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THE ARENA.
No. XX.
JULY, 1891.
[Illustration: (signed) Very truly Yours, Oliver Wendell Holmes.]
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
BY GEORGE STEWART, D. C. L., LL. D.
To the year 1809, the world is very much indebted for a band of
notable recruits to the ranks of literature and science, statesmanship
and military renown. One need mention only a few names to establish
that fact, and grand names they are, for the list includes Darwin,
Gladstone, Erastus Wilson, John Hill Burton, Manteuffel, Count Beust,
Lord Houghton, Alfred Tennyson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Each of
these has played an important part in the world's history, and
impressed the age with a genius that marks an epoch in the great
department of human activity and progress. The year was pretty well
advanced, and the month of August had reached its 29th day, when the
wife of Dr. Abiel Holmes presented the author of "The American Annals"
with a son who was destined to take his place in the front line of
poets, thinkers, and essayists. The babe was born at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in the centre of a Puritan civilization, which could
scarcely have been in touch and harmony with the emphasized
Unitarianism emanating from Harvard. But Abiel Holmes was a genial,
generous-hearted man, and despite the severity of his religious
belief, contrived to live on terms of a most agreeable character with
his neighbors. A Yale man himself, and the firm friend of his old
professor, the president of that institution, who had given him his
daughter Mary to wed (she died five years after her marriage), we may
readily believe that for a time, Harvard University, then strongly
under the sway of the Unitarians, had little fascination for him. But
his kindly nature conquered the repugnance he may have felt, and he
soon got on well with all classes of the little community which
surrounded him. By his first wife he had no children. But five, three
daughters and two sons, blessed his union with Sarah Wendell, the
accomplished daughter of the Hon. John Wendell, of Boston. We may pass
briefly over the early years of Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was educated
at the Phillips Academy at Exeter, and subsequently entered Harvard
University, where he was graduated, with high honors, in 1829, and
belonged to that class of young fellows who, in after life, greatly
distinguished themselves. Some of his noblest poems were written in
memory of that class, such as "Bill and Joe," "A Song of Twenty-nine,"
"The Old Man Dreams," "Our Sweet Singer," and "Our Banker," all of
them breathing love and respect for the boys with whom the poet
studied and matriculated. Young Holmes was destined for the law, but
Chitty and Blackstone apparently had little charm for him, for after a
year's trial, he abandoned the field and took up medicine. His mind
could not have been much impressed with statutes, for all the time
that he was supposed to be conning over abstruse points in
jurisprudence, he was sending to the printers some of the cleverest
and most waggish contributions which have fallen from his pen. The
_Collegian_,--the university journal of those days,--published most of
these, and though no name was attached to the screeds, it was fairly
well known that Holmes was the author. The companion writers in the
_Collegian_ were Simmons, who wrote over the signature of "Lockfast";
John O. Sargent, poet and essayist, whose _nom de plume_ was "Charles
Sherry"; Robert Habersham, the "Mr. Airy" of the group; and that
clever young trifler, Theodore Snow, who delighted the readers of the
periodical with the works of "Geoffrey La Touche." Of these, of
course, Holmes was the life and soul, and though sixty years have
passed away since he enriched the columns of the _Collegian_ with the
fruits of his muse, more than half of the pieces survive, and are
deemed good enough to hold a place beside his maturer productions.
"Evening of a Sailor," "The Meeting of the Dryads," and "The Spectre
Pig,"--the latter in the vein of Tom Hood at his best,--will be
remembered as among those in the collection which may be read to-day
with the zest, appreciation, and delight which they inspired more
than half a century ago. Holmes' connection with the _Collegian_ had a
most inspiriting effect on his fellow contributors, who found their
wits sharpened by contact with a mind that was forever buoyant and
overflowing with humor and good nature. In friendly rivalry, those
kindred intellects vied with one another, and no more brilliant
college paper was ever published than the _Collegian_, and this is
more remarkable still, when we come to consider the fact, that at that
time, literature in America was practically in its infancy. Nine years
before, Sydney Smith had asked his famous question, "Who reads an
American book? who goes to an American play?" And to that query there
was really no answer. Six numbers of the _Collegian_ were issued, and
they must have proved a revelation to the men and women of that day,
whose reading, hitherto, had almost been confined to the imported
article from beyond the seas, for Washington Irving wrote with the pen
of an English gentleman, Bryant and Dana had not yet made their mark
in distinctively American authorship, and Cooper's "Prairie" was just
becoming to be understood by the critics and people.
Shaking the dust of the law office from his shoes, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, abandoning literature for a time, plunged boldly into the
study of a profession for which he had always evinced a strong
predilection. The art and practice of medical science had ever a
fascination for him, and he made rapid progress at the university.
Once or twice he yielded to impulse, and wrote a few bright things,
anonymously, for the _Harbinger_,--the paper which Epes Sargent and
Park Benjamin published for the benefit of a charitable institution,
and dedicated as a May gift to the ladies who had aided the New
England Institution for the Education of the Blind. In 1833, Holmes
sailed for Paris, where he studied medicine and surgery, and walked
the hospitals. Three years were spent abroad, and then the young
student returned to Cambridge to take his medical degree at Harvard,
and to deliver his metrical Essay on Poetry, before the Phi-Beta-Kappa
Society. In this year too, 1836, he published his first acknowledged
book of poems,--a duodecimo volume of less than two hundred pages. In
this collection his Essay on Poetry appeared. It describes the art in
four stages, _viz._, the Pastoral or Bucolic, the Martial, the Epic,
and the Dramatic. In illustration of his views, he furnished
exemplars from his own prolific muse, and his striking poem of "Old
Ironsides" was printed for the first time, and sprang at a bound into
national esteem. And in this first book, there was included that
little poem, "The Last Leaf," better work than which Holmes has never
done. It is in a vein which he has developed much since then. Grace,
humor, pathos, and happiness of phrase and idea, are all to be found
in its delicious stanzas:--
I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.
They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.
But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets,
Sad and wan;
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone!"
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.
My grandmamma has said--
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago--
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.
But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
In 1838, Doctor Holmes accepted his first professorial position, and
became professor of anatomy and physiology at Dartmouth. Two years
later, he married, and took up the practice of medicine in Boston. In
1847, he returned to his old love, accepting the Parkman professorship
of anatomy and physiology, in the Medical School at Harvard. While
engaged in teaching, he prepared for publication several important
books and reports relating to his profession, and his papers in the
various medical journals attracted great attention by their freshness,
clearness, and originality. But it is not as a medical man that Doctor
Holmes may be discussed in this paper. We have to deal altogether with
his literary career,--a career, which for its brilliancy has not been
surpassed on this side of the Atlantic.
