The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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up a wet and slippery bank of red clay we are on the line of the railroad, upon which several hundred men are employed.
Grades of fifty feet to the mile are necessary from the lake up to the falls of the St. Louis, but the tonnage of the road will be largely eastward, down the grade, instead of westward.
The road will be about a hundred and forty miles in length, connecting the lake with the network of railroads centring at St. Paul. It is liberally endowed, having in all 1,630,000 acres of land heavily timbered with pine, butternut, white oak, sugar-maple, ash, and other woods.
There is no doubt that this line of road will do an immense amount of business. Such is the estimation in which it is held by the moneyed men of Philadelphia, that Mr. Jay Cooke obtained the entire amount of money necessary to construct it in four days! The bonds, I believe, were not put upon the market in the usual manner, by advertising, but were taken at once by men who wanted them for investment.
A single glance at the map must be sufficient to convince any intelligent observer of the value of such a franchise. The wheat of Minnesota, to reach Chicago now, must be taken by steamers to La Crosse or Prairie du Chien, and thence transported by rail across Wisconsin, but when this road is put in operation, the products of Minnesota, gathered at St. Paul or Minneapolis, will seek this new outlet.
Think of the scene of activity there will be along the line, not only of this road, but of the Northern Pacific, when the two are completed to the lake, of an almost continuous train of cars, of elevators pouring grain from cars to ships and steamers. Think of the fleet that will soon whiten this great inland sea, bearing the products of the immense wheat-field eastward to the Atlantic cities, and bringing back the industries of the Eastern States!
It is only when I sit down to think of the future, to measure it by the advancement already made, that I can comprehend anything of the coming greatness of the Northwest, — 20,000,000 bushels of wheat this year; 500,000 inhabitants in the State, yet scarcely a hundredth part of the area under cultivation. What will be the product ten years hence, when the population will reach 1,500,000? What will it be twenty years hence? How shall we obtain any conception of the business to be done on these railways when Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Oregon, and all the vast region of the Assinniboine and the Saskatchawan, pour their products to the nearest water-carriage eastward? We are already beyond our depth, and are utterly unable to comprehend the probable development.
The men who are building this railroad from St. Paul to Duluth have not failed to recognize this one fact, that by water Duluth is as near as Chicago to the Atlantic cities. Wheat and flour can be transported as cheaply from Duluth to Buffalo or Ogdensburg as from the southern end of Lake Michigan, while the distance from St. Paul to Lake Superior is only one hundred and forty miles against four hundred and eighty to Chicago. We may conclude that the wheat of Minnesota can be carried fifteen or twenty cents a bushel cheaper by Duluth than by Lake Michigan, — a saving to the Eastern consumer of almost a dollar on each barrel of flour. Twenty cents on a bushel saved will add at least four dollars to the yearly product of an acre of land.
The difference in freight on articles manufactured in the East and shipped to Minnesota will be still more marked, for grain in bulk is taken at low rates, while manufactured goods pay first-class. The completion of this railway will be a great blessing to the people of New England and of all the East, as well as to those of the Northwest. Anything that abridges distance and cheapens carriage is so much absolute gain. I do not think that there is any public enterprise in the country that promises to produce more important results than the opening of this railway.
An elevator company has been organized by several gentlemen in Boston and Philadelphia, and the necessary buildings are now going up. The wheat will be taken directly from the cars into the elevator, and discharged into the fleet of propellers running to Cleveland, Buffalo, and Ogdensburg, already arranged for this Lake Superior trade.
The region around the western end of the Lake has resources for the development of a varied industry. The wooded section extends from Central Wisconsin westward to the Leaf Hills beyond the Mississippi, and northward to Lake Winnipeg. This is to be the lumbering region of the Northwest, for the manufacture of all agricultural implements, — reapers, mowers, harvesters, ploughs, drills, seed-sowers, wagons, carriages, carts, and furniture, — besides furnishing lumber for fencing, for railroad and building purposes.
Upon the St. Louis River there is exhaustless water-power, — a descent of five hundred feet, with a stream always pouring an abundant flood. Its source is among the lakes of northern Minnesota, which, being filled to overflowing by the rains of spring and early summer, become great reservoirs. With such a supply of water there is no locality more favorably situated for the manufacture of every variety of domestic articles. Undoubtedly the water-power will be largely employed for flouring-mills. The climate is admirably adapted to the grinding of grain. The falls being so near the lake, there will be cheap transportation eastward to Buffalo, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, while westward are the prairies, easily reached by the railroads.
The geological formation on the north side of Lake Superior is granite, but as we follow up the St. Louis River we come upon a ridge of slate. It forms the backbone of the divide between the lake and the Mississippi River.
A quarry has been opened from which slates of a quality not inferior to those of Vermont are obtained, and so far as we know it is the only quarry in the Northwest. It is almost invaluable, for Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, western Minnesota, and Dakota have very little wood. Shingles are costly, but here is abundant material to cover the roofs of the millions of houses that are yet to rise upon the prairies.
This slate formation is thus referred to by Thomas Clark, State Geologist, in his Report to the Governor of Minnesota, dated December, 1864 (pp. 29, 30): —
"These slates are found in all degrees of character, from the common indurated argillaceous fissile to the highly metamorphosed and even trappous type. The working of these slates demands the attention of builders; their real value is economically of more importance to the prairie and sparsely timbered valley of the Mississippi than any other deposit in the State's possession on the lake. The annual draught of hundreds of millions of lumber upon the pine forests of the St. Croix and Upper Mississippi and tributaries will exhaust those regions before the close of this century. The trustees of our young Commonwealth are emphatically admonished to encourage and foster the working of these slates, and to bring them into use at the earliest time possible. A hundred square feet of dressed slates at the quarries of Vermont, New York, and Canada are worth from one and a half to two dollars; the weight ranges from four to six hundred pounds, or about four squares to the ton. A ton of this roofing may be transported from the St. Louis quarry to the Mississippi, by railway, at three dollars, and thence by river to the landings as far down as St. Louis or Cairo; but the article may be at all points in this State accessible by boats or railway, at an average cost of fifteen dollars per ton, or, at most, four dollars per square, — little, if any, more than pine shingles; the former as good for a century as the latter is for a decade. The supply of these cliffs is literally inexhaustible; if one fourth of this slate area in the St. Louis Valley proves available, — and doubtless one half will, — it will yield one thousand millions of tons.
"The demand for this slate at ten roofs to the square mile, and for forty thousand square miles, would be one million of tons, or one thousandth part of the material. The annual demand for slates in the Mississippi Valley may be reasonably estimated at one hundred thousand tons, an exportable product of two hundred thousand dollars, besides the element of a permanent income to the railways and water-craft of the State of a half-million of dollars annually."
To-day the country along the St. Louis is a wilderness. Climb the hills, and look upon the scene, and think of the coming years.
"Thou shalt look
Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens
And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze at once,
Here on white villages, and tilth and herds,
And swarming roads, and