Chapter XXMusic and Art

The Levee at St. Paul, 1859.Showing the Steamer "Grey Eagle" (1857; 673 tons), Capt. Daniel Smith Harris, the fastest and best boat on the Upper River, together with the "Jeanette Roberts" (1857; 146 tons), and the "Time and Tide" (1853; 131 tons), two Minnesota River boats belonging to Captain Jean Robert, an eccentric Frenchman and successful steamboatman. (Reproduced from an old negative in possession of Mr. Edward Bromley of Minneapolis, Minn.)

In the middle of the nineteenth century, many an artist whose canvases found no market in the older cities, found ready bidders for his brush, to decorate the thirty-foot paddle-boxes of the big side-wheelers with figures of heroic size; or, with finer touch, to embellish the cabins of Western steamboats with oil paintings in every degree of merit and demerit.

The boat carrying my father and his family from Rock Island to Prescott, upon my first appearance on the Father of Waters, was the "Minnesota Belle". Her paddle-boxes were decorated with pictures the same on each side, representing a beautiful girl, modestly and becomingly clothed, and carrying in her arms a bundle of wheat ten or twelve feet long, which she apparently had just reaped from some Minnesota field. In her right hand she carried the reaping-hook with which it was cut.

All the "Eagles" were adorned with greater than life-size portraits of that noble bird. Apparently all were drawn from the same model, whether the boat be a Grey-, Black-, Golden-, War-, or Spread-Eagle.

The "Northern Belle", also had a very good looking young woman upon her paddle-boxes. Evidently she exhibited herself out of pure self-satisfaction, for she had no sheaf of wheat, or any other evidence of occupation. She was pretty, and she knew it.

The "General Brooke" showed the face and bust, in full regimentals, of the doughty old Virginian for whom it was named.

Later, the "Phil Sheridan" boasted an heroic figure of Little Phil, riding in a hurry from Winchester to the front, the hoofs of his charger beating time to the double bass of the guns at Cedar Creek, twenty miles away.

The "Minnesota" reproduced the coat-of-arms of the state153154whose name she bore—the ploughman, the Indian, and the motto "L'étoile du Nord". But the majority of the side-wheel boats boasted only a sunburst on the paddle-boxes, outside of which, on the perimeter of the wheel-house circle, was the legend showing to what line or company the boat belonged. The sunburst afforded opportunity for the artist to spread on colors, and usually the effect was pleasing and harmonious.

It was the inside work wherein the artists in oil showed their skill. Certainly there were many panels that showed the true artistic touch. The "Northern Light", I remember, had in her forward cabin representations of Dayton Bluff, St. Anthony Falls, Lover's Leap, or Maiden Rock, drawn from nature, for which the artist was said to have been paid a thousand dollars. They were in truth fine paintings, being so adjudged by people who claimed to be competent critics. On the other hand there were hundreds of panels—thousands, perhaps, in the myriad of boats that first and last plied on the river—that were the veriest daubs. These were the handiwork of the house painters who thought they had a talent for higher things, and who had been given free hand in the cabin to put their ambitions on record.

There was one case, however, which appealed to the humorous side of every one who was fortunate enough to see it. It was not intended that it should strike just this note. The artist who put it on the broad panel over the office window of the little stern-wheel "dinkey" from the Wabash, intended to convey a solemn note of warning to all who might look upon it to flee temptation. As the painting very nearly faced the bar, it required no very great stretch of imagination to read into the picture the warning to beware of the tempter, strong drink, particularly the brand served out on a Hoosier packet hailing from the Wabash.

In the centre was a vividly-green apple tree, bearing big red fruit. Our beloved Mother Eve, attired in a white cotton skirt that extended from waist to knee, was delicately holding a red scarf over her left shoulder and bosom. Confronting her was a wofully weak-minded Adam, dressed in the conventional habit of a wealthy first century Hebrew. The Satanic snake, wearing a knowing grin on his face, balanced himself on the tip of his tail.

Thirty years or more after the little boat from the Wabashintroduced this artistic gem to travellers on the upper river, I saw a copper-plate engraving two centuries old, from which the Hoosier artist had painted his panel. It was all there, except the colors—the tree, the apples, Eve in her scarf and skirt, Adam as a respectable Hebrew gentleman, and Satan balanced on the turn of his tail and leering with a devilish grin at the young woman who wanted to know it all, and at the lily-livered Adam who then and there surrendered his captaincy and has been running as mate ever since.

In the flush times on the river all sorts of inducements were offered passengers to board the several boats for the up-river voyage. First of all, perhaps, the speed of the boat was dwelt upon. It was always past my comprehension why any one who paid one fare for the trip, including board and lodging as long as he should be on the boat, and who had three good, if not "elegant", meals served each day without extra charge, should have been in such a hurry to get past the most beautiful scenery to be found anywhere under the sun. I would like nothing better than to take passage on the veriest plug that ever made three miles an hour, and having full passage paid, dawdle along for a week, and thus be enabled to enjoy in a leisurely manner, all the beauties of river, bluff, and island.

After speed came elegance—"fast and elegant steamer"—was a favorite phrase in the advertisement. An opportunity to study Eve and her apple, instead of the wealth of beauty which the Almighty has strewn broadcast over the Mississippi Valley, was an inducement carrying weight with some. It was a matter of taste.

