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Summer 1982

Citizens And Strangers: Geographic Mobility In The Sioux City Region, 1860--1900

William Silag State Historical Society of Iowa,

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Silag, William, "Citizens And Strangers: Geographic Mobility In The Sioux City Region, 1860--1900" (1982). Great Plains Quarterly. 1667. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1667

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. CITIZENS AND STRANGERS: GEOGRAPHIC MOBILITY IN THE SIOUX CITY REGION, 1860--1900

WILLIAM SILAG

An American literary and scholarly tradition Unfortunately for those who would make upholds the midwestern town as a bastion of sense of the social consequences of American social stability. In novels by William Dean urbanization, the stereotype has little basis in Howells, Mark Twain, and a host of nineteenth­ fact. Recent research on the character of century authors, comforting images of small­ American life prior to World War I reveals an town tranquility provide sharp contrast to entire society in flux. 2 The impact of indus­ scenes of urban turmoil in the'age of industrial­ trialization reverberated across the continent; ism. Even the town's critics, from Edgar Watson small towns and rural areas were not immune to Howe to Sherwood Anderson, pay tribute to its effects. The transformation of the American popular views of small-town folk as more economy pulled some men and women into sedentary and self-contented than the ambi­ the nation's cities and pushed others beyond tious urbanites who crowded the streets of the Ohio River Valley onto the western prairies. nineteenth-century New York and Boston and The result was social mobility on a par with Chicago. These images were not restricted to anything uncovered by investigations of twen­ works of fiction. America's first sociologists, tieth-century communities. On the eve of the including Jane Addams and John Dewey, nation's great industrial advance, Alexis de accepted the stereotype of life in the provincial Tocqueville observed that "a restless temper town as a guiding principle for reform efforts seems ... one of the distinctive traits of this in the nation's cities during the Progressive Era. people.,,3 Such restlessness has shaped the The survival of that stereotype, in fiction and history of all American communities, including in social research, into the present century is a the allegedly tranquil country towns and pro­ testament to its power.1 vincial cities of the Middle West.

As senior editor at the State Historical Society THE FRONTIER COMMUNITY of Iowa, Dr. William Silag directs its publica­ tion program and edits The Palimpsest. He is Nineteenth-century Sioux City, Iowa, typi­ the author of two recent articles in Annals of fied the demographic turbulence of the age. Iowa. During the 1850s the "Gateway City" of the

168 CITIZENS AND STRANGERS 169

ingly larger proportion of the total population. Through the 1870s, however, most of them worked in transportation and wholesaling.4 Although a highly visible group of promi­ nent citizens remained from the antebellum years, the majority of the 1860 population had disappeared in the ensuing decade. Certainly the Civil War accounted for some of the depar­ tures, as did the tense confrontation between whites and Indians in northwestern Iowa during the early 1860s. Many other early settlers simply left in frustration over the slow pace of Northwestern lowe in the eOf'ly 18705. commercial life in frontier Sioux City, likened by local historians to "an isolated republic" Upper Missouri River gained and lost thousands looking out on "a howling wilderness."S of residents in response to changing conditions In all, 66.2 percent of the 142 working men in the western land market. The collapse of the present in Sioux City on the eve of the war real estate boom in 1857 brought a decade of were gone ten years later. 6 Those 48 who population stability, which ended abruptly stayed tended to be individuals with business with the coming of the Sioux City and Pacific interests-especially real estate investments-in Railroad in 1868. Thenceforth, Sioux City the community. Table 2 compares those who lived up to its nickname as each year thousands left with those who stayed throughout the of persons passed through town on their way 1860s and reveals the superior economic stand­ to new homes in the Upper Missouri country. ing of the persistent element of the local work By 1870 nearly thirty-five hundred men, force. Men with property valued at $1,000 or women, and children had settled in town. A more in 1860 were about twice as likely to disproportionate number of men lived in the remain in Sioux City as were those with assets area, the sex ratio in Woodbury County having of less than $1,000. Table 2 also shows that climbed since the census of 1860 from 118.1 men in their twenties were more apt to leave to 129.0. The demographic character of the during the 1860s than were men aged thirty settlement had changed in other ways as well. and older, and that native-born Americans were The adult male population of 1870 was slightly more persistent than were men in most of older (by 1.67 years), exhibited greater ethnic Sioux City's European immigrant groups. Only variety, and included more penniless men than the Irish proved less mobile than the American­ had the local population on the eve of the born, with nearly half of them remaining in Civil War (see Table 1). New to Sioux City was Sioux City at the end of the decade. Yet over­ a small enclave of Scandinavians, mostly all, neither nativity nor age proved as strong a Swedish immigrants, who had arrived soon after factor in residential persistence as economic the completion of the Sioux City and Pacific standing. It was men with a financial stake in in 1868. The wider disparities of wealth appar­ the community-businessmen such as Prussian ent in 1870-when 63.8 percent of local men immigrant merchant Gustave Hattenbach and reported no real or personal property-reflects young Vermont-born banker George Weare­ the pressure of an industrial labor force that who formed a stable core population in the was attracted to the Upper Missouri by the Upper Missouri outpost during the war years.7 spate of postwar railroad construction. Later, The relationship between wealth and mobil­ with the emergence of a large-scale meatpack­ ity became even more pronounced in the ing industry and other agricultural processing decade beginning in 1870. Nearly 40 percent activities, these laborers represented an increas- of the men with sizable property holdings in 170 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1982

