Citizens of Gary have always been ashamed of one thing about their town. This, appropriately known as the “patch” is a small section thrusting itself wedge-like into the heart of the city, and being full of saloons and dives. The site of the patch was not acquired by the Corporation, because of some question as to validity of title, so the big company has no power of restriction over its development. Gary men have long hoped that some means of cleaning up the section would be found. Prohibition seems to be doing it.
Away up in the northeast corner of Minnesota, on the shore of Lake Superior, is Morgan Park, another steel city, named after the great banker who financed the organization of the Steel Corporation. This town is one of the latest developments and contains many new and interesting features.
The engineers who laid out Morgan Park were able to use Gary as a model and to improve on that city in many respects, particularly as the demands on the new settlement in the matter of population would be much smaller than was the case at Gary and it was possible to develop the town along suburban residential lines.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Morgan Park is the provision made for children. In no other town in the world are there as many playgrounds per capita. Each block has its own playground for small children, provided with swings, slides, sand piles, and so on, and thus the little ones in every part of the city are able to enjoy the advantages of outdoor play under the eyes of their parents and without their having to cross a street.
For older children and for such adults as still keep up personal interest in athletics there are many places where they may indulge in tennis and other sports, and these give the workers in the mills and their families greater and more varied opportunities for physical recreation than are enjoyed by the inhabitants of most larger and more pretentious cities.
To the visitor Morgan Park presents an unusually attractive aspect. The streets are all laid out in curves, beautifully parked, and the effect of this to the eye is entirely pleasing. Altogether, the physical aspect of the settlement is more that of the exclusive suburbs of some big city than what one ordinarily conceives to be a steel town usually associated with grime and smoke.
Like all the other Steel Corporation developments Morgan Park has a modern, thoroughly equipped hospital, Y. M. C. A. and other advantages above those which a city suburb usually boasts.
Morgan Park is really a suburb of Duluth and is part of that municipality. But while it is under the city government it enjoys the various advantages mentioned because of the direct influence of the Corporation which spends a large amount in beautifying the town, providing playgrounds, etc., and which keeps a corps of trained workers to promote welfare work of various kinds within its confines. Just as in Gary which, though a self-governing city, displays in all its activities the influence of the big corporation. J. P. Morgan, Jr., paid the total cost of the beautiful and commodious Y. M. C. A. building.
And throughout the State of Minnesota are a number of small towns which, in somewhat the same sense, may be classed among the Steel Corporation towns. That is, although self-governing municipalities they owe the majority of their improvements, such as hospitals, to the munificence of the Corporation which employs most of their inhabitants and sees to it that its employees shall have all possible opportunity for comfort and social betterment. Hibbing, Coleraine, Eveleth—all these are, in the true sense, steel towns.
One of the great problems that has faced the Corporation in building the towns or settlements to house its mill workers has been that of the bachelor, or the man who has come to this country to work leaving his family in Europe or elsewhere. A large percentage of steel workers belong to one or other of these two classes, and it has been a difficult matter to devise a means of giving these men decent and respectable living accommodations with as many of the comforts of home as possible at a price within the means of the worker with his hands. In different communities different plans have been tried. In Morgan Park the Corporation erected large boarding houses with some of the advantages of a club but the success of these has not been as great as was hoped for.