Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1886 — FIFTY YEARS AGO. [ARTICLE]

FIFTY YEARS AGO.

Wonderful Changes in the Commercial, Social, and Domestic Life of the World. It will astonish no one, .to be told that the telephone, without which business and»professional people in large towns would hardly know how to get alo»g, is a thing of yesterday; that the telegraph, whose convenient use enters so largely into every day’s transactions, yielded its first message in 1844; that the railway system of the United States, having only about 1,000 miles of road in operation half a century ago, has substatially grown to its present enormous dimensions since the establishment of this paper, or that there was no transAtlantic line of steamers till 1840, and Ho ocean screw steamers till 1847; hut many will be surprised to recall the number of lesser discoveries.inventions, and new contrivances that, within the same period, have come to modify our wavs of working and living. * Fifty years ago there was not a reaping or mowing machine to be heard in any field, nor was there a seed-planter to ’"be seen or any labor-saving apparatus for doing farm work except such as had existed for generations. There was the ancient plow, and the shovel, hoe, scythe, rake, cradle, sickle, and pitchfork, and they were about all. Nearly everything was done by had. The old Dutch plow was still to be seen, with its mold-board of wood protected by their plates of iron and its point of wrought iron. There was in common use no cultivator for the com and no horse-rake for the hay; not even a “bullrake” to be drawn by hand. In 1835 the farmers shot squirrels with flintlock fowling pieces, Springfield muskets, or some of the innumerable “Queen’s arms” that were said to have been picked up on tbe field of Bunker Hill. Percussion cap locks had not come into vogue, and flint locks wqre retained in both the militia and regular service for many years thereafter. The first breech-loading needle gun was made in 1836, and in the same Samuel Colt patented his revolving pistol. The first important move for the introduction of the rifle as a military weapon was made by France in 1842, and Capt. Minie produced his elongated projectile in place of the old spherical bullet about the year 1845. All vessels of war were of wood in 1835, and the combined navies of the world could have been destroyed by a singlearmed ship, such as the English Government sent into the harbor of Alexandria in 1882. In the way of heaVy crdnance even the wild tribes of the •Soudan are better, supplied to-day than all the great powers of the earth, put together, were at the time of which we apeak.

Fifty years ago such a thing as a photograph had never been imagined. Daguerre’s process, long since abandoned, was first announced to the French Academy of Sciences by Arago in 1839. '* It was in 1835 that Charles Goodyear took out his first patent for an Indiarubber cement. Before that time the few “gum” overshoes that were worn came from the crude manufacture of the [lndian’s’ of Brazill. Garden hose, waterproofs, and all the multifarious list of hard and soft rubber goods belong to the last half century. The vulcanized rubber was not made till 1844, and of course all the combs, pencil cases, and articles of use and adornment of that material belong to a later day. In 1836 the first successful machines for making pins were put into operation in New York, but these were the kind with wire or" spun heads” which had • way of slipping down toward the point and leaving the upper end of the pan to get into the thumb or finger. The process of making pins with solid heads, such as are now in universal use, was not patented until 1840.

People 'wrote their letters with quill pens in 1835, and there was no note paper, little ruled paper of any kind, no blotting paper, no envelopes and no stamps. Fine sand was used to take up the surplus ink, and only one sheet or piece of paper being allowed ip go by mail at a single rate, foolscap was largely used for correspondence on account of its size, till it was replaced by large, square sheets of letter paper. There were no postal cards and no money orders. Steel pens were not in common use then, nor for a long time afterwards, for they were neither cheap nor good. An American clergymap named Cleveland, having bought the right in England from another American to make gold pens in this oountry, induced Levi Brown, a watchmaker of Detroit, to undertake their manufacture about the year 1835, the process at first being to cut the pens with scissors from a ,thin, flat strip of gdJ4- Brown removed to New York about 1640 and laid the foundation there for the important manufacture of gold peas which now exists in that city. The nee of anaesthetics wa# practi-