TABLE 1

ADULT MALE POPULATION (AGED 21 AND OVER) OF SIOUX CITY, 1860 AND 1870, BY AGE, NATIVITY, ETHNICITY, AND WEALTH

1860 1870

Age Under 30 64 (45.4%) 192 (45.2%) 30 and over 77 (54.6) 233 (54.8) TOTAL 141 425 Nativity Native-born 96 (68.1) 219 (51.5 ) Foreign-born 45 (31.9) 206 (48.5) TOTAL 141 425 Ethnicity u.S.-born 96 (68.1) 219 (51.5 ) Canadian 1 ( 0.7) 21 ( 4.9) British 7 ( 5.0) 26 ( 6.1) Irish 13 ( 9.2) 49 (11.5 ) German 15 (10.6) 51 (12.0) Scandinavian 0 ( 0.0) 48 (11.3 ) Other European 9 ( 6.4) 11 ( 2.6) TOTAL 141 425 Wealth $0 19 (13.4 ) 271 (63.8) 1-999 63 (44.4 ) 46 (10.8 ) 1,000-9,999 51 (35.9) 79 (18.6) 10,000 or more 9 ( 6.3) 29 ( 6.4) TOTAL 142 425

SOURCE: Manuscript U.S. Census of Population, 1860, 1870.

1870 stayed in Sioux City for another ten research on other nineteenth-century popula­ years, while just 13.2 percent of those with tions. Investigators have found similar patterns assets of less than $1,000 did so. Table 2 out­ of movement in such disparate places as Bos­ lines patterns of movement among the Sioux ton, Atlanta, Roseburg (Oregon), and agricul­ City men of 1870. Again, young men and men tural communities in rural Kansas.8 What is born outside the United States showed a unusual about Sioux City's history is the stronger propensity to migrate than did native­ decline of population stability in the years from born Americans and those past their thirtieth 1860 to 1880. Persistence rates-the proportion birthdays. Only the Germans exhibited greater of people remaining in the community from demographic stability than the American-born, one census to the next-decreased from 33.8 though the between-group differences within percent in the 1860s to 20 percent in the the total population were much smaller than 1870s. The findings of other mobility studies they had been ten years earlier. would lead us to expect increased persistence These findings corroborate the results of with the passage of time as the community's CITIZENS AND STRANGERS 171

TABLE 2

VARIATIONS IN RESIDENTIAL PERSISTENCE, ACCORDING TO AGE, NATIVITY, ETHNICITY, AND WEALTH, SIOUX CITY, 1860-1870 AND 1870-1880

1860 1870

Number Present Gone Number Present Gone in 1860 in 1870 by 1870 in 1870 in 1880 by 1880

Wealth Less than $1,000 80 20 (25%) 60 ( 75%) 317 42 (13%) 275 (87%) $1,000 or more 62 28 (45%) 34 ( 55%) 108 43 (40%) 65 (60%) Nativity Native-born 96 35 (36%) 61 64%) 219 49 (22%) 170 (78%) Foreign-born 45 13 (29%) 32 71%) 206 36 (17%) 170 (83%) Ethnicity U.S.-born 96 35 (36%) 61 ( 64%) 219 49 (22%) 170 (78%) Canadian 1 0 ( 0%) 1 (100%) 21 4 (19%) 17 (81%) British 7 2 (29%) 5 ( 71%) 26 4 (15%) 22 (85%) Irish 13 6 (46%) 7 ( 54%) 49 8 (16%) 41 (84%) German 15 4 (27%) 11 ( 73%) 51 14 (28%) 37 (72%) Scandinavian 0 0 ( 0%) 0 ( 0%) 48 5 (10%) 43 (90%) Other European 9 1 (11%) 8 ( 89%) 11 1 ( 9%) 10 (91%) Age Under 30 64 20 (31%) 44 ( 69%) 192 26 (14%) 166 (86%) 30 and over 77 28 (36%) 49 ( 64%) 233 59 (25%) 174 (75%)

ALL MEN 142 48 (33.8%) 94 ( 66.2%) 425 85 (20%) 340 (80%)

SOURCE: Manuscript U.S. Census of Population, 1860, 1870, 1880. institutional structure became fixed.9 The con­ certainly there were many who accepted urban trary evidence for early Sioux City suggests that employment only in order to earn a down pay­ the surge of economic growth following the ment on rural property. Sioux City's United railroad's arrival in the late 1860s prolonged States Land Office remained busy until 1873, and even exaggerated the demographic instabil­ as most pioneers headed for the Upper Missouri ity of the pioneer period. country would have at least checked in here We might attribute the increased transiency before making deals with private land agents. of the 1870s to two groups of residents peculiar Henry Hospers and the band of Hollanders he to frontier Sioux City. Many of the men listed led into Sioux County in 1869 did so, as did as "laborers" in census rolls of the 1870s were dozens of the Dakota-bound Swedish immi­ probably prospective farmers pausing briefly grants studied by Robert C. Ostergren. These in the Gateway City before taking claim to pioneers, resident in the community for a few prairie homesteads. An estimate of their num­ days or weeks, never intended to remain per­ ber is impossible with the data at hand, but manently in Sioux City.10 172 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1982

