A FEW NOTES FOR AN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF

ILLINOIS.

We have but to look at the passing moment to see that the politics of today grows out of and reflects the economic and industrial conditions of today. When history records tomorrow what politics did today, it may or may not note the fact that under it all was a social condition, growing out of a still deeper economic and industrial condition, which compelled history to be what it was.

The tendency to ask "why?" has reached the historian. We want "interpretations of history." We hear much now of the "economic interpretation of history," and will hear more as intelligence advances.

Industrial conditions shape the economic life out of which social conditions grow. The civic and political life grows out of and takes shape from economic conditions. Pay-rolls and price-lists make history. The fur of the beaver, and the difference between the price paid the Indians for that fur and its price in London was the attraction which drew the star of empire westward.

The time is rapidly approaching when it will be impossible to secure sufficient data for an adequate history of the industrial and economic development of Illinois. Each year, with the destruction of each old account book, old pay-roll, old price-list, the difficulty increases, All possible haste should be made to collect and transcribe as many of these as still exist. Back of the old settler is the question why he came to be an old settler? That question must be settled by his old ledger, not by his picture. I have no doubt that a fair number of old grocery accounts and farmers' income ledgers can yet be secured to make a fairly complete and connected history of this economic growth. But we must be quick about it. The task is not so easy here as in colonial New England where the prices of farm products and labor were fixed from time to time by the courts. In New England the courts fixed the exchange value of beaver skins, wampum beads, corn and wheat. In Illinois, coon skins, wampum, and general barter likewise prevailed, but we must learn exchange values from old letters, diaries, and account books, rather than court records which will not aid as much save in rare instances.

The pay-rolls of the American Fur company for 1818 and 1819 are obtainable, and show that the company was just beginning to operate in Illinois, which is spoken of as a "dependency" of the Milwaukee branch of the company's business. A study of these pay-rolls shows that much higher wages were paid for like services in Illinois than obtained either in the Mackinac district or on the Mississippi below St. Louis. The rates of pay mentioned in these pay-rolls is in the depreciated currency of that time and no attempt will here be made to give present equivalents. If boatmen received but $500 and $600, the rate paid in other districts in 1818, in 1819 they received $1,000 per year in Illinois with no increase for boatmen elsewhere. interpreters, men who could talk with the Indians, were paid $3,000 a year in Illinois, whereas $1,200 and $2,000 were the rates elsewhere. An interpreter who was getting $2,000 a year at Wabash, Indiana, was transferred to the Kankakee, in Illinois, July 13, 1819, at $3,000 a year. The company paid $700 a year for a tailor in Illinois, which was more than double the wages paid at Mackinac. A carpenter who "was left at Chicago" was on the pay-rolls at $1,200 a year. A "trader," presumably a man well versed in the quality of furs, was paid $3,000 in Illinois, while below St. Louis $1,500 was the rate. Certainly this larger pay would cause a rush to Illinois of all the men the company could be induced to use.

In 1821, the company rated wampum at $5.50 per 1,000 pieces, or beads, and that year sent 20,100 pieces of wampum to Chicago to be exchanged for fur. This treasure came on the Schooner Ann, along with five dozen scalping knives at $1.20 per dozen; and 143 blankets of various qualities and prices. Duck shot was sold for 20 cents a pound. Salt was worth more per barrel than flour, the former being $6, the latter $5. Salt had to come from Now York, and its price was the economic reason for the early development of salt wells on the Illinois river, and on the Wabash. The result of these wells, together with Michigan developments, was that salt which, transported from New York, sold in Chicago for $6, dropped to $1.871 a barrel at the Illinois wells, and the wages of coopers rose to $1,200 per year.

It is not, however, in Cook county, nor in the enterprises of the American Fur company that the substantial early industrial developments are to be sought. Cook county is not mentioned in the census returns until 1840, and then it wasthe eleventh in population. That census showed Morgan county with almost double the population of Cook; Sangamon had 14,716; Adams, 14,476; Madison, 14,433; while Cook had but 10,201. The economic trend of things which was to give to Cook county its impetus, and make Chicago the wonder of the world, set in between 1830 and 1840. Prior to that the solid development in the State had been in the central and southwestern counties. It is in them must be sought the economic data desired.

We may never know what Mathew Duncan paid his printers on that first newspaper in Illinois which he started in Kaskaskia in 1815; but we ought to be able to get the wages of printers pretty well back in the century. Detroit has the records of printers' wages back to 1837. The best I have been able to do in Illinois is 1852, when the union was formed in Chicago, wages being $12 per week.

