THE WORLD'S FAIR.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6095, 16 June 1892, Page 3

THE WORLD'S FAIR.

CHICAGO— THE MAIN EXHIBIT. [From Harpkr's Monthly.] Chicago will be the main exhibit at th c Columbian Exposition of 1893. No matter what the aggregation of wonders there, no matter what the Eiffel Tower-like chief exhibit may be, the city itself will make th c most surprising presentation. Those who go to study the world's progress will tind no other result of human force so wonderful, extravagant, or peculiar. Those who go expecting to see a great city will find one different from that which any precedent lias led them to look for. While investigating the management and prospects of the Columbian Exposition I was a resident of Chicago for more than a fortnight. A born New Yorker, the energy, roar, and bustle of the place were yet sufficient to first astonish and then fatigue me. I was led to examine the city and then cross-examine some of its leading men. 1 came away compelled to acknowledge its possession of certain forceful qualities which I never saw exhibited in the same degree anywhere else. I got a satisfactory explanation of its growth and achievements, as well as proof that it must continue to expand in population and commercial influence. Underlying the behavior of the most able and enterprising men in the city is this motto, which they constantly quoted to me, all using the same words "We are for Chicago first, last, and all the time.'"' To define that sentence is, in a great measure, to account for Chicago. It explains the possession of a million inhabitants by a city that practically dates its beginning after the war of the rebellion. Its adoption by half a million men as their watchword means the forcing of trade and manufactures and wealth ; the getting of the World's Fair, if you please. In order to comprehend Chicago it is best never to lose sight of the motto of its citizens. I have spoken of the roar, and bustle, and energy of Chicago. This is most noticeable in the business part of the town, where the freater number of men are crowded together, t seems as if the men would run over the horses if the drivers were not careful. Everybody is in such a hurry and going at such a pace that if a stranger asks his way, he is apt to have to trot along with his neighbor to gain the information, for the average Chicagoan cannot stop to talk. The whole business of life is carried on at high Eressure, aud the pithy part of Chicago is ke 300 acres of New York Stock Exchauge when trading is active. European visitors have written that there are no such crowds anywhere as gather at Broadway, and this is true most of the time ; but there is one hour on every week (lay where certain streets in Chicago are so packed with people as to make Broadway look desolate and solitudiuous by comparison. That is the hour between 5.30 and 6.30 o'clock, when the famous tall buildings of the city vomit their inhabitants upon the pavements. Photographs of the principal corners and crossings, taken at the height of the human torrent, suggest the thought that the camera must have been turned on some little-known painting by Dore. Nobody but Dore" ever conceived such pictures. To those who are in the crowds even Chicago seems small and cramped ; even her streetcars, running in break-neck trains, prove far too few ; even her streets that connect horizon with horizon seenr each night to roar at the City officials for further annexation in the morning. We shall see those crowds simply and satisfactorily accounted for presently, but they exhibit only one phase of the high pressure existence ; they formed only one feature among the many that distinguished the town. In the tall buildings are the most modern aud rapid elevators, machines that fly up through the towers like glass balls from a trap at a shooting contest The slow-going stranger, who is conscious of having been " kneaded ", along the streets like a lump of dough among a million bakers, feels himself loaded into one of these fraillooking baskets of wire netting, and the next instant the elevator boy touches the trigger, and up goes the whole load as a feather is caught by the gale. The descent is more simple. Something lets go, and you fall from ten to twenty stories as it happens There is sometimes a jolt, which makes the passenger seem to feel his stomach pass into his shoes, but, as a rule, the mechanism and management both work marvellously towards ease and gentleness. Along Clarke street are some gorgeous underground restaurants, all marble and plated metal. Whoever is eating at one of the tables in them will see the ushers standing about like statues until a customer enters the door, when they dart forward as if the building were falling. It is only done in order to seat the visitor promptly. Being of a sympathetic and impressionable nature, I bolted along the streets all the time I was there as if one on the next block had picked my pocket. In the Auditorium Hotel the guests communicate with the clerk by electricity, and may flash word of their thirst to the bar tender as lightning dances from the top to the bottom of a steeple. A sort of annunciator is used, and by turning an arrow and pressing a button, a man may in half a minute order a cocktail, towels, ice-water, stationery, dinner, a boot -black, the evening newspapers. Our horse cars in New York move at the rate of about six miles an hour. The cable cars of Chicago make more than nine miles an hour iv town, and more than thirteen miles an hour where the population is less dense. They go in trains of two cars cacli, and with such a racket of gong-ringing and such a whir and grinding of grip wheels as to make a modern vesti billed train seem a waste of opportunities for noise. But these street cars distribute the people grandly, and while they occasionally run down a stray citizen, they far more frequently clear their way by lifting waggons and trucks bodily to one side as they whirl along. It is a rapid and a business-like city. The speed with which cattle are killed, and pigs turned into slabs of salt pork has amazed the world, but it is only the ignorant portion thereof that does not know that the celerity at the stockyards is merely an effort of the butchers to keep up with the rest of the town. The only slow things in Chicago are the railway trains. I do not know how many very tall buildings Chicago contains, but they must number nearly two dozen. Some of them are artistically designed, and hide their height in well-balanced proportions. A few are mere boxes punctured with window holes, and Stand above their neighbors like great hitching posts. The best of them are very elegantly and completely appointed, and the communities of men inside them almost live their lives within their walls, so multifarious are the occupations and services of the tenants, with their floors of deftly laid mosaicwork, their walls of marble and onyx, their balustrades of copper worked into arabesquerie, their, .-artistic lanterns, elegant electric figures'," their costly and luxurious public rooms, these Chicago office buildings force an exclamation of praise, however unwillingly it comes. They have adopted what they call "the Chicago method " in ptftting up these steepling hives. This plan is to construct the actual edifice of steel framework, to which are added thin outer walls of brick or stone masonry, and the necessary partitions of fire brick and plaster laid on iron lathing. The buildings are, therefore, like enclosed birdcages, and it is said that, like bird-cages, they cannot shake or tumble down. The exterior walls are mene envelopes. They are so treated that the buildings look like heaps of masonry. I have referred to the number of these stupendous edifices. Let it be known next that they are all in a very small district, that narrow area which comprises Chicago's office region, which lies between Lake Michigan and all the principal railroad districts, and at the edges of which one-twenty-fifth of all the railroad mileage of the world is said to terminate, though the district ia but little more than half-a-mile square, or 300 acres in extent. One of thes« buildings— and not the largest— has a population of 4000 persons. It was visited, and its elevators were used on three days, when a count was kept, by 19,000, 18,000, and 20.000 persons. Last October there were 7,000 offices in the tall buildings of Chicago, and 7, 000 more were under way in buildings then undergoing construction. The reader now understands why in the heart of Chicago every work-day evening the crowds convey the idea that Broadway is a deserted thoroughfare as compared with, say, the corner of Clark and Jackson streets. These tall buildings are mainly built on land obtained on a 99 year leasehold. Lou

