BB
OUR COUNTRY:
ITS POSSIBLE FUTURE AND ITS
PRESENT CRISIS.
BY
EBV. JOSIAH STRONG, D. D.,
GENEBAL SECEETAEY OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE
FOB THE UNITED STATES, NEW YORK.
With an Introduction, by
PEOF. AUSTIN PHELPS, D. D.
" WE live in a new and exceptional age. America is another name for
Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divin 6
Providence in behalf of the human race."—JEmerson.
ONE HUNDREDTH THOUSAND.
PUBLISHED BY
THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.,
740 AND 742 BEOADWAY, NEW YORK.
FOB
THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
<*{<<
Prefatory Note.
THIS Volume was prepared for the American Home
Missionary Society by EEV. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D., then its
representative for the work of Home Missions in Ohio,.
As will be seen at a glance, its main purpose is to lay
before the intelligent Christian people of our country
facts and arguments showing the imperative need of
Home Missionary work for the evangelization of the
land, the encouragements to such effort, and the danger
of neglecting it.
Copies for perusal and distribution can be obtained
from the publishers, The Baker & Taylor Co., No. 9
Bond Street, New York. Fifty cents in cloth binding
or Twenty-five cents in paper.
Copyrighted by the
AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY,
1885.
12PTON ACCESSKMI
*• ' '
INTRODUCTION.
THIS is a powerful book. It needs no introduction from
other sources than its own. Its great strength lies in its facts.
These are collated with rare skill, and verified by the testi-
mony of men and of documents whose witness is authority.
The book will speak for itself to every man who cares enough
for the welfare of our country to read it, and who has intelli-
gence enough to take in its portentous story.
It is worthy of note that almost all the thinking which think-
ing men have given to the subject for the last fifty years has
been in the line of the leading idea which this volume enforces —
the idea of crisis in the destiny of this country, and through
it in the destiny, of the world. The common sense of men
puts into homely phrase the great principles which underlie
great enterprises. One such phrase lies under the Christian
civilization of our land. It is " the nick of time." The pres-
ent hour is, and always has been, " the nick of time" in our
history. The principle which underlies all probationary ex-
perience comes to view in organized society with more stu-
pendous import than in individual destiny. This book puts
the evidence of that in a form of cumulative force which is
overwhelming.
Fifty years ago our watchful fathers discerned it in their
forecast of the future of the Republic. The wisest among
them even then began to doubt how long the original stock of
American society could bear the interfusion of elements alien
to our history and to the faith of our ancestry. The conviction
was then often expressed that the case was hopeless on any
IT OUB COUNTRY.
theory of our national growth which did not take into account
the eternal decrees of God. Good men were hopeful, only be-
cause they had faith in the reserves of miejht, which God held
secret from human view.
Those now living who were in their boyhood then, remem-
ber well how such men as Dr. Lyman Beecher, of Ohio, and
Dr. Wm. Blackburn, of Missouri, used to return from their
conflicts with the multiform varieties of Western infidelity, to
thrill the hearts of Christian assemblies at the East with their
pictures of Western greatness, and Western perils. Those
were the palmy days of "May Anniversaries." The ideas
which the veterans of the platform set on fire and left to burn
in our souls were three. The magnitude of the West in geo-
graphical area ; the rapidity with which it was filling up with
social elements, many of them hostile to each other, but nearly
all conspiring against Christian institutions ; and the certainty
that Christianity must go down in the struggle, if Eastern enter-
prise was not prompt in seizing upon the then present oppor-
tunity, and resolute in preoccupying the land for Christ.
Again and again Dr. Beecher said in substance on Eastern
platforms : "Now is the nick of time. In matters which reach
into eternity, now is always the nick of time. One man now
is worth a hundred fifty years hence. One dollar now is worth
a thousand then. Let us be up and doing before it is too
late."
From that time to this the strain of appeal has been the
same, but with accumulating volume and solemnity of warn-
ing. The fate of our country has been in what Edmund
Burke describes as " a perilous and dancing balance." Human
wisdom could at no time foresee which way the scales would
turn. Every day has been a day of crisis. Every hour haa
been an hour of splendid destiny. Every minute has been
*f the nick of time." And this is the lesson which this volume
emphasizes by an accumulated array of facts and testimonies
and corollaries from them, the force of which can scarcely
OUR COUNTRY. V
be overstated. Fifty years of most eventful history have
been piling up the proofs of our national peril, till now
they come down upon us with the weight of an avalanche.
Such is the impression which the argument here elaborated
will make upon one who comes to it as a novelty, or in whose
mind the facts have become dim.
One is reminded by it of the judgment which has been ex-
pressed by almost all the great generals of the world, from
Julius Csesar to General Grant, that in every decisive battle
there is a moment of crisis on which the fortunes of the day
turn. The commander who seizes and holds that ridge of
destiny wins the victory. The conflict for the world's salva-
tion partakes of the same character. And the facts and their
corollaries massed together in this book show that nowhere
is it more portentously true than in this country. Our whole
history is a succession of crises. Our national salvation de-
mands in supreme exercise certain military virtues. Vigilance
in watching opportunity ; tact and daring in seizing upon op-
portunity ; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to
its utmost of possible achievement — these are the martial vir-
tues which must command success.
This volume presents, also, with a power which can scarcely
be exceeded — for it is the power of the simple facts — the truth
that Christian enterprise for the moral conquest of this land
needs to be conducted with the self-abandonment which deter-
mined men would throw into the critical moment in the criti-
cal battle of the critical campaign for a nation's endangered
life. What the campaign in Pennsylvania was to the Civil
War, what the battle of Gettysburg was to that campaign,
what the fight for Cemetery Hill was to that battle, such is
the present opportunity to the Christian civilization of this
country.
Turn whichever way we will— South, West, North, East —
we are confronted by the same element of crisis in the outlook
upon the future. Everything seems, to human view, to de-
VI OUE COUNTRY.
pend on present and dissolving chances. Whatever can be
done at aU must be done with speed. The building of great
States depends on one decade. The nationalizing of alien
races must be the work of a period which, in a nation's life, is
but an hour. The elements we work upon and the elements
we must work with are fast precipitating themselves in fixed
institutions and consolidated character. Nothing will await
our convenience. Nothing is indulgent to a dilatory policy.
Nothing is tolerant of a somnolent enterprise.
The climax of the argument appears in the view taken of
the auxiliary relation of this country's evangelizing to the
evangelizing of the world. One who studies even cursorily
the beginnings of Christianity will not fail to detect a masterly
strategy in apostolic policy. Christian enterprise at the outset
took possession first of strategic localities, to be used as the
centers of church-extension. The first successes of Christian
preachers were in the great cities of the East. The attractive
spots, to the divine eye, were those which were crowded with
the densest masses of human being. Not a trace do we find
of labor thrown off at random in the apostolic tactics. As
little do we discover of the spirit of romance. The early mis-
sions were not crusades for the conquest of holy places. They
were not pilgrimages to sacred shrines. Martial ardor in the
work was held well in hand by martial skill in the choice of
methods and localities.
The same military forecast has ruled Christian missions
from that day to this, so far as they have been crowned with
great successes. How little of work and expenditure at hap-
hazard has entered into the splendid structure of English and
American missions to the heathen I How little has the spirit
of romance or of aesthetic taste ever accomplished in evangeliz-
ing the nations ! The two localities to which the romance of
Christian enterprise would naturally turn are Palestine and
Greece ; the one as the home of our Lord, the other as the
birthplace of art and culture. Yet how little, comparatively
OUR COUNTRY. VII
speaking, have Christian missions achieved in either land I
Labor has been as faithful and self-sacrifice as generous there
as elsewhere; but in the comparison with other missions,
where are the fruits?
Success in the work of the world's conversion has, with
rare exceptions, followed the lines of human growth and pro-
spective greatness. But a single exception occurs to one's
memory — that of the Hawaiian Islands. Seldom has a nation
been converted to Christ, only to die. The general law has
been that Christianity should seat itself in the great metropoli-
tan centers of population and of civilized progress. It has
allied itself with the most virile races. It has taken possession
of the most vigorous and enterprising nations. The coloniz-
ing races and nations have been its favorites. It has aban-
doned the dying for the nascent languages. Its affinities have
always been for the youthful, the forceful, the progressive,
the aspiring in human character, and for that stock of mind
from which such character springs. By natural sequence, tne
localities where those elements of powerful manhood are, or
are to be, in most vigorous development, have been the strate-
gic points of which our religion has taken possession as by a
masterly military genius.
The principles of such a strategic wisdom should lead ns
to look on these United States as first and foremost the chosen
seat of enterprise for the world's conversion. Forecasting the
future of Christianity, as statesmen forecast the destiny of na- <
tions, we must believe that it will be what the future of this
country is to be. As goes America, so goes the world, in all
that is vital to its moral welfare. In this view, this volume
finds the superlative corollary of its argument.
AUSTIN PHELPS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE TIME FACTOR IN THE PROBLEM.
The closing years of the nineteenth century are one of the great
focal points in history. It is proposed to show that the progress of
Christ's kingdom in the world for centuries to come depends on the
next few years in the United States.— P. 1.
CHAPTER II.
NATIONAL RESOURCES.
Vastness of our domain, compared with Europe and China. Our
agricultural resources equal to sustaining 1,000,000,000 inhabitants.
Mineral wealth : mineral product greater already than that of any
other country. Manufactures, present and prospective : led Great
Britain, in 1880, by $650,000,000. Our threefold advantage. United
States to become the workshop of the world. With all our resources
fully developed can not only feed, but enrich 1,000,000,000.— P. 7.
CHAPTER in.
WESTERN SUPREMACY.
Extent of Western States and Territories. Nearly two and one-
half times as much land west of the Mississippi as east of it, not in-
cluding Alaska. The " Great American Desert," Amount of arable,
grazing, timber, and useless lands. Mineral resources of the West.
With more than twice the room and resources of the East, the West
will have probably twice the population and wealth of the East.-P. 15.
CHAPTER IV.
PERELS. —IMMIGRATION.
Controlling causes threefold. 1. Attracting influences in the
United States ; prospect of proprietorship in the soil ; this is the
land of plenty ; free schools. 2. Expellant influences of Europe ;
prospect not pacific ; France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, Great
Britain ; military duty ; the " blood tax" ; population becoming more
crowded. 3. Facilities of travel ; labor saving machinery. All co-
operate to increase immigration. Foreign population in 1900.
Moral and political influence of immigration. Influence upon the
West. -P. 30.
OUR COUNTRY. ix
CHAPTER V.
PERILS. — EOMANISM.
I. Conflict of Romanism with the fundamental principles of our
government ; liberty of conscience ; free speech, and a free press ;
free schools ; loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to the Pope.
2. Attitude toward our free institutions. 3. Rapid growth of Roman-
ism in the United States, especially in the West.— P. 46.
CHAPTER VI.
PERILS.— MORMONI8M.
Polygamy not an essential part of Mormonism; might be de-
stroyed without weakening the system. Strength lies in ecclesiastical
despotism. Mormon designs. The remedy.— P. 59.
CHAPTER VII.
PERILS. — INTEMPERANCE.
I. The progress of civilization renders men the easier victims of
intemperance. Civilization must destroy the liquor traffic, or be de-
stroyed by it. The problem serious enough in the East. What of
the West, where the relative power of the saloon is two-and-one-half
times greater?
II. The liquor power; wealth; organization; aims; methods.
Influence in Rocky Mountains and beyond. — P. 68.
CHAPTER VIII.
PERILS.— SOCIALISM.
The Socialistic Labor Party and the International Working-men's
Association. Teachings. Numbers. Conditions favovable to growth :
1. Immigration ; 2. Increasing Individualism ; 3. Prevalence of skep-
ticism ; 4. Development of classes ; 5. Growing discontent. Modern
enginery of destruction. Conditions at the West peculiarly favorable
to the growth of Socialism.— P. 85.
CHAPTER IX.
PERILS. — WEALTH.
Comparative statement of wealth. Rate of increase. Advantages
over Europe. Dangers: 1. Mammonism; 2. Materialism ; 3. Luxuri-
ouanesfs ; 4. Congestion of wealth. All these diftigerl greater at the
W«st than at the East.— P. 1*2.
X OTTE COUNTRY.
CHAPTER X.
PERILS.— THE CITY.
Disproportionate growth of the city. Each of the preceding
perils, except Mormonism, enhanced in the city, and all concentered
there. Moral and religious influence and government all weakest in
the city, where they need to be strongest. The West peculiarly
threatened.— P. 128.
CHAPTER XI
THE INFLUENCE OF EABLY SETTLEBS.
First permanent settlers impress their character on future genera-
tions. Illustrations. Character of the formative influences in the
West.-P. 144.
CHAPTER XII.
THE EXHAUSTION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS.
Meaning of cheap public lands, and significance of their occupa'
tion. Their extent. Exhausted in fifteen or twenty years. The
character of the West and, hence, the future of the nation to be de-
termined by 1900. —P. 153.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WOBLD's FUTUBE.
Reasons why the world's future is to be shaped by the Anglo-
Saxon. The United States to be the seat of his power. The most
marked characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race are here being empha-
sized, and the race schooled for the competition with other races,
which will begin as soon as the pressure of population on the means
of support is felt in the United States. The result of that competi-
tion. The responsibility of this generation. — P. 159.
CHAPTER XIV.
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
For an unparalleled opportunity God has conferred on this gen-
eration the power of unprecedented wealth. It is for the Church to
recognize the relations of the one to the other.— P. 180.
CHAPTER I.
THE TIME FACTOR IN THE PROBLEM.
THERE are certain great focal points of history to-
ward which the lines of past progress have converged,
and from which have radiated the molding influences
of the future. Such was the Incarnation, such was
the German Reformation of the sixteenth century, and
such are the closing years of the nineteenth century,
second in importance to that only which must always
remain nrst ; viz., the birth of Christ.
Many are not aware that we are living in extraordi-
nary times. Few suppose that these years of peaceful
prosperity, in which we are quietly developing a conti-
nent, are the pivot on which is turning the nation's
future. And fewer still imagine that the destinies of
mankind, for centuries to come, can be seriously af-
fected, much less determined, by the men of this gen-
eration in the United States. But no generation ap-
preciates its own place in history. Several years ago
Professor Austin Phelps said: "Five hundred years of
time in the process of the world's salvation may de-
pend on the next twenty years of United States his-
tory," It is proposed in the following pages to show
that such dependence of the world's future on this
generation in America is not only credible, but in the
highest degree probable.
A THE TIME FACTOR IN THE PROBLEM.
To attribute such importance to the present hour
may strike one who has given little or no study to the
subject as quite extravagant. It is easy jbo see how a
great battle may in a day prove decisive of a nation's
future. A political revolution or a diplomatic act in
some great crisis may cut the thread of destiny; but
how is it possible that a few years of national growth,
in tune of peace, may be thus fateful? Great civil-
izations have been the product of ages. Their char-
acter is slowly developed, and changes therein are
slowly wrought. What are twenty years in a nation's
growth, that they should be so big with destiny?
It must not be forgotten that the pulse and the pace
of the world have been marvelously quickened during
the nineteenth century. Much as we boast its achieve-
ments, not every one appreciates how large a propor-
tion of the world's progress in civilization has been
made since the application of steam to travel, com-
merce, manufactures, and printing. At the beginning
of this century there was very little travel. Men lived
in isolated communities. Mutually ignorant, they natu-
rally were mutually suspicious. In English villages a
stranger was an enemy. Under such conditions there
could be little exchange of ideas and less of commodi-
ties. Buxton says: "Intercourse is the soul of prog-
ress." The impetus given to inter-communication of
every sort by the application of steam was the begin-
ning of a new life in the world. Crompton's spinning-
mule was invented in 1775 ; Cartwright's power-loom
in 1787; and Whitney's cotton-gin in 1793; but they
did not come into common use until the nineteenth
century. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War
there were in use in English and American homes the
same primitive means by which the world's wool and
THE TIME FACTOE IN THE PROBLEM. 3
flax had been reduced to yarn for thousands of years,
the same rude contrivance used in ancient Mycenae
and Troy by Homer's heroines. There are men alive
to-day, whose mothers, like Solomon's virtuous woman,
laid their hands to the spindle and distaff, and knew no
other way. William Fairbairn, an eminent mechanic,
states that "in the beginning of the century the human
hand performed all the work that was done, and per-
formed it badly." Methods of travel and communi-
cation were as primitive as those of manufacture.
"Toward the close of the eighteenth century Lord
Campbell accomplished the journey from Edinburgh to
London in three days and three nights, But judicious
friends warned him of the dangers of this enterprise,
and told him that several persons who had been so
rash as to attempt it had actually died from the mere
rapidity of the motion."* In 1879 the railways of Great
Britain conveyed 629,000,000 passengers.f It took
Dr. Atkinson eight months to go from New England
to Oregon in 1847. When he returned the journey
occupied six days. When the battle of Waterloo was
fought (1815) all haste delivered the thrilling dispatches
in London three days later. The news of the bom-
bardment of Alexandria (1882) was received in the
English capital a few minutes after the first shell was
thrown.
Any one as old as the nineteenth century has seen a
very large proportion of all the progress in civilization
made by the race. When seven years old he might
have seen Fulton's steamboat on her trial trip up the
Hudson. Until twenty years of age he could not have
found in all the world an iron plow. At thirty he
* Mackenzie's History of the Nineteenth Century, t MulhalL
4 THE TIME FACTOR IN THE PROBLEM.
might have traveled on the first railway passenger
train. Fifty years later the world had 222,000 miles
of railway. For the first thirty-three years of his life
he had to rely on the tinder-box for fire. He was
thirty-eight when steam communication between Eu-
rope and America was established. He had arrived at
middle life (forty-four) when the first telegram was
sent. Thirty-six years later the world had 604,000
miles of telegraph lines. Our century has been dis-
tinguished by a rising flood of inventions. The En-
glish government issued more patents during the
twenty years succeeding 1850 than during the two
hundred and fifty years preceding.
But this has not been simply a mechanical era of
marvelous material progress. With the exception of
astronomy, modern science, as we now know it, is
almost wholly the creation of the nineteenth century.
In this century, too, have the glorious fruits of mod-
ern missions all been gathered. Another evidence of
progress which, if less obvious than material results,
is more conclusive, is found in the great ideas which
have become the fixed possession of men within the
past hundred years. Among them is that of individual
liberty, which is radically different from the ancient
conception of freedom that lay at the foundation of
the Greek and Eoman republics, and later, of the free
cities of Italy. Theirs was a liberty of class, or clan,
or nation, not of the individual; he existed for the
government. The idea that the government exists for
fche individual is modern.
From this idea of individual liberty follows logically
the abolition of slavery. At the close of the eighteenth
century slavery existed almost everywhere — in Russia,
Hungary, Prussia, Austria, Scotland, in the British,
THE TIME FACTOE IN THE PROBLEM. O
French, and Spanish colonies, and in North and South
America. During the first seven years of this century
English ships conveyed across the Atlantic 280,000
Africans, one-half of whom perished amid the horrors
of the "middle passage," or soon after landing. But
this century has seen slavery practically destroyed in
all Christendom.
Another idea, which, like that of individual liberty,
finds its root in the teachings of Christ, and has grown
up slowly through the ages to blossom in our own,
is that of honor to womanhood, whose fruitage is
woman's elevation. Early in this century it was not
very uncommon for an Englishman to sell his wife into
servitude. "A gentleman in this country, in 1815,
having access to not a very large number of English
sources of information, found, in a single year, thirty-
nine instances of wives exposed to public sale, like
cattle, at Smithfield."* The amazement or incredulity
with which such a statement is received by this gener-
ation is the best comment on it.
Another striking evidence of progress is found in
the enhanced valuation of human life, which has
served to humanize law and mitigate "man's inhuman-
ity to man." At the beginning of this century noth-
ing was cheaper than human life. In the eye of
English law the life of a rabbit was worth more than
that of a man ; for even an attempt upon the former
cost the sacrifice of the latter. The law recognized
* Dorchester's Problem of Religious Progress, p. 219. The New Monthly
tfagazine, for September, 1814, contains the following: " Shropshire.— A
well-looking woman, wife of John Hall, to whom she had been married
only one month, was brought by him in a halter, and sold by auction, in the
market, for two and sixpence, with the addition of sixpence for the rope
witk which she was led. In this sale the customary market fees were
charged— toll, one penny ; pitching, three pence."
6 THE TIME FACTOK IN THE PEOBLEM.
two hundred and twenty-three capital offences. "If a
man injured Westminster Bridge, he was hanged. If
he appeared disguised on a public road, he was hanged.
If he cut down young trees ; if he shot at rabbits ; if
he stole property valued at five shillings; if he stole
anything at all from a bleach field; if he wrote a
threatening letter to extort money; if he returned
prematurely from transportation — for any of these
offenses he was immediately hanged." "In 1816 there
were at one time (in England) fifty-eight persons under
sentence of death. One of these was a child ten years
old."*
Space does not suffer even the mention of other
noble ideas, the growth of which has enriched our
civilization and elevated man. Our glance at the con-
dition, fourscore years ago, of the most enlightened
of the nations, hasty as it has been, suffices to remind
us of the amazing changes which have taken place
within a few years ; and to show that if we reckon time
by its results, twenty years of this century may out-
measure a millennium of olden time.
As the traveler in Asia follows the sun westward
around the world, he finds life growing ever more in-
tense and time more potent.
" Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."
And to carry the comparison between the East and
the West a degree further, permit me to quote an in-
telligent Englishman who is a competent witness ; viz.,
Mr. Joseph Hatton, who says: "Ten years in the
history of America is half a century of European pro-
gress. Ten years ago the manufactures of America were
too insignificant for consideration in the Old World.
•Mackenzie's History of the Nineteenth Century.
NATIONAL RESOUBCES. 7
To-day England herself is successfully rivaled by
American productions in her own markets."* But the
comparison does not end here. Ten years in the New
West are, in their results, fully equal to half a century
east of the 'Mississippi. There is there a tremendous
rush of events which is startling, even in the nine-
teenth century. That western world in its progress is
gathering momentum like a falling body. Yast regions
have been settled before, but never before under the
mighty whip and spur of electricity and steam. Kefer-
ring to the development of the West, the London Times
remarks: "Unquestionably, this is the most impor-
tant fact in contemporary history. It is a new fact, it can
not be compared with any cognate phenomenon in the
past." And, as it is without a precedent, so it will re-
main without a parallel, for there are no more New
Worlds.
CHAPTER II.
NATIONAL KESOUECES.
IT is necessary to the argument to show that the
United States is capable of sustaining a vast popula-
tion.
The fathers on Massachusetts Bay once decided that
population was never likely to be very dense west of
Newton (a suburb of Boston), and the founders of Lynn,
* Tb-day in America, 1881,
8 NATIONAL RESOURCES.
after exploring ten or fifteen miles, doubted whether
the country was good for anything farther west than
that. Until recent times, only less inadequate has been
the popular conception of the transmissouri region
and the millions destined to inhabit it. Of late years,
home missionary writers and speakers have tried to
astonish us into some appreciation of our national
domain. Yet it may well be doubted whether even he
who has pondered most upon its magnitude has a
"realizing sense" of it. Though astonishing compari-
sons have ceased to astonish, I know of no means more
effective or more just by which to present our physical
basis of empire.
What, then, should we say of a republic of eighteen
states, each as large as Spain; or one of thirty-one
states, each as large as Italy ; or one of sixty states,
each as large as England and Wales ? What a confed-
eration of nations ! Take five of the six first-class
Powers of Europe, Great Britain and Ireland, France,
Germany, Austria, and Italy ; then add Spain, Portugal,
Switzerland, Denmark, and Greece. Let some greater
than Napoleon weld them into one mighty empire, and
you could lay it all down in the United States west of
the. Hudson River, once, and again, and again — three
times. Well may Mr. Gladstone say that we have " a
natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever
established by man ;" and well may the English premier
add: "And the distinction between continuous empire
and empire severed and dispersed over sea is vital."*
With the exception of Alaska our territory is compact,
and though so vast, is unified by railways and an un-
equaled system of rivers and lakes. The latter, occu-
NATIONAL RESOURCES 9
pying a larger area than Great Britain and Ireland, are
said to contain nearly one-half of all the fresh water
on the globe. We are told that east of the Kocky
Mountains we have a river-flow of more than 40,000
miles (i.e., 80,000 miles of river-bank), counting no
stream less than a hundred miles in length ; while Eu-
rope in a larger space has but 17,000 miles. It is esti-
mated * that the Mississippi, with its affluents, affords
35,000 miles of navigation. A steamboat may pass up
the Mississippi and Missouri 3,900 miles from the Gulf
— " as far as from New York to Constantinople.'^
Thus a " vast system of natural canals'* carries our sea-
board into the very heart of the continent.
But what of the resources of this great empire which
makes so brave a display on the map ? Alaska is capa-
ble of producing great wealth, but not including this
territory, the area of the United States, according to
the census of 1880, is 2,970,000 square miles. Accord-
ing to the smallest estimate I have ever seen (and
doubtless too small), we have 1,500,000 square miles of
arable land. China proper, which, according to her
last census, supports a population of 360,000,000, has
an area of 1,348,870 square miles, or considerably less
than one-half of ours, not including Alaska. The Chi-
nese could hardly be called a manufacturing people ;
and when their last census was taken (1812), their for-
eign commerce was inconsiderable. That vast popula-
tion, therefore, drew its support from the soil. The
mountains of China occupy an area of more than
300,000 square miles, and some of her plains are bar-
ren. It would seem, then, that our arable lands, taking
the lowest estimate, are in excess of those of China, by
some hundreds of thousands of square miles. The
ffia Britannic^ t tfr.
10 NATIONAL RESOURCES.
fact, therefore, that Chinese agriculture, with its rude
implements, feeds hundreds of millions ought, certainly,
fco be suggestive to Americans.
The crops of 1879, after feeding our 50,000,000 in-
habitants, furnished more than 283,000,000 bushels of
grain for export. The corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye,
buckwheat and potatoes— that is, the food crops, weire
that year produced on 105,097,750 acres, or 164,215
square miles. But that is less than one-ninth of the
smallest estimate of our arable lands. If, therefore,
it were all brought under the plow, it would feed
450,000,000 and afford 2,554,000,000 bushels of grain
for export. But this is not all. So excellent an au-
thority as Mr. Edward Atkinson says that where we
now support 50,000,000. people, " one hundred million
could be sustained without increasing the area of a
single farm, or adding one to their number, by merely
bringing our product up to our average standard of
reasonably good agriculture; and then there might
remain for export twice the quantity we now send
abroad to feed the hungry in foreign lands." If this
be true (and it will hardly be questioned by any one
widely acquainted with our wasteful American farm-
ing), 1,500,000 square miles of cultivated land — less
than one-half of our entire area this side of Alaska —
are capable of feeding a population of 900,000,000, and
of producing an excess of 5,100,000,000 bushels of
grain for exportation; or, if the crops were all con-
sumed at home, it would feed a population one-eighth
larger; viz., 1,012,000,000. This corresponds very
nearly with results obtained by an entirely different
process from data afforded by the best scientific au-
thority.* It need not, therefore, make a very severe
* See Encyclopedia Britannicai Vol. 1^ p. 717.
NATIONAL RESOU&CES. 11
draught on credulity to say that our agricultural re-
sources, if fully developed, would sustain a thousand
million souls.
But we have wonderful wealth under the soil as well
as in it. From 1870 to 1880 we produced $732,000,-
000 of the precious metals. The United States now
raises one-half the gold and silver of the world's sup-
ply. Iron ore is to-day mined in twenty-three of our
states. A number of them could singly supply the
world's demand. Our coal measures are simply inex-
haustible. English coal-pits, already, deep, are being
deepened, so that the cost of coal-mining in Great
Britain is constantly increasing, while we have coal
enough near the surface to supply us for centuries.
When storing away the fuel for the ages, God knew
the place and work to which he had appointed us, and
gave to us twenty times as much of this concrete power
as to all the peoples of Europe. Among the nations
ours is the youngest — the Benjamin — and Benjamin-
like we have received a five-fold portion. Surely "He
hath not dealt so with any people." Our mineral pro-
ducts are of unequaled richness and variety. The
remarkable increase from 1870 to 1880 * places us at
the head of the nations. Our mining industries exceed
those of Great Britain three per cent., and are greater
than those of all continental Europe, Asia, Africa,
South America, Mexico, and the British Colonies col-
lectively ; and as yet, we have hardly begun to develop
these resources. Thousands of square miles of min-
eral wealth lie wholly untouched.
* Mulhall.
18TO. 1880. Increase.
Iron ore, tons ...................... 4,500,000 9,500,000 110 per cent.
Copper " ...................... 12,700 20,300 60 "
Coal " ...................... 33,000,000 55,000,000 66 "
Petroleum, gallons ................. 42,000,000 880,000,000 20-fold.
12 NATIONAL BESOUBCES.
Let us glance at our manufactures, present and pro-
spective. Our first great advantage is found in our
superabounding coal. Our second lies in the fact that
we have our raw material at hand. England must go
at least 3,000 miles for every cotton boll she spins ; we
raise our own. And mills are now being built in the
South which manufacture the cotton where it is grown.
We produce also the wool, the woods, the hides, the
metals of every sort, all that is required for nearly
every variety of manufacture. The remaining advan-
tage which crowns our opportunity is the quality of
our labor ; American operatives being, as a class, the
most ingenious and intelligent in the world. Invent-
iveness has come to be a national trait. The United
States Government issues four times as many patents
as the English. From the Patent Office in Washing-
ton there were issued, during 1884, 20,297 patents.
At the International Electrical Exposition in Paris, a
few years ago, five gold medals were given for the
greatest inventions or discoveries. How many of them,
think you, came to the United States f Only five. The
Mechanical World, of London, says that the United
States has the best machinery and tools in the world;
and Mr. Lourdelot, who was recently sent over here by
the French Minister of Commerce, says that the
superiority of tools used here, and the attention to
details too often neglected in Europe, are elements of
danger to European industries. Herbert Spencer tes-
tifies that " Beyond question, in respect of mechanical
appliances, the Americans are ahead of all nations." *
The fact of superior tools would alone give us no small
advantage, but the possession of the best machinery
• For much additional and weighty testimony to the same point, see re-
port of Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1879, po. xiii and xiv.
NATIONAL EESOUECES. 13
implies much more; viz., that we have also the best
mechanics in the world.
In close competition, any one of the three advan-
tages *enumerated ought to insure ultimate supremacy;
the coincidence, then, of these three great essentials of
manufactures, each in such signal measure as to con-
stitute together a triple advantage, must deliver over
to us the markets of the world. Already have we won
the first rank as a manufacturing people, our products
in 1880 having exceeded even those of Great Britain
by $650,000,000. So soon is Mr. Gladstone's prophecy,
uttered five or six years ago, finding its fulfillment.
Speaking of the United States, he said: "She will
probably become what we are now, the head servant in
the great household of the world, the employer- of all
employed, because her service will be the most and
ablest." And it is interesting to note not only our
position, but our rate of progress. While the manu-
factures of France, from 1870 to 1880, increased $230,-
000,000, those of Germany $430,000,000, and those of
Great Britain $580,000,000, those of the United States
increased $1,030,000,000.* Moreover, the marked ad-
vantages which we now enjoy are to be enhanced.
While England's coal is growing dearer, ours will be
growing cheaper. The development of our vast re-
sources will greatly increase, and hence cheapen, raw
materials. The superior ingenuity and intelligence of
our mechanics and operatives, which enable us now to
compete with the cheaper labor of Europe, will con-
tinue to give us better machinery, while our rapidly
increasing population will cheapen labor. Even now,
with cheap labor against us, we can lay down our
* Our total agricultural products for 1880 were $2,625,000,000 ;
lactures for the same year were $4,440,000,000.
14 NATIONAL RESOURCES.
steels in Sheffield, our lower grades of cotton in Man-
chester, our electro-plate in Birmingham, and our
watches in Geneva, and undersell European manufac-
turers on their own doorsills. What, then, may we
reasonably expect, when, with a dense population,
cheap labor is no longer against us 1 And while our
manufactures are growing, our markets are to be
greatly extended. Steam and electricity have mightily
compressed the earth. The elbows of the nations
touch. Isolation — the mother of barbarism — is be-
coming impossible. The mysteries of Africa are being
laid open, the pulse of her commerce is beginning to
beat. South America is being quickened, and the dry
bones of Asia are moving; the warm breath of the
Nineteenth Century is breathing a living soul under
her ribs of death. The world is to be Christianized
and civilized. There are about 1,000,000,000 of the
world's inhabitants who do not enjoy a Christian civil-
ization. Two hundred millions of these are to be
lifted out of savagery. Much has been accomplished
in this direction during the past seventy-five years, but
much more will be done during the next fifty. And
what is the process of civilizing but the creating of
more and higher wants f Commerce follows the mis-
sionary. Five hundred American plows went to the
native Christians of Natal in one year. The millions
of Africa and Asia are some day to have the wants of a
Christian civilization. The beginnings of life in India
demand $12,000,000 worth of iron manufactures, and
$100,000,000 worth of cotton goods in a single year.
What will be the wants of Asia a century hence? A
Christian civilization performs the miracle of the loaves
and fishes, and feeds its thousands in a desert. It
multiplies populations. A thousand civilized men
WESTERN SUPBEMACY. 15
thrive where a hundred savages starved. What, then,
will be the population and what the wants of Africa, a
century hence I And with these vast continents added
to our market, with our natural advantages fully real-
ized, what is to prevent the United States from becom-
ing the mighty workshop of the world, and our people
" the hands of mankind" ?
If it is not unreasonable to believe that our agricul-
tural resources alone, when fully developed, are capa-
ble of feeding 1,000,000,000, then surely, with our agri-
cultural and mining and manufacturing industries all
fully developed, the United States can sustain and en-
rich such a population. Truly has Matthew Arnold
said : " America holds the future."
CHAPTER III.
WESTERN SUPREMACY.
" I NEVER felt as if I were out of doors before !" ex-
claimed a New Englander, as he stepped off the cars
west of the Mississippi, for the first time.
The West is characterized by largeness. Mountains,
rivers, railways, ranches, herds, crops, business trans-
actions, ideas ; even men's virtues and vices are cyclo-
pean. All seem to have taken a touch of vastness
from the mighty horizon. Western stories are on the
same large scale, so large, indeed, that it often takes a
dozen eastern men to believe one of them. Thev have
16 WESTERN SUPBEMACY.
a secret suspicion that even the best attested are in-
flated exaggerations, which, pricked by investigation,
would burst, leaving behind a very small residuum of
fact. It will be necessary, therefore, to glance rapidly
at the resources of the West, in order to show that it
will eventually dominate the East. And by " the
West" I mean that portion of the country lying west
of the Mississippi, not including Alaska, unless so
specified ; for, though that territory has vast resources
which will some day add much to our wealth, the na-
tional destiny is to be settled this side of Alaska.
Of the twenty-two states and territories west of the
Mississippi only three are as small as all New England.
Montana would stretch from Boston on the east to
Cleveland on the west, and extend far enough south to
include Kichmond, Ya. Idaho, if laid down in the
East, would touch Toronto, Can., on the north, and
Raleigh, N. C., on the south, while its southern
boundary line is long enough to stretch from Wash-
ington City to Columbus, O.; and California, if on our
Atlantic seaboard, would extend from the southern
line of Massachusetts to the lower part of South Caro-
lina; or, in Europe, it would extend from London
across France and well into Spain. New Mexico is
larger than the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland. The greatest measurement of Texas is nearly
equal to the distance from New Orleans to Chicago, or
from Chicago to Boston. Lay Texas on the face of
Europe, and this giant, with his head resting on the
mountains of Norway (directly east of the Orkney
Islands), with one palm covering London, the other
Warsaw, would stretch himself down across the king-
dom of Denmark, across the empires of Germany and
Austria, across Northern Italy, and lave his feet in the
WESTERN STTPKEMACY. 17
Mediterranean. Dakota might be carved into a half-
dozen kingdoms of Greece ; or, if it were divided into
twenty-six equal counties, we might lay down the two
kingdoms of Judah and Israel in each.
Place the 50,000,000 inhabitants of the United States
in 1880 all in Texas, and the population would not be
as dense as that of Germany. Put them in Dakota,
and the population would not be as dense as that of
England and Wales. Place them in New Mexico, and
the density of population would not be as great as that
of Belgium. Those 50,000,000 might all be comfort-
ably sustained in Texas. After allowing, say 50,000
square miles for " desert," Texas could have produced
all our food crops in 1879 — grown, as we have seen, on
164,215 square miles of land — could have raised the
world's supply of cotton, 12,000,000 bales, at one bale
to the acre, on 19,000 square miles, and then have had
remaining, for a cattle range, a territory larger than
the State of New York.
Accounting all of Minnesota and Louisiana west of
the Mississippi, for convenience, we have, according to
the census of 1880,* 2,115,135 square miles in the
West and 854,865 in the East. That is, for every acre
east of the Mississippi we have nearly two and a half
west of it. But what of the " Great American Desert,"
which occupied so much space on the map a genera-
tion ago? It is nomadic and elusive; it recedes be-
fore advancing civilization like the Indian and buffalo
which once roamed it. There are extensive regions,
which, because of rocks or lava-beds or alkali or alti-
tude or lack of rain, are unfit for the plow ; but they
afford much of the finest grazing country in the world,
* The areas of tlie states given in the Ninth Census have been recompute*
for the Tenth.
18 WESTERN SUPREMACY.
much valuable timber, and mineral wealth which is
i enormous. Useless land, though much in the aggre-
gate, is far less than is commonly supposed, and in
comparison with wealth-producing lands is almost in-
significant. The vast region east of the Kocky Mount-
ains, though once the home of the " Great American
Desert," really contains very little useless land. We
have all heard of the "Bad Lands" of Dakota, but they
comprise only about 75,000 acres out of 94,528,000 in
the territory, and even these lands are an excellent
stock-range. Mr. E. V. Smalley says* : " Cattle come
out of the Bad Lands in the spring as fat as though
they had been stall-fed all winter." The United States
Surveyor-General says: "The proportion of waste
land in the territory (Dakota), owing to the absence of
swamps, mountain ranges, overflowed and sandy tracts,
is less than in any other state or territory in the
Union." There are 20,000 square miles of "Bad
Lands" in Northwestern Nebraska, rich in wonderful
fossils, but economically worthless. It is often said
that the Kansas lands near the Colorado border are al-
kaline; but Professor Mudge, State Geologist, says
that, in fifteen years of exploration, he has found but
two springs containing alkalies, and has never seen ten
acres of land in one place which has been injured by it.
There is probably as little waste land in Kansas as in
Illinois. The " Staked Plain" of Texas is sometimes
spoken of as a desert ; but a Texan writer, who has
lived there for years, says of it : " While it is true that
this vast territory which we are describing is mainly a
grazing country, it is also true that it abounds in fer-
tile valleys and rich locations of large extent, which are
as well watered and as fertile as any in the natio-' i:
* The Century for August, 1882.
WESTEEN SUPREMACY. 19
Tnat portion of the "Staked Plain" which is mountain-
ous is rich in minerals.
Driven from the plains east of the Rocky Mountains,
the " Great American Desert" seems to have become a
fugitive and vagabond on the face of the e&rth. It
was located for a time by the map makers in Utah, but
being persecuted there, it fled to Arizona and Nevada.
I do not mean to imply that there are no was*e lands
in Utah. Portions of the territory are as worthless as
some of its people. There are some deserts, one west
of the Great Salt Lake, which contains several thou-
sand square miles ; but the Surveyor-General of the
Territory says: "Notwithstanding the opinion of
many who deem our lands * arid, desert, and worthless,'
these same lands, under proper tillage, produce forty
to fifty bushels of wheat, seventy to eighty bushels of
Oats and barley, from two hundred to four hundred
bushels of potatoes to the acre, and fruits and vegeta^
bles equal to any other state or territory in quantity and
quality." There are vast tracts which can not be irri-
gated, but it has been discovered that by deep plowing,
these same lands, without artificial moisture, can be
made to produce bountifully. The culture of these
high lands was, the past year, thoroughly successful.
Arizona has been considered a waste, and undoubtedly
much land there is arid ; but, on the other hand, there
is much also which is wealth producing. Gen. J. C.
Fremont, who, as Governor of the Territory for several
years, had exceptional facilities for gaining informa-
tion, in his official report in 1878, said : " So far as my
present knowledge goes, the grazing and farming lands
comprehend an area equal to that of the State of New
York." And a writer in Harper's Magazine for March,
1883, says : " It is estimated by competent authority
20 WESTEBX SUPREMACY.
that, with irrigation, thirty-seven per cent, can be re-
deemed for agriculture, and sixty per cent, for pastur-
age." * Certain it is that when the Spaniards first
visited the territory, in 1526, they found ruins of cities
and irrigating canals, which indicated that it was once
densely populated by a civilized race which subsisted
by agriculture.
There is more barren land in Nevada than in any
other state or territory of the "West. The wealth of
the state is not agricultural or pastoral, but mineral.
Nevertheless the Surveyor-General of the State says:
" In our sage-brush lands, alfalfa, the cereals, and all
vegetables flourish in profusion where water can be
obtained, and the state is speedily becoming one of
the great stock-raising states of the Union." A good
authority estimates that eventually one-half of the
state can be made valuable.
The area in which occur, here and there, most of the
worthless lands of the West, is pyramidal in shape, the
base extending along the Mexican line into Texas, and
the apex being found in the northern part of Idaho.
That is, the proportion of useless lands decreases as
you go north, until it seems to disappear entirely be-
fore reaching the Northern Pacific Kailway. Mr. E. V.
Smalley, who, in the summer of 1882, traveled the line
of that road before its completion,, writes : | " The
whole country traversed through the northern tier of
territories, from Eastern Dakota to Washington, is a
habitable region. For the entire distance every square
mile of the country is valuable either for farming,
* From all the information I can gatber, this latter estimate seems to me
too large. In my computation of the valuable lands of the West, page 21, 1
have called 55,000 square miles in Arizona, about one-half of the territory
worthless,
t The Century Magazine for Oct., 1882.
WESTERN SUPREMACY. 21
stock-raising, or timber-cutting. There is absolutely
no waste land between the well-settled region of Dakota
and the new wheat region of Washington Territory.
Even on the tops of the Eocky Mountains there is good
pasturage ; and the vast timber belt enveloping Clark's
Fork and Lake Pend d' Oreille, and the ranges of the
Cabinet and Cceur d' Alene Mountains is more valu-
able than an equal extent of arable land."
Comparatively little of the Eocky Mountain region
has been surveyed. In the absence of exact kncfwledge,
therefore, we must rely on the estimates of Surveyor-
Gen6rals, Governors, and others who have had oppor-
tunities to form intelligent opinions concerning the
available lands of the West. In some cases official re-
ports of surveys have afforded accurate information;
but in most it has been necessary to rely on estimates
which pretend to be only approximately correct. I be-
lieve they are temperate, and will prove to be rather
under than over the truth. According to these esti-
mates, the region west of the Mississippi embraces
785,000 square miles of arable lands, 645,000 of grazing
lands, 260,000 of timber lands, and 425,000 square
miles which are useless, except so far as they are min-
eral lands. In weighing these figures several consid-
erations should be borne in mind.
1. Generally speaking, those best acquainted with
the West make the largest estimates of its resources
and have the most faith in its future.
2. Land often appears worthless which experiment
proves to be fertile. For instance, the " Great Colum-
bia Plains" of Eastern Washington. The soil, which
varies from one foot to twenty feet in depth, is, except
in the bottom lands, a very light-colored loam, con-
taining an unusually large percentage of alkalies and
22 WESTERN SUPREMACY.
fixed acids. A few years ago, sowing wheat on that
soil would have been deemed throwing it away; but
the experiment resulted in a revelation ; viz., that
these 14,000,000 acres of peculiar soil are probably
the best wheat fields in all the world. Other illustra-
tions equally striking might be given. Kev. A. Blanch-
ard, Home Missionary Superintendent for East Wyo-
ming and Colorado,* writes : " Nothing is more sur-
prising than the material for supporting a population
which Continues to be developed in all this region of
mountain and plain, which, twenty years ago, was con-
sidered an inhospitable desert, capable of supporting
nothing but Indians."
3. Barren lands are often rendered fruitful. Water
is all that is needed to make most of our western " des-
erts" blossom as the rose. In 1882 twelve Artesian
wells were sunk in Tulare County, California, with as-
tonishing results. They were found to flow from
200,000 to 1,500,000 gallons daily; and where once
were barren plains, the fields are a succession of vine-
yards, orchards, and wheat fields. Since then many of
these wells have been sunk in Arizona, Nevada, New
Mexico and Colorado. Moreover, the rainfall seems to
be increasing with the cultivation of the soil. It is
also worthy of note that what rain there is usually
falls in those months when it is most needed, and that
there is little or none during harvest.
Oftentimes all that a sterile soil needs is treatment
with some mineral which Nature has deposited near
by.
4. The arable lands in the Rocky Mountains are
mainly in valleys, which, like basins, have gathered the
detritus of the mountains for ages. The soil is, there-
* Since transferred to Kansas.
WESTERN SUPREMACY. 23
fore, very deep and strong, yielding much more than
the same area in the East; and in the Southwest
two crops a year from the same soil are very common,
so that this land is equal to twice or three times the
same area in the East.
5. The above estimate of arable lands in the "West
does not include the timber lands, a large proportion
of which is of the finest quality. Of the 260,000
square miles of timber, 45,000 are in Texas, 26,000 in
Arkansas, and 25,000 in Minnesota. Nearly one-half
of the whole is in the Mississippi valley, and a good
deal of the remainder is on fine soil, so that it is
reasonable to infer that 100,000 square miles, or more,
of this timber land would be arable, if cleared. More-
over, much of the 645,000 square miles of grazing
land will prove to be arable. We may, therefore, ex-
pect the arable lands of the West ultimately to reach
900,000 square miles, and perhaps 1,000,000.
