Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada

Inviting, by its opportunities for labor and its facilities for business, comers from all the world, a large proportion of whom are aliens to the language and institutions of America, Chicago is making a noble fight to assimilate this material into good citizenship. The popular schools are liberally sustained, intelligently directed, practise the most advanced and inspiring methods, and exhibit excellent results. I have not the statistics of 1887; but in 1886, when the population was only 703,000, there were 129,000 between the ages of six and sixteen, of whom 83,000 were enrolled as pupils, and the average daily attendance in schools was over 65,000. Besides these there were about 43,000 in private schools. The census of 1886 reports only 34 children between the ages of six and twenty-one who could neither read nor write. There were 91 school buildings owned by the city, and two rented. Of these, three are high-schools, one in each division, the newest, on the west side, having 1000 students. The school attendance increases by a large per cent, each year. The principals of the high-schools were men; of the grammar and primary schools, 35 men and 42 women. The total of teachers was 1440, of whom 56 were men. By the census of 1886 there were 106,929 children in the city under six years of age. No kindergartens are attached to the public schools, but the question of attaching them is agitated. In the lower grades, however, the instruction is by object lessons, drawing, writing, modelling, and exercises that train the eye to observe, the tongue to describe, and that awaken attention without weariness. The alertness of the scholars and the enthusiasm of the teachers were marked. It should be added that German is extensively taught in the grammar schools, and that the number enrolled in the German classes in 1886 was over 28,000. There is some public sentiment for throwing out German from the public schools, and generally for restricting studies in the higher branches.

The argument against this is that very few of the children, and the majority of those girls, enter the high-schools; the boys are taken out early for business, and get no education afterwards. In 1885 were organized public elementary evening schools (which had, in 1886, 6709 pupils), and an evening high-school, in which book-keeping, stenography, mechanical drawing, and advanced mathematics were taught. The Sehool Committee also have in charge day schools for the education of deaf and dumb children.

The total expenditure for 1880 was $2,000,803; this includes $1,023,394 paid to superintendents and teachers, and large sums for new buildings, apparatus, and repairs. The total cash receipts for sehool purposes were $2,091,951. Of this was from the school tax fund $1,758,053 (the total city tax for all purposes was $5,308,409), and the rest from State dividend and sehool fund bonds and miscellaneous sources. These figures show that education is not neglected.

Of the quality and efficacy of this education there cannot be two opinions, as seen in the schools whieh I visited. The high-school on the west side is a model of its kind; but perhaps as interesting an example of popular education as any is the Franklin grammar and primary school on the north side, in a district of laboring people. Here were 1700 pupils, all children of working people, mostly Swedes and Germans, from the age of six years upwards. Here were found some of the children of the late anarchists, and nowhere else can one see a more interesting attempt to manufacture intelligent American citizens. The instruction rises through the several grades from object lessons, drawing, writing and reading (and writing and reading well), to elementary physiology, political and constitutional history, and physical geography. Here is taught to young children what they cannot learn at home, and might never clearly comprehend otherwise; not only something of the geography and history of the country, but the distinctive principles of our government, its constitutional ideas, the growth, creeds, and relations of political parties, and the personality of the great men who have represented them. That the pupils comprehend these subjects fairly well I had evidence in recitations that were as pleasing as surprising. In this way Chicago is teaching its alien population American ideas, and it is fair to presume that the rising generation will have some notion of the nature and value of our institutions that will save them from the inclination to destroy them.

The public mind is agitated a good deal on the question of the introduction of manual training into the public schools. The idea of some people is that manual training should only be used as an aid to mental training, in order to give definiteness and accuracy to thought; others would like actual trades taught; and others think that it is outside the function of the State to teach anything but elementary mental studies. The subject would require an essay by itself, and I only allude to it to say that Chicago is quite alive to the problems and the most advanced educational ideas. If one would like to study the philosophy and the practical working of what may be called physico-mental training, I know no better place in the country to do so than the Cook County Normal School, near Englewood, under the charge of Colonel F. W. Parker, the originator of what is known as the Quincy (Massachusetts) System. This is a training school for about 100 teachers, in a building where they have practice on about 500 children in all stages of education, from the kindergarten up to the eighth grade. This may be called a thorough manual training school, but not to teach trades, work being done in drawing, modelling in clay, making raised maps, and wood-carving. The Quincy System, which is sometimes described as the development of character by developing mind and body, has a literature to itself. This remarkable school, which draws teachers for training from all over the country, is a notable instance of the hospitality of the West to new and advanced ideas. It does not neglect the literary side in education. Here and in some of the grammar schools of Chicago the experiment is successfully tried of interesting young children in the best literature by reading to them from the works of the best authors, ancient and modern, and giving them a taste for what is excellent, instead of the trash that is likely to fall into their hands—the cultivation of sustained and consecutive interest in narratives, essays, and descriptions in good literature, in place of the scrappy selections and reading-books written down to the childish level. The written comments and criticisms of the children on what they acquire in this way are a perfect vindication of the experiment. It is to be said also that this sort of education, coupled with the manual training, and the inculcated love for order and neatness, is beginning to tell on the homes of these children. The parents are actually being educated and civilized through the public schools.

