Darrow-Starr Debate: “Is Life Worth Living?”

Title: Darrow-Starr Debate: “Is Life Worth Living?”

Location: The Clarence Darrow Collection Date: 1920

It’s an age-old question: “Is Life Worth Living?” It was also the topic of a public debate  between Clarence Darrow and Prof. Frederick Starr held at  the Garrick Theater on March 28, 1920 as part of the Workers University Society series of lectures. Darrow, who was referred to as the greatest living exponent on the philosophy of pessimism in the introduction, debated in the negative while noted Chicago University anthropologist Starr sided in the affirmative. (Darrow and Starr would also debate on other equally upbeat topics: “Is Civilization a Failure?”  and  ”Is the Human Race Getting Anywhere?” ) Following is a sample of Darrow’s rebuttal. What is interesting to note is Darrow’s references to retirement. While this debate was held in 1920, two of Darrow’s most famous cases were yet to come: The Leopold and Loeb murder case (1924) and the Scopes Trial (1925). Darrow died in 1938.

What does the great mass of the human race think about this question as to whether life is worth living, and whether this is in any way affected by the question of the destiny of Man? Why, since man began to dream dreams and see visions; since he evolved consciousness; since he looked around and asked the meaning of life and of death, he has sought by every means to prove that death is not death. He has braced up his love of life by making for himself a dream that there was something more to life than is shown by science or philosophy, or the facts that are apparent to every one who thinks. And, take that feeling from the human mind today, and take it suddenly, and it would be paralyzed, and men would not live their lives. There are a few who might live it out. But, to say that the question of the destiny of man does not affect his present happiness is to say that man has neither memory, nor imagination, nor consciousness, nor thought.

Men suffer from evils that never come, and they ex- perience joys that never come. A very large part of our conscious life is dreaming. We believe in happiness that will come tomorrow, and in misery that passed yesterday. We are terrified sometimes by disasters that will come tomorrow, more than we are by those that we lived through yesterday. Man’s brain is such that his mind will reach into the future and into the past and all about him, and the future and the past, whether it exists or not, does exist for the present, and is the largest part of the things which affect the happiness or the misery of the man. It is idle to say man must not take into account the question of his origin or the question of his destiny, when he considers whether life is worth living. Is it?

Now, I didn’t know that I grumbled so much. I don’t know why I should. I have got about through with the blooming game. I am about ready to retire. That does not mean I have money, but I study the actuary tables; I know I am about to retire. When I retire – well, while I will not be happy, I will not be miserable, and, as life goes, I believe I have as little cause for complaint as almost any person I know. And, I trust that I complain very little. At least I don’t mean to. I have lived a life which is, approximately, as good as nothing. Not quite, but somewhere near it. And I will not be very much better off when I am dead; but some what.

Does Professor Starr prove that life is worth living, be- cause man is here? If so, that is a simple question. By what process can you prove that everything that is here is worth while? Or, what do we mean by worth while? Of course you can ask a lot of questions in discussing this. Of course, if life is worth living to man because man is here, it is likewise worth living to every animal because it is here. It is worth living to the dog and the mouse and the cat that eats it. Of course, you might say that the life of the mouse is worth living to the cat that eats it. It is worth living to the ant and the grasshopper, and to those tiny insects who live only a fraction of an hour. And, in the sight of eternity, the longest human life is just as short. Even if the emotions, in the fraction of a hour, were all pleasant ones, it was not worth while to begin it when it was to end so quickly. The fact that life is here, to my mind, proves nothing, excepting that if you got a certain amount of earth and heat and water – if they were resolved into the simple elements given these elements in certain proportions under certain conditions, life will develop, just as maggots will in a cheese. Does that prove it is worth while? I cannot see it. It does not prove it in any meaning of the words worth while. If it does prove it, then everything is equally worth while, and the living man is no more a part of nature than the corpse. And the well man is no more a part of nature than the sick man. The pleasurable emotion is no more a part of nature than the painful emotion. The fact that it is here simply proves it is here, that is all. The only way that this question can be discussed, it seems to me is as an intellectual or philosophical question: Are the pleasurable emotions of life more than the painful ones? Is there a greater balance of pleasure than pain? And this cannot be discussed without taking into consideration every feeling and imagination that influences man, and influences the feelings of man. You cannot settle it by saying life is a question of health, wealth, happiness and wisdom.

“Commy”

Title: “Commy:”  The Life Story of Charles A. Comiskey, The “Grand Old Roman” of Baseball and for Nineteen Years President and Owner of the American League Baseball Team “The White Sox”

Location: Google Books       Date: 1919

There have been several biographies written about Charlie Comiskey (1859-1931) over the years, but this early one is intriguing because it was published in 1919, before the World Series Scandal (no mention of the World Series which would be expected) of that year and because of its title. Comiskey was most often called, “The Old Roman.” But, his friends called him “Commy.”

And, it is the final chapter of the book, titled BY ” COMMY ” HIMSELF, that is most interesting because Charlie talks about his own character and addresses some of his critics.

It is fitting that the man who has furnished the subject matter for the preceding chapters should have a hearing on his own account. Up to this time he has had a chance only to vouch for the facts, so permit the ” Old Roman ” to speak for himself:

By Charles A. Comiskey.

