ILLINOIS 
 
 Carl Willard Smith 
 
 li W 
 
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ILLINOIS HISTORICAL SURVEY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://archive.org/details/illinoisprairiesOOsmit 
 
ILLINOIS 
 
 THE "PRAIRIE STATE" 
 
 By CARL WILLARD SMITH 
 
 HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS 
 GIRARD, KANSAS 
 
Copyright, 1946, 
 By E. Haldeman-Julius 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
5 
 
 ILLINOIS— THE "PRAIRIE STATE" 
 
 Illinois is the state whose inhabitants speak, not English, but, ac- 
 cording to an act of their legislature, the "American language." Illinois 
 is the "Prairie State" which ranks fourth among all the states in total 
 farm income, but lists more than 73 per cent of its population as urban; 
 which is fifth among the states in its percentage of farmers, but has 
 three times as many industrial as agricultural workers. 
 
 This is the state whose vast prairies and extensive woodlands reach 
 to the very doorstep of a great metropolis of the world — Chicago, the 
 world's largest grain and lumber market, Carl Sandburg's midwest Titan, 
 "half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of 
 Wheat, Player with Railroads, and Freight Handler to the Nation." 
 
 Illinois is the home of the Haymarket Riots and of Hull House; of 
 Al Capone and Abraham Lincoln; the state which calls its own both 
 Sam Insull and Robert Ingersoll, "Big Bill" Thompson and Peter Altgeld. 
 
 Though Illinois has a flavor all its own, it is difficult to find any- 
 thing typical about this paradoxical state. It needs description more 
 than generalization. 
 
 EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT 
 
 Before French explorers first set foot in what is now Illinois, in 
 1763, the region was inhabited by the Indians of the Illinois Confederacy, 
 one of the oldest and most important nations of the historic Indians. 
 They were six tribes, all of Algonquin linguistic stock — the Cahokia, 
 Kaskaskia, Tamoroa, Peoria, Moigwena, and Michigamea. They called 
 themselves by a name variously recorded as Aliniouck, Illinouek, or 
 Iliniwek, meaning "superior men." This apparently was shortened at 
 times by themselves to Ilini, as the Sieur de La Salle identified them 
 in his journal as the "Illini," and named the Illinois river for the Indian 
 nation which lived along its banks. 
 
 Though traders and explorers had brought back word of the great 
 prairie lands inhabited by the Illini for several years previous to their 
 first exploration, no white man had visited them until Jean Talon, In- 
 tendant of Canada, dispatched Louis Jolliet to the region to claim the 
 territory for France. 
 
 Jolliet, who had abandoned the priesthood to become a fur trader 
 and explorer, already had mapped portions of the Great Lakes area. 
 He was requested to take with him Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest. 
 This seems to have been at the instigation of Jesuit authorities in Quebec 
 who wished to plant their missions in the new territory. 
 
 These two, with five voyageurs, were the first white men to venture 
 into this part of the New World. They left Mackinac in May, 1763, in 
 canoes, traveling by way of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Missis- 
 sippi. They descended as far as the mouth of the Ohio river to assure 
 themselves that the Mississippi flowed, not to a western ocean, but to 
 the Gulf of Mexico. Twer years later Marquette established the first 
 mission in the Illinois country. 
 
 No serious attempts to exploit the country were made, however, 
 until La Salle, in 1680, built Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois river two 
 miles south of Lake Peoria. Fort "Heartbreak" was well named; during 
 La Salle's absence some of him men mutinied and plundered the fort. 
 In 1682 La Salle, still envisioning a rich wilderness empire for France in 
 
the prairie country, established another fort, St. Louis, at Starved Rock 
 with the aid of the Chevalier de Tonti, the fabulous "Tonty of the Iron 
 Hand." Tonti carried on after La Salle was shot from ambush in 1687, 
 and at Tonti's death in 1704 a series of forts and trading centers reach- 
 ing from Montreal to Mobile stood as his monument. 
 
 The first official use of the name "Illinois" for this territory was in 
 the 1720's when it was aplied to the seventh civil and military district of 
 the French province of Louisiana. 
 
 But during the years in which the French were establishing them- 
 selves in this region, British traders of the American colonies pushed 
 westward, and were soon at the boundaries of French territory. The 
 Ohio Land Company, organized in 1747, was granted 2,000,000 acres of 
 land along the Ohio river in 1749 on condition that the area be fortified 
 and a hundred families settled there within seven years. The inevitable 
 struggle between the French and British for control resulted in the 
 French and Indian War, at the end of which control of all French 
 possessions passed to the British. 
 
 The British did not emphasize colonization, however, and the 
 French influence remained strong, so that sympathies in this territory 
 were largely with the Colonies at the outbreak of the American Revolu- 
 tion. The Illinois country became so strategically important during the 
 Revolution that the George Rogers Clark expedition was organized under 
 the authority of the Governor of Virginia. Clark floated down the Ohio 
 river to Fort Massac, went overland to Kaskaskia, and gained formal 
 allegiance of the Illinois colonists by persuading them to sign the Oath 
 of Vincennes. 
 
 When news of this reached the Virginia Assembly, Illinois was 
 promptly declared to be a county of Virginia, and just as promptly be- 
 came British territory again when six days later Vincennes was cap- 
 tured by a British force under Governor Hamilton of Detroit. 
 
 Few states have experienced so many and so rapid changes of owner- 
 ship, for Clark immediately set out on his famous march on Vincennes, 
 one of the most courageous performances in our history. In the dead of 
 winter, Clark marched with 170 men through the icy water of flooded 
 bottom lands, attacked Vincennes, and on February 25, 1779, received 
 the surrender of Governor Hamilton's force. Military operations from 
 this time until the close of the Revolution were sporadic. 
 
 Settlers in the territory, however, were continually harrassed by 
 the Indians, at the incitement of the British. The Ordinance of 1787 
 organized Illinois, together with Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan, 
 into the Northwest Territory under a territorial government which 
 granted limited suffrage. The irregular Indian warfare throughout this 
 region rose to full scale when Tecumseh and his brother, the Shawnee 
 Prophet, organized the Indians of the Northwest Territory to drive the 
 white man from their land. 
 
 INDIAN WARFARE 
 
 Despite the Indian warfare and pioneer hardships, however, the 
 white man continued to push westward in increasing numbers. In 
 1800 Congress passed an act effective the next year which incorporated 
 the present state of Illinois into Indiana Territory, and eight years later 
 the Territory of Illinois was created to include what is now Wisconsin. 
 In 1818, on December 3, Illinois was admitted as a state of the Union with 
 a population of 40,258, in spite of a provision of the Ordinance of 1787 
 which specified a population of 60,000 for any territory applying for 
 admission to the Union. Shadrach Bond became the first governor of 
 the state of Illinois, and the capital was established at Kaskaskia, 
 though two years later it was moved to Vandalia. The present boun- 
 daries of the state were moved 51 miles northward in this year, from 
 the southern tip of Lake Michigan, to give the state a shoreline. The 
 
 4 
 
first constitutional convention met, wrote a constitution, and sub- 
 mitted it to Congress without ratification by a popular vote. 
 
 During this period in which Illinois was achieving statehood the 
 country had fought the War of 1812, and the British to the north of 
 Illinois had made good use of their Indian allies. Their success in the 
 capture of Detroit and of Mackinac in July, 1812, aroused apprehen- 
 sion among settlers at Fort Dearborn, located on a tract of land at 
 the mouth of the Checagou, or Chicago, river, which had been ceded 
 by the Indians in 1795. It was the site on which later the city of Chicago 
 was to rise. 
 
 On the morning of August 15, 1812, the settlers evacuated Fort 
 Dearborn and started for the greater safety of Fort Wayne. Two miles 
 from the fort a large band of Potawatomi in full war regalia swept 
 down on them and massacred 43 men, two women, and 12 children — 
 57 of the 93 white persons who evacuated the fort. The survivors were 
 23 men, seven women and six children. Nine of the men and two women 
 were ransomed, and one of the children was later purchased from 
 some Indians by a trader. The fate of the others is unknown, or at 
 best obscure. Thus the violent history of Chicago began with the 
 Massacre of Fort Dearborn. 
 
 Previous to this, however, the scene had been laid for one of the 
 blackest pages in Illinois history — the Black Hawk War. 
 
 The Sac and Fox Indians had lived along the shores of the Missis- 
 sippi for a hundred years, using as their hunting grounds the region 
 from the Wisconsin river to the Missouri. The center of their culture 
 was the village of Saukenuk, near the present Rock Island. Here were 
 their burying grounds, cermonial sites, and 3,000 acres under cultivation, 
 in which they took great pride. The land was theirs not only by heritage, 
 but by a treaty concluded in 1804. 
 
 In that year, five chiefs of the confederated tribes, in St. Louis to 
 protect the interests of a tribesman accused of murder, were persuaded, 
 after lengthy discussions involving several bottles of whiskey, to deed 
 to the government all the land between the Wisconsin, Fox, Illinois and 
 Mississippi rivers, as well as the eastern third of the state of Missouri 
 — in all, about 5,000,000 acres. In return, they were to receive an an- 
 nuity of $1,000 a year and a guarantee that "Indians belonging to said 
 tribes should enjoy the privilege of living or hunting upon" the land 
 as long as it belonged to the federal government. 
 