The same is true of the transportation work­ year, information contained in Polk's Iowa ers camped in Sioux City's hotels, boarding State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1880- houses, and along the levee during the shipping 1881 suggests that these persons retained their season. The steamboat docks of the early 1870s economic preeminence through the financially provided work for scores of boatmen-deck­ troubled 1870s. Land agents, realtors, and hands, carters, and warehouse men-who bankers of the frontier years had become the returned to permanent homes in Kansas City or principal investors in most of the six railroads Saint Louis with the first freeze of winter. that converged on Sioux City by the end of the Indeed, employers such as the Kountz Shipping decade, thus strengthening their influence over Line moved their entire operation back and the commercial life of the now-bustling regional forth each year between the Upper Missouri entrepot. Land agent and town platter Samuel station and one or another downriver port with T. Davis, for example, represented the Sioux the change of seasons. 11 At any rate, the boat­ City and Pacific Railroad as a legislative lobby­ men were hardly settlers in the usual sense; ist in the late 1860s, then organized the Sioux their residence in Sioux City was nothing more City and St. Paul Railroad in the early 1870s, than a temporary occupational convenience. and soon afterward formed a syndicate with Likewise, scores of railroad workers identified fellow pioneers Ashbel W. Hubbard, a lawyer, by the census enumerator in 1870-and un­ and John H. Charles, a dry goods dealer, to known numbers of common laborers who build the Sioux City and Pembina Railroad, helped lay the rails-also moved on as soon as which opened a direct rail route between Sioux their work was finished in Sioux City and the City and the Dakota Territory. Other frontier surrounding area. businessmen who invested successfully in local All of this coming and going was no doubt a railroad projects included lawyer William L. blessing to local businessmen, for the traffic Joy, meatpacker James Booge, and U.S. Land enriched proprietors of existing stores and Office receiver William R. Smith. These indi­ services, and created opportunities for new viduals, along with perhaps a dozen other businesses as well. Civic leaders in some eastern business and professional men, provided a con­ cities worried about the social and cultural tinuity of leadership between the prewar era consequences of rapid urban growth, but ap­ and the years of rapid commercial growth parently no one expressed such thoughts on the that followed the entry of the railroad into the Missouri River frontier. Local editors had few Upper Missouri country in the late 1860s and illusions about the quiet communitylost to the 1870s. Indeed, newspapers, business directories, railroad. "Awake ye drowsy denizens," warned and county histories reveal that these pioneers one exuberant journalist on the advent of the dominated the local business scene until the Sioux City and Pacific line, "get ready to 'git'. mid-1890s. However brief and turbulent, the ... The time draws nigh when we can shake frontier experience of the 1850s had given hands with the outside world, and cease to be Sioux City a socioeconomic elite that pre­ the frontier.,,12 To those who had experienced vailed for more than a generation.14 the lean years of the 1860s, any disorder that accompanied community development was a REGIONAL POPULATION wholly acceptable alternative to the commercial PATTERNS, 1880-1885 stagnation that had dogged Sioux City in the years since its founding in 1854. With the completion of the regional railroad Of the "core population" that survived from network in the 1870s, Sioux City entered a this earlier period, numbering forty-eight in period of accelerated economic growth accom­ 1870, at least twenty-seven (52.6 percent) still panied by still higher levels of population move­ lived in Sioux City in 1880.13 Though data on ment. The city grew to include seven thousand individual wealth are not available for the latter persons by 1880. Annual departure rates-the CITIZENS AND STRANGERS 173 percentage of the local populace moving away in Omaha, and also somewhat higher than the in a given year-climbed to 14.0 percent in the 6 to 8 percent rate found in frontier communi­ early 1880s, up from 6.62 percent in the 1860s ties in Kansas, Wisconsin, and Oregon.15 A and 8.0 percent in the 1870s. As shown in Table definitive explanation for both interregional 3, smaller towns in Sioux City's hinterland and intraregional differences in population experienced out-migration with comparable movement awaits further research, but data for frequency: the most "stable" of the Upper towns in the Upper Missouri region indicate Missouri towns included in this study was that departure rates there were to some extent Orange City, which lost 9.8 percent of its popu­ a function of community size. With the excep­ lation each year. tion of Akron, a country village whose tiny Such figures exceed the departure rates base population in 1880 may account for the calculated by historians for other local popula­ anomaly, a fairly consistent decline occurs in tions in nineteenth-century America. They are the rate of exodus with decreasing town size. far above the rates found in big cities, which Sioux City, which contained slightly more than range from 3.6 percent in Boston to 5.6 percent seven thousand persons in 1880, showed the highest rate of out-migration. Residents of Orange City, on the other hand, exhibited a TABLE 3 relatively strong propensity to remain within their small, culturally cohesive Dutch settle­ PERSISTENCE AND DEPARTURE, 1880-1885, ment. Figures for each of the towns have been OF MALES AGED 21 AND OLDER IN 1880 determined on the basis of males aged twenty­ one and older, but there is little reason to expect that the addition of women and children Five-year Annual into the calculations would seriously alter these Number Persistence Departure findings. 16 Town in 1880 Rate (p,)a Rate (D,)h In absolute terms, of course, the volume of out-migrants (those individuals used to calcu­ Sioux CityC 2,482 30.2% 14.0% late departure rates) in the Sioux City area LeMars 491 46.0 10.8 pales by comparison with the transients who Cherokee 425 44.5 11.1 passed through the nation's largest cities. For example, Boston's annual departure rate of 3.6 Orange City 88 51.2 9.8 percent describes a group totaling thirteen Akron 64 40.6 11.9 thousand persons, while Sioux City'S yearly rate of 14 percent amounts to about one thou­ sand out-migrants.17 But considering the cities' SOURCE: Manuscript U.S. Census of Popula­ differences in size-one on the Atlantic seacoast tion, 1880; manuscript Iowa State Census, and the other a provincial river port-one can 1885. argue that the demographic turbulence of the ap' = percentage of 1880 population remaining Upper Missouri area matched that of the in 1885. nation's industrial metropolises. To estimate the degree of transiency in hD' = percentage of 1880 population removed specific towns and cities while controlling for or died by 1885. size differences requires calculation of a turn­ cSioux City figures are based on a 20 percent over ratio for each community. This statistic systematic sample of adult males listed in the provides a measure of the volume of move­ manuscripts of the federal census of 1880. ment in and out of a town in relation to its Figures for the other towns represent all adult population at the start of a given time interval. males listed by the census takers in 1880. Table 4 displays information on the movement 174 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1982 of men living in Sioux City and neighboring town at the end of the period. While census towns in the years 1880-1885 and reveals two takers in 1885 noted an increase of just one noteworthy features of local migration pro­ hundred men, our figures reveal that such peri­ cesses. First, the figures on arrivals and de­ odic counts of local populations only hint at partures supply a minimum estimate of the the level of turnover between enumerations.18 number of men who spent some time as resi­ Second, we should note the difference in dents of the towns, over and above the sta­ turnover ratios among the towns. While the tionary group present throughout the entire figures do not constitute a regular pattern, five-year period. Men arriving and men leaving Sioux City's extremely high turnover ratio between 1880 and 1885 are listed together in attests to the power of the Gateway City to the table as the Number Moving. The tally for attract and to hold, however briefly, an enor­ Sioux City, in excess of eight thousand, may mous number of men in the years of its swiftest not surprise us, but the movement of more than commercial expansion. As in Cherokee, movers five hundred Cherokee men shows that, even outnumbered men living in Sioux City at the in the smaller railroad town, the population was end of the period, in this case by more than hardly sedentary. In fact, the number of men one thousand. The city's turnover ratio, 3.28, moving in and out of Cherokee in five years was about twice as high as the ratios for neigh­ actually matched that of all men living in the boring towns, suggesting a strong relationship

