and from rock. But, under the alchemy which gold applies, the iron
takes nobler properties upon it. Converted into steel, in masses that
would lately have staggered men's thoughts, it becomes the kingliest
instrument of peoples for subduing the earth. Things dainty and things
mighty are fashioned from it in equal abundance:--gun-carriage and
cannon, with the solid platforms on which they rest; the largest
castings, and heaviest plates, as well as wheel, axle, and rail, as
well as screw or file or saw. It is shaped into the hulls of ships. It
is built alike into column and truss, balcony, roof, and springing
dome. To the loom and the press, and the boiler from whose fierce and
untiring heart their force is supplied, it is equally apt; while, as
drawn into delicate wires, it is coiled into springs, woven into
gauze, sharpened into needles, twisted into ropes; it is made to yield
music in all our homes; electric currents are sent upon it, along our
streets, around the world; it enables us to talk with correspondents
afar, or it is knit, as before our eyes, into the new and noble
causeways of pleasure and of commerce.
I hardly think that we yet appreciate the significance of this change
which has passed upon iron. It is the industrial victory of the
century, not to have heaped the extracted gold in higher piles, or to
have crowded the bursting vaults with accumulated silver, but to have
conferred, by the sovereign touch of scientific invention,
flexibility, grace, variety of use, an almost ethereal and spiritual
virtue, on the stubbornest of common metals. The indications of
physical achievement in the future, thus inaugurated, outrun the
compass of human thought.
Two bridges lie near each other, across the historical stream of the
Moldau, under the shadow of the ancient and haughty palace at
Prague--the one the picturesque bridge of St. Nepomuk, patron of
bridges throughout Bohemia, of massive stone, which occupied a century
and a half in its erection, and was finished almost four centuries
ago, with stately statues along its sides, with a superb monument at
its end, sustaining symbolic and portrait figures; the other an iron
suspension-bridge, built and finished in three years, a half century
since, and singularly contrasting, in its lightness and grace, the
sombre solidity of the first. It is impossible to look upon the two
without feeling how distinctly the different ages to which they belong
are indicated by them, and how the ceremonial and military character
of the centuries that are past has been superseded by the rapid and
practical spirit of commerce.
But the modern bridge is there a small one, and rests at the centre on
an island and a pier. The structure before us, the largest of its
class as yet in the world, in its swifter, more graceful, and more
daring leap from bank to bank, across the tides of this arm of the
sea, not only illustrates the bolder temper which is natural here, the
readiness to attempt unparalleled works, the disdain of difficulties
in unfaltering reliance on exact calculation, but, in the material out
of which it is wrought, it shows the new supremacy of man over the
metal which, in former time, he scarcely could use save for rude and
coarse implements. The steel of the blades of Damascus or Toledo is
not here needed; nor that of the chisel, the knife-blade, the
watch-spring, or the surgical instrument. But the steel of the
mediæval lance-head or sabre was hardly finer than that which is here
built into a Castle, which the sea cannot shake, whose binding cement
the rains cannot loosen, and before whose undecaying parapets open
fairer visions of island and town, of earth, water, and sky, than from
any fortress along the Rhine. There is inexhaustible promise in the
fact.
Of course, too, there is impressively before us--installed as on this
fair and brilliant civic throne--that desire for swiftest
intercommunication between towns and districts divided from each
other, which belongs to our times, and which is to be an energetic,
enduring, and salutary force in moulding the nation.
The years are not distant in which separated communities regarded each
other with aversion and distrust, and the effort was mutual to raise
barriers between them, not to unite them in closer alliance. Now, the
traffic of one is vitally dependent on the industries of the other;
the counting-room in the one has the factory or the warehouse
tributary to it established in the other; and the demand is imperative
that the two be linked, by all possible mechanisms, in a union as
complete as if no chasm had opened between them. So these cities are
henceforth united; and so all cities, which may minister to each
other, are bound more and more in intimate combinations. Santa Fé,
which soon celebrates the third of a millenium since its foundation,
reaches out its connections toward the newest log-city in Washington
Territory; and the oldest towns upon our seaboard find allies in those
that have risen, like exhalations, along the Western lakes and rivers.
