Chapter 8

Part II, also, is almost wholly devoted to biographies, one batch being introduced with this sage remark: "Biography is the most important feature of history; for the record of the lives of individuals appears to be invested with more vitality and interest than the dry details of general historical narrative." Q.E.D.--of course. With Part III we reach the history of St. Louis, contained in one hundred and eighty pages, and worth more or less as a history. Then come one hundred and seventy pages more of biographies, an appendix of fifteen pages, and about thirty pages of views of manufacturing establishments. And this book is called The Great West. No further comment seems necessary.

Of all the many rich and racy things the writer has run across in his explorations in the literature of American cities, the richest and raciest is a book called St. Louis: The Future Great City of the World, by L.U. Reavis. The very title-page gives an inkling of the nature of the contents by its motto, savoring somewhat of cant: "Henceforth St. Louis must be viewed in the light of the future--her mightiness in the empire of the world--her sway in the rule of states and nations." This book, strangely enough, was "published by order of the St Louis County Court," in 1870, on the petition of forty-five of the leading citizens and firms of the city, who were represented before the court by a committee headed by Captain James B. Eads, the renowned engineer, and containing one captain, five honorables, and two esquires. The first edition consisted of one hundred and six pages, which were as vainglorious and boastful, as crowded with laudatory adjectives, glowing periods, and bombastic prophecies, as ever one hundred and six published pages were.

However, it evidently suited the St. Louis palate, for a second edition bears date of the same year, and in 1871 a third appeared in a considerably enlarged form. This last one is the most interesting, for it contains a preface and a finis which for pure, undiluted presumption have never been excelled. The former is entitled "Explanatory," and is worth quoting entire: "A presentation of Causes in Nature and Civilization which, in their reciprocal action tend to fix the position of the FUTURE GREAT CITY OF THE WORLD in the central plain of North America, showing that the centre of the world's commerce and civilization will, in less than one hundred years, be organized and represented in the Mississippi Valley, and by St. Louis, occupying as she does the most favored position on the continent and the Great River; also a complete representation of the great railway system of St. Louis, showing that in less than ten years she will be the greatest railway centre in the world." Even the most arrogant citizen of St. Louis would hardly have the boldness to maintain that ten years after this prophecy was made, in 1881, St. Louis was "the greatest railway centre in the world," or even that she was one of the greatest. As to the one-hundred years prophecy nothing can as yet be affirmed, for it has eighty-seven years more to run, but if the last thirteen can be taken as a criterion, St. Louis has a big contract on her hands.

The last page is the most curious in the book, and in its way is certainly unique. It is called "A Closing Word," and, being printed in italics, has an air of emphasis and force peculiarly appropriate. The author begins: "Thus have I written a new record--a new prophecy of a city central to a continent of resources;" and so he goes on for half a page of ridiculous bombast until he finishes the climax of epithets by calling this "the Apocalyptic City--

'The New Jerusalem, the ancient seer Of Patmos saw.'

"All hail! mistress of nations and beautiful queen of civilization! I view thee in the light of thy destiny. Thou art transfigured before me from thy present state to one infinitely more grand, and which overshadows and dwarfs all civic forms in history.

"The influence of thy empire will pervade the world with invisible and electric force. Yet, vivifying and benignant capital,--emporium of trade and industry, seat of learning and best-applied labor, pivotal point in history, supreme and superb city of all lands,--I behold thy majesty from afar, and salute thee reverently as the consummation of all that the best human energies can accomplish for the elevation and happiness of our race.

"All hail! Future Great City of the World, and 'Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth Peace, Goodwill toward Men.'"

This reminds one equally of Walt Whitman and Artemas Ward. Yet it is not burlesque. It appears to have been written in good faith, and for this reason the incongruity of such a grandiloquent rhapsody on such a prosaic subject is all the more noticeable. As an example of "fine writing" it has seldom been surpassed, and for sheer nonsense it is unequaled in American literature.

These books on St. Louis call to mind a history of Milwaukee of a somewhat similar nature--similar in its magnificent pretensions to the last-described work, and in its biographical characteristics to Edwards's Great West. The book referred to was published in Chicago, in 1881, by the Western Historical Company, A.T. Andreas, proprietor. Holy Herodotus! To think of history becoming a thing of "companies"--on a par with life insurance, railroads, gas-works, and cotton factories! And an "historical company" with a proprietor, too!

