directions an ambitious and progressive State. Judged by its
institutions of benevolence and of economies, it is a leading State. No
other State provides more liberally for its unfortunates, in asylums for
the insane, the blind, the deaf-mutes, the idiotic, the young waifs and
strays, nor shows a more intelligent comprehension of the legitimate
functions of a great commonwealth, in the creation of boards of
education and of charities and of health, in a State inspection of
workshops and factories, in establishing bureaus of meteorology and of
forestry, a fish commission, and an agricultural experiment station. The
State has thirty-four colleges and universities, a public-school system
which has abolished distinctions of color, and which by the reports is
as efficient as any in the Union. Cincinnati, the moral tone of which,
the Ohio people say, is not fairly represented by its newspapers, is
famous the world over for its cultivation in music and its progress in
the fine and industrial arts. It would be possible for a State to have
and be all this and yet rise in the general scale of civilization
only to a splendid mediocrity, without the higher institutions of pure
learning, and without a very high standard of public morality. Ohio is
in no less danger of materialism, with all its diffused intelligence,
than other States. There is a recognizable limit to what a diffused
level of education, say in thirty-four colleges, can do for the higher
life of a State. I heard an address in the Capitol by ex-President Hayes
on the expediency of adding a manual-training school to the Ohio State
University at Columbus. The comment of some of the legislators on it
was that we have altogether too much book-learning; what we need is
workshops in our schools and colleges. It seems to a stranger that
whatever first-class industrial and technical schools Ohio needs, it
needs more the higher education, and the teaching of philosophy, logic,
and ethics. In 1886 Governor Foraker sent a special message to the
Legislature pointing out the fact that notwithstanding the increase
of wealth in the State, the revenue was inadequate to the expenditure,
principally by reason of the undervaluation of taxable property (there
being a yearly decline in the reported value of personal property), and
a fraudulent evasion of taxes. There must have been a wide insensibility
to the wrong of cheating the State to have produced this state of
things, and one cannot but think that it went along with the low
political tone before mentioned. Of course Ohio is not a solitary sinner
among States in this evasion of duty, but she helps to point the moral
that the higher life of a State needs a great deal of education that is
neither commercial nor industrial nor simply philanthropic.
It is impossible and unnecessary for the purposes of this paper to speak
of many of the public institutions of the State, even of those in the
city. But educators everywhere may study with profit the management of
the public schools under the City Board of Education, of which Mr. R.
W. Stevenson is superintendent. The High-school, of over 600 pupils, is
especially to be commended. Manual training is not introduced into
the schools, and the present better sentiment is against it; but its
foundation, drawing, is thoroughly taught from the primaries up to the
High-school, and the exhibits of the work of the schools of all grades
in modelling, drawing, and form and color studies, which were made last
year in New York and Chicago, gave these Columbus schools a very high
rank in the country. Any visitor to them must be impressed with the
intelligence of the methods employed, the apprehension of modern
notions, and also the conservative spirit of common-sense.
The Ohio State University has an endowment from the State of over half
a million dollars, and a source of ultimate wealth in its great farm and
grounds, which must Increase in value as the city extends. It is a very
well equipped institution for the study of the natural sciences and
agriculture, and might easily be built up into a university in all
departments, worthy of the State. At present it has 335 students,
of whom 150 are in the academic department, 41 in special practical
courses, and 143 in the preparatory school. All the students are
organized in companies, under an officer of the United States, for
military discipline; the uniform, the drill, the lessons of order and
obedience, are invaluable in the transforming of carriage and manners.
The University has a museum of geology which ranks among the important
ones of the country. It is a pity that a consolidation of other State
institutions with this cannot be brought about.
The Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus is an old building, not in keeping
with the modern notions of prison construction. In 1887 it had about
1300 convicts, some 100 less than in the preceding year. The management
is subject to political changes, and its officers have to be taken from
various parts of the State at the dictation of political workers. Under
this system the best management is liable to be upset by an election.
