Chicago History | Spring 1975

Chicago History

SPRING 1975

The interior of a Pullman car, ca. 1890. In this issue, Ira J. Bach traces the history of the South Pullman community from its days as a company town to its present status as a national landmark district.

Chicago History

THE MAGAZINE 0 F THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

In this issue, Al Griffin talks about Riverview Amusement Park. Its memory is still green in the hearts of most Chicagoans -who have all kinds of misconceptions about it, which Griffin clears up.

With the Bicentennial approaching, Paul M. Angle examines Illinois' role in the American Revolution and comes up with-George Rogers Clark.

Lots of derring-do.

Our continuing interest in Chicago women is expressed in an article on Mary Livermore and Chicago's great fair to raise money for General Grant's hard-pressed army.

The Town of Pullman is being restored and becoming fashionable. Ira J. Bach reviews its history and its resurrection.

It's been around for over four generations of ups and downs, would you believe.

A manuscript find: a long-lost, first-hand account of Abraham Lincoln's death.

Just when everybody had decided there was no unknown material on Lincoln!

Ralph Newman authenticates the letter.

Two book-review essays: William C. McCready, writing on books about the working class, and our editor writing about the problems of book reviewing.

And, of course, "Fifty Years Ago."

General George Rogers Clark's treaty with the Indians at Cahokia , Illinois, 1778.

From a mural in the State Capitol Building at Springfield.

Chicago History The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society

SPR ING 1975 Vol ume IV, Number 1

Cover: Ho rses of the famed Riverv iew

CONTENTS

carousel . T he en ti re caro use l has been res to red and in stalled at Six Flags Over Georg ia, where our cover photograp h was taken .

GEORGE ROGER S CLARK: ILLINOIS AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION / 5

Chicag o H is torical Society

by Paul M . A ngle

TH E UPS AND DOWNS OF RIVERVIEW PARK /1 4 1,y A I Griffin

Isabel Grossner, Editor

THE FREIGHT TUNNEL UNDER CHICAGO/23

Frederick J. Nachman, Assistant Editor

by A. A . Dornfeld

Ellen Skerrett, Editorial Assistant

Editorial Advisory Comm ittee Paul M. Angle Emmett Dedmon J ames R. Getz O liver J ensen R obert W . Johannsen H erma n Kogan Will Leona rd Nathan A. Scott, Jr. Robert M. Sutton

Printed by Hillison & Etten Company Chicago, Illinois Copyright , 1975 by the Chicago Historical Society Clark Street at North Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60614

Art icles appearing in this journ al are abstracted and indexed in Historic al Abstracts and Am eric a: History and Life

TH E MYSTERY OCCUPANT'S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN/32 w ith a no te by R a lJ>h G. ,\ 'ew man

MARY LIVERMORE AND THE GREAT NORTHWESTERN FAIR / 34 by ]. Christoph er Schnell

PULLMAN : A TOWN REBORN / 44

by Ira ] . Ba ch

FIFTY YEARS AGO / 54 BOOK REVIEWS : WHO OUT THERE IS READ ING OUR REVIEWS? / 60

by Isa be l S. G rossn e r

THE AMERICAN WORK ING CLASS / 61

by IVilliam C. M ccready

BRIEF REPORTS / 63

George Rogers Clark: Illinois and The American Revolution

BY PAUL M. ANGLE

With the Bicentennial of the American Revolution fast approachin!J, Illinoisans would do well to recall the one tie that their state has to the War for Independencethe conquest of the Illinois Country by the redoubtable Virginian, George Rogers Clark.

Statue of George Rogers Clark in Quincy, Illinois.

Chicago Historical Society

in Kentucky, then an unorganized territory under the jurisdiction of Virginia, in the early 1770s. Hunters and surveyors had penetrated this beautiful and fertile region as early as 1769. Within six years frontiersmen were building cabins and establishing fortified settlements at Harrodsburg, Boonesborough, and other places. Fortification was essential, for Indians from both north and south resented the presence of the whites in one of their favorite hunting grounds and made frequent forays designed to remove the settlers from land which the Indians considered their own.

The situation brought Clark to the front. Born near Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1752, he had shunned formal education, although that would have been within his reach. He did, however, learn surveying, and practiced that art in the Kentucky wilderness for three or four years. In 1774, though only twenty-one, he served as captain of militia in Lord Dunmore's War, the effort of the royal governor of Virginia to subdue the Indians then harassing the fledgling western settlements. After the war Clark again took up surveying in Kentucky.

In spite of his youth, he was a commanding figure. He stood six feet tall, strongly built, with red hair and searching black eyes. Facially, he bore a striking resemblance to George Washington and took pride in the similarity. Most important of all, he had that indefinable but unmistakable quality called leadership.

In the early summer of r 776, Kentuckians meeting at the stockaded settlement of Harrodsburg chose Clark as one of two agents to carry a petition to Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia. After a difficult and dangerous journey the two men presented a memorial to Patrick H enry, Virginia's newly elected governor, begging that Virginia throw its protection over the western THE ST-ORY REALLY BEGINS

Paul M. Angle was formerly Illinois State Historian and director of the Chicago Historical Society. A selection from his writings, On a Variety of Subjects, has just been published by the Chicago Historical Society and the Caxton Club.

territory. Clark added his own persuasion, declaring that "if a country was not worth protecting, it was not worth claiming." The council acted, granted Kentucky a county government, made Clark major of the militia charged with defense against Indian attacks, and gave him 500 pounds of powder.

The action was timely, for Lt. Gov. Henry Hamil ton, commanding the British post of Detroit, was about to encourage his Indian allies to attack the American settlements. As in all wars, the opposing forces fought according to their own and sometimes differing rules-and, as in all wars, the rule books were often thrown away by both sides.

In r 777, fifteen Indian bands attacked in Kentucky, giving that year the name of "the bloody year." In The Illinois Country: 1673 to 1818, Clarence W. Alvord wrote: Fighting was almost constant. Outlying settlements were suddenly attacked and burned to the ground.

Brave efforts were made by the frontiersmen to ward off the danger, and many a harrowing tale of adventure was added to the romance of western settlement during these early years of the Revolutionary War. Indian attacks, fire, the murder of pioneers, and the capture of women and children aroused the west against the British authorities that employed such methods in carrying on the war.

Clark himself wrote later that " burying the dead and dressing the wounded seemed to be all our business.''

By temperament, Clark was inclined to attack as the best method of defense. In the West, the British had three centers of power: Detroit, Vincennes on the lower Wabash, and the Illinois villages in the vicinity of the former French stronghold, Fort de Chartres. Detroit was too strong to be taken by any force Clark could muster, but the other points, being small, were likely to fall before a resolute effort. In 1763, the Illinois villages had a total of perhaps 850 inhabitants and 300 Negro slaves. Whatever natural increase had taken place by r 778 had probably been offset by emigration to the Spanish settlements on the west Chicago History

5

George Rogers Clark

side of the Mississippi. Near the French villages lived a few hundred Indians of the Illinois tribes.

Despite their size the villages were prosperous, for the lands around them yielded bounteous crops and supported many cattle and hogs.

The French habitants could be presumed to be without strong ties to the British, who had won them in the French and Indian War. In fact, the British had been so unsuccessful in administering the villages that they had finally withdrawn their own commander and their last troops from Kaskaskia, the principal town, in r 776. In place of one of their own they left the post in charge of a native Frenchman, Philippe Franc;ois de Rastel, chevalier de Rocheblavc, who had spent most of his life in the service of France and Spain. Although Rocheblave was an intriguer, the British General Hamilton at Detroit nevertheless trusted him and had confidence in his loyalty. Still the British gave Rocheblave far less money than he needed and made it clear that he would have to rely on the inhabitants for the defense of the villages. Rocheblave, well aware of hi precarious situation, wrote letter after letter to Detroit asking for help. Several times he warned: "We are on the eve of seeing here a numerous band of brigands who will establish a chain of communication which will not be easy to break, once formed." His British superiors paid no attention.

In the spring of r 777, Clark decided to attack the Illinois villages. He first sent spies to ascertain the situation there. They reported that Rocheblave had not a single soldier to guard a large deposit of military supplies and that, by giving lavish presents, he was inducing the Indian tribes of the vicinity to raid the American settlements in K entucky. All this Clark reported to Williamsburg.

In October 1 777, Clark made a second trip from Kentucky to Virginia. There he outlined to Governor Patrick Henry his plan for taking K askaskia. Once in American hands, the town would control the Indians to the westward and secure communications for K entucky down the 6

Chicago History

Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. The stance of the revolutionary government, at the time of his visit, was confident, even aggressive.

General Burgoyne had surrendered an entire British army at Saratoga, and word of an alliance between the Americans and the French was cxrectcd momentarily.

Aftrr consulting with leading Virginians, including George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, Governor Henry recommended Clark's plan to the Council, which formally approved it on January 2, 1 778. The young commander was raised in rank to lieutenant colonel, given ÂŁ 1200 in currency, and authorized to raise seven companies of fifty men each. He obtained assurance that each volunteer would receive 300 acres of land, and that those of higher r:rnk would receive even more. The purpose of Clark's expedition was kept secret : a public announcement stated only that the men he raised would proceed to Kentucky and serve there for three months under his orders.

By spring, Clark had raised only half of his authorized quota of men. Nevertheless, with 175 men he left Pittsburgh, in boats supplied by the commanding officer there, for the falls of the Ohio River, soon to be called Louisville. On an island in the river he established a base and built a stockade, partly for defense and partly to prevent his men from deserting. On June 24, the expedition took to the boats again , undeterred by an almost total eclipse of the sun which some took as an evil omen. After shooting the rapids successfully, they floated down the Ohio River to Fort Massac. an abandoned post on the Illinois side opposite the mouth of the Tennessee River.

From that point they truck out overland for their objective.

The march was not uneventful. At one point their guide lost the trail, but when accused of treachery and threatened with death he found it within a few hours. After four days, the little army ran out of provisions and had to march two days on empty stomachs. Trials and privations notwithstanding, on the evening of July 4 Clark's

Courrew lllinoi, Boll

rnen stood on the bank of the Kaskaskia River opposite their destination. ln th darkness they crnss<'d tlil' riv<'r in boats thl'y found conv<"nicntly nt'arby. At the edge of tlw town , Clark divid ·d hi s fore< ' into three parties, two lo hold strong points in th(· villag!', the other, which he hc-ad<·d , to take thc comrnanclant's residence . No party t·nccHtntn<'d any resistance·. ln fact th< ·y surprised thl' hapl<'ss a nd for that matter lwlpl<'ss Roc!wblavc in lwcl . Th(' next day, when CI , rk annou11ccd to the apprc·hc-nsivc· French inhabitants that the Americans and the French were now alli('s, the y cl!l'erecl wildly. Th<' Anwrican c·o111111nndcr at 011cc· sc·nt a sn1all force to Cahokia , l'rai, it' du Rochc•r , and the otlwr villages, which suncnclcred without lwsitation .

011<· mo, c· st('p rc·mai1wd to make· the conquest complete. Tha t was to take and occupy Vincennes. Assured by the Kaskaskians that the people of that town would be glad to switch their allegiance from Great Britain to the Americans.

Clark S<'nt a delegation headed by two Frenchmen, Dr. Jean Baptiste LafTont and Fathe r Pierre Gibault, thr priest, to the post. The resid e nts wel comed them and immediately took the oath of allegiancr to Virginia.

rulophono Comoonv A depiction of Clark's army, in 1779, slogging its way to Fort Sackville, which defended Vincennes.

So far, all had gone· we ll for Georg<· Rog ·rs Clark. I 11 Th <' Illinois Country A lvord summed up thC' achiC'vctnrnts of tlw young Virginian: Clark w:,s jubil ant over thr surc1•ss of his <·xp<·dition, whirh \\as indc<'cl notabl<-. The· Virginians had S<'rurc cl a footh old north of tlw Ohio fro111 "'hich attacks on D<'troit mi ght be din•e·t('d . The· British for-r<·s had IH"cn driV<'n back to tlH' lin<' of the· lak!'.

Th<' appe•arancc· of th(' Virginia soldic·rs in tlw Illinois rountry had also brought to the Indians a r('a lization of the· powe·r of the r('volting- coloni<·s, and the prc•sti gC' of thC' British had b1·cn i111pain·cl by their failure to prot<·ct tlw important posts. /\icl<-d by tlH' AnH·riran merchants of the Illinois, Clark and his Virginians had won th e first definite success against the British in thr Old Northwest.

But Clark' s situation was not an easy one.

Many of his men, having erved out their term of enlistment, wanted to go home. It was only by persuasion and rewards th at he managed to induce about a·hundred to stay for several m o re months. The places of those who left h e fi lled b y e nlisting two companies of the F rench villagers.

Chicago History

7

George Rogers Clark

But the Indians' antagonism toward the settlers remained. During the summer of 1 778, Clark held a great council of the tribes at Cahokia, some of which came as far as 500 miles to attend.

Boldly he offered them peace or war, asserting that he did not care which they chose. After much consideration, they decided to side with the Americans. Before the summer ended, Clark had made treaties of peace with ten or twelve nations, an achievement he considered of more service to his cause than a regiment of fresh troops. Experienced frontiersman that he was. h e should have known that the Indians would revert to the British cause whenever they decided it would be more profitable to their own cause.

Clark's third immediate problem was money and supplies. Both ran out before the year ended.

His only recourse was to draw on Oliver Pollock, Virginia's agent at New Orleans. By February 1 779, Clark's drafts on Pollock totaled $48,000, an d the agent was having great difficulty meeting- them.

Far more critical than any of these problems was the threat posed by a British counter-attack.

As soon as General Hamilton in Detroit learned of the capitulation of Vincennes, he resolved to retake the post. In the fall of 1 778, he moved with 600 British regulars, French militia, and Indian allies. Late in the year he retook Vincennes without resistance. He h ad intended to move against the Illinois villages forthwith, but winter had set in and he concluded that an advance across the Illinois prairies, covered as they were with snow and icy water, would be impossible until spring.

Clark learned of Hamilton's recapture of Vincennes in January 1779. He knew that with his small force he could not hold the Illinois villages against the British. Without hesitation he came to a characteristic decision, and the weather and mud and icy water be damned. On February 3, he wrote to Patrick Henry at Williamsburg: Being sensible that without a Reinforcement which at present I have hardly a right to Expect that I shall 8

Chicago History

be obliged to give up this Countrey to Mr. Hamilton without a turn of Fortune in my favour, I am Resolved to take the advantage of his present Situation and Risque the whole on a Single Battle. I shall Set out in a few Days with all the Force I can Raise of my own Troops and a few Militia that I can Depend on . ... The Case is Desperate but Sr we must Either Quit the Countrey or attack Mr. Hamilton. No time is to be lost. Was I Shoer of a Reinforcement I should not attempt it .. .. Great things have been affected by a few Men well Conducted. Perhaps we may be fortunate. We have this Consolation that our Cause is Just and that our Countrey will be greatful and not Con[demn] our Conduct in Case we fall through.

The day after Clark wrote this letter he dispatched an armed galley to the Wabash River, to lie there a few miles south of Vincennes and await his arrival. On February 5, with 150 men, he started overland. A march with more obstacles and more hardships would be difficult to imagine.

The coldest weather of the winter had broken but it had left the roads, only trails at best, deep in mud, and the prairies covered with water. The journal of Maj. Joseph Bowman, one of Clark's most trusted subordinates, offers vivid glimpses of the hardships the little band surmounted: Feb. 8, 1779. Marched early thro' the Water which we now began to meet in those large and level plains . . . . Our Men were in Great Spirits, tho much fatigued.

Feb. 16. Marched all day thro' Rain and Water.

Crossed the second river our provisions began to grow short.

Feb. 19. Many of the Men much cast down particularly the Volunteers. No provisions of any Sort now two days hard fortune.

Feb. 22. Marched on in the Water, those that were weak and faintish from so much fatigue wrnt in the Cannoes. . . No provisions yet, lord help us.

Feb. 23. Set off to cross a plain called Horse Shoe plain about 4 Miles long cover'd with Water breast high-here we expected Some of our brave Men must certainly perish having froze in the Night and so long fasting and no other R esource but wading this plain or rather a leak [lake] of Water we pushed into it with Courage Col. Clark being the first, taking care to have the Boats close by, to take those that

The territory in which George Rogers Clark operated.

Detail from a map of America, 1783.

was weak and benumbed ( with the cold) into them.

Never was Men so animated with the thought of revenging the wrongs done to their back Settlements as this small Army was.

On that same day, the Virginians and their French allies stood within sight of Vincennes and of Fort Sackville, which defended it. From captured hunters, Clark learned that his approach was unsuspected and that the French in the town were eager for the success of the Americans.

Clark sent word to the townspeople to stay in their homes. Then his men stealthily surrounded the fort and began firing, wounding a number of the defenders at the portholes. Hamilton was taken totally by surprise. The next morning, Clark demanded that the British commander surrender. When Hamilton asked for terms, Clark refused to give any, saying that he "wa nted a sufficient excuse to put all the Indians & partisans to death, as the greatest part of those Villains was there with him [Hamilton]."

Clark and his men hated Hamilton passionately. They accused him of paying bounties for scalp brought to Detroit by his Indian allies and called him the "Hair Buyer." Hamilton vig-

orously denied the charge. In a report to Lord Shelburne written in 1782, he asserted that he never sent out Indian parties without one or two whites whose duty it was to "protect defenceless persons and prevent any insult or barbarity being exercised on the Prisoners." He also claimed that he always harangued the Indians on the advantages that they would derive in the future from sparing the lives of their prisoners. Doubtless this was true. But it is also true that Hamilton equipped the war parties and rewarded them generously with presents on their return. Cruelties and barbarities were inherent in frontier warfare.

Some regard for these considerations must have influenced Clark, for he soon modified his inflexible position and gave Hamilton time to consult his officers again. Hamilton knew that he had no choice. Although his garrison outnumbered the Virginians at the time of the attack, his Indian allies were already slipping away, the French were clearly disposed to the Americans, and his only c;lependable troops were his small core of British regulars. On February 25, Hamilton accepted the more moderate terms which Chicago History

9

George Rogers Clark

Clark finally offered. The fort was surrendered, and the garrison allowed to march out with their arms and accoutrements. Clark sent Hamilton and his principal officers under guard to Williamsburg, and paroled the French volunteers and permitted them to return to Detroit.

The recapture of Vincennes was George Rogers Clark's finest hour. As James A. James, Clark's authoritative biographer, put it: Clark was surprised to find th at a fort so strong and well equipped and with a garrison of well-trained soldiers had been given up so readily. This achievement marks the climax of one of the most heroic and notable achievements in history. ThP boldnrss of thr plan, the skill with which it was executed, and the perseverance in overcoming obstacles seemingly insurmountable excited the admiration of Hamilton himself. Courage born of d esperation was manifested by men and leaders alike for all were fully conscious that failure would mean the loss not alone of thr Illinois country but also of K entucky.

Clark's triumph was marred by one of the many acts of cruelty which characterized frontier battles. While negotiations for the surrender of Vincennes were in progress, an Indian party of sixteen braves and two or three whites, sent by General Hamilton to Kentucky, returned and stumbled into the hands of the Americans. The Indians were bound and seated in a ring before the fort. One was tomahawked immediately; the others, aware of their fate, began their death songs. One after another Clark's men sank tomahawks into their heads . To Hamilton, helpless, this was a cruel violation of the truce then in existence. To Clark, it seemed fitting retribution for the killing of innocent settlers in K en tucky .

Clark had looked upon the capture of the Illinois villages and Vincennes as a step in a greater conquest, the taking of Detroit. With that post in American hands, the Indian forays on Kentucky would come to an end. That had been his objective from the beginning and now, with Vincennes under American rule, he began his preparations. He was to be frustrated at every step.