Having a biography prepared has always seemed to me as either superfluous or in the nature of an epitaph. The omission of both sometimes would seem to be of an advantage to the living. Also the ” story ” of a man should denote some achievement. I hope that what I have accomplished has been in the open, so it cannot be considered new. If it has not been out of the commonplace it should not be called noteworthy. Others have done as much as well, so I must consider it a special compliment of the author and publisher to have taken the chance they have in producing this book. I can furnish no secret documents from hidden archives but I can make the statement that the world has given me a square deal — possibly more than I am entitled to. I can think of no exception. It has been all the same whether I have been a temporary or a permanent guest in any community in which I have lived.

I was perfectly satisfied with the West Side of Chicago when I was in knickerbockers. I hope it was with me. They treated me fine in Milwaukee, in Elgin and Dubuque. No one could have been given more consideration than I was in St. Louis. It is impossible to register a kick against Cincinnati and it is with pleasure that I recall my five-year stay in St. Paul. I think I left with a fair share of the population my friends.

Naturally Chicago has seemed different to me from the rest. It has never ceased to be my home. 1 was born here and here I hope to finish. If the people think as much of me as I do of them there can be no grounds for disagreement There is no sectional feeling in my allegiance to the city of my birth because there happens to be a White Sox family on the South Side. I have as many personal friends on the West and North sides as I have on the South.

Words cannot express my real feelings towards the people of Chicago. Did I have the power of expression that others possess I would completely fail in voicing my appreciation of what they have done for me. They encouraged me when I first came to the city. Since then they have built a ball park for me and made it possible for me to get together teams which, at different times, have been fortunate enough to repay them for their outlay. Not I or my managers have won pennants for Chicago. The fans alone have raised the flags which have flown on the South Side.

Occasionally I have been charged with the crime of ” buying ” pennants. If I am guilty it has been for the sake of those who furnished the money. I have been counted a hard loser. My friends wanted me to have a winner. The fans have insisted upon it. The winning of individual ball games contributes to the total and without more victories at the end of the season than anyone else there would have been no championships.

I have fought for every point because, through bitter experience, I early learned that one lost decision sometimes may mean the loss of a pennant. It is the small things in life which count; it is the inconsequential leak which empties the biggest reservoir.

Many have spoken about my luck. I admit that I have been fortunate in many of my undertakings but I do not think that success is governed by the throw of the dice. I do not claim that I have been more foresighted than others. I have had my reverses but I have tried not to lose my appetite.

The real secret of my good luck has been that I could always figure on support. You can do wonders when you have everybody with you. I may not be able to figure out why my friends have been with me but they have. Perhaps it is because I have tried to be on the level with them. That should not be a source of pride to me as it is part of good business. No one has any license to brag because he is honest. That should be natural instinct and, besides, if you are not, they put you in jail. Honesty is merely a form of insurance.

I have been given credit, sometimes entirely unearned, for doing many things for the advancement of the game. I have fought for it because the game deserved it. Baseball is the greatest sport in the world. It is the cleanest, besides affording more people the right kind of amusement than any other. I do not say that because I have made my living at it. I say it from the heart. There have been reports now and then that I contemplate disposing of my ball club. I never had any such intentions. I would be lost without my team. I have spent my life in the game and I have no regrets. To me it has not been misspent.

Formerly sport was not regarded as a proper calling for young men. It is beginning to assume its rightful place in society. To me baseball is as honorable as any other business. It is the most honest pastime in the world. It has to be or it could not last a season out. Crookedness and baseball do not mix. It has become immeasurably more popular as the years have gone by. It will be greater yet. This year, 1919, is the greatest season of them all.

The reason for the popularity of the sport is that it fits in with the temperament of the American people and because it is on the square. Everything is done in the open. What the magnates do behind the screens the fans care nothing about.

Year by year a higher and higher class of players come into the game. This is not meant as a slur on those of the earlier days, the pioneers, but. it is a proof of the attraction it has for young men. The rewards of today are, of course, more in keeping with the efforts than was the case when I broke into the game. I started in at $3 a day. Now some players get that much a minute, counting their actual playing time.

As to a comparison between the players of my days and today there is no way of arriving at a conclusion. It is quite possible to pick a ” greatest team,” but the selection would be based purely on personal opinion. I think I had wonderful players in Caruthers, Foutz, Bill Gleason, O’Neill, Bushong and others, but it would be a matter of opinion to compare these with such stars as Ed “Walsh, Billy Sullivan, Jiggs Donohue, Joe Jackson, Happy Felsch, Eddie Collins, Ray Schalk, Eddie Cicotte and a score or more equally as good who have played for me on my Chicago teams.

We have Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, Grover Alexander, and a host of others. How would they have stacked up with Radbourne, Sweeney, Ramsey, Williamson, Barnes, Pfeffer, Anson, Clarkson, Kelly, and such outstanding figures? It is hard to tell. Batting averages and pitching records do not give the answer, as conditions under which they played were different from those of today.

Personally I think Ty Cobb of the Detroit team is the greatest player of all time. This is no disparagement to others. Ty is in a class by himself. He is a wonderful batter and would have been able to hit any kind of pitching in the old days as well. He is one of the speediest men in the game. He is as good a fielder as one would want, but above all he is a thinker when in the game. His mind works every minute and he carries the team along with him.

In sportsmanship there is little to differentiate the Eighties from the present. We fought to win then. The right kind of team does so now. Perhaps we were a little rougher about it than they are now and it seemed that we could stand harder knocks then than can players of today. I do not mean that the boys have less grit today. I have some of the gamest players in the world on my own team, but then there was less arnica on tap.