After elegance came music, and this spoke for itself. The styles affected by river steamers ranged from a calliope on the roof to a stringed orchestra in the cabin. My recollection is, that most of us thought the name "calliope" was derived from some mechanical appliance in connection with music, with which we were as yet unfamiliar, the fame of Jupiter's daughter not yet having extended to the headwaters of the Mississippi. The question as to what relation this barbaric collection of steam whistles bears to the epic muse, that it should have appropriated her name, is still an open question. The "Excelsior", Captain Ward, was the first to introduce the "steam piano" to a long-suffering passenger list. Plenty of people took passage on the "Excelsior" inorder to hear the calliope perform; many of them, long before they reached St. Paul, wished they had not come aboard, particularly if they were light sleepers. The river men did not mind it much, as they were used to noises of all kinds, and when they "turned in" made a business of sleeping. It was different with most passengers, and a steam piano solo at three o'clock in the morning was a little too much music for the money. After its introduction on the "Excelsior", several other boats armed themselves with this persuader of custom; but as none of them ever caught the same passenger the second time, the machine went out of fashion. Other boats tried brass bands; but while these attracted some custom they were expensive, and came to be dropped as unprofitable.

The cabin orchestra was the cheapest and most enduring, as well as the most popular drawing card. A band of six or eight colored men who could play the violin, banjo, and guitar, and in addition sing well, was always a good investment. These men were paid to do the work of waiters, barbers, and baggagemen, and in addition were given the privilege of passing the hat occasionally, and keeping all they caught. They made good wages by this combination, and it also pleased the passengers, who had no suspicion that the entire orchestra was hired with the understanding that they were to play as ordered by the captain or chief clerk, and that it was a strictly business engagement. They also played for dances in the cabin, and at landings sat on the guards and played to attract custom. It soon became advertised abroad which boats carried the best orchestras, and such lost nothing in the way of patronage.

Some of the older generation yet living, may have heard Ned Kendall play the cornet. If not, they may have heard of him, for his fame was at this time world-wide, as the greatest of all masters on his favorite instrument. Like many another genius, strong drink mastered him, and instead of holding vast audiences spell-bound in Eastern theatres, as he had done, he sold his art to influence custom on an Alton Line boat. It was my good fortune to have heard him two or three times, and his music appeals to me yet, through all the years that lie between. The witchery and the pathos of "Home, Sweet Home", "Annie Laurie", the "White Squall", and selections from operas of which I had then nevereven heard the names, cast such a spell that the boat on which he travelled was crowded every trip. Pity 'tis that one so gifted should fall into a slavery from which there was no redemption. He died in St. Louis, poor and neglected, a wreck infinitely more pitiable than that of the finest steamboat ever cast away on the Great River.

One of the boats on which I served employed a sextet of negro firemen, whose duty, in addition to firing, was to sing to attract custom at the landings. This was not only a unique performance, but it was likewise good music—that is, good of its kind. There was nothing classic about it, but it was naturally artistic. They sang plantation melodies—real negro melodies; not the witless and unmusical inanities which under the name of "coon songs" pass with the present generation for negro minstrelsy. Of course these darkies were picked for their musical ability, and were paid extra wages for singing.

The leader, Sam Marshall, received more than the others, because he was an artist. This term does not do him justice. In addition to a voice of rare sweetness and power, Sam was a bornimprovisatore. It was his part of the entertainment to stand on the capstan-head, with his chorus gathered about him, as the boat neared the landing. If at night, the torch fed with fatwood and resin threw a red glow upon his shining black face, as he lifted up his strong, melodious voice, and lined out his improvised songs, which recited the speed and elegance of this particular boat, the suavity and skill of its captain, the dexterity of its pilots, the manfulness of its mate, and the loveliness of Chloe, its black chambermaid. This latter reference always "brought down the house", as Chloe usually placed herself in a conspicuous place on the guards to hear the music, and incidentally the flatteries of her coal-black lover. As each line was sung by the leader the chorus would take up the refrain:

De Captain stands on de upper deck;(Ah ha-a-a-ah! Oh ho-o-o-o-ho!)"You nebber see 'nudder such gentlehem,I'spec;(Ah ha-a-a-ah, Oh ho-o-o-ho.)

De Captain stands on de upper deck;

(Ah ha-a-a-ah! Oh ho-o-o-o-ho!)"

You nebber see 'nudder such gentlehem,I'spec;

(Ah ha-a-a-ah, Oh ho-o-o-ho.)

and then would follow, as an interlude, the refrain of some old plantation melody in the same key and meter, the six darkies singing their parts in perfect time and accord, and with a melody that cannot be bettered in all the world of music.

De pilot he twisses he big roun' wheel;(Ah ha-a-a-ah! Oh ho-o-o-o-ho.)He sings, and he whissels, and he dance Virginia reel,(Ah ha-a-a-ah, Oh ho-o-o-ho),—

De pilot he twisses he big roun' wheel;(Ah ha-a-a-ah! Oh ho-o-o-o-ho.)

De pilot he twisses he big roun' wheel;

(Ah ha-a-a-ah! Oh ho-o-o-o-ho.)

