The Arena. Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891

Mr. John P. Meany, in the Railway Review of February 7, 1891, says: “It is safe to assume that the market valuation of the entire $4,500,000,000 of railroad stock in existence, would not average more than $30 per share, or, say $1,350,000,000 in all,” and in his Sun article he states that fully $500,000,000 of this stock is duplicated, so that the “live” stock outstanding is really but $4,000,000,000, which at $30 per share would have an aggregate value of $1,200,000,000. Mr. Meany also states that there are duplications of bond issues amounting to some $300,000,000 leaving the live outstanding bonds at $4,500,000,000 and many corporations failing to pay interest, some issues are selling as low as 12 per cent. of par, making it safe to call the average market value of bonds 90 per cent. of their face value, and their aggregate value would be $4,050,000,000, to which add value of “live” capital stock, $1,200,000,000, and the total market value of bonds and stock is, $5,250,000,000, being at the rate of $32,800 per mile for the 160,000 miles in operation.

After many years of familiarity with the turgid and obscure statements issued by American railway corporations, and which are usually of such a character that the more they are studied the less the shareholder knows of the affairs of the corporation, it is very refreshing to read the report of the Railway Commissioners of any one of the Australasian colonies, where every item of expenditure is made clear, and where words are not used for the purpose of misleading.

The last Victorian report shows this new and sparsely settled country as able to borrow money with which to build national railways, at three and one half per cent. per annum. How many American corporations are able to borrow money at such a rate? This saving in the interest charge directly benefits the public, and is due to national ownership, and a like saving will be made by the nationalization of American railways.

This report also shows that while the country is so rugged that in many cases the gradients are as great as one hundred and thirty feet per mile, and the cost of labor and supplies more than here, the roads are operated at less cost, as measured by the expense per train mile, than in the favored regions of the United States. The Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railway is, admittedly, one of the best managed and most economically operated railways in the West, and with an abundance of very cheap coal;11 low gradients and running more trains than do the Victorian railways should be operated much more cheaply, yet the cost of operating this road, as measured by the cost per train mile,—and this is the best possible criterion of economy in operation,—is one third greater than on the government owned railways of Victoria.

An excellent measure of the efficiency of the management is the number of casualties, as proportioned to the number of passengers carried and men employed, which is very great in such countries as Russia, Roumania, and Portugal; but in Victoria, and other Australian colonies, the proportion is far less than in the United States, more attention being given to the adoption of such safety devices as interlocking switches, etc., and all the stations and crossings are provided with gates, and otherwise better guarded than with us, where the corporations are much more intent upon paying dividends than in serving the public, or in saving life and limb, while on the government-operated railways of Victoria, the management devotes its attention—with a due regard to economy,—to the convenience, comfort, and safety of railway users, and employees having no bond or share holders to provide for. In the United States one of the useless traffic associations pays its chief umpire nearly as much as Victoria pays her entire commission.

Those desirous of entering the railway service of Victoria are subjected to such a rigid examination as to qualifications and character, that but little more than one third are able to pass the ordeal, and a high standard of excellence in the personnel of the service results; when these servants are disabled or worn out by long service, they are pensioned or given a retiring allowance, and this system tends to reduce the inclination to strike, as a man who has been years in the service will long hesitate before he forfeits his right to a provision of this kind.

All the Australian reports and accounts which have come under the observation of the writer, are models of conciseness and clearness, and show that there is nothing inherent in railway accounts rendering it necessary that they be made obscure and misleading.

Neither in the Australian reports nor in the colonial press is there the least evidence of discriminations against individuals or localities, and this one fact is an argument of greater force in favor of national ownership than all that have ever been advanced against it.

WHERE MUST LASTING PROGRESS BEGIN?

BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

To the calm observer there is nothing more impressive in society to-day than the varied and multitudinous associations for the amelioration of human poverty, ignorance, and crime; and nothing more depressing than the seeming immense waste of force scattered in these innumerable directions with results so intangible and undefined. From all the discussions we hear in the halls of legislation, and on the popular platform, on the relations of capital and labor, finance, free trade, land monopoly, taxation, individualism, and socialism, the rights of women, children, criminals, and animals, one would think that an entire change must speedily be effected in our theories of government, religion, and social life, and so there would be if a small minority, even, honestly believed in these specific reforms. But alas! our reading minds are yet to be educated into the first principles of social science; they are yet to learn that our present theories of life are all false. The old ideas of caste and class, of rich and poor, educated and uneducated, must pass away, and the many must no longer suffer that the few may shine. Our religion must teach the brotherhood of the race, the essential oneness of humanity, and our government must be based on the broad principles of equal rights to all. A religion that seeks to make the people satisfied in their degraded conditions, and releases them from all responsibility for its continuance, is unworthy our intelligent belief, and a government that holds half its people in slavery, practically chained where they are born, in ignorance, poverty, and vice, is unworthy our intelligent support.

