Chapter XIX A Chronicle of Recent Events
With the close of Governor Hubbard’s administration, now twenty-one years ago, the connected story of Minnesota may properly end. Only after some lapse of years may the historian presume to view affairs with discrimination, selecting those of permanent significance from the trifling and transitory. He may, however, as a mere annalist, record such facts and events as seem to have more than momentary importance.
The governors of the state have been:—
| Name. | Party. | Dates. |
| Andrew R. McGill | Republican. | January 5, 1887, to January 9, 1889. |
| William R. Merriam | Republican. | January 9, 1889, to January 4, 1893. |
| Knute Nelson | Republican. | January 4, 1893, to January 31, 1895. |
| David M. Clough | Republican. | January 31, 1895, to January 2, 1899. |
| John Lind | Democrat. | January 2, 1899, to January 7, 1901. |
| Samuel R. Van Sant | Republican. | January 7, 1901, to January 4, 1905. |
| John A. Johnson | Democrat. | January 4, 1905, to |
Mr. Nelson was elected to the United States Senate in the first month of his second term as governor. Mr. Clough, lieutenant-governor, succeeded him, and was elected governor for a second term. Mr. Lind was the first Democratic governor after Governor Sibley, the first state executive. Both he and Mr. Johnson were elected in spite of the fact that Minnesota was and is overwhelmingly Republican.
Four United States senators only have been elected, all Republican. Cushman K. Davis, who in 1875 had balked Mr. Ramsey of a third term, but failed to secure his own election, went into retirement, devoting himself to his law practice, to literature, and to preparation for a public career to come in good time. He so commended himself to Republicans by his professional ability, his fine public addresses, and the moderation of his demands for advancement, that when the time came, in January, 1887, to fill the vacancy of Senator McMillan, about to occur, there was but one opposing vote against him in the Republican caucus. Ignatius Donnelly, who had temporarily returned to the fold, made a rousing speech of approval. The election followed as of course. In 1893 Mr. Davis was elected for a second term, but by a close vote. In 1899 he was accorded a third term with almost no opposition. He had made a brilliant record as senator and chairman of the committee on foreign relations. He served as one of the commissioners to negotiate the treaty of peace at the close of the Spanish war of 1898. Mr. Davis died in office suddenly, November 27, 1900.
William D. Washburn, who had retired from the House of Representatives, did not reach his expected promotion to the Senate till 1889. At the close of his term be gave way to Governor Nelson, who has since been twice reëlected. Moses E. Clapp was elected in 1901 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Davis.
The Australian ballot system, established in 1889 for cities of 10,000 inhabitants or more, extended to operate throughout the state in 1891, was recodified in 1893.
The legislature of 1899 passed a law providing for “primary elections” to replace nominations by party caucuses and conventions. The act is not operative in towns, villages, and small cities, and does not apply to state officers. The primary election takes place on the first of the registration days for the usual election, and is conducted by the same judges and clerks. Any person eligible to an office may, by payment of a prescribed fee and making a qualifying oath, have his name printed on the primary ballot of his party. Every qualified voter may, after registration, receive and mark the ballot of the party he “generally supported at the last election and intends to support at the next ensuing.” The general election laws apply, and the usual penalties attach to misconduct. The experiment is still too brief to warrant a final judgment. It has certainly weakened the machine, and stimulated aspiration to office in persons whose qualifications are more apparent to themselves than to others. That candidates for judicial positions are obliged to make a personal canvass is perhaps the feature most to be regretted.
