The American Church is not a State Church. It is supported not by law, but by love. No large subsidies corrupt it. No political complications weaken it. Church and State serve each other best when the only bond between them is one of individual conviction and mutual confidence. The beginnings of the Republic were made by religious men, who organized religious communities. They sought our shores to secure religious liberty. Some of them may have been narrow, but they were true and brave. Some of the fetters that bound them had been severed, but some still remained. They had not yet conceived the idea of an emancipated and responsible individuality. Protestants fled from the severities of Roman rule, and Romans from the oppressions of Protestants. And it took a long time for Protestants to become free. But the founders and fathers of the Republic were religious and God-fearing men. They were simply pupils (“primary pupils” at that) in the school of human rights and human brotherhood. The lessons were long and hard. It has taken more than a century to get half through the “first reader,” and there is ample work for the century ahead, but as a people we are coming to see the life of the Church in the aims and order of the State, and to learn that God is in all history, that His claims upon men extend to all social relations, sanctifying all secular and political life, and embracing charity, sympathy, and justice in the minutest details of life, as well as awe, reverence and worship.
Simultaneously with the rise of the Republic began the great Sunday-school system, which went everywhere with the open Bible and the living teacher, with inspiring Christian songs, attractive books for week-day reading, juvenile pictorial papers, social gatherings, and the stimulating power of friendly fellowship in religious life. It brought the people together, old and young, learned and unlearned, rich and poor. It did more to “level up” society than any other agency in the Republic. It made the adult who taught susceptible and affectionate childhood a better citizen. It prepared the children to be wiser, more conscientious, and more loyal citizens in the next generation. In the widely extended Methodist revival, and in the all-embracing Sunday-school movement, we see the hand of God fashioning the Nation and the Church, that they might be one in aim and spirit, and that through them might be promoted liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The various branches or denominations of the American Church are influenced by these ruling ideas of the century; the freedom and unrestricted opportunity of the individual and the spirit of generous fraternity. The old warfare between the Protestant denominations has virtually ceased. Co-operation in religious and reformatory effort—the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor, the International Lesson system, the State and International Sunday-school Conventions, the Evangelical Alliance, the Chautauqua Assemblies, the exchange of pulpits, the frequent union revival meetings held by representative evangelists, the ease with which ministers pass from one denomination to another, the warm, personal friendships between representative leaders of the several Churches, the growth and enrichment of non-denominational periodical literature—these are some of the signs of the larger thought now controlling our people.
The American Church, which imposes no creed but the creed of the Republic, which knows no lines of division—sectarian, political, or territorial—but which seeks the well-being of the individual and the fellowship of all true citizens, will soon wield an immense influence in matters political. It will discuss great ethical questions; it will carry conscientiousness and independence into political action; it will dissipate the weak heresy that Christians are not to take part in national affairs. In the days of Christ and the Apostles, the governing powers, the rulers of this world, were beyond the touch and control of the people. It was for them humbly to serve and uncomplainingly to suffer. But now all this has been changed. The people to-day stand where Cæsar used to stand; and to be a thoughtful, conscientious, active, consistent politician, is to be doing God’s service. The church member who neglects political duty is guilty of sin against both God and the neighbor. The power of the people will be felt for good when the people begin to know and to defend the true and the good. They have during the century expressed the purpose of the American Church on the subject of slavery. At its declaration the shackles have fallen. They pronounced against and destroyed the Louisiana Lottery. Through the press, the ballot, and the authority of law, the moral force of the nation expresses itself and the base conspirators surrender. So must it be with the saloon, and with all political evil. If politicians carry moral questions into the political arena, the pulpit and all other agencies of the church must go with the question before the people, and lead them to consider it no less from the moral than from the political point of view.
Aside from the development of the Christian religion as distinctively displayed in the United States, its progress in the world at large has been great and encouraging. Particularly has the spirit of sectarianism, strongly manifested a century ago, decreased in force and fanaticism diminished, while the sentiment of union and brotherhood between churches of different sects has developed to a highly encouraging degree.
