From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People — Sec 20 North America, part 2

NEW YORK

In a house in a Swedish countryside sit an old man and woman talking seriously.

"It is a great pity," says the old woman, "that Gunnar is beginning to think of America again."

"Yes, he will never rest," replies the old man, "till we have given our consent and let him go.

To-day he says that an emigration 'touter' has promised him gold and green forests if he will take a ticket for one of the Bremen line steamers.

I reminded him that the farm is unencumbered, but he answered that it could not provide for both his brothers and himself.

'It was a very different thing for you, father,' he said, 'but there are three of us to divide the produce.'

He thinks it is a hopeless task to grub in our poor stony hills, when boundless plains in the western states of North America are only waiting to be ploughed, and in any factory he can be earning wages so large as to yield a small income for several years."

"Yes, indeed, I know, it is his cousins who have put this fancy in his head with their glowing letters.

But I suppose we cannot prevent him going if his heart is set on it?"

"What can we do?

He is a free man and must go his own way."

"Well, perhaps it is best.

When he is home-sick he will come back again."

"I am afraid it will be long enough before that happens.

At starting all seems so fine.

'I shall soon come home with a small pile.'

In reality all his memories will grow faint within a year, and the distance to the red cottage will seem to grow longer as time flies.

I mourn for him as dead already; he will never come back."

* * * * * A few days after this our emigrant Gunnar breaks all ties and tears up all the roots which since his birth have held him bound to the soil of Sweden.

He travels by the shortest route to Bremen and steps on board an emigrant steamer for New York.

During the long hours of the voyage the people sit on deck and talk of the great country to which they are all bound.

Before the last lighthouse on the coast of Europe is lost to sight, Gunnar seems to have all America at his finger-ends.

The same names are always ringing in his ears--New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco have become quite familiar, and he has only to insert between them a number of smaller towns, a few rivers, mountains, and lakes, to draw in a few railway lines, to remember the great country of Canada to the north and mountainous Mexico in the south, to place at three of the corners of the continent the peninsulas of Alaska, California, and Florida, and at the fourth the large island of Newfoundland, and then his map of North America is complete.

* * * * * The voyage over the Atlantic draws to an end.

One day a growing restlessness and excitement is perceptible, and the travellers cast inquiring glances ahead.

It is said that the American coast will be visible in an hour.

And so it is.

An irregular line appears to starboard.

That is Long Island.

Two hours more, and the boat glides into the mouth of the Hudson River and comes alongside at Ellis Island in the harbour of New York.

A row of other vessels lie moored at the quays.

These also have brought immigrants to America and will soon return to fetch more.

They must go backwards and forwards year out and year in to carry three thousand persons daily to the United States.

Gunnar has packed his things in good time and takes up a favourable position from which he can observe his fellow-travellers.

He has never heard such a noise and never seen such bustle.

The people throng the gangways, call to one another, haul out their discoloured portmanteaus and their roped bundles.

There are seen Swedes and Germans, Polish and Russian Jews, Galicians and Croats mingled together, some well dressed and with overcoats, others in tattered clothes and with a coarse handkerchief in place of a collar.

Yonder, overlooking New York harbour, stands the colossal statue of Liberty, a female figure holding a torch in her right hand.

When darkness lies over the earth she throws a dazzling beam of electric light out over the water, the quays, houses, and ships.

But Gunnar experiences no feeling of freedom as he sets his foot on American soil.

He and all his fellow-travellers are provided with numbered tickets and marshalled into long compartments in a huge hall.

Then they are called out one after another to be questioned, and a doctor comes and examines them.

Those who suffer from lung disease or other complaint, or being old and feeble have no prospect of gaining a livelihood, receive a peremptory order of exclusion on grey paper and must return by the next vessel to their fatherland.

The others who pass the examination proceed in small steamers to the great city, where, among the four millions of New York, they vanish like chaff before the wind.

From whatever land they may come they always find fellow-countrymen in New York, for this city is a conglomeration of all the peoples of the world, and seventy different languages are spoken in it.

A third of its inhabitants have been born in foreign countries.

In Brooklyn, the quarter on Long Island, there are whole streets where only Swedes live.

