I
A FATEFUL Titan, brooding over a mammoth chess-board, now cautious in his moves as he shifts his myriad pigmies, now daring, but always resolute, clear-eyed, steady of hand, and with no thought but victory—as such a figure Rodin might have visualized twentieth-century Chicago.
Chicago is not a baby and utters no bleating cry that it is “misunderstood,” and yet a great many people have not only misunderstood or misinterpreted it but have expressed their dislike with hearty frankness. To many visitors Chicago is a city of dreadful night, to be explored as hurriedly as possible with outward-bound ticket clenched tightly in hand. But Chicago may not be comprehended in the usual scamper of the tourist; for the interesting thing about this city is the people, and they require time. I do not, of course, mean that they are all worthy of individual scrutiny, but rather that the very fact of so many human beings collecting there, living cheerfully and harmoniously, laboring and aspiring and illustrating the pressing, changing problems of our democracy awakens at once the beholder’s sympathetic interest. Chicago is not New York, nor is it London or Paris: Chicago is different. The Chicagoan will convince you of this if you fail to see it; the point has been conceded by a great number of observers from all quarters, but not in just the same spirit in which the citizen speaks of it.
Both inspired and uninspired critics have made Chicago the subject of a considerable literature that runs the gamut of anxious concern, dismal apprehension, dismay, and disgust. Mr. Kipling saw the city embodied as a girl arrayed in a costume of red and black, shod in red shoes sauntering jauntily down the gory aisle of a slaughter-house. Mr. H. G. Wells boasts that he refrained from visiting the packing-houses owing to what he describes as his immense “repugnance to the killing of fixed and helpless animals.” He reports that he saw nothing of those “ill-managed, ill-inspected establishments,” though he “smelt the unwholesome reek from them over and over again,” and observed with trepidation “the enormous expanse and intricacy of railroads that net this great industrial desolation.” Chicago’s pressing need, he philosophizes, is discipline—a panacea which he generously prescribes not only for all that displeased him in America, but for Lancashire, South and East London, and the Pas de Calais. “Each man,” he ruminates, “is for himself, each enterprise; there is no order, no prevision, no common and universal plan.” I have cheerfully set down this last statement to lighten my own burdens, for by reversing it one may very happily express the real truth about Chicago. Instead of the “shoving unintelligent proceedings of under-bred and morally obtuse men,” great numbers of men and women of the highest intelligence are constantly directing their talents toward the amelioration of the very conditions that grieved Mr. Wells.
Chicago may, to be sure, be dismissed in a few brilliant phrases as the black pit of perdition, the jumping-off place of the world; but to the serious-minded American the effort making there for the common uplift is too searching, too intelligent, too sincere, for sneers. I fancy that in view of events that have occurred in Europe since his visit to America Mr. Wells would be less likely to rest his case against Chicago on the need of discipline alone. All that discipline may do for a people had been achieved by the Imperial German Government when the Kaiser started for Paris in 1914; but subjection, obedience, even a highly developed efficiency are not the whole of the law and the prophets. Justice and mercy are finer things, and nothing in Chicago is more impressive or encouraging than the stubborn purpose of many citizens who are neither foolish nor ignorant to win and establish these twain for the whole. It is an unjust and ungenerous assumption that Chicago is unaware of its needs and dangers, or that from year to year no gains are made in the attempt to fuse and enlighten the mass. It is the greatest laboratory that democracy has known. The very fact that so much effort must go into experiment, that there are more than two and a half million distinct units to deal with, with a resulting confusion in needs and aims, adds not merely to the perplexity but to the fascination of the social and political enigma. There is, quite definitely, a thing called the Chicago spirit, a thing compounded of energy, faith, and hope—and again energy! Nor is the energy all spent upon the material and sordid, for the fine, arresting thing is the tremendous vim this lusty young giant among the world’s cities brings to the solution of its problems—problems that deserve to be printed in capitals out of respect for their immensity and far-reaching importance to the national life. Chicago does not walk around her problems, but meets them squarely and manfully. The heart of the inquirer is won by the perfect candor with which the Chicagoan replies to criticism; the critic is advised that for every evil there is a remedy; indeed, that some agency is at work on that particular thing at that particular moment. This information is conveyed with a smile that expresses Chicago’s faith and hope—a smile that may be a little sad and wistful—but the faith and the hope are inescapably there.
Chicago is the industrial and financial clearing-house, the inspirational centre of the arts, and the playground for 50,000,000 people. The pilgrim who lands on the lake shore with an open mind and a fair understanding of what America is all about—the unprejudiced traveller—is immediately conscious that here, indeed, is a veritable capital of democracy.
