me, has done much for the betterment of local
politics. The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, an organization of 1600
leading business men, is a power for varied good in the city; besides
its constant and aggressive work in promoting the commercial interests
of the city, it was largely influential in the federal reform of the
consular service; it studied the question of overcrowded tenements and
secured the passage of a new tenement law with important sanitary
provisions and a set minimum of air space; it urges and promotes
home-gardening, public baths and play-grounds, and lunch-rooms, &c., for
employes in factories; and it was largely instrumental in devising and
carrying out the so-called "Group Plan" described above.

_History._--A trading post was established at the mouth of the Cuyahoga
river as early as 1786, but the place was not permanently settled until
1796, when it was laid out as a town by Moses Cleaveland (1754-1806),
who was then acting as the agent of the Connecticut Land Company, which
in the year before had purchased from the state of Connecticut a large
portion of the Western Reserve. In 1800 the entire Western Reserve was
erected into the county of Trumbull and a township government was given
to Cleveland; ten years later Cleveland was made the seat of government
of the new county of Cuyahoga, and in 1814 it was incorporated as a
village. Cleveland's growth was, however, very slow until the opening of
the Ohio canal as far as Akron in 1827; about the same time the
improvement of the harbour was begun, and by 1832 the canal was opened
to the Ohio river. Cleveland thus was connected with the interior of the
state, for whose mineral and agricultural products it became the lake
outlet. The discovery of iron ore in the Lake Superior region made
Cleveland the natural meeting-point of the iron ore and the coal from
the Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia mines; and it is from this that
the city's great commercial importance dates. The building of railways
during the decade 1850-1860 greatly increased this importance, and the
city grew with great rapidity. The growth during the Civil War was
partly due to the rapid development of the manufacturing interests of
the city, which supplied large quantities of iron products and of
clothing to the Federal government. The population of 1076 in 1830
increased to 6071 in 1840, to 17,034 in 1850, to 43,417 in i860, to
92,829 in 1870 and to 160,146 in 1880. Until 1853 the