He sings, and he whissels, and he dance Virginia reel,(Ah ha-a-a-ah, Oh ho-o-o-ho),—

He sings, and he whissels, and he dance Virginia reel,

(Ah ha-a-a-ah, Oh ho-o-o-ho),—

an undoubted reference to Tom Cushing, who, before his promotion to the pilot house was said to have been a tenor in grand opera in New York. He was a beautiful singer at any rate; could whistle like a New York newsboy, and dance like a coryphée. The "Old Man" would have been willing to take his oath that Cushing could and did do all three at the same time, in the most untimely hours of the morning watch, at the same time steering his steamboat in the most approved fashion.

The next stanza was:

"'Gineer in the engin' room listenn' fo' de bell;He boun' to beat dat oder boat or bus' 'em up to—heb'n,"

"'Gineer in the engin' room listenn' fo' de bell;

He boun' to beat dat oder boat or bus' 'em up to—heb'n,"

was accepted as a distinct reference to Billy Hamilton, as the manner of stating his intention to win out in a race was peculiar to the junior engineer, and the proposition was accepted without debate.

"De Debbel he come in the middle of de night;Sam, dere, he scairt so he tuhnmos'white—Jes like dat white man out dere on de lebbee",

"De Debbel he come in the middle of de night;

Sam, dere, he scairt so he tuhnmos'white—Jes like dat white man out dere on de lebbee",

pointing at some one whom he deemed it safe to poke fun at, and of course raising a laugh at the expense of the individual so honored.

"Deslookat dem white fokses standin' on de sho';Dey la-a-aff, and dey la-a-aff, till dey cain't laff no mo'—ha-ha-ha-ha-ha",

"Deslookat dem white fokses standin' on de sho';

Dey la-a-aff, and dey la-a-aff, till dey cain't laff no mo'—ha-ha-ha-ha-ha",

and Sam would throw back his head and laugh a regular contagion into the whole crowd—on the boat and "on de sho", opening a mouth which one of the darkies asserted was "de biggest mouf dis nigger ebber saw on any human bein' 'cept a aligator"; or, as the mate expressed it: "It was like the opening of navigation."

"Dish yer nigger he fire at the middle do';Shake 'em up libely for to make de boat go",

"Dish yer nigger he fire at the middle do';

Shake 'em up libely for to make de boat go",

was a somewhat ornate description of Mr. Marshall's own duties on board the boat. As a matter of fact he did very little firing,personally, although when a race was on he could shovel coal or pitch four-foot wood into the middle door with the best of them, at the same time, singing at the top of his voice. Upon ordinary occasions he let the other darkies pitch the cord wood while he exercised a general supervision over them, as became an acknowledged leader.

To hear these darkies sing the real slave music, which was older than the singers, older than the plantation, as old as Africa itself, wherein the ancestors of some of them at least, might have been kings and princes as well as freemen, was better than the fo'c'sle comedies enacted for the amusement of the passengers. These minor chords carried a strain of heartbreak, as in the lines:

"De night is dark, de day is longAnd we are far fum home,Weep, my brudders, weep!"

"De night is dark, de day is long

And we are far fum home,

Weep, my brudders, weep!"

And the closing lines:

"De night is past, de long day done,An' we are going home,Shout, my brudders, shout!"

"De night is past, de long day done,

An' we are going home,

Shout, my brudders, shout!"

were a prophecy of that day of freedom and rest, after centuries of toil and bondage, the dawn of which was even then discernible to those who, like Abraham Lincoln, were wise to read in the political heavens the signs of its coming.

Steamer "Key City," 1857; 560 tons.Steamer "Northern Light," 1806; 740 tons.

Steamer "Key City," 1857; 560 tons.

Steamer "Northern Light," 1806; 740 tons.

Chapter XXISteamboat Bonanzas

How it was possible to derive any profit from an investment of from $20,000 to $40,000, the principal of which had an average tenure of life of but five years, has puzzled a great many conservative business men from "down east", where "plants" lasted a lifetime, and the profits from which may have been sure, but were certain to be small. A man educated in such an atmosphere would hesitate long, before investing $25,000 in a steamboat that was foreordained to the scrap pile at the end of five summers; or where one out of every two was as certainly predestined to go up in smoke or down into the mud of the river bottom at the end of four years—these periods representing the ordinary life of a Mississippi River steamboat.

From 1849 to 1862 the shipyards of the Ohio, where nine out of ten Western boats were built, could not keep up with the orders. Every available shipwright was employed, and on some boats gangs worked at night by the light of torches at double wages, so great was the demand. Every iron foundry was likewise driven to the limit to turn out engines, boilers, and other machinery with which to give life to the hulls that were growing as if by magic in every shipyard.

If there had not been profit in the business, the captains and other river men who gave orders for these craft would not have given them. By far the greater number of boats were built for individual owners—practical river men who navigated the boats, and who knew just what they were about. Many of the orders were given to replace vessels that had been snagged or burned within the past twenty-four hours—for time was money, and a man could not afford to be without a steamboat many weeks, when twenty weeks or less represented a new boat in net earnings.These men knew from actual experience that if they could keep their craft afloat for two years they could build a new boat from the profits made with her, even if she sank or burned at the end of that time. If she kept afloat for four years, they could buy or build two or three new ones from the profits, even without the aid of insurance. As a matter of fact the boats carrying insurance in those days were the exceptions. It came high, and owners preferred to take their own chances rather than indulge to any great extent in that luxury. How such profits were earned and such results obtained, it will be the object of this chapter to disclose.

