railroad – American Environments to 1893

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Unlike previous readings throughout this semester, this week’s portion of Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis left me with two very different reactions. While Parts II and III of the book were both filled with information pertinent to the growth of Chicago in the nineteenth century, the end of the monograph left me puzzled with Cronon’s analysis.

I found Part II of Nature’s Metropolis very effective in emphasizing the importance of natural resources in the development of Chicago. Cronon’s thorough assessment of the emergence of incorporated grain, lumber, and meat into Chicago’s – and eventually the country’s – economy demonstrated how the power of “first nature” was inescapable. In the production of crops, Cronon explains that the glaciers that once existed in the Great Lakes region were responsible for the richness of the soil surrounding Chicago (98). Additionally, Chicago’s lumber trade declined after forests north of the city were exhausted of their trees. Only these forests, due to the network of waterways that ran through them, were able to supply the rather treeless Chicago with lumber (200). These examples served to show that Cronon’s concept of “first nature” was responsible both for the creation and the destruction of different pieces of Chicago as a metropolis.

Cronon also linked his concepts of “first” and “second” nature in Part II. In his discussion of wheat as the definitive cash crop of Chicago, Cronon writes about the importance of the gridding of land and the grain elevator in commoditizing nature. As the railroad established its presence in the Midwest, the transport of grain increased dramatically in scale and necessitated the use of a grain elevator to make the process more efficient (126). The use of the grain elevator railroad also contributed to the creation of the Chicago Board of Trade in an effort to standardize grain qualities for consumers (119). Also bringing agriculture off the farm and into the city was meat production in plants on the South side of Chicago. The commoditizing of meat, Cronon argues served to convince Chicagoans that meat had become an “urban product” (256). While Cronon effectively reveals a relationship between first and second nature, he seems to fail to discuss the implications of this link. When a natural product like wheat became commoditized, did it too become second nature? Unfortunately, Cronon leaves us with inconclusive answers for inquiries like these.

While I found Part II holistically convincing, Part III of Nature’s Metropolis saw Cronon’s arguments beginning to unravel. I also think at this point Chelsea’s commentary on “humans allow(ing) capital to rule their lives” becomes clearly applicable. Even Cronon becomes obsessed with capital when he makes the claim in his chapter “Gateway City” that second nature is capital (269). Though I understand Cronon’s demonstration that second nature can be traced by the seemingly unceasing flow of capital as noted by Chelsea, I am left completely clueless as to why he didn’t make the distinction at the beginning of his book between “nature” and “capital” as opposed to his created concepts of “first” and “second” nature. Moreover, in our discussion several weeks ago on Part I of Cronon, we talked about how Cronon considered both the creation of railroads and cities a step in ecological evolution. However, in “Gateway City” Cronon asserts that there was nothing natural about the advantages Chicago had in becoming a metropolis (295). In Part III of this book, Cronon appears to become more concerned with the economic and cultural history of late nineteenth century Chicago than with the environmental approach taken in the first parts of his narrative. Sadly, with all these contradictions and conflicts in his arguments, I found Cronon’s conclusions, or lack thereof, disappointing.

After reading Slotkin’s The Fatal Environment, I was impressed but unconvinced with Slotkin’s concept of the “Frontier Myth.” While Slotkin provides an extremely thorough examination of how the “myth” of the frontier has been molded to explain Westward expansion, I think the breadth of his work makes some parts of his narrative superfluous.

Much like Ian, I found Slotkin’s Part III – “The Metropolis vs. The Frontier” to be one of his most effective sections. I would like to add to Ian’s analysis that while Slotkin argues that “humanity does in fact exist in nature,” I think Slotkin also believes that in the minds of nineteenth century American industrialists, humans were very separate from nature (iasolcz). This is seen in “The Language of the Frontier Myth” when Slotkin discusses the dispossession of Native Americans. While arguing that Indians were human despite white industrialist ideas that assumed otherwise, Slotkin outlines nature as something “primarily inhuman” (79). He asserts that throughout the Indian wars and American industrialization, the myth emerged that an inherent struggle existed between this inhuman realm and that of human “civilization,” and that it was this conflict that fueled tensions during Westward expansion (79).

Additionally, Part III set the framework for the remainder of Slotkin’s narrative by juxtaposing both perceptions of the frontier in popular culture – as found in many of Cooper’s novels – and the expansion of democracy and politics to the West with the idea of a separate, civilized “Metropolis” that dominated American culture (109-110). I thought this section was particularly interesting because it covered similar topics to our previous readings, particularly Turner’s “Frontier Thesis.” Unlike Turner, however, Slotkin emphasizes the expansion of the frontier as a result of the specific economic, political, and national concerns that emerged within the Metropolis. For example, he ties the spread over the frontier in the 1840s to the increased prevalence of “‘Jacksonian’ ideology” in the early nineteenth century (114).

Slotkin’s section on the railroad also relates to our reading of William Cronon and the development of Chicago in Nature’s Metropolis. Both Slotkin and Cronon emphasize the importance of human actors in bringing change to the environment. They also argue that the development of the railroad and the opening of the frontier was a direct result of the injection of capitalist ideals into the economy –this brings us back to Cronon’s “geography of capitalism” (15, 26). Like Slotkin notes, railroads made access to “nodes of superabundance” increasingly easy (211). However, Slotkin also seems to take Cronon’s analysis one step further and questions whether capitalism might have molded the perception of the railroad opening the frontier. While questions like this are certainly intriguing, this kind of curiosity from Slotkin ultimately turned me away from his narrative. I think these questions detracted too much from an environmental history and instead created a massive study in historical psychology. This was only furthered when Slotkin included his chapters on George Custer. Although the story of Custer’s Last Stand was an effective lens to introduce perceptions of the frontier in the nineteenth century, Slotkin’s perpetuation of the hero myth throughout the book seemed to be a thoughtful, but unnecessary addition to his main argument.

Tag: railroad

Cronon’s Complications with Second Nature

The Fatal Flaw of The Fatal Environment