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Indiana University Studies 



the census of the United States of lv«10, and from magazine 

 articles and books. 3 



Perhaps no city ia America has a more interesting life story 

 than Gary. In picturesqueness it rivals the gold and silver 

 cities of the far West in early days. While those cities were 

 built around the mining and milling of silver and gold, Gary has 

 its foundation in the manufacture of a so-called baser metal, that 

 of iron and steel, aid of iron and steel products, an industry 

 whose stock manipulation in the great financial centers of the 

 country is certainly not inferior in the magnitude of its financial 

 operations to that of gold and silver mining stock of early days, 

 tho it may lack some of the spectacular features and be attended 

 perhaps with somewhat greater dignity and somewhat calmer 

 deliberation. 



The city of Gary apparently sprang up in a night on the 

 southern shore of Lake Michigan from a banen waste of sand 

 dunes into a city complete attracting to it 40,000 people 4 of some 

 47 racial or national groups who give to it its peculiar inter- 

 national character, lending a touch of Old World color: now as 

 a bridal party dressed in bright colors dear to the immigrant 

 heart gaily escort the white-veiled bride and proud-faced groom 

 thru the streets; again as a solemn funeral procession slowly 

 marches behind the hearse on the way to the photographer who 

 will take a picture of the dead covered over with flowers and 

 surrounded by living friends and relatives; or finally as many 

 groups join together in native folk costume, each group withits 

 band playing its own national airs, in one big political parade, 

 shouting over and over again "Knotts, Knotts, Knotts", the 

 name of the candidate for mayor, the only English word many 

 of them know. 



The city is full of many strange inconsistencies. Broadway, 

 ruining thru the center of the city, is a beautiful paved street 

 five miles long and 100 feet wide with cement sidewalks its entire 

 length. On its northern extremity it is flanked by public build- 

 ings and business houses of which any city might be proud. And 

 yet just two squares west of this same Broadway and only a 

 few squares south of the city's beautiful residence district is a 

 typical immigrant settlement of tar paper shacks promiscuously 

 set down in the sand at various angles, forming a little village 



3 Sources: Survey 29:13, 781 ; 22:20; 27:1145; "Satellite Cities", Graham Romeyn 

 Taylor, Independent 70:337; Putnams 5:643; Annual Report Indiana Bureau of 

 Statistics, 1913, pp. 134, 529; McClures 41:61; American Review of Reviews 37:354. 



"In 1916. 



