THROUGH piles of lumber, into back streets filled with liquor bars,
“side shows,” and decorated with flaming posters, into fine, stately
thoroughfares, crowded with people, past imposing buildings marked with
architectural dignity, to the Grand Pacific Hotel.
“It is as if Manchester had given Greenwich Fair a blow in the face,”
said Irving,—“that is my first impression of Chicago. ‘The Living
Skeleton,’ ‘The Tattooed Man,’ ‘The Heaviest Woman in the World,’
‘The Museum of Wonders,’ with the painted show-pictures of our youth;
public houses, old-clothes shops, picturesque squalor. And then great
warehouses, handsome shops, and magnificent civic buildings,—what a
change! There is something of the ‘go’ of Liverpool and Manchester
about it. If I was ever afraid of Chicago, I am afraid no longer. A
people that have rebuilt this city within a comparatively few years
must be great, broad-minded, and ready in appreciating what is good.
We have something to show them in the way of dramatic art,—they will
‘catch on,’ as they say on this side of the Atlantic, I am sure of it.”
The city was more or less snow-bound. Little or no effort had been made
to remove the white downfall, either from street or sidewalk. The sun
was shining. The air was, nevertheless, very cold. Within a few days
of our arrival the thermometer had fallen to twenty and thirty degrees
below zero. We had selected for our visit to America what was destined
to be the bitterest winter that had been known in the United States for
over twenty years. There were storms on sea and land; storms of rain,
and snow, and wind, followed by frosts that closed the great rivers,
and made even Lake Michigan solid for ice-boats a dozen or twenty miles
out. The South Jersey coast was strewn with wreckage. Railway tracks
were swept away. At Cape May the principal pier was destroyed. The
sea demolished the piles of Coney Island’s iron piers. At Long Branch
cottages were undermined by the water, and their contents carried out
to sea. The well-known dancing platform and piazza of the Grand Union
Hotel, on Rockaway Beach, were washed away. Terrific winds blew over
Boston and New England. A little fleet of schooners were driven ashore
at Portland. Vessels broke from their moorings in the adjacent harbors.
Atlantic City had boarding-houses, stores, and dwellings carried away
by high tides.
The mails were delayed for hours, and in some cases for days, on the
principal railroads. Where the obstacles were not rain and flood
they were wind and snow. Lockport, New York, reported that the snow
on that day was four feet on the level, and still falling. Bradford,
telegraphing for Pennsylvania generally, announced that fourteen inches
of snow had fallen within a few hours, the weight of it crushing in
many roofs and awnings. “The narrow-gauge railways,” ran the despatch,
“five in number, have been closed all day; the trains are stalled a
few miles from the city.” Even at Louisville, in Kentucky, navigation
was suspended, and floating ice-blocks were battering in the sides of
steamers lying at the wharves of Baltimore. On the Rappahannock river,
in Virginia, a ship laden with corn was cut down and sunk by floating
ice. These and kindred incidents occurred on or about the day of our
arrival in Chicago. The record of the few previous days, judged from
the official reports of Washington, and the ordinary chronicles of
the times, was a very remarkable one, even for the coldest States of
America. In some places the weather had been the coldest known for more
than fifty years. Canada had had the most extreme experiences in this
respect. At Winnipeg, Manitoba, the thermometer had fallen as low as
forty-five degrees below zero.
On the day we were travelling to the prairie city, while the
thermometer was rising in that section of the country, it was falling
in the eastern and southern States, registering thirty degrees below
zero at Whitehall, New York. The Straits of Mackinaw, connecting
Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, were navigable only on foot or runners.
We arrived in Chicago on Monday, Jan. 7. On the 6th the thermometer
registered twenty-two degrees below zero. Monday’s newspapers
congratulated their readers that, “the wave had passed over.” Incidents
of its severity were curious and numerous. Hundreds of hogs had been
frozen to death on freight-trains. The Terre Haute express from Chicago
was snowed up for thirty-one hours. At fires which had broken out,
water from the engines froze as it fell, and covered the buildings with
strange, fantastic shapes.
