THE

FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1850.

DOWN WITH THE TYRANTS.

WITH HINTS WHAT TO DO WITH THEM.

THERE'S a title that I think entitles me to contribute another article to "The Friend of the People," even if the circumstance under which I write did not.  Mr. Harney is not yet sufficiently recovered to resume his usual duties as Editor, though happily able to commence; therefore I beg to offer him a short paper by way of further assistance.  Called down to Norwich to lecture, I write from that place, and from Diss, where I conclude my paper, or I should gladly make it longer.  As some associations among the Chartists have nominated me to serve on the Executive, I embrace this opportunity to explain the grounds of my constant adhesion to their movement.  I have been a Chartist since 1832, eight years before the "Old Guards" were christened.

    In good truth, I am more of a Chartist than many who bear that name.  They say, down with the tyrants, meaning Class rulers only; I say down with all tyrants, whether set up by others or kept up by ourselves.

    Ignorance is a great tyrant: it makes us impotent: it hides from us our power: it prevents us getting improvement: it makes us make war on our friends by blinding us from seeing who they really are: it keeps us from seeing the opportunities which lie at our feet, whereby we might emancipate ourselves half as fast again as we do—Ignorance therefore is a tyrant, and I say, "Down with that Tyrant!"

    Prejudice is a tyrant.  It prevents us working with each other: it prevents us working with many who might and would help us well: it makes us work only in one way, and what is worse, suspect all who would work in a different way, although for the same end.  Therefore Prejudice is a pernicious Tyrant, and I say "Down with that Tyrant."

    Supineness—is also a Tyrant.  It makes us talk about subscriptions and never pay them: it makes us talk about meetings, and hardly ever go to them: it makes us proud of our Democratic papers, but does not make us take them in: it makes us expect our leaders to stand by us, but never makes us think of standing by them: it sends us to our assemblies with unshorn chins, dirty faces, and dirty clothes, whereby we look like black slaves, when we at least might have the credit of looking like white ones.  Supineness is therefore a Tyrant, and I say "Down with that Tyrant."

    Indignation is a Tyrant: because a man who is merely indignant is not good for much.  So many think that if they are indignant at wrong, that is enough.  It is not enough.  I know as well as any Chartist in the land, that the working classes have reason enough to be indignant.  As I have said elsewhere:* Brightly shines the light of history on national progress.  Improvements, inventions; extension of commerce, and energy of production, reflect rays of prosperity over the extent of the nation, and in the glare of projecting riches few look below, where the dark shade of humbler destiny is obscured.  Grandly and nobly uprears the stalwart structures of our manufacturing greatness; but let us not be blind to the dreary fate of many thousands, who, waste their days in unnoted, unavailing anxieties.  In bare garrets, in cold, dirty, comfortless courts, in suffocating mills, in filthy, sooty, greasy shops, how many sin into the grave, uncheered even by a better prospect for their unhappy offspring?  Let those who are scandalised at the stern, unsocial, antagonistic creed of the poor, remember in what a harsh and hopeless school they have been reared!  When the Falcon saw a poor Fowl escape anxiously from the hands of one who endeavoured to catch it, he reproached it with ingratitude.  'During the day,' said the Falcon, 'the men nourish you with grains—during the night, they concede you shelter where you can roast, unexposed to the inclemency of the weather: yet in spite of all these cares, when they endeavour to catch you, you endeavour to flee from them.  This is what I never do.  A savage bird of prey as I am, and under no obligations to them, I assume tameness when they seek to caress me, and even eat out of their hands.'  'All that is very true which you say,' rejoined the Fowl, 'but you comprehend not the reason which makes me flee. You have never seen a Falcon on the spit, but I have seen thousands of Fowls there.'  We therefore have all of us reason enough to be indignant I know, for we are all on the Spit of Tyranny.  But it is no good being indignant.  It is not enough to hate Tyranny, we must put it down; and I am so resolved to put it down that I can't find time to vent my indignation.  Now many Chartists waste half their time in venting their indignation.  Indignation therefore delays redress—Indignation therefore is a Tyrant, and I say "Down with that Tyrant also!"

    Class legislators are Tyrants, who ought to be put down.  But how?  One way is to knock them down, and that is the only mode many people think of.  But that's not the only way—besides, its a wasteful way.  It's not a good way, because if you knock them down they sometimes get up again, as they have done in France.  The fact is, it's a worn-out way.  Any savage can take that way.  We have found out other ways, and I think better ways.  When a builder finds an old house good for nothing, he of course removes it, but he never thinks of "knocking" it down.  That would be a great waste.  He takes it to pieces—and uses up the materials for some new fabric.  That's the way I would serve all tyrannies.  I would not knock them down.  I would take them to pieces—then they can never get together again!  I would use them up—then they could not get on their legs again and use me up.  This is a commercial age, and I would level on commercial principles.  I would not waste a single tyrant—I would sell his old material to the Reformers to make some thing useful of.  I would apply Cobden's Free Trade rule to them—"buy them in the cheapest market and sell them in the dearest."

    Tyranny should not be suffered to escape into an idle grave.  It should be turned to a good account.

                Permit me to subscribe myself,
                                           A leveller upon commercial principles,

G. J. HOLYOAKE.

* People's Review.

 
The Manufacturer and Builder
New York, January 1880.

Benefits of Co-operation.

Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, the great English co-operator, spoke recently at the Cooper Institute in this city on the subject of co-operation.  He began by telling of the interest he had taken in co-operation all his life.  He had, he said, been an active worker in schemes for co-operation in England for years.  His first point was as to the benefit of co-operative action to the English immigrants coming to this country.  By co-operation, he said, their passage across the ocean could be made a pleasure excursion.  Then, too, they could be conducted to places already prepared for them, and thus, by co-operation, they would not be reduced in circumstances so much that they would be left as a burden upon the great cities.

    In speaking of the Socialist-Labor Party Mr. Holyoake predicted that it would become much larger than it now is in the United States.  The laborer would lack common sense, he thought, if he stood idly by while machinery showers gold upon capitalists.  In England the times had been such that some people could live without labor, while others could not live with labor.  Such a condition of affairs should and can be improved by co-operation.  The cry of the Labor Party in England was that the government should assist them; but the co-operative workers only asked the government to let them alone and they would get along all right.

    The speaker then turned his attention to the movement in England, and gave a history of what the supporters of co-operation had accomplished there.  The co-operative stores were described as having languished for 25 years, and then sprung into success when it was found out that the best plan was to pay 5 per cent to those who put in capital, and divide the profits among the consumers.  An illustration of the extent of the business was the fact that two vessels are now engaged in carrying to England the American produce purchased for the co-operative establishments.  Mr. Holyoake surprised the audience in a glowing description of the beauties of the system by declaring that one of its peculiarities was that the larger a member’s family was, and the more they ate, the richer he became.  By the co-operative bank system members grew rich while they slept, even if they had put in no money.  They paid no money, but yet they grew rich.

    Referring to the subject of co-operative colonization the speaker thought there ought to be no trouble in establishing co-operative communities.  Imagining such a colony of 100 persons on a thousand acres of land, Mr. Holyoake showed how they could make what they needed to wear, and produce what they needed to eat.  When they produced more than the colony needed, the surplus could be exchanged with persons outside of the colony.  If that could not be done, then the colonist would eat their surplus food themselves, and themselves wear and use their surplus articles of manufacture.

    Good feeling between employers and employees was advocated at some length by the speaker, who then showed how co-operation would bring about such a feeling.  He urged that true information should be given the foreign workingmen regarding the prospects immigrants might expect here, and closed by claiming that co-operation was no Utopian scheme.

    The Rev. R. Heber Newton, one of the officers of the Co-operative Colony Aid Association, among some remarks made after Mr. Holyoake had finished, explained that the chief peculiarity of co-operation in England was co-operative distribution through co-operative stores; in France it was co-operative production, through manufactories; in Germany it was co-operative credit through the co-operative banking system.  In this country the first thing the supporters of co-operation wanted to do was to enable the distressed laborers in great cities to go in goodly companies to places in the country, where they could live happily in co-operative villages and work together for each other’s good.  After detailing the hopes and plans of the Co-operative Colony Aid Association, Mr. Newton gave way to Rev. Dr. J. H. Rylance, one of the Executive Committee of the association, who spoke in eulogy of Mr. Holyoake, and predicted that the time was coming when American workingmen would consider social questions of far more importance than the discussion of political tropics.

 
LITTELL'S LIVING AGE
No. 1886—August 17, 1880.

A Stranger in America.
(From The Nineteenth Century)

By G. J. Holyoake.

    NO person could be more completely a stranger than I was in America.  After being interested in American history and public affairs from my youth, I saw the country for the first time in August last.  Being born in midland England, I had more English insularity of thought than most of my countrymen; and having a certain wilfulness of opinion, which few shared at home, and probably fewer abroad, I had little to recommend me in the United States.  Years ago I knew some publicists there of mark and character, but that was before the great war in which many of them perished.  My friend Horace Greeley was dead, Lloyd Garrison was gone, with both of whom I had spent well-remembered days.  Theodore Parker, the "Jupiter of the pulpit," as Wendell Phillips calls him, paid me a visit in England before he went to Florence to die.  To me, therefore, it was contentment enough to walk unknown through some of America's marvellous cities, and into the not less wondrous space which lies beyond them.

