it occurs with zinc in reticulated deposits and fissure veins in clays
and clastic limestones; and in the third, of which Jasper county
is much the most important county, the two metals occur in pockets
and joints in the Burlington-Keokuk beds of the sub-Carboniferous.
The first is the great lead area, the third the great zinc area; the
second is no longer of relative importance. The lead ores are
galena and carbonate; the zinc ores, calamine, smithsonite and
blende. The mines in the St François field were worked by the
French from early in the 18th century. The oldest, Mine La Motte
(Madison county), discovered in 1715 by De la Motte Cadillac,
is still a heavy producer. St François county alone produces
about nine-tenths the yield of the field; Madison, Washington,
Jefferson and Franklin counties furnish most of the remainder.
Large quantities of lead are also obtained from the zinc field of the
south-west. Both the St François and Jasper ores yield from 70
to 75% of metal in final product, and assay even higher. It has
been estimated that down to 1893 1,100,000 tons of ore, yielding
metal worth $74,000,000, had been taken from the state, fully
half of this having been mined in the preceding twenty years.
The total output for the state in 1908 was 114,459 tons, valued at
$12,134,556; of this 116,531 tons came from the central and south-east
field, and of the remainder 15,240 tons from the Webb City—Prosperity
camp. Zinc was originally a hindering by-product of
lead mining in the south-west, and was thrown away; but it long
ago became the chief product in value in this field. The so-called
“Joplin district” of south-western Missouri and south-eastern
Kansas—three-fourths of it being in Missouri—produces nine tenths
of all the zinc mined in the United States. Mining in south-western
Missouri began about 1851, but zinc was of no importance
in the output until 1872. In the next thirty-one years the aggregate
product was about 3,000,000 tons of ore, worth some
$100,000,000. The output from 1894 to 1905 averaged 219,874
tons of ore yearly; in 1908 it was 107,404 tons. The history of the
St François, Granby and Joplin districts has been sensational.
The fortunes of the last have largely revolutionized the conditions
and prospects of the south-western counties. Silver is found in
connexion with lead and zinc mining; in 1908 the total output was
49,131 oz., valued at $26,039. Clays occur in amounts and varieties
surpassed by the deposits in very few if any states of the Union.
They are in every form from the rare to the common—glass pot
clay, ball clays, kaolins, flint fireclays, plastic fireclays, stone-ware
clays, paving-brick shales, building-brick and gumbo clays. Plastic
fireclays, paving and brick clays are available in seemingly limitless
quantities. The loess, the re-sorted residual clays, and the glacial
clays are all used for the production of brick. Clays occur, in short,
all over the state; and their use is almost as general. In 1905 and
1907 the rank of Missouri was sixth in the Union in the value of
clay products—namely, $6,203,411 in 1905 and $6,898,871 in 1907.
There has been no more than the slightest beginning made in the
utilization of these resources. Stone resources are also large.
Limestones are by far the most important; red and gray granites,
sandstones and marble (Ste Genevieve county) being of little more
than local importance. In 1908 the total value of stone quarried
was $2,306,058. Tripoli is quarried particularly in Newton county,
where it has been produced since 1872, and though not produced in
great quantities has value from its general scarcity. This Missouri
tripoli is a finely decomposed light rock, about 98% silica, and is
used for filter stones and as an abrasive. “Chat”—finely crushed
flint and limestone yielded as tailings in the lead and zinc
mines—finds many uses. Limestone is quarried all over the state (except in
the embayment region). There are unlimited supplies of clay, shale
and limestone, the three essential constituents of Portland cement,
and the manufacture of this, begun in 1902, at once assumed important
proportions. Quicklime manufacture is also an important
industry. In 1908 the product of quicklime was 167,060 tons.
