Part 15 (1/2)
At an early day ”prairie schooners,” pioneers of the great freight trains to come, laden with grain from the fertile areas round about began to line the prairie roads leading to Chicago. In 1839, two years after the city was begun, a crude grain elevator was constructed. The farmers, too poor to furnish sacks, brought their grain in sheets, blankets, and pieces of canvas. It was hoisted by hand with block and tackle to the elevator, and in the year mentioned 2900 bushels of wheat, consigned to Black Rock, New York, were dumped loose into the hold of the brig _Osceola_. From this primitive beginning has grown a mighty volume of trade in grain. In 1900 the wheat, corn, oats, rye, and barley s.h.i.+pped from Chicago amounted to 232,267,109 bushels, while the receipts aggregated 307,723,135 bushels.
It was not until 1843 that the Common Council came to the conclusion that the place was sufficiently advanced as a city to warrant the enactment of an ordinance declaring that hogs should no longer be permitted to run at large in the streets. In 1900, far from being unwelcome, over 8,000,000 hogs, safely penned in cars, arrived in the city and were sent to the slaughter.
In writing of Chicago it is customary to deal in superlatives, and this is necessary in the nature of things. Its Union Stock Yards cover 400 acres, nearly twice the area of the original town. Twenty miles of streets thread this meat-packing colony, which pays wages amounting to nearly $9,000,000 a year. In 1900 there were s.h.i.+pped to Chicago 277,205 carloads of hogs, cattle, sheep, etc. Its trade in grain leads every city in the world, while its general mercantile traffic is surpa.s.sed by few.
The first railroad at that time was the Galena and Chicago Union, which was chartered January 16, 1836. Galena at that time was believed to be destined far to outrival her neighbor, and therefore demanded and secured the place of honor in the t.i.tle of the road. To-day thirty-nine distinct railroads enter Chicago, more than half the railway systems of America make that city their objective point, and the aggregate distance travelled by freight and pa.s.senger trains daily entering the metropolis is over 80,000 miles. In the thunder of this traffic the clamor of rivalry long since died away. The British critic, Mr. Archer, remarked that he was unable to detect the slightest evidence of compet.i.tion with Chicago even in a ”Pisgah view from the top of the Auditorium.”
The employment of large adjectives in the recital of the city's history is not without warrant. ”The trouble with you people in Chicago,” remarked a visitor, ”is that you exaggerate too much.” ”We have to,” retorted a citizen, proudly, ”in fact we have to lie to tell the truth.” Even when we speak of the fire of 1871, we must call it the ”great Chicago fire,” for never before perhaps in the history of the world were so many of the piled-up monuments of man's hands consumed so rapidly. Such awful moments, happily, seldom come in the history of communities. It was as if the fires of Dante's Inferno had been permitted for a night and day to devastate a great city of this planet. One thousand four hundred and seventy acres of buildings were utterly consumed. The entire business portion of the city vanished in smoke and flame. One hundred thousand persons were left homeless and in many cases penniless. Seventeen thousand four hundred and fifty buildings were destroyed, the total valuation of the loss by fire being $186,000,000.
In the presence of a catastrophe, so vast that the imagination reeled as the eye wandered over the mighty paths where the cyclones of fire had swept, social inequalities and race prejudices were ignored. All right-minded men stood together in a common bond of fellows.h.i.+p. Doubtless much of the present spirit of amalgamation of the people of the city is an outgrowth of the calamity which thirty years ago brought the representatives of those divers races elbow to elbow in the common cause of rebuilding their homes and reconstructing their lines of industry. The riots at the Haymarket did not indicate bad blood between the races of the city, but merely an incidental if not accidental social unrest not uncommon in all our greater cities.
[Ill.u.s.tration RUINS OF THE GREAT FIRE, CHICAGO.]
The city staggered, but did not fall, under the woful wreck the great fire wrought. Through a grim schooling of disaster in the past the city had developed a force of character that fire could not consume. ”Nothing,”
exclaimed the great French Cardinal and Premier of the seventeenth century, when he was temporarily overthrown, ”nothing remains but the indomitable spirit of Richelieu.” Chicago had similar faith in her own inherent power.
There were some broken spirits who, gazing on the melancholy ruin, caught no glimpse of the magnificent city that was to rise, as if by command of a magician's wand, upon the smoking desolation. But the majority did not permit the calamity to crush. The faithful were exhorted to rebuild the city. It was predicted then that Chicago would live, and live to be so mighty and so vast that the great fire would be but an incident in its history. The city was to live because beyond it were the giant forces, the teeming millions, the imperial area of the mighty West, which, having made Chicago the gateway to the East, would recreate it under the same natural necessities.
The city's optimistic faith and determination enlisted the sympathy of the world, and $5,000,000 in relief contributions poured in and thousands of telegrams offering credit to merchants supplemented this hearty and timely exhibition of Good Samaritanism. The deeds of valor displayed by firemen and citizens in fighting an unequal combat with the fire were equalled only by the heroism which appeared in the rebuilding of the city. The first structure to rise over the ruins was a board shanty, twelve by sixteen feet in dimensions. It was on Was.h.i.+ngton Street, between Dearborn and Clark, near the site of a former flouris.h.i.+ng block, where W.D. Kerfoot had conducted a large business in real estate. The tiny structure was built hastily on the morning of October 10th, while the surrounding ashes and heaps of twisted iron were so hot that the little building had to be set in the middle of the street. The comical cabin bore the legend, ”Kerfoot's Block. Everything gone but wife, children, and energy.” Small as the shanty was, it was an inspiration. It marked the beginning of a city now so vast that the munic.i.p.ality existing before the fire seems but a shadow. Through the city run paved streets whose aggregate length would reach from Chicago to New York, and start the traveller some distance on his way to Boston.
