Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LVI
NOVEMBER, 1899, TO APRIL, 1900
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
[Illustration: EDWARD ORTON.]
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE TRANSPLANTATION OF A RACE. 513
MODERN CITY ROADWAYS. 524
TYPICAL CRIMINALS. 539
A CENTURY OF GEOLOGY. 546
"SALAMANDERS" AND "SALAMANDER" CATS. 556
WHAT MAKES THE TROLLEY CAR GO. 564
A SURVIVAL OF MEDIÆVAL CREDULITY. 577
"RIBBON LIGHTNING." 587
CROSS-EDUCATION. 589
THE MORBID "SENSE OF INJURY." 596
EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN AIR FLIGHT. 603
SKETCH OF EDWARD ORTON. 607
EDITOR'S TABLE. 614
FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 618
MINOR PARAGRAPHS. 622
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 624
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.
MARCH, 1900.
THE TRANSPLANTATION OF A RACE.
BY N. S. SHALER,
DEAN OF THE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
The experiments which have been intentionally or accidentally made in
transplanting organic species from the countries in which they have
been developed to others of diverse soil, climate, and inhabitants
are always of much interest to the naturalist--each of them affords
indications of some value as to the relations of species to what
we term "environment." In almost all instances we find that the
transplanted forms undergo changes in consequence of the alteration
of their circumstances. It is true that certain of our domesticated
animals, such as the horse, the dog, and most cattle, follow men from
the Arctic to the Antarctic Circle, and that sundry insect pests
appear to demand nothing of Nature save the presence of man; yet, as
a whole, the creatures we have turned to use, both plant and animal
alike, have shown themselves incapable of accommodating themselves to
conditions of temperature differing much from those in which they were
developed. With hardly an exception, species or varieties which have
been developed in the tropics perish when called on to withstand the
winter of higher latitudes. Few, indeed, do well when taken to stations
where the heat or the humidity differs greatly from that to which they
are accustomed.
The intolerance of organisms to climatal changes is nowhere more
evident than in the varieties, or species, as we would term them, of
mankind. It is a well-attested fact that none of the tropical races
has ever of its own instance colonized in the temperate zones. It
is also clear that none of the northern peoples have ever become
fully acclimated within the tropical realm. The colonies which have
been founded there by the Teutonic folk, including the English group
therein, have been lamentable failures, the pure-blooded strains dying
out in a few generations. The people of southern Europe have been a
little more successful in the equatorial regions, probably because
their blood has there to a great extent become mingled with that of
tropical origin. These general conclusions concerning the climatal
limitations of man would be unassailable were it not for the history
of the negro in North America. In his case we have the one masterful
exception to the rule, otherwise good, that creatures bred near the
equator can not endure boreal conditions.
The negroes who came to North America had to undergo as complete a
transition as ever fell to the lot of man, without the least chance to
undergo an acclimatizing process. They were brought from the hottest
part of the earth to the region where the winter's cold is of almost
arctic severity--from an exceedingly humid to a very dry air. They
came to service under alien taskmasters, strange to them in speech and
in purpose. They had to betake themselves to unaccustomed food and to
clothing such as they had never worn before. Rarely could one of the
creatures find about him a familiar face of friend, parent, or child,
or an object that recalled his past life to him. It was an appalling
change. Only those who know how the negro cleaves to all the dear,
familiar things of life, how fond he is of warmth and friendliness, can
conceive the physical and mental shock that this introduction to new
conditions meant to them. To people of our own race it could have meant
death. But these wonderful folk appear to have withstood the trials of
their deportation in a marvelous way. They showed no peculiar liability
to disease. Their longevity or period of usefulness was not diminished,
or their fecundity obviously impaired. So far as I have been able to
learn, nostalgia was not a source of mortality, as it would have been
with any Aryan population. The price they brought in the market and the
satisfaction of their purchasers with their qualities shows that they
were from the first almost ideal laborers. If we compare the Algonkin
Indian, in appearance a sturdy fellow, with these negroes, we see of
what stuff the blacks are made. A touch of housework and of honest toil
took the breath of the aborigines away, but these tropical exotics fell
to their tasks and trials far better than the men of our own kind could
have done.
At their first coming, or soon afterward, the negroes were distributed
along the coast of our country from the Carolinas to Nova Scotia.
So far as I have been able to find, there appears to have been no
distinct difference in their tolerance of the climate in any part of
this varied district. There are still negroes in the maritime provinces
who are said to be the descendants of those who came upon the ground
certainly more than a century ago. They are good specimens of their
stock. So, too, along the New England coast and in New York there is
a sufficient number of the progeny of those once held as slaves to
make it clear that the failure to become a considerable part of the
population in that district is not due to any incapacity to withstand
the climate. The failure of the negro to increase in this field can be
accounted for in other ways--by the effects of race prejudice, nowhere
stronger than in this part of the country, and by the vice and misery
that overtake a despised lower class.
