ILKIBI^iaiElf

Deposited by the
Linonian and Brothers Library

[See page 386

HEADING A STEER ON THE FOOTHILLS

OUR GREAT iWEST
A Study of the Present Conditions
cmd Future Possibilities of
the New Commonwealths
and Capitals of the
United States

BY

JULIAN RALPH
In
AUTHOR OP "harper's CHICAGO AND THE WORLD'S FAIR'
"on Canada's frontier" etc.

ILLUSTRATED

S^^^

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1893

/YALE

Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers.
AU rights reserved.

PREFACE

If the territory described in the following pages was part of
any othoi- region than our \\^est, it might be said of this book
that it is a description of certain new States at the close of thc
nineteenth century. That is what it was intended that it should
be, but the inpouring of population, and the rapid and bewil
dering changes which accompany the phenomenal progress in
that part of our country make it certain that, during the seven
years before the actual close of the century, present description
will gain the character of history or reminiscence.
However, another and dominant characteristic of these studies
may fi.x upon them a value not to be so speedily lost. That feature
is the part of each chapter wherein I have tried to point out the
future possibilities of these imperial reaches of plains and mount
ain country — and of the cities that distinguish them — between
the Great Lakes and the Pacific coast. Many of the possibilities
here pointed out are sure of fulfilment, yet will not be realized
until the newer part of our country is more populous than the
older part.
This is, perhaps, the first comprehensive book upon these re
gions (made most famous in literature by Parkman, Irving, and
Lewis and Clarke) that has little to say of the Indians who are now
kept apart from the whites, on reservations, and cut no impor
tant figure anywhere. It is perhaps the first book upon the
great West which makes no account of the hunting of wild game,
so difficult to indulge in and of so little account now, in the ex
periences and resources of the present population. Further
more, the vanishing cowboy — once a great as well as a pictu
resque factor in several of these States — gets little notice, yet all
that he deserves. In a word, in place of a work upon the once
wild West, the reader will here find a series of chapters upon a
V

noble group of commonwealths under complete government, well
administered. It will be found that these States are joined by
swift railroads, equipped nearly like our own in New York and
Pennsylvania ; that they are peopled by practical, sober, nine
teenth-century folk, who, where their already numerous cities
have sprung up, are supplied with modern hotels, fine churches,
extraordinary schools, jbeautiful theatres, and all the modern con
veniences of street travel, electric lighting, elevators, and the rest
that goes with what we are not to be blamed for characterizing
as " civilization."
Standing between us of the East and these new States are cer
tain midland capitals which are growing as never cities grew
before — in population, size, manufactures, commerce, and wealth.
Since they are the great trading posts of the people beyond, de
scriptions of them and explanations ofthe sources of their greats
ness belong in such a book as this.
The more important of these chapters have appeared in Har
per's Magazine. Others have been published in Harper's
Weekly. It has been remarked of them that they betray none
of that feeling of superiority to the alleged crudeness and new
ness of the western people which, with or without reason, it
seeras to have been expected that an eastern writer wonld ex
hibit. I hope that is true. Certainly, in travelling in the West
and in writing these chapters, I was conscious of no feeling
stronger than one of admiration for the energy and boldness of
the people except it was of a sense of pride in the heartiness of
that spirit of equality and democracy which dominates them,
and the like of which I had not known anywhere else.
As to the statements of fact herein made, it has not sur
prised me that they have escaped challenge and correction
even after such wide and brilliant publicity as Harper's Maga
zine gives to its contents. I say I was not surprised, because
the statements are not my own, but are those of the best in
formed and shrewdest men in the cities and States under discus
sion. Had I attempted to study every valley, every sample of
quartz, every colony of Swedes or Hollanders, every tendency of
commerce, every development of cities and the details of every
business of which I have written, I would have found myself
sentenced for life to the task of writing one article, with a cer
tainty that even that one would contain errors. As an alter-
vi

native, I chose to become a chronicler for those who were giving
or had given their lives to the study of the different branches of
knowledge herein treated. If mistakes are yet to be found here
they will be, none the less, my own mistakes, for they will betray
a failure to verify as many times as possible each bit of infor
mation I obtained. This I tried to do, and, with the hope that
the result will be found of value as well as of interest, I intrust
it and myself to the public.
The Author.
Asbury Park, N. J., 1893.

CONTENTS

CHAP. I. THE CITY OF CHICAGO
II. CHICAGO'S GENTLE SIDE . . .
in. "BROTHER TO THE SEA" ,. . . .
IV. CAPITALS OF THE NORTHWEST . . .
V. THE DAKOTAS
VI. MONTANA; THE TREASURE STATE
VII. GLIMPSES OF PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
VIIL WASHINGTON : THE EVERGREEN STATE . .
IX. COLORADO AND ITS CAPITAL
X. WYOMING — ANOTHER PENNSYLVANIA.
XI. A WEEK WITH THE MORMONS
XII. SAN FRANCISCO .
XIIL WAYS OF CITY GOVERNMENT OUT WEST .

1
:iO
107
lUil 173
312 :37B
313 345391
417445

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
HEADING A STEER ON THE FOOTHILLS . . Frontispiece
GRAND ARCH, PICTURED ROCKS, LAKE SUPERIOR 65
THUNDER CAPE, NORTH SHORE . , 67
TRAP -HOCK CLIFFS, NORTII SHORE 69
THE NORTH SHORE, LAKE SUPERIOR 71
NAKED INDIANS IN MONTREAL 7.J
IN THE HARBOR AT DULUTH 79
THE MISSIONARY . . 85
THE LOCK AT "THE SOO" . 89
TROUT - FISHING ..... . 91
ORE DOCKS AT MARQUETTE, THE LARGEST IN THE WORLD . . 95
LIGHT - HOUSE AT MARQUETTE . 98
ELEVATORS AT DULUTH, WEST SUPERIOR IN THE DISTANCE 101
LOADING A WHALEBACK BARGE 103
A WHALEBACK DESCENDING THE RAPIDS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE . 105
MAP OP NORTII AND SOUTH DAKOTA 155
MAP OF MONTANA . 181
IN COTTON-WOOD PARK, GREAT FALLS . . 229
LOWER FALLS . . 233
PART OF LOWER FALLS FROM BOTTOM OF CANON, LOOKING NORTH 237
CROOKED FALLS • . 241
PART OF RAINBOW FALLS, FROM THE SOUTH SHORE, LOOKING
NORTH .... . 245
CAS^ON of the MISSOURI RIVER, BELOW GREAT PALLS . . 249
MANITOBA RAILROAD BRIDGE, GREAT PALLS .... . 253
xi

PAGE
MAP OF WASHINGTON . ... 279
MAP OP COLORADO .... , . .... 317
MAP OF WYOMING .... ..... . . . 351
OLD-STYLE HOUSE AT LOGAN, UTAH .  , 407
SAN FR.^NCISCO BAY .  419
SEAL ROCKS . .  . 433
JEFFERSON SQUARE .  42'}
MARKET STREET . .  431
UNION SQUARE  435
CLIFF HOUSE . . . .  439
CALIFORNIA STREET . . .  443

THE CITY OF CHICAGO
"With few exceptions, the great expositions of the
world have been held in Christendom's great capitals,
and the cities that have known thera have been scarcely
subordinate to the expositions themselves in the attrac
tions they have offered to the masses of sight-seers who
have gathered in thera. Chicago lacks many of the
qualities of the older cities that have been chosen for
this purpose, but for every one that is missing she offers
others fully as attractive. Those who go clear-minded,
expecting to see a great city, will find one different from
that which any precedent has led thera to look for.
Those who go to study the world's progress will not
find in the Columbian Exposition, among all its mar
vels, any other result of human force so wonderful, ex
travagant, or peculiar as Chicago itself.
While investigating the manageraent and prospects
of the Columbian Exposition, I was a resident of Chicago
for more than a fortnight. A born New-Yorker, the
energy, roar, and bustle of the place were yet sufficient
to first astonish and then to fatigue me. I was led to
examine the city, and to cross-examine sorae of its lead
ing men. I carae away compelled to acknowledge its
possession of certain forceful qualities which I never
saw exhibited in the same degree anywhere else. I got
a satisfactory explanation of its growth and achieve
ments, as well as proof that it must continue to expand
A 1

in population and commercial influence. Moreover, with
out losing a particle of pride or faith in New York—
without perceiving that New York was affected by the
consideration — I acquired a respect for Chicago such as
it is most likely that any American who makes a similar
investigation must share with me.
The city has been thought intolerant of criticism.
The amount of truth there is in this is found in its
supervolurainous civicism. The bravado and bunkum
of the Chicago newspapers reflect this quality, but do it
clumsily, because it proceeds from a sense of business
policy with the editors, who laugh at it themselves.
But underlying the behavior of the most able and enter
prising men in the city is this motto, which they con
stantly quoted to me, all using the same words, " We
are for Chicago first, last, and all the time." To define
that sentence is, in a great measure, to account for
Chicago. It explains the possession of a million inhabi
tants by a city that practically dates its beginning after
the w^ar of the rebellion. Its adoption by half a million
men as their watchword raeans the forcing of trade and
manufactures and wealth ; the getting of the World's
Fair, if you please. In order to coraprehend Chicago, it
is best never to lose sight of the motto of its citizens.
I have spoken of the roar and bustle and energy of
Chicago. This is most noticeable in the business part of
the town, where the greater number of the men are
crowded together. It seems there as if the men would
run over the horses if the drivers were not careful.
Everybody is in such a hurry and going at such a pace
that if a stranger asks his way, he is apt to have to trot
along with his neighbor to gain the information, for the
average Chicagoan cannot stop to talk. The whole
business of life is carried on at high pressure, and the
pithy part of Chicago is like three hundred acres of
2

New York Stock Exchange when trading is active.
European visitors have written that there are no such
ci'owds anywhere as gather on Broadway, and this is
true most of the tirae ; but there is one hour on every
week-day when certain streets in Chicago are so packed
with people as to make Broadway look desolate and
solitudinous by comparison. That is the hour between
half -past five and half-past six o'clock, when the famous
tall buildings of the city vomit their inhabitants upon
the pavements. Photographs of the principal corners
and crossings, taken at the height of the human torrent,
suggest the thought that the camera must have been
turned on some little-known painting by Dore. No
body but Dore ever conceived such pictures. To those
who are in the crowds, even Chicago seeras small and
cramped; even her street cars, running in breakneck
trains, prove far too few; even her streets that connect
horizon with horizon seem each night to roar at the city
officials for further annexation in the morning.
We shall see these crowds simply and satisfactorily
accounted for presently; but they exhibit only one
phase of the high-pressure existence; they forra only
one feature among the many that distinguish the town.
In the tall buildings are the most modern and rapid
elevators, machines that fiy up through the towers like
glass balls from a trap at a shooting contest. The
slow-o-oing stranger, Avho is conscious of having been
"kneaded" along the streets, like a lump of dough
araong a million bakers, feels himself loaded into one of
those frail-looking baskets of steel netting, and the next
instant the elevator-boy touches the trigger, and up goes
the whole load as a feather is caught up by a gale.
The descent is more simple. Something lets go, and
you fall from ten to twenty stories as it happens. There
is sometimes a jolt, which makes the passenger seem to
3

