entire appropriation. According to a scale of prices which Mr. Clark had arranged, a glass worth $10,000 should measure about seventeen and a half inches. The diameter was more than twice as great as that of any which Mr. Clark had made before ; and it was his preference and his proposition to prepare one of exactly the size of the Munich glass in the Cambridge Observatory, viz., fifteen inches, in order that he might compare it with that by placing it in the same tube and observing the same objects on the same nights. Mr. George P. Bond, then in charge of the observatory, expressed his entire willingness to afford this opportunity of comparison, but advised against the limitation of size, saying, "Al- ways improve if you can upon the last thing done." Mr. Clark finally consented to at- tempt the larger diameter, and the neces- sary disks were ordered. They were consid- erably in excess of the size necessary for the glass proposed, and on careful examination were found to be perfect to the extreme borders, so that Mr. Clark reported that it would be quite possible to grind them to a diameter of eighteen and a half inches, ex- ceeding by an inch the size which the appro- priation allowed. It seemed an unjustifiable sacrifice to cut down to such an extent a material so excellent, and Mr. Clark was de- sired, in reply, to work the disks to as large a diameter as they would bear, and assured that the appropriation would be increased accordingly. Under these circumstances he proceeded with the work with such rapidity that in June, 1861, he was able to give no- tice that the glass would be ready for a pre- liminary examination in the month of Au- gust succeeding. The troubles of the times prevented such an examination, and no one of those with whom the order for this in- strument originated has ever had an oppor- tunity of looking through it. The latest achievement of Mr. Clark has been the con- struction of the grand 26 -inch objective erected in 1873 in the Naval Observatory at Washington. Some of the most successful constructors of astronomical instruments in our country are to be found among the astronomers themselves. Mr. Lewis M. Rutherfurd, of New York, is the originator of a depart- ment of practical astronomy requiring the use of instruments specially adapted to its purposes ; and as the most expeditious and satisfactory mode of providing these instru- ments, he resolved to construct them him- self. His idea was to make photography subservient to the uses of astronomy, and especially of urauography. Considering how rare are the occasions in which atmospheric conditions are altogether favorable to the observation of difficult objects in the heav- ens, and how large is the necessary con- sumption of time in making measurements of position and distance between the objects observed, it occurred to him that if these favorable opportunities should be seized to make exact photographic maps of the groups MR. RUTHERFUED'S PHOTOGRAPHIC APPARATUS. 303 under examination, measurements of these maps might take the place of direct meas- urements of the stars, and that thus a single evening might be made productive of results as numerous and valuable as those obtained in many months in the ordinary course of observation. His first attempts at a prac- tical realization of this idea were made with a reflecting telescope, for the reason that a parabolic speculum is free from aberration both of color and figure. The Cassegrainian form was adopted, as best suited to the pur- pose ; but the tremors produced by passing street vehicles were so largely magnified by the double reflection in this instrument that he was soon compelled to abandon it for the refractor. A little experience, however, taught him that the refracting telescopes in common use, whatever their degree of excel- lence for purely optical purposes, would not furnish him celestial photographs exhibit- ing the stars with the degree of sharpness which his plan required. Though the lumi- nous rays are well concentrated, the actinic rays are scattered, giving indistinct images of the larger stars, and failing to exhibit minute ones at all. He therefore undertook the construction of an objective corrected for actinic effect, without regard to color. The whole of the work, theoretic and prac- tical, was done by himself, and about the year 1863 he completed an actin-aplauatic object- ive of eleven and a quarter inches aperture, which gave results entirely satisfactory. With this he speedily obtained many sharp- ly defined maps of star groups upon glass, and it remained only to effect the intended measurements upon these maps. Here was presented a new mechanical problem of pe- culiar difficulty. No known micrometric ap- paratus was adapted either in form or in di- mensions to effect these measurements. Mr. Rutherfurd met the difficulty with his char- acteristic ingenuity, and with his own hands constructed an instrument in which, by means of an observing microscope directed toward the plate, and having motion in two 'directions at right angles to each other, the co-ordinates of position of the objects ob- served may be measured with a delicacy which leaves nothing to be desired. In the original form of this instrument a microme- ter screw was depended on to give these di- mensions, and an immense amount of labor was expended in the construction of such a screw and in determining its error. The investigation resulted, however, in demon- strating that the error of the screw is not constant, no matter how faultless the work- manship or how excellent the material. Discarding the screw, therefore, for pur- poses of measurement, Mr. Rutherfurd in- troduces into the instrument, as at present constructed, two auxiliary microscopes trav- eling with the observing microscope, one in each direction, and reading the distances traveled upon fixed scales ruled on glass. In a paper read before the National Acad- emy of Sciences in 1866 Mr. Rutherfurd gave an account of his method ; and at the same meeting a discussion of measurements made at his observatory upon x>hotographs of the Pleiades was presented by Dr. B. A. Gould, who reached the conclusion that the micro- metric measurements of a single such plate, with the customary corrections for refrac- tion, etc., would give results about as accu- rate as those obtained by Bessel with thir- teen years' labor — the time employed by him in mapping this group. Though this meth- od has not yet been adopted in public ob- servatories, it can not bo doubted that it is destined to be instrumental in the future in largely promoting the advancement of ura- nographical science. Another American astronomer, whose in- genuity in the construction of instruments is no less remarkable than his skill iu the use of them, Dr. Henry Draper, has devoted himself to the improvement of reflecting telescopes. The use of silvered glass for as- tronomical specula had been suggested by Foucault, as being a material lighter and less brittle than speculum metal, and as re- flecting a larger proportion of the light; and he had practically illustrated the value of this suggestion by actually griuding and silvering one or two such specula with his own hands. With no light to guide him but the knowledge of these facts, Dr. Draper un- dertook an investigation of the best mode of proceeding in the construction of such spec- ula, recording the results of his experiments as he went on ; and having at length at- tained a triumphant success, he published his method among the Smithsonian Contri- butions, in an elaborate memoir, which has become a standard authority on the subject, 304 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. and is continually quoted as such at the present day. The telescope described in this memoir is of fifteen and a half inches aperture, and it was for a long time the largest in the country; but it is now sur- passed by one of twenty-eight inches, also constructed by Dr. Draper, and mounted in his observatory equatorially under a dome. With both these telescopes Dr. Draper has taken splendid photographs of the moon, one representing the satellite in the third quarter, which has borne an enlargement to fifty inches in diameter ; and also the spec- troscopic photographs of Alpha Lyra?, men- tioned later in this article. Physical Astronomy. — No incident in the history of astronomy has ever excited more universal interest than the detection, in Au- gust, 1846, by a method purely mathematical, of a planet which had been previously lurk- ing unseen upon the confines of the system ever since the creation. This marvelous achievement, of which the history is too well known to need repetition here, was simultaneously accomplished by two foreign astronomers, and does not belong to Ameri- can science. But it is a curious fact that the planet thus discovered fell immediately after into the hands of American astrono- mers, and that they have made it practically their own ever since. Owing to the exceed- ingly slow motion of the body, the elements of its orbit could not be determined from the observations of a few months. Assum- ing the orbit to be circular, several Europe- an astronomers reached early and concur- rently the conclusion that its mean distance from the sun is less than the discoverers had supposed by between five and six hundred millions of miles. But the first approxi- mately correct theory of its motions was wrought out by Professor Scars C. Walker, of the Naval Observatory at Washington, in February, 1847. When Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, Lexell was ena- bled to determine its orbit by means of ob- servations made of the same body (supposed then to be a fixed star) by Bradley and Mayer nearly thirty years before ; and the number of such previous accidental observations of this body which have since been discovered amounts to no less than nineteen. It was naturally hoped that the examination of star catalogues of earlier years would fur- nish some similar help to the solution of the problem presented by Neptune. Of these catalogues, however, most were for one rea- son or another useless in this inquiry. One only offered a possibility that the newly discovered body might have been by good fortune recorded in it. This was the His- toire Celeste of Lacaille, embracing 50,000 stars ; and Mr. Walker soon discovered that Lacaille had swept over the probable path of the planet on two days nearly following each other — the 8th and 10th of May, 1795. Having, therefore, from the observations made at Washington, combined with those received from Europe, computed as well as he could the place of the body for these dates, varying the elements so as to include the entire region within which it could pos- sibly have been at that time, he selected from Lalande all the stars within one de- gree of the computed path. There were nine of these, but among the nine one only seemed likely to be the planet. The ques- tion then presented itself, Is this star still in the place in which Lalande saw it ? Two days after this question had been raised by Mr. Walker, the telescope of the Washing- ton Observatory was directed to the spot, and found it vacant. Assuming, therefore, this missing star to have been the planet, Mr. Walker computed an elliptic orbit which represented with gratifying precision all the modern observations. The elliptic elements first obtained were, however, only approxi- mate. In order to their more exact deter- mination it was necessary that the theory of the perturbations should be revised. Here Professor Peirce, of Harvard Universi- ty, lent his powerful assistance, and with the perturbations furnished by him, and re- vised normal places, Walker computed an ephemeris of the planet which he published in the Smithsonian Contributions. The only attempt at a theory of Neptune made abroad was by Kowalski, of Kasan, Russia, in 1855 ; but this, though formed on a much larger number of recent observations, did not represent the motions of the body more exactly than that of Walker. The ephemerides founded on these early theories were affected more or less with er- ror. Toward 1865 the errors were increasing with rapidity, and it was evident that with- out a new determination of the orbit, they NEWCOMB'S THEORY OF NEPTUNE. 305 would reach, before the end of the century, the serious amount of 5' of longitude. Pro- fessor Simon Newcomh, of the Naval Ob- servatory, Washington, now addressed him- self to the laborious task of reconstructing the theory from the foundation. His re- sults are published in the Smithsonian Con- tributions, and embrace (1) a determination of the elements of the orbit from observa- tions extending through an arc of 40° ; (2) an inquiry whether the mass of Uranus can be determined from the motion of Neptune ; (3) an examination of the question whether these motions indicate the action of an ex- tra-Neptunian planet ; (4) tables and formu- lae for finding the place of Neptune at any time, but more particularly between the years 1600 and 2000. In the computation of the tables the ele- ments adopted are not the mean elements, but their values at the present time as af- fected by secular inequalities and inequali- ties of long period, particularly that of 4300 years arising out of the near approach of the mean motion of Uranus to twice and a half that of Neptune, these being adapted to give the place of the planet with the highest degree of accuracy during the pe- riod for which the tables are specially de- signed, i. e., till the year 2000. The work is one involving an enormous amount of labor. As to the mass of Uranus, Professor New- comb concludes that no trustworthy value can be deduced from the motions of Nep- tune, nor, had this body been unknown, could even its existence have been detect- ed from all the observations of the exterior planet hitherto made. It results, almost of course, that no evidence yet appears of the existence of any still more distant plan- et remaining yet undiscovered. Soon after the publication of Professor Walker's " Elements of Neptune," Professor Peirce, in a communication to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, after demon- strating that this planet, with the mass de- duced from Bond's observations of Lassell's satellite, and with the orbit assigned by Walker, would fully reconcile all the mod- ern observations and all the ancient acci- dental ones better than the hypothetical planet of Leverrier or Adams (Flamsteed's observation of 1600 being discordant with Adams to the extent of 50" and with Lever- •20 rier to 20", but harmonizing with the com- putation from the Walker and Peirce theo- ry within a single second), ventured upon the bold assertion that the planet actually discovered by Galle, searching under Lever- rier's direction, was not the planet predict- ed or expected, but a very different body, which occupied that place at that time only by a happy accident. Leverrier had fixed the distance of his planet from the sun at 36.154 times the earth's distance, and Pro- fessor Peirce demonstrated that at the dis- tance 35.3 (at which a planet would have a periodical time equal to twice and a half that of Uranus) so important a change takes place in the character of the perturbations as to make it impossible to extend to the space within that distance any investiga- tions relating to the space beyond. The observed distance is slightly over 30 ; aud it appears that a second similar peculiarity occurs at 30.4, where a planet would have a period just double that of Uranus. The perturbations produced by it on this latter would, therefore, for a twofold reason, be of very different character from those re- sulting from the supposed planet at the dis- tance of 36. Though these criticisms of Professor Peirce are well founded, and have never been satisfactorily answered, yet they can not materially affect our estimate of the merit of Adams and Leverrier. A plan- et such as that indicated by. their analysis Avould have produced very nearly the act- ually observed irregularities of motion of. Uranus, and must have been occupying very nearly the place in the heavens of that which was actually found. Any planet capable of doing this must have been in this neighbor- hood at the time of the discovery, and it was the merit of the analysis that it indi- cated the quarter in which the disturbing body was to be looked for — a merit which remains, though the actual planet differs from the planet predicted, in mass, distance, and period. Besides his "Theory of Neptune," Profess- or Newcomb has made numerous very val- uable contributions to physical astronomy. His " Investigation of the Orbit of Uranus," in the Smithsonian Contributions for 1873, is a work of great labor, commenced as early as 1859, but necessarily deferred till after the completion of the "Theory of Neptune." 306 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. In 1871 he published in Liouville's Jour- nal, Paris, a " Theory of the Perturbations of the Moon produced by the Action of the Planets." Of this very able and very orig- inal investigation it is sufficient to cite the opinion expressed by Professor Cayley, pres- ident of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, who pronounces it, "from the bold- ness of the conception and the beauty of the results, a very remarkable memoir, con- stituting an important addition to theoret- ical dynamics." Another very interesting memoir by Pro- fessor Newcomb embraces an investigation of the secular variations and mutual rela- tions of the orbits of the asteroids, for the purpose of testing the question, from a the- oretic point of view, whether the theory of Olbers, that these bodies are the frag- ments of a single shattered planet, is ten- able or not. Twenty-five asteroids are in- cluded in the comparison, and the conclusion is unfavorable to the hypothesis in question. In the Washington observations for 1865 there appeared an investigation by Profess- or Newcomb of the value of the solar par- allax, reached by a discussion of the obser- vations made in 1862 at six observatories in the northern hemisphere and two in the southern, and a combination of these with other results furnished by micrometrical measures of Mars by Professor Hall, the parallactic equation of the moon, the lunar equation of the earth, and finally the tran- sit of Venus of 1769 recomputed by Pro- fessor Powalky. The inference is that the true parallax is 8.85", with a probable error of 0.013". Apparently the conclusion from the transit of 1874 will not be far from 8.87", a result very near to that previously ob- tained by Professor Newcomb. The great geometers who succeeded New- ton in applying the principle of gravitation to the explanation of planetary motions as- sume thatj those minute inequalities, of which the effects only become sensible after long intervals, and produce considerable changes only after many centuries, or, perhaps, myr- iads of centuries, are developed uniformly with the time — a supposition which answer- ed the immediate purpose, though it is by no means true. Yet a knowledge of the laws which govern these inequalities is im- portant to the settlement of a number of interesting questions, especially such as con- cern the stability of the system, and the vi- cissitudes of heat and cold to which our own planet has been manifestly subjected in the distant past. Lagrange pointed out the mathematical criterion by which the gen- eral question of stability might be deter- mined. Its application required a knowl- edge of the masses of the planets. These were not accurately known, but by substi- tuting approximate values for them he was able to announce that none of the varia- tions of the planetary elements could go on increasing forever. Laplace went further than this, and proved that, provided the di- rection of revolution is the same for all the planets, the stability of the system is inde- pendent of the masses. In this case he showed that the sum of the products of the several masses by the squares of the eccen- tricities and the square roots of the mean distances is constant, and that if the eccen- tricities are small, the variations will be small, so that the system will not only be stable, but will undergo no large departures from its mean condition. This is the state of things in our solar system. The actual condition of physical astronomy at present has seemed to demand a more complete in- vestigation of this intricate subject, and such an investigation has been recently undertaken and successfully accomplished by Mr. J. N. Stockwell, of Cleveland, Ohio, whose elaborate memoir relating to it has been published among the Smithsonian Con- tributions to Knowledge. The object of the investigation has been to determine the nu- merical values of the secular changes of the elements of all the planetary orbits. The elements considered are four : the eccentric- ities and inclinations of the orbits, and the longitudes of the nodes and of the perihe- lia. The fluctuations of value are largest in the case of Mercury, and smallest in the case of Neptune. We are concerned chiefly with what relates to our own planet, and more especially with the fluctuations in the eccentricity of its orbit. This eccentricity may vary between the limits zero and 0.0694, involving a difference between the aphelion and perihelion distance of the earth from the sun of 13,000,000 miles, and also a difference between the duration of the summer and the winter half year, of thir- PEIRCE, MAXWELL, AND ALEXANDER. 307 ty-two days. It can hardly now be doubted that to these changes of eccentricity have been due the remarkable vicissitudes of cli- mate to which, as geology informs us, the earth has been subjected. At present the winter of the southern hemisphere occurs in aphelion, and is longer than the summer by eight days. The consequence is that the south pole is capped with massive ice, which occupies an area of probably more than 2000 miles in diameter. When the eccentricity is maximum, the hemisphere which has the winter in aphelion is probably ice-bound nearly or quite down to the tropic. The stability of the Saturnian system and the mechanical condition of the material of Saturn's rings form the subject of an impor- tant memoir read by Professor B. Peirce at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held at Cincin- nati in 1851. The conclusion arrived at is that the rings could not possibly be stable unless sustained by the mutual attraction between them and the inner satellites ; and consequently that, in the absence of such sat- ellites, they could have no existence. Also, that inasmuch as no solid material known is sufficiently tenacious to resist without rupt- ure the immense divellent forces to which a solid ring under such circumstances must be subjected, therefore the rings must be fluid, and not solid. Laplace had recognized the difficulty attendant on the hypothesis of a continuous solid ring of such breadth, and had therefore assumed that the rings, though apparently presenting continuous plane sur- faces, are nevertheless divided into many concentric and comparatively narrow rings. He also perceived that such rings would necessarily be in a condition of unstable equilibrium with the planet in case their centres of gravity should coincide, as would seem from their appearance to be most prob- able, with their centres of figure ; and he ac- cordingly supposed that there exist irregu- larities in the disposition of their substance imperceptible to us, which, by displacing the centres of gravity, give them the necessary stability. He failed to show that these two hypotheses can both be true and at the same time consistent with the optical phenomena, and, in fact, left the theory of this system incomplete. In 1857 Mr. J. Clerk Maxwell, in a prize essay presented to the University of Cambridge, in England, investigated these hypotheses of Laplace, and showed conclu- sively that they are untenable. On the hy- pothesis of fluidity he investigated the tidal movements which must take place in the rings, and rejected equally this supposition. But his analysis did not extend to the move- ment of the rings in mass, and therefore it is not in conflict with the view of Professor Peirce. If this be discarded, there remains no other but to suppose the rings to be made up of innumerable small discrete solid mass- es so near together that, in a zone having the generally admitted thickness of one or two hundred miles, they present to a dis- tant observer the appearance of a contin- uous solid. This view is that which is held by Mr. E. A. Proctor. Few of our American astronomers have contributed more abundantly to the litera- ture of the science than Professor Stephen Alexander, of Princeton. In 1843 Professor Alexander presented to the American Philo- sophical Society an elaborate memoir upon the physical phenomena attending eclipses, transits, and occultations, which excited much interest in the astronomical world. In 1874 there was published among the Smithsonian Contributions a paper by the same astronomer, entitled, "Exposition of certain Harmonies of the Solar System." The design is to show inductively a tendency in nature to the arrangement of the plan- ets according to a law of distances from the sun's centre, in which the distance of each succeeding planet is five-ninths of that of the last preceding, and to explain the actual departures from this law in the existing so- lar system by the supposition that in one or two instances two planets (called, therefore, half-planets) have been formed in the place of one. The earth and Venus constitute a pair of this kind. This ingenious specula- tion may be classed among the curiosities of astronomy, as it does not appear practi- cable to test its probability by mathemat- ical analysis. Of the numerous other in- teresting astronomical papers of Professor Alexander the limitations on our space pro- hibit us from making mention. In the year 1849 Professor Daniel Kirk- wood, then of Delaware College, Newark, now of the State University of Indiana, an- nounced a remarkable law connecting the 303 SCIENTIFIC PEOGRESS. masses and distances of the planets of the solar system and their periods of rotation on their axes. To understand this, let it be premised that between any two planets suc- ceeding each other in order as numbered from the sun outward, there is, when the bodies are in conjunction at their mean dis- tances, a point of equal attraction, that is to say, a point in which a body free to move would be held in equilibrio by the opposing attractions of the two planets. Suppose these neutral points to bo found for all the planets of the system, and the distance be- tween the two neutral points above and be- low each planet to be called the diameter of the sphere of attraction of that planet, then, according to this law, it will be true that the cubes of these diameters for any two planets will be to each other as the squares of their respective numbers of rota- tions during one sidereal revolution of each. This law was subjected to a close examina- tion by Professor Sears C. Walker in 1850, with a favorable conclusion. It is to be observed, however, that the uncertainty ex- isting as to the masses of several of the planets, and as to the periods of rotation of some of them, gives to this conclusion the character of a probable rather than of a certain result. In order to extend the anal- ogy throughout the system, Mr. Walker in- terpolates a planet in the region of the aster- oids between Mars and Jupiter, which he places very nearly at the distance given by Bode's law. He finds also that if there ex- ists a planet nearer the sun than Mercury, its distance must be one-fifth that of the earth, or about 18,000,000 miles. For the doubtful masses, Mr. Walker finds that the values demanded by the law are within the limits, often pretty wide, of those actually employed by different authorities in the in- vestigations of physical astronomy and in the construction of tables. It will only be after a higher degree of perfection shall be attained in the theory of every planet than has yet been reached, that the accuracy of Kirk wood's analogy can be conclusively tested. Solar rhysics. — The physical condition of the sun has occupied very much of late years the attention of the scientific world. Ever since the invention of the telescope the solar spots have been observed with careful and curious interest, and these, to- gether with the varying features of the photosphere itself, when minutely examined, led early to a general though hardly univer- sal acquiescence in the opinion expressed by Wilson in the Philosophical Transactions of 1774, and adopted by Sir William Herschel, that the luminous surface which we see is not the surface of a solid. The question what is beneath this surface remained a subject of controversy ; and on any hypoth- esis of the state of the sun's mass, the essen- tial nature of the spots and the causes pro- ducing them were matters equally unsettled. The vastly improved instruments of recent years, the enqdoyinent of photography in aid of observation, and above all, the appli- cation of the spectroscope to the study of the chromosphere and the photosphere, have shed a flood of light upon this difficult sub- ject, which is likely soon to harmonize all opinions, though it can hardly be said to have done so yet. Immediately after the erection of the great Munich achromatic at the Harvard Observatory, this splendid instrument was employed by Mr. W. C. Bond in a continu- ous series of observations of the solar spots continued for a period of more than two years, maps of the spots being carefully drawn at every observation. The results are published in full in the Annals of the Harvard Observatory, and furnish a valuable means of studying the varying aspects of the spots, their growth, decline, and dura- tion. More recently many foreign observers have devoted themselves to the investiga- tion ; among whom may be mentioned Mr. De la Rue, Mr. Balfour Stewart, and Mr. Loewy in England, who have given special attention to the laws governing the varia- tions of the total area of sun spot and its distribution over the solar disk ; Mr. Faye, in France, and Father Secchi, in Rome, who have engaged not only in observation, but in speculations on theory. The British ob- servers arrived at the conclusion that the maxima and minima of spot development are periodic, the period coinciding with the synodical revolution of the planet Venus, to the influence of which body they therefore ascribe it. They attribute a similar and perhaps as powerful an effect to Jupiter; but in this case the irregularities are less, SOLAR PHYSICS. 309 on account of the greater distance of the disturbing body. Professor Looinis, of New Haven, investigated the question of the pe- riod of maximum, in a paper published in 1870, arriving at the conclusion, somewhat different from that above mentioned, that the period is determined by Jupiter, and is about ten years ; the magnitude of the max- imum fluctuating, and dependent on Venus, with irregularities unaccounted for still outstanding. As to the sun's physical con- stitution, Professor Sterry Hunt is the au- thor of a theory which is essentially a part of his theory of chemical geology, according to which the solar sphere consists wholly of matter in a gaseous condition, all the el- ements being mingled but not combined, their affinities being held in check by the intensity of the heat. The partial cooling of the surface by radiation depresses the temperature to the point at which combina- tion is |)ossible, and thus are formed vast volumes of finely divided solid or liquid matter, which, suspended in the surround- ing gases, become intensely luminous, and form the source of the solar light. This view is sustained also by Mr. Faye and by Mr. Balfour Stewart, but is dissented from by Father Secchi, who inclines to believe the luminous envelope to form a kind of liquid or viscous shell. Recent observa- tions by Professor S. P. Langley, with the admirable 13-inch objective of the Alle- ghany Observatory, have furnished proba- bly the most conclusive evidence on this subject which has yet been obtained, and are entirely favorable to the theory of Pro- fessor Hunt. Professor Langley's papers have been published in the American Journal of Science for 1874 and 1875, and are full of interest not only as to the phenomena of the spots, but as to the minute features of the sun's general superficies. Accompany- ing his latest paper is a magnificent en- graved illustration from a drawing of a typical solar spot observed in December, 1873. It represents what is commonly call- ed the penumbra as being formed of long- drawn luminous filaments which in their curvature give evidence of gyratory move- ments, indicating that the spots are formed by tremendous vortices spirally ascending or descending. Professor Langley remarks of the apparently black centre or nucleus of the spot, that he has found it by direct experiment, when all extraneous light is excluded, to be not only intrinsically bright, but in supportably intense to the naked eye. One of the most interesting contributions to the knowledge of the solar physics was the discovery in 1871 by Professor C. A. Young of that comparatively limited but well-defined solar envelope called the chro- mosphere, where the lines which in the or- dinary solar spectrum are black become re- versed, and assume the brilliant tints which characterize the spectra of the elements to which they belong, as seen in experiments artificially instituted. Professor Young's preliminary chart of the lines thus seen and its subsequent extension will be referred to later. A very ingenious device recently suggest- ed by Professor A. M. Mayer, of Hoboken, for the study of the laws of the distribution of heat upon the sun's surface is the latest addition which has fallen under our notice to the means of investigating the physical condition of that body. The double iodide of copper and mercury becomes discolored when raised to a certain ascertained temper- ature. Let a thin paper, blackened on one surface and coated with the iodide on the other, receive the solar image on the black- ened side, the aperture of the object-glass being reduced to such an extent that no dis- coloration of the salt may occur. Then let the aperture be gradually enlarged. Pres- ently a spot will appear, which marks in the image the point of maximum temperature in the solar disk. By successive additional enlargements of aperture the spot on the paper will be correspondingly enlarged, and its borders will indicate the isothermal lines of the solar disk. Several interesting discoveries already made by the application of this method our narrow limits will not permit us to notice here. Comets. — In 1843 Professor Alexander, of Princeton, presented to the American Phil- osophical Society an investigation of the orbit of the great comet of that year, accord- ing to which it appeared that the body must almost have touched the sun, this result be- ing explained on the hypothesis that the centre of gravity of the comet was not coin- cident with its centre of figure. In 1850 he published in the Astronomical Journal a mem- 310 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. oir on the classification and special points of resemblance of certain periodic comets, and the probability of a common origin in the case of some of them. Three classes were distinguished. The possible rupture by the planet Mars of a large comet — that of 131"» and 1316 — to furnish three of the third class, was suggested as an example. This hypothesis was very lightly treated by Hum- boldt in his Cosmos, but it has found unex- pected corroboration in observations of our own time. The orbit of the second comet of 1840 was computed by Professor Loomis, and the re- sults communicated to the American Philo- sophical Society, in an able paper, which was published in their eighth volume. In regard to cometary physics some very important speculations, or, perhaps, more properly discoveries, are due to American physicists and astronomers. The nature of the appendages called tails and the causes producing them have been in all ages sub- jects of perplexing discussion, and have given rise to a variety of hypotheses, many of which are more or less wild. This char- acter can not be attributed to the theory presented in 1859 by Professor W. A. Norton, of Yale College, in which the formation of comets' tails is assumed to be due to elec- trical repulsion, exerted both by the nucleus and by the sun, upon the attenuated matter sublimed from the mass by the solar heat. The particles, under the action of these forces, pass off in hyperbolic orbits. An ap- plication was made of this theory to the case of the remarkable comet of 1858, known as Douati's, by Professor Peirce. This comet had been continuously observed and mapped through all its varying and wonderful as- pects, during the entire five months of its visibility, by Mr. George P. Bond, whose mon- ograph on the subject, published in the An- nals of the Harvard Observatory, with its numerous and beautifully executed illustra- t ions, will always make it an authority of the highest character on the subject of comet- ary changes. Professor Peirce's analysis led to results entirely in harmony with the hy- pothesis, explaining not only the phenom- ena in general, but the special aspects, in- cluding the simultaneous exhibition of one or more rectilinear tails, along with the principal tail, which was curved in the form of a sabre. He applied a similar analysis to the great comet of 1843, with results equally satisfactory. Here also the investi- gation explained the existence of two tails, one of which did not reach the comet's head. The theory of electrical repulsion as applied to comets was proposed by some foreign as- tronomers, perhaps independently, at about the same time with the appearance of Pro- fessor Norton's memoir. It is frequently spoken of abroad as Professor Zollner's view. Auroras. — The aurora borealis has formed the subject of a pretty voluminous litera- ture, both at home and abroad, during the last half century. All the scientific jour- nals teem with articles on the subject, and the transactions of societies contain numer- ous elaborate memoirs relating to it. We can mention but a few of these publications, and those only briefly. In the first volume of Transactions of the Connecticut Acad- emy there appeared the results of seven- teen years' study of auroras by Edward C. Herrick, of New Haven, an observer unsur- passed for accuracy of observation and soundness of judgment. This paper will ever be a high authority in regard to the facts. Professor Loomis, of New Haven, ex- amined a few years since the question of the periodicity of the aurora, and of its rela- tion to the maxima and minima of solar dis- turbance as indicated by the spots, with reference to the possibility that both phe- nomena are dependent on a common cause. He found the periods nearly equal, but the auroral period less regular than the other, and the coincidences in general only ap- proximate. This question was at the same time occupying Professor Lovering, of Har- vard University, who has investigated it, so far as records go, to exhaustion. The tenth volume of the Transactions of the Ameri- can Academy contains a catalogue by him of every aurora to be found in accessible records from the year 502 B.C. down to a.d. 1868. The total number is about 12,000; and this immense catalogue is carefully ana- lyzed with a view to determine the daily, the yearly, and the secular periodicity, if such exists. The results, which are not only tabulated but expressed in curves, do not exhibit all the regularity which might be anticipated, but they show, nevertheless, evidences of a periodicity, subject mani- METEOEIC ASTRONOMY. 311 festly to large disturbances from unknown causes. Meteoric Astronomy. — To American astron- omers is due the credit of having first cor- rectly interpreted the phenomena presented by the frequent intruders from the regions of space into our atmosphere called shoot- ing-stars. In regard to the nature of these bodies the most widely various hypotheses had from the earliest times been held by different speculators, none of them support- ed by proofs, or resting on any systematic observation. Some of the earliest conject- ures regarding them seem to have been soundest. Auaxagoras, whose general views of the structure of the universe were so much in advance of his time, supposed that there are non- luminous bodies revolving about the earth, from which meteors may proceed, though this idea is marred by the supposition that such bodies may have been thrown oft" from the earth itself by centrifu- gal force. Diogeues of Apollonia, whose own writings are not extant, but who wrote on cosmology, is said to have held that, besides the visible planets, there are other planets which are invisible. These sagacious con- jectures, however, were overborne by the later authority of Aristotle, who inculcated the doctrine that shooting-stars are terres- trial meteors originating in the atmosphere itself — a doctrine generally received as the most probable down to the present century. On the morning of November 13, 1833, there occurred one of the most wonderful displays of celestial pyrotechnics that was probably ever witnessed. As observed in the Eastern United States, it commenced about midnight and continued for some hours, increasing in magnificence until it was lost in the light of the rising sun. It was visible probably over the greater part of North America, and was actually observed at various points from the West India Isl- ands to Greenland, and westwardly to the one-hundredth degree of longitude. From the numerous descriptions of this sublime spectacle with which, immediately after its occurrence, tbe journals of the day were crowded, it seems to have presented the ap- pearance of a literal shower of fire, the me- teors falling on all sides in prodigious num- bers, and many of them exhibiting a splendor truly dazzling. An important fact in regard to these meteors noticed by many observers was the apparent divergence of their paths from a single radiant point. All accounts agreed in fixing this radiant in the constel- lation Leo, and in the statement that it con- tinued to maintain its position unchanged as the constellation advanced with the di- urnal motion of the heavens. This fact of- fered very conclusive evidence that the source of the meteors was foreign to the earth, and tbat their paths, though seeming- ly divergent, were actually parallel to each other and to a line drawn from the specta- tor to the radiant, the divergency being merely an effect of perspective. To Pro- fessor Denison Olmsted, of New Haven, be- longs the credit of having first pointed out the legitimate conclusions to be drawu from these phenomena, which he did in a paper imblished in the American Journal of Science in March, 1834. Having first demonstrated the cosmical origin of the meteors, Professor Olmsted proceeded, with the aid of such im- perfect data as at that time existed, includ- ing observations of a similar star-shower observed on the Eastern Continent in 1832, and of a much earlier one witnessed by Humboldt and Bonpland iu Cumana, South America, in 1799, to devise upon this basis a theory adequate to account for the facts. The conclusion reached by him was that the meteors must be portious of a nebulous body drawn into the earth's atmosphere at a point of near approach, and inflamed by the heat generated by the resistance of the atmosphere to their motion. Professor Olmsted did not explain the meaning at- tached by him to the term nebulous. If he meant by it a gas, or a finely comminuted and uniformly diffused solid matter, his the- ory is inadmissible. But if he meant a con- geries of loosely scattered discrete bodies, the phenomena are in harmony with his view; and to this extent the more recent and more exact investigations of Professor Newton, of Yale College, and Professor Schi- aparelli, of Milan, have confirmed his conclu- sions. But in assigning to the supposed nebulous body a period of 182 days, and in his speculations as to the density of the con- stituent parts of the nebula, he was less happy. He supposed the specific gravity to be very small, whereas the researches of Newton and others conclusively prove that 312 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. these bodies must have the average density of our harder rocks; and the numerous spec- imens in cabinets of the fragmentary por- tions of them which have forced their way through the atmospheric shield by which our planet is protected against their de- structive impact are many of them largely or wholly composed of metal. The intense interest excited in all classes of persons by the meteoric display of 1833 turned the at- tention of a multitude of observers in this and other countries to the study of these phenomena — a study which was pursued both by the careful examination of records for the discovery of past examples of similar occurrences, and by the direct and continu- ous observation of the heavens themselves. The scientific journals of the period bear striking witness to the activity of these in- vestigators. One of the most successful among them was Mr. E. C. Herrick, of New Haven, at that time, or later, librarian of Yale College, who presently announced the discovery of three or four additional periods of periodical shooting -star abundance or star showers, viz., in January, August, April, and December. In regard to the August period, Quetelet, of Brussels, was afterward found to Lave anticipated him, but his dis- covery of the others was original. Since that time observation in many quarters has beeu so persistent and so fruitful of results as to justify the statement that there are not fewer than fifty different days in the year on which there is a tendency to a me- teoric display above the average. As from the examination of records, an- cient and modern, the number of observed returus of the November shower was in- creased, two very important deductions fol- lowed — first, the congeries of bodies fur- nishing the meteors must extend along its own orbit to a distance equal in longitude to about one-sixteenth or one-seventeenth of an entire circumference; and secondly, t licit- must be a continuous advance or pro- cession of the node, or intersection of the orbit with that of the earth, causing a re- tardation of the display by about a day at each return. The significaucy of the accu- mulated data was first shown by Professor Newton in 1864, who, from a comparison of observations covering a period of 931 years, determined the length of the cycle to be 33.25 years, the annual mean procession of the node 1.711', the inclination of the orbit about 17°, and the length of the part of the cycle within which showers might be ex- pected 2.25 years. From these definitely ascertained results he deduced the higbly important conclusion that the periodic time of the group of bodies from which the me- teors proceed must be one of the five follow- ing, and no other, viz., 179.915 days, 185.413 days, 354.586 days, 376.575 days, or 33.25 years. It remained only, by applying the principles of physical astronomy, to com- pute the amount of annual procession of the node for each of these five orbits, and, by comparing the results with the observed procession, to determine which of the five orbits is the true one. This computation Professor Newton suggested as the experi- mentiim cruris ; but delayiug to apply it him- self, the honor was snatched from him by Mr. Adams, of Cambridge, England, who demonstrated that the only orbit of the five which fulfills the conditions is that which belongs to the period of 33.25 years. Professor Newton followed up his success with the November meteors by investiga- tions hardly less remarkable of the numer- ous irregularly occurring bodies of this class called sporadic. From a very large number of determinations of the altitudes of these bodies above the earth, he formed a table arranging the observations in groups be- tween limits of altitude regularly increas- ing, by which it appeared that few are seen at heights greater than 180 kilometers and few below 30 kilometers, the mean altitude on the whole being 95.55 kilometers. He then, by a course of very ingenious reason- ing and analysis, proceeded to demonstrate that the number of meteors which traverse some part of the earth's atmosphere daily, and are large enough to be visible to the naked eye (sun, moon, and clouds permit- ting), amounts to more than seven and a half millions. Including those fainter bod- ies of this class which escape the unaided eye, but may be detected by the telescope, this number must be greatly increased. Taking as a basis of calculation the num- ber of telescopic meteors observed by Win- necke between July 24 and August 3, 1854, with an ordinary comet-seeker of 53' aper- ture, the total number per day would seem COMETS AND METEOEOIDS. 313 to be more than 400,000,000 — a number which, higher optical power would, of course, cor- respondingly increase. The following are some of the more interesting conclusions reached in this investigation : 1. It is im- possible to suppose that these sporadic me- teors proceed from a group or riug at the same mean distance from the sun as the earth. 2. The mean velocity of these me- teoroids considerably exceeds that of the earth in its orbit, and hence the orbits are not approximately circular, but resemble the orbits of comets. 3. The number of meteoroids in the space through which the earth is moving is such that in each volume of the size of the earth there are as many as 13,000 small bodies, each one of which is capable of furnishing a shooting-star visi- ble, under favorable circumstances, to the naked eye. The further contributions to the theory of shooting-stars in which American astron- omers have participated are those which connect these bodies with the comets. Near the end of December, 1845, Mr. Herrick and Mr. Bradley, of New Haven, watching the Biela comet with the Clark telescope in the observatory of Yale College, observed a small companion comet beside the principal one. The same was seen two weeks later by Lieutenant Maury and Professor Hubbard at the Naval Observatory at Washington, and two days later than this was noticed in Europe. Professor Hubbard thereafter made this body a special study. At the time of the observations above mentioned the com- et was receding, and each day the pair pre- sented some novel phase. At one time an arch of light connected the two ; the prin- cipal one had two nuclei, and each had two tails. The smaller grew till it equaled the larger in brilliancy, then faded gradually, until, wiien the comet was last seen in March, it was no longer visible. In 1852 the comet was very distant, but it was still double, the two companions being a million and a quarter miles apart. Since Septem- ber of that year this remarkable object has never been again seen. At the return in 1859, it was in conjunction, or nearly so, with the sun, and was necessarily invisible. In 1866 every thing favored its visibility, and hundreds of observers swept the heavens in search of it without success. Another return was due in the autumn of 1872. The body was not seen, but countless fragments broken from its mass came pouring into the earth's atmosphere on the night of the 27th of November, producing a star shower which for an hour or two almost rivaled in brill- iancy that of the 13th of the same month in 1833. A German astronomer, Professor Kliukerfues, at once conceived the notion that, if this were the comet's following, the main body might be seen in its retreat, though we had not seen it in its approach. But if so, it must be seen in the southern hemisphere. He telegraphed Mr. Pogson, at Madras : " Biela touched earth November 27. Search near Theta Centauri." Mr. Pogson looked, and found the comet. The question is unsettled whether this was one of the two parts into which the comet was divided in 1845. Professor Newton thinks it was more probably a fragment thrown off long — perhaps centuries — before. The comet of 1862, III., was discovered on the 18th July, 1862, by Mr. H. P. Tuttle, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It has been proved by Professor Schiaparelli that this comet is only a large member of the August stream of meteoroids. The comet of 1866, 1., discovered by Tempel, December 19, 1865, is shown also by Schiaparelli to be a member of the November stream. This comet Pro- fessor Newtou has identified with one which appeared in 1366. From the evidence fur- nished in these instances, and for other rea- sons, Professor Newton and Professor Weiss regard all these meteoroids as sufficiently proved to be made up of countless frag- ments detached from solid cometary masses, which comets until thus entirely broken up are only large members of the swarms with which they move in company. The cause of the fracture is supposed by Professor A. W.Wright, of Iowa, to be the intense heat of the sun as the body approaches its peri- helion. Professor Wright has recently ob- tained a gas from the Iowa meteorite which has the same spectrum as that of the com- ets. The comet's tail, therefore, is a gas- eous emanation not to be confounded with these meteoroid masses. Comets and meteoroids having thus been demonstrated to be generally identical, the question of the origin of all these bodies has become one of great interest. A theory 314 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. on this subject, put forth in 1866 by Pro- fessor Schiaparelli, of Milan, assumed that matter is disseminated throughout space in all possible grades of division — embracing, in the first place, immense suns or stars of different magnitudes; secondly, groups of smaller or comparatively minute stars, such as those into which many of the nebulae are resolved; then bodies so small as to be in- visible except when they approach our sun, appearing then as comets ; and finally, " cos- mical clouds," made up of elements conform- able in weight to such as we may handle or transport upon the earth. The elements of these cosmical clouds he supposes to be so distant from each other that their mutual attraction is insufficient to counteract the effect of the sun's unequal action upon their different members, so that when drawn into our system from the regions of space, they lose wholly their globular form, and enter as streams, " which may possibly consume years, centuries, and even myriads of years in passing the perihelion, forming in space a river whose transverse dimensions are very small with respect to its length." This was the essential part of a theory which won for its author the Copley medal from the Royal Society — -a theory of which the only part not pure hypothesis is the demon- stration that the mean velocity of the me- teoroids exceeds that of the earth, and this fact had already been demonstrated by Pro- fessor Newton some years before. The rest, viz., all that relates to the different mechan- ical conditions of matter in space, is mere conjecture, and it is doubtful whether it continues still to be held by Professor Schi- aparelli himself. A more probable theory of the origin of comets is suggested by a very significant observation of the sun made by Professor Young, of Dartmouth College, on the 7th of September, 1871. An explo- sion was seen to take place at that time, by which a volume of exploded matter was driven to a height of 200,000 miles, with a velocity, between the altitudes of 100,000 and 200,000 miles, of 166 miles per second. The visible clouds consisted of hydrogen. The resistance of the solar atmosphere pre- vented their complete separation from the sun, but should solid masses be projected with an equal velocity, they must be driven off never to return. Professor Young's ob- servation, therefore, suggests an origin of comets which harmonizes with the views of Weiss and Newton as to the source of meteoric streams ; and it is in further con- firmation of these views that hydrogen was found by Graham in abundance occluded in meteoric masses, and that the gas of the Iowa meteor gave to Professor Wright a cometary spectrum. METEOROLOGY. As early as 1743 Dr. Franklin made the important discovery that the atmospheric disturbances known as northeast storms on the Atlantic coast of North America begin actually in the southwest. The first fact which drew his attention to this seeming physical paradox was the occurrence of an eclipse of the moon on the 21st of October in the year just mentioned, which a north- easter prevented him from observing at Philadelphia, although it was seen to its close by his brother, at Boston, before the storm began. This storm did great dam- age along the coast, and, from the accounts subsequently obtained, it appeared that its effects were felt progressively from Caro- lina to Massachusetts. Other storms of the same kind were observed to advance in the same manner, whence Franklin in- ferred the existence of a law, and proceeded to inquire the cause. Thi3 he presumed to be the rarefaction of the air by the tropical heats of the far south, producing upward currents, with diminished pressure and a consequent flow of air toward the region of rarefaction. This inference of Dr. Franklin was the first step toward a proper under- standing of the law of storms in the tem- perate zones. The views then held by Dr. Franklin as to the mechanical action of the air in water- spouts, and as to the identity of the phenom- ena with tornadoes on the land, were very nearly those at present entertained. He failed, however, to recognize the important agency of the heat set free by condensation in the whirling column in maintaining and promoting the violence of the action, and he supposed that the height of the column of water raised was limited to that which the static pressure only of the atmosphere is capable of sustaining in a vacuum. For a long period after these observations, mete- METEOROLOGY. 315 orological science made very little advance either in this country or abroad. The year 1814 was marked by the publication of the well-known essay on dew by William Charles Wells, which has become a classic in mete- orological science, aud has beeu pronounced by Sir JohnHerschel a model of experimental inquiry. Dr. Wells was a native of Charles- ton, South Carolina, and though his life was principally spent abroad, he belongs in a certain sense to the science of America. In the year 1827 Mr. William C. Redfield, of New York, published the first of a series of papers in which he announced and main- tained a theory of the storms of the Atlantic coast, or, as he called them, Atlantic hurri- canes, which gave rise to much controversy, but which has since in substance been re- ceived as a true statement of the law gov- erning the great progressive storms of the northern hemisphere. Mr. Redfield held — and aimed by a laborious comparison of ob- servations upon the winds, made at numer- ous and widely distant points on land and at sea during these storms, to prove — that the storm is a vast whirlwind, circular in figure, its motion of gyration being to an observer within it from right to left. While such was supposed to be the internal move- ment, the whole storm was shown to have a motion of translation along a curved path, convex toward the west, and having usual- ly its vertex in about latitude 37° or 38°, en- tering upon the continent between Georgia and Texas, and passing off on the coast of New England or of British America. The motion of progress is, therefore, the reverse of that of rotation, and the storm moves on its path in the same manner in which a wheel might be supposed to roll along a curved track. The birth-place of these storms was supposed by Mr. Redfield to be the West India Islands aud the Caribbean Sea, and, like Franklin, he supposed them to be caused by uprising currents produced by local tropical heats. As for their prog- ress, he supposed them to be borne along first by the trades, aud then by the coun- ter-trades, or prevailing west winds of the higher temperate zone. To the theory of Mr. Redfield was opposed a rival theory, identified with the name of its originator, Mr. James P. Espy, of Pennsyl- vania, who published in 1841 an essay en- titled, " The Philosophy of Storms." As to the origin of storms the two theories were in harmony ; but Mr. Espy supposed the air currents within the storm to follow the di- rection of radii of the circle from the cir- cumference to the centre, instead of being coincident in direction with the circumfer- ence itself. Long-continued and extended observation has shown that in this he was in error ; and it is, in fact, capable of a pri- ori demonstration that no two opposite at- mospheric currents, drawn toward the same point by a local diminished pressure, can approach in straight lines or meet each oth- er directly. From the configuration of the earth, and from its motion of rotation, of which the atmosphere partakes, such cur- rents must necessarily deviate toward the right, producing as a result a motion of gy- ration. It is evident, however, that Mr. Redfield was not wholly correct. The true motion of the winds within the storm is nei- ther rectilinear nor circular, but spiral, con- verging to the centre. Mr. Espy made an important contribution to the physics of storms in pointing out the source of the en- ergy which maintains them in action after the merely local cause which originally pro- duced them has ceased to have effect. This is the immense liberation of the heat of elasticity which takes place in consequence of the condensation of the aqueous vapor contained in the ascending air. As the air ascends, it expands from diminished press- ure ; expansion reduces its temperature be- low the dew-point ; condensation occurs, and the heat released causes further expan- sion. Thus the process continues till the moisture of the air is exhausted. The storm would soon cease if it were not in this man- ner continually fed by fresh supplies of un- condensed vapor drawn in with the air from surrounding regions. No such storm can endure upon deserts like those of Northern Africa. Mr. Espy's merits were acknowl- edged by the French Academy of Science in a formal report. Professor Loomis, of Yale College, has made many valuable contribu- tions to meteorological science in the study of particular storms, and more recently in a careful analysis of the weather maps which have for the last few years been issued daily from the Signal-office of the United States War Department. He has especially shown 316 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. that while all our great storms are cyclonic, and to that extent conformable to Mr. Red- field's theory, they are not by any means, as Mr. Redfield had supposed, circular. They are rather irregularly elliptical, having their longer diameter generally north and south, inclining most frequently to the northeast and southwest direction, and they have oft- en large sinuosities of outline. The weather maps of the Signal -office just mentioned, and the system of widely extended telegraphic communication of ob- servations from all points of our national territory to a single central office at Wash- ington, by means of which the material is gathered for their preparation, have fur- nished admirable means for studying the laws which govern atmospheric changes on this continent. The system originated in 1869, at Cincinnati, with Professor Cleve- land Abbe, who now conducts it, under Gen- eral Myer, chief signal officer. The tele- graphic prognostications of the weather daily transmitted for publication from the central office to all the chief cities of the Union have proved to be a very important public benefit. Something similar to this was attempted about twenty years ago by Mr. Espy, who then held an official appoint- ment as meteorologist under the govern- ment, but the means at his command were more limited, and his organization less com- plete. The Smithsonian Institution, ever since its establishment, has been active in promoting meteorological observation, and has maintained constant communication with several hundred observers in all parts of the United States. Previously to the war the secretary, Professor Henry, had planned and had partially put into operation a sys- tem of weather bulletins and storm warn- ings like the present, which, in consequence of the disturbed state of public affairs, was necessarily abandoned after the commence- ment of hostilities ; and for a number of years there was maintained at the institu- tion a large meteorological wall map of the continent exposed to public view, on which were daily exhibited emblems showing the aspect of the weather and the direction of the wind at each of a large number of points of observation distributed widely through- out the country, as communicated by tele- graph. SOUND. The science of acoustics has been great- ly advanced by the labors of the physicists and physiologists of the present century.' The mathematical theory of sound, the mode of its generation and propagation, the prin- ciples of music, and the laws of harmony had been well established by previous in- vestigators. But the experimental study of the particular phenomena of vibration, of the physiology of audition, of the ele- mentary tones which enter into the ordi- nary notes of music, of the physical causes of timbre or quality in sounds, and of what- ever else in acoustics is incapable of beiug deduced abstractly from definitions or first principles, had received comparatively lit- tle attention, or had been pursued with little success. The recent progress of ex- perimental acoustics has been wonderfully promoted by the ingenuity of the methods employed in the study of vibratiou ; some of them graphic, in which the vibrations record themselves, and others optical, in which they present a visible picture of their phases to the eye. The methods strictly acoustic have, moreover, been greatly im- proved in the hands of modern investiga- tors ; as in the case of the sirene of Cagniard de la Tour, which has been converted by Helmholtz into an instrument of largely in- creased capabilities. The vibrating lens of Lissajous, and the revolving mirrors and manometric flames of Kcenig, have furnished admirable means of illustrating the compo- sition and resolution of harmonic vibrations. Professor Tyndall's singing tubes and sen- sitive flames have shown in a striking man- ner the power of one vibration to excite or repress another. Recent comparatively simple forms of apparatus contrived by German experimenters have sbown that the velocity of propagation of sound in air or other gases can be determined in the space of a few feet with as much accu- racy as has beeu heretofore attained in the most elaborate and protracted observations made in the open air between signal sta- tions separated from each other by some miles. No single investigator has contributed more largely to the advancement of acous- tic science than Professor Helmholtz, of Berlin. In his great work on tone sensa- ACOUSTICS. 317 tion he has given the whole philosophy of composite waves and the theory of audition as founded on the capacity of the ear to re- solve these waves into their component ele- ments. He has shown that within a certain portion of the structure of the ear there are found a multitude of microscopic stretched cords, each of which is fitted to respond to a particular vihration, just as in a piano a siugle striug will vibrate when its own note is sounded, while all the rest remain silent. He has also contrived hearing tubes or shells, called by him resonators, which pos- sess this same property of separating an ele- mentary tone out of an ordinary composite musical note, and by means of a series of these he succeeds in discovering all the ele- ments of which such notes are composed. Every such elementary tone when separately heard has precisely the same quality, wheth- er derived from a reed, a stringed, or a wind instrument ; and thus it appears that the quality or timbre of a musical instrument is an effect of difference of composition, and not of difference of elementary sound. In the United States the number of inves- tigators who have occupied themselves with this interesting branch of science is small. Professor W. B. Rogers, now of Boston, gave some attention as early as 1850 to the curi- ous phenomena of singing tubes, that is, of tubes which utter a musical note on the in- troduction within them of a small gas flame. The vibration was imputed by Professor Rogers to a periodical explosive combustion of the gas, extinguishing the flame, which is immediately re-illuminated. For the pur- pose of demonstrating this latter fact, he employed as his gas jet a tube bent twice at right angles, which, by means of a pulley, he caused to revolve rapidly around its low- er limb. When this is revolved it produces an apparent ring of flame so long as the tube is silent ; but the moment the sound begins, the ring breaks into a crown of minute flames resembling a string of pearls. Professor Henry, in the discharge of his duties as chairman of the Light -house Board, has made many experiments on sound, with a view to improve the system of fog-signals. Some of the facts observed by him are interesting contributions to sci- ence. One of these is the remarkable prop- erty manifested by powerful sounds to prop- agate themselves laterally, or in directions divergent from that to which they are orig- inally confined. A steam-whistle, for exam- ple, blown at the focus of a large parabolic mirror will at moderate distances be better heard in front aud in the prolonged axis of the mirror than behind it ; but when the distance amounts to several miles, it is heard as well behind as before. In like manner, if a source of sound be near a building, an observer at a distance on the other side of the building may hear it distinctly, and yet may entirely lose it as he approaches the building. Another remarkable observation is as to the effect of winds on the audibility of sounds. At any considerable distance a wind blowing from the observer towai'd the source diminishes the loudness. This is ex- plained by the consideration that the lower strata of the air are retarded in their move- ments by the friction of the earth, and con- sequently that the fronts of the sound waves become inclined to the earth's surface. But as the direction of sound propagation is nor- mal to the wave fronts, it happens that a sound proceeding against the wind is de- flected upward so that its force passes above the heads of distant listeners. The only elaborate continuous series of investigations in acoustics which has been undertaken in this country has been con- ducted by Professor A. M. Mayer, of Hobo- ken. The processes of Professor Mayer, which are themselves extremely ingenious, have led to many results of interest and value. It is a proposition deducible from theory, and was so announced by Doppler more than thirty years ago, that the undu- lations generated by a vibratory body in motion will be effectively shortened in the direction toward which the body moves, and lengthened in the opposite direction. This is true as well in optics as in acoustics, and it is upon the assumption of its truth that Mr.Huggins has founded his inferences as to the absolute velocities with which the fixed stars are approaching the earth or receding from it. It has first been experimentally proved in the researches of Professor Mayer. The double sirene of Helmholtz affords a convenient means of studying the effect of partial or complete interference between sound waves which differ in phase at the point of origin, but there has been hitherto 318 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. no instrumental means devised for deter- mining the amount of difference of phase ■which exists between two waves originating in a common phase at the same origin, but brought by different and unequal paths to the point of interference. This want Pro- fessor Mayer has supplied, and in doing so has at the same time provided the most ex- act mode hitherto devised of measuring the ■wave length corresponding to any pitch, and of ascertaining the velocity of sound in the air or in any gaseous medium. The deter- minations are made by means of the ser- rated flames in Kcenig's revolving mirrors, and their precision is secured by what is called a flame micrometer — as ingenious in conception as it is exact in its indications. The analysis of a composite note which Helmholtz accomplished by the use of his resonators, combined with Kcenig's mano- metric flames and revolving mirrors, has been effected by Professor Mayer directly, by connecting the arms of a number of steel tuning-forks by means of tightly stretched silk fibres with a membrane forming part of a reed pipe. On causing the pipe to speak, every fork whose tone forms a part of the note immediately sounds. Professor Mayer has also presented very strong evidence to confirm the opinion which many naturalists have entertained, that the antennas of insects constitute for them the organs of hearing, or organs, at least, through which they receive impres- sions for their guidance from the vibrations of the atmosphere ; he has investigated and delineated the curves which represent the resultant sound wave of a composite note, and has devised the means of optically rep- resenting the movements by which a single molecule of an elastic vibrating medium must be animated under the influence of such complex impulses. The most inter- esting of his contributions to this depart- ment of science is found in his determina- tion of the law which connects the pitch of a sound with the duration of its residual sensation, and in the deductions which flow from this law. It appears experimentally that if a sound of any pitch is suddenly arrested there follows a momentary disso- nance, but that if the interruption is reg- ular and periodic the dissonance diminishes with a diminution of the intervals till it finally disappears ; also, that a more rapid succession of the impulses is necessary to this disappearance in proportion as the pitch is higher. Professor Mayer finds that for a tone produced by forty vibrations a second, the residual sensation lasts one-eleventh of a second, while for one of 40,000 vibrations per second, it lasts only one-five-hundredth of a second. This difference of duration of the residual sensation is the reason that trills upon the upper notes are pleasing, while those on the lower are not. The ap- plication of these principles to the study of harmony and to the means of producing the most agreeable effects in musical com- position is important. LIGHT, HEAT, ETC. From the time of Newton to that of Young the science of optics made no ma- terial progress. The correction by Dollond, in 1758, of one of the few mistaken inferen- ces of Newton, that the dispersive powers of transparent bodies are not proportional to their mean refractive powers, however prac- tically important, was not a large contribu- tion to theory ; and Bradley's discovery of the aberration of light belongs rather to dynamics than to optics. It is, in fact, some- what surprising that this latter phenome- non had not been recognized in anticipation of observation as a physical necessity, since the progressive motion of light had been demonstrated by Roemer half a century be- fore. The first note of returning activity in the field of optical investigation was giv- en by Dr. Young in the memoirs which, in 1800 and the two or three years following, he read before the Royal Society, reviving the hypothesis of Huyghens that light is propagated by undulations and not by the emission of material particles, and support- ing this view by evidences and reasonings so cogent as to advance it to the dignity of a theory. It is a remarkable fact, illustra- ting the tenacity with which even enlight- ened minds cling to opinions long received without question, that these able and unan- swerable papers failed to convince, or even, as is remarked by Principal Forbes, to se- cure a single adherent among the members of the learned body to which they were ad- dressed. The discovery by Malus in 1808 of the polarization of light by reflection THE SPECTRUM. 319 awakened a new interest in optical ques- tions, and a large part of the history of this science during the first half of the nine- teenth century is occupied with the devel- opment of the consequences of this discov- ery by Fresnel, Arago, Brewster, Seebeck, and others. Important contributions to the mathematical theory, left in some respects incomplete by Fresnel, were made by Cau- chy, Macculagh, and Sir William Rowan Hamilton. No part of this belongs to Amer- ican science. Spectrum. — In 1802 Dr. Wollaston, of Lon- don, in observing through a prism the image of an elongated and very narrow aperture, perceived it to be intersected by well-defined straight lines perpendicular to its length — lines which Young seems to have regarded at first as boundaries between the several elementary colors of the spectrum. Dr. Brewster subsequently observed that cer- tain bodies, solid, liquid, and gaseous, have the power of producing not lines only, but broad bands in the spectral image of the light transmitted through them. But the most remarkable discovery in this branch of investigation was made by Fraunhofer in 1814, who, employing a telescope to aid the observation, detected and was able to count nearly six hundred lines like those seeu by Wollaston, fixed in position — a num- ber which Brewster subsequently increased to two thousand, and which later observa- tions have shown to be practically unlimit- ed. The earliest investigations of this cu- rious, but, as it has since appeared, highly important class of phenomena, undertaken in the United States, were made by Dr. John William Draper, of New York, a man whose name occupies a very conspicuous place in the world as well of letters as of science. Dr. Draper's labors in this department were spread over so large a field that it would be quite impracticable to do them justice in the limited space at our command. They embraced at once the physical, chemical, and thermal properties of light, and the re- lations of this principle to the organic world and the physiology of vision. He was the first to apply the method of photography to the study of the Fraunhofer lines. A mem- oir published by him in 1843 describes many new lines in the ultra-red and ultra- violet. The great bands in the ultra-red were first detected by him. Some of these were subsequently rediscovered by the aid of the thermo-multiplier. In 1844 he pho- tographed the diffraction spectrum formed by a Gitter-platte, or ruled grating, and pub- lished a memoir showing the singular ad- vantages which that spectrum possesses over the prismatic in investigations on ra- diation. Since the science of spectroscopy (a science of which the foundations were laid in Dr. Draper's early researches) has attain- ed so high an importance in connection with investigations both of celestial and terres- trial chemistry, the spectrum has been pho- tographed upon a much larger scale than was attempted by Dr. Draper. The most admirable photograph of this kind, so far as the visible spectrum is con- cerned, was obtained by Mr. Lewis M. Ruth- erfurd, of New York, in 1866. It was en- larged from an original taken with prisms constructed of plate-glass, hollow, and fill- ed with bisulphide of carbon — a plau first adopted by Professor O. N. Rood, in 1862. To a very powerful train of such prisms, six in number, made effectively twelve by means of a repeating prism, Mr. Rutherfurd subsequently applied a system of mechan- ical or automatic adjustment for varying the angular position without deranging the regularity of the train, which was the first contrivance of the kind ever invented. Of the map, eighty-two inches in length, and embracing more than 2500 sharply defined lines, Mr. Lockyer, the celebrated spectro- scopist of London, remarked recently in a public lecture, it was a thing so admirable that he could not look at it without a feel- ing of the intensest envy. Still more re- cently (1873), Dr. Henry Draper, son of Dr. J. W. Draper, has produced a photograph of the ultra-violet rays of the diffraction spec- trum which far exceeds in distinctness any thing previously attempted in this difficult spectral region. The gitter from which it was taken was ruled by Mr. Rutherfurd, who had long been engaged in the attempt to perfect plates suitable for this purpose. The earliest gitters were prepared by Fraun- hofer, and were ruled through leaf metal or thin coatings of grease on glass. He sub- sequently ruled with a diamond point on the glass itself; but none of his rulings were closer than about 8000 lines to the 320 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. inch, and none of over 3500 were regular enough to be serviceable. For the last twenty or thirty years the plates most in use by investigators have been furnished by Mr. F. A. Nobert, of Barth, in Pomeranian Prussia, who has carried his rulings to a degree of fineness far beyond that at which spectra cease altogether to be produced, the object being to provide tests for the resolv- ing power of microscopes. Admirable as these productions certainly are, they are de- ficient in uniformity, which is the quality of most essential importance in the gratings required for the study of diffraction spec- tra. Mr. Rutherfurd's finer gratings have nearly 18,000 lines to the inch, and their uniformity, as tested by the sharpness of their definition of the spectral lines, is all but perfect. The delicacy of this ruling operation may be judged by the fact that when the machine which draws the lines is operated by hand, although not touched but only moved by a cord attached, the rul- ing is liable to be made uneven by the ef- fect of expansion from the radiant heat of the person. In consequence of this, Mr. Rutherfurd resorted to the expedient of driving the machine by a miniature turbine wheel, with very satisfactory re- sults. The memoir of Dr. Henry Draper accom- panying the photograph above mentioned was read before the French Academy of Sciences, and published in their Comptea Eenclus. It has also been printed in full in the principal journals devoted to physical science in France, England, Italy, and Ger- many, and the discussion of the photograph has settled the wave lengths of all the ultra- violet rays, and has finally corrected the er- rors of previous observers. The first suggestion of the relation be- tween the spectra of incandescent or incan- descing bodies and their physical condition or chemical composition was made by Dr. J. W. Draper, in an important memoir " On the Production of Light and Heat," publish- ed in 1847. This, among other things, point- ed out the means of determining the solid or gaseous condition of the sun, the stars, and the nebulae. In it the author demon- strated experimentally that all solid sub- stances, and probably all liquids, become in- candescent at the same temperature ; that the temperature of red heat is about 977° F. ; that the spectrum of an incandescent solid is continuous, containing neither bright nor dark fixed lines ; that from common tem- peratures up to 977° F. the rays emitted by a solid produce no effect on vision, but that at that temperature they impress the eye with the sensation of red ; that the heat of the incandescing body being made con- tinuously to rise, other rays are added, in- creasing in refrangibility with increase of temperature ; and that while the addition of rays so much the more refrangible as the temperature is higher is going on, there is an augmentation of the intensity of those already existing. In the following year, in a memoir on the production of light by chemical action, Dr. Draper gave the spec- trum analysis of many different flames, and devised the arrangements of charts of their fixed lines in the manner now universally employed. The former of these memoirs had a circulation in American and foreign journals proportionate to its importance. An analysis of it in Italian was read in July, 1847, by Melloni, before the Royal Academy of Naples, and this was afterward transla- ted into French and English. Yet, notwith- standing the publicity thus given to these discoveries, the same facts were thirteen years later published by Professor Kirch- hoff, under the guise of mathematical de- ductions, with so slight a reference to the original discoverer that he secured substan- tially the entire credit of them himself; and in a historical sketch of spectrum analy- sis subsequently published, he omitted the name of Dr. Draper altogether. This is the more remarkable, as the historical sketch here referred to was professedly prepared because the writer had become aware of the existence "of some publications on the subject which he had not before known, and had found that other publications which had appeared to him to possess no special interest" were not similarly regard- ed by all. The object, therefore, of this sequel was " to complete the historical sur- vey." It is entirely occupied, nevertheless, with an argument to disprove that any ob- server had contributed any thing to " the solution of the proposed question whether the bright lines of a glowing gas are sole- ly dependent on its chemical constituents" PHOTOGRAPHY. 321 until 1861, when it was solved by Bun sen and himself — excepting only Swan, who in 1857 identified the sodium line, although "he did not answer the question positively, or in its most general form." The writer considers and passes judgment on the chums of Herschel, Talbot, W. A. Miller, Wheat- stone, Masson, Angstrom, Van der Willigen, and Pliicker, all of whom had examined the well-known bright lines in the spectra of flames or of the electric spark, and had made suggestions indicating that this ques- tion had been present to their minds ; but remarkably omits from the enumeration the name of the only observer whose publica- tions were most directly suggestive of such a course of investigation as that which he himself subsequently pursued. In 1858, three years before the announcement of the results obtained by Bunsen and Kirchhoff, a memoir appeared by Dr. Draper on the nature of flame and the condition of the sun's surface, which was the precursor of the numerous investigations out of which has grown the imposing science of celestial chemistry. The spectra of the stars were earliest studied by Mr. Rutkerfurd, who published in 1863 a comparative map or diagram giv- ing the spectra of 'seventeen different stars compared with those of the sun, the moon, and the planets Mars and Jupiter. The star spectra were arranged by him in three classes, to some extent corresponding to those since made by Secchi. In 1861 Pro- fessor Kirchhoff made public his well-known map of the solar spectrum, in which the very numerous lines given are determined in place by a millimetric scale. To remove the uncertainties attendant on the use of such a system, Dr. Wolcott Gibbs, of Har- vard University, proposed, and to a certain extent constructed, in 1866, a normal map of the spectrum founded on wave lengths. His map embraced 187 lines lying between C and G of Fraunhofer. In 1871 a prelim- inary map or catalogue of the spectral lines of the solar chromosphere was published in the Philosophical Magazine, of London, by Professor C. A. Young, of Dartmouth College, which was afterward republished by Schel- len in his large work on the spectroscope. This embraced 103 lines, identifying such as had been observed before, and giving the 21 names of former observers. In the follow- ing year this number was increased by Pro- fessor Young to 273. The most important contribution to stellar spectroscopy yet made is a photograph of the spectrum of Alpha Lyrse taken by Dr. Henry Draper with his great speculum of twenty-eight inches aperture, showing in the invisible region four great groups of lines never be- fore seen. This interesting result has been attained only after seventeen years of per- severing effort, and is the fruit of probably the most difficult and costly experiment in celestial chemistry ever made. The conclusion as to the chemical consti- tution of the heavenly bodies to which the study of their spectra has led, is that the same elements are found in them as in the earth, and only the same, with the single ex- ception of a supposed element in the sun, called for the present, helium. But it ap- pears that the temperatures of the different bodies must be materially different ; and this difference is without doubt the occasion of the varieties of their spectral aspects, and of their very observable differences of color to the eye. In regard to the distribution of heat in the spectrum, an important discovery was made by Dr. Draper so recently as 1872. He has shown that the observed decrease of the intensity of heat from the more to the less refrangible region is due not to any in- herent quality of the rays, but solely to the action of the prism itself, which compresses the less refrangible region and dilates the more refrangible. Photography. — The sensibility of many ^ chemical compounds to the action of light was very early observed. Attempts were made by Sir Humphry Davy and others early in this century to take advantage of this fact for the purpose of producing copies of prints, leaves, etc., by pressing them un- der glass against sheets of paper which had been impregnated with silver salts, and ex- posing them in the sunlight. Imperfect copies were obtained, but they were eva- nescent, no successful process having been discovered for removing the unchanged salt from the paper. They were counterparts of the originals, but presented, of course, the lights and shades reversed. For a number of years, beginning in about 1830, Mr. Ni- 322 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. cephore Niepce and Mr. Daguerre in France, and Mr. Fox Talbot in England, occupied themselves in persevering endeavors to dis- cover some mode by which the fleeting im- ages might be fixed, and to increase the sen- sitiveness of the chemically prepared surface employed to receive the impression. These efforts were at length crowned with success. In 1839 Mr. Daguerre made public the beauti- ful process which bears his name, and this was immediately followed by the announce- ment of the very different one which Mr. Talbot had been engaged in perfecting, and which he was thus constrained somewhat prematurely to disclose. The production of these light-pictures was attributed to the action of a class of rays present in the sun- light, but non-luminous, called, for want of a better name, the chemical rays. For this term Dr. Draper proposed to substitute the name tithonic, from a fancied analogy with the fable of Tithonus,the favorite of Aurora; and somewhat later Sir John Herschel sug- gested the term actinic — a term which, in spite of its etymological vagueness, has since prevailed. In regard to this class of rays, the researches of Dr. Draper, protracted through a period of ten or fifteen years, commencing about 1835, were more fertile of results than those of any contemporary investigator. Though embracing the class of phenomena on which the art of photography has been founded, their scope was in the largest de- gree comprehensive. They included, among other things, experiments on the absorption of the chemical rays by solid and liquid me- dia, the decomposition of carbonic acid by light, the interference of chemical rays, the crystallization of substances in the rays of light, the supposed magnetizing properties of the solar rays, which he found not to ex- ist, and the effects of light upon vegeta- tion. The memoirs published by him on these subjects in foreign and American jour- nals amounted to nearly forty. Many of these" were collected in 1844 in a large quar- to volume, entitled, A Treatise on the Forces which produce the Organization of Plan ts. Par- ticularly noticeable among these are a mem- oir explanatory of the mechanical cause of the flow of sap in plants, which is ascribed to the carbonization of water on the leaves by the light of the sun ; and another, dem- onstrating that it is the yellow ray which produces the reduction of carbonic acid in plants, and not the violet, as had been pre- viously supposed. The first photographic portraits of the human countenance were taken by Dr. Draper soon after the an- nouncement of Daguerre's discovery, and at a time when such a thing had been pro- nounced impracticable by so high an au- thority as Sir David Brewster. He taught the art to Professor Morse, by whom it was long successfully practiced, and who pos- sessed exclusively the secret until it was at length made public by the originator in the London and .Edinburgh Philosophical Maga- zine. This consisted essentially in quick- ening the sensitiveness of the Daguerrean plates by brief exposure to the vapor of bromine. By this treatment they became so extremely sensitive as to receive an im- pression instantaneously in the open air, and in the light of an ordinary apartment in a very few seconds. About the same time, and while the method of Dr. Draper was still undisclosed, a similar result was attained by the writer of this article by the use of chlorine. Photographs of the moon were taken by Dr. Draper as early as 1840, at a time when the moon's rays were supposed to possess no actinic power, and when, in fact, bright objects strongly illu- minated by the intensest light of the full moon failed, after hours of exposure, to pro- duce any trace of an impression on the plates of Daguerre. These photographs showed very well the light and shade characteris- tic of the different regions of the satellite, though by no means comparable to the mag- nificent photographs since taken by Dr. Hen- ry Draper and by Mr. Rutherfurd. The useful applications of the photo- graphic art are very numerous. In por- traiture it has created a special industry, large and lucrative, and of world-wide pop- ularity. In mechanical engineering and in every branch of constructive art it furnish- es the means of obtaining designs of the most complicated machinery or structures without the expenditure of time and labor necessary for the execution of drawings. It provides a perfect means of cultivating the popular taste or of instructing the pop- ular intelligence by bringing faithful rep- resentations of the choicest works of art, or of the most interesting scenes of nature and THE MICROSCOPE. 