USA > Illinois > Cook County > Growth of Cook County; a history of the large lake-shore county that includes Chicago, Vol. I > Part 7
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Because we mentioned earlier in this chapter that the Chicago American, the first daily newspaper in Illinois, attempted in 1839 to give Chicago the nickname of Queen City, let us here recount the facts relating to other nicknames given the city at later dates.
According to a manuscript by Charles M. McIlvaine, librarian at the Chicago Historical Society from 1901 to 1926, the trustees of the village of Chicago, in 1835, adopted the motto, Urbs in Horto, or City In a Garden.
After this Chicago became known as the Garden City, a nickname that evidently carried a degree of popularity because as recently as 1959 there still were 31 active business firms in Chicago and Cook county using the words Garden City as a part of their names.
It was not until 1890, however, that the most common nickname, Windy City, came into wide usage. The appellation was meant to bear no relation to Chicago's weather conditions. It was used in uncomplimentary fashion by a jealous New Yorker, the famed editor of the New York Sun, Charles A. Dana.
It came about after a number of influential Chicago boosters appeared before Congress seeking legislation to have the pro- posed World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago World's Fair of 1893) made an official project of the United States gov- ernment.
New York, Washington, D. C., and St. Louis likewise sought the fair, but because the Chicagoans were talking so convinc- ingly, Dana advised his readers to pay no attention to the "nonsensical claims of that windy city," and added that "Its people could not build a World's Fair even if they won it."
But Chicago did win. President Benjamin Harrison signed the act on April 25, 1890. That was how Chicago came by its ยท first glorious world's fair, and also how the "windy city" mis- nomer became more firmly latched onto the city.
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We have avoided making the assertion that Dana created the "windy city" term. In fact, Volume 4 of A Dictionary of American English, University of Chicago Press, states that on Jan. 31, 1887, the Louisville Courier-Journal headlined a news dispatch from Chicago as follows: "A Gauzy Story of an Alleged Anarchist Dynamite Plot from the Windy City."
This Louisville angle came to our attention thru mention of it in a Chicago Tribune editorial of June 16, 1959, written by Carl Wiegman.
So if Dana did not actually coin the term, his vitriolic use of it helped publicize the nickname to the point where it stuck. Some Chicagoans today cherish the appellation, others resent it because the velocity of Chicago's breezes is not abnormal, but most residents appear to have no pronounced feelings on the matter.
"Best Game Ever Played"
Without attempting in this volume to explore the rich lore of Chicago and Cook county sports, nevertheless in our perusal of old newspaper files in the archives of the Chicago Historical Society, we found many an item concerning sports that relieved somewhat the tediousness of our research. For example, the recount of an 1870 baseball game which, according to the article, "was by far the best ever played in Chicago."
Not only does the account give us a partial insight of the social life of the times, but it reflects the style of sports writing common in those days.
The game apparently was a spring exhibition affair. The first four paragraphs of the account, as published in the old Chicago Times of April 24, 1870, follow, misspellings and all:
"The announcement that the Chicago Base-Ball club would contest a game with the Garden City nine was enough to con- gregate a crowd of 2,000 at the corner of Taylor and May streets on yesterday afternoon. The arrangements for keeping
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the spectators back from the field were admirable, a detach- ment of police, including Officers Kloss, Kreiburg, and Halter, under the charge of Sergt. Garrity, preserving the best of order, and giving the players every opportunity of conducting their game.
"The Chicago nine went to the bat, and opened the music with 14 runs before going out, their opponents appearing to be at first a trifle nervous at being faced by a lot of profes- sionals. The Garden Citys scored a cipher, and gave way again to the experts, who were enabled to obtain but three in the second innings. From this point to the end of the fifth innings the Garden City nine was unable to obtain a run, the sharp fielding of the Chicago club sending them out with a blank score on each fresh trial .. .
"Their competitors had succeeded in all but one of the previous innings in keeping the score of the Chicago club down to something like respectable figures. The seventh in- nings added another unit to the side of the non-professionals, but in the eighth and ninth they were obliged to content them- selves with whitewashes, and retired from the field, beaten by a score of 48 to two.
