In the value, extent and producing power of her manufacturing industries Indiana has made remarkable advance since 1880. This increase, which more than kept pace with that of the country as a whole, was due largely to local causes, among which may be mentioned the unusual shipping facilities afforded by the network of railways, the discovery and development of natural gas, and the proximity of coal fields, the gas and the coal together furnishing an ample supply of cheap fuel. The number of manufacturing establishments (under the “factory” system) within the state was 7128 in 1900, 7044 in 1905; their invested capital was $219,321,080 in 1900 and $312,071,234 in 1905, an increase of 42.3%; and the value of their total product was $337,071,630 in 1900 and $393,954,405 in 1905, an increase of 16.9%. The most important manufactured products in 1905 were flour and grist mill products, valued at $36,473,543; in 1900, when they were second in importance to slaughter-house products and packed meats, they were valued at $29,037,843. Next in importance in 1905 was the slaughtering and meat-packing industry, of which the total product was valued at $29,352,593; in 1900 it was valued at $43,862,273. Other important manufactured products were: those of machine shops and foundries, the value of which increased from $17,228,096 in 1900 to $23,108,516 in 1905, or 34.1%; distilled liquors, the value of which had increased from $16,961,058 in 1900 to $20,520,261 in 1905, an increase of 21%; iron and steel, valued at $19,338,481 in 1900 and at $16,920,326 in 1905; carriages and wagons, valued at $12,661,217 in 1900 and at $15,228,337 in 1905; lumber and timber products, valued at $19,979,971 in 1900 and at $14,559,662 in 1905; and glass, valued at $14,757,883 in 1900 and at $14,706,929 in 1905—this being 3.7% of the product value of all manufactures in the state in 1905, and 18.5% of the value of glass produced in the United States in that year. The growth in the preceding decade of the iron and steel industry, the products of which increased in value from $4,742,760 in 1890 to $19,338,481 in 1900 (307.7%), and of the manufacture of glass, the value of which increased from $2,995,409 in 1890 to $14,757,883 in 1900 (392.7%), is directly attributable to the development of natural gas as fuel; the decrease in the value of the products of these same industries in 1900-1905 is partly due to the growing scarcity of the natural gas supply. As compared with the other states of the United States in value of manufactured products, Indiana ranked second in 1900 and in 1905 in carriages and wagons, glass and distilled liquors; was seventh in 1900 and fourth in 1905 in furniture; was fourth in 1900 and seventh in 1905 in wholesale slaughtering and meat-packing; was fifth in 1900 and sixth in 1905 in agricultural implements; and in iron and steel and flour and grist mill products was fifth in 1900 and eighth in 1905. The most important manufacturing centres are Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Evansville, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Anderson, Hammond, Richmond, Muncie, Michigan City and Elwood, each having a gross annual product of more than $6,000,000.

