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Extract from THREE HUNDRED YEARS HENCE (1836) (pp. 70-75; 99-102; 119-125). by Mary Griffith
1st published as part of Camperdown: or News from Our Neighbourhood: Being Sketched by the Author of "Our Neighbourhood" in Philadelphia, 1836.
Edgar Hastings, a young man (32 years old), has fallen asleep in February, 1835 in his house which was buried under an avalanche and is awakened by a descendant named Edgar Hastings in April, 2135. In the following extracts the two are discussing the changes that have occurred in the world during Hastings long "nap." For ease in distinguishing the two men the 1835 Edgar Hastings is referred to throughout as Hastings; the 2135 Edgar Hastings is referred to throughout as Edgar.
Extract 1:
"What is this?" said Hastings, looking through one of the arches of the fish market; "can this be the Delaware?"
"Yes," replied Edgar, "the market on which we are now, is over the Delaware. Look over this railing, we are on a wide bridge - but let us proceed to the extremity; this bridge extends to the Jersey shore, and thus connects the two large cities. Philadelphia and Camden."
"In my day, it was in contemplation to build a bridge over the Delaware; but there was great opposition to it, as in that case there would be a very great delay, if not hinderance, to the free passage of ships."
New wonders sprung up at every step-vessels, light as gossamer, of curious construction, were passing and repassing under the arches of the bridge, some of three and four hundred tons burden, others for the convenience of the market people, and many for the pleasure of the idle. While yet they looked, a beautiful vessel hove in sight, and in a moment she moved gracefully and swiftly under the arches, and by the time Hastings had crossed to the other side of the bridge she was fastened to the pier.
"Is this a steamboat from Baltimore?" said Hastings. "Yet it cannot be, for I see neither steam nor smoke."
"Steamboat!" answered his companion -- "don't speak so loud, the people will think you crazy. Why, steamboats have been out of date for more than two hundred years. I forget the name of the one who introduced them into our waters, but they did not continue in use more than fifty years, perhaps not so long; but so many accidents occurred through the extreme carelessness, ignorance and avarice of many who were engaged in them, that a very great prejudice existed against their use. No laws were found sufficiently strong to prevent frequent occurrences of the bursting of the boilers, notwithstanding that sometimes as many as nine or ten lives were destroyed by the explosion. That those accidents were not the consequence of using steam power -- I mean a necessary consequence -- all sensible men knew; for on this river, the Delaware, the bursting of the boiler of a steam engine was never known, nor did such dreadful accidents ever occur in Europe. But, as I was saying, after one of the most awful catastrophes that ever took place, the bursting of a boiler which scalded to death forty-one members of Congress, (on their way home), besides upwards of thirty women and children, and nine of the crew, the people of this country began to arouse themselves, and very severe laws were enacted. Before, however, any farther loss of lives occurred, a stop was put to the use of steamboats altogether. The dreadful accident of which I spoke occurred in the year 1850, and in that eventful year a new power was brought into use, by which steamboats were laid aside forever."
"What is the new principle, and who first brought it to light?"
"Why, a lady. The world owes this blessed invention to a female! I will take you into one of our small boats presently, where you can handle the machinery yourself. No steam, nor heat, nor animal power -- but one of sufficient energy to move the largest ship."
"Condensed air, is it? -- that was tried in my time."
"No, nor condensed air; that was almost as dangerous a power as steam; for the bursting of an air vessel was always destructive to life. The Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries mentions several instances of loss of life by the bursting of one of the air machines used by the manufacturers of mineral waters. If that lady had lived in this century, her memory would be honoured and cherished; but if no memorial was erected by the English to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a reproach could not rest upon us for not having paid suitable honours to the American lady."
"Why, what did Lady Mary Wortley Montagu do?" said Hastings; "I recollect nothing but that she wrote several volumes of very agreeable letters -- Oh, yes, how could I forget -- the small-pox! Yes, indeed, she did deserve to have a monument; but surely the English erected one to her memory?"
"Did they? -- yes -- that old defamer of women, Horace Walpole, took good care to keep the public feeling from flowing in the right channel. He made people laugh at her dirty hands and painted cheeks, but he never urged them to heap honours on her head for introducing into England the practice of innoculation for the small-pox. If this American lady deserved the thanks and gratitude of her country for thus, for ever, preventing the loss of lives from steam, and I may say, too, from shipwreck -- still farther was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu entitled to distinction, for the very great benefit she bestowed on -England. She saved thousands of lives, and prevented, what sometimes amounted to hideous deformity, deeply scarred faces, from being universal. - -Yes, the benefit was incalculable and beyond price -quite equal, I think, to that which the world owes to Dr. Jenner, who introduced a new form of small-pox, or rather the small-pox pure and unadulterated by any affinitive virus. This modified the disease to such a degree, that the small-pox, in its mixed and complicated state, almost disappeared. The Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries states, that after a time a now variety of the small-pox made its appearance, which was called varioloid; but it was quite under the control of medical skill."
