After the Ferris Wheel was moved to the North Side, all that remained was the Palace of Fine Arts. In 1894, the retail magnate Marshall Field gave $1 million to open a natural history museum at the site. The anthropological exhibits, carefully collected by Professor Frederic Putnam, were transferred into the Palace of Fine Arts, now renamed the Field Museum. In 1921, the museum was transferred to a new building in Grant Park. Five years later, Julius Rosenwald, chairman of Sears, Roebuck, donated the money necessary to restore the old Palace of Fine Arts, which emerged in 1933 as the Museum of Science and Industry on Lake Shore Drive.
Race at the Fair
The World’s Columbian Exposition missed a great opportunity to improve race relations in America. Thirty years after the end of the Civil War, racial segregation and discrimination were still very much part of daily life, even in the North. In 1893, African Americans accounted for 7.5 million of America’s 63 million people. Yet not one of the 200 planners of the American exhibits was black. These exhibits purported to tell the story of America’s achievements but there was hardly a mention of a black writer, inventor, lawmaker, or public servant. Blacks were employed as waiters in the restaurants of the Fair and as porters on the trains carrying passengers to Chicago, but no blacks were hired as members of the Columbian Guard, the uniformed police who patrolled the fairgrounds. A few were hired to work on the construction of the Fair or to staff some of the exhibits, but the western perception of “primitive” black life was on prominent display at the Midway Plaisance. On the Fair’s inaugural day, segregated black battalions of the U.S. Army were part of the parade. August 25 was selected as Colored People’s Fete Day, when 3,000 people, of whom two-thirds were African American, gathered in Festival Hall. Frederick Douglass, the noted abolitionist and former U.S. minister to Haiti, addressed the crowd on the topic of “Race Problems in America” and urged people to fight for mutual respect and equal rights. Harry Burleigh sang songs from the opera Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Will Marion Cook. The Jubilee Singers sang about plantation days, and young Joseph Douglass, Frederick’s nephew, played violin solo pieces.
African Americans found work on the railroads as porters and waiters. This illustration of a sumptuous dining car dates from before the 1894 Pullman Strike that was broken up by troops sent in by President Grover Cleveland.
Other black leaders suggested a boycott of the Fair. The Haitian Pavilion, representing the only independent black nation in the New World, was one of the few places at the Fair where people of color felt comfortable eating in the restaurant. Visitors admired the displays of mahogany woods and the 34 different varieties of coffee, as well as the cotton, cocoa, and grain grown in Haiti. The pavilion was managed for the Haitian government by Frederick Douglass. Working with him was Ida B. Wells, one of the leaders of the civil rights movement. Wells (1862–1931) was born in Mississippi to slave parents. Her reformist zeal was sparked in 1884 when she was told to yield her seat to a white passenger on a train. She was determined to fight the “separate but equal” rule that required her to sit in a segregated section of the railroad car. In 1893 Wells moved to Chicago and joined with Frederick Douglass to make the case for full involvement of blacks in American life. She distributed 20,000 copies of her pamphlet The Reason Why the Colored American is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition to visitors at the Haitian pavilion. Douglass died two years after the Fair. Wells married and remained in Chicago to continue the battle for dignity and equality.
The great American civil rights leader Frederick Douglass managed the Haitian pavilion at the Fair. He was aided by Ida B. Wells, who campaigned against segregation on trolleys and railroads.
