Mrs. Lucy Cleaver McElroy, author of "uneuphonious feminine, but very characteristic Dickensy sketches," was born near Lebanon, Kentucky, on Christmas Day of 1861. She was the daughter of the late Doctor W. W. Cleaver, a physician of Lebanon. Miss Cleaver was educated in the schools of her native town, and, on September 28, 1881, she was married to Mr. G. W. McElroy, who now resides at Covington, Kentucky. Mrs. McElroy was an invalid for many years, but she did not allow herself to become discouraged and she produced at least one book that was a success. She began her literary career by contributing articles to The Courier-Journal, of Louisville, The Ladies' Home Journal, and other newspapers and periodicals. Mrs. McElroy's first volume, Answered (Cincinnati), a poem, was highly praised by several competent critics. The first book she published that won a wide reading was Juletty (New York, 1901), a tale of old Kentucky, in which lovers and moonshiners, fox-hunters and race horses, Morgan and his men, and a girl with "whiskey-colored eyes," make the motif. Juletty was followed by The Silent Pioneer (New York, 1902), published posthumously. "The silent pioneer" was, of course, Daniel Boone. Both of these novels are now out of print, and they are seldom seen in the old book-shops. Mrs. McElroy died at her home on the outskirts of Lebanon, Kentucky, which she called "Myrtledene," on December 15, 1901.
Bibliography. The Critic (May, 1901); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1910, v. xiv).
OLD ALEC HAMILTON[32]
[From Juletty (New York, 1901)]
"If you remember him at all, doctor, you remember that he was a curious man; curious in person, manner, habits, and thoughts.
"He was six feet two inches in height and tipped the Fairbanks needle at the two hundred notch; I believe he had the largest head and the brightest eyes I have ever seen. That big head of his was covered by a dense growth of auburn hair, and as every hair stood separately erect it looked like a big sunburned chestnut burr; his eyes twinkled and snapped, sparkled and glowed, like blue blazes, though on occasion they could beam as softly and tenderly through their tears as those of some lovesick woman. His language was a curious idiom; the result of college training and after association with negroes and illiterate neighbors. Of course, as a child, I did not know his peculiarities, and looked forward with much pleasure to seeing him and my grandmother, of whose many virtues I had heard. My father had expatiated much on the beauty of my grandfather's farm—three thousand broad acres (you have doubtless noticed, doctor, that Kentucky acres always are broad, about twice as broad as the average acre) in the heart of the Pennyrile District. As good land, he said, as a crow ever flew over; red clay for subsoil, and equal to corn crops in succession for a hundred years. But I am going to tell you, doctor, of my visit as a child to my grandfather. I had never seen him, and felt a little natural shrinking from the first meeting. My mother had only been dead a few weeks and—well, in short, my young heart was pretty full of conflicting emotions when I drew near the old red brick house. He was not expecting me, and I had to walk from the railway station. It was midsummer, and the old gentleman sat, without hat, coat, or shoes, outside his front door. As I drew near he called out threateningly:
"'Who are you?'
"'Why, don't you know me?' I asked pleasantly.
"'No, by Jacks! How in hell should I know you?' he thundered.
"There was nothing repulsive about his profanity; falling from his lips it seemed guileless as cooings of suckling doves, so nothing daunted, I cried out cheerily as one who brings good news:
"'I'm Jack Burton, your grandson!'
"'What yer want here?'
"'Why, I've come to see you, grandfather,' I answered quiveringly.
"'Well, dam yer, take er look an' go home!' he roared.
"'I will!' I shouted indignantly, and more deeply hurt than ever before or since, I turned and ran from him.
"Then almost before I knew it he had me in his great, strong arms, his tears and kisses beating softly down like raindrops on my face, while he mumbled through his sobs:
"'Why, my boy, don't you know your old grandfather's ways? Eliza's son! First-born of my first-born, you are more welcome than sunshine after a storm. Never mind what grandfather says, little man; just always remember he loves you like a son.'
"He had by that time carried me back to his door; there all at once his whole manner changed, and putting me on my feet, he cried: 'Thar, yer damned lazy little rascal, yer expec' me ter carry yer eround like er nigger? Use yer own legs and find yer grandmother.'
"But he could not frighten me then nor ever any more; I had seen his heart, and it was the heart of a poet, a lover, a gentleman, do what he might to hide it."
The doctor had allowed me to have my head, and talk in my rambling, reminiscent fashion, and agreed in my estimate of my grandsire.
"Yessir, just like him for the world!" he cried.
"I was at his house one day when the ugliest man in Warren County came out; he did not wait to greet him, but shouted, 'My God, man, don't you wish ugliness was above par? You'd be er Croesus.'"
Miss Mary Finley Leonard, maker of many tales for girls, was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 11, 1862, but she was brought to Louisville, Kentucky, when but a few months old. Louisville has been her home ever since. Miss Leonard was educated in private schools, and at once entered upon her literary labors. She has published ten books for girls from fourteen to sixteen years of age, but several of them may be read by "grown-ups." The style of all of them is delightfully simple and direct. The Story of the Big Front Door (New York, 1898), was her first story, and this was followed by Half a Dozen Thinking Caps (New York, 1900); The Candle and the Cat (New York, 1901); The Spectacle Man (Boston, 1901); Mr. Pat's Little Girl (Boston, 1902); How the Two Ends Met (New York, 1903); The Pleasant Street Partnership (Boston, 1903); It All Came True (New York, 1904); On Hyacinth Hill (Boston, 1904); and her most recent book, Everyday Susan (New York, 1912). These books have brought joy and good cheer to girls in many lands, and they have been read by many mothers and fathers with pleasure and profit. Miss Leonard has made for herself a secure place in the literature of Kentucky, a place that is peculiarly her own. She has a novel of mature life in manuscript, which is said to be the finest thing she has done so far, and which will be published in 1913.