According to the annual report on Mineral Resources of the United States for 1906, Indiana ranked fifth in the Union in the value of natural gas produced, sixth in petroleum, and sixth in coal. Natural gas was discovered in 1886 in the east-central part of the state, and its general application to manufacturing purposes caused an industrial revolution in the immediate region. Pipe lines carried it to various manufacturing centres within the state and to Chicago, Ill., and Dayton, Ohio. During the early years an enormous amount was wasted; this was soon prohibited by law, and a realization that the supply was not unlimited resulted in a better appreciation of its great value. The gas, which is found in the Trenton limestone, had an initial pressure at the point of discovery of 325 ℔; this pressure had decreased in the field centre by January 1896 to 230 ℔, and by January 1901 to 115 ℔, the general average of pressure at the latter date being 80 ℔. The gas field extends over Hancock, Henry, Hamilton, Tipton, Madison, Grant and Delaware counties. The value of the output fell from $7,254,539 in 1900 to $1,750,715 in 1906, when the state’s product was only 4.2% of that of the entire country. On the 1st of January 1909 there were 3223 wells in operation, some of which were 1200 ft. deep. It has been found that “dead” gas wells, if drilled somewhat deeper, generally become active oil wells. The development of the petroleum field, which extends over Adams, Wells, Jay, Blackford and Grant counties, was rapid up to 1904. The annual output increased from 33,375 barrels in 1889 to 11,339,124 barrels in 1904, the latter amount being valued at $12,235,674 and being 12.09% of the value of the product of the entire country. In 1906 there was an output of only 7,673,477 barrels, valued at $6,770,066, being 7.3% of the product value of the entire country. The Indiana coal fields, which cover an area of between 7000 and 7500 sq. m. in the west and south-west, chiefly in Clay, Vigo, Sullivan, Vermilion and Greene counties, yielded in 1902 9,446,424 tons, valued at $10,399,660; in 1907, 13,985,713 tons, valued at $15,114,300; the production more than trebled since 1896, when it was 3,905,779 tons. The deposits consist of workable veins, 50 to 220 ft. in depth, and averaging 80 ft. below the surface. It is a high grade block, or “splint” coal, remarkably free from sulphur and rich in carbon, peculiarly adapted to blast furnace use. The quarries and clay beds of the state are of great value. The quarries of sandstone and limestone are chiefly in the south and south-central portions of the state. The value of the limestone quarried in 1908 was $3,643,261, as compared with $2,553,502 in 1902. The Bedford oolitic limestone quarries in Owen, Monroe, Lawrence, Washington and Crawford counties furnish one of the most valuable and widely used building stones in the United States, the value of the product in 1905 being $2,492,960, of which $2,393,475 was from Lawrence and Monroe counties and $1,550,076 from Lawrence county alone. Beds of brick-clays and potters’ clay are widely distributed throughout the state, the total value of pottery products in 1902 being $5,283,733 and in 1906 $7,158,234. Marls adapted to the manufacture of Portland cement are found along the Ohio river, and in the lake region in the north. In 1905 and 1906 Indiana ranked third among the states in the production of Portland cement, which in 1908 was 6,478,165 barrels, valued at $5,386,563—an enormous advance over 1903, when the product was 1,077,137 barrels, valued at $1,347,797. The production of natural rock cement, chiefly in Clark county, is one of the two oldest industries in the state, but in Indiana as elsewhere it is falling off—from an output in 1903 of about 1,350,000 barrels to 212,901 barrels (valued at $240,000) in 1908. There are many mineral springs in the state, and there are famous resorts at French Lick and West Baden in Orange county. A large part of the water bottled is medicinal: hence the high average price per gallon ($0.99 in 1907 when 514,366 gallons were sold, valued at $507,746, only 2% being table waters). In 1907 19 springs were reported at which mineral waters were bottled and sold; they were in Allen, Hendricks, Pike, Bartholomew, Warren, Clark, Martin, Brown, Gibson, Wayne, Orange, Vigo and Dearborn counties. A law of 1909 prohibited the pumping of certain mineral waters if such pumping diminished the flow or injured the quality of the water of any spring.

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Communications.—During the early period, the settlement of the northern and central portions of the state was greatly retarded by the lack of highways or navigable waterways. The Wabash and Erie canal (1843), which connected Lake Erie with the Ohio river, entering the state in Allen county, east of Fort Wayne, and following the Wabash river to Terre Haute and the western fork of the White river from Worthington, Greene county, to Petersburg, Pike county, whence it ran south-south-west to Evansville; and the White Water canal from Hagerstown, Wayne county, mostly along the course of the White Water river, to Lawrenceburg, on the Ohio river, in the south-eastern corner of the state, although now abandoned, served an important purpose in their day. The completion (about 1850) of the National Road, which traversed the state, still further aided the internal development. With the beginning of railway construction (about 1847), however, a new era was opened. Indiana is unusually well served with railways, which form a veritable network of track in every part of the state. It is traversed by nearly all the great transcontinental trunk line systems, and also by important north and south lines. The total railway mileage in January 1909 was 7286.20 m. There has been a great development also in interurban electric lines, which have been adapted both to passenger and to light freight and express traffic; in 1908 there were 31 interurban electric lines within the state with a mileage of 1500 m. Indianapolis is the centre of this interurban network. The first trolley sleeping cars were those used on the Ohio and Indiana interurban railways. The deepening of the channel of the Wabash river was begun in 1872. Below Vincennes before 1885 boats of 3-ft. draft could navigate the river, but after work was concentrated in 1885 on the lock at Grand Rapids, near Mt Carmel, Ill., the channel was soon clogged again, and in 1909 it was impossible for boats with a greater draft than 20 in. to go from Mt Carmel to Vincennes, although up to June 1909 about $810,000 had been spent by the Federal government on improving this river. In 1879 an appropriation was made for the improvement of the channel of the White river, but no work was done here between 1895 and 1909, and although the lower 13 m. of the river was navigable for boats with a draft of 3 ft. or less, there was practically no traffic up to 1909 on the White, because there was no outlet for it by the Wabash river.