When the capitol building was burned in 1881 the legislature, upon Governor Pillsbury’s recommendation, immediately appropriated $75,000 for rebuilding, on the assumption that the walls were sufficiently sound. This assumption was found mistaken, and additional sums were voted till more than four times the original amount was expended. But ten years had not passed before it was apparent that ampler accommodations were imperative for multiplying functionaries and expanding business. The legislature of 1893 accordingly authorized the appointment of a commission to plan, build, and furnish a new and appropriate structure. The local influence was sufficiently effective to keep the location in the heart of St. Paul, on an elevated site of small area, rather than permit erection on a larger area in the “midway district,” still in that city, but near Minneapolis. The corner-stone was laid on July 27, 1898, by Alexander Ramsey. Senator C. K. Davis delivered the principal address. The legislature of 1905 was the first to convene in the completed building. The traditional plan of a central body flanked by wings and surmounted by a dome was followed, with the variation that the house of representatives is housed in a rear extension, leaving the wings to accommodate the senate and the supreme court. The exterior is of Georgia marble. The interior corridors are faced with polished Minnesota magnesian limestones of charming tints, relieved by panels of foreign marbles. The interior of the dome, the senate chamber, the supreme court room, and the governor’s office are splendidly decorated with mural paintings by leading American artists. Over the façade of the central structure rests a quadriga in bronze, typifying the progress of Minnesota. The total cost was $4,428,539.72; and in this age the honorable commissioners need not resent as superfluous the record that there was absolutely no “graft” in the whole construction and furnishing. The architect, Mr. Cass Gilbert, a native of Minnesota, will be fortunate if he shall in his future career surpass the taste, skill, and nobility of conception displayed in this work. It is a splendid object lesson in civic architecture, not only to Minnesota but to neighboring commonwealths.
The legislature of 1905 adopted a new codification of the general laws of the state, which had been prepared by a commission of which Daniel Fish, Esq., was the working member. It has been published in a single volume of 1380 pages.
The penal and charitable institutions of Minnesota under the supervision of the board of charities and corrections had attained to the first rank for economy of administration and beneficial results. Two neighboring states made the experiment of disbanding the separate boards of trustees or managers and placing all such institutions in the hands of a single “board of control.” To be in the fashion the legislature of Minnesota in 1901 created a board of control of state institutions, and went so far as to include the university and normal schools in all their financial concerns. These, however, were in a later year exempted from the operation of the act and restored to their independence. It may be conceded that in point of finance the single board has justified the change, in spite of the fact that its members have been appointed on political considerations. Persuaded that there was danger of neglect in a board so composed and fully occupied with the business management of the institutions, the legislature of 1907 provided for a board of visitors to exercise a humanitarian supervision over the patients and inmates.
The people of Minnesota have not yet desired a revision of their constitution, content to live under the original statute of 1857 and to amend it casually from time to time. In the period now in view no fewer than seventeen amendments have been adopted, some of them of far-reaching importance. They may be enumerated:—
1. 1883, an amendment fixing January 1 as the beginning of the official year of the state, on which day all officers chosen at the previous election enter upon their duties.
2. 1886, an amendment authorizing loans upon interest from the permanent school fund of the state to counties and school districts, to be used in the erection of county and school buildings. This provision, wisely guarded, has proved advantageous.
3. Of the same year, an amendment forbidding the enactment of any special law in all cases where a general law can be made applicable, and specifically inhibiting special legislation in fifteen cases. Its operation has been beneficial, but there have been instances where special legislation has been had under mere color of general.
4. 1888, an amendment limiting the sessions of the legislature to ninety legislative days, and forbidding the introduction of any new bill during the last twenty days, unless upon recommendation of the governor in a special message.
5. Of the same year, an amendment declaring any combination to monopolize markets for food products, or to interfere with the freedom of such markets, to be a criminal conspiracy, punishable as the legislature may provide. No action has yet been had.
6. 1890, an amendment authorizing the legislature to provide that an agreement of ten jurors in a civil action shall be a sufficient verdict. The legislature has not yet acted.
7. 1896, an amendment creating a board of pardons, consisting of the governor, the attorney-general, and the chief justice, with powers to be defined and regulated by law. The procedure of the board has been prescribed by statute. Its administration has been judicious, and the governor has been relieved of a duty exceedingly painful and difficult for any individual to discharge.
8. 1896, an amendment to the elective franchise article, taking from declarants for naturalization the right to vote.
9. In the year 1906 a so-called “wide open” tax amendment, repealing a large part of Article IX as formerly standing. It declares that “the power of taxation shall never be surrendered, suspended, nor contracted away.” After exemptions of the ordinary kind, it leaves the legislature free to levy taxes according to its discretion, requiring only that they shall be uniform upon the same class of subjects.
