The View from 1900

Horatio Alger, his rags-to-riches message in popular bloom, had died the year before. Stephen Crane, who had seen more of the rags than the riches and had written Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, was about to die at 28. Pessimism and doubt were not hard to find on Jan 1, 1900, but the world, and especially the U.S., sided with Alger. It looked forward to the 20th Century with a degree of confidence unequaled by any previous age and unregained since. Paced fast or slow, progress was sure, limitless, irreversible. Virtue walked with progress; they fed each other.

In New York, which was to become the symbol and the power focus of the new century,* the weather on New Year's Day struck just the right note. "The snow-flakes," said the admiring Times, "were of that fine, crisp quality that lie and wear well." The snow, the prosperity of the land and the mood of the hour seemed to wipe out the black misery of preceding centuries. The worst was over; man was out of the woods.

Mercy, Truth & 2,500 Quail. William C. Browning of Browning, King & Co. said: "In nearly 50 years of business experience I don't believe I ever saw a time when prospects were so bright." In parallel vein, the Rev. Michael J. Lavelle preached at St. Patrick's upon the text: "Lord Thou hast blest Thy land: Thou hast turned away the captivity of Jacob . . . Mercy and truth have met . . . justice and peace have kissed. Truth is sprung out of the earth: and justice hath looked down from heaven."

Between spiritual and material progress the Times saw mutual support. It observed: "The finest flower that grows must strike its roots in material earth . . . The noble products of civilization spring from organized and intelligently directed industry. When men lived in caves and every head of a family had to kill his own bear or go without meat, there were no Doric temples, no Trajan columns, or Dewey arches, and no poets reciting their verses of a Summer evening."

Certainly there was no question of barehanded bear killing at the New York Athletic Club, whose 2,000 members and guests that afternoon consumed 2,500 quail, 600 partridges, several hundred grouse. The chef had also reconstructed Manila--in sugar--complete with Cavite Fort and Dewey's fleet. If, later in the evening, any of the guests "recited their verses" it was not recorded.

Marksmanship & Green Moire. New York, the youngest of the queen cities, was smug and hopeful; but Florence, the earliest capital of the modern world, was merely relieved that the 19th Century was over. Italy's nationalist rebirth had indeed been glorious. Progress was everywhere; some Florentines thought that there was too much of it. With a sigh and a shrug Florence's Corriere Italiano saw the old century off: "Tomorrow a new year begins a new century we know nothing about. It does not matter. It is a new year. That is enough."

As midnight approached, Florence's mayor, his council and his bell ringer toiled up the worn stairs of the medieval Bargello. Crowds in the piazza lapped around the corner past Dante's old house. Dancing stopped. Florentines, so seldom quiet, fell silent. The Bargello bell, captured from Pistoia in the 13th Century, was a marvel; it was not rung every Sunday or every New Year's but (such is the proud antiquity of Florence) every new century. It was also rung for the beginning and end of war. Florentines who that night hoped never to hear it peal for war would not be reassured by Education Minister Guidi Bacelli's statement next day. Public school curricula would be revised, he said, to put more emphasis on gymnastics, military drill and marksmanship.

Such exercises were no novelty in Berlin. Three weeks before the New Year Prince von Buelow had told the Reichstag: "In the coming century Germany will be either the hammer or the anvil." At midnight the Kaiser's court heard a 33-gun salute to the New Year, followed by a sermon on "the momentousness of the hour." All then repaired to the White Hall of the Royal Palace for a reception. Kaiserin Augusta Victoria wore a diamond necklace that had belonged to Peter the Great of Russia. Her sage-green moire gown had a ten-yard train of pink velvet borne by eight pages. The hall "was illuminated like fairyland and decorated with symbols typifying a bright future."

Sparks. The year that opened with the glitter of snow, diamonds and hope was to be relatively quiet--a year of intermission between the first and second acts of a great drama. Since 1848 certain fateful ideas and forces had been gathering momentum. Nationalism, capitalism, socialism, secularism were all clearly recognizable by 1900. Afterwards, in the second act, they were to combine and explode. In 1900 all knew that change was at hand, but it was to be gradual and upward, in accordance with popular conceptions of what Mr. Darwin's comforting theory of evolution meant in terms of human society. Few suspected the chasms ahead. Yet as 1900 unfolded, there were portents.

