Image not available: PERSPECTIVE VIEW LOOKING SOUTH, SHOWING END OF WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.PERSPECTIVE VIEW LOOKING SOUTH, SHOWING END OF WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.
impossible to raise enough coin to buy a postage stamp. Yet contract labor is a transaction of exactly the same nature, and it is increasing at a rate that may be estimated from the known ability and willingness of large employers to have work done as cheaply as possible, regardless of the consequences to every one but themselves.
When, however, statesmen or politicians, or demagogues or well-meaning labor agitators or leaders, insist that skilled labor should be kept out of the country, it is to the interest of the community to firmly, persistently and indignantly oppose any such proposition. Lack of skilled labor is the curse of the country. Because a man is employed on work which requires skill and experience is no sign that he is fully competent to do it. The tramps who bind the farmer’s wheat, the cast-aways and chance laborers who build some houses in the West, the riff-raff who are gathered together occasionally to work a mine, or sail a ship, or do the work of a plantation or a farm for a short season, are the most costly labor that could be employed, and a great deal of work supposed to be done by experts in the United States is almost as expensive. So long as we don’t allow young men to learn trades—and that seems to be the rule at present—we must have men who have learned trades somewhere else. Plenty of Americans can be found in New York city at half an hour’s notice whocomplain with real patriotic feeling that, while they would like all their own employés to be Americans, they cannot find a large number or even a respectable majority of natives who are sufficiently skilled to do the work for which they are called upon. The consumption of pianofortes, for instance, in the United States, is twenty times as great, according to statistics of trade, as in any other country of equal population in the world. But in going through a piano factory one might very quickly imagine himself in a foreign country. It is not that the manufacturers are all foreigners, for they are not, or that they prefer foreign labor, or that foreign piano-makers work cheaper than those of native birth, but simply because we have scarcely any of native birth, although this variety of manufacturing industry has been active in this country for nearly two generations.
In many other of the mechanical arts the same lack of native skilled labor is manifested. The wall-paper printers, the engravers, the better class of weavers, and several other mechanical arts, which require the services of draughtsmen and colorists, are almost all obliged to depend upon men of foreign birth for their work. It is pleasing to realize that most of these foreign workmen are now naturalized American citizens and probably quite as loyal to the Union and the Constitution as any of our native-born operatives,but the probabilities are, that as they grow old or disabled, and have to be replaced, the new men must come from the same sources as the old. Between Americans not being allowed to learn trades, and Americans not being willing to learn trades, we are pretty badly off for mechanical labor unless we can depend upon foreign countries.
We need not blame foreigners for this; we have only our own selves to blame and our own people. The reason for the general dependence upon foreign labor, beside the inability of young men who wish to learn a trade to be allowed to follow their inclinations, is that the most of our own people are rapidly getting above anything and everything that does not afford an opportunity for speculation. Beside, it is one of the inevitable results of the theory of social equality, a theory which must do a great deal more harm than it yet has done before we abandon it, that, as the wealth and prosperity of the country increases, and new opportunities of making money multiply, the sons of farmers and mechanics will be reluctant to follow the occupations of their fathers. We have heard a great deal about the unwillingness of the Hebrews to indulge in any mechanical or routine labor, and their avidity to enter all branches of trade where barter and sale are the principal occupations, but the modern American can double discountthe Hebrew in this particular and then get ahead of him about as often as not.
There is no sign that the native-born American youth will revert to the good old custom of his fathers, and endeavor to learn a trade, even if he were able to do it. It is unfashionable to work with one’s hands in a country where most of the money is made by working with one’s wits. The mechanic’s son, and the farmer’s son, and the day laborer’s son gets as good a common-school education as the children of the richest men in the town, and has equal opportunities for going into mercantile business, or for entering the offices of business houses and corporations, and his own father will tell him that he is a fool unless he embraces these opportunities. No man gets rich by farming alone, or by laboring at day’s wages at any mechanical occupation, whereas some men in trade and speculation amass great fortunes. That forty-nine out of every fifty finally fail and never get upon their feet again does not occur either to the youth or to his parents. Let us hope that some day it will, and that our young men will not be ashamed to earn their bread literally by the sweat of their brow. But the prospect at present for any such change seems exceedingly remote. Indeed, until the change occurs we will need all the skilled labor we can get from abroad. Unless the supply increases we will either have to giveup some of our country’s business schemes and prospects, or we will be obliged to offer a bounty or a premium to foreign laborers to come over here.
We especially need foreign farmers and workmen for the instruction of our own farmers, and a large immigration of foreign agriculturists, if they could be sprinkled among our agricultural communities in the various States, would do more than any proposed legislation to improve the condition of the American farmer. In his efforts to get beyond his strength and resources, efforts which are natural in all new countries, our farmer wastes enough to support another farmer. The Englishman, or Frenchman, or German, or Swede, can teach him how not to do this. There are a great many unprofitable farms near the city of New York, but when you see a small piece of ground tilled to the full extent of its capacity, and sending in large loads of fat vegetables to the city every day, you may safely bet that the proprietor is a foreigner. In one neighborhood very near New York city, a lot of discontented farmers are envious of the prosperity of one fellow who is tilling only thirteen acres, yet who has saved enough money to buy three houses in the city of New York, each of which yields him a handsome income. And who is this lucky fellow? A highly educated German, or a scientific English farmer? No; he isa wretched Laplander, a man who is obliged to be ashamed of the province which gave him birth, and who poses among acquaintances as a Swede. He was a common farm laborer in his own country, and came here with very little more money than would pay his board at a den near the Battery for two or three days until some one should employ him. But he had learned how to turn every scrap of soil to the best advantage, how to make the most of all fertilizers, and how to get the largest number of crops out of a given amount of soil in a given time. During the agricultural depression of Great Britain a few years ago, which followed several successive wet years, a number of English farmers sold out at a sacrifice, came over here and located wherever best they could, and it is astonishing to see how fast some of these men have got along, and how well fixed they now are, as the saying is. They didn’t seem to be very smart fellows. In a horse-trade, or a shooting-match, or a political squabble, the best of them cannot hold his own for five minutes with an ordinary American. But when it comes to farming so as to make every resource of the estate count for all that it is worth, they leave the American farmer far behind.
