The arrival of Mr. Parnell in New York was an event of the period. We knew he was an orator, and we were anxious to hear him. There was some uncertainty as to whether he came to America to obtain bayonets to stick the English with, or whether he came for bread for the starving in Ireland. We did not understand the political problem between England and Ireland so well—but we did understand the meaning of a loaf of bread. Mr. Parnell was welcome.
The failure of the harvest crops in Europe made the question of the hour at the beginning of 1880—bread. The grain speculator appeared, with his greedy web spun around the world. Europe was short 200,000,000 bushels of wheat. The American speculator cornered the market, stacked the warehouses, and demanded fifty cents a bushel. Europe was compelled to retaliate, by purchasing grain in Russia, British India, New Zealand, South America, and Australia. In one week the markets of the American North-west purchased over 15,000,000 bushels, of which only 4,000,000 bushels were exported. Meanwhile the cry of the world's hunger grew louder, and the bolts on the grain cribs were locked tighter than ever. American finances could have been straightened out on this one product, except for the American speculator, who demanded more for it than it was worth. The United States had a surplus of 18,000,000 bushels of grain for export, in 1880. But the kings of the wheat market said to Europe, "Bow down before us, and starve."
Suddenly we in America were surprised to learn that flour in London was two dollars cheaper a barrel than it was in New York. Our grain blockade of the world was reacting upon us. Lying idle at the wharves of New York and Brooklyn were 102 ships, 439 barques, 87 brigs, 178 schooners, and 47 steamers. Six or seven hundred of these vessels were waiting for cargoes. The gates of our harbour were closed in the grip of the grain gambler. The thrift of the speculator was the menace of our national prosperity. The octopus of speculative ugliness was growing to its full size, and threatened to smother us utterly. There was a "corner" on everything.
We were busy trying to pick out our next President. There was great agitation over the Republican candidates: Grant, Blaine, Cameron, Conkling, Sherman. Greatness in a man is sometimes a hindrance to the Presidency. Such was the case with Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Thomas H. Benton, and William C. Preston. We were only on the edge of the whirlpool of a presidential election. In England the election storm was just beginning. The first thunderbolt was the sudden dissolution of Parliament by Lord Beaconsfield. The two mightiest men in England then were antagonists, Disraeli and Gladstone.
What a magnificent body of men are those Members of Parliament. They meet and go about without the ostentation of some of our men in Congress. Men of great position in England are born to it; they are not so afraid of losing it as our celebrated Republicans and Democrats. Even the man who comes up into political power from the masses in England is more likely to hold his position than if he had triumphed in American politics.
In the spring and summer of 1880 I took a long and exhaustive trip across our continent, and completely lost the common dread of emigration that was then being talked about. There was room enough for fifty new nations between Omaha and Cheyenne, room for more still between Cheyenne and Ogden, from Salt Lake City to Sacramento.
An unpretentious youth, Carey by name, whom I had known in Philadelphia, went West in '67. I found him in Cheyenne a leading citizen. He had been District Attorney, then judge of one of the courts, owned a city block, a cattle ranch, and was worth about $500,000. There wasn't room enough for him in Philadelphia. Senator Hill of Colorado told me, while in Denver, about a man who came out there from the East to be a miner. He began digging under a tree because it was shady. People passed by and laughed at him. He kept on digging. After a while he sent a waggon load of the dust to be assayed, and there was $9,000 worth of metal in it. He retired with a fortune.