Population.—The population of Indiana, according to the Federal Census of 1910, was 2,700,876, and the rank of the state in the Union as regards population was ninth. In 1810, the year following the erection of the western part of Indiana into Illinois Territory, the population was 24,520, in 1820 it had increased to 147,178, in 1850 to 988,416, in 1870 to 1,680,637, in 1890 to 2,192,404, and in 1900 to 2,516,462. In 1900 34.3% was urban, i.e. lived in places of 2500 inhabitants and over. The foreign-born population in the same year amounted to 142,121, or 5.6% of the whole, and the negro population to 57,505, or 2.3%. There were in 1900 five cities with a population of more than 35,000, viz. Indianapolis (169,164), Evansville (59,007), Fort Wayne (45,115), Terre Haute (36,673), and South Bend (35,999). In the same year there were 14 cities with a population of less than 35,000 (all less than 21,000) and more than 10,000; and there were 21 places with a population of less than 10,000 and more than 5000. In 1906 it was estimated that there were 938,405 members of different religious denominations; of this total 233,443 were Methodists (210,593 of the Northern Church), 174,849 were Roman Catholics, 108,188 were Disciples of Christ (and 10,259 members of the Churches of Christ), 92,705 were Baptists (60,203 of the Northern Convention, 13,526 of the National (Colored) Convention, 8132 Primitive Baptists, and 6671 General Baptists), 58,633 were Presbyterians (49,041 of the Northern Church, and 6376 of the Cumberland Church—since united with the Northern), 55,768 were Lutherans (34,028 of the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference, 8310 of the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and other states), 52,700 were United Brethren (48,059 of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ; the others of the “Old Constitution”) and 21,624 of the German Evangelical Synod.

Constitution.—Indiana is governed under a constitution adopted in 1851, which superseded the original state constitution of 1816. An amendment to the constitution may be proposed by either branch of the General Assembly; if a majority of both houses votes in favour of an amendment and it is favourably voted upon by the General Assembly chosen by the next general election, the amendment is submitted to popular vote and a majority vote is necessary for its ratification. The constitution of 1816 had conferred the suffrage upon all “white male citizens of the United States of the age of twenty-one and upward,” had prohibited slavery, and had provided that no alteration of the constitution should ever introduce it. The new constitution contained similar suffrage restrictions, and further by Article XIII., which was voted upon separately, prohibited the entrance of negroes or mulattoes into the state and made the encouragement of their immigration or employment an indictable offence. This prohibition was held by the United States Supreme Court in 1866 to be in conflict with the Federal Constitution and therefore null and void. It was not until 1881 that the restriction of the suffrage to “white” males, which was in conflict with the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) to the Federal Constitution, was removed by constitutional amendment. Since that date those who may vote have been all male citizens twenty-one years old and upward who have lived in Indiana six months immediately preceding the election, and every foreign-born male of the requisite age who has lived in the United States one year and in Indiana six months immediately preceding the election, and who has declared his intention of becoming a citizen of the United States; but the General Assembly has the power to deprive of the suffrage any person convicted of an infamous crime. The Australian ballot was adopted in 1889. The general state election (up to 1881, held in October) takes place on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years. The governor and lieutenant-governor (minimum age, 30 years) and the clerk of the Supreme Court are chosen in presidential years for a term of four years,[1] the other state officers—secretary of state, attorney-general, auditor, treasurer and superintendent of public instruction—every two years. The state legislature, known as the General Assembly, which meets biennially in odd-numbered years and in special session summoned by the governor, consists of a Senate of fifty members (minimum age, 25 years) elected for four years, and a House of Representatives of one hundred members (minimum age, 21 years) elected for two years. Two-thirds of each house constitute a quorum to do business. The governor has the veto power, but the provision that a bill may be passed over his veto by a majority of all elected members renders it little more than an expression of opinion.

Law.—The judiciary consists of a Supreme Court of five members elected for districts by the state at large for a term of six years, an appellate court (first constituted in 1891), and a system of circuit and minor criminal and county courts. The system of local government has undergone radical changes in recent years. A law of 1899, aimed to separate the legislative and executive functions, provided for the election of legislative bodies in every township and county. These bodies have control of the local expenditures and tax levies, and without their consent the local administrative officers cannot contract debts. In 1905 a new municipal code, probably the most elaborate and complete local government act in the United States, providing for a uniform system of government in all cities and towns, went into effect. It was constructed on the lines of the Indianapolis city charter, adopted in 1891, and repealed all individual charters and special corporation acts. Its controlling principle is the more complete separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers. For this purpose all cities are divided into five classes according to population, the powers being concentrated and simplified by degrees in the case of the smaller cities, and reaching a maximum of separation and completeness in class 1, i.e. cities of 100,000 and over, which includes only Indianapolis. In all classes the executive officer is a mayor elected for four years and ineligible to succeed himself. There are six administrative departments (the number is often less in cities of the lower classes, where several departments may be combined under one head)—departments of public works, public safety, public health and charities, law, finance, and collection and assessment. There is a city court with elected judge or judges, and an elected common council, which may authorize the municipal ownership of public utilities by ordinance, and can pass legislation over the mayor’s veto by a two-thirds vote. Communities under 2500 in population are regarded as towns, and have a separate form of government by a board of trustees.