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TheGOLD COAST AND THE SLUM A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY o/ CHICAGO'S

NEAR NORTH SIDE

Henvrv W.enrnr.l Zonraucx

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY Howenn P. CHuoecorr

TI{E TJNIYERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICA@ & LONDON

CIIAPTER I TTIE SIIADOW OF THE SKYSCRAPER

, . . . It is I veritable Babel, in which some thirty or more tougues arc sPoken, . . , . Gunmea hauDt its gtreets, aod a murder is com- mitted in tlem nearly every day in the year. It is smoke-ridden and diefigured by factories aud railway yards, snd Bany of its streeB sre ill-paved. Moreover, the people who throng theo are more carelessly dressed tban tbose in Fifth Avenue, and their voices Dot so well modul&ted as those of thc iDlebitants of Boston. Their maaners, too, are of thc &.hd the New Yorher deEacs s3 westenr.-CsArrla!}. T^woN, Chicago

The Chicago River, its waters stained by industry, flows back upon itself, branching to divide the city into the South Side, the North Side, and'.the great West Side." In the river's southward bend lies the Loop, its skyline looming toward Lake Michigan. The Loop is the heart of Chicagq tle knot itr the steel arteries of elevated structure which pump in a ceaseless stream the three millions of population of the city into and out of its central business district. The canyon-like streets of the Loop rumble with the tra6c oI cornrnerce. On its sidewalts throng people oI every nation, pushing unseeingly pest one another, into and out ol ofrce buildings, shops, theaters, hotels, and ultimately back to the north, south, a,nd west which they came. For miles over what once was preirie now sprewls in endless bloclts the city.

The city's conquest of tbe prairie has proceeded stride for stride with the development ol transportation. The out- skirts of the city have always been about forty-five minutes from the heart of the Loop, In the days of the horse-drawn

2 THE COLD COAST AND THE SLUM

car they were not beyond Twenty-second Street on the South Side, With the coming of the cable car they were extended to the vicinity oI Thirty-sixth Street, The electric car-surface and elevated-again extended the city's out- skirts, this time well past Seventieth Street. How far "rapid transit" will take them, no one can predict.

Apace with the expansion of the city has gone the ascendancy of the Loop. Every development in transporta- tion, drawing increasing throngs of people into the central business district, has tended to centralize there not only commerce and finance, but all the vital activities of the city's life. The development of communication has further tightened the Loop's grip on the life of the city. The tele- phone has at once enormously increased the area over which the central business district can exert control and centralized that control. The newspaper, through the mediunl of adver- tising, has firmly established the supremacy of the Irop and, through tbe news, focused the attention of the city upon the Loop. The skyscraper is the visible symbol of the Loop's domination of the city's life. The central business district of the old city-like that of modern London-with its six- and eight-story buildings, sprawled over an unwieldy area, Rut the sLyscraper, thrusting the Loop skyward tbirty,forty, fi{ty stories,has rnade possible an extraordinary centralization and articulation of the central business dis- trict oi the rnodern city, Drawing thousands daily into the heart of the city, where the old type of building drew hundreds, the cluster of skyscrapers within the Loop bas become the city's vortex.

As the Loop expands it literally submerges the areas about it with the traffic of its commerce. Business and in- dustry encroach upon residential neighborhoods. As the

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TIIE SHADOW OF THE SKYSCRAPER 3

roar of trafic swells, and the smoke of industry begrimes buildings, land values rise. The old pop'rlation moves slowly out, to be replaced by a mobile, shifting, anonymous popula-

tion bringlng with it trsnsitional forms of social life, Within the looming shadow of the skyscraper, in Chicago as in every great city, is fouad a zone of instability and change--the tidelands of city life.