A man with $3,000 and good health could have gone West in 1880, invested it in cattle, and made a fortune. San Francisco was only forty-five years old then, Denver thirty-five, Leadville sixteen, Kansas City thirty-five. They looked a hundred at least. Leadville was then a place of palatial hotels, elegant churches, boulevards and streets. The West was just aching to show how fast it could build cities. Leadville was the most lied about. It was reported that I explored Leadville till long after midnight, looking at its wickedness. I didn't. All the exploring I did in Leadville was in about six minutes, from the wide open doors of the gambling houses on two of the main streets; but the next day it was telegraphed all over the United States. There were more telephones in Leadville in 1880 than in any other city in the United States, to its population. Some of the best people of Brooklyn and New York lived there. The newspaper correspondents lost money in the gambling houses there, and so they didn't like Leadville, and told the world it was a bad place, which was a misrepresentation. It is a well known law of human nature that a man usually hates a place where he did not behave well. I found perfect order there, to my surprise. There was a vigilance committee in Leadville composed of bankers and merchants. It was their business to give a too cumbrous law a boost. The week before I got to Leadville this committee hanged two men. The next day eighty scoundrels took the hint and left Leadville. A great institution was the vigilance committee of those early Western days. They saved San Francisco, and Cheyenne, and Leadville. I wish they had been in Brooklyn when I was there. The West was not slow to assimilate the elegancies of life either. There were beautiful picture galleries in Omaha, and Denver, and Sacramento, and San Francisco. There was more elaboration and advancement of dress in the West than there was in the East in 1880. The cravats of the young men in Cheyenne were quite as surprising, and the young ladies of Cheyenne went down the street with the elbow wabble, then fashionable in New York. San Francisco was Chicago intensified, and yet then it was a mere boy of a city, living in a garden of Eden, called California. On my return came Mr. Garfield's election. It was quietly and peaceably effected, but there followed that exposure of political outrages concerning his election, the Morey forgeries. I hoped then that this villainy would split the Republican and Democratic parties into new fields, that it would spilt the North and the South into a different sectional feeling. I hoped that there would be a complete upheaval, a renewed and cleaner political system as a consequence. But the reform movement is always slower than any other.
I remember the harsh things that were said in our denomination of Lucretia Mott, the quakeress, the reformer, the world-renowned woman preacher of the day. She was well nigh as old as the nation, eighty-eight years old, when she died. Her voice has never died in the plain meeting-houses of this country and England. I don't know that she was always right, but she always meant to be right. In Philadelphia, where she preached, I lived among people for years who could not mention her name without tears of gratitude for what she had done for them. There was great opposition to her because she was the first woman preacher, but all who heard her speak knew she had a divine right of utterance.
In November, 1880, Disraeli's great novel, "Endymion" was published by an American firm, Appleton & Co., a London publisher paying the author the largest cash price ever paid for a manuscript up to that time—$50,000. Noah Webster made that much in royalties on his spelling book, but less on one of the greatest works given to the human race, his dictionary. There was a great literary impulse in American life, inspired by such American publishing houses as Appleton's, the Harper Bros., the Dodds, the Randolphs, and the Scribners. It was the brightest moment in American literature; far brighter than the day Victor Hugo, in youth, long anxious to enter the French Academy, applied to Callard for his vote. He pretended never to have heard of him. "Will you accept a copy of my books?" asked Victor Hugo. "No thank you," replied the other; "I never read new books." Riley offered to sell his "Universal Philosophy" for $500. The offer was refused. Great and wise authors have often been without food and shelter. Sometimes governments helped them, as when President Pierce appointed Nathaniel Hawthorne to office, and Locke was made Commissioner of Appeals, and Steele State Commissioner of Stamps by the British Government. Oliver Goldsmith said: "I have been years struggling with a wretched being, with all that contempt which indigence brings with it, with all those strong passions which make contempt insupportable." Mr. Payne, the author of "Home, Sweet Home," had no home, and was inspired to the writing of his immortal song by a walk through the streets one slushy night, and hearing music and laughter inside a comfortable dwelling. The world-renowned Sheridan said: "Mrs. Sheridan and I were often obliged to keep writing for our daily shoulder of mutton; otherwise we should have had no dinner." Mitford, while he was writing his most celebrated book, lived in the fields, making his bed of grass and nettles, while two-pennyworth of bread and cheese with an onion was his daily food. I know of no more refreshing reading than the books of William Hazlitt. I take down from my shelf one of his many volumes, and I know not when to stop reading. So fresh and yet so old! But through all the volumes there comes a melancholy, accounted for by the fact that he had an awful struggle for bread. On his dying couch he had a friend write for him the following letter to Francis Jeffrey:—