America Volume II Part 5

FEATURES OF CHICAGO.

Chicago is the world's greatest grain, lumber and cattle market. It attracts immigrants from everywhere, and all flourish in native luxuriance, although occasionally they are compelled to bow to the power of the law by the military arm when civil forces are exhausted.

Everything seems to go on without much hindrance, and thus this wonderful city secures its rapid growth and completely cosmopolitan character. While proud of their amazing progress, the people seem generally so engrossed in pushing business enterprises and piling up fortunes that they have little time to think of much else. Yet somebody has had opportunity to plan the adornment of the city by a magnificent series of parks and boulevards encircling it. The broad expanse of prairie was low, level and treeless originally, but abundant trees have since been planted, and art has made little lakes and miniature hills, beautiful flower-gardens and abundant shrubbery, thus producing pleasure-grounds of rare attractions. Michigan Avenue and Drexel and Grand Boulevards, leading to the southern system of parks and Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive on the north side of Chicago River, are the finest residential streets. The huge Auditorium fronting on Michigan Avenue was erected at a cost of $3,500,000, includes a hotel and theatre, and is surmounted with a tower rising two hundred and seventy feet, giving a fine view over the city and lake. Out in front is the Lake Park, with railways beyond near the sh.o.r.e, and a fine bronze equestrian statue of General John A. Logan, who died in 1886 and is buried in the crypt beneath the monument. Michigan Avenue begins at Chicago River alongside the site of old Fort Dearborn, now obliterated, and it stretches far south, a tree-lined boulevard adorned by magnificent residences.

Chicago River, with its entrance protected by a wide-spreading breakwater, is the harbor of the city, and, like its railways, carries the trade. Tunnels conduct various streets under it, and a mult.i.tude of bridges go over it, all of them opening to let vessels pa.s.s. They are mostly swinging bridges, but some are ingenious constructions, which roll, and lift and fold, and in various curious ways open the channel for the shipping. Huge elevators line the river banks, with vessels alongside, into which streams of grain are poured, while mult.i.tudes of cars move in and out, under and around them, bringing the supply from the farm to the storage-bins. In the business section, as elsewhere, the streets are wide, thus accommodating the throngs who fill them, and there are fine city and national buildings, a new Post-office of large size and imposing architecture being in course of construction. The Chicago Public Library, completed in 1897, is a grand structure, costing $2,000,000, and having about three hundred thousand volumes. The University of Chicago, in the southern suburbs, is destined to become one of the leading inst.i.tutions of learning in America. It began instruction in 1892, and now has some twenty-four hundred students, and endowments of $15,000,000, largely the gifts of John D. Rockefeller. The University grounds cover twenty-four acres, and when the plan is completed there will be over forty buildings. Its libraries contain three hundred and fifty thousand volumes. The great Yerkes Observatory, adjunct to this University, is at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, seventy miles distant, and has the largest refracting telescope in the world, with forty-inch lens and a tube seventy feet long. On the northern side of the city is the Newberry Library, with $3,000,000 endowment and two hundred thousand volumes, including admirable musical and medical collections, and the Crerar Library, with $2,000,000 endowment, princ.i.p.ally for scientific works, is being established on the south side. Chicago's greatest industrial establishment is the Federal Steel Company, having enormous rolling-mills and foundries in various parts of the city, and also at Joliet on Desplaines River. Its South Chicago Rolling Mills occupy over three hundred acres. The manufacture of agricultural machinery is represented by two enormous establishments, the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company on the southwest side and the Deering Works in the northwestern district.

CHICAGO BUSINESS ENERGY.

As the elevators of Chicago represent its traffic in grain, and contain usually a large proportion of what is known as the "visible supply," so do the vast lumber-yards along Chicago River often store up an enormous product of the output from the "Great North Woods,"

covering much of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and spreading across the Canadian border. The third great branch of traffic is represented by the Union Stock Yards in the southwestern suburbs.

