本帖最后由 choi 于 11-29-2016 18:10 编辑
(f) "The exposition's final day was Nov 2 [two months after the assassination]. The fair had cost $7 million to mount, but its revenues amounted to only $6 million. The directors claimed that if McKinley hadn't been murdered, it would have taken in an additional $1.5 million. But Ms Creighton, a history professor at Bates College in Maine, shows that there were a number of other reasons for the exposition's losing money: bad weather, poor advertising, closing the Midway on Sundays. She also makes a cogent case that Buffalo's current reputation as a rusting backwater has nothing to do with the assassination's repercussions. The city, in fact, 'boomed' through the 1950s. Its economic malaise began in 1959 with the completion of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, 'a massive canal that offered shipping companies an opportunity to bypass Buffalo,' and was exacerbated by the loss of a Bethlehem Steel plant and related industries through the 1970s and 1980s."
(i) Bates College
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_College
(The college "obtained financial support for an expansion from the city of Lewiston and from Benjamin E Bates, the Boston financier and manufacturer whose mills dominated the local riverfront)
The English surname Bates means child of Bate, a short form of Bartholomew.
(ii)
(A) Saint Lawrence River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lawrence_River
(begins at the outflow of Lake Ontario; draining into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence)
Quote: "Because of the virtually impassable Lachine Rapids, the St Lawrence was once continuously navigable only as far as Montreal. Opened in 1825, the Lachine Canal was the first to allow ships to pass the rapids. An extensive system of canals and locks, known as the Saint Lawrence Seaway, was officially opened on 26 June 1959 by Elizabeth II (representing Canada) and President Dwight D Eisenhower (representing the United States). The Seaway now permits ocean-going vessels to pass all the way to Lake Superior.
(B) Lachine Rapids is named after the nearby Lachine (now a borough of City of Montreal, but prior to 2002 was an autonomous city). The en.wikipedia.org does not have a map for the rapids.
(C) Lachine Canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachine_Canal
(The canal gets its name from the French word for China (La Chine) )
The red line in the map is Lachine Canal.
(D) Another map showing Lachine Canal (red line), Lachine borough (to the left), and Lachine Rapids (bottom).
Canal's Path. In Lachine Canal National Historic Site. Parks Canada, Government of Canada, undated.
www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/qc/canallac ... aps/piste-path.aspx
(iii)
(A) Saint Lawrence Seaway "is a system of locks, canals and channels," en.wikiepdia.org, necessitated by various surface elevations of Great Lakes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes
(section 1.1 Bathymetry: surface elevation of the individual lakes)
(B) St Lawrence River freezes over each winter for half a year (depending on locations, I guess). See also
Ian Austen and Mary M Chapman, A Slow Thaw for the Great Lakes. New York Times, Mar 24, 2015
www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/busin ... argo-shipments.html
("A deep freeze this winter left much of the Great Lakes blanketed in thick ice * * * The Great Lakes shipping trade largely hibernates during the late winter months * * * Shipping is usually up and running again by March [in Great Lakes]. But the opening of the St Lawrence Seaway, the critical system of locks that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, has been postponed until April 2 [in 2015]. Even when the locks open, there is no assurance that all of the lakes, particularly choke points prone to ice buildup, will be navigable. * * * Shipping by rail is more costly [than by ship] * * * During a normal winter, some ships can continue to make relatively short treks without much trouble [probably about Great Lakes, which is the focus--rather than St Lawrence River], particularly when ice cover is light. But the last two winters have been particularly harsh")
(iv) "loss of a Bethlehem Steel plant"
history of the iron and steel industry in the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi ... n_the_United_States
section 3 Pittsburgh: "The replacement of charcoal [derived from wood] with coke in the steel-making process revolutionized the industry, and tied steelmaking to coal-mining areas. In the 1800s, making a ton of steel required a greater weight of coal than iron ore. Therefore, it was more economical to locate closer to the coal mines. Pittsburgh, surrounded by large coal deposits and at the junction of three navigable rivers, was an ideal location for steelmaking.
section 4 Great Lakes ports: "The tremendous iron ore deposits around Lake Superior were located far from coal deposits, and so were shipped to ports on the southern Great Lakes that were closer to the coal mines of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Large integrated steel mills were built in Chicago, Gary, Cleveland, and Buffalo, to handle the Lake Superior ore.
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