[1] _Diseases of the Genito-urinary System_, by Eugene Fuller, M.D.
(London and New York, 1900).
BLADDER-WORT, the name given to a submerged water plant, _Utricularia
vulgaris_, with finely divided leaves upon which are borne small
bladders provided with trap-door entrances which open only inwards.
Small crustaceans and other aquatic animals push their way into the
bladders and are unable to escape. The products of the decay of the
organisms thus captured are absorbed into the plant by star-shaped hairs
which line the interior of the bladder. In this way the plant is
supplied with nitrogenous food from the animal kingdom. Bladder-wort
bears small, yellow, two-lipped flowers on a stem which rises above the
surface of the water. It is found in pools and ditches in the British
Isles, and is widely distributed in the north temperate zone. The genus
contains about two hundred species in tropical and temperate regions.
[Illustration: A, Bladder of _Utricularia neglecta_ (after Darwin),
enlarged. B, stellate hairs from interior of bladder of _U. vulgaris_.]
BLADES, WILLIAM (1824-1890), English printer and bibliographer, was born
at Clapham, London, on the 5th of December 1824. In 1840 he was
apprenticed to his father's printing business in London, being
subsequently taken into partnership. The firm was afterwards known as
Blades, East & Blades. His interest in printing led him to make a study
of the volumes produced by Caxton's press, and of the early history of
printing in England. His _Life and Typography of William Caxton,
England's First Printer_, was published in 1861-1863, and the
conclusions which he set forth were arrived at by a careful examination
of types in the early books, each class of type being traced from its
first use to the time when, spoilt by wear, it passed out of Caxton's
hands. Some 450 volumes from the Caxton Press were thus carefully
compared and classified in chronological order. In 1877 Blades took an
active part in organizing the Caxton celebration, and strongly supported
the foundation of the Library Association. He was a keen collector of
old books, prints and medals. His publications relate chiefly to the
early history of printing, the _Enemies of Books_, his most popular
work, being produced in 1881. He died at Sutton in Surrey on the 27th of
April 1890.
BLAENAVON, or BLAENAFON, an urban district in the northern parliamentary
division of Monmouthshire, England, 15 m. N. by W. of Newport, on the
Great Western, London & North Western and Rhymney railways. Pop. (1901)
10,869. It lies in the uppermost part of the Afon Lwyd valley, at an
elevation exceeding 1000 ft., in a wild and mountainous district, on the
eastern edge of the great coal and iron mining region of Glamorganshire
and Monmouthshire. There are very extensive iron and steel works, with
blast furnaces and rolling mills in the district, which employ the large
industrial population.
BLAGOVYESHCHENSK, a town of East Siberia, chief town of the Amur
government, on the left bank of the Amur, near its confluence with the
Zeya in 50 deg. 15' N. lat. and 127 deg. 38' E. long., 610 m. by river
above Khabarovsk. Founded in 1856, the town had, in 1900, 37,368
inhabitants, and is the seat of the bishop of Amur and Kamchatka. There
are steam flour-mills and ironworks. It is a centre for tea exported to
Russia, cattle brought from Transbaikalia and Mongolia for the Amur, and
for grain.
BLAIKIE, WILLIAM GARDEN (1820-1899), Scottish divine, was born on the
5th of February 1820, at Aberdeen, where his father had been the first
provost of the reformed corporation. After studying at the Marischal
College, where Alexander Bain and David Masson were among his
contemporaries, he went in 1839 to Edinburgh to complete his theological
course under Thomas Chalmers. In 1842 he was presented to the living of
Drumblade by Lord Kintore, with whose family he was connected. The
Disruption controversy reached its climax immediately afterwards, and
Blaikie, whose sympathies were entirely with Chalmers, was one of the
474 ministers who signed the deed of demission and gave up their
livings. He was Free Church minister at Pilrig, between Edinburgh and
Leith, from 1844 to 1868. Keenly interested in questions of social
reform, his first publication was a pamphlet, which was afterwards
enlarged into a book called _Better Days for Working People_. It
received public commendation from Lord Brougham, and 60,000 copies were
sold. He formed an association for providing better homes for working
people, and the Pilrig Model Buildings were erected. He also undertook
the editorship of the _Free Church Magazine_, and then that of the
_North British Review_, which he carried on until 1863. In 1864 he was
asked to undertake the Scottish editorship of the _Sunday Magazine_, and
for this magazine much of his most characteristic literary work was
done, especially in the editorial notes, then a new feature in magazine
literature.