    For one who has seen but half a great continent, and that but for a short period, to write a book about the country would be certainly absurd.  At the same time, to have been in a new world for three months and be unable to give any account whatever of it would be still more absurd.  To pretend to know much is presumption—to profess to know nothing is idiocy.  A voyager who had seen a strange creature in the Atlantic Ocean as he passed it, might be able to give only a poor account of it; but if he had seen it every day for three months, and even been upon its back, he would be a very stupid person if he could give no idea whatever of it.  I saw America and Canada from Ottawa to Kansas City for that length of time, travelling on its lakes and land, and may give some notion, at least to those who never were there, of what I observed—not of its trades or manufactures, or statistics, or politics, or churches, but of the ways, manners, and spirit of the people.

    After all I had read or heard, it seemed to me that there were great features of social life there unregarded or misregarded.  New York itself is a miracle which a large book would not be sufficient to explain.  When I stepped ashore there, I thought I was in a larger Rotterdam; when I found my way to the Broadway, it seemed to me as though I was in Paris, and that Paris had taken to business.  There were quaintness, grace and gaiety, brightness and grimness, all about.  The Broadway I thought a Longway, for my first invitation in it was to No. 1455.  My first days in the city were spent at No. 1 Broadway, in the Washington Hotel, allured thither by its English military and diplomatic associations, going back to the days when an Indian warwhoop was possible in the Broadway.  At that end, you are dazed by a forest of tall telegraphic poles, and a clatter by night and day that no pathway of Pandemonium could rival.  Car-bells, omnibus-bells, drayhorse-bells, railway-bells and locomotives in the air, were resounding night and day.  An engineer turns off his steam at your bedroom window.  When I got up to see what was the matter, I found engine No. 99 almost within reach of my arm, and the other ninety-eight had been there that morning before I awoke.  When one day at a railway junction I heard nine train-bells being rung by machinery, it sounded as though Disestablishment had occurred, and all the parish churches of England were being imported.

    Of all the cities of America, Washington is the most superb in its brilliant flashes of space.  The drowsy Potomac flows in sight of splendid buildings.  Washington is the only city I have ever seen which no wanton architect or builder can spoil.  Erect what they will, they cannot obliterate its glory of space.  If a man makes a bad speech, the audience can retreat; if he buys a dull book, he need not read it—while if a dreary house be erected, three generations living near it may spend their melancholy lives in sight of it.  If an architect in each city could be hanged now and then, with discrimination, what a mercy it would be to mankind!  Washington at least is safe.  One Sunday morning I went to the church which is attended by the president and Mrs. Hayes, to hear the kind of sermon preached in their presence.  But the walk through the city was itself a sermon.  I never knew all the glory of sunlight in this world until then.  The clear, calm sky seemed hundreds of miles high.  Over dome and mansion, river and park, streets and squares, the sunlight shed what appeared to my European eyes an unearthly beauty.  I lingered in it until I was late at church.  The platform occupied by preachers in America more resembles an altar than our pulpit, and the freedom of action and grace in speaking I thought greater than among us.  The sermon before the president was addressed to young men, and was remarkably wise, practical, definite, and inspiring; but the transition of tone was, at times, more abrupt and less artistic than in other eminent American preachers whom I had the pleasure to hear.

    Niagara Falls I saw by sunlight, electric light, and by moonlight, without thinking much of them—until walking on the American side I came upon the Niagara River, which I had never heard of.  Of course water must come from somewhere to feed the falls—I knew that; but I had never learned from guide-books that its coming was anything remarkable.  When, however, I saw a mighty mountain of turbulent water as wide as the eye could reach, a thousand torrents rushing as it were from the clouds, splashing and roaring down to the great falls, I thought the idea of the deluge must have begun there.  No aspect of nature ever gave me such a sense of power and terror.  I feared to remain where I stood.  The frightful waters seemed alive.  When I went back to the Canadian side I thought as much of Niagara as any one—had I seen the Duke of Argyll's recent published "Impressions" of them (he also discovered the Niagara rapids) before I went there, I should have approached Niagara Falls with feelings very different from those with which I first saw them.

    In the Guildhall, London, I have seen City orators point their merchant audience to the statues of great men there, and appeal to the historic glories of the country.  Such an audience would respond as though they had some interest in the appeal—feeling, however, that these things more concerned the "great families" who held the country, whom they make rich by their industry, who looked down upon them as buttermen or tallow-chandlers.  No orator addressing the common people employs these historic appeals to them.  The working class who are enlisted in the army, flogged and sent out to be shot, that their fathers may find their way to the poorhouse, under their hereditary rulers, are not so sensible of the glory of the country.  The working men, as a rule, have no substantial interest in the national glory: I mean those of them whose lot it is to supplicate for work, and who have to establish trades' unions to obtain adequate payment for it.  Yet I well know that England has things to be proud of which America cannot rival. [1]  At the same time we have, as Lord Beaconsfield discerned, "two nations" living side by side in this land.  What is wanted is that they shall be one in equity of means, knowledge, and pride.  Nothing surprised me more than to see the parks of New York, abutting Broadway, without a fence around the green-sward.  A million unresting feet passed by them, and none trampled on the delicate grass—while, in England, board schools put up a prison wall around them, so that poor children cannot see a flower-girl go by in the streets; and the back windows of the houses of mechanics in Lambeth remain blocked up, whereby no inmate can look on a green tree in the palace grounds.  In Florence, in Northampton, where the Holyoke mountain [2] looks on the ever-winding Connecticut River, as elsewhere, there are thousands of mansions to be seen without a rail around their lawns.  Acres of plantations lie unenclosed between the beautiful houses, where a crowd of wanderers might rest unchallenged, and watch mountain, river, and sky.  In England if an indigent wanderer sat down on house-ground or wayside, the probability is a policeman would come and look at him, the farmer would come and demand what he wanted, and the relieving officer would suggest to him that he had better pass on to his own parish.  In England the whole duty of man, as set down in the workman’s catechism, is to find out upon how little he can live.  In America, the workman sets himself to find out how much he ought to have to live upon, equitably compared with what falls to other classes.  He does not see exactly how to get it when he has found out the amount.  Co-operative equity alone can show him that.  No doubt workmen are better off in any civilized country than workmen were one hundred or two hundred years ago.  So are the rich.  The workmen whom I addressed in America I counselled not to trouble about comparisons as to their condition, but to remember that there is but one rule for rich and poor, workmen and employer — namely, that each should be free to get all he honestly can.  A wholesome distinction of America is that industry alone is universally honourable there, and has good chances.  There are no common people there, in the English sense.  When speaking in the Cooper Institute, New York, I was reminded that the audience would resent being so addressed. [3]  Every man in America feels as though he owns the country, because the charm of recognized equality and the golden chances of ownership have entered his mind.   He is proud of the statues and the public buildings.  The great rivers, the trackless prairies, the regal mountains, all seem his.  Even the steep kerb-stones of New York and Boston, which brought me daily distress, I was asked to admire—for some reason yet unknown to me.  In England nobody says to the visitor or foreigner when he first meets him, What do you think of England?  The people do not feel that they own the country, or have responsible control over it.  The country is managed by somebody else.  Not even members of Parliament know when base treaties are made in the nation’s name, and dishonouring wars are entered into, which the lives and earnings of their constituents may be confiscated to sustain.  All that our representatives can tell us is that that is an affair of the crown.  In America there is no crown, and the people are kings and they know it.  I had not landed on the American shores an hour, before I became aware that I was in a new nation, animated by a new life which I had never seen.  I was three days in the train going from Ottawa to Chicago.  It was my custom to spend a part of every day in the cosy smoking-saloon of the car, with its red velvet seats, and bright spacious-mouthed braziers for receiving lights or ashes.  My object was to study in detail the strange passengers who joined us.  Being on the railway there practically but one class and one fare, the gentleman and the workman, the lady and the mechanic’s wife, sit together without hesitation or diffidence.  A sturdy, unspeaking man, who seemed to be a mechanic, was generally in the smoking-saloon.  He never spoke, except to say "Would I take his seat?" when he thought I was incommoded by a particularly fat passenger by my side.  "It will suit me quite as well to smoke outside the car," he would civilly say, if I objected to putting him to inconvenience.  On the morning of the third day, he and I only were sitting together.  Wishing to find out whether he could or would talk, I asked him, "How far are we from Chicago?"  He looked at me with sudden amazement.  Black, stubbly hair covered his face (which had been unshaven for days, an unusual thing with Americans).  At my question every stubble seemed to start up as he laid his hand on my knee and said, "Have you never been to Chicago?"  "How could I?" I replied; "I am an Englishman travelling from London in order to see it."  All at once, looking at me with pity and commiseration, his little deep black eyes glistening like glow-worms in the night of his dark face, he exclaimed, laying his hand on my shoulder, that his words might be more expressive, "Sir, Chicago is the boss city of the universe," evidently thinking that I might make some futile attempt to compare it with some city of this world.  Afterwards I learned that this electric admirer of Chicago was the brakesman of the train.  Yet this man, who had probably driven into the fiery city a thousand times, had as much delight in it, and as much pride in it, as though he were the owner of it.  I soon found that it would not be a wise thing for a stranger to be of a different opinion.  As I rode into Chicago three hours later, I thought I had never seen such a lumbering, dingy, ramshackle, crowded, tumultuous, boisterous outside of a city before.  When asked my opinion again, amid the roar of cars and hurricane of every kind of wagons and vehicles, I framed one from which I never departed, namely, that considering the short time in which Chicago had been built and rebuilt, it was the most miraculous city I had ever seen.  This opinion was silent on many details, and the acumen of an American questioner is not easily foiled, but as I admitted something "miraculous" about the place my opinion was tolerated, as fulfilling essential conditions.  And when I came to see Chicago’s wondrous streets of business, its hotels in which populations of twenty ordinary English parishes would be lost, its splendid avenues, its fine, noble, far-spreading parks, and Lake Michigan stretching out like a sea on the city borders—it did seem to me a "miraculous city," quite apart from the happy days I spent there, as the guest of Mr. Charlton, of the Chicago and Alton railway, who travelled with me through Canada and half America, that I might see, without cost or care, the civic and natural marvels of the two countries.

