Financing Illinois Industry, 1830–1890

Abstract

Where did the owners of early Illinois industries get the capital and the funds to start their factories? What was the background of these early manufacturers? The evidence that will be presented here suggests that the typical Illinois manufacturer of the nineteenth century was a self-financed man who was born and raised in Europe or on the eastern seaboard. Let us begin with the basic thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, Wisconsin and Harvard historian of the last generation, who reinterpreted the history of this country. Turner's thesis, enunciated at the Chicago meeting of the American Historical Association in 1893, was that society was reborn on every new frontier. Its character was influenced not only by heredity but even more by its new environment. Thus the American economy reflected not only European, especially Anglo-Saxon customs and institutions brought across the Atlantic, but it also reflected the pioneer's adaptation to primitive frontier conditions. By the second, third, and fourth generation, Americans had forgotten or abandoned certain European ways because these were not adapted to survival in the New World.