A-part of these tidelands, within ten minutes' walk oI the Loop and the central business district, within 6v€ minutes by street car or bus, just across the Chicago River, lies the Near North Side, sornetimes called "North Town." Within this area, a mile and a half long and scarcely a mile wide, bounded by lake Michigan on the east and by the Chicago River on the south and west, under the shadow of the Tribune Tower, a part oI the inner city, live ninety thousand people, a population representing all the typ$ and contrasts that lend to the great city its glamor and romance.

The first settlers of Chicago built upon the north bank of the Chicago River, and Chicago's first business house and first railroad were on Kinzie street. But early in Chicago's history destiny took its great commercial and industrial development southward, and for several decades the North Side was a rcsidential district, well-to-do and fashionable. The story of early Chicago society centers about hornes on Ohio, Erie, Cass, and Rush streetsl and street after street of old stone fronts, curious streets some of them, still breethe an air of respectability reminiscent of earlier and better days and belying the slow conquest of the slum,

Here change bas followed fsst upon change. With the growth oI the city commerce has encroached upon resi- dential property, relentlessly pushing it northward or crowd- ing it along the lake shore, until now the Near North Side

I I

4 THE GOLD COAST AND THE SLUM

is chequered with business streets. Into this area, where commerce is competing the conquest of the community, has crept the slum. Meantime great industries have sprung up along the river, and peoples speaLing foreign tongues have come to labor in them. The slum has offered these alien peoples a place to live cheaply and to themselves;and wave upon wave of immigrants has swept over the area- Irish, Swedish, German, Italian, Persian, Greek, and Negro

-forming colonies, staying for a while, then giving way to others. But each has left its impress and its stragglers, and today there live on the Near North Side twenty-nine or more nationalities, many of them with their Old World tongues and customs.

The city's streets can be read as can the geological record in the rock. The old stone fronts of the houses on the side streets;old residences along lower Rush and State, crowded between new business blocks, or with shops built along the street in front of them; a garage with "Riding Academy" in faded letters above its doors; the many old churches along La Salle and Dearborn streets; an o6ce building growing out oI a block of rooming-houses; "Deutsche Apotheke" on the window of s. store in a neighborbood long since Italian- these are signs that record the changes brought about by the passing decades, changes still taking place today.

The Near North Side is an area of high light and shadow, of vivid contrasts-contrasts not only between the old and the new, between the native and the foreign, but between rvealth and poverty, vice and respectability, the conven- tional and the bohemian, luxury and toil.

Variety is the spice of life, as depicted iD tbe books of thc Board of Assessorsi autocracy aDd democracy minglc on tbe same pages;

THE SHADOW OF TIIE SKYSCRAPER s

aphorisos arc borne out; and "art for art's !alc" remails thc elogrn of the twenticth c€ntury.

On one pEge oI Nortb District Book 18, the rccord oI the worldly boldings of Jamcs C. EneU, srtbt, 4 Ohio Street, is sct dowo as 'Total personal propcrty,8r9." So-and-so, artists, ere reported thruout the district with thie notatioa; "Attic roon, ill-furnished, many paintings: urBble to €stim8tc,"

Thc art colony ir locstcd iD tbb s€ctlon, as is the colony of tbe rich.and the ocarly rich. Aad oa thc same psgc at€ tbc following thlec cntries which span tbc stream of life:

Cyrus H. McCormich, 5o E. Iluroa St., $895,ooo; tsrable as- 9€s9ment, $447,5OO.

Mary V. McCormid, 678 Rush St,, $48o,ooo; tarable alsessEcDt, $24o,ooo,

And then-as anotbcr cortlast-the following entry appearc on rccord r

United State! Senator Medill MccormicL., gucst at the Dratc Ilotcl, l-,ooo,ooo,ooo.'

At the corner of Division Street and the LaLe Shore Drive stands a tall apartment building in which seven- teen-room apartments rent at one thousand dollars a month. One mile west, near Division Street and the river, Italian families are living in squalid basement rooms lor which they pay six dollars a month. The greatest wealth in Chi- cago is concentrated along the Lake Shore Drive, in what is called the "Gold Coast." Alsost at its back door, in "Little Hell," is the greatest concentration of poverty in Chicago. Respectability, it would seem, is measured by rentals and land valuesP

The Near North Side is not merely an area ol contrastsl it is an area of extremes. All the phenomena characteristic

'Chi.ato Ectold afll E arn;na,I,iy, ,gt1.

