Cook County IL Archives History - Books .....History Of Chicago, 1876, Part 6 1876
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Book Title: History Of Chicago

1875
 
I take the following synopsis of the business of the city for last year, from 
the commercial reports of the Tribune, prepared by its able commercial editor, 
Elias Colbert, Esq., published January 1st, 1876:

THE BREADSTUFFS MOVEMENT.

The following were the receipts of breadstuffs in this city during the past 
three years, flour being reduced to its equivalent in wheat in the footings:

		   1875.	  1874.           1873.
Flour, bbls.....2,566,225	 2,666,679	 2,487,376
Wheat, bu......24,450,390	29,764,622	26,266,562
Corn, bu.......26,990,557	35,799,638	38,157,232
Oats, bu.......11,511,554	13,901,235	17,888,724
Rye, bu...........693,968	   791,182	 1,189,464
Barley, bu......3,026,456	 3,354,981	 4,240,239
Totals.........79,504,050       95,611,713      98,925,413

The following were the corresponding shipments:

		  1875.		  1874.		  1873.
Flour, bbls.......2,262,030	 2,306,576	 2,303,490
Wheat, bu........23,183.663	27,634,587	24,455,657
Corn, bu.........26,409,420	32,705,224	36,754,943
Oats, bu.........10,230,208	10,561,673	15,694,133
Bye, bu.............310,609	   335,077	   960,613
Barley, bu........1,834,117	 2,404,538	 3,366,041
Totals...........73,278,167     84,020,691      91,597,092


LIVE STOCK.

For the first time since the construction of the Union Stock Yards—a period of 
ten years—we have to record a decrease in the aggregate receipts of live stock 
at Chicago. Of cattle and sheep, a much larger number have arrived than during 
any previous year, but this increase was more than offset by a decline in the 
receipt of hogs, and the figures stand thus: For 1874, 5,440,990; for 1875, 
5,251,901, decrease, 189,089. This is not an unfavorable exhibit, in the light 
of the report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, which shows in the four 
States whence our supplies are chiefly drawn,—viz.: Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, 
and Missouri, a deficiency, as compared with 1874, of 1,222,300 hogs. The 
wonder, therefore, is not that our receipts show a falling off, but that they 
so closely approximate those of 1874. It is also consoling to know that the 
decline in the past season's receipts was not peculiar to Chicago, as witness 
the comparative table furnished below, from which it appears that the 
percentage of decrease at St. Louis is much greater than here, her arrivals of 
hogs being fully 60 per cent, less than for 1874. While our receipts of cattle 
show an increase of 76,877 head, there was a falling off in the arrivals at 
St. Louis of some 24,000 head, as follows:

		 1874.		1875.
Chicago	        843,966       920,843
St. Louis	360,925       336,934
Difference	483,041       583,909


These comparisons are drawn not for the purpose of belittling the importance 
of St. Louis as a live stock market, but to demonstrate the supreme 
ridiculousness of her claims to rival Chicago. The developments of the past 
season would seem to have forever set at rest the question of the continued 
supremacy of Chicago as the chief live stock distributing point of the world. 
Although the aggregate of our receipts was less than for 1874, the value of 
the same was some $10,000,000 greater.


THE GRAND TOTAL.

The following is an approximation to the total value of our trade in 1875. It 
includes only the first selling price, second sales not being counted, though 
made by jobbers:

Produce trade........................$232,328,000
Wholesale (as above)..................293,900,000
Manufactures (product)................177,000,000
Total................................$703,228,000
Deduct from this for manufactures 
  included in wholesale (about)........46,228,000
Total business.......................$657,000,000
Total in 1874........................ 639,000,000

These figures give a decrease of 6.9 per cent, in the sales of produce, and an 
increase of 7 per cent, in wholesale trade and manufactures. The increase of 
the whole over 1874 is 2.8 per cent.

These totals would be materially increased if we included the sales of produce 
to shippers after it had once been sold in open market, to say nothing of the 
manifold sales of grain and provisions under which one lot may be delivered to 
a dozen or more traders in succession. We have also omitted sales of such 
articles as ice, milk, vegetables, dressed hogs, oats, etc., made in the 
street, from wagons, and not placed in public storehouses. The sales of real 
estate are not included, as they do not belong to the wholesale trade. We have 
dealt only with what Mr. Wemmick would designate as "portable property."

The following were the totals for previous years, estimated on the same basis:

1873...............................$596,000,000
Oct. 11, 1871, to Oct. 11, 1872.....490,000,000
1870................................439,000,000
1860................................450,000,000
1868................................434,000,000
1860.................................97,000,000
1850.................................20,000,000


EXTENT OF TRADE OF CHICAGO.

At the close of one of my articles in 1854, I expressed the hope that I might 
be here seventeen years from that date to post up the business of the city. 
This duty has been committed to younger hands. The nearest I have approached 
it was last fall during the sickness of the financial editor of the Tribune. I 
quote the following paragraphs from the financial articles which I wrote in 
his absence, bearing upon the growth and extent of the business of the city.

From the Tribune, October 15, 1875.

These heavy drafts upon our capital, and the cheerful response of our banks, 
correspond with the concentration of the wholesale trade of the Northwest in 
Chicago. The frantic warnings of the New York commercial papers to their 
jobbers to lessen their expenses, and to do all things needed to retain that 
trade, have not been heeded. It is surely leaving them, and is rapidly 
concentrating in Chicago. It is worth while again to note the causes that are 
contributing to this inevitable result. Take the, dry goods trade as an 
example. Our leading houses have ample capital, and buy at the lowest figures 
their goods for cash. They have agents in Europe and this country right 
alongside of those of the New York jobbers, and get their goods at precisely 
the same figures. Goods come directly through to this city; custom duties are 
paid here, and hence they are free from the exactions of the New York 
sharpers. The difference in the price of rents and the modes of doing business 
here more than balance the cost of freights from the seaboard, and hence goods 
are sold as cheap here, and even cheaper, than they are in New York. No 
country merchant in the North, nor in fact in the Southwest, needs now to go 
to New York, and comparatively few of them do so.

What is true of diy goods is equally true of other lines of the wholesale 
trade. The business in all departments is rapidly concentrating here. The same 
is true also of manufactures. Only a day or two ago we were assured that a 
house that manufactures agricultural implements in Sterling, 110 miles west of 
Chicago, was sending its machines even to Philadelphia and other cities of 
Pennsylvania.  Ohio is a large and most valuable customer. Large quantities of 
leather (the best produced in the whole Union), of furniture, and otherN 
articles, are shipped to the seaboard, and all the country this side, from the 
warerooms of Chicago. The large calls upon our bankers, therefore, for 
capital, are but a reflex of other leading interests, and prove that Chicago 
is already the financial as well as the commercial and manufacturing centre of 
the Northwest.

From the Tribune of October 16, 1875.

One of our leading merchants yesterday, commenting on our last article in 
relation to the vast wholesale trade that is concentrating in this city, took 
us to task for using the term Northwest—while the trade of the Southwest was 
rapidly falling within the grasp of Chicago. This we knew full well; but the 
habit, coming down from the time when very little, if any, business came to 
this city from below the southern line of Iowa, is still apt to show itself 
from the point of our pencil, and it will get out in print, to our regret and 
confusion. The fact is, the jobbing trade of the city reaches all the way from 
Texas to Manitoba.

Before our railways were opened down to the Gulf of Mexico through Texas, 
representatives of Chicago merchants had been all through that country, and 
found what kinds of goods the people wanted. Manufacturers of clothing, for 
instance, had carefully taken the dimensions of the average Texan—no matter 
what his occupation might be—had found with what styles he was pleased, and of 
what materials they should be made, and, while jealous rivals of our city were 
snoozing over an exalted opinion of themselves and blessing their stars that 
they were not afiiicted with the restless energy of Chi¬cago, our 
manufacturers had already made the goods and occupied the markets of the "Lone 
Star" State. The same may be said of other lines of manufactured articles and 
of staple merchandise. Since the opening of our railways to the Southwest, in 
spite of the competition of St. Loufe, that broad field has been largely 
gleaned by Chicago enterprise. Our trade from that section is already very 
heavy and lucrative, and it is steadily and rapidly increasing. In speaking of 
the Western trade of the city, therefore, unless for special reasons, let the 
term "North" be dropped. We agree with our friend that simply "West" is better.

As to our foreign direct trade the more we talk with our bankers and merchants 
the more are we surprised at the variety of the articles shipped and at the 
rapidly-increasing values they represent. Five years ago we had one or two 
houses that drew drafts and issued letters of credit upon correspondents in 
England and upon the Continent. The money to meet these drafts was ordered 
placed to the credit of Chicago houses from New York. Now all this is changed. 
Dealers in grain, beef, pork, and provisions, cheese, and other farm products, 
in most of the leading cities of England, and several upon the Continent, 
purchase direct of our packers and commission houses. Several large orders for 
wheat have just been filled on English account. The bills drawn against these 
purchases are taken by our banks, and in the short space of five years the 
balance of trade is largely in favor of this city. Though some of our 
importers often buy $50,000 in a single draft, week after week a balance of 
foreign exchange remains over, and is sold in the New York market. For the 
first six months of the year a single National Bank took 14,000,000 of these 
bills, and in the last half the amount will doubtless be larger still. These 
facts show why New York jobbers are in the dumps at the rapid extension of our 
direct export and import trade. Their disease is chronic. Growling at Chicago 
enterprise can do them no good. If the last five years have shown the results 
already achieved, before the century closes New York will retain very little, 
if any, interest in the wholesale trade of the West.

From the Tribune, Monday, Oct. 18, 1875.

On Friday and Saturday of last week, in explaining the amazing increase of the 
banking business of the city, we had something to say of its foreign and 
domestic jobbing trade. Those brief articles merely embraced what might be 
regarded as the headings for a dozen column articles on the same subjects. 
They did not mention the distant regions to which our people trade, as the 
following hints will show:

To the Editor of the Chicago Tribune:

CHICAGO, Oct. 16.—In your article of to-day you say: "The jobbing trade of the 
city reaches all the way from Texas to Manitoba." This is true, and all very 
well, but how about the Eastern States, Canada, and the States and Territories 
west of the Rocky Mountains? Is the subject too extensive for even two 
articles? Very truly yours,
MERCHANT.

