/ 
 
LAWRENCE J. GUTTER 
 
 Collection of Chicogoono 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 AT CHICAGO 
 
 The University Library 
 
 ?i. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 CARLI: Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois 
 
 http://archive.org/details/chicagoOOpart 
 
"CHICAGrQ™ 
 
 by 
 
 Jamas Part on 
 
 From TEE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 
 March, 136? (Vol. XIX) 
 
G-0 l^X 
 
1 86;.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 3^5 
 
 CHICAGO. 
 
 WHEN Professor Goldwin Smith 
 was preparing for his voyage to 
 America, Mr. Richard Cobden said to 
 him, "See two things in the United 
 States, if nothing else, — Niagara and 
 Chicago." Professor Smith acted upon 
 this advice, and, while visiting Chicago, 
 acknowledged that the two objects 
 named by his friend were indeed the 
 wonders of North America. Chicago 
 can claim one point of superiority over 
 its fellow-wonder. According to the 
 geologists, the cataract has been about 
 four hundred centuries in becoming 
 what it is, but the city has come to pass 
 in thirty-three years. 
 
 On Monday morning, October 4, 
 1834, word was brought to the people 
 of Chicago that a large black bear had 
 been seen in a strip of woods a quar- 
 ter of a mile out of town. The male 
 population seized their guns and made 
 for the forest, where the bear was soon 
 treed and shot. After so cheering an 
 exploit, the hunters, disinclined to re- 
 sume their ordinary labors, resolved to 
 make a day of it, and have a dash at 
 the wolves which then prowled nightly 
 in every part of Chicago. Before the 
 night closed in they had killed forty 
 wolves, all on the site of the present 
 Metropolis of the Northwest! The 
 wolves, however, did not take the hint, 
 since we learn that, as late as 1838, the 
 howlings of this pest of the prairies 
 were occasionally heard far within the 
 present city limits. Yet even then the 
 inhabitants of the place were bewildered 
 at the rapidity of its growth, and spoke 
 of the brilliant prospects before it very 
 much as they now do. 
 
 In 1830, Chicago was what it had 
 been for a quarter of a century, — a mil- 
 iary post and fur station, consisting of 
 twelve^ habitations. There was a log 
 fort, with its garrison of two companies 
 of United States troops. There was 
 the fur agency. There were three tav- 
 erns, so caJied, much haunted by idle, 
 drunken Indians, who brought in furs, 
 
 and remained to drink up the proceeds. 
 There were two stores supplied with 
 such goods as Indians buy. There was 
 a blacksmith's shop, a house for the 
 interpreter of the station, and one oc- 
 cupied by Indian chiefs. All that part 
 of Illinois swarmed with Indians. As 
 many Indian trails then marked the 
 prairie and concentrated at the agency- 
 house as there are railroads now ter- 
 minating in the city of Chicago ; for the 
 Indians brought furs to that point from 
 beyond the Mississippi, as well as from 
 the great prairies of the North and 
 South. Once a year John Jacob Astor 
 sent a schooner to the post to convey 
 supplies to it, and take away the year's 
 product of fur. Once a week in sum- 
 mer, twice a month in winter, a mail 
 rider brought news to the place from 
 the great world on the other side of the 
 Lakes. In 1830, there resided at Chi- 
 cago, besides the garrison and the fur 
 agent, four white families. In 1831, 
 there were twelve families ; and when 
 winter came on, the troops having been 
 withdrawn, the whole population moved 
 into the fort, and had a pleasant winter 
 of it, with their debating society and 
 balls. In 1832, the taxes amounted to 
 nearly one hundred and fifty dollars, 
 twelve of which were expended in the 
 erection of Chicago's first public build- 
 ing, — a pound for stray cattle. 
 
 But in 1833, the rush began. Before 
 that year closed there were fifty fami- 
 lies floundering in Chicago mud. When 
 the forty wolves were slain in 1834, 
 there were, as it appears, nearly two 
 thousand inhabitants in the town ; and 
 in November, 1835, more than three 
 thousand. 
 
 The motive must have been power- 
 ful which could induce such large num- 
 bers of people to settle upon that most 
 uninviting shore. A new town on a flat 
 prairie, as seen from car-windows, has 
 usually the aspect which is described 
 as God-forsaken. Wagon-wheels have 
 obliterated the only beauty the prairie 
 
326 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 ever had, and streaked it with an ex- 
 cellent article of blacking. There may- 
 be but twenty little wooden houses in 
 the place ; but it is " laid out " with all 
 the rigor of mathematics ; and every 
 visible object, whether animate or in- 
 animate, the pigs that root in the soft 
 black prairie mire, the boys, the horses, 
 the wagons, the houses, the fences, the 
 school-house, the steps of the store, the 
 railroad platform, are all powdered or 
 plastered with disturbed prairie. If, 
 filled with compassion for the unhappy 
 beings whom stern fate seems to have 
 cast out upon that dismal plain, far 
 from the abodes of men, the traveller 
 enters into conversation with them, he 
 finds them all hope and animation, and 
 disposed to pity Mm because he neither 
 owns any corner lots in that future 
 metropolis, nor has intellect enough to 
 see what a speculation it would be to 
 buy a few. Pity ! You might as well 
 pity the Prince of Wales because he is 
 not yet king. 
 
 Chicago, for fifteen years after it be- 
 gan its rapid increase, was perhaps of 
 all prairie towns the most repulsive to 
 every human sense. The place was in 
 vile odor even among the Indians, since 
 the name they gave it, — Chicago, — if 
 it does not mean skunk, as some old 
 hunters aver, signifies nothing of sweet- 
 er odor than wild onion. 
 
 The prairie on that part of the shore 
 of Lake Michigan appears to the eye 
 as flat as the lake itself, and its average 
 height above the lake is about six feet. 
 A gentleman who arrived at Chicago 
 from the South in 1833 reports that he 
 waded the last eight miles of his jour- 
 ney in water from one to three feet 
 deep, — a sheet of water extending as 
 far as the eye could reach over what is 
 now the fashionable quarter of Chicago 
 and its most elegant suburbs. Anoth- 
 er traveller records, that, in 1831, in 
 riding about what is now the very cen- 
 tre and heart of the business portion of 
 the city, he often felt the water swash- 
 ing through his stirrups. Even in dry 
 summer weather that part of the prairie 
 was very wet, and during the rainy sea- 
 sons no one attempted to pass over it 
 
 on foot. "I would not have given 
 sixpence an acre for the whole of it," 
 said a gentleman, speaking of land 
 much of which is now held at five hun- 
 dred dollars a. foot. It looked so un- 
 promising to farmers' eyes, that Chica- 
 go imported a considerable part of its 
 provisions from the eastern shores of 
 Lake Michigan, as late as 1838. Chi- 
 cago, that did this only twenty-eight 
 years ago, now feeds states and king- 
 doms. 
 
 Why settle such a spot, when the 
 same shore presented better sites ? It 
 was only because the Chicago River 
 furnished there the possibility of a 
 harbor on the coast of the stormiest 
 of lakes. The Chicago River is not a 
 river. The lake at that point had cut 
 into the soft prairie, just as the ocean 
 cuts deep, regular fissures into the rock- 
 bound coast of New England and its 
 rocky isles. This cutting, which was a 
 hundred yards wide, ran straight into 
 the prairie for three quarters of a mile, 
 then divided into two forks, one run- 
 ning north, the other south, and both 
 parallel to the lake shore. These two 
 branches extend for several miles, and 
 lose themselves at last in the prairie 
 sloughs. There is no tide or flow to 
 this curious inlet, except such as is 
 caused by the winds blowing the waters 
 of the lake into it, which flows out 
 when the wind changes or subsides. 
 Originally the inlet was twenty feet 
 deep, but, the mouth being obstructed 
 by a sand-bar, it only admitted vessels 
 of thirty or forty tons. But the crevice 
 was there, ready for the dredge, which 
 has since made it capable of receiving 
 the largest ships that sail the lakes, 
 and given Chicago thirty miles of 
 wharves. Considering the peculiar 
 destiny of Chicago, as the great dis- 
 tributor of commodities, no engineer 
 could have contrived a more convenient 
 harbor ; for, go where you will in the 
 city, you cannot get far from it, and 
 every mill, warehouse, elevator, and 
 factory can have its branch or basin, 
 and receive and send away merchan- 
 dise in boats at its door. Those draw- 
 bridges, it is true, are rather in the way 
 
1867.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 327 
 
 at present. It is a trial to the patience 
 to have to wait while seventeen lit- 
 tle snorting tug -boats tow through 
 the draw seventeen long three-masters 
 from the lake ; but nothing daunts 
 Chicago. In three years from this 
 time, those seventeen maddening draw- 
 bridges will have been superseded by 
 seventeen tunnels. Underneath that 
 oozy prairie, which an hour's rain con- 
 verts into Day and Martin, and an 
 hour's sun into fine Maccoboy, there 
 is an excellent clay which affords the 
 finest tunnelling, and which indomi- 
 table Chicago turns to various account, 
 as time reveals the need of it. 
 
 The growth of Chicago since 1833, 
 though it strikes every mind with won- 
 der, is not in the least mysterious. 
 There the city stands, at the southern 
 end of Lake Michigan, which gives it 
 necessarily a leading share of the com- 
 merce of all the Lakes, and easy access 
 by land, round the southern shore of 
 Lake Michigan, to all the East and 
 Southeast. But there Chicago was for 
 thirty years without advancing beyond 
 the rank of an outpost of civilization, 
 and there it might have stood for ages 
 In the same condition, if the region be- 
 hind it had remained unpeopled. That 
 muddy inlet, called the Chicago River, 
 is a portal to the prairies, and Chicago 
 has grown with the development and 
 accessibility of that wonderful region, 
 of which it is the grand depot, exchange, 
 counting-house, and metropolis. 
 
 Those prairies, long undervalued, are 
 now known to be that portion of the 
 earth's surface where Nature has ac- 
 cumulated the greatest variety and 
 quantity of what man needs for the 
 sustenance and the decoration of his 
 life, and where she has placed the few- 
 est and smallest obstacles in his way. 
 That is the region where a deep furrow 
 can be drawn through' the richest mould 
 for thirty miles or more, without strik- 
 ing a pebble, a bog, or a root; and 
 under almost every part of which there 
 is deposited some kind of mineral — ■ 
 clay, coal, stone, lead, iron — useful 
 to man. Besides being well watered 
 by rivers, nowhere is it so easy to 
 
 make artificial highways, — roads, rail- 
 roads, and canals. The climate, like all 
 climates, has its inconveniences, but, 
 upon the whole, there is none better. 
 Not much of the prairie land is flat ; 
 most of it is undulating enough for util- 
 ity and beauty. Blest are the eyes that 
 see a rolling prairie at a season of the 
 year when the grass is green and the 
 sky is clear ! It is an enchanting world 
 of azure and billowy emerald, where, 
 from the summit of a green wave twenty 
 feet high, you can see whole counties. 
 The absence of all dark objects, such 
 as woods, roads, rocks, hills, and fences, 
 gives the visitor the feeling that never 
 before in all his life was he completely 
 out of doors. It is a delicious sensa- 
 tion, when you inquire the way to a 
 place ten miles off, to have it pointed 
 out, and to make for it across the ver- 
 dant elastic prairie, untrammelled by 
 roads. The landscape has, too, such a 
 finished aspect, that the traveller finds 
 it difficult to believe that he is not 
 wandering in a boundless park, refined 
 by a thousand years of culture. When 
 the country has been settled for many 
 years, it does not lose this park-like 
 appearance ; it looks then as if some 
 enlightened nobleman had turned demo- 
 crat, torn down his park walls, and in- 
 vited his neighbors to come in and 
 build upon his rounded knolls and 
 wave-like ridges. 
 