    The first hour I was in New York, one, in friendly care for my reputation as a stranger, said to me, "Mind, if you get run over, do not complain—if you can articulate—as it will go against you on the inquest.  In America we run over anybody in the way, and if you are knocked down it will be considered your fault."  In America self-help (honest and sometimes dishonest) is a characteristic.  In Germany apprentices were required to travel to acquire different modes of working.  If young Englishmen could be sent a couple of years to take part in American business, they would come back much improved.  An eminent English professor, whom I lately asked whether it would not do this country good if we could get our peers to emigrate, answered, "No doubt, if you could smarten some of them up a bit first."  Everywhere in America you hear the injunction "Hold on!"  In every vessel and car there are means provided for doing it: for unless a man falls upon his feet—if he does fall—he finds people too busy to stop and pick him up.  The nation is in commotion.  Life in America is a battle and a march.  Freedom has set the race on fire—freedom, with the prospect of property.  Americans are a nation of men who have their own way, and do very well with it.  It is the only country where men are men in this sense, and the unusualness of the liberty bewilders many, who do wrong things in order to be sure they are free to do something.  This error is mostly made by new-comers, to whom freedom is a novelty; and it is only by trying eccentricity that they can test the unwonted sense of their power of self-disposal.  But as liberty grows into a habit, one by one the experimenters become conscious of the duty of not betraying the precious possession, by making it repulsive.  Perhaps self-assertion seems a little in excess of international requirements.  Many "citizens" give a stranger the impression that they do think themselves equal to their superiors, and superior to their equals; yet all of them are manlier than they would be through the ambition of each to be equals of anybody else.

    The effect of American inspiration on Englishmen was strikingly evident.  I met workmen in many cities whom I had known in former years in England.  They were no longer the same men.  Here their employers seldom or never spoke to them, [4] and the workmen were rather glad, as they feared the communication would relate to a reduction of wages.  They thought it hardly prudent to look a foreman or overseer in the face.  Masters are more genial, as a rule, in these days; but in the days when last I visited these workmen at their homes in Lancashire, it never entered into their heads to introduce me to their employers.  But when I met them in America they instantly proposed to introduce me to the mayor of the city.  This surprised me very much; for when they were in England they could not have introduced me to the relieving officer of their parish, with any advantage to me, had I needed to know him.  These men were still workmen, and they did introduce me to the mayor as "a friend of theirs;" and in an easy, confident manner, as one gentleman would speak to another, they said, "they should be obliged if he would show me the civic features of the city."  The mayor would do so, order his carriage, and with the most pleasant courtesy take me to every place of interest.  To this hour I do not know whom I wondered at most—the men or the mayor.  In some cases the mayor was himself a manufacturer, and it was a pleasure to see that the men were as proud of the mayor as they were of the city.

    One day a letter came, inviting me to Chautauqua Lake, saying that if I would allow it to be said that I would come to a convention of Liberals there, many other persons would go there to meet me, and then I should see everybody at once.  I answered that it was exactly what I wanted—"to see everybody at once."  In England we think a good deal of having to go ten miles into the country to hold a public meeting; but knowing Americans were more enterprising, I expected I should have to go seventeen miles there.  When the day arrived and I asked for a ticket for Chautauqua Lake, the clerk, looking at the money I put down, said, "Do you know you are seven hundred miles from that place?"  Having engaged to speak in the Parker Memorial Hall to the Twenty-eighth Congregational Church of Boston the next Sunday, there was no escape from a journey of fourteen hundred miles in the mean time, and I made it.  At Chautauqua was a sight I had never seen.  A hall, looking out on to the great lake, as full of amateur philosophers and philosopheresses—all with their heads full of schemes.  There were at least a hundred persons, each with an armful or a reticule-full of first principles, ready written out, for the government of mankind in general.  It was clear to me that the government at Washington will never be in the difficulty we were when Lord Hampton had only ten minutes in which to draw up for us a new Constitution—our Cabinet not having one on hand.  If President Hayes is ever in want of a policy, he will find a good choice at Chautauqua Lake.  My ancient friend Louis Masquerier had the most systematic scheme there of all of them.  I knew it well, for the volume explaining it was dedicated to me.  He had mapped out the whole globe into small homestead parallelograms.  An ingenious friend (Dr. Hollick) had kindly completed the scheme for him one day when it was breaking down.  He pointed out to Masquerier that there was a little hitch at the poles—where the meridian lines converge, which rendered perfect squares difficult to arrange there.  This was quite unforeseen by the homestead artificer.  The system could not give way, that was clear; and nature was obdurate at the poles.  So it was suggested that Masquerier should set apart the spaces at the poles to be planted with myrtle, sweet-briar, roses, and other aromatic plants, which might serve to diffuse a sweet scent over the homesteads otherwise covering the globe.  The inventor adopted the compromise, and thus the difficulty was, as Paley says, "gotten over;" and if Arctic explorers in the future should be surprised at finding a fragrant garden at the North Pole, they will know how it came there.  In Great Britain, where a few gentlemen consider it their province to make religion, politics, and morality for the people, it is counted ridiculous presumption that common persons should attempt to form opinions upon these subjects for themselves.  I know the danger to progress brought about by those whom Colonel Ingersoll happily calls its "fool friends."  Nevertheless, to me this humble and venturous activity of thought at Chautauqua was a welcome sight.  Eccentricity is better than the deadness of mind.  Out of the crude form of an idea the perfect idea comes in time.  From a boy I have been myself of Butler’s opinion that—

Nevertheless, since I am in the ship as much as others, and have to swim or sink with it, I am at least concerned to know on what principles, and to what port, it is being steered; and those are mere ballast who do not try to find as much out.  Dr. Erasmus Darwin's definition of a fool was "one who never tried an experiment."  In this sense there is hardly a fool in America—while the same sort of persons block up the streets in England—newspapers of note are published to encourage them to persevere in their imbecility, and they have the largest representation in Parliament of any class in the kingdom.  Everybody knows that no worse misfortune can happen to a man here than to have a new idea; while in America a man is not thought much of if he has not one on hand.

    Yet a visitor soon sees that everything is not perfect in America, and its thinkers and statesmen know it as well as we do.  But they cannot improve everything "right away."  We do not do that in England.  In America I heard men praised as "level-headed," without any regard to their being moral-headed.  I heard men called "smart" who were simply rascals.  Then I remembered that we had judges who gave a few months' imprisonment to a bank director who had plundered a thousand families, and five years' penal servitude to a man who had merely struck a lord.  In Chicago you can get a cup of good coffee without chicory at Race's served on a marble table, with cup and saucer not chipped, and a clean serviette, for five cents.  Yet you have to pay anywhere for having your shoes blacked four hundred per cent. more than in London.  The government there will give you one hundred and sixty acres of land, with trees upon it enough to build a small navy; and they charged me three shillings in Chicago for a light walking-stick which could be had in London for sixpence.  All sorts of things cheap in England are indescribably dear in America.  Protection must be a good thing for somebody: if the people like it, it is no business of ours.  We have, I remembered, something very much like it at home.  We are a nation of shopkeepers, and the shopkeeper's interest is to have customers; yet until lately we taxed every purchaser who came into a town.  If he walked in, which meant that he was poor and likely not to buy anything, the turnpike was free to him; but if he came on horseback, which implied that he had money in his pocket, we taxed his horse; and if he came in a carriage, which implied possession of still larger purchasing power, we taxed every wheel of his carriage to encourage him to keep away.  One day I said, that to this hour, our chancellor of the exchequer taxes every person who travels by railway, every workman going to offer his labour, every employer seeking hands, every merchant who travels to buy or sell: in an industrial country we tax every man who moves about in our trains.  Englishmen, who had been out of this country twenty years, could not believe this.  When they found that I was the chairman of a committee who had yet to agitate for free trade in locomotion in England, they were humiliated and ashamed that England had still to put up with the incredible impost.  Many things I had heard spoken of as absurd among Uncle Sam's people, seemed to me less so when I saw the conditions which have begotten their unusualness.  Here we regard America as the eccentric seed-land of Spiritism; but when I met the prairie schooners, [5] travelling into the lone plains of Kansas, I could understand that a solitary settler there would be very glad to have a spirit or two in his lone log-house.  Where no doctors can be had, the itinerant medicine-vender is a welcome visitor, and, providing his drugs are harmless, imagination effects a cure—imagination is the angel of the mind there.  We are apt to think that youths and maidens are too self-sufficient in their manners in those parts.  They could not exist at all in those parts, save for those qualities.  We regard railways as being recklessly constructed—but a railroad of any kind is a mercy if it puts remote settlers in communication with a city somehow.  If a bridge gives way like that on the Tay lately among us, fewer lives are lost there than would be worn out by walking and dragging produce over unbridged distances, and often going without needful things for the household, because they could not be got.

