The New International Encyclopædia/Dallas (Texas)

DALLAS. A city and the county-seat of Dallas County, Tex., 33 miles east of Fort Worth, on Trinity River, and on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fé, the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, the Texas and Pacific, the Houston and Texas Central, and the Texas and New Orleans railroads (Map: Texas, F 3). It is in the great grain belt of the State, and has large manufacturing and commercial interests. The industrial establishments include many factories of cotton-gin machinery, saddlery and harness, cotton and woolen mills, grain-elevators, flour-mills, meat-packing plant, lumber and planing mills, cotton-compresses, cottonseed-oil mills, nurseries, etc. Dallas is one of the largest distributing centres of farming implements and machinery in the United States. The city contains the Roman Catholic Pro-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of Saint Matthew, Saint Paul's Sanitarium, with accommodations for 200 patients, a city hospital, Carnegie Public Library, a court-house, erected at a cost of $300,000, a Confederate monument, and numerous public and private educational institutions. Dallas has a number of public parks, City Park and Oak Cliff being of notable beauty. The State Fair and Dallas Exposition is an annual event of more than State-wide reputation. The city is governed by a mayor, elected every two years, and a city council, in which rest the appointments of auditor, city engineer, city secretary, secretary of water-works, and city electrician; all other important offices are filled by popular election. The city's annual income amounts to about $750,000; expenditures to $575,000, the main items being about $40,000 each for the departments of police, fire, and water-works, and about $90,000 for schools. Population, in 1890, 38,067; in 1900, 42,638.