Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada

Another institution of which Wisconsin has reason to be proud is the State Historical Society—a corporation (dating from 1853) with perpetual succession, supported by an annual appropriation of five thousand dollars, with provisions for printing the reports of the society and the catalogues of the library. It is housed in the Capitol. The society has accumulated interesting historical portraits, cabinets of antiquities, natural history, and curiosities, a collection of copper, and some valuable MSS. for the library. The library is one of the best historical collections in the country. The excellence of it is largely due to Lyman C. Draper, LL.D., who was its secretary for thirty-three years, but who began as early as 1834 to gather facts and materials for border history and biography, and who had in 1852 accumulated thousands of manuscripts and historical statements, the nucleus of the present splendid library, which embraces rare and valuable works relating to the history of nearly every State. This material is arranged by States, and readily accessible to the student. Indeed, there are few historical libraries in the country where historical research in American subjects can be better prosecuted than in this. The library began in January, 1854, with fifty volumes. In January, 1887, it had 57,935 volumes and 60,731 pamphlets and documents, making a total of 118,666 titles.

There is a large law library in the State-house, the University has a fair special library for the students, and in the city is a good public circulating library, free, supported by a tax, and much used. For a young city, it is therefore very well off for books.

Madison is not only an educational centre, but an intelligent city; the people read and no doubt buy books, but they do not support book-stores. The shops where books are sold are variety-shops, dealing in stationery, artists’ materials, cheap pictures, bric-à-brac. Books are of minor importance, and but few are “kept in stock.” Indeed, bookselling is not a profitable part of the business; it does not pay to “handle” books, or to keep the run of new publications, or to keep a supply of standard works. In this the shops of Madison are not peculiar. It is true all over the West, except in two or three large cities, and true, perhaps, not quite so generally in the East; the book-shops are not the literary and intellectual centres they used to be.

There are several reasons given for this discouraging state of the book-trade. Perhaps it is true that people accustomed to newspapers full of “selections,” to the flimsy publications found on the cheap counters, and to the magazines, do not buy “books that are books,” except for “furnishing;” that they depend more and more upon the circulating libraries for anything that costs more than an imported cigar or half a pound of candy. The local dealers say that the system of the great publishing houses is unsatisfactory as to prices and discounts. Private persons can get the same discounts as the dealers, and can very likely, by ordering a list, buy more cheaply than of the local bookseller, and therefore, as a matter of business, he says that it does not pay to keep books; he gives up trying to sell them, and turns his attention to “varieties.” Another reason for the decline in the trade may be in the fact that comparatively few booksellers are men of taste in letters, men who read, or keep the run of new publications. If a retail grocer knew no more of his business than many booksellers know of theirs, he would certainly fail. It is a pity on all accounts that the book-trade is in this condition. A bookseller in any community, if he is a man of literary culture, and has a love of books and knowledge of them, can do a great deal for the cultivation of the public taste. His shop becomes a sort of intellectual centre of the town. If the public find there an atmosphere of books, and are likely to have their wants met for publications new or rare, they will generally sustain the shop; at least this is my observation. Still, I should not like to attempt to say whether the falling off in the retail book-trade is due to want of skill in the sellers, to the publishing machinery, or to public indifference. The subject is worthy the attention of experts. It is undeniably important to maintain everywhere these little depots of intellectual supply. In a town new to him the visitor is apt to estimate the taste, the culture, the refinement, as well as the wealth of the town, by its shops. The stock in the dry goods and fancy stores tells one thing, that in the art-stores another thing, that in the book-stores another thing, about the inhabitants. The West, even on the remote frontiers, is full of magnificent stores of goods, telling of taste as well as luxury; the book-shops are the poorest of all.

The impression of the North-west, thus far seen, is that of tremendous energy, material refinement, much open-mindedness, considerable self-appreciation,’ uncommon sagacity in meeting new problems, generous hospitality, the Old Testament notion of possessing this world, rather more recognition of the pecuniary as the only success than exists in the East and South, intense national enthusiasm, and unblushing and most welcome “Americanism.”

In these sketchy observations on the North-west nothing has seemed to me more interesting and important than the agricultural changes going on in eastern Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In the vast wheat farms, as well as in the vast cattle ranges, there is an element of speculation, if not of gambling, of the chance of immense profits or of considerable loss, that is neither conducive to the stable prosperity nor to the moral soundness of a State. In the breaking up of the great farms, and in the introduction of varied agriculture and cattle-raising on a small scale, there will not be so many great fortunes made, but each State will be richer as a whole, and less liable to yearly fluctuations in prosperity. But the gain most worth considering will be in the home life and the character of the citizens. The best life of any community depends upon varied industries. No part of the United States has ever prospered, as regards the well-being of the mass of the people, that relied upon the production of a single staple.

IX.—CHICAGO. [First Paper.]

Chicago is becoming modest. Perhaps the inhabitants may still be able to conceal their modesty, but nevertheless they feel it. The explanation is simple. The city has grown not only beyond the most sanguine expectations of those who indulged in the most inflated hope of its future, but it has grown beyond what they said they expected. This gives the citizens pause—as it might an eagle that laid a roc’s egg.

