USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 35
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The central part of the state was almost equally fortunate in its new connections. The Toledo, Wabash, and Western was extended across Pike county to Hannibal, Missouri; and the St. Louis, Jacksonville, and Chicago between Blooming- ton and St. Louis, was opened for business in January, 1868, under a lease to the Chicago and Alton railroad. In 1869 the Indianapolis, Bloomington, and Western opened between Pekin and Danville. The western part of the state was traversed lengthwise by the Rockford, Rock Island, and St. Louis rail- road which was finished in 1869 and soon became part of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, a vast railroad combina- tion which was steadily absorbing the roads of western Illinois. These larger systems built many branch lines most of which fell within the central tiers of counties. In many instances local connections were incorporated in the larger systems.
1+ Cairo Evening Bulletin, June 23, 1869; Ottawa Weekly Republican, July 8, 1869; Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1869.
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By 1869 the mileage of Illinois roads had increased to 4,031 and Illinois remained the second railroad state in the union. 15
One of the most significant developments of the decade was the building of the Pacific railroad. Illinoisians had always had a special interest in a trans-Atlantic rail line, especially a central route. This had been a leading factor in Douglas' eagerness to secure the organization of the territory of Ne- braska in 1854; his opponents, moreover, had used a strong Pacific railroad plank in constructing the platform of the new republican party. When the Civil War created a new military demand, congress gave its approval to the undertaking and the president decided in favor of a Chicago connection. The effect upon such lines as the Chicago and Rock Island and the Galena and Chicago was immediate; the stock of the former rose twenty points in a few weeks. The Northwestern rail- way company, using the old Galena and Chicago air line to the Iowa boundary, was the first to complete an Omaha connec- tion. In 1868, the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific under- took to build an extension of its line to Council Bluffs. At once Chicago began to tap the trade of the far west and in 1869, when the trans-Atlantic route was completed, an excur- sion of business men left Chicago for San Francisco to examine into the possibilities of commercial relations with the Pacific coast and the orient.16
Banking and currency problems divided with transportation the responsibility for clearing the way for the industrial pros- perity of Illinois. The banks had just completed their recov- ery from the panic of 1857 when the sectional crisis precipi- tated by Lincoln's election brought the threat of financial chaos. Since the circulation of the state banks was mainly predicated upon southern securities, the banking interests at first reacted very conservatively and even recommended sacri- fices of principle to pacify the south. The free banking system
15 Poor's Manual, xliv-xlv. The Rushville Times, June 4, 1870, estimated the Illinois mileage at 5,200.
16 Ottawa Free Trader, January 9, 1863, June 26, 1866; Chicago Tribune, October 11, 1866, July 1, 1869; James H. Bowen et al. to Trumbull, June 14, 1869, Trumbull manuscripts. The Chicago Board of Trade formally indorsed a Northern Pacific railroad from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. Chicago Evening Journal, April 23, 1866.
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had created a machine for the issue of a circulating medium which was now endangered by the decline of southern securities. The banking commissioners in November, 1860, called for more securities from twenty-two banks, but before they were due the rapid drop of southern stocks had involved all but the fourteen or fifteen banks that had deposited northern state bonds.17 Only the notes of these banks remained in circula- tion; the other paper was driven out and the auditor retired and destroyed the issues presented for redemption. Some specie, too, was forced out of its hiding places, and some for- eign issues remained in the field, although their circulation was attacked.
The general assembly attempted to adjust the banking system to the new conditions under the banking amendment of February 14, 1861. This law provided for a central re- demption system and quarterly reports, and restricted securities for deposits to United States and Illinois stocks. In conse- quence by the end of the year, Illinois bonds constituted the vast bulk of the holdings of the auditor. On the whole, how- ever, this law failed to receive a fair trial. The large volume of federal greenbacks together with the later issues of national bank notes came to monopolize the field. By 1865 the office of bank commissioner was abolished and only $200,000 in state bank paper was circulated by twenty-three banks. On August 1, 1866, the federal tax on state bank notes succeeded in driving from circulation most of what remained. In 1869 the auditor's report showed only $531 in outstanding bank notes.18
In this way a system designed during the fifties to furnish Illinois with a supply of local bank notes collapsed under the double strain of the break with the south and of the compe- tition with the new currency issues of the federal government. The national banking system received a hearty welcome from the business men of the state, and state banks learned to adjust themselves to the necessity of confining their operations to the
17 Illinois State Register, November 16, 1860; Chicago Tribune, November 20, 1860; Rockford Republican, November 22, 1860; Joliet Signal, November 27, 1860; Central Illinois Gazette, November 28, 1860.
