Illinois played its part in the World War I

The Fair of 1893 opened its doors in the worst depression of the nineteenth century. During the first eight months of the year, 24 local banks failed; pig-iron production fell from 949,450 tons in 1892 to 405,261 in 1893; business failures increased 50 per cent; only 62 miles of railroad were laid in that year. Mills, factories, furnaces, and mines throughout the State closed down; unemployed workers crowded the streets of the cities begging food or work, while laborers from the farms and mines fled in desperation to the cities. Suffering continued until 1898.

With recovery Illinois achieved third place among the manufacturing States of the Nation. By 1914 Chicago was the greatest slaughtering and packing center in the country, first in production of farm implements, second only to New York City in printing, and its steel furnaces had the largest capacity in the United States.

By the turn of the century Illinois was able to record a phenomenal growth in population. In 1810, an outpost in the wilderness with only 12,282 inhabitants, it had grown to 2,539,891 in 1870, and by 1900 to 4,821,550. In 1910, 62 per cent of the State was urban, with Chicago housing one-half of the population.

Important changes were also taking place in the character of the population. At the end of the great wave of European immigration in 1910, Germans ranked first among the foreign-born population in the State, with 26 per cent (319,182) ; Austrians and Hungarians next, with 16 per cent; Russians and Scandinavians, about 12 per cent each; Irish 8 per cent, and Italians 6 per cent. Because of the exhaustion of cheap lands by the time these people arrived, and the greater immediate opportunities in the manufacturing centers, they settled largely in the cities and towns in the northern part of the State. Half the population of the cities of Chicago, Joliet, and Rockford was foreignborn. Negroes also began to settle here, mostly in towns of the southern counties; in 1870 they numbered 28,762; by 1910 there were 109,049; in that year Negroes comprised 37 per cent of the population of Cairo.

Notwithstanding the repeated victories of the Republican Party in State elections, Populist sentiment, born in the 1880's, remained strong in Illinois. In 1896, at the Democratic national convention in Chicago, William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous "Cross of Gold" speech, which was warmly received by the workers and farmers of the State; but in 1896 elections Bryan and Governor Altgeld were defeated by the Republicans. A Democratic governor was not again elected until 1912, when the Bull Moose campaign split the Republican Party, permitting the Democrats to take the major offices of the State.

Dissatisfied with Populism as an ineffective political movement, some workingmen turned to more radical politics. In 1901 the Socialist Party of the United States was organized in Chicago by Eugene Victor Debs, Seymour Stedman, and other well-known radicals. The party grew; by 1915 there were 44 Socialists holding political offices in the State: one mayor, 18 aldermen, 2 State legislators, 5 school officials, and 18 others. In 1916 William Cunnea, law partner of Clarence Darrow, ran on the Socialist ticket and was almost elected State's Attorney, losing on a recount. Another radical organization was the Industrial Workers of the World; organized in 1905, with Chicago as its center, its doctrine of "One Big Union" spread throughout the West. Chicago, too, was to see the demise of the 1. W. W. in the famous trial of a hundred leading members before judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis on charges arising out of their opposition to the war.

And it was at Chicago in 1919 that the Communist Party was organized by the left wing of the Socialist Party, which split on the question of support of the Russian Revolution.

In the first twenty years of the new century Illinois was one of the most progressive States in the Union in the field of social legislation. After the passage of the first mining law in 1872, it continued to provide for the safe operation of mines by enacting supplementary legislation in 1899, 1910, and 1913. Child labor legislation was adopted in 1891; a law fixing the maximum hours of labor for women was passed as early as 1893; the first workmen's compensation acts of 1911 were improved in 1913 and 1917. Many other measures were adopted; governmental reforms were undertaken, among which were the establishment of civil service, and the act of 1910 providing direct primaries in the State elections. After the 1907 local option law was adopted, dry areas spread throughout the State, until Illinois became at least technically "dry" by the Volstead Act. An attempt to redraft the antiquated Constitution of 1870 was made by a constitutional convention, which assembled in 1920 and labored for two years, only to have its draft repudiated by the voters in 1922.

Illinois played its part in the World War I. By June 1917, less than three months after the declaration of war, 351,153 Illinois men were in uniform. Illinois was one of the three States to furnish an entire National Guard Division. Officially designated the 33rd, it was popularly called the "Prairie Division," and saw action at St. Mihiel, Verdun, Chateau Thierry, and Meuse-Argonne. At the conclusion of the war the 33rd came home to be cheered and welcomed. Parades were reviewed by the Governor upon the arrival of each contingent. But missing in the demobilization were more than five thousand men from the farms, offices, and factories of the State.

