The United States government has now in press two volumes of the census
of 1880, entitled The Social Statistics of Cities. These statistics have
been in process of preparation for some four years, under direction of
Colonel George E. Waring, jr., the eminent sanitary engineer, of
Newport, Rhode Island. They will fill two large quarto volumes of
something over six hundred pages each; and as each page will average
over one thousand words, it will be seen that the work will, at least,
be massive and imposing, like most government publications. Unlike many
of these, however, it will not be dull, unintelligible, or valueless.
The fact that one half of it is devoted to the history of the cities of
our land is well-nigh sufficient proof that these epithets cannot be
applied to it, and the question is settled beyond a doubt when it is
learned that the greater part of the labor has been performed by people
who are well known in the literary world, and who brought to their task
experience and ability,--rare qualifications to be found combined in
government employees. Colonel Waring himself, though a clear thinker and
good writer, furnished comparatively little manuscript to the volumes,
but he has revised them thoroughly, and has stamped them with his
individuality.
It was Colonel Waring's original design to embrace in his work the
statistics of the twenty largest cities of the country, and these
happened to be the cities that in 1880 had more than one hundred
thousand inhabitants. Then it was decided to allow the smaller cities to
be represented if they chose, and early in the work steps were taken to
induce them to furnish the necessary material. Over two hundred of the
largest were given all the opportunities for representation that could
be asked for, and, as a consequence, nearly every community in the land
containing more than ten thousand inhabitants has a more or less full
account. Each one of these is prefaced by a small outline plan, on which
is marked the direction in which the surrounding cities lie, and the
distance to each. Accompanying this plan are tables of the population at
different decades, and of the sex, color, and nativity of the present
population. Then comes an historical sketch, and then an account of the
present condition of the community. This last describes the location and
topography fully; gives the principal features of the country
immediately tributary; details the facilities for communication given by
railroads and by water; gives statistics about the climate; describes
the public buildings and public works, including water and gas works;
gives figures about the streets, horse railroads, and markets; touches
upon the places and methods of amusement, and the parks and
pleasure-grounds; the sewers, the cemeteries, sanitary organization
(boards of health), and the system, or lack of system, of municipal
cleansing,--all receive especially full treatment, as would naturally be
expected when a sanitary engineer of Colonel Waring's stamp had charge
of the work; the police department gets its share of the space; and in
some cases the schools, fire department, and commerce are represented.
The material from which these accounts were compiled was, in the main,
obtained by sending schedules of questions to the various town and city
officials; in the case of some of the largest cities the material was
secured by special agents, but in general, the desire of the cities to
be represented was considered sufficient guaranty that the schedule
would be filled out fully and accurately, and this generally proved to
be the case.
The historical sketches of the smaller cities and towns were compiled
from information obtained in the same way, and from gazetteers,
encyclopaedias, town and city histories, and all other sources available
at the headquarters of the bureau. To the preparation of the sketches of
the twenty largest cities, especial attention was devoted, and the
results have been correspondingly valuable. Perhaps the most important,
both from the historical and literary point of view, will be the sketch
of the history of New Orleans, written by George W. Cable, who is better
known as a novelist, but who has no mean abilities as an historian. His
familiarity with the Creole element in New Orleans past and present,
together with a very happy style of writing, have made for him more
than a national reputation, from which this sketch will not detract.
Originally his work was intended to occupy some ninety pages of the
report, but later, unfortunately, it had to be condensed into fifty.
Luckily it will not be found necessary to omit a number of interesting
maps that accompany it.
Next in value, perhaps from the purely historical point of view the most
valuable, or at least the most complete, of all, comes the sketch of the
early history of St. Louis, by Professor Waterhouse. The author became
greatly interested in his task, and spent a vast amount of time in
collecting materials for it. From the care bestowed on the work, it may
be taken for granted that this will be as full and accurate an account
of the settlement and early history of the "Philadelphia of the West" as
can possibly be compiled. It is expected that it will occupy fifty or
sixty pages of the report, and even then it will only bring the history
down to 1823, when the first city government was organized.
The largest of the Eastern cities furnish little chance for original
work in an historical line, but yet the sketch of New York by Martha J.
Lamb, of Philadelphia by Susan Cooledge, and of Boston by Colonel
Waring, will be acceptable additions to the very scanty stock of
American historical literature.
The words "very scanty" are used most advisedly, for in very truth the
American _historian_ is a _rara avis_. Of American compilers-of-facts,
to be sure, there have been and are very many, but an aggregation of
details is not a history, nor can a man who makes a book out of local
gossip and the biographies of local heroes and heroines be called an
historian. The truth of this fact has been most forcibly impressed on
the writer in the course of preparing for the Census Bureau historical
sketches of many of the leading cities of the country, and he has become
thoroughly convinced that of all the vulnerable portions of American
literature that which pertains to the history of American towns and
cities is the most vulnerable.
In the first place, American town and city _histories_ are few. In the
second place, the books that pretend to be such are many, and as a rule
historically worthless. In the third place, both the real and the sham
are intensely dull.
Real histories are few, evidently because there is not demand enough to
encourage historians to enter the field, and not because material is
lacking. With the exception of the Atlantic seaboard, our country has
been developed in an age pre-eminent for records and statistics; and
there is scarcely a town or city in the land that has not its records
and its public documents, its newspaper files and its Fourth-of-July
orations,--all replete with information waiting for the historian.
Nearly every State has its Historical Society, and Pioneer Associations
are as plenty in our glorious West as was the fever and ague with which
their members were baptized. If the golden opportunities of
autobiography are lost, the American historian of the future will have
to be satisfied, as must be satisfied the New England historian of
to-day, with the meagre, lifeless information given by records, and the
hyperbolical, untrustworthy knowledge to be obtained from local
tradition and gossip.
We need go no farther to find the first reason why American histories
are so meagre and dull. They are not pictures from life. The fact is,
that the historian might as well try to write a valuable and interesting
history from the materials which our older cities possess, as a painter
might try to paint the battle of Crecy from the details given by
Froissart. To be sure we have all seen such pictures, but who has more
than admired them?
The absence of contemporaneous literature has been the greatest
misfortune of all history. Every student knows how great and deplorable
are the breaks constantly met with in tracing the thread of past events.