Every night three hundred or more sleeping-cars bear approximately 4,500 persons toward this Western metropolis on journeys varying from five to twelve hours in length. From innumerable points it is a night’s run, and any morning one may see these pilgrims pouring out of the railway-stations, dispersing upon a thousand errands, often concluded in time for the return trip between six o’clock and midnight. At times one wonders whether all the citizens of the tributary provinces have not gathered here at once, so great is the pressure upon hotel space, so thronged the streets. The sleeping-car holds no terrors for the Westerner. He enjoys the friendship of the train-crews; the porters—many of them veterans of the service—call him by name and in addressing them he avoids the generic “George,” which the travelling salesman applies to all knights of the whisk-broom, and greets them by their true baptismal appellations of Joshua or Obadiah. Mr. George Ade has threatened to organize a “Society for the Prevention of the Calling of Sleeping-Car Porters George”!
The professional or business man rises from his meagre couch refreshed and keen for adventure and, after a strenuous day, returns to it and slumbers peacefully as he is hurled homeward. The man from Sioux City or Saint Joe who spends a day here does not crawl into his berth weary and depressed, but returns inspired and cheered and determined to put more vim into his business the next morning. On the homeward trail, eating supper in company with the neighbors he finds aboard, he dilates eloquently upon the wonders of the city, upon its enterprise, upon the heartiness with which its business men meet their customers. Chicago men work longer hours than their New York brethren and take pride in their accessibility. It is easier to get a hearing in high quarters in any field of endeavor in Chicago than in New York; there is less waiting in the anteroom, and a better chance of being asked out for lunch.
The West is proud of Chicago and loves it with a passionate devotion. Nor is it the purpose of these reflections to hint that this mighty Mecca is unworthy of the adoration of the millions who turn toward it in affection and reverence. Chicago not only draws strength from a vast territory but, through myriad agencies and avenues, sends back a mighty power from its huge dynamo. It is the big brother of all lesser towns, throwing an arm about Davenport and Indianapolis, Springfield and Columbus, and manifesting a kindly tolerance toward St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Cleveland, whose growth and prosperity lift them to a recognized and respected rivalry.
Chicago is the big brother of all lesser towns.
The intense loyalty of the Chicagoan to his city is one of his most admirable characteristics and the secret of his city’s greatness. He is proud even of the Chicago climate, which offers from time to time every variety of weather known to meteorology and is capable of effecting combinations utterly new to this most fascinating of sciences. Chicago’s coldest day of record was in 1872, when the minus registration was 23; the hottest in 1901, when the mercury rose to 103. Such excesses are followed by contrition and repentance and days of ethereal mildness. The lake serves as a funnel down which roar icy blasts direct from the hyperboreans. The wind cuts like a scythe of ice swung by a giant. In summer the hot plains pour in their burning heat; or, again, when it pleases the weather-god to produce a humid condition, the moisture-charged air is stifling. But a Chicagoan does not mind the winter, which he declares to be good for body and soul; and, as for the heat, he maintains—and with a degree of truth to sustain him—that the nights are always cool. The throngs that gathered in Chicago for the Republican and the Progressive conventions in June, 1916, were treated to a diversity of weather, mostly bad. It was cold; it rained hideously. There were dismal hours of waiting for reports of the negotiations between the two bodies of delegates in which the noblest oratory failed to bring warmth and cheer. Chicago did her worst that week, but without serious impairment of her prestige as the greatest convention city in the world. Every one said, “Isn’t this just like Chicago!” and inquired the way to the nearest quinine.
“The Windy City” is a descriptive sobriquet. There are not only cold winds and hot winds of the greatest intensity, but there are innumerable little gusts that spring up out of nowhere for no other conceivable purpose than to deposit dust or cinders in the human eye. There is a gesture acquired by all Chicagoans—a familiar bit of calisthenics essential to the preservation of head-gear. If you see a man pursuing his hat in a Chicago street you may be sure that he is an outsider; the native knows by a kind of prescience just when the fateful breeze is coming, prepares for it, and is never caught unawares. In like manner the local optic seems to be impregnable to persistent attacks of the omnipresent cinder. By what means the eyeball of a visitor becomes the haven for flying débris, while the native-born walks unscathed, is beyond my philosophy. It must be that the eye of the inhabitant is trained to resist these malevolent assaults and that the sharp-edged cinder spitefully awaits an opportunity to impinge upon the defenseless optic of passing pilgrims. The pall of smoke miraculously disappears at times and the cinder abandons its depredations. The sky may be as blue over Chicago as anywhere else on earth. The lake shimmers like silk and from brown, near shore, runs away to the horizon through every tint of blue and green and vague, elusive purples.