After the war Illinois, along with the rest of the Nation, enjoyed a boom, an extraordinary period of construction and speculation. Politics, prohibition, crime, and the high cost of living filled the headlines of the newspapers. Governor Len Small launched an extensive program of building hard roads throughout the State. His political ally was the colorful William Hale Thompson, serving his second term as mayor of Chicago, who called himself "Big Bill the Builder." There followed the reform administration of Mayor Dever in 1923, but in the next election in 1927 Thompson was returned for a third term.

In 1931 Anton Cermak was elected mayor of Chicago. Then came the Democratic landslide of 1932, which turned the Republicans of the State out of office. Henry Horner, judge of the probate court of Cook County for five years, was elected Governer. Mayor Cermak was fatally wounded on February 15, 1933, when an assassin made an attempt on the life of President Franklin Roosevelt in Florida. Democratic policies again triumphed in 1934 when 22 additional Democrats were elected to the State House of Representatives.

During the twenties Illinois ranked as the third State in the Union in population, manufacturing, and wealth. It continued to lead the country in meat packing and slaughtering. Because of the State's strategic position between the iron mines of the Upper Lakes region and the large coal mines in its southern counties, foundry and machinery products ranked second in Illinois manufacture. Chicago remained an important center for printing, the making of men's clothing, farm implements, and electrical machinery. Railroad coaches were manufactured at Pullman and Chicago Heights. Important national centers for agricultural implements were Moline, Rock Island, and Canton.

By 1928 about 65 per cent of the children of school age were enrolled in public schools, requiring an annual expenditure of 143 million dollars. In addition, more than a thousand private schools were scattered over the State. Enrollment at the State university began to average fourteen thousand a year. Northwestern University and the University of Chicago recorded similar gains. Catholic parochial schools and universities, notably Loyola and De Paul in Chicago, also grew in importance. Greater care for the health of school children was provided with the introduction of regular medical and dental examinations.

As the cities expanded in the twenties with their skyscrapers, automobiles, electrical goods, chain stores, department stores, radios, and movies, there was another decline in agriculture in the State. From 251,872 farms in 1910, the number fell to 214,497 in 1930, and acreage fell from 32,523,000 to 30,695,000 in the same period. By 1935 the former had risen slightly to 231,312, and the latter to 31,661,000. Although the ox, the flail, the cradle, and the scythe were replaced by the combine, the four-plow cultivator, and the tractor, prices of farm goods continued to fall, and more and more people left the farms for the cities. This protracted agricultural recession of the twenties was regarded by economists as responsible, at least in part, for the devastating financial depression that began in 1929.

Under conditions strikingly similar to those of 1893, the Century of Progress Exposition opened in 1933. The times were critical: unemployed descended upon the State capital to demand relief; the coal fields were torn by a factional war between rival labor organizations; court dockets were clogged with foreclosure proceedings and evictions. To add to the suffering of the farmers came great droughts to parch their fields. The collapse of the Insull utilities empire and the widespread closing of banks impoverished thousands.

Despite all this, the fair opened with a note of hope and optimism. The exposition contained 84 miles of scientific, cultural, industrial, and commercial exhibits, seen by 39 million people, who came from all over the world. Its massive architecture of futuristic design was made brilliant at night by a dazzling revelation in new electric lighting.

WHEN THE FIRST WHITE MEN came to Illinois

WHEN THE FIRST WHITE MEN came to Illinois, they found large mounds of earth rising up out of the prairies, usually near navigable rivers. Because these mounds contained burials, pottery, stone implements, and the ruins of buildings, and were sometimes shaped like birds and beasts, various legends arose about the people who built them. One story had it that they were a lost tribe of Israel. Another described them as a people related to the Mayas and the Aztecs. A third told of an ancient race, of much vision and beauty, with large cities and widespread commerce and trade, that flourished in the Mississippi Basin about the time of Christ. For many years the mound builders captured the imagination of story-tellers.

Today, however, these myths have been exploded, and the mystery of the mounds has been solved, at least in part, by archeological expeditions. Archeologists have been able to show clearly that the mound builders were simply Indians who built mounds.

