mind that 10,000 or 40,000 inhabitants in an American town, and
especially in any new Western town, is a number which means much
more than would be implied by any similar number as to an old town
in Europe. Such a population in America consumes double the amount
of beef which it would in England, wears double the amount of
clothes, and demands double as much of the comforts of life. If a
census could be taken of the watches, it would be found, I take it,
that the American population possessed among them nearly double as
many as would the English; and I fear also that it would be found
that many more of the Americans were readers and writers by habit.
In any large town in England it is probable that a higher
excellence of education would be found than in Milwaukee, and also
a style of life into which more of refinement and more of luxury
had found its way. But the general level of these things, of
material and intellectual well-being--of beef, that is, and book
learning--is no doubt infinitely higher in a new American than in
an old European town. Such an animal as a beggar is as much
unknown as a mastodon. Men out of work and in want are almost
unknown. I do not say that there are none of the hardships of
life--and to them I will come by-and-by--but want is not known as a
hardship in these towns, nor is that dense ignorance in which so
large a proportion of our town populations is still steeped. And
then the town of 40,000 inhabitants is spread over a surface which
would suffice in England for a city of four times the size. Our
towns in England--and the towns, indeed, of Europe generally--have
been built as they have been wanted. No aspiring ambition as to
hundreds of thousands of people warmed the bosoms of their first
founders. Two or three dozen men required habitations in the same
locality, and clustered them together closely. Many such have
failed and died out of the world's notice. Others have thriven,
and houses have been packed on to houses, till London and
Manchester, Dublin and Glasgow have been produced. Poor men have
built, or have had built for them, wretched lanes, and rich men
have erected grand palaces. From the nature of their beginnings
such has, of necessity, been the manner of their creation. But in
America, and especially in Western America, there has been no such
necessity and there is no such result. The founders of cities have
had the experience of the world before them. They have known of
sanitary laws as they began. That sewerage, and water, and gas,
and good air would be needed for a thriving community has been to
them as much a matter of fact as are the well-understood
combinations between timber and nails, and bricks and mortar. They
have known that water carriage is almost a necessity for commercial
success, and have chosen their sites accordingly. Broad streets
cost as little, while land by the foot is not as yet of value to be
regarded, as those which are narrow; and therefore the sites of
towns have been prepared with noble avenues and imposing streets.
A city at its commencement is laid out with an intention that it
shall be populous. The houses are not all built at once, but there
are the places allocated for them. The streets are not made, but
there are the spaces. Many an abortive attempt at municipal
greatness has so been made and then all but abandoned. There are
wretched villages, with huge, straggling parallel ways, which will
never grow into towns. They are the failures--failures in which
the pioneers of civilization, frontier men as they call themselves,
have lost their tens of thousands of dollars. But when the success
comes, when the happy hit has been made, and the ways of commerce
have been truly foreseen with a cunning eye, then a great and
prosperous city springs up, ready made as it were, from the earth.
Such a town is Milwaukee, now containing 45,000 inhabitants, but
with room apparently for double that number; with room for four
times that number, were men packed as closely there as they are
with us.

In the principal business streets of all these towns one sees vast
buildings. They are usually called blocks, and are often so
denominated in large letters on their front, as Portland Block,
Devereux Block, Buel's Block. Such a block may face to two, three,
or even four streets, and, as I presume, has generally been a
matter of one special speculation. It may be divided into separate
houses, or kept for a single purpose, such as that of a hotel, or
grouped into shops below, and into various sets of chambers above.
I have had occasion in various towns to mount the stairs within
these blocks, and have generally found some portion of them vacant--
have sometimes found the greater portion of them vacant. Men
build on an enormous scale, three times, ten times as much as is
wanted. The only measure of size is an increase on what men have
built before. Monroe P. Jones, the speculator, is very probably
ruined, and then begins the world again nothing daunted. But
Jones's block remains, and gives to the city in its aggregate a
certain amount of wealth. Or the block becomes at once of service
and finds tenants. In which case Jones probably sells it, and
immediately builds two others twice as big. That Monroe P. Jones
will encounter ruin is almost a matter of course; but then he is
none the worse for being ruined. It hardly makes him unhappy. He
is greedy of dollars with a terrible covetousness; but he is greedy
in order that he may speculate more widely. He would sooner have
built Jones's tenth block, with a prospect of completing a
twentieth, than settle himself down at rest for life as the owner
of a Chatsworth or a Woburn. As for his children, he has no desire
of leaving them money. Let the girls marry. And for the boys--for
them it will be good to begin as he begun. If they cannot build
blocks for themselves, let them earn their bread in the blocks of
other men. So Monroe P. Jones, with his million of dollars
accomplished, advances on to a new frontier, goes to work again on
a new city, and loses it all. As an individual I differ very much
from Monroe P. Jones. The first block accomplished, with an
adequate rent accruing to me as the builder, I fancy that I should
never try a second. But Jones is undoubtedly the man for the West.
It is that love of money to come, joined to a strong disregard for


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