The special interest in the prison at this time was in the observation
of the working of the Parole Law. Since the passage of the Act in May,
1885, 283 prisoners have been paroled, and while several of the convicts
have been returned for a violation of parole, nearly the whole number
are reported as law-abiding citizens. The managers are exceedingly
pleased with the working of the law; it promotes good conduct in the
prison, and reduces the number in confinement. The reduction of the
number of convicts in 1887 from the former year was ascribed partially
to the passage of the General Sentence Law in 1884, and the Habitual
Crimes Act in 1885. The criminals dread these laws, the first because
it gives no fixed time to build their hopes upon, but all depends upon
their previous record and good conduct in prison, while the latter
affects the incorrigible, who are careful to shun the State after being
convicted twice, and avoid imprisonment for life. The success of these
laws and the condition of the State finances delay the work on
the Intermediate Prison, or Reformatory, begun at Mansfield. This
Reformatory is intended for first offenders, and has the distinct
purpose of prevention of further deterioration, and of reformation
by means of the discipline of education and labor. The success of the
tentative laws in this direction, as applied to the general prisons, is,
in fact, a strong argument for the carrying out of the Mansfield scheme.
There cannot be a more interesting study of the “misfits” of humanity
than that offered in the Institution for Feeble-minded Youth, under the
superintendence of Dr. G. A. Doren. Here are 715 imbeciles in all stages
of development from absolute mental and physical incapacity. There is
scarcely a problem that exists in education, in the relation of the body
and mind, in the inheritance of mental and physical traits, in regard to
the responsibility for crime, in psychology or physiology, that is not
here illustrated. It is the intention of the school to teach the idiot
child some trade or occupation that will make him to some degree useful,
and to carry him no further than the common branches in learning. The
first impression, I think, made upon a visitor is the almost invariable
physical deformity that attends imbecility—ill-proportioned, distorted
bodies, dwarfed, misshapen gelatinoids, with bones that have no
stiffness. The next impression is the preponderance of the animal
nature, the persistence of the lower passions, and the absence of moral
qualities in the general immaturity. And perhaps the next impression is
of the extraordinary effect that physical training has in awakening the
mind, and how soon the discipline of the institution creates the
power of self-control. From almost blank imbecility and utter lack of
self-restraint the majority of these children, as we saw them in
their schoolrooms and workshops, exhibited a sense of order, of entire
decency, and very considerable intelligence. It was demonstrated that
most imbeciles are capable of acquiring the rudiments of an education
and of learning some useful occupation. Some of the boys work on the
farm, others learn trades. The boys in the shoe-shop were making shoes
of excellent finish. The girls do plain sewing and house-work apparently
almost as well as girls of their age outside. Two or three things that
we saw may be mentioned to show the scope of the very able management
and the capacities of the pupils. There was a drill of half a hundred
boys and girls in the dumb-bell exercise, to music, under the leadership
of a pupil, which in time, grace, and exact execution of complicated
movements would have done credit to any school. The institution has two
bands, one of brass and one of strings, which perform very well. The
string band played for dancing in the large amusement hall. Several
hundred children were on the floor dancing cotillons, and they went
through the variety of changes not only in perfect time and decorum, but
without any leader to call the figures. It would have been a remarkable
performance for any children. There were many individual cases of great
and deplorable interest. Cretins, it was formerly supposed, were only
born in mountainous regions. There are three here born in Ohio. There
were five imbeciles of what I should call the ape type, all of one Ohio
family. Two of them were the boys exhibited some years ago by Barnum as
the Aztec children—the last of an extinct race. He exhibited them as
a boy and a girl. When they had grown a little too large to show as
children, or the public curiosity was satisfied about the extinct race,
he exhibited them as wild Australians.
The humanity of so training these imbeciles that they can have some
enjoyment of life, and be occasionally of some use to their relations,
is undeniable. But since the State makes this effort in the survival of
the unfittest, it must go further and provide a permanent home for them.
