1912–13 Volume 37 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

106 THE SCROLLlife giving ozone arrives fresh from Sault Ste, Marie and its homein the north woods and Chicago is freed. The smoke is brushedaway with the supreme swiftness of the lake winds and the sky iscleared.Within many walls of Chicago's homes and hotels, the first feelingof ugliness is lost. Carl Lindin, a Swedish American painter possessedof a splendid sense of beauty, once said the interiors of Chicagowill be the most satisfying in the world. The outside city has grownto be so ugly, Lindin observed, that the natural human reactiondrives men to crave beauty and to establish it within their homes asan altar.With the visitor's second windi in which Marathon runners andothers whose races are less classic find relief, Chicago's multiplicityof mind becomes startling.The commercial side at first offers its attractiveness. Everyoneknows that Chicago is the great grain market of the world, and itsBoard of Trade is known around the world where wheat is sold andflour bread eaten. Standing squarely athwart La Salle Street, thewestern Wall Street, is this grey structure.The din^ of eager raucous voices buying and selling surges fromthe pit until it mingles with the rude roar of the street below. Hereis one Chicago at its keenest; its most zestful; contriving, scheming,plotting, lusting to have and to hold. Here at its best is the oldChicago coveting its neighbor's house and all that is his.Here too are fought some of the fiercest battles of modem times.In the midst of the riotous pit "Joe" Leiter hazarded his millionsfor the mastery of all the world's wheat and lost to stronger men;at the same prosaic spot James Patton played the same game andwon, only to be followed by other intrepid speculators each desirousof the illusive glories and powers of the pit's mastery. Here is oneChicago, appealing to the ambitious and the powerful, a great fightingground for them who war and care not.Southwest some eight miles is another market by which Chicagogets the adjective "greatest." Within "The Yards" are herded morecattle, sheep, and hogs than one can find in any other of the famousmarkets of the world. There too are the great packing houses wherethe science of commerce is carried to as fine details as anywhere elsein civilization. The by-products of the business are utilized to themost insignificant minutiae, as is often illustrated with the statementthat the gall stones of the slain animals are shipped to China wherethey are used as amulets. Back of "The Yards" lies Packington, thehome of the workers. Sanitary and social science have not yet beenable to safeguard the environment of the men as commerce has treatedthe products. There one may see the sleek, fat horses of the greatpackers, and the gaunt men who are hardly less dependent than animalsupon the great men. But the ingenuity which can make laundryand toilet soap, glue and gelatine, sandpaper and isinglass, lubricat-