It early became evident that slavery was to be of no permanent
economic advantage to any part of the colonies within the glaciated
district, say from central New Jersey northward. In that portion of the
coastal belt the state of the surface and the character of the crops
alike tended to make the ownership of slaves unprofitable. The farms
were necessarily small. They became in a natural way establishments
worked by the head of the house, with the help of his children. Such
other help as was needed was, in the course of two generations,
readily had from hired white men and women. It was otherwise in the
tobacco-planting region to the southward. The cultivation of that
plant, to meet the extraordinary demands that Europe made for it, gave
slavery its chance to become established in this country. But for
that industry the institution would most likely have taken but slight
root, and the territory as far south as North Carolina would have
been in social order not very different from Pennsylvania, New York,
and the New England settlements. But, owing to some peculiar, as yet
unrecognized, adjustments of climate and soil, tobacco for pipes has
a quality when grown in the Virginia district such as it has nowhere
else in the world, and the world turned to smoking it with a disregard
for expense that made each laborer in the field worth some hundred
dollars a year. Moreover, the production of good tobacco requires
much care, which extends over about a year from the time the seed is
planted. Some parts of the work demand a measure of judgment such as
intelligent negroes readily acquire. They are indeed better fitted for
the task than white men, for they are commonly more interested in their
tasks than whites of the laboring class. The result was that before
the period of the Revolution slavery was firmly established in the
tobacco-planting colonies of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. It
was already the foundation of their only considerable industry.
Although the production of tobacco had made slavery a great economical
success in the limited field where the best product was to be had, it
is doubtful if the institution would have attained to any widespread
importance but for the development of another form of planting--that
of cotton. Thus, in Kentucky, where the crops, with the exception of
a coarse tobacco, are the same as in the other Northern States of the
Union, the institution, despite the long-continued scarcity of labor,
never attained any very great development. The slaves were generally
used for household service, but to no great extent in the fields, and
in such employment only in the districts where the soil was of such
great fertility that large quantities of grain were raised for export.
In one third of that Commonwealth negroes were, and remain to this day,
quite unknown. The invention of the cotton gin ended all hope that
slavery might be limited to a part of the seacoast region, for nearly
all of the lowland regions of the South, as well as some of the upland
country north to the southern border of Kentucky and Virginia, are
admirably suited to that crop--producing, indeed, a better "staple"
than that of any other country. This industry, even more than that of
raising tobacco, called for abundant labor which could be absolutely
commanded and severely tasked in the season of extreme heats. For this
work the negro proved to be the only fit man, for while the whites can
do this work they prefer other employment. Thus it came about that the
power of slavery in this country became rooted in its soil. The facts
show that, based on an ample foundation of experience, the judgment
of the Southern people was to the effect that this creature of the
tropics was a better laborer in their fields than the men of their
own race. Much has been said about the dislike of the white man for
work in association with negroes. The failure of the whites to have
a larger share in the agriculture of the South has been attributed
to this cause. This seems to me clearly an error. The dislike to the
association of races in labor is, in the slaveholding States, less than
in the North. There can be no question that if the Southern folk could
have made white laborers profitable they would have preferred to employ
them, for the reason that the plantations would have required less
fixed capital for their operation. The fact was and is that the negro
is there a better laboring man in the field than the white. Under the
conditions he is more enduring, more contented, and more trustworthy
than the men of our own race.
The large development of the cotton industry in this country came after
the importation of negroes from Africa had ceased to be as completely
unrestricted as it was at first. The prohibition of the traffic came
indeed before the needs of laborers in the more Southern and Western
slave States had been met. For a while there was some surreptitious
importation, which in a small way continued down to the middle of
this century, but this smuggling was quite insufficient to supply the
market of the new States with slaves. The result was that the border
slaveholding States became to a considerable extent the breeding
grounds for men and women who were to be at maturity exported to the
great plantations of Alabama and Mississippi, there to be herded by
overseers in gangs of hundreds, with no hope of ever returning to their
kindred. With this interdiction of the foreign slave trade the evils of
the former situation became magnified into horrors. The folk who were
brought from Africa came from a state of savagery to one of relative
comfort. When once adjusted to their new conditions, their lot was
on the whole greatly bettered. But their descendants, who had become
attached to the places where they were born with the peculiar affection
the better of them had for their homes, being accustomed to masters who
on the whole were gentle, were now to undergo a worse deportation than
that which made them slaves. It is not too much to say that the deeper
evils of the system to the slaves themselves, as well as to their
masters, began with this miserable slave trade that went on within the
limits of this country, and was about at its height when the civil war
began.
