CHAPTER XLII

The Dawn of the Twentieth Century

The Century's Wonderful Stages--Progress in Education--The Education of Women--Occupation and Suffrage for Women--Peace Proposition of the Emperor of Russia--The Peace Conference at The Hague--Progress in Science--Political Evolution--Territorial Progress of the Nations--Probable Future of English Speech--A Telephone Newspaper--Among the Dull-Minded Peoples--Limitations to Progress--Probable Lines of Future Activity--Industry in the Twentieth Century--The King, the Priest and the Cash Box--The New Psychology 617

LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

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Progress of the Nineteenth Century _Frontispiece_

Duke of Chartres at the Battle of Jemappes 21

Battle of Chateau-Gontier 22

Death of Marat 31

Last Victims of the Reign of Terror 32

Marie Antoinette Led to Execution 37

The Battle of Rivoli 38

Napoleon Crossing the Alps 47

Napoleon and the Mummy of Pharaoh 48

Napoleon Bonaparte 53

The Meeting of Two Sovereign 54

The Death of Admiral Nelson 59

Murat at the Battle of Jena 60

The Battle of Eylau 69

The Battle of Friedland 70

The Order to Charge at Friedland 79

Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia at Tilsit 80

Marshal Ney Retreating from Russia 89

General Blücher's Fall at Ligny 90

The Battle of Dresden, August 26 and 27, 1813 94

Famous English Novelists 95

The Eve of Waterloo 99

Wellington at Waterloo Giving the Word to Advance 100

Retreat of Napoleon from Waterloo 109

The Remnant of an Army 110

Illustrious Leaders of England's Navy and Army 119

James Watt, the Father of the Steam Engine 120

Great English Historians and Prose Writers 129

Famous Popes of the Century 130

Great English Statesmen (Plate I) 139

Britain's Sovereign and Heir Apparent to the Throne 140

Popular Writers of Fiction In England 149

Great English Statesmen (Plate II) 150

Potentates of the East 159

Landing in the Crimea and the Battle of Alma 160

The Congress at Berlin, June 13, 1878 169

The Wounding of General Bosquet 170

The Battle of Champigny 179

Noble Sons of Poland and Hungary 180

Noted French Authors 189

Napoleon III. at the Battle of Solferino 190

Great Italian Patriots 199

The Zouaves Charging the Barricades at Mentana 200

Noted German Emperors 209

Renowned Sons of Germany 210

The Storming of Garsbergschlosschen 219

Crown Prince Frederick at the Battle of Froschwiller 220

Present Kings of Four Countries 229

Great Men of Modern France 230

Russia's Royal Family and Her Literary Leader 257

Four Champions of Ireland's Cause 258

Dreyfus, His Accusers and Defenders 281

The Dreyfus Trial 282

The Bombardment of Alexandria 291

Battle Between England and the Zulus, South Africa 292

The Battle of Majuba Hill, South Africa 301

Two Opponents in the Transvaal War 302

Typical American Novelists 307

Two Powerful Men of the Orient 308

Four American Presidents 409

Great American Orators and Statesmen 410

The Battle of Resaca de la Palma 419

Great American Historians and Biographers 420

Great Men of the Civil War in America 445

The Attack on Fort Donelson 446

General Lee's Invasion of the North 455

The Sinking of the Alabama, etc. 456

The Surrender of General Lee 465

The Electoral Commission Which Decided Upon Election of President Hayes 466

Prominent American Political Leaders 475

Noted American Journalists and Magazine Contributors 476

The U.S. Battleship "Oregon" 483

In the War-Room at Washington 484

Leading Commanders of the American Navy, Spanish-American War 487

Leading Commanders of the American Army 488

Prominent Spaniards in 1898 497

Popular Heroes of the Spanish-American War 498

The Surrender of Santiago 501

United States Peace Commissioners of the Spanish-American War 502

Illustrious Sons of Canada 521

Great Explorers in the Tropics and Arctics 522

Inventors of the Locomotive and the Electric Telegraph 539

Edison Perfecting the First Phonograph 540

The Hero of the Strike, Coal Creek, Tenn. 557

Arbitration 558

Illustrious Men of Science in the Nineteenth Century 575

Pasteur in His Laboratory 576

Great Poets of England 589

Great American Poets 590

Count Tolstoi at Literary Work 603

New Congressional Library at Washington, D. C. 604

Famous Cardinals of the Century 615

Noted Preachers and Writers of Religious Classics 616

Greater New York 629

Delegates to the Universal Peace Conference at The Hague, 1899 630

Key to above 631

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF PORTRAITS

PAGE

Abbott, Lyman 476 Adams, John Quincy 409 Agassiz, Louis 575 Aguinaldo, Emilio 308 Albert Edward, (Prince of Wales) 140 Austin, Alfred 589

