Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 Part 3

He would be the first to acknowledge also, if he were speaking, the intelligent, faithful, indefatigable service rendered in execution of his plans by those who have been a.s.sociated with him, as a.s.sistant engineers, as master mechanics, or as trained, trusted, and experienced workmen. On their knowledge and vigilance, their practiced skill and patient fidelity, the work has of necessity largely depended for its completed grace and strength. They have wrought the zealous labor of years into all parts of it; and it will bear to them hereafter, as it does to-day, most honorable witness.

Some of our honored fellow-citizens, who have borne a distinguished part in this enterprise, are no more here to share our festivities.

Mr. John H. Prentice, for years the Treasurer of the Board, wise in counsel, of a liberal yet a watchful economy, of incorruptible integrity, pa.s.sed from the earth two years ago; but to those who knew him his memory is as fresh as the verdure above his grave at Greenwood. More lately, one who had been from the outset a.s.sociated with what to many appeared this visionary plan, to whose capacity and experience, his legal skill, his legislative influence, his social distinction, the work has been always largely indebted, and who was for years the President of the Board, has followed into the silent land. It is a grief to all who knew him that he is not here to see the consummation of labors and plans which for years had occupied his life. But his face and figure are before us, almost as distinctly as if he were present; and it will be only the dullest forgetfulness which can ever cease to connect with this Bridge the name of the accomplished scholar, the experienced diplomatist, the untiring worker, the cordial and ever-helpful friend, Mr. Henry C. Murphy.

But others remain to whom the work has brought its burdens, of labor, care, and long solicitude, sometimes, no doubt, of a public criticism whose imperious sharpness they may have felt, but who have followed their plans to completion, without wavering or pause; who have, indeed, expanded those plans as the progress of the work has suggested enlargement; and who, to-day, enter the reward which belongs to those who, after promoting a magnificent enterprise, see it accomplished.

Among them are two who were a.s.sociated with it at the beginning, and who have continued so a.s.sociated from that day to this--Mr. William C.

Kingsley, Mr. James S.T. Stranahan. The judgment cannot be mistaken which affirms that to these men, more than to any other citizens remaining among us, the prosecution of this work to its crowning success is properly ascribed. They are the true orators of the hour.

We may praise, but they have builded. On the tenacity of their purpose, of which that of these combining wires only presents the physical image,--on the lift of their wills, stronger than of these consenting cables,--the immense structure has risen to its place. No grander work has it been given to men to do for the city, which will feel the unfailing impulse of their foresight and courage, their wisdom in counsel, and their resolute service, to the end of its history!

Mr. William Marshall, Gen. Henry W. Sloc.u.m, were also connected with the work at the outset, and, with intervals in the period of their service, have given it important a.s.sistance to the end; while others are with us who have joined with intelligence, enthusiasm, and helpfulness in the councils of the Board at different times. We rejoice in the presence of all those who, earlier or later, have taken part in the plans, at once vast and minute, which now are realized. We offer them the tribute of our admiring and grateful esteem. We trust that their remembrance of the work they have accomplished, and their personal experience of its manifold benefits, may continue through many happy years. And we congratulate ourselves, as well as them, that the city will keep the memorial of them, not in yonder tablets alone, but in the great fabric above which those stand, while stone and steel retain their strength.

But, after all, the real builder of this surpa.s.sing and significant structure has been the people: whose watchfulness of its progress has been constant, whose desire for its benefits has been the incentive behind its plans, by whom its treasury has been supplied, whose exultant gladness now welcomes its success. The people of New York have ill.u.s.trated anew their magnanimous spirit in cheerfully supplying their share of the cost, though not antic.i.p.ating from such large outlay direct reliefs and signal advantages. The people of Brooklyn have shown at least an intelligent, intrepid, and far-sighted sagacity, in readily accepting the immediate burdens in expectation of future returns.

