America. A history

But among the aristocratic and middle classes of England it was different. Their sympathy was in large measure given to the South. They were misled by certain newspapers, in which they erringly trusted. They were misled by their admiration of a brave people struggling against an enemy of overwhelming strength. They were misled by an unworthy jealousy of the greatness of America. Thus unhappily influenced, they gave their good wishes to the defenders of the slave-system. The North felt deeply the unlooked-for repulse; and a painful alienation of feeling resulted.

A variety of circumstances occurred which strengthened this feeling. A few weeks after the fall of Fort Sumpter, England, having in view that there had been set up in the South a new Government which was exercising the functions of a Government, whether rightfully or otherwise, acknowledged in haste the undoubted fact, and recognized the South as a belligerent power. This the North highly resented; asserting that the action of the South was merely a rebellion, with which foreign countries had nothing to do. A few months later the British mail-steamer Trent was stopped by a rash American captain, and two gentlemen, commissioners to England from the rebel Government, were made prisoners. The captives were released, but the indignity offered to the British flag awakened a strong sentiment of indignation which did not soon pass away. Yet further: there was built in a Liverpool dockyard a steam-ship which it was understood was destined to serve the Confederacy by destroying the merchant shipping of the North. The American Ambassador requested the British Government to detain the vessel. So hesitating was the action of Government, that the vessel sailed before the order for her detention was issued. For two years the Alabama, and some other ships also fitted in English ports, scoured the seas, burning and sinking American ships, and inflicting enormous loss upon American commerce. These circumstances increased the bitter feeling which prevailed.

The American Government held that England had failed to perform the duty imposed upon her by international law, and had therefore made herself responsible for the depredations of the Alabama. English lawyers of eminence expressed the same unacceptable opinion; and a few years after the war closed the English Government wisely determined to seek the settlement of the question. 1869 A.D. There was arranged by the Foreign Secretary and the American Minister a treaty, in terms of which the subject was disposed of by a reference to the arbitration of impartial persons. This treaty was sent to Washington for confirmation, according to the judicious American rule that treaties with foreign powers must receive the sanction of the Senate. But American feeling was not yet prepared for any adjustment of differences which had wounded the nation so deeply. It was not that the terms of the proposed settlement were objected to; it was rather that no immediate settlement was desired. The American people chose that the question should, for the time, remain an open question. Their irritation had not yet subsided, and many of them solaced their angry minds with the purpose that, when England was again involved in some one of those European embarrassments which habitually beset her, this matter of the Alabama should be pressed to a settlement. The Senate gave effect to the general wish by withholding sanction from the treaty, and President Grant instructed his minister at the English Court to abstain from further negotiation.

1871 A.D. But the passage of a little time calmed the irritation of the not implacable Americans. England renewed her proposal to refer the dispute to arbitration, coupling the offer with an expression of regret that injuries so grave had been inflicted upon the shipping of America. She further consented that the arbitrators should guide themselves by a definition of neutral duties so framed that, in effect, it condemned her conduct, and made an adverse decision inevitable. America accepted the proposal, and a dispute which at an earlier period would have brought upon two nations the miseries of a great war was found to come easily within the scope of a peaceful arbitration. The transaction is of high importance, for it is the largest advance which has yet been made towards the settlement of national differences by reason rather than by brute force.

The arbitrators were five persons, named by the Queen, the President, the King of Italy, the President of Switzerland, and the Emperor of Brazil. Their deliberations were conducted in the tranquil city of Geneva, remote from the influence of the disputants. America presented a statement of her wrongs, and of the compensation to which she deemed herself entitled. Her case was stated with much ability, and it produced numerous and painful evidences that the neutrality with which England regarded the conflict had been a neutrality very full of sympathy with the slave-holders. But the claim tabled was extravagantly large. America argued that England should indemnify her for the expenses of the war-ships which were employed to pursue the piratical cruisers. She argued that, since her ship-owners had been compelled to sell their ships to foreigners, England should bear the losses arising from these enforced sales. Above all, she alleged that the prolongation of the war after the battle of Gettysburg was traceable to the influence of the pirate-ships; and she made the huge demand that England should refund to her the cost of nearly two years of fighting. The arbitrators gave judgment that England was responsible for the property destroyed by the Alabama and the other cruisers, and ordained that she should repair the wrong by a payment of three million sterling. The claim for losses arising indirectly out of these unhappy transactions was rejected.

When the claims of sufferers by the piratical vessels were investigated it was found that the arbitrators had over-estimated them. The American Government, having satisfied every authenticated demand, found itself still in possession of about one million of the English money. It was the wish of many Americans that this sum should be restored to England, but Congress did not rise to the height of this generosity.