feel his stomach pass into his shoes, but, as a rule, the
mechanism and management both work marvellously
towards ease and gentleness. These elevators are too
slow for Chicago, and the managers of certain tall
buildings now arrange them so that sorae run " express "
to the seventh story without stopping, while what may
be called accommodation cars halt at the lower floors,
pursuing a course that may be likened to the emptying
of the chambers of a revolver in the hands of a person
who is " quick on the trigger." It is the same every
where in the business district. Along Clark Street are
some gorgeous underground restaurants, all marble and
plated metal. Whoever is eating at one of the tables in
them will see the ushers standing about like statues
until a customer enters the door, when they dart for
ward as if the building were falling. It is only done in
order to seat the visitor promptly. Being of a sym
pathetic and impressionable nature, I bolted along the
street all the time I was there as if some one on the
next block had picked my pocket.
In the Auditorium Hotel the guests communicate
with the clerk by electricity, and may flash word of
their thirst to the bar-tender as lightning dances from
the top to the bottom of a steeple. A sort of annunciator
is used, and by turning an arrow and pressing a button,
a man may in half a minute order a cocktail, towels,
ice-water, stationery, dinner, a bootblack, and the even
ing newspapers. Our horse-cars in New York raove at
the rate of about six miles an hour. The cable-cars of
Chicago make more than nine miles an hour in town,
and more than thirteen miles an hour where the popula
tion is less dense. They go in trains of two cars each,
and with such a racket of gong-ringing and such a
grinding and whir of grip-wheels as to raake a modern
vestibuled train seem a waste of the opportunities for

noise. But these street cars distribute the people
grandly, and while they occasionally run over a stray
citizen, they far more frequently clear their way by
lifting wagons arid trucks bodily to one side as they
whirl along. It is a rapid and a business-like city.
The speed with which cattle are killed and pigs are
turned into slabs of salt pork has amazed the world,
but it is only the ignorant portion thereof that does not
know that the celerity at the stock-yards is merely an
effort of the butchers to keep up with the rest of the
town. The only slow things in Chicago are the steam
railway trains. Further on we will discover why they
are so.
I do not know how many very tall buildings Chicago
contains, but they must number nearly two dozen.
Some of them are artistically designed, and hide their
height in well-balanced proportions. A few are mere
boxes punctured with window-holes, and stand above
their neighbors like great hitching-posts. The best of
them are very elegantly and corapletely appointed, and
the communities of men inside them might almost live
their lives within their walls, so multifarious are the
occupations and services of the tenants. The best New
York office buildings are not injured by comparison with
these towering structures, except that they are not so
tall as the Chicago buildings, but there is not in New
York any office structure that can be compared with
Chicago's so-called Chamber of Commerce office build
ing, so far as are concerned the advantages of light and
air and openness and roominess which its tenants enjoy.
In these respects there is only one finer building in
America, and that is in Minneapohs. It is a great mis
take to think that we in New York possess all the ele
gant, rich, and ornamental outgrowths of taste, or that
we know better than the West what are the luxuries
5

and comforts of the age. With their floors of defth^-
laid mosaic-work, their walls of marble and onyx, their
balustrades of copper worked into arabesquerie, their
artistic lanterns, elegant electric fixtures, their costly
and luxurious public rooms, these Chicago office build
ings force an exclamation of praise, however unwillingly
it comes.
They have adopted what they call " the Chicago
method " in putting up these steepling hives. This plan
is to construct the actual edifice of steel framework, to
which are added thin outer walls of brick, or stone
masonry, and the necessary partitions of fire-brick, and
plaster laid on iron lathing. The buildings are therefore
like enclosed bird-cages, and it is said that, like bird
cages, they cannot shake or tumble down. The exterior
walls are raere envelopes. They are so treated that the
buildings look like heaps of masonry, but that is homage
paid to custom more than it is a material element of
strength. These walls are to a building what an en
velope is to a letter, or a postage-stamp is to that part
of an envelope which it covers. The Chicago method is
expeditious, economical, and in many ways advantageous.
The manner in which the great weight of houses so tall
as to include between sixteen and twenty-four stories is
distributed upon the ground beneath them is ingenious.
Wherever one of the principal upright pillars is to be
set up, the builders lay a pad of steel and cement of
such extent that the pads for all the pillars cover all the
site. These pads are slightly pyramidal in shape, and
are made by laying alternate courses of steel beams
crosswise, one upon another. Each pair of courses of
steel is filled in and solidified with ceraent, and then the
next two courses are added and similarly treated. At
last each pad is eighteen inches thick, and perhaps
eighteen feet square ; but the size is governed by the

desire to distribute the weight of the building at about
the average of a ton to the square foot.
This peculiar process is necessitated by the character
of the land underneath Chicago. Speaking widely, the
rule is to find from seven to fourteen feet of sand super
imposed upon a layer of clay between ten and forty
feet in depth. It has not paid to puncture this clay
with piling. The piles sink into a soft and yielding
substance, and the clay is not tenacious enough to hold
them. Thus the Chicago Post-office was built, and it
not only settles continuously, but it settles unevenly.
On the other hand, the famous Rookery Building, set
up on these steel and cement pads, did not sink quite an
inch, though the architect's calculation was that, by
squeezing the water out of the clay underneath, it
would settle seven inches. Yery queer and differing
results have followed the construction of Chicago's big
gest buildings, and without going too deep into details,
it has been noticed that while some have pulled neigh
boring houses down a few inches, others have lifted ad
joining houses, and still others have raised buildings
that were at a distance from themselves. The bed of
cla}' underneath Chicago acts when under pressure like
a pan of dough, or like a blanket tautened at the edges
and held clear of underneath support. Chicago's great
office buildings have basements, but no cellars.
I have referred to the number of these stupendous
structures. Let it be known next that they are all in a
very sraall district, that narrow area which composes
Chicago's office region, which lies between Lake Mich
igan and all the principal railroad districts, and at the
edges of which one-twenty-fifth of all the railroad mile
age of the world is said to terminate, though the dis
trict is but little more than half a mile square or 300
acres in extent. One of these buildings— and not the
7

largest — has a population of 4000 persons. It was
visited and its elevators were used on three days, when
a count was-kept, by 19,000, 18,000, and 20,000 persons.
Last October there were 7000 offices in the tall build
ings of Chicago, and 7000 more were under way in
buildings then undergoing construction. The reader
now understands why in the heart of Chicago every
work-day evening the crowds convey the idea that our
Broadway is a deserted thoroughfare as compared with,
say, the corner of Clark and Jackson streets.
These tall buildings are mainly built on land obtained
on 99-year leasehold. Long leases rather than outright
purchases of land have long been a favorite preliminary
to building in Chicago, where, for one thing, the men
who owned the land have not been those with the
money for building. Where very great and costly
buildings are concerned, the long leases often go to coi--
porations or syndicates, who put up the houses. It
seems to many strangers who visit Chicago that it is
reasonable to prophesy a speedy end to the feverish
impulse to swell the number of these giant piles, either
through legislative ordinance or by the fever running its
course. Many prophesy that it must soon end. This
idea is bred of several reasons. In the first place, the
tall buildings darken the streets, and transform the
lower stories of opposite houses into so many cellars or
damp and dark basements. In the next place, the great
number of tall and splendid office houses is depreciating
the value of the hurabler property in their neighbor
hoods. Four-story and five-story houses that once were
attractive are no longer so, because their owners cannot
afford the conveniences which distinguish the greater
edifices, wherein light and heat are often provided free,
fire-proof safes are at the service of every tenant, jani
tors officer a host of servants, and there are barber-
8

shops, restaurants, cigar and news-stands, elevators, and
a half-dozen other conveniences not found in sraaller
houses. It would seem, also, that since not all the peo
ple of Chicago spend their tirae in offices, there must
soon corae an end of the demand for these chambers.
So it seems, but not to a thoroughbred Chicagoan.
One of the foremost business men in the city asserts
that he can perceive no reason why the entire busi
ness heart of the town— that square half-mile of which
I have spoken — should not soon be all builded up of
cloud-capped towers. There will be a need for them,
he says, and the money to defray the cost of them will
accompany the demand. The only trouble he foresees
will be in the solution of the problera what to do with
the people who will then crowd the streets as never
streets were clogged before.
This prophecy relates to a little block in the city, but
the city itself contains 181^ square railes. It has been
said of the raany annexations by which her present size
was attained that Chicago reached out and took to her
self farms, prairie land, and villages, and that of such
material the great city now in part consists. This is
true. In suburban trips, such as those I took to Fort
Sheridan and Fernwood, for instance, I passed great
cabbage farms, groves, houseless but plotted tracts, and
long reaches of the former prairie. Even yet Hyde
Park is a separated settlement, and a dozen or more
villages stand out as 'distinctly by themselves as ever
they did. If it were true, as her rivals insist, that
Chicago added all this tract merely to get a high rank
in the census reports of population, the folly of the ac
tion would be either ludicrous or pitiful, according to
the stand -point frora which it was viewed. But the
true reason for her enormous extension of municipal
jurisdiction is quite as peculiar. The enlargement was

urged and accomplished in order to anticipate the
growth and needs of the city. It was a consequence
of extraordinary foresight, which recognized the neces
sity for a uniform system of boulevards, parks, drain
age, and water provision when the city should reach
limits that it was even then seen must soon bound a
compact aggregation of stores, offices, factories, and
dwellings. To us of the East this is surprising. It
might seem incredible were there not many other
evidences of the sarae spirit and sagacity not only in
Chicago, but in the other cities of the West, especially
of the Northwest. What Minneapolis, St. Paul, and
Duluth are doing towards a future park system reveals
the same enterprise and habit of looking far ahead.
And Chicago, in her park system, makes evident her
intentions. In all these cities and in a hundred ways
the observant traveller notes the same forehandedness,
and prepares himself to understand the temper in which
the greatest of the Western capitals leaned forth and
absorbed the prairie. Chicago expects to becorae the
largest city in America — a city which, in fifty years,
shall be larger than the consolidated cities that may
form New York at that tirae.
Now on what substance does Chicago feed that she
should foresee herself so great ? What raanner of men
are those of Chicago? What are the whys and the
wherefores of her growth ?
It seems to have ever been, as it is now, a city of
young men. One Chicagoan accounts for its low death
rate on the ground that not even its leading men are
yet old enough to die. The young men who drifted
there from the Eastern States after the close of the
war all agree that the thing which most astonished
them was the youthfulness of the most active business
men. Marshall Field, Potter Palmer, and the rest,
10

heading very large mercantile establishments, were
young fellows. Those who came to Chicago frora
England fancied, as it is said that Englishmen do, that a
man may not be trusted with affairs until he has lost half
his hair and all his teeth. Our own Eastern men were
apt to place wealth and success at the middle of the
scale of life. But in Chicago men under thirty were
leading in commerce and industry. The sight was a
spur to all the young men who came, and they also
pitched in to swell the size and successes of the young
men's capital. The easy making of money by the loan
ing of it and by handling city realty — sources which
never failed with shrewd men — not only whetted the
general appetite for big and quick money-making, but
they provided the means for the establishment and ex
tension of trade in other ways and with the West at
large. It is one of the peculiarities of Chicago that one finds
not only the capitalists but the storekeepers discussing
the whole country with a familiarity as strange to a
man frora the Atlantic coast as Nebraska is strange to
raost Philadelphians or New-Yorkers. But the well-
inforraed and " hustling " Chicagoan is famihar with the
differing districts of the entire West, North, and South,
with their crops, industries, wants, financial status, and
means of intercommunication. As in London we find
men whose business field is the world, so in Chicago we
find the business raen talking not of one section or of
Europe, as is largely the case in New York, but dis
cussing the affairs of the entire country. The figures
which garnish their conversation are bewildering, but
if they are analyzed, or even comprehended, they will
reveal to the listener how vast and how wealthy a re
gion acknowledges Chicago as its market and its finan
cial and trading centre. 11

