This is a bibliography I have built up while exploring the life of George Armour.
The text that looks like the following is what I place inside the article to create the citation:
{{ sfn | Chicago Tribune | 1881 }}
The structure for this bibliography is being created an updated on-the-fly as I add items. Thus some of the categories and their contents don't make a lot of sense.
The Chicago Tribune: Tuesday, June 14th, 1881, page 9
{{ sfn | Chicago Tribune | 1881 }}
Please help me verify that the following is valid transcription of the newspaper scan
Death of a Sterling Chicago Business Man
The Honorable Record of his Long and Busy Life
The Munn & Scott Affair - How a Panic Was Averted
A cablegram yesterday morning from Bright, England conveyed the sad, yet not wholly unexpected news that George Armour, of the firm Armour, Dole & Co., had breathed his last, his death occurring at 1 o'clock in the morning. The painful news soon became known on the streets and in the business-houses of Chicago, and everywhere elicited expressions of the sincerest regret, coupled with the most tender tributes of respect to his worthy memory. The official announcement of his death in The Board of Trade was made by Vice-President Dunham, and a committee of five, consisting of Murry Nelson, Josiah W Preston, Hiram Wheeler, William T Baker, and Alexander Geddes, appointed to draft suitable resolutions in un ??? today.
It is some three years since Mr Armour first begin to experience those physical troubles which finally culminated in his demise. His complaint was rheumatism, and it settled at last into rheumatism of the heart. In May of last year, yielding to the advice of his physician, in the hope that his condition would be improved by the air, he sailed for England. Proceeding to London, he spent some two months in that city but the hoped-for change failed to come, and accordingly sort the more salubrious climate of Brighton, where he has since remained. He gradually failed in strength however, and, about two months ago, had a renewed attack of the disease?? from which he had so long suffered. He rallied somewhat, but, as the sequel shows, only for a time. During the weeks since that critical juncture Mr Armour was confined to his room, his condition gradually becoming more alarming until 1 o'clock yesterday morning, when he expired. During his last moments Mr Armour was attended by his wife and daughter Mary, and by his son William and his wife formerly Miss Berthe Cobb, of this city. The remains will be brought to Chicago for interment <sic>.
Mr Armour was born in Campbeltown, Argyllshire, Scotland,
in 1811, and what is in his 69th year at the time of his death. He came in this country a year or two after attaining his majority, and located in Ottawa, Illinois. He embarked in merchandising there, and subsequently lived in Joliet and Lockport, following the same business. A better opportunity presenting itself, however, he became a contractor with Mr George Steel. The new firm built a section of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, a portion of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, and a portion of the Rock Island. Their business was very profitable. Along in the 50’s Mr Armour moved to Chicago. In 1853? he formed a partnership with Wesley Munger, and the firm erected the first modern elevator in the site now occupied by the “Air-Line” house. Previous to that time there was but one elevator here, a small affair owned by Mr Steel and operated by horse-power. The firm prospered, Hiram Wheeler was taken in, and other elevators work by Munger, Wheeler & Co.
The Firm of Armour, Dole & Co.,
came into existence in 1860. Mr Armour became its manager. He retained his interest in the firm of Munger, Wheeler & Co., however, the two firms laterally owning nearly all the elevators in the city. There were no more changes, as far as he was concerned. He remained at his desk from then on, accumulating vast wealth, and when he died was one of the richest men of Chicago.
Few men occupy as high a place as Mr Armour in the estimation of this community. He was a quiet, unobtrusive man, and, though deeply interested in all that pertained to the welfare of the city, and doing all he could to further projects for the public good, he made no display about it, and appeared only occasionally in public. He was at one time President of the Chicago Board of Trade - a position which he adorned fully as much as anywho has ever held it either before or since. He was also a local Director of the Liverpool & London & Globe Insurance Company, and one of the most prominent members of the Chicago Commercial Club, in which he represented the elevator interest - one he had been so long identified with. He was a stockholder in the Chicago & Northwestern, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Chicago Milwaukee and St Paul Railroads, a director in the South Side Gas Company, and until a year ago, a Trustee in the Merchant’s Savings, Loan & Trust Company. He was also a large owner of real estate. His wealth is estimated at a large sum - by the million. Next to James Hoyt, it was reported to be the heaviest elevator - owner in the country. His life was insured by the New York Equitable Life-Insurance company for $?5,000
The only official position which Mr Armour ever held was that of Elector the Hayes ticket in 1876. Special attention was called to him at the time, from the fact that his right to hold the place was challenged. It was alleged that he'd never been naturalized, and, consequently was ineligible, which, if true, would have lost Illinois one of her votes and tied the result in the Electoral College. After some difficulty, however, he was able to find a record of his naturalization, and he cast his vote along with his colleagues, for Messrs. Hayes and Wheeler.
Mr. Armour was charitable
on a broad scale, but his charity was not of the sort which can be described as resembling sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, of him it might be said that he had obeyed the Scriptural injunction, “Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth.”
Mr Armour was a consistent Christian, - a fate which furnishes a key to his whole character, he was for many years a Trustee, than an Elder, in the Second Presbyterian Church, and gave liberally of his means for the support of Christianity at home and abroad. He was also a member of the Building Committee which built the new Second Church, and contributed largely towards paying off of the church debt. He was a lay delegate to last Presbyterian General Assembly, but was, of course, unable to serve.
In his personal bearing, Mr. Armour was kindly and pleasant with all, though, like most Scotchman, very firm and positive in his opinions, whether they were right or wrong, and always ready to express them. He was a remarkably clear-headed man, however, and they were more apt to be the former than the latter. His modesty, like his honesty, was proverbial. Everybody will recall
Munn and Scott failure
and the fact that the whole warehouse system was menaced in consequence of this celebrated issue of warehouse receipts for property not in their warehouses, Mr. Armour a silent partner in The firm, could, had he been so disposed, probably have entirely escaped, or evaded, any personal responsibility in the matter. At any rate, he could have fought the thing off, had it come to the worst, as not a few others probably would have done. He saw the results which would have followed, however, to the grain and warehouse business of the Northwest unless the receipts were at once taken care of, and his resolution was formed. In a word, he stopped in to the breech and assumed the whole expense of taking up the receipts by placing an order in the hands of W T Baker to buy them all up, not at depreciated figures, but at market prices. It cost Mr. Armour about $43?,000 to do this and the money was, of course a clear loss. But for his prompt action the warehouse system might have been ruined. If the Munn & Scott matter had been allowed to take its course, it would have created a panic in the commercial circles which would have extended throughout the whole Northwest, and extended throughout the whole Northwest, and compared with which the ordinary commercial panic would have been but a small circumstance. It would have involved every farm in the country. Mr Armour did what he did, in this as well as in other instances, without any noise, and, although the fact leaked out in some way or another, and a representative of The Tribune waited upon him at the time to interview him on the subject in more of its details, he declined to say anything in reference to it, but requested as a special favor that no noise be made about it in the paper.
