trade in 1887 would be, as it was, $1,103,000,000. Nor could any one
have believed that the population of 100,000 would reach in 1887
nearly 800,000 (estimated 782,644), likely to reach in 1888, with the
annexation of contiguous villages that have become physically a part of
the city, the amount of 900,000. Growing at its usual rate for several
years past, the city is certain in a couple of years to count its
million of people. And there is not probably anywhere congregated a
more active and aggressive million, with so great a proportion of
young, ambitious blood. Other figures keep pace with those of trade and
population. I will mention only one or two of them here. The national
banks, in 1887, had a capital of $15,800,000, in which the deposits
were $80,473,740, the loans and discounts $63,113,821, the surplus and
profits $6,320,559. The First National is, I believe, the second or
third largest banking house in the country, having a deposit account of
over twenty-two millions. The figures given only include the national
banks; add to these the private banks, and the deposits of Chicago in
1887 were $105,307,000. The aggregate bank clearings of the city were
$2,969,216,210.00, an increase of 14 per cent, over 1880. It should be
noted that there were only twenty-one banks in the clearing house (with
an aggregate capital and surplus of $28,514,000), and that the fewer the
banks the smaller the total clearings will be. The aggregate Board of
Trade clearings for 1887 were $78,179,809. In the year 1880 Chicago
imported merchandise entered for consumption to the value of
$11,574,449, and paid $4,349,237 duties on it. I did not intend to go
into statistics, but these and a few other figures will give some
idea of the volume of business in this new city. I found on inquiry
that—owing to legislation that need not be gone into—there are few
savings-banks, and the visible savings of labor cut a small figure in
this way. The explanation is that there are several important loan and
building associations. Money is received on deposit in small amounts,
and loaned at a good rate of interest to those wishing to build or buy
houses, the latter paying in small instalments. The result is that these
loan institutions have been very profitable to those who have put money
in them, and that the laborers who have borrowed to build have also been
benefited by putting all their savings into houses. I believe there
is no other large city, except Philadelphia perhaps, where so large a
proportion of the inhabitants own the houses they live in. There is
no better prevention of the spread of anarchical notions and communist
foolishness than this.
It is an item of interest that the wholesale drygoods jobbing
establishments increased their business in 1887 12 1/2 per cent, over
1886. Five houses have a capital of $9,000,000, and the sales in 1887
were nearly $74,000,000. And it is worth special mention that one man in
Chicago, Marshall Field, is the largest wholesale and retail dry-goods
merchant in the world. In his retail shop and wholesale store there are
3000 employes on the pay-roll. As to being first in his specialty, the
same may be said of Philip D. Armour, who not only distances all rivals
in the world as a packer, but no doubt also as a merchant of such
products as the hog contributes to the support of life. His sales in one
year have been over $51,000,000. The city has also the distinction
of having among its citizens Henry W. King, the largest dealer, in
establishments here and elsewhere, in clothing in the world.
In nothing has the growth of Chicago been more marked in the past five
years than in manufactures. I cannot go into the details of all the
products, but the totals of manufacture for 1887 were, in 2396 firms,
$113,960,000 capital employed, 134,615 workers, $74,567,000 paid in
wages, and the value of the product was $403,109,500—an increase of
product over 1886 of about 15 1/2 per cent. A surprising item in this is
the book and publishing business. The increase of sales of books in 1887
over 1886 was 20 per cent. The wholesale sales for 1887 are estimated at
$10,000,000. It is now claimed that as a book-publishing centre
Chicago ranks second only to New York, and that in the issue of
subscription-books it does more business than New York, Boston, and
Philadelphia combined. In regard to musical instruments the statement
is not less surprising. In 1887 the sales of pianos amounted to about
$2,600,000—a gain of $300,000 over 1886. My authority for this, and for
some, but not all, of the other figures given, is the Tribune, which
says that Chicago is not only the largest reed-organ market in the
world, but that more organs are manufactured here than in any other city
in Europe or America. The sales for 1887 were $2,000,000—an increase
over 1880 of $500,000. There were $1,000,000 worth of small musical
instruments sold, and of sheet music and music-books a total of
$450,000. This speaks well for the cultivation of musical taste in the
West, especially as there was a marked improvement in the class of the
music bought.