' Unitcd Chsriti€s of Chicago: 5id1 Ycos ol Saticc, In rgro-rt thelt wcra go contlibutor! to the United CbaritiB iD less thcD a squsrc mile on the Cold Coast, lDd 460 poyelty cc!e3 in thc squ4le bil. bchiDd it.

r 6 THE COLD COAST AND l'HE SLUM

oI the city are clearly segregated and appear in exaggerated form. Not only are there extremes of wealth and poverty. 'Ihe Near North Side has the highest residential land values in the city, and among the lowest; it has more professional men, more politicians, more suicides, more persons in }/lo's Who,lhan any other "community" in Chicago..

The turgid stream of the Chicago River, which bounds the Near North Side on the south and the west, has played a prominent part in its history. A gleat deal of shipping once went up the river, and tugs, coal barges, tramp freight- ers, and occasional ore boats still whistle at its bridges and steam slowly around its bends. This shipping caused com- merce and industrl' to locate along the river, aDd today wharves, lumber and coal yards, iron works, gas works, sheet metal works, light manufacturing planB and storage plants, wholesale houses for spices, furs, groceries, butter, and im- ported oils line both sides of the river for miles, and with the noise and smoke of the railroads make a great barrier that balf encircles the Near North Side, renders the part of it along the river undesirable to live in, and slowly encroaches northward and eastward.

'Talcing figurcs for 6ve widely difiering "communities" in Ciicago, thi! tact i! clearly brought outi

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. Idrrisr.nt .oMunity blck ot thc SGky.rdr. I Polkl ".r.. ol fi6t s.ttl.rnctrC'on rb. Sourhv.lr Sidc. t J.wi.h ".rc. ot s.cohd 3.rrl.'r.n!" on !h. Wc'! Sidc. l Soutb.Sidc rAid.nri.l (omDurity. rurNdibr rhc U.iv.6iry ot CbicrEo corr.irila

Erny Drol.lronar m.n .ad Eoo.!.

THE SHADOW OF THE SKYSCRAPER j ,'North Town" is divided into east and west by State

Street. East oi State Street lies the Gold Coast, Chicago's most exclusive residential district, turning its face to the hLe and its ba& upou what may lie west toward the river. West of State Street lies a nondescript area of furnished rooms: Clark Street, the Rialto of the half-world; "Little Sicily," tbe slum.

The Lake Shore Drive is the Mayfair of the Gold Coast, It runs north and south along Lake Mifigan, with a wide parkway, bridle path, and promenade. On its western side rise the imposing stone mansions, with their green lawns and wrought-iron-grilled doorways, of Chicago's wealthy aristoc-

racy and her industrial and financial kings. South of these is Streeterville a "restricted" district of tall apartments and hotels. Here are the Drake Hotel and the Lake Shore Drive hotel, Chicago's most exclusive. And here apartments rent for from three hundred fifty to a thousand dollars a month. Indeed, the Lake Shore Drive is a street more of wealth than of aristocracyl for in this midwest metropolis money counts Ior more than does family, and the aristocracy is largely that of the fnancially successful.

South of Oak Street the Lake Shore Drive, as it turns, becomes North Michigan Avenue, an avenue of fashionable hotels and restaurants, oJ smart dubs and shops. North I\{ichigan Avenue is the Fifth Avenue oI the l\{iddle West; and already it looks forward to the day when Fifth Avenue will be the North Michigan Avenue of the East.

