The Valley of Democracy

by Meredith Nicholson

V

Anno Urbis Conditæ may not be appended to any year in the chronicles of a city that has so repeatedly rebuilt itself and that goes cheerfully on demolishing yesterday’s structures to make way for the nobler achievements of to-morrow. While the immediate effect of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1892-3 was to quicken the civic impulse and arouse Chicago to a sense of her own powers, a lasting and concrete result is found in the ambition inspired by the architectural glories of the fair to invoke the same arts for the city’s permanent beautification. The genius of Mr. Daniel H. Burnham, who waved the magic wand that summoned “pillared arch and sculptured dome” out of flat prairie and established “the White City” to live as a happy memory for many millions in all lands, was enlisted for the greater task. Without the fair as a background the fine talents of Mr. Burnham and his collaborator, Mr. Edward H. Bennett, might never have been exercised upon the city. Chicago thinks in large terms, and being properly pleased with the demonstration of its ability to carry through an undertaking of heroic magnitude it immediately sought other fields to conquer. The fair had hardly closed its doors before Mr. Burnham and Mr. Bennett were engaged by the Commercial Club to prepare comprehensive plans for the perpetuation of something of the charm and beauty of the fairy city as a permanent and predominating feature of Chicago. Clearly what served so well as a temporary matter might fill the needs of all time. The architects boldly attacked the problem of establishing as the outer line, the façade of the city, something distinctive, a combination of landscape and architecture such as no other American city has ever created out of sheer pride, determination, and sound taste. Like the æsthetic problems, the practical difficulties imposed by topography, commercial pre-emptions, and legal embarrassments were intrusted only to competent and sympathetic hands. The whole plan, elaborated in a handsome volume published in 1909, with the effects contemplated happily anticipated in the colored drawings of Mr. Jules Guérin, fixed definitely an ideal and a goal.

This programme was much described and discussed at the time of its inception, and I had ignorantly assumed that it had been neglected in the pressure of matters better calculated to resound in bank clearings, but I had grossly misjudged the firmness of the Chicago fibre. The death of Mr. Burnham left the architectural responsibilities of the work in the very capable hands of Mr. Bennett. The Commercial Club, an organization of highest intelligence and influence, steadfastly supported the plan until it was reinforced by a strong public demand for its fulfilment. The movement has been greatly assisted by Mr. Charles H. Wacker, president of the plan commission and the author of a primer on the subject that is used in the public schools. Mr. Wacker’s vigorous propaganda, through the press and by means of illustrated lectures in school and neighborhood houses, has tended to the democratizing of what might have passed as a fanciful scheme of no interest to the great body of the people.

With singular perversity nature vouchsafed the fewest possible aids to the architect for the embellishment of a city that had grown to prodigious size before it became conscious of its artistic deficiencies. The lake washes a flat beach, unbroken by any islanded bay to rest the eye, and the back door is level with limitless prairie. There is no hill on which to plant an acropolis, and the Chicago River (transformed into a canal by clever engineering) offered little to the landscape-architect at any stage of its history. However, the distribution of parks is excellent, and they are among the handsomest in the world. These, looped together by more than eighty miles of splendid boulevards, afford four thousand acres of open space. The early pre-emption of the lake front by railroad-tracks added to the embarrassments of the artist, but the plan devised by Messrs. Burnham and Bennett conceals them by a broadening of Grant Park that cannot fail to produce an effect of distinction and charm. Chicago has a playful habit of driving the lake back at will, and it is destined to farther recessions. When the prodigious labors involved in the plan are completed the lake may be contemplated across green esplanades, broken by lagoons; peristyles and statuary will be a feature of the transformed landscape. The new Field Museum is architecturally consonant with the general plan; a new art museum and other buildings are promised that will add to the variety and picturesqueness of the whole. With Michigan Avenue widened and brought into harmony with Grant Park, thus extended and beautified and carried across the river northward to a point defined at present by the old water-tower (one of Chicago’s few antiquities), landscape architecture will have set a new mark in America. The congestion of north and south bound traffic on Michigan Avenue will be relieved by a double-decked bridge, making possible the classification of traffic and the exclusion of heavy vehicles from the main thoroughfare. All this is promised very soon, now that necessary legislation and legal decisions are clearing the way. The establishment of a civic centre, with a grouping of public buildings that would make possible further combinations in keeping with those that are to lure the eye at the lakeside is projected, but may be left for another generation to accomplish.

