Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

The general impression of Milwaukee is that it is a city of much wealth and a great deal of comfort, with a settled, almost conservative feeling, like an Eastern city, and charming, cultivated social life, with the grace and beauty that are common in American society anywhere. I think the men generally would be called well-looking, robust, of the quiet, assured manner of an old community. The women seen on the street and In the shops are of good physique and good color and average good looks, without anything startling in the way of beauty or elegance. I speak of the general aspect of the town, and I mention the well-to-do physical condition because it contradicts the English prophecy of a physical decadence in the West, owing to the stimulating climate and the restless pursuit of wealth. On the train to Madison (the line runs through a beautiful country) one might have fancied that he was on a local New England train: the same plain, good sort of people, and in abundance the well-looking, domestic sort of young women.

Madison is a great contrast to Milwaukee. Although it is the political and educational centre, has the Capitol and the State University, and a population of about 15,000, it is like a large village, with the village habits and friendliness. On elevated, hilly ground, between two charming lakes, it has an almost unrivalled situation, and is likely to possess, in the progress of years and the accumulation of wealth, the picturesqueness and beauty that travellers ascribe to Stockholm. With the hills of the town, the gracefully curving shores of the lakes and their pointed bays, the gentle elevations beyond the lakes, and the capacity of these two bodies of water as pleasure resorts, with elegant music pavilions and fleets of boats for the sail and the oar—why do we not take a hint from the painted Venetian sail?—there is no limit to what may be expected in the way of refined beauty of Madison in the summer, if it remains a city of education and of laws, and does not get up a “boom,” and set up factories, and blacken all the landscape with coal smoke!

The centre of the town is a big square, pleasantly tree-planted, so large that the facing rows of shops and houses have a remote and dwarfed appearance, and in the middle of it is the great pillared State-house, American style. The town itself is one of unpretentious, comfortable houses, some of them with elegant interiors, having plenty of books and the spoils of foreign travel. In one of them, the old-fashioned but entirely charming mansion of Governor Fairchild, I cannot refrain from saying, is a collection which, so far as I know, is unique in the world—a collection to which the helmet of Don Quixote gives a certain flavor; it is of barbers’ basins, of all ages and countries.

Wisconsin is working out its educational ideas on an intelligent system, and one that may be expected to demonstrate the full value of the popular method—I mean a more intimate connection of the university with the life of the people than exists elsewhere. What effect this will have upon the higher education in the ultimate civilization of the State is a question of serious and curious interest. Unless the experience of the ages is misleading, the tendency of the “practical” in all education is a downward and material one, and the highest civilization must continue to depend upon a pure scholarship, and upon what are called abstract ideas. Even so practical a man as Socrates found the natural sciences inadequate to the inner needs of the soul. “I thought,” he says, “as I have failed in the contemplation of true existence (by means of the sciences), I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of the soul, as people may injure their bodily eye by gazing on the sun during an eclipse.... That occurred to me, and I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes, or tried by the help of the senses to apprehend them. And I thought I had better have recourse to ideas, and seek in them the truth of existence.” The intimate union of the university with the life of the people is a most desirable object, if the university does not descend and lose its high character in the process.

The graded school system of the State is vigorous, all working up to the University. This is a State institution, and the State is fairly liberal to it, so far as practical education is concerned. It has a magnificent new Science building, and will have excellent shops and machinery for the sciences (especially the applied) and the mechanic arts. The system is elective. A small per cent, of the students take Greek, a larger number Latin, French, and German, but the University is largely devoted to science. In all the departments, including law, there are about six hundred students, of whom above one hundred are girls. There seems to be no doubt about co-education as a practical matter in the conduct of the college, and as a desirable thing for women. The girls are good students, and usually take more than half the highest honors on the marking scale. Notwithstanding the testimony of the marks, however, the boys say that the girls don’t “know” as much as they do about things generally, and they (the boys) have no doubt of their ability to pass the girls either in scholarship or practical affairs in the struggle of life. The idea seems to be that the girls are serious in education only up to a certain point, and that marriage will practically end the rivalry.

The distinguishing thing, however, about the State University is its vital connection with the farmers and the agricultural interests. I do not refer to the agricultural department, which it has in common with many colleges, nor to the special short agricultural course of three months in the winter, intended to give farmers’ boys, who enter it without examination or other connection with the University, the most available agricultural information in the briefest time, the intention being not to educate boys away from a taste for farming but to make them better farmers. The students must be not less than sixteen years old, and have a common-school education. During the term of twelve weeks they have lectures by the professors and recitations on practical and theoretical agriculture, on elementary and agricultural chemistry, on elemental botany, with laboratory practice, and on the anatomy of our domestic animals and the treatment of their common diseases. But what I wish to call special attention to is the connection of the University with the farmers’ institutes.