Bibliography. Munsey's Magazine (March, 1900); Who's Who in America (1912-1913).
GOODBY[33]
[From The Candle and the Cat (New York, 1901)]
Trolley sat on the gate-post. If possible he was handsomer than ever, for the frosty weather had made his coat thick and fluffy, besides this he wore his new collar. His eyes were wide open to-day, and he looked out on the world with a solemn questioning gaze.
He had been decidedly upset in his mind that morning at finding an open trunk in Caro's room, and clothes scattered about on chairs and on the bed. Of course he did not know what this meant, but to the cat mind anything unusual is objectionable, and it made him unhappy. Finally he stretched himself in the tray, where Caro found him.
"You darling pussie!" she cried, "Mamma do look at him. I believe he wants to go home with us. I wish we could take him."
But Mrs Holland said one little girl was all the traveling companion she cared for. "It wouldn't do dear, he would be unhappy on the train," she added.
"I don't know what I should have done without him. He and my candle were my greatest comforts—except grandpa," and Caro put her cheek down on Trolley's soft fur.
"What am I to do without my little candle?" her grandfather asked.
"Why, you can have the cat," Caro answered merrily.
No wonder Trolley's mind was disturbed that morning with such a coming and going as went on,—people running in to say goodby, and Aunt Charlotte thinking every few minutes of something new for the traveler's lunch, tickling his nose with tantalizing odors of tongue and chicken.
It was over at last, trunks and bags were sent off, Aunt Charlotte was hugged and kissed and then Trolley had his turn, and the procession moved, headed by the president.
"Goodby Trolley; don't forget me!" Caro called, walking backwards and waving her handkerchief.
When they were out of sight Trolley went and sat on the gate-post and thought about it. After a while he jumped down and trotted across the campus with a businesslike air as if he had come to an important decision. He took his way through the Barrows orchard to the Grayson garden where there was now a well-trodden path through the snow.
Miss Grayson and her brother were sitting in the library. They had been talking about Caro when Walter glancing toward the window saw a pair of golden eyes peering in at him. "There is Trolley," he said, and called Thompson to let him in.
Trolley entered as if he was sure of a welcome, and walking straight to Miss Elizabeth, sprang into her lap; and from this on he became a frequent visitor at the Graysons' dividing his time in fact about evenly between his two homes.
And thus an unfortunate quarrel which had disturbed the peaceful atmosphere of Charmington and separated old friends, was forgotten, and as the president often remarked, it was all owing to the candle and the cat.
Joseph Alexander Altsheler, the most prolific historical novelist Kentucky has produced, was born at Three Springs, Kentucky, April 29, 1862. He was educated at Liberty College, Glasgow, Kentucky, and at Vanderbilt University. His father's death compelled him to leave Vanderbilt without his degree, and he entered journalism at Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. Altsheler was on the Louisville Evening Post for a year, when he went with The Courier-Journal, with which paper his remained for seven years. During his years on The Courier-Journal he filled almost every position except editor-in-chief. He later went to New York, and, since 1892, has been editor of the tri-weekly edition of The World. Mr. Altsheler was married, in 1888, to Miss Sara Boles of Glasgow, Kentucky, and they have an attractive home in New York. He began his literary career with a pair of "shilling shockers," entitled The Rainbow of Gold (New York, 1895), and The Hidden Mine (New York, 1896), neither of which did more than start him upon his real work. The full list of his tales hitherto is: The Sun of Saratoga (New York, 1897); A Soldier of Manhattan (New York, 1897); A Herald of the West (New York, 1898); The Last Rebel (Philadelphia, 1899); In Circling Camps (New York, 1900), a story of the Civil War and his best work so far; In Hostile Red (New York, 1900), the basis of which was first published in Lippincott's Magazine as "A Knight of Philadelphia;" The Wilderness Road (New York, 1901); My Captive (New York, 1902); Guthrie of the Times (New York, 1904), a Kentucky newspaper story of success, one of Mr. Altsheler's finest tales; The Candidate (New York, 1905), a political romance. The year 1906 witnessed no book from the author's hand, but in the following year he began the publication of a series of books for boys, as well as several other novels. His six stories for young readers are: The Young Trailers (New York, 1907); The Forest Runners (New York, 1908); The Free Rangers (New York, 1909); The Riflemen of the Ohio (New York, 1910); The Scouts of the Valley (New York, 1911); and The Border Watch (New York, 1912). "All the six volumes deal with the fortunes and adventures of two boys, Henry Ware and Paul Cotter, and their friends, Shif'less Sol Hyde, Silent Tom Ross and Long Jim Hart, in the early days of Kentucky." Mr. Altsheler's latest historical novels are: The Recovery (New York, 1908); The Last of the Chiefs (New York, 1909); The Horsemen of the Plains (New York, 1910); and The Quest of the Four (New York, 1911). He is at the present time engaged upon a trilogy dealing with the Texan struggle for independence against Mexico, the first of which has recently appeared, The Texan Star (New York, 1912). This tale, with the other two that are to be issued in 1913, to be entitled, The Texan Scouts, and The Texan Triumph, are written chiefly for the young. He will also publish in 1913 a story to be called Apache Gold. "Joseph A. Altsheler has made a fictional tour of American history," one of his keenest critics has well said; and his work has been linked with James Fenimore Cooper's by no less a judge of literary productions than the late Richard Henry Stoddard.
Bibliography. The Independent (August 9, 1900); The Book Buyer (September, 1900); The Bookman (February, 1903).