In the "Little Italy" quarter live more Italians than there are in Naples, in the "Chinese Town" there are five thousand Chinese, and even Jews from Russia and Poland have their own quarter.

Gunnar soon finds that New York is more complicated than he supposed when he was rolling out on the Atlantic.

Meanwhile he decides to take it easy at first, and to learn his way about before plunging into the struggle for existence.

In Brooklyn he soon meets with a fellow-countryman and gets a roof over his head.

A

pleasant, well-to-do railway employé from Stockholm takes pleasure in showing him about and impressing him with his knowledge of America.

"This town must be old," says Gunnar, "or it could not have grown so large."

"Old!

No, certainly not.

Compared to Stockholm it is a mere child.

It is barely three hundred years old, and at the time of Gustavus Adolphus it did not contain a thousand inhabitants.

But now it is second only to London."

"That is wonderful.

How can you account for New York becoming so large?

Stockholm and Bremen are pigmies beside it.

I have never seen the like in my life.

There are forests of masts and steamboat funnels in all directions, and at the quays vessels are loaded and unloaded with the most startling speed."

"Yes, but you must remember that the population of the United States increases at an extraordinary rate.

During last century it doubled every twenty years.

And remember also that nearly half the foreign trade of the Union passes through New York.

Hence are exported grain, meat, tobacco, cotton, petroleum, manufactured goods, and many other things.

It is, therefore, not remarkable that New York needs 36 miles of quays with warehouses, and that more than seventy steamboat lines sail to and from the port.

And, besides, it is a great industrial town.

Think of its position and its fine harbour!

Eastward lies the Atlantic with routes to Europe; westwards run innumerable railway lines, five of which stretch right through to the Pacific coast."

"Tell me something about the railways," exclaims Gunnar, who wants to go out west at the first favourable opportunity.

"Yes, I can give you information about them, for I have been working on several lines.

As far back as 1840 the United States had 2800 miles of railway, and twenty years later 30,000 miles.

Now it has nearly two hundred and forty thousand miles of rails, a strip which would reach to the moon or ten times round the equator.

The United States have more railways than all Europe, though the population is only a fifth that of Europe; but the area is about the same."

"How do you explain this rapid development of railway enterprise?"

"Well, the fact is that at first the aim was to fill up the gaps between the waterways.

Rivers were relied on as long as possible, and the first railways were built in districts where there were no large rivers.

Then in course of time various lines converged together, new railways were constructed, and now the forty-nine States are covered with a connected network of lines.

Moreover, the country roads are so bad that they must be supplemented by railways."

"A large number of bridges must be necessary across all the large rivers?"

"Yes, certainly.

The Americans are adepts in bridge-building, and the railway bridges over the Mississippi and Missouri and other rivers are masterpieces of the boldest art.

Where lines cross deeply eroded valleys, bridges of timber were formerly built, like sky-scraping parapets with rails laid along the top; but such bridges are now fast disappearing and iron bridges are built, and the trains run at full speed over elegant erections which from a distance look just like a spider's web.

Just look to your left.

There you have one of the world's strongest bridges, the suspension bridge between New York and Brooklyn.

It is of colossal dimensions, and yet it looks so fine and delicate as it hangs between its two mighty piers.

You see that vessels with the tallest masts can pass clear below, for it is poised 135 feet above high water.

The length is nearly a mile and a quarter.

It is wonderful that men have been able to stretch this huge span of iron above the water.

Wait a little and you will see a kind of aerial railway."

Then the Stockholm man takes his new friend to a station to travel on the elevated railway through New York.

Gunnar's astonishment is beyond bounds as he rushes along on a framework, supported by innumerable iron pillars, over streets and squares, and sees the seething crowd moving in carriages and on foot below his feet.

[Illustration: PLATE XXXII.

"SKY-SCRAPERS" IN NEW YORK.

] "Here is the Central Park.

Is it not delightful with its leafy trees and cool pools?

In summer it is burning hot in the town, and it is refreshing to rest an hour or two in the shade of the trees.

The winters are equally cold, and raw, biting winds blow from the east coast.

