Kitabı oku: «Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada», sayfa 23
The inhabitants of the region are primitive and to a considerable extent illiterate. But still many strong and distinguished men have come from these mountain towns. Many families send their children away to school, and there are fair schools at Barbersville, Harlan Court-house, and in other places. Long isolated from the moving world, they have retained the habits of the early settlers, and to some extent the vernacular speech, though the dialect is not specially marked. They have been until recently a self-sustaining people, raising and manufacturing nearly everything required by their limited knowledge and wants. Not long ago the women spun and wove from cotton and hemp and wool the household linen, the bed-wear, and the clothes of the family. In many houses the loom is still at work. The colors used for dyeing were formerly all of home make except, perhaps, the indigo; now they use what they call the “brought in” dyes, bought at the stores; and prints and other fabrics are largely taking the places of the home-made. During the morning we stopped at one of the best houses on the fork, a house with a small apple-orchard in front, having a veranda, two large rooms, and a porch and kitchen at the back. In the back porch stood the loom with its web of half-finished cloth. The farmer was of the age when men sun themselves on the gallery and talk. His wife, an intelligent, barefooted old woman, was still engaged in household duties, but her weaving days were over. Her daughters did the weaving, and in one of the rooms were the linsey-woolsey dresses hung up, and piles of gorgeous bed coverlets, enough to set up half a dozen families. These are the treasures and heirlooms handed down from mother to daughter, for these handmade fabrics never wear out. Only eight of the twelve children were at home. The youngest, the baby, a sickly boy of twelve, was lounging about the house. He could read a little, for he had been to school a few weeks. Reading and writing were not accomplishments in the family generally. The other girls and boys were in the cornfield, and going to the back door, I saw a line of them hoeing at the top of the field. The field was literally so steep that they might have rolled from the top to the bottom. The mother called them in, and they lounged leisurely down, the girls swinging themselves over the garden fence with athletic ease. The four eldest were girls: one, a woman of thirty-five, had lost her beauty, if she ever had any, with her teeth; one, of thirty, recently married, had a stately dignity and a certain nobility of figure; one, of sixteen, was undeniably pretty—almost the only woman entitled to this epithet that we saw in the whole journey. This household must have been an exception, for the girls usually marry very young. They were all, of course, barefooted. They were all laborers, and evidently took life seriously, and however much their knowledge of the world was limited, the household evidently respected itself. The elder girls were the weavers, and they showed a taste and skill in their fabrics that would be praised in the Orient or in Mexico. The designs and colors of the coverlets were ingenious and striking. There was a very handsome one in crimson, done in wavy lines and bizarre figures, that was called the Kentucky Beauty, or the Ocean Wave, that had a most brilliant effect. A simple, hospitable family this. The traveller may go all through this region with the certainty of kindly treatment, and in perfect security—if, I suppose, he is not a revenue officer, or sent in to survey land on which the inhabitants have squatted.
