to the State, the profound belief of every citizen that his State is the
best. Engendered perhaps at first by a permanent investment and the spur
of self-interest, it speedily becomes a passion, as strong in the newest
State as it is in any one of the original thirteen. Rivalry between
cities is sharp, and civic pride is excessive, but both are outdone by
the larger devotion to the commonwealth. And this pride is developed in
the inhabitants of a Territory as soon as it is organized. Montana has
condensed the ordinary achievements of a century into twenty years, and
loyalty to its present and expectation of its future are as strong in
its citizens as is the attachment of men of Massachusetts to the State
of nearly three centuries of growth. In Nebraska I was pleased with the
talk of a clergyman who had just returned from three months’ travel in
Europe. He was full of his novel experiences; he had greatly enjoyed
the trip; but he was glad to get back to Nebraska and its full, vigorous
life. In England and on the Continent he had seen much to interest him;
but he could not help comparing Europe with Nebraska; and as for
him, this was the substance of it: give him Nebraska every time. What
astonished him most, and wounded his feelings (and there was a note of
pathos in his statement of it), was the general foreign ignorance abroad
about Nebraska—the utter failure in the European mind to take it in.
I felt guilty, for to me it had been little more than a geographical
expression, and I presume the Continent did not know whether Nebraska
was a new kind of patent medicine or a new sort of religion. To
the clergymen this ignorance of the central, richest,
about-to-be-the-most-important of States, was simply incredible.
This feeling is not only admirable in itself, but it has an incalculable
political value, especially in the West, where there is a little haze as
to the limitations of Federal power, and a notion that the Constitution
was swaddling-clothes for an infant, which manly limbs may need to
kick off. Healthy and even assertive State pride is the only possible
counterbalance in our system against that centralization which tends to
corruption in the centre and weakness and discontent in the individual
members.
It should be added that the West, speaking of it generally, is defiantly
“American.” It wants a more vigorous and assertive foreign policy.
Conscious of its power, the growing pains in the limbs of the young
giant will not let it rest. That this is the most magnificent country,
that we have the only government beyond criticism, that our civilization
is far and away the best, does not admit of doubt. It is refreshing to
see men who believe in something heartily and with-out reserve, even if
it is only in themselves. There is a tonic in this challenge of all
time and history. A certain attitude of American assertion towards other
powers is desired. For want of this our late representatives to Great
Britain are said to be un-American; “political dudes” is what the
Governor of Iowa calls them. It is his indictment against the present
Minister to St. James that “he is numerous in his visits to the castles
of English noblemen, and profuse in his obsequiousness to British
aristocrats.” And perhaps the Governor speaks for a majority of Western
voters and fighters when he says that “timidity has characterized our
State Department for the last twenty years.”
By chance I begin these Western studies with the North-west. Passing by
for the present the intelligent and progressive State of Wisconsin,
we will consider Minnesota and the vast region at present more or less
tributary to it. It is necessary to remember that the State was admitted
to the Union in 1858, and that its extraordinary industrial development
dates from the building of the first railway in its limits—ten miles
from St. Paul to St. Anthony—in 1862. For this road the first stake was
driven and the first shovelful of earth lifted by a citizen of St. Paul
who has lived to see his State gridironed with railways, and whose firm
constructed in 1887 over eleven hundred miles of railroad.
It is unnecessary to dwell upon the familiar facts that Minnesota is a
great wheat State, and that it is intersected by railways that stimulate
the enormous yield and market it with facility. The discovery that
the State, especially the Red River Valley, and Dakota and the country
beyond, were peculiarly adapted to the production of hard spring-wheat,
which is the most desirable for flour, probably gave this vast region
its first immense advantage. Minnesota, a prairie country, rolling, but
with no important hills, well watered, well grassed, with a repellent
reputation for severe winters, not well adapted to corn, nor friendly
to most fruits, attracted nevertheless hardy and adventurous people,
and proved specially inviting to the Scandinavians, who are tough and
industrious. It would grow wheat without end. And wheat is the easiest
crop to raise, and returns the greatest income for the least labor. In
good seasons and with good prices it is a mine of wealth. But Minnesota
had to learn that one industry does not suffice to make a State, and
that wheat-raising alone is not only unreliable, but exhaustive. The
grasshopper scourge was no doubt a blessing in disguise. It helped to
turn the attention of farmers to cattle and sheep, and to more varied
agriculture. I shall have more to say about this in connection with
certain most interesting movements in Wisconsin.