But let us look into this monumental tome. (Do not think that adjective hyperbolical, for surely monumental is not too strong a word to describe a book which would just about balance in weight an unabridged dictionary.) Some idea of the immensity of the undertaking can be obtained when, as the preface says, "it is known that nearly one year's time was consumed and an average force of twenty-five men employed in the labor of obtaining information and preparing the manuscript for the printer's hands. The result of this vast effort is the presentation of a History which stands unparalleled in the experience of publishers." The book is a quarto and contains sixteen hundred and sixty-three pages. The letter-press is unexceptionable; each page is surrounded by a neat border; the paper is good; the binding is excellent.

And yet the actual history of this city dates back little more than half a century--not a lifetime. Here is history with a vengeance! The riddle, however, is solved the instant we glance over the pages, for we find the mass of the book made up of biographies,--biographies in front, biographies to the right, biographies to the left, everywhere biographies,--to the grand sum total of nearly four thousand. A book much like this would have been made had the Crown published the Giant Petition trundled into Parliament on a wheelbarrow in the times of George the Third, when Lord George Gordon was the hero of the day. About as valuable, about as readable, about as bulky, about as good for kindling fires!

But let the perpetrator plead his cause in his own words--and it must be conceded he does it well. "The plan of the History of the city of Milwaukee, which is herewith presented to the public," he says in his preface, "possesses the merit of originality. It is based upon the fact that in all older regions, a serious deficiency exists even in the most exhaustive histories which it is possible now to compile through the absence of personal and detailed records of pioneer men and deeds. The primary design of this work is to preserve for future historians as complete an encyclopædia of early events in Milwaukee, and the actors therein, as patient labor and unstinted financial expenditure can procure."

We thank the Western Historical Company, or Mr. Andreas, for this benevolent and philanthropic spirit, but really he must not expect us to believe that pecuniary profit is only a _secondary_ design of this work. But supposing for a moment that the primary design was as philanthropic and unselfish as Mr. Andreas would have us think, let us consider its worth; for, if we grant this premise, we must admit the truth of the conclusion reached, and then must give unstinted praise to the fruits of such a conclusion, a volume like the one before us. But the premise is specious and false. The deficiency that exists through the absence of personal and detailed records of _pioneer_ men and deeds is not serious: on the contrary, in most cases, we should be devoutly thankful that it exists. Of the generations after that of the pioneers we would know much; of that of the pioneers themselves, something. But who is there, or will there be, that cares a picayune whether the third cobbler in Milwaukee (this history would call him the third manufacturer of shoes) was born in April or June, 1806, or whether he came from Tipperary or Heidelberg, or whether his wife died of the pneumonia or the whooping-cough? To be sure we would be glad to know whether the early settlers of Milwaukee were mainly young or mainly old when they came here, whether they were mainly German or Irish, and what where the prevalent diseases in different localities at an early period, but to ask an intelligent being to wade through nearly four thousand "personal histories" in order ascertain these facts is, to say the least, somewhat of an imposition on his good nature.

Later on in his preface the author contradicts himself in this regard, for he shows us how far from philanthropic were the publisher's motives and how little he thought of posterity in inserting these biographies, by writing the following well-turned and suggestive sentences: "It may be asked, Why have the biographical sketches of comparatively obscure men been inserted? The reasons are obvious to business men and should be to all. None but citizens are represented. Whatever Milwaukee is her citizens have made her. Shall the publisher exercise a power higher than the law, and erect a caste distinction or estimate each man's work from some fictitious standard of his own? Assuredly not. If, in the preparation of this work, a citizen has shown commendable pride, and aided its publisher by his patronage, he is entitled to mention in its pages. Such men and women have received a sketch, but the fact of pecuniary assistance has not biased the character of the book."

This is a very specious attempt to throw a glamour of respectability over a very unpleasant and repugnant fact, namely: that a mass of "biographical sketches of comparatively obscure men" has been given to the public under the guise of a history of a city, with the sole object of making money. It is indeed consoling to know that "none but citizens have been represented," but why this statement should be coupled with the platitude that follows it would be hard to say. And then the utter ridiculousness of the nonsense about the publisher exercising a power higher than the law and erecting a caste distinction! "What fools these mortals be!"