Outside of Christendom the influences of the religion of Christ have been widely spread by the active and enthusiastic labors of missionaries, who have carried the lessons of the Gospels to all lands, and established Christianity among numerous tribes formerly in the lowest stages of heathenism and idolatry. The success of these devoted men has been much less among peoples possessed of a religious faith of a higher grade, as the Mohammedans, Hindoos, and Chinese, and perhaps the most important results of their labors everywhere have been those of education and civilization, necessary preliminaries, in the case of ignorant and undeveloped peoples, to a just comprehension of the principles of Christianity and the inculcation of advanced moral sentiments and the high standard of the Golden Rule.
The religious history of the century does not end with the relation of the progress of Christianity. There has indeed been some degree of reaction of heathenism upon Christian countries, particularly in the case of Buddhism, whose doctrines have made their way into Europe and America, and gained there a considerable body of adherents. This infiltration from without has developed into what is known as the Theosophical Society, which claims over 100,000 members in the United States alone. In addition may be named various new religious outgrowths of home origin, including the Mormons, the Spiritualists, the Christian Scientists, and others of less prominence. Similar new sects have arisen in Mohammedan and Hindoo countries, such as the Babists in Persia and the Brahmo Somaj in India, these latter being distinctive reforms on the more ancient religious creeds and practices.
What has been said above does not show the full extent of the religious movement within the century. There has been an active spirit of progress within the lines of denominational religion itself, and liberal sentiment has made a marked and promising advance. The former insistence upon creed as the essential factor in religion has greatly weakened in favor of its ethical element, and the supremacy of conduct over creed is openly taught. Again, the old religion of fear is giving way before a new religion of love. The doctrine of future punishment, and the attempt to swell the lists of church members by insistence upon the horrors of Hades, are rarely heard in the pulpits of to-day, the old Hell-fire conception having become at once too preposterous and too alien to the character of the All Wise and All Good to be any longer entertained except by the most ignorant of pulpit orators. In truth, the doctrines of the modern pulpit are rapidly rising towards the level of Christ’s elevated teachings, and inculcating love and human brotherhood as the essential elements of the Christian faith.
The growing spirit of liberalism has given rise to a large body of moralists who repudiate the idea that faith in a creed is essential to salvation, and claim that moral conduct is the sole religious element that is likely to influence the future destiny of mankind. Persons of this class are specially numerous in the ranks of the scientists, whose habit of close observation, and rigorous demand for established facts as the basis of all theoretical views, unfit them for acceptance of any doctrines insusceptible of rigid demonstration from the scientific standpoint. This requirement of hard and fast evidence, appealing directly to the senses, and discarding all reliance upon the ideal or upon the broad consensus of ancient belief, has no doubt been carried too far, and has yielded a narrowness of outlook which will be replaced by broader conceptions as psychological science develops. That it exists now, however, cannot be denied, and its adherents constitute a very large and influential body. Yet it must be said that science and religion, for a time widely separated, are growing together, and that in all probability the final outcome of modern thought and research will be an alliance between these two great forces, a religion which science can accept and a science in full accord with religious views and principles.
If we now turn aside from religion as a whole, and consider only its ethical side, it is to find an immense advance within the nineteenth century. The standard of right conduct may not have risen, but the sentiment of human sympathy and of the brotherhood of mankind has very greatly developed, and human charity and fellow feeling, a century or two ago largely confined within the limits of a nation or a city, are now coming to embrace all mankind.
There has been a great amelioration in manners and customs within the century, a great decrease in barbarity and cruelty. A few examples will suffice to point this out. The barbarous practices in regard to child labor which existed in 1800 and much later have often been depicted in lurid colors, the selfish greed of employers giving rise to a “massacre of the innocents” as declared and even more cruel in its methods than that of the time of Christ. Thousands of children in the days of our grandfathers were simply tortured to death in dark and dank mines or gloomy and unhealthy workshops, at an age when they should have been alternating between the useful confinement of the schools and the healthful freedom of the playgrounds and the fields. This state of affairs happily no longer exists, and in the present condition of public sentiment could not be reproduced. The world has grown decidedly beyond the level of such heartless cruelty.