Such a popular achievement is one to be proud of. St. Petersburg could be commenced 180 years ago--almost to a day, on May 27th, 1703--and could afterward be built, by the will of an autocrat, to give him a new centre of empire, with a nearer outlook over Europe; its palaces rising on artificial foundations, which it cost, it is said, 100,000 lives in the first year to lay. Paris could be reconstructed, twenty-five years ago, by the mandate of an emperor, determined to make it more beautiful than before, to open new avenues for guns and troops, to give to its laborers, who might become troublesome, desired occupation. But not only have these cities of ours been founded, built, reconstructed by the people, but this charming and mighty avenue in the air, by which they are henceforth rebuilt into one, is to the people's honor and praise. It shows what mult.i.tudes, democratically organized, can do if they will. It will show, to those who shall succeed us, to what largeness of enterprise, what patience of purpose, what liberal wisdom, the populations now ruling these a.s.sociated cities were competent in their time. It takes the aspect, as so regarded, of a durable monument to Democracy itself.

We congratulate the Mayors of both the cities, with their a.s.sociates in the government of them, on the public spirit manifested by both, on the ampler opportunities offered to each, and on those intimate alliances between them which are a source of happiness to both, and which are almost certainly prophetic of an organic union to be realized hereafter. And we trust that the crosses, encircled by the laurel wreath, on the original seal of New Amsterdam, with the Dutch legend of this city, "Union makes Strength," may continue to describe them, whether or not stamped upon parchments and blazoned on banners, as long as human eyes shall see them.

The work now completed is of interest to both cities, and its enduring and multiplying benefits will be found, we are confident, to be common, not local.

We who have made and steadfastly kept our homes in Brooklyn, and who are fond and proud of the city--for its fresh, bracing, and healthful air, and the brilliant outstretch of sea and land which opens from its Heights; for its scores of thousands of prosperous homes; for its unsurpa.s.sed schools, its co-operating churches, the social temper which pervades it, the independence and enterprise of its journals, and the local enthusiasms which they fruitfully foster; for its general liberality, and the occasional splendid examples of individual munificence which have given it fame; for its recent but energetic inst.i.tutions, of literature, art, and a n.o.ble philanthropy; and for the stimulating enterprise and culture of the young life which is coming to command in it--we have obvious reason to rejoice in the work which brings us into nearer connection with all that is delightful and all that is enriching in the metropolis, and with that diverging system of railways, overspreading the continent, which has in the commercial capital its natural centre of radiation.

We have no word of criticism to speak, only words of most hearty admiration, for the safe and speedy water-service on the lines of the ferries which has given us heretofore such easy transportation from city to city, without delays that were not unavoidable, and with remarkable exemption from disaster. So far as human carefulness and skill could a.s.sure safety and speed, in the midst of conditions unfriendly to both, the management of these ferries has been peerless, their success unsurpa.s.sed. To them is due, in largest measure, the rapid growth already here realized. They have formed the indispensable arteries, of supply and transmission, through which the circulating life-blood has flowed, and their ministry to this city has been constant and vital. But we confess ourselves glad to reach, with surer certainty and a greater rapidity, the libraries and galleries, the churches and the homes, as well as the resorts of business and of pleasure, with which we are now in instant connection; and the horizon widens around us as we touch with more immediate contact the lines of travel which open hence to the edges of the continent.

If we have not as much to offer in immediate return, we have, at least, a broad expanse of uncovered acres within the city, for the easy occupation of those who wish homes, either modest or splendid, or who shall wish such as the growth of the metropolis multiplies its population into the millions, crowds its roofs higher toward the stars, and makes a productive silver mine of each several house-lot.

And to those who visit us but at intervals we can open not only yonder park, set like an emerald in the great circular sweep of our boundaries from the waters of the Narrows to the waters of the Sound, but also their readiest approach to the ocean. The capital and the sea are henceforth brought to nearer neighborhood. Long Island bays, and brooks, and beaches, are within readier reach of the town. The winds that have touched no other land this side of Cuba are more accessible to those who seek their tonic breath. The long roll of the surf on the sh.o.r.e breaks closer than before to office and mansion, and to tenement chamber.

The benefits will, therefore, be reciprocal, which pa.s.s back and forth across this solid and stately frame-work; and both cities will rejoice, we gladly hope, in the patience and labor, the disciplined skill, the large expenditure, of which it is the trophy and fruit. New York has now the unique opportunity to widen its boundaries to the sea, and around its brilliant civic s.h.i.+eld, more stately and manifold than that of Achilles, by the aid of those who have wrought already these twisted bracelets and clasping cables, to set the glowing margin of the Ocean-stream.

