STUDIES ON MUSEUMS AND KINDRED INSTITUTIONS. 519 



"wonders of the world." Tlie oe mis for this can he seen shooting 

 up everywhere. 



Man}' things 1 have been unable to include within the scope of my 

 studies. Among these are the technical schools (Armour Institute and 

 Mechanics' Institute), the medical schools, the hospitals, the cit}^ hall 

 and count}' court-house, and others. The last named, double building, 

 cost $5,000,000, and certainly offers much that is instructive in many 

 ways as regards museum interests, as do, for example, the correspond- 

 ing buildings in Boston, which I hope to be able to describe. Recently 

 Mr. J. E. DuBois, from Dubois, in Pennsylvania, gave $1,000,000 

 for a Chicago medical school of homoeopathic practices, with a hos- 

 pital, which led me to lament that this large sum was not applied to 

 efforts more scientific in character than those of homoeopathy. I 

 mention this in order to show how all possible interests find there a 

 ready advocate. Perhaps there had deserved to be included in my 

 report a description of a building like the "Monadnock'" (named for a 

 mountain in New Hampshire about 3,200 feet high), which is only 

 100 feet long and 70 feet wide, but is seventeen stories high and contains 

 1,200 business offices, with 6,000 persons constantly employed therein, ** 

 It constitutes, by itself, a postal district with 11 employees, who daily 

 handle 15,000 pieces of mail and sell stamps amounting to $2,000. 



Although not in this connection, I might, however, in order to illus- 

 trate the specially developed talent of the Chicagoans for organization, 

 as is shown in the incredibly rapid establishment of their museums, 

 libraries, and universities, mention one interesting installation among 

 many others, namely, that of the city railway. 



Chicago, the city of so many technical surprises, possesses a very remarkable 

 arrangement of its city railways. From a center where almost the entire business 

 life is crowded together in 20-story houses within a space of a few square miles, there 

 radiate toward the south, the north, the southwest and the west, four great electric 

 lines, elevated on iron viaducts, each 10 to 15 miles long. On the eastern side the 

 business portion of Chicago is limited, as is well known, l)y Lake Michigan. The 

 uniting member and turning place for all the elevated lines, giving at the same time 

 an opportunity of transfer from one line to another, and yet constituting a line by 

 itself, is the so-called Union Loop in the center of Chicago, perhaps the most remark- 

 al)l(' and most fretjuented piece of railway in the world. The loop is a double-track 

 viaduct about 2 miles long, that surrounds a rectangular area of a portion of the 

 chessboard-like blocks of the business center. The area is live blocks wide and 

 seven blocks long, and its seven stations are so arranged that from any point in the 

 business center it will take not more than three minutes to reach the nearest one. 

 In this way it is possible to reach a railway going in any direction, for the trains of 

 all four of the elevated roads, as soon as they get to the business part of the city, 

 nuist pass over the loop and stoj) at its eleven stations before they can again come to 

 their own line and i)ass out toward the suburbs. The travel on this loop is enor- 



« Life in such a colossus is depicted by H. B. Fuller in his readable romance, The 

 Cliff Dwellers, which at the time created so unpleasant a sensation in Chicago, 

 because in it the author unsparingly exposed some of the dark .«ides of social life 

 among the swarming millions of the city. 