 In 1823 squatters invaded the Sac territory, though land was plenti- 
 ful elsewhere, and began fencing in land under cultivation by the In- 
 dians. Trouble resulted and complaints were made. In 1828 the gov- 
 ernor notified the tribes that the lands covered by the treaty of 1804 
 were to be surrendered and ordered the Indians to move west of the 
 Mississippi by April, 1830. When the Sac braves returned from their 
 annual hunt in the spring of that year they found that settlers, em- 
 boldened by the Presidential order, had taken possession of their farms, 
 driven off the squaws and children, burned the lodges, and plowed 
 their burying grounds. The settlers ordered the Indians to depart. 
 
 Chief Keokuk moved with a large part of the tribes across the river 
 into what is now Iowa, but the war chief of the Sacs, Black Hawk, defied 
 the settlers and said it was the whites who must withdraw from his peo- 
 ple's land. The governor proclaimed Illinois to be in a state of invasion 
 by the Indians and a volunteer army was raised and advanced on the 
 village. Black Hawk and his tribesmen evacuated at night and crossed 
 the river into Iowa. 
 
 A year later Black Hawk, recrossing the river to join a friendly 
 tribe in Wisconsin and raise a crop with them, was encountered by a 
 number of federal troops under Maj. Isiah Stillman. Braves bearing 
 a flag o*f truce were fired on and three Sacs killed. Black Hawk aban- 
 doned his peaceful intentions and with a band of 40 warriors attacked 
 Stillman's force of 275 troops. The encounter, known as the Battle of 
 Stillman's Run, was an embarrassing fiasco for the major, who em- 
 ployed evasive tactics at great speed. His gallant band streamed through 
 
Dixon's, 30 miles away, in complete rout and many galloped 40 to 50 
 miles beyond to the safety of their homes, spreading word that the 
 bloodthirsty Black Hawk was on the warpath, had attacked in force 
 and massacred most of their troops. 
 
 Troops were dispatched to hunt down Black Hawk's band. His pro- 
 posals for truce were ignored. His warriors, women and children, en- 
 feebled by starvation, were reduced to eating bark from trees. Women 
 and children, placed on rafts and canoes to recross the river to Iowa, 
 were fired on by the troops and killed or drowned. After three months 
 of this sort of warfare, most of the braves were killed at the Battle of 
 Bad Ax, during which a military vessel on the river fired cannister into 
 the Indians while Black Hawk, holding a white flag, was making offers 
 to surrender. The remainder were bayonetted, driven into the river to 
 drown, and shot out ©f treetops in which they took refuge, to the ac- 
 companiment of indescribable acts of savagery and cruelty. Most of 
 a few who escaped across the river were killed by Sioux who were 
 ordered to attack by General Atkinson. Black Hawk disappeared into 
 the forests. 
 
 This was the last of the Indian in Illinois. The "war" had cost the 
 government $2,000,000. The state had mustered 8,000 volunteers to 
 assist 1,500 regulars in expelling 400 Indians, and over a thousand 
 lives had been lost. 
 
 THE GROWTH OF A STATE 
 
 The next year, 1833, Chicago was incorporated as a town. It was 
 merely a rebuilt Fort Dearborn, with a population of less than 200, and 
 showed little signs of life. But that same year a wave of westward 
 migration began and thousands streamed through Chicago as they in- 
 vaded the western lands by way of the Great Lakes. Before the open- 
 ing of the Erie Canal in 1825, Shawneetown on the Ohio had been port 
 of entry to Illinois; now Chicago was replacing it. A land boom in 
 northern Illinois further contributed to the city's growth, and within a 
 year its population rose to more than 2,000. 
 
 Besides the Great Lakes traffic there were the river boats to con- 
 tribute to the growth of the state. Only a little more than 20 years 
 ago — in 1811 — the first steamboat in the west had made its appearance; 
 now more than 200 plied the Mississippi and Ohio. The smaller navi- 
 gable rivers, particularly the Illinois, carried their share of the traffic. 
 Most of Illinois' exports went down the Mississippi to New Orleans, rather 
 than east to Pittsburgh, because of lower fraight rates. During this 
 period the river towns prospered and the prairies remained largely 
 undeveloped except for the pioneer families who moved in advance of 
 civilization. 
 
 By 1833, 13 nwspapers were being published in the state, and as 
 new counties were added — they increased from 19 in 1820 to 57 in 1835 — 
 additional papers commenced publication in the new county seats. 
 
 In 1834 a New Salem lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, who had 
 commanded a volunteer company of mounted troops in the Black Hawk 
 War, was elected to the legislature. A young man named Jefferson 
 Davis had been a lieutenant in another company of volunteers. 
 
 The state began to take an interest in its commercial development. 
 A rivers and harbor bill passed in 1837 provided for improvements 
 and added facilities on the waterways. A railroad was planned to tra- 
 verse the state from Galena to Cairo, with two intersecting lines, one 
 linking the Great Lakes and Illinois river. Part of the road eventually 
 was completed, but was never successful. 
 
 It was not until the 1850's that the railroads came to Illinois to 
 change completely the structure of its commerce and industry. Con- 
 gress granted in 1850 more than 2,500,000 acres for the construction 
 of a line, and eastern financiers organized the Illinois Central com- 
 
 6 
 
pany. When the 366 miles of road from Chicago to Cairo were com- 
 pleted, six years later, the prairies ceased to be a part of the wilderness, 
 and began to support thriving towns. Other railroads soon followed the 
 Illinois Central and Chicago was well on its way to becoming the rail 
 hub of the nation. The railroads required coal, and provided trans- 
 portation for it. The state's rich coal fields, which had provided a few 
 small mines near the rivers, began to produce. 
 
 The population of the state increased more than tenfold during the 
 30 years from 1830 to 1860, growing from 157,445 to 1,711,951. McCormick 
 was making reapers in Chicago, and Pullman was converting coaches 
 to sleeping cars. The state had enacted a free school law, and boasted 
 three colleges and universities. 
 
 CIVIL WAR YEARS 
 
 During this period the nation was dividing itself over the issues 
 which resulted in the Civil War, and Illinois was one of the focal 
 points of the struggle, providing two of the leading actors in the drama. 
 
 Lincoln, the leader of a group which had secured removal of the 
 state capital from Vandalia to Springfield in 1839, had developed his 
 political acumen to the point where he emerged as leader of the Re- 
 publican party when it was organized in 1856. 
 
 The new party was composed mostly of dissident Democrats and 
 Whigs who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which was sponsored 
 by Stephen A. Douglas in 1854. The bill proposed repeal of the Missouri 
 Compromise, which prohibited slavery above the latitude of 36° 30', 
 and would give settlers in the new territory their choice between free 
 soil and slavery. 
 
 The people of Illinois were divided sharply on slavery. The southern 
 extremes of the state reached into the cotton country and had been 
 settled mostly by southerners, while the Yankee free-soilers had set- 
 tled the northern part of the state. Petitions to Congress and sharp 
 battles in the state legislature characterized the differences of opinion. 
 Abolitionist activity provoked such bitter controversy that in 1837 the 
 legislature prohibited the circulation of abolitionist literature, and it 
 was in this yetetr that the murder of Elijah P. Love joy, an abolitionist 
 editor, became a cause celebre. 
 
 Love joy, a native of Maine and the son of a Congregationalist min- 
 ister, had been editor of a religious paper in St. Louis in which he aired 
 his anti-slavery views. As a result of his writings he was removed as 
 editor, but a change of ownership caused him to continue, with the an- 
 nounced intention of moving the paper to Alton, 111. 
 
 The night before the presses and equipment were to be transferred, 
 a mob entered the office and destroyed most of it. What remained was 
 shipped to Alton, but the night after it landed another mob threw the 
 presses into the river. A mass meeting at Alton deplored the mob ac- 
 tivity and subscribed money for new presses. Love joy finally began pub- 
 lishing the Alton Observer, which continued for several months, grow- 
 ing more vocal about abolition, until a mob broke into the office and 
 again destroyed the presses. Contributors again raised money for new 
 equipment. When the presses arrived, a mob broke into a warehouse, 
 broke up the presses, and threw them into the river. A fourth press 
 was ordered. Prominent citizens who were not in sympathy with Love- 
 joy's views called a public meeting to consider the situation. 
 
 It was being suggested that Love joy and his paper should be moved 
 to some other community, and the suggestions were being reinforced 
 with threats of tar and feathers and assassination, and stonings of his 
 home which had forced his invalid wife into the garret. Love joy ap- 
 peared at the meeting to speak in his own defense and delivered a 
 stirring insistence upon his rights of freedom of the press: 
 
 "... I have asked for nothing but to be protected in my rights as a 
 
citizen — rights which God has given me, and which are guaranteed to 
 me by the constitution of my country. Have I. sir, been guilty of any 
 infraction of the law? What, I ask, has been my offense? Put your 
 finger upon it — define it — and I stand ready to answer for it. ... I 
 plant myself, sir, down on my unquestionable rights, and the question 
 to be decided is, whether I shall be protected in the exercise and en- 
 joyment of those rights. ... I have concluded to remain at Alton, and 
 here to insist on protection in the exercise of my rights. If the civil 
 authorities refuse to protect me, I must look to God; and if I die, I 
 have determined to make my grave in Alton." 
 
 Some sympathy for Lovejoy resulted from his speech, but on the 
 night that his fourth press was placed in a warehouse, with a guard 
 posted around it, a mob appeared and demanded that they be allowed 
 to remove the press. The guards refused, and the building was attack- 
 ed. Lovejoy himself appeared, and fired on a man who was climbing a 
 ladder to set a torch to the roof. Two men who apparently had antici- 
 pated Lovejoy's appearance fired on him from ambush and killed him. 
 