"Well, you live in an age so much in advance of mine, and so many facts and curious phenomena came to light during the nineteenth century, that you can tell me what the settled opinion is now respecting small-pox, kine-pox, and varioloid."
"The settled opinion now is, that they are one and the same disease. Thus -- the original disease, transferable from an ulcer of the cow's udder to the broken skin of a human being, produced what is called the kine or cow-pox. This virus of the kine-pox, in its original state, was only capable of being communicated by contact, and only when the skin was broken or cut; but, when combined with the other poison, infected the system by means of breathing in the same atmosphere. The poison from the ulcer called cow-pox was never communicated to or by the lungs, neither was the poison which had so strong an affinity for it communicated in that way; but when the two poisons united, and met in the same system, a third poison was generated, and the small-pox was the result. But here we are discussing a deep subject in this busy place -- what gave rise to it? -- oh, steamboats, the new power now used, Lady Mary Wortley, and Dr. Jenner."
"I presume," said the attentive Hastings, "that Dr. Jenner fared no better than your American lady and Lady Mary Wortley.
"You are much mistaken," said Edgar. "Dr. Jenner was a man, which in your day was a very different circumstance. I verily believe if it had been a woman who brought that happy event about, although the whole world would have availed itself of the discovery, her name would scarcely be known at this day."
Hastings laughed at his friend's angry defense of women's rights, but he could not help acknowledging the truth of what was said there was always a great unwillingness in men to admit the claims of women. But it was not a time, nor was this the place, to discuss so important a subject; he intended, however, to resume it the first leisure moment. He turned his eye to the river, and saw vessels innumerable coming and going; and on the arrival of one a little larger than that which he first saw, the crowd pressed forward to get on board as soon as she could land.
Extract 2:
"Just as if what?" said the astonished Hastings, "has the time come when killing men by wholesale in war, is accounted a crime?"
"Yes, thank Heaven," said Edgar, "that blessed time has at length arrived; it is upwards of one hundred and twenty years since men were ordered to kill one another in that barbarous manner. Why the recital of such cruel and barbarous deeds fills our young children with horror. The ancient policy of referring the disputes of nations to single combat, was far more humanizing than the referring such disputes to ten thousand men on each side; for, after all, it was 'might that made right.' Because a strong party beats a weaker one, that is not a proof that the right was in the strong one; yet, still, if men had no other way of settling their disputes but by spilling blood, then that plan was the most humane which only sacrificed two or one man. As to national honour! why not let the few settle it? why drag the poor sailors and soldiers to be butchered like cattle to gratify the fine feelings of a few morbidly constructed minds?"
"Oh, that my good father, Valentine Harley, could have seen this day," said Hastings. "But this bloodthirsty, savage propensity-this murdering our fellow creatures in cold blood, as it were, was cured by degrees I presume. What gave the first impulse to such a blessed change?"
"The old Recorder states that it was brought about by the influence of women; it was they who gave the first impulse. As soon as they themselves were considered as of equal importance with their husbands-as soon as they were on an equality in money matters, for after all, people are respected in proportion to their wealth, that moment all the barbarisms of the age disappeared. Why, in your day, a strange perverted system had taken deep root; then, it was the man that was struck by another who was disgraced in public-opinion, and not the one who struck him. It was that system which fermented and promoted bloodthirstiness, and it was encouraged and fostered by men and by women both.
"But as soon as women had more power in their hands, their energies were directed another way; they became more enlightened as they rose higher in the scale, and instead of encroaching on our privileges, of which we stood in such fear, women shrunk farther and farther from all approach to men's pursuits and occupations. Instead of congregating, as they did in your time, to beg for alms to establish and sustain a charity, that they might have some independent power of their own -- for this crying after distinction was almost always blended with their desire to do good -- they united for the purpose of exterminating that war seed disgrace of a blow on the one who received it. This was their first effort; they then taught their children likewise, that to kill a man in battle, or men in battle, when mere national honor was the war cry, or when we had been robbed of our money on the high seas, was a crime of the blackest die, and contrary to the divine precepts of our Saviour. They taught them to abstain from shedding human blood, excepting in self defence -- excepting in case of invasion.
