Chapter 5

Alexander Johnston Cassatt, one of the greatest of the Pennsylvania Railroad presidents, and perhaps the most far-seeing and resourceful of all our captains of industry of the present generation, was born here. James McCrea, the present wise and conservative president of that road, lived here for twenty years. Andrew Carnegie, Henry Phipps, and Henry C. Frick were the strongest personalities who grew up with the Carnegie steel interests. George Westinghouse, whose inventive genius, as shown in his safety appliances, has so greatly reduced the hazards of railway travel and of operation, has long been one of the industrial and social pillars of the community. John A. Brashear, astronomer and educator, the maker of delicate instruments, is a well-beloved citizen.

Pittsburgh ranks high as a banking center. She is the second city in the United States in banking capital and surplus, and leads all American cities in proportion of capital and surplus to gross deposits, with 47.1 per cent., while Philadelphia ranks second with 26 per cent. In 1906, there were one hundred and seventy-nine banks and trust companies in the Pittsburgh district with a combined capital of $72,058,402, and a surplus of $87,044,622. The gross deposits were $395,379,783, while the total resources amounted to $593,392,069. Pittsburgh, with clearing-house exchanges amounting to $2,640,847,046, ranks sixth among the cities of the United States, being exceeded by the following cities in the order named: New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, and often on a given day exceeds those of St. Louis.

III

The tax valuation of Pittsburgh property is $609,632,427. She mines one quarter of the bituminous coal of the United States. With an invested capital of $641,000,000, she has 3,029 mills and factories with an annual product worth $551,000,000, and 250,000 employees on a pay-roll of about $1,000,000 a day, or $350,000,000 a year. Her electric street-railway system multiplies itself through her streets for four hundred and ninety-two miles. Natural-gas fuel is conveyed into her mills and houses through one thousand miles of iron pipe. Her output of coke makes one train ten miles long every day throughout the year. Seven hundred passenger trains and ten thousand loaded freight cars run to and from her terminals every day. Nowhere else in the world is there so large a Bessemer-steel plant, crucible-steel plant, plate-glass plant, chimney-glass plant, table-glass plant, air-brake plant, steel-rail plant, cork works, tube works, or steel freight-car works. Her armor sheaths our battle-ships, as well as those of Russia and Japan. She equips the navies of the world with projectiles and range-finders. Her bridges span the rivers of India, China, Egypt, and the Argentine Republic; and her locomotives, rails, and bridges are used on the Siberian Railroad. She builds electric railways for Great Britain and Brazil, and telescopes for Germany and Denmark. Indeed, she distributes her varied manufactures into the channels of trade all over the earth.

INTELLECTUAL

I

But while these stupendous industries have given Pittsburgh her wealth, population, supremacy, and power, commercial materialism is not the _ultima thule_ of her people.

Travelers who come to Pittsburgh, forgetting the smoke which often dims the blue splendor of its skies, are struck with the picturesque situation of the town, for they find rolling plateaus, wide rivers, and narrow valleys dropping down from high hills or precipitous bluffs throughout the whole district over which the city extends. Yet the surpassing beauty of nature is not more impressive to the thinking stranger than the work of man who has created and dominates a vast industrial system. The manufactories extend for miles along the banks of all three rivers. Red fires rise heavenward from gigantic forges where iron is being fused into wealth. The business section of the city is wedged in by the rivers, its streets are swarming with people, and there is a myriad of retail houses, wholesale houses, banks, tall office buildings, hotels, theaters, and railway terminals; but right where these stop the residence section begins like another city of happy homes--an immense garden of verdant trees and flowering lawns divided off by beautiful avenues, where some houses rise which in Europe would be called castles and palaces, with scarce a fence between to mark the land lines, giving an aspect almost of a park rather than of a city. There are many miles of asphalt streets set off with grass plots. On the rolling hills above the Monongahela River is Schenley Park (about four hundred and forty acres) with beautiful drives, winding bridle paths, and shady walks through narrow valleys and over small streams. Above the Allegheny River is Highland Park (about two hundred and ninety acres), containing a placid lake and commanding fine views from the summits of its great hills. It also contains a very interesting zoölogical garden. Close to Schenley Park are Homewood and Calvary Cemeteries and near Highland Park is Allegheny Cemetery, where the dead sleep amidst drooping willows and shading elms. Connecting the two parks and leading to them from the downtown section is a system of wide boulevards about twenty miles in length. On the North Side (once Allegheny) is Riverview Park (two hundred and seventeen acres), in which the Allegheny Observatory is situated. A large number of handsome bridges span the rivers. The Pittsburgh Country Club provides a broad expanse of rolling acres for pastoral sports.

