ive American field. Messrs. Blomgren Brothers & Co. are not only mechanics of the highest grade, but they are, strictly speaking, artists also, and the industry in which they hold an acknowledged leading position is so essentially scientific in its multifarious details that only strictly first-class men can engage in it successfully.

THE INTER OCEAN has for a long time employed this house to do its fine electrotye and stereotype work, and when it is stated further, that such work has been entirely satisfactory, the readers of this journal will be disposed to think that the house is fully competent to compete with any establishment of the kind west of the Atlantic seaboard.

The Blomgren brothers are genial gentlemen, thoroughly interested in their calling, and always ready to show visitors through their great foundry, where an enormous capital has been employed in the purchase of the most expensive and elaborate machinery, and in the employ of the best experts, whose exclusive time and talents can only be commanded by a large compensation. In the business to which these enterprising Scandinavians have devoted themselves absolute accuracy of detail is necessary, and that accuracy characterizes all their operations is abundantly demonstrated by the big reputation they have gained throughout the Northwest. The firm has been nine years in business, and is now in the weekly receipt of orders from all parts of the United States. All work done by this house is thoroughly done and will give perfect satisfaction.

CHICAGO TYPE FOUNDRY.

MARDER, LUSE & CO.

The Chicago Type Foundry, which is the synonym of this well-known firm, was established in 1855. Although the city since then has quintupled in growth, the business of this house has surpassed even this wonderful development. It not only has kept up to the demands of the near trade, but has established successful branch houses at San Francisco for the Pacific trade, and at Minneapolis for the convenience of the Northwest.

Aside from correct principles of trade, which are interwoven with all the transactions of this firm, much of its success may

be attributed to the fact that it has brought its productions to an exact science. Instead of casting the various types at hap-hazard, as has been and still is the custom of many other founders, every font produced in this house bears its precise mathematical proportion to its standard. Practical printers appreciate this advantage to such an extent that other foundries are beginning to yield to the inevitable by conforming to "the American system of interchangeable type bodies," which is the standard adopted by this house.

The rapid growth of Chicago business has forced many firms into prominence, but it is a matter of local pride to instance Marder, Luse & Co., who have not only responded promptly to the demand made upon their facilities, but have added laurels to the Western metropolis by establishing a standard which is rapidly being followed by the older cities of the East.

It is not too much to say of this house that it can thoroughly equip a printing establishment of any magnitude, and that no office can be entirely complete without drawing to some extent upon its resources.

In addition to a comprehensive price list and catalogue, which leaves nothing to be guessed at, they also issue a quarterly specimen showing their latest productions.

THE ILLINOIS TYPE FOUNDING CO. LOCATED AT 265 FRANKLIN STREET, was incorporated in 1872, and commenced business the same year at 61 and 63 West Lake street. They were afterward at 196 South Clark street, then at 177 Fifth avenue, and in 1882 movedto their present commodious quarters. They manufacture type, brass rule, leads, slugs, etc., and are general dealers in printing presses, paper-cutters, and all articles used by printers. Entire offices fitted out with all that may be required. This foundry aims particularly to supply Western and Northwertern offices with goods suitable to their requirements. Some of the largest offices in this section have been furnished by them, including THE INTER OCEAN, and the universal satisfaction their goods are giving is sufficient evidence that their type is of the best character. Specimen books and special estimates are cheerfully furnished to all who contemplate purchasing printers' material.

THE CHICAGO THEATERS.

HISTORICAL.

EARLY DAYS ON THE CHICAGO STAGE.. Among the evidences that best determine the substantial growth of a community are the increase and prosperity of its theaters. The desire for' amusement is so great in human nature that it finds expression in the coarsest forms and commonest surroundings, and the class or quality of the entertainment progresses toward a higher tone and more elevated plane as the variety of taste enlarges and improves with the development of population. A retrospect of fifty years is too great in the art view of Chicago life. At that time the actual events of a day were sufficiently dramatic and exciting, and the wild sounds of the prairie had enough of weird music in them to quite shut out thought of the mimicry of dangers, emotions, and suffering. But presently there grew into favor a number of athletic games that evinced the craving for the stir of the fancies, and the masquerading of the young people as Indians foreshadowed a time when the play should be the thing.