6. A considerable portion of the 854,865 square
miles east of the Mississippi is not arable. In New
England, New York, and Pennsylvania there are 94,500
square miles of unimproved lands.* It is a fair infer-
ence that in the old states where land has long been
in demand, so much would not remain unimproved
unless generally incapable of improvement. Through-
out the many mountain ranges of the entire Appa-
lachian system, there is much waste land and more
that is not arable. In the absence of any exact data it
would seem from the facts just given, that there must
be not less than 50,000 or 60,000 square miles of waste
land east of the Mississippi, and twice as much that is
*New England has 28,468 square miles not in farms, 41,500 unimproved.
New York " 10,402 " " " " " 29,000 »
Pennsylvania " 13,952 " " " " " 24,000 "
24 WESTERN SUPREMACY.
not fit for the plow. This reduces the arable lands of
the East to about 700,000 square miles as against
785,000 in the West, with the probable eventual ad-
dition to the latter of one or two hundred thousand
more. For every acre in the East, bad as well as good,
there is another in the West capable of producing
food ; and in addition, a timber area as vast as all New
England, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio
and Indiana- And this, be it remembered, does not
include the magnificent timber lands of Alaska, which
William H. Seward said would one day make that ter-
ritory the ship-yard of the world. And in addition to
all this, the West has grazing lands 50,000 square miles
broader than the total area of all the states east of
the Mississippi not above enumerated. In 1880 there
were in the West 61,211,000 head of live stock ; and
those vast plains are capable of sustaining several
times that number. The West, therefore, has 1,690,000
square miles of useful land against 800,000 in the East,
more than twice as much.
Nor have we finished our inventory of western
wealth. Its mineral resources are simply inexhaustible.
The precious metals have been found in most of the
states and territories of our Western Empire. From
the discovery of gold to June 30th, 1881, California
has produced $1,170,000,000 of that metal. The an-
nual product is now from eighteen to twenty-five mil-
lions. From 1863 to 1880, Idaho produced $90,000,-
000 of gold and silver, and Montana from 1861 to 1879,
not less than $162,000,000. In twenty years, Nevada
produced $448,545,000 of the precious metals. The
production of Colorado, during the twenty-four years
preceding 1883, was $167,000,000. Her out-put 'for
1882 was $27,000,000. In wealth producing power a
WESTERN SUPREMACY. 25
single rich mine represents a great area of arable land.
For instance the Comstock Lode, in 1877, produced
$37,062,252. Those twelve insignificant looking holes
in the side of the mountain yielded more wealth that year
than 3,890,000 acres planted to corn the same year.
That is, those few square rods on the surface in Ne-
vada were as large as all the corn fields of New Eng-
land, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota collectively. Kocky Mountain wealth,
penetrating thousands of feet into the earth, compen-
sates for large areas of barren surface. The agricul-
tural resources of a country do not now as formerly
determine its possible population. To-day easy trans-
portation makes regions populous and wealthy, which
once were uninhabitable. Even if a blade of grass
could not be made to grow in all the Rocky Mountain
States, that region could sustain 100,000,000' souls,
provided it has sufficient mineral wealth to exchange
for the produce of the Mississippi valley. Quartz
mines have been known in the Rockies for years, which
could not be worked without heavy machinery. The
inner chambers of God's great granite safes, where the
silver and gold have been stored for ages to enrich
this generation, are fastened with time locks, set for
the advent of the railway. The projection of railway
systems into the mountains will rapidly develop these
mines. For the year ending May 31st, 1880, the
United States produced 55 tons 724 pounds (avoir-
dupois) of gold, and 1,090 tons 398 pounds of silver.
" These huge figures may be better grasped, perhaps,
by considering that the gold represents five ordinary
car-loads, while a train of 109 freight cars of the usual
capacity would bo required to transport the silver.*
*Tentli Census.
Ub WESTERN SUPREMACY.
But the precious metals constitute only a small pari
of the mineral wealth of the West. "An eminent
metallurgist and scientist has recently estimated the
entire mineral production of the region west of the
Mississippi, for the year 1880, as worth $1,000,000,000
and has given the items on which his estimate is
baaed."* This sum is equal to the value of five-elev-
enths of all our agricultural products for the same
year. The West has upwards of 200,000 square miles
of coal measure, thirty-eight times the area of all the
coal fields of Great Britain, Excepting Minnesota,
coal has been found in every state and territory west
of the Mississippi. And not one is without iron.
California has superior ores. The iron of Oregon is
equal to the very best Swedish and Russian metal.
Wyoming has immense deposits. The supply of
Utah is enormous. It is found in some form in every
county of Missouri. Iron Mountain and Pilot Knob
are estimated to contain 500,000,000 tons of the finest
ore. There are great masses of iron in Texas, proba-
bly equal in quantity and quality to any deposits in
the world. Lead is found in all the states and terri-
tories of the West, except Minnesota, Nebraska, and the
Indian Territory. In many of them the ores are rich and
abundant. The lead-producing area in Missouri is
over 5,000 square miles. The product of that state in
1877 was over 63,000,000 pounds. Nebraska and Kan-
sas alone are without copper. Eich ores and native
metal abound in what seem inexhaustible quantities.
The deposits of salt are without computation. Besides
salt springs and lakes which yibl<? great quantities,
there are beds of unknown depth covering thousands
of acres. Sulphur also is exceedingly abundant. In
* Our Western Empire, p. 212.
WESTERN SUPREMACY. 27
Idaho ill) ere is a mountain which is eighty-five per cent,
pure sulphur. A deposit in Louisiana, equally pure, is
112 feet thick. Nevada has borax enough to supply
mankind. In "Wyoming there are lakes in which the de-
posits of sulphate of soda are from ten to fifteen feet
in thickness, and almost chemically pure. Gypsum
abounds. Texas has the largest deposits known in the
world ; " enough to supply the universe for centuries."
The Colorado River of Texas cuts its way through
mountains of solid marble. In many parts of tLe
Rocky Mountains there are the finest building stones,
granite, sandstone and marble, of all possible colors
and shades, without end. It would be tiresome simply
to enumerate the valuable minerals which swell the un-
developed wealth of the West. If recent reports are
correct, it is not denied even tin, the world's supply
of which has hitherto been so limited. Inconsiderable
deposits have been found in several states and terri-
tories; but Prof. Bailey, United States Geologist for
Montana, states that in the region of Harney's Peak,
he has found tin-bearing rock that can be quarried
from the surface, that there are veins measuring more
than fifty feet in width which will average much better
than those in Cornwall. He declares that there is
enough to supply the world, and says that it is impossi-
ble to imagine this great body of ore ever being
exhausted. If these statements are correct, the
discovery is one of the most important of the cen-
tury.
The unrivaled resources of the West together with
the unequaled enterprise of her citizens are a sure
prophecy of superior wealth. Already have some of
these young states outstripped older sisters at the
East, as is seen by the following statement of wealth
28 WESTERN SUPREMACY.
per caput according to the assessed valuation of prop-
erty in 1880:
In South Carolina $110 In Kansas $161
" Illinois 255 " Minnesota 330
" Vermont 259 " Colorado 331
«' Indiana 368 " Montana 475
" New York.... 538 " California 674
The West is destined to surpass in agriculture, stock-
raising, mining, and eventually, in manufacturing.
Already appears the superiority of her climate, which
Montesquieu declares " is the most powerful of all em-
pires, and gives guaranty alone of future develop-
ment." Every advantage seems to be hers save only
greater proximity to Europe, and if the East com-
mands European commerce, the Golden Gate opens
upon Asia, and is yet to receive
** the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,"
and send her argosies to all the ports of the broad
Pacific.
Beyond a peradventure, the West is to dominate the
East. With more than twice the room and resources
of the East, the West will have probably twice the
population and wealth of the East, together with the
superior power and influence which, under popular
government accompany them. The West will elect the
executive and control legislation. When the center of
population crosses the Mississippi, the West will have
a majority in the lower House, and sooner or later the
partition of her great territories, and probably some
of the states, will give to the West the control of the
Senate. When Texas- is as densely peopled as New
England, it is hardly to be supposed her millions will
be content to see the 62,000 square miles east of the
Hudson send twelve senators to the seat of govern-
ment, while her territory of 262,000 sends only two.
WESTERN SUPREMACY. 29
The West will direct the policy of the Government,
and by virtue of her preponderating population and
influence will determine our national character, and
therefore, destiny.
Since prehistoric times populations have moved
steadily westward, as De Tocqueville said, "as if driv-
en by the mighty hand of God." And following their
migrations, the course of empire, which Bishop Berke-
ley sang, has westward taken its way. The world's
scepter passed from Persia to Greece, from Greece to
Italy, from Italy to Great Britain, and from Great
Britain the scepter is to-day departing. It is passing
on to " Greater Britain," to our mighty West, there to
remain, for there is no further West ; beyond is the
Orient. Like the star in the East which guided the
three kings with their treasures westward until at
length it stood still over the cradle of the young
Christ, so the star of empire, rising in the East, has
ever beckoned the wealth and power of the nations
westward, until to-day it stands still over the cradle of
the young empire of the West, to which the nations
are bringing their offerings.
The West is to-day an infant, but shall one day be a
giant, in each of whose limbs shall unite the strength
of many nations.
30 PERILS. — IMMIGRATION.
CHAPTER IV.
PERILS IMMIGRATION.
POLITICAL optimism is one of the vices of the Ameri-
can people. There is a popular faith that " God takes
care of children, fools, and the United States." We
deem ourselves a chosen people, and incline to the be-
lief that the Almighty stands pledged to our prosper-
ity. Probably not one in a hundred of our population
has ever questioned the security of our future. Such
optimism is as senseless as pessimism is faithless.
The one is as foolish as the other is wicked.
Thoughtful men see perils on our national horizon.
Let us glance at those only which peculiarly threaten
the West. America, as the land of promise to all the
world, is the destination of the most remarkable migra-
tion of which we have any record. During the last
four years we have suffered a peaceful invasion by an
army more than twice as vast as the estimated number
of Goths and Vandals that swept over Southern Eu-
rope and overwhelmed Rome. During the ninety
years preceding 1880, ten million foreigners made
their homes in the United States, and three-quarters of
them came during the last third of that period. Not
only are they coming in great numbers, but in num-
bers rapidly increasing. A study of the causes of this
great world movement indicates that as yet we have
seen only beginnings. Those controlling causes are
three-fold. 1. The attracting influences of the United
States. 2. The expellent influences of the Old World.
3. Facilities for travel.
1. The attracting influences of the United States.
We have already seen that for every one inhabitant in
PERILS. IMMIGRATION. 31
1880 the land is capable of sustaining twenty. This
largeness of room and opportunity constitutes an
urgent invitation to the crowded peoples of Europe.
The prospect of proprietorship in the soil is a power-
ful attraction to the European peasant. In England
only one person in twenty is an owner of land ; in
Scotland, one in twenty-five ; in Ireland, one in seven-
ty-nine, and the great majority of land-holders in Great.
Britain own less than one acre each. More than
three-fifths of the United Kingdom are in the hands of
landlords, who own, each one, a thousand acres or
more.* One man rides in a straight line a hundred
miles on his own estate. Another owns a county ex-
tending across Scotland. A gentleman in Scotland.has
recently appropriated three hundred square miles of
land, extending from sea to sea, to a deer forest;
evicting many families to make room for the deer.
What must free land mean to such a people I
This, moreover, is the land of plenty. The following
table,| giving the average amount of food annually
consumed per inhabitant, shows how much better the
people of the United States are fed than any people of
Europe. Potatoes are estimated as grain, at the rate
of four bushels to one of wheat.
France
Grain,
bushels.
.... 24.02
Meat,
pounds.
81.88
84.51
57.10
119.10
54.05
25.04
Austria
Grain,
bushels.
.. 13 K7
Meat,
pounds.
56.03
51.10
20.80
Germany
23.71
Sweden and Norway 12.05
Italy o «9.
Belgium . . .
. 2284
Great Britain. . .
Russia
20.02
1T.9T
Europe
17 66
57.50
120.00
Spain...
.. 1T.68
United States...
.. 40.66
John Eae says that in Prussia, nearly one-half of the
population have to live on an annual income of $105 to
* Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. viii, p. 223.
tMulhall, Balance-Sheet of the World, 1870—1880, p. 39.
32 PEKILS. IMMIGRATION.
a family. Is it strange that they look longingly toward
the United States?
Immigration rises and falls with our prosperity. A
financial crisis here operates at once as a check, but
numbers increase again with the revival of business.
We shall have, as heretofore, an occasional crash, fol-
lowed by commercial depression, but it can hardly be
questioned that the development of our wonderful re-
sources will insure a high degree of material prosper-
ity for many years to come. And the brightening
blaze of our riches will attract increased immigration.
Equal rights also and free schools are operative. We
expend for education nearly six times as much, per
caput, as Europe. Parents know that their children
will have a better chance here, and come for their sake.
These facts are becoming more widely known in other
lands. Every foreigner who comes to us and wins suc-
cess, as most of them do under more favorable conditions,
becomes an advertiser of our land ; he strongly attracts
his relatives and friends, and very likely sends them
money for their passage. There is, therefore, a ten-
dency in immigration to increase in geometric ratio.
2. The expellent influences of Europe. Social or
political upheavals send new waves of immigration to
our shores. A glance at the situation shows that the
prospect for the next fifteen or twenty years is not pa-
cific. There is scarcely a first-class power in Europe
on whose political horizon there are not clouds bigger
than a man's hand.
France. The French are fickle. Since the Kevolu-
tion no regime has continued for twenty consecutive
years. The Kepublic is not yet fifteen years old, and
the question may fairly be raised whether it can stand
during the remaining five years or more which seem to
PERILS IMMIGRATION. 33
constitute the necessary political probation of a French
government. And if the Eepublic becomes perma-
nent, which now seems likely, it will operate as a con-
stant thorn in the sides of European monarchies, by
stirring up popular discontent.
Germany. The Eevolution of 1848 showed that the
German people, always lovers of freedom, had grasped
the principles of civil liberty ; but it also showed that
they had no practical knowledge of self-government.
During these thirty-seven years of increasing acquaint-
ance with our free institutions, their love of liberty
has been growing, but in the science of self-govern-
ment they have gained no experience. They are ruled
by an .Imperialist, and the German Chancellor is an
old man. There is no one in training to take Bismarck's
place, and in an important sense he can have no suc-
cessor ; for, in consolidating the empire, he has done
for Germany what, in the nature of the case, no other
man can do. Germany, therefore, has tolerated from
him what it will tolerate from no other man. " The
existing regime will, doubtless, last his time ; and it is
all the more likely to do so because everybody knows it
will not survive him" * Here, then, is a mighty peo-
ple, liberty loving, having no practical knowledge of
self-government, and he who rules them is an old man.
It looks as if the death of the Emperor and that of the
great Chancellor would be the signal for movements little
short of revolutionary. German emigration for 1882
was probably a quarter of a million. No wonder a
member of the Reichstag recently cried : " The Ger-
man people have now but one want — money enough to
get to America" ; and revolution in Germany means a
still greater exodus.
* The Nation for April 3d, 1804.
34 PERILS. IMMIGRATION.
Austria. Nihilism is active ; and a blow struck by
Nihilists last year so terrified the Government that
several provinces of the empire were placed under
military rule.
Italy. The Italians are worse fed than any other
people in Europe, save the Portuguese. The tax-col-
lector takes thirty-one per cent, of the people's earn-
ings ! According to a newly issued report upon the
crown-lands, upwards of 60,000 small proprietors have
been evicted because unable to pay the taxes. And
taxes are increasing. Notwithstanding the industrial
advance made by Italy from 1870 to 1880, the national
debt increased so much more rapidly that the nation
was $200,000,000 poorer in 1880 than ten years before.
Growing population and increasing taxation are al-
ready resulting in increased emigration. Italy, pressed
by want as severe as that of Ireland, may yet send a
like flood upon us.
Russia. The throne of the Czar stands on a volcano.
Alexander HI. seems fully committed to Imperialism,
and the Revolutionists are fully determined that the
people shall assist in the work of government. They
are wholly unrestrained by any religious scruples, and
do not hesitate to sacrifice themselves as well as their
enemies in the execution of their plans. " The Govern-
ment may continue to arrest and hang as long as it
likes, and may succeed in oppressing single revolution-
ary bodies. . . . But this will not change the state
of things. Revolutionists will be created by events ; by
the general discontent of the whole of the people ; by the
tendency of Russia toward new social forms. An entire
nation cannot be suppressed." * The utterly lawless
* Address of the " Executive Committee" to the Emperor, March 10th,
1881. Underground Russia, p. 267.
PERILS. — IMMIGRATION. 35
Warfare of the Nihilists naturally prevents the Czar
from making any concessions, while his arbitrary and
oppressive acts deepen popular discontent. Apparent-
ly, the repressive policy of the Government and popu-
lar agitation will serve each to intensify the other, un-
til there results a spasmodic convulsion throughout
Russia. And revolution in Russia means increased
emigration.
Great Britain. There is much popular discontent in
the United Kingdom, which will increase as England
loses her manufacturing supremacy. The late Mr.
Fawcett says* that local expenditure, if it increases
during the next quarter of a century as during the
last, will exceed that of the Imperial Government. In
Liverpool, for example, rates in 1841 amounted to less
than $2.00 per caput; they now amount to more than
$9.00 per caput. Local authorities now raise $200,-
000,000 a year for local purposes, and have an annual
deficit of $100,000,000, which is met by borrowing.
Local indebtedness has increased from $165,000,000 in
1867 to $600,000,000 in 1884. In 1880 the amount of
mortgage on landed property in Great Britain and Ire-
land was 58 per cent, of its full value. An English-
man, writing on the coming revolution in England,f
says you can scarcely find an educated Englishman,
who, if his sober judgment is appealed to, will not tell
you there is every likelihood that a complete social and
political reorganization will be attempted in those
Islands before the close of the nineteenth century.
Thomas Hughes says : " We may despise the present
advocates of social democracy, and make light of their
sayings and doings ; but there is no man who knows
* Manual of Political Economy.
t North American Review, October, 1888.
Ob PERILS. IMMIGRATION.
what is really going on in England but will admit that
there will have to be a serious reckoning with them at
no distant day." There is but one Gladstone, and he
is an old man. A writer in The British Quarterly*
says : " The retirement of Mr. Gladstone will be the
breaking up of the great deep in. English politics."
And social and political disturbances in Great Britain
mean increased emigration.
The progress of civilization is in the direction of
popular government All kings and their armies can-
not reverse the wheels of human progress. I think it
was Victor Hugo, who, with prophetic ear, heard a
European of some coming generation say: "Why, we
once had kings over here!" All the races of Europe
will one day enjoy the civil liberty which now seems
the peculiar birthright of the Anglo-Saxon. De
Tocqueville, whom Mr. Gladstone calls the Edmund
Burke of his generation, said he regarded the progress
of democratic principles in government as a providential
fact, the result of a divine decree. Matthew Arnold,
after his recent visit to America, speaking of the repub.
lican form of government, said: "It is the only event-
ual form of government for all people." Great revolu-
tions, then, are to take place in Europe, why not within
the next twenty-five years — some of them I And judg-
ing the future by the past, they will not be peaceful.
The giant is blind and grinding in his prison house,
howbeit his locks are growing, and we know not how
soon he may bow himself between the pillars of des-
potism.
In Continental Europe generally the best years of
all able-bodied men are demanded for military duty.
Germans must be seven years in the army, and give
• April, 1883.
PERILS. IMMIGBATION. 37
three of them to active service ; the French, nine
years in the army and five years in active service;
Austrians, ten years in the army and three in active
service ; Bussians, fifteen years in the army and six in
active service. When not in active service they are
under certain restrictions. In addition to all this,
when no longer members of the army, they are liable
to be called on to do military duty for a period varying
from two to five years. This robbery of a man's life
will continue to be a powerful stimulus to emigration •
and the "blood tax" which is required to support these
millions of men during unproductive years is steadily
increasing. While aggregate taxation decreased in the
United States from 1870 to 1880, 9.15 per cent., it
increased in Europe 28.01 per cent. The increase in
Great Britain was 20,17 per cent.; in France, 36.13
per cent.; in Kussia, 37.83 per cent.; in Sweden and
Norway, 50.10 per cent.; in Germany, 57.81 per cent.
And notwithstanding the burden of taxation is so
heavy and so rapidly increasing, the public debts of
Europe are making frightful growth. They have
nearly doubled in fifteen years, and in 1880 were
$22,265,000,000. The cost of government has risen
fifty per cent, in ten years. If existing tendencies
continue a quarter of a century more, they must pre-
cipitate a terrible financial catastrophe and perhaps a
great social crisis. Moreover, the pressure of a dense
population is increasing; 22,225,000 souls having been
added to the population of Europe during the ten
years preceding 1880. Europe could send us an un-
ceasing stream of 2,000,000 emigrants a year for a
century, and yet steadily increase her population.
We find, therefore, the prospect of political commo-
tions, the thumb-screw of taxation, given a frequent
€58 PERILS. — IMMIG&ATlOtf.
turn, and a dense population becoming more crowded,
all uniting their influence to swell European emigra-
gration for years to come.
3. Facilities of travel are increasing. From 1870 to
1880, 39,857 miles of railway were built in Europe,
only two thousand less than in the United States
during the same period. Thus, interior populations
are enabled more easily to reach the seaboard. Im-
provements in steam navigation are making the ocean
passage easier, quicker, and cheaper. In 1825 the
cheapest passage from Europe to America was about
$100. Now the rates from continental ports to New
York are from $25 to $30, and from London $20.
Steerage passage from Liverpool has been reduced to
$8. There are great multitudes in Europe who look
westward with longing eyes, but who do not come,
only because they cannot gather the passage money
and keep soul and body together. The reduction of
rates, even a few dollars, makes America possible to
added thousands.
The threefold influences, therefore, which regulate
immigration all co-operate to increase it and insure
that for years to come this great "gulf stream of hu-
manity " will flow on with a rising flood.
Furthermore, labor-saving machinery has entered
upon a campaign of world- wide conquest. This fact
will render still more operative each of the three classes
of influences enumerated above. Wherever man labors
labor-saving machinery is destined ultimately to go ;
and the people of the United States are to make most
of it for the world. We have mountains of iron and
inexhaustible measures' of coal, together with a genius
for invention. Already are we sending our machines
over the civilized world. A»d what does this mean?
PERILS. IMMIGRATION. 39
Sending a machine to Europe that does the work of a
hundred men, temporarily throws a hundred men out
of employment. That machine is useful because it
renders useless the skill or strength of a hundred men,
They cannot easily, in a crowded population, adjust
themselves to this new condition of things. The
making of this machinery in the United States in-
creases the demand for labor here, and its exportation
decreases the demand for labor in the Old World.
That means immigration to this country. We are to
send our labor-saving machinery around the globe,
and equivalents in bone and muscle are to be sent
back to us.
In view of the fact that Europe is able to send us
nearly nine times as many immigrants during the next
thirty years as during the thirty years past, without
any diminution of her population, and in view of all
the powerful influences co-operating to stimulate
the movement, is it not reasonable to conclude that we
have seen only the advance guard of the mighty army
which is moving upon us?
The Tenth Census gives our total foreign-born popu-
lation as 6,679,943 ; but we must not forget their children
of the first generation, who, as we shall see, present a
more serious problem than their parents, the immi-
grants. This class numbers 8,316,053, making a total
foreign population of nearly 15,000,000. In 1882 immi-
gration nearly touched 800,000. In view of the consid-
erations already given, this would not be deemed a high
average for the twenty years from 1880 to 1900. On
that estimate, allowing a death rate of fifteen to one
thousand (that of 1880) there will be in 1900 over
19,000,000 persons of foreign birth in the United
States. And if the proportion of foreign-born to
40 PERILS. IMMIGRATION.
native-born of foreign parentage continues the same,
our foreign population in 1900 will be 43,000,000. So
immense a foreign element must have a profound in-
fluence on our national life and character. Immi-
gration brings unquestioned benefits, but these do not
concern our argument. It complicates almost every
home missionary problem and furnishes the soil which
feeds the life of several of the most noxious growths
of our civilization. I have, therefore, dwelt at some
length upon its future that we may the more accurately
measure the dangers which threaten us.
Consider briefly the moral and political influence of
immigration. 1. Influence on morals. Let me hasten
to recognize the high worth of many of our citizens
of foreign birth, not a few of whom are eminent in the
pulpit and in all the learned professions. Many come
to us in full sympathy with our free institutions, and
desiring to aid us in promoting a Christian civilization.
But no one knows better than these same intelligent
and Christian foreigners that they do not represent
the mass of immigrants. The typical immigrant is
a European peasant, whose horizon has been narrow,
whose moral and religious training has been meager
or false, and whose ideas of life are low. Not a few be-
long to the pauper and criminal classes. "From a
late report of the Howard Society of London, it ap.
pears that 'seventy-four per cent, of the Irish dis-
charged convicts have found their way to the United
States.'"* Moreover, immigration is demoralizing.
No man is held upright simply by the strength of his
own roots ; his branches interlock with those of other
men, and thus society is formed, with all its laws and
customs and force of public opinion. Few men ap-
* Dorchester's Problem of Religious Progress, p. 423.
PERILS. IMMIGRATION. 41
preciate the extent to which they are indebted to their
surroundings for the strength with which they resist,
or do, or suffer. All this strength the emigrant leaves
behind him. He is isolated in a strange land, perhaps
doubly so by reason of a strange speech. He is trans-
planted from a forest to an open prairie, where, before
he is rooted, he is smitten with the blasts of temptation.
We have a good deal of piety in our churches that
will not bear transportation. It cannot endure even
the slight change of climate involved in spending a
few summer weeks at a watering place, and is com-
monly left at home. American travelers in Europe
often grant themselves license, on which, if at home?
they would frown. Yery many church-members, when
they go west, seem to think they have left their Chris-
tian obligations with their church-membership in the
East. And a considerable element of our American-
born population are apparently under the impression
that the Ten Commandments are not binding west of
the Missouri. Is it strange, then, that those who
come from other lands, whose old associations are all
broken and whose reputations are left behind, should
sink to a lower moral level ? Across the sea they suf-
fered many restraints which are here removed. Better
wages afford larger means of self-indulgence ; often the
back is not strong enough to bear prosperity, and
liberty too often lapses into license. Our population
of foreign extraction is sadly conspicuous in our
criminal records. This element constituted in 1870
twenty per cent, of the population of New England,
and furnished seventy-five per cent, of the crime.
That is, it was twelve times as much disposed to crime
as the native stock. The hoodlums and roughs of our
cities are, most of them, American-born of foreign
42 PERILS. IMMIGKATION.
parentage. Of the 680 discharged convicts who ap-
plied to the Prison Association of New York for aid,
during the year ending June 30th, 1882, 442 were
born in the United States, against 238 foreign-born;
while only 144 reported native parentage against 536
who reported foreign parentage.
The Ehode Island Work-house and House of Cor-
rection had received, to December 31st, 1882, 6,202
persons on commitment. Of this number, fifty- two
per cent, were native-born and seventy-six per cent,
were born of foreign parentage.* While in 1880 the
foreign-born were only thirteen per cent, of the entire
population, they furnish nineteen per cent, of the con-
victs in our penitentiaries, and forty-three per cent, of
the inmates of work-houses and houses of correc-
tion. And it must be borne in mind that a very large
proportion of the native-born prisoners were of for-
eign parentage.
Moreover, immigration not only furnishes the greater
portion of our criminals, it is also seriously affecting
the morals of the native population. It is disease and
not health which is contagious. Most foreigners bring
with them continental ideas of the Sabbath, and the
result is sadly manifest in all our cities, where it is be-
ing transformed from a holy day into a holiday. But
by far the most effective instrumentality for debauch-
ing popular morals is the liquor traffic, and this is
chiefly carried on by foreigners. In 1880, of the
" Traders and dealers in liquors and wines,"t (I sup-
pose this means wholesale dealers) sixty-three per cent'
were foreign-born, and of the brewers and maltsters
seventy-five per cent., while a large proportion of the
*For additional statistics oa this point$ see North American Review, Janu-
ary, 1884. t The Tenth Census.
. IMMIGRATION. 49
remainder were of foreign parentage. Of saloon-
keepers about sixty per cent, were foreign -born, while
many of the remaining forty per cent, of these cor-
rupters of youth, these western Arabs, whose hand is
against every man, were of foreign extraction.
2. "We can only glance at the political aspects of im-
migration. As we have already seen, it is immigration
which has fed fat the liquor power; and there is a
liquor vote. Immigration furnishes most of the vic-
tims of Mormonism ; and there is a Mormon vote. Im-
migration is the strength of the Catholic church ; and
there is a Catholic vote. Immigration is the mother
and nurse of American socialism ; and there is to be a
socialist vote. Immigration tends strongly to the
cities, and gives to them their political complexion.
And there is no more serious menace to our civiliza-
tion than our rabble-ruled cities. These several perils,
all of which are enhanced by immigration, will be con-
sidered in succeeding chapters.
Many American citizens are not Americanized. It
is as unfortunate as it is natural, that foreigners in this
country should cherish their own language and pecul-
iar customs, and carry their nationality, as a distinct
factor, into our politics. Immigration has created the
" German vote " and the " Irish vote," for which politi-
cians bid, and which have already been decisive of state
elections, and might easily determine national. A mass
of men but little acquainted with our institutions, who
will act in concert and who are controlled largely by
their appetites and prejudices, constitute a very para-
dise for demagogues.
We have seen that immigration is detrimental to
popular morals. It has a like influence upon popular
intelligence, for the percentage of illiteracy among
44 PERILS. IMMIGEATIOK.
the foreign-born population is thirty-eight per cent,
greater than among the native-born whites. Thus
immigration complicates our moral and political prob-
lems by swelling our dangerous classes. And as immi-
gration is to increase much more rapidly than the
population, we may infer that the dangerous classes
are to increase more rapidly than hitherto.* It goes
without saying, that there is a dead-line of ignorance
and vice in every republic, and when it is touched by
the average citizen, free institutions perish ; for intelli-
gence and virtue are as essential to the life of a re-
public as are brain and heart to the life of a man.
A severe strain upon a bridge may be borne with
safety if evenly distributed, which, if concentrated,
would ruin the whole structure. There is among
our population of alien birth an unhappy tendency
toward aggregation, which concentrates the strain
upon portions of our social and political fabric. Cer-
tain quarters of many of the cities are, in language,
customs and costumes, essentially foreign. Many
colonies have bought up lands and so set themselves
apart from Americanizing influences. In 1845, New
Glarus, in southern "Wisconsin, was settled by a colony
of 108 persons from one of the cantons of Switzer-
land. In 1880 they numbered 1,060 souls; and "No Yan-
kee lives within a ring of six miles round the first
built dug-out." This Helvetian settlement, founded
three years before Wisconsin became a state, has pre-
served its race, its language, its worship, and its cus-
toms in their integrity. Similar colonies are now be-
ing planted in the "West. In some cases 100,000 or
200,000 acres in one block, have been purchased by
* From 1870 to 1880 the population increased 30.06 per cent. During the
same period the number of criminals increased 82.33 per cent.
PEEILS. IMMIGBATION. 45
foreigners of one nationality and religion ; thus build-
ing up states within a state, having different lan-
guages, different antecedents, different religions, dif-
ferent ideas and habits, preparing mutual jealousies,
and perpetuating race antipathies. If our noble domain
were ten-fold larger than it is, it would still be too small
to embrace with safety to our national future, little Ger-
manies here, little Scandinavias there, and little Ire-
lands yonder. A strong centralized government, like
that of Rome under the Caesars, can control heterogene-
ous populations, but local self-government implies close
relations between man and man, a measure of sympa-
thy, and, to a certain extent, community of ideas.
Our safety demands the assimilation of these strange
populations, and the process of assimilation will be-
come slower and more difficult as the proportion of
foreigners increases.
When we consider the influence of immigration, it
is by no means reassuring to reflect that seventy-five
per cent, of it is pouring into the formative West.
We have seen that in 1900 our foreign population,
with their children of the first generation, will proba-
bly number not less than 43,000,000. If the move-
ment westward continues, as it probably will, until the
free farming lands are all taken, 25,000,000 of that
foreign element will be west of the Mississippi. And
this will be two-thirds of all the population of the
West, even if that population should increase 350 per
cent, between 1880 and 1900. Already is the propor-
tion of foreigners in the territories from two to three
times greater than in the states east of the Mississippi.
We may well ask — and with special reference to the
West — whether this in-sweeping immigration is to for-
eignize us, or we are to Americanize it. Mr.
46 PERILS. BOMANISM.
Beecher hopefully says, when the lion eats an ox
the ox becomes lion, not the lion ox. The illus-
tration would be very neat if it only illustrated. The
lion happily has an instinct controlled by an unfailing
law which determines what, and when, and how much he
shall eat. If that instinct should fail, and he should
some day eat a badly diseased ox, or should very much
over-eat, we might have on our hands a very sick lion.
I can even conceive that under such conditions the ig-
noble ox might slay the king of beasts. Foreigners
are not coming to the United States in answer to any
appetite of ours, controlled by an unfailing moral or
political instinct. They naturally consult their own
interests in coming, not ours. The lion, without being
consulted as to time, quantity or quality, is having
the food thrust down his throat, and his only alterna-
tive is, digest or die.
CHAPTER V.
PERILS. ROMANISM.
THE perils which threaten the nation and peculiarly
menace the "West demand, for their adequate presenta-
tation, much more space than the narrow limits of this
work allow. We can touch only salient points.
ROMANISM.
There are many who are disposed to attribute any
fear of Boman Catholicism in the United States to
PEEILS. — ROMANISM. 47
bigotry or childishness. Such see nothing in the char-
acter and attitude of Komanism that is hostile to our
free institutions, or find nothing portentous in its
growth. Let us, then, first compare some of the funda-
mental principles of our government with those of
the Catholic church.
The Constitution of the United States guarantees
liberty of conscience. Nothing is dearer or more fun-
damental. Pope Pius IX. in his Encyclical Letter of
Aug. 15th, 1854, said: "The absurd and erroneous
doctrines or ravings in defense of liberty of conscience
are a most pestilential error — a pest, of all others,
most to be dreaded in a state." The same Pope, in his
Encyclical Letter of Dec. 8th, 1864, anathematized
"Those who assert the liberty of conscience and of
religious worship," also " All such as maintain that the
church may not employ force."
The pacific tone of Kome in the "United States does
not imply a change of heart. She is tolerant where
she is helpless. Says Bishop O'Connor : " Eeligious
liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be
carried into effect without peril to the Catholic World."
The Catholic Review says : " Protestantism, of every
form, has not, and never can have, any right where
Catholicity is triumphant." (A strange kind of catho-
licity /) The Archbishop of St. Louis once said :
" Heresy and unbelief are crimes ; and in Christian
countries, as in Italy and Spain, for instance, where
all the people are Catholics, and where the Catholic re-
ligion is an essential part of the law of the land, they
are punished as other crimes." In the same strain
The Boston Pilot : " No good government can exist
without religion, and there can be no religion without
an Inquisition, which is wisely designed for the pro-
48 PERILS. ROMANISM.
motion and protection of the true faith.'7 The follow-
ing is from The Rambler, a Catholic paper of London :
" Religious liberty, in the sense of a liberty possessed
by every man to choose his religion, is one of the most
wicked delusions ever foisted upon this age by the
father of all deceit. The very name of liberty — except
in the sense of a permission to do certain definite acts
— ought to be banished from the domain of religion.
It is neither more nor less than falsehood. No man
has a right to choose his religion. None but an atheist
can uphold the principles of religious liberty. Shall
I foster that damnable doctrine, that Socianism, and
Calvinism, and Anglicanism, and Judaism, are not
every one of them mortal sins, like murder and adul-
tery ? Shall I hold out hopes to my erring Protestant
brother, that I will not meddle with his creed if he
will not meddle with mine ? Shall I tempt him to for-
get that he has no more right to his religious views than
he has to my purse, to my house, or to my life blood?
No, Catholicism is the most intolerant of creeds. It
is intolerance itself; for it is the truth itself." The
St. Louis Shepherd of the Valley says : " The Catho-
lic who says the church is not intolerant belies the
Sacred Spouse of Christ." Every cardinal, archbishop
and bishop in the Catholic church takes an oath of al-
legiance to the Pope, in which occur the following
words : " Heretics, schismatics, and rebels to our said
Lord (the Pope), or his aforesaid successors, I will to
my utmost persecute and oppose."*
Another foundation stone of our free institutions is
free speech and a free press. But in his Encyclical Let-
ter of Dec. 8th, 1864, Pius IX. anathematized "All wno
maintain the liberty of the press," and "all advocates
*R. W. Thompson's The Papacy and the Civil Power, p. 717.
PERILS. ROMANISM. 49
of the liberty of speech." He calls it the "liberty of
perdition."
Again, free schools are one of the corner-stones of
our Government. Catholic opposition to our public-
school system is general and well known. Says a
Papal Encyclical : " XLY. — The Komish church has
a right to interfere in the discipline of the public
schools, and in the arrangement of the studies of the
public schools, and in the choice of the teachers for
these schools."
"XL VII. — Public schools open to all children for
the education of the young should be under the con-
trol of the Romish church, and should not be subject
to the civil power, nor made to conform to the opinions
of the age."
Said the Vicar-General of Boston, in a public lecture,
March 12th, 1879: "The attitude of the Catholic
church toward the public schools of this country, as
far as we can determine from papal documents, the
decrees of the Council of Baltimore, and the pastor-
als of the several bishops, is one of non-approval
of the system itself, of censure of the manner of con-
ducting them that prevails in most places, and of sol-
emn admonition to pastors and parents to guard
against the dangers to faith and morals arising from
frequenting them."* The attitude of the Catholic
church toward our schools is not simply one of "non-
approval," but of decided hostility. Says the Cincin-
nati Catholic Telegraph : " It will be a glorious day
for the Catholics in this country when, under the blows
*In St. Mary's Parish, Cambridgeport, Mass., for attending a public school
after Father Scully had commanded attendance at a parochial school
a boy was stretched upon a table, and his back lashed till for two weeks
the child could not lie down on account of his wounds. Fate of Repub-
lics, p. 286.
50 PERILS. ROMANISM.
of justice and morality, our school system will be shiv-
ered to pieces." I do not forget that in the dark ages
it was the Church of Home which prevented the lamp
of learning from going out utterly, or that the Jesuits,
at a later period, were the most famous teachers in
Europe. But Rome has never favored the education of
the massesc In her relations to them she has adhered
to her own proverb, " Ignorance is the mother of de-
votion." In Protestant countries like Germany and
the United States, where there is a strong sentiment
in favor of popular education, she has been compelled
in self-defense to open schools of her own. But her
real attitude toward the education of the masses
should be inferred from her course in those countries
where she has, or has had, undisputed sway ; and there
she has kept the people in besotted ignorance. In-
stance her own Italy, where seventy -three per cent, of
the population are illiterate, or Spain, where we find
eighty per cent., or Mexico, where ninety-three per cent,
belong to this class.
Again, our Constitution requires obedience to the laws
of the United States and loyalty to the Government.
The Pope also demands of every subject obedience and
loyalty to himself. In an Encyclical he says :
" XIX. — The Romish church has a right to exercise
its authority without any limits set to it by the civil
power."
"XXVII. — The Pope and the priests ought to have
dominion over the temporal affairs."
"XXX. — The Romish church and her ecclesiastics
have a right to immunity from civil law."
" XLII. — In case of conflict between the ecclesiasti-
cal and civil powers, the ecclesiastical powers ought to
prevail."
PERILS. ROMANISM. 51
In the oath of allegiance, already referred to, taken
by all whom the Pope elevates to positions of official
dignity the candidate swears he will "humbly receive
and diligently execute the apostolic command," and
that he will " endeavor to preserve, defend, increase,
and advance, the authority of the Pope." "The creed of
Pope Pius IY. is put for subscription before every priest
and every bishop. Every convert to Eomanism must
signify his assent to it. One of its sections reads, * I
do give allegiance to the bishop of Eome ' ; and the
sense is, 'I do give political as well as religious alle-
giance.'"* The two greatest living statesmen hold
that the allegiance demanded by the Pope is inconsist-
ent with good citizenship. Mr. Gladstone says:
"... the Pope demands for himself the right to
determine the province of his own rights, and has so
defined it in formal documents as to warrant any and
every invasion of the civil sphere ; and that this new
version of the principles of the Papal church inexora-
bly binds its members to the admission of these exor-
bitant claims, without any refuge or reservation on be-
half of their duty to the Crown."f He also says : "Eome
requires a convert, who joins her, to forfeit his moral
and mental freedom, and to place his loyalty and civil
duty at the mercy of another." Prince Bismarck, in a
speech delivered April 16th, 1875, said : " . . this
Pope, this foreigner, this Italian, is more powerful in
this country than any one person, not excepting even
the King. And now please to consider what this for-
eigner has announced as the programme by which he
rules in Prussia as elsewhere. He begins by arrogating
to himself the right to define how far his authority ex-
tends. And this Pope, who would use fire and sword
"Joseph Cook, Marriage, p. 12. tThe Vatican Pecrees, p. 45,
52 PEBILS. ROMANISM.
against us if he had the power to do so, who would
confiscate our property and not spare our lives, expects
us to allow him full, uncontrolled sway in our midst."
Hon. R. "W. Thompson, late Secretary of the Navy,
says: "He who accepts Papal infallibility, and with
it the ultramontane interpretation of the power of the
Pope over the world, and thinks that by offending the
Pope he offends God, will obey, passively, unresisting-
ly, uninquiringly. Such a man, whether priest or
layman, high or low, is necessarily inimical to the gov-
ernment and political institutions of the United States ;
with him, his oath of allegiance is worth no more than
the paper upon which it is written."
At a meeting in Glasgow, Oct. 5th, 1875, Dr. J. P.
Thompson introduced the following resolution: " That,
in the judgment of this Meeting, the Papacy, as ex-
emplified in the Vatican Decrees, is the most perfected
of all existing forms of tyranny, inasmuch as it aims at
placing in the hands of a single irresponsible man the
conscience of individuals, the civil government of
nations, and the supreme control of the spiritual affairs
and temporal interests of the world." To show that
this construction of the Pope's demands and assump-
tions is not unfair, permit me to quote some high Cath-
olic authorities. Bishop Gilmour in his Lenten Letter,
March, 1873, said: "Nationalities must be subordi-
nate to religion, and we must learn that we are Catho-
lics first and citizens next. God is above man, and the
church above the state." Cardinal McCloskey says:
•''They (the Catholics of the United States) are as
strongly devoted to the sustenance and maintenance
of the temporal power of the Holy Father as Catholics
in any part of the world ; and if it should be necessary
to prove it by acts, they are ready to do so." In a ser-
PEBILS. ROMANISM. 53
mon, preached when he was Archbishop, Cardinal
Manning put the following sentences in the mouth of
the Pope : "I acknowledge no civil power ; I am the
subject of no prince ; and I claim more than this. I
claim to be the supreme judge and director of the con-
sciences of men; of the peasant that tills the fields,
and of the prince that sits upon the throne ; of the
household that lives in the shade of privacy, and the
legislator that makes laws for kingdoms ; I am the
sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong."
He also says : " Moreover, we declare, affirm, define,
and pronounce it to be necessary to salvation for every
human creature to be subject to the Eoman Pontiff."
Of the utter degradation of reason, and the stifling of
conscience the teaching of Cardinal Bellarmine affords
a good example : " If the Pope should err by enjoin-
ing vices or forbidding virtues, the Church would be
obliged to believe vices to be good and virtues bad, un-
less it would sin against conscience."*
Manifestly there is an irreconcilable difference be-
tween papal principles and the fundamental principles
of our free institutions. Popular government is self-
government. A nation is capable of self-government
only so far as the individuals who compose it are
capable of self-government. To place one's con-
science, therefore, in the keeping of another, and to
disavow all personal responsibility in obeying the
dictation of another, is as far as possible from self-
control, and, therefore, wholly inconsistent with repub-
lican institutions, and, if common, dangerous to their
stability. It is the theory of absolutism in the state,
that man exists for the state. It is the theory of
*Dr. Littledale'a " Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome,"
page 129.
34 PERILS. ROMANISM.
absolutism in the church, that man exists for the
church. But in republican and Protestant America
it is believed that church and state exist for man
and are to be administered by him. Our fundamental
ideas of society, therefore, are as radically opposed to
Vaticanism as to Imperialism. And it is as inconsistent
with our liberties for American citizens to yield allegi-
ance to the Pope as to the Czar.
Second. Our brief examination of the underlying
principles of Romanism almost renders superfluous any
consideration of its attitude toward our free institu-
tions. If alive, it must necessarily be aggressive ; and
it is alive. Cardinal Manning advises Romanists
throughout the world to enter politics as Romanists,
and to do this especially in England and the United
States. In our large cities the priests are already in
politics, and to some purpose. The authorities of New
York city, during the eleven years preceding 1880 gave
to the Roman church real estate valued at $3,500,000,
and money to the amount of $5,827,471 ; this in ex-
change for Romish votes, and every cent of it paid in
violation of law. This suggests, in passing, that the
Catholic church is storing up power by amassing im-
mense wealth. Father Hecker says that the aggregate
wealth of the Roman church in the United States in-
creased from nine millions in 1850 to twenty-six mil-
lions in 1860, and to sixty millions in 1870.
Here are some predictions : " There is ere long to
be a State religion in this country, and that State re-
ligion is to be Roman Catholic." — Father Hecker,
1870. " The man to-day is living who will see a ma-
jority of the people of the American continent Roman
Catholics." — Boston Pilot. "Effectual plans are in
operation to give us the complete victory over Protest-
PERILS, ROMANISM. 55
antism." — A former Bishop of Cincinnati. "Within
thirty years, the Protestant heresy will come to an
end." — Bishop of Charleston. These utterances are
quite worthless as prophecies, but are valuable as con-
fessions. They indicate unmistakably the attitude of
Romanism in the United States. There surely can be
no question on that point since the open declaration of
the Pope that "America is the hope of Rome." Half
a century ago, Gregory XVI., who held that "the sal-
vation of the church would come from America," said:
" Out of the Roman States there is no country where I
am Pope, except the United States."
