Cornelius Vanderbilt.

[1863-1869]

The year 1869 witnessed the junction of the Union Pacific with the Central Pacific Railway, forming a continuous railway line between the Atlantic and Pacific shores. The last rail was put down on May 12th, and on the 15th trains began to run. This work had been in process of construction ever since 1863. It traversed the Rocky Mountain range at an elevation of 8,243 feet above sea-level. The Northern Pacific Railway Company was chartered by Congress in 1864. The road was not completed till August, 1883, nor opened to traffic before September. Its length from Duluth to its then terminus on the Columbia River, Washington, was 1,674 miles. The Southern Pacific and the Atlantic and Pacific, both traversing the Rockies, soon followed. Still another line, the Great Northern, connecting St. Paul with the extreme Northwest, was opened in 1893. The country's total railway mileage in 1885 was 128,967 miles; in 1893 it was 170,607 miles.

In the same years with the opening of these continental lines began the consolidation of the older ones into great systems. The New York Central had already been formed out of sixteen different fragments, but the process of consolidation in a large way may be said to have been instituted by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1869, when he joined the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern with the New York Central, thus placing under a single administration the entire route from New York to Chicago. The first train pierced the Hoosac Tunnel, in Western Massachusetts, February 9, 1875, completing another artery between East and West. The tunnel passed through the Hoosac Mountain, a distance of four miles and three-quarters, and had been in process of boring, though not continuously, about fifteen years.



The Big Loop on the Georgetown Branch of the Union Pacific, Colorado.



Charles F. Brush.



Moses G. Farmer.

[1875-1878]

The lighting of large spaces by electricity in a profitable manner may be dated from 1875. The possibility of producing a brilliant light with this fluid had been well known to physicists ever since Sir Humphry Davy's experiments in 1813, but no method of generating the electricity cheaply had hitherto been invented. Utilizing among others the inventions of Dr. C. W. Siemens, Mr. Charles G. Brush, of Cleveland, 0., gave to the world in 1875 his remarkably efficient dynamo or generator, and from that time the illumination of streets and squares by electricity began to be somewhat common. There was, to be sure another difficulty to be overcome, even for lighting on a grand scale, that of maintaining a steady and continuous light. In this the Jablochkoff candle, used in the Paris streets by 1878, was measurably successful. It was a voltaic arc arrangement, in which, by making each of the two carbon pencils alternately positive and negative, their ends were consumed with equal rapidity and so kept perpetually the same distance apart.



Thomas A. Edison.



The Hoosac Tunnel Lit by Glow Lamps, after the Plan of the Marr Construction Company.

But the voltaic light was too brilliant for a small area. How to divide and subdue it so as to render it suitable for house lighting, was still a difficult problem. Farmer, Sawyer, Mann, and Edison, all attacked it at nearly the same time, going back with singular accord from the voltaic arc principle to that of incandescence in a vacuum. Edison, the prodigy of the century in inventive genius, was the most successful. Besides improving the dynamo, he perfected with little difficulty a cheap vacuum-globe. After long experimenting he succeeded in the more arduous task of securing an automatic checking of the current before it became hot enough to consume the incandescent carbon. He also found that a large current could be divided into smaller ones by splitting up the conductor into minor filaments. Triumph in household illumination was thus achieved, and when, in October, 1878, the results of Edison's experimenting were announced to the world, gas fell from twelve to twenty per cent. The alarm was premature, however, since the new illumination did not, after all, prove so satisfactory as to displace the old. It largely did so for streets, factories, and halls, but to no very great extent for residences.



Edison's Platinum Lamp on Carbon Support, 1879.



Edison's Paper Carbon Lamp.



Edison's First Incandescent Platinum Lamp.

[1883-1884]

The most stupendous engineering work yet accomplished by man, the great bridge spanning East River between Brooklyn and New York, was completed in May, 1883, excavations for its foundations having begun so early as 1870. This wonder of the world was designed by John A. Roebling, and after his death in 1869 finished by his son, W. A. Roebling. It cost about $16,000,000, two-thirds coming from the city of Brooklyn, one-third from New York. A gigantic stone tower, 277 feet high, was built on each side of the river. Through arched apertures in these toward the top ran the roadway, its ends being 119 feet above the water. The centre of the bridge was supported by four steel wire cables, 16 inches in diameter, which passed from solid masonry structures nearly 1,000 feet away from the water's edge on either shore, up over the two towers, dipping, at the centre of the river, to nearly the level of the roadway. On account of their great weight they had to be braided, strand by strand, in their permanent position. Suspenders from these cables grappled the body of the bridge at frequent intervals. The main span was I,595-1/2 feet long, the entire work about 6,000 feet. There were five passageways—two on the outside for carriages, the next two for cable cars, the middle one for foot passengers. The bridge curved upward from each tower, being at the middle 135 feet above the water in summer, and three feet higher in winter, owing to contraction by the cold. All but the very largest ships sailed under without shortening their masts.