As a poet he differs much from his contemporaries, but the standard he
has reached is as high as that which has been attained by Lowell and
Longfellow. In lofty verse he is strong and unconventional, writing
always with a firm grasp on his subject, and emphasizing his perfect
knowledge of melody and metre. As a writer of occasional verse he has
not had an equal in our time, and his pen for threescore years has
been put to frequent use in celebration of all sorts of events,
whether military, literary, or scientific. Bayard Taylor said, "He
lifted the 'occasional' into the 'classic'," and the phrase happily
expresses the truth. The vivacious character of his nature readily
lends itself to work of this sort, and though the printed page gives
the reader the sparkling epigram and the graceful lines, clear-cut
always and full of soul, the pleasure is not quite the same as seeing
and hearing him recite his own poems, in the company of congenial
friends. His songs are full of sunshine and heart, and his literary
manner wins by its simplicity and tenderness. Years ago, Miss Mitford
said that she knew no one so thoroughly original. For him she could
find no living prototype. And so she went back to the time of John
Dryden to find a man to whom she might compare him. And Lowell in his
"Fable for Critics," describes Holmes as
"A Leyden-jar full-charged, from which flit
The electrical tingles, of hit after hit."
His lyrical pieces are among the best of his compositions, and his
ballads, too few in number, betray that love which he has always felt
for the melodious minstrelsy of the ancient bards. Whittier thought
that the "Chambered Nautilus" was "booked for immortality." In the
same list may be put the "One-Hoss Shay," "Contentment,"
"Destination," "How the Old Horse Won the Bet," "The Broomstick
Train," and that lovely family portrait, "Dorothy Q----," a poem with
a history. Dorothy Quincy's picture, cold and hard, painted by an
unknown artist, hangs on the wall of the poet's home in Beacon Street.
A hole in the canvas marks the spot where one of King George's
soldiers thrust his bayonet. The lady was Dr. Holmes' grandmother's
mother, and she is represented as being about thirteen years of age,
with
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead, with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.
And the poet goes on:--
What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered no,
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still,
The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill!
Should I be I, or would it be
One tenth another, to nine tenths me?
Soft is the breath of a maiden's yes,
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in the babbling air so long!
There were tones in the voice that whispered then,
You may hear to-day in a hundred men.
O lady and lover, how faint and far
Your images hover, and here we are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,
Edward's and Dorothy's--all their own,
A goodly record for time to show
Of a syllable spoken so long ago!
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive
For the tender whisper that bade me live?
It shall be a blessing, my little maid!
I will heal the stab of the red-coat's blade,
And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,
And gild with a rhyme your household name;
So you shall smile on us brave and bright,
As first you greeted the morning's light,
And live untroubled by woes and fears
Through a second youth of a hundred years.
Dr. Holmes' coloring is invariably artistic. Nothing in his verse
offends the eye or grates unpleasantly on the ear. He is a true
musician, and his story, joke, or passing fancy is always joined to a
measure which never halts. "The Voiceless," perhaps, as well as "Under
the Violets," ought to be mentioned among the more tender verses which
we have from his pen, in his higher mood.
His novels are object lessons, each one having been written with a
well-defined purpose in view. But unlike most novels with a purpose,
the three which he has written are nowise dull. The first of the set
is "The Professor's Story; or, Elsie Venner," the second is "The
Guardian Angel," written when the author was in his prime, and the
third is "A Mortal Antipathy," written only a few years ago. In no
sense are these works commonplace. Their art is very superb, and while
they amuse, they afford the reader much opportunity for reflection.
Elsie Venner is a romance of destiny, and a strange physiological
condition furnishes the key-note and marrow of the tale. It is Holmes'
snake story, the taint of the serpent appearing in the daughter, whose
mother was bitten by a rattle-snake before her babe was born. The
traits inherited by this unfortunate offspring from the reptile, find
rapid development. She becomes a creature of impulse, and her life
spent in a New England village, at a ladies' academy, with its social
and religious surroundings, is described and worked out with rare
analytical skill, and by a hand accustomed to deal with curious
scientific phenomena. The character drawing is admirable, the episodes
are striking and original, and the scenery, carefully elaborated, is
managed with fine judgment. Despite the idea, which to some may at
first blush appear revolting and startling, there is nothing
sensational in the book. The reader observes only the growth and
movement of the poison in the girl's system, its effect on her way of
life, and its remarkable power over her mind. Horror or disgust at her
condition is not for one moment evoked. The style is pure and
ennobling, and while our sympathies may be touched, we are at the same
time fascinated and entertained, from the first page to the last. Of
quite different texture is "The Guardian Angel," a perhaps more
readable story, so far as form is concerned, much lighter in
character, and less of a study. There is more plot, but the range is
not so lofty. It is less philosophical in tone than "Elsie Venner,"
and the events move quicker. The scene of "The Guardian Angel" is also
laid in an ordinary New England village, and the object of the
Doctor-Novelist was to write a tale in which the peculiarities and
laws of hysteria should find expression and development. In carrying
out his plan, Dr. Holmes has achieved a genuine success. He has taught
a lesson, and at the same time has told a deeply interesting story,
lightened up here and there with characteristic humor and wit. The
characters of Myrtle Hazard and Byles Gridley are drawn with nice
discrimination, while the sketch of the village poet, Mr. Gifted
Hopkins, is so life-like and realistic, that he has only to be named
to be instantly recognized. He is a type of the poet who haunts the
newspaper office, and belongs to every town and hamlet. His lady-love
is Miss Susan Posey, a delicious creation in Dr. Holmes' best manner.
These two prove excellent foils for the stronger personages of the
story, and afford much amusement. "A Mortal Antipathy" is less of a
romance than the others. The reader will be interested in the
description of a boat race which is exquisitely done.
In biographical writing, we have two books from Dr. Holmes, one a
short life of Emerson, and the other a memoir of Motley. Though
capable of writing a great biography like Trevelyan's Macaulay or
Lockhart's Scott, the doctor has not yet done so. Of the two which he
has written, the Motley is the better one. In neither, however, has
the author arrived at his own standard of what a biography should be.
Mechanism in thought and morals,--a Phi-Beta-Kappa address, delivered
at Harvard in 1870,--is one of Dr. Holmes' most luminous contributions
to popular science. It is ample in the way of suggestion and the
presentation of facts, and though scientific in treatment, the
captivating style of the essayist relieves the paper of all heaviness.
A brief extract from this fine, thoughtful work may be given here:--
"We wish to remember something in the course of
conversation. No effort of the will can reach it; but we
say, 'wait a minute, and it will come to me,' and go on
talking. Presently, perhaps some minutes later, the idea we
are in search of comes all at once into the mind, delivered
like a prepaid bundle, laid at the door of consciousness
like a foundling in a basket. How it came there we know not.
The mind must have been at work groping and feeling for it
in the dark; it cannot have come of itself. Yet all the
while, our consciousness was busy with other thoughts."
The literary reputation of Dr. Holmes will rest on the three great
books which have made his name famous on two continents. Thackeray had
passed his fortieth year before he produced his magnificent novel.
