USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 15
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Alongside these great names might be listed other great names of Massachusetts conspicuous by their lack of interest in the controversy, for Boston and Massachusetts were in
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that sixth momentous decade of the last century divided in relation to the duty of citizens touching slavery and the Union. John Brown once appealed to Amos A. Lawrence for a per- sonal gift. Lawrence answered that he was "short of cash," for "he had just sent fourteen thousand dollars to Kansas to found the best possible school system." The interest of Massachusetts in Kansas is lastingly evidenced in the name of the university city of that State. Presently the "cause" for which Brown finally and gladly gave up his life became yet more momentous; and the devotion of Massachusetts cit- izens to the western community of Kansas likewise expanded and deepened into close ties as brethren in arms with all the western states in the Civil War for the preservation of the Union. This interest of the Commonwealth, exerted through its citizens, either in groups or as individuals, is one of the most important of all the forms of the influence of Massa- chusetts, in the vast Territory and in the later States of the West.
INFLUENCE ON SCIENCE
Almost one hundred years ago, DeTocqueville in his Democ- racy in America, the best philosophic interpretation of Amer- ican society and government, said: "In America, the purely practical part of science is admirably understood, and careful attention is paid to the theoretical portion, which is im- mediately requisite to application. On this head, the Americans always display a clear, free, original, and inventive power of mind. But hardly any one in the United States devotes him- self to the essentially theoretical and abstract portion of human knowledge." The judgment thus formed almost a cen- tury ago has been proved true in subsequent Massachusetts history.
The development of science was long rather practical than theoretical. Yet the influence of science, proceeding from Massachustts, over the West has been both of the book and of the personality. The popular book of science has been, in no small degree, the textbook used in both school and col- lege. Of such volumes the works of Asa Gray, the great botanist, are most conspicuous. Though Benjamin Franklin
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was born in Boston, yet his life and scientific work are as- sociated with Philadelphia and with Pennsylvania. Of all the citizens of Massachusetts devoted to science, the personal influence of Louis Agassiz has been most, and gloriously, formative. Louis Agassiz, born in Motier, in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland, was a gift to Massachusetts, and through his service in Massachusetts, became a beacon light of science for the whole country. Though his theory of the origin and the development of life has been largely superseded, yet his charm as a lecturer still affects his former students, East and West. His interest in the individual stu- dent was so quickening; his enthusiasm as an explorer and collector so tireless; his intellectual power in presenting his interpretations of nature so moving to mind and to feeling; his vitality so expressive, so exuberant, so enlarging: these elements and qualities have entered into the life and experi- ences of thousands of teachers of western schools, and, through them, into the character of thousands of thousands of their students.
LITERARY INFLUENCE
The fame of Massachusetts through literature has been more powerful than its influence through science. When there was no West, or when all was West, and a West unen- lightened by white men, Massachusetts along with Pennsyl- vania,-Boston along with Philadelphia,-were the great centers of literature. The colonial product was rich and diverse. Its worth we are liable to forget. That product was not only sermonic, it was also literary.
Literary traditions were early established in Massachusetts, and with each succeeding century they have enlarged and their significance deepened. New England textbooks were widely used in the West, and Peter Parley, with his quaint unbelievable illustrations, was often the first force to open the mind of the western youngster to the truth that far to eastward was a mother Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
A useful classification of the dominant literary personalities of Massachusetts would be the Boston historians, the Cam- bridge poets, and the Concord essayists. Yet there were, and
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are, historians of Massachusetts who are not of Boston ; poets, like Whittier, who were not of Cambridge; and essayists, like the Adamses, who were not citizens of Concord. It is a rich and noble tradition and possession. But we are dealing with authors, not simply as authors, but as influences of Massa- chusetts in the western movement of civilization. Com- prehensively, it may be said that Parkman, Bancroft, Hildreth, Motley, Prescott have been great forces in the quickening of thinking and the forming of the literary opinions of the people of the Western Commonwealth.
