Chicago is always on the point of hanging some one and quartering him and boiling him in hot pitch, and assuring him that he has lost the respect of all honorable men.--Finley Peter Dunne
I don't think there is really anything else to be said about this quote...
Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
From: "Hanging Aldermen," Mr. Dooley in the Hearts of His Countrymen (1899)
McCutcheon won The Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for this Cartoon. The more things change...
Credit: The Common Room, "AIG to Taxpayers: See you in Court" Please link to and credit The Common Room blog.
Recommended for teachers:
Cartoons for the Classroom
Gold and green are the fields in peace.
Red are the fields in war.
Black are the fields when the caissons cease
And white for evermore.
John T. McCutcheon, Chicago Tribune
The War in Cartoons by George Joseph Hecht (1919)
"Fifty times he opened the book of photographs of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, fifty times he looked at the picture of the Court of Honour."
Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis
Some books deserve a "do over." Not just another edition or printing; I'm referring to a complete redesign that honors the book's topic and content. Such is the case with Spectacle in the White City: The Chicago 1893 World's Fair, the new Calla Editions release from Dover Publications.
Fair aficionados will immediately recognize that Spectacle in the White City, with its lively and enlightening text by Stanley Applebaum, is a republishing of the 1980 over sized paperback, The Chicago World's Fair of 1893.
One of the most interesting aspects of this new edition comes as a revelation in Peter Bacon Hales' preface. The author of the detailed and highly knowledgeable text, Stanley Applebaum, was actually the Editor-in-Chief of Dover Publications, an old school editor who seemed knowledgeable on a plethora of topics. Applebaum's highly readable text has remained intact with minor exceptions.
At the time when the original edition was released, it was one of a very few to feature the photographs made from the glass plate negatives of architectural photographer, C. D. Arnold, and, to be honest, Fair frenzy had not reached the level it has today. The modest edition was adequate and deserving of a place on the bookshelf of every Chicago history buff, but the reprinting as Spectacle in the White City takes the Fair images and book quality to a whole new level.
The new landscape formatted Calla edition is a beautiful 156 page hardcover with an overprinted vellum dust jacket. There are 128 duotone plates and while the photographs are the same as in the 1980 publication, they look new and crisp. It's the paper stock that really hooked me - heavy, glossy and sturdy. It will stand up to repeated viewing and page-turning.
Because, I'm like Lewis' "Babbitt." I never tire of looking at the amazing pictures from 1893, examining the architectural details of the massive buildings, and sometimes, going so far as to use a magnifying glass to search the faces in the crowds. I want to jump into those pictures, and just for a moment, experience the sounds and sites and smells of those heady long ago days. And now I have a book that will endure my abuse and my fantasy.
Yes, some books deserve a second chance. And, I'm delighted this one got it.
Chicagomagic is a unique blog that I have been delighted to discover in my Internet travels. (Ya, well, I shouldn't sound so smug; the blog archive goes back to 2006! Where have I been?) As the title implies the focus is magic, magicians, spiritualism and, of course, history. More Chicago history than you might think. Read about Chicago's First Magic Show in 1834 or Chicago's Lost Magic Theater, or just some Chicago History. The author of the site is a magician and writer, and the blog is filled with great stories, quotes, pictures of forgotten graves and just a lot of fun and interesting information. Seriously, you need to check it out...before it disappears...
What happened and where is the focus of The Chicago Crime Scene Project, one of the best Chicago history blogs around. The site uses current photographs of notorious crime scenes and then provides a history of the event and notes its significance. Check out The First Ward Ball, Fred Reis, or how Cockroaches Brought Down Scarface, or any of the other entries and you will be hooked. The writing style is light and informative with a touch of humor - just what a blog should be. Can't recommend it enough. 
DesignSlinger , has been visiting Chicago and documenting their trip with a series of photos and stories. I have added a special link to their site in the far right column so you won't miss a post. Their first entry featured a section of an old alley paved with wooden blocks, a reminder of Chicago's very early days. Details like that just knock me out...
Perhaps it is because she clashed with Bertha Palmer. Or maybe it is because there was no famous architect or artist associated with the little exhibit. But, Ellen Swallow Richard's Rumford Kitchen, where nutritious 30 cent meals were served to fairgoers, received little mention during the Columbian Exposition or since. Few reference books even footnote it, and you would be hard-pressed to find it on a Fair map.