The girls who have learned to read and write and sew and do house-work,
and are of decent appearance, as many of them are, are apt to marry when
they leave the institution. Their offspring are invariably idiots. I saw
in this school the children of mothers who had been trained here. It is
no more the intention of the State to increase the number of imbeciles
than it is the number of criminals. Many of our charitable and penal
institutions at present do both.
I should like to approach the subject of Natural Gas in a proper spirit,
but I have neither the imagination nor the rhetoric to do justice to
the expectations formed of it. In the restrained language of one of the
inhabitants of Findlay, its people “have, caught the divine afflatus
which came with the discovery of natural gas.” If Findlay had only
natural gas, “she would be the peer, if not the superior, of any
municipality on earth;” but she has much more, “and in all things has no
equal or superior between the oceans and the lakes and the gulf, and is
marching on to the grandest destiny ever prepared for any people, in any
land, or in any period, since the morning stars first sang together,
and the flowers in the garden of Eden budded and blossomed for man.” In
fact, “this she has been doing in the past two years in the grandest
and most satisfactory way, and that she will continue to progress is as
certain as the stars that hold their midnight revel around the throne of
Omnipotence.”
Notwithstanding this guarded announcement, it is evident that the
discovery of natural gas has begun a revolution in fuel, which will have
permanent and far-reaching economic and social consequences, whether the
supply of gas is limited or inexhaustible.
Those who have once used fuel in this form are not likely to return to
the crude and wasteful heating by coal. All the cities and large towns
west of the Alleghanies are made disagreeable by bituminous coal smoke.
The extent of this annoyance and its detraction from the pleasure of
daily living cannot be exaggerated. The atmosphere is more or less
vitiated, and the sky obscured, houses, furniture, clothing, are dirty,
and clean linen and clean hands and face are not expected. All this is
changed where gas is used for fuel. The city becomes cheerful, and the
people can see each other. But this is not all. One of the great burdens
of our Northern life, fire building and replenishing, disappears,
house-keeping is simplified, the expense of servants reduced,
cleanliness restored. Add to this that in the gas regions the cost of
fuel is merely nominal, and in towns distant some thirty or forty miles
it is not half that of coal. It is easy to see that this revolution in
fuel will make as great a change in social life as in manufacturing,
and that all the change may not be agreeable. This natural gas is a very
subtle fluid, somewhat difficult to control, though I have no doubt that
invention will make it as safe in our houses as illuminating gas is. So
far as I have seen its use, the heat from it is intense and withering.
In a closed stove it is intolerable; in an open grate, with a simulated
pile of hard coal or logs, it is better, but much less agreeable than
soft coal or wood. It does not, as at present used, promote a good
air in the room, and its intense dryness ruins the furniture. But its
cheapness, convenience, and neatness will no doubt prevail; and we are
entering upon a gas age, in which, for the sake of progress, we shall
doubtless surrender something that will cause us to look back to the
more primitive time with regret. If the gas-wells fail, artificial gas
for fuel will doubtless be manufactured.
I went up to the gas-fields of northern Ohio in company with Prof.
Edward Orton, the State Geologist, who has made a study of the subject,
and pretty well defined the fields of Indiana and Ohio. The gas is found
at a depth of between 1100 and 1200 feet, after passing through a
great body of shale and encountering salt-water, in a porous Trenton
limestone. The drilling and tubing enter this limestone several feet to
get a good holding. This porous limestone holds the gas like a sponge,
and it rushes forth with tremendous force when released. It is now
well settled that these are reservoirs of gas that are tapped, and
not sources of perpetual supply by constant manufacture. How large the
supply may be in any case cannot be told, but there is a limit to it. It
can be exhausted, like a vein of coal. But the fields are so large, both
in Indiana and Ohio, that it seems probable that by sinking new wells
the supply will be continued for a long time. The evidence that it is
not inexhaustible in any one well is that in all in which the flow
of gas has been tested at intervals the force of pressure is found to
diminish. For months after the discovery the wells were allowed to run
to waste, and billions of feet of gas were lost. A better economy now
prevails, and this wastefulness is stopped. The wells are all under
control, and large groups of them are connected by common service-pipes.