This mighty and symmetrical band before us seems to stand as the type
of all that immeasurable communicating system which is more
completely with every year to interlink cities, to confederate States,
to make one country of our distributed imperial domain, and to weave
its history into a vast, harmonious contexture, as messages fly
instantaneously across it, and the rapid trains rush back and forth,
like shuttles upon a mighty loom.
It is not fanciful, either, to feel that in all its history, and in
what is peculiar in its constitution, it becomes a noble, visible
symbol of that benign Peace amid which its towers and roadway have
risen, and which, we trust, it may long continue to signalize and to
share.
We may look at this moment on the site of the ship-yard from which, in
March, 1862, twenty-one years ago, went forth the unmasted and
raft-like "Monitor," with its flat decks, its low bulwarks, its
guarded mechanism, its heavy armament, and its impenetrable revolving
turret, to that near battle with the "Merrimac," on which, as it
seemed to us at the time, the destiny of the nation was perilously
poised. The material of which the ship was wrought was largely that
which is built in beauty into this luxurious lofty fabric. But no
contrast could be greater among the works of human genius than between
the compact and rigid solidity into which the iron had there been
forged and wedged and rammed, and these waving and graceful curves,
swinging downward and up, almost like blossoming festooned vines along
the perfumed Italian lanes; this alluring roadway, resting on towers
which rise like those of ancient cathedrals; this lace-work of
threads, interweaving their separate delicate strengths into the
complex solidity of the whole.
The ship was for war, and the Bridge is for peace:--the product of it;
almost, one might say, its express palpable emblem, in its harmony of
proportions, its dainty elegance, its advantages for all, and its
ample convenience. The deadly raft, floating level with waves, was
related to this ethereal structure, whose finest curves are wrought in
the strength of toughest steel. We could not have had this except for
that unsightly craft, which at first refused to be steered, which
bumped headlong against our piers, which almost sank while being towed
to the field of its fame, and which, at last, when its mission was
fulfilled, found its grave in the deep over whose waters, and near
their line, its shattering lightnings had been shot. This structure
will stand, we fondly trust, for generations to come, even for
centuries, while metal and granite retain their coherence; not only
emitting, when the wind surges or plays through its network, that
aerial music of which it is the mighty harp, but representing to every
eye the manifold bonds of interest and affection, of sympathy and
purpose, of common political faith and hope, over and from whose
mightier chords shall rise the living and unmatched harmonies of
continental gladness and praise.
While no man, therefore, can measure in thought the vast
processions--40,000,000 a year, it already is computed--which shall
pass back and forth across this pathway, or shall pause on its summit
to survey the vast and bright panorama, to greet the break of
summer-morning, or watch the pageant of closing day, we may hope that
the one use to which it never will need to be put is that of war; that
the one tramp not to be heard on it is that of soldiers marching to
battle; that the only wheels whose roll it shall not be called to echo
are the wheels of the tumbrils of troops and artillery. Born of peace,
and signifying peace, may its mission of peace be uninterrupted, till
its strong towers and cables fall!
If such expectations shall be fulfilled, of mechanical invention ever
advancing, of cities and States linked more closely, of beneficent
peace assured to all, it is impossible to assign any limit to the
coming expansion and opulence of these cities, or to the influence
which they shall exert on the developing life of the country.
Cities have often, in other times, been created by war; as men were
crowded together in them the better to escape the whirls of strife by
which the unwalled districts were ravaged, or the more effectively to
combine their force against threatening foes. And it is a striking
suggestion of history that to the frightful ravages of the
Huns--swarthy, ill-shaped, ferocious, destroying--may have been due
the Great Wall of China, for the protection of its remote towns, as
to them, on the other hand, was certainly due the foundation of
Venice. The first inhabitants of what has been since that queenly
city--along whose liquid and level streets the traveler passes,
between palaces, churches, and fascinating squares, in constant
delight--its first inhabitants fled before Attila, to the flooded
lagoons which were afterward to blossom into the beauty of a
consummate art. The fearful crash of blood and fire in which Aquileia
and Padua fell smote Venice into existence.
