blaineJAMES G. BLAINE. (1830-1893.)Secretary of State underHarrison's administration.
JAMES G. BLAINE. (1830-1893.)Secretary of State underHarrison's administration.
President Harrison was of the same mind, and authorized the presence on the island of troops that might be needed to protect the lives and property of Americans there, but he disavowed the protectorate. No doubt, however, he favored the movement, but thought it wise to "make haste slowly."
In a short time, a treaty was framed which was acceptable to the President. It provided that the government of Hawaii should remain as it was, the supreme power to be vested in a commissioner of the United States, with the right to veto any of the acts of the local government. The public debt was to be assumed by the United States, while Liliuokalani was to be pensioned at the rate of $20,000 a year, and her daughter was to receive $150,000. President Harrison urged upon the Senate the ratification of the treaty, fearing that delay would induce some other power to step in and take the prize.
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S CHANGE OF POLICY.
Such was the status when President Cleveland came into office on the 4th of March, 1893. His views were the very opposite of his predecessor's, and he took steps to enforce them. He maintained there would have been no revolution in Hawaii had not the force of marines landed from theBoston. He withdrew the proposed treaty from the Senate, and sent James H. Blount, of Georgia, to Hawaii as special commissioner to make an investigation of all that had occurred, and to act in harmony with the views of the President. On the 1st of April, Blount caused the American flag to be hauled down, and formally dissolved the protectorate. Minister Stevens was recalled and succeeded by Mr. Blount as minister plenipotentiary. Steps were taken to restore Liliuokalani, and her own brutal stubbornness was all that prevented. She was determined to have the lives of the leaders who had deposed her, and to banish their families. This could not be permitted, and the Dole government refused the request to yield its authority to the queen.
The situation brought President Cleveland to a standstill, for he had first to obtain the authority of Congress in order to use force, and that body was so opposed to his course that it would never consent to aid him. The provisional government grew stronger, and speedily suppressed a rebellion that was set on foot by the queen. It won the respect of its enemies by showing clemency to the plotters, when it would have been legally justified in putting the leaders to death. The queen was arrested, whereupon she solemnly renounced for herself and heirs all claim to the throne, urged her subjects to do the same, and declared her allegiance to the republic.
ANNEXATION OF HAWAII.
Let us anticipate a few events. In May, 1898, Representative Newlands introduced into the House a resolution providing for the annexation of Hawaii. Considerable opposition developed in the Senate, but the final vote was carried, July 6th, by 42 to 21. The President appointed as members of the commission, Senators Shelby M. Cullom, of Illinois; John T. Morgan, of Alabama; Representative Robert R. Hitt, of Illinois; and President Dole and Chief Justice Judd, of the Hawaiian Republic. All the congressmen named were members of the Committee on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs.
The news of the admission of Hawaii to the Union was received in the islands with great rejoicing. A salute of one hundred guns was fired on the Executive Building grounds at Honolulu, and the formal transfer, August 12th, was attended with appropriate ceremonies. A full description of these interesting islands, their history and their products, will be found in Chapter XXVI. of this volume.
THE GREAT RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1894.
One of the greatest railroad strikes in this country occurred in the summer of 1894. Early in the spring of that year, the Pullman Car Company, whose works are near Chicago, notified their employes that they had to choose between accepting a reduction in their wages or having the works closed. They accepted the cut, although the reduction was from twenty-five to fifty per cent. of what they had been receiving.
When May came, the distressed workmen declared it impossible for them and their families to live on their meagre pay. They demanded a restoration of the old rates; but the company refused, affirming that they were running the business at a loss and solely with a view of keeping the men at work. On the 11th of May, 3,000 workmen, a majority of the whole number, quit labor and the company closed their works.
The American Railway Union assumed charge of the strike and ordered a boycott of all Pullman cars. Eugene V. Debs was the president of the Union, and his sweeping order forbade all engineers, brakemen, and switchmen to handle the Pullman cars on every road that used them. This was far-reaching, since the Pullman cars are used on almost every line in the country.