The fact is, Chicago has become an independent organism, growing by a combination of forces and opportunities, beyond the contrivance of any combination of men to help or hinder, beyond the need of flaming circulars and reports of boards of trade, and process pictures. It has passed the danger or the fear of rivalry, and reached the point where the growth of any other portion of the great North-west, or of any city in it (whatever rivalry that city may show in industries or in commerce), is in some way a contribution to the power and wealth of Chicago. To them that have shall be given. Cities, under favoring conditions for local expansion, which reach a certain amount of population and wealth, grow by a kind of natural increment, the law of attraction, very well known in human nature, which draws a person to an active city of two hundred thousand rather than to a stagnant city of one hundred thousand. And it is a fortunate thing for civilization that this attraction is almost as strong to men of letters as it is to men of affairs. Chicago has, it seems to me, only recently turned this point of assured expansion, and, as I intimated, the inhabitants have hardly yet become accustomed to this idea; but I believe that the time is near when they will be as indifferent to what strangers think of Chicago as the New-Yorkers are to what strangers think of New York. New York is to-day the only American city free from this anxious note of provincialism—though in Boston it rather takes the form of pity for the unenlightened man who doubts its superiority; but the impartial student of Chicago to-day can see plenty of signs of the sure growth of this metropolitan indifference. And yet there is still here enough of the old Chicago stamp to make the place interesting.

It is everything in getting a point of view. Last summer a lady of New Orleans who had never before been out of her native French city, and who would look upon the whole North with the impartial eyes of a foreigner—and more than that, with Continental eyes—visited Chicago, and afterwards New York. “Which city did you like best?” I asked, without taking myself seriously in the question. To my surprise, she hesitated. This hesitation was fatal to all my preconceived notions. It mattered not thereafter which she preferred: she had hesitated. She was actually comparing Chicago to New York in her mind, as one might compare Paris and London. The audacity of the comparison I saw was excused by its innocence. I confess that it had never occurred to me to think of Chicago in that Continental light. “Well,” she said, not seeing at all the humor of my remark, “Chicago seems to me to have finer buildings and residences, to be the more beautiful city; but of course there is more in New York; it is a greater city; and I should prefer to live there for what I want.” This naïve observation set me thinking, and I wondered if there was a point of view, say that of divine omniscience and fairness, in which Chicago would appear as one of the great cities of the world, in fact a metropolis, by-and-by to rival in population and wealth any city of the seaboard. It has certainly better commercial advantages, so far as water communication and railways go, than Paris or Pekin or Berlin, and a territory to supply and receive from infinitely vaster, richer, and more promising than either. This territory will have many big cities, but in the nature of things only one of surpassing importance. And taking into account its geographical position—a thousand miles from the Atlantic seaboard on the one side, and from the mountains on the other, with the acknowledged tendency of people and of money to it as a continental centre—it seems to me that Chicago is to be that one.

The growth of Chicago is one of the marvels of the world. I do not wonder that it is incomprehensible even to those who have seen it year by year. As I remember it in 1860, it was one of the shabbiest and most unattractive cities of about a hundred thousand inhabitants anywhere to be found; but even then it had more than trebled its size in ten years; the streets were mud sloughs, the sidewalks were a series of stairs and more or less rotten planks, half the town was in process of elevation above the tadpole level, and a considerable part of it was on wheels—the moving house being about the only wheeled vehicle that could get around with any comfort to the passengers. The west side was a straggling shanty-town, the north side was a country village with two or three “aristocratic” houses occupying a square, the south side had not a handsome business building in it, nor a public edifice of any merit except a couple of churches, but there were a few pleasant residences on Michigan avenue fronting the encroaching lake, and on Wabash avenue. Yet I am not sure that even then the exceedingly busy and excited traders and speculators did not feel that the town was more important than New York. For it had a great business. Aside from its real estate operations, its trade that year was set down at $97,000,000, embracing its dealing in produce, its wholesale supply business, and its manufacturing.

No one then, however, would have dared to predict that the value of trade in 1887 would be, as it was, $1,103,000,000. Nor could any one have believed that the population of 100,000 would reach in 1887 nearly 800,000 (estimated 782,644), likely to reach in 1888, with the annexation of contiguous villages that have become physically a part of the city, the amount of 900,000. Growing at its usual rate for several years past, the city is certain in a couple of years to count its million of people. And there is not probably anywhere congregated a more active and aggressive million, with so great a proportion of young, ambitious blood. Other figures keep pace with those of trade and population. I will mention only one or two of them here. The national banks, in 1887, had a capital of $15,800,000, in which the deposits were $80,473,740, the loans and discounts $63,113,821, the surplus and profits $6,320,559. The First National is, I believe, the second or third largest banking house in the country, having a deposit account of over twenty-two millions. The figures given only include the national banks; add to these the private banks, and the deposits of Chicago in 1887 were $105,307,000. The aggregate bank clearings of the city were $2,969,216,210.00, an increase of 14 per cent, over 1880. It should be noted that there were only twenty-one banks in the clearing house (with an aggregate capital and surplus of $28,514,000), and that the fewer the banks the smaller the total clearings will be. The aggregate Board of Trade clearings for 1887 were $78,179,809. In the year 1880 Chicago imported merchandise entered for consumption to the value of $11,574,449, and paid $4,349,237 duties on it. I did not intend to go into statistics, but these and a few other figures will give some idea of the volume of business in this new city. I found on inquiry that—owing to legislation that need not be gone into—there are few savings-banks, and the visible savings of labor cut a small figure in this way. The explanation is that there are several important loan and building associations. Money is received on deposit in small amounts, and loaned at a good rate of interest to those wishing to build or buy houses, the latter paying in small instalments. The result is that these loan institutions have been very profitable to those who have put money in them, and that the laborers who have borrowed to build have also been benefited by putting all their savings into houses. I believe there is no other large city, except Philadelphia perhaps, where so large a proportion of the inhabitants own the houses they live in. There is no better prevention of the spread of anarchical notions and communist foolishness than this.

It is an item of interest that the wholesale drygoods jobbing establishments increased their business in 1887 12 1/2 per cent, over 1886. Five houses have a capital of $9,000,000, and the sales in 1887 were nearly $74,000,000. And it is worth special mention that one man in Chicago, Marshall Field, is the largest wholesale and retail dry-goods merchant in the world. In his retail shop and wholesale store there are 3000 employes on the pay-roll. As to being first in his specialty, the same may be said of Philip D. Armour, who not only distances all rivals in the world as a packer, but no doubt also as a merchant of such products as the hog contributes to the support of life. His sales in one year have been over $51,000,000. The city has also the distinction of having among its citizens Henry W. King, the largest dealer, in establishments here and elsewhere, in clothing in the world.