323 of human life, within the reach of every one. Aided by the ingenious invention of Professor Wheatstone, the stereoscope, it actually seems to reproduce before us the objects which it represents, with all the as- pect of reality. In its later degrees of per- fection it has made it possible to prepare plates from which prints in ink can be di- rectly taken ; and as an aid to the litho- graphic art it has substituted a direct im- pression on the stone for the patient labor of the engraver or the draughtsman. In the magnetic observatories established by the British and other European governments, it traces the record of the daily and hourly fluctuations of the magnetic elements ; and it has in some instances been employed to record in like manner the indications of the barometer and the thermometer. Its high- est applications are undoubtedly to astron- omy, to uranographical measurements ac- cording to the method of Mr. Rutherfurd, to the study of the solar and stellar spectra as practiced by Mr. Rutherfurd and Dr. H. Draper, to that of the sun spots so per- severingly pursued by De la Rue, Loewy, and Carringtou, and to fixing the phases of solar eclipses, and of still more rare phenomena, like the transit of Venus. Production of Cold. — One of the most im- portant applications of the principles of physics to a practical purpose is to be found in the various forms of apparatus at present in use for the artificial production of cold. All of these owe their efficacy to the absorption of heat which takes place in the vaporization of highly volatile liquids ; and the discovery that this principle can be practically and economically utilized is due to our countryman, Professor A. C. Twining, of New Haven, by whom the first apparatus for the purpose on a working scale ever c 'ii- structed was put into operation in 1850, and was made the subject of a patent in this country and in England. Professor Twin- ing made use of common sulphuric ether as the liquid to be vaporized. Subsequently Mr. Tellier, an English inventor, substitu- ted for this, methylic ether, which has the advantage of being greatly more volatile ; and Mr. Carre", of Paris, employed liquefied ammoniacal gas, which possesses the same advantage in a still higher degree. An important industry has grown out of this discovery, which is every year enlarging the magnitude of its operations. The Microscope. — The discovery made in 1829 by Mr. J. J. Lister, of London, that ev- ery achromatic combination of lenses has two aplanatic foci, and that by the combi- nation of two achromatics the spherical aberration of oblique pencils can be effect- ually suppressed, formed an epoch in the history of this instrument from which dates an almost miraculously rapid advance to- ward perfection. Results toward which Chevallier and others had been blindly feel- ing their way without ever satisfactorily reaching them were now made dependent upon well-ascertained principles ; and the question who should produce the best mi- croscope became a question of relative in- genuity in the application of theory no less than of practical skill in producing the curves which theory dictated. In 1846 Mr. Charles S. Spencer, a young, self-taught, and previously unknown optician living in the interior of the State of New York, submitted to the microscopists of the country micro- scopic objectives exhibiting a sharpness of definition and power of resolution which excited the greatest surprise, and entitled them to be esteemed, for the time at least, as superior to any other known in the world. The great multiplication of micro- scopic observers produced by the wonderful improvement of the instrument, and the great increase in the demand for objectives consequent upon the multiplication of ob- servers, soon, however, produced the natu- ral effect of rivalry among opticians, and foreign objectives appeared which justly challenged comparison with those of Mr. Spencer. In the subsequent progress of improvement the artisans of England, France, Germany, and the United States have maintained a pretty equal strife. Mr. Spencer still sustains the high reputation which he so early established ; and upon the same plane with him may be placed Mr. R. B. Tolles, of Boston, and Mr. William Wales, of Fort Edward, New Jersey. Of the natu- ralists among us who have devoted them- selves to the use of the microscope, none have done more honor to the science of our country than the late Professor Bailey, of West Point, whose contributions to the knowledge of the diatomacepe are distribu- 324 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. ted through the journals and Transactions, and Professor H. L. Smith, of Hobart Col- lege, one of the highest living authorities upon this order of the algae, who has now in the hands of the Smithsonian Institution, awaiting publication, a systematic and com- prehensive monograph on the subject, found- ed on the studies and observations of twen- ty years, and illustrated with numerous original drawings from nature. ELECTRICITY, MAGNETISM, ETC. Down to the end of the eighteenth cen- tury the science of electricity existed only in a very elementary condition. Its phe- nomena, so far as they were known, belonged to static electricity only, and were referred to the agency of a subtle fluid or fluids pres- ent every where, but becoming manifest only when in a state of disturbed equilibrium. The hypothesis of a single electrical fluid is usually ascribed to Franklin, and passes by his name, though Leslie claims that it had been earlier suggested by Watson, of Lon- don. The opposing hypothesis of Dufay presumed the existence of two fluids neu- tralizing each other in the ordinary condi- tion of bodies by their union, and exhibiting attractions and repulsions when separated. The Franklinian hypothesis is liable to the objection that it necessitates the supposi- tion that material bodies deprived of elec- tricity are mutually repellent. But neither is any longer entertained. Franklin dem- onstrated the identity of lightning with the ordinary electric spark as early as 1752. It is commonly believed that the first suspi- cion of this identity originated with him ; but it had already been suggested by Nollet in 1746, who compared a thunder-cloud to the prime conductor of an electrical ma- chine (it resembles more nearly one coating of a Leyden-jar), and had been urged in a plausible course of reasoning by Winkler. Franklin's merit was that he suggested the means of setting the question forever at rest by actually drawing electricity out of the clouds. It is a curious fact that he was not the first to try his own experiment. The plan he had publicly proposed was to erect on some eminence a lofty insulated iron rod tapering to a point ; and this plan was fol- lowed by Dalibard, who drew sparks from such a rod erected near Paris, and even charged from it a Leyden-jar, as early as the 10th of May, 1752. The famous kite experi- ment of Franklin was performed more than a month later, on the 15th of June ; but in those days, in which ocean cables and steam- ships were equally unknown, he was, of course, ignorant of Dalibard's previous suc- cess. It is upon this experiment that the immense reputation of Franklin as a man of science mainly rests. Considering the sim- plicity of the conception and the still great- er simplicity of the apparatus by which it was realized, we can not at this distance of time but be astonished at the profound im- pression it produced upon the world. Such was his popularity in France that, when he appeared as the representative of the Ameri- can colonies at the court of Louis XVI., the sale of his portrait made the fortune of the engraver ; and beneath this portrait was in- scribed, by the minister of a monarch him- self a few years later dethroned and exe- cuted as a tyrant, the famous legend, " Eripuit coelo f ulmen, sceptrumque tyraunis." Not long after this, moreover, the celebra- ted Erasmus Darwin, writing to compliment Franklin on having united philosophy to modern science, directed his letter merely to " Dr. Franklin, America," adding that he was almost disposed to write "Dr. Franklin, The World," there being but one Franklin, and that Franklin being known of all men. Aft- er making all allowance for the weight of Franklin's political position and the sound practical sense displayed in his writings on subjects of popular interest, there remains no doubt that his singular celebrity was due mainly, after all, to the association of his name with the lightning. The great discovery of Volta, just at the close of the century, originated a new and prolific branch of electrical science, not at first recognized as such. In the infancy of the investiga- tion which this discovery opened, it was a first necessity of progress to improve the means by which the electric current is gen- erated. For the inconvenient pile of the discoverer, trough batteries with immovable plates were soon introduced in England, and it was by means of such that Sir Humphry Davy made many of his very numerous and celebrated electro-chemical discoveries. Dr. Wollaston greatly improved these batteries ELECTRICITY. 325 by giving them a construction which caused both sides of the zincs to be effective, and permitted the plates to be removed from the troughs. But all these forms of apparatus were attended with the serious disadvantage that their power when in action rapidly de- clined, in consequence of the formation upon the negatives of a coating of minute bub- bles of hydrogen gas. This difficulty was first effectually overcome by Dr. Eobert Hare, of Philadelphia, who in 1820 intro- duced the form of voltaic battery which, from the intensity of its efiects, he called the deflagrator. The deflagrator was made very compact by forming the metals into coils, their opposed surfaces being very near to each other, but separated by insulating wedges ; but its important characteristic consisted of a mechanism by which the en- tire series of elements could be instantane- ously immersed in the liquid or lifted out. For experiments of brief duration, therefore, the battery was always ready to act with its full power. A similar device occurred later to Faraday, but though it was original with him, he very honorably admitted that on ex- amination he found this new battery to be " in all essential respects the same as that invented and described by Dr. Hare." Be- sides the deflagrator, Dr. Hare constructed auotber form of voltaic apparatus, designed with low intensity of electricity to generate an enormous volume of heat. This, which he called the calorimotor, was formed by com- bining many very large plates of zinc and copper into two series, and immersing them at once into a tank of dilute acid. By means of it large rods of iron or platinum are ig- nited and fused in a few seconds, and its magnetic effects are equally surprising ; yet it is hardly capable of producing the faintest spark between carbon electrodes. Dr. Ha^-e was an extremely voluminous writer on sub- jects connected with voltaic electricity and chemistry. Nearly one hundred and fifty articles from his pen may be found in the Journal of Science alone. In invention he was wonderfully fertile, and in the variety of ingenious contrivances devised and con- structed by him in aid of investigation or for purposes of illustration, he deserves to be ranked with men like Hooke, Wollaston, and Wheatstone. The constant battery, the next improve- ment in voltaic electro-motive apparatus, was produced by Daniell in 1836. It is a battery of four elements, two metallic and two liquid, the liquids being separated by a porous partition. In this arrangement the nascent hydrogen set free on the zinc side, combining with the oxygen of the metallic base of the solution on the copper side, no longer appears in the gaseous form, and the obstruction it had occasioned to circulation is thus suppressed. Daniell, nevertheless, was not the first to suggest a battery of four elements. The credit of this suggestion is due to Dr. John W. Dra- per, of New York, who, as early as 1834, de- scribed such a battery in the Journal of the Franklin Institute. The relation of electricity to magnetism was a discovery accidentally made by Oer- sted, of Copenhagen, in 1819. He noticed that if a wire conveying a voltaic current be brought near a suspended magnetic nee- dle, the needle will be deflected from its normal position. This remarkable discov- ery was followed by one no less remark- able, made simultaneously by Arago and Davy, that the conducting wire itself, what- ever may be the material it is composed of, is capable, while conveying the voltaic cur- rent, of attracting soft iron. Ampere next discovered that two wires conveying elec- tric currents attract each other if the cur- rents are in the same direction, and repel if the directions are opposite. Upon this he founded his celebrated theory which made magnetism only one of the forms of manifestation of electrical force. This the- ory suggested to Arago the idea that a steel needle might possibly be magnetized by subjecting it to the action of an electric current passing spirally round it. He test- ed the truth of this conjecture, and his ex- periment was a success. A repetition of this experiment in modified form by Stur- geon, of Woolwich, England, in 1825, drew after it important consequences. Bending a piece of stout iron wire into the form of a horseshoe, and coating it with varnish to secure insulation, he wound round this a copper wire, which ho introduced into the battery circuit. The iron wire thus treat- ed became temporarily a feeble horseshoe magnet, capable of sustaining a weight of two or three pounds. At this stage of the 326 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. investigation the subject attracted the at- tention of Professor Joseph Henry, of Al- bany, New York, and the next step in the progress of this history — a very large one — was taken by him. Considering that the intensity of the effect must be proportion- ed to the closeness of the coil, and that with a naked conductor the spirals could not permissibly be brought into contact, it occurred to him to insulate the conducting wire itself, which he did by winding it with silk. This expedient enabled him not only to envelop the iron closely in the first in- stance, but also to wind several successive coils over each other. The result was to produce an electro-magnet in the proper sense of the word — an instrument not lim- ited in its use to the purposes of lecture- room illustration, but capable of important and largely varied practical applications. Some of the magnets constructed by Pro- fessor Henry sustained weights of between one and two tons. In pursuing his investigations on this subject, Professor Henry ascertained a num- ber of important facts concerning the laws of development of magnetism in soft iron. Having surrounded a given bar with a num- ber of short helices abutting end to end, he tried the effect of first uniting the similar ends of these so as to make one short com- pound conductor, and of afterward uniting their dissimilar ends so as to make a siugle continuous conductor of them all. With a battery of a few elements, the first ar- ' raugement proved to be most effective, but with one of many, the second was superior. Hence the distinction introduced by him be- tween quantity and intensity magnets. The possible practical applications of the electro-magnet were not overlooked by Professor Heury, though he contented him- self with pointing them out without pursu- ing them. The practicability of an electric telegraph was illustrated by him in an ap- paratus fitted up in 1831 in the Albany Academy, by which an electric current transmitted through a circuit of more than a mile was made to ring a bell. The inven- tion of the first recording magnetic tele- graph — that is, of the instrument by which signals are actually written down by mag- netism, and not merely addressed to the sense of hearing or sight — was made by Pro- fessor S. F. B. Morse, of New York. He had conceived it as early as 1832. The instru- ment did not take form till some years later. It was impossible that either mode of signal- ing (the mode actually used by Professor Heury in 1831 or that conceived by Profess- or Morse in 1832) should come into public use or be economically a possibility so long as there existed no form of constant or sus- taining battery, and the batteries of Dan- iell and Grove were only known in 1836 and 1837. In the construction of long lines of tele- graph it became early necessary to devise some practicable means of crossing the larger streams or the narrower estuaries by means of submerged conductors. When this had been successfully accomplished, the same system was naturally extended to the small- er seas or arms of the ocean, such as the British Chanuel and the Mediterranean. But when, a little more than twenty years ago, it was first proposed to lay an electric cable from continent to continent in the bed of the ocean itself, the audacity of the proj- ect was such that, at its first announce- ment, it struck the world as too visionary to be seriously considered. Even to con- trive a form of conductor which should com- bine the strength and completeness of insu- lation indispensable to such a purpose, was a problem in applied science of no slight dif- ficulty, and to lay it in its place demand- ed the exercise of mechanical skill of the highest order. Supposing it to have been laid, science, again, had not yet devised the means of making it available. The exhaust- less energy and indomitable perseverance of Mr. Cyrus W. Field nevertheless triumph- ed at last over all the practical difficulties ; and the patient study of the scientific side of the question by the electricians, especially by Sir William Thomson, with his marvel- ous fertility of invention, was equally suc- cessful in overcoming the rest. The elec- trical telegraph, therefore, one of the most magnificent gifts of science to the world, may be justly claimed as especially a gift of American science, and the energy which was mainly instrumental in giving it its latest and largest availability was no less American. Professor Henry was the first to point out the practicability of applying electro-mag- ELECTRO-MAGNETISM. 327 netism as a motive power, and in illustration of this lie constructed an oscillating appa- ratus, described in the American Journal of Science in 1829. The attempts which have been made to turn this power practically to account have been very numerous. Al- most or quite the earliest was made by Messrs. Davenport and Cook, of Vermont, in 1836. A machine in model exhibited by them in New York attracted much atten- tion ; but a working engine which they sub- sequently attempted did not meet their ex- pectations. In all these forms of mechan- ism there is one unavoidable disadvantage, which in the infancy of the science was not known, consisting in the fact that the moving magnets generate in each other cur- rents directly opposed to those from which their own magnetic energy is derived ; and hence the dynamic power of the engine is not proportional to the static energy of its component magnets. Electro-magnetic engines of some power have in a few in- stances been tried, and subsequently aban- doned, not on account of any mechanical failure, but for reasons of economy. One of this description, constructed under the direction of De Jacobi at the expense of the Emperor of Russia, was employed to propel a boat on the Neva. Another was the elec- tro-magnetic locomotive of our countryman, Dr. Charles G. Page. This was remarkable for its original and ingenious method of applying the power, which was by means of solid cylindrical steel magnets rising and descending in the interior of a pile of short helices, the helices being successively thrown into and out of the circuit. With two such engines, Dr. Page drove a car weighing eleven tons and carrying four- teen passengers on a level track at the rate of nineteen miles an hour. Electro-mr g- netic engines can never compete with steam- engines in point of economy until it shall be possible to construct batteries in which the materials consumed shall be, weight for weight, a great deal cheaper than coal. Experimentally it has been proved that a grain of coal consumed under the boiler of a Cornish engine lifts 143 pounds one foot high, while a grain of zinc consumed in a battery to move an electro-magnetic engine lifts only eighty pounds to the same height. But it requires the consumption of a num- ber of grains of coal to produce one grain of zinc. The applications of the electro-magnet to purposes of use are too various to permit here an enumeration in detail. The astro- nomical electro-magnetic chronograph has been already mentioned. The instruments for measuring still more minute intervals of time, called chronoscopes, are dependent, in several of their large variety of forms, on similar means of operation. This same re- mark may be made of numerous very in- genious and very valuable contrivances in- troduced in recent years for demonstrating the laws of falling bodies, for registering vibrations in acoustics, for recording the indications of meteorological instruments, and for many other purposes auxiliary to scientific investigation. As more practical applications, there may be mentioned fire-alarms, by means of which information of the exact locality of a fire in any large city may be instantaneously com- municated to the central office, and definite orders issued at once to fire-companies how to proceed ; burglar-alarms, which instantly indicate the door or window in a dwelling at which entrance has been attempted, and at the same time turn on a light and arouse the sleepers by ringing bells or sounding rattles ; time-balls dropped in centres of business or iu sea-poi'ts by electrical com- munication from distant astronomical ob- servatories ; and clocks operated by electro- magnetism as a motive power, or systems of dials by which a single clock may show simultaneously the same time in every part of a large business establishment. In the year 1859 a clock of peculiar and original design, operated by electro-magnetism, was constructed, under the direction of the writ- er of this article, by Mr. E. S. Ritchie, of Bos- ton, for the observatory of the University of Mississippi. The pendulum was entirely free, the force required to maintain its mo- tion being applied by depositing a very light weight (of one or two grains) upon an arm of the pendulum at the beginning of the swing, and removing it in the middle, by an arrangement of electro-magnets. The small weight served itself to make and break the battery connections necessary to actuate the auxiliary mechanism. The intention was, by relieving the pendulum from the work 328 SCIENTIFIC PEOGRESS. of operating the escapement, and by redu- cing its swing as low as possible (to a frac- tion of a degree), to remove every external cause which might interfere with the per- fect uniformity of its beat. But a very low power was required to run it. A single cell of Farmer's so-called water battery (pure water next the zinc, and copper sulphate next the copper) was sufficient to maintain its action, but two were commonly used. Mechanically it was a perfect success, but after some months of action it was found that the electric contacts became vitiated by the spark produced, even with that low power, at every rupture of the circuit, and the current ceased to flow. Though the most refractory metals were employed, they were still vaporized and oxidized. The dif- ficulty was at length overcome by introdu- cing Fizeau's condenser into the circuit, by which the spark was effectually suppress- ed ; but owing to the troubles of the times, which prevented the completion of the ob- servatory, it was never brought into use. Within recent years some interesting con- tributions to the progress of electro-magnet- ic science have been made in this country by Professor A. F. Mayer, of Hoboken, New Jersey, Professor John Trowbridge, of Har- vard University, and others. Professor May- er's experiments have led to some very im- portant deductions as to the most effective forms of soft irou core to be given to electro- magnets, and have shown that in general, when such cores are solid cylinders, the cen- tral portion is practically ineffective, and may be removed without diminishing the power of the magnet. They have shown also that the inducing action of the envelop- ing wire on itself, or -that of the adjoining spirals on each other, has no effect on their power to magnetize the core, or on the in- tensity of the current passing through them. We owe also to Professor Mayer one of the most delicate and at the same time simple modes yet devised of investigating the re- sistance of conductors to electric currents passing through them. That the molecular changes produced in a bar of iron by magnetization are attended with simultaneous changes of dimensions, was rendered probable by the observation (made many years ago by Dr. Page) that they are attended by audible sounds, and was experimentally proved by Joule and Wertheim. By a very elaborate and care- fully conducted investigation, aided by the exceedingly delicate micrometric comparator constructed for the Coast Survey by Mr. Jo- seph Saxton, Professor Mayer has deter- mined quantitatively the precise character and magnitude of these changes. Professor Trowbridge has also made some interesting discoveries relating to this subject, among which is the fact that if the core of an elec- tro-magnet be made a part of a voltaic cir- cuit, and the magnetizing current be then sent through the enveloping helix by an- other battery, a magnetic power may be ob- tained materially greater than that which the latter current is capable of producing alone, but that this effect will not be re- peated if the magnetizing circuit be broken and again renewed. Voltaic Induction. — The power of a voltaic current to induce currents in neighboring conductors was discovered by Faraday in 1831. If both conductors are motionless, the induced current is but momentary, oc- curring only when the primary current be- gins or ceases to flow. If they approach to-" ward or recede from each other, the induced current is continuous so long as this move- ment continues, being opposite in direction to the primary while approaching, and simi- lar in direction while receding. By using helices instead of single conductors, Mr. Faraday succeeded in producing induced currents of great energy. In the same year Professor Henry made the remarkable dis- covery that a voltaic current induces an ex- tra current in the conductor in which it is itself conveyed, which, however, manifests itself only on making or breaking connec- tion with the battery, the intensity being proportional to the length of the conductor, and being greatly increased by giving the conductor the form of a close spiral. Pro- fessor Henry demonstrated later that, if a series of closed circuits be placed side by side, the first receiving a primary current from the battery, then on making or break- ing battery connection a series of induced currents will be generated in these several circuits, which will be alternately in oppo- site directions. The system of conductors best adapted to this demonstration is a se- ries of flat spirals known as Henry's coils, INDUCTION COILS. 329 formed of wire, or better of copper ribbon, insulated. Induced currents of the ninth order have thus been demonstrated, aud the possible number is theoretically unlimited. Magneto-Electricity. — The year 1831 was very fruitful of electrical discovery. It was in this year that Faraday detected the pow- er of a permanent steel magnet to induce electric currents in neighboring conductors, and in this year also he succeeded in pro- ducing from the induction of such a magnet a visible electric spark. From this mem- orable discovery the science of magneto- electricity takes its date. Almost immedi- ately after it a powerful magneto-electric machine was constructed by Mr. Joseph Saxton, of Philadelphia, which was almost the hrst of its kind. Another, still more powerful, was subsequently invented by Dr. Page, who added the simple but ingenious contrivance called the pole - changer, by which the currents, incessantly reversed in the helices of the machine, are transmitted through the circuit in one constant direc- tion. With this improvement the machine may be made a substitute for a galvanic battery in the operations of electrolysis. Magneto-electric machines have consequent- ly in recent years to a large extent super- seded batteries for many important practi- cal purposes. The galvano-plastic art, so largely employed in copying in fac-simile objects of ornament and use, in plating and gilding, in duplicating the plates of the en- graver, in stereotyping pages for the letter- press, and in a variety of other ways, is now conducted almost entirely by the use of these machines. Constructed on a large scale, they have been employed by the gov- ernments of France and England to furnish electric lights for some of their most impor- tant light-houses. Induction Coils. — After the power of a per- manent magnet to induce electric currents had been demonstrated, it could not be doubted that electro-magnets would do the same. This was Faraday's inference, and experiment confirmed the anticipation. A secondary coil, surrounding but independ- ent of the coil of an electro-magnet, gave currents whenever the battery connection of the magnet was made or broken. In this discovery is found the first suggestion of a form of electrical apparatus which has in recent years become a powerful instrument of physical investigation, the induction coil. In its earliest form this apparatus was the invention of our countryman, Dr. Page, and was called by him the "separable helix." There was an inner helix, fixed upright upon a support, into the hollow interior of which might be introduced bars or wires of soft iron. An outer helix, which was removable, was designed to convey the in- duced current. Dr. Page, in the study of this instrument, made several important discoveries. These were, first, that the in- tensity of the induced current may be great- ly increased by making the wire of the sec- ondary coil many times longer, and also very much smaller, than the primary ; sec- ondly, that the effect of a number of soft iron wires introduced into the inner coil is vastly greater than that obtainable from the same weight of iron in a single bar; and thirdly, that unless the primary cur- rent is broken very abruptly, the induced current of that circuit will leap over the break, neutralizing to some extent, by sec- ondary induction, the induced current in the outer coil. To counteract this he in- vented an ingenious and successful contriv- ance called the spark - arresting circuit- breaker. These discoveries date back to 1838 and earlier. In 1853 Mr. Fizeau, of Paris, suggested the use of a condenser con- structed on the principle of the Leyden-jar, as a means of absorbing the extra current in the primary ; aud this has since super- seded Page's circuit - breaker. About the same time Mr. Ruhmkorff, of Paris, com- menced the construction of the induction coils known by his name, which were in no respect different, except in magnitude, from the separable helices of Page above de- scribed, but which attracted much atten- tion in consequence of the length of spark they produced. This, in Page's instrument, had hardly exceeded one-eighth of an inch ; but in Ruhmkorff's it was increased to near- ly an entire inch, and in his later instru- ments to two or three inches. A practical limit to increase of power in this direction was, however, found in the liability of cur- rents of high intensity to strike through the insulation from layer to layer of the sec- ondary coil. This liability is the greater in proportion as the points of the wire of 330 SCIENTIFIC PKOGEESS. the helix which are brought near each oth- er in winding are more distant as measured upon the length of the wire itself. As a means of preventing it, it occurred to Mr. Ritchie to wind the wire in many flat spi- rals, placing these side by side and connect- ing them at their inner and outer extremi- ties, so as to form a continuous helical con- ductor of which no two points should be more distant from each other, measured along the wire, than the length of two such contiguous spirals, developed. The result was a surprising increase in the length of spark, which has been carried up by him to twelve, fifteen, and even twenty inches. One of Mr. Ritchie's coils was exhibited in Paris in 1860, by Professor McCulloh, of Co- lumbia College, New York. By an exami- nation of this, Mr. Ruhmkorff became ac- quainted with the mode of its construction, which Mr. Ritchie had not previously dis- closed, and adopting it, produced others of enormous power — one of which projected sparks two feet in length. For this great success, mainly due to the ingenuity of our countryman, Mr. Ruhnikorft* received in 1864 the prize of 50,000 francs offered in 1852 by Napoleon III. for the most impor- tant discovery connected with the progress of electricity. Static Electricity. — Some very interesting discoveries in static electricity were made by Professor Henry as early as 1830. He demonstrated that the discharge of a Ley- den -jar consists of a series of oscillations backward and forward, something like the vibration of a spring. The mode of proof employed in this demonstration is at once simple and ingenious. It rests on the two experimentally ascertained facts — first, that a steel needle may be magnetized by sur- rounding it with a spiral conductor, and sending through the conductor the discharge of a Leyden-jar ; and secondly, that there is a point of saturation beyond which the nee- dle will not receive magnetism. By passing successive discharges of gradually increas- ing intensity through the coil, the needle will undergo changes of polarity, showing that it derives its magnetism alternately from the direct and the reversed movement of the electric force. It follows that the electric spark, though to the eye apparently single, is, in fact, made up of many sparks. This multiplicity has recently been optical- ly demonstrated by Professor Rood, of Co- lumbia College, who, by means of a rapidly rotating mirror, has made the successive component sparks visible. A very striking- palpable demonstration of the same fact was also exhibited to the National Acade- my of Sciences in November, 1874, by Pro- fessor A. M. Mayer, of Hoboken, New Jersey. Professor Mayer caused disks of blackened tissue-paper to revolve with great rapidity between the points through which the dis- charge of the Leyden-jar is made. Subse- quent examination of the disk shows it to be perforated with a very great number of minute holes along the circular arc which was passing between the points during the brief continuance of the discharge. The fact which he had demonstrated of the jar, Professor Henry afterward proved to be true of thunder-clouds. These stand to the earth beneath them in the relation of the coatings of the jar, the stratum of air between being the insulating medium. When the insulation is broken through, the lightning flash which follows is multiple and oscillating, presenting on a grand scale an analogy to the discharge of the jar. The duration of flashes of lightning, as well as of the spark from the jar, has been the subject of interesting investigations by Professor Rood, in which he has succeeded in measuring more minute intervals of time than have ever before been made the sub- ject of exact determination. By his meth- ods, which appear to be quite unexception- able, it is proved that a jar of small surface discharges itself in a space of time not great- er than forty one-billionths of a second; and that its light, though of inconceivably brief duration, makes surrounding objects perfectly visible. As there is reason to be- lieve that this time is at least tenfold great- er than is necessary to impress the retina, it follows that the perfect sensation of vision may be excited in an interval as brief as four one-billionths of a second. The dura- tion of lightning flashes is much greater. Besides investigating the form and nature of the spark by optical methods, as already mentioned, Professor Rood has employed photography in the same research, and has demonstrated marked differences between the positive and negative sparks, as well as CHEMISTRY. 331 between the sparks obtained through the jar from the induction coil and from the common frictional machine. In thermo-electricity not much has been done by American investigators. In 1840 Dr. J.W. Draper published a memoir on the electro-motive power of heat, with descrip- tions of improved thermo-electrical couples. A pretty effective thermo-electric battery has been constructed by Mr. Farmer, of Bos- ton, thirty-six elements of which are about equivalent to one of Grove's nitric acid ele- ments. Professor Rood has made an inter- esting application of a thermo-electrical couple to the determination of the heat pro- duced by percussion when the mechanical force exerted is very small. He has been able thus to demonstrate that in the fall of a weight of a single pound through trivial heights, varying from one to five inches, the amouut of heat generated is measura- ble, and is directly as the amount of living force acquired by the body in falling. CHEMISTRY. Chemistry as a science may be said to have been the creation of the century we are reviewing. Many important facts which have now a recognized place in this science had, it is true, been previously gathered ; but they were either facts of accidental dis- covery, or they had been discovered in the course of investigations guided by no intel- ligent theory. The doctrine of phlogiston, introduced early in the eighteenth century by Stahl, though now usually spoken of as a reproach to the science of that age, was really a step of progress, for it was part of a system which proposed to ascertain by ex- perimental research the elementary compo- sition of natural bodies. But it is also true that the overthrow of that doctrine by La- voisier, near the end of the same century, forms the epoch from which modern chem- istry in a proper sense takes its rise. The contemporaries of this great philosopher, Black, Cavendish, and Priestley in England, Scheele in Sweden, and Wenzel in Saxony, contributed largely by their discoveries, and by their researches on heat and on the laws of chemical affinity, to build up the new science on a rational basis. The doctrine of definite proportions, which had been al- ready substantially established by the la- bors of Higgins, Proust, and Richter, was formally announced by Dalton in his atomic theory, taught as early as 1804 and publish- ed in 1808. The question whether there does not exist, also, a law of definite propor- tion between the combining or equivalent weights of the different bodies called ele- mentary, was naturally suggested as a con- sequence of this discovery. When the num- bers are compared with the assumption of any particular equivalent weight as unity, while the results are in many cases integral, there remain always some which continue to be fractional. A comparatively recent and laborious investigation of this subject, however, by Dumas, has led to the result that when a unit is adopted which is equal to one-fourth of the equivalent weight of hydrogen, all the numbers are integral. It is, therefore, a view not without plausibility, entertained by some chemists at present, that all the bodies commonly called element- ary may be compounds; and even that, on a complete decomposition of them all, there might remain but a single elementary sub- stance. The power of heat, when sufficient- ly exalted in temperature, to break up all known chemical compounds, has been fully established of late years by Henri St. Clair Deville ; and spectroscopic observation has shown that many substances exist as vapors in the sun and the stars which no degree of heat which we can artificially produce upon the earth is competent to vaporize. It is therefore not imreasonable to presume that, if there is such a primitive elementary matter as is above supposed, it may be set free in the intense heat of the self-luminous celestial bodies. And it is an interesting fact that, in the spectroscopic examination of the envelopes of the sun, there are detect- ed lines which belong to no element known upon our planet, and which seem also to in- dicate the presence of a substance lighter than hydrogen. Organic chemistry, or the chemistry of animal and vegetable compounds, became early a distinct department of the science. The study of organized bodies led to the discovery of sei-ies, in which a number of bodies differ from each other only in the number of times a simpler definite combi- nation is repeated in their formulae. This discovery was first distinctly announced by 332 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. Dr. James Shiel, of St. Louis, Missouri. In this same study also was found the con- ception of types, in which one element may he replaced hy another — a conception which lies at the foundation of the chemical sci- ence of the present day. This conception, originated by Dumas, and followed up and developed by Laurent and Gerhardt, was first reduced to its most simple and satis- factory form of expression by Professor T. Sterry Hunt, now of Boston, who so early as 1848 demonstrated that all the various saline forms are reducible to two, the types of which are seen in water, and in hydro- gen with the equivalent doubled. In a se- ries of papers published subsequently at intervals, Professor Hunt farther applied these views and extended tliem to embrace the multiple or condensed types afterward adopted by Williamson and Gerhardt, to whom the entire credit of these important generalizations has been often ascribed in foreign publications. So wide is the field covered by the sci- ence of chemistry, and so rapid has been the growth of the science during the last half century, that any attempt in the brief space at our disposal to do justice to the numer- ous laborers to whose activity this great progress is due, wovdd be vain. In this de- partment of science our country has pro- duced a larger number of active investi- gators than in any other, and of these also a larger proportion have become honorably eminent. We must content ourselves in this place with mentioning a few only of the names which have become worthily identified with the history of American chemistry. Among the early teachers of this science in our country who, without engaging largely in original research, did good service in their enlightened defense of the doctrines of the new school of La- voisier, may be fitly mentioned Dr. John Maclean, of Princeton College (elected 1795), Dr. Benjamin Rush, of the University of Pennsylvania (1769), Dr. James Wood- house, of the same institution (1795), and Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, of Columbia Col- lege, New York (1792). Both Dr. Wood- house and Dr. Mitchill published somewhat largely upon chemical topics. Dr. Mitchill was a man of exceptionally varied attain- ments, but his favorite studies were in nat- ural history, especially in zoology, in which he was long regarded as the highest author- ity in the United States. In 1801 there was read before the Chem- ical Society of Philadelphia a memoir " On the Supply and Application of the Blow- Pipe," by a young man of twenty years of age, destined subsequently to attain a high celebrity — Robert Hare. In this was de- scribed the apparatus long known as " Hare's compound blow-pipe," and more recently as the oxyhydrogen blow -pipe, the most powerful means yet known for generating artificial heat. The apparatus referred to was not so much an invention, in the ordi- nary sense of the word, as a logical deduc- tion from a consideration of the conditions necessary to secure the maximum effect from a given amount of heat generated. Lavoisier and others had obtained remark- able effects by directing a stream of oxygen upon ignited carbon. In this case, how- ever, though the body to be operated on was raised to a very high temperature on the side which rested on the carbon sup- port, this temperature did not reach the upper surface, and the fusion or volatiliza- tion attempted was only partially accom- plished. Mr. Hare reflected that this diffi- culty might be got over if some means could be discovered of "clothing the upper sur- face with some burning matter the heat of which might be equal to that of the incan- descent carbon." It soon occurred to him that a flame produced by the combustion of the oxygen and hydrogen gases ought, " according to the theory of the French chemists" (for this was in advance of any demonstration), to be attended with a high- er heat than even that generated by the combustion of carbon. But it was known that a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen in proper proportion to produce a complete combustion is dangerously explosive, and in order to attain the end in view some means of creating the flame had to be de- vised which should be free from this dan- ger. The expedient actually adopted — that of storing the gases in separate vessels and bringing them together by tubes which meet at the point of ignition — seems sim- ple enough now; but that it was not so obvious as it seems is made evident by the fact that, some fifteen years later, Dr. E. CHEMICAL INVESTIGATORS. 333 D. Clarke, Professor of Mineralogy in Cam- bridge, England, introduced and employed an oxyhydrogen blow-pipe in which the gases were mingled in explosive proportions in the same vessel. If Dr. Clarke, in 1816, knew nothing of what Hare had done in 1802, and had described in the same year in Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine, the construc- tion he gave his apparatus proves that the artifice by which the original inventor pro- vided against the possibility of explosion was one which would not readily occur to any but an ingenious mind. If he did pos- sess a previous knowledge of the invention of Hare, his silence in his own paper in re- gard to it admits of no honorable explana- tion. The blow-pipe was but one of Dr. Hare's very numerous contributions to the instrumental means of chemical investiga- tion, but we have room for the mention of no other. Professor Benjamin Silliman, the elder, Professor of Chemistry in Yale College (elected 1802), continued for a long series of years to occupy a very conspicuous po- sition in the world of American science. Though he published a large number of papers on chemical topics, as well as a vo- luminous systematic treatise on the general subject, his early acquired reputation rest- ed in great measure on his eloquent and forceful presentation of the truths of sci- ence to his numerous classes and to popu- lar audiences. The monument which will speak most enduringly of his labors, how- ever, is undoubtedly the Journal of Science, one of the most powerful stimulants of the scientific spirit which has existed among us, established by him when this spirit was at a low ebb, and maintained by him al- most single-handed for years under discour- agements against which few would ha^e had the energy to persevere. Dr. Samuel Guthrie, of Sackett's Harbor, New York, deserves mention here as the discoverer of the very remarkable anaesthet- ic compound known as chloroform. It is a little curious that the same discovery was made about the same time by Soubeiran, a French chemist, and that both discoverers were similarly mistaken as to its nature, and both called it chloric ether. Soubeiran published his discovery in February, 1831, and Guthrie his in January, 1832. It was not till 1834 that the true constitution of the substance was understood, when it was analyzed by Dumas, who gave it the name it has since borne. The numerous and important contribu- tions of Dr. John W. Draper to physical science have been already mentioned. His chemical researches are scarcely less orig- inal, though many of them occupy the bor- der region between physics and chemistry. The most noticeable are his ingenious ex- periments and deductions on osmosis, and on interstitial movements taking place among the molecules of a solid, as in cases of alloys in which the adulterating metals make their way to the surface. Also his beautiful and sensitive photometric appa- ratus, called by him originally the tithom- eter, in which chlorine and hydrogen are mingled in combining proportions. In ab- solute darkness the gases remain free, but on exposure to light they combine with a rapidity dependent on the intensity. One of his later publications is his treatise on Human Physiology, which discusses with much originality questions concerning the chemistry of animal life, as well as the chemical and physical functions of the va- rious organs of the body. Dr. William B. Rogers, of Boston, has pub- lished many chemical papers, some of them of special interest. One of these embraces the discovery tbat the thermal springs of Virginia contain free nitrogen in large pro- portion, exceediug in quantity the carbonic acid and the hydrogen sulphide. Another describes a method of determining carbon in graphite, which is still one of the best methods of effecting the same determina- tion in the analysis of cast iron. Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, has been one of the most active investigators the country has produced. His chemical and geological papers number nearly seven- ty. What has given him probably a wider reputation than any other of his discoveries has been the efficacy of ether to produce anaesthesia. For this he has been made the recipient of honorable decorations from many European governments, yet his title to the credit attributed to him has been contested by two of his countrymen, both now deceased — Dr. W. T. G. Morton, of Bos- ton, and Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford. 334 SCIENTIFIC PEOGRESS. Dr. James Blake, of Sau Francisco, is no- ticeable for his interesting researches in physiological chemistry made by experi- ments on the living subject. Two of his conclusions are striking: first, that the character of the changes produced in living matter by inorganic compounds depends more on the physical properties of the re- agent than on the chemical; and second, that the action of such compounds on liv- ing matter appears not to be related to the changes which they produce in the same substances when not living. Dr. Wolcott Gibbs, now Rumford Professor of the Applications of Science in Harvard University, commenced his career as an in- vestigator while an under-graduate in Co- lumbia College, in 1840, in a description of a new form of magneto-electric machine, and an account of a carbon voltaic battery. This, it will be perceived, was earlier than the date of Bunsen's carbon battery. The contributions of Dr. Gibbs both to chemistry and to physics have been very numerous. The more important relating to chemistry are, "New General Methods of Chemical Analysis," "Theory of Polybasic Acids," " Researches on the Platiuum Metals," and, in association with Professor Genth, "Re- searches on the Ammonio-Cobalt Bases" — a memoir which occupied the authors several years, and is more full of new results than any chemical research before undertaken in this couutry. This was published in 1857 among the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowl- edge. Dr. Gibbs has recently announced the em- pirical discovery of a new optical constant, which may possibly prove to be an impor- tant contribution to the resources of the analytic chemist. The number of interfer- ence bands produced in the spectrum be- tween two given wave lengths by the par- tial interception of the light falling on the prism by any transparent substance is dif- ferent for different substances, and for the same substance diminishes as the density diminishes with increase of temperature. For any given substance, therefore, and for a constant thickness, the actual number of bands produced, divided by the density, gives a sensibly constant quotient ; and this quotient is called by Dr. Gibbs the in- terferential constant. Its value in mixtures is a function of the values belonging to the components, and in compounds a function, apparently, of those of the molecular con- stituents ; hence its probable usefulness in the operations of analysis. Professor Frederick A. Genth, of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, a native of Ger- many, was a chemist of distinction before coming to this country. The first ammonio- cobalt bases were discovered by him in 1846. As an analytic chemist he is without a su- perior. His chemical labors of recent years have been chiefly contributions to the chem- ical constitution of minerals. Dr. J. Lawrence Smith, of Louisville, is the author of many valuable researches in chemistry and mineralogy. In 1850 he ad- dressed an important memoir to the Acad- emy of Sciences of Paris on the geology ^ mineralogy, and chemical history of emery, prepared after a thorough examination of the emery deposits of Asia Minor. This subject had been previously but little un- derstood, and the memoir was received with marks of high approbation. Dr. Smith has made larger investigations upon the phys- ical and chemical constitution of meteorites than any other American chemist. Of his very numerous scientific papers he has re- cently collected and published forty-seven in a volume. Professor T. Sterry Hunt, whose name has been already mentioned, has been the most active contributor to theoretic chemistry in the United States. The credit due to him in the construction of the theory of types has been already mentioned. His various memoirs on chemical geology published from 1859 to 1870 have made him, perhaps, the highest living authority upon that subject. In fertility he is unrivaled, having within the last thirty years produced between one hundred and fifty and two hundred scientif- ic papers, many of them elaborate. Dr. J. P. Cooke, of Harvard University, is another of our prominent chemists whose labors have done much to advance theoret- ical chemistry. He is the author of Chem- ical Physics and First Principles of Chemical Philosophy, both of them profound and ad- mirable expositions of theory, and of other publications of less extent, exhibiting great originality. One of these, a memoir on the numerical relations between atomic weights, APPLIED CHEMISTRY. 335 and the classification of the chemical ele- ments, elicited expressions of high commen- dation from Sir John Herschel before the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The applications of chemistry to the arts are too various, too large, and too multiplied to admit of enumeration here. There is scarcely a department of industry into which they do not enter ; while, on the other hand, there are many industries which, without this science, could not exist at all. In the words of Dr. J. Lawrence Smith at the Priest- ley centennial, "Industrial chemistry links itself with every modern art in such an in- timate manner that were we to take away the influence and results of chemistry, it would be almost like taking away the laws of gravity from the universe ; industrial chaos would result in one case, as material chaos would in the other." In some in- stances chemistry has rendered to industry a reduplicated aid — first, by creating or by greatly improving the industry itself; and secondly, by providing in wonderfully in- creased abundance or at wonderfully di- minished expense the material on which or through which the industry is exercised. For instance, the manufactures of glass, of soap, and of textile fabrics, while indebted in a variety of ways unnecessary to specify to chemical science, are largely dependent upon a particular chemical product, the car- bonate of soda, commonly called in com- merce soda-ash. By the substitution, early in this century, of the manufactured car- bonate, derived by a chemical process from common salt, instead of the natural sub- stance previously obtained from sea-weed, the price was reduced to the tenth or twelfth part of what it had been before. By a new and more recently invented process this cost is likely to be reduced still lower. Again, in the manufacture of paper, to which chem- istry has in various ways contributed, great embarrassments have in later years been experienced in consequence of the growth of a demand outrunning the supply of the substances out of which paper is made. Chemistry has done much to meet this de- mand by rendering available vast masses of rags which from discoloration had been pre- viously unavailable, and by converting the fibre of various kinds of wood and grasses into suitable material for the same manu- facture. Early in this century the process of bleaching linens occupied many months, and was attended with much labor, and some hazard of loss from mildew. Chemis- try has made this a process occupying at present but a few hours. To every depart- ment of metallurgy chemistry has largely contributed, as is illustrated by the Bessemer process for steel, and in nearly every eco- nomical process in use for the precious met- als. To the dyer's art a whole series of the most brilliant colors has been supplied, ri- valing and often surpassing the rarest and most costly of those which have been hith- erto only obtainable from natural sources. To the miner and the engineer have been furnished, in gun-cotton, nitro- glycerine, dynamite, and other explosive compounds, sources of resistless energy to aid in the prosecution of their often gigantic under- takings. The sources of artificial illumi- nation at present in general use — viz., kero- sene, stearine, paraffine, and coal gas — are the gifts exclusively of chemistry to the common uses of life. Fifty years ago the substance known as India rubber had no use but that which its name implies, to efface the marks of the draughtsman's pencil. At present, under the transformations given to it by chemistry, it enters into a larger va- riety of manufactures than almost any oth- er material, except wood and a few of the metals. The benefits rendered to the science of medicine by chemical discovery and chem- ical art are beyond calculation. An entire- ly new pharmacopoeia has been created by it, in which the active principles of the drugs known to the old have been separated from the masses of iuert matter with which they are naturally combined; and to these, new compounds have been added of an effi- cacy in assuaging pain or subduing disease surpassing all former experience. Of the wonderful variety of exquisite perfumes now offered to the choice of the fashionable world, only a very limited number are any longer sought from natural sources. Most are arti- ficial products, in which chemical art has out- done nature. The numerous delicious prepa- rations by which the confectioner succeeds in delighting the palates of the lovers of sweet things are due to a similar origin. Of 336 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. the different descriptions of strong liquors, of which, to the misfortune of mankind, so incredible quantities are annually consumed as beverages, uuder the names of rum, gin, choice brandies, superior old Bourbon, Mo- nongahela, etc., probably half or more than half the quantities sold are merely dilute solutions of alcohol, to which chemically prepared essential oils and chemically pre- pared sugars have communicated so perfect- ly the odors, flavors, and colors of the liq- uor imitated, as to defy detection by the most practiced dealer or drinker. In this case it is some compensation to be able to say that the chemical substances employed are entirely innocent, and that the liquors so manufactured, contrary to the popular im- pression, have nothing in them more nox- ious than the alcohol they contain ; which, however, is just as noxious in the genuine liquors of the same name. Some of the gifts of chemistry to the ordinary uses of life have been so long and so constantly famil- iar that we habitually forget the source to which we owe them. The adhesive stamp, the gun-cap, the lucifer-match, are used daily and hourly by multitudes to whom it never for a moment occurs that science has had any thing to do with their production. And thus it happens, not only in small things but in great, that precisely in the points in which science has been most serviceable to mankind, her services, for the very reason that they are most constantly in sight, cease to be regarded as services, but are habitual- ly confounded in the common mind with the things which come into existence in the or- dinary course of nature's operations. In closing this cursory sketch of a cen- tury's progress in science, a word may not be out of place as to the effect of this prog- ress on the mental characteristics of the race. It is certain that not only has in- crease of knowledge largely modified preva- lent popular opinions in regard to natural phenomena, but also that the modes by which knowledge has been increased have still more largely modified the spirit in which every new question is received which addresses the popular judgment. Even the less educated in enlightened lands no longer tremble at the advent of a comet, or imag- ine human destinies to be controlled by the stars, or see a mischievous sprite in the Will-o'-the-wisp, or conceive it possible for man by magical arts to subvert the ordinary course of nature. One by ono those myster- ies in natural things which to the common mind have heretofore from the foundation of the world been associated with the su- pernatural, have resolved themselves, under the scrutiny of scientific investigation, into their simple natural causes. The rainbow, the lightning, the tempest, the earthquake, the volcano, the aurora borealis, the star- shower, and even the rarer and more start- ling phenomenon, the shower of seeming blood, by which whole provinces have been occasionally appalled, are no longer regard- ed as evidences of the arbitrary interposi- tion of invisible agencies, and no longer afford cause for either alarm or encourage- ment. It is a dogma of modern science that all the phenomena of the natural world, without exception, are subject to unalter- able law; and accordingly that mysteries, wherever they still exist, are only evidences of our still existing ignorance. Standing upon this law, the investigator accepts no solution of a difficulty which does not clear- ly associate the observed effect with its ef- ficient cause. For him authority has no weight whatever. He demands incontro- vertible proof for every proposition ad- vanced. The scientific spirit is, therefore, not a spirit of respect for traditions as tra- ditions. It respects them only for the truth they contain. Its motto is, Prove all things — hold fast that which is good. This spirit, which has been always that of the true investigators of nature, has in past centuries been confined almost exclu- sively to those who were immediately en- gaged in such investigation. The popular spirit has been directly opposed to it, even up to the point of hostility and bitterness ; so that any man who, like Albertus Magnus, or Roger Bacon, or Baptista Porta, allowed himself to seek for natural causes in natu- ral things, drew upon himself the dangerous suspicion of dealing with spirits of dark- ness. Those were ages in which authority was all in all ; in our own, this matter is en- tirely reversed, and authority has ceased to be any thing. The effect of this change is especially no- ticeable in the discussion of questions which THE NATURAL SCIENCES. 337 concern education. The ancient learning is no longer respected because it is ancient. Rather, on the contrary, its claim to preced- ence as the basis of the highest education is prejudiced by the consideration that it was the only learning of the age which gave it such prominence. Larger space is nat- urally demanded for that new knowledge which is the growth of our own time, and is based on positive demonstration — knowl- edge which reveals to us the natural laws under the rigorous rule of which we are compelled to live, and which it concerns the immediate welfare of every individual to know. Hence the growing favor for what in recent years has received the name of " the new education." It is a demand that of the three elements, the good, the true, and the beautiful, the second shall have as full a recognition as the other two. The same effect may be observed in the discussion of religious questions. The basis of belief is investigated with a freedom un- known to other centuries. This is not mere- ly the prompting of a skeptical spirit. If the unbeliever would discredit revelation, the believer no less desires to give a reason for the faith that is in him. There is no ground for the imputation which we hear occasionally expressed, that science is hos- tile to religion, or that infidelity is more rife in the present age than in the last. Modern science hardly existed when the French Re- public, "one and indivisible," abolished re- ligion by public decree. The thing which is true is that the infidelity of our time is open in its utterance, while that of other periods has been restrained by fear of penal- ties both judicial and social. It is in the nature of things impossible that science and religion should be in conflict, since truth, which is the aim of the one, is also the sub- stance of the other, and truth can never be inconsistent with itself. A failure to recognize this simple prin- ciple has operated more powerfully than any other cause to retard the progress of the world's enlightenment ; and it must be counted as the largest of the services which modern science with its methods of free in- quiry has rendered to the race, that it has burst at length the shackles by which hu- man thought has been held for centuries in bondage. 22 II.— NATURAL SCIENCE. At the commencement of the century which is distinguished by the existence of the United States of America as an inde- pendent nation, students of nature had re- gard almost alone to "natural history," or the observation and description of what in nature immediately appealed to their senses. At the present time the " natural sciences" are acknowledged constituents of general science, that great superstructure which enables us by a long-established series of observations and assured deductions to predicate the nature of the unseen from what has been observed, and to throw into a few terse general propositions and princi- ples the results of all our studies. How the several branches of natural his- tory have grown and developed into the natural sciences, and what quota America has contributed to this progress, will be the subject of inquiry in this chapter. The distinction just indicated between the stages of our knowledge of natural ob- jects in times past and present is exempli- fied in the relations of the several branch- es to schemes of classification of general knowledge. In the celebrated synopsis of Bacon, in which the triple division is based on the faculties which are called into ac- tivity in the consideration of the various branches, "natural history" is placed with "civil history" as a branch wherein "mem- ory" is chiefly demanded, while the " mathe- matical sciences" belong to the domain over which "reason" presides — "philosophy." Such was in his time and long afterward, and, in fact, until this century had well ad- vanced, to some extent a true exhibit of the facts and the mode of study of nature. Natural history was, indeed, a mere record of empirical observations and of the crude impressions produced on the senses. The chief aim of the naturalist was then to know the name of a given species, and only long afterward did the name become of sec- ondary importance, and simply a means to- ward an end, that end being the knowledge of the relations of the forms in question to others, aud, a posteriori, to the economy and plan of nature. FIRST STEPS. It was in 1766 that Linnaeus published his last edition of the Systema Naturce ; in 338 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. the earlier editions of that celebrated work he had, in intention at least, incorporated all the species of animals, plants, and min- erals which had been made known in a rec- ognizable manner by his predecessors and contemporaries, and, in this final edition published during his lifetime, he had sys- tematically applied the binomial method of nomenclature, which has been so powerful an auxiliary as a method of notation to the naturalist ; he also revised, and in a num- ber of cases very materially modified, the arrangement adopted in the previous edi- tions of his work, and he added the species in each department of nature which had in the mean while been described. This, there- fore, will furnish a fitting starting-point for our inquiries in each case ; and this work, be it observed, was almost the last in which a single naturalist attempted to cover the whole domain of nature, and to recapitulate all known species. The impulse which had been given to the cultivation of natural history, and the zeal with which travelers collected, as well as the researches of the European colonists in the lands of their adoption, soon increased the numbers of species to such an extent that their survey by one man became impossible. The species of animals and plants — espe- cially the former — known to Linnaeus from America, or at least from the limits of the present United States, were comparatively few. It is true that in numerous works de- voted to the description of the country or its several parts the characteristic species were enumerated, and even alleged lists of species were published ; but in few cases were they scientifically or at all intelligibly described : in default of specimens, there- fore, they could not be incorporated in the Systema Naturce. Linnaeus was consequent- ly confined in his work to the descriptions or identifications of the species which were in the museums or herbaria of Europe ac- cessible to him, or which had been sent to him by American correspondents, among the most conspicuous of whom were Cad- wallader Colden, of New York, and Alexan- der Garden, of South Carolina. A student of his own, the afterward well-known Kalm, in 1747 and 1748 visited this country and collected especially the plants. The com- parative facilities then enjoyed for the ma- nipulation of plants, the tastes of his cor- respondents, and, indeed, Linnseus's own greater familiarity with the vegetable king- dom, all tended to his acquaintance with our plants rather than animals, and conse- quently while the number of species of the former attributed by him to North America was considerable, that of the latter was small. SOCIETIES AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT. Although after Linnaeus equal individual attention to the several branches became rare, societies devoted to the cultivation of all in common originated, and several of them exercised a notable influence on the development of science in its various branches, either being called into existence in response to an active want for the means of expression for individuals, or being them- selves the agents for eliciting communica- tions which might otherwise have never been made known ; these, therefore, always demand special notice in a history of sci- ence. The earliest of such societies, founded when the States were yet colonies of Brit- ain — the American Philosophical Society for promoting useful knowledge, held at Philadelphia — was originated by Franklin and some companions as early as 1743 ; its first volume of Transactions was published in 1771. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was next established, in 1780, at Boston, and published the first volume of its Memoirs in 1785. Both these societies contributed much in their youth (as they still do) to the cultivation of the natural sciences, and various articles on animals, plants, and minerals were published in their serial volumes. Before the close of the eighteenth century (1799) another so- ciety — the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences — was founded at New Haven, but after the publication of one volume languished, or was entirely inactive, till aft- er the establishment of the Sheffield Scien- tific School, when it awoke to active life, and has since (1866-75) published many ex- cellent memoirs. In 1814 there was found- ed in New York a society whose existence was ephemeral, but which played a notable part in American science ; this association was the Literary and Philosophical Society EXPLORATIONS. 339 of New York. In 1815 it published a large quarto volume of Transactions, which con- tained memoirs by Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, Governor De Witt Clinton, Dr. David Hos- ack, and others less known, but the princi- pal article was by Dr. Mitchill, and was a monograph of the fishes of the State, illus- trated by six plates, containing sixty fig- ures. For years afterward the society was inactive, and after publishing the first part of a second volume in 1825, dissolved. The year 1814 saw also the birth of a society destined to have an extraordinary connec- tion with the growth of science in the Unit- ed States generally — the Academy of Nat- ural Sciences of Philadelphia. This body commenced the publication of a Journal in May, 1817, and in this first volume, as well as in all the succeeding ones, were publish- ed some of the most important papers on the animals, plants, and minerals of the country. A very considerable portion of our most familiar species of animals was, in fact, first made known in that journal, and in the earlier volumes Say and Lesueur published their classical memoirs. In 1818 the Lyceum of Natural History in the city of New York was organized, and a new im- petus was given to the cultivation in that city of the natural sciences, and Mitchill, Lecoute, Cooper, De Kay, and others con- tributed numerous articles to the pages of its Annals. Next, in 1834, the Boston So- ciety of Natural History was established, and soon popularized in the city of its home the several subjects of its preference, which till then had received comparatively little attention. Finally were successively established in Albany, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, Buffalo, Washington, and other cities, active societies devoted to sci- ence in several or all of its branches, which have in each case exercised a healthy influ- ence in their several spheres. All the societies specially noticed have not only continued to live, but are more active now than ever. Their inception co- incided with the awakened activity in the several cities where they are located, and thus mark distinct epochs of progress. Besides these local societies, two nation- al ones, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences, have accomplished important results. The Smithsonian Insti- tution, established at Washington in 1846, by its policy of facilitating intercommuni- cation between the learned societies and individuals of this and other countries, of seconding the efforts of investigators by col- lection of materials and publishing the re- sults of such investigations, and in other ways, greatly increased the means for the pursuit of the natural as well as mathemat- ical sciences. To a large extent, too, it has been intrusted by the government of the na- tion with a superintendence of scientific ex- ploration, and has done much thus to direct expenditure for such purposes in a proper channel. In this connection may be fitly noticed a journal which is not the organ of any soci- ety, but which has, perhaps, exerted more influence on the progress of science in this country than any other. This is the Amer- ican Journal of Science and Arts, commenced by the elder Silliman in 1818 in New Haven, and uninterruptedly continued there to the present time by him or members of his fam- ily. Its pages are replete with original and copied articles on the natural as well as the other sciences, and furnish in themselves an epitome of the progress of science in America. GENERAL EXPLORATIONS. The general government early adopted the policy of sending, from time to time, expeditious to the comparatively unknown portions of the country for their explora- tion, and with these in many cases natural- ists were connected. Only those most not- able from a scientific point of view can be referred to. In 1804-6 Lewis and Clarke traversed the continent, and more or less in- telligibly indicated previously undescribed species of animals from the far West, which were subsequently incorporated by Ord, Rafinesque, and others into the zoological system. In 1819-20 S. H. Long (then ma- jor) conducted an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, of which Edwin James was the historian (1823), and also detailed the geol- ogy and botany, while Say described the new animals, and Torrey enumerated the plants. In 1848, and again in 1852-53, Fre- mont led expeditions across the continent, and brought back new riches in botany and 340 SCIENTIFIC PKOGRESS. geology. In 1849 and 1850 Stansbury ex- plored the Great Salt Lake basin ; in 1852 Sitgreaves the Zuni and Colorado rivers; and, also in 1852, Marcy the Red River of Louisiana. All of these expeditions were accompanied by energetic collectors, who brought back from the regions in question, whose natural history had been previously almost unknown, many new species, which were described and illustrated by natural- ists mostly withiu the walls of the Smithso- nian Institution. In 1854-56 General Emory (then major of cavalry) and Senor Salazar, as commissioners of their respective gov- ernments, surveyed and determined on the boundary line between the United States and Mexico. The United States commis- sion was accompanied by a corps of scien- tists ; and the report, published in 1857-59, contained most valuable contributions, rich- ly illustrated, on the zoology, botany, pale- ontology, and geology of the country sur- veyed. But all these must yield in importance to the several expeditions which were sent out by the War Department, under the auspices of the Bureau of Topographical Engineers, for " explorations and surveys to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean." These expeditions were mostly prosecuted from 1853 to 1856, and were conducted nearly on the parallels of latitude : (1) the 47th ; (2) the 38th and 39th ; (3) the 35th ; (4) the California line ; (5) the 32d, (6) under Parke, and (7) under Pope; and (8) the California and Oregon line. All these parties had naturalists attached, and as the natural history of the Pacific slope was almost unknown, a very large propor- tion of the species brought home for exam- ination were new. These were reported upon by the naturalists of the surveys, but more fully elaborated by Professor S. F. Baird and Dr. Charles Girard. The results were published under a common title in a uniform series of twelve volumes in quarto. Professor Baird undertook the great task of revising, in connection with the new forms studied by himself, all the existing material from every part of North America. The fruits of his researches were issued in two very large volumes, respectively describing the mammals and birds of North America, in which the species were subjected to a crit- ical examination ; and for the first time those classes were completely and systemat- ically exhibited according to their affinities, detailed descriptions given of all the species and successively including groups, and clear synoptical tables added. The fishes collect- ed by the expeditions were elucidated chief- ly by Girard and Suckley. Plates were pub- lished of the reptiles, under the direction of Baird ; the coleoptera were partially report- ed upon by Leconte, and the mollusca by Cooper ; the plants were catalogued and de- scribed by Torrey, Gray, Engelmann, New- berry, aud others ; the paleontology was in- vestigated by Hall, Conrad, Agassiz, etc. ; and the geology by the several geologists of the survey. Two other surveys undertaken by the Bu- reau of Engineers should be noticed in this connection. One was the United States geological survey of the 40th parallel, pros- ecuted under the charge of Mr. Clarence King in 1867, 1868, and 1869; the other a geographical and topographical survey of certain of the Western and Southern Terri- tories, under Lieutenant George M.Wheeler, still in progress. Both have doue much for the furtherance of our knowledge of the zoology and botany, as well as the topog- raphy and geology, of the sections explored. Under the Department of the Interior a geological and geographical survey also originated in 1869, and gradually developed into importance, under the charge of Dr. F. V. Hayden ; and recently a second division of the same, with Professor J. W. Powell at its head, has been added to it. These vie with the other surveys in adding informa- tion respecting the physical geography and life, past and present, of the Territories un- der the government. The geological survey of the State of Cal- ifornia, under the superintendence of Pro- fessor J. D. Whitney (1861-74), also merits special notice on account of the complete- ness of its organization and the ability of execution of the work undertaken. While the knowledge of the natural his- tory of our country was being thus made known, that of foreign lands likewise re- ceived attention from American naturalists. During the years 1838-48 an exploring expe- dition was engaged, under the command of MINERALOGY. 341 Admir,. s (then Captain) Wilkes, in a voyage of circumnavigation, and in the course of its long cruise visited several countries whose natural productions and features were al- most or wholly unknown. The expedition was accompanied hy several energetic and accomplished naturalists, chief of whom in labors was the versatile Dana. The results of these explorations were most satisfactory, numerous new species were collected, and the publications on the collections were, as a whole, in the highest degree creditable to American science. The mammals and birds were reported on by Peale and Cassin ; the reptiles, by Girard ; the mollusks, by Gould ; the crustaceans and zoophytes, by Dana; the botany, by Torrey, Gray, Eaton, etc. ; and the geology of the countries visited, by Dana. The most noteworthy of these were the vol- umes on crustaceans and polyps, wherein the classification of those animals was en- tirely revised, and a great mass of new ma- terial added. In the years 1849-52 a " United States Na- val Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere" was for the most part station- ed in Chili, and the commander thereof (Cap- tain J. M. Gilliss) and his assistants paid zeal- ous attention to the natural history of the regions traversed. Collections were made in the various departments, and on the re- turn of the expedition were studied by Baird, Cassin, Girard, Gould, Gray, Wyman, Conrad, J. Lawrence Smith, etc. The collection rich- est in new forms was of the class of fishes, of which some remarkable new types were described by Girard. An expedition which was excelled by none, if it did not, indeed, surpass all, in the col- lections amassed sailed from New York in 1853 for the Northern Pacific, and for about four years cruised in all the great seas, at first under the command of Captain Ring- gold, and afterward under Captain Rodgers. In this expedition Mr. Wright was attached as botanist, and Mr. Stimpson as zoologist. The collections made, especially in the de- partment of zoology, were very large. Mr. Stimpson for the first time dredged in many of the harbors visited, and the results, as might be expected, were very rich. Numer- ous remarkable types of marine as well as other animals were thus discovered. These were partially described in preliminary re- ports by Stimpson, Cassin, Hallowell, Cope, and Gill, but the final reports were never published, and several of them, with the original illustrations, were consumed in the great fire which destroyed Chicago, and the loss thus incurred is irretrievable. Such are the principal explorations which have been instrumental in the extension of our knowledge of nature. Numerous others have concurred, but limited space forbids any mention of them. We may now best inquire how each department has been for- warded by American naturalists, commen- cing with the most simple, and advancing to the most complex. MINERALOGY. Linnaeus applied the same system of no- menclature to the mineral kingdom, or lapi- deum regnum, as he did to the animal and vegetable, dividing it into three " classes" — petrce, or stones ; minerce, or minerals; fossilia, or fossils ; and this exposition alone will give a good idea of the imperfect conception then entertained of the relations of those objects, and especially of the last. Chemistry and crystallography were almost ignored, or made use of in a very crude manner. More than any of his predecessors, however, Lin- naeus availed himself of the crystallograph- ic characters of minerals in their diagnoses ; but their action when subject to friction, fire, and acids was the chief means of de- termination used. Linnaeus was, however, much surpassed as a mineralogist by con- temporary investigators, and the status of mineralogy became rapidly improved by the discoveries of chemists, physicists, and crys- tallographers, and it had assumed the dig- nity of a science before any native Amer- icans applied themselves with intelligent zeal to the study. It is true that the occurrences at various places of certain minerals and peculiar con- ditions of some were noted from time to time, but nothing which deserves special notice was published for a long time. A journal professedly devoted to mineralogy, the American Miner alofjical Journal, was, in- deed, commenced by A. Bruce, but was dis- continued with the first volume. In 1816, however, Professor Parker Cleveland pub- lished An Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology, whose science was respectable # 342 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. for its day, and gained a demand for a sec- ond edition in 1822. In 1832 appeared the first, and in 1835 the second, parts of Shep- ard's Treatise on Mineralogy. This was soon succeeded by a work which was destined to become the opus magnum of the science, A System of Mineralogy, by James D. Dana. It has passed through five entirely revised edi- tions, and several are, to all intents and pur- poses, distinct works, and fairly exemplify the several stages of science. In the first (1837) the system of nomenclature intro- duced by Linnaeus was retained, and a modification of the so-called natural clas- sification by Mobs, proposed several years previously (in 1833), was adopted. This system was based chiefly on the considera- tion of the superficial characters of the min- erals, but which were claimed to be true co- ordinates of the chemical, upon the superior value of which many mineralogists had al- ready insisted. In the second edition (1844) the same system of classification, with some modifications, was retained, but another, "placing the minerals under the principal element in their composition," was added. In the third edition (1850) the old system of nomenclature and classification was dis- carded, and the author adopted a provision- al system in which the chemical constitution of the mineral was taken more cognizance of, the chief aim, however, being to " serve the convenience of the student for easy ref- erence and for the study of mineralogy in its economical bearings, while at the same time it should exhibit many natural rela- tions, and inculcate no false applications or distinctions of species." A more rigid chem- ical classification, in which the Berzelian method was coupled with crystallography, was appended. In the fourth edition (1854) the arrangement appended iu the previous, amplified and corrected, was adopted as the regular system. In the fifth and last (1868) the same method was essentially retained, and in obedience to the necessities imposed by the more detailed study of the subject, and to show the proper subordination of the several characteristics, varieties were recog- nized. In the course of time the demands on the other branches of science in behalf of min- eralogy had become greater and greater. As we have seen, originally mineralogy was simply the art of identifying mineral forms by reference to their superficial physical characteristics. Gradually the chemist was called upon to tell the constitutions thereof; the crystallographer and mathematician to define and classify their forms ; the physi- cist to answer various questions as to char- acteristics ; the spectroscopist to aid the chemist. Finally the chemist was accord- ed the rank of prime arbiter, and in most cases his judgment is now accepted as final. In each of these departments America has had and still has most distinguished inves- tigators. Dana's work stands facile princeps among mineralogical text -books, and is a true " manual" in the Old World as well as in the New. He ranks pre-eminent in the special department of crystallography. In chemical mineralogy there have been many successful students, chief of whom are T. Sterry Hunt, George J. Brush, F. A. Genth, C. M. Shepard, and B. Silliinau. A son of Professor Dana (Mr. E. S. Dana) has, with scarcely unequal skill, begun to continue the work so well commenced by the father, and has been paying especial attention to the physical characters of minerals. Devotion to plants has been a favorite source of enjoyment to man. The attract- iveness of the objects, the positiveness and superficial concentration of characters, and the ease of preserving have all tended to this bias. As a natural result, to a certain extent the value and characteristics of plants were earlier appreciated than any other group of natural objects. Those of this country were tolerably well known at a comparatively early period. Jean Robin, a Frenchman, as early as 1620 published on the plants of old Virginia ; J. Cornuti, a French physician, in 1635, on those of Can- ada ; J. R. Forster in 1771 issued a Flora America; Septentrional is ; Cadwallader Col- den, of Newburgh, New York, communicated to Linnaeus a descriptive account of the plants indigenous to Orange County ; Mr. Cutler in 1785 published in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sci- ences a catalogue of the New England spe- cies ; and numerous other works and articles of various degrees of merit were published (some meanwhile, but especially in succeed- BOTANY. 343 ing years), the most notable of which were the elder Michaux's Flora Borealis Ameri- cana (1803) ; Pursh's Flora America: Septentri- onalis (1814) ; and Eaton's Manual of Bot- any for the Northern and Middle States. In all of these and the minor contemporary productions the artificial sexual system of Linnaeus was adopted, and this had a won- derful hold on the affections of the older botanists. A man of remarkable versatility but disordered mind (C. S. Rafinesque), who had come to this country in 1814, had pub- lished much on botanical subjects, and had in several of his works suggested and par- tially carried into execution a quasi-natural scheme of classification ; but his influence had no weight, and not until the end of the last half century did any one of recognized standing discard the Linnaean method. In 1823 Dr. John Torrey had published the first part of a Flora of the Northern and Middle States, in which he still retained the sexual system ; but having become satisfied of its incongruity with the existing state of sci- ence, he discontinued the work, and imme- diately after applied the natural system to the classification of the plants collected on Long's expedition to the far West, aud sub- sequently rendered it more popular by the publication of a catalogue of the North American genera, arranged in accordance with Lindley's classification (1831). Lewis Beck, in a Botany of the United Slates North of Virginia, also adopted this system. The natural system was thus fairly adopted by scientific botanists and those who appreci- ated the aims of science, but was long in ob- taining favor with the masses. The pub- lication of such works as the Flora of North America, by Torrey and Gray, in 1838-43, the Manual of the Flora of New York, by Torrey, in 1843, Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, by Gray, in 1848, and kindred ones, however, procured its ultimate adoption even in manuals for schools and colleges. The States of the Atlantic sea-board and the Mississippi Valley were sedulously ex- plored by native botanists, and catalogues, and even extensive descriptive works, of the plants of many of the separate States, as well as sections, counties, and town- ships, were published. The expeditions that have been already alluded to in connection with natural history generally extended our knowledge of the flora of the extreme West, and the progress of botany advanced hand in hand with that of geography. Private collectors, too, devoted themselves to the search for the plants of various unexplored sections, and among these may be especially enumerated Fendler, who herborized in New Mexico ; Lindheimer, who collected in Texas ; Wright, Parry, and Vasey, who penetrated to divers places in the Southwestern sec- tions and Rocky Mountains ; and Rothrock, who has visited the extreme North (Alaska), and the furthest Southwest (Arizona). The monographers of groups have also been active. Above all must be mentioned Gray, Torrey, and Engelmann, and during later years Watson, who have studied vari- ous groups of phamoganis ; Eaton has espe- cially attached himself to the ferns ; Sulli- vant and Lesquereux to the mosses ; Curtis, of South Carolina, to the fungi ; Tucker- mann to the lichens ; and lately Dr. H. Wood has monographed our fresh -water algse, and Dr. Farlow has catalogued the marine species. The consideration of the geographical dis- tribution of plants has also engaged the at- tention of many students, and the researches of Gray demand especial notice. Pursh had as early as 1814 called attention to the sim- ilarity between the flora of North America and Northern Asia. Gray in 1846 pointed out many analogies, aud in 1856 insisted on the similarity between the floras of corre- sponding sides of the Old and New Worlds. He also at the same time recognized that, although the number of tropical types was much greater than in the northern portion of the Old World, " the peculiar and extra- European families do not predominate nor overcome the general European aspect of our vegetation." He has more recently rec- ognized a casual relation in this similarity, and contended that they indicated deriva- tion from a common source. ZOOLOGY. Although more or less pretentious lists of the animals of North America were given in many works descriptive of the country, scarcely any are worthy of notice, and so little was known of our species that an ex- tremely small percentage appeared in the 344 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. Systema Natures of Linnaeus. The field in zoology is so vast that none have in this country attempted to do what has heen so well done for botany, that is, to prepare com- pendiums of descriptions of all the known species. From the complete dissimilarity and want of homologies between the great groups of the animal kingdom a peculiar terminology for each is entailed, and conse- quently the students are more specialists than in botany. Each group of animals, however, has had its devotees. The prog- ress in each, too, has, like that of botany, been to a considerable degree coincident with the growth of our geographical knowl- edge ; and this statement must serve in lieu of parti cularization in each case. The more difficult groups have been backward in at- tracting students, and the more pleasing types have received most attention. Thus the birds early excited the admiration of lovers of nature, and numerous works have been dedicated to the portraiture of their beauties, while the worms and other lower invertebrates have only lately attracted the notice science demanded. Before indicating the progress of our knowledge in the several branches of zool- ogy a notice of one who did much to shape the course which investigation took for some years may be fitly given. In 1846 Louis John Rudolph Agassiz vis- ited the country, and soon was induced to make it his home, and in 1848 accepted the chair of zoology and geology at Harvard College. Gifted with quick powers of per- ception and a remarkable memory for speci- mens, he had early applied himself to the study of fossil fishes, which till then had been nearly neglected. The publication of a very extensive and finely illustrated work gained for him a great reputation in Eu- rope. A peculiarly genial and impulsive disposition procured him the favor of those with whom he came into personal contact. This impression communicated itself quick- ly to others. He gathered around him a number of young men who were destined to pursue with distinguished success different branches of science. His prestige caused the ready acceptance of his teaching and principles by others, and insured their ap- plication to the various branches of zoolo- gy. Many of these principles were most sound; others (among them unfortunately were those most frequently applied) were less justified by scientific reason. Such were the views respecting the rigid limita- tions of species in time and area. He was also prone to differentiate genera because of minor differences, and to trust to intuition rather than to the inexorable logic of facts in the classification of data. His views were generally accepted, as well by amateurs as scientists, in this country, and not for a long time was there any strong counter-current. This subsequently set in, and the present tendency is toward a recognition of species with more variable limits, and with greater extension in time and space. But in spite of the drawbacks indicated the influence of Professor Agassiz was most salutary ; he raised the standard of scholarship looked for in the naturalist, incited general respect and even enthusiasm for natural science, and his popularity enabled him to found a Museum of Comparative Zoology which is an honor to Massachusetts and to the coun- try at large, and the best monument to his own zeal and learning. The United States presented long the anomalous position of being the only great nation which had no public museum. The collections that were brought back from time to time were, after the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution, intrusted to its custody, but only within a few years has it been recognized as a duty to appropriate at all adequate amounts for their preserva- tion and use. But some provision has been made for several years for a national muse- um ; this still remains as an appanage of the Smithsonian Institution, under the charge of its assistant secretary, Professor Baird, and now bids fair to soon rival the most important in Europe in the extent and act- ual value of its collections. The most notable accessions to our special knowledge have been as follows: Some of the more conspicuous quadrupeds of North America had been early described and figured in a recognizable manner by compilers and iconographers, and especially in the works of Catesby, Edwards, and Bris- son, and these were incorporated in the Sys- tema Naturae by Linnaeus ; but, all told, he only attributed twenty-five species to North America, and even of these he does not seem ORNITHOLOGY. 