The notion has prevailed that the North-west was being absorbed by
owners of immense tracts of land, great capitalists who by the aid of
machinery were monopolizing the production of wheat, and crowding out
small farmers. There are still vast wheat farms under one control, but
I am happy to believe that the danger of this great land monopoly has
reached its height, and the tendency is the other way. Small farms are
on the increase, practising a more varied agriculture. The reason is
this: A plantation of 5000 or 15,000 acres, with a good season, freedom
from blight and insects, will enrich the owner if prices are good; but
one poor crop, with low prices, will bankrupt him. Whereas the small
farmer can get a living under the most adverse circumstances, and taking
one year with another, accumulate something, especially if he varies
his products and feeds them to stock, thus returning the richness of his
farm to itself. The skinning of the land by sending away its substance
in hard wheat is an improvidence of natural resources, which belongs,
like cattle-ranging, to a half-civilized era, and like cattle-ranging
has probably seen its best days. One incident illustrates what can be
done. Mr. James J. Hill, the president of the Manitoba railway system,
an importer and breeder of fine cattle on his Minnesota country place,
recently gave and loaned a number of blooded bulls to farmers over a
wide area in Minnesota and Dakota. The result of this benefaction
has been surprising in adding to the wealth of those regions and the
prosperity of the farmers. It is the beginning of a varied farming
and of cattle production, which will be of incalculable benefit to the
North-west.
It is in the memory of men still in active life when the Territory of
Minnesota was supposed to be beyond the pale of desirable settlement.
The State, except in the north-east portion, is now well settled, and
well sprinkled with thriving villages and cities. Of the latter, St.
Paul and Minneapolis are still a wonder to themselves, as they are to
the world. I knew that they were big cities, having each a population
nearly approaching 175,000, but I was not prepared to find them so
handsome and substantial, and exhibiting such vigor and activity of
movement. One of the most impressive things to an Eastern man in both
of them is their public spirit, and the harmony with which business men
work together for anything which will build up and beautify the city.
I believe that the ruling force in Minneapolis is of New England stock,
while St. Paul has a larger proportion of New York people, with a
mixture of Southern; and I have a fancy that there is a social shading
that shows this distinction. It is worth noting, however, that the
Southerner, transplanted to Minnesota or Montana, loses the laisser
faire with which he is credited at home, and becomes as active
and pushing as anybody. Both cities have a very large Scandinavian
population. The laborers and the domestic servants are mostly Swedes. In
forecasting what sort of a State Minnesota is to be, the Scandinavian
is a largely determining force. It is a virile element. The traveller is
impressed with the idea that the women whom he sees at the stations in
the country and in the city streets are sturdy, ruddy, and better able
to endure the protracted season of cold and the highly stimulating
atmosphere than the American-born women, who tend to become nervous in
these climatic conditions. The Swedes are thrifty, taking eagerly
to polities, and as ready to profit by them as anybody; unreservedly
American in intention, and on the whole, good citizens.
The physical difference of the two cities is mainly one of situation.
Minneapolis spreads out on both sides of the Mississippi over a plain,
from the gigantic flouring-mills and the canal and the Falls of St.
Anthony as a centre (the falls being, by-the-way, planked over with a
wooden apron to prevent the total wearing away of the shaly rock) to
rolling land and beautiful building sites on moderate elevations. Nature
has surrounded the city with a lovely country, diversified by lakes and
forests, and enterprise has developed it into one of the most inviting
of summer regions. Twelve miles west of it, Lake Minnetonka, naturally
surpassingly lovely, has become, by an immense expenditure of money,
perhaps the most attractive summer resort in the North-west. Each city
has a hotel (the West in Minneapolis, the Ryan in St. Paul) which would
be distinguished monuments of cost and elegance in any city in the
world, and each city has blocks of business houses, shops, and offices
of solidity and architectural beauty, and each has many private
residences which are palaces in size, in solidity, and interior
embellishment, but they are scattered over the city in Minneapolis,
which can boast of no single street equal to Summit avenue in St. Paul.
