Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899
by Various · English · Gutenberg #45115 · 423,043 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899
Author: Various
Editor: William Jay Youmans
Release date: March 11, 2014 [eBook #45115]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45115
Credits: Produced by Judith Wirawan, Greg Bergquist and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, JUNE 1899 ***
Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LV
MAY TO OCTOBER, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
[Illustration: THOMAS EGLESTON.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
JUNE, 1899.
NEW METHOD OF ESTIMATING THE AGE OF NIAGARA FALLS.
BY G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.
Both the interest and the importance of the subject make it worth
while to follow out every clew that may lead to the approximate
determination of the age of Niagara Falls. During this past season, in
connection with some work done for the New York Central Railroad upon
their branch line which runs along the eastern face of the gorge from
Bloody Run to Lewiston, I fortunately came into possession of data
from which an estimate of the age of the falls can be made entirely
independent of those which have heretofore been current. The bearing
and importance of the new data can best be seen after a brief _résumé_
of the efforts heretofore made to solve this important problem.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Looking north from below the Whirlpool,
showing the electric road at the bottom of the east side of the gorge,
and the steam road descending the face about halfway to the top.]
In 1841 Sir Charles Lyell and the late Prof. James Hall visited the
falls together; but, having no means of determining the rate of
recession, except from the indefinite reports of residents and guides,
they could place no great confidence in the "guess," made by Sir
Charles Lyell, that it could not be more than one foot a year. As the
length of the gorge from Lewiston up is about seven miles, the time
required for its erosion at this rate would be thirty-five thousand
years. The great authority and popularity of Lyell led the general
public to put more confidence in this estimate than the distinguished
authors themselves did. Mr. Bakewell, another eminent English
geologist, at about the same time estimated the rate of the recession
as threefold greater than Lyell and Hall had done, which would reduce
the time to about eleven thousand years.
But, to prepare the way for a more definite settlement of the
question, the New York Geological Survey, under Professor Hall's
direction, had a careful trigonometric survey of the Horseshoe Fall
made in 1842, erecting monuments at the points at which their angles
were taken, so that, after a sufficient lapse of time, the actual rate
of recession could be more accurately determined. In 1886 Mr.
Woodward, of the United States Geological Survey, made a new survey,
and found that the actual amount of recession in the center of the
Horseshoe Fall had proceeded at an average rate of about five feet per
annum. The subject was thoroughly discussed by Drs. Pohlman and
Gilbert, at the Buffalo meeting of the American Association in 1886,
when it was proved, to the satisfaction of every one, that, if the
supply of water had been constant throughout its history, the whole
work of eroding the gorge from Lewiston to the Falls would have been
accomplished, at the present rate of recession, in about seven
thousand years.
But the question was immediately raised, Has the supply of water in
Niagara River been constant? It was my privilege, in the autumn of
1892 (see Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, vol. iv, pp.
421-427), to bring forth the first positive evidence that the water
pouring over Niagara had for a time been diverted, having been turned
through Lake Nipissing down the valley of the Mattawa into the Ottawa
River, following nearly the line of Champlain's old trail and of the
present Canadian Pacific Railroad. The correctness of this inference
has been abundantly confirmed by subsequent investigations of Mr. F.
B. Taylor and Dr. Robert Bell.[A] The occasion of this diversion of
the drainage of the Great Lakes from the Niagara through the Ottawa
Valley was the well-known northerly subsidence of the land in Canada
at the close of the Glacial period. When the ice melted off from the
lower part of the Ottawa Valley the land stood five hundred feet lower
than it does now, but the extent of this subsidence diminished both to
the south and the west, making it difficult to estimate just how great
it was at the Nipissing outlet. A subsidence of one hundred feet at
that point, however, would now divert the waters into the Ottawa
River. That it actually was so diverted is shown both by converging
high-level shore lines at the head of the Mattawa Valley and by the
immense delta deposits at its junction with the Ottawa, to which
attention was first called in my paper referred to above.
[Footnote A: See article by Mr. Taylor on The Scoured Bowlders of the
Mattawa Valley, in the American Journal of Science, March, 1897, pp.
208-218.]
The indeterminate question which remained was, At what rate did this
postglacial elevation of land which has brought it up to its present
level proceed? Dr. Gilbert, Professor Spencer, and Mr. Taylor have
brought forth a variety of facts which, according to their
interpretation, show that this rate of elevation was so slow that from
twenty thousand to thirty thousand years was required to restore to
the Niagara River its present volume of water. Their arguments are
based upon the varying width and depth of the Niagara gorge, proving,
as they think, the presence of a smaller amount of water during the
erosion of some portions. Dr. Gilbert has also brought forward some
facts concerning the extent of supposed erosion produced by the
diverted waters of Niagara when passing over an intermediate outlet
between Lake Simcoe and Lake Nipissing. But the difficulty of
obtaining any safe basis for calculation upon these speculative
considerations has increased the desire to find a means of calculation
which should be independent of the indeterminate problems involved.
That I think I have found, and so have made a beginning in obtaining
desired results. _The new evidence lies in the extent of the
enlargement of the mouth of the Niagara gorge at Lewiston since the
recession of the falls began._
It is evident that the oldest part of the Niagara gorge is at its
mouth, at Lewiston, where the escarpment suddenly breaks down to the
level of Lake Ontario. The walls of the gorge rise here to a height of
three hundred and forty feet above the level of the river. It is clear
that from the moment the recession of the falls began at Lewiston the
walls of the gorge on either side have been subject to the action of
constant disintegrating agencies, tending to enlarge the mouth and
make it V-shaped. What I did last summer was to measure the exact
amount of this enlargement, and to obtain an approximate estimate of
the rate at which it is going on.[B] As this enlargement proceeds
wholly through the action of atmospheric agencies, the conditions are
constant, and it is hoped that sufficiently definite results have been
obtained to set some limits to the speculations which have been made
upon more indefinite grounds.
[Footnote B: For opportunity to do this work I am indebted to the
interest of President S. R. Callaway, of the New York Central
Railroad. The measurements were made by Mr. George S. Tibbits,
engineer of the western division. The photographs were taken by Mr. C.
F. Dutton, of Cleveland.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--View looking east across the gorge near the
mouth, showing the railroads and the outcrops of Clinton and Niagara
limestones above the steam road.]
The face on the east side of the gorge presents a series of alternate
layers of hard and soft rocks, of which certain portions are very
susceptible to the disintegrating agencies of the atmosphere. The
summit consists of from twenty to thirty feet of compact Niagara
limestone, which is underlaid by about seventy feet of Niagara shale;
which in turn rests upon a compact stratum of Clinton limestone about
twenty feet thick, which again is underlaid by a shaly deposit of
seventy feet, resting upon a compact stratum of Medina sandstone
twenty feet thick, below which a softer sandstone, that crumbles
somewhat readily, extends to the level of the river.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Looking up the gorge from near Lewiston,
showing on the left the exposed situation of the eastern face of the
gorge at the extreme angle, where the measurements were made.]
The present width of the river at the mouth of the gorge is seven
hundred and seventy feet. It is scarcely possible that the original
width of the gorge was here any less than this, for in the narrowest
places above, even where the Niagara limestone is much thicker than at
Lewiston, it is nowhere much less than six hundred feet in width. Nor
is it probable that the river has to any considerable extent enlarged
its channel at the mouth of the gorge at the water level. On the
contrary, it is more probable that the mouth has been somewhat
contracted, for the large masses of Niagara and Clinton limestone and
Medina sandstone which have fallen down as the shales were undermined
have accumulated at the base as a talus, which the present current of
the river is too feeble to remove. This talus of great blocks of hard
stone has effectually riprapped the banks, and really encroached to
some extent upon the original channel.
We may therefore assume with confidence that the enlargement, under
subaërial agencies, of the mouth of the gorge at the top of the
escarpment has been no greater than the distance from the present
water's edge to the present line of the escarpment at the summit of
the Niagara limestone. This we found to be three hundred and
eighty-eight feet--that is, the upper stratum of hard rock on the east
side of the gorge had retreated that distance, through the action of
atmospheric agencies, since the formation of the gorge first began.
The accompanying photogravures and diagram will present the facts at a
glance. The total work of enlargement on the east side of the gorge
has been the removal of an inverted triangular section of the rock
strata three hundred and forty feet high and three hundred and
eighty-eight feet base, which would be the same as a rectangular
section of one hundred and ninety-four feet base. From this one can
readily see that if the average erosion has been at the rate of one
quarter of an inch per annum, the whole amount would have fallen down
in less than ten thousand years; while if the time is lengthened, as
some would have it, to forty thousand years, the rate would be reduced
to one sixteenth of an inch per year.
Fortunately, the construction of the railroad along the face of the
eastern wall of the gorge affords opportunity to study the rate of
erosion during a definite period of time. The accompanying
photogravures will illustrate to the eye facts which it is hard to
make impressive by words alone. The course of the road is diagonally
down the face of the gorge from its summit for a distance of about two
miles, descending in that space about two hundred feet to the outcrop
of hard quartzose Medina sandstone. The lower mile of this exposure
presents the typical situation for making an estimate of the rate at
which the face is crumbling away.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Nearer view of the upper portion of the face
near the mouth, showing the exposure of the situation at that point.]
Beginning at what used to be known as the "Hermit's Cave," near the
Catholic College grounds, where the Niagara shale is well exposed, and
extending to the outer limit of the gorge, the height of the face
above the railroad averages one hundred and fifty feet. Now, the
crumbling away of the superincumbent cliffs gives continual trouble to
the road. Three watchmen are constantly employed along this distance
to remove the _débris_ which falls down, and to give warning if more
comes down than they can remove before trains are due. The seventy
feet of Niagara shale, and the equal thickness of shaly Medina rock
which underlies the Clinton limestone, are constantly falling off,
even in fair weather, as any one can experience by walking along the
bank; while after storms, and especially in the spring, when the frost
is coming out, the disintegration proceeds at a much more rapid rate.
Sometimes two or three days are required by the whole force of section
hands to throw over the bank the result of a single fall of material.
At a rate of one quarter of an inch of waste each year the amount of
_débris_ accumulating for removal on the track along this distance
would be only six hundred and ten cubic yards per annum--that is, if
six hundred and ten cubic yards of material falls down from one mile
of the face of the wall where it is a hundred and fifty feet high, the
whole amount of enlargement of the mouth of the gorge would be
accomplished in less than ten thousand years. Exact accounts have not
been kept by the railroad; but even a hasty examination of the face of
the wall makes it sure that the actual amount removed has been greatly
in excess of six hundred yards annually. This estimate is based partly
on the impression of the railroad officials as to the cost of removal,
and partly on the impressions of the watchmen who spend their time in
keeping guard and in the work of removing it.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Showing extent of erosion at base of the
Niagara shale since 1854. (See description in the text.)]
But that is not all. The accompanying photogravures indicate an actual
amount of removal over a part of the area enormously in excess of the
rate supposed. Fig. 5 shows a portion of the precipice, a hundred feet
high, where the road first comes down to the level of the Clinton
limestone, and where, consequently, the whole thickness of the Niagara
shale is accessible to examination. Fortunately, Patrick MacNamara,
the watchman at this station, was a workman on the road at the time of
its construction in 1854, and has been connected with the road ever
since, having been at his present post for twelve years. We have
therefore his distinct remembrance, as well as the appearance of the
bank, to inform us where the face of the original excavation then was.
In the picture he is standing at the original face, while the other
figure is nearly at the back of the space which has been left empty by
the crumbling away of the shale. The horizontal distance is fully
twenty feet, and the rocks overhang to that amount for the whole
distance exposed in the photograph. All this amount of shale has
fallen down in forty-four years, making a rate many times larger than
the highest we have taken as the basis of our estimate. Of course,
this rate for the crumbling away of the Niagara shale on its fresh
exposure is much in excess of the average rate for a long period of
time; but it is clear that the rate of erosion at the base of the
Niagara limestone at the mouth of the gorge can never have been
sufficiently slow to reduce the total average much below the assumed
rate of a quarter of an inch a year.
To impress the truth of this statement it is only necessary to follow
the progress, in imagination, of the crumbling process which has
brought the side of the gorge to its present condition. At first the
face of the gorge was perpendicular, the plunging water making the
gorge as wide at the bottom as at the top. At successive stages the
strata of shale on the side would crumble away, as is shown in our
photograph, and undermine the strata of hard rock. The large fragments
would fall to the bottom, and, being too large to be carried away by
the current, would form the talus to which we have already referred,
which would grow in height with every successive century. The actual
progress of the enlargement would thus be periodic, and not capable of
measurement by decades; but after centuries the progress would be
clearly marked, and especially whenever there was a falling away of
the lower stratum of compact Medina sandstone, which is about
two hundred feet below the top, would a new cycle of rapid
disintegrations in the superincumbent strata follow.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Section, drawn to equal vertical and
horizontal scale, showing enlargement of Niagara gorge on the east
side at its mouth at Lewiston: 1, Niagara limestone, 20 to 30 feet; 2,
Niagara shale, 70 feet; 3, Clinton limestone, 20 to 30 feet; 4,
Clinton and Medina shale, 70 feet; 5, Quartzose Medina sandstone, 20
to 30 feet; 6, softer Medina sandstone, 120 feet above water level.]
An important point to be noticed, and which is evident from two of the
reproduced photographs (Figs. 3 and 4), is that the talus has never
reached up so high as to check the disintegration at the mouth of the
gorge of the Niagara shale and limestone which form the upper one
hundred feet of the face, and which exhibit the maximum amount of
enlargement which has taken place. The thickness of the Niagara
limestone is here so small that it has not been so important an
element in forming the talus as it has been farther up the stream,
where it is two or three times as thick. Now, while our original
supposition was that one quarter of an inch annually was eroded from
the upper two hundred feet, this would involve the erosion of a half
inch per annum over the top of the gorge to bring the calculation
within the limit of ten thousand years. It certainly is difficult for
one who examines the facts upon the ground to believe that the
crumbling away of this exposed Niagara shale could have been at any
less rate than that; so that the estimate of about ten thousand years
for the date of that stage of the Glacial period in which Niagara
River first began its work of erosion at Lewiston (an estimate which
is supported by a great variety of facts independent of those relating
to the Niagara gorge) is strongly confirmed by this new line of
evidence.
So far as I can see, the only question of serious doubt that can be
raised respecting this calculation will arise from the possible
supposition that, when the eastern drainage over the Niagara channel
began, the land stood at such a relatively lower level as would reduce
the height of the fall to about half that of the present escarpment at
that point; when it might be supposed that a protecting talus had
accumulated which would interrupt the lateral erosion for the
indefinite period when the drainage was being drawn around by way of
the recently opened Lake Nipissing and Mattawa outlet. Then, upon the
resumption of the present line of drainage, with the land standing at
nearly its present level, the talus may have been undercut, and so
fallen down to leave the upper strata exposed as at present. But there
does not seem to be sufficient warrant for such a supposition to make
it necessary seriously to entertain it, while the objections to it are
significant and serious. First, the present narrowness of the river at
the water level is such that it does not give much opportunity for
enlargement after the first formation of the gorge; secondly, the
Niagara limestone at the mouth of the gorge is so thin (stated by Hall
to be twenty feet thick) that it would not form a protecting talus,
even at half its present height.
* * * * *
P. S.--Since the above was written there has been reported in the
papers an immense fall of rock from the east side of the gorge, near
the head of the Whirlpool rapids. The estimate made of the amount is
one hundred thousand tons. If that estimate is correct, it is a very
impressive illustration of how the average fall of material from the
side of the gorge is occasionally increased by a single instance. In
making our calculations above, the total amount of material annually
falling off from the portion of the side of the gorge under
consideration amounted only to 1,237 tons, while the amount of
material was 611 cubic yards. But the 100,000 tons which came off in a
single slide a few weeks ago would be equal to twenty inches in
thickness from the whole face of the cliff, where our estimate was
only a quarter of an inch.
N. B.--In the diagram (Fig. 6) extend the Niagara shale (2) up to
occupy lower two layers of (1), thus making Niagara limestone (1) half
as thick as now.
* * * * *
A piece of skin which the authors maintained to be of great
antiquity and to have belonged to the extinct mylodon or ground
sloth, found in a cave in Patagonia, was recently exhibited to
the London Zoölogical Society by Mr. A. Smith Woodward and Dr. F.
P. Moreno.
ABUSE OF PUBLIC CHARITY.
BY BIRD S. COLER,
COMPTROLLER OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
Ten per cent of all the human beings who die in New York city are
buried in Potter's Field at public expense; but the records of
organized charity, official and semiofficial, show that less than one
per cent of the living are paupers or dependent persons. There are two
explanations of the difference between the number of living poor and
penniless dead. The chief one is that abuse of public charity has
grown to such proportions that the city has become the Mecca of the
chronic idlers and tramps of the entire country. It is easier for an
industrious and shrewd professional beggar to live in luxury in New
York than to exist in any other city in the world. No magic wand of
ancient fable was ever more potent to unlock the gates of castle or
prison than the name of charity is to open a way to the public
treasury. The liberal and well-nigh indiscriminate giving of the money
of the taxpayers for the relief of sickness and poverty has been
commanded by law, sanctioned by custom, and approved by public opinion
until the possibility of checking or reforming the abuse grows more
and more remote as the burden increases and the evil results multiply.
The city of New York gives annually to public charity more than
$5,000,000, and contributes indirectly $2,000,000 more. Of the money
raised by taxation for city purposes proper (State taxes, interest,
and county expenses eliminated), almost twelve per cent is properly
chargeable to relief of poverty and sickness. Of this expenditure more
than $3,000,000 is paid to private institutions and societies over
which the city authorities have no control or supervision. The
payments are made in compliance with the provisions of acts of the
State Legislature. The only provision in these laws that enables the
city officers to protect the treasury from fraud is a clause under
which the comptroller is permitted to verify the bills of the
institutions for the care of committed persons. There is a
constitutional safeguard against outright swindling of the city, in
the requirement that charitable institutions shall be inspected and
their bills approved by the State Board of Charities, but the system
is open to many abuses where the public officers are powerless.
The present comptroller of the city has found that a number of alleged
charitable institutions and societies receiving money from the city
apply nearly all their funds to the payment of salaries of officers
and employees, while their relief work is very limited and of doubtful
character. Other societies, he found upon investigation, really
encourage professional beggars without in any case relieving deserving
poor. A few cases were so flagrant in their abuse of public charity
that the further payment of city money to the societies was refused.
In one case he found that a society which claimed a board of directors
and numerous officers was really managed by one person, who in one
year had received $1,500 from the city and $70 from all other sources,
and had expended $1,300 of the amount for salaries and $40 for the
relief of the destitute.
The Department of Public Charities, for the maintenance of which the
sum of $1,941,215 is appropriated for the year 1899, is controlled
entirely by the city. The balance of the $5,000,000 appropriated
annually for the same general purpose is divided among more than two
hundred societies and institutions managed by corporations or private
individuals. In theory none of these private institutions is supported
by the city, the municipality merely paying to them a fixed sum, which
is supposed to be supplemented by private donations. In reality nine
tenths of them could not exist six months without the money they
receive from the public treasury. Very few of these semipublic
charities have an income from all other sources equal to the
appropriation from the city.
