Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

The North-western system, which includes, besides the lines that-have its name, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, the Fremont; Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley, and several minor roads, occupies northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, sends a line along Lake Michigan to Lake Superior, with branches, a line to St. Paul, with branches tapping Lake Superior again at Bayfield and Duluth, sends another trunk line, with branches, into the far fields of Dakota, drops down a tangle of lines through Iowa and into Nebraska, sends another great line through northern Nebraska into Wyoming, with a divergence into the Black Hills, and runs all these feeders into Chicago by another trunk line from Omaha. By the report of 1887 the gross earnings of this system (in round numbers) were over twenty-six millions, expenses over twenty millions, leaving a net income of over six million dollars. In these items the receipts for freight were over nineteen millions, and from passengers less than six millions. Not to enter into confusing details, the magnitude of the system is shown in the general balance-sheet for May, 1887, when the cost of road (4101 miles), the sinking funds, the general assets, and the operating assets foot up $176,048,000. Over 3500 miles of this road are laid with steel rails; the equipment required 735 engines and over 23,000 cars of all sorts. It is worthy of note that a table makes the net earnings of 4000 miles of road, 1887, only a little more than those of 3000 miles of road in 1882—a greater gain evidently to the public than to the railroad.

In speaking of this system territorially, I have included the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, but not in the above figures. The two systems have the same president, but different general managers and other officials, and the reports are separate. To the over 4000 miles of the other North-western lines, therefore, are to be added the 1360 miles of the Omaha system (report of December, 1886, since considerably increased). The balance-sheet of the Omaha system (December, 1886) shows a cost of over fifty-seven millions. Its total net earnings over operating expenses and taxes were about $2,304,000. It then required an equipment of 194 locomotives and about 6000 cars. These figures are not, of course, given for specific railroad information, but merely to give a general idea of the magnitude of operations. This may be illustrated by another item. During the year for which the above figures have been given the entire North-western system ran on the average 415 passenger and 732 freight trains each day through the year. It may also be an interesting comparison to say that all the railways in Connecticut, including those that run into other States, have 416 locomotives, 668 passenger cars, and 11,502 other cars, and that their total mileage in the State is 1405 miles.

The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (report of December, 1886) was operating 4036 miles of road. Its only eccentric development was the recent Burlington and Northern, up the Mississippi River to St. Paul. Its main stem from Chicago branches out over northern and western Illinois, runs down to St. Louis, from thence to Kansas City by way of Hannibal, has a trunk line to Omaha, criss-crosses northern Missouri and southern Iowa, skirts and pierces Kansas, and fairly occupies three-quarters of Nebraska with a network of tracks, sending out lines north of the Platte, and one to Cheyenne and one to Denver. The whole amount of stock and bonds, December, 1886, was reported at $155,920,000. The gross earnings for 1886 were over twenty-six millions (over nineteen of which was for freight and over five for passengers), operating expenses over fourteen millions, leaving over twelve millions net earnings. The system that year paid eight per cent, dividends (as it had done for a long series of years), leaving over fixed charges and dividends about a million and a half to be carried to surplus or construction outlays. The equipment for the year required 619 engines and over 24,000 cars. These figures do not give the exact present condition of the road, but only indicate the magnitude of its affairs.

Both these great systems have been well managed, and both have been, and continue to be, great agents in developing the West. Both have been profitable to investors. The comparatively small cost of building roads in the West and the profit hitherto have invited capital, and stimulated the construction of roads not absolutely needed. There are too many miles of road for capitalists. Are there too many for the accommodation of the public? What locality would be willing to surrender its road?

It is difficult to understand the attitude of the Western Granger and the Western Legislatures towards the railways, or it would be if we didn’t understand pretty well the nature of demagogues the world over. The people are everywhere crazy for roads, for more and more roads. The whole West we are considering is made by railways. Without them the larger part of it would be uninhabitable, the lands of small value, produce useless for want of a market. No railways, no civilization. Year by year settlements have increased in all regions touched by railways, land has risen in price, and freight charges have diminished. And yet no sooner do the people get the railways near them than they become hostile to the companies; hostility to railway corporations seems to be the dominant sentiment in the Western mind, and the one most naturally invoked by any political demagogue who wants to climb up higher in elective office. The roads are denounced as “monopolies”—a word getting to be applied to any private persons who are successful in business—and their consolidation is regarded as a standing menace to society.

Of course it goes without saying that great corporations with exceptional privileges are apt to be arrogant, unjust, and grasping, and especially when, as in the case of railways, they unite private interests and public functions, they need the restraint of law and careful limitations of powers. But the Western situation is nevertheless a very curious one. Naturally when capital takes great risks it is entitled to proportionate profits; but profits always encourage competition, and the great Western lines are already in a war for existence that does not need much unfriendly legislation to make fatal. In fact, the lowering of rates in railway wars has gone on so rapidly of late years that the most active Granger Legislature cannot frame hostile bills fast enough to keep pace with it. Consolidation is objected to. Yet this consideration must not be lost sight of: the West is cut up by local roads that could not be maintained; they would not pay running expenses if they had not been made parts of a great system. Whatever may be the danger of the consolidation system, the country has doubtless benefited by it.