He had merely done his duty,
he said, and it might interfere with the country's business if it were written up in the newspapers.
Like thousands of others, Mr Armour suffered largely by the Chicago Fire, his home and many of these buildings and blocks being entirely destroyed.. He rebuilt all of them, however, even more substantially than before, doing as much as any other City toward the restoration. It was one of the officer of the Merchants Insurance Company, in which most of his buildings were insured, and who stock he held $100,000.
Besides the members of the family above referred to, Mr Armour leaves two other sons, one of whom, Allison, is at Yale, and the other, George, is in business here. A fourth son died about ten years ago of the same disease as his father, in spite of an extended European trip.
http://www.illinoisancestors.org/rockisland/railroads/rirrdetails.html
Details of the Development of the
Chicago-Rock Island Railroad
Messrs. Sheffield and Farnam
1851 - charter/contract. 1852 payment on first estimate 1854 completion
GA 16 miles
George Armour was a sub-contractor who carried out 16 miles - out of 181 miles - of road grading
/info/en/?search=Chicago,_Rock_Island_and_Pacific_Railroad
Chicago-Rock Island Railroad
Construction began October 1, 1851, in Chicago, and the first train was operated on October 10, 1852, between Chicago and Joliet. Construction continued on through La Salle, and Rock Island was reached on February 22, 1854, becoming the first railroad to connect Chicago with the Mississippi River.
https://books.google.com/books?id=IpMUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=george+armour+railroad+contractor
Chicago Yesterdays: A Sheaf of Reminiscences
CITEREFKirkland1919
Steel & GA
The first large steam elevator that was ever built in Chicago for handling grain from railroad tracks was on the North side, on the river west of Wells Street. It was built by George A Gibbs and E W Griffin of Gibbs, Griffin & Company. Gibbs told me that people thought he was crazy to undertake such a thing and that it would not pay. A year or two later George Steel, a Scotchman, built another elevator just west of Gibbs, Griffin and Company. He sold out to Wesley Munger and George Armour. Munger add on a small meal at Waukegan, which had burned down, and George Armour had been a contractor on the canal. Both were at this time end of moderate means, but their early development of the grain-elevator business made for them great fortunes.
Wounded 1857
http://www.ipsn.org/chiviol.html
A Republican businessman named George Armour challenged the votes of some Irishmen who did not reside within ward boundaries. Armour was set upon by a crowd of poll-watching ruffians, kicked, beaten about the head, and dragged through the streets by the hair until his friends came to the rescue. Another Wentworth worker was not nearly so lucky. He was attacked, stabbed, and chased clear down to La Salle Street where he jumped onto a dangerously thin sheet of river ice to escape his pursuers. The man escaped but not before one of the 7th Ward Irishers crashed through the ice and drowned in the bone-chilling waters of the Chicago River.
also known as the Seneca Grain Elevator or the Hogan's North Elevator, is a historic grain elevator located in the village of Seneca, Illinois, United States. The elevator and two surrounding outbuildings were listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
In the early 1860s, John Armour, a prominent businessman in Ottawa, constructed a grain warehouse along the north bank of the I&M Canal overlooking downtown Seneca. Rising four stories above its limestone foundation, the 65-foot-tall grain warehouse represents the oldest frame elevator still standing along the canal.
Armour's Warehouse is the largest and oldest of the remaining grain elevators on the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Grain elevators such as this one served as storage facilities for grain brought by local farmers for shipment on the I & M Canal and, later, on the railroad.
Page 8. In 1860 John Armour purchased a section of property in the original town of Grotty, which has officially been known as Seneca since 1957. Armour purchased Block 3, which came to be known as Armour's Addition, from Jeremiah Crotty, Seneca's founder, who had come to the area as a contractor to work on the Illinois and Michigan Canal construction. According to the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of 1907, 1913, and 1921, the elevating warehouse was built in 1861. The 1886 History of laSalle County Illinois names John Armour as having built the warehouse in 1862. (Note: John Armour is not of the Armour meatpacking industry.)
The Armour family appears to have been quite prominent in the grain business. In the 1858 and 1866-67 Ottawa City Directories John Armour was listed as a "grain dealer" residing at the corner of Madison and Clinton Streets in Ottawa. It is interesting to note that by 1872, "Armour's Warehouse" was being referred to by the more modern term we use today, "Armour's Grain Elevator," the listing given to John Armour in the laSalle County General Directory for the Village of Seneca. Armour was also a prominent businessman in the Ottawa community, serving as vice-president of the First National Bank of Ottawa. John Armour's brother, George, was a member of the Chicago Board of Trade and was owner (with Dole) of an 850,000 bushel elevator in Chicago in 1861. In addition, Archibald Armour is listed as a retired grain dealer in The Past and Present of laSalle County, Illinois, published in 1877. The 1860 LaSalle County Census also noted that Archibald Armour was a lime dealer.
A native of Argyleshire, Scotland, John Armour was a produce dealer according to the 1860 census and had real estate and personal property valued at $55,000. John Armour's will, executed in 1868, demonstrates that he was a very successful businessman. At the time of his death, Armour's estate was valued at $79,000; of this, his real estate in Blocks 2 and 3 of Armour's addition to Crotty, including the grain elevator, were sold to his brother for $21,200. It is also interesting to note that Armour's estate included one-half ownership in a canal boat as well as three mules in Seneca. Armour was a founding director of the Seneca Bridge Company and held stock in numerous other local firms, including the Illinois Bridge Company, Ottawa Coke and Light Company, Ottawa Hotel Company, and the First National Bank of Ottawa. It appears, therefore, that although Armour's Warehouse was an important part of Seneca's commerce, Mr. Armour himself was more active in the Ottawa business community than in that of Seneca.
An early innovator named George Dole arrived from Detroit in 1831. The following summer the firm of Newberry and Dole erected what is thought to be Chicago's first frame building used for business—specifically, the slaughtering and packing of cattle and hogs. While slaughtering for local consumption had taken place in Chicago for some time, Newberry and Dole were the first to pack meat for export. In 1839, the firm began shipping wheat from Chicago's first grain elevator, which was located at the north end of the Rush Street bridge. Consequently, Dole is generally credited with being the father of Chicago's meatpacking industry as well as of its shipping, warehouse, and elevator systems. He innovated the market mechanisms that would make Chicago a major transshipment point.