In connection with the great bridge, as likewise in a way possessing an importance for the whole nation, we may mention the ingenious deepening of Hell-gate Channel, East River, by tunnelling beneath the water and using dynamite; and also the introduction of elevated railways in New York City and Brooklyn. This project had been mooted by 1868. Exactly ten years later two sections of railway were open for travel in New York. The first elevated road in Brooklyn began operation in 1885. These new avenues of travel at once became immensely popular. In 1884, no fewer than 250 engines and 800 cars were in use by the New York lines, carrying over 300,000 passengers daily, or about 103,000,000 for the year. Nearly at the same time with the introduction of these roads in New York, new methods of traction for surface street railways, by electricity and by cable, were introduced in various cities of the country, bidding fair soon to do away with horses for this service.



The Brooklyn Bridge, looking up the East River.



The Manhattan Elevated Railway, New York.

[1877-1887]

One of the most interesting and valuable inventions of this or any century was that of the telephone, devised by Alexander Graham Bell, and first put to business use in 1877. For ten years Mr. Bell had been experimenting upon the possibility of conveying sound by means of the electric wire. In 1876 he had so far succeeded as to exhibit a pair of his instruments in successful operation at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. In April of the next year the Cambridge Water Board, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and many other corporations ordered the instrument for practical service. From this time the business grew with incredible rapidity. The American Bell Telephone Company was incorporated, and in January, 1886, had in use 330,000 telephones. There were this year in various cities of the United States 752 telephone exchanges. The total length of telephone wires operated by this company was 114,371 miles. In addition to the system which centred in the Bell Company there were several competing telephone establishments in continual litigation with the Bell. The total mileage of telephone wires in the United States in 1887 was estimated at 130,000 miles. There were the same year 170,000 miles of telegraph wire, besides private lines. In 1893, the aggregate length of telegraph lines in the United States open to the public exceeded 210,000 miles. There were, besides, government and private lines to a length vast but not ascertainable. In addition to all this, the Bell Telephone Company, which conducted the main telephone business of the country, owned, the same year, 307,748 miles of wire, which the lines of other companies increased to 440,750 miles.

Under Side of a Modern Switchboard, showing 2,000 Telegraph Wires.

[1862-1877]

From this account of our country's material advance after the war we purposely omit mention of the great economic progress at the South, as that has been already reviewed in Chapter IV. We must, instead, notice several events which decidedly checked the prosperity of these years.

So soon as gold had ceased to circulate in 1862, speculation in it began, which was one of the most pernicious results of the depreciation of paper. The ups and downs in the gold price of the greenback from week to week and from day to day during the war were largely due to this cause. In 1869 a clique of speculators in New York thought to realize an immense fortune by cornering gold, a large proportion of the stock east of the Rocky Mountains being known to be in New York City.

By Wednesday, September 22d, they had pushed up the price of gold in greenbacks from 131 to 141, causing a disastrous tumble in stocks and almost a panic. The money market grew tight, and interest enormous. Loans were to be had only on the very best securities. On Thursday gold still advanced, showing that the corner remained solid. At the last call it stood at 144; at the first on Friday, September 24th, 105 was the figure. The ring was believed at this time to hold in gold and in contracts to deliver the same, over $100,000,000, while all the gold in New York outside the United States Sub-Treasury was hardly over $10,000,000. Only the Government could break the corner. At eleven o'clock gold was at 155, whence in half an hour it rose to 160, then to 162, then to 164. In the midst of an excitement never paralleled in the Gold Room before or since, it was announced on authority that the Government would sell. The price at once went down to 135, and the power of the clique was instantly broken. This day passed into history under the name of "Black Friday."

Professor Bell Sending the First Message by Long-distance Telephone, from New York to Chicago.



The New York Gold Room on "Black Friday," September 24, 1869.

The Chicago fire of October, 1871, was the most disastrous yet in the chronicles of our country. It began in the evening of October 8th and raged for over twenty-four hours. According to the best estimates 250 lives were lost, 98,500 persons made homeless, 17,500 buildings consumed, and $192,000,000 worth of property destroyed. The main business portion of the city was included in the tract burned. Thirteen months later the most destructive conflagration that had ever visited Boston swept the district below Washington Street from Summer nearly to State, and eastward to the water's edge, being the most solid business portion of the city. The loss was placed at $75,000,000.