Third. Many who are well acquainted with the true
character of Romanism are indifferent to it, because not
aware of the rapid growth of the Catholic church in
the United States. They tell us, and truly, that Rome
loses great numbers of adherents here through the in-
fluence of our free schools, free institutions, and the
strong pervasive spirit of independence which is so
hostile to priestly authority. But let us not congratu-
late ourselves too soon. The losses of Romanism in
the United States are not, to any extent, the gains of
Protestantism. When a man, born in the Catholic
church, loses confidence in the only faith of which he
has any knowledge, he does not examine Protestantism,
but sinks into skepticism. Romanism is chiefly re-
sponsible for German and French infidelity. For,
when a mind to which thought and free inquiry have
been forbidden as a crime attains its intellectual ma-
jority, the largeness of liberty is not enough; it reacts
into license and excess. Skepticism and infidelity are
the legitimate children of unreasoning and superstitious
credulity, and the grandchildren of Rome. Apostate
Catholics are swelling our most dangerous classes.
56 PERILS. ROMANISM.
Unaccustomed to think for themselves, and having
thrown off authority, they become the easy victims of
socialists or nihilists, or any other wild and dangerous
propagandists.
But, notwithstanding the great losses thus sustained
by Romanism in the United States, it is growing with
great rapidity. In 1800 the Catholic population was
100,000. In 1884, according to official statistics, it was
6,628,176. At the beginning of the century there was
one Catholic to every 53 of the whole population ; i&
1850, one to 14.3 ; in 1870, one to 8.3 ; in 1880, one to
7.7. Thus it appears that, wonderful as the growth cf
our population has been since 1800, the growth of the
Catholic church has been much more rapid. Dr. Dor-
chester, in his valuable and inspiring work, Problem oj
Religious Progress, easily shows that the actual gains
of Protestantism in the United States, during the cen^
tury, have been much larger than those of Catholicism,
and seems disposed, in consequence, to dismiss all
anxiety as to the issue of the race between them. But
it is the relative rather than the actual gains which are
prophetic. From 1800 to 1880 the population in-
creased nine-fold, the membership of all evangelical
churches twenty-seven-fold, and the Catholic popula-
tion sixty-three-fold. Not much importance, however,
should be attached to this comparison, as the Catholic
population was insignificant in 1800, and a small ad-
dition sufficed to increase it several-fold. But in 1850
the Catholic church was nearly one-half as large as all
evangelical Protestant churches. Let us, then, look
at their relative progress since that time. From 1850
to 1880 the population increased 116 per cent., the
communicants of evangelical churches 185 per cent.,
and the Catholic population 294 per cent. From 1850
PERILS. BOMANISM. 57
to 1880 the number of evangelical churches increased
125 per cent.; during the same period Catholic churches
increased 447 per cent. From 1870 to 1880 the
churches of all evangelical denominations increased
49 per cent., while Catholic churches multiplied 74 per
cent. From 1870 to 1880 the ministers of evangelical
churches increased in number 46 per cent., Catholic
priests 61 per cent. From 1850 to 1870, ministers in-
creased 86 per cent., priests 204 per cent. From 1850
to 1880, ministers increased 173 per cent., and priests
391 per cent. In 1850 the Catholic population was
equal to 45 per cent, of the evangelical church-member*
ship, in 1870 it was equal to 68 per cent., and in 1880
it equaled 63 per cent., a slight relative loss. During
the ten years Romanism gained largely on Protestant-
ism in the number of churches and ministers ; but lost
slightly in the* number of communicants ; a loss due to
the- falling off of immigration during the last half of
the period. Examination shows that the growth of
the Catholic church corresponds closely with that of
the foreign population, but is somewhat more rapid.
Since 1880 there has been a marked increase in the
Catholic population. The average annual growth of
the latter from 1870 to 1880 was 176,733, while from
1883 to 1884 it was 231,322.
It has been shown that during the remainder of the
century or longer, the rate of immigration will un-
doubtedly increase. The ratio of growth of the Cath-
olic church will, therefore, increase, and it will con-
tinue to make a rapid gain on the Protestant denomina-
tions. But this is not all. Rome, with characteristic
foresight, is concentrating her strength in the western
territories. As the West is to dominate the nation, she
intends to dominate the West. In the United States a
58 PERILS. — ROMANISM.
little less than one-eighth of the population is Catho-
lic ; in the territories taken together, more than one-
third. In the whole country there are not quite two-
thirds as many Catholics as there are members of
evangelical churches. Not including Arizona and New
Mexico, which have a large native Catholic population,
the six remaining territories had in 1880 four times as
many Romanists as there were members in all Protes-
tant denominations collectively ; and, including Arizona
and New Mexico, Rome had eighteen times as many as
all Protestant bodies. We are told that the native
Catholics of Arizona and New Mexico are not as ener-
getic as the Protestants who are pushing into those
territories. True, but they are energetic enough to be
counted. The most wretched members of society count
as much at the polls as the best, and too often much
more. It is poor consolation which is drawn from the
ignorance of any portion of our population. Those de-
graded peoples are clay in the hands of the Jesuits.
When the Jesuits were driven out of Berlin, they de-
clared that they would plant themselves in the western
territories of America. And they are there to-day with
empires in their brains. Expelled for their intrigues
even from Catholic countries, Spain, Portugal, Italy,
Mexico, Brazil, and other states, they are free to colon-
ize in the great West, and are there gathering and
plotting to Romanize and control our western empire.
Rev. J. H. Warren, D.D., writes from California, in
which state there are four times as many Romanists as
Protestant church-members: "The Roman Catholic
power is fast becoming an overwhelming evil. Their
schools are everywhere, and number probably 200 in the
state. Their new college of St. Ignatius is, we are
told, the largest, finest, best equipped of its kind in the
PEKILS. MOBMONISM. 59
United States. They blow no trumpets, are sparing
with statistics, but are at work night and day to break
down the institutions of the country, beginning with the
public schools. As surely as ws live, so surely will tho
conflict come, and it will be a hard one."*
Lafayette, himself a Romanist, was not wholly bliftd
when he said : "If the liberties of the American peo-
ple are ever destroyed, they will fall by the
the Romish clergy."
CHAPTER YL
PERILS. MOBMONISM.
THE people of the United States are more sensible
of the disgrace of Mormonism than of its danger.
The civilized world wonders that such a hideous cari-
cature of the Christian religion should have appeared
in this most enlightened land ; that such an anachro-
nism should have been produced by the most progress-
ive civilization; that the people who most honor
womankind should be the ones to inflict on her this
deep humiliation and outrageous wrong. Polygamy,
as the most striking feature of the Mormon monster,
attracts the public eye. It is this which at the same
time arouses interest and indignation; and it is be-
cause of this that Europe points at us the finger of
shame. Polygamy is the issue between the Mormons
* Sermon of Rev. E. P. Goodwin, D.D., before the American Home Mis-
sionary Society, May 9tn, 1880,
60 PERILS. MORMONISM.
and the United States government. It is this which
prevents Utah's being admitted as a state. It is this
against which congress has legislated. And yet,
polygamy is not an essential part of Mormonism; it
was an after-thought ; not a root, but a graft. There
is a large and growing sect of the Mormons,* not lo-
cated in Utah, which would excommunicate a member
for practicing it. Nor is polygamy a very large part
of Mormonism. Not more than one man in ten prac-
tices it. Moreover, it can never become general among
the " saints," for nature has legislated on that point,
and her laws admit of no evasions. In Utah, as else-
where, there are more males born than females ; and,
in the membership of the Mormon church, there are
some 6,000 more men than women.
Polygamy might be utterly destroyed, without seri-
ously weakening Mormonism. It serves to strengthen
the system somewhat by thoroughly entangling its vic-
tim in the Mormon net ; for a polygamist is not apt to
apostatize. He has multiplied his "hostages to for-
tune"; he cannot abandon helpless wives and children
as easily as he might turn away from pernicious doc-
trines. Moreover, he has arrayed himself against the
government with law-breakers. Franklin's saying to
the signers of the Declaration of Independence is ap-
propriately put into the mouths of this class: "If we
don't hang together, we shall all hang separately."
Still, it may be questioned whether polygamy adds
more of strength or weakness; for its evil results
doubtless often lead the children of such marriages, and
many others, to question the faith, and finally abandon
it.
* The Josephites, scattered through the United States, are law-abiding
citizens, deluded, but inoffensive.
PERILS. — MORMONISM. 61
What, then, is the real strength of Mormonism ? It
is ecclesiastical despotism which holds it together,
unifies it, and makes it strong. The Mormon church
is probably the most complete organization in the
world. To look after a Mormon population of 138S000,
there are 28,838 officials, or more than one to every five
persons. And, so highly centralized is the power, that
all of these threads of authority are gathered into one
hand, that of President Taylor. The priesthood, of
which he is the head, claim the right to control in all
things religious, social, industrial and political. Brig-
ham Young asserted his right to manage in every par-
ticular, " from the setting up of a stocking to the rib-
bons on a woman's bonnet." Here is a claim to abso-
lute and universal rule, which is cheerfully conceded by
every orthodox " saint." Mormonism, therefore, is not
simply a church, but a state ; an " imperium in im-
perio" ruled by a man who is prophet, priest, king and
pope, all in one — a pope, too, who is not one whit less
infallible than he who wears the tiara. And, as one
would naturally expect of an American pope, and
especially of an enterprising western pope, he out-
popes the Eoman by holding familiar conversation
with the Almighty, and getting, to order, new revela-
tions direct from heaven; and, another advantage
which is more material, he keeps a firm hold of his
temporal power. Indeed, it looks as if the spiritual
were being subordinated to the temporal. Rev. W.
M. Barrows, D.D., after a residence at the Mormon
capital of nearly eight years, said ':* " There is no
doubt that it is becoming less and less a religious
power, and more and more a political power. The
* Address at the Home Missionary Anniversary, in Chicago, June 8ta, 1881.
. — MORMONISM.
first Mormon preachers were ignorant fanatics; but
most of them were honest, and their woids carried a
weight that sincerity always carries, even in a bad
cause. The preachers now have the ravings of the
Sibyl, but lack the inspiration. Their talk sounds
hollow ; the ring of sincerity is gone. But their eyes
are dazzled now with the vision of an earthly empire.
They have gone back to the old Jewish idea of a tem-
poral kingdom, and they are endeavoring to set up
such a kingdom in the valleys of Utah and Idaho and
Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico, Ari-
zona and Nevada."
If there be any doubt as to the designs of the Mor-
mons, let the testimony of Bishop Lunt be conclusive
on that point. He said, a few years ago: "Like a
grain of mustard- seed was the truth planted in Zion;
and it is destined to spread through all the world.
Our church has been organized only fifty years, and yet
behold its wealth and power. This is our year of jubi-
lee. We look forward with perfect confidence to the
day when we will hold the reins of the United States
government. That is our present temporal aim ; after
that, we expect to control the continent." When told
that such a scheme seemed rather visionary, in view of
the fact that Utah cannot gain recognition as a state,
the Bishop replied: "Do not be deceived; we are
looking after that. We do not care for these terri-
torial officials sent out to govern us. They are no-
bodies here. We do not recognize them, neither do
we fear any practical interference by congress. We
intend to have Utah recognized as a state. To-day
we hold the balance of political power in Idaho, we
rule Utah absolutely, and in a very short time we will
hold the balance of power in Arizona and Wyoming.
PERILS.— MORMONISM. 63
A few months ago, President Snow, of St. George, set
out with a band of priests, for an extensive tour
through Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana,
Idaho and Arizona, to proselyte. We also expect to
send missionaries to some parts of Nevada, and we de-
sign to plant colonies in Washington Territory.
"In the past six months we have sent more than
3,000 of our people down through the Sevier valley to
settle in Arizona, and the movement still progresses.
All this will build up for us a political power, which
will, in time, compel the homage of the demagogues of
the country. Our vote is solid, and will remain so.
It will be thrown where the most good will be accom-
plished for the church. Then, in some great political
crisis, the two present political parties will bid for our
support. Utah will then be admitted as a polygamous
state, and the other territories we have peacefully
subjugated will be admitted also. We will then hold
the balance of power, and will dictate to the country.
In time, our principles, which are of sacred origin, will
spread throughout the United States. We possess the
ability to turn the political scale in any particular com-
munity we desire. Our people are obedient. When
they are called by the church, they promptly obey.
They sell their houses, lands and stock, and remove to
any part of the country the church may direct them to.
You can imagine the results which wisdom may bring
about, with the assistance of a church organization
like ours."
The astute bishop does not over-estimate the effect-
iveness of the Mormon church as a colonizer. An
order is issued by the authorities that a certain dis-
trict shall furnish so many hundred emigrants for Ari-
zona or Idaho. The families <,re drafted, so many
64 PEBILS. MORMONISM.
from a ward ; and each ward or district equips its own
quota with wagons, animals, provisions, implements,
seed and the like. Thus the Mormon president can
mass voters here or there about as easily as a general
can move his troops.
By means of this systematic colonization the Mor-
mons have gained possession of vast tracts of land,
Jtnd now " hold almost all the soil fit for agriculture
from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevada, or an
area not less than 500 miles by 700, making 350,000
square miles'';* that is, one-sixth of the entire acreage
between the Mississippi and Alaska. In this extended
region it is designed to plant a Mormon population
sufficiently numerous to control it. With this in view,
the church sends out from 200 to 400 missionaries a
year, most of whom labor in Europe. They generally
return after two years of service at their own charges.
If any of the converts are too poor to reach " Zion"
unaided, they are assisted by loans from the " Perpet-
ual Emigration Fund," founded in 1849. The number
of proselytes from the Old "World is steadily increas-
ing. During the first ten years after the founding of
the emigration fund the annual average was 750, for
the next decade it was 2,000, for the last five years the
number has ranged from 2,500 to 3,000. The losses
by apostasy f are many, but are more than covered by
* Rev. D. L. Leonard^ Home Missionary Superintendent for "Utah, Idaho,
Montana and West Wyoming.
t We may learn ere long that there is as little occasion for congratulation
over Mormon apostasy as over Eoman Catholic. The Mormon, in his mental
make-up, is a distinct type. There are men in every community who were
born for the Mormon church. Let ono of the missionaries of the " Saints"
appear, and he attracts this class as naturally as a magnet attracts iron fil-
ings in a handful of sand. They are waiting to hear and believe some new
thing ; they are driven about by every wind of doctrine ; they have probably
been members of several different religious denominations ; tk«y are credu-
PEEILS. — -MORMONISM. 65
the number of converts, while the natural increase of
the church by the growth of the family is exceedingly
large. Furthermore, to the growing power of multi-
plying numbers is added that of rapidly increasing
wealth. The Mormons are industrious — a lazy man
cannot enter their heaven — and the tithing of the in-
crease adds constantly to the vast sums already
gathered in the grasping hands of the hierarchy. The
Mormon delegate to Congress, who carries a hundred
thousand votes in one hand, and millions of corruption
money in the other, will prove a dangerous man in
Washington, unless politicians grow strangely virtu-
ous, and there are fewer itching palms twenty years
hence.
Bishop Lunt is not altogether alone in the anticipa-
tions quoted above. Hon. Schuyler Coif ax says:*
" With Utah overwhelmingly dominated by the Mor-
mon Theocracy of their established church, and wield-
ing, also, as they already claim, the balance of power
in the adjoining territories, this Turkish barbarism
may control the half-dozen new states of our Interior,
and, by the power of their Senators and Representa-
tives, in both branches of our Congress, may even dic-
tate to the nation itself." Those best acquainted with
Mormonism seem most sensible of the danger which it
threatens. The pastors of churches and principals of
schools in Salt Lake City, in an address to American
citizens, say :f "We recognize the fact that the so-called
lous and superstitious, and are easily led in the direction of their inclina-
tions ; they love reasoning, but hate reason ; they are capable of a blind de-
votion, and strongly incline to fanaticism. In a word, they are cranky. A
Church largely made up of such material will, of course, multiply apostates.
The Mormon church is a machine which manufactures tinder for socialistic
fire.
* The Advance, Aug. 24th, 1882.
t Hand-book of Mormonism, p. 94.
66 PERILS. MORMONISM.
Mormon Church, in its exercise of political power, is
antagonistical to American institutions, and that there
is an irrepressible conflict between Utah Mormonism and
American republicanism; so much so that they can
never abide together in harmony. We also believe
that the growth of this anti-republican power is such
that, if not checked speedily, it will cause serious
trouble in the near future. "We fear that the nature
and extent of this danger are not fully comprehended
by the nation at large."
If the Mormon power had its seat in an established
commonwealth like Ohio, such an ignorant and fanat-
ical population, rapidly increasing, and under the abso-
lute control of unscrupulous leaders, who openly
avowed their hostility to the state, and lived in con-
temptuous violation of its laws, would be a disturbing
element which would certainly endanger the peace of
society. Indeed, the Mormons, when much less pow-
erful than they are to-day, could not be tolerated in
Missouri or Illinois. And Mormonism is ten-fold more
dangerous in the new West, where its power is greater,
because the " Gentile" population is less ; where it has
abundant room to expand ; where, in a new and unor-
ganized society, its complete organization is the more
easily master of the situation ; and where state consti-
tutions and laws, yet unformed, and the institutions of
society, yet plastic, are subject to its molding influ-
ence.
And what are we going to do about it ? Thus far,
legislation against polygamy has accomplished but lit-
tie. Each new law has been "answered" by an in-
creased number of polygamous marriages. Happily
there have been some convictions of late; but it is
always difficult to convict criminals by a jury where
PEKILS. — MORMOKtSM. 67
public sentiment is against the law which has been vio-
lated. Nevertheless, something can be done by legis-
lation. Where the dignity of the law is held in con-
tempt there must be found some way to make the arm
of the law felt.* But we have seen that, if polygamy
were entirely suppressed, it might not seriously cripple
the power of Mormonism. Any blow to be effective
must be aimed at the priestly despotism. The power
of the hierarchy is enhanced by the great wealth of
the church. The sequestration of that wealth, there-
fore, would, in some measure, disable the hierarchy.
"Senator Hoar proposes that a commission be ap-
pointed to take over the property of the organization
called the Mormon church, and to apply to the pur-
poses of supporting common schools in this polyg-
amous territory the funds which have been collected
contrary to law, and in excess of authority, in the
Mormon Endowment Houses, "f The proposition was
approved by the judiciary committee of the Senate.
But the power of the priesthood existed before that
wealth was accumulated. It was their power which
made that accumulation possible. The proposed blow,
therefore, though it might be helpful, would not go to
the root of the matter. Belief in the divine inspira-
tion, and hence infallibility of the priesthood, is the se-
cret power of the system, and a veritable Pandora's
box out of which may spring any possible delusion or
excess. Said Heber C. Kimball, formerly one of the
Apostles : " The word of our Leader and Prophet is the
word of God to this people. "We cannot see God. We
cannot hold converse with him. But he has given us a
* For some valuable suggestions on this point see " How Shall the Mor-
mon Question be Settled?" From an address by Dr. Barrows at the Home
Missionary Anniversary, in Chicago, June 8th, 1881.
t Josepn Cook, Lecture, " What Shall be Done with Mormonism ?"
68 PERILS. MORMOWISM.
man that we can talk to and thereby know his will,
just as well as if God himself were present with us."
Special "revelations" to the head of the church, even
if directly contrary to the Scriptures, or the Book of
Mormon, are absolutely binding. The latter says:*
"Wherefore I, the Lord God, will not suffer that this
people do like unto them of old ; wherefore, my breth-
ren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord.
For there shall not any man among you have save it
be one wife ; and concubines he shall have none." Yet
a special " revelation'" sufficed to establish polygamy.
Mormon despotism, then, has its roots in the supersti-
tion of the people ; and this Congress cannot legislate
away. The people must be elevated and enlightened
through the instrumentality of the Christian school
and the preaching of the gospel. This work is being
effectively done by the New West Education Commis-
sion and the American Home Missionary Society. It
is chiefly to such agencies that we must look to break
the Mormon power.
CHAPTER VII.
PERILS. INTEMPEEANCE.
To touch so vast a subject, and only touch it, is diffi-
cult. Let us consider briefly but two points — the dan-
ger of intemperance as enhanced by the progress of
civilization, and the Liquor Power. I. The progress
* Book of Jacob, Chap. II, verse 6.
PEKILS. INTEMPERANCE. 69
of civilization brings men into closer contact. The
three great civilizing instrumentalities of the age,
moral, mental and material, are Christianity, the press
and steam, which respectively bring together men's
hearts, minds and bodies into more intimate and mul-
tiplied relations. Christianity is slowly binding the
race into a brotherhood. The press transforms the
earth into an audience room ; while the steam engine,
so far as commerce is concerned, has annihilated, say,
nine-tenths of space.
Observe how this bringing of men into closer and
multiplied relations has served to increase the excite-
ments of life, to quicken our rate of living. The Chris-
tian religion is an excitant. In proportion as it leads
men to recognize and accept their responsibility for
others, it arouses them to action in their behalf, under
the stress of the most urgent motives. The press and
telegraph, by bringing many minds into contact, have
ministered marvelously to the activity of the popular
intellect. Isolation tends to stagnation. Intercourse
quickens thought, feeling, action. Steam has stimulat-
ed human activity almost to a fury. By prodigiously
lengthening the lever of human power, by bringing
the country to the city, the inland cities to the sea-
board, the seaports to each other, it has multiplied
many-fold every form of intercourse. By establishing
industries on an immense scale it has greatly compli-
cated business ; while severe and increasing competi-
tion demands closer study, a greater application of
energy, a larger expenditure of mental power.
Thus it would seem that these three great forces of
civilization move along parallel lines, and co-operate in
stimulating the nations to an activity ever more in-
tense and exciting ; so that the progress of civilization
70 MJBtLS.
seems to involve an increasing strain on the nervous
system. These influences will be better appreciated if
we compare, for a moment, ancient and modern civiliza-
tion. Look at life in Athens, Jerusalem or Babylon,
when they were centers of civilization, as compared
with Paris, London, or New York. The chief men of
an Oriental city might be found sitting in the gate
gossiping, or possibly philosophizing. Those of an Oc-
cidental metropolis are deep in schemes of commerce,
manufacture, politics or philanthropy, weaving plans
whose threads reach out through all the land, and even
to the ends of the earth. The Eastern merchant sits
in his bazaar, as did his ancestor two or three thousand
years ago, and chaffers with his customers by the hour
over a trifle. The "Western and modern business man
is on his feet. The two attitudes are representative.
Ancient civilization was sedentary and contemplative ;
ours is active and practical. " Multum inparvo " is its
maxim. Immense results brought about in a few days,
or even minutes, hurry the mind through a wide range
of experience, and compress, it may be, years into
hours. I am not at all sure that Abraham Lincoln did
not live longer than Methuselah. In point of experi-
ence, results, acquisitions, enjoyment and sorrow — in
all that makes up life, save the mere factor of time — I
am. not at all sure that the antediluvians were not the
children, and the men of this generation the aged pa-
triarchs. And life is fuller and more intense, activity
is more eager and restless here in the United States
than anywhere else in the world. We work more days
in a year, more hours in a day, and do more work in an
hour than the most active people of Europe.*
* These statements could be abundantly confirmed, but it is presumed
they will not be doubted. The point will be further developed in a later
chapter.
PEEILS. INTEMPEBANCE. 71
If we were quite unacquainted with the results
of this feverish activity of modern civilization, and
especially of American civilization, reason would en-
able us to anticipate those results. Such excitements,
such restless energy, such continued stress of the
nerves, must, in course of a few generations, decidedly
change the nervous organization of men. We know
that the progress of civilization has refined tempera-
ments, has rendered men more susceptible and sensi-
tive. A tragedy that is a nine days' horror with us
would hardly have attracted more than a passing glance
in old Eome, whose gentle matrons made a holiday by
attending gladiatorial shows, and seeing men kill each
other for Roman sport at the rate of 10,000 in a single
reign. And when brothers met in the arena, and lacked
the nerve to strike each other down, red-hot irons were
pressed against their naked, quivering flesh to goad
them on, while these same mothers shouted: " Kill !"
We complain sometimes that modern life has become
too largely one of feeling. It is true the many live
lives of impulse, rather than of principle ; but it is also
true that the springs of human sympathy were never
so easily touched as now. Such wide differences in
men's sensibilities argue not only a difference of -edu-
cation, but a change in the world's nerves.*
Physicians tell us that going from the equator north,
and from the arctic regions south, nervous disorders
increase until a climax is reached in the temperate
zone. An eminent physician of New York, the late Dr.
George M. Beard, who has made nervous diseases a
specialty, says that they are comparatively rare in
* Since writing the above, I find the following sentence in Dr. Geo- M.
Beard's American Nervousness, p. 118: "Fineness of organization, wb^ch
is essential to the development of the civilization -of modern times, i» %r>
eompanied by intensified mental susceptibility."
72 PEBILS. INTEMPERANCE.
Spain, Italy and the northern portions of Europe, also
in Canada and the Gulf States, but very common in
our Northern States and in Central Europe. And this
belt, it will be observed, coincides exactly with the zone
of the world's greatest activity; and further, where
this activity is greatest ; viz., in the United States,
these nervous disorders are the most frequent. Dr.
Beard begins an exceedingly interesting work* on nerv-
ous exhaustion with these sentences: "There is a
large family of functional nervous disorders that are
increasingly frequent among the indoor classes of civ-
ilized countries, and that are especially frequent in the
northern and eastern parts of the United -States. The
sufferers from these maladies are counted in this coun-
try by thousands and hundred of thousands ; in all the
Northern and Eastern States they are found in nearly
every brain- working household." After speaking of
certain numerous and wide-spread nervous diseases
among us, he adds : " In Europe these affections are
but little known." They are all diseases of civilization,
and of modern civilization, and mainly of the nineteenth
century, and of the United States. "Neurasthenia,"
which is the name he gives to nervous exhaustion,
"is," he says, "comparatively a modern disease, its
symptoms surprisingly more frequent now than in the
last century ; and is an American disease, in this, that
it is very much more common here than in any other
part of the civilized world."
When we consider that the increased activity of modern
civilization is attended by new and increasing nervous
disorders, that the belt of prevalent nervous diseases
coincides exactly with that of the world's greatest activ-
ity, and, further, that in this belt, where the activity is
* Entitled Neurasthenia,
PERILS. — INTEMPERANCE. 73
by far the most intense, nervous affections are by far
the most common, it is evident that the intensity of
modern life has already worked, and continues to work,
important changes in men's nervous organization. The
American people are rapidly becoming the most nervous,
the most highly organized, in the world, if, indeed,
they are not already such. And the causes, climatic
and other, which have produced this result, continue
operative.
Be it observed now that nervous people are exposed
to a double danger from intoxicating liquors. In the
first place, they are more likely than others to desire
stimulants. Says Dr. Beard: "When the nervous sys-
tem loses, through any cause, much of its nervous
force, so that it cannot stand upright with ease and
comfort, it leans on the nearest and most convenient
artificial support that is capable of temporarily prop-
ping up the enfeebled frame. Anything that gives
ease, sedation, oblivion, such as chloral, chloroform,
opium or alcohol, may be resorted to at first as an in-
cident, and finally as a habit. Such is the philosophy
of opium and alcohol inebriety. Not only for the re-
lief of pain, but for the relief of exhaustion, deeper
and more distressing than pain, do both men and
women resort to the drug shop. I count this one of
the great causes of the recent increase of opium* and
alcohol inebriety among women."
As a nation grows more nervous, its use of in-
toxicating liquors increases. In Great Britain, Bel-
gium, Holland and Germany, which are the European
countries lying in the nervous belt, there has been a
* There were imported into the United States in 1869, 90,99T pounds o/
opium ; in 1874, 170,706 pounds ; in 1877, 230,102 pounds ; during the fiscal
year ending in 1880, 553,451 pounds ; an increase of more than six-fold in
eleven years.
74 PERILS. — INTEMPERANCE.
marked increase in the use of alcohol during recent
years. Since 1840, its consumption in Belgium has
increased 238 per cent. In 1869 there were 120,000
saloons in Prussia ; in 1880 there were 165,000. From
1831 to 1872, while the population (not including re-
cent annexations) increased 53 per cent., whisky sa-'
loons increased 91 per cent. For all Germany, the in-
crease in consumption of spirituous liquors, per caput,
from 1872 to 1875, was 23.5 per cent. The German
correspondent of the New York Nation writes:
" Within the last few years dram and whisky drinking
has, with fearful rapidity, spread more and more
among the working classes. Even in wine-growing
and beer-producing countries, alcohol is taking the
place of lighter beverages." In Great Britain, during
the year 1800, a population of 15,000,000 consumed a
little less than 12,000,000 gallons of spirits. Fifty
years later, a population of 27,000,000 consumed 28,-
000,000 gallons. In 1874, a population of 32,000,000
consumed 41,000,000 gallons. That is, while the
population increased 113 per cent., the consumption
of spirituous liquors increased 241 per cent. From
1868 to 1877 (the latest statistics to which I have
access), while the population increased less than ten
per cent., the amount of spirituous liquors consumed
increased thirty-seven per cent. "In the United
States," says The Voice,* a careful and accurate au-
thority, " the consumption of beer has increased, since
1840, 1,675 per cent., of wine 400 per cent., and of
ardent spirits over 200 per cent.f (these are not our es-
timates, but are figures taken from the governmental
official reports)." According to these official reports,
the people of the United States used four gallons of
* Sept. 25tll, 1884.
t During the same period tlie population increased about 217 per cent.
PEHILS. INTEMPERANCE. 76
intoxicating drinks per caput in 1840, and twelve
gallons per caput in 1883. During the five years pre-
ceding 1884, while the population increased about 15
per cent., the consumption of distilled spirits increased
44.5 per cent., and that of malt liquors 60.2 per cent.
The production of the latter has risen from 1,628,934
barrels in 1863 to 18,998,619 barrels in 1884.
It should be remembered that at the beginning of
this century liquors were on every side-board, and
conscientious scruples against their moderate use were
almost unheard of. To-day there are many millions
of teetotalers both in this country and in Great
Britain. Especially during the past twenty years,
while the manufacture of intoxicants in the United
States has so rapidly increased, the temperance reform
has made wonderful progress, and the proportion of
teetotalers is much greater to-day than ever before.
And yet there is much more liquor used per caput
now than formerly ; showing, conclusively, that there is
much more of excess now than then ; declaring that, as
a nation grows nervous, those who drink at all are
more apt to drink immoderately.
Again, in the second place, men of nervous organiza-
tion are not only more likely than others to use al-
cohol, and to use it to excess, but its effects in their
case are worse and more rapid. The wide difference
between a nervous and a phlegmatic temperament
accounts for the fact that one man will kill himself
with drink in four or five years, and another in forty
or fifty. The phlegmatic man is but little sensitive to
stimulus ; hence, when its influence wears off, there is
little reaction. He, accordingly, forms the appetite
slowly, and the process of destruction is slow. An-
other man, of fine nervous organization, takes a glass
76 PERILS. — INTEMPERANCE.
of spirits, and every nerve in his body tingles and
leaps. The reaction is severe, and the nerves cry out
for more. The appetite, rapidly formed, soon becomes
uncontrollable, and the miserable end is not long de-
layed. The higher development of the nervous sys-
tem, which comes with the progress of civilization,
renders men more sensitive to pain, more susceptible
to the evil results which attend excess of any kind.
Savages may, almost with impunity, transgress laws
of health which would inflict on civilized men, for like
transgression, penalties well-nigh or quite iatal. It
would seem as if God intended that, as men sin against
the greater light which comes with increasing civiliza-
tion, they should suffer severer punishment.
It has been shown that the use of intoxicants is
more dangerous for this generation than it has been
for any preceding generation ; that it is more danger-
ous for inhabitants of the nervous belt than for the re-
mainder of mankind; that it is more dangerous for
the people of the United States than for other inhabit-
ants of this belt. It remains to be shown that it is
more dangerous for the people of the West than for
those of the East.
Among the principal causes which are operative to
render the typical American temperament more nervous
than the European is the greater dryness of our cli-
mate. " Dr. Max von Pettenkof er has concluded, from
the investigations he has made into the comparative
loss of heat experienced by a person breathing dry air
and one breathing damp air, that with the dry air
more heat is lost and more created, and, in conse-
quence, the circulation is quicker and more intense,
life is more energetic, and there is no opportunity for
the excessive accumulation of fat or flesh, or for the
PERILS. INTEMPERANCE. 77
development of a phlegmatically nervous tempera-
ment." * The mountain region of the West has by
far the dryest atmosphere of any portion of the coun-
try. The writer has often seen Long's Peak by moon-
light at a distance of eighty miles. The wonderful
transparency of that mountain air is due to the ab-
sence of moisture. Such a climate is itself a wine, and
life in it is greatly intensified, with corresponding re-
sults in the nervous system. We should, accordingly,
expect to find a marked increase of intemperance.
And such is the case. In the Mississippi valley,
where the altitude is low, and the atmosphere moist,
there is much less intemperance than in the mountains,
as appears from the ratio of voters to saloons. Take
the tier of states and territories next east of the Rocky
Mountain range. In 1880, Dakota had 95 voters to
every saloon ; f Nebraska, 133 ; Kansas, 224 ; and
Texas, 136. But notice the change as soon as we
reach the high altitudes. Montana had only 28 voters
to each saloon; Wyoming, 43; Colorado, 37; New
Mexico, 26 ; Arizona, 25 ; Utah, 84 ; Idaho, 35 ; Wash-
ington, 68 ; Oregon, 58 ; California, 37 ; and Nevada,
32. The average for the states between the Missis-
sippi and the Eocky Mountains was one saloon to
every 112.5 voters. In the eleven mountain states and
territories, the average was one saloon to every 43
voters. East of the Mississippi, the average was one
saloon to every 107.7 voters. If our assumption that
the ratio of saloons to voters correctly measures in-
temperance, is just, the people in the western third of
* C. E. Young, in Popular Science Monthly, September, 1880.
t Statistics compiled from Census of 1880, and Internal Revenue of same
year. The number of saloons is doubtless much larger than is reported by
the Census ; but for comparison between the East and West, or the city and
country, the Census statistics answer every purpose.
78 PEBILS. INTEMPERANCE.
the United States are two and one-half times as in-
temperate as those in the eastern two-thirds. There
are several causes of this, some of which are more or
less temporary ; but one of the chief influences is cli-
matic, which will continue operative.
We have seen that the progress of civilization brings
men into more intimate relations, that closer contact
quickens activity, that increased activity refines the
nervous system, and that a highly nervou3 organization
invites intemperance, and at the same time renders its
destructive results swifter and more fatal. Thus the
very progress of civilization renders men the easier
victims of intemperance. We have also seen that un-
der regulation the liquor traffic increases much more
rapidly than the population. The alternative, then,
seems simple, clear, certain, that civilization must de-
stroy the liquor traffic or be destroyed by it. Even
here in the East, where there is only one saloon to
every 107 voters, this death struggle is desperate, and
no man looks for an easy victory over the dragon.
What, then, of the far West, where the relative power
of the saloon is two-and-a-half times greater I
II. — THE LIQUOE POWER.
The liquor traffic, of course, implies two parties, the
buyer and the seller. The preceding discussion re-
lates to the former, only a few words touching the lat-
ter. According to the Keport of the Commissioner of
Internal Eevenue for 1883, there were then in the
United States 206,970 liquor dealers and manufactur-
ers. Their1 saloons, allowing twenty feet front to each,
would reach in an unbroken line from Chicago to New
York. There is invested in this business an immense
capital. The North American JZeview estimates it at
PERILS. — INTEMPERANCE. 7 9
$1,000,000,000, which is very moderate, if Joseph
Cook's statement is correct, that there are $75,000,000
engaged in this traffic in the city of Boston. In an
address in the House of Eepresentatives, in favor of
the Bonded Whisky Bill, Hon. P. V. Deuster, of Wis-
consin, member of Congress, and special champion of
the liquor dealers, said that the total market value of
the spirituous, malt, and vinous liquors produced in
1883 was $490,961,588. According to the census, the
capital invested in their manufacture was, in 1880,
$132,051,260. It is generally estimated that the an-
nual liquor bill of the nation is $900,000,000. So
great wealth in the hands of one class, having common
interests and a common purpose, is a mighty power.
And this power does not lack organization. There is
a combination of all the distillers north of the Ohio,
from Pittsburgh to the Pacific. Their success at
Washington a few years since in securing legislation
which granted to whisky makers peculiar privileges,
accorded to no other tax payers, is sufficient evidence
of their power. The United States Brewers' Associa-
tion was organized in 1862. The object of the organi-
zation may be inferred from the introduction to their
constitution, where we read: "That the owners of
breweries, separately, are unable to exercise a proper
influence in the interest of the craft in the legislature
and public administration." How this " proper influ-
ence" is brought to bear upon legislatures will appear
later. That it is potent there can be no doubt. At the
Brewers' Congress, held in Buffalo, July 8th, 1868,
President Clausen, speaking of the action of the New
York branch of the association, relative to the excise
law of that state, said : " Neither means nor money
were spared during the past twelve months to accom-
80 PERILS. INTEMPERANCE.
plish the repeal of this detested law. The entire Ger-
man population were enlisted." "Editorials favorable
to the repeal were published in sixty different English
and German newspapers. Just before the election,
30,000 campaign circulars were distributed among
the Germans of the different counties. A state con-
vention of brewers, hop and malt dealers, hop growers,
etc., was largely attended, and resolutions were
adopted in which we pledged ourselves to support
only such candidates who bound themselves to work
for the repeal of the excise law, and thereby check the
exertions of the temperance party. These resolutions
were published, principally through the English press,
in all the counties of the state. By these efforts the
former minority in the Assembly was changed to a ma-
jority of twenty votes in our favor." The object of
this association is not industrial, but avowedly polit-
ical. The president said, at the Chicago Congress, in
1867 : " Only by union in brotherly love it will be pos-
sible to attain such results, guard against oppressive
laws, raise ourselves to be a large and wide-spread po-
litical power, and with confidence anticipate complete
success in all our undertakings." Again at Davenport,
in 1870, President Clausen said : " Unity is necessary,
and we must form an organization that not only con-
trols a capital of two hundred million dollars, but
which also commands thousands of votes, politically,
through which our legislators will discern our power."
At the Chicago Congress, the brewers resolved : " That
we consider it absolutely necessary that our organiza-
tion should exist in every state and county." The fol-
lowing resolution was passed by the Liquor Dealers
and Manufacturers' Association of Illinois, four years
ago ; "Resolved, That the maintenance and perfection
PERILS. INTEMPERANCE. 81
of our present State Association is absolutely neces-
sary for the proper protection of our business inter-
ests ; that the new Board of Trustees spare neither
trouble nor expense to properly -organize every sena-
torial district in the state, so that, by the time of the
next election of members of the General Assembly, the
business men engaged in the liquor trade may be thor-
oughly organized and disciplined." The Brewers and
Maltsters' Association, of New York, claims to control
in that state 35,000 votes.
Let us look now at some of the methods of the
Liquor Power. The brewers favor boycotting. The
following resolution was passed at their seventh con-
gress : "Resolved, That we find it necessary, in a busi-
ness point of view, to patronize only such business men
as will work hand-in-hand with us." A blacksmith,
who was employed by a brewer, served on a jury which
convicted a saloon-keeper of selling liquor contrary to
law, and in consequence lost his situation. By their
own confession, they expend money freely to accomplish
their purpose at the polls. The Chicago delegate at
the Milkaukee Congress, June 6th, 1877, said : " The
brewers of Illinois have expended $10,000 to beat the
temperance party at the elections." The Chair said :
"Almost every local association has expended large
amounts for this purpose." The liquor lobby at Al-
bany, New York, at the session of 1878 — 9, admitted
before a legislative committee that they had expended
about $100,000 to influence legislation. From the con-
fessions of an old liquor-dealer and lobbyist* we learn
by what methods legislation at Albany was "influ-
enced" twenty years ago. After the election and be-
fore the legislature convened, " Our correspondents
* C. B. Cotton, in The Voice for Feb. 5th, 1885.
82 PEBILS. INTEMPERANCE.
throughout the state gave us special and truthful de-
scriptions of every one of the opposition members,
their mode of life, their habits, their eccentricities and
their religious views ;. whether they were approachable :
with a thorough analysis of their characters in every
way, so that we might understand our subjects in ad-
vance." If the stiff-necked legislator could not be in-
duced to vote directly against temperance measures, or
persuaded to " dodge," he must be convinced that he
was sick, threatened with diphtheria or something else,
and unable to leave his room. A sworn affidavit of the
doctor to this effect cost " anywhere from $25 to $100,
according to the size of the lie sworn to." These cases
of sickness never proved fatal, and recovery was always
rapid. "I well remember a senator who was in great
distress about a mortgage that was being foreclosed on
his house, amounting to about $1,500. This man's
trouble came to the knowledge of the lobby. Suddenly
one of the lobbyists was missing, and a few days later
the senator received his canceled mortgage through
the post. He never forgot the favor, nor did his vote
do us any harm afterward." Sometimes a member
found an elegant suit of clothes hanging over a chair
by his bedside in the morning ; and sometimes a rela-
tive would be presented with a neat little house. An-
other popular method was for a member to receive a
package by express from Troy, or some other town
near by. "This package always contained a certain
sum of money, and it was always so arranged that one
of the lobby should be with the gentleman wlien the
package came to hand. No receipt was ever taken from
the sender in his real name, but the receiver gave the
Express Company one in his real name. So we had all
the evidence we needed, and the receiver dared not go
PERILS. INTEMPERANCE. 83
back on the compact the transaction covered. From
that moment he was at the mercy of the lobby." " If
our tactics failed in the legislature, and temperance
laws were passed, we went home to defeat their execu-
tion. The officers designated to execute these laws
were generally elected. If by ourselves, it was all
right. If by our opponents, we had to buy them up,
and but few were found who would not take a bribe."
"Although the liquor lobby, during the last forty years,
has used millions of dollars in corrupt bargaining and
bribery, and never has made a secret of the fact, yet no
member was ever caught in the act, and, it is fair to
presume, no one ever will be. There is no way so
dark they cannot find their road through." Thus does
the Liquor Power corrupt public morals and defeat the
popular will.
And this power, which does not hesitate to buj
votes or intimidate voters, to defy the law or bribe
its officers, comes to its kingdom through political
partisanship, which enables it to make one of the two
great parties its slave, and the other its minister.
Even in the cities the citizens who desire clean govern
ment are in the majority; but, instead of uniting to
make and enforce good laws, they permit politics to
enter into the elections, thus throwing the power into
the hands of the bad minority. "There are two
things," said D'Alembert, " that can reach the top of
the pyramid — the eagle and the reptile." Under the rum
government of our cities, the reptile climbs. In 1883,
of the twenty-four aldermen of the city of New York,
ten were liquor-dealers and two others, including the
President of the Boarel, were ex-rumsellers. Impor-
tant offices in the city government, which pay a salary
of $12,000 or $15,000, have within a few years been
84 PERILS. INTEMPERANCE.
occupied by men who kept "bucket shops" and "all-
night " dens ; some had been prize fighters, and others
had been tried for the crime of murder. Is it strange
if the law in the hands of such men is a dead letter *?
Says Anthony Comstock: "I have no doubt many of
our influential city politicians are in receipt of a regular
revenue in the way of hush money from gambling-sa-
loons, brothels and groggeries, and the word is passed all
the way down the line to let them alone." Dr. Howard
Crosby says : " One of the captains of police is said
to have made $70,000 in one year by his carefulness in
leaving the law-breakers alone. Anybody with half an
eye can see that the exemption of the liquor-selling
law-breakers from prosecution is a system and not an
accident." "From Police Headquarters goes forth
the order, not written but verbal, that the police are
not to enforce the excise law. Ihave had my man on
the force, and can speak with knowledge of the facts.
If a man is arrested for violating an excise law, the
next morning the one who arrested him is called up,
reprimanded, and the man arrested is discharged,
while the policeman is transferred to some far-off dis-
trict, the twenty-fourth ward, for instance — that Bot-»
any Bay of the police force — if he is not immediately
discharged by those four men we call Commissioners."
Says the New York Times : " The great underlying
evil, which paralyzes every effort to get good laws, and
to secure the enforcement of such as we have, is the
system of local politics, which gives the saloon-keepers
more power over government than is possesssed by all
tbe religious and educational institutions in the city."
Our cities are growing much more rapidly than the
Tffrole population, as is the liquor power also. If this
power continues to keep the cities under its heel, what
PERILS. SOCIALISM. 83
of the nation, when the city dominates the country?
Such a powerful organization, resorting to such un-
scrupulous methods in the interest of a legitimate
business — mining, railroading — would be exceedingly
dangerous in a republic; and the whole outcome of
this traffic, pushed by such wealth, such organized en-
ergy and such means, is the corrupting of the citizen
and the embruting of the man.
And if the liquor power is a peril at the East, what
of the Eocky Mountain region and beyond, where
mammonism is more abject, where there is less of
Christian principle to resist the bribe, and where the
relative power of the liquor traffic is two and a half
times greater than at tbe East?
CHAPTEE Yin.
PEEILS. SOCIALISM.
SOCIALISM attempts to solve the problem of suffering
without eliminating tne factor of sin. It says : "From
each according to his abilities; to each according to
his wants." But this dictum of Louis Blanc could be
realized only in a perfect society. Forgetting that
" there is no political alchemy by which you can get
golden conduct out of leaden instincts,"* socialism
thinks to regenerate society without regenerating the
individual. It proposes to work this regeneration by
* Herbert Spencer, in Contemporary Review, April, 1884, p. 482.
W PEKILS. SOCIALISM.
reorganizing society on a co-operative, instead of a
competitive, basis. It talks much of fraternity, but
forgets what Maurice finely said, that "there is no fra-
ternity without a common Father."
It attracts two very different and almost opposite
classes of minds ; the one, men of large heart, philan-
thropic, often self-sacrificing, but unpractical. Among
this class there are not a few noble and brilliant names.
The other class embraces discontented, envious, selfish,
and often desperate, men, who are terribly practical in
their proposed methods. Some have become discour-
aged and sullen under real grievances, others are
thoroughly vicious and lawless.
