USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 36
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37 Chicago Times, August 22, 1864; Chicago Tribune, October 30, 1864.
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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Chicago was the seat of special disturbances which at times went as far as serious rioting between the strikers and those who remained at work. Governor Oglesby, who had pre- viously indicated his desire to see the state law enforced, was silent during the struggle; Mayor John B. Rice of Chicago, however, took advantage of the growing reaction against the law to issue on May 3 a proclamation calling attention to a statute which forbade preventing any person from working at any lawful business and combining to deprive the owner of property of its lawful use and management.38 Under this policy the loosely organized workers were gradually compelled to resume employment; in only a few cases were they permitted to labor eight hours for eight hours pay. By the first week in June the struggle had pretty well come to an end and the law became a dead letter.
The eight-hour law and its failure stimulated experiments with the principle of cooperative labor. In some instances this meant the association of workers on a purely cooperative basis; in other cases old established firms, like Dillman and Company of Joliet, or newly organized joint stock companies, like the Northwestern Manufacturing Company of Chicago, introduced the new system into their plants.39
Deserted by the old party politicians, the more independent minded labor leaders began to consider an independent political activity to wield the influence to which their numbers entitled them. For them the blandishments of the old parties had come to an end; in the fall of 1867 preparations were made in various parts of the state for the launching of a labor party as a nation wide movement.40 In the spring of 1868 plans were pushed aggressively. The republican leaders tried to check them by directing a labor movement within their party; a republican farmers' and laboring men's state convention at Decatur in April recommended Harrison Noble as the workers' candidate for the republican nomination as governor. When
38 Chicago Evening Post, May 3, 1867; Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1867.
39 Ibid., April 29, May 7, 14, 27, 1867; Joliet Signal, June 11, 15, 1867; Illinois State Journal, September 3, 1867.
40 Ottawa and Alton were centers of activity and in the latter a mayor was elected on the workingmen's ticket. Ottawa Free Trader, August 3, September 7, 21, 1867; Ottawa Weekly Republican, September 19, 26, October 10, 1867; Illinois State Journal, September 14, 1867.
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this recommendation was ignored the movement became even more independent. Independent workingmen's candidates for congress were nominated, including Alexander Campbell of La Salle; possibilities of a presidential ticket were even dis- cussed. The trade-unions of Chicago placed in nomination full legislative, county, and city tickets.41 All these move- ments were abortive but they did not entirely discourage further efforts along these lines in succeeding years.
Some gains were made by the workers through political pressure. In 1869 an aggressive mechanics lien law was se- cured by the managers of the labor forces at Chicago which gave the workers a lien upon all buildings upon which they labored and also upon the lots upon which the buildings were erected. A bill requiring safety devices for the protection of coal miners in their hazardous occupation passed the lower house at Springfield in 1869 but, failing to become law, the proposition was passed on to the consideration of the constitu- tional convention of 1870.42 Thus in a growing class conscious- ness and in an increasing sense of their power the labor forces of Illinois gave further testimony to the industrial revolution.
41 Illinois State Journal, August 19, 1868; Chicago Tribune, April 8, 15, September 14, 1868; Ottawa Free Trader, August 15, 1868; Ottawa Weekly Republican, August 20, 1868.
42 Chicago Tribune, January 27, February 8, April 12, 1869; Illinois State Register, January 26, 1870; Du Quoin Tribune, March 30, 1870; Laws of 1869, P. 255-259.
XVII. AGRICULTURE AND THE WAR
I LLINOIS had become by 1860 the center of the agricultural
life of the nation. The Civil War brought with it an unique opportunity to place her resources at the disposal of the union cause and to develop a prosperity which made possible an important contribution to the sinews of war. As a result the agricultural life of the state was quickened; and, in spite of various handicaps, Illinois not only continued but strengthened her agricultural leadership of the northwestern states.
