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5. The Beauty
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5 the Beauty The Haymarket executions emboldened a new generation of American newspapermen and reformers, but none quite like twenty-seven-yearold Chicago Evening Post columnist and second-generation Irishman Finley Peter Dunne. Writing under the guise of a fictional Bridgeport saloon keeper named Martin J. (or Mr.) Dooley, Dunne called anarchism a “humbug” or unproven political philosophy, hardly a threat to the American democracy. To Dunne, the anarchist’s mentality was surprisingly similar to that of the mainly Irish Chicago policemen they were supposedly trying to kill. “Did ye iver see an American or an Irishman an arnychist?” Dunne had Mr. Dooley ask his saloon regulars in an Irish brogue. “Naw, an’ ye niver will. Whin an Irishman thinks th’ way iv thim la-ads he goes on th’ polis force an’ draws his eighty-three-thirty-three f’r throwin’ lodg-in’-house bums into th’ patrol wagon.” Instead, Dunne sought to humanize the anarchists, something the generation of older newspapermen refused to do. He called one Casey, as Mr. Dooley related: “Be that as it may . . . [Casey] was a most ferocious man. Manny’s th’ time I’ve heerd him lecture to little Matt Doolan asleep like a log behind th’ shtove [in Dooley’s saloon]. ‘What ar-re we comin’ to?’ he’d say. . . . Pretty soon in come a little woman with a shawl over her head—a little German lady. Says she: ‘Where’s me hoosband,’ in a German brogue ye cud cut with an ax. . . . [Meanwhile] ‘Ar-re ye min or ar-re ye slaves,’ [Casey] says to Doolan [in the back of the saloon]. ‘Julius,’ says his wife, ‘vat ye doin’ here, ye blackguard . . . coomin’ ze, or be hivens I’ll break ye’er jaw,’ she says. Well, sir, [Casey] turned 126 . chapter five white an’ come over as meek as a lamb. . . . Afther a while Doolan woke up an’ says he: ‘Where’s me frin’?’ ‘Gone [with his wife],’ says I. . . . ‘Well,’ says Doolan, ’tis on’y another victhry iv th’ rulin’ classes.’”1 Few other topics were off limits to the irrepressible Mr. Dooley as well. As temperance advocates were gathering strength in Gilded Age Chicago, Mr. Dooley claimed that he had read in a newspaper that “liquor is food.” “D’ye think [whisky] sustains life?” one of Dooley’s patrons asked. “It has sustained mine f’r many years” was the reply. Dooley also spoke of another Chicago institution, the World’s Fair “hootchy-kootchy” belly dancers: They’ll be mountains iv infant food an’ canned prunes, an’ pickle casters, an’ pants, an’ boots, an’ shoes an’ paintin’s. They’ll be all th’ wondhers iv modhern science. Ye can see how shirts ar-re made, an’ what gives life to th’ sody fountain. The’ man that makes th’ glue that binds’ll be wearin’ more medals thin an officer iv th’ English ar-my. . . . Where did I bring up, says ye? In th’ fr-ront seat iv a playhouse with me eye glued on a lady iv th’ sultan’s coort . . . thryin’ to twisht out iv hersilf.2 The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition remains the most celebrated entertainment event in Chicago history. First publicly proposed in a letter to the Chicago Times, the World’s Fair was a shining moment that defied the corruption, pollution, social disorder, disease, and poverty that was rampant in late-nineteenth-century Chicago. Such an incongruity caught the attention of the Puck humor magazine, which portrayed Chicago’s beauty and beast personas in a 1893 cartoon that showed a goddesslike figure labeled “Beneficence” directing residents from the dark, smoke-choked city to the fair’s pristine garden setting. The fair was awarded to Chicago through an unprecedented and bitterly fought war with New York City and its newspapers . With Chicago’s selection as the location, the World’s Fair Department of Publicity created one of the first public relations agencies in the world, working closely with the mass news media to make the fair a success. The fair itself came to be defined through its portrayal in the mass news media, newspapers, magazines, and newspaper guide books as a softly focused, surrealistic black-and-white utopian image. And underneath it all percolated Chicago’s crusade to be Number One.3 the World Comes to Chicago The movement to stage a world’s fair in Chicago began in 1882 when the Chicago Times published a letter from a Chicago dental surgeon, Dr. Allison W...