The despotism of the few and the wretchedness of
the many have produced European socialism. It has
been supposed that its doctrines could never obtain in
this land of freedom and plenty ; but there may be a
despotism which is not political, and a discontent
which does not spring from hunger. We have dis-
covered that German socialism has been largely in_
ported, has taken root, and is making a vigorous
growth. Let us look at it as it appears in this ^)u&-
try. There are two parties in the United States,
known as the " Socialistic Labor Party," and the " In-
ternational Workingmen's Association." The one is
the thin, the other the thick, end of the socialistic
wedge. Both seek to overthrow existing social and
economic institutions; both propose a co-operative
form of production and exchange, as a substitute for
the existing capitalistic and competitive system ; both
expect a great and bloody revolution ; but they differ
widely as to policy and extreme doctrines. The plat-
form* of the Socialistic Labor Party contains much
* See the document in Joseph Cook'a " Socialism," pp. 20—22.
PERILS SOCIALISM. 87
that is reasonable, and is well calculated to disciple
American workmen. It does not, as a party, attack
the family or religion, and is opposed to anarchy.
The International Workingmen's Association, which is
much the larger party, is extreme and violent. The
ideals of the Internationals are "common property,
socialistic production and distribution, the grossest
materialism — for their god is their belly, free love, in
all social arrangements, perfect individualism; or, in
other words, anarchy. Negatively expressed — Away
with private property! Away with all authority!
Away with the state ! Away with the family ! Away
with religion!"* In the manifesto unanimously
adopted by the Internationals at Pittsburgh, occurs'
the following : " The church finally seeks to make com-
plete idiots of the mass, and to make them forego the
paradise on earth by promising them a fictitious
heaven." "Truth" published in San Francisco, says:
"When the laboring men understand that the heaven
which they are promised hereafter is but a mirage,
they will knock at the door of the wealthy robber, with
a musket in hand, and demand their share of the goods
of this life now." "Freiheit" the blasphemous paper
of Herr Most, thus concludes an article on the
" Fruits of the Belief in God": " Keligion, authority
and state, are all carved out of the same piece of wood
— to the Devil with them all !" The same sheet " ad-
vocates a new genealogy, traced from mothers, whose
names, and not those of the fathers, descend to the
children, since it is never certain who the father is."
"Public and common up-bringing of children is likewise
* Prof. R. T. Ely, in The Christian Union. For an able exposition of Re-
cent Phases of Socialism in the United States, see articles by Professor Ely,
in The Christian Union for April 24th, May 1st, and May 8th, 1884.
88 PEKILS. SOCIALISM.
favored in the 'FreiheitJ in order that the old family
may completely abandon the field to free love." *
Having lost all faith in the ballot, the Internationals
propose to carry out their " reforms" by force. The
following is from the Pittsburgh manifesto : " Agita-
tion for the purpose of organization ; organization for
the purpose of rebellion. In these few words the ways
are marked, which the workers must take if they want
to be rid of their chains. We could show, by scores of
illustrations, that all attempts in the past to reform
this monstrous system by peaceable means, such as
the ballot, have been futile, and all such efforts in the
future must necessarily be so. There remains but one
recourse — force !"
The Central Labor Union had a parade in New York
City, September 5th, 1883, in which from ten to fifteen
thousand laborers participated. Some of their ban-
ners were inscribed as follows : " Workers in the Ten-
ements, Idlers in the Brown-stone Fronts"; "Down
with Oppressive Capital"; "The Wage System Makes
Us Slaves"; " We Must Crush Monopolies Lest They
Crush Us"; "Prepare for the Coming Kevolution";
" Every Man Must Have a Breech-loader, and Know
How to Use It." The Vbrbote, published in Chicago,
glorifies dynamite as "the power which, in our hands,
shall make an end of tyranny." Truth says : " War to
" the palace, peace to the cottage, death to luxurious
idleness. We have no moment to waste. Arm ! I say,
to the teeth ! for the revolution is upon you." An ar-
ticle in the Freiheit, entitled " Kevolutionary Princi-
ples," contained the following : " He (the revolutionist)
is the irreconcilable enemy of this world, and, if he
continues to live in it, it is only that he may thereby
* Professor Ely, in The Christian Union.
PERILS. — SOCIALISM. 89
more certainly destroy it. He knows only one science
— namely, destruction. For this purpose he studies
day and night. For him everything is moral which
favors the triumph of the revolution, everything is im-
moral and criminal which hinders it. Day and night
may he cherish only one thought, only one purpose —
namely, inexorable destruction. While he pursues
this purpose, without rest and in cold blood, he must
be ready to die, and equally ready to kill every one
with his own hands who hinders him in the attainment
of this purpose." There has been recently formed in
the United^tates a society called " The Black Hand,"
which, in its proclamation, urges " the propaganda of
deed in every form," and cries: "War to the knife!"
The explosions in the Houses of Parliament and Tow-
er of London called forth the following declarations at
a meeting of socialists in Chicago : " This explosion
has demonstrated that socialists can safely go into
large congregations in broad daylight and explode
their bombs.
" A little hog's grease and a little nitric acid make a
terrible explosion. Ten cents' worth would blow a
building to atoms.
" Dynamite can be made out of the dead bodies of
capitalists as well as out of hogs.
" All Chicago can be set ablaze in a minute by elec-
tricity.
" Private property must be abolished, if we have to
use all the dynamite there is, and blow ninety-nine
hundredths of the people off the face of the earth."
At the tinte of the railroad riots, in 1877, which cost
many lives, and not less than a hundred million dol
lars of property, and to quell which ten states, reach
ing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, called on the Pres
90 PEBILS. SOCIALISM.
ident of the Ignited States for troops, there were but
few socialists among us, and they seem to have been
taken unawares by the outbreak ; but they will be pre-
pared to make the most of the next. The following
are stock phrases, found in all their publications:
" Get ready for another 1877"; " Buy a musket for a
repetition of 1877"; "Buy dynamite for a second 1877";
" Organize companies and drill io be ready for a re-
currence of the riots of 1877."
As to the number of socialists in the United States
-we have no exact knowledge. • Their press is numerous
and is increasing. Moreover, "there are a , very large
aumber of papers like the Labor World of Philadel-
phia, organs of the Knights of Labor, and other labor
organizations, which have many points in common with
the socialistic parties, which are growing nearer to
them continually, and which undoubtedly help forward
the general movement."* The labor papers of Michi-
gan claim that, at the elections last fall, nineteen mem-
bers of the labor organizations were elected to the
State Legislature. In 1878 four socialistic aldermen
were elected in Chicago, and the party's candidate for
mayor received twelve thousand votes. Three candi-
dates for the House of Eepresentatives of Illinois, and
one state senator were elected the same year.f Pro-
fessor Ely doubts whether there are ten thousand out-
spoken adherents of the Socialistic Labor Party in this
country. The Internationals are much stronger, and
are growing rapidly. A prominent member of this
party in Chicago claims twenty-five thousand men,
" all armed and drilled." President Seelye, flf Amherst
College, says: "There are probably 100,000 men in
* Professor Ely, in the Christian Union, May 8th, 1384.
t Quoted by Prof. Ely from the socialist's report published in Detroit, 1880.
PERILS. SOCIALISM. 91
the United States to-day whose animosity against all
existing social institutions is hardly less than bound-
less "* A writerf in The New Englander for January,
1884, says there are in this country " 200,000 members
of labor organizations who are more or less familiar
with the doctrines of socialism." This is apparently a
very mild statement, as the leading papers of New York
C? Yyr claimed, as long ago as the summer of 1881, that
" The Knights of Labor " alone numbered 800,000, be-
sides many smaller organizations, which are more or
less socialistic in their sympathies and ideas, though
not avowedly connected with either of the socialistic
parties. The Vorbote of Chicago says : " You might
as well suppose the military organizations of Europe
were for play and parade, as to suppose labor organiza-
tions were for mere insurance and pacific helpfulness.
They are organized to protect interests, for which, if
the time comes, they would fight." But the present
strength of socialistic organizations in the United
States concerns us less than their prospective numbers.
Let us look at the conditions favorable to the growth
of socialism. The reception given to the books of Mr.
Henry George is one of the signs of the times. " Prog-
* The reception given to Herr Most in this country is significant. His ad-
vocacy of assassination as a means of progress was too extreme for the
Social-democratic party in Germany, from which he was expelled on ac-
count of his views. He has, however, been accorded a warm welcome in
the United States. The writer heard him in Cincinnati soon after the riot
His subject was, "The Coming Crisis of the World, and the Social Revolu-
tion." He began his remarks by saying that some had connected the late
riot in this city with his speeches. His defense was that " If the socialists,
in their might, and the working men, had arisen, they would not have at-
tacked the jail and its murderers, but have gone to the palaces of the rich."
Although it was a rainy night the hall was packed with a sympathetic audi-
ence, even the standing room being taken. His most bloodthirsty and in-
cendiary utterances were applauded to the echo with voice, hand and foot
He has met like audiences in other large cities.
t Rev. Edward Kirk Rawsoa,
92 PEKELS. SOCIALISM.
ress and Poverty " has been read by tens of thousands
of workingmen. And the fact that the demand for an
economic work should exhaust more than a hundred
editions, and still continue unsatisfied, indicates a great
deal of popular sympathy with its doctrines. That Mr.
George has made many disciples among American
workmen is shown by the organs of the various laboi
organizations; and any one who is convinced that
proprietorship in land is unjust, has taken at least one
step toward Proudhon's famous doctrine that "prop-
erty is theft." Mr. George has rendered eminent ser-
vice to the cause of socialism against traditional law
by bringing to its support, in the United States, the
strength of moral ideas.
1. Most of the Internationals, the anarchic socialists,
in this country are Germans, whose numbers are con-
stantly being recruited by immigration. And not only
is immigration to increase, but socialism is spreading
rapidly in Germany, which will influence its growth
here. " Since the organization of the German Empire
the social democratic votes for members of the Impe-
rial Parliament (Keichstag) have numbered as follows :
1871, 123,975; 1874, 351,952; 1877, 493,288; 1878,
437,158.* In 1884 the socialists of Germany cast 700,-
000 votes and elected twenty-four members of the
Beichstag. " Professor Fawcett, in opening his present
course of lectures at Oxford, said that, if the growth of
the socialistic political vote progressed in Germany and
the United States for the next fifty years as it has for
the last fifty, capital can do nothing effectual against
socialism."!
2. There are other influences, which, though obscure,
* Professor Ely's "French and German Socialism in Modern Times," p. 213.
t Joseph Cook's "Socialism," p. 17* 1880.
PEKILS. SOCIALISM. 93
are no less potent than immigration in fostering the
growth of socialism in America. Among the deep cur-
rents of the centuries, flowing down through the lasi
eighteen hundred years, there has been an irresistible
drift toward individualism. Guizot says that the
" prime element in modern European civilization is the
energy of individual life, the force of personal exist-
ence." The masses once existed for the state ; the in-
dividual was nothing. When Christ said : " What
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and
lose his own soul ?" thus teaching the priceless worth
of every human being, he introduced a new idea into
the world, which is leavening society. It has manu-
mitted slaves, it has elevated woman, it has overthrown
despotisms and written constitutions, it has swept
away privileges and abolished caste. It is bearing
Europe onward to popular government. Is it strange
that the liberated pendulum should swing beyond the
position of stable equilibrium'? Already are there
signs of an excessive individualism among us ; a cer-
tain self-assertion, a contempt of authority, which for-
gets that duties are co-extensive with rights. Extreme
socialism is only "individualism gone mad." This
powerful movement, therefore, toward individualism,
and especially its perceptible tendency toward ex-
tremes, is favorable to the spread of socialism.
3. The prevalence of skepticism, also, is significant
in this connection. A wide-spread infidelity preceded
the French Kevolution, and helped to prepare the way
for it. A criminal in a prison on the Khine left, not
long since, on the walls of his cell, the following mes-
sage for his successors: "I will say a word to you.
There is no heaven or hell. When once you are dead
there is an end of everything. Therefore, ye scoun-
94 PEBILS. SOCIALISM.
drels, grab whatever you can ; only do not let your-
selves be grabbed. Amen." Not only does irreligion
remove all salutary fear of retribution hereafter, and
thus give over low-minded men to violence and excess ;
but, when a man has lost all portion in another life, he
is the more determined to have his proportion in this.
There are, doubtless, Christian socialists ; but the In-
ternationalists are gross materialists. The socialist,
Boruttau, says : " No man else is worthy of the name
of socialist save he who, himself an atheist, devotes his
exertions with all zeal to the spread of atheism." The
great increase, therefore, of skepticism in this genera-
tion, and especially of doubt touching the sanctions of
the divine law, has prepared a quick and fruitful soil
for socialism.
4. Equality is one of the dreams of socialism. It
protests against all class distinctions. The develop-
ment of classes, therefore, in a republic, or the widen-
ing of the breach between them, is provocative of so-
cialistic agitation and growth. Among the far-reach-
ing influences of mechanical invention is a tendency,
as yet unchecked, to highten differences of condition,
to establish social classes, and erect barriers between
them. In a sense, classes do and must exist wherever
there are resemblances and differences ; but so long as
the individual members of social classes easily rise or
fall from one to the other, by virtue of their own acts,
such classes are neither unrepublican nor unsafe. But,
when they become practically hereditary, differences
are inherited and increased, antipathies are strength-
ened, the gulf between them is widened, and they
harden into casts which are both unrepublican and
dangerous. Now the tendency of mechanical inven-
tion, under our present industrial system, is to sepa-
PEBILS. SOCIALISM. 95
rate classes more widely, and to render them hered-
itary.
Before the age of machinery, master, journeymen,
and apprentices worked together on familiar terms.
The apprentice looked forward to the time when he
should receive a journeyman's wages, and the journey-
man might reasonably hope some day to have a shop
of his own. Under this system there was little oppor-
tunity to develop class distinctions and jealousies.
Moreover, there was a great variety of work. A black-
smith, for instance, was not master of his trade until
he could make a thousand things, from a nail to an
iron fence. There was relief from monotony, and
scope for ingenuity and taste. But machinery is in-
troduced, and with it important changes. It is dis-
covered that the subdivision of labor both improves
and cheapens the product. And this double advan-
tage has stimulated the tendency in that direction until
a single article that was once made by one workman
now passes through perhaps threescore pairs of hands,
each doing a certain part of the work on every piece.
Manchester workmen, complaining of the monotony of
their work, said to Mr. Cook: "It is the same thing
day by day, sir; it's the same little thing; one little,
little thing, over and over and over." Think of mak-
ing pin-heads, ten hours^pb day, every working day in
the week, for a year — twenty, forty, fifty years! A
nailer, in the midst of a clatter, enough to drown
thought, does his day's work by pressing into the jaws
of an ever-ravenous machine a small bar of iron, which
he turns rapidly from side to side. Think of making
that one movement for a lifetime ! Such dreary mo-
notony is the most wearisome of all manual labor. It
admits of little interest and no enthusiasm in one's
^ PERILS. SOCIALISM.
work ; and, worst of all, it cramps the mind and belit-
tles the man. Once the man who made the nail could
make the iron fence, also ; now he cannot even make
the nail, but only feed a machine that makes it. Be-
yond question, under the minute division of labor, the
operative tends to degenerate. This truth is sadly
manifest in the manufacturing towns of England.
Says Mr. Emerson :* " The robust rural Saxon degen-
erates in the mills to the Leicester stockinger, to the
imbecile Manchester spinner — far on the way to be
spiders and needles. The incessant repetition of the
same hand-work dwarfs the man, robs him of his
strength, wit, and versatility, to make a pin-polisher,
a buckle-maker, or any other specialty ; and presently,
in a change of industry, whole towns are sacrificed
like ant-hills !" And statistics show that the population
of the manufacturing departments of France, also, is
far inferior to that of the agricultural departments.
Under the low wages of the present industrial sys-
tem, there is a strong tendency among operatives to
form an hereditary class, and thus degenerate the
more. In Massachusetts, where statistics of labor are
the most elaborate published, the average working man
is unable to support the average working man's fam-
ily. In 1883 the average expenses of working men's
families, in that state, were $i54.42, while the earnings
of workmen who were heads of families averaged
$558. 68. | This means that the average working man
had to call on his wife and children to assist in earn-
ing their support. We accordingly find that, in the
manufactures and mechanical industries of the state,
in 1883, there were engaged 28,714 children under six-
* " English Traits," p. 240.
t " Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics," p. 464.
PEBILS. SOCIALISM. 97
teen years of age. Of the average wording man's fam-
ily 32.44 per cent, of the support fell upon the children
and mother. I am not aware that the condition of the
working man is at all exceptional in Massachusetts.
" In their last report, the Illinois Commissioners of
Labor Statistics say that their tables of wages and
cost of living are representative only of intelligent
working men, who make the most of their advantages,
and do not reach ' the confines of that world of helpless
ignorance and destitution in which multitudes in all
large cities continually live, and whose only statistics
are those of epidemics, pauperism, and crime.' Nev-
ertheless, they go on to say, an examination of these
tables will demonstrate that one-half of these intelli-
gent working men of Illinois ' are not even able to earn
enough for their daily bread, and h^ve to depend upon
the labor of women and children to eke out their mis-
erable existence.' "* In 1880, of persons engaged in
all occupations in the United States, 1,118,356 were
children fifteen years of age or under. f Their num-
ber, in ten years, increased 21 per cent, more rapidly
than the population. These children ought to be
in the school instead of the mill or the mine. How
much longer will the operatives of the United States
be distinguished for their intelligence if our children
under sixteen are pressed into the factory? In many
cases the body is stunted, the mind cramped, and the
morals corrupted. A writer J in the North American
Review, for June, 1884, says that in Pennsylvania
there are "herds of little children of all ages, from six
years upward, at work in the coal breakers, toiling in
* Henry George's "Social Problems," p. 100.
t " Compendium of tne Tentn Census," Part II, p. 1358,
t Henry D. Lloyd.
yo PERILS. SOCIALISM.
dirt, and air thick with carbon dust, from dawn tc
dark, of every day in the week except Sunday. These
coal breakers are the only schools they know. A let-
ter from the coal regions, in the Philadelphia Press,
declares that ' there are no schools in the world where
more evil is learned, or more innocence destroyed, than
in the breakers. It is shocking to watch the vile prac-
tices indulged in by these children, to hear the fright-
ful oaths they use, to see their total disregard for re-
ligion and humanity.' " In the upper part of Luzerne
County there are three thousand children, between six
and fifteen years of age, at work in this way. In mills
and factories children are put to feeding machines,
and the narrow round of work prevents a natural de-
velopment of tl^e mind. Girls brought up in the fac-
tories, or whose mothers are there employed, make
poor housekeepers, learn little of those arts of economy
by which the handful of meal and the cruse of oil of
a meager income waste not, neither fail. They make
poor wives, and keep their husbands poor. Thus the
children of another generation are forced into the fac-
tory. Hence the tendency to establish a class of he-
reditary operatives, which classes are already estab-
lished in Europe, and will appear here in due time.
Moreover, our labor system, together with mechan-
ical invention, is steadily developing an unemployed
class, which furnishes ready recruits to the criminal,
intemperate, socialistic and revolutionary classes. Mr.
Gladstone estimates that manufacturing power, by the
aid of machinery, doubles for the world once in seven
years. Invention is liable, any day, to render a given
tool antiquated, and this or that technical skill useless.
Every great labor-saving invention, though it eventu-
ally increases the demand for labor, temporarily
PERILS. SOCIALISM. 99
chrows great numbers out of employment. The
operative, who for years has confined himself to one
thing, has, thereby, largely lost the power of adapta-
tion. He cannot turn his hand to this or that ; he is
very likely too old to learn a new trade, or acquire new
technical skill ; he has no alternative ; and, unless an-
chored by a family, probably turns tramp. Competi-
tion produces over-production, which results in clos-
ing mills and mines for long periods, thus swelling the
floating population.
We have seen that mechanical invention tends to
create an hereditary operative class, and an unem-
ployed and floating population. It also tends, on the
other hand, to create a class of capitalists and monopo-
lists.* Before the age of machinery, manufacturing
power was, of course, muscular. That power belonged
to the workmen, and could not be monopolized or cen-
tralized without their consent. Every man had a fair
chance to compete with his fellow ; no one enjoyed an
immeasurable advantage ; but machinery enables one
man to own a power equal to that of a thousand or
ten thousand men. Modern science and invention, in
subjecting mighty forces of nature to human control,
have made the Anakim our slaves. Here is an army
of giants who never hunger and never tire, who never
suffer and never complain; when ordered to stop
working, they never raise bread riots. They always
recognize their masters, and obey without question
and without conscience. The availability and magni-
* After discussing these tendencies of modern manufactures, De Tocque-
ville advises the friends of democracy to " keep their eyes anxiously fixed
in this direction," and adds : " For if ever a permanent inequality of condi-
tions and aristocracy again penetrate into the world, it may be predicted
that this is the channel by which they will enter." "Democracy in
America," Book Second, Chap. 20.
100 PERILS. SOCIALISM.
tude of these forces make the concentration of power
both certain and dangerous. The masters of these
forces are the Caesars and Napoleons of modern
society. Within certain limits, other things being
equal, the larger the manufactory the cheaper the
product, and the greater the percentage of profit on
the investment. This law results in the massing of
capital. These great enterprises demand able men to
organize and conduct them. The employer is no
longer a workman with his employes; his work is
mental, not manual ; it tasks and strengthens all his
powers ; his faculties are developed, while those of the
men who tend his machines are cramped. He has
little personal acquaintance with his employes, and,
with noble exceptions, has little personal interest in
them. Thus these classes grow apart. Says Mr,
Lecky : " Every change of conditions which widens
the chasm and impairs the sympathy between rich and
poor, cannot fail, however beneficial may be its effects,
to bring with it grave dangers to the state. It is in-
contestable that the immense increase of manufactur-
ing population has had this tendency."* And not
only are these classes becoming further removed from
each other, they are also becoming organized against
each other. Capital is combining in powerful corpora-
tions and "pools," and labor is combining in powerful
trades- unions. And these opposing organizations
make trials of strength, offer terms and conditions of
surrender, like two hostile armies.
5. Again, socialism fattens on discontent. We are
told that the condition of working men everywhere has
vastly improved during the last fifty or a hundred years.
* " England in the Eighteenth Century," Vol. II, p. 693.
PEEILS. SOCIALISM. 101
If this be true, it has not prevented a rapid growth of
socialism in Europe ; and tihe fact that American work-
men are better off than European, will not prevent its
spread here. De Tocqueville observed and wondered
that the masses find their position the more intolera-
ble the more it is improved. This is because the man
improves faster than his condition ; his wants increase
more rapidly than his comforts. A savage, having
nothing, is perfectly contented so long as he wants
nothing. The first step toward civilizing him is to
create a want. Men rise in the scale of civilization
only as their wants rise ; and, wherever a man may be
on that scale, to awaken wants which cannot be satis-
fied is to provoke discontent as surely as if comforts
were taken from him. Macaulay argues that the nine-
teenth century is the golden age of England, rather
than the seventeenth, because then, "noblemen were
destitute of comforts, the want of which would be in-
tolerable to a modern footman, and farmers and shop-
keepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which
would raise a riot in a modern workhouse/' and
especially because few knights had " libraries as good
as may now perpetually be found in a servants' hall,
or in the back parlor of a small shop-keeper."* The
evidence of progress is found not so much in the fact
that the footman has a library as that he wants it.
There has been a wonderful "leveling up" of the
common people, and their wants have risen accord-
ingly. It is very true that within a century there has
been a great multiplication of the comforts of life
among the masses ; but the question is whether that
increase has kept pace with the multiplication of
wants. The mechanic of to-day, who has much, may
* " History of England," Chap. 3.
102 EKBtLS. — SOCIALISM.
be poorer than his grandfather, who had little. A
rich man may be poor, and a poor man may be rich.
Poverty is something relative, not absolute. I do not
mean simply that a rich man is poor by the side of one
richer. That man is poor who lacks the means of sup-
plying what seem to him reasonable wants. The
horizon of the working man, during this century, has
been marvelously expanded; there has been a pro
digious multiplication of his wants. The peasant of a
few generations ago knew little of any lot save his
own. He saw an aristocracy above him, which enjoyed
peculiar privileges; but these were often justified in
his eyes by superior intelligence and manners. The
life of the rich and great was far removed from him
and vague. He was not discontented for lack of luxu-
ries of which he knew nothing. But modern manu-
factures and commerce and shop-windows have made
all luxuries familiar to all eyes. The working man of
to-day in the United States has probably had a com-
mon school education, has traveled somewhat, attended
expositions, visited libraries, art galleries and museums ;
through books he has become more or less acquainted
with all countries and all classes of society ; he reads
the papers, he is vastly more intelligent than his
grandfather was, he lives in a larger world, and has
many more wants. Indeed, his wants are as bound-
less as his means are limited. Education increases
the capability of enjoyment; and this capability is in-
creasing among the many more rapidly than the means
of gratification ; hence a growing popular discontent.
There is much dissatisfaction among the masses of
Europe. There would be more if there were greater
popular intelligence. Place Americans in the circum-
stances under which the peasant of Continental Europe
PEEILS. SOCIALISM. 103
lives, and there would be a revolution in twenty-four
hours. Hopeless poverty, therefore, in the "United
States, where there is greater intelligence, will be
more restless, and more easily become desperate than
in Europe. Many of our working men are beginning
to feel that, under the existing industrial system, they
are condemned to hopeless poverty. "We have already
seen that the average working man in Massachusetts
and Illinois is unable to support his family. At that
rate, how long will it take him to become the owner of
a home I Of males engaged in the industries of Mas-
sachusetts in 1875, only one in one hundred owned a
house. When a working man is unable to earn a home,
or to lay by something for old age, when sickness or
the closing of. the factory for a few weeks, means debt,
is it strange that he becomes discontented ?
And how are such items as the following, which ap-
peared in the papers of January, 1880, likely to strike
discontented laborers? "The profits of the Wall Street
Kings the past year were enormous. It is estimated
that Yanderbilt made $30,000,000; Jay Gould, $15,000,-
000 ; Kussell Sage, $10,000,000 ; Sidney Dillon, $10,000,-
000; James K. Keene, $8,000,000; and three or four
others from one to two millions each ; making a grand
total for ten or twelve estates of about eighty millions
of dollars." Is it strange if the working man thinks he
is not getting his due share of the wonderful increase
of national wealth 1
" There is," says the eminent Professor Cairnes, " a
constant growth of the national capital, with a nearly
equally constant decline in the proportion of capital
which goes to support productive labor." And this
can result, he points out, only in " a harsh separation
of classes, combined with those glaring inequalities in
104 -PEEILS. SOCIALISM-
the distribution of wealth which most people will
agree are among the elements of our social insta-
bility." "Unequal as is the distribution of wealth
already in this country (England), the tendency of in-
dustrial progress — on the supposition that the present
separation between industrial classes is maintained —
is toward an inequality greater still. The rich will be
growing the richer, and the poor at least relatively
poorer."* Professor Henry Carter Adams says that
" the benefits of the present civilization are not im-
partially distributed, and that the laborer of to-day,
as compared with the non-laboring classes, holds a rel-
atively inferior position to that maintained in former
times. The laborer himself interprets this to mean
that the principle of distribution, which modern so-
ciety has adopted, is unfair to him."t Is it strange
that working men should agree with such conclusions
of political economists 1
Many wage-workers have come to feel that the capi-
talist is their natural enemy, and that he is always
ready, when opportunity offers, to sacrifice them and
their families to his selfish gains. This does the great-
est injustice to some employers, who, in times of de-
pression, run their factories for months at a daily loss
to themselves, rather than throw their workmen out of
employment. But such capitalists are as rare as they
are noble. More do not hesitate to enter into combi-
nations powerful enough to command the trade, and
then stop work for weeks and months in order to in-
flate prices, already fair. In November, 1883, the As-
sociation of Nail-makers ordered a suspension in order
to raise prices ; and for five weeks 8,000 workmen were
* Political Economy.
t Quote-i by Washington Gladden, LL.D., in Century Magazine for Octo*
ber, 1884, p. 906.
PERILS. SOCIALISM. 105
thrown out of employment, just as winter was coming
on. Every mill in the West was in the "pool"; the
suffering workmen, therefore, could not gain employ-
ment by going from one to another. They had
learned to do but one thing, and could not turn their
hand to anything else. There was nothing to do but
nurse their discontent. Those November and Decem-
ber weeks were a good spring-time for sowing social-
istic seed. The Liverpool Cotton Exchange, three
years ago, by manipulating prices, stopped 15,000,000
*spindles, thus taking the bread out of the mouths of
thousands of men, women, and children. The above
simply illustrates a strong tendency toward combina-
tion and monopoly, which is one of the darkest clouds
on our industrial and social horizon. Our various in-
dustries are combining to force down production —
that means that working men are thrown out of em-
ployment; and to force up prices — that means in-
creased cost of living. There are lumber, coal, coke,
oil, brick, nail, screw, steel, rope, fence-wire, glass,
wall-paper, school books, insurance, hardware, starch,
cotton, and scores of other combinations, all made in
the interest of capitalists. Small dealers must enter
the "pool" or be crushed. Once in, they must submit
to the dictation of the " large " men. Thus power is
being gathered more and more into the hands of con-
scienceless monopolies.
Adam Smith thought wheat was less liable than any
other commodity to be monopolized by speculators,
because "its owners can never be collected in one
place." But this supposed impossibility is practically
overcome by the railway and telegraph, and now
Boards of Trade arbitrarily make and unmake the
prices of food, and wheat is as easily "cornered" as
106 PERILS. SOCIALISM.
anything else. A single firm in Chicago, five years
ago, gained control of the pork market, more than
doubled the price, and cleared over seven million dol-
lars on a single deal, the influence of which in advan-
cing prices was felt in every part of the world. The
full significance of such transactions is seen only when
we consider, as has been shown by Drs. Drysdale and
Farr, of England, that the death rate rises and falls
with the prices of food. When the necessaries of life
are " too easily " secured, combinations declare a war
against plenty, production is stopped, and tens of*
thousands are forbidden to earn while prices rise.
Thus, in this land of plenty, a few men may, at their
pleasure, order a famine in thousands of homes.
This is modern and republican feudalism. These
American barons and lords of labor have probably
more power and less responsibility than many an olden
feudal lord. They close the factory or the mine, and
thousands of workmen are forced into unwilling idle-
ness. The capitalist can arbitrarily raise the price of
necessaries, can prevent men's working, but has no re-
sponsibility, meanwhile, as to their starving. Here is
" taxation without representation " with a vengeance.
We have developed a despotism vastly more oppressive
and more exasperating than that against which the
thirteen colonies rebelled.
Working men are apt to be improvident. It is often
their own fault that enforced idleness so soon brings
want. Though, at times, they know enough of want,
as a class they know little of self-denial. They gen-
erally live up to the limit of their means. If wages are
good, they have the best the market affords ; when
work and credit fail, they go hungry. Neither the
capitalist nor the laborer has a monopoly of the fault
PEKILS. SOCIALISM. 107
for the difficulties existing between them. But our
inquiry is after facts, not faults ; and the fact of im-
providence on the part of many working men only
makes their discontent the deeper and more certain.
A communistic leader, who visited America thirty
years ago, was asked what he thought of the condition
of the working classes here. " It is very bad," he re-
plied, " they are so discouragingly prosperous." But
the growth of dissatisfaction and of socialism among
our wage-workers, in recent years, has taken place not-
withstanding generally good harvests and a great in-
crease of aggregate wealth. Poor harvests were^potent
causes in bringing Louis XYI. to the guillotine, and
precipitating the Eeign of Terror. We must, of course,
expect them to occur as heretofore, perhaps recur in
successive years. The condition of the working man
will then probably be bad enough to satisfy the most
pessimistic agitator. Every such " winter of discon-
tent " among laborers is made "glorious summer" for
the growth of socialistic ideas.
We have glanced at the causes which are ministering
to the growth of socialism among us : a wide-spread
discontent on the part of our wage-working population,
the development of classes and class antipathies, and
the appearance of an unemployed class of professional
beggars, popular skepticism, a powerful individualism,
and immigration. If these conditions should remain
constant, socialism would continue to grow ; but it
should be remembered that all of these causes, with the
possible exception of skepticism, are becoming more
active. Within the life-time of many now living, pop-
ulation will be four times as dense in the United States
as it is to-day. Wage-workers, now one-half of all our
workers, will multiply more rapidly than the popula-
108 PEEILS. SOCIALISM.
tion. After our agricultural land is all occupied, as it
will be a few years hence, our agricultural population,
which is one of the great sheet-anchors of society
against the socialistic current, will increase but little,
while great manufacturing and mining towns will go
on multiplying and to multiply. In the development
of our manufacturing industries and our mining re-
sources we have made, as yet, hardly more than a be-
ginning. "When these industries have been multiplied
ten-fold, the evils which now attend them will be cor-
respondingly multiplied.
It must not be forgotten that, side by side with this
deep discontent of intelligent and unsatisfied wants,
has been developed, in modern times, a tremendous
enginery of destruction, which offers itself to every
man. Since the French Revolution nitro-glycerine,
illuminating gas, petroleum, dynamite, the revolver,
the repeating rifle and the Gatling gun have all come
into use. Science has placed in man's hand superhu-
man powers. Society, also, is become more highly
organized, much more complex, and is therefore much
more susceptible of injury. There never was a time in
the history of the world when an enemy of society
could work such mighty mischief as to-day. The more
highly developed a civilization is, the more vulnerable
does it become. This is pre-eminently true of a ma-
terial civilization. Learning, statesmanship, character,
respect for law, love of justice, cannot be blown up
with dynamite ; palaces, factories, railways, Brooklyn
bridges, Hoosac tunnels, and all the long inventory of
our material wonders are destructible by material
means. " The explosion of a little nitro-glycerine un-
der a few water mains would make a great city unin-
habitable ; the blowing up of a few railroad bridges
PERILS.— -SOCIALISM. 109
and tunnels would bring famine quicker than the wall
of circumvallation that Titus drew around Jerusalem;
the pumping of atmospheric air into the gas-mains, and
the application of a match would tear up every street
and level every house."* We are preparing conditions
which make possible a Reign of Terror that would beg-
gar the scenes of the French Revolution.
Conditions at the "West are peculiarly favorable to
the growth of socialism. The much larger proportion
of foreigners there, and the strong tendency of immi-
gration thither, will have great influence. There is a
stronger individuality in the West. The people are
less conservative ; there is less regard for established
usage and opinion. The greater relative strength of
Romanism there is significant ; for apostate Catholics
furnish the very soil to which socialism is indigenous.
Mormonism also is doing a like preparatory work. It
is gathering together great numbers of ill-balanced
men, who are duped for a time by Mormon mummery ;
but many of them, becoming disgusted, leave the church
and with it all faith in religion of any sort. Skeptical,
soured, cranky, they are excellent socialistic material.
Irreligion abounds much more than at the East ; the
proportion of Christian men is much smaller. " Into
these Western communities the international societies
and secret labor leagues and Jacobin clubs, and athe-
istic, infidel, rationalistic organizations of every name
in the Old World, are continually emptying themselves.
They are the natural reservoirs of whatever is uneasy,
turbulent, antagonistic to either God or man among
the populations across the sea. They are also the nat-
ural places of refuge for all in our own country who are
soured by misfortune, misanthropic, seekers of radical
* " Social Problems." D. 14.
110 PERILS. SOCIALISM.
reforms, renegades, moral pariahs. They are hence, in
the nature of things, a sort of hot-beds where every
form of pestilent error is sure to be found and to come
to quick fruitage. You can hardly find a group of
ranch-men or miners from Colorado to the Pacific who
will not have on their tongue's end the labor slang of
Denis Kearney, the infidel ribaldry of Robert Ingersoll,
the socialistic theories of Karl Marx."*
Socialism makes few proselytes among farmers. Less
than one-half of all the lands West of the Mississippi
is arable. The agricultural element, therefore, will be
a much smaller proportion of the whole population in
the West than in the East. The industries of several
of the great mountain states will be almost wholly
mining and manufacturing ; nearly the whole popula-
tion, therefore, will be wage-workers — the class most
easily discipled by socialistic agitators. The capitalist is
a large figure in the West. He owns the mines, he owns
vast reaches of grazing land, and the great herds of cat-
tle.f He has also invested in many thousands of acres
of farming lands. Railroads of immense length have been
richly subsidized with^Iands which will steadily appre-
ciate in value. These corporations bid fair to become
much richer and more powerful than like monopolies
in the East. The longest eastern roads would hardly
be considered more than first-rate side-tracks out W^est;
and some day the wealth and power of the western
roads will be in proportion to their length.
* Rev. E. P. Goodwin, D.D., Home Missionary Sermon, p. 16.
t At a meeting of cattle " kings " in St. Louis, last November, there were
many associations represented which own half a million head of stock or
more. The Northern New Mexico Cattle Grower's Association own 800,000
cattle, besides a large number of horses, which graze over 15,000,000 acres
of land. The Texas Live Stock Association own 1,000,000 cattle, 1,000,000
sheep and 350,000 horses. A moderate estimate of their value would be
PEBILS. SOCIALISM. Ill
There was no immense disparity of fortune between
the early settlers of the East. They started pretty
evenly in the race, and it has taken several generations
to develop the wide extremes of modern society ; but
these differences exist at the outset in the West. East-
ern capital has emptied itself into Western mines and
herds and " bonanza " farms. The comparatively small
population of the West has to-day more millionaires
and more tramps than the whole country had a few
years since. Many cattle and railway " kings," many
gold and silver" kings," there rule their subjects. And
last August eighty tramps took possession of Castle-
ton, Dakota, drove many families from their homes and
committed numerous excesses. Western society is
organized at the very beginning, on the class distinc-
tions which are so favorable to the growth of social-
ism.
Modern civilization is called on to contend for its life
with forces which it has evolved. Said President
Seelye, last summer, to the graduating class of Amherst
College: "There is one question of our time to ward
which all other questions, whether of nature, of man,
or of God, steadily tend. ... No one will be
likely to dispute the affirmation that the social
question is, and is to be, the question of your
time." That question must be met in the United
States. We need not quiet misgiving with the
thought that popular government is our safety
from revolution. It is because of our free institutions
that the great conflict of socialism with society as now
organized is likely to occur in the United States.
There is a strong disposition among men to charge
most of the ills of their lot to bad government, and to
seek a political remedy for those ills. They expect in
112 PERILS. — WEALTH.
the popularization of power to find relief. Constitu-
tional government, a free press and free speech would
probably quiet popular agitation in Russia for a gen-
eration. The new Franchise Bill will allay restlessness
in England for a time. If Germany should become a
republic, we should hear little of German socialism
for a season. But all our salve of this sort is spent ;
there are no more political rights to bestow ; the peo-
ple are in full possession. Here then, where there is
the fullest exercise of political rights, will the people
first discover that the ballot is not a panacea. Here,
where the ultimate evolution of government has taken
place, will restless men first attempt to live without
government.
There is nothing beyond republicanism but anarch-
ism.
CHAPTER IX.
PERILS. WEALTH.
The wealth of the "United States is phenomenal. In
1880 it was valued at $43,642,000,000 ; more than
enough to buy the Kussian and Turkish Empires, the
kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, Denmark and Italy,
together with Australia, South Africa and all South
America — lands, mines, cities, palaces, factories, ships,
flocks, herds, jewels, moneys, thrones, scepters, dia-
dems and all — the entire possessions of 177,000,000
people. Great Britain is, by far, the richest nation of
PERILS. — WEALTH. 113
the Old World, and our wealth exceeds hers by $276,-
000,000. The most remarkable point of this compar-
ison is the fact that European wealth represents the
accumulations of many centuries, while the greater
part of ours has been created in twenty years. In 1860
our wealth was valued at $16,160,000,000. In 1880 it
had increased 170 per cent. During that period a mil-
lion producers were destroyed by war, and not only
were two great armies withdrawn from productive oc-
cupations, but they devoted marvelous energy and in-
genuity to the work of destruction. Moreover, during
the same period, slaves, whose value was estimated in
1860 at $1,250,000,000, disappeared from the assets of
the nation. But, notwithstanding all this, our wealth,
during those twenty years, increased $27,482.000,000 —
$10,000,000,000 more than the entire wealth of the
Empire of Eussia, to be divided between 82,000,000
people. And this increase, it should be observed, was
only a small part of the wealth created — the excess
after supporting the best-fed people in the world. To
the wealth of 1870 were added, during the next ten
years, $19,587,000,000, an average of $260,000 every
hour, night and day, except Sunday, or $6,257,000
every week-day for the period. The material progress
of the United States from 1870 to 1880 is wholly with-
out a parallel in the history of the world.
It is difficult to realize that the youngest of the na-
tions is the richest, and that the richest of all nations
Las, as yet, only begun to develop its resources. Sev-
en-eighths of our arable land are not under cultivation,
and much of our agriculture is rude ; a much larger
portion of our mineral wealth is undeveloped ; and the
only limit which can be set to our possible manufac-
tures is the world's need. Our domestic commerce,
114 PEKtLS. — WEALTH.
already $18,000,000,000 * a year, will double and quad-
ruple with the growth of population. Here are thirty-
eight nations, so to speak — and soon to be half a hun-
dred— enjoying perfect freedom of intercourse, with
but one language and one currency, with common in-
terests and common institutions. In Europe, com-
merce must run a gauntlet of custom-houses, on a score
of frontiers, and must stumble over thrice as many
languages ; while those nations, with conflicting inter-
ests and mutual jealousies and antipathies, exhaust
much of their strength in watching, foiling, and crip-
pling each other. Europe spends annually on the
maintenance of fleets and armies nearly $900,000,000.
And this is but little more than one-half the actual
cost ; for these 3,000,000 men and more are withdrawn
from industrial pursuits in the flower of their youth.
If the time of privates is worth seventy-five cents a day,
and that of officers two dollars, the value of labor an-
nually lost to Europe by her standing armies is $758,-
978,000. In 1880, we expended on our army and navy
$54,000,000 ; and, reckoning the time of the private
soldier here worth a dollar and a half a day, and that
of the officer worth four dollars, the value of the labor
lost by our army in 1880 was only $16,000,000. That
is, in competing with Europe for wealth, our location
is worth to us about $1,588,000,000 a year. In 1880
our wealth was 23.93 per cent, of the wealth of all Eu-
rope; our earnings were 28.01 per cent, of those of Eu-
rope ; and our increase of wealth was 49.28 per cent,
of European increase. From 1870 to 1880 there was
a decrease of wealth per caput, in Europe, of nearly 3
per cent., while here there was an increase of 39 per
cent. If existing conditions continue, the time will un-
* J. L. Stevens, in International Review, Dec. 1881.
PERILS. WEALTH. 115
doubtedly come when the people of the United States
will possess more wealth than all the nations of Eu-
rope. Our riches, together with the power, the prob-
lems and dangers which attend them, are to be multi-
plied many fold. Mr. Gladstone estimates that the
amount of wealth that could be handed down to pos-
terity, produced during the first 1800 years of the
Christian Era, was equaled by the production of the
first fifty years of this century; and that an equal
amount was produced in the twenty years from 1850 to
1870. This will not seem incredible, if we accept his
further estimate that the manufacturing power of the
world is doubled, by the aid of machinery, every seven
years. Some thirty years ago, the power of machinery
in the mills of Great Britain was computed to be equal
to* 600,000,000 men, or more than all the adults, male
and female, of mankind. Think of such a power, and
much greater, at work for the enriching of our nation,
and that power doubled every seven years! It is a
promise of unspeakable wealth. And such wealth con-
tains mighty possibilities, both for good and evil. Let
us, in this connection, look at the latter.
1. As civilization increases, wealth has more mean-
ing, and money a larger representative power. Civili-
zation multiplies wants, which money affords the
means of gratifying. With the growth of civilization,
therefore, money will be an ever-increasing power, and
the object of ever-increasing desire. Hence the dan-
ger of Mammonism, growing more and more intense?
and infatuated. The love of money is the besetting
sin of commercial peoples, and runs in the very blood
of Anglo-Saxons, who are the great wealth-creators of
the world. Our soil is peculiarly favorable to the
* " Emerson's Prose Works," Vol. II., p. 236,
116 PERILS. WEALTH.
growth of this "root of all evil"; and for two reasons.
First, wealth is more easily amassed here than any-
where else in the world, of which we have already seen
sufficient proof ; and, second, wealth means more, has
more power, here than elsewhere. Every nation has
its aristocracy. In other lands the aristocracy is one
of birth ; in ours it is one of wealth. It is useless for
us to protest that we are democratic, and to plead the
leveling character of our institutions. There is among
us an aristocracy of recognized power, and that aris-
tocracy is one of wealth. No heraldry offends our re-
publican prejudices. Our ensigns armorial are the
trademark. Our laws and customs recognize no noble
titles ; but men can forego the husk of a title who pos-
sess the fat ears of power. In England there is an
eager ambition to rise in rank, an ambition as rarely
gratified as it is commonly experienced. With us, as-
piration meets with no such iron check as birth. A
man has only to build higher the pedestal of his wealth.
