PART II.
Pg. 225

HISTORY OF UNION COUNTY
By H. C. Bradsby
__________

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION - GEOLOGY - IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATING THE PEOPLE ON THIS SUBJECT - THE LIMESTONE DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS - ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY OF UNION, ALEXANDER AND PULASKI COUNTIES - MEDICAL SPRINGS, BUILDING MATERIAL, SOIL, ETC. - WONDERFUL WEALTH OF NATURE'S BOUNTIES - TOPOGRAPHY AND CLIMATE OF THIS REGION, ETC.

History is philosophy teaching by example.

     THIS and the two succeeding chapters include the district composed of Union, Alexander and Pulaski Counties.  The whole was once Union County, and the first three chapters bring the history down to the formation of Alexander County.
     For school purposes - for the purpose of giving the people a most important education in the practical life interests - there is no question of such deep interest as the geological history of that particular portion of the country in which they make their homes.  The people of Southern Illinois are an agricultural one in their pursuits.  Their first care is the soil and climate, and it is here they may find an almost inexhaustible fund of knowledge, that will ever put money in their purses.  All mankind are deeply interested in the soil.  From here comes all life, all beauty, pleasure, wealth and enjoyment.  Of itself, it may not be a beautiful thing, but from it comes the fragrant flower, the golden fields, the sweet blush of the maiden's cheek, the flash of the lustrous eye that is more powerful to subdue the heart of obdurate man than an army with banners.  From here comes the great and rich cities whose towers and temples and minarets kiss the early morning sun, and whose ships, with their precious cargoes, fleck every sea.  In short, it is the nourishing mother whence comes our high civilization - the wealth of nations, the joys and exalted pleasures of life.  Hence, the corner-stone upon which all of life rests is the farmer, who tickles the earth and it laughs with the rich harvests that an bountifully bless mankind.  Who, then, should be so versed in the knowledge of the soil as the farmer?  What other information can be so valuable to him as the mastery of the science of the geology, at least that much of it as applies to that part of the earth where he has cast his fortunes and cultivates

Page 226 -
the soil.  We talk of educating the farmer, and ordinarily this means to send your boys to college, to acquire what is termed a classical education, and they come, perhaps, as graduates, as incapable of telling the geological story of the father's farm as is the veriest bumpkin who can neither read nor write.  How much more of practical value it would have been to the young man had he never looked into the classics, a instead thereof had taken a few practical lessons in the local geology that would have told him the story of the soil around him, and enabled him to comprehend how it was formed, its different qualities and from whence it came, and its constituent elements.  The farmer grows to be an old man, and he will tell you that he has learned to be a good farmer only by a long life of laborious experiments, and if you should tell him that these experiments had made him a scientific farmer, he would look with a good deal of contempt upon your supposed effort of poke redicule at him.  He has taught himself to regrd the word "science" as the property only of book-worms and cranks.  He does not realize that every step in farming is a purely scientific operation, because science is made by experiments and investigations.  An old farmer may examine a soil, and tell you it is adapted to wheat or corn, that it is warm or cold and heavy, or a few other facts that his long experiments have taught him, and to that extent he is a scientific farmer.  He will tell you that his knowledge has cost him much labor, and many sore disappointments.  Suppose that in his youth a well-digested chapter on the geological history, that would have told him, in the simplest terms, all about the land he was to cultivate how invaluable the lesson would have been, and how much in money value it would have proved to him.  In other words, if you could give your boys
 

Page 227 -

Page 228 -

Page 229 -

Page 230 -

Page 231 -

Page 232 -

Page 233 -

Page 234 -

Page 235 -

Page 236 -

Page 237 -

Page 238 -

Page 239 -

Page 240 -

Page 241 -

Page 242 -

Page 243 -

Page 244 -