Chicago’s absorption in social service and well-planned devices for taking away the reproach of its ugliness is not at the expense of the grave problems presented by its politics. Here again the inquirer is confronted by a formidable array of citizens, effectively organized, who are bent upon making Chicago a safe place for democracy. That Chicago shall be the best-governed city in America is the aspiration of great numbers of men and women, and one is struck once more not merely by the energy expended in these matters but by the thoroughness and far-sightedness of the efforts for political betterment. Illinois wields so great an influence in national affairs that strictly municipal questions suffer in Chicago as in every other American city where the necessities of partisan politics constantly obscure local issues. The politics of Chicago is bewilderingly complicated by the complexity of its governmental machinery.

It is staggering to find that the city has not one but, in effect, twenty-two distinct governing agencies, all intrusted with the taxing power! These include the city of Chicago, a board of education, a library board, the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, the county government of Cook County, the sanitary district of Chicago, and sixteen separate boards of park commissioners. The interests represented in these organizations are, of course, identical in so far as the taxpaying citizen is concerned. An exhaustive report of the Chicago Bureau of Public Efficiency published in January, 1917, reaches the conclusion that “this community is poorly served by its hodgepodge of irresponsible governing agencies, not only independent of one another but often pulling and hauling at cross-purposes. A single governing agency, in which should be centred all the local administrative and legislative functions of the community, but directly responsible to the voters, would be able to render services which existing agencies could not perform nearly so well, if at all, even if directed by officials of exceptional ability. The present system, however, instead of attracting to public employment men of exceptional ability, tends to keep them out, with the result that the places are left at the disposal of partisan-spoils political leaders.”

The waste entailed by this multiplication of agencies and resulting diffusion of power and responsibility is illustrated by the number of occasions on which the citizen is called upon to register and vote. The election expenses of Chicago and Cook County for 1916 were more than two million dollars, an increase of one hundred per cent in four years. This does not, of course, take account of the great sums expended by candidates and party organizations, or the waste caused by the frequent interruptions to normal business. Chicago’s calendar of election events for 1918 includes opportunities for registration in February, March, August, and October; city primaries in February; general primaries in September; a city election in April; and a general election in November.

Under the plan of unified government proposed by the Bureau of Efficiency there would be but three regular elections in each four-year period, two biennial elections for national and State officials, and one combined municipal and judicial election. A consolidation and reform of the judicial machinery of Cook County and Chicago is urged by the bureau, which complains that the five county courts and the municipal court of Chicago, whose functions are largely concurrent, cost annually two and a quarter million. There are six separate clerks’ offices and a small army of deputy sheriffs and bailiffs to serve these courts, with an evident paralleling of labor. While the city and county expend nearly a million dollars annually for legal services, this is not the whole item, for the library board, the board of education, and committees of the city council may, on occasion, employ special counsel.

The policing of so large a city, whose very geographical position makes it a convenient way station for criminals of every sort, where so many races are to be dealt with, and where the existing form of municipal government keeps politics constantly to the fore, is beset with well-nigh insuperable obstacles. Last year the police department passed through a fierce storm with what seems to be a resulting improvement in conditions. An investigator of the Committee of Fifteen, a citizens’ organization, declared in May, 1917, that ten per cent of the men on the police force are “inherently crooked and ought to be driven from the department.” To which a police official retorted that for every crooked policeman there are 500 crooked citizens, an ill-tempered aspersion too shocking for acceptance. The Chicago Daily News Almanac records 114,625 arrests in 1915. Half of the total are set down as Americans; there were 9,508 negroes, 4,739 Germans, 2,144 Greeks, 7,644 Polanders, 5,577 Russians, 2,981 Italians, and 2,565 Irish. In that year there were 194 murders—35 fewer than in 1914. Comparisons in such matters are not profitable but it may be interesting to note that in 1915 there were 222 murders in New York; 244 in 1914; 265 in 1913. Over 3,000 keepers and inmates of Chicago gaming-houses were arrested in 1915. The cost of the police department is in excess of $7,000,000—an amount just about balanced by the license fee paid by the city’s seven thousand saloons. Until recently the State law closing saloons on Sunday was ignored, but last year the city police department undertook to enforce it, with (to the casual eye) a considerable degree of success.

