USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume I > Part 6
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
Of these three thousand social organizations more than three- fourths are not only based upon religious faith and teaching, but a portion of the time of each regular meeting is devoted to religious exercises.
Chicago has two of the largest universities in America, the North- western and the Chicago, the attendance of students at these and other colleges in the city being over ten thousand. It has five theo- logical seminaries, the students of which number one thousand. It lias, besides the libraries of the universities, that of the Institute of Technology, as well as those of the theological, medical, law, dental. scientific, engineering and other schools; three of the largest public libraries in the United States. The opportunity here afforded for
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the study of music and the fine arts is equal, if not superior to that of any other city in America. Chicago has numerous orchestras, one of which, the Theodore Thomas, is conceded to rank with any in the world.
From 1852 to 1861 the New York Tribune was undoubtedly, politically, the most influential journal in the United States. Its utterances upon the subject of slavery carried conviction to the hearts of millions; it spoke upon these topics not with the voice of authority, but as if an inspired prophet had arisen crying "Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make His paths straight." From 1880 to the present time the public press of Chicago has, in political matters, been the most potent of any in this country.
At the time of the greenback craze in 1876 there was not great danger that the country would be carried away by it. The distinc-
FINANCE
tion between coin and a paper currency, not at all
IN POLITICS. times promptly redeemed on demand, was one of
which the country had large experience. But the movement to retain the practice inaugurated in the administration of Washington, followed certainly until 1853 and, so far as the statute spoke, until 1873, was one which appealed to the com- mon man, especially as the change of the statute in 1873, by which silver money was made a legal tender for only small sums, attracted in 1873 neither attention nor discussion among debtors or creditors, in financial circles, among politicians or throughout the country, because it was not then thought to be a measure of great importance. As a consequence the great majority of the people, if in 1873 they read or heard of the change in the statute, forgot all about it, and when, by the development of silver mining and the comparatively enormous production of silver, it declined in price so greatly that the silver dollar was salable in the markets of the world for from sixty to seventy cents only, the statement was made and believed by multitudes that the money kings had, in 1873, brought about a surreptitious demonetization of silver for the purpose of in- creasing the relative value of money, adding to the wealth of the cred- itor and increasing the burdens of the debtor class. Creditors are never popular at the hustings, before juries, in novels or with the people. Creditors are few, debtors many. Besides, reasoned the people, why should the practice of nearly a century have been changed without
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discussion or a popular demand? That from the beginning of the government up to the year 1873 there had been coined only 1,439.437 standard silver dollars, and that by act of Congress such coinage had ceased in 1853 without noticeable effect upon the price of gold, silver or any other article, was not in the hot passion of the time generally considered or understood.
July 14, 1890, Congress, by a law known as the Sherman act, repealed the law known as the Silver act of 1873, and the secretary of the treasury was ordered to purchase at the market price each month four and a half million ounces of silver bullion and to issue treasury notes of the United States in payment therefor. For a month or two after the passage of the act, the price of silver bullion advanced rapidly and in August, 1890, was worth in the market $1.21 per ounce. After September a decline set in which continued until Janu- ary, 1891, when silver bullion was salable at about one dollar per ounce. The decline continued and by the close of the year 1892 the price had gone as low as eighty-five cents per ounce. June 26, 1893, the authorities of India closed the mints of that empire to the free coin- age of silver. The signs of a financial panic in this country appeared and President Cleveland called an extra session of Congress to take into consideration, as he said, the "perilous condition in business circles- largely the result of a financial policy embodied in unwise laws which must be executed until repealed by Congress." November 1, 1893, in accordance with the president's recommendation, the Sherman act was repealed. As a consequence from thence until after the presi- dential election of 1896, national politics turned largely upon the question of the single or gold standard as distinguished from the double or gold and silver standard.
The situation was for the government, for business and for the people, the most serious presented since the close of the Civil war. India, Japan, Mexico, and other countries were contemplating an adoption of the gold standard and consequently having great quanti- ties of silver to dispose of. The proposal that every person might go to the United States mint and there have all the silver he brought transformed, freely coined, into standard silver dollars, made a legal tender for all debts, public and private, without reference to whether the 412 grains of silver put into the dollar could be bought in the markets of the world for fifty or seventy cents, seemed to those op-
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posed to such free coinage a measure fraught with disaster not only to our monetary system, but to all public and private business. On the other hand it was urged that the free coinage of silver would not only increase wages but the price of corn, cotton, beef and all farm and manufactured products; that the business depression then existing would disappear and prosperity come to all save the con- spiring money kings, some of whose ill-gotten gains would be re- turned to the people.
