The Greatest Highway in the World Part 12

622 M. PAINESVILLE, Pop. 7,272. (Train 3 pa.s.ses, 11:06p; No. 41, 3:40a; No. 25, 2:46a; No. 19, 7:27a. Eastbound: No. 6 pa.s.ses 8:05p; No. 26, 9:16p; No. 16, 12:18a; No. 22, 3:43a.)

Painesville was founded in 1800 by settlers from Conn. and N.Y., the chief among whom was Gen. Edward Paine (1745-1841), an ex-officer of the Continental Army. It contains one of the early women's colleges of the country--Lake Erie College, founded in 1859 as the successor to Willoughby Seminary at Willoughby, Ohio, the buildings of which were burned in 1846.

The history of this part of the State includes early episodes of Mormonism. In Painesville was published a book by E.D. Howe purporting to show that "the historical p(art?) of the book of Mormon" was plagiarized from a romance called _The Ma.n.u.script Found_ written by Solomon Spalding of Conneaut (about 1809). This claim has not been fully verified by later research.

Nine miles southwest of Painesville at Kirtland was (one?) of the early settlements made by Joseph Smith and his Mormon followers. They built here a $40,000 temple (still standing), a teacher's seminary and a bank.

The bank failed and Smith had to leave the state to avoid the sheriff.

Most of his disciples followed him to Missouri. At Mentor (which we now pa.s.s 4 M. west of Painesville) lived Sidney Rigdon, who later became one of the Mormon leaders.

Rigdon (1793-1876) began his preaching career as a Baptist, then helped in establishing a society called the "reformers," and before being converted to Mormonism was pastor of a church in Mentor. He became a Mormon leader, and published a new translation of the Bible, with inserted prophecies of the coming of Joseph Smith. With Hyrum and Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, he moved westward in 1831 preaching, being "persecuted" and establishing an occasional temple. At Far West, a town in Missouri where the Mormons established themselves in 1838, Rigdon preached his "salt sermon," from the Matt. V. 13, urging his hearer to wage a "war of extermination" against all who disturbed them. Following his advice, the Mormons involved themselves in such broils with the "gentiles" that the state militia was called out against them. Smith and Rigdon were arrested, but the former escaped custody and with 15,000 followers, fled to Illinois. When the latter was freed, he joined the "Saints" in the city of Nauvoo which they had founded and was made a professor at their university. After Smith's arrest and murder by a mob in 1849 and the breaking up of Nauvoo, Rigdon disputed with Young for Smith's place. Not only failing to secure it, but being in addition tried for treason in wanting it, the disciple of Mormon returned to the East and spent his last days at Friendship, N.Y. Howe, in the book mentioned above, a.s.serted that Sidney Rigdon was the original "author and proprietor of the Mormon conspiracy."

Near Mentor, also is Lawnfield, the former home of James A. Garfield.

James Abram Garfield (1831-1881), 20th president of the U.S., was born in a log cabin at Orange, Ohio, and began life as a farm hand. He attended for a time the Western Reserve Eclectic Inst.i.tute, afterwards Hiram College, finally entering Williams College from which he graduated, becoming a teacher of ancient languages and literature. Entering politics as a Republican, he was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859. His Civil War record was striking, and he was made major-general for gallantry at the battle of Chickamauga. He was elected to Congress in 1863, where he attracted attention as a hard worker and ready speaker, and where later he became leader of the Republican party in the House. He was an advocate of drastic measures against the South and considered Lincoln's policies too lenient. At the presidential convention of the Republican Party in 1880, he was nominated on the 36th ballot as a compromise candidate, and in the same year was elected president. On the 2d of July, 1881, while on his way to attend commencement exercises at Williams College, he was shot by Charles G. Giteau, a disappointed office seeker who waylaid him in the Washington Railroad Station. He died Sept. 19, 1881, at Elberon, N.J.

CLEVELAND TO CHICAGO

623 M. CLEVELAND, Pop. 796,836. (Train 3 pa.s.ses 11:55p; No. 41, 4:35a; No. 25,3:30a; No. 19, 8:20a. Eastbound: No. 6 pa.s.ses 7:20p; No. 26, 8:35p; No. 16, 11:30p; No. 22, 2:56a.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: City of Cleveland from Reservoir Walk (1873)]

A trading post was established on the present site of Cleveland as early as 1785 and ten years later Capt. Moses Cleaveland, leader of a small band of pioneers and agent of the Connecticut Land Co., surveyed the ground and planted the nucleus of the present thriving city--now fifth in size in the country. Capt. Cleaveland, in travelling from Connecticut into the Northwest, followed closely the present route of the New York Central Lines, crossing N.Y. State to Buffalo and then from Buffalo along the sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie.