Exactly so. It is too broad and too important to be exhaustively treated in a 
dozen articles. For breadstuff's, provisions, and all farm products, Chicago 
has laid all the New England States under tribute for a quarter of a century. 
Within the last ten years the Middle and Southern States have also become 
large purchasers, and the trade with them is constantly increasing. It is true 
that some of these States purchase sparingly of some kinds of produce, but all 
of them are our customers. As to manufactured articles, leather, boots, 
furniture, and many other articles, are sent from this city all over the 
Eastern and Southern States. Agricultural implements are shipped in large 
quantities eastward, and in fact in all directions. McCormick's reaper has 
laid the entire nation, and even several in Europe, under contribution, as 
witness the immense blocks on Dearborn, Clark, and other streets. That 
implement alone has gathered from the wide world several large fortunes, and 
planted them down in Chicago.

Of course our wholesale and retail dealers have nearly as strong a hold on 
Michigan, Indiana, and Western Ohio as they have on the country immediately 
west of the city. They cannot afford to get their goods, elsewhere.

Our trade for many years has been very large with Canada, and an enlightened 
policy on the part of both Governments will swell it into immense proportions. 
Connected intimately with her 4,000,000 of people, both by lake navigation and 
railways, and producing much that she can buy in this market cheaper than 
anywhere else, she is one of our largest and best customers. This fact is 
attested by the branches of two of her largest banks doing the business 
between Chicago and the cities of Canada.

Turning our eyes westward, to say that "the jobbing trade of the city reaches 
from Texas to Manitoba" in some lines does not tell more than half the truth. 
All the States and Territories beyond the Rocky Mountains are trading largely 
in Chicago. They have found that they can buy goods as cheaply here as on the 
Atlantic seaboard, and the disposition to do so is growing every year. Sitting 
in the office of Peter Schuttler, early last spring, we asked where a large 
lot of wagons, just passing, were going. "We are loading two cars to-day for 
Chico, California," was the reply. There is no timber in California from which 
agricultural implements can be made, and if the managers of the Union and 
Central Pacific Railways do not put an embargo upon us by high freights, there 
is scarcely any limit to the orders our manufacturers will receive for these 
and like articles from the Pacific coast. In fact, very considerable orders 
have been filled from our warerooms for Australia. We take in everything. 
Orders for dry goods, books, boots and shoes, clothing, hardware,—in fact, 
almost every kind of merchandise and manufactured articles,—come from Montana, 
Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and even from Nevada, and if Gen. Rosecrans 
will hurry up his railroad between Denver, or rather Pueblo, and Mexico, there 
will be no longer any need of specifying any particular localities. The trade 
of Chicago in North America will be limited only by the boundaries of the 
continent, while most of the nations of Europe will pay her large and 
constantly-increasing tribute. Such is her "manifest destiny," and the New 
York jobbers may as well stop their growling. If Stewart, Claflin, and the 
rest want to sell their goods, let them transplant their establishments to the 
head of the market. Chicago is the place to do it, and if not convinced of it 
now, they will in a very few years find it out to their cost.

As a specimen of the extent of our imports, we mention that one of our 
wholesale grocery houses received on Saturday 33 car loads of coffee, 10 of 
pepper, nutmegs, and other spices, and 13 of new raisins. They expect another 
ship to unload on the cars next week, and another is now loading for them in a 
foreign port. Whole trains of, tea often pass through this city on their way 
to New York, and, of course, all that is wanted for distribution in the 
Mississippi Valley stops here.

It may be asked what propriety there is in stating all these facts in the 
financial column. They show how wide a circuit is embraced in the business 
done at our banks, and by inference how large and how active a capital is 
required to do it. The wants of that business for several weeks past, have 
been immense; but our bankers have backed the enterprise of our merchants and 
manufacturers cheerfully and promptly, and the vast current of our commerce 
has moved along so quietly and so smoothly that it gave scarcely any sign of 
its magnitude.

From the Tribune, Oct. 19, 1875.

A committee of the Board of Trade have recently been collecting some 
statistics in relation to the trade of the city. Among other things they found 
that ten of our principal banks drew during the last year exchange to the 
amount of $418,000,000. At first sight these figures do not appear to 
correspond with the values of the shipments eastward of farm products during 
the same period. Taking the amounts of grain, cattle, hogs, provisions, and 
other animal products, and the average prices ruling for the year, the actual 
value of the shipments to the seaboard was found to be $249,500,000. Whence, 
then, did the banks derive the $168,500,000 over and above the value of the 
shipments from, this city? From all the surrounding country. Some half a dozen 
railways cross the Illinois Central south of Chicago, and in one way or 
another the collections for shipments for all the towns and cities for from 
200 to 500 miles in all directions, and for even 1,000 miles westward, find 
their way largely to the hands of our bankers. Chicago is the financial, as 
well as the commercial centre of all the vast, fertile country by which she is 
surrounded. And besides, it should be remembered that the figures for the 
entire trade of the city—merchandise and manufactures included—for the year 
1874, footed up to the round sum of at least $638,500,000. Hence the results 
reached by the committee, in view of the above facts, and of what has been 
said in this column for the past few days, will be readily believed.

That the West and Chicago are living upon the good old maxim "Pay as you go," 
is proved by the fact that for a long period in the past, exchange has for 
nearly half the time, perhaps more, ruled at or below par. This, as much as 
anything else, shows how rapidly our people are becoming independent. It 
shows, also, that the balance of trade is often in favor of the West. It is in 
the memory of our business men that the price of exchange on New York has been 
from 2 to 25 per cent, premium, and at times it could not be had even at that.


NEW YORK AND CHICAGO BANKS.

At first sight it may seem ridiculous to compare the New York and the Chicago 
banks; but when it is considered that New York dates her origin way back to 
the earliest history of the nation, and claims to have the control of its 
commerce, and to have held it in all the past, and that it is only thirty-
eight years since Chicago became a city, with only 4,000 inhabitants, the 
comparison does not seem to tell so very strongly against us after all. By the 
last bank statements of the two cities, it appears that there are forty-eight 
National Banks in New York and sixteen in Chicago, one-third as many; capital 
of the New York banks, in round numbers, $68,500,000; those of Chicago, 
$12,000,000, a little more than one-sixth; loans and discounts, New York, 
$202,000,000; Chicago, $26,000,000 about one-eighth of the figures of the New 
York banks. As these are the main items, it is not necessary to make any 
further comparisons. That the Chicago banks will gain rapidly on their 
metropolitan neighbors there can not be a particle of doubt.


PORTLAND, ME., TO SACRAMENTO.

As confirmatory of what has appeared in this column for the past few days, one 
of our manufacturers told the writer yesterday that, among others, he had just
filled two large orders—one for Sacramento, CaL, and the other for Portland, 
Me. Thus in scores of cases daily do both extremes of the continent pay 
tribute to our city.

From the Tribune of Nov. 15, 1875.

Business at the banks during the past week has moved along smoothly, to the 
satisfaction alike of cashiers and customers. If anything, it is very quiet 
for the season, more so than it should be, considering the immense amounts of 
farm products still to go forward. Holders seem unwilling to operate to any 
very considerable extent, certainly not up to the means they have to do it. 
The packers have fairly commenced operations, but they have thus far drawn 
mainly on their deposits and loans on call or due when their business 
commences. As a class, their capital has steadily accumulated for several 
years past, and the abundance of money in this market for several months 
during the summer, and the cheap rates at which it could be had on approved 
collaterals, are due largely to the surplus capital for the time being, in the 
hands of the packers. Of course, they will be heavy borrowers before the 
season closes; but bankers will be only too happy to accommodate them with all 
the money they care to use. The time of their activity comes after most of the 
other departments of the fall trade have become quiet, and hence the 
employment they give to the capital of our banks is a great and mutual benefit.

The provision trade of Chicago has grown within the last few years far beyond 
the expectations of our most sanguine packers. Purchases are made almost 
entirely by wholesale dealers in the seaboard cities and in those of Europe. 
Shipments are made direct to Liverpool and other cities on the other side on 
bills of lading, ocean freights included, made in this city. Nobody here now 
thinks of shipping provisions for sale to commission houses in New York. 
Buyers have learned to come directly to the head of the market. The stuff is 
paid for generally by drafts on London or other European cities, and these are 
promptly cashed by our bankers. The large amount of this business done in 
Chicago was referred to in this column two or three weeks ago. A single bank 
in the first six months of the present year discounted foreign drafts against 
direct shipments of grain and provisions, to the amount of $4,000,000. As 
might be expected, it sells foreign exchange to our importers in large 
amounts; but as yet a balance remains, which is disposed of in New York. 
Another fact worthy of notice is, that none of our citizens, or the people of 
the West, need go to New York for letters of credit to travel or buy goods 
anywhere on the face of the earth. Such letters are issued right here, 
available in any city in South America, in Northern or Southern Africa, or on 
the long trip all the way round the world. When Duncan, Sherman & Co. failed, 
two of the sons of one of our citizens were just starting from Italy eastward 
through Egypt, India, China, Japan, and home by California. Stating the fact 
to one of our bankers, the father said: "Duncan, Sherman & Co. have failed, 
and Brown Brothers & Co. may go next; give me a couple of letters of credit 
which I know will bring my boys home without any possible contingency that may 
occur in New York." The thing was done, and the young men are somewhere in 
Asia, traveling there and elsewhere on the letters issued by one of our 
leading banks.
 

COMMERCIAL CRISES.
 
The following article was published in the Tribune July 31, 1873. I insert it 
here, for the reason that, possibly, it may be of service to some one into 
whose hands it may fall.

There is an old-time maxim that "History repeats itself." Without inquiring as 
to the truth of the sentiment, or attempting to give examples to confirm or to 
disprove it, we propose to inquire whether the supposed law can be applied to 
commercial crises. Of course each reader should apply the test of his own 
knowledge and experience to the subject, and act upon the suggestions herein 
submitted according to his best judgment.