10. 1898, an amendment granting suffrage to women of full age in school and library measures absolutely, and not merely allowing the legislature to extend the privilege.
11. In the same year, an amendment requiring a majority of all votes cast at the election to ratify an amendment to the constitution. Up to that year a majority of the electors voting on the particular amendment was sufficient to ratify.
12. In the same year, an amendment creating a state highway commission and a road and bridge fund and authorizing a special tax therefor.
13. Also in 1898, an amendment authorizing cities and villages to adopt charters for their own government, to be drafted by a board of freeholders appointed by district judges; commonly called a “home-rule” amendment. An affirmative vote of four sevenths of the electors is necessary to adopt. In Minneapolis on four occasions, large majorities have favored “home rule,” but the required four-sevenths vote has not been obtained.
14. 1904, an amendment authorizing the investment of the permanent school and university funds in the bonds of counties, towns, cities, villages, and school districts under prescribed conditions.
What place the tornado, the hailstorm, the locust, and such like destroyers have in the mundane economy; whether they are providential dispositions for the punishment of particular communities, or freaks of sheer diabolism, or resultants of powers imparted to nature playing under determining conditions, is a question which must be left to casuists, reverend and other. Minnesota can claim no exemption from such visitations. On April 14, 1886, a furious tornado struck the city of St. Cloud and its suburb, Sauk Rapids, cutting a swath of desolation and destroying some seventy persons. In 1891, on June 15, a series of tornadoes traversed the counties of Martin, Faribault, Freeborn, Mower, and Fillmore, on a line nearly parallel with the Southern Minnesota division of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. Many farm buildings were wrecked and about fifty people killed. In previous years disastrous tornadoes had wrought havoc in New Ulm and Rochester.
In the fall of 1886 there was a descent of what were supposed to be ordinary grasshoppers in Otter Tail County. When in the following spring “hoppers” were appearing dangerously numerous, Governor McGill sent out the state entomologist, Dr. Otto Lugger of the university agricultural college, to investigate. He saw at once that the genuine Rocky Mountain locust was to be dealt with, and proceeded to organize the farmers for warfare on them. So effective was the campaign that thirty-five thousand bushels of the insects were caught and destroyed, and half the crops on about one hundred square miles saved.
On September 1, 1894, a fire broke out in the cut-over pine woods near Hinckley, in Pine County. A high wind prevailing, it spread and raged for many days. Eight villages, including Hinckley and Sandstone, and scores of farmsteads were completely destroyed. Not less than three hundred and fifty square miles were devastated. Four hundred and eighteen persons lost their lives, and more than two thousand were left homeless. The property loss was not less than a million dollars. Governor Nelson appointed a relief committee of citizens, with Charles A. Pillsbury at its head. The estimated amount of relief furnished through this and the local committees was $185,000. In the same year the chinch bug did much damage to growing crops in several southwestern counties.
At the outbreak of the war with Spain in April, 1898, Minnesota was first of the states to respond to the call of the President for volunteers, as she had been in the Civil War. Before the close of the month three regiments,—Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth,—mostly recruited from the national guard, were assembled at St. Paul. They were mustered into the United States service May 7 and 8. The Thirteenth Regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles McCormick Reeve, was dispatched to the Philippine Islands and participated in the capture of Manila, August 13, 1898. It performed provost guard duty in that city till the spring of 1899, and formed part of Lawton’s expedition to the interior. The regiment was mustered out in San Francisco in September, but was transported home in trains furnished by Minnesota cities, and on arrival in Minneapolis, October 12, 1899, was reviewed by President McKinley.
The Twelfth and Fourteenth regiments were sent to the grand rendezvous at Camp Thomas, Chickamauga Park, Georgia, detained thereabout through the summer, sent home late in September, furloughed for thirty days, and mustered out November 18.
