Volume Iv Part 22 (1/2)
END OF THE PERIOD
[1890]
It is a long way that we have taken the reader, from the days of Columbus to where we can espy the dawn of the twentieth century. Yet, in comparison with the times which our narrative has here reached, those of three decades earlier would seem almost as remote as Columbus's own, so swiftly did the wheels of progress turn. Everything declared that a new age had opened. In addition to the signs of this which have been set down in the preceding chapters, we have only s.p.a.ce for the bare mention of a few others.
In 1888 the United States mails flew from point to point across the continent with a rapidity which would have astounded people so few years back as the close of the war. Their distribution effected through the post-office cars that ran on all the main lines and by immediate delivery in cities and large towns, was quite as great an improvement as the speed. The postal-car system had origin in Chicago in 1864, spreading thence East and West. Speedy delivery was introduced in 1886.
Postal rates were lower than ever before, and destined soon to be lower still. Much business formerly left to the express companies was now done by mail, and much carried on in this way which formerly was not done at all.
Our country had developed an attention to art in all its forms far beyond anything of the kind to be observed at the end of the war. In all the princ.i.p.al cities concerts of the highest order were provided and numerously attended. Our art galleries already vied with many of those in the Old World. Students of art were found in abundance in our own multiplying schools for them, while many from this country sought art instruction in Europe. Not a few Americans attained eminence in this department year by year. In one artistic line we already excelled every other people, viz., the application of the principles of taste in beautifying homes, churches, structures intended for business, such as exchanges, railway stations, and bridges, cars, and all kinds of machinery. We led the world, too, in propriety and neatness of apparel, at least, for men.
After the war the right to vote was extended in nearly all the States, until by 1890 manhood suffrage was legally the rule from North to South and from East to West. In this, indeed, we were only keeping pace with Great Britain, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. The agitation for woman's suffrage had, however, progressed further here than in any other land. There was a large party, quasi-political, intent upon bringing it about. A national convention was held in that interest each year. In Wyoming and Utah the suffrage had already been enjoyed by women since 1869. In Kansas, by a law going into effect February 16, 1887, they voted on all munic.i.p.al affairs. In many other localities they had the privilege of voting on certain questions, as the election of school committees, and were eligible to members.h.i.+p in these committees.
Occupations of honor and profit were, more and more as the years pa.s.sed, open to the female s.e.x. Women preached, practised law and medicine, and furnished many of the best bookkeepers, sales-people, and princ.i.p.als of schools. Va.s.sar College, the first inst.i.tution in the world for the full collegiate education of women, was opened in 1861. Smith and Wellesley Colleges, for the same, were opened in 1875, Bryn Mawr following in 1885. Cornell, Michigan, and all the State Universities in the West, like a number of the best universities in the East, educated young women on the same terms as young men. Harvard opened its Radcliffe College for female pupils. At its commencement in 1886, Columbia College, of which the Barnard College for women became virtually a part, conferred the degree of Doctor in Philosophy upon a woman. Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania opened their graduate departments to women on the same terms as to men. Brown University did the same, besides providing for the undergraduate instruction of women.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Man holding his hat, leaning from a moving train.]
Catching the Mail Pouch from the Crane.
Another sign of the times, still more striking, was our advance toward socialism and state socialism. This occurred for the most part in ways so recondite as to escape observation, yet in many respects the course of things in this direction was perfectly obvious. The powerful movement for the legal prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicants was one instance. The extension and perfection of our public school system, all at the expense of the taxpayers, was another, it being possible by 1890 in nearly every State for a young person of either s.e.x to secure, without paying a cent of tuition money, a better education than the finest universities in the land could give a hundred years previous. The extent of governmental surveillance over great industries was another ill.u.s.tration. The Trusts spoken of in a preceding chapter were unhesitatingly a.s.sumed to be subject to legislative investigation and command. Great corporations and combinations, it was now well understood, could not pursue their ends merely for profit, irrespective of public interest. The Inter-State Railway Law of February 4, 1887, inst.i.tuting a National Commission, to which all railways crossing state lines were responsible for obedience to certain rules which the same law enjoined, was the boldest a.s.sertion of state supervision yet made; but there was a great and growing number of thinkers who believed that mere state oversight would not suffice, and that at least gigantic businesses like telegraph, railway, and mining, must sooner or later be bought and operated out and out by public authority. Nothing had done so much to promote this conviction as the rise, procedure, and wealth of these Trusts, for from the oppressive greed of many of them no legislative regulation seemed sufficient to protect the people.
This tendency to over-exalt the State's industrial function was not the only danger which confronted us. Another was that from immigration. So enormous was the influx of foreigners that we were threatened with a fatal emasculation of our national character. The manner in which we incorporated alien elements theretofore was among the wonders of history, but it was at least a question whether we could continue to do this always. It seemed in part therefore a healthy sentiment which by the law of 1882 excluded Chinese labor-immigrants. New-comers from other lands were also refused domicile here if imported under contract, [Footnote: Law of February 26, 1885] or unable to support themselves.
The stronger law against the Chinese at first sight seemed invidious, but there was some justification for it in the fact that those people almost never settled down permanently as citizens of the United States, but returned to their native land so soon as they earned a competence.
Italians of the lowest cla.s.s did this to some extent, but the great bulk of our foreign-born population came here with the purpose of becoming American.
Our Irish-American fellow-citizens gave concern to many. One complaint was that they brought hither their anti-English prejudices, by the loud and continual a.s.sertion of which they tended ever to embroil us with England. There proved to be slight danger from this source, particularly after the rise of a powerful pro-Irish sentiment and party among the English themselves. Others had great fear of the Irish as Catholics, they being the chief representatives of that faith in the United States.
The growth of the Roman Catholic Church in our borders was certainly very rapid. An American clergyman, McCloskey, was made Cardinal in 1875.
A University, subject to the Catholic Church was erected in Was.h.i.+ngton.
Catholicism in America was no longer a mission church as it had been until quite recently, but had a full national organization as in the other great nations of the earth.
A strong movement was developed among the Catholic clergy against our common schools as usually administered. Parochial schools were erected in most Eastern cities and large towns, and efforts made to fill them with children who, but for their existence, would be in the public schools. Public schools were denounced as G.o.dless because they did not, as of course they could not, give positive religious instruction. This opposition was doubtless a menace to our time-honored and on the whole very efficient school system, so that what the future of this was to be no one could confidently predict. It was to be remarked, however, that some of the warmest defenders of the public schools appeared in the Catholic ranks; nor was there any evidence that, as a cla.s.s, American citizens of Irish birth and descent prized the free inst.i.tutions of this nation a whit less than the rest of the people.