Among the Wolverines

This 40-page volume from 1869 is dedicated to the traveling salesmen of Chicago. It is a sponsored trip, and the book is a series of letters to a periodical called “The Chicago Price Current” for publication. Mr. Schooley’s method is to provide a paragraph or a page of economic and demographic facts for each town he passes through. He goes through quite a number of towns in southern Michigan by a circuitous round trip to Saginaw, although it isn’t clear that he actually stepped off the train in many of them. It is striking how rapid and comfortable travel had become, and how these towns had developed, over about 30-40 years.