Holmes, too, was more than forty when he began that unique and
original book, "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," one of the most
thoughtful, graceful, and able investigations into philosophy and
culture ever written. We have the author in every mood, playful and
pathetic, witty and wise. Who can ever forget the young fellow
called John, our Benjamin Franklin, the Divinity student, the
school-mistress, the landlady's daughter, and the poor relation? What
characterization is there here! The delightful talk of the autocrat,
his humor, always infectious, his logic, his strong common sense,
illumine every page. When he began to write, Dr. Holmes had no settled
plan in his head. In November, 1831, he sent an article to the _New
England Magazine_, published by Buckingham in Boston, followed by
another paper in February, 1832. The idea next occurred to the author
in 1857,--a quarter of a century afterwards, when the editors of the
_Atlantic Monthly_, then starting on its career, begged him to write
something for its pages. He thought of "The Autocrat," and resolved,
as he says, "to shake the same bough again, and see if the ripe fruit
were better or worse than the early windfalls." At a bound "The
Autocrat" leaped into popular favor. The reading public could hardly
wait for the numbers. All sorts of topics are touched upon from nature
to mankind. There is the talk about the trees, which one may read a
dozen times and feel the better for it. And then comes that charming
account of the walk with the school-mistress, when the lovers looked
at the elms, and the roses came and went on the maiden's cheeks. And
here is a paragraph or two which makes men think:
"Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The angel of life winds
them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the
key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Tic-tac!
tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop
them; they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot still them;
madness only makes them go faster; death alone can break
into the case, and seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which
we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the
terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our
wrinkled foreheads.
"If we could only get at them, as we lie on our pillows and
count the dead beats of thought after thought, and image
after image, jarring through the overtired organ! Will
nobody block those wheels, uncouple that pinion, cut the
string that holds those weights, blow up the infernal
machine with gun-powder? What a passion comes over us
sometimes for silence and rest!--that this dreadful
mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time,
embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could
have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing
themselves off from beams in hempen lassos?--that they jump
off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters
beneath?--that they take counsel of the grim friend who has
but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable and the
restless machine is shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a
marble floor? Under that building which we pass every day
there are strong dungeons, where neither hook, nor bar, nor
bed-cord, nor drinking vessel from which a sharp fragment
may be shattered, shall by any chance be seen. There is
nothing for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling
of its wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and
silence them with one crash. Ah, they remembered that,--the
kind city fathers,--and the walls are nicely padded, so that
one can take such exercise as he likes without damaging
himself on the very plain and serviceable upholstery. If
anybody would only contrive some kind of a lever that one
could thrust in among the works of this horrid automaton and
check them, or alter their rate of going, what would the
world give for the discovery?"
"The Autocrat" was followed by "The Professor at the Breakfast
Table,"--a book in every way equal to the first one, though, to be
sure, there are critics who pretend to see diminished power in the
author's pen. It is, however, full of the same gentle humor and keen
analyses of the follies and foibles of human kind. It is a trifle
graver, though some of the characters belonging to "The Autocrat" come
to the front again. It is in this book that we find that lovely story
of Iris,--a masterpiece in itself and one of the sweetest things that
has come to us for a hundred years, rivalling to a degree the
delicious manner and style of Goldsmith and Lamb. In 1873 the last of
the series appeared, and "The Poet" came upon the scene to gladden the
breakfasters. Every chapter sparkles with originality. "I have," says
Dr. Holmes, "unburdened myself in this book, and in some other pages,
of what I was born to say. Many things that I have said in my riper
days have been aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say
aching, because they conflicted with many of my inherited beliefs, or
rather traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were
striving in me for the mastery--two! twenty, perhaps, twenty thousand,
for aught I know--but represented to me by two--paternal and maternal.
But I do know this: I have struck a good many chords, first and last,
in the consciousness of other people. I confess to a tender feeling
for my little brood of thoughts. When they have been welcomed and
praised, it has pleased me, and if at any time they have been rudely
handled and despitefully treated, it has cost me a little worry. I
don't despise reputation, and I should like to be remembered as having
said something worth lasting well enough to last."
There is much philosophy in "The Poet," and if it is less humorous
than "The Autocrat," it is more profound than either of its fellows in
the great trio. In it the doctor has said enough to make the
reputations of half a dozen authors.
"One Hundred Days in Europe," if written by anyone else save Dr.
Holmes, would, perhaps, go begging for a publisher. But he journeyed
to the old land with his heart upon his sleeve. He met nearly every
man and woman worth knowing, and the Court, Science, and Literature
received him with open arms. He had not seen England for half a
century. Fifty years before, he was an obscure young man, studying
medicine, and known by scarcely half a dozen persons. He returned in
1886, a man of world-wide fame, and every hand was stretched out to do
him honor, and to pay him homage. Lord Houghton,--the famous breakfast
giver of his time, certainly, the most successful since the princely
Rogers,--had met him in Boston years before, and had begged him again
and again to cross the ocean. Letters failing to move the poet,
Houghton tried verse upon him, and sent these graceful lines:--
"When genius from the furthest West,
Sierra's Wilds and Poker Flat,
Can seek our shores with filial zest,
Why not the genial Autocrat?
"Why is this burden on us laid,
That friendly London never greets
The peer of Locker, Moore, and Praed
From Boston's almost neighbor streets?
"His earlier and maturer powers
His own dear land might well engage;
We only ask a few kind hours
Of his serene and vigorous age.
"Oh, for a glimpse of glorious Poe!
His raven grimly answers 'never!'
Will Holmes's milder muse say 'no,'
And keep our hands apart forever?"
But he was not destined to see his friend. When Holmes arrived in
England, Lord Houghton was in his grave, and so was Dean Stanley,
whose sweetness of disposition had so charmed the autocrat, when the
two men had met in Boston a few years before. Ruskin he failed to meet
also, for the distinguished word-painter was ill. At a dinner,
however, at Arch-Deacon Farrar's, he spent some time with Sir John
Millais and Prof. John Tyndall. Of course, he saw Gladstone, Tennyson,
Robert Browning, Chief Justice Coleridge, Du Maurier, the illustrator
of _Punch_, Prof. James Bryce who wrote "The American Commonwealth,"
"Lord Wolseley," Britain's "Only General," "His Grace of Argyll,"
"Lord Lorne and the Princess Louise,"--one of the best amateur
painters and sculptors in England,--and many others. Of all these
noted ones, he has something bright and entertaining to say. The
universities laid their highest honors at his feet. Edinburgh gave him
the degree of LL.D., Cambridge that of Doctor of Letters, and Oxford
conferred upon him her D. C. L., his companion on the last occasion
being John Bright. It was at Oxford that he met Vice-Chancellor
Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol College, Prof. Max Müller, Lord
and Lady Herschell, and Prof. James Russell Lowell, his old and
unvarying friend. The account of his visit to Europe is told with most
engaging directness and simplicity, and though the book has no
permanent value, it affords much entertainment for the time.
