CERES AMERICANA.
We stopped at the Julien House, Dubuque. Dubuque is a city in Iowa
on the western shore of the Mississippi, and as the names both of
the town and of the hotel sounded French in my ears, I asked for
an explanation. I was then told that Julien Dubuque, a Canadian
Frenchman, had been buried on one of the bluffs of the river within
the precincts of the present town, that he had been the first white
settler in Iowa, and had been the only man who had ever prevailed
upon the Indians to work. Among them he had become a great
"Medicine," and seems for a while to have had absolute power over
them. He died I think in 1800, and was buried on one of the hills
over the river. "He was a bold bad man," my informant told me, "and
committed every sin under heaven. But he made the Indians work."
Lead mines are the glory of Dubuque, and very large sums of money
have been made from them. I was taken out to see one of them, and to
go down it; but we found, not altogether to my sorrow, that the works
had been stopped on account of the water. No effort has been made in
any of these mines to subdue the water, nor has steam been applied to
the working of them. The lodes have been so rich with lead that the
speculators have been content to take out the metal that was easily
reached, and to go off in search of fresh ground when disturbed by
water. "And are wages here paid pretty punctually?" I asked. "Well;
a man has to be smart, you know." And then my friend went on to
acknowledge that it would be better for the country if smartness were
not so essential.
Iowa has a population of 674,000 souls, and in October 1861 had
already mustered eighteen regiments of 1000 men each. Such a
population would give probably 170,000 men capable of bearing arms,
and therefore the number of soldiers sent had already amounted to
more than a decimation of the available strength of the State. When
we were at Dubuque nothing was talked of but the army. It seemed
that mines, coal-pits, and corn-fields, were all of no account in
comparison with the war. How many regiments could be squeezed out
of the State, was the one question which filled all minds; and the
general desire was that such regiments should be sent to the Western
army, to swell the triumph which was still expected for General
Fremont, and to assist in sweeping slavery out into the Gulf of
Mexico. The patriotism of the West has been quite as keen as that
of the North, and has produced results as memorable; but it has
sprung from a different source, and been conducted and animated by a
different sentiment. National greatness and support of the law have
been the ideas of the North; national greatness and abolition of
slavery have been those of the West. How they are to agree as to
terms when between them they have crushed the South,--that is the
difficulty.
At Dubuque in Iowa, I ate the best apple that I ever encountered.
I make that statement with the purpose of doing justice to the
Americans on a matter which is to them one of considerable
importance. Americans as a rule do not believe in English apples.
They declare that there are none, and receive accounts of Devonshire
cyder with manifest incredulity. "But at any rate there are no
apples in England equal to ours." That is an assertion to which an
Englishman is called upon to give an absolute assent; and I hereby
give it. Apples so excellent as some which were given to us at
Dubuque, I have never eaten in England. There is a great jealousy
respecting all the fruits of the earth. "Your peaches are fine to
look at," was said to me, "but they have no flavour." This was the
assertion of a lady, and I made no answer. My idea had been that
American peaches had no flavour; that French peaches had none; that
those of Italy had none; that little as there might be of which
England could boast with truth, she might at any rate boast of her
peaches without fear of contradiction. Indeed my idea had been that
good peaches were to be got in England only. I am beginning to doubt
whether my belief on the matter has not been the product of insular
ignorance, and idolatrous self-worship. It may be that a peach should
be a combination of an apple and a turnip. "My great objection
to your country, sir," said another, "is that you have got no
vegetables." Had he told me that we had got no seaboard, or no coals,
he would not have surprised me more. No vegetables in England! I
could not restrain myself altogether, and replied by a confession
"that we 'raised' no squash." Squash is the pulp of the pumpkin,
and is much used in the States, both as a vegetable and for pies.
No vegetables in England! Did my surprise arise from the insular
ignorance and idolatrous self-worship of a Britisher, or was my
American friend labouring under a delusion? Is Covent Garden well
supplied with vegetables, or is it not? Do we cultivate our kitchen
gardens with success, or am I under a delusion on that subject? Do
I dream, or is it true that out of my own little patches at home
I have enough for all domestic purposes of peas, beans, broccoli,
cauliflower, celery, beet-root, onions, carrots, parsnips, turnips,
seakale, asparagus, French beans, artichokes, vegetable marrow,
cucumbers, tomatoes, endive, lettuce, as well as herbs of many kinds,
cabbages throughout the year, and potatoes? No vegetables! Had the
gentleman told me that England did not suit him because we had
nothing but vegetables, I should have been less surprised.
