“One is forced to admire the pluck of Chicago,” said Irving, after our first drive. “Twice burnt down, twice built up, and laid out anew, on a plan that is magnificent. Some of the houses along Prairie and Michigan avenues are palaces.[37] The art revival in street architecture and house decoration is as actively rife here as in London. And what a superb stone they have for building purposes in their yellow cream-colored marble! It is marvellous to see how they have taken hold of the new ideas. The Calumet and the Chicago club-houses,—nothing could be more chaste than their decorations.”
One day we went to Pullman City, an industrial town, akin to Saltaire, near Bradford, in its scope and enterprise. We were invited and accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Pullman, Miss Terry, Mr. and Mrs. Dexter, Mr. and Mrs. James Runnion, and several other ladies and gentlemen. Going out in Mr. Pullman’s private car, we lunched with him at the pretty hotel of the novel city, and afterwards inspected the workshops and principal buildings.
“The story of the conception and creation of this Pullman City,” said Irving, “interested me very much, though I confess the method of it all strikes me as somewhat like living by machinery: the private houses being massed, as it were, _en bloc_; the shops collected together like arcades; the whole place laid out with geometrical system; and yet one feels that there are fine principles underlying it; that the scheme is founded upon wise plans; and that, from a moral and sanitary stand-point, the city is an ideal combination of work and rest, of capital and labor. Pullman’s idea was a lofty one, and the result is very remarkable: a centre of industry that should give to labor its best chance, with capital taking its place on a platform as human as labor. That is the notion, as Pullman explained it to me. What a square, level head it is! Just the determined kind of man to be the author of a new city on new lines. He told me that Charles Reade’s novel, ‘Put Yourself in his Place,’ had influenced him greatly in his ambition to found this place; that it has affected all his relations towards the people under his direction. Politically, Pullman City is a paradox. A despotism, it still is very democratic. It owes its successful administration to what may be called a benevolent autocracy. The theatre, I am told, is more prosperous than the church proper, though religion is represented by several earnest communities. The idea of giving the people a chance to buy land and build cottage homes for themselves, at a reasonable distance beyond Pullman, appears to be a good one. Pullman himself may well be proud of his work. It is worthy of Chicago and the West.”
