USA > Vermont > The story of Vermont (1889) > Part 13
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
The generosity of the State in dealing with its soldiers had saddled it with a heavy debt, bearing a high rate of interest. The yearly expenses of the Government were not large, but in addition to these charges Vermont had to bear its proportion of the enormous national indebtedness. Taxation en- hanced the price of most commodities bought by the State and of few that it sold. The necessities of the general government, and the imperative de- mand for money to meet its obligations compelled - the imposition of a heavy duty and the raising of
١
271
SINCE THE WAR.
money by numerous vexatious internal revenue taxes since dispensed with. A depreciated currency unsettled trade and prompted to wild speculation.
Simultaneously with these disadvantages were others peculiar to the State, and scarcely shared in by its neighbors. For over thirty years its popula- tion had grown but slowly and the more vigorous of its young men and women had been constantly leav- ing it for the cities and the West. In many coun- try districts the population was scarce half what it had been in 1840. War had completed the work of emigration. The troops of Vermont had suffered as no others had done and the hands that had guided the plow and plied the hammer were sadly missed.
The tide of migration to the great West not only remained unchecked during the period following the war. It was accelerated by the bountiful home- stead act which gave free land to every settler who asked it, and by the extension of Government aid to the Pacific railroads. The astounding develop- ment of the land-grant railroads brought into direct competition with Vermont the countless acres of the West beyond the Mississippi, as the canal had done for the nearer West. Never was compe- tition more unequal. The plain against the mount- ains, a mild climate against a severe one, cheap land against dear land, the ranch against the farm. Even
272
SINCE THE WAR.
the one element that favored Vermont - its com- parative nearness to the markets on the Atlantic seaboard - was largely offset by the favoritism of the competing trunk lines of railroad, each eagerly striving to secure its share or more of through traffic and taxing local freight to furnish the sinews of destructive cut-rate wars. The wool grower of Ohio or Texas, the dairy farmer of Michigan, the corn raiser of Illinois, the wheat farmer of Dakota and Minnesota and the cattle herder of regions . even farther West were largely relieved by this railroad rivalry from the legitimate disadvantage of their position.
That the people of Vermont should have made head against these odds at all was sufficiently to their credit. But they have not only done this; they have made material advance in almost every direc- tion. It has been done by the utmost economy of production, by the free use of improved appliances and by especial care to better the quality of goods marketed - in a word, by the exercise of Yankee thrift and shrewdness.
Agriculture has remained the State's chief in- dustry and has thriven beyond all others. The total value of the farms of the State has not greatly increased since 1860, but the value and quantity of annual product has grown larger. Milch cattle in- creased in number from 174,667 to 217,033. The
-
/
273
SINCE THE WAR.
yield of butter in 1880 had more than doubled since 1850, and that of cheese greatly decreased, the total value of the two being much larger. Vermont was the thirty-second State in the order of her popu- lation in 1880, but the value of her milk products was only surpassed by twelve others. This result
UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT=BUILDING MAIN
was unquestionably largely the result of the factory system - practically a development of the period since the war.
It has been found by experience that factory-made butter and cheese command a higher price than domestic, and there is far less cost and waste in
274
SINCE THE WAR.
their manufacture. Those farmers and farmers' wives who still continue to make butter and cheese at home are the exception rather than the rule. At the factory all the hard work is done by ma- chinery, and the milk of from four hundred to twelve hundred cows is cared for easily. Thus one of the most important industries of the State has become an exact science to its great advantage in many ways; not the least of these is the lightening of the labors of farmers' wives and daughters. The man- ufacture of butter and cheese has been injured of late years by the introduction of spurious imitations, but it is hoped that repressive legisla- tion will give honest dairy products.
The formation, in the early part of 1888, of a State Board of Trade in the interest of the makers of butter, cheese and maple sugar is another agency from which good results are expected. The adul- teration of maple sugar has been a serious blow at one of the chief industries of Vermont, and one that has increased in value under improved methods even more rapidly than the dairy business. The quantity of sugar made has about doubled since 1850; its estimated value was in 1888 one mil- lion two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or forty-two dollars to each farm in the State.
