A. W. Whelpley on "The Old-Time Printer"

Prang's aids for object teaching. Printer. ca. 1876. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2003663928/.

Albert W. Whelpley (1831-1900) was head librarian of the Cincinnati Public Library when he commemorated "The Old-Time Printer" in a delightful and highly informative after-dinner speech, delivered January 17, 1898 at the annual meeting of the Cincinnati Typothetæ. Although long forgotten, Whelpley's talk is full of historical interest and value, being rich with details of his personal experience as a printer's devil and compositor in New York City from 1846 to 1856 or so. Melville aficionados will be especially interested in Whelpley's reminiscences about working at "the widely known printing office of Robert Craighead, on the corner of Fulton and Dutch streets." Whelpley quit with most of his coworkers during a labor strike, possibly in early May 1853 when journeymen book-printers went on strike in New York City.

New York Weekly Journal of Commerce - May 5, 1853

If Whelpley alludes to printers' strikes in April and May 1853, he would still have been working at Robert Craighead's former printing office on Fulton street in May 1851 when Melville hired Craighead to set his great Whale manuscript in type and have it plated. In that case young Whelpley might possibly have helped to produce Moby-Dick. Whelpley's boss William Henry Tinson, "the best-known foreman in New York" and Craighead's manager until May 1853, almost certainly did. 

In 1853 or later, Whelpley rejoined his old boss at 24 Beekman Street, where Tinson operated his own printing office, "also a famed one." Working there for W. H. Tinson, Printer and Stereotyper, Whelpley became personally acquainted with George P. Putnam and numerous other literary celebrities. A. W. Whelpley never once name-drops Herman Melville during his 1898 talk before the Cincinnati Typothetae. However, Whelpley somehow managed to acquire one of Melville's letters to Putnam (9 November 1854) concerning the magazine version of "Israel Potter." Submitting the concluding chapters in manuscript, Melville thus explained why he did not number them:

“Having forgotten the number of the last chapter sent you, I leave the numbering of the following ones to the printer.”

By his own account, Whelpley seems to have been employed as a compositor for W. H. Tinson in 1854 through April 1855 when Tinson's printing office set all of Putnam's Monthly Magazine in type, including the magazine version of "Israel Potter" which concluded in the March 1855 issue. If so, Whelpley might have indirectly received Melville's note to Putnam via Tinson. In any case, Whelpley got it somehow or other and eventually gave it to the Cincinnati Historical Society, as helpfully indicated in the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville’s Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth (Northwestern University Press, 1993) at page 273. Whenever and however Whelpley first acquired it, Melville’s autograph letter of November 9, 1854 to George P. Putnam would have held personal significance as a memento of his youthful occupation in New York City, “working for W. H. Tinson, on Beekman Street.”

The complete text of A. W. Whelpley's encomium of "The Old-Time Printer"is transcribed below from The Printer & Bookmaker (July 1898) pages 230-234. Digital versions of the printed speech are accessible via Google Books

https://books.google.com/books?id=HITnAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA230-IA14&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false 

and courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library, here:

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951001904120c?urlappend=%3Bseq=580%3Bownerid=13510798902360098-596. 

Enjoy!

THE OLD-TIME PRINTER.*

*An address delivered at the annual meeting of the Cincinnati Typothetæ. 

BY A. W. WHELPLEY.

THE printer of the olden time! It is a theme so glorious that it should have been delegated to be handled by some one more practiced in the art of oratory and after-dinner speaking than he who is to address you. Some one whose well-rounded sentences and resonant voice should stir your natures to their very depths—one who might be able to paint glowing wordpictures of that glorious trinity of men who gave the art its birth! Of Gutenberg, Fust and Schoeffer, whose names have come down through the centuries laden with honors; whose triumphs have been sounded in every land and in every language! Gutenberg, inventing movable types, and constructing a rude printing press to take his impressions from them; Fust, inventing the ink with which to make this possible; and Schoeffer, who, conceiving the plan to make better and more effective types than those used, cut a set of matrices to cast them in, which so delighted his master, Fust, that he gave him his only daughter for a wife!

He might take a long leap, and come to the men who, in the early days of this country, gave such renown to the printer's art, William Bradford, who came to America with William Penn, and Benjamin Franklin—both grand types of the old-time printer. And if he was to "the manner born" he could discourse eloquently of three old-time printers whose names are inseparably linked with this "Queen City of the West," Joseph A. James, Ephraim Morgan, and Achilles Pugh.

But I am not equal to anything so lofty in conception, and propose to go back only half a century, to give you a few reminiscences, beginning with the business career of a slightly built, not over-strong, curly-headed youth, who, at the age of about thirteen years, thought the time had come for him to quit school and face the world to earn his own living.

A school-boy friend, who was already at work, secured him a position in the same office where he was employed, and in the autumn months of 1846 this boy, who had never been away from his home except in school hours, trudged gaily to the office in which he was to begin his career, to take the responsible situation of a printer's devil! This service consisted of various important duties, the most responsible of which was rolling a form for ten hours a day—from 7 to 12 A.M., from 1 to 6 P.M. When there was no form on the press, he was to busy himself as best he could. The other duties were to build the fires, make the lye with which to clean the forms, and wash the rollers; gather up the soiled towels to take home to his employer on certain nights of the week, and call for them on certain mornings; in fact, being a "general utility" for everybody about the place. 

