4.  Select a city for study and, drawing upon a variety of sources, review its
    demographic, economic, and spatial expansion in the late nineteenth century.
a.  What were the factors influencing the city's growth in the late 19th century?
b.  How did the city's population, work force, and residential patterns change in                                                                       the period 1870-1900?

   In 1850 Chicago was a small and developing city with a population of 30,000.  However, by the end of the decade, the population had more than tripled to about 109,000.  The entire state of Illinois, which by 1860 had become the fourth most populous state in the Union, experienced a great development during the decade of the 1850s. This development centered mostly in and around the city of Chicago, which became a transportation and commercial center very quickly.
    In 1850, only one railroad passed through Chicago.  The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, which never actually reached Galena, was opened in 1848. The Galena's president was William Butler Ogden, the first mayor of Chicago, who would acquire many railroads during the 1850s. The opening of the Galena had an immediate impact, and by 1852, over half of Chicago's wheat arrived due to the Galena.  Although only one railroad served the Chicago area in 1850, it caused railroads to be one of the primary modes of transportation for the population of Chicago.
    Chicago's transformation into a railroad capital was aided by the national trend of the time, in which the general direction of trade had shifted from north-south to east-west. Before the railroads were made useful, the major mode of transportation had been the steamboat, which caused the building of canals and the development of southern river cities, such as New Orleans. Canals declined in the 1840s and had been superseded by new inventions and other advances in technology.
    In 1848, the same year that the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad was opened, another achievement took place which helped Chicago to displace the river cities. The Illinois & Michigan Canal was completed, connecting Chicago to the Mississippi River, so that trade that had previously gone through St. Louis went instead to Chicago. Chicago was also in a strategic geographical position due to territorial expansion. The United States had gained the Oregon Territory and the Mexican Cession during the late 1840s, moving the frontier westward and causing many people, headed for the new western territories (motivated by such events as the California gold rush of 1848-49), to pass through the Midwest.  These factors led to Chicago becoming a transportation center.
    The railroad also aided Chicago's growth in conjunction with the telegraph.  Judge John D. Caton, president of the Illinois & Mississippi Telegraph Company, made an arrangement with the Illinois Central railroad, under which a telegraph line would be strung along the railroad routes, the railroad agents would man the telegraph, and the railroad and telegraph companies would split the profits. The telegraph assisted the railroad by creating  the rapid transfer of train schedules and the tracking of lost baggage.
    These new developments contributed to the railroad's expansion. As has been stated above, the railroad took business away from the steamboat, since the shipping of freight by railroad was substantially less costly than by steamboat. By 1857, seven railroads had reached the Mississippi. The result of this was the decline of the steamboat and the predominance of the railroad, and consequently of Chicago, as a railroad town.  In 1860, Chicago's population was 109,000, more than three times its population in 1850. In 1870, it would triple again to 300,000.  Chicago's significant expansion was a result of its status as a railroad capital.