Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada

Nearly every religious denomination is represented in the 142 churches of Louisville. Of these 9 are Northern Presbyterian and 7 Southern Presbyterian, 11 of the M.E. Church South and 6 of the M.E. Church North, 18 Catholic, 7 Christian, 1 Unitarian, and 31 colored. There are seven convents and monasteries, and a Young Men’s Christian Association. In proportion to its population, the city is pre-eminent for public and private charities: there are no less than thirty-eight of these institutions, providing for the infirm and unfortunate of all ages and conditions. Unique among these in the United States is a very fine building for the maintenance of the widows and orphans of deceased Freemasons of the State of Kentucky, supported mainly by contributions of the Masonic lodges. One of the best equipped and managed industrial schools of reform for boys and girls is on the outskirts of the city. Mr. P. Caldwell is its superintendent, and it owes its success, as all similar schools do, to the peculiar fitness of the manager for this sort of work. The institution has three departments. There were 125 white boys and 79 colored boys, occupying separate buildings in the same enclosure, and 41 white girls in their own house in another enclosure.

The establishment has a farm, a garden, a greenhouse, a library building, a little chapel, ample and pleasant play-yards. There is as little as possible the air of a prison about the place, and as much as possible that of a home and school. The boys have organized a very fair brass band. The girls make all the clothes for the establishment; the boys make shoes, and last year earned $8000 in bottoming chairs. The school is mainly sustained by taxation and city appropriations; the yearly cost is about $26,000. Children are indentured out when good homes can be found for them.

The School for the Education of the Blind is a State institution, and admits none from outside the State. The fine building occupies a commanding situation on hills not far from the river, and is admirably built, the rooms spacious and airy, and the whole establishment is well ordered. There are only 79 scholars, and the few colored are accommodated by themselves in a separate building, in accordance with an Act of the Legislature in 1884 for the education of colored blind children. The distinction of this institution is that it has on its premises the United States printing-office for furnishing publications for the blind asylums of the country. Printing is done here both in letters and in points, by very ingenious processes, and the library is already considerable. The space required to store a library of books for the blind may be reckoned from the statement that the novel of “Ivan-hoe” occupies three volumes, each larger than Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. The weekly Sunday-school Times is printed here. The point writing consists entirely of dots in certain combinations to represent letters, and it is noticed that about half the children prefer this to the alphabet. The preference is not explained by saying that it is merely a matter of feeling.

The city has as yet no public parks, but the very broad streets—from sixty to one hundred and twenty feet in width—the wide spacing of the houses in the residence parts, and the abundant shade make them less a necessity than elsewhere. The city spreads very freely and openly over the plain, and short drives take one into lovely Blue-Grass country. A few miles out on Churchill Downs is the famous Jockey Club Park, a perfect racing track and establishment, where worldwide reputations are made at the semi-annual meetings. The limestone region, a beautifully rolling country, almost rivals the Lexington plantations in the raising of fine horses. Driving out to one of these farms one day, we passed, not far from the river, the old Taylor mansion and the tomb of Zachary Taylor. It is in the reserved family burying-ground, where lie also the remains of Richard Taylor, of Revolutionary memory. The great tomb and the graves are overrun thickly with myrtle, and the secluded irregular ground is shaded by forest-trees. The soft wind of spring was blowing sweetly over the fresh green fields, and there was about the place an air of repose and dignity most refreshing to the spirit. Near the tomb stands the fine commemorative shaft bearing on its summit a good portrait statue of the hero of Buena Vista. I liked to linger there, the country was so sweet; the great river flowing in sight lent a certain grandeur to the resting-place, and I thought how dignified and fit it was for a President to be buried at his home.

The city of Louisville in 1888 has the unmistakable air of confidence and buoyant prosperity. This feeling of confidence is strengthened by the general awakening of Kentucky in increased immigration of agriculturists, and in the development of extraordinary mines of coal and iron, and in the railway extension. But locally the Board of Trade (an active body of 700 members) has in its latest report most encouraging figures to present. In almost every branch of business there was an increase in 1887 over 1886; in both manufactures and trade the volume of business increased from twenty to fifty per cent. For instance, stoves and castings increased from 16,574,547 pounds to 19,386,808; manufactured tobacco, from 12,729,421 pounds to 17,059,006; gas and water pipes, from 56,083,380 pounds to 63,745,216; grass and clover seed, from 4,240,908 bushels to 6,601,451. A conclusive item as to manufactures is that there were received in 1887 951,767 tons of bituminous coal, against 204,221 tons in 1886. Louisville makes the claim of being the largest tobacco market in the world in bulk and variety. It leads largely the nine principal leaf-tobacco markets in the West. The figures for 1887 are—receipts, 123,569 hogsheads; sales, 135,192 hogsheads; stock in hand, 36,431 hogsheads, against the corresponding figures of 62,074, 65,924, 13,972 of its great rival, Cincinnati. These large figures are a great increase over 1886, when the value of tobacco handled here was estimated at nearly $20,000,000. Another great interest always associated with Louisville, whiskey, shows a like increase, there being shipped in 1887 119,637 barrels, against 101,943 barrels in 1886. In the Louisville collection district there were registered one hundred grain distilleries, with a capacity of 80,000 gallons a day. For the five years ending June 30, 1887, the revenue taxes on this product amounted to nearly $30,000,000. I am not attempting a conspectus of the business of Louisville, only selecting some figures illustrating its growth. Its manufacture of agricultural implements has attained great proportions. The reputation of Louisville for tobacco and whiskey is widely advertised, but it is not generally known that it has the largest plough factory in the world. This is one of four which altogether employ about 2000 hands, and make a product valued at $2,275,000. In 1880 Louisville made 80,000 ploughs; in 1886, 190,000. The capacity of manufacture in 1887 was increased by the enlargement of the chief factory to a number not given, but there were shipped that year 11,005,151 pounds of ploughs. There is a steadily increasing manufacture of woollen goods, and the production of the mixed fabric known as Kentucky jeans is another industry in which Louisville leads the world, making annually 7,500,000 yards of cloth, and its four mills increased their capacity twenty per cent, in 1887. The opening of the hard-wood lumber districts in eastern Kentucky has made Louisville one of the important lumber markets: about 125,000,000 feet of lumber, logs, etc., were sold here in 1887. But it is unnecessary to particularize. The Board of Trade think that the advantages of Louisville as a manufacturing centre are sufficiently emphasized from the fact that during the year 1887 seventy-three new manufacturing establishments, mainly from the North and East, were set up, using a capital of $1,290,500, and employing 1621 laborers. The city has twenty-two banks, which had, July 1, 1887, $8,200,200 capital, and $19,927,138 deposits. The clearings for 1887 were $281,110,402—an increase of nearly $50,000,000 over 1886.

