George Ade, "The Junk-Shops of Canal Street," in Franklin J. Meine, Stories of the Streets and of the Town: The Chicago Record 1893-1900 (Chicago: Caxton Club, 1941); 79-83.

Some one has asked the question: "What becomes of all the pins?"

The question has never been well answered, because there are no dealers in second-hand pins.

What becomes of the empty bottles, the tin cans, the rags, the broken stove-lids and worn-out copper boilers? They go to Canal Street, sooner or later.

That which is rubbish in a backyard becomes merchandise in Canal Street and some lean-fingered speculator converts it into bright money.

Canal Street is an object lesson in economy, a practical ser- [end page 79] mon on the value of looking after the pennies. A 3-cent bottle is not worth saving, but 100 of these bottles gathered up by a shaggy gentleman carrying a gunny-sack pouch means a clear profit of $3, which sum counts very largely along Canal Street.

The junk-shop region of Canal Street lies south from Taylor Street and is being slowly pushed still farther to the south by new brick buildings. For a block south from Van Buren Street the business front is most imposing, yet the site of these tall handsome buildings with their big windows and gilded signs was occupied only a few years ago by the same sort of tottering, aged and unpainted little structures which may still be found between 12th and 16th streets. Even in this backward region an occasional brick building is showing itself, making the contrast with its neighbors something painful.

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In this second-hand strip and along the overcrowded streets leading off to the west reside many Russian Jews, new to American privileges, but half-recovered from the persecution which held them down for generations and compelled, by force [end page 80] of circumstances, to exercise their commercial instincts in a modest way. If frugality and untiring industry count for anything this district will work out its own salvation. The second generation will do business in tall brick buildings like those up toward Van Buren Street. In the very heart of this populous settlement stands the magnificent Jewish manual training school, a voluntary contribution by the representative Jews of Chicago to the children of their less favored brethren. It combines the common-school features with the modern methods of manual training for both boys and girls. Over 800 children attend regularly.

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After passing 12th Street one could well imagine himself out of Chicago. Every shop sign is painted in the angular characters of the Hebrew alphabet, and even the play-bills in the windows are in Hebrew. The queer little cheap stores, the comfortable manner in which whole families take possession of the sidewalk, the strange language of bargain and sale at the front of every grocery, and the heaps of faded merchandise exposed for sale, give to Junktown a character all its own. The bottle dealer, the rag dealer, the scrap-iron man, the grocer, the butcher, the cheap store man and the saloon-keeper are the business magnates. There are also basement shoe-shops and a few blacksmithing places, one of them having Jewish workmen, certainly a hopeful sign. One purpose of the training school is to encourage the poorer Jews to adopt trades and learn to work with their hands rather than become street peddlers and small dealers in junk.

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Canal Street and its western outlets swarm with children, most of them streaked from playing in the street and, in warm weather, lightly clad with not more than one garment. Happy children they are, most of them plump and healthy, in the bargain. They are always playing in the sun, for Canal Street is so wide and the houses are so low that there is seldom any shade. A bale of rags or a mound of scrap-iron is a famous playhouse, and there is always a prospect of hanging on behind some slow rag-wagon. The horses on Canal Street are too deliberate to run down any children. [end page 81]

There are thousands of bottles packed in barrels and boxes, which lean against the dingy fronts. A nervous man who dreads contagion will surely hold his breath when he passes one of the rag warehouses. It is a musty and mothy odor that hangs around the ramshackle place, and one doesn't like to stop and think where all of those soiled and tattered things came from.

It seems that all the "played-out" and worthless odds and ends of the town have been dumped on Canal Street. The rusty scrap-iron lies around in tangled masses. Decrepit wagons are lined up between the houses. Burned-out boilers are strewn on the vacant lots. The crockery exposed for sale at the cheap stores is dusty and cracked, the suits of clothes are ready to fall to pieces from shoddiness. As for the vegetables, [end page 82] they seem to keep away from Canal Street until they are withered and spotted and consequently cheap.

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The buildings themselves do not stand erect on their foundations. At one corner saloon the bareheaded children go down-hill to get their buckets filled, as the venerable structure seems to have settled back on its haunches. The fences around the scrap-iron yards are propped up from outside.

It is a terribly second-handed neighborhood, and it is no wonder that the eye longs for something new-a new coat of paint on a house, a new dress on a woman, a new "Rags Bought" sign. But everything is picturesquely dull and smoke stained. At every breath of wind the dust is gathered in clouds and blown into the stuffy little second-story bedrooms, from the windows of which the heads are always sticking out.

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It may be found, upon investigation, that, considering what these poor people get in the way of home comforts, they pay more dearly than the families on a boulevard. [page 83]