This reading is an interesting account of the growth of Chicago during the 1840s and 1850s.  It combines accounts of the physical and economic growth of the city with a description of an event that reveals the character of its citizens during an epidemic.
 
   The writer, Gustaf Unonius, was a Swedish immigrant whose book about his experiences offers great insight into the settlement of the area around the Great Lakes.

Group discussion questions

   Gustaf Unonius writes that the railroads "more than anything else" contributed to the growth and progress of Chicago.  He describes how the railroad network connected Chicago's factories and businesses with distant mining, lumbering, and farming areas.  The raw materials of these areas could easily be traded through Chicago, or processed into new products for sale.
 
   Unonius also describes a city teaming with the life and energy of freedom.  It has "locomotive works, foundries, and all kinds of machine shops employing thousands of workmen."  He also mentions the churches, newspapers, banks, and shops.  It is a good picture of the productive power of capitalism in America during the mid-19th century.

   What impressed Unonius most about Americans, however, was what happened when a cholera epidemic hit Chicago.  Recent Swedish immigrants were especially hard hit, partly because they were in a weakened condition from their long journey.
 
   Unonius describes how he organized help for the orphaned immigrant children.  He cleared out the church rectory to make room, and sent women with notes asking the people of Chicago for help.  The donations for the children came quickly, in the form of beds, clothing, money, food, and "noble people to watch at their bedsides."  Unonius wrote that the Americans proved "that their hearts possess as great treasure as the ground on which they tread."