History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 21

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 948

USA > Illinois > Union County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 21
USA > Illinois > Pulaski County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 21
USA > Illinois > Alexander County > History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois > Part 21

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Was there a young city on the continent with an equal extent of country tributary to the coming commercial men of Cairo? Here

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was all Southern Illinois, nearly all of Ken- tucky, and all South and a large portion of Eastern Missouri, all of Arkansas, West Ten- nessee, Texas and Louisiana, and, in fact, south to the gulf and southeast to the Pa- cific Ocean. that would come to the Cairo merchant for their supplies and trade. In the North there was no rival that might at all compete with Cairo until Chicago was reached, and then Cincinnati in the north- east and St. Louis in the northwest. The flour, corn, pork, beef, the products of the dairy, all north of Cairo, from the Allegha- nies to the Rockies, should come to Cairo for their natural exchanges, for the cotton, sugar, tobacco and rice of the South. This was the natural order of things, and only the most untoward events could abrogate this law of God.

The South was rich and prosperous, and only cared to exchange her gold for every- thing that was produced north of Cairo. The North had emerged from the gloom of bank- ruptcy, and her agriculture and manufact- ories were beginning to multiply and grow to the amazement of mankind. The people looking to the South for their markets and the South looking to the North for her sup- plies and from Maine to the Rio Grande, from Oregon to Florida, was peace, plenty, prosperity, happiness. Commerce created the demand for a line of steamers from Cairo to New Orleans, and, like all the imperious de- mands of trade, that want was supplied, and, commencing, two of the largest steam- boats were loaded weekly in Cairo for New Orleans, and in the early part of 1861, tri weekly steamers were loaded in the same trade. Here was the commencement of what was to be, had it not been interrupted, the natural growth of an incomparable trade and exchanges. The Ohio boats and the Upper Mississippi and Missouri River boats would

have been content to confine their trade to their separate rivers. The growth of this would have brought the railroads from the East and the West, radiating from Cairo like a golden halo, and hence the true and natural development of the Mississippi Val- ley would have gone on and on, and the West would have focused about Cairo. This obedience to the natural laws would have been as beneficial to the larger portions of this great valley as to Cairo. What a won- derful world we would have had here ere this, had this commencement been peacefully followed out! Ruthless, indeed, was the hand that struck down this bright hope of the human race, and the memory of the au- thors of such ruin deserve eternal execration. But war, bloody, brutal war, was precipitat- ed upon the country, and the North and the South, instead of giving and receiving the blessing of peace and trade, stopped the flow of kindness, brotherly love. rich abundance and happiness, and turned upon each other like enraged beasts, and bartered, exchanged and trafficked in blood and death. and the infant life of such fair promises was crushed out under the heel of war and the skeleton of desolation and unutterable woe took its seat in every family circle in the South. And the war made millionaires in the North who begin to bud in the fat army contracts that were shoveled out to the fortunate, to those who bribed their way to colossal fortunes. The South was wounded, maimed, killed and almost perpetually ruined. The North grew rich, demoralized, triumphant, fierce and inap- peasable, and deep beneath the pomp and show of preternatural glitter and wealth, was, in fact, but little better off from the in- curable poison and pangs of real suffering than was the South.

But the appalling revolution in the Mis- sissippi country was complete. The com-

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manding avenues of trade, commerce and travel had been as completely changed as could have resulted from a change of the topography of the whole country. The dreadful blow fell the heaviest upon South- ern Illinois, Cairo and the Lower Mississippi River. At first when Cairo was made an armed fortification and the river blockaded, the Illinois Central Railroad, no longer taxed to its utmost capacity, carrying the fruits of industry and peace, was merely an avenue for the transporation of armies and war sup- plies. Then the town was paralyzed and the whole community was thrown out of employment. After a season, the paymaster came, and he began to scatter money in im- mense amounts among the soldiers. Then what was called business again came into life and the town was converted into a busy sut- ler's tent; the camp-followers flooded the place, the floating population came, the vile with the good, tent theaters, dives and hells on earth held high carnival by day and by night. The contractor, the soldier, the spec- ulator, the gambler, the thief, the highway robber -- the vicious of every sex, age and condition, jostled each other in the street throngs, and plied their vocations defiantly. And the fools in their heart said " the war has helped, not hurt, Cairo." They saw the flow of cheap money, and they shut their eyes to the avalanche of demoralization. Eventually, as the war progressed, the river was opened from Cairo to New Orleans. Once more Union armies with bristling forts com- manded the river at all the towns and cities, and the rebel flying batteries, slipping in between the fortified points at every oppor- tunity and firing upon helpless steamers, and doing small damage as a rule. The railroads in the South were all destroyed, and the demands for transportation for the army, as well as for a country stripped bare

