Part 9

Finally I asked this intelligent company, every man of which stood upon his own ability in perfect self-respect, “What do you want here in the way of civil rights that you have not?” The reply from one was that he got the respect of the whites just as he was able to command it by his ability and by making money, and, with a touch of a sense of injustice, he said he had ceased to expect that the colored race would get it in any other way. Another reply was—and this was evidently the deep feeling of all: “We want to be treated like men, like anybody else, regardless of color. We don’t mean by this social equality at all; that is a matter that regulates itself among whites and colored people everywhere. We want the public conveyances open to us according to the fare we pay; we want privilege to go to hotels and to theatres, operas and places of amusement. We wish you could see our families and the way we live; you would then understand that we cannot go to the places assigned us in concerts and theatres without loss of self-respect.” I might have said, but I did not, that the question raised by this last observation is not a local one, but as wide as the world.

If I tried to put in a single sentence the most widespread and active sentiment in the South to-day, it would be this: The past is put behind us; we are one with the North in business and national ambition: we want a sympathetic recognition of this fact.

VII.—A FAR AND FAIR COUNTRY.

Lewis and Clarke, sent out by Mr. Jefferson in 1804 to discover the North-west by the route of the Missouri River, left the town of St. Charles early in the spring, sailed and poled and dragged their boats up the swift, turbulent, and treacherous stream all summer, wintered with the Mandan Indians, and reached the Great Falls of the Missouri in about a year and a quarter from the beginning of their voyage. Now, when we wish to rediscover this interesting country, which is still virgin land, we lay down a railway-track in the spring and summer, and go over there in the autumn in a palace-car—a much more expeditious and comfortable mode of exploration.

In beginning a series of observations and comments upon Western life it is proper to say that the reader is not to expect exhaustive statistical statements of growth or development, nor descriptions, except such as will illustrate the point of view taken of the making of the Great West. Materialism is the most obtrusive feature of a cursory observation, but it does not interest one so much as the forces that underlie it, the enterprise and the joyousness of conquest and achievement that it stands for, or the finer processes evolved in the marvellous building up of new societies. What is the spirit, what is the civilization of the West? I have not the presumption to expect to answer these large questions to any one’s satisfaction—least of all to my own—but if I may be permitted to talk about them familiarly, in the manner that one speaks to his friends of what interested him most in a journey, and with flexibility in passing from one topic to another, I shall hope to contribute something to a better understanding between the territories of a vast empire. How vast this republic is, no one can at all appreciate who does not actually travel over its wide areas. To many of us the West is still the West of the geographies of thirty years ago; it is the simple truth to say that comparatively few Eastern people have any adequate conception of what lies west of Chicago and St. Louis: perhaps a hazy geographical notion of it, but not the faintest idea of its civilization and society. Now, a good understanding of each other between the great sections of the republic is politically of the first importance. We shall hang together as a nation; blood, relationship, steel rails, navigable waters, trade, absence of natural boundaries, settle that. We shall pull and push and grumble, we shall vituperate each other, parties will continue to make capital out of sectional prejudice, and wantonly inflame it (what a pitiful sort of “politics” that is!), but we shall stick together like wax. Still, anything like smooth working of our political machine depends upon good understanding between sections. And the remark applies to East and West as well as to North and South. It is a common remark at the West that “Eastern people know nothing about us; they think us half civilized and there is mingled with slight irritability at this ignorance a waxing feeling of superiority over the East in force and power.” One would not say that repose as yet goes along with this sense of great capacity and great achievement; indeed, it is inevitable that in a condition of development and of quick growth unparalleled in the history of the world there should be abundant self-assertion and even monumental boastfulness.

When the Western man goes East he carries the consciousness of playing a great part in the making of an empire; his horizon is large; but he finds himself surrounded by an atmosphere of indifference or non-comprehension of the prodigiousness of his country, of incredulity as to the refinement and luxury of his civilization; and self-assertion is his natural defence. This longitudinal incredulity and swagger is a curious phenomenon. London thinks New York puts on airs, New York complains of Chicago’s want of modesty, Chicago can see that Kansas City and Omaha are aggressively boastful, and these cities acknowledge the expansive self-appreciation of Denver and Helena.

