Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada

by Charles Dudley Warner

In St. Paul and Minneapolis one thing notable is the cordial hospitality, another is the public spirit, and another is the intense devotion to business, the forecast and alertness in new enterprises. Where society is fluid and on the move, it seems comparatively easy to interest the citizens in any scheme for the public good. The public spirit of those cities is admirable. One notices also an uncommon power of organization, of devices for saving time. An illustration of this is the immense railway transfer ground here. Midway between the cities is a mile square of land where all the great railway lines meet, and by means of communicating tracks easily and cheaply exchange freight cars, immensely increasing the facility and lessening the cost of transportation. Another illustration of system is the State office of Public Examiner, an office peculiar to Minnesota, an office supervising banks, public institutions, and county treasuries, by means of which a uniform system of accounting is enforced for all public funds, and safety is insured.

There is a large furniture and furnishing store in Minneapolis, well sustained by the public, which gives one a new idea of the taste of the North-west. A community that buys furniture so elegant and chaste in design, and stuffs and decorations so aesthetically good, as this shop offers it, is certainly not deficient either in material refinement or the means to gratify the love of it.

What is there besides this tremendous energy, very material prosperity, and undeniable refinement in living? I do not know that the excellently managed public-school system offers anything peculiar for comment. But the High-school in St. Paul is worth a visit. So far as I could judge, the method of teaching is admirable, and produces good results. It has no rules, nor any espionage. Scholars are put upon their honor. One object of education being character, it is well to have good behavior consist, not in conformity to artificial laws existing only in school, but to principles of good conduct that should prevail everywhere. There is system here, but the conduct expected is that of well-bred boys and girls anywhere. The plan works well, and there are very few cases of discipline. A manual training school is attached—a notion growing in favor in the West, and practised in a scientific and truly educational spirit. Attendance is not compulsory, but a considerable proportion of the pupils, boys and girls, spend a certain number of hours each week in the workshops, learning the use of tools, and making simple objects to an accurate scale from drawings on the blackboard. The design is not at all to teach a trade. The object is strictly educational, not simply to give manual facility and knowledge in the use of tools, but to teach accuracy, the mental training that there is in working out a definite, specific purpose.

The State University is still in a formative condition, and has attached to it a preparatory school. Its first class graduated only in 1872. It sends out on an average about twenty graduates a year in the various departments, science, literature, mechanic arts, and agriculture. The bane of a State university is politics, and in the West the hand of the Granger is on the college, endeavoring to make it “practical.” Probably this modern idea of education will have to run its course, and so long as it is running its course the Eastern colleges which adhere to the idea of intellectual discipline will attract the young men who value a liberal rather than a material education. The State University of Minnesota is thriving in the enlargement of its facilities. About one-third of its scholars are women, but I notice that in the last catalogue, in the Senior Class of twenty-six there is only one woman. There are two independent institutions also that should be mentioned, both within the limits of St. Paul, the Hamline University, under Methodist auspices, and the McAllister College, under Presbyterian. I did not visit the former, but the latter, at least, though just beginning, has the idea of a classical education foremost, and does not adopt co-education. Its library is well begun by the gift of a miscellaneous collection, containing many rare and old books, by the Rev. E. D. Neill, the well-known antiquarian, who has done so much to illuminate the colonial history of Virginia and Maryland. In the State Historical Society, which has rooms in the Capitol in St. Paul, a vigorous and well-managed society, is a valuable collection of books illustrating the history of the North-west. The visitor will notice in St. Paul quite as much taste for reading among business men as exists elsewhere, a growing fancy for rare books, and find some private collections of interest. Though music and art cannot be said to be generally cultivated, there are in private circles musical enthusiasm and musical ability, and many of the best examples of modern painting are to be found in private houses. Indeed, there is one gallery in which is a collection of pictures by foreign artists that would be notable in any city. These things are mentioned as indications of a liberalizing use of wealth.

Wisconsin is not only one of the most progressive, but one of the most enlightened, States in the Union. Physically it is an agreeable and beautiful State, agriculturally it is rich, in the southern and central portions at least, and it is overlaid with a perfect network of railways. All this is well known. I wish to speak of certain other things which give it distinction. I mean the prevailing spirit in education and in social-economic problems. In some respects it leads all the other States.

