Abroad At Home Part 16

Born on the West Side, August 18, 1858.

Started life as a newsboy.

"Crowned" as Alderman of the First Ward in 1897.

Reelected biennially ever since.

Owner in fief of various privileges in the First Ward.

Lord of the Workingmen's Exchange.

Overlord of floaters, voters, and other liege subjects.

The Workingmen's Exchange, referred to above, is one of two saloons operated by the Alderman, on South Clark Street, and it is a show place for those who wish to look upon the darker side of things. It is a very large saloon, having one of the longest bars I ever saw; also one of the busiest. Hardly anything but beer is served there; beer in schooners little smaller than a man's head. These are known locally as "babies,"

and, by a curious custom, the man who removes his fingers from his gla.s.s forfeits it to any one who takes it up. Nor are takers lacking.

"I'll tell you a funny thing about this place," said my friend the veteran police reporter, who was somewhat apologetically doing the honors. (Police reporters are always apologetic when they show you over a town that has been "cleaned up.")

"What?" I asked.

"No one has ever been killed in here," he said.

I had to admit that it was a funny thing. After looking at the faces lined up at the bar I should not have imagined it possible. Presently we crossed the street to the Alderman's other saloon; a very different sort of place, s.h.i.+ning with mirrors, mahogany, and bra.s.s, and frequented by a better cla.s.s of men. Here we met Hinky d.i.n.k.

He is a slight man, so short of stature that when he leans a little, resting his elbow on the bar, his arm runs out horizontally from the shoulder. He wore an extremely neat brown suit (there was even a white collarette inside the vest!) a round black felt hat, and a heavy watch chain, from which hung a large circular charm with a star and crescent set in diamonds. Though it was late at night, he looked as if he had just been washed and brushed.

His face is exceedingly interesting. His lips are thin; his nose is sharp, coming to a rather p.r.o.nounced point, and his eyes are remarkable for what they see and what they do not tell. They are poker eyes--gray-blue, cold, penetrating, unrevealing. My companion and I felt that while we were "getting" Hinky d.i.n.k, he was not failing to "get" us.

Far from being tough or vicious in his manner or conversation, the little Alderman is very quiet. There is, indeed, a kind of gentleness about him. His English is, I should say, quite as good as that of the average man, while his thinking is much above the average as to quickness and clearness. As between himself and Bathhouse John, the other First Ward fixture on the Board of Aldermen, it is generally conceded that Hinky d.i.n.k is the more able and intelligent. On this point, however, I was unable to draw my own conclusions. The Bathhouse was ill when I was in Chicago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Two rabbis, old bearded men, performed the rites with long, slim, s.h.i.+ny blades]

In the ordinary conversation of the Honorable Hinky d.i.n.k there is no trace of brogue, but a faint touch of brogue manifests itself when he speaks with unwonted vehemence--as, for example, when he told us about the injustices which he alleged were perpetrated upon the poor voters who live in lodging houses in his ward.

The little Alderman is famous for his reticence.

"Small wonder!" said my friend the police reporter. "Look at what the papers have handed him! I'll tell you what happens: some city editor sends a kid reporter to get a story about Hinky d.i.n.k. The kid comes and sees Kenna, and doesn't get anything out of him but monosyllables. He goes back to the office without any story, but that doesn't make any difference. Hinky d.i.n.k is fair game. The kid sits down to his typewriter and fakes a story, making out that the Alderman didn't only talk, but that he talked a kind of tough-guy dialect--'deze-here tings'--'doze dere tings'--all that kind of stuff. Can you blame the little fellow for not talking?"

I could not.

But he talked to us, and freely. The police reporter told him we were "right." That was enough.

As the "red-light district" of Chicago used to be largely in the First Ward before it was broken up, I asked the Alderman for his views on the segregation of vice versus the other thing, whatever it may be. (Is it dissemination?)

"I'll tell you what I think about it," he replied, "but you can't print it."

"Why not?" I asked, disappointed.

"Well," he returned, "I believe in a segregated district, but if I'm quoted as saying so, why the woman reformers and everybody on the other side will take it up and say I'm for it just because I want vice back in the First Ward again. I don't. It doesn't make any difference to me where you have it. Put it out by the Drainage Ca.n.a.l or anywheres you like. But I believe you can't stamp vice out; not the way people are made to-day. They never have been able to stamp it out in all these thousands of years. And, as long as they can't, it looks to me like it was better to get it together all in one bunch than to scatter it all over town.

"Now I know there's a whole lot of good people that think segregation is a bad thing. Well, it _is_ a bad thing. _Vice_ is a bad thing. But there it is, all the same. A lot of these good people don't understand conditions. They don't understand what lots of other men and women are really like. You got to take people as they are and do what you can.

"One thing that shocks a lot of these high-minded folks that live in comfortable homes and never have any trouble except when they have to get a new cook, is the idea of commercialized vice that goes with segregation. Of course it shocks them. But show me some way to stop it.

Napoleon believed in segregation and regulation, and a lot of other wise people have, too.

"Here's the way I think they ought to handle it: they ought to have a district regulated by the Police Department and the Health Department.

