Cities: Clouter with Conscience

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Daley differs from his predecessors in that he is a boss-mayor whose power seems to be dedicated to making Chicago a better place. Says he: "The old bosses were not interested in what was good for the public welfare. They were interested only in what was good for themselves. The new objective of leadership is not what you can do for yourself, but what you can do for the people. We're the first of the new bosses—that is, the first of the new leaders."

Blue Ribbons. The self-styled new leader is presently enjoying one of the fruits of his power. He is running for a third term (election day: April 2), against Benjamin Adamowski, 56, a Democrat turned Republican, who served as state's attorney from 1956 to 1960 and distinguished himself by never successfully prosecuting a major case. If there is such a thing as a cinch in U.S. politics, Daley is it.

Chicago's four daily papers—all of which are Republican-owned—are either overtly or covertly for Daley. Many leading Republican businessmen also support him. Says David Kennedy, chairman of the Continental Bank and head of one of Daley's dozen-odd blue-ribbon civic improvement committees: "The mayor's done a good job. Some people might say his weakness is his political ties, but it's really his strength. He's very strong, and he couldn't operate the way he does if he weren't strong politically."

A Man's Town. Chicago was practically invented for strongmen. Wrote Rudyard Kipling after visiting Chicago in 1889: "Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.'' The hell-raising town that Kipling saw was a burning fuse tossed into the junction of East and West—a brawling, bawdy town of unflagging spirit and adventure. If a city has sex, Chicago is surely male—in its smell of sweat, its feel of muscle, its unceasing masculine drive for power. "There are no ladies in Chicago," an old saying went. "Only widows, wives and girls." Men made the city: Field, Carson, Pirie, Palmer, Altgeld, Sears, Pullman, Armour, McCormick, Swift, Medill.

There was beef on the hoof, grain in the bins, plows and machinery clanking into the prairies beyond. When the Great Fire leveled the city in 1871, men built it again, and so built monuments to themselves. To the railyards. the stockyards and the factories came swarms of immigrants. To the street corners, the slums and the pleasure palaces streamed the sin merchants. The Everleigh girls, two sisters from Kentucky, established the world's most elegant bordello. Reformers and anarchists, empire builders and Pinkertons, clashed in the streets, while hot-eyed sin-slayers sought new souls in their tents.

John D. Rockefeller helped found the University of Chicago, and Louis Sullivan. Frank Lloyd Wright and Carl Sandburg became the first of many creators to honor the city in stone and song. As the town stretched out and up. City Planner Daniel Burnham commanded: "Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty."