USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 34
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In the sixties Chicago nearly tripled in population, with an 45 Chicago Tribune, July 7, 9, 1869.
46 Illinois State Journal, October 15, 1868.
47 Chicago Times, November 23, 1863, June 29, 1865; Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1867.
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increase of 298,977, nearly one-half of which was of foreign birth. In spite of the fact that after 1866 business conditions were very discouraging in the other large cities of the country, Chicago prospered mightily. Buildings to the value of seven million dollars were erected in 1865, and the following years building was prosecuted with even more vigor; by the end of the decade, Chicago was running wild in real estate specu- lation.48
With its fine public buildings and private dwellings the city began to take on the true metropolitan atmosphere. A park was developed from Twelfth to Thirty-first street and the present Lincoln park system on the north side was started; at the same time the people of the western and southern divi- sions prepared to press their claims for civic improvement- for it became an accepted argument that without parks "no city is respectable or decent or fit to be the dwelling-place of men and women." Concrete sidewalks made their appear- ance, a wonderful improvement over the plank walks. Wabash and Michigan avenues were widened into fine drives lined with elegant residences, though the business district at the same time began to work eastward and to threaten encroachment upon these aristocratic boulevards. The streets were lighted by 2,500 gas street lamps, making it one of the best lighted cities of the country; this involved an annual expense of $75,000, however, which aroused an active movement in favor of the municipalization of this utility. The city was networked by an elaborate system of horse railway lines that ran along the chief thoroughfares; in 1865 they secured a ninety-nine year lease from the state legislature in spite of the veto of Governor Oglesby and the opposition of the Chicago Tribune to "the gigantic swindle." A few years later service was so inadequate that an elevated or "second-story" railway was advocated similar to the one then being experimented upon in New York. 49
48 Chicago Tribune, August 21, November 10, 1866, July 20, August 3, 1869; Chicago Evening Journal, November 25, 1865; Aurora Beacon, March 4, 1869. This included the new depot of the Michigan Southern and Rock Island railroads. 49 Chicago Tribune, December 17, 1866, January 8, 9, 11, 16, February 19, 21, 1867, February 26, March 21, 1869; Chicago Times, May 7, 1864; Chicago Evening Journal, March 8, 1866.
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Squalor and filth continued to litter the streets and com- bined with slaughterhouses to poison the air. "Everybody understands," insisted the Chicago Tribune, "that we have the foulest streets, the dirtiest river, the most inefficient police, the most nauseous water, the most fogyish Board of Public Works and Board of Health in the world, unless we look for their equal in Turkey, China, and Dahomey." 50 Finally, in October, 1866, after intermittent cases during the summer, cholera assailed the city in such a serious epidemic that a reorganization of the board of health under state legislative authority was made imperative. In 1866, too, a supply of fresh water was guaranteed by the completion of a tunnel running out two miles under Lake Michigan.
The prosperity of Chicago was the outgrowth of its supe- rior transportation facilities. The city, now fifth among Amer- ican cities in the volume of business, was not only the greatest grain, beef, and pork market in the country but the greatest lumber market as well; 51 asthmatic sawmills in Michigan and Wisconsin laboriously coughed out the cargoes of boards which were brought to Chicago by the three hundred lumber carriers that plied Lake Michigan. All the old advantages derived from lake navigation were enlarged by important additions to the harbor facilities along the lake front. When with the increase of railroad freight tariffs, St. Louis, with the natural advantages of its location on the Mississippi and with railroad connections of its own, threatened to draw more heavily upon the trade of the northwest, Chicago awoke to the importance of a navigable watercourse to the Mississippi river; through- out the decade its citizens urged the project of a ship canal which would guarantee its hegemony. The Pacific railroad also promised much for the future of the city; in order to be independent of tribute to the jobbers of San Francisco and New York, a bill was pressed upon congress to make Chicago a formal port of entry.52
50 Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1865, January 10, August 28, 1867; Chicago Evening Journal, November 15, 1865, February 10, 1866.
51 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, 54: 376-384; The Lumber Industry of Chicago, 7-8; Howe, Yearbook of Chicago, 1885, p. 241-243; Chicago Times, March 19, 1866, October 9, 1872; Chicago Evening Journal, November 17, 1865. 52 Chicago Tribune, July 1, December 25, 1868.