We know the salary of the first school teacher of the first school supported entirely and directly by public taxation in the history of the world. This school was opened in Dedham, Mass., in 1644, and the teacher received $67 per year. Inasmuch as Illinois did not seriously undertake a public school system until 1840, would it not be worth an effort to ascertain the salaries of teachers in at least some of the counties, back to the beginning? We know the fees of the first colonial lawyer in 1638, and whether each particular fee was paid in money, wampum or cord wood; and there may be lawyers' diaries and note books lying around in dusty chests that would be of as great interest to the historian of Illinois as is Thomas Lechford's note-book to the historian of Massachusetts. When he tells us he paid $17 a year rent on his living rooms, and $1.87 1/2 to have a dress made for his wife, the relation of expenditures then and now becomes not less interesting than his frantic efforts to defend the followers of Ann Hutchinson before hostile courts.

Before many years our descendants will be as far away from the early days of Illinois as we are from the Mayflower, and they will wonder why we did not do something to preserve for them some record of the human interest, the every-day-life-side of our history.

In 1835 an official but inadequate census of the industries of the State was taken. This showed, 339 manufactories, 916 mills, 87 manufacturing machines, and 142 distilleries in the State. If the original data or schedules used in that census can be secured they will afford clews through which a very complete picture of economic conditions at that date may be restored.

Doubtless many documents of great value are still in the hands of the descendants of those who began the industrial development of Adams, Morgan, and Sangamon counties, and the counties further to the south.

The lead fields of Galena played an important part in the development of the northern part of the State. Politically they were the cause of the threat of secession made by the Chicago Journal in 1846. They gave the first stimulus to Chicago, and furnished, together with the growth of Chicago, the economic incentive to Wisconsin in seeking to annex to her territory the northern counties of Illinois, thus dismembering the State. At least one Illinois Congressman was offered the United States Senatorship if he would secure a change in the northern line of Illinois from its present position to one direct from the lowest point of Lake Michigan. This would have given Wisconsin the lead fields, and Milwaukee's then rival for lake trade, the growing Chicago.

In 1743, there were but 20 miners in the Galena field, and at surface operations were barely making a living. In 1788, some of them were taking out $30 a day for weeks together. Wages of common labor was $1 a day and board in these fields, or more than twice the wages of New England at the same time. Even then there was no great rush to the lead fields until after July 1, 1825, because the American Fur company was offering better inducements. A report to Congress states that July 1, 1825, there were 100 miners in the lead fields of Galena; Dec. 31, 1825, there were 151; March 31, 1826, there were 194; June 30, 1826, their number bad increased to 406, and by Aug. 31, 1826, to 453. This was the beginning of the rush. Wildcat schemes and speculations followed, of course. The hard times of 1837 which, by restricting consumption, produced that I 'optical illusion" we call over-production, finally ruined the business. Flour which was bought in Milwaukee for $2.60 a barrel in 1841 was hauled to Galena by wagon and sold for $7. The profits of transportation and trade drew large numbers who were not miners into the mining region, and began that movement which was to make great the northern end of the State and its great metropolis. The trade of the southern end of the State was with the south, the trade of the northern end of the State through Chicago was with the east; and these ledger balances manifested themselves in the sectional views, and legislative opinions in 1860.

The Illinois Historical Society should be able to find some of the pay-rolls and account books of the contractors of the Illinois and Michigan canal; a stupendous work which vitally affected economic conditions for a period of several years, not only in its influence upon wages and employment, but also in securing better prices to the farmer for his products, and through these attracting larger and larger influx of people to the northern part of the State: Did you ever stop to think what the history of this country would have been had the Erie Canal been finished to Philadelphia as originally intended, instead of being deflected to New York. To get a good idea of the "economic interpretation of history," imagine the Illinois and Michigan canal leading to St. Louis instead of Chicago, with New Orleans as our final sea-board market instead of Now York, then try to find some familiar faces in a mental picture of 1860.

Railroad building in Illinois began in 1852, and many roads retain their first pay-rolls, and earliest schedules of freight and passenger rates. The men who built the Illinois Central through DeWitt and Macon counties paid $2.50 per week for their board to the farmers along the road; and the graders or common laborers got $1.00 a day; bridge-carpenters, $2.50.

The pay-rolls of the first road to run a train into Chicago are in the possession of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company. They show wages of locomotive engineers to have been $65.00 a mouth in 1856, the year the road was completed. A few received but $50.00 a month. Firemen were paid $35.00 a month. In the shops of the company, blacksmiths were paid various rates, $2.00, $2.25 and $2.50 a day, according to the work performed. Carpenters the same. Painters received $1.60, and all common labor $1.00 a day.

If I have interested its members in this matter, or successfully pointed its importance, I would suggest that a committee of your society can much more readily find and secure access to the documents, diaries, and account books, revealing early economic conditions than any individual can. While few would be willing to part with such treasures most people would gladly let the society copy such facts as are essential, and later these facts can be brought together into a systematic review.