for
slaughter, I did not visit Packing Town, but, without admitting all the
grave charges brought against Chicago's grandest industry, one might
have supposed that the sudden translation of herds of cattle into potted
meat was not unattended with some inconvenience. This suspicion, you
are told, is an insult to the city. What might disgust the traveller
elsewhere has no terrors in Chicago. "This Packing-Town odor," we are
told by a zealot, "has been unjustly criticised. To any one accustomed
to it there is only a pleasant suggestion of rich, ruddy blood and long
rows of tempting 'sides' hung up to cool." I prefer not to be tempted.
I can only bow before the ingenuity of this eulogy. And if, more
seriously, you reproach the cynicism of the Pit, which on this side
or that may compel ruin, you are met with a very easy rejoinder. "The
Chicago Board of Trade"--it is the same apologist who speaks--"is a
world-renowned commercial organisation. It exercises a wider and a
more potential influence over the welfare of mankind than any other
institution of its kind in existence." This assurance leaves you dumb.
You might as well argue with a brass band as with a citizen of Chicago;
and doubtless you would wave the flag yourself if you stayed long enough
in the wonderful West.

But the panegyrist of the Pit, already quoted, helps us to explain
Chicago's vanity. "The fortunes made and lost within the walls of the
great building," says he proudly, "astonish the world." If Chicago can
only astonish the world, that is enough. Its citizens fondly hope that
everything they do is on the largest scale. Size, speed, and prominence
are the three gods of their idolatry. They are not content until
they--the citizens--are all prominent, and their buildings are all the
largest that cumber the earth. It is a great comfort to those who
gamble away their substance in the Board of Trade to reflect that the
weathercock that surmounts its tower is the biggest ever seen by human
eye. There is not one of them that will not tell you, with a satisfied
smile, that the slowest of their fire-engines can go from one end of the
city to the other in five seconds. There is not one of them who, in the
dark recesses of his mind, is not sure that New York is a "back number."
They are proud of the senseless height of their houses, and of the
rapidity with which they mount towards the sky. They are proud of the
shapeless towns which spring up about them like mushroom