The development of sympathy has not confined itself to a redress of the wrongs of children, but has made itself manifest in attention to the wrongs of workmen as a whole, factory inspection having put an end to many unhealthful and oppressive conditions formerly prevailing, and saved thousands of workmen from being poisoned in the midst of their daily labors. And not only human beings, but dumb animals, have been reached by the awakened sympathy of modern communities. A century ago the noble and patient horse was frequently treated with the utmost brutality, without a hand or a voice being raised in its defence. This barbarity was accepted as a part of the established and necessary order of things, and dismissed with a shrug or perhaps without a thought. To-day, in the more enlightened nations, this state of things has ceased to exist. Societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals keep a close watch upon the brutally inclined, and have almost put an end to cruel practices which formerly prevailed without a word of protest, domestic animals being now protected as carefully as human beings.
In no direction did the lack of kindly sentiment of a century ago show itself more decisively than in prison management. We do not mean to say that philanthropy did not then exist, but that it was far from being the active sentiment it has become to-day, and was largely without effect upon legislators; the condition alike of convicted criminals, of debtors, and of those held for trial being in many cases almost indescribably horrible. The first effective movement towards prison reform was made by John Howard, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, but public sentiment was so dulled towards the condition of prisoners that the horrors painted out by him were in great measure permitted to continue. The legislators of England could not be awakened to any active interest in the inmates of the gaols.
When Elizabeth Fry made her first visit to the female department of Newgate, the city prison of London, in 1813, she found a state of affairs whose horrors, words are weak to convey. The women inmates “were limited to two wards and two yards, an area of about one hundred and ninety-two superficial yards in all, into which some three hundred women with their children were crowded, all classes together, felon and misdemeanant, tried and untried; the whole under the superintendence of an old man and his son. They slept on the floor, without so much as a mat for bedding. Many were very nearly naked, others were in rags; some desperate from want of food, some savage from drink, foul in language, still more recklessly depraved in their habits and behavior. Everything was filthy beyond description. The smell of the place was quite disgusting.”
The condition of affairs on the men’s side, unless they were able to pay for better accommodations, was similar to that here described. Their treatment, indeed, depended largely on the amount of money they could pay the jail officials and they were fleeced without mercy. The practice of fettering them was so common that nearly every one wore irons, even the untried being often laden with fetters, while their limbs were chafed into sores by the weight of these useless instruments of torture.
The report of the Prison Discipline Improvement Society, at as late a date as 1818, shows the existence of an almost incredible state of things in English prisons. Many of the gaols were in the most deplorable condition, and crowded far beyond their powers of accommodation. All prisoners passed their time in absolute idleness, or spent it in gambling and loose conversation. The debtors were crowded into the narrowest quarters conceivable. Twenty men were forced to sleep in a space twenty feet long by six wide—accomplishing this seemingly impossible feat by “sleeping edgeways.” In the morning the stench and heat were something terrible; “the smell on first opening the door was enough to knock down a horse.” The jail hospitals were filled with infectious cases, and in one room, seven feet by nine, with closed windows, where a boy lay ill with fever, three other prisoners, at first perfectly healthy, were found lodged. It is no wonder that the deadly jail fever raged as an epidemic in such pest holes, and even communicated itself to the judges before whom these wretches were brought for trial.
We have by no means told all the horrors of prison life at that period, but will desist from giving any more of its painful details. It need scarcely be said that an utterly different state of affairs now exists in all civilized lands, prisoners being treated as human beings instead of wild beasts; and so warm is the feeling of public sympathy with the wretched that any of the horrors here depicted would raise a universal cry of deprecation in the land. Kindness is now the rule in dealing with criminals of all grades, and every effort is made to supply them with employment, and to attend to the requirements of comfort and cleanliness. Prisons are rapidly developing into schools for reform, and with remarkable success where systems of this kind have been fully developed.
