MANUFACTURING Favorable conditions.—Illinois possesses superior advan tages in the six factors necessary for the successful development of manufacturing industries: power, raw materials, capital, labor, transportation, markets.
Abundant and cheap power is necessary for manufacturing on a large scale. Although the surface of Illinois is quite flat, some valuable water power sites have been developed. At Lockport the overflow of the Chi cago Drainage Canal is utilized for light and power for Chicago and intermediate cities. The dam across the Illinois River at Marseilles in La Salle County furnishes power for a group of manufacturing plants and for an electric inter urban railroad system. The great Keokuk Dam is built across the Missis sippi River between Keo kuk, Iowa, and Hamilton, Illinois, and a part of its power is available for use in Illinois. The flour mill was one of the earliest manufactories to be established in Illinois. A mill at Golden, Adams County, is still in commercial operation with wind power. Small mills built in pioneer days have been kept in good repair and are in present use.
The great source of power, however, for Illinois, for present and future generations, is the 200,000,000,000 tons of coal underlying the central and southern parts of the state. Al though Chicago, the chief center of manufacturing, is situated outside the coal-producing region, the distance to abundant coal resources is not great enough to interfere with the rapid growth of manufacture in this great commercial metropolis. Certain manufacturing industries, notably the zinc-smelting plants, have been located in the rich Illinois coal fields in order to have cheap and abundant fuel at their very doors.
Raw materials for the factories of Illinois exist in abundance in regions located in all directions from the manufacturing centers, and they are carried promptly and cheaply by railroad trains and steamship lines. Illi nois factories draw a large amount of raw materials from the farms of the state; they reach out to the forests of the north er n , southern, and western states; to the iron-ore mines of the Lake Superior district; to the grain crops of the rich agricultural lands of the Mississippi Valley; to the live-stock regions of the central and western states. More
than half the area of the United States makes important con tributions to the raw materials of the factories of Illinois.
With a wealth estimated at $15,000,000,000, or more than $2,500 per capita, Illinois has large sums of money invested in profitable manufacturing enterprises, and additional capital awaits investment as opportunity affords.
A large supply of efficient labor exists in the cities of Illinois where, in 1910, 38.5 per cent of the population of the state lived in Chicago alone, 52.3 per cent in the 32 cities having a population of 10,000 or more, and 61.6 per cent in the 144 cities having a population of 2,500 or more. As addi tional labor is needed, the network of railroads radiating to all parts of the United States makes it easy for labor to reach Illinois from centers where conditions are less satis factory.
Illinois is well situated for transportation on the Great Lakes. Large freight boats carry millions of tons annually of iron ore, grain, lumber, fruit, and package freight. Im portant lake traffic is carried on at Waukegan. Gary, Indiana, within the Chi cago industrial district, is making increased use of the advantages of lake commerce. The great transportation fa cilities of Illinois, how ever, consist of numer ous extensive and well-arranged railroad systems which serve all manufacturing centers of the state with con nections to all parts of the country, wher ever raw materials or markets may be found.
Illinois manufacturing centers are well situated to supply all markets. With the center of population for the United States in southwestern Indiana, Illinois is exceptionally well located to reach nation-wide markets. Lying at the center of the rich agricultural lands of the Mississippi Valley, it is in the midst of a region of large population, wealth, and purchasing power. Illinois and the states touching it have a population of 18,000,000 people, or about 20 per cent of the population of the United States.