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Title: Americans by adoption
Brief biographies of great citizens born in foreign lands
Author: Joseph Husband
Contributor: Willian Allen Neilson
Release Date: April 1, 2023 [eBook #70434]
Language: English
Produced by: Bob Taylor, hekula03 and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICANS BY ADOPTION ***
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AMERICANS BY ADOPTION
OTHER ATLANTIC BOOKS
THE AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING AND KINDRED AFFECTIONS
By _A. Edward Newton_ $4.00
AN AMERICAN IDYLL: THE LIFE OF CARLETON H. PARKER
By _Cornelia Stratton Parker_ $1.75
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY AND ITS MAKERS
By _M. A. DeWolfe Howe_ $1.00
ADVENTURES IN INDIGENCE AND OTHER ESSAYS
By _Laura Spencer Portor_ $1.50
COLLECTOR’S LUCK
By _Alice Van Leer Carrick_ $2.50
THE COMFORTS OF HOME
By _Ralph Bergengren_ $1.00
THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN
By _Ralph Bergengren_ $1.00
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: THE PRINCIPLE AND THE PRACTICE
Edited by _Stephen Pierce Duggan_ $2.50
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
BOSTON
[Illustration: _L. Agassiz_ (signature)]
AMERICANS
BY ADOPTION
_BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF
GREAT CITIZENS BORN IN
FOREIGN LANDS_
By JOSEPH HUSBAND
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON
PRESIDENT OF SMITH COLLEGE
[Illustration: Decoration]
_ILLUSTRATED_
_The_ ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
BOSTON
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, INC.
_All rights reserved_
To
EDWARD F. SANDERSON
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION, BY WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON xi
I. STEPHEN GIRARD 1
II. JOHN ERICSSON 17
III. LOUIS AGASSIZ 37
IV. CARL SCHURZ 56
V. THEODORE THOMAS 74
VI. ANDREW CARNEGIE 91
VII. JAMES J. HILL 104
VIII. AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 121
IX. JACOB A. RIIS 140
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LOUIS AGASSIZ _Frontispiece_
STEPHEN GIRARD 6
JOHN ERICSSON 18
CARL SCHURZ 56
THEODORE THOMAS 74
ANDREW CARNEGIE 92
JAMES J. HILL 104
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 122
JACOB A. RIIS 140
INTRODUCTION
There is an old story, told in many countries through the Middle
Ages, of a knight who got into trouble, and was offered pardon if
within a year he brought the correct answer to the question, “What do
women most desire?” At the last moment he saved himself by answering,
“Their own way,” or words to that effect.
This is a man’s story, and scores the man’s point in the perennial
strife of wits between the sexes; but the answer needs but little
modification to hold good of men and women alike. When one takes up
a book like this, dealing with the lives of men who deliberately
and voluntarily left the homes of their fathers to become citizens
of a strange land, one naturally asks what they wanted, and equally
naturally goes on to ask what men in general want most in life.
Many answers have been given to the question, and none can be final,
because men and circumstances differ so widely. But I should like to
propose one that seems to me of more general application than most.
Men want most to count among their fellows for what they are worth.
This desire is more persistent than love, more universal than the
thirst for wealth or power, more fundamental than the demand for
pleasure. It shows itself in early childhood, it steers the ambitions
of manhood, its fulfillment is the crown of old age. The degree of
the chance to achieve it is the measure of the desirability of a
country as a place to live in; and it is fair to say that the men
whose lives are told in this book, and we others who have come to
America of our own accord, have done so because we believed that
these United States, above all countries of the world, give men this
chance to make the most of themselves.
“To count among their fellows for what they are worth”—see what
this implies. First, and most superficially, it means recognition
of ability and character by society. Carried to the highest point,
it would mean the absence of handicaps, of privilege, of “pull”—the
equality of opportunity for achieving distinction which has always
been the theory of this democracy. Of course, neither here nor
elsewhere is this perfect condition reached; but the biographies in
this book tend to show that there has long been a large degree of it
here, and our social progress has this condition frankly accepted as
a goal.
Secondly, it implies a basis for self-respect. Deeper than the grudge
that a man has against the society which refuses him due credit for
his achievement is the grudge that a man feels when he has to admit
to himself that his achievement is not really creditable. The worst
curse of slavery was not its external restrictions, but its effect in
crushing the slave’s sense of the potential nobility of his own soul.
The feeling that a man has a fair chance to be taken at his full
value is an exhilarating feeling, liberating his powers, freeing him
from the gnawing pains of mortified vanity, impelling him to hold his
head up and look his neighbor in the eye.
Thirdly, it means a chance to do one’s job—one’s own job—and to do
it to the limit of one’s capacity. This is the foundation on which
both recognition and self-respect must be built. “Blessed is the
man,” says Carlyle, “who has found his work; let him seek no other
blessedness.” Because a man is freer in America to pass from one
calling to another, from one class to another, from one region to
another; because here people are willing to be shown what he can do;
the chances are greater than elsewhere that he will find the task and
circumstances which fit him best and let him count for most.
If you read through these nine lives, you will see that what each
of these men was really after, and what each found more fully here
than in the old world, was not wealth or power or pleasure of the
senses, but the chance to do the biggest job of which he was capable.
Three of them, indeed, did gather great wealth, but it was either a
by-product of the main achievement of their lives, or the instrument
of that achievement. The vision that inspired James J. Hill was not
a colossal fortune, but the opening up and populating of a great
territory with farmers leading large, wholesome, and prosperous
lives. Two of the nine were artists, who neither asked nor received
great financial rewards, but who found here the chance to create
beauty and to form taste, and in seizing this chance they found their
supreme satisfaction.
Of these nine men I have known only one, Augustus Saint-Gaudens; but
none could have illustrated better the spirit in which work has to
be done if it is to yield its greatest reward. What struck me in
watching Saint-Gaudens work was his absolute indifference to what a
statue would cost him in pains or in time, or to what it would bring
him in money, and his complete absorption in making it as nearly
perfect as he could. He did not “count the mortal years it takes to
mould the immortal forms.” He would work for hours on the modeling of
an inch of surface, seeking for an exactness of result imperceptible
to the lay bystander. He would never be hurried—and he found America
willing to wait.
The same spirit worked in Ericsson in his inventions, in Carl
Schurz in his unceasing quest for political justice, in Riis in his
cleaning up of New York City. Some of these men were not outstanding
intellects, but each cared intensely about his job, and to each
America gave his chance.
I have a quarrel with the title of this book. “Americans by Choice”
it should be, not “Americans by Adoption.” “Adoption” suggests that
America adopt us. We who have of our own accord left the old world
and taken up citizenship in the new know that we have chosen her,
not she us. We can leave to the native-born their natural pride in
their birthright, but we can claim that we pay a greater compliment
to this land than can these others, for our citizenship is not the
result of an accident but of our free choice. And we have paid our
price. We, and we alone, know what it has cost to leave behind scenes
and traditions and affections which clung close to the heart. But
that we have left them is proof that we prized still more highly the
opportunity that America offered us to count for what we are worth.
In the face of this proof we have no apologies to make. We call
our nine worthies to witness; and, while not forgetting our due of
gratitude for our chance, we point to the use we make of the chance,
and ask the native-born to acknowledge that the balance swings
level. More than this we cannot ask; less than this we will not
take. Granted this, without grudging and without condescension, we
can quiet all fears of divided allegiance, and work with our fellow
citizens for the perfecting of the social order in which these wise
and worthy men found an environment for accomplishment of the first
rank, and with which we have thrown in our lot in becoming Americans
by choice.
W. A. NEILSON.
NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MARCH, 1920
AMERICANS BY ADOPTION
I
STEPHEN GIRARD
_Born in Bordeaux, France, 1750
Died in Philadelphia, 1831_
The old French city of Bordeaux has for centuries been one of the
greatest maritime cities of Europe. Situated on the low shore of the
River Garonne, its stone quays have for generations been close-packed
with the ships of a world-wide commerce. Under the Roman Empire it
was a flourishing city; in the fourth century, surrounded by massive
walls and lofty towers, it became the capital of Aquitania Secunda;
and later, for three hundred years, it was ruled by English kings.
Here reigned Edward, the Black Prince, and here was born his son
Richard. Between the Bordeaux merchants and the English an extensive
commerce developed, and as years passed by, this commerce branched
out into a world-activity that to-day maintains relations with all
civilized lands, but chiefly, as has been the case for a century and
a half, with England, South America, the West Indies, and the United
States.
In the year 1750 the stone wharves along the river bristled with the
masts and spars of the fleets of the Bordeaux merchants. Small ships
they were compared with the great steel cargo-carriers that to-day
line the stream; but they were staunchly built and strongly manned,
and their rich cargoes, safely transported from the distant Indies,
filled the city with wealth and the romance of blue salt water and
foreign lands.
In that same year, in a house in rue Ramonet au Chartrons, then a
suburb of the city, was born Stephen Girard, son of Pierre Girard,
Captain of the Port of Bordeaux. Pierre the father was a man of some
importance and a prosperous merchant in the city. In 1744, during
the War of the Austrian Succession, he had served with honor in
the French navy, and at the blockade of Brest, he had received the
Military Order of Saint Louis for his heroic action in putting out
the flames on his ship, which had been fired by a fire-ship sent into
the French squadron by the British. In later years he became Burgess
of Bordeaux, and during this period he began to trade with the French
ports in the island of San Domingo in the West Indies. Of such
stock was the boy Stephen; born with the romance of the sea as his
inheritance and with the heroic memory of his father to inspire him,
but born with a handicap which, however, he never permitted to retard
his progress; for from birth he was sightless in his right eye.
It was natural that the boy should turn to the sea. When he was
twelve years old, the death of his mother left him a half-orphan.
His education had been of the most general nature. There was little
to draw him into the occupations of the land. To the lonesome lad
the sea offered at least the promise of adventure, and perhaps the
rewards of wealth and distinction. In the year 1764 Stephen was
fourteen. His father’s trading activities with the West Indies
afforded the opening he desired; and with his few belongings packed
in a sea-chest, he shipped as cabin-boy on a small merchantman to
Port-au-Prince. Five more voyages followed, and in 1773 he was
licensed to act as “captain, master, or pilot of any merchant ship he
could obtain.”
A year later as “officer of the ship” La Julie, he sailed from
Bordeaux for Port-au-Prince. It was the final severance of his tie
with France. The cargo consisted chiefly of general merchandise,
in which Stephen had purchased a small share, bought from Bordeaux
merchants with notes, or promises to pay at some later date. But
business was slow in the islands, and the goods sold at a loss of
over twenty-five per cent. In those days a man might be imprisoned
for debt, and Girard realized that such a fate might await him
should he return to Bordeaux. Accordingly, he obtained his discharge
from the ship, and with a young acquaintance determined to form a
partnership for the purpose of trading between the island ports. So
with many who have sought freedom in the new world, cruel laws and
the dread of an unjust imprisonment forced Girard to forsake his
native land. But the just debt which he owed was not forgotten, and
in later years the Bordeaux merchants, whose anger he had feared,
received from him payment in full of the merchandise they had
advanced him.
In July, 1774, Girard sailed for New York with a small cargo of
coffee and sugar. It was a stirring time in the history of the
American Colonies. For a dozen years the free spirit of the Americans
had chafed under the oppression of British rule. Open fighting had
occurred in Boston in 1770, when, in a fight between the populace and
the British soldiers, three men were killed and eight were wounded.
Two years later the British revenue schooner Gaspee was seized and
burned by the people of Rhode Island, and in 1773 the citizens of
Boston, disguised as Indians, emptied into the water of Boston Harbor
342 chests of tea from an English merchantman, as a protest against
taxation without representation in Parliament. In retaliation, acts
obnoxious to the people of Massachusetts were passed by the British
Government; and in answer to these, on September 5, 1774, the
Continental Congress was assembled at Philadelphia, and a declaration
of rights was drawn up and published, defining the spirit of the
American Colonies and indicating the consequences which must follow
further interference with the liberty of the American people to
levy their own taxes and make their own laws in their own Colonial
assemblies.
Backing words with deeds, the Colony of Massachusetts set up its own
government in defiance of General Gage, the British representative,
and placed at its head John Hancock, an influential merchant of
Boston. Twelve thousand volunteer militiamen were organized,—of
whom about one third were known as “minute men,” or soldiers ready
to march or fight at a minute’s notice,—and stores and ammunition
were collected. Into such a scene sailed the young French boy with
his cargo of sugar and coffee; and it is not surprising that his
liberty-loving spirit sympathized with the indomitable determination
of the colonists to rid themselves of the yoke of an old-world
nation, and led him to seek employment in New York City, with some
merchants there who traded with San Domingo.
First as mate and soon as captain, Girard steadily sailed back and
forth between New York and the trading town of Le Cap in San Domingo.
As captain of the little vessel, he was allowed by the owners the
privilege of carrying a limited store of goods for his own venture,
in addition to the regular cargo. His capital was small, but no
opportunity to increase it was ever allowed to pass, and each voyage
showed a steadily increasing profit to the credit of the youthful
trader.
Meanwhile, in America, the fighting at Lexington and Concord had
announced to the world the determination of the liberty-loving
colonists to cast off British rule, and in 1775 the War of American
Independence was begun. But important as this war is in American
eyes, it was but one of several difficulties which confronted Great
Britain: three years later war was begun between that country and
France, and in 1779 Spain also declared war on Great Britain; this
was followed in 1780 by the declaration of war between Great Britain
and Holland.
Immediately all American shipping became subject to seizure by
British vessels, and accordingly Girard availed himself of the
neutrality of France and shifted to the protection of the French
flag. But the dangers of the sea, increased by the hazards of
war, were enormous, and in 1776 Girard found himself practically
shipwrecked off the Delaware coast. With difficulty he brought
his ship to shore, and soon found himself in the little city of
Philadelphia, which was destined in afteryears to claim him as its
foremost citizen.
Philadelphia was a town of twenty-four thousand inhabitants. By
slow-sailing packets its people kept uncertain contact with the
news of the old-world cities; stage coach and post-rider kept them
informed of home affairs. A few small newspapers reported the
stirring events then occurring. But Girard was not particularly
concerned with the struggle of the American Colonies. He was still
a Frenchman trading with the West Indies, concerned only with his
ships, his markets, and his fortune. Philadelphia seemed to him to be
an enterprising and growing place, and accordingly he settled there.
It was perhaps the most important decision in his life.
As he was forced by the presence of British war vessels off the
coast to abandon his trading ventures with the West Indies, Girard’s
activities were for two years limited to local affairs. During the
blockade an event took place which gave him a real tie with the
struggling states: he married an American, Miss Mary Lum. In 1778 the
British forces occupied Philadelphia and seized the Water Witch, the
first vessel owned entirely by the enterprising Frenchman.
[Illustration: _Stephen Girard_ (signature)]
Philadelphia, however, was soon again in American hands, and the sea
communication for foreign trade was restored. With the reopening
of commerce Girard formed a partnership with his brother, who was
now living at Le Cap, for the purpose of trading between Le Cap and
Philadelphia. Salt, syrup, sugar, and coffee were desired by the
Americans, and by their importation he saw a “big profit.”
Business prospered, and in 1779 Girard wrote to his father: “Tired
of the risks of a sailor’s life, I determined to settle ashore....
I have taken a wife who is without fortune, but whom I love and
with whom I am living very happily. By hard work I have finished
furnishing my house, increased my capital to thirty-five thousand and
hope to make good all my past losses.”
Peace came in 1783, and with it ports were reopened and trade
resumed. Convinced that by owning his own vessels his profits on
each trading voyage would be largely increased, Girard became the
sole owner of a small brig, the Two Brothers, which was built by him
for his particular purposes. It was the actual beginning of that
mercantile career which was to make him in time the richest merchant
in America. The Two Brothers sailed for Le Cap with a cargo of flour
and lumber. The return cargo consisted of molasses, sugar, coffee,
and soap. The profits each way were large, and a second voyage to Le
Cap was promptly undertaken.
Meanwhile, Girard, realizing the opportunities which the new Republic
promised, had become a citizen, taking the oath of allegiance at
Philadelphia on the twenty-seventh of October, 1778. Among the first
of the millions of old-world people who in the years which followed
were destined to renounce the oppressive institutions of their native
lands and become naturalized citizens of the free United States, it
is particularly interesting that Girard was born in a country which
likewise was soon to cast aside the rule of kings and establish the
institutions of a republic.
From now on Girard’s fortune seemed steadily to advance. In 1789
George Washington became the first President of the new Republic.
With the cessation of war at home and abroad, commerce was again
resumed, and an era of prosperity gave to such men as Stephen Girard
the opportunity to reap richly of the world’s commercial harvest.
Crop failures in France had created a demand for foreign wheat, and
to stimulate its importation the French Government offered a premium
to anyone importing it. It was an attractive speculation, and Girard,
with his eye ever scanning world opportunities while others passed
them by, saw his chance to turn an honest penny. Promptly his own
ships and other chartered vessels were filled with grain, and an
abundant profit was quickly realized.
In these early days, the yellow fever, now eradicated by modern
knowledge of sanitation, took each year its death-toll among the
inhabitants of southern countries, and from time to time extended far
beyond its normal field. Girard, and, in fact, most of the American
merchants of that day, had conducted a large business with San
Domingo, the principal trading centre of the West Indies. In 1791,
however, the large negro population of the island revolted, and fire,
slaughter, and plunder soon turned the prosperous community into a
wilderness. White refugees crowded every outgoing vessel and by the
hundreds began to pour into Philadelphia and other American seaboard
cities. “Take advantage of my brig Polly,” wrote Girard to a friend
on the unhappy island, “if she still be in the harbor, to come here
and enjoy the peace which our Republican Government, founded as it is
on the rights of man, assures to all its inhabitants.”
But with the refugees came also the dreaded plague, and baffling
the skill of the doctors, it spread through Philadelphia until the
streets were crowded with funerals and the church-bells seemed
continually to toll. There were few hospitals in those days, and the
Philadelphia hospital at Bush Hill was not only crowded far beyond
its capacity, but was in wretched condition, owing to the lack of
attendants. Girard was put on a committee, and that very evening
reported the immediate need of nurses and money. But Girard did not
stop with his duties as committeeman. Without hesitation, and totally
ignoring the probability of contracting the fever himself, he and a
fellow townsman, Peter Helm, assumed active control of the hospital,
and day and night, throughout the plague, toiled at this self-imposed
work of mercy among the sick and the dying.
Among the various accounts of the plague the following is of
particular interest in its mention of Girard: “Stephen Girard,
a French merchant long resident here, and Peter Helm, born here
of German parents, men whose names and services should never be
forgotten, had the humanity and courage constantly to attend the
hospital, and not only saw that the nurses did their duties, but they
actually performed many of the most dangerous, and at the same time
humiliating services for the sick with their own hands.”
When the plague was over, Girard returned to his business. In
February, 1793, France declared war on Great Britain, and immediately
British troops and ships seized the French cities in San Domingo.
Ships of war and privateers of both countries promptly swarmed
over the seas. Decrees were soon published by the nations at war,
forbidding neutral vessels to trade with enemy ports. The law
of nations was disregarded, and American ships were seized and
confiscated. Great Britain particularly ignored the rights of
American ship-owners, and thousands of dollars worth of American
ships and cargoes were soon in British hands. Two of Girard’s ships,
the Kitty and the Sally, were taken. Commerce was demoralized.
In retaliation against the outrages perpetrated by the British and
the French, a “non-intercourse bill” provided that after November 1,
1794, “all commercial intercourse between the citizens of the United
States and the subjects of the King of Great Britain should cease.”
The bill was lost in the Senate, but an embargo which closed all
American ports to foreign trade accomplished practically the same
end. In all, five ships belonging to Girard were now in enemy hands.
In October, 1801, after eight years of war, peace was concluded
between France and Great Britain, and in December the war which the
United States had been conducting against France was also ended. With
the return of peace came renewed commercial activity. Girard at once
availed himself of the opportunity, and soon his ships were engaged
in trade with the ports of France and Russia. But this revival of
commerce was of short duration, for the unsettled state of Europe
soon resulted in new blockades of ports, embargoes, and acts of
non-intercourse against the offending countries. Then, to complete
the disaster, in 1810 Napoleon annexed Holland to France and issued
a decree “by which American ships and cargoes, seized in the ports
of Holland, Spain, France, and Naples, to the value of ten million
dollars, were condemned and sold.” Five of Girard’s ships which had
sailed for northern ports were now seized and held by the Danes,
and it was many months before their release could be secured. Trade
with Europe was at an end; but despite the heavy losses which Girard
had suffered, he did not hesitate or allow himself to be mastered
by the situation. If Europe was closed, South America and the Far
East were open to him, and now his ships began new commerce with new
continents, and in December, 1810, the ship Montesquieu set sail for
Valparaiso and Canton.
During these years of commercial activity Girard had become a large
investor in real estate, and of his profits from his trading
ventures at sea he had in 1812 almost four hundred thousand dollars
invested in farm acres and lots and buildings in Philadelphia. In
1812 the United States declared war against Great Britain. Bad
feeling had long existed, due primarily to the disregard of the
British for the rights of American vessels. For a long time Great
Britain persisted in stopping our ships, taking American seamen out
of them and forcing them to serve on British vessels. It was more
than patriotism could bear, and the nation enthusiastically entered
the war with the cry of “Free Trade and Sailor’s Rights.” Forced
practically from the sea, Girard turned his great abilities to
finance and the service of his country.
Girard was now sixty-two years old, but age did not deter him from
a new enterprise. A bank had long been needed in Philadelphia, and
to take advantage of the opportunity, Girard established a banking
institution with a capital of over a million dollars, which was
called Stephen Girard’s Bank. The cost of the war which was being
fought with Great Britain was a severe strain on the finances of the
United States, and at the close of the year 1812 it became necessary
for the Treasury to borrow money or the nation would become bankrupt.
Sixteen million dollars was all that was required, but the loan was a
failure, and less than four millions was subscribed. In April a new
offering of the loan was prepared, but again the effort to float it
ended in failure. In all only $5,838,000 was subscribed. More than
ten million dollars must still be borrowed.
Now came an opportunity for Girard to repay to the United States
the debt of gratitude for all that his citizenship had brought him.
To the United States he owed his all, for in this free and fearless
country he had been enabled to amass his great fortune. With two
other men of means, Girard came forward and offered to subscribe for
the entire balance of the loan. The offer was promptly accepted, and
a situation of great embarrassment to the country was avoided.
With the defeat of Napoleon at Leipsic in 1813, and his abdication in
1814, Great Britain found herself free to conduct a more strenuous
attack on the United States, and for a time matters went badly
with the youthful nation. A British raid on the city of Washington
resulted in the burning of the Capitol, the President’s house, and
other public buildings; and this was followed in September by a raid
on Baltimore, which, however, resulted in failure. Great panic was
caused by these actions, and for a time banking was demoralized and
business practically suspended. But on Christmas Eve, 1814, a treaty
of peace was signed at Ghent, and once more Girard promptly resumed
his world-wide trading, and once more the Stars and Stripes blew free
from halyards.
Girard suffered two severe losses by reason of the war, in the loss
of his ship Good Friends and in a ransom of $180,000 which he was
required to pay for his ship Montesquieu and cargo, captured while
returning from Canton, China. But in spite of this, so greatly had
his wealth increased, that he now paid more than a hundredth part
of the total taxes of the city of Philadelphia and his commercial
capital was sufficient to enable him to sell goods on credit and to
carry on a maritime business throughout the world without aid of
discount. “All this,” he has stated, “do I owe principally to my
close attention to business, and to the resources which this fine
country affords to all active or industrious men.”
