,; 2 GOODWIN'S WEEKLY. J
j C. C. GOODWIN, Editor
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H1 lis
Bit The present ruin there is terrible enough to
H Jj sadden and humble mankind, for it is a reminder
H M that when nature calls up her slumbering forces
H J' and sets them at war, man is but as the insect
H ' i that shows its gaudy wings for a day and then
H ' perishes.
H ! r v The earth for countless ages was rocked by
H i earthquakes and swept by inconceivable storms;'
H I for agos the glacier has been grinding its way;
H I the currents and the tides of the deep sea follow
i their paths, and the notice served by them a'l is
i that man's tenure on this earth is but at tho
M caprice of elements, upon the forces of which he
t h can put no limitations and whose movements he
W can neither anticipate nor turn aside.
Hftj What Railroads Are
Alft WRITER in the World's Work says that a
railroad through a country is simply a rib
J; bon of civilization. We should say that le-
H pends altogether on the country. When the old
H Union and Central Pacific railroads were built
U through this country it was much more than a
M ribbon, it was the linking of the east and the
M west; it was the driving of the frontier back five
H hundred miles in both directions; it was what
H took the fight out of the savage and made pos-
H sible tho planting of homes in mid-desert because
they then were only three days' travel to sea
i shore either way.
The building of railroads through the wilder
ness can hardly be described. It changes the
face of nature; it takes away all feeling of isola
tion; it puts man in the desert in direct com
munication with all his fellow men everywhere.
Our country for two hundred and fifty years did
the best it could. The man in Massachusetts
fought tho savage; the swiftest communication
he had was so slow that when his son in Massa
chusetts bade the family good-by to go to make
m his home in western New York, it was as
H though a funeral was in that home. The thought
H! was that perhaps the boy might some time be
K seen again, but all the chances were against it.
H The same journey is now made in a night and
H1 nothing is thought of it.
M As the men in Massachusetts fought back the
m Indians so did the men of New York; so did
M the men of Ohio; so did the men of Illinois, and
m so the long fight went on clear across the con-
B tinent until the railroad was opened. That
H stopped all the Indian wars within five hundred
H miles of the road. A man in California for twenty
HH years, nearly, was a month away from his friends
H in the east. He became a different person; he
H was so fr away that while his particular rela-
H tives were willing to admit that he was a civil-
H ized being, they were sure that he was surround-
H ed by barbarians. That feeling has always at-
H tached to the east and the men there have not
H known how narrow and provincial and small they
H are, at that veiy moment when they think they
H are wise and are looking down with commis.era-
H tion on the less fortunate men in the west
B There is more civilization in one line) of rail-
H road than there is in a thousand missionaries;
H there are more practical results to human kind
H in a line of railroad than in a century of plowing
B and small manufacturing and farming It is the
evangel of modern times. Its invention was a
notice to the world to right about face and for
ward march. A good many wrongs have been In
flicted through it; no place has capital been more
tyrannical than It has been in tho management of
railroads. At tho same time, no such boon of
mercy was ever given to man as the invention
of railroads.
The flying machine will come after a while,
but for all around good there is nothing to com
pare with a great railroad, and when the flying
machine comes it will be, we presume, as it was
with the Indiana farmer who fought the telegraph
as simply a chimera of a crazy man's brain, until
Anally a dispatch was delivered fresh from a
town a thousand miles way, and he was asked
what he thought of that. Then his reply was
that they might run small parcels on It, but he
still stuck to it that it never would do for heavy
freight.
By the way, some strenuous railway building
is being done In Africa. We have a story before
us of an engineer killed in his sleep by a prowl
ing Hon, an engineer who was laying" out a road
through that region. We presume the president
will pass over the place in tho next few months,
but we do not expect that any Hon will catch
him asleep. And that reminds us that a Kansas
man has petitioned to accompany the president
on that journey. The president had better shake
him, because if he takes one wild Kansas man
with him, when the sentinel for the wild animals
gets one glimpse of him he will give the alarm
and there will be no wild animals on that side of
Africa.
But seriously speaking of railroads, think
what our country would have been had there
been none. The Mississippi river would still have
been away out west and the man in California
would he looked upon, by the man in the east
as was in the old days the sailor on a whale
ship who had gone off to the Bering Sea. The
thought was he might be seen some time, but
hardly.
