INSTANCE OF AMERICAN KINDLINESS—RED-SKINS AND HALF-BREEDS ON THE
RAILS—CINCINNATI AND ITS INHABITANTS—WHAT MAY BE MADE OF PIGS—THE
INFLUENCE OF ITS PORK CROP—MACHINERY FOR KILLING AND CURING—IMPROVING
EFFECT AMERICAN EQUALITY HAS ON THE HIGHEST AND LOWEST CLASS—CHURCHES
ONLY UNPROSAIC BUILDINGS IN AMERICAN TOWNS—SCHOOLS—MERITS OF
PHILADELPHIAN STYLE OF CITY-BUILDING NOT OBVIOUS—IN WHAT IT
CONSISTS—AMERICA HAS BUT ONE CITY—NO. 24, G STREET, CORNER OF 25TH
STREET.
On leaving St. Louis for Cincinnati, I took the evening train, because,
as far as Odin, the ground was the same I had lately passed over. On
entering the carriage I met with an instance of American kindliness
I should be sorry to have to pass unnoticed. When I applied for a
sleeping berth, I found that they were all engaged except some on the
upper tier. As the heated air accumulates against the roof, these upper
berths are generally too warm; besides that, there is some difficulty
in getting in and out of them. This difficulty would have been very
considerably increased in my case, as I happened just at that time to
be obliged to carry my arm in a sling. An American gentleman, and, as
I afterwards found, a very well-known man in Chicago, observing this,
came up to me, and insisted on my taking his lower berth, and letting
him have in exchange my upper one. While at Chicago, I was laid under
further obligation to this gentleman, which I must advert to when I
reach that place. He was one of those who, during the late war, gave
up their business, and left their comfortable houses for the tented
field, that they might help to save their country from disruption; and
he had had the good fortune to accompany Sherman in his memorable march
through the South.
[Sidenote: _What may be made of Pigs._]
There were two red-skins ‘on board’ this sleeping car, on their way to
Washington to transact the business of their tribe. They were tall,
bony men, but their complexion was not of so dark a copper colour as
I had expected. Their features were coarse and stolid, their only
expression being just that of the obstinate tenacity of purpose, and of
the power of endurance with which history credits their race. They were
accompanied by two half-breeds, who appeared a great improvement on the
pure stock. These latter played at cards hour after hour, and, when not
so employed, sang together Heber’s ‘Missionary Hymn’ and ‘Three Blind
Mice’ alternately, equally unconscious of the poetry and sentiments of
the one, and of the inanity of the other.
Everyone has heard of the Metropolis of Pigs. And it is rightly so
called, for the greatness of Cincinnati is founded on cured pigs, in a
far greater degree than that of Holland was on pickled herrings. Here
are more than 200,000 souls maintained in life by breeding, fattening,
killing, salting, packing, and exporting incredible millions of pigs.
The 200,000 human beings are only 200,000,000 pigs in another form.
The old and the young, the schools and the churches, the politicians
and the men of science of this great city, are all created out of pig.
Take away the pigs, and they all disappear; double the pigs, and they
all are doubled.
And the influence of the pigs of Cincinnati is felt all over the world.
When an East Anglian farmer sells his improved Essex or Suffolk hog,
the price of its bacon is affected by the greater or less number of its
brethren who grunted their last at Cincinnati during the previous year,
or, as the Cincinnatians themselves would say, on the amount of the
previous year’s ‘pork crop.’
Of course, where so many pigs have to be disposed of, one would expect
to find in America some time-and-labour-saving machinery; and I was
told that, if I went into any of the great factories—which, however, I
did not do—I might see machinery in operation, by the aid of which a
stream of pigs, that walked into the factory at the front door, alive
and grunting, was made to issue, a few minutes afterwards, at the
opposite door, ready packed for exportation in the three forms of ham,
bacon, and lard; each in his passage through the building having been
stabbed in the throat, scraped, eviscerated, jointed, and injected with
bacon or ham-curing liquor, all by machinery, and with the regularity
of clockwork.
[Sidenote: _Some Effects of American Democracy._]
One of the most marked peculiarities of American society is the
total absence of all classes higher than those of the merchant and
professional man. One sees the working of this in many different ways.