The issue made in the campaign of 1860 was largely sentimental, involving the fundamental rights of man. The issue in 1896 was one of conceived self-interest, but the changes and counter changes of the campaign made it, in the judgment of millions, a struggle against fraud and iniquity, a battle to throw off the tyrannical chain of a single, the gold standard, for measuring values. This thought was most graphically expressed by Bryan in the speech delivered by him at the national Democratic convention held in Chicago in the summer of 1896.
Upon other things Mr. Bryan said: "I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty-the cause of hu manity. In this contest brother has been arrayed against brother, father against son. The warmest ties of love, acquaintance and asso- ciation have been disregarded. We are fighting in defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer ; we entreat no more, we pė .. tition no more. We defy them.
"My friends, the question we are to decide is upon which side will the Democratic party fight; upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses?
"Having behind us the commercial interests, the laboring inter- ests, and the toilers everywhere, we shall answer the demand for a gold standard by saying to them: 'You shall not press upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.' "
Throughout the convention the forty-eight votes of Illinois, through the influence of Governor Altgeld, of Chicago, were stead- ily given for Bryan, who was nominated upon the fifth ballot. That
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the platform was in direct opposition to the views of Grover Clove- land, then president of the United States, he having been, as the nominee of the Democratic party, elected to that office in 1892, was well known.
The Republican convention met at St. Louis, July 16. That Mckinley would have a majority of the convention and be nominated for president was assured before the convention met; the only con- test, therefore, was as to the position to be taken upon the money question. The platform adopted after much discussion was plainly in favor of the gold standard. When it was evident that such action would be taken, Henry M. Teller, who for twenty years had been a Republican senator from the state of Colorado, in part said: "I contend for silver because I believe there can be no proper financial system in any country that does not recognize this principle of bimetal- ism. I contend for it because in this year of 1896 the American people are in greater distress than they ever were in their history. I contend for it because I believe the civilization of the world is to be determined by the rightful or wrongful solution of this financial question." The platform with its declaration in favor of the single gold standard having been adopted, Senator Teller and the delegates acting with him retired from the convention and thereafter supported the nominees of the Democratic party.
Each platform was creditable to the convention by which it was made. Each fairly stated the issue, and voters were not misled by declarations designed to curry favor with all by misleading some.
Chicago, lying midway between the Atlantic cities, wherein the 'oanable capital of the country was more largely held, and the Rocky Mountain region, in which were situated nearly all the great silver- producing mines, was eminently debatable territory and each party made strenuous efforts to control the influence that should go out from the metropolis of the northwest.
The Democrats brought into the city great numbers of speakers accustomed to address audiences of a few hundred persons, to go among the people, talk individually with as many as possible and by personal converse, force conviction upon voters. The Republicans brought here substantially all the orators of national reputation friendly to the gold standard. The influence of Chicago was strongly for the gold standard.
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The vote of Cook county in 1892 had been Republican, Harrison, III,254; Democratic, Cleveland, 144,604.
In 1896 the vote was Republican, Mckinley, 221,893; Demo- cratic, Bryan, 151,910.
The slowly-turning wheels of the prairie schooner have ceased to bend down the verdant grass of Illinois. The white-covered wagon of the immigrant is seen no more; the home seekers rest, some in beautiful habitations they reared and hold as the fruit of much toil; some beneath the sod they looked upon when sixty years agone they journeyed westward, seeking lands to own, till, improve, enjoy and hand down to descendants then unborn. Counted by the years of geologic time man is new to earth; only in recent ages have his foot- steps marked the soil or his hand marred the forest. Robinson Cru- soe, when he beheld in the sand the print of a human foot not his own, knew that to the lonely isle upon which he had been cast, an- other man had come, another, kin to him, a voiceful creature to whom he could speak, perhaps with whom he must fight; for from bitter experience of an unmeasured past the human has inherited an apprehension, a fear of, often an aversion to his kin, the man whose height, complexion, speech, manners are strange to him; and the unknown competitor or undesired presence he slays or flees from. The fruit of the dragon's teeth sown by Kadmos instinctively seeks to kill. Only by association with woman has man been tamed, through her love has been begotten and men taught to dwell together in peace. Barbarian hordes seeking for lands have usually slain a great portion of those they found in possession and enslaved most of the rest.
Perhaps not so ruthlessly expressed but in effect the creed of nomadic land-seekers has often been like that of Jenghiz Khan, "to sweep away cities as haunts of slaves and luxury that his herds might freely feed upon grass whose green was free from dusty feet." The homeseekers, who increased not the fertility but the fruitfulness of the prairies a hundredfold, were not a horde nor were they barbar- ians. They would gladly have made the lives of the Indians a thousand times nobler and happier, if the Inidans had been willing to be taught. There yet remain for homeseekers vast tracts of fruit- ful soil in North and South America, some likewise in islands of the
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS R L
OLD POST-OFFICE
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sea. A good deal is being done to increase the area of cultivable land by the drainage of swamps, the irrigation of barren tracts, reclamation of deserts, the preservation of forests and an increase of the fertility of soils long made use of. Of all the money now being expended by governments, none is more wisely or will prove to have been more profitably expended than that laid out in adding to the area and fertility of the habitable regions of the earth. Fleets and armies do not make flowers blossom, fruits ripen or fields to bring forth some forty, some sixty and some an hundredfold. The onward sweep of drifting sands overwhelming fruitful lands has never been arrested by thunder of cannon or charges of cavalry. Not all the armed fleets that reddened the sea at Salamis and Trafalgar or stirred the mighty deep at Santiago and Tsushima have made fertile soil of one desert acre or redeemed and made fit for habitation of man one rood of miasmatic swamp.