The present tendency of legislation, pushed to its logical conclusion, is towards a practical confiscation of railway property; that is, its tendency is to so interfere with management, so restrict freedom of arrangement, so reduce rates, that the companies will with difficulty continue operations. The first effect of this will be, necessarily, poorer service and deteriorated equipments and tracks. Roads that do not prosper cannot keep up safe lines. Experienced travellers usually shun those that are in the hands of a receiver. The Western roads of which I speak have been noted for their excellent service and the liberality towards the public in accommodations, especially in fine cars and matters pertaining to the comfort of passengers. Some dining cars on the Omaha system were maintained last year at a cost to the company of ten thousand dollars over receipts. The Western Legislatures assume that because a railway which is thickly strung with cities can carry passengers for two cents a mile, a railway running over an almost unsettled plain can carry for the same price. They assume also that because railway companies in a foolish fight for business cut rates, the lowest rate they touch is a living one for them. The same logic that induces Legislatures to fix rates of transportation, directly or by means of a commission, would lead it to set a price on meat, wheat, and groceries. Legislative restriction is one thing; legislative destruction is another. There is a craze of prohibition and interference. Iowa has an attack of it. In Nebraska, not only the Legislature but the courts have been so hostile to railway enterprise that one hundred and fifty miles of new road graded last year, which was to receive its rails this spring, will not be railed, because it is not safe for the company to make further investments in that State. Between the Grangers on the one side and the labor unions on the other, the railways are in a tight place. Whatever restrictions great corporations may need, the sort of attack now made on them in the West is altogether irrational. Is it always made from public motives? The legislators of one Western State had been accustomed to receive from the various lines that centred at the capital trip passes, in addition to their personal annual passes. Trip passes are passes that the members can send to their relations, friends, and political allies who want to visit the capital. One year the several roads agreed that they would not issue trip passes. When the members asked the agent for them they were told that they were not ready. As days passed and no trip passes were ready, hostile and annoying bills began to be introduced into the Legislature. In six weeks there was a shower of them. The roads yielded, and began to give out the passes. After that, nothing more was heard of the bills.

What the public have a right to complain of is the manipulation of railways in Wall Street gambling. But this does not account for the hostility to the corporations which are developing the West by an extraordinary outlay of money, and cutting their own throats by a war of rates. The vast interests at stake, and the ignorance of the relation of legislation to the laws of business, make the railway problem to a spectator in Chicago one of absorbing interest.

In a thorough discussion of all interests it must be admitted that the railways have brought many of their troubles upon themselves by their greedy wars with each other, and perhaps in some cases by teaching Legislatures that have bettered their instructions, and that tyrannies in management and unjust discriminations (such as the Inter-State Commerce Law was meant to stop) have much to do in provoking hostility that survives many of its causes.

I cannot leave Chicago without a word concerning the town of Pullman, although it has already been fully studied in the pages of Harper’s Monthly. It is one of the most interesting experiments in the world. As it is only a little over seven years old, it would be idle to prophesy about it, and I can only say that thus far many of the predictions as to the effect of “paternalism” have not come true. If it shall turn out that its only valuable result is an “object lesson” in decent and orderly living, the experiment will not have been in vain. It is to be remembered that it is not a philanthropic scheme, but a purely business operation, conducted on the idea that comfort, cleanliness, and agreeable surroundings conduce more to the prosperity of labor and of capital than the opposites.

Pullman is the only city in existence built from the foundation on scientific and sanitary principles, and not more or less the result of accident and variety of purpose and incapacity. Before anything else was done on the flat prairie, perfect drainage, sewerage, and water supply were provided. The shops, the houses, the public buildings, the parks, the streets, the recreation grounds, then followed in intelligent creation. Its public buildings are fine, and the grouping of them about the open flower-planted spaces is very effective. It is a handsome city, with the single drawback of monotony in the well-built houses. Pullman is within the limits of the village of Hyde Park, but it is not included in the annexation of the latter to Chicago.

It is certainly a pleasing industrial city. The workshops are spacious, light, and well ventilated, perfectly systematized; for instance, timber goes into one end of the long car-shop and, without turning back, comes out a freight car at the other, the capacity of the shop being one freight car every fifteen minutes of the working hours. There are a variety of industries, which employ about 4500 workmen. Of these about 500 live outside the city, and there are about 1000 workmen who live in the city and work elsewhere. The company keeps in order the streets, parks, lawns, and shade trees, but nothing else except the schools is free. The schools are excellent, and there are over 1300 children enrolled in them. The company has a well-selected library of over 6000 volumes, containing many scientific and art books, which is open to all residents on payment of an annual subscription of three dollars. Its use increases yearly, and study classes are formed in connection with it. The company rents shops to dealers, but it carries on none of its own. Wages are paid to employés without deduction, except as to rent, and the women appreciate a provision that secures them a home beyond peradventure.