An opportunity for superior technical education is given in the Chicago Manual Training School, founded and sustained by the Commercial Club. It has a handsome and commodious building on the corner of Michigan avenue and Twelfth Street, which accommodates over two hundred pupils, under the direction of Dr. Henry H. Belfield, assisted by an able corps of teachers and practical mechanics. It has only been in operation since 1884, but has fully demonstrated its usefulness in the training of young men for places of responsibility and profit. Some of the pupils are from the city schools, but it is open to all boys of good character and promise. The course is three years, in which the tuition is $80, $100, and $120 a year; but the club provides for the payment of the tuition of a limited number of deserving boys whose parents lack the means to give them this sort of education. The course includes the higher mathematics, English, and French or Latin, physics, chemistry—in short, a high-school course—with drawing, and all sorts of technical training in work in wood and iron, the use and making of tools, and the building of machinery, up to the construction of steam-engines, stationary and locomotive. Throughout the course one hour each day is given to drawing, two hours to shop-work, and the remainder of the school day to study and recitation. The shops—the wood-work rooms, the foundery, the forge-room, the machine-shop—are exceedingly well equipped and well managed. The visitor cannot but be pleased by the tone of the school and the intelligent enthusiasm of the pupils. It is an institution likely to grow, and perhaps become the nucleus of a great technical school, which the West much needs. It is worthy of notice also as an illustration of the public spirit, sagacity, and liberality of the Chicago business men. They probably sec that if the city is greatly to increase its importance as a manufacturing centre, it must train a considerable proportion of its population to the highest skilled labor, and that splendidly equipped and ably taught technical schools would do for Chicago what similar institutions in Zurich have done for Switzerland. Chicago is ready for a really comprehensive technical and industrial college, and probably no other investment would now add more to the solid prosperity and wealth of the town.

Such an institution would not hinder, but rather help, the higher education, without which the best technical education tends to materialize life. Chicago must before long recognize the value of the intellectual side by beginning the foundation of a college of pure learning. For in nothing is the Western society of to-day more in danger than in the superficial half-education which is called “practical,” and in the lack of logic and philosophy. The tendency to the literary side—awakening a love for good books—in the public schools is very hopeful. The existence of some well-chosen private libraries shows the same tendency. In art and archæology there is also much promise. The Art Institute is a very fine building, with a vigorous school in drawing and painting, and its occasional loan exhibitions show that the city contains a good many fine pictures, though scarcely proportioned to its wealth. The Historical Society, which has had the irreparable misfortune twice to lose its entire collections by fire, is beginning anew with vigor, and will shortly erect a building from its own funds. Among the private collections which have a historical value is that relating to the Indian history of the West made by Mr. Edward Ayer, and a large library of rare and scarce books, mostly of the English Shakespeare period, by the Rev. Frank M. Bristoll. These, together with the remarkable collection of Mr. C. F. Gunther (of which further mention will be made), are prophecies of a great literary and archaeological museum.

The city has reason to be proud of its Free Public Library, organized under the general library law of Illinois, which permits the support of a free library in every incorporated city, town, and township by taxation. This library is sustained by a tax of one halfmill on the assessed value of all the city property. This brings it in now about $80,000 a year, which makes its income for 1888, together with its fund and fines, about $90,000. It is at present housed in the City Hall, but will soon have a building of its own (on Dearborn Park), towards the erection of which it has a considerable fund. It has about 130,000 volumes, including a fair reference library and many expensive art books. The institution has been well managed hitherto, notwithstanding its connection with politics in the appointment of the trustees by the mayor, and its dependence upon the city councils. The reading-rooms are thronged daily; the average daily circulation has increased yearly; it was 2263 in 1887—a gain of eleven per cent, over the preceding year. This is stimulated by the establishment of eight delivering stations in different parts of the city. The cosmopolitan character of the users of the library is indicated by the uncommon number of German, French, Dutch, Bohemian, Polish, and Scandinavian books. Of the books issued at the delivery stations in 1887 twelve per cent, were in the Bohemian language. The encouraging thing about this free library is that it is not only freely used, but that it is as freely sustained by the voting population.