It was not, however, until 1846 that anything deserving the name of theatric enterprise was projected in Chicago. Some few entertainments had been given in halls and chance places, quite vagrant in character, though there is a tradition that these pioneer mountebanks were immensely

AMUSING AMONG OUR EARLY SETTLERS.

There was some local talent, besides, that played the fiddles, sang songs, took off persons, and cleared some of the obstacles from the way of the coming drama. In the winter of 1846-7 there was an attempt at regular theatrical entertainments, performances being given in the second story of a building on Dearborn street, near South Water.

About that time John B. Rice came from Buffalo to Chicago, perceived the excellent chance for a theater, and enterprisingly set to work to take advantage of the growing demand. He built a small frame theater on Randolph street, east of Dearborn, and kept it open during the spring, summer, and fall seasons. The winter season, now the best,

was then quite dull, so Mr. Rice used to run his company, a very good stock organization, up to Milwaukee for the winter period. The plays were generally classic or at least of standard worth, a taste for trash and absurdity not having prevalence then. But it was the fashion in order to relieve any undue strain upon the patience sensibilities of an audience, to give variety to the performance. So it was the custom, when the curtain had descended on an act of a play, Shakespearean perhaps, to send some one before the curtain to sing or dance. A sailor's hornpipe or a Highland fling was often the prelude to

or

A SOUL-STIRRING TRAGIC EPISODE, and in some cases one of the actors of the drama did the entre act diversion. There was generally a farcical afterpiece to send the audiences away in good spirits. The variety show of to-day was then unknown. The stars who traveled in annual tour of the country used to play at this house, so that the public got the best fruits of the American stage, save in exceptional instances. This theater, the progenitor, so to speak, of the magnificent structure of theaters now our pride, was burned in 1850, and J. H. McVicker and Sam Myers, members of the company, took the troupe on the road, playing on their own account, while Rice devoted himself to the building of a new theater, this time of brick and on Dearborn street, between Randolph and Washington. This was then regarded as a very imposing edifice, and was opened in the spring of 1851.

McVicker built a theater in 1857, and opened it with "Money. From that time began the real theater life of Chicago, and about that period hovered what many now believe to have been the spirit of the best days of the drama. There were memorable times, to be sure, between that date and the fire of 1871, which, practically, began a new era for Chicago, and it would be a pleasant task to here set down the things that are chiefly worth remembering were space available. There are recollections of great actors gone, of others in the decline of power, still others grown since then into the flower of greatness, and many who, then obscure, are now prominent in place and favored by popularity. Fifty years is but a miracle of time in a city's life, but it is very long for the contemplation of panoramic events, most of them ripening before the birth of that which makes the Chicago of to-day.

THE FIRST OF ANY OPERA

heard in Chicago was in 1860. Strakosch then brought out a concert company, at the head

of which were Patti and Brignoli, and they sang parts of opera at McVicker's. This experiment was so very well received that Grau came out next year with a thoroughly equipped opera company, numbering seventy people, and gave three weeks of opera. It was a sensation. The musical sense of Chicago was vindicated, and the taste of the people highly extolled. There is no fear that we do not get credit for equally nice discrimination to-day.

The theater tone, however, is much purer, and it is only that melancholy devotion to things forever gone out of reach that permits any one to contrast the condition of thirty years ago to the disadvantage of the present state of affairs. We are much better off in many respects than we were when the stock companies of McVicker's, the Museum, the Adelphi, Hooley's, or the permanent minstrel companies gave the entertainments, varied by the occasional coming of a star like Cushman, Forrest, Booth, Barrett, Ristori, Edwin Adams, Owens, Lucca, Parepa Rosa, or any of those, who came with more eclat than do corresponding players now, when we are used to a constant round of greatness in rivalry. There were but three or four theaters then, and events were rarer; enthusiasm was greater, because patronage was more special to the theater. In the past ten years the theatric growth of Chicago has been larger and of vaster importance to the city than during the thirty years preceding them, and we get more in one year than the people of a quarter of a century ago obtained in ten years. We have now

