1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clinton (Iowa)

CLINTON, a city and the county-seat of Clinton county, Iowa, U.S.A., on the Mississippi river, in the extreme eastern part of the state. Pop. (1890) 13,619; (1900) 22,698 (5434 being foreign-born); (1905) 22,756; (1910) 25,577. The great increase during the decade 1890–1900 was partly due to the absorption by Clinton in 1895 of the city of Lyons (pop. in 1890, 5700). Clinton is served by the Chicago & North-Western (which has machine-shops here), the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways, and is connected with Davenport by an electric line. The river is spanned here by a railway bridge. A large portion of the city stands between the river and a series of bluffs. Clinton is the seat of Wartburg College (1869), a German Evangelical Lutheran institution, and of the Clinton Business College. Among the public buildings are the city hall, the court-house, the Federal building and the Carnegie library. As a manufacturing centre Clinton has considerable importance; among its manufactures are furniture, blinds, wire-cloth, papier-mâché goods, gas-engines, farm wagons, harness and saddlery, door locks, pressed brick, flour, and glucose products. There is also a large sugar refinery. The value of the factory product in 1900 was $6,203,316; in 1905, $4,906,355. The American Protective Association (A.P.A.), a secret order opposed to Roman Catholicism, was formed here in 1887. The city was founded in 1855 by the Iowa Land Company, and was incorporated first in 1857, and again in 1867, this time under a general law of the state for the incorporation of cities. The county, from which the city took its name, was named in honour of De Witt Clinton.