II

In Schenley Park is the Carnegie Institute, with its new main building, dedicated in April (11, 12, and 13), 1907, with imposing ceremonies which were attended by several hundred prominent men from America and Europe. This building, which is about six hundred feet long and four hundred feet wide, contains a library, an art gallery, halls of architecture and sculpture, a museum, and a hall of music; while the Carnegie Technical Schools are operated in separate buildings near by. It is built in the later Renaissance style, being very simple and yet beautiful. Its exterior is of Ohio sandstone, while its interior finish is largely in marble, of which there are sixty-five varieties, brought from every famous quarry in the world. In its great entrance hall is a series of mural decorations by John W. Alexander, a distinguished son of Pittsburgh. The library, in which the institution had its beginning in 1895, contains about 300,000 volumes, has seven important branches, and one hundred and seventy-seven stations for the distribution of books. Mr. Edwin H. Anderson inaugurated the library at the time of its creation, and, after several years of successful service, was followed by Mr. Anderson H. Hopkins, and he by Mr. Harrison W. Craver, who is now the efficient librarian. The Fine Arts department contains many casts of notable works of architecture and sculpture, sufficient to carry the visitor in fancy through an almost unbroken development from the earliest times in which man began to produce beautiful structures to the present day. It is now the aim of this department to develop its galleries on three lines: first, to gather early American paintings from the very beginning of art in this country; second, to acquire such portraits of eminent men as will, in the passage of years, make these halls to some extent a national portrait gallery; and, third, to obtain such pieces of contemporary art as will lead to the formation of a thoroughly representative collection of modern painting. The Art Gallery is already rich in this latter purpose, and is renowned for its annual competitive exhibits which are open to the artists of all countries for prizes offered by the Carnegie Institute. Mr. John W. Beatty, Director of Fine Arts, has made the building up of this department his ripest and best work. The Museum embraces sections of paleontology, mineralogy, vertebrate and invertebrate zoölogy, entomology, botany, comparative anatomy, archæology, numismatics, ceramics, textiles, transportation, carvings in wood and ivory, historical collections, the useful arts, and biological sciences. Its work in the department of paleontology is particularly noteworthy as it has extended the boundaries of knowledge through its many explorations in the western fossil fields. The success of the Museum is largely due to the energy and erudition of Dr. W. J. Holland, its amiable director. In the music-hall, a symphony orchestra is maintained, and free recitals are given on the great organ twice every week by a capable performer. When the orchestra began its work thirteen years ago, it is doubtful if there were very many persons in Pittsburgh, other than musical students, who knew the difference between a symphony, a suite, a concerto, and a fugue. To-day there are thousands of people in this city who can intelligently describe the shading differences in the Ninth Symphony and give good reasons for their preference as between the two movements of the "Unfinished." The first conductor of the orchestra was Frederic Archer, for three years, who was followed by Victor Herbert, for three years, and then came Emil Paur, who is now in charge. The Technical Schools embrace a School of Applied Science, a School for Apprentices and Journeymen, a School of Applied Design, and a School for Women, and already possess a capable faculty of one hundred and fifteen members, and a student body numbering 1,916. Dr. Arthur A. Hamerschlag is an enthusiastic and capable director of this educational scheme. The Institute is governed by a Board of Trustees, of which William N. Frew is President, Robert Pitcairn, Vice President, Samuel Harden Church, Secretary, and James H. Reed, Treasurer. Charles C. Mellor is chairman of the Museum committee, John Caldwell, of the Fine Arts committee, George A. Macbeth, of the Library committee, and William McConway, of the Technical Schools committee.