In the years which followed, Girard found declining profit in
European cargoes brought to Philadelphia, and in 1821 he began to
trade heavily with the Far East. Two of his ships, the Voltaire and
the Montesquieu, were wrecked during this period; but Girard was as
good a loser as a gainer, and pocketed his losses with small comment.
Out of his fleet only four ships remained. Girard was now an old man,
markets were bad owing to the panic in England and on the Continent,
and the prospect for continuous profitable trading seemed ominous. It
was only natural that he should turn from the sea.
Speculation in land had proved to be as fascinating as his
speculations in ships and cargoes. Girard began to buy land, and soon
his total holdings amounted in all to 200,370 acres. In March 1830
he purchased for $30,000 certain tracts of Pennsylvania coal lands
which have to-day a fabulous value. But the land which chiefly held
his interest was those few acres of his farm. “At my age the sole
amusement which I enjoy is to be in the country constantly busy in
attending to the work of the farm generally.” The peace and happiness
of this final episode made a happy ending of Girard’s long, useful,
and successful life.
“The accumulation of money interested him but little. He had now
entered on his eighty-first year. His will was made and his great
wealth dedicated to the good of posterity. He was under no incentive
to labor for its increase. Yet in his bank, in his counting-house, on
his farm, he continued to toil as of old from the sheer love of work.”
At the time of his death in 1831, Girard had for fifty-five years
been a resident of Philadelphia, and for practically his entire
mature life a citizen of the United States. His funeral was of
“immense extent”; the streets were thronged by people assembled to
pay “a last tribute of respect to a great public benefactor.”
The estate left by Girard amounted to almost seven million dollars,
an amount which, in consideration of the times, would compare with
the greatest fortunes of the present day. By the terms of his will,
although there were many large charitable bequests, the bulk of the
fortune was bequeathed to the city of Philadelphia, to be used in
building and maintaining a school “to provide for such a number of
poor male white orphan children ... a better education as well as
a more comfortable maintenance than they usually receive from the
application of the public funds.”
Certain other provisions have kept alive the memory of the testator’s
downrightness and individuality. In a paragraph of the will, Girard
enjoined and required that “no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister
of any sect whatsoever shall ever hold or exercise any station or
duty whatever in the said college, nor shall any such person ever
be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises
appropriated to the purposes of the said college. In making this
restriction, I do not mean to cast any reflection upon any sect or
person whatever; but as there is such a multitude of sects, and such
diversity of opinion among them, I desire to keep the tender minds of
the orphans, who are to derive advantage from this bequest, free from
the excitements which clashing doctrines and sectarian controversy
are apt to produce.”
Under the wise management of the trustees of the estate, the public
bequests of Girard can now be reckoned in millions. By the thrift,
daring, and vision of a poor French sailor lad a great city of a
mighty nation has received incalculable benefit throughout a century
past, and will receive increasing benefit for centuries to come.
Grasping eagerly the unlimited opportunities of the Republic where
all men stand sure-footed in the equal race for the highest rewards
that civilization can bestow, he seized for himself the honors of
high citizenship, the satisfaction of sincere philanthropy, and the
pleasures that the possession of vast wealth profitably employed can
bring.
To every boy of foreign birth the United States to-day holds equal
promise. Not in mass movements, where progress is measured in the
terms of the slowest, is the reward to be achieved. Only by effort
honestly and sincerely given, in a land where opportunity is free to
all, can the heights be reached. America, oldest of republics, cradle
of liberty, extends its welcome to the youth that is and is to come,
as its welcome has been extended to the youth of generations past.
II
JOHN ERICSSON
_Born in Nordmark, Sweden, 1803_
_Died in New York City, 1889_
High up in the dark forests of Wermland, an ancient division of
Sweden, where deep cold lakes feed the great rivers with clear water
and send them down the mountains to the sea, was born, in the year
1803, a baby, John Ericsson, who in the years that followed made for
himself a name which brought glory to the United States, the land of
his adoption, and undying fame to the country of his birth.
There were few comforts or pleasures waiting to welcome young
Ericsson into the world. The little village where he was born rested
high in the mountains within six degrees of the Arctic Circle. All
around were dark and gloomy forests, filled with strange legends and
tales of ancient heroes, handed down from grandfather to father and
from father to son. The hard thin soil of the mountains was unfit
for cultivation, and it was difficult for the people of the forest
villages to live on the poor crops which they produced in the few
acres hewn from the forests.
But down beneath the tree-roots, deep-lying in the mountain-sides,
were vast deposits of iron ore, renowned throughout the world as the
material of the finest cutlery. So the deep iron-mines gave to the
inhabitants of these mountain villages a hard-earned living which
tempered their own spirits with that same quality which the Swedish
iron developed in the blade of steel.
Olaf Ericsson, the father of John, was part owner of a small
iron-mine and also superintendent of an iron-works, and so the small
boy, with few playmates and none of the school advantages of the
American lad of the present day, found his play and early education
in the machinery at the mine and foundry. He was an industrious boy,
and he was quick to discover the interest and inspiration of the
things which surrounded him. All day, with pieces of paper, a pencil,
and some drawing-tools which he had made for himself, he studied
the principles of the machines and drew clear designs of them to
illustrate their construction.
When John was eleven years old, his father left the mining village
of Langbanshyttan and took with him his wife and his three children:
John, Nils, a year older than John, and a sister, the oldest of the
three. For many years the Swedish Government had considered the
building of a great ship-canal which would open navigation across the
Swedish peninsular, and it was as foreman of this project that Olaf
Ericsson settled his family at Forsvik, a hundred miles from the old
mountain home.
[Illustration: J. Ericsson (signature)]
The mechanical features of this great engineering work filled
young Ericsson with wonder and enthusiasm, and in his eagerness to
obtain knowledge, in order that he too might participate, he sought
information and education from everyone who had the time and
inclination to help him. From a boarder in his father’s household
John learned to draw maps and plans with skill and accuracy. A
friendly professor aided his architectural drawing, and one winter he
studied chemistry and learned to make his own inks and colors with
a few pennies’ worth of chemicals bought from the town druggist. In
these years he also learned the French language, Latin, and grammar;
a fine foundation which enabled him in after years to express himself
in speech and writing with a clearness and exactness that proved of
immeasurable assistance to him.
At the age of twelve the boy had so progressed in his studies that
he was commissioned to make some drawings for the canal company; and
in the following year he became assistant leveler, and a year later,
leveler. In this work he was required to make plans and calculations
for the canal, and had a monthly salary, quarters, and traveling
expenses. Undoubtedly John possessed unusual ability, but this
extraordinary promotion of so young a boy must in large measure have
been the result of his conscientious devotion to his studies and his
enthusiasm and ambition in his work.
In his leisure hours the boy found pleasure in building small working
models of machinery, and among these was a model of a saw-mill
which many years later he counted as the first in the long list of
celebrated inventions which had brought him fame and prosperity.
This model was built entirely of wood, with the exception of the
band-saw, which was filed out by hand from a broken watch-spring and
was operated by a crank cast from an old tin spoon. A cord served for
the driving-band. No detail was omitted, and when water was turned
into the miniature waterwheel, the machinery operated perfectly.
With similar ingenuity he made for himself draughtsman’s compasses,
from birchwood and broken needles; and from the hairs in an old fur
garment of his mother’s he laboriously fashioned brushes with which
to apply colors, also of his own making, to his drawings.
But now the father’s health broke beneath the weight of his work; the
small earnings which supported the family dwindled, and each year
that went by gave to the growing boys added responsibilities. In 1820
John realized that the time had come for him to take his own path and
begin actively to build for his future. His father had died in the
previous year and his mother and sister were supporting themselves by
taking as boarders the workers on the canal. It was necessary that he
also should contribute to their comfort.
Realizing the physical and moral value of military training, young
Ericsson joined the Swedish army. He was now seventeen, a fine
powerful fellow with smooth active muscles, a clear eye, and a
well-trained brain. When he was eighteen there were few, if any, of
his fellows who could match him in feats of strength or agility, and
on one occasion he is said to have lifted a cannon weighing over six
hundred pounds.
Advancement came rapidly, and he was soon recognized as an expert
artillery draughtsman and an expert in the science of artillery, a
branch of the service in which he had begun to specialize. It will be
interesting to see how this early army experience gave to Ericsson
knowledge which in later life brought him his greatest fame and
enabled him to turn the tide of history and hold nations attentive
before his words.
The stirring mind of the young man now yearned for a wider horizon
than the Swedish army afforded, and for a greater opportunity
than his own country presented. For several years he had been
experimenting with a new type of engine by which he hoped to obtain
greater horse-power with economy of fuel. England seemed to offer
the opportunity, and in 1826 he left his native land and took up his
residence in London.
Ericsson went to England at the opening of an engineering era. The
employment of steam as a motive power was in its infancy. Travel by
sea was entirely by ships; on land the stage-coach and canal-boat
furnished the only means of transportation. The steam-engine was an
undeveloped toy of science. Electricity in its industrial application
was unknown.
Forming a business partnership with an English machine manufacturer,
John Braithwaite, under the firm name of Ericsson and Braithwaite,
Ericsson immediately turned his tremendous faculties to various
engineering improvements and inventions. First a gas-engine
occupied his interest; then he turned to his former conception of
a “flame-engine,” in which, by putting the actual fire directly
under the piston, the expanding air would supply the motor power. In
1828 he built and put into operation in a tin-mine in Cornwall a
water-pump driven by compressed air—an invention on which he later
based his claim as inventor of a machine utilizing compressed air for
transmitting power.
It was in the year 1819 that the Atlantic was for the first time
crossed by a steam vessel, the United States ship Savannah, and this
revolutionizing event stimulated Ericsson to new endeavors. In the
months following he produced a number of important improvements by
which smaller and lighter boilers were made possible by increasing
the heat, and hence the power, of the fire by forced draught,
as well as many other radical improvements in steam-engines and
boiler-construction. Of these he claims particularly the credit of
the invention of “surface condensation applied to steam navigation.”
The first steam fire-engine—an apparatus which to-day constitutes
perhaps the most important feature of a city’s fire department—was
invented and built by Ericsson in 1829. Previously, and as a matter
of fact for years afterward, hand-operated engines, manned by crews
of volunteer firemen, fought the fires which so frequently destroyed
vast sections of the wood-constructed cities of those early days.
It is not surprising that this valuable invention did not receive
immediate recognition, for inventors rarely obtain such recognition
from the people whom their inventions benefit. In fact, Ericsson’s
portable steam fire-engine was actually condemned as an impracticable
contrivance that could serve no useful purpose.
To-day we travel thousands of miles by railroad; a hundred years ago
our great-great-grandfathers traveled by horse-drawn coaches. Where
we may now speed a mile a minute behind a giant steam locomotive,
they were content with what seemed to them the tremendous speed of
eleven miles an hour. But all things change. There are always leaders
in the world’s progress. Of these leaders was John Ericsson. Travel
had been a luxury of the rich; the invention of the steam locomotive
made fast and economical travel possible to the poor as well.
In 1829 a prize of two thousand five hundred dollars was offered for
the best steam locomotive which could draw a weight of twenty tons at
the rate of ten miles an hour. Ericsson had never built a locomotive,
but he entered the contest. His greatest competitor was George
Stephenson, who for several years had built small locomotives for use
in coal mines.
On the great day of the trial thousands of people thronged the track
to witness the novel sight. Never in the world’s history had there
been a public experiment so momentous, unless we except the journey
of the American inventor’s steamship, the Clermont, on her first
historic progress up the Hudson River.
The locomotive entered in the contest by Stephenson was named the
Rocket, a strong well-built engine that ultimately was awarded the
prize. But although he was not the winner in this great competition,
to Ericsson belongs great credit, for his locomotive, the Novelty,
passed the Rocket at the amazing speed, for those days, of thirty
miles an hour, and failed to win the prize only because of certain
defects in its construction which caused it to break down before the
goal was reached.
Ericsson was twenty-six years old when he built the Novelty. Already
he had contributed many useful inventions to the world. But his
greatest triumphs were still to come. He had been beaten fairly and
squarely by Stephenson, but his was not the spirit that is easily
subdued. Ericsson, like the hero of Greek mythology, rose the
stronger each time an adversary cast him to the earth.
In 1836 he married a nineteen-year-old English girl, Amelia Byam,
granddaughter of Sir Charles Byam, some time British Commissioner for
Antigua.
For a short time he devoted himself to the perfection of a hot-air
engine, and a sounding device by which ships might ascertain the
depth of the water over which they were passing. Then he turned to
a new activity. The result was revolutionary. What he had almost
accomplished in the field of land-transportation with the Novelty,
he now actually achieved in steam-navigation on the sea. To Ericsson
should be credited the perfection and application of the screw for
the propulsion of steam-driven vessels.
Up to the dawn of the nineteenth century the sailing-ship had
ruled the seas. And even until the middle of that century the fast
clippers, with their towers of widespread canvas, had held supreme
domination over the world’s waterways. But in the year 1835 Ericsson
designed a rotary propeller driven by a steam-engine, which marked
the beginning of the end of sailing days. The steam-engine, first
placed in a ship by Robert Fulton, the American inventor, was no
novelty, but it had been used only to propel vessels by means of
paddle-wheels attached to each side of the vessels, huge cumbersome
contrivances, which were easily damaged by heavy seas and which on
ships of war afforded easy targets for the enemy.
The screw of Ericsson’s was designed to operate underneath the stern
of the vessel, under water and just forward of the rudder, exactly
as it is placed to-day. To test this new invention Ericsson built a
small vessel, the Francis B. Ogden, which was launched in the Thames
River in the spring of 1837. The experiment was a great success and
a speed of over ten miles an hour was attained, to the wonder of the
stolid English boatmen who watched in amazement this strange ship
move rapidly through the water with no visible means of propulsion.
Later in the summer Ericsson invited the Lords of the British
Admiralty to inspect his steamship, and even conducted them on a
trial trip on the Thames; but the amazing performance of the Ogden
created but little interest in the minds of the British officials,
who dismissed the affair as an “interesting experiment.”
But Ericsson had a friend who stood him in good stead. This friend
was an American, Francis B. Ogden, our counsul at Liverpool, after
whom Ericsson’s first vessel was named. Ogden was not an engineer,
but he recognized in the Swedish inventor a man of sincerity and
genius, and to his friendship Ericsson owed much in the way of advice
and assistance.
In 1838 Ericsson built and launched a larger steamship, the Robert
F. Stockton which sailed from Gravesend, England, on April 13,
1839, and made a successful passage to New York City, the first
screw-driven steamship ever to cross the Atlantic. As the result of
this remarkable achievement Ericsson was assured that the government
of the United States would try out his invention on a large scale,
and persuaded him to go to America.
Ericsson was not reluctant. For years he had struggled under the
old-world conservatism. With his energy and ambition, he realized
that only in the great land of opportunity beyond the sea could lie
his hope of recognition. In November, 1839, he sailed for the United
States.
There were no steam vessels in our navy when Ericsson reached our
shores, and it was not until 1842 that the building of the Princeton
gave him the opportunity to display his great invention. The
Princeton was a small iron warship of six hundred tons, and to her
construction Ericsson contributed not only his screw-propeller, but
also a new construction for the gun-carriage, and, of even greater
importance, a cannon reinforced by steel hoops shrunk on to the
breech of the gun. This reinforcing of the breech of a cannon may be
said to have established the recognized construction of the modern
high-power naval guns of the present day.
The Princeton marked a new advance in naval construction. Her speed,
the location of her machinery below the water-line and hence out of
danger from an enemy’s guns, her novel screw-propulsion, and her
powerful armament made her the centre, not only of national, but of
world interest.
For a number of years following, Ericsson continued his development
of the science of naval engineering, and in 1843 applied for the
first time twin-screw engines to the steamship Marmora. During these
years recognition began to bring to the great inventor the financial
rewards which he had long deserved. In the year 1844 his receipts
from his inventions and contracts amounted to almost $40,000, and the
following year he received almost $85,000. But the road to wealth and
glory contains many obstacles, and the successes that crowned the
work of these few years were in a large measure balanced by reverses,
although in the end triumph out-balanced all.
For several years Ericsson devoted his energies to the perfection
of a model type of warship, but his untiring efforts received scant
recognition from the government. October 28, 1848, was, however, a
day memorable, not only in the life of Ericsson, but in the history
of the United States, for on that day he became a naturalized
citizen. Born in a foreign land, a sojourner in European countries,
it was but natural that the Swedish genius should find in this young
nation of opportunity the field which he needed for the expression
of his wonderful faculties. By his naturalization, Ericsson brought
to the United States the fine inheritance of an ancient nation, and
infused into the blood of the new republic additional strength and
virility. Save for the native Indian, there is no true American;
but in the mingled blood of the people of many lands may be found
to-day a race that combines the best of the nations of the earth, a
composite people, free, prosperous, and masters of their own glorious
destiny.
For many years Ericsson had held faith in the theory of a hot-air
engine in which heated air would produce the effect of steam, but
with greater economy. With characteristic confidence he carried his
experiments to their completion, and expended practically his entire
capital on the necessary models and machines which the working-out of
his plans required. Success crowned his efforts, and the hot-air, or
caloric, engine was generally conceded to be a success.
As the result of these experiments a number of New York capitalists
supplied the necessary money to construct a large steamship, the
paddle-wheels of which were operated by caloric engines designed by
Ericsson. The vessel was named after the inventor and was a most
novel and radical departure from any vessel up to that time designed.
Her cost exceeded half a million dollars: an investment which showed
the high esteem in which her designer was held. The Ericsson was
launched in September, 1852, and made her trial trip on January 4,
1853. Never had so strong or fine a ship been built; the newspapers
of the day were filled with praise, and her designer received from
every quarter the most extravagant congratulations for the mechanical
marvel which he had created.
But unexpected disaster destroyed in a few seconds the product of
these months of thought and energy. Within a few weeks of her
launching the Ericsson encountered a tornado, and capsized and sank
a few miles off New York Light. Although she was believed by many to
mark the end of the use of steam-power and the beginning of a new era
of hot-air dynamics, it is now recognized that this invention reached
its maximum development in the Ericsson; and it is in connection
with a later and far greater invention that history has accorded
recognition to the designer’s great mechanical genius.
Long before Ericsson left England he had thought out the plans for
a strange kind of vessel, protected with iron, which would be able
to fight and defeat any warship of any size. In 1854, the year in
which he perfected the plan for his new type of warship, the navies
of all the great nations were composed, in large part, of huge wooden
vessels, usually sailing-ships, but a few combining sails and steam.
For a number of years the use of iron-plating, or armor, on the sides
of battleships had been discussed, and in 1845 R. L. Stevens, an
American engineer, actually began the construction of a vessel, or
“floating battery,” encased in metal.
To France however, probably belongs the credit for the construction
of the first ironclads, consisting of these floating batteries, the
Lave, Devastation, and Tonnante, protected by 4.25-inch iron plates,
which were used during the Crimean War. The following year France
began the construction of four ironclad steam frigates, and England
immediately followed, with the construction of a number of similar
vessels.
But the warship of John Ericsson in no way resembled the huge
ironclads of France or England. With characteristic disregard for
precedent he designed a ship which rested so low in the water that
only about three feet of its sides would be exposed. The sides and
deck were protected by heavy plates of iron, and in the centre of the
deck was a circular heavily armored turret which revolved in either
direction and contained powerful guns. These vessels, or monitors, as
Ericsson named them, were to be propelled by steam. The particular
advantages of the type were that so little of the craft showed above
the water that it afforded an exceedingly small target to an enemy;
that the heavy plating protected it from hostile shot, and the
revolving target enabled the crew to fire in any direction without
manœuvring the vessel, while such shot as might strike the turret
would glance harmlessly from its circular side.
During the Crimean War Ericsson offered the plans for this remarkable
vessel to the French Emperor; but they were politely declined as
impractical in much the same way in which, some years earlier, the
British Admiralty had declined to consider the screw-propeller as
little more than an amusing experiment.
When war was declared in 1861 between the Northern States and the
Confederate States of the South, Ericsson was fifty-eight years old.
In this national calamity in which brother was armed against brother,
and the fate of the country seemed hanging by a thread, Ericsson
unhesitatingly cast himself with those who sought the preservation
of the Union and the abolition of slavery from the United States.
Never before had his adopted country needed so vitally his tremendous
services. With superb health derived from a normal life of
conservative habits, and a brain trained by long years of engineering
experiment, Ericsson found himself ready and able to meet the call
for his greatest service to the nation.
The United States navy at the beginning of the war was composed
entirely of wooden vessels. Early in 1861 the Confederates began the
construction of a floating battery heavily armored with iron. For
this purpose the old United States frigate Merrimac, which had been
burned and sunk in the Norfolk Navy Yard, was raised, and the work of
encasing her with armor plates was begun.
Meanwhile, in the North, Congress had called for proposals for
ironclad steam vessels, and less than a month later, Ericsson
addressed to President Lincoln a letter in which he offered to submit
the plans of a monitor, and described the advantages of its unique
design. On September 13, Ericsson went to Washington and personally
laid before the Navy Department his plans and received a contract to
proceed with the construction of the Monitor.
The keel was laid on October 25, and on January 30, she slid down
the ways into the water. A month later she was commissioned. The
Monitor was 172 feet in length and displaced 776 tons. In the centre
of her low flat deck was the revolving turret, twenty feet in
diameter, protected by eight inches of iron-plating. Two heavy guns
were mounted in the turret. The vessel was operated entirely by
steam-engines, placed well below the water-line, which propelled a
screw beneath the overhanging stern.
Rushed to completion in the brief period of three months, the Monitor
was barely commissioned in time to render, at Hampton Roads, the
tremendous service which in a few brief hours revolutionized naval
warfare, made obsolete the navies of the world, rescued the Union
navy from crushing disaster, and immortalized the name of John
Ericsson, her designer and constructor.
The Monitor had been intended to serve with Admiral Farragut’s fleet
at New Orleans, but a crisis nearer at hand made a sudden change of
plans necessary. The Monitor left New York on the afternoon of March
6, 1862, under command of Lieutenant John L. Worden, U.S.N., and
arrived at Hampton Roads on the evening of March 8, after a stormy
passage.
Meanwhile the armored Confederate ram Merrimac had created havoc
with the great wooden warships of the Federal navy. On the seventh,
the Merrimac had rammed and sunk the frigate Cumberland, and then
destroyed the Congress, vessels powerless to inflict injury on the
iron sides of the Confederate ram. The tall frigates, St. Lawrence,
Roanoke, and Minnesota, powerless to resist or to escape, awaited
their inevitable destruction on the following day.
But on that eventful morning, as the Merrimac steamed out into the
stream to complete her work, which would break the blockade the
Federal forces had established, the Monitor glided out from under
the stern of the Minnesota, looking for all the world like “a
barrel-head afloat with a cheese-box on top of it.”
For four hours these two strange vessels fought this greatest duel
of naval history, which, on the ships and the shores, was watched by
the anxious eyes of soldiers and sailors of North and South to whom
the outcome was of such tremendous import. Manœuvring like boxers,
the two vessels circled each other, black smoke pouring from their
low funnels and the red flame of the great guns spurting from the
gun-ports. As she had rammed the Cumberland, so did the Merrimac
endeavor to crush the Monitor with her ram; but the Monitor either
slipped past her heavier and more ungainly adversary or allowed the
Merrimac to push her aside. Round and round the circular turret
swung, turning away in order to load the two guns which protruded,
and then swinging back to deliver a volley of metal against the
plated sloping side of the Merrimac.