But even the city thus born of war must afterward be built up by
peace, when the strifes which had pushed it to its sudden beginning
had died into the distant silence. The fishing industry, the
manufacture of salt, the timid commerce, gradually expanding till it
left the rivers and sought the sea, these, with other related
industries, had made Venetian galleys known on the eastern
Mediterranean before the immense rush of the crusades crowded
tumultuously over its quays and many bridges. Its variety of industry,
and its commercial connections, turned that vast movement into another
source of wealth. It rose rapidly to that naval supremacy which
enabled it to capture piratical vessels and wealthy galleons, to seize
or sack Ionian cities, to storm Byzantium, and make the south of
Greece its suburb. Its manufactures were multiplied. Its dockyards
were thronged with busy workmen. Its palaces were crowded with
precious and famous works of art, while themselves marvels of beauty.
St. Mark's unfolded its magnificent loveliness above the great square.
In the palace adjoining was the seat of a dominion at the time
unsurpassed, and still brilliant in history; and it was in no fanciful
or exaggerated pride that the Doge was wont yearly, on Ascension Day,
to wed the Adriatic with a ring, as the bridegroom weds the bride.
Dreamlike as it seems, equally with Amsterdam, the larger and richer
"Venice of the North," it was erected by hardy hands. The various
works and arts of peace, with a prosperous commerce, were the real
piles, sunken beneath the flashing surface, on which church and
palace, piazza and arsenal, all arose. It was only when these unseen
supports secretly failed that advancement ceased, and the horses of
St. Mark at last were bridled. Not all the wars, with Genoa, Hungary,
with Western Europe, the Greek Empire, or the Ottoman--not earthquake,
plague, or conflagration, though by all it was smitten--overwhelmed
the city whose place in Europe had been so distinguished. The
decadence of enterprise, the growing discredit put upon industry, the
final discovery by Vasco da Gama of the passage around the Cape of
Good Hope, diverting traffic into new channels--these laid their
silent and tightening grasp on the power of Venice, till
"the salt sea-weed
Clung to the marble of her palaces,"
and the glory of the past was merged in a gloom which later centuries
have not lightened. There is a lesson and a promise in the fact.
New York itself may almost be said to have sprung from war; as the
vast excitements of the forty years' wrestle between Spain and its
revolted provinces gave incentive, at least, to the settlement of New
Netherland. But the city, since its real development was begun, has
been almost wholly built up by peace; and the swiftness of its
progress in our own time, which challenges parallel, shows what, if
the ministry of this peace shall continue, may be looked for in the
future.
When the Dutch traders raised their storehouse of logs on yonder
untamed and desolate strand, perhaps as early as 1615; when the
Walloons established their settlement on this side of the river, in
1624, at that "Walloons' Bay" which we still call the Wallabout; or
when, later, in 1626, Manhattan Island, estimated to contain 22,000
acres, was purchased from the Indians for $24, paid in beads, buttons
and trinkets, and the Block House was built, with cedar palisades, on
the site of the Battery, it is, of course, commonplace to say that
they who had come hither could scarcely have had the least conception
of what a career they thus were commencing for two great cities. But
it is not so wholly commonplace to say that those who saw this now
wealthy and splendid New York a hundred years since, less conspicuous
than Boston, far smaller than Philadelphia, with its first bank
established in 1784, and not fully chartered till seven years later;
with its first daily paper in 1785; its first ship in the Eastern
trade returning in May of the same year; its first Directory published
in 1786, and containing only 900 names; its Broadway extending only to
St. Paul's; with the grounds about Reade street grazing-fields for
cattle, and with ducks still shot in that Beekman's Swamp which the
traffic in leather has since made famous: or those who saw it even
fifty years ago, when its population was little more than one-third of
the present population of this younger city; when its first Mayor had
not been chosen by popular election; when gas had but lately been
introduced, and the superseding of the primitive pumps by Croton water
had not yet been projected--they, all, could hardly have imagined what
already the city should have become: the recognized centre of the
commerce of the Continent; one of the principal cities of the world.
