hich, in 1857, is said to contain near one
hundred thousand inhabitants. Let us, for a moment, compare the
_material advantages and resources_ of that place, with those of
Mackinaw city. Dean Swift said, that a large city must combine the
resources of agriculture, commerce and manufactures. Cities have
risen, however, to large size almost exclusively on commerce. Witness
Tyre and Palmyra. But commerce, we concede, when left to itself, is so
fluctuating, that the cities it builds, like Tyre and Palmyra, may, in
the decay of commerce, be left to ruin and desolation. Cities may,
likewise, be built up almost exclusively on manufactures, such as
Birmingham and Sheffield; and it is quite remarkable that the oldest
and most stable cities have depended largely on manufactures.
Damascus, the oldest historical city--which has resisted all the
destructive influences of time and revolution--has always been a
manufacturing town. Paris, Lyons, Lisle, the great interior towns of
France, depend very largely on the manufacture of fine and fashionable
articles, distributed throughout Europe and America. Of the great
elements of civic success, we consider manufactures the most
important; but, to make a city of the first magnitude, it is obviously
necessary to have all the resources of food, industry and commerce.
Chicago is remarkable chiefly as a grain city--like Odessa, on the
Baltic. But, whence is the grain derived? By the construction of
railroads, at that point, from Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin
and Iowa, the whole mass of surplus grain in that region--amounting
to more than twenty millions of bushels per annum--has been exported
from Chicago. But, this is the drainage of three hundred thousand
square miles, two-thirds of which will not export through Chicago when
railroads extend directly east to Milwaukee, Superior and Mackinaw,
from Wisconsin and Iowa, and connect, from the south, at Cairo, with
Missouri and Illinois. Reduced to its own proper limits, the
agricultural resources of Chicago must be confined to half the surface
of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, or about one hundred thousand square
miles. This is but little over one-third the surface drained of
agricultural products toward the Straits of Mackinaw. Will it be said
that this new region of the Northwest is less productive in
agriculture? The contrary, for the great element of breadstuffs, is
likely to be true. Attentive observers of agricultural production have