It can not be denied that even in the best stages of slaveholding
there had been a good deal of commerce in slaves where the feelings of
these chattels were in no wise regarded. Still, there was a prevailing
sentiment among all the slaveholders of the gentler sort that it was
in a way disgraceful to part families. I distinctly recall, when I was
a lad, some years before the civil war, my maternal grandfather often
charged me to remember that I came of a people who had never bought or
sold a slave except to keep families together. I know that this was a
common feeling among the better men of Kentucky and Virginia, and that
the practice of rearing negroes for the Southern market filled them
with sorrow and indignation. Yet the change was the inevitable result
of the system and of the advancing commercialism which separated the
plantation life more and more from that of the owner's household. At
the time when the civil war began the institution of slavery was, from
the commercial point of view, eminently successful. Notwithstanding
the occasional appearance of the spendthrift slave owner in Northern
pleasure resorts or in Europe, the great plantations were generally
in charge of able business men, who won a large interest on their
investments and who were developing the system of planting in a way
which, though it appeared to those who were accustomed to close
tillage as shiftless, was really well adjusted to the conditions.
Not one fourth of the land of the Southern States that was well
fitted for the work of slaves had been brought into use. The blacks
who were carefully managed in all that regarded their health and
in their morals, so far as might affect their breeding, were in
admirable physical condition, and rapidly increasing in numbers. It
is doubtful if ever a peasant class was so well cared for or so freed
from avoidable diseases. The growing protest against the institution,
so far as it operated in the South, was practically limited to the
border States, mainly to Kentucky, where alone did a considerable
number of well-born men set themselves against it. There is good reason
to believe that if the civil war had not occurred the end of the
nineteenth century would have seen a negro population in the South much
more numerous than we now have there. Experience has shown that the
American cotton crop is little affected by foreign competition, so that
it would have maintained the success of the institution.
Although the system of slavery was by a chance of Nature so firmly
planted on the cotton fields as to give it entire dominance in the
South, and something like control of the Federal Union, there was
one geographic condition that menaced its future, and in the end did
much to insure its downfall in the events of the civil war, and most
likely would have brought about its end even if the Confederacy had
been established. This was the form and extent of the Appalachian
uplands between the Potomac and the Ohio on the north and Alabama and
Georgia in the South. In this area of nearly one hundred and fifty
thousand square miles in extent the surface lies at an average height
of some fifteen hundred feet above the sea; the good arable land
is found mostly in narrow valleys suited only for household farms,
totally unfit for the systematic agriculture in which alone negroes
could be profitably employed as slaves. Into this area drifted the
class of small farmers who by one chance and another had never been
able to enter or to maintain themselves in the aristocratic class of
slaveholders. These mountaineers--they may better be termed the hill
people of the South--were an eminently peculiar people. They are not
to be compared with the "poor white trash"--i.e., the downfallen and
dependent whites, who were broken men in spirit, scarce above the
slaves in quality. These poor whites were often, if not generally,
either the weaker strains of the militant families or the descendants
of the people who had been imported into this country by the land
companies or sent out as peons.
Partly because of their separation from the slaveholding class and
partly because of the circumstances of their origin, the people of
the Southern highlands formed a curiously separated class. They
retained the quality of their English stock, as they had brought it
with them--an independence, a carelessness as to life, and a humor for
quarreling with those who were set above them whenever their liberties
or their license seemed to be threatened. Even their customs and
utensils held with curious adhesion to the usages of earlier centuries.
Thus, in 1878, I found, in a secluded valley of southwestern Virginia,
men hunting squirrels and rabbits with the old English short bow.
These were not the contrivances of boys or of to-day, but were made
and strung and the arrows hefted in the ancient manner. The men, one
of them old, were admirably skilled in their use; they assured me
that, like their fathers before them, they had ever used the bow and
arrow for small game, reserving the costly ammunition of the rifle for
deer and bear. These hill folk were, in a passive but obdurate manner,
opposed to slavery, and even more to negroes. There are still many
counties in this district where a negro has never dwelt. In some parts
of it I have had people gather from twenty miles away to stare at my
black camp servants, as the folk of central Africa are said to do at a
white man.
At the outbreak of the civil war the Appalachian upland was still
thinly peopled; it was, however, fitted to maintain a population
of some millions. If the Confederacy had won its independence, its
plantation districts, with a relatively small voting population, would
soon have had to settle an account with the people of the hills. As it
was, the existence of this folk in a great ridge of country extending
from the Northern States to within two hundred miles of the Gulf of
Mexico was an element of weakness which went far to give success to the
Federal arms. It kept Kentucky from seceding, prevented the region of
West Virginia from being of any value to the rebellion, and weakened
its control in several other States. In all, somewhere near one hundred
thousand recruits came to the Federal army from this part of the South.
