It was this era of optimism in the civic life of Brooklyn that helped to defeat the Lafayette Avenue railroad.
It was a scheme of New York speculators to deface one of the finest avenues in Brooklyn. The most profitable business activity in this country is to invest other people's money. It seemed to me that the Lafayette railroad deal was only a sort of blackmailing institution to compel the property holders to pay for the discontinuance of the enterprise, or the company would sell out to some other company; and as the original company paid nothing all they get is clear gain; and whether the railroad is built or not, the people for years, all along the beautiful route, would be kept in suspense. There was no more need of a car track along Lafayette avenue than there was need of one from the top of Trinity Church steeple to the moon! The greater facility of travel, the greater prosperity! But I am opposed to all railroads, the depot for which is an unprincipled speculator's pocket.
It was only a few weeks later that I had to condemn a much greater matter, a national event.
On March 1, 1878, the Silver Bill was passed in Washington, notwithstanding the President's veto. The House passed it by a vote of 196 against 73, and the Senate agreed with a vote of 46 against 10. It would be asking too much to expect anyone to believe that the 196 men in Congress were bought up. So far as I knew the men, they were as honest on one side of the vote as on the other. Senator Conkling, that giant of integrity, opposed it. Alexander H. Stephens voted for it. I talked with Mr. Stephens about it, and he said to me at the time, "Unless the Silver Bill pass, in the next six months there will not be two hundred business houses in New York able to stand." Still, the Silver Bill seemed like the first step towards repudiation of our national obligation, but I believe that at least 190 out of those 196 men who voted for it would have sacrificed their lives rather than repudiate our national debt.
I had an opportunity to comprehend the political explosion of the passage of this Bill all over the country, for it so happened I made a lecturing trip through the South and South-west during the month of March, 1878.
There is one word that described the whole feeling in the South at this time, and that was "hope." The most cheerful city, I found, was New Orleans. She was rejoicing in the release from years of unrighteous government. Just how the State of Louisiana had been badgered, and her every idea of self-government insulted, can be appreciated only by those who come face to face with the facts. While some of the best patriots of the North went down with the right motives to mingle in the reconstruction of the State governments of the South, many of these pilgrimists were the cast-off and thieving politicians of the North, who, after being stoned out of Northern waters, crawled up on the beach at the South to sun themselves. The Southern States had enough dishonest men of their own without any importation. The day of trouble passed. Louisiana and South Carolina for the most part are free. Governor Nichols of the one, and Governor Wade Hampton of the other, had the confidence of the great masses of the people.
It was my opinion then that the largest fortunes were yet to be made in the South, because there was more room to make them there. During my two weeks in the South, at that time, mingling with all classes of people, I never heard an unkind word against the North, and that only a little over ten years since the close of the war. Congressional politicians were still enlarging upon the belligerency of the South, but they had personal designs at President making. There was no more use for Federal military in New Orleans than there was need of them in Brooklyn. I was the guest in New Orleans of the Hon. E.J. Ellis, many years in Congress, and I had a taste of real Southern hospitality. It was everywhere. The spirit of fraternity was in the South long before it reached the North. Up to this time I had echoed Horace Greeley's advice, "Go West." For years afterwards I changed it. In my advice to young men I said to all, "Go South."
In the spring of 1878, however, things in Brooklyn began to look more promising for young men and young women. I remember after closely examining Mayor Howell's report and the Police Commissioner's report I was much pleased. Mayor Howell was one of the most courteous and genial men I ever knew, and Superintendent Campbell was a good police officer. These two men, by their individual interest in Brooklyn reforms, had gained the confidence of our tax-payers and our philanthropists. The police force was too small for a city of 5,000,000 people. The taxes were not big enough to afford an adequate equipment. There was a constant depreciation of our police and excise officials in the churches. City officials should not be caricatured—they should be respected, or dismissed. It was about this time a mounted police department was started in Brooklyn, and though small it was needed. What the miscreant community of Brooklyn most needed at this time was not sermons or lessons in the common schools, but a police club—and they got it.
There was a political avarice in Brooklyn in the management of our public taxes which handicapped the local government. For a long while I had been thinking about some way of presenting this sin to my people, when one day a woman, Barbara Allen by name, dropping in fatal illness, was picked up at the Fulton Ferry House, and died in the ambulance. On her arm was a basket of cold victuals she had lugged from house to house. In the rags of her clothing were found deposit slips in the savings banks of Brooklyn—for $20,000. The case was unique at that time, because in those days great wealth was unknown, even in New York, and the houses in Brooklyn were homes—not museums. Twenty thousand dollars was a fortune. It was a precedent that established miserliness as an actual sin, a dissipation just as deadly as that of the spendthrift. It was a tragic scene from the drama of life, and its surprise was avarice. The whole country read about Barbara Allen, and wondered what new strange disease this was that could scourge a human soul with a madness for accumulating money without spending it. The people of the United States suffered from quite a different idea of money. They were just beginning to feel the great American fever for spending more of it than they could get. This was a serious phase of social conditions then, and I remember how keenly I felt the menace of it at the time. Those who couldn't get enough to spend became envious, jealous, hateful of those who could and these envious ones were the American masses.
In the spring of 1878, in May, there was a tiger sprang out of this jungle of discontent, and, crouching, threatened to spring upon American Society.