Nevertheless, we need to restrict and regulate more systematically, and with more rigor than we ever did it before. Of course we have theright to refuse absolutely undesirable immigrants. No one can deny this with any show of reason, and if we would fight to maintain this principle no nation could blame us. But we also have the right to deny citizenship to workmen coming from any portion of the world, until we are satisfied that they intend to become citizens, and that they will be desirable acquisitions. We are quite competent to keep up our own supply of idiots, and paupers and criminals. No nation has a monopoly of that sort of thing, and we do quite as well in that way as could be expected of us, and far better than suits our tax-payers. For the freedom of mind and body, and the prospects of founding homes for all of his posterity, an honest man should be willing to remain in this country a long time before claiming full rights of citizenship. There never were any complaints under the old rule, which required a very long term of probation, and there would be none under the new. Property rights of aliens are respected quite as much as those of natives, and there is no other right in which our laws distinguish between the native and the foreigner. A chance tourist arriving here and getting into legal difficulty of any kind has quite as good a chance of obtaining justice as the richest man in the nation. This is not an American idea, for foreigners themselves have said the same. Intelligent foreigners, makers of opinion on the other side of the water,have marvelled again and again in speech and in print at the carelessness with which America admitted all classes of foreign-born persons to the rights of citizenship, and have declared that were citizenship rights to be delayed until the second generation came of adult age, there would be nothing in the law or customs of the country which would give a foreign-born resident any reason for complaint.
Unless we restrict immigration there is nothing to prevent any foreign nation, desiring to pick a quarrel with us so as to steal some of our property, or have some of her own troublesome inhabitants disposed of by bullet wounds, or “to weld the people together” when they are pulling every which way, from sending a few carefully selected men here for the express purpose of fitting out a pretended dynamite expedition or something of the kind, for which the United States would be called to account. But that is only part of what they can do. At the present day every German and Frenchman under middle age has received a military training. There is nothing to prevent a few thousand picked soldiers, with their officers, being sent here in small parties in the guise of ordinary immigrants, to rally and rise at a given signal, seize some of our cities, forts and navy-yards, overcome our make-believe army and establish a reign of terror, from which we could not release ourselves speedily without ransom.They could find arms and munitions of war without the slightest trouble, for such things are on sale to every purchaser in every village in the land, and when desired in large quantities they can be purchased from any of our large manufacturers without the purchaser first undergoing the formality of answering unpleasant questions. As for commissariat, they could live on the land. There is no portion of it from which a body of armed men could not obtain all they need in the way of food and clothing. There would be no difference between such a movement and the insurrections by which almost all of the older nations have suffered from time to time—insurrections some of which have been dignified by success to the rank of revolutions. The mobs which started the French revolution had a large army to oppose them, and they had little opportunity for arming and organizing themselves, nevertheless they succeeded in overturning one of the oldest monarchies in the world, and apparently one of the strongest.
Among the classes whom we must most resolutely exclude from this country are those which, in good earnest and with justifiable sense of wrong, but nevertheless with utter disregard of the land of their adoption, organize disturbances to be carried on in the lands from which they come. Russian nihilists, disaffected Canadians, Irish dynamiters, French socialists and anarchists,and all the other broods of disturbers of the peace of foreign lands are out of place in the United States. Many of them have abundant cause for the hatred which they manifest toward the governments from which they have escaped. Most of them have the sympathy of the people of the United States, to the extent of wishing that desirable reforms might be accomplished in lands where any classes are wrongly treated or find themselves at disadvantage in comparison with other classes more favored. But this country cannot afford to be a hot-bed of discontent from which the germs may be sent abroad. When the time for accounting comes, the bill will not be sent to the disturbers, but to the nation which harbored them. We have been dangerously near war with Great Britain two or three times on account of the operations of the large class generally known as Irish sympathizers. There is probably no class of foreign-born residents of the United States who have more reason in law and morals for the feeling which they manifest than these same Irish sympathizers. But when they come here as citizens the safety of this country, which we have the right to regard as an interest paramount to that of any other which may exist in the hearts of our people, must rank first. If this class or any other class of disturbers of the peace of foreign countries persist in their agitation on thisside of the water, it is the duty of the nation to expel them. Where they may go is an important question to them, but it is not one with which we can afford to concern ourselves. Perhaps there may be individuals among us who would take personal friends into their families with the understanding that they came there for the sole purpose of making trouble with their families; but nations have none of that sort of disinterested philanthropy. The few that have tried it cannot be found to-day on the maps of any well-edited atlas.
The United States has nothing to fear from honest, well-meaning immigrants, no matter how stupid they are. Transplanting does wonders for wild-wood trees and shrubs that amount to nothing in their native wastes, and the improvement which some unpromising foreign stock has often made in this country recalls the traditional remark of the Bad Habit to the Small Boy: “Look at me now and the day you got me.” Some of the most exquisite gentlemen and able men of our land descended from clodhoppers of no one nationality, who came to this country only a generation or two ago. Some of the wisest and grandest spirits of our revolutionary periods were descendants of articled servants who came away not many years before. But, pshaw! Which of us who has not pure Indian blood in his veins did not descend from immigrants who a littlewhile ago were so badly off in the old country that they had to move to get enough to eat and wear? Some self-appointed aristocrats may except to this general classification, but either they lie or they don’t know why their ancestors came here. No foreigner who is living comfortably at home, and who has nothing to be ashamed of, is going to a new country unless he has some unrest in him which will make him a nuisance if he remains at home. Of course political annoyances have been influential in sending us many immigrants, but very few from the classes who have any possible excuse for thinking themselves better than other men. The development of fine natures from very rude stock in the United States has been so marvellous in some of its instances as to deserve a large book specially devoted to the subject. A little while ago it was discovered that a famous judge, whose opinions and rulings are held in respect in courts of every State of this Union, was the son of a pauper immigrant. A gentleman who was very favorably mentioned a few years ago as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States said himself that his father, who was an immigrant, was so poor that the son went to school without breakfast for five successive years, and acquaintances of this estimable and highly cultivated gentleman, who stood at the very head of one of the most learned professions, said that the father was unable to read orwrite at the time of his death. The population of the State of California started with men of all classes from all parts of the world. Probably more adventurers and worthless men took part in the rush for gold than can be found in all the state-prisons of the United States at the present day. Yet the descendants of some of these very objectionable characters are to-day men of prominence and character. The natives of that State attributed this wonderful change to the “glorious climate of California.” But it is not necessary to make any such explanation. Cases of the same kind, though not perhaps in so large proportion, can be found in all the States of the Union. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. Whatever may happen to the original immigrant, his posterity has as fair a chance as that of any native. His children go to the same schools, the same churches, they mingle freely with all persons of their own age, have the same interests, same impulses, aspirations, and opportunities.