345 to have had autoptical knowledge of more than two or three. Others were subsequently made known, chiefly by English and French naturalists, aud later by Americans (espe- cially Say and Ord), and in 1825 Richard Harlan published a special volume on the class, in which were recognized 147 species, a number of which were, however, synonyms. Soon after (1826-28) John D. Godman is- sued a corresponding work, in three vol- umes, containing nothing new. Subsequent- ly Townsend and Audubon obtained from the West many new species, which were described by Bachman, and in 1846-54 Au- dubon and Bachman published a work on The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North Ameri- ca, in three volumes. Finally, in 1859, the great work by Professor Baird, already re- ferred to, appeared, and in this were de- scribed a number of previously unknown species, incorporated with others he had pre- viously made known. On the basis thus laid various zoologists have built. Among these have been the natural historians of various regions and the monographers of distinct groups, such as Harrison Allen, J. A. Allen, Cope, Coues, Gill, etc. The birds have excited the most lively interest, and the works published on the class have been many. The more common and conspicuous species were early intro- duced into the system, aud fi'om the time of John Bartram (1791) and Benjamin S. Barton (1799) to the present there have always been active students of the class in America. The most distinguished of these are Alexander Wilson, a native of Scotland, naturalized in the United States, who published in 1808-14 ; Charles L. Bo- naparte (a nephew of Napoleon, and aft- erward Prince of Musignano and Caniuo), who published, besides many other arti- cles, a complementary volume to Wilson's work (1825-33); T. Nuttall, who issued a Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada (1832-34) ; J. J. Audubon, who contributed the most superbly illustrated work to ornithology that had up to that time been seen ; and S. F. Baird, who first (1858), in conjunction with J. Cassin and G. N. Lawrence, revised the entire system of North American birds, and very recently (1874), in union with T. Brewer and R. Ridg- way, has published the first three volumes of a work which surpasses all others in ac- curacy of description, philosophical breadth of views, and comparative valuation of characters. Lastly may be mentioned Birds of the Northwest: a Sand-Book of the Orni- thology of the Region drained by the Missouri Hirer and its Tributaries, by Elliott Coues (1874). While these general works were in course of publication, many minor works and arti- cles were printed on the general subject, on the species of limited regions, and on the modifications of structure and color induced by geographical and climatic causes, etc. The most successful students of the causes of geographical variation have been Baird, Allen, aud Ridgway. The reptiles and amphibians, although extremely unlike in structure, superficially resemble each other so closely as to have been always confounded together and stud- ied in common under the general head of herpetology. This has been a less culti- vated branch than others, but several emi- nent naturalists have elucidated our spe- cies, and more than either of the preceding classes has the present owed its advance- ment to natives. J. E. Holbrook, of South Carolina, published, in 1843, a North Ameri- can Herpetology, in five volumes, which was then unsurpassed by any similar production in Europe. S. F. Baird, Charles Girard, Ed- ward Hallowell, and Louis Agassiz have done eminent service on different groups, and more recently E. D. Cope has revised the entire herpetological fauna in connec- tion with the geueral system of reptiles and amphibians. The students of fishes have been more numerous. Iu the last century but little was known of these inhabitants of our wa- ters, and even that little was inexact. In 1814 S. L. Mitchill, a man of great eminence in his day, published a valuable though crude memoir on the fishes of New York ; in 1839 D. H. Storer reported on the fishes of Massachusetts ; in 1842 J. E. De Kay pub- lished an important work on the fishes of New York ; and in 1855, and again in 1860, J. E. Holbrook commenced an illustrated work on the Icthyology of South Carolina, but suspended it with the first volume. The fishes of the extreme West and of the Pacific coast, almost absolutely unknown 346 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. till 1854, were in that and in immediately- succeeding years described by Agassiz, Gi- rard, Ayres, etc. Among other cultivators of the science may be mentioned Kirtland, Baird, Brevoort, Gill, Putnam, Abbott, Cope, Bliss, Goode, Garnian, Milner, Yarrow, and Jordan. The invertebrates for purposes of study fall into two groups — the air-breathing in- sects and the marine forms. The insects soon attracted attention, and the various groups engaged active students. Say (1818 et seq.), Fitch, Packard, Walsh, and Riley have described species of almost every group. The coleoptera have been studied by Melsheimer, J. Leconte, Halde- mann, and above all by J. L. Leconte and Horn ; the lepidoptera have had numerous students — Morris, Clemens, Edwards, Pack- ard, Scudder, Grote, and many others; the hymenoptera, or groups thereof, have been examined by Norton, Saussure, etc. ; the or- thoptera have been investigated by Scud- der, Thomas, and Sydney Smith ; the neu- roptera by Hagen ; the hemiptera by Uhler ; and the diptera have engaged the attention of Loew and Osten-Sacken. The myriopods have been described by H. Wood, as have also the pedipalp arachnoids. The marine invertebrates were almost wholly neglected till Say, in 1818, com- menced his investigations, and for some years worked upon several of the groups, describing our most common crustaceans, shells, and other forms. A. A. Gould, in a work on the invertebrata of Massachusetts, made evident the paucity of our knowledge of all except the shells ; and a few years afterward (1851) W. Stimpson, then a very young man, commenced his researches, which added very largely to our informa- tion. In recent years the work thus com- menced has been worthily continued by the two Agassizes, H. J. Clarke, A. E. Verrilh S. Smith, O. Harger, and others. The mollusks, on account of the beauty of their shells and the ease of preserving them, have, like the birds, been favorite subjects for amateur students, and this has directly and indirectly accelerated our ac- quaintance with the species. The laborers have been very many. It must suffice to name, besides the general students of inver- tebrates previously referred to, Isaac Lea, A. A. Gould, Amos and William G. Binney, Thomas Bland, Edward S. Morse, William H. Dall, and George W. Tryon. These have studied, some all the groups, others the land or fresh-water shells, others the anatomy, and still others have especially considered the problems connected with their geo- graphical distribution. PALEONTOLOGY. In no department of natural history has progress been so distinctly marked, or the revelations so interesting and unexpected, as in that which takes cognizance of the former life of our globe. The science of paleontology, as this branch has been named, had absolutely no existence or name when the United States became a nation. Fossils were classified by Linnaeus not with ani- mals or plants, but with minerals. Their nature was then in doubt. By some they were supposed to be sports of nature, or abortive simulacra of what the Deity des- tined afterward to create. By the best in- formed and orthodox they were believed to be witnesses of the Noachian deluge. In a number of cases their nature was, indeed, recognized, but by none was it definitely realized that most fossils were the remains of forms that are no longer living. Although this truth became apparent to several at nearly the same time, Cuvier was the first to render it clear and popular by the resto- ration of numerous fossil remains of the skeletons of mammals found in the terti- ary deposits of the neighborhood of Paris. These were so demonstrably different from any animals that were known in a living state, and the improbability of their hav- ing remained undiscovered if still living was so extreme, that conviction of the truth necessarily struck every one who considered the evidence. The clew thus gained, although at first imperfectly held, was soon firmly grasped and followed by many interested students, and the pres- ent assured superstructure has been the reward of their zeal. In this country the science engaged the attention of many, and Say, Lesueur, De Kay, and Greene were among the earliest. Morton, Conrad, Lea, Hall, Meek, Gabb, White, and Whitfield, besides many others, have described and identified the fossil invertebrates. Hall GEOLOGY. 347 has especially published a noble work on the fossils of the paleozoic formations of New York. Meek has done more than any one else to illustrate the fossils of the carboniferous and mesozoic beds of the West; and Conrad has excelled in knowl- edge of and labors on the species of the tertiary rocks. Lea and Gabb have effi- ciently supplemented the works of the last two. The vertebrates have received attention from another class of scientists. For their comprehension an exact knowledge of the details of comparative osteology was req- uisite, and the students have, therefore, been comparatively few. De Kay, Harlan, Godniau, Hays, Cooper, Redfield, Warren, and Wyman simultaneously or successively touched the subject, but the great labors have been accomplished by Leidy, Cope, and Marsh. It had by some become sup- posed that America would furnish no de- posits of fossil bones such as had been dis- covered in Europe, but in 1846 and 1847 Dr. Hiram A. Prout, of St. Louis, and in 1847 Dr. Leidy, published communications on re- mains found in the Mauvaise Terres of the then Territory of Nebraska, and those de- posits have since been a fruitful source of new discoveries. Other regions containing analogous deposits were subsequently made known, and the mammalian faunas of past times, pliocene, miocene, and eocene, have become tolerably well known. Among the most interesting of the types discovered are many forming "connecting links" between the existing ruminants (cattle, deer, etc.) and hog-like animals first made known by Leidy ; others lessening the interval be- tween the proboscidians and ordinary pach- yderm ungulates, discovered by Cope and Marsh ; others demonstrating the liue of descent of the horses of the present day, elucidated by Marsh ; and still others estab- lishing the former existence in North Amer- ica of animals most nearly related among living forms to the lemurs of Madagascar, as Marsh was the first to clearly demon- strate. Numerous other almost equally im- portant discoveries have been made, illus- trating the structure and range in time and biological generalizations for almost every group of vertebrates; but this is not the place to recount them. GEOLOGY. Geology is almost entirely the child of the present century. Its foundations were chiefly laid by Werner, of Freyberg (after 1775), and his school in the clear recogni- tion of the nature and the relations of rocks to each other, and their distribution; by Hutton, of Edinburgh (1788), in the compre- hension of the origin and natural causes of the strata and rocks, and in the limitation of cataclysmal agencies; and by William Smith, an English surveyor (1790), and Cu- vier (1808), in a general perception of the re- striction of fossils to definite horizons, and the value of those fossils in determining the relative age of the strata in which they were imbedded. In each case, indeed, these had been to some extent anticipated in their dis- coveries, but their ideas were clear and pos- itive, while their predecessors failed to rec- ognize the full significance of the facts in question. The age had also become ripe to apply the truths thus perceived. Nothing worthy of mention was done for the geology of North America till William Maclure (a pupil of Werner), in 1806, came to this country and undertook a geological survey, traveling in the prosecution of this self-imposed task from our Northern border to the Gulf of Mexico. He was engaged on it for about three years, and in 1809 pub- lished the first geological map, and a com- mentary thereon in a special memoir. As was to be expected, he adopted the Wer- nerian system of nomenclature, and having been unable to apply paleontological evi- dence, his work exhibited little more than certain points in structural geology. Lard- ner Vanuxem (1828) first availed himself suc- cessfully of paleontology for the determina- tion of the age of several of our formations and their approximate synchronism with European beds. The natural history survey of the State of New York, commenced in 1836, brought together a great mass of facts, and by the concert of the several geologists and paleontologists, but especially guided by the judgment of Vanuxem and James Hall, a classification of the rocks on sound pale- ontological principles was instituted, which, as since perfected by Hall, has been adopted as the standard of reference for the pale- ozoic rocks of the United States and Brit- ish North America. Henry D. Rogers, in his 348 SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. filial report on the geology of Pennsylvania (1858), made evident the skill with which he had disentangled the complications of the geological structure of the Alleghany sys- tem. F. B. Meek during a long series of years has acted as the universally accepted ar- biter for the determination of the age of the groups of rocks in the far West. Meanwhile the details of the geology of the various ge- ographical sections and States engaged the attention of many laborers, and one after the other almost every State instituted a geological survey, and many of them under- took at intervals two or more. In the order of first publication of results they are as follows : 1824, North Carolina ; 1826, South Carolina ; 1832, Massachusetts ; 1834, Mary- land ; 1835, Tennessee ; 1836, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia ; 1837, Connecticut, Maine ; 1838, Indiana, Michigan ; 1839, Delaware, Kentucky ; 1840, Rhode Island ; 1841, New Hampshire ; 1845, Vermont ; 1850, Alabama ; 1853, California, Illinois ; 1854, Mississippi, Wisconsin ; 1855, Missouri ; 1858, Arkansas, Iowa ; 1859, Tex- as ; 1865, Kansas ; 1866, Minnesota ; 1869, Louisiana ; 1875, Georgia. The general government also from time to time instituted special geological sur- veys, independent of the exploring parties mentioned in the first part of this article. In 1834 and 1835 G. W. Featherstonhaugh investigated the elevated country between the Missouri and Red rivers and the Wiscon- sin Territory. At various times D. D. Owen conducted surveys in several States and Territories of the Northwest, publishing the chief results in 1844, 1848, and 1852. In 1869 the persistent solicitations of F. V. Hayden, already well known as a field ge- ologist and collector, secured a geological survey of Nebraska, under the auspices of the Land-office, a bureau of the Interior Department. For two years this was prose- cuted, and the wedge having been thus driv- en, the survey was continued, and, organized under a more ample scope and with enlarged designs, is continued to the present time. A number of eminent men have availed themselves of the means of investigation and publication presented to them by the survey, and consequently a number of val- uable publications have appeared under its auspices. Also productive of similar work have been, or are, the surveys of the 40th parallel, and the Territories west of the 100th meridian, already referred to under the head of general natural history. In every department of geology America has exhibited efficient works. Stratigraph- ical, chronological, dynamical, and mineral- ogical geologies have each had its votaries, and so numerous have they been that the simple mention of their names is precluded. Such are the principal incidents of prog- ress in the knowledge of the natural history of our land. Many important discoveries have not been even alluded to, and the lim- itations of space preclude notice of the ad- vance of anthropological science and the general propositions and principles of biol- ogy to which American naturalists have contributed. XII. A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. IN a retrospect of what has been done in American literature during the past hun- dred years, it is of the first importance to draw a sharp line of distinction between the mental powers displayed in literature and those which have been exhibited in in- dustrial creation, in statesmanship, and in the abstract and applied sciences. The lit- erature of America is but an insufficient measure of the realized capacities of the American mind. When Sir William Ham- ilton declared that Aristotle had an imag- ination as great as that of Homer, he struck at the primary fact that the creative ener- gies of the human mind may be exercised in widely different lines of direction. Im- agination is, in the popular mind, obstinate- ly connected with poetry and romance. This prejudice is further deepened by associating imagination with amiable emotions, regard- less of the fact that two of the greatest char- acters created by the human imagination are two of the vilest types of intelligent nature — Iago and Mephistopheles. When the attempt is made to extend the applica- tion of the creative energy of imagination to business and politics, the sentimental out- cry against such a profanation of the term becomes almost deafening. Every poetaster is willing to admit that Newton is one of the few grand scientific discoverers that the world has produced; but he still thinks that, in virtue of versifying some commonplaces of emotion and thought, he is himself supe- rior to Newton in imagination. The truth is that, in spite of Newton's incapacity to appreciate works of literature and art, he possessed a creative imagination of the first class — an imagination which, in boundless fertility, is second only to Shakspeare's. In fact, it is the direction given to the creative faculty, and not to the materials on which it works, that discriminates between Ful- ton and Bryant, Whitney and Longfellow, Bigelow and Whittier, Goodyear and Lowell. Descending from the inventors, it would be easy to show that in the conduct of the ev- ery-day transactions of life, more quickness of imagination, subtilty and breadth of un- derstanding, and energy of will have been displayed by our men of business than by our authors. By the necessities of our po- sition, the aggregate mind of the country has been exercised in creating the nation as we now find it. There is, indeed, some- thing ludicrous, to a large observer of all the phenomena of our national life, in con- founding the brain and heart of the United States with the manifestation that either has found in mere literary expression. The nation outvalues all its authors, even in re- spect to those powers which authors are sup- posed specially to represent. Nobody can write intelligently of the progress of Ameri- can literature during the past hundred years without looking at American literature as generally subsidiary to the grand movemeut of the American mind. It is curious, however, that the only ap- parent contradiction to this general princi- ple dates from the beginning of our national life./ At the time the American Revolution broke out, the two men who best represent- ed the double aspect of the thought of the colonies were Jonathan Edwards and Ben- jamin Franklin. Both come within the do- main of the historian of literature, for both were great forces in our literature, whose influence is yet unspent. Of Jonathan Ed- wards, the greatest of American theologians and metaphysicians, and a religious genius of the first order, it is impossible to speak without respect, and even reverence. No theologian born in our country has exer- cised more influence on minds and souls kindred to his own. Those who opposed him recognized his pre-eminent powers of intellect. Every body felt, in assailing such a consummate reason er, the restrain- ing modesty which a master-spirit always evokes in the minds of his adversaries. His treatise on the Will has been generally ac- cepted as one of the marvels of intellectual acuteness, exercised on one of the most dif- ficult problems which have ever tested the resources of the human intellect. There 350 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. have been many answers to it, but no an- swer which is generally considered unan- swerable. Such works, indeed, as this of Edwards on the Will are not so much an- swered or refuted as gradually outgrown. But the treatise has certainly exercised and strengthened all the minds that have reso- lutely grappled with it, and has aided the development of the logical powers of Amer- ican orthodox divines in a remarkable de- gree. Whether a controversialist agrees with its author, or dissents from him, Ed- wards always quickens tbe mental activity of every body who strives to follow the course of his argumentation, or to detect the lurking fallacy which is supposed to be discoverable somewhere in the premises or processes of his logic. Perhaps this fallacy is to be found in the various senses in which Edwards uses the vital word " determina- tion." To most readers, who believe the will to be abstractly free, but that the ac- tions of men commonly proceed from the characters they have gradually formed, the most satisfactory explanation of the mys- tery is that of Jouffroy, who declares that " Liberty is the ideal of the Me." Others may obtain consolation from Gilfillan's some- what flippant remark, that every thing a man does is not necessary before he does it, but is necessary after he has done it. Es- sentially the doctrine of Edwards agrees with that of philosophical necessity, and with that so vehemently urged by many scientists, that the actions of men are as much controlled by law as the movements of the planets. The great difference be- tween Edwards's theory and the others is, that he connects his metaphysics with a theological system, and his treatise remains as a kind of practical argument for the ev- erlasting damnation of those who question the infallibility of its logic. Edwards's large and subtle understand- ing was connected with an imagination of intense realizing power, and both were based on a soul of singular purity, open on many sides to communications from the Di- vine mind. He had an almost preternatu- ral conception of the "exceeding sinfulness of sin." His imagination was filled with ghastly images of the retribution which awaits on iniquity, and his reasoned ser- mons on eternal torments were but the out- break of a sensitive feeling, a holy passion for goodness, which made him intolerant of any excellence which did not approach his ideal of godliness. But then his spiritual ex- perience, though it inflamed one side of his imagination with vivid pictures of the ter- rors of hell, on the other side gave the most enrapturing visions of the spiritual joys of heaven. It is unfortunate for his fame that his hell has obtained for him more popular recognition than his heaven. Like other poets, such as Dante and Milton, his pictures of the torments of the damned have cast into the shade that celestial light which shines so lovingly over his pictures of the bliss of the redeemed. True religion, he tells us, consists in a great measure in holy affec- tions — in " a love of divine things for the beauty and sweetness of their moral excel- lency." " Sweetness" is a frequent word all through Edwards's works, when he de- sires to convey his perception of the satis- factions which await on piety in this world, and the ineffable joy of the experiences of pious souls in the next ; and this word he thrills with a transcendent depth of sug- gestive meaning which it bears in no dic- tionary, nor in the vocabulary of any other writer of the English language. He was certainly one of the holiest souls that ever appeared on the planet. The admiration which has been generally awarded to his power of reasoning should be extended to his power of affirming, that is, when he af- firms ideas coming from those moods of blessedness in which his soul seems to be in direct contact with divine things, and vividly beholds what in other discourses his mind reasons up to or about. To reach these divine heights, however, you must, according to Edwards, mount the stairs of dogma built by Augustine and Calvin. Jonathan Edwards may be characterized as a man of the next world. Benjamin Franklin was emphatically a man of this world. Not that Franklin lacked religion and homely practical piety, but he had none of Edwards's intense depth of religious ex- perience. God was to him a beneficent be- ing, aiding good men in their hard struggles with the facts of life, and not pitiless to those who stumbled in the path of duty, or even to those who widely diverged from it. The heaven of Edwards was as far above BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 351 his spiritual vision as the hell of Edwards was below his soundings of the profundities of human wickedness ; hut there never was a person who so swiftly distinguished an honest man from a rogue, or who was more quick to see that the rogue was at war with the spiritual constitution of things. He seems to have learned his morality in a practical way. All his early slips from the straight line of duty were hut experiments, from which he drew lessons in moral wis- dom. If he happened occasionally to lapse into vice, he made the experience of vice a new fortress to defend his virtue; and he came out of the temptations of youth and middle age with a character generally rec- ognized as one of singular solidity, serenity, and benignity. His intellect, in the beauti- ful harmony of its faculties, his conscience, in the instinctive sureness of its perception of the relations of duties, and his heart, in its subordination of malevolent to benefi- cent emotions — all showed how diligent he had been in the austere self-culture which eventually raised him to the first rank among the men of his time. Simplicity was the fine result of the complexities which enter- ed into his mind and character. He was a man who never used words except to ex- press positive thoughts or emotions, and was never tempted to misuse them for the purposes of declamation. He kept his style always on the level of his character. In announcing his scientific discoveries, as in his most private letters, he is ever simple. In breadth of mind he is probably the most eminent man that our country has pro- duced ; for while he was the greatest diplo- matist, and one of the greatest statesmen and patriots of the United States, he was also a discoverer in science, a benignant philanthropist, and a master in that r.Te art of so associating words with things that they appeared identical. Edwards repre- sents, humanly speaking, the somewhat doleful doctrine that the best thing a good man can do is to get out, as soon as he de- cently can, of this world into one which is immeasurably better, by devoting all his energies to the salvation of his own partic- ular soul. Franklin, on the contrary, seems perfectly content with this world, as long as he thinks he can better it. Edwards would doubtless have considered Franklin a child of wrath, but Francis Bacon would have hailed him as one of that band of explor- ers who, by serving Nature, will in the end master her mysteries, and use their knowl- edge for the service of man. Indeed, the cheerful, hopeful spirit which runs through Franklin's writings, even when he was tried by obstacles which might have tasked the proverbial patience of Job, is not one of the least of his claims upon the consideration of those who rightfully glory in having such a genius for their countryman. The spirit which breathes through Franklin's life and works is that which has inspired every pi- oneer of our Western wastes, every poor farmer who has tried to make both ends meet by the exercise of rigid economy, ev- ery inventor who has attempted to serve men by making machines do half the drudg- ery of their work, every statesman who has striven to introduce large principles into our somewhat confused and contradicto- ry legislation, every American diplomatist who has upheld the character of his coun- try abroad by sagacity in managing men, as well as by integrity in the main purpose of his mission, and every honest man who has desired to diminish the evil there is in the world, and to increase every possible good that is conformable to good sense. Franklin is doubtless our Mr. Worldly Wise- man, but his worldly wisdom ever points to the Christian's prayer that God's will shall be done on earth as it is done in heaven. One of the most ludicrous misinterpreta- tions of this large, bounteous, and benignant intelligence is that which confines his influ- ence to the little corner of his mind in which he lodged " Poor Richard." It is common even now to hear complaints from opulent English gentlemen that Franklin has done much to make the average American nar- row in mind, hard of heart, greedy of small gains, mean in little economies. This is said of a nation the poorer portions of whose population are needlessly wasteful, and whose richer portions astonish Europe annually by the profusion with which they scatter dollars to the right and the left. The maxims of Poor Richard are generally good, and the more they are circulated, the more practical good they will do ; for our countrymen are remarkable rather for vio- lating than for obeying them. In all these 352 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. criticisms on Franklin, however, it is strange that few have observed what a delicious specimen of humorous characterization he has introduced into literature in his charm- ing delineation of Poor Richard. The. ef- fect is heightened by the groaning, droning way in which the good man delivers his bits of wisdom, as if he despairingly felt that the rustics around him would disregard his ad- vice and monitions, and pass through the usual experiences of the passions, insensible to the gasping, croaking voice which warn- ed them in advance. Franklin is probably the best specimen that history affords of what is called a self- made man. He certainly " never worship- ed his maker," according to Mr. Clapp's stinging epigram, but was throughout his life, though always self- respectful, never self-conceited. Perhaps the most notable result of his self- education was the ease with which he accosted all grades and class- es of men on a level of equality. The print- er's boy became, in his old age, one of the most popular men in the French court, not only among its statesmen, but among its frivolous nobles and their wives. He ever estimated men at their true worth or worth- lessness; but as a diplomatist he was a marvel of sagacity. The same ease of man- ner which recommended him to a Pennsyl- vania farmer was preserved in a conference with a statesman or a king. He ever kept his eud in view in all his complaisances, and that end was always patriotic. When he returned to his country he was among the most earnest to organize the liberty he had done so much to achieve ; and he also showed his hostility to the system of ne- gro slavery with which the United States was accursed. At the ripe age of eighty- four he died, leaving behind him a record of extraordinary faithfulness in the per- formance of all the duties of life. His sa- gacity, when his whole career is surveyed, amounts almost to saintliness; for his sa- gacity was uniformly devoted to the accom- plishment of great public ends of policy or beneficence. Edwards was born three years before Franklin, and died in 1758, nearly twenty years before the war broke out. Franklin died in 1790. Both being representative men, may properly be taken as points of departure in considering those writers and thinkers who were educated under the in- fluences of the pre-Revolutionary period of our literary history. ^The writings of Wash- ington, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madi- son, Jay, are a recognized portion of our lit- erature, because the hoarded wisdom slowly gathered in by their practical knowledge of life crops out in their most familiar corre- spondence. A truism announced by such men brightens into a truth, because it has evidently been tested and proved by their experience in conducting affairs. There is an elemental grandeur in Washington's character and career which renders imper- tinent all mere criticism on his style; for what he was and what he did are felt to outvalue a hundredfold what he wrote, ex- cept we consider his writings as mere rec- ords of his sagacity, wisdom, patience, dis- interestedness, intrepidity, and fortitude. John Adams had a large, strong, vehement mind, interested in all questions relating to government. He was a personage of in- domitable individuality, large acquirements, quick insight, ^nd resolute civic courage ; but the storm and stress of public affairs gave to much of his thinking a character of intellectual irritation, rather than of sus- tained intellectual energy. His moral im- patience was such that he seems to fret as he thinks. Jefferson, of all our early states- men, was the most efficient master of the pen, and the most "advanced" political thinker. In one sense, as the author of the Declaration of Independence, he may be called the greatest, or, at least, the most generally known, of American authors. But in his private correspondence his literary talent is most displayed, for by his letters he built up a party which ruled the United States for nearly half a century, and which was, perhaps, only overturned because its opponents cited the best portions of Jeffer- son's writings against conclusions derived from the worsts In executive capacity he was relatively weak ; but his mistakes in policy and his feebleness in administra- tion, which would have ruined an ordinary statesman at the head of so turbulent a combination of irascible individuals as the Democratic party of the United States, were all condoned by those minor leaders of fac- tion who, yielding to the magic persuasive- THE "FEDERALIST." 353 ness of his pen, assured their followers that the great man could do no wrong. Read in connection with the events of his time, Jef- ferson's writings must be considered of per- manent value and interest. As a political leader he was literally a man of letters ; and his letters are masterpieces, if viewed as illustrations of the arts by which polit- ical leadership may be attained. In his private correspondence he was a model of urbanity and geniality. The whole im- pression derived from his works is that he was a better man than his enemies would admit him to be, and not so great a man as his partisans declared him to be. Few pub- lic men who have been assailed with equal fury have exhibited a more philosophical temper in noticing assailants. Though oc- casionally spiteful in his references to rivals, his leading fault, as a political leader, was not so much in being himself a libeler as in the protection he extended to libelers who lampooned men obnoxious to him. His own miud seems to have been singularly temperate ; but he had a marvelous tolera- tion for the intemperance of the rancorous defamers of Washington, Hamilton, and Adams. The Federalists hated him with such a mortal hatred, and showered on him such an amount of horrible invective, that he may have witnessed with a sarcastic smile the still coarser and fiercer calumnies which the band of assassins of character in his interest showered on the leading Feder- alists. Jefferson in this contest proved himself capable of malice as well as insin- cerity ; but in a scrutiny of his works it will be found that individually he had more amenity of temper than his opponents, for it must be remembered that in his political career he was stigmatized not only as the most wicked and foolish of politicians, bat as the sultan of a negro harem, and that every circumstance of his private life was malignantly misrepresented. Many emi- nent New England divines regarded him as an atheist as well as an anarchist, and thundered at him from their pulpits as though he was a new incarnation of the evil principle. Jefferson's comparative mod- eration, in view of the savage fierceness of the attacks on his personal, political, and moral character, must, on the whole, be commended ; but still his moderation cov- 23 ered a large amount of private intrigue, and a readiness to use underhand means to com- pass what he may have deemed beneficent ends. The names of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay are inseparably associated as the au- thors of the Federalist, the political classic of the United States. Of the essays it con- tains, Hamilton wrote fifty- one, Madison twenty-nine, and Jay five. It is generally considered that Hamilton's are the best. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton was, next to Franklin, the most consummate statesman among the band of emineut men who had been active in the Revolution, and who aft- erward labored to convert a loose confedera- tion of States into a national government. His mind was as plastic as it was vigorous and profound. It was the appropriate intel- lectual expression of a poised nature whose power was rarely obtrusive, because it was half concealed by the harmonious adjust- ment of its various faculties. It was a mind deep enough to grasp principles, and broad enough to regard relations, and fer- tile enough to devise measures. Indeed, the most practical of our early statesmen was also the most inventive. He was as ready with new expedients to meet unex- pected emergencies as he was wise in sub- ordinating all expedients to clearly defined principles. In intellect he was probably the most creative of our early statesmen, as in sentiment Jefferson was the most widely influential. And Hamilton was so bent on practical ends that he was indifferent to the reputation which might have resulted from a parade of originality in the means he de- vised for their accomplishment. There nev- er was a statesman less egotistic, less de- sirous of labeling a policy as " my" policy ; and one of the sources of his influence was the subtle way in which he insinuated into other minds ideas which they appeared to originate. His moderation, his self-com- mand, the exquisite courtesy of his man- ners, the persuasiveness of his ordinary speech, the fascination of his extraordinary speeches, and the mingled dignity and ease with which he met men of all degrees of in- tellect and character, resulted in making his political partisans look up to him as almost an object of political adoration. It is diffi- cult to say what this accomplished man might 354 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. have done as a leader of the Federal oppo- sition to the Democratic administrations of Jefferson and Madison, had he not, in the maturity of his years and in the full vigor of his faculties, been murdered by Aaron Burr. Nothing can better illustrate the folly of the practice of dueling than the fact that, by a weak compliance with its max- ims, the most eminent of American states- men died by the hand of the most infamous of American demagogues. Certainly Hamil- ton had no need to accept a challenge in or- der to vindicate his claim to courage. That had been abundantly shown in the field, at the bar, in the cabinet, before the people. There was hardly any form of courage, military, civic, or moral, in which he had not proved that he was insensible to every kind of fear. The most touching expression of it was, perhaps, the confession he public- ly made that he had been entrapped into a guilty intrigue with a wily woman. The confession was necessary to vindicate his integrity as a statesman, assailed by rancor- ous enemies. In reading it one is impressed with the innate dignity of character which such a mortifying disclosure of criminal weakness could not essentially degrade ; and the allusion to his noble wife can hard- ly even now be read without tears. " This confession," he nobly says, " is not made without a blush. I can not be the apolo- gist of any vice because the ardor of pas- sion may have made it mine. I can never cease to condemn myself for the pang which it may inflict on a bosom eminently entitled to all my gratitude, fidelity, and love ; but that bosom will approve that, even at so great an expense, I should effectually wipe away a more serious stain from a name which it cherishes with no less elevation than tenderness. The public, too, I trust, will excuse the confession. The necessity of it to my defense against a more heinous charge could alone have extorted from me so painful an indecorum." John Jay, another of the wise statesmen of the Revolution, who survived to perform services of inestimable value to the new con- stitutional government, was a man whose character needs no apologists. Webster finely said that " the spotless ermine of the judicial robe, when it fell on the shoulders of John Jay, touched nothing not as spotless as itself." His integrity ran down into tho very roots of his moral being, and honesty was in him a passion as well as a principle. A great publicist as well as an incorrupti- ble patriot, with pronounced opinions which exposed him to all the shafts of faction, his most low-minded and venomous adversaries felt that both his private and public char- acter were unassailable. The celebrated "treaty" with Great Britain which he ne- gotiated as the minister of the United States occasioned an outburst of Democratic wrath such as few American diplomatists have ever been called upon to face; but in all the fury of the opposition to it, few oppo- nents were foolish enough to assail his integ- rity in assailing his judgment and general views of public policy. Judge Story once said that to James Mad- ison and Alexander Hamilton we were main- ly indebted for the Constitution of the Unit- ed States. It is curious that to Madison we are also mainly indebted for those Virginia "Resolutions of '98," which have been used to justify nullification and secession. With all his mental ability, Madison had not much original force of nature. He leaned now to Hamilton, now to Jefferson, and at last fell permanently under the influence of the gen- ius of the latter. He was lacking in that grand moral and intellectual impulse, un- derlying mere knowledge and logic, which distinguishes the man who reasons from the mere reasoner. His character was not on a level with his talents and acquirements ; his much-vaunted moderation came from the ab- sence rather than from the control of pas- sion ; and his understanding, though broad, was somewhat mechanical in its operations, and had no foundation in a corresponding breadth of nature. The "Resolutions of '98," which Southern Democrats came grad- ually to consider as of equal authority with the Constitution, were originally devised for a transient party purpose. The passage of the Alien and Sedition Laws, during the ad- ministration of John Adams, provoked Jef- ferson into writing a new "Declaration of Independence" — in this case directed not against Great Britain, but against the Unit- ed States. He drew up a series of resolu- tions, which he sent to one of his subagents, George Nicholas, of Kentucky, to be adopted by the Legislature of that State. They were, EARLY POETS. 355 with some omissions, passed. These resolu- tions substantially declared that the Federal Constitution was a compact between sover- eign States, and that in case of a supposed violation of the compact, each party to it, as in other cases of parties having no common judge, had " an equal right to judge for it- self, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." In a somewhat modified form, but still implicitly contain- ing tbe poison of nullification, similar reso- lutions, drafted by Madison, were passed by the Legislature of Virginia. The object evidently was to frighten the general gov- ernment by a threat of State resistance to its authority, without any settled purpose of nullification or rebellion. When Jeffer- son and Madison became successively Presi- dents of the United States, they seemed to have forgotten their " resolutions," ex- cept to express their horror when, seven- teen years afterward, a few mild Federal gentlemen, meeting at Hartford, appeared to show some vague intention of availing themselves of the precious constitutional doctrines which Jefferson and Madison had so boldly announced. The "Resolutions of '98" must be considered an important por- tion of our national literature, for they were exultingly adduced as the logical justifica- tion of the gigantic rebellion of 1861. It is rare, even in the history of political factions, that a string of cunningly written resolves, designed to meet a mere party emergency, should thus cost a nation thousands of mill- ions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives. When an armed ship has her upper deck cut down, and is thus reduced to an infe- rior class, it is said that she is "razeed." Fisher Ames may be called, on this princi- ple, a razeed Burke. Of all the Fedeial writers and speakers of his time, he bears away the palm of eloquence. He has some- thing of Burke's affluence of imagination, something of Burke's power of condensing political wisdom into epigrammatic apo- thegms, and more than Burke's hatred of " French principles ;" but he lacks the im- mense moral force of Burke's individuality, the large scope of his reason, the overwhelm- ing intensity of his passion. Still, his mer- its as a writer, when compared with those of most of his contemporaries, are so strik- ing that his countrymen seem unjust in al- lowing such an author to drop out of the memory of the nation. He was the despair- ing champion of a dying cause ; he decora- ted the grave of Federalism with some of the choicest flowers of rhetoric ; but the flowers are now withered, and the tomb it- self hardly receives its due meed of honor. The most eminent writers of the period which extends from 1776 to the first decade of the nineteenth century were either states- men or theologians. Between these the poets, essayists, and romancers occupy a com- paratively subordinate place ^ for we esti- mate the value of a literature', not so much by the character of the subjects with which it deals, as by the power of mind it evinces in dealing with them. As it regards our scholars and men of letters of that time, it must be remembered that the colonies were colonies of intellectual as well as of politic- al Britain, and that their ideals of intellect- ual excellence were formed on English mod- els. Our poets could only give a local color to a diction which was essentially that of Milton, or Dryden, or Pope, or Goldsmith, or Gray. They imitated these poets in a vain attempt to attain their elevation, simplicity, or compactness of style ; but in doing this they merely did what contemporary versifi- ers in London or Edinburgh were intent on doing. Their verse has not survived, but it is not more completely forgotten than the verse of Mason, and Hayley, and Henry James Pye. They could write heroic verse as well as most of the English imitators of Pope, and Pindaric odes as well as most of the English imitators of Gray. Indeed, the verses with which our forefathers af- flicted the world are generally not so bad as the verses of the poet laureates of En- gland, from the period when Dryden was deprived of the laurel, to the period when Southey reluctantly accepted it. Timothy Dwight, an eminent patriot and theologian, was early smitten with the ambition to be a poet. He wrote "America," " The Conquest of Canaan" (an epic), " Greenfield Hill," and " The Triumph of Infidelity." These poems are not properly subjects of criticism, because they are hopelessly forgotten, and no critical resurrectionist can give them that slight ap- pearance of vitality which would justify an examination of their merits and demerits. 356 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. Yet they are reasonably good of their kind, and " Greenfield Hill," especially, contains some descriptions which are almost worthy to be called charming. Dwight, as a Latin scholar, occasionally felt called upon to show his learning in his rhymes. Thus in one of his poems he characterizes one of the most delightful of Roman lyrists as " desipient" Horace. After a diligent exploration of the dictionary, the reader finds that desipient comes from a Latin word signifying "to be wise," and that its English meaning is " trifling, foolish, playful." It might be sup- posed that in the whole range of English poetry there was no descriptive epithet so ludicrously pedantic ; but, fortunately for our patriotism, we can convict Dryden of a still greater sin against good taste. In Dry- den's first ode (1687) for St. Cecilia's Day we find the following lines : "Orpheus could lead the savage race, And trees uprooted left their place, Sequacious of the lyre." It can not be doubted that Timothy Dwight's " desipient" is as poetically justifiable as John Dryden's " sequacious." Perhaps ihe most versatile of our early writers of verse was Philip Freneau (1752- 1832), a man of French extraction, possess- ing the talents of a ready writer, and en- dowed with that brightness and elasticity of mind which makes even shallowness of thought and emotion pleasing. He com- posed patriotic songs and ballads, satirized Tories, enjoyed the friendship of Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and was in his day quite a literary power. Most of his writings, whether in verse or prose, were "occasional," and they died with the occasions which called them forth. Perhaps a higher rank should be assigned to John Trumbull (1750-1831), who at the breaking out of the Revolution wrote the first canto of "McFingal,"and published the third in 1782. This poem, written in Hudi- brastic verse, is so full of original wit and humor that we hardly think of it as an imi- tation of Butler's immortal doggerel until we are reminded that many of the pithy couplets of "McFingal" are still quoted as felicitous hits of the ingenious mind of the author of " Hudibras." The immense popu- larity of the poem is unprecedented in Amer- ican literary history. The first canto rapid- ly ran through thirty editions. Longfellow's " Evangeline" attained about the same cir- culation when the population of the coun- try was thirty millions. "McFingal" was published when our population was only three millions. The poem, indeed, is to be considered as one of the forces of the Revo- lution, because, as a satire on the Tories, it penetrated into every farm-house, and sent the rustic volunteers laughing into the ranks of Washington and Greene. The vig- or of mind and feeling displayed throughout the poem gives an impetus to its incidents which " Hudibras," with all its wonderful flashes of wit, comparatively lacks. Francis Hopkinson (1737-91) was anoth- er of the writers who served the popular cause by seizing every occasion to make the British pretensions to rule ridiculous as well as hateful. His " Battle of the Kegs" prob- ably laughed a thousand men into the re- publican ranks. His son, Francis Hopkin- son, wrote the most popular of American lyrics, "Hail, Columbia." It is curious that this ode has no poetic merit whatever. There is not a line, not an epithet, in the whole composition which distinguishes it from the baldest prose. Robert Treat Paine, Jun., was originally named by his father Thomas ; but being a zealous Federalist, he induced the Legisla- ture of Massachusetts to change his cogno- men into Robert Treat, because, detesting the theological iconoclast who was both a Democrat and an infidel, he desired, he said, to have a Christian name. His song of " Adams and Liberty" is far above Hopkiti- son's "Hail, Columbia" in emphasis of phrase, richness of illustration, and resounding har- mony of versification. Even now it kindles enthusiasm, like the lyrics of Campbell, though it is, of course, more mechanical in structure and more rhetorical in tone than the " Battle of the Baltic" and the " Mari- ners of England." At the time, however, it roused a similar enthusiasm. But all the poets of the United States were threatened with extinction or subor- dination when Joel Barlow (1755-1812) ap- peared. He was, according to all accounts, an estimable man, cursed with the idea not only that he was a poet, but the greatest of American poets ; and in 1808 he published, in a superb quarto volume, " The Columbiad." EAELY NOVELISTS. 357 It was also published iu Paris and London. The London Monthly Magazine tried to prove not only that it was an epic poem, but that it was surpassed only by the Iliad, the ^Eneid, and " Paradise Lost." Joel Barlow is fairly entitled to the praise of raising mediocrity to dimensions almost colossal. Columbia is, thank Heaven, still alive ; "TheColumbiad" is, thank Heaven, hopelessly dead. There are some elderly gentlemen still living who declare that they have read " The Columbi- ad," and have derived much satisfaction from the perusal of the same ; but their evidence can not stand the test of cross-examination. They can not tell what the poem is, what it teaches, and what it means. No critic with- in the last fifty years has read more than a hundred lines of it, and even this effort of attention has been a deadly fight with those merciful tendencies in the human organiza- tion which softly wrap the overworked mind iu the blessedness of sleep. It is the im- possibility of reading "The Columbiad" which prevents any critical estimate of its numberless demerits. It is to be noted that, admitting all the poetic talent that our versifiers from 1776 to 1810 can claim, they are exceeded in all the requisites of poetry by contemporary prose writers. Fisher Ames, in a political article contributed to a newspaper, often display- ed a richness of imagery, a harmony of dic- tion, and an intensity of sentiment and pas- sion which would have more than supplied our rhymers with materials for a canto. John Jay was not, like Fisher Ames, a man who thought in images, yet in one instance his fervid honesty enabled him to outleap every versifier of his time in the exercise of impassioned imagination. In a letter ad- dressed to the States of the Confederation he showed the horrible injustice wrought by the depreciated currency of the country. "Humanity," he said, "as well as justice, makes this demand upon you ; the com- plaints of ruined widows and the cries of fa- therless children, whose whole support has been placed in your hands and melted away, have doubtless reached you ; take care that they ascend no higher." And, if we consider poetry in its inmost essence, what can ex- ceed in sentiment and imagination the state- ment in prose of the perfections of the maid- en whom Jonathan Edwards, the austere theologian, was so fortunate as to win for his wife ? To be sure, the description runs back to the year 1723, when Edwards was only twenty years old. " They say," he writes, "there is a young lady in New Ha- ven who is beloved of that Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Be- ing, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for any thing except to meditate on Him, that she expects, after a while, to be received up where He is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven, being assured that He loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him always. There she is to dwell with Him, and to be ravished with His love and delight forever. There- fore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she dis- regards it and cares not for it, and is un- mindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singu- lar purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct ; and you could not persuade her to do any thing wrong or sinful if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind, especially after this Great God has manifested Himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walkiug in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her." The " sage and serious" Spenser, in all his lovely characterizations of feminine excel- lence, never succeeded in depicting a soul more exquisitely beautiful than this of Sa- rah Pierrepont as viewed through the con- secrating imagination of Jonathan Edwards. The leading writers of fiction during the period immediately succeeding the Revolu- tion were Susauna Rowson, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and Charles Brockden Brown. Mrs. Rowson's novel of Charlotte Temple at- tained the unprecedented circulation of 25,000 copies, not so much for its literary merits as on account of its foundation in a mysterious domestic scandal which affected 358 A CENTUKY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. the reputation of a number of prominent American families. Brackenridge was a Democrat of a peculiar kind, generally sup- porting his party, but reserving to himself the right of criticising and satirizing it. At the time the antislavery section of the Dem- ocratic party in the State of New York was called by the nickname of " Barnburners," Mr. J. G. Saxe, the poet, was asked to define his position. " I am," he replied, " a Demo- crat with a proclivity to arson." Bracken- ridge at an earlier period showed a similar restlessness in his dissent from the policy of a party whose principles he generally advocated. His principal work is Modem Chivalry ; or, the Adventures of Captain Far- rago and Teague O'Eegan, his Servant. The author had a vague idea of Americanizing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. The ad- ventures are somewhat coarsely and clum- sily portrayed, but it gave Brackenridge an opportunity to satirize the practical work- ings of Democracy, and he did it with piti- less severity. Teague is represented as a creature only a little raised above the con- dition of a beast, ignorant, credulous, greedy, and brutal, lacking both common-sense and moral sense, but still ambitious to attain po- litical office, and willing to put himself for- ward as a candidate for posts the duties of which he could not by any possibility per- form. The exaggeration is heightened at times into the most farcical caricature, but the book can be read even now with profit by the champions of civil service reform. There are also in the course of the narra- tive some deadly shafts launched, in a hu- morous way, against the institution of slav- ery. Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) was our first novelist by profession. At the time he wrote Arthur Mervyn, Edgar Huntley, Clara Howard, and TVieland the remunera- tion of the novelist was so small that he could only make what is called "a living" by sacrificing every grace and felicity of style to the inexorable need of writing rap- idly, and therefore inaccurately. Brown, in his depth of insight into the morbid phe- nomena of the human mind, really antici- pated Hawthorne; but hurried as he was by that most malignant of literary devils, the printer's, he produced no such master- pieces of literary art as The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun. Brown is one of the most melancholy in- stances of a genius arrested in its orderly development by the pressure of circum- stances. In mere power his forgotten nov- els rank very high among the products of the American imagination. And it should be added that though he is unread, he is by no means unreadable. TVieland; or, the Trans- formation, has much of the thrilling interest which fastens our attention as we read God- win's Caleb Williams, or Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. With all his faults, Brown does not deserve to be the victim of the bitterest irony of criticism, that, namely, of not beiug considered worth the trouble of a critical ex- amination. His writings are contemptuous- ly classed among dead books, interesting to the antiquary alone. Still, they have that vitality which comes from the presence of genius, and a little stirring of the ashes un- der which they are buried would reveal sparks of genuine fire. The progress of theology during the thir- ty years which followed the Revolution is illustrated by the works of many men of mark in their profession, and by two men of original though somewhat crotchety re- ligious genius, Samuel Hopkins and Na- thaniel Emmous. It is the rightful boast of Calvinism, that whatever judgment may be passed on the validity of its dogmas, nobody can question its power to give strength to character, to educate men into strict habits of deductive reasoning, and to comfort regenerated and elected souls with the blissful feeling that they are in direct communication with the Divine mind. But even before the Revolution broke out there was a widely diffused though somewhat lazy mental insurrection against its doc- trines by men who were formally connected with its churches ; aud Jonathan Edwards, the greatest successor of Calvin, was dis- missed from his pastoral charge in North- ampton because he had attempted to re- fuse Christian fellowship to those members of the church who, though they assented to Calvinistic opinions, had given "no evi- dence of saving grace" in their hearts. The devil, Edwards said, was very orthodox in faith, and his speculative knowledge in di- vinity exceeded that of " a hundred saints of ordinary education." It was but natural that the unconverted members of orthodox THOMAS PAINE. 359 churches, who were distinguished more hy their social positiou, wealth, aud good moral character thau by their capacity to stand Edwards's test of vital piety, should end in doubting the truth of the doctrines by the relentless application of which they were pro- scribed as non-Christian. The Revolution brought into the country not merely French soldiers, but the skeptical philosophy of the great French writers of the eighteenth cen- tury. The French officers were practical- ly missionaries of unbelief. The light but stinging mockery of Voltaire had educated the intelligent French mind into a shallow contempt for all the mysteries of the Chris- tian religion ; and in fighting for our liber- ties, these gay, bright Frenchmen fought also against our accredited theological faith. There is something ludicrous in this contact of the French with the Yankee mind. Men like Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, and others, had already adopted opinions which were opposed to Calvinism, but they had no strong impulse to announce their religious convictions. The general drift of the pop- ular mind set in such an opposite direction, that they hesitated to peril their political aims in a vain attempt to enforce their somewhat languid theological views. Uni- tarianism, or Liberal Christianity, so called, had not yet arisen ; and the protest against Calvinism first took the form of an open de- nial of the Christian faith. Thus Ethan Allen published, in 1784, a work which he called Season the Only Oracle of Man. He summoned the fort of Ticonderoga to sur- render in " the name of the Great Jehovah, and of the Continental Congress ;" he after- ward demanded that the impregnable for- tress of Christianity should surrender in the name of Ethan Allen. Christianity declined to obey the summons of this stalwart Ver- mont soldier — doubtless much to his sur- prise. But the man who was the most influen- tial assailant of the orthodox faith was Thomas Paine. He was the arch-infidel, the infidel par eminence, whom our early and later theologians have united in holding up as a monster of iniquity and unbelief. The truth is that Paine was a dogmatic, well- meaning iconoclast, who attacked religion without having any religious experience or any imaginative perception of the vital spir- itual phenomena on which religious faith is based. Nobody can read his Age of Reason, after having had some preparatory knowl- edge derived from the study of the history of religions, without wondering at its shal- lowness. Paine is, in a spiritual applica- tion of the phrase, color-blind. He does not seem to know what religion is. The reputation he enjoyed was due not more to his masterly command of all the avenues to the average popular mind than to the im- portance to which he was lifted by his hor- rified theological adversaries. His merit as a writer against religion consisted in his hard, almost animal, common-sense, to whose tests he subjected the current theo- logical dogmas. He was a kind of vulgar- ized Voltaire. His eminent services to the country during the Revolutionary war were generally known — indeed, were acknowl- edged by the leading statesmen of the Unit- ed States. His memorable pamphlet en- titled Common-Sense reached a circulation of a hundred thousand copies. It was fol- lowed up by a series of tracts, under the general name of " The Crisis," which were almost as efficient as their predecessor in rousing, sustaining, and justifying the pa- triotism of the nation. He was the author of the now familiar maxim that " these are the times that try men's souls." His after- career in England and France resulted in his pamphlet on The Bights of Man, direct- ed against Burke's assault on the principles and methods of the French Revolutionists of 1789. It was unmistakably the ablest answer that any of the democrats of France, England, and the United States had made to Burke's eloquent and philosophic im- peachment of the motives and conduct of the actors in that great convulsion. One passage still survives, because it almost ri- vals Burke himself in the power of making a thought tell on the general mind by apt- ness of imagery. "Nature," says Paine, " has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the realities of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblauce of it striking his imagi- nation. He pities the plumage, hut forgets the dying bird." A writer thus known to the American people not only as the champion of their individual rights, but of the rights of all mankind, could not fail to exert much 360 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. influence "when he brought his peculiar pow- er of simple, forcible, and sarcastic state- ment to an assault on the religion of the country whose nationality he had done so much to establish. He never touched the inmost sanctuaries of Calvinism, though he seriously damaged some of its outworks ; and the fault of the eminent divines who op- posed him was in throwing all their strength in defending what was proved in the end to be indefensible. Indeed, it is pitiable to witness the ob- structions which strong minds and religious hearts raised against an inevitable tenden- cy of human thought. While infidelity was slowly undermining the system of theology on which they based the sentiment and the substance of religious belief, these theolo- gians exerted their powers of reasoning in controversies, waged against each other, re- lating to the question whether deductive arguments from adroitly detached Script- ural texts could fix the time when original sin made infants liable to eternal damna- tion. Some argued that the spiritual dis- ease was communicated in the moment of conception ; others, a little more humane, contended that the child must be born be- fore it could righteously be damned ; others insisted that a certain time after birth, left somewhat undetermined, but generally as- signed to the period when the child attains to moral consciousness, should elapse before it was brought under the penalties of the universal curse. The current theology of his time could not sustain the attacks of such a hard, vulgar reasoner as Paine, ex- cept by withdrawing into its vital and un- assailable position, namely, its power of con- verting depraved souls iuto loving disciples of the Lord. The thinking of the dominant theologians of that period has been quietly repudiated by their successors, and it has failed to establish any place in literature be- cause it was exerted on themes which the human mind and human heart have gradu- ally ignored. Still, the practical effects of the teaching of the great body of orthodox clergymen have been immense. It would be unjust to measure their influence by the success or failure of theories devised by the speculative ingenuity of their representa- tive divines. It is impossible to estimate too highly the services of the clergymen of the country in the formation of the national character. Their sermons have not passed into literature. A band of " ministers," con- tented with small salaries, on which they almost starved, and with no reputation be- yond their little parishes, labored year aft- er year in the obscure work of purifying, elevating, and regenerating the individuals committed to their pastoral charge ; and when they died, in all the grandeur with which piety invests poverty, they were swift- ly succeeded by men who valiantly trod the same narrow path, leading to no success recognized on earth as brilliant or self-sat- isfying. The period of our literary history between 1810 and 1840 witnessed the rise and growth of a literature which was influenced by the new "revival of letters" in England during the early part of the present century, repre- sented by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, Campbell, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Moore. Most of these eminent men were not only writers but powers; they commu- nicated spiritual life to the soul, as well as beautiful images and novel ideas to the mind ; and touching, as they did, the pro- foundest sources of imagination, reason, and emotion, they quickened latent individual genius into original activity by the mag- netism they exerted on sympathetic souls, and thus stimulated emulation rather than imitation. The wave of Wordsworthiauisni swept gently over New England, and here and there found a mind which was men- tally and morally refreshed by drinking deeply of this new water of life. But Pope was still for a long time the pontiff of po- etry, recognized by the cultivated men of Boston no less than by the cultivated men of London and Edinburgh. Probably there occurred no greater and more sudden change from the old school to the new than in the case of a precocious lad who bore the name of William Cullen Bryant. At the age of fourteen, in the year 1808, he produced a versified satire on Jefferson's administra- tion called " The Embargo." It was just as good and just as bad as most American imi- tations of Pope; but the boy indicated a fa- cility in using the accredited verse of the time which excited the wonder and admira- tion of his elders. Vigor, compactness, ring- ing emphasis in the constantly recurring WILLIAM C. BRYANT. 361 rhymes, all seemed to show that a new Pope had been horn in Massachusetts. The gen- ius of the lad, however, was destined to take a different road to fame than that which was marked out by his admirers. He read the lyr- ical ballads of Wordsworth ; and his friend, E. H. Dana, informs us that Bryant confess- ed to him that on reading that volume " a thousand spriugs seemed to gush up at once into his heart, and the face of nature of a sudden changed into a strange freshness and life." Accordingly his next poem of any importance was " Thanatopsis." We are told that it was written when he was only eighteen. It was published in the Noilh American Review for 1816, when he was twenty-two. The difference of four years makes little difference in the remark- able fact that the poem indicates no sign of youth whatever. The perfection of its rhythm, the majesty and dignity of the tone of matured reflection which breathes through it, the solemnity of its underlying sentiment, and the austere unity of the per- vading thought, would deceive almost any critic into affirming it to be the product of an imaginative thinker to whom " years had brought the philosophic mind." Still it must be remembered that the poets in whom med- itation and imagination have been most har- moniously blended have produced some of their best works when they were compara- tively young. This is specially the case as regards Wordsworth. His poem on revisiting Tiutern Abbey, written when he was twen- ty-eight, introduced an absolutely new ele- ment into English poetry, and was specially characterized by that quality of calm, deep, solid reflection which is commonly consid- ered to be the peculiarity of genius when it has attained the maturity which age and experience alone can give. The wonder- ful "Ode on the Intimations of Immortali- ty from Eecollections of Early Childhood," written about four years later, indicates the highest point which the poetic insight and the philosophic wisdom of Wordsworth ever reached; and it ought, on ordinary princi- ples of criticism, to have been written thir- ty years later than the date which marks its birth. Nothing which Wordsworth aft- erward wrote, though precious in itself, dis- played any thing equal to these poems in maturity of thought and imagination. It is doubtful if Bryant's "Thanatopsis" has been excelled by the many deep and beauti- ful poems which he has written since. In his case, as in that of Wordsworth, we are puzzled by the old head suddenly erected on young shoulders. They leap over the age of passion by a single bound, and become poetic philosophers at an age when other poets are in the sensuous stage of imagina- tive development. In estimating the claim of Bryant to be ranked as the foremost of American poets, it may be said that he opened a rich and deep, if somewhat nar- row, vein, which he has worked with mar- velous skill, and that he has obtained more pure gold from his mine than many others who have sunk shafts here and there into more promising deposits of the precious metal. He is, perhaps, unequaled among our American poets in his grasp of the ele- mental life of nature. His descriptions of natural scenery always imply that nature, in every aspect it turns to the poetic eye, is thoroughly alive. Nobody can read his po- ems called " The Evening Wind," " Green River," " The Death of the Flowers," the invocation " To a Water- Fowl," " An Even- ing Reverie," " To the Fringed Gentian," not to mention others, without feeling that this poet has explored the inmost secrets of nature, and has shown how natural ob- jects can be wedded to the human mind in " love and holy passion." In the ab- stract imagination Avhich celebrates the fundamental idea and ideal of our Ameri- can life, what can excel his noble verses on "The Antiquity of Freedom?" "The Land of Dreams" is perhaps the most ex- quisite of Bryant's poems, as in it thought, sentiment, and imagination are more com- pletely dissolved in melody than in any oth- er of his poems. In a criticism of the range of Bryant's mind it must be remembered that his poetry is only one expression of it. His life has been generally passed in political struggles which have called forth all his powers of statement and reasoning, based on a patient study of the phenomena presented by our social and political life. As the editor of the New York Evening Post, he has shown himself an able publicist, an intelligent economist, and a resolute party champion. And at a period of life when most men are justified in resting from their 362 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. labors, he undertook the gigantic task of translating into blank verse such as few but he can give, the whole of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Another eminent writer of the period, and one who also happily survives, at the ad- vanced age of eighty-eight, an object of the deserved respect and admiration of his coun- trymen, was Richard Henry Dana. His ar- ticles in the North American Review, from 1817 to 1819, were remarkable compositions for the time. The long paper on the English poets, published in 1819, surveys the whole domain of English poetry from Chaucer to Wordsworth. It exhibits a comprehensive- ness of taste, a depth and delicacy of critical perception, and a grasp of the spiritual ele- ments which enter into the highest efforts of creative minds, unexampled in any previous American contribution to the philosophy of criticism. His discernment of the relative rank and worth of British poets is special- ly noticeable. He interpreted before he judged ; and in interpreting he showed, in old George Chapman's phrase, that he pos- sessed the "fit key," that is, the "deep and treasurous heart," "With poesy to open poesy." Even among the cultivated readers of the North American, there were few who could appreciate Dana's profound analysis of the genius of Wordsworth and Coleridge. In 1821 he began The Idle Man, of which six numbers were published. In this appeared his celebrated paper on Edmund Kean, the best piece of theatrical criticism in Amer- ican literature ; two novels, Tom Thornton and Paid Felton, dealing with the darker passions of our nature in a style so abrupt, a feeling so intense, and a moral purpose so inexorable that they rather terrified than pleased the " idle men" who read novels ; and several of those beautiful meditations on nature and human life, in which the au- thor exhibits himself as " A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveler betwixt life and death." The Idle Man did not succeed. In 1827 he published a thin volume entitled The Buc- caneer, and Other Poems. These are suffi- cient to give him a high rank among Amer- ican poets, though they have obtained but little hold on popular sympathy. "The Buccaneer" is remarkable for its represen- tation, equally clear, of external objects and internal moods of thought and passion. In one sense it is the most "objective" of poems; in another, the most "subjective." The truth would seem to be that Dana's overpowering conception of the terrible re- ality of sin — a conception almost as strong as that which was fixed in the imagination of Jonathan Edwards — interferes with the artistic disposition of his imagined scenes and characters, and touches even some of his most enchanting pictures with a certain baleful light. An uneasy spiritual discon- tent, a moral despondency, is evident in his verse as well as in his prose, and his large powers of reason and imagination seem never to have been harmoniously blended in his artistic creations. Still, he remains one of the prominences of our literature, whether considered as poet, novelist, critic, or general thinker. Washington Allston,the greatest of Amer- ican painters, was also a graceful poet. " His mind," says Mr. Dana, " seems to have in it the glad but geutle brightness of a star, as you look up to it, sending pure in- fluences into your heart, and making it kind and cheerful." As a poet, however, he is now but little known. As a prose writer, his lectures on Art, and especially his ro- mance of Monaldi, show that he could paint with the pen as well as with the brush. It is difficult to understand why Monaldi has not obtained a permanent place in our lit- erature. There is in it one description of a picture representing the visible struggle of a soul in the toils of sin which, in intensity of conception and passion, exceeds any pic- ture he ever painted. The full richness of Allston's mind was probably only revealed to those who for years enjoyed the inesti- mable privilege of hearing him converse. It is to be regretted that no copious notes were taken of his conversations. Mrs. Jameson, in her visit to the United States, was so surprised to witness such opulence of thought conveyed in such seemingly careless talk, that she took a few notes of his deep and beautiful sayings. It would have been well if Dana and others who from day to day and year to year saw the clear stream of conversation flow ever on WASHINGTON IRVING. 363 from the same inexhaustible mind, had made the world partakers of the wealth with which they were enriched. Allston, iudeed, was one of those men whose works are hardly the measure of their powers — who can talk better than they can write, and conceive more vividly than they can execute. The "revival" of American literature in New York differed much in character from its revival in New England. In New York it was purely human in tone ; in New En- gland it was a little superhuman in tone. In New England they feared the devil ; in New York they dared the devil ; and the greatest and most original literary dare- devil in New York was a young gentleman of good family, whose "schooling" ended with his sixteenth year, who had rambled much about the island of Manhattan, who had in his saunterings gleaned and brooded over many Dutch legends of an elder time, who had read much but had studied little, who possessed fine observation, quick intel- ligence, a genial disposition, and an indo- lently original genius in detecting the lu- dicrous side of things, and whose name was Washington Irving. After some prelimina- ry essays in humorous literature, his genius arrived at the age of indiscretion, and he produced, at the age of twenty-six, the most deliciously audacious work of humor in our literature, namely, The History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. It is said of some reformers that they have not only opinions, but the courage of their opinions. It may be said of Irving that he not only caricatured, but had the courage of his car- icatures. The persons whom he covered with ridicule were the ancestors of the lead- ing families of New York, and these families prided themselves on their descent. Aft- er the publication of such a book he could hardly enter the "best society" of New York, to which he naturally belonged, without running the risk of being insulted, espe- cially by the elderly women of fashion ; but he conquered their prejudices by the same grace and geniality of manner, by the same unmistakable tokens that he was an inborn gentleman, through which he afterward won his way into the first society of England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Still, the promise of Knickerbocker was not ful- filled. That book, if considered as an imi- tation at all, was an imitation of Rabelais, or Swift, or of any author in any language who had shown an independence of all con- vention, who did not hesitate to commit in- decorums, and who laughed at all the regal- ities of the world. The author lived long enough to be called a timid imitator of Ad- dison and Goldsmith. In fact, he imitated nobody. His genius, at first riotous and unrestrained, became tamed and regulated by a larger intercourse with the world, by the saddening experience of life, and by the gradual development of some deep senti- ments which held in check the audacities of his wit and humor. But even in the por- tions of The Sketch-Book relating to England it will be seen that his favorite authors be- longed rather to the age of Elizabeth than to the age of Anne. In Bracebridge Hall there is one chapter called " The Rookery," which in exquisitely poetic humor is hardly equaled by the best productions of the au- thors he is said to have made his models. That he possessed essential humor and pa- thos, is proved by the warm admiration he excited in such masters of humor and pathos as Scott and Dickens; and style is but a secondary consideration when it expresses vital qualities of genius. If he subordinated energy to elegance, he did it, not because he had the ignoble ambition to be ranked as "a fine writer," but because he was free from the ambition, equally ignoble, of sim- ulating a passion which he did not feel. The period which elapsed between the pub- lication of Knickerbocker's history and The Sketch-Book was ten years. During this time his mind acquired the habit of tran- quilly contemplating the objects which filled his imagination, and what it lost in sponta- neous vigor it gained in sureness of insight and completeness of representation. Eip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Holloiv have not the humorous inspiration of some passages in Knickerbocker, but perhaps they give more permanent delight, for the scenes and characters are so harmonized that they have the effect of a picture, in which all the parts combine to produce one charming whole. Besides, Irving is one of those ex- ceptional authors who are regarded by their readers as personal friends, and the felicity of nature by which he obtained this dis- 364 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. tinction was expressed in that amenity, that amiability of tone, which some of his au- stere critics have called elegant feebleness. As a biographer and historian, his Life of Columbus and his Life of Washington have indissolubly connected his name with the discoverer of the American continent and the champion of the liberties of his country. In The Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada and The Alhambra he occupies a unique po- sition among those writers of fiction who have based fiction on a laborious investiga- tion into the facts of history. His reputa- tion is not local, but is recognized by all cultivated people who speak the English language. If C4reat Britain established an English intellectual colony in the United States, such men as Irving and Cooper may be said to have retorted by establishing an American intellectual colony in England. James Fenimore Cooper was substantially a New Yorker, though accidentally born (in 1789) in New Jersey. He entered Yale Col- lege in 1802, and, three years after, left it without graduating, haviug obtained a mid- shipman's warrant in the United States navy. He remained in the naval service for six years. In 1811 he married, and in 1821 began a somewhat memorable literary career by the publication of a novel of En- glish life, called Precaution, which failed to attract much attention. In the same year, however, he published another novel, rela- ting to the Revolutionary period of our his- tory, called The Sjry, and rose at once to the position of a power of the first class in our literature. The novels which immediately followed did, on the whole, increase his rep- utation ; and after the publication of The lied Rover, in 1827, his works were not only eagerly welcomed by his countrymen, but were translated into almost all the lan- guages of Europe. Indeed, it seemed at one time that Cooper's fame was co-exten- sive with American commerce. The novels were intensely American in spirit, and in- tensely American in scenery and characters; but they were also found to contain in them something which appealed to human nature e very where. Much of their popularity was doubtless due to Cooper's vivid presentation of the wildest aspects of nature in a com- paratively new country, and his creation of characters corresponding to their physical environment ; but the essential influence he exerted is to be referred to the pleasure all men experience in the kindling exhibition of man as an active being. No Hamlets, or Werthers, or Ren6s, or Childe Harolds were allowed to tenant his woods or appear on his quarter-decks. Will, and the trained sagacity and experience directing will, were the invigorating elements of character which he selected for romantic treatment. Whether the scene be laid in the primitive forest or ou the ocean, his men are always struggling with each other or with the forces of nature. This primal quality of robust manhood all men understand, and it shines triumphantly through the interpos- ing fogs of French, German, Italian, and Russian translations. A physician of the mind could hardly prescribe a more efficient tonic for weak and sentimental natures than a daily diet made up of the most bracing passages in the novels of Cooper. Another characteristic of Cooper, which makes him universally acceptable, is his closeness to nature. He agrees with Words- worth in this, that in all his descriptions of natural objects he indicates that he and nature are familiar acquaintances, and, as Dana says, have "talked together." He takes nothing at second-hand. If brought before a justice of the peace, he could sol- emnly swear to the exact truth of his rep- resentations without running any risk of being prosecuted for perjury. Cooper as well as Wordsworth took nature, as it were, at first-hand, the perceiving mind coming into direct contact with the thing per- ceived ; but Wordsworth primarily con- templated nature as the divinely appoint- ed food for the nourishment of the spirit that meditates, while Cooper felt its power as a stimulus to the spirit that acts. No two minds could, in many respects, be more different, yet both agree iu the instinctive sagacity which detects the hex-oic under the guise of the homely. The greatest creation of Cooper is the hunter and trapper, Leath- erstocking, who appears in five of his best novels, namely, The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer, and who is unmistakably the life of each. The simplicity, sagacity, and intrepidity of this man of the woods, his quaint sylvan piety and humane feeling, JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 365 the perfect harmony established between his will and reason, his effectiveness equal to all occasions, and his determination to dwell on those vanishing points of civiliza- tion which faintly mark the domain of the settler from that of the savage, altogether combine to make up a character which is admired equally in log-cabins and palaces. Wordsworth, in one of the most exquisite of his minor poems — " Three Years She grew in Sun and Shower" — has traced the process of nature in making "a lady of her own." Certainly Leatherstocking might be quoted as a successful attempt of the same austere goddess to make, out of ruder mate- rials, a man of " her own." Cooper lived to write thirty-four novels, the merits of which are so .unequal that at times we are puzzled to conceive of them as the products of one mind. His failures are not to be referred to that decline of power which accompanies increasing age, for The Deerslayer, one of his best novels, was writ- ten six years after his worst novel, The Mon- ikins. He often failed, early as well as late in his career, not because his faculties were impaired, but because they were misdirect- ed. One of the secrets of his fascination was also one of the causes of his frequent dullness. He equaled De Foe in the art of giving reality to romance by the dextrous accumulation and management of details. In his two great sea novels, The Pilot and The Bed Rover, the important events are preceded by a large number of minor inci- dents, each of which promises to be an event. The rocks which the vessel by cun- ning seamanship escapes are described as minutely as the rocks on which she is final- ly wrecked. It is difficult for the reader to conceive that he is not reading an account of an actual occurrence. He unconsciously transports himself to the deck of the ship, participates in all the hopes and fears of the crew, thanks God when the keel just grazes a ledge without being seriously injured, and finally goes down into the " hell of waters" in company with his imagined associates. In such scenes the imagination of the read- er is so excited that he has no notion wheth- er the writer's style is good or bad. He is made by some magic of words to see, feel, realize, the situation ; the verbal method by which the miracle is wrought he entirely ignores or overlooks. But then the prelim- inaries to these grand scenes which exhibit intelligent man in a life-and-death contest with the unintelligent forces of nature — how tiresome they often are ! The early chap- ters of The Red Rover, for example, are dull beyond expression. The author's fondness for detail trespasses on all the reserved fund of human patience. It is only because " ex- pectation sits i' the air" that we tolerate his tediousuess. If we desire to witness the conduct of the man-of-war in the tempest and the battle, we must first submit to fol- low all the cumbersome details by which she is slowly detached from the dock and laboriously piloted into the open sea. There is more " padding" in Cooper's novels than in those of any author who can make any pre- tensions to rival him. His representative sailors, Long Tom Coffin, Tom Tiller, Night- ingale, Bolthrope, Trysail, Bob Yarn, not to mention others, are admirable as characters, but they are allowed to inflict too much of their practical wisdom on the reader. In fact, it is a great misfortune, as it regards the permanent fame of Cooper, that he wrote one-third, at least, of his novels at all, and that he did not condense the other two- thirds into a third of their present length. Cooper, on his return from Europe in 1833 or 1834, published a series of novels satirizing what he considered the faults and vices of his countrymen. The novels have little literary merit, but they afforded an excellent opportunity to exhibit the inde- pendence, intrepidity, and integrity of the author's character. It is a pity he ever wrote them ; still, they proved that he be- came a bad novelist in order to perform what he deemed to be the duties of a good citizen. Indeed, as a brave, high-spirited, noble-minded man, somewhat too proud and dogmatic, but thoroughly honest, he was ever on a level with the best characters in his best works. The names of Joseph Rodman Drake and Fitz- Greene Halleck are connected, not merely by personal friendship, but by part- nership in poetry. Both were born in the same year (1795), but Drake died in 1820, while Halleck survived to 1867. Halleck, in strength of constitution as well as in power of mind, was much superior to his fragile companion ; but Drake had a real en- 366 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. thusiasm for poetry, which Halleck, though a poet, did not possess. Drake's " Culprit Fay" is an original American poem, formed out of materials collected from the scenery and traditions of the classical American river, the Hudson, hut it was too hastily written to do justice to the fancy hy which it was conceived. His " Ode on the Ameri- can Flag" derives its chief strength from the resounding quatrain hy which it is closed, and these four lines were contributed by Halleck. Indeed, Drake is, on the whole, less rememhered hy his own poems than hy the beautiful tribute which Halleck made to his memory. They were coadjutors in the composition of the " Croaker Papers," orig- inally contributed to the New York Evening Post; but the superiority of Halleck to his friend is manifest at the first glance. One of the puzzles which arrest the attention of a historian of American literature is to account for the strange indifference of Hal- leck to exercise often the faculty which on occasions he showed he possessed in super- abundance. All the subjects he attempted — the " Croaker Papers," " Fanny," " Burns," " Red Jacket," " Alnwick Castle," " Connect- icut," the magnificent heroic ode, " Marco Bozzaris" — show a complete artistic mastery of the resources of poetic expression, wheth- er his theme be gay or grave, or compound- ed of the two. His extravagant admiration of Campbell was founded on Campbell's ad- mirable power of compression. Halleck thought that Byron was a mere rhetorician in comparison with his favorite poet. Yet it is evident to a critical reader that a good deal of Campbell's compactness is due to a studied artifice of rhythm and rhyme, while Halleck seemingly writes in verse as if he were not trammeled by its laws ; and his rhymes naturally recur without suggesting to the reader that his condensation of thought and feeling is at all affected by the necessity of rhyming. Prose has rarely been written with more careless ease and more melodious compactness than Halleck has shown in writing verse. The wonder is that with this conscious command of bend- ing verse into the brief expression of all the moods of his mind, he should have written so little. The only explanation is to be found in his skepticism as to the vital real- ity of those profound states of conscious- ness which inspire poets of less imaginative faculty than he possessed to incessant ac- tivity. He was among poets what Thacke- ray is among novelists. Being the well-paid clerk and man of business of a millionaire, his grand talent was not stung into exertion by necessity. Though he lived to the age of seventy-two, he allowed year after year to pass without any exercise of his genius. "What's the use?" — that was the deaden- ing maxim which struck his poetic faculties with paralysis. Yet what he has written, though very small in amount, belongs to the most precious treasures of our poetical liter- ature. What he might have written, had he so chosen, would have raised him to a rank among our first men of letters, which he does not at present hold. James K.Paulding (1778-1860) completes this peculiar group of New York authors. He was connected with Irving in the pro- duction of the " Salmagundi" essays, and was at one time prominent as a satirist, hu- morist, and novelist. Most of his writings are now forgotten, though they evinced a somewhat strong though coarse vein of hu- mor, which was not without its effect at the period when its local and political allusions and persoualities were understood. A scene in one of his novels indicates the kind of comicality in which he excelled. The house of an old reprobate situated on the bank of a river is carried away by a freshet. In the agony of his fear he strives to recall some prayer which he learned when a child ; but as he rushes distractedly up and down the stairs of his floating mansion, he can only remember the first line of the baby's hymn, " Now I lay me down to sleep," Avhich he in- cessantly repeats as he runs. While these New York essayists, humor- ists, and novelists were laughing at the New Englander as a Puritan and satirizing him as a Yankee, there was a peculiar revival of spiritual sentiment in New England, which made its mark in general as well as in the- ological literature. In the very home of Puritanism there was going on a reaction against the fundamental doctrines of Cal- vinism and the inexorable faith of the Pil- grim Fathers. This reaction began before the Revolutionary war, and continued after it. Jonathan Mayhew, the pastor of the West Church, of Boston, was not only a flam- CHAINING AND NORTON. 