18 Reports General Assembly, 1867, 1 : 115; 1869, 1: 324; I Laws of 1861, P. 39 ff.
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receiving and transmitting of money and to a loan and discount business.
In the spring of 1862 the stream of greenbacks or federal legal tender notes began to flow into Illinois. There was little realization, however, on the part of citizens as to the signifi- cance of this influx. The previous winter had been extremely dull, the bottom had dropped out of the market. Now prices pushed up, trade became brisk, and prosperity seemed to pre- vail. A heavy demand was current for small change to which the government responded by authorizing the issue of a " frac- tional postage currency." Its distribution was managed ineffi- ciently, however, and bankers found it necessary to secure consignments through senatorial intervention.19 The govern- ment outlawed the use of tokens and checks which business houses issued to furnish a currency of small denominations. With the steady depreciation of the greenback, gold and silver disappeared from circulation and high prices began to prevail. For a time, however, the farmer complained of the great dis- parity between the price of his produce and the manufactured articles that he had to secure by purchase; the eastern money changers seemed to be deriving the peculiar advantages from these developments. Two years later, however, wheat was well over $2.00 with other agricultural products in proportion, a partial compensation for the fact that gold was approaching the 250 mark.20 With the victories that closed the war the greenback recovered considerably in value, but prices remained ruinously high. The advocates of contraction placed the blame on the superabundance of money; yet in 1867 dull times and lower prices set in again without any explanation in a reduced supply of money. When contraction was suggested dozens of Chicago business men were found to oppose it. An outcry
went up against heavy taxes. "The honest white men of the country are taxed and retaxed over and over again from the cradle to the grave, and are then taxed one dollar for dying,"
19 E. March to Trumbull, November 28, December 6, 1862, J. Young Scam- mon to Trumbull, December 5, 15, 1862, R. Hinckley to Trumbull, December 13, 1862, Edward Abend to Trumbull, December 24, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts.
20 Ottawa Free Trader, July 2, 1864; Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1864; Joliet Signal, December 16, 1862. The general increase in the cost of living was between two hundred and three hundred per cent.
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complained the Carthage Republican.21 Discrimination against the western agricultural states in internal revenue assessments was claimed at an early day; later when a tax of two dollars on a gallon of whisky threatened to decrease the consumption of grain, a general protest went up. A large body of repub- licans also agreed with the democrats that on the tariff the west was being "consumed by the good of New England & Pennsylvania " and a readjustment seemed essential.22
Then, however, the eastern creditors called up the cur- rency issue in a new form by insisting on the payment of the interest on the federal debt in gold rather than in the legal tender paper. Illinois agriculturalists opposed the idea of special favors for "bloated bond-holders." The democratic party gained strength in 1868 when it seemed that George H. Pendleton would be nominated on his western greenback policy. When, however, he was rejected at New York for a hard money candidate, the issue was postponed to a later period in national politics.
Industrially, Illinois on the eve of the Civil War showed many frontier survivals; another decade, however, worked out a revolution that brought the state to the threshold of modern industrialism. The extended transportation system was one of the greatest factors in stimulating this progress ; the other factors proceeded from the war itself. The war, in bringing high prices for grain and livestock, in bestowing protective duties that far surpassed the rosiest dreams of infant industry, gave a remarkable impetus to manufacturing indus- tries. Cook county in 1860 had only 469 manufactories; an- other decade and this number had more than tripled.23 In the same period the manufacturing establishments of the state had increased from 4,268 to 12,597 with the value of manu-
21 Carthage Republican, June 27, 1867; E. W. Blatchford to Trumbull, February 27, 1867, Trumbull manuscripts; Aurora Beacon, February 7, 1867; Cairo Democrat, May 25, 1865, May 23, August 9, 1867; Illinois Democrat, December 21, 1867; Chicago Times, June 24, 1865; Illinois State Journal, July 24, 1865. Board in Chicago was ten to fifteen dollars per week.