Much of this development was merely greater expansion along the well-established lines of wheat and corn production. Illinois profited from the new demand for foodstuffs to feed the union armies and, as a result of poor European harvests in 1860, 1861, and 1862, from the increased purchases by for- eign countries. Despite the steady drain on farm labor with an army of over a quarter of a million men summoned to the colors, the acreage was increased and good crops were har- vested. Corn production, with a harvest of 129,921,395 bushels in 1869, rose twenty per cent over the figures for the bumper crop of 1859, and Champaign, McLean, and La Salle counties took their place as the heart of the corn belt. They were more fortunate in their accessibility to markets than the counties along the Mississippi river, which had pre- viously sent their corn crop to the slave states; these regions now converted their unprecedented corn harvests into the more marketable form of fat hogs, although at times local market prices dropped so low that large quantities were burned as fuel.1 After the war, an important corn market was greatly weakened by the excise of two dollars per gallon on whisky, an article worth only thirty or forty cents; this was a factor sufficiently serious to cause considerable discontent among the
1 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, 48: 400; Galena Gazette clipped in The (Columbus, Ohio) Crisis, January 10, 1866.
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THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
farmers. By strenuous activity in the wheat fields Illinois con- tinued with an output of 30, 128,405 bushels in 1869 to main- tain her position as the first wheat raising as well as corn grow- ing state. The price of wheat rose steadily and averaged over a dollar a bushel for the Civil War period. The high water mark was reached in 1867 when wheat sold for $3.50 and flour at $ 18.00 per barrel in the city of Springfield.2
A somewhat similar development took place in the produc- tion of the minor cereals. The output of oats leaped forward with an increase of over 180 per cent with the result that Illinois exchanged fourth place for ranking position in oats production.
The Civil War period brought to maturity the promise of the fifties for a wonderful horticultural development in southern Illinois. A region of less than one hundred miles along the Illinois Central railroad, centering in the district be- tween Jonesboro and Carbondale, developed into an impor- tant fruit belt, containing over one hundred thousand bearing fruit trees in 1865 and three times that number in 1866; in that same year 716,375 apple, pear, and peach trees were set out. Willard C. Flagg of Madison county, secretary of the Illinois State Horticultural Society, had a 1, 100 acre farm with 80 acres in orchard. A fruit farm near Cobden in Union county owned by J. L. and S. S. Sawyer, included 5,000 grape vines, 20,000 peach, and 7,000 apple trees, 7 acres of straw- berries, 3,000 gooseberry plants, besides small fruits and veg- etables.3 In the summer of 1862 the Illinois Central was induced to inaugurate a special fruit express to avoid what was termed the rapacity of the regular express companies in bringing the fruit to the Chicago market. In the succeeding years at the demand of the Southern Illinois Fruit Growers' Association, a fruit train to St. Louis as well as Chicago became a regular arrangement; in the closing days of May a train of from ten to fifty cars transported the strawberry crop; in late July the peach trade began, followed shortly by pear and apple
2 Illinois State Journal, April 26, 1867.
3 Illinois State Register, August 10, 1866; Flagg's orchard included 4,500 apple trees, 150 pears, 1,200 peaches, 60 plums, and many others. Belleville Advocate, July 28, 1865; Illinois State Agricultural Society, Transactions, 6 : 196-200.
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shipments. In August, 1867, the Illinois Central cleared $40,000 on peach shipments alone; in that season it carried 8,692,200 pounds of fruit from twenty stations in southern Illinois. 4
Egypt far surpassed northern Illinois both in the quality and quantity of its fruit harvests. The region about Quincy, however, was a good apple country-in 1867 shipping nearly fifty thousand bushels. The most successful grape culture of the state was carried on about Nauvoo, Peoria, and Bloom- ington; Dr. H. Schröder, the well-known horticulturalist of Bloomington, planted the first grape vines there in 1858 and soon had extensive vineyards; his exhibits were usually prize winners at the state fair.5 By 1869 Illinois had nine local hor- ticultural societies and four county associations, in addition to the societies based on larger territorial units.
The modern dairy industry of northern Illinois had its beginning in the Civil War era. Even during the fifties Chi- cago had come more and more to draw upon outlying towns for its supply of milk; in 1859 Elgin, with about twenty export dairymen, shipped 227,047 gallons of milk to Chicago. Eight years later though, with competition from Kane and neighbor- ing counties, the shipment from Elgin had increased only to 296, 197 gallons, yet its value had risen from nine to sixteen cents a gallon.6
Meantime, the dairy industry had become far more com- plex. A heavy butter trade developed : the little town of Wil- mington in 1866 in addition to freight shipments sent out by express 16,912 pounds of butter in a single week. Butter sold at twenty-five to thirty-five cents a pound and was often in such demand as to leave unsupplied the local trade. In 1865 the Gail Borden and Company condensed milk factory was established at Elgin ; at the end of the decade it was condensing daily from twelve to eighteen hundred gallons, or three to four thousand cans. In 1864 the first cheese factory in the west was established at Bloomingdale, Illinois; and within a few years
