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STUDIES IN AMERICAN POPULAR HISTORY AND CULTURE
Edited by
Jerome Nadelhaft
University of Maine
A ROUTLEDGE SERIES
 STUDIES IN AMERICAN POPULAR
HISTORY AND CULTURE
JEROME NADELHAFT, General Editor

WRITING JAZZ
Race, Nationalism, and Modern Culture in the 1920s
Nicholas M.Evans

AUTOMOBILITY
Social Changes in the American South, 1909–1939
Corey T.Lesseig

ACTORS AND ACTIVISTS

Politics, Performance, and Exchange Among Social Worlds
David A.Schlossman

STUDIES IN THE LAND

The Northeast Corner
David C.Smith

FIRST DO NO HARM
Empathy and the Writing of Medical Journal Articles
Mary E.Knatterud

PIETY AND POWER

Gender and Religious Culture in the American Colonies, 1630–1700
Leslie Lindenauer

RACE-ING MASCULINITY
Identity in Contemporary U.S. Men’s Writing
John Christopher Cunningham

CRIME AND THE NATION

Prison Reform and Popular Fiction in Philadelphia, 1786–1800
Peter Okun

FOOD IN FILM
A Culinary Performance of Communication
Jane Ferry
 DECONSTRUCTING POST-WWII NEW YORK CITY
The Literature, Art, Jazz, and Architecture of an Emerging Global Capital
Robert Bennett

RETHINKING THE RED SCARE

The Lusk Committee and New York’s Crusade against Radicalism, 1919–1923
Todd J.Pfannestiel

HOLLYWOOD AND THE RISE OF PHYSICAL CULTURE

Heather Addison

HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Romanticism, Realism, and Testimony
John Allen

NO WAY OF KNOWING
Crime, Urban Legends, and the Internet
Pamela Donovan

THE MAKING OF THE PRIMITIVE BAPTISTS

A Cultural and Intellectual History of the Antimission Movement, 1800–1840
James R.Mathis

WOMEN AND COMEDY IN SOLO PERFORMANCE

Phyllis Diller, Lily Tomlin, and Roseanne
Suzanne Lavin

THE LITERATURE OF IMMIGRATION AND RACIAL FORMATION

Becoming White, Becoming Other, Becoming American in the Late Progressive Era
Linda Joyce Brown
 POPULAR CULTURE AND THE
ENDURING MYTH OF CHICAGO,
1871–1968
Lisa Krissoff Boehm

ROUTLEDGE
New York & London
 Published in 2004 by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group.

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or
Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Copyright © 2004 Routledge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be printed or utilized in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical or other means, now know or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication data
Boehm, Lisa Beth Krissoff, 1969–
Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago, 1871–1968/Lisa Beth Krissoff Boehm.
p. cm.—(Studies in American popular history and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-94929-7 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Chicago (Ill.)—History—1875–2. Chicago (Ill.)—Public opinion. 3. Popular culture—
United States—History—19th century. 4. Popular culture—United States—History—20th
century. 5. United States—Civilization—1865–1918. 6. United States—Civilization—1918–
1945. 7. United States—Civilization—1945–8. City and town life—Illinois—Chicago—
History. 9. City and town life—United States—History. 10. Public opinion—United
States. I. Title. II. Series: American popular history and culture (Routledge (Firm))
F548.5.B54 2004
977.3′1104–dc22
2004000263

ISBN 0-203-33543-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-94929-7 (Print Edition)

 For Chris,
and Mom and Dad, with love
 Contents

Acknowledgments x
Introduction Chicago, the Infamous City xiii

Chapter One “Do You Wonder Chicago Burned?”: The Great Chicago Fire and the 1
Launching of Chicago’s National Reputation
Chapter Two “The New City of the New World”: Fin-de-Siecle Chicago and Its 21
Fairs
Chapter “Turbulent Mistress of the West”: Popular Images of Chicago in the 52
Three Progressive Era
Chapter “All the World is Waiting for the Sunrise”: A Century of Progress and 80
Four the National Image of Chicago
Chapter Five Infamous City: Chicago and the Reworking of Reality in American 98
Popular Culture
Chapter Six The End of the Myth: Chicago in the Tumultuous 1960s 114
Afterword 130

Notes 137
Bibliography 159
Index 185
 Acknowledgments

At two years old, or perhaps earlier, my parents fastened me into what was then a state-
of-the-art car seat (designed for optimum views of the scenery, rather than safety) and we
headed out on our first family visit to Chicago. The trip by car between our home in
Grand Rapids, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois took about four hours. It would be a drive
we repeated often over the years. The flat, clean landscapes of Michigan—scrubby vivid
green plants and trees in the summer and gleaming, white snow with quick glimpses of
Lake Michigan in the winter months—eventually folded into the scarred landscape of
northern Indiana and on into Illinois. I came to know every curve of the road with time.
Monthly trips were not unheard of. Certain signposts meant that we were approaching the
city. My favorites were the looming and eventually abandoned brewery which even today
appears in my mind’s eye whenever the subject of the “Rustbelt” comes up, and the
upward climb of the Chicago Skyway.
Then we would plunge into the city. First we crawled through the traffic of the Stony
Island area of the city’s South Side, then past the University of Chicago and the massive
Museum of Science and Industry. From here you could finally see Lake Michigan, which
appeared to change every day, except in its vastness. People who have never seen this
second largest Great Lake cannot truly imagine its size, its twining of the inviting and the
sinister, and its large, clean smell. Having grown up on the lake’s eastern bank, I was
glad to see it again as we rounded the corner. Yet the lake always appeared different in
Chicago, in a way I could not get entirely comfortable with. When I came to live in
Evanston, Illinois, the lake always seemed to be on the wrong side of me.
Trips to Chicago were a frenzy of museum going, reuniting with friends and family,
and food. Western Michigan is one of the most solid and most pleasant places in America
to raise a family, but the restaurant scene is less than stellar. We carefully picked our
dinner reservations on each of our journeys. The most repeated and most ritualistic of our
meals would be spent in Pizzeria Due (almost never Pizzeria Uno, its older sister and the
site of the founding of the famous chain) on Ontario, with our favorite—the large deep
dish sausage pizza. We did not believe anything smaller tasted right, nor could anything
but sausage ever really measure up. I cannot explain how I came to write this book
without serving up a slice of this magnificent food. The smell alone captured my heart for
Chicago.
As a frequent visitor to the city, I learned to feel that the city was mine to explore and
consider. Although I would come to live in a northern suburb of the city for five years, I
have felt like a little piece of me was “from” Chicago since my earliest days. This sense
of belonging, accompanied by an outsider’s ability to analyze place, partly explains the
existence of this book. The second most important element prompting me to write this
book was the enthusiasm of the students in my Chicago history courses at Indiana
University, which I describe below.
I would like to thank the many people who assisted me with this project. First, I would
like to thank my former dissertation advisor, John Bodnar, who supervised the project
from which this book grew. I went to Bloomington, Indiana specifically to work with
Professor Bodnar in 1992, and never regretted my choice. He challenged me with a
number of interesting courses, and proved to be a wonderful dissertation director. Despite
his numerous teaching, research, and service responsibilities he always seemed to have
time to discuss the project, and provided me with rapid written responses to my chapters
as I went along. Second, I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee;
Wendy Gamber, who inspired in me a great appreciation of nineteenth century history
and always served as a ready and willing ear for my questions regarding research and
professional issues; Judith Allen, who greatly broadened my understanding of women’s
history and allowed me to see first-hand how exciting research projects unfold; and
David Nordloh, who skillfully introduced me to American Studies and had faith in my
research and teaching abilities from an early stage.
I also would like to thank other members of the history faculty at Indiana University
during my years there, including James Madison, David Pace, Steven Stowe, Irving Katz,
Michael McGerr, Joan Hoff, and Derek Penslar. I believe Indiana University offered me
the best possible graduate education in American history and I treasure my experiences as
a student and an instructor in the university’s classrooms.
Warm thanks also go out to those who awarded me grants with which to pursue this
research. I would especially like to thank the family of Paul V. McNutt, who generously
contributed the McNutt History Fellowship, of which I was a proud recipient in 1997.
Thank you to the members of the Indiana University Graduate School and Department of
History who thought my research worthy of financial support over the years. This
assistance allowed me countless trips to Chicago to explore the archives.
Thanks to those who have sat down for conversations with me about the work, or who
have taken on reading parts of this book and offered up helpful suggestions. The
members of the various incarnations of my dissertation study group—including Julie
Plaut, Diane Pecknold, and Patrick Ettinger—provided inspiration and well-considered
words of advice. Kris McCusker took it upon herself to comment thoroughly on drafts via
mail, a favor for which I am very grateful. Additionally, my former University of
Chicago advisor, Michael Conzen, and the Newberry Library’s Jim Grossman, took time
from their busy schedules to speak with me at length about the project. The students of
my two courses on Chicago for the Indiana University American Studies program
deserve extended thank yous—without their enthusiasm I would never have fallen in love
with the subject matter like I did nor would I have begun to link together the path of the
“infamous city” myth. I would especially like to thank my former student Christian
Goodwillie, who gathered piles of magazine articles for me and knew how to negotiate
the library like an ace.
My colleagues in the Department of Urban Studies at Worcester State College—
Maureen Power, Tuck Amory, and Steve Corey—have provided a warm intellectual
home for me in which to hone my teaching skills in urban studies. Although this project
was close to completion when I came to Massachusetts, the collegiality of the department
has been a crucial support for my work on the project’s details. Colleagues Bruce Cohen
and Steve Corey read and commented on sections of the book in its final stages.
Administrative assistant Thressa Corazzini provided essential help with copying rough
drafts of the work. Thanks to Julie Frechette, Kris Waters, and Sarah Sharbach for their
friendship throughout the process. And thanks to Kimberly Guinta, Richard Tressider,
and Jerome Nadelhaft of Routledge, whose hard work brought the project to fruition.
I would also like to thank the hard-working archivists and librarians of the collections I
utilized for the research on this work. Getting access to a broad array of popular media
about Chicago over a one hundred year period proved a much tougher task than I first
surmised. Grateful thanks go out to those at the Chicago Historical Society, the Newberry
Library, the University of Illinois at Chicago Archives, the Harold Washington Library,
the Museum of Broadcast History, the Lilly Library, the Indiana University Research
Collections, the University of Michigan Graduate Library and the Buhr Facility, the
Mardigan Library at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, the Michigan State University
Library, the Oakland University Library, and the Ohio State Library.
Thanks of course also to those who provided me with lodging, food, and even
entertainment in Chicago during my frequent visits. My mother-in-law Loed Boehm,
cousins Steven and Susan Neumer, and friends Lynne and Harvey Golomb, Diane
Pecknold and Clark Johnson, and Jamie Lewis Masco took care of me in Chicago.
My ever-lasting thank yous need to be extended to my immediate family. My brother,
Jonathan Krissoff, let me stay in his apartment, even going out to buy me a new bed
before I arrived. He always proved willing to see a movie with me or go out to dinner
after a tough day in the archives. My sister, Sarah Krissoff, was kind enough to spend
about two weeks watching my newborn son, David (whose baby smiles helped the
project too!), so that I could finish up my last chapter. She gave me assistance at a crucial
time. My son David, as he grew, played patiently while Mommy finished her book, and I
thank him for his good-natured soul and his independence. My grandparents, Abe and
Sylvia Krissoff, provided their support and understanding. Without their help, my dream
of a graduate education could not have come true. My parents, Joel and Madelon
Krissoff, read through chapters, shopped for old books and Chicago memorabilia for me
at every opportunity, cut out relevant newspaper articles and passed them along, and
allowed me to stay with them during their vacations to the city. They introduced me to
Chicago at a very early age and taught me that the city could be mine, too. They of course
are responsible for my love of history, research, and learning, and everything that I am. I
cannot ever thank them enough for all that they have done—nor would anyone else really
believe how wonderful, inspiring, and generous two human beings can be.
And especially, I would like to thank my husband, Christopher Boehm, a native
Chicagoan. We met in Chicago, and the city has served as the backdrop for many of our
special moments and has provided us with a never-ending site of exploration. Chris stood
by me at every critical juncture of this book project. He read drafts, edited, and discussed
Chicago history with me for hours. Despite his own graduate work and busy career, he
has been an unwavering support system. Chris and David are the best family anyone
could have.
Lisa Krissoff Boehm
Worcester, Massachusetts
2004
 Introduction: Chicago, the Infamous City

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel’s

Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower,

Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,

Where evil comes up softly like a flower…
Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full,
Sodden with day, or new appareled, stand
In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,
I love thee, infamous city!