Shall we, then, let the students of posterity remain in the dark on such
questions as these: why Providence became the second city of New
England; why she left Newport so badly in the race for prosperity; why
Buffalo and Cincinnati went up, while Black Rock and North Bend went
down; why Chicago became the largest manufacturing city on the
continent; why New England kept the town-meeting, and the West preferred
the township and the county; and why a thousand and one other important
things happened. To be sure we have had Bancroft, and Sparks, and
Hildreth, but these and their brethren have told us as little about the
history of the people as Lingard, Hume, Hallam, and all the rest of them
told England. Within a very few years historians have begun to see this
defect, and such men as Green, Lodge, and MacMaster have undertaken to
give us histories of the people, the first and last taking the lead on
their respective sides of the Atlantic. MacMaster's work is excellent as
far as it goes. His first volume is deep and scholarly, and does credit
to American literature. It is clear that the task of its preparation was
immense, and more time must have been spent in merely collecting
authorities than has been bestowed altogether on more pretentious
histories. Where Mr. MacMaster found all these authorities is a puzzle,
for even such libraries as those in Boston and Cambridge have not all
the materials for such an undertaking. Yet even he leaves many points
untouched, or cursorily disposed of. Among the subjects referred to, of
which we would like to learn more, may be mentioned: the township system
of the West, the development of American municipal institutions, and,
above all, the origin and rise of the various centres of population and
business which we call cities.
The history of a nation should be compiled in the same way that the
French people of the _ancien régime_ compiled their lists of grievances
to be presented to the king. In the early States-generals the deputies
of all the orders received from the electors mandates of instructions
containing an enumeration of the public grievances of which they were to
demand redress. From the multitude of these _cahiers_ (or codices), the
three estates, that is, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate
(the people), compiled each a single cahier to serve as the exponent of
its grievances and its demands. When this complex process had been
completed and the three residual cahiers had been given to the king, the
States-general, the only representative body of France, was dissolved.
Thus it should be with our national history. Already the clergy have
presented their cahiers in the shape of church histories and theological
essays innumerable. The nobles, that is, the statesmen and politicians,
have formulated their lists of grievances in such works as Thirty
Year's View, The Great Conflict, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in
America, etc. But where is the cahier of the third estate? The
States-general has met and the _tiers état_ is not ready. What excuse
have they? Quick comes the answer: "Our electors have sent in but few
cahiers, and these are defective. We cannot tell our king, the nation,
what the people were and what they are, what they have and what they
want, until they tell us. Our cahier must wait the pleasure of the
people." Meanwhile, the regent, irreverently called Uncle Sam, who rules
the land while his master is away in Utopia, reads the cahiers of the
nobles, laughs in his sleeve at that of the clergy, and forgets all
about that of the third estate. Or if he thinks of it at all, it is only
to try to fill its place with twenty-four-volume Census Reports and
massive tomes from the other departments.
The cahiers of the third estate are, in truth, few and defective, yet
there are some communities that have done their work well. For example,
there is The Memorial History of Boston which does credit even to the
Hub of American historical literature. It was the work of cultivated
men, and although the cooks were many, the broth is excellent. That the
people were a-hungering for just such broth is shown by the fact that
the net profits from it in the first twelve months after publication, as
it is said, were over fifty thousand dollars.
Boston is almost the only city in the land that has been the subject of
a full, accurate, and interesting history. The History of New York, by
Martha J. Lamb, is not so full as might have been wished, but is
otherwise unexceptionable. New York is fortunate in having the most
graphic and humorous history of its early days that any city in the
world ever had, but nobody except Diedrich Knickerbocker himself ever
claimed a great amount of accuracy and truthfulness for his unrivaled
work.
It was to be expected that our older cities,--those whose seeds were
planted by Puritans, Dutch traders, Catholic fugitives, Quakers,
Cavalier spendthrifts and rogues, Huguenot exiles, and in general the
motley crowd that sought the land of milk and honey in the seventeenth
and early part of the eighteenth centuries,--it was to be expected that
these cities would have historians _ad nauseam_. The very nature of the
early colonization of America, the elements of romance and adventure so
conspicuous in the history of early days on the Atlantic coast, gave
warrant to such expectations, and the event has justified them. But
where the romance and adventure end, the historian lays down his pen. It
is left to the census enumerator to complete the work, and the brazen
age of statistics follows the golden age of history.
As the cities in the heart of the continent have very little of the
picturesque in their history, the same line of reasoning would lead us
to expect that the historian would carefully avoid them, or else write
only of their earliest days, when Dame Fortune was yet coquetting on the
boards with Mr. Yankee Adventurer. Again we are not mistaken, for we
find that what few critics are present when the curtain is rung up,
leave the house when the first act ends with the death of the aforesaid
adventurer. How the fickle dame flirts with all the neighboring young
men, and at last, at the end of the second act, has her attention led
by Captain Location to the hero of the piece as a suitable mate for her
wayward daughter, Miss Prosperity,--all this is usually written up from
hearsay. For the third act, wherein the twin brothers Steamboat
Navigation and Railroad Communication help the hero to press his suit,
the imagination often suffices. The grand finale, however, brings back
some of the old set of critics, together with a host of new ones, who
describe in glowing language the setting of the act, the costumes, the
music, etc., and tell minutely how young Miss Prosperity blushingly yet
boldly promises to be forever true to the gallant hero, now known under
his rightful name of Mr. Metropolis. Ac-cording to the critic, this
grand drama always ends happily for all concerned; the acting is always
perfect,--the best ever seen on the stage; the scenery has seldom been
equaled, never excelled. And this is the way the public hears about
every "greatest drama ever produced on any stage."
Do you think the critic too harshly criticized? Look for yourself. Take
Cleveland, if you want a good city with which to begin your explorations
among the histories of Western cities. Here is one of the loveliest
places in all the basin of the Great Lakes--rich, prosperous, beautiful.
It was the one city which alt the travelers through the West in the
second quarter of this century united in declaring to be attractive. For
instance, J.S. Buckingham, who visited America forty-three years ago,
complimented Cleveland as follows, in a book called The Eastern and
Western States of America: "The buildings of Cleveland are all
remarkably clean and neat, many of them in excellent architectural
style, and, like the dwellings we saw at Cincinnati and other towns of
Ohio, all evincing more taste, love of flowers, and attention to order
and adornment than in most of the States of the Union." Mrs. Pulzky, who
accompanied Kossuth in his journey through America, in 1852, wrote in
her diary: "Cleveland is a neat, clean, and agreeable city, on Lake
Erie. Americans call it the 'Forest City,' though the original forests
have disappeared. Cleveland has a most lovely aspect; with the exception
of the business streets, every house is surrounded by a garden. It was
for the first time that I found love of nature in an American
population. On the journey, until here, I had always missed
pleasure-grounds and trees around the cottages."
The growth of Cleveland was steady and healthy. Although foreigners came
to it in large numbers, it has been and is a representative American
city. The spirit of public improvement early made itself felt here, as
has been intimated by the above quotations; wide avenues, beautiful
dwellings, pleasure-grounds, both public and private,--all the
attractions that a lavish expenditure of money can secure were bestowed
upon it. The oil discoveries of a quarter of a century ago made many of
its citizens wealthy, and their city was so pleasant to live in, that,
unlike most Western people who have gained sudden wealth, they stayed at
home to spend their money.
From the history of the rise of such a community, much might be learned.