The wasteful methods of old-fashioned sugar- makers have been entirely replaced by better ones.
275
SINCE THE WAR.
The trees are tapped sparingly with small auger holes, buckets of tin and spouts of tin or galvanized iron are used and the sap is boiled under shelter in flat evaporating pans, with much saving of fuel.
The lumber product of the forests of the State was very large during the period we are consider. ing, and Burlington has remained one of the chief lumber centres of the Union. Only eighteen States surpassed Vermont in the quantity and value of lumber cut in 1880.
The wool clip of Vermont has decreased since 1850, but the value of the sheep of the State has in all probability advanced. The choice breeds of fine wooled sheep raised in Vermont are surpassed nowhere in the world, if indeed they are anywhere equalled. They have found a market at fancy prices all over the United States and even at the antipodes. The earliest consignments of them to Australia were refused admittance on the pretext that they were diseased; the real reason probably being that the local breeders were jealous. Subse- quent importations however, were more hospitably received.
The wool and sheep-breeding industry suffered somewhat by the tariff revision of 1883 and the farmers have never ceased to demand the re-enact- ment of the Morrill tariff of 1867 and to resist any advances toward placing wool upon the free list.
-
276
SINCE THE WAR.
A few sheep have been sent to South America. To the same distant quarter of the world Vermont horses have also been consigned.
The number of horses sold from the State has always been large. The census of 18So showed an increase of about six thousand in the number since 1860, but the business of horse-breeding has greatly increased since the census year in consequence of the low price of butter and cheese. Fine-blooded cattle also represent a large and growing value in the State. Minor agricultural products are numer- ous. The State is seventh in its yield of hops, though it has no breweries. Bees are kept in large numbers and considerable honey is sold. Oats, barley and potatoes are raised in abundance ; the coarser vegetables are produced for consump- tion by cattle, the finer varieties for table use and canning. Vermont's fruit is limited in variety but plentiful, especially west of the mountains; the State in this respect being rather better off than the average.
Manufactures also increased largely in the years which followed the war. The total number em- ployed rose from 10,497 in 1860 to 17,540 in 1880, and probably in about the same proportion after that date. The increase in the value of the product was more than one hundred per cent. As might be expected of a State where agriculture is so success-
277
SINCE THE WAR.
fully carried on, the manufacture of improved farm- ing and dairy implements is a thriving one. Fac- tories of parlor organs and scales, of sash and blinds and wagons, iron foundries, machine-shops and paper mills are among the most prominent. · Steam has supplemented the water power, without supplanting it, and these industries are in a nor- mally healthy condition with every promise of future prosperity.
Akin to the manufactures are the quarries. These have grown so enormously since the canal and railroads began to furnish transportation that in 1880 only two States, New York and Pennsylvania, surpassed Vermont in the capital invested and the value of annual product. Since that year the ratio of increase has been well maintained.
The political history of the period since the war has been singularly uneventful. It can almost be summed up in a sentence. There has been for twenty-eight years no Democratic Governor elected and but one Democratic Congressman, while for every Republican Presidential candidate an over- whelming majority has been cast.
The State has been admirably represented in the United States Senate during practically the whole period since the war by Morrill and Edmunds. In the lower House it has placed such men as Willard, Hendee, Denison, Joyce, Tyler, Grout,
278
SINCE THE WAR.
Poland and Stewart. The representatives of Ver- mont have borne a conspicuous part in national legislation and the two senators especially have exercised far more influence than is usual with the representatives of so small a State.
Senator Edmunds was in 1880 and again in 1884 pressed as a Presidential candidate for the Repub- lican nomination. On both occasions he had the support of a united delegation from Vermont and a strong following from other States. Had Ver- mont been a larger State, or a "doubtful " one, its claims upon a nominating convention might have met with more success.