Another item which helps to explain the buoyant feeling of Louisville is that its population increased over 10,000 from 1886 to 1887, reaching, according to the best estimate, 177,000 people. I should have said also that no city in the Union is better served by street railways, which are so multiplied and arranged as to “correspondences” that for one fare nearly every inhabitant can ride within at least two blocks of his residence. In these cars, as in the railway cars of the State, there is the same absence of discrimination against color that prevails in Louisiana and in Arkansas. And it is an observation hopeful, at least to the writer, of the good time at hand when all party lines shall be drawn upon the broadest national issues, that there seems to be in Kentucky no social distinction between Democrats and Republicans.

XIII.—MEMPHIS AND LITTLE ROCK

The State of Tennessee gets its diversity of climate and productions from the irregularity of its surface, not from its range over degrees of latitude, like Illinois; for it is a narrow State, with an average breadth of only a hundred and ten miles, while it is about four hundred miles in length, from the mountains in the east—the highest land east of the Rocky Mountains—to the alluvial bottom of the Mississippi in the west. In this range is every variety of mineral and agricultural wealth, with some of the noblest scenery and the fairest farming-land in the Union, and all the good varieties of a temperate climate.

In the extreme south-west corner lies Memphis, differing as entirely in character from Knoxville and Nashville as the bottom-lands of the Mississippi differ from the valleys of the Great Smoky Mountains. It is the natural centre of the finest cotton-producing district in the world, the county of Shelby, of which it is legally known as the Taxing District, yielding more cotton than any other county in the Union except that of Washington in Mississippi. It is almost as much aloof politically from east and middle Tennessee as it is geographically. A homogeneous State might be constructed by taking west Tennessee, all of Mississippi above Vicksburg and Jackson, and a slice off Arkansas, with Memphis for its capital. But the redistricting would be a good thing neither for the States named nor for Memphis, for the more variety within convenient limits a State can have, the better, and Memphis could not wish a better or more distinguished destiny than to become the commercial metropolis of a State of such great possibilities and varied industries as Tennessee. Her political influence might be more decisive in the homogeneous State outlined, but it will be abundant for all reasonable ambition in its inevitable commercial importance. And besides, the western part of the State needs the moral tonic of the more elevated regions.

The city has a frontage of about four miles on the Mississippi River, but is high above it on the Chickasaw Bluffs, with an uneven surface and a rolling country back of it, the whole capable of perfect drainage. Its site is the best on the river for a great city from St. Louis to the Gulf; this advantage is emphasized by the concentration of railways at this point, and the great bridge, which is now on the eve of construction, to the Arkansas shore, no doubt fixes its destiny as the inland metropolis of the South-west. Memphis was the child of the Mississippi, and this powerful, wayward stream is still its fostering mother, notwithstanding the decay of river commerce brought about by the railways; for the river still asserts its power as a regulator of rates of transportation. I do not mean to say that the freighting on it in towed barges is not still enormous, but if it did not carry a pound to the markets of the world it is still the friend of all the inner continental regions, which says to the railroads, beyond a certain rate of charges you shall not go. With this advantage of situation, the natural receiver of the products of an inexhaustible agricultural region (one has only to take a trip by rail through the Yazoo Valley to be convinced of that), and an equally good point for distribution of supplies, it is inevitable that Memphis should grow with an accelerating impulse.

The city has had a singular and instructive history, and that she has survived so many vicissitudes and calamities, and entered upon an extraordinary career of prosperity, is sufficient evidence of the territorial necessity of a large city just at this point on the river. The student of social science will find in its history a striking illustration of the relation of sound sanitary and business conditions to order and morality. Before the war, and for some time after it, Memphis was a place for trade in one staple, where fortunes were quickly made and lost, where no attention was paid to sanitary laws. The cloud of impending pestilence always hung over it, the yellow-fever was always a possibility, and a devastating epidemic of it must inevitably be reckoned with every few years. It seems to be a law of social life that an epidemic, or the probability of it, engenders a recklessness of life and a low condition of morals and public order. Memphis existed, so to speak, on the edge of a volcano, and it cannot be denied that it had a reputation for violence and disorder. While little or nothing was done to make the city clean and habitable, or to beautify it, law was weak in its mobile, excitable population, and differences of opinion were settled by the revolver. In spite of these disadvantages, the profits of trade were so great there that its population of twenty thousand at the close of the war had doubled by 1878. In that year the yellow-fever came as an epidemic, and so increased in 1879 as nearly to depopulate the city; its population was reduced from nearly forty thousand to about fourteen thousand, two-thirds of which were negroes; its commerce was absolutely cut off, its manufactures were suspended, it was bankrupt. There is nothing more unfortunate for a State or a city than loss of financial credit. Memphis struggled in vain with its enormous debt, unable to pay it, unable to compromise it.

Under these circumstances the city resorted to a novel expedient. It surrendered its charter to the State, and ceased to exist as a municipality. The leaders of this movement gave two reasons for it, the wish not to repudiate the city debt, but to gain breathing-time, and that municipal government in this country is a failure. The Legislature erected the former Memphis into The Taxing District of Shelby County, and provided a government for it. This government consists of a Legislative Council of eight members, made up of the Board of Fire and Police Commissioners, consisting of three, and the Board of Public Works, consisting of five. These are all elected by popular vote to serve a term of four years, but the elections are held every two years, so that the council always contains members who have had experience. The Board of Fire and Police Commissioners elects a President, who is the executive officer of the Taxing District, and has the power and duties of a mayor; he has a salary of $2000, inclusive of his fees as police magistrate, and the other members of his board have salaries of $500. The members of the Board of Public Works serve without compensation. No man can be eligible to either board who has not been a resident of the district for five years. In addition there is a Board of Health, appointed by the council. This government has the ordinary powers of a city government, defined carefully in the Act, but it cannot run the city in debt, and it cannot appropriate the taxes collected except for the specific purpose named by the State Legislature, which specific appropriations are voted annually by the Legislature on the recommendation of the council. Thus the government of the city is committed to eight men, and the execution of its laws to one man, the President of the Taxing District, who has extraordinary power. The final success of this scheme will be watched with a great deal of interest by other cities. On the surface it can be seen that it depends upon securing a non-partisan council, and an honest, conscientious President of the Taxing District—that is to say, upon the choice by popular vote of the best eight men to rule the city. Up to this time, with only slight hitches, it has worked exceedingly well, as will appear in a consideration of the condition of the city. The slight hitch mentioned was that the President was accused of using temporarily the sum appropriated for one city purpose for another.