The Fifteenth, recruited from the state at large, was mustered in July 18, detained at Fort Snelling till September 15, and then sent to Camp Meade, Pennsylvania. A month later it was ordered to Camp Mackenzie, Georgia, where it remained till mustered out March 27, 1899.
The Thirteenth alone suffered losses in action. Its roll of honor shows officers and men killed, 5; died of disease or accident, 37; wounded, 44.
A detachment of the Fourteenth Minnesota saw some service, happily bloodless, in its own state. The Pillager band of Chippeway Indians on Leech Lake had long been complaining of injustice done them in the matter of the pine on their reservation, which they had been persuaded to sell. The prices paid them were ridiculously low, and the charges for appraisal and inspection as ridiculously high. Parties holding permits to cut “dead and down timber,” cut live trees standing convenient. Repeated protests to the government had brought no redress. The deputy United States marshal, Sheehan (he of Fort Ridgely), undertook to arrest a chief who had given show of misbehavior. He resisted arrest, and a number of his braves rallied and stood off the marshal’s posse. A company of sixty United States infantry was sent from Fort Snelling, which was later reinforced by two hundred men commanded by Major M. C. Wilkinson and supervised by General Bacon. On October 5 the troops were landed on the peninsula known as Sugar Point, and a sharp little conflict followed which cost the lives of Major Wilkinson, Sergeant William Butler, and two privates. Two companies of the Fourteenth were recalled from furlough and distributed to stations of the railroad running north of Leech Lake. After repeated councils, at which the United States commissioner of Indian affairs was present, eight chiefs surrendered to the marshal, and the war ended. Governor Clough, in his message to the legislature of 1899, charged the United States government with a “series of acts and neglects most wrongful to the Indians” and with a “blunder more criminal in its results than those neglects and acts,” the performance being the “climax of a long course of folly and wrong.”
All branches of the public school system have been enlarged and improved. The common school endowment from the lands granted by Congress has increased to more than $11,000,000. Sales of pine timber ($3,500,000) and other items have swelled the fund to more than $20,000,000. The state still holds millions of acres unsold. The excellent work of the normal schools, supplemented by that of the high schools, has greatly added to the number of qualified teachers. Opposition to the normal schools, now five in number, has long since ceased.
Beginning with the year 1889, and the first graduations from the professional schools, the development of the university has surpassed all expectations. The total attendance in that year was 791, the number of degrees conferred, 52. In 1900 those numbers were increased to 2866 and 449 respectively. In 1907 they were 3955 and 507. It has been difficult to keep the buildings and equipment abreast of the needs of these developments, especially as the original “main” building has been once extensively damaged and later destroyed by fire. Despite inadequate compensation, the professorships have been filled with able and earnest men and women, but no small number of teachers whom the state and the institution could ill afford to lose have been drawn away. The student body have secured high places in intercollegiate athletics, oratorical and forensic contests, adding much to the repute of the university, already holding an honorable rank for scholarship and culture. While the state university is the largest and best-equipped in the state, it possesses no monopoly of the superior education. There are at least fifteen other degree-conferring institutions. More than half of the number are Lutheran colleges or seminaries, in which excellent instruction is given in the classical languages, history, and philosophy. The Roman Catholic colleges, also strong in the humanities, are St. John’s University and the College of St. Thomas. The leading Protestant institutions which have passed out of the experimental stage are Carleton College at Northfield, and Macalester College and Hamline University, both within the limits of St. Paul. All are open to women, maintain excellent preparatory departments, and do well the work they undertake to do.