—Baudelaire1

In the late nineteenth century, with gripping tales of a spectacularly destructive fire, the
once far-flung Midwestern outpost, Chicago, became an integral part of the national
popular culture. Chicago entered onto the national stage in a manner unlike that of any
other American city. American culture fashioned for Chicago a particularly compelling
national face, an intriguing image that bespoke modernity and business power yet with
far from subtle undertones of crime, loosening morals, and chaotic change. As Baudelaire
explains in his Petits Poemes en Prose collection—speaking in his case of Paris—a city
could maintain both a lowly image and a fascinating one. In the United States, Chicago
served for a time as the infamous city. Loved by some, reviled by others, Chicago was
representative of the changes that accompanied modernity and which were not
universally applauded in the United States.
Chicago is far from the first American city to have captured American imaginative
attention. Large cities have fascinated and beguiled residents of the Americas since urban
places began gaining a foothold on colonial shores in the mid-sixteen hundreds. As a
nation came to be formed, discussions spurred by the images of cities propagated by
popular culture played a role in the creation of the American identity. In the condensed
view of the nation offered by the thickly settled urban landscape, viewers beheld a
portrait containing both essential elements of the traditional national culture and new,
discordant colors as well. Although early American leaders tended to favor rural over
urban growth for their nascent country, images of urban areas—spaces of such
importance to the U.S. economy and other central components of the nation—undeniably
shaped the national image held by many Americans. On one hand, the close proximity in
which urban residents lived provided onlookers with a targeted view of well-regarded
aspects of American life and values; in a single sweep of street a viewer might take in a
bustling marketplace, a church, a school, and a grouping of well-tended homes. One
might see a farmer bringing his produce to town from the countryside, or peek into
windows to see a minister, at his desk, preparing his Sunday sermon on predestination, or
a teacher exploring geography with a slightly unruly group of boys. On the other hand,
cities threatened some with their foreignness; our earliest cities served as ports of entry to
international goods and increasing numbers of immigrants seeking to make homes in the
New World. Change arrived daily with the tides. The newcomers disembarked and filled
American cities with an increasing diversity of languages, religions, and dreams.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, more than fifty-one percent of Americans have
come to live in metropolitan regions of a million or more. Our metropolitan areas, areas
that include the city proper and the counties linked to the core city by social and
economic ties, are at their most populous. Yet, during the late twentieth century, our
major cities have declined in population within their geographical borders. Only the
census of 2000 allowed a glimmer of hope for the stabilization of population in many
U.S. cities; the variety of immigrants entering the nation has again shored up the numbers
of people living in our great urban centers. The metropolitan boom in the country remains
largely suburban; many Americans wish to live near goods and services and reduce
commute times to work, but not at the expense of giving up manicured lawns, the
privately-owned swing sets, and, in many geographical regions, the nearly ubiquitous
front-yard maple tree.
Although Americans’ personal preferences reflect a desire to live in the quasi-rural
world of the suburbs, we remain fascinated with the urban. Our nightly television news
programs report on the events of urban centers; fires in the downtown areas regularly
make the news, while suburban blazes receive no comment. Many local news programs
begin with a panoramic view of the nearest skyline, even if the studios have long been
located in a suburban outpost. Our fascination with the urban extends to the world of
commercial acquisition as well. In fashion particularly, urban styles have set the trend for
the nation. For example, the city-slicker style of the black or brown leather jacket remains
popular throughout many regions of the United States in the early twenty-first century. In
the 1990s and beyond, teenagers rushed to shop at “Urban Outfitters;” no self-respecting
adolescent would don an ensemble from a clothier known as “The Suburban Shop.”
The heyday of Chicago’s infamous image has passed. Today, the image of Los
Angeles arguably reigns as the premier battleground over the contested image of the
American urban environment. Scholars now pose questions about the California city that
echo those asked about Chicago during the times when it was the second largest city in
America. One category of questioning involves whether or not the newest second city
points the way toward the future of other American cities. Los Angeles’ chaotic realities,
including the 1992 riots over the police’s handling of Rodney King, have brought the city
to the nation’s attention and have allowed its image to become an increasingly bleak one
in a national public culture adverse to change and conflict. Is L.A. an anomaly, an urban
experiment gone wildly wrong? Or are the sprawl, the smog, and the seemingly unending
fascination with commercialism and celluloid the destiny of the other American cities?
We ask if this California capital of hip is our future or an anti-model we can securely turn
our backs on as we form new communities based on the back-to-basics formulation of
styles like the New Urbanism.
We forget that this current bedevilment over Los Angeles has a historical precedent—
the similarly vexing image of the city of Chicago. Although the image of Chicago has
mellowed somewhat in the recent decades, the Midwestern center formerly reigned as the
urban trouble-spot, the inherently interesting, deeply unsettling, infamous city of the late
1800s to mid 1900s. Of course some Americans have considered the Midwest—the
mythical home of the farmer and the field, a geographically central district further
removed from the “Old World” than the coastal areas of the United States—the
embodiment of the American spirit. At times Chicago has been considered the honorary
capital of the Midwest, and at other times even as the flagship city of the West. A few
non-Chicagoans have even considered Chicago to be a very American or perhaps the
most American of U.S. cities. But these summations proved less frequent than those that
ranked the city among the nation’s trouble spots between the years of 1871 and 1968.
Americans felt unsettled by cities generally, and by Chicago’s brashness, youth,
relentless commercial drive, and connections with crime in particular. From the
wrenching stories of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, to the exotic dancers at the Chicago
World’s Fair of 1893, from the seemingly endless need for social services for the city’s
poor, to the fan dancing of Sally Rand, the bootlegging and crime sprees of Al Capone,
and the riotous late-1960s, Chicago captured the nation’s attention and held it fast for
nearly one hundred years.
Urban historians and scholars of urban studies have been intrigued by the idea of the
city and its image for some time. Urban planning has long taken on the challenge of
exploring how our thoughts regarding physical forms influence our relationship with the
built environment. In 1960 Kevin Lynch took on this investigation with his work, The
Image of the City. In this look at Boston, Jersey City, and Los Angeles, Lynch contends
that we ought to think about the mental images that residents form of their cities. He
writes, “we must consider not just the city as a thing in itself, but the city being perceived
by its inhabitants.” Adding to this line of thinking, this book considers the national image
of the city of Chicago. Moving outward from the way in which Lynch asks what local
landmarks form urban residents’ conceptions of place, this book asks what elements of
popular culture have come to define a particular urban center at the national level.2 The
argument here does not look inward at Chicago to consider the thinking of its citizens in
the style of Lynch’s work, but asks a related question, that of how Americans generally
have come to “read” Chicago. The majority of Americans had no day-to-day familiarity
with Chicago’s streets and shoreline, yet they still knew her in a sense. Americans came
to know Chicago through the window opened by popular media. Even if their own
individual experiences brought them to different conclusions, most Americans had a
familiarity with media portrayals of Chicago as a shadowy city of questionable character.
A few other scholarly works have attempted to grapple with the subject of urban
image-making at the national level. In Images of the American City (1976) Anselm
Strauss, a sociologist, has written one of the few studies that examines the way in which
cities are understood in American culture. Strauss argues that, “The city, as a whole, is
inaccessible to the imagination unless it can be reduced and simplified.” The outpouring
of cultural documents which take on the city as subject, according to Strauss, are a
necessary part of the quest to understand the essentially unknowable city. Kevin
McNamara, in Urban Verbs: Arts and Discourses of American Cities (1996) explores
related ground. Interested in the ways in which the urban social structure affects the
construction of the self, McNamara examined the ways in which the authors of six key
creative texts chose to represent modern cities and also investigated social science
writings on cities at similar periods. His work becomes, then, one of the few to take on a
study of the ways in which Americans understand urban society. In a manner similar to
the impetus which informs this project, McNamara is motivated by a desire to “contribute
to discussion about the urban present and future, because the current ‘crisis of the cities’
is nothing new.”3
This work draws on analysis of hundreds of popular works on Chicago produced
between 1871 and 1968. Mainstream, national periodicals, rather than those tailored for a
specific audience, were preferred. Magazine articles that took on the subject of Chicago
for some length proved particularly fruitful sources. They ultimately were more helpful
than newspaper articles related to specific events. Most newspapers speak to a relatively
localized audience—even the modern New York Times speaks more directly to
subscribers in its region than elsewhere—and the daily changes they report seldom speak
to sustained national beliefs. I literally worked through the Readers’ Guide to
Periodicals, year by year, for the entire period, reading either all of the articles related to
Chicago in a given year, or covering a representative sampling.
Surveying the ebb and flow of coverage on Chicago over the years, the work focuses
on times in which a new infusion of popular documents reinvigorated ongoing images of
the city for Americans in a vital way. For that reason, this is not an inclusive study of all
representations of Chicago in popular culture. Like all works, too, it is crafted by the
interests of its author, and thus my own research and teaching philosophy figures
centrally here. In both of these realms of scholarly life, I strive to insert what is missing
into the dialogue. Chicago is perhaps the most frequently researched city in the United
States, and the goal of the work is not to substantially repeat what has been said in other
studies. I want to add unique elements—such as the origins of the O’Leary cow myth, the
way the Inter-State Exposition foreshadowed later great Chicago fairs, the appeal of Sally
Rand’s fan dances, or the national fascination with Playboy Magazine to the story of
Chicago. Yet I also keep in mind that many readers may not want to read shelves of
works on Chicago history in order to understand my argument; for this group of readers,
dates and synopses of major Chicago events are included for clarity. The work flows
chronologically so that readers may come to understand how in each unfolding decade,
the popular, middlebrow media continued to produce representations which reinforced
the dark image of the city.
The book does not relate all of the stories or review all of the works that have come to
us today as “quintessentially Chicago.” Some incidents, like the Haymarket Riot and the
Pullman strike, are simply too well known to rehearse in full detail here. Both certainly
perpetuated Chicago’s infamous image, but pre-existing works already make this point
well. Other Chicago-related tales simply did not have sufficient contemporary impact to
bring them into consideration here. Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, one of most
powerful works of American literature, fell rather flat upon initial publication and only
later came to be regarded as one of the most outstanding pieces of American naturalist
writing. Because its impact only grew over time, it has no place in the timeline of events
as formulated for the book. Readers should be clear too that this book takes as its subject
national attitudes towards contemporary Chicago in each time period; the book does not
discuss the ways in which perceptions of events metamorphosed over the passage of
years. As mentioned briefly in Chapter Two, for instance, popular conceptions of the
World’s Columbian Exposition have transformed over time, growing increasingly
nostalgic. A work that attends to the change over time of a particular element of the city’s
past, such as the Columbian Exposition, would be another type of project altogether.
This book considers the image of Chicago as crafted and shaped by contemporary
producers of popular culture in decades of great change for the city. The actual changes
Chicago experienced, however, and its successes as a commercial center and a locus of
higher education and cultural production do not constitute the book’s subject. This is not
a book about what happened in an actual urban space, but what kinds of discussions were
going on at a national level about that place. Its mission echoes that of Michael Kammen
in his 1991 work, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in
American Culture. His work sought not to document what is or is not “true” about
national memory, but rather what these memories are and how they came to be. Kammen
asserts, “the basic question that this book asks is when and how did the United States
become a land of the past, a culture with a discernible memory (or with a configuration of
recognized pasts)?”4 The question at hand here is the nature of the image of the city of
Chicago in national popular culture.
The work takes on the challenging task of attempting to document that the central
element of Chicago’s role in popular culture does not change overmuch during the years
considered; the city persistently played a dark role in the national conversation. The book
unravels the layers of documents contributing to this shared national image in
consideration of the wondrous tensile strength of the infamous city symbolism. The
frequency of the production of such material meant that Chicago’s local boosters had
little chance of successfully fighting back on behalf of their city, although they did
occasionally attempt to do so.
The existence of Chicago’s infamous national image is a theme which has occurred to
other scholars and commentators on Chicago. Most comment on the existence of the
image briefly, as if all readers had previously been informed. The off-handed and
ubiquitous nature of this type of commentary on Chicago testifies to the fact that the
infamous image is a deeply ingrained part of American culture. The study of the entire
sweep of the near century in which Chicago played this particular role in American
popular culture has not been previously attempted. Writing about a sustained image,
rather than a changing one, presents theoretical hurdles to historians traditionally trained
to study the continual evolution of events. Yet when the story the historian hopes to tell is
one of constancy rather than the tried and true themes of change and progress, he or she
ought to hold fast to the tale and attempt to tell it in its true spirit.
Documenting national public culture also presents challenges to the social historian
practiced in analyzing the world from the “bottom up” rather than the “top down.” Few
individuals make their way into this discussion of Chicago. Popular media, the study
finds, churned out such a deluge of materials in which the word Chicago served as
shorthand for national anti-urban sentiment that few individuals, even the most moneyed
and politically powerful of Chicago’s elite, could serve successfully as the city’s
champion, counteracting the forces of popular culture. This work also does not take on
the task of documenting how each and every different group of Americans—such as the
native born, immigrant, upper class, working class, and African American groups—came
to think about Chicago. Perceptions differed by race, gender, regional background, and
other factors. Yet the window that popular culture offered of the world was such an
integral part of the American scene by the late 1800s that few residents could escape the
grasp of its explanatory power. Even when Chicago’s infamous image was not the image
manufactured by a person’s own experiences, it was one with which they were familiar.
Cities have always provided fertile grounds for exploration in American culture. Our
national attitudes towards them are riddled with tensions. On one hand, we find cities
inviting samples of American culture and philosophy. On the other, we find them
representative of our basest human attributes and far from celebrated national symbols.
As the city physically is the coming together of a large population in a relatively small
space, a conclusive reading of them is difficult. Various camps of Americans choose to
interpret them differently, and the views held by individuals can range over considerable
ground. Some scholars argue that since the inception of the American nation, many and
perhaps the majority of Americans have been substantially troubled by the existence of
large urban areas. As historians Morton and Lucia White argue, “enthusiasm for the
American city has not been typical or predominant in our intellectual history. Fear has
been the more common reaction.” In a letter to Benjamin Rush in the early 1800s,
American founding father Thomas Jefferson, great proponent of the elevating effects of
farming on the democratic character, wrote, “I view great cities as pestilential to the
morals, health and the liberties of man.” Jefferson’s sentiments and those of his
philosophical heirs cast a shadow over American attitudes towards cities that has lasted
up until the present day, albeit not with the strength that it did formerly.5
Works like Thomas Bender’s Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in
Nineteenth Century America have suggested that at times some of America’s leading
intellectuals expressed attitudes toward particular urban settings which were not entirely
hostile. Bender argues that high culture may have reflected more favorable views of the
city than have previously been admitted. Yet the present study indicates that the majority
of the popular discourse concerning Chicago was far from positive. Through fact and
fiction, an enduring myth developed and was sustained in popular culture for close to one
hundred years.
Not all Americans have held anti-urban sentiments. A significant number of citizens,
often city dwellers themselves, have believed urban centers to be the sites of progress. In
the cities, they maintained, individuals could find the greatest possible opportunity, and
come into contact with a broad array of enriching cultural experiences. Financially
successful, urban boosters often believed in the tenets of Social Darwinism, or the theory
that those who rise do so because of their own merit. For most of these urban proponents,
the city had provided the setting for their own success, the American dreams of financial
comfort that they urgently believed were available to all worthy enough to achieve them.
To what extent, then, can cities be seen as “American” places? Do they embody any
part of the fundamental spirit of the United States? Do Americans feel comfortable with
what U.S. cities show us about ourselves? Do specific cities play particularly important
roles in this national-level discussion? In posing such questions, the long-lived myth of
Chicago emerges from American popular culture. Through the years of 1871–1968, a
dark legend was developed and sustained regarding the city, a legend that described the
city as a threat to core American values. Chicago grew to be regarded as a place that in
many ways seemed to represent what the nation was becoming—a land of immigrants, a
land of unabashed capitalism, and an urban, rather than a rural, landscape. Chicago’s
present might have foretold the na-tion’s future, but this particular future frightened many
Americans. These Americans were afraid of change. They viewed the rapidly evolving
Chicago as a challenge to the fundamental philosophical and moral underpinnings of the
nation.
In unraveling the national image of Chicago, this work examines the way in which the
city of Chicago became party to a verbal and visual tug-of-war between an anti-urban
contingent and those who looked upon cities more favorably. The debate took place
between two parties—the producers of popular culture and their readers, who tended to
favor anti-urban fare, and Chicago’s boosters, a group of elite who sought to strengthen
the reputation of their city. Chicago proves a compelling subject with which to examine
the power struggle between those who looked to the city for opportunity and those who
felt something more sinister lay at the heart of American cities. The debate over what
place Chicago held in national culture sparked deeply-felt outpourings from both
philosophical bents. Ultimately, however, the image constructed by the cultural producers
would prove much more tenacious than that of the city leaders. Because of the infectious
nature of their arguments, Chicago at many points served as the national symbol of urban
troubles, and at all times during the period studied here ranked highly as an image of
urban discord. Between the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Democratic National
Convention held in Chicago in 1968, an enduring and sordid picture of the city arose, a
myth of Chicago that took on important meanings for many. Chicago grew to be
considered an “infamous city.”
The image of Chicago set forth by the cultural producers proved stronger than that of
the boosters because the reflection created in the media connected with some deeply held
American beliefs. Despite the undeniable zeal of the boosters, Chicago was needed to
serve as an anti-model in a national debate on self-definition. Beyond the question of
whether or not Chicago could be considered “American,” one can ask what, ultimately,
did the term “American” mean? The study will show that anti-urban sentiments fueled
the production of cultural documents that deeply scarred the national reputation of
Chicago, and for quite a bit longer than urban historians have heretofore believed anti-
urbanism to have remained a potent American idea. Some argue that the previous rural-
urban dichotomy has been supplanted by the tensions between the suburbs and the city,
and that even the suburban-urban conflict has evolved and been mitigated over time. Yet
cities do still function as strong symbols in today’s American mythology, often serving as
shorthand for many of the nation’s most pressing problems. As we begin the twenty-first
century, the terms “city,” “urban area,” and “downtown” are hardly benign. The words
often serve to evoke thoughts of racial conflict, given that in many cities, the majority of
whites have abandoned their connections with the urban center. We clearly have much to
learn today from uncovering the history of American anti-urban rhetoric.
This project traces the evolution of national attitudes towards Chicago, in part
following the interplay between the cultural producers and the Chicago boosters. Using a
wide array of popular media, and paying particular attention to magazine articles focused
on general descriptions of the city, the book examines the reputation of Chicago as
represented at the most mainstream level of American culture. With the disastrous fire of
1871, Chicago initially captured Americans’ imaginations. The tone of the rhetoric linked
with the blaze caused the city to establish the infamous image it would sustain for nearly
a decade to come. In Chicago, the debate between pro-urban and anti-urban camps took
root during a period of devastating disorder; the terrible Great Fire launched national
interest in the city and tipped the scales unfairly towards the cultural producers. With the
publication of lurid tales of the fire, the tabloid press initiated an unflattering picture of
Chicago that grew over time.
In an attempt to recover from this blow, Chicago boosters formulated plans for a grand
World’s Fair in 1893, hoping to create a more sophisticated image for their city and
compete for cultural capital with the likes of New York and Boston. Although the
Columbian Exposition received praise from many quarters, the spectacle did not subdue
the producers of popular culture, who increasingly cast the city in the role of the ultimate
urban challenge to America’s quiet, rural life. By the early twentieth century, Chicago
leaders had temporarily turned their primary attentions away from boosterism and
towards the implementation of real change in their city. These efforts are highly laudable.
Chicago, because of the work of those involved with such cultural institutions as Hull
House, the Chicago Crime Commission, and the University of Chicago, became an
influential laboratory of reform. Yet the Chicagoans’ inward turn came at precisely the
moment when the national media’s influence on American thought had grown
enormously. “Yellow journalism” now swayed readers with its provocative tone, glossy
magazines found their way into American homes, motion pictures began to lure crowds,
and the circulation of American newspapers increased dramatically (ninefold between
1870 and 1910).
In 1933–1934, Chicagoans gave the battle of image-making one more round with their
second World’s Fair, A Century of Progress. With its mix of scientific exhibits and silly,
Midway crowd-pleasers, fair planners hoped to beat popular culture at its own game;
Chicago could be at once intellec-tually and culturally stimulating and a whole lot of fun.
Unfortunately, Sally Rand’s provocative fan dance became the talk of the fair rather than
the Hall of Science.
By the 1940s, the cultural producers had seared Chicago’s negative image into
American popular memory. The myth of Chicago as infamous city had been strengthened
from so many quarters that Chicago-based boosters could do little to effect change. Only
the headline-gathering of such events as the 1965 Watts disruption and the 1968 riots in
Detroit would significantly challenge Chicago’s primacy as anti-urban symbol. Despite
the city’s violent reaction to the death of Martin Luther King and the actions by the police
and anti-war demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in the city,
Chicago now had competition. Many other cities now attracted national attention with
their own sordid sides. The debate between the anti-urbanists and the urban supporters
remained, but the focus had shifted away from Chicago.
Between the years of the Great Chicago Fire and the Democratic National Convention
of 1968, those who built popular culture erected an enduring myth of Chicago, a myth
that described this city as a degradation to the American character. As David Harvey
explains in The Condition of Postmodernity, cities, unable to be understood in their
entirety, lend themselves to the fabrication of myth. Harvey writes, “A labyrinth, an
encyclopedia, an emporium, a theatre, the city is somewhere where fact and imagination
simply have to fuse.”6 Chicago’s myth evolved into a tainted tale. Comprised of truths,
half-truths, and out-right fallacies, the popular representations of the city set forth
Chicago as one of the most, if not the most, immoral settings in the United States.
Chicago became symbolic of the urban troubles of the century, its name linked with
public perceptions about overcrowding, poverty, immigration, and crime—the most
pressing troubles of the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century American city.
Like many cities around the world, Chicago cultivated a “personality” much like a
celebrity. The mere mention of the name “Chicago” brought a number of standard images
to mind. This set of images was shared by many Americans and could exist
simultaneously with personal and/or group images of the city, even much more favorable
ones. Assigning a city a more or less fixed cultural image helped people better understand
a particular place. As cities grew larger, Americans found it increasingly difficult to make
sense of them in any comprehensive way. So many cultures and so many histories were
embodied in a city of millions of souls and a variety of spaces like Chicago. People
looked for a way to grasp even a part of the metropolis, to comprehend its “gist.” Thus
the popularity of ascending to the top of tall buildings; where else could one better
attempt to make sense of an urban center?
Chicago’s public image emerged in part out of a struggle between the city boosters and
the makers of popular culture, including filmmakers, television producers, novelists,
poets, musicians, and journalists. The boosters sought to promote a positive image of
their city, highlighting Chicago’s economic and cultural offerings—and its progress. The
men and women instrumental in building popular culture, on the other hand, most often
chose to stress the negative aspects of the city. As sociologist Anselm Strauss explains, in
the resulting visions of Chicago one can find mirrored “the tension that exists between an
imagery of enterprise and an imagery of violence.”7 Like the boosters, the cultural
producers might choose, for example, to speak of the power of Chicago’s great
commercial drive, but the cultural producers would link Chicago’s commercialism with
capitalistic greed, labor unrest, organized crime, violence, and the city’s sex industry.
Chicago’s reputation pivoted then on the struggle between individuals who sought to
promote their ideals of a progress based on the opportunities capitalism made possible in
the urban environment and scores of popular culture developers who believed the city
less than the ideal space.
The debate took hold during the Victorian era, a time in which many interested parties
sought to control public expressions that appeared threatening to progress. Typically,
Chicago’s leaders and the institutions they controlled sought to maintain an ordered,
hierarchical world in which those who rose to the top did so because of their worthy
characters. These ideas, as mentioned briefly before, are the tenets of Social Darwinism,
a social theory based loosely on Darwin’s theory of evolution. Social Darwinism served
as an explanation about why some Americans had acquired great wealth and some lived
in dire poverty. According to this theory, those of true skill and talent grew wealthy and
assumed leadership positions, as was their due. Social Darwinism also supposed that the
nation evolved into a more and more wonderful place with the contributions of each
generation.
The cultural producers highlighted the seamier sides of the city not because they were
consciously out to destroy the reputation of Chicago, but because they found anti-urban
themes compelling in the abstract. Most of the cultural producers held no particular spite
towards Chicago. Yet they were immersed in a culture in which anti-urban sentiments ran
deep. Utilization of anti-urban tenets came easily, and even for some, almost
unconsciously. Interestingly, the physical location (inside or outside of Chicago) of the
cultural producers often had little overall affect on the general tenor of their work.
Whatever their hometown, the voices that sought to entertain and/or inform differed
markedly from the boosters. The cultural producers viewed cities as troubled areas, but
most did not subscribe in an orthodox fashion to the pro-rural mindset. The producers
found that the darker images of the city resonated with an American public looking to
place blame on “others.” Anti-city and anti-Chicago invective in particular drew a wide
market to the cultural producers’ wares. Writers and other producers learned quickly that
describing Chicago in a certain way led to the publication or distribution of their works
and sold newspapers, magazines, books, and other media. Although Americans were at
times outraged by some of the stories told about the Midwestern center, they were also
intrigued and titillated by these same tales.
This work traces Chicago’s reputation at the level of popular culture, utilizing
contemporary films, television programs, and newspapers, and drawing heavily from
mainstream magazines. The way in which the media shapes images of urban places has
impacted national thought. As Michael Parenti, author of Make-Believe Media: The
Politics of Entertainment, contends, while the public does not accept the constructions of
the media without question, popular culture does alter personal beliefs. Parenti writes, “In
modern mass society, people rely to a great extent on distant imagemakers for cues about
a vast world. In both their entertainment and news shows, the media invent a reality much
their own.”8 As the media provided a window onto Chicago, it formed and shaped public
opinion about the city for many Americans. The image portrayed of the city in national
media mattered; the image had weight and entered people’s consciousnesses. Yet we
should also note that the cultural producers themselves did not create their work outside
culture; American culture and norms affected them as they crafted their works, making
the national understanding of cities a circular rather than simply a top-down process.
Additionally, a city’s national image, it must be understood, differs from an
individual’s own personal connection with a particular urban space. We simultaneously
hold both our individual set of interactions with place and a shared cultural sense of this
place’s meaning or symbolism; both affect our understanding of the urban area. Even
group beliefs—such as African-American or immigrant viewpoints—can coexist with
ideas held by the broader culture. This work takes as its task the documentation of the
evolution of this shared cultural conception of Chicago, rather than exploring individual
or group perceptions.
Between 1871 and 1968, Chicago drew the commentary of a wide range of cultural
producers, providing a sort of lightening rod for anti-urban language. Although many
have now forgotten, at one time Chicago functioned in the national consciousness as the
city of Los Angeles does today. Chicago shook free of its downward-pulling moorings
through the outburst of violence in the late 1960s most often associated with Detroit.
Although Detroit served as the catalyst for Chicago’s change in status, Los Angeles
would become heir apparent for those who needed an anti-urban focal point in the late
twentieth century. Mike Davis relates this story in his book City of Quartz. Davis does
not contend with Chicago’s prior role, but does compellingly explain how Los Angeles
embodies today’s fears of the city. Los Angeles, according to Davis, has come to
symbolize both utopia and dystopia; Americans have dreams for what it might be and
nightmares about what it is. Los Angeles is a commodity in its own right, selling its own
culture in films and fashion, and being sold as evil by those who oppose its existence.
Similar to the debate that ranged over whether or not Chicago represented the bright
possibilities of capitalism or demonstrated its uncouth missteps, Los Angeles represents
the successes and excesses of capitalism in late twentieth century and early twenty-first
century America.9
With the emergence of social history in the 1960s, many sub-sets of historical inquiry,
including urban history, began to change. Contemporary urban historians increasingly
seek to address the role played by urban places in national cultures and to explore the
ways in which these roles are constructed and changed. Yet, to this point few works have
directly assessed the shaping of a particular city’s image in popular culture over a long
span of time. In an age in which urban areas are often assumed to equate with such
problems as infrastructure decay, drug abuse, and racism, it becomes increasingly
apparent that the way in which we think about cities is very important. This project fills
historiographical gaps with its assertion that understanding the evolution of the reputation
of Chicago is an important part of understanding the history of this city and an important
step in comprehending American views of all urban places. This story has value not only
for what it uncovers about this specific Midwestern city but what it tells us about
American cities generally, and what it demonstrates concerning Americans’ beliefs about
themselves.
 Chapter One
“Do You Wonder Chicago Burned?”: The Great
Chicago Fire and the Launching of Chicago’s
National Reputation

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 contained all the elements of a “great news story.”
Before the fire, Chicago received little mention in the national press; with the fire,
Chicago launched a reputation for danger and intrigue that took nearly a century to
overcome. The urban disaster inspired the imaginations of those who put pen to paper
about it, leading them to speculate broadly about the character of Chicago in their
musings concerning the fire. Prepared to view cities as threatening to American culture,
the national audience found that the writings on the disastrous fire, which essentially
leveled the fast growing Midwestern urban center, resonated with their world views.
Given the event’s rich potential for meaningful symbolism, the fire would have riveted
the nation’s attention even if it had broken out in more modern times. The Great Chicago
Fire, which destroyed thousands of acres in central Chicago, became a spectacular media
event and thrust the city into the nation’s vision. As we shall see, the story had elements
of nearly unfathomable disaster, class conflict, business upheaval, urban rivalry, and
sexuality. The fire symbolized what was wrong with the rapid development now
becoming commonplace in American cities, and provided a seemingly unprecedented
opportunity for revision to, and possibly repentance for, the questionable culture of the
Midwestern commercial center.
Over time Chicago developed and maintained a myth associated with what was
deemed to be its character. People believed this myth helped them to know what was
indeed unknowable. Unable to grasp the kaleidoscope of patterns produced in an urban
space, people began to reduce some of a city’s perceived qualities down into a type of
shorthand. Chicago’s abbreviated image cast the city in a particularly dim light, making it
one of the focal points for anti-urban sentiment around the nation.
Americans startled themselves with this image of Chicago, an image quite unrelenting
in its darkness at times. Americans worried that their understanding of Chicago’s present
foretold of a troubled future in other U.S. cities, and that Chicago represented a type of
unwanted change that might eventually engulf the entire nation. In actuality, the city did
reflect much of what the American people were becoming, yet it mirrored both the
favorable and the unfavorable aspects of the national disposition. The city was neither the
all-positive place indicated in its booster’s writings nor the terrifying chasm of crime so
often portrayed by popular culture. In reality Chicago had an ambiguous character, falling
somewhere in-between the ratings of its rave reviewers and its sharpest critics.
Unfortunately, Americans did not (and do not) deal well with ambiguity. Finding
Chicago less than all good, and being afraid of change and of the cultural challenges
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 2

proffered by any urban center, Americans chose to utilize Chicago as an anti-model in the
debate on national self-definition. Chicago, only a youngster in the life cycle of cities, did
not have the organizational apparatus or cultural clout to adequately defend itself against
the American people’s enormous need to take in this negative rhetoric.
Prior to the outbreak of the news stories on Chicago’s great fire, Chicago had not
garnered much coverage in the national media. The fire focused attention on Chicago as
never before. Located outside of the American cultural production center of the East
Coast, the relatively small (yet rapidly expanding) settlement on Lake Michigan had little
reason to spark national interest. Although Chicago had been incorporated as a town in
1833, and established as a city in 1837, it would take the devastating fire to firmly place
the city in the national consciousness. During its first four decades, Chicago received
sparse coverage in the mainstream media, primarily entering American popular culture
through its role as a western entrepôt—supplying needed goods to the rest of the United
States through the Illinois and Michigan Canal and its railroad systems—and for its real
estate speculation. In its earliest years, too, Chicago had been a sparsely settled town.
Chicago housed only 200 residents in 1831—hardly a place worth mentioning. By 1870,
a year before the fire, Chicago ranked as the fifth largest city in the United States, just
below St. Louis. In 1870, St. Louis had over 310,000 people, while Chicago contained
almost 299,000 residents. Just ten years earlier, in 1860, Chicago had had only 112,172
inhabitants, placing it ninth in terms of population nationally. Chicago’s fire brought it
national at-tention at just the moment when such attention would finally be warranted for
the Midwestern city. The 1870 rankings ushered in a period of fantastic growth and
unprecedented attention for Chicago. By 1890 Chicago would rank as the nation’s second
largest city. (If evaluating population by city borders rather than metropolitan region,
Chicago remained the second largest city until the census of 1990.)1
So Chicago established its place in the national culture with a disaster. The fire linked
the city strongly with intrigue and debacle. With the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the city
of Chicago took up the dubious role it would play in the popular culture of the United
States for nearly the next century. The enormous physical damage caused by the fire and
the loss of life the blaze entailed stirred interest around the nation, changing the nature of
the coverage on Chicago, increasing the frequency of such stories, and leaving an
indelible print on American popular images of the Illinois city. Newspapers covered the
disaster thoroughly; publishers also disseminated book-length, more-or-less factually
based “instant histories” of the event for the prurient interests of an American audience
eager to learn more, in the months following the fire. The news was the most important
American topic of discussion of its time. Dispatches from New York declared that
“nothing but the fire in Chicago is talked of through our city, and the people are filled
with deepest sympathy and [are] anxious for the fate of the great Western city.”2
The Great Chicago Fire brought Chicago into the discussion of national identity and
established the tone of the coverage the city would need to shoulder for the next decade.
Commentary on the fire in magazine and newspaper articles, instant histories, and other
popular media described the urban center as a great challenge to the morality of the
nation. A particular progressive-mindedness can be considered typical to the mid-
nineteenth century; the Republican party of Lincoln set forth the ideals of equality of
opportunity for white males and a belief that the United States was evolving into a better
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 3

and better nation. Yet the producers of popular culture found that exposing a more sordid
side of the American character sold their products. Even if Americans tended to choose
elected representatives who promised continual improvement to the nation, people
secretly enjoyed reading stories about the many challenges to progress. As most
Americans’ personal lives did not contain the level of success they had hoped for, tales of
the troubles of others could ease bruised spirits. Chicago, deemed by many Americans to
be merely a far-away city and an urban upstart in what was otherwise perceived as the
tranquil, rural life of the Midwest, provided an easy foil.
Despite the existence of excessive rhetoric, a real tragedy did lay behind the somber
words. Although coverage of the fire tended toward the extravagant, the Great Chicago
Fire was responsible for actual, extensive damage to the city, resulting in approximately
three hundred lives lost, one hundred thousand of the metropolis’ 300,000 residents
homeless, and 18,000 buildings destroyed. Over 2,000 acres of the city, or three and a
half square miles, turned to rubble. Early estimates approximated the property damage at
400 million dollars.3
On October 7, 1871, the night before the start of the extensive conflagration, a smaller
yet still impressive fire started between 10:00 and 11:00 P.M., and received newspaper
coverage around the country. Beginning in the boiler room of the Lull & Holmes planing
mill at 209 Canal Street on the west side of Chicago’s downtown, the fire devoured
nearly twenty acres of the city in the area west of the Chicago River near Jackson and
Van Buren (East-West streets), and Clinton and Canal (North-South streets). Firemen
fought the fire for seventeen hours, finally winning the battle at 3:00 P.M. on Sunday
afternoon. The blaze rendered two of the department’s seventeen engines useless, and
considerably tired the fire fighters. The Chicago Tribune of October 8 estimated a loss of
approximately $700,000 due to the blaze, about two-thirds of which they assumed to be
covered by fire insurance. Reporters predicted more fires to follow. The Atlanta
Constitution eerily concluded that “the fires in the woods and on the prairies are
prevailing in every direction, including Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. A heavy
rain alone can stop the conflagration. The country is dry as tinder.” Chicago had
measured only two and a half inches of rain since July, although average rainfall for the
season measured eight and three-quarters inches.4
The second, larger fire began around 9:30 P.M. on Sunday, October 8, 1871, in or near
the barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, at 137 De Koven Street between Jefferson and
Clinton. Dry from the months of little rain, and mainly built of wood, Chicago stood ripe
for a fire, and the devastation spread quickly. Partially bungled efforts by local
firefighters (such as trouble working with the signal system) did little to still the blaze,
and the city lost the capabilities of their state-of-the-art waterworks early in the battle,
making matters all but hopeless. By Monday night the fire had died down considerably,
having already devoured most of the available tinder; only the neighborhood in the
vicinity of the Clark and Fullerton intersection remained burning. But not until it rained
during the late evening of October 9 and the early morning of October 10th did the fire
finally end.5
The fire, soon known as The Great Chicago Fire, received extensive press coverage
throughout the nation. Readers expressed deep interest in the disaster. The event spoke to
the public’s interest in urban disasters in general and also was of concern due to
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 4

Chicago’s far-reaching business ties. News initially traveled via the railroad, as The
Chicago Tribune reported, “The great fire was the topic of all talk as early as 11 o’clock
on Monday forenoon in every railroad town in the Northwest.” Soon after, the news
reached Louisville, Kentucky, becoming the “universal topic of conversation,” and
Cincinnati, Ohio, where businessmen ceased working in order to learn more about the
fire. Detroit discovered that on October 9, 1871 “before ten o’clock in the morning,
nearly all business in the city had stopped, put away that men might satisfy their excited
cravings for the latest news from a sea of flames.” “Great crowds” found themselves
unable to break away from the news in the Michigan city, and “assembled at the bulletins
and in the public places, eagerly seeking additional news from the Chicago
conflagration.” In Washington, D.C., concern over the fire overshadowed the upcoming
elections. In Atlanta, southerners awaited “further particulars with pain and deep
interest.” And The New York Herald asserted that “nothing has occurred for years which
has so stirred up the people of the metropolis.”6
The cataclysmic news of the event prompted increases in newspaper sales. In New
York, “every extra and each different edition of the evening papers were quickly snapped
up, and all the occupants of the cars and stages might be seen busily perusing their
columns. The shrill voices of the Gamins selling papers could be heard through all the
crowded thoroughfares, crying out, ‘Ere’s your extry: full p’rticlars [sic] of the great
fire.’” Once cognizant of the expanded market for information, newsboys raised their
prices, charging twenty-five cents, fifty cents, or even a dollar for a single issue. Such
techniques quickly earned the young capitalists the title “city Arabs.”7
Over time, American popular culture came to attribute the fire to Irish immigrant
Catherine O’Leary, a lantern, and a wayward cow. Recent articles have attempted to
exonerate O’Leary, and have been well-publicized by the mainstream media. Amateur
historian and attorney Richard Bales argues that Mrs. O’Leary and her cow cannot be
responsible for the fire. Bales places the blame on Daniel “Pegleg” Sullivan, a neighbor.
Sullivan appears to have been the first to have reported the fire.8 Coverage contemporary
to the fire did speculate that the O’Leary barn offered ideal protection from the wind for
anyone interested in lighting up smoking materials, be it a pipe, cigar, or cigarette, on the
street. Yet such knowledge cannot go much beyond speculation at this point, more than
one hundred years after the fire. And attempts to uncover the origins of the blaze
seemingly miss the point—the great disaster caused by the fire and the myriad of tales
which then proliferated remain the central story here. Indeed, Bales’ attempt to use the
archival record to establish a true culprit itself attests to the imaginative power of this
event after so many years. The most compelling point seems to be not who or what
started the fire but why it manages to hold our interest as it does.
Scholars of Chicago history have agreed for some time that Kate O’Leary does not
bear responsibility for the conflagration, yet the O’Leary story, still the subject of jokes
and advertisements, has certainly persisted. We should note, however, that this long-
existing tale, surprisingly, was not central to most of the immediate national newspaper
coverage and “instant-history” pamphlets and books that first brought Chicago’s calamity
to the nation’s attention. Most synopses mentioned the general area of De Koven Street;
some wrote of the O’Leary barn and refrained from naming names. Some coverage
assigned responsibility to O’Leary, but presented the story quickly and without rhetorical
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 5

flourishes.
Harper’s Weekly, for instance, when covering the story of the fire in late October 1871,
reported the story as truthful, but did not publish O’Leary’s name. Elias Colbert and
Everett Chamberlin’s instant-history of the fire, Chicago and the Great Conflagration,
released shortly after the fire in 1871 and very influential in spreading the tale of the
destruction, also attributed the event to O’Leary and held back her name. “The blame of
setting the fire rests on the woman who milked,” they explained, “or else upon the lazy
man who allowed her to milk. The name of this female we shall not hand down to
posterity in these pages.” Popularizers of the treacherous tale, but also Chicago residents,
Colbert and Chamberlin understood even this early on that making more of O’Leary than
necessary would tarnish Chicago’s reputation. The reporters claimed to “have no desire
to immortalize the author of the ruin of Chicago” at the expense of “the noble and
indefatigable pioneers” who built up the city. A local paper, The Chicago Evening Post,
misnamed O’Leary, calling her “a woman named Scully.”9 Although anti-Irish sentiment
only rarely shows up in the Chicago fire coverage, this particular error on the part of the
Post is telling. The reporters mistook O’Leary’s name, but not her ethnicity.
Other commentators attacked the O’Leary story head on, declaring it erroneous. James
W.Sheahan and George P.Upton, associate editors of The Chicago Tribune and authors of
an 1871 treatise on the fire, concluded that “the story that an attempt to milk a cow by the
light of a kerosene lamp, and the rapid firing of the cow-shed, is now known to be
untrue.” Frank Luzerne, author of the widely circulated instant-history The Lost City!
found in 1872 that “the story about the old woman who went into her stable to milk her
cow by the light of a kerosene lamp, which lamp said cow kicked over, is a pure
fabrication. No such woman or cow probably existed, save in the imagination of some
manufacturer of canards.” He continued to report that neighbors had testified that the
family were all in bed when the fire broke out, and posited another possible theory. “The
Journal of Commerce” Luzerne noted, “remarks that in a high wind smokers might stop
there for the purpose of striking a match [more] than at any other part in that
neighborhood. A spark alighting on this tinder of hay and shingles, and fanned by the
wind, would soon wrap the slight barn in flames.”10
Where then can we discover the source of this still prevalent myth? Michael Ahern,
former police reporter for the Chicago-based Morning Republican, publicly denounced
the O’Leary legend in 1915. As a child, Ahern had often purchased milk from O’Leary,
and in respect for her memory he wished to speak out. Claiming to be the oldest living
police reporter for a Chicago paper at the time of the Great Fire, Ahern said that he
believed Jim Haynie, a reporter for the Chicago Times, originally “faked” the story.11
News of the location of the fire’s origins had traveled quickly by word of mouth
throughout Chicago. No one denied that the fire had begun in the O’Leary’s barn. The
brief references to the barn in most newspapers and contemporary books and pamphlets,
however, do not seem to provide the makings of an enduring legend. Nothing about these
one or two line descriptions would inspire the national imagination. The Chicago Times’
coverage however, does reveal the roots of myth-making. I agree with Ahern that The
Chicago Times’ initial article on the fire is the source of Mrs. O’Leary’s fame. Although
this article did not use Catherine’s name, it centered on her and went out of its way to
provide inaccurate information in a manner unlike that of any other contemporary
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 6