This work is important, too, we cannot but feel, in wider relations; for what it signifies, as for what it secures, and for all that it promises. Itself a representative product and part of the new civilization, one standing on it finds an outlook from it of larger circ.u.mference than that of these cities.

Every enterprise like this, successfully accomplished, becomes an incentive to others like it. It leads on to such, and supplies incessant encouragement to them. We may not know, or probably conjecture, what these are to be, in the city or the State, in the years that shall come. But, whatever they may be, for the more complete equipment of either with conditions of happiness and the instruments of progress, they will all take an impulse from that which here has been accomplished. Such a trophy of triumph over an original obstacle of Nature will not contribute to sleep in others; and whatever is needed of material improvement, throughout the State of which it is our pride to be citizens, will be only more surely and speedily supplied because of this impressive success.

It is, therefore, most fitting to our festival that we are permitted to welcome to it the Chief Magistrate of the State, with those representing its different regions in the legislative councils. We rejoice to remember that the work before us has been a.s.sisted by the favoring action of those heretofore in authority in the State; and we trust that to those now holding high offices in it, who are present to-day, the occasion will be one of pleasant experience, and of enlarged and reinforced expectation.

Indeed, it is not extravagant to say that the future of the country opens before us, as we see what skill and will can do to overleap obstacles, and make nature subservient to human designs. So we gladly welcome these eminent men from other States; while the presence of the Executive Head of the Nation, and of some of the members of his Cabinet, is appropriate to the time, as it is an occasion of sincere and profound gratification to us all. Without the concurrence of the National Government, this structure, though primarily of local relations, as reaching across these navigable waters, could not have been built. We feel a.s.sured that those honorably representing that Government, who favor its completion with their attendance, and in whose presence political differences are forgotten, will share with us in the joyful pride with which we regard it, and in the inspiring antic.i.p.ation that the physical apparatus of civilization in the land is to take fresh impulse, not impediment or hindrance, from that which here has been effected. The day seems brought distinctly nearer when the Nation, equipped with the latest implements furnished by science, shall master and use as never before its rich domain.

Not only the modern spirit is here, even in eminence, which dares great effort for great advantage; but the chiefest of modern instruments is here, which is the ancient untractable iron, transfigured into steel.

It was a sign, and even a measure, of ancient degeneracy, when the age of Gold was followed if not forgotten by one of Iron. Decadence of arts, of learning and laws, of society itself, was implied in the fact. The more intrepid intelligence, the more versatile energy, amid which we live, have achieved the success of combining the two: so that while it is true now, as of old, that "no mattock plunges a golden edge into the ground, and no nail drives a silver point into the plank," it is also true that, under the stimulus of the larger expenditure which the added supplies of gold make possible, the duller metal has taken a fineness, a brightness and hardness, with a tensile strength, before unfamiliar.

The iron, as of old, quarries the gold, and cuts it out from river-bed and from rock. But, under the alchemy which gold applies, the iron takes n.o.bler properties upon it. Converted into steel, in ma.s.ses that would lately have staggered men's thoughts, it becomes the kingliest instrument of peoples for subduing the earth. Things dainty and things mighty are fas.h.i.+oned from it in equal abundance:--gun-carriage and cannon, with the solid platforms on which they rest; the largest castings, and heaviest plates, as well as wheel, axle, and rail, as well as screw or file or saw. It is shaped into the hulls of s.h.i.+ps. It is built alike into column and truss, balcony, roof, and springing dome. To the loom and the press, and the boiler from whose fierce and untiring heart their force is supplied, it is equally apt; while, as drawn into delicate wires, it is coiled into springs, woven into gauze, sharpened into needles, twisted into ropes; it is made to yield music in all our homes; electric currents are sent upon it, along our streets, around the world; it enables us to talk with correspondents afar, or it is knit, as before our eyes, into the new and n.o.ble causeways of pleasure and of commerce.