These yards in a year will handle eight millions of hogs, four millions of cattle, four millions of sheep and a hundred thousand horses, over two-thirds of the hogs and cattle being killed in the yards and sent away in the form of meat, and the whole annual traffic being valued at $250,000,000. The yards cover three hundred acres, and with the packing-houses employ twenty-five thousand men, and they have twenty miles of water-troughs and twenty-five miles of feeding-troughs, and are served by two hundred and fifty miles of railway-tracks. The hog is a potential factor in American economy, being regarded as the most compact form in which the corn crop of the country can be transported to market. The corn on the farm is fed to the hog, and the animal is sent to Chicago as a package provided by nature for its economical utilization. The Union Stock Yards make a complete town, with its own banks, hotels, Board of Trade, Post-office, town-hall, newspaper and special Fire Department. The extensive enclosure is entered by a modest, gray sandstone turreted gateway, surmounted by a carved bull's head, emblematic of its uses. The Horse Market is a large pavilion, seating four thousand people. From this vast emporium, with its enormous packing-houses, are sent away the meat supplies that go all over the world, the product being carried out in long trains of canned goods and refrigerator cars, the most ingenious methods of "cold storage" being invented for and used in this widely extended industry.

The active traffic of the grain and provision trades of Chicago is conducted in the building of the Board of Trade, a tall and imposing structure at the head of La Salle Street, which makes a fitting close to the view along that grand highway. It is one of the most elaborate architectural ornaments of the city, and its surmounting tower rises three hundred and twenty-two feet from the pavement. The fame of this grand speculative arena is world-wide, and the animated and at times most exciting business done within marks the nervous beating of the pulse of this metropolis of food products. The interior is a magnificent hall, lighted by high-reaching windows and surmounted by a central skylight elevated nearly a hundred feet above the floor.

Impressive columns adorn the sides, and the elaborate frescoes above are in keeping with its artistic decoration. Upon the s.p.a.cious floor, between nine and one o'clock, a.s.semble the wheat and corn, and pork, lard, cattle and railway kings in a typical scene of concentrated and boiling energy feeding the furnace in which Chicago's high-pressure business enterprise glows and roars. These speculative gladiators have their respective "pits" or amphitheatres upon the floor, so that they gather in huge groups, around which hundreds run and jostle, the scene from the overlooking gallery, as the crowds sway and squirm, and with their calls and shouting make a deafening uproar, being a veritable Bedlam. Each "pit" deals in a specific article, while in another s.p.a.ce are detachments of telegraph operators working with nimble fingers to send instant reports of the doings and prices to the anxious outer world. High up on the side of the grand hall, in full view of all, are hung large dials, whose moving hands keep momentary record of the changes in prices made by the noisy and excited throngs in the "pits,"

thus giving notice of the ruling figures for the next month's "options" on wheat, corn and "short-ribs." There are tables for samples, and large blackboards bearing the figures of market quotations elsewhere. This Chicago Board of Trade has been the scene of some of the wildest speculative excitements in the country, as its shouting and almost frenzied groups of traders in the "pits" may make or break a "corner," and here in fitful fever concentrates the business energy of the great Metropolis of the Lakes.

PULLMAN AND THE SLEEPING-CAR.

Another Chicago specialty of wide fame is the railway sleeping-car, brought to its present high stage of development by one of the most prominent Chicagoans, the late George M. Pullman. The earliest American sleeping-car was devised by Theodore T. Woodruff, who constructed a small working model in 1854 at Watertown, New York, and subsequently building his car, first ran it on the New York Central Railroad in October, 1856, charging fifty cents for a berth. George M.

