North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State

by Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota

INDUSTRY AND LABOR

On any cold winter night in the early 1800's it was not uncommon to see a fur trader set out from Pembina, with his dogsled loaded with valuable pelts, to make the long trek to St. Paul or Fort Garry. With no roads, few landmarks, and the constant danger of Indian attack, such a night trip was extremely hazardous. Daylight, however, presented even more dangers, for the reflection of the winter sun upon the snowy ground often caused snow-blindness; daytime temperatures softened the drifts so that the dogs sank deep into them, while at night they could skim easily over the frozen surface. Despite the dangers of the fur trade, many men engaged in it, taking their cargoes to the frontier cities and bringing back sled-loads of supplies to be exchanged for the furs that Indians brought to the trading posts.

The first stores were at these posts, where the Indians came to barter for blankets, trinkets, food, and alcohol, using the valuable beaver skin as the standard of reckoning. To avoid long discussions over the price of goods, the traders devised a system of marking which could be readily understood by the natives: a single horizontal line drawn on an article indicated a value of one beaver skin, two parallel lines placed the price at two skins, and so on. The quality of some English-made blankets is still designated by a survival of this early system, with lines known as "points" woven into the border.

From this frontier commerce, North Dakota industry grew. In 1909, a century after the fur trade began, the State produced goods valued at $19,150,000; and in 1935 manufactures were valued at $40,076,326, with 325 establishments each doing an annual business of $5,000 or more, and collectively employing 3,306 workers. Although these figures are small in comparison with those of essentially industrial States, they are large in view of the youthfulness of North Dakota and its distinctly agricultural economy.

The fur trade prospered until the Indian insurrections of 1863-64. Then trapping became a perilous occupation, and traders and trappers returned East. Eastward, too, went most of the settlers who had come to farm. The only ones to remain were Charles Cavileer and his little colony at Pembina, who staunchly continued to cultivate their level farms in the face of Indian dangers. With the exception of a few brave adventurers, they had the entire area virtually to themselves, until the extension of the Northern Pacific lines into the Red River Valley in 1871 promoted a period of homesteading. Then, for the first time, agriculture took its place as the leading occupation of this area.

Many of the industries which were important during the development of the State are no longer in existence. Because lumber was an expensive commodity to import, sawmills were established at Grand Forks and Fargo in the 1870's; and because the North Dakota side of the Red River could not furnish a large enough supply for the mills, logs were floated down from the Minnesota woods. Lumberjacking meant cash and wages, and many homesteaders left their families in possession of their claims while they went to Minnesota to earn money for seed and machinery and for building permanent homes on their farms. As traffic on the Red River increased, construction of steamers became an important industry for which North Dakota mills supplied much of the lumber.

On the prairies west of the Red River Valley, the homesteaders could not engage in logging and lumbering to earn money for improving their farms; but, resourcefully, they found another way to get funds. Buffalo bones were scattered abundantly upon the land from Devils Lake westward, and cash prices of eight to ten dollars a carload were paid by sugar manufacturers who used the bones in a refining process. Many homes were built and much machinery purchased with the income derived from gathering and selling this material. Gradually, however, these pioneer occupations died out. The more efficient railway supplanted the river steamers. The supply of buffalo bones was soon exhausted. New occupations, allied with the expanding agriculture of the region, grew into importance.

The first farmers here found the lack of transportation and marketing facilities a great problem. Fort Garry and St. Paul were the nearest markets for grain until 1851. In that year Father Belcourt, who had established a mission where the town of Walhalla now stands, found that sufficient power could be obtained from the Pembina River there to operate a small flour mill. The mill was built, and farmers came from as far east as Pembina to patronize it. Generally, however, there was a lack of mills throughout the region. Elevators and shipping points were far apart, and many farmers had to drive their wagonloads of grain from 25 to 100 miles to market. When the railroads were extended westward, elevators were built in the towns and at sidings, greatly simplifying the marketing problem. The new freight lines made it possible for mills to import fuel from the East, but unfortunately the cost of shipment was prohibitive. The development of North Dakota lignite mines, beginning in the 1880's, removed an important handicap to mill operation, however, and later the lowering of freight rates allowed importation of other fuel. Although a large proportion of North Dakota grain is still shipped out, there are now in the State 27 flour mills which in 1931 had an output valued at $12,000,000. The largest of these is the State-owned mill and elevator opened at Grand Forks in 1922 as part of the Nonpartisan League program of State industries.

One of the important industries which has grown out of the agriculture of North Dakota is seed production. Potatoes, clover, alfalfa, brome-grass, and corn are shipped out in large quantities. A number of nurseries ship trees, plants, and shrubs.

A French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores, was the first person to realize the possibilities of a packing plant in North Dakota. Drawing upon his own and his father-in-law's resources, he established a plant at Medora in 1883. The venture failed, partly because his grass-fed beef, produced at a high cost because of his artless business methods, could not compete with grain-fed meat; but today modern packing plants at Grand Forks and West Fargo prove that the marquis was not the impractical dreamer his contemporaries thought him.

Since most of North Dakota's industry is concerned with the processing of agricultural products, no large manufacturing centers have been developed; but mills, warehouses, poultry markets, and creameries have been established near the areas which they serve—many of the finest creameries are in sparsely settled rural areas. Fargo is the only city in the State that manufactures other than agricultural products.