From Dubuque, on the western shore of the river, we passed over to
Dunleath in Illinois, and went on from thence by railway to Dixon.
I was induced to visit this not very flourishing town by a desire
to see the rolling prairie of Illinois, and to learn by eyesight
something of the crops of corn or Indian maize which are produced
upon the land. Had that gentleman told me that we knew nothing of
producing corn in England he would have been nearer the mark; for
of corn in the profusion in which it is grown here we do not know
much. Better land than the prairies of Illinois for cereal crops
the world's surface probably cannot show. And here there has been
no necessity for the long previous labour of banishing the forest.
Enormous prairies stretch across the State, into which the plough can
be put at once. The earth is rich with the vegetation of thousands
of years, and the farmer's return is given to him without delay. The
land bursts with its own produce, and the plenty is such that it
creates wasteful carelessness in the gathering of the crop. It is
not worth a man's while to handle less than large quantities. Up in
Minnesota I had been grieved by the loose manner in which wheat was
treated. I have seen bags of it upset, and left upon the ground.
The labour of collecting it was more than it was worth. There wheat
is the chief crop, and as the lands become cleared and cultivation
spreads itself, the amount coming down the Mississippi will be
increased almost to infinity. The price of wheat in Europe will soon
depend, not upon the value of the wheat in the country which grows
it, but on the power and cheapness of the modes which may exist for
transporting it. I have not been able to obtain the exact prices with
reference to the carriage of wheat from St. Paul, the capital of
Minnesota, to Liverpool, but I have done so as regards Indian corn
from the State of Illinois. The following statement will show what
proportion the value of the article at the place of its growth bears
to the cost of the carriage; and it shows also how enormous an effect
on the price of corn in England would follow any serious decrease in
the cost of carriage.
A bushel of Indian corn at Bloomington
in Illinois cost in October, 1861 10 cents.
Freight to Chicago 10 "
Storeage 2 "
Freight from Chicago to Buffalo 22 "
Elevating, and canal freight to
New York 19 "
Transfer in New York and insurance 3 "
Ocean freight 23 "
--
Cost of a bushel of Indian corn at
Liverpool 89 cents.
Thus corn which in Liverpool costs 3_s._ 10_d._, has been sold by
the farmer who produced it for 5_d._! It is probable that no great
reduction can be expected in the cost of ocean transit; but it will
be seen by the above figures that out of the Liverpool price of 3_s._
10_d._ or 89 cents, considerably more than half is paid for carriage
across the United States. All or nearly all this transit is by water,
and there can, I think, be no doubt but that a few years will see
it reduced by fifty per cent. In October last the Mississippi was
closed, the railways had not rolling stock sufficient for their work,
the crops of the two last years had been excessive, and there existed
the necessity of sending out the corn before the internal navigation
had been closed by frost. The parties who had the transit in their
hands put their heads together and were able to demand any prices
that they pleased. It will be seen that the cost of carrying a bushel
of corn from Chicago to Buffalo, by the lakes, was within one cent of
the cost of bringing it from New York to Liverpool. These temporary
causes for high prices of transit will cease, a more perfect system
of competition between the railways and the water transit will be
organized, and the result must necessarily be both an increase of
price to the producer and a decrease of price to the consumer. It
certainly seems that the produce of cereal crops in the valleys of
the Mississippi and its tributaries increases at a faster rate than
population increases. Wheat and corn are sown by the thousand acres
in a piece. I heard of one farmer who had 10,000 acres of corn.
Thirty years ago grain and flour were sent westward out of the
State of New York to supply the wants of those who had emigrated
into the prairies, and now we find that it will be the destiny of
those prairies to feed the universe. Chicago is the main point of
exportation north-westward from Illinois, and at the present time
sends out from its granaries more cereal produce than any other town
in the world. The bulk of this passes, in the shape of grain or
flour, from Chicago to Buffalo, which latter place is as it were
a gateway leading from the lakes or big waters to the canals or
small waters. I give below the amount of grain and flour in bushels
received into Buffalo for transit in the month of October during four
consecutive years.
October, 1858 4,429,055 bushels.
" 1859 5,523,448 "
" 1860 6,500,864 "
" 1861 12,483,797 "
In 1860, from the opening to the close of navigation, 30,837,632
bushels of grain and flour passed through Buffalo. In 1861 the amount
received up to the 31st of October was 51,969,142 bushels. As the
navigation would be closed during the month of November, the above
figures may be taken as representing not quite the whole amount
transported for the year. It may be presumed the 52,000,000 of
bushels, as quoted above, will swell itself to 60,000,000. I confess
that to my own mind statistical amounts do not bring home any
enduring idea. Fifty million bushels of corn and flour simply seems
to mean a great deal. It is a powerful form of superlative, and soon
vanishes away, as do other superlatives in this age of strong words.
