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Show LAKE COMMERCE AND POPULATION. What share did Chicago's neglect of lake commerce have in reducing re-ducing the rate of population growth from 54 1-2 to 28 per cent? This is the concrete problem now being worked out. The rate of j growth of Milwaukee, where lake commerce has increased yearly, j was greater than Chicago's, so was Detroit's. What relation do these facts bear one to the other? Chicago's greatest growth in a decade was during the years when lake commerce was increasing by leaps I and bounds. Between 18G0 and 1870 Chicago grew at the rate of 178 per cent, and during those years the lake commerce reached proportions propor-tions that were 41 per cent as great as it was in 1909 approximately six million tons in and out instead of fourteen and a half million tons. The city in 1870 was only a city of 300,000 one-seventh as large as today, but with nearly half as much lake commerce. Since 1898 there has been a decline rather than a gain in shipping to and from Chicago, due to poor harbor facilities. During the same time New York's maritime commerce has grown continually, likewise its population. The census total of 2,185,283 for Chicago put the harbor question into concrete figures, and it also put the Three-Million club into a fine predicament, for it has issued rosy estimates of growth which promised that the 3,000,000 figure would be reached in a walk and that the census would show 3,333,333 or thereabouts. The biggest cities in the world now aro these: New York, 4,766,883; Chicago, 2,185,283; Tokio, 2,040,148; St. Petersburg, 1,678,000; Canton, 1,600,-000; 1,600,-000; Philadelphiafi 1,549,008 ; Moscow 1,359,254; Buenos Ayres, 1,125,-000 1,125,-000 ; Constantinople, 1,106,000. To the foregoing must be added London, Lon-don, Berlin and Paris. |