The annual celebration of Founder's Day at the Carnegie Institute has become one of the most notable platform occasions in America, made so by the illustrious men who participate in the exercises. Some of these distinguished orators are William McKinley and Grover Cleveland, former Presidents of the United States; John Morley and James Bryce, foremost among British statesmen and authors; Joseph Jefferson, a beloved actor; Richard Watson Gilder, editor and poet; Wu Ting Fang, Chinese diplomat, and Whitelaw Reid, editor and ambassador. At the great dedication of the new building, in April, 1907, the celebration of Founder's Day surpassed all previous efforts, being marked by the assembling of an illustrious group of men, and the delivery of a series of addresses, which made the festival altogether beyond precedent. On that occasion there came to Pittsburgh, as the guests of the Institute, from France, Dr. Leonce Bénédite, Director Musée du Luxembourg; Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, Member of the French Senate and of the Hague Court of Arbitration; Dr. Paul Doumer, late Governor-General of Cochin China, and Dr. Camille Enlart, Director of the Trocadero Museum; from Germany, upon the personal suggestion of his Majesty, Emperor William II, His Excellency Lieutenant-General Alfred von Loewenfeld, Adjutant-General to his Majesty the Emperor; Colonel Gustav Dickhuth, Lecturer on Military Science to the Royal Household; Dr. Ernst von Ihne, Hof-Architekt Sr. Maj. d. Kaisers; Dr. Reinhold Koser, Principal Director of the Prussian State Archives, and Prof. Dr. Fritz Schaper, sculptor; from Great Britain, Mr. William Archer, author and critic; Sir Robert S. Ball, Director of Cambridge Observatory; Dr. C. F. Moberly Bell, manager London "Times"; Sir Robert Cranston, late Lord Provost of Edinburgh; Sir Edward Elgar, composer; Mr. James Currie Macbeth, Provost of Dunfermline; Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell, Secretary Zoölogical Society of London; Sir William Henry Preece, Consulting Engineer to the G. P. O. and Colonies; Dr. John Rhys, Principal of Jesus College, University of Oxford; Dr. Ernest S. Roberts, Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University; Mr. William Robertson, Member Dunfermline Trust; Dr. John Ross, Chairman Dunfermline Trust, and Dr. William T. Stead, editor "Review of Reviews"; and from Holland, Jonkheer R. de Marees van Swinderen, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States, and Dr. Joost Marius Willem van der Poorten-Schwartz ("Maarten Maartens"), author.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie has founded this splendid Institute, with its school system, at a cost already approximating twenty million dollars, and he must enjoy the satisfaction of knowing it to be the rallying ground for the cultured and artistic life of the community. The progress made each year goes by leaps and bounds; so much so that we might well employ the phrase used by Macaulay to describe Lord Bacon's philosophy: "The point which was yesterday invisible is to-day its starting-point, and to-morrow will be its goal." The Institute has truly a splendid mission.

III

The University of Pittsburgh was opened about 1770 and incorporated by the Legislature in 1787 under the name Pittsburgh Academy. In 1819 the name was changed to the Western University of Pennsylvania, but, holding to the narrower scope of a college, it did not really become a university until 1892, when it formed the Department of Medicine by taking over the Western Pennsylvania Medical College. In 1895 the Departments of Law and Pharmacy were added and women were for the first time admitted. In 1896 the Department of Dentistry was established. In 1908 (July 11th) the name was changed to the University of Pittsburgh. The several departments of the University are at present (1908) located in different parts of the city, but a new site of forty-three acres has been acquired near Schenley Park on which it is planned to bring them all together. These new plans have been drawn under the direction of the chancellor, Dr. Samuel Black McCormick, whose faith in the merit of his cause is bound to remove whole mountains of financial difficulties. The University embraces a College and Engineering School, a School of Mines, a Graduate Department, a Summer School, Evening Classes, Saturday Classes, besides Departments of Astronomy, Law, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry. It now has a corps of one hundred and fifty-one instructors and a body of 1,138 students.

