I9I5 



BETTER FRUIT 



Page 7 



The End of South Water Street 



EVER heard of South Water Street? 

 Of course you have. Every 

 grower everywhere knows the 

 name of that old thoroughfare as in- 

 timately as the German knows "Unter 

 den Linden," the Englishman "Picca- 

 dilly" and the American banker "Wall 

 Street." South Water Street needs no 

 city name appended to give it a loca- 

 tion. It is better known to growers 

 than Chicago itself. Indeed, I once 

 heard a prominent Oregon grower say, 

 "Chicago? Yes, it's near South Water 

 Street." 



If not the largest. South Water Street 

 is undisputedly the second largest pro- 

 duce market in the world. Here in 

 about two city blocks over $300,000,000 

 worth of farm produce is sold annually. 

 This consist chiefly of citrus and de- 

 ciduous fruits, vegetables, poultry, veal, 

 fish, cheese, butter, eggs and hay. And 

 now, after all this accumulation of 

 reputation. South Water Street is going 

 to move! What is more, it will leave 

 its name behind. South Water Street 

 as a produce market will be but a 

 memory. The grower will tell his 

 grandchildren stories of the old street 

 that sometimes feathered his bank ac- 

 count, and sometimes thieved it. The 

 stories will mark the advance of ethics 

 in business as surely as they will 

 blaspheme practices of the rawest rob- 

 beries. While most of South Water 

 Street's merchants have been gentle- 

 men of honor, others, like wolves in 

 lamb's clothing, have deceived and 

 stolen with a cunning assurance that 

 laws may be broken without danger. 



But now, in perhaps a year, when 

 you come to Chicago to look at this 

 world-famous thoroughfare, you will 

 find — goodness knows what ! Perhaps 

 a wide elm-edged boulevard skirting 

 the historical Chicago River, — perhaps 

 a street of sky-scraping ofTice buildings. 

 One thing is certain, the great produce 

 market will not be there. The fact of 

 the matter is South Water Street has 

 worse than outgrown its clothes. It 

 has outworn them. It has darned its 



By Arnold Joerns. 



facilities till the darning period devel- 

 oped into almost justifiable damning. 



South Water Street had no railway 

 facilities. Think of it! All this pro- 

 duce had to be teamed and trucked 

 across Chicago's congested business 

 "loop," from various scattered railway 

 terminals, to the market. This delay- 

 ing and expensive method of handling 

 perishable produce drew from the fer- 

 tile brain of Mr. King, the cartoonist of 

 the Chicago Tribune, the accompanying 

 two masterly cartoons. The first shows 

 the South Water Street produce mer- 

 chant "busting" himself trying to do 

 business under the old conditions. The 

 second is the sad life story of an inno- 

 cent cabbage that was sent to South 

 Water Street. 



The new location of South Water 

 Street is on .SOth Street, between Ash- 

 land Avenue and Western Avenue. 

 Though a good three miles south of old 

 South Water Street, the new site is 



within four blocks of the center of 

 Chicago, both in point of distance and 

 population. The dominating features 

 of this location are, first, that one hun- 

 dred acres of land are available here 

 and are already purchased for the pur- 

 pose; second, that this site adjoins the 

 great Ashland Avenue yards of the 

 Chicago Junction Railway; and, third, 

 that it is also on the Chicago River. 

 This is the one point in all Chicago 

 to which all railroads can directly 

 bring produce and from which all rail- 

 roads can directly take produce under 

 their own power. So now Chicago's 

 produce market will pass from the in- 

 tolerable South Water Street condition 

 of no railroads to the perfect 39th 

 Street condition of being literally on 

 every railroad entering Chicago. These 

 railroad yards are already built with a 

 capacity today of 8,000 cars. As soon 

 as required, the capacity will be in- 

 creased to 10,000 cars. 



OUI Soiilll WaUi Slricl, ('.hii-:lKi>. Imlny. wluie .JJUll.UUIl.nllil pi 

 con<llKMe(i annually. 



business is 