The laws of a century ago were barbarous almost beyond conception at the present day. Capital punishment, now confined to murderers, was then inflicted for some twenty-five separate crimes, including forgery, coining, sheep or horse stealing, burglary, cutting and maiming, rick-burning, robbery, arson, etc. There were, in fact some two hundred capital crimes on the statute books, but most of these had grown obsolete. Yet such a minor offence as stealing in a dwelling house was a crime punishable by hanging, and men were occasionally executed on the gallows for a small theft that would now subject them to only a few months of imprisonment. It was not until after 1830 that an amelioration in these severe laws began, and with such effect that the number of persons sentenced to death in England decreased from 458 in 1837 to fifty-six in 1839. After 1841 the death penalty was inflicted only for murder, though seven other crimes remained capital by law until 1861.
The practice of public executions was another barbarous feature of the code, and the scenes around the gallows at Tyburn, on the occasion of the execution of any criminal of note, were so disgraceful that it seems incredible that they could exist in any civilized land. Other relics of the dark ages were the public exhibition of the bodies of the executed, and hanging in chains on a gibbet, a practice in vogue until 1832. In one case mentioned, at that late date, “a sort of fair was held, gaming tables were set up, and cards were played under the gibbet, to the disturbance of the public peace and the annoyance of all decent people.”
It will suffice to say here that this state of affairs has been reformed out of existence. Executions, restricted solely to murderers, now take place wholly in private, and so great is the public desire to prevent suffering to the condemned that the first electrical execution in New York raised a cry of horror when it was announced that life did not cease within the few seconds expected, but that the power of sensation continued for perhaps a minute. In truth, in this instance, there was something of a hyper-sensibility manifested, but one of a kind creditable to human nature.
The development of the spirit of sympathy with the poor and suffering is by no means confined to the instances stated, but has gained an extraordinary extension. The rapid progress of railroad and steamship communication, the enormous increase in travel, and the bringing of the ends of the earth together by means of the telegraph wire have made of all mankind one great family, and the instinct of charity and benevolence reaches to the most remote quarters of the globe. Notable results of this feeling, of recent date, have been the efforts to ameliorate the suffering in India during the late famine, the war instigated by sympathy in Cuba, the earnest efforts to supply food to the starving in Porto Rico, and the fervent feeling aroused in favor of the unjustly punished Dreyfus.
In regard to charity at home, the instances of it are voluminous beyond our power to record. Hospitals, asylums, institutions of benevolence of the most varied character, have been everywhere instituted, alike in Europe and America, mainly through public donations, and there is no form of want or suffering which is not met by some attempt at alleviation. Homes for the afflicted of every kind are rising in all directions; charity is organized and active to a degree never before seen; the bettering of the condition of the poor by improved residences, methods of recreation and instruction, and other acts of aid and kindness is actively going on, and in a hundred ways benevolence is striving to lift man from want and degradation into comfort and advanced conditions.
What is known as altruism, the sentiment of fellow feeling, is, in part, coming to be one of the active conditions of the age, and is among the most promising signs of the times. Selfishness, indeed, is abundantly prevalent still, yet altruistic feeling is rapidly on the increase, and gifts for benevolent purposes of all kinds are becoming remarkably abundant. Hundreds of instances might be named, but we shall confine ourselves to one, Andrew Carnegie’s wise and kindly devotion of the income of his great fortune to the founding of public libraries, than which nothing could serve better to bring man into a condition of mind which will prevent him from becoming a willing object of charity.