 He can remember as well as if it were yesterday what a formidable undertaking it seemed to get through a day's rolling—and to count the tokens in his mind, as the sheets were "worked off," ten hours a day, ten tokens to be printed, to make a fair day's work. At the office at 6 to build the fire, and rarely getting home to his supper before 7:30 at night. Such was the life, and such were the duties of a boy in the 40's who was fortunate enough to secure a situation as a printer's devil. The pressman under whom he worked was a kind-hearted, phlegmatic Scotchman, named Archie Naughton—and he can call him to mind always—an old-time pressman who is deserving of a grand reward in the future life. He was very considerate of his devil, and always lightened his duties where possible—and never spoke a cross word.

The hours of service required would alarm a printer boy of this day, and would cause an eruption in the labor unions; but the young devil felt them no especial hardship; and he tumbled into bed at an early hour after supper, with his mother's blessing and a good conscience, and slept soundly the "sleep of the just," for, as he had not many temptations, he had few worries, as yet, to trouble his slumbers. He generally got his breakfast by 5:30, and in the dark hours of the winter mornings was well on his way to the office before 6 o'clock.

The boy was happy! and it was not long before he evinced some skill in setting type (which he learned in the noon hour, supposed to be devoted to dinner), and it was but a few months before he bade a not over-affectionate adieu to his rolling duties! It may be interesting to say that he was succeeded by an inking machine, which had just come into use.

This introduction to the printing business was in the office of John W. Oliver, on the corner of Ann and Nassau streets, New York, in the same building where the well-known Quaker printer, Daniel Fanshawe, ran his presses. A few months later this office of John W. Oliver was removed to the corner of Fulton and Nassau, in the old Sun building, and by that time the boy, who only a little while before had rolled forms, had now become quite a respectable job hand, and could run a job press very well. He preferred composition, however, and when opportunity offered would "stick type" on a weekly temperance paper called The Organ, published by Mr. Oliver, who was an ardent "Son of Temperance," an order then in its infancy.

Printer boys in those times were sturdy young fellows, that disdained to wear such undergarments as shirts and drawers, and some of whom would have discarded stockings, but for the interference of home folks. I can see this young boy, with his shirt sleeves rolled up to the full extent, his shirt front unbuttoned, with a paper cap on his head, to protect the luxuriant locks, that were his pride, from dirt and dust. When these conditions were fulfilled, the printer boy was in full uniform, and ready for business.

He soon made a change to an office managed by a literary Irishman, Dennis Hannegan, well known as the author of "The Orange Girl of Venice," a blood-curdling novel. Dennis was a clever and an honest man, and though he could not pay his hands their wages in cash, he gave them the equivalent in paper novels, all of which were read without death ensuing.

Dennis did a good thing for the subject of this sketch by kindly giving him a letter of introduction to W. H. Tinson, an excellent printer, at that time the best-known foreman in New York, and manager of the widely known printing office of Robert Craighead, on the corner of Fulton and Dutch streets. He was of a just nature, but a violent temper. Mr. Tinson honored the introduction, and took the boy, stipulating that he should serve his time at two-thirds men's wages, either working by piece or by the week. And it seemed a great piece of good fortune to drop so easily into such a situation.

This office literally swarmed with compositors of wonderful intelligence. It was an office in which slack times were seldom known. It had the cream of literature, as it had the pick of workmen. Here was a representative body of old-time printers that could discuss composition, rhetoric, punctuation; who were conscientious in spacing and leading; who would criticise bad work, and were intolerant of inferior workmen; who gave close attention to all the technicalities that go so far to improve the looks of the printed page. Men who would quarrel with the proofreader when they thought him wrong, and oftentimes carry their point. They were a representative set of old-time printers—middle-aged men—and younger dare-devils who could dance all night and work all day. It is doubtful if ever such another office existed, where there was so much wisdom and so much mirth combined, and so much good and conscientious work accomplished, with the pay so sure. All the grand English reviews, Blackwood's Magazine, the Literary World, the Medico-Chirurgical Quarterly, and scores of books from those reputable publishers, Wiley & Putnam, Scribner, Wood, Dodd, Carter Brothers, and others, were constantly in process of composing, stereotyping and printing.

Looking back through half a century, it is a gratification to call to mind the well-educated printers of that establishment. Many of them were Englishmen, who had served their apprenticeships in the old country, and were authority on every technical point of the printing business. How well they had studied their grammars, and how true were their ideas of the niceties of punctuation!

These printers of the olden time were always in the lead on affairs of the day. They could intelligently criticise the pulpit, the stage and the press. They could quote Scripture without limit, and were up in every current joke, and often very humorously repeated questionable stories—a custom not yet obsolete—which dates back, however, to Boccaccio—and in which art many of them were masters.

That office had a coterie of men (of which the boy of whom I am speaking was the youngest member) who by filling responsible positions as editors of prominent newspapers, writers of dramas, important military positions, have given good evidence of the value of the training of the printer of the olden time—one becoming a librarian, and one now bearing the best known name in the annals of printing in America, Theodore L. De Vinne.

These printers of the olden time, in this particular office, had prime opportunities to jostle against the men who were giving to America its literature; and the boy whose history I am giving you was particularly favored. He saw many celebrities, and was noticed by not a few. Here came James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Fenno Hoffman, George P. Morris, Nathaniel P. Willis, Rufus Griswold, Horace Greeley, Evert and George Duyckinck, and a host of others who are among the immortals in American literature.

One more change, and the boy, now grown to manhood, as far as his reminiscences in this city of his birth go, are completed.

