USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > The Cincinnati miscellany, or, Antiquities of the West, and pioneer history and general and local statistics. Volume II > Part 24
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On one occasion one of the watch, Mr. B --- , came off duty, and as carpenter's shavings were adhering to his boots, Butterfield, the captain of the watch, between jest and earnest, accused him of sleeping on a shaving pile, to the annoyance of B-, and the amusement of the rest. B- called his attention to the India rubber: " You know," said he, " that this stuff takes hold of every thing it touches, and there were shavings swept out upon - street, in my beat." " That may be," said Butterfield drily, " but you seem to have India rubber on your cap too," taking a shaving off it; " do you let your head stand where your feet should be?"
Colour Factories.
The wand of the enchanter which changes one substance to another in his slight of hand, or the touch of Midas, transmuting every thing to gold, are not more surprising than some of the opera- tions of modern chemistry, which are calculated to make men that are ignorant of its powers, dis- trust almost the evidence of their senses. Who that beholds prussiate of potash for the first time, would suppose it any thing else than roek candy, and does not feel tempted to take the poison to his lips, and when told that this is the product of hoofs and horns, seraps of leather, hogs bristles, and stale cracklings-the most revolting of sub- stanees to sight and smell-but would smile in- credulously at the statement.
Mr. Charles Dummig is engaged largely in the manufacture, having two establishments north of the corporation line, and on nearly opposite spots, upon the Miami canal. He has hardly been a year in operation, and cannot be said to be fully so yet. In a few weeks, two additional furnaces will be added to the concern, when he will be enabled to enlarge his manufacture to three thousand pounds per week. He sends al- most all he makes by the Miami canal via Toledo to New York, where it commands the highest price in market.
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Mr. Dummig is prepared to make Chrome yel- low and green, Paris, Antwerp and mineral blue, but devotes his whole energies to the prussiate of potash, which is required in large quantities for the woolen factories and calico print works in New England. It is also purchased for render- ing iron as hard as steel. The other articles named are used by painters, paper stainers, and oil cloth manufacturers, for whom they furnish blue and yellow of the deepest and most brilliant tints with all the intermediate shades.
It is inconceivable what mighty masses of offal such an establishment consumes. Four thousand pounds of animal substances, and two thousand pounds of potash, are used in Mr. D.'s factories daily. Twelve hands are constantly employed here, and the manufacturing process going on without intermission day or night.
One of these factories is forty-five by sixty-five feet; the other forty by eighty, and two stories in height. Mr. Dummig's operations will enable him to put into the market during the current year, not less than five hundred casks of this ex- tremely valuable article, worth, at its present value at the East, $120,000.
There is an establishment on Deer creek of the same nature, belonging to Wayne & Pleis, of which I can give no account at present. It may serve to give a realising sense of the vast quanti- ties of raw material consumed in them to be told, as I have been, that the supply except in the slaughtering season, falls far short of the demand, and on an average of the year barely meets it.
How much more do such businesses, in which skill and labour constitute the principal share, and raw materials an insignificant part, commend themselves to the political economist as well as philanthropist, than those heavy enterprises which exist among us, which after paying out probably eighty-five per cent. of the product for the raw material, leave a net profit, perhaps, of from five to ten per cent. to the community at large.
Ignorant Voters.
In Horace Mann's oration, delivered before the city officers of Boston, July 4, 1842, are the fol- lowing remarks:
" For in the name of the living God, it must be proclaimed that licentiousness shall be liberty, and violence and chicanery the law; and super- stition and craft shall be the religion, and the self-destructive influence of all sensual and un- hallowed passions shall be the only happiness of that people who shall neglect the education of their children. By the census of 1840 there are in the United States 175,000 legal voters unable to read or write, who can determine the election of a President, Congress, or the Governor of a that complained of by Nicholas Nollikins.
State. The custom so prevalent at the West and South, of stump-speaking, as it is significantly, but uncouthly called, had its origin in the voter's incapacity to read. How otherwise can can- didates for office communicate with ignorant voters?"