Balfour, A. J. 150 Bancroft, George 420 Barrie, James M. 149 Beecher, Henry Ward 410 Besant, Walter 149 Bismarck, Karl Otto Von 210 Black, William 149 Blaine, James G. 475 Blanco, Ramon 497 Bright, John 139 Browning, Robert 589 Bryan, William Jennings 475 Bryant, William Cullen 590 Bryce, James 150

Caine, T. Hall 149 Carlyle, Thomas 129 Cervera, (Admiral) 497 Chamberlain, Joseph 302 Christian IX, (King of Denmark) 229 Clay, Henry 410 Cleveland, Grover 475 Cooper, James Fenimore 307

Dana, Charles A. 476 Darwin, Charles 575 Davis, Cushman K. 502 Davis, Richard Harding 476 Davitt, Michael 258 Day, William R. 502 DeLesseps, Ferdinand 230 Depew, Chauncey M. 410 Dewey, George 487 Dickens, Charles 95 Disraeli, Benjamin 139 Dreyfus, (Captain), Alfred 281 Doyle, A. Conan 149 Drummond, Henry 616 Dumas, Alexander 189 DuMaurier, George 149

Eggleston, Edward 307 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 590 Esterhazy, Count Ferdinand W. 281 Everett, Edward 410

Farrar, Frederick W., (Canon) 616 Francis Joseph, (Emperor of Austria) 229 Froude, Richard H. 129 Frye, William P. 502

Gambetta, Leon 230 Garibaldi, Guiseppe 199 Gibbon, Edward 129 Gladstone, William Ewart 139 Gough, John B. 410 Grady, Henry W. 410 Grant, Ulysses S. 445 Gray, George 502 Greeley, Horace 476

Hale, Edward Everett 307 Halstead, Murat 476 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 307 Hawthorne, Julian 476 Healy, T. M. 258 Henry, Patrick 410 Henry, Lieutenant-Colonel 281 Hobson, Richmond Pearson 498 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 590 Howells, William Dean 307 Hugo, Victor 189 Humbert, (King of Italy) 229 Humboldt, F. H. Alexander von 575 Huxley, Thomas H. 575

Jackson, Andrew 409 Jefferson, Thomas 409

Kipling, Rudyard 149 Kosciusko, Thaddeus 180 Kossuth, Louis 180 Kruger, Paul 302

Labori, Maitre 281 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid 521 Lee, Robert E. 445 Lee, Fitzhugh 488 Leo XIII., (Pope) 130 Li Hung Chang 308 Lincoln, Abraham 445 Livingstone, David 522 Longfellow, Henry W. 590 Loubet (President of France) 230 Lowell, James Russell 590 Lytton, (Lord) Bulwer 95

McCarthy, Justin 150 Macaulay, Thomas B. 129 MacDonald, Sir John A. 521 MacDonald, George 149 McKinley, William 475 McMaster, John B. 420 Manning, Henry Edward (Cardinal) 615 Mercier, (General of French Army) 281 Merritt, Wesley 488 Miles, Nelson A. 488 Moltke, H. Karl B. von 210 Morley, John 150 Morse, Samuel F. B. 539 Motley, John L. 420

Nansen, (Dr.) Frithiof 522 Napoleon Bonaparte 53 Nelson, (Lord) Horatio 119 Newman, John Henry (Cardinal) 615 Nicholas II. and Family, (Czar of Russia) 257

O'Brien, William 258 Oscar II., (King of Sweden and Norway) 229 Otis, Elwell S. 498

Parnell, Charles Stewart 258 Parton, James 420 Pasteur, Louis, in his Laboratory 576 Peary, Lieutenant R. E. 522 Phillips, Wendell 410 Pitt, William, (Earl of Chatham) 139 Pius IX., (Pope) 130 Prescott, William H. 420