leases rather than outright purchases of land have long been a favorite preliminary to building in Chicago, where for one thing the men who owned the land have not been those with money for building. Where very great and costly buildings are concerned, ihe long leases often go to corporations or syndicates who put up the houses. It seems to many strangers who visit Chicago that it is reasonable to prophesy a speeUy end tothe feverish impulse to swell the number of these giant piles either through legislative ordinance or by the fever running its course. Many prophesy that it mnst soon end. This idea is bred of several reasons. In the first [>lace the tall buildings darken the streets and transform the lower stories of opposite houses into so many cellars or damp and dark basements. In the next place the great number of tall and splendid office houses is depreciating the value of the humbler property. Four and five story houses that once were attractive are no longer so, because their owners cannot afford the conveniences which distinguish the greater edifices, wherein light aud heat are often provided free, lire-proof safes are at the service of every tenant, janitors officer a host of servants, and there are barber shops, restaurants, cigar and news stands, elevators, and half a dozen other conveniences not found in smaller houses. One of the foremost men in Chicago asserts that he can perceive no reason why the entire business heart of the town should not soon be all builded up of cloud-capped towers. There will be a need for them, he says, and the money to defray the cost of them will accompany the demand The only trouble he sees will be the solution of the problem what to do with the people who will then crowd the streets as never streets were clogged before. This prophecy relates to a little block in the city, but the city itself contains 181 £ square miles. In attaining her present size Chicago reached out and took to herself farms, prairie-land, and villages, and of such material the city now in part consists. The enlargement was urged and accomplished in order to anticipate the growth and needs of the city. It was a consequence of extraordinary foresight, which recognised the necessity of a uniform system of boulevards, parks, drainage, and water provision when the city shauld reach limits that it was even then seen must soon bound a compact aggregation of stores, offices, factories, and dwellings. Chicago expects to become the largest city in America— a city which in fifty years shall be larger than the consolidated cities Lluit may form New York at that time. Xow on what substance does Chicago feed that she should foresee herself so great ? What manner of men are those of Chicago ? What are the whys and the wherefores of her growth 'I It seems to have been, as it is now, a city of young men. One Chicagoan accouuts for its low death on the ground that not even its leading men are old euough to die. The young men who drifted there from the Eastern States after the close of the war all agree that the thing which most astounded Lliem was the youthfuluess of the most active business men. Marshall Field, Potter Palmer, and the rest, heading very large mercantile establishments, were young fellows. Those who came to Chicago from England fancied, as it is said that Englishmen do, that a man may not be trusted with affairs until he has lost half his hair and all his teeth. Our own Eastern men were apt to place wealth and success 'at the middle of the scale of life. But in Chicago men un-ler thirty were leading in commerce and industry. The sight was a spur to all the young men who came, and they also pitched in to swell the size iuid successes of the young men's capital. The easy making of money by the loaning of it, and handling city realty— sources which never failed with shrewd men — not only whetted the general appetite for big and quick money-making, but they provided the means for the establishment and extension of trade in other ways with the West at large. It is one of the peculiarities of Chicago that one finds not only the capitalists, but the shopkeepers discussing the whole country with a familiarity as strange to a man from the Atlantic coast as Nebraska is strange to most New Yorkers. But the well-informed Chicagoan is familiar with the different districts of the entire West, North, and South, with their crops, industries, wants, financial status, aud means of inter-communication. As in London we fiud men whose business field is the world, so in Chicago we find the business men talking not of one section or of Kurope, as is largely the case in New York, but discussing the affairs of the entire country. The figures which garnish their conversation are bewildering, but if they are analysed, or even comprehended, they will reveal to the