The Galaxy, April, 1877 Part 9

Germany has, however, done well. She now makes woollens, cottons, linens, irons, steels, penknives, and Bibles quite as cheap as England, and, as some say (one of her own Centennial Commission), "cheaper and nastier." Now _her_ traders are ubiquitous; they go, with the wandering Jew, the fascinating Englishman, the penetrating Yankee, into all heathen lands, carrying everywhere the new gospel of trade, and introducing to youthful minds the civilizing influences of lager beer and free lunches. Aided by the persuasive tones of the patient and soothing Yankee, they are doing wonders in teaching the value of time, by founding establishments for "stand-up drinks" in every lazy and luxurious land, by giving prizes to all who _smoke while they work_, thus making labor cheerful if not respectable. So patient and indefatigable has Germany been, that at Manchester in England, which may perhaps be termed the Delos of the new faith, I was told some five years ago that she had just taken the contract, had bought from Germany the iron beams and rafters for a new city building, and had put them up under the very noses of the wors.h.i.+ppers who burn their sacred fires at Birmingham and Wolverhampton. And so, in the whirligig of time, Trade brings his pleasant revenges.

I was told also--the newspapers said it, and it must be true--that Mr.

Mundella, an enterprising M.P., and a devout wors.h.i.+pper of the new G.o.d, who is a vast producer at Nottingham of stockings and hosiery of every sort--had found it best--well, absolutely necessary--in order to compete with the new disciples in Germany, to remove a part of his machines and machinery to Germany, and make his stockings there, in order that those ridiculous and cheap Germans should not quite put a stop to his trade. It was whispered about that French-made tools were being bought and brought into England for use there, and it was said openly that American saws, vises, and axes were playing the very deuce; and now, just after the triumphs of the "Centennial," Englishmen are writing home that Yankee silks will also play another very deuce with them if they don't get more and cheaper labor. I see too, by late letters from England, that they propose to cheapen iron by putting cheap Chinese labor into the iron works!

And yet in Germany they cry out that _they_ have a panic, and that trade is dull, and people will persist in failing, and that other people won't buy all they can make; they too are at their wits' ends.

There must be something wrong, the "doctrinaires" say, about the gases.

Trade is not free enough, or labor is not cheap enough, or they have too much or too little paper money, or they don't try woman suffrage.

At any rate the new gospel is right--_must be right_, because if you obey the laws of trade and buy cheap and sell dear, you are sure to be happy.

And France--it is frightful to think of France. Steeped in stupidity and enveloped in Cimmerean fog, she resists the new gospel. She will not send her missionaries abroad over the world; she will not build great factories and temples; she will not take her whole people from their small farms, where they raise great surpluses of food, to put them into the new temples; she does not even work her land with steam, nor does she hanker for the cheap (and nasty) things which England and Germany are so ready, willing, and anxious to pour into every household; indeed, will not have them at all. Oh, the economic condition of France makes the heart of the enlightened priest of the new gospel weep. France has taken no steps to introduce the cheap labor of Ireland or China, or even of Africa--right at her doors--into her own wretched country, and there is no sign that she will. What feeling but contempt can the sincere doctrinaire entertain for France?

It would be indeed strange--and yet it is not wholly impossible--that England and Germany and the United States, all of whom have for centuries been cursing work, and crying out against work, and doing all manner of things to get rid of work, and educating their best and wisest not to do it--it would be indeed strange if some day they should be crying out, "Give us work, in G.o.d's name." Strange, but not wholly impossible.

We come back now to our own country--to the

Land of the free, and the home of the blest.

We are the child of England, and we revere, we love, we emulate her. We adopt her methods, we wors.h.i.+p her G.o.d. We follow in her footsteps, and emulating her example, we send out missionaries to extend the gospel of trade; we love to buy cheap and sell dear; we love to scheme; we delight in speculation, for that is an intellectual operation. We have been taught for centuries that the mind is divine, the body devilish.

We do well, therefore, to despise the devilish body and exalt the G.o.dlike soul. We do well to depress and belittle the hand, and to glorify and enlarge the head. We do well to say it, and to make men believe it if we can, that the "pen is mightier than the sword" or the plough. We do well to convert our boys and girls into exaggerated heads, even if they are useless, because we thus exalt them toward G.o.ds. We do well to leave out of view all just balance between head and hand because that is common and vulgar. We do well to say that the man who _says_ a good thing is greater than he who _does_ a good thing, for the spiritual _is_ divine, and the earthly _is_ base!