These mounds were not all of one period, nor were they all built for the same purpose. Some, like the effigy mounds in the northwestern part of the State, were of a ceremonial nature; many were built primarily for burial purposes; others were sites for buildings. Those of the latter type seem to show influences which came from the Lower Mississippi, and possibly from the higher cultures of Mexico and South America. With the great tribal unrest among the Indians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, largely due to the incursions of the Iroquois from the East, a great shifting of tribes occurred, so that by the time the first explorers came to Illinois, there were few mound-building Indians left in the region.

More than 10,000 mounds are scattered throughout the State. Because Illinois was situated at the confluence of the great highways of primitive travel--the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois Rivers --various mound-building cultures shuttled back and forth across the State. Here are found obsidian from Yellowstone, Catlinite from Minnesota, copper from Michigan and Minnesota, mica from the Alleghenies, and shells from the Gulf of Mexico. And in the mounds of other States are found the kind of flint mined only in the ancient quarry in Union County, Illinois.

Archeologists have found two major culture patterns in the State, of which the Woodland is the older and more basic. One phase of this culture is represented by the effigy mounds in northwestern Illinois; this came down from Wisconsin. Another is the Hopewell phase which probably had its origin farther east. The other major pattern is known as the Mississippi culture, and is divided into Upper, Middle, and Lower phases; it runs up along the Mississippi, the Illinois, and other rivers, as far north as Astalan, Wisconsin.

Woodland pottery is crude and unevenly colored; textiles and shell work are absent; and only its stone work is definitely well-fashioned. Houses of the period were circular and temporary. The mounds themselves are round, are generally smaller than those of the Mississippi culture, and were not used as substructures. The dead were usually buried in the mounds in flexed positions; a few of the remains found had been cremated. In the Hopewell phase of this culture--so-called because it probably came to Illinois from the vicinity of the famous Hopewell mounds in Ohio--copper and mica ornaments occur. One of its chief characteristics is the frequent use of log tombs, over which the mounds were built.

In the more recent Mississippi culture, the pottery work is wellfired from carefully prepared clays; it is evenly colored and of many forms. Shell work is highly developed. Finely woven textiles are frequent. The dwellings were square or rectangular, of a permanent or semi-permanent nature, and the mounds were often used as substructures for these houses. In the cemeteries near the mounds the dead were buried in extended positions, together with projectile points, pottery, charms, and amulets.

One of the richest archeological areas in the Middle West is at the junction of the Spoon and the Illinois Rivers in Fulton County. Expeditions from the University of Chicago under Professor FayCooper Cole found as many as three cultural manifestations of the two basic patterns existing in the same mounds. In the eight hundred mounds in Fulton County, six different cultural manifestations have been discovered, with the Middle Mississippi and the Hopewell phases often existing side by side, although different in time. Thus, though the religious practices and beliefs among the mound builders apparently differed, they continued to use the same spots for their burials.

In the same area, near Lewistown, on a high bluff overlooking the two rivers, is the Dickson Mound Builders Tomb. Here a museum has been erected over a mound of the Middle Mississippi phase containing more than two hundred skeletons, the largest and most interesting display of its kind in the country. The remains, together with their accompanying artifacts, are exposed in their original positions. With the skeletons are pottery vessels, mussel-shell spoons, L-shaped pipes, bone needles, beads, and fish hooks, flint arrowheads, stone adze blades, and effigy forms. The mound itself, originally crescent-shaped, with the points toward the east, measured 550 feet along its outer curve, and was 35 feet high. A reproduction of one of these burials, contributed by Mr. Don Dickson, explorer of the mound and owner of the museum, is exhibited at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

Fifteen miles southwest of Joliet is the Fisher Group, explored by George Langford, a local engineer. Three successive occupancies were revealed here: under the original surface, buried in the limestone gravel below the base of the mounds, were skeletons, with medium and long skulls, interred in a flexed position, and unaccompanied by relics; this complete absence of pottery, and the difference of physical type, probably indicate an extremely ancient culture. In the middle levels of the mounds were found burials of a short-headed people; with them were many pottery vessels, and artifacts of stone, bone, and shell. The upper levels held mixed types and mixed artifacts. In one of the smaller mounds of this group occurred skeletons of a short-headed people, extended on their backs with their heads to the west; in these graves were iron, brass, and silver utensils and trinkets, of white man's manufacture, indicating that some of the mound builders lived here down to historic times.