A special Act of the Legislature, drawn by a lawyer, Mr. C. E. Estabrook, authorized the farmers’ institutes, and placed them under the control of the regents of the University, who have the power to select a State superintendent to control them. A committee of three of the regents has special charge of the institutes. Thus the farmers are brought into direct relation with the University, and while, as a prospectus says, they are not actually non-resident students of the University, they receive information and instruction directly from it. The State appropriates twelve thousand dollars a year to this work, which pays the salaries of Mr. W. H. Morrison, the superintendent, to whose tact and energy the success of the institutes is largely due, and his assistants, and enables him to pay the expenses of specialists and agriculturists who can instruct the farmers and wisely direct the discussions at the meetings. By reason of this complete organization, which penetrates every part of the State, subjects of most advantage are considered, and time is not wasted in merely amateur debates.

I know of no other State where a like system of popular instruction on a vital and universal interest of the State, directed by the highest educational authority, is so perfectly organized and carried on with such unity of purpose and detail of administration; no other in which the farmer is brought systematically into such direct relations to the university. In the current year there have been held eighty-two farmers’ institutes in forty-five counties. The list of practical topics discussed is 279, and in this service have been engaged one hundred and seven workers, thirty-one of whom are specialists from other States. This is an “agricultural college,” on a grand scale, brought to the homes of the people. The meetings are managed by local committees in such a way as to evoke local pride, interest, and talent. I will mention some of the topics that were thoroughly discussed at one of the institutes: clover as a fertilizer; recuperative agriculture; bee-keeping; taking care of the little things about the house and farm; the education for farmers’ daughters; the whole economy of sheep husbandry; egg production; poultry; the value of thought and application in farming; horses to breed for the farm and market; breeding and management of swine; mixed farming; grain-raising; assessment and collection of taxes; does knowledge pay? (with illustrations of money made by knowledge of the market); breeding and care of cattle, with expert testimony as to the best sorts of cows; points in corn culture; full discussion of small-fruit culture; butter-making as a line art; the daily; our country roads; agricultural education. So, during the winter, every topic that concerns the well-being of the home, the prolit of the farm, the moral welfare of the people and their prosperity, was intelligently discussed, with audiences fully awake to the value of this practical and applied education. Some of the best of these discussions are printed and widely distributed. Most of them are full of wise details in the way of thrift and money-making, but I am glad to see that the meetings also consider the truth that as much care should be given to the rearing of boys and girls as of calves and colts, and that brains are as necessary in farming as in any other occupation.

As these farmers’ institutes are conducted, I do not know any influence comparable to them in waking up the farmers to think, to inquire into new and improved methods, and to see in what real prosperity consists. With prosperity, as a rule, the farmer and his family are conservative, law-keeping, church-going, good citizens. The little appropriation of twelve thousand dollars has already returned to the State a hundred-fold financially and a thousand-fold in general intelligence.

I have spoken of the habit in Minnesota and Wisconsin of depending mostly upon one crop—that of spring wheat—and the disasters from this single reliance in bad years. Hard lessons are beginning to teach the advantage of mixed farming and stockraising. In this change the farmers’ institutes of Wisconsin have been potent. As one observer says, “They have produced a revolution in the mode of farming, raising crops, and caring for stock.” The farmers have been enabled to protect themselves against the effects of drought and other evils. Taking the advice of the institute in 1886, the farmers planted 50,000 acres of ensilage corn, which took the place of the short hay crop caused by the drought. This provision saved thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in several counties. From all over the State comes the testimony of farmers as to the good results of the institute work, like this: “Several thousand dollars’ worth of improved stock have been brought in. Creameries and cheese-factories have been established and well supported. Farmers are no longer raising grain exclusively as heretofore. Our hill-sides are covered with clover. Our farmers are encouraged to labor anew. A new era of prosperity in our State dates from the farmers’ institutes.”

There is abundant evidence that a revolution is going on in the farming of Wisconsin, greatly assisted, if not inaugurated, by this systematic popular instruction from the University as a centre. It may not greatly interest the reader that the result of this will be greater agricultural wealth in Wisconsin, but it does concern him that putting intelligence into farming must inevitably raise the level of the home life and the general civilization of Wisconsin. I have spoken of this centralized, systematic effort in some detail because it seems more efficient than the work of agricultural societies and sporadic institutes in other States.