Without either avowing or contesting any part of the
process by which Chicago raen account for their city's
importance or calculate its future, let me repeat a digest
of what several influential men of that city said upon
the subject. Chicago, then, is the centre of a circle of
1000 miles diaraeter. If you draw a line northward
500 miles, you find everywhere arable land and timber.
The same is true with respect to a line drawn 500 miles
in a northwesterly course. For 650 miles westward
there is no change in the rich and alluring prospect, and
so all around the circle, except where Lake Michigan
interrupts it, the same conditions are found. Moreover,
the lake itself is a valuable element in commerce. The
rays or spokes in all these directions become materialized
in the form of the tracks of 35 railways which enter the
city. Twenty-two of these are great companies, and at
a short distance sub-radials raade by other railroads
raise the nuraber to 50 roads. As said above, in Chi
cago one-twenty-fifth of the railway mileage of the
world terminates, and serves 30 millions of persons,
who find Chicago the largest city easily accessible to
them. Thus is found a vast population connected easily
and directly with a coramon centre, to which every
thing they produce can be brought, and frora which all
that contributes to the raaterial progress and comfort of
man may be economically distributed.
A financier who is equally well known and respected
in New York and Chicago put the case somewhat dif
ferently as to what he called Chicago's territory. He
considered it as being 1000 miles square, and spoke of it
as " the land west of the Alleghanies and south of Mason
and Dixon's line." This region, the richest agricultural
territory in the world, does its financiering in Chicago.
The rapid increase in wealth of both the city and the
tributary region is due to the fact that every year both
12

produce more, and have more to sell and less to buy.
Not long ago the rule was that a stream of goods ran
eastward over the Alleghanies, and another stream of
supplies came back, so that the West had little gain to
show. But during the past five years this back-setting
current has been a stream of money returned for the
products the West has distributed. The West is now
selling to the East and to Europe and getting money in
return, because it is manufacturing for itself, as well as
tilling the soil and mining for the rest of the world. It
therefore earns money and acquires a profit instead of
continuing its forraer process of toiling merely to obtain
from the East the necessaries of life.
The condition in which Nebraska and Kansas find
themselves is the condition in which a great part of the
West was placed not long ago — a condition of debt, of
being mortgaged, and of having to send its earnings to
Eastern capitalists. That is no longer the case of the
West in general. The debtor States now are Kansas,
Nebraska, the two Dakotas, and western Minnesota;
but Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin,
and Michigan (the States most closely tributary to
Chicago) have paid off their raortgages, and are absorb
ing raoney and investing it in local iraproveraents.
What they earn is now their own, and it comes back to
them in the form of money. This money used to be
shipped to the East, to which these States were in debt,
but now it is invested where it is earned, and the conse
quence has been that in the last five or six years the
West has rarely shipped any currency East, but has
been constantly drawing it from there.
In this change of condition is seen an explanation of
much that has made Chicago peculiar. She has been
what she would call " hustling." For years, in company
with the entire Western country, she has been making
13

money only to pay debts with. That, they say, is
why men in Chicago have talked only "business;"
that is why Chicago has had no leisure class, no res
ervoir of home capital seeking investment. The for
mer conditions having changed, now that she is pro
ducing raore and buying less, the rest will change
also. When we understand what are the agricultural re
sources of the region for which Chicago is the trading-
post, we perceive how certain it was that its debt would
be paid, and that great wealth would follow. The corn
lands of Illinois return a profit of $15 to the acre, rais
ing 50 to 60 bushels at 42^ cents a bushel last year, and
at a cost for cultivation of only $7 an acre. Wheat pro
duces $22 50 an acre, costs a little less than corn, and
returns a profit of from $12 to $15. Oats run 55 bushels
to the acre, at 27 cents a bushel, and cost the average
farmer only, say, $6 an acre, returning $8 or $9 an acre
in profit. These figures will vary as to production, cost,
and profit, but it is believed that they represent a fair
average. This midland country, of which Chicago is
the capital, produces two thousand million bushels of
corn, seven hundred raillion bushels of oats, fifty million
hogs, twenty-eight million horses, thirty million sheep,
and so on, to cease before the reader is wearied ; but in
no single instance is the region producing within 50 per
cent, of what it will be made to yield before the expira
tion of the next twenty years. Farraing there has been
haphazard, rude, and wasteful ; but as it begins to pay
well, the methods begin to iraprove. Drainage will add
new lands, and better raethods will swell the crops, so
that, for instance, where 60 bushels of corn to the acre
are now grown, at least 100 bushels will be harvested.
All the corn lands are now settled, but they are not im
proved. They will yet double in value. It is different
U

with wheat ; with that the maximum production will
soon be attained.
Such is the wealth that Chicago counts up as tribu
tary to her. By the railroads that dissect this opulent
region she is riveted to the midland, the southern, and
the western country between the Eockies and the Alle
ghanies. She is closely allied to the South, because she
is manufacturing and distributing much that the South
needs, and can get most econoraically from her. Chicago
has become the third manufacturing city in the Union,
and she is drawing manufactures away from the East
faster than most persons in the East imagine. To-day
it is a great Troy stove-making establishment that has
moved to Chicago ; the week before it was a Massachu
setts shoe factory that went there. Many great estab
lishments have gone there, but more must follow, be
cause Chicago is not only the centre of the midland
region in respect of the distribution of made-up wares,
but also for the concentration of raw materials. Chicago
must lead in the manufacture of all goods of which
wood, leather, and iron are the bases. The revolution
that took place in the meat trade when Chicago took
the lead in that industry affected the whole leather and
hide industry. Cattle are dropping 90,000 skins a week
in Chicago, and the trade is confined to Chicago, St.
Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, and St. Paul. It is idle to
suppose that those skins will be sent across the Alle
ghanies to be turned into goods and sent back again.
Wisconsin has become the great tanning State, and all
over the district close around Chicago are factories and
factory towns where hides are turned into leather goods.
The West still gets its finer goods in the East, but it is
raaking the coarser grades, and to such an extent as to
give a touch of New England color to the towns and
villages around Chicago. 15

This is not an unnatural rivalry that has grown up.
The former condition of Western dependence was un
natural. The science of profitable business lies in the
practice of economy. Chicago has in abundance all the
fuels except hard coal. She has coal, oil, stone, brick —
everything that is needed for building and for living.
Manufactures gravitate to such a place for economical
reasons. The population of the north Atlantic division,
including Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and acknowl
edging New York as its centre, is 17,401,000. The pop
ulation of the northern central division, trading with
Chicago, is 22,362,379. Every one has seen each suc
ceeding census shift the centre of population farther
and farther West, but not every one is habituated to
putting two and two together.
" Chicago is yet so young and busy," said he who is
perhaps the leading banker there, " she has no time for
anything beyond each citizen's private affairs. It is
hard to get men to serve on a committee. The only
thing that saves us from being boors is our civic pride.
We are fond, proud, enthusiastic in that respect. But
we know that Chicago is not rich, like New York. She
has no bulk of capital lying ready for investment and
reinvestment ; yet she is no longer poor. She has just
got over her poverty, and the next stage, bringing ac
cumulated wealth, will quickly follow. Her growth in
this respect is more than paralleled by her developraent
into an industrial centre."
So much, then, for Chicago's reasons for existence.
The explanation forms not merely the history of an
American town, and a town of young raen, it points an
old moral. It demonstrates anew the active truth that
energy is a greater force than raoney. It commands
raoney. The young founders of Chicago were backed
in the East by capitalists who discounted the energy
16

they saw them display. And now Chicago capitalists
own the best street railway in St. Louis, the surface rail
way system of Toledo, a thousand enterprises in hun
dreds of Western towns.
Chicago has been as crude and rough as any other
self-creating entity engaged in a hard struggle for a
living. And latterly confidence in and exultation over
the inevitable success of the battle have made her boast
ful, conceited, and noisy. But already one citizen has
taken to building houses for rental and not for sale.
He has arranged an imitation Astor estate as far ahead
as the law will permit, which is to saj?^ to one generation
unborn. Already, so they boast in Chicago, you may
see a few tables in the Chicago Club surrounded by
whist-players with gray locks and semispherical waist
coats in the afternoons during titsiness hours ! — a most
surprising thing, and only possible at the Chicago Club,
whicli is the old club of the "old rich." These partially
globular old whist-players are still in business, of course,
as everybody is, but they let go with one hand, as it
were, in the afternoons, and only stroll around to their
offices at four or five o'clock to make certain that the
young merabers of the other clubs have not stolen their
trade while they were playing cards. The other clubs
of Chicago merely look like clubs, as we understand the
word in New York. They are patronized as our dining-
clubs are, with a rush at luncheon-time, although at both
ends of the town, in the residence districts, there are
clubs to which men drift on Sundays.
And here one is brought to reflect that Chicago is
distinctly American. I know that the Chicagoans boast
that theirs is the most mixed population in the country,
but the makers and movers of Chicago are Americans.
The streets of the city are full of strange faces of a type
to which we arc not used in the East — a dish-faced, soft-
B 17

eyed, light-haired people. They are Scandinavians ; but
they are as malleable as lead, and quickly and easily
follow and adopt every Americanism. In return, they
ask only to be permitted to attend a host of Lutheran
churches in flock?, to work hard, live temperately, save
thriftily, and to pronounce every^ as if it were a y. But
the dominating class is of that pure and. broad American
type which is not controlled by New England or any
other tenets, but is somewhat loosely made up of the over
flow of the New England, the Middle, and the Southern
States. It is as mixed and comprehensive as the West
Point school of cadets. It calls its city " She-caw-ger." It
inclines to soft hats, and only once in a great while does
a visitor see a Chicagoan who has the leisure or patience
to carry a cane. Its signs are eloquent of its habits, es
pecially of its habit of freedom. " Take G  's candy
to the loved ones at home," stares from hundreds of
walls. " Gentlemen all chew Fraxy because it sweetens
the breath after drinking," one manufacturer declares ;
then he adds, " Ladies who play tennis chew it because
it lubricates the throat." A bottler of spring water ad
vertises it as " God's own liver reraedy." On the bill
boards of a theatre is the threat that "If you miss see
ing Peter Peterson, half your life will be gone." In
a principal street is a characteristic sign product, " My
fifteen -cent meals are world-beaters;" yet there are
•o'orse terrors for Chicago diners-out, as is shown by
the sign, " Business lunch— quick and cheap."
But the visitor's heart warms to the town when he sees
its parks and its horaes. In them is ample assurance that
not every breath is " business," and not every thought
commercial. Once out of the thicket of the business and
semi-business district, the dwellings of the people reach
mile upon mile away along pleasant boulevards and
avenues, or facing noble parks and parkways, or in a suc-
18