TABLE 4

MINIMUM POPULATION TURNOVER, 1880-1885, OF MALES AGED 21 AND OLDER IN 1880a

Number Number Number Number Turnover Number in 1880 Leavingb Arriving Moving Ratio in 1885

Sioux CityC 2,482 1,732 6,412 8,144 3.28 7,162 LeMars 491 265 481 746 1.52 890 Cherokee 425 236 291 527 1.24 524 Orange City 88 43 128 171 1.94 263 Akron 64 38 54 92 1.44 90

SOURCE: Manuscript U. S. Census of Population, 1880; manuscript Iowa State Census, 1885. aCalculations: Number leaving = Number in 1880 X D' Number arriving = Number in 1885 - (Number in 1880 X P') Number moving = Number leaving + Number arriving Turnover ratio = Number moving -;- Number in 1880 bThe figures are not corrected for deaths. cSioux City figures are based on a 20 percent systematic sample of adult males listed in the manu­ scripts of the federal census of 1880. Figures for the other towns represent all adult males listed by the census takers. CITIZENS AND STRANGERS 175 between the pace of local economic growth and these years reflected the changing labor require­ the rapidity of population turnover, at least in ments of the towns as they experienced steady the Upper Missouri region. commercial expansion. As I have demonstrated The turnover ratio estimates minimum levels elsewhere, however, the economic structure of of mobility, based on the number of men who each place was largely set by 1880, so that had to move in and out of a community in subsequent changes in the character of local order to produce the population recorded at employment were probably slight.21 In any the end of the specified time interval. Were case, local economies certainly approached yearly enumerations available, the turnover their mature occupational configuration during ratios reported here would undoubtedly be re­ the late eighties, and it would be difficult to vised upward, but such data are not available defend the proposition that the region's urban for the Iowa towns. For his study of nine­ places continued to be subject to the idiosyn­ teenth-century Boston, however, Stephan cracies of frontier population movement. Let Thernstrom located yearly listings of the city's us assume, then, that after 1885 we are dealing population during the 1880s. The findings he with ordinary provincial cities and towns in a presented in The Other Bostonians include region fully incorporated into a national system enough of this information to permit a rough of trade. Did the high rates of geographic mo­ calculation of the turnover ratio in the Hub bility of the earlier years continue into this City during the early eighties. Working with the mature phase of community development? Was same formula used to calculate the Sioux City Sioux City's extremely high departure rate a ratio, I found that in the years 1880-1885 permanent feature of the Gateway City'S popu­ Boston had a turnover ratio of 5.20.19 Again, lation? And finally, did the demographic char­ Sioux City's ratio for the same period was 3.28, acter of the Iowa towns eventually attain levels really not much lower than Boston's con­ of stability comparable to those of communi­ sidering the absence of annual data for the ties in other parts of the country? former community. The first question can be answered quite Admittedly, a comparison of these figures simply. Rates of geographic mobility declined must be made with caution. In addition to the markedly in the decade beginning in 1885. In problem of incomplete data for Sioux City, a the early eighties, annual rates of out-migration difference in the sources of information on the varied between 10 and 14 percent among the two cities may have influenced the results of towns of the region. After 1885, however, local the calculations. City directories supplied Thern­ rates decreased to a range of 6 to 8 percent per strom's data, while census schedules provided year. Table 5 describes the change within each the information for Sioux City. Still, the town. Sioux City residents still moved most relatively small discrepancy between the cities' frequently, but overall the relationship between turnover ratios may support the claim that the town size and demographic stability had be­ alleged distinctions between demographic pro­ come less apparent. By 1895 the communities cesses in the cosmopolitan cities of the Atlantic of northwestern Iowa had achieved similar seaboard and the provincial cities of the mid­ rates of yearly out-migration, differing no more western states are largely illusory. 20 than a percentage point or two from town to town.22 The increase in demographic stability was POPULATION TURNOVER, 1885-1900 most striking in Sioux City. Whereas in the To this point, we have confined our discus­ early eighties population turnover had been sion of geographic mobility in Sioux City and dramatically high, the residents of the late its neighboring towns to data drawn from the eighties and early nineties exhibited a stronger censuses of the early 1880s. It may be that tendency to settle down as permanent members the extreme mobility of the region's people in of the community. Though persistence among 176 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1982

