History of the United States Volume V Part 12

Save the Art Building, the structures at the Fair were designed to be temporary, and they were superfluous when the occasion which called them into being had pa.s.sed. The question of disposing of them was summarily solved. One day some boys playing near the Terminal Station saw a sinister leer of flame inside. A high wind soon blew a conflagration, which enveloped the structures, leaving next day naught but ashes, tortured iron work, and here and there an arch, to tell of the regal White City that had been.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Several people watching a fire.]

Electricity Building. Mines and Mining Building.

The Burning of the White City.

The financial backers of the Fair showed no mercenary temper. The architects, too, worked with public spirit and zeal which money never could have elicited. Notwithstanding the World's Fair was not financially a "success," this was rather to the credit of its unstinted magnificence than to the want of public appreciation. The paid admissions were over 21,000,000, a daily average of 120,000. The gross attendance exceeded by nearly a million the number at the Paris Exposition of 1889 for the corresponding period, though rather more than half a million below the total at the French capital. The monthly average at Chicago increased from 1,000,000 at first to 7,000,000 in October. The crowd was typical of the best side of American life; orderly, good-natured, intelligent, sober. The grounds were clean, and there was no ruffianism. Of the $32,988 worth of property reported stolen, $31,875 was recovered and restored.

CHAPTER VI.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT

[1890-1893]

The century from 1790 to 1890 saw our people multiplied sixteen times, from 3,929,214 at its beginning, to 62,622,250 at its end. The low percentage of increase for the last decade, about 20 per cent., disappointed even conservative estimates. The cities not only absorbed this increase, but, except in the West, made heavy draughts upon the country population. Of each 1,000 people in 1880, 225 were urban; in 1890, 290. Chicago's million and a tenth was second only to New York's million and a half. Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and St. Louis appeared respectively as the third, fourth, and fifth in the list of great cities. St. Paul, Omaha, and Denver domiciled three or four times as many as ten years before. Among Western States only Nevada lagged. The State of Was.h.i.+ngton had quintupled its numbers. The centre of population had travelled fifty miles west and nine miles north, being caught by the census about twenty miles east of Columbus, Indiana.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Frame of twelve story building.]

The New York Life Insurance Building in Chicago.

(Showing the construction of outer walls.)

The railroads of the country spanned an aggregate of 163,000 miles, twice the mileage of 1880. The national wealth was appraised at $65,037,091,197, an increase for the decade of $21,395,091,197 in the gross. Our per capita wealth was now $1,039, a per capita increase of $169. Production in the mining industry had gone up more than half. The improved acreage, on the other hand, had increased less than a third, the number of farms a little over an eighth.

School enrollment had advanced from 12 per cent. in 1840 to 23 per cent.

in 1890. Not far from a third of the people were communicants of the various religious bodies. About a tenth were Roman Catholics.

Improvement in iron and steel manufacture revolutionized the construction of bridges, vessels, and buildings. The suspension bridge, instanced by the stupendous East River bridge between New York and Brooklyn, was supplanted by the cantilever type, consisting of trusswork beams poised upon piers and meeting each other mid-stream. Iron and steel construction also made elevated railways possible. In 1890 the elevated roads of New York City alone carried over 500,000 pa.s.sengers daily. Steel lent to the framework of buildings lightness, strength, and fire-proof quality, at the same time permitting swift construction.

Walls came to serve merely as covering, not sustaining the floors, the weight of which lay upon iron posts and girders.

At the time of the Centennial, electricity was used almost exclusively for telegraphic communication. By 1893 new inventions, as wonderful as Morse's own, had overlaid even that invention. A single wire now sufficed to carry several messages at once and in different directions.

Rapidity of transmission was another miracle. During the electrical exposition in New York City, May, 1896, Hon. Chauncey M. Depew dictated a message which was sent round the world and back in fifty minutes. It read:

"G.o.d creates, nature treasures, science utilizes electrical power for the grandeur of nations and the peace of the world." These words travelled from London to Lisbon, thence to Suez, Aden, Bombay, Madras, Singapore, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, and Tokio, returning by the same route to New York, a total distance of over 27,500 miles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Three vertical generators about thirty feet in diameter.]

Interior of the Power House at Niagara Falls.

Self-winding and self-regulating clocks came into vogue, being automatically adjusted through the Western Union telegraph lines, so that at noon each day the correct time was instantly communicated to their hands from the national observatory. Another invaluable use of the telegraph was its service to the Weather Bureau, established in 1870. By means of simultaneous reports from a tract of territory 3,000 miles long by 1,500 wide, this bureau was enabled to make its forecasts indispensable to every prudent farmer, traveller, or mariner.

The three great latter-day applications of electrical force were the telephone, the electric light, and the electric motor. In 1876, almost simultaneously with its discovery by other investigators, Alexander Graham Bell exhibited an electric transmitter of the human voice. By the addition of the Edison carbon transmitter the same year the novelty was a.s.sured swift success. In 1893 the Bell Telephone Company owned 307,748 miles of wire, an amount increased by rival companies' property to 444,750. Estimates gave for that year nearly 14,000 "exchanges," 250,000 subscribers, and 2,000,000 daily conversations. New York and Chicago were placed on speaking terms only three or four days before "Columbus Day." All the chief cities were soon connected by telephone.

At the Philadelphia Exposition arc electric lamps were the latest wonder, and not till two years later did Edison render the incandescent lamp available.

The use of electricity for the development of power as well as of light, unknown in the Centennial year, was in the Columbian year neither a scientific nor a practical novelty. On the contrary, it was fast supplanting horses upon street railways, and making city systems nuclei for far-stretching suburban and interurban lines. Street railways mounted steep hills inaccessible before save by the clumsy system of cables. Even steam locomotives upon great railways gave place in some instances to motors. Horseless carriages and pedalless bicycles were clearly in prospect.