367 ing defender of the political rights of the colonies, hut his sermons also teemed with theological heresies. He rebelled against King Calvin as well as against King George. Probably Paine's Age of Reason had after- ward some effect in inducing prominent Bos- ton clergymen, reputed orthodox, to silently drop from their preaching the leading dog- mas of the accredited creed. With such accomplished ministers as Freeman, Buck- minster, Thacher, and their followers, ser- monizing became more and more a form of moralizing, and the "scheme of salvation" was ignored or overlooked in the emphasis laid on the performance of practical duties. What would now be called rationalism, ei- ther expressed or implied, seemed to threat- en the old orthodox faith with destruction by the subtle process of sapping and under- mining without directly assailing it. The sturdy Calvinists were at first puzzled what to do, as the new heresiarchs did not so much offend by what they preached as by what they omitted to preach ; but they at last forced those who were Unitarians in opinion to become Unitarians in profession, and thus what was intended as a peaceful evolution of religious faith was compelled to assume the character of a revolutionary protest against the generally received dog- mas of the Christian churches. The two men prominent in this insurrection against ancestral orthodoxy were William Ellery Channing and Andrews Norton. Channiug was a pious humanitarian ; Norton was an accomplished Biblical scholar. Channing assailed Calvinism because, in his opinion, it falsified all right notions of God; Nor- ton, because it falsified the true interpreta- tion of the Word of God. Channing's soul was filled with the idea of the dignity of human nature, which, he thought, Calvin- ism degraded ; Norton's mind resented what he considered the illogical combination of Scripture texts to sustain an intolerable theological theory. Channing delighted to portray the felicities of a heavenly frame of mind ; Norton delighted to exhibit the felic- ities of accurate exegesis. Both were mas- ters of style ; but Channing used his rheto- ric to prove that the doctrines of Calvinism were abhorrent to the God-given moral na- ture of man; Norton employed his somewhat dry and bleak but singularly lucid powers of statement, exposition, and logic to show that his opponents were deficient in scholarship and sophistical in argumentation. Chan- ning's literary reputation, which overleaped all the boundaries of his sect, was primarily due to his essay on Milton ; but Norton could not endure the theological system on which " Paradise Lost" was based, and there- fore laughed at the poem. Norton had lit- tle of that imaginative sympathy with the mass of mankind for which Channing was pre-eminently distinguished. Any body who has mingled much with Unitarian di- vines must have heard their esoteric pleas- antry as to what these two redoubtable champions of the Unitarian faith would say when they were transferred from earth to heaven. Channing, as he looks upon the bright rows of the celestial society, raptur- ously declares, "This gives me a new idea of the dignity of human nature ;" Norton, with a certain patrician exclusiveness born of scholarly tastes, folds his hands, and qui- etly says to St. Peter or St. Paul, " Rather a miscellaneous assemblage." But on earth they worked together, each after his gifts, to draw out all the resources of sentiment, scholarship, and reasoning possessed by such able opponents as they found in Stuart, Woods, and Park. There can be no doubt that Calvinism, in its modified Hopkinsian form, gained increased power by the whole- some shaking which Unitarianism gave it; for this shaking kindled the zeal, sharpened the intellects, stimulated the mental activ- ity of every professor of the evangelical faith. Neither Channing nor Norton, in as- sailing the statements in which the Calvin- istic creed was mechanically expressed, ex- hibited an interior view of the creed as it vitally existed in the souls of Calvinists. Channing, however, was still the legitimate spiritual successor of Jonathan Edwards in affirming, with new emphasis, the funda- mental doctrine of Christianity, that God is in direct communication with the souls of His creatures. The difference is that Ed- wards holds the doors of communication so nearly closed that only the elect can pass in ; Channing throws them wide open, and in- vites every body to be illumined in thought and vitalized in will by the ever-fresh out- pourings of celestial light and warmth. But Channing wrote on human nature as though 368 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. the world was tenanted by actual or possible Channings, who possessed bis exceptional delicacy of spiritual perception, and bis ex- ceptional exemption from tbe temptations of practical life. He was, as far as a con- stant contemplation of tbe Divine perfec- tious was concerned, a meditative saint, and bad be belonged to tbe Roman Catbolic Church, he probably would, on the ground of his spiritual gifts, have been eventually canonized. Still, the seductive subjectivity of bis holy outlook on nature and human life tended to make the individual conscious- ness of what was just and good the measure of Divine justice and goodness ; and in some mediocre minds, which his religious genius magnetized, this tendency brought forth distressing specimens of spiritual sentimen- tality and pious pertness. The most curious result, however, of Channing's teachings was the swift way in which his disciples overleaped the limitations set by their mas- ter. In the course of a single generation some of the most vigorous minds among the Unitarians, practicing the freedom of thought which he inculcated as a duty, in- dulged in theological audacities of which he never dreamed. He was the intellectual father of Theodore Parker, and the intel- lectual grandfather of Octavius B. Froth- ingham. Parker and Frothingham, both humanitarians, but students also of the ad- vanced school of critical theologians, soon made Channing's heresies tame when com- pared with the heresies they promulgated. The Free Religionists are the legitimate progeny of Channing. But, in the interim, tbe theologian and preacher who came nearest to Channing in tbe geniality and largeness of bis nature, and the persuasiveness with which he en- forced what may be called the conservative tenets of Unitarianism, was Orville Dewey, a man whose mind was fertile, whose religious experience was deep, and who brought from the Calvinism in which he had been trained an interior knowledge of the system which he early rejected. He had a profound sense not only of the dignity of human nature, but of tbe dignity of human life. In idealizing human life he must still be considered as giving some fresh and new interpretations of it, and bis discourses form, like Chan- ning's, an addition to American literature, as well as a contribution to the theology of Unitarianism. He defended men from the assaults of Calvinists, as Channing had de- fended Man. Carlyle speaks somewhere of " this dog-hole of a world ;" Dewey consid- ered it, with all its errors and horrors, as a good world on the whole, and as worthy of the Divine beneficence. The work which may be said to have bridged over the space which separated Channing from Theodore Parker was Aca- demical Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities, by Dr. John G. Palfrey, Professor of Biblical Literature in the University of Cambridge, published in 1838, but which had doubtless influenced the students who bad listened to them many years before their publication. This book is noticeable for the scholarly method by which most of the miracles recorded in the Old Testament are explained on natural principles, and the calm, almost prim and polite, exclusion of miracle from tbe Hebrew Scriptures. Ac- cepting miracle when he considered it nec- essary, Dr. Palfrey broke tbe spell and charm, at least among Unitarian students of theol- ogy, which separated the Hebrew Bible from other great works which expressed the re- ligious mind of the human race ; and his Academical Lectures remain as a palpable landmark in the progress of American ra- tionalism. But probably the greatest literary result of the Unitarian revolt was the appearance in our literature of such a phenomenon as Ralph Waldo Emerson. He came from a race of clergymen ; doubtless much of his elevation of character and austere sense of the grandeur of the moral sentiment is his by inheritance ; but after entering the min- istry he soon found that even Unitarianism was a limitation of his intellectual inde- pendence to which he could not submit ; and, in the homely New England phrase, " he set up on his account," responsible for nobody, and not responsible to any body. His radicalism penetrated to the very root of dissent, for it was founded on the idea that in all organizations, social, political, and religious, there must be an element which checks the free exercise of individual thought ; and the free exercise of his indi- vidual thinking he determined should be controlled by nothing instituted and au- RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 369 thoritative on the planet. Descartes him- self did not begin his philosophizing with a more complete self-emancipation from all the opinions generally accepted by man- kind. But Descartes was a reasoner ; Em- erson is a seer and a poet ; and he was the last man to attempt to overthrow accredit- ed systems in order to substitute for them a dogmatic system of his own. In his view of the duty of "man thinking," this course would have been to violate his fundamental principle, which was that nobody "could lay copyright on the world ;" that no theo- ry could include nature ; that the greatest thinker and discoverer could only add a few items of information to what the hu- man mind had previously won from " the vast and formless infinite ;" and that the true work of a scholar was not to inclose the field of matter and mind by a system which encircled it, but to extend our knowl- edge in straight lines, leading from the van- ishing points of positive knowledge into the illimitable unknown spaces beyond. Emer- son's peculiar sphere was psychology. By a certain felicity of his nature he was a non-combatant ; indifferent to logic, he sup- pressed all the processes of his thinking, and announced its results in affirmations ; and none of the asperities which commonly afflict the apostles of dissent ever ruffled the serene spirit of this universal dissenter. He could never be seduced into controversy. He was assailed both as an atheist and as a pantheist ; as a writer so obscure that no- body could understand what he meant, and also as a mere verbal trickster, whose only talent consisted in vivifying commonplaces, or in converting, by inversion, stale truisms into brilliant paradoxes ; and all these va- rying charges had only the effect of lighting up his face with that queer, quizzical, in- scrutable smile, that amused surprise at the misconceptions of the people who attacked him, which is noticeable in all portraits and photographs of his somewhat enigmatical countenance. His method was very simple and very hard. It consisted in growing up to a level with the spiritual objects he per- ceived, and his elevation of thought was thus the sign and accompaniment of a cor- responding elevation of character. In his case, as in the case of Channing, there was an unconscious return to Jonathan Ed- 24 wards, and to all the great divines whose "souls had sight" of eternal verities. What the orthodox saints called the Holy Ghost, he, without endowing it with personality, called the Over Soul. He believed with them that in God we live and move and have our being ; that only by communica- ting with this Being can Ave have any vital individuality ; and that the record of a com- munication with Him or It was the most valuable of all contributions to literature, whether theological or human. The no- blest passages in his writings are those in which he celebrates this august and gra- cious communion of the Spirit of God with the soul of man ; and they are the most se- rious, solemn, and uplifting passages which can perhaps be found in our literature. Here was a man who had earned the right to utter these noble truths by patient medi- tation and clear insight. Carlyle exclaim- ed, in a preface to an English edition of one of Emerson's later volumes : " Here comes our brave Emerson, with news from the em- pyrean !" That phrase exactly hits Emer- son as a transcendental thinker. His in-r sights were, in some sense, revelations ; he could " gossip on the eternal politics ;" and just at the time when science, relieved from the pressure of theology, announced mate- rialistic hypotheses with more than the con- fidence with which the bigots of theological creeds had heretofore announced their dog- mas, this serene American thinker had won his way into all the centres of European intelligence, and delivered his quiet protest against every hypothesis which put in peril the spiritual interests of humanity. It is curious to witness the process by which this heresiarch has ended in giving his evi- dence, or rather his experience, that God is not the Unknowable of Herbert Spencer, but that, however infinitely distant He may be from the human understanding, He is still intimately near to the human soul. And Emerson knows by experience what the word soul really means ! " Were she a body, how could she remain Within the body, which is less than she? Or how could she the world's great shape contain, And in our narrow breasts contained be ? "All bodies are confined within some place, But she all place within herself confines; All bodies have their measure and their space, But who can draw the soul's dimensive lines t" 370 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. In an unpublished speech at a celebra- tion of Shakspeare's birthday, he spoke of Shakspeare as proving to us that " the soul of man is deeper, wider, higher than the spaces of astronomy ;" and in another con- nection he says that " a man of thought must feel that thought is the parent of the universe," that " the world is saturated with deity and with law." It is this depth of spiritual experience and subtilty of spiritual insight which dis- tinguish Emerson from all other Ameri- can authors, and make hini an elementary power as well as an elementary thinker. The singular attractiveness, however, of his writings comes from his iutense perception of Beauty, both in its abstract quality as the "awful loveliness" which such poets as Shelley celebrated, and in the more con- crete expression by which it fascinates or- dinary minds. His imaginative faculty, both in the conception and creation of beauty, is uncorrupted by any morbid sen- timent. His vision reaches to the very sources of beauty — the beauty that cheers. The great majority even of eminent poets are " saddest when they sing." They con- trast life with the beautiful possibilities of life which their imaginations suggest, and though their discontent with the actual may inspire by the energy of its utterance, it tends also to depress by emphasizing the impossibility of realizing the ideals it de- picts. But the perception of beauty in na- ture or in human nature, whether it be the beauty of a flower or of a soul, makes Em- erson joyous and glad; he exults in cele- brating it, and he communicates to his readers his own ecstatic mood. He has been a diligent student of many literatures and many religions ; but all his quotations from them show that he rejects every thing in his manifold readings which does not tend to cheer, invigorate, and elevate, which is not nutritious food for the healthy human soul. If he is morbid in any thing, it is in his comical hatred of all forms of physical, mental, and moral disease. He agrees with Dr. Johnson in declaring that " every man is a rascal as soon as he is sick." "I once asked," he says, " a clergyman in a retired town who were his companions — what men of ability he saw. He replied that he spent his time with the sick and the dying. I said he seemed to me to need quite other company, and all the more that he had this ; for if people were sick and dying to any pur- pose, we should leave all and go to them, but, as far as I had observed, they were as frivolous as the rest, and sometimes much more frivolous." Indeed, Emerson, glorying in his own grand physical and moral health, and fundamentally brave, is impatient of all the weaknesses of humanity, especially those of men of genius. He never could be made to recognize the genius of Shelley, ex- cept in a few poems, because he was dis- gusted with the wail that persistently runs through Shelley's wonderfully imaginative poetry. In his taste, as in his own practice as a writer, he is a stout believer in the de- sirableness and efficacy of mental tonics, and a severe critic of the literature of dis- content and desperation. He looks curious- ly on while a poet rages against destiny and his own miseries, and puts the ironical query, " Why so hot, my little man ?" His ideal of manhood was originally derived from the consciousness of his own some- what haughty individuality, and it has been fed by his study of the poetic and histor- ic records of persons who have dared to do heroic acts and dared to utter heroic thoughts. Beauty is never absent from his celebration of these, but it is a beauty that never enfeebles, but always braces and cheers. Take the six or eight volumes in which Emerson's genius and character are embod- ied — that is, in which he has converted truth into life, and life into more truth — and you are dazzled on every page by his superabun- dance of compactly expressed reflection and his marvelous command of all the resources of imaginative illustration. Every para- graph is literally " rammed with life." A fortnight's meditation is sometimes con- densed in a sentence of a couple of lines. Almost every word bears the mark of delib- erate thought in its selection. The most evanescent and elusive spiritual phenome- na, which occasionally flit before the steady gaze of the inner eye of the mind, are fixed in expressions which have the solidity of marble. The collection of these separate insights into nature and human life he iron- ically calls an essay ; and much criticism has been wasted in showing that the apho- THEODORE PARKER. 371 ristic and axiomatic sentences are often con- nected by mere juxtaposition on the page, and not by logical relation with each other, and that at the end we have no perception of a series of thoughts leading up to a clear idea of the general theme. This criticism is just ; but in reading Emerson we have not to do with such economists of thought as Addisou, Johnson, and Goldsmith — with the writers of the Spectator, the Rambler, and the Citizen of the World. Emerson's so-called essay sparkles with sentences which might be made the texts for numerous ordinary essays ; and his general title, it may be add- ed, is apt to be misleading. He is fragment- ary in composition because he is a fanatic for compactness ; and every paragraph, some- times every sentence, is a record of an in- sight. Heuce comes the impression that his sentences are huddled together rather than artistically disposed. Still, with all this lack of logical order, he has the immense advantage of suggesting something new to the diligent reader after he has read him for the fiftieth time. It is also to be said of Emerson that he is one of the wittiest and most practical as well as one of the profoundest of American writers, that his wit, exercised on the ordi- nary aifairs of life, is the very embodiment of brilliant good sense, that he sometimes rivals Franklin in humorous insight, and that both his wit and humor obey that law of beauty which governs every other exer- cise of his peculiar mind. He has many de- fects and eccentricities exasperating to the critic who demands symmetry in the men- tal constitution of the author whose pecul- iar merits he is eager to acknowledge. He occasionally indulges, too, in some strange freaks of intellectual and moral caprice which his own mature judgment should con- demn — -the same pen by which they were recorded being used to blot them out of existence. They are audacities, but how unlike his grand audacities ! In short, they are somewhat small audacities, unworthy of him and of the subjects with which he deals — escapades of epigram on topics which should have exacted the austerest exercise of his exceptional faculty of spiritual in- sight. Nothing, however, which can be said against him touches his essential quality of manliness, or lowers him from that rank of thinkers in whom the seer and the poet combine to give the deepest results of med- itation in the most exquisite forms of vital beauty. And then how superb and anima- ting is his lofty intellectual courage ! " The soul," he says, " is in her native realm, and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn. They are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes through univers- al love to universal power." Emerson, though in some respects con- nected with the Unitarian movement as having been a minister of the denomina- tion, soon cut himself free from it, and was as independent of that form of Christian faith as he was of other forms. He drew from all quarters, and whatever fed his re- ligious sense of mystery, of might, of beauty, and of Deity was ever welcome to his soul. As he was outside of all religious organiza- tions, and never condescended to enter into any argument with his opponents, he was soon allowed silently to drop out of theo- logical controversy. But a fiercer and more combative spirit now appeared to trouble the Unitarian clergymen — a man who con- sidered himself a Unitarian minister, who had for Calvinism a stronger repulsion than Channing or Norton ever felt, and who at- tempted to drag on his denomination to con- clusions at which most of its members stood aghast. This man was Theodore Parker, a born controversialist, who had the challenging chip always on his shoulder, which he in- vited both his Unitarian and his orthodox brethren to knock off. There never was a man who more gloried in a fight. If any theologians desired to get into a controversy with him as to the validity of their opposing beliefs, he was eager to give them as much of it as they desired. The persecution he most keenly felt was the persecution of in- attention and silence. He was the Luther of radical Unitarianism. When the Unita- rian societies refused fellowship with his society, he organized a church of his own, and made it one of the most powerful in New England. There was nothing but dis- ease which could check and nothing but death which could close his controversial activity. He became the champion of rad- 372 A CENTUKY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. ical as against conservative Unitarianism, and the persistent adversary even of the most moderate Calvinism. Besides his work in these fields of intellectual effort, he threw himself literally head - foremost — and his head was large and well stored — into every unpopular reform which he could aid by his will, his reason, his learning, and his mor- al power. He was among the leaders in the attempt to apply the rigid maxims of Christianity to practical life ; and many orthodox clergymen, who combined with him in his assaults on intemperance, slav- ery, and other hideous evils of our civiliza- tion, almost condoned his theological here- sies in their admiration of his fearlessness in practical reforms. He was an enormous reader and diligent student, as well as a resolute man of affairs. He also had great depth and fervency of piety. His favorite hymn was "Nearer, my God, to Thee." While assailing what the great body of New England people believed to be the foundations of religion, he startled vigorous orthodox reasoners by his confident teach- ing that every individual soul had a con- sciousness of its immortality independent of revelation, and superior to the results of all the modern physical researches which seemed to place it in doubt. Indeed, his own incessant activity was an argument for the soul's immortality. In spite of all the outside calls on his energies, he found time to attend strictly to his ministerial duties, to make himself one of the most accom- plished theological and general scholars in New England, and to write and translate books which required deep study and pa- tient thought. The physical frame, stout as it was, at last broke down — his mind still busy in meditating new works which were never to be written. Probably no other clergyman of his time, not even Mr. Beech- er, drew his society so closely to himself, and became the object of so much warm personal attachment and passionate devo- tion. Grim as he appeared when, arrayed iu his theological armor, he went forth to battle, he was, in private intercourse, the gentlest, most genial, and most affectionate of men. And it is to be added that few or- thodox clergymen had a more intense re- ligious faith in the saving power of their doctrines than Theodore Parker had in the regenerating efficacy of his rationalistic con- victions. When Luther was dying, Dr. Jo- nas said to him, " Reverend father, do you die in implicit reliance on the faith you have taught ?" And from those lips, just closing in death, came the steady answering "Yes." Theodore Parker's answer to such a ques- tion, put to him on his death-bed, would have been the same. The theological protest against Unitari- anism was made by some of the most pow- erful minds and learned scholars in the country — by Stuart, Park, Edwards, Barnes, Robinson, Lyman Beecher, the whole family of the Alexanders, of which Addison Alex- ander was the greatest, not to mention fifty others. The thought of these men still con- trols the theological opinion of the country, and their works are much more extensively circulated, and exert a greater practical in- fluence, than the writings of such men as Channing, Norton, Dewey, Emerson, and Parker; but still they have not affected in a like degree the literature which springs from the heart, the imagination, and the spiritual sentiment. Unitariauism, through its lofty views of the dignity of human na- ture, naturally allied itself with the senti- ment of philanthropy. While it has not been more practically conspicuous than oth- er denominations for the love of man, as expressed in works to ameliorate his con- dition, it has succeeded better in domesti- cating philanthropy in literature, especial- ly in poetry. Witness Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, and Mrs. Howe. Longfellow is probably the most popular poet of the country. The breadth of his sympathy, the variety of his acquisitions, the plasticity of his imagination, the sono- rousness and weight of his verse, the vivid- ness of his imagery, the equality, the beau- ty, the beneficence of his disposition, make him universally attractive and universally intelligible. Each of his minor poems is pervaded by one thought, and has that ar- tistic unity which comes from the economic use of rich material. There is a solidity in them in which many occasional poems are wanting, though they may exhibit more fer- tility of thought and imagery ; this fertility is less directed to produce one impressive effect. Take the "Hymn to the Night," "A Psalm of Life," "Footsteps of Angels," LONGFELLOW AND WHITTIEE. 373 "The Skeleton in Armor," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "The Village Blacksmith," "Excelsior," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "Sea- Weed," "Resignation," and other of his minor poeins have found a lodgment in the memory of every body, and it will be found that their charm consists in their uni- ty as well as in their beauty, that they are as much poems, complete in themselves, as " Evangeline" or " Hiawatha." Iu " Maid- enhood" and " Endymion," especially in the latter, the poet is revealed in all the exqui- siteness, the delicacy, the refinement, of his imaginative faculty ; but they are less pop- ular than the poeins previously mentioned, because they embody more subtile moods of the poetic mind. Longfellow's power of picturing to the eye and the soul a scene, a place, an event, a person, is almost unrivaled. His command of many metres, each adapted to his special subject, shows also how artist- ically he uses souud to re-enforce vision, and satisfy the ear while pleasing the eye. "When descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm-wind of the equinox, Landward in his wrath he scourges The toiling surges, Laden with sea- weed from the rocks." The ear least skilled to detect the harmo- nies of verse feels the obvious effect of lines like these. In his long poems, such as " Evangeline," " The Golden Legend," " Hi- awatha," "The Courtship of Miles Stan- dish," " The New England Tragedies," Loug- fellow never repeats himself. He occupies a new domain of poetry with each succes- sive poem, and always gives the public the delightful shock of a new surprise. In his prose works, Outre-Mer, Hyperion, and Eava- nagh, he is the same man as in his verse — ever sweet, tender, thoughtful, weighty, vig- orous, imaginative, and humane. His great translation of Dante is not the least of his claims to the gratitude of his countrymen, for it is a new illustration of his life-long devotion — rare in an American — to the serv- ice of literature, considered as one of the highest exercises of patriotism. Longfellow has enjoyed every advantage that culture can give, and his knowledge of many nations and many languages un- doubtedly has given breadth to his mind, and opened to him ever new sources of po- etic interest ; but John Greenleaf Whittier, who contests with him the palm of popu- larity as a poet, was one of those God-made men who are in a sense self-made poets. A musing farmer's boy, working in the fields, and ignorant of books, he early felt the po- etic instinct moving in his soul, but thought his surroundings were essentially prosaic, and could never be sung. At last one after- noon, while he was gathering in the hay, a peddler dropped a copy of Burns into his hands. Instantly his eyes were unsealed. There in the neighboring field was "High- land Mary;" "The Cotter's Saturday Night" occurred in his own father's pious New En- gland home ; and the birds which caroled over his head, the flowers which grew under his feet, were as poetic as those to which the Scottish plowman had given perennial interest. Burns taught him to detect the beautiful iu the common, but Burns could not corrupt the singularly pure soul of the lad by his enticing suggestions of idealized physical enjoyment and unregulated pas- sion. The boy grew into a man, cultivating assiduously his gift of song, though shy of showing it. The antislavery storm swept over the land, awakening consciences as well as stimulating intellects. Whittier had always lived in a region of moral ideas, and this antislavery inspiration inflamed his moral ideas into moral passion and mor- al wrath. If Garrison may be considered the prophet of antislavery, and Phillips its orator, and Mrs. Stowe its novelist, and Sum- ner its statesman, there can be no doubt that Whittier was its poet. Quaker as he was, his martial lyrics had something of the energy of a primitive bard urging on hosts to battle. Every word was a blow, as ut- tered by this newly enrolled soldier of the Lord. "The silent, shy, peace-loving man" became a " fiery partisan," and held his in- trepid way "against the public frown, The ban of church and state, the fierce mob's hound- ing down." It is impossible even now to read his kin- dling lyrics of that shameful period iu our history without feeling the blood boil in the veins, and experiencing the hot impulse to instant battle. They had a vast effect in rousing, condensiug, and elevating the public sentiment against slavery. The po- 374 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. etry was as genuine as the wrath was ter- rific, and many a political time-server, who was proof against Garrison's hottest de- nunciations and Phillips's most stinging invectives, quailed hefore Whittier's smit- ing rhymes. Yet he tells us he was essen- tially a poetic dreamer, unfit " to ride the winged hippogriff Reform." "For while he wrought with strenuous will The work his hands had found to do, He heard the fitful music still Of winds that out of dream-land blew. "The common air was thick with dreams — He told them to the toiling crowd; Such music as the woods and streams Sang in his ear he sang aloud. "In still, shut bays, on. windy capes, He heard the call of beckoning shapes, And, as the gray old shadows prompted him, To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their le- gends grim." In these lines he refers to two kinds of po- etry in which he has obtained almost equal emiueiice — his intensely imaginative and meditative poems, and his ringing, legend- ary ballads, the material of the latter hav- ing been gathered, in his wanderings, from tbe lips of sailors, farmers, and that class of aged women who connect each event they relate with the superstitions originally ingrafted upon it. It is needless to add that during the war of the rebellion, and the political contests accompanying recon- struction, the voice of Whittier rang through the land to cheer, to animate, to uplift, and also to warn and deuounce. All sorts of cowardice, physical, mental, political, mor- al, felt mean and abashed when detected and smitten by one of his heroic lyrics. In all his poetry, whether descriptive, medi- tative, narrative, or impassioned, the power, in the last analysis, is found to reside in the soul of the poet rather than in his excep- tional gifts of sensibility, understanding, and imaginative vision and faculty. This soul touched what remaius of soul existed in the most selfish and malignant natures ; for it was a soul that drew its force from the Soul of souls, and ever reverently listened to the slightest whisper of command, of monition, of consolation, of cheer, coming to it from the Divine Being it recognized as Master, Inspirer, and Friend. Whittier, indeed, though creedless, is one of the most relig- ious of our poets. In these days of skepti- cism as to the possibility of the communi- cation of the Divine Mind with the human, it is consolatory to read his poem on "The Eternal Goodness" — especially this stanza : "I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air: I only know I can not drift Beyond His love and care." It is curious that Whittier, whose general style is so clear that every body can under- stand it, should, in this beautiful declara- tion of his abiding faith — a faith full of the " magnanimous might of meekness" — have used a technical epithet, drawn from the science of botany, liko " fronded." Oliver Wendell Holmes — wit, satirist, hu- morist, novelist, scholar, scientist — is, above every thing, a poet, for the qualities of the poet pervade all the operations of his vari- ously gifted mind. His sense of the ludi- crous is not keener than his sense of the beautiful; his wit and humor are but the sportive exercise of a fancy and imagina- tion which he has abundantly exercised on serious topics; and the extensive learning and acute logic of the man of science are none the less solid in substance because in exjiression they are accompanied by a throng of images and illustrations which endow erudition with life, and give a charm to the most closely linked chain of reasoning. The first thing which strikes a reader of Holmes is the vigor and elasticity of his nature. He is incapable of weakness. He is fresh and manly even when he securely treads the scarcely marked line which separates senti- ment from sentimentality. This prevailing vigor proceeds from a strength of individ- uality which is often pushed to dogmatic self-assertion. It is felt as much in his airy, fleering mockeries of folly and preten- sion, as in his almost Juvenalian invectives against baseness aud fraud — in the pleasant way in which he stretches a coxcomb on the rack of wit, as in the energy with which he grapples an opponent in the tussle of ar- gumentation. He never seems to imagine that he can be inferior to the thinker whose position he assails, any more than to the noodle whose nonsense he jeers at. In ar- gument he is sometimes the victor, in vir- tue of scornfully excluding what another reasoner would include, and thus seems to make his own intellect the measure of the HOLMES AND LOWELL. 375 ■whole subject in discussion. When in his Autocrat, or his Professor, or his Poet, at the Breakfast Table, he touches theological themes, he is peculiarly exasperating to the- ological opponents, not only for the effect- iveness of his direct hits, but for the easy way in which he gayly overlooks considera- tions which their whole culture has induced them to deem of vital moment. The truth is that Holmes's dogmatism comes rather from the vividness and rapidity of his per- ceptions than from the arrogance of his per- sonality. " This," he seems to say, " is not my opinion ; it is a demonstrated law which you willfully ignore while pretending to be scholars." The indomitable courage of the man carries him through all the exciting controversies he scornfully invites ; and it has been found that to attack him by ar- gument pointed with wit is as futile as at- tacking a porcupine armed on all sides with his quills. Holmes, for the last forty years, has been expressing this inexhausti- ble vitality of nature in various ways, and to-day he appears as vigorous as he was in his prime, and more vigorous than he was in his youth. Indeed, he has rather grown younger in sentiment as he has grown older in years. His early poenis sparkled with thought and abounded in energy ; but still they can not be compared in wit, in humor, in depth of sentiment, in beauty of diction, in thoughtfulness, in lyrical force, with the poems of the past twenty-five years of his life. It is needless to give even the titles of the many pieces which are fixed in the memory of all cultivated readers among his countrymen. His novels, Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel, rank high among original American contributions to the do- main of romance. In prose, as in verse, his fecundity and vigor of thought have found adequate expression in a corresponding point and compactness of style. James Eussell Lowell is now in the prime of his genius and at the height of his repu- tation. His earlier poems, pervaded by the transcendental tone of thought current in New England at the time they were written, were full of promise, but gave little evidence of the wide variety of power he has since displayed. The spirituality of his thinking has deepened with advancing years. Noth- ing in his first volume, A Tear's Life, sug- gests the depth of moral beauty he afterward embodied in "The Vision of Sir Launfal," the throng of subtle thoughts and images which almost confuse us by their multiplic- ity in "The Cathedral," and the grandeur of " The Commemoration Ode." Still less could it have been supposed that the youth- ful poetical enthusiast, singing of sirens and such questionable folks, should have sup- pressed that side of his richly endowed na- ture, by which he has since obtained a prom- inent rank among the greatest wits, satirists, and humorists of the century. The Biglow Papers are unique in our literature. Low- ell adds to his other merits that of being an accomplished philologist ; but granting his scholarship as an investigator of the pop- ular idioms of foreign speech, he must be principally esteemed for his knowledge of the Yankee dialect. Hosea Biglow is al- most the only writer who uses the dialect properly, and most other pretenders to a knowledge of it must be considered carica- turists as compared with him; for Biglow, like Burns, makes the dialect he employs flexible to every mood of thought and pas- sion, from good sense as solid as granite to the most bewitching descriptions of nature and the loftiest affirmations of conscience. Lowell has been doubly doctored by the En- glish universities of Oxford and Cambridge, but it is understood that this exceptional distinction was not so much due to the range of his scholarship and the beauty and power of his English prose and verse as to the new vein of sense, sentiment, and imagination he opened in The Bigloiv Papers — some of which, by-the-way, are the sharpest satires on England ever written, especially in com- menting on her conduct to this country dur- ing the storm and stress of the Southern re- bellion. As a prose writer, Lowell is quite as eminent as he is as a poet. His essays, where nature is his theme, are brimful of de- licious descriptions, and his critical papers on Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, Drydeu, Pope, and Kousseau, not to mention others, are masterpieces of their kind. His defect, both as poet and prose writer, comes from the too lavish use of his seemingly inex- haustible powers of wit, fancy, and imagina- tion. He is apt to sacrifice unity of general effect by overloading his paragraphs with suggestive meaning. The mind is some- 376 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. times dazzled away from the general sub- ject by the wit and beauty of the separate illustrations and images which are intended to enforce it. Aline or a sentence contains something so charming in itself that we forget the end in the means. That wise reserve of expression to which Longfellow owes so much of his reputation, that subor- dination of miuor thoughts to the leading thought of the poem or essay, are frequent- ly disregarded by Lowell. His mind is too rich to submit even to artistic checks on its fertility. Julia Ward Howe, one of the most ac- complished women in the United States, a scholar, a reasoner, an excellent prose writer, a poet with the power to uplift as well as to please, is also generally known as a champion of the right of women to vote. In the facts, arguments, and appeals which she brings to bear on this debated question, and the felicity of the occasional sarcastic strokes with which she smites an opponent who has offended her reason as well as vexed her patience, we find a woman fully equipped to do battle for the cause of wom- an; and certainly that man must be excep- tionally endowed with brains who can af- ford to indulge in the luxury of despising her intellect. Loftiness of sentiment and force of mind are her prevailing character- istics ; but she also possesses a certain de- mure humor which is all the more effective from its seeming innocence of humorous in- tent. It was she who said, when she saw a sign on which in large letters was printed, "Boston Charitable Eye and Ear Infirm- ary," that she did not know till then that there were any charitable eyes and ears in Boston. As a poet she is comparatively lit- tle appreciated as regards the depth and subtilty of thought and imagination which are discernible to the critical eye in her vol- ume of Later Lyrics. That volume, to be sure, includes the poems which have made her reputation ; but they are known to the public through newspapers rather than from the possession of the volume, of which they form but a small portion. The thrill- ing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is an artistic variation on the John Brown soug. The original is incomparable of its kind. No poet could have written it. Such rude- ness aud wildness are beyond the concep- tion even of Walt Whitman and the author of "Festus." One would say that it was written by the common soldiers who sang it as they advanced to battle ; that it was an elemental tune, suited to the rugged na- tures that shouted its refrain as they reso- lutely faced death, with the confident as- surance of immortality. The words are ver- bal equivalents of rifle-bullets and cannon- balls ; the tune is a noise, like the shriek of the shell as it ascends to the exact point whence it can most surely descend to blast and kill. Mrs. Howe's hymn has not this elemental character, but it is still wonder- fully animating and invigorating ; and the constant use of Scripture phrases shows the high level of thought and sentiment to which her soul had mounted, and from which she poured forth her exulting strains. " Our Country," " The Flag," " Our Orders," are also thoughtful or impassioned outbreaks of the same spiritual feeliug which gives vi- tality to the " Battle Hymn." The authors thus grouped together, differ- ing so widely as they do in the individuality impressed on their genius, are still connect- ed by that peculiar impulse given to Amer- ican literature by Channing's revolt against the Calvinistic view of human nature, and by the emphasis they all lay on the ethical sentiment, not merely in its practical appli- cation to the concerns of actual life, but as highly idealized in its application to that life which is called divine. In all the seri- ous efforts of these men and women of gen- ius human nature is glorified through its receptivity of influences which transcend the sphere of ordinary moral maxims, and touch whatever is aspiring, heroic, and holy in the human soul ; and though theology at first interposed objections, it has, on the whole, accepted the contributions made to its spiritual wealth by authors it was still compelled to consider as somewhat unau- thorized explorers of its special domain. There still remained a class of writers whom it could accept as men of letters, and whom it could not assail as impertinent intruders into its province. Charles Sprague was the earliest and most eminent of these. The new poetical metaphysics and theology had not touched the mind of this upholder of the school of Dryden, of Pope, of Goldsmith, of Gray, of Cowper, of Burns. His poem of SPRAGUE AND WILL 1 L*$. 377 " Curiosity," delivered in 1829 before the Phi Beta Society of Harvard College, is so ex- cellent in description, in the various pictures it gives of human life, in the pungency of its wit and satire, that it deserves a place among the best productions of the school of Pope and Goldsmith. His odes are more open to criticism, though they contain many thoughtful, impassioned, and resounding lines. His " Shakspeare" ode is the best of these ; and he concludes it with a very felic- itous image, contrasting the success of the great poet of England in doing that which her statesmen and soldiers could not per- form: "Our Roman-hearted fathers broke Thy parent empire's galling yoke ; But thou, harmonious monarch of the mind, Around their sons a gentler chain shall bind. Still o'er our land shail Albion's sceptre wave, And what her mighty lion lost her mightier swan shall save." A more homely illustration of the fact that Shakspeare biuds the English race togeth- er whithersoever it wanders, is afforded by the remark of a sturdy New England farmer when he heard the rumor that England in- tended to make the Mason and Slidell affair an occasion for war with the United States, and thus insure success to the Confederates. The farmer paused, reflected, sought out in his mind something which would indicate his complete severance not only from the people of England, but from the English mind, and at last condensed all his wrath in this intense remark, " Well, if that report is true, all I can say is that Lord Lyons is welcome to my copy of Shakspeare." Perhaps Sprague's most original poems are those in which he consecrated his domestic affections. Wordsworth himself would have hailed these with delight. Any body who can read with unwet eyes "I See Still," "The Family Meeting," " The Brothers," and "Lines on the Death of M. S. C." is a critic who has as little perception of the language of natural emotion as of the reserves and refinements of poetic art. Sprague had the good fortune, as the cashier of a leading Boston bank, to be in- dependent of his poetic gifts, considered as means of subsistence. But Nathaniel Par- ker Willis was, perhaps, the first of our poets to prove that literature could be relied upon as a good business. He certainly enjoyed all those advantages which accompany com- petence, and the only bank he could draw upon was his brain. He thoroughly under- stood the art of producing what people de- sired to read, and for which publishers were willing to pay. His early Scripture sketch- es, written when he was a student of Yale, gave him the reputation of a promising gen- ius, and though the genius did not after- ward take the direction to which its first successes pointed, it gained in strength and breadth with the writer's advancing years. In his best poems he displayed energy both of thought and imagination ; but his pre- dominant characteristics were keenness of observation, fertility of fancy, quickness of wit, shrewdness of understanding, a fine perception of beauty, a remarkable felicity in the choice of words, and a subtle sense of harmony in their arrangement, whether his purpose was to produce melodious verse or musical prose. But he doubtless squan- dered his powers in the attempt to turn them into commodities. To this he was driven by his necessities, and he always frankly acknowledged that he could have done better with his brain had he possessed an income corresponding to that of other eminent American men of letters, who could select their topics without regard to the immediate market value of what they wrote. He became the favorite poet, satirist, and " organ" of the fashionable world. He wrote editorials, letters, essays, novels, which were full of evidences of his rare talent without doing justice to it. He idealized triviali- ties ; he gave a kind of reality to the un- real; and week after week he lifted into importance the unsubstautial matters which for the time occupied the attention of "good society." Some of his phrases, such as " the upper ten thousand," "Fifth-Ave-nudity," are still remembered. The paper which Willis edited, the Home Journal, exerted a great deal of influence. However slight might be the subjects, there cau be no ques- tion that the editor worked hard in bring- ing the resources of his knowledge, observa- tion, wit, and fancy to place them in their most attractive lights. The trouble was not in the vigor of the faculties, but in the thinness of much of the matter. As an ed- itor, however, Willis had an opportunity to display his grand generosity of heart, and 378 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. the peculiar power lie bad of detecting the slightest trace of genius in writers who were the objects of his appreciative eulogy. In the whole history of American literature there is no other example of a prominent man of letters who showed, like Willis, such a passionate desire to make his natural in- fluence effective in dragging into promi- nence writers who either had no reputation at all, or whose reputation was notoriously less than his. Authors who have obtained reputation are commonly so much occupied in keeping or adding to it that they are not wont to take an active part in celebrating the merits of aspirants for renown. There must be scores of persons still living who remember with love and gratitude Willis's generous recognition of their first immature efforts, and all the more because at the time Willis's cordial praise, unlike that of an or- dinary notice in a newspaper or magazine, arrested public attention to their merits. As a poet, Willis still survives as the author of some of the most beautiful and graceful poems in our literature ; as a prose writer, he deserves a higher position than he now occupies, because nobody has yet attempted to separate the wheat from the chaff in his prose works ; as an interpretive critic, he is much underrated, not only because it is dif- ficult to estimate how much impulse he com- municated to other minds by his genial es- timate of their early promise, but because it is the fashion now to crush budding tal- ent rather than to encourage it. Many of our present critics are inspired not so much by taste as by distaste. Like Indian chiefs on the war-path, they glory in the number of scalps they have deftly detached from the heads of their victims. Perhaps it would be sentimental to bemoan the coarse mas- culine locks which cling to most of the scalps these gentlemen ostentatiously display as evidence of their skill ; but one thinks ad- miringly of the chivalry of Willis when he sees the fine hair of women triumphantly flourished in his eyes as an indication that, in invading the literary household, these critical " braves" are as regardless of sex as <>f age, and scalp maidens, wives, and moth- ers with the same impartial ferocity which leads them to scalp brothers, husbands, and fathers. James G. Percival had not Willis's happy disposition and adaptive talent. Though recognized by friends as a poet of the first (American) class, he never succeeded in in- teresting the great body of his intelligent countrymen in any but a few of his minor poems. He ranks among the great sorrow- ing class of neglected geniuses. A man of large though somewhat undigested erudi- tion, knowing many languages and many sciences, he was seemingly ignorant of the art of marrying his knowledge to his imagi- nation. When he wrote in prose, he was full of matter ; when he wrote in verse, he was full of glow and aspiration and fancy, but wanting in matter. Allston's imagined painter grinds up every thing he feels and knows " into paint ;" Tennyson and Long- fellow, as poets, do the same ; but Percival seems to have had no power of so melting and fusing his learning as to make it the auxiliary of his faucy, and thus give sub- stance to his poetic dreams. At least his best poems, however much they may charm the ear by their melody, and the eye by their flashing pictures of bits of natural scenery, are deficient in thought and in those burning or suggestive epithets which awake a whole train of associations in cul- tivated minds, and "make the burial-places of memory give up their dead." Hence the vagueness of the impression he leaves on the reader. It is sad, however, to think that neither his erudition nor his inspira- tion gave him a decent livelihood. Some infirmities of character, not vicious, may have led to this result. The period in which he lived was one in which no man of let- ters could, without shrewd management, be maintained by his writings alone. His failure as a poet is primarily due to the de- liberate disunion between what he knew and what he sang. At present, the poet is required to supply nutriment as well as stimulant. Tennyson's immense populari- ty, which makes every new poem from his pen a literary event, is to be referred not merely to his imaginative power, but to his keeping himself on a level with the science and scholarship of his age. "In Memoriam" would not have attracted so much atten- tion had it not been felt that the poet who celebrates a dead friend was, at the same time, all alive to the importance of prob- lems, now vehemently discussed by theolo- POE. y?y gians and scientists, which relate to the question of the reality and immortality of the human soul. Even the poet's affirma- tions are at present hesitatingly received if they do not imply a knowledge of the physi- ological science which seems to cast doubt on their validity. Emerson, also, is not more noted for his grand reliance on the soul than for his acquaintance with the scientific facts and theories which appear to deny its ex- istence. Edgar Allan Poe, like Willis and Perci- val, adopted, or was forced into, literature as a profession. Ho was a man of rare orig- inal capacity, cursed by an incurable per- versity of character. It can not be said he failed of success. The immediate recogni- tion as positive additions to our literature of such poems as " The Raven," " Annabel Lee," and " The Bells," and of such prose stories as " The Gold Bug," " The Purloined Letter," "The Murders of Rue Morgue," and "The Fall of the House of Usher," indi- cates that the public was not responsible for the misfortunes of his life. He also as- sumed the position of general censor and supervisor of American letters, and in this he also measurably succeeded ; for his crit- ical power, when not biased by his ca- prices, was extraordinarily acute, and dur- ing the period of his domination no critic's praise was more coveted than his, and no critic's blame more dreaded. In most of his literary work he displayed that rare com- bination of reason and imagination to which may be given the name of imaginative an- alysis. He was so proud of this power that he was never weary of unfolding, even to a chance acquaintance, the genesis of his poems and stories, accounting, on reason- able grounds, for every melodious variation in the verse, every little incident touched upon in the narrative, as steps in a deduct- ive argument from assumed premises. One of two things was necessary to quicken his mind into full activity. The first was ani- mosity against an individual ; the second was some chance suggestion which awaken- ed and tasked all the resources of his in- tellectual ingenuity. The wild, weird, un- earthly, wjiffer-natural, as distinguished from supernatural, element in his most popular poems and stories is always accompanied by an imagination which not only spiritu- ally discerns but relentlessly dissects. The morbid element, directing his powers, came from his character; the perfection of his analysis came from an intellect as fertile as it was calm, and as delicate in selecting every minute thread of thought as in seiz- ing every evanescent shade of feeling. Poe, as a writer, though admired by his own countrymen, is more highly appreciated in London and Paris than in New York and Philadelphia. He should have been a nat- uralized Frenchman, the associate of Meri- mee, De Musset, Gautier, and Baudileire, and been allowed to develop the unmoral but artistic character of his genius in a free way. In France his peculiar theory of practical as distinguished froni intellectual life would have been understood. In con- duct he justified all his escapes from moral rules by his theory of poetic ecstasy ; and he was irritated when any of his friends suggested that ecstasy, though laudable in the realm of imagination, was of doubtful .authority in the concerns of daily life. In Paris his adherence to a certain artistic mechanism in verse and prose would have condoned any improprieties he might have committed in carrying the fine frenzy, the bold promptings of the poetic instinct — the poetic ecstasy, in short — into such an insig- nificant matter as private conduct. And it is also to be remembered that Poe's esca- pades were only occasional. The worst thing in him was his perversity, which made many of the sincerest admirers of his genius unable to benefit him. The fact that he often needed assistance vexed him against those who were ready to afford it. To do him a favor was to run the risk of incurring his enmity. Bayard Taylor is justly esteemed as one of the most eminent of American men of letters. He is not a " self-made" man, for his books give evidence that the Lord had some share at least in making him ; but he is one of our best specimens of a self-edu- cated man. A graduate of no university, he has mastered many languages ; born in a Pennsylvania village, he may be said to have been every where and to have seen every body ; and all that he has achieved is due to his own persistent energy and tran- quil self-reliance. Journalist, traveler, es- sayist, critic, novelist, scholar, and poet, he 380 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. has ever preserved the simplicity of nature which marked his first book of travels, and the simplicity of style which the knowledge of many lands and many tongues has never tempted him to abandon. His books of voyages and travels are charming, but their charm consists in the austere closeness of the words he uses to the facts he records, the scenery he depicts, and the adventures he narrates. The same simplicity of style characterizes his poems, his few novels, and numerous stories. The richness of his vo- cabulary never impels him to sacrifice truth of representation to the transient effective- ness which is readily secured by indulgence in declamation. One sometimes wonders that the master of so many languages should be content to express himself with such rig- id economy of word and phrase in the one he learned at his mother's knee. As a poet, though kindling with his theme, and with all the dictionaries at his beck, he ever dis- criminates between inspiration and aspira- tion. He ascends easily to that peak of imaginative contemplation or rapture which he has earned the right to occupy by expe- rience and character, and he would think it ridiculous to attempt to carry higher ele- vations, not by force of genius, but by dint of spasmodic ejaculations and a parade of resounding adjectives. Among Taylor's mi- nor poems, ifc is difficult to select those which exhibit his genius at its topmost point. Perhaps "Cainadeva" may be in- stanced as best showing his power of blend- ing exquisite melody with serene, satisfy- ing, uplifting thought. The song which begins with the invocation, "Daughter of Egypt, veil thine eyes !" is as good as could be selected from his many pieces to indi- cate the energy and healthiness of his lyric impulse. His longer poems would reward a careful criticism. The best of them is "The Masque of the Gods" — a poem com- prehensive in conception, noble in purpose, and admirable in style. Taylor has also done a great work in translating, or rath- er transfusing, the two parts of Goethe's "Faust" into various English metres corre- sponding to the original German verse, liter- al not only in reproducing ideas, but in re- producing melodies. This long labor could only have been undertaken by an American man of letters whose love of lucre was en- tirely subordinate to his love of literature. A few weeks devoted to lecturing before ly- ceums would have given him more visible returns in money than he could hope to ob- tain by the sale of this translation during the next twenty years. Longfellow and Bryant, men of property, could afford to translate Dante and Homer ; but Bayard Taylor devoted the leisure of ten years, gen- erally passed in what is called "getting a living," in giving English life to the greatest work of German genius. He is now en- gaged in a Life of Goethe which promises to be the best biography of the serene autocrat of German literature that has appeared ei- ther in German or English. Such unremu- nerated labors deliberately entered upon by a man who has depended upon his pen for his subsistence, who has never degraded his profession by pandering to any thing mean or base, and who has become popular only by means which do him honor, are worthy of a cordial recognition by every well-wish- er of American letters. Another American writer who has made literature a profession is George William Curtis. Mr. Curtis opened a new vein of satiric fiction in The Potiphar Papers, Prue and I, and Trumps ; but probably the great extent of his popularity is due to his papers in Harper's Magazine, under the general title of the Editor's Easy Chair. In these he has developed every faculty of his mind and every felicity of his disposition ; the large variety of the topics he has treated would alone be sufficient to prove the generous breadth of his culture ; but it is in the treat- ment of his topics that his peculiarly at- tractive genius is displayed in all its abun- dant resources of sense, knowledge, wit, fancy, reason, and sentiment. His tone is not only manly, but gentlemanly ; his per- suasiveness is an important element of his influence ; and no reformer has equaled him in the art of insinuating sound principles into prejudiced intellects by putting them in the guise of pleasantries. He can on occasion send forth sentences of ringing in- vective ; but in the Easy Chair he generally prefers the attitude of urbanity which the title of his department suggests. His style, in addition to its other merits, is rhythmic- al ; so that his thoughts slide, as it were, into the reader's mind in a strain of music. BANCROFT. 381 Not the least remarkable of his characteris- tics is the undiminished vigor and elastici- ty of his intelligence, in spite of the inces- sant draughts he has for years been making upon it. In the domain of history and biography, American literature, during the past fifty years, can boast of works of standard value. The most indefatigable of all explorers into the unpublished letters and documents il- lustrating the history of the United States was Jared Sparks. His voluminous editions of The Life and Writings of Washington and Franklin, his Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, and other books devoted to the task of adding to the authentic materials of American history, are mines of information to the students of history ; but Mr. Sparks, though a clear and forcible writer, had not the gift of attractiveness ; and the results of his investigations have been more popularly presented by Irving, in his Life of Washing- ton, and Parton, in his Life of Franklin, than by his own biographies of those eminent men, based on the results of tireless original re- search extending through many years, and of which both Irving and Parton, with the usual polite display of gratitude to the drudge who had saved them from so much disgusting toil, gladly availed themselves in writing their more captivating biographies. In the political history of the country there only remain two " families," in the English sense of the term. These are the Adamses and the Hamiltons. Charles F. Adams has published a collection of his grandfather's works, in ten volumes, intro- duced by a life of John Adams, which is one of the most delightful of American biographies, and, at the same time, a posi- tive addition to the early history of the United States under our first two Presi- dents. An edition of Hamilton's works has also been published ; and one of Hamilton's sons has written a History of the Republic of the United States, " as traced in the writings of Alexander Hamilton and of his contem- poraries." It is needless to say that the controversies between the two families have added new matter of great value to the mass of documents which shed light on our early history as a united nation. It would be tedious .to enumerate other works, which are valuable contributions to our annals ; but, in 1834, George Bancroft appeared as the historian of the United States, or rather the historian of the process by which the States became united. He professed to have seized on the underlying Idea which shaped the destinies of the country ; in later volumes he indicated his initiation in the councils of Providence; and though his last volume (the tenth), pub- lished in 1874, only brings the history down to the conclusion of the Revolutionary war, his labor of forty years has confirmed him in his historical philosophy. Bancroft has been prominent in American politics during all this period ; he has been successively Collector of the port of Boston, Secretary of the Navy, American minister in London and Berlin, and has thus enjoyed every pos- sible advantage of correcting his declama- tion by his experience ; but his tendency to rhapsody has not diminished with the increase of his knowledge and his years. He has, to be sure, availed himself of every opportunity to add to the materials which enter into the composition of American his- tory, and has been as indefatigable in re- search as confident in theorizing. The dif- ferent volumes of his work are of various literary merit, but they are all stamped by the unmistakable impress of the historian's individuality. There is no dogmatism more exclusive than that of fixed ideas and ideals, and this dogmatism Mr. Bancroft exhibits throughout his history both in its declama- tory and speculative form. Indeed, there are chapters in each of his volumes which, con- sidered apart, might lead one to suppose that the work was misnamed, and that it should be entitled, " The Psychological Autobiog- raphy of George Bancroft, as Illustrated by Incidents and Characters in the Annals of the United States." Generally, however, his fault is not in suppressing or overlooking facts, but in disturbing the relations of facts — substituting their relation to the peculiar intellectual and moral organization of the historian to their natural relations with each other. Other eminent historians might be quoted as too apt to disturb the natural relations of things by the intrusion of their individual point of view ; but they so con- trive to diffuse their prepossessions through every part of the narrative that the conclu- sions they reach seem to be the inevitable 382 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. result of their presentation of the facts. Mr. Bancroft begins with an emphatic state- ment of lofty abstractions, which his nar- rative by no means sustains. There is a palpable gulf between his tbeories and the realities he brings in to support his theories. This inartistic separation of thoughts from things deprives his history of the unity which we feel in reading such historians as Gibbon, Grote, and Macaiday. He is also accused of doing gross injustice to certain prominent Americans, and of refusing to correct his demonstrated mistakes. His pa- triotism, likewise, is sometimes of that kind which looks not so much to the glory of his country as to its glorification. Admitting, however, all the charges against him, it must still be said that he has written the most popular history of the United States (up to 1782) which has yet appeared, and that he has made a very large addition to the materials on which it rests. Perhaps he would not have been so tireless in re- search had he not been so passionately ear- nest in speculation. The necessarily slow progress of Mr. Ban- croft's history, and the various protests against his theories and his judgments, im- pelled Richard Hildreth, a bold, blunt, hard- headed, and resolute man, caustic in temper, keen in intellect, indefatigable in industry, and blessed with an honest horror of shams, to write a history of the United States, in which our fathers should be presented ex- actly as they were, " unbedaubed with pa- triotic rouge." The first volume was pub- lished in 1849, the sixth in 1852. The whole work included the events between the dis- covery and colonization of the continent and the year 1821. As a book of reference, this history still remains as the best in our catalogues of works on American history. The style is concise, the facts happily com- bined, the judgments generally good; and while justice is done to our great men, there is every where observable an almost vindic- tive contempt of persons who have made themselves " great" by the arts of the dem- agogue. Hildreth studied carefully all the means of information within his reach; but his plan did not contemplate original re- search on the large scale in which it was prosecuted by Bancroft. The History of New England, by John G. Palfrey, is distinguished by thoroughness of investigation, fairness of judgment, and clearness and temperance of style. It is one of the ablest contributions as yet made to our colonial history. The various histo- ries of Francis Parkman, Tlxe Conspiracy of Pontiac, The Pioneers of France in the New World, The Jesuits in North America, The Dis- covery of the Great West, exhibit a singular combination of the talents of the historian with those of the novelist. The materials he has laboriously gathered are disposed in their just relations by a sound understand- ing, while they are vivified by a realizing mind. The result is a series of narratives in which accuracy in the slightest details is found compatible with the most glowing ex- ercise of historical imagination, and the use of a style singularly rapid, energetic, and picturesque. William H. Prescott had one of those hap- pily constituted natures in which intellect- ual conscientiousness is in perfect harmony with the moral quality which commonly mo- nopolizes the name of conscience. He was as incapable of lies of the brain as of lies of the heart. When he undertook to write histories, he employed an ample fortune to obtain new materials, sifted them with the utmost care, weighed opposing statements in an understanding which was unbiased by prejudice, and, suppressing the laborious processes by which he had arrived at defi- nite conclusions, presented the results of his toil in a narrative so easy, limpid, vivid, and picturesque that his delighted readers hard- ly realized that what was so pleasiug and instructive to them could have cost much pain and labor to him. Echoes beyond the Atlantic, coming from England, France, Ger- many, Italy, and Spain, gradually forced the conviction into the ordinary American mind that the historian of Ferdinand and Isabel- la, of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru, of Philip the Second, had in his quiet Boston home made large additions to the history of Europe in one of its most important epochs. Humboldt was specially emphatic in his praise. Prescott was enrolled among the members of many foreign academies, whose doors were commonly shut to all who could not show that they had made contributions to human knowledge as well as to human entertainment. Much of his foreign repu- PRESCOTT AND MOTLEY. 383 tation was doubtless due to his lavish ex- penditure of uiouey to obtain rare books and copies of rare MSS. which contained novel and important facts ; but his wide popular- ity is to be referred to his possession of the faculty of historical imagination ; that is, his power of realizing and reproducing the events and characters of past ages, and of becoming mentally a contemporary of the persons whose actions he narrated. His partial blindness, which compelled him to listen rather than to read, and to employ a cunningly contrived apparatus in order to write, was in his case au advantage. He had the eyes of friends and faithful secreta- ries eager to serve him. What passed into his ear became an image in his mind, and his bodily infirmity quickened his mental sight. His judgment and imagination brooded over the throng of details to which he listened ; he formed a mental picture out of the dry facts; and by assiduous thinking he dis- posed the facts in their right relations with- out losing his hold on their vitality as pic- tures of a past age. People who passed him in his daily afternoon walks around Boston Common knew that his thoughts were busy on Ferdinand, or Cortez, or Pizarro, or Phil- ip, and not on the news of the day ; and his rapid pace and the peculiar swing of his cane as he trudged on indicated that he was looking not on what was imperfectly pres- ent to his bodily eye, but on objects to which physical exercise had given new life and sig- nificance as surveyed by the eye of his mind. His intense absorption in the subject-matter of his various histories gave to them a pe- culiar attractiveness which few novels pos- sess. Any body who, after reading Lew Wal- lace's recent romance of The Fair God, or Dr. Bird's Calarar, will then turn to Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico, can not fail to be impressed with the historian's superi- ority to the romancer in the mere point of romantic interest. Another American historian, John Lothrop Motley, the author of The Rise of the Dutch Republic, The History of the United Nether- lands, The History of John of Barnereld, and, it is to be hoped, of the great Thirty Years' War, has been, like Prescott, untiring in re- search, has made large additions to the facts of European history, has decisively settled many debatable questions which have tried the sagacity of French and German histo- rians of the sixteenth century, and has poured forth the results of his researches in a series of impassioned narratives, which warm the blood and kindle the imagination as well as inform the understanding. His histories are, in some degree, epics. As he frequently crosses Prescott's path in his presentation of the ideas, passions, and per- sons of the sixteenth century, it is curious to note the serenity of Prescott's narrative as contrasted with the swift, chivalric im- patience of wrong which animates almost every page of Motley. Both imaginatively reproduce what they have investigated; both have the eye to see and the reason to discriminate ; both substantially agree in their judgment as to events and char- acters ; but Prescott quietly allows his read- ers, as a jury, to render their verdict on the statement of the facts, while Motley some- what fiercely pushes forward to anticipate it. Prescott calmly represents; Motley in- tensely feels. Prescott is on a watch-tower surveying the battle ; Motley plunges into the thickest of the fight. In temperament no two historians could be more apart ; in j udgmeut they are identical. As both histo- rians are equally incapable of lying, Motley finds it necessary to overload his narrative with details which justify his vehemence, while Prescott can afford to omit them, on account of his reputation for a benign im- partiality between the opposing parties. A Eoman Catholic disputant would find it hard to fasten a quarrel on Prescott; but with Motley he could easily detect an occa- sion for a duel to the death. It is to be said that Motley's warmth of feeling never be- trays him into intentional injustice to any human being ; his histories rest on a basis of facts which no critic has shaken ; and to the merit of being a historian of wide re- pute, it is to be added that he has ever been a stanch friend, in the emergencies of the politics of the country, to every cause based on truth, honor, reason, freedom, and justice. The same high chivalrous tone which rings through his histories has been heard in ev- ery crisis of his public career. The European histories of Prescott and Motley required an introduction, and this was furnished by John Foster Kirk, in his History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Bur- 384 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. gundy. The breaking up of the feudal sys- tem of Europe, and the gradual establish- ment of monarchies and states after the modern fashion, were the slow results of time. Prescott seized on an important point of this process in his History of Ferdi- nand and Isabella, as Robertson had in his History of Charles the Fifth, There remain- ed for a historian sufficiently robust in re- search and quick in intellect a domain of history still imperfectly investigated, name- ly, that of the struggles between Charles of Burgundy and Louis XI. of France, the lat- ter monarch being unquestionably the great disintegrating force which was brought to bear on the old feudal system. Mr. Kirk was one of the ablest, most scholarly, and most enthusiastic of Prescott's secretaries. He had the sagacity to perceive the im- portance of the period of which he proposed to write the history, and the perseverance to execute the difficult task. Charles and Louis were known to all people who spoke the English tongue by Scott's famous novel of Quentin Durward, and his feebler conclud- ing romance of Anne of Geierstein ; and Mr. Kirk had a right to suppose that an ac- count of an important era of European his- tory would lose none of its attractiveness by being rigidly conformed to historical facts. As to his research, it is sufficient to say that in his investigations in the archives of Switzerland alone he was proba- bly the first man to disturb the dust which nearly four centuries had heaped on pre- cious manuscript documents. As a thinker he is always ingenious, and as generally sound as he is original. In narrative, the richness of his materials, as in the case of Motley, tempts him sometimes into seeming- ly needless minuteness of detail. All our modern historians are open to this charge. It is hard, when a writer has devoted a week or a month to the discovery or verification of a fact, that he should be refused the grat- ification of devoting a sentence or a para- graph to its statement. The History of Charles the Bold is redundant in matter ; its three volumes might be judiciously con- densed into two ; but whether compression would add to its mere interest may be doubted. Among other works which do credit to the historical literature of the country may be named The Life and Correspondence of Na- thaniel Greene, from original materials, by George W. Greene — a work which, of its kind, is of the first class. The same writ- er's Historical View of the American Bcvolution is an excellent compend drawn from origi- nal sources. The various volumes of Rich- ard Frothingham are admirable for accu- racy and research. On the general subject of history, the elaborate work of Dr. John W. Draper, The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, is comprehensive in scope, brilliant in style, and bold in specu- lation. The first volume of The History of France, by Parke Godwin, is so good that it is to be regretted the author has not con- tinued his task. The various biographies written by James Parton — namely, the lives of Burr, Jackson, Franklin, and Jefferson — have the great merit of being entertaining, while they rest on a solid basis of facts which the writer has diligently explored. His love of paradox, though a fault, cer- tainly gives piquancy to his lucid narrative. He starts commonly with a peculiar theory, and if sometimes unjust, the injustice comes from his surveying the subject from an ec- centric point of view, and not from any de- liberate intention to misstate facts or disturb their relations. The Life of Josiah Quincy, by his son, Edmund Quincy, is an admirably ex- ecuted portrait of one of the stoutest spec- imens of political manhood in American history. Like Parton, Quincy interests by reproducing the period of which he writes, and, like him, is a painter of " interiors." The Bise and Fall of the Slave Foiver in Amer- ica, by Henry Wilson, is the work of a man who as Senator of the United States was long in the thick of the fight against slav- ery, who knew by experience the thoughts, passions, and policies of the parties in the contest, and who wrote the history of the contest with simplicity, earnestness, and impartiality. The Life of Madison, by Will- iam C. Rives, is a work of interest and value. Among the antiquarians and anecdotists who have illustrated American history, the high- est reputation belongs to Benson J. Lossing and the family of the Drakes. In military history and biography, the most notable work the country has pro- duced is Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Written by Himself — or, as it might be called, TICKNOR. 385 " My Deeds in My Words." The sharpness, conciseness, and arbitrariness of the auto- biographer's style are characteristic of the man. He is intensely conscious of his su- periority. The word of command is heard ringing in every page of his two octavos. No man could, without being laughed at, have written what he has written unless he had done what he has done. Through- out his autobiography he appears self-cen- tred, self-referring, self-absorbed, and, when opposed, prouder than a score of Spanish hidalgoes. Like George Eliot's innkeeper, he divides human thought into two parts, namely, " my idee," and " humbug ;" there is no middle point ; but then his intelligence is as solid, quick, broad, and full of resource as his will is defiantly self-reliant. Though there is something bare, bleak, harsh, abrupt, in his style, his blunt egotism every now and then runs into a rude humor. He pats on the back men as brave if not as skillful as himself, and- looks down upon them with good-natured toleration as long as they look up to him ; but when they do not, disbelief in Sherman denotes incompetency or maligni- ty in the critic. His enmities are hearted, and sometimes vindictive. The grave has closed over a man who in his sphere did at least as much as Sherman to overturn the rebellion, and yet Sherman spares not Secre- tary Stanton dead any more than he spared Stanton living. Still, the book is thorough- ly a soldier's book, and must take a rank among the most instructive and entertain- ing military memoirs ever written. In that department of history which de- scribes the rise and growth of literatures, the most important work which has been produced by an American scholar is The History of Spanish Literature, by George Tick- nor. As far as solid and accurate learning is concerned, it is incomparably the best his- tory of Spanish literature in existence, and is so acknowledged in Spain. The author, in his travels in Europe, sought out every book which shed the slightest light on his great subject. The materials of his work are a carefully selected Spanish library, purchased by himself. He deliberately took up the subject as a task which would pleasingly occupy a lifetime. The latest edition, pub- lished shortly after his death, showed that the volumes always were on his desk for 25 ' supervision, revision, and the introduction of new facts, and that he continued pruning and enlarging his work to the day when the pen dropped from his hand. In research he was as indefatigable as he was consci- entious, and possessing ample leisure and fortune, he tranquilly exerted the powers of his strong understanding and the refine- ments of his cultivated taste in forming critical judgments, which, if somewhat pos- itive, had the positiveness of knowledge and reflection. Besides, his culture was cosmopolitan ; he had enjoyed as wide op- portunities for conversing with men as with books, and there was hardly an illus- trious European scholar or man of letters of his time with whom he had not been on terms of intimacy; but erudition can not confer insight, nor can genius be communi- cated by mere companionship with it. Mr. Ticknor's defect was a lack of sympathy and imagination, and, to the historian of literature, nothing can compensate for a de- ficiency in these. He could not mentally transform himself into a Spaniard, and therefore could not penetrate into the se- cret of the genius of Spain. He studied its great writers, but he did not look into and behold their souls. There was something cold, hard, resisting, and repellent in his mind. His criticism, therefore, externally judicious, had not for its basis mental facts vividly conceived and vitally interpreted. He never seemed to have made himself, in imagination,' an inhabitant of Spain ; to have felt the fine intoxication of its po- etic and romantic literature ; to have re- produced by sympathy the ecstasy of imag- inative creation ; to have hospitably taken into his mind all the strange moods of Span- ish thought and emotion ; to have been ge- nially receptive, in short, of impressions ab- solutely new to his own consciousness. With all his immense acquisitions, he used his knowledge somewhat legally. The external evidence was drawn from Spanish books; the judicial decisions bore unmistakable marks of having been delivered from his residence on Beacon Hill, Boston. Had Mr. Ticknor possessed the realizing imagination of his friend Prescott — who was never in Spain — he would have made what is now a valuable work, also a work of fascinating interest and extensive popularity. 