In nothing has the growth of Chicago been more marked in the past five years than in manufactures. I cannot go into the details of all the products, but the totals of manufacture for 1887 were, in 2396 firms, $113,960,000 capital employed, 134,615 workers, $74,567,000 paid in wages, and the value of the product was $403,109,500—an increase of product over 1886 of about 15 1/2 per cent. A surprising item in this is the book and publishing business. The increase of sales of books in 1887 over 1886 was 20 per cent. The wholesale sales for 1887 are estimated at $10,000,000. It is now claimed that as a book-publishing centre Chicago ranks second only to New York, and that in the issue of subscription-books it does more business than New York, Boston, and Philadelphia combined. In regard to musical instruments the statement is not less surprising. In 1887 the sales of pianos amounted to about $2,600,000—a gain of $300,000 over 1886. My authority for this, and for some, but not all, of the other figures given, is the Tribune, which says that Chicago is not only the largest reed-organ market in the world, but that more organs are manufactured here than in any other city in Europe or America. The sales for 1887 were $2,000,000—an increase over 1880 of $500,000. There were $1,000,000 worth of small musical instruments sold, and of sheet music and music-books a total of $450,000. This speaks well for the cultivation of musical taste in the West, especially as there was a marked improvement in the class of the music bought.

The product of the iron manufactures in 1887, including rolling-mills ($23,952,000) and founderies ($10,000,000), was $61,187,000 against $46,790,000 in 1886, and the wages paid in iron and steel work was $14,899,000. In 1887 there were erected 4833 buildings, at a reported cost of $19,778,100—a few more build-’ ings, but yet at nearly two millions less cost, than in 1886. A couple of items interested me: that Chicago made in 1887 $900,000 worth of toys and $500,000 worth of perfumes. The soap-makers waged a gallant but entirely unsuccessful war against the soot and smoke of the town in producing $6,250,000 worth of soap and candles. I do not see it mentioned, but I should think the laundry business in Chicago would be the most profitable one at present.

Without attempting at all to set forth the business of Chicago in detail, a few more figures will help to indicate its volume. At the beginning of 1887 the storage capacity for grain in 29 elevators was 27,025,000 bushels. The total receipts of flour and grain in 1882, ‘3, ‘4, ‘5, and ‘6, in bushels, were respectively, 126,155,483, 164,924,732, 159,561,474, 156,408,228, 151,932,995. In 1887 the receipts in bushels were: flour, 6,873,544; wheat, 21,848,251; corn, 51,578,410; oats, 45,750,842; rye, 852,726; barley, 12,476,547—total, 139,380,320. It is useless to go into details of the meat products, but interesting to know that in 1886 Chicago shipped 310,039,600 pounds of lard and 573,496,012 pounds of dressed beef.

I was surprised at the amount of the lake commerce, the railway traffic (nearly 50,000 miles tributary to the city) making so much more show. In 1882 the tonnage of vessels clearing this port was 4,904,999; in 1880 it was 3,950,762. The report of the Board of Trade for 1886 says the arrivals and clearances, foreign and coastwise, for this port for the year ending June 30th were 22,096, which was 869 more than at the ports of Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland and Falmouth, and San Francisco combined; 315 more than at New York, New Orleans, Portland and Falmouth, and San Francisco; and 100 more than at New York, Baltimore, and Portland and Falmouth. It will not be overlooked that this lake commerce is training a race of hardy sailors, who would come to the front in case of a naval war, though they might have to go out on rafts.

In 1888 Chicago is a magnificent city. Although it has been incorporated fifty years, during which period its accession of population has been rapid and steady—hardly checked by the devastating fires of 1871 and 1874—its metropolitan character and appearance is the work of less than fifteen years. There is in history no parallel to this product of a freely acting democracy: not St. Petersburg rising out of the marshes at an imperial edict, nor Berlin, the magic creation of a consolidated empire and a Caesar’s power. The north-side village has become a city of broad streets, running northward to the parks, lined with handsome residences interspersed with stately mansions of most varied and agreeable architecture, marred by very little that is bizarre and pretentious—a region of churches and club-houses and public buildings of importance. The west side, the largest section, and containing more population than the other two divisions combined, stretching out over the prairie to a horizon fringed with villages, expanding in three directions, is more mediocre in buildings, but impressive in its vastness; and the stranger driving out the stately avenue of Washington some four miles to Garfield Park will be astonished by the evidences of wealth and the vigor of the city expansion.