Up to a century ago the chief occupation of man might well have been said to be to prepare for and carry on war. The most universally WORLD approved of political maxims was "In time of peace prepare for war." The duty of loving one's KNOWLEDGE. country was correlative with that of hating its enemies. The retired English naval officer who, too infirm to longer sail the sea, took great delight in killing flies because they reminded him of Frenchmen, was, a century ago, typi- cal of much national feeling. We are yet under the spell of the inherited suspicion of and aversion to the stranger. 'Twas only yes- terday that we began to become acquainted with the world, to know mankind. There are now each year more globe trotters, people who travel for pleasure, than there were in the hundred centuries that preceded the nineteenth. Having met the Frenchman in his vine- yard, the German at his beer garden, the Englishman in his shop, and the Arabian in the desert, we know by ocular inspection that they breathe, move, and act very much as we do. They did not carry us to a dungeon or hurl us into the sea. They sold us goods and seemed pleased to do so. That mighty lever, the Press, not only moves the world, but kicks its component parts into obedience to its behests and association with each other. Today every ten-year-old school boy knows more about the different peoples that make what we call man- kind than anybody did two hundred years ago. In the fourteenth cen-
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tury the most learned geographers of the eastern hemisphere knew as little of the western as we do of that which is upon the reverse side of the moon. Today by the hand of the omnipercipient, omniscient and omnipotent Press, there is laid upon our table each morning news of every sensational and important thing that within twenty-four hours has happened, not only in Chicago, New York, Washington, Havana, Manila, Buenos Ayres, Paris, Tokio, London, Berlin and Rome, but in the Hindu Kush, Alaska, Australia, Algiers, Bankok, Caucasia, Chhindwara, Civita Castellana, Faizabad, Göttingen, Kandahar, Mo- rocco, New Zealand and Nicaraugua. The reader will be likely to have his attention called to the fact that the daughter of his neighbor is to take a trip to Kalamazoo, also that the alderman of the 'steenth ward has been sent to Kankakee; the president has caught a black bass weighing twelve pounds; Gans is out of condition and cannot fight ; the pitcher of the Cubs has sprained his ankle and cannot pitch, and that the bull dog of the Duke of Westmoreland has taken a prize and also bitten the Count of Graffenburgh. By virtue of the omnipresent Press, every man is made acquainted with and conse- quently interested in each. Our knowledge is thus increased and our sympathy extended. The ends of the earth are coming to know more of and despise each other less.
When English has became the universal language and the speech of no man is a jargon to any; when no race and no people can think they have a monopoly of culture; when the merits and demerits of all are understood, a leader of a great party in a great nation will not, as a representative of the people, say these laws which as you urge tend to enslavement, "were not made for foreigners but for negroes." The feeling out of which has grown the unwillingness to act justly, the denial to others of rights claimed for ourselves, the assumed su- periority of our ways and our civilization over those of the stranger is passing away. When, under the influence of a better understand- ing, the character of all has been changed and the moral status of each raised, it will not be necessary that our frontier bristle with cannon and our harbors be surrounded by ships of war.
The true spirit of Chicago for freedom and justice to all will in time prevail throughout the world. The Press, Commerce and Asso- ciation are mightily helping to bring this about ; not, perhaps, because
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they wish so to do, but because they cannot help it. None now living may remain to see the day, but it will come and Chicago will continue to be a factor in establishing the reign of peace, good will and equal- ity of all before the law. It was an American poet who wrote:
"Then brother man fold to thy heart thy brother, For where love dwells, the peace of God is there; To worship rightly is to love each other; Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer."