The competition among dealers brings prices to the Chicago rates, or lower, and then the great city is easily accessible for shopping. House rent is a little higher for ordinary workmen than in Chicago, but not higher in proportion to accommodations, and living is reckoned a little cheaper. The reports show that the earnings of operatives exceed those of other working communities, averaging per capita (exclusive of the higher pay of the general management) $590 a year. I noticed that piece-wages were generally paid, and always when possible. The town is a hive of busy workers; employment is furnished to all classes except the school-children, and the fine moral and physical appearance of the young women in the upholstery and other work rooms would please a philanthropist.

Both the health and the morale of the town are exceptional; and the moral tone of the workmen has constantly improved under the agreeable surroundings. Those who prefer the kind of independence that gives them filthy homes and demoralizing associations seem to like to live elsewhere. Pullman has a population of 10,000. I do not know another city of 10,000 that has not a place where liquor is sold, nor a house nor a professional woman of ill repute. With the restrictions as to decent living, the community is free in its political action, its church and other societies, and in all healthful social activity. It has several ministers; it seems to require the services of only one or two policemen; it supports four doctors and one lawyer.

I know that any control, any interference with individual responsibility, is un-American. Our theory is that every person knows what is best for himself. It is not true, but it may be safer, in working out all the social problems, than any lessening of responsibility either in the home or in civil affairs. When I contrast the dirty tenements, with contiguous seductions to vice and idleness, in some parts of Chicago, with the homes of Pullman, I am glad that this experiment has been made. It may be worth some sacrifice to teach people that it is better for them, morally and pecuniarily, to live cleanly and under educational influences that increase their self-respect. No doubt it is best that people should own their homes, and that they should assume all the responsibilities of citizenship. But let us wait the full evolution of the Pullman idea. The town could not have been built as an object lesson in any other way than it was built. The hope is that laboring people will voluntarily do hereafter what they have here been induced to accept. The model city stands there as a lesson, the wonderful creation of less than eight years. The company is now preparing to sell lots on the west side of the railway-tracks, and we shall see what influence this nucleus of order, cleanliness, and system will have upon the larger community rapidly gathering about it. Of course people should be free to go up or go down. Will they be injured by the opportunity of seeing how much pleasanter it is to go up than to go down?

XI.—THREE CAPITALS—SPRINGFIELD, INDIANAPOLIS, COLUMBUS.

To one travelling over this vast country, especially the northern and western portions, the superficial impression made is that of uniformity, and even monotony: towns are alike, cities have a general resemblance, State lines are not recognized, and the idea of conformity and centralization is easily entertained. Similar institutions, facility of communication, a disposition to stronger nationality, we say, are rapidly fusing us into one federal mass.

But when we study a State at its centre, its political action, its organization, its spirit, the management of its institutions of learning and of charity, the tendencies, restrictive or liberal, of its legislation, even the tone of social life and the code of manners, we discover distinctions, individualities, almost as many differences as resemblances. And we see—the saving truth in our national life—that each State is a well-nigh indestructible entity, an empire in itself, proud and conscious of its peculiarities, and jealous of its rights. We see that State boundaries are not imaginary lines, made by the geographers, which could be easily altered by the central power. Nothing, indeed, in our whole national development, considering the common influences that have made us, is so remarkable as the difference of the several States. Even on the lines of a common settlement, say from New England and New York, note the differences between northern Ohio, northern Indiana, northern Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Or take another line, and see the differences between southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and northern Missouri. But each State, with its diverse population, has a certain homogeneity and character of its own. We can understand this where there are great differences of climate, or when one is mountainous and the other flat. But why should Indiana be so totally unlike the two States that flank it, in so many of the developments of civilized life or in retarded action; and why should Iowa, in its entire temper and spirit, be so unlike Illinois? One State copies the institutions of another, but there is always something in its life that it does not copy from any other. And the perpetuity of the Union rests upon the separateness and integrity of this State life. I confess that I am not so much impressed by the magnitude of our country as I am by the wonderful system of our complex government in unity, which permits the freest development of human nature, and the most perfect adaptability to local conditions. I can conceive of no greater enemy to the Union than he who would by any attempt at further centralization weaken the self-dependence, pride, and dignity of a single State. It seems to me that one travels in vain over the United States if he does not learn that lesson.

The State of Illinois is geographically much favored both for agriculture and commerce. With access to the Gulf by two great rivers that bound it on two sides, and communicating with the Atlantic by Lake Michigan, enterprise has aided these commercial advantages by covering it with railways. Stretching from Galena to Cairo, it has a great variety of climate; it is well watered by many noble streams, and contains in its great area scarcely any waste land. It has its contrasts of civilization. In the northern half are the thriving cities; the extreme southern portion, owing in part to a more debilitating, less wholesome climate, and in part to a less virile, ambitious population, still keeps its “Egyptian” reputation. But the railways have already made a great change in southern Illinois, and education is transforming it. The establishment of a normal school at Carbondale in 1874-75 has changed the aspect of a great region. I am told by the State Superintendent of Education that the contrast in dress, manners, cultivation, of the country crowd which came to witness the dedication of the first building, and those who came to see the inauguration of the new school, twelve years later, was something astonishing.

