tary family, and treated with the tenderness of a son, Lafayette is henceforth to be not only the beloved and trusted associate of Washington, but a living tie between his native and his almost adopted country. Returning to France in January, 1779, after eighteen months of brave and valuable service here, during which he had been wounded at Brandywine, had exhibited signal gallantry and skill at Monmouth, and had received the thanks of Congress for important services in Rhode Island, he was now in the way of appealing personally to the French ministry to send an army and fleet to our assistance. He did appeal; and the zeal and force of his arguments at length prevailed. The young marquis, to whom alone the decision of the king was revealed, hastens back with eager joy to announce the glad tidings to Washington, and to arrange with him for the reception and employment of the auxiliary forces. Accordingly, on the 10th of July, 1780, a squadron of the ships of war brings Rochambeau with six thousand French troops into the harbor of Newport, with instructions "to act under Washington, and live with the American officers as their brethren," and the American officers are forthwith desired by Washington, in General Orders, "to wear white and black cockades as a symbol of affection for their allies." Nearly a full year, however, was to elapse before the rich fruits of that alliance were to be developed, a year of the greatest discouragement and gloom for the American cause. The war on our side seemed languishing. As late as the 9th of April, 1781, Washington wrote to Colonel John Laurens, who had gone on a special mission to Paris, "If France delays a timely and powerful aid in the critical juncture of our affairs, it will avail us nothing should she attempt it hereafter. We are at this hour suspended in the balance. In a word, we are at the end of our tether, and now or never our deliverance must come." God's holy name be praised, deliverance was to come, and did come, now! On the third of September, 1781, the united armies reached Philadelphia, where, Congress being in session, the French army "paid it the honors which the king had ordered us to pay," as we are told in the journal of the gallant Count William de Deux Ponts. . . . On the 19th of October the articles were signed by which the garrisons of York and Gloucester, together with all the officers and seamen of the British ships in the Chesapeake, "surrender themselves prisoners of war to the combined forces of America and France." THE AMERICAN WORKMAN IN 17841 THERE can, however, be no doubt that a wonderful amelioration has taken place since that day in the condition of the poor. Their houses were meaner, their food was coarser, their clothing was of common stuff; their wages were, despite the depreciation that has gone on in the value of money, lower by one half than at the present time. A man who performed what would now be called unskilled labor, who sawed wood, who dug ditches, who mended the roads, who mixed mortar, who carried boards to the carpenter and bricks to the mason, or helped to cut hay in the harvest-time, usually received as the fruit of his daily toil two shillings. Sometimes when the laborers were few he was paid more, and became the envy of his fellows if, at the end of a week, he took home to his family fifteen shillings, a sum now greatly exceeded by four dollars. Yet all authorities agree that in 1784 the hire of workmen was twice as great as in 1774. On such a pittance it was only by the strictest economy that a mechanic kept his children from starvation and himself from jail. In the low and dingy rooms which he called his home were wanting many articles of adornment and of use now to be found in the dwellings of the poorest of his class. Sand sprinkled on the floor did duty as a carpet. There was no glass on his table, there was no china in his cupboard, there were no 1 From A History of the People of the United States, vol. i; copyright by D. Appleton & Co. prints on his walls. What a stove was he did not know, coal he had never seen, matches he had never heard of. Over a fire of fragments of boxes and barrels, which he lit with the sparks struck from a flint, or with live coals brought from a neighbor's hearth, his wife cooked up a rude meal and served it in pewter dishes. He rarely tasted fresh meat as often as once in a week, and paid for it a much higher price than his posterity. Everything, indeed, which ranked as a staple of life was very costly. Corn stood at three shillings the bushel, wheat at eight and sixpence, an assize of bread was fourpence, a pound of salt pork was tenpence. Many other commodities now to be seen on the tables of the poor were either quite unknown or far beyond the reach of his scanty means. Unenviable is the lot of that man who cannot, in the height of the season, when the wharfs and markets are heaped with baskets and crates of fruit, spare three cents for a pound of grapes or five cents for as many peaches, or, when Sunday comes around, indulge his family with watermelons or cantaloupes. One hundred years ago the wretched fox-grape was the only kind that found its way to market, and was the luxury of the rich. Among the fruits and vegetables of which no one had then even heard are cantaloupes, many varieties of peaches, and pears, tomatoes and rhubarb, sweet corn, the cauliflower, the egg-plant, head lettuce and okra. On the window-benches of every tenement-house may be seen growing geraniums and verbenas, flowers not known a century ago. In truth, the best-kept gardens were then rank with hollyhocks and sunflowers, roses and snowballs, lilacs, pinks, tulips, and, above all, the Jerusalem cherry, a plant once much admired, but now scarcely seen. If the food of an artisan would now be thought coarse, his clothes would be thought abominable. A pair of yellow buckskin or leather breeches, a checked shirt, a red flannel jacket, a rusty felt hat cocked up at the corners, shoes of neat's-skin set off with huge buckles of brass, and a leather apron, comprised his scanty wardrobe. The leather he smeared with grease to keep it soft and flexible. His sons followed in his footsteps or were apprenticed to neighboring tradesmen. His daughter went out to service. She performed, indeed, all the duties at present exacted from women of her class; but with them were coupled many others rendered useless by the great improvement that has since taken place in the conveniences of life. She mended the clothes, she did up the ruffs, she ran on errands from one end of the town to the other, she milked the cows, made the butter, walked ten blocks for a pail of water, spun flax for the family linen, and when the year was up received ten pounds for her wages. Yet, small as was her pay, she had, before bestowing herself in marriage on the footman or the gardener, laid away in her stocking enough guineas and joes to buy a few chairs, a table, and a bed. PART IV THE DECLARATION THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE THOMAS JEFFERSON [The committee appointed by the Continental Congress to draft the Declaration consisted of Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Jefferson and Adams were appointed a sub-committee, and Jefferson put pen to paper. The document, after being submitted to the other members of the committee, and approved by them, was reported back to the Congress and adopted by that body on July 4, 1776.] WHEN in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to |