Midwestern United States

The Midwestern United States (or Midwest) refers to the north-central states of the United States of America, specifically Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. A 2006 Census Bureau estimate put the population at 66,217,736. Both the geographic center of the contiguous U.S. and the population center of the U.S. are in the Midwest (in Kansas and Missouri respectively). The United States Census Bureau divides this region into the East North Central States (essentially the Great Lakes States); and the West North Central States (essentially the Great Plains States). Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania are also Midwestern in certain parts^{[citation needed]} and can often be considered border states; however, these three states are usually considered Southern or Mid-Atlantic.

The term Midwest has been in common use for over 100 years. Other designations for the region have fallen into disuse, such as the "Northwest" or "Old Northwest" (from Northwest Territory), "Mid-America," or "Heartland". Since the book Middletown appeared in 1929, sociologists have often used Midwestern cities, and the Midwest generally, as "typical" of the entire nation.^[1] The Midwest region of the United States has a higher employment to population ratio (the number of people employed as a percent of the population) than the Northeast, the West, the South, or the Sun Belt states.^[2]

Terminology

The term "Middle West" originated in the 19th century, followed by "Midwest." The heart of the Midwest is bounded by the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, the "Old Northwest" (or the "West"), an area that comprised the original Northwest Territory. This area is now called the "East North Central States" by the United States Census Bureau and the "Great Lakes" region by its inhabitants.

The Northwest Territory was created out of the ceded English (formerly French and Native American) frontier lands under the Northwest Ordinance by the Continental Congress just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery and religious discrimination, and promoted public schools and private property, but did not apply after the territories became states. The Northwest Ordinance also specified that the land be surveyed and sold in the rectangular grids of the Public Land Survey System, which was first used in Ohio. The effect of this grid system can be seen throughout the Midwest in such things as county shapes and road networks.

In contrast, land in Kentucky and Tennessee was surveyed and sold using metes and bounds. As Revolutionary War soldiers were awarded lands in Ohio and migrated there and to other Midwestern states with other pioneers, the area became the first thoroughly "American" region. Frederick Jackson Turner celebrated its frontier for shaping the national character of individualism and democracy.

The Midwest region today sometimes refers not only to states created from the Northwest Ordinance, but also may include states between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rocky Mountains and north of the Ohio River. In all, 12 states are covered by The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (2006).

The term West was applied to the region in the early years of the country. Later, the region west of the Appalachians was divided into the Far West (now just the West), and the Middle West. Some parts of the Midwest have also been referred to as Northwest for historical reasons (for instance, this explains the Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines as well as Northwestern University in Illinois), so the current Northwest region of the country is called the Pacific Northwest to make a clear distinction.

Definition

Midwest as shown by U.S. Census Bureau official map from regdiv.pdf

The boundaries of what is considered the Midwest today are somewhat ambiguous. People from across the region consider themselves to be from the Midwest for very different reasons and have varying definitions and perceptions of the Midwest, and use has changed historically, gradually growing westward to include states which formerly were thought of as being the "West." Because the Northwest Territory lay between the East Coast and the then-far-West, the states carved out of it were called the "Northwest" in 1789, and "Middle West" (Middlewest, Middle-West) by 1898.

In the early 19th Century, anything west of the Mississippi River was considered the West, and the Midwest was the region west of the Appalachians and east of the Mississippi. In time, some users began to include Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri, and with the settlement of the western prairie, a new term, "Great Plains States," was used for the row of states from North Dakota to Kansas. Later, these states annexed themselves unofficially to the Midwest. Today, the term "Far West" means the West Coast, and people as far west as the prairie sections of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana sometimes identify themselves with the term Midwest.^[3]

Traditional definitions of the Midwest include the Northwest Ordinance "Old Northwest" states and often includes many states that were part of the Louisiana Purchase. The states of the Old Northwest are also known as "Great Lakes states". Many of the Louisiana Purchase states are also known as Great Plains states.

