20

T H E C I T I E S O F A M E R I C A

PEORÍABy ELISE MORROW

Long libeled as a rube town, this "whisky-making,earth-moving capital of the universe" is actually abustling city of violent contrasts. It abounds in bothchurches and saloons, civic conscience and gambling.

This is the sixty-second of a »cries of arli-c'lcs on America's niOHt colorful cities. Thenext, wliirh deals wiih St. Auguslinu, Flor-ida, will appear in our iMarch 5tli issue.

XCEPT for Brooklyn, no community in theUnited States has been slandered so elabo-rately as Peoria, Illinois. Generations ofcomedians have vulgarized Peoria as the

symbol of the rube and the boob, and have usedthe city's name to estahlish a suitable backgrotindfor jokes about libidinous drummers, Peoria hasbecome a companion word for "hayseed," an ail-American common denominator, a municipal equiva-lent of the man in the street.

This libelous comedy, which identifies Peoriaas provincialism reduced to absurdity, has givenPeoria a spurious value in American culture

which has little to do with the town itself. Themythical civic personality is related to the realityonly in so far as Peoria is an average Americanmidland city and the vigorous fulfillment of theaverage American town. It has no individualitywhich is not wholly American and no eccentricity orvirtue which is not entirely indigenous to the Mid-west.

Peoria lies, most fortunately, on the western hankof the Illinois River, on a lovely upland sweep risingout of the rich Central Illinois prairie. The Illinoisis a pretty, placid river, and is a major segment ofthe Lakes-to-GuIf inland waterway. It has givenPeoria cheap transportation for its aggressive anddiversified industry, and scenery for one of the mostspectacularly beautiful residential sections in thecountry. Peoria's finest homes are buüt along bluffswhich rise 300 feet ahove a stretch of the river sowide and calm tbat it is called Lake Peoria. Près.Theodore Roosevelt is quoted as having descrihedGrandview Drive, the principal residential street.

leading llatcars with the product of the iialcr-pillar Tractor Company, Peoria's biggest employer.

The state's second-largest city—only Chicago is bigger—lies ou the western bank of the Illinois River,an important segment of the Greal-Lakes-to-GuIf inland waterway. The population is about 117,000.

Robert G. Lc Tourneau, maker of excavating ma-chinery. HU slogan is "God Runs My Business."

as "The World's Most Beautiful Drive," an acco-lade which has been commemorated in the callletters of Peoria's largest radio station, WMBD.

The village of Chicago was a precinct of PeoriaCounty from the time tbe county was organized, in1825, untu 1831. Now Peoria is, next to Chicago,the largest city in Illinois. According to tbe bestavailable estimates, it has a population of 117,000within the city limits, and 68,000 more persons liveon Its perimeter. Its claim to heing the oldest con-tinuous settlement in the state, although sometimeschallenged, is generally accepted. First charted,fortified and colonized by the French in the lateseventeenth century, Peoria has heen a civilizedsettlement since 1691.

Peoria was, successively, under French, Spanish,British and, finally, American control, and the orig-inal American settlers were the hardy Anglo-Saxon pioneers who spread through the Illinoiscountry from Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland.The heavy German immigration of the late 184O's,which played such an important role in determhiingthe character of St. Louis, also provided a Teutonicoverlay for Peoria, and after them came the Irish.

This is a city of violent contrasts, as tangible asthe differences in its air and weather. It can be clearmoonlight in the residential districts on the bluffsand yellow with fog in the ugly, frequently foul-snielling industrial valley. Politicians have usedthis cleavage with considerahle success for years,reducing the city's problems to a conflict between'the haves on the blufïs and the have-nots in thevalley. Its further contrasts include an abundanceof churches and an abundance of saloons; a genuine,highly developed and progressive civic conscious-ness, and a long and odorous history of gamblingand sin dens.

Peoria is described by its friendly postmaster,Howard Gorman, aa "the whisky-making, earth-

ßradley University student» rehearsing their annual musical. The school,founded in 1897, teaches everything from the humanities to watchmaking.

