Thomas Curtis Clarke

“ How wonderful the contrast religion presents!! But without adverting to the fruits of Christian love and enterprize, witness throughout the civilized world, the noon-daylight of Christianity, every where abounding in proportion as the human race rises in the scale of intelligence and civilization; and without denying the evils of bigotry, or the hypocrisy of pretenders, alike inimical to true religion–without appealing to the long line of heroes, statesmen, and philosophers; and the host of great intellects, who have made religion the study of their lives, and sealed it with their deaths ”

“ It is not for legislation to affect materially the family, the most ancient and venerable and permanent of all the forms of society, commencing with man’s history and ending only when man shall cease to be a dweller upon earth. The moral influence of families depends upon themselves. Each family to answer the ends of its existence, and contribute to the common weal and glory, must care for itself, and attend to its own government, purity and happiness. ”

“ There is not a subject which absolutely admits of a greater improvement than the cultivation of the soil: vast improvements are in progress, and will yet be made to an almost infinite extent; the slumbering energies of the farmer are awakening up, and agriculture, the broad foundation of a nation’s prosperity, is unmantling some of the brightest features of her hidden glory! ”

“ What the infant electricity has in store for us it would be rash to predict, but for locomotives its steps have been thus far weak and uncertain, and when we want a giant of steel or a race-horse of iron our only sure reliance is steam. This is the breath of life to the locomotive, which is inhaled and exhaled to and from the cylinders, which act as lungs, while the boiler fulfils functions analogous to the digestive organs of an animal. A locomotive is as dependent on the action of its boiler for its capacity for doing work as a human being on that of his stomach. ”

“ The most amiable and most useful disposition in a young mind, is diffidence of itself; and this should lead you to seek advice and instruction. Improve your understanding by acquiring useful knowledge–and virtue, such as will render you an ornament to society, an honour to your country, and a blessing to your parents. Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation, unless virtue, honour, truth and integrity are added to them. ”

“ When work is over, and everything in its place, the visiter is more welcome, the husband’s look is brighter, and an affectionate glow spreads itself through the circle.
The common law has acknowledged the principle, that every man’s house is his castle. It is true in more cases than one. Home is the citadel of all the virtues of the people. For by home we mean something more than one’s house: it is the family that makes the home. ”

“ He instantly put on more steam, but with unerring judgment opened the valve just far enough and no more.
But the terrible cloud constantly hanging over the engineer and fireman of a fast train is the chance of encountering an obstacle which cannot possibly be avoided, and which leaves them no alternative but to jump for their lives, if, indeed, it does not take away even that. To the fact that this cloud is no larger than it is, and that these men have sturdy and courageous natures, must be attributed the lightness with which it rests upon them. ”

“ In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity.
“’Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. ”

“ Man, without the cultivation of the earth, is, in all countries, a savage. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. If there lives the man who may eat his bread with a conscience at peace, it is the man who has brought that bread out of the earth by his own honest industry. The profession of agriculture brings with it none of those agitating passions which are fatal to peace, or to the enjoyment even of the common blessings of life: it presents few temptations to vicious indulgence ”

“ We lean out of the cab and strain our eyes in vain to see ahead. The head-light reveals a few yards of glistening rail, and the ghostly telegraph poles and switch targets. Were a switch open, a rail taken up, or a pile of ties on the track, we could not possibly see the danger in time to stop. The friendly twinkle of a signal lamp, shining faintly, red or white, tells [191] the engineer that the way is blocked or is clear, and he can only rush along trusting that no one of a dozen men on whom his life depends has made a mistake. ”

“ Anyone who will stand close to a line of railroad when a train is rushing by at a speed of forty, fifty, or sixty miles an hour must wonder how the engine and cars are kept on the track; and even those familiar with the construction of railroad machinery often express astonishment that the flanges of the wheels, which are merely projecting ribs about 11/8 inches deep and 11⁄4 inches thick, are sufficient to resist the impetus and swaying of a locomotive or car at full speed. ”

“ The spectacle of a free people submitting every thing to the ballot boxes, and abiding the result in the decision of the majority, is indeed delightful. In the preliminaries there is less to rejoice at; but in the quiet subordination to the great principles of our social system, which has just been exhibited, we feel the highest joy. We have in it the assurance that the people understand their high responsibility, as freemen: that while each citizen claims his own rights, he is willing to accord as much to his fellows. ”

“ With it a thousand men, contributing a thousand dollars each, compete on equal terms with the millionaire. Its doors are always open to any who may wish to share its privileges or its prosperity, and no man is denied equal participation according to his means and inclinations. It is the greatest "anti-poverty" invention which has ever been produced, and the most democratic. But, for all that, instead of possessing the unbounded power usually ascribed to it, no creature of God or man is so helpless as a corporation before the so-called great tribunal of justice, the American jury. ”