cession of villages green and gay with foliage and flow
ers. They are not cliff dwellings like our flats and tene
ments ; there are no brownstone canons like our up- town
streets; there are only occasional hesitating hints there
of those Philadelphian and Baltimorean mills that grind
out dwellings all alike, as nature makes pease and man
raakes pins. There are raore miles of detached villas in
Chicago than a stranger can easily account for. As they
are not only found on Prairie Avenue and the boule
vards, but in the populous wards and semi-suburbs, where
the middle folk are congregated, it is evident that the
prosperous moiety of the population enjoys living better
(or better living) than the same fraction in the Atlantic
cities. Land in New York has been too costly to permit of
these villa-like dwellings, but that does not alter the
fact tbat existence in a home hemmed in by other
houses is at best but a crippled living. There never
has been any valid excuse for the building of these com
pressed houses by New York millionaires. It sounds
like a Celtic bull, but, in my opinion, the poorer million
aires of Prairie Avenue are better off. A pecuharity of
the buildings of Chicago is in the great variety of build
ing-stones that are eraployed in their construction.
AYhere we would build two blocks of brownstone, I
have counted thirteen varieties of beautiful and differ
ing building material. Moreover, the contrasts in ar
chitectural design evidence among Chicago house-owners
a complete sway of individual taste. It is in these beaiu-
tiful homes that the peo{)le, who do not know what to
do with their club-houses, hold their card -parties; it is
to them that they bring their visitors and friends ; in
short, it is at horae that the Chicagoan recreates and
loafs. It is said, and I have no reason to doubt it, that the
19

clerks and small tradesraen who live in thousands of
these pretty little boxes are the owners of their homes ;
also that the tenements of the rich display evidence of
a tasteful and costly garnering of the globe for articles
of luxury and virtu. A sneering critic, who wounded
Chicago deeply, intimated that theirs must be a primi
tive society where the rich sit on their door-steps of an
evening. That really is a habit there, and in the finer
districts of all the Western cities. To enjoy themselves
the more corapletely, the people bring out rugs and car
pets, always of gay colors, and fiing them on the steps
— or stoops, as we Dutch legatees should say — that the
ladies' dresses may not be soiled. As these step cloth
ings are as bright as the maidens' eyes and as gay as
their cheeks, the effect may be imagined. For my part,
I think it argues well for any society that indulges in
the trick, and proves existence in such a city to be more
human and hearty and far less artificial than where
there is too much false pride to permit of it. In front
of many of the nice hotels the boarders lug out great
arra-chairs upon the portal platforms or beside the curbs.
There the men sit in rows, just as I can remember see
ing them do in front of the New York Hotel and the
old St. Nicholas Hotel in happy days of yore, to smoke
in the sunless evening air, and to exchange comments
on the weather and the passers-by. If the dead do not
rise until the Judgment-day, but lie less active than their
dust, then old Wouter Van Twiller, Petrus Stuyvesant,
and the rest of our original Knickerbockers will be sadly
disappointed angels when they corae to, and find that
we have abandoned these practices in New York, after
the good exaraple that our first families all set us.
It is in Chicago that we find a great number of what
are called boulevarded streets, at the intersections of
which are signs bearing such admonitions as these:
20

" For pleasure driving. No traffic wagons allowed ;" or,
" Traffic teams are not allowed on this boulevard." Ahy
street in the residence parts of the city may be boule
varded and turned over to the care of the park commis
sioners of the district, provided that it does not lie next
to any other such street, and provided that a certain
proportion of the property-holders along it are minded
to follow a simple formula to procure the improvement.
Improved road-beds are given to such streets, and they
not only become neat and pretty, but enhance the value
of all neighboring land. One boulevard in Chicago pen
etrates to the very heart of its bustling business district.
By means of it men and women may drive from the
southern suburbs or parks to the centre of trade, per
haps to their office doors, under the most pleasant con
ditions. By means of the lesser beautified avenues among
the dwellings men and women raay sleep of nights, and
hide frora the worst of the city's tumult among green
lawns and flower-beds.
Chicago's park system is so truly her crown, or its
diadem, that its fame may lead to the thought that
enough has been said about it. That is not the case,
however, for the parks change and improve so constant
ly that the average Chicagoan finds some of them out
growing his knowledge, unless he goes to them as he
ought to go to his prayers. It is not in extent that the
city's parks are extraordinary, for, all told, they com
prise less than two thousand acres. It is the energy
that has given rise to them, and the taste and enthusi
asm which have been expended upon them, that cause
our wonder. Sand and swamp were at the bottom of
them, and if their surfaces now roll in gentle undula
tions, it is because the earth that was dug out for the
making of ponds has been subsequently applied to the
forraing of hills and knolls. The people go to sorae of
21

them upon the boulevards of which I have spoken, be
neath trees and beside lawns and gorgeous flower-beds,
having their senses sharpened in anticipation of the
pleasure-grounds beyond, as the heralds in some old
plays prepare us for the action that is to follow. Once
the parks are reached, they are found to be literally for
the use of the people who own them. I have a fancy
that a people who are so largely American would not
suffer them to be otherwise. There are no signs warn
ing the public off the grass, or announcing that they
" may look, but mustn't touch " whatever there is to
see. The people swarm all over the grass, and yet it
continues beautiful day after day and year after year.
The floral displays seem unharmed ; at any rate, we
have none to compare with them in any Atlantic coast
parks. The people even picnic on the sward, and those
who can appreciate such license find, ready at hand,
baskets in which to hide the litter which follows. And,
O ye who manage other parks we wot of, know that
these Chicago play-grounds seem as free from harm and
eyesore as any in the land.
The best parks face the great lake, and get wondrous
charms of dignity and beauty from it. At the North
Side the Lincolji Park commissioners, at great expense,
are building out into the lake, making a handsome paved
beach, sea-wall, esplanade, and drive to enclose a long,
broad body of the lake-water. Although the great blue
lake is at the city's edge, there is little or no sailing or
pleasure-boating upon it. It is too rude and treacherous.
Therefore these commissioners of the Lincoln Park are
enclosing, behind their new-made land, a watercourse
for sailing and rowing, for racing, and for more indolent
aquatic sport. The Lake Shore Drive, when completed,
will be three miles in length, and will connect with yet
..another notable road to Fort Sheridan twenty-five miles
33

in length. All these beauties forra part of the main
exhibit at the Columbian Exposition. Realizing this,
the municipality has not only voted $5,000,000 to the
Exposition, but has set apart $3,500,000 for beautifying
and improving the city in readiness for the Exposition
and its visitors, even as a bride bedecketh herself for her
husband. That is well ; but it is not her beauty that
will raost interest the visitors to Chicago.
I have an idea that all this is very Araerican ; but
what is to be said of the Chicago Sunday, with its drink
ing shops all wide open, and its multitudes swarming
out on pleasure bent ? And what of the theatres open
ing to the best night's business of the week at the hour
of Sunday evening service in the churches ? I suspect
that this also is American — that sort of American that
develops under Southern and Western influences not
dominated by the New England spirit. And yet the
Puritan traditions are not without honor and respect in
Chicago, witness the fact that the city spent seventeen
and a quarter millions of dollars during the past five
years upon her public schools.
Another thing that I suspect is American, though I
am sorry to say it, is the impudence of the people who
wait on the public. It is quite certain that the more in
telligent a man is, the better waiter he will make ; but
your free-born American acknowledges a quality which
more than offsets his intelligence. In pursuit of knowl
edge I went to a restaurant, which was splendid if it
was not good, and the American who waited on me
lightened his service with song in this singular manner :
"Comrades, com — you said coffee, didn't yer? — ever
since we were boys ; sharing each other's sor — I don't
think we've got no Roquefort — sharing each other's joys.
Brie, then — keerect!" (I recall this against my coun
try, not ag'ainst Chicago lestaurants. A city which pos-
33

sesses Harvey's, Kinsley's, or the Wellington need not
be tender on that point.) But it is as much as a man's
self-respect is worth to hazard a necessary question of a
ticket-seller in a theatre or railroad depot. Those hona
fide Americans, the colored men, are apt to try their
skill at repartee with the persons they serve ; and while
I cannot recall an instance when a hotel clerk was im
pudent, I several times heard members of that frater
nity yield to a sense of humor that would bankrupt a
Broadway hotel in three weeks. In only one respect
are the servitors of the Chicago public like the French :
They boast the sarae motto — " Liberty, equality, frater
nity." There is another notable thing in Chicago which, I
ara certain, is a national rather than a raerely local pe
culiarity — I refer to dirty streets. In our worst periods
in New York we resort to a Latin trick of tidying up
our most conspicuous thoroughfares, and leaving the
others to the care of — I think it must be the Federal
Weather Bureau to whose care we leave them. How
ever, nearly all American cities are disgracefully ahke
in this respect, and until sorae dying patriot bequeathes
the raoney to send every Alderman (back) to Europe to
see how streets should and can be kept, it is, perhaps,
idle to discuss the subject. But these are all corapara
tive trifles. Certainly they will seem such to whoever
shall look into the situation of Chicago closely enough
to discover the great problems that lie before the people
as a corporation.
She will take up these questions in their ,turn and as
soon as possible, and, stupendous as they are, no one
who understands the enterprise and energy of Chicago
will doubt for a moment that she will master them
shrewdly. These probleras are of national interest, and one is a
34

suljject of study throughout Christendora. They deal
with the disciplining of the railroads, which run through
the city at a level with the streets, and with the estab
lishraent of an efficient system of drainage or sewage.
A start has been made for the handling of the sewage
question. The little Chicago River flows naturally into
the great lake ; but years ago an attempt to alter its
course was raade by the operation of pumping-works at
Bridgeport, within the city limits, whereby 40,000 gal
lons of water per minute are pumped out of the river,
and into a canal that connects with the Illinois River,
and thence with the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.
At most times this causes a sluggish flow of the river
southward away from the lake. Water from the lake
is also pumped into the river to dilute its waters, but it
remains a noisome stream, a sewer, in fact, whose wa
ters at times flow or are driven into Lake Michigan to
pollute the city's water supply. " Measures have been
taken to construct a large gravity channel as an outlet
for the sewage into the Illinois River. The Chicago
Sanitary District has been formed by act of Legislature ;
nine trustees have been elected to supervise the construc
tion of the channel, engineers have been set at work
upon surveys," and perhaps the channel which will re
sult will serve the double purpose of disposing of the
sewage and establishing a navigable waterway connect
ing Chicago and her comraerce with the Mississippi
River. It is said that this will cost Chicago twenty
raillions of dollars. Honestly done, it will certainly be
worth whatever it costs.
Chicago's water supply has been linked with this sew
age problem. It does not join with it. Once the sewage
matter were settled, the old two-mile crib in Lake Mich
igan would bring to town water than which there is
none more pure on earth. The five - mile tunnel and
25

crib now in course of construction (that is to say, the
tunnel and gate pushed five miles out into the lake) cer
tainly will leave nothing to be desired, even as the sew
age is now ordered.
The railroad question is more bothersome. Chicago
is criss-crossed by a gridiron of railway tracks. Prac
tically all of them enter the city and dissect the streets
at grade; that is to say, at the level of the city's arteries.
Speaking not too loosely, the locomotives and cars man
gle or kill two persons on every week-day in the year,
or six hundred persons annually. The railroad officials
argue that they invented and developed Chicago, and
that her people are ungrateful to protest against a little
thing like a slaughter which would depopulate the
average village in a year. In so far as it is true that
they created the cit}^, they will but repeat the experience
of that fabled inventor whose raonstrous mechanical off
spring claimed him for its victim, for, in a wholesome
public-spirited sense, that is what must become their
fate. Chicago is ten miles deep and twenty-four miles
wide, and the railroads (nearly all using a number of
tracks) all terminate within 4000 feet of the Rookery
Building. I rely on the accuracy of a noted Chicagoan
for that measurement. The Rookery is situated very
much as the Bank of England is in London and as the
City Hall is in New York, so that it will be seen that
Chicago is at the mercy of agencies that should be her
servants, and not her masters.
, Some railroad raen, looking from their stand-point,
assert that it wiU cost Chicago one hundred millions of
dollars to overcome this injury to her comfort and her
safety. This assertion is often echoed in Chicago by
men not in the railroad business. On the other hand,!
shall be surprised if the railroads do not have to bear a
large share of the cost, whatever it may prove to be,
36