In the American Bottom, near East St. Louis, are the mounds of the world-famous Cahokia Group, known throughout the archeological world. Here the mounds of the Middle Mississippi phase were used as substructures for ceremonial buildings. The pottery is highly developed and sometimes, in form and design, indicates southern connections. Near the center of the area, which contains eighty-five smaller mounds, stands the largest earthwork in the world, the Cahokia or Monks' Mound. A truncated pyramid, rectangular in form, with a broad terrace or apron extending from the south side, it covers sixteen acres. Its greatest height is 100 feet; the east-west width is 710 feet, and the north-south length, including the terrace, 1,080 feet. The general similarity of mounds of this type to those found in Mexico has often been noted. The herculean labor involved in their construction denotes either the existence of slavery or an almost fanatical religious belief. Though there is much evidence that a large community, equal in size to a modern small city, existed in the vicinity of these mounds, no cemetery, strangely enough, has been found.

Also belonging to the Middle Mississippi phase are the four Kincaid Mounds near Metropolis, in Massac County. The largest, a truncated pyramid, rises 32 feet above ground, and covers 2 acres at its base. The nearby village site comprises more than 100 acres. The whole area has been made available to the University of Chicago for archeological research.

Effigy mounds, belonging to the Woodland culture, occur in the northwestern part of the State. They possibly represent totems or clan symbols; usually no burials are found in them. Near Galena is a mound shaped like a serpent, which strikingly resembles the famous Serpent Mound of Ohio. At the junction of Smallpox Creek with the Mississippi is the effigy of a bird with outspread wings. Also belonging to the Woodland culture are seventeen conical mounds on the bluffs overlooking East Dubuque and the Mississippi River, the largest of which is 70 feet in diameter and 12 feet high.

Thousands of small mounds, usually called bluff mounds, line the Illinois River. In culture they are of two types, for here again the Woodland and the Middle Mississippi, separated by considerable lapses of time, are found in the same area. Among other larger mounds of the State are the Montezuma Mounds near Pearl and the Beardstown Mounds in Cass County.

Illinois topography has its explanation in the State's glacial history

The level aspect of Illinois topography has its explanation in the State's glacial history. As late as 25,000 years ago--a tick of the clock in geological time--there was still to be found in Illinois the last of the great ice sheets that had crept down from the North and with a leveling action comparable to that of a road-scraper, effaced hills and valleys carved by centuries of erosion. Ninety per cent of the State's surface was covered by ice; the only unglaciated areas are Jo Daviess County in the extreme northwest, Calhoun County in the west-central section, and the seven southernmost counties. In these areas the rugged terrain, sharply dissected by valleys, indicates the probable appearance of the whole of Illinois before the ice age. Elsewhere, save for sporadic outcrops, the uneven relief lies beneath a mantle of drift averaging 75 feet in depth.

The four ice-sheets that invaded the United States are definitely known to have reached Illinois. The next to last of these covered so great a portion of the State that it has been named the Illinoisan by geologists. Occurring approximately 150,000 years ago, it pushed south to the northern edge of the Ozark Range, and there, halted by increased melting and the barricade of hills, piled up rock debris 20 feet deep on the hillsides. This was the greatest southern penetration of any of the North American glaciers.

The Wisconsin Glacier, which moved into Illinois 50,000 years ago and receded 25,000 years later, covered only the northeast quarter of the State., but because of its geological lateness its effects are more obvious to the layman. The great central portion of the State which was covered by the older Illinoisan sheet, but not overlaid by the Wisconsin, is much more nearly even in relief and mature in drainage. The terminal moraines--ridges of drift piled up where the glacial front stopped--are low and inconspicuous. Those of the last glacier, however, are among the largest known to geologists. Sharply defined and extensive in length, they comprise the chief topographical relief of the northeast portion of the State. The major ones are named for cities that have been built upon them; the Shelbyville, Bloomington, Marseilles, and Valparaiso moraines are four of the most important.

Marked with the characteristics of recent glaciation, the land bordering Lake Michigan near the Wisconsin State line is poorly drained, with many lakes and marshes formed by the melting Wisconsin glacier. Thus was created the lake region of Illinois, major recreational area for the metropolis of Chicago. At the time of recession, the waters of the glacier were impounded between the Valparaiso moraine and the receding edge of ice, forming Lake Chicago, ancestor of Lake Michigan. The site of Chicago lay deep beneath the surface of this ancient lake, and deposition from its waters accounts for the table-top flatness of the city today. In successive stages the water receded north and east.