Something over a century ago the philosophy of evolution began to be promulgated in Europe. With this philosophy the name of Dar- win is most intimately associated. Darwin did not claim to have first taught the new thought-indeed, no one man can with truth be said to have first called attention to the evolutionary method by which the earth, men, animals and plants have arisen, been transformed, passed away and succeeded by those now here, under natural laws of birth, growth, transformation and decay applicable to all earthly and material existence. It is now generally conceded that not only has there been an evolution of plants and animals but that opinions, ideas and civilizations have arisen and been transformed in accord- ance with natural and spiritual laws. It is not conceded that the natural or spiritual laws now existing are the result of evolution. Civilization has arisen out of barbarism. The savage state was and, where now existing, largely is communal, socialistic. With the ex- ception of a little personal clothing, a few weapons and rude imple- ments, the savage has no individual property. The occupancy and possession of huts, lands, boats, etc., are in common. There are neither employers nor employed, masters nor servants, rulers nor ruled except as strength at the moment of contest determines and except as the exigencies of war may have created leaders and, as a result of combat, men have been enslaved. Progress upward has always been coincident with a recognition of private ownership, of property in lands, cattle, houses, fruits, crops, utensils, tools, money and incorporeal things, such as patents, copyrights, heirships, dower, homesteads ; a right to order, to have neighborhoods quiet and or- derly as well as to the enjoyment of many other things deemed con- ducive to good order, happiness and freedom. No state of society. no form of social order, no kind of government has given complete satisfaction and none ever will. Man is an imperfect being, toiling
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with imperfect hands, seeing with imperfect eyes, hearing with im- perfect ears, remembering and reasoning with an imperfect brain. All that he does partakes of his imperfection. Disappointed in his endeavors, weary with effort that fails of the success hoped for, men in all ages have sought to find peace in withdrawal from the strife of life. To this end there have existed for thousands of years and still exist great numbers of communal societies in which such prop- erty as the commune has belongs equally to all and no person has ex- clusively anything, save the mere clothing he wears and makes use of. Communal societies, the membership of which has been care- fully selected and wherein there is complete separation of the sexes or the membership is composed of persons past the child-bearing and child-begetting age, have existed in the old world for thousands of years, were existent in Mexico and probably in South America at the advent of the Spaniards, and have been doing good work in the United States and Canada for two centuries. With a carefully- selected membership living under the conditions before mentioned, with rules of conduct, generally cheerfully obeyed and always en- forced, these organizations have brought peace, happiness, freedom from want, pleasant companionship, home and contentment to in- numerable souls. Into some one of the thousands of these beneficent societies any person of good habits and character, in fair health, able to make him or herself useful, willing to work and obey the rules of the order can obtain admission. If any such person, content to sink his or her individuality, desires to lead a life entirely social in which all that is done is for the benefit of and to serve the purpose of the commune, he or she can do so. The socialism of which this genera- tion hears so much, out of which so much advertising and glory is obtained, is not of the kind above described. The effort of today is not to give opportunity to those who wish to lead a socialistic life, but to destroy individual effort for individual success and to compel all to enter the commune. By means of bolts and bars, by the aid of soldiers and policemen, sheriffs and bailiffs we are all to be driven into the socialistic life. Of course all this is not to be accomplished at once, but as much as possible, to this end, is to be set in motion to- day and the remainder is to follow as speedily as conditions permit. It was once the case that all roads led to Rome. Today all ideas come to Chicago. Thus we have in this city all grades of opinion,
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all kinds of theories as to government, society, morals, business, prop- erty and religion. The metropolis of the Northwest is considered fruitful soil for the growth of all theories. Naturally, the doctrine that all law is tyranny, capital an oppression, individual property robbery, governmental restraint of personal will to do what it pleases, a form of slavery, and that it is the duty of freemen to rise and overturn the effete theory and practice of the present, came to Chicago. Anarchistic societies were organized and the propagation of an anarchistic creed undertaken by which oppression was to be ended and a new reign created under which there would be neither pain nor poverty, ungratified desire nor unsatisfied longing.
Anarchistic newspapers came into being and great quantities of literature designed to help pull down the structures reared by years of
toil and prudence and to scatter the savings of long-
ANARCHY. continued struggle and economy were circulated throughout the city. A portion of this was :
"A revolutionist's duty is to himself. * * The whole work of his existence-not only in words, but also in deeds-is at war with the existing order of society, and with the whole so-called civilized world. With its laws, morals and customs, he is an uncompromising opponent. He lives in this world for the purpose of more surely de- * stroying it. * * Between him and society reigns the war of death or life; publicly and secretly but always steady and unpardon- ing.
"All weak sentiment toward relation, friendship, love and thank- fulness must be suppressed through the cold passion of revolutionary work. * : * Equally must he hate everything that is anti-revo- lutionary. So much the worse for him if he has in the present world ties of relation, friendship or love. He is no revolutionist if these ties are able to arrest his arm."
Tuesday, May 3, 1886, there was an attempt by a large body of men to drive away the men working at McCormick Reaper Works; the factory was attacked and men working there were beaten. Two police officers endeavoring to protect these workingmen were also badly injured. Upon the arrival of reinforcements of police, a fierce contest ensued; the riotous crowd being finally driven away. The following day numerous hand bills containing the words "Revenge, Revenge," and a call to arms were distributed in the city and notice
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