Michael Blankenship

October 9, 2000

Eco-Criticism

Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991.

William Cronon was fascinated by Chicago for the same reasons that all people are drawn to cities: curiosity. For those of us not from a city, the urban environment seems simultaneously beautiful, frightening and dangerous, exciting, and disgusting. Cronon begins Nature’s Metropolis by recalling his childhood memories of passing through the city and uses these memories as the launching point to explore how 19^th Century Chicago developed from a trading camp in the 1800s into the metropolis that was revealed at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

For the purposes of our class, Nature’s Metropolis doesn’t seem to have a direct link to Eco-criticism. In fact, despite having the façade of a history text, the book is much more of an example of applied economics than any sort of history or literary theory text. What is interesting to those with an Eco-critical eye is the way Cronon links the evolution of Chicago to the frontier and rural areas surrounding the city by exploring the flow of resources into the city. In other words, the city is not an island amidst a sea of savage wilderness; it depended on (and still depends upon) the resources that surrounded it to thrive (see explanation of von Thunen’s theory below).

Although much of Chicago’s history is revealed through his exploration, many events that would seem important are deleted. People are downplayed and the town as a whole highlighted. You leave the book having no idea what a 19^th Century citizen of Chicago was like. What you do take is a better understanding of how capitalism makes the world (especially The United States) go around.

Cronon’s idea for Nature’s Metropolis stems from his disagreement with a theory proposed at the World’s Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair that took place in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400^th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the Americas. When asked to explain the American westward domination, Frederick Jackson Turner proposed his theory. Combining Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism, Turner believed that this domination was the result of the “social evolution” of Europeans and Americans who sought to bring order, reason, and ultimately productivity out of the primitive savagery of “the frontier.” In other words, white man’s evolutionary superiority over Native Americans and their willingness for order led them to conquer the West. This order eventually manifested itself in a city like Chicago, the ultimate example of order within Nature. By taking advantage of naturally occurring geographical/natural potential, western man prospered. Modern thinking has done little to challenge this idea. Cronon, however, believes differently. Through an enormous amount of research (which is footnoted and explained in a 115-page appendix), Cronon demonstrated that capital was the reason the city was created and still exists today.

The location of Chicago had long been recognized as a geographically valuable place. Trading posts were located there, Native Americans lived along the shores of Lake Michigan, and its close proximity to the sluggish, shallow Illinois River made travel by small boat easy. As westward expansion became more prevalent, more national views came into play. No longer was Chicago just a good place to live; it was a good place for a city.

Thinking on this larger scale, it became evident that there would be a great advantage to developing the Chicago area. This is where “the boosters” come into the picture. Land speculators hoping to get rich quick saw the value the area and the potential it had to evolve. Its location between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River (which flowed into the Mississippi and eventually the Gulf of Mexico) made it a perfect canal candidate. A canal would create an interior route from the North Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico. The prairie that surrounded the city begged to be farmed. Mining operations could be established, and timber abounded north of Chicago. Reading Turner’s theory backwards, the boosters hoped to create the city that was destined to evolve anyway due to geography. They hoped to buy the land while they could and get rich off of it as the city finally caught up to its potential.

As the Native Americans were removed through shifty government purchases, one of the biggest land speculation movements in U.S. history began. Lots of swampy prairie land sold for outrageous prices. The land often changed hands in a matter of days only to be sold the next week for even more money. The interesting thing was that the actual city didn’t exist. The land on which to build it was sold, but there was no business to generate revenue. The only items sold in the city were lots.

Eventually, it became evident that the city wasn’t growing as it was destined to grow…at least not as quickly as investors would like. The real drive behind the city’s evolution came not from some natural evolution but from these worried investors. So much capital was tied up in the would-be city that something had to be done. The canal, proposed and eventually built, proved to be just short of a disaster as sand constantly clogged the shallow water that ran through it. The railroad eventually came into the picture (sponsored by the government) and soon all but eliminated travel by water. In fact, the railroad became the secret to solidifying the mirage of Chicago.

Focusing on economics, Cronon explains the relationship between a city and the countryside that surrounds it. A city can’t exist without having a purpose. Commercially successful rural areas can’t exist without a market for their goods. Thus, a symbiotic relationship exists. Capital, in the form of lumber, livestock, grain, and ore, flows into the city where it is turned to liquid capital in the form of money. In other words, cities act as funnels and markets for non-liquid capital.

Citing support for this idea, Cronon quotes Johann Heinrich von Thunen’s 1826 book, The Isolated State. Thunen theorizes that an isolated city-state will structurally evolve due to economic factors. The city will be at the center with agricultural, mining, and lumber industries surrounding the city based on monetary factors. The more costly the transportation cost of the item, the closer that item will be to the city. The city itself acts as a center of commerce rather than the center of the Universe. It is not a self-sufficient region but is dependent upon the resources surrounding it.

Under this theory, Chicago shouldn’t have grown as quickly as it did. The surrounding areas could not have supported the rapid growth that occurred there. What changed Thunen’s situation were the railroad and telegraph. These items basically shrunk the world allowing Chicago to link to the East. Capital continued to flow in from everywhere, and Chicago became a boomtown.

The railroad not only made travel into Chicago easier for outlying farmers; it encouraged farmers from great distances away to trade their goods in Chicago. To understand Cronon’s slant, consider this demonstration of his theory. The ideas of fixed and variable costs became factors to the railroad industry. Since they were in charge of loading and unloading grain, for example, on and off of the train, this cost was fixed. It costs the same amount to load and unload 5 tons of grain whether the grain moved 5 feet or 500 miles. Other fixed costs included wage employees and warm up fuel costs for the steam locomotives. Where the railroad could make up the difference was in charging distance rates. Since the distance from any given Farm X to Chicago was always different, this represented a variable cost. The further the farm was from Chicago, the cheaper the rate per mile traveled since only variable costs change. Likewise, shorter trips were often more expensive (per mile) than longer trips. This odd bit of economic logic encouraged farms far from Chicago to ship their product through the bustling city further encouraging development.

As the railroad became more dominant, the world effectively shrank because of the technological advance. Investors poured money into the city, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of Chicago actually occurred. The drive was totally fueled by economics and capitalism. Without the revenue, the swamp that was old Chicago would most likely still be a swamp.

The structure of this book is interesting. After a brief introduction, Cronon looks at the primary economic factors one at a time tracing them from their origins to the end of the 19^th century. This nonlinear organization often leaves the reader wondering exactly when a given event occurred. However, like I said, Nature’s Metropolis only pretends to be a history book while the true topic is applied economics. Anyone with an interest in agriculture, the lumber industry, or the meat industry in Chicago during this time period would find this text interesting. However, aside from Cronon’s reliance on von Thusen’s theory, this text has little Eco-critical appeal.