Conclusion

This chapter reviews Chicago's industrial base that had been eviscerated, and its place-dependent industrial and civic leaders who, by the 1960s, were fighting a losing battle to maintain the city's industrial prominence. It mentions the relentless structural forces arrayed against Chicago that was true of other industrial centers across the Manufacturing Belt. It also talks about the combination of attractive locational assets and corporate strategies that sought increased market share and profits at the expense of places that led to continued and uneven disinvestment in Chicago's industrial base. The chapter analyses the long-term consequence that saw fewer factories and industrial jobs found in Chicago at the beginning of each new industrial cycle. It reviews how the slow process of decline that began in the 1920s became a tsunami of industrial loss from the second half of the 1940s.