CHAPTER XXVII THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY The last sixty years of the nineteenth century witnessed on the shores of the Great Lakes the development of the city. The towns which we have traced through their early stages as forts, trading posts, and villages began in 1840 to make their appearance on the census lists with populations that could be counted in thousands instead of hundreds. If we reckon a population of eight thousand or over as the requisite number to raise a town to the rank of city, Buffalo with eighteen thousand and Detroit with nine thousand inhabitants were in 1840 the only cities on the lakes. Cleveland had six thousand, and Chicago and Milwaukee timidly entered the lists with records of less than five thousand and two thousand respectively. In the proportionate size of cities in the whole United States these five ranged from being sixteenth, as was Buffalo, to being fifty-fourth, as was Chicago, and down to Milwaukee, which was the seventy-ninth on the list. In 1906 these five cities are among the first twelve on the list, and their joint population is three million six hundred thousand, nearly one hundred times the total population of sixty-five years ago. Figures express this change as well as anything can, but even figures can hardly suggest the wonder of this unparalleled development. It makes this last era of the life of the Great Lakes one of great and unique interest. Immediately after 1840 this swift growth of the city began. Within twenty years Detroit was five times as large as in 1840, Buffalo and Cleveland were seven times as large, while Chicago and Milwaukee had multiplied their numbers by twenty and twenty-five. Smaller cities, too, like Toledo had had a rapid increase in their population. This sudden tide of immigration and of urban concentration was the natural result of the widespread westward movement of the twenty-five preceding years which had developed the country and created demands for central markets, and of the rise of the great industries described in the preceding chapters with their attendants, the railroad and the steamboat. No communities have ever come into being for more immediate commercial reasons than the cities of the Great Lakes, and the immense wealth derived from their great industries has been directly responsible for their rapid growth and succeeding prosperity. With this story of the industrial side of the life of the lakes we are all familiar. Each city has necessarily passed through a stage when it spent its time and energy trying with breathless haste to keep pace with the outside demands made upon it by commerce. Now that stage has passed, at least in so far as this industrial side takes precedence over everything else and stands out preëminent and alone as the characteristic spirit of the lake city. Great fortunes have been and are being made, and reasonable prosperity has come to thousands of citizens.