It is not improbable that to this folk we may attribute the failure of
the great revolt. That they turned thus against the people of their own
States to cast in their lot with those who were strangers to them shows
their feelings toward the institution of slavery; it indicated where
they would have stood if the Confederacy had been established.
It is not easy to picture the condition of the negro population in
1860. There is a common notion that it was consciously and bitterly
suffering from its subjugation--ready to rise in arms against its
oppressors. This view was indeed shared by the Southern people, who
lived in chronic fear of insurrections. The error of it arose from the
fallacious notion that the people of another race must feel and act as
we would under like circumstances. The facts showed that the negro mind
does not work in the fashion of our own. He had, it is true, suffered
from slavery, but not as men of our race would have suffered. Against
its deprivations and such direct cruelty as he experienced, not often
great, he could set the simple comforts and small pleasures which are
so much to him. That he was on the whole fairly contented with his
lot, that his relations with his masters were on the whole friendly,
is shown by his remarkable conduct during and since the civil war. If
the accepted account of the negro had been true, if he had been for
generations groaning in servitude while he passionately longed for
liberty, the South should have flamed in insurrection at the first
touch of war. We should have seen a repetition of the horrors of many a
servile insurrection. It is a most notable fact that, during the four
years of the great contention, when the blacks had every opportunity
to rise, there was no real mark of a disposition to turn upon their
masters. On thousands of Southern farms the fighting men left their
women and children in the keeping of their slaves, while they went
forth for a cause whose success meant that those slaves could never be
free.
That the negroes desired to be free is plain enough. The fact that
they fled in such numbers to our camps shows this. Their failure to
revolt must be taken as an indication that their relations with their
masters measured on their own instinctive standards were on the whole
affectionate. They had the strength to have made an end of the war
at a stroke. They were brave enough for such action. That they did
not take it after the manner of their kindred of Santo Domingo is
the best possible testimony as to the generally sympathetic relation
which existed between master and slaves. Of this no better test can be
imagined than that which the final stages of the institution afforded.
In taking account of the history of the slave in this Union it is
not amiss for me to bear testimony as to the spirit with which the
body of our slave owners met the singular obligations of their
positions. There were here and there base men who abused their trust
as masters--some, indeed, who never perceived its existence. But
of the very many slave owners whom I can remember I can recall but
three who failed to recognize the burden that fate had put upon them
and to deal with it much as they dealt with the other cares of their
households--conscientiously and mercifully, though often in the rude
whacking way in which parents of old dealt with their children; so far
as slavery was a household affair, and even where the farm employed no
more hands than could be gathered in a house "quarter," the people were
commonly subject to an anxious scrutiny as regarded their moral and
religious training. Here and there, especially when there were young
white men about, the result was the deplorable mixture of the races.
There is no question but that this was extensive, though the amount
of it is exaggerated. Yet it was common enough to degrade the whites
and to make of itself a sufficient reason for ending the institution,
however profitable it might otherwise have been. Men of no race are
safely to be trusted with such power. The social evil was the heaviest
part of the load which the high-minded slave owners had to bear. It was
shared in even larger measure by his wife and daughters. How heavy the
cross was can only be known to those who remember the conditions of
that unhappy time.
The result of the hopeless effort to keep the slaves in decent ways
and to prevent the pollution of their sons was to make nearly every
right-minded slaveholder at heart an abolitionist. Although the
men, and even the women, who suffered most would have been disposed
to slay any one who suggested that they shared the opinions of the
detested antislavery folk, nearly every one in his heart reprobated
the institution and in his mind was revolving some scheme, generally
fanciful, by which an end of it might be made. They were in the unhappy
position where overwhelming self-interest fought with their moral
sense. Now and then some one of them passed the critical point and
entered into the fold of the accursed abolitionists; but others, after
the manner of average men, paltered with the situation, waiting for
fate to decide the matter. In the meantime, they strove as best they
could to lift these people to a higher estate.
In many ways the standard of care by which the conduct of a master
in relation to his slaves was judged was high. He was expected to
clothe them in a fit manner, keep them from the nocturnal wanderings,
termed "running," so common a trait in these children of the tropics,
to see that they were decently married, that they went to church in
a dutiful way, and, above all, that they were not abused by other
whites, particularly by other slaveholders. To strike or even to vilify
the slaves of another was a very serious thing. The offended person
knew well that it was his part to make his complaint to the servant's
master. Where the negroes exceeded in number those needed for household
and personal service--there were often a dozen or two thus employed
in families of no great wealth--there was a division between the
house people and the "hands." Those in the former group were selected
folk, often belonging to families that had been associated with those
of their masters for a century or more. Such servants had rights
that none could dispute. Not uncommonly their elders were the actual
rulers of the establishment. These family slaves often received some
little schooling, even when the laws forbade that slaves should be
taught to read and write. The children of the household servants were
allowed freely to play with those of their masters until the young
people were about twelve years old. The boys of both often had their
rough-and-tumble games together until they were young men. The field
laborers, where the class was separate, had less perfect connection
with their masters. They usually came to the family storeroom for
the daily issued rations, which they received from the hands of the
mistress or the daughter of the house. They were visited when sick,
and their complaints were heard. They were free to all of the many
festivities of the holiday time.
