When I was in America twenty-two years ago, Chicago was the city that
interested me least. Coming straight from San Francisco--which, in the
eyes of a youthful student of Bret Harte, seemed the fitting metropolis
of one of the great realms of romance--I saw in Chicago the negation of
all that had charmed me on the Pacific slope. It was a flat and grimy
abode of mere commerce, a rectilinear Glasgow; and to an Edinburgh man,
or rather boy, no comparison could appear more damaging. How different
is the impression produced by the Chicago of to-day! In 1877 the city
was extensive enough, indeed, and handsome to boot, in a commonplace,
cast-iron fashion. It was a chequer-board of Queen-Victoria-streets.
To-day its area is appalling, its architecture grandiose. It is the
young giant among the cities of the earth, and it stands but on the
threshold of its destiny. It embraces in its unimaginable amplitude
every extreme of splendour and squalor. Walking in Dearborn-street or
Adams-street of a cloudy afternoon, you think yourself in a frowning and
fuliginous city of Dis, piled up by superhuman and apparently sinister
powers. Cycling round the boulevards of a sunny morning, you rejoice in
the airy and spacious greenery of the Garden City. Driving along the
Lake Shore to Lincoln Park in the flush of sunset, you wonder that the
dwellers in this street of palaces should trouble their heads about
Naples or Venice, when they have before their very windows the
innumerable laughter, the ever-shifting opalescence, of their
fascinating inland sea. Plunging in the electric cars through the river
subway, and emerging in the West Side, you realise that the slums of
Chicago, if not quite so tightly packed as those of New York or London,
are no whit behind them in the other essentials of civilised barbarism.
Chicago, more than any other city of my acquaintance, suggests that
antique conception of the underworld which placed Elysium and Tartarus
not only on the same plane, but, so to speak, round the corner from each
other.
As the elephant (or rather the megatherium) to the giraffe, so is the
colossal business block of Chicago to the sky-scraper of New York. There
is a proportion and dignity in the mammoth buildings of Chicago which is
lacking in most of those which form the jagged sky-line of Manhattan
Island. For one reason or another--no doubt some difference in the
system of land tenure is at the root of the matter--the Chicago
architect has usually a larger plot of ground to operate on than his New
York colleague, and can consequently give his building breadth and depth
as well as height. Before the lanky giants of the Eastern metropolis,
one has generally to hold one's æsthetic judgment in abeyance. They are
not precisely ugly, but still less, as a rule, can they be called
beautiful. They are simply astounding manifestations of human energy and
heaven-storming audacity. They stand outside the pale of æsthetics, like
the Eiffel Tower or the Forth Bridge. But in Chicago proportion goes
along with mere height, and many of the business houses are, if not
beautiful, at least æsthetically impressive--for instance, the grim
fortalice of Marshall Field & Company, the Masonic Temple, the Women's
Temperance Temple (a structure with a touch of real beauty), and such
vast cities within the city as the Great Northern Building and the
Monadnock Block. The last-named edifice alone is said to have a daily
population of 6000. A city ordinance now limits the height of buildings
to ten stories; but even that is a respectable allowance. Moreover, it
is found that where giant constructions cluster too close together, they
(literally) stand in each other's light, and the middle stories do not
let. Thus the heaven-storming era is probably over; but there is all the
more reason to feel assured that the business centre of Chicago will ere
long be not only grandiose but architecturally dignified and
satisfactory. A growing thirst for beauty has come upon the city, and
architects are earnestly studying how to assuage it. In magnificence of
internal decoration, Chicago can already challenge the world: for
instance, in the white marble vestibule and corridors of The Rookery,
and the noble hall of the Illinois Trust Bank.
At the same time, no account of the city scenery of Chicago is complete
without the admission that the gorges and canyons of its central
district are exceedingly draughty, smoky, and dusty. Even in these
radiant spring days, it fully acts up to its reputation as the Windy
City. This peculiarity renders it probably the most convenient place in
the world for the establishment of a Suicide Club on the Stevensonian
model. With your eyes peppered with dust, with your ears full of the
clatter of the Elevated Road, and with the prairie breezes playfully
buffeting you and waltzing with you by turns, as they eddy through the
ravines of Madison, Monroe, or Adams-street, you take your life in your
hand when you attempt the crossing of State-street, with its endless
stream of rattling waggons and clanging trolley-cars. New York does not
for a moment compare with Chicago in the roar and bustle and
bewilderment, of its street life. This remark will probably be resented
in New York, but it expresses the settled conviction of an impartial
pedestrian, who has spent a considerable portion of his life during the
past few weeks in "negotiating" the crossings of both cities.