 And there is enough of this exquisite 
 country for twelve great States, and to 
 maintain a population of one hundred 
 millions. It is sure to be the seat of 
 empire forever. Chicago, the inevi- 
 table metropolis of the vigorous north- 
 western third of the prairie world, has 
 taken the lead in rendering the whole 
 of it accessible. Her vocation is to put 
 every good acre in all that region with- 
 in ten miles of a railroad, and to con- 
 nect every railroad with a system of 
 ship-canals terminating in the Missis- 
 sippi and the Atlantic Ocean. That is, 
 has been, and will be for many a year 
 to come Chicago's work ; and her own 
 growth will be exactly measured by her 
 wisdom and efficiency in doing it. So 
 far, every mile of railroad has yielded 
 
328 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 its proportionable revenue to the great 
 prairie exchange and banking-house; 
 and this fact, now clearly seen by every 
 creature in the town, guarantees the 
 execution of the task. 
 
 They see it now ; but it ought to 
 moderate the boasting of some of the 
 elders of Chicago, that they were full 
 fifteen years in finding it out. The 
 boasters should further consider, that 
 the canal which connects Lake Michi- 
 gan with the Illinois River and with 
 the Mississippi was thought of in 1814, 
 and authorized in 1825, when as yet 
 there was no Chicago ; and the fogy 
 interest should ever be kept in mind 
 that the projectors of the first railroad 
 to the Mississippi had to encounter the 
 opposition of most of the business men 
 of the town, who were certain it would 
 ruin Chicago by distributing its busi- 
 ness along the line of the road. But, 
 with these deductions allowed, there is 
 enough in the early history of the city 
 „to justify more self - laudation than is 
 generally becoming. 
 
 Those crowds of idle and dissolute 
 Indians were the first obstacle to the 
 growth of Chicago with which the ear- 
 ly settlers had to contend. On a day 
 in September, 1833, seven thousand of 
 them gathered at the village to meet 
 commissioners of the United States for 
 the purpose of selling their lands in 
 Illinois and Wisconsin. In a large 
 tent on the bank of the river, the chiefs 
 signed a treaty which ceded to the 
 United States the best twenty million 
 acres of the Northwest, and agreed to 
 remove twenty days' journey west of 
 the Mississippi. A year later, four 
 thousand of the dusky nuisances as- 
 sembled in Chicago to receive their 
 first annual annuity. The goods to be 
 distributed were heaped up on the 
 prairie, and the Indians were made to 
 sit down around the pile in circles, the 
 squaws sitting demurely in the outer 
 ring. Those who were selected to dis- 
 tribute the merchandise took armfuls 
 from the heap, and tossed the articles 
 to favorites seated on the ground. 
 Those who were overlooked soon grew 
 impatient, rose to their feet, pressed 
 
 forward, and at last rusned upon the 
 pile, each struggling to seize something 
 from it. So severe was the scramble, 
 that those who had secured an armful 
 could not get away, and the greater 
 number of empty-handed could not get 
 near the heap. Then those on the out- 
 side began to hurl heavy articles at the 
 crowd, to clear the way for themselves, 
 and the scramble ended in a fight, 
 in which several of the Indians were 
 killed, and a large number wounded. 
 Night closed in on a wild debauch, and 
 when the next morning arrived few of 
 the Indians were the better off for the 
 thirty thousand dollars' worth of goods 
 which had been given them. Similar 
 scenes, with similar bloody results, were 
 enacted in the fall of 1835 ; but that 
 was the last Indian payment Chicago 
 ever saw. In September, 1835, a long 
 train of forty wagons, each drawn by 
 four oxen, conveyed away, across the 
 prairies, the children and effects of 
 the Pottawatomies, the men and able- 
 bodied women walking alongside. In 
 twenty days they crossed the Missis- 
 sippi, and for twenty days longer con- 
 tinued their westward march, and Chi- 
 cago was troubled with them no more. 
 Walking in the imposing streets of the 
 Chicago of to-day, how difficult it is to 
 realize that thirty-two years have not 
 elapsed since the red men were dis- 
 possessed of the very site on which the 
 city stands, and were " toted " off in 
 forty days to a point now reached in 
 fifteen hours ! 
 
 This was the work of our common 
 Uncle, and Chicago does not boast of 
 it. Nor can she claim the credit of the 
 improvement of the harbor in 1833 and 
 1834, which first called the attention of 
 the country to that frontier post. The 
 United States spent thirty thousand 
 dollars, in 1833, in dredging out the 
 Chicago River; and in the spring of 
 1834 a most timely freshet swept away 
 the bar at the mouth of the river, making 
 it accessible to the largest lake craft. 
 This made Chicago an important lake 
 port at once. The town had taken its 
 first stride toward greatness. In 1836 
 the population was four thousand. 
 
1867.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 329 
 
 Then there was a check to the pros- 
 perity of Chicago, as to that of Illinois 
 and of the United States ; and the 
 population scarcely increased for five 
 years, if, indeed, it did not diminish. 
 Besides the mania for land speculation, 
 which ended in prostrating the busi- 
 ness of the whole country, Illinoisans 
 had embarked the credit of the State in 
 schemes of internal improvement too 
 costly for the time, though since sur- 
 passed and executed by private enter- 
 prise. The State was bankrupt ; work 
 on the railroads ceased ; and even the 
 canal designed to connect Lake Michi- 
 gan with the Illinois River was aban- 
 doned for a time. Chicago languished, 
 and repented that it had ever dared to 
 be anything but a military post. Those 
 corner lots, those river sites, those lake 
 borders, so eagerly sought in 1835, 
 were loathsome to the sight of luckless 
 holders in 1837. Some men in Chicago 
 are millionnaires to-day only because 
 they could not sell their land at any 
 price during those years of desolation 
 and despair. But it was in those very 
 years, 1837 to 1842, that Chicago en- 
 tered upon its career. A little beef had 
 already been salted and sent across the 
 lake ; but in 1839 the business began to 
 assume promising proportions, 3,000 
 cattle having been driven in from the 
 prairies, barrelled, and exported. In 
 1838, a venturesome trader shipped 
 thirty-nine two-bushel bags of wheat. 
 *Next year, nearly 4,000 bushels were 
 exported ; the next, 10,000 ; the next, 
 40,000. In 1842, the amount rose, all 
 at once, from 40,000 to nearly 600,000, 
 and announced to parties interested, 
 that the " hard times " were coming to 
 an end in Chicago. But the soft times 
 were not. That mountain of grain was 
 brought into this quagmire of a town 
 from far back in the prairies, — twenty, 
 fifty, one hundred, and even one hun- 
 dred and fifty miles ! The season for 
 carrying grain to market is also the 
 season of rain, and many a farmer in 
 those times has seen his load hopelessly 
 " slewed " within what is now Chicago. 
 The streets used often to be utterly 
 choked and impassable from the con- 
 
 course of wagons, which ground the 
 roads into long vats of blacking. And 
 yet, before there was a railroad begun 
 or a canal finished, Chicago exported 
 two and a quarter millions of bushels 
 of grain in a year, and sent back, on 
 most of the wagons that brought it, 
 part of a load of merchandise. 
 
 The canal connecting the Chicago 
 River with the Illinois, and through 
 that river with the Mississippi, begun 
 in 1836, and finished in 1848, opened 
 to Chicago an immense area of un- 
 cultivated acres, which could then 
 come into profitable cultivation. But 
 the immediate effects of this great 
 event upon the trade of the city were 
 not great enough to open the eyes of 
 its business men to the single con- 
 dition upon which the growth of the 
 town depended, namely, its accessi- 
 bility to the Eastern cities and to the 
 great prairie world. Chicago was still 
 little more than a thriving country 
 town, which received the products of 
 adjacent farms, and gave in exchange 
 merchandise brought in three weeks 
 from the sea-shore. Middle-aged gen- 
 tlemen of Chicago have a lively recol- 
 lection of the opposition of store- 
 keepers to the first project of a rail- 
 road to the Mississippi River. In 
 1850, the Chicago and Galena Rail- 
 road was completed for forty-two miles, 
 to the rolling prairies by which the 
 beautiful and vigorous town of Elgin 
 is surrounded. From that time, there 
 were indeed fewer ox-teams wallowing 
 in Chicago mire, but trade increased 
 and changed its character from retail 
 to wholesale ; and the wheat coming 
 in by car-loads to the river shore was 
 poured into the waiting vessels with a 
 great saving of labor and expense. Still 
 there were men in Chicago who did 
 not take the idea. The money which 
 built that forty-two miles of road had 
 to be borrowed, in great part, on the 
 personal responsibility of the directors, 
 and the road could not have been built 
 at all but for the fact that a prairie rail- 
 road is nothing but two ditches and a 
 track. The railroads, said the fogies, 
 will drain the country of its resources, 
 
330 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 Chicago of its business, and place the 
 welfare of Illinois at the mercy of East- 
 ern capitalists. But when, in 1853, the 
 road paid a dividend of eleven per 
 cent, and it was found that Chicago 
 had trebled its population in six years 
 after the opening of the canal, and 
 that every mile of the railroad had 
 poured its quota of wealth into Chicago 
 coffers, then the truth took possession 
 of the whole mind of Chicago, and be- 
 came its fixed idea, that every acre 
 with which it could put itself into 
 easy communication must pay tribute 
 to it forever., From that time there 
 has been no pause and no hesitation ; 
 but all the surplus force and revenue 
 of Chicago have been expended in 
 making itself the centre of a great sys- 
 tem of railroads and canals. 
 
