Page 383 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - USA

INTRODUCING THE GREA T LAKES  381

Cleveland, where some three-quarters of mobile industry flourished and in turn
residents were either foreign-born or first- supported a network of other industries,
generation Americans. such as the iron mines in Minnesota, steel
Large numbers of other immigrants set mills in Indiana, and rubber plants in Ohio.
up wheat and dairy farms on recently
cleared forests, or found work in other Politics & Culture
resource-based industries. Miners in The success of the industries may have
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, produced reaped huge fortunes for their owners,
more than 75 percent of the nation’s but the workers’ conditions were often dire.
supplies between 1850 and 1900. With a This exploitation led to a number of violent
total value of nearly $10 billion, this mining battles, particularly around Chicago, such as
boom was ten times more lucrative than the riots in Haymarket Square in 1886 and
the legendary California Gold Rush of the bitter strike against the Pullman Palace
1849. Another major industry was food Car company in 1894. The growth of
processing. Meat-packing, which was unions gave workers some semblance of
concentrated on the huge stockyards of political power, which in turn supported a
Chicago and Minneapolis, relied on the number of Left-leaning social movements.
railroads to transport millions of cattle and The Great Lakes in general, and Minnesota
pigs from across the Midwest. The Great and Wisconsin in particular, were early
Lakes also came to dominate grain pro- strong holds of the Populist and Progressive
cessing, and some of the nation’s largest movements, which in the early 1900s
companies, including Kellogg’s and General proposed such now-accepted inno vations
Mills, are still based here. Minneapolis was as the 8-hour workday and graduated rates
known as the flour-milling capital of the of income tax. Unions continue to be very
world for nearly fifty years. active in the region.
The early 20th century witnessed the This social awareness also influenced
largest and most enduring industrial boom, art and literature. Diego Rivera’s massive
mainly because of the mutually dependent mural on the walls of the Detroit Institute
growth of the steel and automobile of Art depicts workers struggling under
industries, both largely based in the Great the demands of industrialization. The
Lakes region. Dearborn and Detroit, head- region’s great literary works include
quarters of Ford Motor Company as well Hamlin Garland’s depictions of life on
as other smaller companies that evolved the Wisconsin frontier, Sherwood
into the giant General Motors, emerged as Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, the vivid
the “Motor City.” Despite competition from exposés of Sinclair Lewis, and the stories
other countries, the Great Lakes auto- of St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Detroit’s gleaming skyscrapers, including the Renaissance Center, from across the Detroit River

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