The history of this country seems to have developed a law that a general 
commercial crash may be expected every twenty years. The first occurred in 
1797, the second in 1817, the third in 1837, many of our readers can remember 
that and the fourth in 1857, whose lessons few of our business men have 
forgotten. The causes which produced the first two can be found in the 
condition of the country at the time they occurred. After the close of the 
Revolutionary War and up to the time of the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution, the business affairs of the nation were at sea. Each State 
adopted trade regulations with its neighbors or with foreign nations according 
to its own notions of what duty or interest might dictate. There was no 
confidence among the business men of the period. 

The value of the currency issued by the States and by the old Continental 
Congress was virtually regulated by the peck, and not by the denominations 
printed on the face of the bills, and confusion worse confounded reigned 
everywhere. This state of things could not be endured. The Constitution of the 
United States, adopted in 1787, in which it was provided that Congress should 
have power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several 
States," gradually inspired confidence. Commercial treaties were made with 
foreign nations; all restrictions upon traffic between the States were 
abolished, and the country began to prosper. As time rolled on and that 
prosperity increased, it turned the heads of the old Revolutionary patriots. 
They began to speculate; prices of everything appreciated; importations of 
foreign luxuries were made far beyond the value of the exports the country 
could make to pay for them; and, at the end of ten years, the whole business 
public was forced into liquidation. There was no money to be had; no 
confidence anywhere, and very little business could be done till the "hard 
pan" had been reached.

After the close of the speculative period, and the people found themselves 
standing upon the common plane of poverty, necessity forced all to work and to 
practice economy. Wealth again began slowly to accumulate, and the demand for 
our products was stimulated by the wars of Napoleon. England was hard pressed; 
the old hatreds of the Revolution had not passed away. A quarrel arose, and 
the War of 1812-'15 was the result. During the war the country was prosperous 
to an unhealthy  extent, and struggled along after it closed till 1817, when a 
terrible financial crash again involved the country in utter and general ruin. 
As before, money seemed to have entirely forsaken the channels of trade. What 
little there was in the country was hid away in old stocking-legs, to reappear 
only when confidence was in some measure restored. Gradually liquidation did 
its work. Careful, persevering toil and close economy began to develop the 
resources of the country and prosperity to bless the land. By 1826, DeWitt 
Clinton and his far-seeing compeers had completed the Erie Canal; the vast 
teeming West was opened to the enterprise of the country, and for the next ten 
years the progress in the population and the wealth of the nation was truly 
amazing. The rapid rise in the nominal value of lands everywhere, and 
especially at the West, enticed thousands even of the most prudent business 
men to invest in them. Wild-cat banks, almost without number,   were 
established in Michigan and almost everywhere west of the Allegheny Mountains. 
Everybody's pockets were full of bank-bills; and so generally did people take 
to speculation to get rich, instead of attending to the duties of the farm and 
the workshop, that potatoes were imported into New York from Ireland in 1836, 
and wheat from the Baltic. Importations of liquors, gew-gaws, and foreign 
luxuries rose to frightful figures. Of course this state of things could not 
last, and the crash of 1837-'8 was the bitter remedy for the moral and 
commercial insanity that had preceded it.

The first two financial crises, as we have seen—viz., that of 1797 and of 1817 
were due to the wars and the condition of the country that resulted from those 
wars.

The period of twenty years having once been established, it is proper to 
inquire, right here, what were the causes that produced the third and the 
fourth, the conditions that may produce others at the recurrence of every 
twenty years, and the means by which the country may hope to avoid them.

During the time between one financial crash and another, it may be stated 
generally that nearly the entire property of tbe nation changes hands. The 
wealthy men die, and with them tbe economy, industry, and prudent foresight, 
by the exercise of which their estates were accumulated. Their sons and sons-
in-law get possession of their property. Commencing where their fathers left 
off, they launch out into foolish extravagance. The promoters of wild 
speculative schemes flatter them by parading their names as the patrons of 
this and that great enterprise, and visions of untold wealth lead them to 
plunge into debt without limit. The fact is, they did not earn the wealth in 
which they revel, and they don't know how to take care of it. Not to divide 
the business public too closely, we mention but one other class who, if we 
mistake not, contribute largely to those conditions which are sure to produce 
a crash in the financial affairs of the country. These are the men who 
commence life entirely poor immediately after a financial revolution. They 
begin to accumulate by the most careful economy and the most energetic toil. 
That first thousand dollars, of which all have heard, require the sweat of 
many a hard day's work to earn, but they earn it. The ring of their hammers 
late and early—no eight-hour days for them—has been hearo, by the merchant and 
capitalist. They deserve and have good credit. Business and profits steadily 
increase, and at the end, say, of fifteen years from the last crash, they are 
worth ten, twenty, perchance, here and there one, a hundred thousand dollars, 
or more. Speculation sets in, and many around them are becoming millionaires. 
Why should they not share in the golden harvest? They "pitch in." Go outside 
of their legitimate business to speculate in new cities, outside lands, and 
great companies expected to coin fabulous fortunes. These men who commenced 
poor—always the majority in business circles—join  with the sons of the 
wealthy, and an insane desire to become suddenly rich seizes all classes. 
Nearly everybody gets in debt, one borrowing from another all the money he 
will lend, or, what is more generally true, one buying from the other, at 
fancy prices, all the property he will sell, and "holding it for a rise." 
While all is going on swimmingly, some mammoth bubble, like the Ohio Life and 
Trust Company, bursts, and in a few weeks, or months at most, bankruptcy 
stares the whole country in the face. Liquidation must then do its work, and 
in half a dozen years a new race of business men have grasped those 
enterprises which in a few years more restore the country to a solid basis of 
prosperity and progress.

Those of our readers whose memory, and especially whose business experience, 
reaches back forty years, will recognize the accuracy of the facts here 
detailed. If  the succession is to continue, the next financial crisis will 
occur in 1877. How far the condition of the country now warrants the 
expectation of such an event, let each one determine for himself. Especially 
will it be wise for all prudent men to watch carefully the course of financial 
events for the next four years. A crash can only come when nearly everybody is 
largely in debt, and if, forewarned by the past, people keep expenses and 
ventures within their means, the country will escape the repetition of the 
bankruptcy that has occurred every twenty years in all our past history. 
It is with the hope that, warned by the past, some, at least, of the readers 
of this article may ride in safety through all the financial storms that may 
befall us. When everybody is rushing into debt, it is a sure sign that it is 
best for wise, sane men to get out of it.

It follows that, if one could foresee a crash, his best policy would be to 
sell all out a year or two before it occurs; have his cash in hand, and, when 
liquidation has done its worst, buy all the property he can and hold it. When 
the whole country lives within its means, and people are at work, wealth is 
sure to accumulate and values to appreciate. This rule has no exceptions; but 
of its application to the present or to the future, each reader must judge for 
himself. Of 1877 we make no predictions, beyond what the principles above 
stated will warrant.

I did not then and do not now regard the crash of 1873 as at all to be 
compared to those of 1837 and 1857; as property did not then and since 
generally change hands. I compare it to the "squeeze" of 1854, and others like 
it. I do not look for it next year though it must be confessed that a very 
large class of people would be only too glad to get their property out of 
their hands and their outstanding notes and obligations in them. In this 
instance the crash may be delayed for some time; but as prices of almost 
everything have been steadily settling since 1873, they may reach bottom in 
1877. It may be well to drop this hint, Look out for breakers one or two years 
after specie resumption.
 


REMINISCENCES OF EARLY CHICAGO.
AN INTERESTING LECTURE BY GOV. BROSS.
A GOSSIPY DESCRIPTION OF SCENES AND INCIDENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE GARDEN 
CITY.
 
From, the Tribune, January 24,1876.

LECTURE BY THE HON. WM. BROSS

Gov. Bross spoke yesterday afternoon at McCormick Hall, his subject 
being "What I remember of Early Chicago." Following is his discourse in full:

The charter of the City of Chicago bears date March 4, 1837, and the first 
election for city officers was held on the first Tuesday in May, 1837. Not a 
few of the men and women who saw it when an Indian trading post, with Fort 
Dearborn to defend the settlers, are still among us, and the ladies certainly 
would not feel complimented were they called old. Hence whatever is said 
about "The Early Times in Chicago" must be regarded as relative, for the city 
has not yet numbered 38 years. As I first saw Chicago in October, 1846, and 
commenced my permanent residence here on the 12th of May, 1848, I can scarcely 
be called an old citizen, and yet in that time it has grown from a city of 
about 18,000 (later in the season the census gave us 20,023) to nearly, if not 
quite, 450,000—an increase never before equaled by any city in the history of 
the world. From a city then scarcely ever mentioned, she has become the fourth 
in rank and population upon the American Continent.

But granting for the moment that I am an old citizen, I recognize the duty of 
placing on record—as myself and others have doubtless often been urged to do— 
what I know personally of the history of Chicago. Though this may require a 
too frequent use of the personal pronoun, your Directors are responsible if I 
bore you with it. If each citizen would do it, the future historian could 
select what best suited his purpose, and Chicago would have what no other city 
has—a history from its earliest times, written by its living inhabitants. In 
1854 I prepared and published some notes on the history of the Town of Chicago—
in fact, going back to the discovery of the site by the French Jesuit 
missionaries, Marquette and Joliet, and I shall devote the hour to giving you 
a supplement to what used to be called "Our Pamphlet" of 1854. This was ably  
continued by my friend, Elias Colbert, in 1868; but neither of them pretends 
to give much of how Chicago appeared to the visitor in the "earlier times" of 
its history.


CHICAGO IN 1846.