The spirit of the game remains the same and that is why I take pride in being identified with it. “With me baseball will never grow old. In my own estimation it may not have improved so much as many believe, but regardless of everything it is the same good old game. If I have contributed to its success I do not refer to this in the sense of boasting. I had to or fall out of the ranks. It was a fast game when I played it and the pace was hot. As the fans know, I have often had trouble in keeping up with it since then, but they have been forebearing. What I have tried to do has been my level best.

Photo Credit: CHARLES “THE OLD ROMAN” COMISKEY, The Chicago Black Sox Trial

Memorial of Robert McCormick

Title: Memorial of Robert McCormick: Being a Brief History of his Life, Character and Inventions

Location: Google Books       Date: 1885

This little book is a memorial to the inventor of the reaper, the machine that changed the West. His name was Robert Hall McCormick ( June 8, 1780 – July 4, 1846). Cyrus Hall McCormick  Sr, the man usually credited with the invention, ( February 15, 1809 – May 13, 1884)  was his son.

According to the publisher, “This book is a photo-engraved reprint of a pamphlet printed in Chicago in 1885. As it contains much valuable history, it is thought to be a suitable compliment to ” Overlooked Pages of Reaper History, Chicago, Illinois, 1897. The name of the author is not given in the original publication, but the contents show plainly an effort to establish the fact that to Robert McCormick and Leander McCormick of Virginia belongs the credit of inventing the McCormick reaper.”

J. Russell Parsons,
Lewis Miller,
John F. Steward.

Chicago, Illinois, June, 1898

Following is a statement from Robert’s nephew, William:

By William S. McCormick, of Wayne County, Missouri.

My name is William S. McCormick. I am seventy-six years of age. I was born in Augusta county, Virginia.

I am intimately acquainted with the invention of the McCormick Reaper. I saw this great machine progress step by step from the unsuccessful experiment, my uncle, Robert McCormick, first tried prior to the fall of 1828 or spring of 1829, when I went to live with my uncle, Robert McCormick. This machine was a small two wheeled reaper, drawn by a horse in shafts, with stationary cutters. This failed to work and it was laid aside by my uncle.

And I was personally present when my old uncle, Robt. McCormick, the father of C. H. [Cyrus] and L. J. McCormick, first conceived the idea of his second reaping machine, subsequently patented. This was in 18291 or 1830. I myself and one Samuel Hite were the men who did the work for Robert McCormick while he invented and experimented with the machine. I know that Robt. McCormick was the sole inventor of the reaping machine. His skillful brain invented each parcel of the reaper in the order I now name:

The machine was drawn by horses in front by the standing grain. It had a master-wheel, say three feet in diameter. The sickle was vibrating and driven by a crank which got its motion from gear wheels from the main axle. The sickle was supported by projecting fingers about three inches apart. Behind this sickle there was a platform on which the grain fell, where it was swept back by the revolving horizontal reel to the sickle and cut, and was faked by a man. The reel was supported by posts at each end and was driven by a band from the main axle.

The foregoing described machine was invented solely and alone by my uncle Robert McCormick. This I know. There can be no doubt about it whatever. I was present. I lived with my uncle and worked with him on this machine. He gave his orders and they were followed by myself and other workmen. He made his suggestions and we followed them. He directed changes and we made them. I know that the conception and creation was wholly from his own brain. I never heard, his right as the ‘ inventor of this machine questioned by any one, nor did I hear any one else at that time claim any of the invention. On the contrary I know that my uncle, Robt. McCormick, claimed the invention of the machine, He was endowed with a mind skilled and inventive, and he had invented other matters.

In witness of the foregoing statement, I have. hereunto set my hand this 5th day of June, 1880.

(Signed) Wm. S. McCormick.

March 4, 1880.

Cyrus McCormick  improved on the reaper built by his father and gain a patent for the machine in 1834, but he was not the inventor.

Silhouette in Diamonds: The Life of Mrs. Potter Palmer

Title: Silhouette in Diamonds: The Life of Mrs Potter Palmer by Ishbel Ross

Location: Internet Archive     Date: 1960

This is the only book of which I am aware that is devoted solely to the life of Bertha Honore Palmer.

A City in Flames

A brisk wind rustled the withered autumn leaves in the garden of Potter Palmer s country house on the outskirts of Chicago on the fateful night of October 8, 1871. The grass on the lawn was like tinder for it had been one of  the driest summers in the city s history. Bertha Honore Palmer,  a bride of twenty-two, was passing a quiet Sunday evening by herself in the home she was about to leave to take up quarters in the newly finished Palmer House, her husband s wedding gift to her. Potter Palmer, millionaire merchant and real estate man, had gone east to attend the funeral of one of his sisters in upstate New York. It was Bertha s first separation from her husband since their marriage fourteen months earlier.

Soon after nine o clock she became conscious of a yellowish glow hanging over the city. She studied the scene with concern. Fires were an everyday occurrence but before long she saw that this was no ordinary blaze. Shafts of flame shot across the skyline until it seemed as if most of the city were on fire. She thought anxiously of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Hamilton Honore, who lived on Michigan Avenue, right in the path of the flames, which seemed to leap out in different areas, leaving no clue to their focus. It was not until some time later that the legend spread of Mrs. Catherine O’ Leary’s cow kicking over her kerosene lamp in a De Koven Street barn at milking time. But in any event this was where the fire began and a dry southwest wind funneled the flames to adjoining shacks. Soon homes, shops, churches, factories, were going up like matchsticks. The downtown business area was quickly enveloped. From the slums to La Salle Street devastation prevailed.