    In the United States there are newspapers of as great integrity, judges as pure, and members of Parliament as clean-handed as in England; but the public indignation at finding it otherwise is nothing like so great there as here.  John Stuart Mill said that the working classes of all countries lied—it being the vice of the slave caste—but English working men alone were ashamed of lying, and I was proud to find that my countrymen of this class have not lost this latent attribute of manliness; and I would rather they were known for the quality of speaking the truth, though the devil was looking them square in the face, than see them possess any repute for riches, or smartness without it.  Far be it from me to suggest that Americans, as a rule, do not possess the capacity of truth, but in trade they do not strike you as exercising the talent with the same success that they show in many other ways.  However, there is a certain kind of candour continually manifested, which has at least a negative merit.  If a "smart" American does a crooked thing, he does not pretend that it is straight.  When I asked what was understood to be the difference between a Republican and a Democrat, I was answered by one of those persons, too wise and too pure to be of any use in this world, who profess to be of no party—none being good enough for them; he said, "Republicans and Democrats profess different things, but they both do the same."  "Your answer," I replied, "comes very near the margin of giving me information.  What are the different things," I asked, "which they do profess?"  The answer was, "The Republicans profess to be honest, but the Democrats do not even profess that."  My sympathies, I intimated, lay therefore with the Republicans, since they who admit they know what they ought to be, probably incline to it.  However impetuous Americans may be, they have one great grace of patience: they listen like gentlemen.  An American audience, anywhere gathered together, make the most courteous listeners in the world.  If a speaker has only the gift of making a fool of himself, nowhere has he so complete an opportunity of doing it.  If he has the good fortune to be but moderately interesting, and obviously tries in some humble way, natural to him, to add to their information, they come to him afterwards and congratulate him with Parisian courtesy.  At Washington, where I spoke at the request of General Mussey and Major Ford, and in Cornell University at Ithaca, where, at the request of the acting president professor, W. C. Russell, I addressed the Students Moralities of Co-operative Commerce, there were gentlemen and ladies present who knew more of everything than I did about anything; yet they conveyed to me their impression that I had in some way added to their information.  Some political colleagues of mine have gone to America.  In this country they had a bad time of it.  In the opinion of most official persons of their day, they ought to have been in prison; and some narrowly escaped it.  In America they ultimately obtained State employment, which here they never would have obtained to their latest day.  Yet their letters home were so disparaging of America, as to encourage all defamers of its people and institutions.  This incited me to look for every feature of discontent.  What I saw to the contrary I did not look for—but could not overlook when it came upon me.  John Stuart Mill I knew was at one time ruined by repudiators in America, but that did not lead him to condemn that system of freedom which must lead to public honour coming into permanent ascendancy.  For myself, I am sufficiently a Comtist [A disciple of Comte; a positivist - Ed.] to think that humanity is greater and sounder than any special men; and believe that great conditions of freedom and self-action can alone render possible general progress.  Great evils in American public life, from which we are free in England, have been so dwelt upon here, that the majority of working men will be as much surprised as I was, to find that American life has in it elements of progress which we in England lack.  Still I saw there were spots in the great sun.  The certainty of an earthquake every four years in England would not more distress us or divert the current of business, than the American system of having a hundred thousand office-holders, liable to displacement every presidential election.  Each placeman has, I "calculate," at least nine friends who watch and work to keep him where he is.  Then there are a hundred thousand more persons, candidates for the offices to be vacated by those already in place.  Each of these aspirants has on the average as many personal friends who devote themselves to getting him installed.  So there are two millions of the most active politicians in the country always battling for places—not perhaps regardless altogether of principle, but subordinating the assertion of principle to the command of places.  The wonder is that the progress made in America occurs at all.  Colonel Robert Ingersoll, during the enchanted days when I was his guest in Washington, explained it all to me, and gave reasons for it with the humour and wit for which he is unrivalled among public speakers among us: nevertheless I remain of the same opinion still.  This system, although a feature of republican administration, is quite distinct from republican principle, and has to be changed, though the duration of the practice renders it as difficult to alter as it would be to change the diet of a nation.

    It would take too long now to recount half the droll instances in which our cousins of the New World rise above and fall below ourselves.  Their habit of interviewing strangers is the most amusing and useful institution conceivable.  I have personal knowledge, and others more than myself, of visitors to England of whom the public never hear.  Many would be glad to call upon them and show them civility or give them thanks for services they have rendered to public progress, elsewhere, in one form or other.  But the general public never know of their presence.  These sojourners among us possess curious, often valuable knowledge, and no journalists ask them any questions, or announce, or describe them, or inform the town where they are to be found.  Every newspaper reader in the land might be the richer in ideas for their visit, but they pass away with their unknown wealth of experience, of which he might have partaken.  There is no appointment on the press to be more coveted than that of being an interviewer to a great journal.  The art of interviewing is not yet developed and systematized as it might he.  Were I asked "What is the beginning of wisdom?"  I should answer, "It is the art of asking questions."  The world has had but one master of the art, and Socrates has had no successor.  With foolish questioning most persons are familiar—wise questioning is a neglected study.  The first interviewer who did me the honour to call upon me at the Hoffman House in New York, represented a Democratic paper of acknowledged position: being a stranger to the operation of interviewing, I first interviewed the interviewer, and put to him more questions than he put to me.  When I came to read his report all my part in the proceedings recounted was left out.  He no doubt knew best what would interest the readers of the journal he represented.  I told him that an English gentleman of political repute was interested in an American enterprise, and had asked me to go to north Alabama with a view to judge of its fitness for certain emigrants.  I put the question to him whether in the South generally it mattered what an emigrant's political views were, if he was personally an addition to the industrial force and property of the place, observing incidentally that I saw somebody had just shot a doctor through the back; who had decided views about something.  His answer has never passed from my memory.  It was this: "Well, if a man will make his opinions prominent, what can he expect?"  I answered, that might be rather hard on me, since though I might not make my opinions "prominent," they might be thought noticeable, and a censor with a Derringer might not discriminate in my favour. [6]  This, however, did not deter me from going South.  The yellow fever lay in my way at Memphis, and I did not feel as though I wanted the yellow fever.  I was content with going near enough to it to fall in with people who had it, and who were fleeing from the infected city.  No doubt the rapidity of my chatter upon strange topics did confuse some interviewers.  Now and then I read a report of an interview, and did not know that it related to me until I read the title of it.  One day I met a wandering English gentleman, who had just read an interview with me, when he exclaimed, "My dear Holyoake! how could you say that?" when I answered, "My dear Verdantson! how could you suppose I ever did say it?"  When in remote cities I fell in with interviewers who were quite unfamiliar with my ways of thought and speech, I tried the experiment of saying exactly the opposite of what I meant.  To my delight next day I found it had got turned upside down in the writer’s mind, and came out exactly right.  But I had to he careful with whom I did this, for most interviewers were very shrewd and skilful, and put me under great obligations for their rendering of what I said. [7]  If English press writers interviewed visitors from a country unfamiliar to them, they would make as many misconceptions as are ever met with in America.  I have never known but two men, not Englishmen—Mazzini and Mr. G. W. Smalley, the London correspondent of the New York Tribune—who understood public affairs in England as we understand them ourselves.  Even Louis Blanc is hardly their equal, though a rival in that rare art.

    When leaving England I was asked by the Co-operative Guild of London to ascertain in my travels in America what were the conditions and opportunities of organizing co-operative emigration.  As this was one of the applications of the co-operative principle meditated by the co-operators of 1830, and which has slept out of sight of this generation, I received the request with glad surprise, and undertook the commission.