"They next taught them to reverence religion for until bloodthirstiness was cured, how could a child reverence our Saviour's precepts? How could we recommend a wholesome, simple diet to a man who had been accustomed to riot in rich sauces and condiments? They had first to wean them from the savage propensities that they had received through the maddening influence of unreflecting men, before a reverence for holy things could be excited. Then it was that clergymen became the exalted beings in our eyes that they now are -- then it was that children began to love and respect them. As soon as their fathers did their mothers the poor justice of trusting them with all their property, the children began to respect her as they ought, and then her words were the words of wisdom. It was then, and not till then, that war and duelling ceased. We are amazed at what we read. What! take man's life because he has robbed us of money! Hang a man because he has forged our name for a few dollars! No: go to our prisons, there you will see the murderer's fate -- solitary confinement, at hard labour, for life! that is his punishment; but murders are very rare now in this country. A man stands in greater dread of solitary confinement at hard labour than he does of hanging. In fact, according to our way of thinking, now, we have no right, by the Divine law, to take that away from a human being for which we can give no equivalent. It is right to prevent a murderer from committing still farther crime; and this we do by confining him for life at hard labour, and alone."
"Women, you say, produced a reform in that miserable code called the law of honour."
"Yes, thanks be to them for it. Why, as the old Recorder states, if a man did not challenge the fellow who struck him, he was obliged to quit the army or the navy, and be for ever banished as a coward, and it was considered as disgraceful in a private citizen to receive a blow without challenging the ruffian that struck him. But the moment that women took the office in hand, that moment the thing was reversed. They entered into a compact not to receive a man into their society who had struck another, unless he made such ample apology to the injured person as to be forgiven by him; and not only that, but his restoration to favour was to be sued for by the injured party himself. A man soon became cautious how he incurred the risk."
"It often occurred to me," said Hastings, "that women had much of the means of moral reform in their power; but they always appeared to be pursuing objects tending rather to weaken than to strengthen morals. They acted with good intentions, but really wanted judgment to select the proper method of pursuing their benevolent schemes. Only look at their toiling as funds toward educating poor they did to collect men for the ministry."
EXTRACT 3:
"Do women still get the third of their husband's estate after their husband's death?"
"Their thirds? I don't know what you mean -- Oh, I recollect; yes, in your day it was the practice to curtail a woman's income after her husband's death. A man never then considered a woman as equal to himself; but while he lived, he let her enjoy the whole of his income equally with himself, because he could not do otherwise and enjoy his money; but when he died, or rather, when about making his will, he found out that she was but a poor creature after all, and that a very little of what he had to leave would suffice for her. Nay, the old Recorder says that there have been rich men who ordered the very house in which they lived, and which had been built for their wives' comfort, during their life time, to be sold, and who thus compelled their wives to live in mean, pitiful houses, or go to lodgings.
"Yes," said Hastings, -- quite ashamed of his own times, -- "but then you know the husband was I fearful that his wife would marry again, and all their property would go to strangers.
"Well, why should not women have the same privileges as men? Do you not think that a woman had the same fears? A man married again and gave his money to strangers - did he not? The fact is, we consider that a woman has the same feelings as we have ourselves a thing you never once thought of -- and now the property that is made during marriage is as much the woman's as the man's; they are partners in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow-they enjoy every thing in common while they live together, and why a woman, merely on account of her being more helpless, should be cut off from affluence because she survives her husband, is more than we of this century can tell. Why should not children wait for the property till after her death, as they would for their father's death? It was a relic of barbarism, but it has passed away with wars and bloodshed. We educate our women now, and they are as capable of taking care of property as we are ourselves. They are our trustees.,' far better than the trustees you had amongst you in your day -they seldom could find it in their hearts to allow a widow even her poor income. I suppose they thought that a creature so pitifully used by her husband was not worth bestowing their honesty upon.
"But the women in my day, said Hastings, seemed to approve of this treatment; in fact, I have known many very sensible women who thought it right that a man should not leave his wife the whole of his income after his death. But they were beginning to have their eyes opened, for I recollect that the subject was being discussed in 1835."