A demand was made upon the Pullman Company to submit the question to arbitration, but the directors refused on the ground that there was nothing to arbitrate, the question being whether or not they were to be permitted to operate their own works for themselves. A boycott was declared on all roads running out of Chicago, beginning on the Illinois Central. Warning was given to every road handling the Pullman cars that its employes would be called out, and, if that did not prove effective, every trade in the country would be ordered to strike.
railwayON THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILWAY.
ON THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILWAY.
The railroad companies were under heavy bonds to draw the Pullman cars, and it would have cost large sums of money to break their contracts. They refused to boycott, and, on June 26th, President Debs declared a boycott on twenty-two roads running out of Chicago, and ordered the committees representing the employes to call out the workmen without an hour's unnecessary delay.
The strike rapidly spread. Debs urged the employes to refrain from injuring the property of their employers, but such advice is always thrown away. Very soon rioting broke out, trains were derailed, and men who attempted to take the strikers' places were savagely maltreated. There was such a general block of freight that prices of the necessaries of life rose in Chicago and actual suffering impended. So much property was destroyed that the companies called on the city and county authorities for protection. The men sent to cope with the strikers were too few, and when Governor Altgeld forwarded troops to the scenes of the outbreaks, they also were too weak, and many of the militia openly showed their sympathy with the mob.
Growing bolder, the strikers checked the mails and postal service and resisted deputy marshals. This brought the national government into the quarrel, since it is bound to provide for the safe transmission of the mails. On July 2d a Federal writ was issued covering the judicial district of northern Illinois, forbidding all interference with the United States mails and with interstate railway commerce. Several leaders of the strike were arrested, whereat the mob became more threatening than ever. The government having been notified that Federal troops were necessary to enforce the orders of the courts in Chicago, a strong force of cavalry, artillery, and infantry was sent thither. Governor Altgeld protested, and President Cleveland told him in effect to attend to his own business and sent more troops to the Lake City.
There were several collisions between the mob and military, in which a number of the former were killed. Buildings were fired, trains ditched, and the violence increased, whereupon the President dispatched more troops thither, with the warning that if necessary he would call out the whole United States army to put down the law-breakers.
The strike, which was pressed almost wholly by foreigners, was not confined to Chicago. A strong antipathy is felt toward railroads in California, owing to what some believe have been the wrongful means employed by such corporations on the Pacific coast.
There were ugly outbreaks in Los Angeles, Oakland, and Sacramento, the difficulty being intensified by the refusal of the militia to act against the strikers. A force of regular soldiers, while hurrying over the railroad to the scene of the disturbance, was ditched by the strikers and several killed and badly hurt. The incensed soldiers were eager for a chance to reach the strikers, but they were under fine discipline and their officers showed great self-restraint.
END OF THE STRIKE.
The course of all violent strikes is short. The savage acts repel whatever sympathy may have been felt for the workingmen at first. Few of the real sufferers took part in the turbulent acts. It was the foreigners and the desperate men who used the grievances as a pretext for their outlawry, in which they were afraid to indulge at other times. Then, too, the stern, repressive measures of President Cleveland had a salutary effect. Many labor organizations when called upon to strike replied with expressions of sympathy, but decided to keep at work. President Debs, Vice-President Howard, and other prominent members of the American Railway Union were arrested, July 10th, on the charge of obstructing the United States mails and interfering with the execution of the laws of the United States. A number—forty-three in all—was indicted by the Federal grand jury, July 19th, and the bonds were fixed at $10,000 each. Bail was offered, but they declined to accept it and went to jail. On December 14th, Debs was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for contempt, the terms of the others being fixed at three months.
On August 5th, the general committee of strikers officially declared the strike at an end in Chicago, and their action was speedily imitated elsewhere.
