paid to superintendents and teachers, and large sums for new buildings,
apparatus, and repairs. The total cash receipts for sehool purposes were
$2,091,951. Of this was from the school tax fund $1,758,053 (the total
city tax for all purposes was $5,308,409), and the rest from State
dividend and sehool fund bonds and miscellaneous sources. These figures
show that education is not neglected.
Of the quality and efficacy of this education there cannot be two
opinions, as seen in the schools whieh I visited. The high-school on the
west side is a model of its kind; but perhaps as interesting an example
of popular education as any is the Franklin grammar and primary school
on the north side, in a district of laboring people. Here were 1700
pupils, all children of working people, mostly Swedes and Germans, from
the age of six years upwards. Here were found some of the children of
the late anarchists, and nowhere else can one see a more interesting
attempt to manufacture intelligent American citizens. The instruction
rises through the several grades from object lessons, drawing, writing
and reading (and writing and reading well), to elementary physiology,
political and constitutional history, and physical geography. Here is
taught to young children what they cannot learn at home, and might never
clearly comprehend otherwise; not only something of the geography
and history of the country, but the distinctive principles of our
government, its constitutional ideas, the growth, creeds, and relations
of political parties, and the personality of the great men who have
represented them. That the pupils comprehend these subjects fairly well
I had evidence in recitations that were as pleasing as surprising. In
this way Chicago is teaching its alien population American ideas, and it
is fair to presume that the rising generation will have some notion of
the nature and value of our institutions that will save them from the
inclination to destroy them.
The public mind is agitated a good deal on the question of the
introduction of manual training into the public schools. The idea of
some people is that manual training should only be used as an aid to
mental training, in order to give definiteness and accuracy to thought;
others would like actual trades taught; and others think that it is
outside the function of the State to teach anything but elementary
mental studies. The subject would require an essay by itself, and I only
allude to it to say that Chicago is quite alive to the problems and
the most advanced educational ideas. If one would like to study
the philosophy and the practical working of what may be called
physico-mental training, I know no better place in the country to do so
than the Cook County Normal School, near Englewood, under the charge
of Colonel F. W. Parker, the originator of what is known as the
Quincy (Massachusetts) System. This is a training school for about 100
teachers, in a building where they have practice on about 500 children
in all stages of education, from the kindergarten up to the eighth
grade. This may be called a thorough manual training school, but not
to teach trades, work being done in drawing, modelling in clay, making
raised maps, and wood-carving. The Quincy System, which is sometimes
described as the development of character by developing mind and body,
has a literature to itself. This remarkable school, which draws teachers
for training from all over the country, is a notable instance of the
hospitality of the West to new and advanced ideas. It does not neglect
the literary side in education. Here and in some of the grammar schools
of Chicago the experiment is successfully tried of interesting young
children in the best literature by reading to them from the works of the
best authors, ancient and modern, and giving them a taste for what
is excellent, instead of the trash that is likely to fall into
their hands—the cultivation of sustained and consecutive interest in
narratives, essays, and descriptions in good literature, in place of the
scrappy selections and reading-books written down to the childish level.
The written comments and criticisms of the children on what they acquire
in this way are a perfect vindication of the experiment. It is to be
said also that this sort of education, coupled with the manual training,
and the inculcated love for order and neatness, is beginning to tell on
the homes of these children. The parents are actually being educated and
civilized through the public schools.
An opportunity for superior technical education is given in the Chicago
Manual Training School, founded and sustained by the Commercial Club. It
has a handsome and commodious building on the corner of Michigan avenue
and Twelfth Street, which accommodates over two hundred pupils, under
the direction of Dr. Henry H. Belfield, assisted by an able corps of
teachers and practical mechanics. It has only been in operation since
1884, but has fully demonstrated its usefulness in the training of young
men for places of responsibility and profit. Some of the pupils are
from the city schools, but it is open to all boys of good character and
promise. The course is three years, in which the tuition is $80, $100,
and $120 a year; but the club provides for the payment of the tuition of
a limited number of deserving boys whose parents lack the means to give
them this sort of education. The course includes the higher mathematics,
English, and French or Latin, physics, chemistry—in short, a high-school
course—with drawing, and all sorts of technical training in work in wood
and iron, the use and making of tools, and the building of machinery,
up to the construction of steam-engines, stationary and locomotive.
Throughout the course one hour each day is given to drawing, two
hours to shop-work, and the remainder of the school day to study and
recitation. The shops—the wood-work rooms, the foundery, the forge-room,
the machine-shop—are exceedingly well equipped and well managed.
The visitor cannot but be pleased by the tone of the school and the
intelligent enthusiasm of the pupils. It is an institution likely to
grow, and perhaps become the nucleus of a great technical school, which
the West much needs. It is worthy of notice also as an illustration of
the public spirit, sagacity, and liberality of the Chicago business men.