It is impossible to conceive of a more effective schooling for the
African people than was given this adoption into the households, and
often into the hearts, of high-minded masters. A like opportunity never
before came and will never again come to so lowly a folk. The effect
of this educative contact with the superior race is, as before noted,
to be seen in the temper of the negroes during and after the civil
war. Upon the high-minded master the effect of the institution was in
many ways enlarging. A man is morally what his cares have made him,
and of these the dutiful slaveholder has more than an average share.
He grew in the power of command and in the habit of doing justice to
many fellow-beings. He lived a large life. The qualities bred of his
station have been of profit to his folk and time. All this is true of
slavery of the domestic sort. It is not so in like manner of the great
plantations which came with the development of the cotton and sugar
industries. It was characteristic of the northern part of the South
until it began to be the place of supply for the rapidly developing
plantation district.
So long as the negro could look forward to life in the place and
with the people of his birth his simple, careless nature opened to
him little to bring a sense of danger. He was to live on until he
passed in to the Elysium of the hereafter, of which he had no doubt
whatever. Gradually there came, in the overcrowding of the farms and
the diminishing fertility of the wasted land, the need of reducing
the number of slaves. Then each year came the dreaded visits of the
"trader," who was like a visible angel of death, to lead one or more
into the far unknown country. Before the plantation demand for slaves
began there were, of course, sales of slaves, but they commonly went as
families, and not to places to them inconceivably remote. These could
hope for Christmas reunions and other exchanges, but when the negro
was "sold South" the place and people that had known him would know him
no more. My first impression of the iniquity of slavery came from the
anxious questions of negroes as to the danger of their being sold to
Alabama, that State being then the supposed destination of all those
who were out of favor. They naturally strove to make interest with
children whom they thought could successfully intercede for them.
There were several very diverse consequences arising from the
exportation of slaves from the border States to the far South. It
shook the confidence of the negro as to his safety in all that was
dearest to him, and thus did much to degrade the relation between him
and his master. It served, cruel as it was, to elevate the relatively
uncivilized blacks of the more Southern districts, where the newly
imported laborers were mostly accumulated. It curiously operated to
elevate the quality of the blacks in what was termed the slave-breeding
States, those where the institution had longest been established. This
was due to the selection of those of lower grade for the market. As
it became necessary to part with slaves, a choice was naturally made
of men and women who had least endeared themselves to the household.
Save in rare cases, the trader sought rather the lusty youths for their
brawn than the more delicate, refined house people. Moreover, where
a fellow had shown a tendency to any vice, the choice fell on him.
In this way for two or three generations a weeding process went on,
with the result that the negroes who were left in the districts where
the work was done acquired a quality noticeably better than those on
the Southern plantations. The difference is almost that we would look
for between two distinct races. The faces of the selected folk are
more intelligent, the lines of their bodies finer, their moral and
intellectual quality very much above those of their lower kindred. They
are at their best, in very numerous instances, as gentle as the elect
of our own race.
Where, as in the Southern plantations, the institution of slavery was
deliberately made the basis of large commercial interests, the motives
were wholly different from whatever existed in the early and better
days, when the slaves were appendages of a household. Even on the
largest tobacco plantations the numbers were not such as to exclude a
share of contact with friendly whites. But on the great properties of
the South the negro was not to any extent subject to the influences
which had in the earlier stage of his apprenticeship done so much for
him. Worked in gangs that were counted by the hundreds, seeing no
whites except the overseers, they tended to lose what little culture
they had gained. Their peculiar but perfectly intelligible speech
began a degradation into a puzzling jargon. African superstitions,
little if any trace of which remained among their kindred in Virginia
and Kentucky, regained their hold. Marriage and a respect therefor,
which had been tolerably well affirmed, tended to disappear. All trace
of good thus vanished from the system.
Although the great plantation, of the Mississippi type, was a
relatively novel feature in American slaveholding, it was evidently the
only largely profitable method of using slave labor. In the household
system the care of the children, the aged, and the infirm, the
unbusinesslike management of the labor, and the tendency to slipshod
methods which with negroes can only be corrected by strict discipline,
made ordinary farming unremunerative. It is evident that the profit,
other than that in mere money, which the institution in the earlier
state had brought to master and slave was rapidly diminishing, and that
any further maintenance of it would have been calamitous. Though we may
regret that it was ended by the civil war, it is difficult to see any
other way in which it could have been terminated, or any profit which
could have been gained by postponing the crisis.
