The Little Theatre in the United States By Constance D’Arcy Mackay

Title: The Little Theatre in the United States by Constance D’Arcy Mackay

Location: Google Books     Date: 1917

The Fine Arts Building in Chicago is one of my favorite places to visit. This is just one of the reasons…

The Little Theatres of Chicago

Chicago, the largest city in the West, has three Little Theatres, each one having a strong note of individuality. Taken separately they represent three distinct types of theatres. Maurice Browne’s pioneer Little Theatre represents the repertory art theatre; the Workshop Theatre represents the localistic experimental theatre; the Hull House Theatre with the Hull House Players represents the sociological type.

Of these theatres Maurice Browne’s Little Theatre was the first to be established in 1911-1912. It is located , on the fourth floor of the Fine Arts building on Michigan Avenue. Its charming interiors white outlined in gold, and there are dark green seats. The auditorium is long and narrow. The seating capacity is ninety-one.

From the day of its founding Mr. Browne, in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties, has held to the idea for which this Little Theatre was established. It was not as easy to make a success of a Little Theatre in 1912 as it is in 1917. There was no public ready and waiting for the non-commercial fare Mr. Browne had to offer. He had to fight the early prejudice that labeled a Little Theatre “Dangerous! Beware of Highbrowism.” It is a thousand times easier to succeed with the Little Theatre today than it was when Mr. Browne first sought to establish his. People have become used to the idea of Little Theatres. They are no longer looked upon as jsljange and impractical.

Maurice Browne’s Little Theatre is thus described by its founder: ” It is a repertory and experimental art theatre producing classical and modern plays, both tragedy and comedy, at popular prices. Preference is given in its productions to poetic and imaginative plays, dealing primarily whether as tragedy or comedy with character in action. . . . It has for its object the creation of a new plastic and rlrythmic drama in America.”

The Little Theatre is supported by a membership of  some 400 people who pay an’ annual subscription of ten dollars, and by the sale of seats to the general public. The subscribers who pay ten dollars a year are admitted to all performances of the Little Theatre Company without charge, and to all other entertainments given in the Little Theatre at half price. Admission is one dollar. So admirably have the finances been managed that the Little Theatre, which began with an indebtedness of $10,500, was able to pay off fifty-five per cent, of its debt after three months’ work. And this work included the production of plays produced primarily for love of art and not for love of gain. The plays were simply and beautifully staged at surprisingly low cost. It is an eagle’s feather in the cap of Mr. Browne that eighteen performances were given—and well given—in his tiny theatre for a total of $868.62!

The staff and players at the Little Theatre number . approximately thirty-five people. The company is semi- ‘ professional. All those who have completed two years’ consecutive service with the theatre receive a small salary averaging ten dollars weekly. During the first three and a half years of the Little Theatre’s existence no salary was in excess of sixteen dollars and fifty cents a week.

The Little Theatre produces plays by European and ‘ American authors. One-act plays and three and four- act plays have been produced in about equal numbers.

Among the greatest successes of the Little Theatre have been the remarkable production of Euripides, The Trojan Women, which antedated Granville Barker’s and other “art” productions of this time-defying drama; the beautiful and reverent Christmas mystery play done in silhouette; and from the point of view of scenic art Maurice Browne’s The King of the Jews, and Maurice Baring’s Catherine Parr. Mr. Browne is stage director as well as moving spirit of the Little Theatre and C. Raymond Johnson his art director. Mr. Johnson has designed the investiture for all of the Little Theatre’s most significant productions.

The Trojan Women was a triumph for the Little Theatre because it brought the vasty deeps of that ancient tragedy into a small playhouse onto a small stage and yet gave the illusion of bigness. There was fine breadth and sweep to the acting; the poses of the chorus were plastic and pictorial. Its stern simplicity was far more moving than Granville Barker’s more elaborate production.

 The Little Theatre produced The Trojan Women during the season of 1912-1913. It was the first production of this play in America. It was revived by the Little Theatre Company during the season of 1913-1914. In the course of both these seasons it was played in several other American cities by the same company, who revived it again during the season 1914-1915, and toured the country with it from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast.

The Trojan Women had one scene throughout: A massive stone wall lost to view beyond the line of the proscenium arch, formed the background. This stone wall, jaggedly cleft in the center, showed the sky beyond. Not only were the massive squares of stone that formed the wall played on by different lights as the play proceeded; but the sky beyond the jagged cleft changed gradually from the intense blue of full day to the softer colors of dusk, thus giving differentiation. The red of the flaming city also flared beyond this cleft, and characters entering or leaving the scene stood out in dark silhouette against the fiery background. It was a scenic triumph made possible largely through its remarkable lighting.

The Christmas Mystery Play was given totally in silhouette, with the figures of the New Testament story moving in flat shadow bas-relief against the curtain. This shadow play was lit from the back. The slightest miscalculation of distance or of lighting would have wrought havoc with it; but it was from first to last superbly done. Looking at it one felt that this was perhaps the only way in which the story of the New Testament could be told without offense. The characters were not substantial flesh and blood, but figures of strange mystery, moving as in a dream.

