"There were started from St. Louis yesterday about eighty trains of grain to New Orleans, or what amounts to the same thing, three different barge companies started tows down the river with 567,000 bushels of grain. This amount would have filled about 1,200 railway cars, and would have taken eighty trains of fifteen cars or sixty trains of twenty cars each to transport. All this grain was put into fifteen barges, and a matter of 2,600 tons of miscellaneous freight besides. All these three tow-boats started down the river with a freight list that would have filled between thirteen and fourteen hundred railway cars, and will be delivered to New Orleans in from five to nine days.

"The exact statement of the cost of transportation of flour from St. Louis via New Orleans to Liverpool and to Boston, per barrel, is ninety cents freight and four cents drayage to boat at levee at St. Louis, or ninetyfour cents to Liverpool, while the freight per barrel to Boston by rail, in car-loads of one hundred and twenty-five barrels, from East St. Louis, is ninety-one cents, or from St. Louis (eight cents transfer across the bridge added,) ninety-nine cents, or five cents less to Liverpool by river and ocean, than by rail to Boston. This rate to Liverpool via New Orleans was negotiated March 30 by the St. Louis, New Orleans and Foreign Dispatch Company."

George H. Morgan, Esq., secretary of the St. Louis "Merchant's Exchange," furnished the writer of this history with the following statement of grain shipments by barge line from St. Louis to New Orleans:

Total....

1,847,996 2,980,707 50,078 22,423

Thus it will be seen that the tide has fairly turned; that St. Louis is now practically a commercial seaport, and will, within the next twelve months, become the greatest grain-shipping city on the American continent.

RAILROADS IN MISSOURI.

The earliest account of any movement in this state with regard to railroads is to the effect that on the 20th of April, 1835, a railroad convention was held in St. Louis, and resolutions were adopted in favor of building two railroads one from St. Louis to Fayette, in Howard county; and the other one southward to Iron Mountain, Pilot Knob, etc.* The reason for projecting a railroad from St. Louis into the great iron region is obvious enough; but why they should at that early day have thought of building more than one hundred and fifty miles of railroad to reach a town that was only twelve miles from Old Franklin, on the banks of the Missouri river, is an unsolved mystery. It indicates, at least, that those “early

*The first steam railroad in this country was the Baltimore and Susquehanna line, in 1830; though horse railroads had been used before, especially at coal mines and marble quarries, and in two cases engines had been used on such roads.

fathers" were not under the control of any narrow or shallow views concerning the practical value of railroads, or the future grandeur of St. Louis as the central point for all trans-Mississippi traffic. In this first railroad convention ever held west of the Allegheny Mountains there were sixty-four delegates in attendance, representing eleven counties; but practically nothing ever came of their deliberations.

In 1840 a State Board of Internal Improvement was created, and it made a survey for a railroad from St. Louis to the Iron Mountain, by the way of Big River. February 7th, 1849, Col. Thomas H. Benton, senator from Missouri, introduced into the U. S. senate a bill to provide for the location and construction of a central national road from the Pacific ocean to the Mississippi river, to be an iron railway where practicable, and the rest a wagon way. February 20th, same year, a public meeting was held in St. Louis, which petitioned the legislature for a charter and right-of-way for a railway across the state from St. Louis to the western boundary; and on the 12th of March this charter was granted.

Next a meeting was held which called a national convention at St. Louis to consider the project of a national Pacific railway across the continent. This convention was held October 15, 16, 17, 18, 1849. Fifteen states were represented; the grand project was warmly commended, and a strong memorial sent to Congress asking the public authorities to take some action in the matter.

Such was the beginning of definite moves toward a trans-continental railroad.

The Missouri Pacific was the first railroad commenced and first finished in the State. Incorporated March 12, 1849; authorized capital $10,000,000; opened to Cheltenham, March 23, 1852; amount of state aid, $7,000,000; St. Louis county aid $700,000; land sold, 127,209 acres; entire length from St. Louis to Kansas City, 382 miles; total cost, $14,382,208.

The successive stages of its construction were: Chartered, March 12, 1859; first ground broken, by Mayor Kennett of St. Louis, July 4, 1851; road opened to Cheltenham, Dec. 23, 1852; to Kirkwood in May, and to Franklin July 23, 1853; completed to Washington, February 11, 1855; to Hermann, August 7, the same year;* and to Jefferson City, March 12, 1856; completed to California in Moniteau county, May, 14, 1858; to Tipton, July 26, same year; and to Syracuse, August, 1, 1859; opened to Otter

*November 1, 1855, a large excursion train left St. Louis to celebrate the opening of the railroad through to Medora station, about twenty miles beyond Hermann. It was a long train filled with business men of ths city and their families, and the occasion was one of great festivity and rejoicing. But while the train was crossing the Gasconade river the bridge gave way, and plunged cars, bridge and people in one mixed and horrible wreck into the gulf of waters fifty feet down. The president and chief engineer of the road, and 30 prominent citizens of St. Louis were killed, while scores of others were more or less injured. It was the first and the most terrible railroad accident that has ever occurred in

the state.

ville, August 24, 1860; to Smithton, November 1, same year; and to Sedalia in February 1861. Here it stopped during the first two years of the war. But Pettis county voted $75,000 to aid it, and Jackson county $200,000. Commenced running trains to Dresden, May 10, 1863; to Warrensburg, July 3, 1864; in 1865 the road was opened to Holden, May 28; to Pleasant Hill, July 19; to Independence, September 19. Meanwhile work had been going on from Kansas City westward, the two gangs of workmen meeting at Independence; and on this 19th day of September, 1865, the last rail was laid and the last spike driven, which connected Missouri's two principal cities with iron bands unbroken from east to west line of the noble commonwealth. On the next day, the president of the road Mr. Daniel R. Garrison, left Kansas City at 3 A. M., and arrived in St. Louis at 5 P. M., thus making the first through trip over the completed line.

