Chicago Fire

Chicago's 1871 fire, started by a cow, burned up $200,000,000 worth of property and many a cigaret smoker. Last week another great Chicago fire, started by a cigaret smoker, burned up $8,000,000 worth of property and many a cow.

Shortly after 4 p. m., the great hay barn of the Union Stock Yards & Transit Co. was touched off, authorities believe, by a cigaret butt flicked from careless fingers. The hay acted as a blow torch on the surrounding tinder-like constructions of sprawling Packingtown, the vast stockyards area on Chicago's Southwest Side. Almost daily fires are extinguished in Packingtown. But when the dreaded "all-out" 4-11 signal clanged through the city's firehouses, firemen knew that this was no ordinary stockyards blaze.

Flames leaped from pen to pen, scorched cattle, sheep and hogs, threatened the huge packing plants of Swift & Co. and Armour & Co., sprang at the big Livestock Exchange. Up went the Dexter Pavilion, scene of many a great livestock exposition. Up went the old Stockyards Inn, where generations of packing tycoons had dined and done their deals. Up went the Saddle and Sirloin Club, the Department of Agriculture Building, two banks and a radio station. Up went an elevated station. Aviators over South Bend, Ind. 95 mi. away, could see the tall pillar of smoke.

Over the stockyards fence jumped the flames, began gnawing at the cheap little houses along Halsted Street. Three blocks of them had been licked up before 3,000 firemen and a shifting wind brought the conflagration under control. Toll: eight blocks of buildings; 1,200 homeless; 25 hospitalized; three missing; one dead. Verdict: worst since '71.

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