I was at Chicago and at Buffalo in October 1861. I went down to the
granaries, and climbed up into the elevators. I saw the wheat running
in rivers from one vessel into another, and from the railroad vans up
into the huge bins on the top stores of the warehouses;--for these
rivers of food run up hill as easily as they do down. I saw the corn
measured by the forty bushel measure with as much ease as we measure
an ounce of cheese, and with greater rapidity. I ascertained that the
work went on, week day and Sunday, day and night incessantly; rivers
of wheat and rivers of maize ever running. I saw the men bathed in
corn as they distributed it in its flow. I saw bins by the score
laden with wheat, in each of which bins there was space for a
comfortable residence. I breathed the flour, and drank the flour,
and felt myself to be enveloped in a world of breadstuff. And then
I believed, understood, and brought it home to myself as a fact,
that here in the corn lands of Michigan, and amidst the bluffs
of Wisconsin, and on the high table plains of Minnesota, and the
prairies of Illinois, had God prepared the food for the increasing
millions of the Eastern world, as also for the coming millions of the
Western.
I do not find many minds constituted like my own, and therefore I
venture to publish the above figures. I believe them to be true in
the main, and they will show, if credited, that the increase during
the last four years has gone on with more than fabulous rapidity. For
myself I own that those figures would have done nothing unless I had
visited the spot myself. A man cannot, perhaps, count up the results
of such a work by a quick glance of his eye, nor communicate with
precision to another the conviction which his own short experience
has made so strong within himself;--but to himself seeing is
believing. To me it was so at Chicago and at Buffalo. I began then
to know what it was for a country to overflow with milk and honey,
to burst with its own fruits, and be smothered by its own riches.
From St. Paul down the Mississippi by the shores of Wisconsin and
Iowa,--by the ports on Lake Pepin,--by La Crosse, from which one
railway runs eastward,--by Prairie du Chien the terminus of a
second,--by Dunleath, Fulton, and Rock Island from whence three other
lines run eastward, all through that wonderful State of Illinois--the
farmers' glory,--along the ports of the great lakes,--through
Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and further Pennsylvania, up to Buffalo, the
great gate of the western Ceres, the loud cry was this--"How shall we
rid ourselves of our corn and wheat?" The result has been the passage
of 60,000,000 bushels of breadstuffs through that gate in one year!
Let those who are susceptible of statistics ponder that. For them who
are not I can only give this advice:--Let them go to Buffalo next
October, and look for themselves.
In regarding the above figures and the increase shown between the
years 1860 and 1861, it must of course be borne in mind that during
the latter autumn no corn or wheat was carried into the Southern
States, and that none was exported from New Orleans or the mouth of
the Mississippi. The States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana
have for some time past received much of their supplies from
the north-western lands, and the cutting off of this current of
consumption has tended to swell the amount of grain which has been
forced into the narrow channel of Buffalo. There has been no southern
exit allowed, and the southern appetite has been deprived of its
food. But taking this item for all that it is worth,--or taking
it, as it generally will be taken, for much more than it can be
worth,--the result left will be materially the same. The grand
markets to which the western States look and have looked are those of
New England, New York, and Europe. Already corn and wheat are not the
common crops of New England. Boston, and Hartford, and Lowell are fed
from the great western States. The State of New York, which, thirty
years ago, was famous chiefly for its cereal produce, is now fed
from these States. New York city would be starved if it depended
on its own State; and it will soon be as true that England would
be starved if it depended on itself. It was but the other day that
we were talking of free trade in corn as a thing desirable, but as
yet doubtful;--but the other day that Lord Derby who may be Prime
Minister to-morrow, and Mr. Disraeli who may be Chancellor of the
Exchequer to-morrow, were stoutly of opinion that the corn laws might
be and should be maintained;--but the other day that the same opinion
was held with confidence by Sir Robert Peel, who, however, when the
day for the change came, was not ashamed to become the instrument
used by the people for their repeal. Events in these days march so
quickly that they leave men behind, and our dear old Protectionists
at home will have grown sleek upon American flour before they have
realized the fact that they are no longer fed from their own furrows.
I have given figures merely as regards the trade of Buffalo; but it
must not be presumed that Buffalo is the only outlet from the great
corn lands of Northern America. In the first place no grain of the
produce of Canada finds its way to Buffalo. Its exit is by the St.