At first Mrs. Palmer had confidence that the new water-works on the North Side would be equal to the situation, but when the fire jumped the river and set them ablaze, all hope of staying its demoniac course was ended. When she saw that things were completely out of control she went into practical action with her servants and neighbors. Although at a safe distance from the burning city they all began assembling their treasures and preparing their houses for the dispossessed. Bertha murmured prayers for her family as she busied herself around the house. There was no way of reaching them in the blazing city.

By this time the sky was an awesome yellow, streaked with vivid columns of crimson where fire flashed out in yet another section of the city. There was little smoke because of the speed and intensity of the conflagration. Here and there the blaze was sharp and clear, illumining the distorted motions of a frantic population. The streets were jammed with fleeing families, carrying babies, bundles, furniture and armfuls of clothes. They ran in all directions, shouting and crying, while cinders hit them like stinging hailstones and sparks danced be fore their eyes like twinkling stars. Embers seemed to rain from the sky. Jets of flame pulverized safes and buildings that had been pronounced fireproof. Synthetic granite walls seemed to offer little more resistance than wooden shacks.

The noise was unearthly. To one it sounded like the lake on a stormy night. To another the crackling murmur suggested an enormous bundle of dry twigs burning. There were sharp explosions as barrels of oil and paint were touched off by the flames.

For days and weeks afterward Bertha heard tales of the terrible scenes enacted in the streets that night. One little girl with flames licking her long golden hair ran screaming through the crowd. But silence followed when a distracted onlooker threw a container of liquor over her. It flared up and enveloped her in blue flame. Fire touched off the skirt of a woman who knelt in the street, praying with her crucifix. Her anguished face was long remembered by those who saw her and survived. A forgotten canary sang in its gilded cage in a hotel window which was brightly lit by the approaching curtain of flame.  A bride with half -wrapped wedding presents in her arms ran frantically back and forth calling for her husband. Women dragged Saratoga trunks along the sidewalks.
Wheelbarrows and perambulators were piled high with family possessions.

There were screams and shouts and curses, tears and voice less despair. The slum sections tossed up thieves, footpads and murderers, who plundered and rioted as the city burned. All along Lake Street they ravaged the shops. Liquor ran in the gutters and many were drunk. But the most desperate scenes were at the bridges, where struggling masses converged while fire already licked the foundations and one after another of the structures went down. Human beings and horses were inextricably mixed in the jam as carriages and teams attempted to cross the river. The horses, half mad from the flick of cinders and the frantic crowding, trampled men and women. Scores of the trapped clung to the guard rails; some wound up in the river. The ships drifted like sagging ghosts as sails and masts caught fire. The sirens of tugs trying to get through added piercing blasts.

Before many hours had passed Bertha knew that the Palmer and Honore fortunes had gone up in flames.Her husband’s thirty-two fine new buildings on State Street, as well as the nearly finished Palmer House, were burned to the ground.  Honore Block, a magnificent building for its time, put up by her father, with walls decorated with colonnades of synthetic marble, was in ruins. Most of his other properties were burned, too. The Palmer House was one of the first large buildings to go, although its fireproof equipment had promised protection. Terrified citizens sought safety in its lobby, bringing their valuables with them. But liquor or explosive oils had been stored in the cellar by some of the refugees and a terrific explosion wrecked the building when the fire reached this area. Detonations were so frequent that night that Bertha never knew which one signaled the collapse of her wedding gift.

Biographical History of the American Irish in Chicago

Title: Biographical History of the American Irish in Chicago by Charles French

Location: Internet Archive     Date 1897

The numerous contributions of the Irish during Chicago’s early history are the focus of this extensive volume. Historians and genealogists will find the searchable text beneficial and the emphasis here is on both individual accomplishments and a detailed accounting of their Irish heritage.

As an entry example, I have chosen John M. Smyth. For many, Smyth’s furniture store advertisement jingle still rings in our memory. But, Smyth’s contribution to early Chicago was also political, serving as an Alderman and Committeeman, and he was known for his honesty in a time when corruption was the norm.

John M. Smyth

Equally a manufacturer, merchant, and one identified with political and public affairs, John M. Smyth is justly regarded as a thoroughly representative man. Personally he unites an old country lineage with the development and energy characteristic of the new world.

The parents of the subject of this sketch, Michael K. Smyth and Bridget (McDonnell) Smyth, left Ireland for America in the summer of 1843, and John M. Smyth was born at sea on the 6th of July of that year. The family came from Balliua, County Mayo, where their people had long been settled, and where Mr. Michael K. Smyth was a surveyor. Their first residence on this side of the Atlantic was in Quebec, but later they removed to Montreal, in which city they lived for five years, settling in Chicago in 1848. In the now historic days when early Chicago was mapped out, Mr. Michael K. Smyth surveyed lands for that notable pioneer real estate owner, William B. Ogden, the first mayor of Chicago. Mr. Smyth, like many others in those early days, had his opportunities of becoming wealthy by the acquisition of laud, subsequently very valuable, but to be had then for comparatively trifling; considerations. For instance, he was offered once for certain services, the Erie square block of land between Kinzie and Michigan, Market and Franklin, afterwards easily worth $1,400,000, but which he declined to accept because it would have taken a year of labor and some slight cost to have leveled a high bank upon it, removed refuse and put generally into marketable shape. Meantime, while the elder Smyth was taking a hand in making the ground plan of the future World’s Fair City, young John M. was attending the renowned “Kinzie” school, known among the youth of that time as “Wilder’s” from the name of the principal, then responsible for shaping and developing the young ideas. Having completed school terms sufficiently well to equip himself with a sound general education, he started out in life on his own account, he chose the typographic art and that section of it represented in the composition rooms of a daily newspaper. Mr. Smyth was employed successively upon the early newspapers of Chicago: the “Morning Herald;” the Chicago “Democrat,” when the historic paper was owned by that representative citizen, Mayor Wentworth, “Long John,” and lastly on the “Press and Tribune,” now the “Tribune.”

