SOME TYPES OF MODERN MEN OF SELF-CULTURE: F the half dozen portraits of men whom we have taken as types of self-culture to embellish our cover, the most noticeably intellectual of the group is that of Robert Collyer, the blacksmith preacher. The face has character, the brow is massive, and the head, which is not unlike that of Henry Ward Beecher, is that of a virile, resourceful, large-minded, and thoroughly human man a man physically and mentally alike cast in nature's largest and, in many respects, finest mould. His robust frame he owes, in part, to the healthy English stock of which he comes, and, in part, to the hard work at the forge and anvil in his young growing days, for when he was fourteen he was apprenticed to a blacksmith in a Yorkshire village, and for nine years after he came to this country he made hammers in the outskirts of Philadelphia, acting the while as a local Methodist preacher and itinerant anti-slavery lecturer. His vocation in the hard mechanic arts, while it developed his physical strength and gave him brawn and muscle, did something at the same time in endowing him with that large sanity and intellectual broad-mindness for which he has long been noted, for only from a hearty, healthy man, sound in mind and limb, can one look for that large humanity and ready sympathy with the toilworn and the suffering, and above all for that broad tolerance in matters of faith and creed, which have been Robert Collyer's most marked characteristics. The incessant toil of Mr. Collyer's early years gave him little chance to acquire a systematic education, and what he has become intellectually he owes entirely to his unwearied efforts to use the scant leisure, and improve the few opportunities of an humble yet contented and even joyous life. How he used these opportunites we gather from the stories that are told of him devouring books in his youth whenever he could lay hands upon them, and, while at work in the smithy, even snatching a glance at the page of an author in whom he was interested at every stroke of the bellows. It is the old story fraught with lessons of encourage ment and incentive to every youth who has the sense to heed them—of the value of using to the utmost the opportunity at hand, however scant it may be, and the success that waits on every earnest, assiduous effort to overcome difficulties and make light of the obstacles in the path of progress and high achievement. It is always interesting, in the case of a man who has won his own way upward in life and attained eminence in his later years, to know the factors in the upbuilding and development of the life and character of the individual. Some of these, in Dr. Collyer's case, we happily know, and, as in the youth-time of many another notable man, books, we find, were the sources of inspiration, coupled with ambition and a constant thirst for and diligence in reading. In the home of his parents, we learn, there were but four books accessible to the eager youth, and upon these he fed at once his soul and his imagination. They were the Bible, Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe," and a work of a didactic or counselling and stimulating nature, entitled "The Young Man's Companion." Subsequently, he became possessed of "Sandford and Merton," and this and "Robinson Crusoe" and the Bible were, we are told, his favorites. Every penny he could save, his good mother relates, went to buy books, and, she adds, that "I scarcely remember a meal to which he sat down at which he did not have a book in his hand, and on such occasions he would become so engrossed that if he were wanted for anything we had to call 'Robert' sharply before we could win his attention." This family picture has been added to by a sketch that exhibits young Collyer, a youth of fourteen, at work at the blacksmith's forge, after having earned his own living for six years in a linen factory. To the smithy, where the lad wrought, a gentleman came one day, and, entering it, found a boy blowing the bellows. Close observation, it is related, revealed the presence of a book before him, its pages kept open by two bits of iron placed on a shelf near his head. Each time he brought the bellows down or released it, he caught a sentence from the book. The passion for reading in young Collyer was thus fed "according to his ability to catch snatches of time and fragments of literature.' These proofs of the industry of the blacksmith apprentice have since been emphasized by Dr. Collyer himself, when in later life he modestly deprecated the idea that he sorely pinched himself or suffered unduly in the struggle of his youth-time to obtain an education. "Such a thing as a struggle for learning," he remarks, never entered my thoughts beyond the mere elements-the three R's, as they say - and at the last of these I was a mere dunce, and am still, while at the second I was not much better. As a reader, however, I was a banner-boy every time, and the truth is, for the rest of it, I seem to have 'growed.' Books were to me a delight beyond all telling. I loved them for their own sake, and devoured them with a measureless greed, so that I do not remember a day when I tired of them or imagined that they would not be as a fire enfolding itself, with no outcome or income, save just the blessedness of getting at their heart." But we pass from the youth to the man. And yet, before doing so, let us glance briefly at the facts of our subject's early life. Robert Collyer was born in England, at