MODERN CITY ROADWAYS.
BY NELSON P. LEWIS,
ENGINEER OF HIGHWAYS, BOROUGH OF BROOKLYN.
One of the conspicuous results of cheapened transportation and the
facility with which the products of field, forest, mine, and factory
can be transferred to the consumer has been the rapid increase in
population of all our cities. In 1890 over forty-five per cent of the
population of New York State (nearly six millions) was concentrated in
four cities, while it is estimated that the greater city of New York
contains at present not less and probably more than fifty per cent of
the State's population. Nor is this tendency characteristic only of
American cities, though the general impression seems to be that it is
more conspicuous with us. In fact, many European cities (notably those
of Germany) have outstripped ours in growth. In 1870 Berlin had about
150,000 less people than New York; in 1890 it had over 73,000 more. In
1875 Hamburg exceeded Boston in population by but 6,000, while in 1890
the German city was more than 121,000 ahead.
Meanwhile the rural population the world over has increased very
slowly, or has positively decreased. The massing together of large
numbers of people, without proper regard to sanitary conditions, has
always resulted in great mortality, as witness the terrible plagues
which have swept over the old cities of Europe, and the disastrous
results during the summer of 1898 of concentrating large numbers of our
volunteers in camps not subjected to rigid sanitary regulations.
It has been amply demonstrated, however, that our cities can be made at
least as healthful as the country districts, and an increasingly large
number of engineers are engaged in such city building.
One branch of this municipal work will be considered in this
paper--that of street improvement. The first impression gained by a
stranger entering a city is undoubtedly that produced by the appearance
of its streets. If they are poorly paved, irregular, dirty, and
generally unkempt, he will consult his time table to see how soon
he can get away. If they are broad, smooth, clean, well shaded and
lighted, he will stay as long as possible.
[Illustration: SECTIONS OF ROMAN ROADS]
In spite of the pride of the American people in the development of our
cities, and notwithstanding the fact that their wealth enables them
to have only the best, they have been slow to appreciate the value of
thoroughly well-paved streets. As stated by Mr. Albert Shaw, European
cities have been ahead of us in accepting the doctrine that "smooth and
clean highways are a wise investment from every point of view, and that
so long as the work is done in a thorough and scientific manner the
result is worth having, regardless of cost. No city should think itself
rich enough to prosper without them, and no city is so poor that it can
not afford them if it has any reason whatever for continued existence.
Good roadways are cheap at any cost, and bad ones are so disastrously
expensive that only a very rich country, like the United States, can
afford them."
Space will not permit even a brief history of street paving, or an
attempt to sketch its development, but reference will be made to the
different kinds in general use, and the kind most in favor in various
cities. Probably no one has introduced the subject of pavements without
reference to the Roman roads.
While Carthage was probably the first city to boast of paved streets,
the Romans soon followed its example, and all over Europe, Asia, and
Africa, as far as the domain of their emperors extended, they built
with the greatest care and at enormous expense that magnificent system
of roads which were often supposed, in the middle ages, to be of
supernatural origin, and remain the wonder of our modern civilization.
These roads were generally from four to six metres in width, and were
constructed in this way: The roadbed was excavated; in it was placed a
layer of stones, which were sometimes united with mortar. These stones
were such as were most available, sometimes rounded stones similar to
the cobblestones with which we are familiar, and in some cases in the
Alps the foundation was a compact mass of angular stones, two feet or
more in their longest dimension, carefully fitted together.
[Illustration: A STREET IN POMPEII, SHOWING OLD ROMAN PAVEMENT.]
On this foundation was placed a layer of plaster made of stone or brick
pounded with mortar; then a course of sand and lime or sand and clay,
leveled and pounded until very hard. The top or wearing surface was
made of irregular flat stones, fitted together with nicety and united
with cement. The total depth of these roads, or pavements, as they can
properly be called, was from three to (in some cases) seven feet. It is
said that in the province of Hispania alone (Spain and Portugal) twenty
thousand miles of roads were built.
The first stone pavements to be laid in modern city streets were
those formed of stones in their natural condition, variously known as
bowlders, pebbles, or cobblestones.
The first attempt at a street pavement in this country was doubtless
that referred to by Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer, in the _Goede Vrouw
of Mana-na-ta_, where she says, in speaking of what was once called
Brower Street, because it passed by the great brewery built by one of
the first of the Van Cortlandts: "This street lies between Whitehall
and Broad, and was one of the first lanes laid out by the settlers, and
was commonly known as 'The Road.' In 1657 it was paved with small round
cobblestones, and the circumstance created such a sensation that the
country people visited it as a curiosity, and it was one of the sights
of the little dorp. The burghers laughingly nicknamed it Stone Street,
which name it still retains. The improvement was effected by Madame Van
Cortlandt, as she could not endure the dust that filled her tidy house,
caused by the heavy brewers' wains that were constantly passing her
door."
