AMONG THE AMERICANS AND A STRANGER IN AMERICA

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Preface To The American Edition

The portion of these pages entitled u Among the Americans," was written for the Manchester " Co-operative News." Messrs. Belford, Clarke & Co. do me the honor to reprint these papers here, together with the article contributed to the " Nineteenth Century," entitled, " A Stranger in America," and they have generously and voluntarily agreed to give me a fair share of the profits that may accrue therefrom. As they are pleased to think the papers will interest the American people, among whom I spent happy months, I should feel indebted to them did no advantage come to me thereby. I will not conceal that their honorable offer does not decrease my satisfaction ; and I have to acknowledge that the "New York Tribune" and the "Index," of Boston, which has published passages from these Chapters, have treated me in the same handsome manner.

John Bull, in his solid, bovine way, does make steady progress after his kind. But his dietary, consisting of precedents, is not very stimulating, and he takes a long time chewing the cud of progress. Like the oxen of Cuyp, he stands meditating over the hedge of his verdant little island, looking as though he was going to think: but he is so long about it that the spectator never feels sure that he does it.

If anybody in England proposes to do a new thing, everybody exclaims, like Lord Melbourne, " Can you not let it alone? If you do xiv Preface*

it everybody witt do it." But everybody does not do it. England is a country where nothing leads to anything, and anything leads tonothing.

Three centuries ago the Reformation broke out, when it was predicted that everybody would come to have ideas of his own. A few new creeds flew into the air and alighted upon ledges in the old rocksof opinion, where they have nestled in inadventurous content, and the groves of thought have seldom since been enlivened by new brightness of plumage or cheered by varieties of song. The republican equality and the republican freedom of America, with their infinite incentives and fertility of aspirations, were to me as a land of new color and newnotes, where the minds of the people, like keyless watches, wind themselves up and always keep going. I should have been glad to live there for years, so as to write about it ; as it is, I content myself with relating a few of the things which I noticed.

It is not intended that these papers, now collected into a book form, should be regarded as a " book upon America." That would be a veryabsurd pretension. The.se pages are the story of nearly four months, travel, and if I had been in America four years I should not think myself competent to write a "book about America." Only an sx-Piesident could write that in a complete way. When I returned tiome my friends naturally asked me what I thought of a country I lad never seen before. What I have written is what I told them* Ct is a mere fireside story of what interested me.

G. J. H

London^ April^ 1881.

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Chapter I. Sea Ways And Sea Society

IN England we have sea-side books. My friend, the late George Henry Lewes, who wrote upon most things better than many men of mark \vrite upon any one, wrote a charming sea-side book. But I never remember to have seen a sea-book. A man who has made many voyages in different vessels to the chief countries of the world, might supply a very useful and popular book, teaching the voyager what to expect and what to avoid. All I knew was that mathematically the least motion occurred in midship. That even sickness must have its conditions that temperance in eating and drinking was likely to answer upon sea as well as upon land; and that resting hoi'izontally after meals had its advantages, and that lemon and biscuit (if hunger occurred in the early morning) were useful. Sickness did not occur to me, although we had head -winds outward and homeward each voyage, which delayed us nearly two days each way. I spent an idle week in Liverpool before setting l8 AWtiftty' '.THE AMERICANS.

out, and another In New York before returning, as bein<* perfectly rested before a voyage sickness itself would H less fatiguing. I could write a little manual about ship experience as far as I acquired it; but it would be absurd and misleading to many without further knowledge of different kinds of ships, varying seas, and vicissitude of storm, climate, and shipwreck the last I have not tried. Onl} r one rule maybe mentioned here, which 'I observed in America us well as on the sea. Being in new climates and in new cities, of whose sanitary condition I knew nothing, I trusted to temperance in eating, to temperance in fatigue and in exposure, for security in health, and found it. I have observed that excitement, worry, or fatigue, whether of pain or pleasure, alike pave the way to illness.

I selected the Cunard line because I knew less of the

habits of other vessels. This line has lost two ships, but

during forty years it is reputed not to have lost a passenger.