More through railroads than any other agents
the United States in seventy years has advanced
faster in the material work of life and in the set
tlement of a country than did any empire of the
old world in a thousand years. It is the blessing
of the age and we wish our government, realizing
its importance, would, through pure government
aid, drive one railroad the whole length of South
America from the river Atrato up through the
stubborn Cordilleras to Bogota and thence on
to Buenos Ayres, skirting the Andes, touching
in eastern Bolivia, making a pathway perhaps
4,000 miles long and making it possible for the
young men of the United States to go there and
make a peaceable conquest of a continent.
Be Just as Well as Generous
CONGRESS on Monday voted a great sum for
the afflicted beyond the sea. That was the
proper thing to do. But there are more
strong men in the United States who are out of
work and cannot obtain employment than there
are refugees In Italy and Sicily Cannot Con
gress be as generous to our own country's poor
as to the unfortunate of other lands?
Why not set the idle men of a dozen eastern
states to making homes where now only ma
larious swamps exist? Why not order the work
just so soon as engineers can set the stakes? Ex
tend the reclamation act and begin. And to pay
them issue $500,000,000 in one per cent bonds,
to be distributed and pass from hand to hand as
money, and make them redeemable from the pro
ceeds of the sale of the redeemed lands, so much
per annum. In that way the Government would
not ultimately be out a dollar; it would have
some more millions of acres of land under culti
vation, some, thousands more homes as Bulwarks J
of the Republic. . 1
We hear much about conserving natural re
sources; why not utilize a resource, which tor
all time has not only been "profitless, but a blight,
and convert it into something that will be an im-
menso food producer?
In the beginning man was commanded to sub
due and till the earth, and he was promised tho
spring time and harvest, that, surely is authority
enough for undertaking the scheme.
There are people who say it is not the busi
ness of the Government to provide work for the'
people. But no one denies that it is the business
of the Government to remove every possible ob
struction from the pa of the people and to com
mand order and peace. Is there any other so
sure a way to keep an earnest man peaceable
when hungry as to supply him with work through
which to earn his bread? It is more terrible for
a man to starve to death in this free1 land than
in Italy.
Bismarck Fooled Scliurz ,
f,
A BOOK has been put out in the east which is
principally the reminiscences of Carl
Schurz and his interviews with Bismarck.
Of course, Schurz had a great personal and na
tional pride in Bismarck. One part deals, with
Schurz meeting with Bismarck in 18G8. Soon af
ter Schurz reached Berlin he learned that Bis
marck desired to participate In his welcome. It
will be remembered that Schurz left Germany in
'48, between two days and until he had an as
surance from Mr. George Bancroft, the then Am
erican minister at Berlin, that he would not be
molested by the police, he would not go to Ger
many. He met Bismarck in the chancellor's palace on
the Wilhelm Strausse. As Schurz put it, the
Wctncellor opened a bottle of wine, lighted i
huge pipe, then talked. Bismarck had been tell
ing Schurz how he had averted intervention by
France in Austria. Then ho paused and added:
"But we shall have that Avar with France any
how. Do you believe that I love war? I have
seen enough of war to abhor it profoundly. The
terrible scenes I have witnessed will never cease
to haunt my mind. I shall never consent to a
war that is avoidable, much less seek it, but this
war with France will surely come. It will be
forced upon us by the French emperor. I see
that clearly. I do not think he is personally x
eager for war, but rather would avoid It, but the
precariousness of his situation will drive him
to it. My calculation is that the crisis will come
in about two yean. We have to bo ready and
of course we are. We shall win and the result
will be just the contrary of what Napoleon aims
at, the total unification of Germany outside of
Austria and probably Napoleon s downfall."
Schurz's comment on this was: "I could not
help remembering that I was listening to the
prime minister of the crown, to whom I was an
entire stranger and who knew nothing of my
discretion and senso of responsibility. As if we
had been confidential chums all our lives, he gave l
me with apparently the greatest abandon and ut
most veracity Inside views of the famous con- J
flict between the crown and the Prussian parlia
ment when, seeing the war with Austria Tnevita- I
bly coming, he had without authorization, spent
millions upon millions of tho public funds upon I
the army in preparation for the great crisis." f
That reads very strangely coming from Carl i
Schurz, his wonder that Bismarck should talk with
him, a comparative stranger, without knowing
anything of his discretion or his sense of respon
sibility. Now it seems to us that is about the
highest exhibition of Bismarck's genius that we
have ever seen. To understand it we must keep
in mind that Bismarck did not make any bones
I