[Illustration: A STREET IN NAPLES, SHOWING LARGE PAVING STONES.]
This cobblestone pavement, laid on Stone Street nearly two centuries
and a half ago, has been a persistent type, and, on account of
their availability and cheapness, such stones continued to be used
in many cities until within a very few years. When they were well
shaped and uniform in size they made quite a durable pavement, and,
though rough and noisy, were capable, when well laid, of sustaining a
considerable traffic. Fortunately, the better class of these stones
are now so scarce and the poorer ones are so execrable that this type
of pavement is becoming obsolete, though there are many miles for
which more civilized pavements are yet to be substituted, two hundred
and thirty-eight miles of which are unfortunately in the Borough of
Brooklyn. The next step in advance was the use of stone shaped to
uniform size, or approximately so, and with a more or less smooth
surface. This is the pavement in most general use to-day, and for
permanency and, consequently, cheapness can not be surpassed. When
first used, these blocks were quite large, and the size has been
decreased until the best stone pavements laid at the present time in
Great Britain are six-inch cubes, or still smaller, with a surface four
inches square and a depth of seven inches.
[Illustration: COBBLESTONE PAVEMENT ON SARATOGA AVENUE, BROOKLYN.]
But stone pavement when most carefully laid and maintained is noisy and
unpleasant to ride over, and in these days we can never reconcile such
a pavement with a handsome residence street. The writer experienced a
distinct shock when on riding over Euclid Avenue, in Cleveland, last
year, he found it still paved with Medina sandstone blocks, and it
seemed that this famous street was still living on the reputation which
Bayard Taylor gave it years ago as the handsomest street in the world.
In looking about for something more quiet and smooth than stone, the
first material tried was wood. In London the first wood pavement was
laid in the Old Bailey in 1839, and was soon followed by many others.
None of these pavements lasted more than seven years, and, as they cost
more than granite and were so short-lived, a prejudice arose against
them, and as they wore out they were mostly replaced with granite.
Since that time wood pavement has become popular again, and a large
area is now covered with it. The material most generally in use is
Baltic fir, though there is quite a large amount of Australian hard
wood which is more durable. The people of London seem willing to bear
the greater expense and submit to the annoyance of more frequent
renewals for the sake of the quiet, and wood is certainly the least
noisy of all known pavements.
Paris had at the close of 1893 more wood than asphalt, the areas of
pavements of different kinds being as follows:
Stone 7,541,258 sq. yds., 71.5 per cent.
Wood 886,236 " 8.4 "
Asphalt 402,394 " 3.8 "
Gravel or macadam 1,724,632 " 16.3 "
Berlin also has some wood pavements, but asphalt seems more popular,
though by far the greatest area is still of stone pavements.
[Illustration: GRANITE PAVEMENT ON ROADWAY OF BROOKLYN BRIDGE AFTER
CONSTANT USE WITH VERY HEAVY TRAFFIC FOR SIXTEEN YEARS.]
The most durable wood pavements are those made of the hard woods of
Australia, which are especially adapted to this purpose. They are
mostly of the eucalyptus family, the red gum, blue gum, black butt,
tallow-wood, and mahogany. Mr. George W. Bell, in a pamphlet published
in 1895, gives some remarkable statistics as to the durability of
these pavements. He cites the case of George Street, in Sydney, which
sustains a very heavy traffic, and on which a wooden-block pavement
had been in constant use for over ten years, without repair of any
kind. The only piece of wood pavement of this class which has been
laid in this country, to the writer's knowledge, is on Twentieth
Street, between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, in the Borough of Manhattan,
where, in 1896, the Australian "kari" wood was laid. The work was done
with the greatest care, and the resulting pavement has proved quite
satisfactory. When Fifth Avenue was lately repaved the use of this
material was considered, but, on account of the popular prejudice
against all wood pavements and the delay which would be involved in
obtaining the blocks, the idea was abandoned.
[Illustration: LOOKING NORTH FROM BEVERLY ROAD AND EAST FIFTEENTH
STREET, BROOKLYN, IN MARCH, 1899.]
[Illustration: LOOKING NORTH FROM BEVERLY ROAD AND EAST FIFTEENTH
STREET, BROOKLYN, IN OCTOBER, 1899.]
