... Black presence in the suburban zone has hardly altered in the recent past, hereas Hispanic proportions outside the central city are groing.IIINDUSTRY AND LEISURE Aided by an excellent distribution netork, Chicago is Americas most important rail and haulage centre and is a significant port handling both domestic and international trade. Great Lakes freighters and river barges deliver bulk commodities such as iron ore, limestone, coal, chemicals, oil, and grain. Some of this freight is destined for processing plants in the heavily industrialized Calumet River area. Foreign vessels arrive via the St Larence Seaay, bringing such products as cars, steel, fish, and alcoholic beverages and carrying aay machinery, farm equipment, hides, and timber, as ell as a variety of food products.The Chicago metropolitan area has the highest number of manufacturing employees in the United States. Chicagos largest employer is the electrical goods industry, folloed by the steel, machinery, fabricated metals, foods, printing and publishing, chemicals, and transport equipment industries. It is one of the nations leading producers of steel, metal goods, confectionery, surgical appliances, rail equipment, soap, paint, cosmetics, cans, industrial machinery, printed materials, and sporting goods. Chicago houses the headquarters of numerous corporations and is a major holesale market for grain, machine tools, food produce, fish, and floers. The Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange are among the orlds largest commodity markets. The city is a leading convention centre, ith extensive hotel facilities, including McCormick Place-on-the-Lake, a multi-purpose exhibition complex on Lake Michigan. Chicago is divided into three sectionsthe North largely residential, est mainly industrial, and South diversely residential Sides. The centre, knon locally as the Loop, shares shops and entertainment facilities increasingly ith the citys multiplying suburbs.Chicago has one of the orlds most beautiful lakefronts. ith the exception of a fe miles of industry on its southern extremity, virtually the entire lakefront is devoted to recreational uses, ith beaches, museums, harbours, and parks, hich include Grant Park opposite the city centre, Lincoln Park to the north, and Jackson Park to the south.The orlds first skyscraper as constructed in Chicago, in 1885, spaning the innovative Chicago School of architecture. Among the renoned architects hose buildings have shaped the citys skyline are Louis Sullivan, illiam Le Baron Jenney, Daniel H. Burnham, Frank Lloyd right, and Ludig Mies van der Rohe. The central part of the city has several of the orlds tallest buildings, including the Sears Toer, hich at 110 storeys high is the tallest in the United States. Construction of tall office buildings continues.Chicago is home to the Cubs baseball team at rigley Field the hite Sox baseball team at Cominskey Park the Bears American football team the Blackhaks ice hockey team and Bulls basketball teams.Chicago is a major centre of higher education, ith numerous colleges and universities. The prestigious University of Chicago 1890 as the site in 1942 of the orlds first controlled nuclear chain reaction. Other schools of higher learning include Northestern University 1851, the Illinois Institute of Technology 1940 Loyola University of Chicago 1870, De Paul University 1898, and the Chicago State University 1867.Chicago contains several distinguished museums. These include the Art Institute of Chicago 1879, one of the countrys largest art museums the Field Museum of Natural History 1893 and the Du Sable Museum of African-American History. In Hyde Park are the Oriental Institute and the Museum of Science and Industry 1893. In Lincoln Park are the Chicago Academy of Sciences 1857 and the Chicago Historical Society 1856. Also notable is the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1891, is considered one of the orlds finest.IIIHISTORY In 1673 the French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet passed through hat is no the site of Chicago. They found a lo, sampy area that Native Americans, mainly Sauk, Mesquakie, and Potaatomi, called Checagou, referring to the ild onion that once gre in marshlands along Lake Michigan. About a century later, Jean-Baptiste Point du Sable, a Haitian trader of African and French descent, established the first permanent delling near the mouth of the Chicago River. By 1837, helped by harbour improvements and the start of construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, Chicagos population had reached 4,000. Groth as very rapid, bolstered by the completion of the canal in 1848 and the coming of the railays in the early 1850s. The consolidated Union Stock Yards opened in 1865 to handle the cattle, pigs, and sheep shipped by rail to Chicago for slaughter and packing. The city as first predominantly a port and trading centre for ra materials from the Midest and finished goods from the East, but it soon developed as a major national railay junction and an important manufacturing centre.aves of immigrants from Europe, hich included Poles, Jes, Russians, Czechs, Lithuanians, Serbs, Italians, and Greeks, meant that Chicago became a chequerboard of different ethnic communities. The generally lo paid jobs and sub-standard living conditions of immigrants ere exposed in the 1906 novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Southern blacks seeking better opportunities migrated north after orld ar I.During the second half of the 19th century, the citys large industrial orker population campaigned actively for an eight-hour ork day, better orking conditions, and better ages. orkers clashed ith police on several occasions, including the Haymarket Square Riot of May 4, 1886. To civilians and seven policemen ere killed, and approximately 150 people ounded. In nearby Pullman on June 27, 1894, orkers of the Pullman Company, manufacturer of sleeper trains, struck in response to unfair age practices and the living and orking conditions of the company ton. The American Railay Union responded ith a support strike. orkers and their families ere attacked by rail deputies, federal troops, and city police. At least 30 people ere killed and 100 ounded before the strike as broken on July 17.By 1890, due largely to its annexation of several suburbs, Chicagos population had surpassed one million. Alternate periods of corruption and reform characterized the citys political history for many years. In the summer of 1919, race riots erupted throughout America, the orst occurring in Chicago hen a black youth simming in Lake Michigan drifted into an area reserved for hites and as stoned and droned. Police refused to arrest a hite man hom black observers considered responsible, and angry crods gathered on the beach. Violence erupted and continued throughout the city for 13 days, resulting in 38 dead, 537 injured, and 1,000 black families left homeless. The shocked national reaction helped launch effor...
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