Yet in the large libraries of the East we find only one book on the
subject, and Poole's mammoth Index--that "Open, sesame," of the literary
man--refers us to not a single magazine article of any sort on
Cleveland. The book referred to is entitled Early History of Cleveland,
with Biographical Notices of the Pioneers and Survivors; its author was
Colonel Charles Whittlesey. As is the case in almost all such histories,
the biographical notices form a very considerable portion of the book,
and, as usual, its value is diminished in an exactly equivalent degree;
for the biographies of Western pioneers are fully as tedious and
valueless as the catalogue of ships in the second book of Homer. And,
oh! the garrulity of the biographers, the minuteness of detail, the
petty incidents, the host of dates! With these we are inflicted because
some adventurous Yankee happened, by sheer luck, to build the first
shanty on what became the site of a great city, or chanced there to be a
pioneer victim of the "shakes" or the jaundice!
Whittlesey's book contains four hundred and eighty-seven pages. Of these
he uses up seventy-six before he gets a civilized man in what became
Cuyahoga County, and fifty more before he gets any actual settlers to
the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. The history of the next thirteen or
fourteen years, down to the War of 1812, fills the mass of the book,
details being here given that really have historical value. The last
forty pages are devoted to the history of the two or three following
decades. Nothing is told us about the actual development of a great
city,--the haps and mishaps, the successes and failures, in short, the
growth, of the community.
This same Colonel Whittlesey, in a volume entitled Fugitive Essays,
published a sketch of the history of Cleveland covering the same ground
more concisely, and also giving a few extra details about the history
between 1812 and 1840.
These constituted the sum total of works solely devoted to Cleveland
which were accessible to a writer in the East. The Ohio Historical
Collections, by Henry Howe, a series of sketches of the counties,
cities, and towns of the State, added a little to the meagre stock of
information. For further knowledge, the public must be thankful that the
argus-eyed tourist has not left the place unnoticed, and that the
mathematically-inclined gazetteer has told us from time to time the
number of Cleveland's churches, banks, and city councilmen, and other
equally important facts!
Take another lake city--Buffalo. The growth of this city has been rapid.
Its sudden rise to the dignity of a metropolis was largely due to that
most interesting of the many important internal improvements of the
first half of the century,--the Erie Canal. With the development of
Buffalo was identified the rise of lake navigation and the grain
elevator. Its population has been increased by the addition of a large
foreign element, which has had its due influence on manners, morals, and
public life. It appears from the report of the board of health for 1879,
that, in 1878, of the children born in Buffalo, nineteen hundred and
seventy-five were of German descent; of all other descents, two thousand
and fifty-six,--a difference of only eighty-one. The city has indeed
been thoroughly Germanized, if we may coin the word.
Here are things of which we would know more. Yet what do we find about
them? Save in meagre or verbose pamphlets, nothing. To be sure, there
was a book written which claimed to be about Buffalo, but a microscopic
examination would fail to find in it anything worth knowing about the
history of this community. The author of that book, William Ketchum, had
the audacity to name it, as we read on the title-page, "An Authentic and
Comprehensive History of Buffalo, with some account of its early
inhabitants, both savage and civilized." It was published in Buffalo in
1864, in two octavo volumes, containing respectively four hundred and
thirty-two and four hundred and forty-three pages. To comprehend the
utter absurdity of the thing, we shall have to glance at history a bit.
It will be remembered that during and for some time after the
Revolutionary War the country about the Niagara River remained in the
possession of the British. The Seneca Indians, who sided against the
Colonies in that war, and who were driven from their homes by the
expedition of General Sullivan in 1779, gathered around Fort Niagara and
became such a nuisance that the English had to set up anew in
housekeeping these faithful allies and disagreeable neighbors. One of
the villages they started was at Buffalo Creek. Our historian, Ketchum,
has twenty-five chapters in the first volume of his Authentic and
Comprehensive History of Buffalo. He gets the Senecas settled at Buffalo
Creek in the twenty-fourth!
During the rest of the century the inhabitants of this Indian village on
the ground where Buffalo was to stand, consisted of redskins and
semi-redskins, a few Indian traders who doled out the firewater, and a
settler or two. The present city of Buffalo, according to the
encyclopaedia (and for once that mass of condensed wisdom is correct
about the date of settlement of a Western city), was founded in 1801, by
the Holland Land Company, which opened a land office here in January of
that year. The notice of this event may be found in the region of page
146, in vol. ii, of Ketchum's book,--the uniform lack of concise
statement, the huge amount of irrevelant matter, and the absence of
lucid summaries and intelligent comment, making more exact reference
impossible.
The rest of this "comprehensive history" is occupied with the course of
events down to December 30, 1813, when the British burnt the town,
leaving but two houses standing--a dwelling-house and a blacksmith's
shop. Here, having brought his Phoenix to ashes, our comprehensive
historian brings his narrative to an abrupt end. This is at page 304.
Then follows the "appendix," an invariable feature of city histories,
which makes of every one of them a huge anti-climax. In this instance,
one hundred and thirty-nine pages of appendix contain, according to the
author, "for the purpose of preservation, a mass of papers not
absolutely necessary to the elucidation of the history contained in the
body of the work. Most of them consist of original papers and letters
never before published, and which are now, for the first time, placed in
an accessible and permanent form." To compare small things with great,
these documents are made just about as "accessible" as are the State
papers to which Carlyle devotes so much paper and bile in his book on
Oliver Cromwell.
In short, this book contains much valuable information, which is very
hard to extract, and when extracted is not germane to the history of the
city of Buffalo.
Some information about Buffalo's history was found in a pamphlet on the
Manufacturing Interests of the City of Buffalo, published in 1866. In it
were historical sketches, covering about twenty-five pages,--verbose,
with little meat, written in the flowery style so dear to the heart of
the American editor or "Honorable" when extolling the virtues of his
constituency. Turner's History of the Holland Purchase, published in
1849, and containing six hundred and sixty-six pages, would have been
more useful, had it not been composed for the greater part of the
biographies of insignificant pioneers, and had not the rest related in
the main to the early history of the section. A book promising much on
the outside was Hotchkin's History of Western New York. An examination
of the title-page, however, dampened our expectations, for there was
added the rest of the title, namely, "And of the Rise, Progress, and
Present State of the Presbyterian Church." The book proved indeed a
delusion and a snare, for of its six hundred pages more than nine tenths
pertained to church affairs,--were part and parcel of the cahiers of the
clergy. As for the magazine articles on Buffalo, they are few and, from
the historical point of view, insignificant.