At that time the southern sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie was part of the famous Western Reserve territory, consisting of 3,250,000 acres of land, certain parts of which Connecticut ceded to her citizens as compensation for their losses from "fire and damage" at the hands of the British during the Revolutionary War. These lands were sometimes known as "Fire Lands."

The Western Reserve was a part of the territory immediately west of the Pennsylvania line, and extending westward therefrom 120 M.

Connecticut held and "reserved" this territory to herself in 1780, when she ceded to the general government all her rights and claims to the other lands in the West. Later Conn. ceded the Reserve itself, but not before she had sold much of it to the Conn. Land Co., and the latter had begun the sale and disposition of all the lands so acquired, east of the Cuyahoga River. Until after 1815 no lands west of that river were open to entrance or survey, and settlers ventured there at their own risk. This was the Indian Boundary Line, established in 1795, and beyond it the aborigines had exclusive right of occupancy.

It was for the purpose of surveying and developing these lands that Capt. Cleaveland undertook his expeditions into the Western Reserve. The first of these expeditions (1795) was composed of 50 men, women and children who arrived at Ft. Independence (now Conneaut) on Lake Erie, July 4, 1796. Pushing on further, they arrived at the present site of Cleveland, and in a few days the first log cabin was erected at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River.

To keep the commissary supplied was no easy problem in the new settlement. Sometimes they ate boiled rattlesnake in default of anything better. On one occasion, while the little band of settlers was a.s.sembled in prayer in one of the log cabins, someone espied a bear swimming across the Cuyahoga River. The coming of the bear was looked upon as providential, and the congregation suspended the prayer-meeting, killed the bear, and then returned to their devotions.

Capt. Cleaveland's plans for his new settlement were ambitious, and he built a number of substantial roads through the forests, usually following the old Indian trails, now the right of way of the New York Central and other lines. With the opening of the Ohio Ca.n.a.l to the Ohio River (1832), Cleveland became the natural outlet on Lake Erie for Ohio's extensive agricultural and mineral products. The discovery and commercial exploitation (beginning about 1840) of large deposits of iron ore in the Lake Superior region placed Cleveland in a strategic position between these vast ore fields and the coal and oil resources of Ohio, Pa., and W. Va., and it is from this time that the city's great commercial importance really dates.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Moses Cleaveland

Moses Cleaveland (1754-1806) was born at Canterbury, Conn., and graduated from Yale. After serving in the U.S. Army, where he attained the rank of captain, he practiced law and entered the Connecticut legislature. Later, he organized the Connecticut Land Co., which in 1795 purchased a large portion of the Western Reserve.]

In 1836 Cleveland had been chartered as a city. The name, though chosen in honour of Capt. Cleaveland, had been abbreviated to its present form some years before. Tradition credits the changed form to a newspaper which left out the letter "a" in order to make the word fit a headline.

The building of the railways during the decade 1850-1860, and the stimulus to industry during the Civil War, when Cleveland supplied large quant.i.ties of iron products and clothing to the government, gave impetus to the city's growth. With a population of only 1,076 in 1830 and 6,071 in 1840, Cleveland had become in 1870 a city of 92,829 (more than double its population in 1860). Thirty years later (1900) the population had grown to 381,768 and in 1920 it was 796,836, an increase of 42 per cent over 1910.

The later history of Cleveland has been distinguished for some notable experiments in city planning, popular education and munic.i.p.al ownership (particularly with respect to street railways). The street railway situation had been a source of trouble ever since 1899, when a strike of serious proportions occurred. Mobs attacked the cars, some of which were blown up with dynamite. In 1901 Tom Johnson was first elected mayor, and, largely as a result of his advocacy, munic.i.p.al ownership became a greater issue in Cleveland than in any other great city in the country.

Tom Johnson (1854-1911) was a successful business man who entered politics on a reform platform. He was an ardent single-taxer, and in spite of the fact that he was financially interested in street railways, steel plants and other industries, a staunch advocate of munic.i.p.al ownership. He served as mayor of Cleveland for 4 successive terms (from 1901 to 1909) and was later elected to Congress. Single Taxers were much pleased by his strategy in getting an entire book--Henry George's _Progress and Poverty_--printed in the Congressional Record.