Your speaker, as above stated, first arrived in Chicago early in the morning 
of the second Sabbath in October, 1846, now of course nearly thirty years ago. 
We landed from the steamer Oregon, Capt. Cotton, near the foot of Wabash 
avenue, and, with others, valise in hand, trudged through the sand to the 
American Temperance House, then situated on the northwest corner of Wabash 
avenue and Lake street. Soon after breakfast a tall young man, made apparently 
taller by a cloth cloak in which his gaunt figure seemed in danger of losing 
itself, and whose reserved modest manners were the very reverse of what we had 
expected to find at the West, called on the clergy of our party and invited 
one of them to preach and the rest of us to attend service in the Second 
Presbyterian Church. That cloak would now be well filled by its owner, the 
Rev. Dr. Patterson, who has grown physically as well as intellectually and 
morally with the growth of the city, to whose moral welfare he has so largely 
contributed. Of course we all went to what by courtesy, as we thought, was 
called a church. It was a one-story balloon shanty-like structure that had 
been patched out at one end to meet the wants of the increasing congregation. 
It stood on Randolph street, south side, a little east of Clark. It certainly 
gave no promise of the antique but splendid church that before the fire stood 
on the corner of Washington street and Wabash avenue, or that still more 
elaborate and costly building, the Rev. Dr. Gibson's church, at the corner of 
Michigan avenue and Twentieth street.
 
That afternoon and Monday morning afforded ample time to see the city. The 
residence portion of it was mainly between Randolph and Madison streets, and 
there were some scattered houses as far south as Van Buren, on the South Side, 
four or five blocks north of the river on the North Side, with scattering 
residences about as far on the West Side. There were perhaps half a dozen or 
more wooden warehouses along the river on Water street. The few stores that 
pretended to be wholesale were on Water street, and the retail trade was 
exclusively done on Lake street. Stores and dwellings were, with few 
exceptions, built in the balloon fashion. To some of my hearers this style of 
building may already be mysterious. Posts were placed in the ground at the 
corners, and at proper distances between them blocks were laid down singly or 
in cob-house fashion. On these foundations timbers were laid, and to these 
were spiked, standing on end, 3x1 scantling. On these sheath-boards were 
nailed, and weather-boards on the outside of them; and lath and plaster 
inside, with the roof, completed the dwelling or store. This cheap, but for a 
new town, excellent mode of building, it is claimed, was first introduced, or, 
if you please, invented, in Chicago, and I believe the claim to be true. Of 
course the fire made sad havoc with them at times; but the loss was 
comparatively small, and they were quickly and cheaply rebuilt. True, Chicago 
was ridiculed as a slab city; but, if not pleasant, to bear ridicule breaks no 
bones. When our merchants and capitalists had grown rich enough to build 
permanent buildings, of course they did it. Then there were not as many bricks 
laid in walls in the whole city as there are now in single blocks anywhere 
near the business centre of the city. Chicago need not shrink from comparing 
them with those in any other city upon the continent. My first objective point 
in Northern Illinois was Batavia, on Fox River, 40 miles distant, where some 
Orange County (N. Y.) friends resided. As Frink & Walker's stages did not pass 
through the town except on the road along the river, the problem was how to 
get there. The streets were full of farmers' teams, and in half an hour's tour 
among them we found a man who, for a small sum, agreed to land us there Monday 
evening. It was nearly noon before we got started, and as two of my traveling 
companions lived 3 or 4 miles west of Fox River, and were bound to get home 
that night, they soon began to use all their arts to urge our Jehu onward. At 
the old tavern on the west side of the Aux Plaines near the bridge, they 
treated the old farmer freely, and again at Cottage Hill, Bibcock's Grove, and 
other places; but sooth to say, the whisky, though it had a marked effect upon 
the old man, must then; as now, have been "crooked," for the more he got of it 
inside of his vest the slower he stubbornly determined to drive his team; but 
he assured us he would "root along," and get to Batavia that evening, and he 
did. Of course, an account of my journey to St. Louis and up the Ohio homeward 
has no place in this lecture.


MORE ABOUT TRAVELING, IN 1848.

As a specimen of traveling, in 1848, I mention that it took us nearly a week 
to come from New York to Chicago. Our trip was made by steamer to Albany; 
railway cars at a slow pace to Buffalo; by the steamer Canada thence to 
Detroit; and by the Michigan Central Railway, most of the way on strap rail, 
to Kalamazoo; here the line ended, and, arriving about 8 o'clock in the 
evening, after a good supper, we started about 10 in a sort of a cross between 
a coach and a lumber box-wagon for St. Joseph. The'road was exceedingly rough, 
and, with bangs and bruises all over our bodies, towards morning several of us 
left the coach and walked on, very easily keeping ahead. In this tramp I made 
the acquaintance of John S. Wright, then, and for many years afterward, one of 
the most enterprising and valuable citizens Chicago ever had. He gave me a 
cordial welcome, and a great deal of valuable information. On Sabbath he 
called and took me to church, and embraced many opportunities to introduce me 
to Mayor Woodworth and other leading citizens, giving me a lesson in courtesy 
to strangers which I have never forgotten. I beg to impress it upon you all as 
a duty too much neglected in the hurry and bustle that surround us on every 
side.

The steamer Sam Ward, with Captain Clement first officer, and jolly Dick 
Somers as steward, afterwards Alderman, brought us to the city on the evening 
of the 12th of May, 1848, and here at 121 Lake street, with Dr. Scammon's drug 
store on one side and Lock's clothing store on the other, the stranger from 
the East settled down quietly as a bookseller. The city had added 4,000 to its 
population in the year and a half after I first saw it; but it had changed 
very little in appearance. It was still pre-eminently a slab city. The 
Illinois and Michigan Canal had been opened the month before, and during the 
summer packets were put on, and, running in connection with steamers on the 
Illinois River, quite an impetus was given to travel through the city. To them 
it did not present a very inviting aspect. The balloon buildings above spoken 
of were mostly dingy and weather beaten. The only two stone buildings in the 
city built of blue limestone, brought as ballast from the lower lakes, stood 
on Michigan avenue between Lake and South Water streets, on the site now 
occupied by the Illinois Central Railroad offices. They were the aristocratic 
mansions of the city. There were a few brick residences and stores, but these 
were the exception. 

It was curious to notice how long some of the old balloon buildings would 
escape the fire. The old store in which Mosely & McCord commenced business, 
between Clark and LaSalle streets, on the north side of Lake, was built when 
the proprietors could look south to Blue Island with not a building in front 
to obstruct the view. There it stood, with the sign "Mosely & McCord" just 
below the roof, till it was all surrounded by brick buildings, and the 
insurance on it had cost ten times what the building was ever worth. Subtract 
the few scattering brick buildings on South Clark street, in the vicinity of 
Twelfth street, and the dingy shanties in that vicinity on Clark street and 
Third and Fourth avenues will best represent what most of Chicago was in 1848.


BUILDING STONE.

And here I may as well mention the sources from which our fine building 
materials are derived. Till after that year it was supposed we had no good 
rock for building anywhere near the city. The blue-limestone quarries from 
which the stone for the two dwellings above mentioned were taken, were thought 
to be our best and cheapest source of supply. Besides these, there had been 
brought from the lower lakes some sandstone flagging. It lay in front of the 
Laflin residence block, corner of Washington street and Michigan avenue, where 
it served for a sidewalk up to the time of the fire in 1871. Discussions, held 
for a long time by the Trustees of the Second Presbyterian society, when it 
was proposed to build a new church edifice in 1849, resulted in their 
determining to use stone found near the western limits of the city. The 
location has become somewhat famous as the site of our first artesian well. 
The rock is a porous limestone, with sufficient silex mixed with it to make it 
very hard. It seems to have been formed under a bed of bitumen, or coal for 
the pores in the rock are filled with it, and hence some of the less porous 
stones in the church were of a pale creamy color, while others were so filled 
with pitch or bitumen that it oozed out in hot weather, and they were as black 
as tar. Hence it was called the speckled or spotted church, a name which, 
referring to an unfortunate occurrence in its after history, my friend Sam 
Bowles said was derived from its speckled morality. The same rock was used in 
rebuilding the church at the corner of Twentieth street and Michigan avenue. 
The use of this rock was really the first important event of the kind in the 
building history of the city.

While this material was regarded as a most excellent one for church purposes, 
giving them an antique and venerable appearance, it was not considered the 
thing for the Cook County Court House in 1852 or '53,—I did not have time in 
this, as in some other cases, to look up the exact date. Our wise men of that 
ancient period, after due deliberation, determined to use a rock found at 
Lockport, N. Y., a bluish-colored limestone. Fortunate it was that official 
plundering had not then, as now, been reduced to a science, or the entire 
county would have been forever swamped in the debt contracted for the money to 
build it. This was regarded as the cheapest and best rock that could be had 
for building—for such structures—and was the second leally progressive step in 
the building of the city.

During all this time it is remarkable that no one had thought of the limestone 
quarries through which the canal had been cut for several miles this side of 
Lockport. The reason probably was that some of the strata were not well 
crystalized and rotted readily; but tens of thousands of cords of it that 
showed no signs of decay lay scattered along the canal. In 1852 or 1853 some 
one, if I mistake not ex-Mayor Sherman, built a store on Randolph street, it 
was afterwards removed  to Clark street opposite the Court House,—facing it 
with this stone. Everybody was delighted with its beautiful color. It was 
found to become very hard when seasoned, and pronounced a marble by President 
Hitchcock, of Amherst College. It very soon came into general use. In 
December, 1853, the Illinois Stone and Lime Company was formed, with A. S. 
Sherman, now of Waukegan, as its efficient manager. The next summer, Harry 
Newhall built two very fine dwellings of it on Michigan  avenue between Adams 
and Jackson streets, and M. D. Gilman followed with another next to Newhall, 
and after that its use became general. It is conceded to be one of the best 
and most beautiful building materials in the world. Cheaply quarried and 
easily accessible by water, Chicago owes much of her prestige and prosperity 
to these Athens marble quarries. From it also Chicago constructs the best 
sidewalks in the world, for, resting on an inner and outer wall, they are 
unaffected by frost, and are always smooth and pleasant to the pedestrian. 
Before, and especially since the fire, Chicago has drawn upon the beautiful 
sandstone quarries of Ohio; the red sandstone of Connecticut and of Lake 
Superior; she has cheap access to the marble deposits and the granite of 
Vermont, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, 150 miles west of the head of Lake 
Superior, and it is now conceded that no city in the world has a better 
variety of building material or is making a more judicious and liberal use of 
it.


OUT OF TOWN, CORNER MADISON AND STATE.

