Cincinnati In 1800 Was A Wooden Village Of 750 Inhabitants; It Is Now A
Substantially-Built Brick Town, Containing 200,000 People, And Thousands
Of Fresh Settlers Are Added Every Year.
There are nearly 50,000 Germans,
and I believe 40,000 Irish, who distinctly keep up their national
characteristics.
The Germans almost monopolise the handicraft trades,
where they find a fruitful field for their genius and industry; the Irish
are here, as everywhere, hewers of wood and drawers of water; they can do
nothing but dig, and seldom rise in the social scale; the Germans, as at
home, are a thinking, sceptical, theorising people: in politics,
Socialists - in religion, Atheists. The Irish are still the willing and
ignorant tools of an ambitious and despotic priesthood. And in a land
where no man is called to account for his principles, unless they proceed
to physical development, these errors grow and luxuriate. The Germans, in
that part of the town almost devoted to themselves, have succeeded in
practically abolishing the Sabbath, as they utterly ignore that divine
institution even as a day of rest, keeping their stores open the whole
day. The creeds which they profess are "Socialism" and "Universalism," and
at stated periods they assemble to hear political harangues, and address
invocations to universal deity. Skilled, educated, and intellectual, they
are daily increasing in numbers, wealth, and political importance, and
constitute an influence of which the Americans themselves are afraid.
The Irish are a turbulent class, for ever appealing to physical force,
influencing the elections, and carrying out their "clan feuds" and
"faction fights." The Germans, finding it a land like their own, of corn
and vineyards, have named the streets in their locality in Cincinnati
after their towns in the Old World, to which in idea one is frequently
carried back.
On Sunday, after passing through this continental portion of the town, I
found all was order and decorum in the strictly American part, where the
whole population seemed to attend worship of one form or another. The
church which I attended was the most beautiful place of worship I ever
saw; it had neither the hallowed but comfortless antiquity of our village
churches, nor the glare and crush of our urban temples; it was of light
Norman architecture, and lighted by windows of rich stained glass. The
pews were wide, the backs low, and the doors and mouldings were of
polished oak; the cushions and linings were of crimson damask, and light
fans for real use were hung in each pew. The pulpit and reading-desk,
both of carved oak and of a tulip shape, were placed in front of the
communion-rails, on a spacious platform ascended by three steps - this, the
steps, and the aisles of the church were carpeted with beautiful
Kidderminster carpeting. The singing and chanting were of a very superior
description, being managed, as also a very fine-toned organ, by the young
ladies and gentlemen of the congregation. The ladies were more richly
dressed and in brighter colours than the English, and many of them in
their features and complexions bore evident traces of African and Spanish
blood. The gentlemen universally wore the moustache and beard, and
generally blue or green frock-coats, the collars turned over with velvet.
The responses were repeated without the assistance of a clerk, and the
whole service was conducted with decorum and effect.
The same favourable description may apply generally to the churches of
different denominations in the United States; coldness and discomfort are
not considered as incentives to devotion; and the houses of worship are
ever crowded with regular and decorous worshippers.
Cincinnati is the outpost of manufacturing civilization, though large,
important, but at present unfinished cities are rapidly springing up
several hundred miles farther to the west. It has regular freight steamers
to New Orleans, St. Louis, and other places on the Missouri and
Mississippi; to Wheeling and Pittsburgh, and thence by railway to the
great Atlantic cities, Philadelphia and Baltimore, while it is connected
with the Canadian lakes by railway and canal to Cleveland. Till I
thoroughly understood that Cincinnati is the centre of a circle embracing
the populous towns of the south, and the increasing populations of the
lake countries and the western territories, with their ever-growing demand
for the fruits of manufacturing industry, I could not understand the
utility of the vast establishments for the production of household goods
which arrest the attention of the visitor to the Queen City. There is a
furniture establishment in Baker Street, London, which employs perhaps
eighty hands, and we are rather inclined to boast of it, but we must keep
silence when we hear of a factory as large as a Manchester cotton-mill,
five stones high, where 260 hands are constantly employed in making
chairs, tables, and bedsteads.
At the factory of Mitchell and Rammelsberg common chairs are the principal
manufacture, and are turned out at the rate of 2500 a week, worth from
1l. to 5l. a dozen. Rocking-chairs, which are only made in perfection
in the States, are fabricated here, also chests of drawers, of which 2000
are made annually. Baby-rocking cribs, in which the brains of the youth of
America are early habituated to perpetual restlessness, are manufactured
here in surprising quantities. The workmen at this factory (most of whom
are native Americans and Germans, the English and Scotch being rejected on
account of their intemperance) earn from 12 to 14 dollars a week. At
another factory 1000 bedsteads, worth from 1l. to 5l. each, are
completed every week. There are vast boot and shoe factories, which would
have shod our whole Crimean army in a week, at one of which the owner pays
60,000 dollars or 12,000l. in wages annually! It consumes 5000 pounds
weight of boot-nails per annum! The manufactories of locks and guns,
tools, and carriages, with countless other appliances of civilized life,
are on a similarly large scale. Their products are to be found among the
sugar plantations of the south, the diggers of California, the settlers in
Oregon, in the infant cities of the far West, the tent of the hunter, and
the shanty of the emigrant; in one word, wherever demand and supply can be
placed in conjunction.
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