periodical.
The Chicago Times article was the first paper to incorrectly report Mrs. O’Leary’s age
as seventy; she was actually only thirty-five at the time of the fire. This image of O’Leary
as an elderly woman would endure for over a century. The Times also first provided a
motive to O’Leary’s actions, transforming them from accidental to intentional behaviors.
The paper claimed, “Living at the place indicated was AN OLD IRISH WOMAN, who
had for many years been [a] pensioner of the county. It was her weekly custom to apply
to the county agent for relief, which in all cases was freely granted her.” Her supposed
graft continued, the paper asserted, until an old man made claims for county aid on the
basis of Mrs. O’Leary’s success at receiving supplies. He could not admit to abject
poverty, but could be considered worse off than O’Leary, who owned a “good milch
cow” and the land she lived on. “As a matter of course the agent at once cut off her
supplies,” the Times ranted on, “and when he took her to task for having deceived him,
the old hag swore she would be revenged on a city that would deny her a bit of wood or a
[piece] of bacon.” The paper also created an enduring myth by linking O’Leary, actually
the owner of six cows, with one particularly special bovine. The newspaper claimed that
when its reporter met with O’Leary, “she was rocking to and fro, moaning and groaning,
and crying aloud after the manner of her country-women when in great trouble. At first
she refused to speak one word about the fire, but only screamed at the top of her voice,
‘My poor cow, my poor cow. She is gone and I have nothing left in the world.’”12
The Chicago Times’ reporter went to such lengths with his story in order to attract and
maintain a readership for his paper. More widely read than The Chicago Tribune during
this period, The Chicago Times needed a strong story for their first issue after the fire.
This story needed to be particularly strong because of the long delay the Times took in
publishing their first post-fire paper. While the Tribune came back to life on October 11,
borrowing type from its long-time rival the Cincinnati Commercial, and The Chicago
Post had put out an extra on October 9, the Times staff waited until October 18th for their
first edition. The Chicago Times’ staff apparently developed this scandal to peak interest
in the publication and increase sales.
This article started a legend which grew up over time in American memory. While
contemporary readers savvy to the Times’ penchant for overblown language could
dismiss the article upon reading it, Americans eventually forgot the way in which the
story had been introduced. Only in the years after the conflagration did the O’Leary story
fully capture the American public’s attention. Over time many came to take the legend as
truth rather than tabloid. On every anniversary of the fire, the myth gained momentum.
And as she refused to speak with reporters, O’Leary encouraged newsmen to invent
interviews with her.13
Chased by the media, O’Leary retreated into a reclusive life. She and Patrick moved
around Chicago, always one step behind the rumors. Kate almost never left home, except
to attend mass. In 1894, O’Leary’s doctor spoke of the great pain the notoriety had
caused her, calling it “the grief of her life.” He added that “she is shocked at the levity
with which the subject is treated and at the satirical use of her name in connection with
it.” In their later years, Patrick and Kate survived financially due to the monetary
contributions of their son, Jim, “the stockyards gambling king,” and a well-known
Chicago figure in his own right.14
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 7

Although the earliest accounts of the fire did not solidify the O’Leary legend, the
coverage of The Great Chicago Fire did establish the hyperbolic tone of news writing on
Chicago which would follow the city for the next century. Most accounts, while matter-
of-fact with their comments on O’Leary, chose to dramatize the story of the fire in other
ways in order to draw in readers. Account after account, for instance, claimed that not
only could the raging fire be termed a terrible disaster, but that it ranked among the worst
disasters in history. In Atlanta, reporters stated that “the burning of Moscow with all its
historic terrors seems repeated.” New Yorkers found that “nothing like it has been
witnessed since the first days of the Franco-Prussian war.” Writers for the city’s own
Chicago Tribune took part in the over-dramatizing, perhaps with the thought that playing
up the conflagration would create a heroic image for their hometown. The first issue of
the newspaper after the fire set the tone for future rhetoric with its declaration, “Well
Chicago has always been bent on beating the world in everything—she has done it again
now. She has had the most destructive fire ever known.”15
Books and pamphlets published shortly after the fire reflected a similar conception of
the event. Edgar Johnson Goodspeed, in The Great Fires in Chicago and The West,
published in 1871, thought the fire would “render Chicago forever memorable in the
annals of history,” and with his book Goodspeed did his own part in making this
prediction come true. Once warmed up, Goodspeed expanded his claims. “No city can
equal now the ruins of Chicago,” he said, “not even Pompeii, much less Paris.” Colbert
and Chamberlin’s Chicago and the Great Conflagration stressed Chicago’s momentous
rise in order to accent the depth of her fall, saying, “Without a peer in her almost magical
growth in what seemed to be an enduring prosperity, the city of Chicago experienced a
catastrophe almost equally without a parallel in history, and the sad event awakened into
active sympathy the whole civilized world.” The Ruined City, in keeping with its title,
went further in its assertions about the fire’s historical qualities. “NEVER,” it boldly
declared, “since the dreadful conflagration which laid London, the modern Babylon, in
ashes, and astonished the world, has there been such a nerve-startling event, as the total
reduction by the red-tongued demon of the Garden City, Chicago—certainly one of the
handsomest, and one of the greatest cities of the Western World.” The book Chicago
Burned: An Authentic, Concise and Graphic Account, published in Elkhart, Indiana in
1871, echoed this tone, contending the fire to be the worst blaze ever to take place. Its
authors found that:

Never before in the annals of history can such a parallel of destruction be found.
The burning of Rome, London, Moscow, New York, Portland, and Paris were
undoubtedly appalling, disastrous events; but pale in significance before the
awful work of devastation which has resulted in the reduction to ashes of
Chicago, the city of the world—the spot on which the eyes of all nations of the
earth have been fixed with mixed envy and admiration ever since she started
into existence.16

The key claim of many of these authors concerned the extent of the physical damage
caused by the flames. The authors were correct to cite the financial devastation such
wreckage would cause, but often took their assertions to the outside edge of credible
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 8

prose. Luzerne, in The Lost City!, wrote:

Since the day when “tall Troy” crumbled away in flames, no fire has surpassed
the Chicago conflagration in its terrible work of destruction. The value of the
merchandise alone consumed by the flames was at least double that of the goods
destroyed in the great fires of Moscow and London combined. No city ever
suffered a greater pecuniary loss by fire, whether Jerusalem smitten by Titus,
Rome when sacked by Alaric, or Carthage when given up to fire and sword by
her Roman conquerors.17

Prominent personages, both inside and outside of the city, also took part in such talk.
Perhaps picking up on the style of the news coverage, the Governor of Michigan, Henry
P.Baldwin, maintained that “the city of Chicago, in the neighboring State [sic] of Illinois,
has been visited in the providence of Almighty God with a calamity almost unequalled in
the annals of history.” And even wealthy Chicago resident William Bross, who, as we
will discuss below, would become the booster most committed to spinning the fire story
in a positive way for the city of Chicago, reflected the extravagant wording of the press.
Part-owner of the Chicago Tribune at the time of the great fire, Bross perhaps intended,
like the article of his paper described above, to claim greatness for his city by magnifying
the extent of its disaster. Bross’s words, “There has indeed been nothing like so vast a
calamity of this nature in any country in the time of authentic history,” and other
comments of this type would ultimately backfire.18 In stressing the city’s destruction and
the horrors of the fire, Chicagoans helped make a curiosity of their hometown.
Articles on the fire also likened the devastation to the events of the Civil War. Coming
to a close just six years earlier, the conflict stood at the ready in all Americans’ minds; all
terrible events were measured by its yardstick of tragedy. Comments comparing the War
Between the States to the fire came from all regions of the country. Sharing a sadness due
to the losses of war, although not a political viewpoint, North and South could both
lament the pain of this more recent tragedy. A reporter from Indianapolis wrote that
“nothing has equaled it [the fire] since the firing on Fort Sumter.” “This calamity,”
declared The Atlanta Constitution, “outside of war, perhaps is the most disastrous one of
modern days.” Union and Confederate were further drawn together in mourning for the
losses caused by the October blaze as both regions provided financial relief for the
struggling city. Confederate exiles living in London sent in contributions with the general
collection, feeling sympathy for Chicago despite its Yankee past. An anonymous citizen
in Nashville, Tennessee left one hundred dollars for the needy of Chicago at the Nashville
Banner office with the note,” ‘No North, no South, when our fellow men are in
distress.’”19 In some sense, then, the Chicago fire provided a degree of reconciliation
between the regions so recently divided by war.
While the Chicago fire served in part to appease sectional conflict, not all authors
chose to use the disaster to bring the nation together. The Ruined City, published in New
York, even claimed that in some ways Chicago’s struggle could be deemed worse than
the events of the Civil War. This account concluded that “Since the memorable New
York fire of December 1835, we have had no disaster of the kind in this country or on
this Continent to compare with this of Chicago in the value of the property consumed,
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 9

while in the number of families left houseless and destitute, it far surpasses the burnings
of Charleston, Atlanta, Columbia, and Richmond during our late civil war all summed up
together.”20 Perhaps these sentiments can be seen as an attempt to lessen the culpability
of the North for damage inflicted upon the South during the Civil War, or to claim for the
North the same type of bravery the South asserted when it confronted the numerous
battles fought on its soil.
The sheer proliferation of the media coverage of the Chicago fire also inspired the
comparison of the disaster to the Civil War. Ross Miller, author of American Apocalypse:
The Great Fire and the Myth of Chicago points out that the Civil War and the Great Fire
were two of the very first national media events experienced by the nation.21 For
example, New Yorkers found themselves captivated by the news flowing into their city
from Chicago, admitting that “the excitement in the business portion of the city was
scarcely surpassed by that of the most eventful times of the war.”22
The producers of popular culture made the most of the city’s losses. Chicago writers
perhaps hoped that in exhaustively examining the horrid details and at times even
stretching the truth, the city of Chicago might appear as a grander metropolis—an
advanced settlement that had taken a terrible tumble. The Chicago Tribune again set the
tone for much of the later discussion. Highlighting the city’s impressive rise even as it
catalogued her devastation, the Tribune writers explained that “the vast extent of territory
is nearly as desolate and empty as it was 50 years ago.” Outside of Chicago, other
periodicals followed suit. One admitted that “the imagination stands appalled at the
magnitude of the terrible calamity now visiting Chicago.”23
Chicago lay in ruins, wrote its assessors, like a romantic European city. James
W.Sheahan and George T.Upton, authors of The Great Conflagration, painted the scene
with a sentimental brush, writing unblushingly, “Dark nooks and deeply-shaded recesses,
which by daylight would lose their secrecy, and be nothing but waste blanks, are in the
evening full of the charm and mystery of darkness. Fancy peoples those secluded spots
with the creatures of her imagination, and they seem fitting homes for ghoul and afrit—
creatures who lurk among the ruined tombs and devour the belated wanderers there.”
Apparently some felt the city equally mysterious in the morning. Edgar Johnson
Goodspeed recounted, “Under the light of the sun, wandering among the ruins of a day,
the beholder cannot dispel the illusion that he is the victim of some Aladdinic dream, and
that he has been transported with the speed of light, by the genius of the lamp or ring, and
set down among the ruins of the Titanic ages.”24 Ironically, by being forced to begin
anew because of the devastation, the relatively young Chicago gained a patina of age
through the fire. Although rebuilding the infrastructure of the urban center would make it
even newer physically, Chicago had gained a well-known past. Unfortunately, in
claiming this particular past, Chicago established a enduring connection with devastation
and scandal. The American public grew accustomed to using Chicago to feed their
prurient interests.
The fire undeniably caused excessive physical damage to the city. Yet, despite the
heightened rhetoric, the blaze was not in fact the worst in terms of loss of life for 1871,
nor even the worst for that day. Also on the evening of Sunday, October 8, the town of
Peshtigo, Wisconsin caught fire, and the conflagration continued until Friday, October
13. Peshtigo was “totally destroyed” by this disaster; in the town and in neighboring
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 10

Sugar Bush eight hundred people died as a result of the fire. According to Karen
Sawislak, author of Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871–1874,
however, Peshtigo’s fire failed to capture the nation’s attention as it was caused by
“nature” rather than human error.25 Most Americans, of course, had not heard of
Peshtigo, so its news held little cachet. In addition, city disasters played better with a
national audience already primed to revel in urban misadventure.
Both the instant-histories and newspaper coverage of the event set aside a few pages
for stories of other contemporary fires across the United States and abroad, as well as
fires throughout history. The work Chicago Burned acknowledged, “Chicago is not the
only place that has been visited by this great destroyer of life and property. From
Wisconsin and Michigan comes a cry of desolation and misery that makes us sick at
heart. All along the shores of Lake Michigan and Huron the suffering is intense. Whole
towns have been destroyed and nothing remains of them but the horrible black ruins that
are to be seen on every side.” Beginning with the first issue of The Chicago Tribune
issued after the disaster, the mainstream media carefully documented other great
historical fires, noting the Charleston blazes of 1838 (1,158 buildings and forty five acres
burned), 1845 (nearly the entire city destroyed), and 1868, the Quebec fires of May and
June 1845 (2,800 buildings ruined in all), the San Francisco fire of 1851, the Portland,
Maine fire of 1866, and the infamous London conflagration of September 1666
(depleting 436 acres and five-sixths of the city). Fires in the city of Chicago itself,
occurring in the years of 1857, 1859, 1866, and 1868 were also discussed.26 Instead of
minimizing the impact of the 1871 fire, however, the discussions of these blazes instead
magnified this latest urban destruction. Presentations of these earlier events in the instant-
histories, usually in a back section of the works, were designed to make Chicago’s
disaster appear all the more devastating. After comparing the various fires, writers
concluded that the Chicago blaze ranked first in terms of tragedy.
Reporters made the most of the chaos inspired by the fire, portraying a scene of utter
confusion. Chicagoans, the observers concluded, appeared psychologically damaged by
the disaster. “The panic is increasing,” said The New York Times on October 9, “and the
people seem almost crazy with alarm.” The Detroit Free Press’ correspondent on the
scene spoke of the “indescribable noise” of the fire itself and “the hurly burly” in the
street as firemen rushed about. “Wails and lamentations of the homeless, houseless
people filled the air,” the subsequent edition explained, “like one great cry of distress to
the heavens. Men wept or raved like lunatics, women fainted away, children ran hither
and thither in their night-clothes, and the awful picture was colored anew by the fresh
flames leaping up from roofs untouched but a moment before.” A native Chicagoan, Mr.
Lockwood, provided his personal reminiscences of the fire to The New York Sun.
Lockwood stated that Chicagoans gathered on the lakefront in order to flee the heat of the
fire in the cold waters, acting “more like dead than living men.” The New York Herald
felt that fire stripped Chicagoans of their humanity altogether. The Herald reported that
“fifty thousand men, women, and children huddled together like so many wild animals;
helpless children asking for bread, heart-broken parents, who knew not which way to turn
or what to say.” One work of contemporary history vividly explained that before the
demon of fire “the proud city’s populace scattered and squirmed like so many little
ants.”27
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 11

In order to make the report palatable to a wide variety of readers, authors often worked
the plight of Chicago’s women into their accounts. Hundreds of premature births were
attributed to the shock of the disaster. Writers made countless references to the lack of
clothing worn by women running from their homes unexpectedly. These unclothed
women had two main effects. First, on some level they inspired sympathy with the city;
many readers could comprehend the comparison between Chicago and an innocent
maiden whose dignity had been compromised or a mother breast-feeding her offspring.
Frank Luzerne undoubtedly hoped to encourage a sympathetic response when he wrote,
“Mothers, slightly enrobed, and carrying tender babes, were crying bitterly, while others
cherished their young babes at their panting breasts and were silent in their overpowering
agony.”28 Second, and probably more forcibly, however, these images of women served
to downgrade Chicago’s reputation. Here stood a city, the authors insinuated, where
young girls could not feel safe. Here lay a city that provided the unclothed bodies of its
women for the entertainment of the rest of the nation.
Some women, the readers learned, emerged from their homes fully ablaze, and had to
remove their burning clothing publicly in the street. After rescuing three hundred dollars
from her home, and returning inside for yet more valuables, a wife fled back outside with
her clothing on fire. “The only way that her husband could save her,” explained the
report, “was by tearing off her clothes; not a shred of clothing being left on her. Her
nakedness, however, was finally covered with a blanket.” If this was yet not enough to
satisfy the reader’s voyeurism, the author went on to say that “her eldest daughter was in
the same plight.” In “A Thrilling Scene: A Lady Braving the Flames with Her Child,”
from the Englewood, Illinois Telegram, a presumably lucky rescuer saved a nude woman
whose “garments nearly completely burned off.” If not entirely naked, a number of
women entered the streets scantily clad; one man admitted that he had a particularly fine
recollection of “a very pretty girl, who must have had barely time to leave her bed ere the
room took fire, as she was clad in nothing but her night clothes and a thin shawl.” Author
Frank Luzerne even provoked his readers with the story of mischievous cross-dressing
Gussie, who found herself forced to wear her brother George’s pants when fleeing
because of her “careless” attitude owards organizing her own clothes.29
Stories of particularly sad or odd reactions to the fire were reprinted in more than one
periodical or instant history. Many accounts spoke of confused mothers mistaking small
wrapped bundles for their infant children as they fled, leaving their babies to die in the
ruins. Often repeated as well was the tale of a young girl with burning long hair, on
which well-meaning citizens threw whiskey in an attempt to put out the flames. Another
infamous figure, a middle-aged woman hauling heavy bundles through the Chicago
streets, had lost her mind, and sang a Mother Goose rhyme as she wandered, “Chickery,
Chickery, Crany Crow/I went to the well to wash my toe!”30
Reporters attributed part of the apparent chaos of the fire to the mixing of classes
caused by the blaze. Driven from their homes, rich and poor, white and black,
Scandinavian, Irish, and English found themselves together. “Thousands of persons and
horses inextricably commingled,” explained The Ruined City, “poor people of all colors
and shades, and of every nationality, from Europe, China, and Africa, mad with
excitement, struggled with each other to get away.”31
The mainstream media claimed the confusion of the fire provided license for a wide
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 12

variety of vices. Edgar Johnson Goodspeed wrote that “it was a time when the worst
forces of society were jubilant, and all the villains had free course.” Colbert and
Chamberlin, probably fashioning the most colorful account of the temptations of the ruin,
stated:

Villainous, haggard with debauch and pinched with misery, flitting through the
crowd, collarless, ragged, dirty, unkempt, were negroes with stolid faces and
white men who fatten on the wages of shame; gliding through the mass like
vultures in search of prey. They smashed windows, reckless of the severe
wounds inflicted on their naked hands, and with bloody fingers rifled
impartially, till, shelf, and cellar, fighting viciously for the spoils of forays.
Women, hollow-eyed and brazen-faced, with foul drapery tied over their heads,
their dresses half-torn from their skinny bosoms, and their feet thrust into
trodden-down slippers, moved here and there, stealing, scolding shrilly, and
laughing with one another at some particularly ‘splendid’ gush of flame or
‘beautiful’ falling in of roof.32