The reader will experience a feeling of sadness, when he takes up Dr.
Holmes' last book, "Over the Tea-cups," for there are indications in
the work which warn the public that the genial pen will write
hereafter less frequently than usual. It is a witty and delightful
book, recalling the Autocrat, the Professor, and the Poet, and yet
presenting features not to be found in either. The author dwells on
his advancing years, but this he does not do in a querulous fashion.
He speaks of his contemporaries, and compares the ages of old trees,
and over the tea-cups a thousand quaint, curious, and splendid things
are said. The work takes a wide range, but there is more sunshine than
anything else, and that indefinable charm, peculiar to the author,
enriches every page. One might wish that he would never grow old. As
Lowell said, a few years ago, in a birthday verse to the doctor:--
"You keep your youth as yon Scotch firs,
Whose gaunt line my horizon hems,
Though twilight all the lowland blurs,
Hold sunset in their ruddy stems.
* * * * *
"Master alike in speech and song
Of fame's great anti-septic--style,
You with the classic few belong
Who tempered wisdom with a smile.
Outlive us all! Who else like you
Could sift the seed corn from our chaff,
And make us, with the pen we knew,
Deathless at least in epitaph?"
PLUTOCRACY AND SNOBBERY IN NEW YORK,
BY EDGAR FAWCETT.
Let us imagine that a foreigner has entered a New York ball-room for
the first time, and let us make that foreigner not merely an
Englishman, but an Englishman of title. He would soon be charmed by
the women who beamed on every side of him. Their refinement of manner
would be obvious, though in some cases they might shock him by a
shrillness and nasal harshness when speaking, while in other cases
both their tone and accent might repel him through extreme affectation
of "elegance." But for the most part he would pronounce these women
bright, cultivated, and often remarkably handsome. They would not
require to be amused or even entertained after the manner of his own
countrywomen; they would appear before him amply capable of yielding
rather than exacting diversion, and often through the mediums of
nimble wit, engaging humor, or an audacity at once daring and
picturesque. But after a little more time our titled stranger would
begin to perceive that behind all this feminine sparkle and freshness,
lurked a positive transport of humility. He would discover that he had
swiftly become with these fashionable ladies an object of idolatry,
and that all the single ones were thrilled with the idea of marrying
him, while all the married ones felt pierced by the sad realization
that destiny had disqualified them for so golden a bit of luck. He
would find himself assailed by questions about his precise English
rank and standing. Had he any other title besides the one by which he
was currently known? How long ago was it since his family had been
elevated to the peerage? Did he personally know the Queen or the
Prince of Wales? Was his mother "Lady" anybody before she married his
father? Did he own several places in the country, and if so, what was
the name of each?
The men would naturally be less inquisitive; but then the men all
would have their Burke or DeBrett to consult at their clubs, and could
"look him up" there as if he had been an unfamiliar word in the
dictionary. And these male followers of fashion would, for the most
part, distress and perplex him. He would be confronted with a mournful
fact in our social life: the men who "go out" are nearly all silly
striplings who, on reaching a sensible age, discreetly remain at home.
He would soon begin to perceive that New York society is a blending of
the ludicrous and pathetic. The really charming women have two
terrible faults, one which their fathers, husbands, and brothers have
taught them, and one which they have apparently contracted without
extraneous aid. The first is their worship of wealth, their devout
genuflection before it as the sole choicest gift which fate can
bestow, and the second is their merciless and metallic snobbery. They
have made a god of caste, and in a country where, of all other cults,
that of caste is the most preposterous. The men (the real grown-up
men, who may hate the big balls, but are nevertheless a great deal in
the movement as regards other gay pastimes) watch them with quiet
approbation. Many a New York husband is quite willing that his wife
shall cut her own grandmother if that relative be not "desirable." The
men have not time to preen their social plumes quite so strenuously;
they are too busy in money-getting, and of a sort which nearly always
concerns the hazard of the Wall Street die. And yet quite a number of
the men are arrant snobs, refusing to associate with, often even to
notice, others whose dollars count fewer than their own. This form of
plutocratic self-adulation is relatively modern. It is called by some
people a very inferior state of things to that which existed in "the
good old Knickerbocker days." But the truth is, odious though the
millionnaire's ascendancy may be at present, that of the Knickerbocker
was once hardly less so. Vulgar, brassy, and intolerable the
"I'm-better-than-you" strut and swagger of plutocracy surely is; but
in the smug, pert provincialism of those former New York autocrats who
defined as "family" their descent of two or three generations from raw
Dutch immigrants, there was very little comfort indeed. The present
writer has seen something of this element; in the decade from 1865 to
1875 it was still extremely active. Society was then governed by the
Knickerbocker, as it is now governed by the plutocrat, and in either
instance the rule has been wholly deplorable. Indeed, for one cogent
reason, if no other, poor New York stands to-day as the least
fortunate of all great cities. Her society, from the time she ceased
to admit herself a village up to the date at which these lines are
written, has never been even faintly worthy of the name. A few years
ago the "old residents," with their ridiculous claims to pedigree, had
everything their own way. A New York drawing-room was, in those days,
parochial as a Boston or Philadelphia tea-party. There were modish
metropolitan details, it is true, but the petty reign of the immigrant
Hollanders' descendants would have put to shame the laborious freaks
and foibles of a tiny German principality. Now, having changed all
that, and having forced the Knickerbockers from their old places of
vantage, the plutocrats reign supreme. To a mind capable of being
saddened by human materialism, pretension, braggadocio, it is all very
much the same sort of affair. Our republic should be ashamed of an
aristocracy founded on either money or birth, and that thousands of
its citizens are not only unashamed of such systems, but really glory
in them, is merely another proof of how this country has broken almost
every democratic promise which she once made to the Old World.
It is easy to sneer away statements like these. It is easy to laugh
them off as "mere pessimism," and to talk of persons with "green
spectacles" and "disordered livers." We have learned to know the glad
ring of the optimist's patriotic voice. If we all believed this voice,
we should all believe that America is the ideal polity of the world.
And one never so keenly realizes that this is not true as when he
watches the creeds and character of society in New York. Of Londoners
we are apt to assert that they grovel obsequiously before their
prince, with his attendant throng of dukes, earls, and minor
gentlemen. This may be fact, but it is very far from being the whole
fact. In London there is a large class of ladies and gentlemen who
form a localized and centralized body, and whose assemblages are
haunts of intelligence, refinement, and good taste. In a certain sense
these are "mixed," but all noteworthy gatherings must be that, and the
"smart" and "swagger" sets of every great European city are nowadays
but a small, even a contemptible factor in its festivities.
Not long ago the present writer inquired of a well-known Englishman
whether people of literary and artistic note were not always bidden to
large and important London receptions. "In nearly all cases, yes," he
replied. "It has been the aim of my sister to invite, on such
occasions, authors, artists, and actors of talent and distinction.
