In no realm did invention and the application of science mean more for the country’s weal than in agriculture. Each State had its agricultural college and experiment station, mainly supported by United States funds provided under the Morrill Acts. Soils, crops, animal breeds, methods of tillage, dairying, and breeding were scientifically examined. Forestry became a great interest. Intensive agriculture spread. By early ploughing and incessant use of cultivators keeping the surface soil a mulch, arid tracts were rendered to a great extent independent of both rainfall and irrigation. Improved machinery made possible the farming of vast areas with few hands. The gig horse hoe rendered weeding work almost a pleasure. A good reaper with binder attachment, changing horses once, harvested twenty acres a day. The best threshers bagged from 1,000 to 2,500 bushels daily. One farmer sowed and reaped 200 acres of wheat one season without hiring a day’s work.
Woman’s position at the Fair was prominent and gratifying. How her touch lent refinement and taste was observed both in the Woman’s Building, the first of its kind, and in other departments of the Exposition. Power of organization was noticeably exemplified in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. This body originated in the temperance crusade of 1873 and the following year, when a State Temperance Association was formed in Ohio, leading shortly to the rise of a national union.
Related to this movement in elevated moral aims, as well as in the prominent part it assigned to women, was the Salvation Army. In 1861 William Booth, an English Methodist preacher, resigned his charge and devoted himself to the redemption of London’s grossest proletariat. Deeming themselves not wanted in the churches, his converts set up a separate and more militant organization. In 1879 the Army invaded America, landing at Philadelphia, where, as in the Old Country and in other American cities, pitiable sin and wretchedness grovelled in obscurity. In 1894 there were in the United States 539 corps and 1,953 officers, and in the whole world 3,200 corps and 10,788 officers. Without proposing any programme of social or political reform, and without announcing any manifesto of human rights, the Salvationists uplifted hordes of the fallen, while drawing to the lowliest the notice, sympathy, and help of the middle classes and the rich. Army discipline was rigidly maintained. The soldiers were sworn to wear the uniform, to obey their officers, to abstain from drink, tobacco, and worldly amusements, to live in simplicity and economy, to earn their living, and of their earnings always to give something to advance the Kingdom. The officers could not marry or become engaged without the consent of the Army authorities, for their spouses must be capable of cooperating with them. They could receive no presents, not even food, except in cases of necessity. An officer must have experienced “full salvation”—that is, must endeavor to be living free from every known sin. Except as to pay, the Army placed women on an absolute equality with men, a policy which greatly furthered its usefulness.
William Booth.
From a photograph by Rockwood, New York.
The peculiar uniform worn by the Salvation soldiers, always sufficing to identify them, called attention to a fact never obvious till about 1890—the relative uniformity in the costumes of all fairly dressed Americans whether men or women. The wide circulation of fashion plates and pictorial papers accounted for this. About this time cuts came to be a feature even of newspapers, a custom on which the more conservative sheets at first frowned, though soon adopting it themselves.
CHAPTER VII.
MR. CLEVELAND AGAIN PRESIDENT
In the special session beginning August 7, 1893, a Democratic Congress met under a Democratic President for the first time since 1859. The results were disappointing. Divided, leaderless, in large part at bitter variance with the Administration, the Democrats trooped to their overthrow two years later.
During his second Administration Mr. Cleveland considerably extended the merit system in the civil service. Candidates for consulships were subjected to (non-competitive) examination. Public opinion commended these moves, as it did the President’s prompt signing of the Anti-Lottery Bill, introduced in Congress when it was learned that the expatriated Louisiana Lottery from its seat under Honduras jurisdiction was operating in the United States through the express companies. The bill prohibiting this abuse was passed at three in the morning on the last day of the Congressional session, and received the President’s signature barely five minutes before the Congress expired.