For instance, it evidently elevates the tone and character of the
classes which thus find themselves at the head of the scale. It gives
them a dignity and a bearing they would not otherwise possess. If
there is no one higher in society than a retail shop-keeper, then by
the force of his position he becomes brave and liberal, and his ideas
become enlarged. I observed this at Denver, where there is no higher
class. And I think the same observation would be made by any one who
would go so far to judge for himself. There are good effects which the
American system has upon those also who are most humbly placed. As they
feel that they are theoretically, and in some respects practically,
equal to those who are even the best placed in society, they endeavour
not to disgrace or altogether to fall short of their position. This
is a strong stimulus among them to education and self-improvement.
It is what has suggested the efforts of many who have risen in life,
and sustained them through many long years of patient industry and
laborious enterprise. I have no reason to believe a word of all that I
ever heard of the offensive self-assertion and obtrusive incivility of
this class, for I never myself suffered from, or witnessed, anything
of the kind. Where an Englishman is the complainant, I should be
disposed to think that, in most cases, he had provoked the treatment
he complains of, for no people are more careful about giving offence
than Americans. This carefulness is taught in their schools, and is a
tradition of American society, coming down from the time when, among an
excitable people, the use of the pistol had always been simultaneous
with the offence.
Another effect of the want in America of what we in Europe regard as
the Corinthian capital of society, is the almost entire absence of the
literary element. Not that the Americans have no writers or readers;
they have plenty of the former, and are a nation of the latter. But
this leaves very little trace on American society, because they have no
class whose only real work in life is intellectual. The chief source
of supply for the literary element is, with us, that vast number of
persons, constituting quite an order in the state, who live upon the
rent of the land, associated with whom is perhaps a still greater
number of families who live more or less on interest and dividends,
that is, on realised personalty. The members of this class can only
distinguish themselves in life by the exercise of intellectual powers.
They have abundant leisure, and every appliance at their command for
intellectual culture. Multitudes of them, it is true, never rise to
any useful conception of the advantages and requirements of their
position; still this, and this only, is what they are called to;
and we cannot complain that their work is on the whole done badly.
As a class they are highly educated. From them come almost all our
statesmen, and a large proportion of our literary and scientific men.
Their culture it is that with us gives to society its tone and colour.
This intellectualising element is completely wanting in America. The
effects of its absence are by the European never unfelt for a moment.
He is always conscious that there are no statesmen, though plenty
of politicians, no literary men, though plenty of writers, and no
intellectual class, though much has been done successfully to cultivate
intellect.
[Sidenote: _Schools._]
As was my custom wherever I went, I asked permission to visit and
inspect some of the schools of this place. The superintendent of
schools for Cincinnati was so good as to take me over the largest
graded school in the city. We spent in it three hours. There were
present about 600 children. The school was divided into six grades. In
New York and most other places two of the grades would have belonged to
the Grammar School. We began at the bottom and worked up to the top.
They teach reading, as is generally now done in America, phonetically.
This they think an easier method. They are not at all ambitious in
their reading books, because they do not aim at conveying knowledge of
things through the medium of reading lessons, but content themselves
with creating the habit of reading correctly, and with attention to the
meaning of what is read; and this is more likely to be secured, if the
book consists of little interesting stories, than would be the case if
it contained solid information. What in the upper grades they write
to-day, is what they remember of an object lesson given on the previous
day. This trains them to remember, to think, and to compose. There is
no writing from copies, which children generally get through as quickly
as they can, without any attention or thought. Singing is carefully
taught, and so is elementary drawing, particularly in connection with
the construction of maps. They begin the study of Geography, with the
geography of the school-room, which is the North, the East, the South,
and the West side: and then they go on to what is beyond. The geography
of the United States is taught carefully. It often struck me in America
that the geography of the rest of the world was almost ignored. In
these schools the reading was very good, and from the readiness and
correctness of their answers, it was evident that they were in the
habit of attending to what they were reading, and that they completely
mastered its meaning. It is not to be expected that children, when they
leave school, will keep up their reading, if they have not been taught
to read with facility, and so far to understand what they read as to
take an interest in it.