386 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. In the department of history may he in- cluded works on the origin, progress, or- ganization, comparison, and criticism of the religious ideas of various nations. Three works of this kind have been produced in the United States during the past twenty years, each of which indicates a " liberal" bias. The first is The History of the Doc- trine of a Future Life, by William R. Alger. This is a mine of generalized information, obtained by great labor, and sifted, ana- lyzed, and classified with care and skill. Indeed, it is said that some of the author's acquaintances, knowing the comprehensive- ness of the plan, and seeing year after year pass by without any signs of approaching publication, gently hinted to him that the book, as he was writing it, would only be finished in that state of existence which it took for its theme. The second is Oriental Religions, by Samuel Johnson, the product of a learned, intelligent, and intrepid " Free Religionist." The third is Ten Great Relig- ions, by James Freeman Clarke. The bold- ness of the thinking in these works is as noticeable as the abundance of the knowl- edge. The number of American statesmen who since 1810 have combined literary with po- litical talent is numerous — so numerous, in- deed, that, in despair of doing justice to all, we are forced to select three representative men as indicating three separate tendencies in our national life. These are John C. Cal- houn, Daniel Webster, and Charles Sumner. Calhoun specially followed the Jefferson who prompted the Resolutions of '98 ; Sum- ner, the Jefferson who wrote the Declara- tion of Independence; W T ebster, the men who drew up and carried into effect the Constitution of the United States. Calhoun was in politics what Calvin was in theolo- gy — a great deductive reasoner from prem- ises assumed. The austerity of his charac- ter found a natural outlet in the rigor of his logic. He had the graud audacity of the intellectual athlete, pushed his argu- mentation to its most extreme results, was willing to peril life and fortune on an in- ference ten times removed from his origi- nal starting-point, and was always a rea- soning being in matters where he seemed to be, on practical grounds, an unreasonable one. Despising rhetoric, he became a rhet- orician of a high class by pure force of log- ical statement. Every word he used meant something, and he never indulged in an im- age or illustration except to condense or en- force a thought. In the discussions in the Senate of the United States regarding the very foundations of the government, raised by what is called "Foote's Resolution," Webster, in 1830, made his celebrated speech in reply to Hayne. In all the resources of the orator — statement, reasoning, wit, humor, imagination, passion — this speech has, like one of the masterpieces of Burke, acquired reputation as a literary work, as well as by its lucid exposition of constitutional law. Webster was so completely victorious over his antagonist in argument as well as elo- quence, that only when the question of nul- lification came up was his triumph serious- ly questioned. Calhoun, who thought that Hayne had not made the most of the argu- ment for State rights, introduced, in Jan- uary, 1833, a series of resolutions into the Senate, carefully modeled on the Resolu- tions of '98, and afterward based an argu- ment upon them as though they were of a validity equal to that of the Constitution itself. The speech was one of the most re- markable efforts of his ingenious, penetra- ting, and logical mind, and can now be studied with admiration by every body who enjoys following the processes of impassion- ed deductive reasoning on a question af- fecting the life of individuals and of States. Webster's reply, called " The Constitution not a Compact between Sovereign States," was his greatest intellectual effort in the sphere of pure argumentation. Calhoun, a greater reasoner than Jefferson or Madison, had deduced *rom their propositions — orig- inally thrown out to serve as a convenient cover for a somewhat factious opposition to the administration of John Adams — a theo- ry of the government of the United States for all time to come. Webster resolutely attacked the premises of Calhoun's speech, and paid little attention to his opponent's deductive reasoning from the premises. Cal- houn retorted in a speech in which he com- plained that Webster had not answered his argument. It was not Webster's policy to discredit Madison, and he simply declared that Madison, in his old age, had repudiated such inferences as Calhoun had drawn from DANIEL WEBSTER. 387 the Resolutions of '98. On constitutional grounds Webster was as triumphant in his contest with Calhoun as he had been in his previous contest with Hayne; but argu- ments are of small account against interests and passions, and it required the bloodiest and most expensive of civil wars to prove that strictly logical deductions from the Resolutions of '98 did not express the mean- ing of the Constitution of the United States. The victory intellectually won was eventu- ally decided by " blood and iron." In addi- tion to Webster's extraordinary power of lucid statement, on which he based the suc- cessive steps and wide sweep of his argu- mentation, he was master of an eloquence unrivaled of its kind, because it represent- ed the kindling into unity of all the fac- ulties and emotions of a strong, deep, and broad individual nature. Generally, under- standing was his predominant quality; in statement and argument he seemed to be specially desirous to unite thougbt with facts ; he distrusted all rbetoric which dis- turbed the relations of things ; but in the heat of controversy he occasionally mount- ed to the real elevation of his character, and threw off flashes and sparks of impassion- ed imagination which had the electric, the smiting, effect of a completely roused na- ture. It is curious that he never exhibited the higher qualities of imagination in his speeches until the suppressed power flamed unexpectedly out after all his otber facul- ties had been thoroughly kindled, and then it came with formidable effect. Tbat Web- ster is one of the most eminent of our prose writers is acknowledged both at the North and the South. He was also a magnificent specimen of physical manhood; his mere presence in an assembly was eloquence ; and when he spoke, voice and gesture added im- mensely to the effect of his majestic port and bearing. Fox said of Lord Chancellor Thurlow that he must be an impostor, for no man could be as wise as he looked. Web- ster was wiser in look thau even Thurlow, but his works show that he was no impostor in the matter of political wisdom, laughable as are some of the epithets by which his admirers exaggerated his claims to rever- ence, as though he had clapped copyright on political thought. In the heathenism of partisan feeling, however, few deities of party were more worthy of apotheosis than "the godlike Dan!" Up to 1850, when he made his memorable " 7th of March speech" in the Senate, Webster was considered the leading champion of the non-extension of slavery ; but in that speech he waived the application of the principle to the Territories acquired by the Mexican war, though he contended that he still adhered to the principle itself. He lost, by this concession, his hold on the minds and con- sciences of the political antislavery men, and the position he vacated was eventually occupied by Charles Sumner, though Sum- ner had numerous competitors for that sta- tion of glory and difficulty. Webster must have foreseen the inevitable conflict be- tween the Slave and Free States, but he la- bored to postpone a catastrophe he was powerless to prevent, thinking that judi- cious compromise might soften the shock when the collision of irreconcilable princi- ples and persons could no longer be avoided. Sumner in heart was as earnest an aboli- tionist as Garrison or Phillips ; his soul was on fire with moral enthusiasm ; but he also had a vigorous understanding, and a memo- ry stored with a vast amount of historical and legal knowledge. He never forgot any thing he had read, and he passed not a day without reading. Accordingly, when he en- tered the Senate of the United States, this philanthropic student - statesman was as ready in citing the precedents as he was fiery in declaring the principles of freedom. During the years preceding the civil war the dominant party in the government was bent on establishing a slave power, which, had it succeeded, would have disgraced the country forever. Law, logic, philosophy, even theology, were in the South all subor- dinated to the permanence and extension of negro slavery, and hundreds of sermons south of Mason and Dixon's line inculcated the refreshing doctrine that if Christ came primarily on earth to save sinners, his sec- ondary, though not less important, object was to enslave " niggers." It is easy to say that it requires no parade of authori- ties to settle the proposition that two and two make four, but ethically and politically this was the proposition that Charles Sum- ner had to sustain by quotations from Vico and Leibnitz, from Coke, Mansfield, Camden, 388 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. and Eldon, from Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Story, and Webster. Those who were foiled in their purposes by these quo- tations from authorities they could not but respect, called him a pedant ; but what re- ally vexed them was that in no case in which this pedant encountered an opponent did he fail to justify his course by the ex- tent of his knowledge, as well as by the keenness of his intellect and the warmth of his sentiments. When the civil war broke out, he saw that negro slavery was doomed. In his endeavors to hasten emancipation he always contrived to make himself unaccept- able to the more prudent statesmen of his own party, by inaugurating measures which the course of events eventually compelled them to adopt ; and after the war he dragged the Repiiblican party up to his own policy of reconstruction, being in most cases only some six or twelve months ahead of what sober and judicious Republicans found at length to be the wisest course. Throughout his career Sumner was felt as a force as well as an intelligence, and probably the future historian will rank him high among the se- lect class of American public men who have the right to be called creative statesmen. He always courted obloquy, not only when his party was depressed, but when it was triumphant. " Forward !" was ever his mot- to. When his political friends thought they had at last found a resting-place, his voice was heard crying loudly for a new advance. Many of his addresses belong to that class of speeches which are events. His collected works, carefully revised by himself, have now become a portion of American litera- ture. They quicken the conscience of the reader, but they also teach him the lesson that moral sentiment is of comparatively small account unless it hardens into moral character, and is also accompanied by that thirst for knowledge by which intellect is broadened and enriched, and is trained to the task of supporting by facts and argu- ments what the insight of moral manliness intuitively discerns. Probably no states- man that the country has produced has ex- ceeded Sumner in his passion for rectitude. In every matter that came up for discussion he vehemently put the question, " Which of the two sides is Right ?" He so persistent- ly capitalized this tremendous monosylla- ble, and poured into its utterance such an amount of moral fervor or moral wrath, that the modest word, which every body used without much regard to its meaning, blazed out in his rhetoric, not as a feeble and faded truism, but as a dazzling and smiting truth. It is in discovering the hidden meaning of simple words that great men have often ex- hibited the full force of their genius. In the political history of the country nobody has excelled Sumner in restoring to its orig- inal majestic significance the much-abused term of "Right." A word may be said here of two public men, one of whom belongs to literature by cultivation and of set purpose, the other ac- cidentally and in the ordinary discharge of his public duties. Edward Everett was one of the most variously accomplished of the American scholars who have been drawn into public life by ambition and patriotism. Though he attained high positions, his na- ture was too sensitive and fastidious for the rough contentions of party, and he could not steel himself to bear calumny without wincing. He suffered exquisite mortifica- tion and pain at unjust attacks on his prin- ciples and character, whereas such attacks awakened in Sumner a kind of exultation, as they proved that his own blows were be- ginning to tell. As an orator, Everett's spe- cial gift was persuasion, not invective. The four volumes of his collected works are, in elegance and energy of style, wealth of in- formation, and fertility of thought, impor- tant contributions to American literature ; but being mostly in the form of speeches and addresses, they have not produced the impression which less learning, talent, and eloquence, concentrated on a few subjects, would assuredly have made. A very differ- ent man was Abraham Lincoln. He was a great rhetorician without knowing it. The statesman was doubtless astonished that messages and letters, written for purely practical purposes, should be hailed by fas- tidious critics as remarkable specimens of style. The truth was that Lincoln was de- ficient in fluency ; he was compelled to wring his expression out of the very sub- stance of his nature and the inmost life of the matter he had in haud ; and the result was seen in sinewy sentences, in which thoughts were close to things, and words THOREAU AND WHITMAN. 389 were close to thoughts. And finally, in November, 1863, his soul devoutly impressed with the solemnity and grandeur of his theme, he delivered at Gettysburg an ad- dress of about twenty lines, which is con- sidered the top and crown of American elo- quence. There are certain writers in American lit- erature who charm by their eccentricity as well as by their genius, who are both origi- nal and originals. The most eminent, per- haps, of these was Henry D.Thoreau — a man who may be said to have penetrated nearer to the physical heart of nature than any other American author. Indeed, he " expe- rienced" nature as others are said to expe- rience religion. Lowell says that in reading him it seems as " if all out-doors had kept a diary, and become its own Montaigne." He was so completely a naturalist that the in- habitants of the woods in which he sojourn- ed forgot their well-founded distrust of man, and voted him the freedom of their city. His descriptions excel even those of Wilson, Audubon, and Wilson Flagg, ad- mirable as these are, for he was in closer relations with the birds than they, and car- ried no gun in his hand. In respect to hu- man society, he pushed his individuality to individualism ; he was never happier than when absent from the abodes of civiliza- tion ; and the toleration he would not extend to a Webster or a Calhoun, he ex- tended freely to a robin or a woodchuck. With all this peculiarity, he was a poet, a scholar, a humorist ; also, in his way, a phi- losopher and philanthropist ; and those who knew him best, and entered most thoroughly into the spirit of his character and writings, are the warmest of all the admirers of his genius. Another Concord hermit is W. E. Channing, who has adopted solitude aj a profession, and seclusion from his kind as the condition of independent perception of nature. The thin volume of poems in which he has embodied his insights and experiences contains lines and verses which are remarkable both for their novelty and depth. A serener eccentric, A. Bronson Al- cott, is eccentric only in this, that he thinks the object of life is spiritual meditation ; that all action leads up to this in the end ; and he has spent his life in tranquilly exploring those hidden or elusive facts of the higher consciousness which practical thinkers over- look or ignore. He is a Yankee seer who has suppressed every tendency in his Yan- kee nature toward "argufying" a point. Very different from all these is Walt Whit- man, who originally burst upon the literary world as " one of the roughs," and whose " barbaric yawp" was considered by a par- ticular class of English critics as the first original note which had been struck in American poetry, and as good as an Indian war-whoop. Wordsworth speaks of Chat- terton as " the marvelous boy ;" Walt Whit- man, in his first Leaves of Grass, might have been styled the marvelous " b'hoy." Walt protested against all convention, even all forms of conventional verse ; he seemed to start up from the ground, an earth-born son of the soil, and put to all cultivated people the startling question, "What do you think of Me V They generally thought highly of him as an original. Nothing is more acceptable to minds jaded with read- ing works of culture than the sudden ap- pearance of a strong, rough book, expressing the habits, ideas, and ideals of the uncul- tivated ; but unfortunately Whitman de- clined to listen to the suggestion that his daring disregard of convention should have one exception, and that he must modify his frank expression of the relations of the sexes. The author refused, and the completed edi- tion of the Leaves of Grass fell dead from the press. Since that period he has un- dergone new experiences ; his latest books are not open to objections urged against his earliest ; but still the Leaves of Grass, if thoroughly cleaned, would even now be considered his ablest and most original work. But when the first astonishment subsides of such an innovation as Walt Whitman's, the innovator pays the penal- ty of undue admiration by unjust neglect. This is true also of Joaquin Miller, whose first poems seemed to threaten all our es- tablished reputations. Each succeeding vol- ume was more coldly received ; and though the energy and glow of his verse were the same, the public, in its calmer mood, found that the richness of the matter was not up to the rush of the inspiration. This eccentric deviation from accredited models is perhaps best indicated in Ameri- can humorists, whose characteristic is ludi- 390 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. crous absurdity. George H. Derby (or John Phoenix) was perhaps the first who carried the hyperboles of humor to the height of humoristic extravaganzas. There are few men who have roused a greater number of irresistible bursts of laughter from so limited a number of humorous sketches. Indeed, many of his readers have his whole works by heart, and never recur to them without honoring his memory by a fresh outbreak of merriment. The peculiarity of the whole school is to revel in the most fantastic absurdities of an ingenious fancy. There is a Western story told of a man who was so strong that his shadow once falling on a child instantly killed it. This is the kind of humor in which Americans excel. Charles F. Browne (Artemus Ward), indul- ging at his will in the oddest and wildest caricatures, still contrived to make his show- man an original character, and to stamp on the popular imagination an image of the man, as well as to tickle the risibilities of the public by his sayings and doings. Per- haps the most delicious among his many de- licious absurdities was his grave statement that it had been better than ten dollars in Jeff Davis's pocket "if he'd never been born." S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain), the most wide- ly popular of this class of humorists, is a man of wide experience, keen intellect, and literary culture. The serious portions of his writings indicate that he could win a reputation in literature even if he had not been blessed with a humorous fancy inex- haustible in resource. He strikes his most effective satirical blows by an assumption of helpless innocence and bewildered for- lornness of mind. The reader or the audience is in convulsions of laughter, while he pre- serves an imperturbable serenity of counte- nance, as if wondering why his statement is not received as an important contribution to human knowledge. Occasionally he in- dulges in a sly and subtle stroke of humor, worthy of the great masters, and indicating that his extravagancies are not the limit of his humorous faculty. D. R. Locke (Petro- leum V. Nasby) is not only a humorist, but he was a great force in carrying the recon- struction measures of the Republican party, after the war, by his laughable but coarse, broad, and merciless pictures of the lowest elements in the Western States that had been opposed to the policy of equal justice. The Nasby Papers are exceedingly amusing ; they are also evidently the work of a man of clear intelligence, and to the future histori- an they will doubtless be considered as exert- ing an influence on the popular mind much greater than that exerted by the speeches of many eminent legislators. Though they seem to be extravagant caricatures, the au- thor is understood to insist on their substan- tial truth to fact. His latest satire is on paper money ; its greatest hit is Mr. Nasby's statement that he did not issue fractional currency, because it was as easy to print a hundred-dollar bill as one for fifty cents. H. W. Shaw (Josh Billings) is a humorist of such bright glimpses of practical perception and insight that one wonders why he strives to vulgarize his sagacity by bad spelling. Charles G. Leland, an accomplished man of letters, the hest translator of the most dif- ficult pieces of Heine, has won a large reputation by his Hans Breitmann Ballads, Hans being a lyrist who sings seemingly from the accumulated inspiration drawn from tuns of lager- beer. B. P. Shillaber, not so prominent as others we have named, has given a new life to Mrs. Partington, and has added Ike to the family. While he par- ticipates in the extravagance of the popu- lar American humorists, he has a demure humane humor of his own which is quite charming. It would be impossible in our brief space to note all the writers who have followed, with more or less ingenuity of in- tellect, in what seems to be the most direct road to American renown. Among those authors who combine hu- mor with a variety of other gifts, the most conspicuous is F. Bret Harte. His subtilty of ethical insight, his depth of sentiment, his power of solid characterization, and his pathetic and tragic force are as evident as his broacl perception of the ludicrous side of things. In his California stories, as in some of his poems, he detects "the soul of goodness in things evil," and represents the exact circumstances in which ruffians and profligates are compelled to feel that they have human hearts and spiritual na- tures. He is original not only in the or- dinary sense of the word, but in the sense of discovering a new domain of literature, and of colonizing it by the creations of his HAY, HOWELLS, AND ALDRICH. 391 own brain. Perhaps the immense popu- larity of some of his humorous poems, such as " The Heathen Chinee," has not been fa- vorable to a full recognition of his graver qualities of heart and imagination. John Hay is, like Bret Harte, a humorist, and his contributions, in Pike County Bal- lads, to what may be called the poetry of ruffianism, if less subtile in sentiment and characterization than those of his model, have a rough raciness and genuine manli- ness peculiarly his own. His delightful volume called Castilian Days, displaying all the graces of style of an accomplished man of letters, shows that it was by a strong ef- fort of imagination that he became for a time a mental denizen of Pike County, and made the acquaintance of Jim Bludso, and other worthies of that kind. The writings of William D. Howells are masterpieces of literary workmanship, re- sembling the products of those cunning artificers who add one or two thousand per cent, to the value of their raw material by their incomparable way of working it up. What they are as artisans, he is as artist. His faculties and emotions are in exquisite harmony with each other, and unite to pro- duce one effect of beauty and grace in the singular felicity of his style. He has humor in abundance, but it is so thoroughly blend- ed with his observation, fancy, imagination, taste, and good sense, that it seems to es- cape from him in light, demure, evanescent flashes rather than in deliberate efforts to be funny. He has revived in some degree the lost art of Addison, Goldsmith, and Ir- ving. Nobody ever "roared" with laugh- ter in reading any thing he ever wrote ; but few of our American humorists have ex- celled him in the power to unseal, as by a magic touch, those secret interior springs of merriment which generally solace the soul without betraying the happiness of the mood they create by any exterior bursts of laughter. His Venetian Life, Italian Jour- neys, Suburban Sketches — his novels, entitled Our Wedding Journey, A Chance Acquaintance, and A Foregone Conclusion — all indicate the presence of this delicious humorous element, penetrating his picturesque descriptions of scenery, as well as his refined perceptions of character and pleasing narratives of in- cidents. His prose style, with its "polished want of polish," and elaborate, deliberate simplicity, is marked not only by felicities of diction, but by the continual oversight of an exacting taste. Indeed, the story goes that when, as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, he incurred the ire of a rejected contributor, the latter was consoled by the remark of Howells that he frequently rejected his own contributions when he found that they did not satisfy his austere editorial judgment. Charles Dudley Warner, like Howells, is an author whose humor is intermixed with his sentiment, understanding, and fancy. In My Summer in a Garden, Back-log Studies, and other volumes he exhibits a reflective intel- lect under the guise of a comically sedate humor. Trifles are exalted into importance by the incessant play of his meditative fa- cetiousness. Thomas Bailey Aldrich first won his rep- utation as a poet. In the exquisite ballad of " Babie Bell," and in other poems, he has, as it were, so dissolved thought and feeling in melody that rhyme and rhythm seem to be necessary and not selected forms of ex- pression. As a prose writer he combines pungency with elegance of style, and in his stories has exhibited a sly original vein of humor, which, Avhile it steals out in separate sentences, is most effectively manifested in the ludicrous shock of surprise which the reader experiences when he comes to the ca- tastrophe of the plot. In this respect Mar- jorie Daw is one of the best prose tales in our literature. Aldrich has written many others constructed on a similar plan, and almost equally attractive. His Story of a Bad Boy belongs to the class of juvenile works, and it is a charming satire on the " do-me-good" narratives which are so copi- ously supplied for the improvement and de- lectation of American lads. Among the American novelists who have risen into prominence during the past thir- ty years, the greatest, though not the most popular, is Nathaniel Hawthorne. His first romance, The Scarlet Letter j did not appear until the year 1850, but previously he had published collections of short stories under the titles of Twice-told Tales and Mosses from an Old Manse. These were recognized by ju- dicious readers all over the country as mas- terpieces of literary art, but their circula- tion was ludicrously disproportioned to their 392 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. merit. For years one of the greatest mod- ern masters of English prose was valued at his true worth only by those who had found by experience in composition how hard it is to be clear and simple in style, and at the same time to be profound in sentiment, ex- act in thought, and fertile in imagination. Most of these short stories contain the germs of romances, and a literary economist of his materials, like Scott or Dickens, would have expanded Hawthorne's hints of passion and character into thrilling novels. The Scarlet Letter, the romance by which Hawthorne first forced himself on the popular mind as a genius of the first class, was but the ex- pansion of an idea expressed in three sen- tences, written twenty years before its ap- pearance, in the little sketch of " Endicott and the Cross," which is included in the col- lection of Twice-told Tales. But The Scarlet Letter exhibited in startling distinctness all the resources of his peculiar mind, and even more than Scott's Bride of Lammermoor it touches the lowest depths of tragic woe and passion — so deep, indeed, that the represen- tation becomes at times almost ghastly. If Jonathan Edwards, turned romancer, had dramatized his sermon on "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God," he could not have written a more terrific story of guilt and retribution than The Scarlet Letter. The pit- iless intellectual analysis of the emotions of guilty souls is pushed so far that the read- er, after being compelled to sympathize with the Puritanic notion of Law, sighs for some appearance of the consoling Puritanic doc- trine of Grace. Hawthorne, in fact, was a patient observer of the operation of spi rit- ual laws, and relentless in recording the re- sults of his observations. Most readers of romances are ravenous for external events ; they demand that the heroes and heroines shall be swift in thought, confident in de- cision, rapid in act. In Hawthorne's novels the events occur in the hearts and minds of his characters, and our attention is fastened on the ecstasies or agonies of individual souls rather than on outward acts and inci- dents; at least, the latter appear trivial in comparison with the inward mental states they imperfectly express. Carlyle says that real genius in characterization consists in developing character from " within out- ward." Hawthorne's mental sight in dis- cerning souls is marvelously penetrating and accurate, but he finds it so difficult to give them an adequate physical embodi- ment that their very flesh is spiritualized, and appears to be brought into the repre- sentation only to give a kind of phantasmal form to purely mental conceptions. These souls, while intensely realized as individu- als, are, however, mere puppets in the play of the spiritual forces and laws behind them, and while seemingly gifted with will, even to the extent of indulging in all the ca- prices of willfulness, they drift to their doom with the certainty of fate. In this twofold power of insight into souls, and of the spir- itual laws which regulate both the natu- ral action and morbid aberrations of souls, Hawthorne is so incomparably great that in comparison with him all other romancers of the century, whether German, French, English, or American, seem to be superficial. The defect of his method was that he pene- trated to such a depth into the human heart, and recorded so mercilessly its realities and possibilities of sin and selfishness as they appeared to his piercing, passionless vision of the movements of passion, that he rather frightened than pleased the ordinary novel- reader. The old woman who sagely con- cluded that she must be sick, because in reading the daily newspaper she did not, as was her wont, " enjoy her murders," uncon- sciously hit on the distinction which sepa- rates artistic representations of human life which include crime and misery from those representations in which the prominence of crime and misery is so marked as to be- come unpalatable. Hawthorne did not suc- ceed in making his psychological pictures of sin and woe "enjoyable." The intensity of impassioned imagination which flames through every page of The Scarlet Letter was unrelieved by those milder accompaniments which should have been brought in to soft- en the effect of a tragedy so awful in itself. Little Pearl, one of the most exquisite cre- ations of imaginative genius, is introduced not to console her parents, but, in her wild, innocent willfulness, to symbolize their sin, and add new torments to the slow-consum- ing agonies of remorse. The Scarlet Letter is incidentally the strongest of all arguments against the heresy of " free love." In The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedalc Bo- HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 393 mance, and The Marble Fait n, Hawthorne deep- ened the impression made by his previous writings that he did not possess his genius, but was possessed by it. The most powerful of his creations of character were inspired not by his sympathies, but his antipathies. Personally he was the most geutle and genial and humane of men. He detested many of the characters in whose delinea- tion he exerted the full force of his intel- lect and imagination ; but he was so men- tally conscientious that he never exercised the right of the novelist to kill the person- ages who displeased him at his own will aud pleasure. So intensely did he realize his characters that to run his pen through them, and thus blot them out of existence, would have seemed to him like the commis- sion of willful murder. He watched and noted the operation of spiritual laws on the malignant or feeble souls he portrayed, but never interfered personally to divert their fatal course. In thus emphasizing the trag- ic element in Hawthorne's genius, we may have too much overlooked his deep and del- icate humor, his ingenuity of playful fancy, his felicity in making a landscape visible to the soul as well as the eye by his charm- ing power of description, and the throng of thoughts which accompany every step in the progress of his narrative. Not the least remarkable characteristic of this remarka- ble man was the prevailing simplicity, clear- ness, sweetness, purity, and vigor of his style, even when his subjects might have justified him in deviating into some form of Carlylese. The most widely circulated novel ever published in this country, or perhaps in any other, is Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book has in the Unit- ed States attained a sale of over 350,000 cop- ies, and after the lapse of twenty-four years the demand for it still continues. It has been translated into almost every known language. Inspired by the insurrection of the public conscience against the Fugitive Slave Law, its popularity has survived the extinction of slavery itself. Its original publication, in 1852, was an important po- litical event. It practically overturned the arguments of statesmen and decisions of ju- rists by an irresistible appeal to the heart and imagination of the American people. It was one of the most powerful agencies in building up the Republican party, in elect- ing Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, and in raising earnest volunteers for the great crusade agaiust slavery. This effect was produced not by explosions of moral wrath against the iniquity it assailed, not by righteous vituperation of the liberticides who meanly lent themselves to the sup- port of the slave power, but by a vivid dramatic presentation of the facts of the case, in which complete justice was done equally to the slave-holder and the slave. And the humor, the pathos, the keen obser- vation, the power of characterization, dis- played in the novel were all penetrated by an imagination quickened into activity by a deep and hiunaue religious sentiment. Next to Uncle Tom, The Minister's Wooing is the best of Mrs. Stowe's novels. Her Old- town Folks and Sam Lawson's Stories are fall of delightful Yankee humor. It is impossible for us to spare the space for even an inadequate notice of all the nov- elists of the United States. At the time (1827) Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick publish- ed Hope Leslie she easily took a prominent position in our literature, in virtue not only of her own merits, but of the comparative absence of competitors. Since then there has appeared a throng of writers of roman- tic narratives, and the number is constantly increasing. We are compelled to confine our remarks to a few of the representative novelists. William Ware gained a just rep- utation by his Letters from Palmyra (1836). The style is elegant, the story attractive, and the pictures of the court of Zenobia are represented through a visionary medium which gives to the representation a certain charming poetic remoteness. Charles Fen- no Hoffman, a poet as well as prose writer, whose song of " Sparkling and Bright" has probably rung over the emptying of a mill- ion of Champagne bottles, was a man who delighted in "wild scenes in forest and prai- rie," and whose Greyslaer shows the energy of his nature, as well as the brilliancy of his intellect. R. B. Kimball is noted for his business novels, and his heart-breaks come not from failures in love, but from failures in traffic. Donald G. Mitchell, in his Rev- eries of a Bachelor, originated a new style, in which a certain delightful daintiness of sentiment was combined with a fertile fancy 394 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. and touches of humorous good sense. Syl- vester Judd, a Unitarian clergyman, went into the great lumber region of Maine, and came out of it to record his observations, experiences, and insights in the novel of Margaret, which Lowell once affirmed to be the most intensely American book ever writ- ten. Thomas W. Higginson, distinguished in many departments of literature for the thoroughness of his culture and the classic simplicity and elegance of his style, is the author of a novel called Malbone, quite not- able for beauty of description, ingenuity of plot, and subtilty of characterization. Her- man Melville, after astonishing the public with a rapid succession of original novels, the scene of which was placed in the islands of the Pacific, suddenly dropped his pen, as if in disgust of his vocation. Mrs. Harri- et Prescott Spofford is the author of many thrilling stories, written in a style of per- haps exaggerated splendor, but in which prose is flushed with all the hues of poetry. Maria S. Cummins published in 1854 a nov- el called The Lamplighter, which attained an extraordinary popularity, owing to the sim- plicity, tenderness, pathos, and naturalness of the first hundred pages. Seventy thou- sand copies were sold in a year. Miss E. S. Phelps, in her Gates Ajar, Hedged In, and in a variety of minor tales, has exhibited a power of intense pathos which almost pains the reader it melts. Henry James, Jun. — long may it be before the "Jun." is detached from his name! — has a deep and delicate perception of the internal states of excep- tional individuals, and a quiet mastery of the resources of style, which make his sto- ries studies in psychology as well as models of narrative art. J. W. De Forest, the au- thor of Kate Beaumont and other novels, is a thorough realist, whose characterization, an- imated narrative, well-contrived plots, and pitiless satire only waut the relief of ideal sentiment to make them as pleasing as they are powerful. Edward Everett Hale, the author of The Man without a Country, My Dou- ble, and How he Undid Me, and Sybaris and Other Homes, is fantastically ingenious in the plan and form of his narratives, but he uses his ingenuity in the service of good sense and sound feeling, while he inspires it with the impulses of a hopeful, vigorous, and elas- tic spirit. Miss Louisa M. Alcott, in her Lit- tle JVoinen and Little Men, has almost revolu- tionized juvenile literature by the audacity of her innovations. She thoroughly under- stands that peculiar element in practical youthful character which makes romps of so many girls aud "roughs" of so many boys. Real little women and real little men look into her stories as into mirrors in order to get an accurate reflection of their inward selves. She has also a tart, quaint, racy, witty good sense, which acts on the mind like a tonic. Her success has been as great as her rejec- tion of conventionality in depicting lads and lasses deserved. Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney has more sentiment and a softer manner of representation than Miss Alcott; but she has originality, though of a different kind ; and her books, like those of Miss Alcott, have penetrated into households in every part of the country, and their characters have been domesticated at thousands of firesides. Faith Gartney especially is a real friend and acquaintance to many a girl who has no other. William G. Simms, the most prolific of American historical novelists, and in tire- less intellectual energy worthy of all re- spect, failed to keep his hold on the popular mind by the absence in his vividly described scenes of adventure of that peculiar some- thing which gives to such scenes a perma- nent charm. Theodore Winthrop, the au- thor of Cecil Dreeme, John Brent, and other striking and admirable tales, rose suddenly into popularity, and as suddenly declined — a conspicuous instance of the instability of the romancer's reputation. J. G. Holland has succeeded in every thing he has under- taken, whether as a sort of lay preacher to the young, as an essayist, as a novelist, or as a poet. It is hardly possible to take up any late edition of any one of his numerous volumes without finding " fortieth thousand" or " sixtieth thousand" smiling complacent- ly and benignly upon you from the title- page. Both in verse and prose he has ad- dressed the bourgeoisie of readers, disdain- ing to court the proletariat, and disregard- ing the fleers of the patricians. Mrs. Mary J. Holmes, the author of Lena Rivers, Mrs. Terhuue (Marian Harland), the author of Hidden Path, Mrs. Augusta Evans Wilson, the author of St. Elmo, are novelists very different from Dr. Holland, yet whose works have obtained a circulation corresponding INDIVIDUAL POEMS. 395 in extent. We pause here in reading the list, not for want of subjects, hut for want of space, and also, it must he confessed, for want of epithets. It is a great misfortune that the temp- tation which besets clever people to write mediocre verses, and afterward to collect them in a volume, is irresistible. Time, and short time at that, proves the truth of Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck's remark, that " your fu- gitive poetry is apt to become stationary with the publisher." Even when a little momentary reputation is acquired, the writ- ers are soon compelled to repeat mournful- ly the refrain of Pierpout's beautiful and pathetic poem, " Passing away ! passing away !" It is not one of the least mysteries of this mismanagement of talent that the want of public recognition does not ap- pease the desire to attain it. As a gener- al rule, books of verses, even good verses, are the most unsalable of human products. There are numerous cases where genuine poetic faculty and inspiration fail to make the slightest impression on the public im- agination. The most remarkable instance of this kind in our literature is found in the case of Mrs. Maria Brooks (Maria del Occi- dente), who printed, some forty years ago, a poem called " Zophiel, or the Bride of Sev- en," which Southey warmly praised, which was honored with a notice in the London Quarterly Review, which deserved most of the eulogy it received, which fell dead from the press, and which not ten living Amer- icans have ever read. Again, some of the most popular and most quoted poems in our literature are purely accidental hits, and their authors are rather nettled than pleased that their other productions should be neg- lected while such prominence is given to one. Thus it might be somewhat danger- ous now to compliment T. W. Parsons for his " Liues on a Bust of Dante," because he has become sick of praise confined to that piece, while the delicate beauty of scores of his other poems, and his noble rhymed translation of " Dante's Inferno," find few readers. Miss Lucy Larcom, when she pic- tured "Hannah Binding Shoes," did not dream that Hanuah was to draw away at- tention from her other heroines, and concen- trate it upon herself. Freneau's " Indian Burying- Ground" is the only piece of that poet which survives. "The Gray Forest Ea- gle" of A. B. Street has screamed away atten- tion from his " rippling of waters and wav- ing of trees" — from his hundreds of pages of descriptive verse which are almost pho- tographs of natural scenery. People quote the " Summer iu the Heart" and " A Life on the Ocean Wave" of Epes Sargent, and over- look many better specimens of his melody and his imagination. There are some poems which almost every body has read, which are commonly considered the only poems of the writers. Such are " The Star-spangled Banner," by F. S. Key ; " Woodman, Spare that Tree" (very insipid, by-the-way), by George P. Morris ; " A Hymn," by Joseph H. Clinch ; " The Baron's Last Banquet" and "Old Grimes is Dead," by A. G. Greene; " My Life is like the Summer Rose," by R. H. Wilde ; " Sweet Home," by John Howard Payne ; " The Christinas Hymn," by E. H. Sears ; "The Old Oaken Bucket," by Samuel Woodworth ; "Milton's Prayer of Patience," by Elizabeth Lloyd Howell; "The Relief of Lucknow," by Robert Lowell ; " The Old Sergeant," by Forceythe Wilson ; "The Vag- abonds," by J.T.Trowbridge ; and " Gnosis," by C. P. Cranch. There are other pieces, like the " Count Paul," and especially the "Theodora," of Mrs. Drinker (Edith May), which seem to be more deserving of success than some of those which have attained it. But little justice has been done to the po- etic and dramatic talent of George H. Boker. " The King's Bell," exquisite for the limpid flow of its verse and the sweetly melan- choly tone of its thought, together with other poems by Richard Henry Stoddard, have not received their due meed of praise. T. Buchanan Read wrote volumes of rich descriptive poetry, but the popularity of "Sheridan's Ride" is not sufficient to at- tract attention to them. In thus commenting on the instability and uncertainty of the public taste in re- spect to poets, we have unconsciously indi- cated quite an excellent body of American poetry, and we may proceed with the enu- meration. W. W. Story, famous as a sculptor, is also a poet, who throws into verse the same en- ergy of inspiration which is so obvious in his statues. Mrs. Frances S. Osgood had a singularly musical nature, and her poems 396 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. sing of themselves. She did not appear to feel the fetters of rhyme ; she danced in them. Her poems, however, have the thin- ness of substance which often accompanies quickness of sensibility and activity of fancy. As it is, the reader rises from the perusal of her poems with a delicious mel- ody in his ears, a charming feeling in his heart, and with but few thoughts in his head. Mrs. M. J. Preston has a more robust intellect, greater intensity of feeling, and more force of imagination than Mrs. Osgood, though lacking her lovely grace and be- witching melodiousness ; but Mrs. Osgood could not have written a poem so deeply pathetic as " Keeping his Word." Henry Timrod and Paul H. Hayne are, with Mrs. Preston, the most distinguished poets of the South. Timrod's ode sung on the oc- casion of decorating the graves of the Con- federate dead is, in its simple grandeur, the noblest poem ever written by a Southern poet. Hayne exhibits in all his pieces a rich sensuousuess of nature, a seemingly ex- haustless fertility of fancy, an uncommon felicity of poetic description, and an easy command of the harmonies of verse. John G. Saxe owes his wide acceptance with the public not merely to the elasticity of his verse, the sparkle of his wit, and the famil- iarity of his topics, but to his power of dif- fusing the spirit of his own good humor. The unctuous satisfaction he feels in put- ting his mood of merriment into rhyme is communicated to his reader, so that, as it were, they laugh joyously together. Ed- mund Clarence Stedman, in addition to his merits as a critic of poetry, has written po- ems which stir the blood as well as quicken the imagination. Such, among others, are "John Brown of Osawatomie" aud "Kearney at Seven Pines." Perhaps the finest recent examples of exquisitely subtile imagination working under the impulse of profound sen- timent are to be found in the little vol- ume entitled " Poems by H. H." (Mrs. Helen Hunt). We have space only to mention the names of Jones Very, Celia Thaxter, Mrs. Lippin- cott (Grace Greenwood), H.H.BrownelhWill Carleton (author of Farm Ballads), Alice and Phcebe Cary, and Mrs. L. C. Monlton, though each would justify a detailed criticism. The limits of this essay do not admit the mention of every author who is worthy of notice. The reader must be referred for de- tails to the various volumes of Dr. R. W. Griswold, to the Cyclopedia of American Lit- erature, by E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, to the useful Manual of American Literature, by Dr. John S. Hart, and the excellent Hand- Book of American Literature, by F. H. Un- derwood. Still, before concluding, it may be well to mention some names without which even so limited a view of American literature as the present would be incom- plete. And, first, honor is due to Henry T. Tuckermau, who for nearly forty years was the associate of American authors, and who labored, year after year, to diffuse a taste for literature by his articles in reviews and magazines. He belonged to the class of appreciative critics, and was never more pleased than when he exercised the resources of a cultivated mind to analyze, explain, and celebrate the merits of others. Richard Grant White, a critic of an austerer order, has for some time been engaged literally in a war of words. In the minutiae of English philology he has rarely met an antagonist he has not overthrown. In these encounters he has displayed wit, learning, logic, a per- fect command of his subject, an imperfect command of his temper. The positiveness of his statements, however, seems always to come from the certainty of his knowledge. In his admirable edition of Shakspeare, and in his Life and Genius of Shakspeare, he has exhibited his rare critical faculty at its best. Henry N. Hudson, also an editor, biographer, and critic of Shakspeare, has specially shown his masterly power of analysis in comment- ing on the characters of the dramatist. Henry Giles, in two or three volumes of bi- ography and criticism, has proved that clear perceptions, nice distinctions, and sound sense can be united with a rush of eloquence which seems too rapid for the pausing doubt of discriminating judgment. S. A. Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, with its 46,000 names, is one of those prodigies of labor which ex- cite not only admiration, but astonishment. George P. Marsh, one of the most widely ac- complished of American scholars, is princi- pally known as the author of Lectures on the English Language and of The English Language and Early English Literature, both critical works of a high class. The greatest com- THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 397 parative philologist the country has pro- duced, William D. Whitney, has, like Max Miiller, in Englaud, popularized some of the results of his investigation in an admirable volume on Language, and the Study of Lan- guage. The theological literature of the United States covers so wide a field that it would he wild to attempt to characterize here even its eminent representatives. We can give only a few names. Henry Ward Beecher, the most widely renowned pulpit and plat- form orator of the country, is more remark- able for the general largeness and opulence of his nature than for the possession of any exceptional power of mind or extent of ac- quisition. As a theological scholar, or, in- deed, as a trained and accurate writer, no- body would think of comparing him with Francis Wayland, or Leonard Bacon, or Ed- wards A. Park, or Frederick H. Hedge. In depth of spiritual insight, though not in depth of spiritual emotion, he is inferior to Horace Bushnell, Cyrus A. Bartol, and many other American divines. He feels spiritual facts intensely ; he beholds them with wa- vering vision. But his distinction is that he is a formidable, almost irresistible, moral force. His influence comes from the con- joint and harmonious action of his whole blood and brain and will and soul, and his magnetism being thus both physical and mental, he communicates his individuality in the act of radiating his thoughts, and thus Beecherizes his readers as he Beecherizes his audiences. He overpowers where he fails to convince. The reader, but especial- ly the listener, is brought into direct con- tact or collision not only with a thinker and a stirrer up of the emotions, but with a strong, resolute, intrepid man. As Emer- son would say, he could mob a mob, and compel it to submit. This continual sense of conscious power impels him into many imprudences and indiscretions, and stamps on what he says, and what he writes, and what he does, a character of haste and ex- temporaneousness. No man could throw off such an amount of intellectual work as he performs, who thought comprehensively or who thought deeply ; for the comprehensive thinker hesitates, the deep thinker doubts ; but hesitation and doubt are foreign to Mr. Beecher's intellectual constitution, and only intrude into his consciousness in those occa- sional reactions caused by the moral fatigue resulting now and then from his hurried, headlong intellectual movement. Observa- tion, sense, wit, humor, fancy, sentiment, moral perception, moral might, are all in- cluded and fused in the large individuali- ty whose mode of action we have ventured to sketch. There are some books which it is diffi- cult to class. Thus, Richard H. Dana, Jun., published some thirty years ago a volume called Two Years Before the Mast, which be- came instantly popular, is popular now, and promises to be popular for many years to come. In reading it any body can see that it is more than an ordinary record of a voyage, for there runs through the simple and lucid narrative an element of beauty and power which gives it the artistic charm of romance. Again, Six Months in Italy, by George S. Hillard, and Notes of Travel and Study in Italy, by Charles E. Norton, would be superficially classed among books of travel, but they are essentially works of lit- erature, and their chief worth consists in descriptions of natural scenery, in pointed reflection, in delicate criticism of works of art. The volume entitled White Hills, by Thomas Starr King, apparently intended merely to describe the mountain region of New Hampshire, is all aglow with a glad inspiration drawn from the ardent soul and teeming mind of the writer. Charles T. Brooks would generally be classed as a trans- lator, but being a poet, he has so translated the novels of Richter that he has domesti- cated them in our language. Such trans- lations are greater efforts of intelligence and imagination than many original works. Horace Mann's reports as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education rank with legislative documents, yet they are really eloquent treatises, full of matter, but of mat- ter burning with passion and blazing with imagery. Suhstance and Shadow, by Henry James, might be classed either with theo- logical or metaphysical works, were it not that the writer, while treating on the deep- est questions which engage the attention of theologians and metaphysicians, stretch- es both theologians and metaphysicians on the rack of his pitiless analysis, and showers upon them all the boundless stores of his 398 A CENTURY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. ridicule. Miss Mary A. Dodge (Gail Hamil- ton) might be styled an essayist, but that would be but a vague term to denote a writ- er who takes up all classes of subjects, is tart, tender, shrewish, pathetic, monitory, objurgatory, tolerant, prejudiced, didactic, aud dramatic by turns, but always writing with so much point, vigor, and freshness that we can only classify her amoug "reada- ble" authors. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, schol- ar, critic, teacher, translator, metaphysician, philanthropist, revolutionist, a pythoness in a transcendental coterie, a nurse in a sol- diers' hospital, a martyr heroine on board a wrecked ship — we can only say of her that she was a woman. There is a delightful book entitled Yesterdays with Authors, by James T. Fields — a combination of gossip, biography, and criticism, but refusing to be ranked with either, and depending for its interest on the life-like pictures it presents of such men as Hawthorne, Dickens, aud Thackeray in their hours of familiar talk and correspondence. There is also one work of such pretension that it should not be omitted here, namely, Outlines of Cosmic Phi- losophy, based on the Doctrine of Evolution, by John Fiske. It is mainly a lucid exposition of the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, with the addition of original and critical matter. The breadth and strength of understanding, the fullness of information, the command of expression, in this book are worthy of all commendation. The curious thing in it is that the author thinks that a new religion is to be established on the co-ordination of the sciences, and of this religion, whose God is the "Unknowable," he is a pious believer. In conclusion, we can only allude to the intellectual force, the various talents and accomplishments, employed in the leading newspapers of the country. During the past thirty years these journals have swarmed with all kinds of anonymous ability. Though the articles appeared to die with the day or week on which they were printed, they re- ally passed, for good or evil, into the gener- al mind as vital influences, shaping public opinion and forming public taste. It would be difficult, for example, to estimate the be- neficent action on our literature of such a critic and scholar as George Ripley, who for many years directed the literary department of a widely circulated newspaper. The range of his learning was equal to every de- mand upon its resources ; the candor of his judgment answered to the comprehensive- ness of his taste ; the catholicity of his liter- ary sympathies led him to encourage every kind of literary talent on its first appear- ance ; and he was pure from the stain of that meanest form of egotism which grudges the recognition of merit in others, as if such a recognition was a diminution of its own importance. The great development, dur- ing a comparatively recent period, of the magazine literature of the country has had an important effect in stimulating and bring- ing forward new writers, some of whom promise to more than fill the places which their elders will soon leave vacant. It would be presumptuous to anticipate the verdict of the next generation as to which of these will fulfill the expectations raised by their early efforts. That pleasant duty must be left to the fortunate person who shall note the Centennial Progress of Ameri- can Literature in 1976. XIII. PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. PAUL BKVEHB. — [1735-1818.] THE growth of the arts of design in this country has been of necessity much slower than the national development in other directions. The early colonists had neither time nor inclination for the culture of art. They distrusted and restrained the imaginative faculty, which is the soul of art, and applied all their energies to the great practical tasks which confronted them on their arrival on the shores of the New World. They had the vast wilderness to subdue, houses to build for themselves and their children, to found commonwealths on the broad basis of liberty and justice, and for many generations were compelled to maintain fierce warfare with crafty and cru- el foes allied with the civilized enemies of the religious freedom which they had fled hither to establish. If the early New En- gland colonists gave any thought to art they probably regarded it as one of the forms of luxurious vanity and license be- longing to a state of society which they held in abhorrence, and from which they were resolved to keep their land of refuge free. Allowance must also be made for the force of circumstances. The struggle for mere subsistence was too severe for the in- dulgence of the imagination. The only graces known to the early colonists were the austere virtues of their rigid theology. To adorn the home or the person was in their eyes a sinful waste of time, which could be well employed only in the practi- cal duties of the present life and in pre- paring for the next. The influence of this stern training was of long duration ; it still exists, indeed, in the prejudice to be found in many communities against the presence of pictures or sculpture in houses of wor- ship, although this may be partially as- cribed to the old Puritan revolt against Romish practices. With the physical development of the country, and the consequent freedom from the harassing cares which had kept the thoughts of the early colonists on the arts of necessity, one form of luxury after an- other crept in upon the homely life of our ancestors. Pictures began to find their way here from the Old World, and artists began to visit the colonies. It is probable that they met with many discouragements and but scanty patronage, for few authentic traces have been preserved of those early pioneers of art. Cotton Mather, in his Mag- nolia, refers to a " limner," but he gives us no name. One of the first of whom we have other than vague traditions was a native of Scotland, John Watson by name, who came to the colonies in 1715, and established him- self as a portrait painter at Perth Amboy, then a flourishing commercial rival of New York, In a building adjoining his dwell- ing-house he established the first picture- gallery in America. The collection was probably of little value. Watson, who com- bined the art of portrait painting with the business of a money-lender, amassed a con- siderable fortune. He never married, and dying in 1768, at the age of eighty-three, 400 PROGRESS OF THE FINE AETS. : JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY. — [1737-1815.] left his wealth and his pictures to a neph- ew. Taking sides with the loyalists in 1776, the nephew was compelled to flee the coun- try. The deserted picture-gallery, left to the mercies of the undisciplined militia, was broken up, and the collection of paint- ings was so effectually scattered that all trace of them was lost. None of the por- traits executed by Watson are known to be in existence, and he is remembered only as an obscure pioneer in the culture and development of a taste for the fine arts in this country. To John Smybert, also a Scotchman, Amer- ican art is more largely indebted. He came to this country in 1728 with Dean Berkeley, afterward Bishop of Cloyne, whose fellow- traveler he had been in Italy. The failure of the dean's grand scheme for the estab- lishment of a "universal college of science and arts for the instruction of heathen chil- dren in Christian duties and civil knowl- edge" left Smybert to the free exercise of his profession. Id early youth he had served his time, ways Horace Walpole, ". with a com- mon house painter ; but eager to handle a pencil in a more elevated style, he came to London, where, however, for a subsistence In- was compelled to content himself at first with working for coach painters. It was a little rise to be employed in copying for dealers, and from thence he obtained ad- mittance into the Academy. His efforts and ardor at last carried him to Italy, where he spent three years in copying Raphael, Titian, Vandyck, and Rubens, and improved enough to meet with much business at his return." Thus accomplished, Smybert was well fitted for a career in the New World, which pre- sented no rival in culture and experience. His talents appear to have been in great de- mand, and they were certainly used to good purpose. To his pencil we owe many excel- lent portraits of eminent divines and magis- trates of his time, and the only authentic portrait of Jonathan Edwards. His picture of the Berkeley household, now in the Yale College Gallery, is said to have been the first containing more than one figure ever paint- ed in this country. He may be said to have been the first teacher of art in America, as it was from his copy of a painting by Van- dyck that Allston, Copley, and Trumbull re- ceived their earliest inspiration and their first impressions of color and drawing. It was long before art received popular encouragement and support in this coun- try. True, Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Charles Wilson Peale, dated London, July 4, 1771, prophesied the future prosper- ity of art among his countrymen. "The arts," he says, " have always traveled west- ward ; and there is no doubt of their flour- ishing hereafter on our side of the Atlantic, as the number of wealthy inhabitants shall increase who may be able and willing suit- ably to reward them, since, from several in- stances, it appears that our people are not deficient in genius." But Trumbull, who spoke from experience, bluntly told a young aspirant for fame that he " had better learn to make shoes or dig potatoes than become a painter in this country." Year by year, however, partly through the influence of art associations, and partly through the influx of the works of foreign artists, the love of art became diffused among our people, and it is many years since American painters and sculptors could justly complain of the want of popular .appreciation. One cause of the slow growth of art sen- timent and art knowledge among Americans was the absence, even in the larger cities, of public and private galleries of paintings like those to which the people of every European PUBLIC AET GALLERIES. 401 BENJAMIN WEST. — [1738-1320.] city have constant access, and where they may become familiar with the works of the great masters of almost every age and coun- try. Of late years these opportunities have notably increased among us. Wealthy cit- izens of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Cincinnati, and other cities have accumulated extensive and valuable private galleries of the best works of native and foreign artists, and have evinced com- mendable liberality in opening their doors to the public. There are also fine galleries of paintings and statuary belougiug to so- cieties, like the Boston Athenaeum and our own Historical Society ; but to most of these the general public can not claim ad- mission, and their usefulness as a moans of art culture is, therefore, comparatively re- stricted. There should be iu every large city a public gallery of art, as in Paris, Ber- lin, Munich, London, Dresden, Florence, and other European cities, to which, on certain days of the week, access should be free to all. The influence of such institutions would be immense. There is many a working-man in Paris who knows more about pictures and statues than the majority of cultivated peo- ple in this country. He visits freely the magnificent galleries of the Louvre, hears artists and connoisseurs converse, and if he is a man of ordinary intelligence and per- ception, he acquires a knowledge of pictures and artists which can not be attained in a 26 country where such opportunities are rare, or only to be enjoyed either by payiug for them or by the favor of some private col- lector. True, the want of public art gal- leries has been in a measure supplied, in most of our large cities, by the collections of art dealers like Schaus and Goupil, who of late years have imported many of the finest specimens of the works of foreign artists, and who admit the public to their exhibition rooms without fee. But this privilege is, for the most part, confined to the educated and the wealthy. Rarely is a working-man or working-woman seen in these rooms, although no respectable and well-behaved person Avoidd be denied ad- mission. Enter the galleries of Paris, of Munich, or Dresden, on a holiday, and you will find hundreds of people belonging to the working classes, men, women, and chil- dren, feasting their eyes on the treasures of art, and filling their minds with love for the beautiful. The refining influence of such an education can not be overvalued. It may not be quite as useful as the practical in- struction of our common schools ; but while we can not subscribe to Ruskiu's opinion that it is more important that a child should learn to draw than that he should learn to write, there can be no question as to the ennobling and refining influence of art upon personal character and upon the community. The lack of this culture among GILBERT STUART. — [1754-1828.] 402 PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. our people only a few years ago was man- ifested by the commotion which Powers's "Greek Slave" made on its arrival in this country. Many persons questioned the pro- priety of exhibiting a nude statue. A dele- gation of distinguished clergymen was sent to view it, when it was at Cincinnati, for the purpose of deciding whether it should be " countenanced by religious people." Not many years ago a well-educated coun- try lady, visiting Boston for the first time in her life, was shocked to find a pretty and modest-looking young woman seated at the ticket table in the statue gallery of the Athe- naeum. The young woman was engaged in sewing-work. " She ought to employ her time in making aprons for these horrid, shameful statues," remarked the indignant visitor, as she left the room. Prejudices like these, the fruit of ignorance, are hap- pily dying out, and few traces of them will be found in the next generation. The American Art Union, founded in 1839, in imitation of the French Society des Amis des A rts, exerted an important influence upon American art culture. For upward of ten years it distributed annually from five hun- dred to more than a thousand works of art. Its yearly subscriptions reached the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. It issued a series of fine engravings from the works of American artists, and for several years pub- lished a bulletin embracing a complete rec- ord of the progress of art in this country, to- gether with much valuable and interesting information regarding the arts and artists of Europe. Through the agency of its com- missions several American artists, who have since attained high rank in their profession, were first brought to public notice. The institution was broken up about ton years after its organization on account of the vio- lation, by its method of distributing prizes, of the State laws against lotteries. But during the period of its existence it accom- plished much toward awakening a love of art throughout the country, and it deserves to be gratefully remembered for its services in this direction. In one respect, however, the Art Union was the indirect means of temporary harm. Through its activity America was revealed to the proprietors of the great picture manu- factories of Italy and Belgium as a new and promising field for the sale of their wretch- ed copies and imitations. Thousands of these vile productions were palmed off upon innocent persons in this country as genuine works by old or modern masters of note. The writer was once present at an auction sale of such a collection in a flourishing city in the western part of this State. There was great excitement over it. Here were " old masters" by the dozen, their genuineness at- tested by printed labels on the back of the frames giving names and dates, while the catalogue, filled with glowing praises of the artists and their works, made no mention of copies. The pictures were marvelously cheap. A Madonna by Raphael sold for thirty dollars, frame and all; a large pic- ture by Rubens for about the same price ; and landscapes by Claude, Ruysdael, and others brought from ten to twenty dollars each, according to the expensiveness of the frames. This was about twenty-five years ago. Thanks to the general advance of culture and knowledge, there is now prob- ably hardly a village, and certainly not a city, in the country where such an imposi- tion could be attempted without detection. Most of the "old masters" purchased at these sales have long since found their appropri- ate resting-place in the lumber-room. The National Academy of Design, in this city, has unquestionably exerted a most im- portant influence on the culture of art in America, and in the diffusion of the knowl- edge and love of art among the people. The present organization was preceded by an association of artists formed in 1801 under the name of the New York Academy of Fine Arts. Seven years later it received the act of incorporation, under the name of the American Academy of Fine Arts, and Chan- cellor Livingston was chosen president ; Colonel John Trumbull, vice-president ; De Witt Clinton, David Hosack, John R. Mur- ray, William Cutting, and Charles Wilkes, directors. Through the instrumentality of the American minister at Paris, the Emper- or Napoleon presented to the institution many valuable busts, antique statues, and rare prints. There was still, however, so little general support afforded by the com- munity, and picture buyers were so few, that the enterprise languished from the first, and it was saved from total dissolution only by THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN. 403 the temporary accession of Vanderlyn's cel- ebrated " Ariadne," afterward so admirably engraved by Durand, and certain pictures of West, in 1816. These important addi- tions to its collection enabled the institu- tion for a time to tide over the danger which threatened its existence. A school of in- struction, with models and art lectures, was also organized, in the hope of reviving pop- ular interest in the Academy, but want of means to carry out the plan on a broad and liberal foundation interfered with the work- ing of the project ; and a fire, which destroy- ed a great part of its models and drawings, in 1828, gave the coup de grace to an insti- tution which had been dying by slow de- grees. The American Academy of Fine Arts hav- ing given up the ghost, another institution was formed to take its place and carry on the work it had begun — the National Acad- emy of Design, of which the first president was Professor Morse, whose invention of the electric telegraph, some years later, cast his artistic career wholly in the shade. Found- ed on a broader basis than its predecessor, and meeting more fully the wishes and aims of the artists, the new institution speedily acquired strength and popularity, and it is to-day the most important and most influen- tial art society in the United States. The most eminent painters and sculptors of America are enrolled among its members. Its management has frequently subjected the Academy to sharp animadversion, some- times not undeserved, from those who deem- ed it too conservative, not to say illiberal, for the progressive tendency of the age ; but none can be so unjust as to deny that its general course has tended to the ele- vation of American art and the popular dif- fusion of art culture. Nor should fauli be too rashly found with its acknowledged conservatism. The best and most enduring reforms are those which come slowly, in obedience to the demands of long expe- rience and mature consideration, while nothing can be worse, in a society as well as in the state, than capricious and hasty changes, which frequently introduce abuses more objectionable than the old. For more than a third of a century the National Academy, to use the words of Bry- ant's address on laying the corner-stone of the Academy building, "had a nomadic ex- istence, pitching its tent now here, now there, as convenience might dictate, but never possessing a permanent seat." At length the munificence of art-loving citizens of New York enabled the society to erect a building well suited to its purposes and worthy of the great city in which it stands. The corner-stone was laid October 19, 1863, and the first exhibition was held in the com- pleted building in the spring of 1865. The Academy building, on the corner of Twenty- third Street and Fourth Avenue, is a hand- some structure in the style of the celebrated Doge's palace at Venice. It is built of mar- ble, banded with graywacke, with simple COLONEL JOIIN TRUMBULL. — [1756-1843.] and appropriate decorations. The cost of the ground and building was about two hundred thousand dollars, a large part of which was contributed by citizens of New York. There are six exhibition galleries, in- cluding the corridor, which for the present afford all the space required for the Acad- emy aud water-color exhibitions ; but an enlargement will be necessary in the near future to meet the increasing demands for room. Philadelphia was not far behind New York in establishing an Academy of Art. In December, 1805, a meeting of seveuty gentlemen of that city, most of them mem- bers of the bar, was held in Independence Hall for the purpose of considering the proj- ect. Their deliberations resulted in the 404 PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. AXEXANDER ANDERSON. — [1TT5-1S70.] signing of articles of agreement, the origi- nal of which is still preserved, providing for the creation of an Art Academy, which was pledged " to promote the cultivation of the Fine Arts in the United States of America, by introducing correct and elegant copies from works of the first masters in Sculpture and Painting." George Clymer, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was elect- ed first president of the association ; of the twelve directors only two were professional artists — William Rush and Charles Wilson Peale. Benjamin West, as the most distin- guished son of Pennsylvania in the ranks of art, was elected an honorary member of the Academy. He was then under a cloud in his adopted country. His royal patron had become insane, and the Prince Regent had withdrawn the commission for the dec- oration of Windsor Chapel with a series of large pictures on the progress of Revealed Religion. He was sixty-seven years old, and this recognition from his native State, coming at a time when he was smarting un- der a sharp disappointment, deeply touched the venerable painter's heart. " Be assured, gentlemen," he wrote in reply, "that that election I shall ever retain as an honor from a relative." Robert Fulton, artist and in- ventor, and Bushrod Washington were the next honorary members after West. Unlike its New York rival, the Philadel- phia Academy made haste to provide for itself a permanent home. The society's charter, procured in the spring of 1806, makes mention of a building then near completion. It Avas of simple design and well proportioned. Its main feature was the " Rotunda" — a handsome circular room with a domed ceiling. The first exhibition was held in March, 1806. The collection of works of art contained over fifty casts of antique statues from the Louvre, two Shaks- pearean paintings by West, and a few oth- er pictures by European artists. The ladies of Philadelphia appear to have been pecul- iarly sensitive on the subject of nude stat- uary, and one day in the week the Academy was thrown open for their exclusive benefit. Gradually the Academy acquired a large and valuable collection of paintings and casts, many of them bequests from wealthy citizens. In 1811, in conjunction with the Society of Artists, it gave its first annual exhibition. The second, in 1812, was marked by the presence of several important works by American artists, evincing the progress made by native talent. In 1816 the Acad- emy collection was enriched with a noble painting by Allston, "The dead Man revived by touching the Relics of Elisha," and also by Leslie's " Clifford" — a fine composition, taken from the scene in Henry VI. where Clifford murders the young Plantagenet, Rutland. The collection gradually increased in val- ue by gifts and judicious purchases, and at the time of the destruction of the building by fire, in 1845, it was without a rival in America. A valuable Murillo, a represen- tation of the " Carita Romana," or Roman Daughter, bought in Spain from the collec- tion of Joseph Bonaparte, perished in the flames, with many other paintings, casts, and statues in marble. The Academy soon recovered from this disaster. It now pos- sesses a valuable gallery of statuary, com- prising modern works in marble and casts from the antique, a permanent gallery of paintings, consisting of about a hundred and fifty works by native and foreign art- ists, and an excellent library. Its new building, the opening of which will be one of the most interesting features of the Cen- tennial celebration, is a noble structure, ad- mirably suited to the purposes for which it is designed. It is only within a recent period that the THE WATER-COLOR SOCIETY. 405 beautiful art of painting in water -color, long since carried to perfection in England, became popular in this country. It had many stubborn prejudices to contend with. Works in water-color looked slight and un- substantial compared with those in oil, and a taste for them had to be created and fos- tered. In the Academy exhibitions a cor- ner was usually set apart for them, but they were generally few in number and of trifling value. The first organized movement in the direction of a water -color society in this country was made in 1850, when a class was started in New York for study from life, the sketches being made in water-color. The members were for the most part well-known designers or engravers. They held their meetings every fortnight. In December, 1850, this " class" adopted a constitution, and thus formed the first Society of Paint- ers in Water-Colors in the United States. There are* records of meetings held from time to time until the opening of the Crys- tal Palace in this city in 1853. Then each member of the society contributed a speci- men of his work. The collection was hung by itself on a screen, and was specified in the catalogue of the exhibition as "Water- color Paintings by Members of the New York Water- color Society." This was a dying effort. Nothing was ever heard of the society again. » REMBRANDT PEAI.E. — [1778-1860.] WASHINGTON ALI.STON. — [1779-1843.] With the exception of one or two foreign collections, nothing more was seen of water- color paintings in this country until the autumn of 1866, when the Artists' Fund So- ciety, in its annual exhibition held in the National Academy of Design, made a feat- ure of this branch of art. Mainly through the efforts of Mr. John M. Falconer, an en- thusiast in water -colors, the society was able to fill the East Gallery and part of the corridor with a fine collection of works by native and foreign artists. Encouraged by the pleasure manifested by the art-loving public, which then for the first time had the opportunity to judge of the real capabilities of water-color painting, a number of artists at once started a project for the organiza- tion of a water-color society which might popularize this beautiful art on this side of the Atlantic. A call signed by Samuel Col- man, William Hart, Gilbert Burling, and William Craig was sent out to all the pro- fessional and amateur artists who were known to be interested in the movement. The result was the organization, in Decem- ber, 1866, of the present flourishing institu- tion of "The American Society of Painters in Water-Colors." The first exhibition of the new society was held in the galleries of the National Academy of Design, under Academy manage- ment, in connection with the fall and win- ter exhibition of oil-paintings. It was in many respects a successful experiment. The collection contained nearly three hundred 406 PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. works, among -which were many crude and insipid compositions side by side with works of great value and still greater promise. The public was pleased with the novelty; the water-color galleries were crowded day and evening with admiring spectators. But the sales were few. The public admired, but did not buy. But the water-colorists were not discouraged. They clung to their work, firm in the faith that as knowledge ripened, their reward would come. Each year witnessed a marked improvement in their exhibition, both in the number and quality of the works exposed to view. The exhibition of 1874 filled all the Academy galleries except one, which is considered un- favorable to the proper display of water- colors, and the hanging committee was obliged, for want of room and other reasons, to return almost as many pictures as were exhibited in 1867. The popular prejudice against water-colors gave way to a just ap- preciation. During the first four exhibi- tions the number of sales could almost be counted upon one's fingers ; but during the six weeks of the exhibition of 1874 the sales of water-colors on the walls amounted to $20,000, a success unprecedented in this coun- try. Now that it pays to paint in water- colors, the permanent success of the society depends only upon the members and the ex- ercise of good judgment in the conduct of its affairs. Its exhibitions, although held in the Academy building, are no longer un- der the management of the National Acad- emy, nor in connection with its exhibitions. The water-color society has an active mem- bership of fifty-four artists. Its financial affairs are in a flourishing condition, and there is every reason to predict for it a brill- iant future. Plans have already been per- fected which will secure for the society a creditable display at the Centennial Exhi- bition at Philadelphia, when the country will have an opportunity to see what our artists have been able to do toward rivaling those of England in this important branch of painting. Turning from these societies, the most im- portant art associations in the United States, to special departments of art, we come first to the consideration of portraiture, which was pursued with more success than any other branch before and immediately after the Revolution. Benjamin West, whose ca- reer, like that of John Singleton Copley, be- longs mainly to England, began portrait painting in 1753, and had he not forsaken it for historical and religious painting, his fame would probably have been more endur- ing. Of the immense number of paintings executed by him during his long career, es- timated at upward of three thousand, only one — " The Death of Wolfe" — rises appre- ciably above the dead level of Academical mediocrity. His mind, hopelessly devoid of imagination, constantly aspired to the treatment of themes which might well ap- pall the most daring genius — such, for ex- ample, as "Moses receiving the Law on Mount Sinai," "The Opening of the Seventh Seal in the Revelations," " The Mighty An- gel with one Foot on the Sea and the other on the Earth," etc. A pretty story is told of his first attempts at painting. Inspired at the age of nine by the sight of some en- gravings and the gift of a paint-box, he used to play truant from school, " and as soon as he got out of sight of his father and mother, he would steal up to his garret, and there pass the hours in a world of his own. At last, after he had been absent from school some days, the master called at his father's house to inquire what had become of him. This led to the discovery of his secret occu- pation. His mother, proceeding to the gar- ret, found the truant ; but so much was she astonished and delighted by the creations of his pencil, which also met her view when she entered the apartment, that, instead of rebuking him, she could only take him in her arms and kiss him with transports of affection." Doubtless many other soft- hearted mothers have thus greeted what they fondly imagined to be the dawning of genius in their offspring, but with conse- quences less appalling. The young artist went early to Rome, where his appearance, coming from the far Western world, excited curious interest and attention. Crowds fol- lowed him to observe the impressions cre- ated by the marvels he encountered. On the completion of his studies, which he pur- sued with assiduity, he went to England, there soon afterward married, and there re- mained until his death, at the age of seven- ty-nine. But a very small number of his works are owned in this country. His WEST AND COPLEY. 407 " Christ healing the Sick," presented hy the artist to the Pennsylvania Hospital, is still in the possession of that institution. It was once greatly admired. The Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts owns his "Death on the Pale Horse ;" his "Christ Rejected" and his "Cupid" are also owned in that city. His " Lear" may be seen in the gallery of the Boston Athenaeum. Two of his pic- tures, illustrating scenes from the Iliad, be- long to the collection of the New York His- torical Society. It must be remembered to his honor that he was the first historical painter to break through the absurd Aca- demical traditions which required modern subjects to be painted in the so-called clas- sic style. When his " Death of Wolfe" was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Loudon, the adherents of the old style " complained of the barbarism of boots, buttons, and blun- derbusses, and cried out for naked warriors with bows, bucklers, and battering-rams." Reynolds and the Archbishop of York re- monstrated with West against his daring innovation. The artist calmly replied that " the event to be commemorated happened in the year 1758, in a region of the world unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and at a period when no warrior who wore classic costume existed. The same rule which gave law to the historian should govern the paint- er." Reynolds was at length compelled to acknowledge the justice of the popular ver- dict in favor of the new style, and to declare that "West has conquered. I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will occasion a revo- lution in art." West was a sensible, kind- ly man, of pure life and lofty aims. His ambition, unhappily, was far beyond his ca- pacity as an artist, and his fame has stead- ily declined since his death. His highest distinction as an artist was his elevation to the presidency of the Royal Academy. Copley's American career closed with the beginning of the Revolution. He was born in Boston on the 3d of July, 1737, and died in London on the 25th of September, 1815. He was the only native painter of real genius and culture of whom the New World could boast prior to the Declaration of In- dependence ; and the skill and assiduity with which he pursued his profession are attested by the number of portraits from THOMAS SULLY. — [1783-1872.] his pencil which still exist in the possession of old families in New England, and occa- sionally in the Southern States. It has been said that the possession of one of these ancestral portraits is an American's best title of nobility. Chiefly celebrated for his portraits, Copley also attempted historical compositions, a department of art in which he received but little encouragement, al- though the " Death of Chatham," and " The Death of Major Pierson," the latter being regarded as his greatest work, evinced con- siderable power of composition and color. Dunlap, in his scrappy but entertaining history of the arts of design in America, gives the names of a large number of por- trait painters, native and foreign, who flour- ished during colonial and Revolutionary times in this country. Most of them have been long forgotten, and but few merit at- tention at the present day. There was Wol- laston, who painted several portraits in Phil- adelphia in 1758, and afterward in Maryland. His portrait of Mrs. Washington was en- graved for Sparks's biography of our first President. Judge Hopkinson paid him a tribute in commonplace verse in the Ameri- can Magazine for September, 1758. In many of the older dwellings in Maryland may be found portraits from the pencil of Hesselius, an English painter of respectable capacity, settled in Annapolis in 1763. Cosmo Alex- ander, who came to this country in 1770 and 408 PEOGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. remained a year, was Stuart's first instructor in art. His best-known work is a portrait of the Hon. John Ross, a prominent member of the Philadelphia bar. Blackburn, an En- glishman, a contemporary of Smybert, paint- ed several excellent portraits during a brief visit to this country, which are still held in high esteem. The name of Robert E. Pine is chiefly remembered for his portrait of Washington. This artist brought to Amer- ica the earliest cast of the Venus de' Medici, " which was privately exhibited to the se- lect few — the manners and morals of the Quaker City forbidding its exposure to the iiiiitiiiiiii iiiiiiiiii FBOITE8SOB MORSE. — [1T91-1S72.] common eye." Pine sympathized with the American cause, and projected a grand se- ries of historical paintings to illustrate the events of the Revolutionary war. His plan also comprehended the portraits of leading generals and statesmen. Invited to Mount Vernon in 1785, he passed three weeks at that place, and produced a portrait of Wash- ington which is believed by many to be a more correct and characteristic likeness of the man than the later and better-known portrait by Stuart. Passing over several names on which it would be pleasant to dwell if space permit- ted, we come to Charles Wilson Peale, the first painter of Washington. He was born in Chestertown, Maryland, in 1741. Deter- mining at an early age on the profession of portrait painting, he first sought instruction in Philadelphia, and afterward in Boston, where he studied Copley's pictures. In 1770 he went to England, and there studied with West, who, with his usual kindness, opened his heart and purse to the poor and strug- gling artist. Peale returned home after a residence of about four years abroad, and became an officer in the Revolutionary army. " He did not," says Tuckerman, " forget the artist in the soldier, but sedulously improved his leisure in camp by sketching from nature, and by transferring to his portfolio many heads which afterward he elaborated for his gallery of national portraits." His portrait of Washington as a Virginia colonel, well known through the art of engraving, pos- sesses a historical value as great as its ar- tistic merit. It was painted in 1772, and is the earliest authentic likeness of Washing- ton in existence. A subsequent portrait was executed by Peale in compliance with a res- olution of Congress, passed before the oc- cupation of Philadelphia. "Its progress," writes Titian R. Peale to a friend, "marks the vicissitudes of the Revolutionary strug- gle. Commenced in the gloomy winter and half-famished encampment at Valley Forgo in 1778, the battles of Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth intervened before its com- pletion. At the last place Washington sug- gested that the view from the window of the farm-house opposite to which he was sitting would form a desirable background. Peale adopted the idea, and represented Mon- mouth Court-house, and a party of Hessians under guard marching out of it." Congress adjourned without making an appropriation for the payment of the artist, and the por- trait remained on his hands. The testimony of contemporaries stamps this picture as a most faithful likeness of Washington in the prime of life. Peale painted fourteen por- traits of Washington, of which the two we have mentioned are the most important. His career was long and honorable. His talent as a portrait painter in oil and min- iature was in constant demand far and wide, not only in this country, but by sitters from Canada and the West Indies. He died, re- GILBERT STUAET. 