Unable to damage the Monitor and herself severely pounded by the
forty-one shots which the Monitor had fired, the Merrimac finally
withdrew, leaving the strange warship of the Swedish-American
inventor the victor. The Minnesota, the Roanoke, and the St. Lawrence
were saved. The blockade remained unbroken.
In the words of a Confederate who witnessed the battle, “The Monitor
was by immense odds the most formidable vessel of war on this planet.”
During the following years of the war, Ericsson devoted his vast
energies to the service of his country, and at great financial loss
and immeasurable personal sacrifice constructed a large number of
vessels of the Monitor type for the navy.
With the close of the war Ericsson continued the marvelous series of
inventions which he had given to the world. For a number of years he
gave his best thought to the building and mounting of heavy guns;
and later he turned his energies to the construction of a practical
submarine torpedo. In these later experiments he personally invested
over a hundred thousand dollars.
From the United States and foreign countries came recognition of
his services to the world. In 1866 the Department of State offered
him the appointment of Commissioner to the Universal Exposition at
Paris. The previous year he had received a resolution of thanks from
the Swedish Parliament. Among other honors conferred upon him were
his election to the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, honorary
memberships in the Royal Military Academy of Science of Stockholm and
the Royal Military Academy of Sweden, a joint resolution of thanks
from the United States Congress, a resolution from the State of New
York, the Rumford gold and silver medals, and a gold medal from the
Society of Iron Masters of Sweden. In 1863 he received the honorary
degree of LL.D. from Wesleyan University; and later he was made a
Knight Commander with the Grand Cross of the order of the North Star
and a Commander of St. Olaf, two Swedish honors. In later years came
many other distinctions, not only from the United States and Sweden,
but from Denmark, Spain, and Austria.
In these later years came also many demands on Ericsson’s generosity,
and to the near members of his family, and even to his most distant
relatives, he invariably responded with a substantial gift. Realizing
the tremendous value of education, he gave freely when money was
needed to provide schooling for the children of members of his family
whom he had never seen. But these benefactions to relatives and
friends were invariably made only when Ericsson believed in the true
need and the sincerity of the request. Out of the considerable income
which came to him from his inventions in later years he gave also
with a liberal hand whenever public or private distress was brought
to his attention.
Ericsson’s own wants were few. His temperate habits, his love of
physical exercise, and his simple tastes made but slender demands on
his income. Vigorous by inheritance, and possessing a fine physique
from his early activities, he preserved his splendid vigor throughout
his long life. Rarely has been given to the world a finer example of
health and character contributing to a career of splendid usefulness.
On the eighth of March, 1889, John Ericsson died in his New York
house, where for a quarter of a century he had lived his active and
solitary existence. The significance of his death was recognized,
not only by his native Sweden and the United States, the land of his
adoption, but by the entire civilized world, in which his inventions
had brought such revolutionizing changes. But the story of his
achievements can never die, and in the history of his useful life
is an inspiration to every succeeding generation to whom the United
States unfolds an ever-increasing opportunity.
III
LOUIS AGASSIZ
_Born in Motier, Switzerland, 1807_
_Died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1873_
When men first received the names which they have handed down through
succeeding generations there was undoubtedly an appropriate reason
for the name which each man bore. The Smiths quite probably worked
with iron, the Carpenters labored with saw and hammer, and the son of
John became Johnson to his friends. But centuries have passed, and it
rarely happens to-day that a man’s name describes his vocation or his
characteristics.
Occasionally, however, there is an exception, and the name of Agassiz
is one of these. Lover of nature, and particularly of the living
things which have for hundreds of thousands of years inhabited the
earth, Louis Agassiz bore a name that suggested his ruling interests;
for Agassiz, or Aigasse as it was written in old French, is the name
of the magpie, a lovable, friendly bird that was known to every
peasant in the beautiful countryside of La Sarraz.
Louis Agassiz was a naturalist and a geologist. Wise in all
departments of these wide fields of nature study, and the leading
teacher in his time, he will always be remembered for his discoveries
in two particular departments of his great subject. Agassiz was an
ichthyologist and a palæontologist. These are hard Latin names, but
they are easily understood, for an ichthyologist is a man who studies
fishes, and a palæontologist is one who is a student of the ancient
life of the globe as it may be seen in the fossil remains deep buried
in the earth. Moreover, to the science of geology Agassiz contributed
a great discovery which revolutionized the thought of scientists of
his day; for it was he who proved beyond all doubt that at one time,
far back in the world’s history, great moving glaciers covered a huge
part of the earth’s surface, and where now the summer sunshine warms
green fields, at one time, in an arctic temperature, these same lands
were deep buried under grinding, creeping fields of ice.
Not far from Lake Neuchâtel, in western Switzerland, is the little
village of Motier, a place so small that it is hard to find it on the
maps of ordinary atlases. Below the village the blue water of Lake
Morat gleams like a bit of sky in the green of hills and fields, and
beyond, like a blue wall against the sky, the Bernese Alps look down
over the ancient country.
Here on May 28, 1807, was born Jean Louis Rudolph Agassiz. His father
was a clergyman and his mother the daughter of a physician, and the
boy inherited from them a love of study and a delight in teaching
which always distinguished him. From the beautiful country of his
birth came also an inheritance of nature that kept him throughout his
long life always a boy at heart.
The lakes of Switzerland are among the oldest dwelling-places of
mankind since human life began. Beneath the waters of Lake Morat
are still found traces of an ancient race that once lived there in
huts built over the water; still may be seen, far down in the blue
deeps, the earthen vessels which, perhaps, fell from their dwellings;
occasionally are found the stumps of piles on which their houses
rested. They were a water-loving people, and Agassiz, born on the
shores of the same lake as this ancient people, found in the water a
natural and congenial element.
He was a normal, wholesome boy, but from the very first his love of
nature displayed itself at every turn. He delighted in birds and
animals and insects, and he was constantly scouring the vineyard-clad
hillsides and the woods and meadows for new specimens. But it was
on the waters of the lakes and in their cold clear depths that his
insatiate curiosity found its greatest gratification. He was a
skilful fisherman and he soon learned the haunts and habits of every
kind of fish that dwelt there. With his brother Auguste, the bright
summer days fled past in one long excursion. Like the fish which they
hunted, the boys found in the lakes a friendly element. They were
splendid swimmers, so skilled that they would often abandon entirely
the hook and line, and, diving swiftly into the water, catch the
gliding fish in their hands.
Like all boys who live in the country, Louis had made collections
of every kind, and in the garden near the house he kept constantly
increasing families of rabbits, field-mice, guinea-pigs, and birds.
These were not merely pets which he loved and cared for; even in his
youthful eyes they seemed to have a deeper significance, for he
studied them and observed their habits in a way that gave him a basis
for the scientific observations of his later life.
It was natural that such a boy should be fearless, and in this
respect Louis was far above the average. Strong, alert, and
resourceful, he was a splendid swimmer and a strong skater. Many are
the tales of boyish fearlessness that are told about him, tales of
boating exploits, of long excursions, and particularly of how once he
made a bridge of his body across a deep fissure in the ice too wide
to jump, that his brother Auguste might creep across.
When he was ten years old, his active schooling began. In the nearby
town of Bienne was a public school for boys. The rules were strict
and the hours long, for the boys were required to study for nine
hours every day. But the father had given Louis a good grounding
in the elements of education, and this, combined with his natural
aptitude, gave him an advantage over his fellow students.
Vacations, however, were as welcome to Louis and his brother as they
are to boys of the present day; and long before dawn on the first
day of each vacation, the two boys would be up and homeward bound,
swinging along the twenty miles of country road which lay between
Bienne and Motier. These were happy days, for although the Agassiz
family had but the very small income which the office of a country
minister afforded, there was a wealth of good fun and love and
wholesome out-of-door happiness in the lives of the young people who
made merry in the little town.
Four years were spent at the school at Bienne, and as the end of
the fourth year neared, Louis, although only fourteen years old,
announced to his parents his desire to become an author. “I wish to
advance in the sciences,” he wrote his father. “I have resolved to
become a man of letters.” And then he expressed his hope that he
might be permitted, after spending a year and a half in commerce at
Neuchâtel, to pass four years at a university in Germany, and finally
finish his studies at Paris. “Then, at the age of twenty-five,” he
concluded, “I could begin to write.” Mature ambitions these, for a
boy of fourteen years!
It was fortunate that the elder Agassiz recognized in the boy those
qualities which were uppermost, and encouraged his studious desires.
The year and a half of business training was abandoned, and in
its place Louis was sent for two years of additional study at the
College of Lausanne. Already he had felt the charm of study, and
his boyish pastimes had now become studious investigations which
absorbed his interest and energy. His work was as orderly as his
mind; his notebooks, written with remarkable neatness in a small
fine handwriting, are excellent examples of clear classification of
whatever branch of study he undertook. Everything was arranged and
classified; subjects were clearly separated and subdivided under
marked headings; nothing was begun that was not completed in every
detail.
At Lausanne, Agassiz had access to the first natural history
collection that he had ever seen; and there also he found friends who
sympathized with his favorite tastes. While he was at Lausanne, it
was decided that he should study medicine, a profession which would
meet his natural inclinations and at the same time ultimately yield
him the income necessary for his support.
Accordingly, during his seventeenth year, Louis entered the medical
school at Zürich. Here he found still more congenial surroundings;
for among the faculty of the university were men of reputation in the
particular branches of natural history which most deeply interested
him. Under the professor of natural history the study of ornithology
was opened to him. Here also the sciences of zoölogy and geology were
taught, and Louis eagerly enrolled in the classes that were held in
these subjects.
In 1826, after two years at Zürich, Louis entered the great German
University of Heidelberg, and there his true university life began.
The four years that he passed there were among the most important
years of his entire life. They were years of hard conscientious
study, combined with wholesome recreation. “First at work, and
first at play,” was his motto. Here he made friendships that were
tense and enduring. Two fellow students, Braun and Schimper, became
particularly his intimates, and with Agassiz formed a trio which
their fellow students called “the Little Academy.”
It was an ambitious atmosphere, and the friendships which were
formed were based on a love of intellectual pleasures. There was
also the vivid vital student life beyond the classrooms; there were
long excursions on foot in vacation times; there were duels and
love-affairs, and there were boisterous evenings thick with tobacco
smoke. Agassiz was a powerful gymnast and an expert fencer. There
was nothing in the student life that was good in which he did not
participate.
Of the many friendships which his open and affectionate nature so
easily formed, his friendship with Alexander Braun was deepest and
most lasting. Soon he began to visit Braun at his home in Carlsruhe,
where he met his friend’s two talented sisters, one of whom was later
to become his wife. And it was here, in the spring of 1827, that
the friendly Braun family nursed him back to health after a serious
attack of typhoid fever.
The earnestness of these young men is perhaps best described by
Agassiz himself. “When our lectures are over, we meet in the evening
at Braun’s room or mine, with three or four intimate acquaintances,
and talk of scientific matters, each one in his turn presenting a
subject which is first developed by him and then discussed by all.
These exercises are very instructive. As my share, I have begun to
give a course of natural history, or rather of pure zoölogy. Braun
talks to us of botany; and another of our company, Mahir, teaches us
mathematics and physics in his turn; Schimper will be our professor
of philosophy. Thus we shall form a little university, instructing
one another, and at the same time learning what we teach more
thoroughly, because we shall be obliged to demonstrate it.”
From Heidelberg the three companions now transferred their studies
to the new University of Munich, where a far more stimulating
intellectual life awaited them. Here were some of the most celebrated
teachers of the day, and “the city teemed with resources for the
student in arts, letters, philosophy, and science.” A fine spirit
existed between students and professors, and there was constant
opportunity, not only in the classrooms, but beyond their walls, for
the earnest young men to draw on the wells of information which their
brilliant instructors freely afforded them.
With an allowance of only $250 a year, Agassiz’s life was necessarily
simple and severe. But the three companions soon found that their
humble rooms had become the meeting-place of the most brilliant
men in the University. Students and even professors crowded their
simple living quarters, and naturalists of renown came to visit these
extraordinary young men. “Someone was always coming or going; the
half-dozen chairs were covered with books, piled one upon another—the
bed, also, was used as a seat, and as a receptacle for specimens,
drawings and papers.” Specimens of various sorts decorated the walls.
In Agassiz’s own room were several hundred fish, “shut up in a wooden
tub with a cover and in various big glass jars. A live gudgeon with
beautiful stripes is wriggling in his wash-bowl, and he has adorned
his table with monkeys.”
During their vacations the young men made expeditions to see such
museums as were within reach, and to visit any scientific men to
whom they could obtain an introduction. All of southern Germany was
included in their rambles, and their wanderings carried them even
into explorations of extensive tracts of the Alps.
But although Agassiz had come to Munich for the special purpose of
taking the degree of doctor of medicine, his studies soon drifted
from those of a medical student to the studies of a true naturalist.
He had gone to Heidelberg “with a strong taste for natural history;
he left Munich devoted heart and soul to science.” Under these
circumstances it was only natural that his first degree should be
that of doctor of philosophy; but a year later, to fulfill the
desires of his parents, he received the degree of doctor of medicine
and surgery.
Up to this time Agassiz had paid no particular attention to the
study of ichthyology, which was later to become the great occupation
of his life; but in 1829 he was unexpectedly given the opportunity
to prepare a history of the fresh-water fishes of Brazil, from a
collection which had been made by a celebrated scientist who had died
before he could prepare the report covering the collection. Agassiz
threw himself enthusiastically into the work of describing and
figuring these Brazilian fishes, and in 1829 the work was completed
and published with the name of the youthful author on the title-page.
His life-work was begun.
It was at this time that he wrote to his father: “I wish it may be
said of Louis Agassiz that he was the first naturalist of his time, a
good citizen, and a good son, beloved by those who know him.”
In the autumn of 1830 Agassiz left Munich, and after a short visit
in Vienna, where he found himself “received as a scientific man
for whom no letters of recommendation were necessary,” he returned
to Switzerland and the welcome of his proud parents. But it was
hard to adjust himself to the quiet village by Lake Morat, and,
although money was difficult to secure, a visit to Paris was finally
made possible through the generosity of a friend of the family.
Here Agassiz formed important friendships with two of the greatest
scientists of the age: Cuvier, the leading French zoölogist, and
Alexander von Humboldt, the leader of the scientific world.
The years that immediately followed were filled with scientific
progress. The “Brazilian Fishes” had determined Agassiz’s specialty,
and the reputation of the book led him to plan a history of the
fresh-water fishes of Central Europe, including a natural history
of fossil fishes. It was an enormous undertaking, for palæontology
was a new science, involving the study of fossil specimens scattered
through the museums of Europe. But Agassiz foresaw only the value
which science would place on such a work, and the five volumes were
finally published by him, at intervals, from 1833 to 1843.
Life in Paris soon proved difficult for the young scientist, and
his poverty was particularly noticeable, for here there was wealth
and position even among scientific men. He had only forty dollars a
month, and his clothing had become so worn that it was not possible
for him to accept invitations from well-to-do friends. The position
of professor of natural history at Neuchâtel was offered him, and,
although the salary was only $400 a year, it seemed wise to accept.
His acceptance, and with it the close of his year in Paris, marks the
end of his boyhood and student days. A new period awaited him.
The college of Neuchâtel was small and unimportant. The chair of
natural history was new, and there was no scientific apparatus,
museum, or lecture-room. But this mattered little to the young
professor. Soon after his arrival he founded a Natural History
Society among the leading citizens of the town; his lectures were
given in the city hall, and his own collection formed the nucleus of
a natural history museum.
As in college, so in the quiet Swiss village, Agassiz soon gathered
about him a group of scientific men as his students and assistants,
many of whom in later life became themselves naturalists of
reputation. It was a “scientific factory” of which Agassiz was the
mainspring. He was poor, but somehow he managed to go on, supporting
many of his staff in his own house, printing and lithographing his
own publications, and supporting his own family as well, for his
marriage had now brought additional responsibilities upon his broad
shoulders. It was an unstable basis, but in one way or another
Agassiz found the means to proceed. Money was but the means to an
end, never the end itself. “I cannot spend my time in making money!”
he once said when a profitable business offer was made to him. The
remark expressed clearly his firm devotion to his chosen profession.
It was during this period of his life that Agassiz added to
scientific knowledge the proof that at some remote time in the
earth’s existence vast glaciers, moving fields of ice miles in area
and often hundreds of feet in thickness, had played a part in the
earth’s formation almost as important as the recognized agents, fire
and water. It was a geological discovery the proof of which, although
indisputable, seemed so startling, that it was with difficulty that
it was accepted even by the best scientific minds of the day.
In the Alpine country had been found great boulders dropped
apparently by some strange force in fields far from the quarries of
native rock from which they had been torn. Here also were moraines
and dikes, great piles of loose gravel deposited by some unknown
agency; and here also, where the bedrock was visible, could be seen
deep furrows and scratches on the polished stone as if chiseled by a
giant tool.
Glaciers existed in the Alps, but it was hard for men to believe
that glaciers had once existed where now were green fields and
meadows. But Agassiz was not the man to endeavor to found a belief on
unsupported theory, and only after six years of study of the glaciers
and glacial traces in the Alps and actual observations on the glacier
of the Aar, was he prepared to give his proofs of the theory to the
scientific world.
Basing his demonstration on this accumulated evidence, Agassiz
proved that at one time glaciers had covered a large part of the
now civilized world. The great boulders had been scooped up by them
in their progress, and perhaps some thousands of years later had
been dropped a hundred miles away by the melting ice-sheet. So also
had the masses of gravel been carried far from their sources, to
form strange new glacial deposits. And on the scarred and grooved
rocks was the final evidence; for these deep scratches had surely
been ground by the advancing glacier as it slowly and silently moved
onward. “The idea that such phenomena were not restricted to regions
where glaciers now are found, but that traces of glacial action
could be seen over enormous tracts of the earth’s surface, perhaps
including regions in the tropics, and that in countries now temperate
there might be discovered, not only the remains of tropical fauna and
flora, but also distinct indications of a period of arctic cold—this
was as new as startling.”
During the years of his professorship at Neuchâtel, Agassiz published
many important contributions to scientific knowledge in those
particular departments of natural science to which he had devoted
himself. At the same time came also many honors, including offers of
professorships from the universities of Geneva and Lausanne, and the
award of the Wollaston Medal by the Geographical Society of London.
But the second period in Agassiz’s life was drawing to a close: a
great country beyond the Atlantic would soon be ready to receive him.
Agassiz, the student and now the discoverer, was about to begin his
final great activity as the pioneer and teacher of natural history
to a strange people in a foreign land. Each year at Neuchâtel had
plunged Agassiz deeper and deeper into debt; his situation had
passed from bad to well-nigh hopeless. Then, unexpectedly, help was
offered. The King of Prussia offered him three thousand dollars, to
be spent in travel for scientific purposes; and at the same time
came an invitation from the Lowell Institute of Boston to visit the
United States. Agassiz could not refuse. It was a solution of all his
immediate difficulties; a wide horizon in the eager young republic
spread before him. In September, 1846, Agassiz sailed for Boston.
He had left behind him all that is wealth to a scientific man.
Books and collections were the tools of his trade; in his fellow
naturalists he had found help and inspiration. In the United States
bountiful nature had provided a fertile and unexplored field, but
here he must work alone. “He came, perhaps, in a spirit of adventure
and of curiosity; but he stayed because he loved a country where
new things could be built up; where he could think and speak as he
pleased; and where his ceaseless activity would be considered of high
quality.”
On his arrival in Boston Agassiz was cordially received by John A.
Lowell, who, as trustee of the Lowell Institute, had extended to
him the invitation which was in a large measure responsible for his
coming. The course of lectures which Agassiz had planned for the
Lowell Institute was entitled “The Plan of Creation.” His success was
immediate. The people were eager to hear the message of the great
lecturer. A second course, on “Glaciers,” was soon arranged, and in a
few months Agassiz found himself the most popular lecturer in all the
great Eastern cities.
The subjects which he chose were always of a character which made
it possible for large untrained audiences to follow him and clearly
understand the points which he logically developed. His command
of English was at first faulty, but he was never embarrassed, and
his audiences found a peculiar charm in his foreign accent and the
unusual phrases which he so frequently employed. But the blackboard
was his unfailing assistant, and as he talked, his quick hand
illustrated the subject with sketches so simple and so clear that the
lecture could almost have been comprehended by these alone.
He had left his collections behind him, but almost immediately
new collections began to grow, and a new “scientific factory” was
established in his house in East Boston. He always spoke of his
specimens as “material for investigation,” for to Agassiz every stone
and every insect held a story filled with wonder and romance which
only patient study could unfold. His house, his garden, and even
his pockets were filled with “material”; as an illustration may be
mentioned the occasion when Agassiz, on being asked by a lady sitting
beside him at a dinner-party to explain the difference between a toad
and a frog, instantly produced, to the amazement of his companions, a
live frog and a live toad from his pockets.
It was but natural that Agassiz should find in Harvard University,
the oldest and most celebrated seat of learning in the United States,
the congenial atmosphere which his work required. And it is equally
natural that the great University should recognize in Agassiz a
master-teacher who would prove a most desirable addition to its
faculty. Agassiz had already found in the United States a cordial
welcome and a deep appreciation. The year 1848 marks definitely the
beginning of the last phase of his life, for in this year the death
of his wife in Carlsruhe and his acceptance of the chair of zoölogy
and geology at Harvard led him to abandon forever his thought of some
day returning to his native land.
Two years later his marriage to Elizabeth Cabot Cary of Boston bound
him still closer to the land of his adoption, and the remaining years
of his life were years of consistent activity filled with growth and
honor. An expedition to Lake Superior in 1848 was followed by a trip
to study the Florida reefs in 1850 and a visit to the Mississippi
River in 1853. During these years his collections were rapidly
increased, and already he was planning for the establishment at
Harvard of a great Museum of Natural History.
Life in Boston and in the clear atmosphere of the University must
have been highly stimulating to a man of Agassiz’s sensitive
susceptibilities. Emerson, Holmes, Hawthorne, Motley, and Longfellow
were his companions, and a group of brilliant younger minds
surrounded him in his work.
From abroad now came honors the larger part of which Agassiz saw fit
to decline. In 1852 the Prix Cuvier was awarded to him in recognition
of his work on fossil fishes. A call to the University of Zürich
was declined in 1854; and during the four years between 1857 and
1861 he three times declined a call to the chair of palæontology at
Paris, perhaps the highest scientific honor which the world could
afford. But neither honors nor wealth could tempt him. His affection
for America and his love for his work in that appreciative country
held him fast. In 1861 he became a naturalized citizen of the United
States.
Rarely, if ever, was there a man of more lovable and winning
personality. “Everybody sought his society, and no one could stand
before his words and his smile. The fishermen at Nahant would
pull two or three miles to get him a rare fish.” Rich and poor,
the educated and the uneducated, all paid homage to his magnetic
personality. Physically large, his genial countenance and smiling
eyes made friends with everyone. And at the same time those laughing
brown eyes, that seemed made only for pleasure and jollity, “saw
more than did all our eyes put together; for he looked, but we only
stared.”
The corner-stone of the great Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at
Harvard was laid in 1859, and in the years that have followed, the
collection has grown to proportions which make it a worthy memorial
to its celebrated founder. Into this edifice Agassiz freely poured
the material which he had collected on his many expeditions,
including a wealth of specimens gathered in 1865 and 1866, on an
expedition to Brazil; and in 1871 and 1872, in a specially designed
ship, the Hassler, he rounded the Horn, and with dredging apparatus
collected along both coasts of the South American continent valuable
data concerning the fauna and physical conditions which were found
at great depths. Meanwhile, although constantly neglectful of his
own income, he devoted his rare personal persuasion to the cause of
obtaining the large sum necessary for the building and maintenance of
the Museum. And it is to him alone that credit is due for the money
that was thus raised, at a cost to science of priceless hours of his
own all-too-limited time and energy.
