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Page 1 of 2 Francis Line, the film maker, was the second son of Charles Smith Line. In 1959 C.S. wrote his memiors. In the following pages we have transcribed his notes. Occasionally, we have re-worded his sentences in the story to make them more concise. We hope you will be as facinated as we have in reading his story about America from his perspective.
Chapter One
World Fair, Chicago, 1893
By C. S. Line
My older brother, Allie, and I got to go to the fair toward which all trains converged. It created a major terminal problem in the “Windy City”. Later, father and mother joined us, and we as a family found private rooming quarters at 4344 Cottage Grove Avenue, not over a mile by streetcar to the fair grounds at Jackson Park on the lakefront.
As fair meals could be had for 8-cents, or a full meal with all the trimmings for 15-cents, during our stay of several days, Allie and I found a restaurant downtown that we patronized exclusively. Of course, aside from the fair itself, we did all the numerous “sights” Chicago has to offer, like the museums, art galleries, zoo, parks, Montgomery Tower, Clark and State Streets, etc.
For use at the fair, the government had coined many millions of half dollars, which served afterward as ordinary money in circulation. Such as it were the half-dollars were not monopolized by coin collectors and thus removed from everyday use. I haven’t seen one for 50 years outside of our own sample preserved by us as a souvenir. They were of special design and called “The Columbian Half Dollar”. They were used in the automatic turnstiles for entrance at the gate in lieu of tickets.
Talking about souvenir coins, along with the “Columbian” I have in our coin box a dime I picked up from the dust in the road 50 or more years ago, dated 1799; and a whole series of half dollars with plain and not milled edges, with printing all around the circumference, with varying dates thereon, but mostly 1803 and 1808, which happen to be the dates when my grandfather Smith and grandmother Smith, were born, respectively. I acquired them from a customer I had in Elizabeth, when she came in every week for her 10-cent novel. Week after week she presented these coins in payment. We figured she had gotten so hard up on cash and in need of her reading that she had been forced to “break the bank”, so to speak. Mother, in the old days, had a gold dollar, minted the year gold was discovered in California, which would be worth a fortune today as a rare coin, but it got away from her. We never knew now. Another coin in our collection is a nickel with a hobo etched on the reverse side. It was perfect, but it really belongs to Francis, who found it, originally. Then we have the late $2 bill.
In 1893 there occurred the worst farm depression that was ever visited upon the country. The success of the World’s Fair was all the more remarkable because of the country wide economic conditions. It was written down in history as “The Panic of ‘93”.
William Jennings Bryan, “the great commoner” was at this time making himself heard across the land, as “the boy orator of the Platte” in his speeches about the “cross of gold and the crown of thorns”. His arguments on the “free coinage of silver on a basis of 3 to 1”, linked to his vaunted abolition of the gold standard, captivated many people, so that his oratory through the years resulted in his nomination for president of the U.S. in three succeeding elections. I was disillusioned many years later, when I heard him lecture at a church function, and at that time I put him down as the regular brand of “spellbinder”. His so-called “lecture” which was supposed to be on the missions, turns out to be a denominational “sermon” pure and simple, and was 3-1/2 hours long. He was a rabid Methodist, but that is not a proper subject to discuss in a school auditorium when an educational topic had been advertised. In these matters his diplomacy or judgment failed him, and the length of his effort was enough to pall his hearers, even with the best of orators.
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