The product of the iron manufactures in 1887, including rolling-mills
($23,952,000) and founderies ($10,000,000), was $61,187,000 against
$46,790,000 in 1886, and the wages paid in iron and steel work was
$14,899,000. In 1887 there were erected 4833 buildings, at a reported
cost of $19,778,100—a few more build-’ ings, but yet at nearly two
millions less cost, than in 1886. A couple of items interested me:
that Chicago made in 1887 $900,000 worth of toys and $500,000 worth of
perfumes. The soap-makers waged a gallant but entirely unsuccessful war
against the soot and smoke of the town in producing $6,250,000 worth
of soap and candles. I do not see it mentioned, but I should think the
laundry business in Chicago would be the most profitable one at present.
Without attempting at all to set forth the business of Chicago in
detail, a few more figures will help to indicate its volume. At the
beginning of 1887 the storage capacity for grain in 29 elevators was
27,025,000 bushels. The total receipts of flour and grain in 1882, ‘3,
‘4, ‘5, and ‘6, in bushels, were respectively, 126,155,483, 164,924,732,
159,561,474, 156,408,228, 151,932,995. In 1887 the receipts in bushels
were: flour, 6,873,544; wheat, 21,848,251; corn, 51,578,410; oats,
45,750,842; rye, 852,726; barley, 12,476,547—total, 139,380,320. It is
useless to go into details of the meat products, but interesting to know
that in 1886 Chicago shipped 310,039,600 pounds of lard and 573,496,012
pounds of dressed beef.
I was surprised at the amount of the lake commerce, the railway traffic
(nearly 50,000 miles tributary to the city) making so much more show. In
1882 the tonnage of vessels clearing this port was 4,904,999; in 1880
it was 3,950,762. The report of the Board of Trade for 1886 says the
arrivals and clearances, foreign and coastwise, for this port for the
year ending June 30th were 22,096, which was 869 more than at the ports
of Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland and Falmouth,
and San Francisco combined; 315 more than at New York, New Orleans,
Portland and Falmouth, and San Francisco; and 100 more than at New York,
Baltimore, and Portland and Falmouth. It will not be overlooked that
this lake commerce is training a race of hardy sailors, who would come
to the front in case of a naval war, though they might have to go out on
rafts.
In 1888 Chicago is a magnificent city. Although it has been incorporated
fifty years, during which period its accession of population has been
rapid and steady—hardly checked by the devastating fires of 1871 and
1874—its metropolitan character and appearance is the work of less than
fifteen years. There is in history no parallel to this product of a
freely acting democracy: not St. Petersburg rising out of the marshes
at an imperial edict, nor Berlin, the magic creation of a consolidated
empire and a Caesar’s power. The north-side village has become a city
of broad streets, running northward to the parks, lined with handsome
residences interspersed with stately mansions of most varied and
agreeable architecture, marred by very little that is bizarre and
pretentious—a region of churches and club-houses and public buildings
of importance. The west side, the largest section, and containing more
population than the other two divisions combined, stretching out over
the prairie to a horizon fringed with villages, expanding in three
directions, is more mediocre in buildings, but impressive in its
vastness; and the stranger driving out the stately avenue of Washington
some four miles to Garfield Park will be astonished by the evidences of
wealth and the vigor of the city expansion.