He did not get the support from Virginia he had 10

Ch icago History

expected. From that state he had been promised 500 men; 150 arrived. Kentucky had agreed to send 300, but only 40 reached him. To capture Detroit with the troops available, poorly equipped with food and clothing, was impossible even for Clark, who was accustomed to having the odds against him. The expedition simply had to be postponed until 1 780. Clark, in deep depression, wrote: "Never was a person more mortified than I was at this time, to see so fair an opportunity to push a victory; Detroit lost for want of a few rncn."

After a ll hopes of moving on Detroit in 1779 were given up, Clark divided his troops among K as kaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, and retired to the south where he built a new fort, named Fort Jefferson, on the cast bank of the Mississippi River a few miles below the mouth of the Ohio.

From that point he hoped to control trade and traffic on both rivers.

Meanwhile, preparations for a campaign in 1 780 were carried on. During the winter, hunters were sent out to obtain meat for curing and the officers in the Illinois villages were instructed to buy provisions from th e inhabitants. The settlers refused to sell to the American army unless they \\t're offered something more substantial than paper money in payment. Clark then levied assessment in the hope of producing sufficient quantities for the large army he was expecting. but they only aroused bitter resentment on the part of the villagers.

To add to the troubles of shortages of men and supplies, the British now threatened a counterattack. The a lliance of Spain with France and the Americans in 1779 made St. Louis and other Spanish settlements on the Mississippi legitimate and tempting targets. The British plan involved two expeditions, one from the south to take New Orleans, the other from Michilimackinac to strike at St. Louis and the Illinois villages. Aggressive counter-measures by the Spanish governor of New Orleans thwarted the southern plan, but the attack from the north was mounted, as scheduled, in the spring of 1780.

Two men who influenced Clark's career.

Right , his patron, Patrick Henry; left, his arch-enemy, James Wilkinson.

The British had hoped to keep the expedition secret, but the Illinois villagers knew of the impending advance before it began. They also knew that the first places to be attacked would be Cahokia and St. Louis, the northernmost settlements. The Cahokians appealed to Clark at Fort Jefferson for help; they also warned the Spanish officials at St. Louis to be prepared. The British force consisted principally of Indians with some Canadians and traders, totalling 1,200. To oppose them at St. Louis, the Spanish had mustered 50 soldiers and 280 townsmen; Clark, now at Cahokia, had about the same number. The British, attacking on May 26 and counting on surprise, were astonished at the resistance. Badly demoralized, they retreated in confusion. For the time being, the British were checkmated.

But not their Indian allies. They continued their forays. In the summer the people of Kaskaskia repulsed one major attack, Fort Jefferson withstood a severe siege, and the people of Cahokia and St. Louis stood in constant readiness to defend themselves. Attacks and threats of attacks so effectually immobilized Clark that for the second time an expedition against Detroit had to be abandoned.

Nevertheless. after the repulse of the British, Virginia considered the Illinois villages and Vincennes to be secure and therefore withdrew the eastern troops stationed there , leaving only a small detachment at Kaskaskia. Clark set out for Harrodsburg to stop the advance of a strong force of British and Indians into Kentucky. After assembling a thousand volunteers at the mouth of the Licking River, he crossed the Ohio River,

marched up the valley of the Big Miami, struck the invaders at Piqua, and defeated them badly.

Although the war in the East ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at York town in October 1781, hostilities in the West continued. On August 18, 1782, a force of Canadians and Indians, raiding in Kentucky, administered a severe and costly defeat to the frontiersmen at the Battle of Blue Licks. Clark, who was not present, soon organized a punitive and bloody expedition against the Indian stronghold at Chillicothe, Ohio, thus saving the settlements from further attacks and keeping the British at Detroit on the defensive.

It was Clark's last battle of the war. On November 30, 1782, Great Britain and the U nitcd States signed a provisional treaty of peace. The Illinois regiment was disbanded on January 18, 1783; in July, Clark was relieved of his command.

What, in four years, had thi indomitable soldier and the few hundred Virginians and French volunteers whom he commanded accomplished?

They had taken and held the Illinois Country and had mitigated, but by no means eliminated, the bloody clashes between the Indians and the white settlers in Kentucky. How did this achievement affect the treaty of peace? That remains an open question.

Some historians hold that American possession of the Old Northwest had little bearing on the acquisition of that vast region by the new nation.

They point out that American opinion was di vided- that the northern colonies were far more interested in fishing rights off Newfoundland than in the land west of the Alleghenies. The southern colonies, on the other hand, were expansionist, and time after time demanded that the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River be made, respectively, the northern and western boundaries.

Moreover, as allies . France and Spain had very different interests. France had little desire to recover the American empire she had lost in 1 763; she wanted oT)ly the humiliation Great Britain would suffer from the loss of her former colonies.

Spain. however. looked with apprehension on the Chicago History

11

Artlat'e rendition of the capture of KaekBBkla.

frontiersmen who were pushing so close to her poorly fortified and garrisoned posts across the great Mississippi River.

And the British enemy seemed curiously unconcerned about western boundaries. Lord Shelburne, the liberal peer who succeeded Lord North as prime minister in I 782, understood, in C. W. Alvord's words, "the inevitable and inexorable thrust of the American population westward and was unwilling to try to prevent what he looked upon as almost a force of nature." He also believed that a generous policy on the part of Great Britain would regain the affection of the Americans, an object which he cherished.

Therefore, he made no serious objection to the demand of the American commissioners for the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes as boundaries.

But other authorities disagree. Reuben G. Thwaites, the great Wisconsin historian, wrote 12

Ch icago History

that "Jay and Franklin could have found no footing for their contention [as to boundaries] had Clark not been in actual possession of the country. It certainly was a prime factor in the situation." Theodore Roosevelt asserted, in The ll'i1111ing of the West: "We were in reality given nothing more than we had by our own prowess gained: the inference is strong that we got what we did get only because we had won and held it."

Perhaps the most impressive statement of all came in 1927 from J. Franklin .Jameson. whose scholarly credentials were impeccable: If the Northwest had not been acquired by the heroic action of George Rogers Clark, all the territory to the westward, which the map shows to be more than half of the United States, would never have been acquired; but if the "cribs and cabins" of the United States, to use an old phrase, had been confined to the Alleghany Mountains, it could never have had that career of imperial greatness that we see before us now.

George Rogers Clark

Althpugh Clark was only thirty-one when his military service ended and would live to be sixtyfivc, the second half of his life was a succession of frustrations and tragedies. For several years after the Revolution he served on a commission to allot lands granted by Virginia to his soldiers who had se1ved in the orthwest. He also served on a commission for making a treaty with Northwestern tribes acknowledging the sovereignty of the United States over the territory ceded by Great Britain. In 1786, he headed a punitive expedition against the Indians of the Wabash in retaliation for their depredations against Vincennes and Kentucky, but some of his troops mutinied and the expedition failed. One of his acts in this campaign-the seizure of goods belonging to Spanish merchants at Vincennesgave Gen. James Wilkinson an opportunity for a venomous attack on Clark. Although Wilkinson was considered an intriguer-"a consummate artist in treason"-his diatribes destroyed Clark's standing with both the Virginia and federal governments. Clark was now without employment and without means, although Virginia owed him some twenty thousand dollars, including back pay and personal funds he had used to supply his troops.

Clark now turned to foreign ventures. He proposed to found a colony on Spanish soil opposite the mouth of the Ohio but could not gain from Spain the promise of political and religious freedom that he considered essential. In 179 1, he propo ed to lead 1 ,ooo men to take possession for the United States of land along th lower Mississippi. Since this was land over which Spain claimed jurisdiction, President Wa hington issued a proclamation forbidding the project. Two years later, Clark proposed to the French government that he should lead an expedition for the conquest of Louisiana. Again Washington intervened, forbidding any American citizen to enlist.

In 1798, France again planned the conquest of Louisiana. Clark, now a general in the French army, was to raise volunteers. When United States officers demanded that he surrender his

comm1ss1on, he refused and took temporary ref ugc in St. Louis.

Soon after returning to Louisville, he built a cabin on the north side of the river near the falls and ran a grist mill there. At times he drank to excess and ceased to be the man he had been al the height of his career. In 1809, he suffered a stroke of paralysis and fell unconscious before the fireplace. His right leg and foot were badly burned, became infected, and had to be amputated. During the two-hour operation, at Clark's request, two drummers and two fifers marched around his cabin playing martial music.

Finally, in 181 2, Virginia granted Clark a life pension of $400 a year and voted him a sword.

The story has long been extant that when the sword was presented he responded bitterly: "When Virginia needed a sword I gave her one.

She ends me now a toy. I want bread!" Then he stuck the sword in the ground and broke it with his crutch. The tale has no foundation. On the contrary, he noted Virginia's action with a gracious note to the governor saying that he was flattered to find "that his exertions when doing his Duty Should meet the Approbation of so respectable a body of his fellow Citizens as Your Excellency & the General Assembly of Virginia."

Shortly afterward, a second stroke impaired Clark's mind and left him bereft of speech and unable to move. His sister, living near Louisville, gave him a home. On February 13, 1818, a third stroke ended hi life. His body was buried in Cave Hill cemetery, where a small marble tablet marks his grave. At Vincennes an imposing memorial, erected by the United States, commemorates his services to a nation which took 1 1 o years to recognize his greatness.

NOTE: The Chicago Historical Society has a small but choice collection of manuscripts relating to Clark. Of most interest are Hamilton's copy of the terms of the surrender of Vincennes, Feb. 24, r 779, and the bill of Clark's physician, Dr. Richard Ferguson, for professional services rendered in r 809, including the amputation of Clark's leg, $50.

Chicago History

13

The Ups and Downs of Riverview Park

BY AL GRIFFIN

For over sixty years, this great world leader in the amusement industry thrilled as many as two million patrons ayear, through good times and bad.

who ever worked for Riverview Park like to refer to it as "the world's largest amusement park." Ah, would that it were true. Most Chicagoans believe it. But there have been bigger amusement parks around the country, both in acreage and in number of rides, for many years. Riverview never needed to be called "the world's largest." It had plenty of legitimate claims to distinction in its own right.

Riverview had the world-famous Chute-theChutcs. It was the only park, ever, to have six roller coasters-including the fastest on record.

It had the first Pair-O-Chutes ride. Thousands, perhaps even millions, of Chicago's kids sneaked their first kiss in the Mill On The Floss dark ride and their second on the venerable old "slip cover" Caterpillar. The park had a main midway with the biggest variety of hanky pankics in America.

A freak show bigger than the one at Ringling Brothers circus. The first foot-long hot dogs. Fastfood places that sold smoked eels. Four shooting galleries with real .22-caliber rifles shooting up as much as three and a half million rounds of ammunition per year. Penny arcades dispensing up to four and a half million postcards a year.

And the merry-go-round.

Riverview's awesome merry-go-round was the biggest and most ornate single-platform carousel ever built. Its seventy hand-carved horses, most of them riding four abreast, included battlearmored stallions with lavishly carved shields, flowers, and fluted saddles. Even the inside jumpers, the ones that went up and down, were more MOST OF THE PEOPLE

Al Griffin's article is adaptrd from his book "Step Right Up, Folks!," reviewed in this issue.

14

Chicago History

elaborately figured than most carousel horses seen today. They were not carved in Germany, though many will swear that they were: Riverview's sixty-four-foot merry-go-round was designed and built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company in Germantown, Pennsylvania. The four exquisitely carved eleven-foot Lovers' Chariots carried such patrons as William Randolph Hearst, President Warren Harding, Clara Bow, and Al Capone. They rode counterclockwise, within reach of the brass ring, at fourteen miles per hour.

By long odds, the merry-go-round was the most popular ride Riverview ever had. Its appeal was truly universal. Toddlers gloried in riding with their older brothers and sisters. Preschoolers found a rapturous chance to prove themselves. " You don't have to hold me on, Ma! " was heard at every load-up. Young daredevils in dream worlds imagined they were cowboys, knights, and sultans on their prancing steeds.

The meny-go-round was for exuberant showoffs, calling to their relatives on the sidelines. It was for strivers reaching for the brass ring. It was for radio-raised kids who learned, for the first time, what music could really be when they heard the tunes of good times swelling from the huge band organ.

Young lovers, proud mothers, and nostalgia buffs were all passionate, sometimes sentimental, fans of that merry-go-round. One old codger who had been bringing his wife to Riverview for many years finally was noticed coming to ride the merry-go-round by himself. For several years, he climbed aboard with the aid of a cane and, when the motion of the jumpers got to be too much for him, he gravely rode the stationary

Chicago Hisloricol Society

horses. Owner Bill Schmidt eventually presented him with a lifetime pass, but he outlived the park.

A real merry-go-round buff would have his or her first ride at around the age of three. The anticipation was almost unbearable as the child waited in line, watching and listening to the surge of joy around him. When the child was finally lifted onto the enormous horse, he or she clutched the riser pole as if life itself depended on it. The child's face assumed expressions of awe, delight, terror, and glee, all at the same time.

Trumpets sounded and cymbals crashed; slowly. inch by inch, the merry-go-round started to move. The terrible horse underneath sank towards the floor. Then, as it rose majestically, the merry-go-round started to pick up peed. The music poured over the child, and a whole new world of ecstasy opened up. Wow! George Schmidt was the scion of a Chicago family made wealthy by real estate when he took his grand tour of Europe in 1903. He was so imprt>ssed with the great European amusement parks, particularly the Tivoli Gard ens in Copenhagen, that he came back to Chicago and built Riverview. The only experience he had had in the business was as a customer. He knew nothing about what a professional amusement park oper-

The Casino , ca. 1910. For those less we/I-heeled, there were vendors hawking foot-long hot dogs, smoked eels, and pigs' knuckles.

ator should or should not do. As a result, he built even more innovations into the seventy-two-acre former picnic grove at Western and Belmont avenues than were being built into Luna Park at Coney Island during the same period.

When Schmidt began building Riverview, Chicago's first world's fair, the Columbian Exposition of 1893, was only ten years in the past. One of its most successful rides had been the Russian Ice Slide. The track was constructed of iron pipes full of freezing brine that circulated through a crude refrigerating system, and the condensa tion created ice on the pipes, providing a slick surface for the sled-cars which slid down it, thrilling the riders.

Othn a musement park operators with onetrack minds who imitated the ride. but who lacked the technological knowhow, were still thinking in terms of sleds: they built ramps comprised of rollers. like the conveyors on industrial loading docks. down which toboggans could slide.

Schmidt knew nothing of these developments bryond the faq that "roller coasters" were drawing large crowds. So. instead of having the rollers on thr track. he put wheels on the car itself (fewer Chicago History

15

Riverview

The phantasmagoric Flying Turns, 1950.

Chicago Historical Society

Carefully engineered tricks, such as quick dips, sharp turns, and useless wooden railings, gave the Bobs an illusion of speed and danger.

Chicago Historlcol Societv Photo bv Bob Riomer

wheels¡ were needed, for one thing), and thus helped revolutionize that part of the industry. The first such ride at Riverview was the Scenic Railway, which was built in 1907 when the park still had only twenty-two acres, and which immediately superseded the Goat Ride as the most popular track ride.

Another world's fair roller coaster that found its way to Riverview, but much more directly, was the Flying Turns, a trackless and free-running ride which had a highly successful career at Chicago's 1933 world's fair, the Century of Progress, and was moved to the park in 1935. At the bottom of the steepest incline in the park, the speeding cars entered smoothly surfaced runways with curved walls against which the centrifugally hurled cars would bank at angles as sharp as 70° in the twisting turns.

Fully loaded cars on the Flying Turns created o much pressure against the walls that the maintenance of its external braces was a constant source of concern. Safety engineers added so many braces that the outside of the ride eventually resembled a centipede on its side. That one ride took a fair share of Riverview's maintenance crew of 125 permanent workers and a total of 550 during the operating season. They used 150,000 board feet of lumber a year. Nobody was ever killed on the Flying Turns, but it was the most potentially dangerous ride Riverview ever had. If one of those bracing systems had ever buckledActually, Riverview averaged only half a dozen serious accidents per million customers and, so far as we know, it was always the customer's own fault. Anybody who stood up in the seat of a car while it was at the top of the Ferris Wheel was a candidate for suicide. Riverview even had wingwalkers on the airplane rides. "Accidents." in such circumstances, should not really be considered accidents.

The Bobs, built in 1926 at a cost of $80,000 and long known as the most fearsome roller coaster in the country, was not particularly dangerous or even very fast. It was, however, far

from comfortable. It was a bone rattler, with dips that ended too abruptly, curves that were too sharp and insufficiently banked, and no straightaways to permit even a little breathcatching. The general effect was to bounce the patrons around in their seats like so many dice in a Las Vegas chuck-a-luck cage. It was the direct ancestor of today's Wild Mouse ride, which is so rough that it has been declared illegal in some areas.

All of the Bobs' claims to speed were wildly exaggerated. Roller-coaster buffs only think they went sixty-five miles per hour on the Bobs. Aurel Vaszin, the dean of American roller-coaster builders, says that top speeds were twenty-four miles per hour on the curves and a top of thirty-eight in the valleys. The Bobs provided a wonderfully engineered illusion of speed and danger.

Building up suspense is an important part of that illusion, and the Bobs made the most of it as the cars clanked ominously on their way to the top of the initial incline. The sensation of speed was intensified by building the high-speed stretches in close proximity to other structures.

The cars roared under other structure for the same reason. The seats were also built closer to the track than in most coasters, and otherwise useless railings on the runways helped heighten the illusion of speed and danger as their posts Rashed by.

Riverview never publicized its safety features.

But ramp ratchets, safety rails, electric block systems, and emergency brakes made the Bobs virtually foolproof-except for whiplash, of course.

Its anti -derailment devices, which kept the coaster cars locked onto the track, are still acknowledged within the industry as the safest ever designed, and they have been copied in other roller coasters all over the world .

Constant change is the lifeblood of any amusement park, and Riverview replaced aging rides or added new ones almost every year. It took more than just new paint jobs, although the park did use 7,500 gallons of paint per year; and it took more than new lighting, although 30,000 Ch ica go History

17

Riverview

light bulbs were installed yearly, in sizes from 10 to 10,000 watts. For example, Bill Schmidt, the founder's son, rebuilt the Fireball in 1963, making it the fastest roller coaster in North America.

He originally toyed with the idea of building its first incline to a height of one hundred feet, which would have also made it the tallest-Vaszin's $600,000 roller coaster in Mexico City has an initial drop of eighty-two feet- but Chicago's municipal building code prevented the new construction of anything over seventy-two feet high at Riverview.

Even so, the initial incline on the Fireball felt like dropping off the roof of a seven-story building. It did not go at one hundred miles per hour, though patrons used to brag that it did. But on a hot summer day, when the packing grease was thinnest and speeds were increased by as much as Io percent, the cars went almost half that fast.

The Fireball was a "pure" ride, in amusement park vernacular. It was satin smooth, with just that one breathtaking intial drop to make it in any way extraordinary, without most of the illusion-producing factors that made the Bobs so popular a scream machine. Even so, a swooshing ride on the Fireball was thrilling.

Back in 1937, the new big thrill ride at Riverview was the innovative Pair-O-Chutes ride. The basic structure was a 225-foot steel observation tower at the southeast corner of the park. It lost patronage when skyscrapers, which offered free views of the city, began going up, and it had not been in use for many years when it was converted to the Pair-O-Chutes ride. Steel wings were added at the top, each accommodating a captive parachute from which a seat was suspended.

