Young, Edward, A.M., Ph.D., Member of the Statistical Society of London; Member of the Geographical Society of France; United States Consul at Windsor, N.S., son of Clarke and Sarah Wingate Young, was born December 11, 1814, at the family household, in Falmouth, a village in Hants county, on the river Avon, opposite to Windsor. The Youngs are of Scotch descent; an ancestor, a Scotch covenanter, forced by persecution to leave his native land, settled in Massachusetts, from which colony Edward’s grandfather, Thomas Young, then a youth, came to Falmouth, with his widowed mother, about the year 1762. He afterwards married a sister of the celebrated evangelist, Rev. Henry Alline, called the Whitefield of Nova Scotia, who travelled and preached in Acadia from 1776 until a short time before his death in New Hampshire, February 8, 1783. His journal was published by his nephew, Clarke Young in 1806. The original in shorthand invented by himself, is now in the possession of the consul. A volume of hymns, entirely of his own composition, was published by Mr. Alline, one of which—“Amazing Sight, the Saviour Stands,” may be found, uncredited, in almost every hymnal now in use. The consul’s mother was a daughter of George Johnson—one of a family who came from Yorkshire to Norton about 1762—and of Mary, his wife, a daughter of Benjamin Cleaveland, who came from Connecticut, in 1760, with the New England colony that settled in Norton after the expulsion of the Acadians. “Deacon” Cleaveland, as he was called, was a brother or cousin to Rev. Aaron, great grandfather of President Cleveland, who, in 1755, or ’56, came from Connecticut to become the minister of the Mather (afterward, St. Matthew’s Presbyterian) Church, in Halifax. Benjamin Cleaveland, who died in 1811, published a hymn book, one of the hymns, of his own composition—“O, could I find from day to day, a nearness to my God,”—appears in many modern hymnals. The Cleavelands are noted for their longevity, averaging nearly ninety years at death. One of Benjamin’s daughters died in 1877, aged 101 years and 4 months. The consul is one of a family of five, all living; the oldest, William H., emigrated to Australia, George and Margaret, both unmarried, reside at the old homestead, while the older sister, Mrs. William Church, is also a resident of Falmouth. After receiving the best education the common schools of that day could give, Edward was one of the first pupils at Norton Academy in April, 1829, of whom the “Records of Students” says: —
Though quite a lad, he showed aptness for learning. Subsequently he left the province and became Chief of the Bureau of Statistics at Washington, received the degree of M.A. from Acadia College, and afterwards Ph.D. from Columbian University, Washington. He has proved himself the constant friend of Acadia. As donor for several years of an annual gold medal for proficiency in the higher mathematics, he is remembered with interest, respect and affection.
He lived several years in Windsor, acquired a knowledge of mercantile business, and believing that the United States offered greater advantages to young men, left his native place in October, 1835, went to the west, and settled in Indiana. There he engaged in business and to some extent in politics. His first vote was given for General Morrison, the Whig candidate for president, who failed of election in 1836, but succeeded in 1840. The severe and long continued illness of Mr. Young’s father induced him to return and remain some years in his native province, during which period he was united in marriage to Maria Bishop, of Horton, some of whose ancestors, the Bishops and Gores, of Connecticut, came with the New England colony in 1760. She is a descendant also of Joseph Jencks, a colonial governor of Rhode Island. After his marriage in December, 1840, he resided in Halifax, engaged partly in commercial pursuits, owning some vessels trading to the United States and the West Indies, himself visiting for purposes of trade the West India islands, South America and the Southern ports of the United States. He edited and published, from 1843 to 1845, a weekly paper, The Olive Branch, the first temperance paper in the Maritime provinces, if not in British North America, except, for a short period, one published also in Halifax, by Edmund Ward. Sustaining losses by shipping, he removed in 1849 to Boston, where he remained till 1851, when he engaged in permanent business in Philadelphia, as publisher of books and a weekly newspaper devoted to American industries, in copartnership with E. T. Freedly, author of a “Treatise on Business,” and other practical works. Their most important publication was “A History of American Manufactures, from 1608 to 1866,” 3 vols. octavo, edited by his wife’s brother, John Leander Bishop, M.D., who was for three years surgeon of a Pennsylvania regiment during the late war. Not only in the United States but by the London Times and other leading journals of England, by the “Westminster” and other reviews, was the highest praise awarded to the author. Even now it is the standard authority on the early history of manufactures in that colony and in the United States. Dr. Bishop was one of the earliest graduates of Acadia. The hardships he endured during the war hastened his death, which occurred in 1868. Not only as a historian and scholar was he lamented, but as the highest style of a man—a Christian gentleman. A statistical work compiled by Mr. Young, attracted the notice of the Washington authorities, and the superintendent of the census offered him a place in that bureau which he accepted, and removed to Washington in 1861, where as chief of division he superintended the compilation of the statistics of industry, and prepared for publication a voluminous report on the manufactures