The Upward Movement in Chicago

THE opportunity to attempt a marshaling and a review of some of the elements prominent in the composition of a large, new, and conspicuous community is not one to be accepted in a spirit of easy self-confidence ; and when these elements are at once comprehensive in range, discordant in character, and so overcharged with peculiarities as to be rendered susceptible to a rather wide variety of interpretation, then the commentator can only approach them in a certain spirit of self-distrust.

The civic shortcomings of Chicago are so widely notorious abroad and so deeply deplored at home that there is little need to linger upon them, even for the purpose of throwing into relief the worthier and more attractive features of the local life. The date of the Fair was the period at once of the city’s greatest glory and of her deepest abasement. But at the very moment when the somewhat naïf and officious strictures of foreign visitors seemed to present Chicago as the Cloaca Maxima of modern civilization, the best people of the town found themselves, for the first time, associated in a worthy effort under the unifying and vivifying impetus of a noble ideal. The Fair was a kind of post-graduate course for the men at the head of Chicago’s commercial and mercantile interests ; it was the city’s intellectual and social annexation to the world at large. The sense of shame and of peril aroused by the comments of outside censors helped to lead at once to a practical associated effort for betterment, and scarcely had the Columbian Exposition drawn to a close when many of the names that had figured so long and familiarly in its directorate began to appear with equal prominence in the councils of the Civic Federation.

Life in Chicago continues to be — too largely, too markedly — a struggle for the bare decencies. Justly speaking, such may he, perhaps must be, the case with every young city ; but never, surely, has the struggle been conducted upon so large and striking a scale, for never before have youth and increase gone so notably together. We are obliged to fight — determinedly, unremittingly — for those desirable, those indispensable things that older, more fortunate, more practiced communities possess and enjoy as a matter of course. As a community, we are at school ; we are trying to solve for ourselves the problem of living together. All the best and most strenuous endeavors of Chicago, whether practical or æsthetic, whether directed toward individual improvement or toward an increase in the associated well-being, may be broadly bracketed as educational. Everything to be said about the higher and more hopeful life of the place must be said with the learner’s bench distinctly in view. The two gratifying phases of the situation are to be found in an increased capacity for effective organization, and in an intense desire for knowledge, for personal improvement, for the mastery of that which elsewhere has already been mastered and passed by. This rush of momentum to make up lost time and to get over hitherto untraversed ground justifies the surmise that the goal may be not only reached, but overreached, and that there may be a propulsion of the new and vigorous Western type past the plane of mere acquired culture, on toward the farther and higher plane of actual creative achievement.

It would be unadvisable to enter upon an extended presentation of Chicago’s efforts toward the amenities and adornments of life without first having safeguarded her reputation for common sense by giving a few notes illustrative of her struggle to secure some of the simple decencies of life. This struggle may best be indicated by a résumé of the recent activities of two of her representative reform organizations, the Civic Federation and the Woman’s Club.

The Civic Federation of Chicago — conspicuously the most important and promising of existing agencies for the improvement of local conditions, and the prototype (past or future) of numerous organizations in smaller towns throughout the West — took shape during the closing months of 1893. Its object, formally stated, is “ to gather together in a body, for mutual counsel, support, and combined action, all of the forces for good, public or private, which are at work in Chicago.”It is nonpartisan, non-political, non-sectarian. It consists of a central council and of subordinate ward and precinct councils, and its field throughout the city is practically coincident with that occupied by the recognized political parties. Its work is in the hands of a number of standing committees, and a brief indication of its recent labors may be readily anticipated by any one who will recall for a moment the familiar evils common to all American cities. Its health committee has concerned itself with the foulnesses of bake-shops and with the chemical analysis of food products; its committee on morals has organized and prosecuted a vigorous warfare upon the gambling interest, causing the closing of hundreds of gamblers’ resorts and " bucket shops,” and of all the race-tracks ; its committee on the work of street-cleaning has brought about a better service at lower figures, — indeed, it has shown, by a practical demonstration of its own, extending over a period of six months, that it is within the range of physical possibility to keep the streets of the central down-town district reasonably clean ; its department of philanthropy has organized a bureau of associated charities, whose object is the systematization and consolidation of philanthropic work ; its committee on political action has dealt through its own secret service department with fraudulent naturalization, colonization, and registration, has inspected the qualifications of election judges and clerks, and has endeavored to improve the character of the Cook County grand juries; and proper departments have concerned themselves with the irregularities of garbage contractors, with the iniquitous dealing in franchises on the part of aldermen, with endeavors to apply the principle of arbitration to the acuter crises in the labor world, and with a thoroughgoing investigation of the city pay-rolls that resulted in sending numerous offenders to the penitentiary.