Lawrence, or by the Grand Trunk Railway, as I have stated when
speaking of Canada. And then there is the passage for large vessels
from the Upper Lakes, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Erie,
through the Welland Canal, into Lake Ontario, and out by the St.
Lawrence. There is also the direct communication from Lake Erie, by
the New York and Erie railway to New York. I have more especially
alluded to the trade of Buffalo, because I have been enabled to
obtain a reliable return of the quantity of grain and flour which
passes through that town, and because Buffalo and Chicago are the two
spots which are becoming most famous in the cereal history of the
western States.
Everybody has a map of North America. A reference to such a map will
show the peculiar position of Chicago. It is at the south or head
of Lake Michigan, and to it converge railways from Wisconsin, Iowa,
Illinois, and Indiana. At Chicago is found the nearest water carriage
which can be obtained for the produce of a large portion of these
States. From Chicago there is direct water conveyance round through
the lakes to Buffalo at the foot of Lake Erie. At Milwaukee, higher
up on the lake, certain lines of railway come in, joining the lake to
the Upper Mississippi, and to the wheat-lands of Minnesota. Thence
the passage is round by Detroit which is the port for the produce
of the greatest part of Michigan, and still it all goes on towards
Buffalo. Then on Lake Erie there are the ports of Toledo, Cleveland,
and Erie. At the bottom of Lake Erie, there is this city of corn, at
which the grain and flour are transhipped into the canal boats and
into the railway cars for New York; and there is also the Welland
Canal, through which large vessels pass from the upper lakes, without
transhipment of their cargo.
I have said above that corn--meaning maize or Indian corn--was to be
bought at Bloomington in Illinois for 10 cents or fivepence a bushel.
I found this also to be the case at Dixon--and also that corn of
inferior quality might be bought for fourpence; but I found also that
it was not worth the farmers' while to shell it and sell it at such
prices. I was assured that farmers were burning their Indian corn in
some places, finding it more available to them as fuel, than it was
for the market. The labour of detaching a bushel of corn from the
hulls or cobs is considerable, as is also the task of carrying it to
market. I have known potatoes in Ireland so cheap that they would not
pay for digging and carrying away for purposes of sale. There was
then a glut of potatoes in Ireland; and in the same way there was in
the autumn of 1861 a glut of corn in the western States. The best
qualities would fetch a price, though still a low price; but corn
that was not of the best quality was all but worthless. It did for
fuel, and was burnt. The fact was that the produce had re-created
itself quicker than mankind had multiplied. The ingenuity of man had
not worked quick enough for its disposal. The earth had given forth
her increase so abundantly that the lap of created humanity could not
stretch itself to hold it. At Dixon in 1861 corn cost fourpence a
bushel. In Ireland in 1848, it was sold for a penny a pound, a pound
being accounted sufficient to sustain life for a day,--and we all
felt that at that price food was brought into the country cheaper
than it had ever been brought before.
Dixon is not a town of much apparent prosperity. It is one of those
places at which great beginnings have been made, but as to which the
deities presiding over new towns have not been propitious. Much of it
has been burnt down, and more of it has never been built up. It had a
straggling, ill-conditioned, uncommercial aspect, very different from
the look of Detroit, Milwaukee, or St. Paul. There was, however, a
great hotel there, as usual, and a grand bridge over the Rock River,
a tributary of the Mississippi which runs by or through the town. I
found that life might be maintained on very cheap terms at Dixon. To
me as a passing traveller the charges at the hotel were, I take it,
the same as elsewhere. But I learned from an inmate there that he
with his wife and horse were fed and cared for and attended for two
dollars or 8_s._ 4_d._ a day. This included a private sitting-room,
coals, light, and all the wants of life--as my informant told
me--except tobacco and whiskey. Feeding at such a house means a
succession of promiscuous hot meals as often as the digestion of the
patient can face them. Now I do not know any locality where a man can
keep himself and his wife, with all material comforts, and the luxury
of a horse and carriage, on cheaper terms than that. Whether or no it
might be worth a man's while to live at all at such a place as Dixon
is altogether another question.
We went there because it is surrounded by the prairie, and out into
the prairie we had ourselves driven. We found some difficulty in
getting away from the corn, though we had selected this spot as one
at which the open rolling prairie was specially attainable. As long
as I could see a corn-field or a tree I was not satisfied. Nor indeed
was I satisfied at last. To have been thoroughly on the prairie and
in the prairie I should have been a day's journey from tilled land.
But I doubt whether that could now be done in the State of Illinois.
I got out into various patches and brought away specimens of
corn;--ears bearing sixteen rows of grain, with forty grains in each
row; each ear bearing a meal for a hungry man.