Looks like not a close relation to the brothers Dole
Trading in grain as C S Dole & C - with brother James
Founder CBoT & director ~ paid $5
P228 CBoT: starts grading wheat in 1856
P229 Lists bushel capacity og A, D & Co elevators
The year 1856 that been no attempt to classify this table into grades and no standard was recognized, greatly to the disadvantage of those who produced and dealt in a superior quality. In that year the Board of Trade of Chicago made the first move towards establishing grades by the separation of the three leading varieties of wheat industry-standard grades. The warehouse gym we sanction this first effort to identify the grain, but the variable standard of inspection at the different warehouses still remained a constant source of the noise, disagreement, and sometimes you break damage to the receivers, there being no statutory law at that time which to find the standard or enforce description, or all alike. in 1858 a second successful attempt was made to rectify this evil. The matter in the hands of a committee consisting of mr. and mrs. Recommended.
Charles Sidney Dole was born in Oakland County Michigan. He was born in Bloomfield, now a suburb of Detroit. He was born on November 2, 1819 to Sidney and Elizabeth (Swan) Dole. A few decades later, Charles would have a great effect on a small town called Crystal Lake in the state of Illinois...
He played a major role in the completion of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. He was the president of the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad and several other railroads that became the Chicago & North Western Railroad, and of the National Pacific Railroad Convention held in Philadelphia in 1850. He also was the first president of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, the first mayor of Chicago, and the president of the Chicago branch of the State Bank of Illinois.
As more people and goods arrived to contribute to, and to benefit from, Chicago's growth, Ogden and others formed the Chicago Board of Trade in 1848 to promote Chicago's commerce.
William Butler Ogden "I was born close to a sawmill, was cradled in a sugar trough, christened in a mill pond, early left an orphan, graduated from a log schoolhouse and, at 14, found I could do anything I turned my hand to and that nothing was impossible..."
These circumstances generated a hostility to banks throughout the Old Northwest and might have doomed Chicago to slow growth, starved for credit, had it not been for the appearance of “private” (i.e., unchartered) banks. One of the first of those was created by Gurdon Hubbard, under the title Hubbard and Balestier, in the 1830s. More important was the bank of George Smith, a Scottish land speculator and investor, who played a crucial role in the city's early financial history. Smith created the Scottish Illinois Land Investment Company in 1837 by investing in Chicago properties, and, in the process of handling the real-estate business, the company started to discount bank notes from other cities and states. Although the company split in 1839, with Smith moving to Wisconsin, his banking activities shaped Chicago.
Smith re-entered banking in Chicago later that year, first by creating the Wisconsin Marine and Fire Insurance Company and second by founding George Smith and Company in Chicago. The latter was not a chartered bank, and therefore could not issue notes, but it could circulate certificates from the Wisconsin business. Smith called his certificates “checks,” and by 1842, “George Smith's money,” redeemable in specie, was in sharp demand throughout the Chicago region. Within two years, all Illinois banks other than Smith's had disappeared. By 1854, George Smith's banks supplied nearly 75 percent of Chicago's currency.
The Illinois legislature passed a “free banking” law in 1851 in which a bank no longer had to obtain a charter from the legislature but could secure a general incorporation charter from the secretary of state. The first Chicago bank under the new constitution, the Marine Bank, appeared that same year and developed close ties with William Ogden and other influential Chicago leaders in railroads, industry, and real estate. The appearance of the Marine Bank was followed shortly by the Merchants and Mechanics Bank, then, rapidly, eight more institutions. As a result of the new law, Illinois banking capital nearly quadrupled in the mid-1850s.
Although Chicago witnessed 204 business failures during the recession following the panic of 1857, less than 10 percent of Illinois' banks failed and the politicians praised the banking system for its performance. However, in 1858, Chicago bankers started to refuse the notes of “country banks,” many of which were backed by bonds from the South. The discounting of non-Chicago notes and the continued collapse of the country bank notes' value led to calls for the abolition of all banks in the state. Instead, the problems were addressed with reforms in the free banking laws.
George Smith ~ 1806-1899 ~ Banker and financier, he was born in the parish of Old Deer, in Scotland's north-east (Mark of the Scots has him from Aberdeen, as does Scotland's Mark on America), and by 1834 was in Chicago where he made his fortune in real estate speculation in the 'wild lands'. Founding figure of the Chicago Marine and Fire Insurance Company in 1836, he returned to Scotland to organize the Scottish Illinois Land Investment Company, but on his return found that the Illinois legislature had suppressed the banking operations of his Chicago corporation. Because of the public's tremendous mistrust of banks, he moved to Wisconsin and opened another bank in 1839 with Alexander Mitchell (another Scot). The charter stated that he could receive money on deposit and offer loans at a specific rate of interest, but it could not be called a bank. The famous Wisconsin Marine and Fire Insurance Company, a bank in all but name, was chartered on February 28, 1839. He left and invested in a bank in Atlanta, and later in the Rock Island, Northwestern and St. Paul railroads. Estimates of his eventual fortune ran as high as $100,000,000.1,14 He later became a prominent banker in Georgia.17
George Steel was a Chicago building contractor born in Forfarshire, Scotland who was a founding member of the Chicago Board of Trade who served as the third president of the exchange.He followed Thomas Dyer and Charles Walker in the role.
He came to Chicago in 1837, having engaged in a contract to for building a section of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. After stoppage of work on the canal, Steel became a general commission merchant in Chicago and established a pork-packing business on South Water Street.
Steel came to Chicago from Scotland via Canada. He was born in Forfarshire, Scotland in 1797, one of a family of twelve sons and moved to Canada in 1828. Steel was the first President of the Illinois Saint Andrew Society in 1845.[5]
He came to Chicago in 1837, having engaged in a contract to for building a section of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. After stoppage of work on the canal, Steel became a general commission merchant in Chicago and established a pork-packing business on South Water Street.
Steel had an office and warehouse located at the foot of LaSalle Street on South Street. In 1856, a new three-story building was erected on this site and it became the first permanent home for the Chicago Board of Trade. His company built the first steam operated grain elevator in Chicago. It was capable of operating from the canal as well as the railroads. The elevator had a capacity of 100,000 bushels and was located at Franklin and River streets.
Steel served as president of the Chicago Board of Trade from 1852 to 1853.
George Steele ~ 1797-1865 ~ Born in Forfarshire, he was the first President of the Illinois Saint Andrew Society in 1845. He was one of twelve sons. The family moved to Canada in 1828, and Mr. Steele arrived in Chicago in 1837. As a contractor on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, he built the works at Utica, known as the Clark Cement Works. When work on the canal was stopped, he began several business ventures in Chicago. He owned a pork-packing plant on South Water Street. He was also in the produce business with an office and warehouse located at the foot of LaSalle Street on South Street. In 1856, a new three-story building was erected on this site and it became the first permanent home for the Board and Trade. George Steele was very active in the Board of Trade and attended the first organizational meeting. He served as president in 1852 and 1853.