There seem to be two elements in the State contending for the mastery, one the New England, but emancipated from tradition, the other the foreign, with ideas of liberty not of New England origin. Neither is afraid of new ideas nor of trying social experiments. Co-education seems to be everywhere accepted without question, as if it were already demonstrated that the mingling of the sexes in the higher education will produce the sort of men and women most desirable in the highest civilization. The success of women in the higher schools, the capacity shown by women in the management of public institutions and in reforms and charities, have perhaps something to do with the favor to woman suffrage. It may be that, if women vote there in general elections as well as school matters, on the ground that every public office “relates to education,” Prohibition will be agitated as it is in most other States, but at present the lager-bier interest is too strong to give Prohibition much chance. The capital invested in the manufacture of beer makes this interest a political element of great importance.

Milwaukee and Madison may be taken to represent fairly the civilization of Wisconsin. Milwaukee, having a population of about 175,000, is a beautiful city, with some characteristics peculiar to itself, having the settled air of being much older than it is, a place accustomed to money and considerable elegance of living. The situation on the lake is fine, the high curving bluffs offering most attractive sites for residences, and the rolling country about having a quiet beauty. Grand avenue, an extension of the main business thoroughfare of the city, runs out into the country some two miles, broad, with a solid road, a stately avenue, lined with fine dwellings, many of them palaces in size and elegant in design. Fashion seems to hesitate between the east side and the west side, but the east or lake side seems to have the advantage in situation, certainly in views, and contains a greater proportion of the American population than the other. Indeed, it is not easy to recall a quarter of any busy city which combines more comfort, evidences of wealth and taste and refinement, and a certain domestic character, than this portion of the town on the bluffs, Prospect avenue and the adjacent streets. With the many costly and elegant houses there is here and there one rather fantastic, but the whole effect is pleasing, and the traveller feels no hesitation in deciding that this would be an agreeable place to live. From the avenue the lake prospect is wonderfully attractive—the beauty of Lake Michigan in changing color and variety of lights in sun and storm cannot be too much insisted on—and this is especially true of the noble Esplanade, where stands the bronze statue (a gift of two citizens) of Solomon Juneau, the first settler of Milwaukee in 1818. It is a very satisfactory figure, and placed where it is, it gives a sort of foreign distinction to the open place which the city has wisely left for public use. In this part of the town is the house of the Milwaukee Club, a good building, one of the most tasteful internally, and one of the best appointed, best arranged, and comfortable club-houses In the country. Near this is the new Art Museum (also the gift of a private citizen), a building greatly to be commended for its excellent proportions, simplicity, and chasteness of style, and adaptability to its purpose. It is a style that will last, to please the eye, and be more and more appreciated as the taste of the community becomes more and more refined.

In this quarter are many of the churches, of the average sort, but none calling for special mention except St. Paul’s, which is noble in proportions and rich in color, and contains several notable windows of stained glass, one of them occupying the entire end of one transept, the largest, I believe, in the country. It is a copy of Doré’. painting of Christ on the way to the Crucifixion, an illuminated street scene, with superb architecture of marble and porphyry, and crowded with hundreds of figures in colors of Oriental splendor. The colors are rich and harmonious, but it is very brilliant, flashing in the sunlight with magnificent effect, and I am not sure but it would attract the humble sinners of Milwaukee from a contemplation of their little faults which they go to church to confess.

The city does not neglect education, as the many thriving public schools testify. It has a public circulating library of 42,000 volumes, sustained at an expense of $22,000 a year by a tax; is free, and well patronized. There are good private collections of books also, one that I saw large and worthy to be called a library, especially strong in classic English literature.

Perhaps the greatest industry of the city, certainly the most conspicuous, is brewing. I do not say that the city is in the hands of the brewers, but with their vast establishments they wield great power. One of them, about the largest in the country, and said to equal in its capacity any in Europe, has in one group seven enormous buildings, and is impressive by its extent and orderly management, as well as by the rivers of amber fluid which it pours out for this thirsty country. Milwaukee, with its large German element—two-thirds of the population, most of whom are freethinkers—has no Sunday except in a holiday sense; the theatres are all open, and the pleasure-gardens, which are extensive, are crowded with merrymakers in the season. It is, in short, the Continental fashion, and while the churches and church-goers are like churches and church-goers everywhere, there is an air of general Continental freedom.