They come, and are welcomed when they come." He did not mention the
name of his sister, knowing, doubtless, that I knew it. She was an
English duchess, magnificently housed in London, a beauty, and a star
of fashion.
But our New York brummagem "duchesses" of yesterday are less liberal
in their condescensions. An attractive New York woman once said to me:
"I told a man the other day that I was tired of meeting him
incessantly at dinner, and that we met each other so often in this way
as to make conversation a bore." Could any remark have more pungently
expressed the unhappy narrowness of New York reunions? How many times
has the dainty Mr. Amsterdam or Mrs. Manhattan ever met men and women
of literary or artistic gifts at a fashionable dinner in Fifth or
Madison Avenue? How many times has he or she met any such person at a
"patriarchs' ball" or an "assembly?" Has he or she _ever_ met an actor
of note _anywhere_, except in two or three exceptional instances?
True, men and women of intellectual fame shrink from contact with our
noble Four Hundred. But that they should so shrink is in itself a
scorching comment. They encounter patronage at such places, and
getting patronage from one's inferiors can never be a pleasant mode of
passing one's time. That delicate homage which is the due of mental
merit they scarcely ever receive. Now and then you hear of a
portrait-painter, who has made himself the rage of the town, being
asked to dine and to sup. But he is seldom really held to be _des
nôtres_, as the haughty elect ones would phrase it, and his
popularity, based upon insolent patronage, often quickly crumbles. The
solid devotion is all saved for the solid millionnaires. Frederick the
Great, if I recall rightly, said that an army was like a snake, and
moved on its stomach. Of New York society this might also be asserted,
though with a meaning much more luxurious. To be a great leader is to
be a great feeder. You must dispense terrapin, and canvas-back ducks,
and rare brands of champagne, in lordly dining-halls, or your place is
certain to be secondary. You may, if a man, have the manners of a
Chesterfield and the wit of a Balzac; you may, if a woman, be
beautiful as Mary Stuart and brilliant as DeStaël, and yet, powerless
to "entertain," you can fill no lofty pedestal. "Position" in New York
means a corpulent purse whose strings work as flexibly as the dorsal
muscles of a professional toady. And this kind of toady has an
exquisite _flair_ for your greatness and dignity the moment he becomes
quite sure of your pecuniary willingness to back both. New York is at
present the paradise of parvenus, and these occasionally commit
grotesque mistakes in the distribution of civilities. Because you
chose to "stay in" for a season or two, they will take for granted, if
suddenly brought in contact with you, that you have never "been out"
and could not go if you tried. Of course, to feel hurt by such cheap
hauteur proves that you are in a manner worthy of it; but even though
you are not in the least hurt, you cannot refrain from a thrill of
annoyance that a country which has boasted in so loud-mouthed a way to
Europe of having begun its national life by a wholesome scorn of all
class distinction, should contain citizens cursed by a spirit of such
tawdry pride. At least the aristocracies of other lands, vicious and
reprehensible as they have always been, are yet an evil with a certain
malign consistency for their support. Like those monarchies of which
they have formed a piteous adjunct, they have always been the
outgrowths of a perfectly natural ignorance. Though distinct clogs to
civilization, their existence remains pathetically legitimate.
Nuisances, they are still nuisances with a hereditary hold on history.
Their chief modern claim for continuance is the fact that they were
once authorized by that very "divine right" which is now the scorn and
jest of philosophy, and that the communities which they still infest
are yet unprepared for the shock of their extirpation. It is clear
that they will one day be sloughed off like a mass of dead animal
tissue, even if they are not amputated like a living limb that has
grown hopelessly diseased. They are as surely doomed by the slow
threat of evolution as is the failure to establish trial by jury in
Russia. They are tolerated by progress for the simple reason that
progress is not yet ready to destroy them. Hence are all imitations of
their permitted and perpetuated folly in wofully bad taste. They are
more; they are an insult, when practised in such a land as ours, to
republican energies, motives, and ideals. Heaven knows, we are a
country with sorry enough substantiality behind her vaunts. We call
ourselves freemen, and our mines and factories are swarming with
haggard slaves. We declare that to be President of the United States
is the most honorable office a man can hold, and our elected
candidates (except when they have the splendid self-abnegating courage
of a Cleveland!) wade to Washington through a perfect bog of venal
promises. We prate of our democratic institutions, and forget that
free trade is one of the first proofs of a free people, and that
protected industries are the feudalism of manufacture. We sneer at the
corruption of a Jeffreys or a Marlborough in the past, and concede
that bribery riots in our capital, and that the infernal political
grist-mill in New York has to-day almost as much nefarious grinding to
get through with annually as it had when Tweed and Sweeny stood the
boss millers that fed its voracious maw. And after all, the
abominations of New York's politics are only a few degrees more
repellent than the cruelties and pusillanimities of her self-styled
patrician horde. The highest duty of rich people is to be charitable;
in New York the rich people make for themselves two highest duties, to
be fashionable and to be richer--if they can. Charity of a certain
sort does exist among them, and it would be unfair to say that it is
all of the pompous public sort. Much of it, indeed, is private, and
when incomes, as in a few individual cases, reach enormous figures,
the unpretentious donations are of no slight weight. But charity is a
virtue that counts for nothing unless meekness, philanthropy,
altruism, is each its acolyte. How can we expect that beings who busy
themselves with affairs of such poignant importance as whether they
shall give Jones a full nod or Brown a quarter of a nod when they next
meet him; as whether the Moneypennys are really quite _lancés_ enough
for them to encounter the great Gilt-edges or no, at a prospective
dinner-party; as whether the latest Parisian tidings about bonnets are
really authentic or the contrary; as whether His Royal Highness has or
has not actually appeared at one of his imperial mamma's drawing-rooms
in a Newmarket cutaway,--how, it is asked, can we expect that beings
of this bent may properly heed those ghastly and incessant wants which
are forever making of humanity the forlorn tragi-comedy it is? The
yawp of socialism is excusably despised by plutocracy. Socialism is
not merely a cry of pain; if it were only that its plaints might have
proved more effectual. It is a cry of avarice, of jealousy, and very
often of extreme laziness as well. Every socialistic theory that we
have yet heard of is self-damning. Each real thinker, whether he be
Croesus or pauper, comprehends that to empower the executive with
greater responsibility than it already possesses would mean to tempt
national ruin, and that until mankind has become a race of angels the
hideous problem of human suffering can never be solved by vesting
private property-rights in the hands of public functionaries. But the
note of anguish in that voice of desperation and revolt need not, for
all this, be confused with its madder strains. The claim of poverty
upon riches is to-day a tremendously ethical one. Help--and help wise,
earnest, persistent--is the inflexible moral tax levied by life itself
on all who have an overplus of wealth wherewith to relieve deserving
misery. The occasional careless signing of a cheque, or even a visit
now and then among the filthy slums of Bayard and Hester Streets,
cannot cancel these mighty obligations. And there are better ways of
schooling the soul to recognize the magnitude and insistence of such
obligations than by organizing ultra-select dancing-classes at
Sherry's; giving "pink luncheons" to a bevy of simpering female snobs;
uncorking eight-dollar bottles of Clos de Vougeot for a fastidious
dinner company of men-about-town; squandering three thousand dollars
on a Delmonico ball, or purchasing at vast prices the gowns and jewels
of a deposed foreign empress. Yes, there are better ways. And for
people who are solely pleasure-seekers to call themselves Christian
is, from their own points of view, blasphemy unspeakable; since
whatever we agnostics may say and believe about the alleged "divinity"
of Christ, _they_ hold that the Galilean was the son of God, and that
in such miraculous character he spoke when saying: "Leave all and
follow me."