Reid, Whitelaw 476 Rios, Montero 497 Roosevelt, Theodore 498 Ruskin, John 129

Sagasta, Praxedes Mateo 497 Sampson, William T. 487 Schley, Winfield Scott 487 Scott, Sir Walter 95 Shafter, William R. 488 Shah of Persia 150 Shaw, Albert W. 476 Shelley, Percy B. 589 Sherman, William T. 445 Spurgeon, Charles H. 616 Stanley, Henry M. 522 Stephenson, George 539 Stevenson, Robert Louis 149 Sultan of Turkey 159

Taylor, Zachary 409 Tennyson, Alfred 589 Thackeray, William Makepeace 95 Thiers, Louis Adolphe 230 Thompson, Hon. J. S. D. 521 Tolstoi, Count Lyof Nikolaievitch 603 Trollope, Anthony 95 Tupper, Sir Charles 521

Victor Emmanuel (King of Italy) 199 Victoria (Queen of England) 140

Wallace, General Lew 307 Watson, John (Ian Maclaren) 616 Watson, John Crittenden 487 Watt, James 120 Watterson, Henry W. 476 Webster, Daniel 410 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, (Duke) 119 Wheeler, Joseph 498 Whittier, John G. 590 William I., Emperor of Germany 209 William II., Emperor of Germany 209 Wordsworth, William 589

INTRODUCTION.

It is the story of a hundred years that we propose to give; the record of the noblest and most marvelous century in the annals of mankind. Standing here, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, as at the summit of a lofty peak of time, we may gaze far backward over the road we have traversed, losing sight of its minor incidents, but seeing its great events loom up in startling prominence before our eyes; heedless of its thronging millions, but proud of those mighty men who have made the history of the age and rise like giants above the common throng. History is made up of the deeds of great men and the movements of grand events, and there is no better or clearer way to tell the marvelous story of the Nineteenth Century than to put upon record the deeds of its heroes and to describe the events and achievements in which reside the true history of the age.

First of all, in this review, it is important to show in what the greatness of the century consists, to contrast its beginning and its ending, and point out the stages of the magnificent progress it has made. It is one thing to declare that the Nineteenth has been the greatest and most glorious of the centuries; it is another and more arduous task to trace the development of this greatness and the culmination of this career of glory. This it is that we shall endeavor to do in the pages of this work. All of us have lived in the century here described, many of us through a great part of it, some of us, possibly, through the whole of it. It is in the fullest sense our own century, one of which we have a just right to feel proud, and in whose career all of us must take a deep and vital interest.

[=A Bird's-Eye View=]

Before entering upon the history of the age it is well to take a bird's-eye view of it, and briefly present its claims to greatness. They are many and mighty, and can only be glanced at in these introductory pages; it would need volumes to show them in full. They cover every field of human effort. They have to do with political development, the relations of capital and labor, invention, science, literature, production, commerce, and a dozen other life interests, all of which will be considered in this work. The greatness of the world's progress can be most clearly shown by pointing out the state of affairs in the several branches of human effort at the opening and closing of the century and placing them in sharp contrast. This it is proposed to do in this introductory sketch.

[=Tyranny and Oppression in the Eighteenth Century=]

A hundred years ago the political aspect of the world was remarkably different from what it is now. Kings, many of them, were tyrants; peoples, as a rule, were slaves--in fact, if not in name. The absolute government of the Middle Ages had been in a measure set aside, but the throne had still immense power, and between the kings and the nobles the people were crushed like grain between the upper and nether millstones. Tyranny spread widely; oppression was rampant; poverty was the common lot; comfort was confined to the rich; law was merciless; punishment for trifling offences was swift and cruel; the broad sentiment of human fellowship had just begun to develop; the sun of civilization shone only on a narrow region of the earth, beyond which barbarism and savagery prevailed.

In 1800, the government of the people had just fairly begun. Europe had two small republics, Switzerland and the United Netherlands, and in the West the republic of the United States was still in its feeble youth. The so-called republic of France was virtually the kingdom of Napoleon, the autocratic First Consul, and those which he had founded elsewhere were the slaves of his imperious will. Government almost everywhere was autocratic and arbitrary. In Great Britain, the freest of the monarchies, the king's will could still set aside law and justice in many instances and parliament represented only a tithe of the people. Not only was universal suffrage unknown, but some of the greatest cities of the kingdom had no voice in making the laws.