A Scene during the Chicago Fire.

The shocking destruction of wealth by these fires was part cause of the hard times which began in 1873. But others concurred. During 1872 the balance of trade was strongly against the United States. The circulation of depreciated paper money had brought to many an apparent prosperity which was not real, leading to the free contraction of debts by individuals, corporations, towns, cities, and States. An unprecedented mileage of railways had just been constructed. During the half decade ending with 1873, $1,700,000,000 had thus been spent in the country. The supposed wealth of many consisted in the bonds of these roads and of other newly created concerns, as mining and manufacturing corporations. Thus the entire business of the country was on a basis of inflation, and when contraction came by the resumption of specie payments and the demonetization of silver, disaster was inevitable.

In the course of the summer solid values began to be hoarded and interest rates consequently to rise. In September panic came. Credit in business was refused, debtors were pressed for payment, securities were rushed into the market and fell greatly in price, railway stocks from ten to forty per cent., even United States bonds from five to ten. There was a run upon savings banks, many of which succumbed. For ten days, beginning September 20th, the New York Stock Exchange had to suspend, so dubious was the value of most stock contracts. Manufactured products were little salable, and the prices of agricultural painfully sank. Factories began to run on short time, many closed entirely, many corporations failed. The peculiarity of this crisis was the slowness with which it abated. No date indeed can be set as its term, its evil effects dragging on through years, so that the ill times of 1893-94 may be regarded as the same fever, intermittent in the meantime.

[1880]

Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the material progress of the United States for the two decades which we are studying was something enormous. We have no room for details. Our total population by 1880 had swollen to 50,155,783, by 1890 to 62,622,250. The census valuation of our national wealth, which had been for 1860, $16,159,616,068. was, for 1870, $30,068,518,507; for 1880, $43,642,000,000; and for 1890, $65,037,091,197. The per capita wealth was, according to the census of 1860, $514, by that of 1870, $780, by that of 1880, $870, by that of 1890, $1,036. In 1870 the United States was in wealth the third nation on the globe; in 1880 it had distanced France and stood second. "The country whose population has been developed within two hundred and eighty years, does already one-third of the world's mining, one-fourth of its manufacturing, and one-fifth of its agriculture; and at least one-sixth of the world's wealth is already concentrated in the strip of territory in Central North America which is the home of the United States." These words were written after the census of 1880. Still stronger ones would have been true in 1895.



CHAPTER IX.

END OF THE PERIOD

[1890]

It is a long way that we have taken the reader, from the days of Columbus to where we can espy the dawn of the twentieth century. Yet, in comparison with the times which our narrative has here reached, those of three decades earlier would seem almost as remote as Columbus's own, so swiftly did the wheels of progress turn. Everything declared that a new age had opened. In addition to the signs of this which have been set down in the preceding chapters, we have only space for the bare mention of a few others.

In 1888 the United States mails flew from point to point across the continent with a rapidity which would have astounded people so few years back as the close of the war. Their distribution effected through the post-office cars that ran on all the main lines and by immediate delivery in cities and large towns, was quite as great an improvement as the speed. The postal-car system had origin in Chicago in 1864, spreading thence East and West. Speedy delivery was introduced in 1886. Postal rates were lower than ever before, and destined soon to be lower still. Much business formerly left to the express companies was now done by mail, and much carried on in this way which formerly was not done at all.

Our country had developed an attention to art in all its forms far beyond anything of the kind to be observed at the end of the war. In all the principal cities concerts of the highest order were provided and numerously attended. Our art galleries already vied with many of those in the Old World. Students of art were found in abundance in our own multiplying schools for them, while many from this country sought art instruction in Europe. Not a few Americans attained eminence in this department year by year. In one artistic line we already excelled every other people, viz., the application of the principles of taste in beautifying homes, churches, structures intended for business, such as exchanges, railway stations, and bridges, cars, and all kinds of machinery. We led the world, too, in propriety and neatness of apparel, at least, for men.