 Several persons identified with the mob were tried and acquitted. 
 The owners of the warehouse were tried for inciting to riot, and also 
 acquitted. 
 
 An interesting sidelight to the affair is supplied by one historian. 
 "It was claimed that the fatal shots were fired by Dr. Jennings and his 
 comrade, Dr. Beall. And it is said that the former was afterward cut 
 to pieces in a barroom fight in Vicksburg, Miss., and that the latter, 
 while attached to a scouting party of Texas rangers, was captured by 
 the Comanche Indians and burned alive." 
 
 Lovejoy's death, though nearly forgotten today, created widespread 
 discussion. Newspapers throughout the country appeared in mourning 
 and he was mourned in mass meetings as a martyr to his convictions 
 on slavery and the freedom of the press. 
 
 A Republican governor was elected the year the party was organized. 
 The next year brought the Dred Scott decision, which held the Missouri 
 Compromise unconstitutional, and brought on the issue of free soil or 
 popular soverenignty. It was this question on which Lincoln and Douglas 
 differed during the senatorial campaign of 1858 and argued in the famous 
 Lincoln-Douglas debates held at Freeport, Charlestown, Galesburg, 
 Quincy, Jonesboro, Ottawa and Alton. Douglas became the senator 
 from Illinois; in 1860 Lincoln was elected President of the United States. 
 
 In April, 1861, the controversy over slavery had flared into war, and 
 Governor Richard Yates was called on to furnish Illinois troops. The 
 state was still divided into bitter factions, and southern sentiment was 
 so strong in the "delta" in the southern end of the state that there 
 was talk of seceding and organizing the state of "Egypt" to join the 
 Confederacy. Douglas returned to plead for unity and adherence to the 
 Union cause. But although opposition was strong in parts of the state, 
 it remained loyal and furnished 256,297 soldiers who represented Illinois 
 in most of the war's major battles. Nearly 29,000 died of wounds or 
 disease. 
 
 The end of the war, with the problems of reconstruction and the 
 country's trend from agriculture to industrialism, found Illinois in a 
 position to emerge as one of the great industrial states, with a network 
 of railroads and waterways and rich mineral resources. 
 
 INDUSTRY AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Until 1870 the riches of Illinois had consisted of its corn, wheat and 
 pork. Now these began pouring into Chicago, the lake port, which would 
 soon become the world's largest grain market and supplier of one-fourth 
 of the country's meat products. Chicago rolling mills produced the 
 country's first steel rails in 1865 and eight years later the introduction 
 of Bessemer furnaces, at Joliet, gave new stimulus to mining the millions 
 
 8 
 
of acres of coal underlying the state. The manufacture of farm imple- 
 ments became an important industry. Every new industry invited an- 
 other, and by the end of the 1870's, Chicago was the greatest manu- 
 facturing center of the west. In 1870 the value of farm products and of 
 manufactured goods in Illinois was about equal, at around $200,000,000. 
 At the end of the decade, agricultural values remained unchanged, but 
 the value of manufactured goods had more than doubled. In the next 
 10 years, it more than doubled again. 
 
 But industry was concentrated. Illinois was still the prairie state, 
 with 30 of its 35 million acres of land under cultivation. The farmers 
 were a potentially influential group, lacking only organization, and their 
 differences with industry over the disparity of farm prices and those of 
 manufactured goods, discriminatory freight rates, and "middleman 
 profits" resulted in their organization. The Grange movement, begun as 
 a cooperative venture to buy farm machinery at a saving for its mem- 
 bers, became a powerful political factor. Grange approved candidates 
 were winning political office, and the movement forced adoption of a 
 railroad act in 1871 to adjust some of the inequalities. 
 
 Another group which began to make itself heard at this time was 
 the workers. There had been some organization of labor before the 
 Civil War. Foreign workmen, imported for the building of the rail- 
 roads and canals, had brought from Europe an appreciation of the 
 benefits of labor unions, which had developed from the guilds of the 
 old countries and were common in many European cities. Mechanics' 
 unions in Chicago were a factor in obtaining passage of the free school 
 law in 1855. English miners organized during the Civil War the American 
 Miners' Association, which remained active for only seven years. A 
 number of trade unions sprang up during the postwar depression. One 
 of the greatest aids in recruiting workingmen into the unions was 
 provided by the industrialists themselves, who obtained the passage in 
 1863 of the La Salle Black Law as their answer to strikes in the coal 
 mines. 
 
 The Black Law protected strikebreakers by making it an offense to 
 prevent anyone from working at any occupation on whatever terms he 
 might choose, and obliquely made unions illegal by prohibiting "com- 
 bining" for the purpose of depriving a property owner of his right to 
 use or manage the property. 
 
 Labor now realized the need for political action, and worked so 
 effectively to this end that both major parties were soon finding it 
 necessary to appease labor. In 1866 the National Labor Union was or- 
 ganized, and workingmen joined Eight-hour Leagues to suport political 
 candidates pledged to initiate legislation for an eight-hour day. 
 
 A sufficient number of labor-supported candidates were, in fact, 
 elected and in 1867 Illinois became the first state to adopt, in theory at 
 least, the eight-hour day. The measure defined a legal day's work as 
 eight hours of labor, providing there was no "special contract or agree- 
 ment to the contrary." 
 
 The result, of course, was that employers, as one man, drew up 
 special contracts and agreements to the contrary. A further announce- 
 ment by employers that any laborer unwilling to work 10 hours a day 
 would be fired was met by a general stirke in Chicago. The strike lasted 
 two days, ended by Mayor Rice's threat to apply the Black Law. This 
 was the last of the eight-hour day for several years. 
 
 The Knights of Labor were organized in 1869, and at about the same 
 time the Workingmen's Party of Illinois entered the political scene with 
 a platform calling for public ownership of transportation and communi- 
 cation facilities, state management of banks, child labor prohibition, 
 compulsory education of children under 14, adjustment of wages, and 
 anti-monopoly legislation. While this program was not realized, the 
 influence of labor was strong enough to force enactment of the gen- 
 eral mining act in 1872, which prohibited employing children under 14, 
 though two years later the age limit was lowered to 12. 
 
 The depression of 1873 gave organized labor a setback, but when 
 
 9 
 
business returned to normal and wages remained at depression levels, 
 union membership grew again. In 1877 membership had increased con- 
 siderably, and delegates of 17 trade unions met in Chicago to form the 
 Trade Council, which two years later became the Trade and Labor As- 
 sembly and later developed into the Chicago Federation of Labor. 
 Factory and railroad workers struck for higher wages and an eight- 
 hour day. They were led by Albert Parsons, later to be heard of in the 
 Haymarket Riot. Federal troops broke the strike. The next year four 
 candidates of the Socialist party were elected to the General Assembly. 
 
 Beginning in 1880 membership in labor organizations increased 
 rapidly. By 1886 the Knights of Labor had more than 50,000 members in 
 Illinois and the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, 
 which later became the American Federation of Labor, had enrolled 
 workers by the thousands. Another labor group was the Central Labor 
 Union, most of whose organizers were affiliated with the Black Interna- 
 tional, an anarchist group. The CLU had recruited successfully among 
 carpenters and hod carriers, cabinet makers and similar trades. 
 
 The unions now felt themselves powerful enough to force their de- 
 mands for an eight-hour day, and the Trade and Labor Assembly united 
 with the CLU in calling out 100,000 workers on a general strike on May 
 1, 1886. This set the scene for the Haymarket Riot, an affair which 
 affected the labor movement all over the country and set it back an 
 indeterminable number of years. 
 
 The strike went along peacefully for two days. On May 2, two days 
 before the Haymarket Riot, an altercation at the McCormick reaper 
 plant, where 1,500 workers had been locked out for three months and 
 replaced with strikebreakers under the protection of Pinkerton men, 
 had attracted the attention of a crowd listening to August Spies, a labor 
 paper editor, talk on the eight-hour day. As the crowd moved toward 
 the plant police fired into it, killing six and wounding several others. 
 
 The meeting on the night of the Haymarket Riot, May 4, had been 
 called by Spies to protest the "police atrocity." About 3,000 persons 
 heard Spies and Albert Parsons, now also a labor paper editor, speak 
 on "Justice" and "The Eight-hour Day." The rain scattered a good 
 part of the crowd. It is estimated that about 500 were present when the 
 speech of Samuel Fielden, a labor organizer, was interrupted by police. 
 
 Mayor Carter Harrison of Chicago had been attending the meeting, 
 and having assured himself of its peaceable nature, had met Inspector 
 John Bonfield at the Desplaines street police station and told him 
 that "nothing is likely to occur that will require interference." Mayor 
 Harrison left the station, and Bonfield immediately went to the meet- 
 ing with 200 policemen and ordered the crowd to disperse. Fielden was 
 protesting that the meeting was a peaceable one when someone whose 
 identity was never learned threw a dynamite bomb which killed eight 
 police, wounded 65, and killed an undetermined number in the crowd. 
 
 Eight labor leaders, including the three who had addressed the 
 meeting, were indicted by the grand jury. Seven of the defendants were 
 sentenced to hang; one, Oscar Neebe, was given 15 years imprisonment. 
 Governor Richard Oglesby, a few hours before the executions, com- 
 muted the sentences of Fielden and Michael Schwab, a labor leader, 
 to life imprisonment. Louis Lingg committed suicide the night before 
 the executions by exploding a fusecap in his mouth. On Nov. 11, 1887, 
 the remaining four defendants were hanged. TLey were Spies, Parsons, 
 George Engel, and Adolph Fischer. 
 