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Life in the other cities of the state began to quicken under the influence of the prosperity of Chicago. Peoria, with a population of 22,849, lost its place as second city and Quincy with 24,052 inhabitants succeeded to this position. Springfield nearly doubled in the decade to reach the figure of 17,364, while Aurora, Galesburg, and Jacksonville trailed some dis- tance behind. Galena was the only important community of 1860 to experience a decline-it suffered a net loss of over one thousand. One important development was the rise of East St. Louis, incorporated in 1865; the atmosphere of old Illinoistown with "its disreputable floating population and its sink holes of iniquity where the moral filth of St. Louis could take refuge, to plan its deeds of crime " gave way to a thrifty and enterprising young town of 5,644.53 In general, all these communities were prosperous and enlightened and were pass- ing through a process of refinement which bespoke a steady modernization. This was especially true of Springfield, which awakened to its responsibilities when the demand for a removal of the capital was renewed by rivals like Peoria, Decatur, and Jacksonville.
The Civil War gave to Cairo the opportunity to realize on the promises brought by the building of the Illinois Central; inasmuch as it would be a feeder for Chicago, all Illinoisians had insisted that it was the most convenient depot for the distribution of the supplies for the army in the west. The advantages of this base became obvious in the winter of 1863- 1864, when ice and low water closed the river below St. Louis and made Cairo the head of navigation on the Father of Waters. Business became brisk immediately: "Every house, cellar and shed on the levee, from one extreme of the town to the other, is occupied as a place of business and every occu- pant is doing well." 54 At times buildings were almost unobtainable; "little shanties that people would not look at anywhere else, bring three or four hundred dollars per year, paying as much per cent. on their actual cost." 55 Five thousand steamers arrived each year to land and discharged
53 Belleville Advocate, January 12, 1866.
54 Cairo Gazette, August 20, 1864; Cairo Democrat, January 8, 1864; Mark Skinner to Trumbull, May 31, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts.
55 Cairo Democrat, September 6, 1863.
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their freight and passengers at Cairo and probably a million or more soldiers passed through the city during the war. The first fear of a prostration of business upon the withdrawal of government patronage after the war was succeeded by a lofty idealism which pointed to the geographical advantages in loca- tion and forecast a continuous position as the natural depot of exchange between the north and south-an emporium rivaling the great metropolis of the lakes. The last two years of the decade, however, showed the futility of this hope; the city had increased from 2,188 to ten or twelve thousand in 1867, but two years later the census enumerators could locate only 6,267 persons, and Cairo did not pass the 10,000 mark again until well toward the close of the century.
Why did Cairo fail to realize the expectations of the latter day prophets? Cairo was a house built upon mud; when the storms came and rain fell and the wind blew, por- tions of the city joined the murky waters of the Mississippi. True, the work of raising and widening the levee to save the bustling city, went on, so that in the flood years of 1862 and 1867 the levees held back the tide, while all the surrounding country was one vast expanse of water spread out like a sea. Yet flood conditions produced a menacing fear which endan- gered the future growth of the city. Rival communities chose to play upon this fear and coupled with it the general belief in the unhealthiness of Cairo. It availed little in meeting this impression that Dr. G. T. Allen, federal medical inspector, was able to report that "with filth enough in many of its streets to poison all the population of New York City, during the summer solstice, it is even then, in my opinion, as healthy as any place in the Union." With water everywhere, Cairo had at times literally not a drop to drink, except as it was hauled into the city in barrels to be retailed at from ten to twenty cents a pint.56
Chicago, the fulfillment of prophecy, the great city on the
56 Cairo Democrat, February 17, 1864. See also Cairo Daily News, August 20, 1864: "Our streets, highways and byways abound, at the present writing, with a profusion of a slippery, sticky substance known to those who are familiar with its qualities as Cairo mud. It is found on the sidewalks and off the side- walks, inside the house and outside the house - in the kitchen, parlor and bed chamber. No place is sacred from its intrusive visits, and it succumbs only to the sun and wind.".
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lakes, and Cairo, the city of blasted hopes, were the opposite poles of this great magnet in the middle west which was attracting the restive population of all parts of the globe.