The Supreme Court of the United States decided that Memphis had not evaded its obligations by a change of name and form of government. The result was a settlement with the creditors at fifty cents on the dollar; and then the city gathered itself together for a courageous effort and a new era of prosperity. The turning-point in its career was the adoption of a system of drainage and sewerage which transformed it immediately into a fairly healthful city. With its uneven surface and abundance of water at hand, it was well adapted to the Waring system, which works to the satisfaction of all concerned, and since its introduction the inhabitants are relieved from apprehension of the return of a yellow-fever epidemic. Population and business returned with this sense of security, and there has been a change in the social atmosphere as well. In 1880 it had a population of less than 34,000; it can now truthfully claim between 75,000 and 80,000; and the business activity, the building both of fine business blocks and handsome private residences, are proportioned to the increase in inhabitants. In 1879-80 the receipt of cotton was 409,809 bales, valued at $23,752,529; in 1886-87, 603,277 bales, valued at $30,099,510. The estimate of the Board of Trade for 1888, judging from the first months of the year, is 700,000 bales. I notice in the comparative statement of leading articles of commerce and consumption an exceedingly large increase in 1887 over 1886. The banking capital in 1887 was $3,300,000—an increase of $1,560,000 over 1886. The clearings were $101,177,377 in 1877, against $82,642,192 in 1880.

The traveller, however, does not need figures to convince him of the business activity of the town; the piles of cotton beyond the capacity of storage, the street traffic, the extension of streets and residences far beyond the city limits, all speak of growth. There is in process of construction a union station to accommodate the six railways now meeting there and others projected. On the west of the river it has lines to Kansas City and Little Rock and to St. Louis; on the east, to Louisville and to the Atlantic seaboard direct, and two to New Orleans. With the building of the bridge, which is expected to be constructed in a couple of years, Memphis will be admirably supplied with transportation facilities.

As to its external appearance, it must be said that the city has grown so fast that city improvements do not keep pace with its assessable value. The inability of the city to go into debt is a wholesome provision, but under this limitation the city offices are shabby, the city police quarters and court would disgrace an indigent country village, and most of the streets are in bad condition for want of pavement. There are fine streets, many attractive new residences, and some fine old places, with great trees, and the gravelled pikes running into the country are in fine condition, and are favorite drives. There is a beautiful country round about, with some hills and pleasant woods. Looked at from an elevation, the town is seen to cover a large territory, and presents in the early green of spring a charming appearance. Some five miles out is the Montgomery race-track, park, and club-house—a handsome establishment, prettily laid out and planted, already attractive, and sure to be notable when the trees are grown.

The city has a public-school system, a Board of Education elected by popular vote, and divides its fund fairly between schools for white and colored children. But it needs good school-houses as much as it needs good pavements. In 1887 the tax of one and a half mills produced $54,000 for carrying on the schools, and $19,000 for the building fund. It was not enough—at least $75,000 were needed. The schools were in debt. There is a plan adopted for a fine High-school building, but the city needs altogether more money and more energy for the public schools. According to some reports the public schools have suffered from politics, and are not as good as they were years ago, but they are undoubtedly gaining in public favor, notwithstanding some remaining Bourbon prejudice against them. The citizens are making money fast enough to begin to be liberal in matters educational, which are only second to sanitary measures in the well-being of the city. The new free Public Library, which will be built and opened in a couple of years, will do much for the city in this direction. It is the noble gift of the late F. H. Cossitt, of New York, formerly a citizen of Memphis, who left $75,000 for that purpose.

Perhaps the public schools of Memphis would be better (though not so without liberal endowment) if the city had not two exceptionally good private schools for young ladies. These are the Clara Conway Institute and the Higby School for Young Ladies, taking their names from their principals and founders. Each of these schools has about 350 pupils, from the age of six to the mature age of graduation, boys being admitted until they are twelve years old. Each has pleasant grounds and fine buildings, large, airy, well planned, with ample room for all the departments—literature, science, art, music—of the most advanced education. One finds in them the best methods of the best schools, and a most admirable spirit. It is not too much to say that these schools give distinction to Memphis, and that the discipline and intellectual training the young ladies receive there will have a marked effect upon the social life of the city. If one who spent some delightful hours in the company of these graceful and enthusiastic scholars, and who would like heartily to acknowledge their cordiality, and his appreciation of their admirable progress in general study, might make a suggestion, it would be that what the frank, impulsive Southern girl, with her inborn talent for being agreeable and her vivid apprehension of life, needs least of all is the cultivation of the emotional, the rhetorical, the sentimental side. However cleverly they are done, the recitation of poems of sentiment, of passion, of lovemaking and marriage, above all, of those doubtful dialect verses in which a touch of pseudo-feeling is supposed to excuse the slang of the street and the vulgarity of the farm, is not an exercise elevating to the taste. I happen to speak of it here, but I confess that it is only a text from which a little sermon might be preached about “recitations” and declamations generally, in these days of overdone dialect and innuendoes about the hypocrisy of old-fashioned morality.

The city has a prosperous college of the Christian Brothers, another excellent school for girls in the St. Agnes Academy, and a colored industrial school, the Lemoyne, where the girls are taught cooking and the art of house-keeping, and the boys learn carpentering. This does not belong to the public-school system.

Whatever may be the opinion about the propriety of attaching industrial training to public schools generally, there is no doubt that this sort of training is indispensable to the colored people of the South, whose children do not at present receive the needed domestic training at borne, and whose education must contribute to their ability to earn a living. Those educated in the schools, high and low, cannot all be teachers or preachers, and they are not in the way of either social elevation or thrifty lives if they have neither a trade nor the taste to make neat and agreeable homes. The colored race cannot have it too often impressed upon them that their way to all the rights and privileges under a free government lies in industry, thrift, and morality. Whatever reason they have to complain of remaining discrimination and prejudice, there is only one way to overcome both, and that is by the acquisition of property and intelligence. In the history of the world a people were never elevated otherwise. No amount of legislation can do it. In Memphis—in Southern cities generally—the public schools are impartially administered as to the use of money for both races. In the country districts they are as generally inadequate, both in quality and in the length of the school year. In the country, where farming and domestic service must be the occupations of the mass of the people, industrial schools are certainly not called for; but in the cities they are a necessity of the present development.

