Arizona republican., 1921-09-04

half a century, reached its greatest power. It may be only natural that here the reaction against commer, cialism should be most marked and extreme.
 Then, too, the course of intellectual moving westward. 4 hundred years ago Boston was the intellectual een- ter of America Then 1t shifted to New York. It probably remains there. but New York is more and more becoming mere market for literary wares, while the people that make them seem more and more to be westerners, and especially middle westerners.
 A generation ago poets and artists generally were as scarce along the Chicago river as fish in the Sahara. Then a group of newspaper men
 gathered there which included sew eral poets of real merit and at least one good novelist. This group broke up and most of its members became mere popular writers. It is only within the past few years with the
 rise of the so-called Chicago school
 of poets, that the great beef town
 has begun to get a highbrow reputa- | ton.
 In part this reputation has been wished upon Chicago. H. l.. Mem cken. the eminent critic. impressed i by the fact that nearly all of our | worth while contemporary novelists | have at some time lived in Chicago
 announced to the world that Chicago
 was becoming the literary capital of | the western hemisphere He publish
 ed this statement not only here. but
 in a leading London weekly. The l cry was taken up by others. No l aArshf Ha Chfea nn a
 ter of intellectual activity has been
 considerably overdrawn. The Chi cago highbrows are after all a small group or few small groups.
 Taxing Bohemia
 But they do seem to be growing.
 The Dill Pickle Club, down on Tooker
 Court, was long their favorite rende-
 zvous. It became a show place, vis- tied by all sorts of curious people,
 and it recently went into ostensible
 eclipse when the government levied
 an amusement tax cpon it.
 ] The Dill Pickle Club is supposed to
 be closed, and maby it Is but in the
 meantime there is a large area of
 the city up north of the river which
 is dotted with studio buildings, all of which are inhabited by artists. poets,
 and other professional worshippers of ! freedom and beauty. It looks as though Chicago was developing in that section a genuine art quarter like the Latin quarter in Paris and
 Greenwich Village in New York.
 This following of intellect in the
 great city of wea'th and business is
 a phenomenon attended by romatic ] happenings-by strange and drama , tic social contacts of the kind that
 O. Henry liked to write about. For 2 ! fnTr af fNhfaorrn hi frs they generally affect indifference to-
 wards all things asthetic and high
 brow are often secretly curious about
 them. Especially is this true of the n women. Daughters of the rich seem often to be afflicted with highbrov - cravings. The Dill Pickle Club be- : gan as a band of poor poets. with g | mixture of vagabonds, but 1t was not | long before limousines began rolling | up to it's doors bringing fashionably | dressed women At least one affail
 of the kinl romancers like to write . about originated there. The daugh- e ter of a wealthy Chicago family fel :, in love with a young sculptor whC - wears his hair long. dispenses with ; . hat. and continually hurls his SCOTT r at the pork packers. The two becam' d engaged and have been trying eve . since to overcome the opposition O
 the girls family 10 a marriage. Th T sculptor has since achieved som sr reputation but his hair and his radi 70 cal ideas remain unchanged. and tn ;- uptown family cannot stomach eithe s. There is a little bookshop in Chi ,- cago at which you can buy almos g any radical book. pamphlet or period Is ical ever published, and it is sail -o that this shop is financed partly b, er Chicago society women-the wives O
 the wealthy bu usiness men It is
 fad with them. method Of malIin Ia, contact with a new world, utterly diff f ferent from their own. So. in nor ,- ways than one the world of art an st dream touches hands with that O le beef and money.
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