But it is the business portion of the south side that is the miracle of
the time, the solid creation of energy and capital since the fire—the
square mile containing the Post-office and City Hall, the giant
hotels, the opera-houses and theatres, the Board of Trade building, the
many-storied offices, the great shops, the clubhouses, the vast retail
and wholesale warehouses. This area has the advantage of some other
great business centres in having broad streets at right angles, but with
all this openness for movement, the throng of passengers and traffic,
the intersecting street and cable railways, the loads of freight and the
crush of carriages, the life and hurry and excitement are sufficient to
satisfy the most eager lover of metropolitan pandemonium. Unfortunately
for a clear comprehension of it, the manufactories vomit dense clouds of
bituminous coal smoke, which settle in a black mass in this part of the
town, so that one can scarcely see across the streets in a damp day,
and the huge buildings loom up in the black sky in ghostly dimness. The
climate of Chicago, though some ten degrees warmer than the average of
its immediately tributary territory, is a harsh one, and in the short
winter days the centre of the city is not only black, but damp and
chilly. In some of the November and December days I could without any
stretch of the imagination fancy myself in London. On a Sunday, when
business gives place to amusement and religion, the stately city is
seen in all its fine proportions. No other city in the Union can show
business warehouses and offices of more architectural nobility. The mind
inevitably goes to Florence for comparison with the structures of the
Medicean merchant princes. One might name the Pullman Building for
offices as an example, and the wholesale warehouse of Marshall Field,
the work of that truly original American architect, Richardson, which
in massiveness, simplicity of lines, and admirable blending of artistic
beauty with adaptability to its purpose, seems to me unrivalled in this
country. A few of these buildings are exceptions to the general style of
architecture, which is only good of its utilitarian American kind, but
they give distinction to the town, and I am sure are prophetic of the
concrete form the wealth of the city will take. The visitor is likely
to be surprised at the number and size of the structures devoted to
offices, and to think, as he sees some of them unfilled, that the
business is overdone. At any given moment it may be, but the demand for
“offices” is always surprising to those who pay most attention to this
subject, and I am told that if the erection of office buildings should
cease for a year, the demand would pass beyond the means of satisfying
it.
Leaving the business portion of the south side, the city runs in
apparently limitless broad avenues southward into suburban villages and
a region thickly populated to the Indiana line. The continuous slightly
curving lake front of the city is about seven miles, pretty solidly
occupied with houses. The Michigan avenue of 1860, with its wooden
fronts and cheap boarding-houses, has taken on quite another appearance,
and extends its broad way in unbroken lines of fine residences five
miles, which will be six miles next summer, when its opening is
completed to the entrance of Washington Park. I do not know such another
street in the world. In the evening the converging lines of gas lamps
offer a prospective of unequalled beauty of its kind. The south parks
are reached now by turning either into the Drexel Boulevard or the Grand
Boulevard, a magnificent avenue a mile in length, tree-planted, gay with
flower-beds in the season, and crowded in the sleighing-time with fast
teams and fancy turnouts.
This leads me to speak of another feature of Chicago, which has no rival
in this country: I mean the facility for pleasure driving and riding.
Michigan avenue from the mouth of the river, the centre of town, is
macadamized. It and the other avenues immediately connected with the
park system are not included in the city street department, but are
under the care of the Commissioners of Parks. No traffic is permitted on
them, and consequently they are in superb condition for driving, summer
and winter. The whole length of Michigan avenue you will never see a
loaded team. These roads—that is, Michigan avenue and the others of
the park system, and the park drives—are superb for driving or riding,
perfectly made for drainage and permanency, with a top-dressing of
pulverized granite. The cost of the Michigan avenue drive was two
hundred thousand dollars a mile. The cost of the parks and boulevards
in each of the three divisions is met by a tax on the property in
that division. The tax is considerable, but the wise liberality of
the citizens has done for the town what only royalty usually
accomplishes—given it magnificent roads; and if good roads are a
criterion of civilization, Chicago must stand very high. But it needed
a community with a great deal of daring and confidence in the future to
create this park system.
