“In the management of railroads, our people have excelled in the West. The children of two Irishmen, brothers, named Egan, born within about thirty miles of where I reside, have been important, if not chief factors in the management of many railroads. They have been connected with the Grand Trunk, the Illinois Central and other roads. I remember well, in 1894, when the great strike, almost an incipient insurrection, occurred in Chicago, that one of these Egans was selected by the officers and directors of all the railroads centering in that great city, to take entire control of their properties and manage them during the strike. This was quite a tribute to the son of a poor Irishman. Another, still comparatively young, might be mentioned. He was born in the town I live in. I remember him as a poor boy, a brakeman on a branch line running through our city. His name is Patrick Houlihan. A brochure has been written on his career and is entitled, I believe, ‘From Water Carrier to General Manager.’ He has on different lines, successively occupied the positions between that of water boy and superintendent, and is now general manager of the Toledo, St. Louis & Western and the Chicago & Alton Railroad Companies, with headquarters at Chicago. He is bright and brainy, with years of usefulness before him. He is a credit to our race. “In literature, we have fairly well held our own. I do not mean to say that we have written as many novels, good bad and indifferent, as others, but the Rileys, the Finnertys, the Sullivans, the Clearys and Dunns, and men and women of such names have left their impress upon our literature. Many of you no doubt have met and all must have with pleasure, read that Western product, the discoverer of Mr. Dooley and Archie Avenue road, that droll, inimitable writer of ‘dialect’ a philosopher in his way—Finley Peter Dunn, who like other good men, has recently gone wrong, in having against the advice of Greeley and all the sages of the republic, migrated backwards as it were until now Gotham claims him for her own. “And now a few words as to the tillers of the soil. “Many of those emigrants settled upon the lands of the West, though under disadvantageous circumstances. There are many townships in my county, and in adjoining counties, and indeed scattered all over the West, that have been settled almost exclusively by them. Those lands are now worth on an average $150 per acre. Measurably, this is true of the Middle West. It is literally true of Illinois.