On a warm spring Sunday "Vanity Fair" glides along "the Drive" in motor cars of expensive mark, makes colorful the bridle-paths, or saunters up the promenade between "the Drake" and Lincoln Park. The tops of the tan motor busses are crowded with those who live farther out, going home

II I

THE GOLD COAST AND TI{E SLUM

from church-those of e difierent vorld who look at "Vanity Fair" with curious or envious eyes. Even here the element of contrast is not lacking, for a mother from back west, witb a shawl over her head, waits for a pause in the strearn oI motors to lead her eager child across to the beach, while be- side her stand a collarless man in a brown derby and his girl in Sunday gingham, Iron some rooming-house bacL on La Salle Street.

For a lew blocks back of "the Drive"--on Belleview Place, East Division Street, Stonc, Astor, Banks, and North State Parkway, streets less pretentious but equally aristo- cratic-live more than a third of the people in Chicago's social register, "of good family and not employed," Here are the families that lived on the once fashionable Prairie Avenue, and later Ashland Boulevard, on the South and West sides. These streets, with the Lake Shore Drive, con- stitute Chicago's much vaunted Gold Coast, a little world to itself, which the city, failing to dislodge, has grown around and passed by,

At the back door of the Gold Coast, on Dearborn, Clark, and La Salle streets, and on the side streets extending south to the business anrl industrial area, is a strange world, pain- fully plain by contrast, a world that livee in houses with neatly lettered cards in the window: "Furnished Rooms." In these houses, from nridnight to dawn, sleep some twenty- five thousand people. But by day houses and streets are practically deserted. For early in the morning this popula- tion hurries from its houses and down its streets, boarding cars and busscs, to rvork in the Loop. It is a childless area, an area of young men and young women, most of whom are single, though some are married, and others are living to- gether unmarricd. It is a world of constant conings and

'I

fiID SHADOW OF THE SKYSCRAPER e goings, oI dull routiae and little romance, a world of un- satisied loagings.

The Near North Side shades fron light to shadow, and from shadow to dark, The Gold Coast gives way to the world of fumished roons I and the rooming-house area, to the west again, imperceptibly becomes the slum. The comoon denominator of the slum is its subnerged aspect and its de- hcbment from the city as a whole. The slum is a bleaL area of segegation of the sediment of society; an area of ertr€me poverty, tenements, ramshackle buildings, of evictions and evaded rents; aD erea of working uothers and children, of high rates of birth, inlant mortality, illegitimary, and death; an area of pawnshops and second-hand stores, of gangs, of "flops" where every bed is a vote. As distinguished from the vice area, the disintegrating neighborhood, the slum is an area which hqq reached the limit of decay and is on the verge of reorganization as rnissions, settlements, playperks, and business come in.

The Near North Side, west of Clark Street from North Avenue to tbe river, and east of Clark Street from Chicago Avenue to the river, we may describe as a slum, without fear of contradiction. For this area, cut ofr by the barrier of river and industry, and for years without adequate trans- portation, has long been a backwater in the lile of the city, This slum district is drab and mean. In ten months the United Charities here had 46o relief cases, Poverty fu ex- treme. Many families are living in one or two basernent rooms for which they pay less than ten dollars a month, These rooms are stove heated, and wood is sold on the streets in bundles, and mal in small sa"lrs. The najority of houses, ba& toward the river, are of wood, and not a few have windows broken out. Smoke, tbe odor fron the gas

I

IO T}II' GOLD COAST AND THE SLU]VI

works, and the smell of dirty alleys is in the air. Both rooms and lots are overcrowded. Back tenements, especio,lly north of Division Street, are common.'