In those days every boat made money. A big and fast one made a great deal; those small and slow made little as compared with their larger rivals, but plenty as compared with their own cost. Perhaps most vessel owners began on a small scale. A little boat might cost $5,000. She would run on some tributary of the Great River, and in the absence of any railroads might control all the traffic she was capable of handling, and at her own rates. In the course of two or three years her owner was able to build a bigger and a better boat. By combining with some other river man, the two might build one costing $25,000, and carrying from a hundred and fifty to two hundred tons of freight, and passengers in proportion. With such an equipment there was a fortune in sight at any time between 1849 and 1862, provided always that the boat was not snagged or burned on her first trip.

The doctrine (or science) of averages, is peculiar. In order to get an average of four years for a steamboat's life, it is necessary to keep some of them afloat for nine or ten; while on the other hand you are certain to "kill" a lot of them within a year after they touch water. When the latter happens, the investment is lost and the owner is probably ruined.

For purposes of illustration we will take as a sample one from the best class of money-makers on the upper river, in the flush times of 1857. Minnesota was organized as a territory in 1849, and admitted as a state in 1858. From 1852 to 1857 there were not boats enough to carry the people who were flocking into this newly-opened farmers' and lumbermen's paradise. There were over a hundred and twenty-five different steamboats registered at St. Paul in the latter year. The boats carrying goodcargoes all through the season were the money-makers. Some of the larger ones were unable to get over the sand-bars after the midsummer droughts began. The stern-wheel boat of two hundred to three hundred tons was the one that could handle a good cargo on little water, and represented the highest type of profit-earning craft.

Such a boat would be about 200 feet long, 30 feet beam, and five feet depth of hold. She would have three large iron boilers (steel not having entered largely into boiler construction at that time), and fairly large engines, giving her good speed without an excessive expenditure for fuel. She would cost from $25,000 to $30,000, and accommodate two hundred cabin passengers comfortably, with a hundred second-class people on deck.

With such a boat furnished and ready for business, it is the duty of the captain to go out and hire his crew, and fit her out for a month's work. Such an investment in 1857, on the upper river, would approximate the following figures:

With this wage-list and expense-account before them, the captain and his chief clerk, who may also be a part owner inthe boat, are face to face with the problem of meeting such expenses from passenger and cargo lists, and at the same time providing a sinking fund with which to build another craft within four years. To the uninitiated this would seem a somewhat appalling problem; with these old hands, the question would no doubt resolve itself down to the number of round trips that they would have to make to pay for their boat. The question of years never enters their heads.

In 1857 there were three principal points of departure on the upper river, above St. Louis. At that time St. Louis itself was the great wholesale centre, but it was not so important as an initial point for passengers for the upper Mississippi. The flood of immigration from St. Louis was for many reasons up the Missouri: furs and gold could be found in the mountains; there was a possible slave state in the farming regions below the mountains. The people who settled Minnesota and northern Wisconsin came from the East, and reached the river at three points—Rock Island, Dunleith (or Galena), and Prairie du Chien. Taking the point with which I am most familiar, we will start the new boat from Galena.

At that time Galena was, next to St. Louis, the principal wholesaleentrepôtin the West. It was a poor trip for the boat which I have taken as a model, when she did not get a hundred tons of freight at Galena from the wholesale houses there. The balance was found at Dunleith, the terminus of what is now the Illinois Central Railway (then the Galena & Western Union); at Dubuque, which was also a big wholesale town; and at Prairie du Chien, the terminus of the Milwaukee & Mississippi Railway.

The freight rates on the river ran from 25 cents per hundred for short distances, to $1.50 per hundred from Galena to Stillwater, or St. Paul. No package was taken at less than 25 cents, however small it was, or how short the distance. In order not to overstate, we will take fifty cents per hundred as the average, and three hundred tons of cargo as the capacity of the two hundred-ton boat.[6]This is relatively the capacity of a vessel of that tonnage after deducting for passengers and fuel, and the165166space occupied by deck passengers. This latter item did not seriously count, for the freight was usually taken first and the deck passengers were then piled on top of it. Their comfort or convenience was never taken into consideration.

The boat can carry two hundred cabin passengers, and a hundred on deck. We will assume that there is another boat competing for this trip, and we do not fill up to the capacity. The clerk studies the rate sheets in vogue in 1857, and finds the following:

UP-STREAM RATES

In 1904, the cabin passage on the Diamond Jo Line boats from Dunleith to St. Paul, was $8.00; from Prairie du Chien, $6.75; from La Crosse, $4.75. This is in competition with six railroads practically paralleling the river. In 1857 there was no railroad competition, and practically none from steamboats. Every boat attained a full passenger list, and was at liberty to charge whatever the conscience of the captain dictated—assuming a conscience. I have known a boat to fill up at Dunleith at the rate of $16.00 to St. Paul, and contract that all the men should sleep on the cabin floor, leaving staterooms for the women. And the passengers were glad enough to accept such conditions, for a detention of two days at Dunleith would cost a far greater sum than the overcharge exacted by the steamboat officers.