"The figures given are in reality but a poor criterion of the game, which was by far the best ever played in Chicago."
Further down the sports column we learn that another base- ball game also was played in Chicago that same day. In this game the Shoo Fly club, composed of Negroes, lost to a "club of white juniors" 29 to 20.
Concerning this game the paper remarks merely that "The members of the first nine are full-grown Fifteenth Amend- ments, and play a very fine game, although a certain inherent tenderness of the shin-bone of course operates against them not a little when they attempt to stop unusually hot 'daisy cutters.'"
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CHAPTER 6
EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT
I N the evolution of the Cook county form of government, we already have noted that at the outset, when the county was created on Jan. 15, 1831, the commission form was established and three commissioners were elected from at large. (Two of the successful candidates resided in the Chicago settlement, and the third, in the vicinity of the DuPage river, then encompassed by Cook county.) A sheriff and coroner were the only other county officials elected at the time.
That`Cook county started with a board of commissioners, rather than a board of township supervisors, was due to the original state constitution of 1818 which provided that all counties be run by a board of three commissioners.
This provision in the constitution had been dictated by the early settlers in the southern portion of the state, most of whom had infiltrated into the Illinois territory from Kentucky, Tennessee, and other southern states where the commission form was popular. Under this form, counties were organized with no provisions for townships.
Cook county's population swelled during the 1830s and
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1840s, however, with settlers from the New England states where the township form of government was in fashion. (With the completion of the Erie canal in 1825, the New Englanders, or "blue-bellied Yankees," as southern Illinoisians derisively termed them, began swarming into the northern counties of Illinois and other north-central areas by traveling the Great Lakes water route. )
It was inevitable, therefore, that these Yankees would set up a clamor for the type of local government with which they were familiar. Accordingly, in 1848 they succeeded in amending the state constitution to provide that any county could switch to a township form of government, if it so desired, by popular election.
Change Is Made
Cook county took advantage of this constitutional revision by voting at the November, 1849 election to make the switch. Under the election provisions, the three-man board of county commissioners was thereby dissolved and the managing of county affairs was entrusted to the county judge until such time as the township form could be set up and supervisors elected.
Elections were held on April 2, 1850, in which each exist- ing township chose for itself a group of town officials, including a supervisor who automatically became a member of the county board of supervisors.
The township supervisors, in their first meeting shortly thereafter, chose from their numbers Stephen M. Salisbury of Wheeling township as chairman of the county board.
The exact number of townships that chose supervisors in this first election is not clear, tho it appears to have been 27, including three from Chicago.
The April 4, 1850 issue of the Chicago Daily Democrat, a copy of which now is in the files of the Chicago Historical Society, lists the elected city township supervisors and their
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votes as follows:
North Chicago . George W. Dole 495
South Chicago N. H. Bolles 593
West Chicago
H. Smith 455
No mention is made in this paper of the results in the country township elections. One notes, however, that in the 1850 fed- eral census table there were 27 townships in Cook county as follows:
Twp.
Pop.
Twp. Pop.
Barrington
676
Lyons
965
Bloom
785
Maine 548
Bremen
250
New Trier
473
Chicago
Niles 408
(nine wards) 27,036
Northfield 1,013
South Chicago 1,008
Orland
504
East & West Chicago
1,919
Palatine 617
Elk Grove
672
Palos 336
Hanover
672
Proviso
482
(same as for Elk Grove)
Rich
168
Ridgeville1
444
Jefferson
744
Schaumburg
489
Lake
349
Thornton
368
Lemont
210
Wheeling
903
Leyden
756
Worth
589
If one assumes from the foregoing table that the townships of "Chicago (nine wards)," "South Chicago," and "East & West Chicago" are the same as the newspaper's North, South, and West Chicago, this means that there were 24 townships in Cook county outside the city of Chicago in 1850.
1. Ridgeville township was organized April 1, 1850, embracing what was after- wards Lake View township. The name was changed to Evanston township Feb. 17, 1857, and at the same time the southern portion was detached and formed into the township of Lake View .- History of Evanston, Hury & Sheppard.