The report of the Bureau of Efficiency recommends the consolidation of the existing governing agencies into a single government headed by an executive of the city-manager type. Instead of a political mayor elected by popular vote the office would be filled by the city council for an indefinite tenure. The incumbent would be the executive officer of the council and he might be given a seat in that body without a vote. The council would be free to go outside the city if necessary in its search for a competent mayor under this council-manager plan. One has but to read the Chicago newspapers to be satisfied that some such change as here indicated is essential to the wise and economical government of the city. Battles between the mayor and the council, upheavals in one city department or another occur constantly with a serious loss of municipal dignity. With deep humility I confess my incompetence for the task of describing the present mayor of Chicago, Mr. William Hale Thompson, whose antics since he assumed office have given Chicago a vast amount of painful publicity. As a public official his manifold infelicities (I hope the term is sufficiently delicate) have at least served to strengthen the arguments in favor of the recall as a means of getting rid of an unfit office-holder.[D] Last year a general shaking up of the police department had hardly faded from the head-lines before the city’s school system, a frequent storm-centre, caught the limelight. The schools are managed by a board of trustees appointed by the mayor. On a day last spring (1917) the board met and discharged the superintendent of schools (though retaining him temporarily), and, if we may believe the news columns of the Chicago Tribune, “Chicago’s mayor was roped, thrown, and tied so rapidly that the crowd gasped, laughed, and broke into a cheer almost in one moment.” I mention this episode, which was followed in a few weeks by the reinstatement of the superintendent with an increase of salary, as justifying the demand for a form of government that will perform its functions decently and in order and without constant disturbances of the public service that result only in the encouragement of incompetence.

The politicians will not relinquish so big a prize without a struggle; but one turns from the dark side of the picture to admire the many hopeful, persistent agencies that are addressing themselves to the correction of these evils. The best talents of the city are devoted to just these things. The trustees of the Bureau of Public Efficiency are Julius Rosenwald, Alfred L. Baker, Onward Bates, George G. Tunnell, Walter L. Fisher, Victor Elting, Allen B. Pond, and Frank I. Moulton, whose names are worthy of all honor as typical of Chicago’s most successful and public-spirited citizens. The City Club, with a membership of 2,400, is a wide-awake organization whose 27 civic committees, enlisting the services of 500 members, are constantly studying municipal questions, instituting inquiries, and initiating “movements” well calculated to annoy and alarm the powers that prey.

Space that I had reserved for some note of Chicago’s industries, the vastness of the stock-yards, the great totals in beasts and dollars represented in the meat-packing business, the lake and railroad tonnage, and like matters, shrinks under pressure of what seem, on the whole, to be things of greater interest and significance. That the total receipts of live-stock for one year exceeded 14,000,000 with a cash value of $370,938,156 strikes me as less impressive than the fact that a few miles distant from the packing-houses exists an art institute, visited by approximately a million persons annually, and an art school that affords capable instruction to 3,000 students. Every encouragement is extended to these pupils, nor is the artist, once launched upon his career, neglected by the community. The city provides, through a Commission for the Encouragement of Local Art, for the purchase of paintings by Chicago artists. There are a variety of private organizations that extend a helping hand to the tyro, and lectures and concerts are abundantly provided. A few years ago the National Institute of Arts and Letters met for the first time in Chicago. It must have been with a certain humor that the citizens spread for the members, who came largely from the East, a royal banquet in the Sculpture Hall of the Institute, as though to present Donatello and Verrocchio as the real hosts of the occasion. It is by such manifestations that Chicago is prone to stifle the charge of philistinism.