Does going West work a radical difference in a man’s character? Hardly. We are all cut out of the same piece of cloth. The Western man is the Eastern or the Southern man let loose, with his leading-strings cut. But the change of situation creates immense diversity in interests and in spirit. One has but to take up any of the great newspapers, say in St. Paul or Minneapolis, to be aware that he is in another world of ideas, of news, of interests. The topics that most interest the East he does not find there, nor much of its news. Persons of whom he reads daily in the East drop out of sight, and other persons, magnates in politics, packing, railways, loom up. It takes columns to tell the daily history of places which have heretofore only caught the attention of the Eastern reader for freaks of the thermometer, and he has an opportunity to read daily pages about Dakota, concerning which a weekly paragraph has formerly satisfied his curiosity. Before he can be absorbed in these lively and intelligent newspapers he must change the whole current of his thoughts, and take up other subjects, persons, and places than those that have occupied his mind. He is in a new world.

One of the most striking facts in the West is State pride, attachment to the State, the profound belief of every citizen that his State is the best. Engendered perhaps at first by a permanent investment and the spur of self-interest, it speedily becomes a passion, as strong in the newest State as it is in any one of the original thirteen. Rivalry between cities is sharp, and civic pride is excessive, but both are outdone by the larger devotion to the commonwealth. And this pride is developed in the inhabitants of a Territory as soon as it is organized. Montana has condensed the ordinary achievements of a century into twenty years, and loyalty to its present and expectation of its future are as strong in its citizens as is the attachment of men of Massachusetts to the State of nearly three centuries of growth. In Nebraska I was pleased with the talk of a clergyman who had just returned from three months’ travel in Europe. He was full of his novel experiences; he had greatly enjoyed the trip; but he was glad to get back to Nebraska and its full, vigorous life. In England and on the Continent he had seen much to interest him; but he could not help comparing Europe with Nebraska; and as for him, this was the substance of it: give him Nebraska every time. What astonished him most, and wounded his feelings (and there was a note of pathos in his statement of it), was the general foreign ignorance abroad about Nebraska—the utter failure in the European mind to take it in. I felt guilty, for to me it had been little more than a geographical expression, and I presume the Continent did not know whether Nebraska was a new kind of patent medicine or a new sort of religion. To the clergymen this ignorance of the central, richest, about-to-be-the-most-important of States, was simply incredible.

This feeling is not only admirable in itself, but it has an incalculable political value, especially in the West, where there is a little haze as to the limitations of Federal power, and a notion that the Constitution was swaddling-clothes for an infant, which manly limbs may need to kick off. Healthy and even assertive State pride is the only possible counterbalance in our system against that centralization which tends to corruption in the centre and weakness and discontent in the individual members.

It should be added that the West, speaking of it generally, is defiantly “American.” It wants a more vigorous and assertive foreign policy. Conscious of its power, the growing pains in the limbs of the young giant will not let it rest. That this is the most magnificent country, that we have the only government beyond criticism, that our civilization is far and away the best, does not admit of doubt. It is refreshing to see men who believe in something heartily and with-out reserve, even if it is only in themselves. There is a tonic in this challenge of all time and history. A certain attitude of American assertion towards other powers is desired. For want of this our late representatives to Great Britain are said to be un-American; “political dudes” is what the Governor of Iowa calls them. It is his indictment against the present Minister to St. James that “he is numerous in his visits to the castles of English noblemen, and profuse in his obsequiousness to British aristocrats.” And perhaps the Governor speaks for a majority of Western voters and fighters when he says that “timidity has characterized our State Department for the last twenty years.”

By chance I begin these Western studies with the North-west. Passing by for the present the intelligent and progressive State of Wisconsin, we will consider Minnesota and the vast region at present more or less tributary to it. It is necessary to remember that the State was admitted to the Union in 1858, and that its extraordinary industrial development dates from the building of the first railway in its limits—ten miles from St. Paul to St. Anthony—in 1862. For this road the first stake was driven and the first shovelful of earth lifted by a citizen of St. Paul who has lived to see his State gridironed with railways, and whose firm constructed in 1887 over eleven hundred miles of railroad.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the familiar facts that Minnesota is a great wheat State, and that it is intersected by railways that stimulate the enormous yield and market it with facility. The discovery that the State, especially the Red River Valley, and Dakota and the country beyond, were peculiarly adapted to the production of hard spring-wheat, which is the most desirable for flour, probably gave this vast region its first immense advantage. Minnesota, a prairie country, rolling, but with no important hills, well watered, well grassed, with a repellent reputation for severe winters, not well adapted to corn, nor friendly to most fruits, attracted nevertheless hardy and adventurous people, and proved specially inviting to the Scandinavians, who are tough and industrious. It would grow wheat without end. And wheat is the easiest crop to raise, and returns the greatest income for the least labor. In good seasons and with good prices it is a mine of wealth. But Minnesota had to learn that one industry does not suffice to make a State, and that wheat-raising alone is not only unreliable, but exhaustive. The grasshopper scourge was no doubt a blessing in disguise. It helped to turn the attention of farmers to cattle and sheep, and to more varied agriculture. I shall have more to say about this in connection with certain most interesting movements in Wisconsin.