    Pricked by poverty and despair, great numbers of emigrant families go out alone.  With slender means and slenderer knowledge, they are the prey, at every stage, of speculators, agents, and harpies.  Many become penniless by the way, and never reach their intended place.  They hang about the large cities, and increase the competition among workmen already too many there.  Unwelcome, and unable to obtain work, they become a new burden on reluctant and overburdened local charity, and their lot is as deplorable as that from which they have fled.  Those who hold out until they reach the land, ignorant of all local facts of soil, climate, or malaria, commence "to fight the wilderness"—a mighty, tongueless, obdurate, mysterious adversary, who gives you opulence if you conquer him—but a grave if he conquers you.  What silence and solitude, what friendlessness and desolation, the first years bring!  What distance from aid in sickness, what hardship if their stores are scant—what toil through pathless woods and swollen creeks to carry stock to market and bring back household goods!  Loss of civilized intercourse, familiarity with danger, the determined persistence, the iron will, the animal struggle of the settler’s life, half animalizes him also.  No wonder we find the victor rich and rugged.  The wonder is that refinement is as common in America as it is.  Stout-hearted emigrants do succeed by themselves, and achieve marvellous prosperity.  Nor would I discourage any from making the attempt.  To mitigate the difficulties by devices of co-operative foresight is a work of mercy and morality.  It is not the object of the London Guild to incite emigration, nor determine its destination; but to enable any who want to emigrate to form an intelligent decision, and to aid them to carry it out with the greatest chances of personal and moral advantage.  In New York I found there had lately been formed a "Co-operative Colony Aid Association" (represented by the Worker, published by Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, and edited by the Rev. R. Heber Newton), of which Mr. E. E. Barnum, Dr. Felix Adler, Mr. E. V. Smalley, the Rev. Dr. Rylance, the Rev. Dr. Charles F. Deems, Mr. Courtland Palmer, Joseph Seligman, the Hon. John Wheeler, and others were promoters.  From inquiries in the city (which I, a stranger, thought it right to make) I found that these were persons whose names gave the society prestige.  Mrs. Thompson was regarded in the States, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts is in England, for her many discerning acts of munificence.  To them I was indebted for the opportunity of addressing a remarkable audience in the Cooper Institute, New York—an audience which included journalists, authors, and thinkers on social questions, State Socialists, and Communists—an audience which only could be assembled in New York.  The Rev. Dr. Robert Collyer presided.  The object of the Colony Aid Association is to select and purchase land, devise the general arrangements of park, co-operative store, and school-house; erect simple dwellings, and provide food for the colonists until crops accrue; arrange for the conveyance of emigrants, from whatever land they come, to their intended settlement—providing them with escort and personal direction until they have mastered the conditions of their new life.  The promoters take only a moderate interest upon the capital employed, affording these facilities of colonial life at cost price; acting themselves on the entirely wholesome rule of keeping their proceedings clear alike of profit and charity.  There is no reason why emigration should not be as pleasant as an excursion, and competence rendered secure to all emigrants of industry, honesty, and common sense.  It soon appeared to me that land-selling was a staple trade in America and Canada—that no person knew the whole of either country.  From visits and letters I received from land-holders and agents, I doubted not that there were many honest among them.  But unless you had much spare time for inquiry, and were fortunate in being near those who knew them, it would be difficult to make out which the honest were.  Evidently what was wanted was complete and trustworthy information, which everybody must know to be such.  There was but one source whence this information could issue, and it seemed a duty to solicit it there.  If information of general utility was to be obtained, it was obviously becoming in me, as an Englishman, first to ask it of the Canadian government, and for this reason I went over to Canada.

    Canaan was nothing to Canada.  Milk and honey are very well, but Canada has cream and peaches, grapes and wine.  I went gathering grapes in Hamilton by moonlight—their flavour was excellent, and bunches abundant beyond imagination.  The mayor of Hamilton did me the honour of showing me the fruits of Canada, on exhibition in a great fair then being held.  Fruit-painters in water-colours should go to Canada.  Hues so new, various, and brilliant have never been seen in an English exhibition of painters in water-colours.  Nor was their beauty deceptive, for I was permitted to taste the fruit, when I found that its delicate hue was but an "outward sign of its inward" richness of flavour.  It was unexpected to find the interior of the town hall of Hamilton imposing with grace of design, rich with the wood-carver's art, relieved by opulence of space and convenience of arrangement far exceeding anything observed in the Parliament houses of Ottawa or of Washington.  The Parliamentary buildings of Canada, like those of the capital of Washington, are worthy of the great countries in which they stand but were I a subject of the Dominion, or a citizen of the United States, I would go without one dinner a year in order to subscribe to a fund for paying wood-carvers to impart to the debating chambers a majestic sense of national durability associated with splendour of art.  The State House of Washington and the library of the Parliament of Ottawa, have rooms possessing qualities which are not exceeded in London by any devoted to similar purposes.  The dining-room of the Hotel Brunswick in Madison Square, New York, was a reflected beauty derived from its bright and verdant surroundings with which its interior is coherent.  But the Windsor Hotel of Montreal impressed me more than any other I saw.  The entrance-hall, with its vast and graceful dome, gave a sense of space and dignity which the hotels of Chicago and Saratoga, enormous as they are, lacked.  The stormy lake of Ontario, its thousand islands, and its furious rapids, extending four hundred miles, with the American and Canadian shores on either hand, gave me an idea of the scenic glory of Canada, utterly at variance with the insipid rigour and frost-bound gloom which I had associated with the country.  A visitor from America does not travel thirty miles into Canada without feeling that the shadow of the crown is there.  Though there was manifestly less social liberty among the people, the civic and political independence of the Canadian cities seemed to me to equal that of the United States.  The abounding courtesy of the press, and the cultivated charm of expression by the Spectator of Hamilton and the Globe of Toronto, were equal to anything I observed anywhere.  And not less were the instances of private and official courtesy of the country.

    At Ottawa I had the honour of an interview with the premier, Sir John Macdonald, at his private residence.  The premier of Canada had the repute, I knew, of bearing a striking likeness to the late premier of England; but I was not prepared to find the resemblance so remarkable.  Excepting that Sir John is less in stature than Lord Beaconsfield, persons who saw them apart might mistake one for the other.  On presenting a letter from Mr. Witton (of Hamilton, a former member of the Canadian Parliament), myself and Mr. Charlton were admitted to an audience with Sir John, whom I found a gentleman of frank and courtly manners, who permitted me to believe that he would take into consideration the proposal I made to him, that the government of Canada should issue a blue-book upon the emigrant conditions of the entire Dominion, similar to those formerly given to us in England by Lord Clarendon "On the Condition of the Laboring Classes Abroad," furnishing details of the prospects of employment, settlement, education, tenure of land, climatic conditions, and the purchasing power of money.  Sir John kindly undertook to receive from me, as soon as I should be able to draw it up, a scheme of particulars, similar to that which I prepared some years ago, at the request of Lord Clarendon.  A speech of Lord Beaconsfield's was at that time much discussed by the American and Canadian press, as Sir John Macdonald had recently been on a visit to Lord Beaconsfield.  Sir John explained to me in conversation that in the London reports of Lord Beaconsfield’s speech, there appeared the mistake of converting "wages of sixteen dollars per month" into "wages of sixteen shillings per day," and of describing emigration "west of the State" as emigration from the "Western States."  This enabled me to point out to Sir John that if these misapprehensions could arise in the mind of one so acute as Lord Beaconsfield, as to information given by an authority so eminent and exact as Sir John himself, it showed how great was the need which the English public must feel of accurate and official information upon facts, with which they were necessarily unfamiliar.  Afterwards I had the pleasure of dining with the minister of agriculture, the Hon. John Henry Pope.  Both myself and my friend Mr. Charlton, who was also a guest, were struck with the Cobbett-like vigour of statement which characterized Mr. Pope.  He explained the Canadian theory of protection as dispassionately as Cobden would that of free trade.  Mr. Pope had himself, I found, caused to appear very valuable publications of great service to emigrants.  He admitted, however, that there might be advantage in combining all the information in one book which would be universally accessible, and known to be responsible.  I was struck by one remark of this minister worth repeating: "In Canada," he said, "we have but one enemy—cold, and he is a steady, but manageable adversary, for whose advent we can prepare and whose time of departure we know.  While in America, malaria, ague, fluctuation of temperature are intermittent.  Science and sanitary prevision will, in time, exterminate some dangers, while watchfulness will always be needed in regard to others."

    Subsequently I thought it my duty to make a similar proposal to the government of Washington.  Colonel Robert Ingersoll introduced me to Mr. Evarts, the secretary of state, who with the courtesy I had heard ascribed to him, gave immediate attention to the subject.  Looking at me with his wise, penetrating eyes, he said, "You know, Mr. Holyoake, the difficulty the Federal government would have in obtaining the collective information you wish."  Then he stated the difficulties with precision, showing that he instantly comprehended the scope of the proposed red-book; without at all suggesting that the difficulties were obstacles.  So far as I could observe, an American statesman, of any quality, does not believe in "obstacles" to any measure of public utility.  I was aware that the Federal government had no power to obtain from the different States reports of the kind required, but Mr. Evarts admitted that if he were to ask the governor of each State to furnish him with the information necessary for emigrant use, with a view to include it in an official account of the emigrant features of all the States, he would no doubt receive it.  I undertook, on my return to England ,to forward to him, after consulting with the Co-operative Guild, a scheme of the kind of red-book required.  Mr. Evarts permitted me to observe that many persons, as he must well know, come to America and profess themselves dissatisfied.  They find many things better than they could have hoped to find them, but since they were not what they expected, they were never reconciled.  The remedy was to provide real information of the main things they would find.  Then they would come intelligently if they came at all, and stay contented.  General Mussey did me the favour of taking me to the White House, and introducing me to the president and Mrs. Hayes, where I had the opportunity also of meeting General Sherman, who readily conversed upon the subject of my visit, and made many observations very instructive to me.  Mrs. Hayes is a very interesting lady, of engaging ways and remarkable animation of expression, quite free from excitement.  She had been in Kansas with the president a few days before, and kindly remarked as something I should be glad to hear, that she found on the day they left that every coloured person who had arrived there from the South was in some place of employment.  The president had a bright, frank manner; and he listened with such a grace of patience to the nature and reason of the request I had made to Mr. Evarts, and which I asked him to sanction, if he approved of it, that I began to think that my pleasure at seeing him would end with my telling my story.  He had, however, only taken time to hear entirely to what it amounted, when he explained his view of it with a sagacity and completeness and a width of illustration which surprised me.  He described to me the different qualities of the various nationalities of emigrants in the States, expressing—what I had never heard any one do before—a very high opinion of the Welsh, whose good sense and success as colonists had come under his observation.  Favourable opinions were expressed by leading journals in America upon the suggestion above described.  To some it seemed of such obvious utility that wonder was felt that it had never been made before.  If its public usefulness continues apparent after due consideration, no doubt a book of the nature in question will be issued.