At last we did find ourselves on the prairie, amidst the waving
grass, with the land rolling on before us in a succession of gentle
sweeps, never rising so as to impede the view, or apparently changing
in its general level,--but yet without the monotony of flatness. We
were on the prairie, but still I felt no satisfaction. It was private
property--divided among holders and pastured over by private cattle.
Salisbury plain is as wild, and Dartmoor almost wilder. Deer they
told me were to be had within reach of Dixon; but for the buffalo one
has to go much further afield than Illinois. The farmer may rejoice
in Illinois, but the hunter and the trapper must cross the big rivers
and pass away into the western territories before he can find lands
wild enough for his purposes. My visit to the corn-fields of Illinois
was in its way successful; but I felt as I turned my face eastward
towards Chicago that I had no right to boast that I had as yet made
acquaintance with a prairie.
All minds were turned to the war, at Dixon as elsewhere. In Illinois
the men boasted that as regards the war, they were the leading State
of the Union. But the same boast was made in Indiana, and also in
Massachusetts; and probably in half the States of the North and West.
They, the Illinoisians, call their country the war nest of the West.
The population of the State is 1,700,000, and it had undertaken
to furnish sixty volunteer regiments of 1000 men each. And let it
be borne in mind that these regiments, when furnished, are really
full,--absolutely containing the thousand men when they are sent away
from the parent States. The number of souls above named will give
420,000 working men, and if out of these 60,000 are sent to the war,
the State, which is almost purely agricultural, will have given more
than one man in eight. When I was in Illinois, over forty regiments
had already been sent--forty-six if I remember rightly,--and there
existed no doubt whatever as to the remaining number. From the next
State of Indiana, with a population of 1,350,000, giving something
less than 350,000 working men, thirty-six regiments had been sent.
I fear that I am mentioning these numbers usque ad nauseam; but I
wish to impress upon English readers the magnitude of the effort
made by the States in mustering and equipping an army within six or
seven months of the first acknowledgment that such an army would be
necessary. The Americans have complained bitterly of the want of
English sympathy, and I think they have been weak in making that
complaint. But I would not wish that they should hereafter have the
power of complaining of a want of English justice. There can be no
doubt that a genuine feeling of patriotism was aroused throughout
North and West, and that men rushed into the ranks actuated by that
feeling--men for whom war and army life, a camp and fifteen dollars
a month, would not of themselves have had any attraction. It came
to that, that young men were ashamed not to go into the army. This
feeling of course produced coercion, and the movement was in that way
tyrannical. There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular
feeling among a democratic people. During the period of enlistment
this tyranny was very strong. But the existence of such a tyranny
proves the passion and patriotism of the people. It got the better
of the love of money, of the love of children, and of the love of
progress. Wives who with their bairns were absolutely dependent on
their husbands' labours, would wish their husbands to be at the
war. Not to conduce, in some special way, towards the war,--to have
neither father there, nor brother, nor son,--not to have lectured, or
preached, or written for the war,--to have made no sacrifice for the
war, to have had no special and individual interest in the war, was
disgraceful. One sees at a glance the tyranny of all this in such a
country as the States. One can understand how quickly adverse stories
would spread themselves as to the opinion of any man who chose to
remain tranquil at such a time. One shudders at the absolute absence
of true liberty which such a passion throughout a democratic country
must engender. But he who has observed all this must acknowledge that
that passion did exist. Dollars, children, progress, education, and
political rivalry all gave way to the one strong national desire for
the thrashing and crushing of those who had rebelled against the
authority of the Stars and Stripes.
When we were at Dixon they were getting up the Dement regiment. The
attempt at the time did not seem to be prosperous, and the few men
who had been collected had about them a forlorn, ill-conditioned
look. But then, as I was told, Dixon had already been decimated and
re-decimated by former recruiting colonels. Colonel Dement, from whom
the regiment was to be named, and whose military career was only now
about to commence, had come late into the field. I did not afterwards
ascertain what had been his success, but I hardly doubt that he did
ultimately scrape together his thousand men. "Why don't you go?" I
said to a burly Irishman who was driving me. "I'm not a sound man,
yer honour," said the Irishman. "I'm deficient in me liver." Taking
the Irishmen, however, throughout the Union, they had not been found
deficient in any of the necessaries for a career of war. I do not
think that any men have done better than the Irish in the American
army.
From Dixon we went to Chicago. Chicago is in many respects the
most remarkable city among all the remarkable cities of the Union.
Its growth has been the fastest and its success the most assured.
