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Probably nothing that we can do will alter the tendency among the great mass of Americans to reduce the size of their families. Reproduction will, hereafter, be more and more determined by intelligence and restraint. Excessive breeding should receive scant approval anywhere. We must not aim, at this time, for numbers at the expense of quality, but rather seek to develop a well-organized and happy society. That is the objective which should animate every student of population, every statesman, and every thoughtful citizen. We must be careful, however, about the way we take to arrive at this goal. Merely wiping out our natural increase by the first means at hand will not do it. We must not substitute real and serious troubles of a new sort for minor and even imaginary old ones. We must not, above all, forget that population mistakes are not easily remedied; that when they are once made, and their effects have become

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visible, it is usually too late to correct them.

Thus far we have considered the quantitative aspect of the population problem. When we turn to the qualitative side of the question, there are just as many misconceptions rife in our current thinking. It has been fashionable in recent years to lament the nonfertility of the native stock and the fecundity of the newcomer. It has been assumed that those who arrived here earlier, and especially those of Nordic origin, are innately superior. A warning should be sounded against too ready acceptance of a theory that establishes sharp classdistinctions without sufficient scientific proof. Evidence is hardly sufficient at the present time to warrant the sweeping conclusion that certain racial elements in our national life are vastly superior to others.

Reflecting very much the same aristocratic bias is the current view, especially pronounced among biological writers on population, that the country is headed for disaster because of the greater fertility of the 'masses' as contrasted with that of the 'classes.' The literature associated with the eugenic movement has overstressed the dangers implied in the differential birth-rate. 'Beware of reproducing from mediocrity,' is the warning. There is often a thinly disguised plea for a race of supermen who, presumably, could spring only from the upper social and economic strata. The common man has little place in this scheme of things, although he does, after all, make up the bulk of the population.

This basic assumption should be thoroughly tested, even though its acceptance does flatter our self-esteem and reflect the paganism of our times. I seriously question its validity and consider this attitude a very crude and unjustified application of biological jargon to human life. Its chief defect

lies in its almost total disregard of the influence of environment and tradition on our conduct and achievement. It is, moreover, a direct challenge to our best ideals of democracy and religion. When we have eliminated the upper and the lower ten per cent of our population, there is not sufficient indication of serious differences in innate ability among the remaining eighty per cent to justify the current fears and warnings against their deliberate participation in parenthood. They are neither spectacularly able nor do they abound in defects. If they lack the brilliance that would single them out for special distinction, they have usually other compensating, valuable, and attractive qualities. They are just plain folk carrying on the world's work. We see on all sides clear evidence of the ability of ordinary people to give birth to children capable of the highest achievements, as opportunity and environment release their power. Our social organization, by its very complexities and the perfection of its mechanical foundations, is conducive to stimulating in men from all walks of life the innate abilities that in a less wellorganized society might go to waste. Throughout all ages, the leaders of mankind have come predominantly from homes that at first sight seemed most unpromising and commonplace.

Will not the leadership of the next generation come, as it always has in the past, from that source?

For these reasons I consider some of the newer tendencies in the development of the American population far from inimical to our institutions and to the best traditions of the country. The rather free fertility still prevailing among those who have recently arrived is not to be deplored. If we can be careful to control- or, better yet, entirely check the reproduction of the unfit, we are in no danger of racial deterioration. There has always been a differential birth-rate, and a replacement of one group of people above by another equally good from below. In all ages men have raised themselves above their inherited station in life and have occupied the seats of the mighty left vacant by those considered their superiors, who have neglected or have been incapable of performing their highest obligation to society - namely, parenthood. We must in all fairness examine critically the current point of view and shift the emphasis in our population discussion from a glorification of the upper strata to a more generous recognition of the inherent worth of the great mass of mankind; and especially so if we, who consider ourselves superior, persist in celibacy or in virtual or approximate sterility.