I hardly think that we yet appreciate the significance of this change which has pa.s.sed upon iron. It is the industrial victory of the century, not to have heaped the extracted gold in higher piles, or to have crowded the bursting vaults with acc.u.mulated silver, but to have conferred, by the sovereign touch of scientific invention, flexibility, grace, variety of use, an almost ethereal and spiritual virtue, on the stubbornest of common metals. The indications of physical achievement in the future, thus inaugurated, outrun the compa.s.s of human thought.

Two bridges lie near each other, across the historical stream of the Moldau, under the shadow of the ancient and haughty palace at Prague--the one the picturesque bridge of St. Nepomuk, patron of bridges throughout Bohemia, of ma.s.sive stone, which occupied a century and a half in its erection, and was finished almost four centuries ago, with stately statues along its sides, with a superb monument at its end, sustaining symbolic and portrait figures; the other an iron suspension-bridge, built and finished in three years, a half century since, and singularly contrasting, in its lightness and grace, the sombre solidity of the first. It is impossible to look upon the two without feeling how distinctly the different ages to which they belong are indicated by them, and how the ceremonial and military character of the centuries that are past has been superseded by the rapid and practical spirit of commerce.

But the modern bridge is there a small one, and rests at the centre on an island and a pier. The structure before us, the largest of its cla.s.s as yet in the world, in its swifter, more graceful, and more daring leap from bank to bank, across the tides of this arm of the sea, not only ill.u.s.trates the bolder temper which is natural here, the readiness to attempt unparalleled works, the disdain of difficulties in unfaltering reliance on exact calculation, but, in the material out of which it is wrought, it shows the new supremacy of man over the metal which, in former time, he scarcely could use save for rude and coa.r.s.e implements. The steel of the blades of Damascus or Toledo is not here needed; nor that of the chisel, the knife-blade, the watch-spring, or the surgical instrument. But the steel of the mediaeval lance-head or sabre was hardly finer than that which is here built into a Castle, which the sea cannot shake, whose binding cement the rains cannot loosen, and before whose undecaying parapets open fairer visions of island and town, of earth, water, and sky, than from any fortress along the Rhine. There is inexhaustible promise in the fact.

Of course, too, there is impressively before us--installed as on this fair and brilliant civic throne--that desire for swiftest intercommunication between towns and districts divided from each other, which belongs to our times, and which is to be an energetic, enduring, and salutary force in moulding the nation.

The years are not distant in which separated communities regarded each other with aversion and distrust, and the effort was mutual to raise barriers between them, not to unite them in closer alliance. Now, the traffic of one is vitally dependent on the industries of the other; the counting-room in the one has the factory or the warehouse tributary to it established in the other; and the demand is imperative that the two be linked, by all possible mechanisms, in a union as complete as if no chasm had opened between them. So these cities are henceforth united; and so all cities, which may minister to each other, are bound more and more in intimate combinations. Santa Fe, which soon celebrates the third of a millenium since its foundation, reaches out its connections toward the newest log-city in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory; and the oldest towns upon our seaboard find allies in those that have risen, like exhalations, along the Western lakes and rivers.

This mighty and symmetrical band before us seems to stand as the type of all that immeasurable communicating system which is more completely with every year to interlink cities, to confederate States, to make one country of our distributed imperial domain, and to weave its history into a vast, harmonious contexture, as messages fly instantaneously across it, and the rapid trains rush back and forth, like shuttles upon a mighty loom.

It is not fanciful, either, to feel that in all its history, and in what is peculiar in its const.i.tution, it becomes a n.o.ble, visible symbol of that benign Peace amid which its towers and roadway have risen, and which, we trust, it may long continue to signalize and to share.

We may look at this moment on the site of the s.h.i.+p-yard from which, in March, 1862, twenty-one years ago, went forth the unmasted and raft-like "Monitor," with its flat decks, its low bulwarks, its guarded mechanism, its heavy armament, and its impenetrable revolving turret, to that near battle with the "Merrimac," on which, as it seemed to us at the time, the destiny of the nation was perilously poised. The material of which the s.h.i.+p was wrought was largely that which is built in beauty into this luxurious lofty fabric. But no contrast could be greater among the works of human genius than between the compact and rigid solidity into which the iron had there been forged and wedged and rammed, and these waving and graceful curves, swinging downward and up, almost like blossoming festooned vines along the perfumed Italian lanes; this alluring roadway, resting on towers which rise like those of ancient cathedrals; this lace-work of threads, interweaving their separate delicate strengths into the complex solidity of the whole.