We came at night to Harlan Court-house, an old shabby hamlet, but growing and improving, having a new court-house and other signs of the awakening of the people to the wealth here in timber and mines. Here in a beautiful valley three streams—Poor, Martin, and Clover forks—unite to form the Cumberland. The place has fourteen “stores” and three taverns, the latter a trial to the traveller. Harlan has been one of the counties most conspicuous for lawlessness. The trouble is not simply individual wickedness, but the want of courage of public opinion, coupled with a general disrespect for authority. Plenty of people lament the state of things, but want the courage to take a public stand. The day before we reached the Court-house the man who killed his wife and his brother had his examination. His friends were able to take the case before a friendly justice instead of the judge. The facts sworn to were that in a drunken dispute over cards he tried to kill his son-in-law, who escaped out of the window, and that his wife and brother opposed him, and he killed them with his pistol. Therefore their deaths were accidental, and he was discharged. Many people said privately that he ought to be hanged, but there was entire public apathy over the affair. If Harlan had three or four resolute men who would take a public stand that this lawlessness must cease, they could carry the community with them. But the difficulty of enforcing law and order in some of these mountain counties is to find proper judges, prosecuting officers, and sheriffs. The officers are as likely as not to be the worst men in the community, and if they are not, they are likely to use their authority for satisfying their private grudges and revenges. Consequently men take the “law” into their own hands. The most personally courageous become bullies and the terror of the community. The worst citizens are not those who have killed most men, in the opinion of the public. It ought to be said that in some of the mountain counties there has been very little lawlessness, and in some it has been repressed by the local authorities, and there is great improvement on the whole. I was sorry not to meet a well-known character in the mountains, who has killed twenty-one men. He is a very agreeable “square” man, and I believe “high-toned,” and it is the universal testimony that he never killed a man who did not deserve killing, and whose death was a benefit to the community. He is called, in the language of the country, a “severe” man. In a little company that assembled at the Harlan tavern were two elderly men, who appeared to be on friendly terms enough. Their sons had had a difficulty, and two boys out of each family had been killed not very long ago. The fathers were not involved in the vendetta. About the old Harlan court-house a great many men have been killed during court week in the past few years. The habit of carrying pistols and knives, and whiskey, are the immediate causes of these deaths, but back of these is the want of respect for law. At the ford of the Cumberland at Pineville was anchored a little house-boat, which was nothing but a whiskey-shop. During our absence a tragedy occurred there. The sheriff with a posse went out to arrest some criminals in the mountain near. He secured his men, and was bringing them into Pineville, when it occurred to him that it would be a good plan to take a drink at the houseboat. The whole party got into a quarrel over their liquor, and in it the sheriff was killed and a couple of men seriously wounded. A resolute surveyor, formerly a general in our army, surveying land in the neighborhood of Pineville, under a decree of the United States Court, has for years carried on his work at the personal peril of himself and his party. The squatters not only pull up his stakes and destroy his work day after day, but it was reported that they had shot at his corps from the bushes. He can only go on with his work by employing a large guard of armed men.
This state of things in eastern Kentucky will not be radically changed until the railways enter it, and business and enterprise bring in law and order. The State Government cannot find native material for enforcing law, though there has been improvement within the past two years. I think no permanent gain can be expected till a new civilization comes in, though I heard of a bad community in one of the counties that had been quite subdued and changed by the labors of a devout and plain-spoken evangelist. So far as our party was concerned, we received nothing but kind treatment, and saw little evidences of demoralization, except that the young men usually were growing up to be “roughs,” and liked to lounge about with shot-guns rather than work. But the report of men who have known the country for years was very unfavorable as to the general character of the people who live on the mountains and in the little valleys—that they were all ignorant; that the men generally were idle, vicious, and cowardly, and threw most of the hard labor in the field and house upon the women; that the killings are mostly done from ambush, and with no show for a fair fight. This is a tremendous indictment, and it is too sweeping to be sustained. The testimony of the gentlemen of our party, who thoroughly know this part of the State, contradicted it. The fact is there are two sorts of people in the mountains, as elsewhere.
The race of American mountaineers occupying the country from western North Carolina to eastern Kentucky is a curious study Their origin is in doubt. They have developed their peculiarities in isolation. In this freedom stalwart and able men have been from time to time developed, but ignorance and freedom from the restraints of law have had their logical result as to the mass. I am told that this lawlessness has only existed since the war; that before, the people, though ignorant of letters, were peaceful. They had the good points of a simple people, and if they were not literate, they had abundant knowledge of their own region. During the war the mountaineers were carrying on a civil war at home. The opposing parties were not soldiers, but bushwhackers. Some of the best citizens were run out of the country, and never returned. The majority were Unionists, and in all the mountain region of eastern Kentucky I passed through there are few to-day who are politically Democrats. In the war, home-guards were organized, and these were little better than vigilance committees for private revenge. Disorder began with this private and partly patriotic warfare. After the war, when the bushwhackers got back to their cabins, the animosities were kept up, though I fancy that politics has little or nothing to do with them now. The habit of reckless shooting, of taking justice into private hands, is no doubt a relic of the disorganization during the war.