There is another great promise to this country also through its immigrant population, which may not be announced as a fact, but which certainly has a great deal of probability in it. Mr. Darwin, who in tracing the descent of species seemed to interest himself in the descent of everything else, explained once the method by which forests suddenly appear upon some tractsof land which apparently had been long destitute of any of the larger varieties of vegetation. He found upon examination of one such tract that while the arboreal shoots which had first come into view that year were small, they nevertheless had enormous roots. Ploughing and cultivation had kept the soil above these roots broken for a great many years, or cattle in grazing over the ground had kept everything nipped short. Nevertheless the roots or germs were there, and through the very process of repression seemed to accumulate a strength which they put forth, when they were allowed to do so, as if they were making up for lost time, which was exactly the deduction which Mr. Darwin made in longer and more scholarly form. It is known to breeders that the strain of families of various species is frequently improved by infusion of the blood of an animal of the sort commonly known as a “runt;” that is, one which has been stunted in its growth. The average immigrant is a man who has been repressed for generations and perhaps for centuries. When his opportunity for development comes he really seems to have the capacity to make up for lost time. There is no other way of explaining the wonderful improvement in many thousands of American families of foreign extraction. There have been some amusing results of efforts of men, suddenly become prominent and deservedly so, in tracing their ancestry.They learned what Burns once expressed about himself after he had made similar investigations:
“Through scoundrels’ bloodMy race has crept, e’er since the flood.”
“Through scoundrels’ bloodMy race has crept, e’er since the flood.”
“Through scoundrels’ bloodMy race has crept, e’er since the flood.”
The wonderful virility and prosperity of the Hebrew in this country, as well as in those European countries where he has been allowed a chance beside his fellow-men, cannot be explained except upon this theory of accumulated strength during long periods of repression.
Americans can stand all this sort of thing that Europe can bless us with. According to statisticians it costs two or three thousand dollars to bring a child from the cradle up to adult age and working power. Consequently every able-bodied foreigner we get who is willing to work is worth two or three thousand dollars to our nation and is so much capital in our pockets. Let us have all we can of them. The men who complain of them are those who are not capable of taking care of themselves.
THIS country has many important duties to fulfil in the family of nations, but annexation of other lands is not one of them.
The contrary opinion is sometimes expressed, but the sooner we sit down upon it the less likely we are to neglect our own business.
Annexation is an old business, and sometimes it has been profitable; but the nations who best understood it have but few of their old possessions left, and they would get rid of some of these, if they could without being laughed at.
What nations could we stand any fair chance of annexing? Perhaps Mexico, Canada and some of the West India Islands. What could be done with them? Nothing that, in the long run, would benefit us. What would they do with us? They would merely introduce discordant elements that would not help us a particle in making our own national position secure. Our country is so large already that there are jarring interests making themselves felt and known in Congress, in the press, in public opinion, and
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with all the efforts that have been made they are approaching solution at so slow a rate that a number of the advocates of one side or the other are discouraged and indignant. There are a great many brilliant theories of what might be done by the annexation of this or that country by the United States. But an ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory, and fortunately we have enough facts to keep us for a long time in examination if we will take the pains.
The ancient nation called Rome was the champion annexer of the world. She annexed every territory that it was possible for her soldiers to reach, and at one time the entire world owed allegiance to Rome. It was practical allegiance, too, because we read in the Gospel according to St. Matthew that in the days of Augustus Cæsar there went out a decree that all the world should be taxed. To collect taxes from annexed countries is more than some modern nations have ever been able to do. The military and political prestige of Rome was afterward strengthened by religion. Rome ruled the souls as well as the bodies and estates of men, but even the Holy Roman empire went to pieces.
Greece did a great deal of annexing in the days of Alexander, who penetrated farther into the civilizations of the East than the legions of the Cæsars ever did, but Greece to-day is a mere spot upon the map.
But it is not necessary to go so far back. The great colonizing and annexing schemes of the world, when nation after nation became numerous and free enough to compete with each other, began soon after the discovery of America. Nearly every European power planted colonies in some portions of the new world. Most of these powers exist and are strong to-day. But where are their colonies? England has Canada to be sure, simply because she does not know how to get rid of it. But Spain has not a foot of ground upon the mainland of America, and holds her island possessions by very uncertain tenure. Look at Cuba, “the ever-faithful island,” as she is called, with the greatest extremity of sarcasm. The majority of the inhabitants detest the mother country and all the officials she sends out there, her taxes are paid grudgingly, again and again a large minority of the inhabitants have struggled to free themselves from the Spanish yoke, and the struggle will probably continue in view of the illustrious examples set by Mexico and all the South American republics. Perhaps you will say that Spain is a bankrupt old brute. Well, that is not overstating the matter at all. But look from Spain to Holland. The Dutch have not been cruel taskmasters. They have planted a number of colonies, and their paternal government, if characterized by thrift, has also been unstained by any of the cruelties and brutalitieswhich have made the name of Spain a synonym for savagery. How many of Holland’s colonies remain in the possession of the mother country? None of any consequence except the island of Java, and Java is no longer a treasury for Holland.