The notion has prevailed that the North-west was being absorbed by owners of immense tracts of land, great capitalists who by the aid of machinery were monopolizing the production of wheat, and crowding out small farmers. There are still vast wheat farms under one control, but I am happy to believe that the danger of this great land monopoly has reached its height, and the tendency is the other way. Small farms are on the increase, practising a more varied agriculture. The reason is this: A plantation of 5000 or 15,000 acres, with a good season, freedom from blight and insects, will enrich the owner if prices are good; but one poor crop, with low prices, will bankrupt him. Whereas the small farmer can get a living under the most adverse circumstances, and taking one year with another, accumulate something, especially if he varies his products and feeds them to stock, thus returning the richness of his farm to itself. The skinning of the land by sending away its substance in hard wheat is an improvidence of natural resources, which belongs, like cattle-ranging, to a half-civilized era, and like cattle-ranging has probably seen its best days. One incident illustrates what can be done. Mr. James J. Hill, the president of the Manitoba railway system, an importer and breeder of fine cattle on his Minnesota country place, recently gave and loaned a number of blooded bulls to farmers over a wide area in Minnesota and Dakota. The result of this benefaction has been surprising in adding to the wealth of those regions and the prosperity of the farmers. It is the beginning of a varied farming and of cattle production, which will be of incalculable benefit to the North-west.

It is in the memory of men still in active life when the Territory of Minnesota was supposed to be beyond the pale of desirable settlement. The State, except in the north-east portion, is now well settled, and well sprinkled with thriving villages and cities. Of the latter, St. Paul and Minneapolis are still a wonder to themselves, as they are to the world. I knew that they were big cities, having each a population nearly approaching 175,000, but I was not prepared to find them so handsome and substantial, and exhibiting such vigor and activity of movement. One of the most impressive things to an Eastern man in both of them is their public spirit, and the harmony with which business men work together for anything which will build up and beautify the city. I believe that the ruling force in Minneapolis is of New England stock, while St. Paul has a larger proportion of New York people, with a mixture of Southern; and I have a fancy that there is a social shading that shows this distinction. It is worth noting, however, that the Southerner, transplanted to Minnesota or Montana, loses the laisser faire with which he is credited at home, and becomes as active and pushing as anybody. Both cities have a very large Scandinavian population. The laborers and the domestic servants are mostly Swedes. In forecasting what sort of a State Minnesota is to be, the Scandinavian is a largely determining force. It is a virile element. The traveller is impressed with the idea that the women whom he sees at the stations in the country and in the city streets are sturdy, ruddy, and better able to endure the protracted season of cold and the highly stimulating atmosphere than the American-born women, who tend to become nervous in these climatic conditions. The Swedes are thrifty, taking eagerly to polities, and as ready to profit by them as anybody; unreservedly American in intention, and on the whole, good citizens.

The physical difference of the two cities is mainly one of situation. Minneapolis spreads out on both sides of the Mississippi over a plain, from the gigantic flouring-mills and the canal and the Falls of St. Anthony as a centre (the falls being, by-the-way, planked over with a wooden apron to prevent the total wearing away of the shaly rock) to rolling land and beautiful building sites on moderate elevations. Nature has surrounded the city with a lovely country, diversified by lakes and forests, and enterprise has developed it into one of the most inviting of summer regions. Twelve miles west of it, Lake Minnetonka, naturally surpassingly lovely, has become, by an immense expenditure of money, perhaps the most attractive summer resort in the North-west. Each city has a hotel (the West in Minneapolis, the Ryan in St. Paul) which would be distinguished monuments of cost and elegance in any city in the world, and each city has blocks of business houses, shops, and offices of solidity and architectural beauty, and each has many private residences which are palaces in size, in solidity, and interior embellishment, but they are scattered over the city in Minneapolis, which can boast of no single street equal to Summit avenue in St. Paul. The most conspicuous of the private houses is the stone mansion of Governor Washburn, pleasing in color, harmonious in design, but so gigantic that the visitor (who may have seen palaces abroad) expects to find a somewhat vacant interior. He is therefore surprised that the predominating note is homelikeness and comfort, and he does not see how a family of moderate size could well get along with less than the seventy rooms (most of them large) which they have at their disposal.