Banquet given for the members of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

With a noteworthy absence of self-consciousness, Chicago assimilates a great deal of music. The symphony orchestra, founded by Theodore Thomas and conducted since his death by Frederic Stock, offers a series of twenty-eight concerts a year. Eight thousand contributors made possible the building of Orchestra Hall, the organization’s permanent home. Boston is not more addicted to symphonies than Chicago. Indeed, on afternoons when concerts are scheduled the agitations of the musically minded in popular refectories, the presence in Michigan Avenue of suburban young women, whom one identifies at sight as devotees of Bach and Brahms, suggest similar scenes that are a part of the life of Boston. The luxury of grand opera is offered for ten weeks every winter by artists of first distinction; and it was Chicago, we shall frequently be reminded, that called New York’s attention to the merits of Mme. Galli-Curci. Literature too is much to the fore in Chicago, but I shall escape from the task of enumerating its many practitioners by pleading that only a volume would do justice to the subject. The contributors to Mr. Bert Leston Taylor’s “Line o’ Type” column in the Tribune testify daily to the prevalence of the poetic impulse within the city and of an alert, mustang, critical spirit.

With all its claims to cosmopolitanism one is nevertheless conscious that Chicago is only a prairie county-seat that is continually outgrowing its bounds, but is striving to maintain its early fundamental devotion to decency and order, and develop among its millions the respect for those things that are more excellent that is so distinguishing a trait of the Folks throughout the West. Chicago’s strength is the strength of the soil that was won for civilization and democracy by a great and valorous body of pioneer freemen; and the Chicago spirit is that of the men and women who plunged into the West bearing in their hearts that “something pretty fine” (in Lincoln’s phrase), which was the ideal of the founders of the republic. “The children of the light” are numerous enough to make the materialists and the philistines uncomfortable if not heartily ashamed of themselves; for it is rather necessary in Chicago to have “interests,” to manifest some degree of curiosity touching the best that has been thought and done in the world, and to hold a commission to help and to serve the community and the nation, to win the highest esteem.

Every weakness and every element of strength in democracy, as we are experimenting with it, has definite and concrete presentment in Chicago. In the trying months preceding and following the declaration of war with Germany the city repeatedly asserted its intense patriotism. The predominating foreign-born population is German, yet once the die was cast these citizens were found, except in negligible instances, supporting the American cause as loyally as their neighbors of old American stock. The city’s patriotic ardor was expressed repeatedly in popular demonstrations—beginning with a preparedness parade in June, 1916, in which 150,000 persons participated; in public gatherings designed to unify sentiment, not least noteworthy of these being the meeting in the stock-yards pavilion in May, of last year, when 12,000 people greeted Colonel Roosevelt. The visit of M. Viviani and Field-Marshal Joffre afforded the city another opportunity to manifest its devotion to the cause of democracy. Every responsibility entailed by America’s entrance into the war was met immediately with an enthusiasm so hearty that the Chicago press was to be pardoned for indulging in ironic flings at the East, which had been gloomily apprehensive as to the attitude of the Middle West.

The flag flies no more blithely or securely anywhere in America than in the great city that lies at the northern edge of the prairies that gave Lincoln to be the savior of the nation. Those continuing experiments and that struggle for perfection that are the task of democracy have here their fullest manifestation, and the knowledge that these processes and undertakings are nobly guided must be a stimulus and an inspiration to all who have at heart the best that may be sought and won for America.

CHAPTER V
THE MIDDLE WEST IN POLITICS

The great interior region bounded east by the Alleghanies, north by the British dominions, west by the Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn and cotton meets ... already has above 10,000,000 people, and will have 50,000,000 within fifty years if not prevented by any political folly or mistake. It contains more than one-third of the country owned by the United States—certainly more than 1,000,000 square miles. Once half as populous as Massachusetts already is, it would have more than 75,000,000 people. A glance at the map shows that, territorially speaking, it is the great body of the republic. The other parts are but marginal borders to it.—Lincoln: Annual Message to Congress, December, 1862.