Passing through the central portion of the State to Springfield, after an interval of many years, let us say a generation, I was impressed with the transformation the country had undergone by tree-planting and the growth of considerable patches of forest. The State is generally prosperous. The farmers have money, some surplus to spend in luxuries, in the education of their children, in musical instruments, in the adornment of their homes. This is the universal report of the commercial travellers, those modern couriers of business and information, who run in swarms to and fro over the whole land. To them it is significant—their opinion can go for what it is worth—that Illinois has not tried the restrictive and prohibitory legislation of its western neighbor, Iowa, which, with its rolling prairies and park-like timber, loved in the season of birds and flowers, is one of the most fertile and lovely States in the West.

Springfield, which spreads its 30,000 people extensively over a plain on the Sangamon River, is prosperous, and in the season when any place can be agreeable, a beautiful city. The elm grows well in the rich soil, and its many broad, well-shaded streets, with pretty detached houses and lawns, make it very attractive, a delightful rural capital. The large Illinois towns are slowly lifting themselves out of the slough of rich streets, better adapted to crops than to trade; though good material for pavement is nowhere abundant. Springfield has recently improved its condition by paving, mostly with cedar blocks, twenty-five miles of streets. I notice that in some of the Western towns tile pavement is being tried. Manufacturing is increasing—there is a prosperous rolling-mill and a successful watch factory—but the overwhelming interest of the city is that it is the centre of the political and educational institutions—of the life emanating from the State-honse.

The State-house is, I believe, famous. It is a big building, a great deal has been spent on it in the way of ornamentation, and it enjoys the distinction of the highest State-honse dome in the country—350 feet. It has the merit also of being well placed on an elevation, and its rooms are spacious and very well planned. It is an incongruous pile externally, mixing many styles of architecture, placing Corinthian capitals on Doric columns, and generally losing the impression of a dignified mass in details. Within, it is especially rich in wall-casings of beautiful and variegated marbles, each panel exquisite, but all together tending to dissipate any idea of unity of design or simplicity. Nothing whatever can be said for many of the scenes in relief, or the mural paintings (except that they illustrate the history of the State), nor for most of the statues in the corridors, but the decoration of the chief rooms, in mingling of colors and material, is frankly barbarous.

Illinois has the reputation of being slow in matters of education and reform. A day in the State offices, however, will give the visitor an impression of intelligence and vigor in these directions. The office of the State Board of Pharmacy in the Capitol shows a strict enforcement of the law in the supervision of drugs and druggists. Prison management has also most intelligent consideration. The two great penitentiaries, the Southern, at Chester (with about 800 convicts), and the Northern, at Joliet (with about 1600 convicts), call for no special comment. The one at Joliet is a model of its kind, with a large library, and such schooling as is practicable in the system, and is well administered; and I am glad to see that Mr. McClaughry, the warden, believes that incorrigibles should be permanently held, and that grading, the discipline of labor and education, with a parole system, can make law-abiding citizens of many convicts.

In school education the State is certainly not supine in efforts. Out of a State population of about 8,500,000, there were, in 1887, 1,627,841 under twenty-one years, and 1,096,464 between the ages of six and twenty-one. The school age for free attendance is from six to twenty-one; for compulsory attendance, from eight to fourteen. There were 749,994 children enrolled, and 500,197 in daily attendance. Those enrolled in private schools numbered 87,725. There were 2258 teachers in private schools, and 22,925 in public schools; of this latter, 7402 were men and 15,403 women. The average monthly salary of men was $51.48, and of women $42.17. The sum available for school purposes in 1887 was $12,890,515, in an assessed value of taxable property of $797,752,888. These figures are from Dr. X. W. Edwards, Superintendent of Public Instruction, whose energy is felt In every part of the State.

The State prides itself on its institutions of charity. I saw some of them at Jacksonville, an hour’s ride west of Springfield. Jacksonville is a very pretty city of some 15,000, with elm-shaded avenues that crest but do not rival New Haven—one of those intellectual centres that are a continual surprise to our English friends in their bewildered exploration of our monotonous land. In being the Western centre of Platonic philosophy, it is more like Concord than like New Haven. It is the home of a large number of people who have travelled, who give intelligent attention to art, to literary study in small societies and clubs—its Monday Evening Club of men long antedated most of the similar institutions at the East—and to social problems. I certainly did not expect to find, as I did, water-colors by Turner in Jacksonville, besides many other evidences of a culture that must modify many Eastern ideas of what the West is and is getting to be.