THE CALL OF THE DRUM[34]
[From In Circling Camps (New York, 1900)]
Then I listened to the call of the drum.
Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the first cannon shot there set this war drum to beating in every village; it was never silent; its steady roll day after day was calling men up to the cannon mouth; it was persistent, unsatisfied, always crying for more.
Its beat was heard throughout a vast area, over regions whose people knew of each other as part of the same nation but had never met, calling above this line to the North, calling below it to the South, summoning up the legions for a struggle in which old jealousies and old quarrels, breeding since the birth of the Union, were to be settled.
The drum beat its martial note in the great cities of the Atlantic, calling the men away from the forges and the shops and the wharves—clerks, moulders, longshoremen, the same call for all; it passed on, and its steady beat resounded among the hills and mountains of the North, calling to the long-limbed farmer boys to drop the plough and take up the rifle, sending them on to join the moulders, and clerks, and longshoremen, and putting upon all one stamp, the stamp of the soldier, food for the cannon—and this food supply was to be the largest of its time, though few yet dreamed it.
The roll of the drum went on, through the fields, along the rivers, by the shores of the Great Lakes, out upon the plains, where the American yet fought with the Indian for a foothold, and into the interminable forests whose shades hid the pioneers; over levels and acres and curves of thousands of miles, calling up the deep-chested Western farmers, men of iron muscles and no pleasures, to whom unbroken hardship was the natural course of life, and sending them to join their Eastern brethren at the cannon mouth.
It was an insistent drum, beating through all the day and night, over the mountains, through the sunless woods and on the burnt prairies, never resting, never weary. The opportunity was the greatest of the time, and the drum did not neglect a moment; it was without conscience, and had no use for mercy, calling, always calling.
Another drum and yet the same was beating in the South, and those who came at its call differed in little from the others who were marching to the Northern beat, only the clerks and the mill hands were much fewer; the same long-limbed and deep-chested race, spare alike of figure and speech, brown-faced men from the shores of the Gulf, men of South Carolina in whom the original drop of French blood still tinctured the whole; brethren of theirs from Louisiana, gigantic Tennesseans, half-wild horsemen from the Texas plains—all burning with enthusiasm for a cause that they believed to be right.
This merciless drum rolling out its ironical chuckle noted that these Northern and Southern countrymen gathering to their standards were alike in their lack of pleasure; they were a serious race; life had always been a hard problem for them, a fight, in fact, and this fight into which they were going was merely another kind of battle, with some advantages of novelty and change and comradeship that made it attractive, especially to the younger, the boys. They had been hewers of wood and drawers of water in every sense of the word, though for themselves; generations of them had fought Indians, some suffering torture and death; they had endured bitter cold and burning heat, eaten at scanty tables, and lived far-away and lonely lives in the wilderness. They were a rough and hard-handed race, taught to work and not to be afraid, knowing no masters, accustomed to no splendours either in themselves or others, holding themselves as good as anybody and thinking it, according to Nature; their faults those of newness and never of decay. These were the men who had grown up apart from the Old World, and all its traditions, far even from the influence which the Atlantic seaboard felt through constant communication. This life of eternal combat in one form or another left no opportunity for softness; the dances, the sports, and all the gaieties which even the lowest in Europe had were unknown to them, and they invented none to take their place.
They knew the full freedom of speech; what they wished to say they said, and they said it when and where they pleased. But on the whole they were taciturn, especially in the hour of trouble; then they made no complaints, suffering in silence. They imbibed the stoicism of the Indians from whom they won the land, and they learned to endure much and long before they cried out. This left one characteristic patent and decisive, and that characteristic was strength. These men had passed through a school of hardship, one of many grades; it had roughened them, but it gave them bodies of iron and an unconquerable spirit for the struggle they were about to begin.
Another characteristic of those who came at the call of the drum was unselfishness. They were willing to do much and ask little for it. They were poor bargain-drivers when selling their own flesh and bones, and their answer to the call was spontaneous and without price.
They came in thousands, and scores of thousands. The long roll rumbling from the sea to the Rocky Mountains and beyond cleared everything; the doubts and the doubters were gone; no more committees; an end to compromises! The sword must decide, and the two halves of the nation, which yet did not understand their own strength, swung forward to meet the issue, glad that it was obvious at last.
There came an exultant note into the call of the drum, as if it rejoiced at the prospects of a contest that took so wide a sweep. Here was long and happy work for it to do; it could call to many battles, and its note as it passed from village to village was resounding and defiant; it was cheerful too, and had in it a trick; it told the long-legged boys who came out of the woods of victories and glory, of an end for a while to the toil which never before had been broken, of new lands and of cities; all making a great holiday with the final finish of excitement and reasonable risk. It was no wonder that the drum called so effectively when it mingled such enticements with the demands of patriotism. Most of those who heard were no strangers to danger, and those who did not know it themselves were familiar with it in the traditions of their fathers and forefathers; every inch of the land which now swept back from the sea three thousand miles had been won at the cost of suffering and death, with two weapons, the rifle and the axe, and they were not going to shun the present trial, which was merely one in a long series.
The drum was calling to men who understood its note; the nation had been founded as a peaceful republic, but it had gone already through the ordeal of many wars, and behind it stretched five generations of colonial life, an unbroken chain of combats. They had fought everybody; they had measured the valour of the Englishman, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Hessian, the Mexican, and the red man. Much gunpowder had been burned within the borders of the Union, and also its people had burned much beyond them. Those who followed the call of the drum were flocking to no new trade. By a country with the shadow of a standing army very many battles had been fought.