    There is no law in America which permits co-operation to be commenced in the humble, unaided way in which it has arisen in England.  When I pointed this out to the gentleman of the Colony Aid Association, the remark was made, "Then we will get a law for the purpose."  In England, working men requiring an improvement in the law have thought themselves fortunate in living till the day when a member of Parliament could be induced to put a question on the subject; and the passing of a bill has been an expectation inherited by their children, and not always realized in their time.  Emerson has related that when it was found that the pensions awarded to soldiers disabled in the war, or to the families of those who were killed, fell into the hands of unscrupulous "claim agents," a private policeman in New York conceived the plan of a new law which would enable every person entitled to the money to surely receive it.  Obtaining leave of absence he went to Washington, and obtained, on his own representation, the passing of two acts which effected this reform.  I found the policeman to he an old friend of mine, Mr. George S. McWatters, whom I found now, to be an officer of customs in New York.  An instance of this kind is unknown in this country.  Emerson remarks that, "having freedom in America, this accessibility to legislators, and promptitude of redressing wrong, are the means by which it is sustained and extended."

    Before leaving Washington, I thought it my duty to call at the British Embassy, and communicate to his Excellency Sir Edward Thornton particulars of the request I had made to the governments of Canada and of the United States; since if his Excellency should be able to approve of the object thereof, it would be an important recommendation of it.  I pointed out to Sir Edward that "though public documents were issued by the departments of both governments, the classes most needing them knew neither how to collect or collate them, and reports of interested agents could not be wholly trusted; while a government will not lie, nor exaggerate, nor, but rarely, conceal the truth.  Since the British government do not discourage emigration, and cannot prevent it, it is better that our poor fellow-countrymen should be put in possession of information which will enable them to go out with their eyes open, instead of going out, as hitherto, with their eyes mostly shut."  I ought to add here that the Canadian minister of agriculture has sent me several valuable works issued in the Dominion, and that the American government have presented me with many works of a like nature, and upwards of five hundred large maps of considerable value, all of which I have placed at the disposal of the Guild of Co-operation in London, for dispersion amid centres of working men, with whom the founder of the Guild, Mr. Hodgson Pratt, is in communication.

    Because I admired many things in America, I did not learn to undervalue my own country, but came back thinking more highly of it on many accounts than I did before.  Not a word escaped me which disparaged it.  In Canada, as well as in America, I heard expressed the oddest ideas imaginable of the decadence of England.  I always answered that John Bull was as sure-footed, if not, quite so nimble, as Brother Jonathan; that England would always hold up its wilful head; and should the worse come to be very bad, Uncle Sam would superannuate England, and apportion it an annuity to enable it to live comfortably; doing this out of regard to the services John Bull did to his ancestors long ago, and for the goodwill the English people have shown Uncle Sam in their lucid intervals.  As yet, I added, England has inexhaustible energies of its own.  But lately it had Cobden with his passion for international prosperity; and John Stuart Mill with his passion for truth; it has still Bright with his passion for justice; Gladstone with his passion for conscience; and Lord Beaconsfield with his passion for—himself; and even that is generating in the people a new passion for democratic independence.  The two worlds with one language will know how to move with equal greatness side by side.  Besides the inexhaustible individuality and energy of Americans proper, the country is enriched by all the unrest and genius of Europe.  I was not astonished that America was "big" I knew that before.  What I was astonished at was the inhabitants.  Nature made the country; it is freedom which has made the people.  I went there without prejudice, belonging to that class which cannot afford to have prejudices.  I went there not to see something which I expected to see, but to see what there was to be seen, what manner of people bestrode those mighty territories, and bow they did it, and what they did it for in what spirit, in what hope, and with what prospects.  I never saw the human mind at large before acting on its own account—unhampered by prelate or king.  Every error and every virtue strive there for mastery, but humanity has the best of the conflict, and progress is uppermost.

    Co-operation, which substitutes evolution for revolution in securing competence to labour, may have a great career in the New World.  In America the Germans have intelligence; the French brightness, the Welsh persistence, the Scotch that success which comes to all men who know how to lie in wait to serve.  The Irish attract all sympathy to them by their humour of imagination and boundless capacity of discontent.  The English maintain their steady purpose, and look with meditative, bovine eyes upon the novelties of life around them, wearing out the map of a new path with looking at it, before making up their mind to take it; but the fertile and adventurous American, when he condescends to give co-operation attention, will devise new applications of the principle unforeseen here.  In America I received deputations from real State Socialists, but did not expect to find that some of them were Englishmen.  But I knew them as belonging to that class of politicians at home who were always expecting something to be done for them, and who had not acquired the wholesome American instinct of doing something for themselves.  Were State workshops established in that country, they would not have a single occupant in three months.  New prospects open so rapidly in America, and so many people go in pursuit of them, that I met with men who had been in so many places that they seemed to have forgotten where they were born.  If the bit of paternal government could be got into the mouth of an American, it would drop out in a day—he opens his mouth so often to give his opinion on things in general.  The point which seemed to be of most interest to American thinkers, was that feature of co-operation which enables working men to acquire capital without having any, to save without diminishing any comfort, to grow rich by the accumulation of savings which they had never put by, through intercepting profits by economy in distribution.  Meditating self-employment by associative gains, English co-operators do not complain of employers who they think treat them unfairly, nor enter into defiant negotiations, nor make abject supplications for increase of wages; they take steps to supersede unpleasant employers.  With steam transit ready for every man’s service, with the boundless and fruitful fields of Australia, America, and Canada open to them, the policy of self-protection is to withdraw from those employers and places with whom or where no profitable business can be done.  To dispute with capital which carries a sword is a needless and disastrous warfare, even if victory should attend the murderous struggle.  Even the negro of the South has learned the wisdom of withdrawing himself.  He has learned to fight without striking a blow; he leaves the masters who menace him.  If he turned upon them he would be cut down without hesitation or mercy.  By leaving them, their estates become worthless, and he causes his value to be perceived without the loss of a single life.

    I learned in America two things never before apparent to me, and to which I never heard a reference at home: first, that the dispersion of unrequited workmen in Europe should be a primary principle of popular amelioration, which would compel greater changes in the quality of freedom and industrial equity than all the speculations of philosophers, or the measures of contending politicians; secondly, that the child of every poor man should be educated for an emigrant, and trained and imbued with a knowledge of unknown countries, and inspired with the spirit of adventure therein; and that all education is half worthless—is mere mockery of the poor child’s fortune—which does not train him in physical strength, in the art of "fighting the wilderness," and such mechanical knowledge as shall conduce to success therein.  I am for workmen being given whatever education gentlemen have, and including in it such instruction as shall make a youth so much of a carpenter and a farmer that he shall know how to clear ground, put up a log-house, and understand land, crops, and the management of live stock.  Without this knowledge, a mechanic, or clerk, or even an M.A. of Oxford, is more helpless than a common farm-labourer, who cannot spell the name of the poor-house which sent him out.  We have in Europe surplus population.  Elsewhere lie rich and surplus acres.  The new need of progress is to transfer overcrowding workmen to the unoccupied prairies.  Parents shrink from the idea of their sons having to leave their own country; but they have to do this when they become soldiers—the hateful agents of empire lately—carrying desolation and death among people as honest as themselves, but more unfortunate.  Half the courage which leads young men to perish at Isandula, or on the rocks of Afghanistan, would turn into a paradise the wildest wilderness in the world of which they would become the proprietors.  While honest men are doomed to linger anywhere in poverty and precariousness, this world is not fit for a gentleman to live in.  Dives may have his purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day.  I, for one, pray that the race of Dives may increase; but what I wish also is, that never more shall a Lazarus be found at his gates.

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.

NOTES.

 
1.     Americans are not lacking in generous admissions herein, as any one may see in William Winters "Trip to England."  The reader must go far to find more graceful pages of appreciation of the historic, civic, and scenic beauties of this country.
 
2.    In an historic churchyard at the bottom of the mountain is the grave of Mary Pynchon, the wife of Eslzur Holyoke, the early English settler, whose name the mountain bears.  Among the commonly feeble epitaphs of churchyards hers is remarkable for its grace and vigour.  It says:—

 
3.    The Rev. R. Heber Newton said to me, "Remember, Mr. Holyoake, we have no 'common people' in America.  We may have a few uncommon ones."
 
4.    Long years ago, when I first knew Rochdale, workmen at Mr. Bright's mills used to tell me with pride, that he was not like other employers.  He not only inquired about them, but of them; and to this day they will stop him in the mill yard and ask his advice in personal difficulties, when they are sure of willing and friendly counsel from him.
 
5.    A long, rickety wagon drawn generally by one horse, carrying the emigrant, his family and furniture, in search of a new settlement.
 
6.    We are not without experience somewhat of this kind in England.  At Bolton, when Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., was lecturing there on the "Cost of the Crown," a very harmless subject, one of the royalists of the town hurled a brick through the window of the hall, intended for the speaker, which killed one of the audience.  Sir Charles was merely "making his opinions prominent."
 