No one of the group, however, has had a larger or more devoted following than Francis Parkman. His narrative touches closely the western heart and mind. Longfellow's verses, of the family fireside and of children, are as dear to the citizens of Nevada as of Massachusetts; and his "Hiawa- tha" has a more personal and intimate meaning to Minneap- olis and St. Paul than to Boston or Springfield. Lowell's patriotic songs, "The Present Crisis," and the "Commemora- tion Ode," have as glorious an appreciation in Wisconsin, as on the Atlantic Coast. Whittier's stirring antislavery verses, and his simple "Snow Bound," are recognized as true on the banks of the northern Mississippi, just as on the banks of the Merrimac. Emerson is accepted as the one great com- prehensive American writer of our literature, quite as joyfully and as enthusiastically through all the West as through all the East. It is a service of value beyond reckoning which Massachusetts, through literature, has given to the West of our America. The influence of Longfellow's interpretative verse on his friends and neighbors represents the influence of many other literary citizens of Massachusetts in all parts of the western world.
MEDICINE AND LAW
In the two other of the older professions besides the minis- try, the influence of the Commonwealth has been constant, pervasive, and constructive. The influence of medicine is to be credited largely to the Harvard Medical School. For the greater part of its formally organized life of almost a cen- tury this school has been predominantly a Boston institution,
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somewhat distinct from any other part of the university. It has sent many graduates into the West as practitioners and also as professors in new medical schools and as members of medical clinics. The cities of the West-Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Rochester (Minnesota), and Omaha-have been radiating centers of its influence.
As in the case of medicine, the influence of Massachusetts upon the law, both statute and common, and upon the lawyers of the western states has its center and source in another great professional institution of Harvard, the Law School. Graduates of the school have carried into their professional practise the results of the teaching and training given by the great teachers of the school-Langdell, the Thayers, both father and son, Ames, Gray and others. Moreover, the Har- vard basic method of teaching law has been borne by grad- uates into the law schools of many western states. Professor Wambaugh carried the case system to the Law School of the University of Iowa; Manley O. Hudson to the University of Missouri. Professor Beale organized the Law School of the University of Chicago. Paul V. McNutt (Harvard Law School, 1916) is dean of the Law School of the University of Indiana, and three Harvard men are among his associates. Wigmore, both as professor and as dean, has, for more than a quarter of a century, been associated with Northwestern University, teaching law by methods which are known as be- longing primarily to the Harvard system.
JOURNALISM AND JOURNALISTS
The contributions which the journalism and journalists of Massachusetts have made to the affairs and the movements of the western states derive their origin from both Boston and Springfield. The first daily journal of effective influence was the Boston Daily Advertiser, established in the year 1813. In the hundred and fifteen years since its foundation, scores of daily newspapers have been born and have died. The larger share have come to their end in absorption by other and stronger papers. The Daily Advertiser, under many and diverse conditions, has absorbed at least six other journals. For many years its editor was Nathan Hale, nephew
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LIBRARIANSHIP
of the patriot spy of the Revolution and father of Edward Everett Hale. The Advertiser introduced the editorial and editorial comment into American journalism. It thus proved to be a unique and profound force in the journalism of the West and of all parts of the country.
A Boston paper of a wholly different sort which touched the West, especially in Illinois and in Kansas, was Garrison's Liberator. Begun in 1831, the first year in a momentous dec- ade in the history of slavery, and published for thirty-four years, it represented everywhere the most potent, energetic, direct, and bold force demanding the immediate emancipation of the slaves. It met with defiance on the Mississippi's banks as well as on the Atlantic coast. But it was read. It is prob- able, indeed, that at the altar of the Liberator was found the inspiration and the consecration of Lovejoy's antislavery Ob- server of St. Louis and of Alton of 1836.
