Chicago History | Winter 1974–1975

Chicago History WINTER 1974-1975

. Th Ir OSJ!~!B~- DEARBORN

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ABSOLUTELY

~d~ATE~T~,

c:i~::ROOF

IROQUOIS THEATRE CO., PROPRIETORS WILL J. DAVIS, and HARRY J. POWERS, Resident Owners and Managers

The

6th Week Beginning Monday, December 28th, 1903

Iroquois

EVERY EVENING INCLUDING SUNDAY WEDNESDAY AND SATURDAY AND NEW YEARS DAY MATINEES

KLA W & ERLANGER Present

MR. BI_,UE BEARD

The Great Spectacular Enttrtainment from Theatre Royal.

Drury Lane, London.

By J. HICKORY WOOD aod ARTHUR COLLINS. Adapted for the American Stage by JOHN J. McNALLY. The Lvrics, unl ess otherwi-,e inll1cntcJ, bv J. Cheever Goodwin. ,\'\usic, unless uthC•f\\'ISl' i.1dic:;tcJ. by.FIL'Jenck Solomon.

8alld<; h\" Ernest !:YAuban.

Produced under Stage Directi<111 of Hvrhcrt G rec;ham and Ned Wayburn.

Busine,s Direction vf Ju"- . Erouk-.,. r dwm H. Price, Man::iger.

SYNOPSIS OF SCENES, MUSIC AND INCIDENTS. A<... T I. Scene 1-The ,\\ arkt't P!:1.~e un tilt 0u:1y. rw:n BagJaJ. (Bruce Smith.) ,\\ust:.i.pha plots to serar..te ::-c·l:m :rn,1 F:itrma antl sell the beautiful Fatima to th e mon~kr Blue Ht·arL..

f--'t1L' He:1rc\ arrive-.; purcha es slaves.

Sister Anne falls in Ion• \1·1rh 81ue ~t•:\~J an l ~1 urns Irish Pat,ha,v.

Beard seizes Fatima antl t:1ke<; hLr c,; l•L> .. r,l !11 , Y:icht.

Blue

Opening Chorus· a. ''Come, Bu" Our Lu,ci< -~•" Fruit._ _·· b. '' Oriental s·1a n ·s are ,, t. · c. • ·we Come from D:.!m:it1:i. ·, d. Algerian ~l,l\"e ~\•Ilg and ci1t•n: "· aa. Grand Entr:rnce Blue Bl':uJ ' -.. Retinue. Medley l:n-;emhle. bb. Song-'· A mo-.t Unp11pulM Putt- i t:itc. ·' Blue Be:.i.rJ :.ind Chorus. a.

"Welcome Fntima ...

Song-'' I'm As Gu\lJ a-. I Ought l'n Ee.·· Blan(ill' .-\Jam,-.

Finale- "Then Awav \Ve G!I. · ·

Programme Continued on Next Page.

POWERS' THEATRE, New Years Week, JOHN DREW IN "CAPT. DIEPW ILLINOIS THEATRE, This Week, JEROME SYKES IN "THE- BILLIONAIRE,,

SMOKING

I

•

WILL NOT BE ALLOWED IN THIS THEATRE SAVE :~ THE SMOKING ROOM DOWN ST A I R S TO

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RIGHT OF MAIN FOYER. WIii J Davis - Harry J. Powers

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Chicago Historical SocielY

Chicago History

THE MAGAZINE 0 F THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Something here for everybody, we think.

Ecologists, conservationists, and just plain nature lovers will treasure W. J. Beecher's article on the Indiana Dunes.

To all lovers, we offer Lester Weinrott's "Dear Valentine." .For feminists and lawyers, there is Herman Kogan's article on Myra Bradwell.

Gerald Carson talks to animal lovers about funny incidents and serious questions, and brings them right up to date.

'I he local historian will learn an amusing thing or two from John M. Lamb's story of early days on the Illinois & Michigan Canal. And there are dramatic moments in Ruth 'I hompson McGibeny's first-person account of the 1903 fire in the Iroquois Theatre.

Interested in the inner city? Tom Philpott steers you around the current crop of writings on how Chicago's architecture affects its inner life. Want to know the city better? Laura Green tells you what various guidebooks offer. Want tips on other new books? See our staff's informed reviews.

Think times have changed? "50 Years Ago," for all its familiar names and odd happenings, will set you straight.

Have fun.

Chicago Histo ric al Society

A lone pine stands sentry on the Indiana Dunes at night.

The stream at left, unable to reach Lake Michigan because of the sandbars, has been formed into a small lake .

Chicago History The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society

WINTER 1974-1975 Volume Ill, Number 3

Cover: On a late afternoon, the West Beach area of the new Indiana Dun es National Lakes hore.

Photo by G eorge Svi hlo

CONTENTS MYRA BRADWELL: CRUSADER AT LAW/ 132

by Herman Kogan

WHY SAVE THE IN DIANA DUNES? / 141

I sabel Grossner, Editor

by W. ]. Beecher

Frederick J. Nachman, Assistant Editor

hy Gerald Carson

Ellen Skerrett, Editorial Assistant

DEAR VALENTINE / 159

IN CHICAGO : CRUEL TY AND KINDNESS TO ANIMALS / 151

by Lester A. Weinrolt

EARLY DAYS ON THE ILLINOIS & MICHIGAN CANAL / 168

Editorial Advisory Committee

hy John l\I. Lamb

Paul M. Angle Emmett Dedmon

THE IROQUOIS THEATRE FIRE/177

James R. Getz Oliver Jensen Robert W. Johannsen Herman Kogan Will Leonard

FIFTY YEARS AGO/181

Nathan A. Scott, Jr. Robert M. Sutton

by Ruth Thompson i\IcGibeny

BOOK REVIEWS: BUILDINGS AND PEOPLE / 187

by Thomas Philpott

WHERE IT'S AT: CHICAGO GUIDEBOOKS / 189

by Laura Green

BRIEF REPORTS / 191 by the staff

Printed by Hillison & Etten Company Chicago, Illinois Copyright, 1974 by the Chicago Historical Society Clark Street at North Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60614

Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life

Myra Bradwell: Crusader at Law

BY HERMAN KOGAN

Her "disability"-that she was a woman-kept her from the practice of law, yet she spent her life upgrading the legal profession in Illinois.

a crusader for legal reform in nineteenth-century Chicago, was almost unbelievably far ahead of her time. Most of the reforms she advocated have since been imbedded in formal law, although they were deemed dangerous and revolutionary in her day. An ardent feminist, she called for the right of women to vote, the elimination of employment barriers, the prohibition of discrimination in taxation between blacks and whites ( then expressly permitted by the Illinois Constitution), the right of accused persons to testify in criminal cases, the abolition of whipping as punishment for crime ("A disgrace to the age in which we live"), and dozens of other reforms.

Myra Bradwell first came to Chicago from her native Vermont in 1843 with her parents, Eben and Abigail Colby. After graduating from the Ladies' Seminary in Elgin, Illinois, she became a schoolteacher and was so engaged when, in 1852, she married British-born James Bole worth Bradwell, who was financing his studies in a local law office by working as a manual laborer. After an interlude in Memphis, where he served as principal of a private school in which she taught, they returned in 1855 to Chicago, where he was admitted to the bar and started a notable career as a diligent barrister and holder of various judicial offices.

Inbetween duties as wife and mother, Myra Bradwell began to study law in her husband's office. At the outset, she had no intention of practicing but hoped to be helpful to Bradwell in preMYRA BRADWELL,

Herman Kogan is editor of the Sun-Times Showcase.

This article is adapted from his recent book The First Century: The Chicago Bar Association, 1874-1974.

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Chicago History

paring briefs, doing research, and interviewing clients. Yet, the more she delved into lawbooks and studied litigation handled by her husband, the more assured she was that she did want to be a licensed lawyer- to become, in fact, the first woman lawyer in the land.

Before she could make a move in that direction, however, the Civil War came. With characteristic energy, Mrs. Bradwell threw herself into myriad activities on the home front, serving most assiduously in arranging and managing fairs in 1863 and 1865 designed to raise funds for nursing wounded soldiers and to gain relief for soldiers' widows and orphans. (Her husband, by now a Cook County judge, busied himself rooting out those he considered disloyal to the Union. As sole officer and only member of what he called the Home Defense Association. he undPrtook to write formal letters to those he suspected of being Copperheads. demanding that they sign oaths of allegiance on pain of being tarred and feathered. ) After the war. Myra Bradwell worked vigorously in behalf of projects to help crippled soldiers, and she established a sewing exchange to teach needy and new immigrants a way to earn their livings.

Having come to know Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln well in the 1850s during frequent trips to Springfield , the Bradwells were foremost among the Chicagoans who befriended Mrs. Lincoln in her troubled years after the President's assassination. For a time. the distraught widow lived in a house near the Bradwells and later, after Mrs. Lincoln's mental instability grew more pronounced and she was adjudged insane and committed to a sanitarium in Batavia, Illinois, Mrs. Bradwell maintained a steady and sympathetic correspondence with her. The Bradwells were also instrumental in effecting a further hear-

Chicago Historical Society

Myra Bradwell, legal crusader and editor.

ing in which Mrs. Lincoln was declared sane and competent to manage her estate. In a letter to a mutual friend in the last, sad years before she died in r 882, Mary Lincoln wrote: "When all others, among them my husband's supposed friends, failed me in the most bitter hours of my life, these loyal hearts, Myra Bradwell and her husband, came to my assistance and rescued me, and under great difficulty secured my release from confinement in an insane asylum."

Mrs. Bradwell's interest in the law intensified in the postwar years, and in r 868 she established the Chicago Legal News, naming herself editor and business manager. In its masthead she inserted the motto Lex vincit and announced her intention to "do all we can to make it a paper that every lawyer and business man in the Northwest ought to take." Not only did she promise to offer in her weekly publication a record of cases decided in various United States courts and the Illinois Supreme Court, headnotes to important cases in advance of publication in the reports of regional courts, and liberal dollops of legal information and general news, but she also made it clear that she would use her publication to battle for improvements in everything directly or indirectly connected with the practice of law.

Almost at once, she began to inveigh against the condition of the Cook County Courthouse.

The grass in Courthouse Square had been trampled out by boys, cows, and goats. The fountains, dry and waterless, were monuments to the neglect and inefficiency of those in charge of the courthouse. The corridors were covered with accumulated filth, and the walls were defaced and dilapidated. "The windows are so dirty," she wrote, "that one in attempting to look through them towards the Sherman House would be unable to tell whether it was built of brick or stone." Week after week, the pages of the Chicago Legal News were studded with accounts of faulty admission standards, the ineptness and low character of some lawyers and justices of the peace, filthy and noisy courtrooms, and flagrant activities of un licensed practitioners.

Chicago History

133

Myra Bradwell

Chicago His torical Society

J ustice James Bradwel l.

Eve n more persistently did Mrs. Bradwell carry on a fight for equal rights for women. Unde r the catchall heading, Law R elating to Women, she campaigned for women's suffrage, maintaining that the issue was not a matter of politics, but of necessary reform :

their just property rights a nd ba rring sex discrimina ti on in employm ent. One of h er most vigorous campa igns was against sta tutes th a t d eprived married wom en of the ri ght to re ta in their earnings fr ee a nd clear of any debts their husba nds might incur. Th a t ba ttle took on m om entum afte r Mrs. Bradwell learned of a case in whi ch the wages o f a wo rking wife were ga rnish eed by a saloon keep er to whom h er debt-ridden spouse owed a con sidera ble ba r bill. Outraged, Mrs. Bra dwell dra fted legisla tion to m a ke such rulings impossible a nd sped to the state capita l a t Springfi eld , where she successfull y lobbied it to p assage .

With equal zea l, sh e p ersua ded J. C . Burroughs, president of th e first University of Chicago, to a dmit v.:om e n to its new la w de pa rtment. And in eve ry issue o f the Chi cago L cRal N ews she printed scores of news accounts a bo ut wom en in othe r sta tes who served. unlike wo m en in Illinois, as jurors. de puty sh e riffs, a nd justi ces o f the peace.

As the city's prime feminist, she h elped to set u p the Middle W est's first wom en' s suffrage conventi on , held in Chicago on F ebrua ry 11-12, 1869, a nd of course reported copiously o n its sessio ns in the columns of the Chicago L egal N l'lUS . A typical editori a l ca lling on the sta te legisla ture to h eed co nventi o n resolutio ns in beh a lf of " wom e n' s em a ncipa ti o n' " bega n:

could tell wh ether we were in fav or of the Democrati c or Republican party- the Methodist, Bapti st, Universalist or Catholic churches. But one thing \\°C' do claim - that woman has a right to think and ac t as an individual- believing that if the Great Father had intended it to be otherwise, he \\'Ould have placed Eve in a cage and given Adam the key.

\Ve hea r a grea t dea l said of late in regard to V\'oma n Suffrage, yr t onl y a fr\\' persons arc foun d \1·ho have th r moral courag-r and arr \\'illing to stand up fa irly and squarely and say: "We beli e\'<' it right to give th r ball ot to woman," about the sa mr number that in our girlhood days \1·rre \\'illing to own th at a colored man had the God-given right to be free.

Bu t th e tim e will come \1·hrn the oppositi on to thi s suffrage movement will melt away bdorr th r glorious sunli ght of truth and right, as did those old argu rn rnt s in favor of Javery. M ethinks human na ture will be about the same then as now- the lo\'C' of a mother for her darling child \\'ill not be lessened- nor th e respect and esteem for the nobl e one who \\'alks by her sid e, as her pro tector and her guide.

Constantly, she demanded that the state legislature consider passage of laws granting women

All this wa s a prelude to her most dramatic and m emorable battle.

\Ve have never said anyth ing in the columns of the N ews and never intend to, from whi ch any person

134

Chicago History

Chicago H istorical Society

The Cook County Courthouse just after the construction of its new wings in 1870. In 1868, Myra Bradwell decried the condition of the main building , but apparently without effect.

Chicago History

135

Myra Bradwell

It began in the hot August of 1869, after she passed her examination creditably before Circuit Court Judge E. S. Williams and was certified to the Illinois Supreme Court for admission to the bar. But the high court rejected her because she was married.

The letter from Norman L. Freeman, the Supreme Court reporter, read:

Asserting that inasmuch as women were not known as attorneys at common law, the court stated it could not exercise its discretion and admit them, because, in its opinion, this was possible only if state statutes were changed. Chief Justice C. B. Lawrence expressed perfunctory and mild approval of current campaigns for women's rights but went on to intone:

The court instructs me to inform you that they are compelled to deny your application for a license to practice as an attorney-at-law in the courts of this state upon the ground that you would not be bound by the obligations necessary to be assumed where the relation of attorney and client shall exist, by reason of the DISABILITY IMPOSED BY YOUR MARRIED CONDITION -it being assumed that you are a married woman.

Applications of the same character have occasionally been made by persons under twenty-one years of age, and have always been denied upon the same groundthat they are not bound by their contracts, being under a legal disability in that regard.

Until such DISABILITY shall br removed by legislation, the court regards itself powerless to grant your application.

Whether, on the other hand, to engage in the hot strifes of the bar, in the presence of the public, and with momentous verdicts, the prizes of the struggle, would not tend to destroy the deference and delicacy with which it is the pride of our ruder sex to treat her, is a matter certainly worthy of her consideration. But the important question is what effect the presence of women as barristers in our courts would have upon the administration of justice, and the question can be satisfactorily answered only in the light of experience.

In a quick counterassault, Mrs. Bradwell filed a detailed and scholarly brief citing innumerable cases with views contrary to those of the Illinois Supreme Court. She included reports of recent admissions of women to law schools and medical colleges in other sections of the country, of the granting of licenses to practice law in Iowa and Missouri, and of trades and professions newly available to women. By referring to "the disability imposed by your married condition," she wrote, the jurists had struck "a blow at the rights of every married woman in the great State of Illinois who is dependent on her labor for support and say to her, you cannot enter into the smallest contract in relation to your earnings or separate property that can be enforced by you in a court of law."

To this, the high court responded by going beyond its original reason for denying her admission to the bar. Once again it rejected Mrs. Bradwell, not because she was a married woman but simply because she was a woman.

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Chicago History

Myra Bradwell offered curt reply: "What the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case was as to the rights of Negroes as citizens of the United States, this decision is to the political rights of women in Illinois- annihilation." And she countered with a petition to the United States Supreme Court for a writ of error.

Senator Matt H. Carpenter of Wisconsin, a close friend of the Bradwells and one of the country's ablest constitutional lawyers, argued that it was contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fourth Article of the Constitution to deny her admission for the stated reasons. But his argument failed to convince. After holding the case for two years, the United States Supreme Court, in May 1873, affirmed the judgment of the Illinois Supreme Court. It declared that admission to the courts of a state was not a privilege belonging to citizens of the United States which individual states were prohibited from abridging. It also emphasized that it was not one of the privileges of women citizens and maintained that "the Laws of the Creator" placed limits on the functions of womanhood.

Such a philosophy was not unusual for the times. In denying the petition of a woman: ap-

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:2 l 7. .\ m:1rri1 ·1l w ,,nia n C'!lll nnt :1<'1 :,, ntl111ini-1 r.,11·i.\ or a, ir11:1n1i:111 o f h.-r <·hihln·n ,, it h.,ut tlw c-,.n,,·nt of h c- r hn,h:1 1111. ·· .\ h 11,ha 11tl i, 1,ouml 111 f"u rni• h hi, \\ iii· \\ilh 1111• n11·:1n-or prth('(" lllill'! h.-r -nit f11r :1 ,!ivor,,·, :ind will h(' C'n111pdk-tl lo (lo ", Ii_,- rn It- of (·nu rt." :l,i 111 . ltl!l . t · 11.i .. r t h,· cn1111111Hl law tlu• hu,han<l :lC'· quin -, :111 :1h, 0 l11 11• tit!, • tn nll tltt· p ,- r,nn:11 prnpl'l"I_\" nf I hi' wili •, whieh ,ht· ha s in p n, .. ,·,.,int' at the litnt1 nf t)w 1n:11-ri:lg'l', ac; l'11111ph·t.-l_,. :,, t ht• pmp<·rt . · whi<"it h e p11r · c·ha,,-,1 with hi < ow11 mon<·y. I I<" is also liahl t• 10 pay :ill t h e d,·hls of hi, wife enntr:o e11•d hl'i'o rc· m ar ria!.(t', w it hout rq;:inl to \\ lr t·l h ,· r h l' n ·c·cin·, propC' rt_,. from· h e r or nnl . \\'h ill· thc 11·!.(i,l:tlttrl' (by the• net of ! ~Iii, p:1_!.(<' 1-lO> han' so for m ndifi C'd the ri .~ or o r Iii(• /'IJ JltllWII /111r, ;ts to allow the prqpnly 11f th e wift· tn he anti re main d11ri11:: t·o,·(·rt1trl\ as hc•r sole an cl ~t·fHlratc

(HOp•• rl_\", un,lt-r her soh• control, th u samP as if s hu w e re unm:trried , fn·c from th e contn,1 am! interl"cn·nn· of h c- r hu•h:111tl , an,1 ,,x,·111pt fmm c-x,•cutinn for hi ; tl.-ht,, h<• is ,till It-rt lial,lp to pay h t• r ,l<·ht, contra< ·ll•tl h• ·f"on, marriaf(C. So th :t t umlc r th,· prt•scn t law, whilc- the husband'~ prop • cr 1_,- m:1_,. b,· !<oh! to ,,ati-f_,. tlH · tlcbts or the wili· co nt rar·t<"<l lwforc- marri:t!.(l' ; the wifo's prop,·rt~- cannot bt: take n !hr the dd,ts of the hu,h,11111 eontra(•tt·,1 during ltla1-ria/!C'l•: .\11:,1:,;ns

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1ri lliilt .!rt ,f JHGI. r,uh-r the prc«·nt law of the state nf 111inoi,, n hu~ha111l is still en tit let.I. to the c:trnin~ ... or Iii.., wit\•. t ·po n tlw c laim of Sn•annah Adam ~, wit,· or E .. \,bm,, of her right toJ rP<'o ,·t· r of ont· Bc•a r, whn was sheriff nf ~lrrcer e,n111t_,·, li,r her •n ·iccs ns cook in the jail, our ,11pn·lll <' court, says: "Tl11· l·a rning, nf n ma rrit'tl woman arc· 110I 1·111h r:1 r-1·d in the• al't nf IH!il, lo proll•<'t lll:lrri ,-, 1 Wt1lll("ll in tlu•ir Sl')llll'alt· propt•rt I". 11..-,· llt'l » n!.( to th e h11,!i:ind , and hl' al,;11,· i, c11 tillt ·d tn th l'lll . That nc-t nnh· 011)1· n·l,·r, tn pro p1·rty, rwl and p:• r,,uwi. anti tlu..: n ·nt . . , i,:--u <·.~. in('n •a ... t· nnd profit tlll'n·ol"l lint n ot to the <•arning-, or th(• "iti•. :u; 111. :!so.

