CANTON, a city and the county-seat of Stark county, Ohio, U.S.A., on Nimisillen Creek, 60 m. S. by E. of Cleveland. Pop. (1890) 26,189; (1900) 30,667, of whom 4018 were foreign-born; and (1910) 50,217. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Wheeling & Lake Erie railways, and is connected by an interurban electric system with all the important cities and towns within a radius of 50 m. It lies at an elevation of about 1030 ft. above sea-level, in a wheat-growing region, in which bituminous coal, limestone, and brick and potter’s clay abound. Meyer’s Lake in the vicinity is a summer attraction. The principal buildings are the post-office, court-house, city hall, an auditorium with a seating capacity of 5000, a Masonic building, an Oddfellows’ temple, a Y.M.C.A. building and several handsome churches. On Monument Hill, in West Lawn Cemetery, in a park of 26 acres—a site which President McKinley had suggested for a monument to the soldiers and sailors of Stark county—there is a beautiful monument to the memory of McKinley, who lived in Canton. This memorial is built principally of Milford (Mass.) granite, with a bronze statue of the president, and with sarcophagi containing the bodies of the president and Mrs McKinley, and has a total height, from the first step of the approaches to its top, of 163 ft. 6 in., the mausoleum itself being 98 ft. 6 in. high and 78 ft. 9 in. in diameter; it was dedicated on the 30th of September 1907, when an address was delivered by President Roosevelt. Another monument commemorates the American soldiers of the Spanish-American War. Among the city’s manufactures are agricultural implements, iron bridges and other structural iron work, watches and watch-cases, steel, engines, safes, locks, cutlery, hardware, wagons, carriages, paving-bricks, furniture, dental and surgical chairs, paint and varnish, clay-working machinery and saw-mill machinery. The value of the factory product in 1905 was $10,591,143, being 10.6% more than the product value of 1900. Canton was laid out as a town in 1805, became the county-seat in 1808, was incorporated as a village in 1822 and in 1854 was chartered as a city.
CANTON (borrowed from the Ital. cantone, a corner or angle), a word used for certain divisions of some European countries. In France, the canton, which is a subdivision of the arrondissement, is a territorial, rather than an administrative, unit. The canton, of which there are 2908, generally comprises, on an average, about twelve communes, though very large communes are sometimes divided into several cantons. It is the seat of a justice of the peace, and returns a member to the conseil d’arrondissement (see [France]). In Switzerland, canton is the name given to each of the twenty-two states comprising the Swiss confederation (see [Switzerland]).
In heraldry, a “canton” is a corner or square division on a shield, occupying the upper corner (usually the dexter). It is in area two-thirds of the quarter (see [Heraldry]).
CANTONMENT (Fr. cantonnement, from cantonner, to quarter; Ger. Ortsunterkunft or Quartier). When troops are distributed in small parties amongst the houses of a town or village, they are said to be in cantonments, which are also called quarters or billets. Formerly this method of providing soldiers with shelter was rarely employed on active service, though the normal method in “winter quarters,” or at seasons when active military operations were not in progress. In the field, armies lived as a rule in camp (q.v.), and when the provision of canvas shelter was impossible in bivouac. At the present time, however, it is unusual, in Europe at any rate, for troops on active service to hamper themselves with the enormous trains of tent wagons that would be required, and cantonments or bivouacs, or a combination of the two have therefore taken the place, in modern warfare, of the old long rectilinear lines of tents that marked the resting-place and generally, too, the order of battle of an 18th-century army. The greater part of an army operating in Europe at the present day is accommodated in widespread cantonments, an army corps occupying the villages and farms found within an area of 4 m. by 5 or 6. This allowance of space has been ascertained by experience to be sufficient, not only for comfort, but also for subsistence for one day, provided that the density of the ordinary civil population is not less than 200 persons to the square mile. Under modern conditions there is little danger from such a dissemination of the forces, as each fraction of each army corps is within less than two hours’ march of its concentration post. If the troops halt for several days, of course they require either a more densely populated country from which to requisition supplies, or a wider area of cantonments. The difficulty of controlling the troops, when scattered in private houses in parties of six or seven, is the principal objection to this system of cantonments. But since Napoleon introduced the “war of masses” the only alternative to cantoning the troops is bivouacking, which if prolonged for several nights is more injurious to the well-being of the troops than the slight relaxation of discipline necessitated by the cantonment system, when the latter is well arranged and policed. The troops nearest the enemy, however, which have to be maintained in a state of constant readiness for battle, cannot as a rule afford the time either for dispersing into quarters or for rallying on an alarm, and in western Europe at any rate they are required to bivouac. In India, the term “cantonment” means more generally a military station or standing camp. The troops live, not in private houses, but in barracks, huts, forts or occasionally camps. The large cantonments are situated in the neighbourhood of the North-Western frontier, of the large cities and of the capitals of important native states. Under Lord Kitchener’s redistribution of the Indian army in 1903, the chief cantonments are Rawalpindi, Quetta, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Nowshera, Sialkot, Mian Mir, Umballa, Muttra, Ferozepore, Meerut, Lucknow, Mhow, Jubbulpore, Bolarum, Poona, Secunderabad and Bangalore.
CANTÙ, CESARE (1804-1895), Italian historian, was born at Brivio in Lombardy and began his career as a teacher. His first literary essay (1828) was a romantic poem entitled Algiso, o la Lega Lombarda (new ed., Milan, 1876), and in the following year he produced a Storia di Como in two volumes (Como, 1829). The death of his father then left him in charge of a large family, and he worked very hard both as a teacher and a writer to provide for them. His prodigious literary activity led to his falling under the suspicions of the Austrian police, and he was mixed up in a political trial and arrested in 1833. While in prison writing materials were denied him, but he managed to write on rags with a tooth-pick and candle smoke, and thus composed the novel Margherita Pusterla (Milan, 1838). On his release a year later, as he was interdicted from teaching, literature became his only resource. In 1836 the Turinese publisher, Giuseppe Pomba, commissioned him to write a universal history, which his vast reading enabled him to do. In six years the work was completed in seventy-two volumes, and immediately achieved a general popularity; the publisher made a fortune out of it, and Cantù’s royalties amounted, it is said, to 300,000 lire (£12.000). Just before the revolution of 1848, being warned that he would be arrested, he fled to Turin, but after the “Five Days” he returned to Milan and edited a paper called La Guardia Nazionale. Between 1849 and 1850 he published his Storia degli Italiani (Turin, 1855) and many other works. In 1857 the archduke Maximilian tried to conciliate the Milanese by the promise of a constitution, and Cantù was one of the few Liberals who accepted the olive branch, and went about in company with the archduke. This act was regarded as treason and caused Cantù much annoyance in after years. He continued his literary activity after the formation of the Italian kingdom, producing volume after volume until his death. For a short time he was member of the Italian parliament; he founded the Lombard historical society, and was appointed superintendent of the Lombard archives. He died in March 1895. His views are coloured by strong religious and political prejudice, and by a moralizing tendency, and his historical work has little critical value and is for the most part pure book-making, although he collected a vast amount of material which has been of use to other writers. In dealing with modern Italian history he is reactionary and often wilfully inaccurate. Besides the above-mentioned works he wrote Gli Eretici in Italia (Milan, 1873); Cronistoria dell’ Indipendenza italiana (Naples, 1872-1877); II Conciliatore e i Carbonari (Milan, 1878), &c.
(L. V.*)