I became aware of Ellen Richards and the Rumford Kitchen when I stumbled on a blog by Joyce Beery Miles appropriately titled, "Ellen." Ellen Richards (1842-1911) was the first woman to be awarded a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT. She dedicated her life to applying the "principles of chemistry to the science of cooking" emphasizing nutrition particularly for the working-class. Jane Addams applauded her efforts and Ellen did spend some time at Hull House converting many to her ideas on the "new domestic science."
Joyce has graciously allowed me to reprint her post on Ellen Richards and the Fair, and I have included a list of sites where you can find some additional information.
Ellen Swallow Richards was determined to have a part in the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. She was invited to be a part of the Women’s Building and cook in a demonstration kitchen. However, she said she failed to see that any of her work was strictly women’s work and she wanted no part of it. After attempts to locate in the Liberal Arts Building failed because of the possible fire hazards, she was determined to construct her own building. This was a small frame, white building with barely room to seat 30 people. She decided to call this the Rumford Kitchen after Massachusetts native Benjamin Thompson later called Count Rumford. He was the first to label nutrition a science in the early 1800s.
The kitchen was open for all to view and the tables had the menu choices with nutrient values for each food item. The walls were lined with posters filled with the latest nutritional information. Since she had been bounced around before she established her own building, she was not operating the full length of the fair, but only for a few months. Miraculously, they were able to feed over 10,000 during this short time. Unfortunately, there was nothing about her kitchen in any advanced fair publicity and little written about it even as an historical event after the fair. What did survive, however, were the many handouts called Rumford Kitchen pamphlets. Patrons of the kitchen were invited to take these with nutritional information.
It sounds like a Monty Python skit, but the ad at left advertises just one of the great acts - "Big Fat Girls Hoop Skirt and Crinoline Laughing Show" - that Chicagoans could catch at the Clark Street Kohl & Middleton Dime Museum in 1893. Heck, I'd have gone just because of the act's name!
C.E. Kohl and George Middleton were very successful in Chicago. Harry Houdini appeared on one of their stages as did Calamity Jane. But it was the "freaks" and the dime admission price that kept the crowds coming.
"In coming down from the northwest C. E. Kohl and I decided there was an opening in Chicago for a dime museum, so we formed a co-partnership and I went on to Chicago to look up a location, which I found at 150 West Madison Street, just east of Halstead. [This was 1882] It was an instantaneous success, and we kept in operation a great many years.
"The next year we opened one at 150 Clark Street, which was also very successful.
"During the World's Fair we opened another one at 300 State Street, which was also a success. We also established them in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Cleveland. All except Cleveland paid handsomely, which was our only failure in the dime museum business.
"It was a strange business, and for a few years the dime was something new for the price of admission to a place of amusement. Thousands and thousands of people would pass along and say, "Oh, let's go in for fun;" but as years went by those same people became critics and would not spend their dime nor their time unless the show was considered worth it.
"The dime museum business, with its curiosities, its stage performance and its music, led to the continuous vaudeville of the theatres; then came the ten, twenty and thirty cent performance, the people all the time demanding better shows, for which they were willing to pay, until finally it has reached the high class vaudeville of today, in which higher salaries are paid than in any other class of amusement, excepting grand opera."
On Friday, October 21, 1892, Chicago's Columbian Exposition was dedicated. The buildings were only half finished and the Fair wouldn't formally open until May 1st of the following year, but the show must go on...and go on it did. Daniel Burnham, the force behind the Fair, was not known for making little plans.
The Marine Corps band played and there were speeches. Lots of speeches. And the ceremony also included a special poem by a then fairly unknown poet named Harriet Monroe. According to Robert Muccigrosso in Celebrating the New World, it was Charles T. Yerkes who was primarily responsible for Monroe being awarded the commission. Of course, it didn't hurt that she was also the sister-in-law of John Wellborn Root, the late partner of Daniel Burnham and consulting architect of the Fair.
The "Columbian Ode" was written at the request of the Joint Committee on Ceremonies of the World's Columbian Exposition, accepted by that honorable body.and delivered on the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, October 21, 1892, before an audience of more than one hundred thousand persons, during the dedicatory ceremonies in the building for Manufactures and Liberal Arts. By authority of the Committee, Mr. Theodore Thomas, Director of Music,requested Prof George W. Chadwick, of Boston, to set to music the lyric passages. Prof. Chadwick admirably fulfilled the obligation. The two songs, countenancing, "Over the wide unknown," and "Columbia! men beheld thee rise," and the passage of eight lines, commencing, "Lo! clan on clan, The embattled nations gather to be one," — a passage which the composer selected for his finale, — were given by a chorus of five thousand voices, to the accompaniment of a great orchestra and military bands.
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