These great men of America, how much they were to me, in their example of doing and living!
Probably there are many still living who remember what a disorderly place Brooklyn once was. Gangs of loafers hung around our street corners, insulting and threatening men and women. Carriages were held up in the streets, the occupants robbed, and the vehicles stolen. Kidnapping was known. Behind all this outrage of civil rights was political outrage. The politicians were afraid to offend the criminals, because they might need their votes in future elections. They were immune, because they were useful material in case of a new governor or President. It was a reign of terror that spread also in other large cities. The farmers of Ohio and Pennsylvania were threatened if they did not stop buying labour-saving machinery. They were not the threats of the working-man, but of the lazy, criminal loafers of the country. It is worth mentioning, because it was a convulsion of an American period, a national growing pain, which I then saw and talked about. The nation was under the cloud of political ambition and office-seeking that unsettled business conditions. Every one was occupied in President-making, although we were two years from the Presidential election. There was plenty of money, but people held on to it.
The yellow fever scourge came down upon the South during the late summer of 1878, and softened the hearts of some. There was some money contributed from the North, but not as much as there ought to have been. In the Brooklyn Tabernacle we did the best we could; New York city had been ravaged by yellow fever in 1832, the year I was born, but the memory of that horror was not keen enough to influence the collection plate. What with this suffering of our neighbours in the South, and the troubles of political jealousies local and national, there were cares enough for our church to consider. Still, the summer of 1878 was almost through, and many predictions of disaster had failed. We had been threatened with general riots. It was predicted that on June 27 all the cars and railroad stations would be burned, because of a general strike order. We were threatened with a fruit famine. It was said that the Maryland and New Jersey peach crop was a failure. I never saw or ate so many peaches any summer before.
Then there was the Patten investigation committee, determined to send Mr. Tilden down to Washington to drive the President out of the White House. None of these things happened, yet it is interesting to recall this phase of American nerves in 1878.
There was one event that aroused my disgust, however, much more than the croakers had done—Ben Butler was nominated for Governor of Massachusetts. That was when politics touched bottom. There was no lower depths of infamy for them to reach. Ben Butler was the chief demagogue of the land. The Republican party was to be congratulated that it got rid of him. His election was a cross put upon the State of Massachusetts for something it had done we knew not of. Fortunately there were men like Roscoe Conkling in politics to counterbalance other kinds.
Backed up by unscrupulous politicians, the equally irresponsible railroad promoter began his invasion of city streets with his noisy scheme. I opposed him, but the problem of transportation then was not as it is now. Just as the year 1879 had begun, a gigantic political promoting scheme for an elevated railroad in Brooklyn was attempted. From Boston came the promoters with a proposition to build the road, without paying a cent of indemnity to property holders. I suggested that an appeal be made to Brooklynites to subscribe to a company for the agricultural improvements of Boston Common. It was a parallel absurdity. Mayor Howell, of Brooklyn, courageously opposed an elevated road franchise, unless property holders were paid according to the damage to the property. This was one of many inspired grafts of political Brooklyn, years ago.
A great event in the world was the announcement in November, 1878, that Professor Thomas Edison had applied for a patent for the discovery of the incandescent electric light. He harnessed the flame of a thunderbolt to fit in a candlestick. I hope he made millions of dollars out of it. In direct contradiction to this progress in daily life there came, at the same time, from the Philadelphia clergy a protest against printing their sermons in the secular press. It was an injustice to them, they declared, because the sermons were not always fully reported. I did not share these opinions. If a minister's gospel is not fit for fifty thousand people, then it is not fit for the few hundred members of his congregation. My own sermons were being published in the secular press then, as they had been when I was in Philadelphia.
Almost at the close of the year 1878 the loss of the S.S. "Pomerania," in collision in the English Channel, was a disaster of the sea that I denounced as nothing short of murder. It was shown at the trial that there was no fog at the time, that the two vessels saw each other for ten minutes before the collision. If such gross negligence as this was possible, I advised those people who bought a ticket for Europe on the White Star, the Cunard, the Hamburg, or other steamship lines, to secure at the same time a ticket for Heaven. What a difference in the ocean ferry-boat of to-day!
Scarcely had the submarine telegraph closed this chapter of sea horror than it clicked the information that the beautiful Princess Alice had died in Germany. Only a few days later, in America, we were in mood of mourning for Bayard Taylor, our Minister Plenipotentiary to Germany. In the death of Princess Alice we felt chiefly a sympathy for Queen Victoria, who had not then, and never did, overcome her grief at the loss of Prince Albert. In the decease of Bayard Taylor we remembered with pride that he was a self-made gentleman of a school for which there is no known system of education. Regarded as a dreamy, unpractical boy, nothing much was ever expected of him. When he was seventeen he set type in a printing office in Westchester. It was Bayard Taylor who exploded the idea that only the rich could afford to go to Europe, when on less than a thousand dollars he spent two years amid the palaces and temples, telling of his adventures in a way that contributed classic literature to our book-shelves. He worked hard—wrote thirty-five books. There is genius in hard work alone. I have often thought that women pursue more of it than men. They work night and day, year in and year out, from kitchen to parlour, from parlour to kitchen.
There was some strong legislative effort made in our country about this time to exclude the Chinese. I opposed this legislation with all the voice and ability I had, because I felt not merely the injustice of such contradiction of all our national institutions, but I saw its political folly. I saw that the nation that would be the most friendly to China, and could get on the inside track of her commerce, would be the first nation of the world. The legislature seemed particularly angry with the Chinese immigrants in this country because they would not allow themselves to be buried here. They were angry with the Chinese then because they would not intermarry. They were angry with the Chinese because they invested their money in China. They did not think they were handsome enough for this country. We even wanted a monopoly of good looks in those days.