UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARIES MARCH 1930 GOVERNOR OGLESBY'S MESSAGE. STATE OF ILLINOIS-EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, To the General Assembly: You are again summoned by our constitution to the delicate and arduous duties of legislation, to carefully consider those questions of domestic concern which more immediately affect us in our relations as citizens of the State of Illinois. Fresh from your constituencies, intrusted with their powers, and bearing to the Capital of the State their confidence and trust, it is pleasant to meet and share with you the responsibilities of government, and the anxieties ever attendant upon the efforts of those who earnestly seek the prosperity of the people and the common weal of the State. Custom has made it the rule for the Executive to give to the General Assembly information of the state of the government at the commencement of each legislative session. No General Asembly ever met under more favorable auspicesLooking back over the four years that have passed since, by the generous confi dence of the people, I was honored with the administration of the executive department of the State government, one unbroken chain of general and reasonable prosperity marks the whole period of our history and progressive march up to the commencement of the present year. Geographically, we hold a most important position in the National Union; are interlocked between the lakes and great rivers of the northwest; have a varied and healthy climate; timber and prairie beautifully blended over a deep, rich, exhaustless soil, cultivated with the best of grains, grasses and vegetables, underlaid with quarries of valuable stone, and enriched with beds of bituminous coal, the exacting demands of an industrious people can never consume. Two millions and a half of men, women and children have found happy homes here. An active, intelligent and desirable population is steadily pouring into our State. Wealth of every variety is accumulating upon our hands, honest industry receives a fair reward, and the hours of toil are lessened by the law and the less rigorous demands of a more enlightened age. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures and mining, that lay at the base of our prosperity, and give employment to our energetic people, were never more flourishing, and never rewarded with more liberal Vol. I-1 returns the labor and capital of those engaged in the pursuit of either. We have thirty-six millions of acres of land, of which, as shown by the returns of assessments for 1868, twenty-one millions are to some extent improved, and ten millions are under actual cultivation. It is difficult to estimate what the products from these broad acres may amount to when the whole shall be brought under intelligent cultivation; enough, at any rate, to gratify every want of our people and feed a nation besides. Our contributions to the commerce of the country are enormous. With our sister states of the northwest we cover the lakes and rivers, and cram the freight cars, carrying off the products of the soil, and bringing back in exchange the fruits of the labor of other parts of the world. The great commercial city of the northwest, situated upon the lake in our own State, holding the key to a vast portion of this trade, steadily growing in population and wealth, astonishing the world in its rapid but carefully guarded strides to prosperity and power, fitly represents the growth of these states. Chicago, uttering the voice of the millions who trade at her marts and swell the wave of commerce from the mountains to the lakes, demands that this commerce shall have larger and freer channels to flow through. I still hope that Congress may look favorably upon the project of widening and deepening the Illinois and Michigan canal, and improving the navigation of the Illinois river, the only neglected link that unites the waters of the Mississippi and the lakes and St. Lawrence with the ocean Commerce cravingly demands that these improvements be made. Our lines of railroad communications are constantly increasing and developing portions of the State not heretofore sufficiently accommodated with this invaluable mode of transportation. Our people are studying more attentively the intimate and profitable relations between agriculture and manufactures. To secure the wealth each produces, the plow, the forge and the spindle ought to dwell together on the same prairie. It is a gratifying fact that nearly all the more expensive agricultural implements are now manufactured in the agricultural work and machine shops springing up every year in the State. Iron, in its multifarious forms, is largely manufactured in works and foundries operated upon home capital. There are at present in the State eighty-seven woolcarding mills, and one hundred and thirty-three manufactories of woolens, with a capital of $3,600,000 invested in buildings and machinery, giving employment to three thousand four hundred and fifty operatives, one-fourth of whom are females, and consuming annually four million pounds of wool of the seven million clipped from over two million five hundred thousand sheep. Capital is steadily seeking investment in manufacturing in our State, and in a few years this new interest will make us what we ought to be-a manufacturing as well as an agricultural people. Coal shafts are being sunk and new mines opened in various portions of the State, and our miners are bringing to the surface not less than two million of tons of coal annually. It is to be regretted that we have no sufficient law for the collection of statistics upon these and other most important interests of the State. Politically, the Nation and State are at rest. Civil discord, that followed in the horrid wake of rebellion and kept alive the fearful animosities engendered by the war upon the Union, is gradually dying out, and men are again returning to their reason. The late general election compelled the people to discuss again substan. tially all the great questions leading to and growing out of the rebellion. In these northern states the canvass was carried on in good temper, and the satisfactory result has been hailed by all parties and people in a most becoming spirit. In our higher relations as citizens of the United States, participating in the powers, the privileges and the liberty of the Union, we are held by a high sense of national obligation to the faithful payment of every dollar of the present national debt. Ardently attached to the Union, fervently devoted to human liberty, and willing to make every sacrifice for the integrity of the government, the people little less than despise that man who in high official position would advise the present, or instruct the rising, generation to inflict upon the nation everlasting dishonor by an absolute or partial repudiation of its existing legal and honest obligations. STATE DEBT. The State debt and finances, subjects that necessarily attract the attention of the people and demand your careful consideration, are believed to be in a satisfactory condition. In fact, the State debt has ceased to cause any general solicitude. It is an ever enduring honor to our people, that in the darkest hours of financial trouble, and when the means to support the ordinary expenses of the State government, on the most economical basis, were hardly attainable by taxation, the credit of the State was never for a moment forsaken. Our people have always borne necessary taxation cheerfully, and are to-day willing as ever to contribute every dollar to the support of the State, imposed by prudent legislation for the public good. It must be the source of just pride to every citizen that no taint of repudiation of our obligations rests upon the State. How much nobler it is to resolutely discharge every obligation prudently, or even imprudently, imposed upon us by our own legislation, than to seek, by indirection, vacillation or false pretenses, to escape the payment of an existing legal debt. The following is a statement of the State indebtedness paid off, etc., by the State, from Dec. 1, 1866, to Dec. 1, 1868: For the preceding amount of State indebtedness there was paid out of the Principal. Interest, etc. And from the Central railroad fund The following is an abstract and statement in detail of the State indebtedness outstanding December 1, 1868: $5,975,103 53 Besides the above, there has been called in by proclamation, September 28, 1863, and not yet presented for payment, 1 bond refunded stock, 1860.. Also 12 Ill. and Mich. canal bonds, proclamation Jan. 4, 1868 From December 1, 1864, to December 1, 1866, it was reduced by purchases with thej Illinois Central Railroad seven per cent. fund, by payments by the canal trustees from tolls, etc., collected on the canal, and by the two mill tax fund.... Leaving due December 1, 1866..... Deducting scrip, interest certificates, etc., outstanding... The funded debt was In 1867 it was increased by bonds issued on account of the penitentiary Making.. Which has been reduced, from December 1, 1866, to December 1, 1868, by payments and purchases of bonds.... 1,000 00 12,000 00 350 00 $5,988,453 53 $11,246,210 67 2,607,958 36 $8,638,252 21 42,909 19 $8,595,343 02 50,000 00 $8,645,843 02 2,656,889 49 Leaving amount of funded debt December 1, 1868. $5,998,453 53 |