Life in the slum is strenuous and precarious. One reads in the paper of a mother on North Avenue giving away her baby that the rest of her children may live. Frequently babies are found in alleyways. A nurse at the Passavant Hospital on North La Salle tclls oI a dirty little gamin, brought in from Wells Street, whose toe had been bitten off by a rat while he slept. Many women from this neighbor- hood are in the maternity ward four times in three years. A girl, a waitress, living at the Albany Hotcl on lower Rush Street, recently committed suicide leaving the brief note, "I am tired of everything. I have seen too much, That is all. "'

Clark Street is the Rialto oI the slum. Deteriorated store buildings, cheap dance halls and movies, cabarets and doubt-

'A 6ve-room house on llill Strcet, thc rooms in which a,te 9X t 2X ro fcet high, hes thirty occupsnts, ADotlcr nulga told the writ€r of being called on a casr on Scdgewick Strcct end 6nding tro couplcs living in one room. Onc couph workcd dsys, thc oth€r nights; ona couplc rent to bcd when the oth€t coupl€ go! up. Mrs. Louisc Dc Rowen Bowen (Ciotuing Up uilh o Ci4,\, remihiscing of ber Unitcd Charities crperiences, tclls of a wonrao who for thrcc ycar! eristed on the food shc procurcd from gerbagc cans aDd from thc samples ol departmcnt store dehonstration counter!. She addsi

"Somctimes fat! secrns to b€ relentl*! to th€ point of absuldityr as in oh. casc I r?rrrembcr of dn ltalian farnily. , . . . Tbc man rvas riding on a strect car and was sudd.nly assaulted by rn irate p*senge.. , , . , Hit nose ras broken and hc was badly disfigured. , . . . A lew days latcr, on his wey bomc from a dispensary where be had gone lo hav€ his wound dressed, h! tell ofi a sidewalk and brokc his lcg. Thc mother grve birth to a child the same day. Anothcr child dicd thc tollowiDg day, and the eldcst girl, only fourtecn y.sr3 old, who had bcen sent out to look for worl, was foully assrult.d oh tbe str€et." Such is tb. lile ol tb. sluml

, Chkalp Eluni,tt At .ri.dr, Dcccmb.! 2r, t923.

1'HE SHADOW OF THE SKYSCRAPDR rr

ful hotels, missions, "flops," pawnshops and second-hand stores, innumerable restaurants, soft-drink parlors and ,,fellowship" saloons, whete men sit about and talk, and which are hangouts for criminal gangs that live back in the slum, fence at the pawnshops, and consort with the transient prostitutes so characteristic of the North Side-such is ,,the

Street," It is an all-night street, a street upon which one meets all the varied t)?es that go to make up the slum.

The slum harbors many sorts of people: the criminal, the radical, the bohemian, the migratory worker, the immi- grant, the unsuccessful, the queer and unadjusted. The migratory worker is attracted by the cheap hotels on State, Clark, Wells, and the streets along the river. The criminal and underworld fnd anonymity in the tran- sient life of the cheaper rooming-houses such as exist on North La Salle Street, The bohemian and the unsuccessful are attracted by cheap attic or basement rooms. The radical is sure of a sympathetic audience in Washington Square. The foreiga colony, on the other hand, is found in the slum, not because the immigrant seeks the slum, nor because he makes a slum of the area in which he settles, but merely be- cause he finds there cheap quarters in which to live, and relatively little opposition to his coming. From Sedgwicl, Street west to the river is a colony of sone fifteen thousand Italians, familiarly known as ,,Little Hell.', Here the immi- grant has settled blocks by villages, bringing with him his language, his customs, and his traditions, many of which persist.

Other foreign groups have come into this area. North of "Little Sicily," between Wells and Milton streets, there is a large admixture of Poles with Americans, Irish, and Slavs. The Negro, too, is rnoving into this area and pushing on into