WHEN CHICAGO WAS VERY YOUNG

BY LOUISE DE KOVEN BOWEN

BECAUSE my grandfather lived in Fort Dearborn and my mother was born within its palisades, I naturally heard, from my earliest childhood, many stories of that valiant band of settlers, traders, and soldiers who made their home in what was then a wilderness and who endured hardships and braved dangers in order that they might establish a settlement between the East and the Mississippi River.

My early imagination was caught by the stories of Mrs. La Compt, a most remarkable woman who came to Chicago during the latter part of the eighteenth century. She was married three times and lived until she was 109 years of age! Mrs. La Compt was a woman of great mentality and an extraordinary constitution; she was also possessed of wonderful courage. She had always been good friends with the Indians, speaking their language and developing a remarkable influence over the Pottawattomies. She would often be awakened in the dead of night by an Indian friend who would tell her that the Indians were contemplating an attack on the white people. Instead of seeking her own safety, she would always set out alone to meet the war party, and never failed to avert bloodshed. Sometimes the settlers would arm themselves and await the attack, and after two or three days they would see the hostile Indians approach with Mrs. La Compt at their head, their hideous war-paint changed to sombre black,

I

to show their sorrow for having entertained evil designs against her friends. This all sounds too good to be true, but I believed it then and I have properly verified it since.

I was told that in 1803 troops from Detroit, under Captain Whistler, were ordered to Chicago. When they reached their destination they found a few traders and friendly Indians, and they determined to settle near the mouth of the river, which they found about ninety feet across, eighteen feet deep, and bordered by low banks covered with bushes. There was then a sand bar at the mouth of the river over which the troops walked dry-shod. A fort was built as soon as possible. The Indians seemed friendly, but bothered the soldiers greatly by their thieving. Many traders settled around the fort and exchanged liquor for furs, so that rum played a big part in the building of the fort just as it did later in its demolition.

All early Chicagoans know that Fort Dearborn was maintained in Chicago for nine years. It was a tedious life for the soldiers, with little excitement except an occasional scare from the Indians and the arrival of some vessel bringing supplies to the little group of soldiers and traders in the settlement. There was an abundance of game; deer were frequently seen swimming in the river and wolves were often heard howling at night.

The stories of the Indians were

scarcely more exciting than those I sometimes heard of the soldiers. The personnel of the army at this time was not of a very high type; drunkenness was common and the usual punishment was a certain number of lashes. Some times the culprit was forced to run the gauntlet between two rows of soldiers, both ranks striking at the same time. Sometimes he had his head shaved and a bottle tied around his neck, and was drummed out of the settlement to the tune of the Rogue's March.

In 1810, years before my grandfather came to Illinois, Nathan Heald succeeded Whistler at Fort Dearborn; he married in Louisville and brought his wife to the Fort on horseback, accompanied by her black slave-girl, the first slave owned in Chicago. When the War of 1812 with the British was at its height, hostile bands of Indians were so numerous that Captain Heald received orders to evacuate Fort Dearborn and go to Detroit. These orders he was loath to obey, as the Fort was well provisioned and he felt it could hold out a long time, while if it were abandoned its inmates would not have a chance of reaching a place of safety, as the country was filled with Indians, many of whom were crazed with liquor sold them by the white traders.

Captain Heald, however, was a soldier and trained to obey orders. To help the little garrison, the Government sent him thirty Indian warriors under the command of Captain William Wells, a famous scout for whom our Wells Street is named.

