Nor is Chicago lacking in facilities for transportation by water. Its situation gives it easy access to all the commercial activities of the great lake system; and it has direct water communication by way of the St. Lawrence River with Montreal, and by the Erie Canal and Hudson River with New York. In the year 1890 the arrivals and clearances at Chicago numbered 18,472, aggregating a tonnage of 8,774,154 tons. About 25 per cent. of the entire lake-carrying trade belongs to Chicago.
There is, moreover, connection with the Mississippi River by way of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the annual traffic amounting to about 1,000,000 tons.
In a city of such rapid growth as Chicago, dealing in real estate and the construction of buildings are important departments of business. Thus, in 1890 a total of 11,608 buildings were erected in the city, having a gross frontage of more than fifty miles, and costing $47,322,100. During the same year the transactions in real estate aggregated $227,486,959.
The general business of Chicago can only be stated by the use of figures too vast for human comprehension. No man, for example, can appreciate what “a billion dollars” means. Well, the commerce of Chicago in 1890 amounted to more than that, in fact, to $1,380,000,000. Much of this came from the grain farms of the Northwest, for Chicago is the greatest grain market in the world. According to its Board of Trade reports, the city in the year 1890 received 15,133,971 bushels of barley and shipped 9,470,221; received 81,117,251 bushels of corn and shipped 90,556,109; received 4,358,058 barrels of flour and shipped 4,410,535; received 13,366,699 bushels of wheat and shipped 11,975,276; received 64,430,560 bushels of oats and shipped 70,768,222; received 2,946,720 bushels of rye and shipped 3,280,433; received 6,244,847 bushels of flaxseed and shipped 6,594,581; received 72,102,031 pounds of grass seed and shipped 59,213,035; received 7,663,828 live hogs and shipped 1,985,700; received 77,985 pounds of pork and shipped 392,786; received 147,475,267 pounds of lard and shipped 471,910,128; received 300,198,241 pounds of cured meats and shipped 823,801,460; received 109,704,834 pounds of dressed beef and shipped 964,134,807.