gan Southern-that outdistanced the Central by three months and gained the honor of first connecting Chicago and this northwest with the east by bands of iron.

In January, 1848, the first telegram had been received in Chicago from Milwaukee, and three months later came the first through dispatch from the east via Detroit. By 1850 the electric telegraph was beginning to affect business operations by introducing new methods. About twenty-two lines per day comprised all news by telegraph reported for the Chicago Daily Journal for 1850, and telegrams were generally dated New York, 6 P. M.

Chicago's great routes for commerce in that year were the Illinois and Michigan Canal, connecting Lake Michigan and the Mississippi via the Illinois River and other canals, and the very valuable lake route from the east. Three years before it had been estimated by a government expert that this lake commerce was worth over $100,000,ooo per annum, as much as our entire foreign commerce and much more than our coast-wise trade. In addition to all the freight, 250,000 passengers were carried in 1845. This year of 1850 was the high tide of lake travel. Then a fleet of sixteen steamers plied between Buffalo and Chicago, two steamers a day leaving each port. The voyage occupied three or four days according to the weather. The average fare one way was $10, including meals and berth; but sometimes passengers were carried as low as $2 when competing lines cut the rates. The steamers were large, often holding 400 or 500 passengers, and were elegantly

equipped. The cuisine was excellent and a band of music helped to pass the time pleasantly each evening. From this time the lake passenger traffic declined because of competition from the railroads.

This lake commerce had increased by leaps and bounds since 1847, for in that year was held in Chicago the famous Northwestern River and Harbor Convention, the first great advertisement for our lake metropolis. In 1846 President Polk had vetoed the River and Harbor bill, stating as a reason the insignificance of the lake commerce. Western papers accused him of sacrificing all sections of the country to his pet project-the retention of Texas and the consequent Mexican War. Citizens of the West and Northwest, and those in the East who were interested financially in the commerce of the lakes were very indignant. To William Mosley Hall seems to belong the honor of originating the idea of a great convention at Chicago of delegates from all the Union to consider this great question of the imperative needs of harbors and light houses along our inland seas and rivers.

Such a convention was held July 5-7, 1847, in Chicago, and brought several thousand delegates from eighteen different states. The only complete records we have of its proceedings are the work of Mr. Robert Fergus, Chicago's veteran printer, who began work in the city 1840, and was the editor of the Fergus Historical Series, our best collection on local history in Chicago. The number recording the Northwestern River and Harbor Convention of

1847 is well worth reading. The sessions of the convention were reported for the New York Tribune by Horace Greeley and for the Albany Evening Journal by Thurlow Weed. Letters were received from numbers of noted men unable to be present, and some of these letters contain interesting expositions of the writer's views on western needs and expansion. Abraham Lincoln paid his first visit to Chicago as a delegate from Springfield to this convention. He had been elected representative to Congress the November previous and was the only Whig chosen from Illinois. Among others are letters from Clay, Webster, Benton, Cass, Van Buren and many United States senators, representatives and judges who could not be present. Horace Greeley reported 20,000 present, 10,000 of them delegates. Its meetings were held in a large tent on the Public Square and a series of resolutions were passed intended to arouse public sentiment all over the United States in behalf of adequate congressional appropriations for western rivers and harbors. Horace Greeley closed his report of the three-days' sessions as follows:

"Thus has met, deliberated, harmonized, acted, separated, one of the most important and interesting conventions ever held in this or any country. It was truly characterized as a congress of freedom, destitute of pay and mileage, but in all else inferior to no deliberative body which has assembled within twenty years. Can we doubt. its results will be most beneficent and enduring?"