168 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



April 



In such stupidity and its tedium he 

 contrasts against it the varied, excit- 

 ing, piquant life described in the me- 

 tropolitan newspaper, and he says to 

 himself: If there is room for four 

 million people in New York there must 

 be room for four million and one. 

 Pardon him. dear reader, if he ranks 

 himself as a little above the average 

 of mankind pardon him, for as you 

 and I know perfectly well, you and 

 I do the same. 



Every forward step taken in the 

 management of cities goes to encour- 

 age the North Brownwich man or wo- 

 man in such decisions. A free library 

 open all day and every evening, free 

 lectures, the Central Park, the hippo- 

 potamus and the lion in The Bronx, 

 a speech by Mr. Cockran, or by Mr. 

 Choate or the President such attrac- 

 tions as these are not set in order by 

 people who want to enlarge the attrac- 

 tions of a city ; but they do enlarge 

 the attractions of a city all the same, 

 and as a western promoter would say, 

 they advertise it to mankind. Now it 

 is in face of the inducements to swell 

 the population of large cities which are 

 thus set in order that the sugges- 

 tions or arguments have to be made 

 which would relieve the congestion of 

 cities. 



On the other hand, when I look back 

 on 1854 and 1855 I remember that we 

 had no difficulty then in collecting emi- 

 grants by the thousand who were ea- 

 ger to move from the crowded East to 

 the West, where it was literally empty. 

 Till the spring of 1854, I think there 

 was no white settler in Kansas who 

 had not been ordered to go there. I 

 was a junior director in the New Eng- 

 land Emigrant Aid Company at that 

 time. We did not have to make any 

 effort to persuade people to move from 

 cities or factory towns upon the empty 

 prairies. We had behind us the eager 

 antislavery determination that Kansas 

 should be a free State. I do not mean 

 tn say that this was a trifling induce- 

 ment. But' I have the experience which 

 enables me to say that with all this 

 generous determination behind them, 

 hardly one of these thousands of peo- 



ple would have gone into Kansas in the 

 first three years of the beginning but 

 that they could go together. Together 

 is the great word in this affair, as it 

 is in every other important affair in 

 human life. 



We did not have to say to a man hy- 

 ing in an attic with his family that 

 he was to take his wife and children, 

 and that they were to work their way, 

 choosing their own course between 

 rival railways and through jealous 

 States with no counsellors but them- 

 selves. What we did say was that on 

 such a day a competent guide would 

 meet such a party at such and such a 

 station, men, women or children, and 

 that they would go together to Kan- 

 sas. What followed was that, as the 

 Bible says, "the carpenter encouraged 

 the goldsmith, and he that smootheth 

 with the hammer him that smote the 

 anvil." 



If a man wanted to go first and se- 

 lect the spot for his cabin, he left his 

 wife and children, and we sent them 

 after him. We did not make anybody 

 promise to remain with his compan- 

 ions. We left every man and every 

 woman free as to where they should go 

 and where they should settle : but. 

 as it is almost of course to say, if a 

 hundred people went out together, 

 coming probably from the same neigh- 

 borhood and arriving after a three- 

 weeks' journey of adventure, why, 

 the>' were likely to stay together ; or if 

 anybody left the party he left it to 

 join in some other settlement where 

 their attractions drew him. 



This fundamental necessity of main- 

 taining "together" belongs deep down 

 in any proposal for the removal west- 

 ward of any considerable body of peo- 

 ple from our eastern cities. Of course 

 there is not a day when in fact John 

 Doe with his family does not leave 

 New York in the summer because his 

 brother Dick or his wife's brother 

 Tom, who is already in one of the 

 western paradises, has sent for them. 

 But such instances, though you could 

 count them by thousands, are insigni- 

 ficant and exceptional while the coun- 

 try receives in the eieht months of 