of the United States, the first of the kind. On the completion of this important work, in 1865, he accepted a place in the revenue commission tendered him by its chairman, Hon. David A. Wells, the celebrated economist, and in the following year and subsequently while Mr. Wells was special commissioner of the revenue, he was assistant or deputy commissioner. How faithfully Mr. Young performed his work, how thoroughly he mastered the then complicated revenue system of the United States, Mr. Wells has ever since taken pleasure in manifesting. The imperfect manner in which the commercial statistics were compiled in the treasury department induced Mr. Wells to have a statistical bureau established which was authorised by Act of Congress, and the bureau organized in September, 1866. In the administration of this important bureau the director failed to give satisfaction, and was afterwards legislated out of office, and Mr. Young, who had resigned and resumed his publishing business in Philadelphia, was induced by Mr. Wells to return to Washington and devoted his energies to the work of the bureau. For a few months as chief clerk, and for more than eight years as chief of the bureau, he so improved it that it was acknowledged to be peer of older institutions of Europe, and the work of its director commended, and the accuracy of his statements acknowledged on the floors of both houses of Congress and in foreign countries. A similar bureau was established in Chili, on a plan prepared by Mr. Young; and one in Japan, partly through correspondence and partly by exhibiting to commissioners sent to examine it, the operations of the Washington bureau, and explaining the details, of which full notes were taken. In addition to the monthly, quarterly and annual reports of the chief of the Bureau of Statistics, as required by law, Mr. Young prepared and published several special reports of great interest and value. In 1871 he published “A Special Report on Immigration,” “A Special Report on the Customs-tariff Legislation of the United States,” and other works. In consideration of these labors, Columbian University at Washington conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The report on Immigration, or more properly “Information for Immigrants,” was welcomed with enthusiasm, as it gave detailed information as to the advantages offered by the sparsely settled states and territories to individuals and families in Europe who were desirous to emigrate to America. Tens of thousands of copies were distributed throughout Europe, not only by the United States government, but by steamship, transportation and other companies, who purchased the work in sheets from the public printer, and distributed it through their agents. Dr. Young had it translated into the French and German languages, also into Swedish; and ten thousand copies in French and about twelve thousand in German were printed and circulated in European countries where those languages are spoken. The result was a great increase each year in the number of immigrants, especially of the more valuable classes, as compared with the arrivals in preceding years. So valuable was it regarded in other countries that the celebrated French economist, Michel Chevalier, in an extended article published in a French periodical, commended Dr. Young’s book, and suggested that a work on the same plan be prepared by the French government, showing the advantages offered by Algiers to those who desired to make their homes in a sparsely settled country. The German government, finding that its people in great numbers were emigrating to the United States, interposed obstacles to the general distribution of this volume full of information. The Marquis of Lorne personally solicited the author to prepare a volume on a similar plan, presenting the great advantages offered by Manitoba and the North-West Territories to those desirous of emigrating to some part of America. The author of the “Special Report on the United States Tariff” was gratified when, during the exciting tariff discussion in the Canadian House of Commons in 1879, his book was observed in the hands of members of both parties, and extracts read therefrom. His greatest work, however, completed in 1875, after years of preparation, was called, “Labor in Europe and America,” 864 pages, octavo, and was republished in 1879, by Dawson Brothers, Montreal, from the original stereotype plates. This is an elaborate special report on the rate of wages, the cost of subsistence, and the condition of the working classes in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, and other countries of Europe, and also in the United States and British America. It is prefaced by a learned and exhaustive review of the condition of the working people among the nations of antiquity and during the middle ages. The following extracts are made from an extended review of this book by a well-known economic writer in Philadelphia: —
The work is a striking exhibit of the industry and research of Dr. Young. He has personally visited many of the countries of Europe (from the Clyde to the Volga), entering factories and mingling among working men to ascertain their actual condition, and his notes of these visits form a very interesting part of the book. He has also pressed United States consuls into his service, and has received valuable information from them. Apparently no source of information has been overlooked. Ancient documents bearing upon the employment and compensation of labor in remote periods have been unearthed, and their contents add greatly to the interest and value of the volume. . . . A work so valuable as this will be in demand in every country in the civilized world, as one of the most elaborate contributions to the literature of labor that has ever appeared.
