USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume IV > Part 26
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the manipulations of stock by the speculators, the enriching of high officials and managers, while stockholders receive no divi- dends, the soaring wages and the increased rates, all occasion discontent and desire for a change. The state might well own and manage its interurban trolleys, as it now does its automo- bile roads, while the railroads of all the states form a complex system that can best be managed as a unit. At least many are coming to believe this and are demanding the experiment. The prediction of such an outcome of present confusion and dissatis- faction is based upon reasoned theories as well as distressing facts.
Granting such a consummation, what will be the results? Railroads will be managed so as to pay expenses and accommo- date the public at the least possible cost. If there are earnings, they go back to the people who maintain the roads. Private emolument is rendered impossible, and this fact alone will spread contentment. The masses can not understand how rail- road kings got so immensely rich in so short a time. There will be no free passes to bribe legislators and judges. The private car will disappear, and one may travel first, second, or third class, to suit one's taste and purse. There will be no rebates and discriminations in rates. Undivided surpluses will not accu- mulate, while small stockholders are being frozen out. The ripened melon will not be cut by a few. The official with a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year will be supplanted by a better one at one-tenth the cost to the public. There will be no competition between rival roads and companies. Roads will not be built where they are not needed, and neglected parts of the country will gradually get the roads they need. Strikes will be rendered impossible by wise legislation, and, the fears and un- certainties of manufacturers and traders being removed, there will be less fluctuation in prices. It will be impossible suddenly to run coal up to fifteen dollars a ton, at the risk of causing poor people to perish in the winter cold. The cost of the necessaries of life will not be determined and changed at the nod of a few railroad magnates. All business enterprises that depend upon transportation of materials, raw or manufactured, will be steadier, and capital locked up by fear will be set to work by trust in the national government. Gambling in railroad bonds
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and stocks will cease. The roads built in specially favorable locations will help the other roads that are needed in regions sparsely settled and the short branches, and they will not get their demanded high rate of interest on leases at the expense of regions less favored by nature. Shylock will not get his pound of flesh, even if it is nominated in the bond. The government will take possession and a commission will determine what ought to be paid in compensation, just as when a lot is seized for a school house, for a post office, or for a fort. Then the small stockholder will fare as well as the landshark who has been accustomed to run stock down, buy all he can at a small price and then declare a big dividend and run the stock up again.
Another railroad reform will be the substitution of elec- tricity for steam. The unused and remote waterfalls well may be seized for such a purpose. There is power enough running to waste in New Hampshire to operate its railroads. Then we shall have passenger trains every fifteen minutes. The roadbed will be oiled, and we may ride through the mountainous scenery of the Granite State without being suffocated in closed cars to save ourselves from dust, smoke and cinders.
All reforms in the industrial and commercial world seek a just distribution of wealth. The laborer wants and ought to have all he has earned. Society is tired of enriching a few at the expense of the many. A commonwealth demands more of equality in the good things of earth. The fears of the ignorant that the rich may be looted and the spoils divided among all have no foundation. Nature has made differences in persons, that necessitate differences in material possessions. There will always be the comparatively rich and the comparatively poor, but the difference need not be measured by celestial diameters. The inventor should enrich society as well as himself. The expert financier must serve the state as well as himself. The inheritor of great wealth must share with his community. Even now England is taxing her wealthiest citizens sixty per cent of their annual income to meet the expenses of defensive war. There are majorities of millions who in times of peace need de- fense against sickness and poverty. A graduated income and inheritance tax that runs up to fifty per cent or more in the
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maximum is a reform that may be expected, when the toilers have been wisely led to vote together.
After enormous and disproportionate wealth has been accu- mulated in a few families, as in ancient Rome, or in the church, as in Italy and Mexico, while the vast majority of the population are without land, and sometimes without work and without food, there come a revolution and a forced confiscation of large properties. There is no other remedy. This country is now passing through a peaceful revolution, effected by education and the ballot, but it is sure, swift and radical. The immense accumulations must be redistributed among the people. Hold- ing corporations cannot forever hold more than they ought to have, while its members escape personal responsibility. Proper remuneration for toil and just redistribution of inflated wealth will not be left to the ignorant and fanatical suggestions of upstarts in politics, but will be the well considered problem of the old political parties. They must consider them and act promptly or lose their existence. The aim must be, not to favor the already too highly privileged classes, but to elevate the masses and make life richer and happier for them. New Hampshire may be expected to lead in the campaign of educa- tion and social betterment. The demand of the hour is for fewer party bosses and place-seekers, and for more constructive states- men.