I12 THD GOLD COAST AND THE SLUM "Little Hell." There is a small colony of Greeks grouped about West Chicago Avenue, with its picturesque cofiee houses on Clark Street. Finally, there has come in within the past few years a considerable colony of Persians, which has also settled in the vicinity o{ Chicago Avenue. The slum on the Near North Side is truly cosmopolitan,

fn the slum, but not of it, is "Towertown,tt or "the village." South of Chicago Avenue, along east Erie, Ohio, Iluron, and Superior streets, is o considerable colony of artists and of would-be artists. The artists have located here because old buildings can be cheaply converted into studios. fhe would-be artists have followed the artists. And the hangers-on of bohemia have come for atmosphere, and be- cause the old residences in the district have stables. "The village" is full oI picturesque people and resorts-tearooms with such names as the Wind Blew Inn, the Blue Mouse, and the Green Mask, And many interesting art stores, antique shops, and stalls with rare books are tucked away among the old buildings. All in all, the picturesque and un- conventional life of "the village" is again in striking contrast to the formal and conventional lile oI the Gold Coast, a few short blocks to the north.

One has but to walk the streets of tbe Near North Side to sense the cultural isolation beneath these contrasts. Indeed, the color and picturesqueness of the city exists in the intimations of what lies behind the superficial contrasts of its life. How various are the thoughts of the individuals wbo throng up Michigan Avenue from the Loop at the clos€ of the day-artists, shop girls, immigrants, inventors, men of afiairs, women of fashion, waitresses, clerks, entertainers. IIow many are their vocational interests; how diflcrent sre their ambitions. How vastly multiplied are the chances of

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rHE SIIADOW OF TIIE SKYSCRAPER 13

life in a great city, as compared with those of the American towts and European peasant villages from which most of these individuals have come. What plans,plots, conspiracies, and dreams lor taking advantage of these chances difrerent individuals must harbor under their hats. Yet they have little in common beyond the fact that they jostle one an- other on the same street. Dxperience has taught them difier- ent languages. How far they are from understanding one anoth€r, or from being able to communicate save upon the most obvious material mattersl

As one walks from the Drake Hotel and the Lake Shore Ddve west along Oak Street, through the world of rooming- houses, into the slum and the streets of the Italian Colony one has a sense of distance as between the Gold Coast and Little llell-distance that is not geographical but social. There are distances of language and custom, There are dis- tances represented by wealth and the luster it adds to hu- man existence. There are distances of horizon-the Gold Coast living throughout the world while Little Hell is still only slowly emerging out of its old Sicilian villages. There are distances represented by the Gold Coast,s absorbing professional interests. It is one world that revolves about the Lake Shore Drive, with its mansions, clubs, and motors, its benefts and assemblies. ft is another world that revolves about the Dill Pickle Club, tbe soap boxes of Washington Square, or the shop of Romano the Barber. And each little world is absorbed in its own affairs.

For the great majority of the people on the Gold Coast- excepting those lew individuals who remernber, or whose parents remember, the immigrant communities out of which they have succeeded in climbing-the district west of State Street exists only in the newspapers. And from the news-

I :

14 THE GOLD COAST AND THE SLUM

papers they learn nothing reassuring. The metropolitan press pictures this district as a bizgrre world of gang wars, of exploding stills, of radical plots, oI "lost" girls, of suicides, oI bombings, of murder.

l'he resident of the Lake Shore Drive forms his concep- tion of Little Sicily from such items as these:

ttl,trrl.E lrAly" grolE waEcrED Br BotB For thc eighth consccutive Sunday thc North Sidc "Littlc Itrly"

wes ewakened by its usual "alarm clock." Thc "alarm clock" was s largc black powder bomb. Tbe detoD&tion was beard tbroughout the colony. A part of thc grocery storc of Mrs. Beatrice Diengello was wrecked, aod the eight families living in the adjoining tcnernent werc rudely awakencd.