The American snob is a type at once the most anomalous and the most
vulgar. Why he is anomalous need not be explained, but the essence of
his vulgarity lies in his entire absence of a sanctioning background.
It is not, when all is said, so strange a matter that anyone reared in
an atmosphere of historic ceremonial and precedent should betray an
inherent leaning toward shams and vanities. But if there is anything
that we Americans, as a race, are forever volubly extolling, it is our
immunity from all such drawbacks. And yet I will venture to state that
in every large city of our land snobbery and plutocracy reign as twin
evils, while in every small town, from Salem to some Pacific-slope
settlement, the beginnings of the same social curse are manifest. Of
course New York towers in bad eminence over the entire country. Abroad
they are finding out the absurd shallowness of our professions. Nearly
seven years ago an able literary man said to me in London: "I am
wearied, here, by the necessity of continual aristocratic patronage.
Especially true is this," he added, "regarding all new dramatic
productions. Lord This and Lady That are more thought of as
potentially occupying stalls or boxes at a first performance than is
the presence of the most sapient judges." And then again, after a
slight pause, he proceeded: "But I hear it is very much the same thing
with you. I have often longed to go to America, just for the sake of
that social emancipation which it has seemed to promise. But they tell
me that in your big cities a good deal of the same humbug prevails." I
assured him that he was fatally right; but I did not proceed to say,
as I might have done, that our "aristocracy" rarely patronizes first
nights at theatres, holding most ladies, and gentlemen connected with
the stage in a position somewhere between their scullions and their
head footmen.
London laughs and sneers at New York when she thinks of her at all,
which is, on the whole, not very often. If London esteemed New York of
greater importance than she does esteem her, the derisive laughter
might be keener and hence more salutary. Imagine America separated by
only a narrow channel from Europe, and imagine her to contain in her
chief metropolis, as she does at present, the amazing contradictions
and refutations of the democratic idea which are to be noted now. What
food for English, French, and German sarcasm would our pigmy Four
Hundred then become! In those remote realms they have already shrank
aghast at the licentious tyrannies of our newspapers. England has
freedom of the press, but she also has a law of libel which is not a
cipher. Our law of libel is so horribly effete that the purest woman
on our continent may to-morrow be vilely slandered, and yet obtain no
adequate form of redress. This is what our extolled "liberty" has
brought us--a despotism in its way as frightful as anything that
Russia or the Orient can parallel. Is it remarkable that such
relatively minor abuses as those of plutocracy and snobbery should
torment us here in New York when bullets of journalistic scandal are
whizzing about our ears every day of our lives, and those who get
wounds have no healing remedy within their possible reach? Some one of
our clever novelists might take a hint for the plot of a future tale
from this melancholy state of things. He might write a kind of new
Monte Cristo, and make his hero, riddled and stung by assaults of our
unbridled press, find but a single means of vengeance. That means
would be the starting of a great newspaper on his own account, and the
triumphant cannonading of his foes through its columns. More
influential New York editors would doubtless already have forced their
way within the holy bounds of patrician circles, were it not that, in
the first place editors are somewhat hard-worked persons, and that in
the second place they are usually men of brains.
Marriage, among the New York snobs and plutocrats, ordinarily treats
human affection as though it were a trifling optic malady to be cured
by a few drops of corrective lotion. Daughters are trained by their
mothers to leave no efforts untried, short of those absolutely
immoral, in winning wealthy husbands. Usually the daughters are
tractable enough. Rebellion is rare with them; why should it not be?
Almost from infancy (unless when their parents have made fortunes with
prodigious quickness) they are taught that matrimony is a mere hard
bargain, to be driven shrewdly and in a spirit of the coolest
mercantile craft. Sometimes they do really rebel, however, mastered by
pure nature, in one of those tiresome moods where she shows the
insolence of defying bloodless convention. Yet nearly always
capitulation follows. And then what follows later on? Perhaps
heart-broken resignation, perhaps masked adultery, perhaps the
degradation of public divorce. But usually it is no worse than a
silent disgusted slavery, for the American woman is notoriously cold
in all sense of passion, and when reared to respect "society" she is a
snob to the core. Some commentators aver that it is the climate which
makes her so pulseless and prudent. This is possible. But one deeply
familiar with the glacial theories of the fashionable New York mother
might find an explanation no less frigid than comprehensive for all
her traits of acquiescence and decorum. How many of these fashionable
mothers ask more than a single question of the bridegrooms they desire
for their daughters? That one question is simply: "What amount of
money do you control?" But constantly this kind of interrogation is
needless. A male "match" and "catch" finds that his income is known to
the last dollar long before he has been graduated from the senior
class at Columbia or Harvard. Society, like a genial feminine
Briaræus, opens to him its myriad rosy and dimpled arms. He has only
to let a certain selected pair of these clutch him tight, if he is
rich enough to make his personality a luring prize. Often his morals
are unsavory, but these prove no impediment. The great point with
plutocracy and snobbery is to perpetuate themselves--to go on
producing scions who will uphold for them future generations of
selfishness and arrogance. One sees the same sort of procreative
tendency in certain of our hardiest and coarsest weeds. Sometimes a
gardener comes along, with hoe, spade, and a strong uprooting animus.
In human life that kind of gardener goes by the ugly name of
Revolution. But we are dealing with neither parables nor allegories.
Those are for the modish clergymen of the select and exclusive
churches, and are administered in the form of dainty little religious
pills which these gentlemen have great art in knowing how to palatably
sugar.
"SHOULD THE NATION OWN THE RAILWAYS?"
BY C. WOOD DAVIS.
PART I.--OBJECTIONS TO NATIONAL OWNERSHIP CONSIDERED.