Certainly the Golden Rule is bearing fruit in these later days, and men are widely doing unto others as they would wish to be done by. The old, narrow idea of patriotism is being replaced by a growing sentiment of the brotherhood of all mankind, and altruism is making its way upward through the dense mass of selfism which has so long dominated the world. It is still only in its pioneer stage, but the indications of its growth are encouraging, and we may look forward with hope to a day in which it will become the leading influence in the social world, and selfishness lose its long and strong hold upon the heart of man.
The nineteenth century saw the modern world in its making. At its opening the long mediæval era was just ceasing to exist. The French Revolution had brought it to a sudden and violent termination in France, and had sown the seeds of the new ideas of equality and fraternity and the rights of man widely over Europe. In the new world a great modern nation, instinct with the most advanced ideas of liberty and justice, had just sprung into existence, a nation without royalty or nobility, and whose leaders were the chosen servants, not the privileged masters, of the people.
This grand political revolution, with which the century began, was paralleled with as notable an industrial revolution. The invention of the steam engine had brought to an end the mediæval system of industry. The old, individual, household era of labor, where every man could be his own master and supply his own capital, ceased to exist; costly labor-saving machines, needing large accumulations of capital, came into use; great buildings and the centralization of labor became necessary; and the factory system, which has had such an immense development in the nineteenth century, began its remarkable career.
With the opening and progress of the nineteenth century came other conditions of prime importance. Invention, which first became active near the end of the preceding century, now flourished until its results seemed rather the work of magic than of plain human thought and work. Science, which already had made some notable triumphs, gained an undreamed-of activity and hundreds of the deep secrets of the universe were unfolded. Discovery and exploration achieved surprising results. At the beginning of the century half the world was unknown. At its end only the frozen realms of the poles remained unexplored, and civilization was making its way into a hundred haunts of ancient savagery. Literature and art, while they can claim no works of acknowledged superiority as compared with the master pieces of past centuries, have displayed a remarkable activity, and the number of meritorious books now annually issued is one of the most extraordinary events of the century.
Not less important is the immense progress in education. The schoolhouse forms the great mile-post on the highway of progress. It is everywhere in evidence. Free schools extend throughout the civilized world, and reach upward to a plane far beyond the highest level of public education a century ago, linking the common school with the college, and forming a direct stepping stone to university education, which has widened out with similar activity. In methods of education a marked advance has been made, while the text-books of to-day are almost infinitely superior to those of the earlier period. And education is turning its attention in a highly encouraging degree towards practical subjects and away from that incubus of the dead languages which was so strenuously insisted upon in the past. Man is going back to nature in education, observation is supplementing book knowledge, and experiment taking the place of authority. In short, education, with its handmaids, the book and the newspaper, is making its way into the humblest of homes, and man is everywhere fitting himself for an intelligent discharge of his social, industrial and political duties.
As regards the development of the spirit of charity and human brotherhood, it has been spoken of in the preceding chapter and does not need recapitulation here. Yet there is one stage of advance of which nothing has so far been said, but which is of high and significant importance, namely, the great progress made in the educational, industrial and political position of woman.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century education, except of the most elementary character, was in great measure confined to boys. In 1788 the village fathers of Northampton, Mass., where Smith’s College for women is now situated, voted “not to be at the expense of schooling girls;” and in 1792 the selectmen of Newburyport decided that “during the summer months, when the boys have diminished, the Master shall receive girls for instruction in grammar and reading, after the dismission of the boys in the afternoon, for an hour and a half.” The site of this schoolhouse, to which, as is believed, women were first admitted on this continent to an education at public expense, is still shown with pride to visitors. The same town established in 1803 four girls’ schools, the first on record, to be kept six months in the year, from six to eight in the morning and on Thursday afternoon.
Step by step the free school was opened to girls, and gradually institutions for the higher education of women were established, the pioneer college which opened its doors to the fair sex being Oberlin, in Ohio, in 1833. The advance since then has been great, and at the opening of the twentieth century there was not a college west of the Alleghanies which denied to woman the full advantages of education, while the same was the case in many of the older colleges of the East. In 1865 Matthew Vassar founded in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., the first college exclusively for women. To this is now added Smith, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr Colleges, within whose doors the highest advantages of education are to be obtained. The distinction between boys and girls in education, in short, has nearly ceased to exist in this country, and is in a fair way of vanishing in Europe.