His company built the first steam operated grain elevator in Chicago. It was capable of operating from the canal as well as the railroads. The elevator had a capacity of 100,000 bushels and was located at Franklin and River streets. It was destroyed by fire in 1854.
In 1830, George Steel married Anna Stein Morrison of Montreal, Canada. They had nine children. Still alive in 1884, were Jane, James, Marjorey, Mary, George, Susan, and William.
He served two terms as president of the St. Andrew Society. He was a very popular man during his life and was typical of the businessmen in the early period of Chicago. The earliest of records shows the last name spelled "Steele", some of the later records show "Steel". The headstones ordered by the family all show "Steel". EWR Files
The late Hiram Wheeler (1809-1892) was a Chicago warehouse owner who served as president of the Chicago Board of Trade in 1855. His firm was Munger, Wheeler & Company, Inc.
Armour, Dole & Co. was founded in 1860 by George Armour, Charles Dole, and Wesley Munger. The company owned a grain elevator at the depot of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad with a capacity of 850,000 bushels. After the Civil War, Armour, Dole & Co. remained among the city's leading grain warehousers; their elevators had a combined capacity of 2.1 million bushels in 1871. By the early 1880s, this figure had grown to 6.3 million bushels.
In 1854, Wesley Munger and George Armour started a Chicago grain-warehousing company called Munger & Armour. In 1863, Hiram Wheeler entered the firm, which became Munger, Wheeler & Co. The company owned large grain elevators next to the depot of the Chicago & North Western Railroad.
Andreas: History of Chicago, Volume 2
{{ sfn | Andreas | 1885 | p = 374 }}
Infrastructure
Illinois and Michigan Canal
1836 chartered
1836 July 4 - construction begins
1841 construction halted
1843 construction restarts?
1848 completed
In 1830 the canal commissioners platted Chicago and Ottawa in the vain hope of raising sufficient money by selling land from a second land grant. The commissioners and private speculators platted numerous towns in the 1830s and 1840s, including Lockport, Joliet, Channahon, and LaSalle, as well as other towns that did not survive.
Canal construction began in 1836, but a depression over the following seven years brought the state to the brink of bankruptcy. The canal was finally completed after a financial and administrative reorganization in 1845.
See panic of 1837
While the canal carried many travelers in the first few years after 1848, passenger traffic disappeared rapidly when the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad began competing in 1854
1848 was a key year for the city—the canal was completed, the first railroad opened, the telegraph reached town, and the Chicago Board of Trade was founded. The canal facilitated trade in bulky goods, not only farm produce but also coal from southern Illinois to fuel the city's homes and industries. Initial plans called for a deep-cut canal to allow boats to pass directly from the lake to the river system, but lack of funds led supporters to settle for a narrow, shallow one. This reinforced Chicago's position as a transfer point where goods were switched from lake boats to barges.
Lockport was platted and named by the Illinois & Michigan Canal commissioners in 1837 as the canal headquarters. Chief Engineer William Gooding saw the water-power potential of the site, which is 40 feet higher than Joliet four miles to the south.
Its predecessor, the Rock Island and La Salle Railroad Company, was incorporated in Illinois on February 27, 1847, and an amended charter was approved on February 7, 1851, as the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. Construction began October 1, 1851, in Chicago, and the first train was operated on October 10, 1852, between Chicago and Joliet. Construction continued on through La Salle, and Rock Island was reached on February 22, 1854, becoming the first railroad to connect Chicago with the Mississippi River.
Chicagoans saw their first iron horse in 1848. On October 10, 1848, a 2-4-0 type steam locomotive, appropriately named The Pioneer, began to pull cars laden with construction supplies and workers over the advancing line of the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad. Spearheaded by several Chicago businessmen, including Walter Newberry, William Butler Ogden, and Charles Walter, the company formed the core of that future corporate giant, the Chicago & North Western Railway System.
Annual Report of the Directors of the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad Co. to the Stockholders, for the Fiscal Year Ending ..., Volume 5, Parts 1851-1852
A partially successful call for laws and budgets to widen and deepen the Illinois and Michigan Canal and thus possible for ships to sail between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.
was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871. The fire killed up to 300 people, destroyed roughly 3.3 square miles (9 km2) of Chicago, Illinois, and left more than 100,000 residents homeless.
Within two months the losses from bank failures in New York alone aggregated nearly $100 million. Out of 850 banks in the United States, 343 closed entirely, 62 failed partially, and the system of State banks received a shock from which it never fully recovered. The publishing industry was particularly hurt by the ensuing depression.
The Midwest states including Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan borrowed funds to build transportation infrastructure in the form of railroads and canals. With the tightening of funding from foreign sources most investment opportunities collapsed and only Ohio was able to avoid defaulting on loans. Indiana and Illinois were able to reach agreements with lenders to continue funding of the projects if payments were still met along with some speculations. Illinois deeded the Illinois and Michigan canal to their creditors as payment
1837-1862 is known as the ‘Free Banking’ era. During the free banking era, the banks were short-lived compared to today's commercial banks, with an average lifespan of five years. About half of the banks failed, and about a third of which went out of business because they could not redeem their notes. (See also "Wildcat banking".)
The traditional view of wildcat banks describes them as distributing nearly worthless currency backed by questionable security (such as mortgages and bonds). These actions ended when note circulation by state banks was stopped after the passage of the National Bank Act of 1863.
George Armour and James H. Dole set their sights on the newly created northwest corner of Adams and Franklin, purchased the recently carved-out city lot, and set about building a standard 6-story, brick post-and-beam, loft-style warehouse.
Before the Chicago Fire, the area directly along the river was predominately commercial warehouses. In April 1879, one such warehouse was constructed at the northwest corner of Adams Street and Franklin Street on the site of today's 300 West Adams. Originally it was built for the Armour-Dole Grain Company. Later the building was converted into a wholesale store for Carson Pirie Scott and Company. By 1905, the warehouse was surrounded by similar structures.
Graceland Cemetery is a large Victorian era cemetery located in the north side community area of Uptown, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA. Established in 1860…
The Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a museum and school for the fine arts in 1879, a critical era in the history of Chicago as civic energies were devoted to rebuilding the metropolis that had been destroyed by the Great Fire of 1871. Its first collections consisting primarily of plaster casts,
In 1866, a group of 35 artists founded the Chicago Academy of Design in a studio on Dearborn Street, with the intent to run a free school with its own art gallery. The organization was modeled after European art academies, such as the Royal Academy, with Academicians and Associate Academicians. The Academy's charter was granted in March 1867.
