The Midwestern United States, where a major portion of industry is concentrated.
The term industrial heartland has been applied primarily to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan—the area identified by the Census Bureau as the East North Central region. However, the concept has also been extended as far west as the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota); as far south as St. Louis, Missouri; and as far east as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York. According to urban historian Jon C. Teaford, the people of this region have in common their isolation from both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The region’s lifelines to that outside world have been primarily the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and the nation’s railroad hub—Chicago. The industrial heartland remains strategically located between the massive iron deposits of the Mesabi Range in northeastern Minnesota and the coalfields of southern Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and it contains the huge oil refineries of northwestern Indiana and northeastern Ohio.
Although the Industrial Revolution began in lower New England and the Middle Atlantic states early in the nineteenth century, it gradually expanded to include the industrial heartland encompassing Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, especially as the manufacture of iron and steel products, steam and electric engines, and automobiles became bellwethers of the industrial economy. By 1919, the Pennsylvania and New York region contained 21 percent of its manufacturing establishments, employed one-quarter of its wage earners, processed 27 percent of its raw materials, and accounted for 28 percent of the Industrial Heartland’s product value and value added by manufacturing, outstripping New England by two or three to one in each category. Although the Middle Atlantic region actually enjoyed a moderate edge in all of these categories, the concentration of heavy industry in the East North Central states reinforced the area’s popular reputation as the nation’s “steel belt.” During the past several decades, however, the area has declined significantly in economic importance, causing some to dismiss it as the “rust belt.” The economy in this region continues to be depressed as U.S. steel companies compete with foreign steel companies. In 2002 President George W. Bush increased the tariff on imported steel in an effort to help the beleaguered industry.