The Depression of 1893–1897
The American industrial revolution began early in the 19th century with textiles and footwear, and nearly a century later these industries were still largely in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Dozens of companies made looms for silk, cotton, and wool mills. The great New England textile industry had already begun moving to the South to be closer to the cotton and to take advantage of lower costs and a more compliant labor force. New England capital helped established the textile industry in the South. In 1880, southern states had only 14,000 textile looms, but 15 years later there were 68,000. The demand for shoes and boots was met by hundreds of factories in New England, but competition was rapidly building from the New York and Midwestern shoe factories. These new factories were established by easterners moving inland to Endicott, St. Louis, and Chicago. The clock and watch industry was first concentrated in New England but competitors were springing up in New York, New Jersey, and the Midwest. Hundreds of companies, mainly in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts, made jewelry, cutlery, and cut glass. Numerous sewing machine companies had sprung up to meet the demand from the clothing industry and the home, while other companies made the cotton thread and needles to run the machines. There were hundreds of reed organ and piano factories in New York and New England, but Emile Berliner’s gramophone was posing a serious challenge to the traditional ways of listening to music. Hundreds of foundries were making kitchen ranges, parlor stoves, and water heaters. Many companies followed the lead of John Deere in making plows, and of Cyrus McCormick and William Deering in making harvesting machines. In towns across the nation there were thousands of manufacturers such as Studebaker and the Columbia Buggy Company making horse-drawn carriages and delivery vans.
The Depression of 1893–1897 witnessed the collapse of 600 banks, taking down 15,000 businesses with them. Many railroad companies, including the Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, and the Topeka & Sante Fe, failed. The national unemployment rate, less than 4 percent in 1892, rose to 8 percent by the end of 1893 and reached a high of 18 percent in 1896. Few of the thousands who had worked at the Fair were able to find other jobs and those lucky enough to do so were paid less than before ( Steeples & Whitten 1998). The close of the 19th century saw the emergence of giant corporations and the decline of regional companies, as smaller firms were acquired or forced to consolidate to survive. Over 100 bakeries from across the nation merged to form the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco). In 1899, twentythree regional fertilizer companies merged into the American Agricultural Chemical Company. Mighty corporations such as American Tobacco, General Electric, American Sugar Refining, Carnegie Steel, United Fruit, Standard Oil, American Woolen, International Harvester, and the United Shoe Machinery Corporation were formed by the merger of many smaller, regional companies. Virtual monopolies, these nation-wide corporations reduced competition and raised prices. The battle for survival prompted companies in mature industries (harvesters, plows, sewing machines, textiles, and shoes) to shift their product lines or move to friendlier parts of the nation in search of cheaper labor and lower fuel costs.
Most of the companies that exhibited at the Fair have long since disappeared. The merger frenzy that started at the close of the 19th century greatly reduced the number of independent, local businesses and consolidated wealth and power in the hands of a few. By 1904, only 300 corporations controlled two-fifths of all the industrial output of America. By 1929, the top 200 corporations controlled one-half of the total wealth, and by 1962, just 100 corporations controlled half of the nation’s industrial wealth.
One of the major economic disruptions after the Fair was the Pullman strike of 1894. George Pullman (1831–1897) was born in New York but left school at age 14 and moved west to make his fortune. He settled in Chicago and got busy in the railroad industry, making the comfortable sleeping cars that carried passengers across the vast distances between American towns. Pullman built a factory town along the shores of Lake Calumet, 14 miles from the center of Chicago. His company town, named Pullman in his honor, had housing for his workers as well as shops, a library, theaters, and parks. Pullman was essentially a feudal lord within the boundaries of his town.
The Pullman Palace Car Company built hundreds of new sleeper cars each year and made repairs to older ones. Pullman was the largest railroad
car manufacturer in the country until the Panic of 1893. With orders declining, Pullman cut wages by 25 percent but maintained the cost of rent in his company housing and food from his company stores. The workers responded by joining the American Railway Union (ARU). On May 11, 1894, the Pullman workers struck the plant and shut down production. Their fury was vented both inside and outside the company town. The strikers overturned freight cars near the factory and blocked rail traffic in and out of Chicago. The ARU declared a nationwide boycott against any railroad using Pullman cars. The strike was finally broken by 2,000 U.S. Army troops, sent in by President Cleveland on the pretext of removing the obstructions to the flow of the U.S. Mail.