They came too, without regard to blood or origin; the Anglo-Saxon predominated; he gave his characteristics to North and South alike, all spoke his tongue, but every race in Europe had descendants there, and many of them—English, Irish, Scotch, French, German, Spanish, and so on through the list—their blood fused and intermingled, until no one could tell how much he had of this and how much of that.
The untiring drumbeat was heard through all the winter and summer, and the response still rolled up from vast areas; it was to be no common struggle—great armies were to be formed where no armies at all existed before, and the preparations on a fitting scale went on. The forces of the North and South gathered along a two-thousand-mile line, and those trying to look far ahead saw the nature of the struggle.
The preliminary battles and skirmishes began, and then the two gathered themselves for their mightiest efforts.
Oscar Wilder Underwood, orator and magazine writer, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, May 6, 1862. He is the grandson of Joseph Rogers Underwood, a celebrated Kentucky statesman of the old regime. Mr. Underwood was prepared for the University of Virginia at the Rugby School of Louisville. In 1884 he was admitted to the bar and entered upon the practice of his profession at Birmingham, Alabama, his present home. He was prominent in Alabama politics prior to his election to the lower house of Congress, in 1895, as the representative of the Ninth Alabama district; and he has been regularly returned to that body ever since. Mr. Underwood is chairman of the committee on ways and means of the Sixty-second Congress, as well as majority leader of the House. In the Democratic pre-convention presidential campaign of 1912, the South almost unanimously endorsed Mr. Underwood for the nomination. Led by Alabama he was hailed in many quarters as the first really constructive statesman the South has sent to Congress in more than twenty years; further, his friends said, he has devoted his life to the study of the tariff and is now the foremost exponent of the subject living; his tariff policy is simply this: stop protecting the profits of the manufacturers; and that Underwood is Democracy's best asset. Earlier in the year, Mr. Underwood had been attacked by William J. Bryan, and his retorts in the House were so severe and unanswerable, he being the only man up to that time able to cope with the Colonel, that, of course, he had that distinguished gentleman's influence against him at the Baltimore convention. Nevertheless, every roll-call found him in third place, just behind Champ Clark, who was also born in Kentucky, and Woodrow Wilson, governor of New Jersey. He was running so strong as the convention neared its close, that at least one Kentucky editor came home and wrote a long editorial calling upon the Kentucky delegation to change its vote from Clark to Underwood; but on the following day the governor of New Jersey was nominated. A few of Mr. Underwood's contributions to periodicals may be pointed out: two articles in The Forum on "The Negro Problem in the South;" "The Corrupting Power of Public Patronage;" "What About the Tariff?" (The World To-day, January, 1912); "The Right and Wrong of the Tariff Question" (The Independent, February 1, 1912); and "High Tariff and American Trade Abroad" (The Century, May, 1912). By friend and foe alike Mr. Underwood is admitted to be the greatest living student of the tariff; and his speeches in Congress and out of it on this subject have given him a national reputation.
Bibliography. The World's Work (March, 1912); Harper's Weekly (June 1, 1912); North American Review (June, 1912).
THE PROTECTION OF PROFITS
[Delivered before the Southern Society of New York City (December 16, 1911)]
The kaleidoscope of political issues must and will continually change with the changing conditions of our Republic but there is one question that was with us in the beginning and will be in the end, and that is the most effective, efficient and fairest way of equalizing the burdens of taxation that are levied by the National Government. Of all the great powers that were yielded to the Federal Government by the States when they adopted the Constitution of our country, the one indispensable to the administration of public affairs is the right to levy and collect taxes. Without the exercise of that power we could not maintain an army and navy; we could not establish the courts of the land; the government would fail to perform its function if the power to tax were taken away from it. The power to tax carries with it the power to destroy, and it is, therefore, a most dangerous governmental power as well as a most necessary one.
There is a very clear and marked distinction between the position of the two great political parties of America as to how power to tax should be exercised in the levying of revenue at the custom houses.
The Republican party has maintained the doctrine that taxes should not only be levied for the purpose of revenue, but also for the purpose of protecting the home manufacturer from foreign competition. Of necessity protection from competition carries with it a guarantee of profits. In the last Republican platform this position of the party was distinctly recognized when they declared that they were not only in favor of the protection of the difference in cost at home and abroad but also a reasonable profit to American industries.
The Democratic party favors the policy of raising its taxes at the custom house by a tariff that is levied for revenue only, which clearly excludes the idea of protecting the manufacturer's profits. In my opinion, the dividing line between the positions of the two great parties on this question is very clear and easily ascertained in theory. Where the tariff rates balance the difference in cost at home and abroad, including an allowance for the difference in freight rates, the tariff must be competitive, and from that point downward to the lowest tariff that can be levied it will continue to be competitive to a greater or less extent. Where competition is not interfered with by levying the tax above the highest competitive point, the profits of the manufacturer are not protected. On the other hand, when the duties levied at the custom house equalizes the difference in cost at home and abroad and in addition thereto they are high enough to allow the American manufacturer to make a profit before his competitor can enter the field, we have invaded the domain of the protection of profits. Some men assert that the protection of reasonable profits to the home manufacturer should be commended instead of being condemned, but in my judgment, the protection of any profit must of necessity have a tendency to destroy competition and create monopoly, whether the profit protected is reasonable or unreasonable.
You should bear in mind that to establish a business in a foreign country requires a vast outlay both in time and capital. Should the foreigner manufacturer attempt to establish himself in this country he must advertise his goods, establish selling agencies and points of distribution before he can successfully conduct his business. After he has done so, if the home producer is protected by a law that not only equals the difference in cost at home and abroad, but also protects a reasonable or unreasonable profit, it is only necessary for him to drop his prices slightly below the point that the law has fixed to protect his profits and his competitor must retire from the country or become a bankrupt, because he would then have to sell his goods at a loss and not a profit, if he continued to compete. The foreign competitor having retired, the home producer could raise his prices to any level that home competition would allow him and it is not probable that the foreigner who had already been driven out of the country would again return, no matter how inviting the field, as long as the law remained on the Statute Books that would enable his competitor to again put him out of business.