When the Alabama dispute was closed, there remained no cause of alienation between the two countries. All good men on both sides of the Atlantic desire earnestly that England and America should be fast friends. It was possible for England, by bestowing upon the North that sympathy which we now recognize to have been due, to have bound the two countries inalienably to each other. Unhappily the opportunity was missed, and a needless estrangement was caused. But this was not destined to endure, and it has long ago passed wholly away. England and America now understand each other as they have never done before. The constant intercourse of their citizens is a bond of union already so strong that no folly of Governments could break it. It may fairly be hoped that the irritations which arose during the war have been succeeded by an enduring concord between the two great sections of the Anglo-Saxon family.

CHAPTER III

INDUSTRIAL AMERICA

The chosen career of the American people is a career of peaceful industry. Wisely shunning the glories and calamities of war, they have devoted themselves to the worthier labour of developing the resources of the continent which is their magnificent heritage. During four years they had been obliged to give their energies to a war, on the successful issue of which the national existence depended. When those sad years were over, and the conflict ceased, they turned with renewed vigour to their accustomed pursuits.

The industrial greatness of America is still, in large measure, agricultural. Nearly one-half of her people live by the cultivation of the soil. Upwards of three-fourths of the commodities which she sells to foreigners are agricultural products. The total value of the crops which she gathered in 1878 was not less than £400,000,000. The strangers who help to build up her power are drawn to her shores by the hope of obtaining easy possession of fertile land. Her progress in the manufacturing arts has been very rapid, but it cannot rival the giant growth of her agriculture.

The agricultural system of America is eminently favourable to cheap production. Unoccupied lands are the property of the nation, and are made over to cultivators on easy terms, and in many cases gratuitously. A rent-paying farmer is practically unknown; the farmer owns the land which he tills. His farm has cost him little, and as the invariable improvement in value cancels even that, it may be said that it has cost him nothing. The average farm of the Western States is one hundred and sixty acres. It is cultivated almost without outlay of money. The farmer and his family perform the work of the farm, with the help of a neighbour at the great eras of sowing and reaping. This help is requited in kind, and therefore costs nothing in money. The rich, deep, virgin soil asks for no manure during many years. The sole burden upon the farm is the maintenance of the farmer and his family, and of the four oxen or mules which share his toils. His local taxation is trivial. His national taxation is less than one-half of that which the English farmer bears.3 The evil of distance from the great markets of the world is neutralized by the low charge for which his grain is carried on railway or canal.4 His husbandry is careless, insomuch that two acres of land in the valley of the Mississippi yield no more than one acre yields in England.5 But if his agriculture is rude it is constantly improving; and, meanwhile, it is so inexpensive that he can send its products to England, four thousand miles away, and undersell the farmer there. A vast revolution, whose results we as yet imperfectly appreciate, is in progress around us. The antiquated, semi-feudal land-system of England totters to its fall, unable to sustain itself in presence of the more free and natural system of the West.

Immigration languished during the earlier years of the war. The distracted condition of the country, and the fears in regard to its future so widely entertained in Europe, formed sufficient reason why men who were in search of a home should avoid America. But when success crowned the efforts of the North, her old attractiveness to the emigrating class resumed its power. It came then to be pressed upon the public mind that the progress of the West was frustrated by want of adequate communication. There was no railway beyond the Missouri river. From that point westward to the Pacific communication depended upon a rude system of stage-coaches, or the waggon of an adventurous pioneer. It was a journey of nearly two thousand miles, across an unpeopled wilderness. The hardship was extreme, and the dangers not inconsiderable; for the way was beset by hostile Indians, and the traveller must be in constant readiness to fight. This vast region, composed mainly of rich prairie land, was practically closed against progress. The resources of the country, as it seemed, could not be developed excepting near the margins of the continent, or by the borders of her great navigable rivers.

