ADMINISTRATION OF CLEVELAND (SECOND-CONCLUDED), 1893-1897.
THE GREAT NORTHWEST.
BY ALBERT SHAW, PH.D.,
_Editor "Review of Reviews," formerly editor of "Minneapolis Tribune."_
Settling the Northwest--The Face of the Country Transformed--Clearing
Away the Forests and its Effects--Tree-planting on the Prairies--Pioneer
Life in the Seventies--The Granary of the World--The Northwestern
Farmer--Transportation and Other Industries--Business Cities and
Centres--United Public Action and its Influence--The Indian
Question--Other Elements of Population--Society and General Culture.
"Northwest" is a shifting, uncertain designation. The term has been used
to cover the whole stretch of country from Pittsburg to Puget Sound,
north of the Ohio River and the thirty-seventh parallel of latitude.
Popularly it signified the old Northwestern Territory--including Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin--until about the time of the
Civil War. In the decade following the war, Illinois and Iowa were
largely in the minds of men who spoke of the Northwest. From 1870 to
1880, Iowa, Kansas, northern Missouri, and Nebraska constituted the most
stirring and favored region--the Northwest _par excellence_. But the
past decade has witnessed a remarkable development in the Dakotas; and
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana, with Iowa and Nebraska,
are perhaps the States most familiarly comprised in the idea of the
Northwest. These States are really in the heart of the continent--midway
between oceans; and perhaps by common consent the term Northwest will, a
decade hence, have moved on and taken firm possession of Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, while ultimately Alaska may succeed to
the designation.
[Illustration: ALBERT SHAW.]
But for the present the Northwest is the great arable wedge lying
between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and between the Missouri
River and the Rocky Mountains. It is a region that is pretty clearly
defined upon a map showing physical characteristics. For the most part,
it is a region of great natural fertility, of regular north-temperate
climate, of moderate but sufficient rainfall, of scant forests and great
prairie expanses, and of high average altitude without mountains. In a
word, it is a region that was adapted by nature to the cultivation of
the cereals and leading crops of the temperate zone without arduous and
time-consuming processes for subduing the wilderness and redeeming the
soil.
SETTLING THE NORTHWEST.
This "New Northwest," in civilization and in all its significant
characteristics, is the creature of the vast impulse that the successful
termination of the war gave the nation. No other extensive area was ever
settled under similar conditions. The homestead laws, the new American
system of railroad building, and the unprecedented demand for staple
food products in the industrial centres at home and abroad, peopled the
prairies as if by magic. Until 1870, fixing the date very roughly,
transportation facilities followed colonization. The railroads were
built to serve and stimulate a traffic that already existed. The
pioneers had done a generation's work before the iron road overtook
them. In the past two decades all has been changed. The railroads have
been the pioneers and colonizers. They have invaded the solitary
wilderness, and the population has followed. Much of the land has
belonged to the roads, through subsidy grants, but the greater part of
the mileage has been laid without the encouragement of land subsidies or
other bonuses, by railway corporations that were willing to look to the
future for their reward.
It would be almost impossible to over-estimate the significance of this
method of colonization. Within a few years it has transformed the
buffalo ranges into the world's most extensive fields of wheat and corn.
A region comprising northern and western Minnesota and the two Dakotas,
which contributed practically nothing to the country's wheat supply
twelve or fifteen years ago, has, by this system of railroad
colonization, reached an annual production of 100,000,000 bushels of
wheat alone--about one-fourth of the crop of the entire country. In like
manner, parts of western Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, that produced no
corn before 1875 or 1880, are now the centre of corn-raising, and yield
many hundreds of millions of bushels annually. These regions enter as
totally new factors into the world's supply of foods and raw materials.
A great area of this new territory might be defined that was inhabited
in 1870 by less than a million people, in 1880 by more than three
millions, and in 1899 by from eight to ten millions.
[Illustration: A DISPUTE OVER A BRAND.]
