Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada

by Charles Dudley Warner

Cincinnati is a city that has a past. As Daniel Webster said, that at least is secure. Among the many places that have been and are the Athens of America, this was perhaps the first. As long ago as the first visit of Charles Dickens to this country it was distinguished as a town of refinement as well as cultivation; and the novelist, who saw little to admire, though much to interest him in our raw country, was captivated by this little village on the Ohio. It was already the centre of an independent intellectual life, and produced scholars, artists, writers, who subsequently went east instead of west. According to tradition, there seems to have been early a tendency to free thought, and a response to the movement which, for lack of a better name, was known in Massachusetts as transcendentalism.

The evolution of Cincinnati seems to have been a little peculiar in American life. It is a rich city, priding itself on the solidity of its individual fortunes and business, and the freedom of its real property from foreign mortgages. Usually in our development the pursuit of wealth comes first, and then all other things are added thereto, as we read the promise. In Cincinnati there seems to have been a very considerable cultivation first in time, and we have the spectacle of what wealth will do in the way of the sophistication and materialization of society. Ordinarily we have the process of an uncultivated community gradually working itself out into a more or less ornamented and artistic condition as it gets money. The reverse process we might see if the philosophic town of Concord, Massachusetts, should become the home of rich men engaged in commerce and manufacturing. I may be all wrong in my notion of Cincinnati, but there is a sort of tradition, a remaining flavor of old-time culture before the town became commercially so important as it was before the war.

It is difficult to think of Cincinnati as in Ohio. I cannot find their similarity of traits. Indeed, I think that generally in the State there is a feeling that it is an alien city; the general characteristics of the State do not flow into and culminate in Cincinnati as its metropolis. It has had somehow an independent life. If you look on a geologic map of the State, you see that the glacial drift, I believe it is called, which flowed over three-fourths of the State and took out its wrinkles did not advance into the south-west. And Cincinnati lies in the portion that was not smoothed into a kind of monotony. When a settlement was made here it was a good landing-place for trade up and down the river, and was probably not so much thought of as a distributing and receiving point for the interior north of it. Indeed, up to the time of the war, it looked to the South for its trade, and naturally, even when the line of war was drawn, a good deal of its sympathies lay in the direction of its trade. It had become a great city, and grown rich both in trade and manufactures, but in the decline of steamboating and in the era of railways there were physical difficulties in the way of adapting itself easily to the new conditions. It was not easy to bring the railways down the irregular hills and to find room for them on the landing. The city itself had to contend with great natural obstacles to get adequate foothold, and its radiation over, around, and among the hills produced some novel features in business and in social life.

What Cincinnati would have been, with its early culture and its increasing wealth, if it had not become so largely German in its population, we can only conjecture. The German element was at once conservative as to improvements and liberalizing, as the phrase is, in theology and in life. Bituminous coal and the Germans combined to make a novel American city. When Dickens saw the place it was a compact, smiling little city, with a few country places on the hills. It is now a scattered city of country places, with a little nucleus of beclouded business streets. The traveller does not go there to see the city, but to visit the suburbs, climbing into them, out of the smoke and grime, by steam “inclines” and grip railways. The city is indeed difficult to see. When you are in it, by the river, you can see nothing; when you are outside of it you are in any one of half a dozen villages, in regions of parks and elegant residences, altogether charming and geographically confusing; and if from some commanding point you try to recover the city idea, you look down upon black roofs half hid in black smoke, through which the fires of factories gleam, and where the colored Ohio rolls majestically along under a dark canopy. Looked at in one way, the real Cincinnati is a German city, and you can only study its true character “Over the Rhine,” and see it successfully through the bottom of an upturned beer glass. Looked at another way, it is mainly an affair of elegant suburbs, beautifully wooded hills, pleasure-grounds, and isolated institutions of art or charity. I am thankful that there is no obligation on me to depict it.

