Library / Economics & Business
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10
- Pages
- about 242
- Category
- Economics & Business
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 4.4 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
It is worth a man's life in Chicago to state his unbiased opinion
of Chicago. The city is filled with dirt and vanity. Its
population is the most complex in the world. It has more than
300,000 people who do not speak, read or write the English
language. In certain of its west side districts a sound of the
mother tongue is not heard from year's end to year's end. The
number of bodies within its limits closely approximates
1,500,000. It will be noticed that I do not say "souls." Not a
daily paper published in the city has a bonafide circulation of
100,000 copies, which is, in itself, a striking commentary upon
the character of the people who live in the largest town of Cook
county. A circulation of that size is not thought to be a thing
to be bragged about in New York. In Chicago, its attainment is
the ambition and heart's desire of every newspaper publisher in
the town.
A traveling man who was not from St. Louis, once summarized
Chicago as "a big, dirty, noisy roaring bluff." He was a fellow
who had a just appreciation of the value of adjectives. That is
what it is. It is said of the merchants that in the summer time
they load wagons with empty barrels and drive them about the
streets to simulate business. I don't doubt it. If they haven't
done it, they forgot it. There is no shady trick of commercial
competition that they will not stoop to, nothing short of a
penitentiary offense that they will balk at. Sometimes they do
not stop there.
Chicago has been called "the representative American city." It
is. It represents the America of to-day, because more than any
other municipality, its life is wrapped in the pursuit of the
dollar. A man in Chicago is weighed by dollars. The attractions
of his wife and daughters are judged by dollars.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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