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Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.
I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. DR. H. H. HOLMES CONFESSION 1896
Vice thrived, with official indulgence.
Max Weber likened the city to “a human being with his skin removed.”
It was this big talk, not the persistent southwesterly breeze, that had prompted New York editor Charles Anderson Dana to nickname Chicago “the Windy City.”
Once built, the Montauk was so novel, so tall, it defied description by conventional means. No one knows who coined the term, but it fit, and the Montauk became the first building to be called a skyscraper.
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”
French editor Octave Uzanne called it “that Gordian city, so excessive, so satanic.”
Paul Lindau, an author and publisher, described it as “a gigantic peepshow of utter horror, but extraordinarily to the point.”
Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes.”
Already foreign editors were asking who would dare attend the exposition given Chicago’s notorious problems with sewage. No one had forgotten how in 1885 fouled water had ignited an outbreak of cholera and typhoid that killed ten percent of the city’s population.
The ranks included a carpenter and furniture-maker named Elias Disney, who in coming years would tell many stories about the construction of this magical realm beside the lake. His son Walt would take note.
The dedication had been anticipated nationwide. Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth’s Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation. He composed a pledge that the Bureau of Education mailed to virtually every school. As originally worded, it began, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands …”
Among a list of measures effective for inducing vomiting, she included: “Injections of tobacco into the anus through a pipe stem.”
As always, he longed for Margaret. She was out of the city but due back for the opening. “I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl,” he wrote. “You must expect to give yourself up when you come.” For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open.
They sampled a new, oddly flavored gum called Juicy Fruit, and caramel-coated popcorn called Cracker Jack. A new cereal, Shredded Wheat, seemed unlikely to succeed—“shredded doormat,” some called it—but a new beer did well, winning the exposition’s top beer award. Forever afterward, its brewer called it Pabst Blue Ribbon.
The fair alone consumed three times as much electricity as the entire city of Chicago.
For many visitors these nightly illuminations were their first encounter with electricity.