It would probably be described as a city of art rather than of theology, and one of rural homes rather than metropolitan society. Perhaps the German element has had something to do in giving it its musical character, and the early culture may have determined its set more towards art than religion. As the cloud of smoke became thicker and thicker in the old city those who disliked this gloom escaped out upon the hills in various directions. Many, of course, still cling to the solid ancestral houses in the city, but the country movement was so general that church-going became an affair of some difficulty, and I can imagine that the church-going habit was a little broken up while the new neighborhoods were forming on the hills and in the winding valleys, and before the new churches in the suburbs were erected. Congregations were scattered, and society itself was more or less disintegrated. Each suburb is fairly accessible from the centre of the city, either by a winding valley or by a bold climb up a precipice, but owing to the configuration of the ground, it is difficult to get from one suburb to another without returning to the centre and taking a fresh start. This geographical hinderance must necessarily interfere with social life, and tend to isolation of families, or to merely neighborhood association.

Although much yet remains to be done in the way of good roads, nature and art have combined to make the suburbs of the city wonderfully beautiful. The surface is most picturesquely broken, the forests are fine, from this point and that there are views pleasing, poetic, distant, perfectly satisfying in form and variety, and in advantageous situations taste has guided wealth in the construction of stately houses, having ample space in the midst of manorial parks. You are not out of sight of these fine places in any of the suburbs, and there are besides, in every direction, miles of streets of pleasing homes. I scarcely know whether to prefer Clifton, with its wide sweeping avenues rounding the hills, or the perhaps more commanding heights of Walnut, nearer the river, and overlooking Kentucky. On the East Walnut Hills is a private house worth going far to see for its color. It is built of broken limestone, the chance find of a quarry, making the richest walls I have anywhere seen, comparable to nothing else than the exquisite colors in the rocks of the Yellowstone Falls, as I recall them in Mr. Moran’s original studies.

If the city itself could substitute gas fuel for its smutty coal, I fancy that, with its many solid homes and stately buildings, backed by the picturesque hills, it would be a city at once curious and attractive to the view. The visitor who ascends from the river as far as Fourth Street is surprised to find room for fair avenues, and many streets and buildings of mark. The Probasco fountain in another atmosphere would be a thing of beauty, for one may go far to find so many groups in bronze so good. The Post-office building is one of the best of the Mullet-headed era of our national architecture—so good generally that one wonders that the architect thought it expedient to destroy the effect of the monolith columns by cutting them to resemble superimposed blocks. A very remarkable building also is the new Chamber of Commerce structure, from Richardson’s design, massive, mediæval, challenging attention, and compelling criticism to give way to genuine admiration. There are other buildings, public and private, that indicate a city of solid growth; and the activity of its strong Chamber of Commerce is a guarantee that its growth will be maintained with the enterprise common to American cities. The effort is to make manufacturing take the place in certain lines of business that, as in the item of pork-packing, has been diverted by various causes. Money and effort have been freely given to regain the Southern trade interrupted by the war, and I am forced to believe that the success in this respect would have been greater if some of the city newspapers had not thought it all-important to manufacture political capital by keeping alive old antagonisms and prejudices. Whatever people may say, sentiment does play a considerable part in business, and it is within the knowledge of the writer that prominent merchants in at least one Southern city have refused trade contracts that would have been advantageous to Cincinnati, on account of this exhibition of partisan spirit, as if the war were not over. Nothing would be more contemptible than to see a community selling its principles for trade; but it is true that men will trade, other things being equal, where they are met with friendly cordiality and toleration, and where there is a spirit of helpfulness instead of suspicion. Professional politicians, North and South, may be able to demonstrate to their satisfaction that they should have a chance to make a living, but they ask too much when this shall be at the expense of free-flowing trade, which is in itself the best solvent of any remaining alienation, and the surest disintegrator of the objectionable political solidity, and to the hinderance of that entire social and business good feeling which is of all things desirable and necessary in a restored and compacted Union. And it is as bad political as it is bad economic policy. As a matter of fact, the politicians of Kentucky are grateful to one or two Republican journals for aid in keeping their State “solid.” It is a pity that the situation has its serious as well as its ridiculous aspect.

