CHICAGO.
Topographical Situation of Chicago.--Meaning of the Name.--Early
History.--Massacre at Fort Dearborn.--Last of the Red Men.--The
Great Land Bubble.--Rapid Increase in Population and Business.--
The Canal.--First Railroad.--Status of the City in 1871.--The
Great Fire.--Its Origin, Progress and Extent.--Heartrending
Scenes.--Estimated Total Loss.--Help from all Quarters.--
Work of Reconstruction.--Second Fire.--Its Public Buildings,
Educational and Charitable Institutions, Streets and Parks.--Its
Waterworks.--Its Stock Yards.--Its Suburbs.--Future of the City.
"See two things in the United States, if nothing else--see Niagara and
Chicago," said Richard Cobden, the English statesman, to Goldwin Smith,
on the eve of the departure of the latter to America. And truly, if one
would obtain a proper sense of America's wonders and achievements, then
Niagara and Chicago may be accepted as respectively the highest types of
each. Niagara remains the same yesterday, to-day and forever. But if it
were a desirable thing to see Chicago at the time of the visit referred
to, how much more so is it to-day, when, Phoenix-like, she has arisen
from her own ashes, turning that which seemed an overwhelming disaster
into positive blessing; drawing her fire-singed robes proudly about her,
crowning herself with the diadem of her own matchless achievements, and
sitting beside her inland sea, the queenliest city of them all.
Situated upon a flat and relatively low tract of country, Chicago is yet
upon one of the highest plane elevations of our continent. Lake
Michigan represents the headwaters of the great chain of American lakes,
through which, in connection with the St. Lawrence, much of the rainfall
of that city finds its way to the Atlantic; while through the canal to
the Illinois River, its sewage is borne to the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps
no more hopeless site could have been selected for a city than that
seemed half a century ago. A bayou or arm of the lake penetrated the
land for half a mile or more, but a sand-bar across its mouth prevented
the ingress of all but the smallest craft. This bayou, called by
courtesy the Chicago River, separated into two branches, the course of
one of which was in a northerly direction, and of the other in a
southerly one. The land was barely on a level with the lake, and at
portions of the year was a vast morass, some parts of it being entirely
under water. Teams struggled helplessly through the black ooze of its
prairies, and a carriage would sink three or four feet in mud and mire
within two miles of where the court house now stands. Sometimes in this
slough a board would be set up, with a rude inscription: "No bottom
here." But American enterprise has found a bottom and reared a city, the
history of whose seemingly magical building almost rivals the tales of
the Arabian Nights.
Chicago is an Indian word, signifying the widely-varying titles of a
king or deity, and a skunk or wild onion. In its early history, while
drainage it had none, and its water supply was mere surface water, foul
with all the accumulated impurities of the soil, and while from the
lagoon, which lay stagnant for twelve or fifteen miles, a horrible,
sickening stench constantly arose, the latter appellations seemed
singularly appropriate, and no doubt originated in these conditions.
But since the city has been purified by fire, and its sanitary
conditions made such as they should be, it has earned its right to the
nobler titles.
The first white visitors to the site of Chicago were Joliet and
Marquette, who arrived in August, 1673. The year following his first
visit Pere Marquette returned and erected a rude church. Later the
French seem to have built a fort on the spot, but no traces of it now
remain. Very early in the nineteenth century John Kinzie, an Indian
trader, and agent of the American Fur Company, having traded with the
Indians at this point for some time, probably influenced the government
to build a fort here. Accordingly, in 1804, Fort Dearborn was built and
garrisoned with about fifty men and three pieces of artillery. Mr.
Kinzie removed his family to the place the same year.
In 1812, Fort Dearborn was the scene of a bloody Indian massacre.
Captain Hull, then in command of the fort, having placed too great
confidence in the professions of fidelity of the Pottawatomie tribe, and
trusting to an escort of that tribe to convey the soldiers and
inhabitants of the fort to Fort Wayne, saw his entire party either
killed or taken prisoners, and found himself a prisoner. The fort stood
at the head of Michigan avenue, below its intersection with Lake street.
Abandoned and destroyed at this period, it was rebuilt in 1816, and
finally demolished in 1856.
For four years the place was deserted by the whites, and even the fur
traders did not care to visit it. In 1818 two families had established
themselves upon the spot. In 1820 some dozen houses represented the
future city, and in 1827 a government agent reported the place as a
collection of pens and kennels, inhabited by squatters, "a miserable
race of men, hardly equal to the Indians." The population numbered
seventy in 1830. In 1832 there were six hundred people in the miserable
little town. In September, 1833, the United States purchased of the
Indians 20,000,000 acres of land in the northwest, the latter pledging
themselves to remove twenty days' journey west of the Mississippi. Seven
thousand redskins attended the making of this treaty, which was ratified
by the chiefs in a large tent on the bank of the river. A year later
four thousand Indians returned to receive an annuity of $30,000 worth of
goods. The distribution of these goods was the occasion of, first, a
fierce scramble, followed by a bloody fight, in which several Indians
were killed and others wounded; the scene closing by a wild debauch, so
that on the following morning few of the recipients were any better off
for the property which had been given them. Similar scenes, with similar
results, were enacted in 1835. But that was the last Chicago saw of the
red men. In September, a train of forty wagons, each drawn by four oxen,
conveyed away on their far westward march the children and effects of
the Pottawatomies, while the squaws and braves walked beside them. It
took them twenty days to reach the Mississippi, and twenty days longer
it took them to attain a point which can now be reached from Chicago in
fifteen hours.
[Illustration: BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF CHICAGO, FROM THE LAKE SIDE.]
In 1827, Major Long, a government agent sent to visit the place, spoke
of the site as "affording no inducements to the settler, the whole
amount of trade on the lake not exceeding the cargoes of five or six
schooners, even at the time when the garrison received its supplies from
the Mackinac." In 1833 the tide of immigration began. At the end of
that year there were fifty families floundering in the Chicago mud. In
1834 there were nearly two thousand inhabitants of the town, and at the
close of 1835 more than three thousand. In 1835-6 Chicago became the
headquarters of a great land speculation. Multitudes of towns sprang up
in every direction, on paper. The country was wild with excitement. Even
eastern capitalists were seized with the mania, and fortunes were made
and lost in this wild gambling in prospective cities. The bubble shortly
burst, resulting in great business depression. The State was bankrupt,
and Chicago languished. But not for long. Turning from the frenzy of
speculation, its inhabitants wisely gave their attention to developing
legitimate business interests. The United States had, in 1833, spent
$30,000 in dredging out the Chicago River, and in the spring of 1834 a
most timely freshet had swept away the bar at the mouth of the river,
making it accessible for the largest craft. In 1838 a venturesome trader
shipped from that port seventy-eight bushels of wheat. In 1839 four
thousand bushels were sent. In 1842 the amount of wheat exported arose
all at once from forty thousand bushels to nearly six hundred thousand
bushels. In 1839 three thousand cattle were driven across the prairies,
and sent to the eastern market; and every year thereafter showed a
surprising increase. Yet with all this accumulating commerce, the
streets of the city were still quagmires, and many a farmer came to
grief with his load of grain within what is now city limits. Before
there was a railroad begun or a canal finished, Chicago exported two and
a quarter millions of bushels of grain in a year, and sent back on the
wagons which brought it loads of merchandise.
The Illinois River is connected with the Chicago River, and through that
to Lake Michigan, by a canal which enters it at La Salle, ninety-six
miles from Chicago. This canal was begun in 1836 and completed in 1848.
It gave a fresh impetus to the youthful western town, and established
its future prosperity. Connected as it already was with the east by the
magnificent lake and river system of our northern borders, this canal
opened up communication with the south and west, and made Chicago the
portal, so to speak, between the different sections of our country.
In 1849 the first railroad had approached within ten miles of the city.
In 1852 direct communication with the east was gained by the completion
of the Michigan Central and Michigan Southern railroads, while more than
one western railroad was projected, and some of them were in actual
progress of construction. To-day, Illinois and its adjoining States are
literally gridironed with iron roads, nearly all of which centre at
Chicago. In 1857 there were living beside the still stagnant waters of
the Chicago River one hundred thousand people.
In 1871 Chicago was the fourth city of the country, claiming a
population of 334,000 persons. By a _chef d'ouvre_ of engineering, the
waters of the river had been turned backward, and made to carry away its
sewage to fertilize the shores of the Illinois and the Mississippi. The
streets had been drained, hollow places filled up, and their grade had
been gradually raised, until it stood twelve feet higher than at first.