One in the heart of the city has not to drive three or four miles
over cobble-stones and ruts to get to good driving-ground. When he
has entered Michigan avenue he need not pull rein for twenty to thirty
miles. This is almost literally true as to extent, without counting the
miles of fine drives in the parks; for the city proper is circled by
great parks, already laid out as pleasure-grounds, tree-planted
and beautified to a high degree, although they are nothing to what
cultivation will make them in ten years more. On the lake shore, at
the south, is Jackson Park; next is Washington Park, twice as large as
Central Park, New York; then, farther to the west, and north, Douglas
Park and Garfield Park; then Humboldt Park, until we come round to
Lincoln Park, on the lake shore on the north side. These parks are
all connected by broad boulevards, some of which are not yet fully
developed, thus forming a continuous park drive, with enough of nature
and enough of varied architecture for variety, unsurpassed, I should
say, in the world within any city limits. Washington Park, with a
slightly rolling surface and beautiful landscape-gardening, has not only
fine drive-ways, but a splendid road set apart for horsemen. This is
a dirt road, always well sprinkled, and the equestrian has a chance
besides of a gallop over springy turf. Water is now so abundantly
provided that this park is kept green in the driest season. From
anywhere in the south side one may mount his horse or enter his carriage
for a turn of fifteen or twenty miles on what is equivalent to a country
road—that is to say, an English country road. Of the effect of this
facility on social life I shall have occasion to speak. On the lake side
of Washington Park are the grounds of the Washington Park Racing Club,
with a splendid track, and stables and other facilities which, I am
told, exceed anything of the kind in the country. The club-house itself
is very handsome and commodious, is open to the members and their
families summer and winter, and makes a favorite rendezvous for that
part of society which shares its privileges. Besides its large dining
and dancing halls, it has elegant apartments set apart for ladies. In
winter its hospitable rooms and big wood fires are very attractive after
a zero drive.
Almost equal facility for driving and riding is had on the north side by
taking the lake-shore drive to Lincoln Park. Too much cannot be said of
the beauty of this drive along the curving shore of an inland sea, ever
attractive in the play of changing lights and colors, and beginning to
be fronted by palatial houses—a foretaste of the coming Venetian variety
and splendor. The park itself, dignified by the Lincoln statue, is
an exquisite piece of restful landscape, looked over by a thickening
assemblage of stately residences. It is a quarter of spacious elegance.
One hardly knows how to speak justly of either the physical aspect or
the social life of Chicago, the present performance suggesting such
promise and immediate change. The excited admiration waits a little upon
expectation. I should like to sec it in five years—in ten years; it is
a formative period, but one of such excellence of execution that the
imagination takes a very high flight in anticipating the result of
another quarter of a century. What other city has begun so nobly or
has planned so liberally for metropolitan solidity, elegance, and
recreation? What other has such magnificent, avenues and boulevards,
and such a system of parks? The boy is born here who will see the town
expanded far beyond these splendid pleasure-grounds, and what is now
the circumference of the city will be to Chicago what the vernal gardens
from St. James to Hampton are to London. This anticipation hardly seems
strange when one remembers what Chicago was fifteen years ago.
