Our Trade and Commerce: Development of Chicago in Wealth and Material Prosperity

The growth of Chicago, in all that pertains to a great commercial metropolis, presents perhaps the most remarkable instance of rapid and uninterrupted progress of any city in the world, either in ancient or modern times. Going back to 1830, we find that the census of the United States gave Chicago a total population of only seventy souls; all, or nearly all, of whom were dependent upon the general government, which had established an Indian agency at this point. When it is remembered that this insignificant nucleus had grown within one generation to over three hundred and thirty-four thousand, as shown by a census taken but a few weeks prior to the great calamity, the question presses for solution--By what magic has this marvelous result been achieved? What peculiar combination of forces or circumstances has wrought a progress so wonderful and so entirely unparalleled?

While it cannot be denied that the city has drawn largely upon the best blood and most vigorous mental capacities, not only of our own country but also from foreign immigration, and to an extent that has made it a city representing by its people natives of almost every town and hamlet in this country and of Europe, thus consolidating into one homogeneous citizenship, the thought and enterprise of many and widely diversified intellects and educations, still all these advantages could not alone produce the results that have been manifest, and that have challenged the attention of the civilized world. In fact, this flood of emigration would not have set hitherward but for advantages of a permanent character that were apparent to the observing and inquiring mind. The not infrequent reference, both at home and abroad--sometimes in candor and sometimes in irony--to the spirit of enterprise and perseverance of the people of Chicago, has to some extent it may be feared done injustice to the peculiar situation and business facilities of the city. Men, however gifted in the diversified qualities of the successful and honorable merchant, cannot build up and establish trade where no trade is demanded or required to be done; and especially in this country men must seek the centres of business if they would command success as merchants: business will not to any great extent be diverted in quest of men. It is because Chicago has possessed remarkable advantages for the development of trade and commerce, that the remarkable results, now matters of history, have been attained.

Any review of the Trade and Commerce of Chicago, however hasty and imperfect, would be essentially incomplete without some reference to the basis of that trade, and the reasons that may be adduced for its rapid growth and development. First of all may be noted the broad expanse of matchless agricultural territory, dotted with farm-houses, villages, and cities, stretching hundreds of miles northward, westward, and southward, all more or less (and the major part of it entirely) dependent upon the city, both as a market for its surplus productions and a source of supply for those necessaries and luxuries that tend to make life enjoyable, and that are produced or manufactured in other portions of this or of foreign countries. But scarcely less important than supply and demand, because by it only can either exist, is the means of speedy transportation demanded by an extended commerce; and this, nature and art have supplied for Chicago to a degree unequaled by any interior city in the land: so that, with lines by water or by rail, the city has come to be a centre from which diverge in all directions ample avenues for conducting an almost limitless traffic, and through the influence of which the commerce of the city has been nourished and built up, and by means of which the great Northwest has become populous, and the hitherto cheerless prairie has been converted into a paradise of happiness, prosperity, and substantial wealth.

The early history of the Trade and Commerce of Chicago appears to have differed but little from that of most other Western settlements, consisting at first of a small Indian traffic, but gradually growing in proportions as civilization began to advance into the then almost trackless prairie. Early settlements in Illinois, as in other Western States, was confined almost exclusively to a proximity to such rivers as could be made available for transportation; hence what of trade there was, took the direction towards such markets as it could be floated to. Chicago was not one of these, for while nature had provided a grand and free highway for commerce from Chicago to the eastward, there were no avenues for it penetrating the interior, until they were created by the necessities of the situation.... The attention of the State had at an early day been drawn to the advantages of connecting the waters of Lake Michigan with those of the Illinois River; and under liberal appropriations of the public lands by the general government in aid of the work, the construction of a canal from Chicago to La Salle, the head of steamboat navigation on the Illinois River, had been in progress for a number of years. After protracted delays, incident to the embarrassed financial condition of the State, this great work was completed, and opened for traffic in the spring of 1848. A new era in the commercial prosperity of the young city now dawned upon it; and with the rapid settling and development of the territory contiguous to this new line of transit, and the facilities it gave for communication with the whole Mississippi Valley, there sprang up a greatly enlarged trade, and an increased confidence in the stability and future greatness of the city....

The introduction of railroads, at a later but not distant day, was but the further development of transportation facilities, the necessity and advantages of which were made strikingly apparent by the acknowledged benefit resulting from the completion of the canal line.... Chicago lines of railway have, in view of the wonderful past and prospective growth of their traffic, been so eminently profitable that capital from abroad has been ever ready to embark in their construction, sometimes even when her own citizens could not readily comprehend the necessity or prospective profit of the investment. The fact that no drain of this kind has been necessary, has left the citizens free to invest in mercantile or other enterprises of a local character, and has enabled them to meet municipal taxation for the extraordinary improvements necessary in a city requiring so much expenditure to make it convenient and enjoyable, without being oppressively burdened.

The subject of railroads may not properly be dismissed without a passing allusion to the great trans-continental lines built or in progress, and their effect on the commerce of the city. With the completion of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific roads, was demonstrated the fact that for the trade between the Atlantic Slope of the United States and the East Indies and China, this route presents advantages over every other, and especially so for the transportation of valuable freight, such as teas, silks, and the like; and a large and growing trade was at once inaugurated over the line, which has steadily increased, all or nearly all passing through or stopping in the city of Chicago.... The finger of destiny to-day strongly points to Chicago as the great distributing-point for all Asiatic goods consumed in the Mississippi Valley. With the early completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad, a remarkably rich and inviting territory will be opened to the emigrant, and in addition very greatly increased facilities for the Pacific trade will result. That Chicago may, with its numerous favorable connections, reap great benefit therefrom, is not doubted by the careful observer of the course of trade. Already the trade with the mining regions of the Rocky Mountains is very large, and rapidly increasing....

Whatever may be said of the advantages to the Trade and Commerce of Chicago resulting from her other means of communication with the world, it must be admitted that her crowning glory as a commercial centre is the great highway provided by God himself for the free passage of her shipping on the great chain of lakes, one of the principal of which stretches its magnificent proportions before the eyes of her citizens, and by its pure and invigorating breezes brings health and joy to all within their influence. Without the aid of this means of transportation, her warehouses would become overburdened and choked, and her railroads could not be relieved of their enormous tonnage; in fact, but for this natural highway, no city would exist where now is so much of commercial life and varied industrial activity.... The navigation of the lakes, though running through but about seven months of the year, is the grand safety-valve by which all rates of transportation eastward are regulated, and by means of it nearly all our lumber and vastly the largest share of our farm products are moved, the former to and the latter from the city....

Such, briefly, has been the outlines of Chicago's history in Trade and Commerce, and such was her situation as regards business, present and prospective, when, in view of the past,--feeling cheerful, strong, and confident in contemplating the future, beaming with brilliant prospects and high hopes,--she is suddenly overtaken by the most dire financial calamity the world has ever witnessed; in a day withering those hopes, laying in ashes her lofty and magnificent temples, both of worship and of trade, and utterly annihilating her treasures of beauty and of art; dividing the fortunes of her citizens by two, by four, by ten, or by an hundred, and some, alas! thrusting from wealth and luxury to actual penury and suffering. What wonder that for a moment her people stand appalled as they contemplate the awful wreck? But it will be only a momen[t]. [While] some may find their burden greater than they can ever stagger under, others will gather together the fragments that remain, and with the aid of the outstretched helping hands from the four quarters of the globe, will repair the waste places, rebuild the levelled landmarks, and raise from the ashes of Chicago past, a city more grand, more, substantial, and in every way more adapted to the needs of what the world has come to recognize as the necessities of Chicago future.