Chicago as a city began with $1993 in its treasury. The need for municipal improvement was imperative. Where to get money for sanitary drainage, for the paving of a few streets, and the purchase of two fire engines, was a problem. The Common Council appointed a finance committee with power to act. Peter Bolles was made chairman. It was finally decided to borrow $25,000 from the State Bank of Illinois, pledging the city to redeem the obligation in five years. In due time the committee submitted as its report the following letter:

[STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN BY ST. GAUDENS.]

"State Bank of Illinois,

"Springfield, May 31, 1837.

"Peter Bolles, Esq.,

"Dear Sir:

"Your letter of the 18th, addressed to the president of this bank and proposing on behalf of the city of Chicago a loan from this bank of the sum of $25,000, has been laid before the directors of the bank, and, I regret to have to state, declined.

"I am very respectfully,

"Your o'bt serv't,

"N.H. Ridgely, Cashier."

In 1900 the city which sixty-three years before could not borrow $25,000, could boast of bank clearances amounting to $6,795,876,000.

The poverty and disasters of early days seemed only to nerve the city to renewed determination and prepare her to meet with stoic faith the appalling calamities of later years. In this résumé it is only possible to catalogue the misfortunes that visited her. Floods swept away her shipping, fire destroyed her accumulating industries, raging epidemics reduced her population—cholera alone in 1854 causing 1424 deaths—and financial panic again and again returned to manacle activities. Many times in Chicago's history citizens could well exclaim: "One woe upon another's heels doth tread, so fast they follow!"

Unconquerable in the presence of these recurrent visitations, the city pressed forward to her place as the metropolis of the Mississippi empire. At an early day "prairie schooners," pioneers of the great freight trains to come, laden with grain from the fertile areas round about began to line the prairie roads leading to Chicago. In 1839, two years after the city was begun, a crude grain elevator was constructed. The farmers, too poor to furnish sacks, brought their grain in sheets, blankets, and pieces of canvas. It was hoisted by hand with block and tackle to the elevator, and in the year mentioned 2900 bushels of wheat, consigned to Black Rock, New York, were dumped loose into the hold of the brig Osceola. From this primitive beginning has grown a mighty volume of trade in grain. In 1900 the wheat, corn, oats, rye, and barley shipped from Chicago amounted to 232,267,109 bushels, while the receipts aggregated 307,723,135 bushels.

It was not until 1843 that the Common Council came to the conclusion that the place was sufficiently advanced as a city to warrant the enactment of an ordinance declaring that hogs should no longer be permitted to run at large in the streets. In 1900, far from being unwelcome, over 8,000,000 hogs, safely penned in cars, arrived in the city and were sent to the slaughter.

In writing of Chicago it is customary to deal in superlatives, and this is necessary in the nature of things. Its Union Stock Yards cover 400 acres, nearly twice the area of the original town. Twenty miles of streets thread this meat-packing colony, which pays wages amounting to nearly $9,000,000 a year. In 1900 there were shipped to Chicago 277,205 carloads of hogs, cattle, sheep, etc. Its trade in grain leads every city in the world, while its general mercantile traffic is surpassed by few.

The first railroad at that time was the Galena and Chicago Union, which was chartered January 16, 1836. Galena at that time was believed to be destined far to outrival her neighbor, and therefore demanded and secured the place of honor in the title of the road. To-day thirty-nine distinct railroads enter Chicago, more than half the railway systems of America make that city their objective point, and the aggregate distance traveled by freight and passenger trains daily entering the metropolis is over 80,000 miles. In the thunder of this traffic the clamor of rivalry long since died away. The British critic, Mr. Archer, remarked that he was unable to detect the slightest evidence of competition with Chicago even in a "Pisgah view from the top of the Auditorium."

The employment of large adjectives in the recital of the city's history is not without warrant. "The trouble with you people in Chicago," remarked a visitor, "is that you exaggerate too much." "We have to," retorted a citizen, proudly, "in fact we have to lie to tell the truth." Even when we speak of the fire of 1871, we must call it the "great Chicago fire," for never before perhaps in the history of the world were so many of the piled-up monuments of man's hands consumed so rapidly. Such awful moments, happily, seldom come in the history of communities. It was as if the fires of Dante's Inferno had been permitted for a night and day to devastate a great city of this planet. One thousand four hundred and seventy acres of buildings were utterly consumed. The entire business portion of the city vanished in smoke and flame. One hundred thousand persons were left homeless and in many cases penniless. Seventeen thousand four hundred and fifty buildings were destroyed, the total valuation of the loss by fire being $186,000,000.