Of far more interest than the histories of either Cleveland or Buffalo,
though perhaps no more important, is that of their nearest common
neighbor of equal rank,--Pittsburgh. In very many respects this is one
of the most interesting cities in the Union, which is mostly due to the
fact that it has such a remarkable location, and that its topography is
picturesquely unique. Here we have the strange combination of the
blackest, smuttiest, dirtiest hole in the United States,--at night, as
Parton said: "All hell with the lid taken off,"--with surroundings half
rural, half urban, which for loveliness can scarcely be rivaled by any
other city in the land. Sir Henry Holland, who was of the Prince of
Wales's suite, when he visited Pittsburgh, remarked to one of the
committee of reception that he had, in 1845, spent a week in an
equestrian exploration of the suburbs of Pittsburgh; that he had
traveled through all the degrees of the earth's longitude, and had not
elsewhere found any scenery so diversified, picturesque, and beautiful
as that around Pittsburgh. He likened it to a vast panorama, from which,
as he rode along, the curtain was dropping behind and rising before him,
revealing new beauties continually. "If the business portion of
Pittsburgh is a city, half enchanted, of fire and smoke, inhabited by
demons playing with fire, the surrounding portion is also under
enchantment, of a different kind, and smiles a land of beauty,
brightness, and quiet. The one section might be a picture by Tintoretto,
and the other by Claude Lorraine."
On the twenty-fourth of November, 1753, no human habitation stood on the
peninsula between the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers. On that day
Washington recorded in his journal: "I think it extremely well situated
for a fort, as it has absolute command of both rivers." In the following
spring the English began the erection of a stockade here, which, on the
twenty-fourth of April, was surrendered to the French under Captain
Contrecoeur Who at once proceeded to the erection of Fort Du Quesne.
Round this name centres a wealth of incident, romance, and history, but
no one has risen to do it justice. Braddock's ill-starred expedition was
followed by the abandonment of the fort by the French, in November,
1758, and its subsequent rebuilding as Fort Pitt. The fate of the little
hamlet which sprang up around it was for a long time most dubious, but
its position as a frontier post on the line of the ever
westward-retreating Indians, and on the edge of the vast unknown
wilderness, just beginning to allure adventurous pioneers, kept it from
falling into the oblivion with which it was threatened by the
dismantling of the fort and the troublous Revolutionary times. Yet as
late as 1784 so experienced a man as Arthur Lee, the Virginian, who had
been a commissioner at the court of Versailles with Franklin and Deane,
and who visited this hamlet in December of this year, said of it:
"Pittsburgh is inhabited almost entirely by Scots and Irish, who live in
paltry log-houses, and are as dirty as in the north of Ireland, or even
in Scotland. There is a great deal of small trade carried on, the goods
being brought at the vast expense of forty-five shillings per cwt. from
Philadelphia and Baltimore. They take in the shops money, flour, and
skins. There are in the town four attorneys, two doctors, and not a
priest of any persuasion, nor church, nor chapel; so that they are
likely to be damned without the benefit of clergy. _The place, I
believe, will never be considerable_."
This "small trade" which Lee speaks of was to develop in a very few
years to gigantic proportions, and was to make Pittsburgh for the while
the commercial metropolis of the West. She maintained this position
until the westward march of civilization had left her far in the rear;
and then the garrison which the vast army of pioneers left here found in
the coal and iron under their very feet a Fortunatus's purse. Thus, far
different was the fate of Pittsburgh from that of Marietta, Portsmouth,
Lexington, and the like, which sank into comparative obscurity as soon
as they had ceased to be outposts of Uncle Sam's army of emigrants.
Here, then, do we lack materials for history? What historian could ask
for a more romantic starting-point than Old Fort Du Quesne? a more
interesting topic for a chapter than Fort Pitt? a more picturesque
subject than the batteurs and voyageurs of the Ohio? What more fruitful
themes can there be than the rise of the iron, the glass, the oil
industry, the steamboat commerce of our interior, the subjection of the
Monongahela, the combination of a city which reminds the traveler of
Hades, with suburbs which suggest metaphors about Paradise? And can he
not find food for inquiry and thought in the great riots of 1877?
Yet the only historian of Pittsburgh is Neville B Craig, whose short and
not over-attractive history ends with the middle of this century, if we
remember rightly. His subject is neither thoroughly nor ably treated,
and it is not presented to the public in an agreeable form. The book is
one of the past generation, and we publish better histories than did our
fathers. In 1876, Samuel H. Thurston presented the public with a small
volume, entitled Pittsburgh and Alleghany in the Centennial. It
contained a little history and a great deal of bombast; and, moreover,
the greater part of it was filled with statistical details pertaining to
the Centennial year alone. Yet from this book had to be taken most of
the historical sketch which will be found in the Census Report. Egle's
History of Pennsylvania tells us something about Pittsburgh, and
magazine articles are plenty, though historically of little value.
St. Louis is more plentifully supplied with histories than any other
Western city, and these histories are as much worse as they are more
numerous. One of these deserves notice, from the fact that its
title-page so ridiculously and exasperatingly misrepresents its
contents. This page reads as follows: "Edwards's Great West and her
Commercial Metropolis, embracing a complete History of St. Louis, from
the landing of Ligueste, in 1764, to the present time; with portraits
and biographies of some of the old settlers, and many of the most
prominent business men. By Richard Edwards and M. Hopewell, M.D.
Splendidly illustrated. 1860. $5." This seemed to promise well, but when
we turned the page and read the introduction, our expectations were, to
say the least, somewhat shaken, and our sense of the eternal fitness of
things somewhat shocked, when we found the citizens of St. Louis called
"a powerful Mæcenas." Shade of Virgil! What a profanation!
Any book that is preceded by a dedication, a preface, an introduction,
and a full-page portrait of the author (with a big A), must, in the very
nature of things, be a monstrosity. But, leaving these anomalies out of
account, in the present instance, the composition of the book is
sufficient proof that the epithet is not undeserved. "And this is so,
for,"--as Herodotus would say,--in a book called Edwards's Great West,
the "Great West" is summarily and mercilessly disposed of in just five
pages. Then follow eighty-two pages of biographies and portraits,
ingeniously defended by the author as follows: "Biographies of those who
have become identified with the progress of the great city, who have
guarded and directed its business currents year by year, swelling with
the elements of prosperity, and who have left the impress of their
genius and judgment upon the legislative enactments of the State, must
be sought after with avidity, and must be fraught with useful
instruction." There is no question that these biographies are fraught
with useful instruction--all biographies are; but to assert that they
must be sought after with avidity is a little too much to be swallowed.
Such assertions show either deplorable ignorance or unwarrantable
misrepresentation of human nature, and in this case we are convinced it
must be the latter. Edwards knew perfectly well--for he seems to have
been sane--that nobody but the subjects of these biographies would seek
them "with avidity," and he made these plausible, bombastic assertions
to excuse himself for having sprung such a trap on an unsuspecting
public. That he tries to palliate the offence is, sufficient proof of
his guilt.
Mark what he says about the "splendidly illustrated" portion of his
book. "It will be a source of satisfaction to the reader," says he,
"that the engravings of individuals who adorn this work are not drawn by
the flighty imagination from airy nothingness, but represent the
lineaments of men," etc. "Airy nothingness" is refreshing!