Pullman was originally a cabinet-maker in New York State, and moved when a young man to Chicago. His first fame in that city, as already stated, came from the ingenious methods he devised, when the grade of the town was elevated to secure better drainage, for raising the buildings by putting hundreds of jackscrews under them, trade continuing uninterrupted during the process. Pullman, subsequently to that time, travelled occasionally between Chicago and Buffalo, and one night got into Woodruff's car. He was stretched out upon the vibrating couch for some two hours, but could not sleep, and his eyes being widely open, and the sight wandering all about the car, he struck upon a new idea. When he left the car he had determined to develop from his brief experience a plan destined to expand into a complete home upon wheels for the traveller, either awake or sleeping. In 1859 he turned two ordinary railway coaches into sleeping-cars and placed them upon night trains between Chicago and St. Louis, charging fifty cents per berth, his first night's receipts being two dollars. He ran these experimental coaches about five years before he felt able to carry out his ideal plan, and he then occupied fully a year in constructing his model sleeping-car, the "Pioneer," at Chicago, at a cost of $18,000.

But when completed the car was so heavy, wide and high that no railway could undertake running it, as it necessitated cutting off station platforms and elevating the tops of bridges before it could pa.s.s by.

Thus he had a white elephant on his hands for a time. In April, 1865, President Lincoln's a.s.sa.s.sination shocked the country, and the funeral, with its escort of mourning statesmen, was progressing from Washington to Chicago, on the way to the grave at Springfield. The nation watched its progress, and the railways transporting the _cortege_ were doing their best. The manager of the road from Chicago to Springfield used the "Pioneer" in the funeral train, taking several days to prepare for it by sending out gangs of men to cut off the station platforms and alter the bridges. Pullman's dream was realized; his "coach of the future," with its escort of statesmen, carried the dead President to his grave and became noted throughout the land. A few weeks later, General Grant, fresh from the conquest of the Rebellion, had a triumphal progress from the camp to his home in Illinois. Five days were spent in clearing the railway between Detroit and Galena, where he lived, and the "Pioneer" carried Grant over that line.

These successes made Pullman's fortune, and the business of his company grew rapidly afterwards, it being now an enormous concern with $70,000,000 capital, controlling practically all the sleeping-cars of this country and many abroad. The main works are at the Chicago suburb of Pullman, ten miles south of the centre of the city, where there are about twelve thousand population, most of the people being connected with the works, which are an extensive general car-building establishment. Pullman was built as a model town, with every improvement calculated to add to the comfort and health of the working-people, being also provided with its own library, theatre, and a tasteful arcade, in which are various shops. It was at Pullman in 1894 that the great strike took place which ultimately involved a large portion of the railways of the country, causing much rioting and bloodshed, and finally requiring the intervention of the Federal troops to maintain the peace. After a protracted period of turmoil, the strike failed.

THE CORN CROP.

Chicago is the _entrepot_ for the great prairie region spreading from the Alleghenies westward beyond the Mississippi. Here grows the grain making the wealth of the land, and feeding the cattle, hogs and sheep that are poured so liberally into the Union Stock Yards of the Lake City. Upon the crops of this vast prairie land depends the prosperity of the country. Wall Street in New York and the Chicago Board of Trade are the market barometers of this prosperity, for the prairie farmer, as he may be rich and able to spend money, or poor so that he cannot even pay his debts, controls the financial outlook in America. The traveller, as he glides upon this universal prairie land, east, south and west of Chicago, viewing its limitless fertility seen far away in every direction over the monotonous level, as if looking across an ocean, cannot help recalling Wordsworth's pleasant lines:

"The streams with softest sound are flowing, The gra.s.s you almost hear it growing, You hear it now, if e'er you can."

Then, as the crops ripen and are garnered, and the wealth of the prairie is turned into food for the world, there comes with the advancing autumn the ripening of the greatest crop of America, and the mainstay of the country, the Indian corn. It is wonderful to think that the first corn crop of the United States planted by white men at Jamestown, Virginia, on a field of forty acres in 1608, has grown to an annual yield approximating twenty-three hundred million bushels.

This prolific crop is the banner product of the great prairie, and Whittier in his "Corn Song" has recorded its glories:

"Heap high the farmer's wintry h.o.a.rd!

Heap high the golden corn!

No richer gift has autumn poured From out the lavish horn!

