Fulltext access denied for pi 1830562916 and pageNo 266
            

ew 4 Ce) Modern Business Geography 1G. 167. Some of the foundries at Homestead, a typical *‘steel city.” Here many thousands of iron, or in the steel plants where the smelted iron is made into steel, or in the The great manufacturing cities of the Middle West. Four cities of this third manufacturing district — namely, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit — rank among the world’s greatest industrial centers. Their advantages in the matter of transportation have already been discussed (pages 217 to 221). Chicago, with two thirds of the factory workers of Illinois, stands first among the cities of the United States not only in wooden products, but in slaughtering and meat packing, in foundry and machine-shop work, and in making and repairing railroad cars. Almost everyone knows of the Pullman cars, which are made in a Chicago suburb. Cleveland, by reason of its favorable position on Lake Erie, finds that it pays to bring coal from near Pittsburgh to meet the iron ore that comes from the Lake Superior region. Its specialties range from small articles like nails, wire, bolts, and hardware, to bulky ships and bridges, — practically all of them products that use large amounts of iron. Pittsburgh is the center of a cluster of great iron-working communities, including McKeesport, South Bethlehem, Braddock, and Homestead. The growth of this cluster in just this area depends largely on the fact that the meeting point of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers happens to lie near a great seam of coal sixteen feet thick. The cities stretch along the rivers more than twenty miles. Their growth is helped by enormous quantities of petroleum and natural gas, which supplement the coal in the steel industries. In early days the necessary iron ore also was mined in the neighborhood. but this is now displaced by ore from Lake Superior. Detroit is an interesting response to a new industry. The location of the city, as we have seen, is favorable; but in 1900 twelve cities exceeded it in size and it was about the same size as Milwaukee. Then