THE WASTE OF WAR AND THE WEALTH OF PEACE
LET us suppose that the history of the whole world is spread out before
us like a picture, and that we are looking down on it. What will we see?
Well, we will see places where a terrible storm seems to have swept over
the picture, and left only darkness and ruin in its track. And we will
see other places where the sun seems to have poured down its bright
beams, and all is clear and bright and beautiful. The dark places are
those of war; the bright places are those of peace. All through history
there have been times when men have gone out to kill and burn and do all
the harm they could; and there have been other times when they stayed at
home to work, and build up what war had cast down, and bring plenty and
happiness to the nations.
In the picture of our own history we see such dark and bright places.
And the darkest of them all is the terrible Civil War, the story of
which you have just read. For in this war our people fought against and
killed one another, and all the harm was done at home, instead of in
foreign lands. The war was a dreadful one. Hundreds of thousands of our
people were killed or wounded, and the ground in hundreds of places was
red with blood. Houses, barns and factories were burned, railroads were
torn up, ships were sunk, growing crops were trampled into the earth.
And last of all came that horrid murder of our good and great President
Lincoln, one of the best and noblest men who ever sat in the
presidential chair. Such is war--the most frightful thing we can think
of or talk about. Some of my young friends may like to play soldier; but
if they should grow up and get to be real soldiers they would find out
what war means. Now, if we look again at the picture of our history, we
shall see a great bright space of peace following the dark space of the
Civil War. That is what I wish to tell you about now--the reign of
peace, when everybody was busy at work in building up what had been torn
down by the red hand of war, and our country grew faster than it had
ever grown before.
There is one thing I must say here. I have told you that slavery was the
cause of the war. If there had been no slaves in the country there would
have been no war. And the one good thing the war did for us was to get
rid of the slaves. President Lincoln declared that all the slaves should
be free, and since that time there has not been a slave in the land. So
we can never have a war for that cause again.
When the war was done, the soldiers marched back to their homes. Their
old battle-flags, rent and torn by bullets, were put away as valued
treasures; their rusty rifles, which had killed thousands of men, were
given back to the government; they took up their axes, they went into
the fields with their ploughs, they entered the workshops with their
tools, and soon they were all at work again, as if they had never seen a
field of battle.
This took place long before any of my young readers were born. But there
are many old soldiers living who took part in it, and when you see the
veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, marching with their ragged
flags and battle-scarred faces, it may bring to you some vision of what
they have seen, and make you think of the fallen comrades they left
behind, dead or bleeding upon the battle-field.
During your short lives there has been no war which came near to us in
our homes. The angel of peace has spread her white wings over our land,
and plenty and prosperity have been the rule. None of our young folks
have known what it is for an army of soldiers to march past their homes,
destroying and burning, and leaving ashes and ruins where there had been
happy homes and fertile fields. But in the past of our country this
happened to many as young as you, and they were glad that their lives
were left them, after everything else was gone.
Let us put the thought of war out of our minds, and go on to see what
took place under the blessed reign of peace. The first thing of which I
shall tell you was one of the most wonderful of all. You know how the
telegraph wires spread over the country until they were many thousands
of miles in length. In the next chapter you may read how the electric
telegraph was invented. In the year after the war ended a still greater
thing was done. A telegraph cable was laid under the ocean from Europe
to America. This had been done before, but it had proved a failure. The
new cable was a success, and since then a man in London has been able to
talk with a man in New York as if he were not a hundred yards away. Of
course, I do not mean with his voice, but with the click of the
telegraph instrument.
The year after that a great addition was made to the United States.
There was a large region in the north, known as Russian America, which
Russia offered to sell to this country for seven million dollars. Many
people talked about this as some of their forefathers had talked about
the purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson. They said that it was
a land of ice and snow which Russia wanted to get rid of, and that it
would be of no use to anybody. But it was bought for all that, and it
has proven a very good bargain.
