CHICAGO, "THE SWIFT AND ORIGINAL"

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 111, 7 November 1906, Page 11

CHICAGO, "THE SWIFT AND ORIGINAL"

SOME OF ITS PECULIARITIES. A VISITOR'S IMPRESSIONS. And still I like Chicago. Why, I can't tell (writes Mr. Kennedy in the Daily Mail). It is a place of darkness of the most outer kind, but I like it nevertheless. I admit that my taste is awful, but what can one do? Ib often happens that the biggest ruffians unhung are most charming and likeable men. We know that they are ruffians, but still we are drawn to them. ,"And 60- it is with, towns. Washington is a beautiful town, but the sight of itself and its over-sized Capital makes me melancholy. I long to get away to pastures new. If I may so put it, the town is uninterestingly perfect. It is too classic. Perkaps one of the charms of Chicago is ' that y»u never know where you axe. You never know what is going to happen. You axe liable to be interviewed by the gay footpad in the broad daylight in the broadest and busiest place. And here I must relate a story of what happened lately before it slips my memory. It was one- beautiful sunlit Sunday, "morning, aud the bells rang and rang, summoning the denizens of Chicago to their devotions. And 10l the devotjocs . passed in a certain church, and the people were coming forth again into the bright sunlit air. The brows of the Chicagoans were relaxed, and their faces ■wore lit up with kindly benignity. You would hardly have known them as they ' ■were passing oat of the church. They '■were so changea. From the church they had to come through a passage to get into the broad and spacious street. And suddenly there appeared at the end of the passage an alert-looking young man with a smiling but rather hard face. In his hand w>i3 a revolver. I regret to be obliged to chronicle the fact that he was a footpad, and I regret still more that he ■was graceless enough to exact toll in a somewhat firm manner from the parsing devotees. He ought not to have done it, but he did it. Surely a town where this can happen is an original town. The sourest critic could not accuse it of being uninterest- ' ing. I waa here in Chicago in 1889. I liked it then, and I must confess that I like it still better now. And if I could get a job as a policeman in it I would most certainly reform my wandering habits and stay here till the end of my days. Chicago is a town difficult to describe. It is, of course, a home of noise, bat it is no noisier than New York. Indeed, New York ia the noisier. I had asserted it was the other way about. But I discovered duriag my present sojoyrn in America that I had made a great mistake. Of late years New York has brightened up considerably in the -way of noise. It more than distinguishes . itself now. It may be put like this. New York 16 the noisiest town in the world, and Chicago is the swiftest. Indeed, so swift is Chicago that its people have had no time to finish it. They have had no time, for example, to make enough propel roads in it. It is asserted that its City Fathers steal the money that should go for the making of the roads. But there are some unconscionable people who will assert anything. In my opinion, the real reason of the roads being in the condition they are is because the people are in too big a hurry to bother with prosaic details. You can't expect a man whose life is spent in epriatuuj; as hard as he can to bother too much, about his per■obsl appearance. And here, to show ttiat I am in no way exaggerating this ideal of hurry, I reproduce without apol- * ogy aa editorial that appeared lately in ■' tko Chicago American. WHY AMERICANS SUCCEED. The nations of Europe, and especially the English, wonder at the success of the American peqple. ' If any Englishman wants to know ■wiy the American race can beat the English race in the struggle for industrial precedence, let him stand on one of the downtown platforms of the Illinois Central' Railroad in < Chicago from seven until nine in the morning as the suburban trains come is. Far outside of the station the train appears, puffing and panting, and while it is still going at dangerous • speed, men, young and old, are seen leaning far out from every platform. As the train rushes in the men leap from the cars and a wild rush follows for the> business district. Not a man is walking slowly or de- ,' Kberately. It is one rush to business, it is one rush, all day, it is one rush home i again. The gauge on the engine tells the pressure of steam and the work that the engine can do. The gauge on the American human Deing stands at high pressure all ,the time. His brain i» constantly excited, his machinery is working with & full head of steam. Tissues are burned up rapidly, and the machine often burns up sooner than it should. The man bald and grey in hia yonth, the man a. victim of dyspepsia, of nervousness, of narcotics, and stimulants, is a distinct American institution. He is an engine burned out before his time, but his work has been done, and that great locomotive works, The American Mother, is for ever supplying the demand for new engines to be run «i dangerously high speed. The American succeeds because he is under high pressure always, because he ia determined to make speed even at the risk of bursting the boiler and wrecking the machine. . So aptly did this editorial hit off the Chicago ideal that numerous letters ■poured into the office of the Chicago American demanding an encore. And, yielding to popular clamour, the editor reprinted it. Chicago iooks an immense mining ■ camp, endeavouring to appear civilised. ' And were Ito think for years I could find no more apt phrase to fit it. It has roads that are as the roads of a mining camp, and again it has roads that are fine and wide and spaciou*. - Its general architectural effect is such aa would come to some architectural genius while he was held in the throes ■ «f a nightmare. There are handsome Vuildings and ugly buildings and respect«We buildings, and sordid-looking buildings and shanty-looking buildings, al thrown together anyhow. Imagine a place like this in the midst of an infernal din, through which myriads of people are rushing madly, and you will nave some sort of an idea of Chicago. It id impossible to get a dear idea of it, even when you are here. The noise and rush general olla podrida architectural effect ia too confusing. Every race under the son i* herejust as in a mining camp. It is unsafe even to walk abroad in davlight — v»s*fe for man or woman. Indeed, at the present moment the Cbicagoans aro <?oo*tderifig a law to makft autaulUi on iwnen A capital offence- — so common are these assaults. I ha*e been in some tough places ia my time, but Chicago beat* anything I have ever met. To gp -abound ia cojuf ort jjoa awt

gun, and you must carry that gun in your right jacket pocket, with the business end facing the genial stranger who at any moment may -endeavour to make an abrupt acquaintance with you. Should any Teader feel that in my description of this most interesting town I am gilding, 80 to speak, refined gold, I can. only refer them to the Chicago Press, or, better still, invite them, if they be of the hardy adventurous type, to come here. Still, as I said, I like the place and the people. The people undoubtedly possess the keenest and strongest sense of humour of any people in the world. In the office of the Interoeean I was assured with the utmost gravity that the cosmopolitan inhabitants of Chicago -were producing the most (superior white race in the world. Tlie future Cincagoan would be a, being in whom would be blended all the qualities of all the European races. He would possess the stamina and poise of the Englishman, the art sense of the Frenchman, the 'ponderosity of the German, the manners of the Spaniard, the business acumeu of the Scot. I argued most strongly against this heresy, but in the end I was beaten down"! Theee Chicago newspaper men were too many for me. And it was not until the next day that I realised that they were ■ only having a joke with v. "heavy, slowwitted Englishman, who had wandered far away from his little slow-coach island that is at least a thousand years behind, the swift and brilliant Chicago.