Classes started in 1868, meeting every day at a cost of $10 per month. The Academy's success enabled it to build a new home for the school, a five-story stone building on 66 West Adams Street, which opened on November 22, 1870.
When the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the building in 1871 the Academy was thrown into debt. Attempts to continue despite the loss by using rented facilities failed. By 1878 the Academy was $10,000 in debt. Members tried to rescue the ailing institution by making deals with local businessmen, before some finally abandoned it in 1879 to found a new organization, named the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. When the Chicago Academy of Design went bankrupt the same year, the new Chicago Academy of Fine Arts bought its assets at auction.
In 1882, the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts changed its name to the current Art Institute of Chicago and elected as its first president the banker and philanthropist Charles L. Hutchinson, who "is arguably the single most important individual to have shaped the direction and fortunes of the Art Institute of Chicago"
The institute has its roots in the 1866 founding of the Chicago Academy of Design, which local artists established in rented rooms on Clark Street. It was financed by member dues and patron donations. Four years later, the school moved into its own Adams Street building, which was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Because of the school's financial and managerial problems after this loss, business leaders in 1878 formed a board of trustees and founded the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. They expanded its mission beyond education and exhibitions to include collecting. In 1882, the academy was renamed the Art Institute of Chicago. The banker Charles L. Hutchinson served as its elected president until his death in 1924.
From modest beginnings as a tiny academy, the Art Institute of Chicago has grown into an internationally renowned institution, comprising a premier collection of art objects from around the globe, a top-ranked art school and library, and a diverse array of temporary exhibitions and public programs. Throughout its history the institute has served as a barometer of the role of art in Chicago.
The institute traces its origins to the Chicago Academy of Design, established by local artists in rented rooms on Clark Street in 1866. Financed by members' dues and patrons' donations, the academy offered classes and staged regular receptions and exhibitions. In 1870 the organization moved into its own building on Adams Street, adding a lecture series to its program. After the building was destroyed in the fire of 1871, the academy was plagued by financial and managerial problems. In an effort to stabilize the institution, business leaders created a board of trustees in 1878. Within a year they decided to organize a new institution, and resigned to found the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts; its expanded mission included collecting as well as offering education and exhibitions. This new incarnation represented a decisive shift from a school run by artists to a multifaceted institution superintended by the city's mercantile elite. In 1882 the academy changed its name to the Art Institute of Chicago and elected as president Charles L. Hutchinson, a banker who would lead the institution until his death in 1924. For the trustees, the institute, along with other new educational and arts organizations, served to offset Chicago's materialism and improve its image. They realized that the city's continued economic growth depended on its transformation from a center identified with commerce to a cosmopolitan place filled with cultural offerings. In turn, the institute benefited from the businessmen's managerial skills and financial generosity.
The institute's early history reflected as well as countered Chicago's capitalist ethos: situated symbolically within the city's commercial downtown, it financed its first buildings and acquisitions through business deals and speculation. It also was committed to expansion. During the 1880s the institute outgrew two successive structures at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Street, both designed by Chicago architects Burnham & Root.
Forty-ninth annual report. - The Art Institute of Chicago
p6
FOUNDERS, TRUSTEES, AND OFFICERS OF THE ART INSTITUTE (1879-1928)
The first call to join in the formation of a Fine Arts institute was issued on May 13, 1879, by George Armour, J. W. Doane, N. K. Fairbank, C. B. Farwell, H. A. Kohn, Levi Z. Leiter, and Samuel M. Nickerson.
A meeting was held accordingly May 15, 1879: Present: The above named and the following: George E. Adams, Dr. G. Anderson, William T. Baker, William H. Bradley, George N. Culver, James H. Dole, Dr. Benjamin Durham, W. M. R. French, J. J. Glessner, H. N. Hibbard, Charles L. Hutchinson, W. L. B. Jen-ney, J. F. Le Baron, A. C. McClurg, Murry Nelson, Eugene S. Pike, J. G. Shortall, and J. H. Walker.
An adjourned meeting on May 20, 1879, was attended by the following additional men: Eliphalet W. Blatchford, George C. Clarke, Marshall Field, C. D. Hamill, Albert Hayden, G. M. Higginson, D. W. Irwin, Francis W. Peck, H. C. Rew, J. M. Rog-ers, M. F. Tuley, and E. S. Waters, besides those already mentioned.
The first officers of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (which became The Art Institute of Chicago on January 1, 1883) were George E. Adams, George Armour, William T. Baker, Eliphalet W. Blatchford, William H. Bradley, J. W. Doane, James H. Dole, George L. Dunlap, N. K. Fairbank, W. M. R. French, Albert Hayden, H. N. Hibbard, Charles L. Hutchinson, D. W. Irwin, Levi Z. Leiter, E. B. McCagg, Samuel M. Nickerson, Eugene S. Pike, J. G. Shortall, and Mark Skinn
P119 ~ 1843 ~ George Smith ~ illegal certificates…
P124 ~ 1845 ~ canal work restarts
P138 ~ At first CBoT meeting: ‘This was the first move ever made in the city toward securing uniformity in grades, or guaranteeing the quality of any of the merchantable products sold’
P138 ~ Founders of CBoT: many GA friends: Ogden, Steel, Smith, Dolle, Dunham, Dole
P144 ~ Prior to 1848 all the grain arriving in Chicago had been stored in ordinary warehouses in bags or in bulk, in such small elevators - elevated by man or horse. First stem elevator 1848
The city's merchants adopted their procedures to handle grain in bulk, not in bags, as traditionally had been the case. The first small shipment of grain in bulk had occurred in 1839. Chicago's grain traders gained national recognition as a reliable and competitively priced source of grain during the 1850s.
The Board of Trade enhanced its role in the grain trade by implementing regulations for grading grain. The state legislature recognized its regulations by granting it a special charter in 1859. The special charter gave the board the power to impose rules and regulations for handling of grain and to arbitrate disputes between commodity merchants.
The laws of trade, as adopted by the Board of trade, the Union stock yards and transit company the Lumberman's exchange and the Produce exchange of the city of Chicago together with some practical hints in shipping ~ 1878
This mass movement of grain resulted in the commingling of grain at railroad stops and barge tie-ups called elevators. There, a farmer's grain was carefully weighed and graded, with like grades being elevated into large commingled overhead bins. From these bins, gravity provided the impetus and wooden chutes quickly filled the waiting railroad cars and barges. While the elevator created another middleman between the farmer and the purchaser, it facilitated a more reliable delivery system, provided a means to accommodate a larger harvest, minimized the loss of grain to a single seller, and provided for the speculator, who could easily buy or sell the stored grain.