 It was in April, 1849, eighteen years 
 ago, that the whistle of the locomotive 
 was first heard on the prairies west of 
 Chicago ; and this locomotive drew a 
 train to a distance of ten miles from 
 the city, amid the cheers of the people 
 who had little to lose, and the fore- 
 bodings of most of those who had 
 much. The railroad system of which 
 Chicago is a centre now includes eight 
 thousand miles of track, and the rail- 
 road system of which Chicago is the 
 centre embraces nearly five thousand 
 miles of track. A passenger train 
 reaches or leaves the city every fifteen 
 minutes of the twenty-four hours. Not 
 less than two hundred trains arrive or 
 depart in a day and night. No farm 
 in Illinois is more than fifty miles from 
 a station, and very few so far ; the 
 average distance, as near as we can 
 compute so impossible a problem, is 
 not more than seven miles. There are 
 sixteen points on the Mississippi which 
 have railroad communication with Chi- 
 cago. The Illinois Central, with its 
 seven hundred miles of road, lays open 
 the central part of the long State of 
 Illinois, and has brought into culture 
 nearly two million acres of the best 
 land in the world. The straight road 
 to St. Louis renders accessible another 
 line of Illinois counties, besides "tap- 
 ping" the commerce of the Missouri 
 
 River at Alton, and that of the Lower 
 Mississippi at St. Louis. Other roads 
 stretch out long arms into the fertile 
 prairies of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minne- 
 sota, Missouri, and extend far to- 
 wards the mining region of Lake Su- 
 perior ; and on whatever lines railroads 
 are building or contemplated to the 
 Pacific, Chicago means to be ready 
 with facilities for reaping her natural 
 share of the advantages resulting from 
 their completion. It is but fifteen years 
 since Chicago first had railroad com- 
 munication with the cities on the At- 
 lantic coast, and the traveller now has 
 his choice of three main lines, which 
 branch out to every important inter- 
 mediate point. Railroad depots, im- 
 mense in extent and admirably con- 
 venient, are rising in Chicago in an- 
 ticipation of the incalculable business 
 of the future, — such depots as ought 
 to put to shame the directors of some 
 of our Eastern roads, who afford to 
 their human freight accommodations 
 less generous than Chicago bestows 
 upon the pigs and cattle that pass 
 through the city. There is one depot 
 for passengers only, which has under 
 cover three quarters of a mile of track, 
 from which three trains can start at 
 the same moment, without the least 
 danger of interference, and wherein no 
 passenger has to cross a track in 
 changing cars. In every sphere of 
 exertion, those Western men improve 
 upon Eastern models and methods. 
 They have sleeping-cars in those grand 
 depots, built at a cost of twenty-five 
 thousand dollars, in which a king 
 would only be too happy to ride, sup, 
 sleep, and play whist. 
 
 In some parts of the country, rail- 
 roads have temporarily diminished the 
 importance of water communication. 
 This is not the case with the Great Lakes, 
 nor with Chicago's lion's share of their 
 commerce. It is but yesterday that 
 Astor's single schooner of forty tons 
 was the only vessel known to the Chi- 
 cago River except Indian canoes. Chi- 
 cago is now more than the Marseilles 
 of our Mediterranean, though Marseilles 
 was a place of note twenty-four hundred 
 
1 86;.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 331 
 
 years ago. Seventy-seven steamers, 
 one hundred and eighteen barques, for- 
 ty-three brigs, six hundred and thirteen 
 schooners, fifty-three scows and barges, 
 — in all, nine hundred and four vessels, 
 carrying 218,215 tons, and employing 
 ten thousand sailors, — now ply be- 
 tween Chicago and the other Lake 
 ports. In the winter, after navigation 
 has closed, four hundred vessels may 
 be counted in the harbor, frozen up 
 safely in the ice. On a certain day of 
 last November, a favorable wind blew 
 into port two hundred and eighteen 
 vessels loaded with timber. 
 
 Provided thus with the means of 
 gathering in and sending away the 
 surplus products of the prairies, the 
 granary of the world, and of supplying 
 them with merchandise in return, Chi- 
 cago has, for the last few years, trans- 
 acted an amount of business that as- 
 tonishes and bewilders herself, when 
 she has time to pause and add up the 
 figures. The export of grain, which 
 began in 1838 with seventy-eight bush- 
 els, had run up to six millions and a 
 half in 1853. In 1854, when there 
 were two lines of railroad in operation 
 across the State of Michigan to the 
 East, the export of grain more than 
 doubled, the quantity being nearly 
 eleven millions of bushels. From that 
 time, the export has been as follows : — 
 
 Year. 
 
 Bushels. . 
 
 1854 • • 
 
 . 12,932,320 
 
 1855 . 
 
 16,633,700 
 
 1856 . . 
 
 . 21,583,221 
 
 1857 . • 
 
 . 18,032,678 
 
 1858 . . 
 
 . 20,035,166 
 
 1859 • • 
 
 16,771,812 
 
 i860 
 
 . 31,108,759 
 
 l86l 
 
 50,481,862 
 
 1862 
 
 56,484,110 
 
 1863 . . 
 
 • 54.741,839 
 
 1864-5 • • • 
 
 47,124,494 
 
 1865-6 . 
 
 53,212,224 
 
 with which this inconceivable quantity 
 of grain is " handled," as they term it, 
 although hands never touch it, is one 
 of the wonders of Chicago. Whether 
 it arrives by canal, railroad, or lake, it 
 comes "in bulk," i. e. without bags or 
 
 barrels, loose in the car or boat. The 
 train or the vessel stops at the side of 
 one of those seventeen tall elevators, by 
 which the grain is pumped into enor- 
 mous bins, and poured out into other 
 cars or vessels on the other side of the 
 building, — the double operation being 
 performed in a few minutes by steam. 
 The utmost care is taken to do this 
 business honestly. The grain is all 
 inspected, and the brand of the in- 
 spector fixes its grade absolutely. The 
 owner may have his grain deposited in 
 the part of the elevator assigned to its 
 quality, where it blends with a moun- 
 tain of the same grade. He never sees 
 his grain again, but he carries away 
 the receipt of the clerk of the eleva- 
 tor, which represents his property as 
 unquestionably as a certified check. 
 Those little slips of paper, changing 
 hands on 'Change, constitute the busi- 
 ness of the "grain men " of Chicago. 
 When Chicago exported a few thou- 
 sands of bushels a year, the business 
 blocked the streets and filled the town 
 with commotion ; but now that it ex- 
 ports fifty or sixty millions of bushels, 
 a person might live a month at Chicago 
 without being aware that anything was 
 doing in grain. 
 
 Recently, Chicago has sought to 
 economize in transportation, by send- 
 ing away part of this great mass of 
 food in the form of flour. The ten 
 flour-mills there produce just one thou- 
 sand barrels of flour every w r orking day. 
 
 Saving in the cost of transportation 
 being Chicago's special business and 
 mission, and corn being the great prod- 
 uct of the Northwest, it is in the trans- 
 port of that grain that the most surpris- 
 ing economy has been effected. A way 
 has been discovered of packing fifteen 
 or twenty bushels of Indian corn in a 
 single barrel. " The corn crop," as 
 Mr. S. B. Ruggles remarked recently 
 in Chicago, " is condensed and reduced 
 in bulk by feeding it into an animal 
 form, more portable. The hog eats the 
 corn, and Europe eats the hog. Corn 
 thus becomes incarnate ; for what is a 
 hog, but fifteen or twenty bushels of 
 corn on four legs ? " Mr. Ruggles fur- 
 
332 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 ther observed, amid the laughter of his 
 audience, that the three hundred mil- 
 lions of pounds of American pork ex- 
 ported to Europe in 1863 were equal to 
 " a million and a half of hogs marching 
 across the ocean." 
 
 The business of pork packing, as it 
 is called, which can only be done to 
 advantage on a great scale, has attained 
 enormous proportions in Chicago, sur- 
 passing those of the same business in 
 Cincinnati, where it originated. In 
 one season of three months, Chicago 
 has converted 904,659 hogs into pork ; 
 which was one third of all the hogs 
 massacred in the Western country 
 during the year. This was in 1863, a 
 year of abundance ; and it has not 
 been equalled since. Walking in single 
 file, close together, that number of hogs 
 would form a line reaching from Chi- 
 cago to New York. 
 
 During the last three years, the num- 
 ber of cattle received in Chicago from 
 the prairies, and sent away in various 
 forms to the East, has averaged about 
 one thousand for each working day. 
 In one year, the last year of the war, 
 92,459 of these cattle were killed, salted, 
 and barrelled in Chicago. Neverthe- 
 less, a person might reside there for 
 years, and never suspect that any busi- 
 ness was done in cattle, never see a 
 drove, never hear the bellow of an ox. 
 
 A bullock is an awkward piece of 
 merchandise to " handle "• ; he has a 
 will of his own, with much power to 
 resist the will of other creatures ; he 
 cannot be pumped up into an elevator, 
 nor shot into the hold of a vessel ; he 
 must have two pails of water every 
 twelve hours, and he cannot 'go long- 
 without a large bundle of hay. There 
 is also a Society for the Prevention of 
 Cruelty to Animals, with an eloquent 
 and resolute Henry Bergh to see that 
 cattle have their rights. Chicago has 
 learned to conform to these circum- 
 stances, and new challenges mankind 
 to admire the exquisite way in which 
 those three hundred thousand cattle 
 per annum, and that million and a half 
 of hogs, sheep, and calves, are received, 
 lodged, entertained, and despatched. 
 
 Out on the flat prairie, four miles 
 south of the city, and two feet below 
 the level of the river, — part of that 
 eight miles which our traveller found 
 under water in 1833, — may be seen 
 the famous " Stock Yards," styled, 
 in one of the Chicago guide - books, 
 "the great bovine city of the 
 world." Two millions of dollars 
 have been expended there in the con- 
 struction of a cattle market. The com- 
 pany owning it have now nearly a square 
 mile of land, 345 acres of which are 
 already enclosed into cattle pens, — 150 
 of these acres being floored with plank. 
 There is at the present time pen room 
 for 20,000 cattle, 75,000 hogs, and 
 20,000 sheep, the sheep and hogs being 
 provided with sheds ; and no Thursday 
 has passed since the yards were opened 
 when they were not full, — Thursday 
 being the fullest day. This bovine city 
 of the world, like all other prairie cities, 
 is laid out in streets and alleys, cross- 
 ing at right angles. The projectors 
 have paid New York the compliment 
 of naming the principal street Broad- 
 way. It is a mile long and seventy-five 
 feet wide, and is divided by a light 
 fence into three paths, so that herds of 
 cattle can pass one another without 
 mingling, and leave an unobstructed 
 road for the drovers. Nine railroads 
 have constructed branches to the yards, 
 and there is to be a canal connecting it 
 with one of the forks of the Chicago 
 River. 
 