by war, were immense, and at once steamboat stock became the most desirable property. The northern docks and ways were put to work and the finest and largest boats that had ever plied the waters were pushed to completion, and all this was grists to Cairo's mill. To such an extraordinary extent did this necessity push the steamboat business, that for one year the daily average of boats at the Cairo wharf reached thirty-five, out- side of the local packets that made daily trips or more. This was much the condi- tion of affairs all over the North; million- aires sprung into existence, and demoraliza- tion fed upon the vitals of the country like a secret consuming fire.

The war was fought and ended, and spec- ulation and peculation took its place, until it became a venial misdemeanor to be laughed at as a joke to speculate in the coffins, grave-stones and decaying bodies of the dead soldiers, and in the breathing bodies of their living families The rich grew richer, the poor poorer, and the cheap money and the calloused con- sciences of the nation pursued their reckless course of evil. The South lay a prostrate people, without money, without credit, and often without food; there Government bayo- nets and negroes were supreme, and the voice of the people was not the voice of God. The North was bloated with Government bonds at thirty-five cents on the dollar, and a cheap money that flowed through the hands of the rich as from a ceaseless fountain. There being no longer fat war contracts, they en- tered upon still fatter Government railroad contracts-robbing the Government of its credit, bonds and lands, in amounts wholly incomprehensible. And the Northern cities that were in this current-a current largely changed from North to South to the East and West, grew and spread and gathered mighty powers, and threw out the strong arm of

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railroads, and in a day became wonderful and magnificent cities.

This is the faintest outline shadow over which men grew wild, joyous and gleesome, and sang their pæans and shouted their ac- claims, and pronounced the saddest page in the book of time, a blessed era of unmixed joy, so good that it beatified the deaths of the millions who perished in the war and the many more than millions who worse than perished.

This sporadic prosperity of all lines of business in Cairo continued for quite three years after the close of the war; but this was the settling of the muddied waters, and at the beginning of the year 1869, it had about all passed away and the railroad and river business was at its ebb. Business was largely again, as at the commencement of the war, to be re-organized and started in accord with the new surroundings. The population of the town slowly decreased, and the crush for houses, both business and private, had changed to occasional empty ones, and unconsciously Cairo began to get ready for the unparalleled panic and bank- ruptcy that was fast coming to the country- settling day, merely, for the carnival decade; when business men of the country cried out for a bankrupt law, by which they could pay their debts with an oath or two, and the threshold of these courts presented the mar- velous spectacle of a rush and crush of busi- ness men to get to the ear of the court first, that perhaps exceeded anything the world ever saw. And an army of a million tramps marched over all the country, devouring the people's substance and making no more com- pensation therefor than do the devastating grasshoppers. Then Cairo suffered only in common with pretty much all the country, but she was less prepared than a few other places, particularly her rivals that had stolen

the golden-egged goose during the war, and therefore, instead of merely standing still during these long, painful years, she lost much that it took years to replace. Some of the effects of the war may be understood better when it is stated that M. B. Harrell estimated, in the year 1864, that there were 12,000 people in the city. When the town emerged from the panic, the sanguine only claimed a population of 6,000, and it is very doubtful if there were more than 4,000 in- habitants, if the negro population had been excluded from the estimate. The war found Cairo with a population of 5,000 souls and a solid growth, business and prospects that could not be mistaken. The war and the panic left her with about the same popula- tion, and all business demoralized and pros- trated. The fifteen years had witnessed her gilded but unsubstantial zenith and her dreary nadir. The descent was great, but it was best that solid bottom should be reached, severe as the trial was, before stopping. In 1879, after people had been long enough on " bed rock " to fully realize the situation of affairs, there started up, once more, a day of prosperity for the city. Not a spasmodic jump that makes men dizzy and sets the peo- ple wild, but a steady, healthy growth that is always fair and full of promise. A healthy business set in; new enterprises were started, and the gradual and permanent increase of citizenship was soon inaugurated; real es- tate, while it rose in price but little, yet it found a market, and those generally wanting to sell could easily find a cash customer. And this cheerful state of affairs has continued to this hour, and from this last and really se- verest of Cairo's ordeals has come the fol- lowing permanent and substantial improve- ments:

The Elevator .- And since this real revival, there has come to the place many marked

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and valuable improvements, among which we may enumerate the elevator, built by the Il- linois Central road. There is no finer struct- ure of the kind in the country, and it will long stand upon the bank of the river as a conspicuous monument to Cairo's commerce. It has a capacity of 800,000 bushels and is so constructed that additional buildings, doubling its present capacity,may at any time be added. It has every modern improve- ment and the latest appliances for its pur poses, and cost about $300,000. The men who projected this magnificent structure are in a position to know the wants of the local- ity, and they were not anticipating the prob- abilities of years, but answering the call of the present.

The Singer Sewing Machine Company- Have put up extensive works and are now en- gaged in adding still more and greater im- provements. The purpose here is the con- struction of cabinets for its machines. Its extensive works at South Bend, Ind., had become insufficient for its purposes, and an agent was sent out to select a new location. After a careful examination of numerous points in the Southwest, Cairo was found to possess greatly superior advantages over all other points. Among the advantages of the place are:

1st. Lumber can be rafted to the door of the factory via the Tennessee, Cumberland, Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and their tributaries at a saving of about $10 per thousand feet over present cost, of freight to South Bend.

2d. Some of the most important centers of the Singer Company's trade, such as St. Louis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Cincin- nati, Pittsburgh and other points, can receive finished work by river from Cairo. The Elizabethport factory, which takes one-quar- ter of the product of the South Bend works,

can be supplied by river to Pittsburgh, thence by rail into the company's yards at Eliza- bethport. Boston, Philadelphia and other eastern depots can be supplied by the same route, or by steamer via New Orleans.

3d. Eight railroads enter at Cairo diverg- ing east, south and west, securing additional facilities for obtaining lumber and other supplies at low rates, besides giving the city unusual advantages as a distributing point. If desired, finished work can be shipped East, all rail, at much lower rates than from South Bend, owing to the competition in rail freights. The immense quantity of hardware and trim- mings required by the Singer Company can be laid down in Cairo from the east cheaper than in South Bend. Last but not least, the enormous quantity of cabinet work demanded by the European trade can be shipped by water via New Orleans, and laid down at the company's Glasgow factory-at which all machines for the European trade are made- as cheap as they can now be sent from South Bend to the American coast.

Immense tracts of hardwood timber sur- round the city in all directions, and the Sin- ger Company has already secured control of the timber on a tract of eighteen square miles, all of which can be delivered by wagon at the works-the longest haul not exceeding six miles.

The Singer factory have secured a factory site of twenty-four acres, including a valua- ble river front-and is one of five corporations owning all the river front surrounding Cairo on both rivers-and has now one brick build- ing 80x65, three stories, another 100x70, another 50x48. These are to be used only for cutting their lumber and gluing it into form, the motive power being a double- cylinder engine and four Babcock & Wilcox sectional boilers of 75-horse-power each.

The cabinet works proper when completed

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will consist of five buildings, each 60x500 feet three stories high, with ample space be- tween for protection, and connected, at each story self-supporting ridges; all elevators and stair cases will be on the outside of the buildings which will be divided by fire walls every hundred feet. The motive power of this immense bee-hive of industry will be supplied by eight Babcock & Wilcox boilers of 180-horse-power capacity each, and an 800- horse-power engine. There will be twelve dry kilns, each holding 50,000 feet of lum- ber. Employment will be given to 1,000 hands.