TABLE 5

ANNUAL RATES OF DEPARTURE, 1880-1885, 1885-1895,1895-1900, OF MALES AGED 21 AND OLDER

Annual Rate of Departurea

Town 1880-1885 1885-1895 1895-1900

Sioux City 14.0% 8.1% 10.7% LeMars 10.8 6.6 10.5 Cherokee 11.1 5.7 8.7 Orange City 9.8 7.0 10.5 Akron 11.9 6.7 11.9 Kingsley n.a. 7.6 lOA Lincoln Township n.a. 6.9 12.0

SOURCE: Manuscript U.S. Census of Population, 1880, 1900; manuscript Iowa State Census, 1885, 1895. aThese figures are not adjusted for death.

the Gateway City's people remained lower than population turnover, for reasons not disclosed that of the railroad towns and country villages by the census figures. Even here, however, the in its hinterland, out-migration dropped to differences between the rates for before and about half the level of a few years earlier. The after the depression period are slight. Overall, actual volume of turnover continued to be it would appear that high levels of in- and out­ quite high, of course, but the average Sioux migration marked the Upper Missouri region at Citian was only slightly more inclined to move least until the turn of the twentieth century. than a man living in LeMars, Orange City, or This pronounced demographic instability Akron. distinguished Sioux City and its hinterland How much of this new stability was a result towns from most communities in the United of the economic depression of the mid-1890s States during the late nineteenth century. is difficult to determine because of the nature Population turnover was common to all Ameri­ of the data. Demographers would expect such can cities and towns, to be sure, but few ex­ declines in turnover rates during hard times, as perienced such change as the settlements of the people's shrinking financial resources discour­ Upper Missouri region. Table 6 compares rates aged migration.23 Moreover, the figures of of persistence and departure in more than a Table 5 show a resumption of high turnover dozen localities and shows that the Iowa com­ rates in all of the communities of the region in munities typically exceeded all others in popu­ the years 1895-1900, coincident with the re­ lation turnover, in years of prosperity and in turn of prosperity. In most cases, the rates of years of scarcity. Annual rates of out-migration the late 1890s matched those of the early in other parts of the country hovered around 5 1880s, the boom years in the region's commer­ percent throughout the period, with a high of cial development. Only Sioux City and Chero­ 7.9 recorded in a rural Wisconsin county. kee failed to recover fully to earlier levels of Waltham, Massachusetts, with a population CITIZENS AND STRANGERS 177 about the same as Sioux City's in the late TABLE 6 eighties, had a departure rate of 4.2 percent per year, half as large as the Missouri River ANNUAL RATE OF DEPARTURE IN SELECTED city's. Thus, even in a decade marked by eco­ AMERICAN COMMUNITIES, 1880-1920 nomic depression, the Gateway City exper­ ienced proportionately more population change Annual Rate than was common in major cities on either Communities of Departure coast. Of all the urban places listed in Table 6, Large cities (1880-1890) nearby Omaha, with an annual departure rate Boston 3.6% of 5.6 percent, came closest to matching the Waltham 4.2 level of out-migration from Sioux City. Perhaps Omaha 5.6 the location of the two midwestern cities along Los Angeles 4.6 major transcontinental transportation routes San Francisco 5.0 accounts for their similarly high rates of tran­ Iowa communities (1885-1895) siency. Despite their own economic maturity, Sioux City 8.1 Missouri River cities in this period may have LeMars 6.6 continued to serve as staging grounds, pro­ Cherokee 5.7 viding brief respite and temporary employment Orange City 7.0 for people headed for farm lands and cities Akron 6.7 Kingsley west of the river. This could have been true 7.6 Lincoln Township 6.9 also for the smaller towns in the Upper Missouri area. Families bound for the Dakota Territory Rural areas (1885-1895) may have paused in LeMars or Orange City for Grant County, Wisconsin 7.9 Eastern Kansas a year or two while preparing for the final stage 4.9 Central Kansas 5.4 of their westward journey. 24 Lacking data on the ultimate destinations of Iowa communities (1895-1900) the region's out-migrants, we can test none of Sioux City 10.7 LeMars 10.5 these hypotheses. What we know for certain is Cherokee 8.7 that population turnover in the settlements of Orange City 10.5 northwestern Iowa exceeded that in virtually Akron 11.9 all of the nineteenth-century communities Kingsley 10.4 that have been examined by historians. We Lincoln Township 12.0 know too that population turnover in the Rural areas (1895-1905) Upper Missouri region varied over time, pre­ Eastern Kansas 5.2 sumably in response to changing economic Central Kansas 6.0 circumstances. Unfortunately, we lack infor­ Western Kansas 6.7 mation needed to determine conclusively Large cities (1900-1910) whether the fluctuations detected in the Iowa Omaha 5.6 communities in the period from 1880 to 1900 Large cities (1910-1920) conformed to some national pattern or were Boston 5.9 instead a regional peculiarity. Where continu­ Los Angeles 5.1 ous data exist for more than a single decade, Norristown, Pennsylvania 4.1 however, the evidence points to the latter view. The rural areas listed in Table 6, for example, maintained relatively constant levels of out­ SOURCE: For Iowa communities, same as Table migration throughout the period. The depres­ 5; for other communities, see Thernstrom, The sion of the 1890s appears not to have affected Other Bostonians, pp. 222, 226. 178 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1982 departures to an appreciable degree. Similarly, and less likely to have accumulated important rates of departure in the large cities listed in the amounts of property, men just beginning their table are fairly consistent over time. In the careers had fewer reasons to stay put when Upper Missouri region, by contrast, out-migra­ better opportunities beckoned elsewhere. The tion declined and recovered by as much as logic of this explanation has been supported by 5 percent of a given community's total popula­ most empirical studies of population move­ tion in the same short period of time. For what­ ments in nineteenth-century America. 25 ever reasons, turnover in the Sioux City area Earlier we noted the unusually high fre­ was more erratic, as well as more frequent, quency of out-migration among men in their than in other parts of the United States. The twenties living in Sioux City during the 1860s following analysis of the stationary and tran­ and 1870s. This strong relationship between age sient elements of the Iowa communities' popu­ and mobility continued after 1880 and was lations provides additional information that is common to many of the hinterland towns as useful for explaining these phenomena. well. Of the seven communities listed in Table 7, only the village of Akron and rural Lincoln Township diverge from the general regional AGE, OCCUPATION, AND pattern of the period from 1880 to 1900. The GEOGRAPHIC MOBILITY other towns show pronounced and consistent It is common knowledge among students of differences in out-migration between persons geographic mobility that young men are more on either side of their thirtieth birthdays. In likely to migrate than older men. Unencum­ Sioux City in the early 1880s, for example, bered by the responsibilities of large families, men in the younger age group were twice as