22 Chicago Times, April 23, 1864; Illinois State Register, April 28, 1866; Chicago Tribune, August 1, 1867, March 27, June 11, 1868; E. Peck to Trum- bull, April 24, 1866, C. H. Ray to Trumbull, February 2, 1866, Trumbull manuscripts.
23 Schoff, Industrial Interests of Chicago; Chamberlin, Chicago and Its Suburbs, 136-137.
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factured products rising from $57,580,886 to $205,620,672. The number of operatives employed in the state increased from 5,593 to 82,979. These figures tell the story of a revolution which, after having broken out in England a century before, had irrepressibly swept on and on until it reached the prairies of Illinois.
The focusing point of the manufactures as well as of the railroads was Cook county. In 1870, although it contained just one-ninth of the establishments in the state, it listed about one-half of the employees; the industries, therefore, were not only more numerous but were organized on a larger scale. Chicago became a center for the manufacture of iron products, which received special protection under the tariff schedules; in 1860 there were 26 iron works in the city which increased in the decade to over a hundred, including about one-quarter of the capital invested in manufacturing. The large output of farm implements and machinery reflected the demand of the agricultural population of the northwest; Peter Schuttler's wagon manufactory, established in 1843, was known from Texas to Oregon, and McCormick's reaper works which were moved to Chicago in 1847 supplied a wide demand among west- ern farmers. A factory started by Furst and Bradley in 1851 for the production of plows and other farm machinery was doing a thriving business before 1860.24 Wood works to supply the building trades were second in importance followed by combined wood and iron establishments. Brick, stone, metal, and terra cotta works, together with leather plants, and textile factories were important in the industrial development of the city.
The milling of flour and grist was one manufacturing field that Chicago was gradually yielding to the smaller cities and towns of the state. In this field as well as in some of the other fundamental needs of farming communities, no serious attempt was made at large scale production; but the smaller centers were left both to supply the local demand and to export the surplus.
Every population center was ambitious to share in the new prosperity. Illinois claimed certain peculiar advantages for 24 Western Manufacturer, May supplement, 1874.
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manufacturing-nearness to the supply of foodstuffs, of raw material for the factories, and of coal for steam power; the cheapness of these commodities tended to offset the lower rates for capital and labor that prevailed in the east. Every city talked of its available coal deposits, its water power, or other advantages; in Peoria and elsewhere business organizations to promote their respective communities soon began to appear. A committee of Bloomington citizens studied the manufactur- ing towns of Ohio and pointed out ways and means to secure the same advantages to their own town; communi- ties competed with each other in offers to secure new in- dustries. 25
Quincy, the second city in the state, specialized in stove foundries ; during the war an important tobacco industry devel- oped there by transfer from Missouri.26 Peoria's prosperity was well grounded upon the distillery business; it had four distilleries in 1856, six in 1859, and nine in 1873. By 1871, moreover, it had two corn planter factories, two plow and cultivator establishments, and one starch factory.27 Rockford claimed to have a manufacturing output of $3,000,000 per year. The other towns of 5,000 or over usually had grist and saw mills, a foundry and machine shop, a woolen factory, a wagon or plow factory, and certain more highly specialized establishments.28 Certain communities boasted of rather unique manufacturing lines. The National Watch Company established its factory at Elgin in 1864; five years later the first watch factory at Springfield was established. La Salle had a flourishing zinc works and in 1866 the manufacture of glass was revived there in the only glass factory in the west; soon Ottawa promoters, headed by J. D. Caton, started to raise the
25 At the beginning of the decade republicans advocated a protective tariff to foster manufactures; soon there was a surfeit and even the democrats urged the people to " quit raising corn and go to manufacturing" as " the true remedy for New England robbery." Ottawa Free Trader, October 14, 1865; Carthage Republican, January 18, May 3, 1866; Paxton Record, December 11, 1869; Ottawa Republican, December 15, 1870.
