A baby is born every second, but in Detroit an automobile is born every minute. Most of the automobiles in the World are made in Detroit. Into one end of a Detroit factory go iron and wood, leather, etc., and out at the other end comes an automobile. Every hour of the day，hundreds of automobiles are finished and run out of the factories, to be shipped over the whole World.

I am sitting in a chair that was made from a tree that grew in Michigan, a thousand miles away, before I was born. The upper part of Michigan used to be covered with forests of trees especially suited for making furniture—and more furniture was made there, especially at a place called Grand Rapids, than at any other place in the World. You probably have some Grand Rapids furniture in your own home. Look on the bottom and see if you can find a label “Made in Grand Rapids.” So much furniture was made there that men have cut down and used up most of the trees, and only stumps are left. But the people had learned how to make furniture, and so they kept on making furniture, though now much of the lumber has to be brought to Michigan from other parts of the country.

Side by side, like two children trying to peek out of one small window, are two States looking out on Lake Michigan. They are Illinois and Indiana, written “Ill. and Ind.” for short. The second largest city in the country is in the State of Illinois on the lower end of Lake Michigan. It has an Indian name—Chicago. More trains of cars come into and go out of Chicago than any other city in the World. Most trains going across the United States stop there and start there—freight trains carrying things and passenger trains carrying people.

There are a great many kinds of animals in the World, and yet of all these animals there are only three kinds that people generally eat. These three are the cow, the sheep, the pig. It takes millions of these animals every year to feed all the people in the United States, and millions of these animals are raised in the States near-by and far from Chicago. These animals have to be fed, and the food that is best to make them fat is corn, so whole States grow corn, just to feed cows and sheep and pigs. The State of Iowa grows more corn than any other State, so it is called the Corn State. Some of the corn is shipped to Chicago, but most of it is shipped “on the hoof”—that is, it is fed to the animals and the animals are sent alive to Chicago to be killed. They are kept in big pens called stock-yards until they are killed. From Chicago they are sent in refrigerator cars or ships, everywhere, even to Europe. Chicago is the greatest butcher-shop in the World. The bacon I had for breakfast, the ham sandwich I had for luncheon, and the roast beef I had for dinner came from Chicago.