Let us imagine a man from the East who has visited the Northwestern
States and Territories at some time between the years 1870 and 1875, and
who retains a strong impression of what he saw, but who has not been
west of Chicago since that time, until, in the World's Fair year, he
determines upon a new exploration of Iowa, Nebraska, the Datokas,
Minnesota, and Wisconsin. However well informed he had tried to keep
himself through written descriptions and statistical records of Western
progress, he would see what nothing but the evidence of his own eyes
could have made him believe to be possible. Iowa in 1870 was already
producing a large crop of cereals, and was inhabited by a thriving,
though very new, farming population. But the aspect of the country was
bare and uninviting, except in the vicinity of the older communities on
the Mississippi River. As one advanced across the State the farm-houses
were very small, and looked like isolated dry-goods boxes; there were
few well-built barns or farm buildings; and the struggling young
cottonwood and soft-maple saplings planted in close groves about the
tiny houses were so slight an obstruction to the sweep of vision across
the open prairie that they only seemed to emphasize the monotonous
stretches of fertile, but uninteresting, plain. Now the landscape is
wholly transformed. A railroad ride in June through the best parts of
Iowa reminds one of a ride through some of the pleasantest farming
districts of England. The primitive "claim shanties" of thirty years ago
have given place to commodious farm-houses flanked by great barns and
hay-ricks, and the well-appointed structures of a prosperous
agriculture. In the rich, deep meadows herds of fine-blooded cattle are
grazing. What was once a blank, dreary landscape is now garden-like and
inviting. The poor little saplings of the earlier days, which seemed to
be apologizing to the robust corn-stalks in the neighboring fields, have
grown on that deep soil into great, spreading trees. One can easily
imagine, as he looks off in every direction and notes a wooded horizon,
that he is--as in Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky--in a farming region which
has been cleared out of primeval forests. There are many towns I might
mention which twenty-five years ago, with their new, wooden shanties
scattered over the bare face of the prairie, seemed the hottest place on
earth as the summer sun beat upon their unshaded streets and roofs, and
seemed the coldest places on earth when the fierce blizzards of winter
swept unchecked across the prairie expanses. To-day the density of shade
in those towns is deemed of positive detriment to health, and for
several years past there has been a systematic thinning out and trimming
up of the great, clustering elms. Trees of from six to ten feet in girth
are found everywhere by the hundreds of thousands. Each farm-house is
sheltered from winter winds by its own dense groves. Many of the farmers
are able from the surplus growth of wood upon their estates to provide
themselves with a large and regular supply of fuel. If I have dwelt at
some length upon this picture of the transformation of the bleak,
grain-producing Iowa prairies of thirty years ago into the dairy and
live-stock farms of to-day, with their fragrant meadows and ample
groves, it is because the picture is one which reveals so much as to the
nature and meaning of Northwestern progress.
CLEARING AWAY THE FORESTS AND ITS EFFECTS.
Not a little has been written regarding the rapid destruction of the
vast white-pine forests with which nature has covered large districts of
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It is true that this denudation has
progressed at a rate with which nothing of a like character in the
history of the world is comparable. It is also true, doubtless, that the
clearing away of dense forest areas has been attended with some
inconvenient climatic results, and particularly with some objectionable
effects upon the even distribution of rainfall and the regularity of the
flow of rivers. But most persons who have been alarmed at the rapidity
of forest destruction in the white-pine belt have wholly overlooked the
great compensating facts. It happens that the white-pine region is not
especially fertile, and that for some time to come it is not likely to
acquire a prosperous agriculture. But adjacent to it and beyond it
there was a vast region of country which, though utterly treeless, was
endowed with a marvelous richness of soil and with a climate fitted for
all the staple productions of the temperate zone. This region embraced
parts of Illinois, almost the whole of Iowa, southern Minnesota, Kansas,
Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and parts of Montana--a region of
imperial extent. Now, it happens that for every acre of pine land that
has been denuded in Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and northern Minnesota
there are somewhere in the great treeless region further south and west
two or three new farm-houses. The railroads, pushing ahead of settlement
out into the open prairie, have carried the white-pine lumber from the
gigantic sawmills of the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries; and thus
millions of acres of land have been brought under cultivation by farmers
who could not have been housed in comfort but for the proximity of the
pine forests. The rapid clearing away of timber areas in Wisconsin has
simply meant the rapid settlement of North and South Dakota, western
Iowa, and Nebraska.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL SPIRES, COLORADO.]
TREE PLANTING ON THE PRAIRIES.