Thirty or forty years ago, when we had numbers of small manufacturers, when there was honest competition without an attempt being made to restrict trade and the home market was more than able to consume the production of our mills and factories, the danger and the injury to the consumer of the country was not so great or apparent as it is to-day, when the control of many great industries has been concentrated in the hands of a few men or a few corporations, because domestic competition was prohibited. When we cease to have competition at home and the law prohibits competition from abroad by protecting profits, there is no relief for the consumer except to cry out for government regulation. To my mind, there is no more reason or justice in the government attempting to protect the profits of the manufacturers and producers of this country than here would be to protect the profits of the merchant or the lawyer, the banker or the farmer, or the wages of the laboring man. In almost every line of industry in the United States we have as great natural resources to develop as that of any country in the world. It is admitted by all that our machinery and methods of doing business are in advance of the other nations. By reason of the efficient use of American machinery by American labor, in most of the manufactures of this country, the labor cost per unit of production is no greater here than abroad. It is admitted, of course, that the actual wage of the American laborer is in excess of European countries, but as to most articles we manufacture the labor cost in this country is not more than double the labor cost abroad. When we consider that the average ad valorem rate of duty levied at the custom house on manufactures of cotton goods is 53% of the value of the article imported and the total labor cost of the production of cotton goods in this country is only 21% of the factory value of the product, that the difference in labor cost at home and abroad is only about as one is to two, and that ten or eleven per cent of the value of the product levied at the custom house would equal the difference in the labor wage, it is apparent that our present tariff laws exceed the point where they equalize the difference in cost at home and abroad, and we realize how far they have entered into the domain of protecting profits for the home manufacturer. This is not only true of the manufacture of cotton goods, but of almost every schedule in the tariff bill. To protect profits of necessity means to protect inefficiency. It does not stimulate industry because a manufacturer standing behind a tariff wall that is protecting his profits is not driven to develop his business along the lines of greatest efficiency and greatest economy. This is clearly illustrated in a comparison of the wool and the iron and steel industries. Wool has had a specific duty that when worked out to an ad valorem basis amounts to a tax of about 90% of the average value of all woolen goods imported into the United States, and the duties imposed have remained practically unchanged for forty years. During that time the wool industry has made comparatively little progress in cheapening the cost of its product and improving its business methods. On the other hand, in the iron and steel industry the tariff rate has been cut every time a tariff bill has been written. Forty years ago the tax on steel rails amounted to $17.50 a ton, to-day it amounts to $3.92. Forty years ago the tax on pig iron was $13.60 a ton, to-day it is $2.50. The same is true of most of the other articles in the iron and steel schedule, and yet the iron and steel industry has not languished; it has not been destroyed and it has not gone to the wall. It is the most compact, virile, fighting force of all the industries of America to-day. It has long ago expanded its productive capacity beyond the power of the American people to consume its output and is to-day facing out towards the markets of the world, battling for a part of the trade of foreign lands, where it must meet free competition, or, as is often the case, pay adverse tariff rates to enter the industrial fields of its competitor.
Which course is the wiser for our government to take? The one that demands the protection of profits the continued policy of hot-house growth for our industries? The stagnation of development that follows where competition ceases, or, on the other hand, the gradual and insistent reduction of our tariff laws to a basis where the American manufacturer must meet honest competition, where he must develop his business along the best and most economic lines, where when he fights at home to control his market he is forging the way in the economic development of his business to extend his trade in the markets of the world. In my judgment, the future growth of our great industries lies beyond the seas. A just equalization of the burdens of taxation and honest competition, in my judgment, are economic truths; they are not permitted to-day by the laws of our country; we must face toward them, and not away from them.
What I have said does not mean that I am in favor of going to free trade conditions or of being so radical in our legislation as to injure legitimate business, but I do mean that the period of exclusion has passed and the era of honest competition is here.
Let us approach the solution of the problem involved with the determination to do what is right, what is safe, and what is reasonable.
