For the Voyant Lab, I chose the the Alton Encyclopedia 1880 document and the Alton Encyclopedia 1906 document. For my hypothesis, I believed that there would be an increase in population as well as more manufacturers built. In 1880 , the city was connected by railroad with Chicago, St. Louis and Terre Haute. It had 6 or 8 churches, 9 public schools, 4 printing offices and several mills and foundaries. The population in 1857 was 12,000. In 1906, Alton was an important commercial and manufacturing point on the Mississippi River. The city had extensive glass works employing 4,000 hands in 1903. The population in Alton in 1890 went down to 10,294 but went up in 1900 to 14,210.