Catholic Colonization in Minnesota / Revised Edition

by Catholic Colonization Bureau

Some time ago, a friend from the East, to whom we were showing some of our Catholic settlements, said to us,

"Why, it is not surprising that the people settled out here in the country should be moral and religious, they have much to make them so, and nothing to make them otherwise in their surroundings; but look at our poor people, huddled together in the tenement houses of New York. When you find them good, give them praise."

"And many of them are good," we said.

"Oh, yes," he answered; "but the great danger is to the children. The priest does his best, the Catholic parent grounded in his religion before he ever saw a city does his best, but his circumstances compel him to live where the foul air reeks with blasphemy, and low debauchery; vice and drunkenness are ever before their eyes."

This is a very sad picture, but a very true one. It is a fearful reality before the eyes of many a poor Catholic parent, who obliged to be continually absent from his children, knows but too well the society they are likely to fall into.

In our Catholic colonies in Minnesota a parent has no such dread. He knows where his boys are on week days; they are helping him on the farm. He knows where they are on Sundays; they are with him at church. When they are amusing themselves, he knows that they are with the young people of his neighbors, their companions and co-religionists.

Here, too, the anxious heart of the loving mother is at rest; for she sees her daughters associating with the good and innocent of their own age, and growing up pure and virtuous.

"God made the country and man made the town," is an old saying. The immigration of those of our people adapted to agricultural life from the city to the land will be a benefit, not alone to themselves, but to those they leave behind. By this healthful drain the latter will be left more room, and have more opportunities to better their condition.

From any side we view it, it is a great and good work to encourage and labor for Catholic immigration to the land, where independence shall reward labor, and Catholic zeal shall spread our holy faith over the fertile prairies of the West.