There came a strike—we all know what strikes are—and every man and boy, except two, marched out from this home which had done so much for them for so many years. And the young man, true to his fellow workmen, but against his inclination, went with them, and bade adieu to the office of Robert Craighead forever. After forty years or more he pays the tribute to him which is deserved, and will never fail to cherish his name gratefully. The boy's career in New York closed with working for W. H. Tinson, on Beekman street. And this office was also a famed one. Here he made friends with the versatile publisher, George P. Putnam, and met and conversed with Bayard Taylor, Frederick Cozzens, author of the "Sparrowgrass Papers," John Brougham, Edward Stephens, author of "Jonathan Slick in New York," Tuckerman, the essayist, our Western poet, W. W. Fosdick, and Frederick Saunders, author of "Salad for the Solitary;" in this office was printed John Mitchel's Citizen, and here came daily those Irish patriots, John Mitchel, John Savage, Thomas Francis Meagher, and scores of others. These were the days when the author came to the printing office with his proofs, and often explained his corrections and the wherefores to the compositor.

These sometimes happy (sometimes otherwise) days came to end, as far as New York experiences are concerned, when this old-time printer came to Cincinnati for a brief visit. That visit has extended to over forty years; and while he oftentimes thinks of what a field he might have had in the city of his birth for growth, he in no wise lacks appreciation of the honors which his fellow citizens of Cincinnati have shown him, and of which he has always endeavored to be deserving! Nor does he in any wise lack appreciation of Cincinnati itself, in which community he feels that his life and his sympathies have so broadened, and in which for so many years he has lived so happily.

But Cincinnati was a new field for the young New Yorker. By force of filial duties he felt obligated to remain, though he was leaving all behind—birthplace, familiar scenes, friends and companions, yet he bravely accepted the new responsibilities, and for the third time was compelled to "seek a job." An introduction from a genial old-time printer of that day, Caleb Clark, sent him to the Franklin Type Foundry, where he received a welcome. There he remained (excepting a month or six weeks, when he was with dear old Mr. Thompson at the Methodist Book Concern), and in time came to have entire charge of the composing room. This business was then superintended by a gentleman who sits here to-night, Mr. Robert Allison, and I look back with pleasure to the period between 1857 and 1864. I think he parted with me with regret, when at the latter date I entered a new field of labor. During all the years that have passed his friendly interest in the young man—above I unconsciously dropped into the first person—has often been shown. He is to be congratulated on his long years of service in the profession, on his position as an employing printer, and on being one of the foremost citizens of Cincinnati.

The printer of the olden time! What memories are awakened—what thoughts will come of by-gone days and men who lived in them—heroes of the composing stick!

The printer of the olden time, and the printers of to-day, and all time, are and will be the greatest factors of our civilization. The preacher may touch our hearts with his glowing words; the actor may dazzle our eyes and charm our ears with the beauty of his scenic effects and the fervor of his declamation; the singer may enchant us with the rhapsody of his melody; the lecturer and statesman may make our minds captive by the force of their eloquent periods—but all their efforts would be as temporary and evanescent as were the lays which of yore the minstrels chanted in kingly courts, were it not for the Art of the Printer—the Art preservative of all the arts. His silent types and inks transfer to the printed sheet the words of the preacher, the lines of the actor, the song of the musician, and the speech of the statesman, and send them forever down the ages to an immortality which otherwise could not be.

Related posts 

• Introducing W. H. Tinson, Stereotyper
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2025/07/introducing-william-h-tinson-stereotyper.html

• Robert Craighead's third-story rooms on Fulton street
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2023/10/robert-craigheads-third-story-rooms-on.html

MOBY-DICK in Poughkeepsie

Christopher Patterson recently discovered this notice of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale in the Poughkeepsie Eagle for December 6, 1851. It's not collected in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995). The Poughkeepsie Eagle was a weekly newspaper, then published every Saturday morning in Poughkeepsie, New York by Isaac Platt and William Schram.

MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE. By Herman Melville, author of "Typee," "Omoo," "Redburn," &c 

—The above work is founded on

       "That sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream."

It is full of interest from beginning to end, and promises to be the most popular of Melville's writings. The characters are various, each imparting peculiar interest to the reader. We respectfully dedicate it to all of our numerous readers. For slae [sale] by W. Wilson.

-- Poughkeepsie Eagle, December 6, 1851; found on newspapers.com

I'm counting this newly discovered notice of Moby-Dick in Poughkeepsie as favorable 🥰 and will add it to the census of early reviews, here:

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/moby-dick-widely-praised-in-1851-2.html

Christopher Patterson already has it registered as a five-star review on the Moby-Dick - Initial Reception page of his wonderful literary website, Literature's Pretty Long History. 👍👍👏👏🎉 Check it out! 

Introducing William H. Tinson, Stereotyper

Introducing William H. Tinson, Stereotyper by Scott Norsworthy

Robert Craighead's foreman c1845-1853; Albert W. Whelpley's boss and exemplary "old-time printer" in NYC

Read on Substack

Socialistic rhapsodies and theosophical trash

James Clarke Welling's 1852 review of Lectures and Miscellanies by Henry James Sr. 

In Herman Melville's prime the Washington, DC National Intelligencer was an important and influential Whig newspaper that embraced conservative, pro-Union values up to and through the American Civil War. As literary editor of the National Intelligencer from 1850 to 1856, James Clarke Welling wrote the highly regarded column of book reviews titled "Notes on New Books." Welling's authorship of the regular "Notes on New Books" column was revealed in 1860 by owner-editor William W. Seaton in a formal statement of Welling's promotion to co-editor. Under the heading "Editorial Announcement," the full statement originally appeared in the National Intelligencer on Thursday, August 30, 1860. Frequently reprinted North and South, usually without Seaton's assurances of continuing loyalty to the Union and support of the United States "Constitution, which is the cement of the Union." Here below is the abridged version that appeared in the New York Evening Post on August 31, 1860.