Glaciation and climate largely explain the agricultural distinction of the Illinois country. The average growing season varies from 160 days in the north to 211 days at Cairo, in the south. The drift laid down by the ice had been gathered from so great a variety of bedrock that an ample percentage of essential minerals was assured. Lying at the southernmost reach of the ice-sheets, Illinois was not strewn with the boulders and heavy débris that pock-mark the land further north. Much of the State is veneered with a layer of loess, the finer particles of drift that were sorted out by the wind and spread across the land. Enriched by prairie grasses during thousands of years, it possesses an even texture which, with the regular terrain, fits Illinois admirably for mechanical cultivation.

Buried beneath the glacial drift, the rock strata of Illinois effect little influence upon the topography, but their minerals yield to the State an income placing it tenth in the country in mineral output. All of the substructure that has been explored by geologists is sedimentary in nature, with the exception of a deep-lying mass of red granite encountered at 3,700 feet near Amboy, in the northern part of the State. At an unknown depth, the entire State is underlain with igneous rock, mother-rock of all formations, but vast processes of sedimentation have buried it beyond reach.

Of the five geological eras, the third, the Paleozoic, was by far the most important both geologically and economically. Beginning some 600 million years ago, it was characterized by repeated submergences and uplifts. What is now Illinois was then covered by a series of shallow seas. In great cycles, the seas advanced, covered the land for millions of years, and then retreated to expose the surface again to weathering and erosion. The strata laid down during each submergence differ sharply from each other, the degree depending upon the depth of the sea and the nature of the land at its shoreline.

The oldest period of the Paleozoic Era was the Cambrian, during which thick layers of sandstone and dolomite were deposited over the entire State. This, like the igneous rock, does not outcrop in Illinois, but slants upward from the south to come to the surface in Wisconsin. Rainfall in the latter area, seeping through surface soil to the sandstone layers, follows these to northern Illinois, where it serves as a reservoir for the wells of many municipalities.

The second period of the Paleozoic Era was the Ordovician, which saw a series of submergences of long duration. Its first deposits, the Prairie du Chien group, included a limestone which was the basis of Utica's natural cement industry, important in the last century but now abandoned. Another of the early Ordovician deposits is a layer of St. Peter sandstone, which outcrops in Ottawa and nearby in a remarkably pure form that has achieved national industrial importance as a source of silica sand used in glass-making and a hundred other processes. St. Peter sandstone also forms the picturesque bluffs that comprise Starved Rock State Park. Platteville limestone, likewise an Ordovician deposit, is used in the manufacture of Portland cement. Late in the period a layer of Galena dolomite was laid down. It bears the lead which gave Galena its name and its early mining boom. Related to this formation is the Kimmswick limestone, source of petroleum in the southwestern field at Dupo.

The third period, the Silurian, laid down several strata of dolomite and limestone. The latter is quarried extensively near Chicago and Joliet for road material, aggregate, and soil replenishment. The following period, the Devonian, is likewise chiefly important for its limestone. Among the Mississippian deposits are the sediments that store the southeastern oil pool, long a steadily producing field and lately the scene of a spectacular boom of revived activity.

Near the end of the Paleozoic Era occurred the Pennsylvanian period, when Illinois' great coal measures were deposited. The coal strata, but a small portion of the Pennsylvanian deposits, far outstrip all other geological periods in the wealth they have yielded. The land at this time was low and marshy, a few feet above sea level. A favorable climate encouraged the growth of giant trees and ferns that subsequent eons compressed into the coal veins that underlie two-thirds of the State. Despite a half-century of extensive mining operations, not more than 2 per cent, it is estimated, of Illinois' coal reserve has been tapped.

Following the close of the Pennsylvanian period, the greater portion of Illinois remained above sea level. Great land movements that raised the Appalachians in the east, folded the land of Southern Illinois into the present Ozark range. The work of the seas was done, and now rain and wind attacked the surface to erode and crease it with great valleys and ridges. But then, following a vast climatic change, snow began to fall in the northern region, year after year, deeper in the winter than the brief summer sun could melt.

So began the glacial period, the deus ex machina in the making of Illinois. Even as the curtain descended upon the State's geological drama, the ice sheets appeared, effaced the ruggedness, and retreated-so recently that Indian legends make awed mention of the Ice God that once came down from the North.