Mr. Johnson’s work as a colorist was seen to advantage in his costume effects for Maurice Browne’s King of the Jews. Here color became a symbol, as in the harsh red and gold of the Roman guard. The costume of Judas, a sinister muddy green combined with muddy lavender, gave his vivid red hair and beard a startling effect. Caiphas was curiously effective in purplish gray and ochre. The Little Theatre is fortunate in its decorations. The banquet hall scene, designed for Maurice Baring’s Catherine Parr, was memorable for its greenish- blue banquet table and greenish-blue high-back banquet chairs set against the background of heavy bluish-purple curtains. These curtains parted to display a flat Rein hardtesque wall of apple green. §till another strange and regal effect was attained through a Little Theatre design of purple banquet chairs and table placed against the background of dark green hangings that parted on the flat wall flooded with yellow light.

It was a dictum of August Strindberg’s that no.Little Theatre with a small stage could ever present outdoor scenes successfully. The Chicago Little Theatre has shattered this idea by a design made by its art director for a midsummer wood. This design was recently exhibited in New York. It showed a scene flooded with the bluish white of moonlight. There was a shallow stage and a back drop of faint bluish white. In the center of this back drop was a great creamy midsummer moon, round and low-lying, just coming up over the rim of the midsummer dusk. One great dark branchless tree trunk soared up beyond the proscenium arch, and was lost to view. To look at this scene was to feel that in a moment Titania and her fairy revelers would appear. It was of magic loveliness, yet simplicity itself.

Mr. Browne’s Little Theatre has been a potent influence in the art of the West and its players, many of whom are now appearing in other Little Theatres, are spreading the non-commercial gospel for which he stands.

World Digital Library Launches April 21st

UNESCO and Library of Congress sign agreement for World Digital Library.

As a strong believer in open digital libraries, free to all, I am excited about the news that the eagerly anticipated World Digital Library will open its virtual doors on April 21, 2009.

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.

According to The History News Network, the project is “the brainchild of James Billington, from the US’s Library of Congress, the project has been developed by Unesco and the Library of Congress, along with 32 other partners from around the world, including national libraries from Iraq, Egypt, Russia, Brazil, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Uganda.”

To learn more about how the site was created, what will be included and how you will be able to use it, visit the World Digital Library website – and be sure to watch the video.

The World’s Fair City and her Enterprising Sons by C. Dean

Title: The World’s Fair City and her Enterprising Sons by C. Dean

Location: Internet Archive     Date published: 1892

There were many books published about The Columbian Exposition immediately following its closing; guide books of all sorts, books about the awards given out and even cookbooks. The purpose of this book was to promote the Fair and, more importantly, Chicago, to the world. Chicago had a reputation for being a bit bawdy, shall we say, so the author here endeavered to place the city in the best light possible, emphsizing its enterprising businessmen and their charitable deeds. No robber barons here! Our millionaires are kind, generous and humble! 

The following excerpt is on Nathaniel K. Fairbank (1829-1903), the millionaire mogul who made a fortune as a lard processor and soap maker (N. K. Fairbank & Co.) , by-products of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. His Fairy Soap was extremely popular. Fairbank was also the owner of the land now known as “Streeterville” in Chicago, a founder and president of the elite Chicago Club, a founder of the Commercial Club of Chicago, an original trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, president of The University of Chicago, a major trader on the Chicago Board of Trade, a member of The Chicago Literary Club, and a benefactor of St. Luke’s Hospital. As far as Chicago’s early millionares go, he was honestly considered one of the good guys.

Following is a description of Mr. Fairbank from Chapter VIII. 

 

NATHANIEL K. FAIRBANK

 

Nathaniel Kellogg Fairbank

At this age in which so many seekers after wealth are devoting their lives, before and after maturity, to the hoarding of riches, it is restful and comforting to find a man who is satisfied that he has in his possession enough of this world’s goods.

 Nathaniel K. Fairbank is one of Chicago’s most wealthy men, but he has retired from business pursuits, and is enjoying life as a man who has done his duty, and has learned what follows in the consistent order of such events. To say the least, it is refreshing to note such men for they are like the angel visits scarce. But he should not be eulogized simply because he is a sane man, but should be counted in as one of the select who see further than the common millionaires, who are not strong enough to discontinue accumulating, and are not willing to take a rest and let some one else have a chance.

 

Mr. Fairbank was born in 1829, in the town of Sodus, Wayne County, New York, consequently he has now reached the age when he can look back upon a long life of work, successful results, perhaps some mistakes and not a few of good deeds rendered to the human family.

His personal appearance is strikingly pleasing. An intelligent brow, with eyes direct in expression, denoting a tendency to generalization rather than to special observation, a nose somewhat Roman in outline, but modified enough to escape the accusation of carrying pet ideas to extremes, yet prominent enough to make him appear at times a trifle stubborn, a mouth bespeaking tenderness and refinement, all of which are set in a framework of snow-white hair and whiskers, make him a conspicuous personage among Chicago’s enterprising sons.