Though in so evident a minority, the Democratic party of the State is a vigorous and active body of men. The victory of that party in the Presidential election of 1884 brought many representative Ver- mont Democrats into the service of the Government. The most prominent of these was Prof. E. J. Phelps, appointed to the most important foreign mission in the gift of the President, that of Minister at the Court of St. James.
The legislative history of the State since the war is full of interest. It gives the key to the character of the people and their law-makers. The greater portion of the legislators are to-day, as they have always been, farmers. They are plain, straightfor- ward men and, as the record shows, do the business
279
SINCE THE WAR.
for which they are elected in a creditable manner. The work of the legislative session is always fin- ished in about half the time consumed in Massa- chusetts or New York, even since the sessions were made biennial by the last revision of the Constitu- tion; the session laws for two years, though in- cluding a deal of important legislation, are easily comprised in a modest volume. The law-makers of the State have faced the problems which have con- fronted them in a manner usually bold, commonly sensible and always well meant and carefully con- sidered. They found Vermont burdened by a heavy war debt and its credit impaired ; they so restored public confidence in their purpose and ability to pay that when, in the panic of 1873, the Secretary of the State desired to buy its bonds he could find a willing seller no nearer than Baltimore; a few years later the debt was practically paid.
After the panic and the shrinkage of values caused six years later by the resumption of specie payment, the expenses of administration became onerous ; they were promptly cut down. The de- nuded hills demanded notice; they received it from a Forestry Commission organized by the Legis- lature, whose duty it was to consider how the evils caused by the destruction of timber were to be remedied. Child labor in factories forced itself upon attention as a growing evil; it was speedily
/
280-231
SINCE THE WAR.
prohibited. Illiteracy became in some measure a reproach, mainly owing to immigration ; a stringent compulsory education act was passed which is expected in time to effect a great im- provement. The morals and education of young criminals needed special care; a State Reform School was established. The frequency of divorces commented upon the unsatisfactory nature of the laws governing the subject; these were amended to such purpose that in 1887 the number and pro- portion of divorces had greatly decreased.
The increase of the practice of counterfeiting butter and cheese and of adulterating honey with glucose was met with repressive legislation. The altered conditions of modern life evoked laws in- creasing the property rights of women. The pro- tection of game and fish from total extermination was made the object of a series of enactments, the planting of shade trees was encouraged and a pre- mium was placed upon thrift by the exemption from taxation of savings-bank deposits up to the value of fifteen hundred dollars.
In 1869, in accordance with the curious provision of the old Constitution, the Council of Censors met and proposed amendments to the Constitution to be considered by the convention held the following year. One of the proposed amendments which was not ratified was the following: "Hereafter
ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
Brideman
C
-
¥7
=
-
283
SINCE THE WAR.
women shall be entitled to vote and with no other restrictions than the law shall impose on men." Other amendments fared better. The organic law of the State was amended in several important particulars, the most noticeable being the provision already referred to that thereafter the State elec- tions and sessions of the Legislature should be bien- nial and held on the even years. The Council of Censors was abolished and a provision substituted that every two years the Legislature might pass an amendment which should become part of the or- ganic law upon its re-passage by the succeeding Legislature and its indorsement by the people at the polls. This provision is sufficiently conserva- tive ; it places nearly four years between the pro- posal of an amendment and its final adoption, while it is at the same time sufficiently elastic to suit the needs of a progressive people. The plan for the biennial sessions of the Legislature works admirably; already it has been favorably urged upon the consideration of other States.
Two constitutional amendments were adopted under the new plan in 1880, one providing that United States officials should not be eligible as legislators, the other that the Secretary of State should thereafter be elected by the people instead of by the Legislature, as had been the custom from the earliest time. The legislatures of 1884 and
١
284
SINCE THE WAR.
1886 passed, in addition to the measures already referred to, a law compelling the presence in court of the libelee in divorce proceedings, another re- quiring the attendance of the State's attorney to represent its interests, another raising the Gov- ernor's salary to fifteen hundred dollars per annum and still another appropriating money for the pur- chase of land and the erection on the field of Gettysburg of a monument to the courage of Ver- mont's sons. They petitioned Congress for the enactment of an inter-State commerce law, passed almost unanimously a resolution favoring the policy of protection to American industries and author- ized the establishment of kindergartens in public schools - acts whose character may serve to illus- trate the trend of opinion and action in the State.
