Chicago is the largest food-market in the world. The industries of the city are almost wholly connected with the commerce of grain, pork, meat, and other food-stuffs. For the transportation of these commodities about thirty great trunk lines enter the city and about twelve hundred passenger trains daily arrive and depart from its stations.
The freight terminals are connected by transfer and belt lines, which receive and distribute the cars passing between the eastern and the western roads. More than five hundred freight trains, aggregating about twenty thousand cars, arrive and depart daily.
St. Louis originally derived its importance as a river-port of the Mississippi, having been the connecting commercial link between the upper and the lower river. In recent years it has become the metropolis of the southern part of the food-producing region. In addition to the river-trade, still largely controlled at this point, it is the focus of more than twenty trunk lines of railway. Some of these, like the trunk lines of Chicago, handle freight exchanged between the East and West; but a large proportion are receiving and distributing roads for Southern freight.
AUTOMOTIVE POWER IN THE INDUSTRIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
St. Paul and Minneapolis are the metropolis of the upper Mississippi. The former grew from a trading-post at the head of navigation; the latter gained its commercial prominence from the water-power at the falls of St. Anthony. The former has become the chief railway and distributing centre of the northern Mississippi Valley; the latter has the greatest flour-mills in the world, and an extensive lumber-trade. Both are situated on the trade-route between the United States and Asian ports, and distribute a part of the trade that comes from them.
The two Kansas Cities,[52] Omaha, South Omaha, and Sioux City are stock-markets and meat-packing centres. The first two named are collecting and distributing points not only for the Mississippi Valley, but also for a considerable share of the Pacific Coast trade. Kansas City is also a transfer station for the cotton destined for China. From this place it is sent by way of Billings to Seattle, and thence shipped to China.
Cincinnati is the metropolis of the Ohio Valley. Its situation on a bend of the river gives most excellent landing facilities; the easy grade from the bluff to the bottom-lands along the flood-plain of Mill Creek makes it accessible to the railways that enter the city. On account of low rates of transportation by river-barges, about three million tons of coal and one million tons of pig-iron and steel billets are floated to the city to be manufactured into other steel products. Indianapolis is a great railway centre, where much of the freight passing between Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg is exchanged. Columbus (O.) is similarly situated as a railway and farming centre.