409 vered and regretted, at the age of eighty- four, in 1826. His son, Rembrandt Peale, at the age of eighteen, made a pencil sketch of Washington, and long afterward painted a portrait of him from memory, assisted by Houdin's bust. We must pass with only brief mention the names of William Dunlap, chiefly known for his history of the arts of design ; Robert Fulton, more celebrated as an inventor than as an artist ; John Wesley Jarvis, genial, gifted, and erratic ; Malbone, like Jarvis, cel- ebrated for his success in miniature paint- ing ; Chester Harding, once the rival of Stu- art in portraiture ; Gilbert Stuart Newton, whose memory is affectionately honored in Leslie's autobiography ; C. C. Ingham, one of the last of the old generation of por- trait painters ; and Morse, who early forsook painting, and w T hose name is connected with the most important invention of this centu- ry, the electric telegraph. Contemporary with these artists were many who achieved high reputation in their day, but whose names are now known only through the annals of art societies. One of the greatest portrait painters of America, Gilbert Charles Stuart, was also one of the earliest. He was born in Narra- gauset, Rhode Island, in 1754, according to an anecdote of his own, quoted by Dunlap, in a snuff mill, the first in New England, erected by his father. In after -years he dropped his middle name, which had been HENEY INMAN.— [1S01-1S46.] THOMAS OOLE.— [1801-1848.] given to him at his baptism to signify his father's fidelity to the royal house of Stuart. He commenced portrait painting at Newport, Rhode Island; was taken to Edinburgh at the age of eighteen ; resided several years in London, where his success was marked, and passed some time in Dublin and Paris. In 1793 Stuart returned to this countiy, and from that time till his death, at Boston, in 1828, pursued a career of remarkable indus- try and ability. Many of the most famous statesmen of America sat to him, and his portraits of Washington, John Adams, Jef- ferson, Monroe, and other distinguished men are well known through engravings. Our ideas of Washington's personal appearance are derived from Stuart rather than from Pine or Peale. He also painted an immense number of society portraits. His works are widely scattered on both sides of the Atlan- tic. In power of drawing and expression, and in truth and purity of color, his por- traits stand almost without rival in Ameri- can or European art. He was great in the portrayal of individual character. Allston declared that he "seemed to dive into the thoughts of men, for they were made to live and speak on the surface." The same ad- mirable artist has also well said that Stuart " was, in its widest sense, a philosopher in his art. He thoroughly understood its prin- ciples, as his works bear witness, whether as to harmony of colors or of lines, or of light and shadow, showing that exquisite sense 410 PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. HORATIO GREENOUGH. — [1805-1S52.] of a whole which only a man of genius can realize and embody. Of this not the least admirable instance is his portrait of John Adams, whose bodily tenement at the time seemed rather to present the image of a di- lapidated castle than the habitation of the unbroken mind. But not such is the pic- ture. Called forth from its crumbling re- cesses, the living tenant is there, still enno- bling the ruin, and upholdiug it, as it were, by the strength of his inner life." Stuart painted but three portraits of Washington from life, but made twenty-six copies of these originals. There is a certain weak- ness about the mouth, Washington having lost his teeth when the originals were paint- ed, but the general bearing is noble and dig- nified; and we may congratulate ourselves, with Leslie, " that a painter existed in the time of Washington who could hand him down looking like a gentleman." To sketch even in outline the career of every American artist who has achieved ce- lebrity in portraiture or any other branch of art would extend this article into a good- sized volume. Among those artists who be- longed partly to the last and partly to the present century, and whose genius has left a deep impression upon American art, may be mentioned John Vanderlyn, whose "Ari- adne" and "Marius" are justly celebrated, and who has given us the best portraits ex- tant of Madison, Monroe, Randolph, Clin- ton, Calhoun, and other eminent Americans ; and Thomas Sully, a native of England, but whose career belongs to America, and whose portraits are distinguished by exquisite grace and refinement. To the present century be- long many eminent names, such as Henry Inman, happiest in portraiture, but also charming in landscape, and the first Amer- ican artist who attempted genre painting with success ; William Page, who emulates Titian and Veronese as a colorist, whose portraits rank among the noblest of mod- ern times, and whose Venetian reproduc- tions have excited the highest admiration as well as the severest criticism; Charles Loring Elliot, whose portraits are distin- guished by richness of color, a manly sim- plicity and force of execution, combined with a subtile grasp of individuality which no other American portrait painter has evinced in an equal degree ; Daniel Hun- tington, whose versatile pencil, not confined to any single branch of art, is equally happy in portraiture, landscape, genre, and historic- al painting; Oliver Stone, recently deceased, whose portraits of women and children, in which he chiefly excelled, are characterized by a peculiar grace and refinement ; Thomas Le Clear; Richard M. Staigg, who, besides the exquisite ivory miniatures by which he is chiefly known, has shown a happy talent in genre painting; George A. Baker, whose portraits of women and children are of rare beauty and refinement. Other names might be mentioned did not want of space forbid. Historical painting has not found in Amer- ica the encouragement accorded to other branches of art, partly, perhaps, because we have never had a really great historical painter, and partly because the genius of the age does not favor it. Colonel John Trumbull attempted to depict the events of the Revolution in a series of large historical tableaux, which are now chiefly valued for the faithful portraits they contain of the soldiers and statesmen of that time. His sketches and studies for these works show a vigor and grasp which are wanting in the larger canvases. His " Death of Montgom- ery," the "Signing of the Declaration of In- dependence," and the "Battle of Bunker Hill," and others of his important works, exhibit considerable skill in grouping and composition, but it would have been better for his fame had nothing remained but the original sketches and portraits. His talent WASHINGTON ALLSTON. 411 is displayed to greater advantage in the " Trumbull Gallery" at New Haven than in the national Capitol. As aid-de-camp to General Washington in the early part of the Revolution, Colonel Trumbull enjoyed peculiar facilities for studying his character and features under the most varied circum- stances, and his portrait of him now in the gallery at New Haven is full of soldierly spirit. By contemporaries, to whom it re- called the leader of the American armies, it was preferred to Stuart's. Pre-eminent among American historical painters stands the honored name of Wash- ington Allston ; yet even of him it must be said that performance lagged far behind de- sign, and that his fame is in great part the legacy of contemporary admiration. The quality of his genius was akin to that of the old masters of religious art. It might be said of him that he painted for antiquity. His mind, even in youth inclined to serious contemplation, was moulded by early study of the old masters, and the results of this training may be traced in all his works. It was to him that Fuseli bluntly said, "You have come a great way to starve," when the young American, on his first visit to Lon- don, announced his purpose to devote him- self to historical painting. Nothing daunt- ed, Allston pursued his studies in England, France, and Italy with unflagging diligence, and with the grand goal of his ambition con- stantly in view. His earliest large picture, "The Dead Man Revived," obtained the prize of two hundred guineas from the British In- stitution, and was soon after purchased by the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. This was followed by a long list of impor- tant works, many of which are owned in England, where Allston enjoys even greater repute than in his own country. He suf- fered much from feeble health and from pe- cuniary embarrassment, and one of his most important works, " Belshazzar's Feast," re- mained, in consequence, unfinished at his death. His first studies for this painting were made in London in 1817. At intervals he worked upon it for nearly thirty years, and was engaged upon it on the last day of his life. Even in its unfinished state it attests the grandeur of the artist's conception, but it also reveals in a striking degree the lim- itations of his genius, chiefly the vacillation of thought, the wavering choice, displayed in changes of plan and apparent dissatisfac- tion with parts of the work as it proceeded. Allston himself regarded this picture as his greatest composition ; to finish it worthily was the desire of his heart ; but his genius found its best expression in some of his less ambitious paintings, in which his refined sense of the beautiful, his love of the grace- ful, and his intimate knowledge of form are allowed free play, untrammeled by the strug- gle to paint in the " grand style." Historical painting in America has been mainly, thus far at least, the reflex of Euro- pean schools of art. Trumbull's style was formed in London under the tuition of Ben- HIRAM POWERS. — [1805-1873.] jamin West, Allston's by long and conscien- tious study of the great masters of the Vene- tian schools, and Emanuel Leutze, our most vigorous and prolific historical painter in recent times, the engraving from whose pic- ture of "Washington crossing the Delaware" has carried his name into every American household, was the disciple of Lessing, with whom he studied at Dusseldorf. The con- ditions of American society are not, indeed, favorable to the development of this branch of art, which can not flourish without a pat- ronage which does not exist in this country. Our government patronage has been a posi- tive detriment to art. With few exceptions, the national commissions have been award- 412 PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. ed to artists of inferior merit, whose success was often due to lobby influence. The con- sequence is that the national paintings at Washington are, with a few worthy excep- tions, a national disgrace. A blank white wall would be less displeasing to the culti- vated eye. It is, perhaps, vain to hope for a remedy. In the scramble for government art patronage, charlatans alone enter the course ; men of genius, whose productions would do the nation honor, will never de- scend to an unseemly scrub race with " art- ists'' who could hardly paint a respectable sign for a village tavern. Hence it is that while we occasionally see an American his- torical painting of high merit, the branches of art which most flourish in this country, and which have reached a degree of excel- lence unsurpassed in Europe, are portrait- ure, landscape, and genre painting. For cor- rect drawing, truth of color, and a fideli- ty to expression as nearly absolute as the art can be carried, American portrait paint- ers, as a class, stand in advance of their Eu- ropean brethren. There are no portraits in the world, if we except those of the old Ve- netian masters, superior in the highest qual- ities of art to those of Stuart, Elliot, Page, Huntington, Le Clear, Stone, Baker, and oth- ers who have devoted their genius to this branch of art. American portraiture may not display so much Academical " effect" as the French, but effect is not in itself an es- sential quality of high art. It is often an artistic trick to catch the uncultivated eye and hide defects of drawing. In landscape painting, as in portraiture, America very early declared her independ- ence of European schools. Our artists have gone directly to nature for inspiration, and each, following the tendency of his own genius, has found in her varied aspects of loveliness and grandeur what no Academical training could have taught. Fidelity to na- ture is a characteristic trait of American landscape art; a fidelity not servile, but conscientious and loving, with none of the con vcn tional trickery and Academical effects characteristic of every European school of landscape except the English ; a fidelity not inconsistent with tl^e widest display of im- agination and fancy, nor with freedom of in- dividual expression. If characteristic speci- mens of the art of each of our landscape painters, from the venerable Durand, whose hand has not yet forgot its cunning, to the youngest aspirant for a place on the walls of the Academy, could be gathered into one gallery, they would form an exhibition un- rivaled in the world in all the higher quali- ties of art, in individuality, and in truth to nature. Such a collection— a nucleus al- ready exists in our Metropolitan Museum of Art — ought to find a place in New York. How interesting to the student would it be to trace the development of landscape art in the pictures of Durand, Cole, Huntington, Inness, Church, Bierstadt, Gilford, Keusett, Whittredge, M'Eutee, Column, Hubbard, and a host of others who have won deserved hon- ors by their faithful delineations of nature! The limits of this sketch preclude extended personal characterizations where so many deserve special notice ; and equally out of the question is even the briefest account of what the most eminent have accomplished toward bringing American landscape art to its present high position. In more senses than one such an exhi- bition would be essentially American ; for although many of our foremost landscape painters have gone abroad for study or in search of special aspects of nature, they have found in the grandeur and in the beau- ty of our own country the highest inspira- tion. Gifford brings nothing from Venice or the East superior to his niaguificent tran- scripts of the scenery of the Hudson and the sea-coast, although that element of the pic- turesque afforded by the architecture of the Old World is wanting in the New ; nor did Church find in the Andes inspiration for a nobler picture thau his "Niagara." Bier- stadt's splendid delineations of the sublime scenery of California and the Rocky Mount- ains far surpass his " Vesuvius." Thomas Cole found in the Catskills the material for his most beautiful pictures ; and where but in America could M'Entee have become the interpreter of those autumnal effects which he renders with such beauty and fidelity ? The happiest efforts of Kensett were in- spired by years of patient study among the mountains of New England and New York, the lakes and rivers of the Middle States, and along the Eastern sea -coast. Whit- tredge's magnificent pictures of Western scenery cast into the shade his earlier GENRE PAINTERS. 413 though beautiful views on the Rhine. But the list is almost inexhaustible ; it would include nearly every eminent landscape painter in America. Several of our most eminent landscapists are known also as successful marine paint- ers. Colman began his artistic career by painting shipping and sea views. Many of the finest pictures of Keusett and GiU'ord represent various aspects of the sea in con- nection with views of the coast. One of Church's most important compositions is his picture of a gigantic iceberg floating majes- tically in a tranquil expanse of ocean. Will- iam Bradford has devoted himself almost exclusively to the delineation of the arctic seas, with their rugged glacier-riven coasts, their icebergs, and their terrible ice-plains, the scene of adventure and disaster. Among our most noteworthy marine painters may be mentioned F. H. De Haas, a native of Rotterdam, but for mauy years a resident of this country. His pictures of sea storms are strong and effective ; and he has also painted many beautiful coast scenes. Charles Temple Dix, had his life been spared, would have achieved great success in this branch of painting. In figure and genre painting we have the names of many gifted and accomplished artists, such as Eastman Johnson, Edwin White, E. W. Perry, Matteson, S. Mount, J. Wood, J. G. Brown, John W. Ehninger, Eli- hu Vedder, George H. Boughton, W. J. Hen- nessy, R. C. Woodville, and others. Mr. White is also a careful and admired portrait painter, and has essayed historical composi- tion with marked success. Mr. Johnson stands at the head of American genre paint- ers. He was among the first to recognize in American life the picturesque and char- acteristic traits which our artists were once fain to seek abroad. Thanks to his intui- tion and to the example of his admirable achievements, American genre painting now rivals that of auy European nation in vari- ety and excellence, and gives promise of greater triumphs in the future. The best animal painter in America is W. H. Beard, whose half-humorous, half-serious compositions have not been excelled by any other artist at home or abroad. He has a special penchant for bears, and has made them the medium of caustic satire ou hu- THOMAS CRAWFORD. — [1813-1857.] inanity, as in his " Bears on a Bender" — a picture which established his name, and the great success of which influenced his career. His brother, James H. Beard, also an animal painter of merit, employs his pencil almost exclusively in the delineation of domestic animals. The late William Hays painted many admirable animal pictures, of which the most important are " The Stampede" and "The Herd on the Move." The names of Tait and Bispham must also be included in the list of painters who have made special study of animal life, and have been success- ful in the delineation of it. The list of American sculptors embraces a number of eminent names, beginning with that of Horatio Greenough, from whose hand came the first marble group executed by an American. Sculpture, as is well known, was not popular in this country for some years after the Revolution. Nude statuary was especially an abomination not to be toler- ated ; and Greenough, Crawford, and Pow- ers waited many years and endured keen disappointments before they received pop- ular recoguitiou. Their residence abroad, rendered necessary by the absence of the proper facilities for the prosecution of their art at home, removed them in a great measure from popular sympathy, and their achieve- ments, except by report, were known to a comparatively small number of people. But travel, culture, familiarity with foreign gal- leries, and the more general distribution of casts and statuary throughout the country have produced a marked change in popular ideas. Statuary forms a more or less im- 414 PROGRESS OF THE FINE ARTS. portant part of every Academy exhibition, and it is no longer necessary to set apart a day exclusively for the admission of ladies. Nor is it longer essential that an American sculptor should reside in Italy, or go abroad at all, except for the purpose of study among the masterpieces of antique art. Several of our most eminent sculptors pursue their art at home, and retain an individuality which might be endangered, in some degree at least, by a foreign residence. Our foremost living sculptor, J. Q. A. Ward, achieved sev- eral signal triumphs in his art, without the advantages supposed to be only attainable abroad. His " Indian Huuter," his " Freed- man," his statue of Shakspeare, now in Cen- JOHN F. KENBETT. — [1818-1ST2.] tral Park, and his numerous portrait busts, all attest the vigor and originality of his genius. Ward is the most thoroughly Amer- ican of all our sculptors. Greenough, Craw- ford, Powers, Story, went early to the studios of Florence or Rome, and in the contempla- tion of ancient .art they lost the inspiration of the New World, and became European artists, not to be distinguished, by any char- acteristic of their work, from the English, French, German, and Italian sculptors sur- rounding them. Palmer, like Ward, never studied abroad, and yet, despite certain pe- culiar theories in regard to his art, he has produced some admirable work. Besides the artists already named, among those who have acquired distinction as American sculp- tors may be named Thomas Ball, Henry Kirke Brown, Randolph Rogers; Joel T. Hart, of Kentucky; and Launt Thompson, who, though born in Ireland, has become thoroughly Americanized. He acquired his art with Palmer, in whose studio he remain- ed about nine years. Thompson has exe- cuted some very characteristic portrait busts aud several statues of great merit, the most important being that of General Sedg- wick. The varied genre groups of John Rogers, chiefly representing scenes and epi- sodes of the late war, entitle this artist to a permanent, if not very lofty, place among American sculptors. Several American wom- en, among them Miss Harriet Hosmer, Miss Margaret Foley, and Miss Emma Stebbins, have also attained high repute as sculptors. The art of engraving has reached a high degree of excellence in America during the hundred years which have elapsed since Paul Revere, the hero of the memorable ride celebrated in Longfellow's verse, engraved caricatures and historical subjects in Bos- ton. Revere worked on copper, an art which, like lithography, has been almost driven out of existence by wood-engraving. The first wood-engraver in America was Dr. Anderson, who died a few years since at the age of ninety-five, having, in the course of his long career, seen the art advance from a rude state to the finish and refinement it has attained in the hands of such men as Linton and Anthony, and of men who are second to these masters only. Wood-en- graving has been a powerful agent in the dissemination of a knowledge and love of art throughout the country, not only by the reproduction of the works of eminent mas- ters of Europe and America, but by spread- ing broadcast through illustrated books, magazines, and journals the artistic crea- tions of Darley, Hoppin, Fredricks, Nast, Mo- ran, Sol Eytinge, and a hundred others who have devoted their talents to illustration. The history of caricature in the United States has been so recently and so amply given by Mr. Parton in the pages of Harpers Magazine tbat it is only necessary here to note some of the leading names in this de- partment of art. Among political carica- turists Thomas Nast stands without a rival GROWTH OF ART CULTURE. 415 in the vigor and sharpness of his satire and in versatility of invention. In social cari- cature we have Sol Eytiuge, whose inimita- ble delineations of the humorous side of negro character excite genial amusement, but never derisive laughter ; Belle w, Woolf, Reinhart, Frost, Wust, Thomas Worth, Hop- kins, and many others, whose names would fill a large catalogue. Looking back through the hundred years of our existence as an independent nation, we see a steady and healthful growth of art in all sections of the country. Year by year the number of American artists has in- creased with the diffusion of culture among the people ; art societies are springing up in all parts of the country ; exhibitions worthy of the Old World are held in cities where fifty years ago there was scarcely a break in the primeval forest. Europe sends us yearly an accession of artists, who be- come American, as West, Copley, and Les- lie became English painters. Schools of art spread culture and knowledge all over the land. Massachusetts has made drawing a part of her system of common-school educa- tion with admirable results. The art school conuected with the Cooper Union in this city has also done great service in the way of elementary training in drawing, painting, wood-engraving, etc. The work begun by the American Institute of Architects awak- ens the hope that another generation will see a vast improvement in the architecture of our public and private buildings. As wealth and culture increase, the fine arts will find increasing support, and the com- ing century will witness a development in the sculpture, painting, and architecture of this country as marvelous as its progress has been in the mechanical and industrial arts. XIV. MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. WHAT has been done in these United States of America since the declara- tion of their independence in the way of medical and sanitary progress ? To answer this question fully it would be necessary to write the history of American medicine, for which at least a volume would be required. In undertaking to review the past centen- nial period, with reference to this question, within the limits of a few pages, I must be content with a large outline and certain representative facts. Evidence of progress is to be sought for in educational institutions. At the close of the colonial government there were two American medical colleges, one in Philadel- phia, the other in New York ; the former es- tablished in 1765, and the latter in 1768. The operations of both were suspended during the Revolutionary war. Up to that time they had conferred medical degrees upon less than fifty candidates. The great ma- jority of the physicians and surgeons in the colonies had obtained what education they possessed in commencing practice by having served for a period of from three to seven years as apprentices to medical practition- ers, the duties of apprenticeship emhracing certain menial offices as well as study and the compounding of medicines. A favored few were able to resort to the celebrated schools of London, Edinburgh, and Leyden. At the close of the war the two American colleges resumed operations, and three others came into existence before the end of the eight- eenth century, namely, the medical depart- ment of Harvard University, of Dartmouth College, and of Rutgers College, of New Jer- sey. The number of graduates from all these institutions at the beginning of the nine- teenth century had not much exceeded two hundred. During the first half of the pres- ent century medical colleges were multi- plied nearly at the rate of a new college annually, distributed among the different .States, and many of them established in small villages. This multiplication and dis- tribution met the requirements of medical education at that time, in view of the rapid settlement of distant parts of our vast coun- try, stage-coaches being the only public mode of traveling by laud, and the great ma- jority of studeuts aud practitioners in med- icine having limited pecuniary resources. After the extension of railway communica- tions and the development of the material resources of newly settled States and Terri- tories, the increase in the number of col- leges was less, and for the most part it has been confined to metropolitan or large towns, many of those in villages having been discontinued. At the present time about seven thousand medical students at- tend annually the various colleges, aud the annual number of graduates exceeds two thousand. 1 During the last quarter of a century there has been progressive improve- ment in collegiate and extra-collegiate in- struction by means of extension of the terms of lectures, subdivisions of the different de- partments, the institution of special courses, combiuing more and more illustrations with didactic teaching, the systematic regulation of study with recitations, and private lect- ures or demonstrations in various branches. Without presumption, it may be claimed in behalf of the leading American medical schools that especially, although not exclu- sively, as regards practical instruction, they compare favorably with the long -distin- guished schools in Great Britain, France, and Germany. In connection with this sketch of educa- tional institutions it is but just to the med- ical profession of this country to present certain facts. To this profession belongs chiefly whatever credit may pertain to the rise and progress of these institutions now aud in the past. Our State Legislatures in- corporate medical colleges, and generally charters are obtained without difficulty. Legislative aid in the way of money is the 1 Vide Toner's A nnals of Medical Progress for these and other statistics. For the dates of the establish- ment of different schools and other details, vide History of Medical Education, etc., by N. S. Davis, M.D. MEDICAL SOCIETIES. 417 exception, not the rule, albeit it is very evi- dent that well-educated physicians and sur- geons are literally of vital importance to the public weal. As a rule, with some notable exceptions, the pecuniary means for the es- tablishment of a medical school are not largely furnished either by municipal ap- propriations or private contributions from other than members of the medical profes- sion. After having been established, the revenue of the colleges is derived commonly from the fees of students : few colleges have any endowment. A certain measure of suc- cess in a medical school, as regards the size of its classes, is therefore essential to its continuance, and its prosperity depends on the number of students attracted to it. The primary organization and the management in all respects, including the appointment of professors, are usually, either directly or indirectly, under the control of the faculties of the schools. These facts involve some objections which are plausible, and in a measure veritable, namely, a medical col- lege can not, without risk of its prosperity, require a higher grade of preliminary edu- cation or of the qualifications for a degree than those institutions with which it is in immediate competition, and professional po- sitions are exposed to insecurity from the action of colleagues. On the other hand, there are advantages which more than out- weigh these objections. An active, honor- able competition enforces the best exertions, the selection of the ablest teachers, and the largest available facilities for instruction. Another fact, in justice to the profession, should be presented, namely, there are prac- tically no legal restrictions on the practice of medicine in most of the States of the Un- ion. Not only are licenses to practice easily obtained, but rarely, if ever, are legal pen- alties, if they exist, enforced for practicing without a diploma or a license. The desire for instruction is therefore the leading mo- tive impelling medical students to resort to medical schools. Moreover, the classes, es- pecially in metropolitan medical schools, consist in part of licentiates or graduates who have been for a greater or less period engaged in practice. Again, in the schools which are considered as offering the largest advantages the classes preponderate greatly in numbers over those in other schools. At 27 the present time more than a thousand stu- dents and practitioners are in attendance at the schools in the city of New York during the winter, and the winter classes in Phila- delphia are not much smaller. A consider- able proportion of the members of the class- es in these two cities is from distant parts of our country, the fees are considerably higher than in provincial schools, and the expenses incident to city life and long jour- neys are not small. Herein is exemplified the strength of the impelling motive, name- ly, the desire for instruction ; and these facts certainly denote a spirit of progress among those who are already, and those who are about to become, members of the medical profession. We are to look for evidence of progress in the number and character of associa- tions for the promotion and diffusion of medical knowledge. Prior to the Eevolu- tionary war there was but one State med- ical society. This was formed in New Jer- sey in 1766, but not regularly incorporated until 1790. Shortly before the war closed, the Massachusetts Medical Society was in- corporated. After the national independ- ence was achieved, associations were speed- ily organized in several of the States. At the beginning of the present century they existed in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Connecticut, and Maryland. Following these were local associations iu different counties and large towns. At the present time probably ev- ery State in the Union has its society, and there are few situations so remote or iso- lated as not to be embraced within the area of some local association. In 1846 a convention of representatives of medical so- cieties, hospitals, and colleges throughout the United States was held in the city of New York, and the result was the estab- lishment, in 1847, of the American Medical Association, which, excepting dui'ing the late war of the rebellion, has ever since held annual meetings in different parts of the Union. Quite recently (1872) an asso- ciation has been formed for the promotion and diffusion of knowledge relating to the prevention of disease. This, entitled the Public Health Association, gives promise of much usefulness. National societies within late years have been formed for the promo- 418 MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. tion and diffusion of knowledge relating to special departments of medicine — for exam- ple, insanity, and diseases of the eye and ear — and local societies of this character exist in most of the larger cities. All of the numerous associations originated with med- ical men, and have heen kept up hy their ef- forts. Many publish Transactions at stated intervals. The American Medical Associa- tion has published twenty-five large vol- umes, and the New York State Medical So- ciety nearly or quite as many. Collective- ly, the Transactions of the societies in vari- ous States constitute not an inconsiderable portion of our periodical medical literature. The associations are all A r oluntary ; mem- bership is not rendered obligatory by legal requirement, but in many, if not in most, parts of the country it is considered essen- tial to an unequivocal professional status to become a member of some regularly organ- ized association. This arises from the fact that in certain associations are vested, by general agreement, the right to take cog- nizance of violations of medical ethics by any of their members, and to reprimand, suspend, or expel for unprofessional con- duct. Passing by further details, it may be said of our medical associations that in number and character they denote a gener- al and active co-operation of the practi- tioners of medicine for the promotion and diffusion of knowledge, to which may be added the maintenance and elevation of the honor and usefulness of the profession. The associations thus furnish evidence, while they are also important means, of medical sanitary progress. Tbe literature of a particular province of science and art, for a given period, offers a good criterion of the progress made during that period. This statement is as applica- ble to medicine as to any department of knowledge. Comparing the present with the past, in this aspect, as in other points of contrast, due consideration is to be given to the difference in population, which at the time independence was declared was not much over 3,000,000, while at the present time it is estimated to be about 40,000,000.' During the colonial government there was not entire absence of an American med- 1 Toner, op. cit. ical literature. Davis gives a list of twen- ty-eight publications, most of which were works of small or moderate size, but several of them possessing much merit on the score of originality and ability. There was no American medical periodical during this pe- riod, the first being the Medical Repository, the publication of which was commenced in the city of New York in 1797. This was a quar- terly of about 150 pages, ably conducted, and its publication ceased with the twenty-third volume. In 1804 the publication of two medical journals was commenced in Phila- delphia. The subsequent multiplication of medical periodicals and their publication in different parts of the Union constitute strik- ing evidence of progress. At the present time there are between thirty and forty med- ical journals published in the United States, not including the Transactions of societies, hospital reports, and other publications prop- erly belonging to periodical literature. The history of medical journalism in this country during the last half century would show many changes, but it is noteworthy that a quarterly journal, The American Journal of Medical Sciences, established in 1827, succeed- ing the Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, established in 1820, still lives, the arrangement of contents never having been changed, the present publisher the successor of the house which from the first issued this, as also the preceding work, and conducted now by the same able editor as over forty years ago. The Boston Medic- al and Surgical Journal, with divers changes, has been in existence for about the same length of time. The bibliography of the first quarter of the present century embraces not a few able works, among which the voluminous writ- ings of Rush are prominent. The standard works and text-books, however, were chiefly of foreign authorship. During the second quarter the number of works by American authors had largely increased, the list em- bracing acceptable text-books in anatomy, physiology, surgery, midwifery, the practice of medicine, and the materia .medica. Then, as now, the absence of any international copyright restrictions favored the republi- cation of works by British in preference to those by native authors, the former having the advantage of a success already acquired, MEDICAL LITERATURE. 419 and the reprint requiring no royalty. Here is an obstacle in the way of the develop- ment and progress of a national literature which, in justice to American authors, should be borne in mind. Notwithstanding this obstacle, and a prevailing sentiment that exotics transplanted from tbe older coun- tries, as a matter of course, are superior to native productions, the increase of original books has been progressive during the last twenty-five years. At this moment the ma- jority of the works recognized by medical schools and the profession as text-books in the different departments of medical educa- tion are by American authors, and there are few topics within the range of the science and art of medicine which are not credita- bly represented in our own literature. At the same time, foreign books and periodical publications now, as heretofore, bave a large circulation in this country. Our native productions do not displace exotics, but both flourish together, competiug with a fair ri- valry. Medical progress, as evidenced in the lit- erature of medicine, is more especially mark- ed in works of a practical character. This is owing to the fact that the vast majority of those who pursue medical studies in this couutry have chiefly in view the duties and responsibilities of the practitioner. The prosecution of researches of a purely scien- tific character, having no immediate prac- tical bearing, is comparatively rare. It is easy to explain the lack of progress in this direction, as shown by comparison with oth- er countries. The rapid increase of our pop- ulation and its extension over new territory have involved a large demand for practi- tioners, a large proportion of whom are, to a greater or less extent, isolated as regards much intercourse with each other, and therefore obliged to depend greatly on their own resources in medical and surgical practice. Hence a predominant desire for knowledge which is plainly and directly practical. Another and more potential rea- son is the absence of inducements or even encouragement for purely scientific research- es beyond their intrinsic attractions. Our collegiate institutions, from want of endow- ment, are unable to make adequate provis- ions for investigations which have no ap- preciable relations to practical teaching ; the policy of our State governments, al- ready referred to, is to leave the cultivation of all the departments of medicine in the hands of the medical profession, without offering incitements or rewards, and the spirit of emulation is not what it would be were there a larger number in the field of original scientific investigations. These are the reasons for the fact that the med- ical literature of this country up to the present time, as compared with that of oth- er countries, is deficient in what may be distinguished as scientific in contrast with practical medicine. A list of American pub- lications relating to medicine and sanitary science during the last hundred years would show a steadily increasing progress in this direction, and such a list would include not an inconsiderable number of works of a purely scientific character. The reader who may desire information concerning the med- ical bibliography of our country is referred to a late publication, entitled History of American Medical Literature from, 1776 to the Present Time, by Professor S. D. Gross, of Philadelphia. Within the past few years subjects relat- ing to sanitary knowledge have entered into our literature more largely than heretofore. The publications by Health Boards have been of much interest and value. These subjects have also occupied a considerable share of medical journals aud the Transac- tions of medical associations, aud at the present time there is at least one journal devoted specially to this department *of knowledge. It is fair to acknowledge that the recent activity in this direction is in a great measure due to the labors prosecuted under governmental co-operation and sup- port in Great Britain and other countries. The attention now given to what has been called "preventive medicine" may be espe- cially referred to as evidence of progress. To promote public health by removing or lessening the causes of disease, to forestall epidemics and endemics or arrest their course, are objects of medical science high- er in importance than therapeutics. The truth of this statement is recognized by the philosophic and philanthropic physician; and there is ground for the belief that al- ready the study of sanitary science has led to the saving of much life. Were it con- 420 MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. sistent with the limits of this article, I might cite the facts in the history of epi- demic cholera in the city of New York in 1866 and 1867 as proof that hy prompt and efficient preventive measures this disease may he effectually " stamped out." ' Sani- tary science and medical science are to a great extent convertible terms, as implied in the name, preventive medicine. The prevention of diseases is the practical re- sult of our knowledge of their character and causes. Our knowledge of the causes of diseases, more especially of the special causes which give rise to epidemics and en- demics, is confessedly defective ; thus far in the history of medical and sanitary prog- ress we have been obliged to content our- selves with the investigation of their laws without being able to determine with pos- itiveness their essential nature and mode of production. Conceding this, it is, per- haps, not an extravagant assertion to say that, with our present knowledge and ex- perience, by means of the skillful employ- ment of disinfecting agents, together with other sanitary measures, the prevalence of certain diseases — epidemic cholera and yel- low fever — is within the power of scien- tific control. In this direction of progress there is reason to hope that much will be accomplished by continued investigations. For carrying on these investigations and enforcing sanitary measures the co-opera- tion of the public and legal powers is es- sential; hence the importance of awakening public interest on the subject, and diffusing as far as practicable popular information. In this connection may be mentioned im- provement in quarantine regulations. The problem in the department of sanitary sci- ence relating to quarantine is to provide to the utmost extent for the public health, with the least interference with personal freedom and the interests of commerce. A review of the history of quarantine laws would show how great has been the progress toward the solution of this problem, as a result of the increase of knowledge of the causes of disease and of preventive meas- ures. From the necessity of resisting a temptation to enter into details, I must be 1 Vide reports of the Metropolitan Board of Health, New York, for these years. content with the general statement that the quarantine regulations of our large commercial cities at the present time ex- emplify the progress made within late years in this most important matter. 1 Medical and sanitary progress, as evi- denced by important discoveries or improve- ments, next claims attention. Of course those originating in this country are more especially characteristic of American prog- ress, yet the ready adoption of discoveries and improvements which have originated in other countries is significant of a progress- ive spirit. The greatest event in the medical history of the last centennial period, the whole world included, was the announcement of the discovery of vaccination. Jenner an- nounced his discovery in a paper " printed for the author" in 1798. He had desired that the paper should appear under the au- spices of the Royal Society of London, but it was declined bythat learned body on the ground that its publication would damage the reputation which the author had al- ready acquired by some observations on the cuckoo ! If wo recognize as a criterion of the importance of a discovery the saving of human life, that of Jenner far transcends any other in the history of the world. A medical writer in 1849 represents the num- ber of lives saved as follows : " In England alone the absolute mortality from small-pox is less by 20,000 a year than it was half a century ago. If a similar rate of reduction in the number of deaths from small-pox holds good, as we have every reason to be- lieve is the case, in the other kingdoms of Europe, then, out of the 220,000,000 of peo- ple that inhabit this quarter of the globe, 400,000 or 500,000 fewer now die of small- pox than, with a similar population, would have died from this malady fifty years ago. During the long European wars con- nected with and following the French Rev- olution it has been calculated that five or six millions of human lives were lost. In Europe vaccination has already preserved from death a greater number of human be- 1 The reader interested in this matter is referred to a paper entitled Quarantine: General Principles af- fecting its Organization, by S. Oakley Vanderpoel, M.D., Health Officer of the port of New York, etc., 1875. INTRODUCTION OF VACCINATION. 421 ings than were sacrificed during the course of these wars. The laucet of Jenner has saved far more human lives than the sword of Napoleon destroyed." ' The introduction of vaccination met with virulent opposition in England. It was scouted by many as entailing on man dis- eases of inferior animals, as likely to cause a physical and mental deterioration of the human race, and as an impious attempt at interference with the ordinances of Provi- dence, so that many years elapsed before the importance of the discovery was prac- tically recognized in the country so much honored by the nativity of the discoverer. We have a right to take credit for the promptness with which vaccination was adopted in this country, and for its being popularized with comparatively small oppo- sition. In 1799 Professor Benjamin Water- house, in Boston, having obtained the virus from Jenner, vaccinated four of his own children. In 1801 Dr. Valentine Seaman procured virus from the arm of a patient who had been vaccinated by Dr. Water- house, and performed the first vaccination in the city of New York ; and in 1802 an in- stitution was established in New York for the purpose of vaccinating the poor gratui- tously and keeping up a supply of the virus. Not going into further details, may not the introduction of vaccination in this country be cited as indicating at that day a spirit of medical and sanitary progress ? Numerous examples of the ready adoption in this country of discoveries and improve- ments of lesser magnitude than the discov- ery of vaccination might be cited in illus- tration of a spirit of progress. I will mention but two of these, namely, the dis- covery of auscultation, and the employment of the thermometer in the study of diseases. Laennec's discovery of auscultation was au event of great importance in the history of medicine. By means of the physical signs determined by listening to sounds within the chest, the different affections of the lungs and heart are now readily distin- guished from each other, and our knowl- edge of the symptoms and laws of these affections has been brought to great per- fection. The great work by Laennec on aus- 1 Sir James Simpson on anaesthesia, etc., 1849. cultation was published in Paris in 1819. It was translated into English by Dr. Forbes, of London, in 1821. The impor- tance of this new method of examination was not at once appreciated either in France or other countries in Europe. It met with indifierence, skepticism, and ridicule. At that time crossing the Atlantic for medical improvement was a great undertaking. Nevertheless, not a few of the young med- ical men of this country resorted to Paris, London, and Edinburgh with that purpose. The stethoscope of Laennec, through their agency, was speedily in use on this side of the Atlantic. The writer can testify that, as far back as 1832, the facts of ausculta- tion entered largely into medical teaching. At this time an important physical sign had been discovered by a most promising Amer- ican physician, who died as he was just en- tering upon an active professional life. 1 In 1836 a prize was offered for competitive dissertations on this together with other methods of exploration, the successful com- petitor being Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose early labors in medicine were of a character to occasion in the minds of those devoted to this department of knowledge a feeling of regret that his talents have been diverted to the pursuits of literature, iu which he has achieved such great distinction. The employment of the thermometer in practical medicine is of recent date. Al- though advocated and to some extent ex- emplified by previous medical observers, it is chiefly owing to the labors of Wun- derlich, in Germany, that this instrument is now in common use iu the practice of medicine. Simple as seems the proposi- tion to determine the heat of the body in diseases by exact measurement, in place of the fallacious evidence afforded by the sen- sations of the patient or the physician's touch, its importance has only been appre- ciated within the last ten or fifteen years. Wunderlich's labors have established cer- tain thermometric laws in disease which are now considered as of great value in es- timating danger and in discriminating dis- eases from each other. The promptness with which medical thermometry was adopted in this country, and the very general use of i James Jackson, Jun., of Boston. 422 MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. the thermometer, may be mentioned as evi- dence of a spirit of progress. 1 Passing now to discoveries and improve- ments originated in this country, I must re- strict myself to certain of those which are prominent, overlooking much that it would he culpable to omit in a history of American medicine. Adopting a chronological ar- rangement, the formidable surgical opera- tion known as ovariotomy is the first in the series. This operation was performed for the first time by Ephraim M'Dowell, of Danville, Kentucky, in 1809. After having performed it in two other instances, he reported very briefly the three cases in the Eclectic Reper- tory and Analytical Review, in 1816. The op- eration was successful in each of the three cases. He subsequently performed it ten times, making the whole number of cases thirteen, of which eight, at least, were suc- cessful. Although never before performed, the possibility and propriety of the opera- tion had beeu advocated, especially by John Bell, a distinguished teacher of anatomy and surgery in Edinburgh. M'Dowell was a private pupil of Bell in 1793 and 1794, and it is probable that the determination was then formed to undertake the operation whenever the opportunity offered. M'Dowell's report of cases was received with incredulity, and the operation was not repeated by any other surgeon until the year 1821, when it was performed by Nathan Smitb, Professor of Surgery in Yale College. It was performed by the latter surgeon with- out the knowledge of M'Dowell's previous operations. For more than twenty years it was practically almost ignored in this coun- try, and during the next twenty years it en- countered much opposition from members of the medical profession. Within the last fifteen years this opposition has in a great measure ceased, and the number of opera- tions has progressively increased, so that in 1871 the number of reported cases amounted to 739, an analysis of 660 of the cases giving a success of sixty-eight per cent. 3 ' The remarks in relation to the thermometer are equally applicable to two still more recent improve- ments in the means of investigating the phenomena of disease, namely, the ophthalmoscope and the laryn- goscope. 1 Peaslee on ovarian tumors, 1S72. M'Dowell's report of his first three cases was published in Great Britain in 1824. Here too it was received with incredulity. The editor of the most influential of the English medical journals at that time, the Medical and Chirurgical Review, applied the quotation, Credat Judwus, non ego. Subse- quently he used this language : "In despite of all that has been written respecting this cruel operation, we entirely disbelieve that it has ever been performed with success, nor do we think it ever will." Having quoted this extract, another should be added, taken from the same journal of the following year (1826): "A back settlement of America — Kentucky — has beaten the mother country, nay, Europe itself, with all the boasted sur- geons thereof, in the fearful and formidable operation of gastrotomy with extraction of diseased ovaries. In the second volume of this series we adverted to the cases of Dr. M'Dowell, of Kentucky, published by Mr. Lizars, of Edinburgh, and expressed our- selves as skeptical respecting their authen- ticity. Dr. Coates, however, has now given us much more cause for wonder at the suc- cess of Dr. M'Dowell ; for it appears that out of five cases operated on in Kentucky by Dr. M'Dowell, four recovered after the operation, and only one died. There were circumstances in the narratives of the first three cases that caused misgivings in our minds, for which uncharitableuess we ask pardon of God and Dr. M'Dowell of Dan- ville." The first cases in Scotland proving unsuccessful, the operation was not repeat- ed for twenty years. In England it was first successfully performed in 1836. Here, as in America, under considerable violent opposition, operations within the last twen- ty years have multiplied rapidly, so that in 1863, 377 cases had been reported, sixty per cent, of which had been successful. Iu 1870 the number of operations performed in En- gland had increased to 1000 or 1100, more than 300 having been performed by one sur- geon. In France ovariotomy was first per- formed in 1844, and was successful. The operation was here denounced by distin- guished surgeons. In 1870 there had been reports of 190 operations, all but seven aft- er 1862, the percentage of success being less than in England and America. In Germany in 1870 there had been 180 operations, with IMPORTANT SURGICAL OPERATIONS. 423 a percentage of only forty-one per cent, of recoveries. 1 I have cited the foregoing historical facts in order that the non-medical reader may to some extent appreciate the importance of this operation. That it has saved many lives can not he douhted ; and if in some instances life might not have heen destroy- ed hy the disease, the successful perform- ance of the operation has relieved patients from a distressing burden and deformity. Its origination, therefore, is one of the prominent events illustrative of American medical progress. When the large size of the ovarian tumors is considered, together with the nature of the operation — opening the abdomen by a long incision, and expos- ing the contained viscera — one can not but admire the boldness, self-confidence, and philanthropy which led to this great surgic- al achievement. Other important surgical operations were performed in this country for the first time not long after the operations of M'Dowell. Early in the past centennial period the great John Hunter introduced a new oper- ation for the cure of popliteal aneurism. Previously the operation had been opening the aneurismal sac, removal of the fibrinous or bloody clots contained within it, and ty- ing the artery above and below it — an op- eration attended with not a little risk of life from loss of blood and subsequent dan- gers, rendering it often unsuccessful. The Hunterian operation, as it was termed, con- sisted in tying the femoral artery at a dis- tance from the tumor, leaving the latter to diminish or disappear from the gradual ab- sorption of its contents. An account of this great improvement in surgery was first published in 1787. Hunter's operation opened up a new field in practical surgery, namely, the ligation of arteries of a still larger size, not only in cases of aneurism, but to arrest hemorrhages, and for the relief or cure of certain local affec- tions. Successive operations in this new field are among the most striking of the events denoting progress during the next thirty years. American surgeons took a prominent part in these operations. Aber- nethy tied the external iliac artery, in the 1 For further details vide Peaelee, op. cit. groin, for aneurism in 1802. Stevens in San- ta Cruz and Atkinson in England had tied the internal iliac artery, the former with and the latter without success, when the operation was successfully performed by S. Pomeroy White, of Hudson, New York, in 1827. In the same year Valentine Mott suc- cessfully tied the common iliac artery in a case of aneurism. This artery had been tied but once previously, and in that in- stance the operator was an American sur- geon, Gibson, then of Maryland, afterward of Philadelphia. In the latter case the op- eration was to arrest hemorrhage after a wound in the abdomen. The carotid artery on one side was first tied by Sir Astley Cooper in 1808. At that time probably no surgeon would have ventured to tie the common carotid artery on both sides. This was done in 1829, by Mussey, an American surgeon, twelve days intervening between the two operations. The disease was aneu- rism by anastomosis ; the aneurismal tumor was afterward removed, and the patient re- covered. Tying the subclavian artery above the collar-bone had been attempted by Sir Ast- ley Cooper, and the operation abandoned, in 1809. Subsequently the operation had been performed in Great Britain four times, but in each case without success, when it was for the first time successfully perform- ed by Wright Post, of New York, in 1817. In 1818 Valentiue Mott performed the diffi- cult and bold operation of tying the in- nominate artery. This operation, in the language of his biographer, Professor Gross, "gave him a world-wide reputation, and placed him in the very foremost rank of the illustrious surgeons of his day." To appre- ciate the operation, some knowledge of an- atomy and physiology is requisite. Suffice it to say that the innominate artery, situ- ated in " fearful proximity to the heart," is the vessel which distributes the blood to the right side of the head and the right upper extremity. Cutting off suddenly with a ligature the flow of blood through this ves- sel, the reliance for the circulation of blood in the parts just mentioned is upon the com- munications between its branches and those of other arteries. Appreciating the sense of responsibility which the surgeon must have felt in venturing on such an operation 424 MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. for the first time, we can sympathize in the intense anxiety as thus described by his biog- rapher: " Doubtful whether so large a quan- tity of blood could suddenly be intercepted so near the heart without very serious ef- fects upon the brain, he drew the cord very gradually, with his eyes intently fixed upon the patient's countenance, determined to withdraw it instantly if any alarming symp- toms should arise. His feelings had been wrought to the highest pitch, and we may therefore easily imagine the relief he expe- rienced when he perceived, to use his own language, 'no change of feature or agita- tion of body.'" The operation was not suc- cessful, the patient dying from secondary hemorrhage twenty-two days after its per- formance ; the fact, however, that so large a vessel may be tied with impunity was dem- onstrated. The operation was afterward repeatedly performed, without success, ow- ing to the occurrence of hemorrhage. It was reserved for an American surgeon at length to perform it with complete success. In 1864 this artery was tied by A. W. Smyth, of New Orleans. Repeated hemorrhages having taken place, as in the other cases, Smyth, fifty-four days after the operation, tied another of the arteries carrying blood to the brain — the vertebral artery — and by this second operation the loss of blood was controlled. The patient recovered. I have referred to the tying of large ar- teries with some detail, because these suc- cessive operations represent important dis- coveries and improvements. It has been seen that with these operations the sur- geons of this country were in no small meas- ure identified. I do not refer to other great surgical operations performed by Mott and others, showing knowledge, skill, and bold- ness in the operations. It would be an in- justice to distinguished members of the profession to omit doing this were I writing a history of American medicine ; but the ob- ject of this sketch, it is to be borne in mind, is not to do honor to the individuals by whose attainments and labors the profession has been honored, but to cite representative facts as illustrative of progress. The next important event belonging in this series pertains to physiology, namely, the remarkable observations of Beaumont in relation to digestion. A Canadian boat- man, named Alexis San Martin, from an ac- cidental discharge of a musket loaded with buckshot, was wounded in the abdomen, and recovered with a permanent opening into the stomach. He was under the care of Beau- mont, a surgeon of the United States army, who at once recognized the opportunity of making important observations and experi- ments, the opening enabling him to with- draw the contents of the stomach at will without any injury to the patient. Prior to this time it had been ascertained that the processes of digestion in the stomach were dependent on the presence of a se- creted liquid — the gastric juice. Thisliquid, however, had never been obtained in so large quantity and in such a state of purity as was now practicable. Beaumont, secur- ing the co-operation of the patient, and keeping him daily under observation from the year 1825 to 1832, studied with great patience and ability the character of this liquid when withdrawn from the stomach, and the successive changes taking place in the aliment during digestion. The effects of the gastric juice upon different kinds of nutriment out of the body were carefully observed ; the relative digestibility of the various articles of food within the stomach was accurately determined, and the effects of disturbing extrinsic influences were noted. Beaumont published an account of his ex- periments and observations in 1834. This event was one of great importance in the progress of physiology. The facts contain- ed in his publication at this day are to be found in the physiological text-books of all countries. Within late years experimental physiologists have been accustomed to pro- duce, in inferior animals, especially in the dog, an artificial communication with the interior of the stomach such as was occa- sioned by accident in the case of the Cana- dian boatman, in order to obtain the gastric juice, and to demonstrate its effect upon food both within and without the organ. It is obvious, however, that the results of these experiments and observations could not be considered as representing, in all re- gards, facts pertaining to digestion in man, and hence, as furnishing a standard for com- parison, those made by Beaumont are in- valuable. I come now to the crowning event in the ANESTHESIA. 425 history of American medical and sanitary progress during the last centennial period. If it he admitted that every thing pertain- ing to the physical universe and to living heings is in conformity with an infinitely intelligent and wise government, diseases exist for certain purposes, and the means of preventing, controlling, and ameliorating them acquired hy human knowledge are not left to chance. The history of medical and sanitary progress in the past shows that epochs characterized hy great discoveries do not occur in rapid succession. Jenner's discovery at the end of the last century con- stituted a great epoch. The discovery of the useful application of anaesthetics may he considered as constituting the second great epoch within the last centennial pe- riod. Had it been announced a century ago that ere long surgical operations were to be divested of suffering, that the law of distress in child-birth imposed upou woman in the primeval curse was to be abrogated, and tbat pain need no longer be an element in many diseases, would not such an an- nouncement have seemed as marvelous, to say the least, as that, by means of steam, the Atlantic Ocean might be traversed in less than ten days, the American continent in a still less number of days, and that, through the agency of the electrical cur- rent, a communication could be sent around the globe in the space of a few minutes ? The successful application of anaesthesia by the inhalation of ether, or etherization in surgery, was first demonstrated in Boston, in 1846. The first application in operative midwifery was also made in Boston, in 1847. Chloroform, which was speedily to a con- siderable extent substituted for sulphuric ether as the anaesthetic agent, was intro- duced by Simpson, of Edinburgh, shortly after the discovery of etherization. It is needless to dilate on the inestimable boon which anaesthesia, in its various useful ap- plications, has conferred on mankind. The annihilation of pain was so obviously such a great blessing that almost the only ques- tions ever raised in opposition have relat- ed to the impossibility of absolute security against the occasional loss of life from the anaesthetic agent. Of the two anaesthetic agents, ether and chloroform, the latter has been generally employed in Europe, and also to a considerable extent m this coun- try. A combination of the two agents is sometimes employed. The danger to life is undoubtedly greater from chloroform than from ether, but the administration of the latter is more difficult, and the inhalation is often disagreeable : these are the reasons for the preference given so largely to the former. The danger from ether is almost nil, and that from chloroform is exceeding- ly small. Thus, at Guy's Hospital, Loudon, chloroform had been used in more than 12,000 cases before any serious accident oc- curred, and in the Crimean war it was ad- ministered more than 25,000 times without a single death. 1 It is difficult to appreciate blessings with- out taking as a stand-point a period when they were not enjoyed. Events with which we become familiar cease after a time to ex- cite wonder or admiration ; and when the mind becomes accustomed to extraordinary acquisitions, they seem to have come as a matter of course. If we go back to the time when severe, tedious surgical opera- tions were performed without anaesthesia, recalling the prolonged agony of the suffer- er, the strongest endurance tasked to the utmost, the patient sometimes requiring to be forcibly restrained by powerful assist- ants, or confined by straps to the operating table, one can form an adequate estimate of the precious discovery of a prompt, effi- cient, and safe method of annihilating pain. Contrast with the picture just presented the severest of operations at the present day, the patient falling easily and quickly into a quiet sleep, and awakening to find, to his astonishment, that all is over! This contrast might be^ extended to cases of se- vere, protracted confinements, and also to certain diseases characterized by intense suffering. But the advantages of anaesthe- sia are not limited to the relief of suffering. The annihilation of pain often contributes to recovery ; for the shock and exhaustion caused by pain may do much toward an un- favorable termination after surgical opera- tions, or in cases of confinement and disease, and may even be the immediate cause of death. Anaesthesia thus has been the means of the saving of human life. Moreover, it » Gross's System of Surgery. 426 MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. has had this effect in another mode. Pa- tients heretofore sometimes preferred death to the terrible trial of painful operations which now have no terrors. There is still another application in which anaesthesia is of incalculable benefit. It enables the sur- geon or physician to make careful and thor- ough examinations after injuries, and to ex- plore by appropriate means interual parts, the requisite manipulations heretofore caus- ing so much suffering that they were there- by impracticable or hazardous. It would be pleasant to connect the dis- covery of the useful applications of anaes- thesia with the name of a discoverer hold- ing a position as a benefactor of mankind like that of Jenner. While we claim for our country the honor of the discovery, the circumstances connected with it are not in all respects agreeable or creditable. The merit of the discovery seems due to the late Horace Wells, a practicing dentist in Hart- ford, Connecticut. He first made the appli- cation to himself, inhaling the nitrous oxide gas, and having a tooth extracted while in- sensible from this anaesthetic. Afterward he employed this agent for the same pur- pose in several instances. He attempted to bring the matter before the profession by a public demonstration at the medical college in Boston, but his experiments not proving successful on that occasion, he met with rid- icule instead of encouragement. Driven to despondency and insanity, he subsequently committed suicide. His successful applica- tions of the nitrous oxide gas were made in 1844. Morton, a dentist in Boston, who had been a pupil of Wells, subsequently made experiments upon himself and others, using as the anaesthetic agent sulphuric ether. In the selection of this agent and in the man- ner of using it he was guided by C. T. Jack- son, a distinguished chemist in Boston. It was by Morton's solicitation that John C. Warren was induced to perform, at the Massachusetts General Hospital, au opera- tion for the removal of a tumor of the neck on a patient rendered insensible by the in- halation of ether. The auaesthesia in this instance was not complete, but the suffer- ing from the operation was evidently dimin- ished. On the following day an operation was performed by George I lay ward on a pa- tient etherized by Morton and rendered en- tirely insensible. This was the first com- pletely successful application to a surgical operation, exclusive of the previous experi- ments for the extraction of teeth. From that date the employment of anaesthesia rapidly extended. To Morton is due the credit of accomplishing the practical appli- cation of anaesthesia to surgical operations, but he probably derived the idea from his preceptor, Wells. Jackson suggested ether in place of the nitrous oxide gas, and aided Morton by his chemical knowledge. Un- happily Morton and Jackson were led to declare the anaesthetic agent a compound which they kept a secret, calling it letheon, and obtaining a patent for it as a joint dis- covery. Such a procedure is in violation of medical ethics, and was in no wise cred- itable. Afterward each claimed to be the discoverer. These circumstances, together with the conflicting statements and acrimo- nious discussions which followed, are pain- ful to think of in connection with a discov- ery Avhich has rendered such great service to mankind. In referring to the extraction of teeth in connection with anaesthesia, I have not con- sidered this in the light of a surgical oper- ation, but inasmuch as most persons have had more or less practical acquaintance with it, to describe the paiufulness of the process were superfluous. It is worthy of note that the inhalation of the nitrous oxide gas, the anaesthetic agent with which Wells experi- mented, is now largely used to render pain- less the extraction of teeth. The anaesthe- sia induced thereby is not sufficiently lasting for most surgical operations, but it answers for this purpose ; and thus far, having been administered many thousand times, it has not been followed by any serious conse- quences. In this regard the dentist's chair is now deprived of all its terrors : after a moment of pleasant dreams, its occupants awaken to find the offending members gone. Passing from the foregoing brief account of the more notable of the discoveries and improvements exemplifying medical and sanitary progress, I must be satisfied with a cursory notice of some of those of lesser importance, belonging, for the most part, to the history of the last forty years. I desire to premise distinctly that I by no means un- dertake to include in the following list all, IMPROVEMENTS IN SURGERY. 427 or even the greater part, of the minor con- tributions which have been made during this period to the science and art of medicine — using the term medicine here, as hitherto, in its comprehensive sense, which embraces ev- ery thing relating directly or indirectly to surgery and obstetrics, as well as to the study of the human organism in health and in disease. My object is simply, as already noted, to cite illustrations of the co-opera- tion of our country in medical progress, and the facts cited are those which suggest them- selves in my own retrospection. The substitution of simple manual efforts for pulleys and other mechanical appliances in the reduction of dislocations of the hip joint is an American improvement. It had been taught by Nathan Smitt and practiced by Physic, but for its complete exposition and popularization the profession is indebt- ed to the late W. W. Reid, of Rochester, New York. By means of the improvement, quot- ing the words of an eminent surgeon, "the reduction of this dislocation is no longer, as it once was, the dread of the surgeon and the terror of the patient." Reid published his experiments and observations in 1851. In 1848 Guidon Buck reported a series of cases in which the rare and fatal affection known as oedema of the glottis had been successfully treated by scarifications of the glottis and epiglottis. This affection in some instances destroys life very suddenly, and the only resource is in prompt surgical in- terference. Buck's simple operation was a substitute for opening the larynx, or laryn- gotomy. The operation was original with him, although it was afterward ascertained that it had been performed by Lisfranc, of Paris, but without having attracted atten- tion. In 1850 H. I. Bowditch resorted to punc- ture with a small-sized instrument and the employment of suction for the purpose of withdrawing morbid liquids from the ches1>. He subsequently employed this method in cases of pleurisy in a very large number of cases, and also applied it to the removal of purulent liquid in other situations. The method has been since employed by others in this country and in Europe with great success. Latterly, under the name of aspi- ration, it has become popularized, and it is one of the most important of the improve- ments in practical medicine within the last quarter of a century. In 1846 Horace Green published a work on diseases of the air passages, in which he asserted that it was practicable to introduce an instrument through the mouth into the larynx, and in this way to make topical ap- plications in the treatment of diseases here seated. The assertion was at first received with much incredulity and distrust, the fea- sibility of the operation being by many de- nied. On this point, however, at the pres- ent time few, if any, are skeptical. In 1848 Jonathan Knight, of New Haven, Connecticut, reported the first successful case in which recovery from aneurism was effected by means of digital compression — a method of treatment which has since been resorted to successfully in a considerable number of cases. Of American surgeons now living or re- cently deceased a considerable number have rendered valuable service by either origina- ting or modifying operations, and by con- tributious to surgical literature. In this list are Gross, who most appropriately heads it, and whose voluminous writings are held in the highest estimation not only in this country but abroad ; Hamilton, whose trea- tise on fractures and dislocations is recog- nized as a standard work in all countries ; Sayre, whose original operations on diseases of joints and ingenious improvements in or- thopaedic surgery have secured for him transatlantic honors ; Brainard, John C. Warren, his son, J. Mason Warren, George Hay ward, Henry I. Bigelow, James R.Wood, Van Buren, Parker, Markoe, Eve, Moore, and many others whose names would not be omitted in a full history of the progress of American surgery. To all justice will doubt- less be done in papers to be presented at the Centennial International Medical Congress to be held in Philadelphia in September next. Important improvements in certain oper- ations for the treatment of the accidents incident to confinement and the diseases of women have been contributed within the last quarter of a century by J. Marion Sims, James P. White, T.G. Thomas, Emmet, Peas- lee, Barker, and others whose names are identified with the literature of this depart- ment of medicine. To notice these contri- 428 MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. butions more specifically would in this arti- cle be out of place. The foregoing improvements relate to practical surgery, and, for obvious reasons, they are more easily characterized than those relating to the remedial or other meas- ures of treatment in cases of disease. An improvement pertaining to the physical di- agnosis of the diseases of the chest may be mentioned, namely, the binaural stethoscope invented by Canmann in 1854. The advan- tages of this acoustic instrument in the prac- tice of auscultation are such that, unless it be superseded by further improvements, it must take the place of the various stetho- scopes devised since the time of Laenuec. Let it not be inferred, from the omission to specify original views and improvements relating to the treatment of diseases, that progress in the latter within late years has been less marked than in surgery. The writings and oral teachings of such men as James Jackson, John Ware, Bowditch, and Shattuck, of Boston ; George B. Wood, Dick- son, StilbS, J. R. Mitchell, Da Costa, and La Roche, of Philadelphia ; Davis and Allen, of Chicago ; Elisha Bartlett, Swett, and Alonzo Clark, of New York ; and Daniel Drake, of Ohio, have rendered the science and art of medicine in this country steadily progress- ive. In this connection reference should be made to a discourse, published in 1835, "on self-limited diseases," by Jacob Bigelow, of Boston, which led physicians in this country to recognize more fully than before the im- portant fact that many diseases tend intrin- sically to recovery, and to appreciate the importance of the study of the natural his- tory of diseases. Important contributions to the materia mi dica have not been wanting. As long ago as 1807 the remedy known as ergot was brought to the notice of the profession by Dr. Stearns, and named by him pulvis partu- riens, a term expressive of its peculiar oper- ation in cases of confinement. Its potency in the application denoted by this term has since been every where recognized, and of late it has been found to have a much wider range of usefulness, being now regarded by many as possessing much efficiency in ar- resting hemorrhages in different situations. The \ eratruni viride was employed as a med- icine by Tully, ( )sgood. and other physicians in New England as far back as 1835 ; but it was brought forward more recently (1850) as a remedy of great power in producing a sedative operation on the heart, by Nor- wood, of South Carolina. The lobelia, or Indian tobacco, is also an American remedy, introduced to the notice of the profession by the Rev. Dr. Cutter, of Massachusetts, for the relief of asthma, and afterward much used as a palliative in that disease both here and abroad. The use of the anthel- mintic remedy, chenopodium or worm-seed, originated in Virginia in the early part of the present century. The anaesthetic agent, chloroform, so extensively used since its employment by Sirnpson in 1848, was dis- covered by Guthrie, of Sackett's Harbor, New York, at about the same time that it was also discovered by Soubeirau, at Paris, in 1831. The medical history of our country with- in the last quarter of a century is not alto- gether barren in contributions to anatomy and physiology, albeit the tendency to stud- ies having a direct and obvious practical bearing is predominant. The researches of Isaacs in relation to the structure of the kidneys were characterized by great minute- ness, completeness, and accuracy. They have been so considered and adopted in Europe as well as in America. Brown-Sequard, al- though not a native of this country, is of American paternity, his father having been born in Philadelphia. Moreover, a consid- erable part of his anatomical, physiological, and pathological labors have been prose- cuted and the results originally published here. He has contributed largely toward our knowledge of the structure, functions, and morbid conditions of the nervous sys- tem ; also important facts relating to other organs and functions of the body. Bennett Douler, of New Orleans, had made valuable contributions to our knowledge of the tem- perature of the body in anticipation of re- cent researches in that direction, and he has also made interesting contributions to the study of the nervous system. John C. Dal- ton has published original and valuable ob- servations relating to the nervous system, digestion, the functious of glands, and oth- er physiological subjects. To him is due the credit of the introduction of vivisec- tions into physiological teaching, which im- CHANGES IN PRACTICE. 429 portant mode of illustration is probably practiced in certain of our medical schools more largely than in those of Europe. S. Weir Mitchell has developed important facts in relation to the nervous system. Austin Flint, Jim., has contributed new views re- specting circulation and respiration, togeth- er with experimental researches relating to a new function of the liver. The latter re- ceived honorable mention by the French Academy of Sciences, with a recompense of 1500 francs. Brown -S6quard, Dalton, and Flint junior have contributed largely to physiological literature. It remains to consider briefly medical and sanitary progress as exemplified by muta- tions in the practice of medicine. It is a curious fact that, according to a wide-spread popular belief, physicians of the present day hold strictly to doctrines handed down by Hippoci-ates, Galen, and others of the early fathers in medicine. These ancient doc- trines, it is by many supposed, have with the medical profession somewhat of the force exerted by theological dogmas on their ad- herents. The practice of medicine is thought to embrace a binding creed, from which phy- sicians are expected not to swerve under the penalty of being repudiated by their breth- ren. Hence it is common to speak of a med- ical man as belonging to the " old school." I say this is a curious fact, for quite the re- verse is the truth. The past history of med- icine shows a series of mutations in its prin- ciples and practice. It is far more open to attack on the score of successive changes than of fixedness. The illegitimate systems which from time to time have sprung up are distinguished by being based on particular dogmas. Their followei-s are truly secta- rians. There is no other standaixl for med- ical orthodoxy than the opinions held by the reputable physicians and inculcated in the accredited woi'ks. As regards individ- ual opinions and modes of practice, so long as they are not maintained in a sectarian spirit nor adopted for unworthy ends, there are no restrictions in the way of profession- al fellowship. The views of a physician, theoretical or practical, may be never so eccentric or absurd without interference with his fraternal relations, provided he conforms to the established principles of medical ethics, and does not place himself in an attitude of antagonism toward the honor and dignity of the profession. A comparison of the early and latter part of the last centennial period furnishes many striking points of contrast. Of course it can not be expected in this paper to go into details ; I must confine myself to leading characteristics. A very marked contrast re- lates to the use of certain potential meas- ures of treatment, such as blood-letting, ca- thartics, emetics, blisters, or other methods of counter-irritation, the use of mercurial remedies, etc. Comparatively these are but little employed at the present time. This therapeutical change is by no means proof that these measures are not useful. Their usefulness has heretofore undoubtedly in many instances been overestimated, and it is not improbable that further progress in med- ical experience will show that they are now underestimated. One reason for their being used with more circumspection and reserve is, the ends for which they were employed, owing to improvements in materia medico, and pharmacy, are now accomplished by remedies which involve less repugnance on the part of the patient, aud which are less liable to do harm if injudiciously employed. In this point of view, therefore, the change denotes progress in knowledge. Perhaps nowhere more than in this country is the practice of medicine characterized by the change just adverted to. Potential drugs of all kinds are less used now than heretofore. This is due in a meas- ure to a better knowledge than formerly of their operation, acquired by accumulated clinical experience and experiments on the lower animals. But it is in a great measure attributable to the results of the study with- in late years of the natural history of dis- eases. This term embraces the laws regu- lating the termination, the duration, the phenomena, and the complications of dis- eases, irrespective of the operation of active measures of treatment. The importance of this study has been for the past half century more appreciated than formerly. As oppor- tunities have offered, it has been prosecuted with much zeal and patience. Physicians in this couutry have taken not an insignifi- cant part in the prosecution of this study. The results have shown that many diseases are self-limited in duration, and pursue a 430 MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. favorable course -without active medicinal interference, and, as a consequence, there is a greater reserve now than heretofore in the use of potential drugs. And in proportion to this reserve a greater importance has been attached to what may be distinguished as sanitary measures of treatment, such as ventilation, regulation of temperature, etc. It is undoubtedly true that many diseases are more successfully managed on account of these changes. In the dietetic manage- ment of the sick there has been great im- provement. The recognition of the impor- tance of supporting the powers of life by an adequate alimentation, together with the judicious use of alcoholic stimulants, is one of the striking characteristics of progress in the practice of medicine during the last half century. In all these mutations indicative of progress, it may be claimed, in behalf of the medical profession of this country, that they have not been backward in conforming to them nor in promoting them. The Amer- ican medical mind may be said to be emi- nently cosmopolitan and eclectic. With perhaps some undue readiness in accepting oi)inions emanating from abroad, the pre- vailing disposition is to seek every where for new developments of knowledge, espe- cially in the practical departments of med- icine. In this country, as elsewhere, one point of contrast between the present and the past is the diminished power of indi- vidual authority in medical doctrines. At this day, much less than in former times, is the phrase, Jurare in verba magistri, appli- cable to the medical profession. In the preparation of remedies there is a notable contrast between the earlier and later portions of the last centennial period. The improvements in pharmacy have been very great. Concentrated forms of medi- cine have largely supplanted infusions or decoctions and bulky medicinal substances. The discovery of the alkaloid quinia was in 1820. Previously malarial fevers were treat- ed with the powdered cinchona bark, the quantity requisite for a cure being so large that, on this account, the treatment was very often unsuccessful. Let it be consid- ered that pounds of the bark are represent- ed by a few grains of the alkaloid. Quinia was speedily after its discovery in use in America, where malarial fevers were a great obstacle in the way of the settlement of our vast national domain. As early as 1841 it had been employed in doses which had not been ventured upon in Europe, but which since that time have been found es- sential to secure its full remedial power, not only in malarial fevers, but in other dis- eases. The experience in our country did much toward developing knowledge re- specting the curative power of this great autiperiodic remedy. In the manufacture and employment of other isolated medicinal principles from veg- etable remedies, and of extracts, the phar- maceutists and physicians in this country have not been far behind those of Europe. To appreciate the progress in this regard, from the stand-point of the patient, one must be able to recall the time when the nauseousness of physic could not fail to tempt many to throw it to the dogs. Thanks to pharmaceutical improvements, doses of medicine are now rarely disagree- able, and not unfrequently they are even rendered palatable. Passing from this brief reference to mu- tations in practice to the character of the medical profession, as represented by the average of the professional attainments, to- gether with the intellectual and moral quali- fications of its members, it is needless to say that the progress has been marked. In these respects the medical profession in the United States to-day will compare favora- bly with the profession in any part of the world. This may be asserted without pre- sumption. It would be easy to cite the tes- timony to that effect of competent observers from abroad who have been among us. No- where in civilized countries do medical men hold a higher social position than here. No- where, as a class, do they exert a stronger influence upon other members of society. In our democratic form of government no body of men are more influential. Were the physicians of any of the States in the Union to combine together to form a polit- ical party, their power would be irresisti- ble. With such a combination, the election of officers and law-makers would be under their control. Fortunately, or unfortunate- ly, this is not likely to happen, for, as a rule, physicians are not inclined to take an active part in politics. By those who might dep- ANTICIPATIONS. 