History of Cook County, Illinois From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Part 164

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 875

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"So if it was wise to secure cheaper houses for the men, it was even wiser to secure better houses, so that the wife and child should be happier during the day, and the man happier when he comes home at night tired and needing rest for eye and heart, as well as body. The dirty tenement and the unwashed and uncombed wife and the dirty and unkempt children drive men from home to groggery and saloon. The flower in the pathway: the tree by the sidewalk; the church spire; the lighted and warm and graceful Arcade; the reading room and library; the ball ground; the boat course and the theater are worth all they cost in dollars and cents, because of the interest in dollars and cents that they will certainly return. They will pay, I know they will pay, because they will help the working people of Pull- man to grow upward as God meant that labor should grow, and not downward as capital, tempted by the devil of selfishness and greed, has so often compelled labor to grovel and debase itself.

" Then if beauty and cleanliness, and recreation and culture counted in securing just money returns, the next step was naturally to provide honest shops and stores for sale of honest food at honest prices; schools for children; churches for those who would worship; play-grounds for athletic sports; boat tracks; books for those who would read, and the theater for such as felt need of such recreation. As I have already said, it all pays and will pay. Men must play ! Men will play ! They must have and will have rest and recreation.

They will have it in virtuous forms and under virtuous conditions, or they will get it under vicious forms and under vicious conditions.

" When I think of the suffering that is kept from the women and children of this factory town by the absence of the groggery and the gin mill, I know that the mothers and little ones in many a small, clean tene- ment are to-night blessing the loving heart and wise brain and resolute purpose that made such homes pos- sible for the working people here in Pullman.

" But to go back. All this chance for manly sport and healthful recreation for body and brain are not given as charity, but are wisely and justly furnished to all who need and will pay fair prices for fair enjoyment. So the whole is done from no false philanthropy, with no suggestion of sickly charity, but on the square and business-like basis that there is a commercial value in beauty, and that fair and generous dealings with your brother man earns and will pay good interest. Thus the old argument of schools is answered. The useful is beautiful. The truly beautiful is and must be useful. Capital does not here seek to rob labor. Nor does it seek to coddle and emasculate and pauperize labor. Labor does not here seek to cheat capital, or to steal from it, or borrow from it, or beg from it. I.abor earns its own wages, pays its own way, and respects itself.

" These, as they seem to me, are some few of the reasons why it was very wise to build Pullman, and try this great experiment under such fair and broad con- ditions.

"But what of the future ? I'hither does this effort lead ? I do not dream that the millennium is about to dawn even at Pullman. It will be strange if the ser- pent does not hiss even under the rose leaves of this Eden. Strange if there is not still a fib on the lips of some Eve, and cowardice in the heart of some Adam even here. But here there is at least a fair, earnest effort to adjust and equalize the conditions between labor and capital.

" As I have walked these streets and looked upon these homes, I have recalled the factory and mining towns as I saw them in Italy, and France, and Germany, and Belgium, and England.

" Thus recalling what I have seen elsewhere, I have said, all honor to the loving heart and strong, wise brain which here demonstrate, so that the coldest may feel and the blindest may see, that the true, essential and enduring interests of capital and labor are forever one.

"When I earn one dollar and save therefrom ten cents, I am just that far and to that extent a member of the capitalist class. Capital is only the difference be- tween what labor earns and what labor spends. That saving, wherever it may be invested, in shop or savings bank, is allied to the great millions of the business workl. It runs into them and blends with them, just as the mountain rivulet runs into the sea. Let it be the part of wise capital to know and to act on the knowledge that precisely as the sea must give back its waters to the mountain stream through absorption, cloud and returning rainfall, so capital must return its strength and sustenance to labor. Otherwise capital itself would be dried up and disappear.

" Thus I answer that the reasonable expectation is, and I think the sure and certain result must be, that this effort, if bravely continued and wisely controlled, must be successful. It will help the laborer. It will help the capitalist. The corporation and the working peo- ple must be alike benefited. Just as surely as the be-

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ginning was wise, the end will be beneficent. This is not experiment. The idea was involved in that first idea of beauty and harmony subservient to use and comfort, to answer which the first Pullman palace car was built. In :863 or 1864 they were put in use. And just as surely as they wheeled their way at once into being a necessity, and proved themselves a wise invest- ment, just so surely this experiment of a factory town, where beauty, books, art and culture adorn labor and lighten its burdens and increase its joys, is already an accomplished and demonstrated success. It is no longer an experiment. It is a proved result.