Keeping in view the short time we have possessed this land, we may fairly arrogate to ourselves what England has long claimed for herself, great "progress." We have created more great cities, more luxurious habits, more free whiskey, more useless railroads, more brokers'

boards, more wild-cat banks, more swindling mining companies, more political jobs, more precocious boys and more fast girls, more bankrupt men and more nervous women than any country known in history. Following the "example of our ill.u.s.trious predecessor"--England--we have done one thing of which we are justly proud, and the full account of which, ill.u.s.trated with pictures, our "Government" (as we facetiously call it) has published in some ten fine volumes. And what is the example we followed? It is this: England, having possessed herself of the vast kingdom of India, found a production there of opium very lucrative to her and very desirable to many of the Chinese, who enjoyed the smoking of the pleasing drug. England greatly desired to sell this drug to China, for it was all in the interest of trade. One fine day some Chinese emperor or mandarin took it into his meddling head to check or forbid the freedom of this trade: and then the virtue, the religious fervor of the devoted Briton was roused. Ninety-three thousand chests of good merchantable opium, worth many taels, was not a dogma to be trifled with, not even by the Emperor of the Flowery Kingdom. What!

Should trade be impeded by this yellow Mantchu, this devotee of Confucius, this long-eyed heathen, because he had some sentimental notions about his people's morals or manners? Good heavens! Could trade stand that? By no means. Persuasion must bring him to his senses if he had any. Persuasion was tried, and various iron arguments were used.

They battered down Canton, they a.s.saulted and took the cities of Amoy, Chusan, Ningpo, Woosung, Shanghai, Nanking; and thus the English missionaries kept on persuading until at last the heathen Chinee yielded: was persuaded to pay $12,000,000, to open the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochoo, Ningpo, Shanghai to trade; to welcome all future opium with open arms; to make the good Queen Victoria a present of the port of Hong Kong; and so on and on. Thus, under the persuasion of a fraternal war, "trade, civilization, and Christianity" made themselves safe in the high places of China; since which happiness has bourgeoned there if not in England!

Could our youthful but pious nation do better than follow this ill.u.s.trious example? Certainly not. Something must be done. If China could thus be persuaded to trade by the English, poor little j.a.pan might be persuaded to trade by the United States. We could but try. We did, and Perry sailed away, with his s.h.i.+ps and his cannons, to try. The j.a.ps were benighted, foolish, and weak. They declined, and said, "No, we don't want any of your trade. We make _all we want_, and don't care either for your religion, your opium, your whiskey, or your stovepipe hats."

"But," said the gallant Perry, "that is a wicked sentiment. The brotherhood of nations is the cornerstone of modern civilization. Trade is divine, and stovepipe hats mark the intellectual races. We are your brothers. G.o.d has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. If you will not be our brothers, and trade, we shall be obliged to shoot.

Don't want to, but must. One--two--three. Bang!"

Well, the j.a.ps also yielded to these arguments, and thenceforth have been happy. Trade has prevailed. Rice has gone up, and a good many j.a.ps have gone to the ethereal s.p.a.ces, overcome with hunger. Railways have been built, national debts have been created; the Mikado and Tyc.o.o.n have fought, the Daimios have quarrelled, white men have been a.s.sa.s.sinated, beggary has begun, taxes press upon the people; and indeed all the signs which mark the high civilization of trade have appeared. "Progress," we are a.s.sured, is now certain, and j.a.pan is "developing her resources." Bliss ensues. All of which is written down and printed in many volumes for all men to read. And "Perry's Expedition" can be read in beautiful volumes which cost you, we'll say, $50 for the books and a million for the glorious expedition.

We make any sacrifices for the new religion, and are willing to waste the filthy lucre of gold to extend a divine idea.

We did it!

We opened their ports!

We extended the blessing of trade!

We have made the j.a.ps into Yankees!

They are learning the benefits of cheap and nasty!

Glory be to the new G.o.d!

Ma.s.sachusetts! Ma.s.sachusetts has held herself and has been held as the heart and the brain of New England. She has had (so she has believed) the heart to feel a moral principle and the head to accept a great thought. She has had brave-hearted men and clear-eyed women. Once--let us make a brief retrospect--she had "pilgrim fathers." She had what she and the world too thought a religion, which she believed in. She had a people of sound English stock, who in this clear New England air grew to hate squalor, vice, beggary, debt, and d.a.m.nation. Once, fifty years ago, she had no great cities; her "Hub," Boston, in 1830 had but the poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Ma.s.sachusetts were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport, centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life.

Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents, and did not tyrannize them. Silk gowns were rare, and pianos unknown; "art" and "culture" had not become household words, but b.u.t.ter was made at home, and the mystery of bread was known to ladies. Few then had been to Paris, and few therefore knew how vulgar they were. But "where ignorance is bliss," etc. They got on, and did not know what poor creatures they were.

Every child was expected to learn the three R's at the little red school-house, and to _perfect_ his education by taking hold of material nature with his hands, and learning what it was by mastering it. That was education. The parson knew a little Latin, and he was all. They thought this worked well. Lamentable indeed!