There is now not a county north of the Missouri river which has not one or more railroads within its limits; and of the seventy counties south of the Missouri, only 22 have no railroad reaching them. However, new roads and branches are being built each year, so that within a few years every county will be provided with good railroad facilities.

January 1, 1880, there were, in round numbers, 3,600 miles of railroad in operation in the state, embraced in about fifty different main lines and branches, allowned by thirty-five different corporations, and operated by twenty-five different companies, as shown in the following table:

POSTAL AND TELEGRAPH FACILITIES.

There are within the state 15,208 miles of postal routes, of which 10,426 miles are by stage and horseback, 575 miles by steamboat, and 4,207 miles by railroad, the whole involving a cost for the year 1878-9 of $768,904. There are 1,700 post towns-but four states in the union have a greater number. These are all offices of registration, where letters and parcels can be registered for transmission through the males to all parts of this and foreign countries. In 200 of these post-offices, moneyorders may be purchased, payable at all similar offices in the United States, and a portion of them issue orders drawn on Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, etc.

There are in the state 562 telegraph stations, whence messages can be sent all over the telegraph world; 2,423 miles of line and 6,000 miles of wire.

MANUFACTURING.

The following statistics of the capital employed in manufacturing industries, and the amount of production, is collated from careful estimates made in 1876, the latest at hand, although it is well known that great increase of these industries has been made since that date. These estimates showed that the state then contained 14,245 manufacturing establishments, using 1,965 steam engines, representing 58,101 horse-power, 465 water wheels, equaling 7,972 horse-power, and employing 80,000 hands. The capital employed in manufacturing was about $100,000,000; the material used in 1876 amounted to about $140,000,000; the wages paid were $40,000,000, and the products put upon the market were over $250,000,000. Outside of St. Louis the leading manufacturing counties of the state are Jackson, about $2,000,000; Buchanan, $7,000,000; St. Charles, $4,500,000; Marion, $3,500,000; Franklin, $3,000,000; Greene, $1,500,000; Cape Girardeau, $1,500,000; Platte, Boone and Lafayette, upwards of $1,000,000 each, followed by several counties nearly reaching the last sum.

The products of the different lines of manufacturing interests are, approximately, as follows:

Of the manufacturing in Missouri, more than three-fourths is done in St. Louis, which produced, in 1879, about $275,000,000 of manufactured articles. The city has, for some years past, ranked as the third in the United States in the amount of her manufactures, leaving a wide gap between her and Chicago and Boston, each of which cities manufactures a little more than one-half as much in amount as St. Louis, and leaves a doubt as to which of them is entitled to rank as the fourth manufacturing city.

FLOUR.-In St. Louis there are twenty-four flouring mills, having a daily productive capacity of 11,000 barrels. The total amount of flour received and manufactured by the dealers and millers of St. Louis, in

1879, was 4,154,757 barrels, of which over 3,000,000 were exported. They also made 425,963 barrels of corn meal and 28,595 barrels of hominy and grits. Of their exports, 619,103 barrels were sent to European nations and to South America.

COTTON.-There are in the city two mills, which consume from 15,000 to 20,000 bales annually. To supply the manufactured cotton goods annually sold in St. Louis will require mills of ten times the capacity of those now in operation.

PRINCIPAL CITIES.

St. Louis is the commercial metropolis not only of the state of Missouri but also of the Mississippi and Missouri valley regions of country; and the history of Missouri is to a very large extent the history of St. Louis. There is so much concerning this imperial city embodied in other parts of this work that little need be added here.

St. Louis is situated upon the west bank of the Mississippi, at an altitude of four hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is far above the highest floods that ever swell the Father of Waters. Its latitude is 38 deg., 37 min., 28 sec., north, and its longitude 90 deg., 15 min., 16 sec., west. It is twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri, and 200 above the confluence of the Ohio. It is 744 miles below the falls of St. Anthony, and 1194 miles above New Orleans. Its location very nearly bisects the direct distance of 1,400 miles between Superior City and the Balize. It is the geographical center of a valley which embraces 1,200,000 square miles. In its course of 3,200 miles the Mississippi borders upon Missouri 470 miles. Of the 3,000 miles of the Missouri, 500 lie within the limits of our own state, and St. Louis is mistress of more than 16,500 miles of river navigation.

The Missouri Gazette, the first newspaper, was establised in 1808, by Joseph Charless, and subsequently merged in the present Missouri Republican. The town was incorporated in 1809, and a board of trustees elected to conduct the municipal government. In 1812 the territory of Missouri was designated, and a legislative assembly authorized. The Missouri Bank was incorporated in 1814. The first steamboat arrived at the foot of Market street in the year 1815, followed soon by others. In 1819 the first steamer ascended the Missouri, and the first through boat from New Orleans arrived, having occupied twenty-seven days in the trip. In 1821 a city directory was issued. The facts stated in this volume show that the town was then an important and thriving one. In 1825 Lafayette visited the city and received a grand public ovation. This year the United States arsenal and Jefferson barracks were established.