Motoring depositors of the JelTerson Bank heat the parking prohlem by us-ing the drive-in Icllers' windows, among the first established in the Midwest.

nioving capital of the universe." This, althoughgrandiose, is reasonably a,ccurate. Boosters callPeoria "tbe city of good spirits." Whisky did helpto define its original character and has continued,almost more than any other single factor, to influ-ence its history. Brewers were prominent among theindustrial founding fathers, and whisky and beer.Supplemented always by a variety of smaller manu-facturing, were the economic backbone until theGarth movers arrived. Hiram Walker operates inPeoria the largest single whisky-distilling unit intbe world.

The city's largest industry today is the earth-nioving Caterpillar Tractor Company. The "Cat"plant in East Peoria employs 22,000. Caterpillar isthe spiritual home of Alexander Botts, the wild andttiarvelous tractor salesman of Saturday EveningPost fiction. Peoria's other leading manufacturer ofearth-moving machinery is Robert G. Le Toumeau,An eccentric genius whose slogan is "God Runs MyBusiness."

With Caterpillar and Le Toumeau, the lai^estemployers in Peoria are the Keystone Steel andWire Company, Hiram Walker, and AltorferBrothers—washing machines. Beyond them, thereW an astonishing variety of large and small opera-tions—more tban 200 industrial firms producing1500 diflerent products, including everything fromcommercial solvents to golf-club-head covers.

Such industrial diversification gives Peoria anUnusual economic stability. Tbe city also drawsUpon the fat Illinois farm land which surrounds it.Peoria lies fifty mü(>s from the geographic heart oftbe great American com belt, and 150 miles fromthe center of the nation's cattle-raising industry.The United States Department of Agriculture, aftersearching the entire Middle West, chose Peoria asthe perfect site for a $2,000,000 regional researchlaboratory to develop new and extended uses for

farm commodities and their hy-products. One offour such laboratories in the coimtry, it has had along list of achievements in the past eight years,among them discoveries which made possible thelni^e-scale commercial production of penicillin.

That the name of a city so fortunate and fruitfulcould have been taken in vain so relentlessly for solong is a source of wonder to most Peorians. Someserenely attribute it to the pure melodiousness of theold Indian word, Peoria, a little exotic, but entirelyAmerican, which rolls so nicely on the tongue; moreare resentful of the implication that "Peoria" issynonymous with "hick town."

"We don't laugh when someone says 'Peoria,'"one of the city's first citizens remarked not long agowhen the subject came up for discussion.

Many Peorians date their city's downfall in tbenational mytbology to two masterpieces of libelvisited upon tbem in the eátly '2O's. The first is ascene in a popular play of the period, calledLightnin', in which an addlepated girl says mourn-fully tbat tbe only reason she and her husbandgot married was that they happened to be ihPeoria and it rained all week.

The second is a gay little madrigal, written in1925 by Billy Rose, which was still being sung bysoldiers and sidlors during tbe second World War.It is called I Wish't I Was in Peoria, and it has eightstanzas, all equally derisive, but in several cases re-markably prescient. The last stanza says that "theytrim their nails with guns in Peoria," a statementwhich would not have seemed, at times in the pastfew years, much of an exaggeration.

Earlier stanzas allege that:

The present mayor of PeoriaWorks in a five-and-ten-cent storia. . . .

PHOTOGRAPHY BY FKANK ROSS

They chased the laundry out of Peoria,The legislature passed a lawriaAnd bought a bathtub for Peoria.

This whimsey has a peculiar connection withpresent reality. Mayor Carl O. Triebel, who headsthe first remotely successful reform administrationin Peoria's history, never worked in a ñve-and-ten,but he is the owner of the Ideal Troy Laundry, oneof the largest laundries in the city. He was elected in1945. Mayor Triebel is a very plain man, referred toboth by himself and by his enemies as " a damneddumb Dutchman." He lacks completely the silver-tor^ued, keys-to-the-city expansiveness of manyMidwestern municipal officiak, but he is stubborn,patient, honest and sincere. He is also very philo-sophical.