The North Central Region, is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as these 12 states:

Illinois: Old Northwest, Ohio River and Great Lakes state
Indiana: Old Northwest, Ohio River and Great Lakes state
Iowa: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state
Kansas: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state
Michigan: Old Northwest, and Great Lakes state
Minnesota: Old Northwest, and Great Lakes state; western part Louisiana Purchase
Missouri: Louisiana Purchase, Border state, Great Plains state
Nebraska: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state
North Dakota: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state
Ohio: Old Northwest (Historic Connecticut Western Reserve), Ohio River and Great Lakes state. Also a Northeastern Appalachian state in the SE.
South Dakota: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state
Wisconsin: Old Northwest, and Great Lakes state

Detroit is the busiest commercial border crossing in North America.

Chicago is the largest city in the region, followed by Detroit and Indianapolis. Other important cities in the region include: Minneapolis-St. Paul, Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Columbus, Wichita, Des Moines, Madison and Omaha.

Differences in the definition of the Midwest mainly split between the Heartland and the Great Plains on one side, and the Great Lakes and the Rust Belt on the other. While some point to the small towns and agricultural communities in Kansas, Iowa, the Dakotas and Nebraska of the Great Plains as representative of traditional Midwestern lifestyles and values, others would assert that the declining Rust Belt cities of the Great Lakes, with their histories of 19th- and early-20th century immigration, manufacturing base, and strong Catholic influence, are more representative of the Midwestern experience. Under such a definition, cities as far east as Buffalo, NY may be considered Midwestern in nature.

Certain areas of the traditionally defined Midwest are often cited as not being representative of the 'Midwest,' while other areas traditionally outside of the Midwest are often claimed to be part of the Midwest. These claims often embody historical, cultural, economic or demographic arguments for inclusion or exclusion.

Another important region, Appalachia, overlaps with the Midwest, especially in southern Ohio. The Ohio River has long been the boundary between North and South, and between the Midwest and the Upper South. All the lower Midwestern states, including Missouri, have a major Southern component, but only Missouri was a slave state before the Civil War.

In addition, parts of the Northeastern states have a Midwestern feel. Western Pennsylvania, which contains the cities of Erie and Pittsburgh, shares culture, history, and identity with the "Midwest," but overlaps with Appalachia as well.^{[citation needed]} Buffalo, New York, the western terminus of the Erie Canal and gateway to the Great Lakes, also offers a Midwestern orientation, and in most instances its residents identify more readily with the cultures of Chicago or Detroit than cities on the Eastern Seaboard. However, residents of Western Pennsylvania and Western New York rarely, if ever, consider themselves Midwesterners. Since the inclusion of Penn State University into the Big Ten Conference in athletics, more Western Pennsylvanians are willing to embrace an identity as Midwesterners than they were before.^{[citation needed]}

The prairie parts of Montana, Wyoming, and especially Colorado are sometimes considered part of the Midwest, especially to people in the Great Plains which are closer to the geographic middle of the country.^{[citation needed]} However, such an inclusion would be considered incorrect to most people in the Great Lakes region as many people near the Great Lakes do not even consider the Plains states to be the Midwest, as much of those states are ranchland.

Eastern Oklahoma is decidedly "Southern" in its cultural history and its connection to the oil business and other Southern industries, having much in common with nearby Arkansas, eastern Texas, and southern Missouri. However, western Oklahoma and the upper Texas Panhandle (generally the part of Texas north of and including Amarillo, Texas), by contrast, generally have more in common economically, climatically, and culturally with the states of Kansas and Nebraska and the eastern part of Colorado than with most of the American South or Southwest.^{[citation needed]} These areas may have been under nominal control of the Confederate States of America but were thinly populated during the Civil War, and were settled largely by people from the Midwest and rely heavily upon ranching and wheat-growing instead of cotton and lumbering for their agricultural production which so clearly mark the American South.

Geography

These states are generally perceived as being relatively flat. That is true of several areas, but there is a measure of geographical variation. In particular, the eastern Midwest lying near the foothills of the Appalachians, the Great Lakes basin, and northern parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa demonstrate a high degree of topographical variety. Prairies cover most of the states west of the Mississippi River with the exception of eastern Minnesota and the Ozarks of southern Missouri. Illinois lies within an area called the "prairie peninsula," an eastward extension of prairies that borders deciduous forests to the north, east, and south. Rainfall decreases from east to west, resulting in different types of prairies, with the tallgrass prairie in the wetter eastern region, mixed-grass prairie in the central Great Plains, and shortgrass prairie towards the rain shadow of the Rockies. Today, these three prairie types largely correspond to the corn/soybean area, the wheat belt, and the western rangelands, respectively. Hardwood forests in this area were logged to extinction in the late 1800s. The majority of the Midwest can now be categorized as urbanized areas or pastoral agricultural areas. Areas in northern Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, such as the Porcupine Mountains, and the Ohio River valley are largely undeveloped.