After the war the right to vote was extended in nearly all the States, until by 1890 manhood suffrage was legally the rule from North to South and from East to West. In this, indeed, we were only keeping pace with Great Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. The agitation for woman's suffrage had, however, progressed further here than in any other land. There was a large party, quasi-political, intent upon bringing it about. A national convention was held in that interest each year. In Wyoming and Utah the suffrage had already been enjoyed by women since 1869. In Kansas, by a law going into effect February 16, 1887, they voted on all municipal affairs. In many other localities they had the privilege of voting on certain questions, as the election of school committees, and were eligible to membership in these committees. Occupations of honor and profit were, more and more as the years passed, open to the female sex. Women preached, practised law and medicine, and furnished many of the best bookkeepers, sales-people, and principals of schools. Vassar College, the first institution in the world for the full collegiate education of women, was opened in 1861. Smith and Wellesley Colleges, for the same, were opened in 1875, Bryn Mawr following in 1885. Cornell, Michigan, and all the State Universities in the West, like a number of the best universities in the East, educated young women on the same terms as young men. Harvard opened its Radcliffe College for female pupils. At its commencement in 1886, Columbia College, of which the Barnard College for women became virtually a part, conferred the degree of Doctor in Philosophy upon a woman. Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania opened their graduate departments to women on the same terms as to men. Brown University did the same, besides providing for the undergraduate instruction of women.



Catching the Mail Pouch from the Crane.

Another sign of the times, still more striking, was our advance toward socialism and state socialism. This occurred for the most part in ways so recondite as to escape observation, yet in many respects the course of things in this direction was perfectly obvious. The powerful movement for the legal prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicants was one instance. The extension and perfection of our public school system, all at the expense of the taxpayers, was another, it being possible by 1890 in nearly every State for a young person of either sex to secure, without paying a cent of tuition money, a better education than the finest universities in the land could give a hundred years previous. The extent of governmental surveillance over great industries was another illustration. The Trusts spoken of in a preceding chapter were unhesitatingly assumed to be subject to legislative investigation and command. Great corporations and combinations, it was now well understood, could not pursue their ends merely for profit, irrespective of public interest. The Inter-State Railway Law of February 4, 1887, instituting a National Commission, to which all railways crossing state lines were responsible for obedience to certain rules which the same law enjoined, was the boldest assertion of state supervision yet made; but there was a great and growing number of thinkers who believed that mere state oversight would not suffice, and that at least gigantic businesses like telegraph, railway, and mining, must sooner or later be bought and operated out and out by public authority. Nothing had done so much to promote this conviction as the rise, procedure, and wealth of these Trusts, for from the oppressive greed of many of them no legislative regulation seemed sufficient to protect the people.

This tendency to over-exalt the State's industrial function was not the only danger which confronted us. Another was that from immigration. So enormous was the influx of foreigners that we were threatened with a fatal emasculation of our national character. The manner in which we incorporated alien elements theretofore was among the wonders of history, but it was at least a question whether we could continue to do this always. It seemed in part therefore a healthy sentiment which by the law of 1882 excluded Chinese labor-immigrants. New-comers from other lands were also refused domicile here if imported under contract, [Footnote: Law of February 26, 1885] or unable to support themselves. The stronger law against the Chinese at first sight seemed invidious, but there was some justification for it in the fact that those people almost never settled down permanently as citizens of the United States, but returned to their native land so soon as they earned a competence. Italians of the lowest class did this to some extent, but the great bulk of our foreign-born population came here with the purpose of becoming American.

Our Irish-American fellow-citizens gave concern to many. One complaint was that they brought hither their anti-English prejudices, by the loud and continual assertion of which they tended ever to embroil us with England. There proved to be slight danger from this source, particularly after the rise of a powerful pro-Irish sentiment and party among the English themselves. Others had great fear of the Irish as Catholics, they being the chief representatives of that faith in the United States. The growth of the Roman Catholic Church in our borders was certainly very rapid. An American clergyman, McCloskey, was made Cardinal in 1875. A University, subject to the Catholic Church was erected in Washington. Catholicism in America was no longer a mission church as it had been until quite recently, but had a full national organization as in the other great nations of the earth.

A strong movement was developed among the Catholic clergy against our common schools as usually administered. Parochial schools were erected in most Eastern cities and large towns, and efforts made to fill them with children who, but for their existence, would be in the public schools. Public schools were denounced as godless because they did not, as of course they could not, give positive religious instruction. This opposition was doubtless a menace to our time-honored and on the whole very efficient school system, so that what the future of this was to be no one could confidently predict. It was to be remarked, however, that some of the warmest defenders of the public schools appeared in the Catholic ranks; nor was there any evidence that, as a class, American citizens of Irish birth and descent prized the free institutions of this nation a whit less than the rest of the people.

A greater peril beset the nation in the decay which slowly crept over our family life. The family has in every civilized age been justly regarded as the pillar of the state, but the integrity which it possessed among our fathers, their children invaded in many ways. Mormonism, decadent if not dead, about which so much had been said, was but one of these, and perhaps not the worst. If crimes of a violent nature were becoming less frequent, crimes against chastity were on the increase. Easy divorce was considerably responsible for this. The diversity of marriage and divorce laws in the various States was a great abomination. How to remedy it did not appear. Many called for a constitutional amendment, lodging solely in Congress the power of making laws upon this vital subject.