The object of all our specific reforms is to secure equal conditions for the whole human race. The initiative steps to this end are:—

1. Educate our upper classes, our most intelligent people, into the belief that our present civilization is based on false principles, and that the ignorance, poverty, and crime we see about us are the legitimate results of our false theories.

2. They must be educated to believe that our present conditions and environments can and will be changed, and that as man is responsible for the miseries of the race, through his own knowledge and wisdom the change must come. To-day, men make their God responsible for all human arrangements, and they quote Scripture to prove that poverty is one of His wise provisions for the development of all the cardinal virtues. I heard a sermon preached, not long ago, from the text: “The poor ye have always with you,” in which the preacher dwelt on the virtues of benevolence and gratitude called out on either side. Poverty, said he, has been the wise schoolmaster, to teach the people industry, economy, self-sacrifice, patience, and humility, all those beautiful virtues that best fit the human soul for the life hereafter. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Thus the lessons of submission and content have been sedulously taught to oppressed classes, in the name of God, with fair promises of heaven to come.

The rich must be taught that they have no right to live in luxury while others starve. The poor must be taught that they, too, have inalienable rights on this green earth, the right to life, liberty, and happiness, and to the fruits of their own industry, and it is the imperative duty of each class to concede the one and demand the other. The apathy and indifference of the masses in their degraded conditions are as culpable as the pride and satisfaction of the upper classes in their superior position.

As the only hope for the lasting progress of the race and a radical reform in social life lie in the right education of children, their birth and development is the vital starting-point for the philosopher. A survey of the various unfortunate classes of society that have hitherto occupied the time and thought of different orders of philanthropists, and the little that has been accomplished in our own lifetime, to go no farther back, gives very little encouragement for this mere surface work that occupies so many noble men and women in each generation. In spite of all our asylums and charities, religious discussion and legislation, the problems of pauperism, intemperance, and crime are no nearer a satisfactory solution than when our pilgrim fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, in search of that liberty in thought and action denied in the old world. The gloomy panorama of misery and crime moves on, a dark picture in this young civilization.

If we would use the same common sense in the improvement of mankind that we do in the ordinary affairs of life, we should begin our work at the foundations of society, in family life, in parenthood, the source and centre of all these terrible evils whose branches we are trying to lop off. A family living in an old house, on unhealthy ground, with water in the cellar, a crumbling foundation, the beams like sponge, the roof leaking, the chimney full of cracks, would not spend large sums of money year after year, generation after generation, in patching up the old house on the same old spot, but with ordinary wisdom and economy, they would build anew, on higher ground, with strong foundations, sound timber, substantial chimneys, and solid roofing. True, they would patch up the old at as little cost as possible, merely to afford them a shelter until the new home was built. And all our special reform work to-day is but patching the old, until with a knowledge of the true laws of social science we can begin to build the new aright. There is much surface work we must do in reform, for decency’s sake, but all this patching up of ignorant, diseased, criminal, unfortunate humanity is temporary and transient, effecting no radical improvement anywhere. The real work that will tell on all time and the eternities, is building the new life and character, laying the foundation-stones of future generations in justice, liberty, purity, peace, and love, the work of the rising generation of fathers and mothers at this hour. Those of us who have long since passed the meridian of life, can give you the result of our experience and researches into social science, but with the young men and women of this hour rests the hope of the higher civilization which it is possible for the race to attain through obedience to law. The lovers of science come back to us from every latitude and longitude, from their explorations in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, from their observations of the planetary world, bearing the same message. “All things are governed by law,” while man himself who holds in his own hand the key to all knowledge and power seems never to be in unison with the grandeur and glory of the world in which he lives. The picture of struggling humanity through the long past is not a cheerful one to contemplate. What can be done to mitigate the miseries of the masses? This thought rests heavily and with increasing weight on the hearts of all who love justice, liberty, and equality. The same law of inheritance that hands down the vices of ancestors, hands down their virtues also, and in a greater ratio, for good is positive, active, ever vigilant, its worshippers swim up stream against the current. Could we make all men and women feel their individual responsibility in the chain of influences that tell on all time, we could solemnize in our own day such vows for nobler lives as to make this seeming herculean work light as the wings of angels. If, henceforward, all the thought, the money, the religious enthusiasm dedicated to the regeneration of the race, could be devoted to the generation of our descendants, to the conditions and environments of parents and children, the whole face of society might be changed before we celebrate the next centennial of our national life. Science has vindicated our right to discuss freely whether our ancestors were apes; let it be as free to ask whether our posterity shall be idiots, dwarfs, and knaves, and if not, by what change, if any, in our social institutions, such wretched results may be avoided. Gatton in his work on “Heredity,” says our present civilization is growing too complicated for our best minds even to grasp, and to meet successfully the issues of the hour, humanity must be lifted up a few degrees, as speedily as possible. And where must this radical work begin? The best hope for the progress of the race in political, religious, and social life lies in the right birth, education, and development of our children. Here is the true starting-point for the philosopher.