When wood pavements are spoken of in most of our cities, the taxpayer
pictures to himself the round cedar block so generally in use in
Western cities. These are used on account of their cheapness. They are
usually laid on one or two courses of plank. The blocks are round,
from four to eight inches in diameter and six inches in depth, are
set as closely as possible to each other, and the joints are filled
with gravel, after which they are usually poured full of pitch. Such a
pavement, when new, is quite agreeable to ride over. It soon, however,
becomes uneven; the defective blocks quickly decay; the surface not
being impervious to water, the wet foundation under a pavement with so
little rigidity becomes soft, and the mud or slime works its way up
between the blocks, and the process of decomposition is expedited. We
hear sometimes of the floating pavements of Chicago. These are such
cedar-block pavements which are said to rise with the floods of water
filling the roadways after heavy rainfalls, and from specimens of the
pavement which may be seen in that city considerable sections must
have floated away. The round block has nothing to recommend it but
its cheapness, and this usually proves to be expensive economy. In
Galveston, Texas, creosoted yellow pine blocks have been laid for some
years with general satisfaction. They are laid directly on the fine
sand, which is water-rammed so as to be very compact. The surface is
formed with great care by a template to the exact grade and crown, and
the joints are filled with similar fine sand. In Indianapolis creosoted
blocks have been laid for several years, sixty thousand square yards
having been put down during the past season. They are laid as closely
as possible on a concrete foundation, with a sand cushion of one inch,
and the joints filled with paving cement, composed of ten per cent of
refined Trinidad asphalt and ninety per cent of coal-tar distillate,
after which the surface is covered with half an inch of clean coarse
sand or granite screenings.
[Illustration: A NEW CEDAR BLOCK PAVEMENT IN TORONTO.]
Improved wood pavements are a luxury. They have many points of
superiority over asphalt. They are so considered in London, where
their use is continued, although they require renewal oftener than
asphalt, and much more often than granite. They will undoubtedly be
used more frequently in this country when the people are willing to pay
the additional cost for the quiet and freedom from dust and from the
somewhat disagreeable glare of asphalt.
For a dozen years or more brick has been used for street pavements
in the cities of the middle West. The use of this material is by no
means new. It began in Holland in the thirteenth century, and in the
seventeenth century the highway from The Hague to Scheveningen was
paved with brick. In Amsterdam such pavements are said to last from ten
to twenty years, or an average of fourteen years. After about ten years
they are commonly turned over and relaid, after which they will last
about four years more. The size in common use is about the same as that
made in this country.
A good paving brick should be tough enough to withstand the wear to
which a street surface is subjected without chipping or cracking, and
should not absorb more than from two to four per cent of its weight
of water after submersion for forty-eight hours. It has not the
wearing qualities of granite, although there is one block on Ninth
Avenue, in the Borough of Manhattan, which has been subjected to very
heavy traffic for eight years, has had no repairs to speak of, and
its condition to-day compares very favorably with almost any street
pavement of equal age which has been subjected to similar traffic.
[Illustration: AN OLD CEDAR BLOCK PAVEMENT.]
Another kind of street improvement which must be considered is macadam.
In small towns, and some quite large cities, most of the streets are
improved in this way. When well maintained and kept smooth, but not too
hard, it forms a most agreeable surface for driving. It should not, in
the writer's judgment, be classed as a pavement at all, certainly not
as a permanent one, and its use should be restricted to park drives
and boulevards (for maintaining which liberal appropriations can be
secured), and to suburban roads, where sewers and subsurface pipes have
not yet been laid, and where temporary roads are required to furnish
convenient communication between centers of population, and to assist
in developing these districts.
Macadam has no place in a city street, nor is it wise to lay it on the
entire width of a roadway. It best serves its purpose when laid in a
comparatively narrow strip, leaving the sides of the road unimproved,
except for the formation of earth gutters, so that the surface water
can readily soak away where the soil is sufficiently porous.
Macadam is the most expensive of all street surfaces to keep in
thoroughly good condition, and in this country it is rarely, if ever,
so maintained, except in some of our park roads.
The pavement which is to-day, more generally than any other,
superseding stone on all streets where the traffic is not excessive
nor the grades extreme, is asphalt. It is scarcely necessary to attempt
to give a history of the use of this material, how its adaptability
to paving purposes was first discovered by the improved condition of
the roads over which it was hauled from the French mines for use in
reservoir and tank linings, etc. The drippings from the carts were
observed to have been compacted by travel until a smooth, hard roadway
resulted. The first street to be paved with it was Rue Bergera, in
Paris, in 1854, and it was so successful that in 1858 Rue St. Honore
was similarly treated. An asphalt pavement was laid in Threadneedle
Street, London, in May, 1869, and in Cheapside and Poultry in the fall
of 1870, while in Berlin its use began in 1873.
[Illustration: EIGHTEENTH AVENUE, BROOKLYN; MACADAMIZED FULL WIDTH OF
ROADWAY AND GUTTERS PAVED, WITH NO PROVISION FOR SURFACE DRAINAGE.]