In the foregoing table I have included La Crosse, which,however, was not an active factor in river rates until 1859. Before then, hundreds of passengers were landed there from Rock Island, Dunleith, and Prairie du Chien; but as the railroad had not yet reached the river at that point, there were but few passengers from La Crosse for landings farther up the river. When our boat leaves Prairie du Chien, then, the following business is in sight:

A boat leaving Galena on Friday evening usually arrived at St. Paul in time to have her cargo all ashore and ready to start on the return trip sometime on Tuesday—usually about noon. At that time we shall find the chief clerk studying the downstream rate sheets. These differ somewhat from the upstream and are like this, a few principal points being taken to illustrate:

DOWN-STREAM RATES

Downstream rates are somewhat less than the upstream, because, for one reason, it costs less to get a boat downstream. There is a four-mile current pushing the boat along, in addition to the applied power. Going upstream the boat had had this current to overcome before she gained an inch. A four-mile current is one-third of an average steamboat's progress. Again,the passengers do not get a chance to eat as much, and very often they were not served as well, on the down trip. Then, there were fewer people who wished to go down river, with the result that there were many boats bidding for the patronage of those who did make the trip. All these elements, with possibly others, entered into the cutting of the rates by about one-third on the down trip.

The only item besides passengers to be depended upon on the return trip, was wheat. There may have been some potatoes or barley, or, if fortune favored, some tons of furs and buffalo robes from the "Red River train", or some flour from the one mill at St. Anthony (now Minneapolis), or perhaps woodenware from the same point. There was always a more or less assorted cargo, but the mainstay was wheat. We will assume, in order to simplify this illustration, that there was nothing but wheat in sight at the time. There was no question about getting it. Every boat got all the wheat it could carry, and the shippers begged, almost on bended knees, for a chance to ship five hundred sacks, or a hundred, or fifty—any amount would be considered a great favor. Wheat was shipped at that time in two-bushel sacks, each weighing a hundred and twenty pounds. Three hundred tons, dead weight, is a pretty good cargo for a two-hundred ton boat. Wheat is dead weight, and a boat goes down into the water fast, when that is the sole cargo. We get five thousand sacks, all of which is unloaded at Prairie du Chien. The down trip foots up somewhat like this:

Arriving in Galena Friday morning, the clerk figures up his receipts with the following result:

The boat makes four trips during the month, leaving out the extra two or three days, which may have been spent on some sand-bar.At the end of the month the clerk again does some figuring, with this result:

A stern-wheel, light-draught boat such as we have taken for this illustration, was quite certain to get five months' service—between the middle of April and the middle of October. In order not to put too great tension upon the credulity of modern readers, we will assume that she gets only five months of navigation. At the close of the season the captain and his clerk figure up the receipts and expenses, and strike a balance like this:

This is enough to buy a new boat, and have something over for pin money. No one knows better than the writer the elusiveness, not to say the mendacity, of figures. He has often figured out greater profits than this in the nebulous schemes which have from time to time seduced him from the straight and narrow path of six per cent investment—and had them come out the other way. In steamboating in the fifties, this occurred very often. The most careful captain, employing the highest-priced pilots and engineers, would often lose his boat the first season; a snag or a lighted match, or a little too much steam, dissipating the best-laid plans in a few minutes of time. But the figures given above are conservative—made so purposely. The truth lies at the opposite extreme.

If the books of some of the boats of the old Minnesota Packet Company could be resurrected, they would show earnings and profits far greater than I have ventured to claim in my illustration. The "Fanny Harris", for instance, was a boat of 279 tons. Her wage-list and expense-account have been taken as a basis of the illustration above given, partly from recollection, and partly from figures which I made when I was second clerk, and which I have had before me in writing this chapter. We usedto tow one barge all the time—most of the time two barges, and both boat and barges loaded to the water line, both ways, nearly every trip.

Of course we sometimes missed it. We landed ten thousand sacks of wheat at Prairie du Chien on one trip. Instead of a hundred and fifty cabin passengers, she often carried three hundred, "sleeping them" on the cabin floor three deep—at stateroom rates; and under such conditions the fortunate winners of such a chance to get into the promised land have risen up and called the whole outfit blessed, when in fact it was the other thing. I have heard of other boats claiming that they had to tow an extra barge to carry the money which they took in on the trip. I have always thought that these men were slightly overstating the case—but maybe not.

An item in one of the St. Paul papers of the time, states that the "Excelsior" arrived from St. Louis November 20, 1852, with two hundred and fifty cabin passengers, one hundred and fifty deck passengers, and three hundred tons of freight. For which freight she received "one dollar per hundred for any distance"; and the net profits of the up trip on freight alone were over $8,000. For two hundred and fifty cabin passengers she would receive $16 each, or $4,000; for the deck passengers, $8 each, or $1,200. These sums added to the $8,000 received for freight, would aggregate $13,200. The "Excelsior" cost not to exceed $20,000—probably not over $16,000. Two trips like this would build a better boat. As this was the last trip of the season, she probably did not get such another. Under that freight rate—"one dollar per hundred for any distance"—a shipment of a hundred pounds from Prescott to Point Douglass, one mile, would cost the shipper a dollar. There were possibilities in such conditions.