Twenty-five years ago there was no Chicago, and now it contains
120,000 inhabitants. Cincinnati on the Ohio, and St. Louis at the
junction of the Missouri and Mississippi, are larger towns; but they
have not grown large so quickly nor do they now promise so excessive
a development of commerce. Chicago may be called the metropolis
of American corn--the favourite city haunt of the American Ceres.
The goddess seats herself there amidst the dust of her full barns,
and proclaims herself a goddess ruling over things political and
philosophical as well as agricultural. Not furrows only are in her
thoughts, but free trade also, and brotherly love. And within her own
bosom there is a boast that even yet she will be stronger than Mars.
In Chicago there are great streets, and rows of houses fit to be the
residences of a new Corn Exchange nobility. They look out on the wide
lake which is now the highway for breadstuffs, and the merchant, as
he shaves at his window, sees his rapid ventures as they pass away,
one after the other, towards the East.
I went over one great grain store in Chicago possessed by gentlemen
of the name of Sturgess and Buckenham. It was a world in itself,--and
the dustiest of all the worlds. It contained, when I was there, half
a million bushels of wheat--or a very great many, as I might say
in other language. But it was not as a storehouse that this great
building was so remarkable, but as a channel or a river course for
the flooding freshets of corn. It is so built that both railway vans
and vessels come immediately under its claws, as I may call the great
trunks of the elevators. Out of the railway vans the corn and wheat
is clawed up into the building, and down similar trunks it is at once
again poured out into the vessels. I shall be at Buffalo in a page or
two, and then I will endeavour to explain more minutely how this is
done. At Chicago the corn is bought and does change hands, and much
of it, therefore, is stored there for some space of time,--shorter
or longer as the case may be. When I was at Chicago, the only
limit to the rapidity of its transit was set by the amount of boat
accommodation. There were not bottoms enough to take the corn away
from Chicago, nor indeed on the railway was there a sufficiency of
rolling stock or locomotive power to bring it into Chicago. As I said
before, the country was bursting with its own produce and smothered
in its own fruits.
At Chicago the hotel was bigger than other hotels, and grander. There
were pipes without end for cold water which ran hot, and for hot
water which would not run at all. The post-office also was grander
and bigger than other post-offices;--though the postmaster confessed
to me that that matter of the delivery of letters was one which could
not be compassed. Just at that moment it was being done as a private
speculation; but it did not pay, and would be discontinued. The
theatre too was large, handsome, and convenient; but on the night of
my attendance it seemed to lack an audience. A good comic actor it
did not lack, and I never laughed more heartily in my life. There was
something wrong too just at that time--I could not make out what--in
the constitution of Illinois, and the present moment had been
selected for voting a new constitution. To us in England such a
necessity would be considered a matter of importance, but it did not
seem to be much thought of here. "Some slight alteration probably,"
I suggested. "No," said my informant--one of the judges of their
courts--"it is to be a thorough radical change of the whole
constitution. They are voting the delegates to-day." I went to see
them vote the delegates; but unfortunately got into a wrong place--by
invitation--and was turned out, not without some slight tumult. I
trust that the new constitution was carried through successfully.
From these little details it may perhaps be understood how a town
like Chicago goes on and prospers, in spite of all the drawbacks
which are incident to newness. Men in those regions do not mind
failures, and when they have failed, instantly begin again. They make
their plans on a large scale, and they who come after them fill up
what has been wanting at first. Those taps of hot and cold water will
be made to run by the next owner of the hotel, if not by the present
owner. In another ten years the letters, I do not doubt, will all
be delivered. Long before that time the theatre will probably be
full. The new constitution is no doubt already at work; and if found
deficient, another will succeed to it without any trouble to the
State or any talk on the subject through the Union. Chicago was
intended as a town of export for corn, and, therefore, the corn
stores have received the first attention. When I was there, they were
in perfect working order.
From Chicago we went on to Cleveland, a town in the State of Ohio on
Lake Erie, again travelling by the sleeping cars. I found that these
cars were universally mentioned with great horror and disgust by
Americans of the upper class. They always declared that they would
not travel in them on any account. Noise and dirt were the two
objections. They are very noisy, but to us belonged the happy power
of sleeping down noise. I invariably slept all through the night, and
knew nothing about the noise. They are also very dirty,--extremely
dirty,--dirty so as to cause much annoyance. But then they are not
quite so dirty as the day cars. If dirt is to be a bar against
travelling in America, men and women must stay at home. For myself I
don't much care for dirt, having a strong reliance on soap and water
and scrubbing brushes. No one regards poisons who carries antidotes
in which he has perfect faith.