But it is the business portion of the south side that is the miracle of the time, the solid creation of energy and capital since the fire—the square mile containing the Post-office and City Hall, the giant hotels, the opera-houses and theatres, the Board of Trade building, the many-storied offices, the great shops, the clubhouses, the vast retail and wholesale warehouses. This area has the advantage of some other great business centres in having broad streets at right angles, but with all this openness for movement, the throng of passengers and traffic, the intersecting street and cable railways, the loads of freight and the crush of carriages, the life and hurry and excitement are sufficient to satisfy the most eager lover of metropolitan pandemonium. Unfortunately for a clear comprehension of it, the manufactories vomit dense clouds of bituminous coal smoke, which settle in a black mass in this part of the town, so that one can scarcely see across the streets in a damp day, and the huge buildings loom up in the black sky in ghostly dimness. The climate of Chicago, though some ten degrees warmer than the average of its immediately tributary territory, is a harsh one, and in the short winter days the centre of the city is not only black, but damp and chilly. In some of the November and December days I could without any stretch of the imagination fancy myself in London. On a Sunday, when business gives place to amusement and religion, the stately city is seen in all its fine proportions. No other city in the Union can show business warehouses and offices of more architectural nobility. The mind inevitably goes to Florence for comparison with the structures of the Medicean merchant princes. One might name the Pullman Building for offices as an example, and the wholesale warehouse of Marshall Field, the work of that truly original American architect, Richardson, which in massiveness, simplicity of lines, and admirable blending of artistic beauty with adaptability to its purpose, seems to me unrivalled in this country. A few of these buildings are exceptions to the general style of architecture, which is only good of its utilitarian American kind, but they give distinction to the town, and I am sure are prophetic of the concrete form the wealth of the city will take. The visitor is likely to be surprised at the number and size of the structures devoted to offices, and to think, as he sees some of them unfilled, that the business is overdone. At any given moment it may be, but the demand for “offices” is always surprising to those who pay most attention to this subject, and I am told that if the erection of office buildings should cease for a year, the demand would pass beyond the means of satisfying it.

Leaving the business portion of the south side, the city runs in apparently limitless broad avenues southward into suburban villages and a region thickly populated to the Indiana line. The continuous slightly curving lake front of the city is about seven miles, pretty solidly occupied with houses. The Michigan avenue of 1860, with its wooden fronts and cheap boarding-houses, has taken on quite another appearance, and extends its broad way in unbroken lines of fine residences five miles, which will be six miles next summer, when its opening is completed to the entrance of Washington Park. I do not know such another street in the world. In the evening the converging lines of gas lamps offer a prospective of unequalled beauty of its kind. The south parks are reached now by turning either into the Drexel Boulevard or the Grand Boulevard, a magnificent avenue a mile in length, tree-planted, gay with flower-beds in the season, and crowded in the sleighing-time with fast teams and fancy turnouts.

This leads me to speak of another feature of Chicago, which has no rival in this country: I mean the facility for pleasure driving and riding. Michigan avenue from the mouth of the river, the centre of town, is macadamized. It and the other avenues immediately connected with the park system are not included in the city street department, but are under the care of the Commissioners of Parks. No traffic is permitted on them, and consequently they are in superb condition for driving, summer and winter. The whole length of Michigan avenue you will never see a loaded team. These roads—that is, Michigan avenue and the others of the park system, and the park drives—are superb for driving or riding, perfectly made for drainage and permanency, with a top-dressing of pulverized granite. The cost of the Michigan avenue drive was two hundred thousand dollars a mile. The cost of the parks and boulevards in each of the three divisions is met by a tax on the property in that division. The tax is considerable, but the wise liberality of the citizens has done for the town what only royalty usually accomplishes—given it magnificent roads; and if good roads are a criterion of civilization, Chicago must stand very high. But it needed a community with a great deal of daring and confidence in the future to create this park system.

One in the heart of the city has not to drive three or four miles over cobble-stones and ruts to get to good driving-ground. When he has entered Michigan avenue he need not pull rein for twenty to thirty miles. This is almost literally true as to extent, without counting the miles of fine drives in the parks; for the city proper is circled by great parks, already laid out as pleasure-grounds, tree-planted and beautified to a high degree, although they are nothing to what cultivation will make them in ten years more. On the lake shore, at the south, is Jackson Park; next is Washington Park, twice as large as Central Park, New York; then, farther to the west, and north, Douglas Park and Garfield Park; then Humboldt Park, until we come round to Lincoln Park, on the lake shore on the north side. These parks are all connected by broad boulevards, some of which are not yet fully developed, thus forming a continuous park drive, with enough of nature and enough of varied architecture for variety, unsurpassed, I should say, in the world within any city limits. Washington Park, with a slightly rolling surface and beautiful landscape-gardening, has not only fine drive-ways, but a splendid road set apart for horsemen. This is a dirt road, always well sprinkled, and the equestrian has a chance besides of a gallop over springy turf. Water is now so abundantly provided that this park is kept green in the driest season. From anywhere in the south side one may mount his horse or enter his carriage for a turn of fifteen or twenty miles on what is equivalent to a country road—that is to say, an English country road. Of the effect of this facility on social life I shall have occasion to speak. On the lake side of Washington Park are the grounds of the Washington Park Racing Club, with a splendid track, and stables and other facilities which, I am told, exceed anything of the kind in the country. The club-house itself is very handsome and commodious, is open to the members and their families summer and winter, and makes a favorite rendezvous for that part of society which shares its privileges. Besides its large dining and dancing halls, it has elegant apartments set apart for ladies. In winter its hospitable rooms and big wood fires are very attractive after a zero drive.

Almost equal facility for driving and riding is had on the north side by taking the lake-shore drive to Lincoln Park. Too much cannot be said of the beauty of this drive along the curving shore of an inland sea, ever attractive in the play of changing lights and colors, and beginning to be fronted by palatial houses—a foretaste of the coming Venetian variety and splendor. The park itself, dignified by the Lincoln statue, is an exquisite piece of restful landscape, looked over by a thickening assemblage of stately residences. It is a quarter of spacious elegance.

One hardly knows how to speak justly of either the physical aspect or the social life of Chicago, the present performance suggesting such promise and immediate change. The excited admiration waits a little upon expectation. I should like to sec it in five years—in ten years; it is a formative period, but one of such excellence of execution that the imagination takes a very high flight in anticipating the result of another quarter of a century. What other city has begun so nobly or has planned so liberally for metropolitan solidity, elegance, and recreation? What other has such magnificent, avenues and boulevards, and such a system of parks? The boy is born here who will see the town expanded far beyond these splendid pleasure-grounds, and what is now the circumference of the city will be to Chicago what the vernal gardens from St. James to Hampton are to London. This anticipation hardly seems strange when one remembers what Chicago was fifteen years ago.