Many a Chicago visitor's first panoramic view of the Northwest Side was from one of those bosun's chairs which were pulled up below the slack chute, with nothing under one's feet but a considerable amount of empty space. Gulping continuously to keep from getting dizzy as one neared a height equivalent to a twenty-story building, and then dropping precipitously until one's chute ultimately opened, one felt certain 18

Chicago History

of the imminence of death. Finally, when the customer stopped bouncing against the tension springs at the bottom, it was all he or she could do to swagger back to the ¡crowd of admiring spectators. Heady stuff.

It was just as well that patrons didn't know that the chute itself was just a decoration; the speed of descent was controlled by a cable, so that heavy passengers wouldn't break a leg and small ones wouldn't take too long to float down.

The ride was a success primarily for its publicity value. It could never-having but two chairsgenerate enough traffic to become profitable in its own right, especially compared with the Bobs, which could carry 1,200 passengers an hour.

But it was the talk of the industry in the late 1930s, and it was copied by the New York World's Fair of 1939 in a four-chair version which was subsequently moved to Coney Island - where it is now an abandoned eyesore. Riverview's own Pair-O-Chutes was sold for scrap iron in 1967.

Chute-the-Chutes was also a widely copied ride, sometimes as a Shoot-the-Chutes, or as a Shoot-the-Shoots, but most often as an outright Chute-the-Chutes. The Schmid ts never sued anybody for copying their ride. For one thing, George Schmidt had swiped the idea himself, emulating the Shoot-the-Chutes at Coney Island's Luna Park-which in turn had got the idea from Sea Lion Park. Sea Lion Park was the nucleus of the Coney Island amusement parks, and had built a Chutes in 1896 to bolster attendance for a trained seal act-and that Chutes had itself been adapted from the Ice Slides in Moscow.

Schmidt's elevated water ride had a taller hoisting tower for the boats, and it featured a longer and steeper incline with more water flowing down it-over a double ramp. It also had a bigger receiving pool with enough water in it to boost Riverview's water consumption to over one and a half million gallons a year, and it incorporated a dark ride which wound through eerie tunnels towards the elaborately roofed and lighted

tower.·A carefully engineered upcurve at the bottom of the ramps shot the zooming boats up into the air before they thumped down onto the water in the receiving pool. The loaded boats would then skip hard enough to bounce the yelling passengers up out of their seats and then slam them down again several times before gliding into the unloading dock. The ride has never been matched anywhere, even at that "other" Riverview.

Yes, there is another Riverview Amusement Park. It's in Des Moines, Iowa, and it uses not only Schmidt's name but also just about every good idea Schmidt ever had that the Iowa owners could afford to duplicate. When Schmidt got a Scrambler, Des Moines got one. When the owners found that the Chutes was the most popular ride in Chicago-next to the merry-go-round, and they didn't have enough money for one like Schmidt's-they built a Chutes, too, albeit a smaller one. When they built their Fun House they hired Zarro Amusements, which had built the Fun House in Chicago, and got an exact duplicate.

One of the major differences between the two Rivervicws is that the one in Des Moines is still in business. Prices may have had something to do with it. When Des Moines' Riverview opened in 1915, admission was a nickel and the average patron's expenditure was 42¢. Even today, the penny arcade still has machines that operate for a penny, and the highest-priced ride is the 40¢ roller coaster. Many rides are 20¢ and, on Wednesday-Kid's Day- the rides cost 7¢ to 21¢.

In contrast, by the early 1960s, a couple spending an evening at Chicago's Riverview could easily spend $20 or $30.

The Chicago park simply cost more to operate. It used union labor and, by the 1960s, required its own private police and fire department . Taxes on the valuable land occupied by Riverview in the heart of the near Northwest Side soared. All had to be covered by higher prices.

Riverview's first serious problems began in the 1920s, during Prohibition. Chicago's huge German population, centered immediately east of

\ I Chicago Historical Society Photo by Roy J. Spies

The daring rode the Pair-O-Chutes. The parachutes were merely decorative, sorry to say: A cable controlled the speed of descent.

the park, did not consider the Great Experiment all that great. The good burghers were not about to give up their beer drinking, regardless of what anybody said in Washington. The home brew flowed as copiously as ever in the picnic groves every weekend all summer long, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Even such guests as Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson were steady roisterers.

A dependable fifty to seventy-five thousand thirsty people every weekend was too good a market for the bootleggers to ignore, and the park became a focal point for the developing rivalry between the O'Bannion and Capone gangs. Open warfare on the grounds was averted only by the intervention of Mayor Thompson himself, who made it clear to both factions that they were to stay out of Riverview. Still, the park remained apprehensive because the gangsters were shooting up each other's speakeasies all around its perimeter, particularly up and down Elston Avenue.

Thompson had no control over the federal prohibition agents, and they made Riverview's picnic grounds a .steady port of call every Satu rday for awhile. They never came on Sunday, for some reason, although the Saturday raids became so Ch icago History

19

Riverview

routine that the big crowds would come only after the agents had smashed a token keg or two of beer and departed. In 1924, the first Saturday in August when the prohibition agents didn't show up at all, the crowds stayed home all day waiting for the "all clear" to spread through the neighborhood. Business was terrible that Saturday. The vendors of smoked eels, pigs' knuckles, and fistsized pretzels depended heavily on the beer drinkers; without them, the big pine picnic tables under the oak trees were virtually deserted.

Not that Riverview depended entirely on the neighborhood for the volume of its traffic. Famili es throughout the entire metropolitan area considered a day at Riverview a highlight of the summer season. Children who did not get to go to Riverview at least once a year felt sorely abused, and Schmidt built not just one but two kiddielands, complete with scaled-down versions of the The Miniature Whip in one of Riverview's two kiddielands.

major rides. For out-of-town visitors, Riverview was a "must," with as much appeal as Disneyland now exerts.

During the Depression of the 1930s, when people were literally worried about getting enough to cat, Schmidt introduced the foot-long hot dog - a twelve-inch frankfurter in a specially baked oversize bun. Before then, a hot dog bought in an amusement park was often called a Coney Island, but Riverview's hot dog was such a success, and so widely imitated, that hot dogs are still called foot-longs by amusement-park people all over the country. Alas, they are now usually only five or six inches long.

The term "hot dog" itself evolved in a unique way. The small German sausages were sold from steam tables by vendors who cried, "They're red hot! Get your red hot dachshund sausages!" Oldtime newspaperman Tad Dorgan heard that cry one day and wanted to mention it in his column, but he couldn't spell "dachshund." The result: hot dog. At Riverview, the vastly popular wieners were almost always vended from a center stand, all four sides of which were open to the public.

A good counterman would deal as many as three hundred foot-longs an hour. Riverview sold over a half-million foot-longs a year, not to mention three-quarters of a million ice cream cones, onequarter of a million candy bars, fifty tons of popcorn, and virtual rivers of soft drinks, all entailing the use of one-and-a-half million paper cups and three-quarters of a million paper napkins during the hundred-day season.

And it maintained a corps of men whose job was to pick up the resulting debris. Armed with a length of broom handle with a nail at one end, a worker could spear enough discarded napkins, empty Cracker Jack boxes, popcorn bags, cotton candy spools, and Baby Ruth wrappers to fill up his shoulder bag twice an hour. Shells from the roasted peanuts were deliberately left on the pavement to provide a satisfying crunchy walkway and were swept up only after the park was closed at night. During Mardi Gras week, when a float and clown-filled parade closed the park

A float from Mardi Gras week.

every night during the last week of the season preceding Labor Day, the laborers had to cope with ankle-deep drifts of confetti and paper streamers until dawn.

This policy of littering for the fun of it contrasts sharply with today's theme park, supersanitized to within an inch of its life, where not even chewing gum is sold lest a patron throw the wrapper on the ground. Customers kicking their way through the happy litter at Riverview could see that they were expected to have an uninhibited good time.

Rides and refreshments notwithstanding, seven out of ten Riverview patrons spent more money on the midway games than anywhere else. Riverview's midway, including the penny arcades, used so much small change that even the largest banks in Chicago had to send special orders to the mint. A typical opening morning called for two hundred thousand pennies, two hundred thou and nickels, seventy-five thousand dimes, and ten thousand quarters.

Riverview was always run as a "family park" and, unlike some amusement parks, never al-

Chicago Historical Society

lowed open gambling. At Riverview, the many Wheel of Fortune hanky pankies clacked for Kewpie dolls, not for cash prizes. Riverview did indeed have its fortune tellers, but they were evicted if they stole from the customer . The popular Mouse Run, where a live mouse was released from the center of a four-foot arena to sec which of the twenty-four holes on the rim he'd run into, was indeed operated by a man who knew that the mouse would run into whichever hole he had touched with vinegar. The Hi-Striker indeed had a foot-controlled wire which could be rigged so that Paul Bunyan himself couldn't swing the sledge down hard enough to ring the gong, but it also could be tightened so that even a small girl could win a prize and thus stimulate patronage.

Everybody knew that the sights were out of line on the shooting gallery rifles, but it only cost 25¢ for ten .22-caliber bullets, and one had the fun of the sound and smell of the shooting. Being mildly cheated at the hanky pankies was always part of the fun at Riverview; few ever objected.

The Guess-Your-Weightman, in contrast, tried Chicago History

21

Yet another reason for swooning: the Boomerang, 1939.

to lose prizes on the 10¢ game. The prizes there were good public relations: awards, emblazoned with the name of the park, which cost the management less than 2¢.

Of all the Riverview games, the Bozo game was the only one that caused any real trouble.

Originally, a clown was seated on a plank and, if a patron could hit an iron bull's-eye with a baseball, the clown would be dumped into a tub of water beneath the seat. To stimulate business, the clown would yell, "Yah, yah, you can't dump me!" at the passersby. But a post-war entrepreneur decided to exploit growing racial tension and hired black Bozos to man the planks. The game was soon known as the "Dump the Nigger" game.

The black Bozos, no longer bothering with clown suits, would yell the worst kind of racial slurs at the white customers, and at their wives and girl friends. Business boomed, but fights would break out regularly between the growing numbers of black patrons at the park and the whites, who sometimes tried to leap over the counter to physically attack a taunting Bozo. Bill Schmidt finally closed the game down, but not before the midway had acquired an unsavory reputation from which it never fully recovered.

Many other things changed after World War II. R eturning servicemen were too sophisticated for the relatively simple amusements they would formerly have found thrilling. The Pair-OChutes ride held little awe for a GI who had 22

Chicago History

been dropped over France in a real one. The air jets in the Fun House, which blew up a girl's dress so spectators could get a tantalizing glimpse of her panties, no longer seemed so titilating.

The penny arcade was out of date, the Bobs was starting to creak, and the timbers in the Chute-the-Chutes were beginning to rot. Once garish and exciting, the park was becoming seedy and drab. Television was offering free entertainment; traffic and parking problems were multiplying. Finally, Chicago's inexorable appetite for prime land, especially inner-city land like Riverview's, resulted in an offer Bill Schmidt couldn't refuse. When the park closed on the night of Labor Day in 1967, Riverview went dark forever.

In small measure, a part of Riverview still survives. After several years of ignominious storage in a Galena, Illinois, warehouse, the great old merry-go-round was moved to Atlanta, where it is now a great attraction at Six Flags Over Georgia, the eastern branch of the amusementpark conglomerate which has other operations in Texas, Missouri, and California.

To this writer, however, the merry-go-round's band organ seems to have lost some of its majesty under the sunny skies of Georgia, compared to the way it sounded as it reverberated through the west side of Riverview Park under the sooty skies of Chicago.

No, Riverview was never "the largest amusement park in the world." Just the greatest.

The Freight Tunnel under Chicago

BY A. A. DORNFELD

Would you like to see all those trucks off the streets and under the ground? Well, that's where they once were. through heavy Washington Street traffic near State Street.

It is summertime, and you are hot and sweaty.

Or it is winter, and the temperature is below freezing. At any season, your body is being assaulted by the clamor and the exhaust fumes of traffic.

If someone were to tell you that two men are following the same course as you, at that very moment, and that they are wrapped in total silence and are inhaling cool, clean air, you would find it hard to believe. Yet Julian Waisnor and Ignatius Di Cecco do travel on foot under the Loop in nearly ideal conditions, each weekday morning, season after season. Their afternoons arc spent inspecting this and other sections of Chicago's tunnel system, checking for serious water leaks, potential cave-ins, or signs of other trouble. They are the last of the six hundred-odd workers who once manned the sixty-four mile minisubway that used to carry all sorts of goods through the downtown area, forty feet below the surface.

Relatively few Chicagoans are aware of the existence of the horizontal bores which underlie the Loop. Even fewer know the part it once played in diverting traffic from the streets and casing congestion-for it was street congestion which stimulated the development of freight traffic in the tunnel after it had been authorized as a passageway for telephone cables just before the turn of the century.

The once-great activity of the tunnel can be understood by a glance at a few figures for the years when traffic was booming there. Well over

YOU ARE PLOWING EASTWARD ON FOOT

A. A. Dornfeld is a frequent contributor to Chicago History.

a million tons of freight were hauled in 1933enough, according to one calculation, to fill a procession of trucks stretching from the Loop to Waukegan, near the Wisconsin state line. Another calculation, made in 193 1, showed that the tunnel kept five thousand trucks a day off Loop streets.

The tunnel was first planned as a four-foot bore by the newly formed Illinois Telephone and Telegraph Company, which hoped to coexist profitably with the Chicago Telephone Company ( which became the Illinois Bell Telephone Company in 192 1). The firm had eight thousand outlets in use by 1898-all of them dial phones - and the company designed the tunnel to protect its cables from weather and eliminate interruptions in service caused by downed telephone poles, a problem even in those days. Within a few years, however, the outlets, instead of rising to the desired thirty thousand, dwindled to three thousand, and the firm finally went out of business in 1917.

In the interim, it occurred to someone that underground bores could also be utilized for hauling freight over a narrow-gauge railroad. Accordingly, the City Council in 1903 granted a new franchise for a larger tunnel, containing a railroad, to the Illinois Tunnel Company, which had bought the tunnel property from Illinois Telephone and Telegraph that same year. The tunnel- seven and a half feet high, six feet wide at its widest part, and five feet wide at the bottom-had a flat-bottomed oval shape. At crossings and loading points, it was somewhat larger.

It was mainly dug through heavy waterlogged clay, a circumstance which caused difficulty and expense in maintaining the tunnel.

From its beginning, the tunnel used electric locomotives, in contrast to the smelly, sooty, steam engines which ran through the famous London Chicago History

23

Chicago's Freight Tunnel

K

E

The tunnel system in 1905.

24

Chicago History

passenger subway when it opened some years earlier. The sixty-four miles of passageway were lively, mysterious, and fascinating places to visit before the growth of trucking and the Great Depression of the r 930s dealt the tunnel a fatal blow. It was also extremely noisy, in sharp contrast to the sepulchral silence which broods down there now. Ninety electric locomotives, their trolley shoes sputtering and sparking against the overhead power wire, hauled 550 "pony" freight cars which clattered over the rail joints and screeched around the sharp curves. Waisnor is not sure whether the engines had whistles or bells.

But, he adds, it didn't make any real difference.

With all that racket, you cou ldn't hear them anyway.

Power for the tunnel locomotives was supplied by 240 volts of direct current flowing through wires seven feet overhead, within easy reach of most of the workers.

"Sure, I touched the live wire lots of times," Waisnor asserts. For many years he worked on the pumps which tried to keep the system dry.

"The current stung you all right. But you could let go of it. Not like alternating current. Alternating freezes your muscles so that you hang on, even if you don't want to."

The trains ran on rails set two feet apart and were operated by one man; the rails are still there although the cars are long gone. Most of the time they ambled along at rates well below their designed top speed of thirty-five miles an hour, stopping or slowing at crossings and switches whose approaches were guarded only by reflectors set to bounce the glare of headlights around the corners. Fixed lights were rather scarce along the run of the tunnel, but there was some illumination at the crossings. The pace, though far slower than modern trains, was still far faster than the three-mile-an-hour horse-drawn traffic on the streets. And accidents were infrequent, despite the absence of sophisticated warning and control systems.

"There wasn't quite enough room to stand between a moving train and the wall, most places,''

ays Waisnor, who in his sixty-four years has attained a certain goodliness of girth. "But I could usually manage to stand between a standing train and the wall.''

Workers in the tunnel wore rubber boots because of the water underfoot. Although pumping has gone on continuously, water still remains.

They also required protection from rats which, according to legend, grew huge on the refuse that fell from the trainloads of garbage being hauled from restaurants and hotels. ow that garbage is hauled through the streets on trucks, rats no longer inhabit the tunnel.

Although there were no air pumps to provide forced circulation, over a hundred ducts, spotted throughout the system, admitted outside air. The up-and-down movement of elevator cages at the freight stations, acting somewhat like pistons, also helped to keep the air moving. There were a score of such freight stations, set well above the level of the tunnel, to which the loaded cars were lifted in elevators. Here the shipments were ortcd, classified, and sent on. Among the stations reached by the tunnel cars were the freight houses of a dozen railroads, for which the tunnel proved a useful and well -paid transfer service. In addition, there were over a hundred "way stations"acccss doors at basements which served as additional loading points.

In prosperous days, much of the material which passed through the tunnel was "package freight" - that is, parcels and cartons which commanded high rates. Less profitable was bulk freight, which was hauled at a lower price. This included building material, coal and ashes from Loop furnaces, and soil excavated for new building foundations and from extensions of the tunnel itself. Much of this earth was carried eastward to a tunnel terminal near the site of the Field Museum, and then placed on barges which dumped it along the shore of Lake Michigan to help create what is now Grant Park.

The tunnel also supplied other services, some of them far from obvious. In the summer, fo r example, theaters in the Loop area used to disChica go Hi story

25

Chicago Historical Society

play placards reading "20° cooler inside"-and it really was cooler inside. The "air-conditioning," long before it was used in the form we now know it, was achieved by piping the tunnel's 50°F air into the theater.

Then there were the pneumatic tubes of the City Press Association (now the City News Bureau), the city's news-gathering agency, which carried news items to the offices of Chicago's daily newspapers, which at one point numbered thirteen. Photographs as well as news sped through the three-inch brass tubes: brass was used because ferrous metal would have rusted in the dampness of the tunnel. The news material traveled at rates variously estimated at thirty to seventy miles an hour.

At the beginning, in 1892, the City News' tubes were simply buried in the ground, but they were moved to the tunnel as soon as it was built. The new location provided full-length accessibility, 26

Chicago History

For those not suffering from claustrophobia, the tunnel was also a place to have a banquet. The tables for this one , given by the Illinois Tunnel Company for the Chicago Press Club in 1904, stretched under Jackson Blvd. between Clark and Franklin sts.

an important factor in maintenance, especially since the scaled cannisters which earned the news occasionally got stuck inside a tube. At first, the news carriers, as the cannisters were called, were moved by jets of steam squirted at an angle into the tubes.

"The steam jets worked," recalled the late Frank Fitzpatrick, superintendent of the tubes, "but moisture always coated the carriers, and sometimes got inside if the seal was imperfect.

Lots of times [news] copy and pictures arrived at the newspaper offices dripping wet." A vacuum pump system was a big improvement when it was installed.

Chicago's Freight Tunnel

I

It was the growth of the trucking industry that made the tunnel a progressively less profitable operation. Many of the railroads moved their freight houses toward the edges of the city, until eventually only four railroad freight stations remained on the tunnel system- the Great Western, the Rock Island, the Pennsylvania, and the Chicago and Eastern Illinois. The Chicago Tunnel Company, which had purchased the property and franchises of the Illinois Tunnel Company at a receivers' foreclosure sale in 1912, tried to compete on the ground, beginning in 1930, by buying its own trucks. At one point, the firm's trucks were carrying almost half of its tonnage.

But they only succeeded in staving off disaster, not preventing it.

During the era of decline, various proposals to revive traffic in the tunnel were put forth. On a smaller scale, the situation resembled the modernday plight of the passenger railroads. A few of the notions about how to save the railroad from

obsolescence looked reasonable enough; many were simply zany.