COXEY'S COMMONWEAL ARMY.
One of the most remarkable appeals made directly to the law-making powers by the unemployed was that of Coxey's "Commonweal Army." Despite some of its grotesque features, it was deserving of more sympathy than it received, for it represented a pitiful phase of human poverty and suffering.
The scheme was that of J.S. Coxey, of Massillon, Ohio, who left that town on the 25th of March, 1894, with some seventy-five men. They carried no weapons, and believed they would gather enough recruits on the road to number 100,000 by the time they reached Washington, where their demands made directly upon Congress would be so imposing that that body would not dare refuse them. They intended to ask for the passage of two acts: the first to provide for the issue of $500,000,000 in legal-tender notes, to be expended under the direction of the secretary of war at the rate of $20,000,000 monthly, in the construction of roads in different parts of the country; the second to authorize any State, city, or village to deposit in the United States treasury non-interest-bearing bonds, not exceeding in amount one-half the assessed valuation of its property, on which the secretary of the treasury should issue legal-tender notes.
This unique enterprise caused some misgiving, for it was feared that such an immense aggregation of the unemployed would result in turbulence and serious acts of violence. Few could restrain sympathy for the object of the "army," while condemning the means adopted to make its purpose effective.
The result, however, was a dismal fiasco. The trampers committed no depredations, and when they approached a town and camped near it the authorities and citizens were quite willing to supply their immediate wants in order to get rid of them. But, while a good many recruits were added, fully as many deserted. At no time did Coxey's army number more than 500 men, and when it reached Washington on the 1st of May it included precisely 336 persons, who paraded through the streets. Upon attempting to enter the Capitol grounds they were excluded by the police. Coxey and two of his friends disregarded the commands, and were arrested and fined five dollars apiece and sentenced to twenty days' imprisonment for violating the statute against carrying a banner on the grounds and in not "keeping off the grass." The army quickly dissolved and was heard of no more.
Similar organizations started from Oregon, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and different points for Washington. In some instances disreputable characters joined them and committed disorderly acts. In the State of Washington they seized a railroad train, had a vicious fight with deputy marshals, and it was necessary to call out the militia to subdue them. Trouble occurred in Kansas, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. The total strength of the six industrial armies never reached 6,000.
ADMISSION OF UTAH.
On the 4th of January, 1896, Utah became the forty-fifth member of the Federal Union. The symbolical star on the flag is at the extreme right of the fourth row from the top. The size of the national flag was also changed from 6 by 5 feet to 5 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 4 inches.
Utah has been made chiefly famous through the Mormons, who emigrated thither before the discovery of gold in California. Its size is about double that of the State of New York, and its chief resources are mineral and agricultural. It forms a part of the Mexican cession of 1848, and its name is derived from the Ute or Utah Indians. Salt Lake City was founded, and Utah asked for admission into the Union in 1849, but was refused. A territorial government was organized in 1860, with Brigham Young as governor. It has been shown elsewhere that in 1857 it was necessary to send Federal troops to Utah to enforce obedience to the laws. Polygamy debarred its admission to the Union for many years.
The constitution of the State allows women to vote, hold office, and sit on juries, and a trial jury numbers eight instead of twelve persons, three-fourths of whom may render a verdict in civil cases, but unanimity is required to convict of crime. The constitution also forbids polygamy, and the Mormon authorities maintain that it is not practiced except where plural marriages were contracted before the passage of the United States law prohibiting such unions.
It has been said by scientists that the power which goes to waste at Niagara Falls would, if properly utilized, operate all the machinery in the world. The discoveries made in electricity have turned attention to this inconceivable storage of power, with the result that Niagara has been practically "harnessed."
In 1886, the Niagara Falls Power Company was incorporated, followed three years later by that of the Cataract Construction Company. Work began in October, 1890, and three more years were required to complete the tunnel, the surface-canal, and the preliminary wheel-pits.