Worthless, good-for-nothing, irreclaimable, were words I often heard applied to people of this and that region. I am not so despondent of their future. Railways, trade, the sight of enterprise and industry, will do much with this material. Schools will do more, though it seems impossible to have efficient schools there at present. The people in their ignorance and their undeveloped country have a hard struggle for life. This region is, according to the census, the most prolific in the United States. The girls marry young, bear many children, work like galley-slaves, and at the time when women should be at their best they fade, lose their teeth, become ugly, and look old. One great cause of this is their lack of proper nourishment. There is nothing unhealthy in out-door work in moderation if the body is properly sustained by good food. But healthy, handsome women are not possible without good fare. In a considerable part of eastern Kentucky (not I hear in all) good wholesome cooking is unknown, and civilization is not possible without that. We passed a cabin where a man was very ill with dysentery. No doctor could be obtained, and perhaps that, considering what the doctor might have been, was not a misfortune. But he had no food fit for a sick man, and the women of the house were utterly ignorant of the diet suitable to a man in his state. I have no doubt that the abominable cookery of the region has much to do with the lawlessness, as it visibly has to do with the poor physical condition.
The road down the Cumberland, in a valley at times spreading out into fertile meadows, is nearly all the way through magnificent forests, along hill-sides fit for the vine, for fruit, and for pasture, while frequent outcroppings of coal testify to the abundance of the fuel that has been so long stored for the new civilization. These mountains would be profitable as sheep pastures did not the inhabitants here, as elsewhere in the United States, prefer to keep dogs rather than sheep.
I have thus sketched hastily some of the capacities of the Cumberland region. It is my belief that this central and hitherto neglected portion of the United States will soon become the theatre of vast and controlling industries.
I want space for more than a concluding word about western Kentucky, which deserves, both for its capacity and its recent improvements, a chapter to itself. There is a limestone area of some 10,000 square miles, with a soil hardly less fertile than that of the blue-grass region, a high agricultural development, and a population equal in all respects to that of the famous and historic grass country. Seven of the ten principal tobacco-producing counties in Kentucky and the largest Indian corn and wheat raising counties are in this part of the State. The western coal-field has both river and rail transportation, thick deposits of iron ore, and more level and richer farming lands than the eastern coal-field. Indeed, the agricultural development in this western coal region has attracted great attention.
Much also might be written of the remarkable progress of the towns of western Kentucky within the past few years. The increase in population is not more astonishing than the development of various industries. They show a vigorous, modern activity for which this part of the State has not, so far as I know, been generally credited. The traveller will find abundant evidence of it in Owensborough, Henderson, Hopkinsville, Bowling Green, and other places. As an illustration: Paducah, while doubling its population since 1880, has increased its manufacturing 150 per cent. The town had in 1880 twenty-six factories, with a capital of $600,000, employing 950 men; now it has fifty factories, with a cash capital of $2,000,000, employing 3250 men, engaged in a variety of industries—to which a large iron furnace is now being added. Taking it all together—variety of resources, excellence of climate, vigor of its people—one cannot escape the impression that Kentucky has a great future.
COMMENTS ON CANADA
I
The area of the Dominion of Canada is larger than that of the United States, excluding Alaska. It is fair, however, in the comparison, to add Alaska, for Canada has in its domain enough arctic and practically uninhabitable land to offset Alaska. Excluding the boundary great lakes and rivers, Canada has 3,470,257 square miles of territory, or more than one-third of the entire British Empire; the United States has 3,026,494 square miles, or, adding Alaska (577,390), 3,603,884 square miles. From the eastern limit of the maritime provinces to Vancouver Island the distance is over three thousand five hundred miles. This whole distance is settled, but a considerable portion of it only by a thin skirmish line. I have seen a map, colored according to the maker’s idea of fertility, on which Canada appears little more than a green flush along the northern boundary of the United States. With a territory equal to our own, Canada has the population of the single State of New York—about five millions.