More than 100,000 street lights, kept ”trimmed and burning” by the munic.i.p.ality at an annual cost of over $1,000,000, twinkle in the city by night.
Over a quarter of a billion of gallons of water are consumed daily by a city now protected by an efficient fire department against a repet.i.tion of the disaster of 1871. Nearly 1500 miles of sewers preserve the sanitation, while the superb ingenuity of engineers has changed the courses and reversed the currents of rivers, and with connecting ca.n.a.ls turned the city's sewage toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The ambition of this characteristically American city is to excel in everything. When she undertook to hold a World's Fair, she determined to eclipse any previous exposition, and to secure a phenomenal attendance.
When she held a Parliament of Religions she arranged that the faiths of every clime should be represented by their most learned and pious men, and that the teachings there set forth should const.i.tute a memorable contribution to the best thought of the world. It has been said of Chicago that when she decides to be the home of the greatest poet among mankind, she will go out and get him, or, better still, produce him.
Cities affecting a more advanced culture sniff at the stock-yard atmosphere which they pretend to believe permeates the literary life of Chicago, and Eugene Field, in playful mood, accepting the jibes of distant critics, printed as the frontispiece of his _Culture's Garland_ a wreath of sausage links; but William D. Howells has acknowledged that out of Chicago is coming a literary virility destined to leave cla.s.sic record in the annals of letters. Field himself occupies an honored place in the American Pantheon, and his ”Little Boy Blue,” though dead, forever sings his way to our firesides.
The city takes high rank as a centre for advanced education. In addition to technical schools like the Armour Inst.i.tute, it has two famous Universities; the Chicago, and the Northwestern. The Chicago University began its career ten years ago. The old denominational University of the same name having been sold at auction under foreclosure, John D.
Rockefeller decided to reorganize it and found a great inst.i.tution of learning, and to that end pledged a portion of his fortune and secured as President, Dr. William R. Harper, of Yale. The University opened in 1892 with 702 students. To-day it has nearly 4000. It began with no less than 135 instructors; it now has 205. The University made its start with grounds, buildings, and equipments valued at $1,600,000, and invested funds amounting to $1,500,000. To-day its productive funds aggregate over $15,000,000. Women have been prominent among the University's donors, and in all the departments women students enjoy equal status with men. A student may enter at the beginning of any quarter and receive his degree at the end of any term. The colleges continue throughout the year. Recently the Chicago Inst.i.tute, founded by Mrs. Emmons Blaine for training school teachers, was absorbed by the University. In fact, Dr. Harper has succeeded in merging so many professional schools that he has been amiably accused of attempting to form an educational trust. The Northwestern University, located partly in the city and partly in Evanston, a suburb, was founded in 1851. It has 296 instructors and over 3000 students. Its productive funds amount to over $3,000,000. Although conducted under denominational auspices, its charter provides that no particular religious faith shall be required of students. It has a campus of 45 acres on the Lake Michigan sh.o.r.e. The University includes a college of Liberal Arts, and schools of medicine, law, pharmacy, dentistry, music, and theology. Many of the departments are coeducational.
[Ill.u.s.tration PUBLIC LIBRARY, CHICAGO.]
The public schools of Chicago are crowded with three quarters of a million children of parents for few of whom ”Plato and the swing of Pleiades and the tall reaches of the peaks of song” had a meaning. And these children of every kindred and tongue are not herded into cla.s.ses and indifferently taught. Modern science a.s.sists them from the start with anthropometric examinations, and scientific methods are in use in every school. There could be no more hopeful ”sign and portent” of the city's future than is furnished by its public schools.
Voluntarily, by popular vote of the people, civil service was established in all branches of the city administration, and the principle laid down that industrious merit rather than political influence should fill the thousands of positions in the school department and city branches in general, a graphic ill.u.s.tration that the spoils system is not a Chicago ideal. Benevolent inst.i.tutions thrive under the munificent endowment of its men of wealth. Seers like Professor David Swing have preached the Gospel to an eager people, thousands on Sunday being turned away, unable to press to the pews through the mult.i.tude of churchgoers. All these phenomena present the interesting psychological truth that with Chicago's liberty and cosmopolitan make-up has been developed a rea.s.suring force ”making for righteousness.” The city is not yet prepared for canonization, but in many ways it is, in its largeness of life and tolerance, an example to the cities of the world. She is still apt, perhaps, in speaking, for example, of her art galleries to dwell overmuch upon the cost of the buildings and paintings and the number of acres.
The unprejudiced critic or historian knows that not all Chicago is pork and pig-iron, though why these industries are not as honorable as poetry and prose, perhaps they who sit in the seat of the scornful will explain.
Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton well says that a people cannot be truly great until they recognize that it is as dignified to till the soil as it is to pen an epic, and in the same line of thought it might be said that a people who ”live laborious days” packing meat and handling lumber, particularly by the thousand carloads, are not necessarily belated travellers on the highway that leads to national integrity and renown.
In wealth, in population, in the high character and eager attendance in her great schools, in libraries, art, and architecture, as evidenced by inst.i.tutes, buildings, and academies of design, in her letters, as displayed by the literary output, in her spiritual conquests, as shown in the teachings of her poets and preachers, and even in the periodical reforms that purify the political atmosphere, Chicago's future will undoubtedly be, like her past, phenomenal.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
FOOTNOTE:
[10] Among the Sacs, ”Checagau” was the name of one of their valiant warriors and colonizers, and meant ”He that stands by the tree.”
Among the several tribes of the Algonquin group ”Chekago,” ”Chicagong,”