France at one time had large colonial possessions. She owned nearly one-half of the territory now embraced by the boundaries of the United States and all of Canada beside. France has now a few insignificant islands and some undesirable swamp-land in Africa, which is valuable chiefly as a place to send military officers who are so ambitious at home as to be somewhat troublesome. Sweden has no colonies at all. Denmark has two or three little islands near the Equator, and has an elephant on her hands in the shape of Iceland.
But, you say that England is an exception to all these relations. Well; is she? Do facts and figures justify the assertion? The most peaceable portion of the British empire at the present time is the Dominion of Canada. Canada gives England absolutely no trouble on her own part. Australia is about as good. But of what use is either country to England except as a resort for dissatisfied Englishmen who wish to begin life anew somewhere else?—an opportunity which they could have equally well if England didn’t own a particle of soil outside the British islands.
But England has a large empire in the East. She holds nearly all of India. Yes; but how does she hold it? Some of it by absolute possession, and a great deal through protectorates and treaties, through intrigues with native princes and by other means which the people of the United States would think beneath the dignity of our own country to exercise anywhere else. We know what happened in India a few years ago when great masses of people rose against English rule, and gave us the most horrible details of war that this century has ever heard of. England’s unrest and uneasiness about her possessions in India can be seen by any one who reads the English newspapers or magazines or reviews. Some phase or other of the Indian question is continually popping up, and there never is anything in it to pacify the national unrest as to the future of the two countries. The possibility of assimilation of the population of India and England is laughed at by Englishmen of all degrees. Britons will not live in India unless they are compelled to do so, and also coaxed by compensation such as Englishmen never expect to receive at home. Even in the days of “John Company” it was impossible to keep an army there without double pay. I am not certain about the private soldiers, but the officers received their pay from the home government andan equal amount from the company, and even then the majority of them were discontented.
As for the natives liking England or English habits or English customs, it would be unreasonable to expect it, even did not facts prove that it is impossible. Native Indians of wealth and intelligence frequently visit England but very few remain. What is called the superior civilization of the West has no charms for them. And they don’t take English customs and principles home with them to disseminate among their own class and the orders beneath it. Many intelligent natives will admit that portions of the country are better ruled than they were under the native princes a hundred or more years ago. But at heart the feeling is that the old ways, if not the best, are certainly the most desirable and the most fitted to the nature of the people. England is in chronic fear of uprisings and disturbances. Her most statesmanlike public officials and her ablest soldiers are sent to India; not enough of them can be spared even to cross the channel to Ireland.
And, speaking of Ireland, which is another of Great Britain’s annexations, is there a more prominent and damning disgrace existing in the name of any civilized government of the world? It is not necessary to go over the Irish question at all. Every man knows enough about it to know that England’s rule of Ireland has been anentire and disgraceful failure, and that with ample opportunities for colonization, for maintaining military establishments, for pacifying the people, England has persistently and continuously failed to make Ireland anything but a hot-bed of hatred.
Where England is at peace with her colonies, what price does she pay? Why, she simply makes them almost absolutely independent of the home government. Except nominal allegiance to the mother country and the acceptance of a viceroy, governor-general, or representative of the throne by some title or other, these countries are almost as free of England as the United States. They have their own parliaments, elect their own officials, make their own laws, assess their own taxes, and even perpetrate huge tariff lists, under which the products of the mother country are obliged to pay handsomely for being admitted at all. The only bond between Canada or Australia and England is one of affection to the mother country. This sometimes endures to the second generation, but there is precious little of it in the third. You can easily enough find that out for yourself by going up to Canada and becoming acquainted in almost any town in the Dominion. It seems farcical, but it is nevertheless a fact, that the best English citizens in Canada are Frenchmen, descendants of the original settlers who fought England furiously and oftensuccessfully for more than a hundred years. And the only ground for the loyalty of these people is apparently that there is no other place for them to go, and no way to take with them what little they possess.
Australia is just as independent as Canada. If she should attempt to secede and declare herself as independent as she really is, England would probably send down fleets and armies, and there would be war for a long time, with the same result in the end that followed the attempt to change the opinions of the thirteen colonies who organized this nation of ours. England’s rule of the United States certainly was not severe. Now that the spirit of the Revolution has been watered out through two or three generations, it is perfectly safe to admit that England never took as much money out of this country as she put into it. So, regarded as a business enterprise, annexation or colonization did not pay here. As soon as she began to demand taxes from the colonies the revolt began. The question of her moral right is one that is not discussed now. Discussion would not do any good. But if taxes cannot be levied upon a colony or an annexed country, of what possible service is the new land to the old?
Well, what is our lesson from all this? What would be the result of our annexing either Mexico, Canada, or Cuba, for instance, to say nothingof the small republics in the Caribbean Sea and in Central America, toward which some of our demagogues have occasionally pretended to cast longing eyes, and found a few fools to encourage them in doing so? It would be utterly impossible under the spirit of our institutions for us to treat any such land as a conquered country. The Declaration of Independence would have to be completely overturned before we could consistently enter upon any such custom. The most that we could do would be to admit these countries as portions of the Union. We would scarcely pretend to obtain them by force for this purpose, but if we were to want to get them peaceably, what would be the only method? Why, by granting them equal rights with our own citizens. Successful annexation would depend upon the acquiescence of the majority of the inhabitants of the countries alluded to. These people, like people everywhere else, have leaders of their own. All leaders have aspirations and personal ambitions, and personal pockets which never are sufficiently full. We would have to provide for them first before we could be certain of the people. We would be obliged to divide each country into States bearing some proportion of population to those which we already have. We would be obliged to give them representation in both Houses of Congress, provide judicial systems for them, and in every way recognize them as our equals.
