Page images
PDF
EPUB

lined mind to lead in the development of its resources and to guide its intellectual energies; none such need of moral power to correct its necessarily strong material tendencies and steadily hold it up to a noble and lofty ideal.

If, therefore, it is in truth, as we have assumed, one important office of the university to supply such discipline and such correcting and elevating power, what_stronger argument could be framed for the founding and liberal sustaining of one such institution in this country high enough in range to meet the demands of the most exalted ambition, and broad enough to answer the needs of every profession?

We could hardly hope for more than one at least for a long time to come, for it must needs be supplied with a multitude of able professors, covering not only the whole range of letters, pure science, and philosophy, together with the several fields of the time-honored professions, but also the yet more numerous and, for a time, more difficult ones of the new professions; a great and choice library, such as this country does not yet possess; and a large number of thoroughly furnished laboratories, museums, and other costly scientific establishments. But then one such university in America would at once become a power, influential alikę in furthering and directing our material development, in elevating the character of all the lower educational institutions of the country, and in awakening and sustaining higher conceptions of both individual and national culture; thus helping us, by a happy combination of our own more than Roman energy and religious faith with the grace and refinement of the Greek civilization, to become a nation fully worthy of the future that awaits us.

It would do more, vastly more than this. It would supply to all lands a most important need of the times, a university placed under the benign influence of free civil and religious institutions, and sublimely dedicated to the diffusion and advancement of all knowledge. Students of high aspirations, and even ripe scholars of genius, would eventually flock to its halls from every quarter of the globe, adding to the intellectual wealth of the nation should they remain, or bearing with them scions from the tree of liberty for planting in their native lands. And thus America, already the most marvelous theater of material activities, would early become the world's recognized center of intellectual culture as well as of moral and political power.

It is not assumed that this ideal is capable of realization within a single year, nor in ten years; for if the pecuniary means were at hand, the maturing of wise plans, the preparation of teachers through protracted foreign study, and the labor of organization and material establishment would require at least one decade. It would be a glorious consummation if on the one hundredth anniversary of our national independence it should even be permitted us to announce to the world that the first great steps insuring the early establishment of the long-hoped-for American university had already been taken. The ideal here presented in rude outline, or some other more perfect ideal, is capable of realization; and, in the things of intellectual culture and social advancement, whatsoever is possible, that it is the moral duty of the individual, society, or the Government, or these several forces combined, to undertake.

Whether the institution contemplated should be an entirely new one, founded in a new place, or whether some one of the few institutions that have already made such noble beginnings of high educational work should rather be made the nucleus around which the earnest friends of university education of every section should rally for its upbuilding; whether it should be what the Italians mean by a free university, or whether the Government, State or National, should have part in its management-these are questions upon which there must necessarily be differences of opinion.

But be the diversity of views as to the precise character of the institution, the place of its location, and the mode of its constitution and government what it may, upon the primary question of whether we will have a university in America somewhere, and at the earliest possible day, there should be no difference of opinion.

There is one other question, moreover, that may be settled now. It may be safely assumed in advance that the founding and endowing of the institution is a work in which it will be necessary for the citizen, the State, and the General Government to unite; for it will cost millions of money, and require the careful guidance of the wisest scholars and statesmen the land can afford. And who doubts that all these forces-the people, the State, and the National Government-will respond if the scholars, the active laborers in the cause of education, and the leading statesmen of the country, with one voice demand it?

When, a few years since, the men of work asked help of the nation for the endowment of schools for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts, the Government, with a liberal hand, gave for this noble object ten million acres of the public domain, to which the individual States and great-hearted men have added no less liberal means. How much more then, proportionally, will our statesmen in council and liberal patriots yield for the foundation and maintenance of one great central institution, to be established in the interest of every profession and all classes of schools; of a profound and universal culture; of a more perfect intellectual and social development of the whole body of the nation, in the interest of liberty and universal man!

In the opinion of your committee, the attention of the association has not been

called to this subject a moment too soon. The trial of its political institutions through which the American nation has just passed; the manner in which the necessity for education as the only guarantee for the perpetuity of those institutions has just been burned into the national consciousness; the pressing demand made by our material and social conditions for the best educational facilities the world can furnish; and the fast accumulating evidence that America is surely destined to a glorious leadership in the grand march of the nations-all these constitute an appeal to action which it were criminal to disregard. The necessity is great. The country and the times are ripe for the undertaking.