While women lost their clothes or their sanity in the conflagration, men turned to drink.
Saloon-keepers, knowing that the fire would soon consume their wares, threw open their
doors to the public for last-minute parties. Some Chicagoans simply helped themselves to
alcohol by breaking into abandoned bars. Harper’s Weekly felt that the men seemed “to
have the same impulse that leads sailors on a sinking ship to drown their terrors in the
delirium of intoxication.” Drunkenness brought death to those too senseless to out-run the
rapidly moving destruction. The many references to intoxicated behavior made buffoons
of male Chicago residents. Even local papers encouraged the characterization. One stated,
“Drunken men staggered among the crowds, apparently possessed of the idea that the
whole affair was a grand municipal spree, in which they were taking part as the duty that
should be discharged by all good citizens.”33
The media presented Chicago as a place with almost unlimited possibilities for
disaster. In the face of unthinkable horror, the cultural producers insisted that Chicago
residents still found a way to make matters worse by becoming drunk or committing
crimes. A national weekly magazine proclaimed that “armed patrols…needed to guard
the helpless from robbery and the baser passions of desperate ruffians, who, under cover
of the general panic and disorganization, sought to inaugurate a new reign of terror.”
Chicagoans allegedly robbed, raped, and murdered during the chaos of the fire. Of
course, in keeping with the rhetoric of excess, reporters deemed these violations of law
the worst ever experienced by any city. Chicago’s own Lakeside Monthly magazine
stated, “Before daybreak the thieving horror had culminated in scenes of daring and
robbery unparalleled in the annals of any similar disaster.” Many sources claimed that
incendiaries roamed the streets and that self-appointed vigilantes had executed up to fifty
people for reportedly starting fires. A local paper urged, “We hope that whenever a
citizen can catch an incendiary attempting to fire a building, he will shoot him on the
spot. This is the best way to dispose of such wretches at a time like this.” Most likely
journalists concocted these tales of incendiarism to please audiences; evidence seems to
suggest that no such events occurred. Carl Smith, author of Urban Disorder and the
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 13

Shape of Belief, the 1995 study that devotes a section to the 1871 fire, concludes that
none of the cases can be verified.34
One of the most prevalent complaints about lawlessness connected to the Great
Chicago fire involved the mercenary attitudes and even outright thefts attributed to the
city’s deliverymen during the conflagration. Fleeing from their homes, the frightened
populace turned to those with carts and horses to help them haul family members and
belongings to safety. A good number of these businessmen, according to later articles,
demanded exorbitant rates for their services, discharged one family’s goods to carry
items for higher paying customers, or stole family heirlooms under the pretense of
moving them. These incidents were recounted as morality tales for readers; in Chicago,
the quest for money had gone too far. Goodspeed related, “This class of people made
great profit out of the calamities of their fellow-citizens. Their pockets may be heavy to-
day, but their consciences, if they have any, should be still heavier.” During the fire,
express drivers charged anywhere between five and one hundred and fifty dollars for use
of their carts. This led, post-disaster, to the Mayor’s proclamation prohibiting hackmen
from charging more than their regular fares.35
Because of the public’s belief that the city teemed with crime, the city undertook
extraordinary law enforcement measures. Within two weeks of the fire, hundreds of extra
policemen began duty. Chicago Mayor R.B.Mason called upon Lieutenant General Philip
Sheridan, along with several companies of regular soldiers and volunteers, to guard
Chicago beginning October 11th. The military reigned in Chicago for nearly two weeks.
Along with security, Sheridan dispensed supplies to those hit hardest by the fire. John M.
Palmer, Governor of Illinois, vociferously protested Sheridan’s presence. Citing
objections to army rule in his state, Palmer lobbied President Grant and others in
Washington, D.C. to have the forces removed. Although most contemporary sources on
the fire praised Sheridan’s efforts and deemed such a level of protection necessary, the
troops’ presence heightened the connection between Chicago and disorder in the public
eye. With the shooting and death of Prosecuting Attorney and former editor of The
Evening Post Thomas W.Grosvenor on October 20, 1871 by young militia member
Theodore Treat, Sheridan’s protection perhaps appeared more dangerous than stabilizing.
On October 23, Mayor Mason relieved Sheridan of his command over Chicago.36
The perceived level of chaos in Chicago led to repeated comparisons between the city
and hell itself. One observer of the disaster reported that “he could feel the heat and
smoke and hear the maddened Babel of sounds, and it required little imagination to
believe one’s self looking over the adamantine bulwarks of hell into the bottomless pit.”
Goodspeed contended that the night sky of the smoldering ruins “glowed like the canopy
of hell and threatened universal ruin.” For some, the fire seemed to hearken the end of the
world. The New York Sun found that more than one witness exclaimed “This is the day of
judgment! This must be the end of the world!” as they watched the devouring flames.
“God only can save the city from utter destruction,” warned The Ruined City. And in fire-
inspired poetry, like N.S.Emerson’s “Call for Help for Chicago,” the fire was portrayed
as the devil.37
Believing that Chicago’s fiery fate could foreshadow events in other American cities,
citizens looked for lessons in the ruins. On the most practical level, Americans looked to
better fireproof their buildings, and to increase water supplies. Yet the lessons also
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 14

assumed a more metaphorical and religious demeanor. Observers noted that sites of vice
burned in the conflagration—brothels, saloons, gambling halls, and theaters. Was this
merely coincidence? Reverend Robert Collyer, of Chicago’s Church of the Unity, found
the metropolis guilty of a wide variety of sins, and of harboring “a criminal population
almost equal to that of London, which is the worst on the face of the earth.” Colbert and
Chamberlin assumed a different tack, arguing that the fire had perhaps been a sign of all
that Chicago had achieved, yet noting that perhaps the city had succeeded too quickly.
They wrote, “What if these fires should be but one of a series of events, designed by the
Great Ruler of the universe to prevent man from progressing too fast or too far, in his
forward march toward the perfection of knowledge, and of that power which knowledge
confers upon its possessors?”38
The Indiana publication, Chicago Burned, warned that Chicago’s experiences
demonstrated the futility of accumulating material wealth. “We learn from all these
disasters,” it concluded, “what a poor place the earth is to put our treasures in.” Publisher
Alfred L.Sewell equated the destruction with biblical proclamations, saying, “He smote
Chicago not only for its own ultimate good, but also as a warning and a lesson for all
other cities, if not for all mankind. That this will be the effect, is already evident. He has
said that ‘pride shall have its fall,’ and that ‘the lofty shall be brought low’—and He has
enjoined us also not to place our trust in riches.”39
The most common exhortation concerning the cause of the fire centered on Chicago’s
lack of humility. Oftentimes, authors characterized Chicago as a shameless woman.
Cities, like ships, frequently were referred to by female pronouns, but cultural producers,
in an uncommon twist to this gendering of cities, proclaimed Chicago’s womanhood of a
particularly unchaste type. In the same Chicago Times issue that launched the O’Leary
legend, the reporter opened with a seemingly prophetic biblical passage. “Saith Holy
Writ,” he proclaimed, “The merchants of the world are waxed rich through the abundance
of her delicacies. How much she has glorified herself and lived deliciously, so much
sorrow and torment give her; for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen and am no widow,
and shall see no sorrow. She shall be utterly burned by fire.” Chicago Burned urged all its
readers to build up their souls rather than their reputations. The book stated, “Politicians
have worshipped their offices, and merchants their business, and painters their pictures,
and musicians their attainments, and architects their buildings, and historians their books;
and how often have they seen their works perish!”40
Chicago might be able to recover, other cities conceded, if she could cast off this
burden of pride. The Cincinnati Commercial predicted that Chicago would “arise from
her ashes a grander city than ever, chastened by her calamity, and by experience grow
less confident in startling rapidity of progress, and have more content with gradual
returns and solid gains.” Murat Halstead, the editor of Commercial, believed that the city
would rebuild in plain brick rather than ornate ironwork, donning the clothing of a more
sober city than the Chicago of the past.41
The best-selling novel of the 1870s, Reverend Edward Payson Roe’s Barriers Burned
Away, first published in installments in The Evangelist beginning at the end of 1871,
envisioned the fire as a lesson in Christian piety. So popular that it was continually
reprinted until after 1900, the book exposed many Americans to the argument that
Chicago’s fire had provided a needed cleansing to the urban center.42 Like Theodore
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 15

Dreiser’s Sister Carrie of a generation later, Payson’s protagonist Dennis Fleet came to
Chicago full of plans. As he embarked for the city, Dennis believed that “the world was
all before him, and Chicago, the young and giant city of the West, seemed an Eldorado,
where fortune, and perhaps fame, might soon be won.”43 Dennis managed to elude the
temptations of the wicked city and ultimately became a successful artist after holding a
series of humble jobs.
Dennis fell in love, despite himself, with the beautiful-yet-cold German aristocrat,
Christine Ludolph. Christine embodied the get-ahead Chicago business ethic; she and her
father wished to make enough money to be able to return to Germany and maintain the
family lands. An atheist, Christine believed that those who claimed religion in her city
fooled only themselves. She stated, “Here in Christian Chicago the will of God is no
more heeded by the majority than the Emperor of China, and the Bible might as well be
the Koran.” Yet in surviving the fire, Christine learned humility and the joy of helping
others as she tended to an elderly woman overwhelmed by the confusion. On the shore of
Lake Michigan, Christine broke down and earnestly prayed to God for the first time in
her life. This newly acquired religion allowed Dennis and Christine to marry, and
presumably to live “happily ever after.” In Roe’s fictional conception, Chicago had a
wicked past, but could hope for redemption if Christian souls like Dennis and Christine
managed to prevail. Roe, a pastor from Highland Falls, New York, bet on the side of the
many Chicagoans who were convinced that Chicago could rise again.44
Predominately local voices made up the contingent of those who worked to beat back
the onslaught of negative media coverage with more positive arguments. Unlike Roe,
these writers did not predict a moral face-lift for their city, as they were not concerned
about whether Chicago had suffered from any ethical laxity in its pre-fire period. They
argued instead that Chicago would soon return to its former physical and financial
strength. The Chicago Evening Post explained that Chicago, as the nation’s
“representative city,” had to be rebuilt. The claim that Chicago was representative would
be a theme that others would take up from time to time during the next hundred years,
and is something further chapters will explore. When those inside the city made this
claim, the representative-ness was seen as a positive attribute. In the Chicago Evening
Post, this attribution signaled the writer’s belief in Chicago’s pioneer spirit and optimistic
business sense. In three to five years, Chicagoans ambitiously (and correctly) challenged,
their city would resume its post-fire demeanor. The effusive Chicago Times uttered, “We
have here won one of the grandest conflicts known to history, and although our defeat is
without parallel, we shall marshal out the remnants of our routed but not demoralized
armies and shall march once more to victory.” Most influential on national fire coverage
and the historical memory of the conflagration, however, were the now famous words of
The Chicago Tribune. The paper urged, “CHEER UP. In the midst of a calamity without
parallel in the world’s history, looking upon the ashes of thirty years’ accumulations, the
people of this once beautiful city have resolved that CHICAGO SHALL RISE
AGAIN.”45
Competition between cities, particularly emerging American cities, was fierce during
this period. The battles between urban centers for financial investments and population
led a few urban newspapers to forecast ruin for Chicago. Perhaps the fire would allow for
a reordering of the urban hierarchy. The St. Louis Republican believed that the fire might
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 16

enable St. Louis to make a bid for Chicago’s trade. The Cincinnati Commercial felt that
other cities would at least temporarily divert much of Chicago’s business. A New Orleans
paper proclaimed Chicago’s financial rulership at an end. “The magical growth and
stupendous wealth of this great interior metropolis was, in the main, due to geographical,
commercial, and other causes, which no longer exist in their original force,” it stated,
making the prediction that St. Louis would now replace the Lake City. To the New
Orleans author, St. Louis’ growth appeared sure and solid, while Chicago had supposedly
grown through speed and unsubstantiated speculation.46
Most urban spokesmen, however, predicted that Chicago would over-come its
predicament. Considerate commentators felt that showing a degree of concern for the city
was the appropriate public response. Observant business people in other regions must
have realized that, whatever their boosterish loyalties, a fall for Chicago could mean a
decline in the fortunes of the many non-resident investors in Chicago’s economic
expansion. A man speaking for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a longtime competitor for
Midwestern trade, admitted to no feeling of rivalry with Chicago despite the two cities’
long and acrimonious history. The businessman challenged, “It is nobody but a narrow-
minded fool that will talk of Milwaukee being benefited by this calamity to Chicago.
What is your misfortune is ours too, and that of the whole Northwest. As for trade, we
haven’t goods enough to serve a single day of Chicago’s trade.” Even some in St. Louis,
a city known to harbor outspoken critics of Chicago, spoke rapturously of Chicago’s
golden future. The St. Louis Democrat, perhaps feigning tenderness for its “sister city,”
stated:

It is a dreadful blow to a swiftly growing city but they are mistaken who think it
will prove fatal. Chicago has been the world’s wonder in her rise, and she is
now the world’s sad wonder in her almost unprecedented calamity. She will
now astonish by the rapidity and success of her recuperation. One year hence
will witness orderly arrays of new and grander piles in place of those that are
now smouldering [sic] in the blackness.”47

More established cities also spoke of their hope for Chicago’s quick rejuvenation. In this
catastrophic time, people from other urban centers sought to overcome jealousies. The
New York Herald flattered the ruined city, conceding, “Our Chicago friends were not
without good reason for speaking of their own city as a possible rival to New York.”48
How can we explain these claims of predicted success for Chicago? When the
preponderance of stories about the Great Fire highlighted the weight of the city’s
enormous struggles, why these proclamations of regrowth? The commentators felt
compelled to make positive statements for the most practical of reasons—they knew that
the financial futures of their cities depended on Chicago’s. For all of the metropolitan
rivalry of the late nineteenth century, many writers understood how economically
interdependent these urban centers had become.
With the news of the fire, the American market did falter. New York stocks tumbled,
particularly Western Union Telegraph (given the physical damage to telegraph facilities
in Chicago). On Wall Street, brokers tried to remain hopeful, but stock prices lost ten
percent of their pre-fire values during the trading day of October 9, picking up slightly at
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 17

the close of the day. Members of the New York produce market also expressed concern,
and the traders “refrained from pelting each other jocosely with little balls of dough, and
stood in small knots and discussed the sufferings of the homeless people of the Queen
City of the West.”49 All over the nation, people had invested in the booming Midwestern
city, and wondered if the fire would devastate them financially. Investors worried that
Chicago businesses would fail to repay their loans; merchants worried that Chicago
businessmen would delay in placing orders for more goods. Despite the initial slump in
the market, national business soon recovered. The Great Chicago Fire, in spite of
Chicago’s importance to the national economy, did not lead to an economic debacle.
Due to the hundreds of millions of dollars in assets lost to the conflagration, the nation
fretted about the strength of its insurance houses. In Providence, Rhode Island, for
instance, insurance companies were “very much excited over the great Chicago fire,
nearly all of them having risks of large amounts in Chicago.” Boston insurance concerns
lost over half a million dollars; some insurance companies based in Chicago closed
altogether. Early reports in Chicago placed the local companies’ losses at approximately
twenty-five million dollars, with tallied assets at close to four hundred million dollars.50
The wealth of positive commentary concerning Chicago’s business future perhaps did
work to shore up its finances. While individual investors inside and outside of the city
collapsed, Chicago businesses did begin to regroup immediately after the fire. While the
makers of popular culture wanted to make money off the fire by selling their “thrilling”
stories to the prurient public, they did not wish to simultaneously kill financial
investments in Chicago businesses. They succeeded in balancing the two concerns in part
because Americans could indeed conceive of an infamous city as financially lucrative.
Americans did not consider “scandalous” and “sound investment” contradictory.
Along with supportive commentary, cities provided financial and material
contributions to the burned city in an attempt to protect the national economy and relieve
suffering Chicagoans. All over the country, Americans held meetings in order to
coordinate local relief efforts that would total in the millions of dollars. In Columbus,
Ohio local bakeries and the penitentiary commissary baked bread and cooked meats for
the Chicago homeless. In Cincinnati, the Allemania Jewish Society cancelled their ball
and sent their foodstuffs to Chicago. Railway companies provided free transportation out
of Chicago, as well as free shipment of relief goods into the city. The state of Illinois paid
Chicago back the nearly three million dollars the city had expended on the Illinois and
Michigan Canal project (which linked the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River and
officially opened in 1848) in exchange for a lien on the canal. The state also relieved
Chicago of approximately three million dollars in taxes.51
According to the media, the contributions at times took the form of personal sacrifices.
An Irish lad in Springfield, Massachusetts reportedly sold his toy whip, his favorite
plaything, for ten cents in order to provide help for Chicago. One young girl sent all of
her clothes to Chicago through her school’s fund drive. A railroad executive supposedly
returned home to find his wife, clad in fine silk, preparing supper. She had given all of
her other clothes, their son’s clothes, and her husband’s clothing, to the needy of
Chicago. Even the family’s pickles were missing, for “the poor souls in Chicago would
relish them so much.” While the businessman admired his wife’s spirit, he inquired, “Do
you think we can stand an ‘encore’ on that Chicago fire?”52
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 18