Now, the truth is, no sane American believes the people of any of those countries to be equal to those of our own. There are intelligent Mexicans and Cubans and Canadians, but we as a body have very little respect for the general run of people in those countries; no more respect than their own rulers have, and that is very little. Some exception must be made in the case of Canada, which is inhabited, so far as the whites are concerned, mainly by intelligent people. But Mexico, according to its own statesmen and according to all travellers who have been in it, is practically a semi-civilized country. The most of the inhabitants are deplorably ignorant. Freedom of ballot is an utter farce. Law is a matter of barter, and life and property, while nominally secure, are frequently threatened by uprisings which no local government has yet been able to promptly suppress, and which certainly could not be suppressed by a central government three thousand miles away with an army of the conventional size of that of the United States.
Cuba is worse than Mexico rather than better. Cuba has been in a condition of discontent and disturbance for so long that there are but few portions of the island on which life and property are safe. The majority of the voters can be purchased at any election time for a very small outlay of money or rum, and the same purchased voters could be persuaded by similar means torise within a week against the newly elected authorities, even if all happened to be their own candidates for office. The class of representatives which Cuba would be obliged to send to Washington could not possibly be expected to have any interest in national legislation except such as pertained to their own portion of the land. They have no sympathies of any sort with any portion of the people or industries or aspirations of the United States. It would be unfair to expect it of them. By birth and tradition they are radically different from us. Their isolation from us would be none the less even were they part of our country, and the consequence would be an alien class, demanding everything and yielding nothing, exactly what would be the case were we to annex Mexico.
Canada may drift to us in time. Some statesmen on both sides of the line regard this as inevitable. Well, what must be will be. But before any such marriage of nations there ought to be a long courtship between the parties. At present there is no love whatever between them, and until there is a marked change in this respect the union would be too utterly selfish on each side to be safe for either. We want some things from Canada, it is true. We have used up most of our visible supply of standing timber, and we could find enough in Canada for a century to come to make up for all deficiencies. But whatelse would we get? Very little. We assume that Canada will buy a great deal from us. But it does not seem to occur to the majority of our people that Canada is not a large purchasing country. Canada has not only no rich class, as we regard the expression, but her well-to-do class is poor, and the majority of her people are not only very poor, but have very few needs and demands to be supplied even had they unlimited means. The French Canadians, who are probably the most industrious of the population, live more plainly than any American would believe until he had travelled in the country largely. They are so poor that they regard themselves in paradise financially when they can find occupation upon American fishing vessels and in American factories. The pay of factory hands in the Eastern States is very small, as the trades’ unions have informed us frequently and without any exaggeration, but it is infinitely better than anything that the young men and young women of Lower Canada could find at home. The home of the French Canadian, who seems to be entirely contented, contains so little furniture that to the poor mechanic of a Northern city it would seem very bare and empty. The farming population of English birth is better off, lives better and has broader and more expensive tastes. But it is one thing to have tastes and quite a different thing to have the means to gratify them. The meanswould not be any greater if those people were citizens of the United States than they are now.
One thing we would receive in bountiful measure from Canada were we to annex her, and that is debt. She is loaded with debt in proportion to the assessed value of everything within her borders about five times as heavily as the United States, and let no one imagine that the Canadian is going to be fool enough to become part of our country and pay a proportion of our debts without having her own debts paid by us. The Canadian debt and ours would have to be amalgamated, with the result that each individual taxpayer of the United States would have to take a share in paying, literally paying, for Canada.
I know that a great deal is said about the vexatious questions that would be entirely disposed of were Canada to become part of this Union. But would we really get rid of them? All of the territory to the north of us is not strictly Canadian. Some of it still belongs to England, and even if England were quite willing to be entirely rid of the Dominion, she would keep a foothold here if only for the purpose of having a source of food supply from the fisheries. Nearly two hundred years ago, when the British islands were nowhere near as populous as at present, and the sea yielded a bountiful harvest all along the British coast, England fought France savagelyon the fisheries question, and America so fully sympathized with her as to assist her to the best of her ability. So, as long as England is anywhere on our border, it would be useless to imagine ourselves rid of her as a possible enemy. She could concentrate troops and munitions of war quite as easily upon any large island or point of the upper half of North America as she can in Canada. She might not be quite so near our border or have so many opportunities for crossing, but she would be far enough away for us not to be able to watch her so closely.
The only purposes of annexation, now that men are no longer stolen and killed for the nominal reason that we wish to make Christians of them, are to get something worth having for its own sake or to find a place of overflow for surplus population. None of our neighbors are rich except in debt. They have nothing we want which we cannot get cheaper by purchase than at the expense of time, money and patience that even peaceable annexation would require.
As for receptacles of overflow, we already have enough to last us a century or two. Do not take any stock in the story that there is no more government land worth having, and that there are no more chances for the poor man in the United States. I know that such stories are told frequently by those who are supposed to know most about it. The younger men of the farming communitiesof the West, some thousands of them, have been howling for years to be allowed to enter the so-called territory of Oklahoma. But if to each of the majority of these men were given a quarter section of land in the Garden of Paradise as it existed before the fall of Adam, they would still be looking out for some new location. There is a great floating, discontented mass of people in the new countries. The proportion is quite as great as it is in the large cities. There are many farmers in the West who have occupied half a dozen different homesteads on pre-emption claims in succession, turned up a little ground, built some sort of house which never was finished, become discouraged or disheartened or restless, sold out at a loss or abandoned their claims, put their portable property in a wagon or boat and started in search of some new country. Their impulse seems to be exactly that of the small boy who is out fishing. He always seems to think the fish will bite better a little further on, either up or down the stream, it does not matter which, and he rambles from one to the other because rambling is a great deal easier work than fishing. The unsurveyed territory of the United States is still enormous. Between the city of New York and the Ohio river there are still hundreds of thousands of acres of good land which never echoed the sound of the lumberman’s axe nor heard the ploughman’s whistle or oath.
