Contents
MAPS AND GRAPHS xiii
PREFACE xv
PROLOGUE: Cloud over Chicago 5
PART I : TO BE THE CENTRAL CITY
1: Dreaming the Metropolis 23
Patterns on a Prairie Landscape 23
Booster Dreams 31
Metropolis and Empire 41
Reading Turner Backwards 46
2: Rails and Water 55
Market in the Mud 55
Artificial Corridors 63
Railroad Time 74
The Logic of Capital 81
PART II : NATURE TO MARKET
3: Pricing the Future: Grain 97
Prairie into Farm 97
A Sack's Journey 104
The Golden Stream 109
Futures 120
Boundary Disputes 132
Necessary Fictions 142
4: The Wealth of Nature: Lumber 148
Where Value Comes From 148
From Forest to Prairie 151
The Business of Lumber 159
Cargo Market 169
Buying by Rail 180
Lost Hinterlands 183
The Cutover 200
5: Annihilating Space: Meat 207
The Great Bovine City of the World 207
Slaughtering the Bison 213
Open Range and Feed Lot 218
Porkopolis 225
Storing the Winter 230
Triumph of the Packers 235
Unremembered Deaths 247
PART III : THE GEOGRAPHY OF CAPITAL
6: Gateway City 263
Mapping Capital 263
Credit Flows 269
The Urban Hierarchy 279
Gateway Rivalry: Chicago and St. Louis 295
7: The Busy Hive 310
Reaping the Factory's Harvest 310
The Merchant's World: Prerailroad 318
The Merchant's World: Postrailroad 324
Catalogs on Kitchen Tables 333
8: White City Pilgrimage 341
The Great Fair 341
Miracle of the Phoenix 345
Metropolitan Vice 350
The Moral Economy of City and Country 357
City and Country as a Unity 364
EPILOGUE: Where We Were Driving 371
APPENDIX: Methodological Note on the Bankruptcy Maps 387
NOTES 391
BIBLIOGRAPHY 4 7 1
INDEX 505
Illustrations follow pages 168 and 328