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The townships of Cook county were established in a series of federal government surveys, the first of which was made in 1821, preparatory to the construction of the Illinois & Michigan canal.
Federal census tables show that by 1840 the county had 14 townships, including those within Chicago; by 1845, 16 town- ships; by 1850, the afore-mentioned 27 townships; by 1860, 29 townships; by 1870, 31 townships; and a year later (1871), 33 townships.
Cook county now has 38 townships, of which 30 are the so-called country townships, and eight are within the city of Chicago. They are:
Country Townships
Barrington
Northfield
Berwyn
Norwood Park
Bloom
Oak Park
Bremen
Orland
Calumet
Palatine
Cicero
Palos
Elk Grove
Proviso
Evanston
Rich
Hanover
River Forest
Lemont
Riverside
Leyden
Schaumburg
Lyons
Stickney
Maine
Thornton
New Trier
Wheeling
Niles
Worth
Chicago City Townships
North Chicago
Lake
South Chicago
Lake View
West Chicago
Jefferson
Hyde Park
Rogers Park
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17 Counties Retain Commission
There are 102 counties in the state, seventeen of which have chosen to remain under the original commission form of government. Under this non-township form, as previously alluded to, three county commissioners are elected at large for overlapping terms of three years.
In most of these counties such boards also function as boards of tax review and as boards of health.
According to the Illinois Blue Book for 1951-1952, pub- lished by the secretary of state, other officers commonly found within the strict commission form of county organization are: county clerk, recorder, county judge, probate judge, sheriff (who also serves as ex-officio county collector ), coroner, state's attorney, treasurer (who serves as assessor in counties with populations under 150,000), superintendent of schools, super- intendent of highways, surveyor, probation officers, public ad- ministrator, and county welfare superintendent.
The remaining 84 counties of the state, exclusive of Cook, are under township organization, the main governing body of which is the county board of supervisors, one supervisor being elected from each township. Each such township also has its complete set of local officers, including assessor, who, tho theoretically under the supervision of the country treasurer, often makes his assessments quite independently.
Under 1949 legislative statutes most counties were due to have a supervisor of assessments especially selected by the county boards of supervisors, but the act subsequently was declared unconstitutional by the state supreme court because such assessors were to be selected rather than chosen by popular election.
Leading proponent of the bill was John S. Clark, elected assessor of Cook county from 1934 to 1954. Clark originally sought legislation to have elected assessors for the other counties of the state, but eventually was forced into compromise for a
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selected supervisor of assessments.
The argument for the single assessor or supervisor of assess- ments was that under him assessments within a county and even between counties would be made in more uniform fashion than if made hodgepodge by the hundreds of individual town- ship assessors. (The writer of this history, Growth of Cook County, was a research analyst under Clark at the time and assisted in seeking this single assessor legislation.)
The afore-mentioned Blue Book also points out that in addition to the elected township supervisors, these township- governed counties operate under a provision of law which entitles them to additional members of their board of super- visors if the county's population exceeds 4,000, as most counties do. These additional supervisors are elected at large, and their numbers sometimes swell the membership on the board to as many as 75, an unwieldy body.
Tho the township form of government had come into being for Cook county in 1850, it soon became obvious that because of the enormous population growth of the city of Chicago, itself, the city's voice in county governmental affairs was fast becoming inadequate.
In 1850, it will be remembered, the entire county had a population of but 43,385, of whom 29,963 lived in Chicago. But by 1870, the county's population had increased to 349,966, of whom 298,977 resided in the city.
Thus if Chicago, with a population six times greater than that of the remainder of the county, were to be proportionately represented, it either would have to elect more than one hun- dred supervisors from within its limits to offset the nearly thirty country township supervisors, or it would have to reor- ganize its county governing structure.
Outgrows Town Meeting
Cook county, as of that time, obviously had outgrown the New England "town meeting" form of government. More-
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over, because of this population growth-matched in impor- tance only by the community's leadership in trade, transporta- tion, and manufacturing enterprises-Cook county no longer was comparable to any of the other 101 counties of the state.
