Part 18

To the country at large Springfield is distinguished as the home of Abraham Lincoln to an extent perhaps not fully realized by the residents of the growing capital, with its ever new interests. And I was perhaps unreasonably disappointed in not finding that sense of his personality that I expected. It is, indeed, emphasized by statues in the Capitol and by the great mausoleum in the cemetery—an imposing structure, with an excellent statue in bronze, and four groups, relating to the civil war, of uncommon merit. But this great monumental show does not satisfy the personal longing of which I speak. Nor is the Lincoln residence much more satisfactory in this respect. The plain two-story wooden house has been presented to the State by his son Robert, and is in charge of a custodian. And although the parlor is made a show-room and full of memorials, there is no atmosphere of the man about it. On Lincoln’s departure for Washington the furniture was sold and the house rented, never to be again occupied by him. There is here nothing of that personal presence that clings to the Hermitage, to Marshfield, to Mount Vernon, to Monticello. Lincoln was given to the nation, and—a frequent occurrence in our uprooting business life—the home disappeared. Lincoln was honored and beloved in Springfield as a man, but perhaps some of the feeling towards him as a party leader still lingers, although it has disappeared almost everywhere else in the country. Nowhere else was the personal partisanship hotter than in this city, and it is hardly to be expected that political foes in this generation should quite comprehend the elevation of Lincoln, in the consenting opinion of the world, among the greatest characters of all ages. It has happened to Lincoln that every year and a more intimate knowledge of his character have added to his fame and to the appreciation of his moral grandeur. There is a natural desire to go to some spot pre-eminently sacred to his personality. This may be his birthplace. At any rate, it is likely that before many years Kentucky will be proud to distinguish in some way the spot where the life began of the most illustrious man born in its borders.

When we come to the capital of Indiana we have, in official language, to report progress. One reason assigned for the passing of emigrants through Indiana to Illinois was that the latter was a prairie country, more easily subdued than the more wooded region of Indiana. But it is also true that the sluggish, illiterate character of its early occupants turned aside the stream of Western emigration from its borders. There has been a great deal of philosophic speculation upon the acknowledged backwardness of civilization in Indiana, its slow development in institutions of education, and its slow change in rural life, compared with its sister States. But this concerns us less now than the awakening which is visible at the capital and in some of the northern towns. The forests of hard timber which were an early disadvantage are now an important element in the State industry and wealth. Recent developments of coal-fields and the discovery of natural gas have given an impetus to manufacturing, which will powerfully stimulate agriculture and traffic, and open a new career to the State.

Indianapolis, which stood still for some years in a reaction from real-estate speculation, is now a rapidly improving city, with a population of about 125,000. It is on the natural highway of the old National Turnpike, and its central location in the State, in the midst of a rich agricultural district, has made it the centre of fifteen railway lines, and of active freight and passenger traffic. These lines are all connected for freight purposes by a belt road, over which pass about 5000 freight cars daily. This belt road also does an enormous business for the stock-yards, and its convenient line is rapidly filling up with manufacturing establishments. As a consequence of these facilities the trade of the city in both wholesale and retail houses is good and increasing. With this increase of business there has been an accession of banking capital. The four national and two private banks have an aggregate capital of about three millions, and the Clearing-house report of 1887 showed a business of about one hundred millions, an increase of nearly fifty per cent, over the preceding year. But the individual prosperity is largely due to the building and loan associations, of which there are nearly one hundred, with an aggregate capital of seven millions, the loans of which exceed those of the banks. These take the place of savings-banks, encourage the purchase of homesteads, and are preventives of strikes and labor troubles in the factories.

The people of Indianapolis call their town a Park City. Occupying a level plain, its streets (the principal ones with a noble width of ninety feet) intersect each other at right angles; but in the centre of the city is a Circle Park of several acres, from which radiate to the four quarters of the town avenues ninety feet broad that relieve the monotony of the right lines. These streets are for the most part well shaded, and getting to be well paved, lined with pleasant but not ambitious residences, so that the whole aspect of the city is open and agreeable. The best residences are within a few squares of the most active business streets, and if the city has not the distinction of palaces, it has fewer poor and shabby quarters than most other towns of its size. In the Circle Park, Here now stands a statue of Governor Morton, is to be erected immediately the Soldiers’ Monument, at a cost of $250,000.

