The Autobiography of an Idea

and again, moving and replacing a foot, flies buzzing about thick as the barnyard odors; other hogs of the group moving waywardly in idle curiosity, grunting conversationally, commenting on things as they are; others asleep. The farmer comes at times, leans over the fence and speculates on hog cholera; for these are his precious ones; they are to transmute his corn. Mentally he estimates their weights; he regards the sucklings with earnest eyes; he will shave on Sunday next. To him this is routine, not that high comedy of rural tranquillity, in peace and contentment, seen by the poet’s eye, as he hangs his harp upon the willow and works the handle of the pump, and converses in city speech with the farmer of fiction and of fact, in the good old days, as the kitchen door opens suddenly and the farm wife throws out slops and disappears as quickly. Such were the home surroundings of the pretty white suckling, such were to form the background of his culture; all one family, crops and farmer, weather fair or untoward, big barn, little house, barnyard and fields, horses, ploughs, harrows, and their kin; cows, chickens, turkeys, ducks, all one family, with the little pig’s cousins that romped and played⁠—one perhaps to dream and go to Congress, others to dream and, when the time should come that their country needed them, would answer their country’s call, it may be to fill little holes in the ground where poppies grow and bloom.

Meanwhile the little white suckling grows to full pig stature, which signifies he has become a hog, with all a hog’s background of culture. He, too, answers his country’s call, though himself not directly bent on making the world safe for democracy. He is placed by his friends in a palace car with many of his kind, equally idealistic, equally educated. The laden train moves onward. At the sidings our hero is watered to save shrinkage, and through the open spaces between the slats⁠—the train at rest⁠—he gazes at a new sort of human being, men doing this and that; they, too, answering their country’s call, at so much per call, and he wonders at a huge black creature passing by grunting most horribly. Again the train moves on, stops, and moves on. In due time what was once the pink and white suckling, meets the man with the knife. But he is not murdered, he is merely slaughtered. Yet his earthly career is not ended; for soon he goes forth again into the work⁠—much subdivided it is true⁠—to seek out the tables of rich and poor alike, there to be welcomed and rejoiced in as benefactor of mankind. Thus may a hog rise to the heights of altruism. It does not pay to assume lowly origins as finalities, for it is shown that good may come out of the sty, as out of the manger. Thus the life story of the hog gains in human interest and glory, as we view his transfiguration into a higher form of life, wherein he is not dead but sleepeth. And yet, upon reflection, what about other pink and whites at the breast today? Are they to grow up within a culture which shall demand of them their immolation? or shall they not?

Inasmuch as all distinguished strangers, upon arrival in the city, at once were taken to the Stock Yards, not to be slaughtered, it is true, but to view with salutary wonder the prodigious goings on, and to be crammed with statistics and oratory concerning how Chicago feeds the world; and inasmuch as the reporter’s first query would be: “How do you like Chicago?” Next, invariably: “Have you seen the Stock Yards?” and the third, possibly: “Have you viewed our beautiful system of parks and boulevards?” it may be assumed that in the cultural system prevailing in those days of long ago, the butcher stood at the peak of social eminence, while slightly below him were ranged the overlords of grain, lumber, and merchandising. Of manufacturing, ordinarily so called, there was little, and the units were scattering and small.

Then, presto, as it were, came a magic change. The city had become the center of a great radiating system of railways, the lake traffic changed from sail to steam. The population had grown to five hundred thousand by 1880, and reached a million in 1890; and this, from a pitiful 4,000 in 1837, at which time, by charter, the village became a city. Thus Chicago grew and flourished by virtue of pressure from without⁠—the pressure of forest, field and plain, the mines of copper, iron and coal, and the human pressure of those who crowded in upon it from all sides seeking fortune. Thus the year 1880 may be set as the zero hour of an amazing expansion, for by that time the city had recovered from the shock of the panic of 1873. Manufacturing expanded with incredible rapidity, and the building industry took on an organizing definition. With the advance in land values, and a growing sense of financial stability, investors awakened to opportunity, and speculators and promoters were at high feast. The tendency in commercial buildings was toward increasing stability, durability, and height, with ever bettering equipment. The telephone appeared, and electric lighting systems. Iron columns and girders were now encased in fireproofing materials, hydraulic elevators came into established use, superseding those operated by steam or gas. Sanitary appliances kept pace with the rest.

The essential scheme of construction, however, was that of solid masonry enclosing-and-supporting walls. The Montauk Block had reached the height of nine stories and was regarded with wonder. Then came the Auditorium Building with its immense mass of ten stories, its tower, weighing thirty million pounds, equivalent to twenty stories⁠—a tower of solid masonry carried on a “floating” foundation; a great raft 67 by 100 feet. Meanwhile Burnham and Root had prepared plans for a sixteen-story solid masonry office building to be called the “Monadnock.” As this was to be