The city pays for the support of a child in a private institution the
sum of $110 a year, and the average allowance for the maintenance of
an adult is $150. The percentage of children among the dependent
persons is almost three to one, so the $5,000,000 public charity fund
would feed and clothe more than forty thousand persons each year if
applied directly to that purpose. In the distribution of this great
sum of public money, however, fully $2,000,000 of the amount is
absorbed in the payment of salaries and expenses, and therein exists
an abuse of public charity so great that the present comptroller of
the city some months ago appealed to the Legislature for relief in the
form of legislation which would enable the local authorities to stop
payments to many societies. There are numerous small institutions,
some of them having the indorsement and moral support of leading
citizens, that spend from sixty to eighty per cent of all the money
they receive in the payment of salaries, and in one case discovered by
the comptroller the expenses absorbed ninety-four per cent of the
total income of the society!
There is no evidence that any of these societies are deliberately
dishonest in their dealings with the city and the public. They are as
a rule conducted by men and women whose motives are good, but who have
no experience or practical knowledge to fit them for the management of
a charitable institution. They are easily imposed upon by professional
beggars, and in most cases fail in their well-meant efforts to reach
and relieve the deserving who are in actual need. Most of the small
organizations that waste public money in misdirected charity are
controlled by women of eminent respectability, but with no knowledge
whatever of the details of the work they have undertaken. The result
in many cases has been that they employ enough help to absorb the bulk
of the money received without realizing that they are doing more harm
than good.
The city does not spend its own money cheaply. Of the appropriation of
$1,941,215 for the support of the Department of Charities for the
current year the sum of $529,626 is allowed for the payment of
salaries of commissioners and employees. No private business could
long endure if conducted on such a basis. Some of the institutions
where hundreds of homeless waifs from the streets are cared
for--institutions semipublic in character, managed by men of more than
local reputation as experts in such work, societies founded by men and
women whose lives have been devoted to doing good--show by their
annual reports that more than half their income is paid out in
salaries. One institution that received $30,000 from the city in 1898
and $20,000 from all other sources, reported a salary account of
$31,000. Another, receiving $100,000 from the city and $120,000 in
donations, had a salary account of $115,000. For every five persons
supported by public charity there are three persons employed on salary
in the work of relief. Of every five dollars paid out by the city
treasury to relieve the sick and destitute, two dollars is absorbed by
the salary and expense accounts.
The theory of the law under which city money is paid to private
charitable institutions is that they relieve the municipal authorities
of the care of a certain number of persons who would otherwise become
public charges to be maintained in the hospitals, asylums, or homes
owned by the city. It is also a popular theory that young children who
have become a public charge will receive better care and training in a
home controlled by a private society than they would in a public
institution. Appropriations and legislation are also obtained by
private organizations on the representation that for every dollar paid
to them by the city or State an equal amount will be contributed by
founders and subscribers. This representation is not always true, and
in many cases it happens that when a society begins to receive money
from the city private contributions fall off. When the city
authorities first took up the question of caring for homeless and
destitute persons and found that they had to deal with a grave
problem, some of the private charitable institutions were already in
existence and came forward with offers to share the burden. At that
time it was considered a good business arrangement for the city to use
private societies in the work of relief. This plan, it was expected,
would save the city considerable money, because the officers of the
societies would contribute their services, and the cost of applying
public charity to necessary relief would in that way be reduced to a
minimum. That expectation has not been realized. With the rapid
increase of necessity and demand for public relief the expenses of
administration of the societies have increased out of all proportion
to the work accomplished. In the beginning the city authorities
shirked a public duty, and by giving city money to private persons who
were willing to relieve them of a burden they invited the creation of
new societies and a steadily increasing demand for more funds.
Of the two hundred and twenty charitable societies that receive money
from the city more than one hundred have been organized during the
past ten years. The records of the finance department and the annual
reports of these new organizations show that many of them have
received from the city sixty to ninety per cent of all the funds they
have handled, and that almost the same percentage of their total
income was charged to expenses, the chief item of expense in every
case being the payment of salaries to officers. Year after year the
promoters and officers of these small organizations appear before the
city authorities when the annual budget is to be passed, and,
attempting to excuse the poor showing they make, say, in pleading for
a larger appropriation, "We hope to do better next year." The most
liberal-minded defender of indiscriminate public charity would find it
difficult to excuse the existence of some of these societies.
There are scores of small organizations helping to spend public money
that are unknown to the general public. In fact, some of them are
never heard of except when their officers appear before the Board of
Estimate once a year to ask for more money. There is a society,
organized for the purpose of supplying clothing to shipwrecked
sailors, which for several years obtained a small appropriation from
the city. When the officers requested an increase of the amount
allowed, the city authorities asked for some particulars of the work
done. The report submitted in reply showed that the society had
received, in addition to the money obtained from the city, several
donations of second-hand clothing and one box of wristlets (knit bands
to be worn on the wrists); had sent to a sailor shipwrecked on the
coast of Oregon a suit of underwear, a pair of hose, and a rubber
coat; to a crew wrecked on the reefs of Florida some shoes and oilskin
caps. There was no report of relief or clothing supplied to a sailor
or any other person in the city or State of New York, but there was a
charge for salaries that almost balanced the amount received from the
city treasury.
Another of the minor institutions is a society that is engaged in an
original method of charitable work. The agents of this society, or the
members themselves, go out into the slums of the city on Sunday
mornings and gather in a number of tramps. The homeless wanderers are
assembled in a room hired for the purpose and supplied with a warm
breakfast, after which they are compelled to listen to a sermon and a
lecture. They are then allowed to depart and live as best they can
until the following Sunday. For a number of years this society has
received a small appropriation from the city on the ground that it is
a useful public charity. To all of these small societies, no matter
what may be their alleged field of charitable work, city money is
appropriated without specific knowledge of the exact purpose to which
it is applied. By legislation or petition, backed by the influence of
prominent citizens, scores of these petty organizations, some of them
merely a fad or whim of an idle man or woman, have been placed on the
list of semipublic charities to be aided at the expense of the
taxpayers, and there they remain year after year without so much as a
serious inquiry as to their merits or the work they accomplish. The
city authorities who grant the appropriations do not and can not know
how the money they give to such societies is to be expended, because
they have no legal authority to investigate the conduct of such
institutions. The city officers, therefore, are not to blame. The
fault seems to rest primarily upon that condition of public opinion
that is cheerfully tolerant of any fraud committed in the name of
charity, and secondly upon the members of the Legislature who vote
without question or investigation for all legislation asked for by any
benevolent person or society.
To the large charitable and correctional institutions of established
reputation, to which children or pauper adults are committed by the
local authorities, city money is appropriated on a business basis. A
fixed sum is paid for the support of each committed person, and the
taxpayers may know what they are getting for their money. While the
city authorities can not regulate the expenses or salaries in these
institutions, they know that the city is paying for a specific service
and that the work is performed. That it might be done better or more
cheaply need not concern them. But to the institutions and societies
that do not undertake to support dependent persons, but engage in
indiscriminate charitable work, the giving of city money is as
doubtful a method of relieving the deserving poor as throwing coin in
the streets.
The appropriation of city money made for 1899 direct to two hundred
and fifteen charitable and correctional institutions and societies
amounts to $1,784,846. The appropriations from the excise funds to
institutions that support pauper children and adults will slightly
exceed $1,000,000. The county of New York pays to State and private
charitable institutions for the same period the sum of $118,682; Kings
County, $82,669; and Richmond County, $4,845; all of which comes out
of the general treasury. The money received for licenses for theaters,
concert and music halls, amounting to $50,000 a year, is divided among
eighty-two private societies and institutions. This makes an aggregate
of $3,000,000 paid out of the city treasury annually and expended
under the direction of private organizations. With the exception of
less than $100,000 it is all appropriated under the provisions of
special acts of the Legislature, or sections of the city charter, and
the city officers have no control whatever over the methods of
expenditure or the work undertaken by the societies that receive the
money. Under such a system the possibilities for abuse of public
charity are well-nigh unlimited.
These direct appropriations of money do not represent all of the
city's contribution to the cause of charity. The property of all the
charitable institutions and societies is exempt from taxation and from
assessments for public improvements. The tax commissioners report that
the assessed value of the property of such organizations is
$70,781,990. At the present rate of taxation this means a loss to the
city of more than $1,400,000 a year. The assessments upon the same
property for public improvements exceed $100,000 a year, which is paid
by the city. These exemptions materially affect the tax rate as well
as the bonded indebtedness and annual interest charges of the city, so
that the yearly contribution of the taxpayers of New York to charity
is nearly if not quite $7,000,000, or about fifteen per cent of the
direct expenses of the city government.
Some figures from the budget for 1899 will show the relative cost of
caring for the poor. The city will pay for public education
$13,040,052; for police, $11,797,596; for the fire department,
$4,443,664; for the health department, $1,110,538; for lighting,
$2,000,000; for water, $1,450,817; for cleaning the streets,
$4,575,800; for parks, $1,729,235; for paving and repaving streets,
$2,520,099; and for charity direct and indirect, $7,000,000.
The chief abuses of the present system of public charity are the
extravagant expenditures for salaries and the steady and rapid
increase of pauperism due to the misdirected efforts of the
inexperienced persons who control so many of the smaller societies
that receive city money.
One of the oldest and most important charitable organizations in the
city is the Children's Aid Society. The report of the treasurer for
1898 shows the following expenditures:
Industrial schools--
Salaries of superintendent and teachers $106,265.71
Rent of schoolrooms 5,119.26
Books and school supplies 5,178.54
Provisions 8,509.70
Clothing and special relief 5,512.56
Fuel, gas, repairs, etc. 20,497.88
---------
Sick Children's Mission $655.48
Children's Summer Home 9,405.37
Health Home 8,307.45
Farm for Boys--Summer Charities 2,719.59
Brace Memorial Lodging House 12,914.13
Elizabeth Home for Girls 10,366.33
Tompkins Square Lodging House 7,546.38
West Side Lodging House 9,079.26
East Side Lodging House 1,848.06
Forty fourth Street Lodging House 7,948.56
Fogg Lodging House 1,942.26
Brace Farm School 12,150.64
Reading rooms 402.96
Medical examinations 312.00
Salaries, executive officers 8,659.92
Immigration, fares, food, clothing, etc. 30,162.69
Reinvestment, bonds sold 29,902.50
Amount due treasurer, November 1, 1898 435.71
Printing, stationery, car fares, and incidental expenses 3,551.85
--------
$309,394.79
This shows a total salary account of $114,925.63, or about
thirty-seven per cent of the expenditure. The society received from
the city $100,764, and from general subscriptions and donations
$119,768. The balance of the income was derived from legacies,
endowments, special trust funds, and sale of bonds.
One of the private institutions in the city for the instruction of
deaf-mutes receives city, State, and county pupils under the
provisions of special acts of the Legislature. The report of the
treasurer for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1898, shows the
following receipts:
Balance on hand, October 1, 1897 $2,885.03
New York State 44,216.74
New York County 27,179.54
Kings County 12,697.05
Queens County 1,217.19
Westchester County 1,060.94
Various other counties 2,727.02
Paying pupils 791.75
Donations 11,754.46
All other sources 613.89
--------
$105,143.61
The expenditures for the same period were $102,570.64, of which
$33,613.56 was for salaries and wages. This is a private institution
exempt from city or State control, subject to no governmental
supervision except examination by the State Board of Charities, yet
ninety per cent of its income is public money, and almost one third of
the cost of maintenance is charged to salaries and wages. These two
cases are mentioned not in criticism of the work or methods of the
institutions, but as representing a fair average of the salary account
of all the larger private charitable societies. They also fairly
represent the two extremes in the source of their income, one
receiving ninety per cent of public money, the other a little more
than thirty per cent.
Recent investigations conducted by the city comptroller and
supplemented by the agents of the State Board of Charities disclose
abuses in the expenditure of public money by certain small societies
so flagrant that the appropriations for the current year have been
withheld. In these cases the salary account was always the chief
expenditure, but it was also discovered that whatever relief got
beyond the headquarters of the societies went to professional beggars,
who had no difficulty in deceiving the persons in charge. It was found
that persons in good health had lived comfortably for months, perhaps
for years, on public charity dispensed through private organizations.
These professional beggars would obtain food at one place, clothing at
another, coal at a third, small sums of money from all three perhaps,
then reverse the order of application or appeal to newer organizations
if detection threatened. Relief was extended in many instances with
little or no effort on the part of the societies to ascertain the
merits of a case or the honesty of an applicant.
One small society was found to have expended practically all of the
money received from the city in the payment of the living expenses of
the person who had the entire management of the organization. The
charitable work of a year consisted in the distribution of a small
quantity of cast-off clothing and a few bushels of potatoes. The
reports of the society contained the names of directors who had never
served and knew nothing of the true condition of the organization.
They had merely consented that their names might be used as a
guarantee of reliability and to aid in the work of soliciting
contributions.
One case has been found where a mother and daughter lived comfortably
by selling coal given to them by charitable societies. One private
institution, now abolished, boarded committed children and received
two dollars a week from the city for each child. The children were fed
on fish and potatoes at a cost of forty-four cents each per week.
After these facts were discovered the city authorities could not
remove the children until the Board of Health condemned and closed the
building under the provisions of the sanitary code. The minor abuses
in the way of aiding undeserving persons extend to nearly all the
private societies that receive city money. Those that exercise care
and have been long established are often deceived by professional
beggars.
After his investigation of the subject the city comptroller
established in his office a bureau of examination for the purpose of
placing a check on the many small societies that indulge in
indiscriminate charity at the expense of the city, but he soon found
that he was powerless to correct all abuses. The present condition can
not be corrected and public charity placed upon a practical basis and
limited to the real necessities of the deserving poor until the city
government begins to deal with each society and institution upon its
merits. Changes and reforms to the present system will come in time,
but progress will be slow because charity is a valid excuse at the bar
of public opinion for the reckless expenditure of city money, and for
that reason it appeals strongly to the average politician and
lawmaker. Charity will cover with a mantle of commendation a multitude
of abuses and crave pardon for gross frauds. It is the pastime of the
rich and their gratuity to the poor. The magic of the word seems to
move a Legislature and open the treasure vaults of city and State.
ALASKA AND THE KLONDIKE.
A JOURNEY TO THE NEW ELDORADO.
BY ANGELO HEILPRIN,
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AT THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF
PHILADELPHIA, FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.
II.--SAN FRANCISCO OF THE NORTH.
[Illustration: DAWSON AND KLONDIKE CITY (SOUTH DAWSON) IN SEPTEMBER,
1898.]
A first impression of Dawson, in August, 1898, could not be other than
one calculated to bring up comparisons with strange and foreign lands.
As we saw it, approaching from the water side, it persistently
suggested the banks of the Yang-tse-kiang, or of some other Chinese
river, on which a densely apportioned population had settled.
Hundreds--one is almost tempted to say thousands--of boats were lined
up against the river front, and so packed in rows back of one another
that exit from the inner line was made possible only by a passive
accommodation from the outside. There were steam craft, house-boats,
scows, and a variety of minor bottoms, ranging from the hay-packed
raft to the graceful Peterboro canoe. Many had canvas spread over
them, giving house quarter to those who preferred the economy of an
owned estate to the high-priced cabins of log huts and hotels, and
the purity of the open air to what was at least considered to be the
polluted atmosphere of the stable city. It would be far from the truth
to assume that this floating population was composed exclusively of
men, women, and children; there were dogs galore, abundant by both
presence and voice, horses and mules, and an occasional goat betrayed
itself munching among hay-packs and the usual combination of simple
and hard things which make up goat food. One canvas bore the tempting
inscription "Hot and Cold River Baths," several carried legends of
variously designated laundries, and a few even invited to "Board and
Lodging, Cheap." Of course, the word cheap had here a special
etymologic significance, and bore little relation to the same form of
word which is current in lexicons.
[Illustration: SOME MUD IN THE MAIN STREET--FIRST AVENUE.]
The first favorable impression of dry land in Dawson was tempered by a
knowledge that even here were many moist spots. The mud lay in great
pools along the main street--First Avenue or Front Street--but hardly
in sufficient depth to make walking dangerous. Dogs and goats could
alone drown in it. It is true that an occasional wading burro or even
a mule would find a dangerously low level, but I am not aware that any
in this condition had added to a list of serious casualties. No
mention is made in this connection of cats, for, in truth, only two
specimens of the feline family had up to this time reached
Dawson--one, a blue-ribboned kitten, which was endearingly received as
the mascot of the Yukon Mining Exchange.
[Illustration: THE MAIN STREET IN A SPRING FRESHET.]
The Dawsonites are not entirely oblivious to the discomforts of mud,
for an effort is being made to block it out with sawdust, of which the
three or four sawmills in the town furnish a goodly supply. In some
parts a rough corduroy has been attempted, but the price of lumber,
two hundred dollars per thousand linear feet, renders this form of
construction too expensive for general use, especially in a community
all of whose members, female as well as male, are prepared to stem the
tide with high-top boots. About one half the street length shows the
pretense of wooden sidewalks, but no one has yet recognized a special
responsibility for repairs, or seemingly considered that a continuous
walk requires a continuous support. Walking is a succession of ups and
downs; boards are missing here, other are smashed elsewhere, and the
whole walk gives the impression of having been in existence for
centuries rather than for the period of a short twelvemonth.
It was not difficult to determine what, perhaps, the majority of the
sixteen thousand inhabitants of Dawson were doing at the time of our
arrival. They were simply loitering, and the streets were packed with
humanity. This was not strange, either, for it must have been
difficult to resist the enjoyment of that open sunshine, that soft,
warm atmosphere which is the delight of the summer climate of the far
North. Never had I experienced anything comparable, and others who had
traveled much agreed with my experience. On my way to the hotel, the
"Fair View," which had been strongly recommended for its _cuisine_ and
the circumstance that it was "brand" new in its appointments--having
only come into existence a few days before--I caught a good general
glimpse of the town, the dominant features of which were registered
in the two sides of the main thoroughfare along the river front. A
nearly continuous row of one-story, or at the utmost two-story, frame
shacks or booths, many of them still in canvas form, and most of them
supported over the river's bank by pile proppings, built up the river
side of this First Avenue. All manner of articles, both serviceable
and unserviceable, for the Klondike business were displayed, mostly
in cramped quarters. The variety of things that had in so brief a
period found their way to this region was truly astonishing, and one
marveled at the mental ingenuity which spirited some of these articles
to a _champ de vente_. Surely nothing but "manifest destiny" could
have placed a mammoth's molar on sale for a hundred dollars, when it
was thought that a period of starvation was reigning in the town. And
yet almost alongside of it were posters announcing that four loaves of
bread could be purchased for one dollar--in another place "six loves"
for the same price--and that "half an ounce" of gold dust, the
equivalent of eight dollars, would gain admission to the best seat
witnessing a boxing and wrestling contest.
In addition to the booths doing a regular merchandise business, there
were those whose masters ministered to a specialty--druggists and
doctors, photographers, auctioneers, and brokers of one kind or
another. "Bartlett Bros., Packers" served the inner core of the gold
regions by means of long trains of pack-mules, but they were not the
only ones to whom the _cargador_ was an officer militant. Dog teams
there were as well as mule teams, and the majesty of the law was
hardly considered invaded when the former effected a junction with man
in the capacity of common carriers. One of the most interesting sights
was to me the large number of letters awaiting ownership which were
tacked up to the fronts and sides of different buildings, in the most
public way petitioning for rapid delivery. My first letter in Dawson
was obtained by stripping it from a door-jamb, but it was three weeks
before my attention had been directed to it by a friendly discoverer.