Recently, while shepherding a visitor about thecity. Mayor Triebel drove past the Ideal Troy and,pointing to it, said, "That's what makes it [)ossiblefor me to be mayor." He has considerable affectionfor the laundry, and he went on to explain thatrunning a laundry is good training for running a city.

"I t makes you patient and fatalistic," he said."Things come in dirty and go out clean, and everyweek they lose a little something. . . . You can't bea perfectionist and run a laundry any more than youcan Be a perfectionist and run a city."

In his campaign Triebel was backed by an anony-mous business group, with the help of Peoria'svigorous and progressive Association of Commerce.This group is called, interchangeably, "the betterelement" and, by those hostile to it, "the secretsixteen." Triebel certainly undertook one of themost difficult jobs in municipal administration whenhe undertook to clean up Peoria. Probably only aman of his patient, forbearing personality couldhave weathered the difficulties of the job; evenTriebel doesn't speak (Continued on Page 119)

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 119

tions. The Katharine Gibbs chainspends $50,000 annually operating aplacement service in the four citieswhere the schools are located. It main-tains a field staff of five traveling repre-sentatives who cover the country in-vestigating new joh opportunities andsoliciting business at schools and col-leges. A graduate of the Providenceschool may choose from openings inBoston, Chicago or New York. Thisservice is free for life to all graduates.Twenty, years after graduating, alum-nae—who in the meantime may havemarried and raised children—some-tmies return for a free two-week re-fresher course, after which KatharineGihbs finds them jobs with companiespreferring "mature women."

The younger girls are more popular,hut cause the most trouble. Eachoranch of the Gihbs system maintains a

do-not-follow-up" list of employerswhose past performance indicates another-than-huBÍness interest in hiringpretty girls. Students are not permittedto answer calls from unknown out-of-town businessmen who request that asecretary be sent up to their hotelrooms.

Yet the management can hardly af-rd to he stuffy. They don*t stand by

the old saw that business and pleasurewon't mix. In fact, many a sound busi-ness relationship has turned into anequally sound romance.

Gordon Gibhs set an example bymarrying his attractive secretary,Blanche Lorraine, of New Bedford,Massachusetts—a Gihbs graduate, ofcourse.

The files of the placement hu-reau are crammed with employer rec-ord cards marked "KGH,*' meaning"Katharine Gihhs husband." On longwinter afternoons when the girls growweary from pounding typewriters,scribbling shorthand and cranking add-ing machines, the teachers revive spiritsby telling their favorite story of theWall Street hanker who requested twosecretaries in as many months.

In his first request the executivecarefully specified that the girl mustpossess charm as well as solid businesstraining.

When he called up the second timeand repeated the order, the placementoffice asked what had happened to thefirst girl.

"She married my son," replied thebanker, making no effort to concealhis eagerness. "This next one is forme."

PEORÍA{Continue*! Jrom Page 21)

of reform, for in Peoria the word is irk-**ome to too many people.

Peoria has never regarded itself ascorrupt, nor has it seen in its abun-dance of gambling joints and other hos-pitable establishments anything morethan the habiliments of a friendly con-tention city. Its leading citizen of thepast few decades was Triebel's prede-cesBor, the late Fdward Woodruff, anold-school polit ician who served asjnayor, off and on, for a total of twenty-four years. Woodruff, a man of per-fona] honor, held the old-fashioned,numan-nature-being-what-it-is view-point; he let the town run wide open aslong as the operators paid on the line'nto the city coííers.

Woodruff was, in many ways, morethan a mayor. A small, scrawny, red-»aced man, with a cigar perpetually inhis mouth, he owned an ice companyand lived in an unfashionable sectionof town. He liked people, and he likedto hold court on the city-hall steps in-stead of in his office. To many olderï*Mrians he epitomized the city; heWas Mr. Peoria.

The success of Mayor Triebel'scleanup is a matter of dispute. It is,however, undeniably true that neithergamhling nor prostitution is able tooperate with the happy ahandon thatWas assured them before. Any travelingSalesman or convention delegate at thehotels will tell you nostalgically thatpeoria isn't the gay town it used to be.Although you can gamble now, youl̂ ave to do a certain amount of search-•"ig. instead of having gambling, as onebusinessman said, everywhere but inthe churches.