The city is fortunate in its public buildings. The County Court-house (which cost $1,000,000) and City Hall are both fine buildings; in the latter are the city markets, and above, a noble auditorium with seats for 4000 people. But the State Capitol, just finished within the appropriation of $2,000,000, is pre-eminent among State Capitols in many respects. It is built of the Bedford limestone, one of the best materials both for color and endurance found in the country. It follows the American plan of two wings and a dome; but it is finely proportioned; and the exterior, with rows of graceful Corinthian columns above the basement story, is altogether pleasing. The interior is spacious and impressive, the Chambers fine, the furnishing solid and in good taste, with nowhere any over-ornamentation or petty details to mar the general noble effect. The State Library contains, besides the law-books, about 20,000 miscellaneous volumes.

When Matthew Arnold first came to New York the place in the West about which he expressed the most curiosity was Indianapolis; that he said he must see, if no other city. He had no knowledge of the place, and could give no reason for his preference except that the name had always had a fascination for him. He found there, however, a very extensive book-store, where his own works were sold in numbers that pleased and surprised him. The shop has a large miscellaneous stock, and does a large jobbing and retail business, but the miscellaneous books dealt in are mostly cheap reprints of English works, with very few American copyright books. This is a significant comment on the languishing state of the market for works of American authors in the absence of an international copyright law.

The city is not behind any other in educational efforts. In its five free public libraries are over 70,000 volumes. The city has a hundred churches and a vigorous Young Men’s Christian Association, which cost $75,000. Its private schools have an excellent reputation. There are 20,000 children registered of school age, and 11,000 in daily attendance in twenty-eight free-school houses. In methods of efficacy these are equal to any in the Union, as is shown by the fact that there are reported in the city only 325 persons between the ages of six and twenty-one unable to read and write. The average cost of instruction for each pupil is $19.04 a year. In regard to advanced methods and manual training, Indianapolis schools claim to be pioneers.

The latest reports show educational activity in the State as well as in the capital. In 1880 the revenues expended in public schools were about $5,000,000. The State supports the Indiana University at Bloomington, with about 300 students, the Agricultural College at Lafayette, with over 300, and a normal school at Terre Haute, with an attendance of about 500. There are, besides, seventeen private colleges and several other normal schools. In 1886 the number of school-children enrolled in the State was 500,000, of whom 340,000 were in daily attendance. To those familiar with Indiana these figures show a greatly increased interest in education.

Several of the State benevolent institutions are in Indianapolis: a hospital for the insane, which cost $1,200,000, and accommodates 1000 patients; an asylum for the blind, which has 132 pupils; and a school for deaf-mutes which cost $500,000, and has about 400 scholars. The novel institution, however, that I saw at Indianapolis is a reformatory for women and girls, controlled entirely by women. The board of trustees are women, the superintendent, physician, and keepers are women. In one building, but in separate departments, were the female convicts, 42 in number, several of them respectable-looking elderly women who had killed their husbands, and about 150 young girls. The convicts and the girls—who are committed for restraint and reform—never meet except in chapel, but it is more than doubtful if it is wise for the State to subject girls to even this sort of contiguity with convicts, and to the degradation of penitentiary suggestions. The establishment is very neat and well ordered and well administered. The work of the prison is done by the convicts, who are besides kept employed at sewing and in the laundry. The girls in the reformatory work half a day, and are in school the other half.

This experiment of the control of a State-prison by women is regarded as doubtful by some critics, who say that women will obey a man when they will not obey a woman. Female convicts, because they have fallen lower than men, or by reason of their more nervous organization, are commonly not so easily controlled as male convicts, and it is insisted that they indulge in less “tantrums” under male than under female authority. This is denied by the superintendent of this prison, though she has incorrigible cases who can only be controlled by solitary confinement. She has daily religious exercises, Bible reading and exposition, and a Sunday-school; and she doubts if she could control the convicts without this religious influence. It not only has a daily quieting effect, but has resulted in several cases in “conversion.” There are in the institution several girls and women of color, and I asked the superintendent if the white inmates exhibited any prejudice against them on account of their color. To my surprise, the answer was that the contrary is the case. The whites look up to the colored girls, and seem either to have a respect for them or to be fascinated by them. This surprising statement was supplemented by another, that the influence of the colored girls on the whites is not good; the white girl who seeks the company of the colored girl deteriorates, and the colored girl does not change.