Halliday House .- This surpasses a hotel in all the meaning of that word as applied to small cities. It is simply a magnificent hostelry that is one of Cairo's institutions. It is understood by those who have not vis- ited it, that it is the old St. Charles Hotel repaired and fixed up in regal style. It is much more than this; it is a new hotel,elegant, substantial, with a complement of every modern perfection of the most elegant hotels in even the largest cities of the country. More massive houses have been built, and that, perhaps, had more expensive outside ornamentation or inside filagree work, but none more solid and wholly comfortable than this, and this applies as well to the internal ap- pliances and the furnishing as well as to the main building. And we have no hesitation in pronouncing the dining room, with its three entire sides lit up by spacious windows for light and ventilation, as the most complete and cozy that we ever sat down to in a hotel.

The Halliday House stands where the St. Charles stood, and that is about all the connec- tion between them. The present proprietor, Mı. Parker, whose life work and study has been how to keep the finest hotel, spent a long time traveling through the different cities of the country, examining the best

hostelries and noting every valuable late im- provement or invention in the same, and when he had obtained all possible informa- tion in this line the work on the Halliday House was commenced, and each and every improvement noted was added without regard to labor or expense, and when all was fin- ished, the doors were thrown open to the public in the full conviction that he had the completest, if not the largest hotel in the world.

A New Enterprise .- Taking front rank among the business enterprises of the city of Cairo are the market gardening and floral interests of Mr. G. Des Rocher. This gen- tleman came to the vicinity of Cairo in 1872, and on a limited scale, having no capital, began what has since developed into a lucra- tive and very attractive business. Two years later, he leased forty acres of land of the Cairo City Property Company, and since that date he has constantly increased his facilites for carrying on his immense enterprise. His first impulse was to supply the city demand for garden vegetables, but finding that it was insufficient to his trade, he turned his attention to Chicago shipment, and has shipped as much as two car loads of vege- tables in a day. He gives employment to a large force of hands of the laboring class annually, distributing among this class about $4,000 of Chicago's money, which fact alone merits the encouragement of every thinking mind in Cairo.

Not only has he sought to supply the exist- ing wants of the people, but knowing well the science of business, has sought to create a want, that he might supply it. The better to accomplish this desire, he added a floral department to his business, which, while producing an income, goes far toward culti- vating a taste for the beautiful in nature, offering a resort alike to the young and old,

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where the mind of the matured, laden with business cares, or fraught with the sorrows of life, as well as the minds of the young, occupied with the lighter and more trivial things, are transported from the beauties of nature up to nature's God. He has six green- houses, having an aggregate of 6,000 square feet of glass surface; these houses, as well as his extensive hot-houses, are supplied with a complete system of cisterns and under- ground piping, the whole furnished with water from a drive well centrally located. A matter in connection with his business, worthy of the attention of the agriculturist, is his system of converting every particle of waste vegetable growth into a valuable fertil- izing medium.

While his enterprise is not a railroad or a national bank, it is one that requires a bus- iness energy, a vast amount of actual toil, and is an important factor in the intricate list of Cairo's financial resources for which we think words of commendation are due to Mr. Des Rocher.

Cotton Oil Mill .-- These extensive works found Cairo the best point in the South or West for the construction of a mill for the production of this oil, that is destined soon to be one of the great industries of the world. American invention has pried out the fact that from the cotton seed-a mere waste heretofore-can be made one of the very fin- est oils in the world.

Ice Factory .- This splendid factory was constructed by an incorporated company, the leading members of which are Charles Gal- ligher, George E. O'hara and Frank L. Gal- igher. The cost of the construction and fixtures was $50,000, and has a capacity of fifty tons a day. Although just started, it Las revolutionized the ice trade here and well may it have done this so readily, as its work shows for itself, as they make ice wholly

from distilled water and its superiority over the natural production is so plain and palpa- ble that there can be no comparison between them.

Flouring Mills .-- There are two, Galigher's and Halliday's. Mr. Galigher's is the older of the two, and yet it is rather a modern insti- tution, and most extensive and perfect, with all modern improvements. The Halliday Mill has just been overhauled, enlarged and sup- plied with all the latest roller processes. The extent of this improvement may be inferred when we state they were put in at an expense of $40,000, and has a capacity of 600 bar- rels a day.