Architecturally, Chicago is more interesting than many older cities. Its wealth and opportunity for fine building coming when our national taste is beginning to be individual, it has escaped the monotony and mediocrity in which New York for so many years put its money, and out of the sameness of which it is escaping in spots. Having also plenty of room, Chicago has been able to avoid the block system in its residences, and to give play to variety and creative genius. It is impossible to do much with the interior of a house in a block, however much you may load the front with ornament. Confined to a long parallelogram, and limited as to light and air, neither comfort nor individual taste can be consulted or satisfied. Chicago is a city of detached houses, in the humbler quarters as well as in the magnificent avenues, and the effect is home-like and beautiful at the same time. There is great variety—stone, brick, and wood intermingled, plain and ornamental; but drive where you will in the favorite residence parts of the vast city, you will be continually surprised with the sight of noble and artistic houses and homes displaying taste as well as luxury. In addition to the business and public buildings of which I spoke, there are several, like the Art Museum, the Studebaker Building, and the new Auditorium, which would be conspicuous and admired in any city in the world. The city is rich in a few specimens of private houses by Mr. Richardson (whose loss to the country is still apparently irreparable), houses worth a long journey to see, so simple, so noble, so full of comfort, sentiment, unique, having what may be called a charming personality. As to interiors, there has been plenty of money spent in Chicago in mere show; but, after all, I know of no other city that has more character and individuality in its interiors, more evidences of personal refinement and taste. There is, of course—Boston knows that—a grace and richness in a dwelling in which generations have accumulated the best fruits of wealth and cultivation; but any tasteful stranger here, I am sure, will be surprised to find in a city so new so many homes pervaded by the atmosphere of books and art and refined sensibility, due, I imagine, mainly to the taste of the women, for while there are plenty of men here who have taste, there are very few who have leisure to indulge it; and I doubt if there was ever anywhere a livable house—a man can build a palace, but he cannot make a home—that was not the creation of a refined woman. I do not mean to say that Chicago is not still very much the victim of the upholsterer, and that the eye is not offended by a good deal that is gaudy and pretentious, but there is so much here that is in exquisite taste that one has a hopeful heart about its future. Everybody is not yet educated up to the “Richardson houses,” but nothing is more certain than that they will powerfully influence all the future architecture of the town.

Perhaps there never was before such an opportunity to study the growth of an enormous city, physically and socially, as is offered now in Chicago, where the development of half a century is condensed into a decade. In one respect it differs from all other cities of anything like its size. It is not only surrounded by a complete net-work of railways, but it is permeated by them. The converging lines of twenty-one (I think it is) railways paralleling each other or criss-crossing in the suburbs concentrate upon fewer tracks as they enter the dense part of the city, but they literally surround it, and actually pierce its heart. So complete is this environment and interlacing that you cannot enter the city from any direction without encountering a net-work of tracks. None of the water-front, except a strip on the north side, is free from them. The finest residence part of the south side, including the boulevards and parks, is surrounded and cut by them. There are a few viaducts, but for the most part the tracks occupy streets, and the crossings are at grade. Along the Michigan avenue water-front and down the lake shore to Hyde Park, on the Illinois Central and the Michigan Central and their connections, the foreign and local trains pass incessantly (I believe over sixty a day), and the Illinois crosses above Sixteenth Street, cutting all the great southward avenues; and farther down, the tracks run between Jackson Park and Washington Park, crossing at grade the 500-feet-wide boulevard which connects these great parks and makes them one. These tracks and grade crossings, from which so few parts of the city are free, are a serious evil and danger, and the annoyance is increased by the multiplicity of street railway’s, and by the swiftly running cable-cars, which are a constant source of alarm to the timid. The railways present a difficult problem. The town covers such a vast area (always extending in a ratio that cannot be calculated) that to place all the passenger stations outside would be a great inconvenience, to unite the lines in a single station probably impracticable. In time, however, the roads must come in on elevated viaducts, or concentrate in three or four stations which communicate with the central parts of the town by elevated roads.

This state of things arose from the fact that the railways antedated, and we may say made, the town, which has grown up along their lines. To a town of pure business, transportation was the first requisite, and the newer roads have been encouraged to penetrate as far into the city as they could. Now that it is necessary to make it a city to live in safely and agreeably, the railways are regarded from another point of view. I suppose a sociologist would make some reflections on the effect of such a thorough permeation of tracks, trains, engines, and traffic upon the temperament of a town, the action of these exciting and irritating causes upon its nervous centres. Living in a big railway-station must have an effect on the nerves. At present this seems a legitimate part of the excited activity of the city; but if it continues, with the rapid increase of wealth and the growth of a leisure class, the inhabitants who can afford to get away will live here only the few months necessary to do their business and take a short season of social gayety, and then go to quieter places early in the spring and for the summer months.