Indianapolis, which is attractive by reason of a climate that avoids extremes, bases its manufacturing and its business prosperity upon the large coal-beds lying to the west and south of it, the splendid and very extensive quarries of Bedford limestone contiguous to the coal-fields, the abundant supply of various sorts of hard-wood for the making of furniture, and the recent discovery of natural gas. The gas-field region, which is said to be very much larger than any other in the country, lies to the north-west, and comes within eight miles of the city. Pipes are already laid to the city limits, and the whole heating and manufacturing of the city will soon be done by the gas. I saw this fuel in use in a large and successful pottery, where are made superior glazed and encaustic tiles, and nothing could be better for the purpose. The heat in the kilns is intense; it can be perfectly regulated; as fuel the gas is free from smoke and smut, and its cost is merely nominal. The excitement over this new agent is at present extraordinary. The field where it has been found is so extensive as to make the supply seem inexhaustible. It was first discovered in Indiana at Eaton, in Delaware County, in 1880. From January 1, 1887, to February, 1888, it is reported that 1000 wells were opened in the gas territory, and that 245 companies were organized for various manufactures, with an aggregate capital of $25,000,000. Whatever the figures may he, there are the highest expectations of immense increase of manufactures in Indianapolis and in all the gas region. Of some effects of this revolution in fuel we may speak when we come to the gas wells of Ohio.

I had conceived of Columbus as a rural capital, pleasant and slow, rather a village than a city. I was surprised to find a city of 80,000 people, growing with a rapidity astonishing even for a Western town, with miles of prosperous business blocks (High Street is four miles long), and wide avenues of residences extending to suburban parks. Broad Street, with its four rows of trees and fine houses and beautiful lawns, is one of the handsomest avenues in the country, and it is only one of many that are attractive. The Capitol Square, with several good buildings about it, makes an agreeable centre of the city. Of the Capitol building not much is to be said. The exterior is not wholly bad, but it is surmounted by a truncated something that is neither a dome nor a revolving turret, and the interior is badly arranged for room, light, and ventilation. Space is wasted, and many of the rooms, among them the relic-room and the flag-room, are inconvenient and almost inaccessible. The best is the room of the Supreme Court, which has attached a large law library. The general State Library contains about 54,000 volumes, with a fair but not large proportion of Western history.

Columbus is a city of churches, of very fine public schools, of many clubs, literary and social, in which the intellectual element predominates, and of an intelligent, refined, and most hospitable society. Here one may study the educational and charitable institutions of the State, many of the more important of which are in the city, and also the politics. It was Ohio’s hard fate to be for many years an “October State,” and the battle-field and corruption-field of many outside influences. This no doubt demoralized the politics of the State, and lowered the tone of public morality. With the removal of the cause of this decline, I believe the tone is being raised. Recent trials for election frauds, and the rehabilitation of the Cincinnati police, show that a better spirit prevails.