Johnson and his followers demanded a 3-cent fare on the street railways and in 1906 it was actually put into effect. The private owners were compelled in 1908 to lease their property to a munic.i.p.al holding company, but in 1910 (after Johnson's defeat for re-election in the preceding year), the street railway system was leased to a new corporation, the rate of fare under the new arrangement to be based on an adequate return to the investors.

Cleveland was the home of Mark Hanna who became famous in national Republican politics.

Marcus A. Hanna was born in Lisbon, Ohio, in 1837, removed with his father in 1852 to Cleveland, where he graduated from Western Reserve University, and in 1867 entered into partnership with his father-in-law (Daniel P. Rhodes) in the coal and iron business.

Under Hanna's guidance the business prospered enormously, but it was not till somewhat late in life that he became prominent in Republican affairs in Cleveland. As chairman of the National Republican Committee in 1896 he managed with great skill the campaign against Bryan and free silver, and came to be acknowledged as a leader of great adroitness, tact, and resource.

He entered the U.S. Senate from Ohio in 1898, and was one of the princ.i.p.al advisers of the McKinley administration. He took a vital interest in problems affecting labor and capital and was one of the organizers in 1901 and first president of the National Civic Federation. He died in 1904 at Washington.

The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce has done much in the betterment of local politics. It was also instrumental in 1902 in securing the adoption of the "Group Plan" by which some of the princ.i.p.al public buildings are arranged in a quadrangle on the bluff overlooking Lake Erie. Cleveland appropriated $25,000,000 to promote the plan. On one side of the quadrangle (nearest the lake) are the courthouse and city hall; on the opposite side and 2,000 ft. south are the post office and library ($2,500,000). There is to be a Mall 600 ft. wide, with public buildings on either side, connecting the court-house and city hall with the post office and library. The granite buildings forming this quadrangle were designed under the supervision of Arnold Brunner, John M. Carrere and D.H. Burnham.

In education the city has made an innovation known as the "Cleveland plan" which seeks to minimize school routine, red tape and frequent examinations. Great stress is put on domestic and manual training courses, and promotion in the grammar schools is made dependent on the general knowledge and development of the pupil as estimated by a teacher who is supposed to make a careful study of the individual. There are in Cleveland 120 public schools and 44 public libraries. The princ.i.p.al inst.i.tutions of higher education are the Western Reserve University with 2,800 students, St. Ignatius College (Roman Catholic), and the Case School of Applied Science.

With its 12 M. of sh.o.r.e line on Lake Erie, a fine park system (1,500 acres), and wide residential streets, well shaded by maples and elms, Cleveland possesses many aspects of unusual beauty. The city is situated on bluffs rising from 74 to 200 ft. above the water and commands pleasant views of Lake Erie, while the surface of the plateau upon which the town is built is deeply cut by the Cuyahoga River, which here pursues a meandering course through a valley half a mile wide. Other streams, notably Dean Brook on the east border, add to the picturesque character of the munic.i.p.al setting. A chain of parks* connected by driveways follows the valley of the Dean Brook, at the mouth of which, on the lake front, is the beautiful Gordon Park, formerly the private estate of William J. Gordon, but given by him to the city in 1893; from this extends up the Dean Valley the large Rockefeller Park, given to the city in 1896 by John D. Rockefeller and others. It adjoins Wade Park, where are a zoological garden and a lake.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The First Automobile (1798)

"By means of wheels," says the Third Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1798), from which this ill.u.s.tration was taken, "some people have contrived carriages to go without horses. One of these [the vehicle to the left] is moved by the footman behind it; and the forewheels, which act as a rudder, are guided by the person who sits in the carriage. Between the hind-wheels is placed a box, in which is concealed the machinery that moves the carriage. A machine of this kind will afford a salutary recreation in a garden or park, or on any plain ground; but in a rough or deep road must be attended with more pain than pleasure.... Another contrivance for being carried without draught, is by means of a sailing chariot or boat fixed on four wheels, as A/B [the figure to the right], which is driven before the wind by the sails C/D and guided by the rudder E. Its velocity with a strong wind is said to be so great that it would carry eight or ten persons from Scheveling to Putten, which is 42 English miles distant, in two hours." The figure in the centre represents a modified sailing vehicle designed to sail against the wind as well as with it.]

Of the several cemeteries in Cleveland, Lake View (300 acres), on an elevated site on the east border of the city is the most noteworthy; here are buried President Garfield (the Garfield memorial is a sandstone tower 165 ft. high with a chapel and crypt at its base), Mark Hanna and John Hay.