XVI. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, 1860-1870
M ODERN industry in Illinois is built upon the foundations laid in the tumultuous era of civil strife. The transpor- tation phase was marked by the extension to a point of greater adequacy of rail and water communication. During the war water transportation again became the great hope of all Illi- noisians; they expected to revolutionize transportation facili- ties by improving the navigation of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Rock rivers and by building a ship canal to the Mississippi. They urged federal aid for the accomplishment of their ends and justified it as necessary to the efficient transportation of supplies and to the triumph of the federal arms. All projects found only local support, however, except as they connected themselves with the proposed ship canal. At first this meant merely the enlarging of the Illinois and Michigan canal so as to end the prevailing low water problems and permit the passage of ships of large draught between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. The disunion crisis further emphasized the need, in order to reverse the course of trade and direct the products of the upper Mississippi eastward instead of toward the gulf. When war closed the Mississippi below Cairo the need became more definite. In the legislative session of 1861 the general assembly authorized an investigation of the possi- bility of an enlarged canal; when a favorable report was made appeals were sent to congress for federal aid.1 The consti- tutional convention of 1862 unanimously adopted a formal memorial to congress; other memorials were sent in, including one from the Chicago Board of Trade.
In February, 1862, Colonel F. P. Blair, Jr., of the com-
1 I Laws of 1861, p. 277-278 ; R. P. Mori to Trumbull, June 6, 1861, Trum- bull manuscripts; Prairie Farmer, November 24, 1861 ; Joliet Signal, November 19, 1861; Ottawa Free Trader, November 23, 1861; Ottawa Weekly Repub- lican, November 30, 1861. In November, 1861, public meetings were held to call attention to the importance of this project.
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mittee on military affairs of the house, reported a bill for the enlargement of the canal so that gunboats and other vessels drawing six feet of water might pass from the Mississippi to the lakes.2 By this time the matter was squarely before con- gress. Representative Arnold from the Chicago district, a member of the committee on roads and canals, assumed the leadership of the Illinois delegation and made a favorable report to the house. In July, however, the project was killed on a test vote in which the eastern members lined up against the representatives of the west. Governor Yates, not to be thus silenced, then pressed the matter upon the attention of the president; in November he went to Washington for a joint interview in the company of Congressman Arnold. The war department was directed to examine into the practicability of the undertaking; meantime, the canal project was again pressed upon the attention of congress.3
Eastern selfishness, the canal advocates claimed, was giving force to the movement for the separation of the western from the eastern states and the formation of a northwestern con- federacy. Even republican leaders declared that governmental policy was destroying the value of the agricultural products of the west, while manufactured articles from the east doubled and quadrupled in price. This discrimination could be removed by a restoration of the natural exchange of commodities by easy channels of commerce; and the canal was, therefore, a political as well as a military necessity. Governor Yates at the suggestion of western business and farming interests went so far as to send a commission to Canada to arrange for a Canadian route to the seaboard.4
While congress was wrestling with this problem, Arnold and other ship canal advocates arranged for a great national canal convention at Chicago to express the interests of the west. This body met on June 2 and 3, 1863, with Vice Presi- dent Hamlin in the chair; it set out to secure the right of the
2 Congressional Globe, 37 congress, 2 session, 902-903.
3 Illinois State Journal, September 17, November 22, 1862.
+ Ibid., January 15, March 10, 31, April 20, 1863; Aurora Beacon, Novem- ber 13, 1861; Chicago Tribune, November 27, December 23, 1862, June 2, 1863. Eastern transportation interests were said to be conspiring to prevent either waterways in the northwest or an aggressive policy to accomplish the reopening of the Mississippi.
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states of the Mississippi valley to "national recognition as coequal sovereignties of the Great Republic."5 It did not confine itself to the Illinois canal plan but adopted resolutions in favor of constructing different ship canals to connect the lakes with the Mississippi and the Atlantic. Although this was not exactly what Illinoisians wanted, yet, as the measure in congress had been given this larger scope, they welcomed the indorsement as a forward step. Again, however, congress took no action: not until January, 1865, was Arnold able to secure favorable action on the bill by the lower house; then the senate refused to lend its assistance, and with the close of the war one of the strongest arguments for federal aid came to an end. A survey was made, however, by the war depart- ment in 1867, and, though the engineers recommended the project, no action was taken.6 Although traffic on the canal was declining rapidly, later efforts to secure federal action also failed to bear fruit.