To obtain anything from the post office was a most exhaustive process,
and usually required a long wait, sometimes of a day, or even of two
days, before entry could be obtained into the small room where the
sorting, distribution, and dispensation of mail matter were being
effected. Even when finally issued, this matter was usually of several
weeks' antiquity of arrival, the sorting of tons of substance being
much beyond the capacity of the few official hands that were engaged
in the work.
[Illustration: DOG-TEAM EXPRESS--DAWSON.]
By far the most imposing side of the street was that which faced the
river. Here, at least, were real buildings. The stately depots of the
Alaska Commercial and North America Trading and Transportation
Companies, with their outer casing of corrugated iron, would have done
credit to a town of larger capacity than Dawson, and in regions much
more accessible to civilization than the Northwest Territory. Farther
on, the signs of a number of well-built saloons--"The Dominion," "The
Pioneer," etc.--attract attention, not by the supposition that they
are alone in the business, since they are supported by probably not
less than two or three score others of their kind, but by their
specially distinctive interiors; one of these is embellished inside by
a series of four mural decorations in oil or distemper, representing a
range of subject from Morro Castle, Havana, to a "Moonlight on the
Yukon," for which a resident artist "of promise," whose work was done
in an open lot, received the handsome compensation of eight hundred
dollars. They were befitting the place which they graced.
[Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE KLONDIKE WITH THE YUKON.]
A more intimate acquaintance with these saloons made it plain that
they were patronized both for the drinks which were sold over the bar
for fifty cents or more and for the gaming tables which in open
evidence betrayed a surpassingly strong interest in faro, _rouge et
noir_, and roulette. Crowds were watching the fortunes of the play at
every turn. From the front entrance quite to the rear some of the more
favored halls were packed, but with an element that seemed little
disposed to disturbance of any kind. While the drinking of spirituous
liquors is very largely indulged in, I believe that during all my stay
in Dawson only three cases of obtrusive drunkenness were brought to my
attention; and of riotism my experience was wholly negative. Life and
property are considered safe even in the most doubtful establishments,
and it is not uncommon for a man to pass hours in a crowded dance hall
with virtually all his possessions, possibly a few hundred dollars, or
it may be thousands, carried in the form of gold dust in his trousers
pockets. Two main factors are involved in this condition of security
or in the feeling that it exists. The first of these is, perhaps, a
wholesome dread of the Canadian Mounted Police, whose efficiency in
the direction of controlling order is conceded by every one; and the
second, the circumstance that the inhabitants of Dawson and of the
adjoining Klondike region are not, as is so largely supposed, a mere
assortment of rough prospectors, intent upon doing anything for the
sake of acquiring gold, but a fair representation of good and
indifferent elements borrowed from all professions and stations of
life, and not from one country alone, but from nearly all parts of the
civilized globe. During my brief stay I stumbled upon "counts,"
"sirs," military and naval officers, scientists, lawyers, newspaper
men, promoters, and others of broad and liberal standing; and if some
of these were undistinguishable in external garb from their brethren
in mustard-colored mackinaws whose sole resource was digging for gold,
their polished and intellectual method was evidence enough that
civilization was present in good quantity along the upper Yukon. The
fact that there are three weekly newspapers published in Dawson--the
Nugget, Midnight Sun, and Dawson Miner, the first two selling for
fifty cents a copy and the last for twenty-five cents--can hardly be
considered to prove this condition, although favoring it; for, though
the substance and especially the typography of the journals are quite
good, the demand for reading matter is such that almost anything could
realize a subscription list. The long-belated New York journals seem
to command a steady sale on the news stands, where one also sees
displayed the small and (in our country) gratuitously distributed
scenic book of the transcontinental railways put up for fifty cents.
The Argosy, Strand, Munsey's, and Cosmopolitan were the ruling
magazines during my visit, and each of these could be had for
seventy-five cents a number.
Regretfully must it be said that the female portion of the population
does not sustain the male either in character or diversity. I tried
in various ways to ascertain the number of women who represented the
community, but failed to obtain a satisfactory accounting. A large
proportion of those who are in evidence, and perhaps even by far the
greater number, belong to the "red" aristocracy, or at least to that
side where steady principles are treated with little consideration and
respect. I use the word aristocracy advisedly, for it is a notorious
fact that an amount of deference is paid to these creatures of shame
which is not given to the virtuous or self-respecting woman; and that
they themselves, recognizing their standing, are apt to look down upon
the rest of their kin, and to even question their proper privileges. A
large part of the broadly capacious Second Avenue, together with
equally conspicuous sections of the town elsewhere, is given up to the
public display of the inmates of neatly constructed log cabins bearing
such devices as "Saratoga," "Bon-Ton," "The Lucky Cigar Store," "Green
Tree," etc. The number of open houses is probably less than in most
mining camps, and far below what it is in some places. In deference to
a demand tax of fifty dollars, levied on each member of the profession
to pay part costs of two fire engines which had been brought to the
town, there was a response of only sixty-nine, and this was considered
a sufficiently close representation not to press the matter any
further.
A community of this kind must necessarily have its dance halls and
places of amusement. The latter consisted at the time of my arrival of
four "theatres" or "opera houses"--the "Combination," "Monte Carlo,"
"Mascot," and "Pavilion," two of which suspended or closed up before
the "season" had fairly opened. Ordinarily, the price of a drink at
the bar of entrance paid for admission to the performance with seat,
and many will agree with me in believing that the admission was fully
paid. The acting need not be worse at any theater, and the singing
could hardly be surpassed in its eccentricities; yet the performances
appeared to satisfy a general demand, as ordinarily the houses were
packed to their full capacity evening after evening. Needless is it to
say that the performances are not intended for women in good standing,
and few such are ever present, unless heavily screened behind the
curtains of the "boxes." The plays are all of a low order, but the
worst is not much worse than some of the plays that are tolerated in
all their nastiness in some of our own legitimate theaters. It is
singular and interesting as showing the influence of necessity that a
sacred Sunday concert in aid of the fire department was successfully
carried through in the capacious halls of one of the most notorious
dancing resorts.
There are now two banks in Dawson--the Bank of British North America
and the Canadian Bank of Commerce. In the early days of August the
first of these was still housed in a tent, and before the end of the
month a stately wooden structure with flagstaff, and with commodious
quarters for the representing officers and accountants, gave dignity
to the institution, while it lent style to the corner upon which it
was erected. Adjoining it now is the architecturally most imposing but
by no means largest building in Dawson--the three-storied,
bow-windowed log cabin of Alexander McDonald, the recognized "King of
the Klondike"--intended primarily as an office building. It is a truly
fine expression of the art of log-cabin building. In many ways one of
the most interesting buildings, if such it can be called, was the air
space, with canvas top, which adjoined one of the theaters and was
used by Signor Gandolfo for a fruit store. There was no architectural
quality to commend this space; nor, indeed, was there anything else in
its favor, except that it was in the right place and brought both
lessor and lessee fortunes. For the privileges of this space of five
feet width the occupant paid the handsome rental of one hundred and
twenty dollars a month, or twenty-four dollars per single foot of
frontage; his profits were, however, such as to justify this payment,
and before leaving he confided to me his plan of renting one half of
the establishment. Conceive of the character of a store five feet
wide, the opposite sides of which are devoted to quite distinct
interests! Other sites rent for very little less, and the singular
part of it is that much of the rental goes to the pockets of certain
assumed owners, whose actual rights are largely in the nature of a
"grab" or of squatter sovereignty alone.
[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF THE "SUSIE" FROM "DOWN THE RIVER."]
Dawson extends up the river for about two miles, virtually coalescing
with and taking in what has been euphoniously called Lousetown and
also Klondike City. These more southerly parts carry with them certain
characteristics which are either wanting in the main city or are there
but feebly represented. The closely packed tents remind one of an army
gathering or of the furniture of some religious camp meeting; walking
between them might almost be considered to be a branch of navigation.
Inscriptions on the canvas tell us of certain "brothers from St.
Louis" being occupants here, and of "the Jolly Four from----"
occupants elsewhere. Representatives of the press, physicians, and
attorneys all have their inscriptions. But the most interesting
constructions, picturesque as much as they are instructive, are the
elevated platform _caches_, diminutive log cabins, which on high
stilts store a multitude of articles in safe keeping and beyond reach
of the army of hungry dogs which are everywhere prowling about and
carousing upon all manner of odds and ends. Their appearance,
especially where they are placed among trees and bushes, is such that
the observer can hardly resist the feeling that he is traveling in a
region of primitive pile-dwellings--it may be the interior of New
Guinea or the forest tract of one of the Guianas.
Dawson, which now owns the right to celebrate its third anniversary,
is destined before long to assume a modern garb. It already has its
electric plant, and before many months have passed electric
illumination will lift the burden of the dark winter night. It is
believed, too, that an electric railroad for freight and passenger
service will be constructed in the course of the present year into the
heart of the adjoining gold region. The tiresome accounts of bad
trails will then be a thing of the past. In its business aspects
Dawson does not materially differ from the majority of the boom towns
of the United States, though of course it has its peculiarities. In
the period of little more than a year it has gathered to itself,
besides the usual class of merchants, representatives of a number of
professions, such as doctors, lawyers, chemists, and assayers, most of
whom, especially of the first two classes, appeared to be doing at
least fairly well. Mine brokers, or simply venders of claims, are
numerous, but their service does not in most cases sustain confidence;
the display of posters announcing "bonanzas" in mining properties may
be effective at times, but ordinarily the investor turns either to the
Mining Exchange, a reasonably well-conducted private enterprise, or to
claim-holders on the ground. The auction of claims at the Exchange was
always largely attended at the times of my visits, and the bidding was
frequently very spirited. The allowance of a time limit of ten days in
which to make an examination of properties purchased and of the titles
thereto before payment, beyond a forfeit of ten per cent, was exacted,
naturally inspired confidence in the method of the transaction, and
there is no question that a considerable number of good properties
were parted over the boards here, and with eminent satisfaction to the
purchasers.
The practice of medicine is necessarily governed by the laws which are
in effect in the Dominion of Canada, and it requires the possession on
the part of the practitioner of a diploma properly accredited from
some recognized college of medicine in Canada. Graduation with diploma
from the best medical schools in the United States is not considered
to meet the requirement--nor, for that matter, is the diploma of any
but a British school. This restriction also applies in the case of
professional trained nurses. A number of cases closely bordering on
litigation, and at one time even threatening to bring about
international complications, have arisen in connection with practice
violating this law; but despite the overwhelmingly large number of
foreigners who are resident in the region, and who, it was thought by
some, had the right to consult practitioners of their own nationality
or choice, there is now a peaceful submission to the reading of the
statute. The exaction is in no way intended to legislate against
foreigners, but is simply a provision of the Dominion laws, similar to
that which requires a "Dominion surveyor" who intends doing official
survey work in British Columbia to be properly accredited with a
special paper of that section of Canada (as distinguished from the
Northwest Territory, etc.). Like the physicians, all surveyors giving
out work under their names must be officially licensed from the
Dominion, although those not thus certificated are permitted to do
office or field work for others who are.
A field of labor that has already been entered upon by women is
stenography and typewriting. There has been considerable demand for
this kind of work, and there will continue to be much more, but it
may be doubted if profits arising from it will ever equal what has
been attained in millinery and the sale of fancy dress goods. One of
the earliest milliners to come out of Dawson told me at Bennett that
she had disposed of a hat which brought her two hundred and eighty
dollars (in April, 1898), and its only ornamentation was two black
ostrich feathers! Such prices are to-day a thing away in the past, but
fur capes or circulars are still marketable for three hundred dollars
and upward.
Toward a more intimate acquaintance with the methods and lines of
business now followed in Dawson we subjoin a facsimile of portions of
the advertising page of the Yukon Midnight Sun, bearing date of
September 3, 1898.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF PART OF YUKON MIDNIGHT SUN, SEPTEMBER 3,
1898.]
THE NEGRO QUESTION.
BY J. L. M. CURRY, LL.D.,
GENERAL AGENT OF THE PEABODY EDUCATION FUND AND OF THE JOHN F. SLATER
EDUCATION FUND; LATE MINISTER TO SPAIN.
The negro question is not of recent origin. The Iliad of our woes
began in 1620, when negroes were first brought to the colony of
Virginia and sold as slaves. Slavery antedates history. The traffic of
Europeans in negroes existed a half century before the discovery of
America. The very year in which Charles V sailed with a powerful
expedition against Tunis to check the piracies of the Barbary states,
and to emancipate enslaved Christians in Africa, he gave an open legal
sanction to the African slave trade. When independence was declared in
1776 all the colonies held slaves. Slavery, said the late Senator
Ingalls, disappeared from the Northern States "by the operation of
social, economic, and natural laws," and "the North did not finally
determine to destroy this system until convinced that its continuance
threatened not only their industrial independence but their political
importance." In course of years "the peculiar institution" assumed a
sectional character. The war between the States precipitated a crisis.
President Lincoln began then the work of emancipation. "As
commander-in-chief of the army and navy in time of war, I suppose I
have the right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy....
I view the measure [the Proclamation] as a practical war measure
according to the advantages or disadvantages it will offer to the
suppression of the rebellion." Senator Ingalls's testimony is as
follows: "It may be admitted that the emancipation of the slaves was
not contemplated by any considerable portion of the American people
when the war for the Union began, and it was not brought to pass until
the fortunes of war became desperate, and was then justified and
defended upon the plea of military necessity." The Southern States
ratified the amendments to the Constitution under penalty of otherwise
remaining out of the Union and in political and military vassalage.
The abolition of slavery has the assent of all sane men. Apart from
ethical considerations, the subjection of the will, thought, or labor
of a mature human being to the whim, caprice, or legal right of
another is a gross political and economical blunder, unwise and
indefensible. After emancipation came citizenship and enfranchisement
of the freedmen, and the punitive measures of reconstruction, which
were the outcome of hatred, revenge, desire for party ascendency, and
which no good man can now approve. No conquering nation ever inflicted
on a conquered people more cruel injustice than the disfranchisement
of the most capable citizens and the enfranchisement of liberated
slaves. Certain great civil rights are the necessary and proper
consequences of freedom. Suffrage is not a natural right, nor a legal,
political, or general result of freedom or citizenship. The large
majority of citizens do not and can not vote.
The liberation of millions of slaves was the most gigantic and, in
itself, one of the most beneficent acts of this century. Nothing is
comparable to it as a triumph of the inalienable rights of man.
Humanity and justice demanded emancipation. Re-enslavement no one
proposes or desires. All would rejoice in the prosperity and progress
of the Afro-American, but with freedom came citizenship and suffrage,
and these revolutionized our Government. Elements undreamed of were
introduced as constituents. When the Constitution and the resulting
Union were formed, such a citizenship with franchise was not proposed,
and if proposed would not have been listened to for a moment. The most
infatuated negrophilist would not stultify himself by asserting that
the Union of States would or could have been consummated with the
present incongruous, heterogeneous citizenship.
From these and other facts has been evolved what has been called the
negro problem. In the discussion, it is best to eliminate all
extraneous considerations, all issues which, as the lawyers say, are
"_dehors_ the record." Government is a very practical business. The
end is the securing and preserving the peace, safety, and well-being
of the State. Civil government has no mission of general philanthropy.
This problem, while of terrific importance in the South, where the
black population is persistently congestive, is not, in its
ramifications or direct effects, local or sectional. It affects every
community and every section. It is of paramount national importance,
complex, and involving social, moral, and political considerations.
Its gravity can not be exaggerated. It compels the attention and
demands all the resources of patriots, philanthropists, statesmen. It
thrusts itself, uninvited and unwelcomed, into religious and social
assemblies and legislative councils. It is pervasive, continuing,
vital. It is better to look it full in the face and give it
dispassionate thought.
It need scarcely be said that in this discussion no hostile reference
is made to individuals. Some negroes are men of intelligence,
integrity, patriotism, and stand on a plane with our best citizens in
virtues and mental qualifications.[C] The gist of this contention is
not based on special exceptions, but on the race in the aggregate.
[Footnote C: Such an extraordinary man as Booker T. Washington is an
honor to any country and worthy of unlimited confidence and regard.]
We find in the South the presence of two distinct peoples, with
irreconcilable racial characteristics and diverse historical
antecedents. The Caucasian and the negro are not simply unlike, but
they are contrasted, and are as far apart as any other two races of
human beings. They are unassimilable and immiscible without rapid
degeneracy. Ethnologically they are nearly polar opposites. With the
Caucasian progress has been upward. Whatever is great in art,
invention, literature, science, civilization, religion, has
characterized him. In his native land the negro has made little or no
advancement for nearly four thousand years. Surrounded by and in
contact with a higher civilization, he has not invented a machine, nor
painted a picture, nor written a book, nor organized a stable
government, nor constructed a code of laws. He has not suppressed the
slave trade, which, according to recent testimony, was never more
flourishing. He has no monuments nor recorded history. For thousands
of years there lies behind the race one dreary, unrelieved, monotonous
chapter of ignorance, nakedness, superstition, savagery. All efforts
to reclaim, civilize, Christianize, have been disastrous failures,
except what has been accomplished in this direction in the United
States.
It need not be disguised, for it is the ever-present, indisputable
fact, that while there are alleviations of the unpleasantness, the
relations between the negroes and their co-citizens of the Caucasian
race are strained and unsatisfactory. The friction, the prejudice, the
cleavage, is not between Teutonic and Latin on the one side and
Semitic on the other, nor between Saxon and Celt; it lies deeper,
yields less readily to palliatives and remedies, and seems a matter of
adjustment for the remotest future. It may help to understand the
situation if we analyze its causes.
The great revolution suddenly transformed the customs, traditions, and
conditions of the two races. Ownership gave way to freedom; compulsory
and wage-unrewarded labor to absolute control of person; inequality,
inferiority, subjection, to equality in the eye of the law; restrained
locomotion to license of movement; kindness, interest in life, wealth,
and physical welfare, to suspicion, distress, alienation. With
property in man, regulated and enforced by laws in the interest of the
master, labor was organized, directed by intelligent control to the
development of agricultural resources and to the building up of a
society which for refinement of manners, hospitality, and
administrative capacity, has elicited praise from disinterested
travelers and investigators. The negro, whatever he may have attained
from the discipline of slavery, was not cultivated in intelligence, in
manual skill, in forethought, power of initiative, in thrift, and the
comforts and graces of home life. When freed, many were deluded by
deceptive promises. They construed freedom to mean a division of
property. Release from bondage led to intemperance and extravagance.
Accustomed to control, unaccustomed to self-reliance, having others
to think, plan, buy, and sell for them, to supply wants, to watch over
them from the cradle to the coffin, many, when left to themselves,
reverted to primitive habits, and became idle and worthless. Slavery
had cursed the South with ignorant, unskilled, uninventive labor.
Freedom did not change its character. The war, liberation of slaves,
the sudden extinguishment of millions of property, bankrupted the
South. Subsistence, recovery of means of living, rehabilitation,
reorganization of those agencies, which are, with intelligent work,
the chief means of the wealth of civilized peoples, became the first
duty after hostilities ceased. This demanded steady, persistent
industry, the change of former methods of agriculture, subdivision of
farms, diversification of pursuits, opening of academies and colleges,
and establishment of public schools for free and universal education.