When the paper published in the February ARENA, entitled "The Farmer,
the Investor, and the Railway," was written, the writer was not ready
to accept national ownership as a solution of the railway problem; but
the occurrences attending the flurries of last autumn in the money
markets, when half a dozen men, in order to obtain control of certain
railways, entered into a conspiracy that came near wrecking the entire
industrial and commercial interests of the country, having shed a
lurid light upon the enormous and baleful power which the corporate
control of the railways places in the hands of what Theodore Roosevelt
aptly termed "the dangerous wealthy classes," has had the effect of
converting to the advocacy of national ownership not only the writer
but vast numbers of conservative people of the central, western, and
southern States to whom the question now assumes this form: "Which is
to be preferred: a master in the shape of a political party that it is
possible to dislodge by the use of the ballot, or one in the shape of
ten or twenty Goulds, Vanderbilts, Huntingtons, Rockefellers, Sages,
Dillons, and Brices who never die and whom it will be impossible to
dislodge by the use of the ballot?" The particular Gould or Vanderbilt
may die, as did that Vanderbilt to whom was ascribed the aphorism "The
public be damned," but the spirit and power of the Goulds and
Vanderbilts never dies.
OBJECTIONS TO NATIONAL OWNERSHIP.
The objections to national ownership are many; that most frequently
advanced and having the most force being the possibility that, by
reason of its control of a vastly increased number of civil servants,
the party in possession of the federal administration at the time
such ownership was assumed would be able to perpetuate its power
indefinitely. As there are more than 700,000 people employed by the
railways, this objection would seem to be well taken; and it indicates
serious and far-reaching results _unless_ some way can be devised to
neutralize the political power of such a vast addition to the official
army.
In the military service we have a body of men that exerts little or no
political power, as the moment a citizen enters the army he divests
himself of political functions; and it is not hazardous to say that
700,000 capable and efficient men can be found who, for the sake of
employment, to be continued so long as they are capable and
well-behaved, will forego the right to take part in political affairs.
If a sufficient number of such men can be found, this objection would,
by proper legislation, be divested of all its force. At all events no
trouble from such a source has been experienced since Australian
railways were placed under control of non-partisan commissions, such a
commission, having had charge of the Victorian railways since
February, 1884, or a little more than one term, they being appointed
for seven years instead of for life, as stated by Mr. W. M. Acworth in
his argument against government control.
The second objection is that there would be constant political
pressure to make places for the strikers of the party in power, thus
adding a vast number of useless men to the force, and rendering it
progressively more difficult to effect a change in the political
complexion of the administration.
That this objection has much less force than is claimed is clear from
the conduct of the postal department which is, unquestionably, a
political adjunct of the administration; yet but few useless men are
employed, while its conduct of the mail service is a model of
efficiency after which the corporate managed railways might well
pattern. Moreover, if the railways are put under non-partisan control,
this objection will lose nearly if not quite all its force.
A third objection is that the service would be less efficient and cost
more than with continued corporate ownership.
This appears to be bare assertion, as from the very nature of the case
there can be no data outside that furnished by the government-owned
railways of the British colonies, and such data negatives these
assertions; and the advocates of national ownership are justified in
asserting that such ownership would materially lessen the cost, as any
expert can readily point out many ways in which the enormous costs of
corporate management would be lessened. With those familiar with
present methods, and not interested in their perpetuation, this
objection has no force whatever.
The fourth objection is that with constant political pressure
unnecessary lines would be built for political ends.
This is also bare assertion, although it is not impossible that such
results would follow; yet such has not been the case in the British
colonies where the governments have had control of construction. On
the other hand, it is notorious that under corporate ownership, and
solely to reap the profits to be made out of construction, the United
States have been burthened with useless parallel roads, and such
corporations as the Santa Fe have paralleled their own lines for such
profits. It is quite safe to say that when the nation owns the
railways there will be no nickel-plating, nor will such an unnecessary
expenditure be made as was involved in the construction of the "West
Shore"; nor will the feat of Gould and the Santa Fe be repeated of
each building two hundred and forty miles, side by side, for
construction profits, much of which is located in the arid portion of
Kansas where there is never likely to be traffic for even one railway.
Much of the republic is covered with closely parallel lines which
would never have been built under national ownership, and this process
will continue as long as the manipulators can make vast sums out of
construction.
A fifth objection is that with the amount of red-tape that will be in
use, it will be impossible to secure the building of needed lines.
While such objection is inconsistent with the fourth it may have some
force; but as the greater part of the country is already provided with
all the railways that will be needed for a generation, it is not a
very serious objection even if it is as difficult as asserted to
procure the building of new lines. It is not probable, however, that
the government would refuse to build any line that would clearly
subserve public convenience, the conduct of the postal service
negativing such a supposition; and for party purposes the
administration would certainly favor the construction of such lines as
were clearly needed, and it is high time that only such should be
built; and what instrumentality so fit to determine this as a
non-partisan commission acting as the agent of the whole people?
The sixth objection is that lines built by the government would cost
much more than if built by corporations.
Possibly this would be true, but they would be much better built and
cost far less for maintenance and "betterments," and would represent
no more than actual cost; and such lines as the Kansas Midland,
costing but $10,200 per mile, would not, as now, be capitalized at
$53,024 per mile; nor would the President of the Union Pacific (as
does Sidney Dillon, in the _North American Review_ for April,) say
that "A citizen, simply as a citizen, commits an impertinence when he
questions the right of a corporation to capitalize its properties at
any sum whatever," as then there would be no Sidney Dillons who would
be presidents of corporations, pretending to own railways built wholly
from government moneys and lands, and who have never invested a dollar
in the construction of a property which they have now capitalized at
the modest sum of $106,000 per mile. After such an achievement, in
making much out of nothing, it is no wonder that Mr. Dillon is a
multi-millionnaire and thinks it an impertinence when a citizen asks
how he has discharged his trust in relation to a railway built wholly
with public funds, no part of which Mr. Dillon and his associates seem
in haste to pay back; their indebtedness to the government, with many
years of unpaid interest, amounting to more than $50,000,000, which is
more than the cash cost of the railway upon which these men have been
so sharp as to induce the government, after furnishing all the money
expended in its construction, to accept a second mortgage, and now ask
the same accommodating government to reduce the rate of
interest--which they make no pretence of paying--to a nominal figure,
and to wait another hundred years for both principal and interest. To
make sure that the government's second mortgage shall be no more
valuable than second mortgages usually are, and to make it more
comfortable for the manipulators, Messrs. Gould and Dillon now propose
to put a blanket first mortgage of $250,000,000 on this property,
built wholly from funds derived from the sale of government lands and
bonds, and to pay the interest on which bonds the people are yearly
taxed, although Mr. Dillon and his associates contracted to pay such
interest. In his conception of the relations of railway corporations
to the public, Mr. Dillon is clearly not in accord with the higher
tribunals which hold, in substance, that railways are public rather
than private property, and that the shareholders _are entitled to but
a reasonable compensation for the capital actually expended in
construction_ and a limited control of the property; and in this
connection it may be well to quote briefly from decisions of the
United States Supreme Court, which, in the case of Wabash Railway
_vs._ Illinois, uses this language: "The highways in a State are the
highways of the State. The highways are not of private but of public
institution and regulation. In modern times, it is true, government is
in the habit, in some countries, of letting out the construction of
important highways, requiring a large expenditure of capital, to
agents, generally corporate bodies created for the purpose, and giving
them the right of taxing those who travel or transport goods thereon
as a means of obtaining compensation for their outlay; but a
superintending power over the highways, and the charges imposed upon
the public for their use, always remains in the government." Again, in
Olcott _vs._ the Supervisors, it is held that: "Whether the use of a
railway is a public or private one depends in no measure upon the
question who constructed it or who owns it. It has never been
considered of any importance that the road was built by the agency of
a private corporation. No matter who is the agent, the function
performed is that of the State."