The first distribution of power was made in August, 1895, to the works of the Pittsburg Reduction Company, near the canal. Other companies were added, and the city of Buffalo, in December, 1895, granted a franchise to the company to supply power to that city. The first customer was the Buffalo Railway Company. November 15, 1896, at midnight, the current was transmitted by a pole line, consisting of three continuous cables of uninsulated copper, whose total length was seventy-eight miles. Since that date, the street cars have been operated by the same motor, with more industrial points continually added.
goldA GOLD PROSPECTING PARTYON DEBATABLE LAND IN BRITISH GUIANA.
A GOLD PROSPECTING PARTYON DEBATABLE LAND IN BRITISH GUIANA.
While our past history shows that we have had only two wars with Great Britain, yet it shows also that talk of war has been heard fully a score of times. Long after 1812, we were extremely sensitive as regarded the nation that the majority of Americans looked upon as our hereditary foe, and the calls for war have been sounded in Congress and throughout the land far oftener than most people suspect. That such a calamity to mankind has been turned aside is due mainly to the good sense and mutual forbearance of the majority of people in both countries. England and the United States are the two great English-speaking nations. Together they are stronger than all the world combined. With the same language, the same literature, objects, aims, and religion, a war between them would be the most awful catastrophe that could befall humanity.
The last flurry with the "mother country" occurred in the closing weeks of 1895, and related to Venezuela, which had been at variance with England for many years. Until 1810, the territory lying between the mouths of the Orinoco and the Amazon was known as the Guianas. In the year named Spain ceded a large part of the country to Venezuela, and in 1814 Holland ceded another to Great Britain. The boundary between the Spanish and Dutch possessions had never been fixed by treaty, and the dispute between England and Venezuela lasted until 1887, when diplomatic relations were broken off between the two countries.
Venezuela asked that the dispute might be submitted to arbitration, but England would not agree, though the territory in question was greater in extent than the State of New York. The United States was naturally interested, for the "Monroe Doctrine" was involved, and in February, 1895, Congress passed a joint resolution, approving the suggestion of the President that the question should be submitted to arbitration, but England still refused. A lengthy correspondence took place between Great Britain and this country, and, on December 17, 1895, in submitting it to Congress, President Cleveland asked for authority from that body to appoint a commission to determine the merits of the boundary dispute, as a guide to the government in deciding its line of action, insisting further that, if England maintained her unwarrantable course, the United States should resist "by every means in its power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands, or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory, which after investigation we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela."
There was no mistaking the warlike tone of these words. The country and Congress instantly fired up and the land resounded with war talk. Congress immediately appropriated the sum of $100,000 for the expense of the commission of inquiry, and two days later the Senate passed the bill without a vote in opposition. The committee was named on the 1st of the following January and promptly began its work.
But the sober second thought of wise men in both countries soon made itself felt. Without prolonging the story, it may be said that the dispute finally went to arbitration, February 2, 1897, where it should have gone in the first place, and it was settled to the full satisfaction of Great Britain, the United States, and Venezuela. Another fact may as well be conceded, without any reflection upon our patriotism: Had England accepted our challenge to war, for which she was fully prepared with her invincible navy, and we were in a state of unreadiness, the United States would have been taught a lesson that she would have remembered for centuries to come. Thank God, the trial was spared to us and in truth can never come, while common sense reigns.
commissionCOUDERT. WHITE. BREWER. ALVEY. GILMAN.VENEZUELAN COMMISSION.Appointed by President Cleveland, January, 1896, to determine the true boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela.
COUDERT. WHITE. BREWER. ALVEY. GILMAN.VENEZUELAN COMMISSION.Appointed by President Cleveland, January, 1896, to determine the true boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1896.
The presidential election in the fall of 1896 was a remarkable one. The month of September had hardly opened when there were eight presidential tickets in the field. Given in the order of their nominations they were:
Prohibition (May 27th)—Joshua Levering, of Maryland; Hale Johnson, of Illinois.