[=Government and the Rights of Man in 1900=]

In 1900, a century later, vast changes had taken place in the political world. The republic of the United States had grown from a feeble infant into a powerful giant, and its free system of government had spread over the whole great continent of America. Every independent nation of the West had become a republic and Canada still a British colony, was a republic in almost everything but the name. In Europe, France was added to the list of firmly-founded republics, and throughout that continent, except in Russia and Turkey, the power of the monarchs had declined, that of the people had advanced. In 1800, the kings almost everywhere seemed firmly seated on their thrones. In 1900, the thrones everywhere were shaking, and the whole moss-grown institution of kingship was trembling over the rising earthquake of the popular will.

[=Suffrage and Human Freedom=]

The influence of the people in the government had made a marvelous advance. The right of suffrage, greatly restricted in 1800, had become universal in most of the civilized lands at the century's end. Throughout the American continent every male citizen had the right of voting. The same was the case in most of western Europe, and even in far-off Japan, which a century before had been held under a seemingly helpless tyranny. Human slavery, which held captive millions upon millions of men and women in 1800, had vanished from the realms of civilization in 1900, and a vigorous effort was being made to banish it from every region of the earth. As will be seen from this hasty retrospect, the rights of man had made a wonderful advance during the century, far greater than in any other century of human history.

[=Criminal Law and Prison Discipline in 1800=]

In the feeling of human fellowship, the sentiment of sympathy and benevolence, the growth of altruism, or love for mankind, there had been an equal progress. At the beginning of the century law was stern, justice severe, punishment frightfully cruel. Small offences met with severe retribution. Men were hung for a dozen crimes which now call for only a light punishment. Thefts which are now thought severely punished by a year or two in prison then often led to the scaffold. Men are hung now, in the most enlightened nations, only for murder. Then they were hung for fifty crimes, some so slight as to seem petty. A father could not steal a loaf of bread for his starving children except at peril of a long term of imprisonment, or, possibly, of death on the scaffold.

And imprisonment then was a different affair from what it is now. The prisons of that day were often horrible dens, noisome, filthy, swarming with vermin, their best rooms unfit for human residence, their worst dungeons a hell upon earth. This not only in the less advanced nations, but even in enlightened England. Newgate Prison, in London, for instance, was a sink of iniquity, its inmates given over to the cruel hands of ruthless gaolers, forced to pay a high price for the least privilege, and treated worse than brute cattle if destitute of money and friends. And these were not alone felons who had broken some of the many criminal laws, but men whose guilt was not yet proved, and poor debtors whose only crime was their misfortune. And all this in England, with its boast of high civilization. The people were not ignorant of the condition of the prisons; Parliament was appealed to a dozen times to remedy the horrors of the jails; yet many years passed before it could be induced to act.

[=Prisons and Punishment in 1900=]

Compare this state of criminal law and prison discipline with that of the present day. Then cruel punishments were inflicted for small offences; now the lightest punishments compatible with the well-being of the community are the rule. The sentiment of human compassion has become strong and compelling; it is felt in the courts as well as among the people; public opinion has grown powerful, and a punishment to-day too severe for the crime would be visited with universal condemnation. The treatment of felons has been remarkably ameliorated. The modern prison is a palace as compared with that of a century ago. The terrible jail fever which swept through the old-time prisons like a pestilence, and was more fatal to their inmates than the gallows, has been stamped out. The idea of sanitation has made its way into the cell and the dungeon, cleanliness is enforced, the frightful crowding of the past is not permitted, prisoners are given employment, they are not permitted to infect one another with vice or disease, kindness instead of cruelty is the rule, and in no direction has the world made a greater and more radical advance.

[=The Factory System and the Oppression of the Workingman=]

A century ago labor was sadly oppressed. The factory system had recently begun. The independent hand and home work of the earlier centuries was being replaced by power and machine work. The steam-engine and the labor-saving machine, while bringing blessings to mankind, had brought curses also. Workmen were crowded into factories and mines, and were poorly paid, ill-treated, ill-housed, over-worked. Innocent little children were forced to perform hard labor when they should have been at play or at school. The whole system was one of white slavery of the most oppressive kind.