The region about Fostoria is organized under the North-western Gas
Company, and controls a large territory. It supplies the city of Toledo,
which uses no other fuel, through pipes thirty miles long, Fremont,
and other towns. The loss per mile in transit through the pipes is now
known, so that the distance can be calculated at which it will pay to
send it. I believe that this is about fifty to sixty miles. The gas when
it comes from the well is about the temperature of 32° Fahr., and the
common pressure is 400 pounds to the square inch. The velocity with
which it rushes, unchecked, from the pipe at the mouth of the well may
be said to be about that of a minie-ball from an ordinary rifle. The
Ohio area of gas is between 2000 and 3000 square miles. The claim for
the Indiana area is that it is 20,000 square miles, but the geologists
make it much less.
The speculation in real estate caused by this discovery has been perhaps
without parallel in the history of the State, and, as is usual in such
cases, it is now in a lull, waiting for the promised developments. But
these have been almost as marvellous as the speculation. Findlay was
a sleepy little village in the black swamp district, one of the
most backward regions of Ohio. For many years there had been surface
indications of gas, and there is now a house standing in the city which
used gas for fuel forty years ago. When the first gas-well was opened,
ten years ago, the village had about 4500 inhabitants. It has now
probably 15,-. 000, it is a city, and its limits have been extended to
cover an area six miles long by four miles wide. This is dotted
over with hastily built houses, and is rapidly being occupied by
manufacturing establishments. The city owns all the gas-wells, and
supplies fuel to factories and private houses at the simple cost of
maintaining the service-pipes. So rapid has been the growth and the
demand for gas that there has not been time to put all the pipes
underground, and they are encountered on the surface all over the
region. The town is pervaded by the odor of the gas, which is like that
of petroleum, and the traveller is notified of his nearness to the town
by the smell before he can see the houses. The surface pipes, hastily
laid, occasionally leak, and at these weak places the gas is generally
ignited in order to prevent its tainting the atmosphere. This immediate
neighborhood has an oil-field contiguous to the gas, plenty of limestone
(the kilns are burned by gas), good building stone, clay fit for making
bricks and tiles, and superior hard-wood forests. The cheap fuel has
already attracted here manufacturing industries of all sorts, and new
plants are continually made.
I have a list of over thirty different mills and factories which
are either in full operation or getting under way. Among the most
interesting of these are the works for making window-glass and table
glass. The superiority of this fuel for the glass-furnaces seems to be
admitted.
Although the wells about Findlay are under control, the tubing is
anchored, and the awful force is held under by gates and levers of
steel, it is impossible to escape a feeling of awe in this region at
the subterranean energies which seem adequate to blow the whole country
heavenward. Some of the wells were opened for us. Opening a well is
unscrewing the service-pipe and letting the full force of the gas issue
from the pipe at the mouth of the well. When one of these wells is thus
opened the whole town is aware of it by the roaring and the quaking of
the air. The first one exhibited was in a field a mile and a half from
the city. At the first freedom from the screws and clamps the gas rushed
out in such density that it was visible. Although we stood several rods
from it, the roar was so great that one could not make himself heard
shouting in the ear of his neighbor. The geologist stuffed cotton in
his ears and tied a shawl about his head, and, assisted by the chemist,
stood close to the pipe to measure the flow. The chemist, who had not
taken the precaution to protect himself, was quite deaf for some time
after the experiment. A four-inch pipe, about sixty feet in length, was
then screwed on, and the gas ignited as it issued from the end on the
ground. The roaring was as before. For several feet from the end of
the tube there was no flame, but beyond was a sea of fire sweeping the
ground and rioting high in the air—billows of red and yellow and blue
flame, fierce and hot enough to consume everything within reach. It was
an awful display of power.