Ever since Memphis took itself in hand with a new kind of municipal government, and made itself a healthful city, good-fortune of one kind and another seems to have attended it. Abundant water it could get from the river for sewerage purposes, but for other uses either extensive filters were needed or cisterns were resorted to. The city was supplied with water, which the stranger would hesitate to drink or bathe in, from Wolf River, a small stream emptying into the Mississippi above the city. But within the year a most important discovery has been made for the health and prosperity of the town. This was the striking, in the depression of the Gayoso Bayou, at a depth of 450 feet, perfectly pure water, at a temperature of about 62°, in abundance, with a head sufficient to bring it in fountains some feet about the level of the ground. Ten wells had been sunk, and the water flowing was estimated at ten millions of gallons daily, or half enough to supply the city. It was expected that with more wells the supply would be sufficient for all purposes, and then Memphis will have drinking water not excelled in purity by that of any city in the land. It is not to be wondered at that this incalculable good-fortune should add buoyancy to the business, and even to the advance in the price, of real estate. The city has widely outgrown its corporate limits, there is activity in building and improvements in all the pleasant suburbs, and with the new pavements which are in progress, the city will be as attractive as it is prosperous.

Climate is much a matter of taste. The whole area of the alluvial land of the Mississippi has the three requisites for malaria—heat, moisture, and vegetable decomposition. The tendency to this is overcome, in a measure, as the land is thoroughly drained and cultivated. Memphis has a mild winter, long summer, and a considerable portion of the year when the temperature is just about right for enjoyment. In the table of temperature for 1887 I find that the mean was 61.9°, the mean of the highest by months was 84.9°, and the mean lowest was 37.4°. The coldest month was January, when the range of the thermometer was from 72.2° to 4.3°, and the hottest was July, when the range was from 99° to 67.30. There is a preponderance of fair, sunny weather. The record for 1887 was: 157 days of clear, 132 fair, 65 cloudy, 91 days of frost. From this it appears that Memphis has a pretty agreeable climate for those who do not insist upon a good deal of “bracing,” and it has a most genial and hospitable society.

Early on the morning of the 12th of April we crossed the river to the lower landing of the Memphis and Little Rock Railway, the upper landing being inaccessible on account of the high water. It was a delicious spring morning, the foliage, half unfolded, was in its first flush of green, and as we steamed down the stream the town, on bluffs forty feet high, was seen to have a noble situation. All the opposite country for forty miles from the river was afloat, and presented the appearance of a vast swamp, not altogether unpleasing in its fresh dress of green. For forty miles, to Madison, the road ran upon an embankment just above the flood; at intervals were poor shanties and little cultivated patches, but shanties, corn patches, and trees all stood in the water. The inhabitants, the majority colored, seemed of the sort to be content with half-amphibious lives. Before we reached Madison and crossed St. Francis River we ran through a streak of gravel. Forest City, at the crossing of the Iron Mountain Railway, turned out to be not exactly a city, in the Eastern meaning of the word, but a considerable collection of houses, with a large hotel. It seemed, so far in the wilderness, an irresponsible sort of place, and the crowd at the station were in a festive, hilarious mood. This was heightened by the playing of a travelling band which we carried with us in the second-class car, and which good-naturedly unlimbered at the stations. It consisted of a colored bass-viol, violin, and guitar, and a white cornet. On the way the negro population were in the majority, all the residences were shabby shanties, and the moving public on the trains and about the stations had not profited by the example of the commercial travellers, who are the only smartly dressed people one sees in these regions. A young girl who got into the car here told me that she came from Marianna, a town to the south, on the Languille River, and she seemed to regard it as a central place. At Brinkley we crossed the St. Louis, Arkansas, and Texas road, ran through more swamps to the Cache River, after which there was prairie and bottom-land, and at De Valle’s Bluff we came to the White River. There is no doubt that this country is well watered. After White River fine reaches of prairie-land were encountered—in fact, a good deal of prairie and oak timber. Much of this prairie had once been cultivated to cotton, but was now turned to grazing, and dotted with cattle. A place named Prairie Centre had been abandoned; indeed, we passed a good many abandoned houses before we reached Carlisle and the Galloway. Lonoke is one of the villages of rather mean appearance, but important enough to be talked about and visited by the five aspirants for the gubernatorial nomination, who were travelling about together, each one trying to convince the people that the other four were unworthy the office. This is lowland Arkansas, supporting a few rude villages, inhabited by negroes and unambitious whites, and not a fairly representative portion of a great State.

At Argenta, a sort of railway and factory suburb of the city, we crossed the muddy, strong-flowing Arkansas River on a fine bridge, elevated so as to strike high up on the bluff on which Little Rock is built. The rock of the bluff, which the railway pierces, is a very shaly slate. The town lying along the bluff has a very picturesque appearance, in spite of its newness and the poor color of its brick. The situation is a noble one, commanding a fine prospect of river and plain, and mountains to the west rising from the bluff on a series of gentle hills, with conspicuous heights farther out for public institutions and country houses. The eity, which has nearly thirty thousand inhabitants, can boast a number of handsome business streets with good shops and an air of prosperous trade, with well-shaded residence streets of comfortable houses; but all the thoroughfares are bad for want of paving, Little Rock being forbidden by the organic law ( as Memphis is ) to run in debt for city improvements. A city which has doubled its population within eight years, and been restrained from using its credit, must expect to suffer from bad streets, but its caution about debt is reassuring to intending settlers. The needed street improvements, it is understood, however, will soon be under way, and the citizens have the satisfaction of knowing that when they are made, Little Rock will be a beautiful city.

Below the second of the iron bridges which span the river is a bowlder which gave the name of Little Rock to the town. The general impression is that it is the first rock on the river above its confluence with the Mississippi; this is not literally true, but this rock is the first conspicuous one, and has become historic. On the opposite side of the river, a mile above, is a bluff several hundred feet high, called Big Rock. On the summit is a beautiful park, a vineyard, a summer hotel, and pleasure-grounds—a delightful resort in the hot weather. From the top one gains a fair idea of Arkansas—the rich delta of the river, the mighty stream itself, the fertile rolling land and forests, the mountains on the border of the Indian Territory, the fair city, the sightly prominences about it dotted with buildings—altogether a magnificent and most charming view.