  Mr. Fairbank has been a resident of Chicago since 1855. He amassed his large fortune in the lard and oil refining business, but he made his first start in industrial life as a bricklayer, when only fifteen years of age. This fact was probably due to his environments at that time, for, according to the record of his life, he soon changed his employment to that of bookkeeper in a flouring mill, in Rochester, New York, where he afterward became apartner in the firm.

His course was ever onward, and his aim was for the attainment of success. The success that would make him comfortable, and place him in a position to lift up humanity. At the age of twenty-six he came to Chicago as western representative of a grain commission house of New York. In this position he remained over ten years. It is inferred that he accumulated money in the business for he is next recorded as a member of the newly organized firm of Smeadley, Peck & Company, and as furnishing capital for the building which was erected for the great enterprise lard and oil refining. For four years business was carried on successfully, when fire destroyed the plant, causing a loss of $50,000. But the next year, 1870, a new building, which is now standing at the corner of Eighteenth and Blackwell streets, was constructed at a cost of $80,000, and the business grew more prosperous, becoming one of Chicago’s most substantial enterprises.

 

Although Mr. Fairbank says that he is naturally inclined to be somewhat indolent, it is very plain that he had a very nice conception of the manner in which it should be indulged; for he seems not to have let this little weakness exist without ample provision. ‘ ‘ Life is a search after power. ” And, if it is a fact, that wherever the mind aims suitable environments follow, this man has drawn, the elements of a power for certain ends, by the means of intellectual guidance. ‘ ‘ When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse. ” Goethe said, ‘ ‘ What we wish for in youth comes in heaps on us in our old age. ” Here is a proof of this statement. Mr. Fairbank courted ease of the princely style; consequently he never borrowed trouble, kept to the even path, and was served by his instincts. He may call himself a man of luck, but, as ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, hunters to the forest, soldiers to the frontier, Mr. Fairbank has proven the same law of  cause and effect, and the force of intellect over environment.

 

Having gained wealth, he commenced at once to show his interest in public matters relating to the building up of the city, and has proved a powerful factor in that capacity. He was one of the prime movers in carrying out the late George B. Carpenter’s conception of  building Central Music Hall, a structure located on the corner of State and Randolph streets. This building, which has a number of office rooms, is occupied by the Chicago Conservatory of Music, Professor Cohn’s School of Languages, and by a great number of physicians. In 1879 Mr. Fairbank presented the plans for Central Music Hall before the public; and, by the influence of his endorsement, capitalists quickly invested in stock. There is probably no better paying building in the city; stockholders realizing about two per cent, a month net profits.

 

The Newsboys’ Home was at one time under the cloud of a heavy mortgage, but Mr. Fairbank took it in hand and soon raised the money to release it. Always giving liberally himself, he inspired others to do the same. In this way he performed double acts of charity; for there are wealthy men who are never inclined to bestow favors unless prompted by the example of  other rich men, or by the desire for public applause. ‘ ‘ Human nature grows by what it feeds upon, and if the material side be over-fed it will expand at the expense of the spiritual.” In this way the habit of accumulating money grows stronger and stronger with those who have neither the inclination nor desire to relieve the wants of the afflicted.  

The Theatre; Its Early Days in Chicago By James Hubert McVicker

Title: The Theatre; Its Early Days in Chicago: A Paper Read Before the Chicago Historical Society, February 19, 1884 By James Hubert McVicker

Location: Google Books     Date Published: 1884

James McVicker (1822-1896) was one of Chicago’s foremost theatrical managers. At the time of his death, the McVicker’s Theater was the oldest in the city, although it had burned to the ground twice. The first McVicker’s Theater (located on Madison near Dearborn) was built in 1857 and burned in the Great Fire of 1871. The former actor was undeterred and rebuilt his theater on a grander scale.

In this excerpt, McVicker relates the story of theater in Chicago’s earliest days. 

James Hubert McVicker

Doubtless there are now living in Chicago those who were present at the first theatrical performance given in the city, but dates are seldom in ” our memory locked,” and hence I have found it impossible to fix the exact time, yet for all purposes of history it will be sufficiently marked.

The original of this first application for a theatrical license, together with others covering a period of nine years from 1837, were found in the only vault belonging to the city, which withstood the flames of October 9, 1871, and are the only authentic records bearing on the subject of the early amusements of the city which I have been able to avail myself of. Among these applications is one asking for a permit to erect a ” show of flying horses,” and that the application should be in keeping with  the show, it is addressed to the M-A-R-E of Chicago. No response from his Honor is on record.