Most of Canada lies north of the limit of what was reckoned agreeably habitable before it was discovered that climate depends largely on altitude, and that the isothermal lines and the lines of latitude do not coincide. The division between the two countries is, however, mainly a natural one, on a divide sloping one way to the arctic regions, the other way to the tropics. It would seem better map-making to us if our line followed the northern mountains of Maine and included New Brunswick and the other maritime provinces. But it would seem a better rectification to Canadians if their line included Maine with the harbor of Portland, and dipped down in the North-west so as to take in the Red River of the North, and all the waters discharging into Hudson’s Bay.
The great bulk of Canada is on the arctic slope. When we pass the highlands of New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York we fall away into a wide champaign country. The only break in this is the Lauren-tian granite mountains, north of the St. Lawrence, the oldest land above water, now degraded into hills of from 1500 to 2000 feet in height. The central mass of Canada consists of three great basins: that portion of the St. Lawrence in the Dominion, 400,000 square miles; the Hudson’s Bay, 2,000,000 square miles; the Mackenzie, 550,000 square miles. That is to say, of the 3,470,257 square miles of the area of Canada, 3,010,000 have a northern slope.
This decrease in altitude from our northern boundary makes Canada a possible nation. The Rocky Mountains fall away north into the Mackenzie plain. The highest altitude attained by the Union Pacific Railroad is 8240 feet; the highest of the Canadian Pacific is 5296; and a line of railway still farther north, from the North Saskatchewan region, can, and doubtless some time will, reach the Pacific without any obstruction by the Rockies and the Selkirks. In estimating, therefore, the capacity of Canada for sustaining a large population we have to remember that the greater portion of it is but little above the sea-level; that the climate of the interior is modified by vast bodies of water; that the maximum summer heat of Montreal and Quebec exceeds that of New York; and that there is a vast region east of the Rockies and north of the Canadian Pacific Railway, not only the plains drained by the two branches of the Saskatchewan, but those drained by the Peace River still farther north, which have a fair share of summer weather, and winters much milder than are enjoyed in our Territories farther south but higher in altitude. The summers of this vast region are by all reports most agreeable, warm days and refreshing nights, with a stimulating atmosphere; winters with little snow, and usually bright and pleasant, occasional falls of the thermometer for two or three days to arctic temperature, but as certain a recovery to mildness by the “Chinook” or Pacific winds. It is estimated that the plains of the Saskatchewan—500,000 square miles—are capable of sustaining a population of thirty millions. But nature there must call forth a good deal of human energy and endurance. There is no doubt that frosts are liable to come very late in the spring and very early in the autumn; that persistent winds are hostile to the growth of trees; and that varieties of hardy cereals and fruits must be selected for success in agriculture and horticulture. The winters are exceedingly severe on all the prairies east of Winnipeg, and westward on the Canadian Pacific as far as Medicine Hat, the crossing of the South Saskatchewan. Heavy items in the cost of living there must always be fuel, warm clothing, and solid houses. Fortunately the region has an abundance of lignite and extensive fields of easily workable coal.
Canada is really two countries, separated from each other by the vast rocky wilderness between the lakes and James Bay. For a thousand miles west of Ottawa, till the Manitoba prairie is reached, the traveller on the line of the railway sees little but granite rock and stunted balsams, larches, and poplars—a dreary region, impossible to attract settlers. Copper and other minerals there are; and in the region north of Lake Superior there is no doubt timber, and arable land is spoken of; but the country is really unknown. Portions of this land, like that about Lake Nipigon, offer attractions to sportsmen. Lake navigation is impracticable about four months in the year, so that Canada seems to depend for political and commercial unity upon a telegraph wire and two steel rails running a thousand miles through a region where local traffic is at present insignificant.