"Let other lands, exulting, glean The apple from the pine, The orange from its glossy green, The cl.u.s.ter from the vine;

"We better love the hardy gift Our rugged vales bestow, To cheer us when the storm shall drift Our harvest fields with snow.

"Through vales of gra.s.s and meads of flowers, Our plows their furrows made, While on the hills, the sun and showers Of changeful April played.

"We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain Beneath the sun of May, And frightened from our sprouting grain The robber crows away.

"All through the long bright days of June Its leaves grew green and fair, And waved in hot midsummer's noon Its soft and yellow hair.

"And now, with autumn's moonlit eves, Its harvest time has come, We pluck away the frosted leaves, And bear the treasure home.

"There, richer than the fabled gift Apollo showered of old, Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, And knead its meal of gold.

"Let vapid idlers loll in silk Around their costly board; Give us the bowl of samp and milk By homespun beauty poured!

"Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth Sends up its smoky curls, Who will not thank the kindly earth, And bless our farmer girls!

"Let earth withhold her goodly root, Let mildew blight the rye, Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, The wheat-field to the fly;

"But let the good old corn adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us for his golden corn Send up our thanks to G.o.d!"

GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST.

VII.

GLIMPSES OF THE GREAT NORTHWEST.

The Great Lakes -- Sieur de La Salle -- Lake St. Clair -- Lake Huron -- Detroit -- Ann Arbor -- Mackinac Island -- Sault Sainte Marie -- Lake Superior -- Lake Nepigon -- Thunder Bay -- Port Arthur -- Kakabika Falls -- The Pictured Rocks -- Marquette -- Keweenaw -- Iron and Copper -- Houghton -- Lake Gogebic -- Superior City -- Duluth -- Messabi and Vermillion Ranges -- Green Bay -- Wisconsin -- Milwaukee -- Waukesha -- Madison -- Rock Island -- Davenport -- Moline Rapids -- Dubuque -- Iowa -- Black Hawk -- Minnesota -- La Crosse -- Lake Pepin -- Falls of St. Anthony -- St. Paul -- Minneapolis -- Fort Snelling -- Flour and Lumber -- Lake Minnetonka -- Minnehaha Falls -- Hiawatha and Minnehaha -- Source of the Mississippi -- Itasca Lake -- Minnesota River -- Red River of the North -- Ancient Lake Aga.s.siz -- Sioux Falls -- Fargo -- Great Wheat Farms -- Manitoba -- Rat Portage -- Keewatin -- Winnipeg -- Hudson Bay Company -- Dakota -- Bismarck -- The Bad Lands -- Yellowstone River -- Montana -- Big Horn River -- Custer Ma.s.sacre -- Livingston -- Cinnabar Mountain -- Yellowstone National Park -- Mammoth Hot Springs -- Norris Geyser Basin -- Firehole River -- Lower, Middle and Upper Geyser Basins -- Yellowstone Lake and Falls -- The Grand Canyon -- Two-Ocean Pond -- Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way.

THE GREAT LAKES.

Rene Robert Cavelier, the Sieur de La Salle, was the chief French pilgrim and adventurer in the seventeenth century who explored the Great Lakes and valley of the Mississippi, and secured for his country the vast empire of Louisiana, stretching from Canada to the Gulf. His explorations were made in 1669 and again in 1678, and like all the discoverers of that early time he was hunting for the water way thought to lead to the South Sea and provide a route to China. The historian Parkman describes La Salle as one of the most remarkable explorers whose names live in history; the hero of a fixed idea and determined purpose; an untiring pilgrim pushing onward towards the goal he was never to attain; the pioneer who guided America to the possession of her richest heritage. Throughout the northwest his memory is preserved in the names of rivers, towns, and otherwise, and his maps and narratives gave the earliest geography of the Lakes and the vast and prolific region obtained from France in the Louisiana cession.