Going back to 1848, after remaining a week at the City Hotel, corner of State 
and Lake streets, I was admitted to a most excellent home, that of the late 
Rev. Ira M. Weed, corner of Madison and State streets, where Buck & Rayner's 
drug store now is. This was considered far south, and as the sidewalks were 
not all good, the best that could be found was south on Dearborn to Madison, 
where a very large sign on a paint shop, where the Bank of Commerce now is and 
directly opposite The Tribune office, reminded me to turn eastward. The 
sidewalks, where such luxuries were indulged in, lay in most cases upon the 
rich prairie soii, for the string pieces of scantling to which the planks were 
originally spiked, would soon sink down into the mud after a rain, and then as 
one walked, the green and black slime would gush up between the cracks to the 
great benefit of retailers of blacking. One's disgust can be under¬stood when 
it is stated that this meant some minutes of active personal service in the 
morning, for this was long before the pro¬fessional bootblack was born—
certainly before he made his advent in Chicago.

In March, 1849,-I think March was the month,—my family having arrived per 
steamer Niagara the August previous, we commenced housekeeping on Wabash 
avenue between Adams and Jackson streets, in a cosy little house at the modest 
rent of $12 per month. In May following I bought of Judge Jessie B. Thomas 40 
feet on Michigan avenue, commencing 80 feet south of the comer of Van Buren 
street, for $1,250. The Judge had bought it at the canal sales in the spring 
of 1848 for $800, on canal time, viz.: as Dr. Egan afterwards directed in 
taking his pills, one-quarter down, balance in one, two and three years. I 
paid the Judge his profit, and what he had advanced on the first payment, and 
assumed the balance due the Canal Trustees, and took the deed to me directly 
from them. It was in a safe place during the fire, and of course is now a very 
ancient document.

In the fall of 1849 I bought a small wood house that I found moving along on 
Wabash avenue, and moved it on my lot. In this modest home we spent some six 
very happy years. Judge Manierre lived on Michigan avenue, corner of Jackson 
streev where the Gardner House now is. Harry Newhall lived on the block north. 
Mine was the only house on block 9, except a small tenement on the rear of a 
neighboring lot, where lived an African friend and brother named William. 
There were at first

NO SIDEWALKS

for a considerable distance north, and hence we were not troubled with 
promenaders on the avenue. The lake shore was perhaps a hundred feet east of 
the street. There my brother John and myself, rising early in the morning, 
bathed in summer for two or three years. We had an excellent cow-for we 
virtually lived in the country—that, contrary to all domestic propriety, would 
sometimes wander away, and I usually found her out on the prairie in the 
vicinity of Twelfth street. I saw a wolf run by my house as late as 1850. An 
incident in the purchase of the lot will illustrate the loneliness of our 
situation. The rule of speculators at the canal sales was to buy all the 
property on which the speculator could make the first payment, and then sell 
enough each year to make the others. Judge Thomas had followed this plan, and 
advertised a large list of property in the spring of 1849. He sold to myself 
and the Rev. Dr. Patterson adjoining lots at $1,250 at private sale; but it 
was agreed that these should be sold with the rest, so as to attract 
customers, as Michigan avenue had become somewhat popular as a prospective 
place of residence. When my lot was struck off to me for some $1,300, Harry 
Newhall came across the room, and said, "Bross, did you buy that lot to live 
on? Are you going to improve it?" "Yes," was the reply. "Well," said he, "I'm 
glad of it; I'm glad some one is going to live beyond me. It won't be so 
lonesome if we can see somebody going by night and morning." We then lived, as 
above stated, on Wabash avenue, between Adams and Jackson streets.


REAL ESTATE.

In the winter of 1851-'52, my friend, the late Charles Starkweather, insisted 
on selling me 14 acres of land immediately south of Twenty-sixth street, and 
east of State to Michigan avenue. Capt. Clement and myself went out of town to 
look at it, going across lots south of Twelfth street. It was away out on the 
prairie, and I made up my mind that the price ($500 per acre) was too much. I 
could raise the $1,000 to make the first payment; but where was the 6 per 
cent, on the balance for the next ten years to come from? Capt. Clement took 
the property, paid the $1,000, and, in seven months, sold it for $1,000 an 
acre, clearing in that time $7,000 on an investment of $1,000. But the Captain 
let a fortune slip through his hands, for that 14 acres is now valued by James 
H. Reese, Esq., at $560,000, or $40,000 per acre. In that case, as in scores 
of others, I, too, just escaped get¬ting rich; but I have an abundance of good 
company, for hundreds of my fellow-citizens have missed opportunities equally 
good.

Take the following instances: Walter L. Newberry bought the 40 acres that form 
his addition to Chicago, of Thomas Hartzell, in 1833, for $1,062. It is now 
valued at $1,000,000. Maj. Kingsbury had been off on an exploring expedition 
about this time, till his pay as an army officer, above his immediate 
necessities, amounted to some $600. A brother officer advised him to salt this 
down for his two children. He bought for it 160x180 feet corner of Clark and 
Randolph streets, and 27 acres on the North Branch. It is now worth from 
$600,000 to $1,000,000. One quick at figures could probably show that at 
compound interest the cost of the land would have realized much more than it 
is now worth. In time this certainly will be true; but if the rents of the 
land are taken in place of the interest, let him who has time to make the 
figures determine which would have been the more profitable investment.


NO PAVEMENTS.

I said we had no pavements in 1848. The streets were simply thrown up as 
country roads. In the spring for weeks portions of them would be impassable. I 
have at different times seen empty wagons and drays stuck on Lake and Water 
streets on every block between Wabash avenue and the river. Of course there 
was little or no business doing, for the people of the city could not get 
about much, and the people of the country could not get in to do it. As the 
clerks had nothing to do, they would exercise their wits by putting boards 
from dry goods boxes in the holes where the last dray was dug out, with 
significant signs, as "No Bottom Here," "The Shortest Road to China." 
Sometimes one board would be nailed across another, and an old hat and coat 
fixed on it, with the notice "On His Way to the Lower Regions." In fact, there 
was no end to the fun; and jokes of the boys of that day—some were of larger 
growth—were without number.

Our first effort at paving, or one of the first, was to dig down Lake street 
to nearly or quite on a level with the lake, and then plank it. It was 
supposed that the sewage would settle in the gutters and be carried off, but 
the experiment was a disastrous failure, for the stench at once became 
intolerable. The street was then filled up, and the Common Council established 
a grade from 2 to 6 or 8 feet above the natural level of the soil. This 
required the streets to be filled up, and for a year or two Chicago lived 
mostly on jack-screws, for the buildings had to be raised as well as the 
streets. Until all the sidewalks were raised to grade, people had to go up and 
down stairs from four to half a dozen steps two or three times in passing a 
single block. A Buffalo paper got off a note on us to the effect that one of 
her citizens going along the street was seen to run up and down every pair of 
cellar stairs he could find. A friend, asking after his sanity, was told that 
the walkist was all right, but that he had been in Chicago a week, and, in 
traveling our streets, had got so accustomed to going up and down stairs that 
he got the springhalt and could not help it.


THE COURT HOUSE SQUARE

should not be forgotten. On the northwest corner of it stood, till long after 
1848, the Jail, built "of logs firmly bolted together," as the account has it. 
It was not half large enough to hold the Aldermen that, if standing now, ought 
to be in it, not to speak of the Whisky Ring, and certainly it was not strong 
enough to keep them there. The Court House stood on northeast corner of the 
Square—a two-story building of brick, I think, with offices in the lower 
story. They stood there till 1853, when they were torn down to give place to 
the new building completed in that year.

I said we had no gas when I first came to the city. It was first turned on and 
the town lighted in September, 1850. Till then we had to grope on in the dark, 
or use lanterns. Not till 1853 or '54 did the pipes reach my house, No. 202 
Michigan avenue.

But the more important element, water, and its supply to the city, have a 
curious history. In 1848, Lake and Water, and perhaps Randolph streets, and 
the cross streets between them east of the river, were supplied from logs. 
James H. Woodworth ran a grist-mill on the north side of Lake street near the 
lake, the engine for which also pumped the water into a wooden cistern that 
supplied the logs. Whenever the lake was rough the water was excessively 
muddy; but in this, myself and family had no personal interest, for we lived 
outside of the water supply. Wells were in most cases tabooed, for the water 
was bad, and we, in common with perhaps a majority of our fellow-citizens, 
were forced to buy our water by the bucket or the barrel from water-carts. 
This we did for six years and it was not till the early part of 1854 that 
water was supplied to the houses from the new works upon the North Side.
 
