The state republican. (Jefferson City, Mo.) 1871-1896, 1896-04-09

IL rs DeCuuSB lue ildiuTld Tlstb lTOIl UT
low and fingers about the adjacent
high places.
In cultivation, these swamp lands
(Which ten years ago were without
purchasers and can even now be had
from So to So per acre), yield on an
average eighty to ne hundred bushels
of corn and two bales of cotton to the
acre.
Fifty years ago lead was known to
exist in the region where Bonnie Terre
and the adjoining lead mines in st.
Francois county now produce three
thousand pigs, each weighing 50
pounds of mcrchantable lead, every
day. The pioneer lead miners of that
day knew and said as time has since
proven, that large parts of Jefferson,
Madison, st. Francois, Crawford, Dent,
Phelps, Washington, Perry, Ste. Gene
We've, Iron, Bollinger, Reynolds and
Wayne counties, covering a stretch of
country one hundred miles wide, by
one hundred and fifty long, was rich
in lead, but they said it would never
be developed because the diggings were
too deep. Then lead was mined by
finding it floating in the clay. Mining
appliances were then so Indifferent that
successful mining could not he made
far beneath the surface. Now we have
diamond and compressed air drills and
with them AMI by the aid of electric
ity to light our mines, we invade the
rock several hundred feet and have
abandoned surface for the more profit
able deep lead mining.
Our modern powerful crushers, our
fine calci miners, scparators and blast
and revelberatory furnaces make sci.
entitic mining to-day a mere matter of
machinery. Still, the total lead min
ing of southeast Missouri, beginning
with Mine La Motto, in Madison
that has been worked daily for
two hundred years, does not, out of very
many thousand acres of good lead indi-
land, comprise, if all thrown
together, over seventy five acres of lead
territory that, thus far, has been
worked ont. Bear i'll mind these facts
and the other fact, that there are, the
one above the other, three stratas of lead,
ages of the most active industry
Fan not exhaust, and it will he seen
in her lead alone south.
Missouri has fabulous wealth.
Lead mining, in Il true lead region. is
safer than mining gold and silver
quickly disappear. Not so
with lead in the third magnetism lime
stone. Its stores are endless, like the
lead mines of Spain which have un-
ceasingly been worked for five hundred
years.
Side by side with our southeast Mis-
souri, lead is to be found our tiff.
zinc, spccular and hematite iron ore,
lickel, copper, cobalt, quicksilver, an
simony, bismuth, kaolin, fire clay, brick
'lay, slick, sulphur, flour spar, hornblend,
we'll defined traces of silver, granite,
sandstone and marble of every beau
-iful and durable kind, plate glass sand,
of hickory, gum, ash, walnut,
pine and all the varieties of oak
timber, all of which is valuable for
lumber and mountaineering purposes,
great scopes of good agricultural land,
much of it already in cultivation and
Exporting many times more than
,ur needs, but with not half our
.illable land in cultivation that is
'uspectible of it, } with good apple,
beach, pear, plum and other fruit or
large diaries, extensive hill
tides for large sheep pasturage, innu-
nerable swift flowing mountain
streams of water Capable of turning
rs many spindles as are running in
New Ensland), in whose beds
for road purposes, are limit
quantities of hard, yellow jasper
gravel, with high, dry healthy eli
and a country picturesque to Il
degree, let the reader realize
I'll that and he then has but a faint
conception Of the upper half of south
asst Missouri, comprising the fourteen
Counties already named.
There are vast quantities of iron in
Dent, Bollinger, Stoddard, Crawford,
ron and st. Francois counties, and of
in Ste. Genevieve, Madison,
Reynolds and Wayne.
We are sometimes asked why south
Missouri is not better known.
It is because Il people do not adver-
Use their success. The mining associ-
in southwest Missouri publish
ZACH week the yield of their mines.
so with southeast Missouri miners,
Who, as to the production of lead, are
in advance of all other parts of the
They quietly continue their
and only occasionally the details
their success leak out. The town of
Bonnie Terre is a model mining town
with a free library, and baths lighted
1y electricity, a free auditorium, all
constructed at the cost of the st. Joe
Lead Company, which pays its men in
ash daily, if desired, and encourages
outsiders to compete with it in the sale
If goods.
Lower southeast Missouri is the
'eglon where, for the most part ice
lever sufficiently forms in the winter
o supply the summer demand. Stock
here does not suffer from exposure at
my time, and grass is green practi-
ally the entire year. 1 know no
ection within the limits of civilization
where agriculture gives a richer yield
With better returns than in the coun-
les pf Game Girnr1anr Scott Ay.....