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.
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.