Cincinnati contains about 40,000 inhabitants, inclusive of the
adjoining villages; although founded 40 years ago, its rapid growth
dates only about 30 years back. It seems to be the rendezvous of all
nations; the Germans and Irish are very numerous, and there are some
Alsacians; I have often heard the harsh accents of the Rhenish French
in the streets. But the bulk of the population, which gives its tone
to all the rest, is of New England origin. What makes the progress of
Cincinnati more surprising is, that the city is the daughter of its own
works. Other towns, which have sprung up in the United States in the
same rapid manner, have been built on shares, so to speak. Lowell, for
example, is an enterprise of Boston merchants, who, after having raised
the necessary funds, have collected workmen and told them, "Build us a
town." Cincinnati has been gradually extended and embellished, almost
wholly without foreign aid, by its inhabitants, who have for the most
part arrived on the spot poor. The founders of Cincinnati brought with
them nothing but sharp-sighted, wakeful, untiring industry, the only
patrimony which they inherited from their New England fathers, and the
other inhabitants have scrupulously followed their example and adopted
their habits. They seem to have chosen Franklin for their patron-saint,
and to have adopted Poor Richard's maxims as a fifth gospel.
I have said that Cincinnati was admirably situated; this is true in
respect of its geographical position, but, if you follow the courses
of the rivers on the map, and consider the natural resources of the
district, you will find that there are several points on the long line
of the rivers of the West as advantageously placed, both for trade and
manufactures, and that there are some which are even more favoured
in these respects. Pittsburg, which has within reach both coal and
iron, that is to say, the daily bread of industry, which stands at
the head of the Ohio, at the starting point of steam-navigation, at
the confluence of the Monongahela and the Alleghany, coming the one
from the south and the other from the north; Pittsburg, which is near
the great chain of lakes, appears as the pivot of a vast system of
roads, railroads, and canals, several of which are already completed.
Pittsburg was marked out by nature at once for a great manufacturing
centre and a great mart of trade. Louisville, built at the falls of the
Ohio, at the head of navigation for the largest class of boats, is a
natural medium between the commerce of the upper Ohio and that of the
Mississippi and its tributaries. In respect to manufacturing resources,
Louisville is as well provided as Cincinnati, and the latter, setting
aside its enchanting situation, seemed destined merely to become the
market of the fertile strip between the Great and Little Miami.
But the power of men, when they agree in willing anything and in
willing it perseveringly, is sufficient to overbear and conquer that
of nature. In spite of the superior advantages of Louisville as an
_entrepôt_, in spite of the manufacturing resources of Pittsburg,
Cincinnati is able to maintain a population twice that of Louisville
and half as large again as that of Pittsburg in a state of competence,
which equals, if it does not surpass, the average condition of that
of each of the others. The inhabitants of Cincinnati have fixed this
prosperity among them, by one of those instinctive views with which
the sons of New England are inspired by their eminently practical and
calculating genius. A half-word, they say, is enough for the wise, but
cleverer than the wisest, the Yankees understand each other without
speaking, and by a tacit consent direct their common efforts toward the
same point. To work Boston fashion means, in the United States, to do
anything with perfect precision and without words. The object which the
Cincinnatians have had in view, almost from the origin of their city,
has been nothing less than to make it the capital, or great interior
mart of the West. The indirect, means which they have employed, have
been to secure the manufacture of certain articles, which, though
of little value separately considered, form an important aggregate
when taken together, and getting the start of their neighbours, with
that spirit of diligence that characterises the Yankees, they have
accordingly distributed the manufacture of these articles among
themselves. This plan has succeeded.
Thus with the exception of the pork trade, one is surprised not to
see any branch of industry carried on on the great scale of the
manufacturing towns of England and France. The Cincinnatians make
a variety of household furniture and utensils, agricultural and
mechanical implements and machines, wooden clocks, and a thousand
objects of daily use and consumption, soap, candles, paper, leather,
&c., for which there is an indefinite demand throughout the flourishing
and rapidly growing States of the West, and also in the new States of
the Southwest, which are wholly devoted to agriculture, and in which,
on account of the existence of slavery, manufactures cannot be carried
on. Most of these articles are of ordinary quality; the furniture,
for instance, is rarely such as would be approved by Parisian taste,
but it is cheap and neat, just what is wanted in a new country,
where, with the exception of a part of the South, there is a general
ease and but little wealth, and where plenty and comfort are more
generally known than the little luxuries of a more refined society.
