Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1873 [PAGE 213]

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209 a large majority of the farms of from 3 to 20 acres—Union county leading, and Vermilion over eastward coming next. Of large farms we find, curious to say, that extremes meet, and Vermilion, on^of the counties leading in small farms, has*23 farms of over 1,000 acres each ; McLean has 21 and Morgan 17. Of farms exceeding 500 acres, McLean has 89, * Sangamon 88, and Vermilion 67. So that we have no lack of large farms. The largest farm in the State is undoubtedly that of M. L. Sullivant, of Ford county, who is said to have about 40,000 acres in a body. This gentleman, probably feeling somewhat cramped by the twenty odd thousand acres of his Champaign county farm, sold it and occupied this. The Champaign county farm has since been cut up and diminished in size. Jacob Strawn, of Morgan county, formery owned one of the great farms of the State, about the size of a township, I believe; and Mr. Gillett, of Logan, has a ten thousand acre farm at Elk Hart Grove, Logan county. Praise a large farm, cultivate a small one is the Horation motto, and undoubtedly large farms are a great check to the growth of a community in intelligence and wealth. So much for our Illinois farms. The farms of Illinois are surpassed in their aggregate value by those of Ohio, ^ew York and Pennsylvania in that orxler. Whilst their value per acre somewhat exceeds those of Indiana, is considerably more than those of Wisconsin and Iowa, and is far ahead of those of Missouri, they are considerably below those of the eastern and older States of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. Of farm implements and machinery Illinois has the value of $34,570,587, or fourteen dollars' worth for every man, woman and child in the State, or about $170 to a farm. The implements are 3.7 per cent, of the farm valuation. Compared with other States, we find it does a much larger portion of its farm work by machinery than the New England or Southern States, not quite so much as New York, rather more than Pennsylvania and Ohio, and decidedly less than the more prairied Iowa. The great prairies of the northwest are singularly favorable to the use of farm machinery. Comparing county with county, the cash value of farms was greatest in Sangamon county with $25,388,118 valuation. This is closely followed by LaSalle and McLean. The cash value of farms shows the lowest aggregate in the somewhat marshy county of Alexander, $546,250; Massac and Pulaski, adjoining counties, comprising the peninsula lying between the Ohio and Mississippi. Comparing the value per acre, we get about the same relative value per acre as is shown by the reports of the Board of Equalization. Counties near the large cities show the highest value per acre, Cook, St. Clair and Madison standing first. At the other extremity of the list —27