John Hay (1838-1905) was a native of Salem, Ind., and a graduate of Brown University. He studied law in the office of Abraham Lincoln, and, after being admitted to the bar at Springfield, Ill., became one of Lincoln's private secretaries, serving until the president's death. He then acted as secretary to various U.S.

Legations abroad--Paris, Vienna, Madrid--and on returning to America became a.s.sistant secretary of State under W. M. Evarts.

President McKinley appointed him amba.s.sador to Great Britain in 1897, and the following year Secretary of State. Hay was prominent in many important international negotiations, such as the treaty with Spain (1898), the "open door" in China, and the Russo-j.a.panese peace settlement. He negotiated the Hay-Pauncefote treaty concerning the Panama Ca.n.a.l; also settled difficulties with Germany over the Samoan question and with Great Britain over the Alaskan boundary. As an author, Hay is best known for his _Pike County Ballads_, in which _Little Breeches_ first appeared, and for the monumental life of Lincoln written by Nicolay and himself.

Other notable monuments in Cleveland are a statue of Senator Hanna by Saint Gaudens (in University Circle), a marble statue of Commodore Perry in commemoration of the battle of Lake Erie (in Wade Park), a soldiers'

and sailors' monument--a granite shaft rising from a memorial room to a height of 125 ft. (in the Public Square), and a bronze statue of Moses Cleaveland, the founder of the city (likewise in the Public Square).

This latter monument is said to stand on the very spot selected by Cleaveland for the centre of his new settlement.

The Public Square, or Monumental Park, is in the business centre of the city, about M. from the lake and the same distance east of the Cuyahoga River. From this park the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares radiate.

Euclid Ave., once famous for its private residences, but now the chief retail street of the city, begins at the southeast corner of the square.

Cleveland's newest residence district is on the heights in the eastern part of the city.

Cleveland sometimes has been called the "Sheffield of America." Its prosperity is founded chiefly on its accessibility to oil, coal and iron. It is the largest ore market in the world. Forty million tons of iron ore valued at $125,000,000 are received annually in the Cleveland district, and the ore docks where much of this ore is handled, are of great interest. Cleveland also has extensive docking facilities,* said to be the finest in the country, for handling its immense trade in coal and grain. Cleveland's oil refineries, among the largest in the world, receive enormous quant.i.ties of crude oil by pipe line, rail and water.

The city has 2,500 manufacturing plants with 125,000 workers, producing annually goods worth about $375,000,000, of which $100,000,000 represents the products of its foundries and machine shops. Cleveland is the first city in America in the making of wire products and automobile parts, second in the manufacture of clothing and sewing machines and one of the leading cities in the production of complete automobiles.

Shipbuilding (there are five large shipyards* here) is likewise an important industry, and Cleveland controls the larger share of the tonnage on the Great Lakes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Slab Hall," Oberlin College (1832)

Oberlin College was founded in 1832 "to give equal advantages to whites and blacks, and to give education to women as well as to men." Other objects were "to establish universal liberty by the abolition of every form of sin" and "to avoid the debasing a.s.sociation of the heathen cla.s.sics and make the Bible a text book in all departments of education." The traditions of Oberlin are strongly religious, and from Charles Grandison Finney, revivalist and president of the college from 1851 to 1866, sprang what is called the "Oberlin Theology," a compound of free-will and Calvinism. Before the Civil War the village was a station on the "underground railway," and the influence of the college made it a centre of extreme abolitionist sentiment.]

673 M. ELYRIA, Pop. 20,474. (Train 3 pa.s.ses 12:52a; No. 41, 5:27a; No.

25, 4:07a; No. 19, 9:12a. Eastbound: No. 6 pa.s.ses 6:22p; No. 26, 7:57p; No. 16, 10:34p; No. 22, 2:04a.)

Elyria was founded about 1819 by Herman Ely in whose honour it was named. Ely came from West Springfield, Ma.s.s., built a cabin on the site of the present town, and later erected the first frame house in the township. The city lies at the junction of the two forks of the Black River, each of which falls about 50 feet here, furnishing considerable water-power. There are sandstone quarries about the town. The chief manufactures of the city are automobile supplies, telephones, electric apparatus, flour, feed, canned goods, machine parts and iron pipe; the annual output is valued at about $10,000,000. Eight miles to the southwest is Oberlin (Pop. 5,000), the seat of Oberlin College.