Manufactures.—Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits absorbed in 1900 the labours of 19·5% of all persons engaged in gainful occupations, less than half as many as were engaged in agriculture. Though an agricultural state, Missouri had in 1900 three cities with populations of above 100,000, whose wealth is based on manufactures and trade. Missouri is the leading manufacturing state west of the Mississippi. Between 1880 and 1900 the value of the product increased from $165,386,205 to $385,492,784, of which $316,304,095 was the value of products of the “factory system”; in 1905 the factory product was valued at $439,548,957. Of the total output in 1900, three-fourths were made up by the output of St Louis ($233,629,733; of which $193,732,788 was from establishments under the “factory system”), Kansas City ($36,527,392; $23,588,653 being “factory product”), St Joseph ($31,690,736, including the product of some establishments outside the city limits; $11,361,939 being “factory product” within the city limits), and Springfield ($4,126,871; $3,433,800 being “factory product”); for the same four cities in 1905 the proportion of the state’s total product ($439,548,957) manufactured under the “factory system” is smaller, and less than three-fourths was made up by the following seven cities: St Louis ($267,307,038), Kansas City ($35,573,049), St Joseph ($11,573,720), Springfield ($5,293,315), Hannibal ($4,442,099), Jefferson City ($3,926,632), and Joplin ($3,006,203). In 1905 the eleven municipalities with a population of at least 8000 each (including the seven above, and Carthage, Moberly, Sedalia and Webb City) produced, under the “factory system,” goods valued at $335,431,978. Eighteen industries in 1905 employed nearly three-fifths of the wage-earners in factories and were represented by nearly two-thirds ($293,882,705) of the total product. The most prominent items in this were slaughtering and meat-packing products (value $60,031,133 in 1905); tobacco (in 1905, $30,884,182), flour and grist-mill products (in 1905, $38,026,142),[1] malt liquors (in 1905, $24,154,264), boots and shoes (in 1905, $23,493,552), lumber and timber products (in 1905, $10,903,783), men’s factory-made clothing (in 1905, $8,872,831), and cars and general shop construction and repairs by steam railways (1905, $8,720,433). The increase in the slaughtering industry between 1890 and 1900 (134·9%) was chiefly due to remarkable growth in St Joseph—or, to be more precise, just outside the city limits of St Joseph; between 1900 and 1905 the increase was 39·5%. Although Missouri is not a great tobacco state, St Louis is one of the greatest centres of the country in the output of tobacco products. It is also, for the state, the great centre of all the leading interests with the exception of slaughtering. The boot and shoe industry is new west of the Mississippi, but Missouri holds in it a high and rising rank. In the Joplin mining region a considerable amount of ores is smelted, but the bulk of the ores is sent into Kansas for smelting. The finer clays, also, are mainly shipped from the state in natural form, but in the manufacture of sewer-pipe and fire-brick, Missouri is a very prominent state. St Louis and Kansas City are the centres of the clay industries.
Communications.—In 1900 rather under a fifth of the working population were engaged in trade and transportation. In commerce as well as in manufactures St Louis is first among the cities of the state, but Kansas City also is one of the greatest railway centres of the country, and the trade with the south-west, which St Louis once held almost undisputed, has been greatly cut into by Kansas City, as well as by Galveston and other ports on the Gulf. There is still considerable commerce on the Mississippi from St Louis to New Orleans, and a few passenger steamers are still in service. In 1906–1907 there was a notable agitation for improvement, following trial voyages that proved the navigability of the Missouri up to Kansas City. For this part of the river the maximum draft at mean low water was 4 ft. in 1908. In 1907 the amount of freight carried from the mouth of the Missouri to Sioux City, Iowa, was 843,863 tons, and river rates were about 60% of railway rates. In 1907 estimates were made for 6 ft. and 12 ft. channels from Sioux City to Kansas City, and from Kansas City to the mouth of the river. The improvement of the Missouri—which is far more difficult to navigate than the Mississippi—was begun by Congress in 1832, and (in addition to large joint appropriations for the Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas and Ohio rivers from 1832 to 1882) cost $11,130,560 between 1876 and 1900. Also $65,000 was expended from 1852 to 1876. In nothing except the freighting of bulky and imperishable products, like cotton, coal and cereals, was the river ever able to contest the monopoly of the railways. The mileage of these within the state rose from 3960 in 1880 to 6142 in 1890, and to 8023·94 in 1908; the Missouri Pacific being far the greatest system of the state. St Louis, Kansas City and St Joseph are ports of entry for foreign commerce.
Population.—The total population of Missouri in 1900 was 3,106,665 and in 1910, 3,293,335. The population in 1810 was 20,845; in 1820, 66,586; in 1830, 140,455; in 1840, 383,702; in 1850, 682,044; in 1860, 1,182,012; in 1870, 1,721,295; in 1880, 2,168,380; and in 1890, 2,679,184. Thus, even in the years of the Civil War, there was no apparent set-back. Of the aggregate of 1900, 63·7% lived in “rural districts” (i.e. those outside all places of a population of 2500 or upwards), and 27·1% in the three great cities of the state, St Louis (pop. 575,238), Kansas City (163,752) and St Joseph (102,979); 5·2% were negroes—their increase from 1890 to 1900 being less than half as rapid as that of the whites; and 7·0% only were foreign-born. Slightly more than half of all foreigners are Germans; Irish, English and Scotch, French and English Canadians, Swiss and Scandinavians following. The German element is, and has been since about 1850, of great importance—an importance not indicated at all by its apparently small strength in the population to-day. The German immigration began about 1845, and long ago passed its maximum, so that in 1900 more than half of all the foreign-born (not only the Germans, but also the later-coming nationalities) had lived within Missouri for more than twenty years, and more than three-fourths of all had been residents of the state for ten
- ↑ Omitting here printing and publishing, and foundry and machine shop products, which (like carpentering, bakery products, &c., in cities) have little distinctive in them to set Missouri off from other states. But it is to be noted that St Louis is one of the leading producers of street-railway cars.
