RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST.
ET us imagine a man from the East who has visited the Northwestern States and Territories at some time between the years 1870 and 1875, and who retains a strong impression of what he saw, but who has not been west of Chicago since that time, until, in the World’s Fair year he determines upon a new exploration of Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. However well informed he had tried to keep himself through written descriptions and statistical records of Western progress, he would see what nothing but the evidence of his own eyes could have made him believe to be possible. Iowa in 1870 was already producing a large crop of cereals, and was inhabited by a thriving, though very new, farming population. But the aspect of the country was bare and uninviting, except in the vicinity of the older communities on the Mississippi River. As one advanced across the State the farmhouses were very small, and looked like isolated dry-goods boxes; there were few well-built barns or farm buildings; and the struggling young cottonwood and soft-maple saplings planted in close groves about the tiny houses were so slight an obstruction to the sweep of vision across the open prairie that they only seemed to emphasize the monotonous stretches of fertile, but uninteresting plain. Now the landscape is wholly transformed. A railroad ride in June through the best parts of Iowa reminds one of a ride through some of the pleasantest farming districts of England. The primitive “claim shanties” of thirty years ago have given place to commodious farm-houses flanked by great barns and hay-ricks, and the well-appointed structures of a prosperous agriculture. In the rich, deep meadows herds of fine-blooded cattle are grazing. What was once a blank, dreary landscape is now garden-like and inviting. The poor little saplings of the earlier days, which seemed to be apologizing to the robust corn-stalks in the neighboring fields, have grown on that deep soil into great, spreading trees. One can easily imagine, as he looks off in every direction and notes a wooded horizon, that he is—as in Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky—in a farming region which has been cleared out of primeval forests. There are many towns I might mention which twenty-five years ago, with their new, wooden shanties scattered over the bare face of the prairie, seemed the hottest place on earth as the summer sun beat upon their unshaded streets and roofs, and seemed the coldest places on earth when the fierce blizzards of winter swept unchecked across the prairie expanses. To-day the density of shade in those towns is deemed of positive detriment to health, and for several years past there has been a systematic thinning out and trimming up of the great, clustering elms. Trees of from six to ten feet in girth are found everywhere by the hundreds of thousands. Each farm-house is sheltered from winter winds by its own dense groves. Many of the farmers are able from the surplus growth of wood upon their estates to provide themselves with a large and regular supply of fuel. If I have dwelt at some length upon this picture of the transformation of the bleak, grain-producing Iowa prairies of thirty years ago into the dairy and live-stock farms of to-day, with their fragrant meadows and ample groves, it is because the picture is one which reveals so much as to the nature and meaning of Northwestern progress.
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 condition 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.