I am no apologist for ignorance; but I can tell Mr. Horace Mann, and his coadjutors, who talk so flippantly of ignorant voters, that he knows little of what he talks so fluently about. Such writers presume that school education and book knowledge are the grand panaceas to make a community intellectual and moral. Now I liold, and will furnish the examples if necessary, that an ordinary degree of education, on which know- ledge of the world is engrafted, is likelier to qua- lify a man for becoming intelligent, than a school education which takes up a large share of the most valuable portion of human life.
Almost all the eminent names in science, lite- rature and the arts, have been self-educated men Franklin, Arkwright, Stephenson, Hiram Pow- ers and Robert Burns are familiar examples, among thousands, of the fact.
I can tell Mr. M., moreover, that the voters of the West and South, who are addressed at poli- tical meetings, are as intelligent a body of men as any equal number who reside in any other section of the country; and that a man who pre- fers any other mode of appealing to the mass of mankind than oral addresses, whatever he may have learned at college, has yet to learn the first principles of human nature. The press is a legi- timate and important engine to influence the community, but the speaker who, in the pulpit or in mass meetings, addresses a crowd, enjoys means of influence attainable in no other mode.
The ignorance of lecturers is, in certain in- stances, as remarkable as the ignorance of voters.
Street Loungers.
An amusing dialogue between two street loungers is published in the Knickerbocker.
" When a feller's any sort of a feller," said Nicholas, " to be ketched at home is like bein' a mouse in a wire trap. They poke sticks in your eyes, squirt cold water on your nose, and show you to the cat. Common people, Billy-low, ornery, common people, can't make it out when natur's raised a gentleman in the family-a gen- tleman all complete, only the money's been for- got. If a man won't work all the time, day in and day out; if he smokes by the fire, or whis- tles out of the winder, the very gals bump agin him, and say, get out of the way, loaf! Now what I say is this; if people hasn't had genteel fotchin' up, you can no more expect 'em to be- have as if they had been fotched up genteel, than you kin make good segars out of a broom handle."
" That are a fact," ejaculated Billy Bunkers, with emphasis, for Billy had experienced, in his time, treatment at home somewhat similar to
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" But, Billy, my son, never mind, and keep not a lettin' on," continued Nollikins, and a beam of hope irradiated his otherwise saturine countenance-‹ The world's a railroad, and the cars is comin'; all we'll have to do is to jump in, chalk free. There will be a time, something must happen. Rich widders are about yet, though they are snapped up so fast; rich wid- ders, Billy, are special providences, as my old boss used to say, when he broke his nose in the entry, sent here like rafts, to pick up deservin' chaps when they can't swim no longer. When you've bin down twyst, Billy, and are just off agin, then comes the widder a floatin' along. Why spatterdocks is nothing to it, and a widder is the best of life-preservers when a man is most a case, like you and me."
" Well, I'm not perticklar, not I, nor never was. I'll take a widder, for my part, if she's got the mint drops and never asks no questions. I'm not proud; never was harristocratic; I drinks with any body, and smokes all the segars they give me. What's the use of bein' stuck up, stiffly? It's my principle that other folks are nearly as good as me, if they're not constables or aldermen. I can't stand them sort."
" No, Billy," said Nollikins, with an encoura- ging smile, " no Billy, such indiwidooals as them don't know human natur'; but, as I was goin' to say, if there happens to be a short crop of wid- ders, why can't somebody leave us a fortin? That will be as well, if not better. Now look here; what's easier than this? I'm standin' on the wharf; the rich man tries to get aboard of the steamboat, the niggers push him off the plank; in I goes; ca-plash. The old gentleman isn't drownded, but he might have been drownded but for me, and if he had a bin, where's the use of his money then? So he gives me as much as I want now, and a great deal more when he de- functs riggler, accordin' to law and the practice of civilized nations. I'm at the wharf every day; can't afford to lose the chance, and I begin to wish the old chap would hurra about comin' along. What can keep him?"
" If it'ud come to the same thing in the end," remarked Billy Bunkers, " I'd rather the niggers would push the old man's little boy in the water, if it's all the same to him. Them fat old fellers are so heavy when they're skeered they hang on so, why I might drownded before I had time to go to bank with the check! But what's the use of waitin'? Could'nt we shove 'em in some warm afternoon ourselves? Who'd know in a crowd?"
Early Records of Cincinnati.
I copy the following memoranda from a book of field notes kept by John Dunlop, who appears to have been engaged in the surveys of Symme's purchase, as early as January 8, 1789.