The man expected to marry a capable wife, and to bring up children; he expected to work on his land or in his shop, to dress decently in clothes which his wife had made, securing a reasonable support in this world by his own labor, not by _hocus-pocus_; he provided for his future salvation by imbibing the five points of Calvin through fifty-four sermons a year, with now and then a Thursday lecture to fill in the cracks. Thus he was sure of his food here and of salvation hereafter--through the merciful providence of G.o.d, and not his own righteousness. New England thus produced a breed of people unlike and they fancied not inferior to any that history tells of.

But it would not do. There was no progress--it was a lamentable condition of things. They had _not_ got a population of 211.78 to the square mile, raked together from the four corners of creation, making the State the sixth in density of all in the world, as she now boasts she has, and thus she had totally failed to secure the higher and better civilization.

They had not "developed their resources"; they had not built up splendid great cities; they had little knowledge of the delights of trade. Things could not get on so--that was not "progress." Here was water power running to waste all over Ma.s.sachusetts; there were keen and able heads who believed they knew how to set these powers to work to grind their grists; it was quite ridiculous that these tumbling streams should not be turning millwheels and spinning cheap cotton. And then too not a railroad ran through Ma.s.sachusetts--no transportation except in wagons. "Good G.o.d!" the pious people naturally exclaimed; "what misery, what a slow set!" Money--money was then loaned at only six per cent.! Things must be changed. They were changed. Mill after mill was built, among them the "_Atlantic_." Railway after railway was built, among them the "_Eastern_," and the stock was quickly paid up, and all went merry as a marriage bell. But some people own those stocks now, and do _not_ find themselves happy!

What is the cure for these shrivelled dividends? Clearly, is it not, _to bring in cheap labor_? Let every man who has nothing and wants much, take shares in

"THE CHEAP LABOR SOCIETY."

Seeing what has been done for Ma.s.sachusetts, it is easy to see what can be done. And what has been done? In fifty years she has built up Lowell, and Lawrence, and Worcester, and Holyoke, and many more great towns. She has increased Boston to a population of 341,919 souls--or bodies--in the year of grace 1875. She has "improved" things so, has made such progress, that Boston now spends yearly $15,114,389.73 (auditor's report 1875-6), which means that out of every man, woman, and child of Boston was taken in 1875, for public expenses, the sum of _forty-four dollars_! The happiness resulting from this may be partly understood when I relate that this tax is some four hundred per cent.

greater than the "effete aristocracies" of Europe have ever got out of their down-trodden serfs, or have even dared to try to get. One other charming effect of this style of self-government (?), as we please to call it, is, that it has driven out of Boston a set of bloated money getters, who fancy it is not pleasant to pay large taxes, so they go to Nahant, and Barnstable, and Concord for a few months, and rid Boston of themselves and--their taxes! Shrewd fellows those Boston Democrats!

They know how to _govern_ a city. So they do in New York. So they do in Cambridge.

But let us look at another of the evidences of true progress. Every man votes, you must know, whether he owns any property or not. Now, Mr.

Daniel L. Harris has discovered, in his researches at Springfield, that of the voters there, _four_ pay taxes and _five_ do not; that is, four-ninths of the voters pay the taxes and five-ninths who pay none outvote the four who pay all. This is so generous on the part of the four that we ought to try to see what it is the four really are about.

Applying the same ratio to Boston, we find that every tax-payer, every man of the four-ninth party, really paid to the yearly expenditures of the city of Boston, in the blessed year 1875-6, the neat little sum of three hundred and ninety-nine dollars, money of this realm.[1]

[1] Total polls of Boston, 85,243. Four-ninths of these will go into $15,114,389--total expenditure of the year 1875-6--$399 times.

And yet the business men of Boston complain that they have made no money for three years, and that they can't make any. How absurd that is, when they can pay such taxes as these! And then think what they do in Boston for the intellect (as it is called). While they stupidly complain that they can't make any money, they spend on their common schools every year--over two millions of good dollars (2,015,380)--and they teach what--what don't they teach? I counted, I think, _thirty-six branches_ as being taught in the Boston schools last year. "Art" and "culture," you know! And in those brutal old times of fifty years ago, they taught only the three R's. Unhappy and despicable! Did they not deserve it?

And then the generosity of these Boston merchants who can't, as they pretend, make anything. Look for a moment at that!

They paid in 1865 for the teaching of each one of those children those thirty-six branches, so necessary to salvation, the sum of $21.16; in 1875 the sum of $35.23. That is, they voluntarily and gladly paid somebody sixty-six per cent. more for their work in 1875 than in 1865, and all the while those merchants pretend they are making no money. Do they expect us to believe that?