While labor unions have raised the price of labor, manu- facturers have sought to import cheaper workmen from foreign lands. There are millions that want to come for a dollar a day, but they will not stay at work long at that price. Then the endeavor has been to get more ignorant laborers from more distant lands. Thus the chasm between the rich and the poor is widened. It is not yet a "great gulf fixed." It has been bridged here and there and a few pass over joyfully one way and woefully the other. The chasm should be filled up. How? By making all rich? That is impossible. By making all poor ? That, too, can not be. By making all comfortable and happy and the contrasts not too far apart and unchangeable? That is a possible ideal, toward which all lovers of their fellowmen will strive.
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We now have a tariff on manufactured articles imported from abroad, to protect labor as American manufacturers say. The counter statement is, that the tariff is designed to increase the gains of the manufacturer, and this seems to be true when he sells his products abroad for less than the market price at home. How would it do to put a tariff on imported laborers and make the American manufacturers pay it? Let the tariff be high enough to really protect labor here. French Canadians were brought in by the car load a few years ago, because they would work in the mills and shops at lower wages than Yankees and Irishmen demanded. If there is free trade in labor, why not in materials and manufactures? The toilers are crying out against the importation of cheap and dependent laborers. The law against it must be such and so enforced that it can not be evaded. The operative in mills and shops can better afford to lose his purse than his job. This whole labor problem, must be solved by legislatures to the satisfaction of the laborers, or there is going to be increasing trouble. It may be a long time before they get their full rights. Many have come up from slavery in the march of history and are not more than half way to complete freedom in many lands and industries. It is impossible to go back to small industries, when the workmen individually owned their tools; we can go forward to a system, in which the workmen collectively or governmentally may own the build- ings and machinery by which they live. They rightly demand a chance to work that can not be taken away at the will of the employer.
One who studies immigration statistics and the rapid in- crease of population in the United States sees the time coming when the number of people in New Hampshire will be several times what it now is. Then there will be more factories, and to feed the operatives there must be more intensive farming. There is good land enough. Much of it lies in swamps. It is easier to make good land in New England by drainage than to do so in the far West by irrigation of deserts. The best soil is washed down from the hillsides, and much of it is now car- ried out to sea in the spring floods. Ways must be discovered and applied for conserving and enriching soil. Increased popu- lation will raise the price of farm products, and the waste lands
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of New Hampshire will blossom and bear fruit like the poorer but better tilled land of crowded Europe.
New Hampshire will continue to be a summer resort. The purchase of large national reservations, good roads and reforesta- tion insure this. There may be danger that too much of the best land and locations will be owned by absentee landlords, but legislation and taxation can avert the evil. Visitors bring money to the State; absentee owners take it away. Absentee owners of mills and shops should be guarded against and re- stricted for the same reason. If one's treasure is laid up in Boston or New York, there will one's heart be also. It is better that the inhabitants of New Hampshire should own and control her lands and industries. Let them be the hosts rather than the guests at summer hotels.