The settlement of these treeless regions means the successful growth on
every farm of at least several hundred trees. Without attempting to be
statistical or exact, we might say that an acre of northern Minnesota
pine trees makes it possible for a farmer in Dakota or Nebraska to have
a house, farm buildings, and fences, with a holding of at least one
hundred and sixty acres upon which he will successfully cultivate
several acres of forest trees of different kinds. Even if the denuded
pine lands of the region south and west of Lake Superior would not
readily produce a second growth of dense forest--which, it should be
said in passing, they certainly will--their loss would be far more than
made good by the universal cultivation of forest trees in the prairie
States. It is at least comforting to reflect, when the friends of
scientific forestry warn us against the ruthless destruction of standing
timber, that thus far at least in our Western history we have simply
been cutting down trees in order to put a roof over the head of the man
who was invading treeless regions for the purpose of planting and
nurturing a hundred times as many trees as had been destroyed for his
benefit! There is something almost inspiring in the contemplation of
millions of families, all the way from Minnesota to Colorado and Texas,
living in the shelter of these new pine houses and transforming the
plains into a shaded and fruitful empire.
PIONEER LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES.
[Illustration: SLUICE-GATE.]
The enormous expansion of our railway systems will soon have made it
quite impossible for any of the younger generation to realize what
hardships were attendant upon such limited colonization of treeless
prairie regions as preceded the iron rails. In 1876 I spent the summer
in a part of Dakota to which a considerable number of hardy but poor
farmers had found their way and taken up claims. They could not easily
procure wood for houses, no other ordinary building material was
accessible, and they were living in half-underground "dugouts,"
so-called. There was much more pleasure and romance in the pioneer
experiences of my own ancestors a hundred years ago, who were living in
comfortable log-houses with huge fire places, and shooting abundant
supplies of deer and wild turkey in the deep woods of southern Ohio. The
pluck and industry of these Dakota pioneers, most of whom were Irish men
and Norwegians, won my heartiest sympathy and respect. Poor as they
were, they maintained one public institution in common--namely, a
school, with its place of public assemblage. The building had no floor
but the beaten earth, and, its thick walls were blocks of matted prairie
turf, its roof also being of sods supported upon some poles brought from
the scanty timber-growth along the margin of a prairie river. To-day
these poor pioneers are enjoying their reward. Their valley is traversed
by several railroads; prosperous villages have sprung up; their lands
are of considerable value; they all live in well-built farm-houses;
their shade trees have grown to a height of fifty or sixty feet; a
bustling and ambitious city, with fine churches, opera-houses, electric
illumination, and the most advanced public educational system, is only a
few miles away from them. Such transformations have occurred, not alone
in a few spots in Iowa and South Dakota, but are common throughout a
region that extends from the British dominions to the Indian Territory,
and from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains--a region
comprising more than a half-million square miles.
THE GRANARY OF THE WORLD.
[Illustration: BETWEEN THE MILLS.]
Naturally the industrial life of these Northwestern communities is based
solidly upon agriculture. There is, perhaps, hardly any other
agricultural region of equal extent upon the face of the earth that is
so fertile and so well adapted for the production of the most necessary
articles of human food. During the past decade the world's markets have
been notably disturbed and affected, and profound social changes and
political agitations have occurred in various remote parts of the earth.
It is within bounds to assert that the most potent and far-reaching
factor in the altered conditions of the industrial world during these
recent years has been the sudden invasion and utilization of this great
new farming region. Most parts of the world which are fairly prosperous
do not produce staple food supplies in appreciable surplus quantities.
Several regions which are not highly prosperous sell surplus food
products out of their poverty rather than out of their abundance. That
is to say, the people of India and the people of Russia have often been
obliged, in order to obtain money to pay their taxes and other necessary
expenses, to sell and send away to prosperous England the wheat which
they have needed for hungry mouths at home. They have managed to subsist
upon coarser and cheaper food. But in our Northwestern States the
application of ingenious machinery to the cultivation of fertile and
virgin soils has within the past twenty-five years precipitated upon the
world a stupendous new supply of cereals and of meats, produced in
quantities enormously greater than the people of the Northwestern States
could consume. These foodstuffs have powerfully affected agriculture in
Ireland, England, France, and Germany, and, in fact, in every other part
of the accessible and cultivated globe.
[Illustration: BARREL-HOIST AND TUNNEL THROUGH THE WASHBURN MILL.]
THE NORTHWESTERN FARMER.
So much has been written of late about the condition of the farmer in
these regions that it is pertinent to inquire who the Western farmer is.
