Volume I Part 7 (1/2)

In the princ.i.p.al business streets of all these towns one sees vast buildings. They are usually called blocks, and are often so denominated in large letters on their front, as Portland Block, Devereux Block, Buel's Block. Such a block may face to two, three, or even four streets, and, as I presume, has generally been a matter of one special speculation. It may be divided into separate houses, or kept for a single purpose, such as that of an hotel, or grouped into shops below, and into various sets of chambers above. I have had occasion in various towns to mount the stairs within these blocks, and have generally found some portion of them vacant;--have sometimes found the greater portion of them vacant. Men build on an enormous scale, three times, ten times as much as is wanted. The only measure of size is an increase on what men have built before. Monroe P.

Jones, the speculator, is very probably ruined, and then begins the world again, nothing daunted. But Jones's block remains, and gives to the city in its aggregate a certain amount of wealth. Or the block becomes at once of service and finds tenants. In which case Jones probably sells it and immediately builds two others twice as big. That Monroe P. Jones will encounter ruin is almost a matter of course; but then he is none the worse for being ruined. It hardly makes him unhappy. He is greedy of dollars with a terrible covetousness; but he is greedy in order that he may speculate more widely. He would sooner have built Jones' tenth block, with a prospect of completing a twentieth, than settle himself down at rest for life as the owner of a Chatsworth or a Woburn. As for his children he has no desire of leaving them money. Let the girls marry.

And for the boys,--for them it will be good to begin as he begun. If they cannot build blocks for themselves, let them earn their bread in the blocks of other men. So Monroe P. Jones, with his million of dollars accomplished, advances on to a new frontier, goes to work again on a new city, and loses it all. As an individual I differ very much from Monroe P. Jones. The first block accomplished, with an adequate rent accruing to me as the builder, I fancy that I should never try a second. But Jones is undoubtedly the man for the West.

It is that love of money to come, joined to a strong disregard for money made, which const.i.tutes the vigorous frontier mind, the true pioneering organization. Monroe P. Jones would be a great man to all posterity, if only he had a poet to sing of his valour.

It may be imagined how large in proportion to its inhabitants will be a town which spreads itself in this way. There are great houses left untenanted, and great gaps left unfilled. But if the place be successful,--if it promise success, it will be seen at once that there is life all through it. Omnibuses, or street cars working on rails run hither and thither. The shops that have been opened are well filled. The great hotels are thronged. The quays are crowded with vessels, and a general feeling of progress pervades the place.

It is easy to perceive whether or no an American town is going ahead.

The days of my visit to Milwaukee were days of civil war and national trouble, but in spite of civil war and national trouble Milwaukee looked healthy.

I have said that there was but little poverty,--little to be seen of real want in these thriving towns, but that they who laboured in them had nevertheless their own hards.h.i.+ps. This is so. I would not have any man believe that he can take himself to the Western States of America,--to those States of which I am now speaking,--Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, or Illinois, and there by industry escape the ills to which flesh is heir. The labouring Irish in these towns eat meat seven days a week, but I have met many a labouring Irishman among them who has wished himself back in his old cabin. Industry is a good thing, and there is no bread so sweet as that which is eaten in the sweat of a man's brow; but labour carried to excess wearies the mind as well as body, and the sweat that is ever running makes the bread bitter. There is, I think, no task-master over free labour so exacting as an American. He knows nothing of hours, and seems to have that idea of a man which a lady always has of a horse. He thinks that he will go for ever. I wish those masons in London who strike for nine hours' work with ten hours' pay could be driven to the labour market of Western America for a spell. And moreover, which astonished me, I have seen men driven and hurried,--as it were forced forward at their work, in a manner which to an English workman would be intolerable. This surprised me much, as it was at variance with our,--or perhaps I should say with my,--preconceived ideas as to American freedom. I had fancied that an American citizen would not submit to be driven;--that the spirit of the country if not the spirit of the individual would have made it impossible. I thought that the shoe would have pinched quite on the other foot. But I found that such driving did exist; and American masters in the West with whom I had an opportunity of discussing the subject all admitted it.

”Those men 'll never half move unless they're driven,” a foreman said to me once as we stood together over some twenty men who were at their work. ”They kinder look for it, and don't well know how to get along when they miss it.” It was not his business at this moment to drive;--nor was he driving. He was standing at some little distance from the scene with me, and speculating on the sight before him. I thought the men were working at their best; but their movements did not satisfy his practised eye, and he saw at a glance that there was no one immediately over them.

