The eloquence of these figures, and of the conditions behind them, was not left to do its work by chance in the private letters of immigrants or in the occasional pamphlet. States and counties, as well as railroad corporations disseminated very widely and systematically the knowledge of the opportunities open to the laborer in the great West. If he were a man who would progress from a temporary tho necessary factor in construction or in the field, to a permanent settler taking up vacant land, so much the better for the State and the corporation. Fortunately for those great railroads, which were pushing construction and receiving large subsidies in public lands, they found just such men in the Swedes and Norwegians. As the Rock Island railroad pushed across Illinois and Iowa, as the Northern Pacific built out through Minnesota and Dakota, and as the road now known as the Great Northern carried its lines from St. Paul into the Red River valley, and on across North Dakota, the Scandinavian and the Irishman supplied the demand for labor front 1850 to 1890, in precisely the same way as the Italian, Pole, Mexican and Greek have been doing in later years.
When construction of a railroad ended, the demand for immigrants merely changed its form and became cumulative. The dividends of any railroad running out into a new country depend on the development of the tributary territory, and this is especially true of the land-grant roads which owned half of the land within ten miles of their tracks. Thus it came about that the Scandinavians were doubly valuable, first as laborers for wages, and second as independent farmers in the townships made accessible by the new lines.[198] It was, indeed, faith in human nature, and especially Swedish and Norwegian human nature, which led to the construction and profitable operation of hundreds of miles of new roads in Minnesota and Dakota after 1880. One prominent railroad man estimated that each settler (presumably each head of a family) meant in the long run from $200 to $300 a year for the railroad.[199]
The fulfilment of the expectations of the builders of railroads and commonwealths was often surprisingly prompt. The prophetic insight of at least one “captain of industry,” President James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway Company which built its transcontinental system without land-grant, was as sure a reliance for capital as the subsidy of the federal Government. Speaking in 1902 at Crookston, in the center of the great Scandinavian region in northwestern Minnesota, he described in striking terms the growth of farm values, and of the railroad business in some of the towns in Minnesota and North Dakota: “I took the best towns [of the Red River valley] outside Crookston [for comparison with towns in North Dakota].... I will give you the annual business. Warren’s last year’s railroad business with our company was $86,000; Hallock, $94,000,—a respectable sum; Stephen, $87,000; Ada, $81,000.... Langdon [in North Dakota] ... away up towards the boundary, upon Pembina Mountain, $210,000; Osnabrock, I hardly know where it is myself, $101,000; Park River, $170,000; ... Bottineau, away at the west end of the Turtle Mountains, where a few years ago people said it was too far away; could not live there and could not raise anything if they did live there, $258,000.... Land up there [around Bottineau], worth $3, $5, and $8 an acre, and a few pieces $10 an acre, a few years ago, is worth today $25 and $30 per acre.”[200]
The railroads left nothing undone to stimulate the economic desire of the Scandinavians to migrate to their particular sections of land and to the adjoining government sections. Several companies maintained for years regular immigration or land agents, besides a considerable and variable corps of sub-agents, port agents, and lecturers; some of them paid the expenses of men representing groups of prospective immigrants, who desired to visit and report upon a particular locality. The St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railroad advertised in “Facts about Minnesota” (1881): “The settler—his family, household goods, live stock and agricultural implements—will be carried from St. Paul to any point on either of our lines at one-half the regular price.”
Besides these efforts and inducements, the railroad companies prepared handbooks in different languages, distributed them widely throughout the East and West, and circulated them systematically in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.[201] A few of the companies even sent special representatives to Europe to work directly with the people of those countries. The Hon. Hans Mattson left the office of Secretary of State in Minnesota in 1871 to become the liberally paid European agent for the Northern Pacific Railroad whose resources he was to advertise from his headquarters in Sweden.[202] He was not, however, to organize regular parties of emigrants. A high official of one of the northwestern roads summed up the matter by saying, “There is as much competition among the railroads desiring to attract immigrants, as among dry-goods stores in aiming to attract customers.”
The northwestern State governments were hardly less interested in inducing immigrants to help fill up the vacant square miles and townships than were the railroads, for developed farms meant towns, diversified industry, and greater assessment values, which, being translated, meant much-needed public buildings, institutions, and improvements. The competition of the States, for immigrants such as the Norwegians, re-enforced and parallelled that of the railroad and land companies. Wisconsin appointed a Commissioner of Emigration in 1852, who resided in New York, and employed a Norwegian and a German assistant.[203] The following year another Act created a Traveling Emigrant Agent, and prescribed that he should “travel constantly between this State and the city of New York,” to advertise “our great natural resources, advantages and privileges, and brilliant prospects for the future.”[204] Pamphlets by the thousand in German, Norwegian, and Dutch were sent out in America and Europe. The office was abolished in 1855, but in 1867 another Act created an unpaid Board of Immigration and appropriated $2,000 for printing pamphlets in English, Welsh, German, and the Scandinavian languages.[205] The State even went so far, in a later Act, as to authorize the Board, in its discretion, to help with money, “such immigrants as are determined to make Wisconsin their future home.”[206]
The Board was succeeded by a Commissioner (Ole C. Johnson) in 1871, whose office was in turn abolished in 1874. The story of Wisconsin’s later organizations for promoting immigration ought almost to go into the chapter on politics—a new Board in 1879, abolished in 1887, renewed for two years in 1895, and revived for another two years in 1899.[207] In 1880, at the request of the president of the Wisconsin Central Railway Company, K. K. Kennan, agent of the land department of that company, was also appointed agent for the State in Europe, without expense to the State.[208]
For the same purposes, and with the same methods, Iowa had a Commissioner, 1860-1862, and a Board (of which the Rev. C. L. Clausen was a member), 1870-1874, which sent agents to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, where they published articles in the newspapers and stirred up emigration sentiment.[209]
Minnesota, likewise, in 1867 created a Board of Emigration, and Hans Mattson was appointed secretary. He proved a very efficient officer, and not the less so because at the same time, as he admits, he acted as land agent for one of the great railroad companies, whose line went through Wright, Meeker, Kandiyohi, Swift and Stevens counties.[210] Of the work of the Board, Mattson gives a convincing summary: “In the above-named localities there were only a few widely scattered families when I went there in 1867, while it is now (1891) one continuous Scandinavian settlement, extending over a territory more than a hundred miles long and dotted over with cities and towns, largely the result of the work of the board of emigration during the years 1867, 1868, and 1869.... Our efforts, however, in behalf of Minnesota brought on a great deal of envy and ill-will from people in other States who were interested in seeing the Scandinavian emigration turned towards Kansas and other States, and this feeling went so far that a prominent newspaper writer in Kansas accused me of selling my countrymen to a life not much better than slavery in a land of ice, snow, and perpetual winter, where, if the poor emigrant did not starve to death, he would surely perish with cold. Such at that time was the opinion of many concerning Minnesota.”[211]