GROWTH OF THE NORTHWEST
%520. Results of the War.%--The Civil War was fought by the North for
the preservation of the Union and by the South for the destruction of
the Union. But we who, after more than thirty years, look back on the
results of that struggle, can see that they did not stop with the
preservation of the Union. Both in the North and in the South the war
produced a great industrial revolution.
%521. Effect on the South.%--In the South, in the first place, it
changed the system of labor from slave to free. While the South was a
slave-owning country free labor would not come in. Without free labor
there could be no mills, no factories, no mechanical industries. The
South raised cotton, tobacco, sugar, and left her great resources
undeveloped. After slavery was abolished, the South was on the same
footing as the North, and her splendid resources began at once to be
developed.
It was found that her rich deposits of iron ore were second to none in
the world. It was found that beneath her soil lay an unbroken coal
field, 39,000 square miles in extent. It was found that cotton, instead
of being raised in less quantity under a system of free labor, was more
widely cultivated than ever. In 1860, 4,670,000 bales were grown; but in
1894 the number produced was 9,500,000. The result has been the rise of
a New South, and the growth of such manufacturing centers as Birmingham
in Alabama and Chattanooga in Tennessee, and of that center of commerce,
Atlanta, in Georgia.
%522. Rise of New Industries in the North.%--Much the same industrial
revolution has taken place in the North. The list of industries well
known to us, but unknown in 1860, is a long one. The production of
petroleum for commercial purposes began in 1859, when Mr. Drake drilled
his well near Titusville, in Pennsylvania. In 1860 the daily yield of
all the wells in existence was not 200 barrels. But by 1891 this
industry had so developed that 54,300,000 barrels were produced in that
year, or 14,900 a day.
[Illustration: Scene in the oil regions of Pennsylvania]
The last thirty years have seen the rise of cheese making as a
distinctive factory industry; of the manufacture of oleo-margarine, wire
nails, Bessemer steel, cotton-seed oil, coke, canned goods; of the
immense mills of Minneapolis, where 10,000,000 barrels of flour are made
annually, and of the meat dressing and packing business for which
Chicago and Kansas City are famous.
%523. The New Northwest.%--When the census was taken in 1860, so few
people were living in what are now Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho that
they were not counted. In Dakota there were less than 5000 inhabitants.
The discovery of gold and silver did for these territories what it had
done for Colorado. It brought into them so many miners that in 1870 the
population of these four territories amounted to 59,000. Between Lake
Superior (where in the midst of a vast wilderness Duluth had just been
laid out on the lake shore) and the mining camps in the mountains of
Montana, there was not a town nor a hamlet. (There were indeed a few
forts and Indian agencies and a few trading posts.) Northern Minnesota
was a forest, into which even the lumbermen had not gone. The region
from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains was the hunting ground of the
Sioux, and was roamed over by enormous herds of buffalo.
%524. The Northern Pacific Railroad.%--But this great wilderness was
soon to be crossed by one of the civilizers of the age. After years of
vain effort, the promoters of the Northern Pacific began the building of
their road in 1870, and pushed it across the plains till Duluth and St.
Paul were joined with Puget Sound. As it went further and further
westward, emigrants followed it, towns sprang up, and cities grew with
astonishing rapidity.
%525. The New States.%--Idaho, which had no white inhabitants in
1860, had 32,000 in 1880; Montana had 39,000 in 1880, as against none in
1860. Kansas in twenty years increased her population four fold, and
Nebraska eight fold. This was extraordinary; but it was surpassed by
Dakota, whose population increased nearly ten fold in ten years
(1870-1880), and in 1889 was half a million. The time had now come to
form a state government. But as most of the people lived in the south
end of the territory, it was cut in two, and North and South Dakota were
admitted into the Union as states on the same day (November 2, 1889);
Montana followed within a fortnight, and Idaho and Wyoming within a year
(July, 1890). The four territories, in which in 1860 there were but 5000
white settlers, had thus by 1890 become the five states of North and
South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, with a population of
790,000.[1]
[Footnote 1: Colorado was admitted to the Union in 1876, Washington in
1889 (November 11); and Utah, the forty-fifth state, in 1896, under a
constitution forever prohibiting polygamy.]
%526. Wheat Farms and Cattle Ranches.%--Such a rush of people
completely transformed the country. The "Great American Desert" was made
productive. The buffaloes were almost exterminated, and one now is as
great a curiosity in the West as in the East. More than 7,000,000 were
slaughtered in 1871-1872. In lieu of them countless herds of cattle and
sheep, and fields of wheat and corn, cover the plains and hills of the
Northwest. In 1896 Montana contained 3,000,000 sheep, and Wyoming and
Idaho each over 1,000,000. In the two Dakotas 60,000,000 bushels of
wheat and 30,000,000 of corn were harvested. Many of the farms are of
enormous size. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand acre farms are not unknown.
One contains 75,000 acres.
[Illustration: A typical prairie sod house]
Over this region, the Dakotas, Montana, Kansas, and Nebraska, wander
herds of cattle, the slaughtering and packing of which have founded new
branches of industry. The stockyards at Chicago make a city.[1]
[Footnote 1: Read "Dakota Wheat-Fields," _Harper's Magazine,_ March,
1880. Also a series of papers in _Harper's Magazine _for 1888.]
%527. Oklahoma.%--The eagerness of the "cattle kings" to get more
land for these herds to graze over had much to do with the opening of
Oklahoma for settlement. Originally it was part of Indian Territory, and
was sold by the Seminole Indians with the express condition that none
but Indians and freedmen should settle there. But the cattle kings, in
defiance of the government, went in and inclosed immense tracts. Many
were driven out, only to come in again. Their expulsion, with that of
small proprietors called "boomers," caused much agitation. Congress
bought a release from the condition, and in 1889 opened Oklahoma to
settlement.
%528. The Boom Towns.%--A proclamation that a part of Oklahoma would
be opened April 22, caused a wild rush from every part of the West, till
five times as many settlers as could possibly obtain land were lined up
on the borders waiting for the signal to cross. Precisely at noon on
April 22, a bugle sounded, a wild yell answered, a cloud of dust filled
the air, and an army of men on foot, on horseback, in wagons, rushed
into the promised land. That morning Guthrie was a piece of prairie
land. That night it was a city of 10,000 souls. Before the end of the
year 60,000 people were in Oklahoma, building towns and cities of no
mean character.
Within fifteen years Oklahoma had a population of over half a million;
and Congress provided (1906) for the admission, in 1907, of a new
forty-sixth state, including both Oklahoma and what was left of the old
Indian Territory.
SUMMARY
1. One important result of the Civil War was a great industrial
revolution.
2. Mining for precious metals, the Northern Pacific Railroad, and other
causes led to the admission into the Union of Colorado (1876), North and
South Dakota, Montana, Washington (1889), Idaho, Wyoming (1890), Utah
(1896), and Oklahoma (1907).