Part II, also, is almost wholly devoted to biographies, one batch being
introduced with this sage remark: "Biography is the most important
feature of history; for the record of the lives of individuals appears
to be invested with more vitality and interest than the dry details of
general historical narrative." Q.E.D.--of course. With Part III we reach
the history of St. Louis, contained in one hundred and eighty pages,
and worth more or less as a history. Then come one hundred and seventy
pages more of biographies, an appendix of fifteen pages, and about
thirty pages of views of manufacturing establishments. And this book is
called The Great West. No further comment seems necessary.
Of all the many rich and racy things the writer has run across in his
explorations in the literature of American cities, the richest and
raciest is a book called St. Louis: The Future Great City of the World,
by L.U. Reavis. The very title-page gives an inkling of the nature of
the contents by its motto, savoring somewhat of cant: "Henceforth St.
Louis must be viewed in the light of the future--her mightiness in the
empire of the world--her sway in the rule of states and nations." This
book, strangely enough, was "published by order of the St Louis County
Court," in 1870, on the petition of forty-five of the leading citizens
and firms of the city, who were represented before the court by a
committee headed by Captain James B. Eads, the renowned engineer, and
containing one captain, five honorables, and two esquires. The first
edition consisted of one hundred and six pages, which were as
vainglorious and boastful, as crowded with laudatory adjectives, glowing
periods, and bombastic prophecies, as ever one hundred and six published
pages were.
However, it evidently suited the St. Louis palate, for a second edition
bears date of the same year, and in 1871 a third appeared in a
considerably enlarged form. This last one is the most interesting, for
it contains a preface and a finis which for pure, undiluted presumption
have never been excelled. The former is entitled "Explanatory," and is
worth quoting entire: "A presentation of Causes in Nature and
Civilization which, in their reciprocal action tend to fix the position
of the FUTURE GREAT CITY OF THE WORLD in the central plain of North
America, showing that the centre of the world's commerce and
civilization will, in less than one hundred years, be organized and
represented in the Mississippi Valley, and by St. Louis, occupying as
she does the most favored position on the continent and the Great River;
also a complete representation of the great railway system of St. Louis,
showing that in less than ten years she will be the greatest railway
centre in the world." Even the most arrogant citizen of St. Louis would
hardly have the boldness to maintain that ten years after this prophecy
was made, in 1881, St. Louis was "the greatest railway centre in the
world," or even that she was one of the greatest. As to the one-hundred
years prophecy nothing can as yet be affirmed, for it has eighty-seven
years more to run, but if the last thirteen can be taken as a criterion,
St. Louis has a big contract on her hands.
The last page is the most curious in the book, and in its way is
certainly unique. It is called "A Closing Word," and, being printed in
italics, has an air of emphasis and force peculiarly appropriate. The
author begins: "Thus have I written a new record--a new prophecy of a
city central to a continent of resources;" and so he goes on for half a
page of ridiculous bombast until he finishes the climax of epithets by
calling this "the Apocalyptic City--
'The New Jerusalem, the ancient seer
Of Patmos saw.'
"All hail! mistress of nations and beautiful queen of civilization! I
view thee in the light of thy destiny. Thou art transfigured before me
from thy present state to one infinitely more grand, and which
overshadows and dwarfs all civic forms in history.
"The influence of thy empire will pervade the world with invisible and
electric force. Yet, vivifying and benignant capital,--emporium of trade
and industry, seat of learning and best-applied labor, pivotal point in
history, supreme and superb city of all lands,--I behold thy majesty
from afar, and salute thee reverently as the consummation of all that
the best human energies can accomplish for the elevation and happiness
of our race.
"All hail! Future Great City of the World, and 'Glory to God in the
Highest and on Earth Peace, Goodwill toward Men.'"
This reminds one equally of Walt Whitman and Artemas Ward. Yet it is not
burlesque. It appears to have been written in good faith, and for this
reason the incongruity of such a grandiloquent rhapsody on such a
prosaic subject is all the more noticeable. As an example of "fine
writing" it has seldom been surpassed, and for sheer nonsense it is
unequaled in American literature.
These books on St. Louis call to mind a history of Milwaukee of a
somewhat similar nature--similar in its magnificent pretensions to the
last-described work, and in its biographical characteristics to
Edwards's Great West. The book referred to was published in Chicago, in
1881, by the Western Historical Company, A.T. Andreas, proprietor. Holy
Herodotus! To think of history becoming a thing of "companies"--on a par
with life insurance, railroads, gas-works, and cotton factories! And an
"historical company" with a proprietor, too!
But let us look into this monumental tome. (Do not think that adjective
hyperbolical, for surely monumental is not too strong a word to describe
a book which would just about balance in weight an unabridged
dictionary.) Some idea of the immensity of the undertaking can be
obtained when, as the preface says, "it is known that nearly one year's
time was consumed and an average force of twenty-five men employed in
the labor of obtaining information and preparing the manuscript for the
printer's hands. The result of this vast effort is the presentation of a
History which stands unparalleled in the experience of publishers." The
book is a quarto and contains sixteen hundred and sixty-three pages. The
letter-press is unexceptionable; each page is surrounded by a neat
border; the paper is good; the binding is excellent.
And yet the actual history of this city dates back little more than half
a century--not a lifetime. Here is history with a vengeance! The riddle,
however, is solved the instant we glance over the pages, for we find the
mass of the book made up of biographies,--biographies in front,
biographies to the right, biographies to the left, everywhere
biographies,--to the grand sum total of nearly four thousand. A book
much like this would have been made had the Crown published the Giant
Petition trundled into Parliament on a wheelbarrow in the times of
George the Third, when Lord George Gordon was the hero of the day. About
as valuable, about as readable, about as bulky, about as good for
kindling fires!
But let the perpetrator plead his cause in his own words--and it must be
conceded he does it well. "The plan of the History of the city of
Milwaukee, which is herewith presented to the public," he says in his
preface, "possesses the merit of originality. It is based upon the fact
that in all older regions, a serious deficiency exists even in the most
exhaustive histories which it is possible now to compile through the
absence of personal and detailed records of pioneer men and deeds. The
primary design of this work is to preserve for future historians as
complete an encyclopædia of early events in Milwaukee, and the actors
therein, as patient labor and unstinted financial expenditure can
procure."
We thank the Western Historical Company, or Mr. Andreas, for this
benevolent and philanthropic spirit, but really he must not expect us to
believe that pecuniary profit is only a _secondary_ design of this work.