It is at this point of view that the value of the park system appears, not only as a relief, as easily accessible recreation-grounds for the inhabitants in every part of the city, but as an element in society life. These parks, which I have already named, contain 1742 acres. The two south parks, connected so as to be substantially one, have 957 acres. Their great connecting boulevards are interfered with somewhat by railway-tracks, and none of them, except Lincoln, can be reached without crossing tracks on which locomotives run, yet, as has been said, the most important of them are led to by good driving-roads from the heart of the city. They have excellent roads set apart for equestrians as well as for driving. These facilities induce the keeping of horses, the setting up of fine equipages, and a display for which no other city has better opportunity. This cannot but have an appreciable effect upon the growth of luxury and display in this direction. Indeed, it is already true that the city keeps more private carriages—for the pleasure not only of the rich, but of the well-to-do—in proportion to its population, than any other large city I know. These broad thoroughfares, kept free from traffic, furnish excellent sleighing when it does not exist in the city streets generally, and in the summer unequalled avenues for the show of wealth and beauty and style. In a few years the turnouts on the Grand Boulevard and the Lincoln Park drive will be worth going far to see for those who admire—and who does not? for, the world over, wealth has no spectacle more attractive to all classes—fine horses and the splendor of moving equipages. And here is no cramped mile or two for parade, like most of the fashionable drives of the world, but space inviting healthful exercise as well as display. These broad avenues and park outlooks, with ample ground-room, stimulate architectural rivalry, and this opportunity for driving and riding and being on view cannot but affect very strongly the social tone. The foresight of the busy men who planned this park system is already vindicated. The public appreciate their privileges. On fair days the driving avenues are thronged. One Sunday afternoon in January, when the sleighing was good, some one estimated that there were as many as ten thousand teams flying up and down Michigan avenue and the Grand Boulevard. This was, of course, an over-estimate, but the throng made a ten-thousand impression on the mind. Perhaps it was a note of Western independence that a woman was here and there seen “speeding” a fast horse, in a cutter, alone.

I suppose that most of these people had been to church in the morning, for Chicago, which does everything it puts its hand to with tremendous energy, is a church-going city, and I believe presents some contrast to Cincinnati in this respect. Religious, mission, and Sunday-school work is very active, churches are many, whatever the liberality of the creeds of a majority of them, and there are several congregations of over two thousand people. One vast music-hall and one theatre are thronged Sunday after Sunday with organized, vigorous, worshipful congregations. Besides these are the Sunday meetings for ethical culture and Christian science. It is true that many of the theatres are open as on week-days, and there is a vast foreign population that takes its day of rest in idleness or base-ball and garden amusements, but the prevailing aspect of the city is that of Sunday observance. There is a good deal of wholesome New England in its tone. And it welcomes any form of activity—orthodoxy, liberalism, revivals, ethical culture.

A special interest in Chicago at the moment is because it is forming—full of contrasts and of promise, palaces and shanties side by side. Its forces are gathered and accumulating, but not assimilated. What a mass of crude, undigested material it has! In one region on the west side are twenty thousand Bohemians and Poles; the street signs are all foreign and of unpronounceable names—a physically strong, but mentally and morally brutal, people for the most part; the adults generally do not speak English, and claning as they do, they probably never will. There is no hope that this generation will be intelligent American citizens, or be otherwise than the political prey of demagogues. But their children are in the excellent public schools, and will take in American ideas and take on American ways. Still, the mill has about as much grist as it can grind at present.

Social life is, speaking generally, as unformed, unselected, as the city—that is, more fluid and undetermined than in Eastern large cities. That is merely to say, however, that while it is American, it is young. When you come to individuals, the people in society are largely from the East, or have Eastern connections that determine their conduct. For twenty years the great universities, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Princeton, and the rest, have been pouring in their young men here. There is no better element in the world, and it is felt in every pulse of the town. Young couples marry and come here from every sort of Eastern circle. But the town has grown so fast, and so many new people have come into the ability suddenly to spend money in fine houses and equipages, that the people do not know each other. You may drive past miles of good houses, with a man who has grown up with the town, who cannot tell you who any of the occupants of the houses are. Men know each other on change, in the courts, in business, and are beginning to know each other in clubs, but society has not got itself sorted out and arranged, or discovered its elements. This is a metropolitan trait, it is true, but the condition is socially very different from what it is in New York or Boston; the small village associations survive a little yet, struggling against the territorial distances, but the social mass is still unorganized, although “society” is a prominent feature in the newspapers. Of course it is understood that there are people “in society,” and dinners, and all that, in nowise different from the same people and events the world over.

A striking feature of the town is “youth,” visible in social life as well as in business. An Eastern man is surprised to see so many young men in responsible positions, at the head, or taking the managing oar, in great moneyed institutions, in railway corporations, and in societies of charity and culture. A young man, graduate of the city high-school, is at the same time president of a prominent bank, president of the Board of Trade, and president of the Art Institute. This youthful spirit must be contagious, for apparently the more elderly men do not permit themselves to become old, either in the business or the pleasures of life. Everything goes on with youthful vim and spirit.

Next to the youth, and perhaps more noticeable, the characteristic feature of Chicago is money-making, and the money power is as obtrusive socially as on change. When we come to speak of educational and intellectual tendencies, it will be seen how this spirit is being at once utilized and mitigated; but for the moment money is the recognized power. How could it be otherwise? Youth and energy did not flock here for pleasure or for society, but simply for fortune. And success in money-getting was about the only one considered. And it is still that by which Chicago is chiefly known abroad, by that and by a certain consciousness of it which is noticed. And as women reflect social conditions most vividly, it cannot be denied that there is a type known in Europe and in the East as the Chicago young woman, capable rather than timid, dashing rather than retiring, quite able to take care of herself. But this is not by any means an exhaustive account of the Chicago woman of to-day.

While it must be said that the men, as a rule, are too much absorbed in business to give heed to anything else, yet even this statement will need more qualification than would appear at first, when we come to consider the educational, industrial, and reformatory projects. And indeed a veritable exception is the Literary Club, of nearly two hundred members, a mingling of business and professional men, who have fine rooms in the Art Building, and meet weekly for papers and discussions. It is not in every city that an equal number of busy men will give the time to this sort of intellectual recreation. The energy here is superabundant; in whatever direction it is exerted it is very effective; and it may be said, in the language of the street, that if the men of Chicago seriously take hold of culture, they will make it hum.

