HON. JOHN A. KASSON.

The urgent need of a new capitol was generally admitted. But the justness or propriety of a measure is not alone sufficient to secure legislation. The jealousy of rival towns was fanned into fierce opposition. Their representatives fought an appropriation with tooth and nail. Two million dollars was magnified into unheard-of proportions. Time-serving politicians who admitted privately that the State needed a capitol badly, tore passion to tatters in portraying the poverty and distress of the taxpayers. With a State "full of barefooted women and barefooted children" they asseverated such an expenditure would be criminal. Such "politics" long prevailed. In 1867, the people of Des Moines elected to the House of Representatives, Hon. John A. Kasson, to conduct the fight for the appropriation. No better man could have been chosen. He had attained distinction as Assistant Postmaster-General under President Lincoln, and as a member of Congress. With what tact, patience and diplomacy he carried on the contest his career since as our country's envoy to the courts of Austria and Germany indicates. For five years Mr. Kasson struggled with recalcitrant representatives through trying vicissitudes before he got the appropriation. As it was, he escaped defeat by but one vote to spare, and that vote he would have lost but for the timely aid of a Catholic priest, Father Brazil, of the city. The opposition resorted to the rascally ruse of getting a bibulous member who was friendly to the measure dead drunk and locking him up to prevent his attendance at the time of the vote. On being informed of the trick, Father Brazil sought out the recreant son of Erin, secured him, and marched him up to the House chamber just as the roll was about to be called, and sat severely by until his charge had answered "Aye."

[THE CAPITOL, DES MOINES.]

It took twelve years to build the capitol. During practically all of that time its construction was under the absolute control of three commissioners, John G. Foote, Peter A. Dey, and Robert S. Finkbine, and the stately structure that now adorns Capitol Hill is a monument to their intelligence and integrity. Not an unwise expenditure nor a dishonest or corrupt transaction was ever charged against their stewardship, and the people of Iowa hold their names and services in grateful memory. It is a sad commentary on our public morals that the erection of a State capitol without suspicion of corruption is so exceptional as to be noteworthy and the proud distinction of the people of this Western commonwealth.

[THE IOWA HISTORICAL LIBRARY.]

From a frontier fort and a huddle of huts, Des Moines has grown to be a stately city whose corporate limits include fifty-four square miles and a population of nearly 70,000, almost double the population of any other city in Iowa. Her citizens boast that "without riots, booms, or conflagrations" she has steadily grown in strength and stature. Her industries and commerce make the city a hive of activities. Seventeen railroads radiate from Des Moines, enabling the city to become the wholesale and retail jobbing centre of the State. Sixty miles of electric street-railways and fifty-eight miles of paved streets make her suburbs readily accessible. There are vast deposits of coal and clay under and about the city. The smoke of three hundred factories, large and small, tinge her atmosphere with the hues of Pittsburg. Among insurance men the city is called the "Hartford of the West," as fifty-one insurance companies have their headquarters in Des Moines and employ five thousand people. In her various colleges and schools of law, medicine, and commercial practice there is a population of nearly six thousand. Thousands of visitors annually come to the State Agricultural Fair and to the political and educational conventions that assemble in the city. Congress has recently provided for the establishment of an army post just south of the city limits, and the War Department is about to expend several hundred thousand dollars in erecting barracks and in the preparation of drill-grounds for troops.

Few cities in the West possess scenery of greater natural beauty than that which greets the eye in and about Des Moines. The junction of the rivers near the centre of the city gives her topography a configuration similar to that of Pittsburg. On the south and east her limits are marked by a range of wooded hills through which the silver stream of the united rivers makes its way. The view of the landscape across the river valley to the horizon's edge which is visible from most points is particularly pleasing to the eye in the spring and summer months. The main part of the city between the "Forks" is in a forest of native oaks, elms, and hickories so dense that the looker from the Capitol dome can scarce perceive the residences. To the attractions of nature the landscape gardener and architect have added much. Nearly five hundred acres of parks give the people fine pleasure resorts in the hot summer months. Many handsome wholesale and retail houses and manufacturing establishments grace her thoroughfares. The city has nearly completed a beautiful Public Library, located on the west bank of the Des Moines River, and, as a result of the years of devotion and unremitting labors of Mr. Charles Aldrich, the State has begun the erection of the Historical Library, which will be one of the chief attractions of Des Moines.