![]() Louis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Kansas City the sections where he traces the rail and financial linkages between them are awesome), the settlers at the frontier never would have managed a living for want of markets without the farmers producing goods for consumption and distribution, Chicago would have no reason for ever existing. ![]() Without Chicago (and to a lesser extent similar cities like St. 1 spring wheat"), and futures trading at the Board of Trade revolutionized how farmers sold their goods, to the extent that Chicago is a world center of commodities trading to this day and the Midwest is some of the most productive farmland on the planet. ![]() For example, he explores how the holy trinity of the grain elevator, grade standardization (a pile of wheat became "no. ![]() Cronon's copiously researched opinion is that city and country, far from being opposed, critically depend on each other. On the highest level, this is sort of a refutation and extension of Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier hypothesis" (short version: the old countries of Europe never had the Wild West's unique conflict between the "individual freedom" of society's rejects on the frontier and the "law and order" back in the Eastern cities, which helped explain why America was so different than its transatlantic ancestors). I've been really into economic histories lately, and this analysis of Chicago's development and its relationship to the Midwest it came to dominate was both staggeringly detailed and elegantly well-written. ![]()
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