The Midwest: Nationally Important, But Still A National Enigma
A manufacturing ruin in Buffalo, NY. Source: lithub.com
The "Five Midwests" Series:
Part 3: The Lower Lakes (aka "Rust Belt")
Part 4: The Heartland
Part 5: The Midland Valley
Part 6: The Plains
Over the last couple weeks I republished a series that I view as a primer for understanding the broad middle of the country commonly defined as the Midwest. Nearly five years ago, when I first published the series, I did so because I thought that the general lack of understanding of a pivotal region in America, the part of the country I’ve spent my entire life, was causing it to be summarily dismissed by those living in the flourishing East Coast and West Coast metro areas and in the rapidly rising South. There are many outside the Midwest who believe its economic reliance on manufacturing, agriculture and extraction are relics of a long-ago past, essentially making its inhabitants irrelevant. If you want to matter, they seemed to say, move.
I sensed that that coastal and Southern ignorance of the Midwest, something that’s been rising for more than 40 years now, would have social and political repercussions. In 2016 with the election of Donald Trump, it did.
In the years since I first published the series, and definitely since the 2016 election, there’s been quite a bit of outrage that a handful of voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin put the nation in political turmoil. And the numerous insincere efforts by coastal types to go to Midwestern diners to understand why voters there switched to Trump imply they feel a sense of betrayal.
No. It is the Midwest that has been betrayed by today’s coastal coalition. If coastal types cannot engage with the Midwest, view the Midwest as part of the solution and the future of this nation, then the nation is in peril.
It wasn’t always that way.
Many East Coast cities, especially the New England and Mid-Atlantic cities extending from Maine to Baltimore, share a history that’s very close to their Midwest/Rust Belt counterparts. Many Eastern cities were early and productive manufacturing centers through most of the 19th century. I’d wager that around 1880, there was little difference between Boston and Buffalo, or Springfield, MA and Akron, OH, size differences notwithstanding.
However, it was at about that time that divergence began. First, the demographics of the Rust Belt began to differ from their Eastern brethren. The early agricultural focus in the Midwest brought many Germans, Scandinavians and Scots-Irish Appalachians into the area, seeking to eke out a productive subsistence living on the rich farmland. This created the first shift away from the Eastern cities.
Second, the late 19th/early 20th century expansion of manufacturing was tilted in the direction of the Rust Belt because the scale of manufacturing expanded exponentially. Manufacturing became much bigger, much more labor-intensive, and much more integral to Rust Belt economies from about 1880-1930. It was not uncommon for steel plants or automobile factories in the Rust Belt to have upwards of 10,000 workers, in part because built-out Eastern cities did not have the land (or nearby access to raw materials like iron ore or timber) to follow suit. However, both East Coast and Midwest/Rust Belt cities drew the same Eastern and Southern European groups seeking tough but well-paying manufacturing jobs.
But the huge demand for manufacturing workers meant that a third factor impacted Midwest/Rust Belt cities that didn’t impact New England or Mid-Atlantic cities in quite the same way: African-American immigration. The Great Migration that brought rural Southern blacks to the urban North between 1910-1970 dramatically changed the demographic landscape for all large Northern cities, but Rust Belt cities were most impacted. African-American migration to Eastern cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia began to ebb following World War II, but in Rust Belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee, the lure of manufacturing jobs brought more blacks North, establishing a much larger and stronger black presence.
This becomes evident when examining this data. I took a look at U.S. Census data on the African-American Great Migration from 1900-2000 gathered by the Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium at the University of Washington, and found data that looked at the share of Southern-born African-American migrants living in Northern states over the 20th century. This chart tells quite a bit:
Midwest/Rust Belt states (and Pennsylvania, depending on how one classifies it) are the bold lines on the chart. New England and Mid-Atlantic states are shown as dotted lines. It’s clear here that Illinois and Michigan have had the greatest share of Southern-born black migrants since 1950, followed by New Jersey and New York. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana follow. The bottom of the chart includes virtually all of New England – Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Massachusetts – as having a far lower share of Southern-born black migrants, joined by far northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Besides New York and New Jersey, the only Eastern state comparably impacted by the Great Migration is Connecticut.
The Great Migration's impact on the Rust Belt is perhaps the most significant divergence of the Rust Belt from its early New England roots.
So over about 125 years, Midwest/Rust Belt cities experienced a demographic divergence, followed by an economic divergence, then another demographic divergence, from their New England and Mid-Atlantic counterparts. This was followed by the economic divergence many of us are familiar with today: the collapse of manufacturing in the 1970s and 1980s that gave the Rust Belt its unfortunate modern descriptor. Metro areas like Buffalo and Pittsburgh lost more than 60% of their manufacturing jobs between 1954 and 2002; Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis lost between 43%-56% of all manufacturing jobs. All in regional economies where manufacturing comprised nearly half of all jobs.
Of course, the collapse of manufacturing was felt across the nation. All cities with significant concentrations of manufacturing jobs suffered, including East Coast cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Smaller East Coast cities located further away from the power metro areas were affected every bit as much as those in the Rust Belt; cities like Hartford, CT, Trenton, NJ and Allentown, PA were hard hit. But the larger East Coast cities had perhaps a 20-year head start implementing a new formula for success that was lacking in the Rust Belt. The largest East Coast cities were able to transition to the emerging New Economy anchored by tech, finance, education and health care. The presence of Ivy League institutions, finance, media and publishing centers, premier hospitals and medical research centers and federal or state government offices provided the major East Coast cities with a platform to go in a different trajectory from Midwest/Rust Belt cities.
The New Economy emergence solidified and completed the split between the East Coast and the Midwest/Rust Belt. The large New England and Mid-Atlantic cities of Boston, New York and Washington found a new way forward and in the process, the Midwest/Rust Belt was cast aside. What’s more, while leaving behind the Midwest/Rust Belt, East Coast cities forged a new alliance with West Coast cities, an early New Economy adopter.
Since the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, the Rust Belt has been in search of a social, cultural, economic and political partner to form a coalition with, with limited success. This was first evident in the 1980 U.S. presidential election, when so-called “Reagan Democrats” in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin began moving away from their New Deal Democratic roots to vote for Republican Ronald Reagan. It was at this time that the Rust Belt gained its “battleground” status. While larger cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Buffalo remained solidly Democratic, their suburbs and the numerous midsize and smaller places damaged by the collapse of manufacturing began to shift each states’ profile.
The Midwest/Rust Belt was faced with a choice. Culturally and politically adrift, should Rust Belt suburbs and midsize cities align with the bigger, more liberal Rust Belt cities along the Great Lakes, or the more conservative Midland Valley/Heartland areas like Indianapolis, Columbus, and much of central and southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa? That tension played out over the ensuing 36 years, culminating in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In 2016 the Midwest/Rust Belt narrowly chose to align with their Midland Valley/Heartland brethren. And once again East Coasters were left wondering what happened.
The urban story of the last 40 years, but especially during the first two decades of the 21st century, has been the fantastic turnaround of many of the nation’s cities. Once left for dead, cities like New York, Boston and Washington built on their legacies and established a new foundation for growth. That new foundation, based on knowledge and information, coincided with what was happening in many West Coast cities where the burgeoning tech industry exploded. Suddenly Seattle, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles, never really burdened with the manufacturing legacy of Eastern cities, found a way to accelerate to the next level. The New Economy brought them together socially, culturally and economically; as a result they've developed aspects of a workable agenda.
But the Midwest/Rust Belt simply hasn't been part of the discussion. If the region is to ever fully come back, it must be understood and embraced by those outside of it.