26 Western Agriculturist, 11:6, 10; The City of Quincy, Illinois, 18-19.
27 Western Manufacturer, 9:4; Board of Trade of Peoria, Report, 1873, p. 31; Dwyer, " Manufactures in Illinois," Department of Agriculture of Illinois, Transactions, 9: 87.
28 Over a dozen firms manufactured plows on a large scale. Prairie Farmer, December 10,. 1864.
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stock for a rival glass factory at that place.29 Bloomington was unique in the possession of a melodeon factory.
Under the stimulus of war prices every town of any size made an effort to secure a woolen factory; at the end of the decade the census enumerators found twenty-four wool carding and cloth dressing establishments and eighty-five woolen mills in Illinois, many at obscure points like Dayton, Lacon, Augusta, and Fairbury. They represented an investment of $3,600,000 and employed 3,460 operators, one-fourth of whom were women.30 This incursion into a new field met with limited success : almost all the new establishments were erected after the close of the war, yet before the seventies some of these were compelled to shut down. Cotton manufacturing, another venture that seemed equally promising, collapsed even more promptly; Henry W. Fuller of Chicago headed a concern to erect a factory in that city; in 1865, after two years of preparation, the Chicago Cotton Manufacturing Company secured an act of incorporation only to die a lingering death. The first cotton factory ever set in operation in Illinois was completed at Rockford in the summer of 1867;31 Rockford had the only two establishments of the kind at the end of the decade.
Even these unsuccessful ventures into new fields testified to the industrial revolution. By the method of trial and failure the commonwealth that had in five decades risen from the wil- derness ranked first among the states in its flour and gristmills and in its sirup and molasses factories, second in its manufac tories of agricultural implements, and fourth in the number of establishments for the manufacture of carriages and wagons,
29 Ottawa Free Trader, October 21, 1865, November 2, 1869; La Salle Press clipped in Central Illinois Gazette, December 22, 1865; Illinois State Journal, March 7, 1866.
30 Ibid., March 2, 1866; Central Illinois Gazette, March 3, 1866; Champaign County Union and Gazette, July 21, 1869; Illinois State Agricultural Society, Transactions, 8: 180. The woolgrowers, anxious to maintain the price of their product urged a protective tariff on the raw wool, but at the Cleveland wool tariff convention of 1866 the Illinois delegation recommended that the Illinois legislature pass a bill exempting from taxation all capital invested in woolen and cotton mills. Chicago Tribune, November 16, 27, 1866; Jacksonville Journal, November 19, 1866.
31 Prairie Farmer, January 24, 1863; Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1866; Chicago Evening Journal, February 5, 1866; Rockford Gazette, Decem- ber 31, 1868.
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of saddlery and harness, of tin, copper, and sheet iron, of cooperage, of furniture, and even of millinery.
The Civil War decade also opened up some of the more important mineral wealth of the state-in 1861 the general assembly had passed an act to encourage mining in Illinois.32 The use of coal in locomotives and manufacturing establish- ments caused a new stir in the coal fields. Informed by the state geological survey of 1860 that coal might be had for the digging anywhere in the state from Kane county to Cairo, prospectors appeared in every community to estimate the com- mercial value of the deposits. As a result the number of coal mines increased from 73 to 322 while the coal output of the state increased from 728,400 tons in 1860 to 2,624,163 in 1870.
The most thrilling event in the industrial world was the discovery of petroleum. In the early months of 1865, after important oil strikes at points between Knox, Jackson, and Lawrence counties, the excitement rose to such a pitch that it infected all parts of the state. "Petroleum is a fever, an itch, a mania, a madness with some," declared the Chicago Journal. "The very air is full of oil, the very pavement is slippery with it, as it were. All a man's five senses are assailed, conquered, carried by it. We cannot help seeing it, nor hearing it, nor feeling it, nor tasting, nor smelling it." 33 Little was accom- plished, however, in the way of utilizing commercially this new resource.
One of the difficulties in the way of industrial development was the labor problem. The war had drawn off a large portion of the working population of the state and created a shortage of labor that not only raised wages everywhere but made skilled labor unobtainable for new enterprises. Yet increased wages could not keep pace with the rapidly increased cost of living. By 1864 living expenses had increased from 50 to 300 per cent, while wages had risen only 15 to 100 per cent. The burdens of war, therefore, fell more heavily upon the workers than upon any other class. An effort was made to solve this difficulty by introducing the principle of cooperative buying on
32 1 Laars of 1861, p. 146.
