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“Chicago . . . is our only major city that had, from its beginning, an immigrant core contained within an immigrant skin.” Unlike Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, it was never a WASP town. “It has no colonial past: only an immigrant and industrial history and a postindustrial present.” (BTW, Jacqueline Peterson paints a dizzying and unforgettable picture of Chicago’s non-WASP past in “The Founding Fathers,” a chapter in the book Ethnic Chicago, the first few pages of which can be read online. For the full impact you’ll have to find the book.)
The big picture? “Chicago has two different yet coexisting economies. One is a shrinking but still very much alive industrial-based economy characterized by good pay and a large white- and blue-collar middle class . . . .