But there is worse even than this. Wages in these regions are what we should call high. An agricultural labourer will earn perhaps fifteen dollars a month and his board; and a town labourer will earn a dollar a day. A dollar may be taken as representing four s.h.i.+llings, though it is in fact more. Food in these parts is much cheaper than in England, and therefore the wages must be considered as very good.

In making, however, a just calculation it must be borne in mind that clothing is dearer than in England and that much more of it is necessary. The wages nevertheless are high, and will enable the labourer to save money,--if only he can get them paid. The complaint that wages are held back and not even ultimately paid is very common.

There is no fixed rule for satisfying all such claims once a week; and thus debts to labourers are contracted and when contracted are ignored. With us there is a feeling that it is pitiful, mean almost beyond expression, to wrong a labourer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them;--but when we speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will not willingly take either goods or labour without payment; and it may be hard to prove that he who takes the latter is more dishonest than he who takes the former; but with us there is a prejudice in favour of one's washerwoman by which the western mind is not weakened. ”They certainly have to be smart to get it,” a gentleman said to me whom I taxed on the subject. ”You see on the frontier a man is bound to be smart. If he ain't smart he'd better go back East;--perhaps as far as Europe. He'll do there.” I had got my answer, and my friend had turned the question. But the fact was admitted by him as it had been by many others.

Why this should be so, is a question, to answer which thoroughly would require a volume in itself. As to the driving, why should men submit to it, seeing that labour is abundant, and that in all newly settled countries the labourer is the true hero of the age? In answer to this is to be alleged the fact that hired labour is chiefly done by fresh comers, by Irish and Germans, who have not as yet among them any combination sufficient to protect them from such usage. The men over them are new as masters,--masters who are rough themselves, who themselves have been roughly driven, and who have not learned to be gracious to those below them. It is a part of their contract that very hard work shall be exacted; and the driving resolves itself into this,--that the master looking after his own interest is constantly accusing his labourer of a breach of his part of the contract. The men no doubt do become used to it, and slacken probably in their endeavours when the tongue of the master or foreman is not heard. But as to that matter of non-payment of wages, the men must live; and here as elsewhere the master who omits to pay once, will hardly find labourers in future. The matter would remedy itself elsewhere, and does it not do so here? This of course is so, and it is not to be understood that labour as a rule is defrauded of its hire. But the relation of the master and the man admits of such fraud here much more frequently than in England. In England the labourer who did not get his wages on the Sat.u.r.day could not go on for the next week. To him under such circ.u.mstances the world would be coming to an end. But in the Western States, the labourer does not live so completely from hand to mouth. He is rarely paid by the week, is accustomed to give some credit, and till hard pressed by bad circ.u.mstances generally has something by him. They do save money, and are thus fattened up to a state which admits of victimization. I cannot owe money to the little village cobbler who mends my shoes, because he demands and receives his payment when his job is done. But to my friend in Regent Street I extend my custom on a different system; and when I make my start for continental life, I have with him a matter of unsettled business to a considerable extent. The American labourer is in the condition of the Regent Street boot-maker;--excepting in this respect, that he gives his credit under compulsion. ”But does not the law set him right?

Is there no law against debtors?” The laws against debtors are plain enough as they are written down, but seem to be anything but plain when called into action. They are perfectly understood, and operations are carried on with the express purpose of evading them.

If you proceed against a man, you find that his property is in the hands of some one else. You work in fact for Jones who lives in the next street to you; but when you quarrel with Jones about your wages, you find that according to law you have been working for Smith in another State. In all countries such dodges are probably practicable.

But men will or will not have recourse to such dodges according to the light in which they are regarded by the community. In the Western States such dodges do not appear to be regarded as disgraceful. ”It behoves a frontier man to be smart, sir.”