TABLE 7

ANNUAL RATES OF DEPARTURE FROM COMMUNITIES OF THE UPPER MISSOURI REGION, 1880-1885,1885-1895,1895-1900

Annual Rate of Departurea

1880-1885 1885-1895 1895-1900 Under 30 30 and Over Under 30 30 and Over Under 30 30 and Over

Sioux City 8.2 6.0 8.7 7.5 12.6 9.8 LeMars 6.5 4.8 7.0 6.4 13.1 9.4 Cherokee 6.8 5.0 6.8 5.3 11.1 8.0 Orange City 5.6 4.3 7.6 6.6 15.0 8.7 Akron 7.1 5.3 6.7 6.7 11.0 12.3 Kingsley n.a. 7.8 7.3 12.9 9.3 Lincoln Township n.a. 6.5 7.1 15.0 10.3

SOURCE: Manuscript U.S. Census of Population, 1880, 1900; manuscript Iowa State Census, 1885, 1895. aThese figures are not adjusted for deaths. CITIZENS AND STRANGERS 179 likely to move away as their elders. Even in element of the local work force, with differ­ Orange City, where persistence was relatively ences in group rates ranging from about 10 to high for the Upper Missouri country in these 33 percentage points. Yet even here no pat­ years, young Hollanders behaved more like terns appear: in ethnically heterogeneous their youthful counterparts in the region's LeMars and Akron, menial laborers exhibited other communities than like their older Dutch the strongest propensity for out-migration, neighbors. The differences in departure rates while in the Dutch stronghold of Orange City, between age groups shrank somewhat in the high-ranking professionals and businessmen decade ending in 1895, but the late 1890s proved to be more transient than either the witnessed a resumption of high out-migration town's clerks and craftsmen or its menial among younger men in most places. laborers. While we know little about the family situa­ A clearer pattern emerges from the data on tions of the towns' out-migrants and, after mobility for the decade beginning in 1885. 1870, nothing at all of their property holdings, This period ended in an economic depression census data available for the period from 1880 that probably influenced the overall reduction to 1900 do permit consideration of the rela­ in levels of out-migration throughout the Upper tionship between migration and occupational Missouri region. Considering the towns individ­ status. It is logical to assume that men who had ually, we saw that departure rates fell by as attained a measure of economic security would much as half their former level in the years be less inclined to seek new opportunities in 1885-1895 (divide these ten-year rates by two other places than would men holding less for comparison with five-year figures for 1880- rewarding jobs at the bottom of their local 1885 in Table 8), and also that differences occupational hierarchy. To test this assump­ between local rates within the region shrank to tion, I divided the labor force of each of seven a notable degree. At the same time, a new regu­ Upper Missouri communities into three groups larity developed in the relationship between job along an occupational prestige scale developed status and geographic mobility. In five of the by a panel of social historians for use in mobil­ seven communities listed in Table 8, occupa­ ity studies.26 Each community's men received tional rank and out-migration are inversely individual prestige scores based on their occupa­ related, as predicted by our original hypothesis. tions at the start of a given time interval, so as The familiar exceptions to the pattern, Akron to determine relationships between job status and Orange City, are hardly consistent with and propensity to migrate in subsequent years. each other. In Akron, the relationship between Table 8 lists departure rates for the various job prestige and mobility is direct: the higher status groups in all of the towns in three dif­ the occupational status, the higher the depar­ ferent time intervals: 1880-1885, 1885-1895, ture rate-just the opposite of the general and 1895-1900. pattern in the region. By contrast, out-migra­ The results are hardly conclusive. In the tion from Orange City displays no regular order years 1880-1885, the relationship between at all. As in the 1880-1885 period, local clerks occupational rank and geographic mobility was and craftsmen exhibit the greatest residential not consistent among the five communities for persistence, but the town's menial laborers-not which census data are available. The behavior its professional and business group-show the of men in Sioux City fully supports the hy­ strongest tendency to migrate. In this respect pothesis that the higher the job status, the Orange City's men conform to the regional lower the departure rate; a range of nearly 44 pattern. It should be noted, furthermore, that percentage points separates the most and least the differences in departure rates among occu­ transient groups. In three of the other com­ pational groups in both Orange City and Akron munities, however, the middle-ranking clerks are relatively small, falling in ranges of less and craftsmen constitute the most stable than 10 percentage points. Group differences 180 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1982