This furnishes a sense of security which is very profitable

to the line, and diminishes the sickness among many voy-

agers. Travellers, however, have assured me that more

space and comfort are to be found in the ships of some other

lines. The Cunards travel in a prescribed path, and have

the merit of not caring to outrace other vessels, and will

even take a day or two longer rather than incur risk. They

act upon the principle that it is better for passengers to be

late than be lost. Good imagination is a powerful quality

at sea. Many passengers become sick by suffering their

eyes to rest upon the waves, as the sea appears to mount

and fall around them. I was surprised to find that the

officers and sailors of the Cunard ships, to whose skill and

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watchfulness passengers owe much ^!$fe^ receive higher wages than men in '^tpsr second Sunday of a voyage a colledfe^ '|a j^ade fi widows and orphans of seamen. These ought $$ vided for otherwise, after the manner of tfe, J^li passed in Parliament for the compensation of workmen who suffer injury or loss of life in their employment, and the subscription made on board should be given to the common sailor? there and then, to whose good seamanship it is mainly owing that you are ali'/e to subscribe at all.

Sailing, as a rule, is attended with no more risk to life than railway travelling, and since the facilities for sailing increase every year, the time is not far distant when everybody will sail somewhere. A good book, therefore, upon the "Art of being a Sea Passenger" would be as useful as one on the Art of Swimming. Out at sea some persons prefer a rolling motion to the heaving; some can sleep over the screw (which I could do myself, although it seemed to be grinding under my pillow). A ship has such a variety of motion and sound that the passenger can take a choice. The stoutest disciple of Dr. Darwin is generally content with the fertility of evolution on the ocean. So many people have got to go to sea that the nature of the going ought to be explained. In the steerage, where the heaving is greatest that part of the ship often rises out of the water and, of course, goes down again sickness is prevalent; yet children recover from sickness much sooner than their parents, probably because they know less about it and do not make themselves miserable by gratuitous imagination. While their parents are pale and apprehensive, I saw the

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rolled about the deck and nobody that diverted them greatly. In ^ first see the storm fences on- the Iplftp . tfe&Jr appetite for the repast; the children

i, and eat with a new sense of pleasure. A voyage is indeed a source of recreation and diversion of mind beyond what any who have never made a voyage imagine. Ideas are often absolutely suspended. " Dirty " weather comes and discolors them ; " nasty " weather perturbs them; "fresh " weather gives them quite a new turn; a ram "squall" comes and softens them; a " gale " disperses them ; a " storm " dashes them against each other, bending them or breaking them ; a " cyclone " gives a rotary motion to the most fixed ideas; a "hurricane" seems to blow them all finally away, and it is some time before the most diligent shepherd of his thoughts gets them into the old fold again. The machinery of the -mind is unlimbered, and only the best fitting parts are ever got into .position again.

It is thus that the ocean is entertaining and recreative TJie fresh wind blows through your mind. Cries of sailors, straining of cordage and planks, creaking of the stubborn masts, beatings of the " steely sea," the roar of the revengeful blast, the clanking of the iron slaves within I regarded as companions of the voyage. All the while the brave engines are driving you through the turbulent and disappointed waves. Three hundred and fifty miles in every day and night,

The pulses of their iron hearts Go beating through the storm.

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The passage between England '^^//Irel^d, I was tpItL would prove unpleasant, but that ^fe$$ we got into, Atlantic, the sailing would improve. '> /When Queenstown, the more experienced passe%g0r we should know how to appreciate the serenity passage, when we had a taste of the " roll of the Atlantic," which was very encouraging. Every day brought some promise of novelty. Until I was on the Atlantic, I had never seen the sea alive. I had heard of " seas as smooth as glass." ' What I saw was a sea as smooth as mountains. The Atlantic is a genuine American ocean; it is never still.

The white crests of the waves appeared to me like white birds coming over the distant waters. It was quite a new experience to see dark clouds a great distance before us, where rain and squall were raging, and know that we had to sail through them; and when in a squall which appeared at first as though it would last always, we could soon see the sun and blue sky a long way off, and it was pleasant to discover that we should ride into the bright sea under them. If a storm did not extend over an area of sixty miles, we yvere through it in four hours, unless head- winds blew. The screw of the vessel was then half out of the water. Albeit the head winds generally did blow with us.

In consequence of what was said in the " Pall Mall Gazette " concerning the treatment of poor steerage passengers of the Cunard Line, I went over the steerage quarters, both in the "Bothnia" and the " Gallia." It was admitted by the writer of the complaints in the " Pall Mall " that the passengers in the Cunard fared better, as to quarters and