because I take it that Chicago will not fail to profit by
the experiences of other cities where this problera has
already been dealt with, and where it has not been so
lightly taken for granted that when railroads are in the
way of the people, it is the people^ and not the railroads,
who must pay to move them out of the Avay. The sum
of present human judgment seeras to be that the cost
is divisible, and that the railroads should look after their
tracks, and the people after their streets.
The entire nation will observe with keen interest the
raanner in which Chicago deals with this problem, not
with any anticipation of an unjust solution that will
trespass on the popular rights, but to note the deter
mination of the lesser question, whether the railroads
shall be compelled to sink their tracks in trenches or to
raise them on trusses, or whether, as has also been sug
gested, all the roads shall combine to build and ter
minate at a common elevated structure curving around
the outside of the thick of the city, and capable of trans
ferring passengers from road to road, as well as of dis
tributing thera among points easily accessible frora every
district. One would think it would be to the advantage of the
principal railway corporations to try at once to effect an
agreement among themselves and with the city for this
reform, because, as I have said, the railroads are now the
slowest of Chicago's institutions. The reduced speed at
which the municipality obliges them to run their trains
must be still further modified, and even the present head
way is hindered by the frequent delays at the numerous
crossings of the tracks. This is a nuisance. Every
occasional traveller feels it, and what must it be to the
local commuters who live at a distance frora their busi
ness ? They move by slow stages a quarter of an hour
or more before the cars in which they ride are able to
37

get under the scheduled headway. But it is more than
a local question. It is one of the peculiarities of Chicago
that she arrests a great proportion of the travelling
public that seeks destinations beyond her limits in either
direction. They may not want to go to Chicago at all,
but it is the rule of raost roads that they raust do so.
They must stop, transfer baggage, and change railroads.
Often a stay at a hotel is part of the requirement. If
this is to continue, the public might at least have the
perforraance expedited. Both the local and the general
nuisance will, in all likelihood, be remedied together.
It is the aim of all progressive railroad managers to
shorten time and prevent transfers wherever possible ;
and delays against which the entire travelling public
protests cannot long avoid remedy.
In interviews with Chicago men the newspapers have
obtained many estiraates of the number of visitors who
will attend the Columbian Exposition. One calculation,
which is called conservative, is that ten million persons
will see the display. It is not easy to judge of such
estimates, but we know that there is a wider interest
in this Exposition than in any that was ever held. We
know also that in the foremost countries of Europe
workraen's clubs and popular lotteries have been estab
lished or projected for the purpose of sending their
most fortunate participants to Chicago — a few of many
signs of an uncoraraon desire to witness the great ex
hibition. Whatever these visitors have heard or thought of
Chicago, they will find it not only an irapressive but a
substantial city. It will speak to every understanding
of the speed with which it is hastening to a place among
the world's capitals. Those strangers who travel farther
in our West may find other towns that have builded too
much upon the false prospects of districts where the
38

crops have proved uncertain. They may see still other
showy cities, where the main activity is in the direction
of " swapping " real estate. It is a peculiar industry,
accompanied by much bustle and lying. But they will
not find in Chicago anything that will disturb its ten
dency to irapress thera with a solidity and a degree of
enterprise and prosperity that are onlj^ excelled by the
almost idolatrous faith of the people in their community.
The city's broad and regular thoroughfares will astonish
many of us who have irabibed the theory that streets
are first mapped out by cows ; its alley system between
streets will win the admiration of those who live where
alleys are unknown ; its many little homes will speak
volumes for the responsibility and self-respect of a great
body of its citizens.
The discovery that the city's harbor is made up of
forty-one miles of the banks of an internal river will
lead to the satisfactory knowledge that it has preserved
its beautiful front upon Lake Michigan as an ornament.
This has been bordered by parks and parkways in pursu
ance of a plan that is interrupted to an iraportant extent
only where a pioneer railway came without the fore
knowledge that it would eventually develop into a nui
sance and an eyesore. Its splendid hotels, theatres,
schools, churches, galleries, and public works and orna
ments will commend the city to raany who will not study
its commercial side. In short, it will be found that those
who visit the Exposition will not afterwards reflect upon
its assembled proofs of the triuraphs of man and of civili
zation without recalling Chicago's contribution to the
sum. 29

II
CHICAGO'S GENTLE SIDE
When I wrote my first paper upon Chicago I sup
posed myself well-equipped for the task. I saw Chicago
day after day, lived in its hotels and clubs, met its lead
ing business men and officials, and got a great deal which
was novel and striking from what I saw around me and
from what I heard of the commercial and other secrets
of its marvellous growth and sudden importance. It is
customary to ridicule the travellers who found books
upon short visits to foreign places, but the ridicule is
not always deserved. If the writers are travelled and
observant spectators, if they ask the right questions of
the right men, and if they set down nothing of which
they are not certain, the probability is that what they
write will be raore valuable in its way than a similar
work from the pen of one who is dulled to the place by
familiaritj^ And yet I know now that my notes upon
Chicago only went half-way. They took no heed of a
moiety of the population — the women, with all that
they stand for.
I saw the rushing trains of cable-cars in the streets
and heard the clang-clang of their gongs. It seemed to
me then (and so it still seems, after many another stay
in the city) that the raen in the streets leap to the
strokes of those bells ; there is no escaping their sharp
din ¦, it sounds incessantly in the men's ears. It seeras
to jog them, to keep them rushing along, like a sort of
30

Western conscience, or as if it were a goad or the per
petual prod of a bayonet. It is as if it might be the
voice of the Genius of the West, crying " Clang-clang
(hustle) — clang -clang (be lively)," and it needs no
wizard sight to note the effect upon the men as they
are kept up to their daily scramble and forge along the
thoroughfares — raore often talking to themselves when
.you pass them than you have ever noticed that men in
other cities are given to doing. I saw all that, but how
stupid it was not to notice that the women escaped the
relentless influence !
They appear not to hear the bells. The lines of the
masculine straining are not furrowed in their faces.
They remain composed and unmoved ; insulated, inocu
lated. They might be the very same women we see in
Havana or Brooklyn, so perfectly undisturbed and at
ease are they — even when they pass the Board of Trade,
which I take to be the dynamo that surcharges the air
for the men.
I went into the towering office-buildings, nerving my
self for the moment's battle at the doors against the out
pouring torrent and the missile -like office boys who
shoot out as from the mouths of cannon. I saw the
flying elevators, and at every landing heard the bankers
and architects and lawyers shout " Down !" or " Up, up !"
and saw them spring almost out of their clothes, as if
each elevator was the only one ever built, and would
raake only one trip before it vanished like a bubble.
The office girls were as badly stricken with this /St.
Vitus hustle as the raen, which must account for my not
noticing that the raain body of women — when they
came to these buildings to visit husbands or brothers —
were creatures apart from the confusion ; reposeful,
stylish, carefully toiletted, serene, and unruffled.
I often squeezed into the luncheon crowd at the Union
81

League Club and got the latest wheat quotation with
my roast, and the valuation of North Side lots with my
dessert ; but I did not then know that there was a ladies'
side-entrance to the club-house, leading to parlors and
dining-rooms as quiet as any in Philadelphia, where im
passive maids in starched caps sat like bits of majolica-
ware and the clang-clang of the car-bells sounded faintly,
like the antipodean echoes in a Japanese sea-shell. I
smoked at the Chicago Club with Mayor Washburne,
and the softening influence of women in public affairs
happened not to come into our talk ; with Mr. Burnham,
the leading architect, and heard nothing of the build
ings put up for and by wom^en. Far less was there any
hint, in the crush at that club, of the Argonauts — those
leisurely Chicago Club-men who haunt a separate house
where they loaf in flannels and the woraen add the
luxurious, tremulous shiver of silk to the sounds of light
laughter and elegant dining.
And every evening, while that first study of the city
went on, the diurnal stampede from the tall buildings
and the choking of the inadequate streets around them
took place. The cable-cars became loaded and incrusted
with double burdens in which raen clung to one another
like caterpillars. Thus the crowded business district
was emptied and the horaes were filled. Any one could
see that, and I wrote that there was more home-going
and home-staying there than in any large Eastern city
in this country. But who could guess what that meant ?
Who could know the extent of the rulership of the
women at night and in the homes, or how far it went
beyond those limitations ? Who would dream that— in
Chicago, of all places— all talk of business is tabooed in
the homes, and that the men sink upon thick uphol
stering, in the soft, shaded light of silk-crowned lamps,
amid lace -work and bric-a-brac, and in the blessed
83

atmosphere of music and gentle voices — all so sooth
ing and so highly esteemed that it is there the custom
for the raen to gather accredited strangers and guests
around them at home for the enjoyment of dinner, ci
gars, and cards, rather than at the clubs and in the
hotel lobbies. I could not know it, and so, for one rea
son and another, the gentle side of Chicago was left out
of that article.
" Great as Chicago is, the period of her true greatness
is yet to come," writes Mr. Jaraes Dredge, the editor of
London Engineering, and one of the British corarais
sioners to our Columbian Exposition. " Its commence
ment will dawn when her inhabitants give theraselves
tirae to realize that the object of life is not that of in
cessant struggle; that the race is not always to the
swift, but rather to those who understand the luxury
and advantage of repose, as well as sustained effort."
In whichever of our cities an Englishman stays long
enough to venture an opinion of it that is what he is
sure to say. It is true of all of them, and most true of
Chicago. But to discover that there is a well-spring of
repose there requires a longer acquaintance than to note
the need of it. There is such a reservoir in Chicago. It
is in the souls, the spirit of the women, and it is as not
able a feature of the Chicago homes as of those of any
American city. But the women contribute raore than
this, for, from the polish of travel and trained minds
their leaders reflect those charras which find expression
in good taste and raanners, a love of art and literature,
and in the ability to discern what is best, and to distin
guish merit and good-breeding above mere wealth and
pedigree. What the leaders do the others copj^, and the result
is such that I do not believe that in any older American
city we shall find fashionable woraen so anxious to be
c 33

considered patrons of art and of learning, or so forward
in works of public improvement and governmental re
form as well as of charity. Indeed, this seems to me
quite a new character for the woman of fashion, and
whether I am right in crediting her with it the reader
will discover before he finishes this paper. It is neces
sary to add that not all the raodish women there belong
in this category. There is a wholly gay and idle butter
fly set in Chicago, but it is small, and the distinctive pe
culiarity of which I speak lies in the fact that in nearly
all the societies and movements of which I ara going to
write we see the names of rich and stylish women.
They entertain elegantly, are accustomed to travel, and
rank with any others in the town, yet are associated
with those forceful women whose astonishing activity
has worked wonders in that city. The Chicago woman
whose name is farthest known is Mrs. Potter Palmer.
She is the wife of a man who is there not altogether ira
properly likened, in his relation to that city, to one of
our Astors in New York. Yet she is at the head of the
Woraan's Departraent or Commission of our Exposition,
and is active in perhaps a score of woraen's organiza
tions of widely differing aims. Her name, therefore,
may stand as illustrating what has been here said upon
this subject.
There is no gainsaying the fact that, in the main, Chi
cago society is crude ; but I am not describing the body
of its people ; it is rather that reservoir from which is to
spring the refinement and graces of the finished city
that is to be here considered. If it is true that hospi
tality is a relic of barbarism, it still must be said that it
flourishes in Chicago, which is almost as open-armed as
one of our Southern cities. As far as the men are con
cerned, the hospitality is Russian ; indeed, I was again
and again reminded of what I have read of the peculi-
34