No one who has watched and reflected upon the public schools thinks that they have reached perfection. It is a current maxim among educators that the teacher has not taught till the pupil has learned. It is not enough that useful knowledge should be committed to memory, sometimes without being understood. The teacher has not well taught in the higher grades till the pupils have learned to think for themselves, to weigh evidences, to compare opposing opinions, to draw con- clusions, to take apart ideas and put them together in varied ways. Most of the pupils now leave school as soon as they are allowed to do so, and they have learned but little. In the school of life they will learn a little more, but they will always be followers of others who teach by word and example. They can not think. Memory and imagination have been cultivated, the latter principally by the exhibitions of moving pictures, but the higher faculties of the human mind are dormant. They see only a small part of what is before their eyes. They hear only the simpler notes of music. They can not distinguish between harmony and discord, between eloquence and noise, between a painting of one of the masters and a cheap chromo, between the classics and literature born only for a day. Their unde- veloped taste prefers the inferior. They have been taught a few things, but they are woefully uneducated. So called study in school has been irksome to the majority. They hate books because all they have ever looked into have required hard and
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disagreeable work. Their teachers have kept school and heard recitations, while the pupils have memorized and speedily for- gotten. The saturated sponge soon becomes dry. Intense in- terest has not been aroused in the subjects under consideration. The new education demands teachers who can make the pupils eager to learn. If some things can not be made interesting to some children, then do not try to cram knowledge into reluctant minds. Change the curriculum of such children. Do not require precisely the same of all children. They are alike with an infinite variety of differences.
The high schools, academies and colleges minister to com- paratively few, and half of those who attends these institutions are not seeking a thorough education, but to learn a few more things and to have a good time. Many who would appreciate the benefits of the higher institutions of learning can not afford to attend them. They must become wage earners at an early age. New Hampshire has not taught her children till all who are capable have learned. If a deathless thirst for knowledge, truth, principles, has been awakened, then for the remainder of life the pupil will be a teacher of himself and others. The process of education has begun and may be finished at the end of eternity.
There are great institutions and heavy endowments to put the finishing touches upon the school education of the favored few ; the multitudes in the elementary schools are without expert training and except for home influences and unusual natural gifts do not start right. The Normal Schools are doing some- thing to prepare young persons to teach a few years. New Hampshire must pay its teachers in the lower grades better wages and give them more respect and honor. The school life of a child should be made one of constant joy. The school house should be a social center for the education, improvement and happiness of those who have ceased to go to school. There is higher education of a noble quality in New Hampshire, but it is not diffused enough. Compulsory education is almost a contradiction in terms, unless it is meant that parents and em- ployers are compelled to give all children a chance to go to school. Alluring education is the prize that should be held out to children. Natural curiosity, the love of mental activity of
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some sort, the beauty of truth and its inspiring power when perceived, such are the spiritual forces to be utilized by the teacher who has felt their power. The education of the future needs to be deeper rather than broader. It should lead to a grasp of principles and develop ability to apply them.
In all departments of human study there is an increasing tendency toward cooperation and unity. Science searches for truth, unmixed with bias and prejudice. Every discoverer and inventor helps every other. Every genuine philosopher, or lover of wisdom, longs to share his vision with every other seer, and even to open the eyes of the blind. Opposing schools of thought no longer exist. Allopathists, homeopathists, osteopathists and sane practitioners of mental therapeutics are glad to learn from one another and are working for the same end, public health. In every sphere of thought, except that of religion, there is quite general harmony. Here the attempt is made to put a denominational label on truth and to claim a monopoly of it. Here more than anywhere else there is needed a broader and a deeper education. The signs of the times are hopeful. The essentials of religion are being separated in thought from the non-essentials. The call for Christian union is growing louder. The harmful nature of so many rival denominations is more clearly seen than formerly. Charity, brotherly kindness and good sense shout aloud the prophecy from the housetops, that after another generation New Hampshire will have fewer and more liberal churches, and that every lover of God and humanity will seek to help every other. The religion needed is one suited to all worlds, the world of thought, the world of emotion, the world of business, the world of industry, the social world, the political world, the complex and eternal world. In all worlds love is the rule of conduct, the perfect bond, the fulfilling of the law.
A review of the history of New Hampshire shows how patriotism, or love of one's country, has taken on an enlarged meaning. The four original towns were independent settle- ments, who governed themselves without consultation with neighboring settlements, and their interests sometimes conflicted. A common need of protection from the savage foe bound them together into a province. They learned to legislate for the wel-
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fare of the entire population, each town giving up some of its independency for the sake of greater gains. The French and Indian wars united the New England colonies for common defense. The American Revolution made the thirteen colonies one. The lover of his town had grown to be a lover of his state and of the United States as a whole. His patriotic love broadened out with the admission of each state and territory. It is not the flag of the colony or of the state that kindles emo- tion, but the flag of the United States, wherever it floats, be it in Hawaii, Porto Rico, or the far off Philippines. There is community of interests that binds all people under that flag into a patriotic group. The citizen has come to feel the ties that bind millions of people together. He is on his way from provincialism to cosmopolitanism. The more he knows about his expanding nation, the more patriotic he feels. The rivalry of towns and states is only that of friendly helpers. Patriotism does not permit legislation that injures one section of the nation for the sake of benefiting another section. The foreigner from scores of countries becomes a fellow citizen, comrade and brother after he has been here long enough to establish mutual acquaintance. We take him into our national family, and he, too, is an American patriot. His interests are with us. He stands with us for national defense and prosperity.
Let hope and prophecy extend their vision. We are learn- ing that all men have common interests, that all nations are dependent on all the rest. A famine, an earthquake, a flood, a war, in any part of the world excites our sympathy and secures our aid for the distressed. As soon as it is perceived and acknowledged that all men and all nations have common interests and needs, the bond of brotherhool will be felt. The federation of nations and the universal brotherhood of man will be realized together. Then patriotism will mean loyalty to the true inter- ests of our fellowmen, wherever found. Like the individual, New Hampshire is free and independent within limits, just so far as her freedom and independence do not conflict with the rights and privileges of other states and nations. All the tra- ditions of the past indicate that the New Hampshire of the future will be among the foremost to welcome the federation
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of the world, and she will be all the more free and independent as she recognizes her obligation to love and serve all the nations of the earth. The flag of the United World will float above even the stars and stripes.
Appendix A GLEANINGS FROM COURT FILES
Appendix A
GLEANINGS FROM COURT FILES
TT is the purpose of this appendix to illustrate the wealth of historical and genealogical data that may be found in the indexed court files. Only a partial search has been made, yet the results may be of interest to readers and lead others to continue the search.
Folder No. 21813. February 15, 1741-2. The sheriff was commanded to attach the goods and estate of Daniel Moulton of Portsmouth, mariner, to the value of five thousand pounds, to answer unto "William Vaughan of a place called Damaris Cotty within our county of York," in an action of ejectment from a tract of land in Portsmouth containing about a quarter of an acre with the building thereon, bounded southerly by land of Thomas Hart, westerly by a street leading from Spring Hill down to Piscataqua Ferry, northerly by land of Capt. George Walker and easterly by Pisca- taqua River; also another tract of land containing an acre and a half, beginning at the southwest corner of land now in possession of Elizabeth Pike, widow, formerly in possession of William Fellows, innholder, de- ceased, running southerly by the highway that leads from the Reverend Mr. Fitch's to the north Meeting House. then running east northeast nine degrees and a half to the street that leads from Spring Hill aforesaid to Piscataqua Ferry, then running westerly by said street to the southeast corner of the said piece of land in possession of the said Elizabeth Pike, then running westerly to the southwest corner first mentioned; also another tract of two acres, beginning at the southeast corner of land in possession of the Reverend Mr. Fitch heretofore belonging to one Joseph Alcock de- ceased, then running west southwest nine degrees south twenty-four and four-fifths rods, formerly owned by Richard Cutt deceased, who on the second day of February anno Domini 1671 deeded this land to William Vaughan, who had married Cutt's daughter Margaret, by whom the right had descended to William Vaughan of Damaris Cotty, son of George Vaughan deceased, who was son of said Margaret. Cutt Vaughan, another son of Margaret, had died without issue.
Matthew Livermore was attorney for the appellees. Daniel Moulton was the original defendant and associated with him were Charles Cham- bers of Charlestown, Middlesex county, Mass., and Margaret his wife in her right, George Walker of Portsmouth and Abigail his wife in her right and William King of Portsmouth.
The folder contains a surveyor's plan of all the lands mentioned in the writ, made by James Jeffrey and George Mitchell. The plan shows that Nathaniel Harvey was then living at the ferry. Also in this folder is found the original deed of Clement Campion, mariner, to John Webster, dated August I, 1646. There is also a memorandum kept by Edward Winslow, giving the price of silver money in currency year by year from 1700 to 1744. The price varied gradually from seven shillings to thirty-two shillings.