But supposing for a moment that the primary design was as philanthropic
and unselfish as Mr. Andreas would have us think, let us consider its
worth; for, if we grant this premise, we must admit the truth of the
conclusion reached, and then must give unstinted praise to the fruits of
such a conclusion, a volume like the one before us. But the premise is
specious and false. The deficiency that exists through the absence of
personal and detailed records of _pioneer_ men and deeds is not serious:
on the contrary, in most cases, we should be devoutly thankful that it
exists. Of the generations after that of the pioneers we would know
much; of that of the pioneers themselves, something. But who is there,
or will there be, that cares a picayune whether the third cobbler in
Milwaukee (this history would call him the third manufacturer of shoes)
was born in April or June, 1806, or whether he came from Tipperary or
Heidelberg, or whether his wife died of the pneumonia or the
whooping-cough? To be sure we would be glad to know whether the early
settlers of Milwaukee were mainly young or mainly old when they came
here, whether they were mainly German or Irish, and what where the
prevalent diseases in different localities at an early period, but to
ask an intelligent being to wade through nearly four thousand "personal
histories" in order ascertain these facts is, to say the least, somewhat
of an imposition on his good nature.
Later on in his preface the author contradicts himself in this regard,
for he shows us how far from philanthropic were the publisher's motives
and how little he thought of posterity in inserting these biographies,
by writing the following well-turned and suggestive sentences: "It may
be asked, Why have the biographical sketches of comparatively obscure
men been inserted? The reasons are obvious to business men and should be
to all. None but citizens are represented. Whatever Milwaukee is her
citizens have made her. Shall the publisher exercise a power higher than
the law, and erect a caste distinction or estimate each man's work from
some fictitious standard of his own? Assuredly not. If, in the
preparation of this work, a citizen has shown commendable pride, and
aided its publisher by his patronage, he is entitled to mention in its
pages. Such men and women have received a sketch, but the fact of
pecuniary assistance has not biased the character of the book."
This is a very specious attempt to throw a glamour of respectability
over a very unpleasant and repugnant fact, namely: that a mass of
"biographical sketches of comparatively obscure men" has been given to
the public under the guise of a history of a city, with the sole object
of making money. It is indeed consoling to know that "none but citizens
have been represented," but why this statement should be coupled with
the platitude that follows it would be hard to say. And then the utter
ridiculousness of the nonsense about the publisher exercising a power
higher than the law and erecting a caste distinction! "What fools these
mortals be!"
But whatever may be said of the historical value of such books as the
above, there can be little doubt that they are remunerative business
enterprises, for the country has of late years been flooded with them.
Perhaps we ought to be thankful for any history at all of these new
Western cities, even though the wheat therein be so scarce and the chaff
so plenty. The prevalence of this same affliction--the biographical
history--in literary New England seems more anomalous than it does in
the West, but it is even more widespread. A fair type of the Eastern
species is the Quarter-Centennial History of Lawrence, Massachusetts,
compiled by H.A. Wadsworth, in 1878. It contained seventy-five very poor
wood-engravings, called portraits by courtesy, which, with the
accompanying biographies, were inserted to represent the leading (?) men
of the city at an entrance fee of five or ten dollars apiece.
Next in number below the biographical histories, but far above them in
value, come what may be called the chronological histories, that is,
those which make little or no attempt to group the important facts of a
city's history in homogeneous chapters, but which, diary-like, give all
facts, important as well as insignificant, in the order of their
occurrence. Fortunately most local historians of this sect have made
more or less attempt at bringing like to like, although they have
generally preserved the purely chronological order within their groups,
whether these be of subjects or periods. Among the histories of the
larger cities, Scharf's Chronicles of Baltimore comes to mind as typical
of this class. This work, published in 1874, is an octavo of seven
hundred and fifty-six pages. The author tells the truth when he says in
his preface: "The only plan in the work that has been followed has been
to chronicle events through the years in their order; beginning with the
earliest in which any knowledge on the subject is embraced, and running
on down to the present." The book is printed "solid," with not a single
chapter-heading from one end to the other, so it is not strange that it
contains such an immense amount of material.
The great fault of this book, as of all books of this class, is the lack
of the proper classification, the scholarly reflection and comment, the
thoughtful contrast and comparison, the exercise of intelligent judgment
in forming conclusions,--all which are necessary to make history
palatable, not to say valuable. Nowhere is this lack shown more forcibly
than in this book in the treatment of the subject of riots and mob
violence. It may not be generally known, especially among the younger
portion of the community, that no American and but few European cities
have such an unenviable and disgraceful record on this head as
Baltimore. The accounts of its riots remind one too forcibly of the
worst days of the French Revolution, and all of them read more like the
incidents so plentiful in the sensational stories of the day, than like
the cold, dispassionate record of history. And this, mind you, is the
record of a city famed far more for monuments, pleasure-grounds, and
beautiful women, than for lawlessness and sans-culottism, a city proud
of its families and its culture, a city one of the oldest and richest in
the land. However unpleasant it may be to look at the black side of such
a city's history, yet the study must be profitable if by it we
Americans, proud of our tolerance and our humanity, jealous of aught
past or present that may blot our escutcheon, wondering at and
scornfully pitying nations that could have had Lord George Gordon riots
and blood-thirsty land-leagues, a reign of terror and a commune,--if we
may learn not to be quite so arrogant in our righteousness, quite so
boastful in our Pharisaism; if we may learn how much reason we of the
New World have to bear in mind, when we read about the past and present
of the Old World, the divine command: "He that is without sin among you,
let him first cast a stone at her."
Yet Scharf gives merely the bare details of these, the most vivid scenes
in Baltimore's history, and goes little into causes or results, leaving
us almost wholly in the dark as to how a civilized city in the most
enlightened country on earth could have grafted on its history such
anomalous things as these riots. This feature of Baltimore's history
seems to us to be the feature most peculiar to itself, and, therefore,
like that feature of a human face peculiar to the person we are
studying, the most interesting; but our historian gives it no
distinctive treatment, puts no emphasis on it, forces the reader to
compare, contrast, account for, explain, and draw conclusions for
himself. That he should slide over this side of Baltimore's history
would be natural enough, but of this he cannot be accused. His treatment
of this subject is characteristic of the whole book.
As a good example of an even more disappointing type of chronological
histories we may take the History of Lynn, including Lynnfield, Saugus,
Swampscott, and Nahant, by Alonzo Lewis and James R. Newhall, an octavo
of six hundred and twenty pages, published in 1865. The book seems to
have been condensed from a series of very poor diaries, and the mass of
detail under the year-headings is ridiculous in its minuteness and
laughable in its absurdity. Every year has its paragraphic entries, more
or less full. The narrative of one year may here be quoted to show the
nature of the whole, and, for that matter, the nature of fifty similar
town histories.
1758. "Thomas Mansfield, Esquire, was thrown from his horse on Friday,
January 6, and died the next Sunday.
"A company of soldiers, from Lynn, marched for Canada, on the
twenty-third of May. Edmund Ingalls and Samuel Mudge were killed.
"In a thunder-shower, on the fourth of August, an ox belonging to Mr.
Henry Silsbee was killed by lightning.