arities of the Russians in what I saw of the pleasures of
the younger generation of wealthy men in Chicago.
They attend to business with all their hearts by day.
and to fun with all their might after dark. They are
mainly college raen and fellows of big physique, and if
ever there were hearty, kindly, jolly, frank fellows in
the world, these are the ones. They eat and drink like
Russians, and, from their fondness for surrounding them
selves with bright and elegant women, I gather that
they love like Russians. In like manner do they spend
their money. In New York heavy drinking in the
clubs is going out of fashion, and there is less and
less high play at cards ; but in Chicago, as in St. Pe
tersburg, the wine flows freely, the stakes are high.
Though the pressure is thus greater than with us in
New York, I saw no such effects of the use of stimu
lants as would follow Chicago freedom were it indulged
in the metropolis. And a lady, who is familiar with
the gay set, told me that the Chicago women of that
circle join the men with such circumspection, when din
ing, that the newspaper reports of the flushed faces and
noisy behavior of our own rapid set at the opera after
heavy dining seem to them both shocking and incred
ible. But enough of what is exceptional and unrepresenta
tive. The Chicago men are very proud of the women,
and the most extravagant comments which Max O'Rell
makes upon the prerogatives of American ladies seera
very rauch less extravagant in Chicago than anywhere
else. Their husbands and brothers tell rae that there is
a keen rivalry among the woraen who are well-to-do for
the possession of nice houses, and for the distinction of
giving good and frequent dinner-parties, and of enter
taining well. " They spend a great deal of money in
this Avay," I was told, "but they are not raercenary;
35

they do not worship wealth and nag their husbands to
get more and more as do the women of the newer West.
Their first question about a new-comer is neither as to
his wealth nor his ancestry. Even more than in Wash
ington do the Chicago women respect talent and vie
with one another to honor those who have any standing
in the World of Intellect." In the last ten years the
leading circles of women there have undergone a revo
lution. Woraen from the feraale colleges, and who have
lived abroad or in the Eastern cities, have displaced the
earlier leaders, have raarried and becorae the mistresses
of the homes as well as the mothers of daughters for
whose future social standing they are solicitous.
The noted men and women who have visited Chicago,
professionally or from curiosity, in recent years, have
found there the atmosphere of a true capital. They
have been welcomed and honored in delightful circles of
cultivated persons assembled in houses where are felt the
intangible qualities that make charming the dwellings of
true citizens of the world. For costliness and beauty
the numerous fine residences of Chicago are celebrated.
Nowhere is there seen a greater variety in the display
of cultivated taste in building. In a great degree fine
houses are put up in homage to women, and we shall
see, if I raistake not, that these women deserve the pal
aces in which they rule. But, to return to the interiors
of the homes, what I find to praise most highly there is
the democracy of the men and woraen. It is genuine.
The people's hearts are nearer their waistcoats and
basques out there. They aren't incrusted with the
sediment of a century of caste-worship and pride and
distrust. They may be more new and crude— and all
else that we in the East are in the habit of charging
them with being— but they may thank God for sorae of
the attributes of their newness. They are more genu-
86

ine and natural and frank. They are more truly Amer
ican, and if I like thera, and have let that liking appear
in what I have written of thera, it is because their de
mocracy is sufficient to overwhelm a myriad of their
faults. I have seen a thing in Chicago — and have seen it sev
eral more times than once — that I never heard of any
where else, and that looked a little awkward at first, for
a few moments. I refer to a peculiar freedom of inter
course between the sexes after a dinner or on a rout — a
eaiiKoraderle and perfect accord between the men and
the women. In saying this I refer to very nice matrons
and maidens in very nice social circles who have never
theless stayed after the coffee, and have taken part in
the flow of fun which such a time begets, quite as if they
liked it and had a right to. In one case the men had
withdrawn to the library, and a noted entertainer was
in the full glory of his career, reciting a poem or giving
a dialect imitation of a conversation he had overheard
on a street-car. The wife of the host trespassed, with
a little show of timidity, to say that the little girls, her
daughters, were about to go to bed, and wanted the
Noted Entertainer to " make a face " for them — appar
ently for them to dream upon.
" Why, come in," said the host.
" Oh, may we ?" said the wife, very artlessly, and in
came all the ladies of the party, who, it seems, had
gathered in the hallway. The room was blue with
smoke, but all the ladies " loved smoke," and so the
evening wore on gayly. The only sign of recognition
of the novelty of the situation was an occasional covert
allusion to the stories that a certain shy and notedly
modest man might tell if the ladies were not present,
but all that was said or told was as pure as crystal, and
the whole evening was so enjoyable that if any man
37

missed the customary after-dinner " tang " he was dis
inclined to mention it.
The next occasion was in a mansion on the lake-side.
An artist and a poet, well known in both hemispheres,
were the especial guests, and the company generally
would have been welcome in the best circles in any of
the world's capitals except, possibly, in New York,
where it is said that an ultra swell personage told the
Lord Chief Justice of England that he had met no ex
plorers, historians, poets, scholars, generals, or naval
heroes, " because none of them is in society." Of the
ladies one was literary, one was a philanthropist and
reforraer, and the others were just wives— but wives of
the brilliant fellows, and all able to coach the men and
to tell queer little bits of their own experiences. When
the coffee was brought on, on this occasion, there was
no raovement on the part of the women towards leav
ing the table. No suggestion was made that they do
so ; there was no apology offered for their not doing so ;
the subject was not mentioned. There were glasses of
" green mint " for all and cigars for the men. Then the
stories flowed and the laughter bubbled. The queer
thing was that there was no apparent strain ; all were
at perfect ease— the ladies being as much so as most
men would have been without them. One of the
women told two long stories of a comical character, im
itating the dialect and mannerisras of different persons
precisely as a man given to after-dinner entertaining
would have done. Once there was a pause and a little
hesitation, and a story-teller said. "I think I can tell this,
here, can't I?" "Why, of course, go on," said his wife.
So he told whatever it was, the point being so pretty
and sentimental that it was a little difficult to deter
mine why he had hesitated unless it was that it had " a
big, big D" in one sentence. 38

I have been present on at least a dozen occasions
when the men smoked and drank and the women kept
with them, being — otherwise than in the drinking and
smoking — in perfect fellowship with them. Such con
ditions are Arcadian. They are part and parcel of the
kinship that permits the Chicagoans to bring their
rugs out and to sit on the stoops in the evenings. It
will be a sad day when Chicago gets too big and too
proud, and when her inhabitants grow too suspicious of
one another to permit of such naturalness.
In the Yictoria Hotel barber-shop for men, open to
the lobbies of the hotel, 1 saw a young woman seated in
a high -chair and having her tresses brushed, next to
a man who wa's being shaved ; but I will not mention
that as another sign of the freedom of the women, lest
I make the same impression on the reader as I once did,
quite without deserving the rebuke I got, upon the in
terpreter at a hotel in Havana. 1 there saw a woman
very strangely dressed, and, pointing her out to that
official, asked him how he accounted for her being on
the street in that attire. He threw up both hands.
" Oh, great Heavens," he exclaimed; "now you will go
back and write in a book that the women of Havana
wear the costume like that, while I, who have lived here
all my life, never saw nothing like it."
Their stylishness is the first striking characteristic of
the women of Chicago. It is a Parisian quality, appar
ent in New York first and in Chicago next, among all
our cities. The number of women who dress well in
Chicago is very remarkable, and only there and in New
York do the shop-girls and working-woraen closely fol
low the prevailing modes. Chicago leads New York in
the eraployraent of women in business. It is not easy
to find an office or a store in which they are not at
work as secretaries, accountants, cashiers, type-writers,
39

saleswomen, or clerks. It has been explained to me that
women who want to do for themselves are more favored
there thau anywhere else. The awful fire of twenty
years ago wrecked so many families, and turned so
many women from lives of comfort to paths of toil, that
the business men have from that day to this shown an
inclination to help every woman who wants to help her
self. Women are encouraged to support themselves,
honored for their efforts to do so, and gallantly assisted
by all true Chicago raen who have the native spirit.
We ^hall see that great results have sprung frora this
necessity of one sex and encourageraent by the other.
But one notices the little results everywhere, every day.
Observe, for instance, this sign in the cable-cars :
THE LADIES DON't SPEAK OF IT
BUT THEY AEE AGAINST THE
SPITTING HABIT IN THE STREET OAKS.
JUST ASK THEM.
The influence of the homes is felt everywhere. It is
even more truly a city of homes than Brooklyn, for its
flats and tenements are few. Such makeshifts are not
true homes, and do not carry household pride with them
in anything like the degree that it is engendered in
those who live in separated houses which they own.
Such, mainly, are the dwellings of Chicago. In that
city there are no blocks of flats, tenements, or apart
ments (by whatever narae those barracks may be
called). One of the famous towering office buildings of Chi
cago is, in the main, the result of a woman's financier
ing. I refer to " the Temple " of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, an enormous and beautiful pile,
which is, in a general way, like the great Mills Build-
40

ing in Broad Street, New York. It is thirteen stories
high, it cost raore than a raillion of dollars, and the
scherae of it as well as the execution thereof, from first
to last, was the work of women and children. Mrs.
Matilda B. Carse, who is grandiloquently spoken of in
the Chicago newspapers as "the chief business woman
of the continent," inspired and planned the raising of
the money. For ten years she advocated the great
work, and in the course of that time she formed a cor
poration called "The Woman's Temple Building Asso
ciation," for carrying forward the project. She was
elected its first president, in July, 1887, and it was cap
italized at $600,000. Frances Willard, of the National
organization of the Union, co-operated towards enlisting
the interest and aid of the entire Temperance Union sis
terhood, which adopted the building as its headquarters
or " temple." Four hundred thousand dollars worth of
the stock was purchased with what is referred to as " the
outpouring of 100,000 penny banks," and bonds were
issued for $600,000. The building is expected to yield
$250,000 a year in rentals. The income is to be divided,
one-half to the National organization, and the rest, ^/'o
rata to the various State organizations, according to the
araount each subscribed to the fund. Mrs. Carse's was
the mind which planned the financial operation, but the
credit of carrying it out rests with Miss AVillard, the
several other leaders of the Union, and the good women
everywhere who have faith in them.
Mrs. Carse is the woman to Avhom the members of
the Chicago Woraan's Club refer all plans for raising
funds. The Chicago Woman's Club is the mother of
woman's public work in that city. An explanation of
what that means seems to me to rank among the most
surprising of the chapters which I have had occasion
to write as the result of my western studies. I know
41

of no such undertakings or co-operation by women
elsewhere in our country. This very remarkable
Woman's Club has 500 members and six great divisions
called the committees on Reform, Philanthropy, Edu
cation, Home, Art and Literature, Science and Phi
losophy. The club has rooms in the building of the
famous Art Institute. It holds literary meetings every
two weeks, each committee or division furnishing two
topics in a year. The members write the papers and
the meetings discuss them. Each committee officers
and manages its own meetings ; the chairwoman of the
committee being in charge, and opening as well as ar
ranging the discussions. The Art and Literature and
the Science and Philosophy committees carry on classes,
open to all members of the club. They engage lec
turers, and perform an educational work. Apart from
these class meetings, the club-rooms are in use every
day as a headquarters for women. They include a
kitchen, a dining-room, and a tea-room — tea, by-the-Avay,
being served at all the committee meetings.
The membership is made up of almost every kind of
women, frora the ultra-fashionable society leaders to the
working women, and includes literary and other profes
sional women, business women, and plain wives and
daughters. " And," say the members, " women who
never hear anything anywhere else, hear everything
that is going on in the world by attending the club
meetings." It is impossible to name all the women who
are conspicuous in the club. Of the fashionable women,
such ones as Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. Dunlap, a brill
iant society leader, and Mrs. Charles Henrotin are
active members. Frances Willard, the head of the
Temperance Union, is a inember, and so is Mrs. Carse.
She is a wealthy woman also, as well as one of great
force of mind. Mrs. Caroline K. Sherman, a writer
43