They probably sec that if the city is greatly to increase its importance
as a manufacturing centre, it must train a considerable proportion
of its population to the highest skilled labor, and that splendidly
equipped and ably taught technical schools would do for Chicago what
similar institutions in Zurich have done for Switzerland. Chicago is
ready for a really comprehensive technical and industrial college, and
probably no other investment would now add more to the solid prosperity
and wealth of the town.
Such an institution would not hinder, but rather help, the higher
education, without which the best technical education tends to
materialize life. Chicago must before long recognize the value of the
intellectual side by beginning the foundation of a college of pure
learning. For in nothing is the Western society of to-day more in danger
than in the superficial half-education which is called “practical,”
and in the lack of logic and philosophy. The tendency to the literary
side—awakening a love for good books—in the public schools is very
hopeful. The existence of some well-chosen private libraries shows the
same tendency. In art and archæology there is also much promise. The Art
Institute is a very fine building, with a vigorous school in drawing
and painting, and its occasional loan exhibitions show that the city
contains a good many fine pictures, though scarcely proportioned to its
wealth. The Historical Society, which has had the irreparable misfortune
twice to lose its entire collections by fire, is beginning anew with
vigor, and will shortly erect a building from its own funds. Among the
private collections which have a historical value is that relating to
the Indian history of the West made by Mr. Edward Ayer, and a large
library of rare and scarce books, mostly of the English Shakespeare
period, by the Rev. Frank M. Bristoll. These, together with the
remarkable collection of Mr. C. F. Gunther (of which further mention
will be made), are prophecies of a great literary and archaeological
museum.
The city has reason to be proud of its Free Public Library, organized
under the general library law of Illinois, which permits the support
of a free library in every incorporated city, town, and township by
taxation. This library is sustained by a tax of one halfmill on the
assessed value of all the city property. This brings it in now about
$80,000 a year, which makes its income for 1888, together with its fund
and fines, about $90,000. It is at present housed in the City Hall, but
will soon have a building of its own (on Dearborn Park), towards the
erection of which it has a considerable fund. It has about 130,000
volumes, including a fair reference library and many expensive art
books. The institution has been well managed hitherto, notwithstanding
its connection with politics in the appointment of the trustees by the
mayor, and its dependence upon the city councils. The reading-rooms are
thronged daily; the average daily circulation has increased yearly; it
was 2263 in 1887—a gain of eleven per cent, over the preceding year.
This is stimulated by the establishment of eight delivering stations in
different parts of the city. The cosmopolitan character of the users
of the library is indicated by the uncommon number of German, French,
Dutch, Bohemian, Polish, and Scandinavian books. Of the books issued
at the delivery stations in 1887 twelve per cent, were in the Bohemian
language. The encouraging thing about this free library is that it is
not only freely used, but that it is as freely sustained by the voting
population.
Another institution, which promises to have still more influence on the
city, and indeed on the whole North-west, is the Newberry Library, now
organizing under an able board of trustees, who have chosen Mr. W. F.
Poole as librarian. The munificent fund of the donor is now reckoned at
about 82,500,000, but the value of the property will be very much more
than this in a few years. A temporary building for the library, which
is slowly forming, will be erected at once, but the library, which is to
occupy a square on the north side, will not be erected until the plans
are fully matured. It is to be a library of reference and study solely,
and it is in contemplation to have the books distributed in separate
rooms for each department, with ample facilities for reading and study
in each room. If the library is built and the collections are made in
accordance with the ample means at command, and in the spirit of its
projectors, it will powerfully tend to make Chicago not only the money
but the intellectual centre of the North-west, and attract to it
hosts of students from all quarters. One can hardly over-estimate
the influence that such a library as this may be will have upon the
character and the attractiveness of the city.
I hope that it will have ample space for, and that it will receive,
certain literary collections, such as are the glory and the attraction,
both to students and sight-seers, of the great libraries of the world.
And this leads me to speak of the treasures of Mr. Gunther, the most
remarkable private collection I have ever seen, and already worthy to
rank with some of the most famous on public exhibition. Mr. Gunther is a
candy manufacturer, who has an archaeological and “curio” taste, and for
many years has devoted an amount of money to the purchase of historical
relics that if known would probably astonish the public. Only specimens
of what he has can be displayed in the large apartment set apart for the
purpose over his shop. The collection is miscellaneous, forming a varied
and most interesting museum. It contains relics—many of them unique, and
most of them having a historical value—from many lands and all periods
since the Middle Ages, and is strong in relics and documents relating to
our own history, from the colonial period down to the close of our civil
war. But the distinction of the collection is in its original letters
and manuscripts of famous people, and its missals, illuminated
manuscripts, and rare books. It is hardly possible to mention a name
famous since America was discovered that is not here represented by an
autograph letter or some personal relics. We may pass by such mementos
as the Appomattox table, a sampler worked by Queen Elizabeth, a
prayer-book of Mary, Queen of Scots, personal belongings of Washington,
Lincoln, and hundreds of other historical characters, but we must give a
little space to the books and manuscripts, in order that it may be seen
that all the wealth of Chicago is not in grain and meat.