431 recate a political party composed of doc- tors it will doubtless be said, such a uuion is rendered impossible by their proverbial tendency to disagree. The disagreement of doctors has long been a proverb. They are considered fair game for jests in this re- gard. Were the charge made in earnest, it would be out of place in this article to un- dertake to refute it. Of the three profes- sions, the imputation, even in jest, would hardly come with a good grace from the clergy. Our legal friends are sometimes fond of comparing, in this point of view, the medical profession with their own. If any of these should honor this article by a perusal, I am sure they will not take offense if I introduce an anecdote which, as I hope, will not be considered frivolous or out of taste iu treating of so sober a subject as medical and sanitary progress. The anec- dote was told by an eminent member of the bar in Connecticut, who was a party in the colloquy, and who related it, by-the-way, as evidence that a talent for humor which formerly was possessed by not a few physi- cians had nearly become extinct, the pro- fession in this respect having retrograded rather than advanced. This distinguished lawyer, meeting one day an old physician of the humoristical school, in order to elicit a witty rejoinder attacked him ou the score of the disagreement of doctors, referring, in contrast, to the habitual agreement of law- yers, no matter how violently they opposed each other in their professional antagonism. He asked his friend the doctor to explain this contrast. " Oh," said the doctor, " Mil- ton has given the explanation of the differ- ence between us in this respect in the fol- lowing quotation : " ' Devils with devils damn'd firm concord hold ; Men only disagree.' " The proper scope of this article takes in only the past ; but anticipations naturally follow retrospections. After a review of the progress made during the last hundred years, one can hardly forbear to ask, what will have taken place at the end of the next centennial period ? A few thoughts sug- gested by this question may be permitted in concluding the article. It is quite certain that medical and sanitary progress will con- tinue. This is a fair inference from the continued progress hitherto up to this time. It is also a logical conclusion, from the facts in the past history of medicine, that future progress iu this direction will be by slow advances. As it has been heretofore, so it will be hereafter : great discoveries or im- provements will not follow in rapid succes- sion. The great event in the seventeenth century was the discovery of the circulation of the blood, in the eighteenth century the discovery of vaccination, and in the present century the discovery of anaesthesia. Events like these are not to be expected to recur at much shorter intervals. What is to be the next great event ? It would, of course, be absurd to attempt to answer this inquiry. Sometimes, however, preliminary circum- stances, as we can see afterward, have point- ed distinctly to the direction in which a great discovery was to be looked for. If I were to indulge a prophetic fancy, it would lead me to predict that, ere long, the nature of what are called the special or specific causes of disease will be demonstrated. By special causes I mean those which produce certain diseases, such as the continued, the periodical, and the eruptive fevers. That these and some other diseases have each its own special cause, never occurring with- out the action of its own cause, and the latter producing only that particular dis- ease, is rationally almost certain. We are acquainted with many of the conditions un- der which these causes are developed, and we know many of the laws of their opera- tion ; but their nature has not been ascer- tained. It is easy to imagine that were these causes fully known, a great impetus would be given to the progress of medicine. The discovery of the nature of one special cause would probably lead, by analogy, to a similar knowledge of the other causes. It may reasonably be supposed that the knowl- edge of their essential nature would lead to the means of destroying them, or of neutral- izing their morbific operation, and iu this way the most destructive to human life of the acute diseases would be prevented or arrested. Many circumstances combine to render it probable that these special causes are either vegetable or animal organisms. On these circumstances are based the " germ theory" of disease. It is, indeed, claimed by some that the causation of certain dis- 432 MEDICAL AND SANITARY PROGRESS. eases by specific organisms of microscopical minuteness lias been demonstrated ; by 'the majority of medical thinkers, however, the demonstrative evidence is not considered as complete. It is an interesting fact that a quarter of a century ago the cryptogamic origin of many diseases was advocated with cogent evidence and argument by a distin- guished medical teacher in this country — the late J. R. Mitchell. Judging from the past, the future prog- ress of medicine will involve improvements of and additions to the means of investiga- ting the body in health and disease. With- in the present century the different organs were resolved into their component tissues by differences mainly in sensible properties. In this way Bichat created the department of general anatomy, that is, the description of the elementary tissues into which the or- gans are resolvable. Next came the appli- cation of analytical chemistry to the study of the solids and fluids, by means of which the department of general anatomy was ex- tended. Then followed the employment of the microscope, giving rise to a new prov- ince in anatomy and pathology, namely, his- tology. Meanwhile the investigation of the heart and lungs by means of the conduction of sounds engaged attention, and ausculta- tion became a branch of medicine. Still later the exploration of the interior of the eye and of the air passages by means of optical instruments has given rise to oph- thalmoscopy and laryngoscopy. To these might be added numerous improved meth- ods of examining internal parts by manual instruments. The improved and added means of inves- tigation which are in the future can not be foreseen, but it may be hoped that thereby, before the lapse of another hundred years, will be gained an insight into the molecu- lar processes involved in nutrition, secre- tion, and excretion. At present our knowl- edge of these processes is limited to the conditions under which they take, place, with certain of their laws and their effects. In proportion as they are more fully under- stood, the processes involved in inflamma- tion, the various morbid alterations of struc- ture, and the disorders of glandular organs may be expected to be better comprehend- ed, contributing, moreover, to the progress of therapeutics as well as of pathology, and changing materially the principles and prac- tice of medicine. If, as regards new remedies and improve- ments in pharmacy, progress continue as it has taken place in the past, the present may very imperfectly represent the future treat- ment of diseases. It is but a little over half a century since the great antiperiodic remedy, quinia, was discovered. It is not improbable that before the end of another half century a remedy, or remedies, may be discovered which will arrest other fevers or acute inflammatory affections as quinia ar- rests malarial diseases. If such an event take place, how great will be the change in practical medicine! New modes of in- troducing remedies into the system may be ascertained more effective than the recently employed method of injecting medicated so- lutions beneath the skin. The extent to which abnormal conditions of the mind are dependent on morbid states of the body is hardly yet fully recognized, though it has been the subject of much thought. Mental disorders falling short of insanity have hitherto entered too little into pathological study. The time may come when, with a better knowledge of the mutual relations of the mental and vital functions, disorders of the former, now in a great measure left for "the patient to min- ister to himself," will be prevented or suc- cessfully treated, and the development of insanity thereby often forestalled. With future progress in this direction, it may be that not a little of the abnormities and enor- mities which the law considers and punishes as crimes will be recognized as more proper- ly belonging to pathology, claiming the ju- dicious management of the physician rather than judicial treatment. Finally, the spirit of imaginary foresight which has led to the few foregoing thoughts suggests the question, how will the coming physician differ from the physician of to- day? The question gives rise to a train of speculation which it would be pleasant enough on the part of the writer to pursue; but this I must forego. Suffice it to say that the coming physician will not be re- garded even as much as now in the light of a mere prescribe!* of drugs. I would by no means be thought to underrate the impor- PREVENTION OF DISEASE. 433 tauce of this function. Diseases will al- ways claim medicinal treatment, and doubt- less medicines will be prescribed a hundred years hence with more efficacy than in the present stage of medical progress. But the coming physician will be regarded in a high- er point of view, as one on whose judgment people will be content to rely in the inter- diction as well as in the prescribing of drugs. It will be more and more considered that one of the most important of his profession- al functions is to determine, by skilled in- terrogation of the different organs of the body, their freedom from disease, as well as, on the other hand, to detect accurately and early deviations from health. He will hiin- 28 self appreciate more and more the fact that prophylaxis — the prevention of disease — is a higher and more useful branch of medicine than therapeutics. The prevention of crime and the proper treatment of criminals will be recognized as embraced within the scope of medical knowledge and practice. His of- fices as a hygienic adviser in matters per- taining to mind and body will become equal, if not superior, to his duties as a therapeu- tist ; and the future enlightened lawgiver, with " others in authority," will co-operate in devising and carrying out measures for medical education, the promotion of med- ical knowledge, and those having reference to public health. XV. AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. THE story is told that a company of set- tlers in a New England colony initiated their acts of organized legislation by pass- ing the resolve, " That this colony be gov- erned by the laws of God in the Old Testa- ment until we have time to prepare better." In this we discern four tones : key-note — a reverent recognition of Divine authority iinderlying human law ; third — a conserva- tive willingness to obey for the present the existing law ; fifth — a progressive confidence in ability to improve the forms and modes of law as the growth of affairs requires ; oc- tave — a resolute purpose to make that im- provement in due season. These four tones have formed the common chord of Ameri- can jurisprudence. In the brief, faint echo which this article will bring to the ear of 1876, one may perceive that this harmony constantly recurs. THE AMERICAN LIBRABY OF LAW. To indicate the impossibility of stating details in this article, let us take at the outset a topic which otherwise might well stand for the close — the collection of books embodying the law. A glance at these, in their number and complexity, will show the magnitude and elaboration of the field of thought which they include. Jurisprudence even within a single jurisdiction is too mi- nute in its distinctions, its lines are too un- yielding, its angles are too sharp, and its growth is too wayward, to admit of repro- ducing its history in an epitome which shall be both brief and accurate. In our country such difficulty is increased by the consider- ation that the law in all its details differs exceedingly in the different States. A his- tory of the rights of married women in New York could have no application to Tennes- see. A sketch, even very general, of modes of judicial procedure in Illinois would be altogether untrue for Indiana. The legal history and policy of Louisiana differ essen- tially from those of Massachusetts. Hence in matters of law it is not possible to give concise, simple answers, which shall be accu- rate, to even the simplest questions. What is the lawful rate of interest ? One must give a dozen different rules to represent the dif- ferent States. " Six per cent, in such and such States, seven in others, again ten, and elsewhere it is left to private contract." What is murder, and hoiv is it punished ? An essay giving the pith of the statutes on this topic, and the rules and distinctions estab- lished by the courts, necessary to a correct answer for the different States, though it excluded all legal verbiage and narratives of particular trials, would overrun the rea- sonable length of an article. Was there once a photographer who en- deavored to take the surface of the whole United States in one picture ? or a composer who tried to bring all varieties of music within one orchestral piece ? Did they succeed? No. Then this writer will not attempt to portray details in this sketch of the development of jurisprudence. Imagine, then, that we see arranged be- fore us the printed books which comprise the law as it has grown throughout the United States during the century, being such a collection as many societies and some few individual lawyers have really made ; only these actual libraries include numerous English and some Contiuental works, while our imaginary shelves hold works of American origin alone. These books, by-the-way, are, as a mass, the product of this century. There exist a few volumes of decisions rendered previous to the Revolution ; but as to most of these, the books were published since, though the decisions were rendered before. There are rare old volumes of colonial statutes, pub- lished in colonial days ; but they have be- come reduced almost to the rank of curiosi- ties or paper-stock by repeals or revisions of the laws. With trivial exceptions, the American library of law is the growth and fruit of this last one hundred years. First in practical importance come the "Reports." These contain the official ac- counts of what the various courts have de- THE AMERICAN LIBRARY OF LAW. 435 cided; not, as a general rule, the trials which one sees reported in the public jour- nals, nor the extended testimony of witness- es and speeches of lawyers, but a concise statement of the facts involved in particular questions of law, a brief memorandum of the positions assumed and authorities cited by the respective counsel, and the deliber- ate opinion of the court. These reports now number, excluding mere curiosities and triv- ialities, second editious, magazines, and the like, about 2500 volumes. Of these the United States courts have contributed about 216. There is a great disparity in the num- ber in the different States. Thus, among the older States, New York and Pennsyl- vania have produced 392 and 184 volumes respectively; New Jersey, sixty -two ; and Delaware and Rhode Island, eight and ten. Among the States most recently organized, California exhibits forty -eight volumes; Minnesota, twenty ; Kansas, thirteen ; Ne- vada, nine ; and Nebraska, three. Next in order are the books of "Stat- utes." These contain the enactments of new laws, the acts of Congress or of the State Legislatures ; not the bills and amend- ments considered, nor the debates and votes, but only the laws finally passed. The pub- lication of these follows the adjournment of each legislative session. The number of volumes does not admit of any precise state- ment, for several reasons ; one, because in many instances the work of separate ses- sions of law-makers is given in small pam- phlets; another, because the same law is often produced again and again in succes- sive revisions and re-enactments. These books of reports and statutes are the orig- inal sources and authorities from which the law is to be learned, but the difficulty of grappling with so many has given rise to the production of many Digests, Indexes, and Treatises, each devoted to a certain subject, sphere, or field, and designed to give to the lawyer, in brief, convenient form, the rules derivable from the reports and statutes. And there are about twenty- five periodicals which may fairly be deemed devoted to jurisprudence as their specialty. Among these the Albany Law Journal, Amer- ican Law Review, American Law Register, Cen- tral Law Journal, Chicago Legal News, Legal Intelligencer, Pacific Law Monthly, and West- ern Jurist have attained celebrity and influ- ence. The preparation of treatises has enlisted the best efforts of some of the ablest and most experienced of American lawyers and judges. And some American treatises — Greenleaf on Evidence, Kent's Commenta- ries on American Law, several of Judge Story's volumes, the Law Dictionary and the Institutes of Bouvier, "Wheaton's fa- mous treatise on International Law, and works of Angell, George T. Curtis, Dr. Lie- ber, Judge Redfield, Theodore Sedgwick, Francis Wharton — have been approved and accepted abroad, some of them having re- ceived the honor of republication, and even of translation. Five hundred volumes is a moderate al- lowance for the statutes, treatises, digests, and periodicals; hence the American library of law, developed through our century, now exceeds three thousand volumes. The occasions for consulting these books do not, upon the whole, diminish. True it is, upon the one hand, that there is, at the present day, less subordination to prece- dents, merely as such, than in early years. Courts are not as much swayed by a sense that they must obey any and every decided case. But, on the other hand, the extent, variety, and complexity of the questions brought before the courts increase faster than the learning, mental power, and vigor of judicial will among judges; hence there is growing inclination to be advised by past decisions; enlarged necessity for the judge to take time for learning all that is known affecting the cause before him ; more hesi- tation to decide a question until what has been adjudicated upon it has been review- ed. No expedients seem to dispense with the labor of research among the reports and statutes. Authors and publishers, indeed, have proffered compilations of various kinds as substitutes for the original books ; but the working lawyers have generally pre- ferred to employ them as means by which they might prosecute research among the reports and statutes themselves more rapid- ly, and carry it further, and have valued each compilation in proportion as it fulfilled this end. Codes have been enacted in the hope of superseding by concise, authorita- tive rules the undigested discussions of the 436 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. reports. Codes are useful ; but immediate- ly relieving the lawyer of his library has not been their strong point. The books found necessary to explain the code some- times seem to outnumber those which the code assumes to consolidate, besides arous- ing a new zeal for research iu older books to find the origin and materials of the new enactment. Lapse of time does not assist, for the books which grow obsolete with the advance of civilization are not as many as those to which each new year gives birth. The necessity, real or imaginary, of "consult- ing the books" is a large and growing ele- ment iu the professioual labor of the indus- trious, paiustaking lawyer. He must — or thinks he must — examine, read in, perhaps quote from, two or three hundred of the three thousand volumes in the collection before him, to prepare himself for a single argu- ment ; and this adds a serious and wearying physical task to the mental duty. Iu the morning, when strength is fresh and inter- est awake, the books come down easily and pleasantly enough. But at night, when the brief is writteu, and a hundred or so of vol- umes are strewed upon the tables and chairs, then one does wish that book covers were fitted with springs and muscles like wings of birds, and that one could clap his hands and frighten the whole bevy to fly up to their perches on the lofty shelves. A Hint to Inventors ! JURISPRUDENCE IN COLONIAL TIMES. Most persons will recall reminiscences of general reading touching the status of ju- risprudence at the close of colonial history, which will indicate that the great funda- mental principles underlying both the rules and the methods of the science were recog- nized and obeyed then substantially as they are now. The changes have been modifi- cations and expansions of old principles, improvements of ancestral instruments and methods, rather than discoveries that can be called new. There has been a great ad- vance, but it has consisted in the steady, progressive application of the Law to the new rights and relations, the new ideas and possessions, which the growth of the coun- try has developed. Throughout colonial times it was under- stood that the administration of justice in the colonies was guided by the general laws and usages of England. Parliament claim- ed an authority over the colonies, which they repudiated, but it was never under- stood, even by advocates of Parliamentary authority, that every act of Parliament of general operation throughout England was necessarily of force in the colonies. At the outset the existing laws and the established decisions in England formed a body of law which obtaiued authority by adoption in the English colonies, except so far as pro- visions of the charter or peculiar circum- stances of the provincial situation prevent- ed. This body of law was somewhat mod- ified during colonial history by provincial laws; also by changes introduced by or adopted from new laws in England. The various colonies of Euglish origin, there- fore, possessed a common law composed of the Euglish common law and statutes, and deducible from the reported decisions and authoritative text-books of English law, but varied in many of its applications to suit the circumstances or views of the American people. This has continued the basis of the jurisprudence of these com- munities since they have ripened into States. The Revolution, which repudiated the crown and Parliament as the source of sovereign authority in the state, and ac- corded all allegiance to the People as the ul- timate authors of civil government, did not repudiate or materially change the rules and methods of the law as theu existing. But while jurisprudence remains iu na- ture and essential principles substautially unchanged, there is great contrast between the early and the closing years of our cen- tury in respect to many of its applications. In so far as family and domestic relation- ships remain in fact unchanged, they have the same protection of law now as then. But views and usages of the authority of a parent over his child, of a husband over his wife, of a master over his apprentice, have advanced among our people, and the law has followed, though at a respectful dis- tance, the alteration in customs. Corpora- tions Were known to the law in their na- ture, and in a few of the many uses for which, nowadays, they are constituted ; but that multitude of incorporated companies with which our whole country is now pop- COLONIAL JURISPRUDENCE. 437 ulous were, in 1775, unborn. Land wa3 recognized as property, and as fast as the ■wilderness was reclaimed, our aucestors — except for the repudiation of the feudal idea that laud was allotted to its possessor as a reward for his military services to his sov- ereign, and should therefore at his death descend undivided to his eldest sou — em- ployed the leading rules of the law of En- gland to protect the possession of real prop- erty and regulate its transfer. But how limited must have been the scope of this branch of jurisprudence before immigration had rendered land valuable, before sur- veyors had mapped the general surface to render it divisible, and while only a few sea-board cities, inland towns, and limited agricultural regions spotted what other- wise was, so far as practical possession and enjoyment were involved, a wilder- ness ! Contracts were enforced and person- al wrongs redressed by courts of justice upon substantially the same general princi- ples of what is right between man and man as now obtain ; but how few were the oc- casions for judicial interference compared with what we now witness! How could there be any law of railway traffic, or of express or telegraph business, when there were no railroads, expresses, or telegraphs ? or many libel suits, when there were so few newspapers ? What may be said as to the law of Crimes ? The English law, as in force throughout the colonies generally, recognized and punish- ed as crimes some things which have now ceased to be so regarded. Absence from church, apostasy, and heresy were punish- able. Witchcraft, prophesying, divination, and sorcery in various forms were dealt with as crimes, upon the theory, now obsolete among jurists, that it was possible truth could be ascertained or real effects produced by human employment of supernatural or necromantic means ; and so of " multiplying the precious metals." English laws, pre- sumably in force in some of the colonies, punished some practices as being infringe- ments of sound honest trading which now pass unchallenged by any legal penalties — such as " engrossing," or the buying quanti- ties of provisions by a speculator to enhance the market price ; " forestalling," or hinder- ing merchandise upon its way to market ; and " regrating," or buying provisions with- in a market with intent to sell them within the same. So of exercising a trade without having served due apprenticeship. Assem- bling in numbers to petition Parliament was deemed in England to deserve criminal pen- alty ; and a great variety of acts indirectly prejudicial to the stability of government were construed to come within the offense of treason. And besides matters which old English law may have made criminal, many semi-religious regulations were j)rescribed by provincial laws, founded upon a theory that civil government should punish dis- obedience to the laws of Moses. The administration of the criminal law was severe in those days as compared with ours. Punishments were graver, the pun- ishment of death being imposed for almost any of the principal offenses, instead of be- ing reserved for two or three, the most hei- nous. The attitude of government toward those accused of crime was arbitrary and positive. The proceedings in criminal cases were strict, and the accused, if convicted, had no appeal. The custody of prisoners was little regulated for their comfort or wel- fare. But accused persons enjoyed, by adop- tion from Euglaud, the privileges of the writ of habeas corjms as a protection against un- authorized or pretended imprisonments, and of trial by jury as a preventive of oppress- ive or forced convictions of crime. Some of the colonies also possessed important as- surances of individual rights in a " Bill of Rights," embodying a distinct declaration of principles of liberty obligatory on govern- ment iu every prosecution of an individual. The principles and means which were to op- erate toward an amelioration of the criminal law were in existence at the era of the Rev- olution. And the amelioration which has been accomplished is by no means confined to American communities or attributable to American ideas. It has been as clear and steady in England as among us. WRITTEN CONSTITUTIONS. The art of administering government ac- cording to the directions of a written con- stitution may fairly be named among the products of American thought and effort during our century. The adoption of writ- ten constitutions by Virginia and Pennsyl- 438 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. vania in 177G, and by other States not long afterward, upon recommendation of the Con- tinental Congress, initiated the system which has become fundamental to our se- curity, prosperity, and progress. It is true there were written resolutions adopted by the people for the guidance of government before the era of the Revolu- tion, and there have been such abroad as well as among us. They were, however, very limited in scope as compared with the constitutions of our day. Most of them, the more ancient ones, like Magna Charta, for example, instead of embodying an attempt to create and organize a government, as- sumed a government already existing by hereditary right, and only sought to impose some special restrictions upon its action. Now a " constitution," as we in America un- derstand the term, is something far deeper and more fundamental than any of the state papers of past centuries. Our idea is that there is no hereditary right, but that all the powers of government, all the authori- ty which society can rightly exercise toward individuals, are originally vested in the masses of the people ; that the people meet together (by their delegates) to organize a government, and freely decide what officers they will have to act for them in making and administering laws, and what the pow- ers of these officers shall bo. Those writ- ten directions of the people, declaring what their officers may do and what they may not, form the constitution. The idea, in its practical development, is American. The course of jurisprudence through our century has shown that it is possible, and, with the short though severe exception of the civil war. that it is not difficult, for an intelligent, conscientious, self-controlled community, who realize that the will of the people is the source of power, to create and administer government by and under those written constitutions. It has been practi- cable to have these writings framed. The thirteen colonies, in obedience to the sug- gestion of their Congress, and notwithstand- ing tlic embarrassments and discord of the period, severally adopted constitutions at a very early day, and from time to time since, as new communities in the Territories have grown to sufficient numbers, they have been prompt to ask an enabling act from Con- gress, and have readily given the time and attention needed for assembling a conven- tion of delegates to prepare a constitution, and for holding a popular election to enact it. It has been practicable to have these writings expounded. The judiciary created by a constitution sits clothed with power to explain whatever doubtful provisions may be found therein, and to test the acts of the Legislature by the constitutional standard ; and these decisions have been readily ac- cepted. It has been practicable to secure obedieuce. Throughout the land a constant succession of elections has been held, pur- suant to the directions of the constitution ; the defeated candidates have retired cheer- fully ; the successful ones have assumed the powers, privileges, and duties prescribed by the written charter, have administered them through the defined term, and have obe- diently relinquished them at its close to constitutionally elected successors. It has been practicable to have these constitu- tions amended. They do not become rigid, iron-bound shrouds, stifling the growth of the people, but contain within themselves duo provision for alteration as time may re- quire. Thus the people of New York, who formed their original constitution in 1777, formed new ones iu 1822 and in 184(5 ; and in 1869, iu a popular election, weighed a new constitution against three amendments to the old one, and accepted one of the amend- ments, while rejecting all other changes. The people of Massachusetts, who framed a constitution in 1780, have several times adopted amendments, and in 1853 employed delegates four months in drawing a new one, deliberately considered the draft, and rejected it at the polls. In Louisiana, where the original constitution was framed in 1812, new ones were adopted in 1845 and 1853. In 18G4 a fourth was adopted, but disallowed by- Congress, whereupon a fifth, under the re- construction laws, was prepared and adopt- ed. The history of other States is similar. THE TWOFOLD SYSTEM OF COURTS. The character of the somewhat complica- ted system of government which has become established in our country has been the sub- ject of much discussion among political writers and theorists. For while the duties of the various members and officers of gov- TWOFOLD .SYSTEM OF COURTS. 4:ii) eminent are pretty distinctly described in the anthoritative constitutions, those Ln- struments give Little or no theoretic expla- nation <>f the nature <>f the anion Intended to be formed. Many theories have boon propounded. At one extreme stands what lias been called the "State Rights" theory, which presents the Constitution as a species of treaty or compact between the States. Ac- cording to Uii.s view, the colonies, upon declaring and establishing their independ- ence, became independent State govern- ments. Desiring to organize some mode of securing their common interests, they form- ed an alliance or compact for that purpose, which was the « » 1 * I confederation; and this was the agreement of the States, not of the people. Finding this compact insufficient for the purpose, the States rescinded it, and framed another, more intimate and efficient, which is the Constitution, and which is like- wise a compact of the States, and to which States subsequently springing into exist- ence by political acts of the people of new Territories have given a voluntary adhe- sion. At the other extreme stands a theory i ha1 the Union is the original government, and the State governments derive t heir existence from it or by its authority. Upon this view, the colonies, desirous before they had exist- ence as Slates to achieve independence, formed a union under the Continental Con- gress, which, indeed, was not very formally organized, and was incomplete and ineffi- cient as to many subjects, but was yet a real national government, by the military operations of which the colonies were set free from foreign control, and )>y the per- mission Of Which, after they were flee, State governments were organized for the exer- cise of such powers as were, not, vested in the Union. These governments, at the de- mand of I he Union, conceded a more explicit statement of the powers and authority of the, latter in the old Articles of Confeder- ation; and still Later, by the Constitution, surrendered to the national government all those broad powers which it now wields. The Union, having at (lie outset given liber- ty and political existence to the thirteen States, and having acquired extensive terri- tory and national jurisdiction beyond their limits, has authorized the set tlement of thai territory, and lias from time to time, organ- ized t lie settlements into states created by the Union, and subject to its proper nation- al authority. A medium view may be slated thus: that the colonial governments were in no proper sense even the germs which have, ripened into the governments which now exist, but were ereat it ms of foreign authority, and per ished with the sundering of the political lies which united our ancestors to the land of their origin ; that \\ hen, not, the colonial governments, but the people of the colonies, became weary of foreign rule and declared themselves independent, this, whether man- ifested by means of the forms and officers in use in colonial government or by other modes, was a revolutionary and popular act, and not an act, of the governments then ex- isting; and the independence which they established was rather the independence of the People from any government, colonial or other, of British origin, than the inde pendence of the colonial governments; and they, the people, then beci ■, the true and ultimate source of all political power, though whether the day when they declared this right or the day when the adversary ac- quiesced in it Should he taken as the liirih- day of the principle is a, question of some nicety. The people within what, were for- merly the thirteen colonies did, by adoption of Slate, constitutions and other less formal and distinct, but really popular acts, estab- lish State governments; and these State governments allied themselves tor mutual defense and other public purposes, under the old Articles of Confederation. This at- tempt of the States to provide for the gen- eral welfare proved inefficient; upon which the people did, by a new, original aid,, rev olntionary though peaceful, and popular though in part performed by the, use of State governmental instrumentalities, withdraw from the Slates a port inn of their powers, and vest them, as expressed in the ('(institu- tion, iii a, new and national government. Since that time new communities of people coming info existence in newly settled Ter- ritories have formed new State governments, and have also, upon the Consent of the, na- tion, united iii the general government. As the general result, the American people have 440 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. established a duplex political system — a na- tional government for national purposes, for duties of common concern to all their com- munities ; and a government by States for objects local or peculiar, or colored by the differing situations, circumstances, and de- sires of the different communities. Very consonant to the last-described the- ory is the appearance of the judicial system as it exists in our day. An important achievement of our people during the cen- tury has been the actual organization of a duplex system of tribunals, adapted to pre- serve and enforce the administration of the powers vested in the two fundamental or- ganizations respectively. By the constitu- tions and laws of the States the people have created courts adequate to the administra- tion of justice in all matters intrusted to the States. By the national Constitution they have created a Supreme Court of the United States, clothed with power to try originally certain controversies of high po- litical importance, and also, what is of more general interest, to review and correct the decisions of subordinate courts. By acts of Congress they have created, for the ordi- nary administration of justice throughout the States in controversies coming within the national jurisdiction, a system of dis- trict and circuit courts. The controversies intrusted to the na- tional tribunals, omitting to mention some of rare occurrence, are of three kinds: cases arising under any law of the United States ; cases of admiralty jurisdiction, that is, aris- ing at sea, or immediately connected with maritime matters ; and cases between cit- izens of different States. It was appropri- ate and highly consistent with the general plan to confide to the States all local and separate concerns ; to the Union all general and national affairs. A controversy de- pending on the laws of the Union or upon the general maritime law of the commercial world should be referred to the courts of the Union, for they might be expected to determine such cases more wisely and more uniformly and consistently than would be done by twenty or thirty independent State courts. Controversies between citizens of different States are referred to national tribunals for other reasons : largely to se- cure protection against any favor or par- tiality which courts of one State might bestow upon its own citizens as compared with citizens of another. To carry this system into practical effect the States have been divided by Congress into judicial districts, of which there are now fifty-seven in all ; twenty of these dis- tricts are co-extensive each with one State ; fourteen States are divided each into two districts; Alabama, New York, and Ten- nessee are each divided into three. For each district there is a district judge. The districts have also been allotted in circuits, of which there are nine, and for each cir- cuit there is a circuit judge. These judges hold United States circuit and district courts at designated places throughout the States, systematic provision having been made for court-rooms, clerks, marshals, and records, wholly independent of State legislation or control ; so that every where individuals concerned in controversies depending on national laws, or arising upon matters of maritime origin, or in which citizens of one State are pitted against those of another, may seek justice in a court of the Union, free, by its creation and surroundings and by all its precedents and traditions, from any undue influence or bias arising from differences among the States. To complete this statement of the national courts, it should be added that appropriate courts have been organized for the general admin- istration of justice in the Territories and the District of Columbia, throughout which the States can not act ; and a " Court of Claims" has been established for the determination of claims by citizens against the govern- ment of the Union. The organization of an appropriate sys- tem of tribunals in the various States is no less complete and thorough, though less easy to be described in brief. As to almost every State it may be said that there is a Supreme Court, the judges of which sep- arately visit various county seats at stated times to hold jury trials, and afterward meet and hold court together to review and correct the decisions made by each other upon their circuits. In New York decisions of the Supreme Court may be reviewed in the Court of Appeals ; but throughout the country generally the Supreme Court of each State is the highest court, and the de- ADMIRALTY JURISDICTION. 441 cisions of the full bench of judges settle the law for that State upon all questions fall- ing within the sphere of State government. If the authority and powers of the national government are involved in the case, there is a mode by which it may be carried to the Supreme Court of the United States for final decision. For each of the counties into which the States are divided there is, as a general rule, a court for the trial of suits, known as the Court of Common Pleas, the County Court, the Circuit Court for the county, or some similar name ; also a court for the care of estates of deceased persous and su- perintendence of children and lunatics, and for other matters involving legal care of property without active lawsuits, which is differently styled Court of Probate, Orphans' Court, Surrogate's Court, and the like, in dif- ferent States. One town in each county is designated by law as the county seat, where these county courts shall be held, and where all the judicial and public records of the law business arising in the county shall be pre- served. The counties, again, are, except in some unsettled regions, divided into townships, and throughout these are justices of the peace, who have authority to try lawsuits involving small amounts or founded upon minor wrongs. In many of the larger cities, where it has been found that the general system of jus- tices of the peace and a county court is not adequate to the judicial business of the place, additional courts for the city are es- tablished. Thus in New York, in Buffalo, in Cincinnati, in Indianapolis, there is a "Superior Court;" in Brooklyn there is a "City Court." And for similar reasons the justices of the peace are in some cities organized into quite a formal system of courts. For the trial of crimes there is, as a gen- eral rule, a similar arrangement. Petty of- fenses may be tried before a justice of the peace. For offenses of a higher but me- dium grade there is very often a Court of Sessions, or a criminal jurisdiction in the court of the county ; or they are tried in a branch of the Supreme Court, sometimes bearing the old-fashioned name " Oyer and Terminer." We are so accustomed to hear allusions to these tribunals that their existence seems a matter of course. But in truth a great deal of organizing power and judicial and business ability have been required and displayed in establishing over so large a country so varied a scheme of courts, co- operating in harmony to secure the admin- istration of justice. OUR ADMIRALTY JURISDICTION. Every reader upon legal topics under- stands that all commercial nations have ac- knowledged a general system of " maritime law," and have employed courts of " admi- ralty jurisdiction" to administer it ; that this law and these courts deal with contro- versies arising out of the management of shij)8, the carriage and delivery of cargoes, the employment and treatment of seamen, the award of damages for collisions between vessels, or of compensation for salvage of ves- sels in peril of wreck, the condemnation and sale of ships captured as prize of war, and the punishment of crimes on board ship. All jurisdiction of this nature was by our Constitution reserved from the States, and vested, by very general language, in the courts of the Union. The manner in which the scope of this jurisdiction has grown to meet the wants of growing American com- merce forms a good illustration of the ex- pansibility of our jurisprudence, and shows that if the law is administered in the future in the same spirit as has prevailed in the past, traditions and precedents may guide and advise, but can not restrict, progress. Admiralty, as has just been said, deals with matters arising " at sea." But what constitutes the sea, and what are its limits and bounds ? Is the mouth of the Hudson or of the Mississippi a part of the sea ? If so, how far up stream is " sea ?" if not, how far out into the blue waters is "river?" Goods are laden on board ship in a foreign land to come to an American port, and they are to be protected for their owner by the Admiralty (or district) court while they are at sea, and by the Common-law (or State) court after they are brought ashore. But when do they cease to be "at sea?" Is it when the vessel enters the pilotage grounds of the port ? or when she is fairly within the sheltered harbor? or when she is fast 442 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. moored ? or not until the goods are piled upon tlie solid wharf or pier ? The leading test for determining these questions in early English times was the ehh and flow of the tide. There was a long- continued and deep prejudice against the admiralty, and as England had no important interior commerce, and the tidal line corre- sponded quite nearly with the actual wants and use of her people in commercial matters, that line (with the modification that admi- ralty should not interfere, tide or no tide, with matters occurring within the legal bounds of an English county) was easily made the dividing line between the rival courts. There is an antique caricature rep- resenting the petty disputes that in old times engrossed English tribunals on this subject, by exhibiting a common-law law- yer, armed with a mace, running back and forth along the sea-side, defending his juris- diction from the incursions of an admiralty lawyer, who floats in a tub upon the water, brandishing a trident. One can easily im- agine that, as the tide rises, the tub is borne in to high-water mark, and the jurisdiction of the admiralty lawyer is in the ascendant. As it falls, the common-law practitioner can push his competitor backward with the re- ceding waves, until he can flourish the mace over the entire moist beach above low water. For two-thirds of the century our courts followed, without much question, the view of admiralty which obtained in England, and treated the word "admiralty" in the Constitution as meaning only that juris- diction, limited to tide-waters, which was implied by it in old English law. There were no early reasons of importance im- pressing a different view. But in later years the increase of navigation and all al- lied interests upon the Great Lakes and the rivers at points above the rise of the tide, together with the advance and development of all forms of commerce upon the various waters connecting the States, have demand- ed and obtained an entire reconsideration of the subject. The year 1845 may be deem- ed the salient era of the change. An act of Congress passed in that year asserting admiralty jurisdiction over the lakes and navigable waters connecting them, and a decision of the Supreme Court announced in 1846, but founded on facts occurring ear- lier, introduced the view that our admiralty jurisdiction is not necessarily that recog- nized in England when our Constitution was framed, but the broader one known in commercial countries elsewhere ; and this idea has been developed by subsequent ad- judications, until it is now understood that (except as to matters arising within the in- ternal commerce of a single State) the ques- tion whether any particular waters are within the American admiralty jurisdiction or not depends upon whether they are nav- igable, not upon their susceptibility to the tide; the jurisdiction may extend, as has been happily said, " wherever vessels float and navigation successful^ aids commerce." The result of the advanced opinion is, that while commerce within a single State — such as the management of a ferry-boat between New York and Brooklyn, a claim for wages earned in running a boat on a merely local canal — is reserved to the State courts, con- troversies connected with vessels in gen- eral commerce upon our lakes and great rivers, upon canals connecting them, upon streams which, though originally unnaviga- ble, have been practically opened to naviga- tion by engineering skill and artificial im- provements, and upon waters fit for general navigation, are subject to one uniform rule of law, course of procedure, and line of de- cisions in the national courts. There is a parallel question relative to the rights of land-owners upon shores of streams. By a long-ago adopted rule of English law, the proprietors of laud upon the banks of petty streams are understood to own the land under the water, each to the middle — to an imaginary thread running up and down the stream half-way between its banks. But if the stream is navigable, the property of the laud-owner terminates at the water-line ; the bed of the stream, with the waters, is public. In England, as with reference to admiralty jurisdiction, so with reference to land titles, a stream was deem- ed navigable and public as far up as the tide ebbed and flowed. Beyond this point, or if there was no tide, it was deemed private. Now this is a question which in America each State settles for itself, and not one which, like admiralty jurisdiction, can be determined for the whole country by the United States Supreme Court. And the PATENTS AND COPYRIGHTS. 443 States are not agreed. The courts of most of the New England States, and of Missis- sippi and Virginia, have been contented to follow the old rule. New York, Pennsyl- vania, and several of the Southern States have, however, adopted the rule that if the river is actually navigable for purposes of commerce, it must be treated as public, whether tidal or not. The West is divided on the question. Some States have had no occasion yet to consider it. But the prob- ability is that ultimately, in all the States where there are any important navigable streams which are not tidal, the tides will be discarded and actual navigability sub- stituted as the test of the extent of the shore-owner's right. PATENTS — COPYRIGHTS. The framers of the national Constitution foresaw the advantage of general and uni- form laws to secure patents for inventions and copyrights for writings ; and the power to legislate upon these subjects was con- ferred upon Congress. There were early laws of these kinds ; a system of patent law was established by an act of 1793, and of copyright law by acts of 1790 and 1802, which, as amended by some later laws, con- tinued in operation for many years. In 1831 as to copyrights, and 1836 as to pat- ents, substantially new systems of law were established ; and these, while they have been altered in details, continued in force quite down to our own time. In 1870 these laws Avere thoroughly re-examined, a new system of provisions covering the entire field, with the addition of trade-marks, was enacted, all the old laws being repeal- ed ; and this act, as re-enacted, with some changes of arrangement and expression, in the United States Revised Statutes, forms the present law for the whole country. Authors frequently contend, and inventors probably agree with them, that the composer of a new writing or the contriver of a new machine has a natural and inherent right of property in his ideas, extending to all the copies or reproductions of them. Composi- tions and inventions, they urge, are just as much the property of those who by talent, time, and labor have wrought them to per- fection as are crops, manufactures, or mer- chandise the property of those whose capital and labor have brought them into being ; and the law ought, they urge, to protect the author in his books (and, by a like reason- ing, the inventor in his machine), no matter where he lives, nor how long he has enjoyed them. In particular it is said to be a ground- less injustice to deny to a foreign author the same protection as is accorded to a citizen. But this theory of an unqualified natural property in all the reproductions of an idea, whether philosophically correct or not, is not accepted as the basis of our jurispru- dence. Our law of copyright, for instance, rests upon the theory that when an author has by his labor and skill embodied ideas in a manuscript, he has a natural property in his work, but it is limited to the identical work he has done, the manuscript he has prepared. In this property he will be pro- tected, just as is the owner of any other ar- ticle : it shall not be used by another with- out his consent ; if it is borrowed, the law will compel its return ; if it is stolen from him, the thief may be punished. But his natural property does not preclude him from giving his ideas away to the public ; and if he does this, no rule of jurisprudence war- rants him in reclaiming them, or in exact- ing compensation from those who adopt and use them. But the practical value of a literary work or an invention to the original proprietor does not consist in his own sole use, but in some means of disposing of reproductions. Hence public policy advises that, as an en- couragement, some control over the repro- duction of the fruits of mental labor should be assured to the originators of ideas, in ad- dition to the natural right of property, by authority of which they might, if they chose, keep what they produce themselves instead of disseminating it. Whatever of monopoly is given is proffered by the government not as a limited concession to a natural right which the law recognizes while unwilling or unable to protect it, but as a gift, by way of reward or stimulus, additional to native right. Such, at least, has been the founda- tion of our copyright and patent laws — that it is wholesome and for the general good not to leave authors and inventors to starve upon the mere property in what they pro- duce, but to encourage their beneficent la- bors by assuring to them a control over all 444 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. reproductions of tlio results. How much control to give them, and for how long, is, upon the theory of our jurisprudence, pure- ly a question of government policy. Under the patent laws, particularly, an immense number of inventions have heen developed, and many of the patents issued have proved very remunerative. The pe- cuniary interests secured under these laws have become of groat importance. The gen- eral features of the manner in which they are protected by jurisprudence, by means of injunctions to prevent continuing an in- fringement, or actions for damages for an infringement already committed, are famil- iarly known. EXTRADITION OF CRIMINALS. When a Tweed absconds, a misty ques- tion arises over the community, "Can wo find him?" And there is a second question, "Can Ave fetch him buck?" Or must we content ourselves with a new application of the words, " We may go to him, but ho will not return to us?" The first of these questions is for the detective force ; the sec- ond is answered by extradition treaties. The plan of a government combining in- dependent states within a homogeneous national organization involves a necessity for a duplex provision for returning fugi- tive criminals. The national territory, as a whole, is naturally a retreat for criminals from foreign lands, and offenders against the laws of one State will constantly seek to escape punishment in their homo courts by passing into the territory of another. Provision has heen needed, and has been made, for both classes. The matter of returning criminals who escape hither from foreign countries lies between the foreign nations and our na- tional goverumont. The Governor of a State is not warranted, according to the prevailing opinion, in sending an escaped criminal from a foreign country home again tor trial; but it is a matter for the Presi- dent and Secretary of state at Washington, and for the United States courts. Even the national government does not hold it- self hound by any absolute or natural obli- gation to return an offender. As a rule, ho is returned only under some treaty stipula- tion. But the United States, mindful of the public necessity of reciprocal efforts between different nations to promote each other's administration of criminal justice, has from time to time formed treaties upon this subject witli different governments abroad, until at length an extensive though somewhat complex system has become es- tablished, and is in full operation under the provisions of a systematic act of Congress prescribing the mode of proceeding. These treaties have some features in com- mon. They aro usually limited to crimes involving grave moral guilt, so that merely political offenders and refugees can not be reclaimed; for the United States has never lent its aid to any disposition in monarchic- al governments to repress by criminal pun- ishments tho exercise of what are deemed in this country tho individual rights of the citizen. Tho treaties do not require abso- lute proof of the guilt of an alleged offend- er ; but, as a rule, he can bo sent home only upon evidence which would be deemed suf- ficient by our law to warrant holding him for trial if he wero charged with commit- ting tho crime in this country. Whether he may be tried here upon any other charge than that on which he was sent home is a vexed question. And the treaties are re- ciprocal ; that is, it is the policy of this country to return only offenders of tho samo class as those whom wo aro allowed to re- claim. This last principle has led to a great variety in the provisions of tho different treaties governing extradition. Thus our treaty with Great Britain of August 9, 1842, provides that the United States and Great Britain shall, upon mutual requisitions by their authorities, deliver up to justice all persons who, being charged with the crimo of murder, or assault with intent to commit murder, or piracy, or arson, or robbery, or forgery, or tho utterance of forged paper, committed within the juris- diction of either, shall seek an asylum or be found within the territories of the other. Aud our treaty with the Hawaiian Islands of December 20, 1849, contains provisions corresponding with these. We have three treaties with France pro- viding for returning from either country to tho other persons accused of murder or at- tempt to commit murder; or with rape, for- gery, arson, robbery, burglary ; or with em- EXTRADITION TREATIES. 445 bezzlenieut by public officers or private employes, or forging, or circulating counter- feit coin or false notes, when such offense is subject to infamous punishment. With the Orange Free State we have a treaty of De- cember 22, 1871, covering these crimes, with the addition of piracy. Our treaty with Sweden of March 21, 1860, includes murder or attempt to commit murder, rape, piracy (including aggravated mutinies of seamen), arson, robbery and burglary, forgery, and the fabrication of counterfeit coin or paper money, and embez- zlement by public officers. The treaty of July 3, 1850, with Austria, and that with San Salvador of June 28, 1872, are to the same effect. So are the treaties with Nicaragua, June 25, 1870, and with Equador of June 28, 1872, except that these omit attempts to murder. So is that with Venezuela of Au- gust 27, 18G0, that with the Dominican Re- public of February 8, 1867, that with Italy of March 23, 1868, and that with Belgium of March 19, 1874, except that each of these extends to the embezzlement of private funds. To the same effect is the treaty with Switzerland of November 25, 1850, except that counterfeiting is omitted, and the em- bezzlement of private funds embraced. Our treaty with Prussia of Juno 16, 1852, includes murder or assaults with intent to commit murder, piracy, arson, robbery, for- gery, or utterance of forged papers, or fabri- cation of counterfeit coin or paper money, and embezzlement of public funds. By a subsequent treaty this engagement is ex- tended to all the states of the North Ger- man Confederation. Aud the same enu- meration of crimes is found in the treaty with Bavaria of September 12, 1853. Our treaty with Mexico of December 11, 1861, embraces murder, assault with iutent to commit murder, mutilation, piracy, arson, rape, kidnaping (whether by force or de- ception), forgery aud counterfeiting, or cir- culating forged or counterfeit coin or paper money, embezzlement of public moneys, rob- bery or burglary, and larceny of property above twenty-live dollars in value, commit- ted within the frontier States and Territo- ries of the contracting parties. Our treaty with Peru of September 12, 1870, provides for murder ; for rape and abduction by force ; bigamy and arson ; kidnaping, by force or deception ; robbery, larceny, burglary ; counterfeiting ; forgery — broadly defined, and extended to public securities, judicial acts and records, postage and revenue stamps, public aud authentic deeds and documents ; embezzlement of pub- lic or private funds; fraudulent bankrupt- cy ; fraudulent barratry ; mutiny, when the crew have taken forcible possession of the ship, or have transferred it to pirates ; severe injuries intentionally caused on railroads, to telegraph lines, or to persons by means of explosions of mines or steam-boilers; and piracy. So much for the right or duty of our na- tion to claim or to make return of a fugitive when the question arises between ours and a foreign country. Quite as often, perhaps, it arises where a criminal escapes from one State into another. With these cases the general government has no concern, except that Congress has prescribed the mode of proceeding. The right and the duty lie be- tween the two States. The President and Secretary of State at Washington have no part in the extradition. The Governor of the one State makes a requisition upon the Governor of the other, demanding the re- turn of the offender ; and upon this demand, accompanied by certain formal proofs, being laid before the Governor of the other, it is his duty to direct the fugitive, if found within his State, to bo arrested and sent home for trial. But if a Governor should refuse perform- ance of this duty, there does uot appear to bo any way by which it can be compelled. The national courts can not oblige him to act. The Constitution simply says that such a fugitive "shall be delivered up," but leaves the performance of the duty to the several States. BANKRUPTCY. Independent of something like a bank- rupt law, a merchant who fails in business is liable to be harassod to an extreme by the pressing demands and suits of rival cred- itors, and to be for long years excluded from resuming industry or seeking new prosperi- ty by the peril that any acquisitions he may make will be seized by those who hold old claims — a peril which both disheartens him in exertion and discourages those who might 446 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. be willing to give him assistance and cred- it. The creditors being independent in pro- ceedings to collect their dues, each endeav- ors to anticipate the others, and numerous anecdotes are current of ingenious devices of attorneys to outstrip one another in the race of diligence. There is the story of one who " attached" the water-wheel of a fac- tory whose proprietors would not pay his demand. In another anecdote four attor- neys, in pursuit of the same debtor, reach- ed the railroad terminus late at night, and three, by concert to exclude the other, hired the only cab in sight, meaning to belate the fourth by compelling him to walk; but he jumped on the box, bought cab and horse from the driver, drove to a choice spot, and upset the cab with the door back against a stone wall, then rau forward and served his writ while his competitors were struggling among the cushions and the broken glass. So an absconding debtor, who undertook to escape across a lake on skates, bearing the proceeds of his fraudulent sales in a fat pocket-book, was followed and overtaken by a collecting agent, also upou skates ; and when the unlucky fugitive broke through the ice, the collector insisted on his throw- ing out the pocket-book to pay demands in full before he would help him ashore. Upon the other hand, the pressure of creditors often impels debtors to schemes of fraud or of unjust preference in paying rival claimants. In view of these tendencies of the ordina- ry laws for collection of debts, the Consti- tution has authorized Congress to establish uniform laws upon the subject of bankrupt- cies. Precisely what is "a bankrupt law" has been the subject of some conflicting discussion. But practically it is understood to be a law which ascertains what persons have become, from want of means, unable to pay their debts in ordinary course of business, which takes their remaining prop- erty into legal custody, and distributes it equitably among the persons who are proved to have just demands, and which gives the debtor, except in such few cases as are ex- cluded from the benefit, a discharge from his past debts, assuring him of immunity from further lawsuits to collect them. In 1800, and again in 1841, laws of this description were enacted under stress of general commercial trouble then existing; but each was, within two or three years, repealed. In 1867 a comprehensive and well-considered bankrupt law was passed. Proposals for its repeal have been warmly urged and earnestly discussed, but have thus far resulted only in some comprehen- sive amendments, indicating that it may probably long continue a feature of the ju- risprudence of the country. Under this law the petition of a debtor to be discharged as a bankrupt, or of his creditors that a surrender of his estate may be compelled, brings up, in the first instance, the question whether the debtor is really a bankrupt and within the provisions of the law. If the debtor is the petitioner, there is not much opportunity for question upon this point ; but when creditors make the application, they must prove that the debt- or has committed some "act of bankruptcy." that he has absconded or concealed himself, or has concealed or disposed of or assigned his property to defraud his creditors ; or has been arrested or imprisoned for debt for at least a week ; or has allowed one creditor in preference to others to get judgment against him or to seize his property ; or has suspended payment of ordinary business paper for a fortnight. Such acts as these expose a person to be thrown into bank- ruptcy by a creditor. After an adjudication that the debtor is a bankrupt, an assignee is appointed, gener- ally upon a choice by the creditors, to take and dispose of the debtor's estate. The debtor is required to furnish schedules or lists of all his property, also of all his debts, and may be strictly examined upon oath as to all the facts. The assignee takes posses- sion of the property, sells it, defrays any specific charges or liens that ought to be paid in full, and collects the proceeds to be distributed among the creditors. To enable him to do this, very full powers are given him to take the place of the bankrupt in all matters connected with his property, and to prosecute any suits which the bank- rupt might have done if the surrender had not been made. Meantime an opportunity is accorded to the creditors to make proof of their de- mands. Each one must file a statement and make oath, and if his claim is disputed, CALIFORNIA LAND CLAIMS. 447 must adduce proof tliat it is lawful. The questions, bow much is due, at what date, *what interest is to be allowed, what offsets should be made, and the like, are all deter- mined. The money realized by the assignee is then paid over by him to the creditors. The general rule is to distribute the fund among the creditors in proportion to their demands proved. But the expeuses of the proceedings, and some demands, such as debts to the United States or to the State in which the proceedings are held, taxes, and wages recently earned to the amount of $50, are allowed to be paid in full be- fore ordinary debts. The ultimate step in the proceedings is to grant the debtor a discharge. This may be refused him if he has been guilty of miscon- duct, such as giving false testimony, with- holding his property from the assignee, falsi- fying his accounts, or giving portions of his estate to particular creditors to buy their consent to a discharge. And there are some restrictions applicable where a debtor's property fails to pay more than a specified portion of his debts. The discharge does not extend to debts incurred by embezzle- ment, or positive fraud, or breach of trust. But, with exceptions like these, one main purpose of the law is to set the bankrupt free from indebtedness, that he may com- mence business life anew. THE CALIFORNIA LAND CLAIMS. Between the California of Dana's Two Tears Before the Mast and that of Nordhoff's recent volumes, how great is the difference ! A third part of a century has seen an im- mense wilderness become a flourishing and influential State. The course of this trans- formation threw upon the United States judiciary the burden of determining a con- glomeration of controversies fully as com- plex, novel, and pressing as any which the history of jurisprudence discloses — the "pri- vate land claims." About a month after our declaration of independence, by a royal order of the gov- ernment of Spain, provinces of Mexico which included California were organized as " the Internal Provinces of New Spain." From that time until 1847 — the date of the trans- fer of California to the United States, upon the close of our war with Mexico, closely fol- lowed in 1848 by the discovery of gold — the province was under a succession of Spanish and Mexican governments, whose policy was to make liberal grants of land to persons who would engage to settle upon and culti- vate the tracts given them. This was done for the purpose of attracting immigrants. Immense quantities — eleven square leagues being a usual limit — were granted without exacting any payment, upon simple condi- tions that the settler should occupy, build upon, and cultivate his acquisition. By the treaty which transferred Califor- nia from Mexico to the United States our government engaged to recognize and pro- tect the rights of these settlers ; not only of those who had fully performed all condi- tions and had received full papers of title to their lands, but also those who, by any circumstances, ought to be allowed to con- tinue incomplete or delayed improvements, and to acquire lands which had been prom- ised them therefor. At the time of the treaty an immense number of these claims existed. In some cases the settler had died, and there were claims of his heirs to be considered; in oth- ers, he had sold his claim, and the purchaser demanded to fulfill the conditions and take the title in his place ; or he had commenced building and cultivation, but had delayed completing what was prescribed ; or he had been prevented from so doing, notwithstand- ing his best efforts ; or he had neglected and abandoned his grant altogether ; or he had lost his papers. The claims involved ques- tions of all sorts ; but the United States agreed to take the place of Mexico in re- gard to the lauds, to recognize and respect such equitable claims as had their origin in the action of the Mexican government, but were yet inchoate and imperfect, and to take such steps as were needed to perfect them, just as if the sovereignty of the country had continued unchanged. The ink of this treaty was hardly dry when the discovery of gold aroused intense interest in these wild lands. Claims that had been neglected were revived; settle- ments that had been abandoned were re- newed. All kinds of reasons were brought forward to excuse the delays of grantees in taking possession and cultivating as they had engaged. False claims were advanced, 448 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. and spurious records aud papers were pre- pared to support them. There arose very rapidly a large mass of claims very novel, complex, and extensive, and pressed with the utmost zeal. Under these circumstances Congress in 1851 created a board of commissioners, who should, under review by the United States courts, try and determine these claims ; and this complicated and difficult task has been, during the past quarter of a century, quietly and successfully accomplished. The extent and scope of the Governors' powers, under the old laws of Spain and Mexico, to make these grants have been ascertained, and the date when their power ceased has been de- termined. Of course all grants made in ex- cess of their authority, or after it expired, have been adjudged valueless. The validi- ty of each grant has been examined — wheth- er the papers were genuine, whether they were regular in form and duly signed. The conditions imposed upon the grantee have received attention, and the claimant has been required to show by some proper proof that the grantee took possession, that he built and cultivated as was required, or to show some excuse. Claims which could not be substantiated have been forever annulled, while all which woiddbear a judicial inves- tigation have been formally confirmed, and complete and final evidences of title have been issued to the claimants. In this affair the number and variety of the claims the extent of the tracts of land involved, their remoteness from the seat of government and settled portions of our coun- try, the difficulty of obtaining evidence in that wilderness, the novelty and obscurity of the questions involved, and the value placed upon the lands since their sudden appreciation, have combined to render the task of judicial determination one of unusu- al difficulty and magnitude. And it is worth noting that during ear- lier years of the century numerous land claims of similar nature, though less ex- tended in respect of territory, less sudden in their rise, and less romantic in the at- tendant circumstances, involving lands in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mis- sissippi, and Missouri, have been determined by our judiciary upon similar principles and with like success. EIGHTS OF MARRIED WOMEN. By the English law, as enforced through early years in this country except in Loui- siana, the legal existence andrights of a wife were for the most part deemed merged in those of her husbaud. She continued, in- deed, the owner of her lands, but he con- trolled them and their income. Money or personal property coming to her, vested at once in him, and so did the fruits or pro- ceeds of any demand or right of action, if he would take the trouble to assert his mar- ital rights. Her services also belonged to him. She was disabled from making any contracts. In almost all judicial proceed- ings affecting her he either took her place or stood by her side, with a practical con- trol of the affair.' As to any criminal acts done in his presence, she was irresponsible, and he alone was legally to blame. Throughout the recent third of the cen- tury in many of the States there has been a steady change introduced by legislation, and carried into effect by the courts in the whole jurisprudence of this subject. The change has been of slow growth. The in- creased rights aud privileges have been ac- corded piecemeal. Take Connecticut, for example. Full and complete protection to married women in their rights of property, against creditors of the husband, is now the established policy of the State. But this result has been attained gradually and with difficulty. The first act was passed in 1845 ; it protected the interest of the husbaud in the real estate of the wife which was hers at the time of the marriage, or accrued to her by devise or inheritance during covert- ure. The second, in 1849, protected the personal estate which should thereafter ac- crue to her during her married life by be- quest or distribution, by vesting it in him as trustee for her. The third, in 1850, pro- tected real estate conveyed to her in con- sideration of money or property acquired by her personal services. The fourth, also in 1850, protected re -investments of the avails of her real estate when sold. The fifth, in 1853, vested in her for her sole use all her property, real and personal, when abandoned. The sixth, in 1855, extended the provisions of the act of 1849 to personal property owned by her at time of marriage. The seventh, in 1856, extended the provis- HOMESTEAD AND EXEMPTION LAWS. 449 ions of the act of 1849 to patent -rights, copyrights, pensions, and grants and allow- ances by government ; and an eighth, in 1857, further extended it to property ac- quired by gift. The ninth, in 1860, extended the act of 1850 respecting property acquired by personal services to re-investments of the same. The tenth, in 1865, extended the provisions of the act of 1845 to real estate acquired by gift or purchase ; and by the eleventh, in 1866, that of 1849 was extend- ed and applied to all personal property, whether acquired before or after marriage. But while the method of the reform has been irregular, the results have been exten- sive and thorough ; and the rules that the real and personal property of a wife, coming to her before or after marriage, continues hers, to be used, enjoyed, and disposed of, except as to manner and form of convey- ance, as if she were single, may be said to be substantially true in the majority of the States. An independent capacity to sue and be sued alone has been conferred in many ; and in not a few of the States wide powers to make contracts and to carry on general business, even to the extent of employing the husband as a managing agent of a large farm or manufacturing establishment, have been conferred. HOMESTEAD AND EXEMPTION LAWS. Books tell us of ancient laws by which a debtor who could not pay his debts might, upon demand of his creditors, be cut in pieces and divided bodily among them. Rigor like this had become obsolete long before the commencement of our century, but the law for the collection of debts was still rigid in exacting all pi-operty that could be obtained from a debtor for the satisfaction of his creditors. In modern years the view has obtained that creditors shall not have every thing ; some reserva- tion of property shall be allowed, to provide for the instant wants of an insolvent, and to relieve his family from absolute destitution. This privilege is given by laws of the vari- ous States allowing a head of a family to designate by public record a house and lot as his "homestead," which shall not there- after be taken for his general debts, and by laws prescribing certain kinds and amounts 29 of personal property which shall be "ex- empt from sale on execution." The prin- ciple of allowing a debtor to retain some little property for himself, and still more for his family, if he has one, is now recognized throughout the country. The extent of the privilege granted differs in the different States. Probably every State accords some privilege of exemption of personal property — clothing, a little live stock, and necessary tools for the debtor's farm, a limited number of articles of furniture for the house, wages just earned, and the like ; but the different statutes upon the subject run into an im- mense number of petty details. Homestead exemptions are not allowed in all the States. Down to 1875, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, Penn- sylvania, and Rhode Island, also the District of Columbia, appear not to have passed laws of this kind. Through the other States there are laws by which a head of a family may designate a homestead, and protect it from being sold for his debts, except for the price of it, or for a mortgage upon it, or oth- er special indebtedness. If the property is a farm, the privilege is limited in about half the States by number of acres ; forty, eighty, or one hundred and sixty is a com- mon limit. In others the restriction is by value, such as $5000, .$2000, or in some of the States less. In Texas two hundred acres may be exempt. If the property is a town or city lot, the exemption is generally limit- ed by a value corresponding to the value al- lowed for farms, or the quantity is closely restricted — as to a quarter or half an acre. The homestead laws usually give the wife of the proprietor some control over any sale or mortgage of the property. mechanics' lien laws. When an owner of land desires to erect a building, he does not usually himself buy the wood, the brick, and the iron-mongery needed, nor personally hire and pay the workmen employed. By custom he makes a contract with a builder for the erection, and the builder makes the purchases and employs the workmen. It has long been found that this system is prolific of frauds or losses to those who sell the materials or do the labor. The builder may collect the contract price of the house from the owner, 450 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. and refuse to pay his subordinates, and the latter may lose their remedy against the builder for want of his having any tangible property which they can reach, and against the owner because he made no contract with them, while they can not reclaim each what he contributed toward the work, because, whatever it is, it has become inextricably involved in the building. To prevent or redress such frauds, laws have gradually been framed in the various States to give the subordinate mechanics a lien upon the property which they assist to improve. Under these laws, "matei-ial men," as those who sell materials for a build- ing may be called, or laborers, may file a notice in a designated public office, setting forth what they have done toward a build- ing, and what is due to them for the same. By doing this they gain a right to be paid out of the value of the property. If the contractor pays them, as he should do, very well. If he does not, the owner may pay them and deduct from the money due the contractor. If neither will pay, the proper- ty may be sold, and the demands paid from the proceeds. Laws of this description exist in nearly all the States, though they vary greatly in details, and within any one State the law may differ in different counties. In Louisi- ana and Florida a lien is allowed for ad- vances made or work done in carrying on a plantation or farm. PROTECTION OF ANIMALS. The notable and successful efforts which have been made for the protection of ani- mals involve a new thought. In the admin- istration of the law in old times there is very little trace of any recognition of ani- mals as entitled in themselves to any legal care or protection. Animals have very long been esteemed property, and ill treatment of one which rendered it less valuable to the owner has been recognized as a wrong which the law would redress. Inhuman and barbarous treatment may also be com- mitted under circumstances rendering it de- moralizing to those who witness it ; on this ground it has long been punishable. But the additional view that sentient life should be, for its own sake, sheltered and guarded by the law, has only lately been developed with any distinctness and efficiency. Found- ed upon this sentiment, laws and efficient societies for the prevention of cruelty to ani- mals have been established in thirty-seven of the States and Territories. Throughout the world there are no less than 229 of these societies, the movement having been initi- ated by the New York society. REFORMED PROCEDURE. The English law of civil rights and reme- dies, as administered throughout our coun- try at the era of our Revolution, aud for more than half a century afterward, abounded in strict rules and exact forms, which were de- signed, and, if skillfully followed, were in many respects adapted, to shorten and per- haps to simplify legal proceedings, but, as actually pursued, were often the means of doing injustice in the name of the Law. The proceedings in the law courts were also sub- ject to interference in large classes of cases from courts of equity, whose mode of pro- ceeding and principles of deciding causes were very different from those of the law courts. Thus it might happen that a man who had an unquestionable right to recover in a suit lost his case because his lawyers brought the suit in the wrong court, or be- cause, bringing it in the right court, they drew the papers in the wrong form of action. The double and technical system which pre- vailed gave rise to great inconvenience, and the fictions constantly employed strength- ened the distrust which other causes created. Attempts have often been made to justify the obnoxious features of the system upon the ground of accuracy, simplicity, brevity, and the like ; but, in truth, the reasons were historic, not logical or practical. The prac- tice was as it had grown to be, not as it ought to be. The Reformed practice is now just above a quarter of a century old. It was initiated by a Code of Procedure adopted in New York in 1848, and amended and re-enacted in 1849. More than half the States have since adopt- ed its essential principles and leading pro- visions, and they underlie a very important measure of law reform which has recently gone into operation in England. The important features of these codes of reformed procedure are four. 1. The distinc- tion between courts of law and equity is CODES AND REVISED STATUTES. 451 abrogated; tlie same court has power to apply the rules of law or principles of equity to the controversy before it as circumstances may require. 2. Forms of action, particu- larly the technical differences between what used to be called actions of assumpsit and debt, of case and trespass, of trover and re- plevin, are abolished ; John Doe and Rich- ard Roe are dead and buried. 3. They recog- nize the assignee of all assignable demands ; and allow the real owner of the cause of action to sue, instead of requiring the action to be brought, by fiction of law, in the name of the original party, as was formerly the case. 4. They discard the strict technical nicety of pleading and practice which was required by the common-law system; and seek to elicit and try the real merits of the controversy, permittiug liberal amendments, and disregarding errors and variances, un- less such as to cause real injustice. CODES AND REVISED STATUTES. The readiness of American Legislatures to codify or revise the laws is a noticeable feat- ure. By a code, in strict usage, is under- stood a concise, comprehensive, systematic re-enactment of the law, deduced from both sources — the pre-existing statutes and the adjudications of courts. A revision of the statutes is a less extensive undertaking ; it aims only to exhibit, in brief compass and with proper corrections and improvements, the statutes which have been for a period accumulating in annual volumes. A code, if perfect and unambiguous, would be at its first enactment a substitute both for statutes and reports previously in use. A revision, however complete, would supersede only previous acts of the Legislature. But this distinction is not very nicely regarded in the nomenclature of our books of legisla- tion. There are, at the present time, about ten " Codes," so called, and partaking large- ly of the nature of a true code ; about fif- teen systems of " Revised Statutes ;" and about twelve compilations, which are in substance revisions, but are named " Gen- eral Statutes," " Compiled Statutes," and the like. Some works of this class are merely private compilations. But nearly every State has either authorized and adopted as official a compilation of its laws by lawyers of ability and reputation, or has employed commissioners to draft its laws into a sys- tem, and has re-enacted them as compiled. In many of the States one or other of these things has been done several times. There does not appear to be any State, with per- haps the exception of Pennsylvania and Ten- nessee, which does not possess a codification or revision of the laws made since the com- mencement of 1860 ; and in the great ma- jority there are such dating within the past ten years. Some of these works involve important and extended reforms of the pre-existing law ; others do not. The New York Revised Statutes, adopted in 1828 and 1830, and the Massachusetts General Statutes of 1860, are notable examples of revisions embodying many improvements. The United States Revised Statutes (1873) is an instance of a simple consolidation. The statutes, as an- nually published, were rapidly accumula- ting, and had become not only inconvenient- ly bulky, but inconsistent and obscure. The revision aims to present, in a single volume, the general and permanent laws, previous- ly running through seventeen volumes, ac- curately condensed, but unchanged in sub- stance. A BRIEF RETROSPECT. This paper draws toward a close, but not for want of further examples of the progress of our law. The brief illustrations which have been given might easily be doubled in number. Each one suggests auxiliary top- ics. Jurisprudence has not only made ex- position of the law in three thousand pub- lished volumes, and declared its rules anew in half a hundred distiuct codes or revisions, but has dotted the States with Law Schools well equipped for the systematic instruction of her disciples. She has not only develop- ed written constitutions and wrought out a twofold system of courts, but has erected State and national Capitals, and organized county seats supplied with buildings, ex- tensive record books and files, and libraries appropriate for judicial labor. She has not only devised a new and homogeneous mode of pleading and practice in courts of justice, but has extensively relaxed the old tech- nical rules excluding Witnesses who might be interested in a suit, even to the extent in several jurisdictions of allowing one upon trial for a crime to testify in his own behalf. 452 AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE. She has not only established the law of the sea over our inland waters, hut has also brought the employment and treatment of Merchant Seamen under one uniform and na- tional system of regulations. Upon the land she has not only adjusted the private land claims arising against former govern- ments, she has also administered systems of laws governing the survey and disposal of the Public Lands, under which the territory owned by the nation or by the various States has been subdivided and opened to a peace- ful settlement and cultivation as fast as has been desired. She has promoted such set- tlement by a hospitable Naturalisation, Law ; by large modifications of the ancient Land Titles, discarding primogeniture and compli- cated entails and trusts, and promoting sub- division and ready sale of estates ; by pre- scribing modes in which lands needed for public uses may be freely taken in right of Eminent Domain, but strictly requiring com- pensation to the land-owner ; and by devis- ing in the rich mineral Territories of the far West appropriate rules for the develop- ment of Mines and the protection of mining claims. Witnessing, without power to pre- vent them, the evils of a gigantic system of Slavery and the horrors of a Civil War, she did something while they lasted to control and restrain them, and is doing much in super- intending the reconstruction of the shatter- ed social fabric, in harmonizing the indi- vidual controversies of which the war was so fruitful, and has fairly entered upon the newly assigned duty of elevating four mill- ions of a lately enslaved and still depressed and ignorant race to enjoyment of equal Civil Bights. She has encouraged Corpora- tions, has added to the old method of incor- poration by charter a free system of general laws for their formation, management, and dissolution, and to the old remedies against corporate property a principle of individual liability, so that incorporation has become a familiar, convenient, and approved mode of uniting many men and aggregating large capital in the pursuit of almost every spe- cies of enterprise or purpose, of very many purposes to which in old times it never was, and in old countries even now it scarcely is, applied. She has rescued Banking from the uncertain basis of private capital and re- sponsibility, and has established it upon a foundation of securities lodged with govern- ment — that of the State or nation, as you please — for the bill-holder's protection. She has liberalized the ancient law of Carriers, giving them leave to restrict their liability by a special contract, and thus has promoted that expansion of our facilities for commerce which has been accomplished by adding to the ships, stage-coaches, and baggage-wag- ons of old times our immense net-work of canals, steamboats, and railway routes, ex- press and telegraph lines. She has fostered the principle of education of the common people at the charge of the State, and super- intends a comprehensive and efficient sys- tem of Public Schools. She has liberalized the Criminal Law and ameliorated Prison Discipline (until the element of humanity sometimes seems to verge upon laxity), has restricted the old views of Sedition and Trea- son to conform to the principles of a popular government, and has given increased effi- ciency to the writ of Habeas Corpus; but has by Liquor Laws, embodying even the en- deavor to prohibit the traffic in intoxica- ting drink entirely, or to compel the seller to make compensation for all damages re- sulting from excess, and by stringent laws against Abortion, Seduction, and the traffic in Vicious Literature and merchandise, made punishable some causes of demoralization which our forefathers considered must be exempt from punishment because the vic- tim was a willing one. These topics might well receive extended explanation ; and if space could be allowed, the writer would gladly add some descrip- tive sketches of Celebrities — of our eminent judges, brilliant advocates, and judicious legislators ; some narratives of the Great Trials of the century, with explanations of their influence upon the tone of judicial thought ; and perhaps some revelations of the methods and achievements of American Detectives. "she hath done what she could." These achievements of Jurisprudence, when compared with the works of her sis- ters in other fields of labor, appear moder- ate, plain, and plodding, rather than rapid, brilliant, or extensive. But then, for many, many centuries, Jurisprudence has had no gift of new powers. Sudden and wonder- CONCLUSION. 