The land of Illinois reveals graphically the agricultural importance of the State

SEEN FROM THE AIR, the land of Illinois reveals graphically the agricultural importance of the State. Carved by intensive cultivation into an intricate mosaic of squares and rectangles, the level prairie resembles nothing so much as a vast stretch of modernistic linoleum. In the grainfields no land is wasted; pasture adjoins field, farm fits snugly against farm, and between them is nothing but the straight line of a fence or hedgerow of osage orange.

Lying between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, Illinois enjoys a drainage system extraordinarily complete and extensive. Water from 23 of the 48 States crosses its surface and flows along its boundaries, eastward through Lake Michigan to the Atlantic Ocean and southward in the Mississippi to the Gulf. Although its topography presents no striking contrasts of surface contour, the State is separated into seven gentle but distinct basins, bearing the names of Lake Michigan, the Illinois, the Rock, the Kaskaskia, the Big Muddy, the Wabash, and the Ohio Rivers. The arteries and branches of these six great rivers serve 87.2 per cent of the 56,665 square miles of the State's surface. The largest, the Illinois, runs from northeast to southwest and drains an area 250 miles long and 100 miles wide, comprising 43 per cent of the State.

The conception of Illinois as an unrelieved table-top admits pleasant and unexpected contradictions. A portion of the hilly Wisconsin driftless area projects into the northwest corner; there, at Charles Mound, is the highest spot in the State, 1,241 feet above sea level. An extension of the Ozark Range, with several hills exceeding a thousand feet in altitude, crosses southern Illinois. The Mississippi and its tributaries, especially the Illinois, have carved long ranges of bluffs, the more rugged portions of which have been enclosed in State parks.

Elsewhere is prairie, but its original extent and appearance have been greatly altered. The earliest settlers found almost half the State in forest, with the prairie running in great fingers between the creeks and other waterways, its surface lush with waist-high grasses and liberally bedecked with wild flowers. Here occurred the transition from the wooded lands of the East to the treeless plains of the West.

Since this was the pioneer's first encounter with the prairie, Illinois came to be known as the Prairie State, although westward lay lands more worthy of the title than the semi-wooded surface of Illinois.

The pioneers admired the grasslands, but clung to the wooded waterways. At the time of early settlement the fertility of the prairie was not known nor was it available until the invention of plows capable of breaking the tough sod. The waterways furnished timber for fuel and building, a convenient water supply, and protection for the settlers' jerry-built cabins from prairie fires and windstorms. Fires invariably swept the grasslands in the late summer, when the Indians burned off the prairie to drive out game. When the settlers at last began to venture cautiously out from the groves, they took the precaution to surround their homesteads with several plowed furrows as a fire check.

The fame of the great stretches of treeless grasslands spread eastward, even to England, and magazines carried articles of description, speculating upon their origin (which is still unexplained) and the possibilities of their cultivation. Dickens, while visiting St. Louis in 1842, especially requested that he be shown the "paroarer," as he noted it was pronounced locally. A rumbling, ancient coach took him out to Looking Glass Prairie, near Belleville, and he returned to write:

. . . . there lay, stretched out before my view, a vast expanse of level ground; unbroken, save by one thin line of trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great blank . . . . a tranquil sea or lake without water, if such a simile be admissible . . . . and solitude and silence reigning paramount around . . . . I felt little of that sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English downs awakens. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive in its barren monotony.

Lumbering activities and the pioneer's early preference for the woodland reduced the forests from their original extent, 42 per cent, to little more than 5 per cent. What is now commonly thought of as prairie is often the increment gained from the clearing of woodlands. Given over now almost wholly to farms, the prairies are constantly in flux as the landscape alters with the agricultural season. April transforms the Illinois country into a vast patchwork quilt of fresh color. Spring planting brings forth teams and tractors that comb and dress the land with geometric nicety. By summer the contours of the prairie are soft and round with ripening crops. July ushers in three months of intense industry. Crops are gathered, threshing machines build mounds of chaff, trucks and trains loaded with grain begin to move toward the cities. When autumn comes, the prairies, gashed by plows and stripped of their harvest, have a worn, desolate aspect that is heightened by the somber browns and yellows of the season. The prairies are dull throughout winter save for intermittent snowfalls, and then, in late March, the land stirs, splotches of green appear, and farmers turn again to the soil.