Armor porcosque cano! Of the slaughter-yards and packing-houses of Messrs. Armour and Co., five miles from Chicago, I need not say much, for they have been described in every detail of killing, scalding, skinning, cutting, and preserving, by many visitors. The sight and the smell were too much for some of the weaker vessels, and they returned to the special train by which they had journeyed to the yards, whilst the others supped full of horrors and statistics. And how these statistics did rain upon us! Millions of pounds weight, millions of dollars, millions of cubic feet—figures in millions and tens of millions everywhere—everything the biggest, the tallest, the deepest, the broadest in the world. What human brain could bear the weight of that multiplication table gone mad? Fortunately it is all down in little books neatly tabulated. I confess the greatest wonder to me was not that so many living things should be slaughtered, and that so much food should be grown and garnered and carried, but that there were over the world so many millions of devouring creatures having stomachs for them all.
I have called Chicago the Venice of the American lakes, or something of the kind. In one respect indeed it excels the Queen of the Adriatic—the odours of the canal-like river to which it owes so much of its extraordinary prosperity. But these odours are to be deodorised some day, and the energies which have raised a city up twice in little more than a generation from ashes and muddy waters, will no doubt accomplish greater works than that.
The mayor (twice elected to that high office), Mr. Harrison, took the Duke out to see the "Crib," as it is termed, whence the waters of the lake are conducted by two iron tunnels, two miles long, to supply the city. On our way he stopped his carriage in an obscure and ill-looking quarter to show us the working of the ingenious system by which 400 police are supposed to be enabled to do the work usually allotted to 1000 men in other cities. Against a dead wall there was affixed a wooden box about 3 ft. square. The mayor took a key out of his pocket and opened it. The key was at once fixed in the lock and could not be removed till the patrol came from the station. This station was a mile and a quarter away. Then the mayor pulled down a small lever inside the box and gave the signal for the patrol to come up at once. Whilst we were waiting he showed us the telephone apparatus by which detailed information can be given to the police of what is required in cases of burglary, assault, fire, &c., and explained that keys similar to those he used are given to trustworthy householders who desire them, so that in case of need they can summon the police at once, and as these keys are numbered and cannot be withdrawn from the lock there is no risk of practical joking, and offenders are heavily fined. In 2½ minutes there came tearing along the street at full speed, driven by a policeman, a light cart with two horses, with two of the force in the vehicle. Inside were stretchers and appliances for removing prisoners, and, that the alarm might not be fruitless, the mayor directed the police to pick up a "drunky" whom we had passed on the way, amusing a group of children by his innocent but ill-regulated gambols. A little crowd assembled round the mayor and the strangers as he explained the devices by which the authorities battled with the crime and excesses of the hybrid population of the city, and I was amused by the expression of disgust on the faces of some of them at the laudations his honour bestowed on the ingenuity and effectiveness of the means he was developing to restrain the lawless desire of gain or the love of a free fight which distinguish some of the citizens.
The proprietor of the grand hotel in which we lodged displayed an amount of energy in directing our movements, for which we were scarcely prepared. He was evidently master in his own house, and in America a man who can keep an hotel is able to do anything, and is certainly a peer of any duke in the world. After dinner, wishing to go to a theatre, a request was made at the bar to procure places. And as we humbly walked off to the place of entertainment, the hotel proprietor accompanied us, and we were joined on our way by an agreeable young gentleman who had introduced himself to us in the early part of the day as Chairman of the Committee of Reception of the Press. I had certain uneasy suspicions that there was going to be some kind of show made of the unostentatious, quiet gentleman who was sauntering along, smoking his cigar, side by side with the spirited hotel-keeper. These were not appeased when, on entering the theatre, I perceived unmistakable officials, managers, box-keepers, and the like, drawn up in the manner of a deputation. It was half an hour behind time, but the play had not yet commenced—they were waiting for the Duke. As he passed along by the pit tier to the stage-box reserved for his use, every eye was directed upon him; and when he entered—awful moment—the orchestra struck up, amidst applause from the gallery and thumping of umbrellas and sticks, and clapping of hands, "God Save the Queen." What it was expected his Grace should do I know not. It was exceedingly embarrassing, and all we could do was to sit tight and take no notice. No doubt it was intended as a compliment, and very kindly meant, but it was most trying, and only the hotel proprietor and the Chairman of the Reception Committee of the Press were at all at their ease at that moment. The play proved an exceedingly interesting national piece; not very probable in all the incidents, but still giving a very fair idea of the general attitude of the American mind in its relation to Mormonism, and tending to bring into deserved contempt the disciples and practices of that most outrageous creed.
May 22nd.—The 'Chicago Times' of Saturday contained the greater part of the revised New Testament, telegraphed from New York. The 'Chicago Tribune' of Sunday (to-day) presents its readers with the whole of the Revised Testament, complete from beginning to end.