New York Evening Post - August 31, 1860
via genealogybank.com

Successor to Mr. Gales in the National Intelligencer.

As the surviving editor of the National Intelligencer, I have to announce that Mr. James C. Welling will hereafter be associated with me in the editorial conduct of this journal. In making this announcement it is proper to state that Mr. Welling is no stranger to the columns of the Intelligencer, having been, in different capacities, connected with it for the last ten years, during the first five of which, after the retirement of the accomplished Edward William Johnston from the literary department of the paper, Mr. Welling had charge of it, and was the author of those "Notes on New Books," which, by the scholarship and ability evinced in their composition, would, of themselves, be a sufficient evidence of the qualifications he brings to the tasks of journalism. But it is just to add that during the last five years he has participated in all the duties incident to the editorship of this journal, and has thus served a noviciate quite long enough to give full proof of his vocation to the exacting career upon which he has entered. Enjoying during this period, in the fullest degree, the confidence of my late lamented colleague, Mr. Gales, he has equally, by his high moral and conscientious character, no less than by his rare attainments, merited my own; and I avail myself of his temporary absence from Washington to make this announcement to the patrons whom it is the honor of the Intelligencer to address. * *

WM. W. SEATON 

 -- New York Evening Post, August 31, 1860.

Initially, notices of new books during Welling's tenure as literary editor were borrowed with due credit from other newspapers. As best I can tell, Welling made his debut as author of the regular "Notes on New Books" column in the Daily National Intelligencer on June 24, 1851, with a cogent reality-check of Charles Kingsley's Yeast: A Problem. Kingsley, being a sort of Christian socialist,

"has vague notions that the constitution of English society is radically wrong, and that the laboring poor of town and country should be instructed in art, poetry, music, and science; but upon the means of attaining this desirable end he is profoundly silent. At one time he seems to hint at Chartism, now at Communism, now at Socialism, just as in his religion he is at first Materialist, then Pantheist, then Humanitarian."

Dismissing Yeast: A Problem as the fantasy of a well-meaning but hopelessly deluded social reformer, Welling concluded by resting on common sense:

"That the world, however, will ever be converted into a lazy Valhalla of social perfectionists, or that all mankind will ever be reduced to a gregarious equality, is a consummation that our modern new light gospellers will, it is imagined, never attain so long as the present laws of mind and matter shall remain in most contumacious disregard of their beautiful theories."

Welling (not William Allen Butler as Hugh W. Hetherington and later Melville scholars mistakenly decided) wrote the long and mostly favorable review of Moby-Dick that appeared in the Daily National Intelligencer on December 16, 1851. In April of the following year, Welling returned to the theme of his Yeast review, the woeful impracticability of Communism, exposing the social reforms urged by philosopher Henry James Sr (the future novelist's father) in his published Lectures and Miscellanies as "communistic and theosophic reveries." Welling's telling extracts from James's book and instructive remarks thereon are transcribed herein from the Washington, DC National Intelligencer of April 20, 1852; digital images with the original review may be found on genealogybank.com.

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

LECTURES AND MISCELLANIES. By Henry James. Redfield, New York, 1852.

Apothecaries, by wise enactment, are forbidden to vend any of the compositions of their retort, mortar, and pestle without affixing a label to each box and vial descriptive of their contents; and so too the bookmakers, it seems to us, should be required to utter their volumes with such titles as shall at least give one a suspicion of what they contain. If any son of Esculapius should retail the nux vomica or prussic acid under the names of "Vegetable Life Pills" or Universal Phœnix Bitters" he would justly incur the penalty of a criminal prosecution. Now, Mr. James, in issuing the work whose name stands at the head of our columns, has acted like the druggist who should dispense a specific nostrum under the general description of a "medicated mixture;" for who can tell from the title of his book whether it is intended to "minister to a mind diseased," by purging off certain errors of understanding, or whether, like a mental cordial, it aims merely to refresh the fancy and gratify the taste? We do not protest at all against the publication of these "Lectures and Miscellanies." We wish the press to be just as free for the dissemination of Mr. James's speculations as it is for the advertisement of "Watts's Mirific Nervous Antidote" or "Dalley's Pain Killer." We presume to say nothing in this connexion against either quacks in medicine or pretenders in literature. Mr. James assures us that society is at present established on a very unscientific basis, and so long as this "abnormal" state endures, it must needs be, we suppose, that charlatans and pseudo-philosophers impose on the credulity of the "great vulgar." We could wish, however, that Mr. James had selected such a title for his book as would have given purchasers an inkling of the socialistic rhapsodies and theosophical trash which were in store for them. And, still further, we think that the author has chosen an inopportune time for the final publication in printed form of the lectures composed and delivered by him a few years ago. Then they had the charm of public and engrossing interest, and floated upon the agitated surface of society like so many brilliant but insubstantial bubbles. The popular mind of Europe was at that time inflated by the leaven of socialism and demagogy, and it was the transmitted influence of these same elements that generated even on our own shores a fermentation of thought that occasionally broke out in just such gaseous eruptions as are discernible in the work before us. But at present the crudities of these ventose reformers and humanitarian philanthropists have been pretty generally left to the digestion of a few very bashful ladies, loud in the advocacy of "woman's rights," and to certain mendicant statesmen of Europe who have been recently illustrating among us, by a "modern instance," the "old saw" concerning beggars put on horseback. All such unripe speculations are now either too late or too early in the day--too late to ride upon the crest of the wave that has already broken on the shore, or too early to stem the receding tide which is now setting back into the sea. 