He may stand as high as he can build. His wealth can-
not secure to him genuine respect, to be sure ; but, for
that matter, neither can birth. It will secure to him
an obsequious deference. It may purchase political
distinction. It is power. In the Old World, men com-
monly live and die in the condition in which they are
born. The peasant may be discontented, may covet
what is beyond his reach; but his desire draws no
strength from expectation. Heretofore, in this coun-
try, almost any laborer, by industry and economy,
might gain a competence, and even a measure of
wealth ; and, though now we are beginning to approx-
imate the conditions of European labor, young men,
generally, when they start in life, still expect to be-
come rich ; and, thinking not to serve their god for
PERILS. WEALTH. 117
naught, they commonly become faithful votaries of
Mammon. Thus the prizes of wealth in the United
States, being at the same time greater and more easily
won, and the lists being open to all comers, the rush is
more general, and the race more eager than elsewhere
" But they that will be rich, fall into temptation and
a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which
drown men in destruction and perdition."* They who
"will be rich" are tempted to resort to methods less
laborious and more and more unscrupulous. Fierce
competition is leading to frequent adulterations, and
many forms of bribery. It is driving legitimate busi-
ness to illegitimate methods. Merchants offer prizes
to draw trade, and employ the lottery to enrich them-
selves and debauch the public. The growth of the
spirit of speculation is ominous. The salaries of clerks,
the business capital, the bank deposits and trust-funds
of all sorts which disappear " on 'change," indicate how
widespread is the unhealthy haste to be rich. And
such have the methods of speculation become that
" The Exchange " has degenerated into little better
than a euphemism for " gambling hell." " While one
bushel in seven of the wheat crop of the United States
is received by the Produce Exchange of New York, its
traders buy and sell two for every one that comes out
of the ground. When the cotton plantations of the
South yielded less than six million bales, the crop on
the New York Cotton Exchange was more than thirty-
two millions. Pennsylvania does well to run twenty-
four millions of barrels of oil in a year ; but New York
City will do as much in two small rooms in one week,
and the Petroleum Exchanges sold altogether last year
two thousand million barrels."! Such facts indicate
• I Tim. vi, 9.
t Henry D. Lloyd, North American Review , Aug., 1883, p. 118.
118 PERILS. WEALTH.
tow small a portion of the transactions of the '• Ex-
change " is legitimate business, and how large a pro-
portion is simple gambling. Mammonism is corrupt-
ing popular morals in many ways. Sunday amusements
of every kind — horse-racing, base-ball, theaters, beer-
gardens, steamboat and railroad excursions — are all
provided because there is money in them. Licentious
literature floods the land, poisoning the minds of the
young and polluting their lives, because there is money
in it. Gambling flourishes in spite of the law, and
actually under its license, because there is money in it.
And that great abomination of desolation, that triumph
of Satan, that more than ten Egyptian plagues in one
— the liquor traffic — grows and thrives at the expense
of every human interest, because there is money in it.
Ever since greed of gold sold the Christ and raffled for
his garments, it has crucified every form of virtue be-
tween thieves. And, while Mammonism corrupts mor-
als, it blocks reforms. Men who have favors to ask
of the public are slow to follow their convictions into
any unpopular reform movement. They can render
only a surreptitious service. Their discipleship must
needs be secret, " for fear of the " customers or clients
or patients. It is Mammonism which makes most men
invertebrates. When important Mormon legislation
was pending, certain New York merchants telegraphed
to members of Congress : " New York sold $13,000,000
worth of goods to Utah last year. Hands off!" The
tribe of Demetrius, the Ephesian silversmith, is every-
where ; men quick to perceive when this their craft by
which they have their wealth is in danger of being set
at naught. " Nothing is more timorous than a million
dollars — except two millions."
Mammonism ic also corrupting the ballot-box. The
PEEILS. WEALTH. 119
last three presidential elections have shown that the
two great political parties are nearly equal in strength.
The vast majority of voters on both sides are party
men, who vote the same way year after year. The re-
sult of the election is determined by the floating vote.
Of this, a comparatively small portion is thoroughly
intelligent and conscientious ; the remainder is, for the
most part, without convictions, without principle and
thoroughly venal ; hence the great temptation to brib-
ery, to which both parties yield. And if the two par-
ties take distinct issue on economic questions — which
seems likely — each believing that the success of the
other would involve great financial disaster, corrup-
tion money will become an increasingly important po-
litical factor. Moreover, the influence of great corpo-
rations, which so often controls legislation, is moneyed
influence. That this influence is likely to be potent in
the United States Senate may be inferred from its com-
position. The Chicago Tribune stated, last year, that
of seventy-six senators, twenty were millionaires, while
enough more were connected with great corporations
to give control to the interests of concentrated capi-
tal.
2. Again, by reason of our enormous wealth and its
rapid increase, we are threatened with a gross material-
ism. The English epithet applied by Matthew Arnold
to Chicago, "too beastly prosperous," has a subtile
meaning, which perhaps was not intended by the dis-
tinguished visitor. Material growth may be so much
more vigorous than the moral and intellectual as to
have a distinctly brutalizing tendency. Life becomes
sensuous ; that is deemed real which can be seen and
handled, weighed and transported ; and that only has
value which can be appraised in dollars and cents.
120 PERILS. WEALTH.
Wealth was intended to minister to life, to enlarge it;
when life becomes only a ministry to enlarge wealth,
there is manifest perversion and degradation. Says
Mr. "Whipple :* " there is danger that the nation's
worship of labors whose worth is measured by money
will give a sordid character to its mightiest exertions
of power, eliminate heroism from its motives, destroy
all taste for lofty speculation, and all love for ideal
beauty, and inflame individuals with a devouring self-
seeking, corrupting the very core of the national life."
We have undoubtedly developed a larger proportion of
men of whom the above is a faithful picture than any
other Christian nation ; men to whom Agassiz's re-
mark, " I am offered five hundred dollars a night to
lecture, but I decline all invitations, for I have no time
to make money," is simply incomprehensible ; it dazes
them.
There is a "balance of power" to be preserved in
the United States as well as in Europe. Our safety
demands the preservation of a balance between our
material power and our moral and intellectual power.
The means of self -gratification should not outgrow the
power of self-control. Steam-power would have been
useless had we not found in iron, or something else, a
greater power of resistance. And, should we discover
a motor a hundred times more powerful than steam, it
would prove not only useless but fearfully destructive,
unless we could find a still greater resisting power.
Increasing wealth will only prove the means of destruc-
tion, unless it is accompanied by an increasing power
of control, a stronger sense of justice, and a more in-
telligent comprehension of its obligations.
There is a certain unfriendliness between the mate-
* " Character and Characteristic.Men," p. 142.
PERILS. WEALTH. 121
rial and spiritual. The vivid apprehension of th^ one
makes the other seem unreal. When the life of the
senses is intense, spiritual existence and truths are
dim; and when St. Paul was exalted to a spiritual
ecstasy, the senses were so closed that he could not
tell whether he was " in the body or out of the body."
A time of commercial stagnation is apt to be a time of
spiritual quickening, while great material prosperity
is likely to be accompanied by spiritual dearth. A poor
nation is much more sensitive to the power of the gos-
pel than a rich one. So Christ taught : "How hardly
shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of
God !" "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye
of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the King-
dom of God !"* Words as true now as when they were
first uttered, and harving a fuller meaning in the nine-
teenth century than in the first.
3. Again, great and increasing wealth subjects us to
all the perils of luxuriousness. Nations, in their be-
ginnings, are poor ; poverty is favorable to hardihood
and industry; industry leads to thrift and wealth;
wealth produces luxury, and luxury results in enerva-
tion, corruption, and destruction. This is the historic
round which nations have run. "Nations have de-
cayed, but it has never been with the imbecility of
age." f " Avarice and luxury have been the ruin of
every great state." J Her American possessions made
Spain the richest and most powerful nation of Europe ;
but wealth induced luxury and idleness, whence came
poverty and degradation. Home was never stronger
in all the seeming elements of power than at the mo-
ment of her fall. She had grown rich, and riches had
corrupted her morals, rendered her effeminate, and
* Mark x, 23, 25. t Charles Surnner. t Livy.
122 PERILS. WEALTH.
made her an easy prey to the lusty barbarian of the
North. The material splendor of Israel reached its
climax in the glory of Solomon's reign, in which silver
was made to be in Jerusalem as stones ; but it was fol-
lowed by the immediate dismemberment of the king-
dom. Under all that magnificence, at which even
Oriental monarchs wondered, was springing a discon-
tent which led to speedy revolt. Bancroft has wisely
said that " Sedition is bred in the lap of luxury."
The influence of mechanical invention is to stimulate
luxurious living. One man, by the aid of steam, is
able to do the work which required two hundred and
fifty men at the beginning of the century. The ma-
chinery of Massachusetts alone represents the labor of
more than 100,000,000 men ; as if one-half of all the
male workmen on the globe had engaged in her ser-
vice. When we remember that this machinery is an
enormous producer of the necessaries, comforts, and
luxuries of life, but is not a consumer of the same, we
see how immensely the average consumption per caput
has increased. As luxuries are thus cheapened and
brought within the reach of an ever- widening circle,
there is an increasing tendency toward self-indulgence.
Herodotus said : " It is a law of nature that faint-
hearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countrie3 ;
for we never find that the same soil produces delicacies
and heroes." Is there not danger that our civilization
will become tropical? The temperate zone has pro-
duced the great nations, because in it the conditions of
life have been sufficiently hard to arouse energy and
develop strength. Where men are pampered by na-
ture, they sink to a low level ; and where civilization is
of the pampering sort the tendency is the same. By
means of coal, which Mr. Emerson calls a "portable
PEEILS. WEALTH. 123
climate," together with increasing wealth and luxuries,
we are multiplying tropical conditions here in the
- North.
The splendor of our riches will doubtless dazzle the
world ; but history declares, in the ruins of Babylon
and Thebes, of Carthage and Rome, that wealth has no
conserving power ; that it tends rather to enervate and
corrupt. Our wonderful material prosperity, which is
the marvel of other nations, and the boast of our own,
may hide a decaying core.
4. Again, another danger is the marked and increas-
ing tendency toward a congestion of wealth. The
enormous concentration of power in the hands of one
man is unrepublican, and dangerous to popular insti-
tutions. The framers of our government aimed to se-
cure the distribution of power. They were careful to
make the several departments — executive, legislative,
and judicial — operate as checks on each other. An
executive, chosen by the people and responsible to
them, may exercise but little authority ; and after a
short period he must return it to them. But a money-
king may double, quadruple, centuple his wealth, if he
can. He may exercise vastly more power than the
governor of his state ; but he is irresponsible. He is
not a constitutional monarch, but a czar. He is not
chosen by the people with reference to his fitness to
administer so great a trust ; he may lack utterly all
moral qualifications for it. We have, indeed, some
rich men who are an honor to our civilization ; but the
power of many millions is almost certain to find its
way into strong and unscrupulous hands. Our money-
king must not, after two or four years, return his
power to the people; he has a life tenure of office,
provided only his grip upon his golden scepter be
124 PERILS. — WEALTH.
strong. Less than thirty years ago, Emerson wrote
for our wonder : " Some English private fortunes reach,
and some exceed, a million dollars a year." At least •
one American has an income of $1,000,000 a month ;
and others follow hard after him. A list of Mr. Van-
derbilt's stocks, bonds, and securities, makes his aggre-
gate wealth a little over $201,000,000. The assessed
valuation of the aggregate property, real and personal,
of four great states of the Union, having a territory of
nearly 350,000 square miles, falls short of this one for-
tune by several millions of dollars. And there are
fourteen states which separately return less property,
real and personal, than this modern Midas. He owns
one two-hundred-and-eighteenth of the wealth of the
nation.
Superfluity on the one hand, and dire want on the
other — the millionaire and the tramp — are the comple-
ment each of the other. The classes from which we
have most to fear are the two extremes of society — the
dangerously rich and the dangerously poor ; and the
former are much more to be feared than the latter.
Says Chancellor Howard Crosby : " The danger which
threatens the uprooting of society, the demolition of
civil institutions, the destruction of liberty, and the
desolation of all, is that which comes from the rich
and powerful classes in the community." * " The
great estates of Koine, in the time of the Caesars, and
of France in the time of the Bourbons, rivaled those
of the United States to-day ; but both nations were on
their way to the frenzy of revolution, not in spite of
their wealth, but, in some true sense, because of it." f
We have seen? in the preceding chapter, that mechan-
* North American Review, April, 1883, p. 346.
t Editorial in Christian Union, Oct. 16th, 1884.
PERILS. WEALTH. 125
ical invention tends to create operative and capitalist
classes, and render them hereditary. It is the ten-
dency of our civilization to destroy the easy gradation
from poor to rich which now exists, and to divide so-
ciety into only two classes — the rich and the compara-
tively poor. In a new country almost any one can do
business successfully, and broad margins will save
him from the results of blunders which would else-
where be fatal. But, with growing population and in-
creasing facilities of communication, competition be-
comes severe, and then a slight advantage makes the
difference between success and failure. Accumulated
capital is not a slight, but an immense, advantage.
"To him that hath, shall be given." There will,
therefore, be an increasing tendency toward the cen-
tralization of great wealth in corporations, which will
simply eat up the small manufacturers and the small
dealers. As the two classes of rich and poor grow
more distinct, they will become more estranged, and
whether the rich, like Sydney Smith, come to regard
poverty as "infamous," it is quite certain that many of
the poor will look upon wealth as criminal.
"We have traced some of the natural tendencies of
great and increasing wealth. It should be observed
that these tendencies will grow stronger, because
wealth is increasing much more rapidly than popula-
tion. Remarkable as the growth of the latter is, it be-
ing four times the European rate of increase from 1870
to 1880, and three times that of England or Germany,
the multiplication of wealth has been even more re-
markable. Since 1850, in one generation, our national
wealth has increased more than six fold, and, notwith-
standing the growth of population, the wealth per
caput has increased nearly three fold. There is reason
126 !>EErLS. WEALTH.
to believe that this rate of increase will be sustained
for years to come. If it is, the danger from Mammon-
ism, materialism, luxuriousness, and the congestion of
wealth will be a constantly increasing peril.
It remains to be shown that the dangers of wealth
are greater at the West than at the East. There is
more of Mammonism there. With rare exceptions, the
West is being filled with a selected population, and the
principle of selection is the desire to better their
worldly condition. Nineteen men of every twenty (and
the twentieth is either an invalid or a home mission-
ary) will tell you that they went there for the express
purpose of making money. Where land is being rap-
idly taken, and real estate of all sorts is rapidly appre-
ciating in value, men make every possible present en-
deavor with reference to the future. Under such con-
ditions the race after wealth becomes peculiarly eager.
The gambling spirit which always prevails in mining
regions exerts a wide influence, even in agricultural
states. Farmers often rent land, put their entire cap-
ital into a great acreage, and stake everything on a
single crop. The sudden wealth often realized in the
mines stimulates the general haste to be rich. And
where riches are almost the sole object of endeavor,
their possession gives greater power. In the Rocky
Mountains a man may be to-day a caterer or bar-
tender, fit for that and nothing more; to-morrow,
without any good wit of his own, a millionaire ; next
day, because "Mammon wins his way where seraphs
might despair," a lieutenant-governor or United States
senator. The demoralizing atmosphere of the New
West is seen in the fact that there are everywhere
church-members who seem to have left their religion
behind when they crossed the Missouri. Many men
PERILS. WEALTH. 127
who lived reputable Christian lives in the East are there
swept into the great maelstrom of worldliness.
As a comment on our gross materialism here in the
United States, and especially in the far "West, I will
quote a short passage from the note-book of the mu-
sician, Gottschalk. Being ill for three days in a town
in Nevada, and finding himself utterly deserted, he
gives vent to his feelings in these words: "I defy
your finding, in the whole of Europe, a village where
an artist of reputation would find himself as isolated
as I have been here. If, in place of playing the piano,
of having composed two or three hundred pieces, of
having given seven or eight thousand concerts, of hav-
ing given to the poor one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, of having been knighted twice, I had sold suc-
cessfully for ten years quarters of salted hog, my poor,
isolated chamber would have been invaded by adorers
and admirers."
There is more danger of luxuriousness at the "West,
a greater extravagance than among Eastern people of
like means. Money comes faster and goes faster.
There is little of that strict economy which is so often
practiced at the East. A western town of ten thous-
and inhabitants will boast of " carrying all the style"
of an eastern city of fifty thousand. New villages are
likely to have more electric lights and telephones than
many of the great cities of Europe. The millionaires
of the West v, ere not many of them born to wealth.
They have made their riches within a few years ; and
such are the men to spend money freely. They be-
come the social legislators, and help to create customs
of free expenditure.
The striking centralization of capital which has al-
ready taken place at the West was sufficiently noticed
128 PERILS. THE CITY.
in the preceding chapter. Enough has been said to
show that the West is peculiarly exposed to the dan-
gers with which wealth threatens the nation.
CHAPTEE X.
PERILS. THE CITY.
The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It
is also the storm center. The fact, therefore, that it is
growing much more rapidly than the whole population
is full of significance. In 1790 one-thirtieth of the
population of the United States lived in cities of 8,000
inhabitants and over; in 1800, one twenty-fifth; in
1810, and also in 1820, one-twentieth ; in 1830, one
sixteenth; in 1840, one-twelfth; in 1850, one-eighth;
in 1860, one-sixth ; in 1870, a little over one-fifth ; and
in 1880, 22.5 per cent., or nearly one-fourth.* From
1790 to 1880 the whole population increased twelve
fold, the urban population eighty-six fold. From 1830
to 1880 the whole population increased a little less
than four fold, the urban population thirteen fold.
From 1870 to 1880 the whole population increased
thirty per cent., the urban population forty per cent.
During the half century preceding 1880, population in
the city increased more than four times as rapidly as
that of the village and country. In 1800 there were
* " Compendium of tne Tenth Cengus," Part 1., pp. xxx and 8.
PERILS. THE CITY. 129
only six cities in the United States which had a popu-
lation of 8,000 or more. In 1880 there were 286.
The city has become a serious menace to our civili-
zation, because in it, excepting Mormonism, each of
the dangers we have discussed is enhanced, and all are
focalized. It has a peculiar attraction for the immi-
grant. Our fifty principal cities contain 39.3 per cent,
of our entire German population, and 45.8 per cent, of
the Irish. Our ten larger cities contain only nine per
cent, of the entire population, but 23 per cent, of the
foreign. While a little less than one-third of the pop-
ulation of the "United States is foreign by birth or
parentage, sixty-two per cent, of the population of Cin-
cinnati are foreign, eighty-three per cent, of Cleveland,
sixty-three per cent, of Boston, eighty-eight per cent, of
New York, and ninety-one per cent, of Chicago.*
Because our cities are so largely foreign, Eomanism
finds in them its chief strength.
For the same reason the saloon, together with the
intemperance and the liquor power which it repre-
sents, is multiplied in the city. East of the Missis-
sippi there was, in 1880, one saloon to every 438 of the
population ; in Boston, one to every 329 ; in Cleveland,
one to every 192 ; in Chicago, one to every 179 ; in
New York, one to every 171; in Cincinnati, one to
every 124. Of course the demoralizing and pauper-
izing power of the saloons and their debauching influ-
ence in politics increase with their numerical strength.
It is the city where wealth is massed ; and here are
* The Compendium of the Tenth Census gives the number of persons,
foreign-born, in each of the fifty principal cities, but does not give the
native-born population of foreign parentage. We are enabled to compute
it, however, by knowing that the total number of foreigners and their
children of the first generation is, according to the Census, 2.24 times larger
than the total number of foreign-bom.
130 PERILS. THE CITY.
the tangible evidences of it piled many stories high.
Here the sway of Mammon is widest, and his worship
the most constant and eager. Here are luxuries
gathered — everything that dazzles the eye, or tempts
the appetite ; here is the most extravagant expendi-
ture. Here, also, is the congestion of wealth the se-
verest. Dives and Lazarus are brought face to face ;
here, in sharp contrast, are the ennui of surfeit and
the desperation cf starvation. The rich are richer, and
the poor are poorer., in the city than elsewhere ; and,
as a rule, the greater the city, the greater are the
riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor. Not
only does the proportion of the poor increase with the
growth of the city, but their condition becomes more
wretched. The poor of a city of 8,000 inhabitants are
well off compared with many in New York ; and there
are no such depths of woe, such utter and heart-wring-
ing wretchedness in New York as in London. Bead
in " The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," a prophecy of
what will some day be seen in American cities, pro-
vided existing tendencies continue: "Few who will
read these pages have any conception of what these
pestilential human rookeries are, where tens of thou-
sands are crowded together amidst horrors which call
to mind what we have heard of the middle passage of
the slave-ship. To get into them you have to pene-
trate courts reeking with poisonous and malodorous
gases, arising from accumulations of sewage and refuse
scattered in all directions, and often flowing beneath
your feet ; courts, many of them which the sun never
penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of fresh
air. You have to ascend rotten staircases, grope
your way along dark and filthy passages swarming
with vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by
3PE&ILS. THE CITY. 131
the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance to
the dens in w! ioh these thousands of beings herd to-
gether. Eight feet square ! That is about the aver-
age size of very many of these rooms. Walls and ceil-
ing are black with the accretions of filth which have
gathered upon them through long years of neglect.
It is exuding through cracks in the boards; it is every-
where. . . . Every room in these rotten and reeking
tenements houses a family, often two. In one cellar, a
sanitary inspector reports finding a father, mother,
three children, and four pigs. . . . Mere are seven
people living in one underground kitchen, and a little
dead child lying in the same room. Elsewhere is a
poor widow, her three children, and a child who had
been dead thirteen days.* Her husband, who was a
cabman, had shortly before committed suicide. . . .
In another apartment, nine brothers and sisters, from
twenty-nine years of age downwards, live, eat, and
sleep together. Here is a mother who turns her chil-
dren into the street in the early evening, because she
lets her room for immoral purposes until long after
midnight, when the poor little wretches creep back
again, if they have not found some miserable shelter
elsewhere. "Where there are beds, they are simply
heaps of dirty rags, shavings, or straw; but for the
most part these miserable beings find rest only upon
the filthy boards. . . . There are men and women
who lie and die, day by day, in their wretched single
rr jm, sharing all the family trouble, enduring the hun-
ger and the cold, and waiting, without hope, without a
single ray of comfort, until God curtains their staring
eyes with the merciful film of death. "f Says the
* The investigations here reported were made in the summer.
\ " The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," pp. 3, 4, 10,
132 PERILS. THE CITT.
writer : " So far from making the most of our facts for
the purpose of appealing to emotion, we have been
compelled to tone down everything, and wholly to
omit what most needs to be known, or the ears and
eyes of our readers would have been insufferably out-
raged. Indeed, no respectable printer would print,
and certainly no decent family would admit, even the
driest statement of the horrors and infamies dis-
covered in one brief visitation from house to house."
Such are the conditions under which hundreds of
thousands live in London. So much space is given to
this picture, only because London is a future New
York, or Brooklyn, or Chicago. It gives a very dim
impression of what may exist in a great city side by
side with enormous wealth. Is it strange that such
conditions arouse a blind and bitter hatred of our
social system ?
Socialism not only centers in the city, but is almost
confined to it ; and the materials of its growth are
multiplied with the growth of the city. Here is heaped
the social dynamite ; here roughs, gamblers, thieves,
robbers, lawless and desperate men of all sorts, congre-
gate ; men who are ready on any pretext to raise riots
for the purpose of destruction and plunder; here
gather foreigners and wage-workers ; here skepticism
and irreligion abound ; here inequality is the greatest
and most obvious, and the contrast between opulence
and penury the most striking ; here is suffering the
sorest. As the greatest wickedness in the world is ! o
be found not among the cannibals of some far oft
coast, but in Christian lands where the light of truth is
diffused and rejected, so the utmost depth of wretched-
ness exists not among savages, who have few wants,
but in great cities, where, in the presence of plenty and
PEEILS. THE CITY. 133
of every luxury men starve. Let a man become the
owner of a home, and he is much less susceptible to
socialistic propagandism. But real estate is so high in
the city that it is almost impossible for a wage-worker
to become a householder. The law in New York re-
quires a juror to be owner of real or personal property
valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars ;
and this, the Commissioner says, relieves seventy thous-
and of the registered voters of New York City from
jury duty. Let us remember that those seventy thous-
and voters represent a population of two hundred and
eighty thousand, or fifty-six thousand families, not one
of which has property to the value of two hundred and
fifty dollars. " During the past three years, 220,976
persons in New York have asked for outside aid in one
form or another."* Said a New York Supreme Judge,
not long since : " There is a large class — I was about
to say a majority — of the population of New York and
Brooklyn, who just live, and to whom the rearing of
two or more children means inevitably a boy for the
penitentiary, and a girl for the brothel, "f Under such
conditions smolder the volcanic fires of a deep discon-
tent.
We have seen how the dangerous elements of our civ-
ilization are each multiplied and all concentered in the
city. Do we find there the conservative forces of so-
ciety equally numerous and strong? Here are the
tainted spots in the body-politic ; where is the salt f In
1880 there was in the United States one Evangelical
church organization to every 516 of the population. In
Boston there is one church to every 1,600 of the popu-
lation ; in Chicago, one to 2,081 ; in New York, one to
* Mrs. J. S. Lowell, in The Christian Union, March 26th, 1385.
t Henry George's " Social Problems," p. 9&
134 PEBILS. — THE CITt.
2,468; in St. Louis, one to 2,800. The city, where
the forces of evil are massed, and where the need of
Christian influence is peculiarly great, is from one-
third to one-fifth as well supplied u ith churches as the
nation at large. And church accommodations in the
city are growing more inadequate every year. Includ-
ing church organizations of all sorts, Chicago had in
1840 one church to every 747 of the population. In
1851, there was one to every 1,009; in 1862, one to
1,301; in 1870, one to 1,599; in 1880, one to 2,081. I
am not aware that the case of Chicago is exceptional.
In that city " There is a certain district, of which a
careful examination has been made; and in that dis-
trict, out of a population of 50,000, there are 20,000
under twenty years of age, and there are Sunday-
school accommodations for less than 2,000; that is,
over 18,000 of the children and youth are compelled to
go without the gospel of Jesus Christ, because the
Christian churches are asleep. Mr. Gates says:
' What wonder that the polioe arrested last year 7,200
boys and girls for various petty crimes ?' The devil
cares for them. There are 261 saloons and dago shops,
three theaters and other vile places, and the Christian
church offers Sunday-school accommodation to only
2,000 !"* The writer has found similar destitution in
the large cities of Ohio. And the statistics given above
indicate that in the large cities generally it is common
to find ex' ensive districts nearly or quite destitute of the
gospel. South of Fourteenth street, New York, there is
a population of 541,000, for whom there is but one
Protestant church to every 5,000 souls. That is, here
are half a million people only one-tenth as well sup-
plied with moral and Christian influences as the whole
* Rev. H. A. Scfcauffier'8 Address at Saratoga, June, 1884.
PERILS. — THE CITY. 135
country at large. There are wards in New York and other
large cities where there is but one Protestant church to
every ten or fifteen thousand souls : which means that those
wards are from one-twentieth to one-thirtieth as well sup-
plied with churches as the whole land. In Ohio, even includ-
iDg the cities, more than one-fifth of the population is in
Evangelical churches; in Cincinnati, by the latest estimate
of the population, only one in twenty-three.
If moral and religious influences are peculiarly weak
at the point where our social explosives are gathered,
what of city government f Are its strength, and purity
so exceptional as to insure the effective control of these
dangerous elements 1 In the light of notorious facts,
the question sounds satirical. It is commonly said in
Europe, and sometimes acknowledged here, that the
government of large cities in the United States is a
failure. " In all the great American cities there is to-
day as clearly defined a ruling class as in the most
aristocratic countries in the world. Its members carry
wards in their pockets, make up the slates for nominat-
ing conventions, distribute offices as they bargain to-
gether, and — though they toil not, neither do they
spin — wear the best of raiment and spend money lav-
ishly. They are men of power, whose favor the am-
bitious must court, and whose vengeance he must
avoid. Who are these men 1 The wise, the good, the
learned — men who have earned the confidence of their
fellow-citizens by the purity of their lives, the splen-
dor of their talents, their probity in public trusts, their
deep study of the problems of government? No;
they are gamblers, saloon-keepers, pugilists, or worse,
who have made a trade of controlling votes and of
buying and selling offices and official acts."t It has
t " Progress ana Poverty." p. 382,
136 PERILS. THE CITY.
come to this, that holding a municipal office in a large
city almost impeaches a man's character. Known in-
tegrity and competency hopelessly incapacitate a man
for any office in the gift of a city rabble. In a certain
western city, the administration of the mayor had con-
vinced good citizens that he gave constant aid and
comfort to gamblers, thieves, saloon-keepers, and all
the worst elements of society. He became a candidate
for a second term. The prominent men and press of
both parties and the ministry of all denominations
united in a Citizens' League to defeat him ; but he was
triumphantly returned to office by the " lewd fellows
of the baser sort." And now, after a desperate strug-
gle on the part of the better elements to defeat him,
he has been re-elected to a third term of office.
Popular government in the city is degenerating into
government by a "boss." During his visit to this
country Herbert Spencer said : " You retain the forms
of freedom ; but, so far as I can gather, there has been
a considerable loss of the substance. It is true that
those who rule you do not do it by means of retainers
armed with swords ; but they do it through regiments
of men armed with voting papers, who obey the word
of command as loyally as did the dependents of the
old feudal nobles, and who thus enable their leaders to
override the general will, and make the community sub-
mit to their exactions as effectually as their prototypes
of old. Manifestly those who framed your Constitution
never dreamed that twenty thousand citizens would go
to the polls led by a 'boss.' "
As a rule, our largest cities are the worst governed.
It is natural, therefore, to infer that, as our cities grow
larger and more dangerous, the government will be-
come more corrupt, and control will pass more com-
PERILS. THE CITY. 137
pletely into the hands of those who themselves most
need to be controlled. If we would appreciate the sig-
nificance of these facts and tendencies, we must bear
in mind that the disproportionate growth of the city
is undoubtedly to continue, and the number of great
cities to be largely increased. The extraordinary
growth of urban population during this century has
not been at all peculiar to the United States. It is a
characteristic of nineteenth century civilization. In
England and "Wales two-thirds of the entire popula-
tion are found in cities of 3,000 inhabitants and over,
and the urban population is growing nearly twice as
rapidly as that of the country. And this growth of the
city is taking place not only in England and Germany,
where the increase of population is rapid, but also in
France, where population is practically stationary, and
even in Ireland, where it is declining. This strong
tendency toward the city is the result chiefly of manu-
facturers and railway communication, and their influ-
ence will, of course, continue. If the growth of the
city in the United States has been so rapid during this
century, while many millions of acres were being set-
tled, what may be expected when the settlement of the
West has been completed? The rapid rise in the value
of lands will stimulate yet more the growth of the city ;
for the man of small means will be unable to command
a farm, and the town will become his only alternative.
When the public lands are all taken, immigration,
though it will be considerably restricted thereby, will
continue, and will crowd the cities more and more.
This country will undoubtedly have a population of
several hundred millions, for the simple reason that it
is capable of sustaining that number. And it looks as
if ibe larger proportion of it would be urban. There
138 PEEILS. THE CITY.
can be? no indefinite increase of our agricultural popu-
lation. Its growth must needs be slow after the farms
are all taken, and it is necessarily limited; but the
cities may go on doubling and doubling again. Unless
the growth of population is very greatly and unex-
pectedly retarded, many who are adults to-day will
live to see 200,000,000 inhabitants in the United States,
and a number greater than our present population —
over 50,000,000 — living in cities of 8,000 and upwards.
And the city of the future will be more crowded than
that of to-day, because the elevator makes it possible
to build, as it were, one city above another. Thus is
our civilization multiplying and focalizing the elements
of anarchy and destruction. Nearly forty years ago
De Tocqueville wrote : " I look upon the size of cer-
tain American cities, and especially upon the nature of
their population, as a real danger which threatens the
security of the democratic republics of the New World."
That danger grows more real and imminent every
year.
And this peril, like the others which have been dis-
cussed, peculiarly threatens the West. The time will
doubtless come when a majority of the great cities of
the country will be west of the Mississippi. This will
result naturally from the greater eventual population
of the West ; but, in addition to this fact, what has
been pointed out must not be forgotten, that agricul-
ture will occupy a much smaller place relatively in the
industries of the West than in those of the East, be-
cause a much smaller proportion of the ]and is arable.
The vast region of the Rocky Mountains will be inhab-
ited chiefly by a mining and manufacturing population,
and such populations live in cities.
1. In gathering up the results of the foregoing
tEBILS. THE CIT*. 139
cussion of these several perils, it should be remarked
that to preserve republican institutions requires a
higher average intelligence and virtue among large
populations than among small. The government of
3,000,000 people was a simple thing compared with the
government of 50,000,000 ; and the government of
50,000,000 is a simple thing compared with that of
500,000,000. There are many men who can conduct a
small business successfully who are utterly incapable
of managing large interests. In the latter there are
multiplied relations whose harmony must be preserved.
A mistake is farther reaching. It has, as it were, a
longer leverage. This is equally true of the business
of government. The man of only average ability and
intelligence discharges creditably the duties of mayor
in his little town; but he would fail utterly at the head
of the state or the nation. If the people are to gov-
ern, they must grow more intelligent as the popula-
tion and the complications of government increase.
And a higher morality is even more essential. As civ-
ilization increases, as society becomes more complex,
as labor-saving machinery is multiplied and the divis-
ion of labor becomes more minute, the individual be-
comes more fractional and dependent. Every savage
possesses all the knowledge of his tribe. Throw him
upon his own resources, and he is self-sufficient. A
civilized man in like circumstances would perish. The
savage is independent. Civilize him, and he becomes
dependent; the more civilized, the more dependent.
And, as men become more dependent on each other,
they should be able to rely more implicitly on each
other. More complicated and multiplied relations re-
quire a more delicate conscience and a stronger sense
of justice. And any failure in character or conduct
140 PERILS. THE CITY-
under such conditions is farther reaching and more
disastrous in its results.
Is our progress in morals and intelligence at all
comparable to the growth of population? From
1870 to 1880 illiteracy decreased. While population
increased thirty per cent., the illiterate increased only
ten per cent. There were in the United States, in
1880, 1,908,801 illiterate voters, "genuine agnostics,"
who cannot write their own name. At present, only
one voter in six is illiterate ; but, judging from a report
of the Senate Committee on Education, the proportion
will soon increase. That committee estimates the
school population of the United States at 18,000,000,
of which number " 7,500,000, or five-twelfths of the
whole, are growing up in absolute ignorance of the
English alphabet." The nation's illiteracy has not
been discussed, because it is not one of the perils
which peculiarly threaten the "West ; but any one who
would calculate our political horoscope must allow it
great influence in connection with the baleful stars
which are in the ascendant. But the danger which
arises from the corruption of popular morals is much
greater. The republics of Greece and Rome, and, if I
mistake not, all the republics that have ever lived and
died, were more intelligent at the end than at the be-
ginning ; but growing intelligence could not compen-
sate decaying morals. What, then, is our moral prog-
ress? Are popular morals as sound as they were
twenty, or even ten, years ago ? There is, perhaps, no
better index of general morality than Sabbath observ-
ance ; and everybody knows there has been a great in-
crease of Sabbath desecration in ten years. There
was three times as much intoxicating liquor used per
caput in the United States in 1883 as there was in
PERILS. THE CITY. 141
1840. Says the Kev. S. W. Dike :* « It is safe to say
that divorce has been doubled, in proportion to mar-
riages or population, in most of the Northern States
within thirty years. Present figures indicate a still
greater increase." And President "Woolsey, speaking
of the United States, says : f " On the whole, there can
be little, if any question, that the ratio of divorces to
marriages or to population exceeds that of any country
in the Christian world." While the population in-
creased thirty per cent, from 1870 to 1880, the number
of criminals in the United States increased 82.33 per
cent. It looks very much as if existing tendencies
were in the direction of the dead-line of vice. The
city, wealth, socialism, intemperance, Mormonism,
Romanism, and immigration are all increasing more
rapidly than the population. Are popular mor-
als likely to improve under their increasing influ-
ence f
2. The fundamental idea of popular government is
the distribution of power. It has been the struggle of
liberty for ages to wrest power from the hands of one
or the few, and lodge it in the hands of the many.
We have seen, in the foregoing discussion, that cen-
tralized power is rapidly growing. The "boss" makes
his bargain, and sells his ten thousand or fifty thous-
and voters as if they were so many cattle. Centralized
wealth is centralized power; and the capitalist and,
corporation find many ways to control votes. The
liquor power controls thousands of votes in every con-
siderable city. The president of the Mormon church
casts, say, sixty thousand votes. The Jesuits are all
under the command of one man in Washington. The
* Princeton Review ', March, 1884, p. 170.
t North American Review, April, 1883, p. 814.
1.42 PERILS. THE CITY.
Catholic vote is more or less perfectly controlled by
the priests. That means that the Pope can dictate
some hundreds of thousands of votes in the United
States. Is there anything unrepublican in all this?
And we must remember that, if present tendencies
continue, these figures will be greatly multiplied in the
future. And not only is this immense power lodged
in the hand of one man, which in itself is perilous, but
it is wielded without the slightest reference to any
policy or principle of government, solely in the inter-
ests of a church or a business, or for personal ends.
The result of a national election may depend on a
single state ; the vote of that state may depend on a
single city ; the vote of that city may depend on a
" boss," or a capitalist, or a corporation ; or the elec-
tion may be decided, and the policy of the government
may be reversed, by the socialist, or liquor, or Romish,
or immigrant vote.
It matters not by what name we call the man who
wields this centralized power — whether king, czar, pope,
president, capitalist, or boss. Just so far as it is abso-
lute and irresponsible, it is dangerous.
3. These several dangerous elements are singularly
netted together, and serve to , strengthen each other.
It is not necessary to prove that any one of them is
likely to destroy our national life, in order to show
that it is imperiled. A man may die of wounds no one
of which is fatal. No sober-minded man can look
fairly at the facts, and doubt that together these perils
constitute an array which seriously threatens our free
institutions ; especially in view of the fact that their
strength is concentrating in the West, where our de-
fense is weakest.
These dangerous elements are now working, and will
PERILS. — THE CITY. 143
continue to work, incalculable harm and loss — moral,
intellectual, social, pecuniary. But the supreme peril,
which will certainly come, eventually, and must proba-
bly be faced by multitudes now living, will arise, when,
the conditions having been fully prepared, some great
industrial or other crisis precipitates an open struggle
between the destructive and the conservative elements
of society. As civilization advances, and society be-
comes more highly organized, commercial transactions
will be more complex and immense. As a result, all
business relations and industries will be more sensi-
tive. Commercial distress in any great business center
will the more surely create wide-spread disaster.
Under such conditions, industrial paralysis is likely to
occur from time to time, more general and more pros-
trating than any heretofore known. When such a
commercial crisis has closed factories by the ten thou-
sand, and wage-workers have been thrown out of em-
ployment by the million ; when the public lands, which
hitherto at such times have afforded relief, are all ex-
hausted ; when our urban population has been multi-
plied several fold, and our Cincinnatis have become
Chicagos, our Chicagos New Yorks, and our New
Yorks Londons ; when class antipathies are deepened ;
when socialistic organizations, armed and drilled, are
in every city, and the ignorant and vicious power of
crowded populations has fully found itself ; when the
corruption of city governments is grown apace ; when
crops fail, or some gigantic "corner" doubles the price
of bread ; with starvation in the home ; with idle work-
men gathered, sullen and desperate, in the saloons ;
with unprotected wealth at hand ; with the tremendous
forces of chemistry within easy reach ; then, with the
opportunity ', the means, the fit agents, the motive, the
144 THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLEES.
temptation to destroy, all brought into evil conjunction,
THEN will come the real test of our institutions, then
will appear whether we are capable of self-govern-
ment.
CHAPTEB XI.
THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLERS.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, on being asked when the
train ing of a child should begin, replied: "A hundred
years before he is born." Not only should it begin
then, it does; for inheritance, together with that which
necessarily accompanies it, is the great conservative in-
fluence which perpetuates national characteristics, and
preserves the identity of races. In the case of nations,
education, though it may modify the results of inherit-
ance, is, itself, for the most part, determined by in-
heritance. What is the difference between North and
South America ? It is the difference between the An-
glo-Saxon race and the Spanish race. What is the
difference between Massachusetts and Virginia ? It is
the difference between the Pilgrim and the cavalier.
How unlike are Boston, New York, Philadelphia, New
Orleans, Montreal, and Quebec ? Religiously, morally,
intellectually, socially, commercially, in enterprise and
spirit, they differ to-day pretty much as their founders
differed generations ago. It is true of the city and
nation as of the herb, that its seed is in itself, after
its kind.
THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLERS. 145
Communities and commonwealths, like men, have
their childhood, which is the formative period. It is
the first permanent settlers who impress themselves
and their character on the future. Powerful influences
may, in later years, produce important modifications ;
but it is early influence which is farthest reaching, and
is generally decisive. It is easier to form than to re
form ; easier to mold molten iron than to file the cold
cast.
Look at a few illustrations of the above truths. On
the Western Reserve are two adjoining townships,
which were settled by men of radically different char-
acter. The southern township was founded by a far-
seeing and devoted home missionary. He had become
convinced that he could do more to establish Christian
institutions on the Reserve " by one conspicuous ex-
ample of a well organized and well Christianized town-
ship, with all the best arrangements and appliances of
New England civilization, than by many years of des-
ultory effort in the way of missionary labor." The set-
tlers were carefully selected. None but professing
Christians were to become land-holders. As soon as a
few families had moved into the township, public wor-
ship was commenced, and has ever since been main-
tained without interruption. A church was organized
under the roof of the first log cabin. At the center of
the township, where eight roads meet, was located the
church building, fitly representing the central place oc-
cupied by the service of God in the life of the colony.
Soon followed the school-house and the public library.
And there, in the midst of the unconquered forest, only
eight years after the first white settlement, the people,
mindful of higher education, and true to their New
England antecedents, planted an academy. At a very
14G THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLERS.
early period several benevolent societies were organ-
ized, and here was opened the first school for the deaf
and dumb in the State of Ohio.
The northern township was first settled by an infidel,
who seems to have given to the community not only
his name, but, in large measure, his character also. He
naturally attracted men of the same sort. He ex-
pressed the desire that there might never be a Christian
church in the township ; and, so far as I know, there
has never been organized within its limits an Evangel-
ical church. Though one of the best colleges in the
West was founded within five miles, I am unable to
learn that any young man from this township has ever
taken a college course. A few* have entered profes-
sional life, none of whom has gained a wide reputation.
On the other hand, the southern township is widely
known to-day for its moral and religious character, its
weal thf and liberality, and for the exceptionally large
number of young men and women it sends to colleges
and seminaries. It has furnished many members of
the state legislature and senate. It has been fruitful
of ministers and educators, some of whom have gained
a national reputation. From this little village of a few
hundred inhabitants have gone forth men to college
professorships east and west, to the Supreme Bench of
the state, and to the United States Congress. The
general character of these two townships was fixed at
the beginning of the century. Their founders placed
a stamp upon them which abides.
* I can gain definite knowledge of only seven, though it is quite likely
there have been more.
t Though the northern township had the advantage of a better sol1, the
assessed valuation of real and personal property in the southern nov ex-
ceeds that of the other by fifty-six per cent. Godliness is profitable t *he
life that now is.
THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLERS. 147
The town of Boscawen, New Hampshire, was settled
in 1734, by a colony of Massachusetts people. Scarcely
were they settled, when they took steps to secure
" some suitable man and a Christian learned" to preach
the gospel. The original stock was good, and the for-
mative influences were Christian. We now find that
its collegiate and professional record contains more
than 130 names, among which there are those of two
missionaries, six journalists, twenty- one lawyers, thirty-
five physicians, and forty-two ministers. From this
town came General John A. Dix, Professor Moses Far-
mer, John P. Farmer, William Pitt Fessenden, Nathaniel
Green, Colonel Thomas Gordon Green, Daniel Webster,
and Ezekiel Webster.
When Northampton, Massachusetts, was settled, in
1654, it was " way out west" on the frontier. Among
the early settlers in the then wilderness, who shaped
the character and history of the town, were the Aliens,
Bartletts, Bridgmans, Clapps, Dwights, Elliotts, Haw-
leys, Kings, Lymans, Mathers, Parsons, Stoddards.
Strongs, Tappans, and Wrights. The town early be-
came distinguished for its marked religious character
and its educational advantages. For a century and a
quarter the entire population, save the very old and
the very young, the sick and their attendants, were
found in the church every Sabbath. In 1735, during
the pastorate of Jonathan Edwards, over 600, out of a
population of 1,100, were members of the church. For
seven generations the impress given by the early set-
tlers has remained. Their influence upon the commu-
nity, and that of the community upon the state and the
nation, may be, in some measure, estimated from the"
following record.* Among the natives and residents
* « Northampton Antiquities," by Rev. Solomon Clark,
148 THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLEB8.
of the town are about 354 college graduates, besides
fifty-six graduates of other institutions, one hundred
and fourteen ministers, eighty-four ministers' wives,
ten missionaries, twenty-five judges, about one hun
dred and two lawyers, ninety-five physicians ; one hun-
dred and one educators, including seven college presi-
dents and thirty professors, twenty-four editors, six
historians, and twenty-four authors, among whom are
George Bancroft, John Lothrop Motley, Professor
W. D. "Whitney, and J. G. Holland; thirty-eight offi-
cers of state, among them two governors, two secre-
taries of the Commonwealth, seven senators, and eigh-
.teen representatives; twenty-one army officers, includ-
ing six colonels and two generals ; twenty-eight offi-
cers of the United States, among them a Secretary of
the Navy, two Foreign Ministers, a Treasurer of the
United States, five senators, eight members of Con-
gress, and one President.
If a community produces or fails to produce good
citizens and able men, the records of the founders will
rarely fail to afford an explanation, for the influence of
the early settlers continues operative until their de-
scendants are displaced by some other stock. It is
true the glory is departing from, many a New England
village, because men, alien in blood, in religion, and in
civilization, are taking possession of homes in which
were once reared the descendants of the Pilgrims.
But the fact that the character of New England is un-
dergoing important changes is no proof that the im-
press now being given to the new communities of the
"West will not be permanent. There is no likelihood
that the foreign immigration now pouring in upon us
is ever to be supplanted by another stock. Instead, it
will be reinforced until there is an equalization of pop-
THE INFLUENCE OF E^LRLT SETTLEBS. 149
ulation between the Old World and the New, and then
it will cease. Beyond a peradventure, the character,
and hence the destiny, of the great "West, for centuries
to come, is now being determined.
" I hear the tread of pioneers,
Of nations yet to be ;
The first low wash of waves, where sooa
Shall roll a human sea.
" The rudiments of empire here
Are plasMc yet, and warm ;,
The chaos of a mighty world
Is rounding into form."