cally unknown till the effect of j in rendering the patient insensible to j pain in surgical operations was an- i nohnoed in 1846. Coal was hardly • known as a fuel in this country fifty , years ago. Everybody burned,--wood. j Lucifer matches were not often seen I in those days; fire was still kindled ■ with thQ tinder-box, and candles and | pipes . were usually lighted with live coals frbm the fireplace. There was no gas for lighting streets or houses in this country. Whale oil lamps and tallow “dips” were the universal reliance.* Burning fluid, lard oil, and campheqe came later, and it was years before the discovery of petroleum and the manu- ! facture of kerosene gave us a cheaper j and better light than the fathers ever j dreamed of. As for the brilliant and wonderful electric light, it hardly dates back beyond the memory of the young- j est inhabitant, The boys and young men of ’35 had neither velocipede nor bicvple; they had no glycerine to keep their hands from chapping, and never j heard of gun-cotton or dynamite. The | housekeeper had no canned fruits whatever, and no preserved meats, soups, or | vegetables. She could get no con- j densed milk, no cocoa, and but little chocolate. She would have had to look long for a banana, and all imported fruits was scarce. She would as soon have j thought of putting a raw squash on her table as a tomato in any form. Ice did not rattle in her water-pitcher, and she j had no refrigerator. There was no- i where a general introduction of water into houses, and the only waterworks in the country were at Philadelphia. Soda water and ice cream were not at hand to cool the palate in summer, and lager beer was a fluid whose name was never pronounced on these shores. The first really practical-sewing machine had not been invented, and the household linen was sium and woven at home. Peripatetic cobblers and tailoresses went from house to house to do the making and mending, and precious few things were used among the farmers that were not fashioned on the premises. Bespectable old front doors were or- j namented with knockers, and door-bells j were a curiosity in Jackson’s time. The I carpenter prepared every piece of woodwork that went into the construction of j a house. He hewed the sills, joists, beams, posts, rafters, and braces; planed and matched the boards, shaved the i shingles in the woods and made the shash and doors at his bench in winter. Women knit their own stockings, for ! the stores held no Balbriggan hose, and the only elastics they could buy were j made of silk inclosing seyeral small cbils of brass wire. There were no bed~> springs and no mattresses of hair, wool, ; tow, or cotton; all the sleeping was i done upon feather and straw beds which j rested upon a bed-cord that had, to bel tightened about twice a year. Mack- j inac blankets were not in the market, i nor the counterpanes which are now so common.

There were nb baby-carriages such as we now r see, but occasionally a clumsy little cart with two wheels. The small children usually slept in a trundle-bed ] that was wheeled under the parental j couch in the day time. - Men smoked, but few cigars, although good “Spanish cigars, as the imported ones were called, could be bought for three cents apiece.' It was quite common for respectable ; yomen to smoke clay pipes; the doctors often directed them to smoke for indigestion. The process of electro-plating unknown in those days, and consequently the cheap plated ware of recent times could not be had. Forks were} made of steel and with but two prongs. Everybody put food to his mouth with j the knife, and the bandana spread upon j the knees was the predecessor of the ! napkin. Individual butter plates had j not appeared. Stoves were by no j means in universal use, and the j capacious brick ovens still did service j on baking days. The few fire engines! to be found were mostly of the “tub” j variety, worked by hand and supplied with water by a gang of men extending to some brook or river, who passed leather buckets from one to another. The invention of steam fire engines was j encouraged by the premium that was i offered after the great New York fire in 1835, but it was nearly thirty years before they came into practical use. The j chemical extinguishers came still later, j Fifty years ago there was not an ex-! press company in the United States. , The present system of carriage by ex- ' press originated in 1839, when William F. Harnden, of Boston, began his regu- j tar trip to New York as a public mes- j senger. It was not every householder who could afford a clock, and there was no domestic timepiece except the tall “varnished clock that clicked behind the door" with a pendulum that Pleasured seconds. Watches were rare, and a good watch was a sight that not manv eyes beheld.

— ——— In 1835 there were probably about 1,200 newspapers in the United States;! now there live times as many. The printing press had not been changed in principle since the invention of the art, and nearly every press in existence was worked by hand. The paper in all cases received its impression between a flat surface of type and an iron platen. Hoe’s cylinder press, which was the first radical departure from the press of Faust and Guttenberg, was invented in 1847, and the first great in the revolution that lias taken place in the structure of printing machines, j Wood pulp, which now constitutes the bulk of all cheap paper for printing, came into use only a few years ago. The papier mache process of stereotyping was first used on the New York newspapers in 1861, and electrotyping dates back not more than thirty-five years ago. Only the houses of the wealthy contained pianos fifty years ago. Cabinet and parlor organs were unknown, and even the melodeon existed only in the rocking or “toad” shape, and was held in the lap. Garhart’s melodeon with legs appeared in 1836. Boys and girlt in those days went to singing school and took their pitch in the choir from s tuning-fork. In the country great chests were more common than bureaus, and the “till” at one end was the depository of the family cash. People went on long journeys in wagons oi double carriages, with a trank slung underneath the axletree.—-Detroit Frit Treat.