Mrs. Elizabeth Robins Parkes, the well-known novelist of the psychological school, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, August 6, 1862. She was taken from Louisville as a young child by her parents for the reason that her father had built a house on Staten Island, where she lived until her eleventh year, when she went to her grandmother's at Zanesville, Ohio, to attend Putnam Female Seminary, an institution of some renown, where her aunts on both sides of the house had received their training. Mrs. Gano, the one fine character of Miss Robins's first successful novel, The Open Question, is none other than her own grandmother, Jane Hussey Robins, to whom she dedicated the story; and the house in which she lived is faithfully described in that story. In 1874, when she was twelve years of age, Miss Robins made her first visit to Kentucky since having left the State some years before; and she has been back many times since, her latest visit being made in 1912. Her mother and many of her kinsfolk are buried in Cave Hill cemetery; and her brother, uncle, and other relatives, including Charles Neville Buck, the young Kentucky novelist, reside at Louisville. She is, therefore, a Kentuckian to the core. On January 12, 1885, she was married to George Richmond Parkes, of Boston, who died some years ago. While passing through London, in 1889, Mrs. Parkes decided it was the most pleasing city she had seen, and she established herself there. She now maintains Backset Town Farm, Henfield, Sussex; and a winter home at Chinsegut, Florida. Mrs. Parkes won her first fame as an actress, appearing in several of Ibsen's plays, and attracting wide attention for her work in The Master Builder, especially. While on the stage she began to write under the pen-name of "C. E. Raimond," so as not to confuse the public mind with her work as an actress; and this name served her well until The Open Question appeared, at which time it became generally understood that the actress and author were one and the same person. She soon after began to write under her maiden name of Elizabeth Robins—and thus confounded herself with the wife of Joseph Pennell, the celebrated American etcher. With her long line of novels Miss Robins takes her place as one of the foremost writers Kentucky has produced. A full list of them is: George Mandeville's Husband (New York, 1894); The New Moon (New York, 1895); Below the Salt (London, 1896), a collection of short-stories, containing, among others, The Fatal Gift of Beauty, which was the title of the American edition (Chicago, 1896); The Open Question (New York, 1898). Miss Robins was friendly with Whistler, the great artist, and he designed the covers for Below the Salt and The Open Question, a morbid but powerful novel. She has been especially fortunate in seizing upon a subject of vital, timely importance against which to build her books; and that is one of the real reasons for her success. What the public wants is what she wants to give them. When gold was discovered in the Klondike, and all the world was making a mad rush for those fields, Miss Robins wrote The Magnetic North (New York, 1904). That fascinating story was followed by A Dark Lantern (New York, 1905), "a story with a prologue;" The Convert (New York, 1907), a novel based upon the suffragette movement in London, with which the author has been identified for seven years, and for which she has written more, perhaps, than any one else; Under the Southern Cross (New York, 1907); Woman's Secret (London, 1907); Votes for Women: A Play in Three Acts (London, n. d. [1908]), a dramatization of The Convert, produced by Granville Barker at the Court Theatre, London, with great success. The title of this play, if not the contents, has gone into the remotest corners of the world as the accepted slogan of the suffragette cause. Come and Find Me! (New York, 1908), another story of the Alaska country, originally serialized in The Century Magazine; The Mills of the Gods (New York, 1908); The Florentine Frame (New York, 1909); Under His Roof (London, n. d. [1910]), yet another short-story of the suffragette struggle in London, printed in an exceedingly slender pamphlet; and Why? (London, 1912), a brochure of questions and answers concerning her darling suffragettes. Upon these books Elizabeth Robins has taken a high place in contemporary letters. Her very latest story is My Little Sister, based upon a background of the white slave traffic in London, the shortened version of which appeared in McClure's Magazine for December, 1912, concluded in the issue for January, 1913, after which it will be published in book form in America under the original title; but the English edition will bear this legend, "Where Are You Going To?" When the first part of this strong story was printed in McClure's it attracted immediate and very wide attention, and again illustrated the ancient fact concerning the author's novels: her ability to make use of one of the big questions of the day as a scene for her story. Another book on woman's fight for the ballot, to be entitled Way Stations may be published in March, 1913. Miss Robins is the ablest woman novelist Kentucky has produced; but her short-stories are not comparable to Mrs. Andrew's.
Bibliography. The Critic (June, 1904); The Bookman (November, 1907); McClure's Magazine (December, 1910); Harper's Magazine (August, 1911).
A PROMISING PLAYWRIGHT[35]
[From The Florentine Frame (New York, 1909)]
Mrs. Roscoe invoked the right manager. The Man at the Wheel was not only accepted, it was announced for early production. Special scenery was being painted. The rehearsals were speedily in full swing. The play had been slightly altered in council—one scene had been rewritten.
Generously, Keith made his acknowledgements. "I should not have gone at it again, but for you," he told Mrs. Roscoe. "It had got stale—I hated it, till that day I read it to you."
She smiled. "Nobody needs an audience so much as a dramatist. I was audience."
"You brought the fresh eye, you saw how the scène à faire could be made more poignant. Do you know," he said in that way he was getting into, re-envisaging with this companion some old outlook, "I sometimes feel the only difference between the poor thing and the good thing is that in one, the hand fell away too soon, and in the other it was able to give the screw just one more turn. You practically helped me to give the final turn that screwed the thing into shape."
She shook her head, and then he told her that after a dozen rebuffs he had made up his mind to abandon the play that very day he and the Professor had talked of cinque cento ivories.
It was not unnatural that the scant cordiality of Mrs. Mathew, whenever Keith encountered that lady at her sister's house, was insufficient to make him fail in what he acknowledged to Fanshawe as a sort of duty. This was: keeping Mrs. Roscoe fully informed of all the various stages in the contract-negotiation, the cast decisions, and the checkered fortunes of rehearsal.
It is only fair to Mrs. Mathew to admit that she had one reason more cogent even than she quite realized for objecting to the new addition to a circle that had, as Genie complained, grown very circumscribed during the days of mourning.
If keeping Mrs. Roscoe au courant with the fortunes of the play had appeared to Keith in the light of an obligation imposed by common gratitude, Mrs. Mathew conceived it as no less her duty not to allow dislike of the new friend's presence to interfere with the sisterly relation—a relation which on the older woman's part had always had in it a touch of the maternal. If that young man was "getting himself accepted upon an intimate footing"—all the more important that Isabella's elder sister should be there at least as much as usual, if only to prevent the curious from "talking."
In pursuance to this conception of her duty, one evening during the later rehearsals, Mrs. Mathew stood just inside the door of the cloak room that opened out of the famous gray and white marble entrance hall of the Roscoe house. Engaged in the homely occupation of depositing her "artics" in a corner where they would not be mixed up with other people's, Mrs. Mathew was arrested by a slight noise. Upon putting out her head she descried Miss Genie creeping down the stairs with a highly conspiratorial air. The girl, betraying every evidence of suppressed excitement, came to a halt before the closed doors of the drawing-room. The sound of Keith's voice reading aloud came softened through the heavy panels, and seemed to reassure the eavesdropper. She ran on noiseless feet to the low seat, where a man's hat showed black against the soft tone of the marble. She lifted the hat and appeared to be fumbling with the coat that was lying underneath.