Let the young man who is indulging in all manner of excesses remember that in considering the effect of the various forms of dissipation on himself, his own happiness or danger, he does not begin to measure the evil of his life. As the high priest at the family altar, his deeds of darkness will inflict untold suffering on generation after generation. One of the most difficult lessons to impress on any mind is the power and extent of individual influence; and parents above all others resist the belief that their children are exactly what they make them, no more, no less; like produces like. The origin of ideas was long a disputed point with different schools of philosophers. Locke took the ground that the mind of every child born into the world is like a piece of blank paper; that you may write thereon whatever you will, but science has long since proved that such idealists as Descartes were nearer right, that the human family come into the world with ideas, with marked individual proclivities; that the pre-natal conditions have more influence than all the education that comes after. If family peculiarities are transmitted to the third and fourth generation, the grandson clothed with the same gait, gesture, mode of thought and expression as the grandfather he has never seen, it is evident that each individual may reap some advantage and development from those predecessors whose lives in all matters great and small are governed by law, by a conscientious sense of duty, not by feeling, chance, or appetite.

If there is a class of educators who need special preparation for their high and holy duties, it is those who assume the responsibilities of parents. Shall they give less thought to immortal beings than the artist to his landscape or statue.

We wander through the galleries in the old world, and linger before the works of the great masters, transfixed with the grace and beauty of the ideals that surround us. And with equal preparation, greater than these are possible in living, breathing humanity. Go in imagination from the gallery to the studio of the poor artist, watch him through the restless days, as he struggles with the conception of some grand ideal, and then see how patiently he moulds and remoulds the clay, and when at last, through weary years, the block of marble is transformed into an angel of light, he worships it, and weeps that he cannot breathe into it the breath of life. And lo! by his side are growing up immortal beings to whom he has never given one half the care and thought bestowed on the silent ones that grace his walls. And yet the same devotion to a high ideal of human character, would soon give the world a generation of saints and scholars, of scientists and statesmen, of glorified humanity such as the world has not yet seen. Many good people lose heart in trying to improve their surroundings because they say the influence of one amounts to so little. Remember it was by the patient toil of generations through centuries that the Colossus of Rhodes, Diana’s Temple at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Pyramids at Egypt, the Pharos at Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens at Babylon, the Olympian Zeus, the seven wonders of the world, grew day by day into enduring monuments to the greatness of humanity. By individual effort the grand result was at last achieved. So the ideal manhood and womanhood, so earnestly prophesied, will become living realities in the future. Remember it took three hundred years to build an Egyptian pyramid. Allowing four generations to a century we have twelve generations of men who passed their lives in that one achievement. Was not the work of those who first evened the ground and laid the foundation-stones as important as of those who laid the capstones at last? Let us, then, begin in our day by the discussion of these vital principles of social science, to even the ground and lay the foundation-stones for the greatest wonder the world is yet to see,—a man in whom the appetites, the passions, the emotions are all held in allegiance to their rightful sovereign, Reason. The true words and deeds of successive generations will build up this glorified humanity, fairer than any Parian marble, grander than any colossal sculpture of the East, more exalted than spire or dome, boundless in capacity, in aspiration, limitless as space.

MY HOME LIFE

BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS

It has been suggested to me that an article descriptive of my ways and doings at home might be acceptable to readers of this journal; and it has furthermore been proposed that I should write the said article myself. There is a straightforward simplicity of purpose about this proposition which commends it to me. Also, it has the recommendation of being quite novel.

As a rule, the person whose home life is to be made the subject of an article is “interviewed” by a gentleman of the press, who cross-examines the victim like an old Bailey counsel, and proceeds to take an inventory of his furniture, like a bailiff.

Now, it seems to me that the conditions under which such a visit is paid and received are radically unsatisfactory. The person interviewed must be more or less uncomfortably self-conscious, and one cannot help doubting whether the interviewer ever succeeds in seeing his subject and his subject’s surroundings in exactly their normal dishabille. It would ask more than Roman virtue not to make the best of one’s self and one’s house when both were sitting for a portrait; and difficult as it is to look natural and feel natural in front of a photographer’s camera, it is ten times more trying vis-a-vis of a reporter’s note-book. As for the temptation to “pose,” whether consciously or unconsciously, it must be well-nigh irresistible. For my own part, I am but too certain that, instead of receiving such a visitor in my ordinary working costume, and in a room littered with letters and papers, I should have inevitably put on a more becoming gown, and have “tidied up” the library, when the appointed day and hour arrived. Not, however, being put to this test, I will do my best to present myself literally “At Home,” and in my habit as I live.