The questions that remain for our discussion relate to the very important subject of definite ways and means. For the proper consideration and satisfactory solution of these, your committee have found it necessary to pray for an extension of the time allotted them.

Respectfully submitted.

J. W. HOYT, Chairman.

In compliance with the request of the committee, further time was granted, in the hope that at the next annual convention they will be enabled to submit a plan for an organized movement looking to the early establishment of some such institution as the one foreshadowed in their preliminary report.

The committee consists of the following gentlemen: Dr. J. W. Hoyt, chairman, Wisconsin; Hon. N. B. Cloud, Montgomery, Alabama; Hon. Thomas Smith, Little Rock, Arkansas; Prof. W. P. Blake, San Francisco, California; Hon. B. G. Northrup, New Haven, Connecticut; Prof. L. Coleman, Wilmington, Delaware; Hon. C. T. Chase, Tallahasse, Florida: Georgia; Hon. Newton Bateman, Springfield, Illinois; Hon. B. C. Hobbs, Indianapolis, Indiana; Hon. A. S. Kissel, Des Moines, Iowa; Hon. P. McVickar, Topeka, Kansas; Hon. Z. T. Smith, Frankfort, Kentucky; Hon. T. W. Conway, New Orleans, Louisiana; Hon. Warren Johnson, Augusta, Maine; Hon. M. A. Newell, Baltimore, Maryland; Hon. Joseph White, Boston, Massachusetts; Hon. O. Hesford, Lansing, Michigan; Prof. W. F. Phelps, Winona, Minnesota; Dr. Daniel Read, Columbia, Missouri; Prof. J. M. McKinsey, Peru, Nebraska; Hon. A. N. Fisher, Carson City, Nevada; Hon. Amos Hardy, Concord, New Hampshire; Hon. C. A. Apgar, Trenton, New Jersey; Hon. J. W. Bulkley, Brooklyn, New York; Hon. S. S. Ashley, Raleigh, North Carolina; Prof. A. J. Rickoff, Cleveland, Ohio; Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson, Portland, Oregon; Hon. J. P. Wickersham, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Hon. T. W. Bicknell, Providence, Rhode Island: Hon. J. K. Jillson, Charleston, South Carolina; Rev. C. T. P. Bancroft, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee; Texas; Hon. J. S. Adams, Montpelier, Vermont; Hon. Wm. H. Ruffin, Richmond, Virginia; Prof. Z. Richards, Washington, District of Columbia.

SOCIETY, CRIME, AND CRIMINALS.

Under this heading Rev. Fred. H. Wines contributed a recent article to the New York Independent, giving some account of the proceedings of the late meeting at Cincinnati, called "The Prison Congress," or "National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory discipline." This began its sessions on the 12th of October, and continued until the evening of Tuesday, the 18th. There were 230 delegates present, from twenty-two States of the Union, including Maine, California, and South Carolina; and among them were two governors, (Hayes, of Ohio, and Baker, of Indiana,) one exgovernor, (Haines, of New Jersey,) fourteen wardens, twenty-three superintendents of reform schools, fourteen chaplains, five prison surgeons, and four matrons. There are in the United States forty State prisons, twenty-five houses of correction, and thirty reform schools. These were all very fully represented. Two social science associations, and six State boards of charity sent representatives, and ten governors who could not be present sent deputies.

Hon. Speaker Blaine being unable to carry out his engagement to preside over the congress, by the death of his friend and neighbor, Governor Cony, Governor Hayes was chosen permanent chairman, and Rev. Dr. Peirce, of New York, Z. R. Brockway, of Michigan, Rev. A. G. Byers, of Ohio, and Rev. Joshua Coit, of Massachusetts, were chosen secretaries; and Charles F. Coffin, of Indiana, treasurer.