" To what does it lead? I can keep you no longer by what must at the best be only brief analysis and unsatisfactory suggestion. Shall men be manlier for this brave effort ? Shall women be sweeter and kind- lier? Shall children be more hopeful and more aspir- ing? Schools shall here culture and teach. Churches shall lift the people up by simpler faith and broader and more Christ-like charity. Books shall broaden and art shall develop. Men must thus be manlier and better, for

" " Man, though he beareth the brand of sin. And the flesh and the devil have bound him, Hath a spirit within. to old Eden akin, Only nurture up Eden around him.

" Pullman will build cars, and will teem with mani- fold production. Labor will earn fair wages and capital will get generous returns. But better than factory, and richer than material production : sweeter than flowers and more beautiful than theater, or library, or church, shall be the manhood that will be developed here."

The curtain then dropped, and at nine o'clock rose upon the first scene of " Esmerakla." This episode of Carolina life was well presented and enjoyed by the . auditory. Somewhat of a coincidence is in the fact, that in a few days more than one year from that night, another play representing life in Carolina was exhibited: " The Mountain Pink." Apart from its mise en scene, this latter melodrama is distinctively of Chicago; written by Chicago authors-Morgan Bates and Elwyn A. Bar- ron-owned by a Chicago man and played by a Chicago company.

The Arcade Building is two hundred and fifty feet long by one hundred and sixty-four feet wide, and is ninety feet high. Just south of this building are the livery stables, one hundred and sixty feet by one hun- dred and ten feet, and containing stalls for fifty-six horses. A portion of the front of the building is occu- pied by the Pullman Fire Department, which was organized on August 4. 1881, as a volunteer hose com- pany, with apparatus consisting of two two-wheeled hose-carts. The inaugurators of the department were : J. Vogt, Nelson P. Sindell, J. Sanders, F. Mathews, Frank Robins, William Palmer, W. Mathews, M. Saxon, A. S. Gilso, O. W. Samson, J. W. Roy. H. Potter, J. Mason, Theodore Von Koenig and J. H. Frayer. The first officers were : J. Vogt, chief : O. W. Samson, cap- tain ; J. W. Roy, lieutenant : Harvey Potter, secretary, and J. Mason, treasurer. The present constituency of the department is as follows : J. Vogt, chief, and Nel- son P. Sindell, secretary.

Hose Company No. 1-O. W. Moody, captain ; W. Palmer, lieutenant ; F. Mathews, Frank Robins, Otto Rhybuck, T. A. White, Edward Klatt, William Lyons. and R. Gibson, members.

Hook and Ladder Company No. 1-John H. Frayer, captain ; H. Worman, lieutenant : Ernest Klatt, William Denton, J. Sanders, J. Frame driver . A. M.

Hoover, J. Kettler, J. Mathews and L. Laycock, mem- bers.

The department has a thoroughly equipped engine- house ; thise two-wheeled hose-carts ; one four-wheeled hose cart, said to be the handsomest and best equipped cart ever manufactured, and the only one of this espe- cial kind in the United States : one hook-and-ladder truck ; four horses, and nine thousand feet of linen, rubber and cotton hose. The department is thoroughly systematized and admirably organized ; the members are workmen in the various factories, and at an alarm being given, they have specific duties to perform imme. diately. Apparatus, such as Babcock extinguishers, pikes, two thousand five hundred rubber buckets, etc .. is distributed in all the workshops, and thus the firemen, in close juxtaposition to the article most needful for the exigency created by the fire, can seize that article, and are ready for efficient service the moment an alarm is sounded, and no needless scampering and swarming is performed. The horse-truck and men have been out of the house and on their way to a fire twelve seconds from the sounding of the gong. Each building is provided with private fire-plugs, and departmental plugs are lib- erally located upon the streets, Immediately south of the livery stable building is the Casino, wherein the Episcopal congregation meet, and south of that is the public school.

