The growth of Chicago is one of the marvels of the world. I do not wonder that it is incomprehensible even to those who have seen it year by year. As I remember it in 1860, it was one of the shabbiest and most unattractive cities of about a hundred thousand inhabitants anywhere to be found; but even then it had more than trebled its size in ten years; the streets were mud sloughs, the sidewalks were a series of stairs and more or less rotten planks, half the town was in process of elevation above the tadpole level, and a considerable part of it was on wheels—the moving house being about the only wheeled vehicle that could get around with any comfort to the passengers. The west side was a straggling shanty-town, the north side was a country village with two or three “aristocratic” houses occupying a square, the south side had not a handsome business building in it, nor a public edifice of any merit except a couple of churches, but there were a few pleasant residences on Michigan avenue fronting the encroaching lake, and on Wabash avenue. Yet I am not sure that even then the exceedingly busy and excited traders and speculators did not feel that the town was more important than New York. For it had a great business. Aside from its real estate operations, its trade that year was set down at $97,000,000, embracing its dealing in produce, its wholesale supply business, and its manufacturing. No one then, however, would have dared to predict that the value of trade in 1887 would be, as it was, $1,103,000,000. Nor could any one have believed that the population of 100,000 would reach in 1887 nearly 800,000 (estimated 782,644), likely to reach in 1888, with the annexation of contiguous villages that have become physically a part of the city, the amount of 900,000. Growing at its usual rate for several years past, the city is certain in a couple of years to count its million of people. And there is not probably anywhere congregated a more active and aggressive million, with so great a proportion of young, ambitious blood. Other figures keep pace with those of trade and population. I will mention only one or two of them here. The national banks, in 1887, had a capital of $15,800,000, in which the deposits were $80,473,740, the loans and discounts $63,113,821, the surplus and profits $6,320,559. The First National is, I believe, the second or third largest banking house in the country, having a deposit account of over twenty-two millions. The figures given only include the national banks; add to these the private banks, and the deposits of Chicago in 1887 were $105,307,000. The aggregate bank clearings of the city were $2,969,216,210.00, an increase of 14 per cent, over 1880. It should be noted that there were only twenty-one banks in the clearing house (with an aggregate capital and surplus of $28,514,000), and that the fewer the banks the smaller the total clearings will be. The aggregate Board of Trade clearings for 1887 were $78,179,809.