TABLE 8

LOCAL RATES OF DEPARTURE, ACCORDING TO OCCUPATIONAL STATUS, 1880-1885, 1895-1900a

Professionals and Clerks and Menial Town Businessmen Craftsmen Laborers

1880-1885 Sioux City 40.5% 66.5% 84.0% LeMars 52.5 49.2 68.1 Cherokee 50.3 60.8 58.9 Orange City 56.2 40.5 53.3 Akron 59.4 47.6 80.0 1885-1895 Sioux City 64.9 84.0 85.1 LeMars 58.3 62.6 76.3 Cherokee 50.6 52.4 61.8 Orange City 70.6 64.9 73.4 Akron 73.0 66.7 64.3 Kingsley 69.6 73.3 92.8 Lincoln Township 64.0 83.3 90.6 189.5-1900 Sioux City 49.6 48.9 59.6 LeMars 54.5 50.3 52.7 Cherokee 39.8 45.6 41.3 Orange City 49.6 50.5 58.1 Akron 58.5 55.1 61.5 Kingsley 52.6 47.8 50.0 Lincoln Township 52.2 100.0 96.6

SOURCE: Manuscript U.S. Census of Population, 1880, 1900; manuscript Iowa State Census, 1885, 1895. aThese figures are not adjusted for deaths.

within each of the other communities are inverse relationship between job status and much wider, all of which would encourage us out-migration. The other communities dis­ to accept our hypothesis as generally valid for played rates of departure as random as those of the Upper Missouri region as a whole in the the period 1880-1885. Only one generalization years 1885-1895. can be made for the group as a whole in the The years 1895-1900, which brought a rise final years of the nineteenth century: in no case in levels of out-migration among all occupation­ did menial laborers constitute the most persis­ al groups in each of the region's communities, tent element of the local population. Despite also witnessed the disruption of the pattern of the financial burdens of relocation, a high intergroup differences established in the prev­ percentage of these low-paid workers moved ious decade. Indeed, only the formerly irregu­ elsewhere, presumably in search of improved lar Orange City showed the once-common economic opportunity. CITIZENS AND STRANGERS 181

REGIONAL TRENDS AND them from comparably sized settlements NATIONAL PATTERNS elsewhere in the nineteenth-century United States. These data for the Sioux City region corrob­ orate the findings of mobility analysts who NOTES have examined nineteenth-century communities in other parts of the United States. In virtually 1. The literature on this subject is vast. A every study to date, the young and the margin­ good place to begin is Page Smith, As a City ally employed constitute the local contribution upon a Hill: The Town in American History (New York: Knopf, 1966), which devotes to America's "floating population" in the early several chapters to the many fictional accounts years of industrialism. As in the Upper Missouri of small-town life in the nineteenth century. region, such personal characteristics as ethnic On Addams, Dewey, and other social reformers background, religion, and marital status weigh who championed the small-town ideal, see Jean far less heavily in the decision to migrate than B. Quandt, From the Small Town to the Great the simple economic facts of age and occupa­ Community: The Social Thought of Progres­ tion. Neither geographic location nor size of sive Intellectuals (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rut­ community appears to have affected this pat­ gers University Press, 1970). tern to any considerable extent. Although the 2. Recent research in this area is summar­ communities of northwestern Iowa display ized in Thomas Bender, Community and Social unusually high levels of population turnover, Change in America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1978), pp. 45-120. the general character of migration into and out 3. Cited in George W. Pierson, The Moving of the settlements of the Upper Missouri region American (New York: Knopf, 1971), p. 164. is almost identical to that identified in Boston, 4. The changing character of the Sioux Omaha, and Atlanta. Differences were of degree City economy is discussed in detail in William rather than of kind. 27 Silag, "City, Town, and Countryside: The Much the same is true with respect to local Ecology of Urbanization in Northwest Iowa, variations within the Upper Missouri region 1850-1900" (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, itself. Expected differences between the small 1979). towns and the Gateway City do not emerge 5. A. W. Warner, History of the Counties from the data; all communities experienced Woodbury and Plymouth (Chicago: A. Warner constant population turnover throughout the and Co., 1890), p. 464; John C. Flint, quoted in Iowa Writer's Program, WP A, Woodbury period from 1880 to 1900. In the smaller County History (Sioux City, Iowa, 1942), p. towns, demographic turbulence never equalled 31. levels reached in Sioux City, but considering 6. Here and throughout this essay-except their smaller base populations, rates of mobility where noted-I have ignored deaths in calcu­ were sufficiently high for us to discard the idea lating persistence and departure rates. I have that the railroad towns and the country villages done so in order to facilitate comparison of the had a distinctive demographic character. Im­ figures for the communities of the Upper Mis­ portant cultural differences notwithstanding, to souri region with those for other nineteenth­ be in the region's economic system was to be a century communities. The data on local migra­ part of its social order. Like economic growth, tion patterns that are available for these other migration was a general societal process that communities do not typically include adjust­ ments for mortality. affected the entire Upper Missouri region. And I estimate that death rates in the state of finally, if the population history of this area Iowa in the 1860s amounted to about 0.7 is representative, it would appear that the alleg­ percent of the adult male population per year. edly "stable" provincial cities and country Calculating the number of deaths among the villages of the Midwest exhibited few demo­ Sioux City men of 1860 in the ensuing decade graphic peculiarities that would distinguish at slightly less than one per year, I estimate 182 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1982 that perhaps 10 of the original 142 men had various ethnic groups in the nineteenth cen­ died by 1870. Thus, the departure rate adjusted tury. for deaths is 36.4 percent. Calculations are 11. William E. Lass, A History of Steam­ based on figures reported in U.S. Census of­ boating on the Upper Missouri River (Lincoln: fice, Ninth Census of the United States, vol. 2, University of Nebraska Press, 1962), pp. 57- Vital Statistics of the United States (Washing­ 75. ton, D.C., 1872), p. 416, and ibid., vol. 1, Pop­ 12. Zane Miller, The Urbanization of ulation, p. 627. Modern America: A Brief History (New York: 7. I calculated a contingency coefficient Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 45-61. (C) to measure the strength of association be­ 13. Men listed in the 1860 U.S. census who tween residential persistence and each of the also appeared in the 1870 U.S. census were following independent variables for the period traced in the 1880 U.S. census, in Polk's Iowa 1860-1870: wealth (C = .205), nativity (.045), State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1880- and age (.060). For the period 1870-1880, 1881 (Detroit: R. L. Polk and Co., 1880), contingency coefficients are as follows: wealth and in A. W. Warner's History of Counties (.272), nativity (.059), and age (.140). C de­ Woodbury and Plymouth. scribes the difference from randomness of the 14. Polk's Iowa State Gazetteer and Busi­ relationship between two nominal-level vari­ ness Directory, 1880-1881, pp. 497-502 and ables, ranging from a low of 0.0 (independence) Warner, History of Counties Woodbury and to a high of 0.707 for a 2 X 2 table. See Rod­ Plymouth, pp. 623-1013. erick Floud, An Introduction to Quantitative 15. I have calculated annual departure rates Methods for Historians (London: Metheun, for the non-Iowa communities from figures 1973), pp. 127-33 . listed in Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians, . 8. Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Boston. pp. 222, 226. These rates, and the rates for the ians: Poverty and Progress in the American Iowa communities, are not adjusted for deaths. Metropolis, 1880-1970 (Cambridge, Mass.: 16. Problems that might result from the Harvard University Press, 1973); Richard exclusion of women and children are discussed Hopkins, "Occupational and Geographic Mobil­ in Robert Doherty, Society and Power: Five ity in Atlanta, 1879-90," Journal of Southern New England Towns, 1800-1860 (Amherst: History 34 (May 1968): 200-13; William G. University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), p. Robbins, "Opportunity and Persistence in the 31. In the interest of advancing comparative Pacific Northwest: A Quantitative Study of historical analysis, I have followed the lead of Early Roseburg, Oregon," Pacific Historical most historical mobility analysts and have Review 39 (August 1970): 279-96; James C. focused exclusively on adult men in this study. Malin, "The Turnover of Farm Population in 17. Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians, pp. Kansas," Kansas Historical Q],tarterly 4 (No­ 16-17. Neither Thernstrom's figures nor my vember 1935): 339-72. own are adjusted for deaths. From the data 9. Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians, provided in U.S. Census, Tenth Census of the pp.225-27. United States, vol. 12, Report on the Mortality 10. Charles L. Dyke, The Story of Sioux and Vital Statistics of the United States (Wash­ County (Orange City, Iowa: Verstegen Print­ ington, D.C., 1886), part 2, pp. 378-79, I ing Co., 1942), p. 15; Robert C. Ostergren, calculate an annual death rate of 26.4 7 per "Prairie Bound: Migration Patterns to a Swed­ thousand adult males living in Iowa in 1880. ish Settlement on the Dakota Frontier," Thus, of the approximately 2,500 men living Ethnicity on the Great Plains, ed. by Frederick in Sioux City in 1880, perhaps 66 died per C. Luebke (Lincoln: University of Nebraska year. By 1885, about 300 of them would have Press, 1980), pp. 73-91. See also John C. been dead. Adjusted for these deaths in the Hudson, "Migration to an American Frontier," years 1880-1885, Sioux City's annual depar­ Annals of the Association of American Geog­ ture rate would equal 11.2 percent. raphers 66 (June 1976): 242-65, for a discus­ 18. Peter Knights may have been the first sion of information-migration networks estab­ historian to discuss the implications of this lished in the United States by members of phenomenon. See Knights, The Plain People of CITIZENS AND STRANGERS 183