H a marrit-tl w o man i, allmn•d to r e tain lwr rt·:11 aml )ll' r,nnal prnpr rt_1· th t· same as a , in'!lt· woma n. •hnultl n o t th•• 1\Cl of !Hfil h t• , o anH•n1h·d a-.; tn (•1nhr:1re lwr f'arning:; ti , r hhor p,·rf,rnu •,1 out,ill l' h e r own hou ,;eho1ld .

In C';M· nfa drnnkt•n nr <p<•rnlthrift hu · t,arnl ,11.-I, :111 um, mltn l'nl would oftt·n san· the " it,· :111d <·hil.!n•n frn111 Wfint, as wt·ll a, pl...-,· th,• "iii·'~ <'a rnin!.(, lwyoml th e read , of ht·r h u ,h:11Hl', 1·n·,litn rs .

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In the section of her paper called Law Relating to Women, Myra Bradwell crusaded for women's rights.

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A humorous entry under Miscellaneous Items in the first issue of the Legal News. Myra Bradwell was noted for her crusade against lawyers who practiced before the wrong bar.

Chicago Historical Society

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since a wag wrote and placed the following pretended rule of court in the court-room of one of our courts of record, where the rules nf practice are wont to he posted, ""'henever any attorney shnll frequent saloons as n habit, and can not be found at his ntrlce, if he has any office, it shall be n ecessary for such attorney tn file with the clerk of tue court a list of the saloons so frequented by him; ant.I notice nf any motion le-ft at s uch saloon or saloons shall he c-onsitlcrctl fis sufficient nnti<'e to such attornl'y of any motion in n casl' pcnrling in this court."

A ecrtainattnrney who loved a social glas~, fin<! \l"ag in the habit of frequrnting acertain saloon in the city more than his olllcc, seeing this notice and supposing it to be genui,w, kft word with the clerk that he coul,1 be found at the aloon of - - - .

Judp;e or the surprise of tlw afort"saitl attornl·y on the following tiny. when he mov• ed the cc,urt, umle r the- ah•H"e rule, tn reinstate :rn imponant case of hi · that had UCl' n dismissed in his ab~t·ncc. on the ground thnt no n o ti ce had b el'n ll' fL at the saloon wlH"rc he had \Jee n waiting the whole o f the day before, anti wa, infornwtl hy the good naturl·d jutlgc, with a smile, and amiol r oar~ o_f laug-ht,•r thm1 the entire bar, thaL the rule was a l«N.r.

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Chicago History

137

Myra Bradwell

plicant from Wisconsin, the nation's highest court expressed what was a widely held feeling among conservative jurists: It is a public policy to provide for the sex, not for its superfluous members, and not to tempt women from the proper duties of their sex by offering the duties peculiar to ours. The peculiar qualities of womanhood, its gentle graces, its tender susceptibility, its purity, its delicacy, its emotional impulses, its subordination of hard reason to sympathetic feeling are surely not qualature has tempered ifications for forensic strife. woman as little for juridical conflicts of the courtroom as for the physical conflicts of the battlefield. Woman is moulded for gentler and better things, and it is not the saints of the world who chiefly give employment to our profession.

The immediate effect of the high court's ruling was to enjoin Myra Bradwell from practicing law. It did not, however, keep her from continuing to agitate in behalf of other applicants.

She had already taken an intense interest in the efforts, throughout 1871, of a brilliant young woman, Alta M. Hulett, to obtain a license.

Although only eighteen, Miss Hulett had applied for admission after spending a year as a student in the office of a lawyer in Rockford, Illinois.

When her application was turned down, Miss Hulett prepared a bill providing that no person could be precluded or debarred from any occupation, profession, or employment, except military, on account of sex.

With considerable encouragement from Mrs. Bradwell, not only in the columns of the Chicago Legal News but also during sessions of the legislature in Springfield, the bill was passed in March 1872. On her nineteenth birthday, June 4, 1873, Miss Hulett became the first woman in Illinois admitted to the bar. Thereupon, Justice C. B. Lawrence, who had delivered the original Illinois Supreme Court decision against Mrs. Bradwell, was heard to remark that if she were his daughter, he would disinherit her. This, of course, was duly reported in the Chicago Legal News, with the snappish comment, "Nothing save a blast from Gabriel's trumpet can dispel 138

Chicago History

C hi ca go Hi storical Soc ie ty

Mary Todd Lincoln. In need, she turned to the Bradwells.

these lifelong prejudices." Shortly thereafter, Lawrence was defeated for reelection to the high tribunal, the result, Myra Bradwell devoutly believed, of his ruling against her and his sour statement about Miss Hulett. Regrettably, Miss Hulett's promising career was cut short with her sudden death in 1877.

Increasingly involved in the women's rights movement and busy with her weekly newspaper, Myra Bradwell never again sought formally to secure admission to the bar, although she did have the pleasure of seeing her daughter Bessie graduated from the Union College of Law (now Northwestern University Law School ) and admitted to practice in 1882. Instead, Mrs. Bradwell continued to carry on her drive for legal reform and improvements.

That there was need for reform and improvements had long been evident, and grievously so.

Persistently Mrs. Bradwell inveighed against the ease with which, despite a slight stiffening of requirements at the end of the 1860s, men could become lawyers. "The crude and vulgar course of study pursued in law offices," she wrote, "has been the means of placing the names of many very poor lawyers upon the roll of the profession

for good or ill, were duly noted in Myra Bradwell's journal. She was well aware of the presence in the city of reputable lawyers, but she took special pains to deplore all lapses of behavior in or out of courtrooms, hesitating not at all in printing such blunt news items as: "Newel Pratt, one of the divorce attorneys of this city, died last week. It was the liquor killed him." In the year of the Great Chicago Fire of 187 1, heavy drinking among the city's lawyers seemed to be especially prevalent, and Mrs. Bradwell lamented the fact:

Chicago Historical Society

Alta M. Hulett, the first woman admitted to the Illinois bar.

who, if they had taken a thorough and welldigested course of reading, might have been numbered among its most useful members." To assist students, she published a 100-page book"50 cents for a paper-covered copy, $1.50 for one on heavy, tinted paper bound in law sheep" -that contained a full report of the examination of candidates appearing before the Illinois Supreme Court, from questions asked by the examiners to the answers of the candidates and even informal remarks of the judges.

In a light vein, she reported anecdotes about unusual answers in other examinations: one such told of a young law student before the Indiana Supreme Court who, when asked by the presiding judge what the first duty of a lawyer was, responded, "To secure his fees, sir!" "This answer to a question strangely general and indefinite, so apt and unexpected," reported the Chicago L egal News, "produced an irrepressible burst of laughter at the judge's expense who, blushing and indignant, cried out to the clerk, 'Prepare a license for the applicant. I find him well qualified to practice law in the state of Indiana!'"

Examples of lawyers' character and conduct,

We remember quite a number of men who, in their day, were distinguished at the bar, had all the clients they desired and wealth sufficient to make them comfortable for life. We have seen them take to drink, neglect their business and client after client left them to return no more. Their wealth would, day by day, drop from their nerveless hands, their friends would forsake them and, at last, they would die a miserable dea th, and be saved from filling a pauper's grave only through the kindness of some surviving friend who would rnllect enough money to give them Christian burial.

Therefore, she welcomed the news that a group of forty-two lawyers had met on November 3, 1873 to form a professional association. An effective organization, Mrs. Bradwell noted, might do much to elevate the standard of professional conduct "and the disreputable shysters who now disgrace the profession could be ¡ driven from it." Within a few months, the organization, which she continually advocated m the Chicago Legal News, was duly formed as the Chicago Bar Association.

Nor did she spare those who sat in judgment.

Chiding judges who were late in opening sessions, she wrote, "A judge has no more right, morally speaking, by his tardiness to take an hour from the time of a lawyer than he has to put his hand in the attorney's pocket and extract five dollars."

Late in 1872, when the Illinois Supreme Court reversed the conviction of a man who had killed a policeman, the Chicago Evening Journal published an article attacking "corrupt and merceChicago History

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Myra Bradwell

nary shysters-the jackals of the legal profession who feast and fatten on human blood spilled by the hands of other men" -and implying that bribery had been used to obtain the reversal. The paper's owner, Charles L. Wilson, and its editor, Andrew Shuman, were held in contempt and respectively fined $100 and $200. In the discussions that ensued among the city's lawyers, Mrs. Bradwell was unequivocally opposed to the findings, criticizing the high court as "wanting in dignity" and expressing her own fears for the liberty of the press.

Nor were her attacks limited to high-andmighty judges. She also inveighed against justices of the peace who had little or no training for their jobs, who imposed outlandish fines to obtain greater fees, and who failed to maintain even a minimum of decorum when they heard cases.

As a writer and polemicist, Mrs. Bradwell avoided the kind of orotund style then fashionable in legal circles. She was invariably crisp and to the point, often with some wit. Excoriating the author of a book replete with borrowings from other volumes, she wrote, "Bumming law writers buy a few reams of legal cap, spend a few months in stealing from various text books and examining reports, engage the services of some unprincipled publisher and the bastard is born and sent to all the law book houses in the United States to be sold to the profession." In a controversy about whether it would be proper to decorate graves on Memorial Day if it fell on a Sunday, she wrote, "We think persons who object to this service on the Sabbath, if they should happen to die and appear before the gates of heaven on Sunday, would ask St. Peter to defer opening the gates to let them in on Monday for fear the Sabbath would be desecrated."

Through it all, through the years of bustle and clamor and turmoil and battle, Myra Bradwell was intensely devoted to her family. In the last years of her life, she and her husband lived on the first floor of a large three-story house, while her attorney son, Thomas, his wife, Hattie, and their child lived on the top floor, and her daughter, her 140

Chicago History

husband, and child occupied the second floor.

Each night, the six adults would gather in the first floor library for a discussion of the events of the day and general talk, mostly about the law and civic virtue, or lack of it. So close were the family ties that on her last trip to Europe in 189 1- in earlier years she had traveled widely throughout the United States and Europe- Mrs. Bradwell was accompanied by her son-in-law and daughterin-law. That trip was an especially sad one, for it was made for the purpose of visiting a specialist in England, who confirmed an earlier finding that Mrs. Bradwell had cancer.

Only one year earlier, in 1890, the Illinois Supreme Court had righted its previous wrong by granting Mrs. Bradwell a license on its own motion. In 1892, when she was already terminally ill, she was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.

By then unable or unwilling to begin a practice of the law, Myra Bradwell nevertheless continued to be active in other ways. Having persistently clamored since the late 188os for Chicago to be the site of the World's Columbian Exposition, she hrlped lobby in Washington for appropriations for the fair, so effectively that Potter Palmer, the Exposition's president, publicly attributed Chicago's triumph to "Myra Bradwell's charm and diplomacy." By the time the 1893 fair opened, Mrs. Bradwell was near death . But so determined was she to see what her efforts had wrought that she had herself moved for two weeks after the opening to a nearby hotel so that she could be wheeled through the fair grounds for a few hours every day.

Early in September of that year, she took to her bed and never left it. Her death the following February brought well-deserved tributes: "A peculiar yet attractive character," "Remarkable for her firmness of character," "Graciously and gloriously she trove on every battlefield of endeavor for the uplifting of women and the enlarging of her sphere of usefulness." She left a legacy of accomplishment unmatched by few Chicagoans of her day, or any day.

Why Save the Indiana Dunes?

BY W. J. BEECHER

A natural wonder and the birthplace of North-American ecology) the Indiana Dunes have been saved from the outreach of" civilization)) only by tenacious) determined) and well-organized conservationists.

IN THE EARLY DECADES of this century, the whole southern shore of Lake Michigan was a dune-land wilderness. The gleaming white beach met the blue of sky and water and the marram grass waved gracefully in the breeze atop the foredunes. Inland, rank on rank, marched the forested dune ridges that marked old shorelines of the vanished past. Through thousands of summers the birds had their migrations, the unique plants had their seasons. But few were the human eyes that beheld the long white strand, few ears heard the lost-soul cries of gull and curlew as their wings flashed white above the wind-blown surf.

There were some though who loved the desolation, the wind and sun, who Jived hermit lives in crude shacks of bleached boards. And there were students and professors who came to learn from nature's unique ecological experiments in this extraordinary place. Professors Henry C. Cowles and Reuben M. Strong of the University of Chicago used to look down the unbroken beach, extending twenty-five miles, fifty miles, and agree that this is how it would always be. There was nothing here that anyone would ever wantnothing but sand!

Dr. Henry M. Bannister, director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences a hundred years ago, pointed out a unique feature of the natural landscape at the foot of Lake Michigan. As you rode inland on horseback from the present Chicago shore, you mounted stepwise from a low level prairie to a higher one, then to a still higher one, all in the space of eight or ten miles. At the crest

Chicago Historical Society

Henry C. Cowles, "the father of North American ecology."

Dr. \V. J. Beecher, ecologist, conservationist, ornithologist, and director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, will be remembered by Chicago History readers for "The Lmt. Illinois Prairie," Spring-Summer r 97 3.

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Indiana Dunes

of each rise was a sand ridge surmounted by black oaks, and he deduced that these ridges represented ancient shore lines of Lake Michigan at levels twenty, forty, and sixty feet higher than the present level. Chicago lay beneath sixty feet of glacial meltwater twelve thousand years ago-dammed against the Valparaiso moraine which encircles the foot of present Lake Michigan. Bannister's discovery that Lake Michigan had a datable history of shrinking back from glacial flood stages enabled a later president of the Chicago Academy of Sciences to become "the father of North American ecology."

He was Professor Cowles, of the Botany Department of the University of Chicago, who customarily took his classes to the famous Indiana sand dunes south of the city. To him, the dunes were an open book. There, at the foot of the Lake, sand was eternally being cast up in bars by northwesterly storm winds, thence to be blown into the most complex series of dunes in the world from the standpoint of vegetation.

Since Cowles knew what Bannister and his geological followers had written, he understood that to walk inland from the present shore was to walk backward in time. The rest was easy.

Clearly, the sand blown inland off the latest sandbar was being arrested just back from the beach by a long, low dune, held together by the rhizomes of marram and sand-binder grasses.

But back of this foredune was one considerably higher, topped by cottonwoods, sand cherries, and junipers. Back of that was another long dune held together by jackpine and white pine, and beyond that an oak dune. Finally, farthest inland of all, one encountered beeches and maples in pockets where a foot-thick layer of soil covered the sand. He reasoned that once, when Lake Michigan had been higher, the dune on which mature oaks were growing had been merely a foredune held together by marram grass within a few yards of the Lake's ancient shore. Successively, it had become a cottonwood dune. and then a pine dune, before it was finally covered by the climactic forest which distin142

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guishes the inmost part of the region. Cowles knew he was reading the results of a ten thousand year long experiment.

The change from one community to another could be seen happening. In a mature pine forest that was shading out its own seedlings, there were already thriving oak seedlings to signal the eventual change to an oak dune. He was able to infer that each stage in the development of the vegetative life of the dunes added humus and otherwise changed the soil and environment so that a higher plant type could succeed it.

This is now common knowledge, but it started with Cowles in the Indiana Dunes and it could not have been discovered very readily anywhere else in the world. Like Mendel's lucky choice of sweet peas which launched the science of genetics on clear evidence, Cowles' choice of the dunes of Indiana was a happy accident for the science of ecology.

Cowles was able to show that each of these successive stages was characterized by a whole complex of plants and that the oldest stages were richest in species. Professor Victor Shelford, animal ecologist at the University of Chicago who studied the animal life of the Indiana Dunes, gave supportive evidence in his book Animal Communities in Temperate America.

The animal life, particularly the insect life of the Dunes, was differentiated along similar lines.

He found, for example, that there was a different species of tiger beetle for every community, and he showed that the complexity of the animal community increased with the complexity of the plant community and that the two formed an inseparable and interdependent fabric.

Shelford also studied a special dune complex within the city limits of what is now Gary, Indiana. At this place, partly up the west shore of the Lake, where winds did not favor dune formation, a series of sandbars has been deposited by the shrinking Lake within the last three thousand years. Over a hundred of these are separated from each other by long, narrow lagoons. He was able to show that the most

recent bar was formed only "yesterday" and that the lag;on behind it was essentially a slice of Lake Michigan. Its bottom was clear sand with no vegetation, and its fish were Lake fish. But behind it, row upon row, were all the bars and lagoons of vanished yesterdays-each one older than its shoreward predecessor, each one with more vegetation and mud on its once sandy bottom. The fauna also became increasingly complex in each landward pond; more and more kinds of fish were found . And finally, he discovered, vegetation overcomes. Pond number , 14 was entirely filled with vegetation and on the way to becoming a prairie. So Shelford had found another fantastic grand experiment performed by nature in the Dunes: he had unraveled the life history of a pond from birth to death. This experiment had taken three thousand years to perform, yet its results could be read clearly.

Back of the series of twenty-five mile long dunes along the shore were, not long ago, some sizeable lakes, like Long Lake at former Baileytown. It is now a Bethlehem rolling mill. About such lakes could be found everything from wet blucjoint fens, gay with blazing star, paintbrush, and gentian, to tall-grass prairie. There were also sphagnum bogs: one that still exists, Dune Acres, is a national landmark named for Professor Cowles.

The acid conditions in the bogs, perpetuated by the sphagnum, create a special, harsh environment. Physically wet, a bog is yet physiologically dry, since the acid water is unavailable to roots. Thus shrubs like the leatherleaf ( Chamaedaphne ), bog rosemary ( Andromeda), and chokeberry ( Pyrus) have thick leaves like desert shrubs to hold down the loss of water through evaporation . Some of the plants, unable to get nitrogen from the water because of its acidity, must obtain it from the decaying bodies of insects which they entrap. The sundew ( Droscra) is one such, capturing insects with its sticky " dewdrops." But it is the pitcher plant (Sarra cenia) that is most spectacular. Its radiat-

The larva of the tiger beetle, found on flat areas of moist sa nd.

Courtesy W. J, Beecher

The digger wasp, which lives in the foredunes.

Courtesy W. J. Beecher

Indiana Dunes

The beginning of a blowout and a wandering dune. Here the battlement of the foredune has just been breached.

Chico~o Hlstorlcol Society

Turret dunes. In the path of a blowout, sandbinder grass provides some stability.

A wandering dune, the result of a blowout, moves along with the wind, the sand falling freely.

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A wandering dune is devouring a dune formerly stabilized by marram grass. The wind is from the right, and the line of soil erosion can easily be seen in the photograph.

Rolling in on a forest, a wandering dune proceeds to bury it.

Having buried a forest , a wandering dune has passed on , leaving behind a graveyard .

.,.,

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Indiana Dunes

ing leaves are shaped like powder horns and hold rainwater. Insects are attracted to it by nectaries around the lip of each pitcher. Overreaching, they fall into the fluid. They are prevented from escaping both by the down-curving spines inside and the anaesthetic action of the fluid, which digests them to liberate the coveted nitrogen.