widely known for her energetic pursuit of philosophical
studies, is active in the Science and Philosophy classes.
Mrs. George E. Adams, wife of the meraber of Congress
of that narae from Illinois, is a social ruler, and yet is
very active in the hard work the club undertakes. She
helped raise the University Fund, of which I shall speak.
A very active personage, not of the fashionable class, is
Miss Ada C. Sweet, who was disbursing officer at Chi
cago, under four Presidents, for the Pension Bureau,
and paid out something more than a million of dollars a
year. She devotes her right hand to the defense of her
sex, and her left hand to her own support. Of other
leaders on the gentle side of that robust city there will
be mention as their works here are considered. As far
as any one can see, the wealthy and fashionable women
are as active as any others. Those who are referred to
as representative of the riches and refinement of the
town not only have given of their wealth, but of their
sympathy and tirae in the various movements I am
about to describe.
Each woman on entering the club designates which
division she wishes to enter. Her name is catalogued
accordingly, and she works with that committee. Each
committee holds periodic raeetings, at which subjects
are given out for papers and discussion at the next ses
sion. The Home Committee, for instance, deals with
the education and rearing of children, domestic service,
dress reform, decorative art, and kindred subjects. That
has always been the method in the club, but a result of
that and other influences has been that " Chicago ladies
have been papered to death," as one of them said to me,
and in the last few years the development of a higher
purpose and more practical Avork has progressed. It
began when the Reform Comraittee undertook earnest
work, and ceased merely to hear essays and discuss

prison reform, to go " sluraraing," and to pursue all the
fads that Avere going. This committee began its earnest
work with the County Insane Asylum, Avhere it Avas
found that hundreds of Avoraen were herded without
proper attention, three in a bed, soraetiraes; Avith in
sufficient food, Avith only a counterpane between them
and the freezing Avinter air at hight, and no flannels by
day. The root of the trouble was the old one — the root
of all public evil in this country — the appointment of
public servants for political reasons and purposes. The
first step of the Reform Committee was to ask the
county coraraissioners to appoint a Avoman physician to
the asylura. Dr. Florence Hunt Avas so appointed, and
Avent there at $25 a month. She found that the nurses
raade up narcotics by the pailful to give to the patients
at night so as to stupefy them, in order that they, the
nurses, might be free for a good time. The new doctor
stopped that and the giving of all other drugs, except
upon her order. Then she insisted upon the employ
ment of fit nurses. She and the women doctors Avho
followed her there suffered much petty persecution, but
a complete reform was in time accomplished, and the
Avoman physician became a recognized necessity there.
To-day, as a consequence, the asylums at Kankakee,
Jackson, and Elgin — all Illinois institutions — have Avom
en physicians also. I am assured that no one except a
physician can appreciate how great a reform it was to
establish the principle that women suffering from men
tal diseases should be put in charge of women. Mrs.
Helen S. Shedd was at the front of the asylum reform
work, Avhich is still going on.
She next led the Reform Committee into the Poor
house, where they went, as they always do, Avith the
plea " There are women there ; we Avant a share in the
charge of that place for the sake of our sex." They
44

have adopted the motto, " What are you doing Avith the
Avoraen and children ?" and they find that the poli
ticians cannot turn aside so natural and proper an in
quiry. The politicians try to frighten the Avomen.
They say, " You don't want to pry into such things and
places ; you can't stand it." But the Chicago ladies
have proven that they can stand a very great deal, as
Ave shall see, on behalf of humanity ; especially fera
inine huraanity. " You are using great suras of money
for the care of the poor, the sick, the insane, and the
vicious," they say. " One-half of these are women, and
Ave, as woraen, insist upon knoAving how you are per
forming your task. We do not believe you bring the
motherly or the sisterly element to your aid ; Ave know
that you do not understand Avomen's requirements."
That line of argument has always proved irresistible.
While I was in Chicago in August some of the Avomen
were looking over the plans for four new police-stations.
It transpired as they talked that they have succeeded
in establishing a Woman's Advisory Board of the Police,
consisting of ten AVomen appointed by the Chief of
Police, and in charge of the quarters of all woraen and
children prisoners, and of the station-house raatrons,
tAVO of which are appointed to each station Avhere
Avomen are taken. Through the work of her women,
Chicago led in this reform, which is noAv extending
to the chief cities of the country. Noav, all Avomen and
juveniles are separated from the raen in nine of the
Chicago precinct stations, to one of Avhich every such
prisoner raust be taken, no raatter at what tirae or on
Avhat charge such a person is arrested. The chief
matron is Mrs. Jane Logan, a woman Avho came to
Chicago from Toronto and became conspicuous in the
Woman's Club and in the Household Art Association.
Miss Sweet " coaxed her into the police work," and the
45

raayor appointed her chief raatron. She has an offlce
in a down-town station, Avhere the worst prisoners are
taken as well as the friendless girls and Avaifs Avho drift
in at the railway stations. The waifs are all taken to
her, and she never leaves them until they are on the
Ava}" back to their homes, or to better guardianship.
She raaintains an " annex," kept clean and sweet, Avith
homelike beds and pictures, and to this place are taken
any first offenders and others, of saving Avhom she
thinks there is a chance. Female AAatnesses are also
kept there instead of in the prisoners' cells, and all who
go to the annex are entirely secluded from reporters as
Avell as all others. Two of the best matrons of the force
are in charge day and night. All women and girl
prisoners are attended at court, even the drunken
Avomen being Avashed and dressed and made to look
respectable. Mrs. Logan always goes herself Avith the
young girls to see that they are not approached, and in
order that if it is just and advantageous that they
should escape punishment she may plead with the
court for their release. Forraerly, every woman Avho
was arrested was searched by men and thrown in a cell
in the same jail -room Avith the male prisoners. Lost
children, homeless girls, and abandoned women were all
huddled together. The Avomen of the citj^ "couldn't
stand it," they say. They Avorked eight years, led by
Miss Sweet, to bring about the noAV accoraplished re
form. In all cases in Avhich women complain of abuse or
mistreatment by the police or others, Mrs. Logan sits
on the Police Trial Board " to show the unfortunate
Avoman that she has a friend." The Board is composed
of five inspectors and the assistant chief of police, and
the president asked her to join its sessions wheneA^er a
woraan is involved in any case that coraes before it.
46

The police do not oppose the Avork of the Avomen. Des
perate and abandoned females used to make fearful
charges against the patrolmen and others on the force
under the old regime. Under the new system there is a
great change in this respect.
Mrs. Logan is described as beautiful and refined, as
gentle and unassuming in the highest degree, as about
thirty-fiA'^e years of age, and as having humanity for her
propelling force — almost for her religion. Just uoav she
Avants to have the police-patrol wagons covered for the'
protection of female prisoners, and, to make sure of her
arguments, she recently rode across the city in one of
those carts. Her Avork is a prolonged effort of patience,
kindness, and justice. Last Christmas-time seventy-five
girls Avere arrested for shoplifting. She found one,
eighteen years of age, flat on her face on a cell floor.
She took her to the annex, aAA'ay from the sight of
prison bars, and got her story from her. It Avas that
she Avas of a respectable faraily, and had come to town
to Avork as a stenographer, but could get no employ
ment. Her brother sent money for her board in a quiet
household, but she had little other money, and in time
she spent her last cent. She mended her gloves until
they Avere mended all over, and then her stockings gave
out. She drifted into a store, saw the profusion of
things there, and stole three handkerchiefs, thinking
she Avould sell thera. She Avas caught in the act. As
she could not go to trial until morning, Mrs. Logan went
to her boarding - house and explained that she was
"going to spend the night Avith friends." Next day, to
oblige the chief matron, the court released the girl, and
then Mrs. Logan told the police reporters the Avhole
story, and got their promise that they would not pub
lish a word of it. Mrs. Howe, the president of the
Advisory Board, sent ten dollars to the girl, and she
47

returned five dollars " for the next girl who needed it."
She is nicely situated now, through the efforts of the
Avomen. I heard many such stories of Mrs. Logan's
work. She is incessantly rushing about, getting passes
and money, sending for the ladies of the Advisory Board
to go to court or to the station-houses ; telegraphing to
parents to take back runaway girls and boys ; and speak
ing for those who have no one else to say a kind Avord
for them.
Mrs. R. C. Clowry, wife of the manager of the West
ern Union Telegraph Office, is a member of the Police
Advisory Board ; she is also on the Woraan's Corarais
sion of the World's Fair and is a rausical composer of
sorae celebrity. She and Miss Sweet are the represent
atives of the Woman's Club on the Board. From the
Woman's Protective Agency to the Board came Mrs.
Fanny Howe, the president of the Board, and Mrs. Flora
P. Tobin.
Mrs. HoAve is also president of the Protective Agency,
one of the raost remarkable huraanitarian organizations
in the city. Its founder, Mrs. J. D. Harvey, is the
daughter of Judge Plato, who was distinguished araong
the early settlers of the town ; but one of the greatest
workers in it, and the person Avho has done the raost
tOAvards developing it, is Mrs. Charlotte Cushing Holt.
She is tenderly described by her friends as "a very
small, short, pretty, doll-like woraan, in a quakerish
reform dress;" and it is added that "the araount of
Avork she can do is astounding." She is studying laAV
just now, because she needs that branch of knowledge
in order to advise the poor. Her husband, Granville
Holt, is Avell known in the city. They have no chil
dren, but very many of these Avomen have families.
The majority are very happily raarried, I ara assured.
The Protective Agency protects women and children in
48

all their rights of property and person, gives them legal
advice, recovers wages for servants, sewing-women, and
shop-girls who are being swindled ; finds guardians for
defenceless children ; procures divorces for women Avho
are abused or neglected ; protects the mothers' right to
their children. It has obtained heavy sentences against
men in cases of outrage — so very heavy that this crime
is seldora committed. In a raatter akin to this, the
Avomen of this society perform what seems to rae a most
extraordinary work. It is a part of the belief of these
ladies that all Avoraen have rights, no matter how bad
or lost to decency some of them may be. Therefore
they stand united against the ancient custom, among
criminal lawyers, of destroying a woman's testimony by
showing her bad character. This these Avomen call " a
many-century-old trick to throw a woman out of court
and deny her justice."
As an instance of the manner in which they display
their zeal on behalf of the principle that no matter how
bad a woraan is she should have fair play, there was
this state of affairs : Five mistresses of disorderly resorts
had brought as many young girls to Mrs. Logan, and
had said they Avanted them saved. The girls Avere pure,
but had been brought to the houses in question by men
who had pretended that they were taking them to res
taurants or respectable dwellings. The Agency caused
the arrest of the men implicated; and when the first
case carae up for trial, the Agency sent for fourteen or
sixteen raarried Avoraen of fine social position to corae to
court and sit through the trial to see fair play. When
the bagnio-keeper, Avho Avas the chief witness against the
prisoner, took the stand, she testified that the girl had
been told that her house was a restaurant where she Avas
to have supper. Undeceived, she was greatly fright
ened, and the woraan took charge of her. Then the
D 49