At Kitty Hawk Orville and Wilbur Wright were flying kite-like gliders, which led them three years later to the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine. It took some years for the world to realize that this ingenious toy had revolutionized war and peace.

A burning, bitter, sardonic young (30) exile, Lenin, was preparing in Germany the first issue of his paper, Iskra (The Spark), which was designed to quicken the class struggle in Russia. Its first issue dedicated Iskra to training "people who will devote to the revolution not only their spare evenings, but the whole of their lives." No periodical ever adhered more closely and successfully to its prospectus.

In South Africa, another revolutionary, Mohandas Gandhi, organized an ambulance corps of 1,100 Indians to help the British, in the Boer War, although his personal sympathies lay with the Boers. He reasoned that he must stand by the Empire because progress for Indians could come only within the Empire.

In China, the Boxers rebelled. Progressive Chinese and all Westerners regarded this anti-foreign movement as utterly wrongheaded. The Boxers were swept aside but by 1950 the Western world, appalled at a Communist China, would gladly have settled for the Boxers.

Whisky for a Widow. The world of 1900 was not so vast and diffuse as airborne 1950 imagines it to have been. 1900 had a focus--Britain, the banker, educator and policeman to the world. And the focus had a symbol, Victoria Regina. She stood for sureness, security, principle. After Prince Albert died in 1861 she had his evening clothes laid out every night as a memorial ritual of constancy. She had once rebuked a Minister who used the word expediency: "My lord, I have been taught to judge between what was right and what was wrong; 'expediency' is a word I neither wish to hear again nor to understand."

On the night of May 17, 1900, Victoria rejoiced. Her troops that day had relieved Mafeking, besieged seven months by the Boers. Though no great war, this had been the gravest challenge to Pax Britannica since Waterloo, four years before Victoria was born. On Mafeking night in the upper quadrangle of Windsor Castle, Eton boys sang patriotic songs for the old Queen. She sat by a window in the dusk, leaning out again & again to say "Thank you. Thank you from my heart." Many of the singing boys or their sons were to die in the two great wars to come; but that night at Windsor all seemed tranquil ahead for Britain and the Empire and the world. The Eton boys were astonished and delighted when an Indian servant handed the Queen a whisky & soda, which she drank, along with all Britain, on Mafeking night.

A few months later, on Jan. 22, 1901, Victoria died in the arms of her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm, whose devotion to her was widely advertised and believed. Few knew then that the Kaiser had recently tried to incite Russia against Victoria's Empire. In a secret message to the Czar, the Kaiser said: "Russia alone could paralyze the power of England and deal it, if need be, a mortal blow." If the Czar would order his armies against India, the Kaiser would guarantee that no European nation rose to Britain's defense.

The world of Windsor Castle was not as secure as it seemed on Mafeking night.

Mr. Morgan Takes the Elevated. The center of power was already passing, not to Berlin or Moscow, but to New York. There an imperious genius, J. Pierpont Morgan, dreamed imperial dreams. His crowning achievement was to create the U.S. Steel Corp., by far the biggest business then in the world. This is the story of Big Steel's genesis:

Andrew Carnegie wanted to sell out so that he could devote the rest of his life to giving away carefully the money he had carefully amassed. He knew that only Morgan could organize a combine big enough to swallow the Carnegie Steel Co.; he also knew that Morgan did not like him, and did not want to deal with him.

Quoting Richelieu and Shakespeare, Carnegie coached his 37-year-old protege Charles M. Schwab on how to handle Morgan. In December 1900 at a private dinner, with Morgan among the guests, Schwab made a speech on the vast opportunities that lay ahead of American business. He said: "For instance, there is in the U.S. no one plant making steel cars exclusively. Instead of having one mill make ten, 20 or 50 products, why not have one mill make one product, and that continuously?" Morgan's imagination caught fire. He cornered the willing Schwab after dinner. Morgan, with Elbert Gary as his chief negotiator, set about the making of a great new steel combine.

The last crucial holdout was John W. ("Bet-a-Million") Gates and his American Steel & Wire Co. When Gates refused his final offer, Gary asked Morgan to come into the room. Morgan, his eyes blazing with resolution, his nose with acne rosacea, pounded a table: "I am going to leave this building in ten minutes. If by that time you have not accepted our offer, the matter will be closed." Gates scratched his head awhile, and then gave up. Gary described Morgan's reaction. " 'Now,' he said, 'let's go home.' We went up on the Elevated to 50th Street, where his old electric car met him. He was like a boy going home from a football game." Carnegie & friends got $492,556,766.