Peoria's housing shortage is aboutaverage. It is a community of home-owners, largely. Many of the industrialWorkers have come from the surround-ing rural areas, for which Peoria is atrading center, and have settled in thecity.

They own their humhle littlehomes, they are liberal-minded andthey are the backbone of the commu-

," said one politician in descrihingvalley constituency.

To understand Peoria, it is necessaryto imderstand this usage of the word"liberal.'* In Peoria, as in Springfieldand south to East St. Louis, "liberal"does not mean what it means to therest of the country.

When a Peoria official says that heassembled a group of liberal elementsin the community, he does not meanthat he called a meeting of presumablyforward-thinking folk from church,labor and business. He means that herounded up the free-and-easy boysfrom the back room. This localizedconception of the word was demon-strated hy a remark made by a busi-nessman who rejected the offer of oneof the gamhlers to set up slot machinesin his store.

"I 'm as liberal as the next man,"said the husinessman, "but I told himslots don't belong in here."

This is what one oí the toughest oldaldermen in town meant when he gotup during a council meeting and shookhis fist at Mayor Triel>el, shouting,"You're a lying, cheating skunk! . . .You got elected saying you were a lib-eral, and look what you turned out tobe!"

For practical purposes, Peoria isdivided into these iwo factions, the so-called better element and the liberalelement. The latter group is strong,and it includes not only numeroussinister and shady tyi)es but some busi-ness and labor people who feel thatPeoria was meant to he what they calla friendly, wide-o()en convention town,and that it is good for husiness for it toremain so.

As one liberal put it, "Peoria wasalways a nice, sociable town. That wasthe old Spanish custom, and franklyit isn't possible to clean it up; therearen't enough police in the state ofIllinois to do it.'*

Triebel had to move slowly and com-promise considerahly hecause of the]X)wer of his opposition. He was ad-vised to carry a gun. He did for a while,hut finally discarded it.

" I t was too bulky," he explained."Besides, I wouldn't have known whatto do with it.*'

Civic consciousness of its own sort isnot restricted to the better element in

{Continiivit on Pagv 121)

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(Continued from Page 119)Peoria. Several big and dubious oper-ators have always been proud thatthey "contributed lavish" to charities,and several exhibited, at least super-ficially, a sportsmanlike approachwhen Triebet was elected.

*'If we never turn another wheel,"one of them said cavalierly, "we're^^PPy you're elected." Another, CarlShelton, sent one of his emissaries,Ferdie (Fishmouth) McGrane, to Trie-bel's office sometime after the electiont:o consult with the mayor on readjust-ing the slots to the change in adminis-tration.

Triehel said something about notuaving any more slots, and Fishmoutbunhappily reported this hack to theboss.

Shelton himself then came down totbe mayor's office. Triebel repeatedthat the slots were down.

"Well," said Shelton, "I guessthat'll give me more time to spenddown on my farm."

'I guess it will," said Triebel.Shelton did spend more time down

on his farm in Southern Illinois, living3 pleasant pastoral life until he wasambushed and assassinated neeir thereabout two yeaiB later. He had left hisPeoria interests in charge of his brotherBernie, who stayed on, living just out-side Peoria on a farm known some-what hilariously as Golden Rule Acres,ßernie kept his hand in what racketswere left and hoped eventually to takeover again full scale. He was murdered|ast July at a dismal roadside beer-and-juke joint he maintained near his farm.One of the surviving Shelton brothers,^arl, assured the reporters afterBernie's death that he was just a dirtfarmer, boys, just a 100-per-cent dirtfarmer.

The late Bernie, not surprisingly,'wew that his future was uncertain.During the last several months of hislife 1 tried in numerous ways to see^im, and was unable to get to him. He*as, his acquaintances said, "easilydisturbed these days" and "likely tohit you over the head with the butt ofa pistol if he didn't like your attitude.It wouldn't matter to him you're awoman. Bernie's got no sense of gal-lantry."