Such bogs are a record of past climate, reaching back to the time over twelve thousand years ago when all of this land lay buried beneath glacial ice a mile thick. Sphagnum decays slowly, turning to peat and preserving the structure of sedge and fern of past times. When this is brought to the surface with a suitable bore, it is found that the pollen of the lowest levels is of spruce and fir. Pollen from these trees rained daily on the pond twelve thousand years ago.

It settled slowly to the bottom with a single layer of the decaying peat forming a record of its early existence. Samples taken higher up in the peat indicate that a drier, warmer climate followed, in which pine predominated. Still more recently, oaks came in.

The bog is, thus, a glacial relict, and the dunes, a meeting ground of plants characteristic of the coniferous woodlands to the north and botanical elements from the south.

Wherever one looks in the Indiana Dunes, one can see the most graphic examples of evolution in response to harsh environmental conditions. Take the foredune itself, where the surface temperature of the sand at noon is 135°F. One is attracted to small holes in the sides of foredunes where the digger wasp is digging, throwing out the sand between his hind legs like a dog. H e hovers ten inches above the sand, steeling himself for the heat of the surface. Immediately upon contact, he digs furiously to get down to the cooler sand, soon digging himself out of sight. To a large extent, he brings food into this sterile habitat from the outside. Although a predator and thus, a consumer, he behaves as a producer organism in this ecosystem, bringing in flies stung and killed outside it. The 146

Chicago History

wasp stores th ese in the bottom of its burrow, aftc-r laying its eggs in each carcass. A robber fly or tiger beetle comes up to the edge of the wasp's burrow, lays eggs there, and sends them rolling down into the burrow with a nudge or kick, thus parasi tizi ng the wasp.

Another burrow which may be seen on flat areas of moist sand belongs to the naked larva of the tiger beetle. The tiger beetle larva moves only early in the morning before the sun is up, or on overcast or rainy days. Looking much like any other beetle larva, this one digs a hole in the sand with a bejewelled shield on its head. When it has finished , the shield exactly fills the hole, about the size of a match head. It lies there, a living trapdoor awaiting the chance passage of an ant, which it snatches and draws into the hole in le s than a fiftieth of a second. Doodlebugs, or ant-lion larvae , which lie in wait at the bottoms of their sand funnels for passing ants, burrowing spiders whose chimney walls are held together with silk-all are Olympic champions that have survived all competition in this strange, harsh world for millions of years. Should their habitat be destroyed , their loss would be fully as important as that of any other endangered species on the planet, and for exactly the same reasons.

The ecology of the dunes is dynamic. Change is normal. Storm winds attacking a foredune from a new angle may tear it loose from the roots which moor it and cause a "blowout." A great excavation, starting at the beach, may tear through the whole complex of dunes. The wind may blow off the sand clear down to the water table back of the foredune, and the wandering dune thus formed may quickly bury a whole forest. Many years later, wandering on, it may exhume acres of tanding trees, a forest graveyard. Sometimes the shifting sand uncovers fossil beaches-a thousand, even three thousand years old-pavements of flat pebbles that were formed as the stones once slid back and forth perpetually with the washing of waves on the beach. Ten miles inland, at Dyer, Indiana, a sand-mining operation has revealed huge dunes that were formed atop the highest

level of glacial Lake Michigan twelve thousand years ago. In the excavated cross section of this dune, one may reach in and pluck out the numerous lenses of flat stones that are the twelve thousand year old beaches.

The struggle of conservationists to preserve a a significant part of the Indiana Dunes from exploitation is a classic story. Human interest in the area is old. Indian trails once followed those same ancient shorelines of shrinking Lake Michigan which Bannister found rising like steps out of the Chicago Plain. Farthest back from the present shore in the Dunes is the Glenwood Beach, which follows the Glenwood-Dyer Road (Route 30) and marks the edge of the Lake twelve thousand years ago; when it was sixty feet deeper than today.

This was once the Sauk Trail or Detroit Trace of the Indians and the early white settlers, which ran through Valparaiso, Westville, and LaPorte, Indiana. Nearer the present lakeshore, another Indian trial followed the Calumet Beach of Lake Michigan, formed ten thousand years ago when the Lake was forty feet deeper than now. At Baileytown, that trail dropped ten feet to the Lake's Tolleston Beach, and the traveler took any one of the hundred-odd sand-bar oak ridges ( studied by Shelford much later) around Wolf Lake into Chicago. This was most used for journeys between Chicago's old Fort Dearborn and Michigan City, Indiana. Travelers continuing east picked up Sauk Trail at Michigan City by journeying inland a few miles.

Baileytown was never built. It was planned and plotted by the talented French-Canadian fur trader, Joseph Bailey, who bought 2,200 acres of forest and marsh near the Little Calumet River in 1822. The furs he bought from the local Potawatomi were sold profitably to the Astor interests at Mackinac, Michigan. He built a substantial homestead on the Sauk Trail, which has remained standing for 140 years. The original home and stagecoach tavern, saw mill, blacksmith shop, and smokehouse, what remains of them, tell of an educated, intelligent man-far ahead of his time-in the Indian wilderness. Baileytown never grew be-

Blueprint prepared by Valparaiso University

Plan for Baillytown [sic].

yond Bailey's structures, and the small towns that did spring up along the trails disappeared.

Their remnants may still be found mouldering in the Dunes. Only the larger towns, such as Valparaiso, Indiana, and South Chicago, Illinois, survived and grew.

Those elated professors, viewing an empty strand and the wilderness of the Dunes early in the century and congratulating themselves that this is how it would always be, had reckoned without industry. In the early 1920s, Clinton W. Murchison, the Texas oil millionaire, acquired the Consumers Company, contractors who had been digging in the area, and subsequently purchased large tracts in the Dunes at $50 an acre.

These were sold to the Lake Shore Development Corporation in 1956 at $2,750 an acre, for by then the lakeshore had become a promising site for industry. Frightened by the prospect of an entire shoreline of pollution-belching smokestacks in place of their beloved dunes, conservationists began to muster their forces to create a national park.

Once before, a serious attempt had been made to create a park. In 1916, the Prairie Club of Chicago launched a drive which resulted in public hearings at the Federal Courthouse in Chicago.

On my library shelf is the record of those hearings, a report bound in a faded gray cover, printed on now yellowed pages. But the words of testimony are eloquent and true.

Giants testified a.t those hearings, held before Stephen T. Mather, director of the National Park Ch icago History

147

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Chicago Historical Socie ty

Service and assistant secretary of the interior.

There was Professor Cowles, who testified that scientists from the great seats of learning in Europe, visiting the United States, wished to see the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the Indiana Dunes. The Dunes were, in their opinion, one of our great natural wonders. He pointed out that the Indiana Dunes were an ecological melting pot because of their tightly packed and varied habitats, their rare wildflowers and their trees, from north and south. The rigors of the sand made it a testing ground in the struggle for existence.

Professor Thomas M. Chamberlain, chairman of the University of Chicago's Geology Department and past president of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, testified. Dean of North-American glacial geologists, he was also author of a major theory of the origin of the universe. He praised the concentrated geological values of the Lake and its dunes.

Laverne Noyes, another past president of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, testified that the Academy considered the Indiana Dunes so important that it was doing several large habitat groups on the area. I might add that the Academy still regards the Dunes highly and that we have just finished re-installing those exhibits for the third time.

Jens Jensen and Dwight Perkins, famous landscape architects, were there, and Dr. C. F. Mills148

Chicago History

paugh of the Field Museum of Natural History appeared on behalf of the Wildflower Preservation Society. Julius Rosenwald, Lorado Taft, and Harriet Monroe testified, and many more. In spite of all that, Congress refused to vote the money. There was a war on.

In 1925, Indiana established the Indiana Dunes State Park, but its 2,200 acres were not the 25 miles of shoreline envisioned in the earlier National Park Bill. The conservationists had given up too easily. Steel companies and oil refineries came to occupy the entire shoreline of Whiting, East Chicago, and Gary. Stifling fumes poured out of their stacks and rolled down over the adjacent towns. The Calumet River and its harbor boiled with the deadly filth of industrial wasteand became a fire hazard!

Then the industrial giant began to expand eastward, from Gary. In 1926, impatient with the ways of rivers, industrialists cut Burns Ditch.

It goes from Lake Michigan, through the sand, straight back to the Calumet River near its source, and channels the river directly north into the Lake, enabling shipping to take a straightforward course. The normal course of this scenic, narrow river is circuitous: it provides an outstanding example of the way in which glacial land forms and, specifically, of how the old, raised shorelines of Lake Michigan can control drainage. The river begins near Otis, Indiana, about ten miles south of the lakeshore, and flows toward the Lake. Al-

CHARM

Indiana Dunes

most im11_1ediately, however, it encounters the barrier of the old Tolleston Ridge which, remember, was the shore of Lake Michigan when it was ten feet higher than today. This is where the cut was made, and where direct navigation to the Lake has been made possible. The by-now fearfully polluted river still continues to flow westward, however, directed by the Tolleston Ridge. Channeled between this ridge to the north and the higher and older Calumet Ridge to the south, the Calumet River flows all of forty miles westward, to the Continental Divide at Blue Island, Illinois.

There it makes a hairpin bend and flows back cast across the Tolleston Ridge at Riverdale, Illinois. And then it continues to flow eastward another forty miles on the north side of the Ridge, finally entering Lake Michigan at Miller, Indiana, cast of Gary.

Midwest Steel bought 750 acres on each side of Burns Ditch in 1929, and immediately proposed that the federal government build a harbor at the mouth of the Ditch. The Army Corps of Engi-

Sen. Paul Douglas , "Indiana's third senator," in a forest graveyard.

Chicago Historical Society

neers at first refused to consider a harbor that would benefit only Midwest Steel, but when, in 1956, Bethlehem Steel bought 4,000 acres of dunes between Midwest Steel's property and the Indiana Dunes State Park, pressure for the harbor reached its peak, and the Army Engineers brought out a favorable report.

The Save the Dunes Council, headed by Mrs. James Buell of Ogden Dunes, had mobilized the Izaak Walton League and other conservation groups in 1952. Now they viewed this rapid further advance of industry with alarm. In desperation, they appealed to Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, knowing his deep personal interest in the Indiana Dunes, to ask him to sponsor a bill for a national park. Senator Douglas toured the area, then asked Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana to sponsor a bill. When he refused, Douglas introduced two bills to take 5,000 acres for a national park, including Midwest Steel's and Bethlehem Steel's property and the proposed harbor site.

Opposed by Senators Homer Capehart and William Jenner, of Indiana, these bills were defeated.

I went to Washington to testify before the Senate subcommittee in support of the bills. I have a vivid recollection of hearing Senator Capehart say that he could not understand why anyone was interested in the Dunes anyway; all you did there was get sand in your shoes! I was also shocked to learn that the vote that defeated the bills was cast

by Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, widely considered a conservationist and supporter of the bills. He had a deal with another senator and fe lt compelled to vote against the Dunes bill to get something he wanted more.

But the Save the Dunes Council did not give up, nor did Senator Douglas. The struggle became legend in Washington. The conservationists came to Washington personally-and in forcetime after time. In the last hearing at which we testified, a compromise between the port and the park was effected. It set aside land for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore under Public Law 89-76 1 and established the Burns Harbor Industrial Area. Of land speculation by public officials Chicago History

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Indiana Dunes

in Indiana I will say nothing, only that it was to be expected. The most dastardly act was the vandalism of Bethlehem Steel, which bulldozed its huge holdings in the Dunes twenty-four hours a day so that there would be nothing left of this unique area that conservationists could fight for.

Many contributed to the creation of the 5,600acre Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and we should remember two in particular. But for Dorothy Buell, president of Save the Dunes Council, and Paul Douglas, who never gave up no matter how dark the prospect or how tough the opposition, we never would have gotten it. Douglas' fight was so famous that he became known as " Indiana's third senator."

But the battle is never finished.

Several years ago Mrs. Jack Troy informed me that members of the Save the Dunes Council, visiting the offices of the National Park Service in Washington to try to get funds released for development, were diverted to an assistant director. He was unwary enough to observe that the Dunes are "only a salvage operation anyway." Infuriated, I wrote to George B. Hartzog, director of the National Park Service, expressing my chagrin that his once prestigious org:rnization had apparently deteriorated into a recreation branch of the government and that nobody on its staff was ecologist enough to be aware that the Indiana Dunes were the birthplace of North-American ecology. Out of this came several days of meetings in the national park area, during which geologists and ecologists explained to park naturalists the unique ecological value of the area and planned for parking lots and such facilities to be located in the least vulnerable places. As a result, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is the best-planned national park to date.

Much more can, and should, be done. A new bill proposes to add 5,300 acres to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. But the National Park Service is pitifully short of money to buy and maintain park land, and no hearing has yet been set.

Meanwhile, it is difficult to protect the Na150

Chicago History

tional Lakeshore acreage that has been set aside.

In the current period of high water in Lake Michigan, storm winds have steadily eroded the shore between the Bethlehem Steel property and Michigan City. This is partly the fau lt of Bethlehem Steel's landfill on the west end of the Indiana Dunes State Park, since artificial projections into the Lake always build up land on the side from which the long currents come and erode the lee side. But on the east end of the Park, the erosion is due to the breakwater at Michigan City, Indiana , built long ago by the Army Corps of Engineers in the erroneous belief that the longshore currents are from the west. At Michigan City, recent evidence proves that the longshore currents are from the east and that the breakwater funnels them right into the beach at Beverly Shores. This conclusion of geologists and ecologists was recently supported by the independent study of the San Diego engineering firm of Moffat and Nichols, which a serts that 64 percent of the damage is due to the breakwater. Still the Army Corps of Engineers will not remove it.

In August 1972, the United States Atomic Energy Commission Directorate of Licensing issued a Draft Environmental Statement for the Bailly Generating Station Nuclear-I of the Northern Indiana Public Service Company. The statement admitted that the construction of the plant would cause increased fog and snowfall up to five miles inland and increase the icing of the landscape in winter. The Cowles Bog National Landmark, who e delicate balance of soil acidity nurtures unique carnivorous plants, would be polluted by ashpit effluent in the ground water and by a deposit of sulfuric acid on the plants.

And so the controversy over the Dunes boils on.

If anything is to be learned from all this, it is that ecologists and conservationists must pinpoint areas that need to be preserved before industry gets into the picture and drives the values up, and they need public and political support to succeed.

At least a significant part of the unique natural laboratory which is the Indiana Dunes is being preserved, I hope for all the foreseeable future .

In Chicago: Cruelty and Kindness to Animals

BY GERALD CARSON

The stpckyards are gone and the horses have almost disappeared) but the crusade for "rights for animals') lives on) engaged in righting wrongs undreamed of in the 19th century. anti-cruelty law for the protection of animals from abuse came on early. It dates from 1869 and is generally considered to be a strong law, for it contains no weakening or limiting words, such as specifying that an animal must be "owned" or requiring that cruelty be proved "unnecessary," "willful," or "malicious."

Under the statute cruelty is a criminal offense, with enforcement in the hands of the police, sheriffs' deputies, or designated agents of humane societies, and any citizen who witnesses an act of cruelty can call upon the authorities to stop it or swear out a warrant for criminal prosecution.

Also in 1869, the General Assembly authorized by special act the incorporation of the Illinois Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, domiciled in Chicago but exercising jurisdiction throughout the state. These two events complemented each other: the public law provided the legal basis for the protection of animals and the private society was prepared to mobilize community support for the spirit of the law. It was only three years earlier, in 1866, that the first organized effort for the decent treatment of animals had come into existence in the Western Hemisphere in the form of New York's American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The rapid spread of the idea to Philadelphia in 1867, Boston and San Francisco in 1868, and Chicago the following year, marks a notable advance in American thinking about social justice. "Rights for Animals" was clearly a concept whose hour had struck.

THE ILLINOIS

Gcra ld Carson is the author of Men, Beasts, and Gods, a history of human reverence for and maltreatment of animals which was reissued in paperback earlier this year.

With Edwin Lee Brown, a manufacturer of sidewalk and vault lights, as its first president, the Illinois SPCA began an uphill fight to improve the treatment of animals. Most visible of all species which suffered in the urban environment was the horse, which performed all the tasks of transportation now handled by the internal combustion engine. Horses drew the huge brewery wagons; dragged the fire engines and paddy wagons of the fire and police departments; moved the wage earners to and from their work on the horse railroads; pulled Frank Parmelee's cabs and hacks; moved the drays, ice wagons, express carts, the shining carriages of the affluent, and the two-wheeled carts of the bone and bottle scavengers. Poorly shod, unmercifully beaten, stumbling over rough cobblestone pavements, mired down in the classical Chicago mud, frequently lame or sick, indifferently fed, watered, and bedded, unprotected from summer heat or wintry blasts off Lake Michigan, the workhorse was commonly used and used up until it collapsed on the street, its misery ended by a policeman's bullet. One particularly offensive trade enabled the "horse shark" to dope decrepit horses for sale, then accept them back for a negotiated refund when the disillusioned buyer protested, making a profit on each repeat sale until the horse's condition could be no longer disguised. In sum, it is not putting it too strongly or too simply to say that it was the scandalous maltreatment of horses that gave the animal reform its cutting edge.

Another major but less generally visible problem, one indigenous to Chicago, was cruelty in the handling of meat animals. The abuse of livestock began on the Western range and continued in the cattle trains. Overcrowded cars carried the animals ¡often for days without food, Chicago History

151

Kindness to Animals

water, or rest with the result that many died or suffered injury in transit. After the shipment arrived in the yards, there was prodding, shouting, gouging, and brutal chivvying of disabled animals. One might suppose that the economic consequences would put some restraint upon this kind of treatment; but it was not so, as Edwin Lee Brown and his associates well knew.

The Illinois SPCA made little impact upon the city during the first year of its existence. But a big lift came in 1870, when John C. Dore, state senator and former president of the Board of Trade and the Board of Education, invited a friend of college days, the Boston attorney, George Thorndike Angell, to come to Chicago and help advance the humanitarian work that had already been started here. Angell, who had founded the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and was internationally known as a pioneer in the field of animal protection, responded favorably and arrived in Chicago on October 1, r 870. He announced that he would be available at the office of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, 154 Washington Street, for two weeks in November where "all gentlemen and ladies of Chicago, or any part of the state of Illinois," would be able to reach him by letter or in person. As it turned out, Angell remained in Chicago for almost six months, for he found Chicago to be "if not the most cruel city, certainly one of the most cruel cities, of the world."

"There is no state," Angell declared in a widely printed newspaper article, signed by Dore and eight other Chicagoans but prepared

by Angell, "in which a powerful society ... is more needed or could be more useful than in Illinois." The good consequences which would flow from such a society, he said, would mean that "Chicago, the metropolis of the West, shall become as distinguished for the humanity of its citizens as it now is for their enterprise and success."

"Old horses," Angell recalled in writing about Chicago, "were abandoned in cold weather, and 152

Chicago History

turned out on the prairie to starve. Just about the time I came there, two horses died of starvation; and the man who caused it went unpunished. A cow run over by an engine in the south part of the city, and both her forefeet cut off, was permitted to lie in a public street twenty-four hours with nobody to care for her.

"That was Chicago in 1870," Angell continued: Men were too busy trying to make money to think of anything else .... With an old hat and coat I went to the stock-yards, and sat on the fences, and walked about, and watched the piles of dead and dying taken off the cars ... the manner of loading with spike-poles and pitch-forks, sometimes thirty or more holes made through the hide of a single animal, and that, too, when the animal was trying to do its best. I said to one man, I should think there was danger of putting out their eyes. He said they didn't care if they did.

The water was shut off from those stock-yards every Saturday night . . . [T]ens of thousands of animals were standing in those stock-yards . . . from Saturday night until Monday morning without one drop of water.

Summarizing his experiences in Chicago, Angell said: It cost me a vast deal of hard work, much anxiety, and about six hundred dollars in money. It has resulted in the prevention of immense cruelty ... and in a largely increased humane protection of from seven to eight million of animals that annually pass into and through tho e great stock-yards. I call it a good investment.

Progress? Yes. Consensus? Hardly. When Angell returned to Chicago in 1876 to address the Methodist Episcopal General Conference on crime, his speech was well received; "but when I came to animals, " the speaker recalled, "that was a more doubtful subject." At the invitation of Ferdinand W. Peck, vice-president of the 11linois SPCA, Angell also spoke at the Chicago Athenaeum to a disappointingly small audience of some forty persons. "But when I closed my lecture, and came down from the platform," Angell remembered, " I was introduced to a quiet-looking gentleman sitting there, who joined

---

1I:=~::~----

~-

=~--~ . .

--

-~¡i:;_:::._----~7 - ----- -- -- -

Chicago H is torical Society

In the 1880s, ambulances kept disabled horses out of the hands of "horse sharks ," who sold and resold the debilitated animals. From Stranger's Guide to the Garden City.

Chicago History

153

Kindness to Animals

Chicago Historicol Society

The use of spears to herd and kill cattle at the stockyards, as portrayed in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.

the Humane Society that night, and whose eloquent voice and pen have since spoken to hundreds of thousands in behalf of those that cannot speak for themselves. It was Prof. Swing of Chicago." The reference was, of course, to the minister of one of the religious and cultural institutions of the city, the downtown Central Church. Professor Swing was a great popular preacher and essayist.

The agents of the Illinois SPCA, who exercised police powers and could bring charges of cruelty before the municipal judges of Chicago, came increasingly to handle cases involving vulnerable and abused children. In consequence of the importance of this work, the name of the Society was changed to the Illinois Humane Society in 1877, during the presidency of John G. Shortall. Today the Society's major emphasis is on its services to children, but it still distributes materials on the care of pets and maintains a referral service in connection with animal problems. This Chicago group was the first in the world to use the word "humane" in its title and to carry on joint work in behalf of animals and children. The word "humane" is now included in the name of practically all societies performing a dual function.

In that same year-1877-President Shortall, convinced of the need for a national association capable of dealing effectively with the maltreat154

Chicago History

ment of food animals which were transported across state lines, called a conference in Cleveland. The result was the formation of the International Humane Society, a federation of local societies and individuals, of which Edwin Lee Brown became the first president. The following year, at Baltimore, the name was changed to The American Humane Association, an organization which still flourishes and renders guidance and counseling services to more than seven hundred local agencies engaged in humane work.

Shortall, by the way, was a hero of the Great Fire of 187 1. Early on the morning of October 10th, with the aid of a friend who, happily, possessed a revolver, he commandeered a team and wagon. With only five minutes in which to work, Shortall rescued the abstracts of title and deed records owned by his real-estate firm, Shortall and Hoard, and conveyed them safely by horse and wagon east toward the Lake and southward to his home on Prairie Avenue. These documents proved to be of crucial importance to the future of the city and county, since the official archives were consumed in the burning courthouse across the street from Shortall's office. It is a pleasure to record here that the post office cat survived. "a white and brindle female ... discovered some hours after the building burned in a half-filled pail of water between two burned walls," according to the Chicago author and staunch animal lover, Bob Cromie.

For the remainder of his long life (he died in 1906 ) , Shortall was an active leader in the work of the Illinois Humane Society and on the national scene with The American Humane Association, always urging the cause of the animals which he termed "the benevolence of to-day."

According to Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, in a judgment made in 1888, Shortall did for Chicago what the pioneer Henry Bergh had done for New York and George T. Angell for Boston. Both the latter, incidentally, were honorary members of the Illinois Humane Society.

Chicago Historical Society

The work in Chicago was expanding, Shortall noted in 1882, not because cruelty was increasing but because the community generally was shaking off its indifference to the plight of the dumb beasts which shared the urban environment. Another factor was the efficient use of the stick.

When the Illinois Humane Society took the cruel to court, its cases were tightly prepared, its record of convictions an impressive deterrent to evildoers. By the 188os, the Illinois Humane Society had erected drinking fountains for horses, with accommodations for dogs and cats, at important street locations, and large fountains had been

Daily News Collection

A once familiar scene in the now barren Chicago stockyards. George T. Ange ll found , in 1870, that the cattle crowded into the yards were forced to go without water from Saturday night to Monday morning.

placed in Lincoln Park and Central Park ( renamed Garfield Park in 1881). An ambulance of special design was in operation for the rescue of horses, agents were regularly on duty at the Union Stockyards, a nd there were auxiliary societies at Hyde Park and Peoria.

Chicago History

155

Chicago Hist orical Socie ty

The large drinking fountain for horses in Garfield Park erected by the Illinois Humane Society, depicted in Stranger's Guide to th e Garden City.

A pleasant reward of working in a large library came to this writer as I examined the 1882 Annual Report of the Illinois Human e Society and a packet of manuscript fell out of the printed pages onto the reading desk. It was a report of the Quincy Humane Society for the year ending July 2, 1883, in the holograph of its secretary. It recited that 389 persons in Adams County had been admonished during the year, 69 horses and mules ordered out of work, 1 17 draft animals sent to shops to be shod, and 20 condemned to be killed . There were nine arrests, eight defendants convicted, and two children removed from the bawdy houses of Quincy.

Animal rescue work ranks high among those charitable activities which have attracted the support of the leading citizens of American cities, and Chicago is no exception to the rule. Among the nineteenth-century figures who served the Illinois Humane Society as officers, directors, life members, and regular contributors were Philip D. Armour, John Crerar, Nathaniel K. Fairbank, 156

Ch ica go History

John V . Farwell, Marshall Field, Levi Z. Leiter, Franklin MacVeagh, Cyrus H. McCormick, Mrs. Potter Palmer, Allan Pinkerton, George M . Pullman, and Prof. David Swing. Other supporters were the North Chicago City Railway, Seipp Brewery Company, and the Union Stock Ya rd and Transit Company. The motive in these latter instances, one conjectures, may not have been humani tarian so much as polishing the compa ny image.

Oth er reform efforts often touched or overlapped with the kindness-to-animals concept.

Thus there was support from those opposed to the practice of vivisection, and from those vegetarians whose interest in diet extended to feelings of compassion toward food animals. "The vegetarian craze has struck," the Inter Ocean observed in the 1890s, "and bids fair to become a fashionable fad." Followers of the meatless diet joined the Illinois Anti-Vivisection Society, read the Chicago V egetarian, official organ of the Vegetarian Society of America, and dined at the

Kindness to Animals

Pure Food Cafe ( "no pork in our beans"). There, to the discreet music of a violin and piano duo, they supped on "progressive dishes to match the progressive times," and agreed warmly with Albert H. Snyder, president of the Chicago Vegetarian Society. He declared, at their second annual banquet, which was graced by the presence of Frances E. Willard, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, that "the progress and growth of the cause of vegetarianism in a city famed for its slaughterhouses must be regarded with joyful feeling and increased hope."

Toward the end of the last century, the opinion arose in Chicago that the animal reform program was not being pushed with sufficient vigor.

Largely as a feminine protest, the Anti-Cruelty Society was organized in 1899 in the parlor of Mrs. Joseph Winterbotham, wife of the Chicago manufacturer. Mrs. Theodore Thomas, wife of the conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was elected president, Mrs. Luther Bodman vice-president, and Mrs. Winterbotham secretary.

The Anti-Cruelty Society emphasized two programs-the prosecution of flagrant offenders and the education of the public in the philosophy and practice of kindness through activities carried on in the elementary schools, with youth groups, lectures for adults, and in such colorful events of the early , goos as workhorse parades. In 1909, the Society opened a shelter for small animals at 155 West Indiana Street (now Grand Avenue) and continues that work on a greatly expanded scale today at 157 West Grand Avenue, as well as operating two suburban branches.

The Prohibition era should be mentioned as having had one odd side effect upon the wellbeing of the horse population of Chicago. Before the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment banishing alcoholic beverages from the United States, saloonkeepers had installed horse-watering troughs before their oases as an added lure to teamsters. With the closing of the barrooms, these amenities fell into neglect until , in , 920, the AntiCruelty Society took over their maintenance. To-

day, as a sentimental gesture, the Anti-Cruelty Society still maintains one horse trough in front of its building.

People in the arts, especially the performing arts, have shown a remarkable empathy with animals. Many names come to mind-George Arliss for his opposition to animal experimentation, Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske for her fight against furs and the steel leg-hold trap and, in Chicago, Irene Castle McLaughlin Enzinger, dancing sensation of the World War I period, famous for the Castle Walk and the Castle Bob, widely admired for her grace, her style, and her passionate dedication to the protection of stray animals. Socially prominent in Chicago as the wife of Major Frederic McLaughlin, polo-playing millionaire, Irene Castle built a shelter for homeless pets at Deerfield, Illinois, called Orphans of the Storm. Among her exploits was an offer to bet $5,000 that if a "mad dog" bit her she wouldn't contract rabies.

Irene Castle McLaughlin and friend in 1932. The originator of the Castle Walk and the Castle Bob wished to be remembered as a humanitarian rather than a dancer.

Kindness to Animals

Miss Castle also conducted a guerilla war against medical researchers over their legal duty, under the general anti-cruelty statute, to provide adequate food, water, and shelter for animals confined in the animal laboratories. Still remembered is the day in June 1945, at the animal laboratory of Northwestern University Medical School, when Irene Castle, in tears, lifted the shivering, skin-and-bones body of a toy brown collie from its recently hosed-down cage and started off with a group of supporters to show it to the newspaper photograp_hers and Dr. Herman N. Bundesen, health commissioner of Chicago. Refused elevator service, she carried the dog in her arms down fourteen flights of stairs. Waiting at the street level was Dr. Andrew Conway Ivy, head of the Division of Physiology and Pharmacology at Northwestern University Medical School, and a pos5e of doctors, determined to head Miss Castle and her supporters off at the pass. A fracas followed in which the women suffered bruises and torn apparel, Dr. Ivy succeeded in wrenching the collie from Irene's embrace, and Northwestern became the defendant in a lawsuit. Irene Castle was probably Chicago's outstanding animal defender of this century. At her death in r 969, it was recalled that she had directed: "When I die my gravestone is to say 'humanitarian' instead of 'dance.r.' " Technology and social change have given the SPCA's, refuges, and animal shelters a different set of problems. The draft horse and its problems are gone. But we have an unprecedented boom in ownership of pets and increased human permissiveness toward animal reproduction. No one really knows how many abandoned or stray animals there are in Chicago. Estimates of the number of waifs that are picked up and destroyed by the Animal Care Pound, an agency of the Chicago Police Department, plus the private societies, range from two hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand. This excludes the unknown number of small animals that are killed privately or the twelve thousand or so that are picked up dead on the streets, victims of autos 158

Chicago History

and trucks. There is a public¡ health factor in all this. And the cost, in money, is between one and two million dollars annually. The moral damage is incalculable: societies that stand for the ethical view that animals have a right to freedom from fear, from unnecessary pain, and to a decent death, are swamped by the surplus animal population and become, in effect, animal Buchenwalds.

There are other and more fortunate animals, the domestic pets of the United States, estimated to number between fifty and fifty-seven millionincluding such exotic beasts as monkeys and ocelets, whose keeping the humane society activists greatly discourage. For cherished animals, the booming pet industry now provides goods, services, and accessories which cost slightly more than the gross national product of Ghana. One person's loving sentiment can be to another, of course, far-out sentimentality-there are dog perfumes such as Le Chien No. 5 and elaborate burial procedures for pet animals. At Paw Print Gardens, a West Chicago animal cemetery, the proprietors provide a chapel, the tolling of chimes, "reminiscing benches," and a short prayer (if desired) , just before the lowering of the casket.

Then there is the matter of inheritances and trust funds. When Chicagoan Margaret Montgomery died some twenty-five years ago, she left a snug $15,000 for the support of her five cats, and named one William Fields as cat-ward and residuary legatee. One of the cats, Flat Nose, lived on for nine years, dining upon delicacies such as pot roast. It was saluted, at the ripe old age of twenty, by United Press International as "the richest cat in Chicago." Fields took Flat Nose's passing stoically: he survived and inherited. A stronger reaction was expressed by the chauffeur of a wealthy Chicago widow a few years ago. H e was left a generous allowance for the care of her dog. After the animal died and was buried at the Hinsdale Animal Cemetery, the chauffeur, far from grieving over the loss of the pet or the money he was paid to take care of it, remarked with relief: "I'm glad to see the last of that damn dog."

Dear Valentine

BY LESTER A. WEINROTT

As an. occasion for sentiment) an opportunity to make an impression by splurging) or a chance to mail an unsigned brickbat) St. Valentine)s Day has grown into big business.

1s NEITHER a religious nor a secular holiday, yet more than twenty-five hundred Chicagoans celebrated it last February by placing advertisements in a newspaper, while untold tens of thousands exchanged gifts of flowers, candy, jewelry, and every other conceivable commodity and luxury. It is, of course, St. Valentine's Day, the unofficial holiday that vies with Christmas and Mother's Day as one of the three greatest gift-shopping days of the current era.

The Chicago Sun-Times opened its classified advertising pages in 1972 to a section entitled Happy Valentine's Day, and men, women, and children responded with their messages of love.

By 1974, nine pages were crammed with protestations of affection; wives saluted husbands, husbands greeted wives, children remembered parents, and lovers each other. And for weeks before February 14th, store windows had been festooned with red hearts, cupids, silk ribbons, floral pieces, and other impedimenta which signified that another year had rolled around and it was time to buy, buy, buy for St. Valentine's Day. The Sun-Times notice to lovers in 1974 read as follows: IT

Show someone you care with aValentine's Day Happy Ad. Tell that special someone how you feel with a personal greeting for as little as $3 ($1 per line, 3 line minimum).

Your ad will appear in a special Classified section on Valentine's Day, Thursday, February I 4.

Lester A. Weinrott, advertising and public relations consultant, is familiar to readers of Chicago History.

Valentines arc one of his many interests.

We'll send an attractive card to the person you are greeting, to make sure he or she watches for your message.

A box on the right-hand side of the ad was titled "Sample Greeting," and it listed examples of Valentine messages costing $3, $4, $6, $7, and $ 1o, depending on the amount of space and size of type. Most of the advertisers elected the economical $3 variety. More generous, or perhaps more verbose persons, took $10 ads, and a few truly devoted or very reckless ones spent $20 for their messages.

The greetings were low-keyed in the main, confined to such sentiments "Happiness is being loved by you," "Love is a beautiful thing created by you," and "Happy Valentine's Day to the one I love." There were a few innovative souls, however. Witness these greetings: FONZIE I LOVE OLD PICKUP TRUCKS, OX!ONS AND YOU. JIM

Babyface, I'm bugs over your hugs, and there's nothing missing in your kissing. Love you, Baby.

ROCKY Il!LL BOWLINGBALL

loves Super Dynamite Very very much

For the more conventional celebrants of St. Valentine's Day there were, of course, the traditional valentines available at department stores and gift and novelty shops. Marshall Field & Company devoted nearly its entire fi rst-floor greeting card section to a dazzling display of every variety of valentine, from the sentimental Ch icago History

159

""

Dear Valentine

Jl. personal greeting for a

Happy Valentine's Vay from someone 11'ho thinks you are extra special n'ill appear on the firsf page of the Classifid Section of tl,e Cl,icago Sun-Uimes anJ the Chicago Vaily Ne1vs on Ualentine's Vay.

We join ll 1'ery

• i11 11

isl1i11g you

1

H'll.PPY 'D'll.Y

L"'h11a~J s,.,,-U1mrs¥L"l11ct1go Vaily ,Yn,'s Courtesy Chicago Sun-T ,mes

The card sent in advance to those about to be wooed in the Happy Valentine's Day section of the Chicago Sun-Times and Daily News.

to the humorous. One manufacturer of valentines has estimated that in 1974 his share of that billion-dollar industry amounted to more than ten mill ion dollars in receipts. Christmas cards continue to be the number one seller in the greeting card business, but valentines are number two-far ahead of sales for Mother's Day, Easter, and Father's Day. A unique type of valentine has burgeoned in recent years. It is what might be called the sexpornographic-explici t school; dedicated, perhaps, to the "swinging-singles" segment of society.

These valentines are offered for sale only by shops specia lizing in erotica. One such purveyor displayed a wide array of such "hard core" valentines in the window of his store on Chicago's North Side.

For the more discriminating, Tiffany & Company advertised a pin of diamonds, set in platinum, which spelled LOVE-$975. Buyers seeking more modest gifts were offered a wide selection in Chicago newspapers. Wigland, for instance, offered head coverings for ladies from $ 1.99 to $22.95, challenging the reader with this 160

Ch icago History

message, "Tired of g1vmg that same old box of stale candy? Try a Wig land gift certificate.

She'll love it." For the ·woman seeking an unusual gift for her man, Wieboldt's suggested "amusing valentine-print men's wear by Jockey ."

Illustrated were hosiery, boxer shorts, briefs, and bath kilts, all imprinted with cartoon characters around a heart, captioned "You turn me on!"

For animal fanciers, Pet World advertised puppies as gifts. The advertisement was illustrated with a cuddly cocker spaniel holding a rose in its mouth. The caption read, "Roses arc red, Violets are blue, a Valentine pet says, I love you." Carson Pirie Scott & Company, in a full-page ad, showed an attractive woman dressed in a valentine-red pullover shirt top. The headline was "Shoot for Valentine's Day with a Lady Arrow" and the body copy stated "If your aim is her heart, give this pullover shirt top."

Other temptations abounded in the columns of Chicago newspapers, ranging from food delicacies from Marshall Field & Company ( "Toast your Valentine with wine and tasty trca ts" ) to "A Sweetheart of a Sale" advertised

by Jewel Food Stores, which featured sliced bacon at $ 1. 19 a pound. Walgreen's called attention to "True Love Tokens of finest fragrances," and Goldblatt's had a pre-Valentine's Day sale of electric hair stylers. Heart-shaped boxes of candy were featured by Sears, who also offered stuffed animals-"Adorable red-andwhite acrylic plush poodle dog, mouse , others with polyurethane foam fill."

Flowers, ever a standard on St. Valentine's Day, were promoted in small subtle cartoon ads with such sentiments as "Lay Flowers at Her Feet" and " Show her you love her ... a Bunch 1" More explicitly, Flower City offered "Gifts of Love" in the form of fresh terrariums and hanging planters- "Give your love a Hang-Up!" The same shop called attention to its design staff, ready to make an arrangement "that's uniquely YOU." For the thrifty, there was an advertisement for a product that promised to prolong the

life of flowers. "Your love will last past Valentine's D'ay. This year, your flowers will, too."

The ad contained a coupon worth 15¢ toward the cost of the product. Another, a dishwashing liquid, promised a free "Rose Pin designed by Du Barry of 5th Avenue, this lovely gold electroplated Rose Pin is yours free with a label from any size bottle."

Perhaps the most intriguing of all the valentine advertisements was one from a maker of a famous Danish liqueur, titled "Give the gift of Love on Valentine's Day and Peter Heering may send you to Denmark." " All you have to do," the reader was informed, was to write the last line of a verse. There were three grand prizes, each consisting of a free flight to Denmark-for two, naturally-plus $ 1,ooo spending money. An easy challenge to writers of poetry, the verse ran as follows: I think of you throughout the d ay, In everything I do and say.

You are the one I hold mo t dear,

A suitable fourth line was suggested by way of illustration: "I want you, need you always near." To make matters even more lucid, the advertiser added, "Just make sure the line you write rhymes with 'dear.' " The food pages of the Chicago newspapers joined in the valentine chorus by printing recipes suitable to the occasion. The Tribune's Food Guide featured a Tart Cherry Trifle based on a recipe served at one of the taverns in Colonial Williamsburg. Hostesses evidently plan Valentine's Day parties for guests in goodly numbers; the recipe is for sixteen servings. For more intimate gatherings, there was the Jelly Roll cake topped with Sabayon sauce. This gourmet cake serves ten.

Not to be outdone, the Food Showcase of the Dail-y News headlined its valentine recipe, "I love you ... crunch" and captioned the illustration "Give your Valentines a sweet twist by making them individualized Valentine Cooky

!!7,t/an'/1 fun

o/dian()on<:/4

1d in ftlatmun-1.,, 1 975.

DFFANY &Co. Courtesy Tiffany & Co.

One would have been wise to purchase this diamond and platinum pin when the advertisement ran in 1972it now costs $1,200.

Cards." Turning its attention to the main course, the Tribune advised, "To win his heart, serve steak Diane." The rationale for the suggestion, an inspired misreading of mythology, is worth quoting: Whether your man is a full-fl edged gourmet or an e\¡er-loving steak and potatoes guy, his heart ""ill be you rs this Valentine's Day with a dinner featuring steak Diane ... Its name makes it especially suitable for this occasion, with Diane or Diana being th e Roman goddess of the chasr.

St. Valentine's Day has become economically important only within recent years. The origin of St. Valentine's Day is obscure, but a popular version is that Bishop Valentine, imprisoned by Roman Emperor Claudius II in 270 A.D., wrote sweet verses for his jailer's daughters. In turn, the children brought him small bouquets. From that story, it is said, came the practice of exChicago History

161

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English cobweb valentine, ca. 1840. The outer border is of gold paper adorned with paste diamonds and pearls.

The romantic hand-colored cobweb lithograph, set on paper lace, contains cut-out flowers , clot h leaves, and a gilt lyre and , wr.en it is pulled up by the string at its center, a church is revealed.

162

Chicago History

Dear Valentine

changing sentimental gifts on Valentine's Day. Wha te~er the origin of the custom, good and kind Bishop Valentine could have had no notion of the free-spending his name day was to create.

The earliest-known valentine of record may be seen in the British Museum. It was composed on February 14, 1415, by Charles, Duke of Orleans, who sent it to his wife while he was held prisoner in the Tower of London, the Duke having been taken captive at the battle of Agincourt. Evidence of the continuing practice is to be found in Samuel Pepys' diary on February 15, 1663, when he wrote, "By and by comes Mrs. Pierce, with my name in her bosom for her Valentine, which will cost me money."

Thus did Mr. Pepys note the beginning of commerce amidst sentiment.

By the eighteenth century, the giving of handmade valentines was a popular and well-established custom. To expedite their creation, an enterprising Englishman created the Valentine Writer, a series of books containing appropriate verses. Among these books was one entitled The Lover's Class Book Containing Sentimental and I nt eresting Valentines with Appropriate Answers.

A more succinctly named tome was Cupid's Directory. The British were apparently content with romantic verses; the French, however, with their flair for design, added to the beauty of valentines by adorning them with real lace, cut-out hearts, gold paper, and pressed flowers.

Colonial America, quick to copy the customs and fashions of the Old World, began the celebration of the day in 1684 when the first valentines arrived by boat from England. These were handmade and hand-colored. They were, no doubt, expensive as well. A hundred years later, Americans were making and sending their own valentines. In 1790, the Dutch who had settled in Pennsylvania devised the Dutch Puzzle valentine. It was bright and vari-colored and had many folds. As the recipient unfolded the greeting, the verses were numbered in sequence.

Often, the final verse was a couplet containing an offer of marriage.

Chicago H is l oric ol Socie ty

A decoupage valentine, ca. 1880. All the parts were assembled by the sender. The basic card is embossed on the front only. Inside, the sender has pasted a poem entitled "The Lover's Dream ." On the outside, he (or she) has first pasted on the center picture of doves, and then a paper lace cover to which was first added the decorations on all four sides.

As the practice of sending valentines grew in America, it was inevitable that it would become a commercial venture, in manufacture and in sales. It is interesting to note, in this day of Women's Liberation, that it was a woman who became the first mass-producer and seller of valentines. In 1846, Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts, was a student at Mount Holyoke F emale Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The daughter of a stationer, she enlisted young women of her acquaintance and established the first "assembly line" for the manufacture of valentines. At first, all the work was done by hand, each young woman either pasting, painting, cutting, or folding a portion of the end product.

It was not long before demand for the handmade valentines swelled. Miss Rowland's father took the val en tines she and her friends had made Chicago History

163

Dear Valentine

From the author's collecti on

A die-cut and embossed bouquet hides the sentimental greeting on an envelope valentine, ca. 1880. The envelope itself is die-cut, embossed on both sides, and stuffed with cotton.

and began peddling them in other towns. When he returned from his trip with sales of more than $5,000, Esther Howland invested in machinery, with the result that her business became a commercial success with an annual sales volume of $75,000. Other entrepreneurs were quick to follow suit. By 1847, more than three million valentines were sold in the United States. The industry got another boost when, during the Civil War, printers began turning out cheap valentines which were bought and sent to the civilians-turned-soldiers at the battlefronts.

My personal recollection of St. Valentine's Day goes back to 1913. As a six-year-old in Moline, Illinois, I was aware of the event only because my older sisters were busy giggling as they addressed valentines. I had only a vague idea of what it was all about, but on a journey to Penny Ross' candy store in quest of a penny's worth of jaw-breakers, I saw a large cartoontype valentine in Mr. Ross' window. It was printed on very cheap paper, crudely drawn, 164

Ch icago History

and decorated with garish colors. The cartoon was of a small, unsuspecting boy about to be butted by a large and angry goat. It was for sale for one cent. I made the supreme sacrifice of forgoing the jaw-breakers and buying the valentine. Once I took it home, I was completely puzzled. For whom had I bought it? My dilemma was solved when Gunnar, my playmate who lived across the street, called me to come out and play with him. Gunnar got the cartoonvalentine, and he was very pleased. His parents had emigrated from Sweden three years before and he could neither read nor write English.

Nevertheless, he cherished the "penny-dreadful" valentine and gave me an apple in return. My first celebration of Valentine's Day was altogether highly successful.

As I grew older, and aware of the little girls in my school classes, Valentine's Day became more significant to me. Miss Duffin, our fourthgrade teacher at Irving School, gave us red and white paper, small paper hearts, and bits of decoupage, and set us the task of making our own valentines. I was smitten with a girl named Rella, who had long black curls, and I made an especially elaborate valentine for her. Since I didn't sign it, she never knew of my sentiments.

When I entered the advertising business, I began collecting advertising trade cards. These, the first mass-produced full-color cards, were issued by tradespeople to advertise their wares.

Ladies collected these cards, pasted them into scrapbooks, and studied them duri~g the long winter nights. Some of the old scrapbooks I bought contained old valentines; these, I segregated and filed. They are, in the main, ca.

1880-1900, the decades marking the high point of the trade card craze.

Over the centuries, valentine sentiments have changed. In Hamlet, William Shakespeare saluted the day: Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day, All in the morning betimc.

And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine.

From the author's colleclion

A 3~ valentine, ca . 1910, made in Massachusetts.

The inside of a fold-out valentine , with an accordion-pleated heart, ca. 1900.

â&#x20AC;˘ M Y _V ALEN TI NE ...

A two-for-a-penny valentine .

The picture is pasted by the sender.

A familiar decoupage motif: a hand with flowers. The sender has pasted it on her calling card envelope , slipped the card inside, and then pasted the envelope onto a cardboard frame .

An early example of a "mean" valentine.

The decoupage on this calling card folds back to reveal the sender's name.

Chi cago History

165

Dear Valentine

The poetasters of the 1880s who composed verses for the valentines in my collection scribbled such sentiments as: With you my Love, Can none compare; As good and kind, As you arc fair.

True Love is what I feel, vVhene'er I look on thee; I can but fondly hope, You feel the same for me.

From the author's collection

17

An articulated cardboard valentine from the early 1900s.

The arm holding the violets moves to reveal a heart.

A postcard valentine-the ticker tape reads "I LOVE YOU. BE MY VALENTINE." Courtesy Andrew McNolly 111

Love is to my impassioned soul, Not as with others, a mere pan Of its ex istence, but the wholeThe very life-breath of my heart.

I have two favorites. One contained an offer of marriage, sent, perhaps, by a shy suitor: I'd like a littl e wife To keep my little house; And not enough of strife, To scare a little mouse . .\nd you're the one to be, This littlr "'ife to me!

The other is intriguing-and disturbing. A brightly plumaged bird holds in its mouth a card bearing the legend, "'Tis a wise bird that knows his place." On the reverse side is written, "I know mine and don't intend to do chores and keep up fires for my board and bed, so there."

It is signed Aunt Jess. Why Aunt Jess chose Valentine's Day to rebel and why the recipient of the card elected to keep it among the valentines she received that year remains a sad mystery. Another from my collection is a handassembled valentine. Its basic pink and white foundation is quite ordinary. On it have been pasted delicate paper lace; rings of embossed gold paper; flowers, birds, and a wreath within the rings; ar.d a centerpiece consisting of a painting of a girl, a boy, and a dog. On the inside, beneath the printed verse is the following handwriting: You can immagin Who this is from

Envelqpe valentines were very popular around These costly offerings were die-cut and embossed . They were stuffed with cotton and usually had an elaborately embossed bouquet of paper flowers on the face of the valentine.

One lifted the bouquet to discover the verse printed beneath it. Articulated valentines, the fi gures hinged so that they could move, were originally manufactured in Germany and imported. Soon American manufacturers also began to make articulated valentine easel-cards, which could be placed erect on table or shelf.

The fold-out, so called because an accordionpleated heart unfolded when it was opened, 1900.

The holes at the top indicate that this is a hanging valentine. The lovers are pasted on construction paper, the greeting is printed in gold .

Ch icag o Hi storica l Socie ty

became popular around the turn of the century.

During the trade card craze, thrifty givers of valentines simply inscribed free trade cards with their own names, passed them on by hand, and thus did not even have to pay postage.

St. Valentine's Day has become established as an integral part of the American fabric. For confirmation, consider the phenomenon of Loveland. For twenty-seven years the residents of Loveland, Colorado, a small town fifty miles north of Dem¡er, have been in the valentine business. Each year, twenty retirees work at the Loveland post office remailing valentines that bear a special Loveland postmark . A unique crimson cachet-a cowboy cupid and a four-line verse- is added to each valentine mailed to Loveland for re-posting. Last year, the happy Golden Agers of Loveland remailed over one hundred thousand valentines, placing the following me sage on the envelopes: Dan Cupid isn't Partial, His darts fly everywhere.

So let your heart be target For one with love to share.

A Valentine Greeting from Sweetheart Town Loveland, Colorado

On Valentine's Day last year, I received two remembrances: one from my wife and one from her namesake, my granddaughter Elizabeth, age seven. The one from my wife was gentle, teasing, humorous. From my granddaughter came a cut-out, obviously from a large page. Pictured was the creature from the television program "Sesame Street" : a furry green animal whose home is in a garbage can. The creature peered out over the edge of the can. On the reverse side was printed the following: Love is a yukky, stupid and dumb thing.

Use this Valentine to wrap up something.

It was signed "liz W. 7."

Valentine's Day hasn't changed all that much since I was six in I g ,¡3 in Moline, Illinois.

Chi cago History

167

Early Days on the Illinois & Michigan Canal

BY JOHN M. LAMB

It took twelve years to build the Illinois & Michigan Canal, and that was only the beginning of its troubles. celebration of the opening of the Illinois & Michigan Canal occurred on April 16, I 848, when the General Fry arrived in Chicago. The boat, a large passenger packet weighing 150 tons and measuring 99 feet long and r 8 feet wide, had been launched earlier at Lockport, Illinois. It made the twenty-nine-mile voyage to Bridgeport at a speed of five miles an hour, and the next day the Chicago Weekly Journal reported its arrival as follows: THE LONG-AWAITED

Yesterday was an eventful period in the history of our city, of the State, and of the \-Vest.-It was the wedding of the Father of Rivers to our inland seasa union of the Mi sissippi with Lake Michigan; ...

The first boat borne on the Illinois Canal passed safely through from Lockport to our city yesterday.

At an early hour yesterday afternoon the whole city was in motion. Carriages, wagons and pedestrians were all on the move to Bridgeport, to welcome the first boat from below, while the propeller [driven] "Rossetter," with the Mayor and the committee of reception, accompanied by a large number of citizens, proceeded by the way of the river.

By three o'clock it seemed as if the whole city had been emptied down at "Lock No. 1 ." The splendid machinery for pumping water into the canal was in operation, and was examined with great satisfaction by all present, working as it did, with such clock-like regularity. About half past four the "GENL. FRY" hove in sight upon the ribbon like sheet of water which was stretching far away to the south-west, and a volunteer escort dashed off, carriages, ladies on horseback, and horsemen, to meet her as she came on, crowded to her utmost, with ladies and gentlemen from the interior.

At a little after five she reached the lock, where "three times three" were given for the boat and delegation, and the bands striking up enlivening airs, she

John M. Lamb, a resident of Lockport, Illinois, and associate professor of history at Lewis University, has long been interested in local history.

168

Chicago History

passed easily in the river, The FIRST BOAT THROUGH ....

Upon th e con clusion of th e address of welcome by the ::'lfayor, GENL. FRY of Lockport introduced to the crowd G.D.A. PARKS, Esq. of Lockport, who spoke

The first boat to arrive from La Salle, Illinois, the western terminus of the Canal, came in on April 24th. This was the General Thornton ( named, like its sister ship, for a canal commissioner), and it was loaded with produce from New Orleans. The General Thornton was built and owned by Isaac Hardy, a contractor who built the first lock, at Lockport. Hardy, a brotherin-law of William Gooding, chief canal engineer, also ran a packet boat line on the Canal a little later. His ship made history doubly, for the produce it carried was reloaded onto a steamer bound for Buffalo, New York- where it arrived two weeks before the Erie Canal was opened to navigation. Knowing full well that construction of the Erie Canal had begun in r 81 7, almost twenty years before the construction of their own Canal started, Illinoisians cheered the news, and a proud Abraham Lincoln brought it to the attention of the nation in a speech before the House of Representatives.

In its early days, the Illinois & Michigan Canal contained two "extra" locks designed to raise boats from the Chicago River to the "summit" of the Canal. One was right at the River, the other some miles away. A pumping station brought water from the Chicago River into the Canal, and additional water between Chicago and Lockport ( where the first "regular" lock was located) was channeled into the Canal from the Calumet River.

The pumping station, or hydraulic works, at Chicago was considered the engineering marvel of the day. Designed by Alfred Guthrie (although

some claim that honor for John M . Van Osdell, Chicago's first architect ) , it pumped seven thousand cubic feet of water a minute. The Ca nal Board of Trustees described it in a circular:

Illinois & Michigan Ca nal Packet Boa t Co., informing the public of "a daily line of Packets between Chicago, Lasalle a nd Peru, which are furnished in the most comfortable style possible, a nd nothing will be wanting on the part of the Captains a nd Company's Agents to make this mode of conveyance attractive and agreeable."

The boa ts left Chicago at 8 A.M . from the foot of Washington Street, the price of a ticket was $4, a nd the trip took over twenty hours.

While undoubtedl y more comfortable than the stagecoach, the packet boat does not appear to ha ve been "attractive and agreeable," as advertised. Sir Arthur Cunynghame, an English army officer who traveled in the United States in 1850, took a Ca na l trip from Chicago to La Salle that fa ll. In his book A Glimpse of the Great W estern R epublic, he described the trip:

The building in whi ch th e engines a rc placed is of brick, res ting upon a found ation of ston e. It is 166 fee t long by 55 fe et wid e, with found a tions on the wa ter fr onts laid with great ca re 6 fe et below the ordin a ry stage of the river, or I 4 feet below t he surface of th e water in the C anal.

The m ac hin ery for raisin g th e wa ter from the ri ve r into th e C anal, consists of two la rge stea m engines, one of whi ch drives four cas t iron cylinder pumps, of 54 inch es diam eter and 7 fee t long eac h. And th e oth er gives m oti on to a wheel of 32 fee t di a meter, th e \\'a ter being lifted by sixteen fl oa t boa rds or buckets 7 fee t long, workin g in a trough nea rl y wa ter tigh t, a nd delive red into a flum e whi ch co mmuni ca tes with a bas in, and thi s aga in with the main ca na l.

E ach engine is furni shed with six cylinder boilers 26 fee t long and 42 inches diam eter, each with two flu es of 16 inch es dia meter. The furn aces being a rranged for burning either wood or coa l.

O n Saturday evening, the 12th of O ctober, about 5 P. ~r. , I emba rked on boa rd th e ca na l boa t, the " Queen of th e Prairies," bound for La Salle, a town

Na tu rally, it was one of the sights to which Mayor "Long John" Wentworth escorted the Prince of Wales when his highness visited the city in 1860.

The passenger packet boat was at first an importa nt part of the commerce of the Canal. In 1848, soon after the Canal was opened, the Chicago Daily Journal ran an advertisement for the

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A map of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, prepared by t he Army Corps of Engineers in 1886, shows the towns along its route.

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Ch ica go History

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situated south-west of Chicago, about I oo miles distant, and at the head of the navigable portion of the Illinois river. The cabin of this canal boat was about 50 feet in length, 9 feet wide, and 7 feet high. We numbered about 90 passengers within this confined space, in which we were to sleep, eat, and live; the nominal duration of our passage was twenty hours, but it eventually proved to be twenty five; our baggage was secured on the roof of the boat, and covered with canvass, to screen it from the effects of the weather.

A sort of divan surrounded the cabin, the portion appropriated to the ladies being screened off during night by a curtain.

For the first few miles we, in company with three more canal boats, were towed by a small steamer, but having passed the locks, not very distant from Chicago, three horses were attached, which towed us smoothly along at the rate of five miles an hour.

170

Ch ica go History

Other inconveniences with which Cunynghame had to contend included poor meals and sleeping berths stacked like library shelves into which the passengers were tightly packed. The windows were nailed shut for fear that malaria would creep in from the surrounding lowlands, and the lack of ventilation trapped "nauseous vapors" which caused the author to awake with a terrible headache. Things were much better after the boat reached La Salle and Cunynghame was able to check into Isaac Hardy's "fine" new hotel. But the author had sad news to report about that enterprising contractor: Hardy had overextended himself financially, had become bankrupt, and was about to lose his fine new hotel.

Cunynghame, good reporter that he was, appears to have embarked at Chicago on a quiet day, for he recounts no difficulties with the tender of Lock No. 1, P. Fox. There were seventeen regular locks on the Canal ( not counting the extra two at Chicago) , and each of the locks had a tender, most of whom lived in a house by the lock. Mr. Fox, like the others, had to open the gates to let ships enter, and close them after the

Illinois & Michigan Canal

entry was completed. He was paid $300 a year, had to be continuously available ( even in winter, when the Canal was closed), and was not allowed to sell liquor.

Like the other lock tenders, Fox soon discovered that his job was not simply a matter of opening and closing the gates. At his, the first lock, three or four boats would arrive simultaneously, towed up the Chicago River by a towboat. Locking a boat in took about fifteen minutes, and each boat had a captain who wasn't likely to yield place to any other captain on the scene. It is hard to believe that, in an era when full speed was five miles an hour, a delay of fifteen minutes or so would create the difficulties it did, but here is Fox's own report of some of his troubles. On September 22, 185 r, he wrote to the canal superintendent to ask for help: I rush to have some instrucktions from you Concerning the Locking of Boats Towed up the river[.] my rule has ben to Lock the Boats in the same order that they Hitch to the Tow Boats[.] the reason why I call on you for is this 2 Boats the St. Lawrence and the Walter Smith Towed up to the Lock together a bout ten Days ago[.] the Smith made Fast the Tow Boat first[.] after Casting off from the Tow Boat the St. Lawrence being heavey loaded held her headway and Entered the Lock about half her Lenght when the Smith weged fast in besyolen her[.) Now Both Cald on me for the first Lockage. according to my former rule in this Case I made the St. Lawrence Haw! out and Locked the Smith up first Mr Notingham [of the St. Lawrence] tell me this morning that he stated the Case to Mr Wm Gooding and to Mr Singer [canal officials at Lockport][.) he says that they tell him that I was wrong that I had no wright to interfear with Boats Below the Lock[.] Now if I am wrong I want to have som Directions in the matter that I may be right hereafter[.) it Frequently happens we have 6 or 8 Boats Formed in below the Lock all want to be Locked first[.] if left to Boatman to Decide who should first take the Lock I think weol have some gloureous Fights every Day

The same year, the lock tender at Marseilles ( Lock No. r r) sent a not-very-different report: Sir on the cvning of the ¡ 11 [of April) the Boat Montsuma came upt to the Lock with out Light or even

given any Signal at all and Run into the lock and the first that we heard was the wickett stanchion [used to open and close the sluice gate at the bottom of the lock gate] and then the gate[.) we than told them not to tuch the Lock gate and forbid him but he forst his way through in spite of all we could say or do[.] he having a lot of pasangers and they and the captain abused us in all posible way they could[.]

A dispute over waterpower between the towns of J olict and Lockport caused headaches even earlier for the keeper at Joliet (Lock No. 5) .

The promise of waterpower was one of the most important assets of the Canal to towns and town sites along its course. Theoretically, Lockport would have had the most waterpower, because it was here that the Canal made its sharpest drop, about sixty feet in five miles. The possibility that this circumstance would be fully exploited caused a great deal of consternation in Joliet, Lockport's older neighbor. Joliet had achieved a degree of importance because of the waterpower it obtained from the Des Plaines River, but the plan was for the Canal to divert that water. J olietans (actually, at the time Joliet was called Juliet) believed that the Canal officials were overly solicitous of Lockport's interests, for most of them lived there. A letter to the Joliet Signal on March 8, 1847, complained that the amount of waterpower being planned at Lockport would mean insufficient water for navigation on the rest of the Canal: These statements of the Chief Engineer [William Gooding) which he sends forth with his annual report, seem tinged with too much partiality to the place of his residence. I have no objection to the creation of all the water power in Lockport ... that can reasonably be had, but it appears to me rather extravagent that the waste water of a canal 60 by 6 feet prism, will be sufficient with 20 feet head to carry 30 nm of stone without seriously obstructing navigation.

This argument, over the water level in Joliet and the supposed machinations of the Lockport Canal officials, reached something of a climax in 1849. The Joliet Signal, on July 10, took exception to the Lockport Telegraph's report on the number of cholera deaths in Joliet. The editor of Ch icago History

171

Illinois & Michigan Canal

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a most unwarrantable policy on the part of a few at Lockport to injure a neighboring town.-The reports of the Board of Health show to what extent cholera has raged here, and beyond question assigned the prinripal cause of its prevalence. Upon the shoulders of the individua l who ordered the basin drawn off, rests the charge of a great portion of the sickness and deaths which have occurred in this place.

That inflammatory statement produced results -the tender of Lock No. 5 was assaulted by an angry mob which prevented him from opening the lock gate and then proceeded to throw him into the Canal. On July 14, the canal superintendent reported on this and related incidents to canal trustee Joseph B. Wells: ,

Courtesy John M. Lomb

Life along the Canal-the Norton and Company warehouse in Lockport. Note the railroad paralleling the Canal.

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Courtesy John M. Lamb

A view of the residence of Ira 0. Knapp in Channahon.

In the foreground, an Illinois & Michigan Canal barge being towed by horses.

the Signal admitted that deaths had occurred, but he attributed them to the decisions of the Canal officials: T aking this, in connection with the con duct of the Canal Superintendent [Edward Talcott] in having the basin in this place drained, there certainly is displayed 172

Chicago History

Sometime since a committee of the citizens [of Joliet] called upon Mr. Gooding in relation to this matter and he assured them that the pool between the two dams should be kept as near full as practicable without wasting water over the lower dam.

From my interview yesterday I am satisfied that malicious persons have opened the gates at night to cause difficulty, and that in the present stage of feeling with a few ( I do not believe it to be universal) there is a manifest disposition to exaggerate and magnify every thing pertaining to this matter.

Several of the citizen, have interfered to prevent the Lockkeeper from a proper discharge of his duty, by closing the gates-and recently by forcibly throwing him into the Canal when he was in the act of opening the gates-In short they have so intimidated him that he says he dare not discharge his duty from fear of personal violence.

Canal Superintendent Talcott threatened legal action, among other things, and further violence was avoided. Positions did not alter much, however, and on July 24, the Signal stated that Joliet would stand firm against Lockport and the Canal officials: We reiterate again that we are every day more strongly convinced that the act of drawing the water off was premeditated and intended for the injury of our town. That the people of Lockport approve of such conduct, we can not persuade ourselves to believe. In conclusion, we assure the Telegraph that we fee l not the slightest jealousy towards Lockport, neither do the people of this place, but at the same time, we will not submit in silence to be trodden upon by a few canal officials who hold property in that village.

TOLLS, EST.A.BLJ:SHED UPON THE

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Tolls on the Illinois & Michigan Canal in 1857, as published by William Gooding.

Chicago Historic al Society

Chicago History

173

Chicago Historical Society

By 1878, George Woodruff, a Will County

historian, was able to view the Joliet-Lockport rivalry with a certain humor. The old quarrels had been laid to rest, Joliet had become much larger and much more important than Lockport, and Woodruff was, after all, on the winning side.

Discussing the internal conflicts of Joliet, he added: But we had a common enemy-Lockport-and, like Jews during the siege of Jerusal em, we used, temporarily, to forget our domestic quarrels, and combine to fight the common foe. The [Joliet] Signal and th e [Joliet] True Democrat let each other alone occasionally, and both pitched into the Lockport Telegraph. The Canal authorities seemed, at least to our jaundiced eyes, to throw all their influence to favor and build up a rival city. We issued to dilate largely against Archer road and the Canal basin and the Canal office, etc., etc. One thing which specially galled us was a map, which was reported to be drawn and exhibited to speculators and persons seeking a location, displaying the Canal route from Chicago to Ottawa, on which all the villages were noted, with 174

Chicago History

Some five thousand delegates met in this "monster" tent for the National-Ship Canal Convention in 1863. The assembled were warned by the sign at the left to LOOK OUT FOR PICKPOCKETS.

one exception . There \\"ere Romeo and Athens, Kepotaw and Scotchto,,¡n, Lockport and Channahon, etc ., etc.; but the only thing to indicate the whereabouts of Juliet \\"as a spot marked McKee's Dam. That was a good joke; and if we did not meet it with something equally foolish, it was not for want of disposition.

Some of the problems on the Canal were not due to human fractiousness or municipal competition. Some were economic. In 1850, for example, 22,614 passengers took the Canal from Chicago to La Salle, and about 17,000 traveled from La Salle to Chicago. Three years later, the Rock Island Railroad was completed. The new railroad line paralleled the Canal and offered faster transportation. The Canal's passenger business rapidly faded.

Illinois & Michigan Canal

But what of freight? Big ships, laden with freight, could compete successfully with any railroad. Alas, the Canal had not been built for them. During extremely dry summers, the Illinois River became so shallow that large steamboats could not reach La Salle, where the Canal terminated.

By the r 86os, there was already considerable agitation for large-scale improvements. In 1862, Rep. Francis P. Blair introduced a bill in Congress to enlarge the Illinois & Michigan Canal and to improve the Illinois River channel. Great efforts were made to support this bill. On February r 2, 1862, the Chicago Board of Trade petitioned:

river. In favor of early passage of the bill, your memorialists beg leave to urge as sufficient and controlling reason, that ,\¡hen, a few months ago, circumstances threatened the sundering of our peaceful relations with Great Britain, a long list of English gunboats was published, showing that an immense fleet might, as soon as the ice was out of the St. Lawrence Canal , be thrown upon the lakes, by which our commerce, more than equaling in value the entire foreign commerce of the nation, could be destroyed, and our lake cities become an easy prey to a conquering enemy.

While the Board of Trade might couch its plea in terms of war and the threat of enemy attack,

... for the enlargement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, so as freely to pass vessels of war, gunboats, and schooners, between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi The festivities at the long-awaited opening of the "deep cut" channel of the Illinois & Michigan Canal in 1871.

Chicago Historical Society )

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1llinois & Michigan Canal

ci ties down the Canal from Chicago had more pressing reasons for wanting more water in the Canal. The Joliet True D emocrat took note, on June 7, 1862, of the tremendous stench coming from the Canal, "enough to make a horse sick."

This, it reported, was caused by pumping out the Chicago River. The Joliet paper prayed that the pumps at Bridgeport would keep working so that not only would the Chicago River be cleaned, but downstream as well, and that "water in this section become settled before warm weather and the season for juveniles to go in swimming." The fact was that the Chicago River was becoming an open sewer-the only way to alleviate this condition was to send the water down to the Gulf of Mexico, for the United States would not allow the River's sewage to be dumped into Lake Michigan.

In June 1863, a National-Ship Canal Convention ,vas held in Chicago to support Blair's bill. Some five thousand delegates met in a tent in Lake Park ( now Grant Park ) and called for the enlargement of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, the Erie Canal, and the New York canals. William Gooding proposed to dam the Illinois River and enlarge the Canal so that the largest steamboat on the Mississippi could travel to Chicago.

And still the bill did not pass.

In 1866, General James Wilson surveyed the Illinois River for the United States secretary of war and recommended the enlargement of the Illinois & Michigan Canal to a width of 160 feet and a minimum depth of 7 feet. His plan also called for a channel of similar depth from Lockport on, created by building a series of locks and dams on the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers. Congress again refused to act.

Meanwhile, the Chicago River continued to ferm ent, and the canal superintendent was urged to pump more fiercely at the Bridgeport works.

In June 1867, the Chicago Board of Public Works requested that the pumps be run at full capacity, and that the Canal's banks be raised to hold the higher water.

The problem was finally solved, or so it was 176

Chicago History

thought, in 187 1, by eliminating the first two extra locks and digging a deeper channel on the summit level of the Canal. This deepening of the channel- known as the "deep cut" - had actually been proposed very early, in the 1830s, when plans for the Canal's construction were being formulated. Governor Joseph Duncan had planned, in 1834, to build the Canal large enough to accommoda tc steamboats coming from Lake Michigan. William Gooding had envisioned a canal sixty feet wide and six feet deep that would be cut deep enough through the rock of the Valparaiso moraine to allow direct passage from the Chicago River to the Canal. Benjamin Wright, the chief engineer of the Erie Canal, had also concurred in the practicality of the "deep cut" after studying the project in 1837. However, the state of Illinois had not been able to raise the capital necessary to finance the "deep cut" and finally settled for the extra locks and the marvelous hydraulic works at Chicago.

The "deep cut" project cost $3,000,000. The pumping station was no longer needed, since the Chicago River now flowed directly into the Canal. With no more locks to tend, the lockkeepers were eliminated. As Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper put it: Thr magic by " ¡hich this foul ditch has been sluiced, and its current directed toward the Gulf of Mexico resembles in principle the method taken by Hercules to cleanse the Augean Stables.

If the Chicago River was the Augean Stables, H ercules' labors were not yet over. In 1881, the city would be required to build another pumping station and, finally later in that decade, to begin constructing the Chicago Sanitary Canal. But in 1871, it appeared that Chicago had cleansed its river by reversing its flow and, in the process, had sent such a flood of water downstream as to provide all the promises made for the Canal in the 1830s and 1840s, both in waterpower and better navigation. And the festivities were, if anything, more prolonged in 187 1 than they had been in 1848.

The Iroquois Theatre Fire

BY RUTH THOMPSON McGIBENY

DECEMB~R

30, 1903 in Chicago was a clear,

sunny Wednesday, but very cold. Early in the morning I wakened to hear the squeak of iron tires as heavy wagons rolled down the street. We all got up early for the Big Day. We were going to the matinee. It was my first because I was only seven years old. It was also to be a first day for my eighty-year-old grandfather, who had come up from downstate for the holidays. He was a Quaker and believed the theatre was the province of the devil. But he was a mild man, and when my mother insisted that theatres were moral and pleasant besides, he consented to go.

There were to be five in our party: my nineyear-old brother John, two aunts, Abby and Dot, my grandfather, and I. My mother was housebound after the birth of my sister. My father couldn't take time off from business, but he had got the tickets.

Actually, he was somewhat miffed that they were a good halfway back from the stage. He expected better treatment at the box office because he was rather important in Chicago. He was John R. Thompson of the restaurant chain.

One of his restaurants was next door to the theatre and was patronized by the theatre personnel.

"But," the manager told him, "the house is a complete sellout. Wednesday between Christmas and New Year's is the time when all the youngsters home from school want to go to a show.

These tickets are the only ones to be had."

We set off in the brougham, a closed carriage.

It was dark inside and cold, but the lap robes, one for the three adults and the other for my brother and me sitting on the little folding seats, kept us reasonably warm. And we were too excited to be really cold.

The play, a musical extravaganza called Bluebeard, Jr., starred Eddie Foy, the comedian. Our

Mrs. McGibeny's personal account of the Iroquois Theatre fire, one of Chicago's worst catastrophes, is from the Society's manuscript collection.

seats may have been too far back to suit my father, but they were on the aisle, and I, being the smallest, was given the aisle seat so I could lean out and see everything.

The play was all my mother had hoped, and my grandfather was enjoying it thoroughly.

Eddie Foy, in his ridiculous clown suit and hat with a flower that bobbed on a wire, spoke his lines in a high, squeaky voice that brought gales of laughter from the audience. The music was wonderful, and the costumes showy and opulent.

In the middle of a song about the moon, with the stage bathed in a silver light that made the satin costumes of the players glisten, a small piece of burning paper fluttered down onto the stage. Its yellow glow was not out of place in the blue light. The players looked at it, moved to one side and continued their song. Then a few more pieces of yellow, flaming paper drifted down. The players walked off the stage.

More and more burning paper fell noiselessly, and people in the audience became alarmed.

One man near me stood up and shouted, "Is this a fire?"

At that point Eddie Foy came out on the stage and in a deep, male voice, quite different from the high, squeaky tones he had used before, called out, "This is only a burning waste basket.

Please keep your seats."

The theatre lights came on and a dingy curtain on a long roller began to unwind slowly as it descended. Eddie Foy continued, "The asbestos curtain is being lowered, and everyone is safe."

But then the curtain stuck about halfway down. Little tongues of flame began curling up in front of it along the bottom edge. The audience began to shout, and Eddie Foy could no longer be heard, so he walked off stage. The orchestra struck up some loud, brassy music but it, too, was drowned by the shouts of the audience.

Suddenly, as if on signal, everyone stood up and crowded into the aisles. We joined the yelling crowd. Almost immediately the overChicago History

177

Iroquois Theatre Fire

head lights went out. But the theatre was still brightly lighted by the flames that began to billow out from under the jammed asbestos curtain. I turned back once to try to grasp my aunt's hand and saw the black shapes of people's heads silhouetted against the solid wall of flame that by now reached up above the proscenium arch to the ceiling. Those flames poured over the theatre seats like waterfalls, and they came faster than the people could move.

I was carried a long in the crowd, my feet only occasionally touching the floor, seeing little, hearing only screams and shouts.

Without warning I fell down what seemed to be a high wall, and waves of black cloth streamed over me. For one moment I thought I was dead . But I was not even hurt. I realized later that I had fallen to the ground from the step at the stage door entrance. At the turn of the century, performers arrived at the stage door in hacks or carriages. The step was nearly three feet high, level with the carriage floor, so actors could walk directly into the hall of the theatre without touching the mud and slush of the alley. Bei ng small I had dropped close to the wall, and the following torrent of people had swept over me without touching me.

I crouched there until no one else came out and then I stood up and looked around me.

Panic-stricken people, firemen, hoses, swarms of humanity were running up and down the alley.

I joined them, crying loudly for my aunt. A man and his wife took my arm and tried to hold me, but I jerked away and ran on. Finally, when I was exhausted, someone pulled me into a brightly lighted store. It was filled with disheveled people. I remember one older woman with singed hair was being comforted by two grown girls who kept saying, "But, mother, we're all right, so stop crying."

One of the salesgirls picked me up and sat me on the counter facing her, away from the milling, weeping crowd behind me. She said to another salesgirl, "Poor little thing. She's lost all her family."

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Chicago History

At that point my Aunt Abby was helped into the store. She had escaped through the same stage door as I and had fallen, injuring her knee.

Two men had helped her along the alley when, as they passed the lighted store where I was, she looked in and saw me sitting on the counter.

We fell into each other's arms and wept, for we thought we were the only survivors of our party.

By and by my other aunt appeared. Her dark hair was windblown, her dark eyes wide with fright, but when she saw us she became almost hysterical.

"That makes four," she said. "John is in the restaurant next door to the theatre. I sat him there and told him to wait. They are bringing bodies in and laying them on the long tables.

Come with me. We'll go back and get him."

We walked out into the morass of the alley on our way to the street and the safety of my father's restaurant. As we picked our way along we heard a voice call out, "Abby!" When we turned there stood my eighty-year-old grandfather. He was hatless and coatless. His white beard was frozen with ice from the fire hoses.

But he maintained his Quaker calm , merely waiting until someone should find him.

To realize that all five of us were alive made us almost exuberant and had it not been for the horror around us we would have shouted. In the restaurant we picked up my brother who was glad enough to leave his gruesome vigil (for by then the tables were piled high with the dead), and all of us trudged the few short blocks to my father's office. He was not in but we sat down to wait while the secretary telephoned home to g-ive the good news to my mother.

While we huddled around the floor register to warm our chilled bodies, we began to chatter about our experiences. Each of us had got out alone and each of us had thought the others were burned.

My brother had got out the front door. The lobby was jammed and he was suffocating, but he managed to call out, "Someone help me."

A man near him picked him up and passed him,

Ch icago Historical Soci e ty

from hand to hand, over the heads of the crowd until he was set down on the street. He was old enough to know where he was and went into the restaurant next door to telephone father. Of course he couldn't get near the telephone. But the manager knew him and took him behind the cashier's desk, where he waited until Aunt Dot found him. She, too, had got out through the front lobby and had stepped into the restaurant to telephone. When she found my brother already there, she told him, "Sit here and watch the bodies being brought in. Look for your sister and anyone else of our party." Then she had left him.

Randolph St., the day the Iroquois Theatre burned. Some of the ticketholders escaped by walking along a plank into Thompson's Restaurant, owned by the author's father.

The theatre's exterior, complete with awning, looks serene while, within, all is being devastated.

Aunt Abby had had a strange experience.

There was one horrible moment when grandfather fell, but with the superhuman strength that comes to people in a crisis, she had held the crowd at bay until he could get to his feet. But then they were swept apart.

We later learned. that my father had been near us all along as we fought our way out of the Ch icago History

179

Iroquois Theatre Fire

theatre. Walking along State Street on the way to his office, he had noticed a couple of girls in short skirts and grease paint standing on the corner. Some men had put overcoats around their shoulders. At first my father thought they were part of some holiday street carnival until he noticed they were weeping.

"What is all this?" he asked one of the men.

"Don't you know?" answered the man. "The Iroquois Theatre is on fire."

At that, father dashed into the State Street traffic-horse-drawn wagons and streetcars that came from all sides. Surprisingly, he was not run over but made the opposite curb, where he ran along to Randolph Street and turned down to the theatre. He headed for the lobby, crunching over hoses and broken glass, but he was stopped by the fire chief.

"Get out of my way!" shouted my father.

"My children are in there."

The fireman was a huge man who held him back and said, sadly, "You can't go in, Mr. Thompson. There's not a soul alive in there now."

Father dashed into his restaurant and ran up the stairs to the top floor to the bakery. There, by an open window, stood the head baker, his arms and apron white with flour. He had thrown a plank over the narrow areaway to a window in the theatre building, and a few people had crawled across it to safety. Seeing the plank my father ran for it and tried to climb onto it, but the head baker grabbed him and held him.

"Let me go!" shouted my father. "My children are in there."

"No, Mr. Thompson," said the baker. "No one is alive in there now."

My father was like a wild man by now and shouted, "You're fired."

"Then I'm fired," said the baker, "but you can't go in there."

At that moment the restaurant manager appeared at the top of the stairs. He had seen father come in but had been unable to reach him through the confusion.

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Chicago History

"Mr. Thompson," he said, panting from his climb, "your family is safe. All of them got out."

"How do you know?" demanded father.

"They were all in here and now they've gone to your office and are waiting there."