"Yes, you can train a mind to acquiesce in any absurd doctrine, and the truth is, that as women were then educated, they were, for the most part, unfit to have the command of a large estate. But I cannot find that the children were eventually benefited by it; for the young men and women, coming into possession of their father's estate at the early age of twenty-one, possessed no more business talent than their mother; nor had they even as much prudence and judgment in the management of money matters, as she had. Men seldom thought of this, but generally directed their executors to divide the property among the children as soon as they became of age - utterly regardless of the injustice they were doing their wives, and of the oath which they took when they married -that is, if they married according to the forms of the Episcopal church. In that service, a man binds himself by a solemn oath 'to endow his wife with all his worldly goods.' If he swears to endow her with all, how can he in safety to his soul, will these worldly goods away from her. We consider the practice of depriving a woman of the right to the whole of her husband's property after his death, as a monstrous act of injustice, and the laws are now peremptory on this subject."
"I am certain you are right," said Hastings, and you have improved more rapidly in this particular, during a period of three hundred years, -- than was, done by my ancestors in two thousand years before. I can understand now, how it happens, that children have the same respect for their mother that they only felt for their father in my time. The custom, or laws, being altogether in favour of equality of rights between parents, the children do not repine when they find they stand in the same relation of dependence to their mother, that they did to their father; and why this should not me, is incomprehensible to me now, but I never reflected on it before."
"Yes there are fewer estates squandered away in consequence of this, and society is all the better for it. Then to this is added the great improvement in the business education of women. All the retail and detail of mercantile operations are conducted by them. You had some notion of this in your time; for in Philadelphia, although women were generally only employed to make sales behind the counter, yet some were now and then seen at the head of the establishment. Before our separation from Great Britain, the business of farming was also at a low ebb, and a farmer was but a mean person in public estimation. He ranks now amongst the highest of our business men; and in fact, he is equal to any other many whether in business or not, and this is the case with female merchants. Even in 1836, a woman who undertook the business of a retail shop, managing the whole concern herself, although greatly respected, she never took her rank amongst the first classes of society.
This arose, first, from want of education, and, secondly, from her having lived amongst an inferior set of people. But when women were trained to the comprehension of mercantile operations, and were taught how to dispose of money, their whole character underwent a change, and with this accession of business talent, came the respect from men for those who had a capacity for the conducting of business affairs. Only think what an advantage this is to our children; why our mothers and wives are the first teachers, they give us sound views from the very commencement, and our clerkship begins from the time we can comprehend the distinction of right and wrong.
"Did not our infant schools give a great impulse to this improvement in the condition of women, and to the improvements in morals, and were not women mainly instrumental in fostering these schools?"
"Yes, that they were; it was chiefly through the influence of their pen and active benevolence, that the scheme arrived at perfection. In these infant schools a child was early taught the mystery of its relation to society; all its good dispositions and propensities were encouraged and developed, and its vicious ones were repressed. The world owes much to the blessed influence of infant schools, and the lower orders were the first to be humanized by them. But I need not dwell on this particular. I shall only point to the improvement in the morals of our people at this day, to convince you that it is owing altogether to the benign influence of women. As soon as they took their rank as an equal to man, equal as to property I mean, for they had no other right to desire; there was no longer any struggle, it became their ambition to show how long the world had been benighted by thus keeping them in a degraded state. I say degraded state, for surely it argued in them imbecility or incapacity of some kind, and to great extent, too, when a man appointed executors and trustees to his estate whilst his wife was living. It showed one of three things -- that he never considered her as having equal rights with himself; or, that he thought her incompetent to take charge of his property -- or, that the customs and laws of the land had so warped his judgment, that he only did as he saw others do, without considering whether these laws and customs were right or wrong. But if you only look back you will perceive that in every benevolent scheme, in every plan for meliorating the condition of the poor, and improving their morals, it was women's influence that promoted and fostered it. It is to that healthy influence, that we owe our present prosperity and happiness -- and it is an influence which I hope may forever continue."
It was not to such a man as Hastings that Edgar need have spoken so earnestly; he only wanted to have a subject fairly before him to comprehend it in all its bearings. He rejoiced that women were now equal to men in all that they ever considered as their rights; and he rejoiced likewise that the proper distinction was rigidly observed between the sexes - that as men no longer encroached on their rights, they, in return, kept within the limits assigned them by the Creator. As a man and a Christian, he was glad that this change had taken place; and it was a melancholy satisfaction to feel that with these views, if it had been permitted him to continue with his wife, he should have put her on an equality with himself.
The moment his wife and child appeared to his mental vision, he became indifferent to what was passing around him; Edgar, perceiving that he was buried in his own thoughts, proposed that they should return home immediately, and they accordingly passed down Broadway to the Battery, from which place they intended to take a boat.