The Illinois College is at Jacksonville. It is one of twenty-five small colleges in the State, and I believe the only one that adheres to the old curriculum, and does not adopt co-education. It has about sixty students in the college proper, and about one hundred and thirty in the preparatory academy. Most of the Illinois colleges have preparatory departments, and so long as they do, and the various sects scatter their energies among so many institutions, the youth of the State who wish a higher education will be obliged to go East. The school perhaps the most vigorous just now is the University of Illinois, at Urbana, a school of agriculture and applied science mainly. The Central Hospital for the Insane (one of three in the State), under the superintendence of Dr. Henry F. Carriel, is a fine establishment, a model of neatness and good management, with over nine hundred patients, about a third of whom do some light work on the farm or in the house. A large conservatory of plants and flowers is rightly regarded as a remedial agency in the treatment of the patients. Here also is a fine school for the education of the blind.

The Institution for the Education of Deaf-Mutes, Dr. Philip H. Gillette, superintendent, is, I believe, the largest in the world, and certainly one of the most thoroughly equipped and successful in its purposes. It has between five hundred and six hundred pupils. All the departments found in many other institutions are united here. The school has a manual training department; articulation is taught; the art school exhibits surprising results in aptitude for both drawing and painting; and industries are taught to the extent of giving every pupil a trade or some means of support—shoemaking, cabinet-making, printing, sewing, gardening, and baking.

Such an institution as this raises many interesting questions. It is at once evident that the loss of the sense of hearing has an effect on character, moral and intellectual. Whatever may be the education of the deaf-mute, he will remain, in some essential and not easily to be characterized respects, different from other people. It is exceedingly hard to cultivate in them a spirit of self-dependence, or eradicate the notion that society owes them perpetual care and support. The education of deaf-mutes, and the teaching them trades, so that they become intelligent and productive members of society, of course induce marriages among them. Is not this calculated to increase the number of deaf-mutes? Dr. Gillette thinks not. The vital statistics show that consanguineous marriages are a large factor in deaf-muteism; about ten per cent., it is estimated, of the deaf-mutes are the offspring of parents related by blood. Ancestral defects are not always perpetuated in kind; they may descend in physical deformity, in deafness, in imbecility. Deafness is more apt to descend in collateral branches than in a straight line. It is a striking fact in a table of relationships prepared by Dr. Gillette that, while the 450 deaf-mutes enumerated had 770 relationships to other deaf-mutes, making a total of 1220, only twelve of them had deaf-mute parents, and only two of them one deaf-mute parent, the mother of these having been able to hear, and that in no case was the mother alone a deaf-mute. Of the pupils who have left this institution, 251 have married deaf-mutes, and 19 hearing persons. These marriages have been as fruitful as the average, and among them all only sixteen have deaf-mute children; in some of the families having a deaf child there are other children who hear. These facts, says the report, clearly indicate that the probability of deaf offspring from deaf parentage is remote, while other facts may clearly indicate that a deaf person probably has or will have a deaf relation other than a child.

Springfield is old enough to have a historic flavor and social traditions; perhaps it might be called a Kentucky flavor, so largely did settlers from Kentucky determine it. There was a leisurely element in it, and it produced a large number of men prominent in politics and in the law, and women celebrated for beauty and spirit. It was a hospitable society, with a certain tone of “family” that distinguished it from other frontier places, a great liking for the telling of racy stories, and a hearty enjoyment of life. The State has provided a Gubernatorial residence which is at once spacious and pleasant, and is a mansion, with its present occupants, typical in a way of the old regime and of modern culture.

To the country at large Springfield is distinguished as the home of Abraham Lincoln to an extent perhaps not fully realized by the residents of the growing capital, with its ever new interests. And I was perhaps unreasonably disappointed in not finding that sense of his personality that I expected. It is, indeed, emphasized by statues in the Capitol and by the great mausoleum in the cemetery—an imposing structure, with an excellent statue in bronze, and four groups, relating to the civil war, of uncommon merit. But this great monumental show does not satisfy the personal longing of which I speak. Nor is the Lincoln residence much more satisfactory in this respect. The plain two-story wooden house has been presented to the State by his son Robert, and is in charge of a custodian. And although the parlor is made a show-room and full of memorials, there is no atmosphere of the man about it. On Lincoln’s departure for Washington the furniture was sold and the house rented, never to be again occupied by him. There is here nothing of that personal presence that clings to the Hermitage, to Marshfield, to Mount Vernon, to Monticello. Lincoln was given to the nation, and—a frequent occurrence in our uprooting business life—the home disappeared. Lincoln was honored and beloved in Springfield as a man, but perhaps some of the feeling towards him as a party leader still lingers, although it has disappeared almost everywhere else in the country. Nowhere else was the personal partisanship hotter than in this city, and it is hardly to be expected that political foes in this generation should quite comprehend the elevation of Lincoln, in the consenting opinion of the world, among the greatest characters of all ages. It has happened to Lincoln that every year and a more intimate knowledge of his character have added to his fame and to the appreciation of his moral grandeur. There is a natural desire to go to some spot pre-eminently sacred to his personality. This may be his birthplace. At any rate, it is likely that before many years Kentucky will be proud to distinguish in some way the spot where the life began of the most illustrious man born in its borders.