 The cause of unionism suffered a heavy blow. Anarchy and union- 
 ism were synonmous in many minds for years, and labor activity receded 
 until the administration of Governor Altgeld in 1892. Despite the wide- 
 spread antipathy to unionism, however, membership in unions continued 
 to grow and under the Altgeld administration activity revived in both 
 the legislature and the factory. 
 
 In 1893 a bill passed the legislature which prohibited employers from 
 interfering with their workers' right to join any lawful union, and in 
 the same year the Sweatshop Law was passed. This set the working 
 
 10 
 
day at eight hours and the week at 48 for women and set the minimum 
 age limit of factory workers at 14. Employer groups, however, attacked 
 the legality of the measures and eventually the courts declared un- 
 constitutional the entire union bill and the section of the Sweatshop 
 Law which limited the working hours of women. 
 
 In 1893 Eugene V. Debs organize^ the American Railway Union, 
 v/hose members walked out in May the next year to begin the famous 
 Pullman strike. The end of the strike two months later added another 
 chapter in the history of strikes broken by the use of federal troops, 
 gained the strikers nothing and Governor Altgeld's conduct furnished 
 his enemies with a weapon which, along with his pardon of the im- 
 prisoned defendants of the Haymarket trials, was used to defeat him 
 for a second term. 
 
 The strike resulted from the firing of members of the union's 
 grievance committee who had asked for restoration of wage cuts. When 
 the Pullman company refused to arbitrate, the union announced it would 
 not handle Pullman cars. At this time it had more than 150,000 mem- 
 bers in the railroad industry, and a nationwide snarl of railway traffic 
 resulted. The Managers' Association of railroad executives ordered 
 the firing of any employee who refused to handle the cars, and joined 
 the Pullman company in hiring strikebreakers. 
 
 The federal government became involved when strikebreakers at- 
 tached mail cars to Pullman trains. When the srtikers stopped the 
 Pullmans, railroad management complained to the government that 
 tfcey were stopping the mails. About 3,400 men, called by the Chicago 
 superintendent of police "thugs, thieves, and ex-convicts," were sworn 
 in as special federal deputy marshals at the request of the Managers' 
 Association. Federal Judge Grosscup issued an injunction ordering the 
 strikers to cease iterfering with the mails and interstate commerce, and 
 President Cleveland ordered four companies of regular army troops to 
 the scene. 
 
 Governor Altgeld protested the assignment of army troops to the 
 strike theater, pointing out that local authorities had given no indica- 
 tion of needing assistance. In fact, Debs had carefully instructed the 
 strikers to refrain from violence, and the strike had been so well con- 
 ducted that a good share of public opinion was with the union. Altgeld 
 charged that the state government was being ignored by "men who had 
 political and selfish motives," and asked for immediate withdrawal of 
 the troops. 
 
 The troops were used in an attempt to move traffic on the railroads, 
 and the restraint which had characterized the conduct of the strikers 
 disappeared. Railroad equipment was broken and burned to the accom- 
 paniment of rioting, and Altgeld was forced to .muster five regiments 
 of state militia, members of which killed seven strikers when they fired 
 on them July 7. Debs was arrested for violation of Judge Grossup's 
 injunction, and five days later AFL executives in special session in 
 Chicago advised the strikers to return to work. Debs was sentenced to 
 six months' imprisonment and though some of the strikers refused to 
 return for several weeks, the companies had for all practical purposes 
 broken the strike. 
 
 Three years later, however, in 1897, Illinois coal miners won a less 
 spectacular but more successful strike in which they gained wage in- 
 creases, an eight-hour day, and recognition of their union. 
 
 The struggle between labor and management during these years 
 checked the state's industrial growth little, if any, and even the de- 
 pression of the 90's seemed to have little effect in the state which was 
 so busily growing up. 
 
 For the next 20 years the story of industry in the state was the 
 history of the growth of monopolies, indicated by figures which show 
 that while the value of manufactured goods doubled and redoubled, the 
 number of corporations did not increase accordingly. This was the pe- 
 riod during which the steel trusts swallowed the small companies, the 
 International Harvester company combined six manufacturers of farm 
 
 11 
 
equipment to monopolize the field, and Chicago packing companies 
 were wedded into the National Packing company, which produced near- 
 ly a quarter of the country's meat products the year it was dissolved. 
 
 By 1920 the great corporations which produced three-quarters of 
 the manufactured goods in Illinois numbered only 4 percent of all the 
 companies and corporations in the state. 
 
 The boom years following World War I gave another boost to the 
 industrial growth of the state, which was checked by the depression 
 following the market crash of 1929. 
 
 Labor continued to gain strength and legislators became more 
 labor minded. The State Board of Arbitration had been established dur- 
 ing Altgeld's administration and was notably successful in the arbi- 
 tration of strikes. The office was absorbed by the Industrial Com- 
 mission in 1917. 
 
 The Sweatshop Law was effective untitl the factory inspectors ap- 
 pointed during Altgeld's administration were removed. Enactment of 
 the State-Use Law in 1903 abolished one of the practices of which 
 labor had long complained — that of using convict labor in the clothing, 
 furniture, and other industries on the contract system, which had 
 lowered workers' wages. Revisions of the Mining Code improved work- 
 ing conditions in the mines; the Occupational Disease Act was passed 
 in 1911 and the Workmen's Compensation Law in 1913. An act of 1925 
 prohibited the issuance of injunctions to prevent peaceable picketing, 
 and in 1933 minimum wages for women and children were fixed by law. 
 
 Illinois has contributed as much to the history of violence and blood- 
 shed in the labor movement, perhaps, as any other state, and these 
 years were not without examples. The Industrial Workers of the World 
 were organized in Chicago in 1905 by Debs, "Big Bill" Haywood and 
 others, and the "Wobblies" ended in Chicago in 1919 when Federal 
 Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis tried and found guilty of criminal 
 syndicalism more than 100 of them. 
 
 The Herrin Massacre during the national coal strike of 1922 created 
 excitement throughout the country. During the shutdown of the mines, 
 operators of a strip pit near Herrin in Williamson county, heart of the 
 southern Illinois coal fields, attempted to run with nonunion labor. 
 On June 21 two union men were killed and a third fatally wounded in a 
 disturbance at the mine. The next day union men beseiged the mine 
 and the strip miners agreed to quit the mine and leave the county 
 under a safe conduct guaranteed by a leader of the strikers. As they 
 were being conducted away, however, a group of the strikers disavowed 
 the authority of the leader who had given the safe conduct guarantee, 
 shot the mine superintendent and fired on the strip miners as they ran. 
 Of the latter, 13 were filled and seven fatally wounded. A special grand 
 jury returned 214 indictments in connection with the massacre but no 
 convictions were obtained on them. 
 
 Most recent of these episodes was the Memorial Day Massacre in 
 1937 when police opened fire on a number of strikers niQving across a 
 field near the Republic Steel works in south Chicago and killed 10. 
 Local authorities found the police guiltless, although they were criti- 
 cized sharply by the Senate Committee on civil liberties. 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF ILLINOIS 
 
 In spite of the radical changes which have characterized the his- 
 tory of Illinois since 1870, the state government still works under a 
 constitution adopted in that year. 
 
 Mention has been made of the state's original constitution, adopted 
 in 1818. This was a brief, simple document, suitable for the frontier 
 state, but soon became unworkable and a second constitution was 
 adopted in 1848. So rapid was the state's growth in size and complexity 
 that this, too, became unsuitable in a few years, and 14 years later 
 
 12 
 
the constitutional convention of 1862 met to draft a new document. 
 Both the delegates and the voters who later disapproved the proposed 
 new constitution were too much concerned with and divided over the 
 questions of the Civil War. A second convention met in 1869, and this 
 time a constitution satisfactory to the voters emerged. This set of 
 principles, adopted in 1870, still prescribes the government of the state. 
 
 Many of the complaints concerning the aged constitution have 
 come from Chicago, a matter which was anticipated by one of the 
 delegates to the convention which drafted the document. He prophe- 
 sied that Chicago would "soon wish to be outside of this state for want 
 of a constitution large enough to hold her." 
 
 This delegate was obviously referring to the broadness of the terms 
 rather than the size of the document, for the constitution of Illinois 
 is more than three times as long as the constitution of the United 
 Sttaes, and contains a mass of detail which contributes to its present 
 unwieldiness. Complaints came from the state senate as early as 1893 
 that the restrictions of the constitution made it impossible for them 
 to deal with social and economic issues demanding solution. 
 
 The state's tax structure became outmoded, the judicial organization 
 needed revision, and the form of ballot confronting the voter in the 
 polls has probably contributed much to the election irregularities for 
 which parts of the state, notably Chicago, are famous. 
 
 The press and the state bar association added their voices to the 
 chorus of dissatisfaction, and by 1918 a convention was authorized to 
 revise the constitution. This convention labored for two and a half 
 years, much of the time in recess, and finally submitted a thoroughly 
 rewritten document which attempted to remedy the situation in Chicago 
 by granting an extent of home rule, revised the judiciary, shortened 
 the ballot and included an authorization for a state income tax in a 
 revised tax system. 
 
 The voters were frightened by the provisions of the tax section and 
 were suspicious of the manner in which certain parts of the old con- 
 stitution had been rewritten. The proposed constitution was over- 
 whelmingly rejected, and voters turned down a suggestion for another 
 convention in 1934, 
 
 It is, of course, possible to amend the constitution, but one of the 
 chief objections to that document is that the drafters who wished to 
 prevent promiscuous tampering did their work so well that amending 
 is difficult at best. Since 1870 the constitution has been amended only 
 seven times, the last in 1908. 
 