Some of the buildings were raised at once to the latest established
grade, and others remained as they had been built. The consequence was
that the plank sidewalks became a series of stairs, adapting themselves
to the buildings which they fronted. The principal streets were paved
with stone or with the Nicholson pavement. The triple river was spanned
by no less than seventeen drawbridges, while two tunnels afforded
uninterrupted travel between the opposite sides. Efficient waterworks
had been constructed to provide pure water for the use of the city. The
total trade for the year previous to the great fire was estimated at
$400,000,000. Its grain trade had reached such enormous proportions that
seventeen large elevators, with an aggregate capacity of 11,580,000
bushels were required for its accommodation. Eighteen banks were in
operation, with an aggregate capital of $10,000,000 and with nearly
$17,000,000 of deposits. The city was beginning to give its attention
largely to manufactures, and its lumber trade had grown into something
almost fabulous. Miles of lumber yards extended along one of the forks
of the river, and its harbor was sometimes choked with arriving lumber
vessels. In a single day, three or four years before the fire, a
favorable wind blew into port no less than two hundred and eighteen
vessels loaded with lumber. One hundred passenger and one hundred and
twenty freight trains arrived and departed daily; and seventy-five
vessels unloaded and loaded at her wharves every twenty-four hours.
Chicago _Redivivus_ should bear upon her shield a cow rampant. On the
evening of the eighth of October, 1871, Mrs. Scully's cow kicked herself
into history, and Chicago into ruin and desolation. Chicago is divided
by the river and its branches into three different sections, known as
the north, south and west sides. The principal business portion of the
city is on the south side, and along the margins of the lake and
streams. The "burnt district," which even yet the Chicagoan will outline
to the visitor with peculiar pride, was confined almost wholly to the
south and north sides.
On the evening of October seventh a planing mill had caught fire on the
west side, and the conflagration had spread over a territory embracing
about twenty acres, destroying a million dollars' worth of property.
This fire, terrible as it seemed, probably saved the west side from
destruction on that fatal night of the eighth, imposing as it did a
broad banner of desolation, when the flames essayed to leap across the
river.
At about nine o'clock in the evening of Sunday, October eighth, 1871, a
cow kicked over a lantern among loose, dry hay, in a stable at or near
the corner of Jefferson and DeKoven streets, on the west side. There had
been no rain of any consequence for fourteen weeks, and roofs and wooden
buildings were as dry as tinder. There was a strong wind blowing from
the southwest, and before the engines could reach the spot, half a dozen
adjoining buildings were wrapped in flames. The buildings of that
quarter were mostly of wood, and there were several lumber yards along
the margin of the river. The flames swept through these with resistless
fury, and then made a bold and sudden leap across the river into the
very heart of the business portion of the south side. Many of the
buildings here also were of wood, while the wooden sidewalks, and wooden
block pavements, the latter filled with an inflammable composition,
seemed constructed especially to aid and hasten the work of the flames.
The fire marched steadily toward the north and east, destroying
everything in its course. Even fireproof buildings seemed to melt down
as it touched them.
[Illustration: BURNING OF CHICAGO. THE WORLD'S GREATEST
CONFLAGRATION.]
The wind increased to a gale, and all night long the fire wrought its
terrible will, like a devouring demon; and at sunrise it had already
leaped the narrow barrier of the river, and was devastating the northern
side, sweeping away block after block of the wooden structures which
occupied to a large extent that quarter of the city. The flames seized
upon the shipping in the river, and when it left it only blackened hulls
remained. The water supply, upon which the city had founded hopes in
case of such extremity, failed. The walls of the buildings, weakened by
the overpowering heat, had fallen in upon the engines, and hope was
quenched in that quarter.
The flames spread southward as far as Taylor street, and to the
northward they only paused when, at Fullerton avenue, the broad prairie
lay before them, and there was nothing more to burn. The track of the
fire was nearly five miles in length, running north and south, and
averaged a mile in width. It continued from nine o'clock on Sunday night
until daybreak Tuesday morning, and then nothing was left of all the
business portion of Chicago, save a vast blackened field on which the
flames still smouldered, with piles of rubbish, formed by fallen
buildings, and here and there portions of walls still standing. Every
bank, insurance office, hotel, theatre, railroad depot, law office,
newspaper office, most of the churches, all but one of the wholesale
stores, and many of the warehouses and retail stores, six elevators,
fifty vessels, and sixteen thousand dwellings, including many elegant
mansions, besides numberless humble homes, were destroyed; two hundred
persons killed, and a hundred thousand people suddenly found themselves
homeless and penniless, without food to eat or clothes to wear.