There were thirty-two different papers read, and more or less fully discussed. These, as we understand, will all be published in book form, together with a synoptical report of the discussions. The points eliciting most debate were: The comparative merits of the congregate and family systems in reformatories; the effect upon reformation of aiming at the highest pecuniary results in prisons; the principle of indeterminate scntences-i. c., of sentences of imprisonment until reformation; the admission of women to labor among male prisoners for their reformation; the Irish system, especially

the ticket-of-leave; the comparative efficiency of prison restraint-with or without walls; and the responsibility of parents for the full or partial support of their chil dren when in reformatories.

There was a very general concurrence of opinion as to the true principles of prison discipline; all agreed that the true end of discipline is the diminution of crime, and the reformation of the criminal; and that reformation cannot be secured by any single instrumentality. The spirit of the meeting was warm, earnest, unselfish, resolute, with an utter absence of sectarian or partisan feeling, well illustrated by the incident of a Quaker reading the essay of an absent Roman Catholic. A platform was adopted, which is to be scattered over the country in the newspapers and in tract form.

The most salient of the principles of this platform relate to the reformatory character to be impressed on prison discipline; the progressive classification of prisoners, based on character; the evils of political appointments, and of fluctuating administration; the professional training of prison officers; the substitution of reformation for the time sentences; the injurious effect of degradation as a part of punishment; the necessity for industrial training in prisons; and the supreme necessity of a central authority sitting at the helm, guiding, controlling, unifying, vitalizing the whole.

On motion of Governor Baker, it was decided to organize a national prison association, and a committee of eleven was appointed to prepare a plan of organization, and to secure the passage of an act of incorporation. The committee are Governor Hayes, of Ohio; Hon. James G. Blaine, of Maine; Governor Baker, of Indiana; ex-Governor Haines, of New Jersey; Hon. Theodore W. Dwight and General Amos Pillsbury, of New York; F. B. Sanborn, of Massachusetts; Z. R. Brockway, of Michigan; Charles F. Coffin, of Indiana; Hon. G. W. Welcker, of North Carolina; and Dr. E. W. Hatch, of Connecticut.

The national association will make the necessary arrangements for the international congress on penitentiary and reformatory discipline, which it was decided to call to meet, probably in London, in 1872.

THE CHINESE MIGRATION.

The Chinese migration to this country is now presenting to every considerate mind problems of the most engaging interest. Its political and moral aspects especially command the earnest, attention of the statesman and the philanthropist. The movement has the appearance now of being but germinal; it is diminutive, almost insignificant, so as to escape the observation of the mass of men; it yet gives the promise of swelling into dimensions, and branching out into relations of the grandest and most vital importance. The little rill just rippling from the fountain, it may now by gentlest touches of kindness and wisdom be turned in directions, where it shall irrigate and nourish our most precious possessions, while, if it be left to itself, it may prove in its coming volume and strength to be mighty only to desolate and destroy. It is none too early to turn toward it the most careful observation and the wisest forecast. What are the facts which it presents and with which we have to deal in solving the great problems it brings to us? what are the results which should be aimed at in dealing with it? and what is the method of attaining these results? These are the three leading questions demanding careful consideration from every American citizen and philanthropist.

I.-FACTS TO BE DEALT WITH.

The first thing that arrests the attention in this movement is its prospective magnitude.

NUMBERS OF CHINESE IMMIGRANTS.

The federal statistics exhibit the character of this immigration up to the present time in the following particulars: The arrivals returned are in 1820 to 1830, ten years, 3; 1831 to 1840, ten years, 8; 1841 to 1850, ten years, 35; 1851 to 1860, ten years, 41,397; 1861 to 1868, eight years, 41,214; 1869, one year, 14,902; 1870 to June 30, six months, 7,347.

The aggregate of arrivals thus returned is 105,744. If from this total of arrivals there be deducted the number of deaths and returns to China, it would appear that there were considerably less than 100,000 Chinamen in the country on the 30th of June last.

The rate of increase of immigration may be more definitely estimated from the numbers returned for each of the last four years ending June 30, which were, in 1867, 3,519; in 1868, 6,707; in 1869, 12,874; in 1870, 15,740.