But the most signal service rendered by the Federation is that which was accomplished two years ago by about half a dozen of its members (in conjunction with an equally small representation from the Civil Service Reform League) at Springfield: the passage of a bill by the legislature, and its adoption at the next election by the city of Chicago, whereby the entire civil service of the city (and of the county as well) was placed solidly upon the merit system, which is in full operation today. This achievement, by reason of its suddenness and thoroughness, may well rank among the miracles of modern legislation, and the adoption of the bill by a majority of fifty thousand was accepted all over the country as one of the most hopeful signs of the times.

The Citizens’ Association, an older though less conspicuous organization, has been working for some years on similar lines. The Municipal Voters’ League, a younger body, has made strong efforts to improve the character of the city council by a rigid scrutiny of aldermanic candidates.

Side by side with the Civic Federation stands the Chicago Woman’s Club. This notable force in the better life of the city was organized in 1876 with a view to “ mutual sympathy and counsel, and united effort toward the higher civilization of humanity.” For several years the club was content to occupy itself with domestic matters, and with the literary and artistic interests common to women’s clubs all over the country. Later on it determined to make itself felt in practical work, and its most valuable services have been effected through its recently organized committees on philanthropy and reform. Among its other activities, this club has secured women physicians for the Cook County Insane Asylum and for the State Hospital at Kankakee; has established a free kindergarten, a women’s physiological institute, and a protective agency for women and children; and on one occasion it sent a delegation to Washington to urge upon the President the reinstatement of women employees in the internal revenue offices. Upon occasion the club has entertained the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and its organization has served as a model for numerous other clubs throughout the West and Northwest.

As already stated, almost everything to be said about the upward movement in Chicago may be directly arrayed under the one general head of “ education.” There is to be shown first, then, what Chicago is doing for her own children and for those who come to her from outside ; and afterward there is to be indicated the active propaganda which she is conducting with a gallant spirit throughout her tributary territory.

It is difficult, I admit, to put forward as an educational centre a city which habitually sends the best of its youth, boys and girls alike, far away from home for instruction ; it is here, indeed, that the colleges and seminaries of Massachusetts and Connecticut become absolutely obtrusive. Nothing better can be done, in such a case, than to fall back upon the mass and weight of mere numbers : a few figures will serve to show the support accorded to half a dozen of Chicago’s own representative educational institutions. The Chicago Conservatory (musical and dramatic) has some six hundred pupils ; the Lewis Institute (technological) has instructed during its first year, just ended, close upon seven hundred ; the Armour Institute (also technological) had last year about twelve hundred; the Chicago Athenæum (day and night school) instructs about fourteen hundred ; the Art Institute, seventeen hundred; the University of Chicago had last year a total enrollment in excess of twenty-four hundred; while that of the Northwestern University, in a northern suburb, with important departments in the city itself, rose as high as twenty-eight hundred. Never has a young city shown itself more liberal in founding and developing public institutions for instruction ; this is one of the most favorable turns taken by the new democracy of the West.

Such figures as those cited imply scale ; such scale implies the high exercise of practical ability ; and practical ability, in the West, implies success — and appreciation. In this New World, the respect gained by the educator, the clergyman, the professional man in general, comes almost completely, not from his mere education, his mere book knowledge, his mere practice of an acquired art, but from his virtù (as the Italians of the Renaissance expressed it), from his masterful dealing with things, circumstances, and his fellow men. The hearty and ungrudging respect of the community goes to the college president — who interests the millionaire intent upon endowment; to the preacher — who fills the house and removes the mortgage ; to the legal practitioner — who draws from the thick air of trusts and syndicates something more than his mere formal professional fee ; and at the epoch of the Fair it seemed pleasantly possible for the mere artist (or at least the architect) to gain the good-natured tolerance of a practical community — provided he operated upon a sufficiently extensive scale, and showed a large and manlike adequacy in dealing with practical affairs.

It will be impossible to give due recognition to the merits of each of the half dozen institutions lately cited, but the brilliant and felicitous career of the new University of Chicago demands a few lines. No institution of learning in the country has been more signally favored by donations, endowments, and bequests. The extent of the endowments, original and supplementary, made by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, is widely known; and the recent magnificent gift of an entire group of buildings, by the Hull estate, for biological purposes, but follows (though on a larger scale) the example already set by many wealthy and well-disposed citizens. The university seems an immense magnet, which draws to itself not only money and lands, but subordinate educational institutions as well : again and again we hear that this school, that academy, or such a seminary, in the city itself, or in the suburbs, or outside of city and county altogether, has yielded to the process of absorption or affiliation, — so many indications that the name of the university for an assured permanence and a businesslike practicality is spreading every day.

The university is in session all the year round. The faculty number close upon one hundred and seventy-five. One third of the students come from Chicago and vicinity ; another third, from the Middle West; and the remaining third includes a significant proportion from the East and even from Europe. The last summer quarter attracted thirteen hundred students, of whom one third were women. Nearly six hundred women, furthermore, attended the 1897 sessions of the Chicago Normal Summer School; they came from all parts of the country, from Canada, and from Mexico.