 Nothing is more simple and easy 
 than the working of the system of these 
 stock yards. The sum of anguish an- 
 nually endured in the United States 
 will be greatly lessened when that sys- 
 tem shall prevail all along the line from 
 the prairies to the Atlantic. A cattle 
 train stops along a street of pens ; the 
 side of each car is removed ; a gently 
 declining bridge wooes the living freight 
 down into a clean, planked enclosure, 
 where on one side is a long trough, 
 which the turn of a faucet fills with 
 water, and on another side is a manger 
 which can be immediately filled with 
 hay. While the tired and hungry ani- 
 mals are enjoying this respite from the 
 
1867.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 333 
 
 torture of their ride, their owner or 
 his agent finds comfort in the Hough 
 House (so named from one of the chief 
 promoters of the enterprise), a hand- 
 some hotel of yellow stone, built solely 
 for the accommodation of the " cattle 
 men," and capable of entertaining two 
 hundred of them at once. A few steps 
 from the hotel is the Cattle Exchange, 
 another spacious and elegant edifice of 
 yellow stone, wherein there is a great 
 room for the chaffering or preliminary 
 " gassing " (as the drovers term it) of 
 buyers and sellers ; also a bank solely 
 for cattle men's use, with a daily busi- 
 ness ranging from one hundred thou- 
 sand to five hundred thousand dollars ; 
 also a telegraph office, which reports, 
 from time to time, the price of beef, 
 pork, and mutton in two hemispheres, 
 and sends back to the cattle markets of 
 mankind the condition of affairs in this, 
 the great bovine city of the world. The 
 "gassing" being accomplished, the 
 cattle men leave this fine Exchange, 
 and go forth to view the cattle which 
 have been the subject of their conversa- 
 tion, and they move about in the midst 
 of those prodigious herds, and inspect 
 the occupants of any particular pen, 
 with as much ease as a lady examines 
 pictures in a window. The purchase 
 completed, the cattle are driven along, 
 through opening pens and broad streets, 
 to the yards adjoining the railroad, by 
 which they are to resume their journey. 
 On the way to those yards, they are 
 weighed at the rate of thirty cattle a 
 minute, by merely pausing in the weigh- 
 ing pen as they pass. The men return 
 to the Exchange, where the money is 
 paid, all the cattle business being done 
 for cash ; after which they conclude the 
 affair by dining together at the hotel, 
 or at an excellent restaurant in the 
 Exchange itself. 
 
 In this elegant Exchange room two 
 classes of cattle men meet, — those who 
 collect the cattle from the prairie States, 
 — Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, 
 Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, — and 
 those who distribute the cattle among 
 the Eastern cities. One of the potent 
 civilizers is doing business on the grand 
 
 scale. . By means of this Cattle Ex- 
 change, a repulsive and barbarizing 
 business is lifted out of the mire, and 
 rendered clean, easy, respectable, and 
 pleasant. The actual handling and 
 supervision of the cattle require few 
 men, who are themselves raised in the 
 social scale by being parts of a great 
 system ; while the controlling minds 
 are left free to work at the arithmetic 
 and book-keeping of the business. We 
 remember with pleasure the able and po- 
 lite gentlemen the necessities of whose 
 business suggested this enterprise, and 
 who now control it. The economy of 
 the system is something worth consid- 
 eration. The design of the directors 
 is to keep the rent of the pens at such 
 rates as to exactly pay the cost of 
 cleaning and preserving them, and to 
 get the requisite profit only from the 
 sale of hay and corn. One hundred 
 tons of hay are frequently consumed in 
 the yards in one day. If those yards 
 were in New England, the sale of the 
 manure would be an important part of 
 the business ; but in those fertile prai- 
 ries, they are glad to sell it at ten cents 
 a wagon-load, which is less than the 
 cost of shovelling it up. 
 
 There is one commodity in which 
 Chicago deals that makes a show pro- 
 portioned to its importance. Six hun- 
 dred and fourteen millions of feet of 
 timber, equal to about fifty millions of 
 ordinary pine boards, which Chicago 
 sold last year, cannot be hidden in* a 
 corner. The prairies, to which Nature 
 has been so variously bountiful, do 
 lack this first necessity of the settler, 
 and it is Chicago that sends up the 
 lake for it and supplies it to the prai- 
 ries. Miles of timber yards extend 
 along one of the forks of the river ; the 
 harbor is choked with arriving timber 
 vessels ; timber trains shoot over the 
 prairies in every direction. To econo- 
 mize transportation, they are now be- 
 ginning to despatch timber in the form 
 of ready-made houses. There is a firm 
 in Chicago which is happy to furnish 
 cottages, villas, school-houses, stores, 
 taverns, churches, court - houses, or 
 towns, wholesale and retail, and to for- 
 
334 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 ward them, securely packed, to any part 
 of the country. No doubt we shall 
 soon have the exhilaration of reading 
 advertisements of these town-makers, 
 to the effect, that orders for the smallest 
 villages will be thankfully received ; 
 county towns made to order ; a metrop- 
 olis furnished with punctuality and 
 despatch ; any town on our list sent, 
 carriage paid, on receipt of price ; rows 
 of cottages always on hand ; churches 
 in every style. N. B. Clergymen and 
 others are requested to call before pur- 
 chasing elsewhere. 
 
 While this great business has been 
 forming, Chicago itself has undergone 
 many* and strange transformations. 
 The population, which numbered 70 
 in 1830, was 4,853 in 1840. During 
 the next five years it nearly trebled, 
 being 12,088 in 1845. In ^o, the 
 year in which the railroad was opened 
 to Elgin, the population had mounted 
 to 29,963, and during the next ten years 
 it quadrupled. In i860, 110,973 per- 
 sons lived in Chicago. In 1865, after 
 four years of war, the population was 
 178,900. In this spring of 1867, if we 
 include the suburban villages, which 
 are numerous and flourishing, and 
 which are as much Chicago as Harlem 
 is New York, we may safely put down 
 the population at 230,000. The closing 
 of the war has not checked the growth 
 of the city. We are assured by the 
 moderate and conscientious " Chicago 
 Tribune," that in 1866 the number of 
 houses of all kinds built in Chicago 
 was nine thousand ; for the construction 
 of which sixty-two millions of bricks 
 were made from the clay over which 
 the city stands. We learn, also, from a 
 series of articles in the vigorous and 
 enterprising " Chicago Republican," 
 that in the young cities of the North- 
 west, which must ever flourish or de- 
 cline with Chicago, there is the same 
 astonishing activity in the building of 
 houses. 
 
 The city is no longer a quagmire. 
 For many years after Chicago began to 
 be a flourishing town, its business men 
 aimed to make a rapid fortune, and re- 
 tire to the banks of the Hudson, or to 
 
 the pleasant places of New England, 
 and enjoy it. Who could enjoy life on 
 a wet prairie, made passable by pine 
 boards, through the knot-holes and 
 crevices of which water could be seen, 
 and where a carriage would sink three 
 or four feet within two miles of the 
 court-house ? But about fifteen years 
 ago, when the effect of the first rail- 
 road revealed the future of Chicago, 
 the leading men said to one another : 
 " This city is to be the abode of a mil- 
 lion or more of the American people. 
 Meanwhile it is our home. Let us 
 make it fit to live in. Let us make it 
 pleasant for our children." Seldom 
 have men taken hold of a task more re- 
 pulsive or more difficult, and seldom 
 has human labor produced such strik- 
 ing results in so short a time. The 
 mud and water for a long period were 
 the despair of the people, since water 
 will only run down hill, and part of the 
 town was below the level of the lake. 
 Planking was a poor expedient, though 
 unavoidable for a time. They tried a 
 system of open ditches for a while, 
 which in wet seasons only aggravated 
 the difficulty. Many hollow places 
 were filled up, but the whole prairie 
 was in fault. It became clear, at 
 length, that nothing would suffice short 
 of raising the whole town ; and, accord- 
 ingly, a higher grade was established, to 
 which all new buildings were required 
 to conform. It soon appeared that this 
 grade was not high enough, and one 
 still higher was ordained. Even this 
 proved inadequate ; and the present 
 grade was adopted, which lifts Chicago 
 about twelve feet above the level of the 
 prairie, and renders it perfectly drain- 
 able, and gives dry cellarage. It is as 
 common now in Chicago to store such 
 merchandise as dry goods, books, and 
 tea in basements, as it is in sandy New 
 York ; and in nearly all the newer res- 
 idences the dining-room and kitchen 
 are in the basement. During the ten 
 years while Chicago was going up out 
 of the mud of the prairie to its present 
 elevation, it was the best place in the 
 world in which to develop the muscles 
 of the lower half of the body. All the 
 
1867.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 335 
 
 newest houses were built, of course, 
 upon the new grade, and some spirited 
 owners raised old buildings to the prop- 
 er level ; but many houses were upon 
 the grades previously established, and 
 a large number were down upon the 
 original prairie. The consequence was, 
 that the plank sidewalks became a se- 
 ries of stairs. For half a block you 
 would walk upon an elevated path, look- 
 ing down upon the vehicles of the street 
 many feet below ; then, you would de- 
 scend a flight of stairs to, perhaps, the 
 lowest level of all, along which you 
 would proceed only a few steps, when 
 another flight of stairs assisted you to 
 one of the other grades. Such, how- 
 ever, were the energy and public spirit 
 of the people, that these inequalities, al- 
 though their removal involved immense 
 expenditure, have nearly all disappeared. 
 The huge Tremont House, a solid hotel 
 as large as the Astor, was raised bodily 
 from its foundation and left at the proper 
 height ; and whole blocks o|" brick stores 
 went up about the same time to the same 
 serene elevation. To this day, how- 
 ever, there are places in the less impor- 
 tant streets where the stranger can see 
 at one view all the past grades of the 
 town. The sidewalk will be upon the 
 grade now established ; the main street, 
 upon the one that preceded the present 
 and final level ; the houses, upon the 
 grade established when it was first de- 
 termined to raise the town ; while in 
 the vacant lots near by portions of the 
 undisturbed prairie may be discovered. 
 The principal streets are now paved 
 with stone, or else with that ne plus ul- 
 tra of comfort for horse and rider, for 
 passer-by and ladies living near, — the 
 Nicholson pavement. 
 
 The people of Chicago have had a 
 long and severe struggle with their 
 river, and they have not yet made a 
 complete conquest of it. The river and 
 its two forks, as we have before re- 
 marked, so divide the town, that you 
 cannot go far in any direction without 
 crossing one of them. In old times 
 the Indians carried people over in their 
 canoes, and, for some time after the 
 Indians had been wagoned off beyond 
 
 the Mississippi, a chance canoe was 
 still the usual means of crossing. Fer- 
 ries of canoes were then established, 
 and, in course of time, the canoes ex- 
 panded into commodious row-boats. 
 Next, floating bridges were tried, much 
 to the discontent of the mariners, who 
 found it difficult to run in their swift 
 vessels in time. One day, when a gale 
 was blowing inward, a vessel came 
 rushing into the river, and, before the 
 bridge could be floated round, ran into 
 it, cut it in halves, and kept on her 
 way up the stream. The sailors much 
 approved this manoeuvre, and it had 
 also the effect of inducing landsmen 
 to reconsider floating bridges. Draw- 
 bridges then came in, seventeen of 
 which now span the river and its 
 branches. Better draw-bridges than 
 these can nowhere be found ; but the 
 inconvenience to which they subject 
 the busy " Chicagonese " (so their 
 rivals style them) must be seen to be 
 understood. Unfavorable winds some- 
 times detain vessels in the lake, until 
 three hundred of them are waiting to 
 enter. The wind changes ; the whole 
 fleet comes streaming in ; in twelve 
 hours, three hundred vessels are tugged 
 through the draw-bridges, which is an 
 average of more than two a minute. 
 At all the bridges, and on both sides 
 of them, crowds of impatient people, 
 and long lines of vehicles extending 
 back farther than the eye can reach, 
 are waiting. Now and then the bridges 
 can be closed for a short time, and 
 then tremendous is the rush to cross. 
 Often, before all the waiters have suc- 
 ceeded in getting over, the bell rings, 
 the bridge is cleared, and the draw 
 swings open to admit another pro- 
 cession of vessels, each towed by a 
 puffing and snorting little propeller. 
 These are exceptional days, and there 
 are other exceptional days in which 
 the bridges are seldom opened. But 
 we were informed, that a business man 
 who has any important appointment 
 in a distant part of the town allows 
 one hour for possible detention at the 
 bridges. Omnibuses leaving the ho- 
 tels for a depot a quarter of a mile dis- 
 
336 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 tant, but on the other side of the river, 
 start an hour before the departure of 
 the train. 
 