But our troubles were by no means ended. The water was pumped from the lake 
shore the same as in the old works, and hence, in storms, it was still 
excessively muddy. In the spring and early summer it was impossible to keep 
the young fish out of the reservoir, and it was no uncommon thing to find the 
unwelcome fry sporting in one's wash-bowl, or dead and stuck in the faucets. 
And besides they would find their way into the hot-water reservoir, where they 
would get stewed up into a very nauseous fish chowder. The water at such times 
was not only the horror of all good housewives, but it was jusily thought to 
be very unhealthy. And, worse than all this, while at ordinary times there is 
a slight current on the lake shore south, and the water, though often muddy 
and sometimes fishy, was comparatively good, when the wind blew strongly from 
the south, often for several days the current was changed, and the water from 
the river, made from the sewage mixed with it into an abominably filthy soup, 
was pumped up and distributed through the pipes alike to the poorest street 
gamin and to the nabobs of the city. Mind you, the summit level of the canal 
had not then been dug down and the lake water been turned south. The Chicago 
river was the source of all the most detestably filthy smells that the breezes 
of heaven can possibly float to disgusted olfactories. Davis' filters had an 
active sale, and those of us who had cisterns betook ourselves to rain-water—
when filtered, about the best water one can possibly get. As Chicago, with all 
her enterprise, did not attempt to stop the south wind-from blowing, and her 
filthy water had become unendurable, it was proposed to run a tunnel under the 
lake to a point two miles from the shore, where the water was always pure—one 
of the boldest and most valuable thoughts ever broached by a civil engineer, 
but our able fellow-citizen, E. S. Chesbrough, not only planned, but carried 
out the great enterprise to a successful conclusion. Ground was broken March 
17, 1864; it was completed Dec. 6, 1866, but it was not till March 25,1867, 
that the water was let in and began to be pumped into the pipes to supply the 
city. A few words as to the way it was constructed: In digging under the city 
a hard blue clay is reached at the depth of a few feet. Experiments proved 
that this bed of hard, compact clay extended under the lake. At the foot of 
Chicago avenue, where it was proposed to sink the shore end, a bed of 
quicksand had to be passed through. To do this, cast-iron cylinders were 
procured, 9 feet long. The flanges by which they were to be bolted together 
were on the inside, so that they could sink smoothly through the sand. These 
were lowered successfully, as the material from the inside was taken out, till 
the hard pan was reached. Brick was then used. The water 2 miles from shore 
was 35 feet deep. In order to start that end of the tunnel an octagonal crib 
was, built of square timber, framed and bolted firmly together, with several 
water-tight compartments and a space in the centre left open sufficiently 
large to receive the same kind of cast-iron cylinders as were used at the 
shore end. The crib was nearly 100 feet in diameter, and, if I mistake not, 50 
or 60 feet high. It was built in the harbor, and during a calm it was towed 
out 2 miles and anchored due east of Chicago avenue; then scuttled, the 
compartments were filled with stones, and it was imbedded firmly into the mud 
at the bottom of the lake. The cylinders were bolted together and forced down 
into the hardpan, the water was pumped out and the brickwork, was fairly 
commenced. The shore shaft was sunk 90 feet, and that at the crib 85 feet, and 
then workmen at each end commenced excavating and bricking up the tunnel 
towards each other. Of course I need not give more particulars, nor speak of 
the 4-mile tunnel to the corner of Ashland avenue and Twenty-second street, 
where new pumping-works are in process of erection—our works on the lake shore 
being found only capable of supplying the 450,000 people now said to be in the 
city. Chicago may well be proud of her Water-Works, for they are truly 
splendid, and furnish her with an abundance of as pure water as can be found 
in any city in the world.

We had no sewers in 1848. The first attempts were made a year or two later 
with oak plank, I think on Clark street. I have no time nor space for 
particulars, but will only add that a thorough and effective system has been 
extended through all the more thickly settled portions of the city, and the 
deepening of the Illinois & Michigan Canal carries the sewage down the 
Illinois River, and, except when the ice covers the canal and river for many 
weeks, it does no damage whatever, and does not even make itself known by 
offensive odors.

Our mails from the East came by steamer from St. Joseph or New Buffalo, or by 
stage from the west end of the Michigan railways, till Feb. 20,1852, when the 
Michigan Southern was opened to this city. Of course during severe storms, 
while navigation was open, and during the winter and spring, when the roads 
were about impassable, they were very irregular. Sometimes we would be a week 
or two without any news from the outside world. Our long winter evenings were 
employed in reading,—much more so than now,—in attending lectures and debates 
at the Mechanics' Institute, in going to church, and in social life. Chicago 
people have always had abundant means to employ their time fully and 
profitably. The post-office stood on Clark street, on the alley where the 
north side of the Sherman House now is. It had a single delivery window a foot 
square, opening into a room with a door on the alley, and another on Clark 
street. All the city could see the flag flying from the Sherman House, when 
the mail steamer from the other side of the lake was signaled. Each one knew 
how long it would take her to reach her dock and the mails to get distributed. 
For a long time before the delivery window would open, the people would begin 
to assemble, the first taking his station at the window and the others forming 
in line through the rear door into the alley, often far into the street, like 
along line of voters at election. Here I saw one day an incident which I 
mention as a tribute to one of the best and noblest of men, and as an example 
for all of us to follow. At one time when we had been without a mail for a 
week or more, I stood in the line perhaps a dozen from the window and Robert 
Stewart two or three ahead of me. Just as the window opened and the column 
began to move, a woman, poorly clad and evidently a foreigner, rushed in at 
the front door, and, casting her eye down that long line of men, the muscles 
of her face twitched and she trembled with anxiety. She evidently expected a 
letter from dear ones far away over the broad Atlantic. Not a word was uttered 
by the crowd, and there she stood waiting in agony for the crowd to pass by, 
till it came Mr. Stewart's turn, when, with a kindly wave of the hand he 
said, "Come here, my good woman," and, placing her directly in front of him, 
she grasped her letter, and with a suppressed "thank the Lord and you sir," 
she left, the most happy person in the crowd. Any man might do such an act for 
a lady in silks; but only a noble, Christian gentleman like Robert Stewart 
would do it for a poor, forlorn woman in calico.

There was not a railway entering the city from, any direction in 1848. Some 
strap rails were laid down that fall, or during the winter following, on the 
Galena & Chicago, now the North-Western, and in 1850, through the personal 
endorsement of ex-Mayor B. W. Raymond and Capt. John B. Turner, men to whom 
Chicago is greatly indebted, it readied Elgin, 40 miles westward. So cheaply 
and honestly was it built, and from the time it was finished to Elgin, 40 
miles, so large and lucrative was its business, that it paid large dividends, 
and demonstrated that Illinois railways could be made profitable investments. 
It became, in fact, the parent of the vast railway system of the West. It was 
marvelous how rapidly railways were projected in all directions, and how 
quickly they were built.

The Michigan Southern Railway was the first great Eastern line to reach this 
city, which it did on the 20th of February, 1852. The Michigan Central was 
opened May 20th of the same year. These gave a very great impulse to the 
growth and prosperity of the city. These were times when the coming of great 
enterprises seemed to fill the air, and the men were found who were ready to 
grasp and execute them. The necessity of binding the South and the North 
together by iron bands had been broached and talked of in Congress and 
elsewhere in 1848, and a few sagacious men had suggested the granting-of 
alternate sections of the public lands to aid in the construction of the road 
as the only means by which it could be built. It had worked admirably in the 
case of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, and it was agreed that the importance 
of the work-would justify a similar grant in aid of a great through line from 
the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. With the characteristic-forecast and energy 
of her citizens, Chicago furnished the man who combined all interests and 
furnished the friends of the measure in Congress the means to carry it. That 
man was John S. Wright, who, as before stated, was one of the most far-seeing 
and valuable citizens Chicago ever had. The whirl and excitement in which he 
lived clouded his mind toward the close of his life; but if any one among bar 
earlier citizens deserves a monument to his memory, that man is John S. 
Wright. I had the same office with him in 1849, and hence know personally of 
what I speak. At his own expense he printed thousands of circulars, stating 
briefly, but with sufficient fullness, the arguments in favor of building the 
road, its effect upon the commerce and the social and political welfare of the 
Union; that in granting the lands the Government would lose nothing, as the 
alternate sections would at once command double the price of both. To this a 
petition to Congress to make the grant was attached. At that time such mail 
matter went free to postmasters, and with a small circular asking them to 
interest themselves in getting signers to the petitions, or to put them in the 
hands of those who would, Mr. Wright (giving employment to his clerk for 
weeks) sent two or three of them to every postmaster between the Lakes and the 
Gulf of Mexico. In the early part of the session of 1849-'50 these petitions 
began to pour into Congress by; the thousands, and still all through the 
summer of 1849 they kept coming. Members from all sections stood aghast at 
this deluge of, public opinion that seemed about to overwhelm them, unless 
they at once passed a law making a grant of lands to the States to open a 
railway from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico. Our Senators, Douglas and Shields, 
and Representatives, Wentworth and others, saw their opportunity, and the bill 
was passed on the 20th day of September, 1850. On the 10th of February, 1851, 
the Illinois Legislature chartered the company, and its construction was 
placed in the hands of Col. R. B. Mason. I need not add that a better 
selection could not possibly have been made.*

-----------------
*From the Tribune, Feb. 4.

THE "PRAIRIE FARMER" AND JOHN S. WRIGHT.

The Rev. J. Ambrose Wight, writing from Bay City, Mich., under date of Feb. 1, 
in relation to the lecture on "Early Chicago" recently delivered in 
McCormick's Hall, says:

"My early Chicago is earlier. I arrived there in September, 1836, and had my 
head quarters there till May, 1843, when I removed there, and remained till 
May, 1865.

"The thing that more especially pleases me in the lecture is the tribute to my 
old friend, John S. Wright. If Chicago, the State of Illinois, and the old 
Northwest, owe anything to anybody, it is to John S. Wright. The lecture 
states his movement in the matter of the Central Railroad. But that was only 
one of his undertakings for the public good. For fifteen years he was 
constantly engaged in some scheme with the same end. His establishment of and 
success with the Prairie Farmer were things remarkable, considering his age 
and supposed qualifications for such a work. He had never done a day's work on 
a farm in his life, and presumptively knew nothing about it. But he possessed 
a remarkable insight info public needs. He started his paper, freely 
acknowledging his own deficiencies, but threw himself on the help of the 
farmers, whose acquaintance he constantly made—putting as his motto at the 
head of his paper, "Farmers, write for your paper." And this flag was still 
flying in the last copy I have seen of that journal. For ten years that paper 
held a place which money could never pay for, and was essential to the growth 
of the country where it circulated—settling, one after another, such questions 
as these: "Will the cultivated grasses grow on prairie lands?" "Can sheep be 
kept to advantage here?" "Can orchards be a success?" "How shall we fence 
these open lands?" and hundreds of other questions of like kinds—the machinery 
to be used on the farm; the stock most profitable; and the claims of dozens of 
discoveries and inventions, good, and good for nothing. Mr. Wright 
relinquished the elm, it is true, after a year and a half, but his enthusiasm 
and insight gave impulse and direction, and made it a success.

"Then the system of public schools in Illinois owes its first impulse and 
direction to him, though he knew no more of school-teaching than of farming. 
He began work at that as soon as his paper was fairly launched ; setup a 
department in it for public-school education, corresponded and wrote 
unweariedly for it. There was no system of schools in the State at that time. 
The "common school," on the South Side, for Chicago, was kept in a story-and-a-
half building, up stairs—the building standing at the corner of State and 
Madison streets—the pedagogue being a Mr. Bennet, I think; and my 
impression,is that the school was common enough. The schools over the State 
were just as they happened to be.