In industrial occupation the advance of woman has been as great. A century ago few avenues of labor were open to them outside the household, and such work as was performed was miserably paid for. At present there is not an industry which they desire or are suited to follow from which they are debarred, and the last census enumerated four thousand different branches of employment in which women were engaged. This was not only in the lower, but in many of the higher employments. Women physicians are numerous, women lawyers and preachers are coming into the field, women professors teach in schools and colleges, and women authors have given us some of the best books of the century.
Politically the progress, while not so great, has been encouraging. In the middle of the nineteenth century no woman had a right to vote, and the thought of woman suffrage was just being evolved. At the end of the century women possessed the fullest privileges of the suffrage in the four states of Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, and partial suffrage in many other states, while a much wider extension of this privilege seemed not far distant. In many European countries, and in the British colonies of Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony, Canada, and parts of India, woman had won the right to vote, under various restrictions, for municipal and school officers. Such has been the progress in this direction of a half century.
What else shall be said of the state of affairs at the dawn of the twentieth century? Perhaps one of the most significant and promising movements of the time is that taken with the object of bringing war, which has raged upon the earth since the primitive days of mankind, to an end. The movement in this direction, singularly enough, emanated from the monarch of the most unprogressive of civilized lands, but one whose size and power give prominence and influence to any proposition coming from its court. On August 24, 1898, Count Muravieff, Foreign Minister of Russia, by order of the Emperor Nicholas II., handed to the representatives of foreign governments at St. Petersburg copies of a proposition of such importance, that we give it below in full:
“The maintenance of general peace and the possible reduction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations present themselves in existing conditions to the whole world as an ideal toward which the endeavors of all governments should be directed. The humanitarian and magnanimous ideas of His Majesty the Emperor, my august master, have been won over to this view in the conviction that this lofty aim is in conformity with the most essential interests and legitimate views of all the powers; and the Imperial Government thinks the present moment would be favorable to seeking the means.
“International discussion is the most effectual means of insuring all people’s benefit—a real durable peace, above all, putting an end to the progressive development of the present armaments.
“In the course of the last twenty years the longing for general appeasement has grown especially pronounced in the consciences of civilized nations; and the preservation of peace has been put forward as an object of international policy. It is in its name that great states have concluded between themselves powerful alliances.
“It is the better to guarantee peace that they have developed in proportions hitherto unprecedented their military forces, and still continue to increase them, without shrinking from any sacrifice.
“Nevertheless, all these efforts have not yet been able to bring about the beneficient result desired—pacification.
“The financial charges following the upward march strike at the very root of public prosperity. The intellectual and physical strength of the nations’ labor and capital are mostly diverted from the natural application, and are unproductively consumed. Hundreds of millions are devoted to acquiring terrible engines of destruction, which, though to-day regarded as the last work of science, are destined to-morrow to lose all their value in consequence of some fresh discovery in the same field. National culture, economic progress, and the production of wealth are either paralyzed or checked in development. Moreover, in proportion as the armaments of each power increase, they less and less fulfil the object the governments have set before themselves.
“The economic crisis, due in a great part to the system of armaments a l’outrance, and the continual danger which lies in this massing of war material, are transforming the armed peace of our days into a crushing burden which the peoples have more and more difficulty in bearing.
“It appears evident that if this state of things were to be prolonged it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm it is desired to avert, and the horrors whereof make every thinking being shudder in advance.
“To put an end to these incessant armaments and to seek the means of warding off the calamities which are threatening the whole world—such is the supreme duty to-day imposed upon all states.
“Filled with this idea, His Majesty has been pleased to command me to propose to all the governments whose representatives are accredited to the Imperial Court the assembling of a conference which shall occupy itself with this grave problem.