Suddenly the flash of a small square envelope on its way to the recesses of the visitor's overcoat!
"What are you doing?" demanded Aunt Josephine, coming down the hall.
"Oh! How you startled me! I'm not doing anything in particular—just waiting about till that blessed reading's over." She left the letter concealed in the folds of the coat, and for an instant she held the hat in front of her perturbed face: "Don't men's things have a nice Russia-leathery smell?" she remarked airily.
"Genie Roscoe, what pranks are you playing?" As Mrs. Mathew took hold of the coat, the girl's self-possession failed her a little. She clung to the garment, sending anxious glances toward the door, whispering her nervous remonstrances and begging Aunt Josephine not to talk so loud. "You'll interrupt them."
"What is going on?" demanded Aunt Josephine, relaxing her hold on the coat.
"He's reading."
"Your poor mother!"
"Oh, she likes it."
"Humph! And that young man—does he never get tired of his own works?"
"It isn't his works that he's reading. It's other people's—to make him forget the way they murder the play at rehearsal. It's French things they read, usually." Genie hurried on with a nervous attempt to be diverting. "There's a new poet, did you know? I like the new ones best, don't you? What I can't stand is when they are so ancient, that they're like that decayed old Ronsard—"
The form Mrs. Mathew's literary criticism took was a violent shake of the visitor's coat. Out of the folds dropped a note. It was addressed in Genie's hand to Mr. Chester Keith.
"What foolishness is this—"
"Don't tell mother," prayed the girl, trying in vain to recover the envelope.
Mrs. Mathew's face grew graver as she took in the girl's feverish anxiety.
"Dear Aunt Josephine!" Genie slipped her hand coaxingly through the arm of the forbidding-looking lady. "I know you wouldn't be so unkind. For all mother seems so gentle and you sometimes look so severe, you're ten times as forgiving, really, as mother is. You're more broadminded," said the unblushing flatterer.
"Oh, really"—Mrs. Mathew smiled a little grimly—but she had ere now proved herself as accessible to coaxing as the cast-iron seeming people often are. They betray, on occasion, a touching gratitude at not being taken at their own grim word.
"Why should I hesitate to tell what you don't hesitate to do?"
But Genie's arm was round her. "Oh, you know why. Mother has such extravagantly high ideas about what people ought to do."
In the other hand Mrs. Mathew still held the note, out of the girl's reach. "You make a practice of this?"
"No, no. It's the first time, and I'll never do it again, if you'll promise not to tell on me."
Mrs. Mathew hesitated.
"Dearest auntie, be nice! If you tell," the girl protested, "I'll have no character to keep up and I'll write him real—well, real letters."
"What do you mean? Isn't this a real letter?"
"No. It doesn't say half. It's nothing to what I could—"
"Very well, if it's nothing—" Mrs. Mathew tore open the note.
Before she could so much as unfold it, Genie had plucked it out of her hand and fled upstairs.
Half way to the top she leaned over the bannisters. "If you tell I'll remember it all my life. If you don't I'll love you for ever and ever."
"You're a very silly child. And I'm not at all sure I won't speak to your mother."
"But I am!" the coppery head was hung ingratiatingly over the hand rail.
Aunt Josephine was already thinking of matters more important than a school girl's foolishness. "How long has that man been here?"
"Oh, hours and hours!" said Genie, accepting the diversion with due gratitude. "He stays longer and longer."
"Humph! that's what I think!" Aunt Josephine stalked into the drawing-room.
Miss Ellen Churchill Semple, Kentucky's distinguished anthropo-geographer, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, in 1863. Vassar College conferred the degree of Bachelor of Arts upon her in 1882, and the Master of Arts in 1891. She then studied for two years at the University of Leipzig. Miss Semple has devoted herself to the new science of anthropo-geography, which is the study of the influence of geographic conditions upon the development of mankind. Since 1897 she has contributed articles upon her subject to the New York Journal of Geography, the London Geographical Journal, and to other scientific publications. Miss Semple's first book, entitled American History and Its Geographic Conditions (Boston, 1903), proclaimed her as the foremost student of the new science in the United States. A special edition of this work was published for the Indiana State Teachers' Association, which is said to be the largest reading circle in the world. In 1901 Miss Semple prepared an interesting study of The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains, which was issued in 1910 as a bulletin of the American Geographical Society. Miss Semple's latest work is an enormous volume, entitled Influences of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography (New York, 1911). This required seven long years of untiring research to prepare, and with its publication she came into her own position, which is quite unique in the whole range of American literature. Although scientific to the last degree, her writings have the real literary flavor, which is seldom found in such work. Miss Semple lectured at Oxford University in 1912, and in the late autumn of that year she discussed Japan, in which country she had experienced much of value and interest, before the Royal British Geographical Society in London, and later before the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in Edinburgh. Between various lectures in Scotland and England she continued her researches in the London libraries, returning to the United States as the year closed.
Bibliography. The Nation (December 31, 1903); Political Science Quarterly (September, 1904).