In 1868 Blaikie was called to the chair of apologetics and pastoral
theology at New College, Edinburgh. In dealing with the latter subject
he was seen at his very best. He had wide experience, a comprehensive
grasp of facts, abundant sympathy, an extensive knowledge of men, and a
great capacity for teaching. In 1870 he was one of two representatives
chosen from the Free Church of Scotland to attend the united general
assembly of the Presbyterian churches of the United States. He prolonged
his visit to make a thorough acquaintance with American Presbyterianism,
and this, followed by a similar tour in Europe, fitted him to become the
real founder of the Presbyterian Alliance. Much of his strength in the
later years of life was given to this work. In 1892 he was elected to
the chairmanship of the general assembly, the last of the moderators who
had entered the church before the disruption. In 1897 he resigned his
professorship, and died on the 11th of June 1899.
Blaikie was an ardent philanthropist, and an active and intelligent
temperance reformer, in days when this was far from easy. He raised
L14,000 for the relief of the Waldensian churches. Although he took an
active part in the affairs of his denomination, he was not a mere
ecclesiastic. He had a keen eye for the evidences of spiritual growth or
decline, and emphasized the need of maintaining a high level of
spiritual life. He welcomed Moody to Scotland, and the evangelist made
his headquarters with him during his first visit. His best books are
_The Work of the Ministry--A Manual of Homiletic and Pastoral Theology_
(1873); _The Books of Samuel_ in the _Expositors' Bible Series_ (2
vols.); _The Personal Life of David Livingstone_ (1880); _After Fifty
Years_ (1893), an account of the Disruption Movement in the form of
letters of a grandfather; _Thomas Chalmers_ (1896). (D. Mn.)
BLAINE, JAMES GILLESPIE (1830-1893), American statesman, was born in
West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on the 31st of January 1830, of sturdy
Scottish-Irish stock on the side of his father. He was the
great-grandson of Colonel Ephraim Blaine (1741-1804), who during the
War of Independence served in the American army, from 1778 to 1782 as
commissary-general of the Northern Department. With many early evidences
of literary capacity and political aptitude, J.G. Blaine graduated at
Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1847, and
subsequently taught successively in the Military Institute, Georgetown,
Kentucky, and in the Institution for the Blind at Philadelphia. During
this period, also, he studied law. Settling in Augusta, Maine, in 1854,
he became editor of the _Kennebec Journal_, and subsequently of the
_Portland Advertiser_. But his editorial work was soon abandoned for a
more active public career. He was elected to the lower house of the
state legislature in 1858, and served four years, the last two as
speaker. He also became chairman of the Republican state committee in
1859, and for more than twenty years personally directed every campaign
of his party.
In 1862 he was elected to Congress, serving in the House thirteen years
(December 1863 to December 1876), followed by a little over four years
in the Senate. He was chosen speaker of the House in 1869 and served
three terms. The House was the fit arena for his political and
parliamentary ability. He was a ready and powerful debater, full of
resource, and dexterous in controversy. The tempestuous politics of the
war and reconstruction period suited his aggressive nature and
constructive talent. The measures for the rehabilitation of the states
that had seceded from the Union occupied the chief attention of Congress
for several years, and Blaine bore a leading part in framing and
discussing them. The primary question related to the basis of
representation upon which they should be restored to their full rank in
the political system. A powerful section contended that the basis should
be the body of legal voters, on the ground that the South could not then
secure an increment of political power on account of the emancipated
blacks unless these blacks were admitted to political rights. Blaine, on
the other hand, contended that representation should be based on
population instead of voters, as being fairer to the North, where the
ratio of voters varied widely, and he insisted that it should be
safeguarded by security for impartial suffrage. This view prevailed, and
the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was substantially Blaine's
proposition. In the same spirit he opposed a scheme of military
governments for the southern states, unless associated with a plan by
which, upon the acceptance of prescribed conditions, they could release
themselves from military rule and resume civil government. He was the
first in Congress to oppose the claim, which gained momentary and
widespread favour in 1867, that the public debt, pledged in coin, should
be paid in greenbacks. The protection of naturalized citizens who, on
return to their native land, were subject to prosecution on charges of
disloyalty, enlisted his active interest and support, and the agitation,
in which he was conspicuous, led to the treaty of 1870 between the
United States and Great Britain, which placed adopted and native
citizens on the same footing.
