ant outposts like
Chicago and Milwaukee, is the outcome of the meeting of the coal of the
eastern and southern borders of the province and of Pennsylvania, with
the iron ores of the north. The industry has been systematized and
consolidated by a few captains of industry. Steam shovels dig the ore
from many of the Mesabi mines; gravity roads carry it to the docks and
to the ships, and huge hoisting and carrying devices, built especially
for the traffic, unload it for the railroad and the furnace. Iron and
coal mines, transportation fleets, railroad systems, and iron
manufactories are concentrated in a few corporations, principally the
United States Steel Corporation. The world has never seen such a
consolidation of capital and so complete a systematization of economic
processes.

Such is the economic appearance of the Middle West a century after the
pioneers left the frontier village of Pittsburgh and crossed the Ohio
into the forests. De Tocqueville exclaimed, with reason, in 1833: "This
gradual and continuous progress of the European race toward the Rocky
Mountains has the solemnity of a providential event. It is like a deluge
of men, rising unabatedly, and driven daily onward by the hand of God."

The ideals of the Middle West began in the log huts set in the midst of
the forest a century ago. While his horizon was still bounded by the
clearing that his ax had made, the pioneer dreamed of continental
conquests. The vastness of the wilderness kindled his imagination. His
vision saw beyond the dank swamp at the edge of the great lake to the
lofty buildings and the jostling multitudes of a mighty city; beyond the
rank, grass-clad prairie to the seas of golden grain; beyond the harsh
life of the log hut and the sod house to the home of his children, where
should dwell comfort and the higher things of life, though they might
not be for him. The men and women who made the Middle West were
idealists, and they had the power of will to make their dreams come
true. Here, also, were the pioneer's traits,--individual activity,
inventiveness, and competition for the prizes of the rich province that
awaited exploitation under freedom and equality of opportunity. He
honored the man whose eye was the quickest and whose grasp was the
strongest in this contest: it was "every one for himself."

The early society of the Middle West was not a complex, highly
differentiated and organized society. Almost every family was a
self-sufficing