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Making Modernism

Dill Pickle Handbill, 1919

Like The Dil Pickle itself, this document brings together many individuals who were part of the literary and cultural life of early twentieth-century Chicago: the writer Sherwood Anderson; the founder of the Dil Pickle, Jack Jones; the Polish-born artist Stanislaw Szukalski, who created the woodcut of Jones; and the editor Henry Blackman Sell, who published the piece in the book section of the Chicago Daily News in 1919.

The Dil Pickle was a bohemian meeting place in Tower Town, or “Hobohemia,” the neighborhood surrounding the Newberry Library. 1917, the club moved nearby to 18 Tooker Alley, off Dearborn between Chestnut and Delaware, where it continued its existence until 1933. The sign above the entrance read: “step high stoop low leave your dignity outside.” The club served coffee, tea, and light refreshments of dubious quality (and sometimes also served as a speakeasy); the main draw was always the conversation of the wide variety of patrons. In addition to dances, and some of the earliest productions in Chicago’s “little theatre” movement, the Dil Pickle’s chief claim to fame was Saturday night lectures by prominent people, experts, or anyone Jack Jones deemed “a nut about something.”

Jack Jones had been a western hard rock miner, an organizer for the I.W.W., and briefly the husband of the labor activist and feminist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn before he moved to Chicago in 19xx. Jones was missing several fingers—either from mining accidents or safecracking—it depended on the story. The Dil Pickle, a “non-Profit to Promote Arts, crafts, Literature and Sciences” (spelled with only one l to prevent copyright conflicts), was Jones’s focus until his death in 1940.

Sherwood Anderson was a regular at the Dil Pickle, with the radicals, college professors, housewives and hobos. Stanislaw Szukalski, who came to Chicago as a teenage artistic protégé, met his wife at the Dil Pickle, the wealthy heiress Helen Walker. And Henry Blackman Sell—who published the collaboration between Anderson and Szukalski—was the editor of the Wednesday book review at the Chicago Daily News. Sell persuaded the editors to create this section of the paper, supported by advertising, and he helped to promote American authors during his editorship from 1916 to 1920.

- Lynne Adrian, University of Alabama

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Jack Jones - "The Pickler"
ARE you a struggling poet, groping your way through a dark and dreary commercial world? Have you written a prose masterpiece that some money minded publisher will not publish? Are you an eager young feminist, longing to lift womankind into the higher life? Have you painted or sung or sculped or thought something that the dull minded world does not appreciate?

What have you done? What have you to say? Jack Jones and the Dill Pickle are looking for you.

Jack Jones is the father, the mother and the ringmaster of the Dill Pickle in Tooker alley, just off Dearborn, north of Chicago avenue, on the north side.

You may have visited the neighborhood. There is a charming little park just around the corner from the Pickle. It is filled with benches and trees and the big, grim, wise looking Newberry library looks down on it. Before Jones name to gather together what he calls his 'trained band of nuts' the poor homeless nuts lived with the squirrels in the park. On warm summer Sunday afternoons they came forth in droves. One by one they climbed upon soap boxes and talked to the sad eyed loafers gathered about.

Two years ago Jones, the Pickler, ar- rived. None knew where he came from and you'll never find out from Jones. For a time he worked as a house painter and ran the Pickle as a week-end diversion.

Then trade began to look up. The nuts were gathered out of. the park and to their amazement found themselves in a big, comfortable room filled with brightly painted chairs and a pulpit from which to talk until they were weary. Something happened to them.

What happened is the secret of Jones. The nuts talked and everybody laughed. In spite of themselves the nuts began to laugh. 'There it is. Don't you see.' said Jones, chuckling and wagging his head, 'the proletariat and the working stiffs are just like the painters and the poets. They'll laugh if you give them a chance. Even a skinny, long haired poet will laugh if you give him a hand and a warm place to sit.'

At that the Pickler might have been overlooked had it not been for the high- brows. Several months ago our very best thinkers began to make their way, rather sheepishly at first, into Tooker alley, and now you are likely to find any one there. The street car conductor sits on a bench beside the college professor, the literary critic, the earnest young wife, who hungers for culture, and the hobo. Jack Jones is always in the background. To every guest he puts the same question. 'Are you a nut about anything?' he asks. 'Don't you want to talk to the Picklers?'

Jack Jones and the Dill Pickle are two bright spots in the rather somber aspect of our town. The highbrows don't walk with Jones on Michigan avenue yet, but that may happen any day. Besides the Sunday evening affairs in the Pickle itself, he is now putting on a strictly artistic and very literary affair every Thursday evening. The street car conductors and the nuts from the park seem to be following Jones into this new venture. On almost any Thursday evening the Dill Pickle chapel is filled with the devotees of the arts.

When things grow a bit heavy and dull Jones cheers up the children of the arts as he formerly cheered the park hangers-on. Bright eyed, alert, filled with good natured laughter and a born showman, Jones and the Dill Pickle may go very far.

It would be a delightful surprise if Jones the Pickler should achieve in Chi- cago what Maurice Browne, with his Little theater, and all the more serious minded yeomen who have tried so hard to make a home for the arts among us have failed to do.

In the meantime Jones isn't worrying. If art wants to come and make its home in the Dill Pickle he'll be ready for it. If things grew dull he'll chuckle and try to stir up a row. If you go to see him he'll ask you the same question he asks every one else?'Are you a nut about anything? Don't you want to talk to the Picklers?' What have you done? What have you to say? Jack Jones and the Dill Pickle are looking for you.