The scenes accompanying the fire were terrible and heart-rending. They
were a mingling of the horrible and grotesque, the tragic and the
ridiculous, such as was probably never witnessed before on so grand a
scale, and we trust will never be repeated; and over it all the smoke
hung like a pall, stifling and blinding, and the flames cast a baleful
glare, which lit up the scene and made it seem like a literal inferno.
The fire spread with a rapidity which baffled all attempts to check it.
Many made a feeble effort to save their household goods, an effort which
was too often futile, while others barely escaped with their lives, clad
only in their scant night garments. The streets were filled with a
frantic multitude; vehicles of every description, laden with movable
property; men, women and children, some of them burdened with their
belongings, and others nearly naked, forgetful of all but the terrible
danger of the hour, all wild with the insanity born of fear, and all
fleeing from the pursuing demon which pressed on behind them, and whose
hot breath scorched their garments and singed their hair. Many took
refuge in the river or the lake; but the hissing flames stooped down and
licked the water, and the poor victims were made to feel the tortures of
a double death. Very few of these escaped with their lives.
The progress of the flames was so swift that many were overwhelmed by
the crumbling walls of their houses or workshops before they had time to
escape, and found in them a fiery tomb. Others were suffocated by the
smoke. Children were separated from parents, and young and old sought
safety wherever they could find it, and a mad panic reigned everywhere.
Many saloons were thrown open, and whisky flowed freely, and the
turbulent riot of drunkenness was added, to increase the confusion and
despair of the dreadful night. Sneak thieves and larger depredators
found spoil on every hand. In this terrible calamity each one seemed to
throw off his mask, and become what he really was--the brave man, the
noble gentleman, the selfish coward, the bully or the thief.
A single leaf of a quarto Bible, charred around its edges, was all that
was left of the immense stock of the Western News Company. It contained
the first chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which begins with the
following words: "How doth the city sit solitary that was full of
people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the
nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!
She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among
all her lovers she hath none to comfort her."
The amount lost by the insurance companies, American and foreign, by the
Chicago fire, was $88,634,133. More than 2,200 acres were swept by the
flames in the space of thirty hours. The value of buildings alone
consumed was estimated at $75,000,000, while their contents were at
least as much more. The total loss probably was not much less than
$200,000,000.
No sooner had the news of the dreadful calamity gone abroad to the
world, than the spirit of generosity prompted efficient aid from all
quarters. St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Cleveland, New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Montreal, cities and towns in the north,
south, east and west, sent generous, and some of them princely,
donations. Even China forwarded $1,290. By December first the public
cash donations had reached $2,508,000. The naked were clothed, the
hungry fed, the homeless housed in at least temporary quarters, and
Chicago set herself to the task of reconstruction.
The smouldering ruins were yet glowing with heat, and the smoke was
still ascending here and there, when, on Wednesday morning, the work of
regeneration began. Within a month, five or six thousand temporary
tenements had been erected. Meantime the foundations for the permanent
structures were being laid, on a scale far surpassing those of the past.
In a year not a trace of the fire remained.
Nearly three years later, on July fourteenth, 1874, another great fire
swept over the devoted city, destroying eighteen blocks, or sixty acres,
in the heart of the city, and about $4,000,000 worth of property. Over
six hundred houses were consumed, but by far the larger number were mere
wooden shanties.
To-day Chicago counts her great fire as one of her chief blessings. The
city is entirely rebuilt, but not with rickety wooden structures, the
previous plenitude of which had rendered her so easy a prey to the
devouring element. Solid, substantial, handsome, and in many instances
magnificent, the stranger can scarcely realize that these blocks of
buildings are not the growth of a century, or of a generation even, but
have sprung from the ground almost in a night. The new Chicago is
surpassingly beautiful and grand. The visitor will walk through squares
and squares of streets, each teeming with life and commercial activity,
and bearing no trace, save in increased elegance, of the disaster of
little more than a decade ago; and is forced to the conclusion that, for
courage and enterprise, Chicago has proved herself unsurpassed by any
city in the world.
Chicago has a water frontage of thirty-eight miles, of which twenty-four
are improved, without including the lake front, where an outer harbor is
in process of construction. The rivers are now spanned by thirty-five
drawbridges, while a tunnel, 1,608 feet long, with a descent of
forty-five feet, connects the south and west sides of Washington street,
and another tunnel, with a total length of 1,854 feet, connects the
north and south sides on the line of La Salle street.