The prosperity of Cincinnati, therefore, rests upon the sure basis of
the prosperity of the West, upon the supply of articles of the first
necessity to the bulk of the community; a much more solid foundation
than the caprice of fashion, upon which, nevertheless, the branches
of industry most in favour with us, depend. The intellectual also
receives a share of attention; in the first place, there is a large
type-foundery in Cincinnati, which supplies the demand of the whole
West, and of that army of newspapers that is printed in it. According
to the usual English or American mode of proceeding, the place of human
labour is supplied as much as possible by machinery, and I have seen
several little contrivances here, that are not probably to be found
in the establishments of the Royal Press or of the Didots. Then the
printing-presses are numerous, and they issue nothing but publications
in general demand, such as school-books, and religious books, and
newspapers. By means of this variety of manufactures, which, taken
separately appear of little consequence, Cincinnati has taken a stand,
from which it will be very difficult to remove her, for, in this
matter, priority of occupation is no trifling advantage. The country
trader, who keeps an assortment of everything vendible, is sure to
find almost everything he wants in Cincinnati, and he, therefore, goes
thither in preference to any other place in order to lay in his stock
of goods. Cincinnati is thus in fact the great central mart of the
West; a great quantity and variety of produce and manufactured articles
find a vent here, notwithstanding the natural superiority of several
other sites, either in regard to the extent of water-communication or
mineral resources.
M. Fourrier has characterised the spirit of the 19th century by the
term _industrial feudalism_. The human race, according to some, has
thrown off one yoke only to bear another, less burdensome perhaps, but
also less noble. The warlike lords of the Middle Ages have passed away
but the industrial lords have come to take their place, the princes
of manufactures, banks, and commerce. These new masters will embitter
the life of the poor with less distress and privation, but they will
also shed less glory upon it. They will increase the body's pittance,
but diminish the soul's. At the sight of the great manufactories of
England and some of those of the European continent, of those which are
multiplying so rapidly in New England, in that wonderful creation the
city of Lowell, one is tempted to think that the industrial feudalism
is already established in the former, and is creeping beneath the
democratic institutions, like the snake under the grass, in the latter.
Those who do not believe that the human race can go backward, and
who prefer to rock themselves in the cradle of hope, rather than to
yield to flat despair, while they admit the existence of this tendency
of the age, console themselves by the contemplation of its other
characteristic features, at the head of which they place the general
spirit of emancipation, which breaks down all obstacles in its way. If
in England, for instance, there are, in the factories, a thousand germs
of despotism, there are, in the working classes, a thousand germs of
resistance, in the population a thousand germs of liberalism; there are
Trades' Unions, there are radicals: neither of these opposite forces
alone will decide the destinies of the future. From their opposing
impulses will result a single force, different from both, yet partaking
of both. The force of emancipation will make what to some seems about
to become feudalism, simply patronage.
Patronage has not finished its career upon the earth; it will endure
while Providence shall continue to cast men in different moulds; it
will subsist for the good of the weak and the poor, and for that of
the class of men, so numerous in southern Europe, for example, who
require the support of somebody more powerful than themselves. But
it will be modified in character, growing successively less and less
violent, and more and more mild. The inferior has been a slave, a serf,
a paid freeman; he may in time become an associate or partner without
ceasing to be an inferior. However this may be, there is no germ of
industrial feudalism in Cincinnati, there are no great factories or
workshops. Mechanical industry is subdivided there, pretty much as the
soil is amongst us; each head of a family, with his sons and some newly
arrived emigrants as assistants and servants, has his domain in this
great field. Cincinnati is, therefore, as republican in its industrial
organisation, as in its political. This subdivision of manufactures has
hitherto been attended with no inconvenience, because in the vast West,
whose growth is visible to the eye, the production cannot at present
keep pace with the consumption. But how will it be in a century, or
perhaps in fifty years? Will not the condition of mechanical industry
undergo some great change, or rather will not the whole of this vast
region undergo a complete change of character and condition, which will
involve a reorganisation of the industrial system?