In the old States the representative farmer is a man of long training in
the difficult and honorable art of diversified agriculture. He knows
much of soils, of crops and their wise rotation, of domestic animals and
their breeding, and of a hundred distinct phases of the production, the
life, and the household economics that belong to the traditions and
methods of Anglo-Saxon farming. If he is a wise man, owning his land and
avoiding extravagance, he can defy any condition of the markets, and can
survive any known succession of adverse seasons. There are also many
such farmers in the West. But there are thousands of wheat-raisers or
corn-growers who have followed in the wake of the railway and taken up
government or railroad land, and who are not yet farmers in the truest
and best sense of the word. They are unskilled laborers who have become
speculators. They obtain their land for nothing, or for a price ranging
from one dollar and fifty cents to five dollars per acre. They borrow on
mortgage the money to build a small house and to procure horses and
implements and seed-grain. Then they proceed to put as large an acreage
as they can manage into a single crop--wheat in the Dakotas, wheat or
corn in Nebraska and Kansas. They speculate upon the chances of a
favorable season and a good crop safely harvested; and they speculate
upon the chances of a profitable market. They hope that the first two
crops may render them the possessor of an unincumbered estate, supplied
with modest buildings, and with a reasonable quantity of machinery and
live stock. Sometimes they succeed beyond their anticipations. In many
instances the chances go against them. They live on the land, and the
title is invested in them; but they are using borrowed capital, use it
unskillfully, meet an adverse season or two, lose through foreclosure
that which has cost them nothing except a year or two of energy spent in
what is more nearly akin to gambling than to farming, and finally help
to swell the great chorus that calls the world to witness the distress
of Western agriculture. It cannot be said too emphatically that real
agriculture in the West is safe and prosperous, and that the
unfortunates are the inexperienced persons, usually without capital, who
attempt to raise a single crop on new land. For many of them it would be
about as wise to take borrowed money and speculate in wheat in the
Chicago bucket-shops.
[Illustration: MOSSBRAE.]
The great majority, however, of these inexperienced and capital-less
wheat and corn producers gradually become farmers. It is inevitable, at
first, that a country opened by the railroads for the express purpose of
obtaining the largest possible freightage of cereals should for a few
seasons be a "single-crop country." Often the seed-grain is supplied on
loan by the roads themselves. They charge "what the traffic will bear."
The grain is all, or nearly all, marketed through long series of
elevators following the tracks, at intervals of a few miles, and owned
by some central company that bears a close relation to the railroad.
Thus the corporations which control the transportation and handling of
the grain in effect maintain for their own advantage an exploitation of
the entire regions that they traverse, through the first years of
settlement. Year by year the margin of cultivation extends further
West, and the single-crop sort of farming tends to recede. The wheat
growers produce more barley and oats and flax, try corn successfully,
introduce live stock and dairying, and thus begin to emerge as real
farmers.
Unless this method of Western settlement is comprehended, it is not
possible to understand the old Granger movement and the more recent
legislative conflicts between the farmers of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas,
Minnesota, and the Dakotas, on the one hand, and the great
transportation and grain-handling corporations on the other. It was
fundamentally a question of the division of profits. The railroads had
"made" the country: were they entitled to allow the farmers simply a
return about equal to the cost of production, keeping for themselves the
difference between the cost and the price in the central markets, or
were they to base their charges upon the cost of their service, and
leave the farmers to enjoy whatever profits might arise from the
production of wheat or corn? Out of that protracted contest has been
developed the principle of the public regulation of rates. The position
of these communities of farmers with interests so similar, forming
commonwealths so singularly homogeneous, has led to a reliance upon
State aid that is altogether unprecedented in new and sparsely settled
regions, where individualism has usually been dominant, and governmental
activity relatively inferior.
[Illustration: ANCIENT BLOCK-HOUSE, ALASKA.]
TRANSPORTATION AND OTHER INDUSTRIES.
But agriculture, while the basis of Northwestern wealth, is not the sole
pursuit. Transportation has become in these regions a powerful interest,
because of the vast surplus agricultural product to be carried away, and
of the great quantities of lumber, coal, salt, and staple supplies in
general, to be distributed throughout the new prairie communities. The
transformation of the pine forests into the homes of several million
people has, of course, developed marvelous sawmill and building
industries; and the furnishing of millions of new homes has called into
being great factories for the making of wooden furniture, iron stoves,
and all kinds of household supplies. In response to the demand for
agricultural implements and machinery with which to cultivate five
hundred million acres of newly utilized wild land, there have come into
existence numerous great establishments for the making of machines that
have been especially invented to meet the peculiarities and exigencies
of Western farm life.