The press in the United States and in England, and to some extent in continental Europe, highly commended this report, and autograph letters were received from men of the highest standing in all parts of America, including two presidents of the United States, governors, presidents of colleges, and others, particularly from Lord Dufferin, also from men of the high standing of the great and good Earl of Shaftesbury with whom Dr. Young corresponded, when engaged in its preparation. The part that treats of the condition of the working people of Europe, their drinking habits, etc., is read with peculiar interest by those who desire to do good to their fellow men. Terence’s celebrated sentiment, “Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,” was adopted by the author as his motto. Although this book, as well as the other two special reports, is out of print—the plates belonging to the United States government having been destroyed—yet occasionally a copy may be found at a book stand, and standing orders from booksellers in London, Germany and Sweden, are held by a bookseller in Washington, to secure every copy of this work that can be obtained. In 1872 Mr. Young was appointed by President Grant as a delegate to the International Statistical Congress at St. Petersburg, of which body he was vice-president for North America. Here he had abundant opportunities of conferring with many of the leading statisticians of the world. He also improved the opportunity of a prolonged tour of the continent and Great Britain. From all these sources he was able materially to increase his store of general knowledge, as well as to improve the methods of his bureau at Washington, and largely to gather information which he made use of in the work on labor, above noticed. Dr. Young was frequently consulted by the government officials, and on several occasions was confidentially employed by Secretary Fish, who submitted for his examination and report thereon, the “Memorandum of the Plenipotentiaries”—Hon. Geo. Brown and Sir Edward Thornton. He was also instructed to personally investigate on both sides of the line, the probable effect of the Treaty of 1874 (which failed to receive a two-thirds vote in the Senate) upon the industries of the United States. The seal of secresy having subsequently been removed, this report became accessible to the public. Mr. Fish was severely criticised by many of his political friends for being in favor of the Treaty; had they known why he approved of it, as Dr. Young knew, confidentially, his action would have been commended. As Mr. Fish’s permission to disclose has never been obtained, a secret it still remains. This hint Mr. Young gives—Mr. Fish was governed, not by commercial considerations, but by those of a political or patriotic character. Dr. Young’s connection with the Bureau of Statistics terminated in the summer of 1878, after he had devoted to it nine of the most active and best years of his life, rendering it highly efficient and greatly useful, and to the entire satisfaction of every secretary of the treasury from Mr. McCulloch down to 1878. But in the Republic as well as in the Dominion, men are occasionally observed who are willing to sacrifice public good to personal aggrandizement. The secretary was then, as the same able statesman is now, intensely desirous to obtain the nomination of his party for the presidency, and expected that all officers, and the great army of custom house and other employés of the department, would exert themselves in his behalf. The chief of the Statistical Bureau was, as he told the secretary, a statistician, not a politician. He neither possessed nor desired political influence, contenting himself by voting for the candidates of the party when they were such as he approved, for he was too independent to be a partizan, his motto not being “My country and my party, right or wrong,” as some say, but “My country (or my party), when in the right.” Unwilling to stand in the way of his chief’s laudable aspirations, Dr. Young offered his resignation provided two or three months’ leave of absence with pay were allowed, which offer was accepted, and his connection with the Bureau severed to the surprise and regret of statisticians and statesmen in Europe and America. Both parties in the government of the Dominion solicited his services. Soon after Hon. Mr. Mackenzie, then first minister, invited him to Ottawa to consult as to the establishment of a Statistical Bureau, but before any definite arrangement was made the elections in September, 1878, transferred that able man to the opposition benches. When the ministry of Sir John A. Macdonald decided, in 1878, to establish a new tariff for the protection of Canadian industries they cast about for some one fitted to assist them in constructing the new list of duties. The reputation of Dr. Young as a statistician and a tariff expert justified them in selecting him for the position. He then