The first public entertainment, of any kind, to which an admission fee was charged, and of which any record can be found, took place on Monday, February 24, 1834, but a few months after the Pottawatomies had consented to give up their land to the white man. On the 18th day of that month the Democrat contained this advertisement: ” Ladies and gentlemen are most respectfully informed that Mr. Barnes, professor de tours amusants, has arrived in town and will give an exhibition at the house of Mr. D. Graves, on Monday evening next.” This entertainment was given in two parts : the first being feats of the Fire King; the second a display of ventriloquism and legerdemain, which Mr. Barnes said were original and ” too numerous to mention.” The performance commenced at early candle light and the admission to it was fifty cents. While the classic tragedian would not admit that this entertainment was in any way connected with his art, and might claim that it should not be blended with a history of the drama, it must nevertheless be accepted as a starting point, even if his professional pride receives a snub. The second recorded performance was given June 11, 1834, when another ventriloquist, Mr. Kenworthy, according to the Democrat, delighted the inhabitants. On the 1gth of June of the same year a concert was given by Mr. C. Blisse. Entertainments, shows and circuses preceded dramatic performance, of which the first mention bears date May 29, 1837, when Messrs. Dean and McKinney applied to the Council for a license to “open a theatre in some suitable building for the term of one or more months as the business may answer.” The authorities were asked to make the license payable weekly, but the request was denied and the Council named $100 as the amount, which sum must have dismayed the applicants, for they abandoned Chicago, and no dramatic performance took place under their management.

 

 

In this vault was found the following application, which is undoubtedly the first in reply to which a license was issued :

“Chicago, October 17, 1837. The subscribers respectfully petition the Honorable the Mayor and Council of the city of Chicago for a license to perform plays in said city. They respectfully represent that this establishment is intended to afford instruction as well as amusement; that they are encouraged and patronized by the leading portion of the inhabitants of the city, who are interested in their success; that they propose to remain here during the winter and that they make no calculation to receive more money in the city than what they shall expend during their stay and therefore they trust that in offering a rate for license these facts may be taken into consideration. Isherwood & McKinzie, the petitioners, request this license for six months, if agreeable to the Board.” The Council fixed the rate at $125.00 for the year, which amount the petitioners paid, while protesting that it was unjust to ask so much.

The first home of the overtaxed drama was the historic Sauganash Hotel located on the southeast corner of Lake and Market. During September, 1837, its proprietor, John Murphy, had vacated it, to move into his new house on the west side of the river and Isherwood & McKinzie converted the dining room of the Sauganash into a temple where Thalia, Melpomene and Terpsichore found their first Chicago home. The room was provided with rough seats for about two hundred persons. The floor was level, and a few common chairs were placed in front for ladies and their escorts. Mr. Isherwood, one of the managers, is still living; and, until within the past five or six years, occupied the position of scenic artist of Wallack’s Theatre, New York. He painted the first scenery known to Chicago. I wrote him with the hope of reaching some exact dates, but as he has only memory to rely upon, I learned nothing but what I had obtained from others ; though he replied in a very interesting letter, ending thus :

“In concluding this rambling, epistle, I could almost say with King Lear ‘ you do me wrong to take me from the grave.’ I am eighty years of age, and, with best wishes, remain yours truly, H. Isherwood.”

Photo Credit: New York Public Library Digital Gallery, Digital ID 99215; Photographer, Fred D. Foss

Cartoons By Bradley, Cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News

Book Title: Cartoons By Bradley, Cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News

Location: Internet Archive     Date published: 1917

In July of 1899, Luther Bradley (1853-1917) joined the staff of the Chicago Daily News and he became one the newspaper’s most famous and beloved political cartoonists. This book was published after his death. It includes a biography and remembrance written by Daily News editor, Henry Justin Smith and a generous selection of his beautifully drawn cartoons reflecting the issues of the period. 

Bradley

 

Luther Daniels Bradley, whose cartoons commanded admiration

everywhere, was never personally conspicuous. He did not make speeches, or sit on platforms, or seek office. His very portrait was almost unknown. In an age when publicity comes easily to less eminent men, when, indeed, popular persons are so much written about that their work is less known than their way of working, Luther Bradley managed to live unobtrusively. Yet he had friends, thousands of friends who never saw him, but who felt that in his cartoons he spoke directly to them. They wrote to him, not as “Dear sir,” but as “Dear Mr. Bradley.” In the scrapbooks wherein he methodically pasted every cartoon he had published for the last seventeen years, he laid away scores of these letters, some from people of note, the majority from that vast body of “plain citizens” he loved to serve. They said in these letters he had “helped”‘ them. They asked his advice. Mothers poured out to him their thoughts. Little boys sent drawings painfully copying his style. He laid all these tenderly away where he could see them again. They were his banquets.

 

THIS picture, drawn by John T. McCutcheon, the noted cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune, was published in that newspaper January 11, 1917, the day of Luther D. Bradley's funeral. The tribute was characteristic of Mr. McCutcheon's sincerity in his friendships. Equally sincere was his spoken corrunent at the time of Mr. Bradley's death: "He was great all the time… not just now and then."