The Pullman public school is one of the best in the State of Illinois, and is furnished with every scholastic adjunct to help the little learners up the rugged ascent of the liill of Knowledge. The building has three stories and fourteen rooms ; all are glittering with light and cleanliness and are ventilated and warmed with scrupulous care. The stairs have low, broad steps and frequent landings. Lavatories and cloak-rooms are attached to each school-room, and the interior is finished in light wood-work and with light-colored, painted walls. The building has a seating capacity for eight hundred pupils. In addition to the building there are two rooms used for school purposes which have been in operation since the fall of 1882 in what is known as the Foundry Building, the teachers of which are F. Baker and Miss Mary Everest. These two rooms are maintained to furnish educational advantages to schol- ars under the fourth grade ; the school-house being too far removed from the homes of little children that are situated in the vicinity, and south of, the Allen Car Wheel Works. Children, however, that are graded above the fourth, wherever their habitation, attend the main school.

'T'he first school was held in two rooms in the depot building with about forty scholars, on November 21, 1881. The first teachers.were D. R. Martin and Mrs. I. N. Biden, and in a month their pupils increased to seventy. Miss Aggie Brennan was then added to the preceptors, and another room utilized for a school- room ; but these accommodations were inadequate. In the beginning of 1882, two rooms were fitted up in the freight house, and the market hall was used ; and eight teachers were employed, besides two who taught in the two rooms in the Foundry Block. The present school was occupied about February 1, 1883. In both schools there are about six hundred and seventy-five pupils enrolled. The teachers are : L. M. Vosburgh, Ada Johnson, Lucy Silk, Florence Ferguson, Helen Fergu- son, Mrs. 1. N. Biden, Misses Belle Dresser, Florence Underwood, Ida Sunderland, Catherine Dolton and Bertha Barnes, assistants. The school district is bounded by Ninety-fifth and One Hundred and Fif- teenth streets, and Indiana and Stony Island (extended.

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HISTORY OF HYDE PARK.

avenues, and in the summer of 1883 it had one thousand and eight hundred under twenty-one years old ; about one thousand between six and twenty-one, and about fifty-one hundred total population.

It is the intention of the Board of Education to pro- vide high school studies and tuition, as soon as the intellectual growth of the youth of Pullman demands it. In the first school month of the year 1883. sixty-five per centum of the pupils were in the first and second grades of instruction, and forty per cent of all the scholars were in the first grade. These figures will, of course, be materially changed at the expiration of the present scholastic year, and it is a fact that there has been virtually no demand for high school curriculum. The Board of Education are : John McLean, M. D., presi- dent ; E. W. Henricks, clerk ; J. Christianson, N. F. Van Winkle and E. C. Tourtelot, members.

Southeast of the depot, at the junction of Stephen- son* Avenue and One Hundred and Twelfth Street stands the Market House, wherein meats and vegetables are exposed for sale, and butchers and green grocers are restricted to this building to pursue their business. Upon the second floor is a large hall where religious services and public meetings are held. Its seating capacity is six hundred persons. South from the depot. along the One Hundred and Eleventh Street Boulevard for Florence Avenue), the visitor arrives at the Pullman Depot, standing upon the line of the Chicago, Pullman & Southern Railroad, which line is operated in the interests, and for the benefit, of the manufactures of Pullman, and those who promote them. The depot is one hundred and seventy five feet by thirty feet, and is characterized by the same architectural elegance and taste that defines other buildings in Pullman, North- east of this depot stands the gas works. The building is one hundred feet by one hundred and thirty feet, and therein is manufactured about one hundred thousand feet of Lowe water-gas per diem. This gas is made from naphtha and coal ; the naphtha being passed through incandescent coal, while commingled with superheated steam. The gas thus formed is then passed through lime, which abstracts all impurities. The gas works are under the charge of Edgar Williams, who is also the engineer-in-charge of the varions municipal works. At the gas works also are kept gas pipes, fittings and fixtures. The city has eight miles of gas- mains, and two hundred and fifty street lamps, which are supplied from these works. The gas is largely used for cooking and heating purposes ; the Hotel Florence using it exclusively to heat its kitchen ranges. At the foot of the Boulevard, on the shore of Lake Calumet, stand the Grand Stands. It is an accepted physiological dic- tum that the play of those engaged in laborious occu- pations, to be acceptable to them, must be of an atheletic character ; it is also a necessity for the health of those engaged in sedentary employments that they should en. gage in outdoor amusements, and to fulfill these two requirements, Mr. Pullman determined to make grounds suitable for the purpose. A dredging-machine was accordingly set to work, and by its means a piece of land was separated from the main land ; the channel thus made formed an excellent water-course for boating purposes, and a skating-pond in winter, although the Calumet Lake makes an excellent rink. A bridge con- nects the island with the main land. The base-ball and cricket park is on the main land, immediately south of the gas works. The action of Mr. Pullman in provid- ing the land-and-water arena was heartily appreciated,

