Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-10-13

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structures in the compact part of the town.
We have already named the most important
buildings destroyed. Hotels, depots, eleva-
tors. warehouses, banks, melted away like
wax.
SECOND ONLY TO THE GREAT FIRE IN LONDON.
The whole is a tale of destruction and fear
full calamity which we may well most earn
estlv pray may not have to be repeated IN
many centuries to come; we might nope
never again while the world lasts. we nave
a result of this catastrophe, city IN dark.
ness; without water; nearly ten thousand
buildings, many of them magnincent WORKS
of architecture in ruins. Very many thou
sand human beings homeless; the utter de-
struction of a large number Of invaluable
works of art the loss of property valued at
more than hundred millions of money; the
loss of many public and private Libraries, and
great numbers of public records. We doubt
whether any so great calamity has over
taken any city in the world, since the great
fire in London in Sept. 1866, two hundred
and five years ago,
The CITY WILL RISE AGAIN
1t is but due to Chicago to say that, I'M
speakably great and mournful as this calamity
is, she will speedily recover from it, more
speedily, we make no doubt than would
almost any other city of Christendom.
fully representative of the ifrepressible enter
prise Of the ninteenth century than Chicago.
She has had a number of disasterOus fires
heretofore, but she has recovered rapidly
from their effects and where has been fine
buildings were constructed magnificent ones.
So it will be now. There must needs be
great suffering and gloom and misery for
time but it will not be long till the spirit of
indomitable enterprise will recover full sway,
and not long thereafter till Chicago will have
been rebuilded, and will be finer and greater
city than before.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS.
Chicago is in ruins, but as the Evening Post
says, not by the loss of freedom, enterprise
and character in its citizens, not by wars
which exhaust the manhood as we'll as the
wealth of nations, not by any of the causes
which have left so many former centres of
civilization desolate. When we look upon
the relics of Rome and of Jerusalem, or the
waste where stood Carthage or Thebes, we
are reminded every moment that the true ruin
is in the minds and hearts of men, that the
decayed city is but the symbol of the more
terrible and hopeless decay in its people. But
Chicago has fallen only to rise again, strong
err, richer and more active than ever. Not
man among the millions who to-day regret its
desolation has any fear that it will remain
desolate day after the people of the United
States shall be able to build it again. For
the world has greatly changed since any so
great calamity ever before fell on Christian
city. The latest event which can be compar-
ed with the Chicago fire was that which des-
troyed five-sixths of London within the walls,
in 1866. 1t did not sweep so large a tract,
nor probably consumed SO much property as
this. Yet it was far more memorable event
in human history than the Chicago calamity
no hpranSp a
blow to the people of the city that suffered.
| London had to bear the burden of it almost
| alone. It's relations to the nation of which it
was the metropolis were so much less intimate
than the relations of Chicago with this coun-
try, that it may be fairly saSd that the Lon
don fire was the temporary ruin of London,
while the Chicago fire is a check to the pros
perity of the United States. The loss of prop
erty by this fire is unknown. Wild conjectures
are heard concerning it; but nearly all the
estimates are naturally made as if the value
| of the land on which the best part of the city
| was built had been destroyed. The fact is
that this land will be found, in the end, to have
! been improved in value by clearing away the
buildings and permitting reconstruction OF
| them more in accordance with the demands OF
| the day. and this improvement will go to
recompense the owners of buildings for their
| loss. 1t was SO when New York. Portland
destruction is far larger in Chicago, yet the
indomitable enterprise of that community
satisfies US that it will be so there. Each of
the estimates of actual loss that have been
made may, therefore, be safely regarded as a
great exaggeration. Chicago was not, indeed,
a we'll built city. Even in many of the best
streets, where the handsomest structures
stood, the majority of the houses were shells
filed with combustible matter, and have help
81, I,,
at most, the whole of the land on which
it stood would have been built over, on
the average, at least once; and the city would
have been greatly improved by it, This vast
work of reconstruction is now thrown upon
the beginning of the period; but it can be
done in very few years, and much better
done than if it had been done piecemeal. 1t
is obviously the interest of the whole country
and especially of the inhabitants of great
cities, to see to it that these aggregations of
people and of property be well housed. Had
there been a single street in Chicago of real
ly ''6re proof buildings, as well constructed,
for example, as the Office of the Chicago
Tribune, the flames could have been stopped
by it, and three square miles of the city saved.
While there is no other city on the continent
that is built, as Chicago seemed to be, for a
bonfire, with its streets laid in tarred wood,
and nine-tenths of its houses heaps of dry
kindling, yet the dreadful devastation wrought
by fire in SO many Of our cities, year by year
is a constant lesson Of the absolute necessity
of such buildings, in numbers sufficient to
hold front before q gale of flame, especially
in the richest streets of our business centres.
Chicago now has an opportunity to arise in
iron and stone, from the ashes of her wooden
past, and then she may stand for generations
The building of Chicago is, as we have said,
but the burning of part of our cities. The
flames have carried off in smoke or left in
glowing dust part of the value of railway
| stocks, of insurance stocks, of the bonds Of
mortgages, of the wages of the poor out of
which bread is to be bought, of the property
and business of the whole country. Let Chi
| cago take courage against this calamity by
the remembrance that the active sympathy of
men who suffer with her comes from all parts
of the country; and let all other communities
find comfort against all other local calamties
that can befall them, in the great law taught
them more clearly every year, both by civil
cation and by Christianity, "Bear we one
another's burdens"