USA > Iowa > Fayette County > Past and present of Fayette County, Iowa, Volume I > Part 6
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These institutions are now known as "Industrial Schools," the boys' school being located at Eldora, Hardin county, and that for the accommo- dation of girls at Mitchellville, Polk county. The first of these was estab- lished in 1868, in Lee county. In 1873 it was removed to Eldora, and in 1880 the sexes were separated and the school ( for girls) at Mitchellville .es- tablished.
PENITENTIARIES.
In addition to the institutions already mentioned, the state has been obliged to make provisions for restraining criminals, and especially for those guilty of felonies. The first steps towards establishing a penitentiary were taken by the territorial Legislature in 1839. Directors were appointed to superintend the construction of the building, which was to be located at Fort Madison, Lee county. The fourteenth General Assembly established an ad- ditional penitentiary in 1873, at Amamosa, Jones county. The expense of maintaining these two penal institutions for the biennial period, 1903-5, was over half a million dollars, a considerable portion of which, however, was returned to the state from the sale of manufactured products and convict labor.
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THE RAILROAD QUESTION.
No one questions but that the building of railroads had much to do with the development of the state of Iowa, as well as the entire Western country ; but many well-informed people likewise believe that the expenditure of the vast wealth in lands and money in the interests of their building and equipment has never been returned in kind, and that the roads would have been built, regardless of the liberal policy adopted by the state, counties, municipalities and even private contributors. Our honored ex-Governor, William Larra- bee, LL. D., has ably set forth a very concise and comprehensive history of "The Railroad Question" in a book bearing that title, and now passing through the eleventh edition. Unfortunately, the work is too exhaustive for our purpose in giving a brief resume of the history of early state institutions. But with grateful acknowledgments to the venerable ex-Governor, we gladly use such portions of his work as are available for our purpose and trust the further history of railroading in Fayette county to those having charge of that department.
Quoting from Governor Larrabee's book, page 328: "The state of Iowa has not derived that benefit from the large land grants made to its rail- roads which her people had a right to expect. In spite of these grants, roads were built only when there was reason to believe that they would be imme- diately profitable to their owners. The land grants enriched the promoters of these enterprises much more than they did the state in whose interest the grants were presumed to be made." "The total number of acres of land granted by Congress to aid the construction of Iowa roads is four million, sixty-nine thousand, nine hundred and forty-two. A fair idea of the value of these lands may be obtained from the fact that the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Company sold over half a million acres of its lands at an average of eight dollars and sixty-eight cents per acre, and the Chicago, Bur- lington & Quincy sold nearly three hundred and fifty thousand acres at an average of twelve dollars and seventeen cents per acre. But land grants form only a small part of the public and private donations which have been made to Iowa roads. Including the railroad taxes voted by counties, townships and municipalities, the grants of rights of way and depot sites and public and private gifts in money, these roads have received subsidies amounting to more than fifty million dollars, or enough to build forty per cent of all the roads in the state. There is no doubt that the contributions of the public toward the construction of the railroads of Iowa is several times as large as the actual contributions of their stockholders for that purpose. As a rule
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these land grants enabled scheming men to hold the selected territory until a railroad through it promised a safe and profitable investment, and to avoid the payment of taxes on their millions of acres of land, which in the mean- time became very valuable. Other roads were built in an early day without government aid. They were pushed forward by the current of immigration until the threatened competition of roads favored by these grants checked their progress. The Chicago, Iowa & Nebraska road may be cited as a fair illustration. It was projected on the 26th of January, 1856, in the town of Clinton, to be built from Clinton to the Missouri river, via Cedar Rapids. It was opened to De Witt in 1858 and completed to Cedar Rapids the fol- lowing year. The road was eighty-two and one-half miles long and was built entirely with private means, receiving neither legislative aid nor local subsidy. It is more than probable that this road would at an early day have been completed to the Missouri river had it not feared the rivalry of the sub- sidized Cedar Rapids & Missouri road.
"The first survey for a railroad in the state of Iowa was made in the fall of 1852. The proposed road had its initial point at Davenport and followed a westerly course. It was practically an extension of the Chicago & Rock Island railroad, which was then built between Chicago and the Mississippi river. On the 22d of December, 1852, the Mississippi & Missouri Railroad Company was formed, its object being to build, maintain and operate a railroad from Davenport to Council Bluffs. The articles of association were acknowledged before John F. Dillon, notary public, and filed for record in the office of the recorder of Scott county on the 26th of January, 1853, and in the office of the secretary of state on the first day of February, following. In 1853 the Mississippi & Missouri Railroad Company entered into an agreement with the Railroad Bridge Company of Illinois for the construction and main- tenance of a bridge over the Mississippi at Rock Island. The work was com- menced in the fall of that year, and the bridge was completed on April 21, 1856, it being then the only bridge spanning the Mississippi river.