There is a United States arsenal at Little Rock; the Government Post-office is a handsome building, and among the twenty-seven churches there are some of pleasing architecture. The State-house, which stands upon the bluff overlooking the river, is a relic of old times, suggesting the easy-going plantation style. It is an indescribable building, or group of buildings, with classic pillars of course, and rambling galleries that lead to old-fashioned, domestic-looking State offices. It is shabby in appearance, but has a certain interior air of comfort. The room of the Assembly—plain, with windows on three sides, open to the sun and air, and not so large that conversational speaking cannot be heard in it—is not at all the modern notion of a legislative chamber, which ought to be lofty, magnificently decorated, lighted from above, and shut in as much as possible from the air and the outside world. Arkansas, which is rapidly growing in population and wealth, will no doubt very soon want a new State-house. Heaven send it an architect who will think first of the comfortable, cheerful rooms, and second of imposing outside display! He might spend a couple of millions on a building which would astonish the natives, and not give them as agreeable a working room for the Legislature as this old chamber. The fashion is to put up an edifice whose dimensions shall somehow represent the dignity of the State, a vast structure of hall-ways and staircases, with half-lighted and ill-ventilated rooms. It seems to me that the American genius ought to be able to devise a capitol of a different sort, certainly one better adapted to the Southern climate. A group of connected buildings for the various departments might be better than one solid parallelogram, and I have a fancy that legislators would be clearer-headed, and would profit more by discussion, if they sat in a cheerful chamber, not too large to be easily heard in, and open as much as possible to the sun and air and the sight of tranquil nature. The present Capitol has an air of lazy neglect, and the law library which is stored in it could not well be in a worse condition; but there is something rather pleasing about the old, easy-going establishment that one would pretty certainly miss in a smart new building. Arkansas has an opportunity to distinguish itself by a new departure in State-houses.

In the city are several of the State institutions, most of them occupying ample grounds with fine sites in the suburbs. Conspicuous on high ground in the city is the Blind Asylum, a very commodious, and well-conducted institution, with about 80 inmates. The School for Deaf-mutes, with 125 pupils, is under very able management. But I confess that the State Lunatic Asylum gave me a genuine surprise, and if the civilization of Arkansas were to be judged by it, it would take high rank among the States. It is a very fine building, well constructed and admirably planned, on a site commanding a noble view, with eighty acres of forest and garden. More land is needed to carry out the superintendent’s idea of labor, and to furnish supplies for the patients, of whom there are 450, the men and women, colored and white, in separate wings. The builders seem to have taken advantage of all the Eastern experience and shunned the Eastern mistakes, and the result is an establishment with all the modern improvements and conveniences, conducted in the most enlightened spirit. I do not know a better large State asylum in the United States. Of the State penitentiary nothing good can be said. Arkansas is still struggling with the wretched lease system, the frightful abuses of which she is beginning to appreciate. The penitentiary is a sort of depot for convicts, who are distributed about the State by the contractors. At the time of my visit a considerable number were there, more or less crippled and sick, who had been rescued from barbarous treatment in one of the mines. A gang were breaking stones in the yard, a few were making cigars, and the dozen women in the women’s ward were doing laundry-work. But nothing appeared to be done to improve the condition of the inmates. In Southern prisons I notice comparatively few of the “professional” class which so largely make the population of Northern penitentiaries, and I always fancy that in the rather easy-going management, wanting the cast-iron discipline, the lot of the prisoners is not so hard. Thus far among the colored people not much odium attaches to one of their race who has been in prison.

The public-school system of the State is slowly improving, hampered by want of Constitutional power to raise money for the schools. By the Constitution, State taxes are limited to one per cent.; county taxes to one-half of one per cent., with an addition of one-half of one per cent, to pay debts existing when the Constitution was adopted in 1874; city taxes the same as county; in addition, for the support of common schools, the Assembly may lay a tax not to exceed two mills on the dollar on the taxable property of the State, and an annual per capita tax of one dollar on every male inhabitant over the age of twenty-one years; and it may also authorize each school district to raise for itself, by vote of its electors, a tax for school purposes not to exceed five mills on the dollar. The towns generally vote this additional tax, but in most of the country districts schools are not maintained for more than three months in the year. The population of the State is about 1,000,000, in an area of 53,045 square miles. The scholastic population enrolled has increased steadily for several years, and in 1886 was 164,757, of which 122,296 were white and 42,461 were colored. The total population of school age (including the enrolled) was 358,006, of which 266,188 were white and 91,818 colored. The school fund available for that year was $1,327,710. The increased revenue and enrolment are encouraging, but it is admitted that the schools of the State (sparsely settled as it is) cannot be what they should be without more money to build decent school-houses, employ competent teachers, and have longer sessions.

Little Rock has fourteen school-houses, only one or two of which are commendable-The High-school, with 50 pupils and 2 teachers, is held in a district building. The colored people have their fair proportion of schools, with teachers of their own race. Little Rock is abundantly able to tax itself for better schools, as it is for better pavements. In all the schools most attention seems to be paid to mathematics, and it is noticeable how proficient colored children under twelve are in figures.

The most important school in the State, which I did not see, is the Industrial University at Fayetteville, which received the Congressional land grant and is a State beneficiary; its property, including endowments and the University farm, is reckoned at $300,000. The general intention is to give a practical industrial education. The collegiate department, a course of three years, has 77 pupils; in the preparatory department are about 200; but the catalogue, including special students in art and music, the medical department at Little Rock of 60, and the Normal School at Pine Bluff of 215, foots up about 600 students. The University is situated in a part of the State most attractive in its scenery and most healthful, and offers a chance for every sort of mental and manual training.

The most widely famous place in the State is the Hot Springs. I should like to have seen it when it was in a state of nature; I should like to see it when it gets the civilization of a European bath-place. It has been a popular and even crowded resort for several years, and the medical treatment which can be given there in connection with the use of the waters is so nearly a specific for certain serious diseases, and going there is so much a necessity for many invalids, that access to it ought by this time to be easy. But it is not. It is fifty-five miles south-west of Little Rock, but to reach it the traveller must leave the Iron Mountain road at Malvern for a ride over a branch line of some twenty miles. Unfortunately this is a narrow-gauge road, and however ill a person may be, a change of cars must be made at Malvern. This is a serious annoyance, and it is a wonder that the main railways and the hotel and bath keepers have not united to rid themselves of the monopoly of the narrow-gauge road.

The valley of the Springs is over seven hundred feet above the sea; the country is rough and broken; the hills, clad with small pines and hard-wood, which rise on either side of the valley to the height’ of two or three hundred feet, make an agreeable impression of greenness; and the place is capable, by reason of its irregularity, of becoming beautiful as well as picturesque. It is still in the cheap cottage and raw brick stage. The situation suggests Carlsbad, which is also jammed into a narrow valley. The Hot Springs Mountain—that is, the mountain from the side of which all the hot springs (about seventy) flow—is a Government reservation. Nothing is permitted to be built on it except the Government hospital for soldiers and sailors, the public bath-houses along the foot, and one hotel, which holds over on the reserved land. The Government has enclosed and piped the springs, built a couple of cement reservoirs, and lets the bath privileges to private parties at thirty dollars a tub, the number of tubs being limited. The rent money the Government is supposed to devote to the improvement of the mountain. This has now a private lookout tower on the summit, from which a most extensive view is had over the well-wooded State, and it can be made a lovely park. There is a good deal of criticism about favoritism in letting the bath privileges, and the words “ring” and “syndicate” are constantly heard. Before improvements were made, the hot water discharged into a creek at the base of the hill. This creek is now arched over and become a street, with the bath-houses on one side and shops and shanties on the other. Difficulty about obtaining a good title to land has until recently stood in the way of permanent improvements. All claims have now been adjudicated upon, the Government is prepared to give a perfect title to all its own land, except the mountain, forever reserved, and purchasers can be sure of peaceful occupation.

Opposite the Hot Springs Mountain rises the long sharp ridge of West Mountain, from which the Government does not permit the foliage to be stripped. The city runs around and back of this mountain, follows the winding valley to the north, climbs up all the irregular ridges in the neighborhood, and spreads itself over the valley on the south, near the Ouachita River. It is estimated that there are 10,000 residents in this rapidly growing town. Houses stick on the sides of the hills, perch on terraces, nestle in the ravines. Nothing is regular, nothing is as might have been expected, but it is all interesting, and promising of something pleasing and picturesque in the future. All the springs, except one, on Hot Springs Mountain are hot, with a temperature ranging from 93° to 157° Fahrenheit; there are plenty of springs in and among the other hills, but they are all cold. It is estimated that the present quantity of hot water, much of which runs to waste, would supply about 19,000 persons daily with 25 gallons each. The water is perfectly clear, has no odor, and is very agreeable for bathing. That remarkable cures are performed here the evidence does not permit one to doubt, nor can one question the wonderfully rejuvenating effect upon the system of a course of its waters.

It is necessary to suggest, however, that the value of the springs to invalids and to all visitors would be greatly enhanced by such regulations as those that govern Carlsbad and Marienbad in Bohemia. The success of those great “cures” depends largely upon the regimen enforced there, the impossibility of indulging in an improper diet, and the prevailing regularity of habits as to diet, sleep, and exercise. There is need at Hot Springs for more hotel accommodation of the sort that will make comfortable invalids accustomed to luxury at home, and at least one new and very large hotel is promised soon to supply this demand; but what Hot Springs needs is the comforts of life, and not means of indulgence at table or otherwise. Perhaps it is impossible for the American public, even the sick part of it, to submit itself to discipline, but we never will have the full benefit of our many curative springs until it consents to do so. Patients, no doubt, try to follow the varying regimen imposed by different doctors, but it is difficult to do so amid all the temptations of a go-as-you-please bath-place. A general regimen of diet applicable to all visitors is the only safe rule. Under such enlightened rules as prevail at Marienbad, and with the opportunity for mild entertainment in pretty shops, agreeable walks and drives, with music and the hundred devices to make the time pass pleasantly, Hot Springs would become one of the most important sanitary resorts in the world. It is now in a very crude state; but it has the water, the climate, the hills and woods; good saddle-horses are to be had, and it is an interesting country to ride over; those who frequent the place are attached to it; and time and taste and money will, no doubt, transform it into a place of beauty.

Arkansas surprised the world by the exhibition it made of itself at New Orleans, not only for its natural resources, but for the range and variety of its productions. That it is second to no other State in its adaptability to cotton-raising was known; that it had magnificent forests and large coal-fields and valuable minerals in its mountains was known; but that it raised fruit superior to any other in the South-west, and quite equal to any in the North, was a revelation. The mountainous part of the State, where some of the hills rise to the altitude of 2500 feet, gives as good apples, pears, and peaches as are raised in any portion of the Union; indeed, this fruit has taken the first prize in exhibitions from Massachusetts to Texas. It is as remarkable for flavor and firmness as it is for size and beauty. This region is also a good vineyard country. The State boasts more miles of navigable waters than any other, it has variety of soil and of surface to fit it for every crop in the temperate latitudes, and it has a very good climate. The range of northern mountains protects it from “northers,” and its elevated portions have cold enough for a tonie. Of course the low and swampy lands are subject to malaria. The State has just begun to appreciate itself, and has organized efforts to promote immigration. It has employed a competent State geologist, who is doing excellent service. The United States has still a large quantity of valuable land in the State open to settlement under the homestead and preemption laws. The State itself has over 2,000,000 acres of land, forfeited and granted to it in various ways; of this, the land forfeited for taxes will be given to actual settlers in tracts of 160 acres to each person, and the rest can be purchased at a low price. I cannot go into all the details, but the reader may be assured that the immigration committee make an exceedingly good showing for settlers who wish to engage in farming, fruit-raising, mining, or lumbering. The Constitution of the State is very democratic, the statute laws are stringent in morality, the limitations upon town and city indebtedness are severe, the rate of taxation is very low, and the State debt is small. The State, in short, is in a good condition for a vigorous development of its resources.

There is a popular notion that Arkansas is a “bowie-knife” State, a lawless and an ignorant State. I shared this before I went there. I cannot disprove the ignorance of the country districts. As I said, more money is needed to make the public-school system effective. But in its general aspect the State is as orderly and moral as any. The laws against carrying concealed weapons are strict, and are enforced.. It is a fairly temperate State. Under the high license and local option laws, prohibition prevails in two-thirds of the State, and the popular vote is strictly enforced. In forty-eight of the seventy-five counties no license is granted, in other counties only a single town votes license, and in many of the remaining counties many towns refuse it. In five counties only is liquor perfectly free. A special law prohibits liquor-selling within five miles of a college; within three miles of a church or school, a majority of the adult inhabitants can prohibit it. With regard to liquor-selling, woman suffrage practically exists. The law says that on petition of a majority of the adult population in any district the county judge must refuse license. The women, therefore, without going into politics, sign the petitions and create prohibition.

The street-cars and railways make no discrimination as to color of passengers. Everywhere I went I noticed that the intercourse between the two races was friendly. There is much good land on the railway between Little Rock and Arkansas City, heavily timbered, especially with the clean-boled, stately gum-trees. At Pine Bluff, which has a population of 5000, there is a good colored Normal School, and the town has many prosperous negroes, who support a racetrack of their own, and keep up a county fair. I was told that the most enterprising man in the place, the largest street-railway owner, is black as a coal. Farther down the road the country is not so good, the houses are mostly poor shanties, and the population, largely colored, appears to be of a shiftless character. Arkansas City itself, low-lying on the Mississippi, has a bad reputation.