So those who have lived in this city from childhood, and who hardly
yet claim the dignities of age, could scarcely have conjectured, when
looking on what Mr. Murphy recalled as the village of his youth, "a
hamlet of a hundred houses," that it should have become, in our time,
a city of nearly 70,000 dwelling houses, occupied by twice as many
families; with a population, by the census rates, of little less than
700,000; with more than 150,000 children in its public and private
schools; with 330 miles of paved streets, as many as last year in New
York, and with more than 200 additional miles impatiently waiting to
be paved; with 130 miles of street railway track, over which last year
88,000,000 of passengers were carried; with nearly 2,500 miles of
telegraph and telephone wire knitting it together; with 35,000,000 of
gallons of water, the best on the continent, to which 20,000,000 more
are soon to be added, daily distributed in its houses, through 360
miles of pipe; with an aggregate value of real property exceeding
certainly $400,000,000; with an annual tax levy of $6,500,000; with
manufactures in it whose reported product in 1880 was $103,000,000;
with a water-front, of pier, dock, basin, canal, already exceeding 25
miles, and not as yet half developed, at which lies shipping from all
the world, more largely than at the piers of New York; and, finally,
with what to most modern communities appears to flash as a costly but
brilliant diamond necklace, a public debt, beginning now to diminish,
it is true, but still approaching, in net amount, $37,500,000!
The child watches, in happy wonder, the swelling film of soapy water
into whose iridescent globe he has blown the speck from the bowl of
the pipe. But this amazing development around us is not of airy and
vanishing films. It is solidly constructed, in marble and brick, in
stone and iron, while the proportions to which it has swelled surpass
precedent, and rebuke the timidity of the boldest prediction. But that
which has built it has been simply the industry, manifold, constant,
going on in these cities, to which peace offers incentive and room.
Their future advancement is to come in like manner: not through a
prestige derived from their history; not by the gradual increments of
their wealth, already collected; not by the riches which they invite
to themselves from other cities and distant coasts; not even from
their beautiful fortune of location; but by prosperous manufactures
prosecuted in them; by the traffic which radiates over the country; by
the foreign commerce which, in values increasing every year, seeks
this harbor. Each railway whose rapid wheels roll hither, from East or
West, from North or South, from the rocks of Newfoundland or the
copper-deposits of Lake Superior, from the orange groves of Florida,
the Louisiana bayous, the silver ridges of the West, the Golden Gate,
gives its guaranty of growth to the still young metropolis. On the
cotton fields of the South, and its sugar plantations; on coal mines,
and iron mines; on the lakes which winter roofs with ice, and from
which drips refreshing coolness through our summer; on fisheries,
factories, wheat fields, pine forests; on meadows wealthy with grains
or grass, and orchards bending beneath their burdens, this enlarging
prosperity must be maintained; and on the steamships, and the
telegraph lines, which interweave us with all the world. The swart
miner must do his part for it; the ingenious workman, in whatever
department; the ploughman in the field, and the fisherman on the
banks; the man of science, putting Nature to the question; the
laborer, with no other capital than his muscle; the sailor on the sea,
wherever commerce opens its wings.
Our Arch of Triumph is, therefore, fitly this Bridge of Peace. Our
Brandenburg Gate, bearing on its summit no car of military victory, is
this great work of industrial skill. It stands, not, like the Arch
famous at Milan, outside the city, but in the midst of these united
and busy populations. And if the tranquil public order which it
celebrates and prefigures shall continue as years proceed, not London
itself, a century hence, will surpass the compass of this united city
by the sea, in which all civilized nations of mankind have already
their many representatives, and to which the world shall pay an
increasing annual tribute.
