РЕФЕРАТ
на тему:
“Сhicago”
Chicago,1 with a population of about three and a half million, is the
second largest city in the United States(New York is the first). It is a
centre of industry for the middle part of the country, the most
important Great Lakes port,2 the largest city of Illinois and the seat
of Cook-County.3
Chicago is also the place where Mayor “King Daley”6 directed the police
to brutalize the young people protesting against the US aggression m
South-East Asia while the Democratic Party convention was going on there
in August 1968.
The city is first in the nation in manufacturing of machinery and
electronic parts. Famous are the stockyards and meat-packing plants, i
where cattle from the western prairies are shipped and from which meat
is distributed all over the couritry.7 Called the “Great Central Market
of the USA”, Chicago is the railroad and grain centre of the nation.
Chicago has a vast commerce by many railroads and by the lake, and
exports wheat, meat and manufactured goods.
An unrivalled rail centre, Chicago is called the “Cross-Roads of the
Continent”. It is served by 19 trunk lines and handles 50,000 freight
Cars daily. Also, 40 per cent of the country’s motor freight moves in
and out of Chicago. More airlines converge on Chicago than any other
city of the USA.
Chicago is also an important centre of culture and science. It is the
seat of the University of Chicago and of several other institutions, and
has -important libraries and art collections. Chicago was the site of
the
first nuclear chain reaction (1942) and is still a leader in nuclear
research.8
Owing to its position, Chicago has been the meeting-place of many
political conventions. From six to seven million tourists come to
Chicago fevery year, and another million and a half who come to business
and political gatherings.
In its rapid growth, Chicago survived the great fire of 1871,9 the gang
wars of 1920’s and early 1930’s, political machinations of its “bosses”
and financial speculations of its tycoons. The city was from the start a
big melting-pot of different nationalities. For years Chicago had a
racial stratification unusual even for American cities. It was German,
Polish, Italian, Slavic, Greek, Jewish. Half a million Black Americans
live in its South Side, which is one of the most exclusively black areas
in the world. About one in four Chicago citizens is black. The Chicago
Negroes are almost as numerous as those in New York, a city twice as
large. Chicago’s Negroes have a long history of participation in basic
industry. They are the most proletarian of all nationality-ethnic
groups, and today together with other militant workers they wage a
particularly bitter and difficult battle for their right to live and
work. Called the “City of the Big Shoub ders”,10 Chicago has long become
the centre of American working-class movement In the 1880’s Chicago was
already a scene of bitter labour wars, and the big strike of Chicago
workers of 1886 led to the establishment of May Day as the holiday of
workers of the whole world.
THE CITY
OF SUPERLATIVES
Chicagoans like to claim that their city has the biggest and greatest of
just about everything. Chicago is the second largest city, in the United
States; it is also the tenth biggest in the world. It is important not
to say this in Chicago. The point to bear in mind about Chicago while
talking to Chicagoans is that, no matter what its own size, it has the
biggest everything in the world. Other places in America have the
biggest something, but Chicago has the biggest everything. You may be
convinced after all that most Chicago things are bigger than anywhere
else; it is unfortunate that they are never the things that one wanted
to be big enough. There is, for example, the Merchandise Mart, which
claims to be the world’s largest commercial building, with seven and a
half miles of corridors and its own police force.
In their claims to the biggest and greatest, Chicagoans in a remarkable
number of ways are right Although it is no longer the nation’s largest
meat-packing centre-Omaha, Nebraska, now claims this distinction,
Chicago is the nation’s busiest air, rail and truck centre, and, since
the opening of the St Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the world’s greatest
inland seaport. Chicago also has the world’s largest grain exchange (the
Chicago Board of Trade), the world’s ‘largest hotel (the Conrad Hilton
with 2,600 rooms), and the world’s largest convention and trade-show
facilities. Chicagoans resent any implication that their home is in any
sense the “second city” in the US, as New Yorkers have been known to
call it. They believe Chicago is really an American city (while” “New
York is not America”) and point with pride to, among other things, the
number of red-blooded American authors-including Theodore Dreiser,”
Frank Norris,12 Upton Sinclair’3 and Carl Sandburg14-who have called
Chicago home.
SKY-SCRAPERS IN THE PRAIRIE
When you arrive in Chicago, you may find it hard to believe that this
busy, noisy, modern metropolis with its towering sky-scrapers was until
well into the 19th century a muddy onion swamp. But by 1871 this
unpromising site had become a city of 300,000, the metropolitan centre
of the American Midwest. Then, on October 8 of that year, disaster
struck. It all began in the barn of a certain Mrs. O’Leary on West De
Koven Street where, as the legend goes, a cow kicked over a kerosene
lantern, starting a fire that quickly swept the city. The blaze
destroyed more than 17,000 buildings that left third of the city’s
people homeless. Yet in one sense this tragedy was responsible for
Chicago’s main contribution to the development of modern architecture.
The fire levelled the entire business district, and the city’s engineers
and architects •. had to rebuild from the ground up. Armed with a series
of technological innovations-most notably steel framework and the
hydraulic, lift-they set to work and in the last decades of the 19th
century the sky-scraper was born..William-Le Barren Jenny, one of the
construction engineers, used this new method when he received the
commission to build the Chicago office of the Home Insurance Company. It
was ten stories high, much taller than any building ever before erected.