 Illinois' constitution specifies executive, legislative and judicial de- 
 partments, as in the federal government. Elective officers of the execu- 
 tive branch are governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor 
 of public accounts, state treasurer, attorney general and superintendent 
 of public instruction, all for terms of four years except the treasurer, 
 whose tenure is two years. The treasurer is the only officer who may 
 not succeed himself. 
 
 In the legislative department are one senator and three represen- 
 tatives from each of the 51 general assembly districts. Senators are 
 elected for four years and representatives for two. 
 
 The state is divided into seven judicial districts, from each of which 
 one Supreme court justice is elected for a nine year tern. The clerk 
 of Supreme court is elected for six years. Circuit court judges are 
 elected from the 17 judicial circuits, three judges in each for six year 
 terms. An Appellate court clerk completes the list of the state's elec- 
 tive officers. 
 
 Following is a list of the annual salaries paid to elective officers: 
 
 Governor $12,000 
 
 Lieutenant governor 5,000 
 
 Secretary of state 9,000 
 
 Auditor of public accounts 9,000 
 
 State treasurer 9,000 
 
 13 
 
Superintendent of public instruction 9,000 
 
 Attorney general 9,000 
 
 Supreme court judge 15,000 
 
 Circuit court judge ?. 8,000 
 
 Clerk of Supreme court 7,500 
 
 Senator 2,500 
 
 Assemblyman 2,500 
 
 Illinois is the parent of three political innovations, two of which are 
 peculiar to the state, another of which has since been adopted by most 
 of the other states. 
 
 A Civil Administrative Code worked out by the general assembly 
 in 1917 under the direction of Gov. Frank O. Lowden was the first to 
 be adopted by any state. Lowden devised the plan to consolidate a com- 
 plex system of autonomous state boards, agencies and commissions whose 
 numbers had been increased by war demands. All the state agencies 
 were concentrated in nine "code departments": agriculture, finance, 
 labor, mines and minerals, public health, public welfare, public works 
 and buildings, registration and education and trade and commerce. 
 Since the original reorganization the departments of insurance, con- 
 servation, public safety and revenue have been added and that of trade 
 and commerce abolished. The department head is given authority over 
 all agencies and activities coming under his department and is re- 
 sponsible to the governor. Most of the larger states have since adopted 
 a civil administration code or similar plan. 
 
 The two pecularities of Illinois government are cumulative voting, 
 or "plumping," and a dual system of county government. 
 
 Cumulative voting is Illinois' unique system for electing represen- 
 tatives to the lower house of the legislature. The constitution provides 
 that "each qualified voter may cast as many votes for one candidate 
 as there are representatives to be elected, or may distribute the same, 
 or equal parts thereof, among the candidates." Since three assembly- 
 men are elected from each district the voter has three votes which he 
 may cast for one candidate if he wishes. Voters of the minority party 
 "plump" their votes for one candidate and are usually successful in 
 sending one representative to the general assemply. At times the sys- 
 tem has resulted in so small a margin for the party. in power that the 
 work of the lower house has been impeded. 
 
 It has been pointed out that the northern sections of Illinois were 
 settled largely by New Englanders, derisively referred to as "Yankee 
 clock peddlers" by southerners who settled in the lower part of the 
 state. The mutual regard of the northerns and southerners is illustrated 
 by the remarks of a hardshell Baptist preacher, Father Biggs, who, 
 discoursing on the universality of God's grace, declared it "tuk in the 
 isles of the sea and the uttermost parts of the y'arth. It embraces the 
 ' Eskimo and the Hottentots and some, my dear brethren, go so far as 
 to suppose it takes in the poor benighted Yankees — but I don't go 
 that fur!" 
 
 The refusal of the two groups to accept each other's customs is re- 
 flected today in the employment of two distinct systems of county gov- 
 ernment. Eighty-five of the counties are governed by the township 
 organization which evidences their New England colonization, while 
 17 counties of southern Illinois are patterned after the unit system of 
 county government in southern states. 
 
 Counties under township organization are divided for political pur- 
 poses into local areas, each of which elects a supervisor. Supervisors 
 from the various townships comprise the county board, and the chair- 
 man of the board with two citizens appointed by the county judge con- 
 stitute the county board of review. 
 
 Counties under the other form of government maintain a board of 
 three commissioners, one commissioner being elected each year for a term 
 of three years. The commission also acts as the county board of health 
 and board of review. Boards make all appropriations for county activ- 
 
 14 
 
ities, have charge of county properties, select grand juries and license 
 public houses outside corporate limits. Other county officers are the 
 state's attorney, sheriff, coroner, clerk, treasurer, superintendent of 
 schools, auditor, recorder, surveyor and superintendent of highways. 
 The judiciary consists of a county judge and clerk of court. 
 
 Cook county represents a compromise between the two plans. That 
 part of the county lying outside the city limits is organized on the 
 township plan, while townships within the city have been abolished. 
 Ten commissioners from Chicago and five from the outlying townships 
 form the county board. 
 
 Chicago itself has adopted the aldermanic plan, which the consti- 
 tution makes optional with the commission plan for cities. Of the state's 
 297 incorporated cities, 74 use the commission plan and 223 the other. 
 Chicago's 50 aldermen are elected from the city's wards and with a 
 mayor, clerk and treasurer govern the city. Chicago complains that it 
 is neither bond nor free; it has not the power to deal with the larger 
 problems of a city of its size, and the state legislature is incapable of 
 doing so. Proposals to remedy the situation have gone so far as to 
 include one for creating a separate state of the city, which would be 
 possible so far as the United States constitution is concerned. 
 
 The basis for the school system of Illinois was a survey system 
 inaugurated by the Continental Congress under which the Northwest 
 Territory was divided into townships (the congressional townships) of 
 
 36 square miles each. A grant of land in each township, to be used for 
 educational purposes, was made by federal legislation. 
 
 Development of a public school system in Illinois was slow, how- 
 ever, an initial attempt in 1825 to levy compulsory school taxes being 
 abandoned when the more conservative citizens of the new state de- 
 nounced it as a Yankee trick. 
 
 The free school law was not enacted until 20 years later, but even 
 this left the levying of school taxes optional with the voters of a town- 
 ship, and it was not until 1854 that a genuine program of public school 
 development was begun. As a result, many private academies and sem- 
 inaries were established during the 19th Century for the education of 
 children of the wealthier citizens, and a relatively large number of 
 private schools still remain. 
 
 On the credit side of the educational ledger in Illinois is the initia- 
 tion of the land grant college movement in 1851. The land grant act 
 was signed by President Lincoln in 1862. 
 
 The state now has about 14,000 public schools, six teachers' colleges, 
 
 37 colleges and universities, and 22 junior colleges. 
 
 Libraries of the state are administered by a director of public 
 libraries. The state is divided into six library regions which contain 
 347 tax supported and 10 endowed libraries, containing more than 6,- 
 500,000 volumes. 
 
 Figures for 1943 showed 93 daily and 623 weekly papers being pub- 
 lished in the state. 
 
 FARMING AND MINING 
 
 The state, in general, is a plain gently sloping from Lake Michigan 
 on the east toward the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. It is nearly level; 
 a plateau extends from Wisconsin into the northwest section of the 
 state, where some bluffs and hills are found, but seldom does the ele- 
 vation here rise above 800 feet, while the "grand prairie" averages 500 
 feet. The lowest portion of the state, at the junction of the Ohio and 
 Mississippi, is 340 feet above the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 Five rivers drain the state; the Mississippi, Illinois, Kaswaskia, Rock, 
 and the Ohio with its tributary the Wabash. The state's only lakes 
 of any considerable size are Lake Pistakee in the northeast and Lake 
 
 15 
 
Peoria, which is formed by a widening of the Illinois river in Woodford 
 and Peoria counties. 
 
 The origin of the soil of most of the state, which is diluvial, in- 
 dicates that during some early geological age an immense lake covered 
 most of what is now Illinois. As a result the land of the prairie is deep 
 and fertile. In some bottom lands the loam and mould extend to a 
 depth of 25 to 100 feet. Whatever the depth, a layer of dense clay lies 
 under the loam and, being almost entirely impervious, it in great 
 measure prevents the moisture from leaching away. Because of the 
 great fertility Illinois can, and does, grow almost everything, including 
 southern crops of cotton and fruits in the lower part of the state. 
 
 Agronomists of the University of Illinois have found that farming 
 activities in the state divide naturally into nine areas, a different type 
 of farming being characteristic of each area. Dairy and truck farms are 
 found in the northeastern area; the northwestern area is character- 
 ized by mixed livestock with considerable dairying; hogs and beef cat- 
 tle are the major farm products in the western area, classified as a 
 livestock and grain section. An east central region is devoted almost 
 wholly to cash grain farming, with two-thirds of all the farms in the 
 area given to this type of crop during the period of the study. The 
 west central section is one of diversified farming with livestock the 
 major item. In the southwest poultry raising, dairying and wheat char- 
 acterize the farms, while in the southeast region the general, diversified 
 farm is again found with some grain and livestock farming. The south 
 central area is one of small, general farms which specialize in nothing 
 in particular. The last of the areas includes the fruit and vegetable 
 country. 
 
 As a result of this varied agricultural activity Illinois, which is 
 the fourth farm state of the country (outranked by Iowa, California 
 and Texas) , stands well toward the top in the production of most farm 
 products with the exception of those typically southern. For example, 
 it is the largest producer of soybeans; second largest producer of field 
 and sweet corn, of hogs, and of American cheese; third in production 
 of oats; fourth in evaporated milk and ice cream; fifth in chickens, 
 milk production and sweet clover seed; sixth largest producer of eggs, 
 and seventh in all cattle and calves raised. 
 