And so the last suggestion comes, which the hour presents, and of
which the time allows the expression.
It was not to an American mind alone that we owed the "Monitor," of
which I have spoken, but also to one trained in Swedish schools, the
Swedish army, and representing that brave nationality. It is not to a
native American mind that the scheme of construction carried out in
this Bridge is to be ascribed, but to one representing the German
peoples, who, in such enriching and fruitful multitudes, have found
here their home. American enterprise, American money, built them both.
But the skill which devised, and much, no doubt, of the labor which
wrought them, came from afar.
Local and particular as is the work, therefore, it represents that
fellowship of the Nations which is more and more prominently a fact of
our times, and which gives to these cities incessant augmentation.
When, by and by, on yonder island the majestic French statue of
Liberty shall stand, holding in its hand the radiant crown of electric
flames, and answering by them to those as brilliant along this
causeway, our beautiful bay will have taken what specially illuminates
and adorns it from Central and from Western Europe. The distant lands
from which oceans divide us, though we touch them each moment with
the fingers of the telegraph, will have set this conspicuous double
crown on the head of our harbor. The alliances of nations, the peace
of the world, will seem to find illustrious prediction in such superb
and novel regalia.
Friends, and Fellow-Citizens: Let us not forget that, in the growth of
these cities, henceforth united, and destined ere long to be formally
one, lies either a threat, or one of the conspicuous promises of the
time.
Cities have always been powers in history. Athens educated Greece, as
well as adorned it, while Corinth filled the throbbing and thirsty
Hellenic veins with poisoned blood. The weight of Constantinople broke
the Roman Empire asunder. The capture of the same magnificent city
gave to the Turks their establishment in Europe for the following
centuries. Even where they have not had such a commanding pre-eminence
of location, the social, political, moral force proceeding from cities
has been vigorous in impression, immense in extent. The passion of
Paris, for a hundred years, has created or directed the sentiment of
France. Berlin is more than the legislative or administrative centre
of the German Empire. Even a government as autocratic as that of the
Czar, in a country as undeveloped as Russia, has to consult the
popular feeling of St. Petersburg or of Moscow.
In our nation, political power is widely distributed, and the largest
or wealthiest commercial centre can have but its share. Great as is
the weight of the aggregate vote in these henceforth compacted cities,
the vote of the State will always overbear it. Amid the suffrages of
the nation at large, it can only be reckoned as one of many consenting
or conflicting factors. But the influence which constantly proceeds
from these cities--on their journalism, not only, or on the issues of
their book-presses, or on the multitudes going forth from them, but on
the example presented by them of intellectual, social, religious
life--this, for shadow and check, or for fine inspiration, is already
of unlimited extent, of incalculable force. It must increase as they
expand, and are lifted before the country to a new elevation.
A larger and a smaller sun are sometimes associated, astronomers tell
us, to form a binary centre in the heavens, for what is, doubtless, an
unseen system receiving from them impulse and light. On a scale not
utterly insignificant, a parallel may be hereafter suggested in the
relation of these combined cities to a part, at least, of our national
system. Their attitude and action during the war--successfully closed
under the gallant military leadership of men whom we gladly welcome
and honor--were of vast advantage to the national cause. The moral,
political, intellectual temper, which dominates in them, as years go
on, will touch with beauty, or scar with scorching and baleful heats,
extended regions. Their religious life, as it glows in intensity, or
with a faint and failing lustre, will be repeated in answering image
from the widening frontier. The beneficence which gives them grace and
consecration, and which, as lately, they follow to the grave with
universal benediction, or, on the other hand, the selfish ambitions
which crowd and crush along their streets, intent only on accumulated
wealth and its sumptuous display, or the glittering vices which they
accept and set on high--these will make their impression on those who
never cross the continent to our homes, to whom our journals are but
names.