Another paper found in this folder declares that the boundary line between Portsmouth and Dover was run by Walter Bryant and John Godsoe, surveyors, August 24, 1739, on a straight line "from the head of Kenney's (Thomas Canney) Creek south seventy-nine degrees and forty-five min: west to ye head of Hogsty Cove." The line was run at the request of Capt. William King and Joseph Rawlins. The direction of the surveyors' line
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locates Hogsty Cove a little south of the mouth of Great Bay, and the marsh land from that point around to Cotterill's Delight near Sandy Beach, with four hundred acres of upland, belonged to ancient Dover and was granted by that town to some of its inhabitants.
In the same folder is found a long deposition by John Downing Esqr., aged eighty-four years, dated at Newington, August 10, 1742. He "testifieth and declareth that about sixty years past he came to Portsmouth in New Hampshire and soon after he came he hired himself with Majr. William Vaughan of said place for one year and further saith that in the time he lived with said Vaughan there was an old fence round the land now in controversy between William Vaughan of Damaris Cotty in the county of York and Daniel Moulton of Portsmouth, mariner, and others, vizt., the land lying westward or southwestward of said Majr. Vaughan's Dwelling House which aforesaid land was in one enclosure excepting the Herb Garden which was a within inclosure in the north east corner thereof, which said enclosure is since divided by a way leading from the north Meeting House in said Portsmouth to Deer Street so called by the house and lot of land of Joseph Alcock where the Reverend Mr. Jabez Fitch now dwells, the south east corner of which lot of Joseph Alcocks lays opposite to the south west corner of a lot of land now in possession of Elizabeth Pike formerly in possession of William Fellows deceased, which said lot of land now in possession of Elizabeth Pike aforesaid was then in the time of my said service with Majr. Vaughan in the Tenure and occupation of Mrs. Eleanor Cutt, widow of Richard Cutt of said Portsmouth Esgr., as it was said, lately deceased, further saith that the same time there was a division fence as it now stands between the same lot in Mr. Cutts Tenure and the garden and orchard then and lately till he died in the possession of said Majr. Vaughan, since in the Tenure of said Daniel Moulton and wife Elizabeth, which aforesaid fence continued near the same course further westward to the back or western side of said Mrs. Cutts orchard, which was about that distance westward of the Reverend Mr. Fitch's south east corner as the present orchards are. Further saith that on the southerly side of said westermost lot of Majr. Vaughan's there was then a fence on the west side of the way opposite to the northwest corner now in the possession of Thomas Hart formerly in possession of John Hunking deceased, which said fence continued its course westward on the south side of the Barberry hedge to the south west corner of the present orchard and from there northerly to the division fence aforesaid at the south west corner of Mrs. Eleanor Cutts aforesaid orchard. Further saith that the said Mrs. Eleanor Cutt possessed the land on the southwest and north of said lot of Majr. Vaughan's aforesaid. Further saith in the time of my said service I the Deponent planted most of the apple trees and barberry bushes in said lot of Majr. Vaughan's for him. Further saith that at the same time Majr. Vaughan and Margaret his wife had two sons to wit Cutt the elder and George the younger who when he came of age possessed and improved the House and land in which his grandmother Mrs. Eleanor Cutt lived now in possession of the aforesaid Elizabeth Pike, also the aforesaid orchard and pasture westward of said Mr. Fitch's Dwelling House to the highway between said pasture and the lot formerly John Hunkings by the fresh marsh Creek so called. Further saith that the present William Vaughan of Damaris Cotty was the reputed latest son of said George Vaughan deceased. Further saith the north and by east corner of the Parsonage or Glebe land lays situated about thirty rods south and by west from the noted Spring so called which lies near the bend of the river near the middle of the place called Strawberry Bank formerly. . Further saith that formerly one John Hunking had a warehouse near the now Dwelling House of Thomas Harts on the southward of the House where the said Majr. Vaughan formerly lived now possessed by the aforesaid Moulton. Further saith that Piscataqua
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