Ohio is growing in wealth as it is in population, and is in many directions an ambitious and progressive State. Judged by its institutions of benevolence and of economies, it is a leading State. No other State provides more liberally for its unfortunates, in asylums for the insane, the blind, the deaf-mutes, the idiotic, the young waifs and strays, nor shows a more intelligent comprehension of the legitimate functions of a great commonwealth, in the creation of boards of education and of charities and of health, in a State inspection of workshops and factories, in establishing bureaus of meteorology and of forestry, a fish commission, and an agricultural experiment station. The State has thirty-four colleges and universities, a public-school system which has abolished distinctions of color, and which by the reports is as efficient as any in the Union. Cincinnati, the moral tone of which, the Ohio people say, is not fairly represented by its newspapers, is famous the world over for its cultivation in music and its progress in the fine and industrial arts. It would be possible for a State to have and be all this and yet rise in the general scale of civilization only to a splendid mediocrity, without the higher institutions of pure learning, and without a very high standard of public morality. Ohio is in no less danger of materialism, with all its diffused intelligence, than other States. There is a recognizable limit to what a diffused level of education, say in thirty-four colleges, can do for the higher life of a State. I heard an address in the Capitol by ex-President Hayes on the expediency of adding a manual-training school to the Ohio State University at Columbus. The comment of some of the legislators on it was that we have altogether too much book-learning; what we need is workshops in our schools and colleges. It seems to a stranger that whatever first-class industrial and technical schools Ohio needs, it needs more the higher education, and the teaching of philosophy, logic, and ethics. In 1886 Governor Foraker sent a special message to the Legislature pointing out the fact that notwithstanding the increase of wealth in the State, the revenue was inadequate to the expenditure, principally by reason of the undervaluation of taxable property (there being a yearly decline in the reported value of personal property), and a fraudulent evasion of taxes. There must have been a wide insensibility to the wrong of cheating the State to have produced this state of things, and one cannot but think that it went along with the low political tone before mentioned. Of course Ohio is not a solitary sinner among States in this evasion of duty, but she helps to point the moral that the higher life of a State needs a great deal of education that is neither commercial nor industrial nor simply philanthropic.

It is impossible and unnecessary for the purposes of this paper to speak of many of the public institutions of the State, even of those in the city. But educators everywhere may study with profit the management of the public schools under the City Board of Education, of which Mr. R. W. Stevenson is superintendent. The High-school, of over 600 pupils, is especially to be commended. Manual training is not introduced into the schools, and the present better sentiment is against it; but its foundation, drawing, is thoroughly taught from the primaries up to the High-school, and the exhibits of the work of the schools of all grades in modelling, drawing, and form and color studies, which were made last year in New York and Chicago, gave these Columbus schools a very high rank in the country. Any visitor to them must be impressed with the intelligence of the methods employed, the apprehension of modern notions, and also the conservative spirit of common-sense.

The Ohio State University has an endowment from the State of over half a million dollars, and a source of ultimate wealth in its great farm and grounds, which must Increase in value as the city extends. It is a very well equipped institution for the study of the natural sciences and agriculture, and might easily be built up into a university in all departments, worthy of the State. At present it has 335 students, of whom 150 are in the academic department, 41 in special practical courses, and 143 in the preparatory school. All the students are organized in companies, under an officer of the United States, for military discipline; the uniform, the drill, the lessons of order and obedience, are invaluable in the transforming of carriage and manners. The University has a museum of geology which ranks among the important ones of the country. It is a pity that a consolidation of other State institutions with this cannot be brought about.

The Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus is an old building, not in keeping with the modern notions of prison construction. In 1887 it had about 1300 convicts, some 100 less than in the preceding year. The management is subject to political changes, and its officers have to be taken from various parts of the State at the dictation of political workers. Under this system the best management is liable to be upset by an election. The special interest in the prison at this time was in the observation of the working of the Parole Law. Since the passage of the Act in May, 1885, 283 prisoners have been paroled, and while several of the convicts have been returned for a violation of parole, nearly the whole number are reported as law-abiding citizens. The managers are exceedingly pleased with the working of the law; it promotes good conduct in the prison, and reduces the number in confinement. The reduction of the number of convicts in 1887 from the former year was ascribed partially to the passage of the General Sentence Law in 1884, and the Habitual Crimes Act in 1885. The criminals dread these laws, the first because it gives no fixed time to build their hopes upon, but all depends upon their previous record and good conduct in prison, while the latter affects the incorrigible, who are careful to shun the State after being convicted twice, and avoid imprisonment for life. The success of these laws and the condition of the State finances delay the work on the Intermediate Prison, or Reformatory, begun at Mansfield. This Reformatory is intended for first offenders, and has the distinct purpose of prevention of further deterioration, and of reformation by means of the discipline of education and labor. The success of the tentative laws in this direction, as applied to the general prisons, is, in fact, a strong argument for the carrying out of the Mansfield scheme.