Another institution, which promises to have still more influence on the city, and indeed on the whole North-west, is the Newberry Library, now organizing under an able board of trustees, who have chosen Mr. W. F. Poole as librarian. The munificent fund of the donor is now reckoned at about 82,500,000, but the value of the property will be very much more than this in a few years. A temporary building for the library, which is slowly forming, will be erected at once, but the library, which is to occupy a square on the north side, will not be erected until the plans are fully matured. It is to be a library of reference and study solely, and it is in contemplation to have the books distributed in separate rooms for each department, with ample facilities for reading and study in each room. If the library is built and the collections are made in accordance with the ample means at command, and in the spirit of its projectors, it will powerfully tend to make Chicago not only the money but the intellectual centre of the North-west, and attract to it hosts of students from all quarters. One can hardly over-estimate the influence that such a library as this may be will have upon the character and the attractiveness of the city.

I hope that it will have ample space for, and that it will receive, certain literary collections, such as are the glory and the attraction, both to students and sight-seers, of the great libraries of the world. And this leads me to speak of the treasures of Mr. Gunther, the most remarkable private collection I have ever seen, and already worthy to rank with some of the most famous on public exhibition. Mr. Gunther is a candy manufacturer, who has an archaeological and “curio” taste, and for many years has devoted an amount of money to the purchase of historical relics that if known would probably astonish the public. Only specimens of what he has can be displayed in the large apartment set apart for the purpose over his shop. The collection is miscellaneous, forming a varied and most interesting museum. It contains relics—many of them unique, and most of them having a historical value—from many lands and all periods since the Middle Ages, and is strong in relics and documents relating to our own history, from the colonial period down to the close of our civil war. But the distinction of the collection is in its original letters and manuscripts of famous people, and its missals, illuminated manuscripts, and rare books. It is hardly possible to mention a name famous since America was discovered that is not here represented by an autograph letter or some personal relics. We may pass by such mementos as the Appomattox table, a sampler worked by Queen Elizabeth, a prayer-book of Mary, Queen of Scots, personal belongings of Washington, Lincoln, and hundreds of other historical characters, but we must give a little space to the books and manuscripts, in order that it may be seen that all the wealth of Chicago is not in grain and meat.

It is only possible here to name a few of the original letters, manuscripts, and historical papers in this wonderful collection of over seventeen thousand. Most of the great names in the literature of our era are represented. There is an autograph letter of Molière, the only one known outside of France, except one in the British Museum; there are letters of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Madame Roland, and other French writers. It is understood that this is not a collection of mere autographs, but of letters or original manuscripts of those named. In Germany, nearly all the great poets and writers—Goethe, Schiller, Uhland, Lessing, etc.; in England, Milton, Pope, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Cowper, Hunt, Gray, etc.; the manuscript of Byron’s “Prometheus,” the “Auld Lang Syne” of Burns, and his “Journal in the Highlands,” “Sweet Home” in the author’s hand; a poem by Thackeray; manuscript stories of Scott and Dickens. Among the Italians, Tasso. In America, the known authors, almost without exception. There are letters from nearly all the prominent reformers—Calvin, Melanehthon, Zwingle, Erasmus, Savonarola; a letter of Luther in regard to the Pope’s bull; letters of prominent leaders—William the Silent, John the Steadfast, Gustavus Adolphus, Wallenstein. There is a curious collection of letters of the saints—St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Borromeo; letters of the Popes for three centuries and a half, and of many of the great cardinals.

I must set down a few more of the noted names, and that without much order. There is a manuscript of Charlotte Corday (probably the only one in this country), John Bunyan, Izaak Walton, John Cotton, Michael Angelo, Galileo, Lorenzo the Magnificent; letters of Queen Elizabeth, Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary of England, Anne, several of Victoria (one at the age of twelve), Catherine de’ Medici, Marie Antoinette, Josephine, Marie Louise; letters of all the Napoleons, of Frederick the Great, Marat, Robespierre, St. Just; a letter of Hernando Cortez to Charles the Fifth; a letter of Alverez; letters of kings of all European nations, and statesmen and generals without number.

The collection is rich in colonial and Revolutionary material; original letters from Plymouth Colony, 1621, 1622,1623—I believe the only ones known; manuscript sermons of the early American ministers; letters of the first bishops, White and Seabury; letters of John André, Nathan Hale, Kosciusko, Pulaski, De Kalb, Steuben, and of great numbers of the general and subordinate officers of the French and Revolutionary wars; William Tudor’s manuscript account of the battle of Bunker Hill; a letter of Aide-de-camp Robert Orhm to the Governor of Pennsylvania relating Braddock’s defeat; the original of Washington’s first Thanksgiving proclamation; the report of the committee of the Continental Congress on its visit to Valley Forge on the distress of the army; the original proceedings of the Commissioners of the Colonies at Cambridge for the organization of the Continental army; original returns of the Hessians captured at Princeton; orderly books of the Continental army; manuscripts and surveys of the early explorers; letters of Lafitte, the pirate, Paul Jones, Captain Lawrence, Bainbridge, and so on. Documents relating to the Washington family are very remarkable: the original will of Lawrence Washington bequeathing Mount Vernon to George; will of John Custis to his family; letters of Martha, of Mary, the mother of George, of Betty Lewis, his sister, of all his step and grand children of the Custis family.