Honesty is the best policy. That is a doctrine which has been widely preached, and which has recommended itself to many minds as being one of absolute truth. It is not very enn.o.bling in its sentiment, seeing that it advocates a special virtue, not on the ground that that virtue is in itself a thing beautiful, but on account of the immediate reward which will be its consequence. Smith is enjoined not to cheat Jones, because he will, in the long run, make more money by dealing with Jones on the square. This is not teaching of the highest order; but it is teaching well adapted to human circ.u.mstances, and has obtained for itself a wide credit. One is driven, however, to doubt whether even this teaching is not too high for the frontier man. Is it possible that a frontier man should be scrupulous and at the same time successful? Hitherto those who have allowed scruples to stand in their way have not succeeded; and they who have succeeded and made for themselves great names,--who have been the pioneers of civilization,--have not allowed ideas of exact honesty to stand in their way. From General Jason down to General Fremont there have been men of great aspirations but of slight scruples. They have been ambitious of power and desirous of progress, but somewhat regardless how power and progress shall be attained. Clive and Warren Hastings were great frontier men, but we cannot imagine that they had ever realized the doctrine that honesty is the best policy. Cortez, and even Columbus, the prince of frontier men, are in the same category.

The names of such heroes is legion. But with none of them has absolute honesty been a favourite virtue. ”It behoves a frontier man to be smart, sir.” Such, in that or other language, has been the prevailing idea. Such is the prevailing idea. And one feels driven to ask oneself whether such must not be the prevailing idea with those who leave the world and its rules behind them, and go forth with the resolve that the world and its rules shall follow them.

Of filibustering, annexation, and polis.h.i.+ng savages off the face of creation there has been a great deal, and who can deny that humanity has been the gainer? It seems to those who look widely back over history, that all such works have been carried on in obedience to G.o.d's laws. When Jacob by Rebecca's aid cheated his elder brother he was very smart; but we cannot but suppose that a better race was by this smartness put in possession of the patriarchal sceptre. Esau was polished off, and readers of Scripture wonder why heaven with its thunder did not open over the heads of Rebecca and her son. But Jacob with all his fraud was the chosen one. Perhaps the day may come when scrupulous honesty may be the best policy even on the frontier. I can only say that hitherto that day seems to be as distant as ever. I do not pretend to solve the problem, but simply record my opinion that under circ.u.mstances as they still exist I should not willingly select a frontier life for my children.

I have said that all great frontier men have been unscrupulous. There is, however, an exception in history which may perhaps serve to prove the rule. The Puritans who colonized New England were frontier men, and were, I think, in general scrupulously honest. They had their faults. They were stern, austere men, tyrannical at the backbone when power came in their way,--as are all pioneers;--hard upon vices for which they who made the laws had themselves no minds; but they were not dishonest.

At Milwaukee I went up to see the Wisconsin volunteers, who were then encamped on open ground in the close vicinity of the town.

Of Wisconsin I had heard before,--and have heard the same opinion repeated since,--that it was more backward in its volunteering than its neighbour States in the West. Wisconsin has 760,000 inhabitants, and its tenth thousand of volunteers was not then made up; whereas Indiana with less than double its number had already sent out thirty-six thousand. Iowa, with a hundred thousand less of inhabitants, had then made up fifteen thousand. But nevertheless to me it seemed that Wisconsin was quite alive to its presumed duty in that respect. Wisconsin with its three quarters of a million of people is as large as England. Every acre of it may be made productive, but as yet it is not half cleared. Of such a country its young men are its heart's blood. Ten thousand men fit to bear arms carried away from such a land to the horrors of civil war is a sight as full of sadness as any on which the eye can rest. Ah me, when will they return, and with what altered hopes! It is, I fear, easier to turn the sickle into the sword, than to recast the sword back again into the sickle!

We found a completed regiment at Wisconsin consisting entirely of Germans. A thousand Germans had been collected in that State and brought together in one regiment, and I was informed by an officer on the ground that there are many Germans in sundry other of the Wisconsin regiments. It may be well to mention here that the number of Germans through all these western States is very great. Their number and well-being were to me astonis.h.i.+ng. That they form a great portion of the population of New York, making the German quarter of that city the third largest German town in the world, I have long known; but I had no previous idea of their expansion westward. In Detroit nearly every third shop bore a German name, and the same remark was to be made at Milwaukee;--and on all hands I heard praises of their morals, of their thrift, and of their new patriotism. I was continually told how far they exceeded the Irish settlers. To me in all parts of the world an Irishman is dear. When handled tenderly he becomes a creature most loveable. But with all my judgment in the Irishman's favour, and with my prejudices leaning the same way, I feel myself bound to state what I heard and what I saw as to the Germans.