Another item, also from a St. Paul paper, states that the "Lady Franklin" arrived May 8, 1855, from Galena, with five hundred passengers. She would accommodate a hundred and fifty cabin people, ordinarily. Figure this trip down to the probabilities, and the net result would be about as follows:

Or, reversing it:

The "Lady Franklin" cost about $20,000. Two months' work at this rate would buy a new and better boat. If I remember aright, the "Lady Franklin" was sunk in 1856 or 1857, but not until she had earned money enough to buy two new boats, each costing twice as much as she did. At the time she carried five hundred passengers she undoubtedly carried a full cargo of freight, worth at least two thousand dollars more to the boat.

An item in a St. Louis paper of that date, announces the departure of the side-wheel steamer "Tishomingo" (Jenks, master), for St. Paul on April 14, 1857, with 465 cabin passengers, 93 deck passengers and 400 tons of assorted freight. This trip would figure somewhat like this:

These rates are estimated at a very low figure. The regular cabin rate at that time, St. Louis to St. Paul, was, for cabin, $24; deck, $12; freight, $1.50 per hundredweight. It is not necessary to amplify at all. The "Tishomingo" had been bought in the spring of 1857, within a month, for $25,000. She paid one-half her purchase price on her first trip that season.

I would not have it understood that all boats made these phenomenal earnings; but many boats did, and all those of the Minnesota Packet Company were in this favored class. There were several conditions precedent, which made these results possible with the boats of this line. It controlled, absolutely, the freighting from the Galena and Dubuque jobbing houses; it controlled, absolutely, the freight business of the Dunleith and Prairie du Chien railroads, and practically all the passenger business of the two roads, as steamboat tickets were sold on the train, good only on the boats of the Minnesota Packet Company. Theseconditions insured a full cargo for every boat, and a full passenger list every trip. Outside boats did not have such a "cinch", but each had a source of revenue of its own, equally satisfactory. Even the "wild" boats had no difficulty in getting cargoes, and every vessel in that busy era had all the business it could handle.

The term "Company" was something of a misnomer. It was not at first a stock company, in the modern sense of the word. Each boat was owned by its captain, or a number of persons acting individually. In organizing the company, instead of capitalizing it with a certain amount of stock, the controlling parties simply put in their steamboats and pooled their earnings. Each boat had an equal chance with all the others for a cargo; and when the dividends were declared each one shared according to the earnings of his boat. A big boat could earn more than a smaller or slower one, and such a boat got a larger percentage than the latter. The particular advantage, in fact the only advantage, in pooling lay in securing a monopoly of the railroad and jobbing business. In order to do this it was necessary to have boats enough to handle the business at all times, and to have a general manager who would place the craft so as to give the most effective service.

One of the beauties of the pooling system was, that if a captain or owner became dissatisfied and desired to pull out, he could take his boat and the share of profits due him, and leave at any time. A few years later the company was reorganized as a joint stock company. After that, if one wished to get out he was lucky if he could get clear with the clothes on his back. The financiers who controlled fifty-one per cent of the stock retained all the steamboats and all the profits.

Facsimiles of Early Tickets and Business Card.

Chapter XXIIWild-cat Money and Town-sites

Both of these specimens of natural history were bred, nurtured, and let loose in countless numbers to prey upon the people in the early days that witnessed the opening of the Northwestern territories to settlement. The wild-cat dollars waxed fat upon the blood and brawn of the settlers who had already arrived; wild-cat town-sites found ready victims in the thousands of Eastern people who desired to better their fortunes, and who lent ready ears to the golden tales of unscrupulous promoters, that told of wonderful cities in the West, whose only reality was that blazoned in the prospectuses scattered broadcast through the East.

The younger generation, whose only acquaintance with the circulating symbols of wealth that we call "money", is confined to the decades since the close of the War of Secession, can have no idea of the laxity of banking laws of the fifties, in the Northwestern states and territories, nor of the instability of the so-called "money" that comprised nine-tenths of the medium of exchange then in use in the West. Nowadays, a bank bill stands for its face value in gold, if it be a National Bank issue. If a state bank—and bills of this sort are comparatively few in these days—they are also guaranteed, in a measure, by the laws of the state in which the bank is situated. In the days of which I am writing, and especially in the unsettled and troublesome times just before the war (from 1856 to 1862), the money that was handled on the river in the prosecution of business, except of course the small proportion of gold that was still in circulation, had little or no backing, either by federal or state enactments.

A man went into an embryo city, consisting in that day of two or three thousand town lots, and from fifty to a hundred inhabitants, with an iron box costing twenty-five dollars. In thisbox he had ten, twenty, or thirty thousand "dollars" in new bank bills purporting to have been issued from two, three, or four banks doing business in other equally large, populous, and growing cities, situated elsewhere in Wisconsin, or preferably in Illinois, Indiana, or Michigan. How did he become possessed of all this wealth? Was it the savings of years? The iron box was, perhaps; perhaps he got trusted for that. The money was not usually the savings of any time at all; it was simply printed to order.

Five or six persons desirous of benefitting their fellow men by assisting them in opening their farms and "moving their crops", would get together in Chicago, Cincinnati, or St. Louis, wherever there was an establishment capable of engraving and printing bank bills—and not very elegant or artistic printing was required, or desired. These men propose to start as many banks, in as many "cities" in the West. They have money enough, each of them, to buy a safe, an iron box into which any carpenter could bore with an ordinary brace and bit, and enough over to pay for the printing of twenty thousand dollars' worth of bills in denominations of one, two, five and ten dollars. The printing finished, each man would sign his own bills as president, and one of the others would add the final touch of authenticity by signing a fictitious name to the same bills as cashier. Then it was "money".