The building was the first “sky-scraper”, a term now so common for a
high building that few people realize that, to begin with, a
“skyscraper” was a triangular sail used high on the mast of sailing
vessels before steamships came into use.15 Quickly a new Chicago arose
of brick and stone. Within a year the business district was restored
along the crescent formed by Lake Michigan in the city’s west. Here lies
America’s second-ranking canyon of finance, La Salle Street, where the
Board of Trade Building towers above a forest of sky-scrapers. Each
sky-scraper is stamped by a specific commodity: the Wrigley equals
chewing-gum, the “Chicago Tribune” and the “Daily News” mean newspapers,
the Continental Illinois-banking, the Chicago Temple-offices of reputed
firms, the Merchandise Mart-wholesale dry goods, the imposing Marshal
Field-department store de luxe, and so on. Each building stands as if a
huge monument to a trust. While you ride through Chicago you have an
opportunity to see a little of the city. The streets are usually crowded
with traffic at whatever hour you arrive. Over your head thunders the
local elevated train, which runs on a platform. If your route takes you
near the shore of Lake Michigan, you will see a broad boulevard along
the water-front with eight lanes of fast-moving traffic. Beautiful, tall
office buildings and hotels make a spectacular picture against the blue
waters of the lake. If your route lay further back from the lake, you
would see narrow, crowded streets lined with rows and rows of red-brick
houses.
Vegetable sellers may push little carts through the streets and call out
\the names of things for safe in any one of a number of languages. \ One
of Chicago’s many nicknames is the “Windy City”, and despite me US
Weather Bureau, which lists Chicago as only the nation’s 19th windiest,
it richly deserves this nickname-as you will soon agree if you a\e
caught on a Chicago street corner when an icy January gale screams oflf
Lake Michigan. Wind is not the only extreme characteristic of the lo^al
weather. Chicago is noted for its subzero (Fahrenheit) temperatures in
winter and 90°-plus temperatures in summer. And don’t be misled if you
arrive in winter and it seems unreasonably warm. Chicago weather changes
quickly.
THE CENTRE OF CLASS WARS
The most proletarian of American cities, Chicago was a scene of bitter
labour wars, of the Haymarket affair (1886) and of the Pullman strike
(1894). .
Called the “Red Square” of Chicago, Haymarket has become world-famous
for the Haymarket affair of 1886. (The official US history books call it
the “Haymarket Riot”.)
The spring of 1886 was marked by a national strike movement for the
8-hour working day. At the giant McCormick Harvester plant in Chicago,
six striking workers were killed by the police. A mass meeting for May
the 4th was called in the Haymarket. Suddenly the crowded square shook
with the explosion of a bomb thrown by an unknown hand. Seven policemen
and four workers were killed, and many were injured. Amid wild hysteria
eight labour leaders were arrested. All eight arrested workers were
convicted in what is now commonly recognized as a frame-up. Four of
them-Parsons, Spies, Fischer and Engel-were hanged. Five years later,
Governor John Altgeld of Illinois, a rare type in US politics, freed the
four Haymarketers remaining in prison and proclaimed their innocence.
The movement for the 8-hour working day and the Haymarket affair caused
a great swell of trade-union organization. Furthermore International May
Day emerged from this movement, for the International Soci…
I would say that the Chicago Art Museum is one of the top three art
museums in the US, because of its breadth of its collection and for its
accessibility. On a recent visit, I discovered the extensive Chicago
Museum of Science and Technology and fell in love.
Only in the eyes of New Yorkers is Chicago this country’s Second City.
For in the Windy City, visitors will find culture and chaos, sports and
skyscrapers, dramatic architecture and a diverse population.
Incorporated in 1837, the Town of Chicago drew its name from a
Native-American word meaning “great.” Thirty years later, 90,000
residents were left homeless in the Great Chicago Fire, which killed 300
people and left a devastating $200 million in damage. A grave disaster,
the fire nonetheless provided the city an opportunity to rebuild and
grow; by the time it hosted the 1893 World’s Fair, it was home to the
famous “El” train that still encircles the heart of downtown Chicago.
Nearly three million people call Chicago home, a mid-Western mixture of
cultures and races. The city’s motto, “I will,” is an articulation of
its hopes and dreams as the city continues to grow in importance. And
true to its name, it is a great city, with world-champion teams like the
Chicago Bulls and well-beloved teams like the Chicago Cubs. Chicago
sports fans are known around the globe for undying devotion in the
bitter winter to their Bears, and through the long summers in the
bleachers at Wrigley and Comiskey parks.
And what would Chicago be without the blues? This classic American
musical innovation floated up the Mississippi River, where it was
perfected and is still performed throughout the city; the original House
of Blues is located on Dearborn Street and hosts the masters of this
music.
Chicago boasts more than a handful of architectural achievements, from
the towering Sears Tower to the Tribune Tower, whose base includes
stones from famous buildings throughout the world. The city is a growing
cultural haven; the Art Institute of Chicago houses a world-class
collection, from Impressionist masters to more contemporary works in
photography and ethnic art. And from the Art Institute, many of the
city’s major cultural and tourist attractions are within walking
distance, including the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, and the
Hancock Tower.
Nestled on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago can be whatever you want
it to be – a sports fan’s paradise, a music lover’s mecca, a shopper’s
delight, a culture-seeker’s dream. Just don’t for a second call it
boring.
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