We had a like though only a momentary display at the famous Karg well,
an eight-million-feet well. This could only be turned on for a few
seconds at a time, for it is in connection with the general system. If
the gas is turned off, the fires in houses and factories would go out,
and if it were turned on again without notice, the rooms would be full
of gas, and an explosion follow an attempt to relight it. This danger
is now being removed by the invention of an automatic valve in the pipe
supplying each fire, which will close and lock when the flow of gas
ceases, and admit no more gas until it is opened. The ordinary pressure
for house service is about two pounds to the square inch. The Karg well
is on the bank of the creek, and the discharge-pipe through which the
gas (though not in its full force) was turned for our astonishment
extends over the water. The roar was like that of Niagara; all the town
shakes when the Karg is loose. When lighted, billows of flame rolled
over the water, brilliant in color and fantastic in form, with a fury
and rage of conflagration enough to strike the spectator with terror.
I have never seen any other display of natural force so impressive as
this. When this flame issues from an upright pipe, the great mass of
fire rises eighty feet into the air, leaping and twisting in fiendish
fury. For six weeks after this well was first opened its constant
roaring shook the nerves of the town, and by night its flaming torch
lit up the heaven and banished darkness. With the aid of this new agent
anything seems possible.
The feverishness of speculation will abate; many anticipations will
not be realized. It will be discovered that there is a limit to
manufacturing, even with fuel that costs next to nothing. The supply
of natural gas no doubt has its defined limits. But nothing seems more
certain to me than that gas, manufactured if not to be the fuel of the
future in the West, and that the importance of this economic change in
social life is greater than we can at present calculate.
XII.—CINCINNATI AND LOUISVILLE.
Cincinnati is a city that has a past. As Daniel Webster said, that at
least is secure. Among the many places that have been and are the Athens
of America, this was perhaps the first. As long ago as the first visit
of Charles Dickens to this country it was distinguished as a town of
refinement as well as cultivation; and the novelist, who saw little to
admire, though much to interest him in our raw country, was captivated
by this little village on the Ohio. It was already the centre of an
independent intellectual life, and produced scholars, artists, writers,
who subsequently went east instead of west. According to tradition,
there seems to have been early a tendency to free thought, and a
response to the movement which, for lack of a better name, was known in
Massachusetts as transcendentalism.
The evolution of Cincinnati seems to have been a little peculiar in
American life. It is a rich city, priding itself on the solidity of its
individual fortunes and business, and the freedom of its real property
from foreign mortgages. Usually in our development the pursuit of wealth
comes first, and then all other things are added thereto, as we read
the promise. In Cincinnati there seems to have been a very considerable
cultivation first in time, and we have the spectacle of what wealth
will do in the way of the sophistication and materialization of society.
Ordinarily we have the process of an uncultivated community gradually
working itself out into a more or less ornamented and artistic condition
as it gets money. The reverse process we might see if the philosophic
town of Concord, Massachusetts, should become the home of rich men
engaged in commerce and manufacturing. I may be all wrong in my notion
of Cincinnati, but there is a sort of tradition, a remaining flavor of
old-time culture before the town became commercially so important as it
was before the war.
It is difficult to think of Cincinnati as in Ohio. I cannot find their
similarity of traits. Indeed, I think that generally in the State there
is a feeling that it is an alien city; the general characteristics
of the State do not flow into and culminate in Cincinnati as its
metropolis. It has had somehow an independent life. If you look on a
geologic map of the State, you see that the glacial drift, I believe it
is called, which flowed over three-fourths of the State and took out its
wrinkles did not advance into the south-west. And Cincinnati lies in the
portion that was not smoothed into a kind of monotony. When a settlement
was made here it was a good landing-place for trade up and down the
river, and was probably not so much thought of as a distributing and
receiving point for the interior north of it. Indeed, up to the time of
the war, it looked to the South for its trade, and naturally, even when
the line of war was drawn, a good deal of its sympathies lay in the
direction of its trade. It had become a great city, and grown rich both
in trade and manufactures, but in the decline of steamboating and in the
era of railways there were physical difficulties in the way of adapting
itself easily to the new conditions. It was not easy to bring the
railways down the irregular hills and to find room for them on the
landing. The city itself had to contend with great natural obstacles
to get adequate foothold, and its radiation over, around, and among the
hills produced some novel features in business and in social life.