But this regiment of Germans, and another not completed regiment, called from the State generally, were as yet without arms, accoutrements, or clothing. There was the raw material of the regiment, but there was nothing else. Winter was coming on,--winter in which the mercury is commonly 20 degrees below zero,--and the men were in tents with no provision against the cold. These tents held each two men, and were just large enough for two to lie. The canvas of which they were made seemed to me to be thin, but was I think always double. At this camp there was a house in which the men took their meals, but I visited other camps in which there was no such accommodation. I saw the German regiment called to its supper by tuck of drum, and the men marched in gallantly, armed each with a knife and spoon. I managed to make my way in at the door after them, and can testify to the excellence of the provisions of which their supper consisted. A poor diet never enters into any combination of circ.u.mstances contemplated by an American. Let him be where he will, animal food is, with him, the first necessary of life, and he is always provided accordingly. As to those Wisconsin men whom I saw, it was probable that they might be marched off, down south to Was.h.i.+ngton, or to the doubtful glories of the western campaign under Fremont before the winter commenced. The same might have been said of any special regiment. But taking the whole ma.s.s of men who were collected under canvas at the end of the autumn of 1861, and who were so collected without arms or military clothing, and without protection from the weather, it did seem that the task taken in hand by the Commissariat of the Northern army was one not devoid of difficulty.

The view from Milwaukee over Lake Michigan is very pleasing. One looks upon a vast expanse of water to which the eye finds no bounds, and therefore there are none of the common attributes of lake beauty; but the colour of the lake is bright, and within a walk of the city the traveller comes to the bluffs or low round-topped hills from which he can look down upon the sh.o.r.es. These bluffs form the beauty of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and relieve the eye after the flat level of Michigan. Round Detroit there is no rising ground, and therefore, perhaps, it is that Detroit is uninteresting.

I have said that those who are called on to labour in these States have their own hards.h.i.+ps, and I have endeavoured to explain what are the sufferings to which the town labourer is subject. To escape from this is the labourer's great ambition, and his mode of doing so consists almost universally in the purchase of land. He saves up money in order that he may buy a section of an allotment, and thus become his own master. All his savings are made with a view to this independence. Seated on his own land he will have to work probably harder than ever, but he will work for himself. No taskmaster can then stand over him and wound his pride with harsh words. He will be his own master; will eat the food which he himself has grown, and live in the cabin which his own hands have built. This is the object of his life; and to secure this position he is content to work late and early and to undergo the indignities of previous servitude. The Government price for land is about five s.h.i.+llings an acre--one dollar and a quarter--and the settler may get it for this price if he be contented to take it not only untouched as regards clearing, but also far removed from any completed road. The traffic in these lands has been the great speculating business of western men. Five or six years ago, when the rage for such purchases was at its height, land was becoming a scarce article in the market! Individuals or companies bought it up with the object of reselling it at a profit; and many no doubt did make money. Railway companies were, in fact, companies combined for the purchase of land. They purchased land, looking to increase the value of it five-fold by the opening of a railroad. It may easily be understood that a railway, which could not be in itself remunerative, might in this way become a lucrative speculation. No settler could dare to place himself absolutely at a distance from any thoroughfare. At first the margins of nature's highways, the navigable rivers and lakes, were cleared. But as the railway system grew and expanded itself, it became manifest that lands might be rendered quickly available which were not so circ.u.mstanced by nature, A company which had purchased an enormous territory from the United States Government at five s.h.i.+llings an acre might well repay itself all the cost of a railway through that territory, even though the receipts of the railway should do no more than maintain the current expenses. It is in this way that the thousands of miles of American railroads have been opened; and here again must be seen the immense advantages which the States as a new country have enjoyed. With us the purchase of valuable land for railways, together with the legal expenses which those compulsory purchases entailed, have been so great that with all our traffic railways are not remunerative. But in the States the railways have created the value of the land. The States have been able to begin at the right end, and to arrange that the districts which are benefited shall themselves pay for the benefit they receive.

