Mr. George M. Higginson, who says he has lived thirty-six
years in Chicago, and has engaged in a great variety of businesses, sends a letter to the Times on the prosperity of Illinois, and its chief city, Chicago. The area of Illinois is -equal to that of England, and is almost all prairie, 90 per cent. of which is capable of profitable cultivation, though there are still 1,000,000 square miles untouched by the plough. The crop of Indian corn in the State in 1877 was three -times the English wheat crop, while the wheat was one third of the latter amount. Chicago, which depends to a great -extent upon the productiveness of the State, had only 4,000 in- habitants in 1840, and now has 500,000, doubling every five years. Mr. Higginson believes that, owing to the geographical position of Chicago in respect to the Lakes, this progress will go on at the same rate, and that Chicago will become, in 1890, a -city of two millions, it being possible, by a little improvement in canals, to enable wheat-ships to sail straight from Chicago to Liverpool, and return laden with znanufactured articles. Mr. Bigginson calls attention to the often forgotten fact that America has, population for population, more labour than any country, the males, owing to immigration, outnumbering the females by 600,000, whereas in England the difference is just the other way. The whole account is an ominous one for the British farmer, the object of Illinois in creation being to feed Great Britain cheaply.
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