Captain Heald ordered all liquor in the Fort to be destroyed, and this is said to have been one of the causes of the massacre the following day. All preparations being now completed for the evacuation, there issued forth the most forlorn little procession Michigan Avenue has perhaps ever seen. First came the Commander and some of

the friendly Indians with their scout leader, then the militia, then Captain Heald's wife and the wife of the lieutenant, on horseback; then the women and children in wagons surrounded by the soldiers, while friendly Indians guarded the rear. The party went south on Michigan Avenue, at that time a sandy beach with sand dunes on the western side and the lake coming up to the roadway, until they reached what is now known as Eighteenth Street. Then Captain Wells, who had gone ahead, was seen coming back, waving his hat in the direction of the west, and peering out from behind sand dunes could be seen the heads of Indians, who swooped down on the little party. The friendly Indians immediately deserted; the children and some of the women were killed at once. Captain Wells fought so bravely that after his death the Indians cut out his heart and ate it, which was the greatest compliment they could pay him. Captain Heald finally surrendered on condition that the prisoners should be spared. Many of these prisoners were tortured, however, some being burned at the stake; nine men were taken prisoner and kept as servants until two years later, when they were sold to some traders and liberated. One of these men was named Joseph Bowen; he was, however, not related to my husband.

The story of one of the men who survived the massacre is interesting. His name was David Kennison. After the massacre his skull was crushed by a falling tree; later he had a bad fall and broke his collar bone and two ribs; the discharge of a faulty cannon broke both his legs; a horse kicked him in the face and smashed in his forehead. Nevertheless he survived all these injuries, was married four times, and had twenty-two children. The last two years of his life he entered a museum, as he felt that his many adventures

made him an object of interest, and his pension was not enough for him to live on. He died in 1852 at the age of 115 years, in full possession of all his faculties. He was buried in Lincoln Park and, when most of the bodies buried there were moved, his was not disturbed. In 1905 a monument was erected over his grave by some patriotic societies.

In 1815 an expedition was sent out to reëstablish Fort Dearborn, and the Fort was occupied off and on until 1832, when it again housed a garrison. This was the time of the Black Hawk War, and the Fort was crowded with settlers who had taken refuge there, something like two hundred people being housed under its hospitable roof. About 1835 my grandfather, Edward H. Hadduck, came to Chicago in charge of $200,000 which he brought in a prairie-schooner wagon from Detroit to Chicago. This money was to be used to pay the Indians for certain obligations which the Government had incurred. When my grandfather reached Chicago he saw so many possibilities for a young man that he immediately returned to Ohio, married my grandmother, and brought her to Chicago. They were obliged to take refuge in the Fort, and I have often heard my grandmother tell of the trials of living in the same room with fifty other people; of how difficult it was to get water, and how she had to sneak out of the Fort down to the river, to avoid the Indians, of whom she was very much afraid.

Help finally came from the East, but the garrison had hardly settled down before cholera broke out and many people died. From this time Chicago forged steadily ahead. Her position at the foot of Lake Michigan on the great highway of trade secured her commercial advantages which no other city could rival.

II

I became so familiar with the stories of these early days that it is difficult to disentangle them from my actual experiences, but my earliest recollections are clustered around an old-fashioned red-brick house belonging to my grandfather, which was set far back from the road on the corner of Wabash Avenue and Monroe Street. There were shade trees in front of the house, and a broad strip of greensward between the house and the roadway. This road was made of good black prairie soil. When muddy it was almost impassable, and when dry there were huge ruts in it which shook up everyone who drove over them. At one time there was a hole in the road opposite our front door and two boards were stuck in it, on one of which was roughly scrawled: 'No bottom here; good road to China.'

When my grandfather built this new house and moved from his Lake Street residence, the neighbors all regretted that he and my grandmother were to live so far out of town, where it would be difficult to meet in the evenings for the parties they so often enjoyed together.

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The house itself was big and roomy. The front door, on Wabash Avenue, was opened only twice a day — once when my grandfather went to his mill in the morning and once when he returned at night. He had a partiality for that door and refused to use the side door, which stood unlatched during the day for the use of the other members of the family.

I always met my grandfather when he came home at night. He was an interesting figure, wearing black broadcloth clothes, with a high collar, an old-fashioned black stock, and, alas, a large diamond solitaire in his shirtfront. His high hat was always shiny, as well as his right coat-sleeve, which

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