The notable development of the university College of Agriculture at St. Anthony Park cannot here have adequate room, but mention must be made of one of its auxiliaries, the so-called “School of Agriculture.” From the year 1868, when the agricultural college lands were merged with those of the university, the regents and faculty of the university had exerted themselves in all good faith to gather students into the agricultural college which they had promptly organized on paper. The farmers’ boys flocked to the university, not to learn agriculture but to practice it. Only occasionally could any be induced to enroll in that college. Up to 1888 not fifty had so done, and but one had completed the course and been graduated. The first president had declared that there was no proper work for an agricultural “college” to do, and that agricultural schools of secondary rank must be organized. Professor Edward A. Porter of the university department of agriculture, after some years of experiment and reflection, became convinced that such a school should be undertaken, and that, not on the university campus, but on the experimental farm some two miles away. He brought the board of regents to his opinion through the influence of an “advisory board of farmers” which he induced them to appoint. State Superintendent D. L. Kiehle, a member of the board of regents ex-officio, worked out the pedagogical details, and early in 1888 submitted the plan of a “school” of agriculture to receive students of fifteen and over, with a common-school training, for a term extending from November to April. His idea was to make the instruction practical in the branches immediately related to agriculture, cultivating powers of observation and judgment, and arousing interest in and taste for country life. The school was opened October 18, 1888, with forty-seven students. Young women were admitted in 1897, and a second-year course has been added. The school expenses proper do not exceed eighty-five dollars a year. The enrollment of students for 1908 was 581, and the whole number since 1888 is 4608. A notable fact is that this “school” has stimulated and fed the “college” of agriculture, 69 students having been graduated since the opening of the school. The framers of the “Morrill bill” of 1857-62, granting public lands for the endowment and support of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts, could have had no expectation of any such use of the grant, and doubtless would have provided against devoting it to elementary education. The industrial education had yet to be invented for this country. But this school of agriculture is far better for the practical farmer than any college could be.
One department of the school of agriculture of the university has had no small part in working a great change in Minnesota agriculture. While the state as a whole will long retain a leading place as a wheat producer, all southern Minnesota has abandoned that cereal as a principal crop. Supplied from the department of dairy husbandry of the school of agriculture with expert operators of creameries and cheese factories, the farmers of many counties have turned to dairying. Minnesota butter, thanks to the science and practice taught in the school, commands a premium in the market, and its annual output has run up to near 100,000,000 pounds. Minnesota has become the “Bread and Butter State.” The total dairy product of Minnesota in 1907 may be safely valued at $40,000,000. Along with dairying has naturally grown up an extensive animal husbandry, profitably converting into marketable forms the forage crops of great areas.
At the experiment station conducted in the agricultural department of the university new varieties of grains, in particular wheat, have been developed by careful breeding and selection, which promise much to Minnesota farmers.
Adjoining the agricultural establishment of the university is the domain of two hundred acres and more on which the Minnesota State Agricultural Society, in a vast range of buildings and inclosures, holds its annual fair in September. Given this permanent location in 1885, the society has developed a great industrial museum of high educational value.
For many years after the white man built his sawmills on Minnesota rivers it was believed that the pine forests north and east of the Sioux-Chippeway intertribal boundary of 1825 could never be exhausted. A generation ago that belief was given up, but exhaustion was thought to be so far away that people then living need not worry about it. There being no public control over private lumbering, the reckless, indiscriminate, ruinous methods of the pioneer operators were continued. Young growing trees went down along with those old and ripe for the axe. Within a few years it has become apparent to all who concern themselves, that the days of Minnesota lumbering in the old piratical fashion are numbered. Had a reasonable forest policy been established fifty years ago, permitting only the annual cutting of ripe trees and leaving the young to grow, a harvest of lumber might have been reaped in perpetuity. There are millions of acres of land in the state which are fit only for forest growth and will some day be so devoted. An act of the legislature of 1899 created a state forestry board, which has already outlined a policy and begun the immense work of re-afforesting despoiled areas. Another act, that of 1905, provides for a forest commissioner, and to that office has been appointed General C. C. Andrews, who for many years has been the apostle of forest preservation and replanting in Minnesota.
In 1878 the state geologist, Professor N. H. Winchell, announced the existence of iron ore fit for steel production about Vermilion Lake in St. Louis County; but neither the university nor the state authorities took sufficient interest to cause a proper examination of the region to be made. George C. Stone of Duluth conducted explorations whose revelations led to the formation of the Minnesota Iron Company and the building of the Duluth and Iron Range Railroad in 1884. In that year 62,122 tons of ore were shipped from the mine opened at Tower. Four years later the railroad was extended to Ely, and 54,612 tons were carried from the Chandler mine. The product of the Vermilion range increased with astonishing rapidity. It was near a half million tons in 1888, and double that figure four years later.
