MAKING SHOES
Next in importance are the tobacco, meat-packing, and malt-liquor industries. St. Louis is one of the leading cities in the country in the manufacture of tobacco. The meat-packing establishments, including those in East St. Louis, hold fourth place among America's great packing centers. Its mammoth breweries lead the country in the output of beer. Flour mills, foundries, and sugar refineries also do an immense business. Street and railroad cars, stoves of all kinds, paints, oils, and white lead are made in scores of factories, while hundreds of other industries flourish in the city, making it one of the greatest workshops in the United States.
MULES IN A STOCKYARD
Important as St. Louis is as a manufacturing city, it is even more noted as a distributing center, its location making it the natural commercial metropolis of the Mississippi valley. It markets not only its own manufactures but products which represent every section of the country. The vast territory to the west and southwest depends almost entirely on St. Louis for its supply of dry goods and groceries. Other staples are boots and shoes, tobacco, hardware, timber, cotton, breadstuffs, cattle, and hogs.
In the handling of furs St. Louis leads the cities of the world. She also holds a high place among the great grain markets. In this country her annual receipts of corn, wheat, and oats are exceeded only by those of Chicago and Minneapolis. Shipments of grain and breadstuffs to Central and South America, Cuba, Great Britain, and Germany constitute the city's leading exports.
As a live-stock market it is no less important. The National Stockyards, located on the Illinois side of the river, contain several hundred acres. Though packing houses and slaughtering houses occupy some of this land, the main part is covered with sheds, pens, and enclosures for the reception and sale of live animals. Millions of cattle, hogs, and sheep are handled here every year. St. Louis also buys and sells hundreds of thousands of horses and mules, being the largest market for draft animals in the world.
Just as the frontier trading post of the eighteenth century grew into the thriving river port of the nineteenth, so the river port of the nineteenth century has developed into one of the leading railroad and commercial centers of the twentieth. And the fourth city of America in size is now St. Louis.