Letter to WSJ on Chicago's 'broad shoulders'

Chicago Sunday PM 23 Janary 2011

Editors, The Wall Street Journal

Gentlepeople:

The first sentence of the fourth paragraph of a 21 August 1996 Wall Street Journal article about Chicago (the site of the Democrat convention that year ) said “the City of Broad Shoulders managed to broaden its appeal over the past quarter century.” Twenty-seven days later you printed a letter pointing out that the great American poet and Lincoln Biographer Carl Sandburgh called it the 'City of the Big Shoulders,' in his 1916 poem 'Chicago.'

Now in an otherwise fine article about the upcoming title game between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers we read: “Green Bay's shoulders might not be as broad as Chicago's, but both are Midwestern cities built long ago on paper making and meat packing....”

If you send me the address of the WSJ staff reference library I will be happy to send a fresh, new copy of Sandburg's book “Chicago poems”. You're on your own for the Lincoln Bio.

Arnold H Nelson in Chicago