 All this inconvenience will soon be 
 a thing of the past. Perhaps before 
 these lines are read the first tunnel 
 under the river will have been opened. 
 Others will be at once begun. 
 
 That river, which is not a river, and 
 because it is not a river, is now giving 
 Chicago another opportunity to exert 
 its unconquerable energy and resolu- 
 tion. Into this forked inlet, all the 
 drainage of the town is poured, and 
 there is no current to carry it away 
 into the lake. Despite incessant dredg- 
 ing, these streams of impurity fill the 
 channel, and convert the water into a 
 liquid resembling in color and con- 
 sistency a rich pea-soup, such as the 
 benevolent Farmer ladles out so plenti- 
 fully to the poor women of New York. 
 This evil, great already, must increase 
 as rapidly as the town increases, and 
 might in time render the place unin- 
 habitable. Chicago is now expending 
 two or three millions of dollars in 
 changing that pool of abominations 
 into a pure and running stream. The 
 canal, before spoken of, which connects . 
 Lake Michigan with the Illinois River, 
 begins at the end of one of the branches 
 of the Chicago River, the water of 
 which is now pumped up into the canal 
 by steam. This canal Chicago is deep- 
 ening, so that the water of the river 
 will Jtow into it, and run down through 
 all its length to the Illinois, and so 
 carry away the impurities of the town 
 to the Mississippi. Thus, by one 
 operation, the pumping is obviated, 
 the canal is improved, the river is puri- 
 fied, and the city is rendered more 
 salubrious. The Chicago River will 
 at length become a river ; only, it will 
 run backwards. 
 
 With regard to that two-mile tunnel 
 under the blue lake, by which its purest 
 water, all uncontaminated by the town, 
 will soon flow, by ten thousand rills, 
 into every room and closet of the place, 
 it is not Chicago's fault if all the world 
 does not understand it. Indeed, we 
 are expressly informed by a guide- 
 
 book, that, "when the work was con- 
 ceived, the whole civilized world was 
 awed by the magnitude of the project." 
 In what state of mind, then, will the 
 whole civilized world find itself, when 
 it learns that a work of such magnitude 
 was executed in just three years, at a 
 cost of less than a million dollars ? 
 The work is really something to be 
 proud of, not for its magnitude, but 
 for the simplicity, originality, and bold- 
 ness of the idea. 
 
 Until within the last ten years, Chi- 
 cago was little more than what we 
 have previously named it, — the great 
 Northwestern Exchange. It was a 
 buyer and a seller on a great scale : but 
 it made scarcely anything, depending 
 upon the Eastern States for supplies of 
 manufactured merchandise. Upon this 
 fact was founded the ridiculous expec- 
 tation, entertained at the beginning of 
 the late war by the enemies of the Re- 
 public, of seeing the Western States 
 secede from, the Union. The Western 
 man, however, has the eminent good 
 fortune of not being a fool. Every 
 business man in Chicago was intelli- 
 gent enough to know that this depend- 
 ence upon the East was a necessity 
 of the case and time. Newly settled 
 countries cannot manufacture their 
 own pins, watches, and pianos, nor 
 even their own boots, overcoats, and 
 saucepans, and they are glad enough 
 to give other communities some of 
 their surplus produce in exchange for 
 those articles. But, happily, there is 
 free trade between the Eastern and 
 Western States. The only and suffi- 
 cient protective tariff imposed upon 
 that trade is the cost of transportation. 
 Consequently, we find that just as 
 fast as it is best for both sections that 
 the West should cease to depend upon 
 the East, just so fast, and no faster, 
 Chicago gets into manufacturing. In 
 all the history of business there can- 
 not be found a more exquisite illustra- 
 tion of the harmonious and safe work- 
 ing of untrammelled trade. At first, 
 Chicago began to make on a small 
 scale the rough and heavy implements 
 of husbandry. That great factory, for 
 
1867.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 337 
 
 example, which now produces an ex- 
 cellent farm-wagon every seven min- 
 utes of every working day, was founded 
 twenty-three years ago by its pro- 
 prietor investing all his capital in the 
 slow construction of one wagon. At 
 the present time, almost every article 
 of much bulk used upon railroads, in 
 farming, in warming houses, in build- 
 ing houses, or in cooking, is made in 
 Chicago. Three thousand persons are 
 now employed there in manufacturing 
 coarse boots and shoes. The prairie 
 world is mowed and reaped by ma- 
 chines made in Chicago, whose people 
 are feeling their way, too, into making 
 woollen and cotton goods. Four or five 
 miles out on the prairie, where until 
 last May the ground had never been 
 broken since the creation, there stands 
 now the village of Austin, which consists 
 of three large factory buildings, forty 
 or fifty nice cottages for workmen, and 
 two thousand young trees. This is the 
 seat of the Chicago Clock Factory, the 
 superintendent of which is that honest 
 and ingenious man, Chauncey Jerome, 
 the inventor of most of the wonderful 
 machinery by which American clocks 
 have been made so excellent and so 
 cheap. After his melancholy failure in 
 Connecticut, (wholly through the fault 
 of others, for he had retired from active 
 business,) he found an honorable asy- 
 lum here, and is now giving to this es- 
 tablishment the benefit of his fifty- 
 five years' experience in clock-making. 
 The machinery now in operation can 
 produce one hundred thousand clocks 
 a year ; and the proprietors had re- 
 ceived orders for eight months' prod- 
 uct before they had finished one clock. 
 They expect to be able to sell these 
 clocks at New Haven quite as cheap 
 as those made in New Haven ; since 
 nearly every metal and wood employed 
 in the construction of a clock can be 
 bought cheaper in Chicago than in 
 Connecticut. A few miles farther back 
 on the prairies, at Elgin, there is the 
 establishment of the National Watch 
 Company, which expects soon to pro- 
 duce fifty watches a day, and to com- 
 pete for a share of the ten or eleven 
 vol. xix. — no. 113. 22 
 
 millions of dollars which the people 
 of America pay every year for new 
 watches. They are beginning to make 
 pianos at Chicago, besides selling a 
 hundred a week of those made in the 
 East ; and the great music house of 
 Root and Cady are now engraving and 
 printing all the music they publish. 
 Melodeons are made in Chicago on 
 a great scale. 
 
 It is in this gradual and safe manner 
 that trade adjusts itself to circumstan- 
 ces when it is untrammelled by law, 
 and such will be the working of free 
 trade in all the nations of the earth, 
 when, by and by, all the nations shall 
 be in a condition to adopt it. For some 
 years to come — so long, indeed, as the 
 national debt is our king — we shall 
 have to approach free trade with slow 
 and cautious steps ; but we need not 
 lose sight of the truth, that universal 
 free trade is the consummation at which 
 the statesmanship of all lands is to 
 aim. 
 
 Chicago is now intent upon four 
 things, — the establishment of manufac- 
 tures, the. improvement of the city, the 
 completion of railroads to the Pacific, 
 the construction of ship canals from the 
 Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean. He 
 who can lend a helping hand or head to 
 any of these is welcome, and especially 
 he who can make any useful article 
 well. There, as everywhere, mere buy- 
 ers and sellers are in excess. Those 
 " Commercial Colleges " which abound 
 in all the Western cities, useful as they 
 are in many respects, appear to be lur- 
 ing young men from their proper voca- 
 tion of producers and makers into the 
 overcrowded business of distributing ; 
 so that even in busy Chicago, where 
 every able man is doing two men's 
 work, the merchants are pestered with 
 applications for clerkships, and the sala- 
 ries of clerks are generally low. These 
 waiting youths are the only idle class 
 in Chicago. There are no men of lei- 
 sure there. No man thinks of stopping 
 work because he has money enough for 
 his personal use. In all the Western 
 country, as a rule, the richer a man is, 
 the harder he toils, and the more com- 
 
338 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 pletely is he the servant of his fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 Chicago, already a handsome town, 
 is going to be one of the most beautiful 
 cities in the world. Twenty years ago, 
 when the present court-house, or City 
 Hall, was built, the corporation sent 
 all the way to Lockport, in the State 
 of New York, for the stone, — a dark 
 granite. Long before the people had 
 done boasting of this grand and gloomy 
 edifice, the men who were digging the 
 canal at Athens, a point about four- 
 teen miles from the city, struck a de- 
 posit of soft, cream-colored stone, which 
 proved to be an inexhaustible quar- 
 ry. For some time this stone was sup- 
 posed to be useless, and it was re- 
 garded only in the light of an obstruc- 
 tion to the excavation of the canal. It 
 was discovered, a year or two after, that 
 fragments of the stone which had been 
 exposed to the air for a few months had 
 become harder ; and by very slow de- 
 grees the truth dawned upon a few in- 
 terested minds, that Chicago had stum- 
 bled upon a treasure. It was, never- 
 ertheless, with much difficulty that build- 
 ers were induced to give a trial to what 
 is now recognized as the very best and 
 most elegant building material in the 
 country. Soft to the chisel, it is hard 
 in the finished wall ; and, devoid of the 
 glare of white marble, it possesses that 
 hue of the Parthenon which, Dr. Words- 
 worth says, looks as though it had been 
 "quarried out of the golden light of an 
 Athenian sunset." The general use in 
 Chicago of this light-colored stone, and 
 of the light yellow brick of the prairie 
 clay, gives to the principal streets a 
 cheerful, airy, elegant aspect, which is 
 enhanced by the promptitude with which 
 all the new and pleasing effects in street 
 architecture are introduced. The West- 
 ern man, in all that he does, and in 
 much tha't he thinks, is the creature of 
 all the earth who is least trammelled by 
 custom and tradition. His ruling aim, 
 when he sets about anything, is to do it 
 better than the same thing has ever 
 been done before since the creation of 
 man. We do not hesitate to say, that 
 the best houses in the leading avenues 
 
 of Chicago are far more pleasing to the 
 eye than those of the Fifth Avenue in 
 New York, and that the general effect 
 of the best streets is finer. 
 
