Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-10-21
ST.. LOUIS AND CHICAGO.
Some Studies in the Two Large Cities
of the Southwest and the
Northwest.

predict q great growth Immediately
upon the completion of railroad connection
with the city Of Mexico. They count more
upon Mexican trade than they do upon the
cultivation of the generous soil Of the great,
sparsely settled state of Missouri, and while
they confess that bright, pushing Kansas
City will probably become a formidable
rival, they nevertheless insist that st. Louis,
with her older business connections, will
draw the most of the new trade with Mexico
to herself. Kansas City, on the other hand,
with her railroads reaching out from all
points of the compass, confidently expects to
get the lions share of MeMco's trade, and
Chicago is hoping that she may get more
than St Louis.
st. Louis does not, however, look solely to
Mexico for her future advancement Speak
ing of the march of the armies of immigration
past Chicago and up into the far northwest
immigration upon which Chicago bases her
hope Of enormous trade in the future-St
Louis business men predict that thousands of
the new settlers will yet find the north winds
too severe, and will seek the warmer latitude
of Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, where
lands may be acquired on as favorable terms
as in the colder northwest; and it is believed
that every railroad opened southwark will
enlargeSt Louis.
But St Louis has within her own limits a
means Of helping herself that is greater than
all these. Her heavens are hung with black.
In winter, when thousands of firesides require
warmth at the hearth, a pail of smoke shuts
out sunlight and makes the brightest days
gloomy; and in summer there is little relief,
for there are still hundreds Of factories belch-
ing volumes of smoke, and to this are added
clouds Of dust from the streets. The city can
rid herself Of this curse Of smoke. She is try
ing TO remedy the dust evil. In this she has
undertaken an4erculean task. Her streets are
wide, and west of Tenth street THERE'S hardly
adweiling that is not surrounded by green
sward. This makes beautiful city, but not a
densely populated city that can pay such taxes
as stone pavements and frequent sweeping
impose. Her streets have been macadamized
and plastered over with asphalt again and
again, only with the result of making the
mud deeper in rainy weather and the clouds
of dust more dense in time of drought; and
at length it has been determined that the
city shall be paved with stone, at whatever
cost. The work has been well begun ON the
riparian streets with cubes of syenite granite
about q foot square, and it is tine intention
gradually to carry this pavement from the
levee westward to TIE city limits. The whole
twelve miles of water front may not be thus
efPectually paved for quarter of CEN
fury to come, but the progress that has
been made within the past year indi-
Gates the proper paving of the business
part of the city as far westward as Twenty
third street, within the next five years. To
Danish smoke viii require nervier legislation
than that which has yielded granite blocks
for pavements. It will require legislation
under which smoke consumption shall be en-
forced The subject has been agitated, and
it has been pointed out that thousands of
men who live in other cities would dwell in
st. Louis but for her intolerable smoke, and
some public spirited merchants have expert
mented until they have brought about per-
feet combustion, even of the bituminous coal
that is used here almost exclusively.
tits the testimony of those who have used
anthracite coal, and whose chimneys have
not given offense, that hard coal at$13
ton is cheaper, all things considered, than
soft coal at S4.50 But there is gigantic
soft coal interest in St Louis It OWLS the
vast coal mines of southern Illinois, and it
will insist that st Louis shall consume that
tituminous coal even if all her table linen is
covered with lampblack by it. But the BIZ
luminous coal interest may yet concede the
necessity for perfect combustion, and may
favor an ordinance of the city council re.
quiring every householder and every owner
of a factory to consume his smoke
Chicago has brighter skies. She burns an
thracite coal; and, besides, she is not in the
Mississippi valley, but on the shore of a great
lake, whose winds blow her smoke away
She has little dust, for almost every square
yard of her twelve miles of lake front is
paved with cedar blocks. She is more COM
pactly built than ST. Louis, and therefore
better able to pay for street paving and
sweeping.
Both cities are provided with park room
for the population that they may have five
centuries hence. Chicago's pride is in Lin
coin park, on her northern limit, extending
two miles along the shore of the lake. She
has expended large sums on system of boule-
wards on her outskirts, all as level as ball
room floor, and shaded and resembling the
Mall in New York's Central park. The
parks in st. Louis are hills and dales, less
costly than those in Chicago but naturally
more beautiful The most elaborate Tower
Grove park, on the southwestern limit of the
city, in some respects resembles Brooklyn'S
Prospect park. 1t is q fit frontispiece to
the charming Missouri Botanical Gardens
justly the pride of ST. Louis. These grounds
are popularity known as Shaw's garden. They
are actually Shaw's cemetery, and in them is
already erected Shaw's mausoleum. In a
modest brick house near the granite gate
dwelis Mr.. Henry Shaw, retired st. Louis
merchant who has just passed his S0th year
For many years past he has made botany his
chief pleasure, and year by year he has added
to his horticultural treasures specimens Tor
which his agents have ransacked the world,
until it is said that ia his garden you may see
every plant and flower that grows The
grounds are handsomely laid out and paved,
and the hot-hoeises are extensive. Mf. Shaw
! must have spent more than million dollars
on the place. He says that it costs him $4,000
year to maintain it In aconspicuous. place
he has erected fre-proof museum wherein
are portraits and statutes of distinguished
botanists, one wherein, no doubt, the city of
st. Louis will set up a statute of Henry
Shaw-for he hiss bequeathed the garden to
| the city.
ST. Louis, it need hardly be said, takes a
deep interest in every measure to improve
the Mississippi river. In June last, when the
rise of the river was greater than it had been
for many years before, all the rich bottom
lands for hundred miles up and down the
loft hank of the river were oyerf1oYed and