“ The homestead of a housekeeper or head of a family, together with the rents and products of the same, is exempt from levy and attachment except to satisfy its liabilities at the time he acquired it. A homestead so exempted is, however, limited to 18 sq. rods of ground and to $3000 in value if it is in a city having a population of 40,000 or more, to 30 sq. ”

“ The increase in the slaughtering industry between 1890 and 1900 (134·9%) was chiefly due to remarkable growth in St Joseph—or, to be more precise, just outside the city limits of St Joseph; between 1900 and 1905 the increase was 39·5%. Although Missouri is not a great tobacco state, St Louis is one of the greatest centres of the country in the output of tobacco products. It is also, for the state, the great centre of all the leading interests with the exception of slaughtering. ”

“ The boot and shoe industry is new west of the Mississippi, but Missouri holds in it a high and rising rank. In the Joplin mining region a considerable amount of ores is smelted, but the bulk of the ores is sent into Kansas for smelting. The finer clays, also, are mainly shipped from the state in natural form, but in the manufacture of sewer-pipe and fire-brick, Missouri is a very prominent state. St Louis and Kansas City are the centres of the clay industries. ”

“ A husband owning a homestead is debarred from selling or mortgaging it without the joinder of his wife, and if the husband dies leaving a widow or minor children the homestead passes to either or to both jointly, and may be so held until the youngest child is twenty-one years of age or until the marriage or death of the widow. ”

“ Manufactures.—Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits absorbed in 1900 the labours of 19·5% of all persons engaged in gainful occupations, less than half as many as were engaged in agriculture. Though an agricultural state, Missouri had in 1900 three cities with populations of above 100,000, whose wealth is based on manufactures and trade. Missouri is the leading manufacturing state west of the Mississippi. Between 1880 and 1900 the value of the product increased from $165,386,205 to $385,492,784, of which $316,304,095 was the value of products of the “factory system” ”

“ This Missouri tripoli is a finely decomposed light rock, about 98% silica, and is used for filter stones and as an abrasive. “Chat”—finely crushed flint and limestone yielded as tailings in the lead and zinc mines—finds many uses. Limestone is quarried all over the state (except in the embayment region) . There are unlimited supplies of clay, shale and limestone, the three essential constituents of Portland cement, and the manufacture of this, begun in 1902, at once assumed important proportions. Quicklime manufacture is also an important industry. ”

“ The principal grounds for divorce are impotence, bigamy, adultery, conviction of felony or other infamous crime subsequent to the marriage or before the marriage if unknown to the other party, desertion or habitual drunkenness for one year, such cruel or barbarous treatment as to endanger the life of the other, such conduct as to render the condition of the other intolerable, and vagrancy of the husband ”

“ Grapes are mainly grown in the Ozark region, and wine is produced in Gasconade and other central and north-central counties in amounts sufficient to place Missouri, California aside, in the front rank of wine states in the Union. Indian corn and abundant grasses give to Missouri, as to the other central prairie states, a sound basis for her livestock interests. In 1900 the value of her live stock was $160,540,004. Two of the four remount purchasing stations of the United States Army are at St Louis and Kansas City. As a mule market Missouri has no rival. ”

“ Lead occurs in three areas in southern Missouri. In the first, of which St François county is the centre, it occurs generally alone disseminated in Cambrian limestone; in the second, of which the counties immediately south-west of Jefferson City are the centre, it occurs with zinc in reticulated deposits and fissure veins in clays and clastic limestones; and in the third, of which Jasper county is much the most important county, the two metals occur in pockets and joints in the Burlington-Keokuk beds of the sub-Carboniferous. The first is the great lead area, the third the great zinc area ”

“ Blacks and whites are segregated in all schools. Various high-schools scattered over the state are given over to the negroes; and in 1904 the number of pupils attending these was exceeded only by the corresponding numbers in Texas and Mississippi—states with five- and sixfold the negro population of Missouri. ”

“ Mining in south-western Missouri began about 1851, but zinc was of no importance in the output until 1872. In the next thirty-one years the aggregate product was about 3,000,000 tons of ore, worth some $100,000,000. The output from 1894 to 1905 averaged 219,874 tons of ore yearly; in 1908 it was 107,404 tons. The history of the St François, Granby and Joplin districts has been sensational. The fortunes of the last have largely revolutionized the conditions and prospects of the south-western counties. Silver is found in connexion with lead and zinc mining ”

“ The metropolitan primacy of St Louis and Kansas City is reflected in the general organization of the courts. The Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains free employment-bureaus in St Louis, Kansas City and St Joseph. There is also a State Board of Mediation and Arbitration to settle labour disputes. A Board of Railroad and Warehouse Commissioners, elected by the people, was established in 1875, under a provision of the constitution requiring the General Assembly to establish maximum rates and provide against discriminations. ”