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^^^^ I went round the ship with Dr. ; the mtdteA jrfEcer of the " Bothnia." The occuof the steet&ge include many rough unmanageable 'jp^Qpid, whose Walts often justify some coercion for the sake of thfe .comfort of others. But I ascertained from those who knew, that the general comfort for the steerage passengers is not what it ought to be, or what it might be. Either Parliament or the press should compel improvements in the arrangement of the steerage. When reporters visit a new vessel to report upon its equipment, they should look into the steerage arrangements. If our naval architects who seek distinction in rendering vessels shot-proof, would give attention to rendering them discomfort-proof for the emigrants who crowd the steerage, it would be a great blessing. Mr. Vere Foster and Mrs. Chisholm secured many attentions to poor passengers ; but the attention wanted is a different construction of the ship. In parts of the ship where' comfort abounds there is eccentricity of contrivances. For instance, the name-plates on Cunard doors were so low that it was only by going down upon your knees that a passenger could read them. Only a passenger who had broken his leg could find out the doctor's door. Recurring to the steerage, Dr. Johnson said he commonly found poor women who came on board with families, and with one suckling at the breast, were generally in such a state of weakness as to be quite unable to bear the strain of rough weather; and I saw myself orders given for dozens of porter and gallons of milk, whereby the poorer women and children were strengthened. This was additional to the supply ordered by law, and were given at discretion by the kind-hearted doctor,

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who said the company never interfered with him in these things, and that in many cases, in thediips of this line, einigrants lived better than they had beto acei^tomed to &l home, which may be true of other lines fJso. If Am&n*$$, '* ships took as many steerage passengers to Great Britain as Great Britain takes to America, there would soon be new devices in the arrangement of ships.

As a rule the solitude of the sea is less than a stranger would think. A large ship is a moving community, and ' generally affords great variety of good society. It was only at night, when most persons had gone below, and the deck was silent, that leaning among the cordage and listening to the beating of the dark sea against the sides of the resolute and defiant vessel as it drove through, the baffled waves you could realize the loneliness of the ocean. It was like thinking in another world, as I contemplated the dark desert of water, afar from any land the busy world, familiar to me for sixty years, far behind all before strangeness and untried existence.

At other times I gave some thought as to what I should do in case it fell to me to speak in public in America. Like the Scotch, many^ Americans pride themselves on speaking English better than the English do themselves, although they have some peculiarities of their own which sometimes attract our attention. Clearness of expression and precision of idea I knew were qualities of American speech: whether I could fulfil these conditions were disturbing considerations with me. However, a small American book which I bought to read on the voyage out was reassuring to me. It

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Mar house, and was one of a popular The fooofc Djteed with this passage : ^'*yhe pfeof^af tJtie t^nited States have now fairly entered upon the

Of economic problems of the gravest importance prob letns titpbfi the right settlement of which both the immediate material and moral welfare of the community will greatly depend. These questions are First, the Money Question : what is good money and what is bad? Second, the Legal Tender Question; what shall be the standard or unit of value by which contracts shall be enforced? Third, the Tariff Question : in what manner and for what purposes shall the revenue derived from taxes upon foreign imports be collected? Fourth, the National Excise System: how shall internal taxes be assessed, and what shall be the subjects of national taxation ? Fifth, the Bank Question : how shall those persons who desire to gain profit to themselves, by rendering the exchange of products and of services among the people most rapid and least costly, be permitted to organize the work? Finally, and beside all these great national fiscal problems, come all the vexed questions respecting State, city, and town taxation and expenditure, and the yet greater problem of national or State interference or non-interference in the pursuits of the citizens, either for shortening the hours of work, promoting education, or attempting to compass the material and moral welfare of special classes by means of legislation. What is called civil service reform, or the question whether corruption or purity shall rule in civil service, waits largely on the determination of these questions before it can he fully accomplished, because it is a well-established fact that an attempt to impose a tax beyond certain limits will promote dishonesty in the revenue service somewhere, under whatever party name appointments may have been made. To these we might add the Railway Question; or, how shall the owners of large or small portions of capital be permitted to combine, for the joint service of themselves and of the community, in the work now developed into such gigantic proportions, of transporting passengers and goods over the continent? w

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If America' had all these things to settle, I thought If might be glad to hear of something simpler by way of pr$- lude. If this complex series of propositions coulcl be put $>f^ ward without bewildering the popular' reader^ nothing I could say would be likely to confuse them. I remember the saying of General Ludlow " It is not enough to mean well, you must know well what you mean." If the popular reader believed that the writer above indicated -knew all the answers to his multitudinous questions, any stranger might hope for liberal attention. As I was never likely to wander into the social infinites in this way, I took heart and thought I could tell, if called upon, a simple story of industrial devices, which would be tolerated. The work which I have alluded to was not without passages of merit and ideas of value, but it remained evident that a people who would make their way through its stupendous series of topics would bear with me. I might annoy them or disappoint them. I could never lead them headlong into a wilderness so vast as this.

