The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1888-05-24
MODEST CHICAGO.
Its Growth and Glowing Future as Seen
by Charles Dudley Warner.

by Charles Dudley Warner.
Chicago is becoming modest. Per-
haps the Inhabitants may still be able
to conceal their modesty, hut neverthe-
less they feel it. The explanation is
simple. The city has grown not only
beyond the most sanguine expectations
of those who INDUCED in the most in
fatuated hope of its future, but it has
grown beyond what they said they ex-
pected. This gives the citizens pause
-as it might an eagle that laid roc's
egg.
The fac, }, Chicago has become an
independe. organism, growing by a
combination of forces and opportuni-
ties beyond the continuance of any COM
bination of men to help or hinder, be-
yond the need of flaming circulars and
reports of boards of trade, and process
pictures. 1t has passed the danger or
the fear of rivalry, and reached the
point where the growth of any other
portion of the great Northwest, or of
any city in it (whatever rivalry that
city may show in. Industries or in COM
merce), is in some way a contribution to
the power and wealth of Chicago. To
them that have shall be given. Cities,
under fayoring conditions for local ex-
pansion, which reach certain amount
of population and wealth, grow by a
kind of natural increment, the law of
attraction, very well known in human
nature, which draws a person to an
active city of two hundred thousand
rather than to a stagnant city of one
hundred thousand. And it is 4 for
tunate thing for civilization that this
attraction is almost as strong to men of
letters as it is to men of affairs.
Chicago has, it seems to me, only re-
Gently turned this point of assured eX-
pansion, and, as l intimated, the in-
habitants have hardly yet become ac-
customed to this idea; but | believe
that the time, is near when they will be
as Indifferent to what strangers think
of Chicago as the Ncw-Y Yorkers are to
what strangers think of New York.
New York is to-day the only American
city free from this anxious note of
provincialism-tho in Boston it
rather takes the form of pity, for the
unenlightened man who doubts its
superiority; but the impartial student
of Chicago to-day has plenty of signs
of the sure growth of this metropolitan
Indifference. And yet there is still
here enough of the old Chicago stamp
to make the place interesting.
1t is everything in getting point of
view. Last summer lady of New
Orleans who had never before been out
of her native French city, and who
would look upon the whole North with
the impartial eyes of foreigner-and
more than that, with Continental eyes
81
York. (Which city did you like best?"
asked, without making myself
in the question. To my surprise, she
hesitated. This hesitation was fatal to
all my preconceived notions 1t mat
tefs not thereafter which she preferred:
she had hesitated. She was actually
comparing Chicago to New York in
her mind, as one might compare Paris
to London. The audacity of the COM
parison l saw was excused by its inno-
cence. | confess that it had never oc-
cured to me to think of Chicago in that
Continental light. ''Well," she said,
not seeing at all the humor of my re-
mark, Chicago seems to me to have
finer buildings and residences, to be
the more beautiful city; but of course
there is more in New York; it is a
greater city; and | should prefer to
live there for what / want This
naive observation sat me to thinking,
and wondered if there was a point
of view, say that of divine omniscience
and fairness, in which Chicago would
appear as one of the great cities of the
world, in fact a metropolis, by-and-by
to rival in population and wealth any
city of the seaboard. 1t has certainly
better commercial advantages, so far
as water communication and railways
go, than Paris or Pekin OF Berlin, and
a territory to supply and receive from
infinitely vaster, richer, and more.
promising than either. This territory
will have many big cities, but in the
nature of things only one of surprising
importance. And taking into account
its geographical position-a thousand
miles from the Atlantic seaboard on
the one side, and from the mountains
on the other, with the acknowledged
tendency of people and of money to it
as continental centre-it seems to
me that Chicago is to be that one.--
Haper's Magazine.