This extraordinary beneficence, on the part of a private citizen, was acknowledged in Great Britain. The freedom of the City of London was conferred on Mr. Peabody by the corporation. The Queen, not content with offering him either a baronetcy or the Grand Cross of the Bath, which he respectfully declined, wrote him a grateful letter, and invited him to visit her at Windsor. In 1866, just before his second visit to his native country, he received from her the gift of a beautiful miniature portrait of herself, framed in the most costly style, which he deposited in the Peabody Institute at Danvers. The last token of public honour which was rendered to Mr. Peabody before his death, was the uncovering, by the Prince of Wales, of Storey’s fine bronze statue of himself behind the Royal Exchange.
Mr. Peabody remained in his native land three years, during which time he largely increased the amount of his donations, and founded more than one or two important institutions. He gave 2,000,000 dollars for the education of the blacks and whites in the South; 300,000 dollars for museums of American relics at Yale and Harvard Colleges; 50,000 dollars for a free museum at Salem; 25,000 dollars to Bishop McIlxame for Kenyon College; and presented a sum of 230,000 dollars to the State of Maryland. He also expended 100,000 dollars on a memorial church to his mother, and distributed among the members of his family 2,000,000 dollars. In recognition of his many large gifts to public institutions in America, Mr. Peabody received, in March 1867, a special vote of thanks from the United States. He died in London, at the house of his friend, Six Curtis Sampson, at Eaton Square, in the seventy-filth year of his age. The funeral took place in Westminster Abbey though, in accordance with the wishes of the deceased, the body was afterwards conveyed to America. The coffin-lid bore the following inscription:—
George Peabody,
Born at Danvers, Massachusetts, February 18th, 1795;
Died in London, England, November 4th, 1869.
The remains were taken over to America in her Majesty’s turret-ship, the Monarch.
The late Mr. A. T. Stewart, dry-goods merchant of New York, has left a curious monument of his administrative skill in the great Working Women’s Hotel, recently completed in that city. As a large employer of labour, male as well as female, Mr. Stewart became impressed with the difficulty that working-folk have in finding lodgings even in comparatively new cities. In swiftly-growing New York, the constantly increasing demand for business premises has pushed the population higher and higher up the island, until one fashionable street after another has been converted into stores and offices, and people fairly well off have built themselves handsome dwellings further afield. This has been by no means an unprofitable change for house-owners; for the compensation received for a house “down town,” more than suffices to build and furnish a handsome dwelling in that part of the city still devoted to private residences; but to the poorer classes of inhabitants, rapid change and development of this kind have been not a little oppressive. Far more swiftly and suddenly than in London, the working-people have found themselves thrust from the space previously occupied by them, but grown too valuable to be covered by their humble homes. Like their brethren in London, they have either retired to the suburbs and find a tiresome morning and evening journey added to the miseries of life, or have taken refuge in large houses let out in tenements and built expressly for the accommodation of artisan families. Both English and American experiments in this latter direction have been very successful. Practice has taught the proper principle of constructing large tenement houses as well as artisans’ and labourers’ cottages, and the working family is probably not less commodiously, and is certainly more healthily, lodged than it has been at any preceding period. The single man, too, is cared for; but the single woman has hitherto been under certain disadvantages. It is obvious that a house almost always contains more space than she wants, and costs more money than she can afford; and it is equally clear that in cooking her own meals separately she is wasting time, food, and fuel. Some of these objections might, perhaps, be got over by four or five women clubbing together; but their general feeling has never been strongly manifested in favour of divided rule or responsibility. It is subjecting human nature to a severe test to ask people to “room together,” as it is called in America, the ordinary result being that the temporary “chums” never speak again to each other for the rest of their lives. It was to obviate this strain on human sympathy that Mr. Stewart projected the Working Women’s Hotel, the completion of which he did not live to see.
“Judging from the prices charged,” says a writer in the Daily News, “and the regulations enforced, the working women for whom the great hotel at New York has been constructed, are of a class somewhat above that of the factory or work-girl proper. Seven dollars a-week for board and a separate room, or six dollars a-head if two persons occupy the same room, is a price that would absorb an ordinary workwoman’s entire earnings. When it is recollected that the value of a paper dollar is now within a fraction of that of a gold one, and that wages and other things have fallen in price with the contraction of the currency since the civil war, it is not easy to see from what class of actual workwomen the hotel is to draw its customers. Women working at trades clearly cannot aspire to the comforts provided for seven dollars a-week, and it is doubtful whether those in a position to pay that sum will submit to the restrictions imposed upon boarders. For the sum asked they can, at the present moment, obtain board easily elsewhere, and enjoy perfect liberty. It is very likely that the food and accommodation provided at the hotel are much superior to those offered at the smaller boarding-houses with which the outer edges of New York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City are thickly studded; but mere eating and sleeping seem to be regarded by women, in America at least, in a far less serious light than by men. The code of regulations at the Working Women’s Hotel affords an amusing instance of the severity which comes over the American when called to the lofty and important position of keeping an hotel. In other walks of life he is easy and good-natured, but when impelled by destiny to ‘run’ an hotel, he undergoes a sudden transformation into a despot. The guests at the new hotel are informed that eight large parlours have been provided for the reception of visitors, who will not be allowed in other rooms or parlours except by express permission of the manager. The eight parlours specified correspond, in fact, to the strangers’ rooms at a club. It is furthermore provided that no visiting to a room will be allowed except by consent of all the occupants; that no washing of clothes will be permitted in the rooms, and that no sewing-machines or working apparatus shall be brought into them. This last regulation may appear severe, but it is probably intended to protect those who do not sew from annoyance. A sewing-machine is an unpleasant neighbour, it is true; but so is a rocking-chair; yet it may be doubted whether even the despot who reigns over this last new ‘institution’ will prove equal to the task of tabooing that pestilent article of furniture. Animals will be rigidly excluded. No dogs, cats, birds, or other pet creatures will be suffered; meals will be served at fixed hours; the gas will be turned off and the hotel closed at half-past eleven. Whether this code will be submitted to by American working-women capable of paying from 24s. to 28s. weekly for board and lodging remains to be seen. The upper lady-clerk in a store is, as a rule, gifted with great strength of character, and as a fairly educated, self-reliant, and hardworking member of society, is perfectly entitled to display her sense of independence. She will be quick to perceive the advantages offered by the new hotel, but it is at least probable that she will be equally quick to resent the restrictions which it is sought to impose upon her sovereign will and pleasure.”