Bernie left, with instructions to hisWife, a remarkable document. It was arecording, laboriously made in theShelton sunroom, of a conversationbetween himself and an alleged repre-sentative of a Peoria County publicofficial. The conversation involved analleged bribery attempt, and the in-

structions with the recording were asremarkahle as the recording itself.Shelton directed that, in the event any-thing happened to him, the recordinghe turned over to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Post-Dispatch is the newspaperwithout whose fairly regular services,as one prominent IUinoisan puts it,Southern and Central Illinois wouldhave trouble remembering the funda-mentals of civic morality. In the en-suing investigation, a grand jury re-turned indictments against three Pe-oria County officials, all of whompleaded not guilty when arraigned. Asuhsequent grand jury reversed thepitch by indicting the Post-Dispatchreporter involved, and ridiculed hischaises.

In any realistic estimate, Carl Shel-ton—although not the less gallantBernie—would have been counted asone of Peoria's first citizens.

"He as good as ran the town foreight years," said one official. "Youcouldn't spit around here without youasked Carl."

Carl was a murderous, intelligent,amiable tough baby with a jxiwerful egoand a Robin Hood complex. He wasnot unpopular in Peoria. One of thelocal papers ran a column when he waskilled which would have been more ap-propriate to the death of the presidentof Harvard. He never swore or drank,people will tell you — ' ' only softdrinks"—and to hear many senti-mental posthumous discussions of him,you would think he had been a pillarof the community and a gentleman andscholar.

This viewpoint was, however, re-stricted. Shelton's adversaries on hisovm level were less respectful. "Nodecent, high-class hoodlum would haveanything to do with him," one of themsaid.

Carl and Bernie, along with a lot ofother hoods, moved in and out of Pe-oria during prohibition, when the townbecame a hotbed of bootleggers fromnil over the country, trying to move inon the large supply of leftover whisky.They returned with repeal, and, aftera few years, took over the gamblingracket.

Carl and Bernie were not the onlyprominent Peorians to die by violence.Their murders remain unsolved, andso does the ambush slaying in March,1947, of George P. McNear, Jr., thelarge, handsome, austere president ofthe Toledo, Peoria and Western Rail-road. McNear, a man of neurotic drive

(Continued on Page 123)

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THE SATURDAY EVENING POST

(Continued front Page 121)ambition, had had trouble for

years with everyone with whom hedealt—the railroad unions, hia bankers,lawyera and bodyguards. He was shoton a foggy night as he walked to hishome from a basketball game.

Most of Peoria's leading citizens,having a higher life expectancy, leadcomfortable aiid prosfjerous but unpre-tentious lives. They live in beautifulhomes, either on Moss Avenue, theoldest residential street, on a lowerbluff, or farther out, in the GrandviewOrive section of the bluffs. Their sociallife revolves around two clubs, thePeoria Country Club and the Mt.Hawley Country Club. The best busi-npsamen's lunch used to be served atone of the gambli "• houses; now themen go to the old Crève Coeur Club orto the smaller Un'veraity Club. TheCrève Coeur looks like a dingy fortress,a small-town Union League, from theOutside. The inside, which was recentlyredecorated, is spacious and comfort-able.

Although the bluff-and-valley divi-'̂lon ¡8 aharj), Peoria as a whole ia

neii.her a anobbish nor a narrow town.It has little racial or religious intoler-ance. This ia partly because of its lowPourcentage of racial minorities andloreign-born peoples, but it is also dueto the quality most Peorians mention

t when they try to analyze their—its warm friendliness and pleaa-

ant openness.There is no founding-father aristoc-

to speak of. The founding fathersj largely old brewing and whiskyfamilies, and most of tbeir descendantsnave long since left Peoria. The city'sindustrial life is so vigorous that there^ a continually renewed industrial aris-tocracy. Some of the finest homes areowned by families who have lived in the*̂ >ty lesB than fifteen years.

