Montgomery Ward's and Sears, Roebuck became major mail-order houses, providing their customers with catalogs describing available merchandise and an opportunity to receive orders by rail.Ĭhicago also became the home of major manufacturing industries, many of which supported the West's agricultural trade. 1Īs it became the nation's western railroad center, Chicago merchants gathered in Midwestern and western produce, from lumber to corn and grain, and distributed finished products, from clothing and tools to pre-fabricated housing units, to the same markets. In Chicago, architects devised the world's first skyscrapers, relying upon steel-frame construction based upon cement caissons sunk to bedrock far below the surface. The large opportunities for new building led the city to become a center for architectural innovation, and gave rise to Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. But a combination of its unique location and eastern capital contributed to Chicago's rapid reconstruction. In 1871 the Chicago Fire burned nearly forty percent of the city. The completion of a transcontinental railroad stretching from Omaha to San Francisco in 1869 made Chicago, which already enjoyed a rail link with the Nebraska city, the hub of the new western rail network as well. The war's end also brought a rapid increase in new railroad construction, especially in the lands west of Chicago. Some became tenant farmers, working lands owned by absentee landlords. Many farmers faced large debts that they could not pay. But the war's end, coupled with a decrease in European demand for American agricultural products, left many of these individuals to face dramatically lower crop prices. Many Illinois farmers borrowed money to increase their productive capacity in wartime's strong markets. Chicago's position at the nexus of the Northwest's growing railroad network made it a major point for the distribution of eastern-made goods to troops serving in the western theater as well. Union armies relied upon the state's corn and grain fields for rations, and upon its factories for uniforms, wagons, and other supplies. The Civil War brought prosperity to Illinois' farmers and manufacturers. Economic Development in Gilded-Age Illinois
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