Here is Fifth Avenue, the finest street of New York.

In the row of palaces you see here live millionaires, railway kings, steel kings, petroleum kings, corn kings, a whole crop of kings.

But I would rather we went to look at the rows of houses facing the Hudson River."

"New York lies, then, on the Hudson River?"

"That is so, but more properly speaking New York stands on the island of Manhattan in the mouth of the river.

We are standing, then, on Manhattan, and it is interesting to recall the fact that this island was sold three hundred years ago by Indians to Dutchmen for the sum of four pounds.

It is rather more valuable now!

Just look at the hideous sky-scrapers with their twenty and thirty storeys" (Plate XXXII.

).

"I was just wondering why houses are built so enormously high."

"That is owing to the tremendous value of the ground.

When there is not space enough to build out laterally, the buildings are piled up heavenwards, where there is plenty of room.

They are certainly not handsome.

Look at this row of houses, some of moderate height, others as tall as chimneys.

Are they not like a row of keys moved by invisible gigantic fingers?"

"I should not like to live in such a building, I am sure.

On the top floor I should be giddy with the height, and on the first I should expect the whole mass to tumble down on me."

"We are better off in Brooklyn, where the houses are of moderate height.

To-morrow I will show you something not less remarkable than the wealthy quarter of the city.

I will take you to the Chinese town.

There Chinese swarm in the dirty lanes; there the whole place reeks of onions and tobacco and spirits from the public-houses; there are vile gambling hells and opium dens; and there paper lanterns on fishing rods hang outside the tea-houses.

Then we can take a look at 'Little Italy,' a purely Italian town in the midst of the New York of the Americans.

There you will see only Italian books in the book-shops, there Italian newspapers are read, there wax candles burn round images of the Madonna in the churches, and black-haired, brown-eyed children from sunny Italy play in the gutters.

And we must not forget 'Little Russia,' the Jews' quarter.

The Jews are a remarkable people; you never see them drunk, and you never hear of any crime or felony committed by them.

They live poorly, cheaply, and sparingly, and seem cheerful in their booths beside the streets."

"All this is very well, but I do not understand where all the immigrants go.

I am told that as many as three thousand persons land daily on Ellis Island.

At this rate New York receives yearly an addition of a million souls."

"Yes, but how many do you think remain in New York?

Most of them go up country and out westwards.

Some improve their position and then repair to other fields of work.

But many also stay here and increase the slum population.

The immigrants who are destitute on landing take work in factories at any wage they can get.

The wages they receive seem very high compared to those in their own country, but they are low for America.

Accordingly the immigrant Europeans thrust out the Americans, and therefore there are two millions out of work in the United States.

And so there are failures, human wrecks, who are a burden to others.

If you like we will try this evening to get to a midnight mission and see the poor wretches waiting in crowds for the doors to open.

They have a worn, listless expression, but when the doors are open they wake up and rush in, fill all the benches in the large hall, and go to sleep in all imaginable positions."

"What do they do there?"

"A missionary preaches to them, but they are hungry and weary, and sleep soundly on their benches.

Among them you will find tramps and vagabonds, professional beggars and thieves, idlers and men out of work.

In the daytime they beg and steal, and now at night they take their sleep in the mission.

When the preacher finishes, they file out and go to the bread stalls to get food.

Such is their life day after day, and they sink ever deeper into misery."

"They are the slag that remains after the precious metal has run off, of course.

It is curious to think of a people that is increased by a never-failing stream of immigrants.

What will be the end of it?"

"No one can answer that question.

Everything is possible with Americans.

They are a mixture of English, Scandinavian, German, Dutch, Italian, and Russian blood, to name only the principal constituents of this complex blend, this huge incorporation.

Out of all these elements one day an American race will emerge, when Ellis Island has closed its gates to emigrants from Europe."

[Illustration: NORTH AMERICA.

] "Tell me another thing, now.

Why is not New York, the most important city, also the capital of the country?"

"It was thought that the city which bears the name of the great Washington had a more convenient and more central position with regard to the States of the original federation.

The population of Washington is only about 330,000, and there are fifteen larger cities in the United States, but it is the centre of government.