A poor rich man, not long since, died at Cincinnati, leaving property worth considerably more than half a million sterling. He lived up an alley in one small room, dressed in rags, and looked like a penniless tramp, and yet he owned more than 100,000 acres of land. Another citizen of Cincinnati also offered to present to the city his valuable art-collection, worth £40,000, on condition that a fire-proof building should be erected in which to store it.
It is said that Peter Cooper, of New York, who has now (1878) entered his eighty-eighth year, is worth £2,000,000. He began life as a coachmaker’s apprentice; but having invented a superior kind of glue, which came into general use, he rapidly made an immense fortune.
The last illustration of getting on in America may be found in the case of Carl Schurz, now (1878) one of the Secretaries of State in America.
The history of Carl Schurz reads like a romance, for the wandering Ulysses himself, restricted to narrower limits by the imperfect geographical knowledge of his day, never had a tenth part of his modern imitator’s advantages in “observant straying” over different lands, and amidst diverse languages, nor “noting the manners and their climes” of widely separated races. Born near Cologne in 1829, and educated first at its gymnasium, and subsequently at the University of Bonn, Carl Schurz enjoyed superior educational advantages, by which, naturally studious, he greatly profited. When but nineteen years of age, under the influence of his professor, Kinkel, he became a Revolutionist in his sentiments; and in the year 1848, memorable for the revolutionary tide that swept over Europe, established, in conjunction with his professor, a journal to advocate those principles. Of this journal he was for a time sole editor. When, in, the spring of 1849, the abortive insurrectionary effort was made at Bonn, in which both he and the professor took a part, they fled together to the Palatinate. Here our young student joined the revolutionary army as adjutant, and aided in the defence of Rastadt against the government troops. On the surrender of that place he escaped to Switzerland, but soon returned to deliver his friend Professor Kinkel from the fortress of Spandau. In this effort he was successful. In 1851, we find the young revolutionist at Paris, as correspondent of German journals, and a little later at London, for a year giving lessons in German. But the exile wearied of Europe, and his fancy drove him to America, where he arrived ignorant of the language, and, it is to be presumed, short of cash. But he proceeded to grapple resolutely with both difficulties. Three years he spent in the quiet Quaker city of Philadelphia, teaching, and learning, and writing—for there is a large German population In Pennsylvania. Then he drifted westwards; first to Wisconsin, where he commenced his career as a political partisan making speeches in German, during the presidential canvass of 1856, on the Republican side. He was also an unsuccessful candidate for the lieutenant-governorship of Wisconsin that year—fast work for one but four years in the country. The first public speech he delivered in the English language was in 1858, about which time he commenced the practice of law. In 1859, he made a lecture tour through the New England States, speaking English, as I have been informed by an auditor, very imperfectly. Now he speaks the language with perfect purity, and a scarcely perceptible accent. In 1860, he was an influential member of the National Republican Convention, and one of the chief speakers during the canvass that resulted in the election of Lincoln to the presidency. Appointed by Mr. Lincoln minister to Spain, he soon resigned that office to return home and take part in the civil war—the Germans forming a large portion of the military contingent in the Federal army, the great bulk of the German immigration having settled in the North and North-western States; very few indeed at the South. It was a curious sequel to a revolutionary career at home that Mr. Schurz should have been so soon engaged in suppressing a rebellion in his adopted country. He rose to the rank of major-general in the Federal service, and took part in the battle of the second Bull Run, and where Stonewall Jackson defeated the Federals at Chancellorsville. He was also at Chattanooga and Gettysburg fights. At the close of the war he returned to the practice of the law, and connected himself with the newspaper press in different parts of the country as a Washington correspondent.
When, in 1866, after the assassination of President Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was acting President of the United States, he appointed Carl Schurz as special commissioner to visit and report on the actual condition of the southern country, then under process of reconstruction. On his return from this mission our German Ulysses migrated to Detroit in Michigan, where he founded a newspaper. The ensuing year he moved again to the city of St. Louis, in Missouri, where he founded a German newspaper, took an active part for General Grant in both languages in 1868, and in 1869 was elected United States senator for six years’ term from Missouri. Disagreeing with General Grant’s policy and mode of conducting public affairs, Mr. Schurz passed over to the Opposition to his administration, and, in conjunction with Horace Greeley—like himself an Abolitionist and Republican—sought to establish a reform party of Liberal Republicans, as opposed to the Spoils party of Grant. Mr. Schurz was the presiding officer in the Cincinnati Republican Convention, which nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency, and since then his career has been one of unmitigated success.