St. Paul has the advantage of picturesqueness of situation. The business part of the town lies on a spacious uneven elevation above the river, surrounded by a semicircle of bluffs averaging something like two hundred feet high. Up the sides of these the city climbs, beautifying every vantage-ground with handsome and stately residences. On the north the bluffs maintain their elevation in a splendid plateau, and over this dry and healthful plain the two cities advance to meet each other, and already meet in suburbs, colleges, and various public buildings. Summit avenue curves along the line of the northern bluff, and then turns northward, two hundred feet broad, graded a distance of over two miles, and with a magnificent asphalt road-way for more than a mile. It is almost literally a street of palaces, for although wooden structures alternate with the varied and architecturally interesting mansions of stone and brick on both sides, each house is isolated, with a handsome lawn and ornamental trees, and the total effect is spacious and noble. This avenue commands an almost unequalled view of the sweep of bluffs round to the Indian Mounds, of the city, the winding river, and the town and heights of West St. Paul. It is not easy to recall a street and view anywhere finer than this, and this is only one of the streets on this plateau conspicuous for handsome houses. I see no reason why St. Paul should not become, within a few years, one of the notably most beautiful cities in the world. And it is now wonderfully well advanced in that direction. Of course the reader understands that both these rapidly growing cities are in the process of “making,” and that means cutting and digging and slashing, torn-up streets, shabby structures alternating with gigantic and solid buildings, and the usual unsightliness of transition and growth.

Minneapolis has the State University, St. Paul the Capitol, an ordinary building of brick, which will not long, it is safe to say, suit the needs of the pride of the State. I do not set out to describe the city, the churches, big newspaper buildings, great wholesale and ware houses, handsome club-house (the Minnesota Club), stately City Hall, banks, Chamber of Commerce, and so on. I was impressed with the size of the buildings needed to house the great railway offices. Nothing can give one a livelier idea of the growth and grasp of Western business than one of these plain structures, five or six stories high, devoted to the several departments of one road or system of roads, crowded with busy officials and clerks, offices of the president, vice-president, assistant of the president, secretary, treasurer, engineer, general manager, general superintendent, general freight, general traffic, general passenger, perhaps a land officer, and so on—affairs as complicated and vast in organization and extensive in detail as those of a State government.

There are sixteen railways which run in Minnesota, having a total mileage of 5024 miles in the State. Those which have over two hundred miles of road in the State are the Chicago and North-western, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Louis, Northern Pacific, St. Paul and Duluth, and the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba. The names of these roads give little indication of their location, as the reader knows, for many of them run all over the North-west like spider-webs.

It goes without saying that the management of these great interests—imperial, almost continental in scope—requires brains, sobriety, integrity; and one is not surprised to find that the railways command and pay liberally for the highest talent and skill. It is not merely a matter of laying rails and running trains, but of developing the resources—one might almost say creating the industries—of vast territories. These are gigantic interests, concerning which there is such sharp rivalry and competition, and as a rule it is the generous, large-minded policy that wins. Somebody has said that the railway managers and magnates (I do not mean those who deal in railways for the sake of gambling) are the élite of Western life. I am not drawing distinctions of this sort, but I will say, and it might as well be said here and simply, that next to the impression I got of the powerful hand of the railways in the making of the West, was that of the high character, the moral stamina, the ability, the devotion to something outside themselves, of the railway men I met in the North-west. Specialists many of them are, and absorbed in special work, but I doubt if any other profession or occupation can show a proportionally larger number of broad-minded, fair-minded men, of higher integrity and less pettiness, or more inclined to the liberalizing culture in art and social life. Either dealing with large concerns has lifted up the men, or the large opportunities have attracted men of high talent and character; and I sincerely believe that we should have no occasion for anxiety if the average community did not go below the standard of railway morality and honorable dealing.

What is the raison d’etre of these two phenomenal, cities? why do they grow? why are they likely to continue to grow? I confess that this was an enigma to me until I had looked beyond to see what country was tributary to them, what a territory they have to supply. Of course, the railways, the flouring-mills, the vast wholesale dry goods and grocery houses speak for themselves. But I had thought of these cities as on the confines of civilization. They are, however, the two posts of the gate-way to an empire. In order to comprehend their future, I made some little trips north-east and north-west.