The population increased very slowly from 1870 to 1880. It gained in those ten years less than two thousand, and there is no' reason to suppose that there has been any marked increase since the enu- meration .* The same census, however, cast a flood of light upon the cause of this slow increase. Vermont has done proportionally more than any other State to people the West and the cities. In 18So there were 332,286 people in the State, 251,112 of whom were native Vermonters, and
"The estimate for 1888 supplied by the Governor of the State showed a population of 336,000 as against 332,286 in 1880. - ED.
١
285
SINCE THE WAR.
81,174 natives of other States or countries. But there were no less than 177,576 natives of Vermont living in other States, making the total number of people of Vermont birth in the Union 428,688, and showing that the State has yielded up to other localities one hundred thousand people in excess of its gain by immigration. Forty-one per cent. of those of Vermont birth were living in other States, New York having 31,130, Massachusetts 26,869, Illinois 14,568, Michigan 12,588, Wisconsin 12,553, Iowa 12,288 and other States and Territories in smaller numbers.
The character of these emigrants to other States cannot be better illustrated than by the fact that in the Fiftieth Congress, in which Vermont was en- titled by appointment to but two Representatives, no less than five men who were born in Vermont sat as Congressmen from other States. Of these former Vermonters one was from Minnesota, two from New York and two from Wisconsin, the latter State being also represented by a Senator born in Vermont. In the States where men of Vermont birth are most numerous, they are found in places of high regard and usefulness.
Yet the wealth of the State has grown in spite of the continual drain. The Legislature of 1882 passed an act requiring assessors thereafter to re- turn real estate at its actual value. The new total
286
SINCE THE WAR.
of real and personal property - still an under- estimate, especially with respect to the latter class -gave the property in the State as $164,063,689. The census returns of 1880 showed that there were more holders of Government bonds in Vermont than in many larger States, ten only surpassing her. And the savings bank report of 1887 showed that on June 30 of that year there were 53,810 deposits aggregating $15,587,950.93 - an average of $289.67 per deposit, or over forty dollars for each person in the State. Vermont, too, holds the proud position of being burdened with no State debt, where other commonwealths have crowded their indebtedness away into the millions .*
The increase in wealth is wholly in the cities and larger villages, the value of the farms having in many instances greatly decreased since 1830. The estimates of the value of new buildings erected in a number of the larger places for 1886 and 1887 ran about as follows : Brattleborough, $400,000 ; Bellows Falls, $350,000; Barre, $200,000; Rutland, $400,000; Bennington, in 1887 alone, $100,000 ; Burlington, $225,000 in 1886, and $400,000 in 1887.
These figures may fall far short of absolute cor- rectness, but it is safe to assume from them that these and other towns have enjoyed a very material
* In 1888 but three States in the Union were free of debt - Illinois, Wisconsin and Vermont.
287
SINCE THE WAR.
increase in wealth and business. The progressive character of the larger villages was during the same period illustrated by the introduction of systems of public water supply and sewerage and by their ready adoption first of gas and next of electricity as a means of lighting the streets. Village improve- ment societies have played an important part in educating and directing public taste and securing the wise expenditure of money in planting trees, laying out parks and otherwise improving the appearance of the villages.
The virtue of patriotism has not been forgotten. The militia has been decreased in recent years to a single regiment, which yet is wholly adequate to the task of preserving order within the State. Should any occasion for national defense arise, the people would be found as willing to respond to it as they were in 1861. Their appreciation of the valor of the Green Mountain Boys was proved in 1877 at the centennial anniversary of the battle of Bennington, when so many thousands of them gathered to witness the imposing ceremonials of the celebration of that event. Arrangements have been since perfected and money collected to erect a mon- ument on that historic battlefield. In the entire period since the war there has been no serious riot or disturbance except the threatened Fenian inva- sion of Canada in 1870.