I had arranged to visit Gunnison (Colorado), and other mining cities,
within a reasonable distance from Chicago and St. Louis; but was
persuaded to postpone my trip by private and public reports of the
storm in those regions. One day’s newspaper (the “Daily-News-Democrat,”
of Gunnison) contained startling evidence of the difficulties I should
have had to encounter. Within a few days twenty-seven men had been
killed by snow-slides in the mountains between Ouray and Telluride.
A local mail-carrier was among the victims. All the available
snow-ploughs and engines of the various districts were at work on the
tracks. Engines were helplessly stuck in the snow on the Rio Grande.
“The miner,” remarked the “Daily News” editor, “who goes into the
mountains at this season takes his life in his hands.” I remained in
Chicago with Irving, and am spared to chronicle these things. The
weather was sufficiently cold for both of us in Chicago. It varied,
too, with a persistency of variation that is trying to the strongest
constitution. One hour the thermometer would be fairly above zero, the
next it would be far below it. Men went about the frozen streets in
fur coats and caps, carefully protecting their ears and hands. Along
the shores of Lake Michigan were barricades of ice; they looked like
solid palisades of marble. Here and there, where tiny icebergs had
been formed, the polar bear would not have looked out of place. It
was strange to see the ice-boats, with their bending sails, literally
flying along, while away out lay ships at anchor. Mr. Lyon took Miss
Terry, Irving, and myself sleighing along the lake shore and upon the
prairie beyond. My friends were delighted with the novel excursion,
astonished at the fine boulevards through which we passed, amazed at
the possibilities of Chicago, as they realized what had been done and
what space had been laid out for the future. A forty-mile drive through
great, wide boulevards designed to encompass the city, is the biggest
of the city’s schemes, and it is in vigorous course of formation.
“One is forced to admire the pluck of Chicago,” said Irving, after our
first drive. “Twice burnt down, twice built up, and laid out anew, on a
plan that is magnificent. Some of the houses along Prairie and Michigan
avenues are palaces.[37] The art revival in street architecture
and house decoration is as actively rife here as in London. And
what a superb stone they have for building purposes in their yellow
cream-colored marble! It is marvellous to see how they have taken hold
of the new ideas. The Calumet and the Chicago club-houses,—nothing
could be more chaste than their decorations.”
One day we went to Pullman City, an industrial town, akin to Saltaire,
near Bradford, in its scope and enterprise. We were invited and
accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Pullman, Miss Terry, Mr. and Mrs. Dexter,
Mr. and Mrs. James Runnion, and several other ladies and gentlemen.
Going out in Mr. Pullman’s private car, we lunched with him at the
pretty hotel of the novel city, and afterwards inspected the workshops
and principal buildings.
“The story of the conception and creation of this Pullman City,” said
Irving, “interested me very much, though I confess the method of it all
strikes me as somewhat like living by machinery: the private houses
being massed, as it were, _en bloc_; the shops collected together
like arcades; the whole place laid out with geometrical system; and
yet one feels that there are fine principles underlying it; that the
scheme is founded upon wise plans; and that, from a moral and sanitary
stand-point, the city is an ideal combination of work and rest, of
capital and labor. Pullman’s idea was a lofty one, and the result is
very remarkable: a centre of industry that should give to labor its
best chance, with capital taking its place on a platform as human as
labor. That is the notion, as Pullman explained it to me. What a
square, level head it is! Just the determined kind of man to be the
author of a new city on new lines. He told me that Charles Reade’s
novel, ‘Put Yourself in his Place,’ had influenced him greatly in his
ambition to found this place; that it has affected all his relations
towards the people under his direction. Politically, Pullman City
is a paradox. A despotism, it still is very democratic. It owes its
successful administration to what may be called a benevolent autocracy.
The theatre, I am told, is more prosperous than the church proper,
though religion is represented by several earnest communities. The idea
of giving the people a chance to buy land and build cottage homes for
themselves, at a reasonable distance beyond Pullman, appears to be a
good one. Pullman himself may well be proud of his work. It is worthy
of Chicago and the West.”