616 



AGEICULTUKAL REPORT. 



CHICAGO AND NOUTirWESTERN AGRICULTURE. 



One of tlie wonders, even in this age, when prngi-ess Ims outstripped the an- 

 ticipations of the most sanguine, is the growth of Chicago. It is not a repre- 

 sentative of manufactures, nor of a foreign commerce, but solely of agriculture 

 and the commerce created by it. Situated at a point of lake navigation which 

 makes it the receptacle of an immense and fertile agricultural region, seeking its 

 markets in the eastern States and in Europe through Chicago, the growth of 

 the city has kept pace with the progress of that region, and therefore it is the 

 representative of that progress as well as of its own. 



Its more rapid advancement, however, since 1860, is not an indication of a 

 corresponding development of the agricultural resources of the country, whose 

 trade it has always enjoyed, or of more remote places added to it by new rail- 

 road communicaiion, but of that disturbing influence upon commerce caused by 

 the war. The navigation of the Mississippi having been closed in 1861, the 

 products of the upper parts of that river, and beyond it, in Iowa and Missouri, 

 as well as the more southern jDortions of Illinois, had to seek a new transit to 

 the eastern markets. They therefore centred in Chicago instead of in St. 

 Louis, and other minor places. 



"With this explanation we reptiblish the following table of shipments f£ 

 breadstuffs from Chicago for the last twenty-six years, which Ave take from the 

 report of the Chicago Board of Trade. How much of successful energy and 

 toil, of increased wealth and of comfort, and of home happiness in the country- 

 life, is embraced in a single glance over these tables ! 



Table Xo. 14. 



SJiipments of jiour (reduced to wheat) and grain from Chicago for twenty-six 



years. 



