Buchanan County, Missouri - Chapter 10: Agriculture and Material Wealth, 1881

Chapter 10: Agriculture and Material Wealth

MISSOURI AS AN AGRICULTURAL STATE - THE DIFFERENT CROPS-LIVE STOCK - HORSES MULES-MILCH COWS-OXEN AND OTHER CATTLE - SHEEP- HOGS - COMPARISONSMISSOURI ADAPTED TO LIVE STOCK-COTTON - BROOM-CORN AND OTHER PRODUCTS-FRUITS - BERRIES-GRAPES - RAILROADS - FIRST NEIGH OF THE "IRON HORSE" IN MISSOURI - NAMES OF RAILROADS-MANUFACTURES - GREAT BRIDGE AT ST. LOUIS.

Agriculture is the greatest among all the arts of man, as it is the first in supplying his necessities. It favors and strengthens population ; it creates and maintains manufactures ; gives employment to navigation, and furnishes materials to commerce. It animates every species of industry, and opens to nations the safest channels of wealth. It is the strongest bond of well-regulated society, the surest basis of internal peace, and the natural associate of correct morals. Among all the occupations and professions of life there is none more honorable, none more independent and none more conducive to health and happiness.

"In ancient times the sacred plow employ'd The kings, and awful fathers of mankind ; And some, with whom compared, your insect tribes Are but the beings of a summer's day, Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm Of mighty war with unwearied hand, Disdaining little delicacies, seized The pljw and greatly independent lived."

As an agricultural region, Missouri is not surpassed by any state in the Union. It is indeed the farmer's kingdom, where he always reaps an abundant harvest. The soil, in many portions of the state, has an open, flexible structure, quickly absorbs the most excessive rains, and retains moisture with great tenacity. This being the case it is not so easily affected by drouth. The prairies are covered with sweet, luxuriant grass, equally good for grazing and hay ; grass not surpassed by the Kentucky blue grass - the best of clover and timothy in growing and fattening cattle. This grass is now as full of life-giving nutriment as it was when cropped by the buffalo, the elk, the antelope and the deer, and costs the herdsman nothing.

No state or territory has a more complete or rapid system of natural drainage, or a more abundant supply of pure, fresh water, than Missouri. Both man and beast may slake their thirst from a thousand perennial fountains, which gush in limpid streams from the hillsides and wend their way through verdant valleys and along smiling prairies, varying in size as they onward flow, from the diminutive brooklet to the giant river.

Here nature has generously bestowed her attractions of climate, soil and scenery to please and gratify man while earning his bread in the sweat of his brow. Being thus munificiently endowed, Missouri offers superior inducements to the farmer, and bids him enter her broad domain and avail himself of her varied resources.

Next in importance to the corn crop in value is the live stock. The following table shows the number of horses, mules and milch cows in the different states for 1879 :

It will be seen from the above table that Missouri is the fifth state in the number of horses ; fifth in number of milch cows, and the leading state in number of mules, having 11,700 more than Texas, which produces the next largest number. Of oxen and cattle Missouri produced in 1879, 1,632,000, which was more than any other state produced excepting Texas, which had 4,800,000. In 1879, Missouri raised 2,817,600 hogs, which was more than any other state produced excepting Iowa. The number of sheep was 1,296,400. The number of hogs packed in 1879 t)y the different states is as follows :

Stapes. Pounds. States. Poinds

From the above, it will be seen that Missouri annually packs more hogs than any other state, except Illinois, and that she ranks third in the average weight.

We see no reason why Missouri should not be the foremost stockraising state of the Union. In addition to the enormous yield of corn and oats upon which the stock is largely dependent, the climate is well adapted to their growth and health. Water is not only inexhaustible, but everywhere convenient. The ranges for stock are boundless, affording for nine months of the year, excellent pasturage of nutritious wild grasses, which grow in great luxuriance upon her thousand prairies.

Cotton is grown successfully in many counties of the southeastern portions of the state, especially in Stoddard, Scott, Pemiscott, Butler, New Madrid, Lawrence and Mississippi.

Broom corn, sorghum, castor beans, white beans, peas and hops, thrive well, and all kinds of garden vegetables are produced in great abundance and are found in the markets during all seasons of the year. Fruits of every variety, including the apple, pear, peach, cherries, apricots and nectarines are cultivated with great success, as are also the strawberry, gooseberry, currant, raspberry and blackberry.