 Of course, Chicago is still a forming 
 city. It stretches along the lake about 
 eight miles, but does not reach back 
 into the prairie more than two. In the 
 heart of the town the stranger beholds 
 blocks of stores, solid, lofty, and in the 
 most recent taste, hotels of great mag- 
 nitude, and public buildings that would 
 be creditable to an)< city. The streets 
 are as crowded with vehicles and peo- 
 ple as any in New York, and there is 
 nothing exhibited in the windows of 
 New York which may not be seen in 
 those of Chicago. As the visitor pass- 
 es along, he sees at every moment some 
 new evidence that he has arrived at a 
 rich metropolis. Now it is a gorgeous 
 and enormous carpet-house that arrests 
 his attention ; now a huge dry-goods 
 store, or vast depot of groceries. The 
 next moment he finds himself peering 
 into a restaurant, as splendid as a steam- 
 boat and larger than Taylor's ; or into 
 a dining-room window, where, in addi- 
 tion to other delicacies of the season, 
 there is a spacious cake of ice, covered 
 with naked frogs, reposing picturesque- 
 ly in parsley. Farther on, he pauses 
 before a jeweller's, brilliant with gold, 
 silver, diamonds, and pictures, where a 
 single item of last year's business was 
 the sale of three thousand two hundred 
 watches, of which one thousand were 
 American. The number and extent of 
 the book-stores is another striking fea- 
 ture, and it is impossible to go far with- 
 out being strongly reminded that pianos 
 and cabinet-organs are for sale in the 
 city. Blessed are the people of Chicago, 
 and blessed the strangers in their midst, 
 in the article of malt liquor ; for it is 
 excellent, it is honest, and it is abun- 
 dant. True, science has not yet posi- 
 tively ascertained whether or not the 
 Coming Man will drink malt liquor ; 
 but the Coming Man has not come, and 
 if people will drink beer, they had better 
 drink it good. 
 
 Along the lake, south of the river, for 
 two or three miles, extend the beautiful 
 
1 867.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 339 
 
 avenues which change insensibly into 
 those streets of cottages and gardens 
 which have given to Chicago the name 
 of the Garden City. This is a pleasant, 
 umbrageous quarter, where glimpses are 
 caught of the blue lake that stretches 
 away to the east for sixty miles. On 
 this shore is rising the monument to 
 Douglas, and there is a shady street 
 near by that will last longer than the 
 monument, called Douglas Place. In 
 all Chicago there is not one tenement 
 house. Thrifty workmen own the houses 
 they live in, and the rest can still hire a 
 whole house ; consequently seven tenths 
 of Chicago consist of small wooden 
 houses, in streets with wooden side- 
 walks and roadways of prairie black. 
 
 It is always interesting to a stranger 
 to notice the names of the streets of a 
 town which he visits for the first time. 
 Chicago boasts a Goethe Street and a 
 Schiller Street. There is also a Gree- 
 ley, a Bremer, a Poe, a Kane, a Kos- 
 suth, a Bross, a Wentworth, and a Long 
 John Street. Local history is com- 
 memorated in Calumet, Astor, Fur, Kin- 
 sie, Blackhawk, and Wahpanseh ; and 
 general history, in Blucher, Bonaparte, 
 Buena Vista, Calhoun, Burnside, Cass, 
 De Kalb, Carroll, Fabius, Macedonia, 
 Garibaldi, Madison, Washington, Mon- 
 roe, Lafayette, Franklin, Butler, Grant, 
 Kansas, Lincoln, Mayflower, Napoleon, 
 Randolph, Sigel, and Thomas. New 
 York is called to mind in Broadway, 
 the Bowery, and the Bloomingdale 
 Road; and Philadelphia, in Chestnut 
 Street. There is likewise a Rosebud 
 Street, a Selah Street, a Queer Place, 
 and a Grub Street. 
 
 When next the Atlantic Monthly 
 chronicles the progress of Chicago, it 
 will have to describe a grand Boule- 
 vard, furnishing a drive of fifteen miles 
 round the city, shaded with trees, and 
 lined with villas and gardens. This 
 very spring, it is hoped, will see the 
 work begun. A great park is also in 
 contemplation, in which Chicago hopes 
 to behold the strange spectacle of hill 
 and dale. It is not unlikely that the 
 park will enclose a range of mountains, 
 the loftiest peaks of which will pierce 
 
 the air half a hundred feet ; and up 
 those giddy heights Chicago's boys will 
 climb on Saturday afternoons, inhale 
 the breath of liberty on the mountain- 
 tops, and learn why Switzerland is free. 
 Would the stranger see the men 
 whose public spirit and energy have 
 created Chicago, and are guiding its 
 destinies ? Then he must go, about 
 noon, to the beautiful edifice in the 
 centre of the city, wherein the Board, 
 of Trade assembles. This is the Ex- 
 change of Chicago. Here, in a spa- 
 cious and lofty apartment, decorated 
 with fine fresco paintings by resi- 
 dent Italian artists, are daily gathered 
 from a thousand to eighteen hundred 
 of the men who control the collection 
 and distribution of those grain moun- 
 tains, those miles of timber stacks, and 
 all that mass of produce of which we 
 have spoken. Here are the buyers, 
 the sellers, the insurers, and the for- 
 warders, and loud is the roar of their 
 talk. Groups of men cover the whole 
 extent of the floor. A few minutes 
 suffice to buy, insure, and despatch a 
 ship-load of wheat ; a few minutes 
 suffice to convert a sanguine speculator 
 into the lamest of ducks, or send him 
 away rejoicing in the possession of new 
 means of speculation. Suddenly, loud 
 knocks are heard in a gallery above, 
 which commands a view of the whole 
 scene. The roar is instantly hushed, 
 and all eyes and all ears are directed to- 
 ward a gentleman in the gallery, who is 
 Mr. John F. Beaty, the Secretary of the 
 Board, who proceeds, in a sonorous 
 voice, to read the last telegram of prices 
 in New York and London. The instant 
 he has finished, conversation sets in 
 with renewed vigor ; and the whole hall 
 is filled with noise. At a semicircle 
 of mahogany desks at one end of the 
 room sit the gentlemen representing 
 the press, who compile daily reports of 
 the business of the city, which for com- 
 pleteness and extent are unequalled. 
 In about an hour and a half the busi- 
 ness of the day is done, and the room is 
 empty, with half an inch of grain on the 
 floor, ready bruised for the janitor's pig 
 and chickens. 
 
34Q 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 No body of men in this land were 
 more heartily loyal to their country 
 during the war than the Chicago Board 
 of Trade. Adjoining the great ex- 
 change-room is a smaller apartment, 
 handsomely furnished in black walnut, 
 for the meetings of the Directors of 
 the Board ; and in this room are pre- 
 served the flags of the several regiments 
 raised or equipped under the auspices 
 and by the assistance of the Board. 
 It so chanced, that while we were in 
 the great room, a few weeks ago, Mr. 
 Walter, of the London Times, passed 
 through it, unobserved, escorted by 
 Governor Bross, of the Chicago Trib- 
 une, who usually does the honors of 
 the city — and no one could do them 
 more agreeably or more intelligently 
 — to visitors of distinction. When it 
 transpired who it was that had ac- 
 companied Governor Bross, a difficult 
 moral problem was discussed by some 
 of those exceedingly uncompromising 
 loyalists. The question was, Suppose 
 Mr. Walter had been recognized, which 
 ought to have been the controlling prin- 
 ciple in the minds of those present, — 
 courtesy to a stranger, or disapproval 
 of a public enemy ? In other words, 
 would it have been right and becom- 
 ing in the Board of Trade to have 
 hissed Mr. Walter a little ? From the 
 tone of the remarks upon this abstruse 
 question of morals, we fear that, if Mr. 
 Walter had been generally recognized, 
 he would not have been left in doubt as 
 to the feelings of the Board toward a 
 man who, the Board thought, gave us 
 two years more of war than we should 
 have had if he had not led England 
 against us. Those radical and straight- 
 forward men of wheat and wool do not, 
 perhaps, sufficiently consider that the 
 great journals of the world are the 
 world's paid servants, who seem to lead, 
 but are in reality propelled. 
 
 The great question respecting Chi- 
 cago, — and all other places under 
 heaven, — is, What is the quality of the 
 human life lived in it? It is well to 
 have an abundance of beef, pork, grain, 
 wool, and pine boards, so long as these 
 are used as means to an end, and that 
 
 end is the production and nurture of 
 happy, intelligent, virtuous, and robust 
 human beings. This alone is success ; 
 all short of this is failure. Cheerful, 
 healthy human life, — that is the wealth 
 of the world ; and the extreme of desti- 
 tution is to have all the rest and not 
 that. The stranger, therefore, looks 
 about in this busy, thriving city, and 
 endeavors to ascertain, above all else, 
 how it fares there with human nature. 
 In Chicago, as everywhere, human na- 
 ture is weak and ignorant, temptable 
 and tempted ; and in considering the 
 influences to which it is there subjected, 
 we must only ask whether those influ- 
 ences are more or less favorable than 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The climate, upon the whole, is good. 
 The winters, short, sharp, and decisive, 
 are healthful, of course. The sum- 
 mer heats are mitigated by the prairie 
 breezes and the fresh cool winds from 
 the lake. Occasionally a southern wind 
 prevails, and gives Chicago some sti- 
 fling days. To those who can afford it, 
 the northern lakes offer an easy and 
 complete escape from the hot weather, 
 as well as a trip of almost unequalled 
 variety and charm. With regard to 
 food, Chicago has the pick of the best ; 
 nothing remains but to learn how to 
 cook it. The West has much to acquire 
 in this great art, and even many of the 
 large hotels are wanting in their mis- 
 sion of setting an example of cookery. 
 The raw material abounds. It is only 
 necessary not to spoil it with grease, 
 saleratus, and the lazy, odious frying- 
 pan. We are happy to state, that ex- 
 cellent dinners are daily enjoyed in 
 Chicago, though a prodigious number 
 of bad ones are bolted. 
 