The amount of generous gifts given the city prompted Mayor Mason to utilize the
city’s Relief and Aid Society as a coordinating committee. Run by “honest” businessmen
rather than Chicago politicians, the society, established in the late 1850s, attempted to
distribute aid only to applicants they deemed worthy. The society’s screening process
must have eliminated many Chicagoans, because the Relief and Aid Society still held
thousands of dollars in donations for fire victims two years after the blaze.53
In a matter of days, writers dubbed the outpouring of relief unparalleled. The Detroit
Free Press found Chicago’s calamity “the occasion of one of the most magnificent
displays of sympathy and charity that the world has ever beheld.” Poet Henry M.Look of
Pontiac, Michigan described the sentiments in rhyming verse, writing, “Destruction
wasted the city,/But the burning curse that came/Enkindled in all the people/Sweet
charity’s holy flame.” Similarly, poet N.S.Emerson mused that the world “gave and gave,
and still had more/To give from Love’s exhaustless store.” Chicagoans responded to the
aid with thanks. The earnestly devout William Bross, Chicago’s fire spokesman and
consummate booster, stated, “Strong men in Chicago weep at midnight, not over their
losses of thousands, aye, many of them even millions, but with joy and gratitude at the
noble charity you have shown us. God will reward you for it, and our children and
children’s children shall bless you.”54
Also in a more positive vein, both local and national commentators occasionally took
up the figure of the phoenix, the Egyptian mythological bird that arose from its own ashes
and began its life anew, as a mascot for Chicago’s recovery. Unlike the phoenix, Chicago
had not been around for hundreds of years when it had to start again, but the comparison
seemed appropriate. Like many of the powerful post-fire images, this symbol first took
shape in the pages of The Chicago Tribune. The paper exclaimed, “So Chicago, aided by
the sympathy and already tendered assistance of her friends in other parts of the country,
joined to the indomitable and elastic energy of her own people, will be builded again,
solemnly yet determinedly, upon the still smoldering ashes of her late glory, and become
known as the Phoenix City—an appellation to which her somewhat obsolete one of
Garden City will readily give place.” In using this legend, the Chicago Tribune provided
precedent for the city’s miraculous rebirth. William Bross, editor and part-owner of the
paper, took the claims even farther. Not only would Chicago regenerate, “Phoenix-like,”
but also she would be “more glorious than ever before.”55
William Bross tried to influence the coverage of the Chicago fire through a number of
speeches and contacts with prominent people. Bross, first setting eyes on Chicago in
October 1846, moved to the city permanently in 1848. Primarily of Huguenot origin, he
had been raised as a Presbyterian in the Delaware Valley. A graduate of Williams
College in Massachusetts, Bross came to Chicago with considerable intellectual skills. He
first ran a bookstore, but finding he enjoyed reading books better than selling them,
entered into the newspaper publication business. In partnership with Chicagoan
J.Ambrose Wight, Bross purchased the religious paper, Herald of the Prairies, and
printed the newspaper and the Chicago Tribune on the city’s first power press. When
Wight and Bross determined the paper could not support both their families, Bross sold
his share to Wight and began the Democratic Press with John L.Scripps in 1852. In
1857–1858, the Democratic Press and Chicago Tribune merged. From 1865 to 1869,
Bross also served as the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois.56
 "Do you wonder Chicago burned?" 19

Bross, the author of two booster histories of Chicago (built of articles culled from his
newspapers), The Railroads, History and Commerce of 1854 and History of Chicago of
1876, became Chicago’s most tireless spokesperson after the fire. Most importantly,
while traveling to Buffalo and New York City the Thursday after the fire to get materials
for the Tribune, Bross gave a number of pro-Chicago speeches and interviews. Bross and
his family lost their home in the conflagration, and the Tribune building, built to be
“fireproof,” did not withstand the blaze. But Bross presented an unflappably optimistic
face to the public. He made claims early on as to the unstoppable energy of Chicago and
its inevitable rejuvenation. The morning after the fire he saw all around him “evidence of
true Chicago spirit. On all sides men said to one another, ‘Cheer up; we’ll all be right
again before long’; and many other plucky things. Their pluck and courage was
wonderful. Every one was bright and cheerful, pleasant, hopeful, and even inclined to be
jolly in spite of the misery and destitution which surrounded them and which they shared.
One and all said, Chicago must and should be rebuilt at once.”57
On his trip, Bross spoke to the Buffalo Board of Trade, where he gave an account “of
the extent of the fire, the relief that had been sent, and of the certainty that the city in a
very few years would rise from its ashes in all its pristine vigor.” Bross reasoned that
Chicago’s re-growth was linked with the idea of Manifest Destiny; as the nation would
inevitably spread west, its western gateway city, Chicago, must return to its former
power. In New York, two reporters for the New York Tribune interviewed Bross, the first
prominent eyewitness to visit their city. The resulting article appeared in the Tribune on
October 14. In the interview, Bross urged New York financiers not to abandon Chicago.
Bross persuaded:

New York is the senior and Chicago the junior partner of the great firm which
manages the vast commercial interests of our nation. By a dispensation of
Providence which the wisest could not foresee, the means in the hands of the
junior partner have been destroyed. Will the senior partner sit by and see the
business of the firm crushed out when he has the means to establish it on a scale
more gigantic and profitable than ever before?58

Bross also met with a friend who worked for the Springfield Republican, and the
president and secretary of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, Chicago’s
largest creditor. On October 17th, Bross spoke to the New York Chamber of Commerce.
His remarks were copied or summarized in many New York morning papers, and in the
papers of other American cities. For the Chamber of Commerce, Bross highlighted the
economic opportunities available in the fallen city. The fire had leveled distinctions
between businessmen; whoever could offer the least expensive goods would prosper.
Bross encouraged young men everywhere to hurry to Chicago to seek their fortunes.
1920s Chicago historian Lloyd Lewis asserts, “Every-body agreed that Bross’ beating of
the tom-toms induced tens of thousands to seek Chicago as a home for either themselves
or their dollars.”59
But even Bross’ concerted efforts could not substantially change the unflattering
rhetoric concerning Chicago generated by the cultural producers. The material, which
detailed the chaos of the fire scene and the wayward character of Chicago, spoke to a
 Popular culture and the enduring myth of Chicago 20

readied part of the American personality. The scandalous story of the blaze proved
popular with a nation primed to link great troubles to the urban environment. In the end, a
good many Americans concluded that Chicago had burned because the city had, at some
level, deserved the punishment. The city’s rapid growth and seemingly insatiable drive to
make money worried Americans trying to hold onto a disappearing rural way of life. The
Great Chicago Fire of 1871 launched the style of popular expression that would color
Chicago’s national reputation for almost a century. With the fire, Chicago became a city
in which drunkenness and crime could barely be controlled, and in which young innocent
women were at risk. The city’s disaster pointed the way towards America’s final
destiny—the pits of hell—if the tides of progress were not stalled. Americans found
themselves utterly captivated by the news of Chicago’s scandalous fire, but not surprised.
Edgar Johnson Goodspeed expressed many of these issues in an anecdote: “A girl
carrying her sewing machine to four different points…was forced from each by the
advancing [fire] fiend. At last an expressman seized her treasure, and in spite of all her
efforts drove away with it. Said the impoverished girl, ‘Do you wonder Chicago
burned?’”60
 Chapter Two
“The New City of the New World”: Fin-de-Siecle
Chicago and Its Fairs

Fin-de-siecle America was a place of great change. Just catching their breath after the
traumas of the Civil War, Americans found themselves in a rapidly evolving era.
Immigrants poured into the country, some of whom posed a challenge to the
predominantly Protestant and northern European heritage of the nation. Between 1860
and 1890, ten million immigrants entered the United States; most of these people settled
in cities. And as the American economy industrialized and corporations grew in size, the
urban areas grew even larger. Between 1890 and 1920, eighteen million more immigrants
entered the United States. Many of these “new immigrants,” hailing from southern and
eastern Europe, settled in urban locations. The nation, predominantly rural for over one
hundred years, became a nation of urbanites. In 1880 nearly one-half of the population of
the northeastern states lived in settlements of four thousand or more, and by 1890 one-
third of all Americans lived in settlements of twenty-five hundred or more.1 A great
change was taking place; a change which upset Americans’ conceptions of themselves.
Where there had once been a Protestant, rural and agricultural nation, a new type of
republic took root, based on industry and large corporations instead of farms, cities
instead of country, and a polyglot population instead of a more homogenous, Anglo-
Saxon one. This transformation unsettled many Americans.
Historians of turn-of-the-century America speak of the power of the status quo in
American life, and the loss perceived by long-settled Americans during these tumultuous
years. Alan Trachtenberg, in The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the
Gilded Age, explains that the meaning of the word “America” itself became a point of
conflict. Focusing on the ways in which American life became increasingly
“incorporated”—more bureaucratic, hierarchical, professional, and secular—
Trachtenberg argues that incorporation abruptly pulled the nation away from its
traditional values. Pondering the rise of the frenzied cities, many Americans mourned the
increasing abandonment of what they perceived to be their old way of life, wondering if
they could hold on to any of its pieces. Could the crowded cities possibly provide
sustenance to the national psyche in the way that rural America had? Trachtenberg writes,
“If the frontier had provided the defining experience for Americans, how would the
values learned in that experience now fare in the new world of cities—a new world
brought into being as if blindly by the same forces which had proffered the apparent gift
of land? Would the America fashioned on the frontier survive the caldrons of the city?”2
Fin-de-siecle America glittered and sparkled, but its glistening shine did not entirely
obscure the cultural questions which lay below the surface. Mark Twain’s name for the
peculiar period, the “Gilded Age,” implied both this sheen and an underlying rot. Other
cultural commentators of the day also spoke to the confusion and what they considered a
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were in the regular service of the Army and the Navy. It is roughly
estimated that about four thousand Jews were found in the military
and naval forces which operated against Spain 51 most of them
immigrants of the last period, of whom a considerable proportion
had served in the armies of Russia, Austria and Roumania before
their arrival here. The Jewish army officers of the highest rank were
four Majors, who were officers in the army before the outbreak of
the war. They were: Major Surgeon Daniel M. Appel (b. in
Pennsylvania, 1854) and Major Surgeon Aaron H. Appel (b. 1856),
both of whom are now colonels in the Medical Corps of the regular
army; the third was Major (of volunteers) George W. Moses, a native
of Ohio, who graduated from the Military Academy of West Point in
1892, and was a Lieutenant in the 3rd Cavalry Regiment when he
was assigned to duty as a major of volunteers and returned to the
regular service in 1899; the fourth was Major Felix Rosenberg of
Cleveland, O., who was stationed at Fort Thomas. There were also in
the army about a half dozen Captains, one of whom, Moses G.
Zalinski (b. in New York, 1863), a graduate of the Artillery School
(1894), is now a Lieutenant-Colonel in the regular army. There were
also about a dozen Lieutenants, most of whom graduated from the
Military Academy of West Point.

Several hundred Jews served as non-commissioned officers and

privates in the regular army, or enlisted as United States Volunteers.
The bulk of the Jewish soldiers, however, served in the regiments of
State Volunteers, and were represented among the soldiers of every
State of the Union, having among them a goodly proportion of non-
commissioned officers, and also a number who held commissions
from the State organizations. They were naturally represented in
largest numbers in the regiments or companies which were
organized in the large cities; some companies in New York regiments
containing between twenty-five and thirty Jewish recruits. At least a
half dozen Jews are known to have served in the First United States
Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (known as the regiment of “Rough
Riders”), which was organized by Theodore Roosevelt (b. in New
York City, 1858), who later served as President of the United States,
from September 14, 1901, to March 4, 1905, as the successor of
President William McKinley (1843–1901), and then served a full term
(March 4, 1905, to March 4, 1909), until he was succeeded by the
present incumbent, William Howard Taft (b. in Cincinnati, O., 1857).

There were about twenty Jewish officers of various ranks in the

Navy during this war, and almost all of them were graduates from
the United States Naval Academy of Annapolis, Md. One of them,
Simon Cook (b. in Illinois, 1856; d. in St. Louis, Mo., 1907), who was
appointed to Annapolis from the old Third Congressional District of
Missouri in 1873 and graduated in 1877, served with distinction in
the Philippines; and a disease which he contracted there forced his
retirement, with the rank of Commander, before he reached the age
limit of retirement. Another Jewish officer of the Navy during the
war, Lieutenant Joseph Strauss, is still in the active service with the
rank of Commander (which is equivalent to the rank of Lieutenant-
Colonel in the Army). A third officer of Jewish descent attained to a
higher rank. Edward David Taussig (b. in St. Louis, 1847) entered
the Naval Academy in 1863 and graduated in 1867, and was a
Lieutenant-Commander (since 1892) at the time of the outbreak of
the war. He served on the Pacific and European Stations and in the
coast survey until 1893, when he was made commander of the
“Bennington.” He took possession of Wake Island (Oceanica) for the
United States, and was placed in charge of Guam when that island
was ceded by Spain on February 1, 1899. In 1902 he became a
Captain (which is equal to the rank of Colonel in the Army); in 1903
he was appointed commander of the Navy Yard at Pensacola, Fla. He
was retired with the rank of Rear-Admiral (the equivalent of
Brigadier-General) in 1909.

The most conspicuous part played by a Jew in the events which

led to the war with Spain, if not in the war itself, fell to the lot of
Lieutenant-Commander (now Rear-Admiral, retired) Adolph Marix (b.
in Germany, probably of Russian parents, 1848), who came to
America in his boyhood, and entered the Naval Academy in 1864,
graduating four years later. He advanced step by step, becoming an
ensign in 1869, a master in 1870, a lieutenant in 1872, after which
he was assigned to special service in the Judge Advocate-General’s
office, where he gained valuable experience and became an expert
in naval and maritime law. In 1893 he was promoted to the rank of
Lieutenant-Commander, and in September, 1895, he was transferred
from the command of the receiving ship “Minnesota” to be the first
commander of the ill-fated battleship “Maine,” which was then put in
commission. He was transferred to the “Scorpion” in January, 1898,
several weeks before the “Maine” arrived in the harbor of Havana,
where she was destroyed by an explosion on February 15 of the
same year.

Lieutenant-Commander Marix was chosen secretary or recorder

of the Court of Inquiry which investigated the blowing up of the
“Maine,” and he prepared the report, which was one of the
contributing causes of the war. He himself laid the ominous
document before President McKinley on March 26, 1898, and soon
returned to engage in the war which was to terminate Spanish
dominion in the New World. In the same month he was advanced to
the rank of Commander and was later advanced, by act of Congress,
two numbers for “eminent and conspicuous conduct in battle in two
engagements at Manzanillo (Cuba), July 1 and July 18, 1898.” When
President Taft was Governor-General of the Philippines, Commander
Marix was a naval attaché in the islands. He later rose to the rank of
Rear-Admiral, and having attained the age-limit (62), he was retired
in April, 1910, after forty-six years of service. He now resides in New
York City.

By the time the Spanish War was over and Spain was stripped of
the last vestige of advantage which she gained by the discovery of
America, the attention of the civilized world was concentrated on the
celebrated Dreyfus Case. The last desperate effort of the forces of
reaction to foist an anti-Jewish policy on a great progressive nation
served only to prove in the end that the world has advanced beyond
such tactics, and that the voice of Justice cannot be stifled in a
civilized community, where the people ultimately decide all-important
questions. Not only was France shaken to its foundations and the
existence of the Government itself endangered on account of the
grievous wrong which was done to the Jewish army officer, but the
entire civilized world was aroused by the incident as it probably
never was before by the fate of one insignificant individual. It was
the first and only attempt of a real “Judenhetze” in a modern free
country, and so much depended on the outcome, that not only the
Jews everywhere were intensely interested, but also their friends
and their enemies felt the full importance of the “affaire” and the
bearing which the issue must have on Jewish conditions everywhere.
Had anti-Semitism triumphed in France, it would mean that even
political liberty, universal suffrage and government by the people
could not solve the Jewish problem; that Western Culture could not
effect the true emancipation which was expected of it, and that
other means than those suggested by the principles of the great
liberal movement of the last century—adjustment to surroundings,
adoption of the speech and mode of life of the nations among whom
they live—must be sought to deliver Israel from his ancient suffering
even in the most highly civilized countries.

Fortunately for France, for civilization and for the Jews, anti-
Semitism was utterly defeated in the open political combat for the
first time in modern history. The barrier erected by Liberty proved
sufficiently strong to stem the tide of raging injustice; the very
excitement caused by the wrong was the best warning against the
danger which the revival of medieval bigotry brings to an
enlightened country. Persecution and discrimination were again
forced back and confined to the more shady corners of the earth, to
the countries where the masses of the people are still oppressed by
tyranny and handicapped by ignorance. It was in these countries
that the Dreyfus agitation was seized upon by the enemies of the
Jews and exploited to the utmost extent, and it was there that many
Jews began to despair. If France could become anti-Semitic at the
end of the nineteenth century, what hope was there for the Jew in
the backward countries, in political progress and cultural
development? The full force of the victory over the French
reactionaries was known and felt only in the free countries;
elsewhere the impression remained that the Jews of France
remained in a lamentable position, and that the future looked as
gloomy to them as is usually the case in Russia after a new outbreak
of anti-Jewish riots.

The result of this new hopeless view of the Jewish situation was
the sudden spread of the new Zionist movement, which was
inaugurated about that time on the Continent by Dr. Theodore Herzl
(1860–1904). He and his first supporters were Austrians, they
obtained their largest following in Russia and Galicia, and in the
large cities in other countries where there were numbers of Jewish
Immigrants from slavic countries. When the movement began to
show signs of life in the English speaking countries, native or
assimilated Jews joined it and became its leaders. And so it came to
pass that although the American press, with few and unimportant
exceptions, was as strongly pro-Dreyfus as the Jewish press itself,
and the victory of Justice and liberalism was as much emphasized
here as in Paris, a limited field was prepared here for the Zionist
movement, as well as in Russia, Austria and Roumania. The old
“Chowewe Zion,” or believers in the colonization of Palestine, joined
the new political movement here, as they did abroad, and the
“Maskilim,” or Germanized Hebrew scholars, who were forced to the
background by the advent of the popular radical leaders of the new
period of immigration, were also attracted by the new movement
which helped to restore the equilibrium among the intellectual
Jewish classes. The first Zionist societies of New York consisted
almost entirely of immigrants. But when the “Federation of Zionist
Societies of Greater New York and Vicinity” (organized 1897)
expanded by absorbing societies outside of New York, and became,
at a convention held in New York in July, 1898, the “Federation of
American Zionists,” American Jews were placed at the head of the
movement.
 Professor Richard J. H. Gottheil was elected President of the
Federation, and held the position for six years, when he was
succeeded, in 1904, by Dr. Harry Friedenwald (b. in Baltimore,
1864), whose father, Dr. Aaron Friedenwald (b. in Baltimore, 1836;
d. there 1902), was one of the first Vice-Presidents of the
Federation. The first Secretary was Rev. Stephen S. Wise (b. in
Budapest, Hungary, 1872), who was brought to this country in his
childhood, and is now the minister of the Free Synagogue in New
York. His successors were Isidore D. Morrison, Jacob de Haas, Rev.
Dr. Judah L. Magnes (b. in San Francisco, Cal., 1877) and Miss
Henrietta Szold. The Federation consisted of about twenty-five
societies, having a membership of about one thousand when it was
first organized. At the Thirteenth Annual Convention, which was held
in Pittsburg in July, 1910, it was reported that the number of
societies was 215, and of Shekel payers 14,000.