"A sloop from Lynn, commanded by Captain Ralph Lindsay, was cast away on
the fifteenth of August, near Portsmouth."
In this pretended "History," the whole of the eighteenth century
receives but sixty-two pages, and that part of the nineteenth which had
elapsed at the time of publication receives only one hundred and
seventeen. In the latter an average entry is the following, under date
of 1856:--
"Patrick Buckley, the 'Lynn Buck,' ran five miles in twenty-eight
minutes and thirty-eight seconds, at the Trotting Park, for a belt
valued at fifty dollars. And on the fourth of December, William Hendley
ran the same distance in twenty-eight minutes and thirty seconds."
The "Lynn Buck," seems to have been an important personage in those
days, for we read under date of 1858:--
"The 'Lynn Buck,' so called, walked a plank at Lowell, in February, a
hundred and five consecutive hours and forty-four minutes, and with but
twenty-nine minutes' rest. A strict watch was kept on him."
We are very glad to know about the "strict watch," but really it was too
bad of the authors not to let us know if those forty-four minutes, also,
were not consecutive. They might, too, have told us to advantage
something about the _modus operandi_ of "walking a plank." It has been
the general impression that the man who walks a plank performs the
operation in an unpleasant hurry--unpleasant for him; and that he will
take all the rest he can get--before he begins; and that he has an
eternal rest, or unrest, after he has finished. But perhaps this has
been a wrong impression. If the authors are alive, it is due to the
public that they should rise and explain.
Enough of pleasantry. Let us examine the book with serious mind, if we
can. Everybody knows that shoes have been the making of Lynn, that they
are and have been for years the backbone of its prosperity, the life of
its business. To say that Lynn is the greatest shoe-manufacturing city
in the country, and, for that matter, in the world, may be an
exaggeration, but it is a very common one. In a history of Lynn we might
expect this fact to be at least recognized. Let us see how that is in
the present case.
The shoe business was not unknown in Lynn before 1750, but in that year
it first got a firm footing here. So we are not surprised to find the
fact mentioned, but we are somewhat disappointed to find only half a
page given to it. Beyond this, mention of the shoe trade in the last
century is very slight, as, no doubt, was the trade itself. Since 1800,
however, the trade has been rapidly increasing, and has gradually
assumed enormous proportions. Yet in this precious volume we find the
subject mentioned just once in the chronological annals, _three lines_
being devoted to it under the head of 1810: "It appeared, by careful
estimation, that there were made in Lynn, this year, one million pairs
of shoes, valued at eight hundred thousand dollars. The females (!)
earned some fifty thousand dollars by binding." To be sure, the burning
of two shoe factories received, respectively, two and three lines; the
formation of an ineffective board of trade by shoemakers, ten lines; and
of an equally fruitless union by journeymen shoemakers, ten lines. A
page and a quarter (_mirabile dictu_) is devoted to a shoemakers' strike
with no definite result. In a biography, the connection of its subject
with the shoe business is mentioned in a quoted letter. A quick job by a
shoemaker receives six lines, and one by another, four; and the death of
a third is mentioned.
In an appendix the state of the shoe business in 1864 is discussed at
length in a third of a half-page! All we learn from it is that by the
State returns in the year ending June 1, 1833, there were made
9,275,593 pairs of shoes valued at $4,165,529. In the year ending
September 1, 1864, about ten million pairs of shoes were made, valued at
fourteen million dollars (probably paper, not gold, value), and the
number of shoe manufacturers was 174; of men and women employed, 17,173.
As the total population of Lynn at that time was little if anything over
twenty-three thousand, it will be seen that even these figures are
untrustworthy, or else the shoe business played even a greater part in
Lynn affairs than is generally supposed.
And this is all the mention to be found in a History of Lynn concerning
the backbone of the city--that great industry to which it almost wholly
owed its population of 38,274 in 1880. Can any one maintain that this
sort of a book is a history?
And so we might go on, finding history after history of the towns and
cities scattered through New England and the Middle States, most of them
on a par with those last mentioned, in all styles of print and binding,
some decrepit and musty with age, others fresh and enticing, with gaudy
covers and scores of illustrations; some like Sewall's History of Woburn
with no table of contents or index, and so practically useless; a few
like Staples's Annals of Providence, scholarly and creditable; yet none
of them ideal histories. But occasionally we meet an oasis in this vast
waste, and though it may not be a paradise, yet we are too grateful for
the water that nourishes the palms and the grass, that refreshes our
parched mouths and wearied bodies, to think that in other climes we
might call it brackish and unclean.
Such is the effect that the History of Pittsfield, Massachusetts has on
us. Here is a book that might well be taken as a standard by town
historians. The very history of the History will show its merits.
At a town meeting held in the Town Hall, in Pittsfield, August 25, 1866,
so the preface says, Mr. Thomas Allen rose, and stated that on the
centennial of the First Congregational Church and parish, namely, April
18, 1864, he had been requested by a vote of the parish to prepare an
historical memoir of that parish and church, embodying substantially,
but extending, the remarks he made at that meeting. He stated that, in
looking over the records of the town and parish, he found them
intimately connected, so that a history of the one would also be a
history of the other; and he had found the history of the town highly
interesting, and honorable to its inhabitants. True, there were no
classic fields in Pittsfield, consecrated by patriotic blood spilled in
battle in defence of the country, as in Lexington and Concord, simply
because no foreign foe in arms ever invaded its soil; but it was not the
less true that Pittsfield had always promptly performed her part, and
furnished her quota of men and means, in every war waged in defence of
the country and the Union; and that in the intellectual contests
through which the just principles of republican government, and civil
and religious freedom, have been established in this country, the men of
Pittsfield, on their own ground and elsewhere, have ever borne a part
creditable alike to their wisdom, their sagacity, and their patriotism.
Pittsfield, therefore, had a history which deserved to be written. The
first settlers had all passed away; and their immediate descendants,
witnesses of their earlier struggles, were whitening with the frosts of
age, and were also rapidly disappearing. If the records of their history
were to be gathered together, and preserved in a durable form, it was
time that the duty be undertaken. He was satisfied that an honorable
record would appear, and worthy of the place to which God had given so
much that is beautiful in nature.
These remarks were so sensible, their spirit was so noble, their form so
forcible, that at once a committee of five was appointed to compile,
write, and supervise the publication of a history of the town, and an
appropriation was made to defray the expense. This committee chose Mr.
J.E.A. Smith to aid them, and, according to the title-page, he compiled
and wrote the book under their general direction. It was published in
two octavo volumes: the first contained five hundred and eighteen pages,
and appeared in 1868, bringing the history from 1734 down to 1800; the
second, containing seven hundred and twenty-five pages, was not
published until eight years later. The second volume brought the history
down to date, and with the first formed an unbroken, readable narrative,
written in perhaps as good a style as town history could warrant us in
expecting. Not the least deserving of praise are the indexes, the lack
of which found in most books of the sort does more to lower their value
than any other defect. The man who writes a history without indexing it
thereby shows his utter lack of the most essential requisite in an
historian--a knowledge of the art of codification. He also calls down
upon his head the curses of every student who tries to use his book.