It was found that by the use of copper wiring electric power could be carried great distances. A line twenty-five miles long bore from the American River Falls, at Folsom, California, to Sacramento, a current which the city found ample for traction, light, and power. Niagara Falls was harnessed to colossal generators, whose product was transmitted to neighboring cities and manufactories. Loss en route was at first considerable, but cunning devices lessened it each year.

Thomas Alva Edison and Nikola Tesla were conspicuously identified with these astonis.h.i.+ng applications of electric energy. Edison, first a newsboy, then (like Andrew Carnegie) a telegraph operator, without school or book training in physics, rose step by step to the repute of working miracles on notification. Tesla, a native of Servia, who happened, upon migrating to the United States, to find employment with Edison, was totally unlike his master. He was a highly educated scientist, herein at a great advantage. He was, in opposition to Edison, peculiarly the champion of high tension alternating current distribution. He aimed to dispense so far as possible with the generation of heat, pressing the ether waves directly into the service of man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Edison working in his laboratory.]

Thomas Alva Edison.

Copyright by W. A. d.i.c.kson.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Nikola Tesla.

The bicycle developed incredible popularity in the '90's. Through all the panic of 1893 bicycle makers prospered. It was estimated in 1896 that no less than $100,000,000 had been spent in the United States upon cycling. A clumsy prototype of the "wheel" was known in 1868, but the first bicycle proper, a wheel breast-high, with cranks and pedals connected with a small trailing wheel by a curved backbone and surmounted by a saddle, was exhibited at the Centennial. Two years later this kind of wheel began to be manufactured in America, and soon, in spite of its perils, or perhaps in part because of them, bicycle riding was a favorite sport among experts. In 1889 a new type was introduced, known as the "safety." Its two wheels were of the same size, with saddle between them, upon a suitable frame, the pedals propelling the rear wheel through a chain and sprocket gearing. An old invention, that of inflated or pneumatic tires of rubber, coupled with more hygienic saddles, gave great impetus to cycling sport. The fad dwindled, but the bicycle remained in general use as a convenience and even as a necessity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Several people riding bicycles.]

Bicycle Parade, New York.

Fancy Costume Division.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hundreds of jars with hoses attached.]

Hatchery Room of the Fish Commission Building at Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., showing the hatchery jars in operation.

The Fish Commission, created by the Government in 1870, proved an important agency in promoting the great industries of fis.h.i.+ng and fish culture. At the World's Fair it appeared that the fis.h.i.+ng business had made progress greater than many others which were much more obtrusively displayed, though the fishtrap, the fyke net, and the fis.h.i.+ng steamer had all been introduced within a generation.

In no realm did invention and the application of science mean more for the country's weal than in agriculture. Each State had its agricultural college and experiment station, mainly supported by United States funds provided under the Morrill Acts. Soils, crops, animal breeds, methods of tillage, dairying, and breeding were scientifically examined. Forestry became a great interest. Intensive agriculture spread. By early ploughing and incessant use of cultivators keeping the surface soil a mulch, arid tracts were rendered to a great extent independent of both rainfall and irrigation. Improved machinery made possible the farming of vast areas with few hands. The gig horse hoe rendered weeding work almost a pleasure. A good reaper with binder attachment, changing horses once, harvested twenty acres a day. The best threshers bagged from 1,000 to 2,500 bushels daily. One farmer sowed and reaped 200 acres of wheat one season without hiring a day's work.

Woman's position at the Fair was prominent and gratifying. How her touch lent refinement and taste was observed both in the Woman's Building, the first of its kind, and in other departments of the Exposition. Power of organization was noticeably exemplified in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This body originated in the temperance crusade of 1873 and the following year, when a State Temperance a.s.sociation was formed in Ohio, leading shortly to the rise of a national union.

Related to this movement in elevated moral aims, as well as in the prominent part it a.s.signed to women, was the Salvation Army. In 1861 William Booth, an English Methodist preacher, resigned his charge and devoted himself to the redemption of London's grossest proletariat.

Deeming themselves not wanted in the churches, his converts set up a separate and more militant organization. In 1879 the Army invaded America, landing at Philadelphia, where, as in the Old Country and in other American cities, pitiable sin and wretchedness grovelled in obscurity. In 1894 there were in the United States 539 corps and 1,953 officers, and in the whole world 3,200 corps and 10,788 officers.

Without proposing any programme of social or political reform, and without announcing any manifesto of human rights, the Salvationists uplifted hordes of the fallen, while drawing to the lowliest the notice, sympathy, and help of the middle cla.s.ses and the rich. Army discipline was rigidly maintained. The soldiers were sworn to wear the uniform, to obey their officers, to abstain from drink, tobacco, and worldly amus.e.m.e.nts, to live in simplicity and economy, to earn their living, and of their earnings always to give something to advance the Kingdom. The officers could not marry or become engaged without the consent of the Army authorities, for their spouses must be capable of cooperating with them. They could receive no presents, not even food, except in cases of necessity. An officer must have experienced "full salvation"--that is, must endeavor to be living free from every known sin. Except as to pay, the Army placed women on an absolute equality with men, a policy which greatly furthered its usefulness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

William Booth.

From a photograph by Rockwood, New York.

The peculiar uniform worn by the Salvation soldiers, always sufficing to identify them, called attention to a fact never obvious till about 1890--the relative uniformity in the costumes of all fairly dressed Americans whether men or women. The wide circulation of fas.h.i.+on plates and pictorial papers accounted for this. About this time cuts came to be a feature even of newspapers, a custom on which the more conservative sheets at first frowned, though soon adopting it themselves.

CHAPTER VII.