The strikers did not give up without a fight. During their battles with the soldiers, 13 Pullman strikers were killed and a further 57 injured. Property damage reached into the millions of dollars. The strike leaders were sent to prison and hundreds of Pullman strikers were blacklisted and forced to leave the town to seek work elsewhere. Relations between workers and George Pullman worsened and he was vilified to the end of his days. After he died in 1897, his body was carried in the dark of night to Graceland Cemetery, where he was buried in a steel vault covered by tons of concrete, to protect his body from desecration.
In 1894, the nation’s gold reserves fell well below the benchmark figure of $100 million and the economic situation appeared dire. The currency finally stabilized only after President Cleveland, with the help of financier J. P. Morgan and the Rothschild banks, saved the gold standard by raising $100 million in gold from European sources. The U.S. government issued bonds to shore up the currency and prevent a further run on its gold reserves.
Economic Growth
Starting in 1897, the nation’s economy began to grow again after President McKinley increased tariffs on imported goods to benefit local production. Optimism returned with greater employment and higher wages. Once again America’s farms and factories were ready to meet local and foreign demand. In 1892, the United States ran a trade deficit. Six years later, the overseas trade was in the black and American factory output surpassed that of Britain.
At the close of the 19th century America still looked to Britain for guidance in style and social structure, to Germany for science, and to France for art. The World’s Columbian Exposition heralded America’s maturity and independence. At the beginning of the 20th century the United States had grown to over 76 million people, with dependencies in the West Indies and in the Philippines. The United States possessed seemingly unlimited natural resources, with two-thirds of the world’s iron, zinc, lead, and petroleum reserves, and over half of the world’s cotton, timber, and coal. The nation had 200,000 miles of railroad tracks and millions of telephones in service (Sullivan 1926). According to Gordon (2004), by the start of the 20th century “the United States had the largest and most modern industrial economy on Earth.” With its vast railroad network, the telegraph, and now the telephone, American business moved aggressively toward a fully national economy. American agricultural products, textiles, shoes, steel, petroleum, railroad engines, trolley cars, and countless consumer products found markets across the nation and abroad. American leadership in scholarship, the sciences, and the arts was soon to follow.
With few governmental controls and low taxes, the leaders of American business (known as the Robber Barons) grew immensely rich and influential.
Recorded sound was a great novelty at the 1893 Fair but the hand-cranked phonogram was already a popular item by the time of the 1904 St. Louis exposition.
Some devoted their wealth to the public good. Andrew Carnegie funded thousands of libraries in towns and cities across America and abroad. Morgan gave his vast collections to the Metropolitan Museum and the Morgan Library. Henry Clay Frick and Felix Warburg bequeathed their homes and collections to establish museums, and John D. Rockefeller funded the University of Chicago. These American titans of industry lived in opulence but hankered for a European aristocratic patina. Many sent their daughters to finishing school in Europe and sought to marry them off to the second or third sons of European nobility. Mary Endicott, the 23-year-old daughter of William Endicott, who served as secretary of war in the first Cleveland administration, was married to the 51-year-old Joseph Chamberlain, the future British colonial minister. Jennie Jerome was the daughter of Leonard Walter Jerome, who was born on a farm in Pompey, New York, and moved to New York City where he invested in railroads and newspapers. Jennie was sent to Europe, where she met and married the third son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough. Their son, Winston Spencer Churchill, was born in Blenheim Palace and became one of Britain’s greatest leaders. But the great prize in securing a high-ranking trans-Atlantic marriage went to William Vanderbilt, the New York railroad magnate, and his Alabamaborn first wife, Alva. The Vanderbilts arranged for their 18-year-old only daughter Consuelo to marry the land-rich but money-poor ninth Duke of Marlborough, Charles Spencer Churchill. The unwilling Consuelo had to be cajoled and threatened into marrying the duke, and on November 6, 1895, she reluctantly became Her Grace, the Duchess of Marlborough. The marriage ended in divorce but Consuelo maintained good relationships with some of the Churchill clan, including Winston Churchill.