Several years ago the president of a prominent railway corporation, a trunk line, said to me that there were hundreds of miles of his company’s land which never contributed in any way to the support of the road. It produced nothing, and scarcely anything was carried over the road to it. And he wanted to know if I could give him any possible reason why immigrants by hundreds went over the line to points a thousand miles away when so much good land was awaiting tillage, and was several hundred miles nearer markets than the country to which they were going. I could not, except to suggest that it was human nature to imagine that the places which were furtherest away offered the greatest advantages.
Why, even in the State of New York, with its five or six million inhabitants, there are large counties, and not in the Adirondack region either, of which not more than half the good land is under cultivation to-day. The land is not bad, the distance from rail communication and from markets is not great. Everything is more favorable to the settler than in some portions of the Western States that are filling up rapidly, and yet the immigrant passes all these localities and goes further away, and he who already is there is often dissatisfied and anxious to sell out and go somewhere apparently for no other purpose except to get a new start. The hill countries of all the older States still contain immense quantitiesof valuable ground which might be made to yield more profitable crops per acre than anybody’s wheat-land in the most favored sections of the United States. The ground that the State of Tennessee some years ago placed upon the market at six cents an acre so as to have it in personal instead of public possession, and with the hope of getting a little something out of it in the way of taxes, is as good as many of the more valuable portions of the Eastern States. The entire table-land of the mountain range that separates the Eastern States from the West is but sparsely inhabited. Not much of it can be utilized for large planting of staple crops, but all of it is valuable for something that might be turned to profit. It is better ground than the Switzers live well on in their native country and far better naturally than that of some of the more prosperous provinces of France. On the basis of the population of the State of New York, which State certainly is not overcrowded in its agricultural districts, this nation has room for all people who will be born in it or who by any possibility can immigrate to it for two or three centuries to come.
We need no place of overflow for any of our population that is not criminal, and this class can be trusted to find its own outlets and places of refuge without any assistance from the government or the people.
Image not available: ELECTRICAL BUILDING.ELECTRICAL BUILDING.
IT was not very long ago that the Indian was the object of a great deal of discussion and alarm in the United States.
He had a habit of breaking out at unexpected times and in unexpected places. He might be quiet in winter when the snow was deep and the reservation warehouse was so full of stores there was no possibility of his getting hungry, and consequently angry. When, however, the spring sun melted away the snow and brought the grass to the surface, so that it was cheaper to let a pony fatten on the grass than to kill him while he was lean, the Indian picked up his spirits and rifle—which always was a good one—and started on the warpath. He did not particularly care whom he might kill; but if there were no other Indian tribes about, he was not going home without a scalp, even if he had to kill a white man. The development of some of our Territories was arrested for months, and even years, by some Indian wars which began upon very slight pretext, and which our army, contemptible in numbers,was unable to suppress promptly; and the savages gained confidence from the knowledge, which they were not compelled to ignore, that we were not a fighting nation.
Either through better soldiers or less dishonest agents, there has been a change in late years. The Indian has not been on the warpath in a long time, and some of the exciting accounts of Indian raids in the West amount only to this—that a body of men have left their reservation against the advice of their associates, and started on a stealing and murdering tour just far enough ahead of the military force to be able to do a great deal of harm in a short time.
At the same time, however, the idea has been creeping to the surface that the Indian might possibly be regarded as a human being and as amenable to the ordinary laws and customs of civilization.
All of us have heard the old brutal remark, attributed to General Sheridan and several other army officers, that the only good Indian is a dead one. But this is a base and cruel slander. There are a great many good Indians, and every honest Indian agent as well as every military officer who has much to do with the savage tribes knows that in each reservation there are a number of men, rude though they may be, who are of considerable character and large self-control, and whose principal faults may be charged tothe negligence of the government, which has regarded the red man as its special ward.
The Indian has brains. No one is quicker to admit this than the army officer who has had occasion to fight the Indian. General Custer was a good soldier and an experienced Indian fighter, but Chief Gall was a better one. The defeat of Custer is usually attributed to Sitting Bull, but that old ruffian simply did out-and-out fighting; the brains of the conflict—all the strategy and all the tactics—were supplied by an Indian named Gall, who still lives, and for whose military ability every officer in our army has a profound respect, not unmixed with fear.
The flowery and elaborate speeches which different representatives of savage tribes have made to the Great Father at Washington, through their interpreters, may seem to have a good deal of nonsense in them, but the Indian Bureau knows that they also contain a great deal of admirable diplomacy. It may be because the Indian has very little to think of and can give his whole mind to the subject under consideration; but whatever the reason, the fact is assured that in pow-wows between representatives of our Indian Bureau and some of the tribes in the Far West the preponderance of brains has not always been on the side of the white man.
Another unexpected development of the Indian question is, that the Indian will work.This may seem a wild statement in view of what a number of travellers and military officers have seen on reservations in the Far West and at railway stations on the slender line which connects the civilization of the West with that of the Rocky mountains and the Pacific slope. But fortunately there are a number of witnesses to substantiate it; for instance, the Apaches are currently supposed to be the most irreclaimable tribe of wild men within our nation’s borders. It will not be hard to recall the difficulties which General Crook experienced in following, defeating and recalling Geronimo’s famous gang of Apaches a few years ago, when they were followed to a mountain fastness in Mexico. Yet when some of the demons who had murdered, ravished and burned everything in their path were finally brought back to the reservation and taught that by tilling the soil they could earn some money, or at least the equivalent of money, they worked harder than any American farmer whose achievements had ever been recorded. These so-called lazy devils supplied a military post with hundreds of tons of hay, every particle of which was cut by hand with such knives as the savages happened to have: they had no other tools with which to work. They also supplied the post with vegetables of various kinds, beside keeping themselves well fed with products of the soil which were resultsof their own labor. Farms managed by Indians are not at all uncommon in the West. It was the eviction, or the fear of eviction of an old Indian woman from her farm, that led to the murder of Indian Agent Meeker in Colorado. An Indian named Ouray was for a long time one of the most successful and respected farmers in Colorado. Ouray not only managed his own business well, but kept in order all the Indians in his vicinity. His methods were somewhat rude to be sure, but they always were effective, and no army officer of his acquaintance hesitated to trust him as implicitly as he would trust the Secretary of War for the time being. An Indian at present is one of the land barons of the West, and has held his little estate near the centre of a large and flourishing town in spite of all temptations and machinations of rum-sellers, traders, lawyers and other scoundrels that have endeavored to swindle him out of his own.
