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  • Chicago Made: Factory Networks in the Industrial Metropolis
  • Robert Beauregard
Chicago Made: Factory Networks in the Industrial Metropolis. By Robert Lewis (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008) 339 pp. $40.00

Lewis' thoughtful and meticulous case history of manufacturing in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chicago rests on the claim that the city was structured "through the building of industrial locational assets" (273). Class coalitions of business owners, developers, governments, booster organizations, financiers, transportation companies, and land speculators created "magnets of urban growth" that attracted labor and additional capital investment (273). Locational assets, in short, were not natural phenomena to be discovered but opportunities that had to be created. The industrial complex that anchored the Chicago metropolitan area evolved through collective action.

In developing his story, Lewis emphasizes suburban industrial development. First present in the late eighteenth century, manufacturing firms on the city's periphery became even more prevalent in the late nineteenth century. In fact, their growth paralleled and even exceeded that in the urban core. Suburban industrialization, moreover, often involved "careful planning" by civic boosters, developers, and business groups (65). In addition, large firms were not located only in the center and small firms on the periphery; in both places, industrial development was diverse in terms of firm size and sectoral specialization.

Most important to Lewis are the myriad ways in which firms were linked through production chains, financial arrangements, business associations, marketing and distribution channels, ties to transportation nodes, and geographical proximity. Anchoring his history is a detailed examination of the linkages between Chicago firms from 1872 to 1878, from 1898 to 1901, as well as in 1920, and 1928. Utilizing the bankruptcy records for 97 firms and their listings of 7,196 creditors, Lewis was able to analyze the concentration and dispersal of linkages and investigate industry clusters. The findings are presented in numerous maps and descriptive tables. The overall impression is that the firms were deeply embedded in a variety of networks that centered on metropolitan Chicago but extended throughout the country's manufacturing belt.

Lewis tells the history of Chicago's industrial network nonchronologically using different, analytical points of view. Giving primacy to a geographical lens, he provides case studies of factory areas and planned industrial districts. Utilizing a sector approach, he explores the furniture, automotive, wholesaling, and steel industries. Focusing on linkages, he investigates inter-firm relations and production chains. Lewis even has a chapter on firm starts, expansions, and moves, thereby providing a glimpse into intra-firm conditions. His point of view shifts from one chapter to the next, enabling him to elaborate and clarify the complexity of Chicago's industrial network. Within each chapter, he attends to individual agents.

Through a layering of different perspectives, attention to descriptive detail, and the use of a variety of primary sources—from business directories [End Page 630] and industry newsletters to company reports—Lewis conveys an intricate understanding of how this major manufacturing center evolved and prospered. Chicago Made is a richly documented, well-written, and ambitious book that deserves wide recognition among labor, business, and urban historians as well as historical geographers.

Robert Beauregard
Columbia University
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