MAN A PRODUCT OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE[36]
[From Influences of Geographic Environment (New York, 1911)]
Man is a product of the earth's surface. This means not merely that he is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits, given him his problems of navigation or irrigation, and at the same time whispered hints for their solution. She has entered into his bone and tissue, into his mind and soul. On the mountains she has given him leg muscles of iron to climb the slope; along the coast she has left these weak and flabby, but given him instead vigorous development of chest and arm to handle his paddle or oar. In the river valley she attaches him to the fertile soil, circumscribes his ideas and ambitions by a dull round of calm, exacting duties, narrows his outlook to the cramped horizon of his farm. Up on the windswept plateaus, in the boundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of the desert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasis to oasis, where life knows much hardship but escapes the grind of drudgery, where the watching of grazing herds gives him leisure for contemplation, and the wide-ranging life a big horizon, his ideas take on a certain gigantic simplicity; religion becomes monotheism, God becomes one, unrivalled like the sand of the desert, and the grass of the steppe, stretching on and on without break or change. Chewing over and over the cud of his simple belief as the one food of his unfed mind, his faith becomes fanaticism; his big spacial ideas, born of that ceaseless regular wandering, outgrow the land that bred them and bear their legitimate fruit in wide imperial conquests.
Man can no more be scientifically studied apart from the ground which he tills, or the lands over which he travels, or the seas over which he trades, than polar bear or desert cactus can be understood apart from its habitat. Man's relation to his environment are infinitely more numerous and complex than those of the most highly organized plant or animal. So complex are they that they constitute a legitimate and necessary object of special study. The investigation which they receive in anthropology, ethnology, sociology and history is piecemeal and partial, limited as to the race, cultural development, epoch, country or variety of geographic conditions taken into account. Hence all these sciences, together with history so far as history undertakes to explain the causes of events, fail to reach a satisfactory solution of their problems, largely because the geographic factor which enters into them all has not been thoroughly analyzed. Man has been so noisy about the way he has "conquered Nature," and Nature has been so silent in her persistent influence over man, that the geographic factor in the equation of human development has been overlooked.
Mrs. Annie Fellows Johnston, creator of the famous "Little Colonel Series," was born at Evansville, Indiana, May 15, 1863, the daughter of a clergyman. Miss Fellows was educated in the public schools of Evansville, and then spent the year of 1881-1882 at the State University of Iowa. She was married at Evansville, in 1888, to William L. Johnston, who died four years later, leaving her a son and daughter. Mrs. Johnston's first arrival in Kentucky as a resident (though not as a visitor), was in 1898, and then she stayed only three years. Her son's quest of health led her first to Walton, New York, then to Arizona, where they spent a winter on the desert in sight of Camelback mountain, which suggested the legend of In the Desert of Waiting. From Arizona they went to California and then, in 1903, decided to try the climate of Texas, up in the hill country, north of San Antonio. Mrs. Johnston called her home "Penacres," and she lived there until her son's death in the fall of 1910. She and her daughter returned to Pewee Valley, Kentucky, in April, 1911, and purchased "The Beeches," the old home of Mrs. Henry W. Lawton, the widow of the famous American general. The house is situated in a six acre grove of magnificent beech-trees, and is a place often mentioned in "The Little Colonel" stories. Mrs. Johnston's books are: Big Brother (Boston, 1893); The Little Colonel (Boston, 1895); Joel: A Boy of Galilee (Boston, 1895; Italian translation, 1900); In League with Israel (Cincinnati, 1896), the second and last of Mrs. Johnston's books that was not issued by L. C. Page and Company, Boston; Ole Mammy's Torment (1897); Songs Ysame (1897), a book of poems, written with her sister, Mrs. Albion Fellows Bacon, the social reformer of Evansville, Indiana; The Gate of the Giant Scissors (1898); Two Little Knights of Kentucky (1899), written in Kentucky; The Little Colonel's House Party (1900); The Little Colonel's Holidays (1901); The Little Colonel's Hero (1902); Cicely (1902); Asa Holmes, or At the Crossroads (1902); Flip's Islands of Providence (1903); The Little Colonel at Boarding-School (1903), the children's "Order of Hildegarde" was founded on the story of The Three Weavers in this volume; The Little Colonel in Arizona (1904); The Quilt that Jack Built (1904); The Colonel's Christmas Vacation (1905); In the Desert of Waiting (1905; Japanese translation, Tokio, 1906); The Three Weavers (1905), a special edition of this famous story; Mildred's Inheritance (1906); The Little Colonel, Maid of Honor (1906); The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding (1907); Mary Ware (1908); The Legend of the Bleeding Heart (1908); Keeping Tryst (1908); The Rescue of the Princess Winsome (1908); The Jester's Sword (1909; Japanese translation, Tokio, 1910); The Little Colonel's Good Times Book (1909); Mary Ware in Texas (1910); and Travellers Five (1911), a collection of short-stories for grown people, previously published in magazines, with a foreword by Bliss Carman. The little Kentucky girl—called the "Little Colonel" because of her resemblance to a Southern gentleman of the old school—has had Mrs. Johnston's attention for seventeen years, and she has recently announced that she is at work upon the twelfth and final volume of the "Little Colonel Series," as she feels that work for grown-ups is more worth her while. This last story of the series was published in the fall of 1912, entitled Mary Ware's Promised Land; and needless to say her "promised land" is Kentucky. There are "Little Colonel Clubs" all over the world, as Mrs. Johnston has learned from thousands of letters from children, and when she rings down the curtain upon her heroine many girls and boys in this and other countries will be sad.
Bibliography. Current Literature (April, 1901); The Century (September, 1903).
THE MAGIC KETTLE[37]
[From The Little Colonel's Holidays (Boston, 1901)]
Once upon a time, so the story goes (you may read it yourself in the dear old tales of Hans Christian Andersen), there was a prince who disguised himself as a swineherd. It was to gain admittance to a beautiful princess that he thus came in disguise to her father's palace, and to attract her attention he made a magic caldron, hung around with strings of silver bells. Whenever the water in the caldron boiled and bubbled, the bells rang a little tune to remind her of him.