Keighley, Yorkshire, December 8, 1823. His grandfather was a sailor and served for a time under Lord Nelson, and was present at the battle of Trafalgar. His father was a blacksmith, earning, we we are told, eighteen shillings ($4.50) a week-the usual wages of a mechanic in England at the period. To his father's trade young Robert was apprenticed in 1837, after only four years of schooling, between his fourth and his eighth years. We have seen how he otherwise supplemented his education, and his intelligence was further stimulated by the demands upon him when, in 1849, he became a local preacher in the Methodist communion. "The way opened," he has said, "for me to speak to my neighbors and friends in the Methodist meetings, and they seemed glad to hear me; so I kept on saying what came to me, and then I found the stores of things I had read and treasured unknown to my conscious self ready to my hand. The words," he continues, "poured from my mouth almost without effort and I was able to speak connectedly of facts, and, in my discourse, to make use of thoughts, which had accumulated in my mind during my period of desultory reading." With his marriage, which occurred in 1850, a new era dawned on his life, for he took ship for the New World and landed in Philadelphia, to resume for a time his work as a mechanic, though with ambitions in his heart for a larger and more notable field of usefulness. a The latter he found in resuming his peripatetic missionary work, which he followed for a while in the Methodist fold, but soon afterwards exchanged it for what, to him, was the freer and more congenial, because more elastic, communion of the Unitarian church. During his sojourn in Pennsylvania, he actively pursued his trade, which at this period was hammer-maker at Shoemakertown, meanwhile fitting himself mentally for his life work as a preacher, lecturer, and, in no mean respect, author and publicist. The Unitarian body he joined in 1859, and in the wider latitude of that communion he gained intellectual breadth and strength, and was not long in winning recognition for himself as a powerful and eloquent preacher. As such he brought strenuous aid to the cause of slavery-abolition, in which at this era he was enthusiastically interested, as well as to that of a righteous patriotism. In the interest of his new found church, Mr. Collyer left the East for the West, settling at Chicago, at first as a ministerat-large, but speedily accepting an invitation to take charge of the nucleus of the Second Unitarian church in that city, which had just been organized by a handful of members of the Denomination. At this time the organization had only a modest meeting house, but as the body grew under its able and eloquent preacher the edifice known as Unity Church was erected and opened in the year 1869. This structure unhappily was destroyed in the great fire of 1871, but was restored soon afterwards, and for ten years it became a centre of live spiritual and philanthropic work, under its now widely known and zealous pastor. Dr. Collyer's fame at this time was enhanced by the work he did for reform in the mammoth city of his adoption, by his public services in the year of the great fire and at a time of suffering in the State, occasioned by a widespread and devastating storm, and by his humane and patriotic labors with the army of the West during the cruel years of the Civil War. In the latter service, particularly, the great preacher endeared himself to all lovers of the nation; and such was his devotion to the soldiers of the Union and such his tenderness to all sufferers, whether Federals or Confederates, that his name was a consecrate one in all parts of the country. When the conflict was over and the native dead were brought for burial to Chicago, it was Dr. Collyer who was called upon to officiate at the solemnities of the grave, and his the patriot eloquence that eulogized the heroes as they passed to their last resting-place. Nor is testimony wanting, during the period of his golden pastorate in Chicago, to the esteem in which he was held by his favored flock, by his brother ministers, and by the citizens at large. From a sympathetic sketch of the great divine, at this era of his life, we make the following appreciative extract: "He (Dr. Collyer) holds a prominent position in the ranks of philanthropy and reform. In the pulpit he has achieved a high reputation. Few ministers are listened to with more admiration or attract larger audiences. He has a vigorous mind, a lively versatile fancy, a deep vein of charming sentiment, a singular sweetness and quality of temper, and withal a certain simple, touching eloquence, which is greatly added to by a continual sparkle of irrepressible but quiet mirth of which he appears to be brimful. In the affairs of life he is a man of sterling common sense and rectitude. That success has not spoiled him or made him less true to his manhood, is witnessed by the fact that he has never disowned the humbleness of his origin, or sought to conceal what, on the contrary, is his proud boast, that he long earned an honest living by the craft of a skilled hammermaker and brawny blacksmith. Indeed, one of the cherished heirlooms of the good divine to-day is the anvil from the smithy in the old English village of Ilkley on which he was wont to work, and which, it is said, some members of his old Chicago charge acquired and brought over as a proud memento of their pastor's strenuous toil in former days. One