Speculation on the price of grain and other agricultural commodities has been a critical component in Chicago's agriculture. The Chicago Board of Trade has been the platform allowing access to markets within the United States and throughout the world. Historically, it has provided price stability, setting the minimum price for agricultural commodities and stimulating interest and re-investment in agricultural businesses. While farmers saw speculators as making money off their labor, the Board of Trade facilitated working capital being available for farmers to utilize.
The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) listed the first-ever standardized 'exchange traded' forward contracts in 1864, which were called futures contracts. This contract was based on grain trading, and started a trend that saw contracts created on a number of different commodities as well as a number of futures exchanges set up in countries around the world.[4]
1848 - CBOT creates the world’s first futures exchange, based in Chicago
1851 - March 13 ~ CBOT offers earliest “forward” contract ever recorded; forward contracts begin to gain popularity among merchants and processors
1865 - CBOT formalizes grain trading with the development of standardized agreements called “futures” contracts, world’s first such agreements CBOT creates world’s first futures clearing operation when it begins requiring performance bonds, called “margin,” to be posted by buyers and sellers in its grain markets
1870 - CBOT develops first octagonal futures trading pit
On Oct. 23, 1868 the exchange vested a seat with property rights. That meant a membership could be sold at the market price or given to heirs. It thus became very much like the pieces of paper that it conferred a right to trade.
The Commercial Club patterned itself after traditional civic improvement clubs, holding regular meetings to discuss pertinent reform issues of the day.
An elite group of successful Chicago businessmen, the Commercial Club promoted the economic development of the city.
P32 ~ The creation of the Merchant’s… was the protest of Chicago’s soundest businessmen and financiers against the continuance of irresponsible and unscientific Banking, and alike in path of merchants and labor. To Chronicle the creators of this Bank is still is to list not a few of the builders of Chicago. It was in 1856 that among other prominent citizens the following came together to establish an institution that should serve the mercantile and manufacturing interests of the Chicago of that day. And of the future Chicago which some foresaw.
Law passes Jan 28 1957. Open for business June 10
P32 ~ 1856 ~ GA listed as a founder
P46- ~ Oct 1871 ~ open for business ~ signed by GA
P47 ~ new HQ ~ signed by GA
P60 ~ 1872 ~ GA appointed trustee
P68 ~ Starts A,D & Co - ‘which established Chicago’s early supremeny as a grain center’. GA ‘was popularly known as the father of the grain elevator system’
P74 ~ Photo of GA ~ image of early grain elevator
South Side Gas-Works
I can find no mention of GA associated with People’s Gas apart from the mention in his Chicago Tribune obituary
As the fire grew, the southwest wind intensified and became superheated, causing structures to catch fire from the heat and from burning debris blown by the wind. Around 11:30 p.m., flaming debris blew across the river and landed on roofs and the South Side Gas Works.
Miller, Donald (1996). City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 147–148.
ISBN0684831384.
In the early 1850s, a park movement emerged in Chicago, when visionary citizens began to rally for the creation of the nation's first comprehensive park and boulevard system. A physician, Dr. John Rauch led a successful protest to set aside a 60-acre section of a public cemetery as parkland, marking the beginnings of Lincoln Park. This inspired citizens to press for three separate acts of state legislation establishing the Lincoln, South, and West Park Commissions in 1869. Although the three park commissions operated independently, the overall goal was to create a unified ribbon of green that would encircle Chicago.
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality) in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers.
The old American Dream . . . was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard" . . . of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck.
The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed results; especially that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism, a lack of interest in high culture, and violence. "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," said Turner.
The American Way of life is individualistic, dynamic, and pragmatic. It affirms the supreme value and dignity of the individual; it stresses incessant activity on his part, for he is never to rest but is always to be striving to "get ahead"; it defines an ethic of self-reliance, merit, and character, and judges by achievement: "deeds, not creeds" are what count. The "American Way of Life" is humanitarian, "forward-looking", optimistic. Americans are easily the most generous and philanthropic people in the world, in terms of their ready and unstinting response to suffering anywhere on the globe. The American believes in progress, in self-improvement, and quite fanatically in education. But above all, the American is idealistic. Americans cannot go on making money or achieving worldly success simply on its own merits; such "materialistic" things must, in the American mind, be justified in "higher" terms, in terms of "service" or "stewardship" or "general welfare"... And because they are so idealistic, Americans tend to be moralistic; they are inclined to see all issues as plain and simple, black and white, issues of morality.
P349 ~ 1863 ~ GA CBT member of Ship Canal Convention
P357 ~1865 ~ Oct 4 Futures recognized as a legitimate feature of trades and full rules established
P367-8 ~ Munn & Scott Difficulties ~ false floor found
P373 ~ ‘The receiving and handling of bulk grains from cars and canal-boats and transmitting the same, of like quality, kind, and grade, to other cars, or ships, with greater expedition and the least possible expense, was the all-important function to be performed. Thus, every railroad entering the city. Thus every railroad entering the city found elevators, with one side fronting navigable water, the other adjoining their tracks, as necessary a part of their system as the rails, engines or cars; and each new railroad completed, either laid rails to warehouses already built, or caused another of these huge structures to appear upon the banks of the river, or along the canal. In the construction of the elevators working efficiency was no less important than storage capacity.
No elevators of large size were constructed prior to 1854. That year, the Galena elevator was built as well as the Munger & Armour warehouse on North Water Street, on the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad track.
The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad Company’s elevator was built in 1855.
P374 ~ Munger & Wheeler
P374-37 ~ much on Armour, Dole & Co
P375 ~ Munn & Scott details
P445 ~ YMCA ~ GA & combining the Bethels, Farwell
P511 ~ YMCA ~ organized 1858 ~ GA Trustee of Farwell Hall - 1861/7?
P514 ~ Great art exhibit
P517-518 ~ Silas Cobb ~ father of Berthe Cobb Armour
P601-607 ~ Crosby’s Opera House
P617 ~ George Smith ~ GA using scripts to pay workers on C&GU RR
P624 ~ May 4, 1864, CBot members / banks to use US notes ~ include Armour Dole
P14 ~ The city at its founding, he argued, had none of the natural advantages found in great cities elsewhere around the world: built in the midst of a great level swamp, it had no fertile valleys, no great harbors, no broad rivers. Instead, its creation depended solely on the force of human will. "Man,"
P19 ~ "The city is a granite garden, composed of many smaller gardens, set in a garden world .... The city is part of nature."