The Order Knights of Zion, which has its headquarters in

Chicago, is considered as an independent Western Federation of
Zionists.
 PART VII.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

PRESENT CONDITIONS.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
SYNAGOGUES AND INSTITUTIONS. THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA. ROUMANIA AND THE ROUMANIAN
NOTE.
Synagogues and other Jewish Institutions—General improvement and moderation
—The Jewish Encyclopedia—Its editors and contributors—The Roumanian
situation and the American Government’s interest in it since 1867—Benjamin
F. Peixotto, United States Consul-General in Bucharest—Diplomatic
correspondence between Kasson and Evarts—New negotiations with
Roumania in 1902—The Roumanian Note to the signatories of the Berlin
Treaty—The question still in abeyance.
 More than six hundred thousand Jews arrived in the United
States from the beginning of the new exodus in 1881 until the end
of the nineteenth century, and the total number in the country was
now considerably more than one million. There were Jews in more
than five hundred places, and there were 791 congregations, 415
educational and nearly five hundred charitable institutions of a
distinctly Jewish character, according to an enumeration made in the
beginning of the new century. 52 But the number of congregations or
synagogues was very much larger, probably more than double than
the figures gathered by the enumerators. For the American, even the
American Jew, had then not yet learned to take seriously those small
and exceedingly unchurchlike synagogues of the small
congregations, of which five or six, or even a larger number, can
sometimes be found in one block in a thickly settled Jewish
neighborhood in the great cities. A second and more thorough
enumeration made in 1907 gave to New York City alone a number of
synagogues almost as large as the one given by the statistics of
1900 to the entire country; but the actual increase was very far from
such proportions. Probably four-fifths of the congregations of New
York and of the other great Jewish centers in the East and the
Middle West were more than ten years old, and they simply escaped
the notice of former enumerators. The organizing of small
synagogues is now out of fashion; the tendency is to consolidate the
smaller ones and to erect more fashionable and spacious buildings in
the newest neighborhoods, to which the immigrants usually move
after they leave their earliest abode in the tenement house districts.
In the fields of charity and education the predilection for new
organizations is disappearing, and there is a desire to build on more
solid foundations, and to improve and strengthen rather than form
anew. New synagogues are now built usually in new communities or
in new Jewish neighborhoods, or by old congregations who need a
larger edifice.

America now had the largest community of free Jews in the

world, i. e., of Jews who labored under no special disadvantages and
who had no special difficulties, like those which are making life a
burden to the Jews of Russia or Galicia. The great masses which
arrived in the last twenty years progressed rapidly and were
becoming Americanized in every respect. There arose new
intellectual needs; the extremists had to yield to the influence of
those who were more acclimatized, and even the most radical
periodicals began to respect the susceptibilities, if not the opinions,
of the other classes. The number of the educated and the well-to-do
was fast increasing, and the community was now well prepared for
“the capital event in the history of Jewish learning in America”—the
publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia.

This monumental work, the greatest Jewish work of reference in

any language, was projected by Dr. Isidore Singer (b. in
Weisskirchen, Moravia, 1859; a. 1895) and edited by a board of well-
known scholars, of whom Dr. Isaac Funk (b. in Clinton, O., 1839;
d. 1912; of the firm of Funk and Wagnalls, which published the
work) was chairman, and Frank H. Vizitelly (b. in London, Eng.,
1864) secretary. The original editors were: Cyrus Adler, Gotthard
Deutsch (b. in Kanitz, Austria, 1859; a. 1891), Professor of History at
the Hebrew Union College; Louis Ginzberg (b. in Kovno, Russia,
1873; a. 1899), now Professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America in New York; Richard Gottheil; Joseph Jacobs
(b. in Sydney, N. S. W., 1854; a. 1900), the folklorist and statistician;
Marcus Jastrow; Morris Jastrow, Jr.; Kaufman Kohler; Frederick de
Sola Mendes (b. in Jamaica, W. I., 1850; a. 1873), rabbi of the West
End Synagogue of New York; Isidor Singer, and Crawford H. Toy (b.
in Norfolk, Va., 1836), Professor (now “emeritus”) of Hebrew and
Oriental Languages at Harvard University. This editorial board was
given on the title page of the first volume which appeared in May,
1901; but several changes were made during the five years of its
publication. From the beginning of the second volume Herman
Rosenthal became editor of the new Department of the Jews of
Russia and Poland, and it is due to his efforts that the Jews of the
Slavic countries are more extensively treated in the historical and
biographical parts of the Encyclopedia than was ever the case in
works of Jewish science which appeared outside of Russia. Dr. Emil
G. Hirsch of Chicago succeeded Morris Jastrow as editor of the
Department of the Bible, with the beginning of the third volume.
From the fourth till the seventh volume the name of Solomon
Schechter (b. in Fokshan, Roumania, 1847; a. 1902), the President
of the Jewish Theological Seminary, appears as editor of the
Department of the Talmud; and from the eighth volume to the end
the name of Wilhelm Bacher of Budapest (b. in Hungary 1850)
appears as editor of the Department of the Talmud and Rabbinical
Literature, succeeding both Schechter and Ginzberg. The editorial
board was assisted by boards of American and foreign consulting
editors, which included many of the best known Jewish scholars and
Orientalists, and many other scholars from various countries were
among the four hundred contributors who participated in the
preparation of the work, in which the vast “Record of the History,
Religion, Literature and Customs of the Jewish People from the
earliest times to the present day” was for the first time systematized,
classified and made available in a modern scientific manner.

Prof. Gotthard Deutsch.

 The situation of the Jews in Roumania had been growing worse
since the financial crisis of 1899, and in the last year of the century
there was a stampede of Jews from that country, some of them
walking hundreds of miles before they could find a place to rest or
until they reached a port from which they could embark for England
or America. Still, neither the Jewish immigration in general nor the
immigration from Roumania could give the slightest cause for
uneasiness to the government of the United States, the tide of
immigration was now again rising from the lowest ebb it had
reached since 1879—229,295 in 1898—and neither the 5,613
Roumanian Jews who arrived at the port of New York in 1901 nor
the 6,395 who came in 1902, when the general immigration was
487,918 and 648,743, respectively, could be taken seriously as a
cause for interference or protest. There would have been much more
cause for protests of that nature after the great massacres in Russia
several years later, when the number of Jews who arrived in one
year (1906) exceeded 150,000. The interest that the Government of
the United States took in the Roumanian situation is therefore
believed to have been due principally to the friendly attitude of
President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay
towards Jews in general.

It was, however, nothing new for the American Government to

use its good offices in behalf of the persecuted Jews of Roumania.
As early as 1867, Secretary of State Seward corresponded with
Mr. Morris, the American Minister to Constantinople, about the
persecutions of that year; and the latter reported having told
Mr. Golesco, the agent of the Danubian principalities, that the
sufferings of the Jews there “has all the appearance of religious
persecution, and that the confidence of the Government of the
United States would be impaired in the Government of Bucharest,
unless the proscriptive measures against the Jews discontinued.” 53

In 1870 official—or it would perhaps be more correct to call it

semi-official—relations with Roumania were established temporarily,
by the appointment of a consul-general of the United States in
Roumania. The man chosen by President Grant for this position was
a prominent Jewish attorney-at-law, Benjamin Franklin Peixotto (b. in
New York, 1834; d. there 1890), who later served as United States
Consul at Lyons, France (1877–85), and when he returned to New
York founded (1886) the “Menorah,” a monthly Jewish magazine
which existed for more than two decades. The Jewish official
became an intimate friend of Prince (now King) Charles, but
Roumania continued on its old way, and the riots of Ismail and
Bessarabia occurred during Peixotto’s stay in Bucharest. “His reports
to the United States Government resulted in that government
addressing letters to its ministers at the various European courts
inviting co-operation in the humane endeavor to stop Jewish
persecution in Roumania. Peixotto’s reports were also the cause of a
great meeting at the Mansion House in London, which called forth
Lord Shaftesbury’s message of sympathy. Peixotto was instrumental,
too, in founding the Society of Zion in Roumania, an organization
with similar aims to the B’nai B’rith; and it was his influence as a
United States official, his intimacy with the European philanthropists
and the force of his own personal magnetism that finally caused the
calling of the conference of Brussels, to which he was a delegate,
and which culminated in the action taken by the Berlin Congress of
1878, when Roumania acquired the status of a sovereign kingdom
only upon the express condition that the civil and political rights of
the Jews should be recognized.” (E. A. Cardozo, in Encyclopedia IX,
p. 582, s. v. Peixotto.)

Peixotto remained in Roumania six years, and about two years

after he left Bucharest, Mr. John A. Kasson, the American Minister to
Austria, wrote to Secretary of State Evarts (under date of June 5,
1878) that in anticipation of Roumanian independence, which was
soon to be granted by the Congress of Berlin, Germany, had begun
negotiations with the Roumanian Government for a commercial
treaty. But Germany finally dropped the negotiations because,
“according to information received here, the hostility of Roumania to
the recognition of equal rights for Jews of a foreign nationality with
other citizens or subjects of the same nationality would have
practically proscribed a portion of the German subjects.” Yet
Mr. Kasson proposes in the same letter that: “It would be to the
honor of the United States Government if it could initiate a plan by
which at once the condition of American Hebrews resident or
travelling in Roumania and the condition of natives of the same race
could be ameliorated and their equality before the law at least
partially assured.” In the following year Mr. Kasson reports about the
attempt to enter into diplomatic relations with Roumania, and about
a conversation he had with Mr. Balatshano, the envoy and minister
of Roumania to Austria, in the course of which allusion was made to
the preliminary requirements of the Berlin treaty in respect to the
Jews. According to the letter (dated February 16, 1879), the
representative of Roumania replied “that the necessary changes
would be made in their laws to give satisfaction on this point, and to
establish for the Jews the basis of absolute equality with other
races.” On November 28, 1879, Secretary Evarts writes to
Mr. Kasson:

“In connection with the subject of Roumanian recognition, I inclose

for your consideration the copy of a letter under date of the 30th ultimo
from Mr. Myer S. Isaacs, president, and other officers of the board of
delegates on civil and religious rights of the Hebrews, asking that the
Government of the United States may exert its influence towards securing
for its Hebrew subjects and residents in Roumania the equality of civil
and religious rights stipulated in Article XLIV of the treaty of Berlin.

“As you are aware, this government has ever felt a deep interest in
the welfare of the Hebrew race in foreign countries, and has viewed with
abhorrence the wrongs to which they have at various periods been
subjected by the followers of other creeds in the East. This Department is
therefore disposed to give favorable consideration to the appeal made by
the representatives of a prominent Hebrew organization in this country in
behalf of their brethren in Roumania, and while I should not be
warranted in making a compliance with their wishes a sine qua non in the
establishment of official relations with that country, yet any terms
favorable to the interest of this much-injured people which you may be
able to secure in the negotiations now pending with the Government of
Roumania would be agreeable and gratifying to this Department.

“I am, etc.,
 “WM. M. EVARTS.”

It was therefore only a continuance of its old policy when the

Government of the United States, which has—as Mr. Evarts
expressed it in 1879—“ever felt a deep interest in the welfare of the
Hebrew race in foreign countries,” again began, in 1902, to pay
attention to the pitiable condition of the Roumanian Jews. There still
existed no treaty or diplomatic relations between the United States
and Roumania, and a new attempt was made by our Department of
State to negotiate a naturalization convention, and perhaps by these
means influence that country to treat its Jews more favorably. The
negotiations were carried on through the American legation at
Athens, Greece, and Secretary Hay sent, on July 17, 1902, a long
confidential dispatch to Mr. Charles L. Wilson, the Charge d’Affaires
ad interim in Athens, which contained the largest part of the famous
“Roumanian Note” to the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin, which
was issued in the following month. Wilson’s reply, dated August 8,
states that “since the draft of the treaty approved by the
Department was submitted to the Roumanian minister for foreign
affairs nothing further has been accomplished, as the Roumanian
Government refused to consider the project favorably.” The
Roumanian Minister to Greece frankly admitted to the American
representative that the King was against the proposed treaty,
because, “according to His Majesty’s opinion, a naturalization treaty
would be most injurious to Roumania, for the reason that it would
complicate the already troublesome Jewish question in that country.”

Three days after the date of that dispatch, John Hay issued, on
August 11, 1902, the Roumanian Note, which was sent to the
representatives of the United States to France, Germany, Great
Britain, Italy, Russia and Turkey. The full text of this unique circular
note, which made a profound impression in the entire civilized world,
is as follows:

“Department of State.

“Washington, August 11, 1902.

 “Excellency:—In the course of an instruction recently sent to the
Minister accredited to the Government of Roumania in regard to the base
of negotiations begun with that government looking to a convention of
naturalization between the United States and Roumania, certain
considerations were set forth for the Minister’s guidance concerning the
character of the immigration from that country, the causes which
constrain it, and the consequences so far as they adversely affect the
United States.

“It has seemed to the President appropriate that these considerations,

relating as they do to the obligations entered into by the signatories of
the Treaty of Berlin of July 13, 1878, should be brought to the attention
of the Governments concerned, and commended to their consideration in
the hope that, if they are so fortunate as to meet the approval of the
several Powers, such measures as to them may seem wise may be taken
to persuade the Government of Roumania to reconsider the subject of
the grievances in question.

“The United States welcomes now, as it has welcomed from the

foundation of its Government, the voluntary immigration of all aliens
coming hither under conditions fitting them to become merged in the
body politic of this land. Our laws provide the means for them to become
incorporated indistinguishably in the mass of citizens, and prescribe their
absolute equality with the native born, guaranteeing to them equal civil
rights at home and equal protection abroad. The conditions are few,
looking to their coming as free agents, so circumstanced physically and
morally as to supply the healthful and intelligent material for free
citizenhood. The pauper, the criminal, the contagiously or incurably
diseased are excluded from the benefit of immigration only when they
are likely to become a source of danger or a burden upon the community.
The voluntary character of their coming is essential; hence we shut out
all immigration assisted or constrained by foreign agencies. The purpose
of our generous treatment of the alien immigrant is to benefit us and him
alike—not to afford to another state a field upon which to cast its own
objectionable elements. The alien, coming hither voluntarily and prepared
to take upon himself the preparatory and in due course the definite
obligations of citizenship, retains hereafter, in domestic and international
relations, the initial character of free agency, in the full enjoyment of
which it is incumbent upon his adoptive State to protect him.

“The foregoing considerations, whilst pertinent to the examination of

the purpose and scope of a naturalization treaty, have a larger aim. It
behooves the State to scrutinize most jealously the character of the
immigration from a foreign land, and, if it be obnoxious to objection, to
examine the causes which render it so. Should those causes originate in
the act of another sovereign State, to the detriment of its neighbors, it is
the prerogative of an injured State to point out the evil and to make
remonstrance; for with nations, as with individuals, the social law holds
good that the right of each is bounded by the right of the neighbor.

“The condition of a large class of the inhabitants of Roumania has for

many years been a source of grave concern to the United States. I refer
to the Roumanian Jews, numbering some 400,000. Long ago, while the
Danubian principalities labored under oppressive conditions which only
war and a general action of the European powers sufficed to end, the
persecution of the indigenous Jews under Turkish rule called forth in
1872 the strong remonstrance of the United States. The Treaty of Berlin
was hailed as a cure for the wrong, in view of the express provisions of
its forty-fourth article, prescribing that in Roumania the difference of
religious creed and confessions shall not be alleged against any person as
a ground for exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment
of civil and political rights, admission to public employments, functions,
and honors, or the exercise of the various professions and industries in
any locality whatsoever, and stipulating freedom in the exercise of all
forms of worship to Roumanian dependents and foreigners alike, as well
as guaranteeing that all foreigners in Roumania shall be treated without
distinction of creed, on a footing of perfect equality.

“With the lapse of time these just prescriptions have been rendered
nugatory in great part, as regards the native Jews, by the legislation and
municipal regulations of Roumania. Starting from the arbitrary and
controvertible premises that the native Jews of Roumania domiciled there
for centuries are ‘aliens not subject to foreign protection,’ the ability of
the Jew to earn even the scanty means of existence that suffice for a
frugal race has been constricted by degrees, until every opportunity to
win a livelihood is denied; and until the helpless poverty of the Jew has
constrained an exodus of such proportions as to cause general concern.

“The political disabilities of the Jews of Roumania, their exclusion from

the public service and the learned professions, the limitation of their civil
rights and the imposition upon them of exceptional taxes, involving as
they do, wrongs repugnant to the moral sense of liberal modern peoples,
are not so directly in point for my present purpose as the public acts
which attack the inherent right of man as a breadwinner in the ways of
agriculture and trade. The Jews are prohibited from owning land, or even
from cultivating it as common laborers. They are debarred from residing
in the rural districts. Many branches of petty trade and manual production
are closed to them in the over-crowded cities where they are forced to
dwell and engage, against fearful odds, in the desperate struggle for
existence. Even as ordinary artizans or hired laborers they may only find
employment in the proportion of one ‘unprotected alien’ to two
‘Roumanians’ under any one employer. In short, in the cumulative effects
of successive restrictions, the Jews of Roumania have become reduced to
a state of wretched misery. Shut out from nearly every avenue of self-
support which is open to the poor of other lands, and ground down by
poverty as the natural result of their discriminatory treatment, they are
rendered incapable of lifting themselves from the enforced degradation
they endure. Even were the fields of education, of civil employment and
of commerce open to them as to ‘Roumanian citizens,’ their penury would
prevent their rising by individual effort. Human beings so circumstanced
have virtually no alternative but submissive suffering or flight to some
land less unfavorable to them. Removal under such conditions is not and
cannot be the healthy, intelligent emigration of a free and self-reliant
being. It must be, in most cases, the mere transplantation of an
artificially produced diseased growth to a new place.

“Granting that, in better and more healthful surroundings, the morbid

condition will eventually change for good, such emigration is necessarily
for a time a burden to the community upon which the fugitives may be
cast. Self-reliance and the knowledge and ability that evolve the power of
self-support must be developed, and, at the same time, avenues of
employment must be opened in quarters where competition is already
keen and opportunities scarce. The teachings of history and the
experience of our own nation show that the Jews possess in a high
degree the mental and moral qualifications of conscientious citizenhood.
No class of immigrants is more welcome to our shore, when coming
equipped in mind and body for entrance upon the struggle for bread, and
inspired with the high purpose to give the best service of heart and brain
to the land they adopt of their own free will. But when they come as
outcasts, made doubly paupers by physical and moral oppression in their
native land, and thrown upon the long suffering generosity of a more
favored community, their immigration lacks the essential conditions which
make alien immigration either acceptable or beneficial. So well is this
appreciated on the Continent that, even in the countries where anti-
Semitism has no foothold, it is difficult for these fleeing Jews to obtain
any lodgment. America is their only goal.

“The United States offers asylum to the oppressed of all lands. But its
sympathy with them in no wise impairs its just liberty and right to weigh
 the acts of the oppressor in the light of their effects upon this country
and to judge accordingly.

