Chicago's Luck

Lucky the mother whose sons succor her in an hour of need. Luckier the mother whose sons, in their time of plenty, come with filial presents and a heart of gratitude. Chicago, mother of vast fortunes in grain, machinery, mail-order goods and department store wares, last week rejoiced over two costly filial presents. From John G. Shedd, aging board chairman of Marshall Field & Co., came a third million to add to two he had promised for the construction of a ne plus ultra city aquarium in Grant Park. From Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears Roebuck & Co.), came three millions outright to restore the old Fine Arts building of World's Fair days in Jackson Park and house within it a museum of industrial progress. Mr. Shedd's increased aquarium gift came forth promptly when he learned that two millions would not pay for a plant planned by architects to be the greatest ichthyological edifice--from a scientific standpoint--in the world. The U. S. has, or is to have: the Golden Gate Park Aquarium (San Francisco), $200,000; the St. Louis Aquarium, $1,500,000; the New York Aquarium, antiquated but visited by millions annually (and now being re-stuccoed) after years of supremacy in the U. S. A commission of experts was sent last autumn to study aquaria abroad--the invertebrate collection at Naples, biological research at Monaco, artificial salinity in Berlin, lighting of tanks in London. Mr. Rosenwald's industrial museum gift paralleled the $2,500,000 bequest by the late Henry R. Towne, lock and hardware man, to New York for a Museum of Peaceful Arts (TIME, April 12): Mr. Towne had been interested in such a museum by Dr. George F. Kunz, mineralogist and gem expert, an honorary fellow of the American Museum of Natural History, who had visited every world's fair since the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. Announcement of the Towne bequest sent experts in agriculture, animal industry, mining and metallurgy, transportation, engineering, aeronautics, etc., etc., flocking to Europe to study exhibits in such places as the German Museum in Munich, which contains replicas or originals of epochal contrivances, including James Watt's first steam engine, Diesel's oil-compression engine, Dunlop's original rubber tires. The finding of these experts will assist Chicago's industrialists as well as New York's, in assembling a record of the material ascendancy of mankind, a record that is to be made practical rather than theoretical, with many work ng models of machinery, to afford inventors an industrial laboratory.