The most conspicuous of the private houses is the stone mansion of
Governor Washburn, pleasing in color, harmonious in design, but so
gigantic that the visitor (who may have seen palaces abroad) expects
to find a somewhat vacant interior. He is therefore surprised that the
predominating note is homelikeness and comfort, and he does not see
how a family of moderate size could well get along with less than the
seventy rooms (most of them large) which they have at their disposal.
St. Paul has the advantage of picturesqueness of situation. The business
part of the town lies on a spacious uneven elevation above the river,
surrounded by a semicircle of bluffs averaging something like two
hundred feet high. Up the sides of these the city climbs, beautifying
every vantage-ground with handsome and stately residences. On the north
the bluffs maintain their elevation in a splendid plateau, and over this
dry and healthful plain the two cities advance to meet each other, and
already meet in suburbs, colleges, and various public buildings. Summit
avenue curves along the line of the northern bluff, and then turns
northward, two hundred feet broad, graded a distance of over two miles,
and with a magnificent asphalt road-way for more than a mile. It is
almost literally a street of palaces, for although wooden structures
alternate with the varied and architecturally interesting mansions of
stone and brick on both sides, each house is isolated, with a handsome
lawn and ornamental trees, and the total effect is spacious and noble.
This avenue commands an almost unequalled view of the sweep of bluffs
round to the Indian Mounds, of the city, the winding river, and the town
and heights of West St. Paul. It is not easy to recall a street and view
anywhere finer than this, and this is only one of the streets on this
plateau conspicuous for handsome houses. I see no reason why St. Paul
should not become, within a few years, one of the notably most beautiful
cities in the world. And it is now wonderfully well advanced in that
direction. Of course the reader understands that both these rapidly
growing cities are in the process of “making,” and that means cutting
and digging and slashing, torn-up streets, shabby structures alternating
with gigantic and solid buildings, and the usual unsightliness of
transition and growth.
Minneapolis has the State University, St. Paul the Capitol, an ordinary
building of brick, which will not long, it is safe to say, suit the
needs of the pride of the State. I do not set out to describe the city,
the churches, big newspaper buildings, great wholesale and ware houses,
handsome club-house (the Minnesota Club), stately City Hall, banks,
Chamber of Commerce, and so on. I was impressed with the size of the
buildings needed to house the great railway offices. Nothing can give
one a livelier idea of the growth and grasp of Western business than
one of these plain structures, five or six stories high, devoted to the
several departments of one road or system of roads, crowded with
busy officials and clerks, offices of the president, vice-president,
assistant of the president, secretary, treasurer, engineer, general
manager, general superintendent, general freight, general traffic,
general passenger, perhaps a land officer, and so on—affairs as
complicated and vast in organization and extensive in detail as those of
a State government.
There are sixteen railways which run in Minnesota, having a total
mileage of 5024 miles in the State. Those which have over two hundred
miles of road in the State are the Chicago and North-western, Chicago,
Milwaukee, and St. Paul, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha,
Minneapolis and St. Louis, Northern Pacific, St. Paul and Duluth, and
the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba. The names of these roads give
little indication of their location, as the reader knows, for many of
them run all over the North-west like spider-webs.
It goes without saying that the management of these great
interests—imperial, almost continental in scope—requires brains,
sobriety, integrity; and one is not surprised to find that the railways
command and pay liberally for the highest talent and skill. It is not
merely a matter of laying rails and running trains, but of developing
the resources—one might almost say creating the industries—of vast
territories. These are gigantic interests, concerning which there is
such sharp rivalry and competition, and as a rule it is the generous,
large-minded policy that wins. Somebody has said that the railway
managers and magnates (I do not mean those who deal in railways for
the sake of gambling) are the élite of Western life. I am not drawing
distinctions of this sort, but I will say, and it might as well be said
here and simply, that next to the impression I got of the powerful
hand of the railways in the making of the West, was that of the high
character, the moral stamina, the ability, the devotion to something
outside themselves, of the railway men I met in the North-west.
