By WILLIAM H. ALLEN

Bumpkins v. slickers: Illinois'old feud

"Why are we connected with these yahoos, anyway? Chicagoans have little in common with the small town bumpkins and simple-minded rustics who make up most of the rest of Illinois. "

"How can anyone who lives closer to Memphis, Louisville and other such places deny that he is a rube and a bumpkin — if not an outright hillbilly?"

"I have seen the enemy, and he's a hick."

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES columnist Mike Royko's outrageous verbal buffoonery was but one of the many wrenches fouling the works in the recent legislative debate over state aid to the financially struggling Regional Transportation Authority (RTA). Royko's taunting assertions created an uproar beyond the Windy City's borders that seemed to heighten the animosity of downstaters — lawmakers and electorate alike — toward Chicagoans in general and the RTA in particular.

As fanatical as it seems, however, Royko's rhetoric is neither new nor very intemperate in the context of Illinois' long history of regional antagonisms. The issues have shifted and changed, but upstate and downstate have always been at odds, and Royko's recent broadsides were only the latest in a long series of vivid verbal volleys.

Long before the economic prosperity and immigrant flood of the late 19th century set Chicago at odds with down-state, similar battle lines had been drawn on a north-south basis. Thomas Ford, governor of Illinois from 1842 to 1846, wrote in his History of Illinois that the shape of the state "naturally divided the legislature into representatives from the south and representatives from the north, and under any circumstances, a State so long in proportion to its breadth must contain much of the elements of discord."

The northern third of Illinois was settled almost exclusively by migrants from the Northeast, especially New England. Much of the rest of the state was inhabited, for the most part, by relatively poor settlers from the slave states.

"Our southern settlements presented but few specimens of the more wealthy, enterprising, intellectual and cultivated people from the slave States," Ford wrote in even-tempered fashion. By contrast, the population of the northern reaches of Illinois primarily consisted of "wealthy farmers, enterprising merchants, millers and manufacturers," a highly motivated and industrious lot who, among other things, built the city of Chicago.

The residents themselves were not so moderate in appraising their respective characters. The northerners boasted that theirs was a superior, more progressive way of life. "One thing is certain," wrote a northern settler in 1850, "that where New England emigrants do not venture, improvements, social, agricultural, mechanic or scientific, rarely flourish." More than a century before Royko's barrages, one newspaper snickered, "The southern portions of. . . Illinois . . . have become proverbial for the intellectual, moral and political darkness which covers the land."

Ford reported that the northern populace thought of the downstater as

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"a long, lank, lean, lazy and ignorant animal, but little in advance of the savage state; one who was content to squat in a log cabin with a large family of ill-fed and ill-clothed, idle, ignorant children."

Downstaters, not be outdone, believed their northern neighbor to be "a close, miserly, dishonest, selfish getter of money, void of generosity, hospitality or any of the kindlier feelings of human nature," Ford wrote. As the century wore on, pious moral reformers, whose stronghold was downstate, began to describe the metropolis blossoming along Lake Michigan in terms that ring true to the present declamatory battle.

To the reform press, Chicago was a "wicked, infidel, worldly, grasping" place — a sewer of vice, crime and poverty (and beer-drinking!). University of Illinois-Chicago Circle historian Richard Jensen, in his book The Winning of the Midwest, wrote that the reformers viewed Chicago as "full of Catholics, anarchists, socialists, railroad barons, trust-builders, commodity speculators, grasping bankers, saloon-keepers and houses of ill repute."

The 100-year word war

Today Royko flogs the "rustics, bumpkins, hayseeds, hicks, hillbillies and yahoos" while acknowledging downstaters' belief that Chicago is "something like the pits of hell." Fellow columnists and others have responded in kind. One would think little has changed in the last century in the way "northerners" and downstaters think of each other.

Underlying the current rhetorical skirmish, of course, is a realization of the distorted nature and comic purpose of Royko's crusade. (He even has suggested that Chicago secede from Illinois and prepare for the inevitability of armed conflict.) Similarly, more than 100 years ago Ford lamented the gross misconceptions of character reflected in the war of words between northerners and downstaters.

"There is much natural shrewdness and sagacity in the most ignorant of the southern people; and they are generally accumulating property as fast as any people can who had so little to begin with," he reasoned. "The parties are about equal in point of generosity and liberality, though these virtues show themselves in each people in a different way.

"The southerner is perhaps the most hospitable and generous to individuals. He is lavish of his victuals, his liquors and other personal favors. But the northern man is the most liberal in contributing to whatever is for the public benefit. If a school-house, a bridge or a church is to be built, a road to be made, a school or a minister to be maintained or taxes to be paid for the honor or support of government, the northern man is never found wanting."

Maybe there is some truth to those words even today; maybe not. It is tempting to think so, especially if one has in mind the RTA controversy.

When RTA was a canal

Ford, however, had another public transportation controversy in mind: the mid-19th century legislative debate over the proposed "great canal" between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River. Ford argued that the Illinois and Michigan Canal would be of great benefit to the entire state, but southern lawmakers opposed providing state funds for the system. (The reason they gave for their opposition, according to Ford, was that the canal "would open a way for flooding the State with Yankees.")

"This want of concord. . . was unfavorable to the adoption of the wisest means for public relief," he wrote. "In framing a wise policy for the future, the success of the canal in the north was one indispensible item. But because it was in the north, and for no other reason that I can discover, it was liable to objection in other quarters."

The bitter struggle over the RTA has its roots in the same regional conflicts. Indeed, Royko drew blood with his jibes, but the wounds were old ones that have festered for generations. Given its built-in regional implications, the RTA was sure to cause discord in any case; but Royko's barbs struck sensitive nerves and deflected rational debate on this important public issue.

Ordinary citizens may not be able to do much about this unfortunate regional animosity; but they may at least find some consolation in the knowledge that this kind of rhetoric is nothing new in Illinois.

William H. Allen, formerly a reporter for United Press International in Chicago, is now studying for a master's degree in history at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.

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