“ Missouri lies very frequently in the dangerous quadrant of the great cyclonic storms passing over the Mississippi valley—indeed, northern Missouri lies in the area of maximum frequency of tornadoes.
Agriculture.—Few states have so great a variety of soils. This variety is due to the presence of different forms of glacial drift, and to the variety of surface rocks. The northern half of the state is well watered and extremely fertile. The south-eastern embayment is rich to an exceptional degree. ”

“ Thus, even in the years of the Civil War, there was no apparent set-back. Of the aggregate of 1900, 63·7% lived in “rural districts” (i.e. those outside all places of a population of 2500 or upwards) , and 27·1% in the three great cities of the state, St Louis (pop. 575,238) , Kansas City (163,752) and St Joseph (102,979) ; 5·2% were negroes—their increase from 1890 to 1900 being less than half as rapid as that of the whites; and 7·0% only were foreign-born. Slightly more than half of all foreigners are Germans ”

“ Minerals.—Coal, lead, zinc, clays, building stones and iron are the most important minerals. Cobalt and nickel are associated with lead in the St François field; but though the American output is almost exclusively derived from Missouri the production is small in comparison with the amount derived from abroad. Practically the whole comes from Mine La Motte, in Madison county. Missouri is also the largest producer in the Union of tripoli and of barytes. Copper occurs in various localities, but is of economic importance only in the Ozark uplift ”

“ Few localities have an elevation exceeding 1400 ft. Rather broad, smooth valleys, well degraded hills with rounded summits, and—despite the escarpments—generally smooth contours and sky-lines, characterize the whole of this Ozark region.
3. The third region, the lowlands of the south-east, has an area of some 3000 sq. m. It is an undulating country, for the most part well drained, but swampy in its lowest portions. The Mississippi is skirted with lagoons, lakes and morasses from Ste Genevieve to the Arkansas border, and in places is confined by levees. ”

“ Illiterate persons above 10 years of age constituted in 1900 6·4% of the total population—28·1% of the negroes, 7·1% of the natives, 6·9% of the foreign-born. The idea of providing a university and free local schools as parts of a public school system occurs in the constitution of 1820 (and in the Acts of Congress that prepared the way for statehood) , and the occurrence is noteworthy ”

“ Fauna.—Excepting the embayment region, Missouri lies wholly within the Carolinian area of the Upper Austral life-zone; the embayment lies in the Austro-riparian area of the same zone. Among wild animals, deer and bear are not uncommon. Opossums, raccoons, woodchucks, foxes, grey squirrels and fox-squirrels are common. ”

“ In addition to these four constitutional conventions, mention should be made of the special body chosen in 1861 to decide the question of secession, which retained supreme though irregular control of the state during the Civil War, and some of whose acts had all the force of promulgated constitutional amendments. Universal manhood suffrage was established by the first constitution. The constitution of 1865 was a partisan and intolerant document, a part of the evil aftermath of war ”

“ An experiment station supported by the national government was established in 1888, and is part of the school of agriculture. The state Board of Agriculture organizes educational farmers’ institutes; and agriculture is taught, moreover, in the normal schools of the state. ”

“ Clays occur in amounts and varieties surpassed by the deposits in very few if any states of the Union. They are in every form from the rare to the common—glass pot clay, ball clays, kaolins, flint fireclays, plastic fireclays, stone-ware clays, paving-brick shales, building-brick and gumbo clays. Plastic fireclays, paving and brick clays are available in seemingly limitless quantities. ”

“ In 1905 and 1907 the rank of Missouri was sixth in the Union in the value of clay products—namely, $6,203,411 in 1905 and $6,898,871 in 1907. There has been no more than the slightest beginning made in the utilization of these resources. Stone resources are also large. Limestones are by far the most important; red and gray granites, sandstones and marble (Ste Genevieve county) being of little more than local importance. ”

“ The Radical Republicans held control until 1870, when they were defeated by a combination of Liberal Republicans and Democrats, [17] and the test-oath and the rest of the intolerant legislation of the war period were swept away. ”

“ Those of the White system have open-trough valleys bordered by hills in their upper courses and canyons in their lower courses; others, notably the Gasconade, exhibit remarkable differences in the drainage areas of their two sides, with interesting illustrations of shifting water-partings ”

“ The limits of the coal belt have already been defined. The area of the Coal Measures is about 23,000 sq. m., and that of those classed by the National Geological Survey as probably productive is about 14,000 sq. m., or nearly the entire area of the lower measures. The coal is almost wholly bituminous, with very little cannelite. The seams are generally from one to five feet in thickness. Macon, Lafayette and Adair are the leading counties in output; Lexington and Bevier are the leading mining centres. The total output from 1840 to 1902 was about 78,500,000 short tons ”