It was now determined to construct a railway which should connect the Atlantic with the Pacific, and open for the use of man the vast intervening expanse of fertile soil. Stimulated by liberal grants of national land, two companies began to build – one eastward from San Francisco, the other westward from the Missouri. As the extent of land given was in strict proportion to the length of line laid down, each of the companies pushed its operations to the utmost. The work was done in haste, and, as many then thought, slightly; but experience has proved its sufficiency. 1869 A.D. In due time the lines met; the last rail was laid down, not without emotion, such as befitted the completion of a work so great. By the help of electricity the blows of the hammer which drove home the last spike were made audible in the chief cities of the east. The union of east and west was now complete, and many millions of acres of rich land, hitherto inaccessible, were added to the heritage of man. The savage occupants of these lands were remorselessly pushed aside. The Indians had been dangerously hostile to the workmen who constructed the railway, and they showed some disposition to offer unpleasant interruption to the trains which ran upon it. They were now gathered up and placed in certain “reservations,” which it was well understood would be reserved for Indians only till white men had need of them. When the railroad was newly opened, travellers could occasionally look out from the windows upon a vast plain dark with innumerable multitudes of buffaloes plodding sullenly on their customary migrations. Herds of antelopes were seen fleeing before this new invader of their quiet lives. The prairie-dog, sitting upon his mound of earth, watched with curious eye the unwonted disturbance. All wild creatures were now wantonly slain, or driven far away. A steady tide of emigration flowed to the west. In the neighbourhood of the railway, the little wooden farm-house became frequent; beside stopping-places, villages arose, and swelled out into little towns; the towns of the olden time increased rapidly and prospered. The settlers planted trees of quick growth, and gradually, as the line of settlement stretched westward, the monotony of those dreary plains was brightened with groves, and dwellings, and cultivated fields.

Iowa, Indiana, Illinois ceased to be regarded as belonging to the west, and took rank as old and fully settled central States. Beyond the Missouri a new career opened for Kansas and Nebraska. Down to the beginning of the war these States had been claimed and fought for by the slave-power. Day by day now the railway brought long trains laden with immigrants – Russian Mennonites fleeing from persecution in Church and despotism in State; Germans escaping from military conscription; Englishmen and Irishmen leaving lands where the ownership of the soil was impossible excepting to a few.

Texas – once the refuge of men seeking exemption from the restraints which criminal law imposes – even Texas prospered, and under the genial influence of prosperity became respectable. Her population has risen in eight years from eight hundred thousand to two million. Much of her vast area6 still lies untilled; but much of it has been reclaimed for the use of man. Her railways still traverse dreary forests, and great, unpeopled plains; but they also carry the traveller past many smiling villages, and many thriving cities where a prosperous commerce is maintained, where schools and churches abound. They reveal to him well-appointed farm-buildings; fields rich with bountiful crops; jungles where the peach, the orange, the banana, the pomegranate grow luxuriantly under the fostering heat of a semi-tropical sun; vast areas roamed over by myriads of slight, active-looking Texan cattle, the rearing of which yields wealth to the people. In many of the Texan cities two contrasted types of civilization – the old Mexican and the young American – live peaceably side by side. The palace-car meets the ox-team and the donkey with his panniers. The blanketed Indian, the Mexican in poncho and sombrero, the American in his faultless broadcloth, mingle harmoniously in the streets. Handsome mansions such as abound in the suburbs of eastern cities are near neighbours to antique Mexican dwellings, built of adobe, with loopholed battlements, and walls which show still the bullet-marks of forgotten strifes.

As the enormous mineral resources of the Rocky Mountains became more certainly ascertained, crowds were attracted in hope of sudden wealth, and the States which include the richer portions of the range became the home of a large population. In the remote north-west wheat crops of astonishing opulence rewarded the simple husbandry of the settler. The law that cultivated plants are most productive near the northern limit of their growth was illustrated in the happy experience of Dakotah and northern Minnesota, where the growing of wheat has now become one of the most lucrative of industrial occupations. The railways of those States are being extended with all possible rapidity, and each extension is followed by a fresh influx of settlers. Farmers of experience from the older and less productive States are drawn to the north-west by the unrivalled advantages which soil and climate present. During the year 1878 not less than five million acres of land were purchased in northern Minnesota for immediate cultivation.7

America has never been satisfied with mere agricultural greatness. The ambition to manufacture was coeval with her origin, and has grown with her growing strength. Twenty years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers there were bounties offered in Massachusetts for the encouragement of the manufacture of linen, woollen, and cotton cloths. When the Arkwright spinning machinery was introduced into England, the Americans were eager to possess themselves of an improvement so valuable. But the English law which prohibited the export of machinery was inflexibly administered, and the models prepared in secret for shipment to America were seized and confiscated. But no discouragement repressed the enterprising colonists. The beginnings of their great textile industries were sufficiently humble. The earliest motive-power applied to cotton machinery was the hand; next to it, and as an important advance, came the use of animal-power.8 But the growth of demand was rapid, and before the close of last century the application of water-power was universal.