On the other hand, I observe no eagerness on the part of New York to
contest the supremacy of Chicago in the matter of smoke. In this
respect, the eastern metropolis is to the western as Mont Blanc to
Vesuvius. The smoke of Chicago has a peculiar and aggressive
individuality, due, I imagine, to the natural clearness of the
atmosphere. It does not seem, like London smoke, to permeate and blend
with the air. It does not overhang the streets in a uniform canopy, but
sweeps across and about them in gusts and swirls, now dropping and now
lifting again its grimy curtain. You will often see the vista of a
gorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feel
sure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up at
the zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a sudden
swirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept across
Fifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me to
prick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easily
alarmed. It is accustomed to having its airs from heaven blurred by
these blasts from hell. I know few spectacles more curious than that
which awaits you when you have shot up in the express elevator to the
top of the Auditorium tower--on the one hand, the blue and laughing
lake, on the other, the city belching volumes of smoke from its thousand
throats, as though a vaster Sheffield or Wolverhampton had been
transported by magic to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. What a
wonderful city Chicago will be when the commandment is honestly
enforced which declares, "Thou shalt consume thine own smoke!"
What a wonderful city Chicago will be! That is the ever-recurring burden
of one's cogitations. For Chicago is awake, and intelligently awake, to
her destinies; so much one perceives even in the reiterated complaints
that she is asleep. Discontent is the condition of progress, and Chicago
is not in the slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inert
self-complacency. Her sons love her, but they chasten her. They are
never tired of urging her on, sometimes (it must be owned) with most
unfilial objurgations; and she, a quite unwearied Titan, is bracing up
her sinews for the great task of the coming century. I have given myself
a rendezvous in Chicago for 1925, when air-ships will no doubt make the
transit easy for my septuagenarian frame. Nowhere in the world, I am
sure, does the "to be continued in our next" interest take hold on one
with such a compulsive grip.
Culture is pouring into Chicago as rapidly as pork or grain, and Chicago
is insatiate in asking for more. In going over the Public Library (a not
quite satisfactory building, though with some beautiful details) I was
most of all impressed by the army of iron-bound boxes which are
perpetually speeding to and fro between the library itself and no fewer
than fifty-seven distributing stations scattered throughout the city. "I
thought the number was forty-eight," said a friend who accompanied me.
"So it was last year," said the librarian. "We have set up nine more
stations during the interval." The Chicago Library boasts (no doubt
justly) that it circulates more books than any similar institution in
the world. Take, again, the University of Chicago: seven years ago (or,
say, at the outside ten) it had no existence, and its site was a dismal
swamp; to-day it is a handsome and populous centre of literary and
scientific culture. Observe, too, that it is by no means an oasis in the
desert, but is thoroughly in touch with the civic life around it. For
instance, it actively participates in the admirable work done by the
Hull House Settlement in South Halsted-street, and in the vigorous and
wide-spreading University Extension movement.
At the present moment, Chicago is not a little resentful of the sharp
admonitions addressed to her by two of her aforesaid loving but exacting
children. One, Professor Charles Zueblin, has been telling her that "in
the arrogance of youth she has failed to realise that instead of being
one of the progressive cities of the world, she has been one of the
reckless, improvident, and shiftless cities." Professor Zueblin is not
content (for example) with her magnificent girdle of parks and
boulevards, but calls for smaller parks and breathing spaces in the
heart of her most crowded districts. He further maintains that her great
new sewage canal is a gigantically costly blunder; and indeed one cannot
but sympathise with the citizens of St. Louis in inquiring by what right
Chicago converts the Mississippi into her main sewer. But if Professor
Zueblin chastises Chicago with whips, Mr. Henry B. Fuller, it would
seem, lashes her with scorpions. Mr. Fuller is one of the leading
novelists of the city--for Chicago, be it known, had a nourishing and
characteristic literature of her own long before Mr. Dooley sprang into
fame. The author of _The Cliff-Dwellers_ is alleged to have said that
the Anglo-Saxon race was incapable of art, and that in this respect
Chicago was pre-eminently Anglo-Saxon. "Alleged," I say, for reports of
lectures in the American papers are always to be taken with caution, and
are very often as fanciful as Dr. Johnson's reports of the debates in
Parliament. The reporter is not generally a shorthand writer. He jots
down as much as he conveniently can of the lecturer's remarks, and
pieces them out from imagination. Thus, I am not at all sure what Mr.