"The first division of the Mississippi & Missouri railroad, extending from Davenport to Iowa City, was completed on the first.of January, 1856, and was formally opened two days later. A branch line to Muscatine was com- pleted shortly thereafter. On the first day of July the state of Iowa had in all sixty-seven miles of railroad, bonded at fourteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty-five dollars a mile, which at that time probably represented the total cost of construction. The earnings of these sixty-seven miles of road during the six months following July 1, 1856, amounted to one hundred and eighty-four thousand, one hundred and ninety-three dollars, or two thousand,
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seven hundred and forty-nine dollars per mile, which was equal to an annual income of about five thousand, five hundred dollars per mile. On the 15th of May, 1856, Congress granted to the state of Iowa certain lands for the purpose of 'aiding in the construction of railroads from Burlington, on the Mississippi river, to a point on the Missouri river, near the mouth of the Platte river; from the city of Davenport, Iowa, by way of Iowa City and Fort Des Moines, to Council Bluffs; from Lyons City northwesterly to a point of intersection with the main line of the Iowa Central Air Line railroad near Maquoketa, thence on said line running as near as practical to the forty- second parallel across the state; and from the city of Dubuque to the Mis- souri river near Sioux City.' The grant comprised the alternate sections designated by odd numbers and lying within six miles of each of the pro- posed roads. Provision was also made for indemnity for all lands covered by the grant which were already sold or otherwise disposed of.
"The wisdom of the land-grant policy has been questioned. When these grants were made it was believed by many that railroads would not and could not be built in the West without such aid. While others did not share this opinion, they at least supposed that land grants would greatly stim- ulate railroad enterprise and lead to the early construction of the lines thus favored. *
"The price of all government lands lying outside of the land-grant belts was one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. To reimburse the public treasury for the loss resulting from these grants, the price of lands situated within the land-grant belts was advanced to two dollars and fifty cents per acre, practically compelling the purchasers of the even-numbered sections of land, instead of the government, to make the donation to the railroads.
"Designing men soon saw the advantages which the situation offered. They combined with their friends to organize companies for the construction of the land-grant roads, built a small portion of the proposed line, to hold the grant, and then awaited further developments, or rather, the settlement of the country beyond. There are those who believe that the doubling of the price of government land within the belt of the proposed land-grant roads greatly retarded immigration and with it the construction of roads. They hold that, had no grant whatever been made to any railroad company and had equal competition in railroad construction been permitted, the Iowa through lines, instead of following, would have led, the tide of immigration."
Restrictions regarding space, and the further fact that this is to be a county history instead of one devoted to the state of Iowa, precludes the pos- sibility of following the interesting and instructive details of railroad history,
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as so fairly and ably presented by Mr. Larrabee. It would be extremely interesting to present the history of transportation, the building of .turnpikes in early days, the canals of the East and Middle West, the inventions tending to introduce "steam navigation," and some of the minutiae relating to early railroading in Iowa ; but we must be content to give a brief synopsis of a few of the early conditions. as has been the case in speaking of other state insti- tutions. But there is one railroad in which the people of Fayette county have more than a passing interest, in that it furnished us the first outlet to the mar- kets of the world. Reference is here made to the building of the McGregor & Western railroad, which passed through so many "evolutions" that the orig- inal promoters did not recognize it! This company was the successor of the McGregor, St. Peter & Missouri River Railroad Company, which was or- ganized in 1857, and the construction of the road was commenced at Mc- Gregor in that year. Large local subscriptions were taken along the proposed line and every local encouragement possible was given to the enterprise. The company prosecuted the work of grading for a couple of years, when the McGregor, St. Peter & Missouri River Railroad Company was allowed to pass through the process of foreclosure, as was customary with many other roads at that time." The old stock company was completely wiped out and new owners came into possession of the property, reorganizing under the name of the McGregor Western Railway Company. Nearly all the early invest- ments of Iowa people were thus confiscated by the same class of men who now cry out loudly against confiscatory measures." But this and other com- panies failed to build the road until the Legislature had made contracts with, or offered the stimulus of a large land grant, to four different corporations, the last of which was the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Company, who completed, and now operate, the road. The land grant in this case was "every alternate section of land designated by odd numbers for ten sections in width on each side of the proposed road. "Ten years after the construc- tion of this road had commenced at McGregor it had only reached Calmar, in Winneshiek county, and more than twenty years were required, in the desultory manner employed, to build it through as far as Sheldon. It was completed as far as Algona in 1870, and this point remained the western terminus until it passed into the hands of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Company, and was completed by that company as far as Sheldon, in 1878.
While the particular branch of this road now under discussion does not touch any part of Fayette county, it passes within a mile or two of the north- east corner, and is even nearer to the northwest corner of the county. Then it was the first railroad to which our people had easy access, and, though it
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did not greatly stimulate trade in this section, it did improve the McGregor market, to which most of our surplus products were hauled with teams. It was also an earnest as to the possibilities of the future in Fayette county.