went to Ottawa, and his experience and knowledge of the theory and working of Protection in the United States enabled him to be of material service to the Canadian government in their novel labors. Although he had nothing to do with filling in the rates of duty, yet he so drafted the tariff as to make it symmetrical, and avoided the inconsistencies of the United States tariff. Its successful operation in subsequent years proved that the design was good and the materials sound, otherwise the blizzards that sometimes are felt, even in Canada, would have injured or destroyed the structure. After the tariff went into operation in 1879, it was expected that a Bureau of Statistics would be established at Ottawa. The ablest presentation of the great need of such a bureau, and the advantage it would confer on the Dominion, was made by James Johnson, now of Ottawa, himself an able statistician, in the Halifax Reporter of April 16, 1879. In concluding his argument he wrote: —
The United States found itself compelled to add a Bureau of Statistics, and the only regret we ever heard expressed is that the bureau had not been established years ago. * * * In addition to all these arguments there is the fact that the government have now in the temporary employ of the finance department a man who till lately was chief of that bureau—a skilled, experienced man, capable of putting the Canadian bureau into good working order without those expenditures which are the invariable price of experience when accumulated from a beginning of ignorance. Such a skilled man would save the country thousands of dollars by reason of the experience he has had. We refer to Edward Young, Ph.D., a Nova Scotian who left this province some years ago and worked his way up to the eminent position he held in Washington by sheer force of ability. The time, then, is opportune; the work is immensely important; the man is at hand.
Although Sir Leonard Tilley appreciated the importance to the government and people of a Statistical Bureau, yet he regarded the carrying out of the new revenue system without friction as a measure of pressing necessity. To interpret the tariff and prescribe uniformity in the various custom houses, a board of appraisers was appointed of which Mr. Young was acting secretary. After a few months he resigned and returned to Washington, and soon after established in New York the Industrial Monthly, devoted to the manufacturing industries of America, and the advocacy of protective legislation. This was published for several years and then merged in America, a serial of similar views. Until his removal to Windsor he was engaged in writing for the weekly and daily press of New York, chiefly on economic subjects, and in advocacy of protection, in order that the toilers in American shops, mills, factories, and mines should receive full reward for their labor. Although not fully in accord with the economic views of the president and the secretary of state, yet it was the particular desire of Mr. Bayard that Dr. Young should enter the consular service and be stationed in Canada, where his knowledge of the trade and the fishing and other industries of the several provinces, would prove useful to the United States government. Accordingly he was appointed and confirmed as consul of the Windsor consular district, which embraces the counties of Hants, Kings, and Cumberland, with parts of Annapolis and Colchester, succeeding D. K. Hobart, of Maine, who had held the office for fourteen years. Dr. Young spends, by permission of his government, accompanied by his wife and daughter, some of the winter months during which navigation on the Avon is closed, at Wolfville, where he has relations, and where he has access to the valuable library of Acadia College. He has two sons, both married and settled in Washington; the older, Charles E., a civil engineer; the younger, William H. Young, B.D. (of Yale), pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Church. Another son who was a very able man, an accomplished linguist, connected with the Smithsonian Institute, died four years ago. He represented the institution at the Vienna Exposition in 1873, and officially visited its agencies in Europe. Dr. Young occasionally comes before the public as a speaker on moral and religious topics. He delivers a very learned and interesting lecture on the subject of Russia, in which he accords a high place to the late Czar, Alexander II., for his great act, the emancipation of the serfs. He has for a long period been actively engaged in religious and benevolent work. For many years a member and deacon of Baptist churches, and for a few years superintendent of a Sabbath school in Washington; and although strongly attached to the principles of his own denomination, yet has been actively engaged in all union efforts. He was one of a committee that planned, and secretary of a society that established in Halifax, about forty years ago, the first