To give a clearer picture of Cook county's size, both by area and population, we here note that its land area of 956 square miles gives it sixth rank among the 102 counties of Illinois. McLean, of which Bloomington is the seat, ranks first with 1,173 square miles. Putnam, from which Cook was carved in 1831, and of which Hennepin is the seat, is the smallest, both in area (166 square miles) and in population (4,746).
Cook county's population of 4,508,792 (1950 census), however, was not only the largest for any county within the state, but was greater by 303,408 than the population of all Other 101 counties combined. The population for the entire state in 1950 was 8,712,176.
In 1959, according to John J. Crane and Edward J. Kenealy, tax rate experts in the office of County Clerk Edward J. Barrett, Cook county had within its boundaries 116 incorporated vil- lages and cities of which four rank among the ten most popu- lous within the state. These four, with their 1950 population census figures, are: Chicago, 3,620,692; Evanston, 73,641; Cicero, 67,544; and Oak Park, 63,529.
Thus with a population that was ever growing, Cook county in 1870 elected a change that was to place its government in a separate category from that of any other county in the state.
It may be only co-incidental that in the months preceding the change, the county government was in something of a turmoil.
This condition is reflected in notes on board proceedings that are reported by Goodspeed and Healy in their History of Cook County, published in 1909.
Roll-calls in the late 1860s indicate there were 50 super- visors on the board, of whom slightly fewer than half-elected
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on a ward basis-were from the city of Chicago.
The country township supervisors were fighting against the city supervisors, there was evidence of graft on the board, and the county was unable to borrow money to pay current debts until the graft was rooted out.
The fight between the two groups of supervisors reached the stage where one of the city members introduced a resolu- tion to have the forthcoming 1870 constitutional convention insert a clause by which most of the country townships would be expelled from Cook county and attached to adjoining counties.
This resolution proposed the creation of "Chicago County," to be comprised of the townships of North Chicago, South Chicago, West Chicago, Hyde Park, Calumet, Thornton, Lake, Cicero, Jefferson, Lake View, and Evanston. It also provided that the townships of Lemont, Palos, Worth, Orland, Bremen, Rich and Bloom be attached to Will county, and that Proviso, Leyden, Niles, Maine, Elk Grove, and New Trier be given to DuPage county.
This resolution, which would have done away with Cook county, was defeated by the country township majority of supervisors.
In its stead, the supervisors, on Dec. 15, 1869, did adopt an innocuous resolution "that the board of supervisors of Cook county respectfully ask the Constitutional Convention to insert a clause in the Constitution, authorizing the Legislature to divide the counties in certain cases."
This resolution, of course, had no ultimate effect, other than to indicate to the state at large that Cook county was not entirely satisfied with its existing form of township government.
At about the same time there were widespread rumors that both the County hospital and the Oak Forest Infirmary (then strictly a poor house as compared with its present status of
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being a hospital) were being mismanaged and that foods served in Oak Forest were inferior to those for which the county was spending money.
A committee of the board, itself, was appointed to "investi- gate" the charges. This committee subsequently reported back that everything was "satisfactory," but the newspapers termed the report a "whitewash."
Then followed a charge of graft that rocked the county.
Involved was J. J. Kearney, supervisor from Chicago's then ninth ward, who on Dec. 6, 1869, had been elected chairman of the board by his fellow supervisors. Kearney, at the time, was not new on the board, having been a member during the preceding term. How the supervisors from the country town- ships, who constituted the board's majority, permitted Kearney to gain the chairmanship is not clear.
The graft charge stemmed from circumstances surrounding the county's purchase of land in Englewood that was used as the site of the County Normal School, built within months following the acquisition. A special committee was appointed by the board to investigate.