The moral aspect of Cincinnati is delightful in the eyes of him who
prefers work to every thing else, and with whom work can take the
place of every thing else. But whoever has a taste for pleasure and
display, whoever needs occasional relaxation from business, in gaiety
and amusement, would find this beautiful city, with its picturesque
environs, an insupportable residence. It would be still more so for
a man of leisure, desirous of devoting a large part of his time to
the cultivation of the fine arts and the rest to pleasure. For such
a man, indeed, it would not be possible to live here; he would find
himself denounced from political considerations, because men of leisure
are looked upon in the United States as so many steppingstones to
aristocracy, and anathematised by religion, for the various sects,
however much they may differ on other points, all agree in condemning
pleasure, luxury, gallantry, the fine arts themselves. Now the United
States are not like some countries in Europe, particularly France,
where religion and the pulpit can be braved with impunity. Hemmed in
by the laborious habits of the country, by political notions, and by
religion, a man must either resign himself to the same mode of life
with the mass, or seek a soil less unfriendly to his tastes in the
great cities of New York, Philadelphia, or New Orleans, or even in
Europe. There is, therefore, no such thing in Cincinnati as a class
of men of leisure, living without any regular profession on their
patrimony, or on the wealth acquired by their own enterprise in early
life, although there are many persons of opulence, having one hundred
thousand dollars and upwards. I met a young man there, the future heir
of a large fortune, who, after having been educated at West Point and
received a commission, had retired from the service in order to live
at home. Wearied out with his solitary leisure, burdened with the
weight of his own person, he could find no other relief than to open a
fancy-goods shop.
Every where in the United States where there are no slaves, and out
of the large towns of the sea-coast, a strict watch is kept up in
regard to persons of leisure, obliging those who might be seduced
by a taste for this kind of life to fall into the ranks and work,
at least until age makes repose necessary. Public opinion is on the
lookout to banish any habits of dissipation, however innocent, that
might get a footing in society, and make a life of leisure tolerable.
Religious and philanthropical societies, instituted under various
names, take upon themselves the task of enforcing the decrees of public
opinion; like vigilant sentinels, they compel a rigid observance of
the austerities, or if you choose the _ennuis_, of Sunday, labour
to suppress intemperance and gaming, the spirit of which, if once
diffused among a people so wholly devoted to money-making, might lead
to the most fatal consequences. These societies and committees pursue
their task with a more than British perseverance, and sometimes with
a puritanical fanaticism. When Mr John Quincy Adams became President,
he had a billiard-table placed in the President's House, and such is
here the real or affected abhorrence of every thing called a game,
that this billiard-table was actually one of the arguments against
the re-election of Mr Adams. "It is a scandal, the abomination of
desolation," was the general cry. Mr Adams, whose private character is
above suspicion, was, if we must believe the Opposition journals of
the day, a teacher of immorality, because he had a billiard-table in
his house, and General Jackson has doubtless caused that scandalous
piece of furniture to be broken up and burnt, since he has become
master of the White House. Any where else this rigour would be called
intolerance, inquisition; here it is submitted to without a murmur,
and few persons are really annoyed by it, or show that they are. The
American can support a constant and unrelaxing devotion to labour;
he does not feel the need of amusement and recreation. The silence
and retirement of his Sunday seem to be a more effectual relaxation
for him, than the noisy gaiety of our festivals; one might even say
that he was destitute of the sense of pleasure. All his faculties and
energies are admirably and vigourously combined for production; he
wants those without which pleasure is not enjoyment, and amusement is
but a painful effort; and, between these two kinds of work, he would of
course prefer that which is gainful, to that which is expensive.
Such a social organisation is the very best for a pioneer people.
Without this devotion to business, without this constant direction
of the energies of the mind to useful enterprises, without this
indifference to pleasure, without those political and religious
notions which imperiously repress all passions but those whose objects
are business, production, and gain, can any one suppose that the
Americans would ever have achieved their great industrial conquests?
With any other less exclusive system, they would yet, perhaps, be
meditating the passage over the Alleghanies. Instead of having that
great domain of the West, immense in its extent and resources, already
cleared and cultivated, furrowed with roads and dotted over with
farms, they would probably be still confined to the sandy strip that
borders the Atlantic. It must be allowed that this ardent and entire
devotion to business gives the nation a strange aspect in the eyes of
a European: And this explains the fact that the Americans have found
so little favour with most foreigners who have visited their country.
But, in return, they are sure of the gratitude of that innumerable
posterity for whom they are preparing with such energy and sagacity
an abode of plenty, a land of promise. This posterity, it is said,
will change the habits of their fathers, will adopt new tastes, and
even new institutions. So be it! It is of little consequence whether
the Americans of the 20th or 21st century, shall retain the national
character, customs, and laws of the Americans of the 19th. But the
more interesting consideration is, whether the Americans of our day
do not fulfil, as perfectly as human nature is capable of doing, the
mission which Providence has entrusted to them, that of acting as a
nation of pioneers and subduers of the forest; and if they do not
deserve to be excused, like all nations and individuals, for having the
defects inherent in their good qualities. The question thus stated will
be easily answered by every one who sets any value on the interests and
welfare of the future.