33 Clipped in Belleville Advocate, February 24, 1865
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the English plan; since there was no opportunity, however, to carry it beyond the experimental stage, it could not relieve the general situation.34
The result was a stimulus to organization such as never existed in the history of the state. Before the war organized labor had been represented almost exclusively by German workingmen's associations. German tailors, carpenters, and wagoners associations had been in existence in Chicago for some time and in 1857 the Chicago Arbeiter Verein was organ- ized.35 During that period, however, proximity to cheap lands offered a solution of the economic problem to many a hard pressed worker; this remedy still existed to a limited degree but the worker in a more complex society began to sense his own strength with a growing class consciousness - a conscious- ness that gave birth to the labor movement in Illinois.
In December, 1863, a mass meeting of Chicago working- men representing nearly every field sent resolutions to the striking laborers of New York. Within a few months, in view of increased living expenses, Chicago workers were organ- izing into some twenty trade-unions with a "general trades union " to harmonize their relations.36 With the same process going on in Springfield and the other cities of the state, strikes began to make their appearance in Illinois; March 1, 1864, was significant for the general railroad strike on roads entering Chicago in which the locomotive engineers sought, after having secured a $3.50 wage, to define their week's work in terms of a run of a specified mileage as against six ten-hour work days. The railroads stood their ground, backed by the newspapers, and the engineers one after another returned to their duty. In the same year short strikes took place among the coopers, carpenters, waiters, bakers, and other labor groups. The
34 For cooperative stores and societies see Prairie Farmer, June 20, 1863, Chicago Tribune, November 21, 1863; Chicago Evening Journal, November 23, 1865; Chicago Post, January 3, 1866.
35 The miners about Belleville were organized in 1860 under their leader, John Hinchcliffe, with the German element sufficiently numerous to warrant a separate issue of the Belleville Miner and Workman's Advocate in German shortly after its institution. Belleville Democrat, February 2, 16, 1861; January 16, 1864.
36 Chicago Times, December 29, 1863, April 25, May 6, 1864; Chicago Morn- ing Post, December 30, 1863; Chicago Tribune, April 27, August 21, 23, 1864.
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strike had taken its place as the favorite weapon by which the workers sought to secure their "rights."
With the growing class consciousness of the workers they began to recognize the influence they exercised in political life and soon launched a movement whereby labor definitely en- tered politics. In 1864 when many workers were alienated from Lincoln by his war policies, a Chicago mass meeting of workingmen proposed an independent "labor party." The republicans tried to head it off by references to their rail-splitter and tailor candidates while the democrats posed as the pro- tectors of the laboring poor from the tyranny of capital and of the national administration. Cyrus H. McCormick, demo- cratic candidate for congress, made a direct appeal to the workers through the columns of the Workingman's Advocate.37 With such bids from the professional politician old party con- nections proved in every sense too strong for a new alignment. Indeed, politicians displayed unlimited zeal in trying to placate labor. In 1866, when the workers launched a widespread movement for an eight-hour law and organized an eight-hour league to support only eight-hour men, all candidates took up the idea. A legislature was elected which enacted the eight- hour law of 1867 providing that, in the absence of any contract, eight hours except in farm labor should be a legal day's work.
It was not to be expected that the employers would acqui- esce without a fight in this new-found power of the working- men. Indeed, they had not been sitting idly by; suddenly they showed their hand. Upon agreement they notified their em- ployees that such as were unwilling to work ten hours might consider themselves discharged. The workers, in angry reply, organized themselves through the Illinois Labor Convention to secure the advantages of the eight-hour system. The law was to go into effect May I ; for that day they planned a grand demonstration in Chicago followed by a general strike. The newspapers, sensing a shift in public opinion in response to the uncompromising attitude of the employers, immediately at- tacked the program of the workers and aroused public opinion against them ; nevertheless, on May Day the strikes broke out all over the state and soon work was generally suspended.
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