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THE AUTO INDUSTRY From 1860 until 1910, the harvest and sawing of logs and the marketing of lumber was the major non-agricultural industry of the state. Immense fortunes were made. One of the major reasons for the later concentration of the automobile industry in Michigan was the fact that Detroit had men whose large fortunes had been made in lumbering and mining and who were willing to invest money in automobile plants. There was a mixture of pine and politics which deserves more attention from historians than it so far has had. Since 1910, the rapid growth of Michigan’s urban population is attributable largely to the automobile industry and its high degree of concentration in Michigan. The influx of people to work in the automobile plants brought drastic changes in the character of the state's population. The newcomers included sizable numbers of Canadians, Irish, English, and Scots, but they also included nationalities which hitherto had been represented by only a few. In 1960, there were more Michigan residents of Polish than of any other European stock. Russians, Italians, Hungarians, Jugoslavs, and Greeks came in droves to work in the auto plants until the immigration bars were put up. When the automotive industry shifted to war production in the 1940's and when, after the war it enjoyed a prolonged boom based not only on civilian production but also large defense contracts, the great influx from neighboring states and the South began. Most of the people who came to Michigan after 1910 settled in cities. In that year there were only 3 cities in the state with a population of more than 50,000; by 1960, there were 17. The number of cities in the 25,000-50,000 class increased from 6 to 20 in the same period. The growth of cities in this period has been, of course, characteristic of the whole country, but it proceeded more rapidly in Michigan than in most other states.
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