The Great Lakes on the northern border of the United States are the largest bodies of fresh water on the globe. They carry an enormous commerce, nearly a hundred thousand men being employed by the fleet of lake vessels, which approximates two millions tonnage. At the head of Lake Erie the waters of Detroit River pour in, draining the upper lakes, this stream, about twenty-five miles long, flowing from Lake St. Clair and broadening from a half-mile to four miles width at its mouth. Lake St. Clair is elevated five hundred and thirty feet, but is small, being about twenty-five miles in diameter, and shallow, only about twenty feet deep. The navigation of its shallows is intricate, and is aided by a long ca.n.a.l through the shoals at the upper end, where the St. Clair River discharges, a strait about forty miles long, flowing south from Lake Huron. This great lake is at five hundred and eighty feet elevation, and in places seventeen hundred feet deep, covering twenty-four thousand square miles, and containing many islands. At its northern end, Lakes Superior and Michigan join it by various straits and water ways beyond Mackinac Island. Westward of Lakes Ontario and Erie, and between them and Lake Huron, a long peninsula of the Dominion of Canada projects southward into the United States, terminating opposite Detroit. Similarly, to the westward of Lake Huron, and between it and Lake Michigan, the State of Michigan has its lower peninsula projecting upward to Canada. The Canadian projection, which is part of Ontario Province, is unfortunately located, being almost surrounded by these expansive lakes, having bleak, cold winds sweeping across them and seriously impeding its agriculture. The surface has little charm of scenery and the population is spa.r.s.e. The trunk railways, however, find this an almost direct route from Western New York to Detroit and Chicago, and various roads traverse it, coming out on the Detroit River and the swift-flowing St. Clair River, which are crossed both by car-ferry and tunnel. At the outlet of Lake Huron, St. Clair River is less than a thousand feet wide between Point Edward and Fort Gratiot, and here and at Ports Sarnia and Huron the low and level sh.o.r.es are lined with docks, elevators and other accessories of commerce. This river brings vast amounts of sand down out of Lake Huron with its swift current, which are deposited on the St. Clair Flats beyond its mouth, keeping that lake shallow, and requiring the long ship ca.n.a.l to maintain navigation. Below Lake St. Clair, the wider Detroit River presents many fine bits of scenery, while the city of Detroit spreads for several miles along the northwestern bank, and has Windsor opposite, on the Canadian sh.o.r.e. Pretty islands dot the broadening stream below Detroit, and the varying width, with the bluffs on the Canadian side, and the meadows, fields and forests of Michigan, give lovely views.

DETROIT AND MACKINAC.

Detroit means "the strait," and the original Indian names for the river mean "the place of the turned channel." The early visitors who reached it by boat at night or in dark weather, and were inattentive to the involved currents, always remarked, as the Indians did before them, that owing to these extraordinary involutions of the waters, when the sun appeared again it always seemed to rise in the wrong place. The French under La Salle were the first Europeans who pa.s.sed through the river, and in 1701 the Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac, who received grants from Louis XIV., came and founded Fort Pontchartrain there, naming it after the French Minister of Marine, around which a settlement afterwards grew, to which the French sent colonists at intervals. The British got possession in 1760, and it successfully resisted the conspiracy and attacks of the Ojibway Indian chief Pontiac for over a year, the garrison narrowly escaping ma.s.sacre. The United States, after the Revolution, sent out General St. Clair as Governor, and his name was given the lake to the northward. Detroit was a frontier post in the War of 1812, being alternately held by British and Americans. In 1824 it had about fifteen hundred people and became a city. It now has three hundred and fifty thousand population, and its commercial importance may be estimated from the fact that the whole enormous traffic of the Lakes pa.s.ses in front of the city during the seven months that navigation is open, the procession of craft often reaching sixty thousand vessels in the season. Detroit also has extensive and varied manufactures. It has a gradually rising surface and broad and well-paved streets on a rectangular plan, with several avenues radiating from a centre, like the spokes of a wheel. The central square is the Campus Martius, an expansion, about a half-mile from the river, of Woodward Avenue, the chief street. Here is an elaborate City Hall, the princ.i.p.al public building, having in front a magnificent Soldiers' Monument. The suburbs are attractive, and there are various pleasant parks and rural cemeteries, the leading Park of Belle Isle, covering seven hundred acres, being to the northeastward, with a good view over Lake St. Clair. Fort Wayne, the elaborate defensive work of Detroit, is on the river just below the city, and has a small garrison of regular troops. It is yet incomplete, and is designed to be the most extensive fortification on the northern frontier, commanding the important pa.s.sage between Lakes Huron and Erie and the railway routes east and west.