listener how vast and how wealthy a region acknowledges Chicago as its financial and trading centre. Without either avowing or contesting any part of the process by which Chicago men account for their city's importance or calculate its future, let me repeat a digest of what several influential men of that city said upon the subject. Chicago, then, is the centre of a circle of 1000 miles diameter. If you draw a line northward of 500 miles you find everywhere arable laud and timber. For 050 miles westward there is no change in the rich aud alluring prospect, aud so all around the circle, except where Lake Michigan interrupts it, the same conditions are found. Moreover, the lake itself is a valuable element in commerce. The rays or spokes iv all these directions become materialised in the form of the tracks of 35 railways which enter the city. Twenty-two of these are great companies, and at a short distance sub-radials, made by other railroad companies, raise the number to 50 roads. As said above, in C.iicago one-twenty-fifth of the railway mileage of the world terminates and serves 30 millions of persons, who find Chicago the largest city easily accessible to them. Thus is found a vast population connected easily and directly with a common centre, to which everything they produce can be -brought, and from which all that contributes to the material progress and comfort of man may be economically distributed. There has been a vast improvement in the numerous States around Chicago, which until recently were in a condition of debt, being mortgaged, and having to send their earnings to Eastern capitalists. They have now paid off their debts, aud are absorbing money and investing it in local improvements. What they earn by their produce is now their own, and it comes back to them in the shape of money. In this change of condition is seen an explanation of much that has made Chicago peculiar. She has been what she would call " hustlincr." For years, in company with the entire western country, she has been making money only to pay debts with. That they say, is why men in Chicago have talked only "business;" that is why Chicago has had no leisure class, no reservoir of home capital seeking investment. The former conditions having changed, now that she is producing more and buying less, the rest will come also. When we understand what are the agricultural resources of the region, for which Chicago is the trading-post, we perceive how certain it was that its debt would be paid, and that great wealth would follow. The corn lands of Illinois return a profit) of lodols to the acre, raising 50 to 60 bushels at 42^ cents a bushel last year, aud at a cost of cultivation of only 7dols an acre. Wheat produces 22d01s 50 cents an acre, and costs a little less than corn, and returns a profit of 12dols to lodols. Oats run 55 bushels to the acre, at 27 cents a bushel, and cost the average farmer only, say, Gdols an acre, returning Sdol or 9dol an acre in profit. These figures will vary as to production, cost, and profit, but it is believed that they represent a fair average. This inland country, of which Chicago is the capital, produces two thousand million bushels of corn, seven hundred million bushels of oats, fifty million hogs, twenty-eight million horses, thirty million sheep, and so on, to cease before the reader is wearied ; but in no single instance is the region producing within 50 per cent of what it will be made to yield before the expiration of the next twenty years. Fanning there has been haphazard, rude, and wasteful ; but as it begius to pay well, the methods begin to improve. Drainage will add new lands and better methods will swell the crops, so that, for instance, where 00 bushels of corn to the .acre are now grown, at least 100 bushels will be harvested. All these corn lands are now settled, but they arc -not improved. They will get double in value. It is different with wheat ; with that the maximum production will soon be attained. (To be continued )

The Melbourne police say they havo broken up a gang ot pickpockets.

Sydney unemployed include 148 printers. No less than 160 civil servants over 60 years of age in Victoria are doomed to go under the retrenchment proposals. The New South Wales Hansard maintained the steady salt) of one copy per week during the last session of Parliament. A hid named Ellis, twelve years of age, plnckily rescued two children from drowning at Yoring, neur Lilydnle, Victoria, lately.

The stealing of an umbrella on a clear da ia held to be a theft by a Judge, but th stealing of the same article on a rainy day i held to be justifiable, on the ground of selfdefence. The stealing of a pair of boots is never justifiable ; they are not worth stealing when you can buy them so cheap at Hennessy's. Gentlemen's Carpet Slippers, 2sod.— (Advt.)