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| Man standing on crusted refuse on the Chicago River (Chicago Daily News Archives) |
Two items today
about the Chicago River – the first from June 11, 1864 and the second from June
11, 1892.
To begin, consider
a poem Samuel Taylor Coleridge published in 1834, a scathing piece written
about the city of Cologne, a poem that stands in an angry irony against the
city’s name. It’s a short poem for
Coleridge, and here it is . . .
In
Köhln, a town of monks and bones,
And
pavements fang'd with murderous stones
And
rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
I
counted two and seventy stenches,
All
well defined, and several stinks!
Ye
Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
The
river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth
wash your city of Cologne;
But
tell me, Nymphs, what power divine
Shall
henceforth wash the river Rhine?
The Chicago Tribune on this day in 1864 made reference to
Coleridge’s work in an editorial concerning the Chicago River. “All the stinks Coleridge found in Cologne .
. . are to be found exhaling from the wretched cess-pool disturbed by our
shipping; and occasionally we doubt if there be not a whiff or two that
Coleridge would have found an addition to his list. It smells.
It is foul,” the paper hissed. [Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1864]
The editorial board
went on to discuss an incident that occurred days earlier along the river.
The other day . . . we stood upon the brink
of [the river] when the stern-wheel steam craft from the Rolling Mill passed
down. We were to leeward. Faugh!
The paddles dipped up the water, carried it over and threw it out, in
its swashing style, and we caught its rank odors; as we caught them we parted
company with them speedily, but not before we had formed an opinion that
something must be done about it.
Then the writers
looked forward to the long, hot summer and what implications it and the river would
have on the inhabitants of the city.
It will breed a pestilence,
this huge, filthy ditch, which reeks with the garbage of distilleries and
slaughter houses, sewers, and cesspools, and the odorous refuse of the Gas
Company. We do not remember to have ever
before seen it as abominably unclean as it is now . . .
The remedy to the
horrors of the river, the editorial suggested, was to employ huge pumps already
installed at Bridgeport to move water from the river into the Illinois and
Michigan Canal, at that point already 16 years old. “. . . in twenty-four hours time, fresh, pure
water form the lake will take the place of this infamous broth concocted of all
uncleanness and pent under the very nostrils of our citizens.”
Clearly, the idea
of reversing the river and moving its “cologne” out of the city to the west was
an idea that was proposed long before the storied reversal of the river in
1900.
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| JWB Photo |
The second item
comes from this date in 1892 when a curious incident occurred on the Chicago
River according to The Tribune, what
the paper called a “queer coincidence.”
At the time that
incumbent President Benjamin Harrison was renominated in Minneapolis, reports
of the event were being received at the offices of the V. O. T. company. Much to the amusement of those gathered
there, “the schooner Benjamin Harrison was passing through Harrison street
bridge in Chicago, the Protection towing her and the Union astern, with the
barge Sunshine following in tow of the satisfaction. Capt. Dunham’s schooner, James G. Blaine is
somewhere on Lake Superior, but has not been heard from for several days. She
is supposed to be safe.”
James G. Blaine
served as the Secretary of State in President Harrison’s first and contested
the nomination as the Republican candidate for President with the incumbent
Harrison. A Chicago public school on
Janssen Street and Waveland Avenue is named for him. Benjamin Harrison went on to lose the
election for a second term to Grover Cleveland, whose running mate was an
Illinoisan named Adlai E. Stevenson.
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