Walks About Chicago, 1871-1881 By Franc Bangs Wilkie

Full Title: “Walks about Chicago,” 1871-1881: And Army and Miscellaneous Sketchesby Franc Bangs Wilkie

Location: Google Books     Date Published: 1882

The satiric stories and essays written by Franc Wilkie (1832-1892) and contained in this book provide an interesting view of post-Civil War America. Wilkie had been a war correspondent for the New York Timesand during the Civil War he accompanied General Ulysses S. Grant from the taking of Fort Henry to the Battle of Vicksburg. In 1863, Wilkie joined the staff of the Chicago Times and remained with the newspaper until 1882. Wilkie was extremely versatile as a writer, and his satire was some of the best.

The following excerpt gives Wilkie’s view of a strange land, known by locals as the “Nord Seite” of Chicago. I think you’ll enjoy it.

NORD SEITE

THE geography, customs, productions, people, and so forth, of a new country, are always full of interest.

Once, when I was traveling about, I reached a place known among its inhabitants as ” Nord Seite.” I spent some time there. I found much to interest a traveler. Nord Seite is situated in about the same latitude as Chicago, and is about 10 degrees of longitude west of Washington. Its population is about 60,000.

To reach it from Chicago, one can take rail to New York; thence go by steamer to Alaska, via Cape Horn; from Alaska south to about the 42nd parallel; thence east by stage and rail, 2,000 miles, to Nord Seite.

Nord Seite has an immense body of water en one side, and a river whose main stream and one branch inclose two of the remaining sides. Nord Seite is, therefore, a sort of peninsula.

The river referred to is deep and sluggish. It can not be forded. It can not be crossed in small boats on account of its exhalations. These are a combination of sulphuretted hydrogen, the odor of decaying rodents, and the stench of rotting brassica. In crossing this river a sort of contrivance is resorted to, which is termed by the natives, Briicke.

This Briicke is not always reliable. Sometimes one can get over the river by its means, oftener he can’t. The Briicke is built of wood and iron, painted red, and at a distance looks not unlike a stumpy sort of rainbow.

The inhabitants of Nord Seite consist of men, women, children, dogs, billy-goats, pigs, cats, and fleas. In estimating the proportion of each of these classes, it is found that the fleas vastly outnumber all the others. They are not only numerous, but full-grown and vicious.

In the warm season a Nord-Seiter has a lively time in flea-hunting. In hunting this game the Nord Seiter shuts himself or herself in a tight room and strips to the skin. Then the flea is pursued and captured.

Most all the Nord Seite dogs are good flea hunters. They commence hunting fleas when young, without any instruction. Pretty much all their lives are spent in pursuit of this pastime.

The human population of Nord Seite is industrious. In the flea and fly time especially.

 

 

 

The business of the inhabitants of Nord Seite consists of a great variety of pursuits and occupations. These pursuits and occupations divide themselves naturally into two large classes. The first includes every other male resident of Nord Seite. These are engaged in selling a liquid which tastes something like a mixture of hops and rosin. It is the color of amber, and is surmounted with a white, yeasty, flaky coronal. The other class includes every man, woman and child in Nord Seite. This class is engaged in drinking what the other class is engaged in selling.

From the large admixture of hops in this universal beverage, it results that the residents of North Seite are very fond of dancing.

The ladies of North Seite are usually feminine in dress, and oftentimes so in fact and appearance. They mostly wear their hair braided in small plaits, which are again braided in larger plaits, which are braided into still larger ones; and these are once more braided into a large braid, which is twisted, and coiled, and wound and intertwined in, and around, and through, and about, and over, and under itself, till it resembles a riddle tied in a Gordian knot, and the whole enveloped in a rebus which nobody ever can guess.

When a Nord-Seite lady once gets her hair done up in this complex and elaborate style, she never takes it down. She couldn’t if she would. The only method of removing this style of coiffure is to shave the head.

Intercommunication in Nord-Seite is carried on in various ways. Many of the inhabitants go on foot. Others have a small two-wheeled vehicle, to which are harnessed a dog and a small boy, or a little girl.

They also have tracks upon which run vehicles which they term Vagens. The Vagen is drawn by two horses.

The Vagen is used principally for the conveyance of passengers carrying goods. It will answer to what would be an express-car in this country, in which each man should ride carrying whatever article he wished expressed to any point.

I have been in a Vagen in which a woman, on one side of me, carried on her lap a clothes-basket; in which were four heads of cabbage ; six links of imported sausage ; one bottle of goose-grease ; two loaves of a brown, farinaceous product termed Brodt; a calf’s liver; some strips of what is known as Schweinfleisch; a half peck of onions ; a string of garlic ; and a large piece of a fragrant compound known as Limburger Kdse.

On the other side of me was a woman with a baby in her arms ; a small child on each knee ; two other children, a trifle larger, on their knees, on each side of her, looking out of the windows of the Vagen ; and five other children, of various sizes, picturesquely grouped about her knees and on the floor. The same sort of thing was seen all through the Vagen. Each woman either had from four to nine children, or a basket that filled half the vehicle. Sometimes a woman would have the basket and the children both.

