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more than a fire, a distant one--the great Chicago fire, October 7th, 1871, which burned that
city-- its vast commercial section--to the ground, and instantly and incidentally produced a
financial panic, vicious though of short duration in various other cities in America. The fire began
on Saturday and continued apparently unabated until the following Wednesday. It destroyed the
banks, the commercial houses, the shipping conveniences, and vast stretches of property. The
heaviest loss fell naturally upon the insurance companies, which instantly, in many cases--the
majority--closed their doors. This threw the loss back on the manufacturers and wholesalers in
other cities who had had dealings with Chicago as well as the merchants of that city. Again, very
grievous losses were borne by the host of eastern capitalists which had for years past partly
owned, or held heavy mortgages on, the magnificent buildings for business purposes and
residences in which Chicago was already rivaling every city on the continent. Transportation
was disturbed, and the keen scent of Wall Street, and Third Street in Philadelphia, and State
Street in Boston, instantly perceived in the early reports the gravity of the situation. Nothing
could be done on Saturday or Sunday after the exchange closed, for the opening reports came
too late. On Monday, however, the facts were pouring in thick and fast; and the owners of
railroad securities, government securities, street-car securities, and, indeed, all other forms of
stocks and bonds, began to throw them on the market in order to raise cash. The banks
naturally were calling their loans, and the result was a stock stampede which equaled the Black
Friday of Wall Street of two years before.
Cowperwood and his father were out of town at the time the fire began. They had gone with
several friends--bankers--to look at a proposed route of extension of a local steam-railroad, on
which a loan was desired. In buggies they had driven over a good portion of the route, and were
returning to Philadelphia late Sunday evening when the cries of newsboys hawking an "extra"
reached their ears.
"Ho! Extra! Extra! All about the big Chicago fire!"
"Ho! Extra! Extra! Chicago burning down! Extra! Extra!"
The cries were long-drawn-out, ominous, pathetic. In the dusk of the dreary Sunday afternoon,
when the city had apparently retired to Sabbath meditation and prayer, with that tinge of the
dying year in the foliage and in the air, one caught a sense of something grim and gloomy.
"Hey, boy," called Cowperwood, listening, seeing a shabbily clothed misfit of a boy with a
bundle of papers under his arm turning a corner. "What's that? Chicago burning!"
He looked at his father and the other men in a significant way as he reached for the paper, and
then, glancing at the headlines, realized the worst.
ALL CHICAGO BURNING
FIRE RAGES UNCHECKED IN COMMERCIAL SECTION SINCE YESTERDAY EVENING.
BANKS, COMMERCIAL HOUSES, PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN RUINS. DIRECT TELEGRAPHIC
COMMUNICATION SUSPENDED SINCE THREE O'CLOCK TO-DAY. NO END TO
PROGRESS OF DISASTER IN SIGHT.
"That looks rather serious," he said, calmly, to his companions, a cold, commanding force
coming into his eyes and voice. To his father he said a little later, "It's panic, unless the majority
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