The present government of Canada is an evolution on British lines, modified by the example of the republic of the United States. In form the resemblances are striking to the United States, but underneath, the differences are radical. There is a supreme federal government, comprehending a union of provinces, each having its local government. But the union in the two countries was brought about in a different way, and the restrictive powers have a different origin. In the one, power descends from the Crown; in the other, it originates with the people. In the Dominion Government all the powers not delegated to the provinces are held by the Federal Government. In the United States, all the powers not delegated to the Federal Government by the States are held by the States. In the United States, delegates from the colonies, specially elected for the purpose, met to put in shape a union already a necessity of the internal and external situation. And the union expressed in the Constitution was accepted by the popular vote in each State. In the provinces of Canada there was a long and successful struggle for responsible government. The first union was of the two Canadas, in 1840; that is, of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada—Ontario and Quebec—with Parliaments sitting sometimes in Quebec and sometimes in Toronto, and at last in Ottawa, a site selected by the Queen. This Government was carried on with increasing friction. There is not space here to sketch the politics of this epoch. Many causes contributed to this friction, but the leading ones were the antagonism of French and English ideas, the superior advance in wealth and population of Ontario over Quebec, and the resistance of what was called French domination. At length, in 1863-64, the two parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals (or, in the political nomenclature of the day, the “Tories” and the “Grits”—i. e., those of “clear grit”), were so evenly divided that a dead-lock occurred, neither was able to carry on the government, and a coalition ministry was formed. Then the subject of colonial confederation was actively agitated. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick contemplated a legislative union of the maritime provinces, and a conference was called at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in the summer of 1864. Having in view a more comprehensive union, the Canadian Government sought and obtained admission to this conference, which was soon swallowed up in a larger scheme, and a conference of all the colonies was appointed to be held at Quebec in October. Delegates, thirty-three in number, were present from all the provinces, probably sent by the respective legislatures or governments, for I find no note of a popular election. The result of this conference was the adoption of resolutions as a basis of an act of confederation. The Canadian Parliament adopted this scheme after a protracted debate. But the maritime provinces stood out. Meantime the Civil War in the United States, the Fenian invasion, and the abrogation of the reciprocity treaty fostered a spirit of Canadian nationality, and discouraged whatever feeling existed for annexation to the United States. The colonies, therefore, with more or less willingness, came into the plan, and in 1867 the English Parliament passed the British North American Act, which is the charter of the Dominion. It established the union of the provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and provided for the admission to the union of the other parts of British North America; that is, Prince Edward Island, the Hudson Bay Territory, British Columbia, and Newfoundland, with its dependency Labrador. Nova Scotia was, however, still dissatisfied with the terms of the union, and was only reconciled on the granting of additional annual subsidies.
In 1868, by Act of the British Parliament, the Hudson’s Bay Company surrendered to the Crown its territorial rights over the vast region it controlled, in consideration of £300,000 sterling, grants of land around its trading posts to the extent of fifty thousand acres in all, and one-twentieth of all the fertile land south of the north branch of the Saskatchewan, retaining its privileges of trade, without its exclusive monopoly. The attempt of the Dominion Government to take possession of this north-west territory (Manitoba was created a province July 15, 1870) was met by the rising of the squatters and half-breeds under Louis Riel in 1869-70. Riel formed a provisional government, and proceeded with a high hand to banish persons and confiscate property, and on a drumhead court-martial put to death Thomas Scott, a Canadian militia officer. The murder of Scott provoked intense excitement throughout Canada, especially in Ontario. Colonel Garnet Wolseley’s expedition to Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) followed, and the Government authority was restored. Riel and his squatter confederates fled, and he was subsequently pardoned.