“Putting together the facts now painfully brought home to this

Government during the past few years, that many of the inhabitants of
Roumania are being forced, by artificially adverse discriminations, to quit
their native country; that the hospitable asylum offered by this country is
almost the only refuge left to them; that they come hither unfitted, by
the conditions of their exile, to take part in the new life of this land under
circumstances either profitable to themselves or beneficial to the
community; and that they are objects of charity from the outset and for a
long time—the right of remonstrance against the acts of the Roumanian
Government is clearly established in favor of this Government. Whether
consciously and of purpose or not, these helpless people, burdened and
spurned by their native land, are forced by the sovereign power of
Roumania upon the charity of the United States. This Government cannot
be a tacit party to such an international wrong. It is constrained to
protest against the treatment to which the Jews of Roumania are
subjected, not alone because it has unimpeachable right to remonstrate
against the resultant injury to itself, but in the name of humanity. The
United States may not authoritatively appeal to the stipulations of the
Treaty of Berlin, to which it was not and cannot become a signatory, but
it does earnestly appeal to the principles consigned therein, because they
are the principles of international law and eternal justice, advocating the
broad toleration which that solemn compact enjoins and standing ready
to lend its moral support to the fulfilment thereof by its co-signatories, for
the act of Roumania itself has effectively joined the United States to them
as an interested party in this regard.

“You will take an early occasion to read this instruction to the Minister
for Foreign Affairs and, should he request it, leave with him a copy.

“I have the honor to be

“Your obedient servant,

“JOHN HAY.”

The note made a great impression on the entire civilized world,

but was followed by no practical results. The only government which
took any notice of it was—as could have been expected—the British.
Mr. John B. Jackson, who had in the meantime been appointed
minister of the United States to Greece and was also accredited to
Roumania, wrote from Athens (March 31, 1903) that, having been in
charge of the American embassy at Berlin at the time when the note
was received, he “understood that immediately after the same
instruction has been communicated to the foreign office at London,
the British Government, without in any way making known its own
views contained therein, had addressed a communication to the
other Governments which were parties to the Berlin treaty of 1878,
inquiring what they proposed doing in the matter. So far as I am
aware, however, no action was taken by any of these Governments,
and the contents of the circular was never formally brought to the
attention of the Roumanian Government....”

This letter, and another dated Athens, April 18, and still another
dated September 7, 1903, contain statements made by Roumanian
statesmen explaining the situation from their point of view, and
observations made by Mr. Jackson himself during his travels through
Roumania. The last letter, which closes the correspondence, ends
with the remark that “the general feeling (in Roumania) is that the
naturalization of Jews must be a gradual matter, as they become
educated up to being Roumanians”—a feeling much more likely to
be found in America than in Roumania.

There is still no treaty with Roumania, but there is an American

Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary (the usual
designation of an ordinary minister) sent to Roumania and
accredited also to Servia and Bulgaria, who resides at the
Roumanian capital, Bucharest, where there is also an American
consul-general. The representation is, as was the case in the time of
Peixotto, one-sided, the Roumanian Government having no
representative in the United States. The Roumanian question may
therefore be considered neither as solved nor as abandoned, but to
be in abeyance until a favorable opportunity shall present itself for
further negotiations, which may ultimately lead to the only
adjustment which can be acceptable to the United States as well as
to the Jews.
 CHAPTER XXXVII.
HELP FOR THE VICTIMS OF THE RUSSIAN
MASSACRES IN 1903 AND 1905. OTHER PROOFS OF
SYMPATHY.
The Kishinev massacre—Official solicitude and general sympathy—Protest
meetings and collections—The “Kishinev Petition” and its fate—Less publicity
given to the later pogroms, whose victims were helped by “landsleut” from
this country—The influence of pogroms on immigration—The frightful
massacres in Russia in the fall of 1905, and the assistance rendered by this
country—A Resolution of sympathy adopted in Congress—The 250th
Anniversary of the Settlement of the Jews in the United States—Relief for
Moroccan Jews proposed by the United States—Oscar S. Straus in the
Cabinet.

While the correspondence about the Jews of Roumania was still

carried on by our State Department, the civilized world was shocked
by the reports of the brutal massacre of Jews in Kishinev in the three
days of April 19–21, 1903. This massacre which is still within every
one’s memory, aroused the press and the people of the United
States more than the riots of 1881. “Almost from the first, the
world’s indignation centered in the United States. Served by a
vigorous press, whose liberal spirit voices the prevailing attitude;
animated by a humanitarianism which lies at the foundation of all
our public institutions; realizing also that America was the chief
refuge of all victims of persecution; the people of the United States
became, again, the world’s logical leaders in a campaign of
humanity.” 54 President Roosevelt’s opening remark in his speech to
the Executive Committee of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith on
June 15, 1903, when he said: “I have never in my experience in this
country known of a more immediate or a deeper expression of
sympathy for the victims and of horror over the appalling calamity
that has occurred,” was fully justified.

The news filtered very slowly through the usual channels, and
more than a week passed before the enormity of the Russian crime
became fully known. On the 29th of April the following dispatch was
sent by our Department of State:

McCormick, Ambassador, St. Petersburg:

It is persistently reported upon what appears to be adequate authority

that there is great want and suffering among Jews in Kishinev. Friends in
this country would like to know if financial aid and supplies would be
permitted to reach the sufferers.

Please ascertain this without discussing political phase of the action.

HAY.

Ambassador McCormick replied, ten days later, that it is

“authoritatively denied that there is any want or suffering among
Jews in Southwestern Russia and aid of any kind is unnecessary.”
But the people here understood that the Ambassador reflected the
official view of the Russian Government, and efforts to raise money
for the thousands of families which were left destitute by pillage,
and for the hundreds of widows and orphans of the martyrs, were
soon made, and large sums were collected in New York, as well as in
many other places. More than seventy-five meetings of protest and
indignation were held in fifty localities in twenty-seven States (and
the District of Columbia) during the months of May and June, the
most notable of which was the one held in New York, May 27, where
Mayor Seth Low presided and ex-President Grover Cleveland was the
principal orator. Among the largest meetings of the other places
were those of Baltimore (May 17), of Philadelphia (June 3) and of
New Orleans (June 13). In the most cases the prominent non-Jewish
citizens, including high officials and ministers of religion, delivered
addresses or expressed their sentiments in letters. Numerous
sermons against Russia were preached in various churches and
hundreds of editorial articles appeared in all sorts of periodicals.
Public opinion was again, as it was twenty-two years before,
practically unanimous in condemning Russia, and in encouraging
every enterprise for the assistance of the sufferers from its barbarity.

The response to the appeals for material help was quick and
generous. The contributions were sent either directly to the central
office of the “Alliance Israelite Universelle” at Paris or to one of three
agencies in New York—to the Relief Committee of which Emanuel
Lehman was chairman and Daniel Guggenheim, treasurer, and which
was in communication with the “Alliance”; to the Relief Committee of
which K. H. Sarasohn was chairman and Arnold Kohn, treasurer, and
which was in communication with the Central Relief Committee at
Kishinev; or to Mr. William Randolph Hearst, whose newspapers, in
New York, Chicago and San Francisco, did much to arouse the public
to the gravity of the situation, and who forwarded the money
collected by them to Treasurer Arnold Kohn. The sum sent to
Kishinev from the United States through all these agencies was set
down in a report made on June 7, 1903, by the Central Relief
Committee at Kishinev to the “Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden” at
Berlin, at 192,443 roubles (somewhat less than $100,000). It is
about half of the sum which was collected in Russia itself, and a
fourth of what was contributed by all the countries of the world.

It was generally understood that little could be accomplished by

representations or remonstrances to Russia, but the desire to do
something more than collect alms was very strong, and the
sentiment naturally crystallized itself in an effort to ask the
Government of the United States to use its good offices in behalf of
the Jews of Russia. A petition was framed by the Executive
Committee of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith and submitted to
the President of the United States with the request that it be
transmitted to the Emperor of Russia. The President received the
Committee cordially, and said at the conclusion of his remarks: “I will
consider most carefully the suggestion that you have submitted to
me, and whether the now existing conditions are such that any
further official expression would be of advantage to the unfortunate
survivors, with whom we sympathize so deeply.”

The petition was couched in courteous terms, extolling the Czar

personally and pleading that “he who led his own people and all
others to the shrine of peace, will add new luster to his reign and
fame by leading a new movement that shall commit the whole world
in opposition to religious persecution.” The petition was circulated in
thirty-six States and Territories, and 12,544 signatures were
obtained. Among the signers were Senators, Members of the House
of Representatives, Governors (22), high judicial officers, State
Legislators, Mayors of cities (150), clergymen of all denominations,
including three Archbishops and seven Bishops, a large number of
other officials, and many prominent men in the professional and the
business world. President Roosevelt consented to transmit the
petition, but the Russian Government declined to receive it, and the
matter was thus ended. By permission of the President, the separate
sheets of the petition bearing all the signatures, suitably bound and
enclosed in a case provided for the purpose, have been placed in the
archives of the Department of State. 55

It was impossible to arouse the general public and even the

general Jewish public at the recurrent pogroms and massacres at
near intervals after Kishinev. But as is always the case with Russian
or Galician or Roumanian cities when they suffer from fires, it
became now the custom for all natives of an afflicted city to form
some sort of organization in the rather rare occasion when there
existed no synagogue or benevolent society of the “landsleut,” and
to collect funds for the succor of the unfortunate families of the
victims at home. Each of the riots and massacres between Kishinev
and the terrible October days, the largest of which occurred at
Homel (September 10–14, 1903) when eight Jews were killed and
nearly one hundred injured; at Bender (May 1, 1904), and at
Zhitomir (May 6, 1905), where twenty-nine were killed—each of
these riots was a miniature Kishinev among the natives of the
stricken place or its vicinity in this country. America became for the
suffering Jews of Russia the Egypt of the time of the Patriarch Jacob,
and the Russian immigrant who settled here before was the
prosperous brother Joseph whom God sent to the New World before
them to preserve life. To the emissaries from Palestine and from
religious institutions in Russia, especially the Talmudical Academies
or Yeshibot, who were coming regularly to the United States for
many years to make collections among the conservative immigrants
who prospered here, were now added emissaries from the radical or
revolutionary parties from Russia, who were enthusiastically received
by the working classes and the radical element in general, and their
appeals for funds were seldom in vain.

The most substantial and most beneficial form of assistance sent

from here to Russia was, however, not in response to appeals
through Jewish newspapers or through personal representatives of
causes, of parties or of institutions, but to requests made by
members of families, by relatives or by friends to be taken out of
Russia as soon as possible. While public appeals were made for
charity of various kinds and for defense funds and similar objects,
private correspondents solicited only one thing—steamship tickets.
And the private responses, while they attracted less attention, were
more generous, and in many instances verged on self-sacrifice. This
can be deduced from the results, i. e., from the increased Jewish
immigration, which was easily absorbed and little burdensome to the
general Jewish public or to the larger charities, because most of the
new arrivals had near relatives or friends who took care of them in
the short time which elapsed until they could find employment. The
increase of Jewish immigration on account of the pogroms can best
be seen by a comparison of the number of Jewish arrivals at the Port
of New York, where nearly nine-tenths of them arrive, with the
general immigration for the five years 1903–07 (each ending
June 30). The figures for 1903 are: Jews 58,079, total immigration,
857,046; for 1904: Jews 80,885, total 812,870; for 1905: Jews
103,941, total 1,027,421; for 1906: Jews 133,764, total 1,100,735;
for 1907: Jews 117,486, total 1,285,349. It is seen that while
general immigration in 1904 was about 45,000 less than in 1903,
Jewish immigration was about 22,000 more. On the other hand,
while general immigration rose to an unprecedented height in 1907,
and was larger than the preceding year by 185,000, the number of
Jews arriving in New York was about 16,000 less. The Jewish
immigrant is not the man who fails at home or the adventurer who
cares for no home; he could get along very well where he is if he
were not molested, and Jewish immigration from Russia would
become as insignificant as Jewish immigration from Germany if the
former country could rise to the political and social conditions of the
latter.

The small pogroms which were designated above as miniature

Kishinevs, and even Kishinev itself, were soon forgotten or began to
look very small in comparison with the frightful massacres of the last
day of October and the first days of November, 1905, with which the
Russians inaugurated their quasi-constitutional regime. This time
there were about a thousand Jews killed, the wounded numbered
many thousands, the losses by destruction of property amounted to
hundreds of millions. America again responded nobly, and a
committee, of which Oscar S. Straus was chairman and Jacob H.
Schiff, treasurer, collected considerably more than a million dollars,
from Jews and non-Jews, mainly through the same agencies and by
the same methods as the funds for the sufferers from Kishinev were
collected. There were again mass-meetings at which prominent non-
Jews spoke words of sympathy for the martyrs and their families and
condemned the government which permitted such carnage. The
general press was as friendly and sympathetic to the Jews as on
former occasions. When the great march of Jewish mourners after
the martyrs took place through the streets of New York, in which
nearly one hundred thousand participated (December 4, 1905),
several Christian churches tolled their bells in expression of
sympathy with the weeping masses which passed by.

Hon. Jacob H. Schiff.

Photo by Dupont, N. Y.

There was also an official expression of sympathy from Congress.

Representatives Henry M. Goldfogle and William Sulzer introduced
into the House resolutions to that effect, and a third one as a
substitute was introduced by Representative Charles A. Towne, who,
like the former two, represented a New York City District. The House
Committee on Foreign Affairs granted a hearing, on February 8,
1906, to those interested in the passage of the resolutions. In its
final form the joint resolution was introduced into the Senate by the
late Anselm J. McLaurin of Mississippi, and in the House by Robert G.
Cousins of Iowa, and read as follows:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United

States of America in Congress assembled. That the people of the United
States are horrified by the reports of the massacre of Hebrews in Russia,
on account of their race and religion, and that those bereaved thereby
have the hearty sympathy of the people of this country.
 This resolution was adopted without debate, and unanimously, by
both houses on June 22, and approved by the President on June 26,
1906.

On two other occasions about the same time the friendly

disposition of the people and the Government of the United States
towards the Jews was manifested to the world. The first occasion
was only semi-official, when the Jews of the country celebrated the
Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Jews
in the United States, on Thanksgiving Day (November 30), 1905.
Meetings and special services were held in more than seventy
localities between November 24 and December 10, but the principal
celebration was in New York on the above mentioned date, in
Carnegie Hall, where notable addresses were delivered by former
President Grover Cleveland, Governor Francis W. Higgins of the State
of New York, Mayor George B. McClellan of New York City, and
Bishop David Greer. Cordial letters were received from President
Roosevelt and Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks. The principal
oration at that memorable meeting was delivered by Judge Mayer
Sulzberger of Philadelphia. Our present Ambassador to Russia, Curtis
Guild, Jr., who was at that time Lieutenant-Governor of
Massachusetts, was one of the speakers at the celebration meeting
which was held in Boston, a day before the New York meeting. 56

The second occasion attracted less attention, but was strictly

official. The International Conference about Morocco, which was held
in Algeciras, Spain, from January 6 to April 7, 1906, was participated
in by the United States, and its first delegate, Henry White
(Ambassador to Italy), received instruction by a special letter from
Secretary of State (now Senator) Elihu Root to work for the
protection of the Jews of Morocco. These instructions were
accompanied by a letter received by Secretary Root from Mr. Jacob
H. Schiff, setting forth the pitiable condition of the Jews of that
country and enumerating the legal restrictions to which they were
subject. Through the exertion of Mr. White, a provision was inserted,
on April 2, in the treaty, with which the Conference was concluded,
according to which the signatory nations guarantee the security and
equal privileges of the Jews in Morocco, both those living in the
ports and those living in the interior. (See “American-Jewish Year
Book” for 5667, pp. 92–98.) The chief value of this provision,
however, consists only in its indication of the good will of the
Government of the United States. Its practical value for the Jews of
Morocco, as far as protection from riots and massacres are
concerned, is hardly more than that of the well known “Article 44” of
the Treaty of Berlin regarding the Jews of Roumania. The Jews of
Morocco probably never heard of that provision, and the credit of
ameliorating their condition rightfully belongs to France, which has,
according to the latest agreement among European Powers, become
the protector, or ruler of the Shereefian Empire.

Hon. Oscar S. Straus.

Near the end of the same year (1906) President Roosevelt

appointed Oscar S. Straus, the author and diplomatist, Secretary of
Commerce and Labor. The first Jew to be thus honored with a seat
in the Cabinet has served twice as minister plenipotentiary (and
since he left the Cabinet, again as Ambassador) to Turkey, and also
succeeded the late Benjamin Harrison, former president of the
United States, as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at
The Hague. His oldest brother, Isidor Straus (b. in Bavaria, 1845;
a. 1854; drowned with the “Titanic” April 15, 1912), was a well
known merchant and philanthropist in New York, who was a member
of the Fifty-third Congress, and has been for many years President
of the Educational Alliance. Another brother, Nathan Straus (b. in
Bavaria, 1848: a. 1854), who is also known as a philanthropist and
served as Park Commissioner, and, for several months, as President
of the Board of Health of New York, is two years older than the
former Cabinet Minister.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE AMERICAN-JEWISH COMMITTEE. EDUCATIONAL
INSTITUTIONS AND FEDERATIONS.
Formation of the American Jewish Committee—Its first fifteen members and its
membership in 1911—The experimental Kehillah organizations—The re-
organized Jewish Theological Seminary—Faculty of the Hebrew Union College
—The Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning—The Rabbi Joseph
Jacob School—Other Orthodox “Yeshibot”—Talmud Torahs and “Chedarim”—
Hebrew Institutes—They become more Jewish because other agencies now do
the work of Americanizing the immigrant—Technical Schools—Young Men’s
and Young Women’s Hebrew Associations—Federations of various kinds.

The massacres of 1905 aroused and united the Jews of the

civilized world, and the necessity of an organization to cope with the
situation and with similar situations in the future began to be
generally felt. The time when the Alliance Israelite Universelle, with
its preponderance of French Jews and French methods, could act for
the Jewry of all countries was now past, and only a new organization
in which each country was independently represented could answer
the purpose. The same was also true, in a more restricted sense, in
the United States itself. None of the national Jewish bodies, not even
the Order B’nai B’rith, with its Board of Delegates, could now
assume to speak with undisputed authority in the name of American
Jewry as it is now constituted. An attempt to form a representative
international Committee of Jews was made at the General Jewish
Conference which was convened at Brussels, Belgium, in the last
days of January, 1906, where a resolution to that effect was
adopted. But the plan was not carried out.

Judge Mayer Sulzberger.

Photo by Gutekunst, Phila.

Within a week after the Brussels Conference (February 3–4), a

conference was held in New York City “to consider the formation of a
General Jewish Committee or other representative body of the Jews
in the United States.” 57 A committee which was appointed by the
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