Little Rock, already a railway centre of importance, is prosperous and rapidly improving. It has the settled, temperate, orderly society of an Eastern town, but democratic in its habits, and with a cordial hospitality which is more provincial than fashionable. I heard there a good chamber concert of stringed instruments, one of a series which had been kept up by subscription all winter, and would continue the coming winter. The performers were young Bohemians. The gentleman at whose pleasant, old-fashioned house I was entertained, a leading lawyer and jurist in the South-west, was a good linguist, had travelled in most parts of the civilized globe, had on his table the current literature of France, England, Germany, and America, a daily Paris newspaper, one New York journal (to give its name might impugn his good taste in the judgment of every other New York journal), and a very large and well-selected library, two-thirds of which was French, and nearly half of the remainder German. This was one of the many things I found in Arkansas which I did not expect to find.

XIV.—ST. LOUIS AND KANSAS CITY

St. Louis is eighty years old. It was incorporated as a town in 1808, thirteen years before the admission of Missouri into the Union as a State. In 1764 a company of thirty Frenchmen made a settlement on its site and gave it its distinguished name. For nearly half a century, under French and Spanish jurisdiction alternately, it was little more than a trading post, and at the beginning of this century it contained only about a thousand inhabitants. This period, however, gave it a romantic historic background, and as late as 1853, when its population was a hundred thousand, it preserved French characteristics and a French appearance—small brick houses and narrow streets crowded down by the river. To the stranger it was the Planters’ Hotel and a shoal of big steamboats moored along an extensive levee roaring with river traffic. Crowded, ill-paved, dirty streets, a few country houses on elevated sites, a population forced into a certain activity by trade, but hindered in municipal improvement by French conservatism, and touched with the rust of slavery—that was the St. Louis of thirty-five years ago.

Now everything is changed as by some magic touch. The growth of the city has always been solid, unspeculative, conservative in its business methods, with some persistence of the old French influence, only gradually parting from its ancient traditions, preserving always something of the aristocratic flavor of “old families,” accounted “slow” in the impatience of youth. But it has burst its old bounds, and grown with a rapidity that would be marvellous in any other country. The levee is comparatively deserted, although the trade on the lower river is actually very large. The traveller who enters the city from the east passes over the St. Louis Bridge, a magnificent structure and one of the engineering wonders of the modern world, plunges into a tunnel under the business portion of the old city, and emerges into a valley covered with a net-work of railway-tracks, and occupied by apparently interminable lines of passenger coaches and freight cars, out of the confusion of which he makes his way with difficulty to a carriage, impressed at once by the enormous railway traffic of the city. This is the site of the proposed Union Depot, which waits upon the halting action of the Missouri Pacific system. The eastern outlet for all this growing traffic is over the two tracks of the bridge; these are entirely inadequate, and during a portion of the year there is a serious blockade of freight. A second bridge over the Mississippi is already a necessity to the commerce of the city, and is certain to be built within a few years.

St. Louis, since the war, has spread westward over the gentle ridges which parallel the river, and become a city vast in territory and most attractive in appearance. While the business portion has expanded into noble avenues with stately business and public edifices, the residence parts have a beauty, in handsome streets and varied architecture, that is a continual surprise to one who has not seen the city for twenty years. I had set down the length of the city along the river-front as thirteen miles, with a depth of about six miles; but the official statistics are: length of river-front, 19.15 miles; length of western limits, 21.27; extent north and south in an air line, 17; and length east and west on an air line, 6.62. This gives an area of 61.37 square miles, or 39,276 acres. This includes the public parks (containing 2095 acres), and is sufficient room for the population of 450,000, which the city doubtless has in 1888. By the United States census of 1870 the population was reported much larger than it was, the figures having no doubt been manipulated for political purposes. Estimating the natural increase from this false report, the city was led to claim a population far beyond the actual number, and unjustly suffered a little ridicule for a mistake for which it was not responsible. The United States census of 1880 gave it 350,522. During the eight years from 1880 there were erected 18,574 new dwelling-houses, at a cost of over fifty millions of dollars.

The great territorial extension of the city in 1876 was for a time a disadvantage, for it threw upon the city the care of enormous street extensions, made a sporadic movement of population beyond Grand avenue, which left hiatuses in improvement, and created a sort of furor of fashion for getting away from what to me is still the most attractive residence portion of the town, namely, the elevated ridges west of Fourteenth Street, crossed by Lucas Place and adjoining avenues. In this quarter, and east of Grand avenue, are fine high streets, with detached houses and grounds, many of them both elegant and comfortable, and this is the region of the Washington University, some of the finest club-houses, and handsomest churches. The movements of eity populations, however, are not to be accounted for. One of the finest parts of the town, and one of the oldest of the better residence parts, that south of the railways, containing broad, well-planted avenues, and very stately old homes, and the exquisite Lafayette Park, is almost wholly occupied now by Germans, who make up so large a proportion of the population.

One would have predicted at an early day that the sightly bluffs below the eity would be the resort of fashion, and be occupied with fine country houses. But the movement has been almost altogether westward and away from the river. And this rolling, wooded region is most inviting, elevated, open, cheerful. No other eity in the West has fairer suburbs for expansion and adornment, and its noble avenues, dotted with conspicuously fine residences, give promise of great beauty and elegance. In its late architectural development, St. Louis, like Chicago, is just in time to escape a very mediocre and merely imitative period in American building. Beyond Grand avenue the stranger will be shown Vandeventer Place, a semiprivate oblong park, surrounded by many pretty and some notably fine residences. Two of them are by Richardson, and the city has other specimens of his work. I cannot refrain from again speaking of the effect that this original genius has had upon American architecture, especially in the West, when money and enterprise afforded him free scope. It is not too much to say that he created a new era, and the influence of his ideas is seen everywhere in the work of architects who have caught his spirit.

The city has addressed itself to the occupation and adornment of its great territory and the improvement of its most travelled thoroughfares with admirable public spirit. The rolling nature of the ground has been taken advantage of to give it a nearly perfect system of drainage and sewerage. The old pavements of soft limestone, which were dust in dry weather and liquid mud in wet weather, are being replaced by granite in the business parts and asphalt and wood blocks (laid on a concrete base) in the residence portions. Up to the beginning of 1888 this new pavement had cost nearly three and a half million dollars, and over thirty-three miles of it were granite blocks. Street railways have also been pushed all over the territory. The total of street lines is already over one hundred and fifty-four miles, and over thirty miles of these give rapid transit by cable. These facilities make the whole of the wide territory available for business and residence, and give the poorest inhabitants the means of reaching the parks.

