Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada

by Charles Dudley Warner

One of the most striking facts in the West is State pride, attachment 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.