Слике страница
PDF
ePub

thought. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open, but has even been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise.2 But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons have accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the everretreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.

1 See paper on "The West as a Field for Historical Study," in Report of American Historical Association for 1896, pp. 279-319.

2 The commentary upon this sentence

[ocr errors]

- written in 1893 lies in the recent history of Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines, and the Isthmian canal.

CHAPTER III

THE GROWTH OF CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES1

:

Of late years there have been many able discussions of the problems of city government in the United States. Most of these discussions, however, have turned upon the forms of municipal governments and the dangers discernible in their workings the existence and growth of cities have been assumed as a matter of course. Nevertheless, the fact that we have so many cities to govern is one of the most astonishing in history. A little more than a hundred years ago the whole population of the United States was under four millions, of whom hardly a hundred thousand lived in cities. There were in 1890 four hundred and forty-seven cities, with a total population of more than eighteen millions. Since 1790, the population of the United States has increased nearly sixteen times, while the cities have increased in number more than seventy times, and the urban population nearly a hundred and forty times.

In the causes and development of this phenomenal growth may perhaps be found an explanation of some of the complicated problems of city government. This paper will therefore be devoted to three inquiries:

1. What causes have determined the sites and distribution of American cities? 2. What has been the growth of their popu lation? 3. What is noticeable about the status and social condition of people in cities? 3

1"The Rise of American Cities," by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart. Reprinted from Hart's Practical Essays on American Government, p. 162, et seq., by permission of the author and the publishers, Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London.

2 In 1900 there were 545 cities containing 24,992,000 inhabitants, or 33.1 per cent of the total population. — Ed.

3 In this volume only the discussion relating to the first inquiry is reproduced. -ED.

At the outset, what is meant by the term "city"? The English usage, by which no place is strictly a city which has not a cathedral and a bishop, is no longer applicable even in England. To use the term for every place having a so-called "city" charter would include many an unimportant Charles City or Falls City. In New England there are often several centers of population still united under the old town government, but the aggregate is not a city in name. For convenience, the definition of the Tenth Census will be adopted: a city is any aggregate of eight thousand or more persons living under one local government.

Before noticing the rate of growth of particular cities, it is desirable to consider what causes have planted and nourished our chief centers of population. The reasons which can be given for the site of most ancient and medieval cities are here singularly inapplicable. An Athenian or Salzburger suddenly placed in our midst would declare that this strange people had deliberately avoided the most eligible sites, and had exposed themselves to ruin. The intelligent Athenian or candid Salzburger must quickly see, however, that the conditions of life in the New World have been different. Our cities have grown up in a time of peace. Steam power, artificial roads, and the use of large craft have changed the character of manufactures and commerce. The political importance of cities has diminished, and their commercial importance has increased. Little as he might admire the external appearance of some of our cities, even Alexander or Wallenstein might share the admiration which Blücher expressed when taken through the streets of London after Waterloo: "Mein Gott, was für eine Stadt zum plundern!" Most ancient or mediæval cities, as Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, were grouped about a hill; or on an island, as were Paris, Rhodes, and Venice; or on a promontory, as Constantinople; or, if in flat land, they were not immediately on the coast, as London, Pisa, Cairo. The reason was a simple one: they felt themselves in danger of attack, and sought the most defensible situations. It is not too much to say that not one city in the United States owes its growth to its protected situation.

Quebec stands like a lion on its rock; but there is not, and never has been, one first-class fortress or citadel within our present limits. So far is this the case, that of ten larger cities in the United States, six, probably seven, are exposed to attack by sea and insufficiently protected.1 Military authorities assure us that a bombardment is by no means the serious affair that people suppose. Nevertheless, the prosperity of the coast cities may at any time receive a terrible blow, because other than military reasons have determined their site.

A second great reason for the location of cities applies as efficaciously now as at any former time: it is the convenience of commerce. The sage observation that Providence has caused a large river to flow past every great city is as nearly true now as it was when Memphis, Babylon, and Cologne were built. As nature has determined the position of some cities by furnishing a bold and therefore a defensible site, so she has selected that of others by inequalities in the bed of streams. The site of many American cities is on a river at the head or foot of navigation, usually just above or below a fall. This is the case with Louisville and Buffalo. St. Paul marks the upper part of the Mississippi, as Troy marks the Hudson, and Duluth and Chicago the head waters of the St. Lawrence. More often the large city grows up at the mouth of a river or near its mouth. This is the case with many of our lake cities, as Cleveland and Milwaukee; so St. Louis stands on the first high land below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi; Baltimore owed its early growth to the Susquehanna trade; New Orleans and New York are famous examples.

The history of the world has shown that it is much less important for a city to have the length of a great river behind it than to have a good harbor before it. Newburyport at the mouth of the Merrimac, Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut, have long since fallen out of the race with Boston on the

1 New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, and New Orleans are exposed: only Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati are safe. [Since this was written the coast defenses have been considerably strengthened - ED.]

Charles, Philadelphia on the Schuylkill, and Providence on the Moshassuck. It is the harbor that counts most, and not the river navigation. The further up into the land a harbor penetrates, the more valuable it is. In America, as elsewhere in the world, the point where the tidal water of an estuary meets the fresh water of a river is marked by nature for the site of a settlement. Hence the foundation of the greatness of London, Hamburg, Bordeaux; hence the importance of Norfolk, Charleston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. New York and San Francisco alone of our large cities lie at the mouth of an estuary.

The depth of harbors was for many years of less consequence than their accessibility and protection. From the little havens of the Cinque Ports issued the wasp's nest of vessels which protected the coast of England. From Duxbury, Falmouth, and Perth Amboy sailed the East Indiamen of a century ago. The increasing size and draught of seagoing steamers have caused a concentration of trade into the few large and deep harbors, and this is doubtless one cause of the disproportionate growth of the large cities in the United States. As the coast from Nova Scotia to New Jersey contains the best harbors in the North Atlantic ocean, the cities of that region have a natural advantage over their southern rivals. On the other hand, the ports from New York to Norfolk, and the lake ports, have an advantage in their nearness to supplies of coal; and the advantage increases as steamers take the place of sailing vessels.

Sixty years ago New England seemed likely to lose her commercial importance, because the mountains cut her off from direct communication with the West. It is not enough for a place to have a harbor and good communication with foreign countries in order to grow into a city. It must also have direct and easy connection with a rich country in the interior. Verona, though an interior city, has for ages lain at the mouth of the easiest Alpine pass. Trieste is the port for southern Germany. For the same reason, Baltimore, Charleston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Paul have had a better opportunity for growth than Boston.

« ПретходнаНастави »