The same process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. Here the growth of large private fortunes was marked by much greater celerity than in the East, although these fortunes are not as large as those based upon land in the Eastern cities.
MARSHALL FIELD AND LEITER.
The largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. In 1895 the Illinois Labor Bureau, in that year happening to be under the direction of able and conscientious officials, made a painstaking investigation of land values in Chicago. It was estimated that the 266 acres of land, constituting what was owned by individuals and private corporations in one section alone—the South Side,—were worth $319,000,000. This estimate was made at a time when the country was slowly recovering, as the set phrase goes, from the panic of 1892-94, and when land values were not in a state of inflation or rise. The amount of $319,000,000 was calculated as being solely the value of the