It is only possible here to name a few of the original letters,
manuscripts, and historical papers in this wonderful collection of over
seventeen thousand. Most of the great names in the literature of our era
are represented. There is an autograph letter of Molière, the only one
known outside of France, except one in the British Museum; there are
letters of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Madame Roland, and other French
writers. It is understood that this is not a collection of mere
autographs, but of letters or original manuscripts of those named.
In Germany, nearly all the great poets and writers—Goethe, Schiller,
Uhland, Lessing, etc.; in England, Milton, Pope, Shelley, Keats,
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Cowper, Hunt, Gray, etc.; the manuscript of
Byron’s “Prometheus,” the “Auld Lang Syne” of Burns, and his “Journal in
the Highlands,” “Sweet Home” in the author’s hand; a poem by Thackeray;
manuscript stories of Scott and Dickens. Among the Italians, Tasso. In
America, the known authors, almost without exception. There are letters
from nearly all the prominent reformers—Calvin, Melanehthon, Zwingle,
Erasmus, Savonarola; a letter of Luther in regard to the Pope’s bull;
letters of prominent leaders—William the Silent, John the Steadfast,
Gustavus Adolphus, Wallenstein. There is a curious collection of letters
of the saints—St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Borromeo;
letters of the Popes for three centuries and a half, and of many of the
great cardinals.
I must set down a few more of the noted names, and that without much
order. There is a manuscript of Charlotte Corday (probably the only
one in this country), John Bunyan, Izaak Walton, John Cotton, Michael
Angelo, Galileo, Lorenzo the Magnificent; letters of Queen Elizabeth,
Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary of England, Anne, several of Victoria (one at
the age of twelve), Catherine de’ Medici, Marie Antoinette, Josephine,
Marie Louise; letters of all the Napoleons, of Frederick the Great,
Marat, Robespierre, St. Just; a letter of Hernando Cortez to Charles the
Fifth; a letter of Alverez; letters of kings of all European nations,
and statesmen and generals without number.
The collection is rich in colonial and Revolutionary material; original
letters from Plymouth Colony, 1621, 1622,1623—I believe the only ones
known; manuscript sermons of the early American ministers; letters of
the first bishops, White and Seabury; letters of John André, Nathan
Hale, Kosciusko, Pulaski, De Kalb, Steuben, and of great numbers of the
general and subordinate officers of the French and Revolutionary wars;
William Tudor’s manuscript account of the battle of Bunker Hill; a
letter of Aide-de-camp Robert Orhm to the Governor of Pennsylvania
relating Braddock’s defeat; the original of Washington’s first
Thanksgiving proclamation; the report of the committee of the
Continental Congress on its visit to Valley Forge on the distress of the
army; the original proceedings of the Commissioners of the Colonies at
Cambridge for the organization of the Continental army; original returns
of the Hessians captured at Princeton; orderly books of the Continental
army; manuscripts and surveys of the early explorers; letters of
Lafitte, the pirate, Paul Jones, Captain Lawrence, Bainbridge, and so
on. Documents relating to the Washington family are very remarkable: the
original will of Lawrence Washington bequeathing Mount Vernon to George;
will of John Custis to his family; letters of Martha, of Mary, the
mother of George, of Betty Lewis, his sister, of all his step and grand
children of the Custis family.
In music there are the original manuscript compositions of all the
leading musicians in our modern world, and there is a large collection
of the choral books from ancient monasteries and churches. There are
exquisite illuminated missals on parchment of all periods from the
eighth century. Of the large array of Bibles and other early printed
books it is impossible to speak, except in a general way. There is a
copy of the first English Bible, Coverdale’s, also of the very rare
second Matthews, and of most of the other editions of the English Bible;
the first Scotch, Irish, French, Welsh, and German Luther Bibles; the
first Eliot’s Indian Bible, of 1662, and the second, of 1685; the first
American Bibles; the first American primers, almanacs, newspapers, and
the first patent, issued in 1794; the first book printed in Boston; the
first printed accounts of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia,
South Carolina, Georgia; the first picture of New York City, an original
plan of the city in 1700, and one of it in 1765; early surveys of
Boston, Philadelphia, and New York; the earliest maps of America,
including the first, second, and third map of the world in which America
appears.