There were in Iowa, at the taking of the last state census ( 1905), nine thousand eight hundred miles of railroad, with an average assessed value for the state of five thousand nine hundred and thirty- seven dollars per mile. The gross earnings for the entire railroad systems of the state was five thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight dollars per mile. There are thirty-two corporations, or railroad companies, subject to many changes of names, hence a list of names for this year would be incorrect for another period.
COAL OUTPUT.
There were six million, five hundred and seven thousand, six hundred and fifty-five short tons of coal produced in 1904-the latest official report-from twenty-two counties in the south-central and southwestern portions of the state. Monroe county occupies first place in the production of this staple, the output for that county being two million and sixty-one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-seven tons in 1904.
GYPSUM.
Though Iowa occupies third place in the production of this commodity, Michigan and New York alone exceeding it in the amount produced, yet the production is confined almost exclusively to Webster county. The value of the product for 1904 was four hundred and sixty-nine thousand, four hundred and thirty-two dollars.
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.
This organization was effected in the spring of 1854 by the election of Hon. Thomas Claggett, of Keokuk, president, and the selection of three directors from each county that then had a local agricultural society in oper- ation.
In the fall of 1854 the society held its first annual fair, in the town of Fairfield, Jefferson county. From that day until the present the State Agri- cultural Society has been successful. It is fostered by the state, and receives an annuity of one thousand dollars to aid in operating expenses, the balance of such funds being contributed in entrance fees, the sale of privileges, etc.
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The annual election of officers and directors is provided for by law, and occurs on the second Wednesday of each year at the capital of the state. Re- ports of the proceedings of the society are required by law to be published each year, and the secretary of state has charge of the distribution. The board of directors are also required to make an annual report to the governor of the state, and otherwise conduce to state supervision.
IOWA CHILDREN'S HOME ASSOCIATION.
This organization, brought into existence within comparatively recent years, is also fostered by the state, though the expenses of operation are mostly paid by private contributions. Through the efforts of philanthropic men and women in every section of the state, much good has resulted in re- lieving the wants of homeless children and placing them in proper homes for their training and education.
POPULATION.
According to the latest state census (1905), the population of Iowa is 2,210,050, which represents a decrease of .9 per cent since 1900. With this single exception, there has been a gradual increase in population at each census-taking the period from 1838, when the population was 22,859, to the present time.
Of the present residents of the state, there are 749,496 persons of school age, i. e., between the ages of five and twenty-one years. These include, col- ored, 4,318; foreign-born, 16,430; foreign parents, 259,509, and 469,239 have native parents.
In 1905 there were 460,840 men subject to military duty, i. e., able- bodied between the age of eighteen and forty-four years. Of these, 4,046 are colored and 66,205 are foreign born. Over seventy-one per cent. of the total population of Iowa are native born, the number being 1,379,981. Illinois contributed the greatest number of present inhabitants born outside of Iowa, or over seven per cent., while Ohio is second, with nearly four per cent., and New York and Pennsylvania each contributed a little over two per cent.
IOWA'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR.
From a population of less than seven hundred thousand, she furnished forty-seven regiments of infantry, nine of cavalry and four batteries of ar- tillery, besides numerous enlistments in the regular army and navy, and in
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organizations from other states. One pioneer of Fayette county, and who is now living here, enlisted in the Fifth California, and probably others were equally as zealous and disinterested in giving prompt response to the coun- try's call, regardless of where the credit for enlisting was placed. No state in the Union furnished as great a percentage of population for the preserva- tion of the Union as did "Peerless Iowa." Her muster-rolls included almost eighty thousand names.
In commemoration of the heroic deeds of her soldiers on the battle-fields of the South, the state has during the last ten years appropriated a quarter of a million dollars to the building of monuments at Shiloh, Vicksburg. An- dersonville and Chattanooga. These monuments were dedicated by the Gov- ernor in November, 1906.
Of this vast army enlisting from the state in the sixties, but ten thousand, four hundred and eighty-eight are now living within its boundaries, though some have removed to other localities, but the casualties of war and the ravages of time are responsible for almost the entire shrinkage. There are twenty-five thousand, five hundred and sixty-nine veterans of the Civil war now living in Iowa, many of whom became residents of the state under the liberal homestead laws extended to them soon after the close of hostilities.
But enlistments, alone, did not determine the extent of Iowa's patriotism, as will be told more fully in the department devoted to county history. The sudden, though not unexpected, declaration of war, found the national gov- ernment, as well as the states, wholly unprepared for an insurrection of such magnitude. The enlistment of men was the least part of the trouble. Arms and military equipments had been largely appropriated to the use of the or- ganizing Confederates, whose leaders were in position to devastate the coun- try before leaving their seats in Congress, in diplomatic circles or in the United States army. The national treasury was also depleted through the same agency, and we found ourselves on the verge of a great war, confront- ing an enemy already organized and equipped, without the necessary means of arming and uniforming a single division.