What the final form of that western world is likely
to be, we may infer from the forces which are at work
shaping it. How do they compare with the influences
which molded New England institutions'? The Pil-
grim fathers sought these shores not simply as refu-
gees, but also as missionaries. "A great hope and
inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation
(or, at least, to make some way thereunto) for propa-
gating and advancing the Gospel of the Kingdom of
Christ in those remote parts of the world." They
came not for gold ; but for conscience sake and soul's
sake. The early settlers of New England were suf-
ficiently homogeneous to enable them to labor har-
moniously and successfully to make religion, learning,
liberty and law, the four corner-stones of their civiliza-
tion. New England ideas gave form to the national
government, and shaped the institutions of the Mid-
dle States ; but does any one suppose they are domi-
nant to-day in the great territories of the West? Is
there no danger that an alien and materialistic civiliza-
tion will spring up in the Rocky Mountains and beyond*?
The population of the frontier is thoroughly hetero-
geneous. In a town in Montana of about 7,000inhabi-
150 THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLEBS.
tants, a religious census discovered, in addition to the
usual Protestant sects, evangelical and otherwise, 3,000
Catholics, several members of the Greek church, three
Mohammedans and 360 Buddhists. In a single con-
gregation there were representatives of fifteen states
of the Union, scattered from the Atlantic to the Pa-
cific, and the following nationalities : German, French,
Italian, English, Scotch, Irish, "Welsh, Norwegian,
Swedish, Greek and Russian, besides a native of
Alaska. The "West is being settled by well-nigh every
variety of race, representing every type of religion and
irreligion — peoples different in antecedents, language,
customs, habits, ideas and character. The one thing
in which a frontier population agrees is the universal
and unbending purpose to make money.
We have already seen that the West is peculiarly
exposed to the dangers of Mammonism, materialism,
luxuriousness and the centralization of wealth; that
conditions are exceptionally favorable to the spread of
socialism ; that the relative power of the saloon is two
and a half times greater in the far West than in the
East ; that Mormonism is rapidly growing ; that
Komanism, as compared with the population, is about
three times as strong in the territories as in the whole
United States; and that into the West is pouring
seventy-five per cent, of immigration. These forces of
evil, which are severely trying the established institu-
tions of the East, are brought to bear with increased
power upon the plastic and formative society of the
West. It is like subjecting a child to evil influences,
for resistance to which the full strength of mature
years is none too great.
We have seen (Chap. IV.) that nearly all of the per-
ils which have been discussed are greatly enhanced
THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLERS. 151
by the presence of the foreign element. It is of the
utmost significance that this element constitutes so
large a proportion of the settlers who are now shaping
the future of the great commonwealths of the West.
Those of foreign birth or extraction * were, in 1880,
38.2 per cent, of the population of Washington Terri-
tory. Of Montana,, they constituted 48.8 per cent, of
the population ; of Wyoming, 50.5 per cent.-; of Utah,
51.9 per cent.; of Idaho, 53.2 per cent.; of Arizona,
55.2 per cent.; of Dakota, 66.5 per cent.; of the State
of Nebraska, 43.5 per cent.; of California, 59.9 per
cent.; of Nevada, 63.3 per cent., and of Minnesota,
71.6 per cent. Not including Alaska, New Mexico, or
the Indian Territory, 53.9 per cent, of the population
of the territories was, in 1880, of foreign birth or ex-
traction. The population of New Mexico, though al-
most wholly native, is essentially foreign — foreign in
race, language, education (or rather the lack of it), in
religious ideas, habits and character. It is much more
difficult to assimilate than any of the European races.
The same is true of the population of the Indian Ter-
ritory. Counting these peoples, then, as foreign, 66
per cent, of the population of the territories is of for-
eign birth or extraction ; and these territories include
nearly 44 per cent, of all the land between the Missis-
sippi and Alaska. If we add California, Colorado, Min-
nesota, Nebraska, Nevada and Oregon, these states,
together with the territories, constitute nearly two-
thirds of all the West, and 58.9 per cent, of their in-
habitants are of foreign extraction or birth.
We have seen that dangerous influences are being
* By foreign extraction is meant natives, one or both of whose parents
were foreign-born. See " Compendium of Tenth Census," Part II, pp. 1408
and 1409.
152 THE INFLUENCE OF EAELY SETTLERS.
brought to "bear upon the new settlements of the West
with peculiar power. Are the neutralizing and saving
influences of the Christian religion equally strong?
According to Dr. Dorchester, the evangelical church
membership of the United States in 1880, was one-
fifth of the entire population ; but in Oregon, the same
year, only one in eleven of the population was in some
evangelical, church ; in Dakota, one in twelve ; in
"Washington, one in sixteen ; in California and Colora-
do, one in twenty; in Idaho, one in thirty- three ; in
Montana, one in thirty-six ; in Nevada, one in forty-
six; in Wyoming, one in eighty-one; in Utah, one in
224 ; in New Mexico, one in 657 ; in Arizona, one in
685.
If, as Milton says, "Childhood shows the man as
morning shows the day," what will be the manhood of
the West, unless the churches of the East are speedily
aroused to some appreciation of their opportunity and
their obligation?
Important changes are taking place in the East and
South, but they do not possess the almost boundless
significance which attaches to beginnings. East of
the Mississippi, state constitutions and laws were
formed long since ; society is no longer chaotic, it has
crystallized ; religion has its recognized institutions
which are thoroughly established. A vast work remains
to be done, especially in the South and the cities of
the North — a work which sustains important relations
to our national welfare ; but it is the West, not the
South or the North, which holds the key to the nation's
future. The center of population, of manufactures, of
wealth, and of political power is not moving south, but
west. The Southern States will never have a majority
of our population ; the West will. To-day, the consti-
THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY SETTLERS. 153
tutions and laws of many of the future states of our
western empire are unformed. Those great territo-
ries, as Edmund Burke once said of the nation, are yet
"in the gristle "; society is still chaotic ; religious, ed-
ucational and political institutions are embryonic ; but
their character is being rapidly fashioned by the swift,
impetuous forces of intense western life. "Know thy
opportunity."
CHAPTER XII.
THE EXHAUSTION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS,
THOMAS CABLYLE once said to an American : " Ye may
boast o' yer dimocracy, or any ither 'cracy, or any kind
o' poleetical roobish ; but the reason why yer laboring
folk are so happy is thoth ye have a vost deal o* land
for a verra few people." Carlyle was not the man to
take an unprejudiced view of republican institutions;
but he was not mistaken in finding great significance
in the fact that heretofore our land has been vastly
greater than its population. The rapid accumulation
of our wealth, our comparative immunity from the con-
sequences of unscientific legislation, our financial elas-
ticity, our high wages, the general welfare and content-
ment of the people hitherto have all been due, in very
large measure, to an abundance of cheap land. When
the supply is exhausted, we shall enter upon a new era,
and shall more rapidly approximate European condi-
tions of life. The gravity of the change was clearly
154 THE EXHAUSTION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS.
foreseen by Lord Maeaulay, and expressed in his well-
known letter to Hon. H. S. Randall, in 1857 — a letter
which General Garfield said startled him " like an alarm
bell in the night." "Your fate," says Macaulay, "I
believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a phys-
ical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of
fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population
will be far more at ease than the laboring population
of the Old World. . . . But the time will come
when New England will be as thickly peopled as Old
England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as
much with you as with us. You will have your Man-
chesters and Birminghams. And in those Manchesters
and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans
will assuredly be some tune out of work. Then your
institutions will be fairly brought to the test. . . .
Through such seasons the United States will have to
pass in the course of the next century, if not of this. I
wish you a good deliverance. But my reason and my
wishes are at war, and I cannot help foreboding the
Worst."
What is the extent of these public lands whose oc-
cupation means so much I The public domain west of
the Mississippi, not including Alaska, is estimated to
have been, in 1880, 880,787,746 acres.* This includes
* The following table, showing the location of public lands, is compiled
from " Spaulding on Public Lands," pp. 6, 7.
Surveyed and Unsurveyed.
Unsold Acres. Acres. Total.
Arizona 1,561,231 61,098,366 68,659,591
Arkansas 4,620,120 .... 4,623,120
California 25,250,680 48,643,592 73,894,272
Colorado 20,489,312 40,651,670 61,146,982
Dakota 12,225,492 71,422,103 83,647,595
Idaho 3,925,237 47,7 9,: 68 61,664,605
Indian Territory 17,150,250 17,150,250
Kansas 28,049,731 .... 28,049,731
THE EXHAUSTION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. 155
land necessary to fill railroad grants, estimated at 110,-
000,000 acres, also private land claims estimated* at
80,000,000 acres, together with military and Indian res-
ervations estimated at 157,356,952 acres. Supposing
all of the military and Indian reservations to revert to
the public domain save 57,000,000 acres, there remained
of the public lands west of the Mississippi, in 1880, yet
to be disposed of, about 633,787,746 acres. This seems
an almost inexhaustible supply, but we must remember
the magnitude of the demand. In 1881, tlie govern-
ment parted with 10,893,397 acres ; in 1882, 14,309,-
166 ; in 1883, 19,4^0,032 ; and in 1884, 27,531,170— a
slice considerably larger than the State of Ohio, in a
single year, and a total in the four years of 72,163,765
acres, leaving in the hands of the government at the
present time about 561,623,981 acres. Not only is the
amount annually disposed of enormous, but, as we
have seen, it is very rapidly increasing. Even if the
increase should cease, the demand for 1884, steadily
continued, would exhaust the supply in twenty years.
It must not be forgotten that these 561,000,000 acres
include the great mountain ranges, and all the barren
lands. Only a comparatively small portion is arable.
The farming lands of the "West, therefore, will all be
Louisiana
2,130,000
2,130,000
Minnesota
13,383,813
13,510,423
26,894,236
Missouri
1,000,000
....
1,000,000
Montana.
5,TT9,452
80,651,676
86,431,128
Nebraska
23,958,652
7,052,207
31,010,859
Nevada
8,337,671
58,436,698
66,774,269
New Mexico
6,042,409
67,024,990
73,067,399
Oregon
12,906,700
37,908,340
50,815,040
Utah
5,685,054
44,282,680
49,967,734
Washington
9,088,338
28,836,985
37,925,323
Wyoming
5,645,121
53,381,485
59,026,606
Public Land strip ,
6,912,000
6,912,000
Grand total.
..880,787,746
* George W, Spaulding,
156 THE EXHAUSTION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS.
taken before the close of this century. And under
private ownership they will appreciate in value with
the increase of population. Senator Wade, of Ohio,
predicted, in the United States Senate, some twenty
years ago, that, by 1900, every acre of good agricultural
land in the Union would be worth at least fifty dollars.
However that may be, it is certain our wide domain
will soon cease to palliate popular discontent, because
it will soon be beyond the reach of the poor.
But the settlement of the public lands has a further
and even deeper significance. The first permanent
settlers, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, im-
press their character on the community and common-
wealth for generations and centuries ; and this abiding
stamp is to be given to the great West in the course of
the next fifteen or twenty years. True, the land is not
settled as rapidly as it is disposed of by the govern-
ment. Many acres have passed into the hands of
wealthy syndicates 01 individual capitalists, and are
held by them for a rise in value ; but this can delay
actual settlement for a short time only, and does not
modify the general statement that the great West is to
be settled by this generation. Robert Giffen, Presi-
dent of the London Statistical Society, in an address
on "World Crowding,"* after following several lines of
reasoning to the same conclusion, says: "Whatever
way we may look at the matter, then, it seems certain
that, in twenty-five years' time, and probably before
that date, the limitation of area in the United States
will be felt. There will be no longer vast tracts of
virgin land for the settler. The whole available area
will be peopled agriculturally, as the Eastern States
are now peopled." Suppose the entire region west of
" * " Topics of tlie Time," Vol. L, No. 1, p. 36.
THE EXHAUSTION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. 157
the Mississippi — not excepting bald mountains and
alkaline deserts — were divided into townships six
miles square. From 1870 to 1880 the transmississippi
population increased a little more than sixty-one per
cent.* If that ratio of increase is sustained to the
close of the century (and there is abundant reason to
believe that it will rise), in 1900 there will be a popu-
lation of 30,165,000 — sufficient, if it were evenly dis-
tributed, to place 530 souls in every township west of
the great river. The natural distribution of such a
population would manifestly result in the settlement
of all the habitable regions. Consider the location of
the unoccupied land. It is not a vast island, like Aus-
tralia, separated by thousands of miles from its sources
of population. It lies close to one of the greatest peo-
ples on the earth ; and not on our north or south, but
on our west, which is important, because great migra-
tions move along lines of latitude. Moreover, this .
great territory is gridironed with transcontinental
railways. Every circumstance favors its rapid occupa-
tion.
"We must note, also, the order of settlement. In the
Middle States the farms were first taken, then the
town sprung up to supply their wants, and at length
the railway connected it with the world; but in the
West the order is reversed — first the railroad, then the
town, then the farms. Settlement is, consequently,
much more rapid, and the city stamps the country, in-
stead of the country's stamping the city. It is the
cities and towns which will frame state constitutions,
make laws, create public opinion, establish social
* During the same period the average per cent, of increase of population
in all the states of the Union was 29— in the territories, 11. Idaho increased
117 per cent., Wyoming, 127, Washington, 213, Arizona, 318, Dakota, 853.
THE EXHAUSTION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS.
usages, and fix standards of morals in the West. The
character of the West will, therefore, be substantially
determined some time before the land is all occupied.
In 1880, fifty-three per cent, of our national domain
(not including Alaska) contained only six per cent, of
our population. That is, one-half of our territory was,
for the most part, uninhabited. The character of this
vast region, equal in area to Great Britain, France,
Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, Norway and Sweden,
together with a dozen of the smaller European states,
is to be determined during the last twenty years of the
century. Suppose all of Western Europe were prac-
tically uninhabited, that to-day the pioneer were pitch-
ing his tent by the Thames and the Seine, and building
his log cabin on the banks of the Tiber. He takes with
him not the rude implements. of centuries ago, but the
locomotive, the telegraph, the steam-press, and all the
swift appliances of modern civilization. Suppose the
countries named above were all to be settled in twenty
years ; that, instead of the slow evolutions of many
centuries, their political, social, religious, and educa-
tional institutions were to be determined by one gen-
eration ; that from this one generation were to spring a
civilization, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter,
full-grown and fully equipped. What a period in the
world's history it would be, unparalleled and tremen-
dous! Yet such a Europe is being created by this
generation west of the Mississippi. And within the
bosom of these few years is folded not only the future
of the mighty West, but the nation's destiny ; for, as
we have seen, the West is to dominate the East.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLDS FUTURE. 159
I CHAPTER XIII.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND. THE WORLD'S FUTURE.*
EVERY race which has deeply impressed itself on the
human family has been the representative of some
great idea — one or more — which has given direction to
the nation's life and form to its civilization. Among
the Egyptians this seminal idea was life, among the
Persians it was light, among the Hebrews it was pu-
rity, among the Greeks it was beauty, among the Ro-
mans it was law. The Anglo-Saxon is the representa-
tive of two great ideas, which are closely related. One
of them is that of civil liberty. Nearly all of the civil
liberty in the world is enjoyed by Anglo-Saxons : the
English, the British colonists, and the people of the
United States. To some, like the Swiss, it is permitted
by the sufferance of their neighbors ; others, like the
French, have experimented with it; but, in modern
times, the peoples whose love of liberty has won it, and
whose genius for self-government has preserved it,
have been Anglo-Saxons. The noblest races have al-
ways been lovers of liberty. That love ran strong in
early German blood, and has profoundly influenced the
institutions of all the branches of the great German
family ; but it was left for the Anglo-Saxon branch
fully to recognize the right of the individual to him-
self, and formally to declare it the foundation stone of
government.
The other great idea of which the Anglo-Saxon is the
* It is only just to say that the substance of this chapter was given to the
public as a lecture some three years' before the appearance of Prof. Fiske's
" Manifest Destiny," in Harper's Magazine, for March, 1885, which, contains
some of the same ideas.
160 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLD'S FUTURE.
exponent is that of a pure spiritual Christianity. It
was no accident that the great reformation of the six-
teenth century originated among a Teutonic, rather
than a Latin people. It was the fire of liberty burning
in the Saxon heart that flamed up against the absolu-
tism of the Pope. Speaking roughly, the peoples of
Europe which are Celtic are Catholic, and those which
are Teutonic are Protestant ; and where the Teutonic
'race was purest, there Protestantism spread with the
greatest rapidity. But, with rare and beautiful excep-
tions, Protestantism on the continent has degenerated
into mere formalism. By confirmation at a certain
age, the state churches are filled with members who
generally know nothing of a personal spiritual experi-
ence. In obedience to a military order, a regiment of
German soldiers files into church and partakes of the
sacrament, just as it would shoulder arms or obey any
other word of command. It is said that, in Berlin and
Leipsic, only a little over one per cent, of the Protest-
ant population are found in church. Protestantism on
the continent seems to be about as poor in spiritual
life and power as Catholicism. That means that most
of the spiritual Christianity . in the world is found
among Anglo-Saxons and their converts ; for this is the
great missionary race. If we take all of the German
missionary societies together, we find that, in the num-
ber of workers and amount of contributions, they do
not equal the smallest of the three great English mis-
sionary societies. The year that Congregationalists in
the United States gave one dollar and thirty-seven
cents per caput to foreign missions, the members of
the great German State Chui;ch gave only three-quar-
ters of a cent per caput to the same cause.* Evident-
* Cnristlieb's " Protestant Foreign Missions," pp. 34 and 37.
161
ly it is chiefly to the English and American peoples
that we must look for the evangelization of the world.
It is not necessary to argue to those for whom I
write that the two great needs of mankind, that all
men may be lifted up into the light of the highest
Christian civilization, are, first, a pure, spiritual Chris-
tianity, and, second, civil liberty. Without contro-
versy, these are the forces which, in the past, have con-
tributed most to the elevation of the human race, and
they must continue to be, in the future, the most effi-
cient ministers to its progress. It follows, then, that
the Anglo-Saxon, as the great representative of these
two ideas, the depositary of these two greatest bless-
ings, sustains peculiar relations to the world's future,
is divinely commissioned to be, in a peculiar sense, his
brother's keeper. Add to this the fact of his rapidly
increasing strength in modern times, and we have well
nigh a demonstration of his destiny. In 1700 this race
numbered less than 6,000,000 souls. In 1800, Anglo-
Saxons (I use the term somewhat broadly to include
all English-speaking peoples) had increased to about
20,500,000, and in 1880 they numbered nearly 100,000,-
000, having multiplied almost five-fold in eighty years.
At the end of the reign of Charles II. the English
colonists in America numbered 200,000. During these
two hundred years, our population has increased two
hundred and fifty-fold. And the expansion of this race
has been no less remarkable than its multiplication.
In one century the United States has increased its ter-
ritory ten-fold, while the enormous acquisition of
foreign territory by Great Britain — and chiefly within
the last hundred years — is wholly unparalleled in his-
tory. This mighty Anglo-Saxon race, though compris-
ing only one-fifteenth part of mankind, now rules more
162 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLD'S FUTURE.
than one-third of the earth's surface, and more than
one-fourth of its people. And if this race, while grow-
ing from 6,000,000 to 100,000,000, thus gained posses-
sion of a third portion of the earth, is it to be supposed
that when it numbers 1,000,000,000, it will lose the dis-
position, or lack the power to extend its sway?
This race is multiplying not only more rapidly than
any other European race, but far more rapidly than all
the races of continental Europe. There is no exact
knowledge of the population of Europe early in the
century ; we know, however, that the increase on the
continent during the ten years from 1870 to 1880, was
6.89 per cent. If this rate of increase is sustained for
a, century (and it is more likely to fall, as Europe be-
comes more crowded), the population on the continent
in 1980 will be 534,000,000 ; while the one Anglo-Saxon
race, if it should multiply for a hundred years as it in-
creased from 1870 to 1880, would, in 1980, number
1,343,000,000 souls; but we cannot reasonably expect
this ratio of increase to be sustained so long. What,
then, will be the probable numbers of this race a hun-
dred years hence? In attempting to answer this ques-
tion, several things must be borne in mind. Hereto-
fore, the great causes which have operated to check
the growth of population in the world have been war,
famine, and pestilence ; but, among civilized peoples,
these causes are becoming constantly less operative.
Paradoxical as it seems, the invention of more destruc-
tive weapons of war renders war less destructive;
commerce and wealth have removed the fear of famine,
and pestilence is being brought more and more under
control by medical skill and sanitary science. More-
over, Anglo-Saxons, with the exception of the people
of Great Britain, who now compose only a little more
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND 1-HE WOBLDVS tfUTTTBE. 163
than one- third of this race, are much less exposed to
these checks upon growth than the races of Europe.
Again, Europe is crowded, and is constantly becoming
more so, which will tend to reduce continually the
ratio of increase ; while nearly two-thirds of the Anglo-
Saxons occupy lands which invite almost unlimited ex-
pansion— the United States, Canada, Australia, and
South Africa. Again, emigration from Europe, which
is certain to increase, is chiefly into Anglo-Saxon coun-
tries ; while these foreign elements exert a modifying
influence on the Anglo-Saxon stock, their descendants
are certain to be Anglo-Saxonized. From 1870 to
1880, Germany lost 987,000 inhabitants by emigration;
in one generation, their children will be counted
Anglo-Saxons. This race has been undergoing an un-
paralleled expansion during the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, and the conditions for its continued
growth are singularly favorable.
We are now prepared to ask what light statistics
cast on the future. In Great Britain, from 1840 to
1850, the ratio of increase of the population was 2.49
per cent.; during the next ten years it was 5.44 per
cent.; the next ten years, it was 8.60; and from 1870
to 1880, it was 10.57 per cent. That is, for forty years
the ratio of increase has been rapidly rising. It is not
unlikely to continue rising for some time to come;
but, remembering that the population is dense, in
making our estimate for the next hundred years, we
will suppose the ratio of increase to be only one-half
as large as that from 1870 to 1880, which would make
the population in 1980, 57,000,000. All the great
colonies of Britain, except Canada, which has a great
future, show a very high ratio of increase in popula-
tion; that of Australia, from 1870 to 1880, was 56.50
164 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLD'S FUTURE.
per cent.; that of South Africa was 73.28. It is quite
reasonable to suppose that the colonies, taken to-
gether, will double their population once in twenty-
five years for the next century. In the United States,
population has, on the average, doubled once in twen-
ty-five years since 1685. Adopting this ratio, then,
for the English colonies, their 11,000,000 in 1880 will
be 176,000,000 in 1980. Turning now to our own
country, we find in the following table the ratio of in-
crease of population for each decade of years since
1800:
From 1800 to 1810 36.38 per cent.
" 1810 « 1820 34.80 " "
« 1820 " 1830 33.11 " "
« 1830 " 1840 32.66 " "
« 1840 « 1850 35.87 " "
« 1850 " 1860 35.58 " "
« 1860 " 1870 22.59 « "
« 1870 « 1880 30.06 « "
Here we see a falling ratio of increase of about one
per cent, every ten years from 1800 to 1840 — a period
when immigration was inconsiderable. During the
next twenty years the ratio was decidedly higher, be-
cause of a large immigration. It fell off during the
war, and again arose from 1870 to 1880. Increased
immigration is likely to sustain this high ratio of in-
crease for some time to come. If it should continue
for a hundred years, our population in 1980 would be
697,000,000. But suppose we take no account of im-
migration, leaving it to offset any unforeseen check
upon growth, we may infer from the first forty years
of the century that the ratio of increase would not fall
more than about one per cent, every ten years. Be-
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLDS FUTURE. 165
ginning, then, with an increase of thirty per cent, from
1880 to 1890, and adopting this falling ratio of in-
crease, our population in 1980 would be 480,000,000,
making the total Anglo-Saxon population of the world,
at that time, 713,000,000, as compared with 534,000,000
inhabitants of continental Europe. And it should be
remembered that these figures represent the largest
probable population of Europe, and the smallest prob-
able numbers of the Ajiglo-Saxon race. It is not un-
likely that, before the close of the next century, this
race will outnumber all the other civilized races of the
world. Does it not look as if God were not only pre-
paring in our Ajiglo-Saxon civilization the die with
which to stamp the peoples of the earth, but as if he
were also massing behind that die the mighty power
with which to press it I My confidence that this race
is eventually to give its civilization to mankind is not
based on mere numbers — China forbid ! I look for-
ward to what the world has never yet seen united in
the same race ; viz., the greatest numbers, and the high-
est civilization.
There can be no reasonable doubt that North Amer-
ica is to be the great home of the AjQglo-Saxon, the
principal seat of his power, the center of his life and
influence. Not only does it constitute seven-elevenths
of his possessions, but his empire is unsevered, while
the remaining four-elevenths are fragmentary and scat-
tered over the earth. Australia will have a great pop-
ulation ; but its disadvantages, as compared with North
America, are too manifest to need mention. Our con-
tinent has room and resources and climate, it lies in
the pathway of the nations, it belongs to the zone of
power, and already, among Anglo-Saxons, do we lead
in population and wealth. Of England, Franklin once
166 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND TflE WORLD'S FUTURE.
wrote : " That pretty island which, compared to Amer-
ica, is but a stepping-stone in a brook, scarce enough
of it above water to keep one's shoes dry." England
can hardly hope to maintain her relative importance
among Anglo-Saxon peoples when her "pretty island"
is the home of only one-twentieth part of that race.
With the wider distribution of wealth, and increasing
facilities of intercourse, intelligence and influence are
less centralized, and peoples become more homogene-
ous ; and the more nearly homogeneous peoples are,
the more do numbers tell. America is to have the
great preponderance of numbers and of wealth, and by
the logic of events will follow the scepter of controlling
influence. This will be but the consummation of a
movement as old as civilization — a result to which mei?
have looked forward for centuries. John Adams re-
cords that nothing was " more ancient in his memory
than the observation that arts, sciences and empire had
traveled westward ; and in conversation it was always
added that their next leap would be over the Atlantic
into America." He recalled a couplet that had been
" inscribed, or rather drilled, into a rock on the shore
of Monument Bay in our old colony of Plymouth :
' The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends,
And empire rises where the sun descends.'"*
The brilliant Galiani, who foresaw a future in which
Europe should be ruled by America, wrote, during the
Eevolutionary War, " I will wager in favor of America,
for the reason merely physical, that for 5,000 years
genius has turned opposite to the diurnal motion, and
traveled from the East to the West."f Count d'Aranda,
after signing the Treaty of Paris of 1773, as therepre-
* John Adams' Works, Vol. IX, pp. 59T— 599.
t Galiani, Tome II, p. 2T5.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WOBLD?S FUTURE. 167
sentative of Spain, wrote his king : " This Federal Re-
public is born a pigmy. ... a day will come when
it will be a giant, even a colossus formidable in these
countries."
Adam Smith, in his " Wealth of Nations," predicts
the transfer of empire from Europe to America. The
traveler, Burnaby, found, in the middle of the last cen-
tury, that an idea had " entered into the minds of the
generality of mankind, that empire is traveling west-
ward ; and every one is looking forward with eager
and impatient expectation to that destined moment
when America is to give the law to the rest of the
world." Charles Sumner wrote of the " coming time
when the whole continent, with all its various states,
shall be a Plural Unit, with one Constitution, one Lib-
erty and one Destiny,'1 and when "the national ex-
ample will be more puissant than army or navy for the
conquest of the world." * It surely needs no prophet's
eye to see that the civilization of the United States is
to be the civilization of America, and that the future
of the continent is ours. In 1880, the United States
was the home of more than one-half of the Anglo-Saxon
race ; and, if the computations already given, are cor-
rect, a much larger proportion will be here a hundred
years hence. It has been shown that we have room
for at least a thousand millions. According to recent
figures, there is in France a population of 180.88 to the
square mile ; in Germany, 216.62 ; in England and
Wales, 428.67; in Belgium, 481.71 ; in the United
States — not including Alaska — 16.88. If our popula-
tion were as dense as that of France, we should have,
this side of Alaska, 537,000,000 ; if as dense as that of
Germany, 643,000,000 ; if as dense as that of England
* See The Atlantic , Vol. 20, pp. 275— 306»
168 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLD'S FUTUBE.
and Wales, 1,173,000,000 ; if as dense as that of Bel-
gium, 1,430,000,000.
But we are to have not only the larger portion of
the Anglo-Saxon race for generations to come, we may
reasonably expect to develop the highest type of Anglo-
Saxon civilization. If human progress follows a law
of development, if
" Time's noblest offspring is the last,"
our civilization should be the noblest ; for we are
" The heirs of all the ages in the foremost flies of time,"
and not only do we occupy the latitude of power, but
our land is the last to be occupied in that latitude.
There is no other virgin soil in the North Temperate
Zone. If the consummation of human progress is not
to be looked for here, if there is yet to flower a higher
civilization, where is the soil that is to produce it?
Whipple says : * " There has never been a great mi-
gration that did not result in a new form of national
genius." Our national genius is Anglo-Saxon, but not
English, its distinctive type is the result of a finer
nervous organization, which" is certainly being devel-
oped in this country. " The history of the world's
progress from savagery to barbarism, from barbarism
to civilization, and, in civilization, from the lower de-
grees toward the higher, is the history of increase in
average longevity,! corresponding to, and accompanied
by, increase of nervousness. Mankind has grown to be
at once more delicate and more enduring, more sensi-
tive to weariness and yet more patient of toil, impressi-
ble, but capable of bearing powerful irritation ; we are
* Atlantic for Oct., 1858.
t " It is ascertained that the average measure of human life, in this coun-
try, has been steadily increasing during this century, and is now considerably
longer than in any other country." Dorchester's "Problem of Religious
Progress," p. 288.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WOELD^S FUTURE. 169
woven of finer fiber, which, though apparently frail, yet
outlasts the coarser, as rich and costly garments often-
times wear better than those of rougher workman-
ship."* The roots of civilization are the nerves ; and
other things being equal, the finest nervous organiza-
tion will produce the highest civilization. Heretofore,
war has been almost the chief occupation of strong
• races. England, during the past sixty-eight years,
has waged some seventy-seven wars. John Bright said
recently that, during Queen Victoria's reign, $750,000,-
000 had been spent in war and 68,000 lives lost. The
mission of the Anglo-Saxon has been largely that of
the soldier ; but the world is making progress, we are
leaving behind the barbarism of war ; as civilization
advances, it will learn less of war, and concern itself
more with the arts of peace, and for these the massive
battle-ax must be wrought into tools of finer temper.
The physical changes accompanied by mental, which
are taking place in the people of the United States are
apparently to adapt men to the demands of a higher
civilization. But the objection is here interposed that
the " physical degeneracy of Americans " is inconsist-
ent with the supposition of our advancing to a higher
civilization. Professor Huxley, when at Buffalo he
addressed the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, said he had heard of the degeneration
of the original American stock, but during his visit to
the states he had failed to perceive it. We are not,
however, in this matter, dependent on the opinion of
even the best observers. During the War of the Con-
federacy, the Medical Department of the Provost Mar-
shal General's Bureau gathered statistics from the ex-
amination of over half a million of men, native and
* " Beard's American Nervousness," p. 287.
170 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLD'S FUTURE.
foreign, young and old, sick and sound, drawn from
every rank and condition of life, and, hence, fairly rep-
resenting the whole people. Dr. Baxter's Official Ke-
port shows that our native whites were over an inch
taller than the English, and nearly two-thirds of an
inch taller than the Scotch, who, in height, were supe-
rior to all other foreigners. At the age of completed
growth, the Irish, who were the stoutest of the for-
eigners, surpassed the native whites, in girth of chest,
less than a quarter of an inch. Statistics as to weight
are meager, but Dr. Baxter remarks that it is perhaps
not too much to say that the war statistics show " that
the mean weight of the white native of the United
States is not disproportionate to his stature." Ameri-
cans were found to be superior to Englishmen not only
in height, but also in chest-measurement and weight.
Such facts afford more than a hint that the higher civ-
ilization of the future will not lack an adequate physi-
cal basis in the people of the United States.
Mr. Darwin is not only disposed to see, in the supe-
rior vigor of our people, an illustration of his favorite
theory of natural selection, but even intimates that the
world's history thus far has been simply preparatory
for our future, and tributary to it. He says :* "There
is apparently much truth in the belief that the won-
derful progress of the United States, as well as the
character of the people, are the results of natural se-
lection; for the more energetic, restless, and coura-
geous men from all parts of Europe have emigrated
during the last ten or twelve generations to that great
eountry, and have there succeeded best. Looking at
the distant future, I do not think that the Kev. Mr.
Zincke takes an exaggerated view when he says : ' All
* "Descent of Man," Part L, page 142.
AtfGLO-SAXOtt AffD THE WORLDS FUTURE. 171
other series of events — as that which resulted in the
culture of mind in Greeces and that which resulted in
the Empire of Rome — only appear to have purpose and
value when viewed in connection with, or rather as
subsidiary to, the great stream of Anglo-Saxon emi-
gration to the West.' "
There is abundant reason to believe that the Anglo-
Saxon race is to be, is, indeed, already becoming, more
effective here than in the mother country. The marked
superiority of this race is due, in large measure, to its
highly mixed origin. Says Rawlinson:* "It is a gen-
eral rule, now almost universally admitted by ethnolo-
gists, that the mixed races of mankind are superior to
the pure ones"; and adds : " Even the Jews, who are
so often cited as an example of a race at once pure and
strong, may, with more reason, be adduced on the op-
posite side of the argument." The ancient Egyp-
tians, the Greeks, and the Romans, were all mixed
races. Among modern races, the most conspicuous
example is afforded by the Anglo-Saxons. Mr. Green's
studies show that Mr. Tennyson's poetic line,
" Saxon and Norman and Dane are we,"
must be supplemented with Celt and Gaul, Welshman
and Irishman, Frisian and Flamand, French Huguenot
and German Palatine. What took place a thousand
years ago and more in England again transpires to-
day in the United States. "History repeats itself";
but, as the wheels of history are the chariot wheels of
the Almighty, there is, with every revolution, an on-
ward movement toward the goal of his eternal pur-
poses. There is here a new commingling of races ; and,
while the largest injections of foreign blood are substan-
* Princeton Review, for Nov., 1878.
172 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLD'S FUTURE.
tially the same elements that constituted the original
Anglo-Saxon admixture, so that we may infer the gen-
eral type will be preserved, there are strains of other
bloods being added, which, if Mr. Emerson's remark is
true, that " the best nations are those most widely re-
lated," may be expected to improve the stock, and aid
it to a higher destiny. If the dangers of immigration,
which have been pointed out, can be successfully met
for the next few years, until it has passed its climax, it
may be expected to add value to the amalgam which
will constitute the new Anglo-Saxon race of the New
World. Concerning our future, Herbert Spencer says :
" One great result is, I think, tolerably clear. From
biological truths it is to be inferred that the eventual
mixture of the allied varieties of the Aryan race, form-
ing the population, will produce a more powerful type
of man than has hitherto existed, and a type of man
more plastic, more adaptable, more capable of under-
going the modifications needful for complete social
life. I think, whatever difficulties they may have to
surmount, and whatever tribulations they may have to
pass through, the Americans may reasonably look for-
ward to a time when they will have produced a civili-
zation grander than any the world has known."
It may be easily shown, and is of no small signifi-
cance, that the two great ideas of which the Anglo-
Saxon is the exponent are having a fuller development
in the United States than in Great Britain. There the
union of Church and State tends strongly to paralyze
some of the members of the body of Christ. Here
there is no such influence to destroy spiritual life and
power. Here, also, has been evolved the form of gov-
ernment consistent with the largest possible civil lib-
erty. Furthermore, it is significant that the marked
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WOELD's FUTUBE 173
characteristics of this race are being here emphasized
most. Among the most striking features of the Anglo-
Saxon is his money-making power — a power of increas
ing importance in the widening commerce of the
world's future. We have seen, in a preceding chapter,
that, although England is by far the richest nation of
Europe, we have already outstripped her in the race
after wealth, and we have only begun the development
of our vast resources.
Again, another marked characteristic of the Anglo-
Saxon is what may be called an instinct or genius for
colonizing. His unequaled energy, his indomitable
perseverance, and his personal independence, made him
a pioneer. He excels all others in pushing his way in-
to new countries. It was those in whom this tendency
was strongest that came to America, and this inherited
tendency has been further developed by the west-
ward sweep of successive generations across the conti-
nent. So noticeable has this characteristic become
that English visitors remark it. Charles Dickens once
said that the typical American would hesitate to enter
heaven unless assured that he could go further west.
Again, nothing more manifestly distinguishes the
Anglo-Saxon than his intense and persistent energy;
and he is developing in the United States an energy
which, in eager activity and effectiveness, is peculiarly
American. This is due partly to the fact that Ameri-
cans are much better fed than Europeans, and partly
to the undeveloped resources of a new country, but
more largely to our climate, which acts as a constant
stimulus. Ten years after the landing of the Pilgrims,
the Kev. Francis Higginson, a good observer, wrote :
"A sup of New England air is better than a whole
flagon of English ale." Thus early had the stimulating
174 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLD'S FUTURE.
effect of our climate been noted. Moreover, our social
institutions are stimulating. In Europe the various
ranks of society are, like the strata of the earth, fixed
and fossilized. There can be no great change without
a terrible upheaval, a social earthquake. Here society
is like the waters of the sea, mobile ; as General Gar-
field said, and so signally illustrated in his own expe-
rience, that which is at the bottom to-day may one day
flash on the crest of the highest wave. Every one is
free to become whatever he can make of himself ; free
to transform himself from a rail-splitter or a tanner or
a canal-boy, into the nation's President. Our aristoc-
racy, unlike that of Europe, is open to all comers.
Wealth, position, influence, are prizes offered for en-
ergy; and every farmer's boy, every apprentice and
clerk, every friendless and penniless immigrant, is free
to enter the lists. Thus many causes co-operate to
produce here the most forceful and tremendous energy
in the world.
What is the significance of such facts 1 These tend-
encies infold the future ; they are the mighty alphabet
with which God writes his prophecies. May we not,
by a careful laying together of the letters, spell out
something of his meaning ? It seems to me that God,
with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-
Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's
future. Heretofore there has always been in the his-
tory of the world a comparatively unoccupied land
westward, into which the crowded countries of the
East have poured their surplus populations. But the
widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago
rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates,
meet to-day on our Pacific coast. There are no more
new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLDS FUTURE. 17£
are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is com-
ing when the pressure of population on the means oi
subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe
and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage
of its history — the final competition of races, for which
the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. Long before the
thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal
tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in
the United States, will assert itself. Then this race oi
unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and
the might of wealth behind it — the representative, let
us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity,
the highest civilization — having developed peculiarly
aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions
upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. If I
read not amiss, this powerful race will move down up-
on Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out
upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and be-
yond. And can any one doubt that the result of this
competition of races will be the " survival of the fit-
test"? "Any people," says Dr. Bushnell, "that is
physiologically advanced in culture, though it be only
in a degree beyond another which is mingled with it
on strictly equal terms, is sure to live down and finally
live out its inferior. Nothing can save the inferior race
but a ready and pliant assimilation. Whether the
feebler and more abject races are going to be regen-
erated and raised up, is already very much of a ques-
tion. "What if it should be God's plan to people the
world with better and finer material? Certain it is,
whatever expectations we may indulge, that there is a
tremendous overbearing surge of power in the Christian
nations, which, if the others are not speedily raised to
some vastly higher capacity, will inevitably submerge
176 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WOULD7 S FUTUBE.
and bury them forever. These great populations oi
Christendom — what are they doing, but throwing
out their colonies on every side, and populating them-
selves, if I may so speak, into the possession of all
countries and chines f ' * To this result no war of ex-
termination is needful ; the contest is not one of arms,
but of vitality and of civilization. "At the present
day," says Mr. Darwin, "civilized nations are every-
where supplanting barbarous nations, excepting where
the climate opposes a deadly barrier ; and they succeed
mainly, though not exclusively, through their arts,
which are the products of the intellect ?" f Thus the
Finns were supplanted by the Aryan races in Europe
and Asia, the Tartars by the Russians, and thus the
aborigines of North America, Australia and New Zea-
land are now disappearing before the all-conquering
Anglo-Saxons. It would seem as if these inferior
tribes were only precursors of a superior race, voices
in the wilderness crying : " Prepare ye the way of the
Lord !" The savage is a hunter ; by the incoming of
civilization the game is driven away and disappears be-
fore the hunter becomes a herder or an agriculturist.
The savage is ignorant of many diseases of civilization
which, when he is exposed to them, attack him before
he learns how to treat them. Civilization also has its
rices, of which the uninitiated savage is innocent. He
proves an apt learner of vice, but dull enough in the
school of morals. Every civilization has its destructive
and preservative elements. The Anglo-Saxon race
would speedily decay but for the salt of Christianity.
Bring savages into contact with our civilization, and
its destructive forces become operative at once, while
* "Christian Nurture," pp. 207, 213.
t "Descent of Man," Vol. I, p. 154.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WOBLD^S FUTUBE 177
years are necessary to render effective the saving influ-
ences of Christian instruction. Moreover, the pioneer
wave of our civilization carries with it more scum than
salt. Where there is one missionary, there are hundreds
of miners or traders or adventurers ready to debauch
the native. Whether the extinction of inferior races
before the advancing Anglo-Saxon seems to the reader
sad or otherwise, it certainly appears probable. I
know of nothing except climatic conditions to prevent
this race from populating Africa as it has peopled
North America. And those portions of Africa which
are unfavorable to Anglo-Saxon life are less extensive
than was once supposed. The Dutch Boers, after two
centuries of life there, are as hardy as any race on
earth. The Anglo-Saxon has established himself in
climates totally diverse — Canada, South Africa, and
India — and, through several generations, has preserved
h\s essential race characteristics. He is not, of course,
superior to climatic influences; but, even in warm
climates, he is likely to retain his aggressive vigor long
enough to supplant races already enfeebled. Thus, in
what Dr. Bushnell calls "the out-populating power of
the Christian stock," may be found God's final and
complete solution of the dark problem of heathenism
among many inferior peoples.
Some of the stronger races, doubtless, may be able
to preserve their integrity; but, in order to compete
with the Anglo-Saxon, they will probably be forced to
adopt his methods and instruments, his civilization
and his religion. Significant movements are now in
progress among them. While the Christian religion
was never more vital, or its hold upon the Anglo-Saxon
mind stronger, there is taking place among the nations
a wide-spread intellectual revolt against traditional be-
178 THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLDS FUTURE.
liefs. uin every corner of the world," says Mr,
Froude,* "there is the same phenomenon of the decay
of established religions. . . . Among Mohanu
medans, Jews, Buddhists, Brahmins, traditionary
creeds are losing their hold. An intellectual revolu-
tion is sweeping over the world, breaking down es-
tablished opinions, dissolving foundations on which
historical faiths have been built up." The contact of
Christian with heathen nations is awaking the latter to
new life. Old superstitions are loosening their grasp.
The dead crust of fossil faiths is being shattered by
the movements of life underneath. In Catholic coun-
tries, Catholicism is losing its influence over educated
minds, and in some cases the masses have already lost
all faith in it. Thus, while on this continent God is
training the Anglo-Saxon race for its mission, a comple-
mental work has been in progress in the great world
beyond. God has two hands. Not only is he prepar-
ing in our civilization the die with which to stamp the
nations, but, by what Southey called the "timing of
Providence," he is preparing mankind to receive our
impress.
Is there room for reasonable doubt that this race,
unless devitalized by alcohol and tobacco, is destined
to dispossess many weaker races, assimilate others,
and mold the remainder, until, in a very true and im-
portant sense, it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind ? Al-
ready " the English language, saturated with Christian
ideas, gathering up into itself the best thought of all
the ages, is the great agent of Christian civilization
throughout the world ; at this moment affecting the
destinies and molding the character of half the human
* North American Review, Dec., 1879.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WOBLD's FUTURE. 179
race."* Jacob Grimm, the German philologist, said
of this language : " It seems chosen, like its people, to
rule in future times in a still greater degree in all the
corners of the earth." He predicted, indeed, that the
language of Shakespeare would eventually become the
language of mankind. Is not Tennyson's noble
prophecy to find its fulfillment in Anglo-Saxondom's
extending its dominion and influence —
" Till the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." t
In my own mind, there is no doubt that the Anglo-
Saxon is to exercise the commanding influence in the
world's future ; but the exact nature of that influence
is, as yet, undetermined. How far his civilization will
be materialistic and atheistic, and how long it will take
thoroughly to Christianize and sweeten it, how rapidly
he will hasten the coming of the kingdom wherein
dwelleth righteousness, or how many ages he may re-
tard it, is still uncertain ; but it is now being swiftly
determined. Let us weld together in a chain the vari-
ous links of our logic which we have endeavored to
forge. Is it manifest that the Anglo-Saxon holds in
his hands the destinies of mankind for ages to come?
Is it evident that the United States is to be the home
of this race, the principal seat of his power, the great
center of his influence ? Is it true (see Chap. HE.) that
the great West is to dominate the nation's future!
Has it been shown (Chapters XI. and XH.) that this
generation is to determine the character, and hence
the destiny, of the West ? Then may God open the
eyes of this generation ! When Napoleon drew up his
troops before the Mamelukes, under the shadow of the
Pyramids, pointing to the latter, he said to his soldiers:
* Bev. N. a Clark, D.D. t "Locfcsley Hall"
180 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
"Remember that from yonder heights forty centuries
look down on you." Men of this generation, from the
pyramid top of opportunity on which God has set us,
we look down on forty centuries! We stretch our
hand into the future with power to mold the destinies
of unborn millions.
" We are living, we are dwelling,
In a grand and awful time,
In an age on ages telling—
To be living is sublime !»
Notwithstanding the great perils which threaten it,
I cannot think our civilization will perish ; but I be-
lieve it is fully in the hands of the Christians of the
United States, during the next fifteen or twenty years,
to hasten or retard the coming of Christ's kingdom in
the world by hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of
years. We of this generation and nation occupy the
Gibraltar of the ages which commands the world's
future.
CHAPTER XIV.
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
PROPERTY is one of the cardinal facts of our civiliza-
tion. It is the great object of endeavor, the great
spring of power, the great occasion of discontent, and
one of the great sources of danger. For Christians to
apprehend their true relations to money, and the rela-
tions of money to the kingdom of Christ and its
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 181
progress in the world, is to find the key to many of
the great problems now pressing for solution.
Money is power in the concrete. It commands
learning, skill, experience, wisdom, talent, influence,
numbers. It represents the school, the college, the
church, the printing-press, and all evangelizing ma-
chinery. It confers on the wise man a sort of omni-
presence. By means of it, the same man may, at the
same moment, be founding an academy among the
Mormons, teaching the New Mexicans, building a
home missionary church in Dakota, translating the
Scriptures in Africa, preaching the gospel in China,
and uttering the precepts of ten thousand Bibles in
India. It is the modern miracle worker; it has a
wonderful multiplying and transforming power.
Sarah Hosmer, of Lowell, though a poor woman, sup-
ported a student in the Nestorian Seminary, who be-
came a preacher of Christ. Five times she gave fifty
dollars, earning the money in a factory, and sent out
five native pastors to Christian work. When more
than sixty years old, she longed to furnish Nestoria
with one more preacher of Christ ; and, living in an
attic, she took in sewing until she, had accomplished
her cherished purpose. In the hands of this conse-
crated woman, money transformed the factory girl and
the seamstress into a missionary of the Cross, and
then multiplied her six- fold. God forbid that I should
attribute to money power which belongs only to faith,
love, and the Holy Spirit. In the problem of Chris-
tian work, money is like the cipher, worthless alone,
but multiplying many fold the value and effectiveness
of other factors.
In the preceding chapter has been set forth the won-
derful opportunity enjoyed by this generation in the
182 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
United States. It lays on us a commensurate obliga-
tion. We have also seen (Chap. IX.) that our wealth
is stupendous. If our responsibility is without a prece-
dent, the plenitude of our power is likewise without
a parallel. Is not the lesson which God would have
us learn so plain that he who runs may read it I Has
not God given us this matchless power that it may be
applied to doing this matchless work ?
The kingdoms of this world will not have become the
kingdoms of our Lord until the money power has been
Christianized. " Talent has been Christianized already
on a large scale. The political power of states and
kingdoms has been long assumed to be, and now at
least really is, as far as it becomes their accepted office
to* maintain personal security and liberty. Architec-
ture, arts, constitutions, schools, and learning have
been largely Christianized. But the money power,
which is one of the most operative and grandest of all,
is only beginning to be ; though with promising to-
kens of a finally complete reduction to Christ and the
uses of His Kingdom. . . . That day, when it
comes, is the morning, so to speak, of the new crea-
tion."* Is it not time for that day to dawn ? If we
would Christianize our Anglo-Saxon civilization, which
is to spread itself over the earth, has not the hour
come for the church to teach and live the doctrines of
God's Word touching possessions ? Their general ac-
ceptance on the part of the church would involve a ref-
ormation scarcely less important in its results than the
great reformation of the sixteenth century. What is
needed is not simply an increased giving, an enlarged
estimate of the " Lord's share," but a radically differ-
ent conception of our relations to our possessions,
* Buslmell's "Sermons on LiTing Subjects," pp. 264, 265.
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 183
Most Christian men need to discover that they are not
proprietors, apportioning their own, but simply trust-
ees or managers of God's property. All Christians
would admit that there is a sense in which their all be-
longs to God, but deem it a very poetical sense,
wholly unpractical and practically unreal. The great
majority treat their possessions exactly as they would
treat property, use their substance exactly as if it
were their own.
Christians generally hold that God has a thoroughly
real claim on some portion of their income, possibly a
tenth, more likely no definite proportion ; but some
small part, they acknowledge, belongs to him, and they
hold themselves in duty bound to use it for him. This
low and unchristian view has sprung apparently from
a misconception of the Old Testament doctrine of
tithes. God did not, for the surrender of a part, re-
nounce all claim to the remainder. The Jew was
taught, in language most explicit and oft-repeated, that
he and all he had belonged absolutely to God. " Be-
hold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the
Lord's, thy God, and the earth also, with all that there-
in is." (Deut. x, 14). " The earth is the Lord's, and
the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell
therein." (Ps. xxiv, 1). " The silver is mine and the
gold is mine, saith the Lord." (Hag. ii, 8). "Behold,
all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, so also
the soul of the son is mine." (Ezek. xviii, 4). "When
the priest was consecrated, the blood of the ram was
put upon the right ear, the thumb of the right hand,
and the great toe of the right foot, to indicate that he
should come and go, use his hands and powers of
mind, in short, his entire self, in the service of God.
These parts of the body were selected as representa-
184 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
tive of the whole man. The tithe was likewise repre-
sentative. "For, if the first fruit be holy, the lump is
also holy." (Rom. xi, 16). Tithes were devoted to
certain uses, specified by God, in recognition of the
fact that all belonged to him.
THE PRINCIPLE STATED.
God's claim to the whole rests on exactly the same
ground as his claim to a part. As the Creator, he must
have an absolute ownership in all his creatures ; and,
if am absolute claim could be strengthened, it would
be by the fact that he who gave us life sustains it, and
with his own life redeemed it. "Ye are not your
own; for ye are bought with a price." (I Cor. vi, 19,
20). Manifestly, if God has absolute ownership in us,
we can have absolute ownership in nothing whatever.
If we cannot lay claim to our own selves, how much
less to that which we find in our hands. When we say
that no man is the absolute owner of property to the
value of one penny, we do not take the socialistic posi-
tion that private property is theft. Because of our in'
dividual trusts, for which we are held personally re-
sponsible, we have individual rights touching property,
and may have claims one against another; but, be-
tween God and the soul, the distinction of thine and
mine is a snare. Does one-tenth belong to God I Then
ten-tenths are his. He did not one-tenth create us
and we nine-tenths create ourselves. He did not one-
tenth redeem us and we nine-tenths redeem ourselves.
If his claim to a part is good, his claim to the whole is
equally good. His ownership in us is no joint affair.
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 185
We are not in partnership with him. All that we are
and have is utterly his, and his only.
When the Scriptures and reason speak of God's
ownership in us they use the word in no accommodated
sense. It means all that it can mean in a court of law.
It means that God has a right to the service of his
own. It means that, since our possessions are his
property, they should be used in his service — not a
fraction of them, but the whole. When the lord re-
turned from the far country, to reckon with his serv-
ants to whom he had entrusted his goods, he demanded
not simply a small portion of the increase, but held his
servants accountable for both principal and interest —
" mine own with usury." Every dollar that belongs to
God must serve him. And it is not enough that we
make a good use of our means. We are under exactly
the same obligations to make the best use of our money
that we are to make a good use of it ; and to make any
use of it other than the best is a maladministration of
trust. Here, then, is the principle always applicable,
that of our entire possessions every dollar, every cent,
is to be employed in the way that will best honor God.
THE PKINCIPLE APPLIED.
The statement of this principle at once suggests
difficulties in its application. Let us glance at some
of them,
1. An attempt to regulate personal expenditures by
this principle affords opportunity for fanaticism on the
one hand and for self-deception on the other ; but an
honest and intelligent application of it will avoid both.
186 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
Surely, it is right to supply our necessities. But
what are necessities? Advancing civilization multi-
plies them. Friction matches were a luxury once, a
necessity now. And may we allow ourselves nothing
for the comforts and luxuries of life? Where shall we
draw the line between justifiable and unjustifiable ex-
penditure?
The Christian has given himself to God, or, rather,
has recognized and accepted the divine ownership in
him. He is under obligations to apply every power,
whether of mind, body, or possessions, to God's ser-
vice. He is bound to make that service as effective as
possible. Certain expenditures upon himself are nec-
essary to his highest growth and greatest usefulness,
and are, therefore, not only permissible, but obliga-
tory. All the money which will yield a larger return
of usefulness in the world, of greater good to the
kingdom, by being spent on ourselves or families than
by being applied otherwise, is used for the glory of
God, and is better spent than it would have been if
given to missions. And whatever money is spent on
self that would have yielded larger returns of useful-
ness, if applied otherwise, is misapplied ; and, if it has
been done intelligently, it is a case of embezzlement.
A narrow view at this point is likely to lead us into
fanaticism. We must look at life in its wide relations,
and remember that character is its supreme end.
Character is the one thing in the universe, so far as
we know, which is of absolute worth, and therefore
beyond all price. The glory of the Infinite is all of it
the glory of character. Every expenditure which
serves to broaden and beautify and upbuild character
is worthy. The one question ever to be kept in mind
is whether it is the wisest application of means to the
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 187
desired end. Will this particular application of power
in mon?ey produce the largest results in character ?
But what of the beautiful I How far may we gratify
our love of it? A delicate and difficult question to
answer, especially to the satisfaction of those living in
the midst of a luxurious civilization. Our guiding
principle holds here as everywhere, only its application
is difficult. It is difficult to determine how useful the
beautiful may be. Doubtless, at times, as Victor Hugo
has said, "The beautiful is as useful as the useful;
perhaps more so." The ministry of art widens with
the increasing refinement of the nervous organization.
There are those to whom the beautiful is, in an im-
portant sense, a necessity. God loves the beautiful.
Each flower would yield its seed and perpetuate its
kind as surely if each blossom were not a smile of its
Creator. The stars would swing on in their silent,
solemn march as true to gravitation, if they did not
glow like mighty rubies and emeralds and sapphires.
The clouds would be as faithful carriers of the bounty
of the sea, if God did not paint their morning and
evening glory from the rainbow as his palette. Yes ;
God loves the beautiful, and intended we should love
it ; but he does not have to economize his power ; his
resources are not limited. When he spreads the splen-
dors of the rising East, it is not at the cost of bread
enough to feed ten thousand starving souls. Art has
an educational value in our homes and schools and
parks and galleries; but how far may one who recog-
nizes his Christian stewardship conscientiously go in
the encouragement of art and the gratification of taste ?
If every man did his duty, gave according to ability,
there would be abundant provision for all Christian
and philanthropic work and substance left for the pat-
188 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
ronage of art. But not one man in a hundred is doing
his duty ; hence those who appreciate the necessities
of Christian work must fill the breach, are not at lib-
erty to make expenditures which would otherwise be
wholly justifiable. Many expenditures are right ab-
stractly considered. That is, would be right in an
ideal condition of society. But the condition of the
world is not ideal ; we are surrounded by circumstances
which must be recognized exactly as they are. Sin
is abnormal, the world is out of joint ; and such facts
lay on us obligations which would not otherwise ex-
ist, make sacrifices necessary which would not other-
wise be binding, forbid the gratification of tastes
which are natural, and might otherwise be indulged.
Thrice true is this of us who live in this great national
crisis and world emergency. It is well to play the
violin, but not when Rome is burning.
Here is a large family of which the husband and
father is a contemptible lounger (if loafers had any
appreciation of the eternal fitness of things, they would
die); he does simply nothing for the support of the fam-
ily. Exceptional cares are, therefore, laid on the wife and
mother. She must expend all her time and strength to
secure the bare necessaries of life for her children ;
and with the utmost sacrifice on her part they go hun-
gry and cold. If her wretched husband did his duty,
she could command time and means to beautify the
home and make the dress of herself and children at-
tractive; but, under the circumstances, it would be
worse than foolish for her to spend her scant earnings
on vases and flowers, laces and velvets. God has laid
upon Christian nations the work of evangelizing the
heathen world. He has laid on us the duty of Chris-
tianizing our own heathen, and under such conditions
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 189
that the obligation presses with an overwhelming
urgency. If this duty were accepted by all Christians,
the burden would rest lightly upon each ; but great
multitudes in the church are shirking all responsibility.
So far as the work of missions is concerned, these
members of the household of faith are loungers. The
unfaithful many throw unnatural burdens on the faith-
ful few. Under these circumstances he who would be
faithful must accept sacrifices which would not other-
wise be his duty. That is, the principle always and
everywhere applicable, that we are under obligations
to make the wisest use of every penny, binds him to a
use of his means which, if every Christian did his duty,
would not be necessary. Notwithstanding all the sac-
rifices made by some, there are vast multitudes, which
the established channels of beneficence have placed
within our reach, who are starving for the bread of
life. As long as this is true, must not high uses of
money yield to the highest? It is not enough to be
sure that we are making a good use of means ; for, as
the Germans say, the good is a great enemy of the
best. The expenditure of a large sum on a work of
art may be a good use of the money3 but can any one
not purblind with selfishness fail to see that, when a
thousand dollars actually respresents the salvation of '
a certain number of souls, there are higher uses for the
money 1
The purchase of luxuries is often justified by the
following fallacy : " I am giving work and hence bread
to the poor ; and it is much wiser thus to let them
earn it than to encourage them in idleness by bestow-
ing the price of the lace in charity." Thus many justify
extravagance and make their luxuries flatter their pride
into the complacent conviction that they are unselfish.
190 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
An economy in truth — forcing the same act to minister
at once to self-indulgence and self -righteousness !
Does it make no difference to the world how its labor
is expended, whether on something useful or useless,
for high uses or low? "Many hold that an enormous
expenditure of wealth is highly commendable, because
it * makes trade.7 They forget that waste is not
wealth-making; war, fire, the sinking of a ship also
6 make trade,' because by destroying existing capital
they increase demand. The wealth thus wasted would,
more wisely used, give work to many more people in
creating more wealth."*
Again, the advocates or excusers of self-indulgence
pose as the vindicators of God's love. They tell us
that he gave all good things for the uses of his chil-
dren, and that he rejoices in their delight. Yes ', God
is even more benevolent than such suppose. So
greatly does he desire our joy that he is not content to
see us satisfied with the low delights of self-gratifica-
tion, but would fain have us know the blessedness of
self-sacrifice for others. The writer has no sympathy
with asceticism. There is no virtue in deformity ;
good taste is not unchristian ; beauty often costs no
more than ugliness. Away with the idea of penance .
It belies God, and caricatures the Christian religion.
It differs from the self-sacrifice which Christ taught
and exemplified as widely as the suicide of Cato
differed from the heroic death of Arnold von Winkel-
ried. Christ did not die for the sake of dying, but to
save a world ; and he does not inculcate self-
denial for the sake of self-denial, but for the sake of
others.
Many practice self-denial, if not for its own sake,
* Economic Tract No. X. " Of Work and Wealth," by R R. Bowker.
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 191
only for the sake of saving, and with little or no refer-
ence to giving. Let a Japanese heathen show us a
more excellent way. I take the following account
from The Missionary Herald (Sept., 1883). In a
certain place, and generation by generation, the owner
and relatives of a certain house prospered greatly.
Year by year, those persons, on the second day of the
New Year, assembled and worshiped the god IZannin
Daimiyo-jin-san. The meaning of the name in Eng-
lish is " the great, bright god of self-restraint." After
engaging in worship, the head of the house opened
the Kannin-bako (self-restraint box), and distributed
to the needy money enough to enable them to live in
comfort for a time. The money in the box was the
annual accumulation of his offerings to his god.
Outsiders, learning of the prosperity, worship, and
large giving to the needy, which characterized this
family, were astonished, and presented themselves to
inquire into the matter. The master of the house, in
reply, gave the following account of the practice of his
household :
" From ancient times, my family has believed in and
worshiped 'the great, bright god of self-restraint.'
We have also made a box, and called it 'the self-
restraint box,' for the reception of the first-fruits and
other percentages, all of which are offered to our god.
"As to percentages, this is our mode of proceeding:
If I would buy a dollar garment, I manage by self-
restraint and economy to get it for eighty cents, and
the remaining twenty cents I drop into * the self-re-
straint box'; or, if I would give a five-dollar feast to
my friends, I exercise self-restraint and economy, and
give it for four, dropping the remaining dollar into the
box; or, if I determine to build a house that shall cost
192 MONET AND THE KINGDOM.
one hundred dollars, I exercise self-restraint and
economy, and build it for eighty, putting the remain-
ing twenty dollars into the box as an offering to
ITannin Daimiyo-jin-san. ... In proportion to
my annual outlays, the sum in this box is large or
small. This year my outlays have been large ; hence,
by the practice of the virtues named, the amount in
'the self-restraint box' is great. Yet, notwithstand-
ing this, we are living in comfort, peace, and happi-
ness." Among us, outlays and benefactions are apt to
be in inverse, instead of direct, ratio. I am strongly in-
clined to think that Christians could gain easy forgive-
ness for a little idolatry of "the great, bright god of
self-restraint." And if the " self-restraint box" were
marked Home Missions, and the savings resulting
from our self-denial were dropped into it, the " million
dollars a year" called for by Dr. Goodell, in 1881,
would be speedily forthcoming.
The general acceptance, by the church, of the Chris-
tian principle that every penny is to be used in the
way that will best honor God, would cause every
channel of benevolence to overflow its banks, and
occasion a blessed freshet of salvation throughout the
world. "But," says some one, "that principle de-
mands daily self-denial." Undoubtedly; and that
fact is the Master's seal set to its truth. " If any man
will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up
his cross DAILY, and follow me." (Luke ix, 23).
2. And there are no exceptions to this law of sacri-
fice; it binds all alike. Christian people will agree
that missionaries are called to make great sacrifices
for Christ ; but why does the obligation rest on them
any more than on all ? Does the missionary belong
absolutely to God? No less do we. Do the love
MONE* AND THE KINGDOM. 193
sacrifice of Christ lay him under boundless obligation?
Christ died for every man. Why is not the rich man
in America under as great obligation to practice self-
sacrifice for the salvation of the heathen as the
missionary in Central Africa, provided his sacrifice
can be made fruitful of their good? And that is
exactly the provision which is made by missionary
boards to-day. They establish channels of intercom-
munication which bring us into contact with all heath-
endom, and make Africa, which, centuries ago, fell
among thieves, and has ever since been robbed and
sore-wounded, our neighbor. To live in luxury, and
then leave a legacy for missions, does not fulfill the
law of sacrifice. Every steward is responsible for the
disposition of his trust made by will. The obligation
still rests upon him to bestow his possessions where,
after his death, they will do most for God. Legacies
to benevolent societies ought to be greatly multiplied,
and would be, if the principle of Christian stewardship
were accepted ; but such a legacy cannot compound
for an unconsecrated life. If the priest or Levite,
who passed by on the other side, wrote a codicil to his
will, providing for wounded wayfarers, I fear it was
hardly counted unto him for righteousness, was
hardly a proof that he loved his neighbor as himself.
Christ said : " Go ye into all the world, and preach the
gospel"; and he did not say it to the twelve, but to the
whole body of believers. If we cannot go in person, we
are under obligations to go by proxy. The rich man
has more power to send than the missionary has to go ;
he can, perhaps, send a dozen. And why is he not called
to make as great sacrifices in sending as the missionary
in going?* The obligations of all men rest on the
* Glance at some of the sacrifices of missionaries who go to the frontier.
194 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
same grounds. The law of sacrifice is universal. " If
AN£ man will come after me "; that means Dives and
Lazarus alike ; the terms are all-inclusive. And not
only must all men sacrifice, but the measure of sacrifice
is the same for all. God does not ask of any two the
same gift, because to no two are his gifts the same ;
but he does require of every man the same sacrifice.
"Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not ALL THAT
HE HATH, lie cannot be my disciple.1' (Luke xiv, 33).
To give the little all is as hard' as to give the abound-
ing all. In both cases the sacrifice is the same ; for it
is measured less by what is given than by what re-
mains. Only when the sacrifice is all-inclusive is it
perfect and entire, It is the sacrifice, not the gift,
which is the essential thing in God's eye. What he
demands of every soul is a complete sacrifice — the ab-
solute surrender of self, of all powers and all posses -
Writing to the Congregational Union for aid to build a parsonage, one says :
"Am sleeping in a shack three miles from town, and taking my meals at
the hotel. Not a house or building of any kind to be had to live in. My
family are in Ohio, awaiting arrangements for a home. Can you help us ?"
Another writes : " During the first two years' service here, was obliged to
live in Seattle, seven miles away, going to and fro on foot. For one year
since, have occupied such a building as I could erect in thirty days, with my
own hands."
Another : " My wife and myself, with our daughter of six years, have
been doing our best to live (if it can be called living) in an attic of a store.
It is all unfinished inside. By putting up a board partition we have two
rooms. To reach our rooms we have to go around to ihe rear of the store,
and make our way among boxes, barrels, tin cans, etc., to the foot of the
outside stairway that leads to our attic. We are doing our best to keep
warm ; but with mercury twenty degrees below zero we do not find it easy.
Then for these accommodations, which are the best and all we can get, we
have to pay $10 a month. Our salary is only $500. Cannot the Union loan
us $250, to help us build ?"
Another, writing for a loan, says : " My family of seven lived, all summer,
in a house twelve by sixteen, having only two rooms."
Many are heroically enduring hardship for the Kingdom, at the front,
whose sacrifices would be less if ours were greater, whose sufferings could
be relieved if our luxuries were curtailed.
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 195
sions ; not the abandoning of the latter any more than
of the former, but their entire surrender to God to be
used honestly for him. In George Herbert's noble
words :
" Next to Sincerity, remember still,
Thou must resolve upon Integrity.
God will have all thou hast ; thy mind, thy will,
Thy thoughts, thy words, thy works."
Whatever their occupation, Christians have but one
business in the world; viz., the extending of Christ's
Kingdom; and merchant, mechanic, and banker are
under exactly the same obligations to be wholly conse-
crated to that work as is the missionary.
3. One who believes that every dollar belongs to
God, and is to be used for him, will not imagine that
he has discharged all obligation by " giving a tenth to
the Lord." One who talks about the " Lord's tenth,"
probably thinks about "his own" nine-tenths. The
question is not what proportion belongs to God 1 But,
having given all to him, what proportion will best
honor him by being applied to the uses of myself and
family, and what proportion will best honor him by
being applied to benevolent uses ? Because necessi-
ties differ this proportion will differ. One man has a
small income and a large family ; another has a large
income and no family at all. Manifestly the propor-
tion which will best honor God by being applied to
benevolence is much larger in the one case than in the
other. God, therefore, requires a different proportion
to be thus applied in the two cases. If men's needs
varied directly as their incomes, it might, perhaps, be
practicable and reasonable to fix on some definite pro-
portion as due from all to Christian and benevolent
work. But, while men's wants are quite apt to grow
196 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
with their income, their needs do not.* A man whose
income is five hundred dollars may have the same needs
as his neighbor whose income is fifty thousand.
There are multitudes in the land who, after having
given one-tenth of their increase, might fare sumptu-
ously every day, gratify every whim, and live with the
most lavish expenditure. Would that fulfill the law
of Christ, " If any man will come after me let him
deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow
me"?
There is always a tendency to substitute form for
spirit, rules for principles. It is so much easier to
conform the conduct to a rule than to make a principle
inform the whole life. Moses prescribed rules;
Christ inculcated principles — rules for children, prin-
ciples for men.
The law of tithes was given when the race was in
its childhood, and the relations of money to the king-
dom of God were radically different from what they
are now. The Israelite was not held responsible for
the conversion of the world. Money had no such
spiritual equivalents then as now ; it did not represent
the salvation of the heathen. The Jew was required
simply to make provision for his own worship ; and its
limited demands might appropriately be met by levy-
ing upon a certain proportion of his increase. Pales-
tine was his world and his kindred the race ; but, under
the Christian dispensation, the world is our country,
and the race our kindred. The needs of the world to-
day are boundless ; hence, every man's obligation to
supply that need is the full measure of his ability ; not
* When John Wesley's income was £30, he lived on £28, and gave two ;
and when his income rose to £60, and afterwards to £120, he still lived on
£38, and gave all tne remainder.
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 197
one-tenth, or any other fraction of it. And no one ex-
ercises that full measure until he has sacrificed.
By all means let there be system. It is as valuable
in giving as in anything else. Proportionate giving to
benevolence is both reasonable and scriptural — "as
God hath prospered." It is well to fix on some pro-
portion of income, less than which we will not give,
and then bring expenses within the limit thus laid
down. But when this proportion has been given — be
it a tenth, or fifth, or half — it does not follow neces-
sarily that duty has been fully done. There can be
found in rules no substitute for an honest purpose and
a consecrated heart.
4. The principle that every dollar is to be used in
the way that will best honor God is as applicable to
capital as to increase or income, and in many cases
requires that a portion of capital be applied directly to
benevolent uses. " But," says one, " I must not give
of my capital, because that would impair my ability to
give in the future. I must not loll the goose that lays
the golden egg." The objection is of weight, especial-
ly in ordinary times ; but these are times wholly ex-
traordinary ; this is the world's emergency. It may be
quite true that giving one dollar now out of your cap-
ital would prevent your giving five dollars fifteen
years hence. But it should be remembered that, for
home missionary work, one dollar now is worth ten
dollars fifteen years later. This saying has become
proverbial among the home missionaries of the West.
Money, like corn, has a twofold power — that of min-
istering to want and that of reproduction. If there
were a famine in the land, no matter how sore it might
be, it would be folly to grind up all the seed-corn for
food. But, on the other hand, suppose, in the midst
198 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
of the famine, after feeding their families and doling
out a handful in charity, the farmers put all the in-
crease back into the ground, and do it year after year,
while the world is starving. That would be something
worse than foolish. It would be criminal. Yet that is
what multitudes of men are doing. Instead of apply-
ing the power in money to the end for which it was
entrusted to them, they use it almost wholly to accu-
mulate more power. A miller might as well spend his
life building his dam high and higher, and never turn
the water to his wheel. Bishop Butler said to his sec-
retary: "I should be ashamed of myself, if I could
leave ten thousand pounds behind me." Many pro-
fessed Christians die disgracefully and "wickedlj
rich." The shame and sin, however, lie not in the
fact that the power was gathered, but that it was un-
wielded.
It is the duty of some men to make a great deal of
money. God has given to them the money-making
talent ; and it is as wrong to bury that talent as to bury
a talent for preaching. It is every man's duty to wield
the widest possible power for righteousness ; and the
power in money must be gained before it can be used.
But let a man beware ! This power in money is some-
thing awful. It is more dangerous than dynamite.
The victims of " saint-seducing gold " are numberless.
If a Christian grows rich, it should be with fear and
trembling, lest the " deceitfulness of riches" undo him ;
for Christ spoke of the salvation of a rich man as some-
thing miraculous (Luke xviii, 24 — 27).
Let no man deceive himself by saying : "1 will give
when I have amassed wealth. I desire money that I
may do good with it ; but I will not give now, that I
may give the more largely in the future-" That is the
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 199
pit in which many have perished. If a man IB growing
large in wealth, nothing but constant and generous
giving can save him from growing small in soul. In
determining the amount of his gifts and the question
whether he should impair his capital, or to what ex-
tent, a man should never lose sight of a distinct and
intelligent aim to do the greatest possible good in a
life-time. Each must decide for himself what is the
wisest, the highest, use of money ; and we need often
to remind ourselves of the constant tendency of human
nature to selfishness and self-deception.
THE PEINCIPLE NOT ACCEPTED.
The principle which has been stated and briefly ap-
plied, and which is as abundantly sustained by reason
as it is clearly taught in the Scriptures, is not ac-
cepted by the Christian Church. There are many
noble gifts and noble givers ; but they only help us to
demonstrate that great multitudes in the church have
not yet learned the first principles of Christian giving.
According to Dr. Dorchester there were, in 1880, ten
million members of Evangelical Protestant churches
in the United States, who, from 1870 to 1880, gave an-
nually for missions, home and foreign, five million five
hundred thousand dollars,* an average of fifty-five
cents for each church-member. A considerable pro-
portion, however, is given by church-goers who are not
church-members. We will call it, therefore, an even
fifty cents for each of the ten million professing Chris-
« Dorchester's " Problem of Religious Progress," pp. 552—555.
200 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
tians. But many thousands give a dollar each, which
means that as many thousands more give nothing.
There are some thousands who give ten dollars ; and
for every thousand of this class there are nineteen
thousand who do not give anything. Dr. Cuyler says
he once had a seamstress in his church who used to
give a hundred dollars a year to missions. Not a few
out of larger means, give as much ; and, for every one
of them, there are one hundred and ninety-nine who
give nothing. Some give five thousand dollars; and
for each of them there are ten thousand church-mem-
bers who do not give one cent to redeem the heathen
world, for which he with whom they profess to be in
sympathy gave his life. There are hundreds of
churches that do not give anything to home or foreign
missions ; and of those that do many members give
nothing. A church in Hartford gave eleven hundred
dollars to home missions. One lady said to another :
"Didn't we do well this morning f " No ; not as a
church," was the reply. " For one lady gave six hun-
dred dollars and one gentleman gave three hundred."
If church collections were analyzed, it would appear
that, as a rule, by far the greater part is given by a
very few persons, and they not the most able. The
great majority of church-members give only a trifle or
nothing at all for the work of missions.
Five million five hundred thousand dollars for this
cause sounds like a large sum. But great and small
are relative terms. Compared with the need of the
world and the ability of the church it is pitiable in-
deed. Look at that ability. The Christian religion,
by rendering men temperate, industrious, and moral,
makes them prosperous. There are but few of the
very poor in our churches. The great question has
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 201
come to be : " How can we reach the masses t"
Church-membership is made up chiefly of the well-to-
do and the rich.* On the other hand, a majority of the
membership is composed of women, who control less
money than men. It is, therefore, fair to say that the
church-member is at least as well off as the average
citizen. One-fifth, then, of the wealth of the United
States, or $8,728,400,000, was in the hands of church-
members in 1880 ; and this takes no account of the
immense capital in brains and muscles. Of this great
wealth one-sixteenth part of one per cent., or one dol-
lar out of fifteen hundred and eighty-six, is given in a
year for the salvation of seven or eight hundred mil-
lion heathen. If Christians spent every cent of wages,
salary, and other income on themselves, and gave to
missions only one cent on the dollar of their real and
personal property, their contribution would be $87,-
284,000 instead of $5,500,000. In 1880 they paid out
nearly six times as much for sugar and molasses as for
the world's salvation, seven times as much for boots
and shoes, sixteen times as much for cotton and wool-
en goods, eleven times as much for meat, and eighteen
times as much for bread. From 1870 to 1880 the ave-
rage annual increase of the wealth of church-members
was $391,740,000. And this, remember, was over and
above all expense of living and all benevolences ! That
is, the average annual increase of wealth in the hands
of professed Christians was seventy-one times greater
than their offering to missions, home and foreign.
How that offering looks, when compared with their
* The Century says that, of the fifty leading business men of Columbus,
Ohio, and Springfield, Mass, (if we are not mistaken in the unnamed cities),
four-fifths are attendants upon the churches and supporters of them, while
three-fifths are communicants.
202 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
wealth and its annual increase, may be seen on the op
posite page.
If the members of our Sunday-schools in America
gave, each, one cent a Sabbath to missions, it would
aggregate nearly as much as is now secured, with end-
less writing and pleading and praying, from our entire
church-membership. If each of these professed Chris-
tians gave five cents — the price of one cigar — once a
week, it would amount in a year to $26,000,000. If
each gave one cent every day to that which he pro-
fesses is the object of his life — the building of the
Kingdom — it would amount to $36,500,000.
Immense sums are invested freely if there is only a
chance of large dividends. The Times of India says
that "nearly $25,000,000 have been invested in search
for gold in India, and that not $2,500 worth of the
precious metal has been obtained after three years of
labor/' Christians have opportunities to invest, and
with perfect security, where they will realize thirty,
sixty, a hundred-fold — that is three thousand, six
thousand, ten thousand per cent. — yet how few and
small the investments !
Seventy business men of New York subscribed
$1,400,000, or $20,000 each, toward the Metropolitan
Opera House in that city, which was completed two
years ago ; and this without receiving or expecting
pecuniary return. "Where are the seventy men who
will give one-half that amount to home missions'? Is
the love of Italian opera a more powerful motive than
love of country, love of souls, and love of Christ I
It is commonly agreed that the annual liquor bill of
the nation is $900,000,000. As comparatively few
women and children use intoxicating drinks, and many
men do not, we may safely assume that the most of
Wealth, of Church, JtCem&ers
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MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 4 203
that amount is paid by one-fifth of the population.
That is, in 1880, ten million people paid $900,000,000
for liquors, and the same number of professed Chris-
tians gave $5,500,000 for missions. Any one that did
not know better might naturally infer that the one
class loves beer and whisky better than the other
loves souls.
The other day a brutal prize-fighter got a purse of
$12,000 for pounding an opponent into pulp.
Money can be had in abundance for illegitimate uses,
but a thousand interests, dear to the Master as the
apple of his eye, must languish for the lack of funds.
We have seen that there is no lack of wealth ; there is
money enough in the hands of church-members to sow
every acre of the earth with the seed of truth; bufc the
average Christian deems himself a despot over his
purse. God has intrusted to his children power
enough to give the gospel to every creature by the
close of this century ; but it is being misapplied. In-
deed, the world would have been evangelized long
ago, if Christians had perceived the relations of money
to the Kingdom, and had accepted their stewardship.
There has been too much of the spirit of an Ohio
church treasurer (a professed Christian), who, when
his pastor brought his annual contribution to the
American Board, said to him : " You ought not to do
it. I don't think it's right. You ought to stop giving
to missions, and preach for us on a smaller salary";
adding, in conclusion ; " We are heathen." A proposi-
tion which few enlightened men would be disposed to
controvert, though it is a hard rub on the heathen.
When the heathen come to the light, they are much
more Christian in their conceptions of duty and privi-
lege, and shame us by their giving. Six native Chri&-
204 i, MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
tians, living on the banks of the • Euphrates,
property averaged, perhaps, eight hundred dollars,
gave towards their chapel and school-room three hun>
dred and eight dollars, an average of more than fifty
dollars each. " This contribution," adds the mission-
ary, " means for one of those poor mountaineers mor*
than one thousand days' work" " It is an amazing
circumstance that, in 1881, the 1,200 church-members
belonging to the missions of the United Presbyterian
Board, in Egypt — most of them very poor men and
women — raised £4,546, or more than $17 each, for the
support of churches and schools. The Baptists, among
the Karens, have done equally well."* Yes; that is
amazing ; but it is far more amazing that Christians in
rich America should give only fifty cents each to mis-
sions. If we gave as much per caput to home and for-
eign missions as they gave for churches and schools,
our offering would be $170,0005000, instead of $5,500,-
000.
Is it not evident that most of our church-members
have failed to learn the first principles of Christian
giving ? And many who give most largely do not seem
to have grasped fully the idea of stewardship, and to
hold themselves under obligations to use every dollar
in the way that will most honor God. A wealthy cler-
gyman (!), who was a munificent giver, saw, in Paris, a
pin that struck his fancy, and gave $800 for it If, in
the wide world, he could find no higher use for the
money, it was his duty to spend it as he did. Many
give largely, and spend as lavishly on themselves ; nor
is it strange, in view of the instructions often given.
A pastor, whose fame is in all the churches, and justly,
writes 0' "I say not, indeed, that it is wrong for a man
* Josepli Cook, "Occident," p. 126,
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 205
to take such a position in society as his riches warrant
him to assume, or that there is sin in spending money
on our residences, or in surrounding ourselves with the
treasures of human wisdom in books, or the triumphs
of human art in pictures and statuary ; but I do say
that our gifts to the cause of God ought to be at least
abreast of our expenditure for these other things."
And a worthy secretary of one of our most honored
benevolent societies says : " He shall see the travail of
his soul and be satisfied — When? Not till beneficence
keeps pace with luxury." Will that satisfy him who
commended her that cast into the treasury all her liv-
ing, who requires of his followers daily cross-bearing,
and admits no one to discipleship who has not forsaken
"all that he hath"? Is the Master satisfied when a
rich man, to gratify "a nice and curious palate," spends
ten thousand a year on his table, provided only benef-
icence keeps pace with his luxury, and he gives as
much more to missions ? Or, is it untrue that God
requires every one to make the wisest and best use of
all his. money ?
Many churches are never taught that the consecra-
tion of all our property to God is no more optional
than the practice of justice or chastity or any other
duty. Most Christians leave their giving to mere im-
pulse ; they give something or nothing, much or little,
as they feel like it. They might as well attempt to
live a Christian life and be honest or not, as they felt
like it. The churches are not adequately instructed as
to this duty. They hear too often of the "Lord's
share." The reformation must begin with the pulpit.
While I would not seem censorious of my brethren, it
must nevertheless be said that too many ministers have
not laid hold of this truth, or, at least, it has not laid
hold of them.
206 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
No, there is no lack of wealth in the churches, even
in hard times. When the rod of conviction and con-
secration smites the flinty rock of selfishness, it will
break asunder and send forth abundant streams of ben-
efaction, which shall make glad the waste places and
prove the water of life to the perishing multitudes.
ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRINCIPLE URGED.
Having defined the true principle of Christian giving,
and glanced at some of the questions of casuistry
which spring from its application, and having shown
that the church does not act on it, it remains to present
briefly some of the considerations which urge its ac-
ceptance.
1. Duty. It is common to urge benevolence by ap-
pealing to the hope of larger returns, which are
assured by many promises of the "Word. And such
motives were needed in the childhood of the race ; but
with al] our light they should not be needed now. Did
not Christ place giving on a higher plane ? He said,
"It is more blessed to give than to receive," not be-
cause of the return ; but because giving is more God-
like. Men urge benevolence as an investment. It is
true that the steward whom God finds faithful, he is
very apt to honor with a larger trust ; but this should
not be the motive of giving. We should " do good,
and lend, hoping for nothing again." It is true that
honesty is the best policy ; but if this be the motive of
honest dealing, there is no real honesty. So when men
give because they expect a larger return, there is no
real giving. In the region of right and wrong we may
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 207
not ask what is politic ; we stand under the scepter of
the absolute Ought, which does not reason or advise
or plead, but simply says : Thou shalt. Whether or
not we have learned that only that which we give is
truly and forever ours, the duty to give remains the
same. The fact that God requires the entire consecra-
tion of all our substance, ought, <alone, to be sufficient
to move us ; but there are other considerations.
2. The spiritual life and power of the churches de-
mand the acceptance of the true doctrine touching
possessions. We talk about " our crosses." There is
no such expression in the Bible. The word does not
occur there in the plural. It has been belittled ; it has
come to mean trial, disagreeable duty, anything which
crosses our inclination ; but its meaning in the Scrip-
tures is never so meager as that. There it always
means crucifixion; like the word gallows, in modern
speech, it means death. To take one's cross means, in
the Bible, to start for the place of execution. " If any
man will come after me, let him take up his cross and
follow me." Follow him where ? To Golgotha. He
in whose experience there is no Calvary where he him-
self has been crucified with Christ, knows little of
Christian discipleship. Christ demands actual self-
abnegation ; but where the Christian name is honored,
and its profession confers obvious advantages, self-
deception is common and Christian experience is liable
to be shallow. As quaint old Kutherford said : u Men
get Christ for the half of nothing — such maketh loose
work." Too many church-members know little or
nothing of self -surrender ; hence the lack of spiritual
life and power. At such times the church suffers for
the want of some decisive test, the application of which
will show men to themselves, and separate, with a good
208 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
degree of accuracy, those who have been crucified with
Christ from those who know not what it is to " take up
the cross."
In a commercial age, and especially in a luxurious
civilization, the form of worldliness to which the church
is most likely to be tempted is the love of money. As
the means of almost every possible self -gratification it
becomes the representative of self; hence the true
principle of Christian giving, the actual surrender of
all substance to God, is exactly the test for the ap-
plication of which the church is suffering to-day. If
this test were applied now to every church-member as
Christ applied it to the young ruler (and the need is
the same, for the human heart is the same, and heaven
and the conditions of entrance are the same), would no^
the record in many a case be, " and he went away sor-
rowful, for he had great possessions "?
What right has any one, who has light on this sub-
ject, to believe he has given himself to God, if he has
not given his possessions? If he has kept back the
less, what reason is there to think he has given the
greater I As Jeremy Taylor says :* " He never loved
God who will quit anything of his religion to save his
money."
Is not much that the Master said concerning posses-
sions a dead letter in the church of to-day 1 " Lay not
up for yourselves treasures upon earth." Is not that
exactly what many in the church are doing, and many
more striving with eager energy to do ? " The deceit-
fulness of riches." How many are afraid of being de-
ceived by them ? How many refuse to run the risk ?
" How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
* " Holy Living," p. 184.
MONEY AND THE KiJNi*uOM. 209
Kingdom of Heaven." How many are unwilling to be*
come rich or richer ? Multitudes now complain that
they have so little who, on the great day of accounts,
will mourn that they had so much. The Word declares
covetousness to be idolatry; but how many church-
members were ever disciplined for this idolatry I There
is, however, a sign of the millennium down in Maine,
where, about a year ago, a church disciplined five mem-
bers because they would give nothing.
The spiritual life and power of the church can vital-
ize and save the world only when there is a spirit of
consecration sufficiently deep and inclusive to accept
the true principle of Christian giving.
3. Again, our safety from the perils which have been
discussed demands the acceptance of this principle.
It is not urged as a panacea; specific remedies,
which there is no space to discuss, must be applied ;
reforms must be pressed ; we need patriotic and wise
legislation, and to this end fewer politicians and more
statesmen ; but statesmanship cannot save the country.
Christ's refusal to be made a king, and his rejection of
Satan's offer of the world's scepter, ought to teach those
who seek to save the world that moral means are nec-
essary to moral ends. Christ saw that the world could
not be saved by legislation, that only by his being
" lifted up " could all men be drawn unto him. He
saw that he could not save the world without sacrific-
ing for it ; no more can we. The saving power of the
church is its sacrificing power.
The gospel is the radical cure of the world's great
evils, and its promulgation, like its spirit, requires
sacrifice. Money is the sinews of spiritual warfare as
well as carnal, and a sufficient amount of it would en-
able us to meet these perils with the gospel.
210 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
Christianize the immigrant and he will be easily
Americanized. Christianity is the solvent of all race
antipathies. Give the Romanist a pure gospel and he
will cease to be a Romanist. It has already been shown
that Christian education will solve the Mormon prob-
lem. The temperance reform, like all others which de-
pend on popular agitation, must have money, and i*
being retarded by the lack of it. Concerning the rem-
edy for socialism, accept the opinion of an economist
who has made it a subject of special study. Says Prof.
Ely : " It is an undoubted fact that modern socialism
of the worst type is spreading to an alarming extent
among our laboring classes, both foreign and native. I
think the danger is of such a character as should arouse
the Christian people of this country to most earnest
efforts for the evangelization of the poorer classes,
particularly in large cities. What is needed is Chris-
tianity, and the Christian church can do far more than
political economists toward a reconciliation of social
classes. The church's remedy for social discontent and
dynamite bombs is Christianity as taught in the New
Testament. Now in all this you will find nothing new.
It is only significant in this regard : others have come
to these conclusions from the study of the Bible ; from
a totally different starting point, from the study of
political economy, I have come to the same goal."*
But the acceptance of the Christian doctrine con-
cerning property would have a direct, as well as indi-
rect, influence on socialism. Let us, therefore, dwell
a moment on the subject.
In the popular ferment, a hundred years ago, which
* From a letter by Prof. R. T. Ely to Kev. H. A. Schauffier. I regret that
lack of space forbids my quoting the entire letter, wMcli maj be found ix
The Home Missionary for Oct., 1884, p. 22T.
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 211
culminated in the French ^Revolution, the demand was
for equal rights and the watchword was Liberty. There
is a popular ferment throughout Europe to-day which
is more universal and extends to the United States.
The popular demand now is equality of condition, and
the watchword is Property — a cry the meaning of
which the dullest and most earthly can understand.
This movement, which is steadily gathering force, re-
sults from the two most striking facts of the Nineteenth
century : first, the general diffusion of knowledge
through the press, which has wonderfully multiplied
wants up and down the entire social scale ; and, sec-
ond, the creation of immense wealth by means of the
steam engine. But this wealth, which is necessary to
the satisfaction of these wants, has been massed. In a
word, the difficulty is knowledge multiplied and popu-
larized, and wealth multiplied and centralized.
The right distribution of property, which is the ker-
nel of the social question, is the great problem of our
civilization ; and it may well be doubted whether the
true solution will be found until the church accepts,
both in doctrine and practice, the teaching of God's
"Word touching possessions. For the church is re-
sponsible for public opinion on all moral questions, and
no great question of rights can be settled for the world
until Christian men come into right relations with it.
The inexorable law of our present industrial system
is that the cost of subsistence determines the rate of
wages. This makes no provision for the higher wants
of increasing intelligence, and therefore insures an in-
creasing popular discontent. It would seem that the
solution of the great difficulties between capital and
labor must be found in some form of co-operation by
which the workman will be admitted to a just share in
212 MONET AND THE KINGDOM.
the profits of his labor. Professor Cairns, who is con-
sidered one of the greatest economists England has
produced, believes that co-operative production affords
the laboring classes " the sole means of escape from a
harsh and hopeless destiny" (" Leading Principles," p.
338). Referring to several thousand co-operative so-
cieties in England, having some millions of capital,
Thomas Hughes says : " I still look to this movement
as the best hope for England and other lands." The
eminent statistician, Carroll D. Wright, the head of
the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, re-
ferring to the duty of the rich manufacturer to regard
himself as " an instrument of God for the upbuilding
of the race," and the promotion of the highest welfare
of those in his employ, says : " This may sound like
sentiment. I am willing to call it sentiment ; but I
know it means the best material prosperity, and that
every employer who has been guided by such senti-
ments has been rewarded two-fold ; first, in witnessing
the wonderful improvement of his people, and, second,
in seeing his dividends increase, and the wages of ins
operatives increase with his dividends. The factory
system of the future will be run on this basis. The
instances of such are multiplying rapidly now." Man-
ifestly, the acceptance on the part of Christian capital-
ists of the scriptural doctrine of possessions would
greatly facilitate the introduction of co-operation or
any other plan which promised justice to the work-
man.
The Christian man who is not willing to make the
largest profits which an honest regard for the laws of
trade permits is a rare man. But the laws of trade
permit much that the laws of God do not permit.
Many transactions are commercially honest which ax>
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 213
not righteous. If, now, a man accepts the truth that
his possessions are a trust to be administered for God's
glory, he will not consent to increase them by any un-
righteous means. And since justice and righteousness,
like honesty, will prove to be the best policy, the ac-
ceptance on the part of Christian men of a thoroughly
righteous plan of co-operation between capital and la-
bor would eventually compel its general acceptance.