Westbury-on-Trym is a village in Gloucestershire separated from Clifton by about a mile and a half of open down, and distant about four miles from Bristol terminus. It lies in a hollow at the foot of two steep hills, one of which is crowned with the woods of Blaise Castle, and the other with a group of buildings consisting of the parish church, a charming little Gothic structure known as “The Hall,” and the national schoolhouse. The church is a fine perpendicular edifice of considerable antiquity, with a square tower surmounted, in true West of England style, by a small turret, having a tiny Gothic spire at one corner. The parishioners are proud of their church, and with justice. It contains some good stained-glass windows, two interesting mediæval monuments, and an exceptionally fine organ. “The Hall” is quite modern, having been built and endowed, in 1867, by a generous parishioner. The large room seats three hundred people, and is fitted up with an organ as large and beautiful as that in the church close by. Village concerts, penny readings, Lent lectures, charity bazaars, and the like are held here. The building also contains a reading-room and a small library for the use of the working classes. My own first attempts at public reading were made on this village platform, twenty years ago.

A little river flows through the valley, and is crossed by a single bridge in the lower part of the village. This is the Trym,—an untidy Trym enough, nowadays,—opaque, muddy, and little better than a ditch. Yet it was a navigable river some centuries ago, and, according to tradition, was not unknown to trout. On leaving the village, it takes a southwesterly course through a pleasant bottom of meadow lands, and thence between wooded slopes and a romantic “Coombe,” much beloved of artists, till it finally empties itself into the Avon, not far from the mouth of that tidal river.

There are still some remains of a building at the foot of Westbury Hill, which in olden times was second only in age and importance to the church,—namely, “The College.” This “College” was a religious house, founded as far back as A.D. 798, and probably rebuilt some five centuries later by that famous merchant and public benefactor, William Canynge, of Bristol, who died there as Dean of the College, and was buried in the church. Twenty-five years ago, when I first made its acquaintance, this “College” (a large modernized building with corner turrets) still presented a stately front to the road. At the back was a square bell-tower covered from top to bottom with ivy, and a spacious garden shut in by high walls. It was then a boy’s school, and the big garden used to echo with shouts and laughter on summer evenings. The bell-tower is the most ancient part of the building, and according to local tradition, a subterranean passage leads from the cellarage in the basement to the church on the hillside above. The story is likely enough to be correct; for a passage of some kind there certainly is, and it leads apparently in the direction of the church. A working-man who, with some three or four others, had once tried to explore it, told me several years ago that, beyond the first few yards, the tunnel was completely blocked, and the air so foul that it put the lights out. Whether any subsequent attempt has been made to force a passage, I do not know; but the whole place is sadly changed since the time when I used to cast longing glances at the old green tower from the lane that skirted the garden wall, wishing that I might some day get permission to sit in a corner under a shady tree on the other side of that wall, and sketch the tower. The school has long since broken up for good, and boys and masters have gone their ways. The old house, after standing vacant for years, was bought at last by a little local builder, who ran up a row of smart shops in front of the old turreted façade; let off the house itself in lodgings to poor families; and re-sold the old bell-tower to the village blacksmith. The garden wall being pulled down on that side, the tower now stands at the end of a row of new cottages, forlorn and solitary in the midst of alien surroundings, a forge and anvil in the basement.

As regards the “great houses” of the place, Westbury-on-Trym enjoys a curious monopoly of handsome private mansions. These mansions—spacious, finely built, each standing in its own park-like grounds—were built for the most part by wealthy Bristol merchants during the two last centuries—men of wealth, who needed to reside within an easy drive of the city, and who were content to amass great fortunes without also desiring to become land-owners. The Bristol merchants of the present day no longer care to live so near their business. Railways and steamers enable them to go farther afield; and so the fine old houses of Westbury, Henbury, Redland, Shirehampton, Brislington, and other parishes round about the great commercial centre, have gradually passed into the possession of a class of moneyed gentry who, having neither trade nor land, are attracted by the fine climate and beautiful scenery of this part of England. Some few of these old mansions are renowned for the valuable collections of paintings and other works of art which they contain; as, for instance, at Blaise Castle, there is a fine series of specimens of the old masters purchased at the close of the great war during the first quarter of the present century by Mr. Harford, grandfather of the present owner; a series which comprises a fine Guido, several specimens of the Caracci, Salvator Rosa, etc. At Kings-Weston Park, we find the family portraits of the de Cliffords purchased, together with the very fine old house built by Vanbrugh in the time of Charles II., by the late owner, Philip Miles, Esq. At Leigh Court, the gallery, with its famous Leonardo, is known throughout Europe, while many other art treasures are to be found in the possession of private owners round about the neighborhood.