a region so abundantly supplied with game and
wild products as to make it almost possible to live from the forest alone,
combined with a lack of efficient means of transportation, made such a
temptation to a life of idle ease as many pioneers did not resist. Be it
remembered, also, that although towns, retail trade, and export trade had
begun in Illinois by 1830, these changes were not simultaneous throughout
the state. As 1830 closed Illinois still had squatters many miles from a
mill, it still had Indians, it still had unbridged streams, it still had
regions far from a market--in a word, it had still persisting in some part
of its wide extent each of the ills that had at various times confronted
it in respect to personal danger and lack of inducements to farmers. The
minority of really progressive farmers overcame the difficulties
confronting them by raising cattle or hogs and driving them to distant
markets, the price received being almost clear profit, or by constructing
their own boats and shipping their produce.(457)

Although the great majority of the population of Illinois was engaged in
agriculture, there were salt works in the southeast and lead mines in the
northwest. The salt industry was important. Far the greater part of the
salt made in the state was made at the Gallatin county saline, near
Shawneetown. In 1819 the indefinite statement was made that these springs
furnished between 200,000 and 300,000 bushels of salt annually, the salt
being sold at the works at from fifty to seventy-five cents per
bushel.(458) In 1822, the price of salt in Illinois was reported to have
fallen from $1.25 to $0.50, because of the discovery of copious and strong
salt wells.(459) The next year a strong well was reported twenty miles
east of Carlyle.(460) In 1825, a visitor to the Vermilion county saline
found twenty kettles in operation, producing about one hundred bushels of
salt per week.(461) In 1828, an official report of the superintendent of
the Gallatin county saline stated that about 100,000 bushels of salt was
made annually, and sold at from $0.30 to $0.50 per bushel. The lessees
paid $2,160.50 rent during the year.(462) In 1830, the salt works in
Gallatin county had a capital of $50,000; a product of from 100,000 to
130,000 bushels, selling at from $0.40 to $0.50; and three hundred
employees. The saline in Vermilion county had a capital of $3500; a
product of 3000 to 4000 bushels, selling at $1.25 to $1.50 per bushel;