The increase of consumption was more rapid in America than the increase of production, and it had to be met by considerable imports of English goods. England, with abundant capital and low-priced labour, was able to produce more cheaply than America, and the struggling native manufacturer had to complain of a competition against which he was not able to support himself. He appealed to the Government for protection, and was influential enough to obtain that which he desired. For many years the subject of the tariff was keenly disputed. The Northern manufacturers were habitually seeking increased protection, which the Southern planters, having no kindred interests to protect, were often unwilling to grant. The rates imposed rose or fell with the strength of the contending parties and the political exigencies of the time. 1861 A.D. At length, immediately after the representatives of the South had quitted Congress, and the friends of protection were absolute, a highly protective tariff was enacted. Duties, the mass of which range from thirty to fifty per cent., with some very much larger, were imposed on nearly all foreign commodities landed at American ports. Under this law, with only slight modification, the foreign commerce of America has been conducted for the last eighteen years, and there has not yet manifested itself any change in American opinion which warrants the expectation of an early return to a more liberal system.

The large protection now enjoyed, and the active demand occasioned by the war, stimulated the increase of productive power. Within twelve years the machinery engaged in cotton-spinning had doubled, rising from five to ten million spindles. The increase in many other industries was equally rapid. Side by side with this undue development there appeared the customary fruits of a protective policy. There was a general disregard of economy, a prevailing wastefulness which seemed to neutralize the advantages enjoyed, and leave the manufacturer still in need of additional protection. But a new competition had now arisen, against which protection could not be gained. It was no longer foreign competition which marred the fortune of the native manufacturer; it was the still more deadly competition which resulted from excessive production at home. Especially when the panic of 1873 diminished so suddenly the purchasing power of the American people, it was seen that even if the manufactures of Europe had been wholly excluded, America could no longer consume the commodities which her machinery was able to produce.

During the years of misery which followed the panic, American manufacturers gained experience of the “sweet uses” of adversity. It was incumbent upon them now above all things to study cheapness. Wages were reduced; improved appliances by which cost might be lessened were eagerly and successfully sought for; economy in every detail was studied with anxious care. The result gained was of high national importance. In a few years the American manufacturers found, in regard to many articles of general consumption, that they were now able to produce as cheaply as their rivals in England, and that they were wholly independent of that legislative protection which hitherto had been regarded as indispensable.

As the skill and care of the native producer increased, the purchases which America required to make from foreigners underwent large diminution. Her imports in 1878 were smaller by one-third than they had been in 1873. She ceased to purchase railroad iron, and diminished by more than eight-tenths her purchases of other descriptions of iron. She almost ceased to use European watches, having signally distanced us in that branch of industry. She diminished by nearly one-half her use of foreign books and other publications. Where formerly she had required the earthen and glass wares of Europe to the value of thirteen million dollars, seven million now sufficed. Her use of foreign carpets fell to one-tenth; of foreign cottons and woollens to one-half; of manufactures of wood to one-third; of manufactures of steel to a little over one-third. April, 1879 A.D. And in explanation of this record of decay our Secretary of Legation at Washington contributes the ominous suggestion: – “The decreased importation of the articles referred to has been due in a great measure to the substitution in the markets of this country of articles of American manufacture.”

But the Americans were not contented with this limitation of their purchases from foreign producers. A desire to become themselves exporters of manufactured articles sprang up during the years of depression which followed the panic. Under the pure democracy of America a general desire translates itself very quickly into Government action. 1877 A.D. The Secretary of State addressed to his consuls in all parts of the world a request that they would collect for him all information fitted to be useful to American manufacturers who sought markets for their wares in foreign countries. The answers have put him in possession of a mass of information such as no Government ever before took the trouble to gather regarding the conditions of foreign markets, and the openings which existed or might be created in each for American manufactures. The growth of this trade has thus far been steady, but not rapid, and even now it has reached only moderate dimensions. In 1870 American manufactures were exported to the value of fifteen million sterling, while in 1878 the value had risen to twenty-seven million. Chief among the articles which make up this respectable aggregate are cotton cloths, manufactures of wood, of leather, of iron and steel, including machinery, tools, and agricultural implements. America sells to foolish nations which have not yet grown out of their fighting period, fire-arms, cartridges, gunpowder, and shell, to the extent of nearly a million and a half sterling. The multiplicity of articles which leave her ports show how keenly her foreign trade is being prosecuted. She sends household furniture, made by machinery, and sells it at prices which to the British cabinet-maker seem to be ruinous. She sends cutlery and tools of finish and price which fill the men of Sheffield with dismay, but do not apparently stimulate them to improvement. She sends watches manufactured by processes so superior to those still practised in Europe that the Swiss manufacturers have explicitly acknowledged hopeless defeat. She sends medicines, combs, perfumery, soap, spirits, writing-paper, musical instruments, glass-ware, carriages. All these are articles for which, but a few years ago, she herself was indebted to Europe. Now she supplies her own requirements, and has an increasing surplus for which she seeks markets abroad. Her policy of protection has been costly beyond all calculation; but those who upheld it now point with reasonable pride to the splendid place which America has taken among the manufacturing nations of the Earth.