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Geographic Mobility in the Sioux City Region, 1860--1900

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Geographic Mobility in the Sioux City Region, 1860--1900 University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Summer 1982 Citizens And Strangers: Geographic Mobility In The Sioux City Region, 1860--1900 William Silag State Historical Society of Iowa, Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons 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.
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