There the President lives in White House, there Congress assembles in the Capitol, there stands the Washington monument surrounded by large national buildings, and there three universities are established."

CHICAGO AND THE GREAT LAKES

After our friend Gunnar has seen as much as he wants of New York, he obtains a good post in a large factory, but he stays there only two months, for with other Swedes he receives an offer from Philadelphia which he does not hesitate to accept.

His idea is to work his way gradually westward.

If he can only get as far as Chicago he thinks it will not be difficult to go on to San Francisco.

Now he works in a yard where more than a thousand locomotives are made annually.

This yard seems to him quite a town in itself.

Here the iron is made white hot in immense furnaces, there it is hammered and rolled, and with irresistible power human hands convert the hard steel into steam boilers, wheels, axles, and parts of machines which are put together to form engines.

The workshop is traversed in all directions by rails, and the completed steam-horses are sent out all over the railway systems of the United States.

Gunnar learns from his mates that Philadelphia is one of the largest cities of the world, with nearly a million and a half inhabitants, and that in America only New York and Chicago are larger.

* * * * * After a while, however, Gunnar has had enough of Philadelphia, and takes a ticket for Pittsburg, the steel and iron capital, where immigrants never need be in want of a post.

He travels without a change of carriages between the two towns, traversing the whole of Pennsylvania.

Innumerable branch lines diverge in all directions, for towns and villages are everywhere.

Here a railway runs to a mine, there another to a district rich in maize and tobacco, and here again a third to a timber yard.

At the station stand long trains laden with grain, planks, petroleum, cotton, reaping machines, coal--in fact all the wares that the earth can produce by its fertility, and men by the labour of their hands.

The country becomes hilly, and the train winds about through the northernmost part of the Alleghany Mountains.

Gunnar lets his eyes rove with strained attention over the dark woods, the waving fields, and the smoke rising from villages and farmhouses, when an American comes and sits down on the seat just in front of him.

"I see that you are a newcomer in America," says the stranger.

"It may then interest you to know that the crest of the Alleghany Mountains, composed of granite, gneiss, and slates, is the watershed between the Atlantic and the Mississippi.

You must not suppose that these mountains are everywhere as low as here; far down south-west, in North Carolina, there are summits more than six thousand feet high.

Maize and fruit are grown in the valleys, and there are fine forests of pines and foliage trees.

And there are places where you lose yourself in dense clumps of rhododendrons and climbing plants.

And there are wild recesses where men never go, but where bears and wolves have their haunts among broken branches and twigs, fallen trunks and moss-grown granite boulders, and where nothing is changed since the time when the Indian tribes went on the war-path.

But where are you bound for?"

"I am going to Pittsburg to look for work, for I was a smith at home."

"Oh, Pittsburg!

I was foreman in some steel works there for two years, and I have never seen anything more wonderful.

You know that this town has sprung up out of the earth as if by magic.

When petroleum springs were discovered, it increased at double the rate, and now it is one of the world's largest industrial towns, and, as regards iron and steel, the first in America.

Here materials are manufactured to the value of more than nineteen million pounds annually.

Almost inexhaustible deposits of coal are found in the neighbourhood.

More than twenty railway lines converge to Pittsburg, which also has the advantage of three navigable rivers, and a network of canals.

And round about the town are suburbs full of machine factories, steel works, and glass works.

The neighbourhood has a million of inhabitants, a third of them foreigners, mostly Slavs, Italians, and Hungarians.

You have a kind of feeling of oppression when you see from a height this forest of reeking factory chimneys, and when you think of the unfortunate men that slave under this cloud of coal smoke.

There is a hammering and beating everywhere, and a rumble of trains rolling over the rails.

Overheated furnaces bubble and boil, and sparks fly out under the steam hammers.

At night you might think you were in the bottom of a volcano, where lava boils under the ashes ready to roll out and destroy everything.

A weird reddish-yellow light flames forth from thousands of fires, lighting up the under side of the thick smoke cloud.

I am sorry for you if you are going to Pittsburg.

You had much better travel straight on to Chicago.