Specialists many of them are, and absorbed in special work, but I doubt
if any other profession or occupation can show a proportionally larger
number of broad-minded, fair-minded men, of higher integrity and less
pettiness, or more inclined to the liberalizing culture in art and
social life. Either dealing with large concerns has lifted up the
men, or the large opportunities have attracted men of high talent and
character; and I sincerely believe that we should have no occasion
for anxiety if the average community did not go below the standard of
railway morality and honorable dealing.
What is the raison d’etre of these two phenomenal, cities? why do they
grow? why are they likely to continue to grow? I confess that this
was an enigma to me until I had looked beyond to see what country was
tributary to them, what a territory they have to supply. Of course, the
railways, the flouring-mills, the vast wholesale dry goods and grocery
houses speak for themselves. But I had thought of these cities as on
the confines of civilization. They are, however, the two posts of the
gate-way to an empire. In order to comprehend their future, I made some
little trips north-east and north-west.
Duluth, though as yet with only about twenty-five to thirty thousand
inhabitants, feels itself, by its position, a rival of the cities on the
Mississippi. A few figures show the basis of this feeling. In 1880 the
population was 3740; in 1886, 25,000. In 1880 the receipts of wheat were
1,347,679 bushels; in 1886, 22,425,730 bushels; in 1860 the shipments
of wheat 1,453,647 bushels; in 1886,17,981,965 bushels. In 1880 the
shipments of flour were 551,800 bushels; in 1886, 1,500,000 bushels. In
1886 there were grain elevators with a capacity of 18,000,000 bushels.
The tax valuation had increased from 8669,012 in 1880 to 811,773,729
in 1886. The following comparisons are made: The receipt of wheat in
Chicago in 1885 was 19,266,000 bushels; in Duluth, 14,880,000 bushels.
The receipt of wheat in 1886 was at Duluth 22,425,730 bushels;
at Minneapolis, 33,394,450; at Chicago, 15,982,524; at Milwaukee,
7,930,102. This shows that an increasing amount of the great volume of
wheat raised in north Dakota and north-west Minnesota (that is, largely
in the Red River Valley) is seeking market by way of Duluth and water
transportation. In 1869 Minnesota raised about 18,000,000 bushels of
wheat; in 1886, about 50,000,000. In 1869 Dakota grew no grain at all;
in 1886 it produced about 50,000,000 bushels of wheat. To understand the
amount of transportation the reader has only to look on the map and
see the railway lines—the Northern Pacific, the Chicago, St. Paul,
Minneapolis, and Omaha, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, and
other lines, running to Duluth, and sending out spurs, like the roots of
an elm-tree, into the wheat lands of the North-west.
Most of the route from St. Paul to Duluth is uninteresting; there is
nothing picturesque except the Dalles of the St. Louis River, and a good
deal of the country passed through seems agriculturally of no value. The
approaches to Duluth, both from the Wisconsin and the Minnesota side,
are rough and vexatious by reason of broken, low, hummocky, and swamp
land. Duluth itself, with good harbor facilities, has only a strip of
level ground for a street, and inadequate room for railway tracks and
transfers. The town itself climbs up the hill, whence there is a good
view of the lake and the Wisconsin shore, and a fair chance for both
summer and winter breezes. The residence portion of the town, mainly
small wooden houses, has many highly ornamental dwellings, and the long
street below, following the shore, has many noble buildings of stone
and brick, which would be a credit to any city. Grading and sewer-making
render a large number of the streets impassable, and add to the signs of
push, growth, and business excitement.