Peoria's feeling and focus have alwaysbeen practical, realistic and forward-looking, rather than nostalgic or spirit-}^- In a way, it ia, like so many Amer-'can industrial towns, without legend,tradition or a rich continuity of history.It ia outside the hallowed Lincoln coun-try, although Ernest E. East, Peoria's^miofficial historian, has recorded thatLincoln made seventeen visits to thecity and, during one of them, made"'Hat Beveridge, the Lincoln historian,*^ed his first great speech._ As their most famous citizen, Peo-

^lans almost alwaya name RobertG.In-gersoU, tbe eminent agnostic. Peoria*!rected a statue in his memory, andmany older folk, who recñll him withaffection, believe that he bequeathed toPeoria a part of her liberal — both in thePeoria and outside senses —heritage.'He taught ua to think free," one ofthem remarked. It is rather character-jstic of Peoria's paradoxical nature that'^^ides IngersoU, Peorians name as*:l*eir most famous aon the Right"everend Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen,the eminent Catholic scholar.

After the monsignor come Jim Jor-dan, who ia Fibber McGee, and Charlea^r re l l , who ia Andy, of Amoa 'n'Andy.

Monaignor Sheen's parents moved to"eoria from a near-by farm when FultonWas seven years old. Sheen grew up inPeoria and went to school at Spaldinginstitute—a Catholic boys' high school^ m e d for Archbishop Spaiding, thepea t Middle Western prelate—where"6 and Fibber McGee were classmates.

The monsignor's Uncle Dan, a Peorialawyer, was, astonishingly enough, as-sociated in practice with Ingersoll, andWas as much of a spectacular character,^an Sheen waa a prohibitionist, and, in

one of the biggest whisky towns in thecountry, he ran imauccesafully for mayoras a dry.

It haa been said of Peoria that "asidefrom the vice and graft, it's a fairly ef-ficiently run town "; and that, undoubt-edly, ia true. Its scboola are good, asare moat of its municipal services, andits location is almost ideal for easy,pleasant life. Edging the city are morethan 1000 acres in well-equ=pped parks,and Lake Peoria provides half a dozenbathing beaches aa well as boathigfacilitiea.

One of Peoria'a most energetic do-gooders remarked not long ago that"it 's a wonderful place for anyone in-terested in community hetterment, be-cauae there's so much to do." Actually,Peoria has done more in a positive sensethan most towna its size. Its people willorganize themaelves enthusiastically foralmost any imaginable cause. Many ofthe city's prodigious nimiber of organi-zations are routine marching-and-chowder societies, but there is a solidbase of constructive civic activity. Onebundred and forty women's groups, rep-resenting an intimidating total of 10,-000 women, are organized into theWomen's Civic Federation, The federa-tion, which includes a thriving JuniorLeague and League of Women Voters,had a large ahare in electing MayorTriebel through a high-pressure tele-phone camiîaign,

Peoria's cultural activities include thePeoria Players, one of the oldest little-tbeater groups in the country, an activeAmateur Music Club, the Peoria Sym-phony Orchestra and Bradley Univer-sity. Bradley was founded in 1897 by awealthy Peorian, and it was plannedwith the help of John Dewey and Dr.William R, Harper, first president ofthe University of Chicago. Small but

expanding, the university ia much likePeoria itself in its vigor and variety—itteaches everything from the humanitiesto watchmaking.

Peoria harbors something called theI Too Reform Progreaa Society and theLiederkranz Singing Society, but it alaohas the Peoria Mental Hygiene Society,which, with the help of the city'a sevenpsychiatriata, maintains a mental-healthclinic. There ia a well-used teen-age rec-reation center, one of the moat success-ful Junior Achievement branches in thecountry, and the PtK)ria Plan VeteranaService Center, at which committees ofindustrial and professional leaders ofthe city have helped to provide veter-ans with everything from job placementto medical help.