The intellect of Agassiz was gigantic, and yet he combined with his
mighty forces an unfailing patience with dull or ignorant people. His
craving for knowledge was equaled only by his ability in imparting
it to others. Nothing that he achieved was for himself: his all was
attained that he might give it to the world. “Good teachers are not
commonly original investigators; and original investigators often
lack both the will and power to tell other people what they know.”
To this Agassiz was perhaps the greatest exception that the world
has ever seen. The scientific world will ever remember Louis Agassiz
for his discoveries in zoölogy, for his vast researches in the study
of fishes, and for his glacial theories and subsequent revelations
in geology; but the world at large will hold him perhaps more dear
as the master who brought to the United States the old sciences of
an older civilization and, infusing them with his own vitality,
became to the people of America the first and the great teacher of
the history of the mighty book of nature, which before his time had
remained closed to them.
On December 14, 1873, Louis Agassiz died at Cambridge, in the shadow
of the walls of the great University of which he had become so loyal
a member. Above his grave a simple granite boulder from the glacier
of the Aar, sent by loving friends in the land of his birth, gives
in its brief inscription the name of a man whom the United States
proudly claims as citizen, and whom the world honors as a man.
IV
CARL SCHURZ
_Born in Liblar, Germany, 1829_
_Died in New York City, 1906_
There are few Americans who can say that they were born in a castle,
for the castle-born children of Europe of whom history tells us
have been the children of royalty who have by virtue of their birth
inherited the privileges of a ruling clan and have ever handed down
these same privileges to succeeding generations. Europe was for
centuries ruled by the castle-born. Supreme was the tradition of
royalty. And strange in contrast is the story of a baby of humble
parentage who by chance first saw the light through the high windows
of a castle wall, and lived to become an honored citizen of a land
where royalty is unknown and all men are equal.
In the great republic of the United States, men who had become
wearied of the old order of things had built a nation on another
plan. Here there was no royalty; it was not where or how a boy was
born that counted, but what kind of a man he became. To all, equal
opportunities were offered. It was not who you were, but what you
were, that counted; and that is what counts to-day in the United
States.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Pach Brothers_
C. Schurz. (signature)]
The first President, George Washington, was a farmer. Abraham
Lincoln was born in a log-cabin and taught himself to read and
write in the early days of his hard boyhood. Woodrow Wilson was a
schoolteacher. Rich men and poor men have risen to the presidency;
men with the blood of many nations in their veins. The log-cabin or
the castle birthplace has counted little; high posts of honor have
been won by all.
Carl Schurz was born in a castle at Liblar, a small German town a few
miles distant from the great city of Cologne, in the year 1829. But
in spite of his castle birthplace, Carl was not of royal blood, but a
poor boy. Like the fathers of so many other distinguished sons, the
elder Schurz was a schoolmaster; but so small was his pay that he
and his family came to live with his wife’s father, a tenant farmer,
in the ancient castle at Liblar. And in this castle was born the boy
Carl who, in the many years of his useful life, was destined to fill
high places in the great Republic beyond the seas.
Life in the great castle was much the same in 1829 that it had been
for hundreds of years, for changes came slowly in the peaceful,
beautiful German country. At harvest-time the young and old, with
a spirit of mutual helpfulness, gathered the harvest; and at other
times they met for Rhineland festivals, with much happy visiting of
relatives, with games and contests of strength and skill. In the big
stone hall of the castle the “folk” assembled for their meals at long
wooden tables, and ate their soup or porridge out of deep wooden
bowls with wooden spoons. During the day the women spun flax at their
spinning-wheels and the men worked in the shops, the stables, and
the fields.
In the twilight hours the boy listened to stories of the “French
Times,” when the great Napoleon passed through the land with his
mighty army before the Russian campaign, and later returned, his army
shattered and defeated. He heard of the Cossacks, uncouth, dirty,
bearded men on shaggy ponies, who followed Napoleon’s retreating
army, and how they stole and plundered and ate the tallow candles
in people’s houses. And he heard, too, of the great men whose fame
was not created by the sword—Schiller, Goethe Tasso, Shakespeare,
Voltaire, Rousseau. Perhaps the stories of these famous men of
history inspired the boy in later years to become himself a leader
among men.
When he was still very young, Carl was sent to school; and twice a
week he walked, each way, to a town four miles distant, to study
music. It was during these early days that Carl first heard his
family talk about the United States, “that young Republic where the
people were free, without kings, without counts”; and it is probable
that the impressions of this republican state of free citizens
received in his early years had something to do with the directing of
his ambitions in later life.
When Carl was nine years old his father, believing that the boy had
outgrown the little school at Liblar, sent him to a school at Brühl,
where he continued his various lessons and the study of music. The
next year Carl was taken by his father to Cologne and entered the
“gymnasium,” a school which bears some resemblance to the high
school in the United States. Here he studied history, Latin, and
German, and particularly the art of expressing himself in writing
with clearness and ease—a study which perhaps contributed most to his
success in coming years.
But now a new influence began to enter the life of the boy. During
the first fifty years of the nineteenth century, that part of
Germany which extends along the banks of the Rhine had seen three
governments. First, it had been ruled by the Archbishop Electors;
then it was conquered by the French and had felt French rule both
under the French Republic and the Empire; and last of all, it had
been taken from the French and annexed by Prussia. The Rhenish people
perhaps liked the Prussian rule least of all; for the Prussians
governed well, but with a stern discipline that could never be
understood by the careless, pleasure-loving people of the Rhine.
Among the younger people, and particularly those of the
better-educated class, among whom Carl found himself, there was a
restless spirit and the feeling that great changes were necessary.
Young men believed that the hard Prussian rule must be overthrown
and give place to a new form of constitutional government, with free
speech, free press, and free political institutions. How this was to
be done, no one knew; but Carl and his companions talked much with
each other of their dreams of liberty and unity for the Fatherland,
and eagerly read every newspaper and pamphlet that fell into their
hands, to keep themselves informed of the tendencies of the day.
It was the ambition of the elder Schurz that his son, after
graduation from the gymnasium, should enter the famous university at
Bonn. But only a year before Carl’s graduation the father met with
financial disaster which swept away the small savings of years and
left him practically penniless. Carl was seventeen years old and was
entering his last year in the gymnasium; by this disaster all his
hopes and ambitions seemed swept aside. His father, bankrupt, was in
a debtor’s prison. Hurriedly, Carl took leave of his teachers and
friends and returned home, where, by much hard effort, he succeeded
in securing his father’s release.
The question now arose whether or not he must abandon his studies and
take up a new course of life. Next to his family, his ambition for
a literary career was the greatest factor in his life. By leaving
the gymnasium his hopes seemed destroyed beyond remedy; for the
examinations for the university were very difficult and practically
required this final year of study and preparation. Fortunately, his
father in a few months became able again to provide for himself, and
Carl immediately undertook the difficult task of preparing to pass
the graduation examinations at Cologne, which must be accomplished
before he could enter the university. By hard work this was finally
accomplished, and Carl entered the university at Bonn.
German universities have always been known for their student
societies. Too many of these groups of students have had a reputation
only for drinking and senseless dueling; but there are others that
have been marked by a distinct scientific, literary, or musical
tone. Of the latter class was the Buschenschaft Franconia at Bonn;
its members were not men of wealth or noble birth, but in later years
they found high places in the world’s history. And of this society
Carl Schurz was elected a member. It was a group of young men who
were destined greatly to affect his entire life.
But of even greater importance in their effect on the life of Carl
Schurz were certain political conditions in Germany. Early in the
century, after Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign into Russia, the King of
Prussia and the Russian Tsar had called the German people to arms,
promising them a new national union, free political institutions, and
the abolition of arbitrary government. The victories of Leipzig and
Waterloo broke the power of Napoleon, but the years that followed
did not see the promises of the Prussian King fulfilled. In 1814
the Congress of Vienna created an alliance among the German States,
but the organization was composed of kings and princes; there was
no popular representation and no mention of civic rights, a popular
vote, a free press, freedom of assembly, or trial by jury—all of
which were rights desired by the people.
Then followed a bitter period of studied repression of every liberal
tendency, and the advance toward liberal institutions almost ceased.
In 1840, Frederick William IV ascended the Prussian throne. It was
at first believed that he sympathized with the liberal and patriotic
hopes of the people; but it soon became evident that the same policy
would be continued; the demands of the people were refused, and the
press censorship was increased. Discontent with general conditions,
and particularly with absolute kingly power and police despotism,
soon became general, and in 1847 the King convoked a “United Diet” in
Berlin, to consist of members of all the provincial diets. But only
in appearance was this a popular assembly, and no reforms were, or
could be, enacted by it.
Disappointment and discontent followed, and from the mass of people
revolutionary agitators arose, demanding liberation from the rule of
a domineering King. “God, Liberty, Fatherland” was the motto of the
people. Black, red, and gold were the colors of the revolutionists.
Schurz was at the beginning of his university training in the year
1848. It was a year of tremendous import. In France King Louis
Philippe had been driven out and the republic established. The day
seemed to be dawning for the establishment of “German Unity,” or,
in other words, a “constitutional form of government on a broad
democratic basis.”
The Revolution soon took actual form. In Cologne the people met in
the public squares to formulate their demands. All through South
Germany the revolutionary spirit flamed forth. And in Austria a
similar revolution demanded liberty and citizens’ rights.
Meanwhile, great activity in the university town of Bonn burst
forth, and Professor Kinkel, representing the citizens, declared
that the liberties and rights of the German people must be granted
by the princes or taken by force by the people. In Berlin, the King
wavered under the flood of petitions which poured in on him, and
actual fighting between the citizens and the troops, in March, 1849,
resulted in the temporary acquiescence of the King in the popular
demand. But the victory of the people was not followed up and proved
to be short-lived.
Soon, throughout Germany, the realization began to spread that the
revolution of March, which had seemed so glorious, would amount to
little unless action was promptly taken. Soon also it became apparent
that the King would give nothing but promises, and that the people
would be no better off than before. Accordingly, in Frankfurt,
Eisenach, Bonn, Dresden, and other cities, the revolutionists planned
to cast off the yoke of the King, and many bloody fights took place
between the people and the monarch’s Prussian bayonets.
In all this Schurz and his friend Kinkel played an active part. But
the power was on the side of the King, and one by one the small bands
of revolutionists were defeated by the trained Prussian troops.
Schurz had fought with credit in several engagements, and finally,
with many other revolutionists, had taken refuge in the fortress of
Rastatt, which for three weeks held out against the Prussian army
that besieged it. Finally the fortress was compelled to surrender,
and at great peril, Schurz and two companions escaped through a sewer
and, crossing the Rhine by night, sought refuge on French soil.
The Revolution had ended in disaster and Schurz was an exile from
his native land, to which he dared not return. He had fought for the
cause of freedom; he had lost all. But his life was saved. Kinkel
and others of the revolutionists, less fortunate than Schurz, were
condemned to life-imprisonment.
But although Schurz was free, the knowledge that Kinkel was
imprisoned inspired in him the resolve to aid his friend in escaping.
It was dangerous work, for it was necessary for Schurz to return
in disguise to Germany, where, had he been recognized, he would
immediately have suffered Kinkel’s fate. But the loyalty of Schurz to
his friend was rewarded by the final accomplishment of his plans; and
after many exciting adventures Kinkel succeeded in his escape from
prison by lowering himself at night from a window in his cell, by a
rope which Schurz had smuggled in to him. And a few days later the
two men succeeded in reaching the seacoast and took passage on a ship
to England.
For several years Kinkel and his family lived in London, where a
large number of political refugees had gathered. It was a brilliant
gathering, and in these many people of varied accomplishment Carl
Schurz found much to interest him. Here, too, it was that Schurz
found, in the daughter of another German exile, the young woman,
Margaretha Meyer, who a few months later became his wife.
The year 1852 was covered by a gloomy cloud. Throughout all Europe
the Liberal movement seemed suppressed. In France, Louis Napoleon
had made himself Emperor and was recognized by England; the French
Republic was gone. In Italy, Mazzini had fought in vain for a united
country under a free government. Kossuth had fought for the national
independence of Hungary, but had gone into exile, a defeated man.
In Germany, revolutionists had met a similar fate. To Carl Schurz
there seemed but one direction in which he might turn. Far beyond the
Atlantic the United States of America offered a republican government
where the people ruled themselves by popular laws, free to live their
lives and express their thoughts, free from the yokes of kings and
princes. In August, 1852, Schurz and his young wife sailed for New
York.
The first task which Schurz set for himself on his arrival was to
learn in the shortest possible time to speak, read, and write the
English language. Chiefly by reading the newspapers this task was
soon accomplished, and in a very few years there were not many
Americans who could claim a more exact and fluent command of their
own language than he.
Schurz had come to the United States a poor man and an exile, but
he was fortunate in possessing a number of friends who lived in the
larger Eastern cities, and through them he obtained many valuable
introductions and rapidly widened his acquaintanceship, particularly
in political and literary circles.
Since the founding of the Republic slavery had existed in the United
States. Particularly in the Southern states thousands of negro slaves
furnished practically the only labor on the vast plantations and in
the homes of the owners. Against the slowly widening influence of
slavery a small band of anti-slavery men were opposing by every means
at their command the growth of this condition so utterly opposed to
the laws of freedom and civilization. “I saw the decisive contest
rapidly approaching,” wrote Schurz, “and I felt an irresistible
impulse to prepare myself for usefulness, however modest, in the
impending crisis: and to that end I pursued with increased assiduity
my studies of the political history and the social workings of
the Republic, and of the theory and practical workings of its
institutions.”
Schurz had German friends and relatives living in Illinois,
Wisconsin, and Missouri. It seemed to him that, by visiting them, he
would be enabled to see more of the country and study at first-hand
the actual “real America,” which he must thoroughly understand if he
was to take a helpful part in the impending struggle.
During the year 1854, Schurz visited all of the large cities of the
Middle West, and particularly the states of Wisconsin and Missouri,
which were largely settled by Germans. The West attracted him, and
after carefully considering many places, he determined to settle in
the pleasant little village of Watertown, Wisconsin.
In the years of his residence in Watertown, Schurz took up the law as
his profession, and at the same time began actively to participate
in local politics. The large German population in the Western states
was a voting power that was of great importance, and Schurz’s high
standing and reputation made it only natural that he should soon be
chosen as their spokesman and leader.
These were stirring days. The great question of slavery was
uppermost. With the entrance of new territory into the Union, the
question flamed forth with greater violence: would the new states
be free states or slave states? Would the slave-holders or the
anti-slavery men rule the land? Would slavery or freedom dominate?
Schurz flung himself into politics and the anti-slavery party of the
North. With clear vision he realized that slavery must be destroyed,
but that the United States must be preserved; a separation of the
slave states from the Union could not be tolerated; all must be
united in freedom.
Rapidly the reputation of Carl Schurz as a political speaker spread
beyond Wisconsin. He was called to address meetings in neighboring
states, and finally he was summoned even to Boston, to address a
great meeting in the historic Faneuil Hall. In Illinois he met
Abraham Lincoln, soon to hold the office of President of the United
States; everywhere he encountered the leaders in the great Republic,
men of every party and every type of character; the men who were
guiding the steps of the nation.
Throughout the campaign for the election of Abraham Lincoln to the
presidency, Carl Schurz gave his entire energy as a speaker and
organizer, and as a result soon became recognized as a person of
influence in the victorious party. During these months the friendship
of Schurz and Lincoln was strengthened, and other ties with other
men were made, which were to have a strong influence, not only on
Schurz’s own life, but on the history of his adopted country.
On April 12, 1861, the storm which had so long been brewing between
the Northern and Southern states broke with the capture of Fort
Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, by the Confederate forces. For some
time the government of the so-called Confederate States had attempted
to open negotiations with the Federal authorities for a peaceful
separation. But the North had stood firm in the position that at all
costs the Union must be preserved. With the fall of Sumter came the
opening of the Civil War, which for four long years plunged the land
in blood.
Three days later President Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for
75,000 volunteers; and on June 10 the Northern troops were repulsed
at Big Bethel, and July 21, were routed at Bull Run. The long war had
begun. During these first months of the war Schurz threw himself into
the work of organizing in New York a regiment of German cavalry; but
his services were considered of even greater value in another kind
of activity, and a few weeks later he was on his way to Madrid, as
United States Minister to Spain.
There is probably no other country in the world where such a rapid
and spectacular progress would be possible. Ten years before, Carl
Schurz was an exile from his native land, a poor newcomer to a
strange country. Now, after this brief period, he was to return to
Europe, the powerful representative of a great republic.
Early in 1862 Schurz returned to the United States. During the
months which he had spent in Spain he had rendered valuable service
in keeping the Spanish government informed of the exact condition
of affairs in the United States, and impressing upon the Spanish
authorities the desirability of maintaining friendly relations with
the North, and an interest in the cause of freedom.
But Schurz was restless in a position of security, no matter how
great its importance, while others were risking their lives for their
country’s cause. “I became convinced,” he said, “that, in such times,
the true place for a young and able-bodied man was in the field,
and not in an easy-chair.” Schurz laid his case before Mr. Lincoln,
and the President agreed to accept his resignation and gave him a
commission in the army.
At the outbreak of the war the Regular Army was very small, its
officers few. Of these officers many had gone over to the army of the
Confederate States. There was great need of officers for the vast
volunteer armies which were being formed, and it became necessary to
select men from civil life, on account of their general intelligence,
and give them appointments as officers. Few of these had any
military experience or particular knowledge of military science.
Because of these conditions, and also because of his brief military
experience in the revolutionary army of 1849, Schurz was appointed a
brigadier-general for immediate service.
His experience during the Civil War included many of the famous
campaigns and battles, and in all of them he played an active and
important part. During the year 1862, Fort Henry and Fort Donelson
were captured by the Union forces, and on March 9, the Monitor,
designed by John Ericsson, defeated the Confederate ironclad
Merrimac. Early in April General Grant won the victory of Shiloh,
and on the 24th of the same month Admiral David G. Farragut ran the
forts below New Orleans with his ships, and captured the city. In the
East during this same period, the Confederate army, under General
Robert E. Lee, pressed forward toward the city of Washington, but
was finally thrown back across the Potomac River after the battle of
Antietam.
In the following year, 1863, the Confederate army under General
Lee again marched North, but was defeated, July 1-3, at the great
battle of Gettysburg. In this battle Schurz took part, and from the
crest of Cemetery Hill watched the Confederate infantry of General
Pickett make their brave charge against the Union forces. Fifteen
thousand strong, in a long close line, with bayonets gleaming in
the sunshine and flags waving in the breeze, the gray-clad soldiers
of the Confederacy appeared from the dark shadows of the woods and
came steadily across a mile of open fields. Under a tremendous fire
from the Union artillery the gray line slowly melted as it advanced,
leaving the soft green of the meadow flecked with gray-clad bodies of
dead and wounded. Closing the gaps, they came steadily on, now lost
behind a low rise of ground, now again in view, their flags still
flying above them. Then, within rifle-range, a cloud of smoke lifted
like fog from the Union guns, and as it floated off on the light
wind, the Union soldiers saw the remnant of Pickett’s brave band
slowly retreating from the field. Although more than a year of war
was to follow, the strength of the Southern offensive was shattered.
On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant, and in November came the
victories of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. In the following
year were other victories in the battles of the Wilderness and
Spottsylvania. Another drive of the Confederates against Washington
was attempted by General Early, but he was defeated by General
Sheridan in three battles and was forced to withdraw. Then came the
capture of Atlanta and General Sherman’s famous march through Georgia
to the sea. On the water were achieved the victory of the Kearsarge
over the Confederate steamer Alabama, and Admiral Farragut’s
successful passage of the forts at Mobile Bay. In April of the year
1865 came the complete surrender of the armies of the Confederacy.
The Union was preserved; slavery was destroyed.
With the ending of the war, Schurz began again to take an active
part in the political life of the nation, and for a time devoted
himself to a study of the perplexing difficulties which surrounded
the reconstruction of the South, impoverished by years of war and
economically ruined by the emancipation of the slaves.
In the autumn of 1867 he again visited Germany. The high position
which he now held in the great Republic assured him of a welcome, but
the attentions which were heaped upon him were a particular tribute
to the man who had once fled by night. Bismarck, “The Minister” of
Germany, honored him by inviting him to long conferences, in which
he eagerly questioned Schurz concerning the great war in which he had
taken part, and asked many questions about the political and social
conditions of the Republic of which Schurz had become a citizen.
On his return to the United States, Schurz was elected to the United
States Senate, representing the great state of Missouri, where he had
now taken up his residence. “I remember vividly the feelings which
almost oppressed me when I first sat down in my chair in the Senate
Chamber. Now I had actually reached a most exalted public position,
to which my boldest dreams of ambition had hardly dared to aspire.
I was still a young man, just forty. Little more than sixteen years
had elapsed since I had landed on these shores a homeless waif, saved
from the wreck of a revolutionary movement in Europe. Then I was
enfolded in the generous hospitality of the American people, opening
to me, as freely as to its own children, the great opportunities of
the new world. And here I was now, a member of the highest law-making
body of the greatest of republics.”
But a still greater honor was to come. With the election of President
Hayes in 1877, Schurz became the Secretary of the Interior of the
United States. In this high position his ability found ample room for
exercise, and the reforms which he in large measure effected, both in
the civil-service system of appointment—by which men were placed in
government positions as a result of examination on their merits, as
opposed to their appointment regardless of merit but as a political
reward—and in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, were of unusual value to
the nation.
On leaving the Department of the Interior at the close of President
Hayes’s administration, Schurz was confronted by an almost
embarrassing number of positions for his future occupation. For a
time he occupied an editorial position on the New York _Evening
Post_; but he still continued to take an active and important part in
the politics of the day. For some years after his retirement from the
_Post_ he devoted himself to literature, and produced, among other
books, a life of Henry Clay which won high commendation.
After a brief business episode, he again returned to the field
of journalism, and for six years contributed weekly the leading
editorial to _Harper’s Weekly_. Once again he visited Europe; but
old age was growing heavy on his shoulders, and on his return to the
United States he retired each year a little more from the active
fields of politics and journalism which had so long held him, and to
which he had so gladly contributed.
On May 14, 1906, surrounded by his children, the end came. “Es ist
so einfach zu sterben” (it is so simple to die), was his farewell to
those about him. As he lived, so did he die, simply and unafraid.
V
THEODORE THOMAS
_Born in Essen, Germany, 1835_
_Died in Chicago, 1905_
Civilization is a condition of organization; in a nation it is a name
for progress and enlightenment. Literature, art, music, and science
are measures of civilization; so also are agricultural, industrial,
and social progress. All men contributing to the advancement of
civilization are benefactors of mankind. The inventor, the artist,
the physician, the scientist, the manufacturer, the writer, the
explorer, and the musician, all contribute to human happiness and
advancement.
No man who lives for himself alone can add to the progress of the
world. Only they who unselfishly have lived for others deserve the
gratitude of their fellow men. And it is encouraging that, in almost
every case, those men who have accomplished most have sooner or later
received their high rewards.