Cincinnati in many respects is more an Eastern than a Western town; it is developing its own life, and so far as I could see, without much infusion of young fortune-hunting blood from the East. It has attained its population of about 275,000 by a slower growth than some other Western cities, and I notice in its statistical reports a pause rather than excitement since 1878-79-80. The valuation of real and personal property has kept about the same for nearly ten years (1886, real estate about $129,000,000, personal about $42,000,000), with a falling off in the personalty, and a noticeable decrease in the revenue from taxation. At the same time manufacturing has increased considerably. In 1880 there was a capital of $60,623,350, employing 74,798 laborers, with a product of $148,957,280. In 1886 the capital was $76,248,200, laborers 93,103, product $190,722,153. The business at the Post-office was a little less in 1886 than in 1883. In the seven years ending with 1886 there was a considerable increase in banking capital, which reached in the city proper over ten millions, and there was an increase in clearings from 1881 to 1886.

It would teach us nothing to follow in detail the fluctuations of the various businesses in Cincinnati, either in appreciation or decline, but it may be noted that it has more than held its own in one of the great staples—leaf tobacco—and still maintains a leading position. Yet I must refer to one of the industries for the sake of an important experiment made in connection with it. This is the experiment of profit-sharing at Ivorydale, the establishment of Messrs. Procter and Gamble, now, I believe, the largest soap factory in the world. The soap and candle industry has always been a large one in Cincinnati, and it has increased about seventy-five per cent, within the past two years. The proprietors at Ivorydale disclaim any intention of philanthropy in their new scheme—that is, the philanthropy that means giving something for nothing, as a charity: it is strictly a business operation. It is an experiment that I need not say will be watched with a good deal of interest as a means of lessening the friction between the interests of capital and labor. The plan is this: Three trustees are named who are to declare the net profits of the concern every six months; for this purpose they are to have free access to the books and papers at all times, and they are to permit the employes to designate a book-keeper to make an examination for them also. In determining the net profits, interest on all capital invested is calculated as an expense at the rate of six per cent., and a reasonable salary is allowed to each member of the firm who gives his entire time to the business. In order to share in the profits, the employé must have been at work for three consecutive months, and must be at work when the semi-annual account is made up. All the men share whose wages have exceeded $5 a week, and all the women whose wages have exceeded $4.25 a week. The proportion divided to each employé is determined by the amount of wages earned; that is, the employés shall share as between themselves in the profits exactly as they have shared in the entire fund paid as wages to the whole body, excluding the first three months’ wages. In order to determine the profits for distribution, the total amount of wages paid to all employés (except travelling salesmen, who do not share) is ascertained. The amount of all expenses, Including interest and salaries, is ascertained, and the total net profits shall be divided between the firm and the employés sharing in the fund. The amount of the net profit to be distributed will be that proportion of the whole net profit which will correspond to the proportion of the wages paid as compared with the entire cost of production and the expense of the business. To illustrate: If the wages paid to all employés shall equal twenty per cent, of the entire expenditure in the business, including interest and salaries of members of the firm, then twenty per cent, of the net profit will be distributed to employés.

It will be noted that this plan promotes steadiness in work, stimulates to industry, and adds a most valuable element of hopefulness to labor. As a business enterprise for the owners it is sound, for it makes every workman an interested party in increasing the profits of the firm—interested not only in production, but in the marketableness of the thing produced. There have been two divisions under this plan. At the declaration of the first the workmen had no confidence in it; many of them would have sold their chances for a glass of beer. They expected that “expenses” would make such a large figure that nothing would be left to divide. When they received, as the good workmen did, considerable sums of money, life took on another aspect to them, and we may suppose that their confidence in fair dealing was raised. The experiment of a year has been entirely satisfactory; it has not only improved the class of employés, but has introduced into the establishment a spirit of industrial cheerfulness. Of course it is still an experiment. So long as business is good, all will go well; but if there is a bad six months, and no profits, it is impossible that suspicion should not arise. And there is another consideration: the publishing to the world that the business of six months was without profit might impair credit. But, on the other hand, this openness in legitimate business may be contagious, and in the end promotive of a wider and more stable business confidence. Ivorydale is one of the best and most solidly built industrial establishments anywhere to be found, and doubly interesting for the intelligent attempt to solve the most difficult problem in modern society. The first semi-annual dividend amounted to about an eighth increase of wages. A girl who was earning five dollars a week would receive as dividend about thirty dollars a year. I think it was not in my imagination that the laborers in this establishment worked with more than usual alacrity, and seemed contented. If this plan shall prevent strikes, that alone will be as great a benefit to the workmen as to those who risk capital in employing them.