The s.h.i.+p was for war, and the Bridge is for peace:--the product of it; almost, one might say, its express palpable emblem, in its harmony of proportions, its dainty elegance, its advantages for all, and its ample convenience. The deadly raft, floating level with waves, was related to this ethereal structure, whose finest curves are wrought in the strength of toughest steel. We could not have had this except for that unsightly craft, which at first refused to be steered, which b.u.mped headlong against our piers, which almost sank while being towed to the field of its fame, and which, at last, when its mission was fulfilled, found its grave in the deep over whose waters, and near their line, its shattering lightnings had been shot. This structure will stand, we fondly trust, for generations to come, even for centuries, while metal and granite retain their coherence; not only emitting, when the wind surges or plays through its network, that aerial music of which it is the mighty harp, but representing to every eye the manifold bonds of interest and affection, of sympathy and purpose, of common political faith and hope, over and from whose mightier chords shall rise the living and unmatched harmonies of continental gladness and praise.

While no man, therefore, can measure in thought the vast processions--40,000,000 a year, it already is computed--which shall pa.s.s back and forth across this pathway, or shall pause on its summit to survey the vast and bright panorama, to greet the break of summer-morning, or watch the pageant of closing day, we may hope that the one use to which it never will need to be put is that of war; that the one tramp not to be heard on it is that of soldiers marching to battle; that the only wheels whose roll it shall not be called to echo are the wheels of the tumbrils of troops and artillery. Born of peace, and signifying peace, may its mission of peace be uninterrupted, till its strong towers and cables fall!

If such expectations shall be fulfilled, of mechanical invention ever advancing, of cities and States linked more closely, of beneficent peace a.s.sured to all, it is impossible to a.s.sign any limit to the coming expansion and opulence of these cities, or to the influence which they shall exert on the developing life of the country.

Cities have often, in other times, been created by war; as men were crowded together in them the better to escape the whirls of strife by which the unwalled districts were ravaged, or the more effectively to combine their force against threatening foes. And it is a striking suggestion of history that to the frightful ravages of the Huns--swarthy, ill-shaped, ferocious, destroying--may have been due the Great Wall of China, for the protection of its remote towns, as to them, on the other hand, was certainly due the foundation of Venice. The first inhabitants of what has been since that queenly city--along whose liquid and level streets the traveler pa.s.ses, between palaces, churches, and fascinating squares, in constant delight--its first inhabitants fled before Attila, to the flooded lagoons which were afterward to blossom into the beauty of a consummate art. The fearful crash of blood and fire in which Aquileia and Padua fell smote Venice into existence.

But even the city thus born of war must afterward be built up by peace, when the strifes which had pushed it to its sudden beginning had died into the distant silence. The fis.h.i.+ng industry, the manufacture of salt, the timid commerce, gradually expanding till it left the rivers and sought the sea, these, with other related industries, had made Venetian galleys known on the eastern Mediterranean before the immense rush of the crusades crowded tumultuously over its quays and many bridges. Its variety of industry, and its commercial connections, turned that vast movement into another source of wealth. It rose rapidly to that naval supremacy which enabled it to capture piratical vessels and wealthy galleons, to seize or sack Ionian cities, to storm Byzantium, and make the south of Greece its suburb. Its manufactures were multiplied. Its dockyards were thronged with busy workmen. Its palaces were crowded with precious and famous works of art, while themselves marvels of beauty.

St. Mark's unfolded its magnificent loveliness above the great square.

In the palace adjoining was the seat of a dominion at the time unsurpa.s.sed, and still brilliant in history; and it was in no fanciful or exaggerated pride that the Doge was wont yearly, on Ascension Day, to wed the Adriatic with a ring, as the bridegroom weds the bride.

