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Financing Illinois Industry, 1830–1890
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Extract
Where did the owners of early Illinois industries get the capital and the funds to start their factories? What was the background of these early manufacturers? The evidence that will be presented here suggests that the typical Illinois manufacturer of the nineteenth century was a self-financed man who was born and raised in Europe or on the eastern seaboard.
Let us begin with the basic thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, Wisconsin and Harvard historian of the last generation, who reinterpreted the history of this country. Turner's thesis, enunciated at the Chicago meeting of the American Historical Association in 1893, was that society was reborn on every new frontier. Its character was influenced not only by heredity but even more by its new environment. Thus the American economy reflected not only European, especially Anglo-Saxon customs and institutions brought across the Atlantic, but it also reflected the pioneer's adaptation to primitive frontier conditions. By the second, third, and fourth generation, Americans had forgotten or abandoned certain European ways because these were not adapted to survival in the New World.
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- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1953
References
1 Turner, F. J., The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920), pp. 10–21.Google Scholar
2 Cook, $1,068,000; Peoria, $419,000; Madison, $332,000; Jo Daviess, $288,000; Adams,$260,000; Fulton,$255,000; Kendall, $244,000; and next, LaSalle, $160,030. De Bow, J., Compendium of Seventh Census (Washington, 1854), p. 223.Google Scholar
3 Quincy, 6,900; Galena, 6,004; Peoria, 5,095; Springfield, 4,533; Peru, 4,500; Alton, 3,585; Ottawa, 3,219; LaSalle, 3,201; Joliet, 2,659; Elgin, 2,359; Aurora, 1,895; Bourbonnais, 1,710; Rockford, 1,711; Pekin, 1,678; Bloomington, 1,59–1; Freeport, 1,436. Compendium, pp. 338 ff.
4 William Besley was the great grandfather of the author's wife. This was the family tradition, related by Besley's granddaughter, Mrs. Jane B. Strong.
5 There was one road in the west from Naples to Springfield, another in the north connecting Elgin, Aurora, and Chicago.
6 The 366-mile route, Chicago to Cairo, passed near three settlements of importance; Bourbonnais on the Kankakee River (710), Urbana on the Grand Prairie (210), and Jonesboro in the south (584). Corliss, Carlton, Trails to Rails (Chicago, 1937), p. 25.Google Scholar
7 Compendium, p. 52.
8 Ibid., pp. 128–9, 179–82.
9 Report on Manufacturing Industries in the United States at the Eleventh Census (Washington, 1890), Part I, 387–99.
10 Dictionary of American Biography, XIX, 470.
11 Eighth Census of the United States, Population (Washington, 1860), p. xxxv, The four exceptions are as follows: Maine to Massachusetts, Maryland to Ohio, Mississippi to Texas, and Missouri to California.
12 A. W. Harris, pamphlet on William Deering in University of Illinois Library, p. 10, W. Deering to Elijah Gammon.
13 Dictionary of American Biography.
14 Clark, Neil M., John Deere (privately printed, Moline, Ill., 1937), p. 15.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., pp. 27, 43–44.
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17 Historical Encyclopaedia of Illinois, Cook County, II (1905) 863–64; A. W. Harris, pamphlet on William Deering.
18 Dictionary of American Biography.
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