SIXTEEN PERMANENT PLACES OF AMUSEMENT and five or six halls where there are occasional entertainments, exclusive of private institutions that continually appeal to the public with one or another form of diversion.

of

The recognized theaters are McVicker's. Haverly's, the Grand Opera House, Hooley's, the Olympic, the Academy Music, the Criterion, the Lyceum, the National, the Chicago Museum Theater, the Halsted Street Opera House, the New Metropolitan, and the West and South Side Museums. In Central Music Hall, Farwell Hall, Weber Hall, Hershey Hall, the West End Opera House, there is oftener something doing than not. The theaters named are capable of accommodating 25,000 people nightly, and it is a small computation to say our theaters entertain. 100,000 people every week, on an average, throughout the year. The value of Chicago as an amusement center can be very clearly perceived. On this basis -which is very just when we remember that it covers no other patronage than that set down to the regular theaters and takes the middle range of prices-the people of Chicago spend more than $5,200,000 for their amusement each year. Not one of the Chicago theaters but is a largely profitable enterprise, and yet there is only

one

manager who owns his own theater. His income per annum is, therefore, some $20,000 greater than any of the others, though he plays to no larger business, theaters of his class considered. The rent of Chicago theaters ranges from $5,000 to $30,000 a year. The total value of theater property in Chicago is about $3,000,000. The contrast between this prosperous condition and the wooden theater of 1846 demonstrates what Chicago has done in less than forty years, for the enterprise of which this is an illustration has been universal in

corresponding effects, since the theaters follow commercial growth and prosperity, and are never found successful in laggard communities.

M'VICKER'S THEATER,

AND ITS VETERAN PROPRIETOR. To write the history of McVicker's Theater would be to review the dramatic record of Chicago, for it is the oldest house in the West, and has always been at the head and front of theatrical affairs. Science and art have suggested no practical improvement it has not been the first to adopt, and for a play to have been presented or an actor to have appeared before its footlights has been a certificate of merit to the public and to the profession. It has always been recognized and respected the world over as a perfectly successful theater, conducted solely in the interest of the truest and best types of the drama, and the motive of its proprietor during the third of a century he has spent in Chicago, has ever been to elevate the taste of the people, to encourage that which is good, and to condemn that which is bad in the art of which he is so noble a representative.

Mr. McVicker was born in New York in 1922, and in his early youth developed a him "behind the scenes." fondness for the drama, which naturally led He made his first

entered the profession at the bottom of the appearance in amateur entertainments, but ladder as a call boy at the St. Charles Theater of New Orleans, then under the management of

THE FAMOUS SOL SMITH.

Here he educated himself by observation and by the study of the famous actors whom it was his duty to call upon the stage. After three years of this sort of service, at the age of 20, he was given minor parts in the plays, his debut being a speech ten lines in length. Having shed his swaddling clothes, he went to Nashville in the company of Mr. Neafie, where he appeared in heavy tragedy with considerable success; but his first adventure in the higher role of the drama was at the National Theater of Cincinnati, being there given the proud position of "first walking gentleman" of a stock company that was quite celebrated in its day.

A few years after he returned to New Orleans and played comedy parts at the American Theater, making his first great hit as "the grave-digger" to Edwin Forrest's Hamlet in 1847, being then 25 years of age. He accompanied Forrest on his tour, and finally landed in Chicago, where he joined John B. Rice's company at the old theater on Dearborn street, and remained here four years.

While here he purchased the comedy pieces of Dan Marble, and in 1852 started out as a star, meeting with wonderful success and becoming recognized as the leading comedian of that day. In 1855 he made a tour of Europe, and played "Sam Patch" for twelve consecutive weeks in London.

He

THE FIRST "M'VICKER'S THEATER.' Returning to America in 1856, he assumed the management of Wood's Theater in St. Louis, but remained there only one season. returning to Chicago in 1857 to stay. built a theater on the site he occupies today, and on the 5th of November, 1857, opened it with the following bill, the original copy of which hangs in his office: