14. The lumber merchants
Lumber arrived in Chicago via ships and trains, stored on the city’s west side while awaiting sale and shipment. Merchants and brokers purchased the limber on arrival in the port, and sold it to customers, sometimes in the city, but most often to the developing towns to the west. At any one time, an inventory of up to 400 million board feet stocked the yards. Trains carrying lumber westward returned carrying grain and livestock, which fed Chicago’s Union Stockyards and the meatpackers there. The Chicago River became lined with wharves and piers, boat basins, factories, warehouses, silos, and the community of watermen living and working at the port.
Beyond the waterfront, itself stood the communities and accommodations attendant in any great port of the day. They included offices for freight brokers and salesmen, taverns and saloons, boarding houses, and brothels. The areas immediately around the Chicago River became the centers for vice in the city. Pickpockets, pimps and their prostitutes, and other criminals, roamed the streets day and night. On the west side, most of the laborers worked for the lumbermen, hired by the day to unload lumber ships and stack the cargo in the lumber yards. Further upriver, the same routine applied to hiring men to unload coal, a dirty and often dangerous job.