" Memorandums of sundry circumstances in the Miami purchase, from the 1st day of May, 1789.
" May 21st .- Ensign Luse, with eight soldiers, and some citizens, going up from North Bend to a place called South Bend, was fired on by a party of Indians, the tribe they belonged to we never could learn. There were six soldiers killed and wounded, of which one died on the spot; another died of his wounds, after going to the falls of the
Ohio for the doctor. There was a young man named John R. Mills in the boat, who was shot through the shoulder; but by management and care of some squaws he recovered and got per- fectly well.
" September 20th .- The Indians visiting Co- lumbia, at the confluence of the Little Miami, they tomahawked one boy and took another pri- soner. They were sons of a Mr. Seward, lately from New Jersey. On the 30tli same month they took another prisoner from same place.
" On the 12th December following a young man, son of John Hilliers of North Bend, going out in the morning to bring home the cows, about half a mile from the garrison, the Indians came upon him. They tomahawked and scalped him in a most surprising manner, took away his gun and hat, and left him lying on his back.
" On the 17th inst. following, two young men, one named Andrew Vanemon, the other James Lafferty, went on a hunting excursion across the river. When they encamped at night, and had made a fire, they were surprised by Indians, and fell a sacrifice into the hands of the savages, be- ing killed by their first fire. They were both shot through the back, between their shoulders, the bullet coming out under their right arms. The Indians tomahawked and scalped them in a most · barbarous manner, stripped them of their clothes, and left them lying on their backs quite naked, without as much as one thread on them. Next day myself and six others went over and buried them together in one grave. .
" December 29th General Harmar arrived at Cincinnati, and was received with joy. They fired fourteen cannon at the garrison on his land- ing.
"January 1, 1790 .- Governor St. Clair arrived. On his arrival they fired fourteen guns, and while he was marching to the garrison, they fired four - teen guns more. As soon as he landed they sent express for Judge Symmes, who went the next day to see him, and appoint civil and military officers for the service and protection of the set- tlement."
The Eclectic Series.
Besides the various mechanical fabrics which render the business relations of this city so inti- mate and extensive with the west and southwest, there are some heavy publishing operations which, having been carried on for some years past, have grown with our growth, and besides their regular business character, exercise a moral influence highly creditable to the reputation of Cincinnati.
I refer, particularly, in this respect to the edu- cational publications of W. B. Smith & Co., the proprietors of what is now universally known through the Mississippi valley, by the name of
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the Eclectic Series of School Books, written and [ the leading captains with great regularity and compiled by Professors M'Guffey and Ray.
The publication of the series was, in
1842 75,000 volumes,
1843
171,500 do.
1844 334,000 do.
During the first six months of 1845, the issues have been 199,000, and the residue of the year will more than equal that amount, making the issue for 1845 at least 400,000 volumes, of which the value is not less than $60,000. The establish- ment consumes four thousand reams extra sized double medium paper annually, keeps three power printing presses constantly in motion, and gives current employment to eighty hands.
Besides supplying a large portion of the west and southwest with the series, which are in gene- ral use throughout that region, large quantities are sold to the Atlantic cities, with which coun- try merchants supply themselves while making their general book and stationary purchases.
No series of school books eastward are put up in a neater or more durable style, as has been re- peatedly acknowledged by the booksellers in our Atlantic cities. It is hardly necessary to do more than allude to the names of Professors M'Guffey and Ray as a guarantee for the scientific accura- cy, pure taste, and elevated morality of the series. In this aspect of the subject, the authors, as well as publishers, have laid the great west under ob- ligations which cannot be measured by pecuniary values.
I learn that the Eclectic Series have displaced in the schools throughout the west, the element- ary books which preceded them in use.
Ball Exercises.