The ship canal fever included a number of projects of more daring scope. In 1866 a widespread movement took place for the extension of the Illinois and Michigan canal to the Mississippi river at a point near Rock Island,7 and a local following boomed a scheme for a ship canal from the Rock river to Lake Michigan. A series of conventions at Sterling, Geneseo, Dixon, Rock Island, Morris, and other points enthu- siastically urged ship canals and river improvement. Some even advocated a canal under federal auspices around Niagara Falls to open up a more satisfactory route to Europe. The only tangible result that followed from all this activity was the act of the Illinois legislature of February 28, 1867, under which the state inaugurated the work of improving the canal and the Illinois river channel. As a sop to the advocates of other water routes the act referred to but made no provi- sion for an extension of the canal to the Mississippi at Rock Island and the improvement of the Rock and other rivers.
5 " The West," declared the Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1863, "will hence- forth be a partner in the Union, entitled to all the immunities and privileges of her place."
Ibid., June 3, 4, 1863, July 20, 1867; Putnam, Illinois and Michigan Canal, 135; House Executive Documents, 40 congress, I session, number 16.
7 Chicago Tribune, January 6, 8, 10, 17, 23, 1866; Chicago Evening Journal, January 8, 1866.
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The strength of the agitation for water transportation reflected not so much the absence of rail communication as the dissatisfaction with the service which the railroads were fur- nishing. Some of the canal and river meetings were held as anti-monopoly conventions under the auspices of the movement which the farmers launched against the enormous freight tariffs of the railroads. The agriculturists claimed that they were at the mercy of the railroads, while Chicagoans held that these rates were "damaging Chicago to a degree that it is difficult to compute." 8
There was a strong survival in Illinois of the sixties of the old frontier fear and hatred of monopoly; the railroad symbolized this hydra headed monster whose inroads had been dreaded since the days of Andrew Jackson. When the rail- roads, deprived of the competition of the Mississippi water route and encouraged by general economic and monetary con- ditions, steadily increased their passenger and freight rates to a point that seemed extortionate, a note of alarm and protest was sounded which showed the crystallization of widespread dis- satisfaction; the year 1865 saw the crest of a high rate wave with a corresponding amount of complaint and indignation.9 Transportation charges on shipments from Minnesota, Wis- consin, and Iowa, it was said, were retarding the development of the state and threatening the prosperity of the lake cities. The railroads were flourishing on tariffs like twenty-five cents on a bushel of wheat from Winona to Chicago; indeed, rates sometimes amounted virtually to an embargo upon the ship- ment of cereals by this route and forced trade to go through St. Louis and down the Mississippi river. Through freight, moreover, was often handled more reasonably than freight between two intermediary points.
A rumor began to spread of a great upper Mississippi railroad and steamboat combination; thereupon, two hundred and twenty of the leading mercantile houses of Chicago ad- dressed a questionnaire to the railroad companies to learn whether they were in partnership with the elevators of the city,
8 Ibid., November 27, 1865.
9 Ibid., December 18, 1865; Cairo Weekly Democrat, January 19, 1865; Paxton Record, June 22, 1865; Chicago Tribune, December 15, 1865.