The Government price of land is 125 cents, or about five s.h.i.+llings an acre; and even this need not be paid at once if the settler purchase directly from the Government. He must begin by making certain improvements on the selected land,--clearing and cultivating some small portion, building a hut, and probably sinking a well. When this has been done,--when he has thus given a pledge of his intentions by depositing on the land the value of a certain amount of labour, he cannot be removed. He cannot be removed for a term of years, and then if he pays the price of the land it becomes his own with an indefeasible t.i.tle. Many such settlements are made on the purchase of warrants for land. Soldiers returning from the Mexican wars were donated with warrants for land,--the amount being 160 acres, or the quarter of a section. The localities of such lands were not specified, but the privilege granted was that of occupying any quarter-section not hitherto tenanted. It will of course be understood that lands favourably situated would be tenanted. Those contiguous to railways were of course so occupied, seeing that the lines were not made till the lands were in the hands of the companies. It may therefore be understood of what nature would be the traffic in these warrants. The owner of a single warrant might find it of no value to him. To go back utterly into the woods, away from river or road, and there to commence with 160 acres of forest, or even of prairie, would be a hopeless task even to an American settler. Some mode of transport for his produce must be found before his produce would be of value,--before indeed he could find the means of living. But a company buying up a large aggregate of such warrants would possess the means of making such allotments valuable and of reselling them at greatly increased prices.

The primary settler, therefore,--who, however, will not usually have been the primary owner,--goes to work upon his land amidst all the wildness of nature. He levels and burns the first trees, and raises his first crop of corn amidst stumps still standing four or five feet above the soil; but he does not do so till some mode of conveyance has been found for him. So much I have said hoping to explain the mode in which the frontier speculator paves the way for the frontier agriculturist. But the permanent farmer very generally comes on the land as the third owner. The first settler is a rough fellow, and seems to be so wedded to his rough life that he leaves his land after his first wild work is done, and goes again further off to some untouched allotment. He finds that he can sell his improvements at a profitable rate and takes the price. He is a preparer of farms rather than a farmer. He has no love for the soil which his hand has first turned. He regards it merely as an investment; and when things about him are beginning to wear an aspect of comfort,--when his property has become valuable, he sells it, packs up his wife and little ones, and goes again into the woods. The western American has no love for his own soil, or his own house. The matter with him is simply one of dollars. To keep a farm which he could sell at an advantage from any feeling of affection,--from what we should call an a.s.sociation of ideas,--would be to him as ridiculous as the keeping of a family pig would be in an English farmer's establishment. The pig is a part of the farmer's stock in trade, and must go the way of all pigs. And so is it with house and land in the life of the frontier man in the western States.

But yet this man has his romance, his high poetic feeling, and above all his manly dignity. Visit him, and you will find him without coat or waistcoat, unshorn, in ragged blue trousers and old flannel s.h.i.+rt, too often bearing on his lantern jaws the signs of ague and sickness; but he will stand upright before you and speak to you with all the ease of a lettered gentleman in his own library. All the odious incivility of the republican servant has been banished. He is his own master, standing on his own threshold, and finds no need to a.s.sert his equality by rudeness. He is delighted to see you, and bids you sit down on his battered bench without dreaming of any such apology as an English cottier offers to a Lady Bountiful when she calls. He has worked out his independence, and shows it in every easy movement of his body. He tells you of it unconsciously in every tone of his voice. You will always find in his cabin some newspaper, some book, some token of advance in education. When he questions you about the old country he astonishes you by the extent of his knowledge. I defy you not to feel that he is superior to the race from whence he has sprung in England or in Ireland. To me I confess that the manliness of such a man is very charming. He is dirty and perhaps squalid. His children are sick and he is without comforts. His wife is pale, and you think you see shortness of life written in the faces of all the family. But over and above it all there is an independence which sits gracefully on their shoulders, and teaches you at the first glance that the man has a right to a.s.sume himself to be your equal. It is for this position that the labourer works, bearing hard words and the indignity of tyranny,--suffering also too often the dishonest ill-usage which his superior power enables the master to inflict.

”I have lived very rough,” I heard a poor woman say, whose husband had ill-used and deserted her. ”I have known what it is to be hungry and cold, and to work hard till my bones have ached. I only wish that I might have the same chance again. If I could have ten acres cleared two miles away from any living being, I could be happy with my children. I find a kind of comfort when I am at work from daybreak to sundown, and know that it is all my own.” I believe that life in the backwoods has an allurement to those who have been used to it, that dwellers in cities can hardly comprehend.

From Milwaukee we went across Wisconsin and reached the Mississippi at La Crosse. From hence, according to agreement, we were to start by steamer at once up the river. But we were delayed again, as had happened to us before on Lake Michigan at Grand Haven.

CHAPTER X.

THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.