"Mr. Wright drew up a system for the State, published it, printed circulars, 
got friends for it, and had it made a law, against a pretty strong dislike 
from the southern and central parts of tne State.
--------------------------

Permit me to say here, by way of parenthesis, that omnibuses and horse-cars 
were introduced nearly ten years after this time. The City Railway Company was 
chartered Feb. 14, 1859. Pardon the remark, that whatever honor attaches to 
driving the first spike belongs to your speaker. It was done on State, corner 
of Randolph. The road reached Twelfth street on the 25th of April, 1859, only 
seventeen years ago. Now the whole city is gridironed with them, and they are 
essential to its business life.

I should like to give you the history of the Rock Island, the Alton & St. 
Louis, the Burlington & Quincy, the Pittsburgh & Fort Wayne, and other roads, 
but time and space forbid. For several years succeeding 1854, the leading men 
of Chicago had to endure a great deal of eating and drinking, as our railways 
were opened to cities in all directions; and for this ser-

--------------------
And, when he found it defective, he reconstructed it, and it became a new law. 
And this old law of Mr. Wright's, made over as the Indian gun was, is the 
system now. True, he soon got powerful helpers in Chicago, among whom I 
remember as the earliest, William Jones, J. Y. Scammon, Dr. Foster, W. H. 
Brown, and Flavel Mosely—succeeded by such others as the Hon. Mark Skinner, 
John Wentworth, and a good many more, including William H. King, Esq.

"Another of Mr. Wright's public movements was that of the 10-per-cent.-loan 
law. The Legislature, moved by the southern Granger interest, had passed a law 
making a higher interest than 6 per cent, usurious. Mr. W. knew, that a repeal 
of that law was a hopeless undertaking. But it prevented all obtaining of 
money for use—operating especially hard against the interests of Chicago and 
the northern end of the State, where recovery from the financial disasters of 
1836-7 had set in with a good deal of strength. He therefore drew up an 
amendment to the 6-per-cent. law, allowing an interest of 10 per cent. "on 
money loaned." As usual, his circulars flew like the leaves of autumn; and, 
contrary to the prediction of many, the amendment passed the Legislature. The 
relief was instantaneous and great.

Chicago — old Chicago — knows Mr. Wright's peculiarities well enough. He saw 
further into a subject, in the beginning, than most men. But once in it, he 
seemed to love his ability to handle it, and often his interest in it; and the 
outcome sometimes threw undeserved obloquy on the whole undertaking. Had he 
been able to carry things through as he begun them, he had probably been a 
millionaire, and alive to-day."

Mr. Wight does not state, what most of our older citizens know, that, when Mr. 
Wright "relinquished the helm" of the Prairie Farmer, "a, year and a half" 
after it started, he committed it to Mr. Wight, as its editor. The sterling 
integrity, untiring zeal, sharp, strong common sense, and trenchant pen of Mr. 
Wight made the Prairie Farmer for many years one of the very best agricultural 
papers ever published in this country. Mr. Wright was too completely absorbed 
in the other important enterprises of which Mr. Wight speaks, to give much 
attention to his paper, though retaining the proprietorship of it. But to his 
enterprise in starting it, and to that of Mr. Wight in conducting it, Chicago 
and the Northwest owe a far greater debt of gratitude than they will ever be 
able to repay, or even appreciate. Those, were forming epochs in our history, 
and much of our wonderful progress and prosperity are the direct result of 
their labors.
--------------------

vice, as for all  others, they showed a capacity and willingness, as well as a 
modesty, which has made them distinguished all over the country. On the 10th 
of May, 1869, the Central and Union Pacific Railways joined rails at 
Promontory Point, thus completing the grand railway system across the 
continent. And here I may be permitted the incidental remark that we who live 
with them, and enjoy the first fruits of their enterprise, do not sufficiently 
honor the men who bridge our great rivers and bind every section of the Union 
together in bands of iron and steel, never to be broken, such men as Wm. B. 
Ogden, John B. Turner, R. B. Mason, Thomas C. Durant, Leland Stanford, and 
scores of others that might be named. History shows that it was not only the 
men who bore the victorious eagles of old Rome through distant nations, but 
who built roads to connect, them with the Eternal City, that received the 
highest honors. Thus it was that great national thoroughfares were built 
thousands of miles long, from the North to the Black Sea, and as in that case 
all roads pointed towards Rome, so at least nine-tenths of all the roads in 
all this broad land point to Chicago. Do you know that the title even now worn 
by the Pope of Rome has come down to him from those old road-builders? Pontif 
ex Maximus simply means the greatest bridge-builder, the proudest, and thus 
far the most enduring title ever worn by earthly monarch. Let our city honor 
the men for making Chicago commercially in this centennial year what Imperial 
Rome was politically in past ages. While we give all honor to these men, let 
not the name of John S. Wright be forgotton, who, addressing himself to even 
the greater work, in 1849, combined and gave direction to the political and 
moral forces that enabled them to complete the grandest system of improvements 
ever made in the history of the world.

You will expect me to say something of the press of the city. In 1848 the 
Journal had rooms in what was then the Saloon Buildings, on the southeast 
corner of Clark and Lake streets. The Gem of the Prairie, and The Tribune as 
its daily, maintained a precarious existence in an old wooden shanty on the 
northwest corner of Lake and Clark streets. Messrs. Wheeler, Stewart and 
Scripps were the editors. It was burned out, and then located at No. 171 1/2 
Lake street. My friend the Hon. John Wentworth published the democrat in very 
aristocratic quarters at Jackson Hall, on LaSalle street, just south of Lake. 
He had the only Hoe power-press in the city. In the fall of 1849, finding I 
preferred my old occupation of using books rather than of selling them, I 
disposed of my interest in the book-store to my partners. It was the original 
of the great house of Jansen, McClurg and Co. The leading member of the firm 
now—my brother-in-law—I left in the store a mere boy, whose duties were to 
sweep out, carry packages, and generally to do a boy's business. I mention 
this as an example for the boys who hear me to follow.

I then formed a partnership with J. Ambrose Wight, then editor of the Prairie 
Farmer, — a most valuable paper, owned by John S. Wright,—and we bought out 
the Herald of the Prairies, a religious paper, the organ alike of the 
Presbyterians and Congregationalists of the Northwest. The latter half of the 
concern survives in the Advance. It was then published on Wells street, on the 
corner of the alley between Lake and Randolph streets. We soon moved to 171 
Lake street, next door to The Tribune, and in the rear building, on an old 
Adams press, the first power press ever brought to the city, we printed our 
own paper, and also The Tribune, for Messrs. Stewart, Wheeler & Scripps. The 
press was driven by Emery's horse-power, on which traveled, hour by hour, an 
old black Canadian pony. So far as my interest in the splendid machinery of 
The Tribune is concerned, that old blind pony ground out its beginnings, 
tramping on the revolving platform of Emery's horse-power.

By the autumn of 1851 Mr. Wight, a man who, as editor of the Prairie Farmer, 
did very much towards laying the foundations of the rapid progress and the 
great prosperity of the West, and now pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Bay 
City, Mich., and myself, found out by sad experience that the Prairie Herald, 
as we then called it, could not be made to support two families, for we had 
scarcely paid current expenses. I therefore sold out to Mr. Wight, taking in 
payment his homestead lots on Harrison street. That winter rather than have 
nothing to do I remained in his office with him, working for the large sum of 
$1 per day. After a vacation of a few months the late John L. Scripps and 
myself formed a partnership and issued the first number of the Democratic 
Press on the 16th of September, 1852. We started on a borrowed capital of 
$6,000, which all disappeared from sight in about six weeks. We put in all our 
services and profits, and about all the money we could borrow, never drawing a 
cent from the firm till after the first of January, 1855. This required nerve 
and the using up of funds to a very considerable amount, which we had obtained 
from the sale of real estate; but we thought we could see future profit in the 
business and we worked on, never heeding discouragements for a moment.
 
The hard times of 1857-'58, brought the Democratic Press and The Tribune 
together, and Dr. Ray, J. Medill, John L. Scripps, and myself, became equal 
partners, with Mr. Cowles as business manager. Dr. Ray and Mr. Scripps have 
ceased from their labors, but not till they had done most effective and, 
valuable work in the development and progress of Chicago. Mr. Scripps was 
Postmaster during Mr. Lincoln's first Administration. Both he and Dr. Ray were 
able and very cultivated gentlemen, and the memory of them should have a high 
place in the esteem and gratitude of their fellow citizens. Mr. Medill, Mr. 
Cowles, and myself, still stand by the old Tribune, with what efficiency and 
success the reading public can best judge.

I should like to have an hour to pay a passing tribute to the men who gave 
character to Chicago in 1848, and the years that followed. To Thomas Richmond 
still with us; to John P. Chapin, Charles Walker and Captain Bristol, heavy 
dealers on Water street; to Judge Giles Spring, Judge George Manierre, S. 
Lisle Smith, William H. Brown, George W. Meeker, Daniel Mcllroy, James H. 
Collins, and others of the Bench and Bar; to Drs. Maxwell, Egan and Brainard; 
to Editors Dick Wilson, T. A. Stewart, John E. Wheeler, and James F. 
Ballantyne, as well as to Ray and Scripps; to the Rev. Dr. Tucker, Parson 
Barlow, and perhaps several others of the clergy. I should like to speak of 
Mayors F. C. Sherman, James Curtiss, J. H. Woodworth, and Thomas Dyer, all of 
whom have been relieved of all earthly cares. Many of our oldest citizens 
still linger among us. Of these, Col. Gurdon S. Hubbard first came to Chicago 
in 1818—the year Illinois became a State. Still hale and happy, may he long 
bless Chicago with his presence. Of our ex-Mayors previous to 1860, William B. 
Ogden, the first, Buckner S. Morris, B. W. Raymond, Walter S. Gurnee, Charles 
M. Gray, Isaac L. Milliken, Levi D. Boone, John Wentworth, and John C. Haines, 
are still living. Of the clergy we have still the Rev. Dr. R. W. 
Patterson, "whose praise," like one of old, "is in all the churches." Of our 
leading citizens we have still a host, almost too numerous to mention. The  
names of Jerome Beecher, Gen. Webster, Timothy and Walter Wright, S. B. Cobb, 
Orrington Lunt, Philo Carpenter, Frederick and Nelson Tuttle, Peter L. Yoe, C. 
N.   Holden, Charles L. and John Wilson, E. H. Haddock, E. D. Taylor, Judge J. 
D. Caton, J. Y. Scammon, Grant Goodrich, E. B. and Mancel Talcott, Mahlon D. 
Ogden, E. H. Sheldon, Mat. Laflin, James H. Reese, C. H. McCormick and 
brothers, P. W. Gates, A. Pierce, T. B. Carter, Gen. S. L. Brown, Peter Page, 
William Locke, Buckner S. Morris, Capt. Bates, and many others, will at once 
recur to our older citizens.