The contrast between the wealth and prosperity of the North and South
presents an appalling picture. Naturally, the Southern people were in
despair, and too often they vented their dissatisfaction, their rage,
upon the irresponsible and unoffending negro.
Slavery _per se_ is not conducive to self-restraint of the enslaved,
to high ethical standards, and the best types of human life. When the
interest and authority of owners were removed and former religious
instruction was crippled or withdrawn, the negroes fell rapidly from
what had been attained in slavery to a state of immorality, and, in
some cases, to original fetichism. Some remained immovable in their
former faith, but many, especially of the younger generation, of both
sexes, gave proof of what degeneracy can accomplish in a quarter of a
century. It is very common for them to divorce religion and piety.
Artificial excitement, passionate emotion, was substituted for a faith
which should be the product of a knowledge of and deep reverence for
the Word of God. The danger of doing harm, or injustice, restrains my
pen from disclosing a mass of disgusting material which could only
shock sensibilities and stagger credulity. It is, besides, very easy
to magnify our own virtues and others' vices. It is a prevalent mode
of religiousness to repent of other people's sins, and to get
superfluous merit by showing how others fall short of our attainments.
Lowell said, "Everybody has a mission (with a capital M) to attend to
everybody else's business," and "to make his own whim the law, and his
own range the horizon of the universe." We have all read of the
philanthropic Mrs. Jelliby neglecting home and children to sweeten the
lot of the unregenerate natives of Borrioboola Gha. Still, testimony,
to satisfy the most skeptical, could be adduced _ad nauseam_, from men
and women doing educational and missionary work among the colored
people, to show the deplorable depths into which multitudes have
sunk.
Under the Reconstruction Acts there was a deliberate, predetermined
attempt and purpose to put the freedmen in control of the Southern
States. The late slaves were enfranchised; the best class of white men
were disfranchised. The law presumes that a man or a State intends the
logical consequence of acts done. In South Carolina, Mississippi, and
Louisiana a majority of the voters, under the coerced policy, were
negroes. In other States they were so numerous that a combination with
a small fraction of white voters would give the ascendency. In
Virginia, a coalition between non-taxpaying white people and negroes,
under skilled and bold leadership, accomplished partial repudiation of
the State debt. Superadd to this undisguised Federal intent the hungry
adventurers who, as governors, judges, marshals, district attorneys,
etc., flocked like vultures around the carcass, the horde of persons
whose object was to pilfer and plunder, who played upon the ignorance,
the superstitions, and gratitude of the negro and made the credulous
victims believe that their former masters were not to be trusted in
elections, and you have a picture which imagination fails to realize.
The negroes, neither by apprenticeship, nor political education, not
intellectual culture, were prepared for the boon, and their
unscrupulous friends organized them into secret societies and inflamed
hopes and expectations of wealth and dominancy. Casper Hauser
transferred from a dungeon to a throne would be a fit illustration of
this defiance of all the teachings of the past. Suffrage was a wrong
to the nation, to the States, to the white and black races, and
especially to the negro. Negro suffrage is a farce, a burlesque on
elections, and only evil. The negroes generally vote as puppets, as
machines, and have not the remotest conception of the character or
effect of the act they are ignorantly performing, or of the issues
involved in the contest, or of the functions or duties of the officers
voted for. Huxley says, "Voting power as a means of giving effect to
opinion is more likely to prove a curse than a blessing to the voter,
unless that opinion is the result of a sound judgment operating upon
sound knowledge." This premature investiture of the negro with
suffrage reciprocally provoked alienation, bitterness, strife, and a
resolute purpose on the part of the white people not to submit to the
misrule and tyranny of ignorance and pauperism, but to resort to all
necessary methods to defeat such a result.
It is needless to recapitulate the facts of many thousand years in
order to raise the inference of racial difference between the
Caucasian and the negro. The immigration to our country is the proof
of antagonism of races. The foreigner stays away from the South; so in
a large degree does the Northern man. Notwithstanding the unsurpassed
climate, the rivers and gulf and mountains, the fertile soil, the
varied products, the hospitable welcome, the territory occupied by the
negro is persistently avoided. By the census of 1880 the proportion of
foreign-born in all the former slave States was 3.5 per cent; in the
Northern States about twenty per cent; in eight Southern States, where
the negroes abound, there was in 1880 only one and a third per cent
who were of foreign birth. Mr. Lincoln, in 1858, in accounting for the
repulsion, said: "There is a physical difference between the two races
which will probably forbid their living together upon the footing of
perfect equality.... I am not, or ever have been, in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office,
nor of intermarrying with white people." Absorption, assimilation, is
not to be dreamed of. The negro is no nearer common fellowship,
equality of association, than he was in 1865. Reconstruction measures,
constitutional amendments, sword and bayonet, ecclesiastical
anathemas, fulminations of press and pulpit, all power of church and
state and public opinion, have not altered, can not alter, what seems
ineradicable. Race antagonism reaches deeper than political
affiliation. If every negro at the South were to vote the Democratic
ticket in every subsequent election, the race division would remain
the same.
Can these differences be effaced, alienations be healed, and
overshadowing perils be averted? What concerns the patriot is to find
a solution for this gigantic and appalling problem. The statesman has
not yet arisen, disposed to grapple with the problem, or capable of
suggesting a feasible and efficacious remedy. With the least hardship
to the negro, proper recognition of his rights as a man, due regard to
the just ends of our Government, and the purposes of its founders,
some scheme, if possible, wise, adequate, and comprehensive, should be
devised. Whatever hitherto has been suggested has been met with
opposition and is justly liable to criticism. The most obvious remedy,
and which has been tried with some success, is to uplift the race by
means of public schools and proper religious instruction. All honor to
the schools that train the youth into self-respecting manhood and
womanhood! All honor for the efforts that are making to correct the
debasement of slavery, to unite faith and practice, to infuse
religious life with an ethical Christianity, and to form a moral basis
for life and character! The crimes of both races in the South, pushed
within the last few years to most brutal atrocities, show that there
can be no safety for free institutions, no guarding against savage
degradation, if either race be kept in crass ignorance. Both must
suffer. It would be some relief from ballot-box evils and perils if
the examples of New England and of Louisiana, Mississippi, and South
Carolina were followed by all the States. As "universal suffrage has
no anchorage except in the people's intelligence," Massachusetts
requires of voters a prepayment of taxes, and voting and
office-holding are limited to those who can read the Constitution in
the English language and write their names. What has been done by
States, denominations, and individuals through schools is not
discouraging to larger and better efforts, but is a stimulus to and an
assurance of excellent results. The plantation system of the South,
when land was in the hands of a few territorial magnates, was of very
doubtful utility. A bold peasantry is a country's pride, and a small
farmer should take the place of the large landed proprietor. If the
negroes should acquire and hold more real estate, they would be of
more value as citizens, and would have increased interest in the
stability of laws, enforcing of contracts, and the preservation of
State honor. An enlargement of the number of those who have a solid
stake in the well-being of the country would be adding to the ranks of
natural supporters of law and honor, and strengthening the true
foundations on which the stability of a republican government must
rest.
The congestion of the negroes aggravates the difficulties and dangers
of the problem. The area of the States holding slaves in 1860 was
901,740 square miles, and of the Northern States, excluding Alaska,
2,123,860 square miles. By the census of 1890, the total population of
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West
Virginia, was 37.3 per cent of negroes and 62.7 per cent of whites;
or, including Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, 30.7 per
cent of negroes and 69.3 per cent of whites. The African citizens are
localized within a narrow area. A French statesman said, "Cross the
Pyrenees and Africa begins." Cross Mason and Dixon's line, or the Ohio
and Potomac Rivers, and in a truer sense Africa begins, for south of
that line the negroes are massed. It has been nearly forty years since
slavery existed, for no one born since 1860 was ever practically a
slave, and yet freedom has not diffused the seven million and a half
of Africans. Despite all the traditions of bondage, all the
misrepresentations of modern literature, all the exaggerated accounts
of intimidation and cruelty, the South remains the home of the negro.
When he is told that equality, friendship, political sympathy, and
good wages may be secured by passing an invisible geographical line,
he persistently refuses to be seduced across. Senator Windom, of
Minnesota, advocated a plan for distributing by assisted emigration,
but nothing came of it. Senator Edmunds, in discussing the Chinese
question, said: "The people of Massachusetts would not be hungry for
an eruption of a million of the inhabitants of Africa, ... because
they believe, either by instinct or education, that it is not good for
the two races to be brought into that kind of contact in that
place.... The fundamental idea of a prosperous republic must be a
homogeneity of its people."
Colonization as a remedy has had many strong advocates. As early as
1800 the Assembly of Virginia, in secret session, instructed the
Governor to correspond with the President with the object of procuring
a colony to which the negroes could be sent. Jefferson began the
correspondence. The Legislature resumed the question, and expressed
its preference for "Africa or any of the Spanish or Portuguese
settlements in South America" as the place "to which free negroes or
mulattoes, and such negroes or mulattoes as may be emancipated," might
be sent or choose to remove. In 1805 the members of Congress were
instructed to endeavor to procure suitable territory in Louisiana. In
1811, being asked his opinion as to a settlement on the coast of
Africa, Jefferson replied that "nothing is more to be wished than that
the United States would themselves undertake to make such an
establishment on the coast of Africa." In 1813 the Legislature openly
and almost unanimously adopted, for the third time, resolutions
similar to those of 1800. The same year the Colonization Society was
formed, out of which grew the Republic of Liberia. President Lincoln,
in his first annual message, December, 1861, referring to the two
classes of liberated persons that might be thrown upon Congress for
their disposal, recommended "that in any event steps be taken for
colonizing both classes at some place or places in a climate congenial
to them. It might be well to consider, too, whether the free colored
people already in the United States could not be included in such
colonization." Congress responded by voting one hundred thousand
dollars for the voluntary emigration of freedmen from the District of
Columbia to Haiti or Liberia, and later, in July, 1862, gave five
hundred thousand dollars for the colonization of negroes in some
tropical country beyond the limits of the United States. Mr. Lincoln
continued to favor the policy of removal to another country, and five
days after signing the above act he read to his Cabinet a proposed
order for "the colonization of negroes in some tropical country."
Burdened with this great question, amid the exigencies of the mighty
war, he continued to push the matter, and had Secretary Seward send a
circular letter to England, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark, with
regard to colonizing the negroes in some of their tropical
possessions. Offers came from the Danish West Indies, Dutch Surinam,
British Guiana, Honduras, Haiti, New Granada, and Ecuador. Mr. Lincoln
considered the offers from New Granada and an island off Haiti, and
even sent a colony to the latter. Again, in his annual message in
1862, he argued for colonization, and asked for an appropriation,
but, under the passions of the terrible conflict then raging, the
Congress, instead of heeding the request, repealed the former act
appropriating five hundred thousand dollars.
The Indians, against their will, were transported, by coercive
measures, to allotted lands beyond the Mississippi, but that was
before the modern discovery that the United States should grant
"fraternity and assistance to all people" under other than republican
governments, and that universal suffrage was the infallible expedient
for civilizing semibarbarous peoples. President Harrison, in his
letter of acceptance, writing on another subject, says, "We are
already under a duty to defend our civilization by excluding alien
races whose ultimate assimilation with our people is neither possible
nor desirable."
Remedies, strong and adequate and feasible, may not be found readily,
but there are gentler and quieter agencies which may be used by both
races to mutual advantage. The white people, in accepting the
legitimate consequences of defeat, in vigorous efforts to restore
antebellum prosperity, in establishing schools, in reconstructing
shattered society, have done nobly, but they are not without sin.
Laws, general and wise and impartial, on the statute-book need for
their enforcement a sustaining public opinion, but this has not always
been forthcoming. Lawless and violent proceedings, always unnecessary
and demoralizing, sometimes as brutal as the crimes which excited
horror; harsh and unjust contracts; interferences in elections; false
registration and counting of votes, and other acts which the plea of
self-preservation did not justify, have evinced the harshness and
injustice of dominant power, and have not tended to soften prejudices
or make the situation more tolerable. Each race is fortunately
improving in intercourse and in dealings with the other, and time and
sober judgment are, in a sensible degree, removing causes of
alienation which are not inherent and incurable.
* * * * *
"What a blessing," said President Sir John Lubbock, at the late
meeting of the International Congress of Zoölogists, "it would be
for mankind if we could stop the enormous expenditure on engines
for the destruction of life and property, and spend the tenth,
the hundredth, even the thousandth part on scientific progress!
Few people seem to realize how much science has done for man, and
still fewer how much more it would still do if permitted. More
students would doubtless have devoted themselves to science if it
were not so systematically neglected in our schools; if men and
boys were not given the impression that the field of discovery is
well-nigh exhausted. We, gentlemen, know how far that is from
being the case. Much of the land surface of the globe is still
unexplored; the ocean is almost unknown; our collections contain
thousands of species waiting to be described; the life-histories
of many of our commonest species remain to be investigated, or
have only recently been discovered."
THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS AND AMERICAN CAPITAL.
BY J. RUSSELL SMITH.
That the Philippine Islands are of value as a place for investment is
an unexplained generalization that is now being used to tempt business
men. The object of this article is to discuss this generalization. The
idea that the Philippine Islands are of importance to us, as a new
field for our industrial developments, depends upon two assumptions:
First, that we need to go beyond the bounds of the United States;
second, that the Philippines offer the best available field for the
satisfaction of that need.
As to the first assumption, the occasion and origin of the demand for
the retention of the Philippines furnish presumptive evidence that it
represents no real economic want of the American people. No one ever
thought of it until we heard the boom of Dewey's guns at Manila. The
demands that then arose for Eastern territory were the natural result
of a just pride in the amazing triumph of our navy. Before the battle
of Manila a suggestion that we should take the Philippines and RECEIVE
$20,000,000 as a bonus we would have deemed preposterous. Before that
battle, one idea was uppermost in the minds of the American
people--namely, the development of the American continent. And yet,
along with the enthusiasm over the accomplishments of our army and
navy, the idea has crept into some minds that we are in need of more
land to develop, and that we must find it in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Examination of the internal condition of the United States does not
seem to indicate such need. Our exports are an index to our condition.
In 1872 we exported merchandise to the value of $522,000,000; in 1898
the amount had swelled to $1,230,000,000, an increase of two hundred
and thirty-five per cent. No European nation has shown such progress.
Despite their colonial empires, their armies and navies, their
chartered companies, their spheres of influence, and all their
elaborate paraphernalia, we are competing with them in their own
markets. We have pursued a policy the opposite of theirs and are
outstripping them in the race for a share of the world's trade. It is
not compatible with industrial wisdom to change and adopt the policy
of our less successful rivals just as the success of our own policy is
being fully demonstrated.
A nation's commercial supremacy rests upon the same principles as a
business man's leadership in his trade--namely, superiority of
production. It does not require a citation of evidence to say that the
producers of Europe are staggering under the burden of their armies
and navies. While they are thus handicapped, we have nothing to fear
unless we inflict upon ourselves a similar burden. We have succeeded
by attending to our own industries, by developing our natural
resources, by producing things that the people of other nations must
have. That development is but begun. Even England, the ruler of the
greatest colonial empire the world has ever known, the greatest
manufacturing nation, the mistress of the seas, stands with almost
stationary exports. The United States, the nation with a small navy,
the nation that never really had a colony, the so-called isolated
nation, has come by rapid strides to the point where she is the
leading exporter of the world.
There is no reason why the progress of the United States should be
checked. England has demonstrated the fact that the nation that has
the iron and coal is the commercial mistress of the world. The United
States is continuing, and will continue the demonstration. England has
but 900 square miles of much-used coal lands, and she gets her iron
ore from Spain. We have over 200,000 square miles[D] of untouched coal
lands; an almost continuous bed of iron ore, reaching from Lake
Ontario to Alabama.[E] Beside this great ore bed is the Appalachian
coal field, with coal mines in every State between New York and
Alabama. There are mountains of iron ore in Missouri and Michigan. By
the special lines of lake steamers the iron ore of Lake Superior is
taken to Chicago and Cleveland, and thence carried by rail to
Pittsburg. There the eastern coal completes the conditions for the
most economical production of iron and steel. That gives the United
States the basis for our export trade in iron, steel, and machinery.
We are capturing the iron markets of the world, and, judging by our
supplies, can hold them for ages. As our iron and coal are the basis
of all manufacturing industry, continued attention to them will give
us the control of the world's trade.
[Footnote D: The last United States census puts our coal lands at
something more than 225,000 square miles.]
[Footnote E: "This deposit occurs as far north as the southern shores
of Lake Ontario, and thence extends in an almost continuous manner
through Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee to central
Alabama."--_N. S. Shaler's The United States of America, vol. i, p.
432._]
There are many other lines of our internal development that are yet
barely begun. Irrigation is an example of this. The report of John W.
Noble, Secretary of the Interior for 1891, said, "One hundred and
twenty million acres that are now desert may be redeemed by irrigation
so as to produce the cereals, fruits, and garden products possible in
the climate where the lands are located." That is an area nearly twice
as large as the Philippine Islands, and it is open to the American
settler, while there is an indication that the Philippines may be
inaccessible on account of their climate. Moreover, they are four
times as densely populated as is the United States; and while we deem
the Chinese so undesirable that we exclude him from our shores, all
authorities agree that his race is superior to that of the Malays,
Tagals, and Negritos who inhabit the Philippines.
The irrigable area is much larger than the States of New York,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts combined. Those States at
the present time are supporting a population of over seventeen
millions, and many authorities claim that they will in the future
support at least fifty millions. The regions of scanty rainfall that
can be irrigated are fairly crusted with potash and other soluble
mineral ingredients that nourish plant life, and give to the valleys
already irrigated their astonishing fertility. This enables the
farmers to support themselves on such small areas that the life is
almost a communal one. The irrigated West can sustain a population as
great as that sustained on an equal area in the East, or even
greater.[F] For years that dry climate has been a health restorer to
the sojourner there. This is not claimed for the Philippine Islands.
The building up of this Western empire with its canals and irrigating
ditches, its railroads and cities, will absorb a vast amount of
capital, and it is a natural and easy line of development for us. Mr.
Irwin has said, "To capital seeking investment in a large way,
irrigation enterprises in the West offer a most solid, lucrative, and
tempting field."[G] Secretary Noble has said, "No one can now compute
the money value that will concentrate in these reservoirs and canals
and ditches, carrying water to the fields of the husbandman, and upon
which the people must depend for their prosperity."[H]
[Footnote F: If we accept the reclaimable area given above as
approximately correct, and apply a system of irrigation, it can be
cultivated, "and made the happy home of an industrious people more
than equaling in number the inhabitants of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland."--_J. N. Irwin, in Forum, vol. i, p. 742._]
[Footnote G: Forum, vol. xii, p. 750.]
[Footnote H: Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1891.]
Five centuries ago large parts of eastern and western England were
impenetrable morasses. These have entirely disappeared before the
skill of the engineer.
N. S. Shaler says, "The total area of the inundated lands of the
United States probably exceeds 115,000 square miles, counting only
those flooded areas which are at present unsuited by their excessive
humidity for agricultural use, but which may be won to the service by
engineering devices such as have been applied in the regions occupied
by older civilizations."[I] This is more than 73,000,000 acres of
drainable swamps and marshes. Lands more easy of access have, in the
past, so occupied our attention that these lowlands have thus far been
almost entirely neglected. They are located along our northern,
eastern, and southern borders in close proximity to water
transportation and to the large cities of the seaboard. They can be
drained, as were the swamps of England. Their fertility will make this
profitable, and they will support a large population.