Journalistic influences over the West have come from the central city of the Commonwealth. A notable contribution of Massachusetts to the journalism of the West is found in the Springfield Republican. Established in 1824 as a weekly, the Republican has from its beginning been identified with the family of its founder, Samuel Bowles. Through the great personal qualities of Bowles and his successors, it proved to be a constantly constructive and often an irritating force in the West, and indeed in all parts of the country. Few of the Republican's editors have become editors of western papers; but it has influenced the editorial opinion of the great papers of western cities. One who served long on the Republican, Solomon Bulkley Griffin, has said of it: "Everywhere the Republican was recognized for thoughtful and finished work that was infused with conscience and force. It was no weak echo of any party, man or paper, but spoke with assured in- dependence. For long years before, and in the years after the death of its creator, no newspaper was more widely quoted. and its opinions commanded respect."
LIBRARIANSHIP
To the new science and the new art of librarianship the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has made offerings both
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direct and indirect of the richest value. That influence has been chiefly one of personalities of formative worth. One name stands forth in peculiar significance. It is William Frederick Poole. Poole, born in Salem in 1821 and graduated at Yale in 1849, while still an undergraduate made a cata- logue of his college society, thus foreshadowing what has since become known as Poole's Index. He began his formal library experience in 1852, and in 1856 became head of the Athenaeum. His western service began in his connection with the Public Library of Cincinnati. Thence he passed to the headship of the Chicago Public Library, and later was the or- ganizer of the Newberry Library. It was a contribution of richest and lasting worth which, through Poole's personality and service, Massachusetts made to the higher life of Ohio, of Illinois, and of all western commonwealths.
Among personalities whom the Commonwealth has con- tributed to librarianship was James Kendall Hosmer (Har- vard, 1855) librarian of the Minneapolis Public Library dur- ing a formative period of twelve years from 1892 to 1904. Nathaniel D. C. Hodges (Harvard, 1874), after serving in the Astor and Harvard Libraries, became librarian of the Public Library of Cincinnati. Clement Walker Andrews (Harvard, 1879) became librarian of the John Crerar Li- brary in Chicago in 1895. Azariah Smith Root was librarian of Oberlin College, and was very serviceable, too, in advanc- ing librarianship in the whole country. Herbert Putnam (Harvard, 1883) earlier in the Boston Public Library and in the Athenaeum Library (1884-1887) and the public library in Minneapolis (1887-1891) helped to educate himself for his great place as head of the Congressional Library, beginning in 1899.
ART MUSEUMS AND EXPERTS
The contribution made to the aesthetic development of the western commonwealths is most manifest in the foundation and administration of their art museums, art collections, and art schools, and in their buildings planned and erected by the architects of Massachusetts. The art museums of half a dozen States reveal the influence of the museums and of the art schools of the old Commonwealth.
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ART MUSEUMS AND EXPERTS
The Art Institute of Chicago, incorporated in 1879, had for its first director William M. R. French (Harvard, 1884), brother of Daniel Chester French, the sculptor. Intimately associated with French was Charles L. Hutchinson, president of the Art Institute for forty-one years. Frank W. Gun- saulus, whose precious collections enrich the Art Institute, was for a time a minister in Newton.
The Cleveland Museum of Art, in the location and erec- tion of its beautiful Greek building, chose Edward M. Wheel- wright, of Boston, as consulting architect. Also it had, as its first director (1913-1930) Frederic Allen Whiting, who was educated in Massachusetts. From the Boston Museum of Fine Arts came J. Arthur MacLean to be the first Curator of Oriental Art; later he went to the Art Institute of Chicago as Assistant Director and Curator of Oriental Art and then to John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis, as director; and still later to the Toledo Museum as curator of oriental art.
A yet more intimate association between the John Herron Art Institute of Indianapolis and Massachusetts is evident. The second director was Frederic Allen Whiting who re- ceived a rich training in art in Massachusetts. The third director, Harold Haven Brown, was educated in the Massa- chusetts Normal Art School. The fourth director, J. Arthur MacLean, was born in Winchester, Massachusetts.
The largest benefactor to all the art museums of the West was Edward Drummond Libbey, who was educated at Boston University. Libbey was president of the corporation of the Toledo Museum of Art, and from the time of its beginning was a liberal giver. Under his will the Museum was made (1925) his chief beneficiary. The amount which will thus be ultimately received will probably be not less than $20,000,- 000.