The immigration has been chiefly of males. But the returns for the later periods show a noteworthy increase in the arrivals of females. In the year ending June 30,

1867, there were only eight, and all of them in Boston and Charlestown, none in the Pacific ports. In 1868 the whole number was 46; in 1869, 974; in 1870, 1,116. The total of arrivals of females reported to June 30, 1870, is 2,144.

In regard to occupation, the returns for the year ending June 30, 1870, exhibit the following facts: Physicians, 6; carpenters, 71; stonecutters, 14; mechanics, (trade not stated,) 14; bakers, 3; barbers, 7; tailors, male 16, female 11; cooks, (male,) 42; farmers, 733; interpreters, 4; laborers, 12,782; merchants, 43; peddlers, 2; sailors, 8; occupation not stated, 11; without occupation, 1,973; total, 15,740.

CHARACTER OF IMMIGRANTS.

In regard to character and condition, no exact information is attainable. We may believe, however, that the earlier immigrants would be the worst specimens of the race. They came mainly from the southwestern coast of China, where morality and stability are reported to be at a lower standard than elsewhere; where, indeed, the fortuneseeker, the profligate, the exile from home, the ruined in fortune and in character, most congregate. Yet, in addition to the uniform testimony of those who have had the best opportunities for observation that they are for the class more sober, more industrious, more orderly and faithful than the same class from European countries, we have the following facts well attested in regard to their intelligence which are worthy of careful attention. Of the Chinese in North Adams all can read and write their own language. On the Pacific Railroad every Chinese laborer, so far as known, was also able to read and write. Of the Chinese in San Francisco, by the recent census it appears that all can read and write their own language, while there are 7,658 foreigners who can neither read nor write. Of these, 6,882 are from Ireland; 248 from Italy; 283 from Mexico; 40 colored from the Southern States; 29 from England. Of native Americans 9 are returned as unable to read and write.

RESIDENCES OF IMMIGRANTS.

Of the distribution of the Chinese, accurate intelligence is as yet unattainable. The recent census in San Francisco returns 9,777 males and 2,040 females, or a total of 11,817 Chinese in a population of 150,361. Nearly all the Chinese females in the country are in San Francisco or the immediate vicinity. Some thousands of male Chinese, it is understood, are employed on the Central Pacific Railroad. There are many mining camps made up chiefly of Chinese. They also constitute the majority of the population in some towns and villages in the Pacific States, as also in some silk, tea, and cotton plantations. Ninety-five males are employed at North Adams, Massachusetts; 68 at Belleville, New Jersey; 167, all males, are reported as having arrived at New Orleans in the year ending June 30, 1870. In Oregon 2,304 males, 51 females are returned for the four years ending June 30, 1870; in New York 70 males, 9 females; in Philadelphia 13 males. The number now in New York is estimated to be 200, only two or three being adult females, "exemplary mothers of families." These, it is reported, all came from Havana. A large portion of these are cigar-makers and earn large wages; there are some candy-makers, jewelers, and bakers; a majority, however, are house servants. good proportion have intermarried with native or naturalized whites. The use of opium was two years ago well-nigh universal among them; but reformatory labors have effected a prohibition of its use in a majority of the houses, and many have been reclaimed at the hospitals.

CHINESE COMPANIES.

A

In San Francisco the Chinese have united themselves into associations for mutual help and benefit, organized after the pattern to which they had been wonted in their native country. The specific objects of these "companies" are stated to be "to improve the life of their members and to instruct them in principles of benevolence." Membership is voluntary. Dr. Speer, who took especial pains to ascertain the true character of these "Chinese companies," regards them as "institutions which have no parallel for ability and philanthropy among the immigrants from any other nation or people to our wide shores." Their funds "are not used for mercantile purposes or to obtain revenue." They are simply mutual aid societies. One of them reports to Dr. Speer that the total membership in it from the beginning is about 16,500. Of these perhaps 3,700 have returned; more than 300 have died; 3,400 separated last year to form a new company; and about 9,200 remain in California. They do not appear to be directly engaged in promoting emigration from China; have of course nothing to do with any importation of men in servitude of any kind; but are purely philanthropic organiza

tions.

PROBABLE INCREASE OF IMMIGRATION.