When he burst into the office, my two aunts and I fell on him, weeping as hysterically as the woman I had seen in the store. My brother tried to be stoic about the whole thing but found he was not too old to cry. The only calm person was my grandfather, who was sitting on a straight office chair. He merely waited until the storm was over.

When the carriage arrived, we climbed in and crawled under the lap robes for the long, slow drive to our house on the South Side. Huddled inside the dark carriage we could hear the horses' muffled clopping. We were too tired to talk. But it was hard to believe what we had all been through a few hours earlier.

My mother had been spared the anguish of knowing about the fire. In those days before television or even radio, such catastrophes were hawked on the streets by newsboys shouting "Extra paper! Read all about the great fire!"

The windows were closed because of the cold, and my mother heard only vague shouts. She sent someone to buy a paper but before it could be brought in, the telephone call had come. The cook, a buxom Irishwoman, went upstairs to my mother's room and walked in without even knocking. Her first words were, "They're all right. Every one of 'em got out."

My astonished mother demanded, "Who got out from what?"

Then the cook told her. But she knew we were safe before she heard of the fire.

That night, with all of us gathered in her room, recounting our experiences, Aunt Abby said, "Well, father always thought the theatre was the province of the devil, and the first time he set foot in one, all Hell broke loose."

My mother shook her head. "Don't you realize," she asked mildly, "that the good Lord never in tended him to burn?"

Fifty Years Ago

As re~orded by newspapers in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society 1924 Dec. 1. Declaring that John D. Rockefeller's praise of the "warmth and beauty of modern religion" is but "putrid paganism," the Rev. John Roach Straton tells the second annual meeting of the Baptist Bible Union of North America that "The Rockefeller money is the greatest curse that rests today on the Baptist denomination." "Working through the infidel University of Chicago and the unbelieving Union Theological Seminary of New York," he said, "it is doing more to blight us than all other forces combined."

As his trial for the alleged misuse of state funds finally opens, Gov. Len Small's attorneys startle the court by charging that its demand for an accounting for funds spent during 1917-1919, while Small was state treasurer, stems from persecution by political enemies including Circuit Court Judge Frank W. Burton's judicial colleagues.

Dec. 2. John J. Glessner presents his residence at 18th St. and Prairie Ave. to the American Institute of Architects. The forty-year-old building, possessing only small exterior windows but amply lit by a large courtyard on its south side, is the last work of architect Henry H . Richardson and is considered the most original of his designs.

Dec. 4. President Calvin Coolidge, speaking before the Chicago Commercial Club and the International Livestock Exposition, tells his audience that he "can think of nothing to help the farmer so much as economy in ... government." The presidential party provides an object lesson by eschewing a private car and traveling in an ordinary Pullman sleeper, thus saving $17 ,ooo.

"We want a subway! We want a subway!" chant members of Chicago's Real Estate Board at their annual dinner at Rainbo Gardens, and Samuel Insull responds that Mayor William Dever's plea for municipal ownership of the city's transportation system will not provide them with one. "Say it with shovels," challenges Insull, contending that only a combination of state and private ownership can do the job.

Verna Baker, teacher at Chicago Normal College, and Alice Hall , graduate of the University of Chicago, both members of the Midway Hockey Club, become the first Chicagoans ever named to the All-American hockey squad.

Dec. 5. One million dollars worth of rare whisky and wine is stolen from the U.S. Army Warehouse at 39th and Wood sts. Fifteen steel fire doors are cut open with pickaxes to get at the liquor, which is then removed through an exit torn through to Hermitage Ave. and transferred to a fleet of 20 waiting trucks.

Superintendent of Schools William McAndrew urges that Chicago public school principals institute daily etiquette lessons. "We find the products of our Chicago schools addressing groups of people with their hands in their pockets," he notes, "or coming out of a restaurant with a toothpick in the mouth."

Dec. 6. "Hinky Dink" K enna presents the last beer schooner from his pre-Prohibition Workingmen's Exchange to Anna Gordon, president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and "Bathhouse John" Coughlin writes a poem to celebrate the occasion. Previously, Miss Gordon had to make do with a similar momento of the Clark St. saloon borrowed from reformer Arthur Burrage Farwell.

Dec. 7. A U.S. Army captain and several lieutenants are said to be implicated in the milliondollar theft of Army warehouse liquor. All who were on the scene deny hearing any noise during the break-in.

The Chicago Bears win the national professional football championship before 18,000 fans at Cubs Park, as the Cleveland Bulldogs, league Chicago History

181

50 Years Ago

Chicago Historical Socie ty

Glessner House , at 18th St. and Prairie Ave. , the last work of architect Henry H. Richa rdson , was willed to the American Inst itute of Architects on Dec. 2.

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Chicago History

"Yellow Kid" Weil in a familiar situation.

leaders who defeated them earlier in the season, lose 23-0.

Dec. 10. Kiwi chickens, raised in Texas, are among thousands of fowl on display at the 15th annual Poultry Show at the Coliseum. The new breed, a large table-sized fowl, is descended from a New Zealand species said to be virtually extinct.

Dec. 19. "Yellow Kid" Weil, Chicago's most notorious "confidence man," out on parole from the state prison at Joliet, is accused of fraudulently attempting to buy the electrical firm of Durr & Company for $150,000 and some "gilt-edged" mining stocks.

Dec. 20. Chicago's temperature falls to -6°F and some stations report - 1 1 °. The freeze causes 5 deaths, over 200 fires, and serious delays in telephone and telegraph communications.

Dec. 22 . A new struggle for votes and patronage is developing in the city's 2nd and 3rd wards as white control of the wards' politics fades, and Negro Republicans Edward H. White and Oscar 0. DePriest build separate precinct organizations.

Implement dealers report that there are more fruit presses than washing machines in Cook County. The sale of grapes has increased 45% this year.

Dec. 24. Downtown stores report a prosperous Christmas season as radio equipment becomes the most popular gift of 1924, replacing mah jongg sets, the 1923 leader.

Local health officials credit the city's relatively low rate of typhoid cases to a timely warning against the eating of raw oysters. Chicago is reporting seventy new cases a week, while illnesses in New York City have hit six hundred.

Dec. 28. "Yellow Kid" Weil, arrested at a nightclub for swindling H. L. Kutter of Hamilton, Ohio, feels uncomfortable about entering jail in a tuxedo. While waiting for a business suit to arrive, the Kid offers to sell anyone in the courtroom a racehorse, bus or real-estate stock, and even goldfish .

50YearsAgo

1925

Chicago Hist orical Societ y Photo by R. 0. Jones

Oscar 0. DePriest, Chicago's first black alderman, who contended with Edward H. White for control of the city's 2nd and 3rd wards.

Dec. 29. Clarence Darrow and Benjamin and Walter Bachrach, lawyers for convicted murderers Leopold and Loeb, will receive$ 150,000 for their services. The fee was set by the Chicago Bar Association.

Dec. 30. Circuit Court Judge Frank W. Burton rules in Springfield that Gov. Len Small owes the state almost $1,000,000, the interest paid by Chicago meatpackers on public funds lent them during Small's term as state treasurer. None of the interest payments appear on the treasury's books.

The Ku Klux Klan of Illinois announces that it will conduct a series of raids to clean up Chicago's "booze, vice and gambling."

Dec. 3 1. One of the largest crowds in history jams the Loop to celebrate the new year, and newspapermen report that there haven't been so many "inebriates" downtown since Armistice Day, 1919.

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Chicago History

Jan. r. William Sanson, assistant superintendent of delivery in the Chicago post office, is among six postal officials in as many cities suspended

by Postmaster General Harry S. New. The men are charged with bribing legislators to boost postal workers' salaries.

Jan. 8. Prof. Albert A. Michelson of the University of Chicago tells an audience at Orchestra Hall that his experiments on the velocity of light uphold Einstein's theory of relativity. He is continuing his research in Clearing, Ill., just southwest of Chicago.

Jan. 9. David Shapiro, rabbi of Ahaveth Sholem congregation, and three other officials of the temple are arrested for failure to account for 1,500 gallons of wine issued to the congregation last September.

Jan. 17. All available lights are turned on downtown as dense black coal fumes turn day into night.

Johnny Torrio, Chicago underworld chieftain, two of his lieutenants, and two former policemen are sentenced to a term in jail for the looting of the Sieben Brewery last May. Their sentences begin next month.

Jan. 19. Fire Battalion Chief Burton E. Fisher suspends fireman Thomas L. Noonan for singing while fighting a South Side fire. Noonan is accused of timing the blows of his axe to the cadence of the popular song, "The Pal that I Love Stole the Gal that I Love."

Jan. 23. Two unmarried people conducting a "trial marriage" in Oak Park are fined $75.

Two other unmarried couples who shared their house are fined $200 each and banished from the community "forever."

Jan. 25. National Guard troops are once again called into Herrin, Ill., to restore order after S. Glenn Young, the Klan's chief liquor raider, and anti-Klan Deputy Sheriff Ora Thomas are killed in a gun battle. The two had pledged to stay out of town in a truce arranged last year.

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Chicago Hisforicol Society

Daily News Collection

Henry Gale and Joseph H. Purdy of the University of Chicago testing the speed of light in an effort to prove Einstein's theory of relativity.

Chicago History

185

50 Years Ago

Jan. 27. Wheat at the Chicago Board of Trade brings $2.05, the highest price in 50 years.

Feb. 3. Among Chicago's theatrical attractions arc The S eco nd Mrs. Tanqueray, with Ethel Barrymore; The Chocolate Soldier, with DeWolf Hopper; Charlot's Revue of 1924, with Beatrice Lillie; and Th e Dream Girl, with Fay Bainter. Other attractions include Pavlova and the Ballet Russe Symphony Orchestra at the Auditorium, Sophie Tucker at the Palace, George White's Scandals at the Selwyn, and Burton Holmes' travel lecture on Czechoslovakia at Orchestra Hall. Movies include Th e Redeeming Sin, with Nazimova; Janice Meredith, with Marion Davies; Thief of Bagdad, with Douglas Fairbanks; Folly of Vanity, with Betty Blythe; H e Who Gets Slapped, with Lon Chancy, Norma Shearer, and John Gilbert; Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, with Mary Pickford; A Sainted Devil, with Rudolph Valentino; and East of Suez, with Pola Negri.

Feb. 5. A compromise bill limiting most women's labor to 8 hours a day will be offered to the Springfield legislature by Rep. Lottie Holman O'Neill. The new version is almost assured of passage by the recent election of Mrs. Florence Fifer Bohrern, Illinois' first woman state senator, who defeated State Sen. Frank 0. Hanson, the legislation's chief opponent.

The Illinois Humane Society announces that it received 358 complaints of cruelty to children caused by drinking in 1924, the highest number since 1922, when it began recording cases of child abuse.

Feb. 7. The Chicago Women's Apparel Manufacturers show hemlines rising almost to the knee. Colors will be brighter this year, and fox fur and ostrich feathers will be popular trim mings.

Feb. 9. Johnny Torrio, weakened by gunshot wounds suffered during a recent attempt on his life, is escorted to the Waukegan county jail by Al Capone and a nurse. He does not say why he is reporting early, but observers speculate that Torrio might feel safer in jail.

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Chicago History

Feb. 17. More than 2,500 street department workers vote to strike. Street cleaners, now earning $5 a day, seek an increase of 50¢.

Feb. 24. Chicagoans reelect an overwhelming number of organization Democrats to the City Council, assuring Mayor Dcver's continued control of the municipal government. The election is, however, marred by fisticuffs, gunfire, and thefts and stuffing of ballot boxes, provoking the Municipal Voters' League, a reform group, to declare that Chicagoans have "postponed" a cleanup of public affairs.

Samuc-1 lnsull accepts Mayor Dcvcr's compromise offer of $85,000,000 for his elevated lines and endorses city management of local transportation.

Feb. 25. Mcdill McCormick, grandson of Joseph Mcdill and brother of Robert R. McCormick, dies in Washington, D.C., at 48. McCormick, former editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, served as U.S. congressman in 1916 and senator in 1918.

Feb. 27. Chicago's street sweepers settle for a raise of 15¢ a day.

United States Sen. Medill McCormick, the former editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, who died on Feb. 25.

Chicago Hisloricol Society

Books

Bu il dings and People " 1N A DEMOCRACY, " Louis Sullivan once d ecla red, " th ere can be but on e test of citizenship, nam ely: Arc you using such gifts as you possess for or aga inst the peopl e?" That famou s architect buil t offi ces, m ansions, d epots, fa ctori es, churches, even tombs-everything but houses for the p eopl e. H e and his a pprenti ce Frank Ll oyd Wright put C hi cago in th e for efr ont o f " ·oriel architecture, a nd th eir successo rs have managed to keep it there. But ordin a ry people cann ot a fford a rchitec ts, so wh a t kind of h ome has C hi cago becom e for its peopl e? D o they enj oy a decent living environm ent ?

In th e vast literature on C hi cago's archit ec ture and soc iety, such qu esti ons are rarely a ddressed. Thus Ca rl Condit's book on building, pl annin g, and tec hnology in Chicago sin ce 1930 is extraordinary. Condit, one o f Am eri ca's leading a rchitec tura l historians, has heretofore a l"'ays considered both constru cti on and aesth etics, ba lancing ma terials and site, stru cture and d esign, form a nd fun cti on . N ow, in his two-pa rt stud y o f C hicago, he has ac hi en·d a new synth es is of archit ect ura l and urba n history. In Ch icago 191 0-1929 ( revi ewed in Ch icago Histo ry Spring-Summ er 1974 ), he \\·as deve loping a new kind o f environm en tal analysis. In Ch icago 193 0-1970 he has ma tered th e art, far surpa sing everything he has done before.

Condit 's new \·olum e is stunnin g, a masterwork of \\'riting enriched with hundreds of photos and line cuts, a dmirably a rranged and ann otat ed. It is a lso sa dd enin g, fo r in it Condit argues th a t ' 'th e real city," th e cit y shad owed by that stupend ous skylin e, th e hum an habita ti on as di stin ct from th e arti fact, constitutes a nea rly " tota l failure.'' Condit ca lcul a tes th e hum an co nsequ ences and the civic costs of a rchitectu ra l pl anning and d esign , and th en measures th ese aga in t th e a rtisti c advances. Over-a ll , he find s important ga ins in a rchitec tura l styl e and exec uti on-

Chicago, 1930-1970: Building, Planning and Urban T echn ology, by Carl W . Condit, Uni\'Crsit y of Chicago, 1974, S12.50; Architecture of Skid more, Ow ings & M errill, 1963-1 973 wit h commentaries by Axel Menges,

Architectural Book Publishing Compan y, 1974, S27.95; B lack Power/ lVhit e Cont ro l: Th e Stru ggle of Th e Woo dlaw n O rganization in Chicago, by John Hall Fish , Prin ce ton, 1973, S 11.50; Cities Des t royed for Cash: Th e FHA Scandal at HUD, by Brian D. Boyer, Follett, 1973, S7 .95 ; Openin g l'/1 th e Suburbs: An Ur ban St ra tegy fo , Am erica, by An thony Downs, Yale, 1973, S7.95 .

and yet not enough progress to offse t the aw ful pri ce th e people have had to pay.

T o appreciate the contrast between Condit's and more com ·cnti ona l trea tments, you need only look a t Architectu re of Skidm ore, O w ings & M er rill, 19631973 a handso me picture book devoted to the mos t influ en tia l C hicago firm since Burnha m & R oo t. Without a co mm anding ge nius, but wi th gifted p rac tition<'rs and offi ces in even cities, the firm is depend abl y innova tive. SOJvf incl udes am ong its fo rty-four layouts C hi cago's J ohn H ancock Cent er and Sea rs Tower

by Bru ce G ra ha m, and Walter N et. ch' R egenstcin Library fo r th e U niversity of Chi cago a nd C ircl e C ampus fo r th e U ni ve rsity of Illinois. Th e illustra tions arc ad equ a te; th e co mm entaries, tra nsla ted from th e Ge rm an and prin ted in bo th languages, a rc sparse and tri ctly tec hni ca l, omittin g even the na mes of the a rchitec ts. In his Int rodu cti on, Arthur Drexler of the Mu cum of :Mod ern Art contends th at architec ts are onl y sc n ·ants, and tha t the only relevant considera ti on fo r archi tec tu ra l cri tics i styl e.

Condit, however, considers the cm·ironm cnta l impact of such impressive buildings . Ik reports th at th e H ancoc k megas tru cture, a miles tone in itse lf, vi ola ted its loca le vi. uall y and clotted a ll the available tra ffi c a rteri e . The triking severity of C ircl e Campus beco mes pl easa nt, he fed s, only wh en it is aswa rm wi th peopl e on mild , " softly lighted" days, of whi ch th e city has precious few. M oreover, it obliterat ed a uniqu e neighborh ood , ri ch in traditi on but too p oo r in influ ence to wa rd off destru ction. In sum, C ondit find s, the benefits conferred by the C a mpus d o not outweigh th e da mage . Condit's assess ments o f so me oth er, less distinguished SOM contributions arc even more cri tica l. H e accuses Ickes H omes, for exa mpl e, of initiatin g th e downwa rd slide of public housing toward a dull , degrad ed design. H e find s th a t La ke M ead ows, a middle-class urban renewal p rojec t, di spossessed th ousa nds of poo r famili es wh o poured into the already impacted ghetto.

Whil e he agrees with Arthur Drcxlrr th a t architec ts arc se rvants, Condit obse rves th at even " ·hen th ey d esign civic cent ers, public schoo ls, and governm ent housing proj ec ts, th ey seldom se rve th e public. H e is convinced th a t given the economi c a nd ra cia l ineq ua lity of th e Ameri can system, a humane city of the kind th at Louis Sulli\·an advoca ted is pract ically beyond a chi evin g.

Chicago has fewer peopl e now than in 1930, but th e Chi cagoland area has continu ed to grow over the decad es and the polarization of its people has intensified. Chicago is being consumed by a disease affli cting a ll la rge Ame rican cities. If the process seems more dramati c here than elsewh ere, Cond it concludes, it is because of "the in cred ible contrast ben,·ecn its c\·ils and its unparallel ed artistic, structural, and planning ac hi evem ents."

The Grea t D epression of the 1930s ushered in th e era of fed eral intervent ion, whi ch fai led either to res tore the city's lost momentum or to humanize it.

Public housing and urban renewal promised d ecent hom es for slum dwell ers, but th ey did not rep lace a ll th e dwelling units th a t th ey, toge th er \1·ith th e fed eral highway program, demo lished . A third m ajor housing m easu re, natio na l mortgage insurance, made th e Ch ica go Hist ory

187

Books

medium-income housing market safe for mortgage bankers. It never pretended to benefit the poor.

The Federal Housing Administration, which guaranteed lenders against loss, made home ownership possible for millions of middle and working-class families. Not until 1968, however, were its benefits extended to the poor or the blacks. The Housing Act of that year finally included the most ill-housed families in the most successful of all the government's urban experiments. But in Cities Destroyed for Cash , Brian D. Boyer tells an appalling story of what happened to those families under FHA. Boyer, one of the reporters who exposed the FHA scandals, knows his stuff, and even though he writes in tough-cop style instead of telling it straight, he gets his point across-that, after ignoring the poor for thirty-five years, the FHA subsidized, and failed to supervise, mortgagors, bankers, builders, realtors, and house repairers who made a mockery of the new legislation. He reports that the profits were enormous, the cost to taxpayers may ultimately exceed seventy billion dollars, and that the costs to the cheated families is inestimable. "To be FHA'd," for the poor, meant " to be ruined." Compared to other cities which Royer surveys, Chicago got off easy, but even here he concludes that the resu lts were devastating.

The community that suffered most was Austin. Realestate speculators moved in , persuaded whites into selling out cheap, and then sold the houses to blacks at extortionate prices. \,Vh en the new buyers defaulted , FHA foreclosed and resold, again to speculators.

Whites who sold cheap blamed the blacks for driving them out; blacks who bought dear blamed the whites for cheating them. One white woman who stayed in Austin, Gale Cincotta, holds FHA regional administrator John Waner responsible. Ironically, Boyer contends that \Vaner's FHA office was the best-run in the country. In 1973 the new provisions were jettisoned and, once again, the FHA is mainly for the whites and non-poor.

