THE NEW ENGLAND FOUNDATION 3 
Much of his life was devoted indirectly to public service. 
He benefited mankind by showing that ocean cables could 
be laid to connect the continents; as an unofficial ambassador 
he smoothed the difficult relations between the Northern 
States and England during the Civil War; and he gave New 
York an improved transit system. An inveterate traveler, 
he was a frequent passenger on Atlantic liners and a familiar 
figure abroad. Altogether he was a man worth knowing, a 
leading personality during an important period of transition 
in modern civilization. 
It is worth tracing the career of this notable New Englander 
from the hills of western Massachusetts, who conquered 
Broadway, was toasted by London and Paris, and sped the 
transmission of intelligence across the Atlantic. One of a 
family of eminent Americans, he was another example of a 
minister’s son who came to the metropolis and achieved suc- 
cess. Study of his career helps to reveal the national charac- 
teristics of the mid-nineteenth-century. 
When Cyrus Field was born, in 1819, the young American 
republic had scarcely more than obtained a fair start after the 
disorders of two wars with England. Most of the people lived 
in primitive villages, isolated from the larger centers by lack 
of railroads and news service. It was still the ox-cart era of 
slow transportation over rough roads cut through a formid- 
able wilderness. ‘The nation had about twelve millions in 
population. 
In the Berkshire Hills, where Field was born, a village was 
largely dependent upon its own products and local leader- 
ship. Life was hard and insistent. The stern puritanism that 
ruled in social matters did not alleviate the severity of natural 
handicaps. The church, however, supplied a unifying bond 
and a spiritual guidance that kept the community inspired 
to a workable, if narrow, effort. 
The father of Cyrus Field had only recently taken over the 
pastorate of the church at Stockbridge, a tiny settlement in 