National Party, Free Silver, Woman-Suffrage offshoot of the regular Prohibition (May 28th)—Charles E. Bentley, of Nebraska; James H. Southgate, of North Carolina.
Republican (June 18th)—William McKinley, of Ohio; Garret A. Hobart, of New Jersey.
Socialist-Labor (July 4th)—Charles H. Matchett, of New York; Matthew Maguire, of New Jersey.
Democratic (July 10th to 11th)—William Jennings Bryan, of Nebraska; Arthur Sewall, of Maine.
People's Party (July 24th to 25th)—William Jennings Bryan, of Nebraska; Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia.
National Democratic Party (September 8th)—John McAuley Palmer, of Illinois; Simon Boliver Buckner, of Kentucky.
bryanWM. JENNINGS BRYAN.Democratic candidate for President, 1896.
WM. JENNINGS BRYAN.Democratic candidate for President, 1896.
As usual, the real contest was between the Democrats and Republicans. The platform of the former demanded the free coinage of silver, which was opposed by the Republicans, who insisted upon preserving the existing gold standard. This question caused a split in each of the leading parties. When the Republican nominating convention inserted the gold and silver plank in its platform, Senator Teller, of Colorado, led thirty-two delegates in their formal withdrawal from the convention. A large majority of those to the National Democratic Convention favored the free coinage of silver in the face of an urgent appeal against it by President Cleveland. They would accept no compromise, and, after "jamming" through their platform and nominating Mr. Bryan, they made Arthur Sewall their candidate for Vice-President, though he was president of a national bank and a believer in the gold standard.
In consequence of this action, the Populists or People's Party refused to accept the candidature of Mr. Sewall, and put in his place the name of Thomas E. Watson, who was an uncompromising Populist.
There was also a revolt among the "Sound Money Democrats," as they were termed. Although they knew they had no earthly chance of winning, they were determined to place themselves on record, and, after all the other tickets were in the field, they put Palmer and Buckner in nomination. In their platform they condemned the platform adopted by the silver men and the tariff policy of the Republicans. They favored tariff for revenue only, the single gold standard, a bank currency under governmental supervision, international arbitration, and the maintenance of the independence and authority of the Supreme Court.
Mr. Bryan threw all his energies into the canvass and displayed wonderful industry and vigor. He made whirlwind tours through the country, speaking several times a day and in the evening, and won many converts. Had the election taken place a few weeks earlier than the regular date, it is quite probable he would have won. Mr. McKinley made no speech-making tours, but talked many times to the crowds who called upon him at his home in Canton, Ohio. The official vote in November was as follows:
McKinley and Hobart, Republican, 7,101,401 popular votes; 271 electoral votes.
Bryan and Sewall, Democrat and Populist, 6,470,656 popular votes; 176 electoral votes.
Levering and Johnson, Prohibition, 132,007 popular votes.
Palmer and Buckner, National Democrat, 133,148 popular votes.
Matchett and Maguire, Socialist-Labor, 36,274 popular votes.
Bentley and Southgate, Free Silver Prohibition, 13,969 popular votes.
Despite the political upheavals that periodically occur throughout our country, it steadily advances in prosperity, progress and growth. Its resources were limitless, and the settlement of the vast fertile areas in the West and Northwest went on at an extraordinary rate. In no section was this so strikingly the fact as in the Northwest. So great indeed was the growth in that respect that the subject warrants the special chapter that follows.
cornerCORNER AT TOP OF STAIRWAY NEW CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
CORNER AT TOP OF STAIRWAY NEW CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Editor "Review of Reviews," formerly editor of "Minneapolis Tribune."
Settling the Northwest—The Face of the Country Transformed—Clearing Away the Forests and its Effects—Tree-planting on the Prairies—Pioneer Life in the Seventies—The Granary of the World—The Northwestern Farmer—Transportation and Other Industries—Business Cities and Centres—United Public Action and its Influence—The Indian Question—Other Elements of Population—Society and General Culture.