Probably no nation in all the world has given so much in so short a
time to civilization as the United States. The reason is not far to
seek, for in no other country have such opportunities to accomplish
their fine desires ever been offered to men of ambition and ability;
never has there been so fair a field in which each man might rise as
high as his own strength would carry him.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of A. C. McClurg & Co._
Theodore Thomas (signature)]
Since the world began, music has been a part of the very life of
every nation. As labor in the shop and field and mine have produced
the material things so necessary for the health and comfort of the
body, so, for the development of the mind and for the happiness of
all people, have painters, sculptors, and musicians contributed their
fairest conceptions, that life might be more beautiful and the world
a better place to live in for all mankind.
In the older European countries music has been handed down for
centuries from father to son. In conditions where music has so
completely become a part of life, great musicians from time to
time have lived and left their lasting contributions. In the older
civilizations there was a fertile field long cultivated for the
ever-increasing growth of music.
In the United States, however, another condition existed. Here was a
new civilization, transplanted by early settlers from beyond the sea.
Here there was no existing civilization developed through centuries.
It was a land to which had come men and women from every nation in
the world, seeking freedom from the rule of kings and a place where
they might live in peace and equality, regardless of their birth.
Each brought with him the civilization of his native land. But much
was lost in the migration; there was no place, at first, for many
elements of European civilization in the busy life of the new world.
For half a century, from the glorious day when the United States
cast off the yoke of a European monarchy and became a republic,
there was small time in the lives of Americans for music, art, and
all the other finer elements of civilization. It was necessary that
men should explore and open up the vast rich country in which they
lived. They must build cities and plant fields with grain; they must
dig deep mines and find coal and metals, and they must cut timber
from the forests for the needs of the nation. Also, they found it
necessary to develop the government of their new nation, and form
from the wilderness, where once only the Indians dwelt, new states to
increase the union of the great Republic.
But through all these years of labor there remained in the minds
of men an appreciation of those other more beautiful factors of
civilization; memories of an inheritance that were like dreams from
which these pioneers waited to be awakened by someone who, at the
right time, would come to them and, understandingly, would point out
the way. The love of music was in their hearts.
Meanwhile, in the town of Essen, in Germany, by the North Sea, was
born, on the eleventh of October, 1835, a boy, Theodore Thomas,
who in a few short years was destined to bring to the great United
States that appreciation of music of which it was now so thoroughly
unconscious.
The boy’s father was the Stadtpfeifer, or town musician, of Essen. It
was a position of honor, for the Stadtpfeifer played on all important
occasions, and many great musicians have held this title.
From infancy the boy showed an aptitude for music. At the age of
five he played the violin in public, and he spent as much of his
play-time as he could with his father’s orchestra, playing his violin
and reading all the new music he could find.
When he was ten years old, the family emigrated to America. It was
the land of promise, and a bigger and brighter future seemed to await
them in the vast free United States than in the sleepy German village
where for generations their ancestors had been born and lived and
died.
This was before the days of fast steamships; then the passage of the
Atlantic was made in sailing vessels, and often the voyage lasted as
many weeks as now it is measured by days. The Thomas family found
passage on an American vessel; and it was six long weeks after their
departure that they landed, on a hot July morning in the year 1845,
in the city of New York.
There was little or no real music in the United States. A few people
played the piano or cornet, there were a number of brass bands, and
some of the theatres boasted of a few musicians, but orchestras and
good music were unknown.
The Thomas family was a large one, and the father worked far into
the night, playing in theatre orchestras, to provide for his wife
and children. It was only natural that young Theodore, with his
musical talent, should be called upon to help; and so almost from
the beginning the boy labored with the father, playing his violin in
various theatres, at a dancing-school, and wherever he could earn an
honest dollar.
Three years later the father enlisted in a navy band, and the boy
followed him, playing second horn to the father’s first. But a year
later, both father and son left the navy; and as the former was now
able alone to provide for the family, young Theodore found himself
free to carry out his own plans and lay the foundations for his
future.
With a little box of clothing, his violin, and a bundle of posters
announcing a concert by “Master T-T,” Theodore set out alone to
try his fortune with the world. For a year he wandered through the
Southern states, giving his concerts in hotel dining-rooms, in
schoolhouses, or wherever he considered it possible to gather an
audience. As the people arrived, Theodore would stand at the door and
take in the money; then, when he thought that all who were coming
were present, he would hurry to the front of the hall and begin the
concert.
A year later he was back again in New York, poor in pocket but rich
in experience of the world. “I was then fifteen years old,” he later
wrote, “and somehow had recognized the necessity of studying if I
expected to accomplish anything in this world. But what? I did not
know, of course, that a general education was needed, or even what it
meant. My first idea was to become a virtuoso, so I began to practise
and play in concerts.”
Shortly after his return to New York, the fifteen-year-old boy
was engaged as the leading violinist in the orchestra of a German
theatre. But this experience gave him more than an actual living; for
here he became acquainted with the plays of the great German poets
and masters of literature, and he also widened his musical horizon
far beyond the rather limited boundaries which had up to that time
confined it.
During the next two or three years his musical education prospered.
Great singers and musicians began occasionally to visit America:
Jenny Lind, Sontag, Mario, Grisi, Bosio, and Alboni. Thomas played
everywhere in concerts and operas, and this gave him constant
opportunity to hear these artists under the best of conditions. “The
pure and musical quality of their art,” he has said, “was of great
value in forming the taste of an impressionable boy at the outset of
his career.” The influence of this experience did much to prepare him
for his own triumphs in coming years.
There were at that time no real orchestras in America. An orchestra
meant to Thomas a selected organization of skilled musicians
“sufficiently subsidized to enable it to hold the rehearsals
necessary for artistic performances, its object and aim to be to
attain the highest artistic performance of master-works.” Of the
existing orchestras of the time all were of negligible quality, and
their leaders mere “time-beaters,” instead of true musicians.
But at this time such a leader appeared for a short period in the
circle of Thomas’s life. Karl Eckert, the leader of the orchestra
accompanying Mademoiselle Sontag, appeared in New York, and Thomas
secured a position as one of the first violinists in the orchestra,
a position from which he was soon promoted to leader of the second
violins. Thomas gave his best effort to his new work. It was a
place of responsibility, and the boy was young, but he saw his
opportunity, grasped it, and held it.
The following year Thomas won promotion to _Konzert-meister_, or
leader of the first violins; and here his extreme genius became
the more apparent, for he was now the leader of men many of whom
were old enough to be his father. This was the definite beginning
of his career, for the experience of playing in a well-organized
orchestra gave him a thorough schooling, not only in his duties as
Konzert-meister but—and this was of particular value to him—in the
practical business side of orchestral management.
In 1853 his education was further broadened by a year in the
orchestra of Jullien, a famous European conductor. This was the first
time that he had heard or played in a large and complete orchestra,
and the result was that he was now ready to step out from the ranks
and begin to develop his ability as an individual and a leader.
For about twelve years the New York Philharmonic Society had
struggled, against popular indifference, to create a source of real
music in the community. In 1854 Thomas was elected a member. He was
nineteen years old. For thirty-six years he was destined to hold a
more or less close association with it, first as violinist and later
as its leader.
In the year 1855 William Mason, “a refined, sincere and highly
educated musician,” organized a quartette of string players. Thomas
was invited to play first violin, although he was the youngest member
of the quartette. Mason played the piano, and the other members were
Carl Bergmann, J. Mosenthal, and G. Matzka. It was an association of
true artists, and its influence was of great consequence to Thomas in
the opportunity which it afforded for the expression of his art and
in the lasting friendships which it formed.
The concerts which were given by the quartette were known as “chamber
concerts,” and the programmes included only the best music for the
string quartette, or for a sonata or trio with piano accompaniment.
Three mornings a week were given up to rehearsals, and as only
six programmes were arranged for the year’s repertoire, the deep
interest and enthusiasm of all the members is apparent. “It was this
exhaustive study of master-works, especially those of Beethoven,
continued through fourteen years, which gave Thomas his mastery of
the string choir of the orchestra, and his profound insight into the
classical school of music.”
The first experience of Theodore Thomas in conducting an opera is
characteristic of the man and illustrates his fine self-confidence
and his instant acceptance of opportunity. One evening he came home
from his work and settled down in an easy chair for a few hours of
rest and relaxation. A few blocks away, at the Academy of Music, an
opera (Halévy’s “Jewess”) was to be sung. The house was filled and an
impatient audience waited for the curtain: but the conductor was ill,
and there was no one to take his place. Someone thought of Thomas,
and a messenger was sent to ask him if he would conduct the opera.
Thomas had never before conducted an opera; he was wholly unfamiliar
with the one in question. But his answer was an immediate “I will.”
And he did, with complete success.
But the limitations of the opera, the Philharmonic, and the quartette
could not satisfy him, and in 1862, for the first time, he announced
an orchestral concert under his own direction. This was the first
“Thomas concert.” The orchestra consisted of about forty players.
In the programme it is interesting to read the titles of two
compositions which had never before been played in America. Here was
the intimation of his life-policy of giving his American audience the
best current music, often before it was completely recognized in the
Old World.
“In 1862 I concluded to devote my energies to the cultivation of
the public taste for instrumental music. Our chamber concerts had
created a spasmodic interest, our programmes were reprinted as models
of their kind, even in Europe, and our performances had reached a
high standard. As concert violinist, I was at that time popular,
and played much. But what this country needed most of all to make
it musical, was a good orchestra, and plenty of concerts within the
reach of the people.”
After several seasons of occasional concerts, Thomas determined to
organize an orchestra of his own. There was no endowment, there were
no backers. All the responsibility of organization and finance fell
on the shoulders of the young leader. The orchestra was called the
“Theodore Thomas Orchestra,” and it was truly his, in name and fact.
With a firm determination to bring the highest form of music to the
people and to teach them thoroughly to enjoy it, he began a regular
series of evening concerts; and after a season of moderate success,
he inaugurated a series of Summer-Night concerts, given in the open
air in a park in the city.
The life-work of Theodore Thomas was begun; the little violin-player
from an obscure foreign village was fast assuming the musical
leadership of a nation—a nation to which he gave musical standards
and an understanding of his art.
In the next few years a number of important events brightened the
steady work which had become now necessary to his success. The
leadership of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society was awarded him, a
position of high honor which enabled him to employ his own orchestra
in a series of twenty additional concerts. His marriage to Miss Minna
L. Rhodes, an event which brought into his life much happiness and
an influence which did much to hasten the development of his rare
abilities, occurred during this period. Finally, in 1867, a short
trip to Europe became possible; and at London, Paris, Munich, Vienna,
Dresden, and Berlin he listened to the performances of the most
celebrated European orchestras and gained much by comparison of them
with his own. Moreover, on his return to the United States, he was
enabled to give to his audiences the most modern music played as he
had heard it under the leadership of the composers themselves.
The thought has often occurred, Why did not Theodore Thomas himself
become a composer? To be sure, on a few occasions compositions of
his own were given to the public, but this happened only during his
earlier career. The answer may be quoted in his own words: “As a
young man I wished to be a composer, but circumstances forced me into
the executant’s career. My creative vein was worthy of development
had I had the time for it, but it fell short of genius, and I
believed I could do more for my art and my country by familiarizing
the people with the literature already created than by adding to it
myself. The exacting nature of my work in the orchestra required
all my time and strength, and made another kind of serious work
impossible; and as long as I could not give the time necessary
to produce compositions which would be satisfactory to myself, I
preferred to let it alone altogether.”
The winter concerts and the Summer-Night concerts in the Central Park
Garden were continued; but the revenue from the winter concerts fell
short of the sum which the expenses of the organization required,
and in 1868 Thomas decided to give them up and play in New York City
in the summer only. During the winter months he planned to carry his
orchestra about the country, and by playing in all the larger cities,
not only assure himself of larger houses, but at the same time widen
the scope of the musical education which he longed to afford the
entire country.
Beginning in the year 1869, for twenty-two years Thomas toured the
length and breadth of the land. The Southern states and New England
heard his rare programmes; San Francisco and Montreal anticipated
with eagerness his next arrival; and even to the new frontier lands
of Texas the tireless conductor led his little company of musicians.
For years identified with New York City, he now became a national
figure, an individual who had given himself to and was claimed by the
entire country.
Among the first cities to give him recognition were Boston and
Cincinnati. In the former city a musical critic wrote: “The visit
of this famous orchestra has given our music-lovers a new and
quick sensation. Boston has not heard such performances before. We
thank Mr. Thomas for setting palpably before us a higher ideal of
orchestral execution.” In Cincinnati music had long been an important
part of the life of the city. “We have not seen at any time audiences
so wrought upon as those that attended the concerts of Theodore
Thomas”; and “the finest orchestral music that has ever been given
in this city,” wrote the newspapers. It was the same everywhere:
wherever the orchestra played, praise unstinted was accorded.
During this period of his life Thomas devoted a considerable part of
his energies to the conducting of “festivals” in the large cities
of the country. These festivals were elaborately planned musical
programmes, in which the orchestra and often several hundred voices
took part. The festivals were in some cities annual affairs, in
which the local singing societies coöperated. The festivals held in
New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago were particularly popular, and
their success and popularity may be truly said to have been almost
entirely due to the untiring work of their great conductor.
But success and recognition in the lives of great men rarely come
without compensating failures and disappointments; and in the life of
Theodore Thomas were many days when failure seemed to be his chief
reward. The great Chicago fire in 1871, which destroyed almost the
entire city, caused him a financial loss that he was hardly able to
bear. Then, in 1876, came the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition,
commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the United
States. A great musical programme was planned and Thomas was honored
with its entire direction. But the crowds visiting the exposition
did not appreciate the concerts, and to the deep disappointment
of Thomas and the committee behind the plan, they were so poorly
attended that it was soon necessary to abandon them. This was a hard
blow to Thomas. He had lost much money on account of the Chicago
disaster, and now this new calamity increased the losses which he
could ill afford. Financial ruin faced him. His large and valuable
musical library, his only asset, was seized by the sheriff to pay
the debts of the orchestra. The library consisted of musical scores,
collected throughout a lifetime, without which he could not conduct
his orchestra. Only the kindness of a loyal friend, who bought up
the library and gave it back to Thomas several years later, saved
him from complete disaster. As it was, he might well have gone
into bankruptcy and settled his debts; but his fine sense of honor
prevailed, and he preferred to assume his responsibilities in full
and meet them in their entirety in later years.
In 1878 he received an offer to establish and direct a college of
music which a number of influential and wealthy men proposed to found
in the city of Cincinnati. Thomas gladly undertook the directorship,
and a splendid institution developed under his wise guidance; but
the scheme which he planned was greater than the board of directors
desired; and, seeing that it would be impossible for him to carry out
his complete plans, he resigned from his office in 1880 and returned
to his former work as an orchestra leader.
Another trip to Europe brightened the gloom which had surrounded the
recent years of disappointment, and the recognition which now began
to be accorded him helped to bring back his spirit of optimism for
the future. The conductorship of the London Philharmonic Society was
offered to him; a high honor which only his love for his adopted
country forced him to refuse. In the same year the honorary degree of
Doctor of Music, “by way of recognition of the substantial service
which he has rendered to musical culture in the United States,” was
conferred upon him by Yale University. Other universities later
conferred similar degrees, and of the many honors which came to him
there were none which he more highly prized.
The next few years were years of triumph, for during this period
Thomas devoted himself to the management of great musical festivals
in New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago, and finally, in 1885, conducted
a festival tour from New York to San Francisco.
Another financial setback came now, hard on the heels of this period
of success, for he was induced to accept the musical leadership of an
American opera company, an enterprise which seemed to contain every
necessary element for success. But after a short life the entire
project proved itself a failure, and once again Thomas returned to
the orchestra, which for the rest of his life he was destined never
again to leave. In 1889 the death of his wife came as another blow
which seemed impossible, for the time, to bear. But a new and final
period in his life was already dawning, a period of recognition and
accomplishment.
Theodore Thomas had once said: “Chicago is the only city on the
continent, except New York, where there is sufficient musical culture
to enable me to give a series of fifty successive concerts.” In 1881
a permanent orchestra was established in Boston, and Chicago became
ambitious to follow the example. The leadership of the new Chicago
orchestra was offered to Thomas. New York had in a large measure
failed to fulfill his expectations. But what New York would not
provide, Chicago offered. The opportunity could not be refused, and
Thomas accepted.
Conditions for the founding of a permanent Chicago orchestra were
far from favorable. There was no building suitable for orchestral
purposes; the cultivated class of the population was small, and,
moreover, the city did not afford musicians of a quality suited for
the formation of the orchestra. But Thomas throve on adversity.
From New York he imported sixty musicians, of whom half a dozen had
been members of the old New York Thomas Orchestra, and with thirty
selected Chicago players he completed the necessary quota of ninety
men. Concerts were given in buildings unsuited for this kind of
entertainment, under the most trying conditions, but the public was
taught to understand the worth of the great undertaking by the most
carefully arranged programmes.
Success came at last. For a period the expenses of the orchestra were
carried by a number of liberal and far-sighted citizens; but finally
it was decided to find out how sincerely such music was actually
desired by the people. A general appeal for an endowment fund was
made, the fund to be invested in a suitable home for the orchestra.
The result was far beyond the wildest hopes of the projectors of the
plan. In less than a year almost $700,000 was subscribed by over
eight thousand subscribers, from every corner of the vast city, from
every class of society, from rich and from poor.
It was the realization of the dream of Thomas’s youth. The home
of the Thomas Orchestra was dedicated in 1904. This building,
contributed by the people that the music which he had brought into
their lives might become a part of their existence, is his monument,
which will long endure. But more lasting than those walls of stone is
the recognition which history will accord to him who in his way made
the world a better living-place for his countrymen.
Theodore Thomas died in the year that followed the dedication of the
home of his orchestra. The fourteen final years of his life had found
in Chicago the material appreciation which he deserved. A second
marriage—this time to Miss Rose Fay—brought him its happiness. With
no precedents, no traditions, and no experience of others to guide
him, he had done the kind of work for music in the United States that
the first settlers had done when they ploughed their first furrows in
the wilderness. He had blazed the trail; he had opened the way that
others might follow on.
“German-born, associated with German musicians all through his life,
meeting them daily, and living as it were in a German atmosphere, yet
he was the strongest of Americans in sentiment, disposition, feeling
and patriotism. Many a time have I heard him resent foreign slurs
upon American institutions, and defend the national government’s
policy against its critics. His love for the United States, where
he had lived from boyhood, and his respect and admiration for the
broad-minded views of its people as well as their public spirit,
was deep, hearty, and sincere.” Such was Theodore Thomas in the
estimation of one who knew him well.
His creed was simple, but it was a creed from which he never
deviated. “Throughout my life my aim has been to make good music
popular, and now it appears that I have only done the public justice
in believing, and acting constantly on the belief, that the people
would enjoy and support the best in art when continually set before
them in a clear and intelligent manner.”
VI
ANDREW CARNEGIE
_Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, 1835_
_Died in Lenox, Massachusetts, 1919_
The little town of Dunfermline in Scotland has for centuries been
famous for its weaving. For generations have the sturdy inhabitants
devoted their lives to the looms. And here, in this quiet and humble
corner of the busy world, was born, on the twenty-fifth of November,
1835, a small baby whom his parents named Andrew, who was destined
to become one of the richest men that the world has seen, a citizen
of the United States, a world philanthropist, and a true captain of
industry. So simply was Andrew Carnegie born into the tremendous
nineteenth century.
Andrew’s father was a weaver of damasks, as had been his father
and grandfathers for generations back in the Carnegie history;
and the boy was doubtless expected by his parents to carry on the
established vocation of the family. But, as so often happens,
circumstances unforeseen and impossible to anticipate abruptly
changed the whole life-work of a community, and in the change the
small boy’s life was directed into a new channel which was destined
to bring him the greatest material rewards. The Carnegies wove with
hand-looms. Suddenly, invention gave the power-loom to the world.
Gone immediately was the demand for the now more costly product of
skilled and patient fingers. The swift machines destroyed a trade to
build an industry, and in the destruction the Carnegie family was
swept into new work and a new environment.
With his only means of earning a living destroyed, necessity
compelled the elder Carnegie to seek occupation somewhere beyond
the limits of the quiet Scotch town. Across the Atlantic a great
new republic was just reaching its young manhood. Its fast-sailing
clippers had made the Stars and Stripes of its flag known on
every sea, and tales of the daring Yankee skippers had brought to
complacent England a rude awakening from her peaceful sense of
maritime supremacy. Within its boundaries even greater developments
were taking form under the firm hands of the Americans. A rich
inland empire was disclosing wealth beyond dreams of men: mines of
iron and coal and various metals, forests unexplored and seemingly
limitless, millions of rich acres unturned by the ploughshare and
destined in time to come to feed the world. Already minds of vision
were organizing railroads to bring together these riches and to make
them accessible to the nation as a whole. All over the world people
were turning from war-scarred and time-worn nations oppressed by the
rule of kings to this free land of promise. Men and women and little
children crossed the broad Atlantic to live happily in a country
where men ruled themselves by self-imposed laws, and where education
gave to all an equal opportunity. And with these went also the
Carnegie family, to add their sturdy strength to the great Republic.
[Illustration: Andrew Carnegie (signature)]
There were four in the little family—the father, mother, and two
boys, Andrew and Thomas. Andrew was thirteen years old and his
brother four when this great life-changing event occurred—too young
to realize its significance or to find in it much else but the
romance and adventure of a sea-voyage and the excitement of seeing
new places and strange faces. There was a considerable cotton
manufacture in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, and there the Carnegie
family settled, in a neighborhood known as Barefoot Square in a part
of the city called Slabtown. Andrew was old enough to work, and money
was needed to meet the higher costs of living in this new land; so
both father and son found work in the same cotton mill, Andrew as a
bobbin-boy at a wage of $1.20 a week.
This was the first step in Andrew’s career, and other steps came
with what seemed a marked rapidity. But it was not that unusual
opportunities confronted the lad; on the contrary, nothing could
have seemed to offer a more slender promise than the arduous and
elementary work which he gladly accepted. The promise lay rather in
the boy; and, as is ever the case, Andrew was in those early years
proving the old truism that the right kind of a boy rises above
adversity and grows strong by battling with discouragement.
Andrew was soon promoted, at a slight increase in pay, to be
engineer’s assistant in the factory. For twelve long hours each day
he shoveled coal under the boilers and ran the engine. His pay was
now $1.80 a week, and all of it went into the family purse; for not
only was all the money earned by father and son required for the
household expenses, but Mrs. Carnegie added her mite by taking in
washing from the neighbors. And it is interesting to recollect that
of these neighbors one named Phipps, a shoemaker, had a son Harry, a
chum of Andrew’s, who also, in later years, became a man of wealth
and importance in the nation’s business affairs.
A year later Andrew again made an advance; for, leaving his work in
the cellar of the factory, he took a job as district messenger boy
for the telegraph company, at $3.00 a week. Now came an opportunity
which his conscientious study enabled him to grasp. Ever since he
had obtained his job with the telegraph company he had studied
telegraphy and spent all his spare time in practice. “My entrance
into the telegraph office,” he once said, “was a transition from
darkness to light—from firing a small engine in a dirty cellar
into a clean office with bright windows and a literary atmosphere;
with books, newspapers, pens, and pencils all around me, I was the
happiest boy alive.” One morning, before the telegraph operator
reached the office, a message was signaled from Philadelphia. Andrew
was always early at work, and although the boys were not supposed
to know anything about the instruments or allowed to touch them,
he jumped to the receiver and took down the message with accuracy.
His resourcefulness and willingness to assume responsibility were
immediately recognized, and he was promoted to operator, at a salary
of $300 a year.
