In the fall of 1887 the citizens of Minneapolis were honored by a visit from a large number of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish military officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers. They arrived by an express train from Chicago, and were met at the union depot by thousands of people. The Swedish Guard, Normanna Infantry, and the society Dania were paraded outside the depot building. The guests were received by a committee, and conducted in procession through the illuminated and crowded streets to Dania hall, where a splendid banquet was enjoyed, while music was discoursed by the Svea and Normanna bands. The city mayor, Dr. Ames, made an address of welcome, after which several Scandinavians made speeches. I had been elected as the spokesman for the Swedes, and expressed myself as follows:
“Honored Guests from Sweden, Norway and Denmark:
“From the place where we now stand the roar of the St. Anthony falls may be heard through the still night. You are, therefore, far back in the depths of the American West; and yet this is only the modern gate of entrance to the great North-west.
“A couple of hours ago a half dozen railway trains left our depot over different roads and are now speeding on toward the setting sun, and some of them do not cease their journey until they have passed distances greater than that between London and Rome, through fertile, but, as yet, mostly unsettled regions. Thirty-four years ago I, with a few other of your countrymen, some of the earliest in Minnesota, gazed for the first time at
the St. Anthony falls. There was no city, not even a sign of a city, on this side of the river; the red man chased his game in the woods where our churches and school-houses now stand; the country west of us was an unknown wilderness, Minnesota did not exist as a state, and many of our western states, which now contain millions of happy inhabitants, were not even projected.
“Now, on the contrary, our state alone is a mighty empire, with a population of nearly a million and a half, and with an assessed valuation of six hundred million dollars. Minnesota now produces a hundred million bushels of grain annually on her fertile fields, six hundred and fifty million feet of lumber from her forests, and her infant iron mines already show an annual production of half a million tons of rich ore. The Scandinavians constitute more than one-fourth of the population of the state, and produce at least one-third of our agricultural products on their own lands, as most of them are farmers. The amount of grain which in Minnesota alone is annually produced, would be more than sufficient to furnish the whole population of Sweden with bread from the beginning to the end of each year.
CAPITOL OF MINNESOTA.
“Our beautiful city of Minneapolis has already a population of one hundred and sixty thousand, of which at least one-fourth, or forty thousand, are Scandinavians or their descendants.
“I hope you will all have an opportunity to see our city with your own eyes before you leave us,—its mills, churches, schools and happy homes,—and will therefore not consume the time by referring to these.