Many wagons and carriages have long been made in these states, and now the automobile industry has grown up in Detroit, Michigan, until there is no other such automobile city anywhere in the world. Over fifty different kinds of auto mobiles 'are made in and near this one city.
As the land is so good for farming, there is room near every city, except Duluth (see Sec. 101), for dairy farms to produce plenty of milk. There are truck farms to grow vegetables for people who do not have gardens. Most of the breakfast foods used in the United States are manufactured in towns along the way from the grain fields of the North Central States to the seaports on the Atlantic Coast.
It is easy now to understand why these twelve North Central States have so much trade and so many people. We think of the good climate which makes people feel like doing things; of the rich, level land where it is easy to grow food; of the coal for power; 'of the iron and wood to build factories; and of the rivers, lakes and rail roads to carry goods from one place to another.
There is, however, one part of these States that is less favored than the rest.
105. The western part has little rain. —The rainfall map (Fig. 88) shows that the western parts of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota have less rain than the eastern parts. This west
ern district is too dry for wheat and corn to grow as well as they do farther east. See the wheat and corn maps (Figs. 87 and 79). Here are wide stretches of pasture land and cattle ranches, from which, tattle are sent to the corn farms to be fattened. Which has the greater population, eastern or western Kansas? (Fig. 99.) Why? Even the North Central States have some hills, although no other group of states has so much level land or so few mountains.
106. The small highland southern Missouri there is a region of hills and low mountains where the soil is not rich. This highland region is called the Ozark Plateau. Here lead and zinc are mined. Joplin is the mining center.
In western South Dakota you will see another highland district, the rugged Black Hills, where some gold is mined near the town of Deadwood. A third highland is near Lake Superior, and here, on the peninsula that reaches into the lake, are good copper mines that have chunks of pure copper embedded in the rocks. Some of these mines are a mile deep and extend out under the bed of the lake. Michigan once led all other states in copper produc tion; but now the Plateau States, of which we shall soon read, produce more copper than any other part of the world.