453 ful progress iu either of the various fields of human effort is generally observable with- in a few centuries after some new power or means has been bestowed. Not three cen- turies have passed since the Novum Organon of Bacon gave to practical science a new method of research, which has substituted astronomy for astrology, chemistry for al- chemy, and has rendered attainments in science rapid and easy which upon old methods would have remained impossible. The steam-engine was a new gift to Com- merce and Manufactures ; so was the print- ing-press to Literature ; so has been the telegraph to Journalism. The enunciation and application of the principle that " gov- ernments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," as a substitute for the idea of a divinely given, hereditarily transmitted right, was a gift of a new power to Government. These were not improve- ments in old methods; they involved the total subversion of old methods and sub- stitution of new ones. They are compara- tively modern ; some of them are very re- cent, and one need not wonder that brilliant results are flowing from them within our century. But how long it is since Anglo- Saxon Jurisprudence has received any new endowment ! We have only the ancient methods. When a controversy arises we employ a lawyer — a species of agent which flourished in the times of Demosthenes and Cicero; he brings the cause before a judge — an officer suggested by Jethro to relieve the labors of Moses ; who summons a jury — as ordained by Alfred. We have statutes — so had the Medes and Persians ; and codes — so had Justinian; and a common law — so had the Saxons. What is older than our courts, our trials, our prisons? Trial by jury — a device ten centuries old — is the most modern of all the important means and instruments with which Jurisprudence does her work. All we can say for her in the century now closing is that, with her antique tools, " she hath done what she could." XVI. HUMANITARIAN PROGRESS. THE spirit of humanity belongs to all races, and has been stimulated by many of the religions of mankind. It has attained its highest development and greatest power under Christianity ; and so imbued is modern society with its silent influences, that even those who deny the su- pernatural origin of the Christian religion, and who reject its doctrines, are often filled with the spirit which it has especially culti- vated in the world. The history of this re- public has beeu no exception to this silent and powerful working of the Christian faith. Both through its organized forms, and even as effectively through external agencies in- spired by its spirit, through literature and law and associations for reform and charity, this divine impulse has been slowly over- coming in our history the instinct of selfish- ness, the indifference to human ills, the ig- norant pride of race, and the hardness and cruelty which have come down from ages of barbarism. In no nation has this spirit, which has been spread abroad in the world by Christ, had such power as in this ; and yet we seem to be but just touched by its civilizing influences, and scarcely yet to have emerged from the savagery and inhu- manity of barbarous times. Many dreadful abuses and cruel evils yet exist. Still the whole opinion and feeling of the day are against them ; much ability and labor are expended to diminish these ills or remove their sources ; and the path of true progress and reform has been steadi- ly entered upon. Another centennial will probably see Christianity enthroned in this country, in custom aud law and institution, as it has never yet been in modern days; and the spirit of humanity, guided by rea- son and culture, governing more human be- ings, in their relations to the great evils of mankind, than were ever witnessed before. This sketch being necessarily brief, the writer has been obliged to choose certain distinct fields where the progress in the spirit of humanity can be clearly tested; such as the treatment of prisoners ; the pen- alties and enactments against crime ; the punishment of debtors, and the legislation in regard to them ; the treatment of crimi- nal and neglected youth, and the care of the insane poor. Great departments of the sub- ject, such as the emancipation of the slaves, together with the sanitary labors of the civ- il war, could only be alluded to. THE PRISONS. One of the tests of the progress of the race iu humanity and civilization is its treatment of criminals aud the large and varied class of unfortunates. The infliction of severe and bloody punishment for comparatively slight offenses, the use of degrading and brutalizing penalties, the treatment of of- fenders against the law as if they were an irreclaimable and distinct class of the com- munity, aud the neglect of the elements of hope aud reform in the management of crim- inals, are all being gradually left behind, as relics of barbarism, by Christian nations in their onward progress. The true indica- tions of advance in the spirit of humanity are not in any false and sentimental views of punishment and its object. The crimi- nal has violated human law, and, in the in- terest of social security, must be deterred himself from committing the offense again, aud through his punishment must deter oth- ers. But it is equally for the interest of so- ciety, and a duty of humanity and religion, that he should not finish his period of penal- ty worse than he began it. It is quite pos- sible that he may not be worse, morally, than many whose offenses have not beeu de- tected or whose temptations have not been so great. But human law can not regard this : it must treat his violation of it as an offense, and inflict a "deterrent" penalty. But here humanity and sound policy can suggest modes and modifications of punish- ment which may bring with them improve- ment on the part of the prisoner, aud which will at least prevent him from becoming MANAGEMENT OF CRIMINALS. 455 worse, aud thus injuring society more in the future than he has done in the past. Wisdom in this matter of punishment will naturally suggest that offenses which are caused by pure misfortune, or which are technical in their nature, should not be pun- ished as are immoral actions. The debtor should not suffer the same penalty as the thief, aud certainly should not share the same cell. The smuggler or the uninten- tional violator of revenue laws is not to be treated as the robber or the forger. Classification of prisoners is one of the first elements in true progress in the science of punishmeut. The innocent — such as wit- nesses or persons arrested on suspicion — should not be imprisoned with the guilty ; the young should be separated from the old, the recent offender from the experienced and hardened convict, woman from man, and each similar grade of prisoners as much as possi- ble be kept together. It is of vital impor- tance that the young criminal should not learn in the jails new lessons of crime; and that the old should not grow worse by vile associations. The weakness at the foundation of crimi- nal life is the want of habit of continuous labor. It becomes, then, of the utmost con- sequence that the convict should be trained to constant and steady industry. Occupa- tion in the prison will fit him for a better life outside, aud, at the same time, will pay the expenses of his support. No offender of civil law ought to be a burden on his fellow- citizens. But the prison life has the same principles at its basis as life outside. There can be no reform without the element of hope. The convict needs, in order to elevate him, the same forces which work upon society gener- ally : the prospect of reward, the approval of the worthy, and a certain liberty of action bringing either penalty or profit, according to his self-control, or feebleness of principle. There must be, then, in a real advance in the treatment of offenders against the law, a system which would first show the prisoner the magnitude of his offense, and give him time aud cause for sober reflection, which would have the severe and deterrent effects of punishment ; he must have terms of soli- tude and idleness. Then he must gradually be admitted to a higher stage of prison life, where work is offered him as a relief from idleness. Here he begins to see a reward from labor and good conduct, both in the proportion of his wages allowed him, and in the commutation of his punishment which they will bring. He has all the time, to a large degree, his future in his hands ; he can cause his own penalty to be light or severe. A failure of self-control, a neglect of indus- try, will lengthen his imprisonment, and di- minish the wages he would carry forth at his release. Finally, strengthened thus by years of hard labor and virtuous conduct, he is ad- mitted, in his final term, to a greater free- dom of action, which will prepare him for his life in the world ; in which a failure of principle will cause him to serve the full term of years to which he had been sen- tenced. Under such an improved prison -system, there will be both solitary and cellular im- prisonment and congregated labor ; there will be the influences of secular-school aud Sunday religious teaching, of lessons aud li- braries. The cells will be clean and healthy ; no brutalizing puuishments of tread-mill and cat will be permitted ; penalties will be the deprivation of what has been gained, or, at the worst, solitary confinement. The convict will come forth, not imbittered against so- ciety, nor depraved by bad association, nor weak through long dependence on others. He starts on a vantage-ground as he leaves the prison; he has learned habits of indus- try and self-control, he has been approved by the prison authorities, aud has perhaps regaiued his rights of citizenship ; he has saved money, and has felt the power of re- ligion, and his mind has been awakened by instruction and kuowledge. He will not easily fall again. This ideal prison-system, set forth in so re- markable a manner by Edward Livingston, 1 fifty years since, is the high-water mark in the tide of human thought thus far on this subject. How far has this nation approach- ed it in a hundred years, aud from what beginnings in the management of criminals has it advanced ? 1 Livingston's Code of Criminal Reform (published in 1S33) contains, fifty years before their adoption, the best ideas of this generation on prison reform. The Crofton system is there in its essential features. 456 HUMANITARIAN PROGRESS. OVERCROWDING OF FORMER PRISONS. The accounts of the crowding of convicts in the various prisons and jails of the coun- try during the first fifty years of our history as a republic are distressing in the extreme. It is stated on the best authority 1 that the average number of prisoners, from 1776 to 1826, confined in each cell at night in the penitentiaries of New Hampshire and Ver- mont was from 2 to 6; in those of Massa- chusetts, 4 to 6; of Connecticut, 15 to 32 ; in New York City, 12 ; in New Jersey, 10 to 12 ; in Maryland, 7 to 10 ; and in Pennsylvania, worst of all, from 29 to 31. In the Phila- delphia prison the cells only measured 18 feet by 20, so that each convict at night " had only a space as large as a coffin," or about 6 feet by 2. In the Massachusetts _ prisons the cells were so narrow, that the prisoners were often lodged by swinging hammocks, one over the other ; and in one Connecticut pi'ison it is related that during the hot weather of July, 1825, 32 convicts were confined in a basement under 7 feet in height and only 21 feet by 10, the only ven- tilation being one small wiudow anthan ori- fice over the door. During more than fifty years (fromM773 to 1827) the enlightened State of Connecti- cut had an under -ground prison in an old mining-pit on the hills near Simsbury, which surpassed in horrors all that is known of European or American prisons. The passage to the " New-gate Prison," as it was called, was down, a shaft by means of a ladder, to some caverns in the sides of the hill. Here rooms were built of boards for the convicts, and heaps of straw formed their beds. "The horrid gloom of these dungeons can be realized only by those who pass among its solitary windings. The im- penetrable vastness supporting the awful mass above, impending as if ready to crush oue to atoms ; the dripping waters, trick- ling like tears from its sides ; the unearthly echoes — all conspire to strike the beholders aghast with amazement and horror." 2 Here from thirty to one hundred prison- ers were crowded together at night, their feet fastened to bars of iron, and chains 1 Report of Boston Prison Discipline Society for 1826. 2 A Hixlory of the Xew-gate Prison, by R. H. Phelps, East Granby, Conn., 1844. about their necks attached to beams above. The caves reeked with filth, occasioning in- cessant contagious fevers. The prison was the scene of constant outbreaks, and the most cruel and degrading punishments fail- ed to reform the convicts. " The system," says the writer quoted above, "was very well suited to make men into devils, but could never make devils into men." The prisoners educated one another in crime. " Their midnight revels were often like the howling in a pandemonium of tigers, banish- ing sleep and forbidding rest!" Nearly all the county jails had what were called "dungeons," or cells not fit for human beings, in which convicts were confined. At Northampton, Massachusetts, a dun- geon is described, only four feet high, with- out window or chimney, the only ventilation being through the privy-vault and two ori- fices in the wall. In Worcester, a similar cell was only three feet high and eleven feet square, without window or orifice, the air entering through the vault and through the cracks in the door. This was connected with a similar room for lunatics. At Con- cord was a. cell of like construction ; and in Schenectady, New York, it is related that three men confined a few hours in such a dmigeon were found lifeless, though after- ward >they were revived. Worse even 'than the overcrowding was the indiscriminate association, iu the Ameri- can prisons, of all ages, classes, and sexes. Of the Philadelphia Walnut-street Prison it was said, "Its crowded night-rooms, un- disciplined throng, enormous expense, dread- ful mortality ; its issues of highway robbers, incendiaries, and thieves, as proved by its recommitments, are believed not to be sur- passed in the United States." 1 Of the old Market - street Prison in the same city, Mr. Vaux says, " All ages and sex- es are mingled: the trembling novice in crime, the debtor, the disgusting object of popular contempt besmeared with filth from the pillory, the unhappy victim of the lash streaming with blood from the whipping- po8t, the half-naked vagrant, the loathsome drunkard, the sick and the condemned crim- inal." An old report says of the New York Bride- 1 Report of Boston Prison Discipline Society for 1S26, p. 77. OVERCROWDED PRISONS. 457 well, " More to be lamented than its fever and mortality is tlie indiscriminate min- gling of over two thousand persons annu- ally of all ages aud degrees of guilt." The French commissioners who visited the pris- ons of, this country, MM. Beaumont and De Tocqueville, state that in 1834 they saw more than fifty untried persons in the same room with old offenders, there being u6 bed, chair, or plank in the cell, and no means of obtaining pure air. A common custom in the prison was what was called " blanket- ing a stranger;" that is, the new-comer was tossed in a blanket by the older ruffians un- til he parted with all his superfluous cloth- ing, to be used in exchange for liquor. Of the Leverett- street Jail, Boston, it is stated, in 1831, that over one thousand debt- ors were confined in the same crowded night-rooms with over a thousand criminals and vagrants. Men and women, old men aud black boys, idiots, lunatics, aud drunk- ards, all mingled together in two buildings. No restraint was used to\^>revent gambling, lascivious conversation, or quarreling. It is said in regard to the old prison in Connecticut, that if the prisoners themselves had been permitted to build the prison with the greatest facilities for the concealment of crime and the least possibility of detection, they could not have succeeded better. Of the State -prison in New, York City, the French commissioners report that the prisoners, when the cells were'unlocked in the morning, flocked confusedly into the yard, and, at the sound of the bell for meals, they moved like an undisciplined mob to the mess-room. The New York Society for the "Prevention of Pauperism" states in fits second report, 1820, that " in Bellevue Prison, New York, more than three hundred wretches of all ages, and graduating in crime, are placed in a community by themselves, often without employment, without instruction, without admonition or advice, to become the sub- jects of reformation." Girls from ten to eighteen years of age were confined here in the same cell with old prostitutes. "Why," says the report, " this melancholy spectacle of female wretchedness has claimed no more attention and excited no more sympathy in a city like ours, we can not say. Why no female messengers have entered this gloomy abode of guilt and despair like angels of mercy, is a matter of deep reflection aud re- gret !" In 1828, it is stated that the convicts in Bellevue Penitentiary were so crowded in the night-rooms that they could not lie down on the floor without mingling their limbs in one solid mass. The natural results were repeated attacks of terrible jail-fevers. Iu the old prisons of Philadelphia, partic- ularly in the one on the corner of High and Third streets, it is stated that, in 1837, wom- en caused their own imprisonment for ficti- tious debts, iu order to join iu the orgies of the jail.. Intoxicating liquors were bought and sold at the bar kept by one of the prison officials ; acquitted prisoners were kept there for jail fees ; the custom of " garnish" pre- vailed, whereby a new prisoner was stripped of his clothing, which was held by 'the other convicts till the man redeemed it by " drink- money." No instruction or religious teach- ing was known there. It is related that the first clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Rogers, who was admitted there to preach, obtained en- trance with the greatest difficulty. There was supposed to be danger of a riot aud a combined escape of the prisoners. He was, however, finally admitted to a platform at the top of steps leading to the prisou-yai'd, where a*man stood with a cannon aud a lighted match during the preaching of the first sermon in that prison. Mr. Edward Livingston, the great penal reformer of this country, mentions, in 1822, that' from fifteen huudred to two thousand persons of both sexes were committed to prison in each year in New York City, all being presumed to be innocent, and the large proportion really so, aud were forced into association with old criminals, eating, drinking, and sleeping in the same rooms with them; then, after having learned the lessou of crime, they are turned out to prac- tice it. ^ " The innocent stranger, unable to find se- curity's joint tenant to the same chamber with three-times-couvicted convicts ; vaga- bonds sunk iu vice and brutified by intoxi- cation, perpetrators of every infamous crime, and even with the murderers taken in the fact," "Women of innocence and virtue are sometimes forced, bv this unhallowed ad- 458 HUMANITARIAN PROGRESS. ministration of justice, into an association •with all that is disgusting in female vice, with vulgarity and intemperance." With regard to Western and Southern prisoners, the French commissioners report that in 1832 they found in\he Cincinnati prison one - half the prisoners loaded with irons, and the rest plunged into infected dungeons. In the prison of New Orleans they found men together with hogs, in the midst of all odors and nuisances. A natural effect of these wretched and overcrowded prisons was that they hecame schools of crime. Here,were learned the arts of making false keys, of counterfeiting coiu and bank-paper ; here youth received their first lessons in petty thieveries and the prac- tice of picking pockets ; here, also, extensive combinations for crime were made, among the prisoners. As a natural result, too, the proportion of recommitments was enormously large. In tile New York Penitentiary they reached the proportion of 50 out of 100 ; in the New York City State-prison, 25 out of 10O convicts; in the Philadelphia Penitentiary in 1817, and in the Massachusetts Penitentiary, there were 33 in 100 ; in the Charlestown Prison, Massachusetts, there were 30 out of 100 ; in the Maryland prison, the recommitments are given about 14 in 100 ; in the Walnut- street Prison, Philadelphia, 16£ ; in the Con- necticut Prison, 25; in the Boston Jail, 16^. The present proportion is given as 10 per cent, iu the Pennsylvania prisons; 13.44 in those of Massachusetts ; in Wisconsin, 5^ ; in Ohio, 6^; and in New Hampshire, 5 per cent. All these figures, however, are to be re- ceived with hesitation, on account of the loose way in which statistics are made up iu our prisons. Another frightful effect of these over- crowded prisons was their extreme mortal- ity. The death rate of the old State-prison in New York City from 1805 to 1823 reached 00 in 1000; in the Richmond Prison, Vir- ginia, it was 70 ; and in the Philadelphia Old County Prison it attained the extreme point in one year of 130, and in six years it averaged 00. When it is remembered that during the last forty- two years the death rate in the Philadelphia prisons has been only 17-jSi, and in Massachusetts, during four years, 19 T ^, while Auburn has even attaiued (1874) 13, and the Alleghany Couuty Prison 21 per cent, to 1000, we can judge of the sanitary progress made during the last oue hundred years. IMPRISONMENT OF DEBTORS. One of the frightful abuses of the past was the mode of imprisonment and treat- ment of debtors. It is not, necessarily, an evidence of low degree of progress, that per- sons who have incurred a money obligation, and have been unable or unwilling to dis- charge it, should be by legal enactment pun- ished ; still, experience has shown that im- prisonment of debtors does not in itself tend to make the community more honest, and seldom aids the creditor in recovering his debt. It is a great hardship, moreover, to persons who have been unfortunate in busi- ness through no fault of their own ; and as it was executed in this country, it degraded the debtor to a level with the criminal and pauper. Even as late as 1829, it was esti- mated that there were as many as 3000 of these unfortuuate persons confined in the prisons of Massachusetts ; 10,000 in New York ; 7000 in Pennsylvania ; 3000 iu Mary- laud, and a like proportion in other States. Iu the Philadelphia prisons of that year, there were imprisoned for debts of less than one dollar 32 persons ; and in thirty prisons of the State, 595 persons were imprisoned for debts of between one and five dollars. Many of these were honest debtors, who had been unable to pay solely through misfortune. The proportion of debtors to other prisoners was as 5 to 1. The Report of the Boston Prison Disci- pline Society, page 388, says: "We have known of a respectable mechanic imprisoned for a debt of five dollars, contracted by his family at a grocer's while he was very ill ; he was sent to jail, and he was not only with- out a shilling, but his family was without bread, because ho was not able to work." The keeper of the debtors' department of the Philadelphia Prison reported, in 1828, 1085 debtors imprisoned ; their debts amounting to $25,409, their expense to the community $362,076 ; the amount of the debt recovered in jail was ,$295. In 1831, the Gazette of that city reported forty debtors imprisoned IMPRISONMENT OF DEBTORS. 459 for debts amounting to twenty-three dollars and forty ceuts. One man was confined thir- ty days for a debt of seventy-two cents ; an- other, two days for two cents ; another, thir- ty-two days for two cents ; seven were con- fined one hundred and seventy-two days for two dollars and eighty-four cents, and the only debt recovered was one of twenty-five cents. During fifteen months, five hundred and eighty-four persons were confined for debts of less than five dollars. In the Arch- street Prison, one hundred debtors per month were received. No attendants were provided for the sick, no medicines, no additional nourishment ; none of the prisoners received bedding or a supply of clothing. The poor- est class slept on the floor. A bed, says the same report quoted above, is seldom seen in this prison. No provision is made by law for either sex, though some 4500 debtors are sen- tenced here annually. It is a common re- ceptacle for all untried prisoners. Highway robbers, murderers, burglars, vagrauts, to- gether with those arrested for most petty offenses, are here coufined with debtors. In New Jersey, food, bedding, and fuel were provided for criminals, but "for debt- ors, only walls, bars, and bolts." Their pris- ons were fearfully filthy and neglected. Many of these debts were what were called " rum debts ;" that is, they had been incur- red for alcoholic liquors with those who had tempted them to drink, and had perhaps ruined their families. In all the States, these unfortunate per- sons were thrust into the same prisons with the most abandoned offenders against socie- ty. The voice of humanity was raised in- cessantly against these abuses, and by none more than by the members of the Prison Discipline Societies of the country. Impris- onment for debt was gradually abolished throughout the country. In New York State, it was abolished in 1831, except in certain cases where fraud was supposed, or in cases of torts, or wrongs to the public interest. This arrest was per- mitted where the debtor had been a non- resident, or where his debts were for moneys collected as a public officer, or in any profes- sional employment, or in a fiduciary capaci- ty; also if the debtor seemed about to re- move his property, with intent to defraud. He could avoid his imprisonment by paying his debt ; by giving security that the debt should be paid within sixty days; by giv- ing an iuventory of his property, and mak- ing an assignment of it for the payment of his debts; or by giving a bond that he would not remove his property or defraud his creditors. If imprisoned, he could pe- tition the judge for an assignment of his property, and thus secure the benefit of the act. No arrest w T as allowed for debts under fifty dollars. The same principles in the treatment of debtors were adopted in the New York Code of 1849. Arrest was forbid- den in civil cases, except in actions for in- jury to person or character, etc. ; or where personal property was concealed or kept out of the reach of the sheriff; and also where the defendant was guilty of fraud in con- tracting the debt, or avoiding the payment of it, or in concealing the property. Fe- males were exempted from arrest, except in an action for willful injury to person or character. The law was still further amended in 1875, with the intent to em- brace cases of embezzlement by public offi- cials, and where they seemed about to re- move property from the State, or were con- cealing property which they had illegally acquired. In other respects the principles of the law of 1831 were re -affirmed; and these are substantially the features of the laws against debtors throughout the Union. The present law in regard to imprisonment for debt in Massachusetts dates from 1857. Any person can be arrested upon "mesne" processes or execution, upon a claim of not less than twenty dollars, exclusive of costs, and committed to jail, unless the debtor gives bail, or pays the debt. The writ or execution must have affidavit of plaintiff or his attorney attached, signed by a com- missioner, setting forth, in case of an origi- nal writ, that the debtor is about to leave the State, and, in case of execution, that the debtor has property he does not intend to apply toward payment of the debt. The commissioner will always grant the affida- vit on payment of one dollar, and either plaintiff or attorney signing it ; the debtor is then arrested, and he must go to jail or give bail. If he gives bail, which is for thir- ty days, he must take the " poor debtor's oath," or the bail is liable. He can cite the plaintiff or attorney if he has money, and if 4G0 HUMANITAEIAN PROGRESS. he has not, he must go to jail. If he does cite, he cau have a hearing within twenty- four hours. It will be observed that the presumption or suspicion of fraud is the ground for action against the person of the debtor. No innocent debtor can remain, under this law, long in jail. In Kentucky, imprisonment for debt was abolished in 1821 ; in Ohio, in 1828 ; in Mary- land, in 1830, for debts under thirty dollars; in Connecticut, iu 1837. In Alabama, in 1848, arrest was permitted, but no imprisonment, except on conditions similar to those of New York. Iu Louisiana, it was abolished in 1840 ; in Missouri, in 1845. In fact, the law in all the States seemed substantially the same : that imprisonment is permitted where fraud is reasonably suspected, or in cases of torts. Under United States law, this punishment was finally abolished iu 1839, or made to conform to State laws. In 1840, the provis- ion against non-resident debtors was struck out. SEVERITY OF PENALTIES. One of the barbarities of the past was the extreme severity of the penalties. Progress in humanity is not necessarily shown by abolishing the death penalty, but this should be reserved alone for the extreme offense of murder iu the first degree/ In Massachusetts, under the early legis- lation succeeding the Declaration of Inde- pendence, ten different crimes were punish- ed by death— among them being rape and burglary. Fornication was punished with fine, and if this was not paid iu twenty-four hours, the offender was punished with ten stripes of the whip. Blasphemy was pun- ished with the pillory ami stripes, even till the year 1829. Persons recommitted to prison were branded on the arm, at the end of their imprisonment, with the words "Massachu- setts State-prison." Iu Rhode Island and Connecticut, the death penalty was also inflicted for ten dif- ferent crimes. In Rhode Island, the sentence for forgery was exposure in the pillory, a piece of the offender's ear to be cut off, and branding with the letter C. In Delaware, the penalty for pretended magical aits was twenty -one stripes. In Pennsylvania, iu 1718, twelve crimes re- ceived the death penalty, and several others on the second convictiou. These, with two or three others, remained capital offenses till after the Revolution. Iu 1776 twenty crimes were liable to the death penalty ; among them, high -and petit treason, murder, rob- bery,burglary, rape, sodomy, malicious maim- ing, manslaughter by stabbing, witchcraft, arson, aud the second conviction for any crime except larceny ; aud besides these, the counterfeiting or passing of counterfeit mon- ey, whether bills of credit, gold or silver. Iu Virginia and Kentucky, twenty-seven offenses were punished by death or maim- iug; among them perjury, the destroying or concealing of a will, the obtaiuiug of money or goods on false pretenses, horse-stealing, the stealing of any record or writ of court, and the breaking out of jail where the of- fender was imprisoned for crimes punishable with death. The "benefit of clergy" was denied to certain criminals ; as, for iustauce, all principals in murder, burglary, or arson, to all those convicted of a willful burgla- ry of a court-house or public institution ; to those sentenced for stealing goods from a church, for robbing on the highway or in a dwelling-house, and for horse-stealing. In In- diana, even iij 1807, horse-stealing, treason, murder, and arson were punished with death. Burglary, robbery, larceny, hog-stealing, the striking of parent or niHster, received the penalty of whipping. In New York, in 1712, a negro convicted of being engaged in the negro plot was burned in that city ; another was broken upon the wheel ; and another hanged alive. Negroes were sometimes burned with green wood, to prolong their agony ; at other times they were hanged in iron frames, to die of starvation, their bodies being devoured by birds of pre3 r . In 1733-several negroes were burned in that city. Iu 1741 an instance of this punishment is recorded. Even in 1822 the degrading punishment of the tread-mill still continued in this State. For a long period, one of the well-known sights at the head of Broad Street were the public whipping- post, pillory, and stocks. In almost every village of this couutry, the stocks, whippiug-post, aud pillory were to be seen. Whipping with the "cat," burning, brand- ing, and cropping of ears were common pun- ishments. The objection to this description COUNTY PRISONS. 461 of penalties is, it should be remembered, not that they give pain, but that they tend to degrade and brutalize, not merely the crim- inal, but the community who witness them, and thus form a soil, as it were, on which the same kind of offenses will grow luxuri- antly. Thus the experience of all civilized coun- tries is that the punishment of the "cat" for brutal offenses against women tends to keep up the class of brutalities. Continent- al countries and the United States are main- ly free from the horrible brutalities inflicted in England by ignorant husbands on wives ; it is these countries which have mainly abolished corporal punishments. COUNTY PRISONS. The most crying abuse during our colonial history, and in this first century of the na- tion's growth, has been the condition of the county prisons. In Boston the Leverett- street Jail, even in 1835, is described as a horrible den of filth and iniquity. The old and young were mingled here ; the idle and industrious ; the hardened convicts and per- sons arrested merely on suspicion, or as wit- nesses. There was no ventilation in the prison and no cleanliness ; the prisoners were under no proper discipline, and moral or religious instruction was unknown. In Providence, Rhode Island, the prison is described as. having broken windows stuffed with rags ; the wainscoting dark and filthy, with the doors open between the different cells, so that there Avas free communication between the prisoners. Gambling prevail- ed, and liquors were bought and sold in the jail. In Middlebury, Vermont, the jail contain- ed one dungeon ten feet by twelve in dimen- sions, without window or orifice, except the stove-pipe hole, where the old and young, those sentenced and those arrested, were con- fined for months. In Ohio, in 1840, says the secretary of the Prison Discipline Society, "I have seen in the prison of the principal town a respectable stranger, a debtor, confined in the same cell with an insane black woman." He speaks even of a/prisoner's feet being frozen by the want of proper warmth in the jail. The Hamiltou County Jail he describes as having no wiudow or fire-place in the cells, light, heat, and air entering by the grated doors. There were no beds in the jail, and slops were emptied only once a week. The build- ing was exceedingly unhealthy and filled with vermin. No religious instruction was known there. In Hartford, Connecticut, in 1838, the county jail is said to have contained from six to ten persons in each cell. Drink was freely supplied to the prisoners, and a tavern communicated with the prison. The New Haven County Jail was oue of similar char- acter. The prisoners had free access to liq- uor, and both jails became schools of vice where many combinations of crime were formed. Very few of the county jails of this country were superior to these. REFORM OF THE PRISON SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES. The great reforms in the prison systems of the United States begat) where the abuses were the greatest — in the State of Pennsyl- vania. In 1786 the first alleviation of the severity of punishment was made through the Society of Friends, and the efforts of the Philadelphia Society for the Alleviat- ing the Miseries of Public Prisons. Three of the former offenses punishable by death were now punished by the forfeiture of the real and personal estate of the offender, and by confinement at hard labor. By the same act all barbarous punishments were abroga- ted. Under the former system, the convicts of Philadelphia were obliged to perform la- bor in the public streets under degrading circumstances. These prisoners were call- ed "the wheel-barrow men," and were often exposed to insult aud ill-treatment by the mob. This practice was now done away with. In 1788, the Philadelphia Prison So- ciety addressed the Legislature, recommend- ing more private and solitary labor in the prisons. In 1790 all the previous penal laws were repealed, and a revised system adopt- ed, which provided for a better union of punishment and labor. Separate cells were authorized for hardened offenders. Crim- inals were henceforth to be employed in the jail ; the introduction of intoxicating liq- uors into the prisons was forbidden. Al- ready, ten years previous, in 1780, the la"w had passed authorizing the erection of the Walnut-street Prison in Philadelphia with 402 HUMANITARIAN PROGRESS. the principle of seclusion — a great advance in the prison system, beyond any thing which had heeu known in Europe or Ameri- ca. Unfortunately this prison was subse- quently so much crowded as somewhat to defeat the purposes of the law. By the reforms of 1790, labor was to be- come a necessary part of the system of pun- ishment ; the sexes among the criminals were to be separated ; the untried prisoners and debtors were to be kept in different compartments from those convicted ; suita- ble food and clothing were to be supplied, jail fees abolished, and secular and religious instruction to be provided. The custom of "garnish" was forbidden. In 1794, an act was passed abolishing the punishment of death except for murder in the first degree. In the same year an effort was made to in- troduce separate confinement into the pris- ons of the State. In 1795 further provision was made for the classification of prison- ers and their employment at hard labor; the punishment of whipping was abolished, and confinement in cell, with bread and wa- ter, for not more than fifteen days, substi- tuted. In 1803, the erection of the Arch-street Pris- on was ordered, which was finished in 1818 ; a prison constructed on the improved prin- ciples of prison reform. In 1814 an allowance was made to debtors by law of fourteen cents a day for clothing, bedding, fuel, and food. In 1818, an act was passed authorizing the erection of the West- ern State Penitentiary, and another, in 1821, authorizing the Eastern State Penitentiary, both on the principle of solitary confinement of convicts. The latter prison was finished in 1829. The system of solitary confinement, though now generally held by the prison reformers as too severe for the reformation of convicts, was a great advance on the promiscuous herding of prisoners which prevailed before, and was a fitting introduction to the reforms of the present day. In other States, similar reforms were carried out ; in New Hamp- shire, the old and bloody code of 1791 was improved in 1812, and revised in 1829; by this, burglary, robbery, rape, and arson, which had been punished by death, were now pun- ished by solitary confinement for not more than six months, and hard labor for life. The punishment of death except for murder was finally abolished in 1837. In New York, in 1796, capital punishment was abolished for fourteen offenses, and only retained for treason and homicide. Whip- ping for minor crimes was forbidden. The same Legislature forbade the use of the lash in the prisons ; but, unfortunately, in 1819, this punishment, so easily abused, was re- authorized in our State-prisons. No con- viction in that State (except of treason) can work forfeiture of goods, chattels, or lands. As far back as in 1822, the punishment of the tread-mill had been given up in New York State as barbarous. In 1847, a law was passed attempting to reform county prisons. Sufficient room was required to keep the witnesses from crimi- nals separate ; and an entire separation was endeavored to be effected between those ar- rested aud those convicted, and between males aud females. Hard labor was also prescribed upon the public works for the constant offenders. Each keeper was re- quired to have a Bible in every cell. No whipping of female prisoners was permitted. In 1851, an act passed the Pennsylvania Legislature designed to effect sanitary re- form in the construction of county prisons. In Connecticut, in 1790, the punishment of death for burglary, arson, horse-stealing, rape, and forgery was replaced by confine- ment in Newgate. Cropping and branding of criminals were abolished. In Rhode Isl- and, in 1838, a mild code, like that of Penn- sylvania, was introduced in place of a cruel one. In Massachusetts, the first improved peni- tentiary of the country was probably erect- ed — that at Charlestown — in 1805. In nearly all the modern prisons of our different States the reforms of combined la- bor in the day, and separation in the cell at night, have been introduced. Strict classi- fication so far as possible is the rule. The abuses of the old prisons have passed away ; discipline, sobriety, industry, aud cleanli- ness prevail. The former brutalizing pun- ishments within the prison have been mostly done away with. The penalties now inflict- ed by the keepers are solitary confinement in a dark cell, bread and water, the with- holding of letters, and the loss of commuta- tion. In many of the States the lash is no RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. 463 longer employed, aud in all, except Ken- tucky, the power of punishment hy under- officials is taken away. In the New York prisons alone certain se- vere punishments are still permitted. In very many of the States the greatest reform of the modern prison system has heen intro- duced — that of "the commutation" of sen- tences ; that is, the convict, hy good conduct and industry while in the prison, can reduce the term of his sentence hy a specified amount, and can earn wages to support him- self or his family after he is discharged. In 1867, in nine States of the Union the convict could earn five days per mouth by good con- duct. In New York he could diminish his sentence from seven and a half to ten days per month ; so that if the prisoner were sen- tenced for ten years he could shorten his sen- tence hy two years and one month ; if for twenty years, by five years aud five months. All the States testify to the remarkably good results of this reform. Iu Connecticut, more than 80 per cent, of the prisoners had a perfect record of conduct for the year. Iu Michigan, for 1864, more thau 90 per cent, presented such a record. In all except Maine the commutation can be forfeited by bad conduct. In Ohio, Wiscon- sin, or Illinois, the gaining of a certain num- ber of marks by the convict iu his prison will enable him to recover his rights of cit- izenship. As an instance of the highest point which our prison system has reached, the Ohio Pen- itentiary of Columbus may be taken. In this prison the convict may, by good be- havior aud diligence, diminish his sentence by a period of five days per month, and he is permitted to receive an allowance not ex- ceeding one-tenth of his earnings. Should he violate the rules, he may lose not only all the time he has gained in the month aud his earnings, but also a portion gained in pre- vious months. If his labor is diminished by sickness or other causes beyond his control, two and a half days commutation are allow- ed him in each month. The names, penal- ties, and commutations of the prisoners are read publicly in the prison. At the eud of his time of sentence, if he has gained his full commutation, the convict is restored by the governor of the State to his rights of cit- izenship. JNo cruel or degrading punish- ments are employed in this prison; even prison clothing is done away with as de- grading. Flannel under -clothing is sup- plied, and good corn -husk mattresses are provided iu each cell. The library of the prison is much used; the Sabbath - school aud prayer -meeting are constantly attend- ed ; while there are two hundred well-con- ducted members of the prison church. A chapel is now in process of building. Without having accurate returns as yet of the number reformed, it is believed that in no prison in the United States are there so few recommitments. Financially, it is by far the most successful one. The con- victs on their discharge have received the following amounts as wages : in 1868, $1872 ; in 1869, $2890 ; in 1871, $5598 ; in 1873, $6271. Besides earning this extra money for the support of their families, the convicts have been able to pay not only all the current ex- penses of the prison, but the cost of the per- manent improvements, and to turn iu a large sum of money to the treasury of the State. For instance, from 1869 to 1873 the prison paid all its own expenses ; paid for perma- nent improvements $58,145, and turned into the State treasury $38,818. Iu 1873, the ordinary expenses were $152,163, while the receipts from the labor of the convicts were $174,450. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION. In the prisons of the country immediately after the Revolution there was no religious instruction. As we have seen, the first pas- tor who preached in the Philadelphia Peni- tentiary had to be supported with a cannon, with a lighted match at the side. Even fifty years since there was no regular chap- lain in any State - prison of the United States, and very little religious instruction was given. In 1828, more provision was made for religious teaching in the prisons of New England aud the Middle States. In 1833, every prison was supplied with Bibles, and a Sabbath-school was established in ten of the whole number, while fifteen hundred convicts received religious instruction. In 1867, there were regular chaplains in ten State - prisons, and stated preaching in five others. Ten also enjoyed the benefit of Sab- bath - schools, wherein about two thousand convicts were tnught by two hundred teach- 464 HUMANITARIAN PROGRESS. ers. Iu some of the prisons there was daily religious service. SECULAR TEACHING. In New York, schools were first establish- ed in the State -prisons in 1822; Sunday- schools were opened in the Auburn Prison in 1826. In 1829, an act was passed by the New York Legislature ordering convicts to be taught. In 1841, there was secular teach- ing in several of our State-prisons. In 1847, the law was passed in New York to provide teachers for all the State -prisons; other States followed this enlightened example. In 1848, a society was formed in the Massa- chusetts State-prison by the convicts them- selves for mutual improvement and debate. LIBRARIES. The first notice we have of these is in 1802, in the regulation of the Kentucky State-pris- on in regard to donations of books. One of the first prison libraries was formed in Sing Sing in 1840. In 1867, there were libraries in most of the State-prisons, one in Ohio con- taining 3000 volumes, another in Sing Sing with 4000. Thirteen prison libraries con- tained iu that year 20,413 volumes. A fixed sum was appropriated by the Legislatures of many States for the purchase of prison libra- ries. THE TREATMENT OF CRIMINAL AND UNFOR- TUNATE CHILDREN. Nothing is more characteristic of the bar- barous period of society than its utter neg- lect of children ; while, on the other hand, the highest attainment of social wisdom and the realization of Christianity are shown in the most watchful care for the young, and especially for the children of the unfortu- nate and the criminal. The culture of the young guards the future of society, and the prevention of misery and crime among chil- dren is a duty at once of economy and hu- manity. In no way can society save the vast losses it now sustains through pauperism and crim- inal offenses so well as by the care and edu- cation of the children of the most destitute classes. The extent and wisdom of this care are the measure of the civilization of a peo- ple. The records of our early criminal ad- ministration show that children who had committed offenses against the law were treated precisely like any other criminals; and what that treatment was we have suffi- ciently indicated in the description of the wretched prisons in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston during the first fifty years of our existence as a natiou. Old and young, crim- inals and accused, witnesses and hardened offenders, persons of all ages and both sexes, were often crowded together iu the day, and confined so as to communicate with one an- other at night. The young took lessons in crime, and the prisons became a nursery of criminals. A child once condemned to one of these schools of vice came forth, if con- fined a sufficient time, a skilled and harden- ed young offender. The prison was never under this system a place of reform. The offenses of children became a crying evil. New convicts were being constantly trained. And this young country, with all its bound- less possibilities for the laboring classes, be- came cursed with some of the worst evils of old communities, in the increase of the crim- inal classes among the young. Edward Livingston, in his celebrated es- say on A Code of Criminal Reform, speaks of au infant of nine years of age being tried and executed for murder. And iu another passage he describes a boy of eleven in the Philadelphia Arch -street Prison awaiting trial for felony who had been a year iu a New Jersey prison for horse -stealiug, and during this period the only lessons he re- ceived were the histories related by his fel- low-convicts of their exploits. A boy is also mentioned who was first committed to a New York prison at ten years of age, and, under various sentences, was twenty-eight years a convict. Livingston also gives this testimony to the character of previous legislation in re- gard to the young. " The provisions of law have heretofore pronounced the same punish- ment against the first offense of a child that they awarded to the veteran in guilt. The seducer to crime and the artless victim of his corruption were confounded in the same penalty ; and that penalty, until lately, was here, and in the laud from whence we de- rived our jurisprudence still is, death. We have substituted imprisonment. * * # For the minor offenses affecting property indict- ments against children are frequent; and TREATMENT OF UNFORTUNATE CHILDREN. 465 humanity is equally shocked whether they are convicted, or, by the lenity of the jury, discharged to complete their education of infamy" (A Code of Criminal Reform, p. 60). In one of his annual messages, Mayor Cold- en, of New York, reports that he had sen- tenced youth between twelve and sixteen years several times to the penitentiary, from which they invariably came out worse than they entered. Innumerable facts of this kind can be gathered in the early reports of the prison associations of New York, Bos- ton, and Philadelphia. The first institution founded in the country for youth charged with crime was the New York House of Ref- uge, in 1824. Its influence, especially in its earlier years, when but few children were iumates, was remarkably reformatory, and great numbers of youth were saved then, and many others have been since, from lives of crime, by its excellent teachings and the effect of regular industry. This reformatory was soon followed by others in various parts of the country. How immensely these useful institutions have increased may be gathered from the following statistics : There were, in 1874, in twenty States and one Territory, thirty-four of these reformatories for youthful crimi- nals; they owned in the aggregate 6153 acres of laud ; the total estimated value of buildings and lauds, with the personal prop- erty, was $7,826,480 ; the average number of inmates was 8924, and the whole number re- ceived since their opening was 91,402, of whom 77,678 were boys and 13,724 girls ; the whole number of persons engaged in this work was 771, and the total annual cost for maintenance was $1,358,885, or $152 for each inmate. Three - fourths of the inmates, or nearly seventy thousand, are reported as permanently reformed. These figures, how- ever are to be received with great caution, as there is no accurate tabulating of the re- sults ; and in a country like this, the fort- unes of boys in after-life can not be easily traced out. These useful institutions are an immense advance on the prisons which preceded them. The youth is no longer confined in company with mature criminals ; the young alone are placed in the reformatory; the sexes also are separated ; and at night, as a general practice, there is but one child in 30 each cell, or, if in a large dormitory, the chil- dren are carefully watched, to prevent evil communications. They are all taught useful trades, aud have regular day instruction in schools, besides religious teaching on the Sunday. After their term of sentence has expired, or previously, if their good conduct permit, they are indentured with worthy and respectable farmers and mechanics. Great numbers are, no doubt, thus saved to socie- ty. Still there is a radical defect in the constitution of most of the houses of refuge and reformatories throughout the country. They are managed, with the exception of the Ohio State Reform School and a few oth- ers, on the " congregated system," and what- ever influence is exerted is on the children en masse rather than individually. There is too much machiuery, and too little personal influence. No criminal child can be thor- oughly reformed without a direct and per- sonal influence. These large reformatories should be broken up, their land and build- ings, if possible, sold, and farms purchased where small groups of children could be placed in separate cottages, under individu- al teachers or superintendents. Then each child may be reached by personal example, with a much greater probability of thorough reform. The present system of the houses of refuge iu the United States can not be re- garded as the highest point to which reform among youthful criminals is able to reach in this country; and viewed as an indica- tion of humanitarian progress, the preven- tion of misery and crime among children is more important eveu than their reform. PREVENTION OF CHILDREN'S CRIMES. Owing to the enormous emigration of des- titute laboring people from Europe to the United States, New York, the port of entry, became crowded with masses of exceeding- ly poor, ignorant people. As the children of these persons grew up, without care or instruction, aud often without homes, they .formed a singularly miserable and danger- ous element in the New York community. Hundreds and thousands were known to be roving about the streets of the city without any lawful occupation, and without any set- tled home. They were growing up, natural- ly, as vagrants, beggars, petty thieves, and prostitutes; the prisous became full of 466 HUMANITARIAN PROGRESS. them ; the House of Refuge was crowded, and the whole public began to feel the dan- gers which might arise from these miserable youths, and to cousider what could be done for their elevation and improvement. The first distinct note of alarm was sounded in 1848, by Captain Matsell, then Chief of Po- lice, iu a public report, wherein it was stated that over ten thousand of these wretched and half-criminal children were wandering vagrant through the streets of New York. This report was accompanied, or followed, by a number of preventive or reformatory movements in various parts of the city, among which should be noted especially the foundation of the two missions in the Five Points (1850 and 1852) and the forming of the Juvenile Asylum in 1851 ; but more im- portant than any or all of these was the foundation, in 1853, of one of the most re- markable associations for the prevention of children's crime and misery that have been known in modern times — the Children's Aid Society of New York. So wide-spread, however, were the crime and misfortune among children, that for several years but little effect was produced upon them by the labors of this association. Thus, even in 1859, the number of female vagrants committed to prison was 5778, and in 1860, 5880 ; and even in 1863, 1133 young girls were committed for thieving or petit larceny ; in 1863, 403 little girls under fif- teen were committed for various offenses. Among boys, in 1859, 2829 were committed for vagrancy, and 2626 for petit larceny. In 1853, the Children's Aid Society began its labors, with the formation of one industrial school, and the sending-out to homes in the country of 207 boys and girls, the expenses for this first year being $4191. In 1854, the first Newsboys' Lodging-house w T as found- ed, at an expense of about $700. This asso- ciation has now been in existence twenty- three years. The plan and methods of the society were peculiar : its great object was to save the vagrant, homeless, and semi- criminal children of the city by drawing them into places of instruction and shelter, and then by transferring them to careful- ly selected homes in the rural districts. It was seen that the condition of this coun- try was peculiar, iu an economical point of view, there being an almost unlimited de- mand here for children's labor, and no neces- sity existed for placing homeless and va- grant children in asylums or institutions. The best of all institutions for a poor child is the farmer's home. Here he would be ele- vated aud reformed sooner than any where else, aud with very little expense to the community. The effort of the society was, according- ly, to draw the poor and vagrant children of the city into industrial schools or lodging- houses, to instruct and train them there for a brief period, and then to forward those who w T ere willing to go, or who were with' out friends or parents, to places in the coun- try. The "industrial schools" were also de- signed for that large class of children who, though having friends and home, are too poor and ragged to attend the public schools, aud are obliged to be on the streets a part of the day engaged in street occupations. To these children a simple meal is given ; clothing and shoes are distributed to the needy ; and industrial branches taught, be- sides the common - school branches. The " lodging-houses" were contrived with spe- cial reference to the wants of the street children. Each child paid a certain small sum for his maintenance, and received iu re- turn simple and substantial meals, a com- fortable bed, a pleasant play-room, means of cleanliness with hot and cold water, a place to deposit his savings and to store his lit- tle property, while the only obligations in return were neatness and good order, and obedience to the rules of the house. A night- school was opened in each lodging-house to teach common-school branches, and simple religious teaching w r as given on the Sunday evening. The growth and success of this association have been truly remarkable. In 1876, the society counts twenty - one day industrial schools aud thirteen night-schools as found- ed by it, where over ten thousand children annually are partly fed, clothed, aud in- structed. It had founded six lodging-houses for boys and one for girls, where in the course of the year some 13,000 different homeless children were sheltered ; the aver- age each night being about 600. A single lodging-house, the Newsboys', has contain- ed, since it was founded, over 100,000 differ- CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY. 467 ent boys. The society sent forth to country homes over 3000 children during 1875, and in all the twenty -three years it had pro- vided over 30,000 homeless children with homes and work in the country. Besides these works of education and charity, it had supported a Sea -side Summer Home, where some 2000 children during the sum- mer had enjoyed a week of recreation and country air. Several hundred sick children had also been tended and supplied with food and medicine through its benevolent agen- cy. The total outlay, during twenty-three years, for these various benevolent enter- prises has reached the large sum of $1,877,569, and the receipts during 1874 alone amount- ed to $230,604. A single one of its lodg- ing-houses had been erected at a cost of $200,000. The effect upon the increase of crime in New York City of these benevolent labors for children has been remarkable. The commitments of females for "va- grancy," a term which includes many of the peculiar offenses of girls and women, have fallen from 5880 in 1860 to 548 in 1871— the latest year to whose reports we have access, as no public reports are now issued by the Commissioners of Charities and Correction. If this class of offenders had increased with the population, the number would have been, in 1871, over 6700. The arrests of female vagrants fell from 2161 in 1861 to 914 in 1871. The commit- ments of young girls for petty thieving fell from 1133 in 1860 to 572 in 1871 ; "juvenile delinquency," from 240 females in 1860 to 59 in 1870 : the commitments of female young children from 403 in 1863 to 212 in 1871. Among males, the commitments for vagrancy diminished from 2829 in 1859 to 934 in 1871 : the natural increase would huve been 3225; for petty larceny the decrease is from 2626 in 1859 to 1978 in 1871 : by natural increase, the number would have been 2861. The classification of commit- ments of lads under fifteen years only be- gins in 1864 ; but the decrease is from 1965 in that year to 1017 in 1871. The arrests of pickpockets have diminished from 466 in 1861 to 313 in 1871. This comparison might be followed farther, but enough has been shown to prove the distinct effect produced upon the growth of juvenile crime by the labors of the Children's Aid Society and sim- ilar organizations. When it is remembered that during the period covered by its operations there have been the disasters of two business panics and a gigantic civil war, with all the de- moralization naturally arising from them, besides an immense influx into New York of poor foreign laboring people, the profound influence of such preventive and education- al labors upon the criminal classes may be partially estimated. In fact, these labors may be considered as one of the historical landmarks to indicate the gradual but sure elevation of the spirit of humanity among our people since our century opened. While even fifty years since, according to Livingston, the practice of this and all civ- ilized nations was to punish the criminal or vagrant children, as the old offender and tramp were punished, by confiniug them, without moral influence, among older con- victs and rogues, and punishing them with extreme severity, at the same time society permitting the children of the street to grow up half-starved and neglected, to inevitably become criminals; now not only does each State open reformatories for youthful law- breakers, but a large part of the best of the community set themselves to work to pre- vent crime and misery among children. The Children's Aid Society illustrates the higher Christian estimate of the duties of society : that the fortunate classes can and ought to prevent the growth of the pauper and crim- inal classes, and that it is the wisest econo- my, as well as the highest humanity, to ed- ucate and rescue the outcast children and youth of large cities. Auother remarkable instance of the work- ing of the spirit of humanity among our in- telligent classes is the formation of commit- tees of leading ladies and gentlemen through- out this State to inspect and improve pub- lic charities. These " State Charities Aid" associations have already, in New York State, thrown a new spirit of kindness and order and improvement into those worst of all institutions in modern days, county alms- houses. The county jails, however, through- out the Union unfortunately remain yet un- touched by the spirit of the age, and are as bad as they were at the time our indepen, 209. :, 354. Magneto-electricity, 328, 329. Maine, First Settlement in, '215. Malthus, T. R., 209. Mann, Horace, 285, 397. Mann's Reaping-machine, 47, 48. Mansfield, W. M.,33. Manufacture, Progress in, 147-173:— What are Manu- factures? 147; Sources of Information, 147-150; Prog- ress from 1007 to 1770, 150-150; True Cause of the Revolution, 150-159; Tench Coxe's Address on the "Encouragement, of Manufactures," 100; Washing- ton's Dress at his First Congress, and Hamilton's Famous Report on the Progress in Manufactures, 101 ; Samuel Slatei and his Manufactures, 104, 105; Statistics of Cotton Goods Manufactured in the United States in 1873-74, 100; Results of the War of 1812, 166, 167; Value of Manufactured Products exported, and Books and Paper-making, 168; Iron ami steel, 109; Woolen Goods, 170, 171 ; Relative Importance of the Manufacturing Industries, 171, 172; Number of Persons Employed, 172; Social Cou- dition of Laborers, 172, 173. Manufactures, Colonial, forbidden, 20; Encourage- ment of, Address by Tench Coxe, 160. Manuring, 179, 180. Maps — Showing the Acquisition of Territory, 1776- 1808, 212 ; Showing the Progress of Settlement East of the 100th Meridian, 221 ; Showing Progress West- ward of the Centre of Population from Baltimore, 1800-1S70, 227: Illustrating Interstate Migration, 235 ; Showing Density of Population, 237. Married Women, Rights of, 448, 449. Marsh, George P., 390. Maryland in 1775,22; Settlement of, 214; Roman Ca- tholicism first introduced into, 483. Mason, Jeremiah, 246. Massachusetts, Class feeling in, 17; Prosperity of, in 177r,, 22. Mather, Cotton, 30, 37. Matteson, J.,413. Manch < 'hunk Mountain, 27. Maxwell, J. C., 307, 308. May, Edith (Mrs. Drinker), 395. Mayer, A. M., 808, 809, 316-318. Mayhew, Jonathan, opposition of, to Episcopal Tyr- anny, 31, 32; Opposition to Calvinism, 300, 307. M'Closkey, Cardinal, 483. M'Cormick's Reaping-machine, *47, 48. M'Dowell, Ephraim, 422. M'Eutee, Jervis, 412. Mechanical Progress, 36, 39-146: — Printing-press, 36; Cotton-mills, and Exportation Of English Machin- ery prohibited, 40; Newcomen Engine, and Watt's Engine, -11 ; The Factory System, Richard Ark- wright, and Cotton-machinery, 42 ; Agricultural Im- plements, 43-50; Steam-engines, 50-00; Cotton Manufacture, 00-08; Iron, 68-79; Engineering, 80- 3S; Wood-working, 8S-92 ; Elevators, 92,93; Do- mestic Machinery, 93-97; Fire-arms and Ordnance, 'a? mo; Telegraphs, 100, 102; Electroplating, 102, 103; Electric Light, 103, 104 ; Fire-engines and fire- alarms, 104, 1U5; Atmospheric Railways, 105, 106; Balloons, 106, 107; Weighing-machines, L07; Gas, 107, lUS; Silver, His; lee. Ins, lo(i : Sugar, 109, 110; Porcelain, L10; Glass, 111, 112; Paper, 112, 113; In- dia Rubber, 118, 114; Meteorological Instruments, 114, 115; Anaesthetics and Artificial Limbs, 115; Aquaria and Lucifer matches, 116, 116; Musical In- struments, 110, 117; Printing, 117-120; Type, 120- 124; Stereotyping, 121 120; Electrotyping, 126-128; Printing -press, 128, 135; Folding- machines, 135; INDEX. 501 Addressing -machines, 135, 136; Printing for the Blind, 130; Engraving, 136, 187; Lithography, 137- 140; Photography, 140-142 ; Photolithography, 142- 144; Miscellaneous Photo -processes, 144, 145; Pho- to-micrography, 145, 140. Mechanics' Lien Laws, 449, 450. Medal, Lalande, presented to Mr. A. ('lark, 209. Medical and Sanitary Progress, 410-433: — Colleges and Education, 417; Societies, 417, 418; Literature and Journalism, 418-420 ; Writings of Benjamin Rush, 41 S ; Edward Jenner and Vaccination, 420, 421 ; Pro- fessor Benjamin Waterhouse and Dr. Valentine Seaman, 421 ; R. T. II. Laennec's Discovery of Aus- cultation, 421 ; Wunderiich's Improvements in the Thermometer, 421, 422; Operation in Ovariotomy, performed hy Ephraim M'Dowell and others, 422; Important Surgical Operations by John Hunter, Stevens in Santa Cruz, Atkinson in England, 8. Pomeroy White, Valentine Mott, Sir Astley Cooper, Reuben Dimond Mussey, Wright Post, A. W. Smyth, and William Beaumont, 423, 424; Application of Anaesthesia by Sir James Y"oung Simpson, Horace Wells, C. T. Jackson, and John < '. Morton, 425, 426 ; Improvements in Surgery by Nathan Smith, W. W. Reid, Guidon Buck, If. I. Bowditch, Daniel Brain- ard, John C. Warren, George Hayward, Henry F. Bigelow, James K. Wood, J. Marion Sims, James I'. White, T. G. Thomas, James Jackson, John Ware, George 15. Wood, J. R. Mitchell, Elisha Bartlett, Alonzo Clark, Daniel Drake, and Jacob Bigelow, 427, 428 ; The Lobelia, or Indian Tobacco, introduced by Rev. Dr. Cutter, and Guthrie's Discovery of Chlo- roform, 428; Important Contributions to Materia Medica by Dr. Steams, John C. Dalton, S. Weir Mitchell, Brown-Sequard, Guthrie, and Austin Flint, Jan., 428, 429; Changes in Practice, Anticipations, Progress of Medicine, and Prevention of Disease, 429-433. Medical Colleges and Education, 410 ; Societies, 417, ■lis; Literature, 41s 120. Meikle's, Andrew, Threshing-machine, *49, 52. Menzies's Threshing-machine, 52. Meteorological Instruments, 114, 115. Meteorology, 314-310. Meteors, 311-314. Methodism, 477, 482. Michaelius, Rev. Jonas, 481. Micrometer Gauge, The, 79. Micro-photographic Apparatus, Woodward's, "115. Microscope, The, 323, 324. Migration, Interstate, 236; Map Illustrating, 235. Miller, Joaquin, 389. Mineralogy, 341,342. Mineral Resources, Development of, 185-199 : — Deposits of Coal, 185-1-9; Petroleum, Mineral oil, 189 I 12; Iron, 192-195; Copper, and Copper Mines, 195-197; Gold and Silver, 197 199. Minerals, Discovery of, 28. Mitchell, Donald G.,393. Mitchell, J. K.,428. Mitchell, Maria, 299, 300. Mitchell, Samuel P., 184. Mitchell, S. Weir. 428, 429. Monetary Development, 238-260: —Barter Currency, Coinage and Paper Bills, 238, '-'39 ; Bills of Exchange, 240 ; Taxation imposed, The Treasury Department, National Bank established, and ' loinage, 211 ; Bank- ruptcy Law passed, 242 ; War Debt of 1812, 243 ; Liq- uidation under Difficulties, 1819-1823, 245; Reform of the Government under Andrew Jackson, 240; Bank recharlered, 247, 248 ; Financial Crisis in 1836, 249; "Bills Receivable," 250; Suspension of tin: Banks in 1839,251; Comparative Dank Statements, 252; Indiana Currency, Discovery of Gold in Cali- fornia, 253; Panic in 1857, 254; Morrill Tariff and the Situation in 1801, 255; Stamps used as Currency, Fractional Currency, and National Bank Act of Feb- ruary 25, 1863, 256 ; Congressional Restrictions on the Currency, and Tea and Coffee Duties Repealed, 257; Hepworth v. Griswold case decided, "Black Friday" and Failure of Jay Cooke, & Co., 258; Panic of 1S73, 258, 259; Suspension of the Union Trust Company, Of Paper Payments by the Hanks, and the Outlook, 259. Moody and Sankey Revival, 488. Moran, Peter, 414. Moran, Tl ias, 414. Moravians, The, 232. Morrill Tariff, 255. Mori i , George I'., 395. Morse, S. F. I'.., Telegraphic Inventions by, "102 ; Por- trait, 408 ; Sketch of, 300, 409. Morton, John C, 426. Motley, John Lothrop, 383. Moit, Valentine, 423. Moulding-machine, "90. Moulton,Mrs. L. ('., 396. Mount, S., ii::. Mountains, Rocky, 185. Mule-spinner, *65. Musical Instruments, no, 117. Mussey, Reuben Dimond, 423. N. Nasby, Petroleum V. (D. R. Locke), 390. Nasmyth's Steam-hammer, "72. Nasi., Thomas, 414. National Growth, 220,227. Natural Sciences, The, First Steps In, 337, 338 ; Socie- ties and Local Development, 338, 339 ; General Ex- plorations, 339, 340; Mineralogy, 341, 312; Botany, 342, 343; Zoology, 313 310; Paleontology, 346, 347; Geology, 347,348. Nautical Chronometers, Transportation of, 301. " Navigation Act" of 1050, 157. Neale, Thomas, 229. Neptune, Theory of, hy Kowalski, 304; hy Newcomb, 305. New Amsterdam, Settlement formed, called, 215. Newbold's Flow, 45. New comb's Ephemerides and Theory of Neptune, 304, 305. Newcomen, Steam-engine of, *40, 51. New England, Democracy in, 20; Dutch in Albany, 20, 21 ; Character of the Clergy of, 31 ; Schools in, 281 ; Revival of Spiritual Sentiment, 866. New Hampshire, Settlement in, 215. New Haven, Sell lenient in, 215. New Jersey, Princeton College, 23 ; Formation of the Colony of, 210. New Mexico, Annexation of, 213. Newspaper- first printed in America in 1704,30. Newton, Gilbert Stuart, 409. Newton's Scientific Researches, 311-314. New Voik, Fast River Bridge, Caisson at, *81. New York, Imperfect Agriculture In, 18 ; Aristocratic and Religious Tendencies of, Condition of, in 1774, 33; Schools of, 281 ; Common-school System in, 282- 284 ; Academy of Fine Arts, 402; National Academy of Design, 403; Fulton Street Prayer-meeting, 488, Niles, II., 21 1, 245. Nobert, F. A., 319-321. 502 INDEX. Normal Schools, Establishment of, 2S5. Norton, Andrews, 367, 36S. Norton, Charles E., 39T. Norton, John P., 184. Novelists, Early, 35T, 358. Nullification, Doctrine of, 267. O. Ogle's Reaping-machine, 47, 48. Oil, Mineral, 189-192. Olmsted, Professor, 311-314. Optics, Science of, 31S, 319. Ordnance and Fire-arms, 97-100. Organic Chemistry, 331, 332. Organs, 116, 117. Osborne's Copying Camera, *143. ( >sgi iod, Prances S., 395. Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 398. Otis, James, 33. Ovariotomy, 422. P. Pacific Coast Settlements, 228, 229. Page, William, 410. Paine, R. T., Jun.,356, 357. Paine, Thomas, on Separation from England, 23 ; As- sailant of the Orthodox Faith, 359. Painting and Painters :— Portrait, 406, 407 ; Genre, 410, 411 ; Historical, 411 ; Landscape, 412. Paleontology, 346, 347. Palfrey, John G., 3S2. Palmer, Erastus Dow, 414. Panic of 1857, 254 ; of 1S73, 25S, 259. Papacy, Dangers from the Increase of, 275. Paper and Paper-making Machinery, 112, 113; Manu- facture, 153; Making, 169; Currency, 23S, 239 ; Pay- ments suspended by the Banks, 259. Park, Edward A., 397. Parker, Theodore, 371, 372. Parkman, Francis, 382. Parsons, T. W., 395. Patent-office, Washington, *39. Patents since 16S0, 42, 443, 444. Paulding, James K., 365, 360. Payne, John Howard, 395. Peacock's Plow, 45. Peale, Charles Wilson, 408. Peale, Rembrandt, Portrait of, 405 ; Sketch of, 409. Peck, Jedediah, 2S2, 2S3. Peirce, Benjamin, 297. Penalties, Severity of, 460, 461. Penn, William, 36. Pennsylvania, Conservative Government in, 23; Col- onization of, 217. Percival, James G., 37S, 379. Perkins's, Jacob, Nail-cutting Machine, and Coin-die, 40. Perkins's Transferring Plant, *77. Perronet's Chapelets (Chain -pumps), at Orleans, France, 84. Perry, E. W., 413. Peters's Scientific Discoveries, 300. Petroleum, 1S9-192. Phelps, E. S.,394. Philadelphia, Academy of Art, 403, 404. Phlogiston, Doctrine of, 331. Phoenician and Egyptian Writing, *119. PhoBnix, John (George H. Derby), 390. Photographic Apparatus, by L. M. Rutherford, 302, S03. Photography, 140-142. 321-323. Photo-lithography, 142-144. Photo-micrography, 145, 146; Woodward's Apparatus, *145. Photo Processes and Discoveries, 144, 145. Physiological Chemistry, 334. Pianos, 116, 117. Pickering's, Timothy, Plow, 45. Pictures, Forgeries of, 402. Pile-driving, 80. Pine, Robert E., 40S. "Pine-tree" Coinage, 70. Planets, Discovery of Minute, 300. Planing-machine, 75. Plow and Hoe, Origin of, *43. Plows, Rude Modern,* American, ofl776, *44; of 1785- 1874, * Howard Wheel, *45 ; Fowler's Steam, *46. Plymouth Colony, Formation of, 214. Poe, Edgar Allan, 379. Poems, Individual, 395, 396. Poets, Early, 355-357. Political Growth, Historic Causes of, 200, 261; Re- form, Need of, 277, 278. Population, Growth and Distribution of (with five Maps), 211-237:— Acquisition of Territory (with Map), 212 ; Louisiana, 213 ; Florida, Texas, and New Mexico, 213; Settlement in 1607-1660, and Forma- tion of Virginia, Maryland, Plymouth, and Salem, 214; New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Islaud, Con- necticut, New Haven, New Amsterdam, and Long Islaud, 215; Settlement in 1660-16SS, and Forma- tion of Delaware, New Jersey, and the Caroiinas, 216 ; Settlement in 1688-1754, 217, 218-221 ; Forma- tion of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Tennessee, Ken- tucky, and Michigan, 219; Progress of Settlement in the United States, East of 100th Meridiau (with Map), 221 : Settlement in 1754-1790, Westward Emi- gration, 220, 221; Settlement in 1790-1S70, and the First Census taken, 221, 222; Extension of Settle- ment since 1790 ; Segregation of the Colonies, 222, 223; Centre of Population and Growth of Cities, 224,225; The Arithmetical and Geographical Prog- ress of the National Growth (with Map), 226, 227 ; Pacific Coast Settlement, 22S; The Post-office, 229, 230 ; Constituents of our Population, 231 ; Our For- eign Elements, 231-236 ; Interstate Migration (with Map), 235, 236 ; Density of Population in 1S70 (with Map), 230, 237. Population of the States at the Formation of the Re- public, 19 ; Increase of the, 160 ; Constituents of our, 231-236 ; Religious, 484. Porcelain, 110. Portrait-painting, 406-412. Portsmouth, 215. Post-office, The, 229, 230. Post, Wright, 423. Postage and Revenue Stumps, 77. Powers, Hiram, Portrail of, 411; The " Greek Slave," 402; Sketch of, 413, 414. Prairie Produce, 206. Prayer-meeting, Fulton Street, New York, 4SS. Presbyterians, The, 4^2. Prescott, William H., 382, 383. Press, Power of the, 290. Preston, Mrs. M. J., 390. Priestley, Robert, 294, 295. Princeton College, 23, 37. Printing first introduced in America, 36; Types and Presses, 117-135;* for the Blind, 136; Chronograph, 300, 301. Prisons, Management of Criminals in, 454, 455 ; Over- crowded, 456^458 ; County, 461 ; Reform in, 401-463 ; INDEX. 503 Religious Instruction in, 4G3 ; Secular Teaching and Libraries in, 464, 405 ; Treatment of Unfortunate Children in, 404, 405 ; Review of the, 471, 472. Products, Exchanges of, Causiug the National Strength, 205. Prose-writers displaying more Talent than Poets, 357. Prosperity, Legal Obstructions to our, 210. Protection of Animals, 450. Protestant Denominations, 4S0-4S3. Puddling-machine, *70. Pnlping-engine, *112. Pumping-engiues, 83, 84 ; Cornish, *51. Q. Quaker Settlements, The, 262. Quetelet's Scientific Researches, 311-314. Quincy, Edmund, 384. Races in the South, Conflict of, 209. Railways, Introduction of, iu England, 1829, 5S; in America, 1S26, 59. Ransome's Plows, 45. Read, T. Buchanan, 395. Reaping in Gaul, *47. Reaping-machines, 46-49; Gladstone's,* Bell's, *48; The "Champion," *49. Rebellion, The, and its Results, 2GS, 269. Redfield, W.C., 314-316. Reform needed in Journalism, 276 ; in Politics, 276- 27S. Reformed Procedure, 450, 451. Reid, W. W., 427. Reidesel, Baroness, 33. Rein hart, Charles S.,415. Religion — Calvinism, 359 ; Unitarian, 366- 36S. See Denominations. Religious Development, 473-492 : — Early Religious Sen- timent, Peter Faneuil, John Laurens, and John Win- throp, 474,475; The Revolutionary Struggle, Revo- lution, and Politics, 476, 477 ; Paul Revere and Bish- op Madison, 477; The Methodists and Bishop As- btiry, 477 ; Intemperance and the large Consumption of Spirits, 47S; Ecclesiastical Independence com- menced in Virginia and extended to the other Col- onies, 47S, 479 ; Founding of various Protestant De- nominations, 4S0-4S3 ; Episcopal Church — Captain John Smith, Rev. John Hunt, and Bishops Seabury, White, and Provoost, 4S0, 4S1 ; Congregationalism- John Robinson, 4S1 ; Reformed Dutch Church — Rev. Jonas Michaelius and Rev. Dr. J. H. Livingston, 481; The Baptists— Roger Williams, 4S1, 482; The Lutherans — Rev. Jacob Fabricius, 4S2 ; The Presby- terians — John Rodgers, 482; The German Reformed Church, 482 ; The Methodists— Bishop Asbury, 482 ; Roman Catholicism first commenced in Maryland under Lord Baltimore (Crecilius Calvert), the First Cardinal being Archbishop M'Closkey, 4S3, 484 ; De- nominational Statistics, 4S4, 4S5; The Freedmen's Bureau, 4S0 ; Great Revivals — Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Samuel Finley, Dr. Griffin, Ful- ton Street Prayer-meeting, New York, and Moody and Sankey, 4S6^1SS ; Religious Fraternization in the War, 4S8, 489 ; Sanitary Commission under the Supervision of the Rev. H. W. Bellows, 4S9 ; Practi- cal Character of our Religious Development, 4S9, 490; Meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in New York in 1S73, 4S9 ; Election of Dr. Ware to a Pro- fessorship in Harvard University, 489 ; Unitarian Controversy, 489, 490 ; Reactionary Elements, The Roman Catholics, Temperance Reform, and the In- terchange of Evangelistic Efforts, 490^192. Religious Sects in North and South, 20 ; Feeling of Jonathan Edwards, 349, 350 ; Statistics, 484, 4S5. " Resolutions of '98," 354, 355. Revere, Paul, Portrait of, 399 ; Sketch of, 414, 477. Revivals, Great, 4S6^S8. Revolution, True Cause of the, 156-159; Progress since, 159-171 ; Results of the, 266. Revolutionary Struggle, 476, 477. Rhode Island in 1775, Democracy in, 22 ; Colony of, 215. Rice, Production of, 24; as a Barter Medium, 239. Rittenhouse, David, 294. Rives, William C, 3S4. Robinson, John, 4S1. Rocky Mountains, 185. Rodgers, John, 482. Rogers, John, 414. Rogers, Randolph, 414. Rogers, W. B., 316-31S. Rolling-mill for Iron Bars, 71. Roman Catholics, Statistics of, 490, 491. Rood, O. N., Professor, 319-321. "Rotherham" Plow, The, 44. Rowson, Susanna, 357, 35S. Ruling-machine, 137. Rush, Benjamin, 418. S. Salem, Massachusetts Bay, Colony of, 214. Sargent, Epes, 395. Saturn, Satellites of, 29S; Rings of, 299; Memoir on, by Professor B. Peirce and J. C. Maxwell, 307. Saws, Circular, *89 ; Baud, *90. Saxe, John G., 396. Saxton's Scientific Instruments, 300 ; Researches, 324- 331. Schiaparelli's Scientific Researches, 311-314. Schools of New England and New York, 281 ; Estab- lishment of Normal, 2S5. Sciences, The Natural, First Steps in, 337, 338 ; Socie- ties and Local Development, 33S, 339 ; General Ex- plorations, 339, 340 ; Mineralogy, 341, 342 ; Botany, 342, 343 ; Zoology, 343-346 ; Paleontology, 346, 347 ; Geology, 347, 34S. Scientific Progress, 294-34S: — The Exact Sciences and Activity of David Rittenhouse, 294 ; Robert Priestley and Benjamin Thompson, 294, 295 ; Transit of Venus Expedition, 295 ; Encouragement of Science by the Government and the Smithsonian Institution, 295, 296; Wilkes's Exploring Expedition, The Lynch Dead Sea Exploration, Gillis's Solar Parallax Ex- pedition, 295, 296; Nathaniel Bowditch's Comment- ary on the Mecanique Celeste of Laplace, Professor Benjamin Peirce's Publications, The Algebra of Professor Theodore Strong, The Memoir on "Music- al Temperament," by Professor A. M. Fisher, The Essay of Professor Fisher on the "Calculus of Vari- ations," Professor Patterson's "Calculus of Opera- tions,'' Professor Newton's Memoirs on Questions of High Geometry, General Alvord's "Tangencies of Circles and Spheres,'' Professor Ferrel's "Con- verging Series,'" General Barnard's "Theory of the Gyroscope " and " Problems iu Rotary Motion," 297; Astronomical Science, 297-314 — Sir William Herschel's and Mr. Lassell's Astronomical Discov- eries, 298; Telescope of the Cambridge Observatory Mounted, and Discovery of the Eighth Satellite of Saturn by the Messrs. Bond, which received the name of Hyperion, 298; Saturn's Rings noticed by Messrs. Bond, Dawes, Lassell, Galle, Father Secchi, Otto Strove, J. Capini, and Halley, and the Discov- ery of Sirius, 299; Completion of Alvau Clark's 504 INDEX. Great Telescope, and Award of the Lalaude Medal, 299; Discovery of Comets by W. C. Bond, Maria Mitchell, and Mr. Tuttle, 299, 300 j Discovery of Mi- nute Planets by American Observers and Detection of Asteroids by Messrs. James Ferguson, Searle, Tuttle, Watson, and Peters, 300; Practical Astrono- my, The Automatic Registration of Time Observa- tions by Electro-magnetism Discovered by Profess- or J. Locke, to whom were awarded Ten Thousand Dollars, 300 ; Telegraph Instruments by Morse, Mitchell, Saxton, and the Messrs. Bond, 300; Print- ing Chronograph, by Professor George W. Hough, 300, 301 ; Longitudinal Determinations and Im- provement of Instruments, 301 ; Grinding a Metal Speculum, Optical Experiments, by Alvau Clark, and Appreciation of the Same by W. B. Dawes, 300 -302; Rutherford's Photographic Apparatus, 302, 303; Scientific Experiments, by Dr. Henry Diaper, 303, 304 ; Detection of a Planet in August, 1846, Pro- fessor S. C. Walker's Planetary Theory in Febru- ary, 1S47, Herschel's Discovery of the Planet Ura- nus, Laeaille's Histoire Celeste, and a Theory of Nep- tune, by Kowalski, 304; Newcomb on the Epheme- rides, 304, 305 ; Application of the Principles of Grav- itation in Astronomy with Reference to Inequali- ties, 306, 307 ; The Saturniau System the Subject of Memoirs by Professors B. Peirce and J. C. Maxwell, and the Exposition of Certain Harmonies of the Solar System, by Professors S. Alexander and D. Kirkwood, 307, 308 ; Solar Physics, Observations by George, Wilson, Sir W. Herschel, T. De la Rue, B. Stewart, Messrs. Loewy and Faye, Father Secchi, Professors Loomis, Hunt, Laugley Young, and A. M. Mayer, 308, 309 ; The Chromosphere discovered by Professor C. A. Young, 309 ; Professor A. M. May- er's Device for the Study of the Laws of the Distri- bution of Heat, 309; Comets— Treated by Professors Alexander, Loomis, Norton, Peirce, and Mr. George P. Bond, 309, 310 ; Auroras — Studied by E. C. Her- rick, Professors Loomis and Lovering, 310 ; Meteor- ic Astronomy and Comets demonstrated to be iden- tical by Diogenes of Apollouia, Professors Olmsted, Newton, Schiaparelli, Hubbard, Klinkerfues, Weiss, W. Wright, and Young, and Messrs. E. C. Herrick, Qnetelet, Winnecke, Bradley, H. B. Tuttle, and Adams, 311-314; Meteorology— Opinions held by Drs. Franklin, Wells, W. C. Redtield, J. P. Espy, Professors Loomis, C. Abbe, and Henry, 314- 316; Signal -office Weather Maps, 316; Profess- or Tyndall's Singing -tubes, 316; Acoustics — In- vestigations by Professors Helmholtz, W. B. Rog- ers, Henry and A. M. Mayer, 316-318; Science of Optics, 318, 319; The Spectrum — Observations by Dr. Wollaston, Dr. Draper, Messrs. L. M. Ruther- furd, Lockyer, F. A. Nobert, Professor O. N. Rood, and Dr. W. Gibbs, 319-321 ; Important Discovery in the Distribution of Fieat in the Spectrum made by Dr. Draper, 321; Photography — Discoveries by Daguerre, Draper, Rutherfurd, and Professor Wheatstone, 321-323 ; The Stereoscope, 323 ; Forms of Apparatus for the Artificial Production of Cold, 323 ; The Microscope — Discoveries by J. J. Lister, C. S. Spencer, R. B. Tolles, W. Wales, and Profess- ors Bailey and II. L. Smith, 323, 324; Electricity- Discoveries in Magnetism, Voltaic Induction, Mag- neto-electricity, Induction Coils, Static and Thermo- electricity, by Franklin, Hare, Dauiell, Arago, Davy, Sturgeon, Henry, Morse, Faraday, Saxton, Ritchie, Page, Ruhmkorff, Farmer, and Professor Rood, 324- 331 ; Completion of the Atlantic Telegraph under the Presidency of Cyrus W. Field, 326 ; Electro-magnet- ism as a Motive-power, 327 ; Fire-alarms and Elec- tro-magnetic Clock by E. S. Ritchie, 327; Magneto- electric Machine by Joseph Saxton and Dr. Page, 32S ; Induction Coils by Dr. Page and Messrs. Ruhm- korff, 329, 330; Chemistry — Discoveries by Stahl, Lavoisier, Black, Cavendish, Priestley, Scheele, Wenzel, Higgius, Proust, Richter, Deville, Shiel, Hare, Clarke, Silliman, Guthrie, Soubeiran, Draper, Jackson, Blake, Gibbs, Cooke, and Dr. Smith, 331- 336 ; Organic Chemistry, 331, 332 ; Compound Blow- pipe, 332, 333 ; Discovery of Chloroform by Soubei- ran, a French Chemist, and Dr. Samuel Guthrie, 333; Method for Determining Carbon in Graphite, 333 ; Physiological and Applied Chemistry, 334-336 ; Scientific Investigations, 336, 337 ; The Natural Sci- ences and their First Steps, 337, 338 ; Scientific So- cieties and Local Development, 338, 339; General Explorations, 339, 340; Mineralogy, 341, 342; Bot- any, 342, 343 ; Zoology, 343-346 ; Paleontology, 346, 347; Geology, 347, 34S. Scotch-Irish populating Virginia, 21. Screw-propeller, Invention of the, 54. Sculpture and Sculptors, 413, 414. Seaman, Valentine, 421. Searles's Scientific Discoveries, 300. Sears, E. H., 395. Secchi, Father, 299, 308, 309. Sectarian Contest in Public Schools, 284. Sectarianism discarded by the Founders of the Ameri- can Republic, 17. Sects. See Denominations. Sedgwick, Catharine M., 393. Settlement East of the 100th Meridian, Map showing the Progress of, 221. Sewing-machines, 93-96 ; Singer's, *95. Shaw, H. W. (Josh Billings), 390. Sherman, General W. T., 3S4, 3S5. Shillaber, B. P., 390. Ship-building, Introduction of, 25, 39. Shooting-stars, 311-314. Short, William, 221. Signal-office Weather Maps, 316. Silk, Culture of, 150. Silver and its Processes, 108, 197-199. Simms, William G., 394. Simpson, Sir James Young, 425. Sims, J. Marion, 427. Singer's Sewing-machine, *95. Slater, Samuel, and his Manufactures, 1G4, 165. Slavery, Introduction of, 21, 264 ; Traffic in, 26 ; Aboli- tion of, 2GS. Small's Plow, *45. Smith, Captain John, 219, 4S0, 481. Smith, Nathan, 427. Smith, Pearsall, 492. Smith, William, 32. Smith's, Aaron, Plow, 45. Smith's, Adam, Treatise on the Wealth of Nations, 200. Smithsonian Institution, Organization of, 295, 296. Smybert, John, 400. Smyth, A. W., 424. Snyder, Governor, 243. Solar Camera, *141, 142; System, Exposition of cer- tain Harmonies of the, 307, 30S,- Physics, 308, 309. Soubeiran's Scientific Researches, 333. South, Education in the, 288. Spading-machines, 46. Spalding, Archbishop, 4S3. Sparks, Jared, 3S1. Spectrum, The, 319-321. Speculum, Grinding a Metal, 301. INDEX. 50.5 Spencer, Herbert, 39S. Spinning-machinery, 61-66 ; Wheel, *62. Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 394. Spottiswoode, Lieutenant-governor, 219. Sprague, Charles, 3T6, 377. Sprengel, Kurt, 179. Staigg, Richard M., 410. Stamps used as Currency, 256. " Stanhope " Printing-press, *12S. Stars, Shooting, 311-314. States, Commerce between the, 203 ; Migration be- tween, 236. Statutes, Revised, and Codes, 451. Steam-engine and its Applications, Newcomen's En- gine, *40, 51 ; Watt's Engine, *41 ; Cornish Putupiug- engine, *51, 52. Steam-hammers, *72. Steam -navigation, Steamboats, 52-54; Steamships, *54, 55 ; Locomotives, *55-60. Steam-plows, *46. Steam-pumps, S3. Steamship City of Peking, *154. Stearns, Dr., 42S. Stebbins, Emma, 414. Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 396. Steel, Cast, Invention of, 74, 169. Stephenson's Locomotive, *58. Stereoscope, The, 323. Stereotyping, "124-126. Stetef.jldt's Roasting Furnace, 108. Stethoscope, 421. Stevens, Mr., 256. Stewart, B.,30S, 309. Stiles, Dr., 4S4. Stirling's Threshing-machine, 52. Stock, Importation of Live, 1S1-1S3. Stoddard, Richard Henry, 395. Stone, Oliver, 410. Story, W. W., 395,414. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 393. Street, A. B., 395. Strong, Theodore, 297. Struve, Otto, 299. # Stuart, Gilbert Charles, Portrait, 401 ; Biographical Sketch of, 409. Stuyvesant, P., 35. Suffolk Bank System Organized, 246. Suffrage, Universal, 273, 274. Sugar, 109, 110 ; Modern Process of Making, *110. Sully, Thomas, Portrait of, 407; Sketch of, 410. Sumner, Charles, 3S7, 3S8. Surgery, Improvements in, 427, 428. Swedish Settlements along the Delaware, 20. Symington's, Charlotte Dundas, Steamboat, *53. Taney, R. B., 247, 24S. Tariff Compromise effected, 267. Taylor, Bayard, 379, 380. Taylor's Machine Gun, *99. Tea and Coffee Duties Repealed, 257. Telegraphs, *100-102 ; Atlantic Telegraph Completed, 326. Telescopes, 78 ; Alvan Clark's, 299. Temperance Reform, 492. Tennessee Attacked by Indians, 19 ; Founded by James Robertson, 219. Terhune, Mrs. (Marian Harland), 394. Territory, Acquisition of (with Map), 212. "Thanatopsis," a Poem, by W. C. Bryant, 361. Thaxter, Celia, 396. Theological Writers, Early, 35S-359 ; Literature, 397. Theology, Calviuistic, 359. Thermo-electricity, 331. Thermometer, 421, 422. "Thirteen," The Immortal, 218. Thomas, T. G., 427. Thompson, Benjamin, 294, 295. Thompson, Lauut, 414. Thoreau, Henry D., 3S9. Threshing-machines, *49, 50. Ticknor, George, 385. Timrod, Henry, 396. Tobacco, Growth of, 24 ; Cultivation of, ISO. Transportation, 205 ; of Nautical Chronometers, 301. Treasury Department Established, 241. Trevethick and Vivian's Locomotives, *55. Trowbridge, J. T., 395. Trumbull, Colonel John, Portrait of, 403 ; Biograph- ical Sketch of, 356, 410. Tuckerman, Henry T., 396. Tull's, Wheat Drill, 176. Tunneling, Mont Cenis and Hoosac, 85. Turning-lathes, 75. Tuttle's Scientific Discoveries, 299, 300. Twain, Mark (S. L. Clemens), 390. Tyndall's Singiug-tubes and Sensitive Flames, 316. Type and Type-founding, etc., 120, *123; Setting and Distributing Machine, 123, 124. U. Underwood, F. H.; 396. Union, Colonial Preparation for the, 264, 265. Union, Experiment of the, with its Preparations, 260- 278 :— Historic Causes of Political Growth, 260, 261 ; Quaker Settlements, Catholics of Maryland, Dutch of New Netherlands, and the Fortunate Conditions of the Colonists, 262, 263 ; Introduction of Slavery, and Colonial Preparations for the Union, 264, 265; The Revolution and its Results, and Rev. E. A. Free- man on Federal Governments, 266 ; The Doctrine of Nullification and Tariff Compromise, 267; The Re- bellion and its Results, 268, 269; Abolition of Slav- ery, 26S ; Conflict of Races in the South, 269 ; The Strength of the Executive, 270-272; The Danger of Consolidation, and Universal Suffrage, 273, 274; Danger from the Influx of Catholics, and Financial Perils, 275, 276 ; Greater Personal Integrity needed in Congress, and Reform in Journalism, 276 ; Need of Political Reform, 276, 277 ; Expectations for the Future, 278. Union Trust Company, Suspension of, 259. Unitarian ism, Controversy on, 489, 490. Vaccination, Discovery of, 420, 421. Vanderlyu, John, 410. Vansittart, Mr., 257. Varley, Henry, 492. Vedder, Elihn, 413. Verrugas Viaduct, in the Andes of Peru, 86. Very, Jones, 396. "Victory," Hoe's great Printing-press, *135. Virginia, Class Feeling in, 17 ; A Great Wilderness, 19 ; Loyalty to the Stuarts, 20; Illiteracy in the Colony, 20; Slavery first introduced in, and the Opposition to, 21 ; Establishment of Episcopacy, 21 ; Settlement at Jamestown, 150, 214. Vivian's Locomotive, *55. Voltaic Induction, 328, 329. 506 INDEX. W. Walker, S. C, 304. Walsh, Robert, 4S3. Walter's Perfecting Press, *132, 143. Wampum used as Money, 29, 238. War of 1812, and its Results, 160, 167 ; Debt, 243. War of the Rebellion, Christian Religious Fraternity during the, 4S8, 4S9. Ward, Artemus (C. F. Browne), 390. Ward, J. Q. A, 414. Ware, Dr., 4S9. Ware, John, 428. Ware, William, 393. Warner, Charles Dudley, 391. Warren, John C, 427. Washing-machines, 97. Washington, George, 35; First Message to Congress, 161. "Washington," No. 1, Steam Fire-engine, *105. Washington, Patent Office at, *39. " Washington " Printing Press, The, *129. Watch-making, 77, 78. Water-color Society, 405, 406. Waterhouse, Benjamin, 421. Water Supply in London, 52 ; Current-wheel at Lon- don Bridge, 1731, *34. Watson, John, 399. Watson's Scientific Discoveries, 300. Watt's Mechanical Inventions to the Steam-engine, •41. Wayland, Francis, 397. Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith's Treatise on the, 200. Weaving Machinery, 66, 67. Webster, Daniel, 256, 386, 387. Weighing-machines, 107. Weiss, Professor, 311-314. Wells, 86. Wells, Dr., 314-316. Wells, Horace, 426. West, Benjamin, Portrait of, 401 ; Biography of, 406, 407. Westward Emigration, 219, 220. Whale-fishery established, 25. Wheatstone, Professor, 321-323. White, Edwin, 413. White, James P., 427. White, Richard Grant, 390. White, S. Pomeroy, 423. Whitefield, George, 4S7. Whitman, Walt, 389. Whitney, A. D. T., 394. Whitney's Cotton-gin, 40, *60. Whittemore's Card-sticking Machine, 40. Whittier, John Greenleaf, 373, 374. Whittredge, Worthington, 412. Wilde, R. H., 395. Wilkes's Exploring Expedition of 1838, 295. Willard Asylum, The, 470. William and Mary's College, 37. Williams, Roger, 215, 481, 482. Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 377, 378. Wilson, Augusta Evans, 394. Wilson, Forceythe, 395. Wilson, G., 308, 309. Wiunecke's Scientific Researches, 311-314. Winthrop, John, 474, 475. Winthrop, Theodore, 394. Witherspoon, Dr., 37. Wolcott, Oliver, 233. Wollastou, Dr., 319-321. Wollaston's Portrait-painting, 407. Women, Rights of Married, 44S, 449. Wood, George B., 428. Wood, J., 413, 427. Wood's, Jethro, Plow, *45. Woodman, John, 267. Woodville, R. C, 413. Woodward's Photo-micrographic Apparatus, *145. Wood-working, 8S-*92. Woodworth, Samuel, 395. Woolen Manufactures, 170. Woolf, Michael, 415. Worth, Thomas, 415. Wright, W., 311-314. Wust, T., 415. Y. Yale College, 37. 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