A notable feature of the work of the university is to be found in its extension division. This department, active last year through a range of eight States, carries on its work by three methods of study, — by lecture, by class, and by correspondence. The class study section, operative in the university itself or anywhere in the city and suburbs upon the request of six persons, had last year an attendance of eighteen hundred students. The extension division coöperates with the Chicago Board of Education, gives evening instruction at several convenient points in the down-town business district, and arranges for lectures at a number of churches, high schools, and libraries.

The lecture idea, indeed, is as firmly rooted in the Chicago of to-day as it was in the Boston of a generation ago. Free courses of lectures are given annually in the Field Columbian Museum (the former Art Building at Jackson Park) ; at the Academy of Sciences (the Laflin Memorial), in Lincoln Park ; in the assembly hall of the Art Institute, on the Lake Front; and a fourth series has lately been inaugurated in connection with the new Haskell Oriental Museum of the University of Chicago. Lectures are also given at the Kindergarten College, which for nine or ten years past has been accustomed to hold an annual “ literary school.” The name of the organization affords little clue to the class of subjects to which the school gives its attention. These subjects are, in fact, such standard ones as Homer, Dante, Goethe, and Shakespeare ; and the school is considered by visiting lecturers to be almost unique in its alert sympathy and in its fidelity to the highest standards of culture. The same organization also arranges for an Annual Convocation of Mothers, which aims to promote the physical, mental, and moral well-being of children. The autumn convocation of 1897 will devote two or three of its sessions to symbolism in art and literature, and in the kindergarten.

The extension division of the university may be paralleled, in a way, by the college extension classes of Hull House. This admirable institution has been so long and so conspicuously the typical “ settlement ” of the whole country that any characterization of it would be quite unnecessary. Stress will be laid only upon its educational aspects. Regular instruction is provided in chemistry. mathematics, and electrical science ; in music, drawing, and painting ; in embroidery and cooking ; in Latin and the modern languages ; and the literary courses include Emerson, Browning, George Eliot, and — once more — Shakespeare and Dante. The Hull House Bulletin gives multifarious details regarding lectures, recitals, readings, conferences, and receptions, and it devotes ample space to the interests and doings of some forty clubs that assemble under the one roof beneath which most of them have been generated. Hull House, in brief, is one of the typical local agencies for bridging over the wide gulf between the fortunate and the less fortunate, the native and the alien. Chicago has felt in its full force the Hood of foreign immigration. How soon the vast body of newcomers may consciously achieve a national allegiance is a question ; their civic allegiance, thanks to the compelling personality of the city itself, is instant and complete. They may not all make good Americans just yet, but they certainly do make loyal Chicagoans, — the next best thing, perhaps.

The Chicago Commons, on lines not dissimilar to those of Hull House, is active in another neighborhood of like nature and necessities. Its organ, The Commons, presents a comprehensive picture of “ settlement ” interests throughout the country.

The four great libraries of the city — chief among its educational factors — have frequently been celebrated, separately and together. The oldest, largest, and most generally serviceable is the Public Library itself, which was created by the city in 1872, shortly after the great fire, and which has been accommodated for some years on the upper floor of the City Hall. This collection, now comprising some 230,000 volumes, which are circulated through the city by means of more than thirty delivery-stations, is upon the point of removal to more suitable quarters, — its own building (the corner-stone of which was laid during the Fair) on the Lake Front. All the interior arrangements of this new structure were planned by practical librarians; to its architects, as architects, it owes little more than its envelope of brick and stone. It is not to be claimed that this peculiar piece of coöperation has produced an impeccable architectural organism, but the practical requirements of a great library are believed to have been met more successfully than ever before. The stack system (with an ultimate capacity of 2,000,000 volumes) has been adopted; two thirds of all the demands for books can be met from a stack within ten feet of the delivery-counter. In its readingroom, reference - room, delivery - room, and grand staircase, the building affords large opportunities for decoration. No effort has been made, however, to enlist the individual talents of sculptors and painters ; the decorations will be done by the impersonal coöperation inherent in the contract plan, and dependence will be placed chiefly on marbles and mosaics, the use of which promises to be most lavish and brilliant. The annual income of the library is about $250,000. Tickets are held by 60,000 book-borrowers, and the circulation is the largest in the country.

The Newberry Library is on the North Side, and is wholly for reference purposes. Half of the building ultimately looked for is already constructed, of granite, in a graceful Romanesque style, and there is abundant room for the present collection of 140,000 volumes. The Newberry is especially strong in music, medicine, Americana, and hymnology, and has recently made the purchase of 1200 works on China.

The third of the large libraries is that of the University of Chicago, which occupies temporarily a rough brick buildingon the university campus, — the single interruption to the general reign of graystone scholastic Gothic. This collection was purchased en bloc from a bookseller in Berlin, with funds contributed on a sudden philanthropic impulse by several gentlemen of wealth and public spirit. It is understood to include some 290,000 books and pamphlets, and to abound in duplicates, students’ theses, and German commentaries on the Latin authors.

