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How was chicago affected by railroads
Railroads affecting chicago
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When you encounter a city such as Chicago, it is practically impossible to avoid CTA and Metra trains. From short store errands to long journeys home, the CTA is there as your personal downtown car. If you do not have enough money to put into owning a car or simply do not want to put up with trying to find parking in the congested city, the CTA is there for you. Where more people to use the CTA, the amount of gas polluting the earth would significantly decrease the pollution levels in Chicago. Since there aren't as many cars on the road, it not only decreases the carbon monoxide leaking from cars but the amount of cars on the road, which also decreases the amount of people on the road. Numerous laws state how using the CTA could benefit people in Chicago overall. These are just some of the reasons Metra and the CTA has impacted everything from population to economics and even political and environmental issues. Throughout the history of Chicago, trains have always played a big role in its development. In the early years of Chicago's booming economy, trains would bring cattle into the slaughter yards, where they would be slain and butchered for meat and then shipped elsewhere. This region near the south side, became known as the stock yards. Another neighborhood started right beyond it, known as the back of the yards. This neighborhood grew from people who moved into the region to work in the yards. Coming off of this fact, we see that in Chicago's early history, it had a great population boom due to its extremely prosperous economy. Many immigrants came over the years looking for political stability and personal freedoms in America along with other migrants looking for work which all were readily available to them within Chicag... ... middle of paper ... ...g I can use for my final paper when I include evidence about the environmental impacts of the trains on the city. I also liked this source because of how it talks about these organizations competing to bring more money into the city, which shows that they are positively impacting Chicago's economy. Hampp, Andrew. "Advertising Boosts Transit Budgets." Advertising Age 79.40 (2008): 8. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. Hampp describes how cities such as New York and Chicago are facing financial issues within their public transit systems. They are beginning to rely on the funding from advertisements in order to keep the fares low for riders because of costs to maintain equipment and pay employees are rising. I would prefer this source to be more recent, seeing that this is from 2009 but I do feel like the information I used fits in perfectly for my topic.
The transition, however, was not so smooth. Men and women were attracted to the new cities because of the culture and conveniences that were unavailable to rural communities. Immigrants in particular were eager to get to cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston for these reasons, and to look for better jobs than the ones they had found at home. In fact, without the increase in immigration from 1850 to 1920 (where around 38 million came to America), cities would have expanded at lethargic rates – if at all – due to a decreasing fertility rate and a high rate of infant mortality. Death due to disease was also common. Yet the influx of immigrants managed to make up for these losses, and cities grew exponentially for nearly a century1.
Many businesses developed from Chicago's growing domination over the rail industry. One of those businesses was the grain business. The invention of the grain harvester and grain elevators allowed farmers west of Chicago who grew grain, to bring there grain to Chicago, store it, and keep it fresh before it was shipped on the rails. Chicago was doing so much business in grain that they established the Chicago Board of Trade. At the Board of Trade grain would be graded and large amounts would be sold for varying prices depending on their grade, but would be delivered at a later time.
Reinhardt, Richard. Workin' on the Railroad; Reminiscences from the Age of Steam. Palo Alto, CA: American West Pub., 1970. Print.
In the years from 1860 through 1890, the prospect of a better life attracted nearly ten million immigrants who settled in cities around the United States. The growing number of industries produced demands for thousands of new workers and immigrants were seeking more economic opportunities. Most immigrants settled near each other’s own nationality and/or original village when in America.
Chicago in the 1920s was a turning point for the development of ethnic neighborhoods. After the opening of the first rail connection from New York to Chicago in the 1840s, immigration sky rocketed from that point on. Majority of the immigrants to Chicago were Europeans. The Irish, Italians, eastern European Jews, Germans, and Mexicans were among the most common ethnicities to reside in Chicago. These groups made up the greater part of Chicago. The sudden increase in immigration to Chicago in the 1920s soon led to an even further distinguished separation of ethnicities in neighborhoods. The overall development of these neighborhoods deeply impacted how Chicago is sectioned off nowadays. Without these ethnicities immigrating to Chicago almost 100 years ago, Chicago neighborhoods would not be as culturally defined and shaped as they are today.