But whatever may be said of the historical value of such books as the above, there can be little doubt that they are remunerative business enterprises, for the country has of late years been flooded with them. Perhaps we ought to be thankful for any history at all of these new Western cities, even though the wheat therein be so scarce and the chaff so plenty. The prevalence of this same affliction--the biographical history--in literary New England seems more anomalous than it does in the West, but it is even more widespread. A fair type of the Eastern species is the Quarter-Centennial History of Lawrence, Massachusetts, compiled by H.A. Wadsworth, in 1878. It contained seventy-five very poor wood-engravings, called portraits by courtesy, which, with the accompanying biographies, were inserted to represent the leading (?) men of the city at an entrance fee of five or ten dollars apiece.

Next in number below the biographical histories, but far above them in value, come what may be called the chronological histories, that is, those which make little or no attempt to group the important facts of a city's history in homogeneous chapters, but which, diary-like, give all facts, important as well as insignificant, in the order of their occurrence. Fortunately most local historians of this sect have made more or less attempt at bringing like to like, although they have generally preserved the purely chronological order within their groups, whether these be of subjects or periods. Among the histories of the larger cities, Scharf's Chronicles of Baltimore comes to mind as typical of this class. This work, published in 1874, is an octavo of seven hundred and fifty-six pages. The author tells the truth when he says in his preface: "The only plan in the work that has been followed has been to chronicle events through the years in their order; beginning with the earliest in which any knowledge on the subject is embraced, and running on down to the present." The book is printed "solid," with not a single chapter-heading from one end to the other, so it is not strange that it contains such an immense amount of material.

The great fault of this book, as of all books of this class, is the lack of the proper classification, the scholarly reflection and comment, the thoughtful contrast and comparison, the exercise of intelligent judgment in forming conclusions,--all which are necessary to make history palatable, not to say valuable. Nowhere is this lack shown more forcibly than in this book in the treatment of the subject of riots and mob violence. It may not be generally known, especially among the younger portion of the community, that no American and but few European cities have such an unenviable and disgraceful record on this head as Baltimore. The accounts of its riots remind one too forcibly of the worst days of the French Revolution, and all of them read more like the incidents so plentiful in the sensational stories of the day, than like the cold, dispassionate record of history. And this, mind you, is the record of a city famed far more for monuments, pleasure-grounds, and beautiful women, than for lawlessness and sans-culottism, a city proud of its families and its culture, a city one of the oldest and richest in the land. However unpleasant it may be to look at the black side of such a city's history, yet the study must be profitable if by it we Americans, proud of our tolerance and our humanity, jealous of aught past or present that may blot our escutcheon, wondering at and scornfully pitying nations that could have had Lord George Gordon riots and blood-thirsty land-leagues, a reign of terror and a commune,--if we may learn not to be quite so arrogant in our righteousness, quite so boastful in our Pharisaism; if we may learn how much reason we of the New World have to bear in mind, when we read about the past and present of the Old World, the divine command: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

Yet Scharf gives merely the bare details of these, the most vivid scenes in Baltimore's history, and goes little into causes or results, leaving us almost wholly in the dark as to how a civilized city in the most enlightened country on earth could have grafted on its history such anomalous things as these riots. This feature of Baltimore's history seems to us to be the feature most peculiar to itself, and, therefore, like that feature of a human face peculiar to the person we are studying, the most interesting; but our historian gives it no distinctive treatment, puts no emphasis on it, forces the reader to compare, contrast, account for, explain, and draw conclusions for himself. That he should slide over this side of Baltimore's history would be natural enough, but of this he cannot be accused. His treatment of this subject is characteristic of the whole book.

As a good example of an even more disappointing type of chronological histories we may take the History of Lynn, including Lynnfield, Saugus, Swampscott, and Nahant, by Alonzo Lewis and James R. Newhall, an octavo of six hundred and twenty pages, published in 1865. The book seems to have been condensed from a series of very poor diaries, and the mass of detail under the year-headings is ridiculous in its minuteness and laughable in its absurdity. Every year has its paragraphic entries, more or less full. The narrative of one year may here be quoted to show the nature of the whole, and, for that matter, the nature of fifty similar town histories.

1758. "Thomas Mansfield, Esquire, was thrown from his horse on Friday, January 6, and died the next Sunday.

"A company of soldiers, from Lynn, marched for Canada, on the twenty-third of May. Edmund Ingalls and Samuel Mudge were killed.

"In a thunder-shower, on the fourth of August, an ox belonging to Mr. Henry Silsbee was killed by lightning.

"A sloop from Lynn, commanded by Captain Ralph Lindsay, was cast away on the fifteenth of August, near Portsmouth."