A very common patroness of the Vagen was a woman with two buckets of swill, carried by a yoke from the neck. The woman with the swill buckets was very common. She usually made her appearance at every third square. She didn’t generally look very attractive. If possible, she smelt a trifle worse than she looked.

The’ Nord-Seiter is economical. No matted if he earn nothing per diem, he always has enough to buy a mug of the amber fluid, and have five cents over, which he puts away in the bottom of an old stocking.

There is no newspaper published in Nord Seite. But there is a brewery there. So is there a distillery. There is likewise a place where they sell a beverage known as Lager Bier.

When two or three Nord-Seiters are conversing confidentially on a subject which they wish nobody else to hear, their whisper is about as loud as the tone in which a Chicago man would say, “Oh, Bill!” to an acquaintance two blocks away.

When two or three Nord-Seiters converse in an ordinary tone of voice, the result is a tremendous roar. A stranger would think them engaged in a hot, terrific altercation.

A Nord-Seite Vagen is an epitome of one hundred and eight distinct odors, of which onions constitute the dominant.

Some of the Nord-Seiters speak a little broken English.

 

 

 

There are many other curious things about Nord Seite and its population. Any body who has time and money should visit the place. The people are hospitable. Any one can visit them; reside with them as long as necessary; study their customs, and enjoy himself very thoroughly.

Fifty Years a Journalist By Melville Elijah Stone

Full Title: Fifty Years a Journalist by Melville Elijah Stone

Location: Google Books     Date: 1921

Melville E. Stone, 1918

Melville Elijah Stone  (1848-1929) was the founder and editor of the Chicago Daily News. The paper began publishing on Christmas Day in 1875 and cost a penny. In 1888 Stone sold his interest in the paper to his good friend and partner, Victor F. Lawson and set sail for Europe.

“In 1893, Stone became the general manager of the Associated Press of Illinois, which later became the national association, the Associated Press, in New York after absorbing the United Press. Stone extended the foreign service of the Associated Press by established bureaus in the European capitals and speaking with foreign heads of state to secure adequate news and telegraphic facilities and services, even convincing the Czar of Russia to abolish censorship of the foreign press.

“Stone resigned from the AP in 1918, after 25 years of service. Until his death in February, 1929, he held the honorary position of counselor to the association. Stone penned an autobiography in 1921, entitled, Fifty Years a Journalist.”

–Newberry Library

The stories in Stone’s autobiography are priceless. Following is an excerpt from the section on his early life in Chicago.

Boyhood in Chicago

It was during the campaign of 1860 that we moved back to Chicago, my father being appointed pastor of the Des PIaines Street Methodist Church. He served there for two years. We moved into the city from Naperville, a distance of thirty miles, by the usual lumber wagon, my mother and her children sitting high up on the furniture and my father walking a good share of the distance. He found a comfortable home, and we two sons resumed school life. I shall never forget a wise decision made by my father. Mother had traces of aristocracy still surviving, I suppose, as a heritage from her Irish “royal line.” She thought her boys should attend a private school, or have a tutor. “No,” said my father, “I have laboured for years under a distinct misfortune. Sunday after Sunday I have risen in the pulpit and preached a sermon, and there was no one to tell me that I did not know what I was talking about. It will be much better for our children to attend a public school, where they will be drilled in democratic notions, and where they will find independent companions to challenge their ideas.” And so it was settled. I was sent to the Foster Grammar School.

It was necessary to help the family exchequer. I secured a position to carry the Chicago Tribune to its subscribers in a certain quarter of the city. This meant that I must be out of bed about four o’clock every morning, go to the newspaper office for my bundle of papers, and walk out to serve them. I reached home about eight o’clock, breakfasted, and was at school at nine. For a time I also had an afternoon task, the sweeping of the floor of the Board of Trade rooms, which were almost knee-deep with wheat and oats and corn after the day’s session closed. I found time to attend on certain evenings a Palestine Class for the study of the geography of the Holy Land, and a lodge of Good Templars of which I became chief officer. And yet I was pursuing my studies so earnestly that for the year I ranked second in my class and was awarded the “Foster Medal.”

I entered the Chicago High School, but after a year was forced to drop out for a twelve-month. I never finished the course. At the close of his two years’ service, my father was sent to the church at Kankakee, and thither I followed him. I bought and sold old paper and rags for a time, and then secured a position in the leading dry-goods store of the place. Outside of the town there were two or three settlements of French Canadians. I soon picked up their patois and was able to serve them as a clerk in our store. One day there was a public examination for teachers’ certificates, conducted under the auspices of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I attended, answered the questions, and was adjudged fit to teach. I was then fifteen years old. I was offered a school in a remote corner of the country, but on condition that I should “board around,” that is, that I should live with one family or another a week at a time. On reflection I declined. Then I learned of a patent gong doorbell, for which there seemed to be a market. Doorbells were a novelty in Illinois in those days. I bought a stock of the bells and the necessary tools to affix them and set out. I peddled them from house to house with success for several months.