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with express and transportation companies, or steamboat lines upon routes leading to Chicago, in such a way as to involve restraint of trade. The failure of the railroads to reply was interpreted as an admission of the combination; complaints became even more general and were summarized in February, 1866, in a report of a joint committee of the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Association.10
The result was a state wide revolt against the railway and warehouses "monopolies." In northern Illinois, farmers' mass meetings and commercial conventions urged that provi- sion be made for new waterways and that the railway lines of the state be subjected to careful legislative regulation. As early as 1864, rate regulation had been proposed by farmers' organizations and in January, 1865, William Brown of Win- nebago had proposed in the legislature a resolution subjecting all new railroads to a general law regulating freight and pas- senger rates. Within a year the demand for rate regulation became general; the supervisors of Winnebago county passed resolutions declaring that they would support no man for office who was not pledged to use his influence for the correction of this abuse.11
In January, 1867, the anti-monopoly forces came together at Springfield and formed a league which demanded of the legislature restrictions on railroad combinations, uniformity of freight rates, a three-cent passenger fare, and an annual report of expenditures and receipts of each road. Bills were promptly introduced into the legislature ; but the railroad inter- ests, aided by the unwillingness of downstate rail advocates to place any obstacles in the way of their own ambitions, blocked all attempts at legislation. In 1869 the cudgel was again taken up against the railroads. The blow was tempered, however, by a challenge at the constitutionality of such rate- fixing legislation. Southern Illinois spokesmen also pointed out that, since it would apply only to roads thereafter incor-
10 Chicago Tribune, December 15, 26, 1865; January 11, 12, 1866; Central Illinois Gazette, January 19, 1866; Illinois State Register, January 12, 1866; Chicago Evening Journal, February 14, 1866.
11 Prairie Farmer, December 24, 1864; Rockford Register, January 28, 1865; Ottawa Weekly Republican, January 28, 1865; Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1865; Illinois State Register, January 3, 1866.
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porated, its sole effect would be to prevent the construction of new lines. A maximum rate bill introduced into the senate by General A. C. Fuller passed both houses but was vetoed by Governor Palmer; thereupon Senator Fuller introduced a new measure limiting all roads in the state to a "just, reason- able, and uniform " rate; this became law and went into force on March 10, 1869. The war between the people and the railroad ring continued and a point for the people was scored in the restrictions imposed by the new constitution of 1870.12
The remedy most strongly favored by the anti-monopolists was additional transportation facilities. Besides waterways new railway lines were welcomed to open up competition with those that were charged with indiscriminate pillage. Little, however, could be done in northern Illinois, which was domi- nated by the Chicago and Northwestern railway; this com- pany, chartered in 1854 under the Illinois and Wisconsin laws, had first taken up the rights and franchises of the Chicago, St. Paul, and Fond du Lac railway company, then in 1864, after unsuccessful attempts to force out the Galena and Chicago Union railroad by competition, a consolidation of the two sys- tems as arranged. A little later under the control of Henry Keep of New York and his associates, the Northwestern line absorbed the Chicago and Milwaukee railroad and with a mile- age of 1,152 became the largest railway corporation in the United States; in 1868 evidence was published of a scheme to consolidate the Chicago and Northwestern, the Chicago and Rock Island, and the Milwaukee and St. Paul under one man- agement; this, said the Chicago Tribune, "would practically deliver the whole territory north and west of Chicago over to the tender mercies of a Wall street ring." 13 Simultaneous with the election of three of the managers of the Milwaukee and St. Paul to the directorate of the Northwestern road, the Northwestern corporation tried to secure a majority of the
12 Chicago Tribune, January 14, February 12, 19, March 13, December 6, 1869; Illinois State Journal, January 15, 1869; Cairo Evening Bulletin, January 16, 1869; Ottawa Free Trader, January 15, 1870; Ottawa Weekly Republican, June 30, December 1, 1870; Laws of 1869, p. 309-312.
13 Chicago Tribune, March 6, June 4, 5, 1868, June 10, 1869; Chicago Times, June 2, 1864.
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stock of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific. It was no wonder that the people clamored for competing waterways, the only competition possible.
Southern Illinois, meanwhile, had been passing through another attack of the periodic railroad fever, and was now able to gratify some of its cravings for more railroads. In- numerable schemes were afloat many of which secured legis- lative sanction; work was commenced on twelve distinct roads, but only the more stable and conservative ventures were suc- cessfully executed; 14 through these, however, the railroad mileage of the southern third of the state was nearly doubled. The old St. Louis and Terre Haute project, revived and char- tered in 1865 as the St. Louis, Vandalia, and Terre Haute railroad, was completed and opened in 1870. The Springfield and Illinois Southeastern was chartered in 1867; and the con- nection between the state capital and Shawneetown, except for the short link between Pana and Edgewood, was completed within the decade. The extension of the Belleville and Illinois- town toward Du Quoin produced the Belleville and Southern Illinois road which was not ready for use, however, until 1873. Plans were also well under way for a road between Cairo and Vincennes which was finished in 1872.
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