Still it remains true here, as elsewhere in the United States, that women are in advance in the intellectual revival. One cannot yet predict what will be the result of this continental furor for literary, scientific, and study clubs—in some places in the East the literary wave has already risen to the height of the scientific study of whist—but for the time being Chicago women are in the full swing of literary life. Mr. Browning says that more of his books are sold in Chicago than in any other American city. Granting some affectation, some passing fashion, in the Browning, Dante, and Shakespeare clubs, I think it is true that the Chicago woman, who is imbued with the energy of the place, is more serious in her work than are women in many other places; at least she is more enthusiastic. Her spirit is open, more that of frank admiration than of criticism of both literature and of authors. This carries her not only further into the heart of literature itself, but into a genuine enjoyment of it—wanting almost to some circles at the East, who are too cultivated to admire with warmth or to surrender themselves to the delights of learning, but find their avocation rather in what may be called literary detraction, the spirit being that of dissection of authors and books, much as social gossips pick to pieces the characters of those of their own set. And one occupation is as good as the other. Chicago has some reputation for beauty, for having pretty, dashing, and attractive women; it is as much entitled to be considered for its intelligent women who are intellectually agreeable. Comparisons are very unsafe, but it is my impression that there is more love for books in Chicago than in New York society, and less of the critical, nil admirari spirit than in Boston.

It might be an indication of no value (only of the taste of individuals) that books should be the principal “favors” at a fashionable german, but there is a book-store in the city whose evidence cannot be set aside by reference to any freak of fashion. McClurg’s book-store is a very extensive establishment in all departments—publishing, manufacturing, retailing, wholesaling, and importing. In some respects it has not its equal in this country. The book-lover, whether he comes from London or New York, will find there a stock, constantly sold and constantly replenished, of books rare, curious, interesting, that will surprise him. The general intelligence that sustains a retail shop of this variety and magnitude must be considerable, and speaks of a taste for books with which the city has not been credited; but the cultivation, the special love of books for themselves, which makes possible this rich corner of rare and imported books at McClurg’s, would be noticeable in any city, and women as well as men in Chicago are buyers and appreciators of first editions, autograph and presentation copies, and books valued because they are scarce and rare.

Chicago has a physical peculiarity that radically affects its social condition, and prevents its becoming homogeneous. It has one business centre and three distinct residence parts, divided by the branching river. Communication between the residence sections has to be made through the business city, and is further hindered by the bridge crossings, which cause irritating delays the greater part of the year. The result is that three villages grew up, now become cities in size, and each with a peculiar character. The north side was originally the more aristocratic, and having fewer railways and a less-occupied-with-business lake front, was the more agreeable as a place of residence, always having the drawback of the bridge crossings to the business part. After the great fire, building lots were cheaper there than on the south side within reasonable distance of the active city. It has grown amazingly, and is beautified by stately bouses and fine architecture, and would probably still be called the more desirable place of residence. But the south side has two great advantages—easy access to the business centre and to the great southern parks and pleasure-grounds. This latter would decide many to live there. The vast west side, with its lumber-yards and factories, its foreign settlements, and its population outnumbering the two other sections combined, is practically an unknown region socially to the north side and south side. The causes which produced three villages surrounding a common business centre will continue to operate. The west side will continue to expand with cheap houses, or even elegant residences on the park avenues—it is the glory of Chicago that such a large proportion of its houses are owned by their occupants, and that there are few tenement rookeries, and even few gigantic apartment houses—over a limitless prairie; the north side will grow in increasing beauty about Lincoln Park; and the south side will more and more gravitate with imposing houses about the attractive south parks. Thus the two fashionable parts of the city, separated by five, eight, and ten miles, will develop a social life of their own, about as distinct as New York and Brooklyn. It remains to be seen which will call the other “Brooklyn.” At present these divisions account for much of the disorganization of social life, and prevent that concentration which seems essential to the highest social development.

In this situation Chicago is original, as she is in many other ways, and it makes one of the interesting phases in the guesses at her future.

X.—CHICAGO [Second Paper.]

The country gets its impression of Chicago largely from the Chicago newspapers. In my observation, the impression is wrong. The press is able, vigorous, voluminous, full of enterprise, alert, spirited; its news columns are marvellous in quantity, if not in quality; nowhere are important events, public meetings, and demonstrations more fully, graphically, and satisfactorily reported; it has keen and competent writers in several departments of criticism—theatrical, musical, and occasionally literary; independence, with less of personal bias than in some other cities; the editorial pages of most of the newspapers are bright, sparkling, witty, not seldom spiced with knowing drollery, and strong, vivid, well-informed and well-written, in the discussion of public questions, with an allowance always to be made for the “personal equation” in dealing with particular men and measures—as little provincial in this respect as any press in the country.

But it lacks tone, elevation of purpose; it represents to the world the inferior elements of a great city rather than the better, under a mistaken notion in the press and the public, not confined to Chicago, as to what is “news.” It cannot escape the charge of being highly sensational; that is, the elevation into notoriety of mean persons and mean events by every rhetorical and pictorial device. Day after day the leading news, the most displayed and most conspicuous, will be of vulgar men and women, and all the more expanded if it have in it a spice of scandal. This sort of reading creates a diseased appetite, which requires a stronger dose daily to satisfy; and people who read it lose their relish for the higher, more decent, if less piquant, news of the world. Of course the Chicago newspapers are not by any means alone in this course; it is a disease of the time. Even New York has recently imitated successfully this feature of what is called “Western journalism.”