The peninsula of Michigan was originally covered with the finest forests, so that lumbering has always been a leading industry of the people. The greater portion of its pine woods, however, has been cut off, so that that branch is declining; but its ample supply of hard woods has made the State a great manufacturer of furniture, which is shipped all over the country. Thirty-eight miles west of Detroit, on the Huron River, is the city of Ann Arbor, with a population of fifteen thousand. Here are the extensive buildings of the University of Michigan, the leading educational establishment of the northwest, attended by over three thousand students, of whom a large number are young women. It is richly endowed, and has departments of law and medicine, as well as of literature and science, a large library and an observatory. The State makes a liberal annual contribution for its support, raised by taxation, it being governed by eight regents elected by the people. At the northern extremity of the Michigan Peninsula is the Strait of Mackinac, through which Lake Michigan discharges into Lake Huron. This water way is about four miles wide.

In the strait is Mackinac Island, about nine miles in circ.u.mference, which was early held by the French on account of its strategic importance, but, being taken by the English in 1760, was captured by Pontiac when he organized the Indian revolt against the British in 1763, and all its inhabitants ma.s.sacred. It is now a military post and reservation of the United States. This rocky and wooded island contains much picturesque scenery, and is a favorite summer resort, its weird legends, fresh breezes, good fishing and clear waters being the attraction. It was an early post of the northwestern fur-traders, and here was founded one of the frontier trading-stations of the Astor Fur Company in the early nineteenth century by John Jacob Astor of New York, the building in the little village being still known as the Astor House.

LAKE SUPERIOR.

To the northward of Mackinac, Lake Superior discharges into Lake Huron through the Sault Sainte Marie Strait, the "Leap of St. Mary." This strait of St. Mary is a winding and most beautiful stream, sixty-two miles long, being a succession of expansions into lakes and contractions into rivers, dotted with pretty islands and having some villages on the banks. The chief attraction is the Sault, or "Leap,"

which is a rapid of about eighteen feet descent, the navigation being maintained through capacious modern systems of locks and ship ca.n.a.ls provided by both the United States and Canada. To the westward is the great Lake Superior, the largest fresh-water lake on the globe, three hundred and sixty miles long and covering thirty-two thousand square miles, with a coast-line of about fifteen hundred miles. It is elevated about six hundred feet above the ocean level, and has a depth averaging one thousand feet. Nearly two hundred rivers and creeks flow into it, draining a region of a hundred thousand square miles. There are a few islands in the eastern and western portions, but all the centre of the lake is a vast unbroken sheet of water, and generally of a low temperature, the deeper waters being only 39 in summer. The early French missionaries, who were the first explorers, told their interesting story of Lake Superior in Paris in 1636, and in their published account speak of its coasts as resembling a bended bow, of which the north sh.o.r.e makes the arc of the bow, the south sh.o.r.e the chord, and the great Keweenaw Point, projecting far from the southern sh.o.r.e, represents the arrow. Superior has generally a rock-bound coast, displaying impressive beauties of scenery, particularly on the northern sh.o.r.e, where the beetling crags and cliffs are projected boldly into the lake along the water's edge. This northern coast is also much indented by deep bays, bordered by precipitous cliffs, back of which rise the dark and dreary Laurentian Mountains. There are also rocky islands scattered near this portion of the coast, some presenting vast castellated walls of basalt and others peaks of granite, elevated a thousand to thirteen hundred feet above the lake.

Nowhere upon the inland waters of North America is there grander scenery.