The last of the four libraries, the Crerar, is devoted to science, — science in a wide and general sense. This collection, numbering at present 25,000 volumes, occupies temporary quarters in a mercantile building only a few steps distant from the new Public Library itself, until a site shall have been determined upon for a permanent structure. It is meant, however, that books shall come before building; and the librarian, Mr. Clement W. Andrews, late of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has recently been engaged in extensive purchases abroad. The directors of the Crerar rank among the best and most representative citizens of Chicago, the funds at their disposal run up into the millions, and the institution is expected to take at once a high position among the local aids to culture.

Education in music proceeds apace with education in other fields. Here the city’s chief dependence is upon the Chicago Orchestra, — eighty-five men, Theodore Thomas conductor, — which last spring rounded out prosperously its sixth season. Mr.Thomas’s efforts (than which nothing could be more persistently and laboriously educational) are supported by a large and patient body of guarantors, and by the resignation, if not delight, of large and earnest audiences, — large, in part, no doubt, because of the practical withdrawal of the better element from the theatres. The orchestra’s past season has consisted of twenty-two concerts and the same number of rehearsals, and the annual deficit has been smaller than ever before. The delusive character of Mr. Thomas’s ‘popular ” nights and “request ” programmes has long been recognized, but the public always rallies to the frank exposition of Beethoven and of Wagner, while the announcement of a soloist of reputation, vocal or instrumental, will always fill the great hall of the Auditorium to overflowing. The chief feature of the past two seasons has been Brahms, and the public — now upon the verge of a weak surrender — are wondering what, if anything, can lie beyond.

The cause of vocal music in Chicago is most conspicuously represented by the Apollo Club, which is just entering upon its twenty-sixth season. This organization, as the name would indicate, began as a Münnerchor; but for some years past its four hundred voices have been equally divided between the sexes. It gives three or four concerts during the winter and spring, chiefly in the way of oratorio and cantata. Its Christmas performance of the Messiah has become one of the landmarks of the local musical season.

Both the orchestra and the Apollo Club make use of the Auditorium, and within the same building is the representative musical school of the West, the Chicago Conservatory. In scope, size, and character it may suggest the New England Conservatory of Boston. Many of the instructors have more than a local reputation; the course of its year is marked by a great number of concerts, recitals, and dramatic matinées; and pupils are drawn toward it from all parts of the West. The Chicago Musical College enjoys an equal reputation and prominence.

The distinctively social side of Chicago’s musical life is represented by the Amateur Musical Club, an organization composed exclusively of ladies, who follow a rigorous ideal in both vocal and instrumental departments, and who rely almost entirely upon one another for their entertainment, though occasionally a distinguished soloist from outside may be heard. This club is approaching its three hundredth recital.

The activity in art is no less marked than that in music. The focus of all this endeavor is the Art Institute. The new building on the Lake Front — the third occupied by the growing institute within ten years — is well known from having been the scene of so many congresses during the year of the Fair. It was built on public ground by an arrangement between the institute and the city, with the title vested in the latter. The Art Institute is to retain possession as long as it shall fulfill the purposes of an art museum. Three days in the week admission is free, and the number of visitors is half a million annually. The number of annual members is about twenty-five hundred.

The collections of the Art Institute can hardly be called extensive, neither is the building itself completed ; but they are valuable out of proportion to their size, and they represent, however sketchily, most of the departments of interest that receive recognition in institutions of the sort. The picture-gallery is reinforced by the permanent exposition of several loan collections ; there is a strong representation of the Dutch and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century and an adequate display of the modern French painters most in favor with American purchasers. There are extensive collections of casts from the antique and the Renaissance ; there is a room of reproductions of Pompeian bronzes, a collection of eighteen thousand of the Braun photographs, an historical collection of casts of French works of sculpture and architecture, the gift of the French government, and considerable in the way of Egyptian antiquities, and of embroideries and textiles.

The programme of the Art Institute comprises a series of exhibitions, lectures, concerts, and receptions running through the greater part of the year. There is a long range of apartments suited to the uses of transient displays, — works of Eastern or of foreign painters, works of local painters, sculptors, and architects ; and the annual exhibitions include those given by the pupils of the institute itself, as well as those of the work of the art classes in the public schools.

Activity in art circles is further promoted by the women’s clubs, which occasionally make an offer of prizes or arrange a reception for the artists themselves. Through such agencies more than one real but unsuspected talent has been brought to light. More grateful opportunities are sometimes presented when the owners of the great office buildings are found disposed to decorate their properties with works of art. In this way Mr. Lorado Taft has been enabled to make a set of bronze panels illustrative of the travels of Columbus, and Mr. Hermon A. MacNeil another illustrative of those of Père Marquette. Mr. Johannes Gelert has contributed reliefs and medallions for the decoration of more than one public auditorium ; and to Mr. Edward Kemeys are due the lions placed in front of the Art Institute. The figurines of Miss Bessie Potter are unique in American art.