Fuller really said; but there is no doubt whatever of the indignation
kindled by his diatribe. Deny her artistic capacities and sensibilities,
and you touch Chicago in her tenderest point. Moreover, Mr. Fuller's
onslaught encouraged several other like-minded critics to back him up,
so that the city has been writhing under the scourges of her
epigrammatists. I have before me a letter to one of the evening papers,
written in a tone of academic sarcasm which proves that even the
supercilious and "donnish" element is not lacking in Chicago culture. "I
know a number of artists," says the writer, "who came to Chicago, and
after staying here for a while, went away and achieved much success in
New York, London, and Paris. The appreciation they received here gave
them the impetus to go elsewhere, and thus brought them fame and
fortune." Whatever foundation there may be for these jibes, they are in
themselves a sufficient evidence that Chicago is alive to her
opportunities and responsibilities. She is, in her own vernacular,
"making, culture hum." Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached her with her
stockyards--an injustice which even Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcely
have committed. Is it the fault of Chicago that the world is
carnivorous? Was not "Nature red in tooth and claw" several æons before
Chicago was thought of? I do not understand that any unnecessary cruelty
is practised in the stockyards; and apart from that, I fail to see that
systematic slaughter of animals for food is any more disgusting than
sporadic butchery. But of the stockyards I can speak only from hearsay.
I shall not go to see them. If I have any spare time, I shall rather
spend it in a second visit to St. Gaudens' magnificent and magnificently
placed statue of Abraham Lincoln, surely one of the great works of art
of the century, and of the few entirely worthy monuments ever erected to
a national hero.
POSTSCRIPT.--The above-mentioned Hull House Settlement in South
Halsted-street, under the direction of Miss Jane Addams, is probably the
most famous institution of its kind in America; but it is only one of
many. There is no more encouraging feature in American life than the
zeal, energy, and high and liberal intelligence with which social
service of this sort is being carried on in all the great cities. This
is a line of activity on which England and America are advancing hand
in hand, and however much one may deplore the necessity for such work,
one cannot but see in the common impulse which prompts and directs it a
symptom of the deep-seated unity of the two peoples. Nothing I saw in
America impressed me more than the thorough practicality as well as the
untiring devotion which was apparent in the work carried on by Miss
Addams in Chicago and Miss Lillian D. Wald in Henry-street, New York.
And in both Settlements I recognised the same atmosphere of culture, the
same spirit of plain living, hard working, and high thinking, that
characterises the best of our kindred institutions in England. A lady
connected with the University of Chicago, who is also a worker at the
Hull House Settlement, told me a touching little story which illustrates
at once the need for such work in Chicago, and the unexpected response
with which it sometimes meets. She had been talking about the beauties
of nature to a group of women from the slums, and at the end of her
address one of her hearers said, "I ain't never been outside of Chicago,
but I know it's true what the lady says. There's two vacant lots near
our place, an' when the spring comes, the colours of them--they fair
makes you hold your breath. An' then there's the trees on the Avenoo.
An' then there's all the sky." On another occasion the same lady met
with an "unexpected response" of a different order. She was showing a
boy from the slums some photographs of Italian pictures, when they came
upon a Virgin and Child. "Ah," said the boy at once, "that's Jesus an'
his Mother: I allus knows _them_ when I sees 'em." "Yes," said Miss
R----, "there is a purity and grandeur of expression about them, isn't
there--" "Tain't that," interrupted the boy, "it's the rims round their
heads as gives 'em away!"
Apart from the Settlements, there are many energetically-conducted
Societies in America for the social and political enlightenment of the
masses. I have before me, for instance, a little bundle of most
excellent leaflets issued by the League for Social Service of New York.
They deal with such subjects as _The Duties of American Citizenship, The
Value of a Vote, The Duty of Public Spirit, The Co-operative City_, &c.
They include an admirable abstract in twenty-four pages, of _Laws
Concerning the Welfare of Every Citizen of New York_, and the same
Society issues similar abstracts of the laws of other States. They have
a large and well-equipped lecture organisation, and they issue
excellent practical _Suggestions for Conferences and Courses of Study_.
The problem to be grappled with by this Society and others working on
similar lines is no doubt one of immense difficulty. It is nothing less
than the education in citizenship of the most heterogeneous, polyglot,
and in some respects ignorant and degraded population ever assembled in
a single city, since the days of Imperial Rome. The spread of political
enlightenment in New York and other cities cannot possibly be very
rapid; but no effort is being spared to accelerate it. I sometimes
wonder whether the obvious necessity for political education in America
may not, in the long run, prove a marked advantage to her, as compared,
for instance, with England. Dissatisfaction, as I have said above, is
the condition of progress. We are apt to assume that every Briton is
born a good citizen; and in the lethargy begotten of that assumption, it
may very well happen that we let the Americans outstrip us in the march
of enlightenment.