Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

In the 19th century, Chicago frequently traded commodities with remote areas such as Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico. Despite the rapid rise of the railroad and value of human labor in developing the city and its hinterland, first nature—the richness of the prairies and abundant forests—and all other “autonomous ecological processes” (228) contributed as the central form of wealth in the area. Humans made massive profits by exploiting nature. Like ecosystems where species are dependent on one another for survival, so too were cities dependent on surrounding areas. Human labor to produce grain, lumber, and meat comes from consuming nature.

The lumber industry profited from Chicago’s geographical relationship with waterways which led to an abundant supply of white pine in Michigan and Wisconsin. White pines could reach impressive heights of 50 feet and could live for over 200 years. The white pine’s characteristic straight trunk made it light and easy to handle in the sawmills. It also floated, unlike many of the other hardwoods surrounding it, making it easy to transport in northern regions still without railroads. Prairies on one side and thick forests on the other would bridge “old ecological boundaries” with “new economic relationships” (235). Settling the American West meant cutting the northern forests. Behind soil, the white pine was the most important resource to farmers because it provided wood for the infrastructure of their farms. Lake Michigan was the corridor used to bring wood from Michigan and Wisconsin to Iowa, Illinois, and points west, and everything would need to flow through Chicago.

Many farm families worked in logging camps during the winter to supplement their income. Logging camps expanded in direct proportion to the industry, with small, one-room cabins expanding into larger structures with more comfortable rooms. Logging was a dangerous winter activity. Moving logs in icy conditions posed a threat to both humans and animals, but the industry depended heavily on the weather. Logs moved from the forest to markets by floating down the river, so insufficient snowfall resulted in water levels too low to float logs in the spring. Log jams also posed potential dangers to workers who had to free the jams. Also, structures along the riverbank could be damaged by flooding.

An abundance of sawmills along Lake Michigan and boom companies that sorted the lumber based on its owners became prominent businesses. The circular saw and band saw became much more effective tools in the lumber industry. Some Chicago lumber dealers managed the process of timber from harvest to the consumer, and others simply contributed funding. Chicagoan Zebina Eastman and easterners Charles and Nathan Mears funded a significant portion of the lumber business. The Mears case study demonstrates the owner-partner role. Outside of lumber, Chicago was also the best place to purchase tools, produce, supplies, and labor.

Chicago also provided lumbermen with invaluable resources to grow their businesses. Chicago brokers and commission merchants analyzed market conditions for their customers. The city provided substantial information regarding the market that attracted people from Michigan and the High Plains, and mill owners could recruit workers from the city. Businessmen like Mears offered workers one-year contracts, but problems with cash flow, attributed to the season-dependent industry, soon left workers angry. Lumber businesses experienced significant fixed costs, were highly susceptible to fire and water damage, depended on rain and snowfall to make the rivers usable for transport, and timber harvesting only occurred in the winter. Many lumber businesses were forced to fire workers and reduce production to save money.

Chicago became the center of the lumber industry in part because it presented solutions to the seasonal hardships it endured. Lumber that passed through the Chicago markets might find a merchant who would purchase it. Chicago’s cargo market was a place where merchants and wholesalers could purchase unsold lumber. The market became popular because it was reliable and competitive, and merchants paid cash for lumber by the shipload. Ships that brought lumber to the Chicago market could then be loaded cheaply with food and supplies and brought back to smaller towns. The wholesalers, serving as go-betweens for large lumber companies and small businesses, mitigated the financial impact of seasonal downturns in the lumber market. Wet lumber, also known as “green lumber,” which ordinarily would eat into the cost of a shipment because it was heavier, could be sold to wholesalers and given ample time to dry by the time it reached potential retailers. Wholesalers assumed the task of drying, sorting, and grading wood and often purchased the lumber without inspecting it first.

Grading standards for lumber did not appear until the 1890s. Despite not reaching the success of grain markets, lumber markets and sawmills could cut wood to specific standards at a buyer’s request. Though informal, the standards still bolstered business. Mass-produced, standard timber became popular in the housing market. Builder Augustine D. Taylor created balloon frame houses which were lighter and easier to assemble than older-style structures.

Chicago merchants continued to answer demand for wood from the developing prairies by shipping readymade structures to farm families. The vast amount of lumber shipped to the West was balanced by the vast amount of grain shipped to the East. Railroad rates and rail competition were reduced because railcars were no longer travelling empty. Fixed rates for shipping were calculated based on the distance between Chicago and the destination.