Mr. Smyth, when in a leisure hour, likes nothing better than to dwell upon the details of the early newspaper life and business of Chicago; that epoch in Chicago when James W. Sheahan started “The Times” (Sheahan & Price), afterwards purchased by the Hon. Cyrus H. McCormick, and subsequently advanced to a conspicuous place in modern daily journalism by the distinguished editor, Wilbur F. Storey. But the comparatively unremunerative business of the printer and publisher did not satisfy John M. Smyth.

He embarked in business for himself in 1867, opening a furniture store at 92 West Madison Street. This was the beginning of the business that has since grown to such immense proportions and has made the name of its proprietor almost a household word in every part of the city. To accommodate his increasing business, he removed his establishment in 1880 to its present location, where he greatly extended and enlarged the operations of the establishment. The store was destroyed by fire in April, 1891, but Mr. Smyth immediately rebuilt on the same site, completing and occupying, by November 1st of the same year, the largest and handsomest business block on the West Side. It is a business which now embraces literally thousands of individual accounts, and the fair and just management of the great time credit department has deservedly won for John M. Smyth thousands upon thousands of friends and well wishers in Chicago.

Mr. Smyth was sent to the City Council in 1878, re-elected as Alderman until 1882, and has twice served as a Presidential Elector in the successful campaign for Garfield in 1880, and also upon the Blaine ticket. He managed the latter campaign, in Chicago and Cook County in 1884 and also the Republican campaigns of 1894 and 1896. Mayor Hempstead Washburne appointed him a member of  the Library Board in 1892, and from that date until 1895 Mr. Smyth served the Library upon its Finance committee. In politics he has ever been a consistent Republican, and as member and chairman of the County Central Republican Committee, has always been active in that great political party.

With all this, he is much more of a family and domestic man than a political aspirant, and cares most to live simply within the conventional requirements of the responsible citizen. Mr. Smyth married June 14th, 1871, Miss Jane A. Hand, and [has] eight children. Three sons and five daughters, blessed a union which led to an exceptionally happy domestic life. The best exemplification of his energy and success as a Chicago business man, is found in the accomplishment of certainly the greatest business in his special direction ever known in the West.

Daniel H. Burnham by Charles Moore

Title: Daniel H. Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities,Volume One by Charles Moore

Daniel H. Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities, Volume Two by Charles Moore

Location: Google Books     Date: 1921

Much has been written about Daniel H. Burnham, but these two volumes on his life were the first. Burnham had met Charles Moore while working on the 1901 Plan of Washington when Moore was serving as secretary to Michigan senator James McMillan. They became close friends and Moore would later assist Burnham as editor of the 1909 Plan of Chicago. The biography includes many excerpts from Burnham’s personal daily journal. The selection I have chosen, which includes Burnham’s journal entries, is not about architecture or city design. It concerns the death of Francis Millet,  decorations director of the Columbian Exposition, which occurred during Burnham’s last trip to Europe in 1912. Burnham would die in June of thast year, but on April 13, 1912 Burnham and his wife boarded the R.M.S Olympic…

April 13. Theodore N. Ely called; also Henry Bacon. Went to steamship Olympic in Charlotte Graham’s auto. Bacon and wife there. Dined in the public dining-room. Hon. Charles Bryan on board.

Frank Millet was sailing on the Titanic with Colonel Archibald Butt, on their return from Rome. That steamship and the Olympic were to pass one another at sea. On the evening of the 14th, Mr. Burnham wrote a message of greeting to Millet and Butt and gave it to his steward to take to the wireless operator. The steward returned to say that the operator declined to receive it, but would make no explanation. Puzzled and worried, Mr. Burnham sent the man back to insist on an explanation. He again returned to say that an accident had happened to the Titanic, that the Olympic had been summoned, and had been ordered to prepare hospital facilities. Thereupon Mr. and Mrs. Burnham arranged to give up their suite of rooms to Millet and Butt. Later, however, they learned that other succor had gone to the Titanic and that the Olympic had been ordered to resume her course.

April 15. This morning, the steward told us that an accident had occurred on the Titanic, sister ship to the one we are on. She sailed from Cherbourg on the 10th. Later in the day we learned via Marconi, that she had struck an iceberg and had gone down; later yet came a list of survivors (675), mostly women and children. My Chief of Decoration of the Fair of 1893 and Vice-chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts, Frank D. Millet, whom I loved, was aboard of her, and with him was Major Archibald Butt, President Taft’s military secretary. Their names are not on the list of survivors and probably they have gone down, thus cutting off my connection with one of the best fellows of the Fair.

April 16. Breakfasted in our rooms. Went out and read list of Titanic survivors telegraphed from the Carpathia, which is carrying them to New York. Frank’s name is not among them, nor is Archie Butt’s. My steward is in grief; his son was a steward on the Titanic and has gone down. This ship is in gloom; everybody has lost friends, and some of them near relations. I find Kirsten, partner of our Boston client Filene, is aboard.

April 18. Breakfasted alone in the main dining-room. Found a list of subscribers to Titanic Relief Fund amounting to £770 or $3850, headed by Lord Ashburton. Subscribed $100.