Sailors’ Home and Bethel. In the cause of temperance he was one of the pioneers, uniting with a society established in Wolfville in 1829, was secretary of a society in Windsor more than fifty years ago, and in Halifax about forty-five years ago, where he published a weekly paper devoted to temperance. His consistency was proved by not permitting his vessels to take cargoes of rum from the West Indies; and—the only American—by declining to partake of wine at dinner in the palaces of the Emperor of Russia and of Grand Dukes and other members of the Imperial family, and by declining to drink wine with the Prince Dolgorouki, governor-general of Central Russia, at his palace in Moscow. That his eccentric conduct produced no ill-feeling is evidenced by the fact that he succeeded in having released from Russian prisons twelve poor people who had been long kept there charged with inducing members of the Russo-Greek church to unite with the Standists (chiefly Baptists), when the Evangelical Alliance, which met in New York in 1874, failed even to have their memorial submitted to the Imperial court. In 1873 the Russian minister at Washington, in a despatch to the secretary of state, asked permission to present to Dr. Young, delegate from the United States to the International Statistical Congress in 1872, a diamond ring from the Emperor’s private cabinet, as a souvenir of that congress. To overcome a constitutional obstacle, a joint resolution was passed at the ensuing session of Congress, and approved by the president, giving the recipient permission to accept the valuable ring. It has the Emperor’s initials and a crown in gold and small diamonds on blue enamel surrounded by eight large diamonds of the first water. Although well up in years (and old only in years)—“his hair just grizzled as in a green old age”—yet Dr. Young preserves a youthful flow of spirits, takes great interest in the rising generation and its pursuits, and loves sociality and friendly conversation. If he has a craze it is the belief that English not Volapüt will be the universal language of commerce at least, and that the two great English-speaking peoples, having a common language and literature, and possessing greater freedom than other nations, shall unite their efforts to extend the blessings of civil and religious liberty to all other peoples, and to evangelize the world.
Huggan, William Thomas, Charlottetown, Accountant and Auditor, Prince Edward Island Railway, was born on the 24th May, 1851, at Halifax, Nova Scotia. His father, Thomas Huggan, was born on the 5th May, 1817, at Barney’s River, Pictou county, Nova Scotia; and his mother, Sarah Dowler, was born on the 27th December, 1818, at Leith, Scotland. Mr. Huggan received his educational training at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in a private school,—Michael McCullough being master. He entered the government employ at Halifax, on January 14, 1870, as junior clerk in the accountant’s office, Nova Scotia railway. In August, 1870, he became a clerk in the general store-keeper’s office; in August, 1871, time-keeper and clerk in the mechanical superintendent’s office, and in November, 1871, clerk in the audit office. Upon the amalgamation of the Nova Scotia Railway with the Intercolonial and European and North American railways in November, 1872, under the name of the Intercolonial, he was transferred to Moncton, New Brunswick, on the 27th of that month, as clerk in the audit office of the road. In October, 1873, he became clerk in the local store of the Intercolonial Railway; February, 1874, clerk in the general store-keeper’s office; April, 1874, clerk in the mechanical superintendent’s office; July, 1874, clerk in the accountant’s office, and in November, 1875, he was appointed chief clerk in the accountant’s office. On the 1st of July, 1882, he was made accountant and auditor of the Prince Edward Island Railway, with charge of the general ticket department, which office he now holds. During the period covered above he served in the various capacities of station-master, paymaster, cashier, etc. In January, 1881, he became connected with St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Moncton, N.B., since which time he has been a Sabbath-school teacher. In March, 1882, he was ordained an elder of this church, and afterward taking up his abode in Charlottetown, was elected to same position, that of elder in Zion Church. Mr. Huggan has also served as manager in the former church, and as a trustee and treasurer in the latter congregation. While always a total abstainer, he became a charter member of Orient Division, No. 161, Sons of Temperance, in September, 1886, since which time, he has twice served as financial scribe. He served five years in the first battery Halifax Volunteer Artillery. He was married, October 25th, 1875, to Sarah L., eldest daughter of William E. Weldon, of Moncton, N.B., and Margaret A. Church, of Point Du Bute, N.B.