Among the more reasonable ideas was one call ing for crewless, automated trains-although the term "automated" was not used, as it hadn't been invented yet. Highly mechanized freight handling systems were proposed for further economy. The post office people made an exhaustive study of the practicability of installing a long, continuously moving belt conveyor in the bores to move the mails. When the underground railroad's contract to carry the mails was cancelled in 1934, it was a body blow.

"After that," growls Waisner, "the letters and the parcel post went through the street in trucks.

Where they'd get in the way."

Some of the less practical ideas were rather charming in their nuttiness.

The loading platform at Universal Freight Station No. 4, located at 12th and Canal sis.

â&#x20AC;˘

Chicag o Hist orical Soci ety

"An ideal place to grow mushrooms wholesale," remarked someone, pointing out that the temperature stayed at a uniform 50° and that it never rained. Another idea man called the tunnel "a natural to store and age wine."

"No good," objects Di Cecco, "Wine vats are around seven or eight feet across. How arc you going to fit them into a seven-by-six tunnel?"

The total silence in the biggest part of the tunnel system-you can hear the roar of subway trains through the earth at some points-inspired a proposal that acou tical laboratories should be built down there to study sound and its effects.

Great effort and expense are required to filter out adventitious noise from such laboratories on the surface. Underground, the silence is free.

Then there was a suggestion to install a kiddie railroad in the tunnel-with proper safeguards against electrical hazards, of course. Devising scary effects along such a railroad should have been simple. Something simi lar is running today beneath the Museum of Science and Industry.

28

Chicago History

A loaded freight train at a street intersection, 1904.

The trains' movements were controlled by telephone dispatches.

Visitors to a simulated coal mine under the Museum get a short ride through a dark pa sage on trolley cars powered by an overhead wire. And at one time excursions for young. ters werr actually run in the tunnel, Waisnor recall .

What was probably the weirdest proposal of all came from a professor-turned-sheriff named Jo eph Lohman, back in the 1950s. He announced that the tunnel would be a fine place to immure prisoners picked up during street disorders when lockups and jails were overcrowded.

The idea of modern dungeons caused penologists to shudder, and it was dropped.

A souvenir of what once appeared to be a good idea remains at the City Hall's entrance to the tunnel. It is a large red arrow, marked "To Shelter." The notion that the tunnel would prove an ideal refuge from atomic fallout collapsed when

Chicago's Freight Tunnel

someone pointed out that a bomb in Lake Michigan would set up a wave to flood every inch of the tunnel's "shelter."

One proposal, made about twenty-five years ago, still appears to make sense. This idea was to supply steam to buildings in the Loop from a central, super-efficient plant, by means of pipes routed through the tunnel. Back in 1950, while the tunnel cars were creaking toward oblivion, businessmen, financiers, and political figures debated the merits of this plan, which would have resulted in a considerable saving in fuel consumption. Now, with the shortage of energy upon us, such economy may once again interest the city fathers.

It was planned to place the central steam-generating plant over the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, where it could easily be supplied with coal from downstate. Steam would be created at 2,500 pounds per square inch and cut down to 25 pounds for the heating of buildings: in the process, the steam could turn electric generators, according to Sidney Gettelman, the plan's chief proponent, and thus produce saleable electricity.

"Negotiations to sell the current to the Commonwealth Edison Company were under way," Gettelman reports, and a number of important businessmen planners were figuring on setting up an operating firm that would lease the tunnel and make a cash settlement with the moribund Chicago Tunnel Company for the release of its claim. The city was to receive $400,000 annually and the rest of the income from the steam was to go toward retirement of bonds which were to be issued. It was expected that the bonds would be retired in ten years.

But the deal fell through. Gettelman attributes the failure to the insistence by the tunnel firm on an annual income from the steam venure rather

Rear view of an automatic distributing board at the Illinois Telephone and Telegraph Company at 177-181 Fifth Avenue (now Wells Street).

Chicag o Hist orical Society

than a lump settlement. He also hints darkly that the greed of certain politicians was a factor.

A similar but smaller system to supply steam to downtown Milwaukee was built during the early 1 goos, Gettelman declares.

"I had a share in the Milwaukee job. We had to build all our own conduits underground there.

Right through the city streets, tearing up and replacing as we went along. It was very costly. We made some enemies too, because some streets were blocked for weeks together.

"When I read in a magazine that Chicago had a grid of tunnels under Loop streets," Gettelman said, "and ready-made for a steam system, I realized that a super plant could be installed here much more cheaply than in Milwaukee.

"I got around to pushing the idea some years later when the freight tunnel income dropped very low. Today there are several isolated steam plants in the Loop, each supplying several buildings. For instance, the City Hall is now heated by steam piped across Clark Street from the Civic Center. Such plants of course are less efficient than one large modern one would be. I read a few days ago that the outflow of cash this year 30

Chicago History

Daily News Collecti on Chicago Hist o rical Society

Moving freight in an elevator from the tunnel to a depot in 1906.

[1974] to foreign countries for fuel oil will be around $20 billion instead of the $7 billion originally estimated. In view of this, any step toward conserving energy by a super steam system in the Loop is a must. Coal, of which there is an ample supply, can be burned cleanly and without significant pollution by the use of modern techniques."

It has been calculated that almost two-thirds of the electricity used in the Loop could be derived from such a generating plant. Supplying cold water from the condenser side of the system as a coolant for buildings could be another source of income, Gettelman states.

The city fell heir to the tunnel in 1959, when the Chicago Tunnel Company- the last firm to operate the underground railroad-went bankrupt. The maintenance of the tunnel reverted to the city, and the task of keeping their pneumatic tubes reasonably dry often fell to City News, which didn't care for water in its news materials.

Chicago's Freight Tunnel

That problem was finally solved in 1962, when City News substituted teletypes for the old system. The replacement value of those news tubes had once been estimated by Fitzpatrick at around $5 million. There were sixteen miles of them, plus a large inventory of motors, pumps, and other equipment. But no one would bid on them. The difficulty and danger of removing them was deemed too great even by professional salvage firms. Eventually the city bought them for just $ 1 and left them where they were.

"Nothing much happens down here nowadays," laments Di Cecco, a comparative youngster of sixty-two whose tenure goes back to 1938, "but we do find a break in a wall once in a while.

If it's a bad one, we call for help."

The one-foot thick, unreinforced concrete tunnel lining has stood up remarkably well for threequarters of a century, according to one engineer in the city Department of Public Works, although a few collapses have occurred. Di Cecco recalled two recent instances of serious trouble. Once a shaft being sunk for a pillar to support the Kennedy Expressway at Randolph Street passed so close to a tunnel that the shell cracked. Heavy flooding resulted, but prompt pumping and patching prevented serious damage.

The other difficulty developed when the clo-

verleaf which connects the John F. Kennedy Expressway and the Eisenhower Expressway was being built. A contractor, seeking to dispose of vast amounts of water which had accumulated in an area he had excavated, decided that a dark hole nearby which seemed to go nowhere was just the place for the liquid. Actually, the hole led to the tunnel system. Before the contractor shut off the inflow, the water had risen so high that the heating plant in the sub-basement of City Hall was endangered, as were the foundations of several other buildings which still had doors leading to the bores.

The tunnel bores still run below the surface of practically all the streets in the Loop. Extensions reach as far south as 16th Street, as far north as Erie Street, and as far west as Halsted Street.

Some stretches were destroyed when passenger subways were dug under State, Dearborn, and Lake streets, although the subway does not lie quite as far down as the tunnel. The vast black hole, with its vast possibilities, is now almost universally regarded as a white elephant-a liability rather than an asset.

The tunnel sped mail from the railroads to the post office depot, where it was moved by conveyor belt.

Chicago Historical Society

The Mystery Occupant's Eyewitness Account of the Death of Abraham Lincoln Washington D C.

with a note

by Ralph G. Newman

May 5th 1865 Dear Jo ephine

THE FOLLOWING is the text of a recently discovered account of the death of Abraham Lincoln contained in a letter from George Francis to his niece Josephine. Francis and his wife, Huldah, occupied the front rooms in the house owned by William Petersen across the street from Ford's Theatre on Tenth Street in April 1865.

Abraham Lincoln died in the back bedroom on the first floor of this house on the morning of Saturday, April 15, 1865. Mr. and Mrs. Francis were present when the body of the dying President was carried across the street from Ford's Theatre. Their front parlor was occupied by Mrs. Lincoln and her frirnds during the night and morning of April 14 and 15. Their bedroom became the back parlor where Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton set up his headquarters.

Charles F. H emenway, the former owner of this letter, is the grand -nephew of George Francis. Until its discovery, the names of the occupants of the front rooms on the first floor of the Petersen House were not known and the account of the President's death and related events as they viewed them was not availahle to historians.

From a manuscript in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society. The Society's Lincoln Gallery contains a replica of the room in the Petersen House in which Lincoln dic-d, including- the bed and other original furnishings.

Ralph G. Newman is president of the board of directors of the Chicago Public Library and a noted expert and author on Abraham Lincoln. His book Abraham Lincoln: H is Story in His Own Words was published last month by Doubleday.

32

Chicago History

Your letter of last week, and the one in January reached me in one time. I have been on the point of writing to you for some time back, but we have had so much excitement here- so much to occupy my attention, that it has seemed as though I must be in a dream, and I have hardly known what I was about. The fall of Richmond, the surrender of Lee's army, and the assassination of the President is all that has been thought of here. The President died in our house, and we witnessed that heartrending scene. I shall never forget that awful night, fo llowing too, as it did, one of such general rejoicing. For a week before the whole city had been crazy over the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army . Only the night before, the city was illuminated, and though it had been illuminated several times just before this time, it was more general, and was the grandest affair of the kind that t'ver took place in Washington. At the time of the murder we were about getting into bed. Huldah had got into bed. I had changed my clothes and shut off the gas, when we heard such a terrible scrt'am that we ran to the front window to see what it could mean . We saw a great commotion- in the Theater- some running in, others hurrying out, and we could hear hundreds of voices mingled in the greatest confusion. Presently we heard some one say "the President is shot," when I hurried on my clothes and ran out, across the street, as they brought him out of the Theater- Poor man! I could see as the gas light fell upon his face, that it was deathly pale. and that his eyes were closed.

Thl'y carried him on out into the street, and towards our steps. The door was open and a young man belonging to the house standing on the steps told them to bring him in there, expecting to h ave him laid upon our bed. But the door to that room being fastened they passed on to a little room in the back building at the end of the h all.

Huldah remained looking out of the window until she saw them bringing him up our steps when she ran to get on her clothes. Mrs. Lincoln came in soon after, accompanied by Major Rathbone and Miss Harris,- She was perfectly frantic ¡'Where is my husband! Where i my husband!" she cried, wringing her hands in the greatest anguish . As she approached his bedside she bent over him, kissing him again and again, exclaim ing "How can it be so? Do speak to me!" Secretary Stanton Secretary Wells, and all the members of the Cabinet except Secretary Seward came in and remained all night. Also Charles Sumner, Judge Carter, General Auger, General Meigs, two or three Surgeons, and a good many others. Our front parlor was given up to Mrs. Lincoln and her friends. The back parlor ( our bedroom ) was occupied by Secretary Stanton.

He wrote his dispatches there during the night.

Judge Carter held an informal Court there, and it was full of people. Mrs. Lincoln went into see her husband occasionally. Robert Lincoln was with her. Rev. Dr Gurley was there and made a prayer by the bedside of the President, and then in the parlor with Mrs. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln was insensible from the first and there was no hope from the moment he was shot. As he lay on the bed, the only sign of life he exhibited was his breathing. About two o'clock he began to breathe harder and he breathed with more and more difficulty until he died. After he died Dr Gurley made a short prayer over him, and then prayed again with Mrs. Lincoln in the parlor. A Cabinet meeting was then held in our back parlor, and soon after, the most of the people left.

Mrs. Lincoln went soon and in about two hours after he died the President was carried up to the President's House. v\Te saw him the last time up in the Capitol the day before he was carried away.

Things are now resuming their usual appearance, but business seems to keep very quiet. There is not much doing here in that line. I think I shall have plenty of time for a summer ramble . ...

Chicago Historical Society

Your Uncle-Geo. Francis

George and Huldah Francis, fro m po rtrai ts in th e home of Thomas S. Heme nway, Jr.

Ch icago History

33

Mary Livermore and the Great Northwestern Fair

BY J. CHRISTOPHER SCHNELL

She couldn)t sign a contract) but she could and did lead the Midwest's effort to aid the Union army.

IN THE EARLY SPRING OF 1863, a general mood of pessimism and gloom hovered over Chicago as the Civil War dragged on with no apparent end in sight. As she walked down Madison Street toward the offices of the Chicago Sanitary Commission, located beneath McVicker's Theatre, Mary Livermore felt a distinct sense of apprehension. Mrs. Livermore was associate director of the Commission, a civilian-volunteer organization that provided the army with nurses, hospital supplies, and other services necessary to maintain adequate sanitary conditions in Union camps.

For several weeks, she had been expecting word fror:1 General Ulysses S. Grant's command in the western front.

And during those anxious weeks, the Chicago Sanitary Commission had daily sent one hundred barrels of supplies to Grant's shifting camp. One delegation, headed by Mrs. Livermore, was responsible for the transportation of thirty tons of medical supplies and food for the soldiers--rations of dried fruit, farina, and lemons-and even such delicacies as oysters and butter.

Upon entering the offices, Mrs. Livermore detected by the air of excitement that the longawaited message had arrived. It was a letter from General Grant himself, dated March 4, and it contained an urgent call for more help. Dangerous problems, both of morale and sanitation, were jeopardizing the Union advance toward the garrisoned city of Vicksburg, Mississippi: "because the countryside was covered with water, troops could scarcely find ground on which to pitch their tents. Malarial fevers broke out

J. Christopher Schnell was enabled to do the research underlying his article by a grant from the University Research Council at Southeast Missouri State University, where he is assistant professor of history.

34

Chicago History

among the men. Measles and small pox also attacked them." Nevertheless, Grant complimented the Sanitary Commission: "the hospital arrangements and medical attendance were so perfect, however, that the loss of life was much less than might have been expected."

Malaria, measles, smallpox! The Chicago Sanitary Commission sprang into a frenzy of action.

It bought all the supplies available in the city and sent teams of men and women to scour the countryside in search of desperately needed commodities.

Before her work for the army brought her to national attention, Mary Livermore's life differed somewhat from that of other middle-class women.

Born Mary Rice in Boston in , 820, she received possibly the finest education available to a young American girl. After completing the simple curriculum at the Female Seminary in Charlestown, Massachusetts, Mary taught French, Latin, and Italian and studied a wide variety of subjects under tutors hired by her father from Harvard University. In 1845, much to the dismay of her Calvinist family, she married a young Universalist minister, Daniel Parker Livermore, who in the following years served as pa tor to congregations in several New England states.

During the late 1840s, the Livermores became involved in several reform movements of the time, including temperance and abolition. While living in Connecticut, they campaigned for the adoption of the Maine Liquor Law, a prohibitionist measure, and succeeded in securing its passage. Mary favored prohibition because she felt it was necessary to protect American women and their families from the "pauperism, crime, and moral deterioration" associated with alcoholism. Her first published work was a temperance story.

Chicogo Historical Society

A broadside from the series "Heroes and Heroines of the War."

In 1857, the Livermores headed for Kansas, to assist in securing its status as a free state. However, one of their daughters became seriously ill in Chicago and, although Daniel Livermore continued the trip, Mary stayed behind to care for her child. When it became apparent that their daughter's illness would be lengthy, the Livermores decided to settle in Chicago. Herc, Mary involved herself in a number of charitable causes, including administrative work for the Chicago Home of the Friendless. Later, she co-founded the Home for Aged Women and the Hospital for Women and Children. She also worked as associate editor of the N ew Cov enant, a Universalist newspaper of which her husband was editor. In that capacity, she attended the 1860 Republican National Convention at the Wigwam in Chicago.

As she noted later, "I was the only woman reporter present, and was furnished with a ticket, and assigned a place among the men reporters, numbering a hundred or two." She did other writing, also, and entered into various charitable enterprises.

When Lincoln's subsequent election prompted the secession of several Southern states and the Confederate army's attack on Fort Sumter, Mary

was in Boston caring for her ailing father. There, as elsewhere throughout the North, local relief agencies were doing their part to help the fledgling Union army. From their localities, these societies sent bandages and packages from home to the regiments. The system was haphazard and chaotic, and it often resulted in lost supplies and worthless shipments of contaminated food; still, the need for this volunteer civilian aid became very evident to Mrs. Livermore when she made the long return journey to Chicago.

En route in May 1861 , she saw Union troops crammed into dirty cattle cars. For lack of lodging, some were forced to sleep on the floors of railroad stations, while others were billeted in barns and stables. Dirty and unshaven, with insufficient food , many were already suffering from malnutrition, colds, and fevers. It was apparent to Mrs. Livermore that, during these early stages of the war, the Union army was more debilitated by the ineptness of the federal and state governments' logistics than by any damage inflicted by the Confederate army.

Letters sent home by soldiers on the front confirmed her suspicion. In June, a private from Camp Smith near Cairo, Illinois, wrote that "the Chicago History

35

Chicago H is torica l Soci e ly

government has done very little for us yet. ...

Many [men] are sick from exposure and lack of proper protection." His comrades badly needed beds, blankets, pillows, socks, and were living on "hardtack and salt junk." They were being "eaten up by mosquitoes and every kind of creeping thing." Another soldier at Camp Griffen, Virginia, reported that many men had died of pneumonia, dysentery, and exposure before they ever saw battle. He asserted that conditions in the army hospitals were "so bad the men fight against being sent to them. Many brave it out and die in camp."

It was to help remedy their soldiers' forlorn situation that citizens throughout the North had formed their aid societies and had sent relief supplies from their respective areas. On April 18, 1861, Chicagoans formed a similar organization and arranged for arms, equipment, and nurses to be sent to troops stationed at Cairo. Later that month, J. H. McVicker, the theater owner, donated several rooms to women who had volunteered to make bandages. But their efforts, while enthusiastic, were just as ineffective as similar efforts had proved to be in the East and, again, 36

Chicago History

McVicker's Theatre, when it housed the Chicago Sanitary Commission.

largely because they were so disorganized. A centralized agency was needed to coordinate military needs and civilian relief activity. For this purpose, President Lincoln authorized the establishment of the United States Sanitary Commission in June 1861, under the leadership of the R ev.

Dr. Henry W. Bellows.

The Chicago branch of the Commis ion was formed in October 1861 , following a citizens' meeting at the Tremont House. Shortly thereafter, Mary Livermore and Jane Hoge became its associate managers, entrusted with the responibility of inspecting field camps, raising financial support, and organizing the solicitation, storage, and disbursement of supplies. The two women made an excellent team- Mrs. Livermore did most of the planning and administration ; Mrs. Hoge, an able and respected open-air public orator, directed the public relations and promotional campaigns. Under their leadership, the Chicago Commission became a beehive of activity. Entering the offices, the visitor was greeted

Mary Livermore

by the !'oar attendant upon the loading of boxes and barrels, the hubbub of voices shouting and receiving orders, and the constant clatter of thirty to forty volunteer-operated sewing machines.

The rooms exuded a myriad of odors: Mrs. Livermore referred to them as the "perfume of the Sanitary"- a mixture of onions, sauerkraut, whiskey, codfish, pickles, ale, potatoes, smoked salmon, and ginger.