Let Christian men gain a correct conception of their
relations to their possessions, let them accept the duty
of Christian stewardship, and it would command their
getting as well as their spending. There would be no
motive to drive a sharp bargain. It would purify
trade. It would mediate between capital and labor.
It would destroy the foundation on which the rising
structure of socialism rests. It would cut one of the
principal roots of popular unbelief ; for extended in-
quiry in Cincinnati elicited the almost unanimous re-
sponse that the reason workingmen neglect the
churches is that there are on the church rolls the
names of employers who wrong their employes.
The acceptance of the true principle of Christian
giving is urged upon us by the fact that money is
power, which is needed everywhere for elevating and
saving men. It is further urged upon us by the fact
that only such a view of possessions will save us from
the great and imminent perils of wealth. God might
have sent his angels to sing his gospel through the
world, or he might have written it on the sky, and
made the clouds his messengers ; but we need to bear
the responsibility of publishing that gospel. He might
mak^ the safe of every benevolent society a gold mine
as unfailing as the widow's cruse of oil ; but we need
to give that gold. The tendency of human nature, in-
214 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
tensified by our commercial activity, is to make the life
a whirlpool — a great maelstrom which draws every-
thing into itself. "What is needed to-day is a grand re-
versal of the movement, a transformation of the life
into a fountain. And in an exceptional degree is this
the need of Anglo-Saxons. Their strong love of lib-
erty, and their acquisitiveness, afford a powerful temp-
tation to offer some substitute for self-abnegation.
We would call no man master. We must take Christ
as master. We would possess all things ; we must
surrender all things.
One of the grave problems before us is how to make
great material prosperity conduce to individual ad-
vancement. The severest poverty is unfavorable to
morality. Up to a certain point increase of property
serves to elevate man morally and intellectually, while
it improves him physically. But, as nations grow rich,
they are prone to become self-indulgent, effeminate,
immoral. The physical nature becomes less robust,
the intellectual nature less vigorous, the moral less
pure. The pampered civilizations of old had to be re-
invigorated, from time to time, with fresh infusions of
barbaric blood — a remedy no longer available. If we
cannot find in Christianity a remedy or preventive, our
Christian civilization and the world itself is a failure ;
and our rapidly increasing wealth, like the " cankered
heaps of strange-achieved gold," will curse us unto de-
struction.
But the recognition of God's ownership in all our
substance is a perfect antidote for the debilitating and
corrupting influence of wealth. It prevents self-in-
dulgence, and the apprehension of religious truth im-
plied in such recognition affords the strongest possible
motives to sacrifice and active effort of which men are
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 215
capable. A hundred years ago poverty compelled men
to endure hardness, and so served to make the nation
great. Now that we are exposed to the pampering in-
fluence of riches, Christian principle must inspire the
spirit of self-denial for Christ's sake, and the world's
sake, and so make the nation greater.
Where that spirit obtains, Mammonism and materi-
alism, as well as luxuriousness, lose their power, and
wealth, instead of being centralized, is distributed. So
that Christian stewardship, so far as it is accepted,
affords perfect protection against all the perils of
wealth.
Our cities, which are gathering together the most dan-
gerous elements of our civilization, will, in due tin\e,
unless Christianized, prove the destruction of our free
institutions. During the last hundred years, the in-
struments of destruction have been wonderfully multi-
plied. Offensive weapons have become immeasurably
more effective. Not so the means of defense. Yout
life is in the hand of every man you meet. Society is
safe to-day only so far as every man becomes a law un-
to himself. The lawless classes are growing much
more rapidly than the whole population ; and nothing
but the gospel can transform lawless men and women
into good citizens.
The number of missionaries in our cities ought to be
increased ten or twenty-fold; and their work is ex-
pensive. It is usually the densest populations which
are most neglected, and in such quarters mission chap-
els cannot be built without large expenditures. If our
cities are to be evangelized, laymen must greatly en-
large their ideas of the demands of the work, and of
their pecuniary responsibility for it.
The perils which have been discussed (Chaps. IV. — X.)
216 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
are increasing. And not only has their rate of in-
crease since 1800 been greater than that of the whole
population, but greater even than that of our evangel-
ical church-membership, as may be seen by the accom-
panying diagram.* As some of our statistics extend
no further back than 1850, let us compare the rates of
increase since that date. While the whole population
has increased a little over two-fold, and the evangelical
less than three-fold, the Catholic population has in-
creased nearly four-fold, as has the city population
also. Wealth has increased six-fold, the use of malt
liquorsf more than eleven-fold, and the Mormon popu-
lation in Utah fourteen-fold. Immigration, though
very irregular, shows a general increase more rapid
than that of population. Immorality and crime also
are increasing much more rapidly than church-member-
ship. That is, the dangerous and destructive elements
are making decidedly greater progress than the con-
servative. Our churches are growing, our missionary
operations extending, our benefactions swelling, and
we congratulate ourselves upon our progress ; but we
have only to continue making the same kind of prog-
ress long enough, and our destruction is sure.
* This diagram exhibits rate of increase, not relative numbers. The
straight perpendicular lines, numbered at the top and bottom of the page,
represent fold. Thus, from 1800 to 1850, the evangelical population in-
creased ten-fold, and the Catholic population increased sixteen-f old. From
1800 to 1880, the former increased twenty-seven-fold and the latter sixty-
three-f old, while the whole population increased somewhat over nine-fold.
Dr. Dorchester's diagram No. II, " Problem of Religious Progress," p. 456,
is very incorrect and utterly misleading. By his diagram the Catholic pop-
ulation increased, from 1800 to 1850, barely three-fold; by his statistics, six-
teen-fold ; from 1800 to 1880, by his diagram, six or eight-fold ; by his statis-
tics, sixty-three. His mistake lay in attempting to represent, by the same
diagram, two entirely different things ; viz., rate of increase and relative
numbers.
t Malt and vinous liquors are, in some measure, supplanting spirituous.
Taking all kinds of intoxicating drinks together, the people of the United
States used three times as much per caput in 1883 as in 1840.
1800
MZ34&78 16
It 4& 56 64,
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 217
Has not the time fully come when the church must
make a new departure of some sort? And is it not evi-
dent that what is needed is a true view of the relations
of money to the kingdom, and such a spirit of conse-
cration as will lay it and all else on the altar ?
4. We have seen, in the preceding chapters, that a
mighty emergency is upon us. Our country's future,
and much of the world's future, depend on the way in
which Christian men meet the crisis. Do you gay: "I
trust in God, and therefore have no fear ; I believe
what some one has said, ' If God intends to save the
world, he cannot afford to make an exception of
America.' This country is his chosen instrument of
blessing to mankind; and God's plans never fail"?
The difference between a true and a false faith is that
one inspires action while the other paralyzes it.
God saved the nation during the war of the Eebellion ;
but it was not by a false faith, which, with folded arms,
rehearsed its confidence in the divine decrees. It was
by a faith which inspired sacrifice. At the time of
Paul's shipwreck, it was revealed to him that they
were all to be saved; but, nevertheless, there were
conditions with which they must comply, or be lost.
Their salvation was certain, but not necessary; it was
conditioned. I believe our country will be saved.
Its salvation may be certain in the counsels of God ;
but it is not necessary. I believe it to be conditioned
on the Church's rising to a higher spirit of sacrifice.
When the drum beat the nation to battle, a quarte
of a century ago, no sacrifice was too great; wive**
gave their husbands, parents gave their sons. A
Christian mother had sent seven sons into the Union
army. Near the close of the war, the eighth, and only
remaining son, paid a visit to his mother, and, speak-
218 MONET AND THE KINGDOM.
ing of the wax, said : " Mother, what would you do if
one of the boys should fall in the struggle?" Turning
her deep eyes upon him, she said : " God has given me
nine noble sons ; one he has taken to himself, seven
are in the army, and I want you to understand, my
son, that I only hold you as a reserve for your coun-
try's defense ; and the first breach that you hear of as
being made in our number, go quickly, and fill it ; and
may God take care of you, and I will take care of your
children." Is it easier to give one's flesh and blood
than to give silver and gold? We are engaged in
what Lord Bacon called the " heroic work of making a
nation"; for which heroic sacrifices are demanded.
And our plea is not America for America's sake ;
but America for the world's sake. For, if this genera-
tion is faithful to its trust, America is to become God's
right arm in his battle with the world's ignorance and
oppression and sin. If I were a Christian African or
Arab, I should look into the immediate future of the
United States with intense and thrilling interest ; for,
as Professor Hoppin of Yale has said: "America
Christianized means the world Christianized." And
"If America fail," says Professor Park, "the worla
will fail." During this crisis, Christian work is un-
speakably more important in the United States than
anywhere else in the world. "The nations whose
conversion is the most pressing necessity of the world
to-day," says Professor Phelps, "are the Occidental
nations. Those whose speedy conversion is most vital
to the conversion of the rest are the nations of the
Occident. The pioneer stock of mind must be the
Occidental stock. The pioneer races must be the
Western races. And of all the Western races, who
that can read skillfully the providence of God, or can
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 219
read it at all, can hesitate in affirming that the signs
of divine decree point to this land of ours as the one
which is fast gathering to itself the races which must
take the lead in the final conflicts of Christianity for
possession of the world? Ours is the elect nation for
the age to come. We are the chosen people. We
cannot afford to wait. The plans of God will not
wait. Those plans seem to have brought us to one of
the closing stages in the world's career, in which we
can no longer drift with safety to our destiny. We
are shut up to a perilous alternative. Immeasurable
opportunities surround and overshadow us. Such, a#
I read it, is the central fact in the philosophy of
American Home Missions."*
What a consummate blunder to live selfishly in such
a generation! What food for everlasting reflection
and regret in a life lived narrowly amid such infinitely
wide opportunities!
Says a New York daily paper : " A gentleman died
at his residence in one of our up-town fashionable
streets, leaving eleven millions of dollars. He was a
member of the Presbyterian church, in excellent stand-
ing, a good husband and father, and a thrifty citizen.
On his deathbed he suffered with great agony of
mind, and gave continual expression to his remorse
for what his conscience told him had been an ill-spent
life. 'Oh!' he exclaimed, 'if I could only live my
years over again ! Oh ! if I could only be spared for a
few years, I would give all the wealth I have amassed
in a lifetime. It is a life devoted to money-getting
that I regret. It is this which weighs me down, and
makes me despair of the life hereafter.' " Suppose so
* From letter read at tbe Home Missionary Anniversary in Chicago, June
9tfl, 1881.
220 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
unfaithful a steward is permitted to enter the many
mansions. When, with clarified, spiritual vision, he
perceives the true meaning of life, and sees that he
has lost the one opportunity of an endless existence to
set in motion influences, which, by leading sinners to
repentance, would cause heaven to thrill with a new
joy, it seems to me he would gladly give a hundred
years of Paradise for a single day on earth in posses-
sion of the money once entrusted to him — time enough
to turn that power into the channels of Christian
work.
The emergency created by the settlement of the
states and territories of the West — a grand constella-
tion of empires — is to be met by placing in the hand
of every Christian agency there at work all the power
that money can wield. There is scarcely a church, or
society, or institution of any kind doing God service
there which is not embarrassed, or sadly crippled for
lack of funds. Missionaries should be multiplied,
parsonages and churches built, and colleges generously
endowed. The nation's salt, with which the whole
land, and pre-eminently the tainted civilization of the
frontier, must be sweetened, is Christian education.
The tendency, which is so marked in many of our
older and larger colleges, to develop and furnish sim-
ply the intellect, is full of peril. Divorce religion and
education, and we shall fall a prey either to blunder-
ing goodness or well-schooled villainy. The young
colleges of the West, like Drury, Doane, Carleton,
Colorado, and others, founded by broad-minded and
far-seeing men, are characterized by a strong religious
influence, and send a surprising porportion of their
graduates into the ministry. In view of their almost
boundless possibilities for usefulness in their relations
MONEY AND THE KINGDOM. 221
to the future of the "West and of the nation, and in
view of their urgent needs, it is a wonder that those
who, like Boaz, are mighty men of wealth, can deny
themselves the deep and lasting pleasure of liberally
endowing such institutions. Said one who had just
given fifty thousand dollars to a Western college : " I
cannot tell you what I have enjoyed. It is like being
born into the kingdom again."
This emergency demands the acceptance of Christian
stewardship, that our great benevolent societies may
be adequately furnished for their work. They are
kept constantly on their knees before the public, and
with pleas so pitiful, so moving, the marvel to me is
that, when Christian men hold their peace and their
purse, the very stones do not cry out. And, notwith-
standing all their efforts to secure means, they must,
every one, scrimp at every point, decline providential
calls to enlarge their work, and even retrench, in order
to close the fiscal year without a debt.
The door of opportunity is open in all the earth ;
organizations have been completed, languages learned,
the Scriptures translated, and now the triumph of the
Kingdom awaits only the exercise of the power com-
mitted to the church, but which she refuses to put
forth. If she is to keep step with the majestic march
of the divine Providence, the church must consecrate
fche power which is in money.
5. Oh! that men would accept the testimony of
Christ touching the blessedness of giving ! He who
sacrifices most, loves most ; and he who loves most, is
most blessed. Love and sacrifice are related to each
other like seed and fruit; each produces the other.
The seed of sacrifice brings forth the fragrant fruit of
love, and love always has in its heart the seeds of new
222 MONEY AND THE KINGDOM.
sacrifice. He who gives but a part is not made perfect
in love. Love rejoices to give all ; it does not measure
its sacrifice. It was Judas, not Mary, who calculated
the value of the alabaster box of ointment. He who
is infinitely blessed is the Infinite Giver; and man,
made in his likeness, was intended to find his highest
blessedness in the completest self-giving. He who
receives, but does not give, is like the Dead Sea. All
the fresh floods of Jordan cannot sweeten its dead,
salt depths. So all the streams of God's bounty can-
not sweeten a heart that has no outlet ; is ever receiv-
ing, yet never full and overflowing.
If those whose horizon is as narrow as the bushel
under which they hide their light could be induced to
come out into a large place, and take a worthy view of
the Kingdom of Christ and of their relations to it, if
they could be persuaded to make the principle of
Christian giving regnant in all their life, their happi-
ness would be as much increased as their usefulness.
INDEX.
PAQB.
ADAMS, John 166
ADAMS, Professor H. C 104
AGASSIZ 120
AGRICULTURAL resources of the United States 9-10
Product for 1880, 12, note.
ALASKA, timber lands of 24
ALEXANDER III 34
ALCOHOL, increase in use of 74
AMERICANS, physical degeneracy of. 169-170
ANGLO-SAXONS and the world's future 159-180
Two great ideas represented by 159-160
Multiplication and expansion of, in modern times 161-163
Future growth of 162-165
Becoming more effective in the United States than in Great
Britain 171-175
Characteristics of. 172-174
ARABLE lands of the West 21-23
Of the East 28-2^.
AREA of C hina 9
Of the United States 9
ARIZONA, lands of 19-20
ARKANSAS, timber lands of , 23
ARMIES, cost of standing 114
ARNOLD, Matthew 15-36
ARTESIAN Wells 22
ATKINSON, Edward 10
AUSTRIA 34
BACON, Lord 218
" BAD LANDS " 18
BAILEY, Professor 27
BARROWS, Dr. W. M 61
BAXTER, Dr 170
BEARD, Dr. Geo. M 71-72-73-168
BEAUTIFUL, how far may we gratify our love for the? 187-189
BEECHER, Henry Ward 46
BELLARMINE, Cardinal • 53
BISMARCK 33-51
BLANC, Louis 85
BLANCHARD, Rev. A 29
224 INDEX.
PAGE.
BORUTTAU 94
BOSCAWEN. 147
BOWKER, R R 190
BREWERS' Congress 79-80
BRIGHT, John lf>9
BRITISH Colonies, increase of population in 163-164
BURKE, Edmund 153
BURNABY 167
BUSHNELL, Dr. 175-176-182
BUTLER, Bishop 198
BUXTON 2
CAIRNES, Professor. 103-212
CALIFORNIA, extent of, 16 ; gold, 24 ; iron 26
CAPITAL, consecration of 197-199
CARLYLE 153
CATTLE " Kings " 110
CHINA, area and population of 9
CHURCH Members, proportion of in states and territories 152
Wealth of. 201-202
CITY, the peril of the 128-138
Growth of. 128-129
Proportion of foreigners in 129
Liquor power in 129
Wealth and poverty in 129-132
Socialism in 132
Number of churches to population in. 133
Religious destitution of 133-135
Government of. 135-136
CLARK, Dr. N. G 178
COAL 11-26
COLFAX, Hon. Schuyler 65
COLORADO, gold and silver products of. 24
COMMERCE, domestic 113-114
COMMERCE follows the missionary 14
COMSTOCK, Anthony 84
COOK, Joseph 67-92-95-204
COPPER 26
COTTON-GIN 2
COTTON, C. B., confessions of 81-83
COTTON Exchange of New York Ill
CRIME 41-42-44
CRIMINALS, increase of 141
CROSBY, Dr. Howard 84-124
DAKOTA, 17 ; " Bad Lands *' of 18
D'ALEMBERT 83
D'ARANDA 166
DARWIN, Professor 170-171-176
DEBTS, public, of Europe 37
DENSITY of population in European States and United States 161
INDEX. 225
PAGE-
DESETRT..... 1T-21
DE TOCQUEVILLE 29-36-99-101-138
DIAGRAM, showing wealth of church members and gifts to missions 202
Showing increase of perils.— 2i6
DICKENS 173
DIVORCE 141
DORCHESTER, Dr. D 168
DIKE, S. W 141
EAST of the Mississippi, area IT
Arable lands 23-24
ELY, Professor R. T 87-88-90-210
EMERSON 96-122-124-172
EMPIRE, westward movement of . , 166-167
FAIRBAIRN, William 3
FAWCETT, Professor 35
FOOD, per caput, in United States and Europe 31
FOREIGN-BORN population in United States in 1880, 39 ; in 1900 - 40
FOREIGN-BORN population, tendency toward aggregation of . .... r 44-45
FOREIGN population, proportion of, in western states and territories. . . 161
FRANCE 32-33
FRANKLIN, Benjamin 60-166
FREMONT, J. C 19
FRONTIER population, heterogeneous character of 149-150
FROUDE 178
FULTON'S steamboat , 3
GALI ANI 166
GEORGE, Henry 91-92-133-135
GERMANY 33
GIFFEN, Robert 156
GILMOUR, Bishop 52
GIVING, Christian ; the principle stated 184-185
The principle applied 185-199
The principle is not accepted by the church 199-206
Acceptance of the principle urged 206-222
GLADSTONE 8-13-36-51-98-115
GOLD and silver product of the United States 11-24-25
GOODWIN, Dr. E. P 109-110
GOTTSCH ALK . : 127
GRAZING lands of the West 21
" GREAT American Desert," 17-21
GREAT Britain, land holders in 31
Popular discontent in 35
Local indebtedness of 35
Increase of population in 163
GREAT Columbia Plains 21
GREGORY XVI 65
GRIMM, Jacob 179
GUIZOT 93
HATTON, Joseph 6
HEATHEN, the giving of converted , 203-204
226 INDEX.
PAG*.
HECKER, Father 64
HERBERT, George 195
HERODOTUS 122
HIGGINSON, Francis 173
HOLMES, Oliver Wendell , 144
HOPPIN, Prof 218
HUGHES, Thomas 35-212
HUGO, Victor 36
HUXLEY, Prof 169
IDAHO, extent of, 16 ; gold and silver, 24 ; sulphur 27
ILLITERACY '. 140
ILLITERACY in United States 44
IMMIGRATION, 30-46 ; causes of 30-39
Influence of on morals, 40-43 ; political aspects of 43
INTELLIGENCE, higher, demanded for large populations 139
INTEMPERANCE, 68-85, of West compared with East 77
INTOXICANTS, increase in use of 74
IRON ORE 11-26
ITALY 34
JESUITS 50-58
KANNIN, Daimiyo-j in-san 191-192
KANSAS, alkaline lands of 18
KIMBALL, Heber C 67
"KINGS," Cattle 110
LAFAYETTE 59
LANDS, exhaustion of public 153-158
Location of public 154-155
LEAD 26
LECKY ,. ; 100
LIBERTY, progress of 4
LIFE, increasing valuation of human 5
LIQUOR BILL of the nation 202
LIQUOR Power, the, 78-85 ; wealth of 79
Methods of .81-83
LIQUOR traffic, carried on by foreigners 42-43
LlVY 121
LONDON, Bitter Cry of Outcast 130-132
LOUISIANA, sulphur of 27
LOURDELOT 12
LOWELL, Mrs. J. S 133
LUNT, Bishop 62
LUXURIOUSNESS, one of the perils of wealth 121-123
MACAULAY 101-154
MACHINERY, labor-saving, to increase 38
Influence of 95-96
Power of, in Great Britain 115
Superior in the United States 12
MAMMONISM, 115-119 ; corrupts morals, 118 ; blocks reforms, 118 ; cor-
rupts the ballot-box 118-119
MANNING, Cardinal 53-54
INDEX. 227
PAGE.
MANUFACTURERS in United States » . » » » , » . 12-15
Progress of 6-13
MATERIALISM, one of the perils of wealth 119-123
MAURICE, Eev. J. F. D 86
MCCLOSKEY, Cardinal .! 52
MECHANICAL invention, influence of, on luxuriousness 122
METROPOLITAN Opera House in New York, subscriptions for 202
MILITARY duty in Europe 36-37
MILTON 152
MINERAL products of United States from 1870—1 880, 11 ; of the West. . . 26
MINNESOTA, timber lands of 23
MISSIONARY, commerce follows the 14
MISSIONS, amount given to 199
MISSISSIPPI and affluents, navigation of 9
MISSOURI, iron, 26 ; lead 26
MONEY, the power of 181
And the kingdom 180-222
MONTANA, extent, 16 ; gold and silver, 24 ; tin 27-
MONTESQUIEU. 28
MORALS, popular 140-141
MORMONISM, 59-68 ; polygamy not an essential part of, 59-60 ; strength
of, 61 ; dangers of, 66 ; remedy for 67-68
MORMONS, designs of, 62-63 ; possessions of, C4 ; increase of, by immi-
gration, 64 ; apostacy of 64
MOST, Herr 91
MUDGE, Prof 18
NAPOLEON. . '. 180
NEBRASKA, lands of , 18
NERVOUS belt, the , 71-72
NEVADA, lands of, 20 ; gold and silver, 24-25 ; borax 27
NEW ENGLAND, unimproved lands in 23
NswGlarus 44
NEW MEXICO 16
NEW YORK, unimproved lands in 23
NIHILISTS 34-35
NORTHAMPTON, Mass 147-148
O'CONNOR, Bishop 47
OPIUM, increased consumption of 73
OREGON, iron ore of 26
PARK, Professor 218
PATENTS issued by English Government, 4 ; by United States 12
PENNSYLVANIA, unimproved lands in 23
PERIL, the supreme 143-144
PERILS, increase of 216-217
PETROLEUM Exchange of New York 117
PETTENKOFER, Dr. Max von 76
PHELPS, Prof 1-218
" PHYSICAL Degeneracy of Americans " 169-170
Pius IX, creed of r*
Pius IX ,.,.., ,,, ,,,,,, ffffflftt, 47-48-49-^'
PAGE.
POLYGAMY not an essential part of Mormonism 59-60
POPULATION, density of, in European states and United States 16T
POSSESSIONS, God's ownership in our 184-185
POWER, distribution of; the fundamental idea of popular government. 141
Loom 2
PRODUCE Exchange of New York 117
PuBLiciands, exhaustion of. 153-158
Location of 154-155
RAE, John 31
RACES, competition of 175-179
RAILWAYS, construction of, from 1870 to 1880 38
Of Qreat Britain, passengers conveyed by 3
RAINFALL 22
RAWLINSON 171
RESOURCES, national 7-15
ROMAN Church in the United States, wealth of 54
ROMANISM, 46-59 ; fundamental principles of. 47-54
ROMANISM, attitude of, toward our free institutions 54-55
Growth of in the United States 55-57
In the West 57-59
Responsible for skepticism 55
RUSSIA 34
RUTHERFORD 207
SACRIFICE, the law of. 192-195
SEELYE, Pres. J. H 90-111
SETTLERS, influence of early 144-153
SEWARD, William H : 24
SCHAUFFLER, Rev. H. A 134
SCHOOL population 140
SILVER and gold product of the United States 11-24-25
SLAVERY. 4
SMALLEY, E. V 18-20
SMITH, Adam 105-167
SOCIALISM, 85-112 ; Socialistic Labor Party 86-87
SOCIALISM, International Workingmen's Association 87-88
Chicago socialists, 89 ; increase of, 92-107 ; influenced by immi-
gration, 92 ; by individualism, 93 ; by skepticism, 93-94; by devel-
opment of classes, 94-100; by discontent, 100-107; conditions of
the West peculiarly favorable to the growth of 109-111
SOUTHE Y 178
SPENCER, Herbert 12-85-136-172
SPINNING mule 2
" STAKED Plain " of Texas 18
SUMNER, Charles 121-167
TAXATION in Europe and United States 37
TAYLOR, Jeremy 208
TELEGRAPH lines of the world. 4
TENNYSON 168-171-179
TEXAS, 16 ; capable of supporting present population of United States, . 17
INDEX. 229
PAGE.
TEXAS, " Staked Plain " of, 18-19; timber lands of, 23 ; iron, 26; gypsum,
27 ; division of, into several states 28
THOMPSON, Dr. J. P.. 62
THOMPSON, Hon. R. W 52
TIMBER 21-23-24
TIN 27
TITHES, misconception of the doctrine of 183-184
TITHING 195-19T
TRAMPS, taking possession of a town Ill
UNITED STATES, area of, 9 ; agricultural resources of, 9-10 ; increase of
population in, 164 ; the seat of Anglo-Saxon power 165-168
UTAH, lands of, 19 ; iron 26
VANDERBILT, wealth of 124
VIRTUE, higher, demanded for large populations 139
WALL Street Kings 103
WARREN, Rev. Dr. J. H 58
WEALTH, perils of, 112-128 ; per caput in several states, 28 ; produced
from 1850 to 1870, 115 ; meaning of, in the United States, 116 ;
aristocracy of, in the United States, 116 ; congestion of 123-125
WEST, London Times on the rapid development of, 7 ; live stock in, 24 ;
mineral wealth of, 24 ; foreign-born population in 45
WESTERN Reserve, two towns on the 145-146
WHIPPLE 120-16S
WHITTIER 149
WIYES, English sale of 5
WOMANHOOD, increasing honor to 5
WOOLSEY, President 141
WRIGHT, Carroll D 212
WYOMING, iron, 26; sulphate of soda. 27
YOUNG, Brigham 61
American Home Missionary Society,
BIBLE HOUSE, N. Y.
REV. DAVID B. COE, Honorary Secretary.
REV. WALTER M. BARROWS, REV. JOSEPH B. CLARK, Secretaries.
REV. ALEX'R H. CLAPP, Treasurer.
SIXTY years ago tne American Home Missionary Society was
organized to assist congregations that are unable to support the
Gospel ministry, and TO SEND THE GOSPEL AND THE MEANS
or CHKISTIAN EDUCATION TO THE DESTITUTE WITHIN THE UNITED
STATES.
It began its work near the commencement of that great
" world-movement" described in this volume. In 1826, when
Western New York was a frontier region, two -thirds of its mis-
sionaries were found in this State.
Now they are laboring in nearly every State and Territory of
the Union. Over 1,000 are in States south and west of New
York. WHo can estimate the influence they are exerting in
building up the new communities on Christian foundations ?
Some idea of the magnitude and scope of the Society's work
may be gained from the following facts.
In sixty -one years its missionaries have organized 4,951
churches and brought 2,430 to self-support. They have gathered
into these churches 345, 973 members. Cash receipts, $11,586,-
692,20,
During the sixty -first year 1,571 missionaries ministered to
3,063 congregations and 129,350 Sunday-school scholars ; organ-
izing 135 new churches and 323 new Sunday-schools ; and re-
ceiving into the churches 10,031 members. Cash receipts,
$482,979,60.
Never before were the calls for Home Missionary work so
loud. Never were the doors so wide open in all parts of the
land. Never were our institutions in greater peril. Head in
this book of these perils and their remedy. Then let every
patriot and Christian ask if he is not responsible for applying
this remedy. The average cost to this Society for each of its
missionaries is $471 per year.
Are there not many who will each contribute enough to sup-
port at least one such Christian worker ?
SAVE AME3ICA TO SAVE THE WORLD !
WHAT INTELLIGENT READERS OF "OUR COUNTRY"
SAY OF IT.
"ITS facts, as they are piled up page after page, arrest the
attention of all classes of readers who have an interest in the
welfare of their country, and the successive chapters furnish a
cumulative argument of great power for home mission work.
Many pastors have sent for copies for use among their people.
Judge Warren Currier of Missouri contributes $25 to help in
its circulation, and the home missionary secretaries and many
others pronounce it a wonderful book. It can be had of the
American Home Missionary- Society at the low price of twenty-
five cents in paper, and fifty cents in cloth covers, postage in-
cluded. It should by all means be scattered far and wide over
the country." — The Congregationalist.
" IN 'Oun COUNTRY/ published by the American Home Mis-
sionary Society, Rev. Josiah Strong has given us a book whose
value lies in its facts and in the rare ability with which the
author has gathered and verified them. In successive chapters
he has sketched the spirit of the times, the National resources
and Western supremacy. He has depicted the perils from im-
migration, from Romanism, Mormonism, intemperance, social-
ism and wealth; the dangers from urban population and the
exhaustion of the public lands. His final chapter on ' Money
and the Kingdom ' reveals the purpose of the book, which is to
point Christians of this country to the present time as a critical
period in Christ's Kingdom, and to urge upon them the conse-
cration of their wealth to the cause of the Redeemer. The
book ought to be in the hands of every patriot in the land as a
thesaurus of important material facts and as an incentive to
stand on higher grounds of civic and religious duty." — The
Advance.
"THE purpose of this volume, well accomplished, is to
furnish facts and arguments showing the imperative need of
the evangelteation of our land. The statistics are collated with
decided skill, and the arguments are masterly. It is a valu-
able hand-book on the great practical problems now facing the
Church at every turn. Romanism, Mormonism and intemper-
ance are handled without gloves. The entire book, indeed,
hews to the line. It bravely diagnoses the diseases of society,
Church and State, and suggests treatment. The despotism
and danger of excessive wealth, especially in monopoly, is for-
cibly depicted. At the same time the trouble with the work-
ing classes is fearlessly delineated. The closing chapter, on
'Money and the Kingdom, 'is a powerful argument for the
cause of benevolence. This work is worthy of a wide circula-
tion, and will be sure to accomplish good." — Herald and Pres-
"Ms. STRONG was the successor of Rev. J. D. Davis, of
^apan, at Cheyenne, and recently Home Missionary Secretary
of Ohio. He is practically and thoroughly familiar with the
home missionary problem in all its phases, and during the past
few years has been giving exhaustive study to the elucidation
of questions which involve our national existence and well
being.
"An introduction by Dr. Phelps, of Andover, sounds a clarion
note which the succeeding chapters swell into reverberating
tones that both oppress and inspire with a sense of far-reach-
ing destiny as springing from what we of to day do or fail to
do.
' * These chapters present an array of facts which bear the
reader on with a trend well nigh as irresistible as are the warn-
ings, the expostulations, the pleadings, and the inspiring pre-
dictions of the Hebrew prophets.
" The closing chapter speaks with the voice of aDanielcome
to judgment. If professing Christians will recognize the pic-
ture and move out on the lines indicated, the beginning of the
end will be reached. We will not further particularize. Read
3
the book for yourself. Especially should every pastor season
his miad and tone up his convictions by its careful study. "—.
Neb. Congregational News.
"MR. STRONG'S admirable book, OUR COUNTRY, is by all
odds the best home missionary document that has fallen under
my observation . It is full of solid facts and sound sense, and is
free from cant. Here are twenty-five dollars to aid in its cir-
culation. It ought to be in every Sunday-school and pastor's
library throughout Pilgrimdom. I am ready to be one of fifty
to pay $100 each, ($5,000) if that is the best way to get the
book diffused throughout the land. " — Hon. Warren Currier, of
"I AM glad to hear of the rapid circulation of the book. It
cannot help doing good to anybody who has brains and heart
enough to take it in. I have seldom read a thing that moved
me more deeply. We are living in a torrent of great history.*'
—Prof. Austin Phelps, D.D.
' ' IT is a wonderful book. It ought to be read by all the
people. It is a great educator. I hope our wealthy men will
read it, and see that they cannot put their money to better use
than in the home missionary work. It surpasses any novel in
interest to any one who cares for his country as a patriot, and
for the world as a Christian." — Rev. Stewart Sheldon, of Dakota.
" OUR COUNTRY is truly a wonderful book. It is by far
the most notable contribution ever yet made to home mission-
ary literature."— Rev. John H. Barrows, D.D., 1st Presb. Ch.,
Chicago, III.
" It is a splendid book. It thrills me through and through.
I wish I could get all the business men in our churches to read
it."— Ren. T. 0. Douglass, Iowa.
"OUR COUNTRY is one of the grandest books of this
Nineteenth Century. I intend, God willing, to get it into
every family in this parish." — Rev. S. R. Roseboro, Rock Creek> 0
" THE book makes a powerful appeal, especially to such as
have much property laid up for many years, and can be moved
by considerations of self-preservation for themselves and their
children. When they have opened wide their purses through
fear, ihey will be likely to keep them open for love. Is there
no possibility of putting them into all city churches?"— A Gen-
tleman in New Haven, Conn.
* ' Too much cannot be said in praise of OUR COUNTRY. For
the money herewith please send me four more copies for dis-
tribution.''—^ Lady in Greenfield, Mass.
" ' OUR COUNTRY,' a book recently published by the Amer-
ican Home Missionary Society, at New York, is as full of
sermon matter as an egg is of meat. Prof. Phelps says: ' Its
great strength lies in its facts.' These facts should be brought
to the notice of every church in America. Pastors may diffuse
missionary intelligence, but they must first have some informa-
tion to diffuse." — Missionary Record.
" IT is a revelation. It is a thoroughly admirable piece of
werk in detail quality, as well as in general sweep and scope."
—Gen. A. B. Nettleton, Minn.
" PERMIT me to thank you for your valuable and instructive
work. — It contains precisely the information people need. " —
Prof. R. T. Ely, of Johns Hopkins University.
" IN a thoughtful little book, entitled ' OUR COUNTRY,' late-
ly published [by the American Home Missionary Society]
the Rev. Josiah Strong observes that 'the tragedy of our
civilization consists in the fact that, while knowledge has
been multiplied and diffused, wealth has been multiplied and
concentrated in few hands.'"— The Century, for June, 1886.
MODERN CITIES
AND THEIR RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS.
By Rev. SAMUEL LANE LOOMIS.
With an Introduction by Rev. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D,
1 2mo, Cloth, $ 1 .OO.
" For all who love their fellow-men, this book will be a stimulus
and a guide. It presents clearly and forcibly the increasingly difficult
problem of the modern city, and will prove to be a storehouse of in-
formation to all workers in this field. Like * Our Country, ' by Rev.
Dr. Strong, this book is one of the most marked books of the current
year. Every worker in city or country should read and inwardly
digest this suggestive volume." — Rev. A. F. SCHAUFFLER, D.D.
" This volume is in point and substance the companion volume to
be read in connection with ' Our Country,' by the Rev. Josiah Strong,
D. D. The author's sociology is sound. The chapters on methods
of philanthropic endeavor, and especially those which show what has
been done, are wise and helpful. We commend the book heartily to
our readers." — The Independent.
" This is an important little volume, and a fit companion to place
side by side with the remarkable work by Dr. Strong, entitled * Our
Country. ' It is a book which will startle many and convince all who
read it. It ought to go into every household in the land." — Christian
at Work.
"The author has reached more nearly to the true cause of the
difficulty, and the proper manner to remove it, than any other author
with whose works we are acquainted." — Hartford Post.
"A striking and sensible book — one of the clearest and best things
ever written on this live and stirring current question." — Michigan
Christian Advocate.
"A timely book, well written, sensible, practical. A book that
deserves reading." — Springfield Union.
" The present volume is directly to the point, wise, timely, and
earnest. " — Christian Sanctuary.
tl TViic TC a irffir oV»1<a V»nr»lr " /?/»//*' vnfi<v0 QV/*»
neat. — ^ftrtxitun ourtciuary.
" This is a very able book." — Baltimore Sun.
Sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by
THE BAKER & TAYLOR Co.,
PUBLISHERS,
740 AND 742 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.
A Work of Profound Interest to the Christian World !
SOCIALfSM~AND
CHRISTIANITY
By A. J. F. BEHKENDS, IX D.
This book treats from a new point of view the problems
raised by the most frequently advanced social theories of the
day ; their relations to the reciprocal duties of Labor and
Capital, and the position of the Christian Church with reference
to the social and industrial movements that are taking place
about it.
-CONTENTS :-
I. Social Theories. II. Historical Sketch. III. The Assumptions
of Modern Socialism. IV. The Economic Fallacies of Modern Socialism.
V. The Rights of Labor. VI. The Responsibilities of Wealth. VII. The
Personal and Social Causes of Pauperism. VIII. The Historical Causes of
Pauperism and its Cure. IX. The Treatment of the Criminal Classes.
X. Modern Socialism, Religion and the Family.
12 mo,, Paper, 5O cents; Cloth, $I.OO.
" It is a book for the times in the interest of truth, and justice, and pure
religion. We have read it from beginning to end, with unflagging interest,
and shall read it a second time this summer, and hope to lay some extracts
before our readers." — N. Y. Observer.
" It is the first approach to a popular systematic presentation of the
principles of the destructive socialism of the day. The questions which it
discusses are now so prominent, and their social bearing is so vital, that
ministers should deal with them. We commend this volume to them,
especially to all who desire to get an intelligent view of one of the burning
questions of the day." — Presbyterian Journal.
" The book should be in every home, and we are sure that if the princi-
ples which it advocates, and the information which it presents were given to
every family in the land, the present disturbances in our country would soon
be at an end." — St. Louis Central Baptist.
" If this spring gives America a more timely or useful book, I shall be
surprised." — Prof. M. B. Riddle, D. D., Hartford Theological Seminary.
" We need a volume that shall be broad enough to take in the whole
field ; one that thinks the subject through, and is not confined to one or
more phases of it. This Dr. Behrends gives us."
—Illustrated Christian Weekly.
Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by
THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.,
PUBLISHERS,
740 and 742 Broadway, New York
A Great Book on a Great Subject.
THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS;
Or, the Voice out of the Cloud.
BY THE
REY. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D.
I6mo, - $1.25.
" One of the most important books to the Cause of Foreign Missions—
and through them to Home Missions also — which ever has been written.
It should be in every library and every household. It should be read,
studied, taken to heart, and prayed over." — Congregationalist.
"Surely if the inspiration and the force of this 'Crisis of Missions'
were imbibed and felt by the whole sacramental host, there would be a
mighty uprising, a grand anointing, and a holy crusade to storm the
kingdom of darkness all along the line, and speedily add the crown of
earth to Christ's many crowns !" — Homiletical Review.
" This is a book for every Christian to read with prayer and a sin-
cere desire to know his personal duty in this great and glorious work." —
N. Y. Observer.
"We do not hesitate to say that this book is the most purposeful,
earnest and intelligent review of the mission work and field which has ever
been given to the church." — Christian Statesman.
"A closely compacted array of facts, arranged under distinct heads
and welded together by the strong rivets of logic, vivified and made almost
a thing of life by the evident presence throughout its pages of the guiding
power of the Holy Ghost." — Right Rev. Wm. Bacon Stevens, Bishop of
Pennsylvania .
Sent, post-paid on receipt of price, by
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THE FAOSIMILE REPRINTS.
BTJNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. From this
World to that which is to come. By JOHN BUNYAN. Being a
fac-simile reprint of the first edition, published in 1678.
16mo., pr.per $0 50
Antique Binding, with Renaissance Design, Gilt Top 1 25
HERBERT'S TEMPLE. Sacred Poems and Private
Ejaculations. By GEORGE HEBBEBT, late Oratour of the Univer-
sitie of Cambridge. Being a fac-simile of one of the gift copies
printed for circulation by NICHOLAS FEKEAB, before the publi
cation in 1 633, of which only one copy is known to exist.
16mo. , paper f 0 50
Antique Binding, with Renaissance Design, Gilt Top ... 1 25
WALTON'S COMPLETE ANGLER ; or the Contem-
plative Man's Recreation. Being & fac-simile reprint of the first
edition, published in 1653.
16mo. , paper $0 50
Antique Binding, with Renaissance Design, Gilt Top. . . . 1 25
"They are curious and valuable souvenirs of the authors
and their works. " — N. T. Observer.
" The fac-simile reprints are charmingly printed, and bound
in a fashion quaint and engaging. They are as pleasant little
gifts for a friend as one could select." — New York Tribune.
" The purchaser (of the Pilgrim's Progress) will see the
famous allegory in the form in which Bunyan sent it forth to
the World."— 17ie Congregationalist.
"The printing and binding are so skillfully done in imita-
tion of the antique as to deceive even the elect." — Christian Union.
" Two little books sure to be sought after are the fac-similes
of George Herbert's ' Temple,' after a unique copy of the first
(undated) impression of 1633; and of Walton's 'Complete Angler,'
after the first edition of 1063. The quaint embossed binding
in brown and white patterns at once distinguishes these books
as antique. In both cases the result is very successful." — New
Y rk Evening Post.
"All lovers of these sweet old lavender-smelling times will
be grateful for the possession of such fac-similes." — The Critic.
Sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers.
THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.,
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INDEX RERUM
BY JOHN TODD, D.D.
REVISED AND IMPROVED BY REV. J. M. HUBBARD.
QUARTO, HALF LEATHER, - - $2.50
The Index is intended to supply to those who are careful enough
readers to make notes of what they may wish to use again, a book
especially adapted to that purpose by a system of paging by letters,
each page having a margin for the insertion of the words most express*
ive of the subject of the note. It contains 280 pages of quarto size,
ruled and lettered, and in the hands of an industrious reader, forms,
in the course of years, a perfect index of his reading, as valuable *s he
may choose to make it complete. It may be fairly said to be the most
useful and convenient book ever devised for the purpose of making
permanent the results of the Student's, Writer's, and Professional man's
reading. Its system and arrangement are such, that with the minimum
of effort it secures a lasting record of every reference mat mav oe
thought worthy of preservation in the course of the widest reading.
Says the author : " When you read anything which you may here-
after need, place the principal word in the margin under the first let-
ter in the word, and the first vowel in it. I will here give some ex-
amples as they stand in my own Index. Suppose I wish to note some-
thing relating to America. I turn to A and the vowel e, because A
is the first letter, and e is the first vowel, thus : —
On page A-*. America
1 Atheism
** /?-<;. Rousseau,
i, page 277.
W-i. Wilberforce,
X-y. Xylochartion,
supposed to be known in the time of Homer : Thomas's
History Print, volume x, page 20.
of France, Picture of: SchlegePs Lecture : Volume a,
page 199.
morbid imagination of: Stewart on the mind : Volume
, .
character as a speaker ; Port. Rhet. Reader : Page 250.
or bark paper, description of: Am. Quart. Rev. v. a."
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
I have no hesitation in saying that the plan of the l Index Rerum,' by Rev. Di
Todd, is better adapted to the object for which it is intended, than any other with
which I am acquainted. __ Its great excellence consists in its simplicity, and this ren-
ders its advantages so obvious, that to those who want anything of the kind, an inspec-
tion of the work must preclude the necessity of any recommendation." — Ex-President
MARK HOPKINS, Williams College, Mass.
" It has been in use for over half a century, and exoenence has shown it to be»an in-
dispensable part of every literary man's equipment.'* — Chicago Interior.
" It is unquestionably the best book of the kind issued." — A Ibany Evening Journal
"The * Index Rerum,' as invented and prepared by Rev. Dr. John Todd, is per
haps one of the best possible means of arranging the results of one's reading, so as tc
make them afterward readily accessible This Index Rerum, or something simi-
lar to it, should be studied and used by one who would make his store of learning
accessible."— N. W. Christian Advocate.
Sent post-paid, on receipt of price, by
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74O and 742 Broadway, New York,
EVANGELISTIC WORK
In Principle and Practice.
By Rev. ARTHUR T. PERSON, D.D.
12 mo, Cloth, $1.25.
A new book on that method which has been one of the most
potent means of building up the Christian Church — Evangelization.
It is written by an acknowledged master of the subject.
" This book is preeminently a book for the hour. It is at once
a fruit of the reviving evangelistic spirit and a welcome and powerful
force for the promotion of that spirit among the disciples of Christ.
All who are working for Christ, especially all ministers and teachers,
ought to procure and study this book." — Christian Statesman.
" More truth, perhaps, than can be found in any single uninspired
book, concerning 'evangelistic work,' is included in a volume with
this title, by Arthur T. Pierson, D. D. Truths of the first importance
are spoken concerning methods and the treatment of the poor. After
having set down the principle as he believes it to be, the author has
enforced it in sketches of Whitefield, Howard, Finney, Chalmers,
Moody, Bliss, and others. The book ought to have a wide circulation ;
it cannot but be productive of the greatest good." — Hartford Post.
"Every phase of the question is discussed, the methods and
merits of different evangelists are set forth, apostolic and modern
preaching compared, and the causes of failure and success in minis-
terial work portrayed. It is a book to be studied by all church
workers. " — Indianapolis Journal.
" The book is dedicated to Dwight L. Moody, and would seem
to contain nearly all that can be said in the way of information,
instruction, example, or exhortation upon the subject. "
— Baptist Standard.
" The chapters on the great Evangelists are delightfully written
in a lofty and devout spirit." — Indianapolis News.
" His views will be accepted as of orthodox authority."
— Washington Critic,
Sent) postpaid, on receipt of the price, by
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