CARTHAGE  , a

city and the county-seat of Jasper county, Missouri, U.S.A., on the Spring river, about 950 ft. above sea-level, and about 150 M . S. by E. of Kansas City . Pop . (189o) 7981; (1900) 9416, of whom 539 were negroes; (1910 census) 9483 . It is served by the St Louis & San Francisco, the Missouri Pacific, and the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railways, and is connected with Webb City and Joplin, Mo., and Galena, Kan., by the electric line of the Southwest Missouri railway . The town is built on high ground underlain by solid limestone, and has much natural and architectural beauty . It is the seat of the Carthage Collegiate Institute (Presbyterian) . A Chautauqua assembly and a county fair are held annually . In the vicinity there are valuable lead, zinc and coal mines, and quarries of Carthage "marble," with which the county court house is built . Carthage is a jobbing centre for a fruit and grain producing region; live-stock (especially harness horses) is raised in the vicinity; and among the city's manufactures are lime, flour, canned fruits, furniture, bed springs and mattresses, mining and quarrying machinery, ploughs and woollen goods . In 1905 the factory products were valued at $1,179,661 . Natural gas for domestic use and for factories is piped from the Kansas gas fields .

The

municipality owns and operates the electric-lighting plant . Carthage, founded in 1833, was laid out as a town and became the county-seat in 1842, was incorporated as a town in 1868, was chartered as a city in 1873, and in 1890 became a city of the third class under the general (state) law . On the 5th of July 1861 about 3500 Confederates under General James E . Rains and M . M . Parsons, accompanied by Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson (1807-1862), and 1500 Union troops under Colonel Franz Sigel, were engaged about 7 M. north of the city in an indecisive skirmish which has been named the battle of Carthage .