The Coolidge examiner., 1932-09-09
prepared by the National Geographic
Society, Washington. d. c.
(WNU Service.)

n gan pioneers were recently
honored when the Lumber
mems Memorial, overlooking the Au
Sable river, was dedicated.
Little did Monsieur Jean Nicolet,
the first white man to set foot on
Michigan in 1854, or the hardy pio-
neers who later laid a firm founda-
tion upon which the state was built
suspect that today their crude
camps would be sites of great
American cities joined by a splen-
did network of fine highways and
railroads.
In its infancy Michigan was a
huge lumber camp; today its indus
tries are legion. Detroit industries
alone normally employ some $780,
600 workers who are massed in
units attaining to $1,000 or $4,000
In single establishment. 1t is, of
course, her automobile industry,
which predominates in this mass
employment.
When the future state was sur
rendered by the British in 1896, no
body attached undue Importance to
village named Detroit with its
500 inhabitants and an area less
than a square mile. Skip 1876 years
and Detroit reappears as the ma
tons fourth largest city with an
area of more than 40 square miles,
a population of more than one and
quarter million and an industrial
product value of S2,0O0,000,000 a
year.
Approaching the city by lake
steamer one beholds a striking pan
Drama. The Canadian side shows
many miles of green meadows, while
the American side reveals grad
ual intensifying spectacle of man.
moth cranes, towering stacks, vast
factories-all of industry's bewil-
dering panoply.
Lest the motor car bulk dispro-
portionately on Detroit's skyline, it
should be remembered that the
city's 5000 major manufacturing
plants include 35 lines that fall into
the million-dollar-a-year class of
productivity. In fact, ever since
the days when Detroit made the
first gold pens, ran the first refrig-
orator cars and built among the ear
liest Of sleeping cars-and, tradi-
ton adds, mixed the first ice cream
soda-the Michigan metropolis has
been a plexus of diversified manu-
featuring.
Detroit's Remarkable Growth.
Her growth measured in terms
of population, has increased more
than $50 per cent during this cen
tury. Indeed, her present roll of in
dustrial operatives surpasses by
more than 10000 her total popula-
ton of 1900. Within the past ten
years the office cloud-toucher has
taken its place in Detroit's skyline,
and apartment hotels and hotel sky
scrapers cannot be reared fast
enough to keep pace with her
growth. In fact, Detroit's rapid
changes in physiognOmy justify the
English writer who remarked Of
American cities, Wrecked build
ings spring up like mushrooms"
One turns gratefully from De-
Nro nh A1 Nhnra11rrI 70
into that loveliest retreat Of all her
5000 acres of park space-Belle
Isle.
Pontiac, town founded in the
early boom period, leaped into the
general expansion frenzy by taking
out the states first railroad char
ter in 1880. Six years later work
was begun on the Detroit & Pontiac
railroad. Presently many a pioneer,
upon hearing the first locomotives
distant shrek, was seizing his gun
to "git the bar" with the strident
voice.
Great State for Lumber.
The original track of wooded,
iron-sheathed rails was soon dis
charging ripped-off fragments of
sheathing through the car bottoms.
These "snake-heads," as the flying
fragments were called, caused many
casualty among the passengers
until the D. & P. came handsomely
to the rescue with "a new and ele-
CANT car" whose metaled flooring
smothered the snake-head offensive.
Michigan's through-rail connection
with the East was established by
the completion Of the Great West
ern railroad in 1854. Nowadays the
states transportation is served by
steam lines operating $500 miles,
motor coaches 1000 miles, and elec-
trio lines 1000 miles.
Michigan's every city, it seems,
must make something, and her very
capital is not content to make only
laws. Lansing normally has $1,000
hands engaged in industries, mainly
the automotive or auxiliary thereto,
producing an annual output valued
n& r 1n.fn,