In this pretended "History," the whole of the eighteenth century receives but sixty-two pages, and that part of the nineteenth which had elapsed at the time of publication receives only one hundred and seventeen. In the latter an average entry is the following, under date of 1856:--

"Patrick Buckley, the 'Lynn Buck,' ran five miles in twenty-eight minutes and thirty-eight seconds, at the Trotting Park, for a belt valued at fifty dollars. And on the fourth of December, William Hendley ran the same distance in twenty-eight minutes and thirty seconds."

The "Lynn Buck," seems to have been an important personage in those days, for we read under date of 1858:--

"The 'Lynn Buck,' so called, walked a plank at Lowell, in February, a hundred and five consecutive hours and forty-four minutes, and with but twenty-nine minutes' rest. A strict watch was kept on him."

We are very glad to know about the "strict watch," but really it was too bad of the authors not to let us know if those forty-four minutes, also, were not consecutive. They might, too, have told us to advantage something about the _modus operandi_ of "walking a plank." It has been the general impression that the man who walks a plank performs the operation in an unpleasant hurry--unpleasant for him; and that he will take all the rest he can get--before he begins; and that he has an eternal rest, or unrest, after he has finished. But perhaps this has been a wrong impression. If the authors are alive, it is due to the public that they should rise and explain.

Enough of pleasantry. Let us examine the book with serious mind, if we can. Everybody knows that shoes have been the making of Lynn, that they are and have been for years the backbone of its prosperity, the life of its business. To say that Lynn is the greatest shoe-manufacturing city in the country, and, for that matter, in the world, may be an exaggeration, but it is a very common one. In a history of Lynn we might expect this fact to be at least recognized. Let us see how that is in the present case.

The shoe business was not unknown in Lynn before 1750, but in that year it first got a firm footing here. So we are not surprised to find the fact mentioned, but we are somewhat disappointed to find only half a page given to it. Beyond this, mention of the shoe trade in the last century is very slight, as, no doubt, was the trade itself. Since 1800, however, the trade has been rapidly increasing, and has gradually assumed enormous proportions. Yet in this precious volume we find the subject mentioned just once in the chronological annals, _three lines_ being devoted to it under the head of 1810: "It appeared, by careful estimation, that there were made in Lynn, this year, one million pairs of shoes, valued at eight hundred thousand dollars. The females (!) earned some fifty thousand dollars by binding." To be sure, the burning of two shoe factories received, respectively, two and three lines; the formation of an ineffective board of trade by shoemakers, ten lines; and of an equally fruitless union by journeymen shoemakers, ten lines. A page and a quarter (_mirabile dictu_) is devoted to a shoemakers' strike with no definite result. In a biography, the connection of its subject with the shoe business is mentioned in a quoted letter. A quick job by a shoemaker receives six lines, and one by another, four; and the death of a third is mentioned.

In an appendix the state of the shoe business in 1864 is discussed at length in a third of a half-page! All we learn from it is that by the State returns in the year ending June 1, 1833, there were made 9,275,593 pairs of shoes valued at $4,165,529. In the year ending September 1, 1864, about ten million pairs of shoes were made, valued at fourteen million dollars (probably paper, not gold, value), and the number of shoe manufacturers was 174; of men and women employed, 17,173. As the total population of Lynn at that time was little if anything over twenty-three thousand, it will be seen that even these figures are untrustworthy, or else the shoe business played even a greater part in Lynn affairs than is generally supposed.

And this is all the mention to be found in a History of Lynn concerning the backbone of the city--that great industry to which it almost wholly owed its population of 38,274 in 1880. Can any one maintain that this sort of a book is a history?

And so we might go on, finding history after history of the towns and cities scattered through New England and the Middle States, most of them on a par with those last mentioned, in all styles of print and binding, some decrepit and musty with age, others fresh and enticing, with gaudy covers and scores of illustrations; some like Sewall's History of Woburn with no table of contents or index, and so practically useless; a few like Staples's Annals of Providence, scholarly and creditable; yet none of them ideal histories. But occasionally we meet an oasis in this vast waste, and though it may not be a paradise, yet we are too grateful for the water that nourishes the palms and the grass, that refreshes our parched mouths and wearied bodies, to think that in other climes we might call it brackish and unclean.

Such is the effect that the History of Pittsfield, Massachusetts has on us. Here is a book that might well be taken as a standard by town historians. The very history of the History will show its merits.