In another matter Wisconsin has taken a step in advance of other States; that is, in the care of the insane. The State has about 2600 insane, increasing at the rate of about 167 a year. The provisions in the State for these are the State Hospital (capacity of 500), Northern Hospital (capacity of 600), the Milwaukee Asylum (capacity of 255), and fifteen county asylums for the chronic insane, including two nearly ready (capacity 1220). The improvement in the care of the insane consists in several particulars—the doing away of restraints, either by mechanical appliances or by narcotics, reasonable separation of the chronic cases from the others, increased liberty, and the substitution of wholesome labor for idleness. Many of these changes have been brought about by the establishment of county asylums, the feature of which I wish specially to speak. The State asylums were crowded beyond their proper capacity, classification was difficult in them, and a large number of the insane were miserably housed in county jails and poor-houses. The evils of great establishments were more and more apparent, and it was determined to try the experiment of county asylums. These have now been in operation for six years, and a word about their constitution and perfectly successful operation may be of public service.

These asylums, which are only for the chronic insane, are managed by local authorities, but under constant and close State supervision; this last provision is absolutely essential, and no doubt accounts for the success of the undertaking. It is not necessary here to enter into details as to the construction of these buildings. They are of brick, solid, plain, comfortable, and of a size to accommodate not less than fifty nor more than one hundred inmates: an institution with less than fifty is not economical; one with a larger number than one hundred is unwieldy, and beyond the personal supervision of the superintendent. A farm is needed for economy in maintenance and to furnish occupation for the men; about four acres for each inmate is a fair allowance. The land should be fertile, and adapted to a variety of crops as well as to cattle, and it should have woodland to give occupation in the winter. The fact is recognized that idleness is no better for an insane than for a sane person. The house-work is all done by the women; the farm, garden, and general out-door work by the men. Experience shows that three-fourths of the chronic insane can be furnished occupation of some sort, and greatly to their physical and moral well-being. The nervousness incident always to restraint and idleness disappears with liberty and occupation. Hence greater happiness and comfort to the insane, and occasionally a complete or partial cure.

About one attendant to twenty insane persons is sufficient, but it is necessary that these should have intelligence and tact; the men capable of leading in farm-work, the women to instruct in house-work and dress-making, and it is well if they can play some musical instrument and direct in amusements. One of the most encouraging features of this experiment in small asylums has been the discovery of so many efficient superintendents and matrons among the intelligent farmers and business men of the rural districts, who have the practical sagacity and financial ability to carry on these institutions successfully.

These asylums are as open as a school; no locked doors (instead of window-bars, the glass-frames are of iron painted white), no pens made by high fences. The inmates are free to go and come at their work, with no other restraint than the watch of the attendants. The asylum is a home and not a prison. The great thing is to provide occupation. The insane, it is found, can be trained to regular industry, and it is remarkable how little restraint is needed if an earnest effort is made to do without it. In the county asylums of Wisconsin about one person in a thousand is in restraint or seclusion each day. The whole theory seems to be to treat the insane like persons in some way diseased, who need occupation, amusement, kindness. The practice of this theory in the Wisconsin county asylums is so successful that it must ultimately affect the treatment of the insane all over the country.

And the beauty of it is that it is as economical as it is enlightened and humane. The secret of providing occupation for this class is to buy as little material and hire as little labor as possible; let the women make the clothes, and the men do the farm-work without the aid of machinery. The surprising result of this is that some of these asylums approach the point of being self-supporting, and all of them save money to the counties, compared with the old method. The State has not lost by these asylums, and the counties have gained; nor has the economy been purchased at the expense of humanity to the insane; the insane in the county asylums have been as well clothed, lodged, and fed as in the State institutions, and have had more freedom, and consequently more personal comfort and a better chance of abating their mania. This is the result arrived at by an exhaustive report on these county asylums in the report of the State Board of Charities and Reforms, of which Mr. Albert O. Wright is secretary. The average cost per week per capita of patients in the asylums by the latest report was, in the State Hospital, $4.39; in the Northern Hospital, $4.33; in the county asylums, $1.89.

The new system considers the education of the chronic insane an important part of their treatment; not specially book-learning (though that may be included), but training of the mental, moral, and physical faculties in habits of order, propriety, and labor. By these means wonders have been worked for the insane. The danger, of course, is that the local asylums may fall into unproductive routine, and that politics will interfere with the intelligent State supervision. If Wisconsin is able to keep her State institutions out of the clutches of men with whom politics is a business simply for what they can make out of it (as it is with those who oppose a civil service not based upon partisan dexterity and subserviency), she will carry her enlightened ideas into the making of a model State. The working out of such a noble reform as this in the treatment of the insane can only be intrusted to men specially qualified by knowledge, sympathy, and enthusiasm, and would be impossible in the hands of changing political workers. The systematized enlightenment of the farmers in the farmers’ institutes by means of their vital connection with the University needs the steady direction of those who are devoted to it, and not to any party success. As to education generally, it may be said that while for the present the popular favor to the State University depends upon its being “practical” in this and other ways, the time will come when it will be seen that the highest service it can render the State is by upholding pure scholarship, without the least material object.

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

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

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

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

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

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

IX.—CHICAGO. [First Paper.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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