7.    The Kansas City Times published an "Interview with Gen. George Holyoake."  This was discerning courtesy.  Down there "difficulties" had often occurred, and a "general" being supposed to have pistollic acquirements, I was at once put upon a level with any emergency.  It was in Kansas City, where a judge trying a murder case said to those present—"Gentlemen, the court wishes you would let somebody die a natural death down here, if only to show strangers what an excellent climate we have."

 
From

THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN 1810-1890.
RECOLLECTIONS

by

W. J. LINTON.

    Of two men with whom I had relations, George Jacob Holyoake and Charles Bradlaugh, I must now speak, that I may not be thought afraid to do so: not afraid, but indeed unwilling so far as concerns Holyoake, with whom for some years I had close connection.  He began his public life by a foolish provocation of prosecution for blasphemy, thereby gaining such credit and notoriety as might be due to the "Last Martyr for Atheism."  With such object in view, the martyrdom was of small account; but, taken as only the rash impulsiveness of an over-earnest young man, it gave him admittance to the ranks of lovers of free thought.  So welcomed and made much of, he worked himself up to be the leader of a party, the party of those who considered freethought and disbelief to be synonymous terms, who may indeed be likened to the bird which, escaping from its cage, perches on the next tree, not knowing how nor caring to attempt a farther flight, and whose monotonous song is merely the contented inane reiteration of "I am free."  Looking back upon Holyoake's work, I can give no better account of it so far as free thought was concerned.  But independently of that, he had place among us for his adhesion to the principles of the Charter, and for some aidance in the cooperative endeavours of the time: not by any means of the importance which he now claims for himself.  And he was liked as a kindly-natured, amiable man.  So he made his way, a poor speaker, though not wanting words, not so much leading or swaying an audience as expressing what it desired to hear, and therefore popular,—the mouthpiece of a party that only wanted to be encouraged on its predetermined road.  Looking back, I find in his writing in his paper—the Reasoner—little of original thought or sound reasoning.  Half-educated and weak, he never grew.  Yet after a time he was dissatisfied.  Staying in my house at Miteside for some days, seeing his state of doubtfulness, I counseled him to make his condition of health an excuse for discontinuing the Reasoner for a few weeks, to give him time to seriously sift his own mind.  "If," I said, "you find yourself still convinced of the righteousness and usefulness of your course, you have sufficient hold on your followers to resume work, all the better for your rest; if, on the other hand, you find your path is really tending nowhere, be brave enough to abandon it, and apply your future differently!"  He did not follow my advice, but long afterwards said that he wished he had.

    In fact, he was getting weary of the poor reiteration of Atheism, the word standing between him and friends who could not recognise him openly under such a garment.  So at last he doffed the unseemliness and put on what seemed the more respectable garb of "Secularism," rather a vague term which did not too exactly describe his still-continued nibblings at religious theories and wranglings upon theological formulas.  I began to find him inconsistent and slippery; and when, as it seemed to me, he was also false to the popular cause, and only self-seeking, I parted from him, not without harsh words which even now, rereading them, I can not honestly call back or soften.

 
Letter from Harriet Martineau to Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the Liberator (New York) [see also article above].

    "DEAR SIR,—I see with much surprise and more concern an attack in your paper upon the character of Mr. G. J. Holyoake, signed by Mr. W. J. Linton.  I could have wished, with others of your readers, that you had waited for some evidence, or other testimony, before committing your most respected paper to an attack on such a man from such a quarter.  Of Mr. Linton it is not necessary for me to say anything, because what I say of Mr. Holyoake will sufficiently show what I think of his testimony.

    "I wish I could give you an idea of the absurdity that it appears to us in this country to charge Mr. Holyoake with sneaking, with desiring to conceal his opinions, and get rid of the word 'Atheism.'  His whole life, since he grew up, has been one of public advocacy of the principles he holds, of weekly publication of them under his own signature, and of constant lecturing in public places.  One would think that a man who has been tried and imprisoned for Atheism, and has ever since continued to publish the opinions which brought him into that position, might be secure, if any man might, from the charge of sneaking.  The adoption of the term Secularism is justified by its including a large number of persons who are not Atheists, and uniting them for action which has Secularism for its object, and not Atheism.  On this ground, and because by the adoption of a new term a vast amount of impediment from prejudice is got rid of, the use of the name Secularism is found advantageous; but it in no way interferes with Mr. Holyoake's profession of his own unaltered views on the subject of a First Cause.  As I am writing this letter, I may just say for myself that I constantly and eagerly read Mr. Holyoake's writings, though many of them are on subjects—or occupied with stages of subjects—that would not otherwise detain me, because I find myself always morally the better for the influence of the noble spirit of the man, for the calm courage, the composed temper, the genuine liberality, and unintermitting justice with which he treats all manner of persons, incidents, and topics. I certainly consider the conspicuous example of Mr. Holyoake's kind of heroism to be one of our popular educational advantages at this time.

    "You have printed Mr. Linton's account of Mr. Holyoake.  I request you to print mine.  I send it simply as an act of justice.  My own acquaintance with Mr. Holyoake is on the ground of his public usefulness, based on his private virtues; and I can have no other reason for vindicating him than a desire that a cruel wrong should be as far as possible undone.  And I do it myself because I am known to your readers as an Abolitionist of sufficiently long standing not to be likely to be deceived in regard to the conduct and character of any one who speaks on the subject.
                                                     "I am, yours very respectfully,
                                                                                     "HARRIET MARTINEAU.
"LONDON, November 1, 1855,"

 
Boston Daily Globe
Sept. 11, 1879.

CO-OPERATION

Meeting of the Homestead Association—Address by G. J. Holyoake
of London—Annual Report.

    The second annual meeting of the Homestead Association was held at Stacy Hall, Washington street, last evening.  At about 8 o'clock Mr. A. J. Mercer called the meeting to order, and Mr. Josiah Quincy, stepping to the platform, introduced Mr. George Jacob Holyoake of London, England, as a pioneer in the co-operative movement.

    Mr. Holyoake, who was received with great applause, said that on his first arrival he sought out a co-operative association, in which he knew he could at once feel at home.  During his brief stay here he had seen much from which the people of England could learn with advantage.  But he confessed to a feeling of astonishment at the difficulties which had stood in the way of establishing these societies.  The necessity of going to the legislature for a charter struck him as somewhat peculiar, and he was surprised at the opposition raised to the scheme by the various savings banks of the state. In England....

It Was Only Necessary to File a Declaration

...with the registrar of friendly societies, and they at once attained a legal footing.  The only difficulties they experienced was in teaching the working-people the necessity for thrift and the advantages to be gained by an efficient system of self-help, which was the underlying principle or force of co-operation.  He gave an interesting account of the difficulties attending the formation of the Rochdale Co-operative Society, and of the self-denying and gratuitous work given to make it a success.  It was scarcely possible to realize the poor condition of the Rochdale weavers in 1843.  When they met in a miserable room and determined to try and experiment, the small sum of two pence per week was levied upon them.  Small as the sum was, it had to be collected weekly, and "missionaries of the movement used the day of rest for the purpose of collecting these sums, for it was not safe to leave the collection even of the small sum until later in the week.  Now the same society realizes a profit of £200,000 per annum.  He doubted whether the stores could be so successful in large cities, for the many attractions and allurements....

Tended Rather to Spending Than Saving.

    The function of the co-operative store was not to undersell grocers or other tradesmen.  The most efficient stores which those which rather kept up the market prices.  They were principally intended rather to create capital, and the simple method of doing so was well illustrated.  A person might become a member by the payment of a small sum, and the profit on the goods he or she bought—that is the difference between the wholesale price, plus expenses, and the retail figure—was placed to the credit of the member until they reached the price of a share, which was then assigned to the person so purchasing.  These co-operative societies were intimately associated with the political advance in England, for, although they made a difference between social questions and those of politics, the effect of co-operation had been beneficial.  They had created a better social condition, but political freedom was by no means forgotten.  The stores could be made attractive to the people.  One of the best things, he said, in the management of such stores was that the clerks were pledged to use the utmost care in distinctly....

Stating the Quality of Goods

    ...sold, so that implicit reliance could be placed in the articles purchased in the store.  But the main feature of these societies was the creation and diffusion of capital.  Capital is the nursing mother of every blessing, and these societies aimed to place it in more hands. In spite of bad land laws, expensive conveyancing and other impediments, from which this country was happily free, co-operative building societies in England had flourished.  Co-operation was the secret of a successful advance of the working people.  Without revolution, spoliation or destruction the change of condition would be effected, and the working people be elevated. Mr. Holyoake resumed his seat amidst loud applause.

    Mr. Quincy briefly explained the course pursued by the society, and enlarged on the advantage of the association as an investment over the savings banks.  The report submitted tonight showed a dividend of eight per cent., better than any savings bank was able to pay.

    After the speaking the ballots for officers for the next year were counted, the result being as follows:

    President, Joseph S. Ropes; vice-president, Charles H. Sweeney; secretary, D. Eldredge; treasurer, Thomas Swadkins, Jr.; directors, A. J. Mercer, Samuel K. Head, George L. Pierce, John H. Putnam, D. B. Fletcher, Dan G. Drew, Abel Head, R. C. Habberley, William F. Brenenstuthl, F. herbert Odell, W. C. Raymond, Joel F. Brown, J. Sedgwick, John S. Verity, Thomas Marshall, Joseph M. Ford; auditors, William H. Woodbury, Charles A. Keyes, Arthur T. Kloder.