TWO SEOT TO DEATII IN WSISEEY !EI'D

Two bullet-ridden bodies wcrc found yesterdsy near "Dcatb Corner," Cambridge snd OaL stleets. Police invcstigation developed the theory that s fcud among whiskey runteru ws8 responsible tor thc murdcrs.

rrN'a srLENcE AGArN EIDES xtAlt N sLAyER The usual sbrugging of rhoulderg answered detective *ho are

trying to clear up Chicago's lstest lt&li&n murder-thst of Franl. Mariata, a lsborer, rvho was shot to dcath os he was leaviag his flat, 462 West Division St.eet, yesterda.y noming. Threc men were aeer rushihg llom the building after the shooting, but rela.tivee of the dead man claim the-y bave no idea who the slayers are. Although thrce guns were found under Mariata's pillow, his wifc iasists he had lo eneruies,

FFry-TrrREE ptR cEN? o! cnrceco's rn ttxcs occm IN LITTI,E ITALY AND BLACE BELT

More thEn half ol the violent deaths h Chicago ilr thc 6!st linety drys of tbis year occurred among Negroes or ltalians, two groups con- stituting abo,rt 7 per cent ot the populatio!. The Italian blackhsnd zone is on the Near North Side, bounded by Erie, Dearborn, Divisioa, rnd the river,

THE SHADOW OF TIIE SKYSCRAPER rs

Similarly, the "Gold Coaster" concludes from his mom- ing paper that the Persian colony is a place of feuds, flash- ing knives, flying chain, and shattering glass:

rWO CIPS END I'AI O! 2OO PERSIANS: TETEE I{EN S1ABBED Three men wele stabbed, several badly beaten, and ten arrested

duriog 8 pitched bsttle between rivsl lactioN of Persians in a cofiee shop at 706 North Clark Street €arly yesterday evening. Police in answering a riot clU bad to 6gbt their r|ay tblough more than two hundred fighting mcn.

For several years there bEs beel en unwrittcn law tbat no Syriso Pcrsian was allowed north of Huror Street oE Cl&rk Strcet. Five mem- bcrs of the race wandered iuto tbe coficc shop of Titian and Sayad rnd sat down at a tablc to pl8y c.rds, Ia a ehort tiarc sir Assyrian Persians eDt€red th€ plac! and saw thcm. They walked to the table, it is 6aid, snd remarked tbat the Syrisns had better gct ofr t[e rtreet. At that the frve Syliatrs stsrt€d to 6ght.

In a moment other men in the place drew kdves End advanccd on the battlers, Cbairs rverc overturncd aod windows broLen. Tbe fight led out to the street. Finally morc tbatr two hundred had talel up the 6ght. Then someonc scot io a riot csll.

Beyond these newspaper reports, little is known of the world west of State Street by the people of the Gold Coast. Their afiairs rarely take them into tbe river district. The reports of social agencies are little read. It is I region re- mote.

But to the people who live west of State Street the Gold Coast is inimediate and real. It is one of the sights of the town. They throng its streets in going down to the lake on hot summer days. From the beach lhey gzze up at the magnifcent hotels and apartments of Streeterville, and at the luxurious and forbidding mansions of the Lake Shore Drive. They watch the streams of costly automobiles and fashionably dressed men and women. The front pages of the newspapers they read as they hang to straps on the street

t6 THE GOLD COAST AND THE SLUM cars in the evening are filled with pictures of the inhabitants of the Gold Coast, and with accounts of their comings and goings. It all enlists the imagination. Consequently the people lrom "back west" enormously idealize the Gold Coast's life. They imitate its styles and manners. The im- agination of the shop girl, of the immigrant, of the hobo plays with these erternals of its life. In the movie they see realistic pictures of "high society," These they take to be the inner, intimate life of which they see the externals along the Lake Shore Drive. As a result the social distance from Death Corner to the Drake lIotel is no less than the distance Irom the Casino Club to Bughouse Square,

The isolation of the populations crowded together within these few hundred blocks, the superficiality and externality of their contacts, the social distances that separate them, their absorption in the affairs of their own little worlds- these, and not mere size and numbers, constitute the social problem of the inner city. The community, represented by the ton'n or peasant village where everyone knows everyone else clear down to the ground, is gone. Over large areas of the city "community" is little more than a geographical expression. Yet the old tradition of control persists despite changed conditions of life. The inevitable result is cultural disorganization.