Cleveland is another pleasant town,--pleasant as Milwaukee and
Portland. The streets are handsome, and are shaded by grand avenues
of trees. One of these streets is over a mile in length, and
throughout the whole of it, there are trees on each side--not little
paltry trees as are to be seen on the boulevards of Paris, but
spreading elms,--the beautiful American elm which not only spreads,
but droops also, and makes more of its foliage than any other tree
extant. And there is a square in Cleveland, well sized, as large
as Russell Square I should say, with open paths across it, and
containing one or two handsome buildings. I cannot but think that all
men and women in London would be great gainers if the iron rails of
the squares were thrown down, and the grassy enclosures thrown open
to the public. Of course the edges of the turf would be worn, and the
paths would not keep their exact shapes. But the prison look would be
banished, and the sombre sadness of the squares would be relieved.
I was particularly struck by the size and comfort of the houses at
Cleveland. All down that street of which I have spoken, they do not
stand continuously together, but are detached and separate; houses
which in England would require some fifteen or eighteen hundred a
year for their maintenance. In the States, however, men commonly
expend upon house rent a much greater proportion of their income than
they do in England. With us it is, I believe, thought that a man
should certainly not apportion more than a seventh of his spending
income to his house rent,--some say not more than a tenth. But in
many cities of the States a man is thought to live well within bounds
if he so expends a fourth. There can be no doubt as to Americans
living in better houses than Englishmen,--making the comparison of
course between men of equal incomes. But the Englishman has many more
incidental expenses than the American. He spends more on wine, on
entertainments, on horses, and on amusements. He has a more numerous
establishment, and keeps up the adjuncts and outskirts of his
residence with a more finished neatness.
These houses in Cleveland were very good,--as indeed they are in most
Northern towns; but some of them have been erected with an amount
of bad taste that is almost incredible. It is not uncommon to see
in front of a square brick house a wooden quasi-Greek portico, with
a pediment and Ionic columns, equally high with the house itself.
Wooden columns with Greek capitals attached to the doorways, and
wooden pediments over the windows, are very frequent. As a rule these
are attached to houses which, without such ornamentation, would
be simple, unpretentious, square, roomy residences. An Ionic or
Corinthian capital stuck on to a log of wood called a column, and
then fixed promiscuously to the outside of an ordinary house, is to
my eye the vilest of architectural pretences. Little turrets are
better than this; or even brown battlements made of mortar. Except in
America I do not remember to have seen these vicious bits of white
timber,--timber painted white,--plastered on to the fronts and sides
of red-brick houses.
Again we went on by rail,--to Buffalo. I have travelled some
thousands of miles by railway in the States, taking long journeys by
night and longer journeys by day; but I do not remember that while
doing so I ever made acquaintance with an American. To an American
lady in a railway car I should no more think of speaking than I
should to an unknown female in the next pew to me at a London church.
It is hard to understand from whence come the laws which govern
societies in this respect; but there are different laws in different
societies, which soon obtain recognition for themselves. American
ladies are much given to talking, and are generally free from all
_mauvaise honte_. They are collected in manner, well instructed, and
resolved to have their share of the social advantages of the world.
In this phase of life they come out more strongly than English women.
But on a railway journey, be it ever so long, they are never seen
speaking to a stranger. English women, however, on English railways
are generally willing to converse. They will do so if they be on a
journey; but will not open their mouths if they be simply passing
backwards and forwards between their homes and some neighbouring
town. We soon learn the rules on these subjects;--but who make the
rules? If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably
fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the
same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have
written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that
of love.
And now for Buffalo, and the elevators. I trust I have made it
understood that corn comes into Buffalo, not only from Chicago, of
which I have spoken specially, but from all the ports round the
lakes: Racine, Milwaukee, Grandhaven, Port Sarnia, Detroit, Toledo,
Cleveland, and many others. At these ports the produce is generally
bought and sold; but at Buffalo it is merely passed through a
gateway. It is taken from vessels of a size fitted for the lakes, and
placed in other vessels fitted for the canal. This is the Erie Canal,
which connects the lakes with the Hudson River and with New York.
The produce which passes through the Welland Canal--the canal which
connects Lake Erie and the upper lakes with Lake Ontario and the St.
Lawrence--is not transhipped, seeing that the Welland Canal, which
is less than thirty miles in length, gives a passage to vessels of
500 tons. As I have before said, 60,000,000 bushels of breadstuff
were thus pushed through Buffalo in the open months of the year 1861.