Marvelous as had been the development of the Vermilion range, it was eclipsed by that of another of which geologists had detected but faint indications. In November 1890, an exploring party of the Merritt Brothers of Duluth found iron ore at a point west of Virginia, near which the Great Mountain iron mine was later opened. A year after one of their explorers found ore turned up by the roots of a fallen tree. A shaft sunk on the spot struck the ore body of the Biwabik mine. From these beginnings date the developments of the Mesabi iron range, lying some twenty miles south of and parallel with the Vermilion range, but extending much farther to the west. In 1892, 4245 tons of ore were shipped over the railroads which had been built out from Duluth to the Mesabi mines. Three years later the shipments were nearly three millions of gross tons; in 1900 they had swelled to nearly eight millions, and in 1907 they touched twenty-seven and a half millions. The shipment in the year last named from a certain single mine was 2,900,493 tons. The Mesabi ores are of the “soft” variety, lie near the surface, and are in large part mined by means of steam shovels dumping into cars; these, in the shipping season, are at once dispatched to the lake ports, where the ore is transferred to vessels which carry it below. The output of the Vermilion range has remained under two millions a year, except in a single case. The ores of both ranges are of the variety known as hematite, with great differences of physical structure. Much of them yield seventy per cent. of pure metal. Ore containing less than fifty-five per cent. of iron is not now considered marketable, and there are enormous masses of such low grade ore left untouched by the mine operators. At least 1,500,000,000 tons of ore marketable under present conditions have been located and measured. The state tax commission in 1907 raised the valuation of 2116 ore properties, containing 1,192,509,757 tons, from $64,500,000 in 1906 to $189,500,000.
An act of Congress of 1873 expressly excepted Minnesota from the operation of the mining laws of the United States, leaving all her mineral lands open to settlement or purchase in legal subdivisions, like agricultural or timbered lands, thus virtually giving to lucky speculators these priceless ore deposits. Up to 1889 the state pursued the same policy, selling her school and swamp lands containing ore at the annual sales and getting the usual prices for arable lands. In 1889 the legislature provided for the leasing of ore properties for fifty years at a royalty of twenty-five cents per ton. At this rate, less than one third that obtained by private mine owners, the school fund will be splendidly enriched. The receipts from royalties and contracts in 1907 were $273,433.
At the close of the year 1907 the railroads of Minnesota had increased their mileage to 8023 miles, having almost doubled it in twenty years. The Supreme Court of the United States in the Blake case, decided in 1876, had affirmed the right of the state of Minnesota to regulate railroad fares and rates, according to the pleasure of the legislature. In 1890 came a decision from the same tribunal in another Minnesota case to the effect that any regulation, whether by statute or through a commission, must be subject to judicial review. The legislature could not deprive a railroad company of its property—rents, issues, and profits included—without due process of law, much less could a commission. This decision with others of the period materially moderated the effect of the “granger cases.” Another litigation arising in the state was of national importance. A small clique of capitalists who had bought control of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railway systems, each of eight thousand miles and more, desiring to operate them as one property or interest, formed a third corporation called the Northern Securities Company. It was chartered in New Jersey, November 13, 1900, with an authorized capital stock of $400,000,000. When duly organized this company proceeded to exchange its own stock for the stocks of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific, and absorbed more than three fourths of them. This consolidation, effecting a monopoly of all traffic between the Mississippi and the Pacific coast for five degrees of latitude, caused the greatest alarm. Governor Van Sant used every means at his disposal to prevent its consummation. A suit, brought by the state in one of her district courts alleging violation of her statute forbidding the consolidation of parallel and competing roads, removed to the Circuit Court of the United States, was there decided against the state on the ground that the Northern Securities was not a railroad company, but a mere “holding company.” An appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, but that court declined to review the action below because the case had been improperly removed from the Minnesota court. Without waiting for the result of this suit, the Attorney-General of the United States sued in the Circuit Court of the United States for Minnesota, charging infraction of the “Sherman anti-trust law” of 1890. That court, after elaborate hearings, found the Northern Securities Company to be an unlawful combination in restraint of trade, and ordered its dissolution. As was expected, an appeal was taken to the Supreme Court, where in March, 1904, the decision below was affirmed, the chief justice and three associates dissenting. Under judicial direction the Northern Securities Company proceeded to return the stocks taken in exchange, and at length went into dissolution. The same men own the two roads still.