As to the merely literary execution of the volume under consideration, we are free to confess that it possesses considerable merit. Mr. James has at ready command a vocabulary of philosophical language that leaves no one in doubt respecting the author's opinions on the most recondite subjects which he undertakes to discuss. There is none of that groping after the light in a misty vacuity which seems to have been the attitude of certain writers on metaphysical subjects. Mr. James clearly eyes his mark and hits it in the white; he does not bandy words merely in the dazzling fence of a rhetorician, but speaks like one really in earnest, or endeavoring to seem so. Sometimes, it is true, we think he becomes the dupe of his own enchantments, and imagines, when he has tricked off an old idea in the livery of his peculiar dialect, that his brain has been safely delivered of a Minerva; the reader, on the contrary, bethinks himself of the mountain laboring with a mouse. We propose to give our readers, before indulging in further remark, a side view of the most salient features which stand out in these remarkable political and philosophical sketches. It has generally been our wont to cull a few excerpts from an author under consideration, in order to append them to the foot of our own disquisitions; but on the present occasion we prefer to give Mr. James the honor of a first hearing, reserving to ourselves the right of following with such animadversions as shall seem good to us in the premises. With the "New Theology" of our author it does not become us specially to concern ourselves; whether the "objective sphere of human existence" is external or internal to the subjective, and whether consequently the relation of God to man is external or internal, it is no part of our theology either to deny or affirm. Believing that such questions minister to strife and vain janglings rather than edification, we dismiss them with the simple query of honest Strepsiades in the play of Aristophanes: "How, my friend, being old, forgetful, and slow, shall we ever learn the hair-splittings of such nice words?"

Mr. James has so mixed up his politics with his religion that it becomes no easy task for us to eviscerate the former from the body of his lectures without bringing away some portions of the latter; but politics undoubtedly form the chief staple of the three opening lectures of the present volume, which are respectively entitled, "Democracy and its Issues," "Property as a Symbol," and "The Principle of Universality in Art." What our political philosopher's theory respecting the origin and ends of government actually is, will sufficiently appear from the following extracts:  

"Every Governmental institution has been a standing testimony to the harmonic destiny of society, a standing proof that the life of man is destined for peace and amity, instead of disorder and contention. No one can doubt that, if human life had been perfect in the infancy of the race--that is to say, if just social relations had existed from the beginning--Government would never have been though of as a necessity of human society. It's existence is simply a confession of the immaturity of society."

"I look upon Democracy as heralding the moral perfection of man--as inaugurating the existence of perfectly just relations between man and man, and as consequently preparing the way for the reign of infinite Love. It supposes that men are capable of so adjusting their relations to each other as that they will need no police or external force to control them, but will spontaneously do the right thing, in all places and at all times." * *

"Because the moment society becomes perfect, the moment all legalized privilege ceases among its subjects, and every man becomes the equal of every other in the public care, that moment you make it the interest of the individual to cherish the good of the whole, because his own advantage is identified with it; and if you can make it the interest of man to be orderly, of course you need no machinery of police to ensure that result. It will take place of itself without any compulsion. The reason why evil exists among mankind is, that their outward life, their life as determined by institutions, does not fully according with their inward or essential life--the life they have in God."

"I am entirely persuaded that nothing but the persistent and ever-enlarging operation of the Democratic principle, or, what is the same thing, the destructive legislation now in progress, is requisite to inaugurate the Divine life on earth, to bring about that great prophetic period to which all history form the beginning has tended--that everlasting Sabbath or rest which is to close in and glorify the brief  but toilsome week of man's past experience."

"Criminality is the product exclusively of vicious legislation, of institutions which insist upon distributing the bounties of Providence unequally. The world waits for nothing else, in order to begin its eternal Sabbath, than the legislative recognition of human unity by the destruction of the last remnant of privilege." 

"In a true society, or fellowship, among men, envy would be impossible; because no arbitrary distinctions, no such thing as exclusive privilege, in which alone envy has its source, would exist. Why would not these things exist? Because a true society, a society scientifically organized, would confer no unequal property, no exclusive privilege, upon its subjects. That is to say, a true  society would guaranty to every man, woman, and child, for the whole term of his natural life, food, clothing, shelter, and the opportunities of an education adapted to his  tastes; leaving all the distinction he might achieve to himself, to his own genius, freely influencing the homage of his fellow-men. Where society observed this wisdom, all envy would at once disappear."

"Every one would be greatly happier if, being brought into this  world without his own consent, he might be permitted to live in it without the continual consent of somebody else. Each of us would be greatly happier if his relations to others were so scientifically adjusted as that every one would stand ready when he came into the world to endow him with cradles, and nurseries, and schools, and shoes, and coats, and breeches, and  breakfast, and supper, and lodging, and whatever else makes life comfortable, and thus leave him free to do only the special work which God empowers him to do."

"Inasmuch as moral distinctions--the distinctions of good and evil--exist only where hostile or divided interests exists among men, so of necessity the divine life which exacts a perfect unity of interests among its subjects, will at its coming utterly obliterate moral distinctions from the face of the earth. In other words, the perfect life is not moral, because it involves a harmony so complete among men as to be fatal to the existing differences of good and evil." "No man ever antagonizes his neighbor's interest, save with a view of promoting his own; and if, therefore, you release men from this temptation, by removing their existing social inequalities, you utterly vacate every shade of moral diversity among them."