"Northwest" is a shifting, uncertain designation. The term has been used to cover the whole stretch of country from Pittsburg to Puget Sound, north of the Ohio River and the thirty-seventh parallel of latitude. Popularly it signified the old Northwestern Territory—including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin—until about the time of the Civil War. In the decade following the war, Illinois and Iowa were largely in the minds of men who spoke of the Northwest. From 1870 to 1880, Iowa, Kansas, northern Missouri, and Nebraska constituted the most stirring and favored region—the Northwestpar excellence. But the past decade has witnessed a remarkable development in the Dakotas; and Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana, with Iowa and Nebraska, are perhaps the States most familiarly comprised in the idea of the Northwest. These States are really in the heart of the continent—midway between oceans; and perhaps by common consent the term Northwest will, a decade hence, have moved on and taken firm possession of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, while ultimately Alaska may succeed to the designation.
shawALBERT SHAW.
ALBERT SHAW.
But for the present the Northwest is the great arable wedge lying between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. It is a region that is pretty clearly defined upon a map showing physical characteristics. For the most part, it is a region of great natural fertility, of regular north-temperate climate, of moderate but sufficient rainfall, of scant forests and great prairie expanses, and of high average altitude without mountains. In a word, it is a region that was adapted by nature to the cultivation of the cereals and leading crops of the temperate zone without arduous and time-consuming processes for subduing the wilderness and redeeming the soil.
SETTLING THE NORTHWEST.
This "New Northwest," in civilization and in all its significant characteristics, is the creature of the vast impulse that the successful termination of the war gave the nation. No other extensive area was ever settled under similar conditions. The homestead laws, the new American system of railroad building, and the unprecedented demand for staple food products in the industrial centres at home and abroad, peopled the prairies as if by magic. Until 1870, fixing the date very roughly, transportation facilities followed colonization. The railroads were built to serve and stimulate a traffic that already existed. The pioneers had done a generation's work before the iron road overtook them. In the past two decades all has been changed. The railroads have been the pioneers and colonizers. They have invaded the solitary wilderness, and the population has followed. Much of the land has belonged to the roads, through subsidy grants, but the greater part of the mileage has been laid without the encouragement of land subsidies or other bonuses, by railway corporations that were willing to look to the future for their reward.
It would be almost impossible to over-estimate the significance of this method of colonization. Within a few years it has transformed the buffalo ranges into the world's most extensive fields of wheat and corn. A region comprising northern and western Minnesota and the two Dakotas, which contributed practically nothing to the country's wheat supply twelve or fifteen years ago, has, by this system of railroad colonization, reached an annual production of 100,000,000 bushels of wheat alone—about one-fourth of the crop of the entire country. In like manner, parts of western Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, that produced no corn before 1875 or 1880, are now the centre of corn-raising, and yield many hundreds of millions of bushels annually. These regions enter as totally new factors into the world's supply of foods and raw materials. A great area of this new territory might be defined that was inhabited in 1870 by less than a million people, in 1880 by more than three millions, and in 1899 by from eight to ten millions.
brandA DISPUTE OVER A BRAND.
A DISPUTE OVER A BRAND.
Let 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 Datokas, 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 farm-houses 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.
CLEARING AWAY THE FORESTS AND ITS EFFECTS.