During the last two decades of the 19th century, the Chicago wholesale lumber trade market was unstable. Businesses began reducing their operation size, moving out of the area, going bankrupt, or witnessing the retirements or deaths of their owners. The white pine forests of the North began to vanish because of the dominance of the lumber industry. Following the Civil War, as railroads established a foothold into southern forests, southern manufacturers began selling yellow pine directly from their mills. Yellow pine proved to be stronger and more cost effective, thus edging out the demand for white pine. Chicago lost its lumber trade because the northern forests were disappearing. Forested real estate was rising in price while the quality of trees cut by loggers declined. An increase in wildfires and the introduction of an invasive European plant disease, the white-pine blister rust, destroyed farming communities and the rest of the white pine forest. Clear-cutting also resulted in erosion and flooding, and the soils of the northern forests were not agreeable to agriculture.

In 1864, the proposal of a central, unified stockyard in the city of Chicago addressed the issues of limited stockyard growth in the prairies. Increased development in the prairies cut off grazing areas, posed threats to both human and animal well-being, and lacked timely reporting of the price of goods produced by the stockyards. The greatest problem the central, city stockyard held, however, was the wet prairie itself, regularly flooded in the spring and after severe rainstorms.

The economic promise of the stockyard had much in common with that of the grain elevator. Known as the Exchange Building, the stockyard attracted tourists from around the country, housed a successful bank, and had telegraph facilities gathering meat prices and livestock news from around the world. Like the grain elevators and lumberyards, the stockyards would be responsible for new market technology and would inflict a substantial ecological change upon the land. They would also foster new connections among grain farmers, stock raisers, and butchers, thereby creating a new corporate network.

In the early 19th century, the plains provided numerous amounts of bison that contributed to the trading of their skin. The market for robes in the East, coupled with the demand for bison meat among Indigenous people and fur traders, contributed to their swift decline in numbers. Sport hunters also hastened the bison’s near-extinction when they shot them and left them for dead from the comfort of their railcars. Commercial hunting operations descended on the plains, killing the bison in great numbers and shipping their skins back east. As the value of the slaughtered buffalo increased, their numbers declined to the point of leaving many hunters bankrupt.

The new livestock industry rose to fruition at the time when the bison were becoming extinct. Often romanticized by American writers, cattle drives of the 1860s, ’70s, and ’80s demonstrated new ways of moving livestock to the Union Stockyard in Chicago. In 1867, cowboys began bringing animals north from Texas. Large ranchers bought up many prairie areas around streams to keep competitor grazing in the area to a minimum. Water and hay sources were now controlled by the ranchers, and the increase in cattle impacted the diversity of vegetation found in the areas. Wooden fences were needed to partition the animals. In an area where trees were scarce, wood was expensive. Joseph Glidden’s barbed wire invention in 1873 reduced the amount of wood required for fencing and accelerated the transformation of the plains into pastures for grazing. The close-cropped grasses meant less risk of fire.

Meanwhile, corn production soon became central to feeding the animals, and most of the feed came from neighboring farmers or Chicago grain elevators. Ranchers shifted their focus from breeding animals to fattening the grown animals or manipulating their genetic characteristics. The expense of driving cattle, because of low wages and animals losing weight on the journey, led cowboys to move slowly and continually pasture the animals or load them on railroads so that they could remain at a profitable weight. Improvements in breeding eventually meant that animals could be slaughtered profitably by the end of their second year, thereby saving the costs of many months of feed.

Pork packing was one of the most important frontier industries. Hogs, as compared to cattle, were smaller, harder to handle, and prone to losing weight on the road. However, hogs were productive animals that could convert grain to meat with more efficiency. During the winter, when demand was low, pork could be smoked or pickled.

Cincinnati’s disassembly line became a leading innovation in the processing of animals at slaughterhouses nationwide. The technology allowed byproducts of the meat industry that would not have been otherwise consumed to be turned into soap, lard, candles, and brushes. The Civil War clinched Chicago’s dominance of American pork packing and enabled it to seize the much-sought title of Porkopolis, a moniker once used by Cincinnati.

Pork could easily be preserved by smoking or pickling, but customers expected their beef to be delivered to them and consumed as quickly following the animal’s death as possible. Merchants relying on distant slaughterhouses to supply range-fed beef were at a disadvantage. The meat spoiled after a few days of transport. Packing the meat in ice prolonged its quality, but frozen beef turned brown, and melting ice needed to be repacked regularly. The refrigerated railcar, designed in 1868 by Detroit packer George H. Hammond and perfected by New England farm boy Gustavus Swift, was soon in use by all major firms in the dressed beef trade. “Dressed beef” refers to beef that has been partially butchered and is therefore lighter.

The dressed beef industry had a significant impact on railroads invested in the movement of livestock. The Grand Trunk, a railroad that ran from Buffalo through northern New York and down to Boston, had never succeeded as a livestock carrier and became one of the largest carriers of dressed beef. Eventually, local meat merchants, unable to afford purchasing, processing, and shipping livestock, found it cheaper to purchase dressed beef from Chicago.