My cabin companion passenger was the Rev. James J. Good, of Philadelphia, a young preacher, who had been travelling in Europe, visiting the Holy Land among other places. Not knowing that even numbers in a ship represented the lower berth in the cabin, an upper one fell to me. Mr. Good, seeing I was the elder, very civilly volunteered to take the upper berth himself, leaving the lower to me, as being more convenient. He was quiet, well-informed, and studious, and his pleasant courtesies were constant during the" voyage. One morning a gentleman nearer my age, of very animated expression, came down to my cabin, and

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himself. It was the Rev. Dr.

He was ^ preacher of great repute in New York, the jnost evangelical of the Evangelicals. I never quite knew how evangelical he was ; but I was told it was very much beyond what I could expect to understand; but this did not prevent him being a very bright-mannered and intelligent gentleman, with whom I had several conversations which interested me very much. He introduced me to another minister, who had a wonderful theory of uniting monarchy with American democracy. But as I had no innate faculty for appreciating either thing, I made no progress in that way of thinking. This minister was evidently a man of strong thought, and had some original views. There were twelve clergymen on board, which was pleasant to me to think of, for if there was anything wrong in me, I doubted not that they would use friendly intercession in the quarter where they had influence and get it all put right

There is an offensive rule on board ships that the service on Sunday shall be that of the Church of England, and that the preacher selected shall be of that persuasion. Several of the twelve ministers of religion among the passengers of the " Bothnia " were distinguished preachers, whereas the clergyman selected to preach to us was not at all distinguished, and made a sermon which I, as an Englishman, was rather ashamed to hear delivered before an audience composed almost entirely of intelligent Americans. The preacher told a woeful story of loss of trade and distress in England, which gave the audience the idea that John Bull .was "up a tree." If the old gentleman who personifies us

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had "been very high up I would not bave published it m a sermon. The preacher said, after the manner of his class* that this was owing to our sins that is the sins of English^ men. The devotion of the American hearers was varied with a smile at this announcement. It was their surpassing ingenuity and rivalry in trade which had affected our ex ports for a time. Our chief " sins " were uninventiveness and commercial incapacity, and the greater wit and ingenuity of the audience were the actual punishment the preacher was pleading and praying against. He was preaching this "before the punishers, and praying them to be contrite on account of their own success. The minister described bad trade as a punishment from God, as though God had made the rascally merchants who took out shoddy calico and ruined the markets. It has been political oppression, and not God, that has driven the best French and German artists into America, where they have enriched its manufactures with their skill and industry, and enabled that country to compete with us.

The preacher's text was as wide of any mark as his sermon. It asked the question, " How can we sing in a strange land?" When we arrived there there were hardly a dozen of us in the vessel who would be in a strange land; the great majority were going home. They were mostly commercial reapers of an English harvest who were returning home rejoicing, bearing their golden sheaves with them. Neither the sea nor the land was strange to them. Many of them were as familiar with the Atlantic as with the prairie. I sat at table by a Toronto dealer who had crossed the ocean twenty-nine times, The congregation at sea

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a y^ry pocilf pinion of the discernment of the Estab- Chinch. There were wise and bold things which other' preachers on board could have said, and a good sermon would have been a great pleasure mid-ocean.

On the return voyage in the " Gallia " we had another "burning," but not "a shining light" of the Church of England, to discourse to us. He had the merit of reading what he had to say with confidence and evident sincerity. He was a young man, and it required some assurance to look into the eyes of intelligent Christians around him, who had three times his years, experience, and know, edge, and lecture them upon matters of which he was himself absolutely ignorant.

This clergyman dwelt on and enforced the old doctrine severity of parental discipline of the young, and on the wisdom of compelling children to unquestioning obedience; and argued that submission to a higher will was good for men during life. At least two-thirds of the congregation were Americans, who regard parental severity as cruelty to the young, and utterly uninstructive ; and unquestioning obedience they held to be calamitous and demoralizing education. They expect reasonable obedience, and seek to obtain it by reason. Submission to a " higher will," as applied to man, is mere submission to authority, against which the whole polity of American life is a magnificent protest. The only higher will they recognize in worldly affairs is the will of the people, intelligently formed, impartially gathered, and constitutionally recorded facts of which the speaker had not the remotest idea. Everyone felt that the preacher himself had been trained in " unques-

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tioning obedience," since he was evidently -without the power of inquiring into or acquiring the commonest international facts of his time.

