so-called. There was much more pleasure and romance in the pioneer experiences of my own ancestors a hundred years ago, who were living in comfortable log-houses with huge fire places, and shooting abundant supplies of deer and wild turkey in the deep woods of southern Ohio. The pluck and industry of these Dakota pioneers, most of whom were Irish men and Norwegians, won my heartiest sympathy and respect. Poor as they were, they maintained one public inst.i.tution in common--namely, a school, with its place of public a.s.semblage. The building had no floor but the beaten earth, and, its thick walls were blocks of matted prairie turf, its roof also being of sods supported upon some poles brought from the scanty timber-growth along the margin of a prairie river. To-day these poor pioneers are enjoying their reward. Their valley is traversed by several railroads; prosperous villages have sprung up; their lands are of considerable value; they all live in well-built farm-houses; their shade trees have grown to a height of fifty or sixty feet; a bustling and ambitious city, with fine churches, opera-houses, electric illumination, and the most advanced public educational system, is only a few miles away from them. Such transformations have occurred, not alone in a few spots in Iowa and South Dakota, but are common throughout a region that extends from the British dominions to the Indian Territory, and from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains--a region comprising more than a half-million square miles.
THE GRANARY OF THE WORLD.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BETWEEN THE MILLS.]
Naturally the industrial life of these Northwestern communities is based solidly upon agriculture. There is, perhaps, hardly any other agricultural region of equal extent upon the face of the earth that is so fertile and so well adapted for the production of the most necessary articles of human food. During the past decade the world"s markets have been notably disturbed and affected, and profound social changes and political agitations have occurred in various remote parts of the earth.
It is within bounds to a.s.sert that the most potent and far-reaching factor in the altered conditions of the industrial world during these recent years has been the sudden invasion and utilization of this great new farming region. Most parts of the world which are fairly prosperous do not produce staple food supplies in appreciable surplus quant.i.ties.
Several regions which are not highly prosperous sell surplus food products out of their poverty rather than out of their abundance. That is to say, the people of India and the people of Russia have often been obliged, in order to obtain money to pay their taxes and other necessary expenses, to sell and send away to prosperous England the wheat which they have needed for hungry mouths at home. They have managed to subsist upon coa.r.s.er and cheaper food. But in our Northwestern States the application of ingenious machinery to the cultivation of fertile and virgin soils has within the past twenty-five years precipitated upon the world a stupendous new supply of cereals and of meats, produced in quant.i.ties enormously greater than the people of the Northwestern States could consume. These foodstuffs have powerfully affected agriculture in Ireland, England, France, and Germany, and, in fact, in every other part of the accessible and cultivated globe.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BARREL-HOIST AND TUNNEL THROUGH THE WASHBURN MILL.]
THE NORTHWESTERN FARMER.
So much has been written of late about the condition of the farmer in these regions that it is pertinent to inquire who the Western farmer is.
In the old States the representative farmer is a man of long training in the difficult and honorable art of diversified agriculture. He knows much of soils, of crops and their wise rotation, of domestic animals and their breeding, and of a hundred distinct phases of the production, the life, and the household economics that belong to the traditions and methods of Anglo-Saxon farming. If he is a wise man, owning his land and avoiding extravagance, he can defy any condition of the markets, and can survive any known succession of adverse seasons. There are also many such farmers in the West. But there are thousands of wheat-raisers or corn-growers who have followed in the wake of the railway and taken up government or railroad land, and who are not yet farmers in the truest and best sense of the word. They are unskilled laborers who have become speculators. They obtain their land for nothing, or for a price ranging from one dollar and fifty cents to five dollars per acre. They borrow on mortgage the money to build a small house and to procure horses and implements and seed-grain. Then they proceed to put as large an acreage as they can manage into a single crop--wheat in the Dakotas, wheat or corn in Nebraska and Kansas. They speculate upon the chances of a favorable season and a good crop safely harvested; and they speculate upon the chances of a profitable market. They hope that the first two crops may render them the possessor of an uninc.u.mbered estate, supplied with modest buildings, and with a reasonable quant.i.ty of machinery and live stock. Sometimes they succeed beyond their antic.i.p.ations. In many instances the chances go against them. They live on the land, and the t.i.tle is invested in them; but they are using borrowed capital, use it unskillfully, meet an adverse season or two, lose through foreclosure that which has cost them nothing except a year or two of energy spent in what is more nearly akin to gambling than to farming, and finally help to swell the great chorus that calls the world to witness the distress of Western agriculture. It cannot be said too emphatically that real agriculture in the West is safe and prosperous, and that the unfortunates are the inexperienced persons, usually without capital, who attempt to raise a single crop on new land. For many of them it would be about as wise to take borrowed money and speculate in wheat in the Chicago bucket-shops.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MOSSBRae.]
The great majority, however, of these inexperienced and capital-less wheat and corn producers gradually become farmers. It is inevitable, at first, that a country opened by the railroads for the express purpose of obtaining the largest possible freightage of cereals should for a few seasons be a "single-crop country." Often the seed-grain is supplied on loan by the roads themselves. They charge "what the traffic will bear."
The grain is all, or nearly all, marketed through long series of elevators following the tracks, at intervals of a few miles, and owned by some central company that bears a close relation to the railroad.
Thus the corporations which control the transportation and handling of the grain in effect maintain for their own advantage an exploitation of the entire regions that they traverse, through the first years of settlement. Year by year the margin of cultivation extends further West, and the single-crop sort of farming tends to recede. The wheat growers produce more barley and oats and flax, try corn successfully, introduce live stock and dairying, and thus begin to emerge as real farmers.
Unless this method of Western settlement is comprehended, it is not possible to understand the old Granger movement and the more recent legislative conflicts between the farmers of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, on the one hand, and the great transportation and grain-handling corporations on the other. It was fundamentally a question of the division of profits. The railroads had "made" the country: were they ent.i.tled to allow the farmers simply a return about equal to the cost of production, keeping for themselves the difference between the cost and the price in the central markets, or were they to base their charges upon the cost of their service, and leave the farmers to enjoy whatever profits might arise from the production of wheat or corn? Out of that protracted contest has been developed the principle of the public regulation of rates. The position of these communities of farmers with interests so similar, forming commonwealths so singularly h.o.m.ogeneous, has led to a reliance upon State aid that is altogether unprecedented in new and spa.r.s.ely settled regions, where individualism has usually been dominant, and governmental activity relatively inferior.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT BLOCK-HOUSE, ALASKA.]
TRANSPORTATION AND OTHER INDUSTRIES.
But agriculture, while the basis of Northwestern wealth, is not the sole pursuit. Transportation has become in these regions a powerful interest, because of the vast surplus agricultural product to be carried away, and of the great quant.i.ties of lumber, coal, salt, and staple supplies in general, to be distributed throughout the new prairie communities. The transformation of the pine forests into the homes of several million people has, of course, developed marvelous sawmill and building industries; and the furnishing of millions of new homes has called into being great factories for the making of wooden furniture, iron stoves, and all kinds of household supplies. In response to the demand for agricultural implements and machinery with which to cultivate five hundred million acres of newly utilized wild land, there have come into existence numerous great establishments for the making of machines that have been especially invented to meet the peculiarities and exigencies of Western farm life.
Through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, Indian corn has become a greater product in quant.i.ty and value than wheat; while in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota the wheat is decidedly the preponderant crop. Although in addition to oats and barley, which flourish in all the Western States, it has been found possible to increase the acreage of maize in the northern tier, it is now believed that the most profitable alternate crop in the lat.i.tude of Minneapolis and St. Paul is to be flax. Already a region including parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas has become the most extensive area of flax culture in the whole world. The crop has been produced simply for the seed, which has supplied large linseed oil factories in Minneapolis, Chicago, and various Western places. But now it has been discovered that the flax straw, which has heretofore been allowed to rot in the fields as a valueless product, can be utilized for a fibre which will make a satisfactory quality of coa.r.s.e linen fabrics.
Linen mills have been established in Minneapolis, and it is somewhat confidently predicted that in course of time the linen industry of that ambitious city will reach proportions even greater than its wonderful flour industry, which for a number of years has been without a rival anywhere in the world.
THE "TWIN CITIES."
The railroad system of the Northwest has been developed in such a way that no one centre may be fairly regarded as the commercial capital of the region. Chicago, with its marvelous foresight, has thrown out lines of travel that draw to itself much of the traffic which would seem normally to belong to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth on the north, or to St. Louis and Kansas City on the south. But in the region now under discussion, the famous "Twin Cities," Minneapolis and St. Paul, const.i.tute unquestionably the greatest and most distinctive centre, both of business and of civilization. They are beautifully situated, and they add to a long list of natural advantages very many equally desirable attractions growing out of the enterprising and ambitious forethought of the inhabitants. They are cities of beautiful homes, pleasant parks, enterprising munic.i.p.al improvements; advanced educational establishments, and varied industrial interests. Each is a distinct urban community, although they lie so near together that they const.i.tute one general centre of commerce and transportation when viewed from a distance. Their stimulating rivalry has had the effect to keep each city alert and to prevent a listless, degenerate local administration. About the Falls of St. Anthony, at Minneapolis, great manufacturing establishments are grouping themselves, and each year adds to the certainty that these two picturesque and charming cities have before them a most brilliant civic future.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FALLS OF ST. ANTHONY, 1885.]
UNITED PUBLIC ACTION AND ITS INFLUENCE.
The tendency to rely upon united public action is ill.u.s.trated 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 cla.s.ses. 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 h.o.m.ogeneous 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, h.o.m.ogeneity, 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 conditions of society.
The extent to which a modern community resorts to State action depends in no small measure upon the acc.u.mulation 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 a.s.sociated 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.
THE INDIAN QUESTION.
The Northwest presents a series of very interesting race problems. The first one, chronologically at least, is the problem that the American Indian presents. It is not so long ago since the Indian was in possession of a very large portion of the region we are now considering.
A number of tribes were gradually removed further West, or were a.s.signed to districts in the Indian Territory. But most of them were concentrated in large reservations in Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. The past few years have witnessed the rapid reduction of these reservations, and the adoption of a policy which, if carried to its logical conclusion with energy and good faith, will at an early date result in the universal education of the children, in the abolition of the system of reservations, and in the settlement of the Indian families upon farms of their own, as fully enfranchised American citizens.
OTHER ELEMENTS OF POPULATION.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LAKE-Sh.o.r.e 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 apt.i.tude 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 st.u.r.diness 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 ma.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s. There is a pleasantness, a hospitality, and a friendliness in the social life of the Western communities that is certainly not surpa.s.sed.
CHAPTER XXIV.
ADMINISTRATION OF McKINLEY, 1897-1901.
William McKinley--Organization of "Greater New York"--Removal of General Grant"s Remains to Morningside Park--The Klondike Gold Excitement--Spain"s Misrule in Cuba--Preliminary Events of the Spanish-American War.
THE TWENTY-FIFTH PRESIDENT.
William McKinley was born at Niles, Trumbull County, Ohio, January 29, 1843, of Scotch ancestry, his father, David, being one of the pioneers of the iron business in Eastern Ohio.
The parents were in moderate circ.u.mstances, and the son, having prepared for college, was matriculated at Alleghany College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, but his poor health soon obliged him to return to his home. He became a schoolteacher at the salary of $25 per month, and, as was the custom in many of the country districts, he "boarded round;"
that is, he made his home by turns with the different patrons of his school. He used rigid economy, his ambition being to save enough money to pay his way through college.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM McKINLEY.
(1843-.) One term, 1897-1901.]
Destiny, however, had another career, awaiting him. The great Civil War was impending, and when the news of the firing on Fort Sumter was flashed through the land, his patriotic impulses were roused, and, like thousands of others, he hurried to the defense of his country. He enlisted in Company E, as a private. It was attached to the Twenty-third Ohio regiment, of which W.S. Rosecrans was colonel and Rutherford B.
Hayes major. Of no other regiment can it be said that it furnished two Presidents to the United States.