For the purposes of trade, Duluth, and the towns of Superior and West
Superior, in Wisconsin, may be considered one port; and while Duluth may
continue to be the money and business centre, the expansion for railway
terminal facilities, elevators, and manufactures is likely to be in the
Wisconsin towns on the south side of the harbor. From the Great Northern
Elevator in West Superior the view of the other elevators, of the
immense dock room, of the harbor and lake, of a net-work of miles and
miles of terminal tracks of the various roads, gives one an idea
of gigantic commerce; and the long freight trains laden with wheat,
glutting all the roads and sidings approaching Duluth, speak of the
bursting abundance of the tributary country. This Great Northern
Elevator, belonging to the Manitoba system, is the largest In the world;
its dimensions are 360 feet long, 95 in width, 115 in height, with
a capacity of 1,800,000 bushels, and with facilities for handling 40
car-loads an hour, or 400 cars in a day of 10 hours. As I am merely
illustrating the amount of the present great staple of the North-west,
I say nothing here of the mineral, stone, and lumber business of this
region. Duluth has a cool, salubrious summer and a snug winter climate.
I ought to add that the enterprising inhabitants attend to education
as well as the elevation of grain; the city has eight commodious school
buildings.
To return to the Mississippi. To understand what feeds Minneapolis and
St. Paul, and what country their great wholesale houses supply, one must
take the rail and penetrate the vast North-west. The famous Park or Lake
district, between St. Cloud (75 miles north-west of St. Paul) and Fergus
Falls, is too well known to need description. A rolling prairie, with
hundreds of small lakes, tree fringed, it is a region of surpassing
loveliness, and already dotted, as at Alexandria, with summer resorts.
The whole region, up as far as Moorhead (240 miles from St. Paul), on
the Red River, opposite Fargo, Dakota, is well settled, and full of
prosperous towns. At Fargo, crossing the Northern Pacific, we ran
parallel with the Red River, through a line of bursting elevators and
wheat farms, clown to Grand Forks, where we turned westward, and passed
out of the Red River Valley, rising to the plateau at Larimore, some
three hundred feet above it.
The Red River, a narrow but deep and navigable stream, has from its
source to Lake Winnipeg a tortuous course of about 600 miles, while
the valley itself is about 285 miles long, of which 180 miles Is in the
United States. This valley, which has astonished the world by its wheat
production, is about 160 miles in breadth, and level as a floor, except
that it has a northward slope of, I believe, about five feet to the
mile. The river forms the boundary between Minnesota and Dakota; the
width of valley on the Dakota side varies from 50 to 100 miles. The rich
soil is from two to three feet deep, underlaid with clay. Fargo, the
centre of this valley, is 940 feet above the sea. The climate is one
of extremes between winter and summer, but of much constancy of cold or
heat according to the season. Although it is undeniable that one does
not feel the severe cold there as much as in more humid atmospheres, it
cannot be doubted that the long continuance of extreme cold is trying
to the system. And it may be said of all the North-west, including
Minnesota, that while it is more favorable to the lungs than many
regions where the thermometer has less sinking power, it is not free
from catarrh (the curse of New England), nor from rheumatism. The
climate seems to me specially stimulating, and I should say there is
less excuse here for the use of stimulants (on account of “lowness” or
lassitude) than in almost any other portion of the United States with
which I am acquainted.
But whatever attractions or drawbacks this territory has as a place of
residence, its grain and stock growing capacity is inexhaustible, and
having seen it, we begin to comprehend the vigorous activity and growth
of the twin cities. And yet this is the beginning of resources; there
lies Dakota, with its 149,100 square miles (96,596,480 acres of land),
larger than all the New England States and New York combined, and
Montana beyond, together making a belt of hard spring-wheat land
sufficient, one would think, to feed the world. When one travels over
1200 miles of it, doubt ceases.
I cannot better illustrate the resources and enterprise of the
North-west than by speaking in some detail of the St. Paul, Minneapolis,
and Manitoba Railway (known as the Manitoba system), and by telling
briefly the story of one season’s work, not because this system is
bigger or more enterprising or of more importance in the West than some
others I might name, but because it has lately pierced a comparatively
unknown region, and opened to settlement a fertile empire.