other witness to Dr. Collyer's well-earned fame may be cited in the fact, that when the great New England divine, Theodore Parker, died, an effort was made, but made in vain, to persuade Dr. Collyer to come to Boston to fill his charge. Later, however, he was induced to sever his connection with his attached flock in Chicago, on the occasion of his accepting a call, in the year 1879, to the Church of the Messiah, in New York. Here he has since successfully labored, finding time in the intervals of arduous pastoral and other work to make a few visits to his old English home and to prepare and publish several volumes of discourses, added to those which were issued from his pen while in Chicago. These include "Nature and Life" (1866), "The Life that Now Is" (1871), "The Simple Truth: a Home Book (1877), and "Lectures to Young Men and Women" (1886). These are marked by the characteristic qualities of the preacher - earnestness and sympathy, coupled with learning and thought and a felicitous and poetic style. G. M. A. Notwithstanding the presence of the European men-of-war, bloodshed has not ceased in Crete. At Candia there would appear to have been a breach of the armistice by Mussulmans, who, having been armed by the Governor, attacked several villages; and in the fighting there were several persons killed and wounded on both sides. The commanders of the European ships have lodged a protest with the Governor. There has been continuous fighting between Christians and Mussulmans at a point within an hour's march of Retimo. There have also been conflicts, attended with bloodshed, near Mataxa, and here a Turkish frigate opened fire on the Christians. Incendiary fires are reported from several villages. The insurgents have presented to the admiral in command of the combined squadrons a reply to the recent proclamation. They state that all the ties between the Porte and Crete are broken, and that the "only solution" of the present problem which will be accepted by the Cretan people is union with Greece. In course of a statement in the Hungarian Diet the other day, Baron Banffy, the Premier, stated that the agreement between the Great Powers to the effect that under no circumstances should the annexation of Crete by Greece be allowed was unanimous. Further details of naval and military preparations by Turkey come from Constantinople and Salonica. A decree has been issued at Athens calling out the 1891 and 1892 reserves in view of the mobilization of Turkish troops on the frontier. FEDERAL CORPORATIONS AND THE CRÉDIT MOBILIER NATIONAL BANKS AND THE "UNION PACIFIC" N 1790 a disagreement and serious contention took place in President Washington's cabinet over the question as to whether or not the Federal Government could lawfully create a corporation. This question has been a constant subject of debate by different political parties, members of Congress, and other Federal officers, ever since, and was recently agitating Mr. Cleveland's government, the problem being what should be done with its interest in the Union Pacific Railroad. This railway matter is but a sequel to that old trouble in the first cabinet. The incident that started the disturbance was the recommendation of Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, that a National Bank should be chartered by Federal legislation. Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, opposed the plan, upon the ground that the Federal Government had no lawful power to create a corporation, and that it would be drifting towards paternalism and running the government into private business and out of its only rightful realm, which, he declared, was merely to keep peace, while individuals worked out their own financial salvation. Edmund Randolph, the Attorney General, Madison, and, in a word, all the opponents of the old Federal party, accepted this doctrine of the Secretary of State as the true one. The President finally sided with Hamilton and afterwards signed the bill incorporating the Bank. The differences between the two great members of the cabinet grew and they became so widely apart upon this and other matters that finally Jefferson resigned, recording this saying that "Hamilton and I were pitted against each other every day in the cabinet like two fighting cocks." It might be thought today that this should have settled that dispute, but the fact remains in history that it did not. Jefferson's party asserted that the act chartering the bank was unconstitutional, and grumbled at everything that arose in Congress in reference to the bank and its successor, until the charter of the latter expired by limitation in 1836—the former having expired in Madison's first administration. This second National Bank was chartered by Congress in 1816, and, three years after its establishment, the question of the constitutionality of the act creating it came before the Supreme Court of the United States. The court then declared it constitutional, solely upon the ground that such a corporation was "necessary to carry into effect the [expressly] granted powers of the Federal Government to borrow money, maintain and supply armies, coin money," etc. Benton subsequently said that after experience was tantamount to a "victory of the Constitution over the Supreme Court," and arrayed facts in history against the "necessity" argument for a National Bank. The operations of the last National Bank resulted, as all socialistic institutions in a government tend to result, in the grossest frauds