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has characterized Chicago undertakings from the beginning of her history, were quickened by misfortune, and became the motive power of reconstruction. The foundations and supports of prosperity were unharmed, though the superstructure was a heap of ashes.

As the surrounding country had developed, through agriculture, cattle raising and lumbering, Chicago of necessity grew to meet the demands as a center of receiving and shipping the products of these industries, and as a manufacturing city for handling and re-shaping them. Chicago, being so great a market and manufacturing city, her interests became bound up with those of New York and of every other great center of business in the country. The commerce which Chicago had built up had inspired such confidence in her that millions of Eastern capital was put at her disposal. So when the fire came and destroyed much of her visible wealth, the commercial structure of which Chicago was an integral part held her up and kept her from ruin. The momentum of the trade activities of the nation carried her along; it was inevitable that she should rise and march on.

DESTRUCTION OF LAND TITLE RECORDS

The records of land titles in the Recorder's office of Cook County were totally consumed in the great fire. Thus there was no way by which owners could show title to real estate, the legal evidence of title being lacking. Something had to be done and done at once, for owners of realty in many cases were without money to rebuild the structures destroyed in the fire, and would be obliged to borrow on the security of the land to enable them to do so. In order to do this a perfect title must be shown, and this could not be done under the law as it then existed. It was of vital importance to the city that this emergency should be promptly met. The Legislature which convened in the winter following the fire passed the necessary law, which was approved on April 9th, 1872. Before quoting the law it should be stated that under the Constitution of 1870 special legislation was prohibited in cases where a general law could be made applicable. This accounts for the special case of Cook County not being referred to in the law as passed.

The language of the statute, quoting the essential portion only, was as follows: “Whenever it shall appear that the records, or any material part thereof, of any county in this state have been destroyed by fire or otherwise, any map, plat, deed, conveyance, contract, mortgage, deed of trust, or other instrument in writing affecting real estate in such county, which has been heretofore recorded, certified copies of such, may be re-recorded; and in recording the same the recorder shall record the certificate of the previous record, and the date of filing for record appearing in said original certificate so recorded shall be deemed and taken as the date of the record thereof. And copies of any such record, so authorized to be made under this section, duly certified by the recorder of any such county, under his seal of office, shall be received in evidence, and have the same force and effect as certified copies of the original record."

This act enabled bona fide owners of real estate to establish title to the satisfaction of lenders, and since that time, with such amendments as have from time to time been made, the act has served its purpose completely, and has passed every test in the courts.

PROFESSOR SWING'S ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT FIRE

An account of the great fire, written by David Swing twenty years afterward, and printed in Scribner's Monthly for June, 1892, is included in this chapter. Professor Swing, who although a prominent preacher of Chicago from 1866 to 1894, always retained the title of "Professor" because of his earlier connection with Miami University in Ohio as an instructor in Greek and Latin, possessed a finished literary style which gave his sermons and addresses a charm that attracted large audiences, and were regularly printed in the Monday morning issue of a city daily for many years, and read by multitudes of persons.

At the time of the fire Professor Swing was the pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church located in the North Division, and his residence was in the same neighborhood. This portion of the North Division was swept by the advancing tide of the great conflagration, and with his family he was obliged to seek safety on the open prairie to the west of the city. In his account here given he relates the adventures he passed through on this thrilling occasion.

DAVID SWING'S "MEMORY OF THE CHICAGO FIRE"

"If to us, who were wandering homeless in front of the great conflagration of 1871, anyone had whispered the words of Acestes: 'It will be a pleasure some day to remember these things,' he would have seemed to be trifling with the sufferers and the event. But twenty years have sufficed to justify the words of the Latin. With a great pleasure I shall pass again along the path which once was so beset with smoke and fire. Emerson once wrote in the blank leaf of a book these words:

"A score of piny miles will smooth

The rough Monadnock to a gem.'

"With his usual spirituality he thus declared that twenty years would transform a painful experience into a rather pleasing dream.

THE STORY BEGINS

"The Chicago fire began on Sunday evening, October 8th, 1871, at a quarter before nine o'clock. It raged until half past ten the next evening, pausing suddenly in a large isolated dwelling house, which fell into ruins at that time. The work of destruction, under the impulse of a driving wind, thus lasted only about twenty-six hours. The houses destroyed were about fourteen thousand; the people rendered homeless ninety-eight thousand; the value of property destroyed two hundred millions of dollars.