State street, on the south side, is the Broadway of Chicago. Randolph
street is famous for its magnificent buildings, among which are the city
and the county halls. Washington street is one of the fashionable
promenades, lined with retail stores, though Dearborn street closely
rivals it. The United States Custom House and Post Office, a magnificent
structure, costing upward of $5,000,000, occupies the square bounded by
Clark, Adams, Jackson and Dearborn streets. The Chamber of Commerce, a
spacious and imposing building, with elaborate interior decorations, is
at the corner of Washington and La Salle streets, opposite City Hall
Square. Its ceiling is frescoed with allegorical pictures representing
the trade of the city, the great fire and the rebuilding. The Union
Depot, in Van Buren street, at the head of La Salle, is among the finest
buildings of the city. The Exposition Building is a vast ornate
structure of iron and glass, occupying the lake front, extending from
Monroe to Jackson street, and with a front of eight hundred feet on
Michigan avenue. The centre of the edifice is surmounted by a dome one
hundred and sixty feet high and sixty feet in diameter. Annual
expositions of the art and industry of the city are held here every
autumn.
Among the hotels of Chicago the Palmer House takes the lead. This house
was destroyed by the fire, but has been rebuilt with a magnitude and
elaborateness far exceeding its former self, and constituting it one of
the finest, if not the finest, in the world. It is entirely fireproof,
being constructed only of incombustible materials, brick, stone, iron,
marble and cement. It has three fronts, on State and Monroe streets and
Wabash avenue, and the building and furnishing cost $3,500,000. It is
kept on both the American and European plans, and continually
accommodates from six hundred to one thousand guests. The Grand Pacific
Hotel is but little inferior to the Palmer House. It occupies half the
block bounded by Jackson, Clark, Adams and La Salle streets. The Sherman
and Tremont Houses are fine hotels and centrally located.
There are about three hundred churches in Chicago, including those
untouched by fire and those which have been since rebuilt. The great
Tabernacle, on Monroe street, where Messrs. Moody and Sankey held their
meetings, is used for sacred concerts and other religious gatherings,
and will seat ten thousand persons.
In literary and educational institutions Chicago holds a foremost place.
Its common schools are among the best in the country, with large,
handsome, convenient and well-ventilated buildings. The University of
Chicago, founded by the late Stephen A. Douglas, occupies a beautiful
site overlooking the lake, and boasts the largest telescope in America.
It has a Public Library containing 60,000 volumes. The Academy of
Sciences lost a valuable collection of 38,000 specimens in the fire, but
has erected a new building and is slowly gathering a new museum and
library. There are three Theological Seminaries, and three Medical
Colleges, three hospitals, and a large number of charitable institutions
within the city. The fire department is most efficiently organized, and
its annual expenses are scarcely less than $1,000,000.
[Illustration: GRAND PACIFIC HOTEL, CHICAGO.]
Chicago has the most extensive system of parks and boulevards of any
city in the United States. Lincoln Park, lying upon the lake to the
northward, contains 310 acres, and served, during the great fire, as a
place of refuge for thousands of people driven thither by the raging
element. The Lake Shore Drive, the great north side boulevard, extends
from Pine street to Lake View, and is one of the finest drives in the
world. Humboldt Park, Central Park and Douglas Park extend along the
western boundaries of the city, are large, contain lakes, ponds, walks,
drives, fountains and statuary, and are connected with each other by
wide and elaborately ornamented boulevards. The great South Parks are
approached on the north by Drexel and Grant Boulevards. Drexel Boulevard
is devoted exclusively to pleasure, all traffic over it being forbidden.
The most southerly of the two south parks extends upwards of a mile and
a half along the shore of the lake. Union Park is located in the very
centre of the residence portion of the west side.
Whatever Chicago accomplishes is on so gigantic a scale that strangers
almost hold their breath in astonishment. Among the titanic achievements
of this youthful giant are the waterworks, which supply pure drinking
water to its six hundred thousand population. The water supply is by
means of a tunnel sent out under Lake Michigan for a distance of two
miles, the water being forced by numerous engines into an immense
standpipe, 154 feet high. The works are situated at the foot of Chicago
avenue. In tunneling under the lake, excavations went on simultaneously
at the land end and two miles out in the lake; and so accurate were the
calculations that when the two tunnels met in the centre, they were
found to be but seven and one-half inches out of the line, and there was
a variation of but three inches in the horizontal measurements. This
tunnel, which is made of iron, protected by heavy masonry, is large
enough for a canoe to pass through it when it is but partially filled
with water, it being nine feet in diameter. The exit at the lake end of
the tunnel is protected by a breakwater, and securely anchored to its
place by means of heavy stones. Storms never affect it, save sometimes
to produce a light tremor; and even large fields of ice, which grate by
it with a fearful, crunching noise, have thus far failed to shake its
foundations.