288
SINCE THE WAR.
Educational matters continue to attract much attention. The schools and colleges have pros- pered since the war, and the expenditure of public money for instruction has been upon a liberal scale in proportion to the State's resources. In the farming towns the schools suffer from the de- crease in the number of pupils, but on the whole they are fairly well supported. In the larger towns seminaries and academies supplement the work of the common schools, nor is it necessary, even for a collegiate education of the very highest rank, to send the children of the State beyond its bound- aries.
Middlebury College, founded in 1800 by the Con- gregationalist denomination, is one of the oldest and most useful institutions of learning in the country. It had graduated in the classical depart- ment, up to ISSS, twelve hundred and ninety-two students, among whom were such men as Governor Silas Wright of New York, the Rev. Dr. Stephen Olin, Joseph Battell, the donor of Battell Chapel, Yale College, Dr. Henry Smith of Lane Seminary, John G. Saxe the poet, the Rev. Dr. Post of St. Louis, Henry N. Hudson, the Shakespearean editor, Edward J. Phelps, United States Minister to Great Britain, Stephen A. Walker, United States District Attorney of New York City, Railroad Commis- sioner Aldace F. Walker and J. S. Grinnell, public
.
289
SINCE THE WAR.
prosecutor of Chicago, whose memorable trial of the anarchists will be long remembered.
The college has about two hundred and twenty- five thousand dollars in productive investments, good buildings and a fine library and has a consid- erable income from tuition fees. Its future, to quote the words of President Ezra Brainerd, "is looking better than it has at any time since the Civil War, when most of the students enlisted." A law school is connected with the college.
The State University at Burlington was opened also in 1800, though it is to the credit of the people of Vermont that it was projected long before. A portion of land from each town grant was reserved for its benefit as early as 1778, but during the discussion of the project for uniting a portion of New Hampshire to Vermont, Dartmouth College was considered the State University. Though the University had at the start a handsome endowment of money and some twenty-nine thousand acres of land it did not prosper uniformly. Bad luck pursued it. The buildings were occupied by the United States army during part of the War of 1812 and the sessions wholly interrupted. The school did not for some years recover the standing which it should have enjoyed, and in 1824 its main build- ing was burned. Lafayette laid the corner stone of the new building during his memorable visit in
-
290
SINCE THE WAR.
1825 and since then the school has thriven more in proportion to its merits.
A medical college was established in connection with the University in 1822 and an agricultural course of study, added since the war, offers training of a special value to farmers. In the winter courses of lectures on agriculture are given to the farmers of the State as well as to the students and these through intelligent newspaper reports are made public property. A farm and experiment station recently authorized by the Legislature and pur- chased in ISSS is the most recently acquired ad- vantage which the University offers. It numbers among its graduates such men as Zadock Thompson the historian, Alden B. Spooner, Governors Redfield and Dillingham and Benjamin H. Smalley.
In the work of education there are other agen- cies scarcely less potent than schools and colleges. Among these must be reckoned a shrewd and en- terprising newspaper press, alert in the discussion of public problems, and this advantage Vermont enjoys. It has numerous libraries also. The State Library at the Capitol was in 1886 completed, with space for seventy thousand volumes; the Brooks Library at Brattleborough was opened in 1888 and there are many others of even longer usefulness.
The churches, too, are well supported. The Catholic denomination is not so numerous as in
-
291
SINCE THE WAR.
New York or Massachusetts, but includes practi- cally all the growing French-Canadian element. Of the Protestant denominations the Congregational was the first to obtain a footing in the State and is still the most numerous. Next in order come the Baptists and Methodists, with Universalists and Episcopalians in about equal numbers and other sects in smaller proportions. In many of the farm- ing towns the decrease of the population and the effect of sect hostility in keeping four or five churches barely alive where one or two might be better supported, have unfavorably affected relig- ious interests, but on the whole the condition of the churches is eminently satisfactory.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.