Reference might be made here to the peripatetic art-gallery connected with Hull House, — some fifty framed reproductions, such as the colored prints of the Arundel Society, and photographic renderings of the work of men like Millet and Bastien-Lepage. These pictures are loaned for a fortnight, like books from a library. The most popular subjects are those of a religious nature.

Public art in Chicago is represented by a number of statues and fountains ; most of these are placed in the parks. Some of them are admirable ; others of them are abominable. Some have been removed ; others might follow. The commissioners of Lincoln Park, the quarter most favored by donors, were considering, a year or two ago, the question of an art commission to sit upon such matters. As the public parks are the only portions of Chicago that possess any beauty or ever can possess any, the value of such a commission may readily be realized. It is to be hoped that Chicago’s parks may be kept beautiful, for Chicago’s streets can never become so. The associated architecture of the city becomes more hideous and more preposterous with every year, as we continue to straggle farther and farther from anything like the slightest artistic understanding. Nowhere is the naïf belief that a man may do as he likes with his own held more contentiously than in our astounding and repelling region of “sky-scrapers,” where the abuse of private initiative, the peculiar evil of the place and the time, has reached its most monumental development. All the vagaries of this movement, along with developments of a more creditable sort, will be found recorded year by year in the Inland Architect, which “ compares favorably,” as we are still fond of saying in the West, with the best of similar publications in the East.

The most striking manifestation of the Fair was an architectural one; but that any improvement in the external aspect of Chicago has been wrought in consequence, — this would be too much to claim. We hear, indeed, of advances in other directions, outside : from one quarter comes evidence, as educed by a competition for a new state capitol, of a return to a chastened classicism ; from another, of a better and more rational taste in the draughting of a municipal edifice ; from a third, that one of our local magnates has presented to his native New England town a public library building planned and decorated on the model of one of the most admired of the minor structures at Jackson Park. But Chicago itself is too large readily to be affected, and has been too closely devoted, through too many years, to ideals essentially false. Then, too, the average is certain to fall far short of any ideal of style, however just ; while the degree to which opportunity always lags behind practice, good or bad, constitutes one of the real crosses of the architectural profession. But, in brief, the damage has been done. Possessed of a single sheet of paper, we have set down our crude, hasty, mistaken sketch upon it, and we shall have the odds decidedly against us in any attempt to work over this sketch, made on the one surface at our disposal, into the tasteful and finished picture that we may be hoping finally to produce. There are those who consider that the manifest destiny of the city is to become the largest aggregation of human beings on the globe, and its ultimate metropolis ; such a metropolis should have an aspect in accord with its primacy. Now, Chicago has an unlimited field for expansion, and the unimpeded march of her streets in every direction (save one) is led by the county surveyor with the same unhesitating precision that marks the spread of the township idea through the newest territories of the Far West. But the breadth and lucidity and regularity of plan possible only to a city the bare mention of whose name suggests rather evocation than mere growth have suffered in the detailed carrying-out. Too much work of a public character has been devised with haste and incompetence, and executed with haste and dishonesty. Furthermore, for the first time in the rearing of a vast city, the high and the low have met together, the rich and the poor have built together: each with an astonishing freedom as to choice, taste, expenditure ; each with an extreme, even an undue liberty to indulge in whatever independences or idiosyncrasies might be suggested by greed, pride, carelessness, or the exigency of the passing moment, — democracy absolute manifested in brick, stone, timber. The sociological interest of such an exhibit is necessarily great; its artistic value is nil. One must make the regretful acknowledgment that the picturesque flagrancy which still marks the conduct of Chicago’s municipal affairs is amply figured in the associated effect of Chicago’s architecture, and that the extent of our failure in the art of living together is fully typified by our obvious failure in the art of building together. The general effect of the city, under the dual domination of Greed and of Slouch, must continue for many years to be that of a mere rough impromptu.

The social aspects of the town — the town taken by and large — will also continue for some years fairly to deserve the same characterization. The social range is wide enough to include the best as well as the worst, but its wealth is fully equaled by its disorder : a boundless heaving of human activities that is practically unregulated, in the main, by anything like tradition, authority, forms, and precedents. Society, in its technical sense, has assuredly come into existence, and is able to present a competent reproduction of the most esteemed social forms ; and there is as assuredly a yearly increase in the number of 11 good houses,” where one finds an easy command of the best elements and opportunities of life, a grateful survival, in their best form, of the real Western frankness, kind-heartedness, and informality, and a clever understanding of the use of wealth as an unobtrusive lubricant to the wheels of culture. Social intercourse remains reasonably unaffected, unartificial; social cruelty is very rare. The back door of the social edifice looks out upon the farm, its side porch gives on the country town ; and for another generation, at least, wholesome breezes from these quarters may be depended upon to remedy any sophistication of atmosphere consequent upon the ambitions and rivalries of a population lately and largely rustic, and now undergoing crystallization into urban forms. The city, speaking in a general way, possesses at once a high standard and a low average, and the safest and most favorable presentation of its social characteristics would be accomplished by the exhibition (here, as elsewhere) of its educational endeavors as carried on through the medium of a multiplicity of clubs. Everything that is done at all is done through these organizations, and when it has been said that their number is fully in correspondence with the broad and much-divided area of the city and the extent and variety of its population, further insistence upon the general prevalence of the club habit becomes unnecessary.