. The streets running north and south are named Murer, Watt, Stephenson, Fulton and Ericsson avenues.

and an Athletic Association formed. The officers are: E. W. Henricks, president ; D). R. Martin, vice-presi- dent ; J. P. Hopkins, treasurer ; Alex. Harper, secretary, and W. C. Dole, Jr., athletic instructor. The directors are : E. W. Henricks, J. P. Ilopkins, J. L. Woods, MI. A. Lincoln, F. A. Secord, J. W. Hazlehurst, Jesse Wardell, John McLean, A. Rapp, D. R. Martin, and Alex. Harper. The Pullman Athletic Association is one of the clubs constituting the Mississippi Valley Amateur Rowing Association, whose sixth annual re- gatta was held at Pullman, on July 27 and 28, 1883. The Pullman Boat Club furnished contestants at the regatta as follows : Four-oared gig : 0. 1., Holmes, D. R. Martin, J. E. Hinkins, J. M. Price ; coxswain, C. Bronson. Six entries. Senior four : Same oarsmen. Six entries. Six-oared barge : 0. 1 .. Holmes, D. R. Martin, J. E. Hinkins, J. M. Price, - Hawkes, Hu- bert Woods ; coxswain, C. Bronson. Six entries. The regatta was a success, but the coffers of the Athletic Association was not aggrandized by its occurrence; this the officers intend to remedy, and as they are all practical business men, as well as ardent acolytes of the Temple of Hercules, it is confidently predicted that future exhibitions, under the auspices of the Athletic Association, will he proftahle as well as pleasurable. They have an excellent gymnasium, and in addition to the boat club, have a cricket club and a base-ball club. of which C. L. Stokes and L. Reis are captains respect. ively. A foot-ball club is also in process of formation. On the island is a race-course, about one sixth of a mile in length, for pedestrian races, and, within the race- course, an excellent tennis ground ; and the grand stands can accommodate about seven thousand specta- tors. Standing in the vicinity of the grand stands and looking westward up Florence Avenue, or One Hundred and Eleventh Street Boulevard, the spectator can see some of the most elegant of the residences of Pullman, and the beautiful Arcade Square. Light and air, cleanliness and beauty, utility and comfort are written all over Pullman ; in its houses, its roads, its markets, its plats of beautiful flowers and, most important testi- mony of all, in the faces and figures of its working- men. The houses are graded in size and elegance according to the rent exacted in return for their occu- paney. But they are not classified like barracks ; the design is characteristically uniform, but without painful sameness, and there are pretty and distinct. ive features about each block of buildings. The rent paid ranges from $6 to $65 a month, the average rent being about $14. In all the houses are gas and water, and where else can a brick house be rented with these advantages for $14 a month ? and that, too, in a city where markets are convenient, travel- ing facilities plentiful and health smiles from the faces of the little children? Usually in a city cheap rents typify either undesirable localities or an undesirable house; here, in Pullman, all the houses and localities are desirable, and no sewer-gas taints the residence and wrecks fair young lives with its insidious poison. Many voices have praised George M. Pullman, but no eulogy could be sweeter, tenderer and more befitting than the sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks and joyful voices of the hundreds of little children whose happiness is a gift from George M. Pullman. How ? Mle has provided their parents with healthy homes at a low rental-the money saved is so much more to spend on the clothes of wife and children; he has removed the infernal saloon far from the sober homes of the workmen-the money saved is so much available capital devoted to home uses; he has provided excellent schools-knowledge is

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power, and an employed mind is a healthful and happy mind, and this healtli and happiness is communicated to the body; his careful sanitary precautions and method allow fresh, pure air to be continually the pos- session of the Pullinan children-their clear voices ring a silvery chime of happy thanks to him, that spreads far, far through the ether until it splashes-a voiceless mel- ody-at the feet of Him who so loved little children. Chicago has many causes for just pride, and none more proper than in the fact of George M. Pullman being her citizen; a man whose digging after lucre unearths blessings for his workmen, and of whom it could be fitly said: " Write him as one who loved his fellow-men." A prosaic, statistical fact indorses this eulogium upon the sanitation of the city, that for two years ending July 1. 1883, there were only twenty-three deaths from zym- otic diseases, less than . three per annum for every one thousand of population; all the deaths in Pullman for that period were less than seven per annum for each one thousand of population, while the average of deaths to each one thousand of the population of the world is thirty-two.

