LAKE-SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO.
The most potent single element of population in the Northwest is of New England origin, although more than half of it has found its way into Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, by filtration through the intermediate States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. But there has also been a vast direct immigration from abroad; and this element has come more largely, by far, from the northern than from the central and southern races of Europe. The Scandinavian peninsula and the countries about the Baltic and North Seas have supplied the Northwest with a population that already numbers millions. From Chicago to Montana there is now a population of full Scandinavian origin, which, perhaps, may be regarded as about equal in numbers to the population that remains in Sweden and Norway. In Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, as well as in northern Iowa and in some parts of Nebraska, there are whole counties where the population is almost entirely Scandinavian. Upon all this portion of the country for centuries to come the Scandinavian patronymics will be as firmly fixed as they have been upon the Scotch and English coasts, where the Northmen intrenched themselves so numerously and firmly about nine hundred or a thousand years ago. The Scandinavians in the Northwest become Americans with a rapidity unequaled by any other non-English-speaking element. Their political ambition is as insatiate as that of the Irish, and they already secure offices in numbers. Their devotion to the American school system, their political aptitude and ambition, and their enthusiastic pride in American citizenship are thoroughly hopeful traits, and it is generally believed that they will contribute much of strength and sturdiness to the splendid race of Northwestern Americans that is to be developed in the Upper Mississippi and Missouri Valleys. The Northwestern Germans evince a tendency to mass in towns, as in Milwaukee, and to preserve intact their language and national traits.
SOCIETY AND GENERAL CULTURE.
The large towns of the Northwest are notable for the great numbers of the brightest and most energetic of the young business and professional men of the East that they contain. While they lack the leisure class and the traditions of culture that belong to older communities, they may justly claim a far higher percentage of college-bred men and of families of cultivated tastes than belong to Eastern towns of like population. The intense pressure of business and absorption of private pursuits are, for the present, seeming obstacles to the progress of Western communities in the highest things; but already the zeal for public improvements and for social progress in all that pertains to true culture is very great. Two decades hence no man will question the quality of Northwestern civilization. If the East is losing something of its distinctive Americanism through the influx of foreign elements and the decay of its old-time farming communities, the growth of the Northwest, largely upon the basis of New England blood and New England ideas, will make full compensation.
Every nation of the world confronts its own racial or climatic or industrial problems, and nowhere is there to be found an ideal state of happiness or virtue or prosperity; but, all things considered, it may well be doubted whether there exists any other extensive portion, either of America or of the world, in which there is so little of pauperism, of crime, of social inequality, of ignorance, and of chafing discontent, as in the agricultural Northwest that lies between Chicago and the Rocky Mountains. Schools and churches are almost everywhere flourishing in this region, and the necessities of life are not beyond the reach of any element or class. There is a pleasantness, a hospitality, and a friendliness in the social life of the Western communities that is certainly not surpassed.