Chicago's Pride chronicles the growth -- from the 1830s to the 1893 Columbian Exposition - of the communities that sprang up around Chicago's leading industry. Wade shows that, contrary to the image in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the Stockyards and Packingtown were viewed by proud Chicagoans as the eighth wonder of the world. Wade traces the rise of the livestock trade and meat-packing industry, efforts to control the resulting air and water pollution, expansion of the work force and status of packinghouse employees, changes within the various ethnic neighborhoods, the vital role of voluntary organizations (especially religious organizations) in shaping the new community, and the ethnic influences on politics in this instant industrial suburb and powerful magnet for entrepreneurs, wage earners, and their families.''Chicago's Pride is a consistently readable and at times compelling study that graphically illustrates the changes in the Stockyards and Packingtown from the 1830s into the 1890s. In so doing, the work illuminates our understanding of working-class and labor history, technological and environmental history, business and economic history, and urban history. Wade's work possesses all the elements-thorough and imaginative research, readability, and informed, probing analysis-worthy of a significant book in United States history.''--William M. Tuttle Jr., author of Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919
