Bowels of Chicago

London, Paris, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston all shoot their citizens through tubes in the bowels of the earth as the quickest means of getting them from work to home to work. Chicago, bigger than Paris, Philadelphia or Boston, has eschewed the convenience of subways, kept her citizens where God put them, atop the earth. But Chicago has gone into the bowels of the earth for another convenience that these other cities lack-- freight subways. Last week a group of Chicagoans invaded Washington seeking capital from the R. F. C. to add to Chicago's tunnel traffic a new and livelier commodity: steam. Chicago's freight tunnels, which most Chicagoans live and die without ever seeing, have little likeness to the passenger subways of other cities. They lie not just beneath the street but 40 feet below the surface. Driven through clay (bed rock is several hundred feet below the surface in Chicago's Loop) and walled with concrete a foot thick, they are but six feet wide and seven and a half feet high. There are 62 miles of such tunnels, under nearly every street of downtown Chicago. Through them engineers guide small electric locomotives (running on a 2-ft. gauge track and powered by current from wires overhead) which draw trains of ten or 15 "freight cars" each four feet wide and twelve feet long--carrying about as much goods as a fair-sized motor truck. The freight tunnel system, begun in 1901, was mainly an accident; the first tunnels were built by an independent telephone company which went on the rocks. Reorganization followed; Ogden Armour and E. H. Harriman put in new capital. The system was enlarged, 49 connections made with different freight terminals of Chicago's numerous railroads. The tunnel system was set at work distributing and collecting package freight between railroads and shippers; also transferring freight from railroad to railroad, also distributing coal to office buildings which took it up to their furnaces by conveyors; also collecting ashes. Frequently in making excavations for new buildings it was found convenient simply to open a hole into the tunnels and pour the earth removed down into tunnel cars. Many acres of land, including much of that where the Century of Progress Exposition now stands, were "made" by ashes and earth carted off for disposal by the tunnel freight system and dumped along the lake front. Despite all this the tunnel system went upon the rocks in 1912, had to be reorganized. Sherman Weld Tracy, former railroad man, then fortyish, now sixtyish and grey-haired, was put in charge. Since then he has kept the tunnels out of receivership but it is no secret that they have never been a very profitable venture. Meantime Ogden Armour and E. H. Harriman are dead. Their widows are today two of Mr. Tracy's biggest stockholders, and John J. Mitchell, Mrs. Armour's son-in-law, is vice president. For the widows and orphans Mr. Tracy last week acted.

Report had it that Chicago Tunnel Co. had bought a $700,000 site (at Randolph Street on the lake front) from the Illinois Central R. R., planned to build there a $7,000,000 steam plant. Messrs. Tracy and Mitchell rushed to Washington to negotiate with the R. F. C. for $4,000,000. If they get it, they plan to lay 24-in. steam pipes beside the tracks in their tunnel, sell steam to office buildings for heating, cooling systems.

Central station steam is no novelty in business. Already about 10% of Chicago's buildings are heated by steam sold by Illinois Maintenance Co. (an ex-Insull concern). Other cities have central steam systems. Largest is in Manhattan, served by New York Steam Co. which last year sold eleven billion pounds of steam. Problem for a new steam company in Chicago is to sell steam to the 90% of Loop buildings which now have individual heating plants.

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