Even while FHA was dealing with lower-income groups, it. apparently never tried to open up the suburbs to them as it did for the middle classes. Like public housing and urban renewal, the effect of FHA appears actually to have reinforced economic and racial segregation. The poor, and especiall y the nonwhites, remain concentrated in central city slums.

Metropolitan areas-and none more so than Chicago -continue their split into two separate societies. One is suburban, mostly white, reasonably affluent, and politically influential; the other, in the city, is increasingly black, poor, and powerless.

Anthony Downs of Chicago's Real Estate Research Corporation proposes a two-pronged strategy: integra ting the suburbs and enriching the sltim districts.

In Opening Up the Suburbs, he emphasizes economic rath er than racial integration. Six years ago, at the height of the rebellions in the ghettos, Downs insisted upon racial integration, but he has since given up the idea of distributing middle-class blacks throughout the suburbs. What he is now proposing is the dispersion of 188

Chicago History

low-income people, of both races but mostly white, to suburban homes within reach of employment. He proposes that building codes and zoning laws be modified.

He would introduce cheaper houses on smaller lots into all subdivisions, subsidize mortgage payments, shift the base of support of civic services away from the property tax, and offer grants to communities which accommodate the poor and white, conversely withholding them from those which do not.

Dispersing the poor would relieve th e pressure on the crisis-wracked inner city, Downs argues, and give central communities a chance for recovery. All parts of the metropolis would become economically-and, he hopes, racially-m ixed, with middle-class whites dominanl in both th e ¡urban core and the surrounding ring.

There are many problems with Downs' approach, only some of which he acknowledges. For one thing, spreading the poor around is not thC' same as ending poverty. For another, the black poor themselves might resist the transfer of dominance where they have it.

Then one would have to reckon with the exclusivity of the middle-class whites. If the strategy worked at all, it would most likely empty the cities of th e white poor only, thus intensifying the racial segregation of th e metropolis, a price Downs is not willing to pay. i\foreover, the strategy could proceed only in an expanding housing market, a condition which has not existed since 1971. Finally, as Downs admits, even under the best conditions the middle cla ses would almost certainly use their community control to keep the suburbs closed.

Ironically, the new demand for community control originated in the ghettos. Most suburbs have long enjoyed self-determination, but power in the black communities has traditionally been wielded from somewhere outside. In Black Power/White Control, John Hall Fish examines the long struggle of one organization to represent its inner-city community. The 'Woodlawn Organization (TWO ), founded by white clergymen in 1961 with the aid of Saul Alinsky, was soon taken over by black people who made it the most important black community organization in the nation.

Fish reports that TWO survived the attempts of both the University of Chicago and the city to destroy it, and that it won a measure of power in Woodlawn.

Still, he argues, whites outside would not relinquish control; instead, they included TWO in the governing structure of major projects for \,Voodlawn's "enrichment."

The efficacy of the programs that government and private foundations are willing to conduct in Woodlawn is arguable. After years of effort, Woodlawn's basic problems remain. Over half-forty thousandof its blacks have fled, and certainly not to the suburb .

John Hall Fish, however, does not judge TWO to be a failure. Failure to accomplish the impossible, Fish argues, is not failure. He believes that T\VO's great achievement was that it survived and that it won itself a local legitimacy which no government has or can have. Higher authorities can run the community, he states, but they cannot govern it. Fish shares with Carl Condit and Gale Cincotta the conviction that nothing but government by the people will suffice. And he would agree with Anthony Downs that programs

to build up impoverished neighborhoods without opening up the suburbs are designed not to enrich the ghetto but to contain it. Fish holds out the hope that TWO can hang on (and not be bought off) until higher authorities concede their own ineffectiveness, yie ld to democratic organizations the resources to govern, and open up access for all kinds of people to all metropolitan communities.

Precedent seems to indicate that John Hall Fish's hope is not warranted. But that docs not make it impossible. Fish, Condit, Downs, Boyer, and citizens like Gale Cincotta and the members of TWO are follo,,·ing Louis Sullivan's dictum by using such gifts as they possess for the people. If they do not succeed, to paraphrase Anthony Downs, they will at least weaken our excuses for failing to do what is necessary to unify the metropolis.

Thomas Philpott

Thomas Philpott, a native of Chicago's South Side, teaches urban history at the University of Texas. His book The House and the Neighborhood: Housing Reform and Neighborhood Work in Chicago, 1880-1930, will be published by Oxford University Press in 1975.

Where It's At: Ch icago Gu idebooks Chicago is an easy place to fathom.

I ts address system is comprehensible, the neighborhood subdivisions provide a quick frame of reference and a ready stereotype for most parts of town. The young live here, Italians there, Blacks, the elderly, the rich, the struggling each have staked out or inherited their own domains.

Yet to the newcomer, the city remains private. It hides its little fascinations and secret pleasures from all but the most determined snoops. And once away from his home territory, the average Chicagoan is as puzzled as he would be on a side street in Durban.

To both, the guidebook holds out promises of instant expertise, exquisite bargains, and painle sly acquired knowledge. It never works because the perfect guidebook will never be written. A guidebook is, after all, a collection of subjective judgments if it is to be more than just a pocket-sized Yellow Pages, and the reader ON TIIE SURFACE,

The Chicago GuideBook, 2nd ed., by the editors of Chicago Guide, Regnery, 1973, S1-95; Instant Chicago: How to Cope, by Jory Graham, Rand McNally, 1973, -h-95; Lei.rnreguide/ Chicago, Leisureguides, Inc., 1973, S2.50; IVhere To Go And What To Do With The Kids In Chicago, by Andrea Baron and Dyann Rivkin, Price/ Stern/ Sloan, 1972, S2.95; Serendipity City, 3rd ed., l\forry Roth, ed., Swallow Press, 1973, S2.50; Chicago Women's Directory/Guia para las Mujeres de Chicago,

by the lnforwomen Collective, Inforwomen, Inc., 1974, 2; Chicago On Foot, 2nd ed., by Ira J. Bach, J. Philip O'Hara, 1973, $6.95.

is as likely to find evaluations he consistently agrees with as he is to find an alter ego.

Guidebooks also suffer from instant obsolescence.

The minute the last galley goes to the printer, shop owners change phone numbers, the park plows over its toboggan run, and another architectural landmark bites the dust. Perhaps the only solution is a looseleaf guidebook with ring binders and a quarterly revision schedule.

This is not to say that all guides to the city are poor and not worth the price. For someone new to town a good guide, which means an indexed, well-organized, and sufficiently detailed book, gives an overview of the city and saves endless time.

A half-dozen or so Chicago guidebooks have bc('ll published in the last two years. We have an architectural guide, a tourists' guide, a radicals' guide, a directory of free-form schools, a children's guide, and several women's guides, but-except for an occasional chapter-no comprchensi\·e guide to restaurants and food markets. For a city that's a glutton's Everest, it's a strange omission.

Chicago Guide magazine, which made its reputation on its restaurant directory and entertainment listings, put its experience to good use in a guidebook first published t,,·o years ago. The second edition of The Chicago GuideBook is a breezy and thorough guide to the city, though it is flawed by the lack of an index which forces the buyer to second-guess the editorial organization system. The problem pops up again in a listing of handy phone numbers, each with its own cute caption. They're fun to read, but it would be easier to find the zoning violations call number under "zoning" instead of under "when your neighbor is breeding bison ."

The paperback's assessments of sightseeing attractions, entertainment, museums and galleries, shops and hotels are for the most part fair and do Ii t the warts and drawbacks of spots, like Chinato\l·n, that have fallen on tacky days. The one exception is the res taurant guide, which persists in honoring sacrrd cows when they should be butchered.

Unlike most other guidebooks, this one includes several urban driving tours and makes an effort to get off the well-worn path through the lakefront neighborhoods.

Instant Chicago: How to Cope, by Jory Graham, is most useful to newcomers because it gives a breakdown of the area's governmental offices and what they do or arc supposed to do, and surveys the city neighborhoods as placrs to li,·e. Inc,·itably, inAation has made the prices in the housing guide out of date, but the section on leases should be required reading for all apartment renters.

The book includes brief but fair Ii ts of select repairmen and services-a directory of everything from abortions to wea\"ers. But like other guidebooks, this one reinforces the large and well-known institutions.

People needing medical care, for example, arc referred to university-based medical centers while the good neighborhood hospitals, where people with run-of-the m ill medical problems could, and probably wi ll , go arc all but brushed off.

There's an unusual guide to both private and publi c schools, a ubject most guidebooks don't have the Ch ica go Hi story

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Books

stomach for, and a unique checklist for evaluating any school.

The book is less useful to long-time Chicagoans who have long since found a dry cleaner, an apartment, or the dri\·cr's license testing station, but people moving lo a new city need all the help they can get.

The Leisureguide/Chicago is a handsome, hardcover magazine that comes with the hotel room's Gideon Bible. It's a tourist-oriented glossy production that tries to show Chicago in its best light but too often it puts on rose-colored glasses.

The contributors are fond of local sayings. Daniel Burnham 's "Make no small plans" might be the magazine's subtitle since it appears in most essays. Some of the articles are optimistically unfair, like the one on Old Town and New Town that makes the sucker strips look like strings of Neiman-Marcus boutiques punctuated by quaint little restaurants instead of a hustler's heaven. Elsewhere we are treated to homilies about the city that really works, but people who \\'Ould refute that contention are too busy trying to get the garbage picked up to spend much time hanging around the Playboy Towers reading guidebooks.

The guide's essays are for the most part informative and the photos are handsome. It has a small shopping section, which might be subtitled "Make no small purchases," and a restaurant directory that reads like a public relations handout. Despite its fau lts, the book gives the vi. itor an idea of where to go to cram in as much sightseeing, museum trotting, spending, and eating as possible in a short time.

Where To Go And What To Do With The Kids In Chicago, by Andrea Baron and Dyann Rivkin, is a mixed package. It is the most comprehensive young people's guide to the city and includes information that even the most dedicated parent doesn' t know. The guide, which is two years old and ready for a revised edition, tells where kids can watch glassblowers, learn to square dance, or see a puppet show. It lists sports, museums, old-time villages, children's classes, and tours. It also touches on an important subject that is neglected in other Chicago guidebooks. \Ve really need a directory of outdoor wall murals-to say, as this book does, that "quite colorful, expressive [murals] painted by Chicagoans are located on various walls" is like saying "on your right is Lake Michigan where you will find fish." No help at a ll.

Vagueness is the book's one problem. Too often the readers are referred to the Yell ow Pages. The sports section is comprehensive but could be better organized.

The authors cou ld make a real contribution by listing sports on a park-by-park basis in addition to their sport-by-sport guide.

Serendipity City, edited by Morry Roth and written by dozens of dedicated Lincoln Parkers, is one of the most specific and thorough guidebooks available because its scope is so limited. The guidebook is restricted to the Lincoln Park neighborhood but what it covers, it blankets.

The research groups compiled guides of erratic quality, and in some cases allowed fondness for the

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Chicago History

home territory to get the better of objectivity. The specialty shop section, for example, is filled with bad advice, though the guides to both antique shops and service businesses arc particularly well informed and helpful. The magazine also rates the neighborhood restaurants, bars, movie houses and theaters, clothing and furniture stores, and adu lt education programs, though it would have been nice to ha\·e something about the neighborhood's schools as well.

Serendipity City, which is in its third edition, has a unique coupon section with more than half of the coupons still good though it was published over a year ago. The coupons give discounts on everything from a pound of chocolate chip cookies to a reserved pew in a neighborhood church. One coupon is good until 1990 and another outlasted the misbegottrn • delicatessen that offered it.

The guide is useful on ly to Lincoln Parkers or Lincoln Park fans but, for them, it is th<' most comprehensive one avai lable.

Chicago Women's Directory/Guia para las Muj ercs de Chicago, by the Inforwomcn Collective, is a lesson in how not to write a guidebook. Its purpose, I suppo e, is to Ii t services of particular use and interest to \,·omen and it docs this, but the information is hiddrn away betwcrn painfully windy and naivr rssays on the nature of feminism, discrimination, and the class struggle, which is fought and won in every chapter.

The book backs off from making recommendations, in a few cases, by saying that inclusion of an institution in its pages should not be considered an endorsement nor shou ld exclusion be considered a criticism. Wh y then hould the authors bother writing them or hould I read the listings?

Though the book tries lo be bilingua l, it translates on ly the essays into Spani h and lravrs the listings, which arc far more useful, in English. Furthermore, it is physically disorganized and some of the listings, which arc quite thorough, arc hard to find.

Ira J. Bach's Chicago On Foot offrrs 32 walks in the Ch icago area, complete with dirrrtions by CTA from the Loop and complete with walking times.

Particularly rccommrnded arc his tours past thr architrctural monuments of the Loop and the Alta Vista Terrace, the Graceland Cemrtrry tour, the one of Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Oak Park and River Forest, and the trip through Pullman. One wishes that he had included tours of equally interesting neighborhoods such as \Vestown and Logan Square. Despite some inaccuracirs that might bothrr the specialist, persons setting out on foot to explore the most intrrest ing parts of the city \\'ill genera ll y find Bach a helpful guide.

Last but not least, no collection of guidrbooks to Chicago is complete without a pocket street guide to locate each strert in the city and suburbs on its precise north-south or east-west grid . J\fost bookstores or Loop cigar-and-magazine stores carry at least one brand.

Buy the one that fits most easil y in a back pocket and keep it with you.

Laura Green Laura Green, a feature writer for the Chicago Sun• Times, has a special interest in Chicago neighborhoods.

Brief Reports by the Staff The Pullman Strike

by Rev. William H. Carwardine. New ed., Intro.

by Virgil]. Vogel Published for the Ill. Labor History Society

by Kerr, 1974. $2.50. the Pullman Strike, 1894, that the Rev. William H . Carwardine, 31-year-old pastor of the First M. E. Church in Pullman, Illinois, decided to speak out, from his pulpit and with his pen, about the issue- of the strike and about the families caught up in it. The resulting small book was a classic-a humanistic report of ordinary people's day-to-day struggle to survive-and has long been cherished by those interested in social history. Carwardine speaks of family budgets, wage rates, rents, foremen, and hours of labor. He reproduces letters, recounts interviews, analyzes company statements and contracts, and prefaces his whole here-and-now account with a history of the Town of Pullman and an eva luation of both George M. Pullman and his formidable opponent, Eugene Debs.

Virgil Vogel, finding Carwardine's history '•inadequate" and its author, with all due respect, guilty of '·nai,·ctc," has prefaced the work with a newer, more academic, and more strongly pro-labor historical statement. Carwardine, aft er all, never endorsed the strike nor the boycott which supported it. He was more concerned with what \ ' ogcl might feel were " implistic" concern -people, fairnc s, and human dignity-than in the ·'larger" questions of capital versus labor, the benefits of socialism, and so on.

Following Vogel's history is a disappointingly brief biography of the Rev. Carwardinc by William Adelman, and then an "annotated bibliography" which, though far from complete or objective, can lead the student to some interesting source material. Only after all this do the unforewarncd arrive at Carwardine's own moving account. Consider yourself forewarned.

IT WAS DURIJ\'G

Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks

by Da vid S. McIntosh, ed. Dale R . Whiteside

to manhood on a northwest Illinois farm, he gi,·es m an intimate view of rural mid-America. The text consists of the family's own comments on the pictures, taprd o,·cr the past twenty years . .\ delightful doc-umrntary.

Chicago Public Works: A History ed. Daphne Christensen Printed for the Dept. of Public Works

by Rand McNally, 1973. S6.95. of the city that "really works" is examined in this official history of Chicago's engineering triumphs- its sewers, river tunnels, canals, subways, filtration plant , and c,·en its trcctlights. The text for this picture book is concise, yet it contains a "·ealth of interesting information ( did you know that the debris from the Great Chicago Fire was used for landfill? ) . A helpful Appendix list the oprning dates of Chicago's expre sways and mo\'ablc bridges.

THE U'.'IDERSIDE

Chicago: A Chronological and Documentary History, 1784-1970 Compiled and ed. by Howard B. Furer Oceana, 1974. $7.50. of the city that we cannot recommend . The chronology itself is inaccurate, and a good many of the statements made are trite or otherwise useless . Follows a selection of inconsequential documents, and an annotated bibliography which omits too many important sources. It really does not matter that the Index is overbrief.

o:--E ~!ORE HISTORY

The Fate of the Lakes

by James P. Barry Baker, 1972. 14.95. at the "·onderful Great Lakes and a peck into their imperiled future, packed into less than two hundred pages of clear text and superbly rrproduccd color photography. The handsome lakes and mighty waterways become real, as do the fishing and play boats that ply them. So do the uncontrolled industrialization, overuse, and pollution which portend their ultimate demise. A useful work on a vital subject. ., coon LOOK

Southern Illinois Univ., 1974. 8.95.

Da\'id S. McIntosh displays a wealth of oral tradition from the Illinois Ozark region in this volume. Featured are tunes and singing games which originated in this area, as well as regional variants of melodics familiar to other folk cultures. You'll discover an abundance of raw materials with which to create your own folkfest-instructions for the singing games, lyrics, some of the music, insights into local folk traditions, and a recording of a few tunes to play on your own turntable.

FOLKLORIST

Farm Boy

by Archie Lieberman Abrams, 1974. S18.50.

Look photographer, Lieberman is selling the American Dream and many readers will want to buy it. In 240 sensi tive photographs of a boy gro"·ing

A FOR~IER

Public Defender

by Gerald Getty and Jam es Presley Grosset & Dunlap, 1974. S9.95 . for the poor accused of murder, larceny, riot, rape-just about any crim e that can be committed-Gerald Getty spent 29 years in the Cook County public defender's office, 18 years as chief. His accounts very from dull to exciting, from a few paragraph to whole chapters, but most tell us littl c that is not on the public record. His chapter on Richard Morrison and the Summerdale police scandal is the most interesting; at the other extreme is Getty's long account of his defense of Richard Speck, notable only for its rehash of the crime's more gruesome details. The book is still worthwhile reading, for it reminds u that a lthough the public defender's office exists to secure equal justice for thr indigent, it cannot al\\'ays stop the slipshod practices of the courts.

AS ATTORNEY

Chicago History

191

THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY Clark Street at North Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60614 Telephone: M lchigan 2-4600 ,¡

OFFICERS

Theodore Tieken, President Stewart S. Dixon, ut Vice-President James R. Getz, 2nd Vice-President Gardner H. Stern, Treasurer Harold K. Skramstad, Jr., Secretary and Director TRUSTEES

Bowen Blair Emmett Dedmon Stewart S. Dixon James R . Getz Philip W. Hummer Willard L. King Andrew McNally m Mrs. C. Phillip Miller

Bryan S. Reid, Jr. Nathan A. Scott, Jr. Gilbert H . Scribner, Jr. Harold Byron Smith, Jr. Hermon Dunlap Smith Gardner H. Stern Theodore Tieken Mrs. Philip K. Wrigley

MEMBERSHIP The Society is supported alm ost entirely by income from its endowment, by contributions, and by memberships. Membership is open to anyone interested in the Society's activities and objectives. Cla ses of membership and dues arc as follows: Annual, $ 1 5 a year; Life, $250 (one payment ) ; Governing Life, $500 (one payment); and Patron, $1000 (one payment ) .

Members receive the Society's magazine, Chicago History, invitations to all special functions held by the Society, and periodic notice of new exhibitions. Members and their immediate families are admitted fr ee to the museum at all times.

SUBSCRIPTIONS Single copies of Chicago History, published quarterly, are $2.25 by mail, $2 at newsstands and bookshops. Subscriptions are$ 1 o for 4 issues.

The John Hancock Center towers above No. Michigan Ave .'s skyline. To the right , topped by a beacon , is the Playboy Building . The identical twin metal and glass towers at the right, 860 and 880 Lake Shore Dr., were designed by Mies van der Rohe.

Courtesy John Hancock Mutual life Insurance Co.