"A state of society may exist, without the slightest prejudice to morality, in which, notwithstanding, each and all its members, or the public and private interests, May be so harmoniously related as to allow the utmost possible freedom to all the appetites and passions  of human nature. But I do not stop here. I am not content with merely saying that a state of society which puts man in harmony with his nature, or, in equivalent terms, ensures him the ample gratification of all his appetites and passions, may exist  without prejudice to the interests of morality. I claim that such a state of society is absolutely indispensable to those interests. I insist that such a state of society is the actual fulfilment of all morality; is the destined consummation of all law and prophecy; is, in fact, the necessary basis of God's kingdom on earth."

"We instinctively feel that society has no right to guaranty one man's nature ampler satisfaction than another's; that natural want is in every case the ample title to, and the only measure of, natural gratification; and that society's prime function therefore is, not to ordain inequalities in this regard, but utterly to destroy them as fast as they come to her notice. The diversity of human gifts has been ordaining these inequalities all along the course of history, or giving one man superior natural endowments to another. But society's business is not to legislate for one or few, but for all. She should, therefore, aim to reduce these inequalities wherever they have arisen, and ensure all the same material succor, the same exemption from outward want, which has been realized hitherto only by the few. The province of society lies wholly in providing for man's material development, in removing from that sphere every thing like organized injustice and inequality. The development of his genius and the care of his spiritual interests belong appropriately to God, who, I doubt not, would be found amply competent to the task, whenever society should consent to inaugurate Him."

Here we close our extracts, taken passim from these "Lectures and Miscellanies;" especially directing the notice of readers to the concluding paragraph, being Mr. James's polite and condescending certificate to the competency of the Deity.  

Our readers will not, of course, suppose that our attention has been attracted to these speculations by their intrinsic novelty, for it is not at all difficult to trace the paternity and pedigree of nearly every prominent idea embodied at second-hand by Mr. James in his communistic and theosophic reveries. Fichte, with his work on the "Destination of Man;" Sweedenborg, with his New Jerusalem revelations and seventh-heaven rhapsodies; Fourier, with his analogies and correspondence between man and nature; the "young school" of Hegelians, such as Ruge, and Feuerbach, and Ronge, with their humanitary visions of a social regeneration; Spinosa, with his philosophism respecting God and Creation; and even old Leibnitz, with his doctrine of the "pre-established harmony," are all clearly discernible in the composite and eclectic philosopher whose work we are considering--a work which shows the great advance of "humanitary ideas" in our modern philosophers over such "old fogies" as Aristotle with his Politics, Xenophon with his Economics, Plato with his ideal Republic and Laws, Justinian with his Commentaries, More with his Utopia, Fenelon with his celebrated romance; and even over Jean Jacques with his Social Contract, Robert Owen with his Harmonists, and Monsieur Cabet with his affectionate Icariens.

It is plain that the eyes of the American philosopher have been dazzled by the same splendid illusion which, like a mirage of the desert, has cheated so many sanguine students of historical science. The philosophical historians would convince us that the "unitary man" is constantly approximating towards the goal of human perfectability in the gradual progress marked by the evolutions of history. Mr. James arrives at the same conclusion by his "ineffaceable conviction of man's inward righteousness, and of the intimate alliance subsisting between God and the human soul," which only needs to have the social gyves and legislative fetters stricken off in order to install itself in the full fruition of consummate and supernal beatitude. The "new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," in the opinion of such a thinker or visionary, are only to be ushered in by some grand social cataclysm, or by a more gradual process, through the advance of "positive science;" and it is evident that by the phrase positive science Mr. James means the same thing as does Monsieur Auguste Comte. The antagonism which now exists between man and external nature, according to his theory, is only initial and mediatory to the ultimate and "manifest destiny" which requires of Man to subdue the earth; and we are told that every power of nature will eventually be rendered subservient to the uses of man's moral, intellectual, and physical life, until finally "the veil of the temple shall be rent from top to bottom, and the Holy of Holies shall stand suddenly revealed in the lineaments of an immaculate and omnipotent humanity." The phalansterians of Monsieur Fourier have always been sorely gravelled to reconcile the performance of certain menial offices in social life with their conceptions of man's dignity and their theory of human equality and universal brotherhood. Cooks, chambermaids, bootblacks, and sweeps, hostlers, and waiters, and scullions, have been thus far found necessary agents even in the best-adjusted of their social parallelograms. Mr. James, however, in the gradual progress of a "positive philosophy" sees the "good time coming" when science shall be the only menial on the face of the earth; when the relations of Man to external nature shall be so scientifically constructed that he will have no need to take thought, saying what shall we eat? or what shall we drink? or wherewithal shall we be clothed? for Society, invested with the potent wand of subject nature, will be changed into a greater than the Deus Fortuna of the ethnic mythology, as from her cornucopia she dispenses, with beneficent hand, upon each new comer into the renovated earth, "cradles, and nurseries, and schools, and shoes, and coats, and breeches, and breakfast, and supper, and lodging, and whatever else makes life comfortable," leaving each nascent scion of the social stock "free to do only the special work which God empowers him to do." Life now-a-days is a fardel, but it will be worth living in those days, and it is confidently expected that suicide will become obsolete, except in the case of an occasional Cleombrotus; for in this halcyon period, for which even now "the whole creation groaneth," envy will disappear from among men, vanity from among women, and indiscretion from among children; society will no longer be infested by the social evil that has been heretofore engendered by "class legislation," but all men every where will rejoice in the cognition of the Deity; will discourse on subjects as "high as metaphysic wit can fly;" will glorify "the rehabilitation of the senses;" will talk in poetry better than Milton ever dreamed of, and lose themselves in the ecstacy of aesthetic contemplations and the worship of the Beautiful. Other system builders and ideal philosophers have been startled from their complacency by visions of women putting tea-kettles on the fire and peeling potatoes, and of men delving in the soil like old Adam with sweat on their brow; but when the "perfect and integral humanity" of Mr. James shall appear on the earth, self-guiding as well as self-sharpening ploughs will cultivate the land, steam machinery will hoe corn, and automatic shovels dig potatoes, each particular shovel working with the velocity and power of forty modern Hibernians. Such is the destination of man in the resplendent future; we have to regret, however, that there is hardly any probability that we will live long enough to see it; we must content ourselves with the poets and painters, lawyers and priests of the existing species--the mere "harbingers of the perfect man, the nearest approximation permitted by our infirm science, but by no means his veritable self." They bear, indeed, says our social astrologer, precisely the same relation to the Lord, or the complete divine man, that the present path of the ecliptic does to the equator, which is a relation of decided obliquity. Philosophers tell us that when the earth shall have attained her true poise upon her axis, the path of the ecliptic will be coincident with the equator, and the rigors of winter and the fervors of summer consequently will alike give place to a new and perpetual spring which shall bathe the whole earth in gladness. So, when humanity, exclaims Mr. James, shall have attained true moral poise, these men who have hitherto been her ecliptic, "will give place to the equatorial or perfect man, who shall completely reconcile the still disunited elements of good and evil in a new individuality, which shall carry the dew and fragrance of God into every commonest nook of our everyday life, and absorb alike the parched aridity of the saint and the rank fecundity of the sinner in the unity of the integral man."