We had a very pleasant dinner, at which General Sheridan, General M'Dowell, and General Forsyth assisted. It was a relief to get away for a little from grain averages and railway statistics, but these are rare escapades from the study of material interests. The subsidence of the mass of combatants which the Civil War summoned to the field north and south from civil life into the ordinary pursuits of citizens was one of the most wonderful phenomena of the contest. I find my old friends have beaten their swords into all kinds of peaceful implements. One day General McClellan writes to me from a railway office in New Jersey to say he is on the eve of a voyage to Europe. Now I get a letter from "Bangs and Kirkland, attorneys-at-law, 142, La Salle St., Chicago," dated May 9th, which puzzled me a little till I read the text and the well-known signature of "Joseph Kirkland," recalling the old days of the army and head-quarters of the Potomac in 1861, and remembered the martial major who was my frequent companion in excursions about the camps around Washington.
May 23rd.—The Duke and most of the party started at 8.30 to inspect the Pullman car factory. The town is called Hyde Park, South Chicago, Calumet, Grand Crossing, and Kensington—and lies upon the outside of the great city, nine miles distant. Nine months ago, according to a Chicago paper, there was not a single trace of an industrial habitation upon the spot, and for five months of the subsequent time there was one of the most severe winters on record; but in April the largest engine in the world, as we were told, was started as the central motive power of one of the most extensive manufacturing schemes of the world. The Corliss Centennial Exhibition engine, which was built at a cost of 25,000l., was set to work with its 24,000 horse-power, to give life to the machinery which had been erected by the enterprise of Colonel Pullman; and since that time a city of freight shops, hammer shops, equipment buildings, lumber store-houses, foundries, brickworks, with railway tracks to connect them, gas-houses, artesian wells, and wide and long ranges of streets round the central depôt, have sprung up in Pullman; and locomotive works are also busy in connection with the rolling-mills and iron-dale mills which are connected with the town of Pullman by water, rail, and waggon roads. The sentiment of wonder is taxed when one visits this great American enterprise. It is said that before the year is over ten thousand people will be comfortably housed and living in this city, the work of a few weeks. No wonder that the Chicago people are enthusiastic about their city, though they are apt to be somewhat tiresome in the details which they give of its greatness. "I have sometimes tried," said one of them, "when I was travelling about, to invent some fabulous story to relate about Chicago; but when I woke up in the morning I always found that the progress made had exceeded the wildest fabrication I could think of." Twenty-five cars a day will be turned out when the works are in full swing. The most interesting operation, perhaps, was the manufacture of the paper wheels intended to take the place of iron in all railway, and which are already used by the Pullman cars. The paper is made of wood, which is cut on the shores of Lake Michigan, is brought to the works, reduced to pulp, and under hydraulic pressure is made as hard as granite, and perfectly impenetrable by air or water. It is sheathed with a steel band, which holds it like a vice, and it is cheaper and more lasting than iron.
The thermometer at 88 degrees in the shade, and the temperometer higher still. For there are thorns in the flesh, and trials, small though they be, to vex the spirit. Some there are who can endure interviewing without wincing, others who laugh at evil or good reports; but there are people who fret and fume at obstinate inquisition, and who are indignant at misrepresentation. These latter should stay at home. If one of these writes a letter marked "private" to the editor of a newspaper, he may be vexed if he sees it in print, with the word "private" omitted. It must be admitted that the peculiarities which invited comment in times past have nearly disappeared—I mean manners and customs connected with tobacco and its uses. Not only that—the burning curiosity which proved so troublesome to thin-skinned strangers appears to have been slaked by copious indulgence. Americans no longer care to know, or at least, disdain to ask, "Well, sir; and what do you think of our country?" They feel that they have a country which travellers must recognise as one of the first in the world. However, I think an American is not always pleased when an Englishman, tired out, perhaps, by the strain which a continual demand upon his power of expressing surprise involves, meekly intimates that there is something of the same sort to be seen in the Old Country. The other day, when we were taken out on the lake at Chicago, and asked to admire the water, which was not particularly clear, I remarked that the water supply of London, with its three millions and a half of people, and no lake at all, was rather creditable. The worthy Mayor was at once antagonistic. "Where do you get your water?" "From the various water companies—the New River, the Chelsea," &c. The Mayor next day, at a public meeting, congratulated the people of Chicago that they were not supplied with such water as London had to put up with, "where," he said, "I am told it comes from Chelsea, which is one of the filthiest places in the world."
By this time the whole party has got into working order; Lady Green, as a soldier's wife, sets an excellent example of punctuality and ready-packed-up-edness, no matter how early the start may be. It is a large party, but, by reason of its discipline, very easy to move. And so, notwithstanding the work in the early morning nine miles away, we were all ready at the terminus of the Shore Line by noon to strike out for the West by the rail which runs by Lake Michigan, halting first at Milwaukee, eighty miles away.
The Americans have many things to be grateful for on the vast continent of which they own so goodly a share, especially the natural facilities which they possess for turning the development of their energies to account; and among these, next, perhaps, to the navigable rivers opening up the length and breadth of the States to the sea, is the series of lakes stretching from the Atlantic to the central mountain ridges, affording the most admirable intercommunication between the great cities which are growing up on their shores and the corn-growing and stock-producing regions which extend far away on either side of them.