Early in the year 1908 the Supreme Court of the United States considered that the Circuit Court for the District of Minnesota had the right to punish the attorney-general of Minnesota for attempting, in disobedience of its process, to enforce a state law regulating railroad rates, held to be obnoxious to the national constitution.
Minnesota enjoys a great advantage in point of transportation to both oceans in the competition of Canadian roads, with branches penetrating to her principal cities. The water route eastward from Duluth has moderated costs of shipping out her staple products—grain, ore, and lumber—and given her favorable rates on returning merchandise.
The new states of the Northwest have departed far from the conservative doctrine that governments exist merely for the protection of persons and property. Two examples of this departure in Minnesota may be mentioned. In 1899 the legislature created the Minnesota Public Library Commission. Its duties are to maintain (1) a bureau of information on library matters, (2) a circulating library, and (3) a clearing-house for periodicals. From the circulating library, “traveling libraries” of twenty-five or fifty volumes are sent to small towns and rural communities on payment of a small fee. Home study and juvenile libraries are also sent out, and small collections in five different foreign languages. No provision for the general culture could be more popular.
Equally acceptable have been the ministrations of the Minnesota State Art Society, organized under an act of 1903. This body manages periodical art exhibitions, offers and awards prizes for excellence in artistic work, and will ultimately form a permanent collection. The exhibitions, held in St. Cloud, Mankato, and Winona have been of great educational value.
Minnesota lies between the latitudes of 43 degrees, 30 minutes, and 49 degrees north, and the longitudes of 89 degrees, 29 minutes, and 97 degrees, 15 minutes west. Her extreme dimensions are therefore about 380 miles from north to south and 350 miles from east to west. Her situation is not far from the geographical centre of the North American continent, and the drainage from the Itascan plateau falls into Hudson’s Bay, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the Gulf of Mexico. The lowest land is at the head of Lake Superior, whose surface is 602 feet above sea-level. The highest land, a granite peak of the Misquah hills in Cook County, is 2230 feet above sea-level. The annual mean temperature is 44 degrees Fahrenheit; that of the summer months, 70 degrees. The climate has proved favorable to health and industry.
By the state census of 1905 the total population of Minnesota was 1,979,912, including 10,920 Indians, 171 Chinese, and 50 Japanese. The native born were 1,424,333. Of the 537,041 foreign-born persons, 262,417 came from the Scandinavian kingdoms, 119,868 from Germany, 84,022 from English-speaking countries. The average yearly increase for the decade closing in 1905 was 40,529; for the five-year period, 22,852. The urban population was 1,048,922, equal to 53 per cent. of the total. In the same decade the urban population had increased 38 per cent., while the rural population had augmented but 14.5 per cent. The most notable examples of urban development are in the “twin cities” of Minneapolis and St. Paul, their aggregate population in 1905 being 458,997. If the suburban dwellers within easy “trolley” ride be added, that number rises to more than half a million. Although the two municipalities have long been coterminous, they may remain politically separate for many years, if not indefinitely.
POPULATION OF MINNESOTA FOR TWELVE CENSUS YEARS.
| Federal Census. | State Census. | |
| 1850 | 6,077 | |
| 1857 | 150,037 | |
| 1860 | 172,028 | |
| 1865 | 250,099 | |
| 1870 | 439,706 | |
| 1875 | 597,407 | |
| 1880 | 780,773 | |
| 1885 | 1,117,798 | |
| 1890 | 1,301,826 | |
| 1895 | 1,574,619 | |
| 1900 | 1,751,394 | |
| 1905 | 1,979,912 |