4 Illinois State Register, September 18, November 14, 1867; Cairo Democrat, December 19, 1867.
5 Prairie Farmer, January 30, May 14, October 1, 1864, January 12, 1867.
6 Chicago Press and Tribune, February 8, 1859; Illinois State Journal, January 30, 1867.
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there were such establishments in ten northern Illinois counties. McHenry county in particular promptly became a great cheesemaking center ; in 1866 it contained no cheese factories; in 1867 eight factories in operation for a season of four to six months consumed 5,500,000 pounds of milk and produced 600,- 000 pounds of cheese. Two years later eleven factories made about 1,600,000 pounds. In 1870 nine counties in northeastern Illinois produced nearly sixteen million pounds of cheese with a capital investment of $1,667,500; cheese was then worth twelve and one-half cents a pound .?
What was probably the first dairyman's convention west of Ohio met at Rockford in March, 1867, for an interchange of ideas and comparison of experiences; this resulted in the organization of the Illinois and Wisconsin Dairymen's Asso- ciation. Three months later a similar meeting at Elgin arranged for the organization of the Fox River Dairy Club.8
By doubling the value of all livestock Illinois rose in a decade from third to first rank as a stock raising state. The biggest gains were in the northern division of the state. In beef cattle production the increase for the state was only 8.7 per cent, since a 26.6 per cent loss in the southern division neu- tralized the heavy 38 per cent gain registered in the central counties. Though second to Texas in cattle production, Illinois beef began to take a leading place in the New York market; nearly one-half of the 165,000,000 pounds received in New York in 1862 was raised in Illinois.9 This same record was maintained in the succeeding years with Illinois cattle often outnumbering those from all other states. Champaign county furnished large quotas; but Morgan county, with three of the largest cattle dealers in the country, held the palm. Jacob Strawn, until his death in 1865, had continued to be one of the leading Illinois stockgrowers, while John T. Alexander, the Jacksonville cattle king, sometimes sold single lots of 3,000
7 Illinois State Register, December 5, 1865; Ottawa Weekly Republican, January 30, 1868, June 17, November 4, 1869, August 11, 1870; Aurora Beacon, January 30, 1868, October 9, 1869; Ottawa Free Trader, May 27, 1865; Joliet Signal, June 5, 1866; Prairie Farmer, February 22, 1868.
8 Rockford Gazette, February 7, 1867; Ottawa Weekly Republican, Febru- ary 6, 1868; Prairie Farmer, March 2, 23, August 10, 1867, February 1, 1868. 9 Rockford Register, February 14, 1863.
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head of cattle; he, together with William M. Cassell and George D. Alexander, in twelve months shipped over 65,000 head of cattle which at six dollars a hundredweight were valued at $5,000,000.10
The driving of cattle from Texas to Illinois for prepara- tion for market revived with the close of the Civil War. The imported cattle often arrived in a sickly and exhausted con- dition, with their longhorned, shark-like carcasses resembling walking corn cribs. John T. Alexander after several trials finally found the business of fattening them for market de- cidedly unprofitable. Nevertheless, the shipping of longhorns to take advantage of the grazing and feeding facilities of Illi- nois continued by the thousands. One company in 1867 con- tracted for the shipment of over 70,000 Texas cattle. In 1868 the firm of Gregory and Hastings of Chicago grazed a herd of nearly 35,000 at Tolono. In that year sixty or seventy thousand came into the state by way of Cairo alone.11
These importations often brought with them a dread cattle murrain, the "Spanish fever," a disease that not only took a heavy toll from the longhorns but also infected fine herds of native cattle. In 1866 it caused so much complaint that in February of the following year a law was enacted "to prevent the importation of Texas or Cherokee cattle." Since, how- ever, the law was ignored, with the result that in 1868 the disease again raged in Iroquois, Vermilion, Ford, and Cham- paign counties, vigilance committees were appointed at differ- ent stations to prevent the unloading of further importations. At the same time meetings were held and other movements initiated in favor of an effective state law against the impor- tation of Texas cattle; a cattle convention at Springfield on the first of December advised a law the passage of which Governor Oglesby recommended in his message to the legis- lature. The result was legislative restriction on the importation of Texas cattle except between the first of November and the first of March.12
10 Illinois State Journal, May 4, 1864; Chicago Tribune, August 2, 20, 1869. 11 Cairo Democrat, September 17, 1867, July 14, 27, 1868 ; Champaign County Union and Gazette, August 5, 1868; Illinois State Journal, February 23, 1870; Illinois State Register, July 1, 1868, March 3, 1869.