“ There never was a doctrine more untrue than the now almost obsolete one, derived from the false distinctions of monarchies, that mechanic professions are menial, and beneath the station of a true gentleman. The truth is, they are almost the only professions that have substance, and reality, and practical utility. The greatest men in the annals of the world, the men who have done most to enlighten it, and advance the prosperity and the liberties of the human race, have been mechanics. ”

“ The passenger-train brakeman differs from the freight trainman chiefly in the fact that he must deal with the public, and so must have a care for his personal appearance and behavior, and in the fact that he is not a brakeman, the universal air-brake relieving him of all work in this line. His chief duties are those of a porter, though the wide-awake American brakeman, with an eye to future promotion to a conductorship, maintains his dignity and is not by any means the servile call-boy that the English railway porter is. ”

“ The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history,–the language addressed by every past age of New England to all future ages, is this–Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom none but virtue; virtue none but knowledge; and neither freedom, virtue, nor knowledge, has any vigour, or immortal hope, except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in the sanctions of the Christian religion. ”

“ There are no public offices which are so emphatically "public trusts" as those whose duties comprise that of handling the correspondence of the people, because upon the proper and skilful performance of that duty depend—to a far greater degree than in the care of any other function accomplished through government agency—the business and social welfare of the entire community. The effects of ignorance, carelessness, and dishonesty in any other branch of the public service, although to be deplored, are not to be compared to those which follow the existence of such evils in the Post-Office. ”

“ Salary men generally spend all their salaries, and have but little to lay up for sickness or old age. A rich office-holder is generally a novelty, and a contented office-bolder is a greater novelty still.”
The Public welfare is no less endangered by this inordinate thirst for office, since experience has so frequently demonstrated the fact that measures of great national importance have been adopted or neglected solely with reference to their effects upon party. The paramount interests of the state or the country have been too often sacrificed in the unworthy scramble for office. ”

“ An engineer who makes a specially quick trip feels proud of his engine, and of the honor of having been chosen for an important run, and he shares with the passengers the exhilaration produced by such a triumph of science and skill in annihilating space; but in the matter of credit to himself for experience and judgment, patience and forethought, he feels and knows that many a trip in his every-day service is worthy of greater recognition. Many a runner has to urge his engine, day after day, with a load twenty-five per cent. ”

“ No where else is so large a portion of the community engaged in farming; no where else are the cultivators of the earth more independent or so powerful. One would think that in Europe the great business of life was to put each other to death; for so large a proportion of men are drawn from the walks of productive industry and trained to no other occupation except to shoot foreigners always, and their own countrymen occasionally; while here, the whole energy of all the nation is directed with intense force upon peaceful labour. ”

“ With the best will in the world he cannot make his annual reports give a thoroughly clear idea of what has been done. Is he to be forbidden to buy stock when it seems too low, or sell it when it is high? Shall we refuse him the right to invest in other property which he sees will advance in value? Apparently not; and yet, if we allow this, we open the door for some of the worst abuses of power which have occurred in railroad history. The line between good faith and bad faith in these matters is a narrow one, and the average conscience cannot be trusted to locate it with accuracy. ”

“ The great business of our country is agriculture. Because it feeds us, and furnishes the materials for our clothing; it gives employment to five-sixths of our population; it is the primary source of individual and national wealth; it is the nursing mother of manufactures and commerce; it is essential to national independence. Agriculture is worthy the most liberal patronage of our governments, state and national; it ought to be enlightened by a better (and thorough) education of the agricultural class. Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, stand together ”

“ The passenger-train conductor has in many respects the most difficult position in the railroad ranks. He should be a first-class freight conductor and a polished gentleman to boot. But in his long apprenticeship on a freight train he has very likely been learning how not to fulfil the additional requirements of a passenger conductorship. In that service he could be uncouth and even boorish, and still fill his position tolerably well; now he feels the need of a life-time of tuition in dealing with the diverse phases of human nature met with on a passenger train. ”

“ TEMPERANCE.
Being satisfied from observation and experience, as well as from medical testimony, that ardent spirits, as a drink, is not only needless but hurtful; and that the entire disuse of it would tend to promote the health, the virtue, and the happiness of the community: We hereby express our conviction, that should the citizens of the United States, and especially all young men, discountenance the use of it, they would not only promote their own personal benefit, but the good of our country and the world. ”