Going still further west, the city of Minneapolis possesses an Institute of Art justly esteemed for its public service as well as for its collections. The first director (1919) of the Institute, Joseph Breck, came from Massachusetts.
Connected with art museums either in a formal or, at least, in a cooperative relation are art schools. In Cleveland in particular a great art school, established in the ninth decade
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of the last century, has been built up largely through the di- rectorship of Miss Georgia Norton, and later of Henry Turner Bailey, educated in the State Normal Art School of Boston. He taught in the schools of Boston and Lowell, and was agent of the Massachusetts State Board of Education in industrial drawing, everywhere formative and constructive.
ARCHITECTURE
The service which Massachusetts has given to the West in architecture began early and has continued to the present day. These contributions also are of two diverse types. The people who came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the other New England States in the early decades of the nineteenth century, were usually obliged to be content with simple con- structions. In Massachusetts, however, that period was the era of the Greek revival in architecture, called by some the "Greek mania." It was the age of Charles Bulfinch (1763- 1844), of his State House on Beacon hill, and of his Univer- sity Hall in Cambridge. Greek columnar construction was, as it still is, costly. The western colonists were, with a few not- able exceptions, poor. A few private houses, however, were constructed which bear the marks of the Greek period in Massachusetts, especially in Michigan, although some are to be seen along the national highway in Ohio and in parts of Indiana and even of Wisconsin. A Michigan house at Grass Lake, usually called "the Dexter house," was built between 1840 and 1843. The plans were made by the Stannard family, modelled somewhat after their father's old home on Beacon Street, Boston.
The contributions of the later period have indeed taken on far wider relations than the Greek revival represents. The first and most valuable of these offerings, the Gothic, is found in the life and career of Henry Hobson Richardson. Though born in Louisiana in 1838, his professional career, beginning in 1865, is associated with Boston. For the twenty-one years that his career lasted it was the predominant influence in all North America. It set standards of judgment. It also in- spired other architects to even greater direct results than Richardson himself achieved.
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Richardson's great achievements in the West are found in a county building in Pittsburgh; in the Cincinnati Board of Trade Building, unfinished at the time of his death; and in warehouses and residences in Chicago. A strength, so mighty as at times to seem almost savage, characterizes all his work both East and West. The general influence of Richardson has been continued by Charles A. Coolidge and his associates, who have built great academic buildings in Cleveland, in Cam- bridge, and elsewhere.
The ecclesiastical and Romanesque traditions of Richardson have been enlarged into noble Gothic types by other Boston architects. Chief among them are Ralph Adams Cram and Henry Vaughan. Cram and Vaughan have built the best Gothic churches in the Western States-an example is found in the beautiful cathedral of Pittsburgh-as they have in the Eastern States. Born in England, Henry Vaughan has created fine examples of the Gothic work of his native country. Cram and his associates, like Goodhue, and others of his school, have given and are still continuing to give to the West great examples of Gothic architecture in parish church and in cathedral.
WESTERN RAILROADS
The influence of Massachusetts over the West has not, how- ever, been confined to forces and conditions primarily intel- lectual. This influence has taken on forms industrial, financial, and commercial. In all this diversity the Massachusetts rela- tion to western railroads is commanding in the immediate present and also important and lasting in the long future.
The development of railroads in the West can be summar- ized in three geographical directions. The chief and central point of concentration and of radiation has been Chicago. The principal railroads to the Northwest, to the Southwest, and the transcontinental systems, have been lines focusing in and radiating from Chicago. The earliest of the great roads to the Northwest was what is now known as the Chicago, Bur- lington & Quincy; the earliest of the transcontinental lines was the Union Pacific, later united with the Central Pacific; and the earliest of the systems of the Southwest was what is
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now known as the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. All these roads were originally financed, and much of the trackage was built, by Massachusetts capitalists. These three are still most important and they are representative. To each of them Massachusetts made contributions-executive, financial, and, above all, personal.