In 1871 British Columbia was admitted into the Dominion. In 1873 Prince Edward Island came in. The original Act for establishing the province of Manitoba provided for a Lieutenant-governor, a Legislative Council, and an elected Legislative Assembly. In 1876 Manitoba abolished the Council, and the government took its present form of a Lieutenant-governor and one Assembly. By subsequent legislation of the Dominion the district of Keewatin was created out of the eastern portion of the north-west territory, under the jurisdiction of the Lieutenant-governor of Manitoba, ex officio. The Territories of Assiniboin, Alberta, and Saskatchewan have been organized into a Territory called the North-west Territory, with a Lieutenant-governor and Council, and a representative in Parliament, the capital being Regina. Outside of this Territory, to the northward, lies Athabasca, of which the Lieutenant-governor at Regina is ex officio ruler. Newfoundland still remains independent, although negotiations for union were revived in 1888. Some years ago overtures were made for taking in Jamaica to the union, and a delegation from that island visited Ottawa; but nothing came of the proposal. It was said that the Jamaica delegates thought the Dominion debt too large.
The Dominion of Canada, therefore, has a central government at Ottawa, and is composed of the provinces of Nova Scotia (including Cape Breton), New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, British Columbia, and the North-west Territory.
It has been necessary to speak in this brief detail of the manner of the formation of the union in order to understand the politics of Canada. For there are radicals in the Liberal party who still regard the union as forced and artificial, and say that the provinces outside of Ontario and Quebec were brought in only by the promise of local railways and the payment of large subsidies. And this idea more or less influences the opposition to the “strong government” at Ottawa. I do not say that the Liberals oppose the formation of a “nation”; but they are critics of its methods, and array themselves for provincial rights as against federal consolidation.
The Federal Government consists of the Queen, the Senate, and the House of Commons. The Queen is represented by the Governor-general, who is paid by Canada a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year. He has his personal staff, and is aided and advised by a council, called the Queen’s Privy Council of Canada, thirteen members, constituting the ministry, who must be sustained by a Parliamentary majority. The English model is exactly followed. The Governor has nominally the power of veto, but his use of it is as much in abeyance as is the Queen’s prerogative in regard to Acts of Parliament. The premier is in fact the ruler, but his power depends upon possessing a majority in the House of Commons. This responsible government, therefore, more quickly responds to popular action than ours. The Senators are chosen for life, and are in fact appointed by the premier in power. The House of Commons is elected for five years, unless Parliament is sooner dissolved, and according to a ratio of population to correspond with the province of Quebec, which has always the fixed number of sixty-five members. The voter for members of Parliament must have certain property qualifications, as owner or tenant, or, if in a city or town, as earning three hundred dollars a year—qualifications so low as practically to exclude no one who is not an idler and a waif; the Indian may vote (though not in the Territories), but the Mongolian or Chinese is excluded. Members of the House may be returned by any constituency in the Dominion without reference to residence. All bills affecting taxation or revenue must originate in the House, and be recommended by a message from the Governor-general. The Government introduces bills, and takes the responsibility of them. The premier is leader of the House; there is also a recognized leader of the Opposition. In case the Government cannot command a majority it resigns, and the Governor-general forms a new cabinet. In theory, also, if the Crown (represented by the Governor-general) should resort to the extreme exercise of its prerogative in refusing the advice of its ministers, the ministers must submit, or resign and give place to others.
The Federal Government has all powers not granted expressly to the provinces. In practice its jurisdiction extends over the public debt, expenditure, and public loans; treaties; customs and excise duties; trade and commerce; navigation, shipping, and fisheries; light-houses and harbors; the postal, naval, and military services; public statistics; monetary institutions, banks, banking, currency, coining (but all coining is done in England); insolvency; criminal law; marriage and divorce; public works, railways, and canals.
The provinces have no militia; that all belongs to the Dominion. Marriage is solemnized according to provincial regulations, but the power of divorce exists in Canada in the Federal Parliament only, except in the province of New Brunswick. This province has a court of divorce and matrimonial causes, with a single judge, a survival of pre-confederation times, which grants divorces a vinculo for scriptural causes, and a mensa et thoro for desertion or cruelty, with right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the province and to the Privy Council of the Dominion. Criminal law is one all over the Dominion, but there is no law against adultery or incest. The British Act contains no provision analogous to that in the Constitution of the United States which forbids any State to pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts—a serious defect.
