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. [Illustration] [Illustration] ST. LOUIS "THE FUTURE GREAT" BY WILLIAM MARION REEDY