"The rain of cinders upon the water works soon made the roof timbers fall in upon the pumping engines and block their working beams. In three or four hours from the outset of the conflagration, the whole city was without water. It lay helpless. Had the wind changed at any time within two days, no part of Chicago would have remained. The historian would have recorded the total erasure of everything above ground. But the wind, which caused the destruction, intervened to limit its extent. It never veered for three days, and thus it held the destroyer to a definite channel widening out to the northwest. The gale blew until it sank down under the smitings of the rain.

"It was never learned how the rumor originated that a cow had kicked over a lamp and had burned a city. The fire started at a quarter before nine. The O'Learys had milked their cow at five o'clock, and had no lamp lighted that Sunday in either cottage or barn. The air was so much like summer that the inside of both stable and house was deserted. It is probable the cow story sprang up out of the inventive power of some man or woman who was hungry for a small cause for a great disaster.

LOSS OF LIFE IN THE FIRE

"It was never learned how many lives were lost in the burning and falling of so many buildings. The coroner was called upon to make report on one hundred and seventeen bodies. But against such a report one fact must be kept in mind, that the wind and blaze, acting together, created a form of blast-heat before which window glass dropped like rain, and in which iron columns melted as though made of lead. Many bodies may have been obliterated so completely as to leave no trace of a life or a death.

"It was about ten o'clock at night before any person a half-mile from the place where the great flame started knew that the situation was unusual and alarming. The dryness of every roof, the high wind, the exhausted condition of the fire department, combined to make the red sky a painful spectacle. It has many times happened, in the lives of most men, that an alarm of fire has awakened a sudden desire to walk rapidly to the doomed building, and, boy-like, enjoy the battle between engine and blaze; but there was something in this October night that depressed the spirits and made the foot fall as though made of lead. Already in the sky overhead there was a great line of sparks moving slowly toward the northwest. It was a fiery belt, having a breadth of perhaps two hundred feet, and composed of millions of sparks and bits of material on fire. This hot upper river added to the seriousness of the scene, and raised the question: What is to be the end?

SWING'S PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

"My own domestic group soon went to the roof of our house to battle if need be with falling coals. But as we watched and worked the stream in the sky grew wider and the sparks grew in size, until not a few of the burning objects seemed as large as a plate or as long and wide as a shingle. Our home was in the exact line of the wind and fire, and all this red volume was rolling along directly over our heads. It was, perhaps, four hundred feet above the level of the streets. "So unusual was the scene that the thought came into my mind: the city will burn up to-night. I determined to go at once toward the field of battle, and soon I was nearing the place and source of the destruction. Men hurrying back paused long enough to tell me that the trouble had begun in a stable a mile to the southwest of the city's heart; that the conflagration had spread out fan-like; that it was raging in more than a hundred houses; had crossed the river, and was coming along on the wings of the wind. The reports were terrible, but I walked on, not in the least sceptical, but wishing to make a survey and an estimate for myself. I walked slowly and looked back often to see if the rainbow of fire in the sky were not assailing the city in some other places-far away from the point of

first attack. Soon before me were streets arched over with flame, and massive buildings, the pride of each citizen, were smoking, blazing, falling.

DEMEANOR OF THE PEOPLE

"There was not much clamor of men, women, or children. It is probable that the awfulness of the situation made the mind silent rather than noisy. Personal friends said to me: "The city is gone,' or 'No power can save us,' or 'All is lost;' but beyond such ejaculations few were the words to be heard. Quite a stream of vehicles and persons were moving northward, but the movement did not seem that of a panic, but rather that of an orderly retreat. The guests were issuing from the Tremont and Sherman hotels. The banging of trunks was only a little more violent than usual, and the vehicles into which trunks were going showed that the exodus of guests was informal; and yet not much was said by the man with the team or the man with the trunk. The fire was raging in the business district, and its population at midnight was not great. The scene was not that of families fleeing for life, with mothers calling to child and child crying for parent. The ruin was advancing in the great commercial blocks, whose clerks and business heads were perhaps miles distant from their counters and desks. It was a common event to see one or two men come down from a bank or office, unload their arms or a basket into either an express wagon or a well equipped carriage, and then hasten away. Where there was distrust of a vault, the valuable contents

were extracted and headed for some place not yet doomed.