Some of these gentlemen were not quite so full of purse when they came here as 
now. Standing in the parlor of the Merchants' Savings, Loan and Trust Company, 
five or six years ago, talking with the President, Sol. A. Smith, E. H. 
Haddock, Dr. Foster, and perhaps two or three others, in came Mr. Cobb, 
smiling and rubbing his hands in the greatest glee. "Well, what makes you so 
happy?" said one. "O," said Cobb, "this is the 1st day of June, the 
anniversary of my arrival in Chicago in 1833." "Yes," said Haddock, "the first 
time I saw you, Cobb, you were bossing a lot of Hoosiers weatherboarding a 
shanty-tavern for Jim Kinzie." "Well," Cobb retorted, in the best of humor, 
you needn't put on any airs, for the first time I saw you, you were shingling 
an out-house." 

Jokes and early reminiscences were then in order. It transpired that our solid 
President of the South Side Horse Railway left Montpelier, Vt., with $40 in 
his pocket, but by some mishap when he reached Buffalo he had only $9 left. 
This was exactly the fare on the schooner to Chicago, but the Captain told him 
he might buy some provisions, and if he would make no trouble and sleep on 
deck the boy could come to Chicago for what was left. Cobb got some sheeting, 
which some lady fellow-passengers sewed up for him, and he filled it with 
shavings, and this made his bed on deck. He got a ham, had it boiled, bought 
some bread, and, thus equipped and provisioned, he set sail for Chicago. There 
was then no entrance to the Chicago River, and the vessel anchored outside, a 
long way out, and the cabin passengers went ashore with the Captain in a 
Mackinaw boat. A storm springing up, the mate lay off for three days between 
Michigan City and Waukegan. When the vessel returned, a cabin passenger, who 
had returned for baggage, was surprised to find Cobb still aboard. Cobb told 
him the Captain had gone back on him, and would not let him go ashore without 
the other $3, and what to do he did not know. The gentleman lent him the $3, 
and Cobb gladly came ashore. Though he knew nothing of the carpenter's trade, 
he accepted a situation to boss some Hoosiers, who were at work on Mr. 
Kinzie's excuse for a hotel, at $2.75 per day, and soon paid his friend. From 
that time to this he has seldom borrowed any money. Mr. Haddock also came to 
Chicago, I think, as a small grocer, and now these   gentlemen are numbered 
among our millionaires. Young men, the means by which they have achieved 
success are exceedingly simple. They have sternly avoided all mere 
speculation; they have attended closely to legitimate business and invested 
any accumulating surplus in real estate. Go ye and do likewise, and your 
success will be equally sure.

Having seen Chicago in 1848 with no railways, no pavements, no sewers, 
scarcely an apology for water-works—a mere city of shanties, built on the 
black prairie, soil-the temptation to imagine for her a magnificent future is 
almost irresistible.

I beg leave with characteristic Chicago modesty to refer to a prophecy which I 
ventured to make in 1854. I had just written and published the first 
exhaustive account of our railway system, followed by a history—the first also—
of the city. In the closing paragraph I had the following sentences: The city 
had then not quite completed the seventeenth year of its existence, and I ask:

"What will the next seventeen years accomplish? We are now (1854) in direct 
railroad connection with all the Atlantic cities from Portland to Baltimore. 
Five, at most eight, years will extend the circle to New Orleans. By that time 
also we shall shake hands with the rich copper and iron mines of Lake 
Superior, both by canal and railroad, and long ere another seventeen years 
have passed away we shall have a great national railroad from Chicago to 
Puget's Sound, with a branch to San Francisco."

By the time the building of the road was fairly undertaken, San Francisco had 
grown so largely in wealth and population that the main line was forced to 
that city. But in June, 1869, two years before the thirty-four years in the 
life of the city had passed away, I rode from Chicago to Sacramento with my 
good friend George M. Pullman in one of his splendid palace cars, with a 
dining car attached, and no one could possibly fare better than we did on the 
entire trip. Another line was open from Sacramento to Vallejo nearly right 
across the bay from the City of the Golden Gate, so that practically the 
prophecy was literally fulfilled. Perhaps it was only a fortunate guess, and 
as I was educated in New England, you will permit me to guess again, and to 
bound the city for you on the nation's second Centennial, viz., on the 4th of 
July, 1976. I think the north line will probably begin on the lake shore half 
way between Evanston and Winnetka, and run due west to a point at least a mile 
west of Aux Plaines River; thence due south to an east and a west line that 
will include Blue Island, and thence southeast from Blue Island to the Indiana 
State line, and thence on that line to Lake Michigan. With my eye upon the 
vast country tributary to the city, I estimate that Chicago will then contain 
at least 3,000,000 of people, and I would sooner say 4,000,000 than any less 
than 3,000,000. I base my opinions on the fact that the gastronomic argument 
controls mankind. Men will go and live where they can get the most and the 
best food for the least labor. In this respect what city in the world can 
compete with Chicago? And I also assume that the nation for the next, hundred 
years will remain one united, free and happy people.

But, gentlemen, in order to realize the magnificent destiny which Providence 
seems to have marked out for our city, permit me to say, in conclusion, that 
the moral and religious welfare of the city must be carefully guarded and 
promoted. Philo Carpenter (still among us) and Capt. Johnson established the 
first Sunday-school here July 30, 1832, and the Rev. Jeremiah Porter (also 
still living) organized and became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church 
(now Dr. Mitchell's) on the 26th of June, 1833. Brave old Jesse Walker, the 
pioneer Methodist, also preached sound doctrine in the earliest years of the 
Town of Chicago. All other denominations were also on the ground early, and 
through all her former history our people seemed as active and earnest in 
religious efforts as they were enterprising and successful in mercantile and 
other business. Let all our churches address themselves earnestly, faithfully, 
to the work of moralizing, if you please converting, the people, working as 
their Divine Master would have them work; let respectable men, honest men, and 
especially religious men, go to the polls, and banish from places of trust and 
power those who are stealing their substance and corrupting, aye even 
poisoning, the very life blood of the city; let us all, my friends, do our 
whole duty as citizens and as men, ever acting upon the Divine maxims 
that "Righteousness exalteth a nation," that "Godliness is profitable for all 
things," and with God's blessing Chicago, as in the past so in the future, 
shall far outstrip in wealth, population and power all the anticipations of 
her most enthusiastic and sanguine citizens.
 


MAYORS OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO.

City Incorporated March, 1837.
 
1837	William B. Ogden.
1838	Buckner S. Morris.
1839	Benj. W. Raymond.
1840	Alexander Loyd.
1841	Francis C. Sherman.
1842	Benj. W. Raymonds.
1843	Augustus Garrett.
1844	Alanson S. Sherman.
1845	Augustus Garrett.
1846	John P. Chapin.
1847	James Curtiss.
1848	Jas. H. Woodworth.
1849	Jas. H. Woodworth.
1850	James Curtiss.
1851	Walter S. Gurnee.
1852	Walter S. Gurnee.
1853	Charles M. Gray.
1854	Isaac L. Milliken.
1855	Levi D. Boone.
1856	Thomas Dyer.
1857	John Wentworth.
1858	John C. Haines.
1859	John C. Haines.
1860	John Wentworth.
1861	Julian S. Rumsey.
1862	Francis C. Sherman.
1864	Francis C. Sherman.
1865	John B. Rice. 
1867 	John B. Rice. 
1869 	Roswell B. Mason. 
1871 	Joseph Medill.
1873 	Harvev D. Colvin. 
1876 	Harvey D. Colvin.
 

POPULATION OF CHICAGO.
 
1835	3,265
1836	3,820
1837	4,179
1838	4,000
1839	4,200
1840	4,479
1841	5,752
1842	6,248
1843	7,580
1844	8,000
1845	12,088
1846	14,169
1847	16,859
1848	20,023
1849	23,047
1850	28,269
1851	34,437
1852	38,733
1853	60,652
1854	65,872
1855	80,028
1856	84,113
1857	93,000
1858	90,000
1859	95,000
1860	112,172
1861	120,000
1862	138,835
1863	160,000
1864	169,353
1865	178,900
1866	200,418
1867	220,000
1868	252,054
1869	273,043
1870	298,977
1872	364,377
1874	395,408
1876 (est) 450,000
 
1885, (estimated by Jno. S. Wright), 1,000,000. 
1911, (estimated by J. N. Balestier), 2,000,000. 
1976, (estimated by Wm. Bross), 3 to 4,000,000.


CONCLUSION.

The history of Chicago from 1850 to 1876 remains to be written. I have most of 
the materials, but fear I shall not have the time and the patience to put them 
together. Somebody should do it, for such a work would show a more astonishing 
progress than has ever been realized by any other city in the history of the 
world. I respectfully commit this little volume to my fellow-citizens as my 
contribution to the facts, that should be stored away in our libraries in this 
Centennial year, with the hope that they may in some way interest and perhaps 
benefit those who are to come after us.

Additional Comments:
HISTORY OF CHICAGO.
HISTORICAL AND COMMERCIAL STATISTICS, SKETCHES, Facts and Figures,
REPUBLISHED FROM THE "DAILY DEMOCRATIC PRESS."
 
What I Remember of Early Chicago; 
A LECTURE, DELIVERED IN McCORMICK'S HALL, JANUARY 23, 1876,
(Tribune, January 24th,)
By WILLIAM BROSS, Ex-Lieut. Governor of Illinois.	
CHICAGO: JANSEN, MCCLURG & Co., BOOKSELLERS, PUBLISHERS, ETC.
1876

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