In music there are the original manuscript compositions of all the leading musicians in our modern world, and there is a large collection of the choral books from ancient monasteries and churches. There are exquisite illuminated missals on parchment of all periods from the eighth century. Of the large array of Bibles and other early printed books it is impossible to speak, except in a general way. There is a copy of the first English Bible, Coverdale’s, also of the very rare second Matthews, and of most of the other editions of the English Bible; the first Scotch, Irish, French, Welsh, and German Luther Bibles; the first Eliot’s Indian Bible, of 1662, and the second, of 1685; the first American Bibles; the first American primers, almanacs, newspapers, and the first patent, issued in 1794; the first book printed in Boston; the first printed accounts of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia; the first picture of New York City, an original plan of the city in 1700, and one of it in 1765; early surveys of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; the earliest maps of America, including the first, second, and third map of the world in which America appears.

Returning to England, there are the Shakespeare folio editions of 1632 and 1685; the first of his printed “Poems” and the “Rape of Lucrece;” an early quarto of “Othello;” the first edition of Ben Jonson, 1616, in which Shakespeare’s name appears in the cast for a play; and letters from the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend, and Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, and Essex. There is also a letter written by Oliver Cromwell while he was engaged in the conquest of Ireland.

The relics, documents, and letters illustrating our civil war are constantly being added to. There are many old engravings, caricatures, and broadsides. Of oil-portraits there are three originals of Washington, one by Stuart, one by Peale, one by Polk, and I think I remember one or two miniatures. There is also a portrait in oil of Shakespeare which may become important. The original canvas has been remounted, and there are indubitable signs of its age, although the picture can be traced back only about one hundred and fifty years. The Owner hopes to be able to prove that it is a contemporary work. The interesting fact about it is that whilc it is not remarkable as a work of art, it is recognizable at once as a likeness of what we suppose from other portraits and the busts to be the face and head of Shakespeare, and yet it is different from all other pictures w know, so that it does not suggest itself as a copy.

The most important of Mr. Gunther’s collection is an autograph of Shakespeare; if it prove to be genuine, it will be one of the four in the world, and a great possession for America. This autograph is pasted on the fly-leaf of a folio of 1632, which was the property of one John Ward. In 1839 there was published in London, from manuscripts in possession of the Medical Society, extracts from the diary of John Ward (1648-1679), who was vicar and doctor at Stratford-on-Avon. It is to this diary that we owe certain facts theretofore unknown about Shakespeare. The editor, Mr. Stevens, had this volume in his hands while he was compiling his book, and refers to it in his preface. He supposed it to have belonged to the John Ward, vicar, who kept the diary. It turns out, however, to have been the property of John Ward the actor, who was in Stratford in 1740, was an enthusiast in the revival of Shakespeare, and played Hamlet there in order to raise money to repair the bust of the poet in the church. This folio has the appearance of being much used. On the fly-leaf is writing by Ward and his signature; there are marginal notes and directions in his hand, and several of the pages from which parts were torn off have been repaired by manuscript text neatly joined.

The Shakespeare signature is pasted on the leaf above Ward’s name. The paper on which it is written is unlike that of the book in texture. The slip was pasted on when the leaf was not as brown as it is now, as can be seen at one end where it is lifted. The signature is written out fairly and in full, William Shakspeare, like the one to the will, and differs from the two others, which are hasty scrawls, as if the writer were cramped for room, or finished off the last syllable with a flourish, indifferent to the formation of the letters. I had the opportunity to compare it with a careful tracing of the signature to the will sent over by Mr. Hallowell-Phillips. At first sight the two signatures appear to be identical; but on examination they are not; there is just that difference in the strokes, spaces, and formation of the letters that always appears in two signatures by the same hand. One is not a copy of the other, and the one in the folio had to me the unmistakable stamp of genuineness. The experts in handwriting and the micro-scopists in this country who have examined ink and paper as to antiquity, I understand, regard it as genuine.

There seems to be all along the line no reason to suspect forgery. What more natural than that John Ward, the owner of the book, and a Shakespeare enthusiast, should have enriched his beloved volume with an autograph which he found somewhere in Stratford? And in 1740 there was no craze or controversy about Shakespeare to make the forgery of his autograph an object. And there is no suspicion that the book has been doctored for a market. It never was sold for a price. It was found in Utah, whither it had drifted from England in the possession of an emigrant, and he readily gave it in exchange for a new and fresh edition of Shakespeare’s works.

I have dwelt upon this collection at some length, first because of its intrinsic value, second because of its importance to Chicago as a nucleus for what (I hope in connection with the Newberry Library) will become one of the most interesting museums in the country, and lastly as an illustration of what a Western business man may do with his money.