and abuses, among which were building houses for speculation, selling coin, taking usury and unduly lending money to editors, brokers, and members of Congress. After the charter of this last bank expired, Daniel Webster, who had been its ardent defender, admitted that the view that a National Bank was a necessity to the carrying out of the expressly granted powers of the Federal Government was an obsolete idea." The idea, however, that the Federal Government could lawfully create a corporation was not destined to become so obsolete, and within a few years after Webster passed from the scene, we find the government incorporating a railroad company and going into the business of railroad building and maintenance, by a similar line of procedure to that which it had followed in the creation and running of a bank. This railroad enterprise, however, was principally justified by its supporters under that provision of the Constitution which gives the Federal Government power to regulate commerce. The logic of this reasoning was that the Government can create and enter into commerce in order to regulate it. The railroad matter and the government's connection with it form quite a little history in our country. In 1856 the Republican party declared in its platform that a railroad should be built to the Pacific Ocean and "that the Federal Government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction, and, as an auxiliary thereto [should render aid] to the immediate construction of an emigrant road on the line of the railroad." Four years later, the Republican platform was substantially the same as that of 1856, so far as this railroad matter was concerned. But there was also a plank in the platform of 1860 which asserted that "a return to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by favorite partisans. Within two years after the Republican party came into power, it passed the Act which incorporated the Union Pacific Railroad Company. The party that has always denied the power of the Federal Government to lawfully create a corporation was then, in the main, without representation in Congress, and nearly a dozen States were out of the Union and entirely unrepresented in either branch of the Federal legisla ture. The capital stock of the railroad was fixed by Congress at $100,000,000. By the act creating it, the Government not only gave it the right of way over all public territory, with sufficient land for all switches, depots, etc., but agreed to issue government bonds to be used for the construction of the road, in these amounts: $16,000 per mile for 150 miles of the intended road, $32,000 per mile for 850 miles, and $48,000 per mile for 300 miles of the mountainous part. The gov ernment bonds actually issued by the time the road was completed amounted to over fifty-four millions of dollars, par value. The Government retained a first mortgage upon nearly all the property of the company, to secure the repayment of these bonds. This act also granted to the company every alternate section of land along the route that was within ten miles on each side of the projected road. By the year 1864 there were less than twenty miles of the great road actually built and in running order; but at the prayer of the company Congress doubled the land grant, making it extend twenty miles on either side of the road - amounting to 12,000,000 acres. At this time Congress became even more liberal, and proceeded to give the company power to issue its bonds for over twenty seven millions of dollars, and declared that these company bonds should be a first mortgage upon the road, subordinating to them the Government's lien for the bonds which it had agreed to issue by the Act of 1862. This Act of 1864 met with opposition on the ground that the government bonds previously donated were alone enough to build the road, but the opposition was defeated. The result was that $27,236,512 worth of the government bonds issued for the building of the road were secured only by a second mortgage after the passage of the Act of 1864, and the company's placing of its bonds on the market. With the issue of land grant and income bonds, sale of stock, government and first mortgage bonds, the company actually had the enormous capital of $111,000,000 with which to build the road, nearly all of which came from the Government. The task of building the road was now before the gentlemen composing this company. They not only wanted to get the road into running order, but also sought to make money out of the construction. They could not contract with themselves to build it, for that would be unlawful and might stop the issue of the Federal bonds. If they undertook to build it themselves, as the mere act of the company, they could not enjoy any return until the operation of the road began, and the government bonds would be beneficial only to laborers, materialmen, and bankers. Oakes Ames was now in Congress, and largely interested in the Union Pacific Railroad Company. His brother, Oliver, was president pro tem. of the company, and James Brooks, C. S. Bushnell, Henry S. McComb, and Thomas C. Durant were upon the board of directors. The question that confronted them was how could they retain their interests and positions in the company, and at the same time make and execute contracts with it for the building of the road and reap the profits of contractors, and avoid personal liability. liability. George Francis Train suggested to one of them that they purchase |