12 Ibid., November 19, 1866, July 30, August 17, September 2, December
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THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
The war greatly stimulated the demand for pork, and prices continued steady between $5 and $6.50 per hundred- weight. Illinois' output so increased as to place it in second place. At times the hog cholera prevailed in various parts of the state but never became epidemic. In 1867 an Illinois swine breeders' association came into existence.13
With the new demand for uniforms and with the wide- spread substitution of wool for the now unavailable southern cotton, the war offered a remarkable stimulus to the produc- tion of wool. In the five years ending in 1865 the number of sheep in the state more than doubled,14 with Sangamon county as the center of the wool raising district. Although in 1861 wool was worth only twenty-five cents a pound, within a few years its value increased to eighty cents. As the demand from the government fell off with the close of the war and the price dropped to forty cents, sheep shearing exhibitions, fairs, or festivals were held to increase interest in the industry. In 1863 at the state fair at Decatur the Wool Growers' Associa- tion of the State of Illinois had been organized, and this body now undertook to secure a new stimulus to their industry by agitation in favor of a protective tariff against "inferior im- ported wool;" in 1866 and 1867 resolutions strongly urging protection were adopted.15 Illinoisians also took a prominent part in the Wool Tariff Convention at Cleveland in 1866. In spite of the concessions they were able to secure, the price continued to drop; and the last five years of the decade brought a considerable decline in sheep raising.
The war cut off the normal supply of southern staples, and Illinois was one of the few states able to step in and take advantage of the situation. This was particularly true of cot-
1, 3, 1868; Illinois State Journal, February 23, 1867; Prairie Farmer, March 9, 1867; Champaign County Union and Gazette, August 5, 1868; Canton Weekly Register, September 4, 1868 ; Chicago Tribune, January 5, 1869; I Laws of 1867, p. 169; Laws of 1869, p. 237.
13 Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, 54: 376-384; Ottawa Free Trader, Decem- ber 18, 1869.
14 See the contradictory figures in Cairo Democrat, February 16, 1864; Ot- tawa Weekly Republican, July 29, 1865; Canton Weekly Register, February 5, 1866; Aurora Beacon, May 31, 1866; Jacksonville Journal, February 7, 1867.
15 Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1863, January 9, 1867; Chicago Times, October 7, 1863 ; Chicago Post, February 22, 1866; Aurora Beacon, January 17, 1867; Prairie Farmer, January 19, 1867.
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ton after the Mississippi river was closed. Previous to the war a considerable amount of cotton was raised in the southern counties but mainly by farmers' wives to add to their "pin money." 16 In the fall of 1861, after reports of successful experiments by certain individuals during the previous summer, preparations were made for extensive cotton growing in the following season. Although critics began to deplore the wide- spread "cotton mania," they were swamped by the "pro-cot- tonists." Immediately a seed problem arose; the federal government, however, undertook to secure seed and to dis- tribute it in Illinois through John P. Reynolds, the correspond- ing secretary of the State Agricultural Society. As a result a crop estimated at twenty thousand bales was raised, when cotton was selling in the east at sixty cents a pound.17 In the spring of 1863 the price had risen to eighty-seven and one-half cents, and the farmers of southern Illinois responded by secur- ing cotton seed by the carload. Cotton culture on a large scale followed, and the 1864 crop was marketed when the eastern price was $1.50 per pound.
Many southern exiles and some Negro freedmen were drawn upon to aid in this new development. One of the for- mer, Archie J. Elyutt, established the Southerner and Cotton Planter at Cairo in 1865 to attract southern emigrants and others to the possibility of cotton culture in southern Illinois.18 The next harvest showed an unprecedented yield; Jonesboro and Carbondale with cotton in the air and on the streets seemed like southern cities. In season ten gins ran continuously in Carbondale, which shipped 4,000 bales. A region of southern Illinois which had produced only 1,416 pounds in 1862 three years later harvested over one and a half million pounds, mar- keted at the western price of forty-five cents a pound.19 A high production cost, however, was involved in the raising of
16 Rockford Republican, February 21, 1861.
17 Belleville Advocate, February 14, March 21, November 21, 1862; Illinois State Register, February 11, 1862; Illinois State Journal, March 29, May 12, 1862; Lewis Ellsworth to Trumbull, February 19, 1862, Caleb Smith to Trum- bull, February 20, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts; Champaign County Patriot, November 6, 1862.
