Chapter I 

 THE REGION OF DISCONTENT 



IF AMERICANS were obliged to select a heartland for the United States, 

 most of them undoubtedly would point on their maps to the twelve 

 states of the Middle West, or as the census maps have it, the North Central 

 states. Here lie the five states of the old Northwest Ohio, Indiana, Mich- 

 igan, Illinois, and Wisconsin and beyond them in two neatly arranged 

 tiers seven more Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri in the first tier and the 

 Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas in the second. All of these states are far 

 distant from the seas; they are heavily populated, except on their western 

 and northern fringes, by the most "typical" of Americans; and they are 

 capable of almost unlimited development, both agricultural and industrial. 

 The exploitation of their riches is, indeed, already far along. On one 

 census map after another, throughout the later nineteenth century and 

 into the twentieth, the areas shaded to show acreage under cultivation, or 

 crops harvested, or the production of wheat, or corn, or cattle, or swine, 

 or dairy products reveal clearly the dominant role which this region has 

 played, and continues to play, in the production of food. Here, too, lie the 

 nation's richest deposits of iron ore and some of its richest coal fields. 

 And into this sheltered haven industry also has marched with ever increas- 

 ing tempo. Probably no other like-sized area could be found in all the 

 world so capable of taking care of all its major needs. 



i. This chapter follows in the main an article by John D. Hicks, "The Western 

 Middle West, 1900-1914," Agricultural History, XX (April, 1946), pp. 65-77. Re- 

 printed by permission. 



