The Biggest Parade on Earth

Chicago, October 9.

"Yes, sir," said the millionaire, "I was then clurking [sic] at five dollars a-week in a dry-goods store. There came the fire, and the store was burned down, so next morning I went out to look for something to do. I couldn't afford not to be working. I found a man who offered me a job picking out bricks from the burned foundations at one dollar twenty cents a-day. But the bricks were so hot that I couldn't hold them in my hands. As I was going back to the room where I boarded to get a pair of gloves, I met a gentleman I knew who manufactured safes. His house of business was on the West side and hadn't been burned down. Everybody was coming to him for safes to put their valuables in; others' loss was his gain. He had more trade than he knew what to do with, so he asked me to come as his cashier for a dollar a-day. I went." He smiled a smile of half-wistful reminiscence as he looked round his parlour. There he was on velvet cushions, with a grand piano and a shameless Italian novel side by side--O horror!--with Mr. Richard le Gallienne's 'Prose Fancies,' and with Heaven knows how many dollars in the bank. And there, if any merit lies in sturdy and resourceful effort, he deserved to be.

This little bit of retrospect is interesting, not merely as showing that if you are ready to salvage bricks at seventeen you will be a millionaire at forty-two, but also as a hint and an explanation of the devotion with which Chicago men regard their city. By their untamable energy they have built her up from a heap of ashes in their own lifetime to be great and wealthy and pulsing with virility. The gentleman I have quoted would be honoured and loved in any capital of the earth, not for his wealth and ability, but for his sweet and even saintly character. You had not associated saintliness with Chicago? Probably not. But he associates everything he is or ever has been with Chicago, and it would never enter into his mind for an instant that there is in the world any city where he would be, or where he would wish to be, more in place than in Chicago. He has grown up with her, and he loves her like a mother.

Therefore the men of Chicago resolved that the twenty-fifth anniversary of her destruction by fire should not pass without such a demonstration as should convince the world that she is very much more alive than ever. Incidentally, it was determined that this demonstration should also blazon abroad her devotion to the cause of that sound money on which she has grown to be what she is. Now, when Chicago makes up her mind to do a thing she does it as it has never been done before. If it is not the biggest thing of its kind the world ever saw--why, then Chicago has lost a day. The American people love display above all things; it is nothing to be anything unless you can express that being so as to impress it sensibly upon others. So the day was made a public holiday, not by the decree of authority--what cares Chicago for authority?--but by the unanimous resolve of the leading citizens. Board of Trade, Stock Exchange, banks, offices, shops, factories, street railways, all took a day off; they hardly knew themselves in the unaccustomed calm. And Chicago gathered herself together into the heart of the city for a festival of superlative display such as had never been seen before, and should never be seen again until Chicago saw fit to surpass it.

I had seen at Canton something of the American method of electioneering,--of the appeal to the senses of the voter, hitting him hard in eye and ear with colour and noise, so that the dullest imagination cannot fail to appreciate the strength of the great machine which asks him to become part of it. I had seen in Chicago evidences of ambitious energy which convinced me that what there was to be done in the way of colour and sound and pageantry would be done here. But I had also seen something of the exaggeration into which American impressionability is wont to betray itself. When I went to the office of the Chicago 'Times-Herald,' which was my hospitable home for the day, I expected to see a big thing--perhaps a matter of two or three hours--but not a thing whose bigness would transcend my powers of estimate and comparison. The parade was timed to start at ten, and only a few minutes afterwards its head appeared between the dense phalanxes of people crushed on to the pavements, and the swarming faces that lined every building, from the lowest window to the roofs and chimneys, like ants in a hill. First came a squad of mounted police; then mounted buglers; then rank on rank of mounted citizens. With parti-coloured sashes slung round their bodies, gold cords about their hats, white gauntlets, new bridles, and brilliant saddle-cloths, they looked as disciplined and rode as regularly as the police. Presently came by the organiser of the parade, riding alone like a general, and after him a small staff and a mounted standard-bearer. Then slowly there advanced a colossal American ensign, spread out like a canopy from side to side of the broad street: it seemed to be rolling along by its own motion. It was a mass of umbrellas--some blue with white stars, others red and white, cunningly marshalled so that from above they presented a giant counterfeit of the stars and stripes. Then came the demonstrators themselves. First, grey-bearded veterans of the war, glittering with medals and badges, a little stiff with years, but every inch of them soldiers yet. Band after band crashed past--scarlet and blue, crimson and gold, lace and feathers. Between them, now eight abreast shoulder to shoulder, now four abreast in open order across the whole street, advanced battalion after battalion of marchers. They were regimented either according to political clubs or to the prominent business houses of Chicago; each carried its own standard. The great drapery establishment of Marshall Field & Company led the way--six partners of the firm riding abreast, and after them shop-walkers, salesmen, cashiers, porters, office-boys, all in rank and file, and all in step with the music. Firm followed firm, club followed club. Some wore red badges, some blue, most gold; some carried scarlet umbrellas, some orange. Others wore slouched hats of saffron colour, others again short capes of ultra-marine or vermilion. All kept their formation and marched in step. After about three-quarters of an hour, when the procession had already become an army, began to arrive the principal attraction of the show--the floats, as they call waggons bearing symbols of trade or groups of allegorical figures. Here Vulcan with attendant Cyclops, here nothing but a huge earthen pipe, there a model of one of the great buildings, there again a car swarming with starred-and-striped Uncle Sams--six horses, eight horses, ten horses, with floating streamers and gilded hoofs. Horns boomed and megaphone speaking-trumpets magnified the din tenfold. And at intervals along the line of march were telephone-receivers into which enthusiasts decanted their cheers, to be carried five hundred miles into Mr. M'Kinley's [sic] study at Canton. Was there ever such a blend of the infantile and the heroic?

