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of Chicago, the world's emporium, city of fair women and 

 wise, virtuous and unselfish men ; city of great universities, 

 and of various other things that need not be mentioned here. 

 We boast of Peoria on our western borders, whose constant 

 flow of good spirits spreads a stream of cheer throughout the 

 state ; of Springfield, where our law-makers, laying aside all 

 personal prejudice and factional strife, putting behind them 

 the sins and weaknesses that beset the ordinary mortal, press 

 forward eagerly to the crown of civic righteousness, mean- 

 time spreading beneficent- laws like a halo along their path- 

 way. We are proud of our great commercial and manufact- 

 uring interests ; of the lead mines in the northwestern coun- 

 ties ; of the coal mines everywhere. In short, we are inclined 

 to be proud of our beauty, and of our pride, and of a hundred 

 things beside that would scarcely bear inspection. 



But after all, Mr. Toastmaster, it is not in any or in all of 

 these that Illinois finds the true source of her wealth and 

 greatness. This is found in the fertile black soil of our corn 

 belt, which stretches like a broad band across the fair bosom 

 of our state, and which gives to the world more than one 

 tenth of the world's corn supply. Illinois is preeminently a 

 farmers' state ; and to this fact she owes her preeminence 

 among commonwealths. These black soils have been tilled 

 for almost two generations, and, until recently, without 

 thought that their fertility could ever be exhausted. But 

 Science has sounded the warning. The chemist is pointing 

 to the fact that the crops from these soils, as they go out to 

 market, are carrying with them their due proportion of the 

 essential elements of fertility — the nitrogen, the phosphorus, 

 and the potassium ; that already some of these soils have 

 reached the point of incipient exhaustion ; and that unless 

 the warning of Science is heeded, these black soils of Illinois 

 will surely follow in the wake of the soils of Ohio and of the 

 older states whose value during the last two decades has 

 been decreased by many millions of dollars through soil ex- 

 haustion. 



At this point enters the controversy which doubtless many 