P33 ~ canal
P66 ~ Chicago's earliest railroad thus began as a corporation managed by Chicago businessmen but financed in good measure by the rural and small-town communities along its line.
Grain: pp97-147
P97 ~ "The cities have not made the country," reflected one long-time resident of Chicago in 1893; "on the contrary, the country has compelled the cities .... Without the former the latter could not exist. Without farmers there could be no cities."'
P105 ~ Without the farmers, storekeepers would have had neither customers to sell to nor crops to buy.
And without the storekeepers' willingness to purchase produce and extend credit in advance of the harvest, many farmers could not have survived their own lack of capital in growing crops and bringing them to market.
P104 ~ sack-based shipping
P104 ~ the earliest storekeepers in rural areas wore at least two hats: at the same time that they sold farmers retail goods, they also served as wholesalers of farm crops because their customers had nothing else with which to pay for merchandise.
P108 ~ insurance important to shippers
P109 ~ The Golden Stream / Notes p415
P109 ~ RR disrupt sack system ~ because of explosion or receipts of grain
P110 ~ thinking switches from sacks to cars
P111 ~ 1842 ~ Dart: first steam-powered grain elevator: least acknowledged invention.
P111 ~ move from volume to weight
P111 ~ 1848 ~ the first steam-powered grain elevator appeared. Built by Captain Robert C. Bristol, it was a four story brick building measuring 75 feet square and having a total capacity of over 80,000 bushels
P113 ~ The increasing scale and efficiency of Chicago's grain-handling technology depended on one condition: moving wheat, corn, or other crops without recourse to old-fashioned sacks.
P113 ~ Our warehouses are all erected on the river and its branches, with railroad tracks running in the rear of them, so that a train of cars loaded with grain may be standing opposite one end of a large elevating warehouse, being emptied by elevators, at the rate of from six to eight thousand bushels per hour, while at the other end the same grain may be running into a couple of propellers [ships], and be on its way to Buffalo, Oswego, Ogdensburgh or Montreal within six or seven hours. And all this is done without any noise or bustle; and with but little labor, except that of machinery.64
P114 ~ 1848 ~ CBT
p116 ~ Daily meetings on the floor of what was beginning to be called 'Change (short for "Exchange") soon became so crowded that the Board moved to new quarters on the corner of LaSalle and South Water streets. (Steel’s office )
P116 ~ 1856 first standards. Its system of regulations, proposed for the first time in 1856, restructured Chicago's market in a way that would forever transform the grain trade of the world. In that year, the Board made the momentous decision to designate three categories of wheat in the city-white winter wheat, red winter wheat, and spring wheat-and to set standards of quality for each
P116 ~ The grading system allowed elevators to sever the link between ownership rights and physical grain, with a host of unanticipated consequences.
P119 ~ Inspection underpinned the integrity of the grading system, which underpinned the integrity of the elevators, which underpinned the integrity of the Board's own markets.
P119 ~ inspections key factor. CBoT members swore oath / had quasi-legal status
P120 ~ Futures
P120 ~ By 1859, then, Chicago had acquired the three key institutions that defined the future of its grain trade: the elevator warehouse, the grading system, and, linking them, the privately regulated central market governed by the Board of Trade.
P120 ~ The elevators effectively created a new form of money, secured not by gold but by grain. Elevator receipts, as traded on the floor of ‘Change, accomplished the transmutation of one of humanity's oldest foods, obscuring its physical identity and displacing it into the symbolic world of capital.
P120 ~ In 1848, the same year that Chicago merchants founded the Board of Trade, the first telegraph lines reached the city.
P124 ~ 4th element: futures market
P124 ~ 1865 ~ first futures rules:
P126 ~ Bull / Bears
P126 ~ Grain elevators and grading systems had helped transmute wheat and corn into monetary abstractions, but the futures contract extended the abstraction by liberating the grain trade itself from the very process which had once defined it: the exchange of physical grain.
P127 ~ Corner the market ~ Andreas: 1868 - years of the corners
P127 ~ the activities of speculators working the floor of 'Change sooner or later circled back to those of farmers working the black prairie soil of the western countryside. Remote as the two groups often seemed from each other, they were linked by the forces of a single market.
P132 ~ More important, few traders were willing to attack a phenomenon that seemed to flow from the heart of the market itself. Chicago's great innovation in the grain trade had been to simplify the natural diversity of wheat, corn, and other crops so that people could buy and sell them as homogeneous abstractions.
P132 ~ Corners were an almost inevitable result not just of the futures contract but of grain grading and elevators as well; all three derived from the same artificial partitioning of the economic landscape, the same second nature.
P132 ~ Boundary Disputes / Notes p420
Despite the deep suspicion that many rural residents felt toward the Board of Trade and its mysterious market, farmers and Board members often found themselves on the same side of arguments about how to reform Chicago's grain trade. Moreover, they had a common enemy: the grain elevator operators.
P133 ~ As graders drew sharper boundaries between grain shipments that seemed nearly identical, disputes about grading grew more frequent.
P133 ~ One reason the Board hired its own team of inspectors in 1860 was to reduce the likelihood of such fraud, for Board members had as strong an interest as farmers in properly graded grain.
P134 ~ Reassuring declarations of this sort proved unpersuasive to farmers, for it did not take much anecdotal evidence to confirm rural suspicions that the entire Chicago market was corrupt. Farmers "knew" that railroads, elevators, inspectors, and "grain gamblers" were all in league to swindle the defenseless producer.
P135 ~ Whatever the logic behind it, mixing disturbed farmers and Board members alike, for it seemed to call into question the honesty and integrity of the whole grading system. What made mixing particularly objectionable was the uniquely powerful position of elevator operators, who could earn large sums of money by manipulating the physical partitions between grain bins so as to profit from the conceptual partitions between grain grades.
P135 ~ By mixing grain to bring it as close as possible to the lower boundary of a grade, elevators could capture the hidden value of intra-grade variation for themselves, an act that seemed both dishonest and unfair
P135 ~ But this was by no means the only complaint that farmers and Board members had against the elevators. Equally objectionable were the legal agreements elevator operators made with the railroads to segment Chicago's grain-handling market geographically. By 1870, Chicago had seventeen elevators with a total capacity of 11.6 million bushels of grain. Each received grain from only a single railroad, and each had a contract which gave it exclusive rights to the grain delivered by that road.I58 The railroads rarely operated elevators themselves, but received a percentage of the elevators' profits as part of the agreement between them. Five private partnerships managed all the large elevators in the city. Moreover, the ten to fifteen individuals who made up these partnerships were financially so closely linked to each other, and had so successfully restricted the possibilities of competition among themselves, that they effectively acted as a single bloc. When farmers and traders complained about an "elevator monopoly" in Chicago, they knew what they were talking about
Note 159 ~ Lee, "Chicago Grain Elevator Industry," 113-28, attempts to reconstruct the various secret agreements among elevators and railroads that allowed them to keep competition to a minimum. One of his conclusions is that Ira Munn, later known for his participation in the famous Munn v. lllinois court case, was the "kingpin" in a multipartnership combination which controlled about half of Chicago's total elevator space.