Railroads were America’s first big business and contributed a great deal towards advancing industrialization. Beginning in the early 1870's, railroad construction in the United States expanded substantially. Before the year 1871, approximately fourty-five thousand miles of track had been laid. Up until the 1900's another one-hundred and seventy thousand miles were added to the nation's growing railroad system. This growth came about due to the erection of transcontinental railroads. Railroads supplied cities and towns with food, fuel, materials, and access to markets. The railroad system made way for an economic prosperity. The railroad system helped to build the physical growth of cities and towns. It even became another means of communication. Most importantly, it helped to produce a second
People immediately began to migrate to the area now known as The Great Plains, and populations in the states along the route began to prosper at record percentages. The original railroad sparked inspiration for other tracks that could branch off of the main line and go to other areas of the country. By the year 1893, there were about four different transcontinental railroads and modifications were made to the original cars, such as a freezer box that was designed to keep crops fresh during the few day voyage. This new improvement also provided the country with several new jobs that were never needed before. All areas such as construction, maintenance, and operation workers were now needed to ensure that things went the way they were supposed to and that the hard work and dedication that went into this six year project did not go to a waste and give the opposite effect than
The Chicago River was shallow and stagnant, but it had much potential because of its location and what it provided to the city. The Chicago River altered the human population as Chicago developed into a big city. Because of the river factories and stock yards moved in and caused major problems for the city. The rise of Chicago's Stock Yards was a significant benefactor to the city's pollution problem. In the late1840s Chicago large stockyards moved into the city along the river and dumped all of the meat packing waste into the river.
During the last 10-15 years of the Progressive Era, more than 15 million immigrants arrived in the United States— a number equal to the total number of immigrants that arrived in the previous 40 years. In 1910, three-fourths of New York City's population was made up of either immigrants or first generation Americans. Unlike earlier immigrants, the majority of the newcomers during this time came from non-English speaking European countries. Immigrants mostly traveled in from...
A good chunk of people in the Big Apple (New York City) feels that the MTA makes their ride efficient, cheap, easy, and convenient way of getting around town. On a scale of 1-10, N...
There is no refuting that the railroad companies transformed business operations and encouraged industrial expansion. The raw materials required for construction of the transcontinental railroad directly resulted in the expansion of the steel, lumber and stone industries. (Gillon p.652) The railroad stimulated growth in manufacturing and agriculture providing an efficient manner to ship raw materials and products throughout the country. Which in turn, increased consumerism and introduced t...
"Railroads were the first big business, the first magnet for the great financial markets, and the first industry to develop a large-scale management bureaucracy. The railroads opened the western half of the nation to economic development, connected raw materials to factories and retailers, and in so doing created an interconnected national market. At the same time the railroads were themselves gigantic consumers of iron, steel, lumber, and other capital goods". (Tindall, Shi)
At the beginning of the industrial revolution in England during the mid-nineteenth century, the railroad was the most innovative mode of transportation known. The British Rail system was a forerunner in railroad technology, uses, and underground engineering. Though the rail system was extremely slow at first and prohibitively expensive to build and run, the British were not to be dissuaded in their pursuit of non-animal driven transportation. The most advanced mode of transportation prior to the introduction of the rail system was the horse drawn omnibus on a track, called a tram. This paper will examine the rail system from a cultural perspective, presenting the impact the railway had on everyday lives in Victorian London and its surrounding communities.
An outburst in growth of America’s big city population, places of 100,000 people or more jumped from about 6 million to 14 million between 1880 and 1900, cities had become a world of newcomers (551). America evolved into a land of factories, corporate enterprises, and industrial workers, and, the surge in immigration supplied their workers. In the latter half of the 19th century, continued industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force. The country's transformation from a rural agricultural society into an urban industrial nation attracted immigrants worldwide. As free land and free labor disappeared and as capitalists dominated the economy, dramatic social, political, and economic tensions were created.
Washington D.C. is the pride and joy of America. We put all of our major monuments there, we hold all of our major government facilities in that area, and it’s even where we house one of the most important people in the country, the president himself. With over 600,000 people living in only 68 square miles, that’s almost 9,000 people per square mile and that is including places like the National Mall on which no one lives, the truth is that it is neither effective nor environmentally safe for everyone to have a car. Because of this we have the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or locally known as the Metro. The metro, thought of at the beginning of the 20th century, began being built in the 1950s and was supposed to be an incredible and effective underground transportation system so that people could more easily get around D.C. without a vehicle. It was supposed to be a national wonder! It was supposed to be revolutionary! The results were a little less than pleasing.