Through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, Indian corn has become a
greater product in quantity and value than wheat; while in Wisconsin,
Minnesota, and North and South Dakota the wheat is decidedly the
preponderant crop. Although in addition to oats and barley, which
flourish in all the Western States, it has been found possible to
increase the acreage of maize in the northern tier, it is now believed
that the most profitable alternate crop in the latitude of Minneapolis
and St. Paul is to be flax. Already a region including parts of
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas has become the
most extensive area of flax culture in the whole world. The crop has
been produced simply for the seed, which has supplied large linseed oil
factories in Minneapolis, Chicago, and various Western places. But now
it has been discovered that the flax straw, which has heretofore been
allowed to rot in the fields as a valueless product, can be utilized for
a fibre which will make a satisfactory quality of coarse linen fabrics.
Linen mills have been established in Minneapolis, and it is somewhat
confidently predicted that in course of time the linen industry of that
ambitious city will reach proportions even greater than its wonderful
flour industry, which for a number of years has been without a rival
anywhere in the world.
THE "TWIN CITIES."
The railroad system of the Northwest has been developed in such a way
that no one centre may be fairly regarded as the commercial capital of
the region. Chicago, with its marvelous foresight, has thrown out lines
of travel that draw to itself much of the traffic which would seem
normally to belong to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth on the north, or
to St. Louis and Kansas City on the south. But in the region now under
discussion, the famous "Twin Cities," Minneapolis and St. Paul,
constitute unquestionably the greatest and most distinctive centre, both
of business and of civilization. They are beautifully situated, and they
add to a long list of natural advantages very many equally desirable
attractions growing out of the enterprising and ambitious forethought of
the inhabitants. They are cities of beautiful homes, pleasant parks,
enterprising municipal improvements; advanced educational
establishments, and varied industrial interests. Each is a distinct
urban community, although they lie so near together that they constitute
one general centre of commerce and transportation when viewed from a
distance. Their stimulating rivalry has had the effect to keep each city
alert and to prevent a listless, degenerate local administration. About
the Falls of St. Anthony, at Minneapolis, great manufacturing
establishments are grouping themselves, and each year adds to the
certainty that these two picturesque and charming cities have before
them a most brilliant civic future.
[Illustration: THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY, 1885.]
UNITED PUBLIC ACTION AND ITS INFLUENCE.
The tendency to rely upon united public action is illustrated in the
growth of Northwestern educational systems. The universities of these
commonwealths are State universities. Professional education is under
the State auspices and control. The normal schools and the agricultural
schools belong to the State. The public high school provides
intermediate instruction. The common district school, supported jointly
by local taxation and State subvention, gives elementary education to
the children of all classes. As the towns grow the tendency to graft
manual and technical courses upon the ordinary public school curriculum
is unmistakably strong. The Northwest, more than any other part of the
country, is disposed to make every kind of education a public function.
Radicalism has flourished in the homogeneous agricultural society of
the Northwest. In the anti-monopoly conflict there seemed to have
survived some of the intensity of feeling that characterized the
anti-slavery movement; and a tinge of this fanatical quality has always
been apparent in the Western and Northwestern monetary heresies. But it
is in the temperance movement that this sweep of radical impulse has
been most irresistible. It was natural that the movement should become
political and take the form of an agitation for prohibition. The history
of prohibition in Iowa, Kansas, and the Dakotas, and of temperance
legislation in Minnesota and Nebraska, reveals--even better perhaps than
the history of the anti-monopoly movement--the radicalism, homogeneity,
and powerful socializing tendencies of the Northwestern people. Between
these different agitations there has been in reality no slight degree of
relationship; at least their origin is to be traced to the same general
conditions of society.
The extent to which a modern community resorts to State action depends
in no small measure upon the accumulation of private resources. Public
or organized initiative will be relatively strongest where the impulse
to progress is positive but the ability of individuals is small. There
are few rich men in the Northwest. Iowa, great as is the Hawkeye State,
has no large city and no large fortunes. Of Kansas the same thing may be
said. The Dakotas have no rich men and no cities. Minnesota has
Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Nebraska has Omaha; but otherwise these
two States are farming communities, without large cities or concentrated
private capital. Accordingly the recourse to public action is
comparatively easy. South Dakota farmers desire to guard against drought
by opening artesian wells for irrigation. They resort to State
legislation and the sale of county bonds. North Dakota wheat-growers are
unfortunate in the failure of crops. They secure seed-wheat through
State action and their county governments. A similarity of condition
fosters associated action and facilitates the progress of popular
movements.