Dreamlike as it seems, equally with Amsterdam, the larger and richer "Venice of the North," it was erected by hardy hands. The various works and arts of peace, with a prosperous commerce, were the real piles, sunken beneath the flas.h.i.+ng surface, on which church and palace, piazza and a.r.s.enal, all arose. It was only when these unseen supports secretly failed that advancement ceased, and the horses of St. Mark at last were bridled. Not all the wars, with Genoa, Hungary, with Western Europe, the Greek Empire, or the Ottoman--not earthquake, plague, or conflagration, though by all it was smitten--overwhelmed the city whose place in Europe had been so distinguished. The decadence of enterprise, the growing discredit put upon industry, the final discovery by Vasco da Gama of the pa.s.sage around the Cape of Good Hope, diverting traffic into new channels--these laid their silent and tightening grasp on the power of Venice, till

"the salt sea-weed Clung to the marble of her palaces,"

and the glory of the past was merged in a gloom which later centuries have not lightened. There is a lesson and a promise in the fact.

New York itself may almost be said to have sprung from war; as the vast excitements of the forty years' wrestle between Spain and its revolted provinces gave incentive, at least, to the settlement of New Netherland. But the city, since its real development was begun, has been almost wholly built up by peace; and the swiftness of its progress in our own time, which challenges parallel, shows what, if the ministry of this peace shall continue, may be looked for in the future.

When the Dutch traders raised their storehouse of logs on yonder untamed and desolate strand, perhaps as early as 1615; when the Walloons established their settlement on this side of the river, in 1624, at that "Walloons' Bay" which we still call the Wallabout; or when, later, in 1626, Manhattan Island, estimated to contain 22,000 acres, was purchased from the Indians for $24, paid in beads, b.u.t.tons and trinkets, and the Block House was built, with cedar palisades, on the site of the Battery, it is, of course, commonplace to say that they who had come hither could scarcely have had the least conception of what a career they thus were commencing for two great cities. But it is not so wholly commonplace to say that those who saw this now wealthy and splendid New York a hundred years since, less conspicuous than Boston, far smaller than Philadelphia, with its first bank established in 1784, and not fully chartered till seven years later; with its first daily paper in 1785; its first s.h.i.+p in the Eastern trade returning in May of the same year; its first Directory published in 1786, and containing only 900 names; its Broadway extending only to St. Paul's; with the grounds about Reade street grazing-fields for cattle, and with ducks still shot in that Beekman's Swamp which the traffic in leather has since made famous: or those who saw it even fifty years ago, when its population was little more than one-third of the present population of this younger city; when its first Mayor had not been chosen by popular election; when gas had but lately been introduced, and the superseding of the primitive pumps by Croton water had not yet been projected--they, all, could hardly have imagined what already the city should have become: the recognized centre of the commerce of the Continent; one of the princ.i.p.al cities of the world.

So those who have lived in this city from childhood, and who hardly yet claim the dignities of age, could scarcely have conjectured, when looking on what Mr. Murphy recalled as the village of his youth, "a hamlet of a hundred houses," that it should have become, in our time, a city of nearly 70,000 dwelling houses, occupied by twice as many families; with a population, by the census rates, of little less than 700,000; with more than 150,000 children in its public and private schools; with 330 miles of paved streets, as many as last year in New York, and with more than 200 additional miles impatiently waiting to be paved; with 130 miles of street railway track, over which last year 88,000,000 of pa.s.sengers were carried; with nearly 2,500 miles of telegraph and telephone wire knitting it together; with 35,000,000 of gallons of water, the best on the continent, to which 20,000,000 more are soon to be added, daily distributed in its houses, through 360 miles of pipe; with an aggregate value of real property exceeding certainly $400,000,000; with an annual tax levy of $6,500,000; with manufactures in it whose reported product in 1880 was $103,000,000; with a water-front, of pier, dock, basin, ca.n.a.l, already exceeding 25 miles, and not as yet half developed, at which lies s.h.i.+pping from all the world, more largely than at the piers of New York; and, finally, with what to most modern communities appears to flash as a costly but brilliant diamond necklace, a public debt, beginning now to diminish, it is true, but still approaching, in net amount, $37,500,000!