    The report submitted to the meeting shows 257 members holding 1253 shares.  The annual interest earned by the shares has been as follows: First six months, 6 per cent.; second six months, 6 per cent.; third six months, 6 per cent.; fourth (last) six months, 8 per cent."

 
Boston Daily Globe,
Feb. 6, 1881.

GEORGE ELIOT.

George Jacob Holyoake's Reminiscences
of the Novelist.

    In the last number of the Free Religious Index George Jacob Holyoake writes from London as follows:

    There is no instance of two other persons being associated in life so eminent in diversity of capacity as George Henry Lewes and George Eliot.  Personally she was comely rather than beautiful, and her manner of conversation very sweet and dignified.  In later years, age had given her quite a commanding and queenly look.  When Garibaldi was last in England, we gave him what you call a "grand reception" at the Crystal Palace, where probably 30,000 people were present.  George Eliot asked me to come and sit on the dias by her side and tell her all about "the general," as we familiarly call Garibaldi, with whom I had often had personal and official communication.  She understood, I need not say, the art of asking questions.  George Henry Lewes, who I first knew in the days when I was associated with the Leader newspaper (in which I wrote the "Ion" letters to which Mr. Wendell Phillips replied in the Melodeon), was the most intrepid thinker of that day, and to him I owed my first public association with men of letters.  Herbert Spencer, Thornton Hunt (a man of wonderful intellectual courage), W. J. Linton and others, were the principal writers upon it.  It was then that I first knew George Eliot.  Three or four years ago I travelled into Kent with Mr. Lewes.  He induced the station master to delay the train a few minutes that I might go down to the vale below, to speak with George Eliot, who had driven down to meet him.  I had never seen her look so well.  That was the last time I saw her.  The day before I sailed for America I received a letter from her in which she spoke of a passage in my "History of Co-operation," describing "the ruins of education in New Lanark," which she said had to her mind "a tragic impressiveness."  In the same work I had quoted some lines from the opening of her poem of "Jubal," to which I had put the name of William Morris, the author of the "Earthly Paradise."  Having made a quotation from Morris in the same work, I had not noticed the error, being blind when the proofs went to the press.  She said in a very pleasant way that Mr. Morris might not be gratified by having lines of hers imputed to him.  It was a modest way of putting it.  Mr. Morris would probably think the error a compliment.

 
BROOKLYN EAGLE
Sept. 3, 1882.

GEORGE J. HOLYOAKE.
___________

A Pleasant Chat with the Great English Secularist.

A Retrospect of What George Jacob Holyoake has Done for the Working Classes—His Second Visit to America and his Reasons for Making it—What he Thinks and Says of us—His Object in the United States—Recognition of his Services by the British Government and people—The trades Unions—Co-operation, not Communism.

___________

    A pleasant elderly gentleman of unassuming manners, a concise use of English language, great clearness of thought and precision of statement responded to the greetings of a representative of the Eagle on Friday evening at the Manhattan Beach Hotel.  Retiring "far from the maddening crowd" to whom Gilmore's band were discoursing their choicest selections, Mr. Holyoake, who arrived in New York from England by the Cunard steamer Scythia on Thursday last, engaged in a conversation upon the subject of his own life and work, and very clearly defined his principles with the help of that fragrant stimulus to reflection—a good Havana cigar.

    Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, translating his narrative into the third person, is now 63 years of age.  This is his second visit to America, his first having been made in 1879.  When he returned to England after that visit he had no idea of ever returning here, but his account of the wonders of the land so interested his daughter that when he recently found his personal presence here again necessary, he brought her with him, and this lady, Miss Emily Holyoake, with her friend, Mrs. Ethel Leach, a member of the School Board of Great Yarmouth, a place familiar to the readers of "David Copperfield," and an advocate of civil enfranchisement of women, are now enjoying scenes that are as new to them, as they are amazing.

    For as Mr. Holyoake looked from a balcony of the Manhattan Beach Hotel at the crowd, the sea, the orchestra and then back at the interior of the hotel, he said, as he waved his hand, "Look at all this.  We have nothing like it in Europe, let alone England." Being asked what place in the old country Coney island, with all its sights and sounds, most vividly recalled to his memory, he answered, "Brighton, where I have long spent my summers, and about which, by the way, I have just published an anonymous pictorial pamphlet which I will give you.  I wrote it at the request of the Mayor to vindicate the salubrity of the city by the sea from some injurious misstatements about its sewage.  Brighton is a wonderfully healthy place, standing first in the death rate of 1881 among the twenty largest towns in the kingdom.  But there is nothing like this at Brighton.  Even the best hotel there, the Grand, does not compare with this for convenience and comforts."

    A few years ago Mr. Holyoake lost for some time the use of his eyes, and was threatened with total blindness.  The eminent London oculist, Dr. Brudenell Carter, "cut both my eyes open," to use his own description, and the result which seemed miraculous in being so unexpected was a complete cure.  He has, however, to be economical in his reading and writing, and his daughter now handles his papers and correspondence.  After his return to England from his former visit, he had to write no less than four hundred letters with his own hand in relation to it.  He collected his impressions of us in an article entitles "A Stranger to America," which appeared in the Nineteenth Century for July, or August, he thinks the latter, of 1880.  It was pronounced by competent critics to be "one of those articles that promote international good will."  In England people said it was the only record of an Englishman's experiences in this country which they could put into the hands of their American friends without misgiving, so many writers balanced balancing their praise with blame and thus nullifying its good effect.  "I came here," said Mr. Holyoake, "wholly unprejudiced, resolved to see and judge for myself, and the rule I laid down for my observations when I met, as I sometimes did, with things that offended me was this: What is there which is paralleled to this, or like this, in my own country?  And I always found some parallel.  If I met some ungentlemanly persons and some disagreeable things here, so I had there.  There is room there for improvement there as much as here.  In some things England is ahead, in other things America.  But there is no deficiency here which is not offset by some deficiency at home.  I hate charity, but I think much of justice."

    Mr. Holyoake also wrote a book after his last visit entitled "Among the Americans."  It is the story of four months travel and does not go into the same ground as his article "A Stranger in America."  But he says that if he had been in this country four years instead of four months when he wrote it, he should not have felt himself competent to write a book about America, his is but "a fireside story of what interested him."

HIS LIFE WORK.

    Mr. Holyoake is a freeman of the City of London and was for many years a publisher in Fleet Street.  His earliest fame as a writer was in the public press.  His most continuous literary work was that of editing the "Reasoner," in thirty volumes, a work which Harriet Martineau wrote in an article vindicating Mr. Holyoake's labors, that "she always read the 'Reasoner' with profit and instruction to herself and counted Mr. Holyoake as one of the moral forces of the times."  He has written twenty books in all, among them a book on rhetoric and another on logic.  The "Reasoner" had made his pen a power among all circles and especially among the working and middle classes in Great Britain.  But his "History of Co-operation in England" (2 vols.) is his largest single work.  Therold Rogers calls it "the most exhaustive book on the subject."  An American edition has been published by Lippincott, in Philadelphia.  In the July number of the Nineteenth Century of the present year Mr. Holyoake has a very interesting paper on "The Theory of Political Epithets," and it is the first time that any theory has been broached upon the subject of epithets.  The Speaker of the House of Commons, said Mr. Holyoake, is constantly calling members to order for the use of epithets.  The fact is that nobody knows what is or not a condemnatory epithet."  Although he has treated chiefly of parliamentary epithets, he discusses also the epithets in vogue in the public press, the pulpit, at the bar and in social life.  He writes chiefly now for the magazines.

RECOGNITION AT LAST.

    For many years Mr. Holyoake got more abuse than credit for his self denying and laborious efforts to improve the conditions of the working classes in England.  But at the time of his illness a committee was formed in London comprised of the Right Hon. James Stanfield, then President of the Poor Law Board; professor J. R. Green, of Oxford, famous for his "History of the English people;" the Rev. Stepford A. Brooke, the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, professor James E. Thorold Rogers, of Oxford, and other members of Parliament and public men to present him with a testimonial in recognition of what he had done in introducing dispassionate reasoning in politics, courtesy in controversy, and in promoting political and social reforms."  The testimonial took the form of an annuity of $10,000 being subscribed and invested.

RIGHT HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.

    The EAGLE representative being well acquainted with the personnel of this committee, with the exception of Mr. Chamberlain, who is a novus homo among the ruling minds of England, took the occasion of his name to ask Mr. Holyoake what manner of man he was.  "Why, he is more dreaded by the Tories," he replied, "than any other member of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet.  He represents Birmingham with Mr. Bright.  He has the courage of his opinions, is a man of outspoken principles and great determination of character.  You will believe this when I tell you that when he was mayor of Birmingham the Prince of Wales paid a State visit to that city.  Mr. Chamberlain took the occasion of the banquet to the prince to avow himself a thorough republican in his political principles.  The Prince took it very pleasantly, as he always does in a situation which may be a little awkward and contratemps.  Mr. Chamberlain is now President of the Board of Trade.  He has retired from business and is immensely wealthy, having made his money as a screw manufacturer.  He held the patents on every kind of screw made by machinery in England.  His colleague, John Bright, preceded him as President of the Board of Trade during Mr. Gladstone's last Premiership, but was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the present one, and lately resigned his seat in the Cabinet owing to his disapproval of the Egyptian war.

MR. GLADSTONE'S APPROVAL.

    The men who c