Architecturally, Chicago is more interesting than many older cities. Its
wealth and opportunity for fine building coming when our national
taste is beginning to be individual, it has escaped the monotony and
mediocrity in which New York for so many years put its money, and out
of the sameness of which it is escaping in spots. Having also plenty of
room, Chicago has been able to avoid the block system in its residences,
and to give play to variety and creative genius. It is impossible to do
much with the interior of a house in a block, however much you may load
the front with ornament. Confined to a long parallelogram, and limited
as to light and air, neither comfort nor individual taste can be
consulted or satisfied. Chicago is a city of detached houses, in the
humbler quarters as well as in the magnificent avenues, and the
effect is home-like and beautiful at the same time. There is great
variety—stone, brick, and wood intermingled, plain and ornamental; but
drive where you will in the favorite residence parts of the vast city,
you will be continually surprised with the sight of noble and artistic
houses and homes displaying taste as well as luxury. In addition to the
business and public buildings of which I spoke, there are several, like
the Art Museum, the Studebaker Building, and the new Auditorium, which
would be conspicuous and admired in any city in the world. The city is
rich in a few specimens of private houses by Mr. Richardson (whose loss
to the country is still apparently irreparable), houses worth a long
journey to see, so simple, so noble, so full of comfort, sentiment,
unique, having what may be called a charming personality. As to
interiors, there has been plenty of money spent in Chicago in mere show;
but, after all, I know of no other city that has more character and
individuality in its interiors, more evidences of personal refinement
and taste. There is, of course—Boston knows that—a grace and richness
in a dwelling in which generations have accumulated the best fruits of
wealth and cultivation; but any tasteful stranger here, I am sure, will
be surprised to find in a city so new so many homes pervaded by the
atmosphere of books and art and refined sensibility, due, I imagine,
mainly to the taste of the women, for while there are plenty of men here
who have taste, there are very few who have leisure to indulge it; and
I doubt if there was ever anywhere a livable house—a man can build a
palace, but he cannot make a home—that was not the creation of a refined
woman. I do not mean to say that Chicago is not still very much the
victim of the upholsterer, and that the eye is not offended by a good
deal that is gaudy and pretentious, but there is so much here that is in
exquisite taste that one has a hopeful heart about its future. Everybody
is not yet educated up to the “Richardson houses,” but nothing is
more certain than that they will powerfully influence all the future
architecture of the town.
Perhaps there never was before such an opportunity to study the growth
of an enormous city, physically and socially, as is offered now in
Chicago, where the development of half a century is condensed into a
decade. In one respect it differs from all other cities of anything like
its size. It is not only surrounded by a complete net-work of railways,
but it is permeated by them. The converging lines of twenty-one (I think
it is) railways paralleling each other or criss-crossing in the suburbs
concentrate upon fewer tracks as they enter the dense part of the
city, but they literally surround it, and actually pierce its heart. So
complete is this environment and interlacing that you cannot enter the
city from any direction without encountering a net-work of tracks. None
of the water-front, except a strip on the north side, is free from them.
The finest residence part of the south side, including the boulevards
and parks, is surrounded and cut by them. There are a few viaducts, but
for the most part the tracks occupy streets, and the crossings are at
grade. Along the Michigan avenue water-front and down the lake shore to
Hyde Park, on the Illinois Central and the Michigan Central and their
connections, the foreign and local trains pass incessantly (I believe
over sixty a day), and the Illinois crosses above Sixteenth Street,
cutting all the great southward avenues; and farther down, the tracks
run between Jackson Park and Washington Park, crossing at grade the
500-feet-wide boulevard which connects these great parks and makes them
one. These tracks and grade crossings, from which so few parts of the
city are free, are a serious evil and danger, and the annoyance is
increased by the multiplicity of street railway’s, and by the swiftly
running cable-cars, which are a constant source of alarm to the timid.
The railways present a difficult problem. The town covers such a vast
area (always extending in a ratio that cannot be calculated) that to
place all the passenger stations outside would be a great inconvenience,
to unite the lines in a single station probably impracticable. In time,
however, the roads must come in on elevated viaducts, or concentrate in
three or four stations which communicate with the central parts of the
town by elevated roads.
This state of things arose from the fact that the railways antedated,
and we may say made, the town, which has grown up along their lines. To
a town of pure business, transportation was the first requisite, and the
newer roads have been encouraged to penetrate as far into the city as
they could. Now that it is necessary to make it a city to live in safely
and agreeably, the railways are regarded from another point of view. I
suppose a sociologist would make some reflections on the effect of such
a thorough permeation of tracks, trains, engines, and traffic upon
the temperament of a town, the action of these exciting and irritating
causes upon its nervous centres. Living in a big railway-station must
have an effect on the nerves. At present this seems a legitimate part
of the excited activity of the city; but if it continues, with the rapid
increase of wealth and the growth of a leisure class, the inhabitants
who can afford to get away will live here only the few months necessary
to do their business and take a short season of social gayety, and then
go to quieter places early in the spring and for the summer months.