The child watches, in happy wonder, the swelling film of soapy water into whose iridescent globe he has blown the speck from the bowl of the pipe. But this amazing development around us is not of airy and vanis.h.i.+ng films. It is solidly constructed, in marble and brick, in stone and iron, while the proportions to which it has swelled surpa.s.s precedent, and rebuke the timidity of the boldest prediction. But that which has built it has been simply the industry, manifold, constant, going on in these cities, to which peace offers incentive and room.

Their future advancement is to come in like manner: not through a prestige derived from their history; not by the gradual increments of their wealth, already collected; not by the riches which they invite to themselves from other cities and distant coasts; not even from their beautiful fortune of location; but by prosperous manufactures prosecuted in them; by the traffic which radiates over the country; by the foreign commerce which, in values increasing every year, seeks this harbor. Each railway whose rapid wheels roll hither, from East or West, from North or South, from the rocks of Newfoundland or the copper-deposits of Lake Superior, from the orange groves of Florida, the Louisiana bayous, the silver ridges of the West, the Golden Gate, gives its guaranty of growth to the still young metropolis. On the cotton fields of the South, and its sugar plantations; on coal mines, and iron mines; on the lakes which winter roofs with ice, and from which drips refres.h.i.+ng coolness through our summer; on fisheries, factories, wheat fields, pine forests; on meadows wealthy with grains or gra.s.s, and orchards bending beneath their burdens, this enlarging prosperity must be maintained; and on the steams.h.i.+ps, and the telegraph lines, which interweave us with all the world. The swart miner must do his part for it; the ingenious workman, in whatever department; the ploughman in the field, and the fisherman on the banks; the man of science, putting Nature to the question; the laborer, with no other capital than his muscle; the sailor on the sea, wherever commerce opens its wings.

Our Arch of Triumph is, therefore, fitly this Bridge of Peace. Our Brandenburg Gate, bearing on its summit no car of military victory, is this great work of industrial skill. It stands, not, like the Arch famous at Milan, outside the city, but in the midst of these united and busy populations. And if the tranquil public order which it celebrates and prefigures shall continue as years proceed, not London itself, a century hence, will surpa.s.s the compa.s.s of this united city by the sea, in which all civilized nations of mankind have already their many representatives, and to which the world shall pay an increasing annual tribute.

And so the last suggestion comes, which the hour presents, and of which the time allows the expression.

It was not to an American mind alone that we owed the "Monitor," of which I have spoken, but also to one trained in Swedish schools, the Swedish army, and representing that brave nationality. It is not to a native American mind that the scheme of construction carried out in this Bridge is to be ascribed, but to one representing the German peoples, who, in such enriching and fruitful mult.i.tudes, have found here their home. American enterprise, American money, built them both.

But the skill which devised, and much, no doubt, of the labor which wrought them, came from afar.

Local and particular as is the work, therefore, it represents that fellows.h.i.+p of the Nations which is more and more prominently a fact of our times, and which gives to these cities incessant augmentation.

When, by and by, on yonder island the majestic French statue of Liberty shall stand, holding in its hand the radiant crown of electric flames, and answering by them to those as brilliant along this causeway, our beautiful bay will have taken what specially illuminates and adorns it from Central and from Western Europe. The distant lands from which oceans divide us, though we touch them each moment with the fingers of the telegraph, will have set this conspicuous double crown on the head of our harbor. The alliances of nations, the peace of the world, will seem to find ill.u.s.trious prediction in such superb and novel regalia.

Friends, and Fellow-Citizens: Let us not forget that, in the growth of these cities, henceforth united, and destined ere long to be formally one, lies either a threat, or one of the conspicuous promises of the time.

Cities have always been powers in history. Athens educated Greece, as well as adorned it, while Corinth filled the throbbing and thirsty h.e.l.lenic veins with poisoned blood. The weight of Constantinople broke the Roman Empire asunder. The capture of the same magnificent city gave to the Turks their establishment in Europe for the following centuries. Even where they have not had such a commanding pre-eminence of location, the social, political, moral force proceeding from cities has been vigorous in impression, immense in extent. The pa.s.sion of Paris, for a hundred years, has created or directed the sentiment of France. Berlin is more than the legislative or administrative centre of the German Empire. Even a government as autocratic as that of the Czar, in a country as undeveloped as Russia, has to consult the popular feeling of St. Petersburg or of Moscow.