[Footnote I: The United States of America, vol. i, p. 382.]
The public highways of the United States are, on the whole, in
anything but a desirable condition, and their improvement is a good
investment for the commonwealth. We have railroads to build, harbors
to deepen, and canals to dig. The United States is young yet, and
tremendous tasks await her labor and capital.
In this country, so full of promise for the future, we are still using
borrowed foreign capital. In The Forum for February, 1895, Mr. Alfred
S. Lauterbach said, "That the people of the United States require
European capital for the full development of the great resources of
our country there can be no doubt." The same author made a "very
conservative estimate," and said that we owed to Europe annually:
"For dividends and interest upon American securities
still held abroad, minimum $75,000,000
"For profits of foreign corporations doing business here,
and of non-residents, derived from real estate,
investments, partnership profits, etc., about 75,000,000
------------
$150,000,000"
That is to say, we were paying a five-per-cent interest on
$3,000,000,000 of foreign money.
As to the second assumption: It is claimed by some that we should have
the Philippines because they will furnish us the tropical products
that we are using in ever-increasing quantities. Two things are
revealed in the examination of our needs of tropic products and a
comparison of the Philippines with the American tropics: 1. That the
Philippines are at a great disadvantage in location. 2. That America
is of sufficient area and natural wealth to meet all our needs, and
more.
As to location: It is a first principle of commerce to get supplies
where they are most accessible. It is about ten thousand miles from
New York to Manila, twelve hundred to Havana, and eighteen hundred to
the continent of South America. Under these conditions the freight
rates must always discriminate in favor of tropic America. The
disadvantage of the Philippines is increased by the fact that the
ships going from San Francisco or Panama to Manila are compelled to
carry their coal three thousand four hundred miles at one
stretch--from Honolulu to Yokohama, the most available route. Then,
again, a large part of our tropic trade, and one that shows promise of
the most growth, is in the green fruits, such as cocoanuts,
pineapples, lemons, oranges, and bananas. Of the last article our
imports have doubled every five years since 1865. On account of
distance it is not practicable to bring any of these fruits from the
Philippines, but there is no limit to the amount of trade that can
grow up on the lines that are now beginning to form between us and our
southern neighbors.
As to the fitness of tropic America to supply our needs: There are
Central America, South America, and the West Indies. An examination of
their area and productiveness shows that there is little to induce
American industry to control any part of the Eastern Hemisphere. Of
the 17,000,000 square miles that make up the Western Continent, the
tropics make up 5,000,000 square miles--an area sufficient to make
more than one hundred States as large as Pennsylvania; an area nearly
fifty times as great as the Philippines. The variety of its
productions is scarcely excelled even by the East Indies. There are
only two important tropic products imported into the United States
that are not already largely produced on this continent. They are
Manila hemp and tea, and it would appear that the reason they come
from the East is because of present labor conditions there. Manila
hemp is a sort of half-wild product that may yet have an introduction
to our rich tropics just as the potato was introduced into Europe, and
many of our crops have been introduced from Europe. Even the tea plant
thrives in the warm regions of America as far north as Tennessee.
Small quantities of tea are now grown in various parts of America,[J]
but the cheap labor of the East has made it unprofitable here. We are
at the present time getting nine tenths of our tea from India, where
Anglo-Saxon care has developed the industry and is fast driving China
out of the tea market of the world.
[Footnote J: United States Report on Commerce and Navigation for
1897.]
There is a difference when it comes to the two great tropic staples of
coffee and sugar. Our imports of these two articles in 1897 were
valued at $180,000,000, while the imports of tea were less than one
twelfth as much. At the present time nearly all the coffee used in the
United States comes from Central and South America, whence also comes
the greater part of the world's supply. The declining price of coffee
indicates that we shall get it under more favorable terms in the
future.
We import about $100,000,000 worth of sugar per annum.[K]
Approximately two fifths of it is beet sugar and comes from the
continent of Europe, and the rest is cane sugar from scattered sources
in the tropics. Only one sixth comes from the Eastern Hemisphere. We
are getting sugar from Europe, not because it is the natural
development of the industry, but because those countries are willing
to give an export bounty on all that is exported. This makes
exportation possible. Meanwhile the American sugar industry is left to
unprogressive and slovenly methods, but it needs only a reasonable
addition of capital and labor to enable it to supply the markets of
the world. An Englishman of much experience in the sugar-growing
colonies of Great Britain says that by the introduction of improved
methods all the sugar that we use in this country could be grown on
one half of the little island of Porto Rico.[L] This would cause heavy
complaint from the sugar-cane region of Louisiana, and from those
sections of our country that are beginning to hope for a future in the
beet-sugar industry. Certainly America can supply herself in this
particular.
[Footnote K: Ibid.]
[Footnote L: W. Allyne Ireland, in an address before the University of
Pennsylvania.]
India rubber is another of our tropic imports that promises to
increase in importance with improvements in our ability to use it.
Nearly the whole supply comes from the American tropics. There it
thrives everywhere. We are importing it from almost all of our sister
republics, and although it responds readily to cultivation and yields
a profitable crop,[M] the main supply is yet taken from the wild trees
of the forests. Like the other products it waits for the capital which
it will well repay.
[Footnote M: See Coffee and India-Rubber Culture in Mexico. By Matias
Romero, late Mexican minister to the United States.]
By a comparison of the average yields per acre of the leading tropic
imports with the amounts of those imports, we shall find the area of
the territories that are in cultivation to meet our present needs.[N]
In 1897 we imported into this country from all sources the crops that
would be yielded by 1,400 square miles of coffee, 30 of bananas, 40 of
cocoa beans, 60 of India rubber, 10 of oranges; a total of 1,540
square miles. Add to that the area that will be needed for our sugar,
and the result does not equal the whole of Porto Rico. The area of
Porto Rico is less than 4,000 square miles. Multiply these crop areas
by ten, to make allowance for crop rotation and for the time taken for
new plantations to come into bearing. The result will be less than
40,000 square miles, a territory not half as great as the area of the
West India islands. They in their turn do not comprise the fiftieth
part of the area of tropic America.
[Footnote N: The average yields of tropic produce were made out with
the assistance of the Cyclopædia Britannica, Coffee and India-Rubber
Culture in Mexico (Romero), and statistics obtained at the
Philadelphia Commercial Museums. The amounts of the imports were taken
from the United States Report on Commerce and Navigation for 1897.]
When the time comes that American industry needs to develop more
lands, there they lie. They are our opportunity. They have an almost
virgin soil, because we have been too busy with our own internal
development to give them needed attention. They need capital, and we
have been borrowing money abroad to meet our needs at home. Their
inhabitants are idle for lack of employment; they will respond to our
capital. The United States is the natural market for the West Indies;
they lie close to our shores, and when the Nicaragua Canal comes they
will be but islands in an American lake--parts of the industrial unit
of Greater America. They can give us the things that are needed to
round out our consumption, and we can do the same for them.
It is illogical and unlike American shrewdness to go seven thousand
miles for tropic lands when an equally valuable, a more valuable, area
is within seven hundred miles of us. The comparison becomes even more
striking when it is remembered that the control of the Philippines
brings to us a burden of problems from which industrial development in
this country is free.
The Government at Washington may spend our millions and establish
government in the Philippines, but will American capital go there?
Will our citizens invest their money seven thousand miles away while
tropic America is so much nearer, and is, moreover, an equally rich
and far more extended field? This does not assume the conquest of
American regions. It is not necessary to have governmental control in
order to profit by the industries of a country. The conditions of
modern industry prove this most conclusively. But for this fact the
progress of the world would have been much less rapid. We have an
example of this in American railroads: they have been largely built by
English capital; the same is also true to a greater or less degree of
many of our other industries. What England has done in North America
without governmental control, we can do in Central and South America
when our industrial condition demands new areas to work over. By the
modernized Monroe doctrine our supremacy in this hemisphere is
assured, and we have the guarantee of a clear field. Our interests are
also furthered by our friendly relations with the American peoples and
by our nearness to them.
The American policy of our forefathers is the one for us, even from
the industrial point of view. America is an industrial unit, an
economic unit, full of undeveloped possibilities that await the hand
of American enterprise. Our resources can abundantly provide for our
material needs. The continent is controlled by the most ingenious of
all the races, and is dominated by the highest political ideals known
to man. What need have we to reach out across seven thousand miles of
ocean to take lands populous with millions of barbarians?
THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE WEST INDIES.
BY F. L. OSWALD.
III.--REPTILES AND FISHES.
The present fauna of our planet includes many varieties of mammals and
reptiles, and a few kinds of birds, that are found only on certain
islands--a fact which seemed rather to justify the once universal
belief in the origin of species by separate acts of creation.
A different theory of explanation has, however, been suggested by the
discovery of fossil remains, proving the former existence of closely
allied forms on continents where their battle for existence had to be
fought against beasts of prey and competitors for a limited food
supply.
The supposed products of an island genesis by the fiat of supernatural
agencies, demanding recognition in mental penance and the payment of
tithes, may thus be simply animal Crusoes, favored by the positive or
negative advantages of their surroundings.
The dodo, in its struggle for survival, would have had no chance
against South American tiger-cats. Not one of the twenty-odd species
of Madagascar lemurs could have held its own against the competition
of the African daylight monkeys.
Yet there was a time when night apes and large ground birds seem to
have had things all their own way, the world over, and Central America
may have afforded a chance for existence to several species of
reptiles which at present are found only on the West Indian islands.
The Cuban bush tortoise (_Emys nigra_) is found only in the forests of
Santiago and Puerto Principe, and there only on the south coasts. It
is the most sluggish creature of its genus, and does not seem to have
had enterprise enough to crawl around the sand belt of Cape Maysi and
colonize the jungles of the north side provinces. It is as helpless as
a hedgehog, _minus_ its bristles. The darkeys of the Cuban planters
crack its armor with home-made hammers, and the _tortuga prieta_, or
prieta, as they call it for short, forms a factor of holiday _menus_
as frequently as 'possum pie in southern Georgia.
Swift-flowing rivers bear it away as they would a floating log, and it
is wholly incredible that its ancestors should have crossed the
Caribbean Sea in quest of a more congenial home; but it is possible
enough that its eggs may have been ferried across on one of the
driftwood islands which the Sumasinta River often tears from the coast
swamps of southern Mexico and carries into the current of the Gulf
Stream. The evolution of the South American giant cats was probably
the death warrant of its continental relatives, but in Cuba it had no
four-footed enemies except the _hutia_, or jungle rat, that now and
then destroys its eggs.
An equally favored islander is the grayish-yellow rock lizard,
abounding in the uplands of Cuba and Hayti. The lizard-killing cranes
of Honduras have not found their way to the Antilles, and the
_lagartilla_ still basks in the sun that once smiled upon the
indolence of the naked Lucayans.
The _toco_, or Cuban hornbill, however, devours small reptiles of all
sorts, and the West Indian tree lizards have become almost as nimble
as squirrels. They dodge behind branches and wait to ascertain the
origin of every flitting shadow, but from imminent danger save
themselves by a swift descent, followed by a bold leap into the
thickets of the underbrush. Their courtship is quite as grotesque as
that of the strutting bush pheasants. The males will swing their heads
up and down and puff up their throat-bags till their skin seems on the
point of disruption, while the objects of their rivalry sit blinking,
reluctant to risk an open manifestation of preference. Some gorgeously
beautiful varieties are found in Jamaica: greenish-blue, with a
metallic luster, and rows of bright crimson spots, as if the design of
protective colors had been patterned after the flower shrubs of the
tropics.
[Illustration: IGUANA.]
The word _iguana_ is of Mexican origin, and rarely used in the Spanish
West Indies, but the animal itself is--for culinary purposes, though
the Haytian negroes do not go quite as far as the mongrels of Yucatan,
where iguana farmers fatten the defenseless reptiles with cornmeal, in
wickerwork baskets, that are brought to market as a New England
poultry fancier would fetch in a crateful of spring chickens. But,
prejudice aside, there is no harm in an iguana fricassee; the meat is
white and insipid, but takes the flavor of every spice, and is far
more digestible than such hyperborean delicacies as fried eels and
pork fritters. There are two species--one in eastern Cuba, with spines
all the way down to its tail-tip, and in Hayti a smaller one, with a
smoother tail, but with an exaggerated throat-bag and wattles like a
turkey gobbler.
_Lagartos vastecos_, or "tree alligators," the Cuban creoles call the
scampering forest dwellers, that attain a length of four feet, and can
stampede foreigners by leaping to terra firma with an _aplomb_ that
scatters the dry leaves in all directions. If chased, they will take
to water like frogs. They are first-class swimmers, their throat-bag
serving the purpose of a float, and once in the ripple of the stream
are hard to keep in sight, as they have a trick of keeping their legs
close to the body and navigating by means of their submerged tails.
Like the rainbow hues of the coryphene (miscalled dolphin), the bright
colors of the iguana soon fade after death, and the shriveled
greenish-brown specimens of our taxidermists give no idea of the
appearance of the living animal in the sunlight of its native land.
The _Iguana tuberculata_ (eastern Cuba) is velvet-green above, with
saffron flanks, ringed with blue, black, and brown stripes, and the
pet specimens, basking on the porch of a coffee planter, can challenge
comparison with the paroquets that flutter about the eaves of the
outbuildings like swifts around a martin box.
Cuba has also acclimatized a horned frog, and one species of those
curious half-lizards whose shapes may have suggested the dragon fables
of antiquity. The "basilisk" (_Cyclura carinata_) is only half a yard
long, but can erect its crest and raise its pronged tail in a manner
that will make a dog leap back in affright. It has no goiter-bag, but
the skin of its throat is elastic, and can be made to swell out like
that of the East Indian cobra, while its multiplex spines vibrate
ominously. The little monster is, nevertheless, one of the most
harmless reptiles of the tropics, and subsists on succulent leaves,
with occasional _entremets_ of small grubs and insects. In that case,
however, Nature has rather overdone its efforts at protective
ugliness, and the creoles kill the poor simulator of terrors as the
Mexican rustics would a horned toad.
A plurality of the zoölogical immigrants of the West Indies seem to
have come from Mexico, and it is a suggestive fact that the number of
reptiles steadily decreases from west to east. Cuba, with its western
headland approaching the east coast of Yucatan, thus came in for a
lion's share of lizards, tortoises, and ophidians.
Hayti, though only one fourth smaller, experienced a
seventy-five-per-cent discount, and all natives and travelers agree on
the _curiosum_ that there is _not a single species of serpent_ on the
island of Porto Rico. Trinidad, with an area of only fifteen hundred
square miles, but laved by the giant current of the Orinoco, boasts
twenty-eight species of land serpents, besides several pythons and
swamp vipers. The Trinidad museum of venomous ophidians does not,
however, include the dreaded fer-de-lance, which infests the woods
near Samana Bay on the south coast of San Domingo. The _Bothrops
lanceolatus_ is larger than a rattlesnake, and its bite, though not
always fatal, causes fearful inflammation, but its aggressive
disposition has been greatly exaggerated. Like most venomous serpents,
it is a sluggish brute, relying on its ability to crouch motionless
till its prey comes in range, then get in a snap bite and shrink back
to wait till the virus begins to take effect, and the victim, in its
fever spasms, betrays its helplessness by those eccentricities of
conduct which are apt to be misinterpreted by the dupes of the
"serpent-charm" superstition.
[Illustration: FER-DE-LANCE.]
The fer-de-lance is found also on the islands of Martinique and Santa
Lucia, where the natives counteract its virus with a decoction of
jungle hemlock, and the basis of its grewsome reputation seems to be
the fact that it does not warn the intruders of its haunts, after the
manner of the cobra or the rattlesnake, but flattens its coils and,
with slightly vibrating tail, awaits events. If the unsuspecting
traveler should show no sign of hostile intent he may be allowed to
pass unharmed within two yards of the coiled matador, but a closer
approach is apt to be construed as a challenge, and the _vivoron_,
suddenly rearing its ugly head, may scare the trespasser into some
motion of self-defense--he may lift his foot or brandish his stick in
a menacing manner. If he does he is lost. The lower coils will
expand, bringing the business end, neck and all, a few feet nearer;
the head "points," like a leveled rifle, then darts forward with
electric swiftness, guided by an unerring instinct for the selection
of the least-protected parts of the body.
And the vindictive brute is ready to repeat its bite. For a moment it
rears back, trembling with excitement, and, if felled by a blow of its
victim's stick, will snap away savagely at stumps and stones, or even,
like a wounded panther, at its own body.
A very curious adaptation of means to ends in the modification of the
virus is its swiftly fatal effect on birds. A stricken child, though
half crazed with fear, may run a distance of three miles before
paralysis begins to impede its motions; a squirrel will escape to its
nest in the top of the tree, only to come forth again and topple down
in its delirium; but a bird drops as if he had swallowed a dose of
prussic acid. Serpent virus is specifically a bird poison; in other
words, it acts instantaneously in cases where a few moments' delay
would defeat the purpose of the snap bite. Wounded rodents will not
run very far and can be relied upon to come out of their holes; but a
bitten bird, unless promptly paralyzed, would fly out of sight and
drop in distant thickets, beyond the ken of its destroyer. And of all
bird-killing reptiles the fer-de-lance is the most destructive. The
Spaniards have varied its bill of fare by importing the wherewithal of
an occasional rabbit stew, but during the preceding ages it had to
subsist on poultry, like a popular circuit preacher--the _hutia_ rat
having developed a talent for avoiding its haunts.
The alleged _horror naturalis_ of serpents is perhaps not more
deep-rooted than the aversion to cats; at all events, the West Indians
have overcome it sufficiently to prefer rat-killing snakes to
tabbies. In thousands of rancho cabins a pet serpent of the genus
_coluber_ may be seen gliding noiselessly along the rafters, or slip
through the crack of a floor plank to reach the penetralia of the
basement, where the death shriek of rodents soon after announces the
result of its activity. Aristocratic Creoles relegate it to their
stables, but the tenants of numerous backwood _casuchas_ furnish it a
cotton-stuffed bed box, and reward its services with a weekly dish of
milk. There are several species of large river serpents, and one true
boa, the Cuban _matapollos_, or chicken-killer, that attains a length
of eighteen feet, and has been known to use its supernumerary coils
for the purpose of cracking the ribs of a hound flying to the
assistance of the barnyard rooster.
In addition to the above-mentioned jungle tortoise there are several
land turtles of the genus _chlemmys_, and thousands of chelidonians
are annually caught on Samana Bay, southern Porto Rico, St. Vincent,
the Isle of Pines, and the north coast of Matanzas, Cuba. Those of
Santiago Bay have gradually been exterminated, but a large number of
West Indian fishing waters are practically inexhaustible. A specialist
like Agassiz might haul nondescripts from scores of Haytian coast
rivers, and the angle fishers of the Cuban sierra brooks can hook an
equally interesting reproduction of an Appalachian species.
"Some of our companions had to eke out a haul with crawfish," says the
traveler Esterman, "but our own string of sundries included a puzzle
for naturalists. We had caught some twenty brook trout, absolutely
indistinguishable from the species found in the head waters of the
Tennessee River. Where did they come from? Had they crossed the Gulf
of Mexico and ascended the rapids of half a hundred rivers, or had
Nature copied her own handiwork in such details as the small dark
dots below each red spot, and the occasional breaks in the lines of
the silver-white keel streaks?"