When we come to the capital of Indiana we have, in official language, to report progress. One reason assigned for the passing of emigrants through Indiana to Illinois was that the latter was a prairie country, more easily subdued than the more wooded region of Indiana. But it is also true that the sluggish, illiterate character of its early occupants turned aside the stream of Western emigration from its borders. There has been a great deal of philosophic speculation upon the acknowledged backwardness of civilization in Indiana, its slow development in institutions of education, and its slow change in rural life, compared with its sister States. But this concerns us less now than the awakening which is visible at the capital and in some of the northern towns. The forests of hard timber which were an early disadvantage are now an important element in the State industry and wealth. Recent developments of coal-fields and the discovery of natural gas have given an impetus to manufacturing, which will powerfully stimulate agriculture and traffic, and open a new career to the State.

Indianapolis, which stood still for some years in a reaction from real-estate speculation, is now a rapidly improving city, with a population of about 125,000. It is on the natural highway of the old National Turnpike, and its central location in the State, in the midst of a rich agricultural district, has made it the centre of fifteen railway lines, and of active freight and passenger traffic. These lines are all connected for freight purposes by a belt road, over which pass about 5000 freight cars daily. This belt road also does an enormous business for the stock-yards, and its convenient line is rapidly filling up with manufacturing establishments. As a consequence of these facilities the trade of the city in both wholesale and retail houses is good and increasing. With this increase of business there has been an accession of banking capital. The four national and two private banks have an aggregate capital of about three millions, and the Clearing-house report of 1887 showed a business of about one hundred millions, an increase of nearly fifty per cent, over the preceding year. But the individual prosperity is largely due to the building and loan associations, of which there are nearly one hundred, with an aggregate capital of seven millions, the loans of which exceed those of the banks. These take the place of savings-banks, encourage the purchase of homesteads, and are preventives of strikes and labor troubles in the factories.

The people of Indianapolis call their town a Park City. Occupying a level plain, its streets (the principal ones with a noble width of ninety feet) intersect each other at right angles; but in the centre of the city is a Circle Park of several acres, from which radiate to the four quarters of the town avenues ninety feet broad that relieve the monotony of the right lines. These streets are for the most part well shaded, and getting to be well paved, lined with pleasant but not ambitious residences, so that the whole aspect of the city is open and agreeable. The best residences are within a few squares of the most active business streets, and if the city has not the distinction of palaces, it has fewer poor and shabby quarters than most other towns of its size. In the Circle Park, Here now stands a statue of Governor Morton, is to be erected immediately the Soldiers’ Monument, at a cost of $250,000.

The city is fortunate in its public buildings. The County Court-house (which cost $1,000,000) and City Hall are both fine buildings; in the latter are the city markets, and above, a noble auditorium with seats for 4000 people. But the State Capitol, just finished within the appropriation of $2,000,000, is pre-eminent among State Capitols in many respects. It is built of the Bedford limestone, one of the best materials both for color and endurance found in the country. It follows the American plan of two wings and a dome; but it is finely proportioned; and the exterior, with rows of graceful Corinthian columns above the basement story, is altogether pleasing. The interior is spacious and impressive, the Chambers fine, the furnishing solid and in good taste, with nowhere any over-ornamentation or petty details to mar the general noble effect. The State Library contains, besides the law-books, about 20,000 miscellaneous volumes.

When Matthew Arnold first came to New York the place in the West about which he expressed the most curiosity was Indianapolis; that he said he must see, if no other city. He had no knowledge of the place, and could give no reason for his preference except that the name had always had a fascination for him. He found there, however, a very extensive book-store, where his own works were sold in numbers that pleased and surprised him. The shop has a large miscellaneous stock, and does a large jobbing and retail business, but the miscellaneous books dealt in are mostly cheap reprints of English works, with very few American copyright books. This is a significant comment on the languishing state of the market for works of American authors in the absence of an international copyright law.

The city is not behind any other in educational efforts. In its five free public libraries are over 70,000 volumes. The city has a hundred churches and a vigorous Young Men’s Christian Association, which cost $75,000. Its private schools have an excellent reputation. There are 20,000 children registered of school age, and 11,000 in daily attendance in twenty-eight free-school houses. In methods of efficacy these are equal to any in the Union, as is shown by the fact that there are reported in the city only 325 persons between the ages of six and twenty-one unable to read and write. The average cost of instruction for each pupil is $19.04 a year. In regard to advanced methods and manual training, Indianapolis schools claim to be pioneers.

The latest reports show educational activity in the State as well as in the capital. In 1880 the revenues expended in public schools were about $5,000,000. The State supports the Indiana University at Bloomington, with about 300 students, the Agricultural College at Lafayette, with over 300, and a normal school at Terre Haute, with an attendance of about 500. There are, besides, seventeen private colleges and several other normal schools. In 1886 the number of school-children enrolled in the State was 500,000, of whom 340,000 were in daily attendance. To those familiar with Indiana these figures show a greatly increased interest in education.