But it would have been overloading the credulity of even the most gullible denizens of his adopted city to ask them to accept his own bills as legal tender; so a swap was made all around, and when the requisite amount of shuffling was completed, each man had his twenty thousand dollars in bills on four or five banks, but none of his own issue. There was a double incentive in this transaction: first, it inspired the utmost confidence in the minds of the men who were to borrow this money. How could this banker who had come among them for their good, have acquired this money by any other than legitimate transactions? If it were bills on his own bank that he proposed to put into circulation, there might be some question as to their guaranty; but he could not get this money by merely going to the printing office and ordering it, as he might in case of bills on his own institution. It certainly must be good money. Secondly, by distributing his bills in as many different localities as possible, the chances of its never being presented for redemption were greatly multiplied; it mightbe burned, or lost overboard, or worn out, in which case he would be just so much ahead, and no questions asked.

The foregoing may be a somewhat fanciful statement of the way in which the bankers proceeded, but in essence it is a true picture. They may not have all met in Chicago, or anywhere else, to perfect these arrangements, but the arrangements were all perfected practically as stated: "You put my bills into circulation, and I will put out yours; and in each case the exchange will greatly assist each and all of us in hoodwinking our victims into the belief that it is money, and not merely printed paper which we are offering them".

Equipped with these goods, and with a charter from the state in which he proposed to operate—a charter granted for the asking, and no questions raised—the banker transports himself and his box of money to his chosen field of operations. The newspaper which has already been located in the new city heralds the coming of Mr. Rothschild, our new banker, more or less definitely hinting at the great wealth lying behind the coming financier. A bank building is rented, a sign hung out, and he begins to loan his money at five per cent per month on the partially-improved farms of his neighbors, or the house and lot of his "city" friends. He is a liberal man, and if it is not convenient for you to pay the interest as it accrues, he will let it stand—but he does not forget to compound it every month. The result is inevitable. The debt mounts up with a rapidity that paralyzes the borrower, and in the end a foreclosure adds farm and improvements to the growing assets of the banker. Within a very few years he is the owner of eight or ten of the best farms in the county, and perhaps half a dozen houses and lots in the village, and all with the investment of less than a hundred dollars invested in printing, and an iron box, and without the expenditure of an ounce of energy or a legitimate day's work. And the victims break up and start anew for the still farther West, to take new farms, to be engulfed in the maws of other sharks. One may not greatly pity the men themselves, for men are born to work and suffer; but the women! God pity them. Worn, tired, broken-hearted, they must leave that which is dearest to them in all the world, their homes, and fare forth again into the wilderness, to toil and suffer, and at last, blessed release, to die.

177178And the bankers? They were counted honest. If by any chance one of their bills came to hand and was presented for payment at the home counter, it was promptly redeemed, sometimes in gold or silver, but oftener with another bill on some other bank belonging to the syndicate. I personally knew some of these bankers. Some of them were freebooters without conscience and without shame. Under color of law, they robbed the settlers of their lands and improvements, and defied public opinion. Others put on a cloak of righteousness; they were leaders in the love-feasts and pillars in the church; and they also had their neighbors' lands and improvements. Their descendants are rich and respected to-day in the communities where their fathers plied their iniquitous trade; and these rule where their fathers robbed.

As a clerk on the river, I had some experience in handling the wild-cat money. At Dunleith, before starting on the up-river trip, we were handed by the secretary of the company, aThompson's Bank Note Detector, and with it a list of the bills that we might accept in payment for freight or passage. We were also given a list of those that we might not accept at all; and still another list upon which we might speculate, at values running from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent of their face denominations. Thus equipped we started upstream, and the trouble started with us. At McGregor we put off a lot of freight, and were tendered money. We consulted our lists and cast into outer darkness that which had upon it the anathema of Mr. Jones, the secretary. We accepted all on the list of the elect, and compromised upon enough more to balance our freight account. The agent at McGregor had a list of his own which partly coincided with ours but in general disagreed. In the meantime another boat of our line had arrived from up river, and we get from her clerk fifteen or twenty lists of bills which would be taken or rejected at as many landings above. This helps somewhat, as we see our way clear to get rid of some of our twenty-five per cent stuff at par in exchange for cord wood or stores on the upper river, and we sort our stock out into packages which are reported current at each landing. We also see an opportunity to swap at Dunleith some bills which are not current there at all, but which are taken at par at Prescott or Stillwater, for other bills which they do not want but which will be taken at the company's office at Dunleith in settlement of our trip.

It required a long head to figure it out. Mine was long enough, but unfortunately it had the same dimensions both ways, and was not to be depended upon in these finer transactions. Mr. Hargus labored with the problem, studying lists until he came nigh to the point of insanity, with the result that when we "cashed in" on our return it was usually found that we had from five hundred to a thousand dollars that was not acceptable. This we kept, and the boat was debited with the amount on the company's books. On the next trip we would usually be able to work off some of this stuff. At the end of one season I recollect that we had some two thousand dollars, face estimate, of this paper on hand, which the treasurer would not accept, for the banks on which the bills were drawn had gone out of existence.

