Cities: Clouter with Conscience

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Though Sandburg's "hog butcher for the world'' is no more (many of the slaughterhouses have moved out), Chicago remains a mercantile and industrial center for the nation. Its wholesale and retail trade runs better than $33 billion a year. The city handles more freight cars daily—26,000—than New York and St. Louis combined, boasts terminals for 20 rail lines. Its motor arteries are clogged by 800,000 truck trips daily. Its McCormick Place is the nation's biggest convention hall, plays host to organizations that spend more than $200 million a year in Chicago. Its share of the gross national product is $28.7 billion. Its steadily climbing industrial capacity has reached total gross sales of $23.2 billion; now the leading steel producer in the nation, Chicago turned out one-fifth of the nation's steel in 1962. Chicago's per capita debt is only $206, and the city has a prime credit rating to boot.

Imperishable. Despite that record, Chicago's Mayor Daley plows indefatigably on, seeking still further improvement. He works an 18-hour day, carries pencil and paper on which he jots streams of ideas in shorthand, commands instantaneous action from his political underlings. "He keeps prodding you all the time," says one. He has thousands of friends, but few close ones. "He's like a post office clerk sorting mail," says one associate. "He keeps men in slots. In a general human sense of trusting somebody, the only person really close to him is his wife." Daley's entire attention is devoted to Chicago and to every facet of the city's life. "Ever been to a ball game with Daley?" asks Real Estate Man James Downs. "If the White Sox are losing 10 to 1, he thinks in the next inning they're going to tie it up. He never lets up."

Daley's stubborn resolve to rebuild his city has given Chicago a new stature. At the same time, its old vitality happily continues to beat out the jazzy cacophony that gives Chicago its rowdy rhythm and its imperishable lustiness. Chicago can no more do without its bawdy peep shows or its cackling Paddy Baulers than it can do without its Fields, its Swifts—and its Dick Daleys. In its own broad-shouldered way, in its anatomy and in the art of its clout, in its indestructible zest for life, Chicago is a man among cities.