Several of the State benevolent institutions are in Indianapolis: a hospital for the insane, which cost $1,200,000, and accommodates 1000 patients; an asylum for the blind, which has 132 pupils; and a school for deaf-mutes which cost $500,000, and has about 400 scholars. The novel institution, however, that I saw at Indianapolis is a reformatory for women and girls, controlled entirely by women. The board of trustees are women, the superintendent, physician, and keepers are women. In one building, but in separate departments, were the female convicts, 42 in number, several of them respectable-looking elderly women who had killed their husbands, and about 150 young girls. The convicts and the girls—who are committed for restraint and reform—never meet except in chapel, but it is more than doubtful if it is wise for the State to subject girls to even this sort of contiguity with convicts, and to the degradation of penitentiary suggestions. The establishment is very neat and well ordered and well administered. The work of the prison is done by the convicts, who are besides kept employed at sewing and in the laundry. The girls in the reformatory work half a day, and are in school the other half.

This experiment of the control of a State-prison by women is regarded as doubtful by some critics, who say that women will obey a man when they will not obey a woman. Female convicts, because they have fallen lower than men, or by reason of their more nervous organization, are commonly not so easily controlled as male convicts, and it is insisted that they indulge in less “tantrums” under male than under female authority. This is denied by the superintendent of this prison, though she has incorrigible cases who can only be controlled by solitary confinement. She has daily religious exercises, Bible reading and exposition, and a Sunday-school; and she doubts if she could control the convicts without this religious influence. It not only has a daily quieting effect, but has resulted in several cases in “conversion.” There are in the institution several girls and women of color, and I asked the superintendent if the white inmates exhibited any prejudice against them on account of their color. To my surprise, the answer was that the contrary is the case. The whites look up to the colored girls, and seem either to have a respect for them or to be fascinated by them. This surprising statement was supplemented by another, that the influence of the colored girls on the whites is not good; the white girl who seeks the company of the colored girl deteriorates, and the colored girl does not change.

Indianapolis, which is attractive by reason of a climate that avoids extremes, bases its manufacturing and its business prosperity upon the large coal-beds lying to the west and south of it, the splendid and very extensive quarries of Bedford limestone contiguous to the coal-fields, the abundant supply of various sorts of hard-wood for the making of furniture, and the recent discovery of natural gas. The gas-field region, which is said to be very much larger than any other in the country, lies to the north-west, and comes within eight miles of the city. Pipes are already laid to the city limits, and the whole heating and manufacturing of the city will soon be done by the gas. I saw this fuel in use in a large and successful pottery, where are made superior glazed and encaustic tiles, and nothing could be better for the purpose. The heat in the kilns is intense; it can be perfectly regulated; as fuel the gas is free from smoke and smut, and its cost is merely nominal. The excitement over this new agent is at present extraordinary. The field where it has been found is so extensive as to make the supply seem inexhaustible. It was first discovered in Indiana at Eaton, in Delaware County, in 1880. From January 1, 1887, to February, 1888, it is reported that 1000 wells were opened in the gas territory, and that 245 companies were organized for various manufactures, with an aggregate capital of $25,000,000. Whatever the figures may he, there are the highest expectations of immense increase of manufactures in Indianapolis and in all the gas region. Of some effects of this revolution in fuel we may speak when we come to the gas wells of Ohio.

I had conceived of Columbus as a rural capital, pleasant and slow, rather a village than a city. I was surprised to find a city of 80,000 people, growing with a rapidity astonishing even for a Western town, with miles of prosperous business blocks (High Street is four miles long), and wide avenues of residences extending to suburban parks. Broad Street, with its four rows of trees and fine houses and beautiful lawns, is one of the handsomest avenues in the country, and it is only one of many that are attractive. The Capitol Square, with several good buildings about it, makes an agreeable centre of the city. Of the Capitol building not much is to be said. The exterior is not wholly bad, but it is surmounted by a truncated something that is neither a dome nor a revolving turret, and the interior is badly arranged for room, light, and ventilation. Space is wasted, and many of the rooms, among them the relic-room and the flag-room, are inconvenient and almost inaccessible. The best is the room of the Supreme Court, which has attached a large law library. The general State Library contains about 54,000 volumes, with a fair but not large proportion of Western history.

Columbus is a city of churches, of very fine public schools, of many clubs, literary and social, in which the intellectual element predominates, and of an intelligent, refined, and most hospitable society. Here one may study the educational and charitable institutions of the State, many of the more important of which are in the city, and also the politics. It was Ohio’s hard fate to be for many years an “October State,” and the battle-field and corruption-field of many outside influences. This no doubt demoralized the politics of the State, and lowered the tone of public morality. With the removal of the cause of this decline, I believe the tone is being raised. Recent trials for election frauds, and the rehabilitation of the Cincinnati police, show that a better spirit prevails.

Ohio is growing in wealth as it is in population, and is in many directions an ambitious and progressive State. Judged by its institutions of benevolence and of economies, it is a leading State. No other State provides more liberally for its unfortunates, in asylums for the insane, the blind, the deaf-mutes, the idiotic, the young waifs and strays, nor shows a more intelligent comprehension of the legitimate functions of a great commonwealth, in the creation of boards of education and of charities and of health, in a State inspection of workshops and factories, in establishing bureaus of meteorology and of forestry, a fish commission, and an agricultural experiment station. The State has thirty-four colleges and universities, a public-school system which has abolished distinctions of color, and which by the reports is as efficient as any in the Union. Cincinnati, the moral tone of which, the Ohio people say, is not fairly represented by its newspapers, is famous the world over for its cultivation in music and its progress in the fine and industrial arts. It would be possible for a State to have and be all this and yet rise in the general scale of civilization only to a splendid mediocrity, without the higher institutions of pure learning, and without a very high standard of public morality. Ohio is in no less danger of materialism, with all its diffused intelligence, than other States. There is a recognizable limit to what a diffused level of education, say in thirty-four colleges, can do for the higher life of a State. I heard an address in the Capitol by ex-President Hayes on the expediency of adding a manual-training school to the Ohio State University at Columbus. The comment of some of the legislators on it was that we have altogether too much book-learning; what we need is workshops in our schools and colleges. It seems to a stranger that whatever first-class industrial and technical schools Ohio needs, it needs more the higher education, and the teaching of philosophy, logic, and ethics. In 1886 Governor Foraker sent a special message to the Legislature pointing out the fact that notwithstanding the increase of wealth in the State, the revenue was inadequate to the expenditure, principally by reason of the undervaluation of taxable property (there being a yearly decline in the reported value of personal property), and a fraudulent evasion of taxes. There must have been a wide insensibility to the wrong of cheating the State to have produced this state of things, and one cannot but think that it went along with the low political tone before mentioned. Of course Ohio is not a solitary sinner among States in this evasion of duty, but she helps to point the moral that the higher life of a State needs a great deal of education that is neither commercial nor industrial nor simply philanthropic.

It is impossible and unnecessary for the purposes of this paper to speak of many of the public institutions of the State, even of those in the city. But educators everywhere may study with profit the management of the public schools under the City Board of Education, of which Mr. R. W. Stevenson is superintendent. The High-school, of over 600 pupils, is especially to be commended. Manual training is not introduced into the schools, and the present better sentiment is against it; but its foundation, drawing, is thoroughly taught from the primaries up to the High-school, and the exhibits of the work of the schools of all grades in modelling, drawing, and form and color studies, which were made last year in New York and Chicago, gave these Columbus schools a very high rank in the country. Any visitor to them must be impressed with the intelligence of the methods employed, the apprehension of modern notions, and also the conservative spirit of common-sense.

The Ohio State University has an endowment from the State of over half a million dollars, and a source of ultimate wealth in its great farm and grounds, which must Increase in value as the city extends. It is a very well equipped institution for the study of the natural sciences and agriculture, and might easily be built up into a university in all departments, worthy of the State. At present it has 335 students, of whom 150 are in the academic department, 41 in special practical courses, and 143 in the preparatory school. All the students are organized in companies, under an officer of the United States, for military discipline; the uniform, the drill, the lessons of order and obedience, are invaluable in the transforming of carriage and manners. The University has a museum of geology which ranks among the important ones of the country. It is a pity that a consolidation of other State institutions with this cannot be brought about.

The Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus is an old building, not in keeping with the modern notions of prison construction. In 1887 it had about 1300 convicts, some 100 less than in the preceding year. The management is subject to political changes, and its officers have to be taken from various parts of the State at the dictation of political workers. Under this system the best management is liable to be upset by an election. The special interest in the prison at this time was in the observation of the working of the Parole Law. Since the passage of the Act in May, 1885, 283 prisoners have been paroled, and while several of the convicts have been returned for a violation of parole, nearly the whole number are reported as law-abiding citizens. The managers are exceedingly pleased with the working of the law; it promotes good conduct in the prison, and reduces the number in confinement. The reduction of the number of convicts in 1887 from the former year was ascribed partially to the passage of the General Sentence Law in 1884, and the Habitual Crimes Act in 1885. The criminals dread these laws, the first because it gives no fixed time to build their hopes upon, but all depends upon their previous record and good conduct in prison, while the latter affects the incorrigible, who are careful to shun the State after being convicted twice, and avoid imprisonment for life. The success of these laws and the condition of the State finances delay the work on the Intermediate Prison, or Reformatory, begun at Mansfield. This Reformatory is intended for first offenders, and has the distinct purpose of prevention of further deterioration, and of reformation by means of the discipline of education and labor. The success of the tentative laws in this direction, as applied to the general prisons, is, in fact, a strong argument for the carrying out of the Mansfield scheme.