These open months run from the middle of April to the middle of
November; but the busy period is that of the last two months,--the
time that is which intervenes between the full ripening of the corn
and the coming of the ice.
An elevator is as ugly a monster as has been yet produced. In
uncouthness of form it outdoes those obsolete old brutes who used to
roam about the semi-aqueous world, and live a most uncomfortable life
with their great hungering stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws. The
elevator itself consists of a big moveable trunk,--moveable as is
that of an elephant, but not pliable, and less graceful even than an
elephant's. This is attached to a huge granary or barn; but in order
to give altitude within the barn for the necessary moving up and
down of this trunk,--seeing that it cannot be curled gracefully
to its purposes as the elephant's is curled,--there is an awkward
box erected on the roof of the barn, giving some twenty feet of
additional height, up into which the elevator can be thrust. It will
be understood, then, that this big moveable trunk, the head of which,
when it is at rest, is thrust up into the box on the roof, is made
to slant down in an oblique direction from the building to the river.
For the elevator is an amphibious institution, and flourishes only on
the banks of navigable waters. When its head is ensconced within its
box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building,
the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's
trunk, and down it comes, like a mosquito's proboscis, right through
the deck, in at the open aperture of the hole, and so into the very
vitals and bowels of the ship. When there, it goes to work upon its
food with a greed and an avidity that is disgusting to a beholder
of any taste or imagination. And now I must explain the anatomical
arrangement by which the elevator still devours and continues to
devour, till the corn within its reach has all been swallowed,
masticated, and digested. Its long trunk, as seen slanting down from
out of the building across the wharf and into the ship, is a mere
wooden pipe; but this pipe is divided within. It has two departments;
and as the grain-bearing troughs pass up the one on a pliable band,
they pass empty down the other. The system therefore is that of an
ordinary dredging machine; only that corn, and not mud is taken away,
and that the buckets or troughs are hidden from sight. Below, within
the stomach of the poor bark, three or four labourers are at work,
helping to feed the elevator. They shovel the corn up towards its
maw, so that at every swallow he should take in all that he can hold.
Thus the troughs, as they ascend, are kept full, and when they reach
the upper building they empty themselves into a shoot, over which a
porter stands guard, moderating the shoot by a door, which the weight
of his finger can open and close. Through this doorway the corn
runs into a measure, and is weighed. By measures of forty bushels
each, the tale is kept. There stands the apparatus, with the figures
plainly marked, over against the porter's eye; and as the sum mounts
nearly up to forty bushels he closes the door till the grains run
thinly through, hardly a handful at a time, so that the balance is
exactly struck. Then the teller standing by marks down his figure,
and the record is made. The exact porter touches the string of
another door, and the forty bushels of corn run out at the bottom of
the measure, disappear down another shoot, slanting also towards the
water, and deposit themselves in the canal-boat. The transit of the
bushels of corn from the larger vessel to the smaller will have taken
less than a minute, and the cost of that transit will have been--a
farthing.
But I have spoken of the rivers of wheat, and I must explain what
are those rivers. In the working of the elevator, which I have just
attempted to describe, the two vessels were supposed to be lying at
the same wharf, on the same side of the building, in the same water,
the smaller vessel inside the larger one. When this is the case
the corn runs direct from the weighing measure into the shoot that
communicates with the canal boat. But there is not room or time for
confining the work to one side of the building. There is water on
both sides, and the corn or wheat is elevated on the one side, and
re-shipped on the other. To effect this the corn is carried across
the breadth of the building; but, nevertheless, it is never handled
or moved in its direction on trucks or carriages requiring the use
of men's muscles for its motion. Across the floor of the building
are two gutters, or channels, and through these small troughs on a
pliable band circulate very quickly. They which run one way, in one
channel, are laden; they which return by the other channel are empty.
The corn pours itself into these, and they again pour it into the
shoot which commands the other water. And thus rivers of corn are
running through these buildings night and day. The secret of all the
motion and arrangement consists of course in the elevation. The corn
is lifted up; and when lifted up can move itself and arrange itself,
and weigh itself, and load itself.
I should have stated that all this wheat which passes through Buffalo
comes loose, in bulk. Nothing is known of sacks or bags. To any
spectator at Buffalo this becomes immediately a matter of course; but
this should be explained, as we in England are not accustomed to see
wheat travelling in this open, unguarded, and plebeian manner. Wheat
with us is aristocratic, and travels always in its private carriage.
Over and beyond the elevators there is nothing specially worthy of
remark at Buffalo. It is a fine city, like all other American cities
of its class. The streets are broad, the "blocks" are high, and cars
on tram-ways run all day, and nearly all night as well.