The Peoria Plan for veterana waa de-veloped originally by Dr. Harold A.Vonachen, director of medicine at Cat-erpillar, who also ia president of tbeAmerican Society of Industrial Phyai-eiana and Surgeons and commodore oftbe Illinois Valley Yacht Club, DoctorVonachen is an impassioned, energetic,rather cherubic-looking man who fciclsvery strongly about everything, includ-ing overeating. In the executivea' din-ing room at the Cat plant, he snatcheadesserta from the hands of sputteringvice-preaidents whom he regards as toocorpulent, and he has organized the Cat-erpillar Fat Men's Club, the purpose ofwhich is to shame members into keep-ing their figurea.

The father of seven children. DoctorVonachen ia a member of one of Pe-oria's moat notable self-made families.His brotber. County Judge FrancisVonachen, is a aaintly man dedicatedto figbting juvenile delinquency; thehead of one correctional institution inIllinois has remarked that if there werea few more judges like Vonachen there

' I 'm not going to school today; mythroai*B so sore I can harflly whisper!"

would be fewer delinquent children.Another brother ia a prominent pedia-trician.

Peoria has a rather striking numberof self-made aucceasea like the Vonachenswho have stayed on in their home towninatead of deserting it for Chicago or theEast, as so many Middle Westernbright boya do, Louis Neumiller, thegentle, conscientious president of Cat-erpillar, started aa a blueprint boy. Hisbrotber, Harry, ia president of one ofthe city's smaller plants and past pres-ident of both the Peoria and the Illinoisassociations of commerce. Two of itapaychiatriata. Dr. Walter Baer and Dr.Helen Coyle, struggled for their educa-tions, studied all over the country andreturned to their native town when theysettled down to practice. Doctor Baer'sbrotber, Theodore, is a lawyer whostarted in 1931 with nothing but college •debta and retired to California laat sum-mer, a millionaire in his early fortiea.He atill keeps an interest in hia Peorialaw firm and commutes by air every fewmonths. At thirty-eight, Theodore Baerwas the youngest board cbairman of anybank in the country; the bank ia theJefferaon Trust and Savings, a sleek,young institution that looks like a morieaet and haa drive-in teller windowawhere motoring depositors can pick upmoney aa though it were hamburgers.

The culmination of all Peoria's prideof city, the community project to endall community projects, ia known aaExposition Gardens. This is a plan sograndiose that it could have been con-ceived only in the whisky-making, earth-moving capital of the universe. It willbe a gigantic commimity center, witbthree main buildings, many smaller ex-hibition buildings, and facilities for ed-ucational, religious and agriculturalgatherings, conventions, stage produc-tions, sports éventa, concerts and har-neas and auto racing. It will be uaed theyear round, the major event to be aweek'a fair competing with the IllinoisState Fair, at Springfield, seventy-sixmiles away.

All this got imder way laat spring,when more' than 1000 men and 150pieces of earth-moving equipment beat140 aerea into shape hy moving 250,000cubic yards of earth in forty and onehalf hours. Everything waa donated—equipment, lahor, fuel, bus transporta-tion, food for 4500 meale, and old Dr,Hiram Walker's medicine for the pre-vention of tedium. Lieut. Gen. R. A.Wheeler, chief of Army Engineers anda Peoria boy, supervised tbis mechan-icEil madness after a parade of bulldozers,tractors, trucka and scrapers throughthe streets of Peoria and the detonationof five aerial bombs got ihe show started.

President Neumiller, of Caterpillar,was on hand and so, very much ao, wasR. G. Le Toumeau. WMBD broadcastthe proceedings from the scene, and atone point Mr. Le Toumeau was calledupon for a few words. Mr, Le Toumeau,who spends much of his time addressingchurch audiences all over the country,brought the full force of hia evangelisticfervor to the occasion,

"Ab! " he cried, waving his arms upand down. "Look at those beautifulbig machines move that earth! Ob, don'tI wisb I were down there running oneof them!"

Thia went on at aome length, andfinally the shaken announcer got aword in edgewise.

"Ah, yes, Mr. Le Toumeau," he said.*'Isn't this a great spectacle? Isn't thisa magnificent example of democracy inaction? Isn't this a wonderful demon-stration of the true spirit of Peoria?"

"Amen ! " Mr. Le Toumeau shouted.THE END