ILLUSTRATIONS
| Michigan Avenue, Chicago, from the steps of the Art Institute | [ Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | |
| “Ten days of New York, and it’s me for my home town” | [ 6] |
| Art exhibits ... now find a hearty welcome | [ 20] |
| The Municipal Recreation Pier, Chicago | [ 66] |
| Types and Diversions | [ 74] |
| On a craft plying the waters of Erie I found all the conditions of a happy outing and types that it is always a joy to meet | [ 78] |
| The Perry Monument at Put-in Bay | [ 80] |
| A typical old homestead of the Middle West | [ 100] |
| Students of agriculture in the pageant that celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Ohio State University | [ 114] |
| A feeding-plant at “Whitehall,” the farm of Edwin S. Kelly, near Springfield, Ohio | [ 120] |
| Judging graded shorthorn herds at the American Royal Live Stock Show in Kansas City | [ 132] |
| Chicago is the big brother of all lesser towns | [ 142] |
| The “Ham Fair” in Paris is richer in antiquarian loot, but Maxwell Street is enough; ’twill serve! | [ 152] |
| Banquet given for the members of the National Institute of Arts and Letters | [ 176] |
| There is a death-watch that occupies front seats at every political meeting | [ 194] |
| The Political Barbecue | [ 198] |
THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY
France evoked from the unknown the valley that may, in more than one sense, be called the heart of America.... The chief significance and import of the addition of this valley to the maps of the world, all indeed that makes it significant, is that here was given (though not of deliberate intent) a rich, wide, untouched field, distant, accessible only to the hardiest, without a shadowing tradition or a restraining fence, in which men of all races were to make attempt to live together under rules of their own devising and enforcing. And as here the government of the people by the people was to have even more literal interpretation than in that Atlantic strip which had traditions of property suffrage and church privilege and class distinctions, I have called it the “Valley of the New Democracy.”
—John H. Finley: “The French in the Heart of America.”
THE VALLEY OF DEMOCRACY