Undertaking the organ ization and administration of Union supplies for most of the Western theater proved to be a monumental task. The Chicago Sanitary Commission was forced to hire a large number of corresponding secretaries to keep open the lines of communication between Chicago and the outlying areas which sent their supplies to the city for reshipment to the front lines. Supplies came from Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. To induce a steady flow of goods from these states, Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hoge wrote patriotic newsletters and "stimulating circulars, opened a vigorous correspondence with the aid societies within the bounds of the Commission and organized large numbers of new societies." The two leaders also paid many visits to battlefronts in southern Illinois and to the Tennessee-Mississippi theater to inspect supply depots and to ensure that the camps and hospitals did not exhaust their reserves of vital commodities.

These far-flung field trips offered Livermore and Hoge frequent opportunities to visit hospitals, raise money and supplies in surrounding towns, and organize many of the four thousand aid societies in the tributary region serving Chicago. In March , 863, following her receipt of General Grant's letter, Mrs. Livermore brought thirty-five hundred supply boxes down the Mi sis ippi River: in the process. she visited nearly every Union hospital from Cairo to Young's Point, Mississippi, a short distance from the embattled city of Vicksburg. " From every point we were [able] to report our movements, the result of our observations, what we had accomplished and what we found needing attention, employing

the Chicago press and the bulletins of the Sanitary Commission [to direct the flow of goods]."

On this occasion, Mrs. Livermore shipped her cargo on riverboats and barges down the river from St. Louis, where Southern sentiment ran high. Most of the time, however, the Chicago Sanitary Commission depended on railroad transportation, particularly the Illinois Central, which moved all Commission freight without charge. A thousand barrels of food went southward daily, and it has been estimated that two-thirds of the U.S. Sanitary Commission's aid to Grant's army came from Chicago.

Despite the best efforts of the Commission and the federal government, troops in many areas remained neglected . During one of her journeys to the Mississippi front in , 863. Mrs. Livermore visited an officers' hospital in Memphis and reported that many soldiers were without food. clothing, or bedding. She found that "the government makes no provisions for the care of officers when they are sick, beyond furnishing medicines and advice. They receive their pay at such irregular intervals, that when the poor fellows are taken sick, they have no means to furnish them the necessary food and clothing their situation demands . . . . Their poverty is pitiable."

Jane Hoge.

Chicago Historical Society

Mary Livermore

To help allay such misery, the Chicago Sanitary Commission arranged for hospital cars to run between Nashville and the front during the campaign in Tennessee, and for a hospital directory at Louisville so that the families of wounded men could find them. During Grant's devastating Vicksburg campaign, the Commission designed and operated a supply depot in Young's Point, to serve troops fighting only a few miles away.

That spring's campaign, however, strained even the Chicago Commission's resources. Leaders recognized that the amount of money and materials that could be raised by canvassing would never meet the ever-increasing demands of General Grant's invading army. Therefore, in the summer of 1863, when Grant was laying siege to Vicksburg, Livermore and Hoge proposed a new and untested method of raising funds and supplies for the Union army-a great Northwestern fair. This fair was to be Mary Livermore's most notable accomplishment. The Great Northwestern Sanitary Fair, held in Chicago in the fall of 1863, was so successful that it became the prototype of many such fund-raising events.

After consulting with the male officers of the Commission, who hesitantly gave their approval, the women printed ten thousand circulars urging aid societies in outlying areas to assist in organizing the proposed festival. In the circular, Livermore and Hoge proposed numerous moneymaking projects designed to draw large crowds to the Fair. War souvenirs and mementos, such as captured Confederate flags and weapons, were to be sold to the highest bidder. A series of dinners for those who attended, prepared and served by volunteers-with poultry, livestock, eggs, and other agricultural products donated by the local farmers- would realize handsome profits. In the evening, visitors would be entertained by a variety series of "the most brilliant character," including concerts, tableaux, pantomimes, and lectures. The circular, which the Commission mailed to most newspapers in the five-state region, requested every local aid society and mem ber of the Union League and Lodge of Good 38

Ch icago History

Templars "to represent itself in a Convention to be held September 1st, by at least one lady delegate from its members." Nearly five hundred delegates attended the "Women's Convention."

During that convention, held in Chicago on September I and 2, , 863, the women of the Commission planned and organized the Fair. By acclamation, the delegates appointed Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hoge co-directors of the gala event. Shortly after the convention adjourned. the women announced their wide-ranging program and dispatched a second circular to auxiliaries throughout the surrounding region: Every Aid Society, Union League, and Good Templar's Lodge in the Northwest, is requested to appoint a Committee, IMMEDIATELY, to canvass its neighborhood, and secure laborers for this great work.

Clergymen of all denominations, arc urgently requested to interest their parishes in this great enterprise, and stimulate their ladies to the manufacture and donation of articles for the Fair.

Every town was urged to hold local fair meetings shortly before the Chicago event in order to bring as large a collection of articles as possible to the Great Northwestern Fair, scheduled to open on October 27.

Because their idea was experimental, Livermore and Hoge had few guidelines to follow. As time began to run out, they urged a massive effort by the thousands of volunteers in the northwestern region. Throughout September and October, women organized hundreds of fair meetings in the cities and towns located in the wide circumference surrounding Chicago. They canvassed their communities for gifts- money, promises of a percentage of the yearly harvest yield, almost anything. Donations arrived from cities as far away as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York, and Boston.

Up to about a week before the Fair was to open, the entire operation was basically a women's movement. From Mary Livermore and J ane Hoge down through the ranks of several thousand volunteers, it was planned, coordinated, and executed almost completely by women while

Chicago Historical Society

men watched, sometimes with skepticism, as the opening date approached. Then, as Mary Livermore later noted, "at last, even gentlemen became inoculated with the 'Fair Mania.'" It was already mid-October, very late, but the men really pitched in, volunteering their help, pledging their money and merchandise through the newspapers, and "favoring the ladies with their suggestions." During this final hectic period, the manufactured goods contributed by Chicagoans included mowing machines, reapers, threshers, planters' pumps, and windmills, to be sold at auction . In fact, so many citizens offered agricultural implements that Livermore and Hoge had to order the construction of a new hall solely for the storage of machines.

During the final week before opening day, thousands of shipments of donated goods poured into Chicago. Farmers filled the back rooms of the Commission with wheat and the basement of McVicker's Theatre with vegetables. Lake County farmers jammed the sidewalks along Madison Street with row upon row of crops.

Stacks of boxes and barrels, and sacks of wheat, corn, beans, onions, and potatoes lined the street a ¡ Chicago prepared for its greatest fair ever. But che Fair's most valuable possession was not related to the crops, the machines, the fancy needlework, or the clothing. It was the original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, presented by President Abraham Lincoln.

The gift was a result of a special trip to Washington by Lincoln's close friend, Thomas B. Bryan, president of the Northwestern Sanitary Fair Commission. After agreeing to part with the valuable document, Pre ident Lincoln expressed some regret at having to lose it. Lincoln in-

Wagons usually contained chloroform, surgeon's silk, condensed milk, and beef stock, among other things.

A government agent rode with the wagon, which flew the Sanitary Commission flag.

formed his friend that he had "wanted to keep that proclamation to give to my sons as a family keepsake, but my soldier boys are dearer to me than anything else in the world, and they shall have it!" Later, Bryan stated that tears came into the President's eyes as h spoke of the matter. On October 26, Lincoln wrote Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hoge the following letter: According to the request made in your behalf, the original draft of the Emancipation proclamation is herewith inclosed. The formal words at the top, and th e conclusion, except the signature, you perceive arc not in my hand-writing. They were written at the State Department by whom I know not. The printed part was cut from a copy of the preliminary proclamation, and pasted on merely to save writing.

I had some desire co retain the paper; but if it shall contribute to the relief or comfort of the soldiers, that will be better.

Your obt. Servt.

A. Lincoln

At the Fair, the letter and document were auctioned off to the highest bidder. They were acquired for $10,000 by a citizen who sold them to Thomas Bryan for $3,000. Unfortunately, the Emancipation Proclamation perished when the Great Fire of 1871 destroyed the library of the Chicago Historical Society.

When the Fair opened its doors on October 27, the entire city of Chicago suspended its daily routine . All its businesses, courts, stores, shops, factories, schools, even the Board of Trade closed Chicago History

39

..'~-(

\\,

1ft; )~t~

li

.. ,,·.

,,

J.

4

l!,,,1,,,,,;I, "·

I

(ji( I,

L /7 ~ ~ efho Jo-rd_

}J,ra.-,

J-rrr

~n- _ e,

/, •••. ' I -

,..•-,(- • .,-,.,' (_'.

'r

(

/ C...:, I

,_,,c,

~<

ff/{.,?/

1,,/

~...,._,

~

/4

L.::i:;:-o

0-,

<::,

I ),

,.,..-0

a.Z, I-~

I

-1

h-/,

d '&.c..., /_))~.

t,,,,r,- t,/4::

•v

gy

.,.f:._,.J ·

,/JA _ .

--;4'(.A.,..I

1

7.

L-~/''1/''-c-.,'_/ £.--..A...-

a__,

I~

A facsimile of the letter from Abraham Lincoln to the "Ladies having in charge The North Western Fair," to which he appended the Emancipation Proclamation to be auctioned off in the Union cause . '

Chicago History

cJ;::

f....., e;:,~......c..l..... ,-,~...,_,fl-,._. c..

t;;1-e---G,

1, r_, ~1·11111111 Popy hi!:-; tlw lhwla,11;!11011 "',! ,dl.11·lwd i111mrcli,1tely l,,·1·1 ·1111df'I'

40

(-€1,,t-e-c.J,

~ f "'"l.,~u /1...A-=-C,'""-,

-)

/ ·d/'t-.....::,

, , ) . - o - ~I

v , ...,<..·

'7 I ;:;:;

-

o.t d I ~ 1"'-C~c.~.---

~7

0--

-,~k,,e..e;

1 [/LJ

,_.:,,,cc__,

'// "-r-f~J--.1 ./~...., /Nr0,

,:2. ,.._ __.,__ ; - ~

}

i..,f

c,

{..~.

/,_,,~

......,

_,L-7 •

c-L-'-e-/' <

/t r ..--42.-<v~

f, r rl,..I 1'-t,,.~

,:;,.Cd

{ t:.,

u.

J ~ ,G,,./ (~IL ;,~l,I

1,.,-,

,< ...-

.

i?fe-a,vv

tTI ,.__

•r

-·

~d ,~.f~

•

,,

f"

(,,

dLP H/-,

J.~ ·,~cm,:, Chicago Hisloricol Society

Mary Livermore

for the day as a n air of excitement swept the city.

It was, in the words of the Chi cago T ribune : . .. a sight never befor e seen in the W est on any occasion, and we d oubt wheth er a mo re magnifi cent spectac le was ever prese nted in t he streets of the Empire City itse lf, th an th e vas t p rocession o f chariots and horsemen, country wagons and ve hi cles, civic orders and mili ta ry co mpani es, both horsrs and foot, whi ch converted C hi cago, for the tim e, into a vas t thea tre of wond ers. F ro m th e ea rli est d awn of the d ay, th e hea rt o f t hr m ighty city was awa ke, and long befo re eigh t o'c lock, th e streets were throngrd with pro ple. C itizens hurri ed excitedly lo and fro, and co un try women, w ith th eir children, ca me in ra rl y in the mornin g, with co lors ti ed to th eir bridl es, and mini a ture Aags ti ed to th eir horses' hra ds. From house to ps, fr om th r tops o f public buildings, was displ ayed th e glori ous Aag of li be rty.

Dru ms brat in a ll pa n s of th e city, summonin g thr va rious p rocessions or acco mpanying th em to t he great centra l rendezvous. Bands of music, pl ay in g pa tri otic tun es-ban ds of yo ung mrn and womrn, sin ging patri otic songs-rn li vrnr d th e st reets.

For th e next two weeks, the a tmosphere was charged with a nationa listic enthusiasm which ra rely wa ned . Each day, the trains were filled with fa rmers and people from the small towns who we re cager to displ ay th eir loyalty to the orth . Th e cen ter of the acti vity was the m am mo th Bryan H a ll- la ter known as the Gra nd Opera Hou se-loca ted across Cla rk Street from the courthouse between R a ndolph and Washingto n stree ts. C ro wds packed the place from eight in th e morni ng un til ten a t night. Inside, the building had been divided into va ri ous a renas fo r th different activities. Th e ha ll was ma inl y used to exhibit fa ncy goods, needlework , m usical instruments, silverwa re, glassware, and clothing.

Downsta irs, a huge dining room with a seating capacity of fifteen hundred had bee n created.

M anufac turer' s H all , constructed especially for the Fair, housed a display of the la test in farm wagons, reapers, fannin g mills, threshing machines, corn pla nters, stea m engines, a nd plows.

Across Cla rk Stree t, in the courthouse, M ary Livermore orga nized the Supervisors' Room as a showcase fo r captu red Confederate flags,

U nion fl ags, trophies, a nd oth er war m ementos.

The women orga nized an a rt gallery in M cVicker's Thea tre, under the direc tio n of the Chi cago sculptor L. W. Volk . Fina lly, M etropolitan H a ll beca me the nightl y scene of va rious form s of entertainment from singing groups to ba nds of all sizes. I ts star a ttrac tion q uickl y emerged in th e soul-sti rring lectu res of Anna Dickinson.

La ter ha iled as the greatest woma n ora tor in Ameri ca, An na D ickinson a t the time of her Chi cago visit was beginning a long a nd tempestuous ca ree r. M rs. Li vermore described her as a "young girl of not more th a n twenty summ ers, graceful , beautiful , a nd bew itching, holding a n immense a udience spellbound by her eloquence, Chicago Hisloricol Society

')l1lft11u 11,l 1~J

:::,'/11111,uul.... f~/ ~,,111. (r(l1rl

fl rJ.+i)ldal

( 'omfo ris nncl Quilt,.. . !J:l:):! 'hirts. __ ..

130.'3t; ' hc<:l:, .

79~l.-, lr nder 'h irB. _ l>rnwers .

~IU~

_ Hd7

Pillows • . • . . . . . Sll~ Pill ow Cn,,•;. • . • .... 11 US:; Pads and L'u~hiotJ..i. __

l,y C/111' t:/t' ::,1111i',iry ( ',o,wi ,.,

Farinn .. _ ..... 't:1rf"h , ..

Snt!o \ rro w Ruot

~-t!I l 7lh l

'!'aviotn Btt1tin1: ..

B11rley

:.!:-' l ;j lbs.

0

:!U.'.i-l-

Soeks ........... . .. •167S i,,m• Bed Sacks. ~8n •r owels nn<l :S-npkins..

Dre;;sing Oo wn,.

~11.111 13()~•

llnnclk crrheifs .

:33,-,.

Bottles of Wi nt:

l l ';'!I 1·14 1,ai1 ..

' lipper:.:_________ . .fC'll ies nnd J-'rt~(-nl·~ i11 <·nns :1rnl jnrs. _

,•,'tu,•t,tt

l,,,,t Fd.Jrtwry Iv h t .iuly. lb1l~ .

B ut te·r

Egi,;, Lc111or1:--.

U rn.11i:,n•

l)ystcr~ l ' S ~o:q1 Pic·klt·,

IHankets.

,tittcns ..

• .-,,j pai r:-

l'nuw ... ;-.-l ¼ dozc11. •r:1.1n:lri111l,

Porter .. •

I l,l,J \le... . ! 'od fish .. . .... 10·14 0 I\J,.

-:-lutmc~s .....•.. ~.j !Ls. ·It> II,,.

1't rouncl Cinnnn1on.

1

t il'ound

l'l O\'l•..;.

.

l 'rnnbcrries.

1.'hlorofo1111 i iround Fla.x /"-iel·ll . _ rea --- - l'ee. ---· ..... -

l':ltl,

17 lbs.

I lib! \I ll !h,. ::110 IIJS. :W 1·:Hl's

:1 chest:-. :;, lbs. ;; 1,1,1,.

Tc:1, ___ _ :--:ugnr.

1 keg. ·,11 lhs I ':1.11cllcs ...• •

,.

){ice (;round P epper .· Chloride Lime.. _._ C amphor Bottles...

...

7 hoxc~. ~n lb• 8 li b!.-. l kc·p; ~J lbs.

-1 bo~cs.

7 hh1'.

12

Dried Fruit. _ . _ . . . l 2u0 c:,11., .

Oricd Applcs:rnd Peach's :13i\.l lbs. ~fostm~l. . . . . . _. . .

103 lb.

JS boxes.

I kc!(.

l ri11al-. .\ Uhcsh 1..• l'Ja:-.ll•r HpOll ~l''" \ 'ocoo Torn n.Lot•s rri n ( 'ups Ti ll Pl:it,•s .Rt'd Pun~ Grall't".s. l ~rnndy .. . ~-: S ur~con:-- 1 ~ uk. _ .. _. _.

Splints \\,. ash Hn~ini:;

( 'nrnllestkk, ~poo11<..

l'ots . . . . . _ Tsinµ;!nss.. . _ Solclified ~fill, . . .

Pot,.loc., .

Onions . _.. __ C:1rrot"'-.

,llcohol.. .... • Spittoon, . .. _.. . • _. __ Kni,·cs nnd Forks .. f'o ncentratr, I ( 'otle.•. _

.',:! lb,.

IL;,;

lb, \ 1: w lb, 2 bale,

2~ keg: . . . ~u·; 11.,s I ,·roc-k J;J bhl-. ·ltl 1,,,xe-

1~ cloz 10 hox,·ti:i .J can~ l:!,i }l,q_ ~-J jnr ..

·ob!, 11 boxe, :!

l10X(' ..

I kc,,, , u.J 1;0(1 y d,.

.._,; ·1b~ .j

pup·r,

'i"..t cnn'-

l,i!J~ li dot

·I-~ 12 do:t

~:l3 botth-, 1 lb. :! box1.::-.

,-i,

7 do;, l'.! Lioi'. l ~ !j

277 y d, :!2 t an ... ~48 lb, . :l hl)I•.

I bhl I bbl. ,) gall ~. :lll bottr s

~G

-i2 do z 7t C:'ln F.

Mary Livermore

now melting them to tears and sobs by the infinite pathos of her voice, and of her pleadings-and now dilating with noble indignation, and uttering scorching denunciations of the vile enemies of the country, whether fighting against our armies in the South, or more meanly plotting treason at home."

Miss Dickinson's arrival in Chicago was a major news event. She appeared at the Fair every night for two weeks. Although tickets for her lectures sold at a dollar each-a higher price than any other attraction- she always spoke to capacity crowds, and even standing-room tickets were sold out in advance. After the Commission h ad paid all the expenses related to Miss Dickinson's lectures, including her fee , the rent of the hall, advertising, and so forth, Mrs. Livermore reported that the dynamic orator had netted more than $1,300 for the Fair.

On the final day, the Sanitary Commission gave a huge banquet for all wounded soldiers in Chicago hospitals. At noon, the doors swung open and, as the band struck up "Brave Boys Are They," the wounded marched into the hall. Mrs. Livermore later described them as "a bronzed, scarred, emaciated, halt, blind, deaf, crippled, skeleton corps, some without arms, some without legs, some swinging themselves painfully on crutches, and some leaning feebly on those stronger than themselves." Then, when all had been seated, Anna Dickinson rose and gave the closing address: Some of you, alas! have come back to us blinded, with the beautiful light of heaven shut out from you forever, but it has been that the glorious light of justice might shine throughout the length and breadth of the land. What can I say to you, save that coming back to us halt, and maimed, and blind, the great loyal heart of the nation springs up to meet you, and to love you. Some of you may be going back again to renew your noble exertions in our great cause, to suffer, and, it may be, to die for it. If there be any such here, looking in your faces, I repeat, we thank you. Should it be the lot of any of you to return to us no more-should your life ebb on some distant battle-field, where no woman's hand can 42

Chicago History

C hi cago H ist orical Societ y

The spellbinding oratory of Anna Dickinson brought large crowds to the Fair and netted it over $1,300.

smooth your dying pillow, and no friendly ear perceive your parting sigh- still even there our love and affection shall follow you. You shall have immortal crownings and the world shall honor your graves!