Boston, 1830-1860: A Study in City Growth in regional ethnic enclaves or moving on accord­ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), ing to the changing structure of local economic pp.48-77. opportunity. 19. Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians, pp. 25. See Doherty, Society and Power, pp. 16-17. 40-43, for an especially illuminating discussion 20. See Park Dixon Goist, From Main Street of the relationship between age and migration. to State Street: Town, City, and Community 26. Theodore Hershberg, et aI., "Occupa­ in America (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat tion and Ethnicity in Five Nineteenth-Century Press, 1977), and the works cited in Note 1 American Cities: A Collaborative Inquiry," above. Historical Methods Newsletter 7 (June 1974): 21. Silag, "City, Town, and Countryside," 185-86. I collapsed Hershberg's five prestige pp.125-50. groups into three for easier manipulation of the 22. Age- and sex-specific figures on mor­ data. tality in the period 1885-1895 are not avail­ 27. See the summary of mobility research able. However, using the 1880 figures discussed in Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians, pp. 221- in Note 17, I calculate the following adjusted 32. A recent essay applies multivariate analysis annual departure rates: Sioux City, 6.00 per­ to the findings of a number of mobility studies, cent; LeMars, 4.89 percent; Cherokee, 4.24 refines their conclusions, and points up the im­ percent; Orange City, 5.17 percent; Akron, portance of occupational rank and age over 4.89 percent; Kingsley, 5.62 percent; Lincoln religion, ethnicity, marital status, and several Township, 5.09 percent. other variables in determining persistence rates. 23. Everett S. Lee, "A Theory of Migra­ See Anthony E. Broadman and Michael P. tion," Demography 3 (1966): 47-57. Weber, "Economic Growth and Occupational 24. Hudson, "Migration to an American Mobility in Nineteenth-Century Urban Amer­ Frontier," shows how foreign-born migrants ica: A Reappraisal," Journal of Social History moved toward North Dakota in steps, pausing 11 (Fall 1977): 52-74.