The perch of the forest rivers include several nest-building
varieties, and the sportsmen of Kingston, Jamaica, often amuse
themselves with target practice at a species of rock fish that come
clear out of the water and bask, like coots, on the harbor cliffs.
With every mile farther south the number and variety of the finned
aborigines become more infinite, and the fishermen of the estuary of
San Juan de Porto Rico alone catch pompanos, mullets, cavalli, red
snappers, chiquillos (a kind of sardelles), sea bass, dorados,
skip-jack, angelfish, skate, ray, sheepshead, garfish, torpedo-fish,
devilfish or giant ray, cobia, hogfish, croakers, shark, and
coryphenes.
[Illustration: FLYING FISH (_Exocoetus volitans_); FLYING GURNARD OR
FLYING ROBIN (_Cephalacanthus volitans_). (From Baskett's Story of the
Fishes.)]
The tiger of the sea, the great white shark, occasionally visits the
harbor waters of Cuba, and has been known to seize barefooted peons,
surf-bathing horses in the next neighborhood of Morro Castle, and drag
them under so suddenly that their companions were unable to account
for their disappearance till the foam of the breakers became flecked
with blood.
[Illustration: BUTTERFLY FISH.]
That champion of marine man-eaters is as smooth as a hypocrite, and
hides its double row of horrible fangs under a slippery nose, while
the little butterfly fish tries its best to disguise its helplessness
with a crest of spiny fins. Its length rarely exceeds four inches, and
it can be handled with impunity, but its spines are just rigid enough
to entangle it in tufts of gulf weed, and in company of equally tiny
sea horses and goldfish, it can often be seen in the aquariums of the
Jamaica seaport towns.
[_To be continued._]
A STUDY OF LUIGI LUCCHENI (ASSASSIN OF THE EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA).
BY CESARE LOMBROSO.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--LUIGI LUCCHENI.]
There is not an enlightened person in the world who does not deplore
the anarchist crime committed last summer by Luccheni in Geneva upon
the unfortunate Empress of Austria. With grief is associated the duty
of inquiring what could have been the origin of a misdeed which
besides being cruel had the vice of being absurd, falling as it did
upon a poor woman near the tomb, who was ready to welcome death, and
who had no political influence, by an assassin who had not suffered
any offense from her or from her government, and who further had the
impudence to boast of his crime as if it had been a heroic act.
We begin our inquiry by seeking for an explanation of the act by means
of a study of the person of the murderer in conformity with the rules
of the anthropological school.
Luigi Luccheni is the illegitimate son of a Parmesan servant now
living in America, and her master, who lived in the Parmesan
territory, a priest, unbalanced and intemperate, who sent her when she
was pregnant to Paris to be confined. There she abandoned her newborn
babe to a foundling asylum. The child was sent thence to his native
country and placed, till he was nine years old, with a Parmesan family
named Monici, of whom the father was a shoemaker, very poor and
intemperate, and the mother immoral.
After he was nine years old he was put with a family named Nicasi,
good people, but very poor--peasants, or rather mendicants, so that he
too became a mendicant, wandering with his comrades through the
streets and pilfering till he was thirteen years old. It appears from
what Dr. Guerini, of Parma, writes me that during this time he had
epileptic fits. When twelve years old he went to school, where he
appeared bright but impulsive, and on one occasion in his anger
destroyed the portrait of the king.
From the age of fourteen to that of nineteen he was a servant, and had
two masters, and wandered in Liguria, Switzerland, and Austria, where
he was arrested, sent back to his country, and prohibited from showing
himself in the east. He then entered the military service, where he
conducted himself very well, incurring only light punishments for
assaulting a comrade and for helping a sergeant get out of the
barracks at night. He was so liked by his superiors and comrades that
when, three years afterward, in 1897, he left the army, Captain the
Prince de Vera engaged him as his servant. In this service he
exhibited great affection for children, and, what is strange, he was
so good a monarchist that he was scandalized that at the commemoration
of the deceased Cavolotti, in Naples, the orator was permitted to
praise him as a political man without interruption from the delegate.
One day, irritated because he had been denied some permission, he
abruptly took his leave, declaring that he was not born to be a
servant, and returned to Switzerland to work as a marble polisher. But
even from Switzerland he kept continually imploring his old employer
to take him back, declaring in a letter which revealed symptoms of a
persistent delirium that "he probably would not receive him again
because he did not go to mass"; which indicates substantially that he
had not that repugnance for the anti-anarchical life of a servant
which he manifested previously and afterward.[O]
[Footnote O: It appears that he afterward made the strange request for
an anarchist to be appointed guard of the prison, and was irritated
when it was denied. (See A. Gautier, Le procès Luccheni. Vienna,
1899.)]
Whether all at once or not he became an extreme anarchist. He signed
and composed anarchist hymns. Suspected by his comrades of not being
zealous enough, and also perhaps of being a spy, he decided to strike
a blow against some prince; he chose the empress as his victim
possibly because he had suffered his first annoyance in Austria. He,
who had never killed a fly, had a rude instrument prepared--a file;
practiced for a considerable time, perhaps a month, at striking with
it, and having committed the crime, tried to escape. When stopped by
two citizens he did not resist, and behaved in a very different way
from common criminals, therein exhibiting a tinge of insanity. He, for
example, although he knew French very well, denied it and demanded an
interpreter in the interrogations. He sang and laughed continually,
and was glad that he had dealt his victim a good blow, and that he had
struck deep with the instrument, boasting that he had used a file
instead of a dagger. He was, besides, solicitous of publicity,
declaring to the reporters and the judges that he had done the deed
all alone, that he had left his captain to accomplish his idea, that
he had been an anarchist for thirteen years, etc. In two ungrammatical
and very long letters to the journal _Don Marzio_, in Naples, chosen
evidently because he had seen it at his master's, he declared that he
was not a criminal born, as Lombroso would have it, nor a madman, and
that he had not been incited by misery but by conviction, because, if
all would do as he had done, middle-class society would soon
disappear. He knew that this single assassination would be of no
avail, but he had, nevertheless, committed it for an example.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--EXTRACT FROM A LETTER BY LUCCHENI.]
He wrote to the President of the Swiss Confederation that he would
rather be tried at Lucerne, because the death penalty was in force
there, and repeated the statement to the judges; he wrote to his
master that he was more worthy of him than ever; he replied to the
reporters and the judges who reproached him with having killed a
helpless woman, that as for that, if she had been a child, but a
prince, he would have killed her all the same. At another time he
said, in a wild way: "I killed her because she did not work; whoever
does not work should not eat, and I was not going to work for her"--a
reason which would be as good for the slaughter of several million
persons.
Curious and important is the remark of Luccheni that "Crispi would not
have killed her because he was a thief"; an evident proof of the
complete lack of moral sense in anarchists,[P] who like primitive men
confound the crime with the deed, and regard criminality as a sort of
merit, a seal of fraternity; which demonstrates that the anarchistic
practice, if not its theory, is an equivalence of crimes.
[Footnote P: See my Delitto politico, Part III, and Gli Anarcici,
second edition.]
When asked if he had never committed blood-crimes, he replied that he
had never had anything to do with courts, not even as a witness--which
was found to be true--but "I entertained the idea this time, and acted
upon it."
Luccheni is a man of medium stature, about 1.63 metre, with very
thick, light chestnut hair, stout, with dark-gray, half-closed eyes,
roundish ears, heavy eyebrows, voluminous cheek bones and jaw
prognatic, low forehead, very brachycephalic (cephalic index 88). He
has, therefore, a number of characteristics of degeneration common to
epileptics and insane criminals. On the other hand, his handwriting,
with its minute characters, especially in the writing of past years,
indicates a mild feminine disposition, with little energy of
character. This is especially seen in an autograph of 1896, which was
procured for me by Dr. Guerini, who got it from his patient (see Fig.
2). This characteristic, which was extremely conspicuous in Caserio
when he was near his crime, was also apparent in the assailant of
General Rocha. I have likewise observed it to be very conspicuous in
epileptics and hysterical persons; and it corresponds, according as
they are in their psychical spasm or out of it, with a real double
personality provoked by their disease. In one, as I have shown in
_L'Uomo Delinquente_, they write signatures that cover a whole page in
their larger diameter, while the signature in the normal state is
often smaller than the average (see Fig. 3).
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--MACROGRAPHIC AND MICROGRAPHIC WRITING BY THE
SAME EPILEPTIC.]
The same double personality that is apparent in the writing is
attested in the psychology. We have seen that Luccheni was kind to
children, that he was a good servant, characteristics quite opposed to
the anarchistic nature, and a genial companion; a man who in Africa
was enthusiastically fond of military life; who, a little while
before, when he was in the service of the captain, had expressed
extreme monarchical sentiments; and finally, when he had become an
anarchist, again asked his master to be restored to his service. This
double personality is another of the essential characteristics of
hysteria and epilepsy.
I have recently studied an epileptoid degenerate who has a sound mind,
and, at least in his normal state, is quiet and gentle. But as soon as
he has taken hardly more than ninety grammes of alcohol (96° proof) he
becomes a wild anarchist, with fierce impulses and hallucinations, of
which he has no recollection two hours afterward, or even charges them
to his comrades. In this case a double personality is revealed, the
demonstration of which is completed by alterations of the visual field
and of the touch.
We have, then, in Luccheni a degenerate and probably epileptic person
descended from an alcoholic father. Although he affirms that he is not
insane or a criminal born, he is a little of both, for he is epileptic
and hysterical, so that his denial is already a beginning of a proof
of disease. Luccheni also confirms what I have tried to demonstrate in
my _Delitto politico_--that the most frequent organic cause of similar
morbid impulses of a political character is hystero-epilepsy; for not
only do the declarations of some of his countrymen point to epilepsy,
and the characteristics of degeneration in the skull confirm it, but
his inheritance from an alcoholic father and that impulsiveness and
that double personality, which make him pass from the gentlest of men
to the cruelest, and which is reflected in the macrography alternating
with the micrography of the intervals between the spasms, are
accumulative evidence of it.
I have demonstrated the hysterical and epileptic basis in the
anarchists and regicides Felicot, Monges, and Caserio, and
particularly in a vagabond anarchist, full of cranial anomalies, who
told me, when I questioned him concerning political reforms, "Do not
speak to me of them, for as soon as I begin to think about them I am
taken with a vertigo and fall down"; so that it seems to me possible
to establish a psycho-epileptic equivalent in extreme political
innovators, an equivalent which is further manifest in their vanity,
rising sometimes to megalomania, in their intermittent geniality, and
especially in their great impulsiveness. There was also latent in
Luccheni an indirect disposition to suicide, which I have found in
other political criminals, like Oliva, Nobiling, and Passananti,[Q]
who, having conceived a dislike for the king, made an attempt on his
life; and especially in Henry, who rejected the defense of his
advocate and his mother based on the insanity of his father, remarking
that it was the advocate's business to defend, his to die; and in that
Roumanian who was photographed in a portrait that I have reproduced,
in the act of committing suicide.[R] Luccheni, too, believed he would
be condemned to death, and was much disappointed when he learned that
there was no such penalty in the canton where he committed the crime.
[Footnote Q: See my Delitto politico, 1890.]
[Footnote R: Ibid.]
It may have been morbid vanity that prompted the exclamation he was
heard to make, "I wanted to kill some great person, so as to get my
name in the papers" (Gautier).
But while an organic, individual cause was good for a third in
Luccheni's crime, he was much more influenced by the atmosphere in
which he lived. An illegitimate child, left in one of those nurseries
which are real nests of crime and graver disorders, then consigned to
a very poor and not always moral family of mendicant habits, having
learned nothing except to beg and wander, he found such modes of
subsistence as he could (notice the uncertainty and plurality of his
occupations, indicating lack of assiduity--servant, soldier, marble
polisher, and in the beginning peasant); he found, we might say, as
the most constant condition the infelicity which radiated around him
from every quarter, and, reflecting the worst, urged him to this way
of suicide. We should recollect, too, what Frattini said: "Was it
hunger brought me to this?" and the anarchist whom Hamon speaks of:
"When I began to question the unfortunates of the hospital, it had a
frightful effect on me; I comprehended the need of solidarity and
became an anarchist"; and as another one said to the same Hamon: "I
became an anarchist when I saw my comrades begging for work with their
faces bathed in tears, and was indignant over it." Caserio wept when
he thought of the lot of his Lombard companions in misery. These
criminals by passion, by altruism, are, as Burdeau wrote, veritable
philanthropic assassins. They kill recklessly for the love of men.
Epilepsy and hysteria in Luccheni are explained by his abrupt passage
from one condition to the other, and by the conversion of factional
passion in him into a criminal act. But there are epileptics and
criminals everywhere; yet persons thus disordered in Norway and Sweden
are not transformed into anarchists; nor in Switzerland and England,
whither people resort from all parts of the world, and where, when
anarchy shows itself, it is like a meteor falling to the earth from
the extra-planetary regions--wholly isolated and opposed to the world
around it.
The most important cause of this transformation is the misery that
weighs upon our unfortunate country, evidence of which comes in from
every side even upon those who are not miserable themselves. If even
in the latest days Luccheni had been living comfortably, he could not,
with the excessively morbid altruism that dominated him, have failed
to feel this misery, which is so profound and general in Italy.
Not much erudition is required to demonstrate the immense economical
embarrassment of Italy as contrasted with other countries when it is
known that we pay about five hundred times its value for salt, that
bread is growing dearer every day, and that the amount consumed
diminishes one tenth every year in these lands.
It was, therefore, with justice that Scarfoglio said in explaining the
origin of anarchism, "A good fifth of the population of Italy are
still living in a savage state, dwelling in cabins that the Papuans
would not live in, accommodating themselves to a food which the
Shillooks would refuse, having a vision and an idea of the world not
much more ample than that of the Kaffirs, and running over the land
desiring and seeking servitude."
It may be added that it is because of this condition--that is, of the
defective civilization that results from it--that there is everywhere
a weakened revulsion and diminished horror at blood-crimes, so that
there are now sixty homicides for every one hundred thousand
inhabitants.
We may learn from this what the true remedies should be. The idea of
conquering anarchy by killing anarchists is not valid, because every
epileptic has another ready to take his place, because anarchistic
crimes are to a great extent simply indirect suicides, and because
anarchists think as little of their own lives as of the life of
another. It is rather necessary to change the direction of the disease
by changing the miserable conditions in which it originates.
Not for humanity, therefore, not for exalted social theories, but in
our direct interest, we ought to make a complete change. The
suppression of a dozen anarchists is like killing a thousand microbes
without disinfecting the surroundings that contain milliards of them;
it is that we should look, if we want to be better, to breaking up the
large estates, and ameliorating the conditions of agriculture and
operative industry, and this in the interest of the governing classes.
Typhus, cholera, and plague, it is true, attack chiefly the poor, but
from these the contagion extends also to the rich; and from the
unhealthy habitations in which the rich man permits beggars to crowd
and suffer, the miasm, as if in revenge, is propagated to marble
palaces.
That imbecile idea of some European nations, who, instead of
disinfecting the medium, find it better to put down the doctors who
propose remedies, can not make itself at home except among peoples who
are destined to perish.[S]--_Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from the Archives di Psichiatria._
[Footnote S: To the charges made against me by M. Gautier (Le procès
Luccheni, 1899) of having formulated a diagnosis without seeing the
patient, which was therefore inexact, and of having described
characteristics of degeneration which did not exist, I answer with the
pages of Forel, certainly the most eminent alienist of our time, who
had him under his eyes during the whole process, and whose diagnosis
differs but little from mine.]
TENDENCIES IN FRENCH LITERATURE.[T]
SUGGESTED BY PROFESSOR DOWDEN'S RECENT BOOK.
BY PELHAM EDGAR, PH. D.
[Footnote T: A History of French Literature. By Edward Dowden, D.
Lit., LL. D., etc. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1897.]
"To present Victor Hugo in a few pages is to carve a colossus on a
cherry stone." Thus Professor Dowden prefaces his ten admirable pages
on the great French poet; and with equal appropriateness we might
assign the phrase as a motto for the whole undertaking. The subject is
too vast to cope with adequately in the limits of a slender volume,
the tendencies too complex; and the appeal from human interest, which
since the days of Sainte-Beuve and Taine has formed such an important
element in scientific criticism, had to be abandoned in favor of
generalized views of literary conditions and tendencies necessarily
abstract or impersonal in character. Yet, despite these evident
restrictions which the requirements of his task imposed upon him,
Professor Dowden has produced a work of extraordinary merit, a
masterpiece indeed in its kind. If we were not assured that everything
which the eminent critic writes is its own sufficient justification,
we might be inclined to question the necessity of the present volume,
in view of the painstaking and conscientious treatise that Mr.
Saintsbury gave to the public some sixteen years ago, and which has
deservedly remained until the present time the most reliable English
text-book upon the subject of French literature. With no desire to
disparage Mr. Saintsbury's scholarly contribution, the present work
does in truth supply a need which the earlier book, in spite of its
abundant merit, failed to satisfy. It is not harsh criticism to state
that Mr. Saintsbury's volume, crammed as it is with a plethora of
dates and titles, is at best a compendium for convenient reference,
and consequently quite unreadable as a book. Professor Dowden, on the
other hand, has conquered the dry-as-dust problem with admirable
skill, and the charm of his diction and the easy sequence of his ideas
lead the reader insensibly on to the close of a delightful volume. Nor
is the book lacking in instructive value of a highly reliable kind,
for, in addition to an intimate knowledge of French criticism,
Professor Dowden is evidently familiar at first hand with all the more
important works of which he treats, and not infrequently proffers
fertile suggestions upon debated questions.
Having avowed, therefore, a genuine admiration of Professor Dowden's
book, will it be thought a graceless task if, with the proverbial
perversity of critics, I endeavor to point out here and there
questions of importance that may seem to have merited more attention
than the author was perhaps able to afford to them within his
restricted space?
The mediæval portion of Professor Dowden's book is valuable not for
its originality, but rather as the reflection of advanced modern
criticism in France. Therefore, in this brief review the mediæval
period may be neglected, and turning to the second book, which deals
with the sixteenth century, the first writer of capital importance
whom we encounter is Clément Marot. The author has justly indicated
the decrepit conditions of poetry in Marot's youth in the degenerate
hands of the Rhétoriqueurs, and also the powerful attraction which the
allegorizing mania exercised on the poet's early work. His later
manner is justly emphasized, and his prowess in the lighter familiar
forms of verse; but it is only by inference that we apprehend the
comparative neglect of his work until the later classical reaction
restored him to favor. Professor Dowden, indeed, throughout his book
has hardly conveyed a proper idea of the reactionary shocks by which
French literature has invariably advanced. Thus the Pléiade, in the
enthusiasm of their rupture with middle-age traditions, were blind to
the Renaissance elements in Marot's work, and seeking as they did to
elevate poetry to nobler themes and a nobler manner, his easy familiar
grace was distasteful to them.
