Do you ask why she is different from her sisters? I was afraid you might ask that. They tell a romantic story. I don't like to repeat gossip, but—They say that, long ago, when her mother lived upon a little farm by the river, there came along a dashing voyageur, from France, who loved her. Mind you, I vouch for nothing. It is a legend. I do not affirm that it is true. But—voila! There is Detroit. She is different.
If you will consider these three fictitious sisters as figures in a cartoon—a cartoon not devoid of caricature—you will get an impression of my impression of three cities. My three sisters are merely symbols, like the figures of Uncle Sam and John Bull. A symbol is a kind of generalization, and if you disagree with these generalizations of mine (as I think you may, especially if you live in Buffalo or Cleveland), let me remind you that some one has said: "All generalizations are false—including this one." One respect in which my generalization is false is in picturing Detroit as young. As a matter of fact, she is the oldest city of the three, having been settled by the Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac in 1701, ninety years before the first white man built his hut where Buffalo now stands, and ninety-five years before the settlement of Cleveland. This is the fact. Yet I hold that there is about Detroit something which expresses ebullient youth, and that Buffalo and Cleveland, if they do not altogether lack the quality of youth, have it in a less degree.
So far as I recall, Chicago was the first American city to adopt a motto, or, as they call it now, a "slogan."
I remember long ago a rather crude bust of a helmeted Amazon bearing upon her proud chest the words: "I Will!" She was supposed to typify Chicago, and I rather think she did. Cleveland's slogan is the conservative but significant "Sixth City," but Detroit comes out with a youthful shriek of self-satisfaction, declaring that: "In Detroit Life is Worth Living!" Doesn't that claim reflect the quality of youth? Doesn't it remind you of the little boy who says to the other little boy: "My father can lick your father"? Of course it has the patent-medicine flavor, too; Detroit, by her "slogan," is a cure-all. But that is not deliberate. It is exaggeration springing from natural optimism and exuberance. Life is doubtless more worth living in Detroit than in some other cities, but I submit that, so long as Mark Twain's "damn human race" retains those foibles of mind, morals, and body for which it is so justly famous, the "slogan" of the city of Detroit guarantees a little bit too much.
I find the same exuberance in the publications issued by the Detroit Board of Commerce. Having just left the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, I sedulously avoided contact with the Detroit body—one can get an overdose of that kind of thing. But I have several books. One is a magazine called "The Detroiter," with the subtitle "Spokesman of Optimism." It is full of news of new hotels and new factories and new athletic clubs and all kinds of expansion. It fairly bursts from its covers with enthusiasm—and with business banalities about Detroit's "onward sweep," her "surging ahead," her "banner year," and her "efficiency." "Be a Booster," it advises, and no one can say that it does not live up to its principles. Indeed, as I look it over, I wonder if I have not done Detroit an injustice in giving to Cleveland the blue ribbon for "boosting." The Detroit Board of Commerce even goes so far in its "boosting" as to "boost" Detroit into seventh place among American cities, while the "World Almanac" (most valuable volume on the one-foot shelf of books I carried on my travels) places Detroit ninth.
Like Cleveland, I find that Detroit is first in the production of a great many things. In fact, the more I read these books issued by commercial bodies, the more I am amazed at the varied things there are for cities to be first in. It is a miserable city, indeed, which is first in nothing at all. Detroit is first in the production of overalls, stoves, varnish, soda and salt products, automobile accessories, adding machines, pharmaceutical manufactures, aluminum castings, in shipbuilding on the Great Lakes and, above all, in the manufacture of motor cars. And, as the Board of Commerce adds significantly, "That's not all!"
But it is enough.
The motor-car development in Detroit interested me particularly. When I asked in Buffalo why Detroit was "surging ahead" so rapidly in comparison with certain other cities, they answered, as I knew they would: "It's the automobile business."