52 ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



metropolitan proportions. I remember Chicago when it did not 

 have half the people that now are in this lovely city of Effingham. 

 Wealth began to pour into that city and brought with money and 

 men of brains, who had to be accommodated with the comforts 

 of life. Its hotel accommodations were entirely inadequate. 

 Old Mark Baubien, landlord of the " Sauganash," used to tell 

 of covering sixteen men with a single blanket as they slept clothed 

 in their day garments upon the one carpeted floor of the crowded 

 house. He put them to bed in pairs, and covered them with the 

 blanket. The wearied men soon slept, and he carefully removed 

 the blanket. By this time another pair was ready to lie down 

 and be covered, and this way he had used the blanket successively 

 eight times in one night. The growth of the city was marvelous, 

 and local production was unable to meet the ever-increasing 

 demand for table supplies. Fresh, pure milk, and sweet, palata- 

 ble butter it was especially difficult to obtain, and those the 

 hotels must have. 



The low-tying level lands west of Chicago extend almost to 

 the beautiful banks of the Fox river, and had been passed over 

 by the pioneers. In 1850, the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad 

 Company reached Elgin with its trains, and in Februrary, 1852, 

 Mr. Phineas H. Smith shipped from Elgin the first can of milk 

 ever transported by rail in this state, consigned to J. Irving 

 Pierce, the genial landlord of the Adams House at Chicago. 



This single can drawn by oxen from the farm to the railway 

 station, was the beginning of dairying as a distinctive business 

 in our great State. 



Who can realize the importance of the vast industrial revolu- 

 tion it inaugurated? In that now world wide dairy center, 

 wheat, the certain impoverisher of the soil, gave way to the cow, 

 of animal creation, man's best and most constant friend, from 

 the cradle to the grave, and surely the gentle queen of pleasant, 

 safe and profitable investments. 



Chicago hotels and milk peddlers quickly sought the same 

 source of supply, and hundreds of wagons were labeled " Pure 

 Elgin Milk," even many years after Elgin ceased to ship a can 