IV

The author ventures to repeat in this little book a suggestion which has been made by him several times, looking to a working coöperation or even a closer bond of union between the Carnegie Institute and the University of Pittsburgh. In an address delivered at the Carnegie Institute on Founder's Day, 1908, the author made the following remarks on this subject:

The temptation to go a little further into the future first requires the acknowledgment which St. Paul made when he wrote of marriage: "I speak not by authority, but by sufferance." There will soon begin to rise on these adjacent heights the first new buildings of the Western University (now University of Pittsburgh), conceived in the classic spirit of Greece and crowning that hill like a modern Acropolis. With its charter dating back one hundred and twenty-five years the University is already venerable in this land. Is it not feasible to hope that through the practical benevolence of our people, some working basis of union can be effected between that institution and this? Here we have painting, and sculpture, and architecture, and books, and a wonderfully rich scientific collection, and the abiding spirit of music. We have these fast-growing Technical Schools. And yet the entire scheme seems to be lacking something which marks its unfinished state. The Technical Schools do not and should not teach languages, literature, philosophy, and the fine arts, nor the old learned professions, but these must always rest in the University. Should not one school thus supplement the other? And then, the students on each side of this main building would find available here those great collections which, if properly demonstrated, would give them a larger opportunity for systematic culture than could be offered by any other community in the world. For we should no longer permit these great departments of the fine arts and of the sciences to remain in a passive state, but they should all be made the means of active instruction from masterful professors. Music, its theory, composition, and performance on every instrument should be taught where demonstrations could be made with the orchestra and the organ. Successful painters and sculptors, the elected members of the future faculty, should fix their studios near the Institute and teach painting and sculpture as well as it could be done in Paris or Munich. Architecture should thrive by the hand of its trained votaries, while science should continue to reveal the secrets of her most attractive mysteries. Then, as the ambitious youths of the ancient world came to Athens to obtain the purest culture of that age, so would our modern youths, who are already in the Carnegie Technical Schools from twenty-six States, continue to come to Pittsburgh to partake of the most comprehensive scheme of education which the world would obtain. Believing firmly in the achieving power of hopeful thought, I pray you think on this.

V

In the East End is the Pennsylvania College for Women (Presbyterian; chartered in 1869), which has one hundred and two students. On the North Side (Allegheny) are the Allegheny Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian; founded in 1825), which has six instructors and sixty-one students; the Western Theological Seminary (Presbyterian; opened in 1827), with sixty-four students and twelve instructors, and a library of 34,000 volumes; and the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (founded in 1856). There are five high schools and a normal academy and also the following private academies: Pittsburgh Academy, for both boys and girls; East Liberty Academy, for boys; Lady of Mercy Academy, for girls and for boys in the lower grades; the Stuart-Mitchell School, for girls; the Gleim School, for girls; the Thurston School, for girls; and the Ursuline Young Ladies' Academy.

The Phipps Conservatory (horticulture), the largest in America, and the Hall of Botany are in Schenley Park and were built by Mr. Henry Phipps. There is an interesting zoölogical garden in Highland Park which was founded by Mr. Christopher L. Magee.