In such a society the spirit of action is intense. If there are few
philosophers, there is remarkable diffusion of popular knowledge and
elementary education. The dry atmosphere and the cold winters are
nerve-stimulants, and life seems to have a higher tension and velocity
than in other parts of the country.
THE INDIAN QUESTION.
The Northwest presents a series of very interesting race problems. The
first one, chronologically at least, is the problem that the American
Indian presents. It is not so long ago since the Indian was in
possession of a very large portion of the region we are now considering.
A number of tribes were gradually removed further West, or were assigned
to districts in the Indian Territory. But most of them were concentrated
in large reservations in Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota,
Montana, and Wyoming. The past few years have witnessed the rapid
reduction of these reservations, and the adoption of a policy which, if
carried to its logical conclusion with energy and good faith, will at an
early date result in the universal education of the children, in the
abolition of the system of reservations, and in the settlement of the
Indian families upon farms of their own, as fully enfranchised American
citizens.
OTHER ELEMENTS OF POPULATION.
[Illustration: LAKE-SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO.]
The most potent single element of population in the Northwest is of New
England origin, although more than half of it has found its way into
Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, by filtration
through the intermediate States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. But there has also been a vast direct
immigration from abroad; and this element has come more largely, by far,
from the northern than from the central and southern races of Europe.
The Scandinavian peninsula and the countries about the Baltic and North
Seas have supplied the Northwest with a population that already numbers
millions. From Chicago to Montana there is now a population of full
Scandinavian origin, which, perhaps, may be regarded as about equal in
numbers to the population that remains in Sweden and Norway. In
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, as well as in
northern Iowa and in some parts of Nebraska, there are whole counties
where the population is almost entirely Scandinavian. Upon all this
portion of the country for centuries to come the Scandinavian
patronymics will be as firmly fixed as they have been upon the Scotch
and English coasts, where the Northmen intrenched themselves so
numerously and firmly about nine hundred or a thousand years ago. The
Scandinavians in the Northwest become Americans with a rapidity
unequaled by any other non-English-speaking element. Their political
ambition is as insatiate as that of the Irish, and they already secure
offices in numbers. Their devotion to the American school system, their
political aptitude and ambition, and their enthusiastic pride in
American citizenship are thoroughly hopeful traits, and it is generally
believed that they will contribute much of strength and sturdiness to
the splendid race of Northwestern Americans that is to be developed in
the Upper Mississippi and Missouri Valleys. The Northwestern Germans
evince a tendency to mass in towns, as in Milwaukee, and to preserve
intact their language and national traits.
SOCIETY AND GENERAL CULTURE.
The large towns of the Northwest are notable for the great numbers of
the brightest and most energetic of the young business and professional
men of the East that they contain. While they lack the leisure class and
the traditions of culture that belong to older communities, they may
justly claim a far higher percentage of college-bred men and of families
of cultivated tastes than belong to Eastern towns of like population.
The intense pressure of business and absorption of private pursuits are,
for the present, seeming obstacles to the progress of Western
communities in the highest things; but already the zeal for public
improvements and for social progress in all that pertains to true
culture is very great. Two decades hence no man will question the
quality of Northwestern civilization. If the East is losing something of
its distinctive Americanism through the influx of foreign elements and
the decay of its old-time farming communities, the growth of the
Northwest, largely upon the basis of New England blood and New England
ideas, will make full compensation.
Every nation of the world confronts its own racial or climatic or
industrial problems, and nowhere is there to be found an ideal state of
happiness or virtue or prosperity; but, all things considered, it may
well be doubted whether there exists any other extensive portion, either
of America or of the world, in which there is so little of pauperism, of
crime, of social inequality, of ignorance, and of chafing discontent, as
in the agricultural Northwest that lies between Chicago and the Rocky
Mountains. Schools and churches are almost everywhere flourishing in
this region, and the necessities of life are not beyond the reach of any
element or class. There is a pleasantness, a hospitality, and a
friendliness in the social life of the Western communities that is
certainly not surpassed.