Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

“And therein lies our dilemma: however we may feel about the urban world which is the most visible symbol of our human power—whether we celebrate the city or revile it, whether we wish to ‘control’ nature or ‘preserve’ it—we unconsciously affirm our belief that we ourselves are unnatural. Nature is the place where we are not.”

This quotation asserts that human beings and all human-made creations are separate from nature. The passage raises one of the most significant ecological and philosophical questions of the present era. It asks whether human beings are part of or uniquely separate from nature.

“Just as our own lives continue to be embedded in a web of natural relationships, nothing in nature remains untouched by the web of human relationships that constitute our common history.”

This quotation underscores one of the central messages that Cronon articulates in each section of his book. Nature and humans and city and country are all interrelated, and individuals’ histories are interconnected narratives that rely on one another.

“The hybrid cultural universe of Indians and Euroamericans that had existed in the Chicago area for decades was finally to be shattered by different conceptions of property and real estate.”

The connotation of the word “hybrid” suggests a positive blending of two unlike items. The blending of Indigenous and European cultures, some of which are discussed by Cronon, were respectful and efficient. However, Indian removal and the identification of “useful” land would forever challenge that hybrid relationship.

“Cities were like stars or planets, with gravitational fields that attracted people and trade like miniature solar systems.”

This quotation comes from Cincinnati native S. H. Goodin. Goodin argues that rural populations acted in a way that resembles a planet’s gravitational pull. Rural populations revolved around small villages, which then found larger towns around which to revolve, until eventually these towns were revolving around larger cities.

“Where human beings organize their economy around market exchange, trade between city and country will be among the most powerful forces influencing cultural geography and environmental change. The ways people value the products of the soil, and decide how much it costs to get those products to market, together shape the landscape we inhabit.”

This passage reinforces the idea that geographical locations, both urban and rural, depend on one another for survival. The railroads and other cheaper ways to access natural resources dictated where rural settlements would be established.

“For many, if not most, Americans, ‘the discovery, cultivation, and capitalization’ of land meant bringing it into the marketplace and attaching it to the metropolis.”

There are three actions expressed in the quotation: discovery, cultivation, and capitalization. These actions best express the process of growth in Chicago and the American West during the 19th century.

“Natural avenues of transportation might play important roles in shaping a city’s future, but the preexisting structures of the human economy—second nature, not first nature—determined which routes and which cities developed most quickly.”

Cronon argues from the beginning of his book that location did not catapult Chicago to its status as a major metropolis. Rather, the way its hinterlands were manipulated and used in relationship to the market economy of the West and East played the most important role. In short, human beings’ vision for the use of natural resources fostered urban growth in Chicago.

“The lake, the harbor, the river, and the canal might by themselves have made Chicago the most important city in northern Illinois, but they would never have made it the interior metropolis of the continent.”

The quotation reminds readers of the importance that geographical features played on the positioning of a great western city. However, it also serves as a reminder that these features and modes of transportation only existed because of the natural resources the hinterlands could supply, and because of how the city utilized those resources.

“Railroads were more than just natural; their power to transform landscapes partook of the supernatural, drawing upon a mysterious creative energy that was beyond human influence or knowledge.”

The railroad as the national symbol of economic power and advancement took prominence in the late 19th century. This form of transportation far surpassed other modes because of its speed and ability to navigate through inclement weather. Poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson both wrote about the locomotive in ways that fostered a magical, sublime image of the technology.

“‘Nature,’ wrote one booster who came closer than most to this perspective, ‘built Chicago through her artificer, Man.’”

This quotation succinctly names “Nature” as the creator of the city. Human beings were merely the tools used by Nature to build Chicago1.

“The railroads of this country demonstrated yesterday that the hand of time can be moved backward about as easily as Columbus demonstrated that an egg can be made to stand on end.”

The railroads were responsible for overhauling how people kept time in the 19th century. Before the railroad, keeping time was based on the seasonal cycles and hours of light. The railroads introduced a complicated organizational structure that required standardized times so that railcars could clear the tracks at specific times before other scheduled cars needed the rail. Moving to a mechanical way of timekeeping kept train schedules organized and accurate.

“The piles of grain now lying uncovered in our streets, the choked and crowded thoroughfares, the overloaded teams, the bursting bags, […] all testify to a wide-felt want of room. […] We want more warehouses […]. We want more cars and locomotives.”

This quotation comes from the Chicago Democratic Press reporting during the harvest season of 1854. The description of the confusion in the streets and goods “bursting” from the bags suggests that market growth in Chicago was reaching an all-time high. It makes clear the need for additional storage and transportation, which signifies that Chicago and its hinterland were becoming the gateway to the West.

“The development of the system of grading and of elevator receipts is the most important step in the history of the grain trade.”