The most prominent and promising of these organizations are, of course, those conducted by women ; and among them the first mention is perhaps due to the Fortnightly, which was founded in 1873, with the object of intellectual and social culture.” The Fortnightly carries no dead-weight; all of its members — about one hundred and seventy-five — are pledged to the writing of essays, or to participation in the discussion of the themes with which the essays deal. The Fortnightly is occasionally addressed by distinguished strangers, men as well as women, indulges now and then in receptions and open meetings, and was duly prominent in a social way at the time of the literary congress held during the Columbian Exposition.

The WOman’s Club is bigger in body — it has between five and six hundred members — and more determined in disposition. Its civic services have already been touched upon, but some indication of its lighter labors should not be omitted. Within recent years its department of philosophy and science has been busy upon the “ results of recent investigation in the sciences,” its educational department has considered through several months “ the fundamental principles of education,” and its art study class has studied in (theoretical) detail the elaborate technique of painting. During the coming season the club will study the history of sculpture, the evolution of modern music, and the masterpieces of English poetry. The club (in whole or in part) meets weekly throughout the greater portion of the year, and wields an influence in just accord with such determined and unremitting efforts and so thorough a scheme of organization.

The Friday Club resembles the Fortnightly, and is said to draw its membership even more distinctly from the ranks of “ society.” The Junior Fortnightly, the Wednesday, and others are clubs of a similar sort organized among the younger set. The Arché Club, with a membership of six hundred, meets in the neighborhood of Jackson Park and the Field Museum, and pursues its literary and artistic studies under the leadership of a lecturer.

The " new woman,” as is readily seen, must stand well in the foreground of any picture of to-day’s society in Chicago ; happily, she is coming to take herself a little more for granted. May not the influence of her advent be figured more or less successfully from analogous cases, — from the introduction of tolerance into religion, from the introduction of democracy into polities? The woman movement seems but another link added to one general chain. An exaggerated emphasis on sex may moderate itself, as the exaggerated enforcements of bigotry and the exaggerated claims of social privilege have moderated themselves already; and we may find that the abolition of a number of arbitrary and invidious distinctions between man and woman marks but one more step toward the general solidification of the body politic.

Compared with the bustling and ambitious aggregations just named, the men’s clubs must infallibly suffer; as we enter them we find ourselves among the helots whose labors make possible the mental expansion of the feminine aristocracy. The down-town club is used chiefly as a lunching convenience and for the discussion of business affairs, being little frequented save at midday. The Union League Club, however, has distinct political leanings, and its annual celebration of Washington’s Birthday has added point and interest to one of the few conspicuous dates in the American calendar. The first of its meetings upon this anniversary was addressed by James Russell Lowell. Recent speakers have been the Hon. Theodore Roosevelt and Mr. Frederic R. Coudert. The socio-political clubs, with houses situated in the widely scattered residential quarters,—one may instance the Marquette, the Hamilton, and the Ashland,—frequently entertain visiting political celebrities, and also coöperate steadily in the cause of reform and good government. The Chicago Literary Club, a homogeneous body of professional men, holds weekly meetings throughout a large part of the year, and has recently begun the practice of issuing in pamphlet form such of its papers as provoke a demand for publication. The Caxton Club, resembling the Grolier of New York, gives an annual exhibition of books and bookbindings.

All this, however, does not go far in comparison with the activities of the other sex, and the balance should be restored by some reference to the benefactions of individual citizens. Half a dozen examples (added to the number already indicated) will suffice. The ground upon which the University of Chicago stands and the funds necessary for the establishment of the Columbian Museum are alike the gift of Mr. Marshall Field ; the Armour Institute and Mission, together with the extensive range of adjoining tenements, the income from which supports them, the city owes to Mr. P. D. Armour; the construction of the observatory at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, for the University of Chicago, and its equipment with the largest telescope in the world, are to be credited to Mr. C. T. Yerkes; the development and prosperity of the Art Institute are due in great part to the energy, enthusiasm, and public spirit of Mr. Charles L. Hutchinson, its president; and an endless series of widespread donations has made the name of Dr. D. K. Pearsons a household word throughout the educational world.