Every one who knows any thing of Indian sports and customs, is aware that they are among other exercises, passionately fond of ball playing. With some of the tribes, their ball plays resemble those of the whites. But some are peculiar to themselves, and have never been introduced among their civilized neighbours. A late letter from a Methodist missionary at the south west, dated Fort Coffee, Choctaw Nation, says :-
order. Preparatory to commencing operations an extensive plain is selected, on one side of which two poles are erected about twenty feet high and placed about six inches apart at the ground, and diverging in such a manner as to be about two feet apart at the top. On the opposite side of the plain, or about two hundred yards dis- tant two other poles are placed in the same man- ner. The parties to the contest, varying in num- ber as may have been previously agreed upon, meet in the centre, when a ball is thrown up from two sticks about two feet long, with a small net- ting or basket-work at the end, and the strife commences. This consists in each party keep- ing the ball.on their own side of the centre, and passing it the greatest number of times between the poles of the side to which they belong. The excitement and strife become very great ; men are often hurt and sometimes killed. It sometimes requires more than a day to determine the con- test. Bets usually run very high.'-This ball- play seems not unknown to the surrounding na- tions. The same writer says, ' It was formerly resorted to by the Indians to settle contested points of difference. A very serious difficulty which arose between the Cherokees and Creeks, about thirty years ago, was settled in that man- ner, and the horrors of war prevented.'"
One of the most singular results of my explo- rations in Indian records and narratives, has been my ascertaining that the game of Shinny, highly popular in my boyish days, and still in use in some parts of the United States, is of Indian parentage. Col. James Smith, the great uncle of the respectable family of the Irwins of our city, who was made prisoner by the savages and resi- ded among them many years, describes it in such terms as serves both to identify it, and to show that the whites derived it from their Indian neigh- bours. It is a deeply interesting and exciting game, as all ball exercises, indced are.
I observe that the English game of cricket, an- other ball exercise, is becoming introduced into Cincinnati. As an out-door game, it must be a more manly as well as moral exercise than bil- liards or ninepins, which in the attendant cir- cumstances, at any rate, always deteriorate the public morals.
" The leading and favourite sport of the Choc- taws is their ball-play. Having never witnessed one, I extract the following from the description given by the late Captain Stuart, commandant of the United States' forces, formerly stationed at The Philosophy of Spitting. this place. He says, ' It is rough and wild. Foreigners complain of our natural want of refinement and good breeding, and cite our uni- versal practice of spitting on floors as evidence that we are barbarians. When the Irish chief- tainess who had long resisted the arm of that vi- rago Queen Elizabeth of England, was brought subdued into her presence, the Queen presented The combatants engage in the contest entirely naked, except the flap. The interest and zeal which the natives of the forest take in this play, frequently attract ladies as spectators; sometimes, however, those of extreme delicacy may have oc- casion to blush. It is considered something of a national feast, and is often conducted by some of her with a handkerchief. The heroine inquired
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its use. To spit in, was the gracious reply. " In Ireland we spit upou the earthi," rejoined the undaunted woman; " we leave it to Saxon kernes to put the spittle in their pockets."
But has it never occurred to those people that there are hidden virtues and meanings in spitting which may be said to invest the practice with a certain species of dignity. In Africa it forms an oath, or at least an attestation to treaties. 'The last Liberia Herald states as follows :- " The
Colonies are generally prosperous. Governor Russwurm has visited an interior tribe of natives at Dena, about thirty or forty miles due east from Cape Palmas. He made a treaty of peace with them, which was duly ratified by the ceremony of " spewing water," which is the form of an oath observed by the Dena people. The cove- nant is performed by the chiefs of the contending tribes, after the paláver is talked, which is a kind of court held by all the head men, kings, chiefs, and all who have any influence. There is a bowl of water prepared; the king who appears to be the most willing to make peace, first dips his hands into the water, and, after slightly washing his hands, he fills his mouth, and spits it out on the ground a few times, and spits, the last time he fills his mouth, the whole mouthful into the hands of the other king, who sits before him while he performs the aet. This being done, the other king gets up and goes through the same process. This being done by the kings, peace is made throughout the tribe or nation. The Gov- ernor succeeded in getting a peace of this sort made between the Dena and the Cape Palmas people, there being one of the very influential men from Cape Palmas in the company."
Nor is the practice confined to barbarous na- tions and modern times. Spitting, according to Pliny, was superstitiously observed to avert the effects of witchcraft and in giving a more vigor- ous blow to an enemy. Hence the English de- rive their custom in boxing, previously to a set-to, of spitting on their hands. Boys are accustomed to spit as a testimony or asseveration in matters of importance. In combinations of the colliers in the north of England for the purpose of raising their wages, they spit togetlier on a stone, by way of cementing their confederacy. The Eng- lish are therefore the last people who should complain of a practice they have done so much to introduce.