Cairo Weekly Democrat, March 23, 1865.
19 Chicago Tribune, November 14, December 26, 1865; Cairo Times clipped in Chicago Post, March 14, 1866; Illinois State Agricultural Society, Transac- tions, 6: 191-194.
.
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these crops; when, therefore, with the return of peace and competition with southern cotton a heavy 1866 harvest had to be marketed at one-half the 1865 price, the enthusiasm for cotton culture was promptly demolished; and by 1869 the production was only one-tenth that of 1865.
The scarcity of cotton during the early years of the war also stimulated the cultivation of flax. This was the oppor- tunity of the northern district, and in 1863 it was seized upon with such keenness that a flax belt appeared centering in De Kalb county. Developments were less spectacular than in the case of cotton; but during the decade Illinois multiplied its output nearly fifty times, reaching a crop of 2,204,606 pounds in 1869. Factories for cleaning the flax fiber and for the manu- facture of linen goods were established at Batavia, Ottawa, Sycamore, Mendota, and other points.20
Illinois also made wonderful progress in the field of raising saccharose crops to take the place of Louisiana cane sugar. The output of maple sugar had begun to fall off in the forties; but Civil War conditions stimulated a slight increase, while sorghum culture made great gains. Secession came just at the height of the enthusiasm over Chinese sugar cane, and during the first two years of the decade the output was almost doubled; such heavy sowings were made in southern Illinois that for a considerable time it was difficult to secure seed. Reduced prices after the war resulted in merely nominal increases so that the census of 1870 showed an output of only 1,900,000 gallons of sirup; the 1869 harvest had doubtless fallen off as a result of advice to force up prices by curtailed planting. Repeated efforts to produce a satisfactory granulated sugar from the Chinese sugar cane ended in failure; even such large scale ventures as the Northwestern Chinese Sugar Manufacturing Company which was incorporated in 1863 collapsed promptly.21
Interest in the possibility of beet sugar production was
20 Ottawa Weekly Republican, February 21, 1863, December 16, 1869; Illinois State Journal, February 23, March 7, April 27, 1863; Cairo Democrat, October 8, 1863; Aurora Beacon, March 17, July 21, 1864.
21 Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, 1862, p. 140-147; Jacksonville Journal, November 13, 1862; Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1862; Champaign County Union and Gazette, April 1, 1868; Ottawa Free Trader, March 20, 1869; Cairo Gazette, April 2, 1863; D. C. Martin to Trumbull, February 1, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts.
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aroused by the dissemination of information as to conditions in France and Germany; soon ventures were launched into this field. In 1862 an unsuccessful experiment was made by H. Belcher, a Chicago refiner ; three years later nothing significant had been accomplished, though many people, including John P. Reynolds, the secretary of the State Agricultural Society, were convinced that the manufacture of sugar from sugar beets could be made to pay. Then a group of Chicagoans consti- tuting the Illinois Beet Sugar Company undertook to investi- gate conditions in Germany and France through one of their number, C. E. Olmstead, whom Governor Oglesby appointed a special honorary agent for the state; but this brought no immediate results.22 At the same time a beet sugar manufac- tory was being built at Chatsworth, in Livingston county, for the Germania Beet Sugar Company of which Theodore Gen- nert was superintendent. Gennert went to Germany where he secured the necessary machinery and three hundred mechanics and laborers. In 1867 this company manufactured and mar- keted one hundred thousand pounds of sugar and the following season was shipping a carload a week. This was the first successful beet sugar venture in Illinois.23
One of the most significant aspects of Illinois' marvelous agricultural contributions during the years of the war was the withdrawal of an army of a quarter million workers, a majority of whom went from the farms of the state; from certain agri- cultural districts over nine-tenths of the young and able-bodied men liable to the draft promptly went into service.24 The shortage of farm laborers was soon reflected in increased wages and in appeals for help. Wages rose to $1.25, to $2.00, and were then forced still higher by the depreciation of paper money; in some instances farmers turned their cattle into their grain fields rather than pay the rates required to harvest. The revival of foreign immigration relieved the problem of upstate
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