Prohibition in Kansas and Iowa was making honest men. I did not see an intoxicated man in either of these States. All the young men in Kansas and Iowa were either prohibitionists or loafers. The West had lost the song plaintive and adopted the song jubilant.
In the spring of this year, 1887, Brooklyn was examined by an investigating committee. Even when Mayor Low was in power, three years before, the city was denounced by Democratic critics, so Mayor Whitney, of course, was the victim of Republican critics. The whole thing was mere partisan hypocrisy. If anyone asked me whether I was a Republican or a Democrat, I told them that I had tried both, and got out of them both. I hope always to vote, but the title of the ticket at the top will not influence me. Outside of heaven Brooklyn was the quietest place on Sunday. The Packer and the Polytechnic institutes took care of our boys and girls. Our judiciary at this time included remarkable men: Judge Neilson, Judge Gilbert, and Judge Reynolds. We had enough surplus doctors to endow a medical college for fifty other cities.
It looked as though our grandchildren would be very happy. We were only in the early morning of development. The cities would be multiplied a hundredfold, and yet we were groaning because a few politicians were conducting an investigation for lack of something better to do. From time immemorial we had prayed for the President and Congress, but I never heard of any prayers for the State Legislatures, and they needed them most of all. They brought about the groans of the nation, and we were constantly in complaint of them. I remember a great mass meeting in the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, at which I was present, to protest against the passage of the Gambling Pool Bill, as it was called. I was accused of being over-confident because I said the State Senate would not pass it without a public hearing. A public hearing was given, however, and my faith in the legislators of the State increased. We ministers of Brooklyn had to do a good deal of work outside of our pulpits, outside of our churches, on the street and in the crowds.
When the Ives Gambling Pool Bill was passed I urged that the Legislature should adjourn. The race track men went to Albany and triumphed. Brooklyn was disgraced before the world by our race tracks at Coney Island, which were a public shame!
All the money in the world, however, was not abused. Philanthropists were helping the Church. Miss Wolfe bequeathed a million dollars to evangelisation in New York; Mr. Depau, of Illinois, bequeathed five million dollars to religion, and the remaining three million of his fortune only to his family. There were others—Cyrus McCormick, James Lenox, Mr. Slater, Asa D. Packer. They, with others, were men of great deeds. We were just about ready to appreciate these progressive events.
In the summer of 1887 I urged a great World's Fair, because I thought it was due in our country, to the inventors, the artists, the industries of America. How to set the idea of a World's Fair agoing? It only needed enthusiasm among the prominent merchants and the rich men. All great things first start in one brain, in one heart. I proposed that a World's Fair should be held in the great acreage between Prospect Park and the sea.
In 1853 there was a World's Fair in New York. In the same year the dismemberment of the Republic was expected, and a book of several volumes was advertised in London, entitled "History of the Federal Government from the Foundation to the Dissipation of the United States." Only one volume was ever published. The other volumes were never printed. What a difference in New York city then, when it opened its Crystal Palace, and thirty-four years later—in 1887! That Crystal Palace was the beginning of World's Fairs in this country.
In the presence of the epauleted representatives of foreign nations, before a vast multitude, Franklin Pierce, President of the United States, declared it open, and as he did so Julien, the inspired musical leader of his day, raised his baton for an orchestra of three thousand instruments, while thousands of trained voices sang "God Save the Queen," "The Marseillaise," "Bonnie Doon," "The Harp that once through Tara's Halls," and "Hail Columbia." What that Crystal Palace, opened in New York in 1853, did for art, for science, for civilisation, is beyond record. The generation that built it has for the most part vanished but future generations will be inspired by them.
The summer of 1887 opened the baseball season of America, and I deplored an element of roughness and loaferism that attached itself to the greatest game of our country. One of the national events of this season of that year was a proposal to remove the battle-flag of the late war. Good sense prevailed, and the controversy was satisfactorily settled; otherwise the whole country would have been aflame. It was not merely an agitation over a few bits of bunting. The most arousing, thrilling, blood-stirring thing on earth is a battle-flag. Better let the old battle-flags of our three wars hang where they are. Only one circumstance could disturb them, and that would be the invasion of a foreign power and the downfall of the Republic. The strongest passions of men are those of patriotism.
The best things that a man does in the world usually take a lifetime to make. A career is a life job, and no one is sure whether it was worthy or not till it is over. I except doctors from this rule, of whom Homer says:—