To-day this state of affairs no longer exists. Wages have risen, the hours of labor have decreased, the comfort of the artisan has grown, what were once luxuries beyond his reach have now become necessaries of life. Young children are not permitted to work, and older ones not beyond their strength. With the influences which have brought this about we are not here concerned. Their consideration must be left to a later chapter. It is enough here to state the important development that has taken place.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of the nineteenth century has been in the domain of invention. For ages past men have been aiding the work of their hands with the work of their brains. But the progress of invention continued slow and halting, and many tools centuries old were in common use until the nineteenth century dawned. The steam-engine came earlier, and it is this which has stimulated all the rest. A power was given to man enormously greater than that of his hands, and he at once began to devise means of applying it. Several of the important machines used in manufacture were invented before 1800, but it was after that year that the great era of invention began, and words are hardly strong enough to express the marvelous progress which has since taken place.

[=The Era of Wonderful Inventions=]

To attempt to name all the inventions of the nineteenth century would be like writing a dictionary. Those of great importance might be named by the hundreds; those which have proved epoch-making by the dozens. To manufacture, to agriculture, to commerce, to all fields of human labor, they extend, and their name is legion. Standing on the summit of this century and looking backward, its beginning appears pitifully poor and meager. Around us to-day are hundreds of busy workshops, filled with machinery, pouring out finished products with extraordinary speed, men no longer makers of goods, but waiters upon machines. In the fields the grain is planted and harvested, the grass cut and gathered, the ground ploughed and cultivated, everything done by machines. Looking back for a century, what do we see? Men in the fields with the scythe and the sickle, in the barn with the flail, working the ground with rude old ploughs and harrows, doing a hundred things painfully by hand which now they do easily and rapidly by machines. Verily the rate of progress on the farm has been marvelous.

[=The Fate of the Horse and the Sail=]

The above are only a few of the directions of the century's progress. In some we may name, the development has been more extraordinary still. Let us consider the remarkable advance in methods of travel. In the year 1800, as for hundreds and even thousands of years before, the horse was the fastest means known of traveling by land, the sail of traveling by sea. A hundred years more have passed over our heads, and what do we behold? On all sides the powerful, and swift locomotive, well named the iron-horse, rushes onward, bound for the ends of the earth, hauling men and goods to right and left with a speed and strength that would have seemed magical to our forefathers. On the ocean the steam engine performs the same service, carrying great ships across the Atlantic in less than a week, and laughing at the puny efforts of the sail. The horse, for ages indispensable to man, is threatened with banishment. Electric power has been added to that of steam. The automobile carriage is coming to take the place of the horse carriage. The steam plough is replacing the horse plough. The time seems approaching when the horse will cease to be seen in our streets, and may be relegated to the zoological garden.

In the conveyance of news the development is more like magic than fact. A century ago news could not be transported faster than the horse could run or the ship could sail. Now the words of men can be carried through space faster than one can breathe. By the aid of the telephone a man can speak to his friend a thousand miles away. And with the phonograph we can, as it were, bottle up speech, to be spoken, if desired, a thousand years in the future. Had we whispered those things to our forefathers of a century past we should have been set down as wild romancers or insane fools, but now they seem like every-day news.

These are by no means all the marvels of the century. At its beginning the constitution of the atmosphere had been recently discovered. In the preceding period it was merely known as a mysterious gas called air. To-day we can carry this air about in buckets like so much water, or freeze it into a solid like ice. In its gaseous state it has long been used as the power to move ships and windmills. In its liquid state it may also soon become a leading source of power, and in a measure replace steam, the great power of the century before.

[=Education, Discovery and Commerce=]

In what else does the beginning of the twentieth stand far in advance of that of the nineteenth century? We may contrast the tallow candle with the electric light, the science of to-day with that of a century ago, the methods and the extension of education and the dissemination of books with those of the year 1800. Discovery and colonization of the once unknown regions of the world have gone on with marvelous speed. The progress in mining has been enormous, and the production of gold in the nineteenth century perhaps surpasses that of all previous time. Production of all kinds has enormously increased, and commerce now extends to the utmost regions of the earth, bearing the productions of all climes to the central seats of civilization, and supplying distant and savage tribes with the products of the loom and the mine.

Such is a hasty review of the condition of affairs at the end of the nineteenth century as compared with that existing at its beginning. No effort has been made here to cover the entire field, but enough has been said to show the greatness of the world's progress, and we may fairly speak of this century as the Glorious Nineteenth.