Rabelais, of course, is another "colossus on a cherry stone," and the
purport of his message is epitomized in a few luminous sentences. The
elements of contrast in the man, and his full-blooded joy in living,
which was the sign-manual of the Renaissance upon him, are indicated
as follows: "Below his laughter lay wisdom; below his orgy of
grossness lay a noble ideality; below the extravagances of his
imagination lay the equilibrium of a spirit sane and strong. The life
that was in him was so abounding and exultant that it broke all dikes
and dams; and laughter for him needed no justification, it was a part
of this abounding life. After the mediæval asceticism and the
intellectual bondage of scholasticism, life in Rabelais has its vast
outbreak and explosion; he would be no fragment of humanity, but a
complete man."
Proceeding to the Pléiade, we find its doctrine admirably enunciated,
and one point of literary history is well brought out--namely, that to
the Pléiade, and not to Malherbe alone, belongs the honor of
establishing the bases of classicism in France, the difference chiefly
residing in the fact that the programme of the Pléiade was one of
expansion in matters of language and prosody, whereas it is precisely
in these points that Malherbe and Boileau are concerned with
restrictive refinements. Again Professor Dowden, following perhaps in
the wake of M. Brunetière, characterizes the conditions of the time as
being unfavorable to lyrical expansiveness. "Ronsard's genius was
lyrical and elegiac, but the tendencies of a time when the great
affair was the organization of social life, and as a consequence the
limitation of individual and personal passions, were not favorable to
the development of lyrical poetry." These words are ripe with
suggestiveness, and duly weighed, they afford the true solution of the
oratorical and impersonal character of French literature for two long
centuries, when the social _genres_ in prose and poetry usurped
dominion over the national mind. With our eye then upon the social
conditions in France, the often-quoted words "Malherbe a tué le
lyrisme" mean nothing more than that he struck a prostrate body.
Before turning from the sixteenth century it should perhaps be
observed that in discussing the comedy of that period the author might
have amplified his statement of Italian influences by at least a
reference to the _Commedia dell' Arte_ which we find established in
France in 1576, with its traditional repertory of stock characters,
whose antiquity ascends to the venerable times of the early Latin
farces, and whose survival the work of Molière, nay, even of
Beaumarchais, will adequately attest. The last great figure that
greets us in the sixteenth century is Montaigne, and we feel a sense
of disappointed curiosity when he is relentlessly dismissed at the end
of the five pages to which he is entitled here. This singularly modern
doubter still smiles inscrutably at us through the misty centuries
that flow between us, and we would prefer to loiter with him by the
way rather than pass him with a curt nod of recognition. But Montaigne
is more important in the history of thought than in the history of
literature, so, crossing the threshold of the sixteenth century, we
meet the great lawgiver Malherbe, a Moses who really entered the
promised land. Professor Dowden is eminently just and appreciative in
his judgment of this pedantic and unsympathetic figure, estimating his
merits and impartially noting his defects without presuming in his
character as literary historian to stamp them as such. Malherbe
undeniably eliminated personality from poetry. Shall we regard this as
a defect? A century's masterpieces of objective art survive to say us
nay, and if the critic's personal sympathies sway him to the side of
lyric eloquence, the historian of literature observing without
prejudice judges without rancor. "The processes of Malherbe's art were
essentially oratorical; the lyrical cry is seldom audible in his
verse; it is the poetry of eloquence thrown into studied stanzas. But
the greater poetry of the seventeenth century in France, its odes, its
satires, its epistles, its noble dramatic scenes, and much of its
prose literature, are of the nature of oratory; and for the progress
of such poetry, and even of such prose, Malherbe prepared a highway."
And now in the wake of Malherbe so thick do the great names throng
that I must perforce touch swiftly only on what seems to demand
amplification rather than dwell at length, as it would be much less
difficult to do, on the many admirable views the book contains. And
first as regards the literary significance of René Descartes.
Professor Dowden places himself in accord with the customary views of
criticism in assigning to Descartes a preponderating influence on the
literary art of his century. "The spirit of Descartes's work was in
harmony with that of his time, and reacted upon literature. He sought
for general truths by the light of reason; he made clearness a
criterion of truth; he proclaimed man a spirit; he asserted the
freedom of the will. The art of the classical period sought also for
general truths, and subordinated imagination to reason. It turned away
from ingenuities, obscurities, mysteries; it was essentially
spiritualist; it represented the crises and heroic victories of the
will." This sounds reasonable, and is indeed in large measure in
accordance with the actual conditions observable in the seventeenth
century. Yet there is no doubt that the literature of Louis XIV is
more intimately penetrated by the ascetic spirit of Jansenism as
conveyed in the famous doctrines of Port-Royal, and it is to
Jansenism, and emphatically not to Cartesianism, that the literature
of the seventeenth century owes that aspect of grandeur and moral
serenity which characterizes it. To quote Brunetière: "Pendant plus de
cinquante ans, la conscience française, si l'on peut ainsi dire,
incarnée dans le jansénisme, et rendue par lui à elle-même, a fait
contre la frivolité naturelle de la race le plus grand effort qu'elle
eut fait depuis les premiers temps de la réforme ou du calvinisme."
Indeed, the tenaciously religious Jansenist spirit of the "grand
siècle" would have been universal were it not that Molière and La
Fontaine were apathetically indifferent, nay, sometimes actively
hostile, to the general enthusiasm.
Let us, however, examine in all brevity the fundamental doctrines of
Cartesianism. The terms are familiar enough. The identity of being and
of thought. The objectivity of science. The all-powerfulness of
reason. Progress to infinity. Optimism at all times. We can not fail
to observe the significance of these categories, and how they contain
the germs of almost every great subject debated by the leviathians of
the eighteenth century. Yet the nation struggled long before it had
strength to shake the incubus of Jansenism from its back, and the
stimulating work of Bayle had to be supported by events of actual
political significance before the stringent and constraining dogmas of
catholicism relaxed their grasp on thought and conduct. The revocation
of the Edict of Nantes, the Quietistic movement with its unseemly
attendant episcopal quarrels, and finally the actual persecution of
the Jansenists, all pointed inevitably in one direction, and
stimulating the anti-religious sentiment and opening the flood gates
to immorality, induced a potent reaction of Cartesianism in the
fundamental theories of the eighteenth century.
In his treatment of Corneille, Professor Dowden "opens his hands only
sufficiently to let out a portion of the truth he holds," but what he
says is admirable to a degree. Of his diction he writes: "His mastery
in verse of a masculine eloquence is unsurpassed; his dialogue of
rapid statement and swift reply is like a combat with Roman short
swords; in memorable single lines he explodes, as it were, a vast
charge of latent energy, and effects a clearance for the progress of
his action." This is well said, but hardly indicates how Corneille
soared so often in the region of Spanish bombast, or crept among the
insipid flowers of Italian preciosity; defects from which Racine's
severer Greek taste held him free.
It is refreshing when we come to Boileau to find an English mind
impartial enough to do justice to the much-abused "lawgiver of
Parnassus." Criticism has for so long deplored his narrowness that we
relish an encomium on his good sense. But beyond this there is an
opinion which the general reader would be reluctant to admit, but
which Professor Dowden has had the courage and the discernment to
enforce, when he writes as follows: "But for Paris itself, its various
aspects, its life, its types, its manners, he had the eye and the
precise rendering of a realist in art; his faithful objective touch is
like that of a Dutch painter." Let the incredulous merely turn to the
satires to appreciate the scope and truth of the remark. It is
difficult to imagine that a more brilliant and effective account of
Boileau's work and influence could be presented within so limited a
space; yet might not the author have added that whereas Malherbe is
the representative of the aristocratic element in literature, Boileau
is the first great incarnation in modern times of the bourgeois
spirit?
With regard to La Fontaine it need only be observed that Professor
Dowden recognizes what French critics with repeated insistence
emphasize, the cunning harmonies of his verse.
Much space is of right devoted to Molière, who with La Fontaine has
ever been a stumbling-block to English criticism. Professor Dowden
voices our national feeling in refusing to consider him as a poet,
preferring to emphasize his profound and healthy philosophy of life.
_Tartufe_ he considers to be an attack on religious hypocrisy merely.
Is not the interpretation perhaps correct which regards it as an
attack on the intolerance and Puritanism of all religion, even the
most sincere?
Once again, in dealing with Racine, the author shows that subtle
discernment in which his criticism abounds. He penetrates to the heart
of the secret reason for the cabals that harassed Racine in the later
years of his dramatic activity, and which doubtless had their
influence in enforcing his retirement. Have we ever sufficiently
realized that Boileau, Molière, and Racine were waging constant war
against a rebirth of the _précieux_ spirit which threatened not only
society with ridiculousness but literature with ruin? Such, indeed,
was the case, and in the eyes of the super-refined coterie that
grouped itself round the Duchesse de Bouillon, Boileau and his
fellow-workers were innovators of a dangerous and revolutionary order.
Does not this idea carry us far from our preconceived notions of the
narrow conservatism that dominated the leaders of classical thought?
Referring to the disastrous check of Racine's _Phèdre_, the author
writes: "It is commonly said that Racine wrote in the conventional and
courtly taste of his own day. In reality his presentation of tragic
passions in their terror and their truth shocked the aristocratic
proprieties which were the mode. He was an innovator, and his audacity
at once conquered and repelled." The point of view may seem extreme to
us, and this vaunted realism may show pale and weakly when contrasted
with the grossness of much of the realism that prevails at the present
day, or with the graphic directness of the best examples of the type.
But the words ring true if we are willing to accept the refined
psychological realism of Racine as equally worthy to the title with
the physiological naturalism of our more scientific age. Our whole
conception of Racine's art falls into line with this view, and his
constant solicitude for an easy and natural intrigue in the structure
of his tragedies may be brought home to the same healthy impulse of
his mind. Was it not Faguet who maintained that so natural indeed were
the processes of his plots that a happy ending would have alone been
needed to make any of his tragedies, with some added modicum of wit,
in all essential features a comedy that Molière might have penned? Mr.
Saintsbury, on the other hand, in dealing with Racine is seemingly
swayed by some innate prejudice, or he could hardly have denied the
poet a high moral character, merely granting him the possession of
great shrewdness and discernment. True passion, he remarks, was not
popular with the crowd, but "love-making, on the contrary, would draw,
and love-making accordingly is the staple of all his plays." It is
against this view, and against Mr. Saintsbury's further opinion that
the tragedy of Racine is at the furthest remove from an imitation of
Nature, that Professor Dowden makes a strong and timely protest.
While applauding, however, the value of such novel opinions in English
criticism at least, we may suspect that in his desire to clinch his
arguments the author may have driven the nail too ruthlessly home. And
so it would appear when we seek in vain for any statement which
contains the shadow of a justification for the existence of that
powerful _précieux_ spirit against which the greater classicists
rebelled. We are too inclined to take Molière's word for it that they
were solely ridiculous, forgetting the explicit reserve of his
preface--"aussi les véritables précieuses auraient tort de se piquer
lorsqu'on joue les ridicules qui les imitent mal." So let us then give
the _Précieuses_ credit for what they did confer to the advantage of
letters amid so much folly, and, weighing the matter carefully, their
gift to literature amounts to this: First, amid much linguistic and
metaphorical pedantry they were free from the equally damaging and
ridiculous pedantry of a labored erudition which pervaded the
literature of the day. In the second place, whether we regard it as an
advantage or the contrary, their influence made directly _against_ the
licentiousness of the _esprit gaulois_, and _for_ politeness and
decency in expression; and as a third count in their favor can we
doubt that straining as they did to express the _nuances_ of sentiment
and gallantry, they were instrumental in stimulating that ardor of
mental analysis which is of all things the distinguishing mark of the
century? A word finally might have been said with a view to
elucidating the inherent divergence of the _précieux_ spirit from our
own Euphuism, from the Marinism of Italy, or the Gongorism of Spain; a
divergence due certainly to the fact that the _précieuses_ allied
themselves to, and accordingly strengthened, that spirit of social
coherence so characteristic of the life and letters of the time in
France, whereas the influences of similar movements abroad were more
transitory, inasmuch as in some degree more isolated and tentative.
The chapter devoted to the seventeenth century closes with a critical
review of the series of great preachers and theologians who have left
their mark more or less upon the development of thought, while their
literary significance can be comparatively slighted in a history of
this kind; and the chapter which discusses the transition to the
eighteenth century broaches questions of such large issue that an
exhaustive treatment of them was not to be expected. Such are the
memorable quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and the
_philosophe_ idea of perfectibility and human progress. The chapter
closes with an account of the great protagonist and pioneer in the
warfare against Christianity, the patient, plodding, dangerous Pierre
Bayle. So effectually was his teaching absorbed by Voltaire and the
encyclopedists that he is read no longer; but low as his flame has
sunk, he remains one of the beacons lighting us over the lurid
threshold of the century of strife.
We are in safe hands when it is Professor Dowden who guides us on the
highways and bypaths of the eighteenth century, but by very reason of
his accurate knowledge of the ground whereon he treads we are
disappointed when he fails to point out to us some special feature of
the landscape. Beauties we could hardly hope to meet with on our
journey. There was not sap enough in that arid soil to nourish
flowers, or send a flush of living green over hill and valley. The
most serious omission is to have left entirely out of account the
exceedingly interesting reactionary influences that leaped back and
forth across the Channel when Marivaux's romances were devoured in
England, and Richardson's _Pamela_ was in every French pocket large
enough to hold it. It is in itself still an open question which of
these two authors exerted the initial influence on the other, although
eighteenth-century criticism invariably held that in _Marianne_
Richardson found his inspiration.
A great deal of interest attaches to an explanation of the causes of
Le Sage's decline in popularity, and this question likewise Professor
Dowden has not adequately presented. Le Sage saw the imperative need
of mediating between the stilted heroic romances _à la Scudéry_ and
the grotesque travesties of Scarron and Furetière. Inspired by the
picaroon romances of Spain, he produced, amid much inferior work, _Gil
Blas_, a masterpiece in its kind. The plot is loose-jointed, the
composition _nil_, but the book teems with such verve and vigor that
it still pulses with an abounding life when Marivaux and Richardson
slumber on our shelves. Yet we must admit that the characters are
vagabonds, and the sentiment not without coarseness. Love when not
slighted is ridiculed, and metaphysical analysis and moral
disquisitions are both refreshingly absent from the book. Hence Le
Sage's claims on our consideration as the progenitor of naturalism in
romance, but on this account also the reactionary wave against which
he had to buffet in his declining years. Marivaux, on the other hand,
saw the need of mediating between the stilted heroics of Scudéry and
what he deemed the ignoble realism of Le Sage. In this resolve he
elevated the characters to _bourgeois_ rank, and abandoning the empty
love rhetoric of the old romances, he brought the acuteness of an
analytic mind to bear on the exploitation of the tender passion; and a
conscientious though desultory effort is made to study subtle phases
of character in the light of surrounding circumstances. Despite the
artificial _précieuse_ qualities of his style, and the unfinished
condition of his novels, Marivaux enjoyed an extraordinary popularity
in his day. The same problem repeats itself on a larger scale when we
transfer our attention to Richardson, whose works, translated and
popularized by Prévost, were read with the greatest avidity in France.
Were not these such influences as Professor Dowden's profound
knowledge of English literature would have qualified him to illustrate
with more precision than has yet been brought to bear upon them; and
was it not in point of fact almost imperative for him to deal
seriously with such an important theme in the international literary
history of nations?
The pages which Professor Dowden devotes to Voltaire, although
brilliant, are not sufficiently suggestive of the extraordinary
influence which that most celebrated of writers exercised. It was in
no uncritical spirit that Mr. Morley wrote: "The existence, character,
and career of this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a
new and prodigious era. The peculiarities of his individual genius
changed the mind and spiritual conformation of France, and in a less
degree of the whole of the West, with as far-spreading and invincible
an effect as if the work had been wholly done, as it was actually
aided, by the sweep of deep-lying collective forces. A new type of
belief, and of its shadow, disbelief, was stamped by the impression of
his character and work into the intelligence and feeling of his own
and modern times." Nor will Villemain be accused of rapt enthusiasm
when he writes, "C'est le plus puissant renovateur des esprits depuis
Luther, et l'homme qui a mis le plus en commun les idées de l'Europe
par sa gloire, sa longue vie, son merveilleux esprit et son
universelle clarté." The strangest fact to contemplate with regard to
this unrivaled popularity, this astonishing range of influence, is
that it truly constitutes an apotheosis of superficiality. And this in
no disparaging spirit of Carlylese disdain for clear ideas around
which hang no mists of oracular obscurity, but rather by way of
tribute to a heart that beat responsively to human suffering, to a
mind keenly sensible of human wrongs. Voltaire rejected the subtleties
of metaphysical thought, was indeed incapable of attaining to the
heights of speculative contemplation; he was only preternaturally
sensitive to the moral defects of this imperfect world, and determined
to bend all his efforts to the alleviation of injustice and of crime.
As a further concession to his superficiality as a thinker we may
frankly admit his incapacity to originate new ideas. His mind indeed
was extraordinarily receptive, his intellectual curiosity unlimited,
and hostile critics have availed themselves of this very receptivity
as a medium of attack upon his originality. They are free to pursue
him on that score, but it does not appreciably detract from his
greatness in the eyes of posterity to recognize that Bayle before him
had preached the doctrine of toleration; that Montesquieu had
advocated the abolition of torture and of slavery, and the sanctity of
social institutions, or that Boileau forsooth had upheld the dignity
of classical formulas in matters literary. It is rather in the
mobility of his mind and in the impressionability of his temperament
that we should seek for an explanation of a philosophical disturbance
in his ideas. It is not an actual mental confusion that I refer to,
for his diction is never more limpid than in the expression of his
easy personal beliefs; but a certain intellectual inconsistency in his
habits of thought makes it impossible for us to hold him down to any
definite set of opinions which we can regard as a genuine confession
of faith. And this is a vital characteristic of skeptical minds of his
stamp, swiftly receptive, and as open as the day to each new
intellectual impulse as it arises. Thus we must attribute to his
capacity for mental development, as well as to the narrowness of his
philosophical range, the many contradictions which his writings
exhibit in such matters of intellectual belief as are wont to give a
permanent bias of thought to minds less volatile and alert. Are we to
regard him as an optimist or a pessimist? a believer in immortality or
devotee of annihilation? a fatalist or spiritualist in history? an
advocate of free will or determinism? We can not say, and M. Faguet
has amused himself with supporting each of these opinions in turn upon
its appropriate text, whose clearness is beyond dispute.
If there was one set of opinions to which Voltaire may be said to have
somewhat consistently adhered I may instance his vague and insipid
deism, which relegated to God the rôle of an absentee landlord in this
poor world which he created and governs by absolute law, but in whose
affairs he only intervenes when the death rent is to be collected. He
infers a creative God from the argument of the clockmaker and the
clock, but takes extreme pleasure in showing how sadly the poor
machine is out of order. His idea of the social utility of an avenging
and rewarding God must of course be regarded as a freak of
intellectual caprice, and yet his timid political instincts made him
regard the terrorizing influence of the doctrine of hell with some
complacency as a restraining force upon the unthinking masses. The
story is well known of the atheistic conversation between D'Alembert
and Condorcet at Voltaire's table, who summarily dismissed the
servants from the room with the remark: "Maintenant, messieurs, vous
pouvez continuer. Je craignais seulement d'être égorgé cette nuit."
The _Dictionnaire philosophique_ confirms the flippant utilitarian
point of view, which we must beware of regarding as a personal
conviction. "I insist particularly on the immortality of the soul,
because there is nothing to which I hold more than the idea of hell.
