In the Public Interest
Reader ASR points us to Julia Vitullo-Martin’s WSJ report on the Burnham Centennial, and the contention that the citizens of Chicago are ‘a population capable of indefinite expansion.’
She grows a bit overwrought in her praise of all things Chicago, but she digs the essence of 19th Century millenarianism by quoting Burnham:
The domain over which Chicago holds primacy is larger than Austria-Hungary, or Germany, or France; three thousand miles of navigable waters form a portion of its boundaries; the rivers flowing into the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, and the Ohio, give access to every part of the interior; the level prairies invite the railroad and the canal builder; the large proportion of arable land makes possible the support of an enormous population; and the abundance and range of the products of earth and forest furnish the materials for traffic.