The grape has not been produced with that success that was at first anticipated, yet the yield of wine for the year 1879 was nearly half a million gallons. Grapes do well in Kansas, and we see no reason why they should not be as surely and profitably grown in a similar climate and soil in Missouri, and particularly in many of the counties north and east of the Missouri River.

Twenty-nine years ago the neigh of the "iron horse" was heard for the first time within the broad domain of Missouri. His coming presaged the dawn of a brighter and grander era in the history of the state. Her fertile prairies and more prolific valleys would soon be of easy access to the oncoming tide of immigration, and the ores and minerals of her hills and mountains would be developed and utilized in her manufacturing and industrial enterprises.

Since 1852, the initial period of railroad building in Missouri, between four and five thousand miles of track have been laid ; additional roadsare now being constructed and many others in contemplation. The state is already supplied with railroads which thread her surface in all directions, bringing her remotest districts into close connection with St. Louis, that great centre of western railroads and inland commerce. These roads have a capital stock aggregating more than one hundred millions of dollars, and a funded debt of about the same amount.

Missouri Pacific - chartered May loth, 1850 ; the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad, which is a consolidation of the Arkansas Branch ; the Cairo, Arkansas & Texas Railroad ; the Cairo Sc Fulton ' Railroad; the St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern Railway; the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway ; the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroad ; the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad ; the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad ; the Illinois, Missouri & Texas Railroad ; the Kansas^ City, St. Joseph & Council Bluffs Railroad ; the Keokuk & Kansas City Railway Company ; the St. Louis, Salem & Little Rock Railroad Company ; the Missouri & Western ; the St. Louis, Keokuk & Northwestern ; the St. Louis, Hannibal & Keokuk Railroad ; the Missouri, Iowa & Nebraska Railway ; the Quincy, Missouri & Pacific Railroad ; the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway ; the Burlington & Southwestern Railroad ; the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad and the St.. Joseph & Des Moines.

The natural resources of Missouri especially fit her for a great man^ ufacturing state. She is rich in soil ; rich in all the elements which supply the furnace, the machine shop and the planing mill ; rich in the multitude and variety of her gigantic forests ; rich in her marble, stone and granite quarries ; rich in her mines of iron, coal, lead and zinc ; rich in strong arms and willing hands to apply the force ; rich in water power and river navigation ; and rich in her numerous and well built railroads,, whose numberless engines thunder along their multiplied trackways.

Missouri contains over fourteen thousand manufacturing establishments, 1,965 of which are using steam and give employment to 80,00a hands. The capital employed is about $100,000,000, the material annually used and worked up amounts to over $150,000,000 and the value of the products put upon the markets $250,000,000, while the wages paid are more than $40,000,000.

The leading manufacturing counties of the state are St. Louis, Jackson, Buchanan, St. Charles, Marion, Franklin, Green, Lafayette, Platte, Cape Girardeau and Boone. Three-fourths, however, of the manufacturing is done in St. Louis, which is now about the second manufacturing city of the Union. Flouring mills produce annually about $38,194,000; carpentering, $18,763,000; meat-packing, $16,769,000; tobacco, $12,496,- 000; iron and castings, $12,000,000; liquors, $11,245,000; clothing, 10,022,000; lumber, $8,652,000; bagging and bags, $6,914,000, and many other smaller industries in proportion.

Great Bridge At St. Louis

Of the many public improvements whichdo honor to the state and reflect great credit upon the genius of their projectors, we have space only to mention the great bridge at St. Louis.

This truly wonderful structure is built of tubular steel, the total length of which, with its approaches, is 6,277 feet, at a cost of nearly $8,000,000. The bridge spans the Mississippi from the Illinois to the Missouri shore, and has separate railroad tracks, roadways and foot paths. In durability, architectural beauty and practical utility, there is, perhaps, no similar piece of workmanship that opproximates it.

The structure of Darius upon the Bosphorus ; of Xerxes upon the Hellespont ; of Caesar upon the Rhine ; and Trajan upon the Dainube, famous in ancient history, were built for military purposes, that over them might pass invading armies with their munitions of war, to destroy commerce, to lay in waste the provinces, and to slaughter the people.

But the erection of this was for a higher and nobler purpose. Over it are coming the trade and merchandise of the opulent East, and thence are passing the untold riches of the West. Over it are crowding legions of men, armed not with the weapons of war, but the implements of peace and industry ; men who are skilled in all the arts of agriculture, of manufacture and of mining ; men who will hasten the day when St. Louis shall rank in population and importance second to no city on the continent, and when Missouri shall proudly fill the measure of greatness,, to which she is naturally so justly entitled.