The town-site industry was on the same plane of deception and robbery as the banking frauds, but it found its victims "back East", instead of close at hand. Being Easterners, who had been educated to suppose that integrity and honesty were the basis of all business confidence, and themselves practiced these old-fashioned virtues, they all too readily accepted the assurances of the land-sharks, and invested their money without seeing the property which was so glowingly described in the prospectuses sent out by the Western promoters. The result was, that they were "taken in and done for" by the hundreds of town-site sharks who were operating all along the river, between Dunleith and St. Paul. I shall refer to but one of which I had personal knowledge, and to another described to me by Captain Russell Blakeley.

The city of Nininger, as delineated on the large and beautifully-engraved and printed maps issued by Ingenuous Doemly, was a well-built metropolis capable of containing ten thousand people. As delineated, it had a magnificent court house, this city being the county seat of Dakota County, Minnesota. Four or five church spires sprang a hundred feet each into the atmosphere. It had stores and warehouses, crowded with merchandise, and scores of drays and draymen were working with feverish energy to keep the levee clear of the freight being landed from half a dozen well-known steamboats belonging to the Minnesota Packet Company or the St. Louis & St. Paul Packet Company. An imposing brick structure with cut stone trimmings, four stories high, housed the plant of the NiningerDaily Bugle.

This last-mentioned feature of the prospectus was the only one that had the remotest semblance of foundation in fact. There certainly was aDaily Bugle, issued once a week, or once in two or three weeks, depending upon the energy of the printer and his "devil", who jointly set the type, and the assiduity of the editors who furnished them with copy. This paper was printed upon the first power press that ever threw off a printed sheet in the Territory of Minnesota. It was a good press, and the paper printed upon it was a monument to the shrewdness and ingenuity of the honorable proprietor of the Nininger town-site. The sheet was filled with a wealth of local advertising—drygoods, groceries, hardware, millinery, shoe stores, blacksmith shops—every class of business found in a large and prosperous city, was represented in those columns. But every name and every business was fictitious, coined in the fertile brain of this chief of all promoters. It was enough to deceive the very elect—and it did. When the Eastern man read that there were six or eight lots, lying just west of Smith & Jones's drygoods store, on West Prairie Street, that could be had at a thousand dollars per lot if taken quickly, and that they were well worth twice that money on account of the advantageous situation, they were snapped up as a toad snaps flies on a summer day.

The paper was filled with local reading matter, describing the rush at the opening of the latest emporium; that Brown had gone East to purchase his spring stock; that Mrs. Newbody entertained at her beautiful new residence on Park Avenue, and gave the names of fifty of her guests. The whole thing was the plan of a Napoleonic mind, being carried out to the minutest detail with painstaking care by a staff of able workers, with the result that the whole prairie for two miles back from the river was sold out at the rate of ten thousand dollars an acre or upwards, and that before the proprietor had himself perfected his legal rights to the land which he was thus retailing.

Henry Lindergreen, the printer who did the mechanical work on the Nininger paper, was a chum of mine, we having set type in the same "alley" elsewhere, and that winter I went up to Nininger to help him out. The four-story brick block of the wood-cuts shrunk into a little frame building, the sides of which were made of inch boards set up on end and battenedon the outside. Inside, it was further reinforced with tarred paper; and while I was there a pail of water ten feet from a red-hot stove, froze solid in a night, and the three printers had all they could do to feed the fire fast enough to keep themselves from freezing also, with the mercury down to forty degrees below zero. The editor who, in the absence of the promoter himself, in the East disposing of lots, was hired to improvise facts for the columns of this veracious sheet, lived in St. Paul, and sent his copy down to Hastings, as there was no postoffice at Nininger. If the editor or the proprietor had been found at Nininger in the following spring when the dupes began to appear, one or two of the jack oaks with which the city lots were plentifully clothed, would have borne a larger fruit than acorns. Even the printer who set the type, was forced to flee for his life.

One of the boldest-faced swindles I ever heard of, was the so-called Rolling Stone colony. In the spring of 1852, some three or four hundred people, chiefly from New York city, came to seek their purchased lands in Rolling Stone. They brought with them beautiful maps and bird's-eye views of the place, showing a large greenhouse, lecture hall, and library. Each colonist was to have a house lot in town and a farm in the neighboring country. The colony had been formed by one William Haddock, and none of the members had the faintest shadow of experience in farming. Boarding steamers at Galena, they expected to be put off at the Rolling Stone levee, for the views represented large houses, a hotel, a big warehouse, and a fine dock. But the steamboat officers had never heard of such a place. Careful questioning, however, seemed to locate the site three miles above Wabasha Prairie, on land then belonging to the Sioux Indians. As they insisted on landing, they were put off at the log cabin of one John Johnson, the only white man within ten miles. They made sod houses for themselves, or dug shelter burrows in the river banks; sickness came; many died during the summer and autumn; and when winter set in the place was abandoned. The people suffered severely, and the story of Rolling Stone makes a sad chapter in the early history of Minnesota.

While the craze was on, some made fortunes, while thousands of trusting men and women lost the savings of years. After the fever of speculation had burned itself out, the actual buildersof the commonwealth came in and subdued the land. Nininger and Rolling Stone are still on the map, and that is about all there is of them—a name. La Crosse, Winona, St. Paul and Minneapolis have superseded them, and the population, wealth, and commerce of these are greater in reality than were the airy figments of the brain which they have supplanted.

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