THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY, 1885.
UNITED PUBLIC ACTION AND ITS INFLUENCE.
The tendency to rely upon united public action is illustrated in the growth of Northwestern educational systems. The universities of these commonwealths are State universities. Professional education is under the State auspices and control. The normal schools and the agricultural schools belong to the State. The public high school provides intermediate instruction. The common district school, supported jointly by local taxation and State subvention, gives elementary education to the children of all classes. As the towns grow the tendency to graft manual and technical courses upon the ordinary public school curriculum is unmistakably strong. The Northwest, more than any other part of the country, is disposed to make every kind of education a public function.
Radicalism has flourished in the homogeneous agricultural society of the Northwest. In the anti-monopoly conflict there seemed to have survived some of the intensity of feeling that characterized the anti-slavery movement; and a tinge of this fanatical quality has always been apparent in the Western and Northwestern monetary heresies. But it is in the temperance movement that this sweep of radical impulse has been most irresistible. It was natural that the movement should become political and take the form of an agitation for prohibition. The history of prohibition in Iowa, Kansas, and the Dakotas, and of temperance legislation in Minnesota and Nebraska, reveals—even better perhaps than the history of the anti-monopoly movement—the radicalism, homogeneity, and powerful socializing tendencies of the Northwestern people. Between these different agitations there has been in reality no slight degree of relationship; at least their origin is to be traced to the same general conditions of society.
The extent to which a modern community resorts to State action depends in no small measure upon the accumulation of private resources. Public or organized initiative will be relatively strongest where the impulse to progress is positive but the ability of individuals is small. There are few rich men in the Northwest. Iowa, great as is the Hawkeye State, has no large city and no large fortunes. Of Kansas the same thing may be said. The Dakotas have no rich men and no cities. Minnesota has Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Nebraska has Omaha; but otherwise these two States are farming communities, without large cities or concentrated private capital. Accordingly the recourse to public action is comparatively easy. South Dakota farmers desire to guard against drought by opening artesian wells for irrigation. They resort to State legislation and the sale of county bonds. North Dakota wheat-growers are unfortunate in the failure of crops. They secure seed-wheat through State action and their county governments. A similarity of condition fosters associated action and facilitates the progress of popular movements.
In such a society the spirit of action is intense. If there are few philosophers, there is remarkable diffusion of popular knowledge and elementary education. The dry atmosphere and the cold winters are nerve-stimulants, and life seems to have a higher tension and velocity than in other parts of the country.
THE INDIAN QUESTION.
The Northwest presents a series of very interesting race problems. The first one, chronologically at least, is the problem that the American Indian presents. It is not so long ago since the Indian was in possession of a very large portion of the region we are now considering. A number of tribes were gradually removed further West, or were assigned to districts in the Indian Territory. But most of them were concentrated in large reservations in Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. The past few years have witnessed the rapid reduction of these reservations, and the adoption of a policy which, if carried to its logical conclusion with energy and good faith, will at an early date result in the universal education of the children, in the abolition of the system of reservations, and in the settlement of the Indian families upon farms of their own, as fully enfranchised American citizens.
OTHER ELEMENTS OF POPULATION.