In addition to his study of telegraphy Andrew, during this period,
became a constant reader of good books. A gentleman living in the
neighborhood had opened his private library to Andrew and a few other
boys every week-end, and gave them permission to take certain books
home with them. Andrew made full use of the opportunity. “Only he who
has longed as I did for Saturdays to come,” he said in after years,
“can understand what Colonel Anderson did for me and the boys of
Allegheny. Is it any wonder that I resolved, if ever surplus wealth
came to me, I would use it imitating my benefactor?”
The boy’s earnest attention to his work was not long unnoticed,
and the divisional superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad,
hearing of his quickness and enthusiasm, appointed him railway
operator in his own office, increasing his salary to $35 a month.
A second opportunity to assume responsibility occurred. During the
superintendent’s absence from the office early one morning, an
accident was reported on one of the lines, which tied up the road
and threatened a costly blockade. Andrew at once took charge of the
situation, and knowing exactly what the superintendent would do in
such a situation, wrote out the necessary orders, to which he signed
the superintendent’s name, to set the trains again in motion, and
straightened out the whole difficulty. When his chief arrived, Andrew
reported what he had done. The superintendent said nothing to him,
but to the president of the railroad he wrote that he “had a little
Scotchman in his office who would run the whole road if they would
only give him a chance.”
When Andrew was sixteen his father died, and the boy became the
head of the family; and it was at this time that he made his first
investment, although it was necessary, with his mother’s help, to
borrow the required money.
“One day Mr. Scott [the superintendent of his division], who was the
kindest of men and had taken a great fancy to me, asked if I had or
could find five hundred dollars to invest.... I answered promptly:
“‘Yes, sir, I think I can.’
“‘Very well,’ he said, ‘get it. A man has just died who owns ten
shares in the Adams Express Company, that I want you to buy. It will
cost you sixty dollars a share. I will advance the remaining hundred
dollars.’
“The matter was laid before the council of three that night and the
oracle spoke. ‘Must be done. Mortgage our house. I will take the
steamer in the morning for Ohio and see uncle and ask him to arrange
it. I am sure he can.’ Of course her visit was successful—where did
she ever fail?
“The money was procured; paid over; ten shares of Adams Express
Company stock was mine, but no one knew our little home had been
mortgaged ‘to give our boy a start.’
“Adams Express then paid monthly dividends of one per cent, and the
first check arrived....
“The next day being Sunday, we boys—myself and my ever-constant
companions—took our usual Sunday afternoon stroll in the country,
and sitting down in the woods I showed them this check, saying,
‘Eureka! I have found it.’
“Here was something new to all of us, for none of us had ever
received anything but from toil. A return from capital was something
strange and new.”
Concentrating his entire efforts on his work, Andrew learned all
that there was to know about train-dispatching and began to improve
on the existing methods. Time passed, and Colonel Scott becoming
vice-president of the railroad, Andrew promptly stepped into the
position of division superintendent which Colonel Scott vacated.
Carnegie was now twenty-eight years old and by careful saving and
investment he had acquired a tidy capital. A chance to invest in one
of the first sleeping-car companies had been accepted by him, and a
large profit was ultimately made out of the investment, although at
the time Carnegie had to borrow the money for the stock of a banker
in Altoona and repay the loan at the rate of $15 a month. A fortunate
speculation in oil, which his savings permitted him to make, gave him
his first real profit, and put him immediately in a position to play
with larger affairs in a larger way.
In the year 1865 Carnegie was thirty years old. As division
superintendent of the Pennsylvania he had won for himself a
place from which he could view a wider horizon; a large field of
opportunities was visible. Also, he had saved his money; he was in a
position to seize an opportunity when it appeared.
During the great Civil War Carnegie had been put in charge of the
government telegraph and had done well the important work which
fell to him. But with the close of the war and the beginning of the
period of reconstruction, he saw a greater field for the exercise
of his business abilities. Iron was in great demand. Carnegie had
already been active in the foundation of a mill for the production
of structural iron; for three years the company had stood on the
brink of failure; but Carnegie was not a “quitter,” and he hung on
to his faith. Now, with his brother and several other partners, he
formed the Union Iron Mills. The profits were enormous. Vast railroad
development throughout the country required rails and structural
iron. Steel rails were worth from $90 to $100 a ton. The manufacture
of steel seemed to offer even greater prospects than iron.
In 1868 Carnegie visited England. In the early days of the nineteenth
century England controlled the iron business of the world; and when
Carnegie made his first trip abroad, there were fifty-nine Bessemer
Steel plants in Europe and only three in the United States. To-day,
the United States produces over two fifths of all the steel and iron
in the world, and the beginning of this great American industry can
be found in the enterprise of the son of the poor Scotch weaver.
Carnegie had faith in steel. By the Bessemer process steel of high
quality was economically produced by decarbonizing cast iron by
forcing a blast of air through the mass of metal when it is in a
molten condition. Carnegie saw the merits of this process, brought
the idea home with him, and adopted it in his mills. The vindication
of his faith was immediate. In an incredibly short time he had
obtained control of seven great plants in the vicinity of Pittsburgh:
the Homestead, the Edgar Thomson, the Duquesne Steel Works and
Furnaces, the Lucy Furnaces, the Keystone Bridge Works, the Upper and
Lower Union Rolling Mills. In the town to which he had come a poor
lad from a foreign land, Carnegie was now assuming the proportions of
a giant of industry.
Nothing was too good or too costly for the perfecting of the
industry. “Carnegie was the first steelmaker in any country who
flung good machinery on the scrap heap because something better
had been invented. He was the first to employ a salaried chemist,
and to appreciate science in its relation to manufacturing. In his
early days he was the biggest borrower in Pennsylvania; and when
the profits grew large they were poured back, to fertilize the soil
from whence they grew.... So it is clear that, primarily, the aim of
Andrew Carnegie was not to make large dividends or to sell stock,
but to establish a solid and enduring industrial structure. First of
all, he was a business builder; and the present unequaled prosperity
in our iron and steel trade is largely due to the fact that American
steel-makers have adopted the Carnegie policy of ranking improvements
above dividends.”
To protect the supply of coal which his vast steel manufacture now
required, in 1889 Carnegie joined forces with Henry C. Frick, who
dominated the coke-making industry. As a result, his companies
soon “owned and controlled mines producing 6,000,000 tons of ore
annually; 40,000 acres of coal land, and 12,000 coke ovens; steamship
lines for transporting ore to Lake Erie ports; docks for handling ore
and coal, and a railroad from Lake Erie to Pittsburgh; 70,000 acres
of natural-gas territory, with 200 miles of pipe-line; nineteen blast
furnaces and five steel mills, producing and finishing 3,250,000 tons
of steel annually. The pay-roll of the year exceeded $18,000,000.”
Gradually consolidating his interests, Carnegie formed in 1890,
the Carnegie Company, with a paid up capital of $160,000,000, and
in 1899 his interests were merged into the Carnegie Steel Company.
Although still as active in affairs as ever, Carnegie now determined
to retire from active business. In an address delivered at Pittsburgh
he gave his reasons. “An opportunity to retire from business came
to me unsought, which I considered it my duty to accept. My resolve
was made in youth to retire before old age. From what I have seen
around me, I cannot doubt the wisdom of this course, although the
change is great, even serious, and seldom brings happiness. But this
is because so many, having abundance to retire upon, have so little
to retire to. I have always felt that old age should be spent, not
as the Scotch say, in ‘making mickle mair,’ but in making good use
of what has been acquired; and I hope my friends will approve of my
action in retiring while still in full health and vigor, and I can
reasonably expect many years of usefulness in fields which have other
than personal aims.”
The “opportunity” to which Carnegie referred was the merging, in
1901, of the Carnegie Steel Company into the United States Steel
Corporation. For his personal interest Carnegie received $420,000,000.
Freed from business, the iron-master turned to follow the paths to
which his idealism had constantly called him. Always a reader and a
student of books, he now found himself able to make, through public
libraries, books everywhere available, and in various cities and
towns he contributed for library buildings more than $60,000,000.
Still further to advance education and bring its advantages to all
who sought it, he made other gifts, consisting of $24,000,000 to the
Institute at Pittsburgh, $22,000,000 to the Carnegie Institute in
Washington, and $10,000,000 to the Universities of Scotland. At the
time of his death in 1919, it was estimated that he had given away to
education and other worthy causes over $350,000,000.
Behind this generous distribution of his great wealth was a desire
to distribute his fortune before his death. “The day is not far
distant,” he once said, “when the man who dies leaving behind him
available wealth which was free to him to administer during life,
will pass away ‘unwept, unhonored and unsung,’ no matter to what use
he leaves the dross that he cannot take away with him. Of such the
public verdict will be: ‘The man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced.’”
Many other worthy causes held Carnegie’s interest from his retirement
from business to his death. Of all his public activities, he took
perhaps greatest interest in the cause of world peace. He believed in
arbitration instead of war, and aided in the organization of various
leagues and commissions to that end.
But although Carnegie was one of the world’s most generous givers he
had no desire to abolish poverty. “We should,” he said, “be quite
willing to abolish luxury, but to abolish honest, industrious,
self-denying poverty would be to destroy the soil upon which mankind
produces the virtues which enable our race to reach a still higher
civilization than it now possesses.” Not to help men were his
millions given, but to help men to help themselves. In his long
list of philanthropies, education is the goal. “Nothing for the
submerged,” was his motto; but for the boy or man who honestly strove
to force his way upward Carnegie would give all.
During the latter years of his life honors came to him. He was made
Lord Rector of the University of St. Andrews, Edinburgh, in 1903, and
received from the same university the degree of Doctor of Laws in
1905. In 1907 France made him a Commander of the Legion of Honor, and
in the same year the Queen of Holland conferred on him the Order of
Orange-Nassau. By his adopted country he was held in high regard, and
among other honors was made an honorary alumnus of the University of
Princeton.
Simple, as his parents had been before him, in spite of his vast
wealth which opened the world to him, Carnegie desired that the world
should know his pride in his own hard struggle and in the poverty of
his birth. On the crest which he designed for himself is a weaver’s
shuttle, indicating his father’s occupation, and there is a coronet
turned upside down, surmounted by a liberty cap, and supported by
American and Scots flags. The motto is “Death to Privilege.” To
radical minds there is food for thought in this strange crest and
its motto, for they who cry death to privilege often mean death to
ambition, and without ambition the son of the weaver would never have
become the world benefactor who made himself able to give wealth by
the hundreds of millions for the good of humanity.
On the day following his death, in the summer of 1919, a great New
York newspaper began an account of his life with these paragraphs, a
final tribute to an American by adoption:—
“Andrew Carnegie, the outstanding figure of nineteenth-century
industrialism, will go down through the ages as the very
personification of ‘Triumphant Democracy.’
“Overcoming almost insuperable obstacles by his unusual energy
and sheer tenacity of purpose, Andrew Carnegie rose from a humble
messenger-boy to wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. He rose from
obscurity to a unique position in the world.
“Yet despite the tremendous effort put into everything he undertook,
Andrew Carnegie’s meteoric rise was due entirely to the opportunity
offered to all in a land of freedom and of free speech. This
fact he emphasized in all his writings, and in all his speeches.
Moreover, it had a profound effect upon the course he adopted for the
administration of his vast fortune, for the development of mankind,
and the furtherance of science.”
VII
JAMES J. HILL
_Born near Guelph, Ontario, Canada, 1837_
_Died in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1916_
A hundred years ago Napoleon, with the sword, carved out of Europe
an empire. To accomplish this, the lives of men by the thousand were
sacrificed. With misery and bloodshed its boundaries were extended,
and in a few years it had vanished into the history of the past. In
like manner, for centuries have men of dominance changed the maps of
the world, with armies and the sword.
But within the memory of men who live to-day another kind of
empire-builder gave to the new world an empire of another kind. With
peace and prosperity, year by year, he developed its vast square
miles of territory. With rails of steel he pushed its boundaries each
year still further into the wilderness. Each year he opened up to the
world new acres of fertile fields, rich mines, and the tremendous
natural resources of a virgin country. It is an empire that time can
never destroy. It is an empire that has brought prosperity to the
world.
All this was done by a poor Canadian boy, born in a log-cabin at the
edge of the forest in the Province of Ontario, in the year 1837.
James Jerome Hill was his name.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Pach Brothers_
_Jas. J. Hill_ (signature)]
On his mother’s side the boy inherited the sturdy characteristics
of Scotch ancestry; on his father’s side he found the brilliance
and spirit of the Irish race. The soil was the sole source of their
livelihood. Born in a wilderness where dark forests still sheltered
wolves and deer, and where the Indians still roamed, the boy, from
earliest childhood, received impressions that moulded his life’s
destiny. He was born to see man subdue the wilderness, to see his
struggle with the forces of primitive nature, to see his inevitable
victory. As his own father hewed his few acres from the forest, so
in the coming years was James J. Hill to redeem vast wilderness
territories and give them to the use of man.
Characteristically, the father’s foresight sought more than an
ordinary frontier education for his eldest son; and with equal
eagerness the boy grasped at the opportunities that were offered him.
At eleven he left the little district school where his education had
begun, and entered an academy in a nearby village, conducted by an
Englishman of college education.
There were no libraries, and in that remote outskirt of civilization
newspapers were rarely seen. But a few books in the Hill household
gave the growing boy an insight into literature, and the long hours
of out-of-door labor which filled that part of the day when he was
not at school developed him physically and gave him a foundation of
good health which in later years made possible his tireless energy.
When he was fourteen his father died, and realizing the
responsibilities which were now resting on his shoulders, the
boy gave up his hope of a professional career and for four years
supported his mother and her household with such small wages as he
earned as clerk in the village store.
For several years, in the imaginative brain of the boy had grown the
hope of some day crossing the Western plain and sailing across the
Pacific to the Orient. Eagerly he had read all he could find that
told him of those far countries. To his imagination they seemed to
hold a definite promise of opportunity. He had but little money; but
he had faith in himself and in his future. Each year the longing grew
until, when he was eighteen, he could stand it no more and his new
life began.
Without money, friends, or influence, he crossed the boundary into
the United States, and after visiting several of the large Eastern
cities, made his way to St. Paul, then a small town situated at the
head of navigable water on the Mississippi River. North and west the
unbroken prairie and the forests were peopled only by the Indians;
buffalo roamed the prairies. Only along the navigable rivers were the
cultivated farm-lands of the settlers.
The young man had no money; it was necessary for him to devote
himself for a time to some profitable occupation. He was eighteen
years old, but he was willing to turn his hand to any honest work,
and his vivid imagination inspired him to work hard so that his
future hopes might be realized. All of the business activity of St.
Paul centred on the levees along the river, where merchandise brought
up the Mississippi by boat was unloaded for shipment by ox-teams to
the outlying settlements.
Hill was attracted by this kind of business. The position of shipping
clerk in the office of the agents of a steamboat company was open,
and he grasped it. The work was varied: he received incoming and
outgoing freight, ran the warehouse, inspected its contents, kept an
open eye for new business, and when labor was scarce, helped the men
load and unload the steamboats. On this early experience was to be
built the great triumph of coming years.
Not content with performing well his daily work, young Hill spent
his evenings largely in studying the more technical and theoretical
aspects of the transportation business and the possibilities,
dependent upon adequate transportation, of the development of the
great unexplored Northwest. Moreover, he saved his money, realizing
that a time would come when his savings, however small, might prove
vital to the grasping of an opportunity.
The year 1864 marks the close of the second period of his education.
The great Civil War had torn the country. Hill, eager to serve his
adopted land, had tried to enlist; but an accident in childhood which
had resulted in the loss of an eye made it impossible to pass the
physical examination. Although just beyond his majority, the boy had
become a man in more than years. His steady attention to his work and
the long hours of study had put him into a position from which he
could now step fearlessly forward. He was a man of affairs.
The practical business knowledge and the business relationships which
he had formed made him desire to be more completely his own master.
It was not that he was tired of clerking; it was rather that he
realized that the time had come to strike out for himself. To this
resolve his young wife, Mary Theresa Mehegan, whom he had married in
1864, lent all her power of love and encouragement. A true partner in
all her husband’s plans, Mrs. Hill shared every struggle along the
path of success.
The young business man became interested in many things. Far to the
north was the great Red River country, and he began to identify
himself with the traffic which was carried on between this territory
and St. Paul. He developed his warehouse business; he became a dealer
in salt, coal, cement, and lime; he transferred freight, and, above
all, he studied the developments of railroading, with a realization
that in the freight-car and the locomotive was the secret of the
transportation of the future. Fuel particularly interested him,
for he believed that, as the railroad train would supersede the
steamboat, so would coal supplant wood as a motive power.
A year after resigning his clerkship, he entered into the first of
the many partnerships which he formed during his life. His savings
were now an asset of real value, and the $2500 which he had put by
made the partnership possible. The partners planned to do a general
transportation, commission, and storage business, and in 1866 he
began his enlarged activities.
The following year Hill secured a contract with the St. Paul and
Pacific Railroad Company to supply it with fuel. It was his first
real introduction to the railroad business, and on it were based
the labors and successes of the coming years. The railroad in the
Northwest was still in its infancy; transportation depended largely
on the rivers and lakes.
During the next few years, Hill studied the transportation problems
of the Northwest with constantly increasing faith in his belief
that, by means of adequate transportation, it was possible speedily
to develop this vast region for the use of man. More and more the
idea appealed to him. His romantic vision led him on in his thoughts
far beyond the boundaries which surrounded the mental vision of
his fellow citizens, and his years of study and varied business
experience enabled him, step by step, to turn his dreams into
realities.
Steadily the railroads had extended westward from the Great Lakes.
The end of the Mississippi River transportation was within sight.
But from St. Paul to the rich lands of the Red River only the
clumsy carts and the lake flatboats carried the merchandise which
the settlers required. Present needs of adequate transportation
were great; future requirements were enormous beyond comprehension.
Hill went into the problem, and soon had a regular line of boats,
carts, and steamers operating between St. Paul and Winnipeg. The
empire-maker had begun to build.
Many are the stories that are told of Mr. Hill in those early days.
In the heat of summer and in the blizzards of the northern winters
he personally inspected and carried forward the work which he had
designed. He endured every kind of hardship. On his steamboats in the
open months, and with sled and dog train in winter, he passed back
and forth over the route, examining every local condition, studying
the soil, the climate, and the mineral deposits along the way.
On one late winter trip, when the bitter winds were sweeping across
the snowy prairies, blotting out every landmark and turning the
country into a vast white sea, he started north with dogs and sleds,
and an Indian guide for a companion. After a few days the nerve
of the Indian began to weaken and he urged that they turn back.
Realizing that unless decided action was promptly taken the Indian
might be dangerous, Hill ordered him to return, and set out again
alone, camping by night among the snow-drifts, making tea with melted
snow, and sleeping wrapped in his blankets, with his dogs close about
him.
The first railroad actually to be constructed into this new territory
was the St. Paul and Pacific. It received its charter in 1858, under
the name of the Minnesota & Pacific Railroad Company, and was planned
to extend from Stillwater, through St. Paul and Minneapolis, west to
Breckenridge. Immediately a craze for railroads swept the Northwest,
and numbers of companies were formed; but such frenzied speculation
could end only in disaster, and one by one the companies fell into
bankruptcy.
With anxious eyes Hill watched the rising and waning fortunes
of these various railroad enterprises. His investigation led
him to believe that the St. Paul & Pacific offered the greatest
possibilities. For seventeen long years he worked hard, dreamed
his dreams, and added to his capital. Then came the opportunity.
The St. Paul & Pacific had become a wrecked property. In it he saw
the possibilities for which he had worked and saved. With a clear
realization of the tremendous step that he was taking, he cast his
entire fortune into the balance, and with the assistance of several
associates took over the property, and with it its enormous debt of
over $33,000,000. James J. Hill at last held control of a railroad.
He had bought a property that was bankrupt and was described as “two
streaks of rust reaching out into the desert”; but in this bold
beginning was the germ of the great railroad system which, under the
name of the Great Northern, was to bring him fame and fortune in the
years to come.
In the six years that followed, Mr. Hill extended his railroad to the
Red River and connected with the government line from Winnipeg. By
this extension the rich lands of Minnesota were opened to immigrants,
and the great wheat-lands of the Northwest were connected with the
markets of the United States.
The risk that he had taken was justified; but to his wife and
to the friends who knew him it seemed less great, for they knew
the character of the man, and to know him was to feel complete
confidence in any action which he determined to take. “All his life
it was his custom to know all the facts about anything in which
he was interested, a good deal earlier and a little better than
anybody else. For twenty years he had lived in the country where the
situation had been preparing. For four or five years he had been
consumed with anxiety to get possession of this property. He alone
fully understood its present value; he alone conceived its future
with any degree of justness.”
But now his dreams of a greater empire began to be realized. The
St. Paul & Pacific, under his able management, was earning money
and building up a surplus. In 1883 Mr. Hill extended it to Helena,
Montana. And now his belief in the development of the Northwest
was more strongly confirmed with each new step. His vision already
pictured a railroad stretching across the prairies and over the
tremendous barrier of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific and the
great harbors of Puget Sound. This was no impractical dream, but an
idea founded on fact and experience; it was a great constructive
enterprise.
Ten years later, in 1893, Mr. Hill began actively to carry out his
plan of extending his railroad from Helena to the coast. It is hard
to realize the tremendous difficulties which faced him. On the one
hand, the Rocky Mountains seemed to block his path; on the other, a
financial panic made the obtaining of the money necessary for the
project seem almost an impossibility. But he was undismayed; every
obstacle was overcome, the road was built, and the empire again
extended its boundary, this time to the blue waters of the Pacific.
Following the completion of the Great Northern, as the consolidation
of his various railroads was now called, to Puget Sound, Mr. Hill
began his struggle to obtain the control of other railroads in order
to combine them all into one vast coherent system. The Northern
Pacific Railroad was the first to be added, and then the Burlington
System was secured and incorporated into the vast development of
his plan. Fifty years before, the penniless country boy had left
the small village of his birth to seek his fortune; and now, after
this life of usefulness, he found himself able to pay in cash over
$200,000,000 for the Northern Pacific Railway System.
Mr. Hill believed that the tilling of the soil was the true basis of
success; that on the soil rested the stability of government, and
that from it came the wealth of the world. To him, his vast systems
of railroads were the means of opening to settlement regions of
arable land, and later, when these lands had been cultivated, of
connecting them with the rest of the world and affording markets for
their produce. To increase population and industry along a railroad
was the surest way of making the railroad profitable. He believed
that a railroad would be rich or poor along with the farmers who
cultivated the fields beside its tracks.
In order to help the thousands of farmers along the lines of his
railroads to make their farms more profitable, Mr. Hill bought,
wherever in the world they could be best obtained, herds of the
finest cattle. These he bred on his own farms, and many he gave away
to the farmers for their own breeding. In all, he gave away more than
eight thousand head of cattle and hogs, and for many years offered
prizes for the best cattle raised by the farmers. “We must have
better farming,” he said. “We must have more intelligent methods.
Experience has shown that there is no way in which they can do this
so well as by raising cattle, pigs, and horses, and by dairying.”
As a boy he had dreamed of the Orient. Now his dreams were to be
realized. From the Western states his trains came eastward heavily
loaded with lumber from the great forests of Oregon and Washington.
To operate most profitably, it was apparent that these trains should
not go west empty, but filled with merchandise. But there were not
enough people in these Western states to consume the merchandise
the trains could carry. Beyond the Pacific, however, were millions
of people. China and Japan needed many things. Why should not his
railroads carry westward merchandise for these great markets of the
Orient?
With characteristic thoroughness, Mr. Hill sent agents to China to
study the food-problem, and the best way to make a market there
for American flour. They reported the existence of a great market
for flour, cotton, and steel. To gain this business was to wage
industrial warfare with Belgium and Great Britain, who had a cheap
all-water route to the Orient by way of the Suez Canal.