Not that Chicago is a paradise, but there are better openings there, and you will be nearer the great West with its inexhaustible resources."

"Thanks for your advice.

I am the more ready to follow it because I always intended to get to Chicago sometime."

"From Pittsburg," continues the American, "a line runs direct to the large town of St. Louis on the Mississippi.

St. Louis is a junction of great importance, for not only do a whole series of great railway lines meet there, but also innumerable steamboats ply from there up the Mississippi and Missouri, and to all the large towns on their tributaries.

St. Louis is the centre of all the winding waterways which intersect all parts of the United States.

And there you can travel on comfortable flat-bottomed steamers along the main river to New Orleans, a great harbour for the export of cotton.

You can well conceive what a blessing and source of wealth this river is to our country.

It is of immense extent, for it is the longest river in the world, if we take its length from the sources of the Missouri in the Rocky Mountains, and in the area of its basin it is second only to the Amazons.

Its plain is exceedingly fruitful, and far around its banks grain shoots up out of the soil to feed many millions of human beings.

And its waterways, ramifying like the nerves of a leaf, facilitate communication and the transport of goods between the different States.

"You should just see how the great river rises in spring.

You might think you were sailing on a large lake, and, as a matter of fact, it floods an area as large as Lake Superior.

If the Mississippi is a blessing to men, on the other hand in spring it exacts a heavy tax from them.

The vast volumes of brown, muddy water often cut off sharp bends from the river-bed and take short cuts through narrow promontories.

By such tricks the length of the river is not infrequently shortened by ten or twelve miles here and there.

But you can imagine the trouble this causes.

A town standing on such a bend may one fine day find itself six miles from the bank.

In another the inhabitants are in danger of being at any time drowned like cats.

A railway bridge may suddenly be suspended over dry land, while the river has swept away rails and embankment a little farther off.

Our engineers have great difficulty in protecting constructions from the capricious river in spring.

Not a year passes without the Mississippi causing terrible destruction and inflicting great loss on those who dwell near its banks, especially in cattle.

"You have only to see this water to comprehend what immense quantities of earth, sand, and mud are yearly carried down by it.

And all this silt is deposited in the flat delta below New Orleans.

Therefore the delta extends from year to year farther out into the Gulf of Mexico.

This is an easy way of increasing our territory, but we would willingly sacrifice the gain if we could get rid of the terrible floods in spring."

The train with our two travellers on board has now crossed the boundary of Pennsylvania, and is making its way westwards through the states of Ohio and Indiana.

Boundless plains extend to north and south, planted with maize, wheat, oats, and tobacco.

Maize fields, however, are the most frequent, and the harvest is just beginning.

Gigantic reaping machines, drawn by troops of horses, mow down the grain and bind it into sheaves, while other machines throw it into waggons.

The reapers have only to drive the horses; all the rest is done by the machines.

Certainly men's hands could never be able to deal with all this grain;

whole armies could be hidden under the ears of maize.

Now the train skirts the shore of Lake Michigan, which stretches its blue surface northwards, and a little later halts at Chicago.

* * * * * Gunnar has been directed to an agency for Swedish workmen, and the first thing he does is to call there.

In a day or two he obtains work in the timber business, and goes up to Canada in a large cargo steamer which carries timber from the forests of Canada to Chicago.

Here the timber supplies seem to him inexhaustible when he sees the dark coniferous woods on the shores and hills, and when he notices that hundreds of steamboats are carrying the same freight.

The workman beside him, an Englishman, boasts of the immense territory which occupies almost all the northern half of North America.

"Canada is the most precious jewel in the crown of Great Britain, next to the mother-country and India."

"Why is Canada so valuable?

I always thought that its population was very small."

"It has not many people; you are right there.

Canada has only seven million inhabitants."

"Oh, not more!

That is just about as many as Greater London."

"Yes; and yet Canada is as large as all Europe and as the United States of America.

It stretches so far to east and west that it occupies a fourth part of the circuit of the earth, and if you travel from Montreal to Vancouver you have a journey of 2906 miles.

But you can well understand that such an extensive country, even though it is thinly peopled, especially in its cold, northern parts, must yield much that is valuable to its owners."

