GENERAL REPORT. 
51 
First, tlie material requisite to the construction of homes and 
the manufacture of the bulk of articles of use and luxury j 
secondly, the means of a motive power ; thirdly, natural chan¬ 
nels for economical moving of the materials to the place of 
manufacture; fourthly, open avenues to the great markets of 
the world. 
Material she has in great abundance and variety, including 
four of the most useful metallic ores known in the arts—iron, 
lead, zinc and copper ; building stone, brick and potter’s clay ; 
timber in great variety, both hard and soft; and the number¬ 
less products of agriculture, such as cereal grains for all man¬ 
ner of foods, flax and wool for the more useful textile fabrics,, 
and the several races of domestic animals, each portion of 
which is so wonderfully prolific, in these days of scientific dis¬ 
covery, of articles in every day use. 
As to natural motive powers, no state in the United States 
or any single country in the known world, can boast of such 
as are more extensive or more available. Of coal alone, that 
great steam-maker of the present day, are we denied. And 
even this deficiency is not so serious a one as we are some¬ 
times apt to think. For, with our modern improvements, in 
all factories where wood is worked exclusively, the sawdust 
and other waste should be nearly, if not quite, adequate to the 
generation of sufficient power for their use; and, if not ade¬ 
quate, in many portions of our State, wood is so abundant as 
to make fuel quite as cheap as coal would be, even if found 
within our limits ; while those portions which are neither sup¬ 
plied with wood nor v/ater-power fortunately lie so near the 
coal fields of upper Illinois as, with proper railroad facilities,— 
which are coming apace,—to be quite as well situated in that 
respect as the more remote portions of Illinois herself. More¬ 
over these same sections abound in rich deposits of peat, which 
is destined at a very early day to be utilized for most, if not 
all, those purposes to which wood and coal are at present ap¬ 
plied. 
Of the third and fourth requisites, is it not enough to say 
that no equal area of the world, embraced under one govern- 