The Autobiography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard

Title: The Autobiography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard: Pa-Pa-Ma-Ta-Be, “The Swift Walker” by Gurdon Hubbard

Location: Google Books     Date: 1911

Introduction by Caroline M. McIlvaine, Librarian of the Chicago Historical Society

PROBABLY no one life presented so many of the phases of Chicago’s life-drama as did that of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard. The brief autobiography here reprinted deals with the earlier years only. It remains for us to round out the picture by a swift review of the later scenes, and to try to so adjust the focus that we may see the picture as a whole and realize its relation to our own lives. Born in Vermont, a descendant of the Connecticut colonial governor, Gurdon Saltonstall, who was great-grandson of Sir Richard Saltonstall, Gurdon Hubbard bore, so far as ancestry is able to imprint it, the stamp of the metal from which America has been molded. But there was something else about Gurdon Hubbard than that which can be accounted for by ancestry.

Leaving his adopted home in the Canadian wilderness at the age of sixteen, to descend with the voyageurs of the American Fur Company through the waters traversed only a trifle over a century before by the explorers La Salle and Tonty, intimate as a brother with the Indians, and yet able to defend the whites from their treachery, possessed of the strength and skill of the former, with the diplomacy and aplomb of the latter, swift of foot, huge of stature, Hubbard seems as he looms up in history like the survivor of some former race, —a giant whose youthful adventures might have been passed on by tradition, as of a being more than human. Something he undoubtedly imbibed from the Indians, which, added to his own firm fiber, made him the hero that he was in the estimation of his contemporaries, and rendered him, in a very true sense, a representative American. That he was able to adapt himself to civilization, and to infuse into others something of the fire which burned within him, is in large part, we believe, the secret of much of Chicago’s extraordinary advance. If we have moved at a rapid pace, it is perhaps because that pace was set by Pa-pa-ma-ta-be, “The Swift Walker.”

In Africa by John T. McCutcheon

Title: In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country by John Tinney McCutcheon

Location: Google Books     Date: 1910

Fans of Chicago Tribune cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon, will be particularly interested in his personal account of his African adventures. The book is filled with his whimsical prose and sketches plus many of his personal photographs. What is most interesting to note is that eleven years later, McCutcheon would be elected the first president of the Chicago Zoological Association. In his autobiography, Drawn From Memory, McCutcheon credits his African expedition as the reason he was chosen to be president of the new Brookfield Zoo.

Getting ready for lion shooting.

CHAPTER I

THE PREPARATION FOR DEPARTURE. EXPERIENCES WITH WILLING FRIENDS AND ADVISERS

Ever since I can remember, almost, I have cherished a modest ambition to hunt lions and elephants. At an early age, or, to be more exact, at about that age which finds most boys wondering whether they would rather be Indian fighters or sailors, I ran across a copy of Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent. It was full of fascinating adventures. I thrilled at the accounts which spoke in terms of easy familiarity of “express” rifles and “elephant” guns, and in my vivid but misguided imagination, I pictured an elephant gun as a sort of cannon—a huge, unwieldy arquebus—that fired a ponderous shell. The old woodcuts of daring hunters and charging lions inspired me with unrest and longing—the longing to bid the farm farewell and start down the road for Africa. Africa! What a picture it conjured up in my fancy! Then, as even now, it symbolized a world of adventurous possibilities; and in my boyhood fancy, it lay away off there—somewhere—vaguely—beyond mountains and deserts and oceans, a vast, mysterious, unknown land, that swarmed with inviting dangers and alluring romance.

One by one my other youthful ambitions have been laid away. I have given up hope of ever being an Indian fighter out on the plains, because the pesky redskins have long since ceased to need my strong right arm to quell them. I also have yielded up my ambition to be a sailor, or rather, that branch of the profession in which I hoped to specialize— piracy—because, for some regretful reason, piracy has lost much of its charm in these days of great liners. There is no treasure to search for any more, and the golden age of the splendid clipper ships, with their immense spread of canvas, has given way to the unromantic age of the grimy steamer, about which there is so little to appeal to the imagination. Consequently, lion hunting is about the only thing left—except wars, and they are few and far between.

And so, after suffering this “lion-hunting” ambition to lie fallow for many years, I at last reached a day when it seemed possible to realize it. The chance came in a curiously unexpected way. Mr. Akeley, a man famed in African hunting exploits, was to deliver a talk before a little club to which I belonged. I went, and as a result of my thrilled interest in every word he said, I met him and talked with him and finally was asked to join a new African expedition that he had in prospect. With the party were to be Mrs. Akeley, with a record of fourteen months in the big game country, and Mr.  Stephenson, a hunter with many years of experience in the wild places of the United States, Canada and Mexico. My hunting experience had been  chiefly gained in my library, but for some strange reason, it did not seem incongruous that I should begin my real hunting in a lion and elephant country.

I had all the prowess of a Tartarin, and during the five months that elapsed before I actually set forth, I went about ray daily work with a mind half dazed with the delicious consciousness that I was soon to become a lion hunter. I feared that modern methods might have taken away much of the old- time romance of the sport, but I felt certain that there was still to be something left in the way of excitement and adventure.

The succeeding pages of this book contain the chronicle of the nine delightful months that followed my departure from America.

Chicago’s Left Bank

Title: Chicago’s Left Bank by Alson J. Smith

Location: Google Books       Date: 1953

This is one of my favorite books on the subject of literary Chicago. Smith has a witty style that matches his topic and, I believe, will grab you from the get go. Tracing the history of Chicago’s literati we get a glimpse of the bohemians in their native environment – Towertown. You’ll love it.