Chicago ships a considerable portion of her grain in the shape of flour,
there being extensive flouring mills in the city. The present annual
export of flour is probably not less than 3,000,000 barrels. Chicagoans
have also found it possible to pack fifteen or twenty bushels of corn in
a single barrel. "The corn crop," remarks Mr. Ruggles, "is condensed and
reduced in bulk by feeding it into an animal form, more portable. The
hog eats the corn, and Europe eats the hog. Corn thus becomes incarnate,
for what is a hog but fifteen or twenty bushels of corn on four legs?"
The business of pork-packing has attained enormous proportions in
Chicago. It has entirely superseded Cincinnati, the former "Porkopolis,"
in this branch of trade. Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Indianapolis
and Milwaukee do not together furnish a total number of head slaughtered
equal to that of Chicago.
The stock yards, just outside the city limits on the southwest, are the
largest in the world. They cover hundreds of acres, and constitute what
has been styled "The Great Bovine City of the World." This bovine city
is regularly laid out in streets and alleys crossing each other at right
angles. The principal street is called Broadway, and it is a mile long
and seventy-five feet wide. On either side are the cattle pens, and it
is divided by a light fence into three paths, so that herds of cattle
can pass one another without wrangling, and leave an unobstructed road
for the drovers. These yards are connected with all the railroads in the
west centering in Chicago. The company have twenty-five miles of track.
A cattle train stops along the street of pens; the side of each car is
removed, and the living freight pass over a declining bridge into clean,
planked inclosures, where food and water is quickly furnished them. A
large and comfortable hotel furnishes accommodation for their owners;
there is a Cattle Exchange, a spacious and elegant edifice; a bank
solely for the cattle-men's use; and a telegraph office, which reports
the price of beef, pork and mutton from all parts of the world. The
present capacity of the yards is 25,000 head of cattle, 100,000 hogs,
22,000 sheep, and 1,200 horses. A town of five thousand inhabitants has
grown up in the immediate vicinity of these stock yards.
In some of the yards not less than five hundred beeves are slaughtered
daily. Much of this beef is sent in refrigerator cars to the Atlantic
cities, while enormous quantities are cooked and packed in cans and sent
all over the world.
Suburban towns have spread out from Chicago, in every direction, over
the prairie. South Chicago, one of the principal of these, is twelve
miles to the southward, at the mouth of the Calumet river, and has a
large amount of capital invested in iron and steel works. The sloughy
morasses which still exist between the parent city and its thrifty
offshoots are fast being filled up, and bridged over with pavements, so
that the mud, which a generation ago was the chief distinguishing
feature of Chicago and its vicinity, but which is now confined to
outlying sections, will soon be a thing of the past. Chicago is itself
extending rapidly in all directions, and numberless suburban streets are
lined with pretty cottages, whose rural surroundings have given to the
city its appropriate name of "The Garden City."
Taking its past as a criterion, who shall dare to predict the future of
Chicago? It has by no means come to a stand-still, but is to-day
increasing its population, developing its resources, and extending its
commercial enterprises to a degree that is scarcely credible, save as
one is faced by actual facts and figures. These miles of streets, filled
with the incessant roar of business; these lofty temples, magnificent
warehouses and elegant residences; these public institutions of
learning; this gigantic commerce, this high degree of civilization; all
of which have been attained by older cities after a prolonged struggle
with adversity, are here the creations and accumulations of less than
two generations. Up the Chicago River, where considerably less than a
century ago the Indian paddled his solitary canoe, and John Jacob Astor
annually sent his single small schooner to bring provisions to the
garrison and to take away his furs, there swarms a fleet of vessels of
all descriptions, bringing goods from, and sending them to, every
quarter of the world. Where, no later than 1834, a grand wolf hunt was
held, and one bear and forty wolf scalps were the trophies of the day,
the bears of the Stock Exchange alone rage and howl, and the only wolves
are human ones. Chicago is a great and a magnificent city, embodying
more perfectly than any other in the world the possibilities of
accomplishment of the Anglo-Saxon race, given its best conditions of
freedom, independence and intelligence.