Chicago is the world's greatest grain, lumber and cattle market. It
attracts immigrants from everywhere, and all flourish in native
luxuriance, although occasionally they are compelled to bow to the
power of the law by the military arm when civil forces are exhausted.
Everything seems to go on without much hindrance, and thus this
wonderful city secures its rapid growth and completely cosmopolitan
character. While proud of their amazing progress, the people seem
generally so engrossed in pushing business enterprises and piling up
fortunes that they have little time to think of much else. Yet
somebody has had opportunity to plan the adornment of the city by a
magnificent series of parks and boulevards encircling it. The broad
expanse of prairie was low, level and treeless originally, but
abundant trees have since been planted, and art has made little lakes
and miniature hills, beautiful flower-gardens and abundant shrubbery,
thus producing pleasure-grounds of rare attractions. Michigan Avenue
and Drexel and Grand Boulevards, leading to the southern system of
parks and Lake Shore Drive on the north side of Chicago River, are the
finest residential streets. The huge Auditorium fronting on Michigan
Avenue was erected at a cost of $3,500,000, includes a hotel and
theatre, and is surmounted with a tower rising two hundred and seventy
feet, giving a fine view over the city and lake. Out in front is the
Lake Park, with railways beyond near the shore, and a fine bronze
equestrian statue of General John A. Logan, who died in 1886 and is
buried in the crypt beneath the monument. Michigan Avenue begins at
Chicago River alongside the site of old Fort Dearborn, now
obliterated, and it stretches far south, a tree-lined boulevard
adorned by magnificent residences.
Chicago River, with its entrance protected by a wide-spreading
breakwater, is the harbor of the city, and, like its railways, carries
the trade. Tunnels conduct various streets under it, and a multitude
of bridges go over it, all of them opening to let vessels pass. They
are mostly swinging bridges, but some are ingenious constructions,
which roll, and lift and fold, and in various curious ways open the
channel for the shipping. Huge elevators line the river banks, with
vessels alongside, into which streams of grain are poured, while
multitudes of cars move in and out, under and around them, bringing
the supply from the farm to the storage-bins. In the business section,
as elsewhere, the streets are wide, thus accommodating the throngs who
fill them, and there are fine city and national buildings, a new
Post-office of large size and imposing architecture being in course of
construction. The Chicago Public Library, completed in 1897, is a
grand structure, costing $2,000,000, and having about three hundred
thousand volumes. The University of Chicago, in the southern suburbs,
is destined to become one of the leading institutions of learning in
America. It began instruction in 1892, and now has some twenty-four
hundred students, and endowments of $15,000,000, largely the gifts of
John D. Rockefeller. The University grounds cover twenty-four acres,
and when the plan is completed there will be over forty buildings. Its
libraries contain three hundred and fifty thousand volumes. The great
Yerkes Observatory, adjunct to this University, is at Lake Geneva,
Wisconsin, seventy miles distant, and has the largest refracting
telescope in the world, with forty-inch lens and a tube seventy feet
long. On the northern side of the city is the Newberry Library, with
$3,000,000 endowment and two hundred thousand volumes, including
admirable musical and medical collections, and the Crerar Library,
with $2,000,000 endowment, principally for scientific works, is being
established on the south side. Chicago's greatest industrial
establishment is the Federal Steel Company, having enormous
rolling-mills and foundries in various parts of the city, and also at
Joliet on Desplaines River. Its South Chicago Rolling Mills occupy
over three hundred acres. The manufacture of agricultural machinery is
represented by two enormous establishments, the McCormick Harvesting
Machine Company on the southwest side and the Deering Works in the
northwestern district.