This proclamation was made in 1896 by Henry Crosby Emery, one of the 19th century’s leading scholars of commodity markets. The grading system for grain, while not without controversy, revolutionized how farmers traded and profited from their crops. The system would eventually influence similar standards in the lumber and meat industries.

“That farmers and merchants no longer needed to float rafts down prairie streams or haul wagons over muddy roads to sell their grain was due to the very railroads and elevators which now linked them so powerfully and troublingly to Chicago’s marketplace.”

The innovations in transportation and grain production helped the rural farmer in several ways. Because crops could move at a cheaper cost and more quickly to final consumers, farmers no longer needed to risk loss of crop or injury to themselves or their animals while transporting goods. However, the increase in agricultural technology increased the volume of Chicago markets which in turn created unprecedented competition and corporate monopoly.

“They are leeches upon commerce and the community, that suck the life blood out of the farmers and dealers in grain, without contributing anything towards the general wealth or productions of the country. They swarm like lice upon the body politic and feed and fatten upon its substance.”

Rural delegate Joseph Medill uses this metaphor to confront “grain gamblers.” These merchants and traders practice immoral business practices by buying and selling futures contracts and cornering the market without adding any value or incentive to the product. They were viewed as parasites to honest American farmers.

“If the chief symbol of the earlier marketing system was the sack whose enclosure drew boundaries around crop and property alike, then the symbol of Chicago’s abandonment of those boundaries was the golden torrent of the elevator chute.”

The sack as referenced in this passage refers to sacks of wheat or grain that would be harvested by farmers and traded to merchants. The sacks were a clear and orderly way to keep track of weight and quantity per farmer. However, when the sacks became obsolete, there was no way to clearly and legally record which grain belonged to which farmer. The farmer needed to place their trust in the grain elevator operator to “grade” the grain fairly and accurately. The boundaries of ownership were broken for farmers.

“The abundance that fueled Chicago’s hinterland economy thus consisted largely of stored sunshine: this was the wealth of nature, and no human labor could create the value it contained.”

This quotation is a nod to the distinctions between first and second nature. First nature, in this case, is the sunshine, which gives every living organism the energy to live. Second nature is how people use the energy from the sun to engage in human labor.

“The Chicago wholesale yards were thus a long way—in thought as much as in space—from the forests that had been cut down to supply them.”

This quotation reemphasizes the notion that merchants and consumers are far removed from first nature. Meanwhile, the lumberyard is a perfect encapsulation of second nature.

“The hog eats the corn, and Europe eats the Hog. Corn thus becomes incarnate; for what is a hog, but fifteen or twenty bushels of corn on four legs?”

Cronon attributes the above quote to a “19th-century commentator,” but the honesty, accuracy, and humor put the time period in context. The end product of the market process is the sum of all that went into it. In this case, the hog is just as valuable as the nature that sustained it.

“Though hardly as elegant as the department stores on State Street or the millionaires’ mansions on Prairie Avenue, Chicago’s elevators, lumberyards, and stockyards were the most basic symbols of the city’s wealth and power.”

This quotation provides two contrasting images of the city. On one hand, the city offers a polished, economically healthy environment with department stores and mansions. On the other hand, the quotation reminds readers that these symbols of wealth are built on the less glamourous aspects of American culture, like elevators, lumberyards, and stockyards.

“In economic and environmental terms, we should think of a city and its hinterland not as two clearly defined and easily recognizable places but as a multitude of overlapping market and resource regions.”

This quotation emphasizes the overall message that Cronon conveys with his book: The city and the country are not uniquely separate environments independent from one another. The city and the rural areas that make up its hinterland dictate the range of goods and services that feed its local markets.

“Surely there were few more powerful symbols of modern urban life than this vast buzzing tower of human enterprise, like nothing so much as a swarm of anonymous insects performing their intricate labors according to the dictates of a mysterious collective intelligence.”

The symbol of the “modern” way of life came in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition (The World’s Fair). The “vast buzzing tower of human enterprise” references the fair itself, with its extensive exhibits of the economic achievements Chicago made during the second half of the 19th century. The metaphor of the “bee hive,” suggested in the chapter’s title, is extended in this quotation. The human beings responsible for the “buzzing” enterprise are compared to the worker bees of a hive—unidentifiable and all working to the same central goal.

“The fair reminded people of something not always so obvious back home: the place in which they lived was a hinterland, whose cultural worth would be measured by the metropolitan vision that the White City so clearly exemplified.”

The “White City,” or more commonly “The World’s Fair,” solidified Chicago’s position as a metropolitan juggernaut. To some visitors, the fair was a clear message that the value of their home areas depended solely on what they saw in the metropolitan hub around which they orbited.