Out In Chicago, the only genuinely civilized city in the New World, they take the fine arts seriously and get into such frets and excitements about them as are raised nowhere else save by baseball, murder, political treachery, -foreign wars, and romantic loves . . . almost one fancies the world bumped by a flying asteroid, and the Chicago River suddenly turned into the Seine.—Henry L. Mencken in the Smart Set.

Chapter I
Montmartre in the Midwest

EVERYTHING in Chicago dates from the Year of the Fire, 1871. Post anno incendii, the chief structure left standing on the north bank of the Chicago River was the waterworks building on East Chicago Avenue. The tall stone tower of this inelegant edifice looked out over the fire-blackened ruins of what had been one of the city’s better residential sections, the Near North Side.

It was only natural that when the rebuilding began, the area in the immediate vicinity of the old water tower should be dubbed “Towertown.” And, like the arch in New York’s Washington Square and the golden dome of Sacre Coeur on Montmartre, that tower was destined to cast a long shadow over the world of arts and letters. In the years between 1912 and 1924, it was the geographical center of what was perhaps the most vital literary and artistic upsurge in the history of the country. At least Papa Mencken thought so; in 1920 he went to England to startle the dilettantes of Fleet Street with the information that the Germans had really won the war and that Chicago, Illinois, was the literary capital of the universe.

The part about Chicago was approximately true, although book critic Harry Hansen, speaking for the city’s better classes, angrily denied the accusation. In those years corn-fed hopefuls from all over the Midwest flowed into the free-and-easy bohemia of the gigantic abattoir by Lake Michigan. They came to read their poems to Harriet Monroe in the studio at 543 Cass Street, to study under Lorado Taft at the Art Institute, and to chase fire-engines for Henry Justin Smith and the Chicago Daily News in return for the privilege of rubbing shoulders in the city room with Carl Sandburg and Ben Hecht.

Towertown was the center of this renaissance. It was happily situated between the palaces of a rich residential area, the Lake Shore Drive “Gold Coast,” and the miasmal slums of Little Hell. Little Hell, like the deteriorated areas around New York’s Greenwich Village, was largely Italian, and the cheap spaghetti parlors of the neighborhood had atmosphere to fit the temperament and price to fit the pocketbook of the impoverished artists and writers in the batik-curtained coach houses, studios, and stables of Towertown. North Avenue, main artery of the old German “Nort’ Seit’,” bounded bohemia on the north, and the river, with its many bridges into the Loop, was on the south. Bisecting the whole area was the bright gut of the North Clark Street rialto, traditional main drag of hobohemia and the demi-world, with its saloons, night clubs, gambling joints and “hotels.” Rents were cheap, the Loop was within easy walking distance, and the finest beach in the city was at the foot of Oak Street. All this and Ireland’s, too—for one of the world’s best sea food restaurants was on North Clark Street, and still is.

John Wellborn Root by Harriet Monroe

Title: John Wellborn Root: A Study of His Life and Work by Harriet Monroe

Location: Internet Archive     Date: 1896

Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) is best known as the founder and editor of Poetry Magazine in 1912. Monroe was also literary and arts critic, a member of Lorado Taft’s art colony Eagle’s Nest and The Little Room literary group located in the Fine Arts Building. She was also the sister-in-law of the Columbian Exposition’s original architect, John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham’s partner who died in 1891 , two years before the Fair formally opened. Her biography of Root is her only non-poetry publication.

The following selection from Monroe’s book gives us a glimpse of what The White City might have looked like if Root had lived. The architecture may have been more varied and, more significantly, The White City may just have not been white at all… 

Harriet Monroe

JOHN ROOT’S conception of the Fair differed much from the White City of memory. If he had lived and his ideas had prevailed, the Columbian Exposition would have been a City of Color ; a queen arrayed in robes not saintly, as for a bridal, but gorgeous, for a festival. These two ideals are both worthy of honor. One was embodied in delicate beauty, to win the praises of the world; the other vanished when a great man died.

For the first I do not need to speak : its noble stateliness made its own appeal. We lived for half a year in the awe and wonder of it, and it lingers in memory, under the sunshine of that gracious summer, as a glimpse into realms unearthly, the chosen abode of perfect souls. For the second I must say my feeble word, remembering the enthusiasm and strength of purpose which this unrealized dream concentrated. That word will be unconvincing, perhaps; because no architectural scheme can be fairly judged until it is completed before men’s eyes, and because any disturbance of our memories of the White City will seem a desecration. But the beauty of the lily is no reason why the rose should not also be beautiful. And all the flowers of memory cannot make it impossible that one unrecorded should be as lovely as these. The difficulty lies in the proving. What eye can behold the perished flower, however marvelous? What hand can delineate the Columbian City as its first architect saw it? Mine is powerless to offer more than a few hints showing the rough outline of his conception.

The fundamental point in Root’s creed as an architect was sincerity : a building should frankly express its purpose

John Wellborn Root

 and its material. Thus it would have been impossible for him to design, as the chief buildings of the Fair, imitations
in staff of marble palaces : these could not express their material ; or to adopt a classic motive : this could not express the purpose of a modern American exposition. He wished to admit frankly in the architectural scheme the temporary character of the Fair : it should be a great, joyous, luxuriant midsummer efflorescence, born to bloom for an hour and perish a splendid buoyant thing, flaunting its gay colors between the shifting blues of sky and lake exultantly, prodigally. Edifices built in pursuance of this idea should not give the illusion of weight and permanence : they should be lighter, gayer, more decorative than the solid structures along our streets. To his mind the dominant note in our civilization was its youth, its newness, crudeness : manifestly things were beginning here, beginning with a swift rush and turmoil of creative energies. He wished to show its affluence, its sumptuous conquering enthusiasm. He wished to offer to the older nations a proof of new forces, new ideals, not yet developed and completed, but full of power and prophetic of charm. He wished to express our militant democracy as he felt it,pausing after victory for a song of triumph before taking up its onward march.