 Some parts of the mind are well cul- 
 tivated there. Chicago is itself a col- 
 lege to all its inhabitants. When we 
 see a boy reading in Roman history an 
 account of the Appian Way, we all say 
 that he is improving his mind. The 
 Nicholson pavement has ten times 
 more thought in it than the Appian 
 Way ; why is not an urchin improving 
 his mind who stands, with his hands in 
 his pockets, looking on while the work- 
 
1 86;.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 341 
 
 •Wis 
 
 men arrange the little blocks and pour 
 in the odorous tar ? Then those mighty 
 schemes for ship canals, and new, far- 
 reaching railroads, and the improved 
 methods, processes, models, — all these 
 are the daily theme of conversation and 
 keen discussion, with maps spread out 
 and authorities at hand. A great and 
 splendid city is rising from the prai- 
 rie, in the view of all the people, who 
 watch, criticise, compare, suggest. It is 
 observed that the too respectable Bos- 
 tonian, the staid Philadelphian, the self- 
 indulgent and thoughtless New-Yorker, 
 acquire, after living awhile in Chicago, 
 a vivacity of mind, an interest in things 
 around them, a public spirit, which they 
 did not possess at home. It must be 
 very difficult for a boy to grow up a 
 fool in a Western city, unless, indeed, 
 he takes to vice, which, there and every- 
 where, is deadly to the understanding. 
 It is with pleasure that we report to 
 the people of the United States, that 
 their fellow-citizens of Chicago are look- 
 ing well to the interests of those who 
 are to carry on their work when they are 
 gone. The public schools of the city 
 are among the very best in the United 
 States. The buildings are large, hand- 
 some, and convenient ; much care is 
 taken with regard to the ventilation of 
 the rooms and the exercise of the pu- 
 pils ; the salaries of the teachers range 
 from four hundred to twenty-four hun- 
 dred dollars a year ; the gentlemen of 
 the Board of Education are among the 
 most respectable and capable of the 
 citizens. In the High School, an insti- 
 tution of which any city in Christen- 
 dom might be justly proud, colored lads 
 and girls may be seen in most of the 
 classes, mingled with the other pupils ; 
 and in the evening schools of the city 
 colored men and women are received 
 on precisely the same footing as white. 
 Colored children also attend the com- 
 mon schools, and no one objects, or sees 
 anything extraordinary in the fact. No 
 little child is allowed to pass more than 
 half an hour without exercise. In the 
 higher classes, the physical exercises 
 occur about once an hour ; the win- 
 dows are thrown open, the pupils rise, 
 
 and all the class imitate the motions 
 of the teacher for five minutes. The 
 boys in the High School have a lesson 
 daily in out-door gymnastics, skilfully 
 taught by a gentleman who left one of 
 his legs before Vicksburg. The girls 
 have a variety of curious exercises, 
 which combine play and work in an 
 agreeable manner. Connected with the 
 High School, there is a small school of 
 young children, for the purpose of giv- 
 ing young ladies who intend to become 
 teachers an opportunity of practice, 
 under the direction of a teacher already 
 experienced. If in one room we re- 
 gretted to see boys and girls expending 
 their force in acquiring a smattering of 
 Latin, we were consoled in another by 
 discovering that those who are wise 
 enough to prefer it can learn German 
 or French. 
 
 The peril of America is the over- 
 schooling of her children. In Chicago, 
 as everywhere else, the grand fault of 
 the public schools is, that too much is 
 attempted in them. The Board of Edu- 
 cation is ambitious ; the superintend- 
 ent is ambitious ; the teachers, the par- 
 ents, the children, are ambitious ; and 
 there is nowhere in the system any one 
 who stands between these co-operating 
 ambitions and the delicate organiza- 
 tion of the children. Five hours' school 
 a day, with two hours' intermission, and 
 no lessons learned at home, — these 
 are our colors, and we nail them to the 
 mast. Even on Sundays the poor chil- 
 dren have no rest from eternal school 
 and the stimulating influence of older 
 minds. 
 
 Three medical colleges, two theologi- 
 cal seminaries, a university, an acad- 
 emy of sciences, — all in their infancy, 
 but full of young vigor, — exist in Chi- 
 cago. It is startling to find on the 
 western shore of Lake Michigan, where, 
 thirty-two years ago, seven thousand In- 
 dians howled, an astronomical observa- 
 tory of the most improved model, pro- 
 vided with a telescope which is consid- 
 ered the finest of its kind in the world, 
 and a resident professor capable of 
 using it. Chicago will have a museum 
 before New York has one. Nine vears 
 
342 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 ago, a few gentlemen interested in sci- 
 ence, particularly in natural history and 
 geology, formed a society for the col- 
 lection of specimens and the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge. A year or two since, 
 it occurred to one or two of the more 
 zealous members that the time had 
 come for the society to take a step for' 
 ward. The merchants of Chicago have 
 a finely developed talent for subscrib- 
 ing money, and before many days had 
 gone by one hundred and twenty men 
 had subscribed five hundred dollars 
 each, for the purpose of establishing on 
 a proper basis the Chicago Academy of 
 Sciences. A lot has been purchased ; 
 a building will be begun in the spring ; 
 and Chicago will have a museum before 
 the year is out. Already the society 
 possesses many objects of particular 
 interest, — among others, a specimen of 
 the prairie squirrels that cannot climb, 
 which ought to be put in the same 
 case with the eyeless fish of the Mam- 
 moth Cave. 
 
 The daily mental food of the business 
 men in Western cities is the daily news- 
 paper ; and many of them read nothing 
 else. The daily press of Chicago is 
 conducted with the vigor, enterprise, 
 and liberality of expenditure which we 
 should expect to see in a city pervaded 
 with the spirit of advertising. Read- 
 ers have not forgotten General Butler's 
 famous apple -speech in front of the 
 City Hall in New York, a few months 
 ago, the report of which filled nearly 
 two columns of the New York papers. 
 It was telegraphed, with all the re- 
 marks and doings of the crowd, to " The 
 Chicago Republican." "The Chicago 
 Tribune " has excellent " own corre- 
 spondents " in New York, London, Par- 
 is, and Washington, besides occasional 
 contributors in twenty other cities. On 
 almost any day of the year, this excel- 
 lent newspaper publishes telegraphic 
 news from as many as twenty-five 
 points, and on extraordinary occa- 
 sions the number of despatches has 
 risen to seventy-five. In the office of 
 the Republican is kept a list of seven 
 hundred and sixty names of persons 
 residing in different towns, to whom 
 
 the editor can send for detailed infor- 
 mation when anything of interest has 
 occurred within their reach. If the 
 Mammoth Cave should cave in, or Ni- 
 agara break down, there would be some 
 one on the spot, an hour after, col- 
 lecting details of the catastrophe for 
 the Chicago Republican of the next 
 morning. "The Evening Journal," too, 
 though it cannot compete with morn- 
 ing papers in point of news, presents 
 a singularly well-digested and tastefully 
 selected variety of interesting reading. 
 
 The press of Chicago has opinions of 
 its own. The Tribune, unlike its great 
 New York namesake, inclines toward 
 free trade. We believe the editors are 
 prepared to recommend that the pol- 
 icy of protection should be carried no 
 farther, and that future changes made 
 in the tariff should lessen restrictions 
 upon trade, not increase them. The 
 young Republican, on the contrary, is a 
 thorough-going protectionist. At least, 
 it believes that the policy of protec- 
 tion should be maintained until Chi- 
 cago has her manufacturing system 
 well developed. Both these papers 
 and the Evening Journal are radical 
 Republican. Indeed, we may say that, 
 in the Western country, the vast ma- 
 jority of Republicans are of the most 
 radical description. " The Chicago 
 Times " is the leading Democratic 
 paper of the Northwest, but it advo- 
 cates "impartial suffrage," as well as 
 universal amnesty. It was the first 
 paper of its party that had the ability to 
 see that the one chance of the Demo- 
 cratic party's regaining power was to 
 give the suffrage to the great mass of 
 the negroes immediately. Ignorance 
 is ignorance. Ignorance, always gravi- 
 tating the wrong way, can be cajoled 
 and bought. It is the demagogue's 
 natural prey; honest men cannot get 
 near enough to it for a shot. What a 
 reproach to Tammany, that a politician 
 in far-off Chicago should have been the 
 first to see the mode of New-Yorkizing 
 the politics of the South ! 
 
 The community that possesses a 
 large surplus of beef, pork, grain, wool, 
 and timber, can have whatever other 
 
1867.] 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 343 
 
 purchasable commodity it desires. To 
 Chicago, accordingly, painters come 
 and paint pictures for its parlors, or 
 send them from afar. There is a sur- 
 prising taste there for every kind of 
 artistic decoration. It is more com- 
 mon to see good engravings and tol- 
 erable paintings in the residences of 
 Chicago than in those of New York. 
 In a window of one of the stores, we 
 noticed a very pretty statue of the boy 
 Washington, executed by a resident 
 sculptor. And we agree with the pos- 
 sessor of the Crosby Opera House, that 
 he has just drawn in the lottery the 
 most elegant interior in the country. 
 We abhor superlatives, but we must 
 claim the privilege of asserting, that, in 
 the construction of buildings designed 
 for the assembling together of many 
 people, Chicago surpasses the rest of 
 the world. There are, positively, no 
 churches anywhere else in which ele- 
 gance and convenience are so perfectly 
 combined as in the newer churches of 
 Chicago. That beautiful Opera House 
 wants nothing but an opera. We heard 
 within it, however, one of the concerts 
 of the Philharmonic Society, at which 
 the violin playing of Camilla Urso 
 was listened to with rapture, while an 
 abstruse symphony, performed by a 
 German orchestra, was borne with the 
 patient faith which we Northern bar- 
 barians generally exhibit on such oc- 
 casions. We firmly believe the music is 
 sublime ; we are ashamed that we can- 
 not enjoy it ; and now and then, when 
 the orchestra plays a little louder than 
 usual, we wake from a revery, and 
 almost persuade ourselves that we are 
 receiving pleasure. As in New York, 
 so in Chicago. Only, the politer Chi- 
 cago gentlemen do not talk, nor the 
 ladies giggle. 
 
 But Chicago does more than listen 
 patiently to foreign artists. It has 
 music of its own. Those war-songs, 
 which cheered ten thousand camp-fires, 
 and solaced many a weary march, — 
 *' Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are 
 marching," " The Battle Cry of Free- 
 dom," " Kingdom Coming," " Wake, 
 Nicodemus," and twenty others, famil- 
 
 iar to the army and country, — were 
 composed, printed, and published in 
 Chicago. That worthy gentleman, Mr. 
 George F. Root, of the firm of Root 
 and Cady, composed several of the 
 best of them. Mr. H. C. Work, con- 
 nected with the same house, is the 
 author of others, some of which had a 
 wonderful run. Now, reader, mark 
 how time brings its revenges ! Many 
 years ago, Alonzo Work, father of this 
 composer, was walking along a road in 
 Missouri, when he was overtaken by a 
 party of fugitive slaves, who asked the 
 way to a free State. He directed them 
 on their course, and gave them some 
 slight aid in money. For doing this, 
 he was condemned to twenty years' 
 imprisonment at hard labor, and served 
 several years of the term before he was 
 pardoned. In 1861, his son, a poor 
 invalid journeyman printer, climbed up 
 to Mr. Root's study, and laid upon his 
 desk the music and words of a war 
 song. Astonished that so forlorn an 
 apparition should have ever had a 
 thought of music in his soul, Mr. 
 Root was still more astonished to dis- 
 cover that he had a genius for pro- 
 ducing such music as the people love. 
 Before he left the room he had engaged 
 to compose for Messrs. Root and Cady 
 for five years. His songs have been 
 sung by millions of men, and he now 
 has a pleasant cottage, paid for, and an 
 income from copyrights of three thou- 
 sand dollars a year. 
 
 Such books, too, as the people of 
 Chicago and the Northwest are buy- 
 ing ! Already three large book-houses 
 are competing to supply the demand of 
 this great market. The most attrac- 
 tive, as well as the most promising, in- 
 dication of the healthful progress of 
 Chicago is given in the quantities and 
 character of the books offered for sale. 
 
 The book-houses, the shelves of 
 which are crowded with the best lit- 
 erature, are not exotic. They come in 
 obedience to the law of demand and 
 supply. All our leading publishing 
 houses have their lists of publications 
 completely represented, and Chicago 
 itself is rapidly becoming second only 
 
;44 
 
 Chicago. 
 