Later (the story goes), he tried to strike up a shipboard conversation with Morgan. "I sold out to you too cheaply," he said. "You'd have given me a hundred million more."

"Yes, I'd have given you a hundred million more," said Morgan, turning away, "if only to be rid of you."

Brother Gompers Defines an Era. Tough men, the lords of American Big Business; the power they wielded had begun to worry thoughtful citizens. Some proposed that the government curb "the trusts." Others feared that legislation would exchange one tyranny for a worse. Arthur Twining Hadley, Greek scholar and president of Yale, had a quaint solution. In January 1900, Hadley proposed to deal with the business monopolist by an old Greek remedy--ostracism.

Cried Hadley: "Don't invite [the monopolist] to dinner with you. Don't let him come to your house." This solution was widely ridiculed in the press. Harper's Weekly pointed out that the monopolists could enjoy an active social life merely by inviting one another to dinner. The jokesters would have been surprised by the outcome. Big Businessmen began to feel more & more keenly the reproaches of fellow citizens; they began to worry over something called "bad public relations." By 1922 Hadley was able to say that social pressure rather than law' had changed business conduct.

Samuel Gompers in 1900 was forging another weapon to counteract the power of Big Business. His American Federation of Labor was growing. At the turn of the century, men were beginning to ask Gompers what his goal was. Where would he stop? Gompers had a prophetic answer which he was soon to deliver in a speech at Portland, Ore.: "We want more, we demand more, and when we get that more, we shall insist upon again more and more and even more, until we get the full fruition of our labor."

And so, from 1900 on, it was to be. Gompers and Morgan had the word. More wages, more capital, more machines, more dividends, more production, more leisure, more education, more entertainment, more words, more wars, more wives. Somewhat piquantly, the emphasis on quantity even turned up in a song that swept the U.S. in 1900: "Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?"

After All, the Politicians. 1900 did not exaggerate the prospect of material progress ; its dream was to be multiplied many times over. But in a measure that would have appalled even the pessimists of 1900, old savageries were to be reborn, also multiplied. 1900 expected the next 50 years to belong to the businessman, or perhaps the scientist, or the educator. After them, the New York Times might be right: the world would belong to the poets "reciting their verses of a Summer evening" beside a Dewey arch.

1900 would have been amazed to know that, for good & ill, the next 50 years were to belong to the politician and his uneasy stepbrother, the soldier. Change churned up elemental issues of human freedom and organization that had to be fought out in the politicians' arena. Some of the politicians were of a familiar parliamentary type: Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Clemenceau. Some were soldier-politicians: Chiang Kaishek, Kamal Atatuerk. Some were agitators and conspirators: Lenin, Stalin, Tito, Mao Tse-tung. One, Gandhi, was a saintly organizer. Some--Mussolini, Hitler--were pure dynasts, dealing with dark power drives deep in the spirit of man.

One of the half-century's greater politicians was Winston Churchill. Sometimes wrong, often right, he fought his way toward the heart of every storm. In 1900, Churchill, like his contemporaries, looked forward to pleasant years. Like his contemporaries, Churchill was to struggle through depths and rise to heights unimaginable to 1900. No man's history can sum up the dreadful, wonderful years 1900-50. Churchill's story comes closest.

*Those celebrating the new century as of Jan. 1, 1900 were looked down upon by many well-informed citizens who pointed out that there had been no year Zero A.D.; therefore the 20th Century could not begin until Jan. 1, 1901. (Actually, the pedantic insistence on Jan. 1, 1901 has been overborne by other pedants who say that when the monk Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th Century began the fashion of counting years from the birth of Christ, he missed from one to seven years. So the year 1900 may have been really 1901 or 1907.) In pedantic Boston, the 1901 view prevailed. On Jan. 1, 1901 throngs gathered on the Common to hear a moral discourse by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, author of the patriotic tear-squeezer The Man Without a Country. In those days the fate of Kale's pathetic character, Philip Nolan, was regarded as uniquely dreadful. The wars, revolutions and immigration restrictions of the next 50 years were to create hundreds of thousands of men & women without a country.

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