Manifestly these turbulent awakening energies could not be presented through any formal and crystallized type of
architecture. The classic type, Root was inclined to feel, had attained its ultimate perfection in Greece, and its motives had been restudied and developed through succeeding centuries until they were scarcely capable of a new vitalization which should express the modern purposes. It was a style for the open-air life and the fair blue skies of Athens, not for wind-swept and storm-beaten Chicago.

 
Moreover, it was a monumental style, not suitable for holiday structures built of temporary materials. Among all
the tentative sketches of the Fair, or portions of it, which Root threw off from day to day during these busy weeks,
there is scarcely a trace of a classic motive. On the contrary, there is much that is unconventional or even bizarre,
conceived in a lyric mood with delightful freshness and spontaneity. He was much pleased one day when an English artist, trained in the schools, but hospitable to new suggestions, recognized what he was striving for in one of these drawings : ” You ‘ve got an exuberant barbaric effect there a kind of an American Kremlin,” he said ; “lots of color and noise and life.”

A vigorous and masterful panorama of ephemeral magnificence such was the ideal these sketches present. Kremlin and Nishni-Novgorod give suggestions of the turn his mind was taking with regard to form and splendor. This idea of a World’s Fair would not have given the nations a Celestial City it would not have been divine, but it would have been sympathetically and broadly human. Its appeal to the popular imagination would have been, perhaps, the more intimate, potent, and enduring. Root’s sketches adopted usually the Romanesque type of arch and column as a form more pliable than the Greek, a form which admitted the use of American species of flower and leaf in ornamentation. The Fisheries Building, which was designed by Mr. Henry Ives Cobb, was the best example on the grounds of Root’s ideas of Fair architecture. Its frankly playful use of staff, as a medium whose easy plasticity invited an endless variety of gay detail, would have struck him as honest and poetic ; and the delicate, even humorous adaptation of sea-forms of animal and plant life would have appealed to his sense of fitness. Such happy imaginings, however, he would have vivified with color instead of freezing them in white. Color was, to his feeling, a necessity in any architectural expression of a great festival. In this opinion he was at one with the Greeks themselves, who added to the creamy translucency of their marble brilliant accents of color. He was outborne also by the instinct of the people, who loved the Court of Honor best, not when the noon sunshine glared on its facades of opaque white, but when the twilight made them luminous with pink and gold and purple, or the Night, flashing her million lamps, clothed them in mysteries of shimmer and shade.

I am convinced that the people would have responded with joy to an intelligent use of color in the treatment of buildings at the great festival, that it would have added a strong element of beauty and gaiety, and emphasized the
grandeur of noble facades. The Transportation Building, with its beautiful Golden Door, was an interesting experi-
ment in this direction, although Mr. Sullivan’s sumptuous orientalism was scarcely given a fair setting as the only
strong note of color among many classic fagades of changeless white. Problems of out-door decoration have been
studied but little by our decorators, for the best of reasons.

Root had much confidence in Mr. William Pretyman’s ideas on this subject, an enthusiast whose old-world studies did
not make him reject new ideas. During these months they discussed somewhat this problem of out-door color, and
afterwards, when Mr. Pretyman was appointed Chief of Color for the Fair, he experimented in the tinting of staff with thin washes of pure transparent oil-colors, believing that opaque paint of the ordinary kind would harden and artificialize the delicate material, and that white especially would destroy its creamy translucency. In these experi-
ments beautiful results were obtained, but Mr. Pretyman resigned his post too early to carry out his ideas, the only
example of them on the grounds being the little East India House, that delicate opal set in green. Any one who saw
the Fisheries Building, for example, when it was first completed in 1892, and noted the lovely amber tones of the
staff melting graciously into the sunlight, could not fail to feel a painful shock when this seductive bloom was hidden
forever under the heavier white. Somehow the poetry of the building seemed to have gone out of it.

Root’s possible decisions in points of detail are of course a mere matter of conjecture. While he lived all projects were still chaotic, and his mind, as usual, was open to all suggestions. We know only his initial preferences, not his ultimate choice. During these months the scale was still his dominant thought. ” He was thinking of the bones no one else did,” says a gentleman familiar with him at this time. ” He had dug up his mammoth and set it up while others were wondering how big such an animal could be, and when told of its existence, were opening their eyes without being able to measure its magnitude.” Yet he did not neglect the sinews and integument of his giant. During these last weeks of his life he caused experiments with colored tiles and terra-cotta to be carried on at the terra-cotta works ; and his accurate mind a mind which, in the service of clients, hated extravagance and waste was full of speculations in regard to the availability and cost of this material and of others, such as glass, wood, staff. Staff, which had been used extensively in Paris, was not his preference for large structures, though it might have been his choice eventually for a great deal of the work. He would never have used it in imitation of marble, but he would have appreciated its delightful temptations to gaiety of modeling and coloring. Terra-cotta, in rather strong tones, he would undoubtedly have used as extensively as its price would admit. But, whatever the materials, his whole heart was centred upon his hope of an American Fair an architectural scheme which should express exuberantly our young, crude, buoyant civilization, and strike our note at last in the world’s art.