My father was next appointed to the church at Morris, Illinois. It was now the early spring of 1864. The Civil War was in full swing. I enlisted as a drummer and was anxious to “go to the front,” but my father promptly cancelled the enlistment, as he had an undoubted right to do. His health was breaking and he retired from the ministry and engaged in the manufacture of saw-mill tools with his brother in Chicago. While in Morris there was a charming little girl who was running about the place, and who, in later years, became famous as Jessie Bartlett Davis, the opera singer.

Back in Chicago I began the study of law. I read Walker’s “Introduction to American Law,” Blackstone, Greenleaf, Parsons, and other standard works, and was in a fair way to pass the bar. My mother dissuaded me. I then went into my father’s factory and divided my time in aiding the bookkeeping and in learning the machinist trade. I qualified to run a lathe and planer and to do a certain amount of work with a file and a vise.

…In the midsummer of 1864 Mr. Ballentine, commercial editor of the Chicago Tribune and father of a schoolmate of mine, asked me to help him in his work. This resulted in a short period of service as a reporter, although I was but sixteen years of age.

There were the makings of big men in Chicago at that time, but we did not know how big they were to become. For example, I used often to take our family washing to a neighbouring laundry. This establishment was maintained by one George M. Pullman who had just invented a sleeping car. He had set up a laundry to wash the bed linen of the cars, and took in consumers’ work to help eke out expenses. He became one of the great millionaires of the nation.

I shall never forget a morning in April, 1865. We lived on West Madison Street in Chicago, and it was my habit to rise early and get the morning paper. I did so on this particular morning and came bounding through the house, announcing the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. I dressed at once and started for the Tribune office. When I reached there the street was crowded, and the windows were filled with bulletins announcing the death of Mr. Lincoln, Secretary Seward, General Grant, and Andrew Johnson. The wild burst of rage was beyond description. Unable to enter the Tribune Building because of the crowd, I made my way around the corner to the Matteson House, which was located on the corner of Dearborn and Randolph streets a block away. In it was an ancient lounging rotunda. It was packed. Very soon I heard the crack of a revolver, and a man fell in the centre of the room. His assailant stood perfectly composed with a smoking revolver in his hand, and justified his action by saying: “He said it served Lincoln right.” There was no arrest. No one would have dared arrest the man. He walked out a hero. I never knew who he was.

Also recommended is: “M.E.S.,”: His Book, a Tribute and a Souvenir of the Twenty-five Years, 1893-1918, of the Service of Melville E. Stone as General Manager of the Associated Press By Associated Press, 1918 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chicago Race Riots, July 1919 by Carl Sandburg

Full Title: The Chicago Race Riots, July, 1919  by Carl Sandburg, Walter Lippmann

Location: Google Books     Date: 1919

MR. JULIUS ROSENWALD INTERVIEWED

At Sears, Roebuck & Co., where the volume of business is $200,000,000 a year, where they send out 8,000, ooo copies a year of the most widely circulated book in the United States—the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogue —there sits in the administration office the president of the company, Julius Rosenwald.

In the midst of an array of wall photographs of Greek parthenons and Egyptian sphinxes there is a large photograph of Booker T. Washington, the negro race leader. Near at hand is a remarkable collection of books on the race question.

“If we say the negro must stay in slums and shall not invade white residence districts, then we shall have to make more stringent health laws to protect us from the evils that go with slums,” said Mr. Rosenwald. “If we say the negro must continue to live in slums, we must prepare for a brighter crime rate.

“They came here because we asked them to come, because they were needed for industrial service. There is no solution for the problem apparent now. That is all the more reason both sides must be fair. It will do no good to see red.

“With immigration restricted, it will be necessary for business to seek another source of labor supply. This exists in the colored population. When they settle here and become workers in the community they have a right to a place to live amid conditions that insure health and sanitation.

“I know from experience that the negroes are not anxious to invade white residence districts any more than white people are willing that they should come.”

The face of Julius Rosenwald softened.

“The negro is the equal of the white man in brains,” said Mr. Rosenwald. “I have talked with men who said they started with a theory that the negro is inferior, but when the facts were arrived at, there was no other conclusion to be derived from those facts than that the colored man is the equal in intelligence of the white man.

“I attended the graduation ceremonies of this year’s class at Hampton institute in May, the fifty-first anniversary of this negro institution. I heard Columbus K. Simango tell ‘The South African’s Story.’ Here he was, straight from the jungles of Africa, a full blooded negro who came direct from Melsetter, South Rhodesia, to Hampton institute. His speech, his markings in classes, his general behavior showed intelligence and competency. He is a specimen of what can be accomplished by education.

“He didn’t know he wanted an education till he met a missionary who told him about Hampton. He walked 200 miles to a port, and was started for America three times and then turned back by authorities. He arrived in America a grown young man, unable to read or write. And now he is able to pass any college examinations in America.