This country we now call Alaska. We get there all the sealskins from
which the rich and warm cloaks of the ladies are made. And most of the
canned salmon, which some of you think very good food, come from Alaska.
That country is rich in furs and fish and timber; and that is not all,
for it is rich in gold. Millions of dollars worth of gold are obtained
there every year. It has been something like California, whose gold was
not found till Americans got there to dig.
These are not the only things that took place in the years after the
war. Railroads were being built in all directions. East and west, north
and south, they went, and travel became easier than it had been before.
The greatest thing done in this way was the building of a railroad
across the mountains and the plains to San Francisco, on the far Pacific
coast, three thousand miles away from the Atlantic shores. Before that
time men who wanted to go to California had to drag along over thousands
of miles in slow wagon trains and spend weeks and months on the road.
Now they could go there in less than a week. It was the longest railroad
that the world had ever seen, up to that time.
While all this was going on, people were coming to this country in
great multitudes, crossing the ocean to find new homes in our happy
land. They did not have to come in slow sailing ships as in former
times, but were brought here in swift steamships, that crossed the seas
almost as fast as the iron horse crossed the land. All these new people
went to work, some in the cities and some in the country, and they all
helped to make our nation rich and powerful.
But you must not think that everything went well, and that we had no
dark days. Every country has its troubles, even in times of peace. War
is not the only trouble. Great fires break out, storms sweep over the
land, earthquakes shake down cities, and many other disasters take
place. Of all these things, fire, when it gets beyond control, is the
most terrible; and it is of a frightful fire that I wish to speak.
About the year 1831 a small fort stood near the shore of Lake Michigan,
and around this a few pioneer families had built their homes, which were
only rude log houses. In 1871, forty years afterwards, the fort and the
huts had long been gone and a large city stood at that place. Its growth
had been wonderful. Only forty years old and already it was one of the
great cities of the country. This was the famous city of Chicago, which
has grown more rapidly than any other great city ever known.
One night in October a dreadful thing took place in this city. A cow
kicked over a lamp in a stable. The straw on the floor took fire, and in
a minute the blaze shot up into the air. The people ran for water, but
they were too slow, and in a few minutes the whole stable was in flames.
You may think that this was not of much account, but there happened to
be a gale of wind, and soon great blazing fragments were flying through
the air and falling on roofs squares away. It was not long before there
was a terrible fire over almost the entire city.
Chicago at that time was mostly built of wood, and the fire spread until
it looked as if the whole great city would be burnt to ashes. For two
days it kept on burning until the richest part of the city had gone up
in smoke and flame. Many people were burned to death in the streets and
two hundred million dollars worth of property was destroyed. It was the
most frightful fire of modern times. But Americans do not stop for fire
or water. The city was built up again, far handsomer than before, and it
is now one of the greatest cities, not only of this country, but of the
world.
This was not the only disaster which came upon the country. In 1886
there was a frightful earthquake in South Carolina, that shook down a
great part of the city of Charleston. And in 1889 there was a terrible
flood that swept away the young city of Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, and
drowned more than two thousand people. And there were tornadoes, or wind
storms, in the west that blew down whole towns as you might blow down a
house of cardboard with your breath. And there were great strikes and
riots that were almost like war, and various other troubles. But all
these could not stop the growth of the country. Every year it became
richer. New people came, new factories were built, new fields were
farmed, and the United States seemed like a great hive of industry, and
its people like so many bees, working away, day by day, and gathering
wealth as bees gather honey.
It not only got many of the old articles of wealth, but it found many
new ones also. Never was there a country with so many inventors or men
that have made things new and useful to everybody, and never were there
more wonderful inventions. I have told you about some of our inventors;
I shall have to speak of some more of them. There were hundreds of men
busily at work at inventing new machines and tools, new things to help
everybody--the farmer, the merchant, the workman in the factory, and the
cook in the kitchen. It went on so that there was not much done by hand,
as in old times, but nearly everything was done by machine.