 [March, 
 
 to New York as a distributing point. 
 The demand for foreign books, for 
 costly books, for valuable books, is 
 very great. You see in these large 
 establishments an assortment almost 
 as large and valuable as is to be found 
 in any of our Atlantic cities. Here 
 have been sold over fifteen hundred 
 sets of Appleton's Encyclopaedia, in 
 sixteen volumes ; and into this mar- 
 ket several hundred sets of the En- 
 cyclopaedia Britannica, in twenty -two 
 volumes, worth two hundred dollars a 
 set, have found their way. We were 
 surprised to find here such works, for 
 example, as Robertson's Holy Land, 
 the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of 
 Hogarth, Gilray, Dore, Jameson, My- 
 rick, and many others, at prices vary- 
 ing from one hundred to four hundred 
 and fifty dollars each. We were sur- 
 prised, too, to read in a Chicago news- 
 paper the programme of a course of 
 twenty-four lectures to be delivered in 
 the French language. Allied to the 
 book business is the news business, 
 which is not the least among the note- 
 worthy things of this city. The busi- 
 ness itself is an outgrowth of the ex- 
 press business, which, by its ramifica- 
 tions and punctuality, has, notwith- 
 standing its extortionate charges, been 
 a great public servant. The express 
 has opened in almost every town, cer- 
 tainly in almost every respectable vil- 
 lage, a news stand ; and the influence 
 of these cheap establishments in the 
 diffusion of intelligence, as well as 
 this other function, the provision of a 
 peculiar class of cheap literature, it will 
 be the duty of some future historian to 
 determine. 
 
 The railroads running out from Chi- 
 cago have given every facility to the 
 development of the news business, 
 and accordingly there has grown up in 
 the city a very large and most admi- 
 rably conducted establishment, — the 
 Western News Company, under the 
 management of its founder, Mr. John 
 R. Walsh. It is, we believe, less than 
 ten years since this establishment was 
 started, in a small way, by Mr. Walsh, 
 then a young man with a very limited 
 
 capital. It is now one of the institu- 
 tions of Chicago, and transacts a busi- 
 ness of nearly three quarters of a mil- 
 lion of dollars a year. Hardly one of 
 those trains that leave the city every 
 fifteen minutes but takes out to other 
 places some of its parcels. Hardly a 
 cabin in the Northwest that is beyond 
 the reach of its influence. Hardly a fam- 
 ily that is not indebted to it for a cheer- 
 ful visit during the week or month. 
 
 The truth is, that much of the best 
 young brain, taste, and civilization of 
 the country has gone to the Northwest ; 
 and Chicago, besides supplying it with 
 an annual fifty millions of dollars' worth 
 of dry goods, and no end of boards, has 
 to minister to its nobler needs, and 
 distribute over the country five millions 
 of dollars' worth of books. At Chicago 
 the other day, fifty graduates of Yale, 
 all residents of the city, were gathered 
 about one table. 
 
 The traveller who stays over a Sun- 
 day in Chicago witnesses as complete 
 a suspension of labor as in Boston or 
 Philadelphia. A great majority of the 
 eager and busy population on that day 
 resigns itself to the influence of its in- 
 structors ; and the hundred and fifty 
 churches are well filled with attentive 
 people. There are nine Baptist, six 
 Congregational, eleven Episcopal, ten 
 Lutheran, eighteen Methodist, sixteen 
 Presbyterian, two Dutch Reformed, fif- 
 teen Catholic, two Swedenborgian, two 
 Unitarian, and two Universalist church- 
 es, besides various mission churches 
 and a few others that decline classi- 
 fication, and four Synagogues. The 
 social life of the people centres in their 
 churches. Those superb church edi- 
 fices in Wabash Avenue are not mere- 
 ly for the assembling of a congrega- 
 tion on Sunday ; they are rather relig- 
 ious club-houses, and some of them 
 are provided with a complete kitchen 
 and restaurant apparatus, and con- 
 tain extensive suites of apartments, in 
 which, twice a month, the ladies give 
 an entertainment to the congregation. 
 The Sunday - school rooms are made 
 inviting by pictures, elegant furniture, 
 and in some instances by fountains and 
 
i86y.] 
 
 Labor. 
 
 345 
 
 natural flowers. The Rev. Mr. Hat- 
 f eld, the eloquent Methodist clergyman, 
 a recent acquisition to Chicago, who 
 has preached in many cities, assured 
 us \hat in no city of the United States 
 are\the local benevolent operations of 
 the churches carried on with such sus- 
 tained vigor, and on such a thorough, 
 far-reaching system, as in Chicago. 
 There ^s one mission Sunday school 
 there vhich gathers every Sunday 
 afternooi a thousand poor, neglected 
 children into apartments replete with 
 all the blst modern apparatus of in- 
 struction, \mcl full of pleasing objects. 
 At Chicag<\it is evident that the good 
 people are Vapidly learning and fulfil- 
 ling the fin\l purpose of a Christian 
 church ; whiih is not the promulgation 
 of a barren aid dividing opinion, but 
 the diffusion anong the whole commu- 
 nity of the civiization hitherto enjoyed 
 only by a few Avored families. 
 
 Nowhere in th* world are there such 
 striking proofs of\he inexhaustible vig- 
 or and power of Christianity as in this 
 new prairie town. Here, far inland, on 
 the shores of this bke lake, amid these 
 
 ber, this entanglement of railroads, this 
 mighty host of new-comers, even here it 
 is still the voice from Palestine, coming 
 across so many centuries, that delivers 
 the needed message : " Rest not, Chi- 
 cago, in planks, nor grain, nor railroads, 
 nor in infinite pork. These are but 
 means to an end. Never mind about 
 cutting out St. Louis: try only which 
 shall do most for the civilization of the 
 prairie world." Chicago is not inatten- 
 tive to this message, and is. learning to 
 interpret it aright. Those beautiful tem- 
 ples, those excellent schools, those local 
 benevolences, that innocent social life, 
 those ceaseless battlings with vice, that 
 instinct of decoration, that conscien- 
 tiously conducted press, those libraries 
 and bookstores, all attest that Chicago 
 does not mean to laboriously champ up 
 the shells of the nut of life and throw 
 the kernel away. It is our impression, 
 that human nature there is subject to 
 influences as favorable to its health and 
 progress as in any city of the world, 
 and that a family going to reside in 
 Chicago from one of our older cities 
 will be likely to find itself in a better 
 
 gram mountains, 
 
 th\se miles of tim- place than that from which it came. 
 
 LABOR. 
 
 \\ THOSE won is then divinest? His who moulds 
 VV With pallidfinger the dark, ignorant clay, 
 Making new radiate, as dawn goldens day,— 
 Or his, for whom tie hollow pipe enfolds 
 Magic to melt the rtoon in tenderness, — 
 Or his, whose orient Viemory in sad hours 
 Shows color on north Ws grown lustreless, 
 While he but dreams o\ Persia's purple towers,— 
 Or his, who pours out % upon a song? 
 Ah ! weak is toil as foam\ U pon blown beaches, 
 Unless the might of love Uiall make us strong, 
 And weak our statues andWeet reedy reaches, 
 Unless our love keep tideless overflow 
 Round even the lowliest blossom earth can show. 
 
34-6 
 
 My Friend Bingham. 
 
 [March, 
 
 MY FRIEND BINGHAM. 
 
 r^ONSCIOUS as I am of a deep 
 >> aversion to stories of a painful na- 
 ture, I have often asked myself wheth- 
 er, in the events here set forth, the ele- 
 ment of pain is stronger than that of 
 joy. An affirmative answer to this ques- 
 tion would have stood as a veto upon 
 the publication of my story, for it is my 
 opinion that the literature of horrors 
 needs no extension. Such an answer, 
 however, I am unwilling to pronounce ; 
 while, on the other hand, I hesitate to 
 assume the responsibility of a decided 
 negative. I have therefore determined 
 to leave the solution to the reader. I 
 may add, that I am very sensible of 
 the superficial manner in which I have 
 handled my facts. I bore no otner part 
 in the accomplishment of these facts 
 than that of a cordial observer ; and it 
 was impossible that, even with the best 
 will in the world, I should fathom the 
 emotions of the actors. Yet, as the 
 very faintest reflection of human pas- 
 sions, under the pressure of fate, pos- 
 sesses an immortal interest, I am con- 
 tent to appeal to the reader's sympathy, 
 and to assure him of my own fidelity. 
 
 Towards the close of summer, in my 
 twenty-eighth year, I went down to the 
 seaside to rest from a long term of 
 work, and to enjoy, after several years 
 of separation, a tete-a-tete with an inti- 
 mate friend. My friend had just arrived 
 from Europe, and we had agreed to 
 spend my vacation together by the side 
 of the sounding sea, and within easy 
 reach of the city. On taking posses- 
 sion of our lodgings, we found that we 
 should have no fellow-idlers, and we 
 hailed joyously the prospect of the great 
 marine solitudes which each of us de- 
 clared that he found so abundantly peo- 
 pled by the other. I hasten to impart 
 to the reader the following facts in re- 
 gard to the man whom I found so good 
 a companion. 
 
 George Bingham had been born and 
 bred among people for whom, as he 
 grew to manhood, he learned to ente'- 
 
 tain a most generous contempt, — peo- 
 ple in whom the hereditary possesion 
 of a large property — for he assured 
 me that the facts stood in the reMtion 
 of cause and effect — had extingiished 
 all intelligent purpose and principle. I 
 trust that I do not speak rhetorically 
 when I describe in these terns the 
 combined ignorance and vaniy of my 
 friend's progenitors. It was their for- 
 tune to make a splendid figure while 
 they lived, and I feel little compunc- 
 tion in hinting at their powrty in cer- 
 tain human essentials. Bngham was 
 no declaimer, and indeed no great 
 talker ; and it was only iow and then, 
 in an allusion to the pastas the field of 
 a wasted youth, that hf expressed his 
 profound resentment. I read this for 
 the most part in the severe humility 
 with which he regarded the future, and 
 under cover of whi-h he seemed to 
 salute it as void at least (whatever other 
 ills it might contair) of those domestic 
 embarrassments vhich had been the 
 bane of his first nanhood. I have no 
 doubt that mucl may be said, within 
 limits, for the graces of that society 
 against which -ny friend embodied so 
 violent a reaction, and especially for 
 its good-huiror, — that home-keeping 
 benevolence vhich accompanies a sense 
 of materia] repletion. It is equally 
 probable flat to persons of a simple 
 constitution these graces may wear a 
 look of cfelightful and enduring myste- 
 ry ; butpoor Bingham was no simple- 
 ton. H« was a man of opinions numer- 
 ous, celicate, and profound. When, 
 with iie lapse of his youth, he awoke 
 to 2 presentiment of these opinions, 
 and cast his first interrogative glance 
 upon the world, he found that in his 
 o;vn little section of it he and his opin- 
 bns were a piece of melancholy imper- 
 tinence. Left, at twenty- three years of 
 age, by his father's death, in possession 
 of a handsome property, and absolute 
 master of his actions, he had thrown 
 himself blindly into the world. But, as 
 
F 
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