Residents of the wheat belt, which consists of the westernmost states of the Midwest, generally consider themselves part of the Midwest, while residents of the remaining rangeland areas usually do not. Of course, exact boundaries are nebulous and shifting.

History

European settlement of the area began in the 17th century with the French explorers and the establishment of a network of fur trading posts and Jesuit missions along the Mississippi River system and the upper Great Lakes. French control over the area ended in 1763 with the conclusion of the French and Indian War. British colonists began to expand into the Ohio Country during the 1750s. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 temporarily restrained expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains, but did not stop it completely.

Early settlement began either via routes over the Appalachian Mountains, such as Braddock Road; or through the waterways of the Great Lakes. Fort Pitt, now Pittsburgh, at the source of the Ohio River, was an early outpost of the overland routes. The first settlements in the Midwest via the waterways of the Great Lakes were centered around military forts and trading posts such as Green Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, and Detroit. The first inland settlements via the overland routes were in southern Ohio or northern Kentucky, on either side of the Ohio River, and early such pioneers were Daniel Boone and Spencer Records.

Following the American Revolutionary War, the rate of settlers coming from the eastern states increased rapidly. In the 1790s, American Revolutionary War veterans and settlers from the original states moved there in response to Federal government of the United States land grants. The Ulster-Scots Presbyterians of Pennsylvania (often through Virginia) and the Dutch Reformed, Quaker, and Congregationalists of Connecticut were among the earliest pioneers to Ohio and the Midwest.

By the time of the American Civil War, European immigrants bypassed the East Coast of the United States to settle directly in the interior: German immigrant Lutherans and Jews to Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and eastern Missouri; Swedes and Norwegians to Wisconsin, Minnesota and northern Iowa. Poles, Hungarians, and German Catholics and Jews founded or settled in Midwestern cities. Many German Catholics also settled throughout the Ohio River valley and around the Great Lakes.

In the 20th century, African American migration from the Southern United States into the Midwestern states changed Chicago, St. Louis, Gary, Detroit, and many other cities dramatically, as factories and schools enticed families by the thousands to new opportunities.

The region's fertile soil made it possible for farmers to produce abundant harvests of cereal crops such as corn, oats, and, most importantly, wheat. In the early days, the region was soon known as the nation's "breadbasket".

Two waterways have been important to the Midwest's development. The first and foremost was the Ohio River which flowed into the Mississippi River. Spanish control of the southern part of the Mississippi, and refusal to allow the shipment of American crops down the river and into the Atlantic Ocean, halted the development of the region until 1795.

The river inspired two classic American books written by a native Missourian, Samuel Clemens, who took the pseudonym Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Today, Twain's stories have become staples of Midwestern lore. Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri is a tourist attraction in the area offering a glimpse into the Midwest of his time.

The second waterway is the network of routes within the Great Lakes. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 completed an all-water shipping route, more direct than the Mississippi, to New York and the seaport of New York City. Lakeport cities grew up to handle this new shipping route. During the Industrial Revolution, the lakes became a conduit for iron ore from the Mesabi Range of Minnesota to steel mills in the Mid-Atlantic States. The Saint Lawrence Seaway later opened the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean.

Inland canals in Ohio and Indiana constituted another great waterway, which connected into the Great Lakes and Ohio River traffic.

Because the Northwest Ordinance region, comprising the heart of the Midwest, was the first large region of the United States which prohibited slavery (the Northeastern United States emancipated slaves in the 1830s), the region remains culturally apart from the country and proud of its free pioneer heritage. The regional southern boundary was the Ohio River, the border of freedom and slavery in American history and literature (See: Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Beloved, by Toni Morrison). The Midwest, particularly Ohio, provided the primary routes for the "Underground Railroad", whereby Midwesterners assisted slaves to freedom from their crossing of the Ohio River through their departure on Lake Erie to Canada.

The region was shaped by the relative absence of slavery (except for Missouri), pioneer settlement, education in one-room free public schools, and democratic notions brought with American Revolutionary War veterans, Protestant faiths and experimentation, and agricultural wealth transported on the Ohio River riverboats, flatboats, canal boats, and railroads. The canals in Ohio and Indiana opened so much of Midwestern agriculture that it launched the world's greatest population and economic boom foreshadowing later "emerging markets". The commodities that the Midwest funneled into the Erie Canal down the Ohio River contributed to the wealth of New York City, which overtook Boston and Philadelphia. New York State would proudly boast of the Midwest as its "inland empire"; thus, New York would become known as the Empire State.

The Midwest was predominantly rural at the time of the Civil War, dotted with small farms across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, but industrialization, immigration, and urbanization fed the Industrial Revolution, and the heart of industrial progress became the Great Lakes states of the Midwest. German, Scandinavian, Slavic and African American immigration into the Midwest continued to bolster the population there in the 19th and 20th centuries, though generally the Midwest remains a predominantly diverse, Protestant region. Large concentrations of Catholics are found in larger metropolitan areas because of German, Irish, Italian, and Polish immigration before 1915, and Mexican American migration since the 1950s. Famous Amish farm settlements are found in northern Ohio, northern Indiana and central Illinois.

Culture

Midwesterners are alternately viewed as open, friendly, and straightforward, or sometimes stereotyped as unsophisticated and stubborn. Factors that probably affected the shaping of Midwest values include the religious heritage of the abolitionist, pro-education Congregationalists to the stalwart Calvinist heritage of the Midwestern Protestants, as well as the agricultural values inculcated by the hardy pioneers who settled the area. The Midwest remains a melting pot of Protestantism and Calvinism, mistrustful of authority and power.

Catholicism is the largest single religious denomination in the Midwest, varying between 19 and 29% of the state populations. Baptists compose 14% of the populations of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, up to 22% in Missouri and down to 5% in Minnesota. Lutherans peak at 22-24% in Wisconsin and Minnesota, reflecting the Scandinavian and German heritage of those states as parodied humorously by Garrison Keillor in his Prairie Home Companion. Pentecostal and charismatic denominations have few adherents in the Midwest, ranging between 1 and 7% (although the Assembly of God began in lower Missouri). Judaism and Islam are each practiced by 1% or less of the population, with slightly higher concentrations in major urban areas, such as Chicago and Cleveland. Those with no religious affiliation make up 13-16% of the Midwest population.

The rural heritage of the land in the Midwest remains widely held, even if industrialization and suburbanization have overtaken the states in the original Northwest Territory. Given the rural, antebellum associations with the Midwest, further rural states like Kansas have become icons of Midwesternism, most directly with the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.

Midwestern politics tends to be cautious, but the caution is sometimes peppered with protest, especially in minority communities or those associated with agrarian, labor or populist roots. This was especially true in the early 20th century when Milwaukee was a hub of the socialist movement in the United States, electing three socialist mayors and the only socialist congressional representative (Victor Berger) during that time. The metropolis-strewn Great Lakes region tends to be the most liberal area of the Midwest, and liberal presence diminishes gradually as you move south and west from that region into the less-populated rural areas. The Great Lakes region has spawned people such as the La Follette political family, and Communist Party leader Gus Hall. Minnesota in particular has produced liberal national politicians Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy, and Hubert Humphrey and well as protest musician Bob Dylan.

Because of 20th-century African American migration from the South, a large African American urban population lives in most of the regions' major cities, although the concentration is not nearly as large as that of the Southern United States. The combination of industry and cultures, Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll, led to an outpouring of musical creativity in the 20th century in the Midwest, including new music like the Motown Sound and techno from Detroit and house music & the blues from Chicago. Rock and Roll music was first identified as a new genre by a Cleveland radio DJ, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is now located in Cleveland. See also Music of the Midwest/Motown, Detroit, 70s Soul Music, Ohio Players, Kool and The Gang, and Dayton. Today the population of the Midwest is 65,971,974, or 22.2% of the total population of the United States.

Political trends

One of the two major political parties in the United States, the Republican Party, originated partially in the Midwest. One of its founding places was Jackson, Michigan or Ripon, Wisconsin in the 1850s and included opposition to the spread of slavery into new states as one of its agendas. Most of the rural Midwest is considered to be a Republican stronghold to this day, and Hamilton County, the home of Cincinnati, is one of the few metropolitan counties in America which voted predominantly Republican at the close of the 20th century. From the American Civil War to the Great Depression and World War II, Midwestern Republicans dominated American politics and industry, just as Southern Democrat farmers dominated antebellum rural America and as Northeastern financiers and academics in the Democratic party would dominate America from the Depression to the Vietnam War and the height of the Cold War.^{[citation needed]}

As political trends have changed and the Midwest's population has slowly shifted from the countryside to its cities, the general political mood has moved to the center, and the region is now home to many critical swing states that do not have strong allegiance to either party. Upper Midwestern states, such as Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan have proven relatively Democratic. Normally a Republican stronghold, Indiana became a key state in the 2006 Mid-Term elections, picking up 3 House Seats to bring the total to 6 Democrats to 5 Republicans representing Indiana in the U.S. House. The state government of Illinois is currently dominated by the Democratic Party. Both of Illinois's senators are Democrats and a majority of the state's U.S. Representatives are also Democrats. Illinois voters have preferred the Democratic presidential candidate by a significant margin in the past 4 elections (1992, 1996, 2000, 2004). The same is true of Michigan and Wisconsin, which also currently have a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators. Iowa is considered by many analysts to be the most evenly divided state in the country, but has leaned Democratic for the past fifteen years or so. Iowa has a Democratic governor, a Democratic Senator, three Democratic Congressmen out of five, has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in three out of the last four elections, (1992, 1996, 2000). As of the 2006 midterms elections, Iowa has a state legislature dominated by Democrats in both chambers. Minnesota voters have chosen the Democratic candidate for president longer than any other state. Minnesota was the only state among the 50 states (along with Washington, D.C.) of the U.S. to vote for Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan in 1984 (Minnesota is Mondale's home state). In Iowa and Minnesota, however, the recent Democratic pluralities have often been fairly narrow. Minnesota has elected and reelected a Republican governor, as well as supported some of the most pro-gun concealed weapon laws in the nation.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the region also spawned the Populist Movement in the Plains states and later the Progressive Movement, which largely consisted of farmers and merchants intent on making government less corrupt and more receptive to the will of the people. The Republicans were unified anti-slavery politicians, whose later interests in invention, economic progress, women's rights and suffrage, freedman's rights, progressive taxation, wealth creation, election reforms, temperance and prohibition eventually clashed with the Taft-Roosevelt split in 1912. Similarly, the Populist and Progressive Parties grew out intellectually from the economic and social progress claimed by the early Republican party. The Protestant and Midwestern ideals of profit, thrift, work ethic, pioneer self-reliance, education, democratic rights, and religious tolerance influenced both parties despite their eventual drift into opposition.

The Midwest has long mistrusted Northeastern elitism. Some favor isolationism, a belief held by George Washington that Americans should not concern itself with foreign wars and problems. It gained much support from German American and Swedish American communities, and leaders like Robert La Follette, Robert A. Taft, and Colonel Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune.^[4]

Unemployment remains low (under 5%), but is higher than the national average; some manufacturing-dependent states — most notably Michigan — have still higher unemployment rates. ^[5] Outsourcing of higher paying manufacturing jobs and a rise in low-wage service jobs is a major issue.

Linguistic influence

The accents of the region are generally distinct from those of the South and many urban areas of the American Northeast. The accent of most of the Midwest is considered by many to be "standard" American English. This accent is preferred by many national radio and television broadcasters, who go so far as to actually have potential broadcasters receive training in speaking "Midwestern."^{[citation needed]}

This may have started because many prominent broadcast personalities — such as Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Tom Brokaw, John Madden and Casey Kasem — came from this region and so created this perception. More recently, a National Geographic magazine article (Nov. 1998) attributed the high number of telemarketing firms in Omaha, Nebraska to the "neutral accents" of the area's inhabitants.

However, many Midwestern cities are now undergoing the Northern Cities Shift away from the standard accent.

In some regions, particularly the farther north into the Upper Midwest one goes, a definite accent is detectable, usually reflecting the heritage of the area. For example, Minnesota, western Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula have strong Scandinavian accents, which intensifies the farther north one goes. Many parts of Michigan have noticeable Dutch-flavored accents. Also, residents of Chicago are recognized to have their own distinctive nasal accent, with a similar accent occurring in parts of Wisconsin, Michigan, Cleveland, and Western New York State. Arguably, this may have been derived from heavy German, Polish, and Eastern European influences in the Great Lakes Region. The most southern parts of the Midwest, generally south of U.S. Route 50, shows distinctly southern speech patterns.

Universities and colleges

University of Notre Dame campus in Notre Dame, Indiana.

File:Lawquadaerial.jpg

An aerial view of the University of Michigan Law School quadrangle.

The Midwest contains many highly-regarded universities, both public and private. The region has some of America's most highly rated public universities, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, University of Iowa, and the University of Minnesota. The region also hosts two "Public Ivies": Miami University of Ohio and the University of Michigan.

Other public universities include:

Private

Many Midwestern educational institutions were founded in the 1800s as denominational religious schools. Notable private institutions include: University of Notre Dame, Case Western Reserve University, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Notable Catholic universities include: Creighton University, University of Dayton, University of Detroit Mercy, DePaul University, Marquette University, Loyola University Chicago, St. Louis University, and Xavier University. The Midwest also includes several nationally notable liberal arts colleges such as Carleton College, Grinnell College, Kenyon College, Macalester College, and Oberlin College. The commitment of many immigrant and religious groups to found institutions of higher learning is apparent in the number of schools, Albion College, Beloit College, Bradley University, Capital University, Drake University in Des Moines, DePauw University, Earlham College, theUniversity of Evansville, the University of Findlay,Gustavus Adolphus College, Hamline University, Hanover College, Spring Arbor University, Valparaiso University, Lawrence Technological University, Luther College (Iowa), Taylor University, St. Olaf College, Wartburg College, Lake Forest College, Kalamazoo College, Knox College, Lawrence University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Denison University, Wabash College, and The College of Wooster. Many have since dropped the religious affiliation.

Notes

^ Sisson (2006) pp 69-73; Richard Jensen, "The Lynds Revisited," Indiana Magazine of History (Dec 1979) 75: 303-319, online at [1]
^ Bureau of Labor Statistics
^ Sisson (2006) pp 57-60
^ Ralph H. Smuckler, "The Region of Isolationism," American Political Science Review, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Jun., 1953), pp. 386-401 in JSTOR; John N. Schacht, Three Faces of Midwestern Isolationism: Gerald P. Nye, Robert E. Wood, John L. Lewis (1981).
^ Unemployment in the region was 4.8% in November 2006, compared to 4.5% nationally.[2]

References

Buley, R. Carlyle. The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period 1815-1840 2 vol (1951), Pulitzer Prize
Cayton, Andrew R. L. Midwest and the Nation (1990)
Cayton, Andrew R. L. and Susan E. Gray, Eds. The American Midwest: Essays on Regional History. (2001)
Frederick; John T. ed. Out of the Midwest: A Collection of Present-Day Writing (1944) literary excerpts
Garland, John H. The North American Midwest: A Regional Geography (1955)
Jensen, Richard. The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (1971)
Fred A. Shannon, "The Status of the Midwestern Farmer in 1900". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Vol. 37, No. 3. (Dec., 1950), pp. 491-510. in JSTOR
Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Cayton, eds. The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006), 1916 pp of articles by scholars on all topics covering the 12 states; ISBN 0-253-34886-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-253-34886-9
Terre Haute Tribune-Star (West Central news daily)
Meyer, David R. "Midwestern Industrialization and the American Manfucaturing Belt in the Nineteenth Century". Vol. 49, No. 4 (Dec., 1989) pp. 921-937. The Journal of Economic History, [5], JSTOR.

[1] Sisson (2006) pp 69-73; Richard Jensen, "The Lynds Revisited," Indiana Magazine of History (Dec 1979) 75: 303-319, online at [1]

[2] Bureau of Labor Statistics

[3] Sisson (2006) pp 57-60

[4] Ralph H. Smuckler, "The Region of Isolationism," American Political Science Review, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Jun., 1953), pp. 386-401 in JSTOR; John N. Schacht, Three Faces of Midwestern Isolationism: Gerald P. Nye, Robert E. Wood, John L. Lewis (1981).

[5] Unemployment in the region was 4.8% in November 2006, compared to 4.5% nationally.[2]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]