“This conference will be, by the help of God, a happy presage for the century which is about to open. It would converge into one powerful focus the efforts of all states sincerely seeking to make the great conception of universal peace triumph over the elements of trouble and discord, and it would, at the same time, cement their agreement by a corporate consecration of the principles of equity and right whereon rest the security of states and the welfare of peoples.”
This hopeful proposal did not, unfortunately, produce the result hoped for by its distinguished promulgator. Doubt of the honesty of the czar and his advisers, and mutual jealousies of the powers of Europe, stood in the way of an acceptance of the proposition to reduce the enormous armaments of the great nations. Yet, despite this, it was not without important results in the direction of doing away with the horrors of war and bringing about the reign of peace upon the earth. A peace conference of representatives of the nations, in accordance with the suggestion of the czar, was held at The Hague, the capital of the Netherlands, in the spring of 1899, and resulted in the adoption of a scheme of international arbitration which is full of promise for the future, as an important step in the direction of settling international disputes in the high courts of the nations instead of on the bloody field of war. It proposes to adopt in regard to the nations the principle long since in vogue in regard to their people, that of the legal in place of the violent redress of wrongs and settlement of disputes. The Court of ArbitrationA permanent court of arbitration is to be established, composed of men amply competent to deal with the questions likely to come before them, and enjoying the public confidence, to deal with national disputes which previously had no other ready arbiter but the sword. There is, it is true, no legal obligations upon nations to submit their differences of opinion to this tribunal, but there is a high moral obligation, whose force is sure to grow as the years pass on, and in the establishment of this court we have the most promising step yet taken towards the abolition of the barbaric custom of war.
With the question of the development of the peace sentiment comes that of the advance of industry, which has been one of the most important results of nineteenth century progress. This, as already indicated in these pages, has made an enormous advance within the century, the invention of labor-saving machinery having so enhanced man’s powers of production that the results of each person’s labor is very much greater than that of a century ago. Where slow hand processes then widely prevailed, now the whirr of wheels, the intricate play of almost human-like machines, which need the eye rather than the hand of the mechanic, turn out products in astonishing profusion and phenomenal cheapness, while the “man with the hoe” of the past is everywhere making way for the man with the machine.
The rate of progress in this direction has been well shown in the successive fairs of the nations, of which, as we have already stated, the first was held in Paris in the first year of the century, while the last was held in 1900, the closing year of the century. Between these two dates a large number of fairs, international and national, have been held in Europe and America, each surpassing its predecessor in size and in the variety and originality of its exhibits, and each showing new and important steps of advance. It was the middle of the century before the ideas of mankind expanded to the conception of an international exhibition, or “world’s fair,” the first of which was held in London in 1851. Since then many others on this extended scale have been held, the first in the United States being the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. The Columbian Exposition, which followed at Chicago in 1893, was full of indications of great progress in the intervening seventeen years, especially in the department of electricity, which had made a remarkable advance in the interval. Still more significant, as showing the vast industrial progress of the United States, was the National Export Exposition at Philadelphia in 1899, a display of commercial products significant of the great development of American commerce in the final decade of the century, and justly held in the city which had established the first great commercial museum in the world.
As indicative of the progress in American commerce, a few statistics may be of importance. In 1873 the exports of the United States amounted to $522,479,922, a sum surpassed by that of the imports, which reached $642,136,210. In 1892 the exports had increased to $1,030,278,148; the imports reaching $827,402,462. In 1898 the total exports aggregated the great sum of $1,231,482,330; while the imports fell to a lower figure than in 1873, the total being $616,050,654, almost exactly one half the sum of the exports. It must further be said that these exports are no longer predominately agricultural, as in the earlier period, but that the mechanical products of the United States are being sent abroad in a constantly increasing ratio. And a significant fact in this relation is that of our growing sum of exports to England herself, long the dominant lord of manufacture and commerce. This is strikingly indicated in the shipment of locomotives for use on English railroads, and of iron bridges for English use by the British authorities in Egypt, the rapidity and cheapness with which American workshops can turn out their products being the ruling elements in this remarkable diversion of trade.