If they want to make money, why not at once bring in more cheap labor?

The Chinese are ready to come, and the negroes, even if Ireland can spare no more of her enlightened people. And then what a boon this cla.s.s of people would be to our aspiring statesman. For the sum of two dollars they are ent.i.tled to vote, and then any man who feels a desire to be a governor or an M.C. can, by paying this paltry pittance, secure the votes of a grateful const.i.tuency. Is it not, therefore, our supreme duty to bring in this cla.s.s of voters as rapidly as possible?

We need _population_ and we need _voters_. England has a population of 389 to the square mile and we in Ma.s.sachusetts have only 211! Should we not hide our faces with shame while such an inferiority lasts?

There are people now who are getting up a scare about the wonderful growth of the Holy Catholic Church, claiming that that church demands of all its members (as it does) allegiance _first_ to the Church, and then _second_ to the government where its subjects happen to be. I do not think much of this now that Antonelli is dead; but there may be something in it. I question whether Ma.s.sachusetts can any longer put forth pretensions to being a Puritan or a Unitarian or religious State of any sort unless it be a Catholic one. Go with me to the U.S. census report of 1870:

The whole population of Ma.s.sachusetts in 1870 was 1,457,351

Of these were born in foreign lands 353,319

Born of foreign parents in Ma.s.sachusetts 626,211 979,530

Thus, it seems, the population of Ma.s.sachusetts is already foreign-born and of foreign parents, _over two-thirds_. What number of these foreign people are Roman Catholics, any other person can guess as well as I can. But it is quite certain that this blessing, such as it is, has reached us incidentally through our cheap labor; that is, it is a sort of superadded bliss, coming as an unexpected reward of unconscious virtue. In the words of Shakespeare, "We are twice blessed." We have got cheap labor and we have got the Catholic church crowning every hill and blooming in every valley.

At any rate it is quite certain that few if any of this cla.s.s of the Ma.s.sachusetts people are either Puritans, Unitarians, or Episcopalians; and some of them I strongly suspect are like the good sailor, neither Catholics nor Protestants, but "captains of the fore-top!" In Ma.s.sachusetts, as I have said, there was in 1870 of this kind of population sixty-six per cent., and all have votes. In the whole United States there was forty-five per cent. of this sort, all of whom have votes. It is known also that New York, and Boston, and Lowell, and Fall River are intrinsically foreign cities. It is known that the majority of voters in those cities have no property which pays taxes; it is known that this cla.s.s of voters are now well organized, and can and do vote and do elect such men as will _please them_--men who "will tickle me if I'll tickle you"--that is the sort of statesman we now welcome with effusion; indeed, we seek no other. We mean to deplete all over-grown fortunes; we mean through the taxes to equalize things and make Sat.u.r.day afternoons pleasant. I have not at hand, just this moment, the figures to tell what good was done in Boston last year to the cla.s.s called "the poor." But I have them for Cambridge, a small city almost a part of Boston. In that small select and intellectual city the expenditures in direct aid of "the poor," not counting work which was _made_ for them, was in dollars, $80,000, and that does not count a large sum besides given in private charity. This help was given to some 5,400 persons; stating it simply, in the words of political economy, one person in seven or eight of that cultivated and select community was a pauper. Another feature of this new and peculiar social state is this: that the voters who have no property and pay no taxes do not enjoy the possibility of starving, nor do they look with favor upon advice which tells them to "Go West." Why should they go West? They do not know where to go--indeed, they have no money to go with--nor do they know that there would be any work for them there. They _choose_ to stay where they are, and they will vote for people who will help them to stay; and they have five votes to the tax-payer's four, which significant little fact should not be lost sight of!

In our laudable desire for "progress," in our vital wish "to develop our resources," we have produced many results, some interesting ones, quite unexpected. We have got cheap labor and we have got cheap cotton cloth and cheap boots and shoes, and a good deal of all of them. The smart little city of Lowell was begun by the most capable and enterprising of Boston's "solid men"; it was begun upon a theory that men and women in New England ought to be clean, decent, and virtuous.

In its beginning nearly all the operatives were of New England birth, descendants of Puritans who were used to decency, cleanliness, and virtue. Then they lived and lodged in houses belonging to the mills, which were _regulated_--the men in their own boarding houses, the women in theirs. All were expected to be in their houses by or before a certain hour, say ten o'clock at night.

Then every young lady had a green silk parasol for Sunday's use, and she wrote poetry for the "Lowell Offering," if she felt the divine movement. At that early undeveloped time an English gentleman, one Anthony Trollope, visited the nascent city. He lamented the narrow-mindedness of the projectors, and predicted it would not work; that the little Lowell could never compete with such highly developed cities as Manchester and Preston, where they knew the magic of "cheap labor." In other words, Lowell could not be a great success.