 Total farm area of the state is 35,806,000 acres, and the latest farm 
 census showed 213,439 farms as going concerns in the state. Its 1942 
 gross cash income from farms was over $1,000,000,000. 
 
 Illinois is also rich in minerals, being one of the great coal produc- 
 ing states, important in the oil industry, and a lavish source of stone 
 and building materials. 
 
 Oddly enough, considering the earlier settlement and industrial- 
 ization of the eastern coal producing states, it was in Illinois that coal 
 was first discovered in America. Coal beds underlie three-fifths of the 
 area of the state and because of their wave -like structure sometimes 
 lie just under, or even on, the surface. Both shaft and strip mines are 
 found in the state, and Illinois has the world's largest producing mines 
 of each type — the West Frankfort shaft mine and Pinckneyville strip 
 mine. 
 
 An interesting description of evidences of coal in early Illinois is 
 found in the book of an English traveler, William Oliver, who visited 
 Illinois in 1841 and 1842 in order to "afford as much information as pos- 
 sible to the poorer classes" of England and Scotland, many of whom 
 were attracted to the idea of emigration to these new farm lands, but 
 were deterred by a lack of information. 
 
 "There is every reason to believe," said Oliver, "that coal prevails 
 throughout a large proportion of the Mississippi Valley, though, owing 
 to the abundance of wood, the inhabitants have not hitherto paid 
 much attendance to that mineral. A great drawback to the usefulness 
 of the coal seams on the prairies is their frequently having no cover 
 beyond the alluvial deposits of gravel and clay, which, when deep, 
 render the coal quite unattainable by ordinary means. In some places 
 
 16 
 
the seams are so near the surface that they are cut into by the waggon 
 wheels in wet weather. . . . The seams are sometimes three and four 
 feet thick. The coal is bituminous, and of excellent quality." 
 
 Illinois has been for several years the third largest producer of coal 
 in the country, and there still remain large areas in which the presence 
 of rich commercial deposits is suspected, but about which there has 
 been little available information to date. Drilling for oil in the "Illinois 
 Basin" field, for example, has recently revealed that holes were going 
 through coal-bearing rock. 
 
 The greater part of the surface of Illinois was formed in the Car- 
 boniferous era. During one period the land was only a few feet above 
 sea level, a wide stretch of swamp and marshlands in which grew the 
 giant prehistoric trees and ferns which later pressed into strata of 
 coal. The great coal field of the state is 375 miles long, lying from 
 northwest to southeast, and about 200 miles wide, from St. Louis to the 
 northeast. The veins are not so deep as those of Pennsylvania and 
 Ohio, and the strata lie in waves which sometimes bring to the sur- 
 face the formations of sandstone and limestone underlying the coal. 
 
 These stone formations are worked as a source of building material 
 and limestone for agricultural purposes, of which the state is one of 
 its own largest users. Illinois is the third largest producer of limestone 
 and dolomite, and the country's largest source of sand and gravel, and 
 of silica sand which is used in glass manufacture. One of the large 
 glass manufacturers of the state turns out a million and a half a day 
 of the glass marbles which furnish small boys with one of their major 
 outdoor sports. 
 
 As an oil producing state Illinois ranks fifth in the country, both 
 in volume and value. The exploitation of the oil resources in th estate 
 have been recent, as the following table shows: 
 
 PRODUCING WELLS PRODUCTION (BARRELS) 
 
 1936 52 , 4,445,000 
 
 1937 292 7,426,000 
 
 1938 2,010 24,075,000 
 
 1939 2,970 94,912,000 
 
 1940 3,080 147,647,000 
 
 1941 2,925 134,138,000 
 
 1942 1,179 106,590,000 
 
 Petroleum production in Illinois in 1942 is summarized in the fol- 
 lowing table from the Illinois Blue Book: 
 
 UNIT QUALITY VALUE 
 
 Crude oil bbls. 106,456,000 $143,315,350 
 
 Natural gas M.cu.ft. 13,333,437 400,000 
 
 Natural gasoline gals. 66,616,000 2,664,640 
 
 Liquified petroleum gases gals. 73,619,000 2,024,522 
 
 The northwestern part of the state, particularly in Jo Daviess coun- 
 ty, includes the eastern terminal of the great western lead-bearing 
 belt. At one time this was one of the most important lead and zinc 
 producing districts of the country, and although production declined for 
 some years, the stimulus of the war's demands resulted in the develop- 
 ment of some new fields in this region. Pre-war production of the 
 metals was about $1,750,000 worth of lead and $314,000 worth of zinc 
 yearly, with some silver being refined from the argentiferous galena. 
 
 Clay and Fuller's earth are important items in the mineral produc- 
 tion of the state. Clay is used in bonding the molding sands of the 
 foundries and in the manufacture of the refractory brick which lines 
 steel furnaces. The making of pottery has been a large industry in the 
 state since 1865 when a large pottery works was established at Peoria. 
 
 As indicated previously, Illinois is basically a flat, level state, 
 though it presents a broken appearance in certain regions owing to 
 
 17 
 
the erosion of the streams. Illinois lay in the path of all four of the great 
 ice caps or glaciers which moved across the northern United States. 
 The third of the glaciers, which almost completely covered the state, 
 is known among geologists as the Iilinoisan; the fourth, called the 
 Wisconsin glacier, receded only 25,000 years ago, which practically 
 amounts to modern times in geological terms. There has not been time 
 for deep erosion since this recent flattening of the country, but its ap- 
 pearance before it was scraped flat by the glaciers — and its probable 
 appearance in another million years or so — may be guessed from the 
 topography of the seven southernmost counties of Illinois. Here, where 
 the glaciers did not reach, the land is deeply dissected by valleys and 
 ravines and has a rugged look uncharacteristic of the rest of the prairie 
 state. 
 
 The present extent of the prairies, however, is due to the clearing of 
 land by the early settlers. Before white men moved into the state 
 nearly half of it was covered by forests, although farming and lum- 
 bering activities have now reduced the woodlands to about 5 percent of 
 the state's area. Native trees are the oak, black walnut, sugar maple, 
 ash, elm, locust, linden, hickory, persimmon, pecan, and in the bottom 
 lands cottonwood, sycamore, buckeye, tulip tree, poplar, beech and 
 black birch. There are yellow pine, cypress and cedar near the Ohio river, 
 and the state has one stand of white pine. 
 
 A curious belief held by the first farmers to plow Illinois land was 
 that only forest land was fertile, and the practice was to leave stumps 
 in the cultivated fields, laboriously plowing around them. Actually, 
 however, their preference for such, land, rather than the open prairie, 
 was probably a "sour grapes" rationalization because they were forced 
 to settle for convenience along the rivers and wooded areas, and the 
 early plow was unable to cope with the sticky sod of the prairies. 
 
 The conversion of the prairies to endless fields of grain didVnot 
 begin until large-scale farming equipment was introduced. The invention 
 of the steel plow, claimed by a number of persons, several of them 
 Illinoisans, was surprisingly recent. Probably the first indisputable record 
 of the manufacture of a steel plow is of one built by John Deere at 
 Grand Detour in 1837. Crops, however, increased at a greater rate than 
 did the labor necessary to cultivate them, and the need for labor- 
 saving machinery was soon supplied. Cyrus Hall McCormick, by the 
 middle 1850's, was producing nearly 100 mechanical reapers a week in 
 Chicago. 
 
 Today the manufacture of farm equipment is one of the great in- 
 dustries and one in which Illinois leads the nation. 
 
 Conversion of the prairies to farms was not rapid, though, for 
 several years. The dissemination of new ideas and the adoption of new 
 equipment were slow in the frontier state. An example is the story 
 of one farmer who saw his first team of horses in harness abreast 
 during the Black Hawk War of 1832, was intrigued by the idea and sent 
 away for a set of the harness. When it arrived, however, he was unable 
 to make head or tail of it and it was not until a traveler from the east 
 passed through some time later that he was able to get it assembled. 
 
 A picture in some detail of the life of the Illinois farmer of this 
 period is found in the book of the English traveler, Oliver. His "Eight 
 Months in Illinois, with Information to Emigrants" describes the ploughs 
 in use in 1842 on a farm near Plum Prairie, east of Kaskaskia, whdre 
 the steel plough being built in Chicago by Deere apparently either was 
 unknown or regarded as a Yankee contraption. Oliver points out the dif- 
 ferences between ploughing cleared land, "which is so light and friable 
 that anything in the shape of a plough will stir it up," and ploughing 
 the much tougher prairie. 
 
 For the lighter work "farmers often manufacture their own ploughs, 
 especially the light one-horse plough; ... as it is simple in its con- 
 struction, when ploughing it can be lifted and thrown about in any 
 direction to avoid the roots of scrubs, bushes, or any irregularities 
 among the corn hills ,which are very often far from being placed in 
 
 18 
 
straight lines. A stout boy could lift one of them on his shoulder and 
 carry it with ease. 
 
 "The prairie plough, though made much stronger than the small 
 plough, is very seldom proportioned to the strain it has to bear; and, 
 for the most part, makes wretched work. ... By going so shallow, the 
 plough is kept working among the very toughest of the rind; . . . the 
 result must be very unsatisfactory. I have seen five yoke of oxen in 
 one of these crazy, creaky things which, not infrequently, are converted, 
 by one smash, into a bundle of sticks." 
 
