Last winter in the United States

by F. Barham Zincke

There were two red-skins ‘on board’ this sleeping car, on their way to Washington to transact the business of their tribe. They were tall, bony men, but their complexion was not of so dark a copper colour as I had expected. Their features were coarse and stolid, their only expression being just that of the obstinate tenacity of purpose, and of the power of endurance with which history credits their race. They were accompanied by two half-breeds, who appeared a great improvement on the pure stock. These latter played at cards hour after hour, and, when not so employed, sang together Heber’s ‘Missionary Hymn’ and ‘Three Blind Mice’ alternately, equally unconscious of the poetry and sentiments of the one, and of the inanity of the other.

Everyone has heard of the Metropolis of Pigs. And it is rightly so called, for the greatness of Cincinnati is founded on cured pigs, in a far greater degree than that of Holland was on pickled herrings. Here are more than 200,000 souls maintained in life by breeding, fattening, killing, salting, packing, and exporting incredible millions of pigs. The 200,000 human beings are only 200,000,000 pigs in another form. The old and the young, the schools and the churches, the politicians and the men of science of this great city, are all created out of pig. Take away the pigs, and they all disappear; double the pigs, and they all are doubled.

And the influence of the pigs of Cincinnati is felt all over the world. When an East Anglian farmer sells his improved Essex or Suffolk hog, the price of its bacon is affected by the greater or less number of its brethren who grunted their last at Cincinnati during the previous year, or, as the Cincinnatians themselves would say, on the amount of the previous year’s ‘pork crop.’

Of course, where so many pigs have to be disposed of, one would expect to find in America some time-and-labour-saving machinery; and I was told that, if I went into any of the great factories—which, however, I did not do—I might see machinery in operation, by the aid of which a stream of pigs, that walked into the factory at the front door, alive and grunting, was made to issue, a few minutes afterwards, at the opposite door, ready packed for exportation in the three forms of ham, bacon, and lard; each in his passage through the building having been stabbed in the throat, scraped, eviscerated, jointed, and injected with bacon or ham-curing liquor, all by machinery, and with the regularity of clockwork.

Some Effects of American Democracy.

One of the most marked peculiarities of American society is the total absence of all classes higher than those of the merchant and professional man. One sees the working of this in many different ways. For instance, it evidently elevates the tone and character of the classes which thus find themselves at the head of the scale. It gives them a dignity and a bearing they would not otherwise possess. If there is no one higher in society than a retail shop-keeper, then by the force of his position he becomes brave and liberal, and his ideas become enlarged. I observed this at Denver, where there is no higher class. And I think the same observation would be made by any one who would go so far to judge for himself. There are good effects which the American system has upon those also who are most humbly placed. As they feel that they are theoretically, and in some respects practically, equal to those who are even the best placed in society, they endeavour not to disgrace or altogether to fall short of their position. This is a strong stimulus among them to education and self-improvement. It is what has suggested the efforts of many who have risen in life, and sustained them through many long years of patient industry and laborious enterprise. I have no reason to believe a word of all that I ever heard of the offensive self-assertion and obtrusive incivility of this class, for I never myself suffered from, or witnessed, anything of the kind. Where an Englishman is the complainant, I should be disposed to think that, in most cases, he had provoked the treatment he complains of, for no people are more careful about giving offence than Americans. This carefulness is taught in their schools, and is a tradition of American society, coming down from the time when, among an excitable people, the use of the pistol had always been simultaneous with the offence.

Another effect of the want in America of what we in Europe regard as the Corinthian capital of society, is the almost entire absence of the literary element. Not that the Americans have no writers or readers; they have plenty of the former, and are a nation of the latter. But this leaves very little trace on American society, because they have no class whose only real work in life is intellectual. The chief source of supply for the literary element is, with us, that vast number of persons, constituting quite an order in the state, who live upon the rent of the land, associated with whom is perhaps a still greater number of families who live more or less on interest and dividends, that is, on realised personalty. The members of this class can only distinguish themselves in life by the exercise of intellectual powers. They have abundant leisure, and every appliance at their command for intellectual culture. Multitudes of them, it is true, never rise to any useful conception of the advantages and requirements of their position; still this, and this only, is what they are called to; and we cannot complain that their work is on the whole done badly. As a class they are highly educated. From them come almost all our statesmen, and a large proportion of our literary and scientific men. Their culture it is that with us gives to society its tone and colour. This intellectualising element is completely wanting in America. The effects of its absence are by the European never unfelt for a moment. He is always conscious that there are no statesmen, though plenty of politicians, no literary men, though plenty of writers, and no intellectual class, though much has been done successfully to cultivate intellect.

Schools.

As was my custom wherever I went, I asked permission to visit and inspect some of the schools of this place. The superintendent of schools for Cincinnati was so good as to take me over the largest graded school in the city. We spent in it three hours. There were present about 600 children. The school was divided into six grades. In New York and most other places two of the grades would have belonged to the Grammar School. We began at the bottom and worked up to the top. They teach reading, as is generally now done in America, phonetically. This they think an easier method. They are not at all ambitious in their reading books, because they do not aim at conveying knowledge of things through the medium of reading lessons, but content themselves with creating the habit of reading correctly, and with attention to the meaning of what is read; and this is more likely to be secured, if the book consists of little interesting stories, than would be the case if it contained solid information. What in the upper grades they write to-day, is what they remember of an object lesson given on the previous day. This trains them to remember, to think, and to compose. There is no writing from copies, which children generally get through as quickly as they can, without any attention or thought. Singing is carefully taught, and so is elementary drawing, particularly in connection with the construction of maps. They begin the study of Geography, with the geography of the school-room, which is the North, the East, the South, and the West side: and then they go on to what is beyond. The geography of the United States is taught carefully. It often struck me in America that the geography of the rest of the world was almost ignored. In these schools the reading was very good, and from the readiness and correctness of their answers, it was evident that they were in the habit of attending to what they were reading, and that they completely mastered its meaning. It is not to be expected that children, when they leave school, will keep up their reading, if they have not been taught to read with facility, and so far to understand what they read as to take an interest in it.

The key to the success of these schools, and of so many other city schools in America, is that they are graded, and that each grade has a room and teacher exclusively to itself. The whole time of the teacher is devoted to one class. No member, therefore, of the class can ever during school hours be idle. This system, too, naturally employs more largely than any other the oral method of conveying instruction. The teacher stands up before the class, and teaches it. The eye and the ear are always busy. There is no drowsiness, no whispering, no poring over books, or pretending to be poring over them. All the teachers in this school, excepting one, were women. The superintendent of the whole school appeared to attend equally to all the classes, and to be responsible for the state of each. Boys and girls are taught together in all grades except the highest. The district in which this fine school is situated is inhabited chiefly by German Jews, and more than half the 600 pupils were children of such parents. The Roman Catholic children were only six or seven per cent. of the whole. In the State of Ohio they do not, as is done in the State of New York, allow the Roman Catholics a part of the school rate for the maintenance of separate schools. If they wish to bring up their children in schools of their own, of course they are at liberty to do so, but they must pay for such schools themselves.