It is, however, the stupendous proportions of the future of this migration which most forcibly arrest the attention. The great facts on which this future may reasonably be

forecast and measured are, first, the immensity of the supply, and particularly as set over against the vastness of the demand. The source of supply is oceanic; the basin into which it naturally settles, under the great law of supply and demand, is continental. A homogeneous people, numbering over 400,000,000, writhing under the distresses of repletion, have found an outlet, a way of escape and deliverance, into a broad and goodly land. They are characteristically adventurous, and, while patient under difficulties, yet persistent and steadfast of purpose. "We can spare," said a Chinese missionary, "40,000,000 of laborers, and shall not feel it in China." The tide of human migration, in its eastward course, has reached its bounds in the Old World; it stays on the Pacific coast only as an ever-rolling, ever-swelling stream at a dam, ever accumulating volume and purpose. It is in the clear intent of Providence that sooner or later, in quiet current or in bursting flood, it pour itself into the open, empty basin of the American continent.

HINDERANCES TO EMIGRATION IN CHINA.

There is little in the circumstances or in the disposition of the Chinese to withstand this movement of population toward its equilibrium. The southeastern parts of China, from which the emigration chiefly moves at present, are so densely populated that it is difficult to obtain the means of subsistence. It is here, mainly, that infanticide prevails-an acknowledged immorality, an enforced necessity. The filial sentiment of affection and respect toward ancestors, in cases where, from want, the life of a depend-. ent parent or child must be sacrificed, desperately saves the old and lets go its hold on the child. It is not want of natural affection, but hard necessity, which is the source of Chinese infanticide. The want of food, even where there is not absolute starvation, as is often the case, occasions disease and protracted suffering and premature death, and frequently terrible pestilence. The stern, driving law of self-preservation enforces the natural method of relief by migration.

Although not properly to be regarded as a migratory people, the Chinese yet are wanting in that powerful sentiment which so characterizes some races-love of country. The love of home and of family in the Chinese takes the place of the love of country and of nation in other peoples. It is a most noticeable fact that the Chinese are still properly to be placed in the patriarchal, tribal stage of development; they have not reached the stage of nationality. Rebellions, revolts against the national authority when deemed oppressive, hence, are of the commonest and most customary occurrence. Their religion is predominantly ancestral; their most sacred places are the depositories of ancestral remains. To be gathered with their fathers in the world of spirits is the governing religious aspiration. The government itself is characteristically patriarchal, and political as well as religious institutions-indeed, the social life generally-bear this family stamp. Removal of family goods, of ancestral remains, and tablets carries with it what elsewhere assumes the form of local attachment, and place, country, is left without regret. In natural correspondence with this family sentiment, as displacing proper national feeling, love of country, and attachment to native soil, is the universal worship paid to the kitchen god, the household divinity of China, which has no local abode, no temple, no fixed place, but is represented only on paper, that is burned every year to represent its departure to the spirit land, and is replaced by a new engraving to mark its return.

The great hinderances to migration, consequently, arising from political and religious associations, and consisting in attachments to native land, and the social bonds of a true nationality, politically and religiously organized, are relatively weak or entirely wanting among the Chinese, and the pressure from overcrowded population finds its check not in the national but only in the proper family associations. Let but the integrity of the family life be maintained secure, let but the ancestral remains, the ancestral images, and tablets, the monuments and representatives of the dead, together with the living membership of the family, be assured safe conveyance and safe transplanting, and the repugnance to expatriation is so weakened that it is easily overborne by the pressure of want.

DEMAND FOR LABOR IN AMERICA.

While China thus presses, America invites; a territory vast as China itself remains unoccupied, except by roving tribes subsisting on game and fish, and wild vegetable products. An area capable of absorbing the entire population of China proper, now desert, craves occupancy by civilized men-by men that in fixed settlements will till the soil and cultivate the arts. The earth was made to be occupied and improved by man; the human race has, since the great epoch of the dispersion, been under orders to spread and occupy. The sentiment of the American people has been, from the first, in harmony with this great providential ordering. Its language has been that of Henry: "Encourage emigration, encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants of the Old World to come and settle in the land of promise; make it the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and the happy as well as the asylum of

« PreviousContinue »