"Yes, certainly; so it is in Siberia, where the population is also scanty."

"Just so.

In Canada fields, mountains, forests, and water yield an immense revenue.

Think only of all the agricultural produce which is shipped from here, not to speak of gold, fish, and furs.

The wheat produced in Canada is alone worth over 22 million pounds sterling a year.

There are also huge areas which are worthless.

We get little advantage from the northern coasts, where the Eskimos live."

"You are quite at home on these lakes?"

"Oh yes.

When a man has sailed to and fro over them for ten years, he knows all about the roadsteads and channels, and about when the ice forms and breaks up, and when there is a prospect of a storm."

"But the storms cannot be very dangerous?"

"Ah, you do not believe in them.

All the same they may be just as dangerous as in the Atlantic, and when a real hurricane comes, the skipper will do well to seek shelter, or at the best he will lose his cargo.

You will soon have opportunities of seeing, hearing, and feeling how the surge beats just as on the coast of the ocean.

But then, all these lakes have an aggregate area more than half as large as the Baltic, and if we take the depth into account we shall find that the volume of water is the same as in the Baltic.

Lake Superior is the largest lake in the world.

Beyond the point yonder lies Lake Huron.

You must acknowledge that this scenery is beautiful.

Have you ever seen anything to equal this sheet of dark-blue water, the dark-green woods, and the grand peaceful shores?

It is a pity that we do not go to Lake Erie, for at its eastern extremity is one of the wonders of the world and the most famous spectacle in North America."

[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.

NIAGARA FALLS.

] "You mean the Falls of Niagara, which I have heard described so many times?"

"Yes.

Think of a steamboat on Lake Erie sucked along by the stream that flows to Ontario.

This lake lies 300 feet lower than Erie, and about half-way between the two lakes the water passes over a sharp bar and plunges with a thundering roar into the depth below (Plate XXXIII.

).

The barrier itself, which is a thousand yards broad, is formed of a huge stratum of sandstone, and the rocks under it are loose slates.

Erosion proceeds more rapidly in the slates than in the hard limestone, which, therefore, overhangs like the projecting leaf of a table, and the collected volumes of water hurl themselves over it.

But when the limestone is so far undermined that it is no longer able to bear the weight of the water, fragments break off from time to time from its edge and fall into the abyss with a deafening noise.

Thus in time the fall wears away the barrier and Niagara is moving back in the direction of Lake Erie."

"Moving, do you say?

The movement can surely not be rapid."

"Oh no; Niagara needs about seventeen thousand years to move half a mile nearer to Lake Erie."

"That's all right, for now I can be sure it will be there when I visit it at some future opportunity."

"Yes, and you would find it even if a crowd of railway lines did not run to it.

You hear the roar of the 'thunder water' forty miles away, and when you come closer you see dense clouds of foam and spray rising from the ravine 150 feet below the threshold of the Fall.

Yes, Niagara is the most wonderful thing I have seen.

In all the world it is surpassed only by the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, discovered by Livingstone.

One feels small and overawed when one ventures on the bridges above and below the Fall, and sees its 280,000 cubic feet of water gliding one moment smooth as oil over the barrier, and the next dashing into foam and spray below with a thundering noise."

"It would not be pleasant to be sucked over the edge."

"And yet a reckless fellow once made the journey.

For safety he crept into a large, stout barrel, well padded inside with cushions.

Packed in this way, he let the barrel drift with the stream, tip over the edge of the barrier, and fall perpendicularly into the pool below.

As long as he floated in the quiet drift, and even when he fell with the column of water, he ran no danger.

It was when he plumped down on to the water below and span round in the whirlpools, bumped against rocks rising up from the bottom, and was carried at a furious pace down under the watery vault.

But the traveller got through and was picked up in quiet water."

"I suppose that there are bridges over the Niagara River as over all the others in the country?"

"Certainly.

Among them is an arched bridge of steel below the Falls which has a single span of 270 yards, and is the most rigid bridge in the world."

"Tell me, where does all this water go to below Niagara?"

"Well, it flows out into Lake Ontario, opposite Toronto, the largest town in Canada.