But it isn’t necessary to go West to find out whether the Indian will work. One needs only to go down to Hampton, Virginia, where the government is supporting a lot of young Indians in the Normal school conducted by General Armstrong. I had heard so much about the unwonted spectacle of Indians, clothed and in their right minds, with clean faces and hands, studying books and using tools and behavingthemselves like human beings—that a little while ago I went down to Hampton myself and went through the schools. First, I asked General Armstrong whether the Indian would work.
“Will he work?” said the General, with a merry twinkle of his eye. “Well now, you roam about here yourself all day; I presume you know a red man from a black one when you see him; and you will have the question answered to your entire satisfaction.”
I did, and was convinced. I saw Indians out-of-doors working the soil, and Indians indoors, in the shops, handling tools as skilfully as the average white man. I saw houses inhabited by picked Indian families—young people with children, and the “housekeeping”—one of the most comprehensive words in the world—was so thorough in all visible respects that either family seemed fit to teach domestic economy and neatness in many Northern villages I have seen. I saw four Indians in a class-room, at four separate blackboards, draw, inside of three minutes by the clock, four quite accurate maps of North America, putting the principal lakes and rivers in their proper places. Several prominent Americans (white) were with me at the time, and each admitted, for himself, that he could not have done as well to save his life; yet one was one of those railroad monopolists who want to own theearth, and are supposed to carry at least their own section of it in their mind’s eye.
From General Armstrong himself I got the following brief statement of the Indian situation, and I have been unable to find any one in authority who is able to contradict any part of it.
“There are now in this country (exclusive of the Alaskans) some 246,000 Indians, of whom 64,000 belong to the so-called civilized tribes, the Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks and Chickasaws. These, including their 16,000 ex-slaves, a rapidly increasing negro element, live, in the main, like white men. They, however, pay no taxes, receiving ample revenues from their interest in the sales of land to the government, but, while they have schools and churches and an organized government of their own, are held back by their adherence to the old tribal idea. This is thoroughly anti-progressive, and the savage Indian of to-day, who, taking his land in severalty, comes under the same law as his white neighbor, will probably in twenty years be well in advance of his Indian Territory brother, who, under existing conditions, can be neither one thing nor the other.
“The principal uncivilized tribes are the 20,000 Navajos in the Southwest, and the 30,000 Sioux in the Northwest. The first of these have nearly doubled in ten years, own 1,000,000 sheep and 40,000 ponies, are wholly independent andself-supporting, but wild and nomadic; while the Sioux, who are but just holding their own, are still victims to the ration system. In spite, however, of this demoralizing influence, they have improved remarkably of late, chiefly because they have been fortunate in their agents. It is upon the agents that everything depends, and those in charge of the Sioux have gradually decreased the food supply, thus forcing self-support and inducing the younger men to scatter along the river bottoms where there is wood and water, instead of huddling in hopeless dependence about the agencies. Along the banks of the Upper Missouri and its tributaries, and on the Rose-bud and Pine Ridge Agencies, the Sioux have generally broken from the heathenish village life and taken farms up of from one to thirty acres. As I drove last fall down the west bank of the Missouri river I saw hundreds of these farms, with their wire fences, log huts with the supplementary ti-pi, stacks of grain and hay, and everywhere men working in the fields, nineteen out of twenty in citizen’s clothing. As a better class of white settlers comes in, a better feeling comes with them, and the Indian can get in no other way such education as he receives from contact with these people.
“The best of these Sioux, 3,500 of whom are now self-supporting, illustrate what we mean by ‘progressive Indians,’ and what has been donefor them can be done for all Indians. It is only a question of time and work. Between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountain Ranges, and in Montana, there are many thousand Indians whose condition is not encouraging, chiefly for lack of adequate effort in their behalf; while on the other hand, there are many on the Pacific coast who, under the influence of good agents and good conditions, are doing well. On farming lands Indians improve much faster than in a grazing country.
“Government paid last year $1,050,000 for beef for reservation Indians, and $1,200,000 for their education, and only twelve thousand children are at school out of the total of forty thousand who are of an age to receive education. More education and less beef is the need.
“An experience of eleven years with Indian students at Hampton, together with careful study of reservation life, has convinced me that Indians are alive to progressive influences. They are intelligent and clear thinkers, quick at technical work in trades shops, unused to steady application but willing to take hold. They do not learn English easily, and are shy of speaking it, while they have no appreciation of the value of time, and cannot endure prolonged effort; this last being a result of their lack of physical vigor, which I believe to be their chief disadvantage. In my dealings with them I havetreated them as men and have found them manly, frank, resentful, but not revengeful; with a keen sense of justice, ready to take punishment for wrong doing, and to speak the truth to their own hurt.
“Of 247 sent home from the Hampton school, three-fourths have done from fairly to very well. At least one-third are doing excellently. There must always be a certain percentage of poor material, and there is a curious fickleness in the average Indian; but our students are always surprising us by doing better than we expect, and this is especially the case with the girls, for whom often we hardly dare to hope. Over one-half of our returned Indians have had temporary relapses, but there are few who do not recover themselves. A majority are working for their living as teachers, mechanics, farmers, teamsters, clerks, etc.
“The need of the Indian is good agents, teachers, and farm instructors. They are born stock-raisers and their lands are the best cattle ranges in the country. With the right men in charge they could in ten years raise such a proportion of their own beef as to reduce the beef issue by one-half.