Among the clubs of mixed membership — most of them mediating between literature and society — may be mentioned the Twentieth Century Club, an organization of wealthy people with a taste for private views of passing celebrities. This practice, mutatis mutandis, is pretty widely diffused throughout Chicago ; a nice discrimination is not invariably shown by every minor association, and the docility and credulity of our eager neophytes, when brought face to face with stranger evangelists of limited value, cannot yet be classed among vanishing phenomena. The Contributors’ Club, active at the period of the Fair, wrote and published its own magazine, until the demand for bricks outran the supply of straw. Its most notable achievement was the publication of a number made up wholly of articles (accompanied by facsimiles in many strange languages) contributed by distinguished foreigners who were associated with the Exposition. The Chicago Chapter of the University Guild of the Northwestern University has been accustomed to hold each winter a series of meetings at the houses of persons prominent in society ; it thus bridges over the thirteen miles that separate Evanston from Chicago, and gives added cohesion to a great institution whose topographical dispersedness is surpassed only by its enormous enrollment. I may note here, in passing, that the property of this university amounts in value to more than four million dollars.

Literature proper in Chicago is represented by The Dial ; here, too, the special slant is toward the educational. The Dial is well known and much esteemed by the schools and libraries of the whole country. It is as irreproachable in its ideals as in its typography ; but its tone of some what cold correctness causes one to feel that there is a certain lack of temperament.

“ Literary Chicago,” thanks to the successive advents of many emissaries from both East and West, is finally conscious of itself; its consciousness has once or twice taken the form of an “ authors’ reading,” — with moderate interest on the part of the public. The literary people of Chicago, freed from rivalry by the absence of prizes to struggle for, live together in a sympathetic and companionable spirit that has been more than once remarked by visitors who have themselves borne the burden and heat of effort in the Eastern arena.

Chicago is said to be the largest bookmanufacturing city in the country; its number of " publishers ” is in proportion. However, we need not pause over its tons of school-books, nor its mountains of German and Scandinavian Bibles intended for the farmhouses of the Northwest, nor its cheap and sometimes unauthorized editions of authors favorably or unfavorably known, but destined in either case for the railway train and the news-stand. Yet Chicago possesses at least one old-established and conservative publishing firm of high rank (together with the largest book-shop in the country), and one or two newer firms that stand for a notably delicate and refined practice in book-making. Chicago also enjoys the further celebrity that comes from the publication of the quaint Chap - Book. This highly individual semi-monthly, having lately enlarged itself and subdued the intensity of a yellow tone reflected from London, may now be fully accepted as an embodied response to Chicago’s long and earnest prayer, — that for a magazine.

From such educational exactions as have occupied the preceding pages the public have but two apparent refuges, — the parks and the theatres. Within the past few years the idea of the value of leisure and recreation has been steadily gaining ground ; the Saturday half-holiday has become quite general during the summer months, and the great system of public parks now yields the fullest service that even the most prophetic of its originators could have foreseen. A Saturday afternoon in August spent in Washington Park is recommended with confidence to the casual tourist, in place of the “Levee,” the Stockyards, and the contemplation of the “submerged tenth,” all of which have been too much favored of late by the stranger eye.

The park area of Chicago is soon to he increased by the enlargement of the Lake Front to two hundred acres. Four fifths of this area will be obtained by filling in beyond the shore line, and the material will come from the excavations for the great drainage canal, upon which work has been prosecuted for the past five years. This undertaking — said to be the most extensive piece of engineering now doing in the world — will eventually turn the waters of Lake Michigan into the Mississippi River, and will give a final solution to Chicago’s vexatious sewage problem. Roughly speaking, the canal will be thirty miles long, and will cost thirty million dollars, the enterprise has thus far escaped the contamination of partisan politics.

A splendid project to connect the Lake Front with Jackson Park by a six-mile boulevard along the lake shore has lately received a serious official check, but will probably be revived upon the coming of better times — or of a better governor. The city, in its increasing aptitude for relaxation, is learning, despite this check, to turn the lake to proper account. A score of yachts, anchored within the “ breakwater, " point to the opportunities for one kind of pleasure, and for the past two or three seasons the south shore has witnessed a determined effort toward another kind. Lake-bathing, after many years of failure, has at last been established ; and on a summer Sunday the half-mile stretch of piers, kiosks, and bungalows along the beach is thronged by bathers enjoying the fresh-water equivalent of Nantasket and Coney Island.

Little can be said for the local theatre, which sinks lower in the esteem of the better class as it rises higher in the esteem of the populace. However, a dirty dollar contains as many cents as a clean one, and the dirty dollars are in the large majority, besides. Not much can be found for approval beyond the efforts of Miss Anna Morgan, of the Chicago Conservatory, who gives infrequent performances of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, and the like, — a work which she carries on with great enthusiasm and optimism, despite the indifference of the middle public and the resentment of the newspaper press. When one has noted a Greek play brought to town by a country college, and has recalled that the most respectable successes in the way of American light opera originated in Chicago, little more remains to justify attention. Certainly, no one need remember the immense effort and mistaken expenditure undergone to make Chicago a “ producing centre ” of — extravaganza.