Mr. Justice Bradley says: "When a railroad is chartered it is for the
purpose of performing a duty which belongs to the State itself.... It
is the duty and prerogative of the State to provide means of
intercommunication between one part of its territory and another."
If, as appears, such is the duty of the State (nation) why should not
the State resume the discharge of this duty when the corporate agents
to which it has delegated it are found to be using the delegated power
for the purpose of oppressing and plundering a public which it is the
duty of the government to protect?
The abilities of the man who cannot become a multi-millionnaire with
the free use, for twenty-five years, of $33,000,000 of government
funds, must be of a very low order, and it is no wonder, that after
having for so many years had the use of such a sum without payment of
interest, Mr. Dillon and his associates are very wealthy, and, like
others who are retaining what does not belong to them, think it an
impertinence when the owner inquires what use they are making of
property to which they have no right. Had the nation built the Union
Pacific there would have been no "Credit-Mobilier" and its unsavory
scandal, and it is safe to say that the road would not now be made to
represent an expenditure of $106,000 per mile, and that Mr. Dillon and
some others would not have so much money as to warrant them in putting
on such insufferable airs. When it is remembered what use Oakes Ames
and the Union Pacific crew made of issues of stock, it is not at all
surprising that the president of the Union Pacific should think it an
impertinence for a citizen to question the amount of capitalization or
the use to which a part of such issues have been put, some of which
are within the knowledge of the writer, so far as relates to issues of
that part of the Union Pacific lying in Kansas and built by Samuel
Hallett, who told the writer that he gave a member of the then federal
cabinet several thousand shares of the capital stock of the "Union
Pacific Railway, Eastern Division,"--now the Kansas Division of the
Union Pacific--to secure the acceptance of sections of the road which
were not built in accordance with the requirements of the act of
Congress, which provided that a given amount of government bonds per
mile should be delivered to the railway company when certain officials
should accept the road; and it was a quarrel with the chief engineer
of the road in relation to a letter written by such engineer to
President Lincoln, informing him of the defective construction of this
road, that caused Samuel Hallett to be shot down in the streets of
Wyandotte, Kansas, by engineer Talcott. It is within the knowledge of
the writer that the member of the cabinet to whom Mr. Hallett said he
gave several thousand shares of stock, held an amount of Union Pacific
shares years afterwards, and that many years after he left the cabinet
he continued to draw a large salary from the Union Pacific Company.
Mr. Hallett also told the writer what were the arguments applied to
congressmen to induce them to change the government lien from a first
to a second mortgage of the Pacific Railway lines, and what was his
contribution in dollars to the fund used to enable congressmen to see
the force of the arguments. When issues of railway shares are used for
corrupt purposes it is certainly an impertinence for a citizen to make
inquiries or offer any remarks in relation thereto.
The seventh objection to State owned railways is that they are
incapable of as progressive improvement as are corporate owned ones,
and will not keep pace with the progress of the nation in other
respects; and in his _Forum_ article Mr. Acworth lays great stress
upon this phase of the question, and argues that as a result the
service would be far less satisfactory.
There may be force in this objection, but the evidence points to an
opposite conclusion. When the nation owns the railways, trains will
run into union depots, the equipment will become uniform and of the
best character, and so sufficient that the traffic of no part of the
country would have to wait while the worthless locomotives of some
bankrupt corporation were being patched up, nor would there be the
present difficulties in obtaining freight cars, growing out of the
poverty of corporations which have been plundered by the manipulators,
and improvements would not be hindered by the diverse ideas of the
managers of various lines in relation to the adoption of devices
intended to render life more secure or to add to the public
convenience. That such is one of the evils of corporate management is
demonstrated daily, and is shown by the following from the _Railway
Review_ of March 7, 1891: "It is stated that a bill will be introduced
in the Illinois Legislature, at the suggestion of the railroad and
warehouse commissioners, governing the placing of interlocking plants
at railway grade crossings. It sometimes happens that one of the
companies concerned is anxious to put in such a plant and the other
objects. At present there is no law to govern the matter, and the
enterprising company is forced to abide the time of the other."
Instead of national ownership being a hindrance to improvement and
enterprise, the results in Australia prove the contrary, as in
Victoria the government railways are already provided with
interlocking plants at all grade crossings, and one line does not have
to wait the motion of another, but all are governed by an active and
enlightened policy which adopts all beneficial improvements,
appliances or modes of administration that will add either to the
public safety, comfort, or convenience. It is safe to say that had
the nation been operating the railways, there would have been no
Fourth Avenue tunnel horror; and Chauncey Depew and associates would
not now be under indictment, as the government would not have
continued the use of the death-dealing stove on nearly half the
railways in the country in order to save money for the shareholders.
Existing evidence all negatives Mr. Acworth's postulate "that State
railway systems are incapable of vigorous life."
An objection to national ownership, which the writer has not seen
advanced, is that States, counties, cities, townships, and
school-districts would lose some $27,000,000 of revenue derived from
taxes upon railways.
While this would be a serious loss to some communities, there would be
compensating advantages for the public, as the cost of transportation
would be lessened in like measure.
Many believe stringent laws, enforced by commissions having judicial
powers, will serve the desired end, and the writer was long hopeful of
the efficacy of regulation by State and national commissions; but
close observation of their endeavors and of the constant efforts--too
often successful--of the corporations to place their tools on such
commissions, and to evade all laws and regulations, have convinced him
that such control is and must continue to be ineffective, and that the
only hope of just and impartial treatment for railway users is to
exercise the "right of eminent domain," condemn the railways, and pay
their owners what it would cost to duplicate them; and in this
connection it may be well to state what valuations some of the
corporations place upon their properties.
Some years since the "Santa Fe" filed in the counties on its line a
statement showing that at the then price of labor and materials--rails
were double the present price--that their road could be duplicated for
$9,685 per mile, and the materials being much worn the actual cash
value of the road did not exceed $7,725 per mile.
In 1885 the superintendent of the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railway,
before the Arkansas State board of assessors, swore that he could
duplicate such railway for $11,000 per mile, and yet Mr. Gould has
managed to float its securities, notwithstanding a capitalization of
five times that amount.
(_Concluded next month_.)
THE UNKNOWN.[1]