We proved very fortunate as a people in that our material prosperity itself did not prove a greater curse. More than every other disaster was to be feared the growth of a temper for mere material thinking and enjoyment, the love of lucre and of those merely material comforts and delights which lucre can buy. There was among us quite too little care for the ideal side of life. Too many who purchased books loved them only for the money they cost. Rich engravings and bindings were often sought rather than edifying matter. Costly daubs were purchased at enormous prices for lack of true artistic taste or relish. In sadly frequent cases the great captain of industry was nothing but a plodder. There was too great rush for wealth. We became nervous. Nervous diseases increased alarmingly. We read, but only market reports. Think, we did not; we only reckoned.

The outlook, notwithstanding, embraced much that was hopeful. Very worthful as well as very beautiful was the new sense of nationality that had been developed in this country in consequence of the war. While men still differed as to the original nature of our Union, while the State remained as yet a vital though a decreasingly important organ of the political frame, its real status offering to reward study as never before because no longer a sectional issue, yet the war, as unmistakably pronouncing the national will, laid the question of Nation's supremacy over State forever at rest, having hereupon virtually the effect of a constitutional amendment. Close construction of the Constitution could never again throttle this Union. Whether such quasi-amendment altered the Constitution, Stephens's view, or served but to bring out more clearly its old meaning, our view, practically the war had entailed enormous new exaltation and centralization of the Union, with answering subordination of the State.



Igloos, or Esquimau Huts.



A. W. Greely.

A quickened sense of our duty as a nation might likewise be observed at work in various directions. Our treatment of the Indians had been, since the administration of President Grant, more humane than ever before. Earnest and successful efforts were made, very largely at the national expense, to educate them and prepare them for citizenship. They were better protected from the rapacity of heartless agents and frontiersmen, while the land in severalty legislation of 1887 opened the red man's way to the actual attainment of civil rights and to all the advance in civilization of which he was capable.

The part which our Government had begun to take in the advancement of science was greatly to its credit. We have space to instance only the expedition of 1881-1884, headed by Lieutenant Greely, to the northern polar regions for scientific observation, reaching a point nearer to the pole than had ever before been attained. The whole world admired the daring and sympathized with the sufferings of these gallant explorers, several of whom perished of cold and hunger before relief reached them, the others rescued barely in season to save them from like fate.

The revision of King James's version of our English Bible, New Testament finished in 1881, Old Testament in 1885, was an eminent historical event falling in this period. American divines took prominent part in it, though of course not under any commission from our Government.

Being the most trying crisis ever successfully met by a self-governed people, the war lent powerful stimulus and tonic to the cause of free institutions everywhere, proving republican loyalty to be as firm and trustworthy as monarchical, and government by and for the governed to be not necessarily either inefficient or ephemeral. It demonstrated that a republic, without lessening its freedom, may become a great military power, generals of highest genius passively obeying a popularly elected Congress and Executive, these in turn maintaining full mastery, yet not hampering military movements.

The achievement of this firmer national unity, with the success and the martial and financial prodigies attending the struggle therefor, gave us new and far higher place in the esteem of nations, with correspondingly enlarged influence in mankind's greater affairs.

By 1890 one might observe a more or less conscious disposition on the part of thoughtful Americans to insist that this influence be exerted, to have the nation break over the policy wisely laid down by Washington, for earlier times, and assert itself more in the Parliament of Man. It was felt that our place and power among the nations of the earth had not been given us for naught, and that, as the weal of mankind is to a considerable degree determined by international politics, we had no right longer to hold ourselves aloof from this field. The feeling was emphasized by the annihilation of space between us and other nations, brought about through steam navigation and ocean telegraphy.

Not only Great Britain and France, but Germany, Russia, and China were now at our very doors. They would influence our weal whether or not we reacted upon them. Why should we not, without being meddlesome, strive to disseminate our ideas, extend our civilization, and make our national personality felt? It was to President Arthur's praise that he caused the United States to be represented at Berlin in the Congo Conference of 1884-85. Next, men said, our delegates would be present with voice and vote in all regular Congresses of the Great Powers. Americans did not prophesy, as more than one voice out of Europe itself had of late done, that the United States would some day cross the Atlantic as a conqueror. This, indeed, was a somewhat natural thought. The Old World reeled under its crushing burden of national debts and military taxes, and in material resources could not long compete with us, free from such burdens. But the American thought was that we should express our superiority in the form of ideas, not of arms, and use it in elevating mankind to richer culture and a nobler life.

THE END