Halliday's Saw Mill is another late and immense Cairo improvement, said by com- petent judges to be the completest thing of its kind in the world, and in this connection we may mention Halliday's coal dump -- Maj. Halliday's own invention-as the most complete and perfect thing of the kind in the country.

Opera House .- The old Athenaeum,a frame, has been torn away, and one of the neatest and coziest little theaters in the country has taken its place. It is the pride of the peo- ple and the admiration of the actors who have visited it.

Commission Houses .- The extensive com- mission houses of Halliday Bros., How Bros., J. M. Philips & Co., Thistlewood & Co., and the great amount of business transacted by each, shows that with the many other of the old and solid pioneer commission mer- chants here, Cairo is becoming a very impor- tant shipping point again.

The patent brick machine of McClure & Coleman, together with the very large yard of Mr. Jacob Klein, sufficiently evidences the fact that such building material in Cairo finds an extensive market.

No less than six first-class railroads have

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come to Cairo since 1878. A splendid union depot has been constructed and here are ac- commodated the Wabash, the St. Louis & Cairo, the Mobile & Ohio, the Iron Mountain and the Texas & St. Louis. The Mobile & Ohio Railroad has erected at the foot of Eighth street, a local freight depot that is a spacious and elegant building. The Alex- ander County Bank, in its first-class bank building, is also one of Cairo's very substan- tial and solid institutions.

Improvements that may be considered as now started and on their way, and that are certain to be completed at an early day are, among many others, the Cairo Public Li- brary, to be known as the Safford Memorial Hall, the grounds of which are on Washing- ton and Seventeenth streets. This is due, we believe, entirely to Mrs. A. B. Safford, and when completed will give Cairo a building that will stand appropriately to the memory of her husband, A. B. Safford, deceased. The wholesale hardware houses, including about everything made of iron, are Mr. Bross' and Mr. Woodward's; and in drugs the house of Barclay Bros., and that of Paul G. Schuh. There are four wholesale dry goods houses, the heaviest of which are Goldstein & Rosen- water, and that of C. R. Stewart, the New York store, Patier proprietor, although a very young house in business, has already sold at wholesale $250,000 worth of goods in a year. The beer bottling, soda and seltzer and min- eral trade has grown to immense proportions here recently. Mr. A. Lohr and Henry Brenhan each have extensive concerns, and a wide market to supply in this and adjoining States. Mr. John Sproat carries on the same, and he adds to this the trade in fresh butter, eggs and vegetables. He loads his own cars and sends them to New Orleans, Mobile and other Southern cities, the seal of the car only broken when it arrives at its

final destination. No less than three planing mills are busy preparing the lumber for the carpenters of Cairo and the surrounding country, to wit, that of Lancaster & Rice, Mr. Walters and Mr. Trigg. Mr. Eichohff's furniture factory and wholesale and retail esablishment is an institution worthy the at- tention of house-builders and housekeepers far and wide.

We only claim here to give a few of the leading recent improvements in Cairo. There are many others, all going to show that just now the city is at last beginning to take its proper position as a wholesale manufactur- ing emporium-that it has facilities for bringing together the raw material and the factory and the markets where the manufact- ured goods are to be sold, that is possessed by few places in the West. Think of it! here are over thirty thousand miles of tribu- tary shores upon our navigable rivers, and already eight railroads are built, with Cairo as the terminus of the majority of them, and all this great railroad development is of a very recent date. In a very short time it must become as important a railroad point as it has always been in point of navigable waters. Soon it will possess the shortest route to the Atlantic seaboard over the Ches- apeake & Ohio Railroad, this road forming one continuous line as soon as a small gap is completed, and on which the work is being pushed. In a few months, it will communi- cate direct with the City of Mexico over a direct line of one continuous railroad from Cairo to that city. A railroad from here running a little east of north, is under con- struction, connecting Cairo with the Toledo, Cincinnati & St. Louis Narrow Guage Rail- road, and this will give it still another di- rect New York connection in addition to the several now possessed.

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History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois, Part 21

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co. Number of Pages: 948

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. ; O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 948