Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 161

(Pjicago Hutibm) QTribunc 7f rW r7 Vlaqazme of ypofcs OCTOBER 14. I9W PART 4 A Midwest 'Boy' Writes Lovingly of the Heartland THE HEARTLAND: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois by Walter Havighurst Harper Row, 378 pages, $5 95, to Dec. 31 $6.95, thereafter. Reviewed by Robert J. Graf Jr.

THE MIDDLE WEST has long lain in the trough of historical appreciation. Settled after the east, before the far west, it has never acquired the pretentious sophistry of the former, was not granted the physical flamboyance of the latter. Like Cinderella flanked by more glamorous sisters, the middle west has quietly gone about the prosaic task of building and maintaining the inland empire. The setting of Walter Havighurst's latest book, in the Regions of America series, is that belt of rolling, water-coursed fertility that was politically subdivided into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. While it may be historically incorrect to tout one area, it is difficult to find another which can match "the" heartland" in production of wealth, talents, and personalities.

Undominated by metropolitanism, particularism, or fanaticism, isolated from the short-range hysterias of foreign pressures, the area is marked by an attitude which can only be called "American." Tonfy on Starved Rock. Drawing, by Grattan Condon, from the boot. chant marine, made a great and prodigious settle ment. The author tells all of this, and much' more. There is a chapter on Indian corn, the bonanza crop, another on lake transportation, others on the five heartland Presidents, bloody Haymarket.

the literary giants. Like the country itself, the book is unfinished, for the area remains and continues to grow. Fort Ouiatenon stands empty alongside the Wabash, waiting for the ephemeral voyageurs, but new explorers come in science and industry. If Europe no longer pours its ambitious into the heartland, annually the college graduates go out. a reverse migration.

Turkeys are no longer driven down the National road to the eastern markets, but the refrigerated trucks wheel past the majesty of 10-foot corn. Stephen A. Douglas, a transplanted Vermonter. said, "1 have found my mind liberalized and my opinions enlarged when I get out on those broad prairies." It is as sound a commentary on "The Heartland" as can be written. Noted for its sense and sobriety, often derided for its conservatism while its liberalism is ignored, the heartland of all America best retains what the Frenchman, Crevecoeur, noted two centuries ago: the land has made the new American.

The penetration began a hundred years before Crevecoeur; black robes and white coats were assiduously cultivating Christianity and trade in this North American Eden. "It is nearly all so beautiful and fertile," La Salle wrote home. The French numbers were insufficient to hold their empire, and largely by default it fell to the British, as the later Indian empire of the Prophet bowed to the inrushing Americans. This part of the Northwest Territory, laid out by Jefferson, saw the first of the westward land "rushes" of the new nation, and by 1850 the land was settled, the frontier gone. The inrushing stream had three sources, all of them restless and ambitious: the east, which was to give a New England flavor to the lakes region; the southeast which was to bring grits-and-gravy to the northern bank of the Ohio river; and the Europeans who came to farm, trade, and brew beer.

All were assimilated, all begat, all contributed to the unmatched prosperity and economic balance. Economically conservative, socially liberal, the heartland produced both a Mark Hanna and a Eugene Debs. The author, a midwest "boy" eternal youth and vitality are regional hallmarks 1 who grew up on the Sangamon, writes from the heart about a region which is bone-of-his-bone. He has produced a family album full of faces, some familiar and some strange, some bizarre and some prosaic, but all stamped with the heartland character which Charles Dana described as "genial, generous, radiant, warmly courteous." The heartland was fertile but not gentle, a land to be conquered not caressed. Victory rested within the hands of the individual settlers.

From Tonty and Father Gabriel they were equal to the task of modifying the environment and utilizing the natural bounty. They settled their Delphis and Oxfords, interlaced the groves and savannahs with an iron network, launched a mer Robert Graf teaches at Purdue uniteriity. tpecialitiij in American history..