We have to do with a host of rogues who have never thought; a crowd of
petty people, brutes and drunkards and thieves. Preach to them if you
will that there is no hell and that the soul is mortal. As for me I
will cry in their ears that they are damned if they rob me." It is
needless to add that convictions of this eminently practical nature
did not seriously hamper Voltaire in his anti-religious crusade.
To every branch of letters Voltaire brought the same splendid
qualities of mind, and need I add the same defective qualities of
conscience and carelessness of the truth when his personal glory or
his material advancement were concerned? The sordid pages of his life
would weary us in the turning, yet his native generosity and sympathy
incline us to charity; and it is wonderful how his never-failing wit
can temper his vindictiveness for us, now that the sting has lost its
living poison.
I have referred to Professor Dowden's unsatisfactory treatment of the
international reactions which characterize the literary history of the
eighteenth century. There is another omission which I have remarked in
the book on a reperusal of the pages devoted to Rousseau and the
encyclopedists. It might have been easily within the scope of a
literary story of even moderate dimensions to have more explicitly
accounted for the crumbling of the old classical ideal, to have shown
that the once impregnable citadel of classical art was rotten at the
base, and that those who still defended the imaginary stronghold were
themselves the unconscious agents of its destruction. With reference
to the irreligious influences of Cartesianism and the philosophical
system of Bayle I shall say no more, save that the evident loss in
prestige of the traditional religious faith, combined as it was with
the rapid decentralization of the sovereign power in the state, must
perforce make impossible the survival of literature on the old
national basis. Again, in point of pure art a decline was inevitable
in connection with the revival of Cartesianism among writers of the
stamp of Fontenelle; for their prestige was synchronous with the
triumph of the modern party in the famous quarrel; and no student of
the _Art Poétique_ will fail to appreciate the æsthetical significance
of an abandonment of classical standards of taste as an unimpeachable
canon of art. Defending as Boileau did the supreme value of reason and
good sense, what justification could he have found for poetry unless
he had proved to the satisfaction of his generation that poetry better
than any other mode of expression could render permanent the
promptings of the diviner reason, as witness the eternal monuments of
ancient art in the domain of poetry? The triumph of the moderns then
turned men's faces in other directions, and whether literary art
should henceforward advance or decline, it must at least strike root
in a newer soil.
The inroads of sensibility into French literature, as exemplified in
Marivaux and Prévost in the thirties, followed swiftly by the rank and
file, also wrought havoc in the old classical method, though this fact
may not without further reflection be conceded. But in the broad realm
of psychological observation, where classic art had reigned supreme,
the influx of a certain morbid sensibility strangely warped the mental
vision of the observer. Diderot, a veritable sinner himself in this
respect, admits as much in an unguarded moment: "L'homme sensible est
trop abandonné à la merci de son diaphragme ... pour être un profond
observateur et conséquemment un sublime imitateur de la nature." Every
one knows Voltaire's naïve statement which bears condemnatory evidence
to the bluntness of his psychology. "La nature est partout la même."
And is it not, we ask, this enigmatical typical man, out of space and
out of time, for whom the chimerical theories of universal
perfectibility were soon to be woven?
It is incontestably true, then, that the character of human
observation undergoes a sensible alteration in the course of the
century, and that whereas the individual man had been heretofore
studied inasmuch as he was in himself of typical value, henceforward
not man the individual will be the object of study, but the
observation of human relations will usurp the field, and psychological
analysis will yield to social investigation.
I would add a word or two by way of conclusion to illustrate how the
encyclopedists in their propaganda, aided in part by the coincident
influence of Rousseau, established ideals of thought and conduct which
were in the most violent contrast to the ideals cherished in the
preceding century. Of course, we readily understand that the
encyclopedists threw to the four corners of heaven the outworn respect
of religious and political tradition. Furthermore, we may ask
ourselves what it is which in a sense makes Molière and La Fontaine
isolated in their century; and the answer will not be far to seek when
we realize that these two alone of all their fellows urged the
suspected authority of instinct as a sufficient guide for conduct. Yet
how far were not even these bolder spirits from the natural man of
Rousseau or of Diderot?
The views of the two centuries concerning the authority of reason seem
at first sight to coincide, yet, while bearing Boileau in mind, we can
confidently assert that the doctrine of the sovereignty of reason was
not established as a principle of thought until the culminating years
of the eighteenth century. Pascal's "taisez-vous raison imbécile"
indicates how attempered and attenuated by spiritual faith were the
dictates of pure reason in his day, and the reason of Boileau, as I
have already observed, was strongly tinged with æstheticism. I need
not, with reference to eighteenth-century reason worship, go further
than to refer the curious of enlightenment on the subject to the
masterly works of Morley on the period in question, in which it is
precisely this unflinching devotion to reason or unreason (if the sage
of Chelsea will have it thus) which stimulates his calm and logical
temperament to positive enthusiasm.
A last element of contrast between the centuries is of interest in
connection with the habitual mode of thought which Godwin and his
political disciple Shelley borrowed from eighteenth-century French
sources with reference to the true relations subsisting between laws
and morals. The seventeenth-century mind held tenaciously enough to
the theory that it is the _moeurs_ of a nation that inspire the laws,
but the encyclopedists were inspired in their undying hope of
amelioration and human progress to perfectibility by the contrary
theory that men, after all, are only bad because the laws have made
them so.
It may be conceded, then, that these broad relations of literary
movements one with the other, the conflict of converging tendencies,
and the more evident causes of the growth and decay of powerful
manifestations of a nation's thought, are of quite sufficient moment
to have merited fuller treatment at the hands of the eminent critic
who has in all other respects fulfilled his task so admirably, that
having regard to the necessary conditions of the subject, it would be
above criticism if anything could be.
THE BOTANY OF SHAKESPEARE.
BY THOMAS H. MACBRIDE.
The universality of Shakespeare is the common remark of critics. Other
great men have been versatile; Shakespeare alone is universal. He
alone of all great men seems to have been able to follow his own
advice, "to hold as it were the mirror up to Nature." On the clear
surface of his thought, as on a deep Alpine lake, the whole shore lies
reflected--not alone the clouds, the sky, the woods, the castles, the
rocks, the mountain path by which the shepherd strolls; not alone the
broad highway by which may march the king in splendor the peasant with
his wain; but even the humbler objects by the still water's edge, the
trodden grass, the fluttering sedge, the broken reed, the tiniest
flower, all things, all Nature in action or repose finds counterpart
within the glassy depths.
Hence it is that no man, at least no English-speaking man, reads
Shakespeare wrong. Everybody understands him. Here is a sort of
Anglo-Saxon Bible in which, so far as the world goes, every soul finds
himself, with all his hopes, his doubts, his whims, depicted. We are
therefore not surprised that everybody claims a share in Shakespeare;
rather claims the poet as his own. The Protestant is sure that
Shakespeare despised the hierarchy; the Romanist is quite as certain
that he loved the Church. There exists an essay to prove him a
Presbyterian; another to show that the great dramatist was a
Universalist. A volume has been written to prove the man a soldier;
another that he was a lawyer, a printer, a fisherman, a freemason; and
here are five or six articles to show that Shakespeare was a
gardener.[U]
[Footnote U: In preparation of this article the author has consulted
chiefly the following: John Gerarde, The Herball or General Historie
of Plants, 1597; Shakspere, Edward Dowden, 1872; William Shakespeare,
Works, Globe edition, 1867; Natural History of Shakespeare, Bessie
Mayou, 1877; Shakespeare's England, William Winter, 1894; The Plant
lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare, H. F. Ellacombe, 1896; The
Gardener's Chronicle, sundry pamphlets, and shorter articles.]
All this simply means that the poet had a marvelous faculty for close
observing; that his vision was accurate, his instinct wonderfully
true. It may be therefore worth our while to study for a little this
remarkable man from the standpoint of a naturalist, to see how he who
so vividly paints a passion can paint a flower; how the man who limns
a character, till beyond the photograph it starts to actuality, will
catch the essential feature of some natural truth.
We shall nowhere lack for material. The plays are full of references
to plants and flowers of every sort. England in Shakespeare's day, as
now, was a land of bloom, and the poet but reflects the loveliness of
beauty and color spread about him. But he does something more. He is
not content with flashes of color and breathings of odor, he goes into
detail and gives us the individual plant unmistakably. In his
description he shows an exactitude, a discriminating perception that,
had it been turned to Nature's problems seriously at all, must at once
have transformed the science of his age. But Shakespeare was not a man
of science; he was a poet. In his views of Nature he resembles the
great poets of the world, notably Goethe; and, like Goethe, he not
infrequently outruns the science of his time, uses his imagination,
divining things invisible. Moreover, Shakespeare's plants are living
things; they form a garden, not a herbarium. They stand before us in
multitudes, so that it is difficult for the present purpose to know
what to select. We must be content with a few specimen forms brought
out in quotations no more extensive than seems necessary to the
argument. Of course, there are many plants to-day discussed of which
Shakespeare never heard. He does not speak of many sorts of fungi, of
slime molds, microbes; he knew nothing about these. The microscope had
hardly been invented, and the unseen world was as yet largely
personified. And yet Shakespeare has not failed to note the visible
signs of some of our microscopic forms. Critics have wasted their time
and the patience of mankind in an effort to identify Hebona, the
"leperous distilment" poured into the porches of the royal ear. Almost
profitless are such discussions. Yet we may note that we have here to
do with an effect; the means of producing it need not be too closely
questioned. Before the rush of action, the weird setting, the voice of
an apparition, the excited audience cares not what the mysterious vial
may contain--ebony, henbane, yew, or whether it were entirely empty.
What is called for is a speedy and mysterious taking off. Had the
scene been laid in Italy, the effect had been reached by the fateful
prick of a jeweled pin, some ring upon a Borgian finger whose pressure
was the paralysis of death. But the king died of no such curari. Note
the symptoms (Hamlet, i, 5, 64-73):
"The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body."
These are the symptoms of blood-poisoning, vividly portrayed; of some
contagion, communicable by infection. In foul old London Shakespeare
had doubtless seen endemic, zymotic diseases of every description, and
drew his picture from the life. Royal blood is notoriously unsound,
royal habit leaves the porches of royal ears especially exposed. On
our supposition the vial need not have contained very much, not even
ebony. The dramatist had plenty of mystery ready to his hand, and the
Hebona is perhaps intentionally ambiguous. Bacterial diseases were of
old called plagues; they fell from heaven. Listen to King Lear:
"Now, all the plagues that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o'er men's faults, light on my daughters!"
Or Caliban:
"All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inch-meal a disease!"
Or they were attributed, as already intimated, to unseen personal
agencies:
"This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and
walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints
the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and
hurts the poor creature of earth."
I quote this latter rather also to show the accuracy and compass of
Shakespeare's vision. How many people, not farmers, have seen wheat
whitened by the blight! And that is exactly the description, white not
"to the harvest," but whiter still to sterility and death.
But leaving aside all microscopic forms which may or may not be
incidentally touched upon everywhere, we may turn our attention next
to cryptogamic plants which are positively defined. The sudden
springing of mushrooms, for instance, especially at night, so unreal
and yet realities withal, made their creation a suitable trick for
Prospero:
"You demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew."
The "green sour ringlets on the fields whereof the ewe not bites" are
"fairy rings." The same thing appears in the speech of Dame Quickly:
"And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring;
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see."
Fungi, toadstools, mushrooms, and so forth, are fructifications only;
the vegetative part of the plants permeates the soil, feeds on its
organic matter, and spreads almost equally, we may assume, in all
directions from the point of starting. When now this vegetative growth
has accumulated energy to form fruit, the sporocarps or mushrooms rise
all around at the limits of activity; hence, in a circle.
The fungi cut a small figure in Shakespeare--i. e., considering their
numbers and almost omnipresence. But we must remember that they were
at that time studied by few, their significance and interest little
suspected. They formed part of the realm of the world unseen; they
came and went at the instance of powers unknown, mostly personified,
imaginary, a misty population, the thought of which kept for long ages
the childhood of our race in terror. Shakespeare saw the forms of
unstudied plants, everything visible to the naked eye, and really
omitted very little. He speaks of mosses--the lichens were included
with them--chiefly as indicative of age in the object in which they
rest:
"Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age
And high top bald with dry antiquity."
Then again he simply touches them, but in such a way as to reveal his
full appreciation of their beauty, as in Cymbeline, iv, 2. For the
decoration of Imogen's grave the ruddock would bring flowers--
"... bring thee all this;
Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse."
The "furred moss" to "winter-ground thy corse" is exquisite.
Ferns, though so much larger, so handsome, and in our day so
all-attractive, failed generally to impress our fathers.
Butler, writing in 1670, has this to say:
"They spring like fern, that infant weed,
Equivocally without a seed,
And have no possible foundation
But merely in th' imagination."
Now, as far as Shakespeare was concerned, ferns answered his purpose
without seed just as well as with such visible means of perpetuity.
His only reference is I Henry, iv, where Gadshill says:
"We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible";
and Chamberlain replies:
"Nay, by my faith, I think you are more belonging to the
Night than to fern-seed for your walking invisible."
In this connection Ellacombe suggests the doctrine of signatures. The
God of Nature had written for us his human children prescriptions all
over the leafy world. The remedy indicated by its form its own
application. Thus a heart-shaped leaf was good medicine for cardiac
troubles, a lung-like leaf was good for consumption, a lungwort in
fact, and so a liverwort, a spleenwort, and the like. Gerarde, and, in
fact, all the old medical writers throughout the centuries, are full
of this. Now, what more natural than that a plant which could thus
perpetuate itself age after age by means invisible should be able to
confer the much-sought gift of invisibility, the power to disappear
and reappear at pleasure? Many people so believed. Shakespeare appears
to have been skeptical.
Turn we now to the flowering plants: the amount of material at our
disposal, as already indicated, is immense. Shakespeare was evidently
a great lover of flowers simply as such. His pages from first to last
are ornate with color, almost redolent of roses, lilies, eglantine,
with every conceivable metaphor and trope--"the bud of love," the
"nettle of danger," the "flower of safety." Their lovely shapes are
ever before him; he is spellbound with their beauty. "England itself
is a sea-walled garden." Grammatical forms may vanish, if only the
flower may live. Compare Cymbeline, ii, 3:
"Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that _lies_."
The image of the morning flowers, the fiery steeds that drink them
dry, shall fascinate us so that we forget the grammar. It will not do
to say lie; the word must rhyme with "arise," and further on with
"eyes":
"And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet arise."
For the Queen of the Fairies he spreads this sort of a couch:
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight," etc.
Such cases reveal the impress, the healthy, happy impress which Nature
could exercise on this the foremost man of all the world, the harmony
between Nature and Nature's child. All the plants in the last
quotation are wild flowers, except the musk-roses, and these are so
common in England as to be almost wild. The eglantine was the
sweetbrier, said to be wild in all the southern part of the island and
popular in the literature of all recorded centuries. Gerarde describes
as follows: "The leaves are glittering, of beautiful green color, of
smell most pleasant.... The fruit when it is ripe maketh most pleasant
meats, and banqueting dishes, as tarts and such like, the making
whereof I commit to the cunning cook, and teeth to eat them in the
rich man's mouth."
The sweetness of the leaf of the eglantine is referred to by
Shakespeare in another passage which I venture to quote now for
another purpose, to show the accuracy of his description as applied to
simple flowers. The lines are from the scene quoted before. Arviragus
and Guiderius would bury the swooning Imogen. They think her dead
(Cymbeline, iv, 2):
"I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azured harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweetened not thy breath."
Primroses when pale are the palest of all withering plants. The
flowers change color with maturity, especially after fertilization.
The paleness of the primrose is the pallor of decay. But the azure
harebell--behold it waving on its slender stipe beneath the shade of
some great rock--who can look into its delicate cerulean cup again and
not bethink him of the blue-veined eyelid sleep that falls upon our
human flowers!
The same accuracy of detail is evinced in many other places. Take, for
instance, Shakespeare's description of the violet all the way through.
It moves him chiefly by its odor (King John, iv, 2):
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, to add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
Nevertheless, we have violets dim, and violets blue, and purple
violets, and more particularly "blue-veined" violets, as if the poet
looked with a lens into the very throat of the flower which Frenchmen
call a thought. "And there is pansies--that's for thoughts." His
description of the elm is equally exact (Midsummer-Night's Dream, iv,
1, 47-49):
"So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm."
There is nothing better than that, as you may prove by examining the
twigs of even some of our American species; the cork elm, for
instance. The hawthorn, the cedar, and the pine and the oak
especially, are most naturally treated. These are Shakespeare's
familiar trees. The cedar of Shakespeare is the cedar of Lebanon,
commonly planted throughout Europe since the time of the Crusades.
Shakespeare had probably seen specimens in England. He uses it as the
type of all that is great and fine. One author thinks he copies
Ezekiel, chapter xxxi. The pine was beside him all the while. He knew
the secret of the pine knot, and well describes it (Troilus and
Cressida, i, 3):
"... checks and disasters
Grow in the veins of actions highest reared,
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Deflect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth."
Any one who has ever examined the case, or even one who has handled
knotty lumber, has seen the wood fiber run around the persistent base
of some dead limb, and can appreciate these lines.
All these quotations show that Shakespeare used his own eyes and used
them well. He saw the real distinctions of things, the hoariness on
the willow leaf. He found character in the oak as in the king, and
beauty in both. In many of his notices of natural objects, however,
the poet is not the original observer. He often uses current opinions,
fancies, dreams, for these also were the realities in his day, quite
as much sometimes as oaks and forests. There is concerning plants a
sort of orthodox mythology, and thousands of years have sometimes
contributed to the reputation born by a single species. A curious
illustration is found in what Shakespeare has to say about the
mandrake (Antony and Cleopatra, i, 5):
"Give me to drink mandragora.
Why, madam?
That I might sleep out this great gap of time."
Othello, iii, 3:
"Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday."
Juliet, reflecting on her proposed entombment in the dark grave of the
Capulets, exclaims (Romeo and Juliet, iv, 3):
"Alack, alack! is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrake's torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:
Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environèd with all these hideous fears?"
The mandrake _Atropa officinalis_ belongs to the _Solanaceæ_, and,
like others of the family, has narcotic properties. This was doubtless
known to Shakespeare, as in the passage cited he compares the mandrake
with the poppy. The groaning and shrieking are, of course, the purest
superstition. The root of the mandrake was supposed to resemble the
human form. The favorite habitat assigned to the plant was the foot of
the gallows, and men believed that in some way the bodies of criminals
were reproduced in the growing plant; their very pains and cries
renewed, especially for him who profanely dared to pull the mandrake
from the earth. The curious may consult Gerarde.
These ideas, it is needless to say, are very old; Pliny refers to
them, and, if I recollect well, Vergil has his hero pull up some plant
amid the strangest of sights and sounds. With these old myths are tied
up, perchance, the mandrakes of King James's version. Nay, the
superstition still survives; look at the woodcut in Webster's
Unabridged, and you will discover that the artist who set out to
illustrate the word mandrake for that somewhat venerable authority was
by no means able to free himself from the ancient spell. Credulity is
evermore a factor in the compound called human nature. Men love to be
fooled, or to find some support for belief in manifest absurdity.
There is nothing so silly but has its advocates among men who ought to
know better.
A year or two since, a man brought from Ohio to
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/45115