LINCOLN  , a

city of S.E . Nebraska, U.S.A., county-seat of Lancaster county and capital of the state . Pop . (1900) 40,169 (5297 being foreign-born); (1910 census) 43,973 . It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Missouri Pacific and the Chicago & North-Western railways . Lincoln is one of the most attractive residential cities of the Middle West . Salt Creek, an affluent of the Platte river, skirts the city . On this side the city has repeatedly suffered from floods . The principal buildings include a state capitol (built 1883-1889); a city-hall, formerly the U.S. government building (1874-1879); a county court-house; a federal building (1904-1906); a Carnegie library (1902); a hospital for crippled children (1905) and a home for the friendless, both supoorted by the state; a state penitentiary and asylum for the insane, both in the suburbs; and the university of Nebraska . In the suburbs there are three denominational schools, the Nebraska Wesleyan University (Methodist Episcopal, 1888) at University Place; Union College (Seventh Day Adventists, 1891) at College View; and Cotner University (Disciples of Christ, 1889, incorporated as the Nebraska Christian University) at Bethany . Just outside the city limits are the state fair grounds, where a state fair is held annually . Lincoln is the see of a Roman Catholic bishopric .

The surrounding

country is a beautiful farming region, but its immediate W. environs are predominantly bare and desolate salt-basins . Lincoln's " factory " product increased from $2,763,484 in 1900 to $5;222,620 in 1905, or 89%, the product for 19o5 being 3.4% of the total for ,the state . The municipality owns and operates its electric-lighting plant and water-works . The salt-springs attracted the first permanent settlers to the site of Lincoln in 1856, and settlers and freighters came long distances to reduce the brine or to scrape up the dry-weather surface deposits . In 3886-1887 the state sank a test-well 2463 ft. deep, which discredited any hope of a great underground flow or deposit . Scarcely any use is made of the salt waters locally . Lancaster county was organized extra-legally in 1859, and under legislative act in 1864; Lancaster village was platted and became the county-seat in 1864 (never being incorporated); and in 1867, when it contained five or six houses, its site was selected for the state capital after a hard-fought struggle between different sections of the state (see NEBRASKA).' The new city was incorporated as Lincoln (and formally declared the county-seat by the legislature) in 1869, and was chartered for the first time as a city of the second class in 1871; since then its charter has been repeatedly altered . After 1887 it was a city of the first class, and after 1889 the only member of the highest subdivision in that class . After a " reform " political campaign, the ousting in 1887 of a corrupt police judge by the mayor and city council, in defiance of an injunction of a federal court, led to a decision of the U.S . Supreme Court, favourable to the city authorities and important in questions of American municipal government .