In his annual message for 1874 Governor Austin advised the legislature that the text-books used in the common schools were sold to parents at exorbitant prices fixed by a convention of the publishing craft, but made no definite suggestion for relief. Ignatius Donnelly, who was in the state senate continuously from 1874 to 1878, took the lead in an effort to emancipate the people from the tyranny of the school-book ring. His favorite plan was to have the state print books prepared by competent experts and distribute them free to the schools. Two bills for this purpose were passed by the senate and defeated in the house. In 1877 a well-known book dealer of St. Paul came forward with a proposition to furnish text-books as good as those in use for half the prices exacted, provided he could have a fifteen-year contract. To this the legislature agreed, and the contract was made and executed. Mr. Donnelly’s biographer claims that the saving to the state in that term was at least $2,839,765. There is no positive evidence of the allegations that large amounts of money were used to defeat the bill.
In all the territories of the Northwest as they were successively carved out of the old Northwest Territory, provisions were made in their organic acts for universities, to be endowed by grants of land from the general government. That universities could not in fact appear and exist until after the development of fitting schools did not trouble the pioneers, intent chiefly on getting the lands. The reliance of American colleges generally for the preparation of their students had been upon the excellent academies, controlled or countenanced by Christian denominations, which were the ornaments of so many eastern villages. The academy did not multiply nor flourish in the West. Ambitious cities existing on highly colored lithographic maps could tolerate nothing less than a college or university. A score of them were chartered in Minnesota in the fifties. All the western colleges were obliged to open preparatory departments, and it may be said that they have never done more useful service than in thus setting patterns for the secondary education of the future. When the University of Minnesota began college work in 1869 there were practically no efficient preparatory schools in the state. After a study of the situation the president of the university formed the opinion that it was to the budding high schools of the state that the university must look for its supply of students prepared for college work. At the state teachers’ convention of 1872 that body was asked by a committee from the board of regents to join in an endeavor to bring about a vital organic connection between the high schools and the university. It was not proposed that these schools should be made over into mere “fitting schools,” but that, while performing their great function as “people’s colleges,” they should accommodate those worthy, and ambitious youth desirous to carry their school and professional educations still farther. The idea was not unwelcome, but it was not easy to work out a plan of vital, organic connection. Yet one was worked out, embodied in a bill drawn by the head of the university, and laid before the legislature of 1878. The law enacted provided for a money payment out of the state treasury to any high school which, having the proper faculty and equipment, would maintain preparatory courses of study, and admit thereto pupils of both sexes from any part of the state, free of tuition. The schools were obliged to submit to inspection and make reports to the “high school board.” The high schools of cities and villages were thus employed as the state’s agencies for extending free secondary education to all the youth of the state. A beginning was made under the law in the year of its passage, but owing to an omission in an appropriation bill it was not put into full and effective operation till 1881. The results have fully equaled all reasonable expectations. The university, the high schools, and the common schools of Minnesota have been converted from a loose aggregation into a complete, harmonious, organized system. There is open to every child of the state a course of free school education from the kindergarten to the doctorate of philosophy.
On May 2, 1878, soon after seven o’clock in the evening an explosion took place in the Washburn flour mill in Minneapolis. The report was heard at great distances, the windows in neighboring streets were shattered, and not one stone of the great building was left on another above the foundations. Two other mills of less capacity, standing near, blew up within a few seconds, and three others took fire and were completely destroyed. It was the hour for the change of shift of day to night crews, or many more than eighteen men would have lost their lives. The insurance companies, when called upon to pay their losses, demurred, taking the ground that they had insured against fire only, and not against chemical explosion. Mr. Louis Peck, the instructor in physics in the University of Minnesota, attracted by the problem, conducted an exhaustive course of experiments to ascertain the truth of the matter. Some of them were exhibited to the public. His conclusion was that the mills were destroyed by a true fire. He found that any carbonaceous dust, flour, starch, or even sawdust, diffused through the atmosphere, would take fire and burn with an incalculable rapidity from a spark or flame. His testimony compelled the payment of the insurances. The statement of a Minnesota historian that this excellent bit of scientific work was done by a professor in Berlin is erroneous.
Even more disastrous was a fire which on November 15, 1880, destroyed a wing of the hospital for the insane at St. Peter. Twenty-seven patients lost their lives. The state capitol, erected in 1853, took fire in the evening of March 1, 1881, while the senate was in session, and was completely destroyed. Fortunately no lives were lost, but the senators made their escape none too soon. The ceiling fell as the last of them reached the street.
The Fourth of July, 1880, was the two hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Falls of St. Anthony by Father Louis Hennepin. The event was commemorated by a celebration held on the university campus, under the management of the Minnesota Historical Society, General Sibley presiding. The principal address was delivered by Mr. Cushman K. Davis. Archbishop Ireland charitably defended the Franciscan father from charges of untruthfulness on the ground that unauthorized interpolations were made in his original book. General William T. Sherman was present, and was heard in some happy extemporaneous remarks.