The park system is on the most liberal scale, both public and private; the parks are already famous for extent and beauty, but when the projected connecting boulevards are made they will attain world-wide notoriety. The most extensive of the private parks is that of the combined Agricultural Fair Grounds and Zoological Gardens. Here is held annually the St. Louis Fair, which is said to be the largest in the United States. The enclosure is finely laid out and planted, and contains an extensive park, exhibition buildings, cottages, a race-track, an amphitheatre, which suggests in size and construction some of the largest Spanish bull-rings, and picturesque houses for wild animals. The zoological exhibition is a very good one. There are eighteen public parks. One of the smaller (thirty acres) of these, and one of the oldest, is Lafayette Park, on the south side. Its beauty surprised me more than almost anything I saw in the city. It is a gem; just that artificial control of nature which most pleases—forest-trees, a pretty lake, fountains, flowers, walks planned to give everywhere exquisite vistas. It contains a statue of Thomas II. Benton, which may be a likeness, but utterly fails to give the character of the man. The largest is Forest Park, on the west side, a tract of 1372 acres, mostly forest, improved by excellent drives, and left as much as possible in a natural condition. It has ten miles of good driving-roads. This park cost the city about $850,000, and nearly as much more has been expended on it since its purchase. The surface has great variety of slopes, glens, elevations, lakes, and meadows. During the summer music is furnished in a handsome pagoda, and the place is much resorted to. Fronting the boulevard are statues of Governor Edward Bates and Frank P. Blair, the latter very characteristic.

Next in importance is Tower Grove Park, an oblong of 276 acres. This and Shaw’s Garden, adjoining, have been given to the city by Mr. Henry Shaw, an Englishman who made his fortune in the city, and they remain under his control as to care and adornment during his life. Those who have never seen foreign parks and pleasure-gardens can obtain a very good idea of their formal elegance and impressiveness by visiting Tower Grove Park and the Botanical Gardens. They will see the perfection of lawns, avenues ornamented by statuary, flower-beds, and tasteful walks. The entrances, with stone towers and lodges, suggest similar effects in France and in England. About the music-stand are white marble busts of six chief musical composers. The drives are adorned with three statues in bronze, thirty feet high, designed and cast in Munich by Frederick Millier. They are figures of Shakespeare, Humboldt, and Columbus, and so nobly conceived and executed that the patriotic American must wish they had been done in this country. Of Shaw’s Botanical Garden I need to say little, for its fame as a comprehensive and classified collection of trees, plants, and flowers is world-wide. It has no equal in this country. As a place for botanical study no one appreciated it more highly than the late Professor Asa Gray. Sometimes a peculiar classification is followed; one locality’ is devoted to economic plants—camphor, quinine, cotton, tea, coffee, etc.; another to “Plants of the Bible.” The space of fifty-four acres, enclosed by high stone walls, contains, besides the open garden and allées and glass houses, the summer residence and the tomb of Mr. Shaw. This old gentleman, still vigorous in his eighty-eighth year, is planning new adornments in the way of statuary and busts of statesmen, poets, and scientists. His plans are all liberal and cosmopolitan. For over thirty years his botanical knowledge, his taste, and abundant wealth and leisure have been devoted to the creation of this wonderful garden and park, which all bear the stamp of his strong individuality, and of a certain pleasing foreign formality. What a source of unfailing delight it must have been to him! As we sat talking with him I thought how other millionaires, if they knew how, might envy a matured life, after the struggle for a competency is over, devoted to this most rational enjoyment, in an occupation as elevating to the taste as to the character, and having in mind always the public good. Over the entrance gate is the inscription, “Missouri Botanical Gardens.” When the city has full control of the garden the word “Missouri” should be replaced by “Shaw.”

The money expended for public parks gives some idea of the liberal and far-sighted provision for the health and pleasure of a great city. The parks originally cost the city 81,309,944, and three millions more have been spent upon their improvement and maintenance. This indicates an enlightened spirit, which we shall see characterizes the city in other things, and is evidence of a high degree of culture.

Of the commerce and manufactures of the town I can give no adequate statement without going into details, which my space forbids. The importance of the Mississippi River is much emphasized, not only as an actual highway of traffic, but as a regulator of railway rates. The town has by the official reports been discriminated against, and even the Inter-State Act has not afforded all the relief expected. In 1887 the city shipped to foreign markets by way of the Mississippi and the jetties 3,973,000 bushels of wheat and 7,365,000 bushels of corn—a larger exportation than ever before except in the years 1880 and 1881. An outlet like this is of course a check on railway charges. The trade of the place employs a banking capital of fifteen millions. The deposits in 1887 were thirty-seven millions; the clearings over 8894,527,731—the largest ever reached, and over ten per cent, in excess of the clearings of 1886. To whatever departments I turn in the report of the Merchants’ Exchange for 1887 I find a vigorous growth—as in building—and in most articles of commerce a great increase. It appears by the tonnage statements that, taking receipts and shipments together, 12,060,995 tons of freight were handled in and out during 1886, against 14,359,059 tons in 1887—a gain of nineteen and a half per cent. The buildings in 1886 cost $7,030,819; in 1887, $8,162,914. There were $44,740 more stamps sold at the post-office in 1887 than in 1886. The custom-house collections were less than in 1886, but reached the figures of $1,414,747. The assessed value of real and personal property in 1887 was $217,142,320, on which the rate of taxation in the old city limits was $2.50.

It is never my intention in these papers to mention individual enterprises for their own sake, but I do not hesitate to do so when it is necessary in order to illustrate some peculiar development. It is a curious matter of observation that so many Western cities have one or more specialties in which they excel—houses of trade or manufacture larger and more important than can be found elsewhere. St. Louis finds itself in this category in regard to several establishments. One of these is a wooden-ware company, the largest of the sort in the country, a house which gathers its peculiar goods from all over the United States, and distributes them almost as widely—a business of gigantic proportions and bewildering detail. Its annual sales amount to as much as the sales of all the houses in its line in New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati together. Another is a hardware company, wholesale and retail, also the largest of its kind in the country, with sales annually amounting to six millions of dollars, a very large amount when we consider that it is made up of an infinite number of small and cheap articles in iron, from a fish-hook up—indeed, over fifty thousand separate articles. I spent half a day in this establishment, walking through its departments, noting the unequalled system of compact display, classification, and methods of sale and shipment. Merely as a method of system in business I have never seen anything more interesting. Another establishment, important on account of its central position in the continent and its relation to the Louisiana sugar-fields, is the St. Louis Sugar Refinery.

The refinery proper is the largest building in the Western country used for manufacturing purposes, and, together with its adjuncts of cooper-shops and warehouses, covers five entire blocks and employs 500 men. It has a capacity of working up 400 tons of raw sugar a day, but runs only to the extent of about 200 tons a day, making the value of its present product $7,500,000 a year.