The progress in other fields of human endeavor, as indicated at the dawn of the twentieth century, has been equally pronounced. Science, for example, manifests a wonderful activity, and displays results of bewildering variety and great importance; while the rapid and varied applications of scientific discoveries to useful purposes is one of the most significant signs of the age. Striking recent examples of this have been the Röntgen ray and wireless telegraphy.
Politically the world has been by no means at rest during the century. In 1800 despotisms, of greater or less rigidness, controlled most of the countries of the world. The republic of the United Netherlands had been overthrown, that recently established in France was sinking under the autocracy of Napoleon, and the small mountain-girdled republic of Switzerland alone remained. Beyond the seas this was matched by a new republic, that of the United States, at that time small and of little importance in the councils of the world. In 1900 a vast change manifested itself. The whole double continent of America was occupied by republics, Canada being practically one under distant supervision, France had regained its republican institutions, and Great Britain had all the freedom of a republican form of government. Through all Western Europe autocracy had vanished, constitutional governments having succeeded the absolutism of the past, and the only strongholds of autocracy remaining in Europe were Russia and Turkey, in both of which the embers of revolution were smouldering, and might at any moment burst into flame.
These are not the only significant signs of progress which present themselves to us at the dawn of the twentieth century. In truth, in a hundred directions the world has been equipping itself for the new century, which seems to have before it a destiny unequalled in the history of the world. It is of special importance to observe how prominent the Anglo-Saxon peoples have been in the great advance which we have chronicled. Great Britain, and, following in her footsteps, the United States, have occupied the position of the leading manufacturing and commercial nations of the world. The contracted boundaries of the British Islands long since proved too narrow to contain a people of such expanding enterprise, and they have gone forth, “conquering and to conquer,” settling and developing, until, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the empire of Great Britain and its colonies covered an area of 11,336,806 square miles, inhabited by 381,037,374 human beings. This area is nearly one fourth that of the habitable land surface of the earth, and its population quite one fourth of all mankind. The East Indian possessions of this great empire are larger than all Europe without Russia, and the North American ones, if their water surface be included, are larger than the whole of Europe.
The other nations which have made a great advance in territory are Russia, with its 8,644,100 square miles of territory, and the United States with its 3,602,990. But in both the latter cases these are compact territories, held not as colonies, which at any time may break loose, but as integral parts of the national domain. This is particularly the case in the United States, whose territory is inhabited by a patriotic and largely homogenous population, and is not made up of a congeries of varied and dissatisfied tribes like those of Russia. The remaining great territorial nation is France, which, with its colonial acquisitions, covers 3,357,856 square miles of territory. But France herself is only 204,177 square miles in extent, and her immense colonial dominions in Africa are held by so weak and uncertain a tenure as to count for little at present in the strength of the nation.
A significant fact, in respect to the recent proposition to establish a universal language, is that the English form of speech, spoken in 1801 by 20,000,000 people, is now used by 125,000,000. Russian comes next, with 90,000,000, German with 75,000,000, French with 55,000,000, Spanish with 45,000,000, and Italian with 35,000,000. The rate of increase in the use of English has far surpassed that of any other language, and it is said that two-thirds of the letters that pass through the post-offices of the world are written and sent by people who speak this cosmopolitan tongue.
This immense advance of the English form of speech is full of significance. If it goes on, the question as to which is to become the dominant language of the world will settle itself by a natural process, and the necessity of inventing a special form of speech will be obviated. English is to-day the chief commercial language of the world, and is fast becoming the polite tongue of Europe, a position held a century ago by French. By the end of the twentieth century it may well have become the only language besides their own which the peoples of the earth will find it necessary to learn. And its marked simplicity of grammatical form adapts it to this destiny beyond any other of the prominent languages of mankind.