But as his railroads extended only to the Pacific shore, a great
ocean still lay between him and these alluring markets. To solve
this problem, Mr. Hill formed, in 1900, the Great Northern Steamship
Company, and built the Minnesota and the Dakota, the greatest vessels
ever built flying the American flag, to run between Seattle and
Yokohama and Hong Kong. But in this great venture, with its promise
of success, Mr. Hill encountered disappointment, for the policy of
the United States was unfavorable, rates and regulations made the
cost of the operation of the ships excessive, and he was at last
forced by circumstances to withdraw from the Oriental field.
Meanwhile, the vast empire of the Northwest was rapidly filling up
with settlers. In a single year eighteen thousand farmers located
along the Great Northern, and each year, farther and farther back
from the tracks, new lands were developed and new homes were located
where only a few years before the buffalo and the Indians had
wandered. Next after the railroad, it was the farm which held the
closest interest of the empire-builder.
Second only to Mr. Hill’s belief in the farm as the foundation of
national prosperity was his interest in the discovery and development
of new sources of mineral wealth. As a young man he had recognized
the tremendous part which coal was to play in the history of
transportation and the consequent development of the country. For
years he had studied the coal deposits of the Northwest, and there
was probably no one better informed than he regarding their quality,
extent, and location.
In like manner he had investigated the general facts regarding the
world’s supply of iron ore. At this time, however, there were no
known deposits of iron ore in the Northwest. Then came rumors of the
discovery of iron deposits in northern Minnesota. But now Mr. Hill’s
two oldest sons were taking an active interest in the vast operations
of their father. Like him, they had traveled extensively, not only
over the territory reached by his railroads, but also over the still
undeveloped lands, particularly in northern Minnesota.
In this way the two younger men became convinced of the wealth
of iron ore which awaited only proper development and railroad
connections to yield an enormous profit. Mr. Hill saw also the
great opportunity that presented itself, and in 1899 personally
purchased, for $4,050,000, a great tract of land on the now famous
Mesabi Range. Immediately, railroad connections with the iron country
were constructed, and arrangements for the shipment of the ore
over the Great Northern were made. But although this was in every
respect a private venture, practically discovered and entirely paid
for by Mr. Hill out of his own pocket, his high sense of honor and
responsibility refused to accept the enormous profits which were
soon to be realized. Believing that the stockholders of the Great
Northern, who with their money had stood behind him and had in a
measure made this new development possible, were entitled to a share
in the profits, he organized this new mining project, and distributed
its stock, share for share, among them in proportion to their
investment in the railroad. His refusal to take the entire profit is
a fine example of the high principles which guided his every act and
were in large measure responsible for his success.
Throughout his life, Mr. Hill believed that the success of men and
nations rests entirely on the truest personal liberty. To him the
man was always bigger than the state. Personal initiative and effort
came first; what man individually could not accomplish, that the
state must do; but never should the state assume the development or
operation of a project until it was recognized that an individual or
a group of individuals could not better accomplish the desired result.
The forest, the farm, and the mines, were in his belief the three
sources of wealth. But wealth could come only from universal
industry, honesty, thrift, and fair dealing among men. In his own
dealings with his fellow men, he required those qualities; and,
although his keen sympathies invariably responded to true distress,
he had scant patience with those whose false vision saw in wealth
honestly acquired a fund to be drawn upon for the support of the lazy
and shiftless.
He once said: “There are four great words that should be written upon
the four corner-stones of every public building in the country, with
the sacredness of a religious rite. These watchwords of the Republic
are Equality, Simplicity, Economy, and Justice.” And another time he
said, when speaking of a profit-sharing arrangement he had made with
his employees: “I am as well satisfied with that institution as with
anything I have ever had to do with. I think that its greatest value
is teaching the men to save. The first two or three hundred dollars
is the hardest to save, but when once you have started, you all know
it comes easy.”
Long before his death Mr. Hill’s name had become known throughout
the civilized world. “His fame was international. His services were
cosmopolitan.” Among the many honors which were heaped upon him in
recognition of his services to mankind was the degree of Doctor of
Laws by Yale University. In conferring this degree, Professor Perrin,
of Yale, said:—
“Mr. Hill is the last of the generations of wilderness conquerors,
the men who interpreted the Constitution, fixed our foreign
relations, framed the Monroe Doctrine, and blazed all the great
trails which determined the nation’s future. He has always been an
original investigator, and we know him now as a man of infinite
information. Every item of his colossal success rests upon a series
of facts ascertained by him before they had been noted by others, and
upon the future relations which he saw in those facts to human need
and national growth. He believes that no society can prosper in which
intellectual training is not based upon moral and religious culture.
He is a national economist on broad ethical and religious lines;
but the greatest things in all his greatness are his belief in the
spiritual significance of man and his longing for the perpetuation of
American institutions at their highest and best.”
His interest in books as a source of education found expression in
the great public library which he presented to the city of St. Paul.
To him, the trained mind was a necessity for success. Whether trained
in the university or in the active life of the world did not matter,
so long as it was trained; that was all that concerned him.
Mr. Hill’s reputation in years to come will rest chiefly on his
career as an “Empire-Builder.” But he was primarily a railroad
manager and a railroad engineer. His knowledge of the great
business of transportation made it possible for him to extend his
interests far and wide; no opportunity came near him that he did not
investigate, and no opportunity which he accepted was ever put aside
until he had developed it to its most perfect completion.
Physically, he was a man who seemed to express in his appearance
the force and character which distinguished him mentally among men.
Slightly under average height, with a great head firmly set on
square, powerful shoulders, he commanded attention. He was physically
strong, and his powers of endurance, which served him so well in the
long hard days of his early life, remained unimpaired almost to his
death. His firm mouth was half hidden by a beard, whitened in his
latter years. His brow was high. His eyes were alert and looked out
from beneath shaggy eyebrows. He was a man of a notable appearance
which demanded respect and inspired confidence.
“Work, hard work, intelligent work, and then some more work,” was
one of his frequent explanations of his success, and his advice to
others. To young men he said: “The best advice to a young man, as it
appears to me, is old and simple. Get knowledge and understanding.
Determine to make the most possible of yourself by doing to the best
of your power useful work as it comes your way. There are no receipts
for success in life. A good aim, diligence in learning every detail
of your business, honest hard work, and a determination to succeed,
win out every time, unless crossed by some exceptional accident or
misfortune. Many opportunities come to every man. It depends upon
himself, and upon what he shall make of himself, what he makes of
opportunities and what they will make of him.”
From a poor farmer boy, in fifty years, James J. Hill, by the force
of his own determination, and the opportunities common to all men in
the great Republic of which he became a citizen, achieved a position
among the world-leaders of his day. Wealth in millions came to him,
not by inheritance or a stroke of speculative chance, but from the
works which he himself had conceived and created. The achievements of
his life will long be remembered, not only because of their public
service, but because of their inspiration to other men by affording
an example of the heights which may be reached by hard work,
imagination, and determination to succeed.
VIII
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
_Born in Dublin, Ireland, 1848_
_Died in Cornish, New Hampshire, 1907_
In a little house in Dublin, Ireland, on March 1, 1848, was born
Augustus Saint-Gaudens. There was nothing in the humble surroundings
which first greeted his eyes to mark the baby as in any way different
from the many other babies who may have been born on the same first
day of March in the ancient Irish city.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, however, inherited from his father and mother
something far greater than wealth or name, for in their sturdy,
honest blood he found that indefinable thing called “character,”
which, throughout his life, led him steadily forward along the
straight path to fame and honor. From his parents he also inherited
the qualities which are inherent in a romantic people; for his father
was born in France, in the little village of Aspet at the foot of the
Pyrenees, and his mother, whose maiden name was Mary McGuiness, gave
him the love of the beautiful which belongs to Ireland. But perhaps,
after all, his parents gave him a like inheritance, for Ireland is an
old nation into which in centuries past has been infused the blood
of the proudest families of France—Irish by birth and French by
inheritance, he might be called.
The elder Saint-Gaudens was a shoemaker, and he had met the mother
of the future Augustus in the shoe store for which he made shoes and
where she did the binding of slippers. When Augustus was but a few
months old his parents emigrated to the United States and in the
month of September in the year of his birth he landed in the city of
Boston, a place which in later years became deeply identified with
his activities.
From Boston the little family proceeded to New York, where Bernard
Saint-Gaudens, the father, set up his small business and secured
humble lodging nearby for his family. And here the young Augustus
made the beginning of his conscious life, in which, of early
memories, most vivid were the “delightful reminiscences of the smell
of cake in the bakery at the corner of the street, and of the stewed
peaches of the German family in the same house.”
Above the door of the shop hung the sign “French Ladies’ Boots and
Shoes”; and within, the shoemaker, with his “wonderfully complex
mixture of French accent and Irish brogue,” varied his occupation of
making shoes with endless duties which he undertook as the organizer
and leading figure in several societies which flourished in the
French colony of the city. Customers came readily to the little shop,
for its proprietor was an able workman, despite certain agreeable
eccentricities, and the business, growing steadily, provided an
adequate, if simple, upbringing for Augustus and his two brothers.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1915, by de W. C. Ward_
_Augustus Saint-Gaudens_ (Signature)]
Many are the memories of those early days, memories of a
wholesome and normal boyhood. There are memories of fires, of
street-fights with boys of other neighborhoods, of school-days, of a
never-to-be-forgotten excursion to the country, of the delight of his
first reading of “Robinson Crusoe,” and of the famous actress Rachel
playing “Virginia” in Niblo’s Garden. And there are memories of
boyhood loves, memories all that “pass across the field of my vision
like ships that appear through the mist for a moment and disappear.”
With the early end of his school days Augustus turned to the actual
earning of his daily bread. He was thirteen years old. To his
father’s question as to what kind of work appealed most strongly
to him he had answered, “I should like it if I could do something
which would help me to be an artist.” It was a decision that must
have seemed strange to the father, who perhaps had seen in the boy a
possible assistant in his growing business; but wisely he respected
the desire that Augustus expressed, and a few weeks later the boy was
apprenticed to a Frenchman named Avet, the first stone-cameo cutter
in America.
A cameo is a fine relief of a human head, or the head of an animal,
cut in a stone or shell, often so done as to show the design in a
layer of one color with another color as a background. The stones,
which were usually amethysts or malachite, were at that period
extremely fashionable, and were worn in rings, or scarf-pins, or
breast-pins by men and women. The work was fine and required skill
and patience and artistic ability; so for a long time Augustus was
limited to the preparation of the stones, which Avet would finish
and later sell to the leading jewelers of the city.
Avet was a hard taskmaster and the monotonous labor over the whirring
lathe was irksome to the red-blooded boy, who looked up from the
spinning-wheel at the white clouds sailing across the little window
above him and heard the rumble of wheels and the hum of life in the
distant street. But in his few hours of leisure there were glimpses
of stirring events never to be forgotten. There was the excitement
attending the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, “Honest
Abe, the Rail-Splitter.” There was the recruiting of troops for the
great Civil War which for four long years racked the land. And later,
from the window in front of his lathe, Saint-Gaudens watched the
volunteers from New England as they tramped down Broadway, singing
“John Brown’s Body” as they marched.
Day after day Saint-Gaudens ground and turned the stones on his
lathe, and all day long he listened to the voice of Avet, scolding
and swearing as he worked. One day came the breaking-point. At noon
the boy had quietly eaten his luncheon from the little box which he
brought each morning with him to his work. Some crumbs had fallen on
the floor, and Avet, seeing them, burst into a fury and discharged
him on the spot. Without comment he folded up his overalls, left the
shop, and going at once to his father’s store, explained exactly
what had occurred. Within a few minutes Avet followed, apologetic
and promising even more money if the boy would return. Without
hesitation Saint-Gaudens refused, and in later life he often recalled
his father’s “proud smile” as he made his decision.
There is credit in sticking to a hard job, and there is equal credit
in a manly refusal to continue to work under intolerable conditions.
Saint-Gaudens’s act brought its own reward, for his next employer,
Mr. Jules le Brethon, a shell-cameo cutter, was a man unlike Avet in
every particular, and it was through this new connection that the
path to Saint-Gaudens’s career as a sculptor was opened to him.
With his characteristic foresight in availing himself of every
opportunity, the boy had early begun to devote his evenings to the
study of drawing in the free classes at the Cooper Institute. Every
day at six he left his work, and after a hurried supper, hastened to
his classroom. He was appreciative of the great opportunity which the
school afforded him, and he threw himself with all his soul into his
work. “I became a terrific worker, toiling every night until eleven
o’clock after the class was over. Indeed, I became so exhausted with
the confining work of cameo-cutting by day and drawing at night, that
in the morning mother literally dragged me out of bed, pushed me over
to the washstand, where I gave myself a cat’s lick somehow or other,
drove me to the seat at the table, administered my breakfast, and
tumbled me downstairs out into the street, where I awoke.”
When the courses at the Cooper Union were finally accomplished,
Saint-Gaudens took up new night work at the National Academy of
Design, and it was here that his first appreciation of the antique
came to him, and his first practice in drawing from the nude—training
so fundamental for his great work in coming years.
Early in the year 1867 came another turning-point in his life. Ever
since he had first begun to work, Saint-Gaudens had been giving his
wages to his father to pay his share of the family expenses. And
now the father, realising that the boy’s earnestness and ability
were deserving of every opportunity which he could afford, made the
offer of a trip to Europe, where he might see the art of the older
civilizations and return to the United States broadened by his
experience and observations.
Saint-Gaudens was nineteen years old. His father had paid for his
passage in the steerage, and in his pocket were a hundred dollars
which had been saved out of his wages. Arriving in Paris in a “mixed
state of enthusiasm and collapse,” he spent a few days visiting in
the household of an uncle, and then began his search of employment
at cameo-cutting and of admission to the School of Fine Arts. Work
was soon found in the establishment of an Italian. But entrance to
the school was a more difficult proposition, and in order that no
time should be wasted while he was waiting, he enrolled in a modeling
school, working there mornings and nights and supporting himself on
what he earned at cameo-cutting in the afternoon.
These were days and nights of almost superhuman exertion, but at
the end of a year the desired admission to the school was obtained,
and his real education began. It is customary for a student at the
Beaux-Arts to select the master in whose atelier he wishes to study,
and Saint-Gaudens selected Jouffroy, whose pupils in the preceding
years had been particularly successful in capturing most of the
prizes which were offered by the school.
Here Saint-Gaudens formed several friendships which endured
throughout his life, and here also he began to mingle more widely
with the men in the great world about him, although his time was far
too occupied for more than an occasional hour or two of relaxation.
“My ambition was of such a soaring nature, and I was so tremendously
austere, that I had the deepest scorn of the ordinary amusements of
the light opera, balls and what not.” And yet, when he did play,
his play was of the hardest. He was active beyond measure, and it
is doubtless to the hours of hard physical exercise which he got
at night in the gymnasium and the swimming-baths, that he owed the
health which gave him the endurance necessary for his long hours
in the classroom. Occasionally, walking trips, with one or two
companions, gave well-deserved vacations—trips from which the walkers
returned tired and penniless, but inspired by the beauty of nature
in the pleasant French countryside and thrilled with the stupendous
grandeur of the Alpine scenery.
But now, in the year 1870, the dark clouds of the Franco-Prussian
War suddenly gathered. War was declared. The streets of Paris were
congested with shouting, marching crowds. The enlistment places were
filled with men joining the colors. To the young American the problem
of his own line of action seemed difficult to decide. Everything
within him urged him to enlist under the flag of France. But he was
a citizen of another land, and aged parents awaited his return. He
decided to withhold his decision. Once, indeed, he returned to Paris
from Limoges fixed in his purpose to join his French companions;
but there he found a letter from his mother, so pathetic that he
reluctantly abandoned his intention, returned to Limoges, and a few
months later started for Rome.
After the cold, gray months of a Paris winter, and the misery and
suffering of the war, the glowing warmth and beauty of the Holy City
exhilarated and exalted him. “It was as if a door had been thrown
wide open to the eternal beauty of the classical.” Here, living
almost in poverty, he continued the work so well begun in Paris.
Here, also, he began the statue of Hiawatha, “pondering, musing in
the forest, on the welfare of his people”—the first of the long list
of world-recognized masterpieces which the strenuous labor of his
life produced. So poor, indeed, was Saint-Gaudens at this time, that
it was only through the kindness of an American, who advanced him the
money to cast the figure, that he was able to complete the work. For
this same gentleman Saint-Gaudens modeled busts of his two daughters,
and through him he also received a commission for copies of the busts
of Demosthenes and Cicero.
In Rome Saint-Gaudens also first made the acquaintance of Dr. Henry
Shiff, a comrade whose friendship lasted throughout his life.
Shiff was considerably the senior of Saint-Gaudens, but his deep
appreciation of art and literature, and his frank, friendly nature
endeared him to the young and struggling sculptor, and gave him the
inspiration that is always found in the true appreciation of a loyal
friend.
In 1872 Saint-Gaudens returned to New York; but his stay was brief,
for he was eager to return to Italy for a few years more before
definitely establishing himself in the United States. While in New
York, much work was accomplished, but little of it should be included
in a list of his works, for in the main it consisted of jobs of
one sort or another necessary to earn the money which his living
required. Here, however, he began his bust of Senator William M.
Evarts, one of the foremost orators in the United States, and, during
the years 1877 to 1881, Secretary of State in the administration
of President Hayes. Then, also, he received a number of other
commissions for busts and, of particular importance, a commission
for a figure of Silence to be placed in a Masonic building in New
York. It was a sudden and bewildering amount of work for the young
sculptor, and it brought vividly to him, after his struggling years
of poverty in Europe, a realization of the appreciation and reward
which the United States so freely offered.
In 1875 Augustus Saint-Gaudens returned again to the United States,
but this time to take his place as a full-fledged sculptor. Behind
him were years of hard but fruitful experience. From the long period
at which he had worked at his cameo-cutting he had developed a
keen eye and a sure hand with his tools. From Paris and Rome he had
obtained the practice which he required in actual work from the human
figure, and from Rome in particular he had learned “what to leave
untouched” and had acquired “an ability to choose his subjects from
among the important figures of the moment, and then to give his best
efforts to transforming them into vital and eternal symbols.”
On his arrival in New York he rented a small studio in an old
building, and was soon intensively occupied in a life in which
modeling, teaching, and studying filled the long hours, and carried
on often far into the night. Dark and depressing seemed the New York
winter after the warmth and color of Italy; and to bring back more
vividly the memory of the tinkling, splashing fountains that played
in the Roman sunshine, he would turn on the water in the little
wash-basin in his studio and let the gentle sound carry his thoughts
back to the gardens of Rome.
But now came two commissions which left no opportunity for thoughts
of anything but the work in hand. From Governor Dix of New York
came a commission for a statue of Robert Richard Randall, a wealthy
citizen of New York City in the early years of the nineteenth
century, who had left his fortune for the founding of the Sailors’
Snug Harbor, on Staten Island, a home for aged deep-sea sailormen.
At the same time he obtained a commission for the statue of Admiral
David G. Farragut,—the first Admiral of the United States Navy, and
the hero of Mobile Bay,—which stands in Madison Square, New York.
The importance of these commissions did much to raise the spirits
and fire the ambition of Saint-Gaudens, and at the same time the
constantly increasing friendships which he was forming helped him to
find the happiness of congenial comradeship which his nature sought.
“There is no doubt,” he has written, “that my intimacy with John
LaFarge has been a spur to higher endeavor”; and there were others
who gave him similar inspiration by their warm appreciation of his
ambitions.
It was in the year 1877 that Saint-Gaudens took a principal part in
the founding of the Society of American Artists. The establishment
of this society was an important milestone in the progress of
American art, for with it came a vital change in American painting
and sculpture. Previously, art in the United States had been more
or less burdened with conventions and a dull technique. But this
stagnant state now became stirred and freshened by the flood of a new
generation of artists. Such men as Saint-Gaudens, Eastman Johnson,
John LaFarge, Winslow Homer, and John S. Sargent began to remonstrate
against the things that were. These men and their fellows had felt
abroad the new movement in artistic appreciation. It was their desire
to give to America this new and virile expression, and in spite of
the opposition of the conservatists of the established school,—the
“old-timers,”—the new society received a welcome and became a
constantly increasing factor and force in the development of American
art.
A year was now spent in the modeling of a high bas-relief depicting
the “Adoration of the Cross by Angels,” which was to form the
principal part of the interior decorations of St. Thomas’s Church
in New York, which were being designed by Mr. John LaFarge. This
was important work and added greatly to Saint-Gaudens’s reputation;
but only the memory of its beauty remains, for the church was later
destroyed by fire.
In 1878 Saint-Gaudens again visited Paris, but this time his work
and study held him there for three years. In a quiet studio which
he hired in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, work was begun on the
Farragut statue, and also on a series of figures which were designed
to ornament a mausoleum which Governor Morgan of Connecticut had
commissioned him to execute. It is a strange coincidence that the
angels for the Morgan tomb were later destroyed by fire, as were the
angels of St. Thomas’s Church.
“In the years I passed this time in Paris there was little of the
adventurous swing of life that pervaded my previous struggles.”
Work on his commissions almost wholly occupied him. There were,
however, occasional excursions, and the presence of two friends,
Stanford White and McKim, who were already winning their reputation
as brilliant New York architects, did much to break the tedium of his
work.
The Farragut statue was finally completed, and on the afternoon
of a beautiful day in May, 1881, it was unveiled to the eyes of
the public. In his “Reminiscences” Saint-Gaudens described this
memorable occasion: “These formal unveilings of monuments are
impressive affairs and variations from the toughness that pervades
a sculptor’s life. For we constantly deal with practical problems,
with moulders, contractors, derricks, stone-men, ropes, builders,
scaffoldings, marble assistants, bronze-men, trucks, rubbish-men,
plasterers, and what-not else, all the while trying to soar into the
blue.—But if managed intelligently there is a swing to unveilings,
and the moment when the veil drops from the monument certainly makes
up for many of the woes that go towards the creating of the work. On
this special occasion Mr. Joseph H. Choate delivered the oration. The
sailors who assisted added to the picturesqueness of the procession.
The artillery placed in the park, back of the statue, was discharged.
And when the figure in the shadow stood unveiled, and the smoke
rolled up into the sunlight upon the buildings behind it, the sight
gave an impression of dignity and beauty that it would take a rare
pen to describe.”
During the year 1877 Saint-Gaudens was married to Augusta F. Homer
of Boston. Recognition had come to his work; his professional future
seemed assured. Now, by this happy marriage, domestic tranquillity
and congenial companionship were added.
On his return from Europe Saint-Gaudens took a studio on Thirty-Sixth
Street in New York, and here were begun the Sunday afternoon
concerts which soon became celebrated because of the literary men
and artists who gathered there, and invitations were eagerly sought
and highly prized. But in 1885 Saint-Gaudens moved from the city
and established his family in an old Colonial house at Cornish,
New Hampshire. “I had been a boy of the streets and sidewalks all
my life,” he says, “but during this first summer in the country,
it dawned on me seriously how much there was outside of my little
world.” Here was open country, a land of green hills and sky, a place
where the man to whom beauty was a living thing might find widening
inspiration.
Of the many monuments which Saint-Gaudens created there are five
which commemorate great heroes of the Civil War. The monument of
Admiral Farragut has been mentioned; standing in the heart of the
country’s greatest city, it carries daily to the thousands who pass
an unconscious inspiration—as though treading the swinging deck
of his flagship, the Admiral seems to look forward with a grim
determination, inflexible, indomitable—a man.