 Working the prairie for a living, with such equipment, and surviving 
 the bitter winters in the crude homes with only a fireplace for heat 
 was a hard life at best. Oliver, who spent the winter on the Plum 
 Prairie farm, tells of one cold spell during which "I attempted to 
 write, but, although I heated the ink, which was hard frozen, and sat 
 within as short a distance of the fire as I could, with the paper on my 
 knee, I could not write one word; the ink seemed to vanish up the pen, 
 and was frozen in an instant." 
 
 At a community hog-killing, when the slaughtered hogs were doused 
 in barrels of scalding water, "the tops of the bristles became frozen 
 together in a few seconds after the hogs were withdrawn from the hot 
 water, and the carcases were as hard as wood in not very many hours." 
 
 Hardships and the necessity of communal enterprises for sur- 
 vival under such conditions drew the prairie farmers together, and both 
 the social and economic life were much different than today when 
 modern equipment and conveniences make a farm nearly self-sufficient 
 and the farmer, noted for his independent attitude, is listed among the 
 last of the rugged individualists. Much of the work was done by col- 
 lective effort, such as the community hog-killing, and community husk- 
 ins bees 
 
 ' Oliver describes a "corn shocking or husking frolic" which he at- 
 tended. "It was a scene full of novelty. Groups of wild-looking men, 
 with long hair spread over their shoulders, and clad in home spun 
 coats and trousers of Dutch build, were standing about, laughing 
 and talking, whilst all around were seen fancifully caparisoned horses, 
 with long tails and manes, attached by the bridles to the pliant branches 
 of the trees. Newcomers were pouring in from all quarters, some car- 
 rying long rifles on their shoulders, and accoutred in belt and bullet 
 pouch. . . . 
 
 "All things being prepared, a noisy consultation was held, when it 
 was resolved and carried that the heap should be divided into two 
 equal parts. On this being done, two men were being pitched upon as 
 captains of the heaps, who having called sides, the battle commenced. 
 
 "No match at football or shinty was ever engaged in with more up- 
 roarious animation. The yells of defiance, mingled with whoops and yells 
 in Indian style, arose in one continued medley, and reverberated far 
 through the woods, whilst an unceasing shower of corn streamed 
 through the air toward the roofless crib. . . . 
 
 "There is a plentiful libation of that most exercrable of spirits, 
 corn whisky, or of peach brandy. A red ear, which is now and then met 
 with among the white flint corn, is always a signal for a round of 
 the bottle. ^* 
 
 "Sometimes, on similar occasions, a number of the ladies of the 
 neighborhood assemble, and the affair finishes off with amusements, 
 and if a fiddler can be procured, with a dance." 
 
 Another form of collective enterprise was the chopping bee, "where 
 20 or 30 choppers are collected. . . . -The forest resounds with the blows 
 of the axe, and ever and anon some tall monarch of the woods begins 
 to topple, reclines gently to one side, and then rushes, with accelerating 
 speed, and the roar of a whirlwind, to the thundering earth, amidst 
 a chaos of smashed limbs and dust. 
 
 "Accidents sometimes occur, from the descent of pieces of shattered 
 limbs, which have been pitched into the air; and my friend was one 
 day felled to the earth with one which descended from a height of 70 
 
 19 
 
or 80 feet, and though the touch was so slight that it barely ruffled 
 the skin of his face, yet some of his teeth were splintered by it." 
 
 These were the primitive conditions under which Illinois was farmed 
 prior to the state's great industrial expansion which commenced in the 
 next decade or two, when railroads crossed the prairies to bring the iso- 
 lated frontiersmen in touch with urban areas, and farm machinery con- 
 verted the task of opening the soil of the prairies into a modern business. 
 
 Important as industrial aids were, however, men must precede the 
 machinery onto the prairies before there is a need for it, and it was 
 the pioneer farmer who opened the way for the great agrarian industry 
 of today. Aware of the hardships of the life they were adopting, they 
 ignored the warnings contained in accounts such as Oliver's, who con- 
 cluded: "I wish it to be distinctly understood that I advise no man, 
 whatever may be his circumstances, to emigrate either to illinois or to 
 any other part of the world." 
 
 A great many of the earlier settlers, undoubtedly, were forced west- 
 ward by economic reasons and found the struggle with nature more 
 bearable than the struggle with poverty in urban areas, for, as Oliver 
 said, "the poor are the proper immigrants to a new country, where 
 thews and sinews are convertible into wealth." 
 
 Whatever their reason for coming, they came, and tamed the 
 prairie, and in a hundred years the land of Illinois supported a rural 
 
 population of more than 2,000,000 persons. 
 
 < 
 
 Mfc. 
 
 SWORD AND FIRE 
 
 Illinois has so often been host to riot, disaster and war that its 
 story is not complete without passing mention of some of these episodes, 
 though they may not be an integral part of its history. 
 
 Most famous of Illinois disasters is the Chicago fire of 1871. 
 
 In this year, Chicago had a population of about 300,000. It had 
 tripled in the preceding 10 years; dwellings and business houses had 
 been going up so rapidly that there was no time for brick and stone. 
 An estimated seven-eighths of the city's 40,000 buildings were wooden. 
 
 Legend ascribes the beginning of the fire to a lantern kicked over by 
 Mrs. O'Leary's cow. Whatever the cause, it started in a barn behind 
 the home of Patrick O'Leary, where a three-story flat building now 
 stands at 558 DeKoven street. Few houses more substantial than 
 O'Leary's, of flimsy pine that was like tinder to the flames after months 
 of searing drought, stood in the surrounding blocks. The fire, beginning 
 on the night of October 8, a Sunday, was soon out of control and 
 fanned by a strong southwest wind, swept northward across the river. 
 At the height of the fire its heat could be felt on the eastern shore of 
 Lake Michigan, 100 miles away. Before it burned itself out 27 hours 
 later it had reduced three and a half square miles to ashes, including 
 the present Loop district and the near north side to Fullerton avenue, 
 destroying over 17,000 buildings at an estimated loss of $192,000,000. At 
 least 250 persons died in the fire. 
 
 A new city began to rise out of the ashes at once, and in three years 
 little evidence of the fire remained. 
 
 One of the greatest losses of life by fire in the country's history 
 occurred in Chicago in 1903 in the Iriquois Theater fire. A stage curtain 
 blazed up as a capacity house filled the recently completed theater. A 
 panic ensued and exits, already locked, were blocked by trampled bodies. 
 Before the fire was brought under control 596 had perished and the re- 
 sulting investigation resulted in the adoption of numerous fire perven- 
 tion measures in European cities as well as throughout this country. 
 Memorial services are held annually in the city council chambers on 
 December 30, the anniversary of the disaster. 
 
 Even greater casualties resulted from the sinking of the excursion 
 
 20 
 
steamer "Eastland" in Chicago harbor on July 24, 1915. The steamer 
 had been chartered by the Western Electric company for an outing for 
 company employes. It capsized as it was leaving the Clark street dock, 
 drowning 812 persons, mostly residents of the western suburbs near the 
 company's plant. The remodeled "Eastland" is still in service in Chicago 
 waters as the "Wilmette," a naval reserve training ship. 
 
 The forerunner of the Eastland disaster, remembered now by few 
 
 persons, was the loss of 297 lives when the Chicago excursion steamer 
 
 "Lady Elgin" was rammed and sank off Waukegan on -September 8, 1860. 
 
 "Outbreaks of the mob spirit," remarks John Moses, a historian of 
 
 the state, "have been of rather frequent occurrence." 
 
 One of these occurrences led to virtual civil war in Massac country 
 in 1846. An arrest on a robbery charge had revealed that a large number 
 of persons in that and surrounding counties had formed a "crime syn- 
 dicate." The syndicate's operations were so extensive that a good portion 
 of the community banded together calling themselves "regulators," and 
 gave notice to suspected members of the syndicate to leave the state. 
 Another group of citizens who opposed the irregular measures became 
 known as "flatheads." When the flatheads succeeded in electing a 
 sheriff, the regulators seized a number of suspects, some of whom were 
 driven from the county, some punished, some tortured for further con- 
 fessions. Several regulators were lodged in jail as a result, but were 
 freed in a jail delivery and the sheriff was ordered to leave the county. 
 
 Governor Ford finally sent a general of the militia to bring peace to 
 Massac county. In a short time nearly everyone in the county, and a 
 good many in adjoining counties, were arrayed on one side or the other. 
 The civil war was never quelled, though state authorities tried several 
 measures. 'The climax came when an army of regulators captured a 
 sheriff's posse of about 60 men who had taken some regulators prisoners. 
 Several of the posse were drowned in the Ohio river and the regulators 
 were left in possession of the field, although riots flared up from time to 
 time for many years. 
 
 One of the most grotesque chapters in Illinois history concerns the 
 Mormon wars which kept the state militia busy for nearly two years. 
 
 The Mormons had been expelled from Missouri by the militia of that 
 state and settled in a small village on the Mississippi, Commerce, in 
 Hancock county. By 1842 the Mormons had taken over the small village 
 which, now renamed Nauvoo, had outgrown Chicago with a population 
 of 16,000. 
 
 Joseph Smith, leader of the Mormon colony, was mayor of the city 
 under a charter of his own design which made him not only chief 
 executive but judge of the municipal courts, head of the police depart- 
 ment, president of the council, and commander of a private militia. 
 Smith declared his courts and militia to be independent of state con- 
 trol, and then denounced the government of the United States and in 
 1844 announced that he was a candidate for President. 
 