Returning to England, there are the Shakespeare folio editions of 1632
and 1685; the first of his printed “Poems” and the “Rape of Lucrece;”
an early quarto of “Othello;” the first edition of Ben Jonson, 1616,
in which Shakespeare’s name appears in the cast for a play; and letters
from the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s friend, and Sir Walter
Raleigh, Francis Bacon, and Essex. There is also a letter written by
Oliver Cromwell while he was engaged in the conquest of Ireland.
The relics, documents, and letters illustrating our civil war are
constantly being added to. There are many old engravings, caricatures,
and broadsides. Of oil-portraits there are three originals of
Washington, one by Stuart, one by Peale, one by Polk, and I think I
remember one or two miniatures. There is also a portrait in oil of
Shakespeare which may become important. The original canvas has been
remounted, and there are indubitable signs of its age, although the
picture can be traced back only about one hundred and fifty years. The
Owner hopes to be able to prove that it is a contemporary work. The
interesting fact about it is that whilc it is not remarkable as a work
of art, it is recognizable at once as a likeness of what we suppose from
other portraits and the busts to be the face and head of Shakespeare,
and yet it is different from all other pictures w know, so that it does
not suggest itself as a copy.
The most important of Mr. Gunther’s collection is an autograph of
Shakespeare; if it prove to be genuine, it will be one of the four in
the world, and a great possession for America. This autograph is pasted
on the fly-leaf of a folio of 1632, which was the property of one
John Ward. In 1839 there was published in London, from manuscripts in
possession of the Medical Society, extracts from the diary of John Ward
(1648-1679), who was vicar and doctor at Stratford-on-Avon. It is
to this diary that we owe certain facts theretofore unknown about
Shakespeare. The editor, Mr. Stevens, had this volume in his hands while
he was compiling his book, and refers to it in his preface. He supposed
it to have belonged to the John Ward, vicar, who kept the diary. It
turns out, however, to have been the property of John Ward the actor,
who was in Stratford in 1740, was an enthusiast in the revival of
Shakespeare, and played Hamlet there in order to raise money to repair
the bust of the poet in the church. This folio has the appearance of
being much used. On the fly-leaf is writing by Ward and his signature;
there are marginal notes and directions in his hand, and several of the
pages from which parts were torn off have been repaired by manuscript
text neatly joined.
The Shakespeare signature is pasted on the leaf above Ward’s name. The
paper on which it is written is unlike that of the book in texture. The
slip was pasted on when the leaf was not as brown as it is now, as can
be seen at one end where it is lifted. The signature is written out
fairly and in full, William Shakspeare, like the one to the will, and
differs from the two others, which are hasty scrawls, as if the
writer were cramped for room, or finished off the last syllable with
a flourish, indifferent to the formation of the letters. I had the
opportunity to compare it with a careful tracing of the signature to
the will sent over by Mr. Hallowell-Phillips. At first sight the two
signatures appear to be identical; but on examination they are not;
there is just that difference in the strokes, spaces, and formation of
the letters that always appears in two signatures by the same hand.
One is not a copy of the other, and the one in the folio had to me the
unmistakable stamp of genuineness. The experts in handwriting and the
micro-scopists in this country who have examined ink and paper as to
antiquity, I understand, regard it as genuine.
There seems to be all along the line no reason to suspect forgery.
What more natural than that John Ward, the owner of the book, and a
Shakespeare enthusiast, should have enriched his beloved volume with an
autograph which he found somewhere in Stratford? And in 1740 there was
no craze or controversy about Shakespeare to make the forgery of his
autograph an object. And there is no suspicion that the book has been
doctored for a market. It never was sold for a price. It was found
in Utah, whither it had drifted from England in the possession of an
emigrant, and he readily gave it in exchange for a new and fresh edition
of Shakespeare’s works.
I have dwelt upon this collection at some length, first because of
its intrinsic value, second because of its importance to Chicago as a
nucleus for what (I hope in connection with the Newberry Library) will
become one of the most interesting museums in the country, and lastly as
an illustration of what a Western business man may do with his money.
New York is the first and Chicago the second base of operations on this
continent—the second in point of departure, I will not say for another
civilization, but for a great civilizing and conquering movement, at
once a reservoir and distributing point of energy, power, and money.
And precisely here is to be fought out and settled some of the most
important problems concerning labor, supply, and transportation.
Striking as are the operations of merchants, manufacturers, and traders,
nothing in the city makes a greater appeal to the imagination than the
railways that centre there, whether we consider their fifty thousand
miles of track, the enormous investment in them, or their competition
for the carrying trade of the vast regions they pierce, and apparently
compel to be tributary to the central city. The story of their building
would read like a romance, and a simple statement of their organization,
management, and business rivals the affairs of an empire. The present
development of a belt road round the city, to serve as a track of
freight exchange for all the lines, like the transfer grounds between
St. Paul and Minneapolis, is found to be an affair of great magnitude,
as must needs be to accommodate lines of traffic that represent an
investment in stock and bonds of $1,305,000,000.