I observed that the steerage passengers were not invited into the saloon to hear the service. Probably the souls of the poorer passengers did not need saving, and the service was only necessary for the sinners of the saloon. In this the ship authorities were probably right.

Chapter II. Courtesies Of New York

A STRANGER in America is very much like the Tangier oysters, which but partly fill the large shell- in which they are incased. Before being sold, they are sent to reside for a short time in another water, when they arc found to have grown double their former size, and entirely fill the copious shells in which they were born. A brief residence in America in like manner enlarges the ideas of an insular Briton. At the Gloucester Co-operative Congress the Heckmondwike Manufacturing Company exhibited two handsome rugs. One was presented to Professor Stewart, and the other I had the honor to receive. I took it with me to America, thinking to astonish New York .with the beauty of co-operative manufacture. I had it hanging on my arm as I entered the city alone. I soon found that the i"ug had fascination for other eyes as well as my own, for when I next thought of it it was gone, in what way I had no idea. So the discernment or envy of New York prevented me from displaying my choice example of co-operative industry. If any " smart " foreign trader bikings rugs of that pattern into the English market, Mr. Crab tree will understand how the design got abroad. *

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r. Hollick, gave me the use of his rooms in the Broadway for the purpose of business and seclusion. One Saturday afternoon when I was alone in that manyroomed building, all other occupants having left, a creature with quiet manner, a pretty auburn beard, and sharp, useful eyes, of about thirty years of age, walked noiselessly into the middle of the inner chamber, I having left both doors unlocked. He was what was known in the city as a " sneak thief." He pressed me to buy pencils of him. I observed that he took an inventory of two open trunks which I kept there, and that he meant to come again. When I was in Kansas City he did. As I had taken the precaution of throwing newspapers over the trunks he appeared not to have observed them, and carried away only some articles of clothing which I had left out, and a large illustrated work of my friend's, entitled the " Origin of Life." The clever police captured the pencil seller, but as I was far away at the trial and could not claim my clothing, it fell to the police, at which I was glad as I suppose they were for the articles were English, new and good. I lost nothing else during my sojourn in the land,

Once, when I was a guest of Mr. Alderman Samuelson, brother of the member for Danbury, at a Boston hotel, an umbrella, which I had bought of a London Jew, because it was unlike afiy other, disappeared from the place where I had placed if. My host spoke to a shrewd black waiter and said in his emphatic way that it was necessary that the umbrella should reappear, as it belonged to his guest. Wherv I came to leave the hotel I found it where I had placed it

The impetuosity of New York was in everything and everybody. The painted signboards relating to the telegraph offices contained animated figures of men and juvenile messengers, racing as though a fire engine or Milton's Satan was after them. The mahogany tables of the Western Union Telegraph Office, on which the public write messages, are covered with great sheets of plate glass, which gave them a cleanness and brilliancy very striking. As there are several of these, the appearance of the office is that of a drawing-room. The public in England have no accommodation of this kind. Sitting there alone and late one Saturday evening, while a friend was arranging some messages upstairs, I passed from meditation to sleep. Immediately my eyes were closed, a sharp youth, from some unseen room, awakened me. I assured him I had no intention of passing the night there; but three times, when sleep overtook me in the large and deserted room, he promptly issued from his recess and desired me to look about. I concluded that nobody was allowed to go to sleep in New York under any colorable pretext.

Occasionally I went down to the Astor House, because I liked to lunch at the great, broad, circular table, with the waiters inside, who serve you so promptly; and also to watch business men eating, though I cannot say I ever saw it done. " What do you think of it?" said Mr. Barnum, as we came out. My answer was, " All I observed was that a gentleman enters, reads the bill of fare, speaks to the waiter, pays the cashier, and departs. He has, doubtless, taken his dinner; but the operation is so rapid that I cannot say properly that I witnessed it." Yet in the clubs and

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houses, where I was at times a guest, I found that the dinner was eaten as dilatorily and as daintily as in an English mansion besides including a greater number of delicacies. Americans, as a rule, know how to dine like gentlemen.

In " Appleton's Guide," as I construed it, No. i, Broadway, was the Old Kennedy House, and that Fulton (the inventor of steamships, whom Robert Owen aided in Manchester) died in one of its rooms; that General Sir Henry Clinton (grandfather of my friend Colonel H. Clinton, who has never forgiven the Americans for defeating his famous ancestor) once resided there; as, afterwards General Washington and Talleyrand (the "lame fiend" who tempted Cobbett to teach him English).