North Lawndale: Impact of Economic Decline on People,”In 1960, there were 125,000 people living in North Lawndale, with two largefactories employing 57,000 workers, and a large retail chain’s corporateheadquarters supporting thousands of secretaries and office workers.• One by one, the employers closed their doors, and by the 1980s North Lawndalewas disintegrating.• By 2003, North Lawndale had shrunk to just 50,000 people, and over 50 percentof the adults were unemployed.• Despite the importance of industry in this region it would be wrong to think ofthe economic core as solely grounded on factories and mines.• The thousands of miles of shoreland around the Great Lakes and oceanfrontalong the Eastern Seaboard provided both winter and summer recreationallandscapes
as do the mountains of New York State and Pennsylvania. Theseancillary economic activities constitute an important source of supplementaryemployment for families devastated by factory closings.”