“ In nothing is the want of unity so distinctly and mischievously obvious as in the power of each corporation to make rates independently. It may not only make its own local rates at discretion, but it may join or refuse to join with others in making through rates; so that an inconsiderable and otherwise insignificant road may be capable of being so used as to throw rates for a large section of the country into confusion, and to render the making of profit by other roads impossible. ”

“ I trust every thing to habit; habit, upon which, in all ages, the law-giver, as well as the school-master, has mainly placed his reliance; habit which makes every thine easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from the wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful and hard; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be contrary to the nature of the child grown an adult. ”

“ The quantity and variety of articles used and consumed in the operation of a railroad are so great that it is a measure of much economy to concentrate all purchases into the hands of a single purchasing agent, rather than to allow each department to purchase for itself. This agent has nothing to do but to study prices and markets. His pride is enlisted in getting the lowest figures for his road, and the large amount of his purchases enables him to secure the best rates. ”

“ I answer, all that is odious, all that is dangerous in the distinctions which the free acquisition and the lawful enjoyment of property must always create, will soon vanish, and all classes be united in the enduring bonds of sympathy and gratitude, when the rich (I include all who have the leisure or means to bestow) shall understand and feel that it is their paramount duly to improve the physical and elevate the moral condition of their fellow-beings, or, to express nearly the whole in one word–to educate the poor. ”

“ Similarly, a railroad organized to respond efficiently to all the varied demands upon it as a common carrier, by the public, and as an investment by its owners, becomes almost a living organism. That the barrel of flour may be safely delivered and the fifty cents reach the company's treasury, and a part of it the stockholder's pocket, the whole organization outlined in the diagram must thrill with life, and every officer and employee, from president to car-greaser, must discharge his special functions. ”

“ We live in a country of small farms; a country, in which men cultivate with their own hands, their own fee-simple acres; drawing not only their subsistence, but also their spirit of independence, and manly freedom from the ground they plough. They are at once its owners, its cultivators, and its defenders. And whatever else may be undervalued, or overlooked, let us never forget, that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labour of man. ”

“ Less was said or felt of similar evils in passenger traffic, because the passenger business of the country generally is of much less importance than its freight business, either to the railroad investors or to the producers themselves. But there was the same fluctuation in passenger rates; and there was an outrageous form of discrimination in the development of the free-pass system; a practice which would have fully deserved the name of systematic bribery, had it not become so universal that most men hardly recognized any personal obligation connected with the acceptance of a pass. ”

“ Some farmers may fail for want of sufficient capital, but more for want of sufficient knowledge. There is no class who place more entire reliance on their skill than farmers, yet no one who is acquainted with the general agriculture of the country, will assert that it has yet reached the perfection of which it is susceptible. The intent of cultivation is to obtain the greatest possible amount of produce from the soil; the farmer’s object being to raise it by such means as will afford him the largest profit with the least labour ”

“ The progress in the construction of cars has been fully as great as in that of locomotives. If the old stage-coach bodies on wheels are compared with a vestibule train of to-day the difference will be very striking. Most of us who are no longer young can recall the days when sleeping-cars were unknown, when a journey from an Eastern city to Chicago meant forty-eight hours or more of sitting erect in a car with thirty or more passengers, and an atmosphere which was fetid. ”

“ When will those who are chosen to make laws for us, when will men who profess Christianity, learn and practise something of the Christian spirit, against which every feature of this law is at open war? Capital punishment is a blot upon our institutions, and a disgrace to any civilized community. ”

“ For while the life of a corporation is perpetual, its powers are constrained, and the individuals exercising them are constantly changing. It is but an artificial individual existing for certain purposes only, and, as it lacks some human qualities, all its methods of doing business are influenced thereby. The business affairs of an individual, for instance, are greatly simplified by his memory of his transactions from day to day and from year to year. But a corporation having no natural memory, all of its transactions and relations must be minutely and systematically noted in its archives. ”

“ But the development of engineering-works in America has been effected successfully by American engineers only because they have appreciated another side of the problem presented to them. A past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a man of rare judgment and remarkable executive ability, the late Ashbel Welch, said, in discussing a great undertaking proposed by an eminent Frenchman: "That is the best engineering, not which makes the most splendid, or even the most perfect, work, but that which makes a work that answers the purpose well, at the least cost." ”

“ Many a mile of railway over which we travel now at the highest speed has been a weary problem to the engineer of location, and he has often accomplished a really greater success by securing a line which seems to closely fit the country over which it runs without marking itself sharply upon nature's moulding, than if he had with apparent boldness cut deep into the hills and raised embankments and viaducts high over lowlands and valleys. ”