“Another speaker was a Fisk university man, Isaac Fisher. He has taken thirty-two prizes offered by newspapers and magazines in competitions open to all without regard to color. While living in Arkansas, he wrote to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat the twelve best reasons why Missouri is the best state to live in, and was awarded the prize. Everybody’s Magazine had a contest with 3,000 competitors, and the award of $1,000 was made to Isaac Fisher, a type of the pure negro, a little thin fellow who is all intelligence.”

Mr. Rosenwald quoted Walter Hines Page, a southerner, ambassador to Great Britain during the late war, “The most expensive thing we can do is not to educate the negro.”

He quoted Booker Washington, from memory, as saying that in some southern states it was found that $16 per capita was spent on the education of white children in the public schools and $1.29 yearly on the colored (children, and Washington’s comment that such a dis- ^. parity presumed too much on the intelligence of the eager [blacks.

There are now more than 300 Rosenwald rural schools in operation in southern states, 300 more partially established and 400 others projected. They are maintained by three contributors, Mr. Rosenwald, state treasuries and miscellaneous donors.

Magazines of a Market-metropolis By Herbert Easton Fleming

Full Title: Magazines of a Market-metropolis: Being a History of the Literary Periodicals and Literary Interests of Chicago  by Herbert Easton Fleming

Location: Google Books     Date: 1906

With a suggestion in its name of the bright give-and-take of afternoon teas, Four O’Clock was conspicuous among the original magazines expressing the attitude of certain literary workers, pen-and-ink artists, and dabblers in art at Chicago in the late nineties. Its descriptive subtitle proclaimed it to be “a monthly magazine of original writings,” and its motto was “Sincerity, beauty, ease, cleverness.” Most of its contents were from Chicago writers. Not all were so original and clever, nor so marked by ease and beauty of style, as to be of special literary value, though some had a degree of merit. The “sincerity” was its expression of that vague spiritual quality known as the artist soul. In illustrations, however, the periodical was original and specially attractive. The reproductions of drawings, done so as to give them the effect of originals, appeared on leaves of special texture, pasted into the magazine. This device gave the periodical distinctive aesthetic values. Young artists, a majority of them students at the Art Institute, did most of this illustrating. Among the illustrators was Carl Werntz, who is now the head of the Art Academy, an independent art school in Chicago. Four O’Clock was started some time after the Chap-Book had reached the height of its career in Chicago. No. I was dated February, 1897. With the seventy-first number, December 1902, Four O’Clock was merged in Muse, another of the art-spirit literary periodicals, which had grown out of still another called Philharmonic. Literary workers who recall these magazines characterize them as dilettante ephemerals.

Note: This is one of my favorite resources on early Chicago magazines. But, be advised. This was Mr. Fleming’s dissertation. There is not one illustration in the entire paper.

Cartoons Magazine edited by H. H. Windsor

Full Title: Cartoons Magazine, edited by Henry Havens Windsor; Published by H.H. Windsor

Location: Google Books     Date Published: 1919

Up an Alley to a Wild Place

The Dill Pickle club in Chicago is where visitors from the country and New York are taken to have shivers and shocks. Most of Chicago’s best people go there, and all of its worst people.

Lecturers (who once were professors of comparative ethics at the University of Copenhagen or Bayreuth, and are now deans of lunchrooms or prominent night watchmen) deftly set aside the laws of gravitation and attraction, and show where Newton and Galileo were wrong. The drama is dragged upward by the hair of its head, and a successful evening at the club is measured by the number of women who leave before the meeting is half over.

To get to the Dill Pickle, you go through a tight passageway (too narrow for a fat secret service man to get through) into a blind alley, and continue westward till you come to a garbage can. Right alongside this can is the doorway into the club.

One Saturday night a Chicago detective was showing a friend from Kansas City all the tough places in town. Finally, they came in sight of the Dill Pickle Club, where an affinity masquerade was effervescing. The ex-garage in which the club is housed was brilliantly lighted; clouds of cigaret smoke poured from the windows, and the strains of an orchestra almost in tune cleft the night air.

“There’s one wild place, Jake,” said the detective.

“Tough, eh?” responded the visitor.

“You said it. Every guy that goes into that hall is searched for concealed weapons—and if they find a guy who ain’t got any concealed weapons, they give him some.” John Nicholas Beffel.

Popular Mechanics cover (1904)

Cartoons Magazine, published monthly beginning in 1912 at 6 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago,  specialized in social and political cartoons wrapped  with editorial from around the world. Poems, essays and jokes (as the above excerpt illustrates) framed the cartoons, but the whole point of the magazine was to feature cartoonists. Chicago Tribunecartoonists John T. McCutcheon and Clare Briggs were frequent contributors. Editor Henry Haven Windsor (1859-1924) was also the founder and first editor of Popular Mechanics Magazine.

  

More information on Cartoons Magazine:

 Cartooning: Cartoons Magazine January 1916 from ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive