Transformation of Grain
Corn was mostly grown for this purpose.
What is feed for livestock?
This communication technology allowed grain prices in Chicago to be known almost instantly in New York.
What is the telegraph?
This 1871 Illinois legislation created a commission to perform official grain inspections.
What is the Warehouse Act of 1871?
This fundamental shift, powered by Chicago's new markets, meant a farmer's livelihood depended less on local weather and more on distant financial speculators.
What is market integration or financial risk? (Acceptable: What is the nationalization of risk?)
This is the original, pre-human landscape.
What is "First Nature"?
The equivalent to a check for grain in a warehouse.
What is an elevator receipt?
Before railroads, this was the key middleman who handled the sale of a farmer's grain
Who is a merchant?
This rival city fell behind in the grain trade because it relied on manual labor and lacked a standardized railroad gateway system.
What is St. Louis?
Founded in 1848, this Chicago organization became the "quasi-judicial entity" that established uniform grain grades.
What is the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT)?
Before Euro-American farmers arrived, these annual events were the primary force that maintained the prairie ecosystem.
What are fires? (Acceptable: What are prairie fires?)
The event that caused the Chicago Board of Trade to form its rules about futures contracts.
What was the huge speculative market created by the Union Army's demand during the Civil War?
Also acceptable: What was the Civil War?
The shift from sacks to bulk rail transport forced grain to be measured this new way, rather than by volume.
What is by weight?
The hidden reason farmers lacked choice in grain storage, resulting from exclusive agreements between railroads and specific warehouses.
What is an elevator monopoly? (Or: What is a warehouse cartel?)
In futures markets, these two archetypal figures bet against each other, one on rising prices, the other on falling prices.
Who are Bulls and Bears?
This 1785 government system subdivided the nation into a grid, turning prairie ecology into marketable real estate.
What is the Rectangular Land Survey? (Or: What is the Land Ordinance of 1785?)
This controversial market practice, attempted by bulls like Hutchinson, could cause wild price swings in grain before a predictable crash.
What is cornering the market?
Chicago's need for this massive storage building was driven by farm mechanization that produced huge grain surpluses.
What is a grain elevator?
To prevent city-wide railroad congestion, the unloading of grain cars evolved into this mechanized, steam-powered process.
What is steam-powered elevating? (Specific: What is the mechanized grain leg/conveyor system?)
This instrument, born in Chicago, let merchants bet on the future price of an abstract grain grade, divorcing market value from physical crops.
What is a futures contract? (Acceptable: What is the futures market?)
The central paradox of Chicago's grain trade, where a paper grade or receipt became the trusted economic reality, overshadowing the physical grain.
What is the representation becoming more "real" than the thing itself?
By 1875, the value of trades in this abstract Chicago market was ten times greater than that of the actual, physical grain trade.
What is the grain futures market?
Cronon argues that the railroad and telegraph created this new economic geography, where Chicago's time and prices dictated terms to the entire hinterland.
What is a metropolitan-hinterland relationship? (Or: What is "Second Nature"?)
Cronon argues the grain trade perfected this principle, treating interchangeable, standardized commodities without regard to origin or owner.
What is fungibility? (Acceptable: What is the assembly-line model applied to commodities?)
Due to changing grain prices, a family's income from 500 bushels of wheat could rise or fall by more than this percentage.
What is 10 percent?
Cronon implies that the creation of "second nature" in Chicago didn't just organize the landscape, but fundamentally required this shift in human perception, making abstract systems seem natural and inevitable.
What is a change in consciousness or a new way of seeing the world? (Acceptable: What is the naturalization of the artificial?)