Carlyle's laugh, and other surprisesHigginson, Thomas Wentworth
History
Carlyle's laugh, and other surprises
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
American literature -- History and criticism; Authors, American
From an early period of life he was a profuse and vigorous pamphleteer,
his first pamphlet being published during the Civil War and entitled
“Cheap Cotton by Free Labor,” and this publication led to his
acquaintance with David R. Wells and Charles Nordhoff, thenceforth his
life-long friends. His early pamphlets were on the cotton question in
different forms (1863-76); he wrote on blockade-running (1865); on the
Pacific Railway (1871); and on mutual fire insurance (1885), this last
being based on personal experience as the head of a mutual company. He
was also, during his whole life, in print and otherwise, a strong and
effective fighter for sound currency.
A large part of his attention from 1889 onward was occupied by
experiments in cooking and diet, culminating in an invention of his
own called “The Aladdin Oven.” This led him into investigations as
to the cost of nutrition in different countries, on which subject he
also wrote pamphlets. He soon was led into experiments so daring that
he claimed to have proved it possible to cook with it, in open air, a
five-course dinner for ten persons, and gave illustrations of this at
outdoor entertainments. He claimed that good nutrition could be had
for $1 per week, and that a family of five, by moderate management,
could be comfortably supported on $180 per year (Boston “Herald,”
October 8, 1891). These surprising figures unfortunately created among
the laboring-class a good deal of sharp criticism, culminating in the
mistaken inquiry, why he did not feed his own family at $180 a year, if
it was so easy? I can only say for one, that if the meals at that price
were like a dinner of which I partook at his own house with an invited
party, and at which I went through the promised five courses after seeing
them all prepared in the garden, I think that his standard of poverty
came very near to luxury.
Mingled with these things in later years was introduced another valuable
department of instruction. He was more and more called upon to give
addresses, especially on manufactures, before Southern audiences, and
there was no disposition to criticise him for his anti-slavery record.
Another man could hardly be found whose knowledge of manufacturing and of
insurance combined made him so fit to give counsel in the new business
impulse showing itself at the South. He wrote much (1877) on cotton
goods, called for an international cotton exposition, and gave an address
at Atlanta, Georgia, which was printed in Boston in 1881.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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