To the many active educational agencies already mentioned, add, of course, the public schools, the parochial schools, and the variety of small and dispersed private establishments that, even in a town so rampantly democratic, must live their own lives and enter into the general count. Education, education, and again education. Is education the safeguard of the res publica ? Then perhaps we are safe. Is character ? Then perhaps we are not. Instruction is booming ; principle is hardly holding its own. The recklessness and consciencelessness of the earlier Western day were barely showing some sign of abatement, when the voice of a proletariat, disappointed in the efficacy of its own fetish and disposed to a clamorous and summary revision of meum and tnum. began to make itself heard. Although the city of Chicago, a year ago, indeed pronounced most outspokenly for honor and principle, still the persistent agitation of such matters could have but one effect upon a community that, for the first time within a quarter of a century, was suffering a serious check in its course of unparalleled prosperity : a partial disintegration of its moral fibre, a serious slackening of the sense of obligation and of the integrity of contract, and a diminished adhesion to the principles of common commercial honesty. This lapse may be but temporary ; certainly the only basis upon which a great and complicated community can conduct its affairs is not far to seek nor difficult to find.

It remains to state the effort which the city is putting forth on behalf of the whole Middle West, —a propaganda of music, art, and literature which is little suspected in the East, and not fully realized at home.

The Public Library of Chicago has become a bureau of inquiry for the whole country ; it is constantly furnishing data on all sorts of subjects, dignified or trivial, to all sorts of people. The country editor, the country physician, the exChicagoan, and the new woman appear to be the chief beneficiaries; not a day passes in which information is not furnished (at a moderate charge) to persons far beyond the designated scope of the institution. It is here that the club woman comes most fully into view, and aids to her study in history, art, language, and literature are provided on the most extensive scale.

The extension system of the University of Chicago reaches through eight States, — from Minnesota to Kentucky, from Ohio to Nebraska. Eighty-five of the courses in its lecture study department are conducted outside of the city itself. The correspondence study department engages the services of sixty instructors, and meets the requirements of six hundred students.

The musical propaganda has been conducted in large part by the Chicago Orchestra, which has been in the habit of interrupting its home series of concerts two or three times during the season to give performances in outside towns. These concerts have usually been secured on the basis of a guarantee fund, and the orchestra has appeared in places as distant and as far apart as Pittsburg, Toronto, St. Paul, Omaha, and Louisville.

A similar service for painting is performed by the Central Art Association, originated by Mr. Hamlin Garland and Mr. Lorado Taft, and headed at present by Mr. Halsey C. Ives. This association aims to aid the progress of the student and art-lover in interior towns by giving lectures on art, by suggesting courses of reading on related subjects, by sending out reproductions in pictorial form of the great masterpieces, and (chiefly) by arranging circulating exhibitions of the best obtainable examples of recent American art. It also conducts Arts for America, a periodical in which architecture, decoration, and ceramics are discussed, as well as painting and sculpture. This association, devoted to Western art and to the plein air idea, has brought to light fresh talent in Indiana, Colorado, and Texas, and has given to these workers, as well as to many home painters, a wide currency through the West by sending small but carefully composed collections to many towns in the Mississippi Valley and beyond. In future a more pronounced coöperation on the part of Eastern artists is assured, and it should seem an easy matter for any Western community that wishes to inform itself about the most recent and peculiar developments of American art to gratify its desire. The latest organization in this field is the Society of Western Artists, which has established a “circuit” comprising half a dozen of the largest Western towns, and undertakes perambulatory displays of contemporary art.

The foregoing pages may serve to show the stage that has been reached by the Chicago of to-day, and to indicate what the city is doing for itself, for the West, and for the world at large. That further and more remarkable stages are yet to be arrived at may well be granted to an energy, ambition, and initiative in which no hint of failure or of pause is to be detected. Sixty years ago the Pottawatomies held their last war-dance within a few steps of the site of Chicago’s city hall; to-day the centre of population of the United States is but a few miles south of our limits. The bulk of Chicago already shuts off Eastern prospects from Western eyes, and indications abound that the city is coming to assume an equal importance in the eyes of the South. The increasing centrality of her position, coupled with the widening exercise of her powers, appears to her confident and rather arrogant mind a sufficient earnest of her final supremacy, commercial, intellectual, and political. Material prosperity is already won ; a high intellectual status seems assured; and her principal concern for another generation — the extirpation of the moral and civic evil that has reared itself behind the back of a resolute but too preoccupied endeavor — will be prosecuted, let it be hoped, in that spirit of civic regeneration whose signs are just now so encouraging and so abundant. The absence of such signs would be doubly discouraging in a day wherein a city life seems indicated with growing certainty as the future condition of the greater part of the American people.

Henry B. Fuller.