As the presidential election of 1876 approached, Blaine was clearly the
popular favourite of his party. His chance for securing the nomination,
however, was materially lessened by persistent charges which were
brought against him by the Democrats that as a member of Congress he had
been guilty of corruption in his relations with the Little Rock & Fort
Smith and the Northern Pacific railways.[1] By the majority of
Republicans, at least, he was considered to have cleared himself
completely, and in the Republican national convention he missed by only
twenty-eight votes the nomination for president, being finally beaten by
a combination of the supporters of all the other candidates. Thereupon
he entered the Senate, where his activity was unabated. Currency
legislation was especially prominent. Blaine, who had previously opposed
greenback inflation now resisted depreciated silver coinage. He was the
earnest champion of the advancement of American shipping, and advocated
liberal subsidies, insisting that the policy of protection should be
applied on sea as well as on land. The Republican national convention
of 1880, divided between the two nearly equal forces of Blaine and
General U.S. Grant--John Sherman of Ohio also having a considerable
following--struggled through thirty-six ballots, when the friends of
Blaine, combining with those of Sherman, succeeded in nominating General
James A. Garfield. In the new administration Blaine became secretary of
state, but, owing to the assassination of President Garfield and the
reorganization of the cabinet by President Chester A. Arthur, he held
the office only until December 1881. His brief service was distinguished
by several notable steps. In order to promote the friendly understanding
and co-operation of the nations on the American continents he projected
a Pan-American congress, which, after being arranged for, was frustrated
by his retirement. He also sought to secure a modification of the
Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and in an extended correspondence with the
British government strongly asserted the policy of an exclusive American
control of any isthmian canal which might be built to connect the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
With undiminished hold on the imagination and devotion of his followers
he was nominated for president in 1884. After a heated canvass, in which
he made a series of brilliant speeches, he was beaten by a narrow margin
in New York. By many, including Blaine himself, the defeat was
attributed to the effect of a phrase, "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,"
used by a clergyman, Rev. Samuel D. Burchard (1812-1891), on the 29th of
October 1884, in Blaine's presence, to characterize what, in his
opinion, the Democratic party stood for. The phrase was not Blaine's,
but his opponents made use of it to misrepresent his attitude toward the
Roman Catholics, large numbers of whom are supposed, in consequence, to
have withdrawn their support. Refusing to be a presidential candidate in
1888, he became secretary of state under President Harrison, and resumed
his work which had been interrupted nearly eight years before. The
Pan-American congress, then projected, now met in Washington, and
Blaine, as its master spirit, presided over and guided its deliberation
through its session of five months. Its most important conclusions were
for reciprocity in trade, a continental railway and compulsory
arbitration in international complications. Shaping the tariff
legislation for this policy, Blaine negotiated a large number of
reciprocity treaties which augmented the commerce of his country. He
upheld American rights in Samoa, pursued a vigorous diplomacy with Italy
over the lynching of eleven Italians, all except three of them American
naturalized citizens, in New Orleans on the 14th of May 1891, held a
firm attitude during the strained relations between the United States
and Chile (growing largely out of the killing and wounding of American
sailors of the U.S. ship "Baltimore" by Chileans in Valparaiso on the
16th of October 1891), and carried on with Great Britain a resolute
controversy over the seal fisheries of Bering Sea,--a difference
afterwards settled by arbitration. He resigned on the 4th of June 1892,
on the eve of the meeting of the Republican national convention, wherein
his name was ineffectually used, and he died at Washington, D.C., on the
27th of January 1803.
During his later years of leisure he wrote _Twenty Years of Congress_
(1884-1886), a brilliant historical work in two volumes. Of singularly
alert faculties, with a remarkable knowledge of the men and history of
his country, and an extraordinary memory, his masterful talent for
politics and state-craft, together with his captivating manner and
engaging personality, gave him, for nearly two decades, an unrivalled
hold upon the fealty and affection of his party.
See the _Biography of James G. Blaine_ (Norwich, Conn., 1895) by Mary
Abigail Dodge ("Gail Hamilton"), and, in the "American Statesmen
Series," _James G. Blaine_ (Boston, 1905) by C.E. Stanwood; also Mrs
Blaine's _Letters_ (1908). (C. E. S.)