Perth Amboy evening news., 1921-09-02
BEAUTY AND THE BEEF
BY Frederic j. Haskin.

Ill, Sept. 1.-THE infection of ar
tistic and literary bacilli, which has been dis
turbing the sound commercial constitution OF
Chicago for some years past, has broken out IN a
new spot. The spot is somewhere in the region
north of the Chicago River and between the
Lake and State street. 1t is a little shop, which
used to be called the Old Tower Book Shop.
Apparently the book-selling didn't pay, and the
shop now sells a variety of arty and artistic
wares too numerous to enumerate. 1t is also the
headquarters of an organization for the pur-
pose of finding jobs for women writer's and edi-
tors, managed by Miss Ruby Black.
But its real distinction is neither as a shop
nor as an agency for the distribution OF beauti-
once a week, poets and ~poetesses meet and read
their works to themselves and each other and
any ono else who cares to listen. Some say that
there are really two meetings a week at TINS
place. According to this story, when the word
went round that any poet could get an aualehce
for his verses at this place, the poets poured In
so rapidly and numerously that there simply
was not time for all of them to read all that
they had to give the world. Besides that, a lot
of people came who didn't really appreciate
poetry at all. So a circle was organized, ana
now there is another meeting every week to
which only the really elect are ADMITTED. AT
least, so they say.
This reading circle seems to consist chiefly OF
poets of whom the world at large has not yet
heard, although there are one or Two OF them
who publish regularly. 1t includes some poets
publish their works-who seem to have scorned
the public so far. Among these is a woman VINO
calls her poems collectively "Dlshpan Lyrlcs.
She is a woman who has spent OF most OF ner
life cooking and washing dishes, 50 they say,
and she has put into pulsing meter the thoughts
and emotions, the rebellions and hopes or the
housewife tied to humble tasks, escaping only
in her imagination. Her friends say mat her
verses would appeal to a large puohc' ou' VI
has never sought to reach 1t.
An Aesthetic Oasis.
Whether this little shop is really a nest ~
more center of Intellectual aspiration in the
greatest business place of the West. ~ IS one
more court of beauty In the city Oh peei, ~ y
more phase of the strange process by wnlch the
civ that typifes American commercialism and
money lust at it's most intense, is also pecomiHs
a CITY of poets, painters and dreamers, a city IN
which the aesthetic impulse is seen in It's most
rarefied and extravagant forms.
Perhaps the phenomenon IS not aen n,sttar of
action and reaction. Chicago is the place where
the great industrial push, which has useo mos
of Americas energy for half a century, reaenet
its greatest power. 1t may be only naturai I'M
here the reaction against commerclallsm shouio
be most marked and extreme. r,,ire
Then. too. the course or lnteilectudl eHlpito
In America seems now to be moving westWaro'
A hundred years ago Boston was the inte,lecr
tual center of America. Then it shltted 10 NeW
York. 1t probably remains there, but New YORK
is more and more becoming a mere marley :.
literary wares, while the people that make thenl
seem more and more to be Westerhers' ahu :
pecially middle westerners.
A generation ago poets and artists generally
were as scarce along the Chicago river as nsh III
the Sahara. Then a sroup OF neWspapel of
gathered there which Included several poets %
real merit and at least one good noVelisl. Ih ~
proup broke up and most of its members pc
came mere popular writer's. 1t is only within
the last few years, with the rise OF the SO.
| called Chicago school of poets, that the great
beef town has begun to get q hlghproW repu'd-
ton. $50,
Chicago. II. l.. Mencken, the eminent critic,
| Impressed by the fact that nearly all OF our
worthwhile contemporary noveIsts nave az
some time lived in Chicago, announced 10 the
world that Chicago was becoming the nterars
capital of the Western Hemisphere, He publish
ed this statement not only here, but IN a leaoihg
London weekly. The cry was taken up by
others. No doubt the case for Chicago as a cen
ter of intellectual activity has been considerably
overdrawn. The Chicago highbrows are after all
a small group or a few small groups.
Taxing Bohemia. ,,
But they do seem to be growing: Inc ~.
Pickle Club, down on Tooker Court, was long
their favorite rendezvous. 1t became a snow
place, visited by all sorts of curious people ana
it recently went into ostensible eclipse when the
government levied an amusement tax upon 1t!
The Dill Pickle Club is supposed to be closed,
any maybe it is, but meantime there is 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 profess
sional worshippers of freedom and beauty. 1t
looks as though Chicago were developing in that
section a genuine art quarter, like the Latin
quarter in Paris and Greenwich Village in New
York.
This Towering of intellect in the great city of
wealth and business is a phenomenon attended
by romantic happenings-by strange and dra-
matte social contacts of the kind that O.. Henry
liked to write about. For the wealthy folk of
Chicago, while they generally AFFECT lndllference
toward all things aesthetic and highbrow, are
often secretly curious about them. Especially is
this true of the women. Daughters of the rich
seem often to be afflicted with highbrow crav-
ings. The Dill Pickle Club began as a band of
poor poets, with a mixture of vagabonds, but
it was. not long before limousines began rolling
up to it's doors bringing fashionably dressed
women. At least one affair of the kind ro-
mancers like to write about originated there.
The daughter of a wealthy Chicago family fell in
love with a young sculptor who wears his hair
long, dispenses with a hat, and continually hurls
his scorn at the pork packers. The two became
engaged, and have been trying ever since to
overcome the opposition of the girls family to a
marriage. The sculptor has since achieved some
reputation but his hair and his radical ideas re-
main unchanged, and the uptown family cannot
stomach either.
There is a little bookshop in Chicago at which
you can buy almost any radical book, pamphlet
or periodical ever published, and 1t is said thai
this shop is financed partly by Chicago society
women-the wives of wealthy business men. II
Is a fad with them. a method of making contact
with a new world, utterly different from theil
own. SO, in more ways than one. the world OF
art and dream touches hands with that of bee
and money.