Not a little has been written regarding the rapid destruction of the vast white-pine forests with which nature has covered large districts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It is true that this denudation has progressed at a rate with which nothing of a like character in the history of the world is comparable. It is also true, doubtless, that the clearing away of dense forest areas has been attended with some inconvenient climatic results, and particularly with some objectionable effects upon the even distribution of rainfall and the regularity of the flow of rivers. But most persons who have been alarmed at the rapidity of forest destruction in the white-pine belt have wholly overlooked the great compensating facts. It happens that the white-pine region is not especially fertile, and that for some time to come it is not likely to acquire a prosperous agriculture. But adjacent to it and beyond it there was a vast region of country which, though utterly treeless, was endowed with a marvelous richness of soil and with a climate fitted for all the staple productions of the temperate zone. This region embraced parts of Illinois, almost the whole of Iowa, southern Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and parts of Montana—a region of imperial extent. Now, it happens that for every acre of pine land that has been denuded in Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and northern Minnesota there are somewhere in the great treeless region further south and west two or three new farm-houses. The railroads, pushing ahead of settlement out into the open prairie, have carried the white-pine lumber from the gigantic sawmills of the Upper Mississippi and its tributaries; and thus millions of acres of land have been brought under cultivation by farmers who could not have been housed in comfort but for the proximity of the pine forests. The rapid clearing away of timber areas in Wisconsin has simply meant the rapid settlement of North and South Dakota, western Iowa, and Nebraska.
spiresTHE CATHEDRAL SPIRES, COLORADO.
THE CATHEDRAL SPIRES, COLORADO.
TREE PLANTING ON THE PRAIRIES.
The settlement of these treeless regions means the successful growth on every farm of at least several hundred trees. Without attempting to be statistical or exact, we might say that an acre of northern Minnesota pine trees makes it possible for a farmer in Dakota or Nebraska to have a house, farm buildings, and fences, with a holding of at least one hundred and sixty acres upon which he will successfully cultivate several acres of forest trees of different kinds. Even if the denuded pine lands of the region south and west of Lake Superior would not readily produce a second growth of dense forest—which, it should be said in passing, they certainly will—their loss would be far more than made good by the universal cultivation of forest trees in the prairie States. It is at least comforting to reflect, when the friends of scientific forestry warn us against the ruthless destruction of standing timber, that thus far at least in our Western history we have simply been cutting down trees in order to put a roof over the head of the man who was invading treeless regions for the purpose of planting and nurturing a hundred times as many trees as had been destroyed for his benefit! There is something almost inspiring in the contemplation of millions of families, all the way from Minnesota to Colorado and Texas, living in the shelter of these new pine houses and transforming the plains into a shaded and fruitful empire.
PIONEER LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES.
sluice-gateSLUICE-GATE.
SLUICE-GATE.
The enormous expansion of our railway systems will soon have made it quite impossible for any of the younger generation to realize what hardships were attendant upon such limited colonization of treeless prairie regions as preceded the iron rails. In 1876 I spent the summer in a part of Dakota to which a considerable number of hardy but poor farmers had found their way and taken up claims. They could not easily procure wood for houses, no other ordinary building material was accessible, and they were living in half-underground "dugouts," 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 institution in common—namely, a school, with its place of public assemblage. 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.
millsBETWEEN THE MILLS.
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 assert 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 quantities. 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 coarser 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 quantities 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.
THE NORTHWESTERN FARMER.
millBARREL-HOIST AND TUNNELTHROUGH THE WASHBURN MILL.
BARREL-HOIST AND TUNNELTHROUGH THE WASHBURN MILL.
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 unincumbered estate, supplied with modest buildings, and with a reasonable quantity of machinery and live stock. Sometimes they succeed beyond their anticipations. In many instances the chances go against them. They live on the land, and the title 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.
mossbraeMOSSBRÆ.
MOSSBRÆ.
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.
block-houseANCIENT BLOCK-HOUSE, ALASKA.
ANCIENT BLOCK-HOUSE, ALASKA.
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 entitled 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 homogeneous, has led to a reliance upon State aid that is altogether unprecedented in new and sparsely settled regions, where individualism has usually been dominant, and governmental activity relatively inferior.
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 quantities 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 quantity 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 latitude 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 coarse 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, constitute 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 municipal improvements; advanced educational establishments, and varied industrial interests. Each is a distinct urban community, although they lie so near together that they constitute 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.