In March (1870) the committee reported it had secured evidence that at least one member of the board had received a tract of land as a bribe for the purchase of the school site. With that, one of the supervisors presented to the board the following resolution:
"Whereas, the special committee of five appointed by this board to examine into and investigate certain charges, report that they found J. J. Kearney, a member of this board, did receive a lot of land, and from the preponderance of testimony it was for his influence in securing the location of the Cook County Normal school at Englewood while he was a member of the previous board of supervisors;
"Therefore, be it resolved as the sense of this board, that the said J. J. Kearney, supervisor of the Ninth ward and
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member of this board, be requested to resign as presiding officer and as a member of this board."
Two motions followed. One, asking Kearney to resign as chairman, carried 42 to eight. Action on the other, asking him to resign as a member of the board, was postponed by a vote of 29 to 21.
On March 22, 1870, Kearney resigned as board chairman, but not as a board member.
Shortly, thereafter, tho the date is not clearly established, a committee of the board, investigating the letting of contracts for public buildings, reported that "in view of the responsi- bility resting on them and to the end that this board may be purged of shame and disgrace now existing upon it, they would recommend that J. J. Kearney, supervisor for the Ninth ward, be expelled from this board and his name be erased from the roll."
When this was placed in the form of a motion, it carried by a vote of 42 to 4 and Supervisor Kearney, the former presi- dent, was off the board and out of office.
Hybrid Government For Cook
The ensuing constitutional revision of 1870 made it possible for Cook county to do away with its strict township form of government the following year, substituting for it a form unlike any other in the state. This embodies certain features of both the township and commission forms of organization, and has been found so satisfactory that only minor changes in it have been made down to the present time.
The new government retained in name the townships and permitted those in the county outside of Chicago to elect a complete set of officers, but drastically curtailed their powers in most cases.
As explained recently by George R. McCollom, chief clerk in the election department of the county clerk's office, the township officers, after the change, continued to be supervisor,
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clerk, justice of the peace, and treasurer and collector, the latter two offices often being held by the same person.
The township supervisor, however, ceased representing his township on the county board, and the collector and assessor became, in effect, deputies of the county treasurer (collector ) and the county assessor, respectively.
As mentioned previously, Cook county has 30 such so-called "country" townships and eight city townships within Chicago, but the city's townships elect no officials and exercise no gov- ernmental authority.
The major alteration effected in this change of government for Cook county was the supplanting of its board of super- visors (one from each township or city) with a board of com- missioners numbering 15, ten of whom were elected from within the city of Chicago, and five from the remainder of the county.
In the early years under the new form of organization, the ten Chi- cago commissioners were elected from groups of wards within the city, while the remaining five members were elected from groups of townships within the county outside the city. Later, however, this was changed so that the com- missioners were and still are elected from at large, the ten from within Chicago, and the five from outside.
Daniel Ryan President, Board of Commissioners of Cook County
The first meeting of the new board of commissioners of Cook county was held on Dec. 4, 1871. At this meeting, Commis- sioner Julius White was elected by his fellow members as county board chairman (later termed president) .
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That White was one of the five commissioners from out- side Chicago, representing the "country" townships of Lake View,1 New Trier, Northfield, and Niles, indicates he had sup- port from Chicago commissioners and that the previous feuds between city and country township representatives were at an end.
The term of office for a commissioner, originally set for three years, on a staggered basis, now has been extended to four, with the commissioners now being elected in even-num- bered, non-presidential years, and all at the same time.
Electing A President
And now, instead of letting the commissioners choose their own chairman, as at first, the voters elect one as board presi- dent. The president also must be elected separately as a board member. To date there has been no embarrassing circumstance wherein a person might be elected board president but would be unable to serve because he failed to get elected as a board member.
The president, tho serving both as a commissioner and as president, has but one vote and receives but a single salary. A candidate for board president runs on a county-wide basis, receiving votes from within Chicago as well as from without.
In these elections the board members and the president also become, automatically, ex-officio members and president of the Cook county board of forest preserve commissioners, and as such serve without additional pay.
The salary of the president of the county board now is $15,000 a year, and that of each of the other 14 commissioners, $10,000. Full time of the commissioners now is required in administering the many functions of present-day county government.
Back in the 1830s and 1840s, when Cook county had but
1. Lake View township was not annexed to the city of Chicago until 1889.
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