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Promoting the American West in England, 1865–1890

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Oscar O. Winther
Affiliation:
Indiana University

Extract

When in 1872 the English Reverend Alexander King, Secretary of the Freedmen's Mission Aid Society, returned to Blackheath (London) from his travels in the American West, he wrote a letter to the editor of the London Observer. Said he: “I believe our great national problem … must be solved by … the British occupation of America. Emigration, on a grand scale, to the trans-Mississippi regions will prove the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon people, and our cheapest and most effectual remedy for some of our most formidable national evils.”

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1956

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References

1 Clippings, Burlington Railroad Archives, Newberry Library, Chicago. Hereafter cited as B.R.A.

2 Liverpool Journal, June 24, 1871.

3 Letter from Cornelius Schaller to George S. Harris, August 26, 1871, B.R.A.

4 The Stirling Observer and Midland Company's Advertiser, February 22, 1872, clippings, B.R.A.

5 [Anonymous] “From a Vagabond's Note-Book,” Macmillan's Magazine, XXIV (1871), 246.Google Scholar

6 Brisbin, Gen. J. S., The Beef Bonanza; or, How to Get Rich on the Plains (London, 1881), p. 13.Google Scholar

7 Macdonald, James, Food From the Far West; or, American Agriculture (London, Edinburgh, 1878), p. 29.Google Scholar

8 Overton, Richard C., Burlington West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941), pp. 363364CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also ibid., pp. 359–362.

9 Letter from Schaller to Harris, September 4, 1871, B.R.A.

10 MacdonaId, Food From the Far West, p. 29.

11 Kingsbury, W. G., A Description of South-Western and Middle Texas (London, 1878).Google Scholar

12 The (London) American Settler, July 10, 1880, to November 26, 1892. This weekly newspaper was edited by Colonel D. D. Muter, also associated with the London Anglo-American Times.

13 Russell, W. H., Hesperothen; Notes From the West (London, 1882), I, 213, 217, 222.Google Scholar

14 For promotional literature on the Burlington Railroad, see B.R.A., Land Department. See also [Northern Pacific Railroad], The Pacific North-West: A Guide for Settlers and Travellers (New York, 1882), pp. 43, 45Google Scholar; Wheeler, Olin D., Wonderland ‘gy … Along the Northern Pacific Railroad (St. Paul, 1897), p. 29Google Scholar; Hedges, James B., “The Colonization Work of the Northern Pacific Railroad,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XIII (1926), 317318.Google Scholar In 1883, the Northern Pacific Railroad Company had 831 active agents operating in the British Isles. See ibid., p. 330.

15 Money, Richard, The Truth About America (London, 1886), p. 43.Google Scholar

16 Clippings, London Standard, [1872]; Conservative Standard, February 17, 1872; Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, January 16, 1872. See also Greenwood, ThomasA Tour in the States and Canada, London [1883] pp. 157158Google Scholar; Campbell, J. L., Great Agricultural and Mineral West (Chicago, 1867), p. 58.Google Scholar

18 The (Manchester) Labourers’ Union Chronicle, November 1, 1873.

19 [California Immigration Commission], California: The Cornucopia of the World (n.p., 1883), p. 21. Also designed to promote the West, and California in particular, in England was the magazine Abroad, published in Liverpool. See in particular the October, 1892, issue devoted especially to those who intended to emigrate to California. Publishers of Abroad labeled it as a “Journal Containing Useful Information for Tourists and Intending Settlers.”

20 Warner, Charles DudleyThe American Italy (London, 1891, 1892).Google Scholar This was an English edition of Our Italy, published in the United States. This is discussed fully in Oscar Osburn Winther, “The Use of Climate as a Means of Promoting Migration to Southern California,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXIII (1946), 412414.Google Scholar “California's ‘chief claim,'” wrote The (London) Agricultural Gazette, May 3, 1880, “is certainly its healthfulness….” See Edward Vincent, “Life in California,” in the London Spectator, XLII (May 18, 1889), 677; Joseph Surr, “Winter in California,” in ibid., XLII (May 4, 1889), 607; Joseph Morton, “Winter in California,” in ibid., XLII (March 9, 1889), 332–333.

21 London Times, January 20, 1870.

22 Ibid., January 9, 1883.

23 For critical observations on western American agent activities in England, see Money, The Truth About America, pp. 42–43; on frauds attending promotional activities and migration, see Wainwright, Mary D., “Agencies for the Promotion or Facilitation of Emigration from England to the United States, 1815–65,” unpublished Master of Arts dissertation, University of London, 1951.Google Scholar

24 Mulder, William“Image of Zion: Mormonism as an American Influence in Scandinavia,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLIII (1956), 19.Google Scholar

25 The (London) Guardian, November 22, 1871.

26 Dutton, J. Roger, “Among the Mormons,” in The Gentlemen's Magazine, n.s., VII (1871), 675.Google Scholar

27 See, for example, London Times, December 8, 1866. It must, however, be kept in mind that Mormonism, in the post-Civil War period, had declined in England in comparison with the period 1840–60. See Bancroft, H. H., History of Utah (San Francisco, 1889), pp. 408409.Google Scholar

28 Taylor, Philip A. M., “Mormon Emigration From Great Britain to the United States, 1840–70,” unpublished Doctoral dissertation, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University, 1952.Google Scholar

29 See charts in ibid., 212, 219.

30 London Graphic, IV (April 26, 1873), 394.

31 Aubyn, Robert J. St., “Middle-Class Emigration,” in London Agricultural Gazette, January 28, 1878.Google Scholar A complete bibliography of British travelers in the West is unavailable- Such a bibliography, if it existed, would contain several hundred items.

32 Thorpe, C. H., How to Invest and How to Speculate (London: G. Richards, 1901), p. 168Google Scholar; London Times, March 30, 1874.

33 List of British Companies in Western North America, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California.

34 Population of the United States in 1860 … the Eighth Census (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1864), passim; Census Reports, Twelfth Census … Population … igoo (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Office, 1901, 1902), I-II, passim.