In this dilemma, the state was authorized at a special session of the Leg- islature, convened May 15, 1861, to secure a loan of eight hundred thousand dollars to meet the extraordinary emergency. Previous to this authorization, however, the First Regiment had been clothed with extemporized "uniforms" of all colors, shapes and materials, mostly the result of the volunteer labors of the loyal women in the towns near the regimental rendezvous. The same was done, in part, for the Second Infantry, but the completion of their outfit was forestalled by the assumption of authority by the state and the means secured through the loan.
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Ex-Governor Samuel Merrill, then of McGregor, at once took a contract to supply three regiments with complete outfits of clothing, agreeing to ac- cept, in payment, state bonds at par. The terms of this contract were com- plied with to the letter and within one month a considerable portion of the clothing was delivered from the manufacturers in Boston to the rendezvous at Keokuk, and the remainder was forthcoming within a few days. But the color was gray, and the Confederates were uniforming with that color! The war department had decided upon blue as the uniform color for the national troops. Other states had sent forward troops uniformed in gray, hence the uniforms were condemned by the war department, and this involved much apparently needless expense, though the reader will readily recognize the con- fusion and danger arising from two hostile armies meeting in deadly conflict when clothed in the same colors, and but little difference in their respective flags. The state of Iowa was reimbursed, in later years, for the cost of these uniforms and other irregular war expenses.
The loyal women, all over the state, at once took in hand the care of the families of soldiers at the front, and organizations were effected in every county for the collection of funds and the distribution of necessaries among the indigent families. Nor were the women alone in this loyal and philan- thropic work, but the non-combatants at home were equally zealous in raising funds for soldiers' families. Parties of "lint-scrapers" were held weekly, in almost every neighborhood, the purpose being to prepare hospital supplies to be sent to the hospitals where sick and wounded soldiers were cared for, and many a patient has been made happy by the timely arrival of a box of palatable "goodies" from the hands of those he loved.
The United States Christian Commission was an early organization for promoting the spiritual, as well as the temporal, comfort of disabled soldiers in the field. Millions of dollars were collected and dispensed through this one agency, and no doubt it was instrumental in saving many lives. The Sanitary Commission was another very useful and effective agency, both in camp and about the general hospitals, their mission being, especially, to look after sanitary or "health" conditions among the soldiers, either sick or well. The work of these beneficent organizations was carried on without a dollar of expense to the general government, and few of those engaged in it, except nurses, ever received any money recompense for their services. But the great heart of the nation was enlisted in a common cause, and it is a pleasure to all survivors of the contest to know that the efforts at the front were so ably seconded by those who could not share in the glories of the battle-field.
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But the culmination of all our military glory comes from the knowledge that our services, after the lapse of nearly half a century, are still shown tangible appreciation by the nation we served. No nation on the globe has ever been more liberal in pensioning its soldiers and their dependents than the United States. While this is true of the general government, the states, not to be outdone in their devotion and loyalty to the veterans, have, without a single exception, we believe, erected homes to care for those dependent upon their own efforts, in order that they may be nearer to their friends than in the National Homes, of which there are enough to supply all demands. The state has generously remitted the taxes of soldiers, within certain limits, and the "poor-house" can no longer be a menace to the over-sensitive but in- digent veteran.
Iowa did not pay any bounties for enlistments, though toward the close of the war small bounties were paid by some cities and counties.
In response to the call of July 18, 1864, a draft was made in Iowa, not because she was behind in her quota of men, but because of the necessities of the government, which, for the time being, changed the apportionment in this and other states. There were one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-seven men raised by the draft in 1864. One regiment of three-months' men and four regiments and one battalion of infantry composed of one-hundred-days' men, comprised the irregular, or short-term enlistments from the state. Some five thousand men, at times of threatened invasions or border troubles, served under irregular enlistments or as emergency militia. Nearly eight thousand men re-enlisted in the field, thus rounding out a term of about four years in actual service. With the exceptions here enumerated, the term of service was three years, but the war was brought to an end before the latest enlisted men had served out the full term for which they enlisted.
Two Iowa cavalry regiments served the entire three years on the Western plains, where they confronted hostile Indians from 1863 to 1866. Some of these companies were among the last to return to their homes.
Upon final settlement after the restoration of peace, it was found that Iowa's claims against the federal government were fully equal to the amount of her bonds, issued and sold during the war to provide the means for raising and equipping her troops sent to the field and to meet the inevitable demands upon her treasury in consequence of the war. This is a record of which but few of the older and wealthier states can boast, since most of them had heavy war debts for many years after the close of hostilities.
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