"IOWA MANUFACTURES. 851 acre for seeding and threshing, and that the net result, after paying all expenses, is $3 per acre. Other cases reported to us have given the net profit as high as $5.50 per acre. Besides the profit on cultivation, the crop is a great advantage to the land for the succeeding crop, as it leaves it clean and in better condition than if permitted to remain idle.* The importance of this new departure in farming cannot be over-estimated, for it is nothing less than a year's gain in cropping, and that at the most important time to the settler, the beginning of his enterprise, when the call upon his resources is greatest. The man of limited means need no longer be deterred from buying a home by the fear that a year must be lost after breaking before the farm will yield returns." Manufactures.-Iowa has always been regarded as an essentially agricultural State, yet she has from the first taken a deep interest in manufactures, for which her fine water-powers and her large production of excellent coal give her extraordinary facilities. Her flouring mills are very numerous and on a large scale. She has also extensive smelting works, agricultural implements and machine works, carriage, wagon, and car works, creameries, cheese factories, plaster mills, sorghum mills and sugar refineries, cotton, woollen, and silk mills, etc. The growth of manufactures in the State has been very large during the last decade and is now rapidly increasing.+ Until the returns of manufactures for the census of 1880 are received and published, it is useless to conjecture the present amount of these in the State; but, though the aggregate is certainly less than that of the great manufacturing State of Missouri, which joins Iowa on the south, yet it will reflect high honor upon its industry and enterprise. The cortical fibre of the flax stalk, though nearly worthless as flax, is valuable for paper stock, after being run through a flax breaker, and will bring, anywhere within 100 miles of a good paper mill, from seventy to eighty dollars a ton, for that purpose. The best writing and map papers can be made from it. In 1874, the State census, which omitted all the small industries, and only enumerated nineteen kinds of manufactures, reported 3,203 establishments, employing 18,854 men, and producing goods valued at $39,263,310. The probability is that this sum was not at that time one-half of the actual production of that year; and the progress since 1854 has been enormous. Educational Advantages.-The State has made ample pro vision from the first for the education of all its children, and youth. Beginning with the higher instruction, it has a State University at Iowa City fully organized and under an able faculty, having 284 students in its collegiate and 232 in its professional departments, and taking rank with any State University in the country; a State Normal School at Cedar Falls, having a principal and five other professors and 237 teacher pupils in 1879; a State Agricultural College at Ames, well endowed, and with a faculty of 24 professors and teachers, and 305 students. There are also 99 Teachers' Institutes held every year, one in each county, where for from two to four weeks the teachers of the public. schools are instructed by the ablest professors and teachers who can be obtained. Below these come the public schools, graded and ungraded. Of these schools there are now 10,951, occupying 10,791 school-houses, of which 10,719 are substantial build ings of frame, brick, or stone. The appraised value of these school-houses in 1879 was $9,066,145, an increase from $38,506 in 1849, thirty years before, of 241 times the amount. There were 21,152 teachers employed in these schools, viz.: 7,573 males, 13,579 females, and the average compensation for the whole State was $31.71 per month for males, and $26.40 for female teachers. The whole number of persons of school age of both sexes (between five and twenty-one years) in the State was 577,353, out of a total population of about 1,500,000; of these, 431,317 were enrolled on the school registers, and the average attendance was 264,702. The average cost of tuition per month was $1.49 per head. The total expenditure for school purposes annually was $5,051,478, or about $3.33 for each inhabitant of the State; of this amount $2,927,308 was for teachers' salaries, $1,149,718 for school-houses, apparatus, etc., and $979,452 for fuel and other contingencies. The permanent school fund amounts to $3,484,411, and is constantly increasing. The income from this, $276,218 in 1879, is distributed to the schools, but the remainder, $4,775,260, is raised by district taxation and local funds. The teaching is for the most part of a very high order. BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS AND CHURCHES. 853 Beside this liberal course of public instruction, the State has special schools for deaf mutes, the blind, and for orphans and deserted children, and reformatories for neglected, wayward, and vicious children. There are, moreover, fifteen or twenty colleges, and very many academies, collegiate schools and seminaries, mostly under the control of the different religious denominations. The immigrant coming to Iowa with his family need not fear that they will be deprived of the opportunities of gaining an education, whatever his own circumstances may be. Religious Denominations.-The general tone of society in Iowa is eminently moral, and, to a considerable extent, religious. In no State west of the Mississippi are so large a proportion of the inhabitants connected with some religious denomination. The Methodists take the lead, both in the number of members and the adherent population; the Presbyterians, Catholics, Congregationalists, Baptists, German Reformed, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and minor sects follow after in about the order designated. Every village, even the newest, has one or more churches. The religious, like the secular teaching, is generally of a high order. The immigrant coming to Iowa either with a large or small capital may not find the avenues to large immediate wealth so wide as in some of the newer States and Territories, but if temperate, industrious, and frugal, he is sure to acquire a competence in a few years; and, meanwhile, he has the advantages of established organizations, good society, excellent educational and religious institutions, a fertile soil, and easily accessible markets. CHAPTER IX. KANSAS. KANSAS GEOGRAphically the Central State-ITS BOUNDARIES—Latitude, Longitude, Length, Breadth and Area-ITS SURFACE, DECLINATION AND ELEVATION AT VARIOUS POints-Rivers-LAKES-HILLS-NO MOUNTAINS IN THE STATE-GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY-THE GEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS -THE QUATERNARY, TERTIARY, CRETACEOUS AND CARBONIFEROUS AND LOWER CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEMS REPRESENTED-FOSSILS-GREAT VARIETY OF THESE-ECONOMIC GEOLOGY-COAL-SALT-LEAD AND ZINC-GYPSUMBUILDING-STONE, ETC., ETC.-Gas or Burning Wells-Soil and VegetaTION-NATIVE TREES-TREES PLANTED UNDER THE TIMBER-CULTURE ACTSFLOWERS Zoology-Natural CuriositiES AND PHENOMENA-CLIMATE AND Meteorology — Meteorological Statistics — Rainfall - AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONS-TABLES OF PRODUCTIONS OF 1877, 1878, 1879-LIVE-STOCKVALUATIONS OF REAL AND PERSONAL ESTATE-SCHOOL STATISTICS-No MINES OR MINING EXCEPT COAL, LEAD AND ZINC-MANUFACTURES-POPULATION-INDIans-Sources FROM WHICH POPULATION IS Derived-Counties, CITIES AND TOWNS-SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION-CHURCHES-RAILROADS— KANSAS A HOME FOR IMMIGRANTS. KANSAS is, geographically, the central State of the American Union, and one of the largest and most enterprising of the great States of the central belt of "Our Western Empire." It is bounded on the north by Nebraska, on the east by Missouri, on the south by the Indian Territory, and on the west by Colorado. It would be a perfect parallelogram, but that the Missouri river cuts off a slice of its northeast corner, and hands it over to Missouri. It is situated between the 37th and the 40th degrees of north latitude, and between the meridians of 94° 35′ and 102° of west longitude from Greenwich, and is 404 miles long from east to west, and 2081⁄2 miles wide from north to south. The latest Land Office Report makes its area 80,891 square miles, or 51,770,240 acres. Topography and Surface-Rivers and Lakes-Plains, Prairies and Valleys.-The topography of the State shows an alternation of broad, level river valleys and high rolling prairies, the whole forming a series of gentle undulating plateaus, sloping at an |