An abundance of illustrations is not rare enough in town histories to
merit applause, but they are so seldom worth looking at that the
presence of such admirable ones as we find here attracts more than
passing notice. If American art were to be judged by the generality of
such illustrations, we would do well to say as little as possible about
the slurs and sneers of foreign critics. In such case silence would be
the better plan.
The preface to the second volume contained the following suggestive
sentences:--
"The original plan of the work was to make the earlier portions more
full than the later: indeed, to give but a brief skeleton of recent
affairs: it being exceedingly difficult to make contemporary history
satisfactory to those who have taken part in it. We have, in a few
instances, departed from this course, for reasons which will suggest
themselves to the reader."
In these sentences may be found the germ of almost the only idea in the
making of this truly admirable book which deserves severe criticism, and
most certainly the severest condemnation should be given to this and all
similar ideas. The notion that history should be written in a way that
will be _satisfactory_ to those engaged in it is radically wrong, unless
perchance by a _satisfactory_ way is meant a way that in point of truth,
accuracy, and fulness, will suit those who have a more or less personal
share in the events to be recorded. But here it is evident that the word
has not this meaning, or at least has a great deal more than this
meaning. In this connection it seems to be a euphemism for _pleasant_.
Certainly no one will dispute that an historian of contemporary events
would find very difficult even the attempt to make his work pleasant to
his contemporaries. It is the endeavor to do this which has vitiated
all the histories so far written of the late Civil War. The same
principle made Thiers's French Revolution an almost worthless book as a
history. To come down to lesser things, the same principle underlying
and pervading all American local histories has done more toward making
them worthless than any other single defect. In the name of truth and
justice we ask, "Why should the writing of history be made satisfactory,
pleasant, to those who aid in the making of it?" We want the _truth_
about the near, as well as the far, past. Let us do unto our descendants
as we would that our ancestors had done by us, and tell them the truth
about ourselves.
Perhaps we ought to be more lenient in the case of this history of
Pittsfield, in consideration of the fact that this was a _public_ work,
and, therefore, more caution had to be exercised than we would otherwise
have expected. Of course no employee would like to displease even a
single member of the corporation that employed him. Possibly the same
argument might be raised in defence of any historian, in that the public
is virtually his employer. Here, however, reasoning by analogy fails,
for the public is a very large body, and will seldom take up the cudgel
in defence of any single individual. This is a question, however, which
should be settled on the ground of right, not of expediency. But even if
the right be left out of account, the expedient in this case is not
necessarily opposed to truth and accuracy. This is well shown by the
phenomenal success of The Memorial History of Boston, mentioned above.
It may be well just here to say a little more about this admirable work,
for it is even more typical of what an ideal city history should be,
than that of Pittsfield is of the ideal town history.
From the title-page we learn that The Memorial History of Boston,
including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, was edited by Justin
Winsor, and issued under the business superintendence of the projector,
Clarence F. Jewett, in 1880. The nature of the book is learned from the
preface, which says: "The history is cast on a novel plan: not so much
in being a work of co-operation, but because, so far as could be, the
several themes, as sections of one homogeneous whole, have been treated
by those who have some particular association and, it may be, long
acquaintance with the subject. In the diversity of authors there will,
of course, be variety of opinions, and it has not been thought
ill-judged, considering the different points of view assumed by the
various writers, that the same events should be interpreted sometimes in
varying and, perhaps, opposite ways. The chapters may thus make good the
poet's description:
'Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea,'--
and may not be the worse for each offering a reflection, according to
its turn to the light, without marring the unity of the general
expanse."
Among those who contributed one or more chapters to this work were
Justin Winsor (the editor), Charles Francis Adams, Jr., R.C. Winthrop,
T.W. Higginson, Edward Everett Hale, H.E. Scudder, F.W. Palfrey,
Phillips Brooks, Andrew P. Peabody, Henry Cabot Lodge, Josiah P. Quincy,
and Edward Atkinson. Such names as these are more than enough to insure
the truth, accuracy, and historical value of the book. Each one of them
discussed one or more topics, and then their work with that of the less
famous contributors was arranged chronologically, making a logically
consecutive series of essays complete in themselves. The whole was
published in four elegantly printed volumes, containing, in all,
twenty-five hundred and seventy-seven pages.
This is the kind of a history which is of value, not only for immediate
use, but also for future reference; and this is the kind that gladdens
the heart and cheers the labors of the student and the writer. It is the
lack of such histories which makes incomplete and unsatisfactory such
works as the one in the hands of the government which called forth this
article. For it must not be supposed that the historical part of The
Social Statistics of Cities of 1880 will be either complete in every
part or wholly satisfactory. Yet perhaps it will be complete enough to
answer its end, which is to afford an opportunity for seeing why the
cities and towns described have reached their present condition. It is
on the accounts of their present condition that the value of the work
must chiefly rest.
To the historians in succeeding generations these accounts will be
invaluable, for they will give information about the cities as they were
in the year 1880, which is not likely to be embodied in any other
permanent form. It has been shown how large a proportion of the local
histories of America have been found wanting in these things. It is not
to be expected that the immediate future will see any decided
reformation. Then it is clear of how great value to the "future
historian of recent events," to quote one of Daniel Webster's phrases,
will be such work as this that has been undertaken by the National
government. It will be of so great value because, as we can say with
little exaggeration, the history of the cities is the history of the
nation. The city to-day plays a most important part in national affairs.
It is, indeed, and for aught we can see must continue to be, the Hamlet
of the play. Few people realize this. Few people know that over one
fifth of the population of the land is gathered in the large towns and
cities. At the beginning of the century the ratio of the urban
population to the rural was only as one to fifteen. No reason is
apparent why the increase in the ratio should not be equally steady and
rapid for many generations. That this same change has taken place in all
_civilized_ portions of the world is, in truth, most significant. In
England the progress of the cities has been in the same direction, and,
as nearly as can be judged, in the same ratio as that of wealth,
learning, and happiness.
Call to mind what Macaulay said, nearly half a century ago, in chapter
iii of his History of England: "Great as has been the change in the
rural life of England since the Revolution (1688), the change which has
come to pass in the cities is still more amazing. At present, a sixth
part of the kingdom is crowded into provincial towns of more than thirty
thousand inhabitants. In the reign of Charles II, no provincial town in
the kingdom contained thirty thousand inhabitants, and only four
provincial towns contained so many as ten thousand inhabitants." Since
this was written, the change, if not so marvelous, has been equally
important.
As to our own country, the change can in no way be shown more clearly
than by the following table, which will be published in the Census
Report:--