The reader already knows how the people of Minnesota, believing themselves to have been tricked and swindled by a combination of corrupt politicians and greedy railroad operators, forbade in 1860, by a constitutional amendment, their legislature to make any provision for redeeming the special Minnesota state railroad bonds without their affirmative vote. The holders of the bonds refrained from attempts to secure recognition of their claims till after the close of the Civil War. The legislature of 1866 yielded to their urgency so far as to appoint a commission to ascertain who were then holding the bonds and at what prices they had obtained them. The working members of the commission were John Nicols and General Lucius F. Hubbard. It was in this year that the discovery occurred of 500,000 acres of public land coming to the state under the forgotten act of 1841. On Governor Marshall’s recommendation the legislature of 1867, without waiting for the report of the Nicols commission, joyously devoted those acres to the redemption of the bonds. Under the constitutional amendment of 1860 the act had to run the gauntlet of popular vote. The electors turned down the bill by a decisive majority.
The Nicols commission reported to the legislature of 1868 that they had found 1840 of the 2275 bonds in the hands or control of 106 persons. The largest holder was Selah Chamberlain of Ohio, who had held the largest contracts for construction. He averred that his bonds had cost him “more than par” for work done and material furnished; and claimed the whole amount with interest to date as justly due him. Other holders had obtained their bonds by purchase as low as seventeen and one half cents on the dollar. In response to allegations frequently repeated, that the grading done by Mr. Chamberlain for three of the four companies had never cost $9500 a mile, the commission employed an experienced engineer to examine the work and make an estimate of what it should reasonably have cost. His figure was $2843.42 per mile. The report of the Nicols commission did much to confirm the Minnesota people in the conviction that the men who had tricked and cheated them had no standing as honest creditors. Governor Marshall, however, believing that the innocent holders for value at least had just claims, urged the legislature to use the internal improvement lands to satisfy their claims. An absurd bill of 1869 he felt obliged to disapprove. Another of 1870, passed in response to an appeal in his closing message, proposing to turn over the lands at a price which would produce a sum sufficient to pay the bonds, became a law and was ratified by a large majority of the electors voting thereon. The legislature had imposed the condition that the act should not be in effect until at least 2000 bonds had been offered for redemption. But 1032 were turned in, and the act was futile. Governor Austin expressed his regret that the bondholders were unwilling to accept so “fair and equitable a compromise.” The legislature of 1871 entertained a new proposition. The bill introduced provided for a commission whose first duty should be to ascertain and decide whether the bonds were a legal and equitable obligation against the state. If the decision should be affirmative, the commission was to award to each holder the amount due him on the basis of cost, and deliver to him proper amount of new state bonds. The railroad taxes were to be devoted to the redemption of the new bonds. General Sibley had left his retirement and taken a seat in the house of representatives because of his desire to see the old bond matter settled. He had never wavered from his opinion that the state was a debtor to the full amount of the bonds issued. But for his influence the bill could not have passed. He would not believe that Minnesota would not at some time pay what she had promised to pay. Could he so believe, he declared in his speech, he would emigrate to some community in which he would not suffer the “intolerable humiliation” of living in a “repudiating state frowned on by a just and righteous God and abhorred by man.” Governor Austin, although he sympathized with the popular feeling, did not disapprove the bill, but let it go to be mercilessly slaughtered at the polls. The people would not pay mere paper obligations without right or equity behind them. Such they held the bonds to be.
Having failed to obtain satisfaction from the political authorities, the claimants presently resorted to the courts. In 1873 Mr. Chamberlain, their representative, sued the St. Paul and Sioux City Railroad Company to recover from that company as assignee of a portion of the land grant, which he claimed to be still subject to the mortgages authorized by the “five million loan bill.” The decision went against him in the Circuit Court of the United States, and he took an appeal to the Supreme Court, to be there finally defeated. Both of these courts, however, took opportunity to declare that the bonds were legal obligations, and that if the state of Minnesota were suable no court of justice could refuse to adjudge her to pay. “Justice and honor alike” bound her to redeem her bonds. The state of Minnesota was thus branded by the highest judicial tribunals of the land as a defaulting, repudiating state, regardless of the claims of honor and justice. These opinions—they were not decrees—had little effect on the Minnesota people, most of whom never heard of them, but they did affect the minds of many of her public men, who smarted under the reproaches they could not help but hear. Governor Davis in his retiring message urged the establishment of a commission to arbitrate between the bondholders and the state. Governor Pillsbury in his inaugural address urged the payment of the bonds in full, to redeem the reputation of the state. To these appeals the legislators gave no heed. To the legislature of 1877 Mr. Chamberlain for himself and others submitted an offer to cut their claims in two and accept new six per cent. bonds in payment. To this the legislature promptly agreed, but the electors in the following November put their veto on the bill. They did the same thing to an act of 1878 providing for an exchange of internal improvement lands for the bonds, differing in particulars from a previous act of the same general tenor.