"One banker hailed a colored man who was moving along slowly with an express wagon. Whether the two persons had ever met before I do not now remember, but the banker had dragged as far as down to the sidewalk a large trunk full of bills and bonds. The African and his wagon assumed the form of a special providence. A bargain was soon made. Its terms seemed liberal to Sambo. The banker simply said, 'If you will see that my trunk and I are safe and secure, I will give you a thousand dollars.' The two moved toward the lake, and there the acute negro drove into the water to a depth which enabled him to fight well, with all kinds of splashing, the rain of hot coals which smote wagon and trunk, driver and horse. He triumphed, and in a few hours had in his possession, in place of the usual fifty cents for carrying a trunk, the more satisfactory fee of a thousand dollars.

AT CLOSE QUARTERS WITH THE FLAMES

"My advance ended at the Court House. All beyond was a furnace. Here, and a little after midnight, the fact that the city was doomed, that my home was doomed, and that tens of thousands of persons would be homeless and penniless in a few hours, was fully realized. Before me lay in one mass of fire a district nearly a mile long and fully four squares wide; and, under a wind which was almost a hurricane, this red army was advancing. At intervals, like minute guns, came the boom of some falling wall. I turned to go home. The tumbling buildings made a solemn sound like the pulsations of a volcano, or the heavy artillery of some field of battle.

"Many of those moving in the same direction were acquaintances, but few were the words from our lips. My own memory was full of all the doleful phrases and

sentences which had long before come into it from classic and modern sources. Terms which had been long forgotten came back and were saying to me with Croly: 'Rome was an ocean of flame. Height and depth were covered with red surges that rolled before the blast like an endless tide. The distant sound of the city in her convulsion went to the soul. The air was filled with the steady roar of the advancing flame, the crash of falling houses, and the hideous outcry of myriads.' St. John came with his deep bass: 'Babylon the great is fallen, fallen,' while mingling with the Bible and Croly, came all those precious tears from Virgil, such as: 'Once Troy stood,' and 'Time too great for grief,' and 'The end of all fortune,' that 'finis fatorum' of Anchises.

RETREAT AND FLIGHT

"The way homeward was beset with fire. The rain of sparks set going little groups of autumn leaves and bunches of dried grass. The bridge on which we were crossing was on fire. Here a wooden fence, there a stable, or a wooden porch was blazing. Fire and ivy were both seen winding around the same columns of a veranda. Far in advance a large building was burning, thus revealing the fact that the enemy was holding a line two and a half miles in length, and was reaching out right and left for more churches, hotels, palaces, and cottages.

"From one family learn the motions of thousands of households. Trunks were packed hastily. Servants and mistress and children were one in mutual helpfulness. Each attempted to put the house into a trunk. Some were absent-minded for a moment and locked an empty drawer as though to keep the fire from getting in; one put a gold watch and money into a trunk, and then prepared to carry in hand a two-dollar clock; one turned down the gas through habits of economy; one neighbor, routed at half-past one, put on a dressing gown and began to shave himself. It was difficult for each one to do the best thing for the occasion, but all made an earnest effort to be sensible. In a few minutes three or four large trunks were down on the sidewalk. But why were they there? No promises, threats, or money could bring a wagon. My wife, two little daughters, and I made up a specimen group-prepared for exile. The wife carried a favorite little marble clock, one daughter carried the cat, the other daughter a canary bird in its cage, while I held on to a hand trunk in which were all my manuscripts up to date. There was no weeping. All who joined us or passed us seemed satisfied with the remark: 'It is awful.' We were dumb rather than tearful. A theological student relieved me of my box of sermons and lectures, and told me to trust those things implicitly to him. It was well that I did; for he soon found a pretty girl who was carrying a bundle of fine dresses. He threw the box of manuscripts down and enlisted in the service of attractive womanhood. Those documents never again were spread out to weary a metropolitan or rural audience. And after all the girl married a lawyer.

ASPECTS OF THE CONFLAGRATION

"Few historians of the fire have done justice to the velocity of the wind. After midnight, at least, it was so violent that it was difficult to walk in its face. The tall spire of the Church of the Holy Name had just been blown down. It lay in the street as we passed, but no fire had yet been kindled in the spire or the build

Vol. U-16

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