The Shaw memorial was undertaken in 1884. The second of this historic
series, Saint-Gaudens expected to complete it within a comparatively
short time; but it was not until 1897 that the memorial was unveiled
in Boston. Robert Gould Shaw was a young Bostonian who was killed in
action while leading his regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts—a
regiment of colored men led by white officers. The memorial is in
the form of a large bas-relief. Although unfortunately placed, it
is one of Saint-Gaudens’s most highly considered works. Across the
relief the colored troops march to the drum beat; there is the rhythm
of a passing regiment and a martial animation, but over all is a
sense of melancholy; in the faces of the soldiers, the tense look of
anticipation of the impending battle. Occupying the centre of the
panel, Shaw rides beside his men, an expression of sadness on his
youthful face. Above the scene floats a figure to which the master
gave no name, but which his interpreters and pupils have called Fame
and Death.
During the early nineties Saint-Gaudens produced two more statues,
both of which have been placed in the city of Chicago. In the
equestrian monument to General Logan, Saint-Gaudens gave an
indication of the greater statue, that of General Sherman, which was
soon to follow. In the Logan monument he found a subject susceptible
of broad interpretation. The general, mounted on a spirited charger,
rides with the air of a conqueror. There is the “smell of the
battlefield” in his face. The body seems a living thing, moving flesh
and blood are incased in the wind-blown uniform.
But in his statue of Abraham Lincoln, Saint-Gaudens reached the
height of his art. Standing before the massive chair from which he
seems to have risen, the tall, gaunt, ungainly figure embodies in
its attitude and in every hanging fold of the unfitted garments,
the spirit of infinite tenderness, melancholy, and strength that
characterized the great emancipator. Although the memory of Lincoln
will endure as long as men live upon the earth, the Lincoln of
Saint-Gaudens will ever recall to coming generations the plaintive
sadness of this greatest of Americans.
In the year 1887 General William Tecumseh Sherman gave Saint-Gaudens
eighteen sittings for a bust. Sherman had served with distinction in
the Mexican War in 1846, and in May, 1861, at the outbreak of the
Civil War, was appointed colonel of the Thirteenth U.S. Infantry.
Rapidly promoted, he took part in many famous campaigns, and in
1864 became commander of the military division of the Mississippi.
Assembling in 1864 his three armies, comprising over one hundred
thousand men, near Chattanooga, he began an invasion of the State of
Georgia, and finally, with 60,000 picked men, made his celebrated
“March to the Sea,” from Atlanta to Savannah. The statue of Sherman
was begun in 1890, but it was not until 1903 that it was finally
erected at the entrance of Central Park in New York City. Led by a
symbolic figure of Victory, the general rides forward on his charger.
A speaking likeness of Sherman, the statue at the same time seems
infused with the spirit of the great struggle, a spirit of invincible
determination. It is a monument which may be included among the great
equestrian statues of the modern world. “His horse is obviously
advancing, and Sherman’s body, tense with nervous energy, is at one
with the body beneath him, equally impressive of movement. The winged
victory in every fibre quivers with the rhythm of oncoming resistless
force.”
In the Rock Creek Cemetery near the City of Washington is a figure
which is not only one of the greatest productions of Saint-Gaudens,
but unquestionably his most imaginative composition. This is the
memorial erected by Mr. Henry Adams to his wife. The figure is
seated and concealed by a loose garment which half veils the face.
Saint-Gaudens once spoke of the figure as symbolic of “The Mystery of
the Hereafter; it is beyond pain, and beyond joy.” Of this monument
Henry Adams wrote to Saint-Gaudens: “The work is indescribably noble
and imposing ... it is full of poetry and suggestion, infinite
wisdom, a past without beginning and a future without end, a repose
after limitless experience, a peace to which nothing matters—all are
embodied in this austere and beautiful face and form.”
The world now began to pour its offerings upon Saint-Gaudens. From
Harvard University came the honorary degree of LL.D. and the tribute
of Dr. Eliot, its president, who said in conferring it: “Augustus
Saint-Gaudens—sculptor whose art follows but ennobles nature, confers
fame and lasting remembrance, and does not count the mortal years it
takes to mould immortal forms.” Degrees from the Universities of Yale
and Princeton followed his Harvard honor; at Paris in 1900 he was
awarded the medal of honor, “and at Buffalo in the following year a
special medal was bestowed upon him, an enthusiastic tribute from his
fellow artists, who sought lovingly to exalt him above themselves as
the one man they regarded as the master of them all.”
Together with these recognitions came others of equal significance.
In the late nineties he was made by the French Government an Officer
of the Legion of Honor and a Corresponding Member of the Société des
Beaux-Arts, and later from the same source came an offer to purchase
certain of his bronzes for the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. In 1904
he was elected Honorary Foreign Academician of the Royal Academy of
London, and among his other later distinctions may be included his
memberships in the National Academy of New York and the Academy of
St. Luke, Rome.
Constantly he answered the call of Europe and found delight and
profit in his travels; but the United States grew more dear to him
with each passing year. “I belong in America,” he wrote; “that is
my home, that is where I want to be and to remain.” But now the
tireless energy of his early life began to show its mark on the
vigorous vitality which had so long supported him. With his work,
and congenial assistants and friends, he began to identify himself
more closely with the simple life of his Cornish home. On the third
of August, 1907, came the final episode in his memorable career. A
long illness attended by much suffering had failed to separate him
from his work; carried to his studio to superintend the work of his
assistants, he labored until the end. But his life was over, and as
he had lived in a realm of spiritual beauty, so in the quiet peace of
the New Hampshire hills his spirit passed.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, although of foreign birth and for many years,
during the early period of his life, a resident abroad, “remained as
distinctly American in his art as if he had come from a long line
of native ancestors. He showed his Americanism in striking out in a
totally new vein and making his own traditions.”
Of his art much has been written, but a few quotations may suffice.
“The special note of the medallions which are conspicuous among his
first productions is one of delicacy, and in the character of that
delicacy lies a source of strength which was from first to last of
immense service.” His touch was “at once caressing and bold,” and
he delighted “in giving a clear, even forcible, impression of the
personality before him. It is portraiture for the sake of truth and
beauty, not for the sake of technique.” In his work in the round,
the Adams memorial stands as his “one memorable effort in the sphere
of loftiest abstraction. His other greatest triumphs were won in
the field of portraiture.” In his studies of historical subjects,
Saint-Gaudens “struck the one definitive note, made his Lincoln or
Sherman a type which generations must revere and which no future
statues can invalidate.”
“People think a sculptor has an easy life in a studio,” he once
said. “It’s hard labor in a factory.” And often he remarked, “You
can do anything you please. It’s the way it’s done that makes the
difference.”
Such was Augustus Saint-Gaudens. To him America afforded an
opportunity; richly and many times over did he repay his debt to his
adopted land.
IX
JACOB A. RIIS
_Born in Ribe, Denmark, 1849_
_Died in Barre, Massachusetts, 1914_
There are many good citizens of the United States who can look back
with pride to their Danish ancestry. Denmark, that land of low-lying,
storm-swept coasts, and level plains, has bred for centuries a race
of hardy, freedom-loving people. It is only natural that America
should hold out to them a promise of even greater opportunity and
personal liberty.
On the bleak coast of the North Sea is the little town of Ribe.
There, in 1849, was born Jacob A. Riis, son of a schoolmaster and
one of fourteen children. Scant were the means for the education and
upbringing of so large a family; but from this humble home on the
Danish seacoast came a man who, in later years, was to become famous
in the new land of his adoption: famous, not because of wealth or
inventive genius, but for his citizenship, and for his deeds, which
left the world better than he found it.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Brown Brothers_
_Jacob A Riis_ (signature)]
There were no railroads or steamboats in Ribe in those days. It was
as it had been almost for centuries. And yet Ribe took pride in
its history: its people were a fighting race, fighters for honor
and liberty, fighters for the little of peace and security that
encroaching neighbors and unfriendly Nature had permitted them to
have. They had fought back the Germans in 1849, as they had fought
for their homes in years before. And every year, when the wind set in
from the northwest, they fought back the sea that rose up over the
low beaches and flooded the land as far back as the eye could see.
With such traditions and in such environment, it is small wonder that
young Jacob grew to be a healthy, normal boy charged with ambition
and energy. There was fighting blood in his veins, but it was the
blood that rises and fights against oppression and for the right, and
never for conquest or the subjection of the weak.
It was the ambition of the father that Jacob should study for a
professional career, but to the young boy, with his strong body and
alert mind, the study of a trade appealed more keenly, and he was
apprenticed for a year to a carpenter in the town.
But before the year was done, the boy’s ambition grew beyond the
opportunities of the little town, and, with the consent of his
family, he removed to Copenhagen to continue his apprenticeship
under a great builder in that city. Four years were passed here,
and during these years Jacob became proficient in his trade; but of
even greater value were the opportunities for study which the Danish
capital afforded him: study not only in books, but in men and in the
observation of the life around him.
One other thing drove his ambition steadily forward. In Ribe was a
fair-haired girl, the daughter of the wealthiest and most prominent
citizen. Wide was the social and financial gulf between the young
and penniless carpenter and the young girl whom he desired for his
wife. To everyone but himself his hopes seemed almost ridiculous in
their impossibility. He alone refused to accept defeat. If money was
needed, he would make it. If Denmark could not offer him success,
there was a land beyond the Atlantic that could.
He was twenty-one years old. In his pocket were forty dollars. It was
not much, either in years of experience or in wealth; but he had his
trade to fall back on, and, above all, he had “a pair of strong hands
and stubbornness enough to do for two; also a strong belief that in a
free country, free from the dominion of custom, of caste, as well as
of men, things would somehow come right in the end.”
From the deck of the steamer he watched the city of New York grow
large on the horizon. Ships of the world filled the blue harbor.
Tall spires of churches lifted above the roofs; wharves were alive
with activity. A static quality was in the air; he was filled with a
spirit of adventure and limitless opportunity.
In Castle Garden, at the tip of New York, where in years past the
immigrants were landed, a man was hiring laborers in an iron-works at
Brady’s Bend in Pennsylvania. The pay seemed good, and Riis engaged
to join the party which was being formed.
The work was hard, but Riis’s knowledge of a trade stood him in good
stead, and he was put at work building houses for the employees in
the foundry. Then from a clear sky came news which abruptly changed
his plans and the course of his entire life. France had declared war
on Prussia, and Denmark was expected to join with France and avenge
her wrongs of 1864.
Back to his memory came the love of his own country, of her flag,
and of what seemed his duty there. His brain aflame with patriotism,
he threw up his job and hurried to Buffalo, and from there proceeded
finally to New York. He had just one cent in his pocket; he had sold
his clothes and small possessions to buy his ticket.
But the Frenchmen in New York did not understand the young Dane who
wanted them to send him home to fight if his country needed him; nor
did those of his own countrymen whom he saw feel able to pay his
transportation on this patriotic journey. Again and again young Riis
offered himself. At every attempt rebuff or misfortune countered him.
It was useless to try further. Reluctantly he abandoned his hope to
join the French in their great struggle.
Winter was at hand. To the scantily clad, starving, and penniless
young man, the great city seemed to turn a cold and forbidding
shoulder. But opportunity does not come to those who wait expectant
of it: it is a prize to be won by struggle, and often by privation.
Opportunity is everywhere, but it is only the stalwart, indomitable
spirits who seek and seize it.
Hard days followed. From New York Riis went to Jamestown, a small
village in the northern part of the state, and there he spent the
winter doing such trivial jobs as fell to him, glad to receive the
small and irregular pay which enabled him to struggle on. For a time
he worked in a Buffalo planing-mill. Summer found him working with a
railroad gang outside the city. Then came the winter again, and with
it work at good wages in a Buffalo shipyard. Destined to be known
throughout the United States in later years for his social reforms,
and his virile writings for the betterment of his fellow men, in
these early days it was his knowledge of an honest trade that made it
possible for him to build the foundations of future greatness.
Two years later Riis was back again in New York. Among the “want”
advertisements, in a newspaper, his eye caught one which offered the
position of city editor on a Long Island City weekly. The probability
that a position thus advertised would be of small value was confirmed
by the salary attached to it. Riis got the position; the salary was
eight dollars a week, and at the end of two weeks the paper failed.
Three wasted years they seemed; three years of no accomplishment.
Then came the turning. A former acquaintance, casually met, mentioned
a job that was open in a news-gathering agency. “It isn’t much—ten
dollars a week to start with,” he said. The brief two weeks’
experience on the Long Island City paper had given Riis a slight
familiarity with the requirements. In the shadow of Grace Church he
prayed for strength to do the work which he had so long and so hardly
sought. Beside him his dog, his only friend in these dark days,
wagged his tail in encouragement. The die was cast.
The next morning Riis presented himself at the office of the New
York News Association. The earnestness of the young man appealed to
the desk editor, and despite his shabby clothes and thin, worn face,
he was engaged. From that time on the path broadened and mounted
steadily upward. He had begun his major life-work, a newspaper man.
A winter of hard work followed, but Riis kept his head and left no
stone unturned to take every advantage of his opportunity. By day
he gathered news about the city; by night he studied telegraphy. In
the spring he took another step forward, and his conscientious work
during the winter made it possible for him to meet the requirements
of his post.
Some South Brooklyn politicians had started a weekly newspaper. They
needed a reporter. Riis packed his grip and crossed the river. The
new job paid fifteen dollars a week. And two weeks later he was made
editor and his weekly pay was advanced to twenty-five dollars.
Then came another turning in the long, hard road. A letter from
Denmark, from the little town of Ribe, from the fair-haired girl whom
he had loved as a boy and for whom his love had grown through these
lonesome years, told him that she loved him. A few months earlier
this letter would have found him destitute, but now he was at the
opening of his career. All things seemed possible. With redoubled
enthusiasm he flung himself into his work.
By thrifty living Riis had saved seventy-five dollars. With this
small sum and with notes for the balance, he bought the paper of
which he was the editor. He was determined to succeed. “The _News_
was a big four-page sheet. Literally every word in it I wrote myself.
I was my own editor, reporter, publisher and advertising agent. My
pen kept two printers busy all week, and left me time to canvass for
advertisements, attend meetings, and gather the news. I slept on the
counter, with the edition for my pillow, in order to be up with the
first gleam of daylight to skirmish for newsboys.”
Once, impressed by the fervor of a preacher, he decided to throw
up editorial work and take to preaching. “No, no, Jacob,” said the
preacher, “not that. We have preachers enough. What the world needs
is consecrated pens.”
That determined him, finally. He would pursue the vocation he had
begun, but his pen would strive for the high ideal he had set before
him.
Local politics were corrupt, and Riis with his paper began a campaign
for reform. He was offered bribes; politicians urged him to cater
to them for the rewards they could offer. Then, when nothing else
could move him, they turned to violence. One cold winter night a
gang of roughs called at his office. Riis was working late. One of
the roughs, chosen by the others, entered the office with a club. A
minute later Riis flung him through the front window of the office
into the street. That ended the trouble.
In a few months Riis had paid in full the price of the newspaper
and had established it firmly on its feet. But the months of cruel
work had had their effect on him. He was badly overstrained. He
needed a rest. The doctors urged it. He knew they were right. With
characteristic rapidity of determination, he sold the paper for five
times what it had cost him, and with a snug sum in his pocket took
the ship for Denmark to claim his bride.
It was no easy life in America to which he brought back his young
wife. But in their small home they found in each other a peace and
inspiration that made all things possible.
Eager always to try his hand at something new, Riis purchased a
stereopticon and experimented with it in such small time as was left
from his long day of newspaper activity and his domestic cares. It
was to play a large part in his later life. “No effort to add in
any way to one’s stock of knowledge is likely to come amiss in this
world of changes and emergencies, and Providence has a way of ranging
itself on the side of the man with the strongest battalions of
resources when the emergency does come.”
For a long time after the sale of the Brooklyn paper Riis had tried
to get a foothold on one of the New York dailies. His persistence
was again rewarded and the position of a reporter on the _Tribune_
was opened to him. Soon after came the recognition of his earnest
and conscientious work in the form of an appointment to represent
his paper at Police Headquarters. It was a hard and dangerous
job, which required cool nerve and indefatigable energy. But of
greater importance than the money that it paid, or the honor of the
advancement, was the opportunity it afforded the young reporter to
study at first-hand the conditions in which men and women lived in
the congested tenements of the city—a study which placed at his hand
the knowledge which later enabled him to become the champion of the
slums.
The police reporter on a newspaper gathers and writes all the news
that means trouble to someone—the fires, suicides, murders, and
robberies. The _Tribune_ office was in Mulberry Street, opposite
Police Headquarters. All the rival newspapers had offices in the
neighborhood, and among the reporters there was keen rivalry for
news. Naturally, the police did not help, for to be “news” it must be
discovered before it reached Police Headquarters, when all would know
of it. Friendships and detective skill were important factors. Each
reporter tried to be the first to get the news, write it up, and get
it to his paper. There was lively competition among the reporters,
for the man who got the news in print first had a “scoop” on his
rivals.
Out of this busy life of the newspaper man, Riis now began to develop
that interest which soon dominated his very existence; for from his
daily contact with the daily life of the city slums he drew the
inspiration to do his small part to better the conditions of the
lives of those around him. Small as were his first efforts, there was
soon inspired a veritable crusade in the soul of the Danish-American.
Not as a newspaper reporter, not because he won his livelihood in the
face of every difficulty, but because of his unselfish interest in
his fellow men is Jacob Riis great among Americans.
One day he picked up a New York paper and saw that the Health
Department reported that during the past two weeks there had been
a “trace of nitrates” in the city water. For months cholera, the
dreaded scourge that comes from impure water and has, in the life of
the world, killed more people than all the battles, had threatened
the city. Riis investigated. The water supplying two million people
must be pure. “Nitrates” were a sign of sewage contamination. The
city was threatened, and no one seemed to realize the danger. The
humble investigations of the newspaper reporter were to produce
far-reaching results.
Riis wrote an article that day for the _Evening Sun_, and advised the
people to boil the water before drinking it. Then, with a camera in
his hand, he spent a week following to its source every stream that
discharged into the Croton River. He found evidence enough: town
after town discharged its sewage into the water which supplied New
York City; people bathed in it; cities dumped refuse into it. With
exact details, and the evidence illustrated with photographs, he
returned.
The city was saved. So strong was the evidence that over a million
dollars was promptly spent by the city to guard the water-supply. The
real public-service life of Riis had begun.
In 1884, an awakened interest in the housing conditions in the
tenement districts came to a head with the establishment of the
Tenement-House Commission. It brought out the fact that the people
living in the tenements were “better than the houses.” Riis worked
heart and soul for the cause. Four years later the reform was
assured, with the backing of such men as Dr. Felix Adler and Alfred
T. White. The Adler Tenement-House Commission was formed.
Now Riis turned to other conditions which cried aloud for reform. The
“Bend” in Mulberry Street and the Police Lodging-Room system needed
him. The “Bend” was a crowded slum that for a half-century had been
the centre of vice and misery. Riis aroused the community, and in
1888 a bill was introduced in the Legislature to wipe it out bodily.
To-day, a city park, a breathing-place and playground marks the site.
The Police Lodging-Room was another civic disgrace and a breeder
of crime. In these vile and filthy rooms the Police Department
gave night lodging to thousands of vagrants. The idea sounds well
enough, but the system was wrong, and Riis realized it. In these foul
quarters young men lodged with professional beggars and criminals,
and learned the ways of vice; in these rooms was bred disease,
physical as well as moral. Riis warned the city through his paper.
Then his prophecies came true: typhus broke out in the Police
Lodging-Rooms.
Slowly the force of Riis’s newspaper articles made headway. One by
one the rooms were closed. The Committee on Vagrancy was formed,
of which Riis was a member; and the same year Theodore Roosevelt,
later to be President of the United States, was appointed Police
Commissioner. That was the end. The reform was accomplished. For the
deserving poor, decent quarters were provided; the professional
vagrants left the city.
In the gloom and dirt of the crowded tenements the souls of little
children were shrunk and dwarfed. Riis was their crusader. Through
his paper he appealed for flowers—flowers from those who came each
day to the city from the country; flowers for “sad little eyes in
crowded tenements, where the summer sunshine means disease and death,
not play or vacation; that will close without ever having looked upon
a field of daisies.”
And the flowers came. Express wagons filled with them crowded
Mulberry Street; people brought them in great armfuls. Little
children, slovenly women, and rough men smiled and were glad. Riis
brought God’s country to Mulberry Street.
Then he turned his attention to the problem of child labor in the
“East Factories” of New York. Only children over fourteen could be
employed. But as there was no birth-registry, it could not be proved
that thousands of little children quite evidently years under age
were working there. Riis studied the problem. He found that certain
teeth do not appear until the child is fourteen. He went to the
factories and examined the children’s teeth. His case was proved.
With such evidence a committee was appointed and a correction of the
wrong was begun.
“The Public School is the corner-stone of our liberties.” The public
schools of New York were crowded, the buildings were old, unsanitary,
badly lighted, and many were actually dangerous fire-traps; dark
basements were used for playgrounds. There was in the whole city
but one school with an outdoor playground. Worse yet, there were
thousands of children who did not go to school at all, and of those
who did, conditions made truants of many.
Riis enlisted for this new battle. He took photographs, and gave
lectures showing slides made from his photographs, and he wrote
constantly in the newspaper. Slowly the playgrounds came, and modern
school-buildings more adequate to house the city’s youth.
It is an endless list of public-service activities. Instigated by
this foreign-born American, the reform of the greatest American city
was begun and carried far along its way. Unfit tenements were torn
down, parks and playgrounds were established, the whole school-system
was remodeled, the old over-crowded prison was condemned and a modern
one erected, the civil courts were overhauled; there was no end to
his warfare on conditions which brought death and misery to the
city’s poor.
A writer for a newspaper by vocation, Jacob Riis found in his pen a
strong power in his battles for reform. Throughout the latter years
of his life he contributed frequent articles to magazines, and in
1890 published a book which alone will long make men remember the
vital purpose of his life. _How the Other Half Lives_ tells by its
title its message to the world; it is the Golden Rule reduced to
modern terms.
“I hate darkness and dirt anywhere, and naturally want to let in
the light ... for hating the slum, what credit belongs to me?”
Unselfish, giving his all to the common cause, Jacob Riis is of the
noble band of great Americans. As he lived, so he died, relatively
a poor man. But poor only in worldly goods; for in the peace of his
home and the love of wife and children he found a priceless wealth
that gold can never buy. Many were his chances to profit by his work,
but his creed was to give rather than to receive.
There were worldly honors that he received. There was the golden
cross presented to him by King Christian of Denmark, and there were
other recognitions to be found in the friendship and respect of
the foremost citizens of the United States. But of all honors, the
greatest was the affection of the thousands whom he helped a little
nearer to the light, for whom he had opened windows in their souls.
No better advice has been given than this: “As to battling with the
world, that is good for a young man, much better than to hang on to
somebody for support. A little starvation once in a while, even, is
not out of the way. We eat too much, anyhow, and when you have fought
your way through a tight place, you are the better for it. I am
afraid that is not always the case when you have been shoved through.”
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 23 Changed: was named the Rocket, a stong well-built engine
to: was named the Rocket, a strong well-built engine
pg 89 Changed: taught to undertsand the worth
to: taught to understand the worth
pg 117 Changed: These watchwards of the Republic
to: These watchwords of the Republic
pg 150 Changed: The Alder Tenement-House Commission was formed
to: The Adler Tenement-House Commission was formed
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