But it is largely from the Chicago newspapers that the impression has gone abroad that the city is preeminent in divorces, pre-eminent in scandals, that its society is fast, that it is vulgar and pretentious, that its tone is “shoddy,” and its culture a sham. The laws of Illinois in regard to divorces are not more lax than in some Eastern States, and divorces are not more numerous there of residents (according to population) than in some Eastern towns; but while the press of the latter give merely an official line to the court separations, the Chicago papers parade all the details, and illustrate them with pictures. Many people go there to get divorces, because they avoid scandal at their homes, and because the Chicago courts offer unusual facilities in being open every month in the year. Chicago has a young, mobile population, an immense foreign brutal element. I watched for some weeks the daily reports of divorces and scandals. Almost without exception they related to the lower, not to say the more vulgar, portions of social life. In several years the city has had, I believe, only two causes célèbres in what is called good society—a remarkable record for a city of its size. Of course a city of this magnitude and mobility is not free from vice and immorality and fast living; but I am compelled to record the deliberate opinion, formed on a good deal of observation and inquiry, that the moral tone in Chicago society, in all the well-to-do industrious classes which give the town its distinctive character, is purer and higher than in any other city of its size with which I am acquainted, and purer than in many much smaller. The tone is not so fast, public opinion is more restrictive, and women take, and are disposed to take, less latitude in conduct. This was not my impression from the newspapers. But it is true not only that social life holds itself to great propriety, but that the moral atmosphere is uncommonly pure and wholesome. At the same time, the city does not lack gayety of movement, and it would not be called prudish, nor in some respects conventional.

It is curious, also, that the newspapers, or some of them, take pleasure in mocking at the culture of the town. Outside papers catch this spirit, and the “culture” of Chicago is the butt of the paragraphers. It is a singular attitude for newspapers to take regarding their own city. Not long ago Mr. McClurg published a very neat volume, in vellum, of the fragments of Sappho, with translations. If the volume had appeared in Boston it would have been welcomed and most respectfully received in Chicago. But instead of regarding it as an evidence of the growing literary taste of the new town, the humorists saw occasion in it for exquisite mockery in the juxtaposition of Sappho with the modern ability to kill seven pigs a minute, and in the cleverest and most humorous manner set all the country in a roar over the incongruity. It goes without saying that the business men of Chicago were not sitting up nights to study the Greek poets in the original; but the fact was that there was enough literary taste in the city to make the volume a profitable venture, and that its appearance was an evidence of intellectual activity and scholarly inclination that would be creditable to any city in the land. It was not at all my intention to intrude my impressions of a newspaper press so very able and with such magnificent opportunities as that of Chicago, but it was unavoidable to mention one of the causes of the misapprehension of the social and moral condition of the city.

The business statistics of Chicago, and the story of its growth, and the social movement, which have been touched on in a previous paper, give only a half-picture of the life of the town. The prophecy for its great and more hopeful future is in other exhibitions of its incessant activity. My limits permit only a reference to its churches, extensive charities (which alone would make a remarkable and most creditable chapter), hospitals, medical schools, and conservatories of music. Club life is attaining metropolitan proportions. There is on the south side the Chicago, the Union League, the University, the Calumet, and on the north side the Union—all vigorous, and most of them housed in superb buildings of their own. The Women’s Exchange is a most useful organization, and the Ladies’ Fortnightly ranks with the best intellectual associations in the country. The Commercial Club, composed of sixty representative business men in all departments, is a most vital element in the prosperity of the city. I cannot dwell upon these. But at least a word must be said about the charities, and some space must be given to the schools.

The number of solicitors for far West churches and colleges who pass by Chicago and come to Xew York and New England for money have created the impression that Chicago is not a good place to go for this purpose. Whatever may be the truth of this, the city does give royally for private charities, and liberally for mission work beyond her borders. It is estimated by those familiar with the subject that Chicago contributes for charitable and religious purposes, exclusive of the public charities of the city and county, not less than five millions of dollars annually. I have not room to give even the partial list of the benevolent societies that lies before me, but beginning with the Chicago Relief and Aid, and the Armour Mission, and going down to lesser organizations, the sum annually given by them is considerably over half a million dollars. The amount raised by the churches of various denominations for religious purposes is not less than four millions yearly. These figures prove the liberality, and I am able to add that the charities are most sympathetically and intelligently administered.

Inviting, by its opportunities for labor and its facilities for business, comers from all the world, a large proportion of whom are aliens to the language and institutions of America, Chicago is making a noble fight to assimilate this material into good citizenship. The popular schools are liberally sustained, intelligently directed, practise the most advanced and inspiring methods, and exhibit excellent results. I have not the statistics of 1887; but in 1886, when the population was only 703,000, there were 129,000 between the ages of six and sixteen, of whom 83,000 were enrolled as pupils, and the average daily attendance in schools was over 65,000. Besides these there were about 43,000 in private schools. The census of 1886 reports only 34 children between the ages of six and twenty-one who could neither read nor write. There were 91 school buildings owned by the city, and two rented. Of these, three are high-schools, one in each division, the newest, on the west side, having 1000 students. The school attendance increases by a large per cent, each year. The principals of the high-schools were men; of the grammar and primary schools, 35 men and 42 women. The total of teachers was 1440, of whom 56 were men. By the census of 1886 there were 106,929 children in the city under six years of age. No kindergartens are attached to the public schools, but the question of attaching them is agitated. In the lower grades, however, the instruction is by object lessons, drawing, writing, modelling, and exercises that train the eye to observe, the tongue to describe, and that awaken attention without weariness. The alertness of the scholars and the enthusiasm of the teachers were marked. It should be added that German is extensively taught in the grammar schools, and that the number enrolled in the German classes in 1886 was over 28,000. There is some public sentiment for throwing out German from the public schools, and generally for restricting studies in the higher branches.

The argument against this is that very few of the children, and the majority of those girls, enter the high-schools; the boys are taken out early for business, and get no education afterwards. In 1885 were organized public elementary evening schools (which had, in 1886, 6709 pupils), and an evening high-school, in which book-keeping, stenography, mechanical drawing, and advanced mathematics were taught. The Sehool Committee also have in charge day schools for the education of deaf and dumb children.

The total expenditure for 1880 was $2,000,803; this includes $1,023,394 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.