The key to the success of these schools, and of so many other city
schools in America, is that they are graded, and that each grade has a
room and teacher exclusively to itself. The whole time of the teacher
is devoted to one class. No member, therefore, of the class can ever
during school hours be idle. This system, too, naturally employs more
largely than any other the oral method of conveying instruction. The
teacher stands up before the class, and teaches it. The eye and the
ear are always busy. There is no drowsiness, no whispering, no poring
over books, or pretending to be poring over them. All the teachers
in this school, excepting one, were women. The superintendent of the
whole school appeared to attend equally to all the classes, and to be
responsible for the state of each. Boys and girls are taught together
in all grades except the highest. The district in which this fine
school is situated is inhabited chiefly by German Jews, and more than
half the 600 pupils were children of such parents. The Roman Catholic
children were only six or seven per cent. of the whole. In the State of
Ohio they do not, as is done in the State of New York, allow the Roman
Catholics a part of the school rate for the maintenance of separate
schools. If they wish to bring up their children in schools of their
own, of course they are at liberty to do so, but they must pay for such
schools themselves.
[Sidenote: _America has but One City._]
I observed at Cincinnati, and in some other cities, that the American
Jews affect in their synagogues a Moorish style of architecture. As
American cities can have no historical buildings, there is nothing in
them to counteract the prose of commerce, and of the American method
of laying out cities, except the churches. And as many of them (the
practice being general among all the denominations) are embellished
with towers or spires, their redeeming effect on the appearance of the
town is very considerable.
As I am on the subject of American towns, I trust that my friends in
that part of the world will excuse me for never having been persuaded
by them to fall into ecstacies at the contemplation of the plan of
Philadelphia, which they point to with feelings of enthusiasm, as the
very perfection of taste and judgment in the art of building cities.
There is, however, as far as I could see, nothing in Philadelphia which
is not also in St. Louis and Cincinnati, and a hundred other cities in
embryo, or in adolescence. The three cities whose names I have just
mentioned are, saving their reverence, as like one another as three
peas. They have no main street, but a number of parallel streets at
equal distances from each other. These are numbered, first, second,
third, &c. Another set of streets, again, exactly parallel to each
other, cut the first at right angles. This second set of streets, in
the three cities I have named, are called after different trees: Birch,
Elm, Hickory, &c. This is everything. It is the very democracy of
houses; for all the streets and blocks are equal. No one is larger, or
wider, or in anyway better than another.
Of course the result of this must be that there is not a particle of
difference between one town and another, all having been cast in the
same mould. It would be laughable, were it not tiresome, to have not
a thousand cities in America, but one city reproduced over and over
again, wherever you go. St. Louis and Cincinnati are about the same
size, and have much the same kind of site, and I believe that if a man
who had spent a week in each of these cities, were a month afterwards
carried blindfold into one of them, and set down in the middle of the
town, he would be unable to say in which of the two he was. I know no
two things that are so like each other, except it be two farms on the
Prairie, where every farm is just the fac-simile of every other farm;
so that it is really impossible to guess how one living on the Prairie,
unless he developes a new sense to meet the circumstances he is placed
in, can ever distinguish his own home.
[Sidenote: _No. 24, G St., Corner of 25th St._]
I venture to think that the Americans are under another mistake about
their towns; they suppose that their method of parallel streets, not
named but enumerated and lettered, is a great help to the memory, and
facilitates very much the finding of any house one is in search of.
Never did fallible mortals entertain so erroneous an idea. Instead of
a name, Rivoli, or Cheapside, which readily fixes itself in the mind
you have to remember a figure and a letter; and as neither figures nor
letters suggest ideas, the thing is impossible. In truth, you have to
remember two figures and a letter. For instance No 24, G Street, corner
of 25th Street. There is no faculty in the human mind which enables one
to retain this direction. In five minutes all certainty is lost as to
whether it was G or E, 25th or 26th—perhaps it was C, perhaps it was
36th.
In fact, the Americans have but one town, and in the nomenclature of
the streets of this one town they have done everything the perverse
ingenuity of man could desire to render it confusing.