“In their way stands a short-sighted economy, and a service so organized that it changes with every change of party. The lines of work for the Indian are indicated with sufficient clearness;the one thing now essential is intelligent co-operation of his friends.
“The saying that ‘there is no good Indian but a dead one’ is a cruel falsehood and has done great harm. They are a good deal like other people, and with a fair chance do well.”
That the Indian will work and that he also will learn was first demonstrated—officially—by Captain Pratt, of the regular army, who now is busily engaged in solving individual Indian problems at his noble school at Carlisle, Pa. The change in the government’s policy toward the redskins is attributed, with good reason, to Captain Pratt’s endeavors. Says Senator Dawes, who labored so hard for the bill enabling Indians to take farms instead of living in barbarous communism on reservations:
“The division line between the present policy and the past is drawn here; in the past the government tried, by fair means or foul, to rid itself of the Indian. The present policy is to make something of him. That policy had its origin almost in an accident. Eight or nine years ago the government sent Captain Pratt with warriors, covered with the blood of a merciless war, from the Indian Territory down to Florida; and Captain Pratt, in the discharge of his duty, undertook to relieve himself of the labor of keeping these warriors in idleness, no matter if the work was of no service to anybody if it would keepthem out of idleness. With this end in view he got permission to let them pick stones out of the streets. Then he enlisted ladies to teach them to read. Out of that experiment of Captain Pratt’s has come all the rest. Behold what a great fire a little matter has kindled!”
Senator Dawes further says the following pertinent words on the Indian question; no American can fail to realize the force of his remarks:
“If St. Paul was here and had 250,000 Indians on his hands, whom the United States had sought for one hundred years to rob of every means of obtaining a livelihood, and had helped bring up in ignorance, he never would have said to them, ‘He that will not work, shall not eat.’ You did not say that to the poor black man; you did not say that to the little children whom you sent by contribution out into the country for fresh air, and you ought not to say it to this poor, helpless race, helpless in their ignorance, and ignorant because we have fostered their ignorance. We have appropriated more money to keep them in absolute darkness, and heathenism, and idleness, than would have been required to send every one of them to college, and now we propose to turn them out. We did not relieve ourselves of the responsibility by that indifference; we have got to take them by the hand like little children and bring them up out of this ignorance, for they multiply upon our hands,and their heritage is being wrenched away from them, and good men as well as bad are devising means to take it away.
“What is to become of them then? Have we done our duty to this people when we have said to them: ‘We will scatter you and let you become isolated and vagabonds on the earth, and then we will apply to you the philosophic command, “Go, take care of yourselves; we have every dollar of your possessions, every acre of your heritage; we have killed more of your fellows than there are of you left; we have burnt your little homes, and now we have arrived at the conclusion that it is time to take away from you the last foot of ground upon which you can rest, and we shall have done our duty when we command you to take care of yourselves?” ’ That is not the way I read it; I know how sincere and honest, and probably as near right everybody else is, but I am only telling how I feel. I feel just this: that every dollar of money, and every hour of effort that can be applied to each individual Indian, day and night, in season and out of season, with patience and perseverance, with kindness and with charity, is not only due him in atonement for what we have inflicted upon him in the past, but is our own obligation towards him in order that we may not have him a vagabond and a pauper, without home or occupation among us in this land.One or the other is the alternative; he is to be a vagabond about our streets, begging from door to door, and plundering our citizens, or he is to be taken up and made a man among us; a citizen of this great republic, absorbed into the body politic and made a useful and influential citizen.”
President Cleveland voiced the opinion of all thoughtful and intelligent citizens when he wrote that “the conscience of the people demands that the Indians within our boundaries be fairly and honestly treated as wards of the government,and their education and civilization promoted with view to ultimate citizenship.”
With a chance to work, the Indian needs also the chance to learn, and this he is getting more and more. Whether hewilllearn is a question no longer open to doubt. General Armstrong’s testimony is given above. Captain Pratt says “scarcely a student but is able to take care of himself or herself among civilized people at the end of their five years’ course.” Bishop Hare, of the Episcopal Church, who has been doing splendid work among the Indians for many years, gives unwearying attention to schools on the reservations, but says, “I cannot shut my eyes to the incalculable service which well-conducted Eastern boarding-schools have done the Indians.”
When we shall have for a few years treated the Indian like a human being, there will be no “Indian question” to discuss.
THE editor is the great American schoolmaster. None other is worthy to be compared with him.
He is about as numerous as all other teachers combined. His lessons are given more frequently, they last longer and they cost less than any others.
To him forty-nine students in every fifty are indebted for the only post-graduate course they ever receive. Many others would have no education at all if it were not for him.
He does not always know his business so well that he could not know it better, but whatever he does know he imparts steadily, as well as some that he does not honor.
He is the only influence upon whom the public can absolutely depend to right any wrong which is being endured in spite of the efforts and oaths of legislators. When law is lazy and legislators are venal it is the editor, and the editor only, who comes to the relief of the public. The public will not do this for itself. It seems to considerits duty done when it casts its ballot. More than half a century ago, when editors were not supposed to think their souls their own, the first Napoleon said, “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” Napoleon certainly knew the value of bayonets.
The newspaper is the universal tribunal. It is an open court and there is justice of a sort for every one there at a trifling cost, one cent, two or three, as the case may be. The editor is the lawyer to whom the poor man must of necessity come. His court is one of equity, and it is to equity courts after all that all of us are inclined to resort when we insist upon a final decision.
He is the people’s advocate. Before a law can be suggested in legislature or Congress to undo a wrong or strengthen a right, the editor has already suggested it, debated both sides of it and rendered a decision, frequently a dozen or twenty decisions, which the public are inclined to admit or regard as accurate. He sometimes gets hold of a subject wrong end first, but he will submit to correction and improvement quicker than any judge or jury on record. He may not always admit that he has changed his mind, or that he turned over, or that he has turned his coat, but the change is there all the same, to any one who will read his paper.
He is the only biographer and historian which the mass of the people can read. And he gives