P135 ~ The lack of cost data makes it difficult to estimate profit rates from these figures, but elevator operators did declare personal incomes ranging from $30,000 to $100,000 per year during the 1860s.162
P136 ~ The Prairie Farmer, speaking to a rural audience, concluded that no business men in Chicago are more rapidly becoming independently rich than the warehousemen. Their fortunes are being made entirely from off the farmers of the country."
p137 ~ Elevator operators could predict ordinary price movements better than most traders. They knew when a grain could probably be cornered, and when a corner could probably be broken.
P136 ~ As one Cook County politician remarked, the elevators were not only "the largest gamblers in grain in Chicago ... , but gamblers who play with marked cards ....
P137 ~ In the years following the Civil War, then, critics of Chicago's grain market had a long list of indictments against the city's elevators: fraudulent grading, dishonest weighing, mixing grades, restricting competition, hiding storage information, and issuing false receipts.170
P137 ~ For just this reason, the Chicago Board of Trade and several of the city's leading newspapers-not the farmers-actually led the attack against the elevators.
P138 ~ To defend themselves, elevator operators apparently bribed members of the legislature to eliminate the most threatening provisions of the bill and to limit its enforcement mechanisms.
P140 ~ The Tribune, for instance, reported that among farmers in the city's hinterland, "the name of a Chicago warehouseman has become a synonym with that of a pirate .... It may be safely affirmed that no man voluntarily sends his grain to Chicago who can send it elsewhere."177
P140 ~ The Tribune's reform editor, Joseph Medii!, was himself a delegate and delivered what was probably the convention's most grandiloquent indictment of the elevators:
The fifty million bushels of grain that pass into and out of the city of Chicago per annum, are controlled absolutely by a few warehouse men and the officers of railways. They form the grand ring, that wrings the sweat and blood out of the producers of Illinois. There is no provision in the fundamental law standing between the unrestricted avarice of monopoly and the common rights of the people; but the great, laborious, patient ox, the farmer, is bitten and bled, harassed and tortured, by these rapacious, blood sucking insects.
P141 ~ In short, Article 13 and the 1871 Warehouse Act addressed each of the boundary problems that had so concerned farmers, grain traders, and other elevator critics during the 1860s: grading, inspection, m1xmg, counterfeit receipts, public grain supply statistics, and the monopoly linkage between railroads and elevators. Although complaints about grain elevators persisted long into the future, the new legislation laid the essential legal foundation for regulating any abuses that might occur.
P146 ~ Necessary Fictions
P142 ~ Munn v Illinois ~ establishing forever the principle that grain elevators and other such facilities were "clothed with a public interest" and could not escape state regulation.
P143 ~ One delegate to the constitutional convention remarked, "I am satisfied that there is no institution in the State of Illinois that can pile up money like the elevators in Chicago."
P144 ~ Far from standing as an "obstruction" between grain and its ultimate market, the floor of 'Change was where grain found its final markets.
P145 ~ The original decision to remove grain from its sacks was undoubtedly ! a pragmatic one, driven by the technological possibilities of the grain elevator. Probably no one foresaw that so simple an act would have such complex consequences, imposing a new symbolic order on Chicago's marketplace and distancing it from the physical universe of fields and crops and rural nature. The shift from sack to elevator enabled grain traders to come indoors, to a market called 'Change where sheets of paper would stand as surrogates for grain bought and sold in millions upon millions of invisible bushels. The shift to standard grades meant that those sheets of paper represented not real physical grain but abstract conventions whose homogeneity was the condition that made them interchangeable. Interchangeability in turn made it possible to sell grain not only over great distances of space but over extended periods of time as well, for the futures market depended for its existence on the standardized fictions that enabled traders to buy and sell grain they had never seen, because it did not yet exist.
P146 ~ Although the futures market marked the most significant step in this direction, an equally symbolic change occurred in 1875. In that year, the Board of Trade decided that its own memberships-roughly two thousand in number-should be offered for sale in the open market, to be bought and sold as commodities in their own right. This "policy of making these memberships merchandise" would henceforth be the way people acquired the right to trade on the floor of 'Change, offering their services to anyone on the outside who wished to buy or sell grain there. CBT, Annual Report for 1875, 22.
By this decision, the Board began to conduct a market in the market itself: boxes within boxes within boxes, all mediating between the commodified world inside and the physical world outside.
P338 - first shipment of grain 1837 to Buffalo - Newberry & Dole
1848 ~ April 10 - illinois canal opened
1852 ~ first RR from East
Ely, Burnham & Bartlett
Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Illinois: Convened at the City of Springfield, Tuesday, December 13, 1869, Volume 2
1870
E L Merritt & Brother
Springfield, IL
P 1629: Medhill: The fifty million bushels of grain that pass into and out of the city of Chicago per annum, are controlled absolutely by a few warehouse men and the officers of railways. They form the grand ring, that wrings the sweat and blood out of the producers of Illinois. There is no provision in the fundamental law standing between the unrestricted avarice of monopoly and the common rights of the people; but the great, laborious, patient ox, the farmer, is bitten and bled, harassed and tortured, by these rapacious, blood sucking insects.
Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1919
https://books.google.com/books?id=MEfWAAAAMAAJ
Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1919
P63 ~ Ottawa IL / Duke of Argyl forces peeps to leave
P83 ~ GA ‘grain king’
Lee, Guy Anderson
Should try and get a copy...
History of the Chicago grain elevator industry, 1840-1890.
Thesis (PhD) - Harvard University, 1938; 373 leaves, ill; bibliogr.
Commodity corn, which is as much an economic abstraction as it is a biological fact, was invented in Chicago in the 1850s.
...
The breakthrough came in 1856, When the Chicago Board of Trade instituted a grading system. Now any number 2 corn was guaranteed to be as good as any other number 2 corn.
...
No one could foresee it at the time, but the Chicago Board of Trade’s decision redirected the evolution of Zea mays
Zea mays is the type of corn used to created high-fructose corn syrup.
Weston Arthur Goodspeed, Daniel David Heal
Goodspeed historical association, 1909
History of Cook County, Illinois--: Being a General Survey of Cook County History, Including a Condensed History of Chicago and Special Account of Districts Outside the City Limits; from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Volume 1