Eleven o'clock: they were still stepping briskly out to the music. Twelve o'clock: they were still yelling "He's all right!" as they passed the picture of M'Kinley. One o'clock: they were just getting into their stride. At half-past one I took a short adjournment and not unnecessary sustenance. At half-past two I went back to the window: there was this inexhaustible parade sweeping on as doggedly as ever. Club followed club, factory trod on the heels of factory. More bands, more floats, more colours, more megaphones, always more gold. A detachment of bakers in white; a company of glass-blowers with glass swords; a troop of broom-makers shouldering gilt brooms. Then came the contingent of the great packing houses--ten thousand marchers from these alone. Their feature was the stockyards brigade, all riding and all in capes that may have been paper, but looked like cloth-of-gold--hard cattle-drovers and slaughterers sitting their fine horses carelessly. Every ward in the city, every trade that man ever set his hand to, had sent its sons to swell this prodigious pageant. Three o'clock: was it ever going to end? We had long ago worked through the list of organisations coloured on the card, yet tramp, tramp, rumble, rumble, crash, crash, the men and the waggons and the bands came pouring on. It was an army corps, two army corps, a whole nation on the march.

At last! A six-horsed car one blaze of gold, and the crowd had broken the dam and was surging over the street. Twenty-five minutes to four: it had taken five hours and ten minutes to go past the 'Times Herald' office. By my own estimate nearly four hundred men had passed every minute; allowing for all intervals the 'Herald's' calculation of eighteen to twenty thousand an hour cannot have been too high. A hundred thousand men! More than thirteen miles of procession! Capitalist worth two hundred million dollars! But why struggle with figures so vast that they have lost their meaning. The parade would have failed if its object, if its import, be grasped and weighed by figures. The mind was stunned and deadened by the vastness of it. The eye was blinded with colour, the ear deaf with music, the head dazed with the effort to get it all into focus. There was more colour and more noise and more men than you could conceive were in the whole world--a world of brilliant bunting and brass and horses, and moving men, men, men, till you gave up and let it sweep over you and conquer you and absorb you, annihilated into its titanic self.

"If McKinley gets all that of votes out of this county," said the lift-boy when I crawled home, feeling too small a worm ever to turn again, "he'll be our next President sure." There you see it at work. That lift-boy never went to a political meeting, never read a political tract. They have discovered in this country the effects of the spectacular and the auricular, and they have applied it on a characteristically vast scale. You can disregard argument; you can ignore self-interest; you can forget country; you can even refuse a bribe. But you cannot fail to see and hear and to be struck wellnigh resistless by so imperious and masterful appeal to the senses of your body.

The Democrats know that as well as anybody else. So they have organised a counter-demonstration as colossal as they can lay their hands on for the evening, and as I write it is trooping up beneath my window. On the horizon the red and white lights shine steadily over the black solemnity of the Lake. Nearer in is the broad belt of muddy waste that Chicago is going to make into a park when the City Council gives back the money it has embezzled. And right below us is Michigan Avenue, dark with heaving masses of men, flickering with gold and silver and red fire, and volleying cheers, hoarse and shrill, far over the solemn water, and up to unanswering heaven. All poor men these. No two hundred million dollars here. Not but what they know how to play the game as well as anybody. They have the advantage of the darkness and illumination, and the keen night breeze. They have a row of sheeted ghosts with such boding inscriptions as "Murdered in Pennsylvania by Carnegie." It seems to me--I may be wrong, I am trying to be fair--that there is more life, more sincerity, more devil in this muster than in the other. Men said that factory hands were compelled to demonstrate this morning for fear of their employers. It was untrue of many thousands, I doubt not; yet some looked sullen--it may probably have been true of some. But of this night's enthusiasm there can be no doubt; the affair goes in a whirlwind of cheers from start to finish. It may be smaller, though even this is a great army; it takes an hour and a half to pass my window, and cannot number less than thirty thousand men. And if smaller, it is more exuberant. It may be less overwhelming, but it is more inspiriting. I am getting enthusiastic myself. There may be fewer bands, but how they ring! and was there ever an air like "Auld Lang Syne"? There may be fewer cavalry, but how they step! and was ever any created thing so beautiful as a horse? There may be less colour, but how the torches dance! There may be fewer cars, but how the silver blazes in the eye of the calcium lights! So they go blaring and flaring, tossing and roaring and maddening into the darkness. All poor men, in this city of corn and meat and dollars, may be coarse men and ignorant men. They may be very wrong; they may be compassing their country's ruin and their own. But they all feel that there is something they want--something they ought to have and have not--and in a vague, blind way they are striving to get it. Thousands of them think--how tragically!--that it is within their grasp today. All poor men--and poor they will remain. Sometimes dully patient through the night of indigence; sometimes shouting at the phantom of false morning; sometimes, it may be, raving and seeing red. But poor they will remain.