Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

Chicago
Chicago was the fastest-growing city in the world, both in population and in commercial importance.
From a prairie village of four thousand in 1840, it had exploded into a metropolis of half a million,
and was now doubling in size every five years. Known as “Slabtown” and “The Mud Hole of the
Prairie,” the city now extended across thirty-five square miles along Lake Michigan, and boasted
paved streets and sidewalks, broad thoroughfares with streetcars, elegant mansions, fine shops,
hotels, art galleries, and theaters. And this despite the fact that most of the city had been razed in a
terrible fire just five years before.
Chicago’s success owed nothing to climate and locale; the shores of Lake Michigan were swampy;
most of the early buildings had sunk into the mud until they were jacked up by the brilliant young
Chicago engineer George Pullman. Water was so polluted that visitors often found small fish in their
drinking water—there were even minnows in dairy milk. And the weather was abhorrent: hot in
summer, brutally cold in winter, and windy in all seasons.
Chicago owed its success to its geographical position in the heartland of the country, to its
importance as a rail and shipping center, and most particularly to its preeminence in the handling of
prodigious tonnages of beef and pork.
“I like to turn bristles, blood, and the inside and outside of pigs and bullocks into revenue,” said
Philip Armour, one of the founders of the gigantic Chicago stockyards. Along with fellow
meatpacking magnate Gustavus Swift, Armour ruled an industry that dispatched a million head of
cattle and four million pigs each year—and which employed one-sixth of the population of the city.
With their centralized distribution, mechanized slaughter, and refrigerated railroad cars, the barons of
Chicago were creating a whole new industry—food processing.
The Chicago stockyards were the largest in the world, and many visitors went to see them. One of
the Yale students was the nephew of Swift, and they went off to tour the yards, which Johnson
regarded as a dubious tourist attraction. But Marsh was not stopping in Chicago for tourism. He was
there on business.
From the magnificent Lake Shore Railroad Depot, he took his charges to the nearby Grand Pacific
Hotel. Here the students were awed by one of the largest and most elegant hotels in the world. As
everywhere, Marsh had arranged special accommodations for his party, and there were
newspapermen waiting to interview him.
Othniel Marsh was always good copy. The year before, in 1875, he had uncovered a scandal in the
Indian Bureau, whereby bureau officers were not dispensing food and funds to the reservations, but
were instead keeping the proceeds for themselves, while Indians literally starved. Marsh had been