Difficulties in shipping grain to outside markets provided one of the chief factors in the development of the many cooperatives which are important in the present economic life of the State. Grain farmers early realized that by acting independently they could not trade advantageously with eastern buyers. By 1891 there were ten farmers' elevators in the State, and the cooperative movement grew until the Equity Association, the National Producers Alliance, and the Better Farming Association developed the North Dakota division of the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of America, which at present includes some 540 buying and consumers' cooperatives in the State. At first exclusively grain-selling organizations, the cooperatives have expanded to include the handling of twine, machinery, petroleum products, tires, electricity, dairy products, and groceries.

The period since the World War has seen the revival of the occupation of the first white settlers—the fur industry. Some trapping is done each winter, but the fur sellers today do not rely upon this nineteenth-century method of getting pelts. Instead they have farms on which they raise the furbearing animals, usually silver-black foxes. The climate is well suited to this industry, for the cold winters produce heavy and valuable furs.

Although agriculture and its allied industries will probably always predominate, recent years have seen the beginning of the development of North Dakota's great mineral resources, which lay neglected or unrecognized for years while farmers attempted to emulate the phenomenal success of the bonanza wheat growers.

Ranchers in the western counties early discovered large deposits of lignite, a black or brownish substance in a stage between peat and bituminous coal, lying at or near the surface of the earth. Lignite has a conspicuously woody appearance, often showing clearly the grain of the wood or the shape of the trunks and branches from which it was formed. It is known to underlie the entire western part of the State. For many years its use was entirely local, chiefly because it contains a large amount of moisture which evaporates upon exposure to the air, causing the coal to crumble. To overcome this difficulty, shipment is now made in closed boxcars; briquetting of lignite has also proved successful, and the mineral is now common fuel. Lignite is used exclusively by State institutions and by many of the manufacturing concerns in the State. In the eight-month period from November 1, 1935, to June 30, 1936, the production of 355 mines, amounted to 1,704,983 tons, valued at $2,077,800.15. New mines are continually being opened. The rapidity with which the industry has been developed is demonstrated by the fact that there were 67 more mines in operation in 1935 than in 1931, with production in 1935 twice that of 1924 and eight times that of 1908.

The interest of the university school of mines in lignite experimentation did not end with the perfecting of the briquet process. The most recent achievement of the school is the production from lignite of activated carbon, a substance (hitherto produced largely from animal bones) used in water purification, sugar refining, rubber tire manufacture, and other commercial processes. The development of this product should furnish a new and profitable industry for western North Dakota.

Western North Dakota has, in addition to its lignite beds, large deposits of clay. These, like lignite, engaged the interest of the late Dean E. J. Babcock of the university school of mines, and largely as a result of his efforts are being developed. Upon his urging, a ceramics department was created at the university in 1910 to determine the commercial value of native clays. From experiments conducted, it was found that certain varieties made excellent brick, tile, and other building materials, while others were especially suitable for pottery. Reproductions of fine European pottery and original pieces of local design turned out at the university have attracted attention at exhibitions throughout the United States. Large-scale commercial development of the State's clay deposits is centered at Dickinson, where both building materials and pottery are produced.

Sodium sulphate and bentonite are two of the more recent mineral discoveries in North Dakota. In the southwestern part of the State are large beds of bentonite which, because close to the surface, are easily accessible for commercial purposes. Bentonite is used in the manufacture of paint, rubber, soap, cosmetics, dynamite, and a variety of other products; it has also been found to give rich gold and brown tones to decorative designs on pottery. The chalky-white crystals of sodium sulphate, sometimes known as Glauber's salts, are found in few places in the United States outside of the old lake beds of northwestern North Dakota. Sodium sulphate is principally used in the manufacture of paper. Millions of tons of it are easily accessible in the open lake beds where it has been deposited by springs.

Development of mineral resources should help to solve the unemployment problem of the State—a problem which is constantly growing. Except in recent years, residents have had no difficulty in finding work, because agricultural pursuits usually require the same amount of labor year after year regardless of agricultural prices. Despite this, new factors are increasing unemployment. In the period between 1930 and 1935, North Dakota was the only State in the spring wheat belt to show an increase in population. Another primary cause of increasing unemployment is the steadily growing percentage of persons over 40 years of age: in 1900, 18.4 percent of the population was over 40, in 1920 this had increased to 20.8 percent, and in 1930 to 25.6 percent.

In keeping with the comparative unimportance of the State labor movement at present is the small number of labor unions in North Dakota. The State's first labor organization was the Bismarck Typographical Union, chartered in 1883. In 1906 the American Federation of Labor granted a charter to the Fargo Trades and Labor Assembly, and in 1911 the State Federation was officially organized. Branches of the latter have since been formed in almost all of the larger towns in the State.

State regulation of labor conditions had its beginning in 1907 with the passage of a Workmen's Compensation Act. Many revisions have since been made in this law. A State welfare commission was formed in 1917 to regulate labor conditions; and two years later, partly through the efforts of this commission, a minimum wage law was passed and placed under the administration of the Workmen's Compensation Bureau. At the same time provision was made for regulating the wages and hours of women laborers. In 1936 North Dakota was the only State having an eight-and-one-half hour day provision for women in factories, stores, hotels, laundries, cafes, and telephone and telegraph offices.

ANCIENT INDIAN TURTLE EFFIGY

Photo by Russell Reid

SIOUX SUN DANCE AS ORIGINALLY PERFORMED

Copy of an old drawing courtesy of Frank Fiske

A MODERN SIOUX SUN DANCE CEREMONIAL

Photo by Paul S. Bliss

NORTH DAKOTA IN 1879, FROM AN OLD MAP OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

The first State child-labor act was passed in 1909. Under the present law, employment of children under the age of 14 is prohibited. The proposed child-labor amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified by the North Dakota Legislature at the 1931 session.