In the present order of things life is at best a checkered scene of lights and shadows. As the poet sings--

Enough has Heaven indulged of joy below
     To tempt our tarriance in this lov'd retreat;
Enough has Heaven ordained of useful woe

     To make us languish for a happier seat 

[Elegy IV, Written at the Approach of WINTER in The Poetical Works of John Scott; London, 1782.]

But when the earth is swung back to her equatorial poise, and man has attained his true moral centre, there will no longer be any need of a higher sphere in which to fulfil his destiny, and by that time, too science will have established such a chemically exact equilibrium between the nutriment and excretion, the absorption and the exhalation, that perpetual youth will result just as inevitably as water from the union of oxygen and hydrogen. Why, in fact, exclaims philosopher Proudhon, should man grow old? The spiritualists and theosophs promise us a new and imperishable life beyond the grave. Why does not this life commence from the present? Why a transition? And, if this hope be well founded, who knows but that one day, by the perfecting of the species, the present life may acquire this ultra-mundane incorruptibility? People have long believed in the possibility of escaping death; examples of it have been cited--witness the tradition of the "Wandering Jew"--a proof beyond reply, says the French communist, "that the previous experience which man has made of death has not at all sufficed to demonstrate to him the necessity of the thing." But still it is not to be expected that the social levellers will feel authorized to dispense entirely with the services of the "great leveller." It is the duty of society to preserve a constant arithmetical equality. Accordingly the humanitary philosophers have recommended the "painless extinction" of all the supernumerary offspring of a "social phalanx," and, as a melancholy pleasure to the bereaved parents, it has been beautifully proposed to adorn the corridors of their communistic temples with middling-sized flower-pots, in which should be interred the infants who had thus perished by "painless extinction," in order that the community might not be overburdened." Bills of mortality, it is true, will then be out of date, but in their place will succeed a floral catalogue of the "painless extinctions" per week by which society will be assured of its equilibrium, and a taste for flowers kept alive in the virtuous ladies of the association. This is the aesthetics of communism.  

The socialists of France have been too much disposed to deify Labor. With daring profanity they have doxologized it by the pater nosters of their impious devotion, saying,"Thine, oh labor, is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever, amen." But Mr. James has no such idolatrous homage for the "accursed necessity of earning one's bread by the sweat of his brow." Talk as we may on gala days, says he, man hates compulsory labor, labor which the body lays upon the soul, "because it does not express the true order of human life, does not express that inward and divine force which is the proper glory of man, and which reveals itself only in free or spontaneous action--action that descends from the soul to the body." Nothing but whips, and dungeons, and gibbets, and a ceaseless army of men affirming the terrors of a vindictive future keeps the needy, he says, from supplying their wants in a more summary way than by their present servitude; and as Mr. James is the sworn enemy of all "penal exactions," the reader can readily infer the consummation he thinks "devoutly to be wished;" and unless speedy justice be done to "human individuality," by furnishing it suitable media for the display of its "inmost and essential innocence," he predicts that, like a bursting thundercloud, it will break out in "eccentric and explosive methods."

We do not feel that it is at all incumbent on us to attempt a confutation of the transparent fallacies which lurk in almost every proposition and paragraph of the extracts above quoted. They are too extravagant to be even specious. There are some truths so axiomatic that it is a work of supererogation to essay their demonstration, and there are some falsities so palpable that, like the darkness of Egypt, they do not require us for their discovery so much as to open our eyes; they can be felt. To state them is to confute them. They all emanate from what O'Connell would have called "a multitudinous and monstrous lie;" or, if this expression implies a disrespectful imputation, from an egregious blunder, to wit, that social inequalities and governmental repression are the causes instead of being the effects of moral and consequently of physical evil. As well might you say that the knife and cautery, the compress and bandage of the surgeon are the causes of cancers and tumors and broken limbs. We pass to notice a moralism of our author respecting the "philosophy of intemperance."