The small electric motor took the heavy work out of a host of household tasks. Electric-powered washing machines, dishwashers, fans, heaters, refrigerators, and the Hoover suction sweeper were commonplace by the 1920s.
The export of American farm goods reduced the value of British land, upon which the great English fortunes rested and, to make ends meet, members of the ruling classes were forced to sell their art collections and their stately homes. The British aristocracy found ready takers among the New Rich of the time—American millionaires and South African gold and diamond mining magnates. While the British were mired in the brutal and expensive Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the United States had easy victories over Spain and gained territories as far-flung as Cuba and the Philippines. But little of the wealth of America’s Gilded Age trickled down to the working man and woman. Salaries remained low (around $400–$600 a year for a 60-hour week) with few benefits. Men in 1900 on average lived to 48 and women only three years longer. Typhoid, diphtheria, influenza, pneumonia, and tuberculosis were the great killers.
Technological Change
The 1893 Fair heralded the transition from human labor and horse and steam power to electricity and fossil fuels. The gigantic locomotives, steam turbines, horse-pulled plows and harvesters, and the numerous foot- and hand-powered tools on show in Chicago would soon be cast aside for smaller and more efficient power tools to ease housework, travel, and work. Thomas Edison demonstrated his Kinetoscope at the Chicago Fair. Using a continuous role of film (produced by Eastman Kodak), on which many consecutive images were imprinted, the electric-powered device created the sense of movement and immediately captured the interest of the public. Edison’s company produced dozens of moving pictures that were shown in Kinetoscope parlors in cities across the nation. Live vaudeville houses were soon converted to moving picture theaters, and the age of the movies had begun.
By 1900, American cities and towns collectively had over 30,000 electric trolley cars running on 15,000 miles of track. Street trolleys were a big business and by 1907, there were 939 electric trolley car companies in the United States. These companies extended their lines beyond the city limits and sold house lots on either side of the new roads. The speed and efficiency of the electric trolleys opened the suburbs to development. The trolleys also traveled to the lakes and beaches, and to trolley company–owned theme parks, hotels, and casinos. Electric trolleys were used to deliver milk and the mail, and there were even electric trolleys equipped for firefighting. During the summer months the companies used their open cars but when the weather turned cold, closed trolleys were brought into service. Trolley companies linked one town to another and it was possible, by changing streetcars, to travel over 200 miles from Boston to New York.
Each great invention produced a frenzy of i
mitators as a new industry evolved. Already in 1893, the internal combustion engine was being tested and would soon set the stage for the next revolution in transportation. On September 22, 1893, Charles and Frank Duryea took their modified horse-carriage, with its attached gasoline-powered engine, on a test drive along the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts. On its inaugural run, America’s first automobile moved at a speed of five miles per hour. With this early success, the brothers formed the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago (2004), America’s first automobile race, sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald, took place on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1895, with the temperature at 30 degrees and six inches of fresh snow on the ground. Some 80 drivers and cars signed up for the race but only 11 were willing to race under the difficult conditions. Only six of the eleven motor cars actually took off from Jackson Park, the site of the 1893 Fair, for the 54-mile journey to Evanston, Illinois. An imported Benz and a Duryea were the only cars to finish the grueling race. The winning car, which earned a prize of $5,000, was the Duryea driven by Frank Duryea himself, who completed the race in 7 hours and 53 minutes at an average speed of a little over seven miles per hour, using three-and-a-half gallons of gasoline. In March 1896, a motorist named Henry Wells was driving his Duryea in New York when he struck a cyclist and America’s first automobile accident was duly recorded. The first automobile show in America was held in New York in 1900 (Sullivan 1926). The innovative Duryea brothers were followed in 1894 by Elwood Haynes in Indiana, Olds in 1897, the Studebaker brothers in 1898, Peerless in 1900, Cadillac in 1902, Ford and Buick in 1903, and thousands of other aspiring automobile builders.
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