 When a newspaper of the county attacked him in print, Smith had 
 the press destroyed. Non-Mormon citizens of Hancock county pro- 
 cured warrants for the arrest of Smith and others but because of Smith's 
 control of the courts and police it was impossible to bring him to trial. 
 
 Militia from Hancock and adjoining counties forced the surrender 
 of Smith and his council. Joseph and his brother Hyrum were taken to 
 Carthage for trial on charges of treason. A band of 150 angry disbanded 
 militiamen broke into the jail that night and shot and killed both men. 
 
 Civil war now broke out in Hancock county between the Saints and 
 Gentiles and marauding bands prowled the country, killing and burning 
 houses. Several thousand armed citizens gathered for a "wolf hunt" 
 were dispersed by militia from other counties. A state of anarchy, with 
 frequent visits by militia, continued until September, 1846, when an 
 armed force of Mormons entrenched in Nauvoo was attacked with in- 
 fantry and artillery. At this time the last of the belligerents was 
 expelled. 
 
 Today the village of Nauvoo contains a few members of the Re- 
 
 21 
 
organized Church, headed by a grandson of Joseph Smith. The church 
 claims to_be the true Mormon church on the basis of leadership passing 
 from father to son, while the Utah branch asserts leadership passed to 
 the Twelve Apostles on Smith's death. But since both factions acknowl- 
 edge Joseph Smith as the founder and true prophet, many Mormons 
 regard this small village in Illinois as their Mecca. 
 
 PEOPLE OF ILLINOIS 
 
 In a list of the famous of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln would, of course, 
 stand alone at the top. Though not native born, he is as much Illinois 
 as the prairie itself. 
 
 Ulysses S. Grant, though an Ohioan by birth, was a resident of 
 Galena, 111., at the outbreak of the civil war, and volunteered his serv- 
 ices in the Illinois militia to begin a career which made him first to 
 hold commission as general of the armies of the United States and 
 twice President. 
 
 Though not known as widely as he deserves, Governor Peter Altgeld 
 was one of the country's great champions of justice. He voluntarily 
 moved to his own political ruin with his famous Pardon Message which 
 freed the three defendants of the Haymarket Riot trial who remained 
 alive. A 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas and William Jennings Bryan began their law 
 practices in Jacksonville. Senator William E. Borah, though identified 
 politically with Idaho, was born near Fairfield and attended school at 
 
 Enfield. 
 
 A list of political figures of Illinois would not be complete without 
 the name of "Big Bill" Thompson, mayor of Chicago during the Capone 
 heyday, who amused the country with his private wars with the kings 
 of England, from George III on down, and whose safety deposit boxes 
 revealed hundreds of thousands of unexplained dollars on his death 
 in 1944. 
 
 Illinois has contributed more noted figures to the field of literature 
 than to any other. Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, 
 Booth Tarkington, Ben Hecht, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, Ernest 
 Hemingway, and Eugene Field are some of the better known names. 
 Many others, important but less well known, were a part of the Mid- 
 west literary group which earned Chicago the title of "literary capital 
 of the United States." 
 
 Robert Ingersoll, famous agnostic writer and orator, first taught 
 school in 1852 in Massac county, and later practiced law in Shawneetown. 
 Clarence Darrow, the great humanist lawyer, rose to fame in Chicago. 
 
 Jane Addams, born in Cedarville, left as her monument the famous 
 Hull House of Chicago. This famous settlement house has itself pro- 
 duced its quota of prominent figures, including Sidney Hillman the labor 
 leader and Benny Goodman, exponent of modern music. Louis Arm- 
 strong, another figure in modern music, came from Chicago's south side. 
 
 Frank Lloyd Wright began his career in a Chicago architect's office, 
 and the state contains many examples of his functionalist style. One 
 of the country's great sculptors, Lorado Taft, worked in Chicago and 
 taught for years at the Art Institute. 
 
 Illinois contributed one of the country's outstanding newspaper 
 publishers in Joseph Medill who founded the Chicago Tribune, now 
 the stronghold of Midwest isolationism and published by his grandson, 
 Col. Robert R. McCormick. Another outstanding publisher, and war- 
 time Secretary of the Navy, was Col. Frank Knox of the Chicago Daily 
 News. Another prominent figure of journalism was the co-founder of 
 the Daily News, Melville Stone, later identified with the Associated Press. 
 
 One of the country's most brilliant educators became identified with 
 
 22 
 
Illinois when Jekf^Maynard Hutchins launched his progressive program 
 at the University of Chicago. 
 
 And finally, at Troy Grove, in La Salle county, you may see the 
 birthplace of James Butler Hickock and a monument inscribed with his 
 better known name, "Wild Bill" Hickock. 
 
 WHAT TO SEE IN ILLINOIS 
 
 - -or.jjurv *■ 
 
 Visitors to Illinois (or residents) will find plenty of scenery and 
 facilities for enjoying it. The state park system consists of 13 parks 
 ranging in size from 43 to 4,500 acres. 
 
 Largest of the parks is Starved Rock park, between La Salle and 
 Ottawa on the Illinois river. It is the oldest of the parks and contains 
 more than 50 points of interest. The rock formation from which it 
 takes its name rises 140 feet above the river. On its summit La Salle 
 and Tonti established one of their chain of French forts, and in 1769, 
 according to legend, the remanant of a band of Illinois Indians took 
 refuge there in a vain attempt to escape from the British. Caves, 
 canyons, salt and sulphur wells are among the natural attractions; 
 park facilities include lodges, swimming, boating, fishing and other 
 recreations. 
 
 White Pines Forest, near Mt. Morris, contains 315 acres of white 
 pines, the southernmost stand of this tree in the Midwest, and the 
 only forest of its kind in Illinois. 
 
 Chain-O'-Lakes park attracts many cottagers during the summer 
 and fall to the lake country north and west of Chicago. A unique fea- 
 ture that brings thousands to the park in early August is the blooming 
 of the lake's Egyptian Lotus beds. 
 
 Other state parks are: Buffalo Rock, Illini and Matthiessen (form- 
 erly Deer Park) , all in LaSalle county with Starved Rock; Pere Marquette 
 and Spitler Woods in Jersey county near Alton; Apple River Canyon in 
 Jo Daviess county; Fox Ridge in Coles county; and Mississippi Palisades 
 near Savanna in Carroll county where some of the state's most im- 
 pressive scenery is found. 
 
 Besides the state parks there are nine historical parks: Black Hawk 
 in Rock Island, Cahokia Mounds near St. Louis, Cave-in-Rock in Hardin 
 county; Fort Massac in Massac county; Jubilee College near Peoria; 
 the Lincoln Log Cabin park near Charleston, New Salem near Peters- 
 burg in Menard county, and Fort Chartres and Fort Kaskaskia in 
 Randolph county. 
 
 Space is too limited here to attempt a guidebook of Illinois, but the 
 following are listed as of especial interest because of their uniqueness: 
 
 The Banal House of Worship in Wilmette, Chicago suburb, is one 
 of the most unusual architectural creations in the country. The temple 
 is the only one in North America representing the faith founded in the 
 1860's by Baha'u'llah, a Persian religious leader. His son, Abdu'1-Baha, 
 laid the cornerstone in 1930. 
 
 On the Rock river near Rockford is a 48-foot statue of an Indian, 
 rising from the trees of the bluff overlooking the river. This is the 
 Black Hawk Monument, executed by Larado Taft and presented by him 
 to the state in 1911. The foundation extends 30 feet down into the 
 bluff to secure it against the forces of the elements. The great white 
 figure rising from its wild setting presents an unusual appearance. 
 
 Probably one of the most extensive collections of weapons, antique 
 and modern, is housed in the museum of the government owned Rock 
 Island Arsenal on a river island near the city. 
 
 Springfield, the state capital, is the Mecca of Lincoln's admirers. 
 Besides the Lincoln tomb which contains the bodies of Lincoln, his 
 wife and three children, there are many collections of Lincolniana and 
 
 23 
 
the Illinois State Historical Library houses the most comprehensft 
 collection of material on Illinois history in existence. 
 
 The Piasa Bird on the bluffs at Alton is a sight the traveler wij 
 not see elsewhere. It was described by Father Marquette on the whit 
 man's first trip into Illinois country as "high rocks with hideous mon 
 sters painted on them, and upon which the bravest Indians dare nc 
 look." The original painting of the strange monster was destroyed b 
 quarrying operations in 1870 and has been restored with funds raised t 
 subscription.^ description ig hardly justice to a state of more tha 
 56 000 square miles with the Great Lakes on pne side and the Mississip 
 on another, and the story of the country's second largest city is 
 
 b ° 0k p?aise of 7 the state has been by no means unanimous. Many ha 
 found little but injustice and disappointment , witHin .ite J,^ers. ChML 
 Dirkpns writing of Illinois in his American Notes could find little coi- 
 SSSStaS to fay, and some may agree with the sentiments of Thorn 
 Campbell former Secretary of State of Illinois. A gentleman of cleric 
 anSearance applied to Campbell for the use of the state assemt 
 chamber say^g he wished to deliver a course of lectures on the secol 
 
 C ° m ^e my advfce and don't waste your time in this city," Campbil 
 said. "It is my private opinion that if the Lord has been in Spnngfid 
 once he will not come the second time." I 
 
 There is something about the state, however, that attracts peop 
 for in 1940 there were 7,897,241 residing there. Few parts of the eaih 
 have changed so in the last 200 years. 
 
 
 24 
 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 977.3SM53I C001 
 
 ILLINOIS, THE PRAIRIE STATE GIRARD, K 
 
 3 0112 025382331