Very ardent and well meaning reformers among us are anxious "to cut up intemperance by the roots," and to this end propose the entire suppression of the traffic in intoxicating liquors "except for mechanical, medicinal, and sacramental purposes." All such philanthropists will be interested to learn of a reformatory process which will encounter no opposition from rum-sellers, and which, nevertheless, we are assured, will prove infallibly effective. Cases of confirmed intemperance, says Mr. James, are a clinging and a burning reproach to the society that tolerates them. "Society," he asserts, "has ample virtue to cure every instance of intemperance within her limits, provided she had only the will to exert it." Drunkenness, he argues, is the vice of those men of passive habit, in whom the energies of passion and thought are superior to their energy of action. Now, if society were so constituted that every man found sufficient stimulus in his daily engagements to call into action his energies of thought, we are assured that no man would resort to artificial stimuli in order to evoke the dormant activity of his nature. The first step, and the vitally important one, in Mr. James's process of reforming drunkards, consists in society coming to regard drunkenness as nothing more or less than a "symptom of disease in the will," and in ceasing consequently to regard the subject as criminal on account of it. The drunkard simply asks, he says, that you should, "by the potent magnetism of your sympathy, empower or inflame his will" with sufficient strength to enable him successfully to stem the drift of a passive habitude. We do not wish to make cavilling objections to any philanthropic enterprise, but simply inquire of Mr. James who is to "empower and inflame" the will of society with a disposition to exert the virtue which, as he says, she possesses "to cure very instance of intemperance"; for if the drunkard is not to be regarded as a criminal because the seat of his disease consists in a "diseased will," is not society equally exonerated from all culpability if her "will" is so "diseased" that she cannot exert her virtue? We hasten to dismiss this sickly sentimentalism by presenting the following specimen as an addition to the "Amenities of Literature:"

"When Society shall have the grace to forgive all her erring offspring, by assuming to herself the burden of their offences, she will learn that the path of magnanimity is also the path of consummate prudence. Teach a man to believe himself at heart a sinner, and he will be sure to 'play hell,' as the phrase goes, with his teachers. Teach him, on the contrary. to believe himself at heart sound, and a sinner only by social imputation, and he will abound in all manner of manly fruit. Accordingly the poor drunkard, being inwardly relieved of that guilt which bows him to the dust, and which forever darkens the hope of the future by the memory of the loathsome past, being restored to more than pristine peace and innocence by your loyalty to truth, will put on vigor and beauty with the day, and shed the slough of natural habit as spontaneously as flowers shed their foliage or corn its husks." 

-- James C. Welling, review of Henry James Sr., Lectures and Miscellanies in "Notes on New Books," Washington National Intelligencer, April 20, 1852.

Before the Civil War, book reviews in the National Intelligencer by James Clarke Welling repeatedly called attention to the magical thinking exhibited by social reformers, and warned against real miseries bound to accompany the actual implementation of socialist policies. For example, reviewing Charlotte Brontë's Villette on May 26, 1853, Welling felt safe in saying that

"In our country we may not be harassed by any fears lest a Blithedale romance may inoculate the popular mind with a contagion like socialism."

Reviewing Peruvian Antiquities by Mariano E. Rivero on November 29, 1853, Welling predicted that

"If socialism found its full and rotund development under these autocratic rulers, swaying at will an ignorant and degraded populace, whose equality consisted only in an equality of barbarism, we may judge to what results a similar policy would conduct the nations of Europe."

As in the 1852 review of Henry James's Lectures, transcribed in full herein, Welling often put a spotlight on the horrifying policy of infanticide, as theoretically approved by Plato in his Republic and confidently advocated in the 19th century by "Monsieur Fourier" and other "crazy" European socialists, perhaps under the influence of Malthus or the dark Malthusian "Marcus pamphlet" deplored by Carlyle in his treatise on Chartism. Reviewing the Life and Travels Herodotus in the Fifth Century before Christ by James Talboy Wheeler in the National Intelligencer for July 1, 1856, Welling thus ridiculed the latest Utopian scheme for population control through the "painless extinction" of unwanted babies:

Every body knows that when Monsieur Fourier set about to effect "the synthesis of matter and spirit" according to the most philosophical adjustments of "passional attraction" of the supernumerary offspring by which the free and easy working of the social machine which he had invented was liable to be clogged, and in the end brought to a stand-still. To guard against any such obstruction he recommended (it was but an exaggerated phase of Malthusianism, such as might have been expected from a French translation of that politico-economical system or from a crazy Gaul ambitious to "out-herod Herod") that children who came into the world (that is, the phalanstery) without being wanted might be disposed of in a way which would be advantageous to the community, without, it was supposed, being very harrowing to anybody's parental feelings in an association among whom the birth of a "wise child," as defined by the familiar proverb, was a social impossibility. St. Augustine, we remember, speaks of the infants who perished under the sword of Herod as the flores martyrum, or "flowers of the martyrs." It was perhaps in memory of this pious fancy that certain ardent Fourierites have recommended the ornamentation of the phalanstery with sculptured flower pots in which the nascent "martyrs" of the community might be aesthetically inurned.

In the same vein, this time focusing on maltreatment of living children as the "most loathsome" consequence of communism, Welling asked a sadly prophetic question in his review of The Mother and her Offspring by Stephen Tracy and Letters to Country Girls by Mrs. Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm, published in the Washington, DC National Intelligencer on May 18, 1853:

The veriest and most loathsome communism is the price at which woman must purchase her equality of rights. The modern advocates of the same social theories are not always so consistent [as Plato in the Republic], and they cannot, therefore, shield themselves behind the philosopher's mantle. Let them remember that the foundling hospital must be endowed before woman can be installed in the "rights" now withheld. Are American mothers prepared for such a consummation?

Protest leftovers in NYC - January 2017

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