Behind these contributions, as either a force or a condition, inviting human cooperation, lay the rich prairie lands of the Mississippi Valley. These fertile acres in the middle nineteenth century were becoming populated by farmers of intelligence, gifted with a sense of progress, inspired by noble ends, and willing to work hard in gaining these ends. They came largely in families, gathered from foreign countries and from the States further to the east. They expected to improve their lot and to establish permanent homes. In the 'fifties this vast territory lay open for the establishment of a civilization by and of the best men and women.
In the year 1846, this territory west of the eastern end of Lake Erie contained only five hundred miles of railroad; and these lines were poorly equipped, with an efficiency lament- ably, almost inexpressibly, poor and weak. Into this field Massachusetts men and Massachusetts money came.
WESTERN RAILROAD MANAGERS
The most outstanding of the empire builders of the fifth and sixth decades was a Boston man, John Murray Forbes, born in Bordeaux, France, in 1813, a member of a Boston family interested in foreign commerce, and trained by mercantile experience in China. Returning to the United States in 1836, he began a great career, which continued till his death in 1898. This career was largely concerned with railroads. He was president of the Michigan Central from 1846 to 1855; president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy from 1878 to 1881; and a director of that road for the almost unexampled period of forty-one years from 1857 to 1898. His personal character was worthy of his financial and executive ability. It was of him that Emerson wrote in a famous passage in Letters and Social Aims: "Never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action, combined with
From a photograph
Courtesy of Edward W. Forbes
J. MURRAY FORBES
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such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent preference for others. Wherever he moved he was the bene- factor."
Forbes began his career as a western railroad builder and executive in the purchase, by himself and associates, of the Michigan Central in 1846. The road at the time ran from Detroit to Kalamazoo, 145 miles. It was "a shabby piece of property." "The value of the rolling stock was $68,000, the largest single item being $4,000 for a locomotive of twelve tons. The track, like that of all early railroads, consisted of beams of wood six inches square, to which were fastened strips of iron half an inch thick by two and a quarter inches wide." Under the touch of the Boston financiers and execu- tives this "shabby piece of property" was so developed as to become one of the best paying pieces of railroad property in the country. After a history of fifty years it finally became absorbed in the New York Central system.
FINANCIAL AND OPERATIVE FORCES
The aid which Forbes and other citizens of Massachusetts gave to the railroads of the Northwest, of the Southwest, and of the central territory was a contribution both of financial support and of personality. Boston banks promised credits. Boston brokers sold the necessary bonds. Boston bankers gave constant support and encouragement. The financial difficulties of the condition were well stated by Charles E. Perkins of Boston, who, entering the service of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy in 1859 as a clerk, became one of the great powers in the system. He said: "Iowa railroad builders had quite as much of a struggle in the early days as other pioneers, and the difficult problem connected with railroad development was to find persons who were able and willing to supply the money. Of those who were bold enough to take the risks involved, some have made a profit, but not all, by any means. The general impression is that railroads have been great money-makers, without much, if any risk, and that their rates are too high and their taxes too low. The truth is, men who bought land west of the Des Moines river forty
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years ago have made more profit than men who put their . money into railroads."
The support given by the administrators and executives of the Burlington system was quite as necessary as that furnished by the financiers. Between the years 1850 and 1901 (when the road was sold to the Morgan interests) among its directors were Richard Olney, General Charles J. Paine, John L. Gard- ner, H. H. Hunnewell, Nathaniel Thayer, Sidney Bartlett, John W. Brooks, John N. Denison, and William Endicott-all outstanding Massachusetts names.
The executive service in the field given by the young men of Massachusetts was quite as notable as the financial support provided by the solid citizens whose offices were in State Street. Among them were Charles Lowell, nephew of James Russell Lowell; E. P. Ripley, who began his great career in a humble position, ending it with the presidency of the Atchi- son, Topeka & Santa Fe; Howard Elliott, who started as a rodman in western Iowa, and became the head of the Northern Pacific and other systems; and George W. Holdredge, who was manager of the Burlington lines west of the Missouri. They and many others were sons of the Commonwealth, and many of them were also graduates of Harvard.
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