Then there ought to be restrictions. No bright lights for one thing. No music. No booze. Cut out those things and you kill the place for sightseers. Then there ought to be a law that no woman can be an inmate without going and registering with the police, having her record looked up, and saying she wants to enter the house. That would prevent any possibility of white slavery. Personally, I think there's a lot of bunk about this white-slave talk. But this plan would fix it so a girl couldn't be kept in a house against her will. Any keeper of a house who let in a girl that wasn't registered would be put out of business for good and all. Men ought not to be allowed to have any interest, directly or indirectly, in the management of these places.

"Now, of course, there's objections to any way at all of handling this question. The minute you say 'cut out the booze' that opens a way to police graft. But is that any worse than the chance for graft when the women are just chased around from place to place by the police?

Segregation gives them some rights, anyhow.

"Some people say 'segregation doesn't segregate,' Well, that's true, too. But segregation keeps the worst of it from being scattered all over town, doesn't it? When you scatter these women you have them living in buildings alongside of respectable families, or, worse yet, you run them onto the streets. That's persecution, and they're bad enough off without that.

"Say, do you think Chicago is really any more moral this minute because the old red-light district is shut down? A few of the resort keepers left town, and maybe a hundred inmates, but most of them stuck. They're around in the residence districts now, running what they call 'buffet flats.'"

Listening to the little Alderman I was convinced of two things. First, I felt sure that, without thought of self-interest, he was telling me what he really believed. Second, as he is undeniably a man of broad experience among unfortunates of various kinds, his views are interesting.

"I wish you'd let me print what you have said," I urged as we were leaving his saloon.

He shook his head.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," I persisted. "I'll write it out. Perhaps I can put it in such a way that people will see that you were playing square. Then I'll send it to you, and, if it doesn't misrepresent you, perhaps you'll let me print it after all."

"All right," he agreed as we shook hands.

CHAPTER XV

AN OLYMPIAN PLAN

In city planning, as in other things, Chicago has thought and plotted on an Olympian scale, and it is characteristic of Chicago that her plan for her own beautification should be so much greater than the plan of any other city in the country, as to make comparisons unkind. For that reason I have eliminated Chicago from consideration, when discussing the various group plans, park and boulevard systems, and "civic centers,"

upon which other American cities are at work.

The Chicago plan is, indeed, too immense a thing to be properly dealt with here. It is comparable with nothing less than the Haussman plan for Paris, and it is being carried forward, through the years, with the same foresight, the same patience and the same indomitable aspiration.

Indeed, I think greater patience has been required in Chicago, for the French people were in sympathy with beauty at a time when the broad meaning of the word was actually not understood in this country. Here it has been necessary to educate the ma.s.ses, to cultivate their city pride, and to direct that pride into creative channels. It is hardly too much to say that the minds of American city-dwellers (and half our race inhabits cities) have had to be re-made, in order to prepare them to receive such plans as the Chicago plan.

The World's Columbian Exposition, at Chicago, exerted a greater influence upon the United States than any other fair has ever exerted upon a country. It came at a critical moment in our esthetic history--a moment when the sense of beauty of form and color, which had hitherto been dormant in Americans, was ready to be aroused.

Fortunately for us, the Chicago Fair was worthy of the opportunity; and that it was worthy of the opportunity was due to the late Daniel Hudson Burnham, the distinguished architect, who was director of works for the Exposition. In the perspective of the twenty-one years which have pa.s.sed since the Chicago Fair, the figure of Mr. Burnham, and the importance of the work done by him, grows larger. When the history of the American Renaissance comes to be written, Daniel H. Burnham and the men by whom he was surrounded at the time the Chicago Fair was being made, will be listed among the founders of the movement.

The Fair awoke the American sense of beauty. And before its course was run, a group of Chicago business men, some of whom were directors of the exposition, determined to have a plan for the entire city which should so far as possible reflect the lessons of the Fair in the arrangement of streets, parks and plazas, and the grouping of buildings.

After the Fair, the Chicago Commercial Club commissioned Mr. Burnham to proceed to re-plan the city. Eight years were consumed in this work. The best architects available were called in consultation. After having spent more than $200,000, the Commercial Club presented the plan to the city, together with an elaborate report.

To carry out the plan, the Chicago City Council, in 1909, created a Plan Commission, composed of more than 300 men, representing every element of citizens.h.i.+p under the permanent chairmans.h.i.+p of Mr. Charles H. Wacker, who had previously been most active in the work. Under Mr. Wacker's direction, and with the aid of continued subscriptions from the Commercial Club, the work of the Commission has gone on steadily, and vast improvements have already been made.

The Plan itself has to do entirely with the physical rearrangement of the city. It is designed to relieve congestion, facilitate traffic, and safeguard health.

Instead of routing out the Illinois Central Railroad which disfigures the lake front of the whole South Side, the plan provides for the making of a parkway half a mile wide and five miles long, beyond the tracks, where the lake now is. This parkway will extend from Grant Park, at the center of the city, all the way to Jackson Park, where the World's Fair grounds were. Arrangements have also been made for immense forest areas, to encircle the city outside its limits, occupying somewhat the relation to it that the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes do to Paris.