By any standards, the fair was a remarkable accomplishment. Mrs. Livermore had predicted that it would be financially rewarding if profits reached $25,000, and it actually netted more than $86,000. Ticket takers at Bryan Hall estimated that between eighty-five and ninety thousand visitors entered the main building. More importantly, Chicago's Fair set a precedent for similar fund-raising events in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Had it failed, the United States Sanitary Commission would have been in serious trouble, and the Union army would undoubtedly have suffered.

The Commission had been running out of money - between April I and October 1, 1863, it had received $115,752 but spent $281 ,099, creating a deficit of $165,347.

It is probable that the United States Sanitary Commission would eventually have found other ways to raise money for the Union army, but the sanitary fairs undeniably helped to insure a steady flow of supplies to the battlefront. Grateful Chicagoans concluded their fair by passing a final resolution thanking Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Hoge for "their untiring zeal, industry and effort, [having] inaugurated, conducted and concluded the great Northwestern Fair [despite] ... having been subjected to many personal trials and difficulties in the prosecution of their noble work."

After the Civil War, Mary Livermore turned her attention to the woman's movement. During her preparation for the Northwestern Sanitary Fair, she had encountered legal discrimination against married women a number of times. When she and Mrs. Hoge attempted to arrange for the construction of Manufacturer's Hall, for example, the builder informed them that their husbands' signatures would have to appear on the building contract because married women could Mary Livermore.

not enter a contractual agreement without the permission of their spouses. Later, Mrs. Livermore remarked that this incident stimulated her later efforts to sponsor legislation aimed at securing property and civil rights for married women in Illinois.

This work soon led her to the woman's suffrage movement. Earlier, she had not been in favor of suffrage, but now she became convinced that the disenfranchisement of women placed them on the same level as "the pauper, the convict, the idiot, and the lunatic." She organized the first suffrage convention in Chicago, in 1868-a huge success, with a roster of speakers that included such prominent Chicagoans as J udge J am es Bradwell and the Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher, and national figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Shortly after, Mrs. Livermore became president of the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association .

In 1869, she established Chicago's first woman suffrage and temperance organ, The Agitator.

The following year it merged with L ucy Stone's Woman's Journal, and Mrs. Livermore moved to Boston to become editor in chief. During the final twenty-five years of her life, Mrs. Livermore wrote and lectured extensively throughout the United States, becoming one of the better known literary representatives of the woman's movement. Although she tended toward conservatism, she proved to be more successful than ma ny other feminists when it came to convincing her audiences. Probably her most frequent topic was a plea for higher education for women, which she dealt with in a lecture called "What Shall We Do with Our Daughters?" She wrote two autobiographical books and compiled a volume of biographies of women.

Throughout this period her reputation grew.

When she died in 1905, at the age of 85, the Boston Transcript called her the "foremost woman in America." In retrospect, this characterization might be open to some discussion, but without a doubt Mary Livermore was one of Chicago's most illustrious citizens.

Ch icago History

43

Pullman: A Town Reborn BYIRAJ.BACH

After ninety years and many vicissitudes) part if George Pullman) s town comes into its own. of the Greenstone Church towers above a facade of serpentine rock and ornate windows of stained glass. Designed by Solon S. Beman as a focal point of George M. Pullman's model town, the church was dedicated on December 11, 1882. Its completion marked the end of construction in the residential section of the town.

The church, on the corner of 112th Street and St. Lawrence Avenue on Chicago's far South Side, looks much the same now as it did during Pullman's heyday as a model industrial town.

Both the original interior and exterior have been preserved , unlike the Florence Hotel, one block to the north, which has been modernized.

The Greenstone Church was, therefore, the perfect site for an important meeting which took place a full ninety years after its dedication. On the agenda was a single issue-whether a small portion of the former model town would be designated a city landmark. It was with much anticipation that Pullman residents gathered in the churc_h on August 3, 1972, to hear the favorable testimony of architectural experts. For years, home owners in Pullman had been aware that their community was unique, and now the city of Chicago agreed. On October 16, 1972, the City Council decided that part of the town should be preserved according to George Pullman's original plan, and it conferred landmark status on the area known as the South Pullman District.

THE MASSIVE STEEPLE

Ira J. Bach, former City Planner of Chicago, is now secretary of the Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks and administrator of the Illinois-Indiana Bi-State Commission. His book, Chicago on Foot, is a perennial favorite.

44

Chicago History

The Town of Fullman was, initially, an outgrowth of industry. In the 1870s, the Pullman car, or "sleeper," revolutionized the railroads by providing passengers with the comforts of bed and board. The railroad cars built by the Pullman Palace Car Company made travel from coast to coast a pleasurable experience. The interiors of their cars were decorated by skilled craftsmen and then furnished with plush chairs and draperies. And the dining cars not only increased the passengers' comfort but also reduced travel time by eliminating the need to stop for meals.

So successful was Pullman' experiment with railroad sleeping cars and parlor cars that by the late 1870s he needed a large tract of land in order to expand his operation. Some years earlier, acting on the advice of his friend Colonel James H. Bowen, Pullman had purchased land along Lake Calumet, which was rapidly becoming the region's steel center. The land was cheap, and the area offered convenient transportation by both water and rail. Bowen's land transactions did not arouse the real-estate speculators, for he had long been buying in the Calumet area, whereas direct purchases by Pullman would have driven prices up.

The decision to locate Pullman's railroad shops near Lake Calumet, some fourteen miles south of the Loop, marked the beginning- of a trend now known as "suburbanization." The reasons, as we have just seen, were the same then as they are now-cheap land, natural resources, and access to transportation. In the 1880s, however, the Calumet region was little more than swamp, and the only settlement was a small number of farms in K ensington and Roseland, just west of Lake Calumet. In testimony incorporated in the United States Strike Commission's R eport on the Chicago Strike of Jun e-July, 1894, Pullman explained his choice:

Courtesy Pul lman Civic Orgon izotion

The Greenstone Church (now Pullman Methodist Church). ca. 1884.

We decided to build, in close proximity to the shops, homes for workingmen of such character and surrounding as would prove so attractive as to cause the best class of mechanics to seek that place for.employment in preference to others. \Ve also desired to estab lish the place on such a basis as would exclude all baneful influences, believing that such a policy would result in the greatest measure of uccess ... from a commercial point of view .... Accordingly the present location of Pullman was selected. That region of the country was then sparsely populated.

For Pullman, the ability to draw and maintain a stable labor force of skilled mechanics and craftsmen was every bit as important to the success of his operation as the location of his factory.

Unlike other industrialists of the day, he did not subscribe to the theory that if he provided a source of employment, a labor force would appear. And, although company towns had been built in the East, notably the Lawrence Manufacturing Company in Lowell, Massachusetts, none had been planned along the lines of Pullman's model community. Pullman believed that the worker's environment influenced his output, and his theory found expression in his town. Here every building was to be both functional and beautiful, from the smallest worker's cottage to the more impressive homes of management workers.

In , 879, Pullman commissioned Solon Beman, a young New York architect, to design the town.

By April 1880, when ground was broken and the sewage system begun, Beman had completed

plans for a factory, workers' homes, town square, and hotel. Nathan F. Barrett, another New Yorker and a landscape architect by profession, joined Beman in planning the town and supervising the system of streets and open green areas which distinguished Pullman from working-class neighborhoods in the city.

Pullman's beliefs determined the moral tone of the community as well as its phy ical development. The separation of the shops from the employees' homes reflected his view that workers should live in pleasant surroundings. Thus Florence Boulevard (now , , Ith Street) divided the Pullman car shops from the town's residential section . Noticeably absent were the saloons which characterized working-class neighborhoods throughout Chicago-a result of Pullman's conviction that alcohol adversely affected the quality of an employee's work or, at least, of the lower-paid workers' output. Liquor was indeed available to visitors, executives, and management workers at the expensive Florence Hotel.

Although to get a "pint," a worker needed only cross the Illinois Central tracks at , , 5th Street to Kensington's "Bumtown," Pullman's workers had a reputation for bPing temperate people.

One of the reasons may have been the standards Pullman set for employment in his shops.

The Chicago Herald reported, on February 2,, 1886. that: In making an application for a position in the rm ploy of the Pullman Company, a man must face a formidable written examination involving a great deal of personal history. Among othrr things he must tell whether or not he has ever been married or divorced, whether he is in debt, and if so to whom, and how much, how long he went to school, whether he ha any physical deformities, why he was discharged from or voluntarily left his last position whatever that po ition may ha,·e bern , whether he uses intoxicating liquors, plays gamrs of chance or gamblr in any way \\·hatcvcr. ...

Contemporar·y accounts of the model town a ttcst to the effectiveness of this screening procc s. It rrsulted in a work force predominantly Chicago History

45

native-born, with large numbers of skilled German and Scandinavian craftsmen. In an article in which she dubbed George Pullman "A Modern King Lear," Jane Addams characterized workers in Pullman as sober individuals with a respect for property. She described the behavior of Pullman workers during the 1894 strike as follows: They were self-controlled and destroyed no property.

The bill presented to the city of Chicago by the Pullman Company for damages received during the strike was $26-the result only of petty accidents.

They were sober and exhibited no drunkenness, even though obliged to hold their meetings in the saloon hall of a neighboring town.

Under Pullman's master plan, workers were provided with red and yellow brick dwellings which far surpassed the frame buildings found in other industrial areas of Chicago such as Back of the Yards or South Chicago. Still, in Pullman, a worker's home reflected his position in the hierarchy of the company. The lowest-paid workers lived in sprawling three-story "tenements" on Fulton Street (now Langley Avenue), while higher-paid mechanics lived in Foreman's Row on Stephenson (now Champlain) Avenue, between 114th and 115th streets. The majority of Pullman residents lived in buildings which contained two or more apartments and paid rents of $10 to 14 a month. A variety of single-family dwellings were built to accommodate workers who could afford $ 17 a month, but only a small number of workers, usually managers, could afford the spacious homes which rented for $25 or more.

The Town of Pullman grew so rapidly that by 1882 it was necessary to draw up plans for additional homes to accommodate the unskilled workers employed by the nearby Allen Paper Whet>l Company and Union Foundry, companies which provided the wheels and steel dies essential to the construction of railroad cars. George 46

Chicago History

Pullman, knowing that if his own company were to prosper, he would have to provide housing for the laborers employed by these companies, commissioned Solon Beman to design 600 more housing units for the area north of the Pullman car works, between 104th and I08th streets. This section, which was designed in 1882, came to be known as North Pullman. It differed substantially from the original settlement south of Florence Boulevard. The buildings resembled the dwellings along Fulton Street, but North Pullman lacked the mixture of spacious homes and row houses that characterized South Pullman. Boarding houses and large tenement buildings predominated in the new area. And while the new residents would be close to their place of employment, they had to make a long trek to the Arcade, Market Hall, Greenstone Church, the depot, and to school.

In his original plans for the town, George Pullman had not anticipated the desire of workers to own property, since he had provided them with living conditions described by one of his draftsmen as "nearly perfect as was humanly possible." evertheless, they did desire to own property, and many workers moved to nearby Roseland and to Gano, Pullman's first suburb, even though the houses there were not as well constructed as the dwellings in Pullman. According to Richard T. Ely, who visited Pullman while on assignment for Harper's Monthly, the rapid increase in population- from 2,000 in 1882 to 8,000 in 1884-obscured the fact that the workers were highly mobile.

As early as 1883, Pullman had realized that he would have to provide opportunities for home ownership, if he were to maintain a stable labor force of skilled workers, and he announced plans for the creation of a suburb just west of Pullman where workers could purchase lots for $300. In an interview with French economist Paul de Rousicr, Pullman described his plans:

Town of Pullman EPISCOPAL CHURCH

A Pullman panorama: engraving of the buildings in the town, from the Chicago Album, ca. 1892.

Chicago Hist orical Society

It is truly my intention to form another town, near this one, where each resident will build a cottage after his own inclination, suited to his own needs, and which will be his own. I have already bought a large area of unoccupied land for this purpose, but I do not think the time has yet come for beginning this enterprise. If I had sold the sites to my workmen at the beginning of the experiment, I should have run the risk of seeing families settle who are not sufficiently accustomed to the habits I wish to develop in the inhabitants of Pullman City, and all the good of my work would have been compromised by their presence.

George Pullman's "West Pullman" never materialized, however, and skilled craftsmen continued to move to surrounding neighborhoods.

In his rigorous attempts to insulate his model town from the city of Chicago, Pullman provided everything he thought his workers would needhomes, parks, a library and school, shops, factories, and a church. In many respects, the town was indeed self-sufficient, but from the beginning there were serious lacks. Just as George Pullman had not anticipated the desire of his workers to own the homes in which they lived, he also had not foreseen their religious independence. He simply assumed that they would be happy to worship in his beautiful Greenstone Church. Like everything else in the town, Pullman expected the church to yield a return on his investment: he therefore set the yearly rent at $3,600. But the church, although completed in 1882, was not occupied until 1885; even then, a Presbyterian congregation negotiated a reduction in the rent.

Furthermore, Pullman's proposal that all sects share the church's facilities was unacceptable to the Swedish and Catholic immigrants whom he employed. After attending services in the Arcade for a few years, both groups finally obtained permission to locate their churches on 113th Street, just outside the town. Solon Beman designed the Swedish Elim Lutheran Church and thr Holy Rosary Catholic Church, but they nev-

ertheless represented a challenge to Pullman's concepts.

And, while their physical environment was a vast improvement over industrial areas in Chicago itself, workers in suburban Pullman were reminded constantly of their indebtedness to the Pullman Company. It was this sort of "paternalism" that the Rev. William H. Carwardine, pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Pullman, described in his book on the Pullman strike: An unpleasant feature of the town is that you are made to feel at every tum the presence of the corporation. As Peter Quinon, of the Pittsburgh Times, well says: "The corporation is everything and everywhere. The corporation trims your lawn and attends to your trees; . . . sweeps your street, and sends a man around to pick up every cigar stump, every bit of paper, every straw or leaf; the corporation puts two barrels in your back yard, one for ashes and one for refuse of the kitchen; . . . the corporation does practically everything but sweep your room and make your bed, and the corporation expects you to enjoy it and hold your tongue."

When the effects of the panic of 1893 finally began to be felt in the town, Pullman responded by cutting production and wages. His refusal to make a corresponding reduction in their rents left his workers with only a few dollars for all the rest of their needs. The resulting strike of 1894 loosened Pullman's vise on the town, but it was not until four years later that the control of the Pullman Company was finally broken.

In 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the Pullman Palace Car Company had exceeded its charter by purchasing more real estate than was needed for the operation of the car works.

The court declared that the Pullman Corporation was not authorized to build homes for employees or to "engage in the business of renting dwellings, store rooms, market places, etc." In Thf' PeoplP v. The Pullman's Palace Car Company, the court ruled that the car works were loChicago History

47

Town of Pullman

cated "within the suburbs of the city" and that adequate transportation for workers was provided by the Illinois Central Railroad, which connected Pullman to the city of Chicago. It was the opinion of the court that had George Pullman built only the car works, "individual enterprise and private capital" would have quickly provided "all necessary dwellings and tenements for the accommodation of the workmen."

The effect of the court decision was to force the Pullman Palace Car Company to relinquish , by 1904, all holdings in the town not directly related to the operation of the car works. In 1907, the workers in the Town of Pullman were at last able to buy the homes in which they lived.

But home ownership alone could not halt-to some extent it actually accelerated-the transformation of Pullman from a model town to an industrial community. The Town of Pullman began its decline: the result of a revolution in the manufacture of railroad cars, the exodus of the town's middle class, the state supreme court's decision, and the deterioration of the Arcade.

From 1905 to 1910, Pullman witne sed a boom in industry as new companies located in the town. The Pullman car works were expanded, and employment rose to more than ten thousand.

By 1908, although the annual wage of an average Pullman worker had reached ¡an unprecedented lcvel- $828.73-an increase of more than 25 percent over the pay scale in effect in the 1890s, innovations in the construction of railroad cars were having a profound effect on the composition of the labor force. Ever since Pullman established his reputation with the "Pioneer" sleeping car in 1864. all railroad cars had been made of wood.

Now a change in materia ls-from wood to steel - was accompanied by a change in the labor force. In his definitive study of the Town of Pullman, Stan ley Buder reports that: After 1907, cabinetmakers, gilders, and polishers were replaced by riveters and crane operators. These new skills were more easily acquired than the older ones. R ather than the long apprenticeship needed to master carpentry tools, a metal worker learned to 48

Chicago History

tend a machine expertly in a matter of months. Already in 1900, the company reported that skilled workers had declined to only 40 percent of the total force. Soon the proud tit le "journeyman mechanic" was discarded, and by 1908, '¡an army of steel workers . .. fanned the flames in the furnaces and leased the lash or sand blast, air hose and gas flame ...

Increasingly, as German, Scandinavian, and native-American craftsmen left Pullman, they were replaced in the car works by newer immigrantsItalians, Poles, and Greeks- who were willing to labor under the conditions dictated by the use of steel in the construction of railroad cars.

For more than twenty years, Pullman had continued to attract workers of all classes- a situation rarely found in Chicago neighborhoods which were formed along ethnic and economic lines. A laborer in the Armour meat packing company was apt to live "Back of the Yards," while an executive of the same firm would reside in Kenwood, Woodlawn, or Englewood-neighborhoods characterized by spacious homes and tree-lined streets.

But while living conditions in Pullman improved substantially for the company's laborers after 1goo, middle-class professionals and executives found less and less reason to remain in the community. The exodus of middle-class workers from Pullman began in 1897 , following George Pullman's death. No longer compelled to live in the town, a majority of management workers moved to Hyde Park and Woodlawn, and commuted to the Pullman Palace Car Company via the Illinois Central. According to Buder, very few professional men and company officers resided in Pullman in 1910.

One of the contributing factors to the largescale migration of management workers from Pullman was the decline of the Arcade. Since r 882. the Arcade had served as the center of social life in the town , as well as the main shopping area for the workers. In one building were centralized shops, post office, barber shop, tailor, bank , theater, and library. Mrs. Duane Doty, author of an "official" history of Pullman written

for v1s1tors to the 1893 Columbian Exposition, described the Arcade as follows: Evenings the arcade presents an animated scene, hundreds of people visiting it and engaging in social chat, discussing in an animated way the political situation, the labor question, the prospects of a visitation by cholera, and other topics of current interest, reading in the library-rooms, or trading in the elegant stores .... All trading is done under shelter and at one place; the necessary competition insures purchasers the best goods at the lowest market prices ....

The theatre is occupied three or four times a month during the theatre season by entertainments of the best character, and is liberally patronized .... This theatre is an art gem, and ministers to refined enjoyment. Beauty is an element appointed by the Deity to sustain the souls of men, and there has never been a time when there was greater need of such calming and sustaining beauty as art can give.

There never was a period when it could soothe and heal so much hard pressure, worry and hurry and wear as now.

The majority of Pullman residents did patronize the shops located in the Arcade, but only the management workers and executives could afford the price of theater tickets and the library membership fee of 25¢ a month. Had Mrs. Doty foreseen the labor strife which would wrack Pullman during the next year, she might have advocated lowering the price of theater tickets so that the average laborer could feel the soothing effects of art. The closing of the Arcade theater for lack of patronage in 1902 testified to the exodus of well-paid workers from Pullman; another result was that the Pullman Public Library lost the majority of its members.

In 1919, John McLean, the town's first physician, commented on the great changes which had taken place in Pullman since he took up residence in 1881. The most striking difference, he reflected, was the composition of the community. He noted that "there are few, very few, of the pioneers of Pullman who still live in the town itself." McLean was a prominent member of the community: his job as chief surgeon for the Pullman Company enabled him to live in a home on Offi-

Inside the Arcade .

cer's Row, on the corner of Stephenson Avenue and 1 1 1th Street "just across from the big gate of the car works." During the thirty years in which he and his wife Helen lived in Pullman, McLean served as president of the school board, vice-president of the Pullman Athletic Club, a nd as a board member of the Pullman Public Library. After the death of his wife and his subsequent retirement from the Pullman Companywith full pay-McLean joined the exodus of professionals and executives from the town. In his autobiography, he wrote: Following the general trend of the migration from Pullman, I am now living in the Hyde Park district at the Hotel Windermere . . . it was _only natural that I should follow that migration into the district where so many old friends now reside. The location of the ,vindermere Hotel across the street from Jackson Park, in which the World's Fair was held, and but a few steps from an Illinois Central suburban station, lend to its attractiveness as a place of residence. Living there has brought me into delightful association with some of Ch icago's most celebrated personages.

The stability which had been built into the town in 1880-the comprehensive architectural plan and the carefully selected labor forceeroded steadily after 19 1o. While under the control of the Pullman Palace Car Company, the town had been maintained strictly according to Beman's original plan. R esidents were forbidden to alter the exterior of their homes. In addition, the company landscaped and tended such areas as Arcade Park and L ake Vista, which were focal points of the community. When the ownerChicago History

49

Town of Pullman

ship of non-indu strial buildings passed from the control of the Pullman Company, the appearance of the community began to change. After a visit to Pullman in 1915, Graham R omeyn Taylor of Th e Survey reported that: . . . the old town is left with a forlorn air of faded glory. The city of Chicago does not maintain the streets so well, and out of sheer regard for the immediate surroundings of the shops, the company still ass um es the maintenance of r r r th Street, the boule-

After 1907, workers were able to purchase homes such as these along St. Lawrence Ave ., south of 111 th St. Doily News Collection Chicago Historical Society

vard, and the thoroughfare along the western front.

The old lawns which made each street beautiful in the old days are kept up or not as the present owner happens to elect, and often adjoining premisrs show a glaring contrast. Hard, bare ground in front of th e tenement blocks permits their ugly monotony to stand out to-day in all its nakedness, a monotony previously softened by the flanking greensward and hedges .

In part, the physical decline of Pullman was a resu lt of the I 898 supreme court decision that the Pullman Company must sell its residential holdings. In 1907, the Pullman Company began to sell property worth four million dollars to prospective home owners in the communitywith disastrous results for Beman's architectural

Pullman Company Collection Chicago Historical Society

plan and the Arcade. Edward F. Bryant, president of the Pullman Trust and Savings Bank, described what happened when restrictions on the use of property were lifted: ... gradually throughout the town different houses formerly occupied as dwellings have been remodeled into st?res, so that the business of dry goods, meats, groceries, drugs, etc., is no longer centralized in the large Arcade and the Market Hall, as it was prior to 1907.

As enterprising home owners converted the ground floor of row houses into saloons and grocery shops, Pullman took on the appearance of a working-class neighborhood. These new shops gradually drew business from the Arcade, but it was the development of Roseland's Michigan Avenue that signalled the end of the Arcade as a business center. Located one-half mile from Pullman, Roseland grew from a small farmino" community of five hundred residents in 1880 to a neighborhood of more than twenty thousand by 19 Io. By 1920, R oseland's commercial district extended along Michigan Avenue from 103rd to 1 19th streets, and contained new "department"' stores, such as Gately's Peoples Store at r 12th Street and the H ome Store at 1 18th Street, where shoppers could find a variety of goods and services that were unavailable in the Arcade. In 1922, the sma ll shopkeepers in the Arcade conceded defeat. The Pullman Company converted the shops into offices, but the arrangement proved

Streetcars manufactured for the North Chicago Street Railroad eventually connected the Town of Pullman to the city of Chicago.

unsatisfactory a nd, in 1926, the Arcade was d emolished. Roseland' s Michigan Avenue continued to th rive, however, as evidenced by the fact that both Gately's and the Home Store are sti ll in business, a half-century later.

By the 1920s, Pullman was no longer a n outpost of Chicago, but one of the city's many neighborhoods. The rapid growth of the city during this era was reflected by the building boom that took place in previously isol ated communities-including those near Pullman-everywhere it seemed, but in Pullman. Between 1920 and 1930, Pullman was outstripped both in population and affi uence by the surrounding communities of Roseland, West Pullman, Gano, and K ensington.

In the 1880s, it seemed impossible to George Pullman that the small farm communities surrounding Pullman could ever influence the town's development. Ironically, the Pullma n Company itself was an agent of the town's destruction: it provided the city of Chicago with the trolley cars that eventually connected Pullman to the Loop and made Pullman part of the larger city.

According to Stanley Buder: .. _- the same streetcars that changed the map of Chicago and accelerated Pullman's decl ine were made in the company's shop. In 1886, the company had added a streetcar division under the direction of Chicago History

51

Chicago Historical Society

Charles Pullman, younger brother of George. By I 900, it was the country's largest producer of "intraurbans," and in 1907, the shop turned out the first of the famous "Red Rockets," the prototype of all later cars.

The construction of entire neighborhoods which took place in Chicago during the 1920s ended abruptly with the Depression of the Thirties. The effect of the building boom on Pullman had been negligible, as we have seen. Since 1882, when the land north of Florence Boulevard was subdivided for homes, little residential construction had taken place. But Pullman's very houses had changed. By 1930, when more than half the homes in Pullman were owned by residents--an admittedly stabilizing development-many home owners had modernized Beman's dwellings by adding picture windows, shutters, siding, porches, and garages, or by painting the red and yellow brick exteriors. Pullman, which had once been distinguished by the uniform appearance of its buildings, now had only its wide tree-lined streets, its spacious homes, and its Florence Hotel to recall its former glory. The residential buildings in Pullman contained none of the modern conveniences found in the bungalows built elsewhere during the Twenties. Built at the same time, all the dwellings in Pullman had aged at once.

George Pullman's selectivity in hiring the men who would live in his town was given a new twist when home owners in the 1930s sought to exclude blacks from the community. George Pullman had carefully screened his immigrant labor force in order to achieve a stable community; the home owner-workers now signed restrictive covenan ts. The Greater Pullman Property Restrictive Association, formed in 1928 "by a group of 52

Chicago History

Automobile bodies being assembled in the Packard shop in North Pullman, 1920.

public spirited business men" launched a restrictive covenant drive on the far South Side of Chicago in the area from 87th Street to r 19th Street, and from Stony Island Avenue to the Panhandle railroad tracks, just west of Halsted Street.

An editorial in the South End Reporter of December 6, 1929, encouraged residents to sign restrictive covenants in order to insure neighborhoods against racial change: The South End is rapidly developing into one of the most desirable residential sections in Chicago. It is already known as one of the greatest home owning districts in the city. Millions of dollars have been invested in homes in this community by workingmen, men who can ill afford to face the big depreciation in property values that is bound to follow further encroachment by undesirables. So it behooves every property owner, yes every citizen, to lend their aid, both financially and morally, to this progressive movement to assure the future greatness of the South End by protecting property values.

Restrictive covenants had already been employed, in the 1920s, by middle-class residents of Kenwood, Hyde Park, and Woodlawn as a way of halting black in-migration. Now, property owners in Roseland, Kensington, Pullman, and Gano paid $5 and pledged not to sell their homes or land to blacks during the period from December 3 r, 1928, to January 1, 1950. What was new about their movement was that they were working-class home owners with ethnic backgrounds, whereas the neighborhoods that had previously resorted to restrictive covenants were middleclass and made up of groups that had come to the United States relatively early.

Town of Pullman

Never-theless, by 1960, blacks had begun to move into Roseland and, a little later, into North Pullman, where they rented apartments in the large buildings constructed in , 882 for laborers in the Allen Paper Wheel Company and the Union Foundry. South Pullman, with its individually owned homes, remained almost exclusively white.

No strong organization to preserve the community emerged until 1960, when a real-estate developer announced plans to raze the town and its historic buildings and make South Pullman into an industrial park. Residents of the area reacted by forming the Pullman Civic Organization and launching a campaign for landmark status. The Beman Committee for the Preservation of Historic Pullman publicized the architectural features of the neighborhood which qualified it as a landmark community. Gradually, newspaper accounts appeared, architectural walking tours were sponsored, and the reputation of Pullman underwent yet another change.

No longer the model company town, or the rundown community of the Thirties, South Pullman emerged in the 1960s as a distinctively urban neighborhood. It shared the concerns of other city neighborhoods-but it had its architecture and its planned streets and it Jacked the high density associated with "lakefront living."

Residents of the community thought that landmark status for South Pullman would result in a stable community-the same goal sought by George Pullman and the home owners of the 1930s. This time, however, the emphasis was not on the immigrant labor force or the racial background of home owners. Instead , members of the Pullman Civic Organization stressed the unique architectural features of their community as well as its excellent transportation links to the Loop. The result was that younger couples settled in the area and joined the established home owners in their campaign for landmark status.

The area under consideration for landmark status at the 1972 meeting in the Greenstone Church was only part of the original Town of

Pullman: four square blocks known as the South Pullman District which contained most of the public buildings of the town as well as the different kinds of homes Pullman provided for his workers. This area is bounded by 1, , th Street on the north, 115th Street on the south, Cottage Grove Avenue on the west, and the Calumet Expressway on the east.

In 1969, South Pullman was named an Illinois historic site, and in 1970 it was named a national landma rk di trict. But the crucial designation was that given by the city of Chicago in 1972, for without it, federal money for renovation could not be obtained.

The legacy of George Pullman is being preserved, finally, in a small part of Pullman. Landmark designation acknowledges the existence of the South Pullman District as a unique neighborhood within the city of Chicago, and it offers a solution to the problem of stability which plagued the town from its beginning. Not only has landmark status begun to revitalize the entire neighborhood of Pullman- North and South - but it assures the preservation of a portion of the town's architecture and, so, of part of Solon Beman's original plan.

C hicag o H i sto rical Soc iet y

Fifty Years Ago

As recorded by newspapers in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society.

1925 Mar. 2. In an opinion on the case of Philip Grossman, a Chicagoan whose jail sentence by a federal court was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the President possesses unlimited power to pardon persons found guilty by the courts.

Clients with personal injury suits against railroads are taught how to limp by attorneys William and James MacCallum, according to the lawyers' former secretary. She testifies that one of the brothers scolded an unsuccessful client, telling him, " It's your own fault. You couldn't walk convincingly enough."

Mar. 3. Chicagoan Jacob Schaefer regains the international billiards championship from Willie Hoppe at thr Congress Hotel, breaking four world's records in the process.

Chicago Tribune

Jacob Schaefer, demonstrating the style with which he regained the international billiards championship on Mar. 3.

54

Chicago History

Mar. 4. Newly inaugurated Vice-President Charles D awes lashes out at filibustering in his first address before the Senate. His hands shaking, Dawes demands to know_" who would dare maintain that, in the last analysis, the right of the Senate itself to act should ever be subordinated to the right of one senator to make a speech?" Typical senatorial reactions: "deplorable" and "comical."

Mar. 5. Plans for night air mail service between New York and Chicago, announced by Postmaster General Harry S. New, provide for next-morning delivery to addressees.

School Supt. William McAndrew urges a referendum on education, especia lly on raises for schoolteachrrs. Current starting salary for elementary school teachers is $1,500; for junior high school teachers, $1 ,800; and for high school teachers, $2,000. far. g. A wave of influenza and pneumonia kills 201 Chicagoans during thr first nine days of the month.

Mar. 12. Prohibition agents seize the- four-story plant of thr Chicago Box Specialty Company after finding nine million counterfeit liquor labels and over$ roo,ooo worth of bottles, many with the names of prestigious distillers blown into the glass.

Mar. 12. Jewish Congressman Adolph Sabath saves the day for Chicago's Irish when he succeed in getting a shipload of shamrocks through customs in New York City by suggesting that the soil be scraped from the plants, a ploy which satisfies a new law prohibiting the importation of growing plants.

Mar. 15. Twenty persons are hurt and at least as many arrested at the Garrick Theater, where a meeting called by socialist supporters of the deposed Alexander K erensky is interrupted by supporters of the Stalin regime. A hundred police reserves and detectives quell the ensuing riot.

M a r. 18. Two trains of doctors, nurses, and medical supplies rush to tornado-stri cken southern Illinois, where almost six hundred are dead

Dody News Collection Chicago Historical Society

Preparing for the first night air mail flight to New York.

See Mar. 5.

and over two thousand are injured. West Frankfort, where over one hundred are dead and eight hundred fifty injured, is hardest hit.

Mar. 21. Two convicted prohibition agents face four-year prison terms and fines up to $20,000 for their involvement in Chicago's $5,000,000 sacramental wine scandal. The scheme involved phony Jewish congregations, set up by rabbis who worked with liquor distributors and the prohibition agents.

Mar. 26. Chicago Civic Opera orchestra members receive an $8 a week pay boost and $5 for every practice session under their new contract, and Chicago Federation of Musicians President James Petrillo exults that they "now lead the world as being the best paid." The musicians' average salary will be about $155 a week - when they work.

1far. 28. The Chicago Tribun e moves into its new offices, which at 295.000 square feet are more than twice the area of the entire Union Tru~t Company Building, in which the paper had been located since 1902 . Among the hundreds who unsuccessfully submitted designs for the new Tribune Tower were Elie! Saarinen and Walter Gropius .

Apr. 3. Coroner Oscar Wolff announces that deaths by alcohol in Cook County were 400 percent higher in 1924 than in the year ending June 30, 1919, when Prohibition went into effect.

Chicago's Chinatown merrily celebrates an official peace between the On Leong and Hip Song tongs, ,.,.·hose bloody battles have resulted in over forty deaths nationwide, as incense burns in the tongs' halls to mourn the departed and long red prayer papers hang before alabaster altars.

Corn, wheat, and oat prices fall to their lowest levels of the year at the Board of Trade.

Wheat, which two months ago sold for $2 , hits $ 1.36½ as grain dealers seek to liquidate their holdings. Oats, down from 66¾¢ to 35¾¢, arc selling below the cost of production.

A policeman frisks a man in Chicago 's Chinatown before Apr. 3.

50 Years Ago

The Tribune Tower shortly before its completion.

Daily News Collection Ch i cago Historical Society

Apr. 4. Sen. William E. Borah tells the Izaak Walton League convention at the Hotel La Salle that the U.S. should forget internationalism and concentrate on problems in this country. Attacking loans and gifts to foreign countries, he declares, "we are building a bureaucratic form of government-the most expensive, the most burdensome, the most inefficient, and the most arbitrary form of government which has thus far ever been permitted to torture the human family."

Apr. 7. Chicagoans vote down Mayor William Dever's plans for municipal ownership and operation of transportation by a surprising 3-2 majority, as strong Democratic wards, such as Anton Cermak's 22nd and Patrick Nash's 28th, join the landslide against their nominal leader.

Apr. ro. Municipal Judge Howard Hayes returns records seized in a raid on Torrio-Capone headquarters on So. Michigan Ave. four days ago. The restored ledgers and other materials reveal the names of regular customers of bootlegged alcohol, bribed government officials and prohibition agents, and "disorderly resorts and their inmates."

Apr. 14. The largest crowd ever to witness an opening-day baseball game in Chicago--over 40,000-cram all available space to see the Cubs defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-2. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis is on hand to present flowers to the Cubs, including a flower-bedecked crutch for injured shortstop Rabbit Maranville.

April. 18. Henry Fernekes, who is reputed to have robbed fourteen Chicago banks of over a halfmillion dollars, is captured while peacefully reading a book on color photography at the Crerar Library. His response: "Get me Clarence Darrow."

Apr. 20. Since the first of the year, there have been r r 5 deaths by shooting, which authorities blame on cheap and easily obtainable handguns, weak statutes covering permits and concealed weapons, and the failure of judges to hand out maximum penalties.

Chicago Historical Society

Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of baseball, who presented flowers to the Cubs on opening day, Apr. 14.

Apr. 2 r. Police arrest Ma Streeter for violating almost three-quarters of the city's harbor laws, exactly one day after a federal court ruled that she has no right or title to any part of the Near North Side known as Streeterville. The court based its finding on the fact that the late Cap'n Streeter, in whose houseboat Ma is now living, did not legally divorce his previous wife before marrying Ma. Apr. 24. The number of scenes deleted from motion pictures tripled during 1924, reports Miss Alice Miller, president of the city's motion picture censor board. Sex, gunplay, and ridicule of religion are most often excised . The board's authority was upheld last month by an appellate court ruling involving The Deadwood Stage, starring Tom Mix. Apr. 25. The first Woman's World Fair closes after a successful eight-day run at the Furniture Mart. The fair featured over a hundred exhibits of women in business-including mining, agriculture, and plumbing-and drew over 200,000 visitors, including Gov. Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming and Vice-President Dawes.

Apr. 30. Movies around town include Madam Sans Gene, with Gloria Swanson; Riders of the Purple Sage, with Tom Mix; The Ragman, with Jackie Coogan ; A Kiss of Death, with Adolphe Menjou and Lillian Rich; Th e Cro wded Hour, with Bebe Daniels; Sally, with Colleen Moore; and Charley's Aunt, with Syd Chaplin.

On stage are Louis Mann in Milgram's Progress at Cohan's Grand, Eddie Dowling in Sally, Chicago History

57

50 Years Ago

Irene and Mary at the Garrick, the Marx Brothers in ''I'll Sa'y Sh e Is" at the Apollo, and Katherine Cornell and Leslie Howard in Th e Green Hat at the Selwyn. Among other current attractions: comedians Nat Nazarrow and Buck & Bubbles at the Rialto, mezzosoprano Clara Clemens at Kimball Hall, and the Sells-Floto Circus at the Coliseum.

May 2. Over ten thousand babies are entered in the National Baby Congress and Health Exposition ponsored by the Illinois State Medical Society. The "most perfect baby" will receive a $500 bank account.

May 4. "I can not believe, and I do not, that the officials elected by the voters to high offices in the county's service are stealing the taxpayers' funds by padded pay rolls," declares County Board President Anton Cermak in reply to charges by Board efficiency expert J. L. Jacobs that persons not appearing on time sheets have been paid full salaries.

May 7. Ground is broken for a $4,500,000 medical center at the University of Chicago. The

The DeKalb County Jail in Sycamore. Its special attractions were revealed on May 7.

complex will include a new hospital to be named for Albert Billings and the university's medica l school.

Sheriff E. E. Crawford of the DeKalb County Jail in Sycamore extols his prison, which features lace curtains on the windows, an exercise room, a nd the Blue Room-reserved for "the higher grade of federal prisoners"-where wealthy inmates may order special meals.

May 12. The eight-hour-day work bill for women fails to pass the Illinois House by four votes, capping a disastrous session for reformers.

Other important legislation defeated include labor's anti-injunction bill and the federal child labor amendment.

Secretary of Agriculture William M. Jardine threatens to revoke the charter of the Chicago Board of Trade in response to rumors that this year's wild price fluctuations were caused by the manipulation and cornering of markets.

J ardine hints at more federal regulation of trad ing in grain futures, including limiting the amo unt by which prices can change in a single day.

May 17. Chicago's new Union Station opens for business. The $60,000,000 structure was fi-

Doily News Collection Chicago Historical Society

na nced by fo ur railroads: the Chicago, Burli ngton a nd Quincy, the M ilwaukee a nd St. Paul, the Chicagâ&#x20AC;˘J a nd Alton, a nd the Pennsylvania R ailroad .

M ay 18. The Sa nitary District receives a pe rmi t to deepen a n eight-mile stretch of the Calumet a nd Little C alumet rivers between Lake C alumet a nd the Sag C a na l. The dredging will allow ba rges to travel from Lockport to South Chicago, speed construction of the h arbor at La ke Calumet, a nd reve rse the flow of the C alumet R iver.

M ay 22. The H orn & H ardart Com pany denies tha t it is phasing out its "au toma ts" in Chicago, a lthough th ree of its six have suddenly closed . The cha in has been successful in N ew York City, but Chicagoans have ra pidly lost interest in the newfa ngled cafeterias.

Union Station under construction. T he headhouse in the background was completed before the concourse, whic h opened to the public on May 17.

M ay 2 6 . K ojo Tova lou-Houenuv, prince of the African kingdom of D ahomey, sees Chicago's ight Court in ac tion- as a defenda nt- after a brawl a t Schulder's Seafood Inn, but is reieased after cha rging tha t Chicago police beat him blood y when he questioned the Inn's right to refu se him service .

M ay 29 . R eceivers for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Pa ul R ai lroad a nnoun ce they will defa ult on bonds a nd interest worth almost $49,000,000, signaling the railroad's foreclo sure. The railroad blames depressed business a nd agricultural conditions in the Northwest, competition from wa ter transporta tion, and ri sing costs of labor a nd materials.

Chica go History

59

Books

Who Out There Is Reading Our Reviews?

"THERE WAS A TIME, and now it's all gone by," when the book reviews published in Chicago were read all over the country. The very thought makes one dream a little.

Particularly an editor of Chicago History, which doesn't have one eternal headache suffered even in those halcyon days. Our pages are not paid for by advertisers, so the size of our book-review section remains stable. And another, new, and growing headache (most would call it migraine) is alleviated because the scope of our magazine is limited. Praise God, British poets and Henry James' correspondence and Heller's new novel do not fall within our purview.

Still, by one estimate, r 5,ooo ti tics were published last fall alone, and far too many were about Chicago or the Midwest or by or about Chicagoans or important Midwest subjects. A raft of them were books about antiques and handicrafts, which we know interest our members because they buy so many at our museum shop. But some hard bookreview lines were already drawn before I arrived : no antiques or handicrafts, unless of regional interest; no fiction; and no general, as opposed to regional, American history.

I do cheat a little, but only when I feel I must.

And chafe as I may at restriction , the sad truth is that eligible review copies pile up all over the place while we wring our hands.

Becoming a quarterly has helped. Adding brief reports has helped, although it means that some important books get shorter shrift than they deserve.

A case in point is Art, Graf ts, and Architecture in Early Illinois, a beautiful, well-researched, and stimulating book reviewed by John Vinci in this issue.

Group reviews have also helped, but grouping books is not a simple matter in these days when so many authors are crossing over traditional subjectmatter lines. Take Carl Condit's Chicago: r 910-29 .

Most Chicago papers and magazines gave that fine book to historians, economists, or g<'ncral reviewerswith the unfortunate result that it wasn't understood ( some reviewers even said so) and therefore met with an unenthusiastic response. We decided it was architectural history and grouped it with books on architecture: our critic understood it and praised it highly. Comes his second volume Chicago: 1930-70, and what do we have? Urban history, that's what.

The urban historian we gave it to loved it.

Our special reviewers often help us to decide how

60

Chicago History

to group books, sending back one that doesn't belong or asking for another that does. Sometimes, though, they reject a book because of its title: when we send it anyway, they sometimes agree that it docs belong.

A book's title, or the name of its author, has become what its cover has always been-nothing by which to judge it.

One of the eternal problems that we do share with other book pages is the "nice guy" reviewer. These people are everywhere-on newspapers and in belleslettres. Wilfred Sheed, writing recently about Cyril Connolly, said: "He had never been a good critic, because among other things, he could not pan a friend. (I know this seems a barbarous test, but without it, everything comes unstuck ... ) " Let me illustrate how this particular headache works.

In the very first issue of the magazine of which I had charge, a new history of Illinois was reviewed.

The book got rave notices, and yet privately most knowledgeable people were noting that it had its limitations. There were two small problems about saying so in print. The usual one, that the author had friends, was compounded by the fact that the Foreword was written by our own beloved ex-director Paul M. Angle. Everybody who knows Paul loves him, and he knows everybody. We finally got a balanced review, rather than a rave- from an historian who has left the state and who told me, on the telephone, that he does not intend to return.

In the very same issue, I reviewed a book written by a friend of then-director Clement Silvestro; in fact, he called my attention to it. It was a poor book, and I panned it. To cap the climax, a member of our own staff wrote a book reviewed in that issue.

Fortunately, it was enjoyable. She thanked me for the review, but the two directors never said a word.

This is my first chance to thank them and, while I am at it, Bob Cromie, one of the nicest guys ever, who advised me to stick to my guns while all these harrowing decisions were being made. Subsequently, and inevitably, a reviewer panned a book written by a friend of mine in our magazine- a book I liked, to boot. It's the only panning that particular book ever had, but the reviewer knew whereof she spoke and it proves, to invert an old saying, that what's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.

One important book, written by a black author, never got reviewed at all, partly because it involved the question of who was qualified to review it. Privately, everyone agreed that the book was awful; still, everyone raved about it in their reviews and editors put it on their small "recommended" lists.

The author has such clout that I couldn't find any qualified person, in any state of the Union, willing to say in print what they read with their own eyes.

On this one, I went to Ivan Dee, a publisher and editor, and a book reviewer of considerable experience. He could recommend a white reviewer, but the book was about black experience and I was looking for a black reviewer. He didn't agree, and he translated my requirement into a simpler formatthe women's movement: "Isabel, do you mean if you wrote a book, I couldn't review it ?" Fortunately, I had brought the matter up quickly instead of over coffee, the more traditional moment, and thus had

time to reflect. I remembered Caitlin Thomas' Lef l over Life to Live, a book describing how she thrashed around in torment and sin after Dylan died-a confession, if you will-and all the reviewers were males who decided she had always hated her husband. And I said, "No. If I write a book about being a woman, I would want a woman to review it." So that book by a black author was never reviewed by us. And my judgement has recently been reinforced by a newer, nice and tame book about widowhood which the male re';'iewers loved and which many husbands I know bought for their wives. Now comes a new biography of Emily Dickinson, by a man, reviewed only by men to my kn owledge, and everyone agrees that her poetry is "difficult." Her poetry, that speaks so immediately to women!

So we look for reviewers who are qualified by being who they are as well as what they know, and we ask them for honest reviews. Nor do we spare our publishing and editing friends when they do a sloppy job. Credit is given when it is due, and a rave review is not unusual. Ellen Skerrett and I continue to work to create the space, by what we hope is sensible eva luation, for books important enough to tell our readers about or to warn them against. In the reviews, we define a book's aud ience when it is more limited than the title suggests, so our readers won't waste their money. We try-hard.

But is anyone out there reading our reviews? Readers of the magazine sometimes write ( they love it or we got their great-grandfather's middle initial wrong), they sometimes call (they stayed up too late reading the new issue or where can they buy the map on page r 4), but the only person I ever heard from about a book review was my friend whose book was panned. And even he took the trouble to inform me that he hadn't read the review until his publisher called him up about it .

Let's hear from you. If you disagree with our choices of books to review, or with the opinions expressed, you are entitled to say so. If there's something you like, well, frankly, we would welcome the encouragement. Can we have a few letters to the editor from those silent book lovers out there?

Isabel S. Grossner

The American Working Class of simplistic and moralizing writings on the working class, perpetrated mostly by sociologists, there are two works I am happy to recommend. In The Working Class Majority, Andrew Levison destroys the myth that the white working class is an IN A WELTER

The Working Class Majority, by Andrew Levison, Coward. McCann & Geoghegan, 1974, 8.95; Blue Collar Community, by William Kornblum, University of Chicago Press, 197 4 , . 9.95; False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness, by Stanley Aronowitz, McGraw-Hill, 1973, $3.95; The Deadly Simple Mechanics of Society, by John Helmer, Seabury Press, 1974, 9.95; Radicals in Urban Politics: The Alimky A/Jproach, by Robert Bailey, Jr., University of Chicago Press, 1974, $9.95.

affluent, racist, reactionary, and politically impotent minority. Poverty is still a problem. Workers are still an im portant political force. Most Americans are not white-collar workers: American workers are a class aparl with real and legitimate problems and discontents. And unlike the abstract paper coalitions of wildly disparate groups which liberals have proposed, they are united by common interests and constitute a majority of the American people.

Levison's second chapter reads likr a brief version of Rachel Scott's powerful Muscle and Blood, which is the best treatment of the dangers of blue-collar work to date. Manua l labor is dirty, dangerous, and frequently boring. If social theorists had to conform to the worker's regimen, he observes, their ideas might change: . the professor would begin to understand how the factory worker feels if he had to type the same single paragraph from 9:00 to 5:00 every day of the week .

Instead of setting the pace himself, the professor's typewriter carriage shou ld begin to mo\'e at 9:00 and continue at a steady rate until 5:00 . The professor's job would be at stake if his typing did not keep up the pace.

Levison also comprehends the techniques of compromise and coalition available in our society: . blue-collar workers can be a force for progress in America. There is clearly a wide range of issues where the real interests of workers, blacks, and liberals coincide and the basis for alliance exists.

His is a pragmatic understanding of the way human groups ebb and flow together to work out solutions to common problems. He has examined the data about workers instead of conjecturing about their att it udes, and his appea l for the formation of interest-based coal itions is eloquent.

William Kornblum's Blue Collar Community is everything a community study should be; an ideal book for anyone who wants to learn how a workingclass community operates. A student who was born and raised in South Chicago said that it was "Amazing, that's exactly how things happen there!" Strong praise for a sociological book.

Blue Collar Community is about South Chicago's steel-mill district and the people who live there. Kornblum, a keen observer and an articulate writer, has given us a book which is not only informative but also very readable and interesting. The social processes of neighborhoods such as Bessemer Park, the Bush, South Chicago, Millgate, Irondale, and Slag Valley come alive and the people seem very real to us .

Kornblum describes the ethnic sett lement patterns of the area and then proceeds to a fascinating description of millwork and its impact on primary group for mation and political organization within the neighborhood. Ralph, a Polish-American railroad man, is speaking: I'm not the kind of person who likes to talk about work after it's over. What I like is politics. You take Tom, Chicago History

61

Books

though, he's one of those guys who can talk forever about railroading, and Mike (the tavern owner) gets worked up about the Serbian churches and the arguments they have with the DP's. Of course Mike loves ward politics, and me and him have brought Tom into the organization as a precinct captain when he wanted some farnrs for his mother's building on the East Side.

Now with us and some of the Mexicans in here who work precincts in Irondale you have a group of people who know the politics of the ward real well.

Abstract terms such as "shared experiences" and "common consciousness" come alive in such conversation.

Union politics dominate the second part of Kornblum ·s book. Again, the author's power of observation and expression clarify the central issue: Young union leaders in South Chicago are actively seeking ways to educate the rank and file on issues of housing. education, and control over the now of work.

But the underlying issues of their campaigns continue to center upon the succession to union leadership by various ethnic and racial groups.

Kornblum understands this community and these people. There are no vague references to the oppression of the marketplace; instead, there is clear de cription and analysis of how people from many diverse backgrounds and with divergent self-interests arrive at an agreement to work in a common cause.

They do it slowly. By trial and error, they have discovered that this is the way to win, this is the way to get what they want from the "system."

Levison and Kornblum each tell us something of what it means to be totally dependmt upon manual labor for sustenance: Levison dealing with generalities and Kornblum with the specifics. Together, these books arc required reading for anyone who would understand the processes operating·within the American working class.

The remaining works either seem na·ivc or fail to consider several crucial dimensions of working-class life.

False Promises, by Stanley Aronowitz, promises to lead us on an exploration, but it turns out to be into a blind alley:

The fundamental question to be explored in this book is why the working class in America remains a dependent force in society and what the conditions are that may reverse this situation.

At the end of his rather long trek he concludes that what is needed is a new kind of radical involvement between the left and the working class: The task of a radical mm·ement among the workers is to he lp create a new working class "public," in the classical sense of the term, that is, a group that participates in public life in accordance with its self-conscious in terests.

62

Chicago History

The author admonishes radicals not to get involved with "vanguard" politics, but to engage with members of the working class in reflection, self-criticism, and consciousness-raising. In other words the working class isn't conscious of its interests yet, but it can be made so.

The author defines the working class as dependent and without the capacity to act in its own behalf.

Ethnic loyalties are perceived as drstructive of class consciousness. Just how Aronowitz justifies his presumptions is never revealed.

To\,·ard the conclusion, he provides a description of the modern American worker: The present generation of workers is qualitatively different from any in the history o[ American capitalism.

It has shared the transcendence of ethnicity, the distance from scarcity, the partial recognition that consumerism is insufficient lo o,·ercome the alienation of bureaucrat·ically rationalized labor, and the experience of having been incompletely socialized by the weakening of institutions and ideologies upon which capitalism relies for its survival.

Each of us can evaluate this drscription independently; personally, I find it an incredible oversimplification. False Promises is a good title for this work, which is really an exercise in conjerturr and prophecy.

The Deadly Simple Mechanics of Societ)', by John Helmer, takes its name from the thrre principles which, according to the author, undrrlie the driving moti\'ations of our society- force , fraud, and subversion:

In some places at some time it can happen that men will fight for the Joye and protection of their homeland, or that their productivity will be motivated by moral rather than material incenti,·cs, or that their political acti,·ity will mean something vital to them. These things can happeu. but in American society force, fraud, and sub\'ersion order and regulate eYerything we know of as social behavior-the conforming and the de\·iant, the right and the wrong.

Helmer's title is a pun. "l\fechanics" can mean the principlrs by which society operates; it can mean the working cla s; or it can mean the professional sociologists who are, according to Helmer, responsible for maintaining the myths about the working class.

Almost all of \,·hat Helmer says about ociologists and their training is true. Thrre is a strong elite within the profession and it docs tend to dominate sociology. Howe\'er, it is cxtrrmely dubious that they have power in the larger society. When Helmer discusses the sociological profession, he is often extremely accurate and insightful; when he discusses social theory he becomes arrogant. Most would agree \\ith Helmer that justice is an important goal, but his solution, cast in terms of irrationally motivated conflict, is imply unacceptable.

Robert Bailey, Jr.'s, book Radicals in Urban Politics is the report of a survey and some participant observation in a west-side Chicago neighborhood. It focuses on the Organization for a Better Austin as an example of Saul Alinsky's controversial approach to

community orga nizmg. It is an adequate guidebook to this particular organ ization, although Bailey writes, with a surp rised pen, that Alinsky isn't the communistic monster that people thought he was. However, there have been many organizations in Chicago created by Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation, such as The Back of the Yards Council, The Woodlawn Organization, and the Northwest Community Organization, and it has been quite a while since any responsible commentator has labeled them communistic or even radical. Bailey seems to be beating a dead horse.

As research into an urban neighborhood, this book falls short of the mark. Th<' surv<'y used in Austin did not even ask about the religion of the respondents nor did it include anyth ing about thC'ir ethn ic heritage.

As a general rule, a study of a Chicago neighborhood that n<'giccts such factors mu t b<' far from complete.

William C. McCready

William C. McCready is senior study director at the National Opinion Research Center of the Un iversity of Chicago and assistant professor of sociology at Loyola University.

he has packed a lot of information into it. Ile discusses the history of the parks, the rides, and the concessions, but half the book is an up-to-date inventory of where the parks a re and what to expect. To compile it, he sometimes had to get to know the workers or take a job himself. Those WC'r<' genC'rally the worst places, and he warns you about them. Put it in the car the next time your family go<'s travding.

You'll have more fun and save yoursdf money and disa ppointmcnts.

I. S. G.

Henry B. Fuller of Chicago

by Bernard R. Bowron, Jr .

Greenwood, 1974. $12.50.

A COMPLETE BIOGRAPHY of the novelist and book critic whose works were overshadowed by H enry J ames and William Dean Howells, this book also has interesting material on the Chicago R enaissance. At this price, however, the casual reader should look elsewhere for enjoyment.

F.

J. N.

To Life

Brief Reports Art, Crafts, and Architecture in Early Illinois

by Bett')' I. Madden Published b) the Li ni,·. of Ill. Press in cooperation with the Ill. State Museum, 1974. $19.50.

Art, Graf ts, and Architecture in Early Illinois is a carefully researched and handsomely illustrated survey of our artisans and the artifacts they created from prehistoric times to 1860. We recommend it heartily. Ms. Madden gives us exciting persp<'ctives on amazingly varied sites of social and cultural significance. One can't wait to visit them.

John Vinci

No Cheering in the Press Box R ecorded and ed. b,• Jerome H oltzman Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974. $7.95. remarkably free of sentimentality, which records the words of eighteen famous sportswriters who debunk old myths (and probably also create new ones) as they talk about the more human aspects of sports that they were never permitted to report in their columns. Chicagoans will enjoy the intervi ews with ex-Tribune writers George Strickler -who claims to have first applied the expression "Four Horsemen" to Notre' Dame's backfield-and Ed Prell, as he recounts his days with sports "impresario" Arch Ward.

Frederick J. Nachman AN ORAL HISTORY,

"Step Right Up, Folks!"

by Al Griffin Regnery, 1974. $8.95.

GRIFFIN FELL in lov<' with amus<'m<'nt parks as a kid at C hi cago's Riverview (sec his art icle), and later worked there. This book was right up his alley, and

by Elmer Gertz McGraw-Hill, 1974. $7.95.

ONCE -OVER-LIGHTLY memoir that does justice neither to Elmer Gertz's profes ional rarPer as a libel lawyer and foe of capita l punishment, nor to his personal life as husband, father, and grandfather. Instead of a look at the inner man, To Li/ e is a selfportrait with character references by Henry Miller and Harry Truman plus a host of Chicago's famous, ranging from Nathan Leopold to Carl Sandburg.

Ellen Skerrett A

Museums of Illinois

by Mary J o Whittaker Weekends, 1974. $3. on Illinois is needed, but this paperback is too uneven to fill the bill. Ripl ey's Believe-It-or-Not Museum receives more space than Chicago's Art Institute! And a lthough small museums and historic houses are amp ly treated, some of the most interesting highlights of the larger institutions are unfortunately omitted .

Sarajane Wells

A GOOD HANDBOOK

Ships of the Great Lakes: 300 Years of Navigation

by Jam es P. Barry Howell-North, 1973. S10to cover navigation on the Great Lakes in 256 pages must be a scholar, an enthu iast, an d an optimist. ·withal, Barry has succeeded rather well. H ere is a miscellany of lake lore, most of it reliable, some of it a bit controversial, all of it fascinating. A must for the sailing ship expert and the steamboat buff.

A. A. Dornfeld

ANYONE ATTEMPTING

Chicago History

63

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

OFFICERS

Theodore Tieken, President Stewart S. Dixon, 1st Vice-President James R. Getz, 2nd Vice-President Gardner H. Stern, Treasurer Bryan S. Reid, Jr., Secretary

DIRECTOR Harold K. Skramstad, Jr. 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 almost entirely by income from its endowment, by contributions, and by membrrships. Mrmbrrship is open to anyone interested in the Society's activities and objectives. Classes of membership and durs 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 fun ctions held by the Society, and periodic notice of new exhibitions. Members and their immediate families arr admitted free to th e museum at all times.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

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

The widely copied Chute -the Chutes nt Riverview Perk , which Itself was copl d from Coney lslnnd .

Chlcooo H is t, r1col Snt e ty

rho t4 bv Pov

J

~pie,

CH MOOS

I

1111!1 11111111111111111111il/1I11111111