One mile south of the town is the Brick Yard, where about four hundred workmen are employed, and 220,- ooo brick per day can be manufactured. E. H. Callaway is superintendent of the hrick yard, and the brick manufactured there is selected, on account of its superiority, for use in the tunnel being constructed, hy the village of Hyde Park, under Lake Michigan. South of the brick yard are two hundred acres of land, comprising a territorial exponent of a knotty matter, that has long troubled municipal and village governments. This mute demonstrant of the problem is known as the Puliman Sewage Farm. This comprises one hundred and fifty acres, and is under the manage- ment of E. T. Martin, and yields all kinds of vegetables in their season, and those of the best. There is no fætid or unpleasant odor fifty feet from the farm while it is being flooded; what little odor there is is rapidly disinfected by the deodorizing power of the soil. The modus operandi of the distribution of the sewage will be found in the article upon the Water Tower; it will suf- fice to say herc, that the farm has demonstrated the per- fect capacity of an acre of land to assimilate the focal deposit of one hundred persons; and transinute that which is utterly worthless and obnoxious into clean, healthful vegetables, without the assistance of any agent save the illimitahle chemical laboratory of nature. It is contemplated also to establish a dairy farm, of one hun- dred acres, in the vicinity of the sewage farn.

To return to Florence Avenue. North of the avenue and fronting toward Pullman Boulevard are a massy pile of buiklings, technically known as the Front Erect- ing Shops of the Pullman Palace Car Company. All the work-buildings are huilt of Pullman brick, faced with Indiana pressed brick, with trimmings of Berea sandstone. The one now under consideration is ap- proached by a finely graveled drive, meandering through a model lawn, which extends from the base of the build- ing to the edge of Lake Vista. The building is seven hundred feet western front by eighty-six feet deep. The office building occupies one hundred feet in the center and is three stories in height, surmounted by a clock-tower one hundred and forty feet high. The of- fices are elegant and commodious, and in one of them is the office of A. Rapp, the general manager of this vast system of car manufacture. On each side of the office building are the erecting shops, each three hun- dred feet by eighty-six feet, wherein are twenty-four stalls supplied with tracks to run the Pullman cars in and out.

These stalls abut on a wide court, beyond which is the rear erecting shop. Along this court are two very wide railroad tracks, and one, between them, of a narrow gauge. 'These tracks are a peculiar labor-saving insti- tution; upon the center rails ruas a dummy engine, and upon the side rails are platforms, whereon are rails of the standard gauge laid transversely to the rails whereon the platforms are run. The use of these platforms is to be moved by the dummy, opposite to the various stalls where specific and exact parts of the work are performed upon a car; a cable is attached to the partly- finished car-that runs around a drum in the dummy -- the car is hauled out of the stall onto the platform; the dummy steams up and halts opposite to the stall where the car is to receive its next stratum of progress, and the car is run into that stall, from which, when it has underwent the process bestowed upon it there, it is taken to the next stall, and from that to the next stage of stall-ic and progressive construction. There are twenty- four of these stalls representing twenty-four stages of progress in car-building; the embryonic mass of rough timbers and car-trucks in the first stall proceeds through its various mechanical and distinct processes, until it emerges from the twenty-fourth chrysalide stall a per- fert butterfly of a dining-room or sleeping car. The vast amount of labor saved by the use of these platforms, and the utilization of the dummy as a traction engine, can readily be comprehended, when it is known that be- tween thirty and forty men were formerly employed to run the cars in and out of the stalls. Each stall has its corps of workmen, and their portion of the work is al- ways the same; under their skillful and apportioned labor two sleeping cars per diem can be manufactured.

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History of Cook County, Illinois From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Part 164

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas Number of Pages: 875

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 875