The Englishwoman in America

by Isabella L. Bird

Taking the various schools throughout the Union, it is estimated that between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 individuals are at this time receiving education.

To turn from the social to the material features of the United States: their system of internal communication deserves a brief notice, for by it their resources have been developed to a prodigious extent. The system of railways, telegraphs, and canal and river navigation presents an indication of the wealth and advancement of the United States, as wonderful as any other feature of her progress. She contains more miles of railway than all the rest of the world put together.

In a comparatively new country like America many of the items of expense which attend the construction of railways in England are avoided; the initiatory expenses are very small. In most of the States, all that is necessary is, for the company to prove that it is provided with means to carry out its scheme, when it obtains a charter from the Legislature at a very small cost. In several States, including the populous ones of New York and Ohio, no special charter is required, as a general railway law prescribes the rules to be observed by joint-stock companies. Materials, iron alone excepted, are cheap, and the right of way is usually freely granted. In the older States land would not cost more than 20_l._ an acre. Wood frequently costs nothing more than the labour of cutting it, and the very level surface of the country renders tunnels, cuttings, and embankments generally unnecessary. The average cost per mile is about 38,000 dollars, or 7600_l._

In States where land has become exceedingly valuable, land damages form a heavy item in the construction of new lines, but in the South and West the case is reversed, and the proprietors are willing to give as much land as may be required, in return for having the resources of their localities opened up by railway communication. It is estimated that the cost of railways in the new States will not exceed 4000_l._ per mile. The termini are plain, and have been erected at a very small expense, and many of the wayside stations are only wooden sheds. Few of the lines have a double line of rails, and the bridges or viaducts are composed of logs of wood, with little ironwork and less paint, except in a few instances. Except where the lines intersect cultivated districts, fences are seldom seen, and the paucity of porters and other officials materially reduces the working expenses. The common rate of speed is from 22 to 30 miles an hour, but there are express trains which are warranted to perform 60 in a like period. The fuel is very cheap, being billets of wood. The passenger and goods traffic on nearly all the lines is enormous, and it is stated that most of them pay a dividend of from 8 to 15 per cent.

The primary design has been to connect the sea-coast with all parts of the interior, the ulterior is to unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. At the present time there are about 25,000 miles of railway in operation and course of construction, and the average rate of fare is seldom more than 1_d._ per mile. Already the chief cities of the Atlantic have been connected with the vast valley of the Mississippi, and before long the regions bordering on Lake Huron and Lake Superior will be united with Mobile and New Orleans. In addition to this enormous system of railway communication, the canal and river navigation extends over 10,000 miles, and rather more than 3000 steamboats float on American waters alone.

The facilities for telegraphic communication in the States are a further evidence of the enterprise of this remarkable people. They have now 22,000 miles of telegraph in operation, and the cost of transmitting messages is less than a halfpenny a word for any distance under 200 miles. The cost of construction, including every outlay, is about 30_l._ per mile. The wires are carried along the rail ways, through forests, and across cities, rivers, and prairies. Messages passing from one very distant point to another have usually to be re-written at an intermediate station; though by an improved plan they have been transmitted direct from New York to Mobile, a distance of 1800 miles. By the Cincinnati telegraphic route to New Orleans, a distance from New York of 2000 miles, the news brought by the British steamer to Sandy Hook at 8 in the morning has been telegraphed to New Orleans, and before 11 o'clock the effects produced by it upon speculations there have been returned to New York—the message accomplishing a distance of 4000 miles in three hours. The receipts are enormous, for, in consequence of the very small sum charged for transmitting messages, as many as 600 are occasionally sent along the principal lines in one day. The seven principal morning papers in New York paid in one year 50,000 dollars for despatches, and 14,000 for special messages. Messages connected with markets, public news, the weather, and the rise and fall of stocks, are incessantly passing between the great cities. Any change in the weather likely to affect the cotton-crop is known immediately in the northern cities. While in the Exchange at Boston, I witnessed the receipt of a telegraphic despatch announcing that a heavy shower was falling at New Orleans!

It must not be supposed that there is no poverty in the New World. During one year 134,972 paupers were in the receipt of relief, of whom 59,000 were in the State of New York; but to show the evil influence of the foreign, more especially the Irish, element in America, it is stated that 75 per cent. of the criminals and paupers are foreigners.

The larger portion of the crime committed is done under the influence of spirits; and to impose a check upon their sale, that celebrated enactment, known under the name of the "Maine Law" has been placed upon the statute-books of several of the States, including the important ones of New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nebraska. This law prohibits, under heavy penalties, the manufacture or sale of alcoholic liquors. It has been passed in obedience to the will of the people, as declared at the elections; and though to us its provisions seem somewhat arbitrary, its working has produced very salutary effects.

When so much importance is attached to education, and such a liberal provision is made for it, it is to be expected that a taste for reading would be universally diffused. And such is the case: America teems with books. Every English work worth reading is reprinted in a cheap form in the States as soon as the first copy crosses the Atlantic. Our reviews and magazines appear regularly at half price, and Dickens' 'Household Words' and 'Chambers' Journal' enjoy an enormous circulation without any pecuniary benefit being obtained by the authors. Every one reads the newspapers and 'Harper's Magazine,' and every one buys bad novels, on worse paper, in the cars and steamboats. The States, although amply supplied with English literature, have many popular authors of their own, among whom may be named Prescott, Bancroft, Washington Irving, Stowe, Stephens, Wetherall, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and Bryant. Books are very cheap wherever the editions of English works are concerned, and a library is considered an essential part of the fitting up of a house. In many of the States there are public libraries supported by a rate. In the State of New York, in the year ending 1854, the Commissioners of Education received 90,579 dollars for libraries.

Perhaps the greatest advantage offered to emigrants is the opportunity everywhere afforded of investing small sums of money advantageously. In England, in most branches of trade, the low rate of wages renders it impossible for the operative to save any portion of his earnings; and even when he is able to do so, he can rarely obtain a higher rate of interest for his money than that which the savings-banks offer. Economise as he may, his hard-won savings seldom are sufficient to afford him a provision in old age. In America, on the contrary, the man who possesses 5_l._ or 10_l._ has every hope of securing a competence. He may buy land in newly- settled districts, which sometimes can be obtained at 7_s._ an acre, and hold it till it becomes valuable, or he may obtain a few shares in any thriving corporate concern. A hundred ways present themselves to the man of intelligence and industry by which he may improve and increase his little fortune. The necessaries of life are abundant and cheap, and, aided by a free education, he has the satisfaction of a well-grounded hope that his children will rise to positions of respectability and affluence, while his old age will be far removed from the pressure of want. The knowledge that each shilling saved may produce ten or twenty by judicious investment is a constant stimulus to his industry.