The Pittsburgh "Gazette," founded July 29, 1786, and consolidated with the Pittsburgh "Times" (1879) in 1906 as the "Gazette Times," is one of the oldest newspapers west of the Alleghany Mountains. Other prominent newspapers of the city are the "Chronicle Telegraph" (1841); "Post" (1842); "Dispatch" (1846); "Leader" (1870; Sunday, 1864); "Press" (1883); and the "Sun" (1906). There are also two German dailies, the "Volksblatt und Freiheits-Freund" and the "Pittsburgher Beobachter," one Slavonic daily, one Slavonic weekly, two Italian weeklies, besides journals devoted to society and the iron, building, and glass trades. The publishing house of the United Presbyterian Church is located here, and there are several periodical journals published by the various religious bodies.

The city has some very attractive public buildings and office buildings and an unusual number of beautiful churches. The Allegheny County Court-House, in the Romanesque style, erected in 1884-88 at a cost of $2,500,000, is one of Henry H. Richardson's masterpieces. The Nixon Theater is a notable piece of architecture. The Post-Office and the Customs Office are housed in a large Government building of polished granite.

The city has twenty or more hospitals for the care of its sick, injured, or insane, ten of which have schools for the training of nurses. There is the Western Pennsylvania Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb in Pittsburgh, which is in part maintained by the State, where trades are taught as a part of the educational system. The State also helps to maintain the Western Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind, the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Women, and the Home for Colored Children. Among other charitable institutions maintained by the city are the Home for Orphans, Home for the Aged, Home for Released Convicts, an extensive system of public baths, the Curtis Home for Destitute Women and Girls, the Pittsburgh Newsboys' Home, the Children's Aid Society of Western Pennsylvania, the Protestant Home for Incurables, the Pittsburgh Association for the Improvement of the Poor, and the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Children, and Aged Persons. Under the management of Women's Clubs several playgrounds are open to children during the summer, where competent teachers give instruction to children over ten years of age in music, manual training, sewing, cooking, nature study, and color work.

The water supply of Pittsburgh is taken from the Allegheny River and pumped into reservoirs, the highest of which is Herron Hill, five hundred and thirty feet above the river. A slow sand filtration plant for the filtration of the entire supply is under construction and a part of it is in operation. In this last year the Legislature has passed an act prohibiting the deposit of sewage material in the rivers of the State, and this tardy action in the interest of decency and health will stop the ravages of death through epidemic fevers caught from poisoned streams.

VI

Pittsburgh maintains by popular support one of the four symphony orchestras in America. She has given many famous men to science, literature, and art. Her astronomical observatory is known throughout the world. Her rich men are often liberal beyond their own needs, particularly so William Thaw, who spent great sums for education and benevolence; Mrs. Mary Schenley, who has given the city a great park, over four hundred acres in the very heart of its boundaries; and Henry Phipps, who erected the largest conservatory for plants and flowers in our country. There is one other, Andrew Carnegie, whose wise and continuous use of vast wealth for the public good is nearly beyond human precedent.

If Pittsburgh people were called upon to name their best known singer, they would, of course, with one accord, say Stephen C. Foster. His songs are verily written in the hearts of millions of his fellow-creatures, for who has not sung "Old Folks at Home," "Nelly Bly," "My Old Kentucky Home," and the others? Ethelbert Nevin is the strongest name among our musical composers, his "Narcissus," "The Rosary," and many others being known throughout the world.

Charles Stanley Reinhart, Mary Cassatt, and John W. Alexander are the best known among our painters. Henry O. Tanner, the only negro painter, was born in Pittsburgh and learned the rudiments of his art here. Albert S. Wall, his son, A. Bryan Wall, George Hetzel, and John W. Beatty have painted good pictures, as have another group which includes William A. Coffin, Martin B. Leisser, Jaspar Lawman, Eugene A. Poole, Joseph R. Woodwell, William H. Singer, Clarence M. Johns, and Johanna Woodwell Hailman. Thomas S. Clarke is a Pittsburgh painter and sculptor. Philander C. Knox, United States Senator, and John Dalzell, member of the House of Representatives, are prominent among those who have served Pittsburgh ably in the National Government.

VII