Coolidge's Steam Furniture Factory.
When I published lately a statement of the op- erations in WALTER's Steam Furniture Factory, I was under the impression that it was the only factory in Cincinnati in which furniture was made by machinery and under steam pressure. In this I made a mistake. J. K. COOLIDGE, at the
corner of Smith and Front streets, has just put into operation machinery also driven by steam power, for the manufacture of the principal arti- cles of cabinet ware, such as bedsteads; side, breakfast, and dining tables and stands, cribs, bureaus, &c.
His machinery consists of Daniel's planing ma- chine, made by Stewart & Kimball, on Columbia street, two circular saws, mortice and tenon ma- chine, boring and turning apparatus, all driven by a steam engine.
The building is forty-five feet by twenty and four stories in height.
Mr. Coolidge has placed this establishment un- der the charge of Mr. William Turner, an expe- rienced cabinet maker, employs sixteen hands, and is prepared to turn out $25,000 worth of furniture during the current year. His markets are in the west, soutli, and southwest, a region from which our Cincinnati mechanics are rapidly driving the catchpenny and low priced eastern articles made for sale alone.
It must be apparent that fabrics cut and fitted by machinery will possess an exactness, not usually attainable by hand, which must secure and maintain a degree of strength which will enable furniture made in this mode to out last all other descriptions.
The whole district in the sixth ward, adjacent to the White Water Canal, must become filled before long with manufacturing establishments of various characters.
Artesian Wells.
In our cities an abundant supply of pure whole- some water is a blessing beyond price. It is in- dispensable to the luxury of the rich, the comfort of the poor, and the health of all classes. And there is hardly a city in the United States, where the supply is so inadequate to the want of the article, as in Cincinnati. I take, therefore, a deep interest in a project now agitating at Louis- ville, and brought forward lately before its city council to supply that city with water by Artesian Wells. If Louisville or Cincinnati can otbain ample supplies of wholesome water springing be- low the limestone formation, it is hardly possible to overrate the importance of the measure. That such wells may be obtained in certain locations, in what geologists call the secondary formation, has been successfully demonstrated both in Eng- land and France. There is one at the Episcopal palace in Fulham, one at Turnham Green, nine more in the parish of Hammersmith in Great Britain ; and besides others in France, one or more extensive wells at Paris. So that the prac- ticability of the project is no longer a matter of doubt.
The great well of Paris is eighteen hundred
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feet deep, and the expense of digging it, as may [ art, but very few who unite practical knowle ige be conjectured, has been enormous. But in rocks of morc recent formation, water has been obtain- ed to flow on the level of the earth, at a depth of three hundred feet. In one case of this kind, the water ran fourteen feet above the tops of the pipes at the rate of ninety gallons per minute. I am now speaking of wells for the supply of cold, wholesome water for drinking and culinary pur- poses, If we go deep enough we can doubtless get it such as that supplied to Paris, which is hot enough to scald our hogs.
Nor are the benefits of such wells confined to our cities. I have no doubt that they will be found in the United States the most efficient, as well as economical agents in draining marshy lands. It
is in this way the water of the Artesian well at Paris, which is used only for jets d'eaux, is re- turned into a depth where it loses itself in a per- meable bed of sand, sufficing to absorb the whole. There is little doubt that any of our morasses may be drained by digging holes from twenty to fifty feet in depth.
If thesc views can be demonstrated as founded in fact, there is another application of the well. principle of great importance to Cincinnati. This is the getting rid of the surplus water which, ow- ing to the system, or to speak more correctly, want of system, in the early grading of our city, has created difficulties which must go on to in- crease, with the increasing discharge of water through our streets, which the improvement of Cincinnati creates. For this evil a drainage well is a cheap and efficient remedy. The expense which the wretched grades in the neighbourhood of Sycamore and Abigail streets have entailed, and are yet entailing on the city, in the shape of damages from overflow of water, would have built a dozen such wells. The culverts, which freely discharge water in ordinary rains, cannot relieve the overflow of water during storms such as we have lately liad; whereas wells of this kind will let off any amount of water.
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