counsel for the defence began to draw out the story of
the woraan's evil life and habits. He was rebuked from
the Bench, and was told that the Avoraan's character for
chastity could not affect her testiraony, and that when
counsel asked such questions of Avoraen witnesses the
Court Avould insist that sirailar questions be put to all
raale witnesses in each case, with the sarae intent to de
stroy the force of their depositions. Thus Avas estab
lished a new principle in criminal practice. In the other
cases prosecuted by the Agency the same array of ma
trons in silks, laces, and jeAvels was conspicuous in the
court -rooms. The police and court officials are said —
and very naturally, it seems to me — to have been aston
ished at this proceeding by women of their standing.
But the women have not only gained a step towards
perfect justice for their sex, they say that their pres
ence in court has put an end to the ribaldry that was
always a feature of trials of the kind. Not far removed
from this Avork has been the successful effort of the
women to raise Avhat is called " the age of consent "
from twelve to sixteen years.
The Philanthropy Committee of the Woman's Club
began its active work in the county jail, Avhere it found
a shocking state of affairs. There was only one Avoman
official in the jail, and at four o'clock every afternoon
she locked up the women and Avent away. When she
had gone the men were free to go in, and they did. The
women of the committee demanded the appointment of
a night matron, and the sheriff said he required an or
der from certain judges who Avere nominally in charge.
This they obtained, and then they Avere told they must
secure from the county an appropriation for the pro
posed matron's salary. The county officials granted the
money conditionally upon the nomination for the place
being made by the Woman's Club. The matron Avas ap-
50

pointed, the Avork of reforra Avas begun, and it was as if
a fresh lake breeze had blown through the unwholesome
place. The men cannot intrude upon the Avomen noAv,
and little vagrant girls of ten to fourteen years of age
are no longer locked up with hardened criminals. The
children have a separate department, Avhere toys and
books and a kindly matron brighten their lives Avhile
they are awaiting trial. Still another department in the
jail is a school for the boys, Avho are sometimes kept
there three or four raonths before being tried. It Avas
after this Avork in the jail that the Philanthropy Com
mittee took up the police-station reforras. The first
matrons who Avere put in charge of the stations were
political appointees, except a few Avho Avere nominally
recoramended by the Woraan's Christian Temperance
Union. The whole system was a sham ; the Avomen
had to have political backing ; they were not in sympa
thy Avith the movement, and were not competent. Thev
Avere "just poor," and had large farailies, and merely
Avanted the money. There are twenty-five satisfactory
matrons now. Each appointment was first recommended
after investigation by the women of the Police Ad
visory Board, Avhich endeavors to secure those who
have not large families or absorbing cares at home,
but Avho have time to spare, and character, nerve, and
tact. A few years ago there was" a moveraent among Chi
cago men for the foundation of an Industrial School for
Homeless Boys Avho were not crirainals. The idea was
to train the boys and put thera out for adoption. The
plan languished and Avas about to be abandoned, Avhen
the AVoman's Club took hold of it. A Mr. George, a
farmer, had promised to give three hundred acres of
land worth $40,000 if any one would raise $40,000 for
the buildings. The Woraan's Club rose "as one man,"
51

got the money in three months, and turned it OA'^er to
' the men, who then founded the Illinois Manual Training-
school at Glenwood, near the city. An advisory board
of women in the club attends to the raising of raoney,
the provision of clothing, and the exercise of a general
motherly interest in the institution, which is exception
ally successful.
This list of gentle reforms and revolutions is but be
gun. The Education Committee of this indomitable
club discovered, a few years since, that the statute pro
viding for corapulsory education was not enforced. The
ladies got up a tremendous agitation, and many leading
men, as Avell as Avoraen, went to the Capitol at Spring
field and secured the passage of a mandatory statute in
suring the attendance at school of children of from six
to fourteen years during a period of sixteen weeks in
each year. Five women were appointed among the tru
ant officers, and the laAV Avas strictly carried out. It is
found that it Avorks well to employ women in this ca
pacity. They are invited into the houses by the mothers,
Avho tell them, as they would not tell raen, the true
reasons for keeping their children frora school, as, for
instance, that they have but one pair of shoes for six
children. A beautiful charity resulted from this work.
There Avas established in the club an aid society. Mrs.
Murray F. Tuley, the wife of Judge Tuley, a Avoman
long identified with free kindergarten work, became
very active in establishing this society. She interested
all classes, obtained the use of a room in the City Hall,
recruited Avorkers frora the Church societies, the Wora
an's Club, and frora alraost everywhere else, to sew for
the children. She got the raerchants to send great rolls
of fiannels, and shoes and stockings by the hundreds of
pairs. These are stored in the roora in the City Hall,
and when the truant officers discover a case of need
53

they report it, and the Board of Education orders relief
granted through the truant agency.
Some members of the Woman's Club are physicians,
such as Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, Dr. Juha Holmes
Smith, Dr. Mary A. Mixer, Dr. Marie J. Mergler, Dr.
Julia Ross Low, Dr. Frances Dickinson, Dr. Elizabeth
L. Chapin, Dr. Sarah H. Brayton, Dr. Rose S. Wright
Bryan, and Dr. Leila G. Bedell. There are between 200
and 250 woraen doctors in Chicago, by-the-way, and in
the club are two Avoraen preachers. While I ara paus
ing to raention these distinctive features I will add an
other which interested rae, and that is the raanner in
which the merabers' naraes are printed in the annual
book of the club. This is it :
Signature. Address.
Agnes Potter Hutohins, Mrs. James C. Hutchins,
231 Forty-seventh St.
Ellen Bullaed Jenny, Mrs. H. W. Jenny,
530 Orchard St.
Annie W. Johnson, Mrs. Feancis A. Johnson,
3807 Langley Av.
Tevphena Y. Johnson, Mrs. Willis F. Johnson,
390 Dearborn Av.
Susan C. Ll-Jones, Mrs. Jenkin Ll-Jones,
3939 Langley Av.
But to return to the physicians, who most blamelessly
led rae into this excursion: Mrs. Dr. Julia Ross Low
carae to the club one day with a solemn tale of the need
of a hospital for sufferers from contagious diseases.
There Avas none in the city. No hospital would take
such cases, and they were kept at home to endanger
Avhole neighborhoods. She told of the fearful results
of contagion in places where Avhole farailies occupied
53

one roora, and where, when disease came, two or three
must die. Her words made a great impression. A Mrs.
Benedict, who had lost two children by some dread dis
ease, offered to give ten thousand dollars towards found
ing such a hospital; but it Avas discovered that under the
law the hospital must be a public institution. There
fore, a monster mass-meeting was held last fall. The
county and city officials attended, and so did many phy
sicians and a host of influential persons. Franklin Head
presided, under the rule the women have adopted of
asking men to preside on such occasions so as not to
offend ultra - conservative minds. Strong resolutions
were adopted, and later the press helped the raoveraent
enthusiastically. The Avomen say that the Chicago
newspapers always co-operate with thera gallantly and
ardently. The county commissioners then appropriated
thirty thousand dollars and put up a building, the plan
ning of which Avas supervised by the woraen.
In this case, as whenever a committee has more than
it can do, the Avhole club took hold. " Now, everybody
pull for the contagious hospital," was the signal, and
every woman in the club dro,pped everything else, went
home, enlisted the husbands, fathers, and brothers, and
so quickly stirred all Chicago.
Last May one of the committees invited President
Harper, of the Chicago University, to deliver an address
on the Higher Education of Women, and particularly
upon the plans of the university in that respect. He
made it evident that the university plans were very
liberal ; that women were to have the sarae advantages
as raen, the same examinations, the same classes, the
same professors, and that they Avould be eligible to the
same professorships. Considering the great endow
ment of the institution, this Avas seen to be the fullest
and richest opportunity that American Avomen enjoy for
54

the pursuit of learning ; but it also came out that, al
though there had been fiA'e hundred applications from
the graduates of other female schools and colleges, there
were to be no accoraraodatlons Avhatever for thera. The
donations to the university had come in such a way
that no money could be set apart for the construc
tion of dorraitories. The chairman of the Education
Committee (all the heads of comraittees in the club are
called " chairmen ") proposed that the club pledge itself
to raise $150,000 for a Woman's Building for the uni
versity. The motion Avas carried unanimously, a com
mittee was appointed, and in sixty days (on July 10,
1892) it had collected $168,000. Three different Avom
en gave $50,000 each, so that when the coraraittee
had time to count what it had, there were $18,000
more, than Avere needed. Of course, dollars never go
liegging for a use to which to be put, and these will be
used for interior appointraents. Another comraittee was
appointed to insure the planning of a building satisfac
tory to Avoraen, and to furnish the apartments, Avhich are
not to be merely bedrooms, but are to include a large
assembly-roora, dining-rooms and parlors, a gymnasium,
library, baths, and Avhatever ; the parlors being comraon
to CA-'ery tAvo or three bedrooms, and all the appoint
ments being homelike and inviting.
Mrs. Dr. StcA'enson was in the chair Avhen this great
movement Avas set on foot, and she has since interested
Chicago anew by deraanding bath-houses on the lake
front for the boys, and afterwards for the poor in gen
eral. She began by doing violence to a strong tradition
as to the relation between woraen and naked boys in
bathing. She asked Mayor Washburne to suspend the
ordinance forbidding boys to bathe in the lake within
the city limits. The first that the people knew of it
was the sight of SAvarras of little shavers, and some big

boys and raen, fringing the water's edge Avith their shin
ing bodies. She got the mayor to permit them to go in
wherever it was not dangerous, and to order the police
to patrol the lake shore and mark the unsafe places.
During the intense heat of July the promiscuous bathing
Avent on — in no way offensively, it seeraed to me — and
after that a boat-house was found by the energetic doc
tor, who had it converted into a bath-house, with dress
ing-rooms, with a basement full of water for those who
could not swira, and a door adraitting to the lake those
who could. This is but the beginning of what proraises
great results, for the woraen are solidly abetting Dr.
Stevenson, and she is going to have two more lake baths,
and then some large, complete, all-the-year-round bath
houses in the poorer quarters of the town.
A very reraarkable meraber of the Woraan's Club is
Jane Addaras, of whose gentle character it is sufficient
to say that her friends are fond of referring to her as
" Saint Jane." She is not robust in health, b.ut, after do
ing raore than ten men Avould want to do, she usually
explains that it is something she has found " in which
an invalid can engage." She is a native of Illinois, is
wealthy, and while on a visit to London, becoming in
terested in Toynbee Hall, evolved a theory which has
brightened her oavu and very raany other lives. It is that
" the rich need the poor as rauch as the poor need the
rich ;" that there is a vast number of girls coraing out of
the colleges for whora there is not enough to do to inter
est them in hfe, and who grow ennuied Avhen they might
be active and happy. It is her idea that Avhen they inter
est themselves in their poor brothers and sisters they find
the pure gold of happiness. She asked the aid of many
ladies of leisure, and Avent to live in one of the Avorst
quarters of Chicago, taking Avith her Miss Ellen Starr,
a teacher, and a niece of Eliza Allen Starr, the writer.
56

She found an old-time mansion with a Avide hall through
the middle and large rooms on either side. It had been
built for a man named Hull, as a residence, but it had
become an auction-house, and the district around it had
decayed into a quarter inhabited by poor foreigners.
The woman who had fallen heir to it gave it to Miss
Addaras rent free until 1893. She and Miss Starr lived
in it, filled it plainly but with fine taste, with pictures
and ornaments as well as suitable furniture and appoint
ments for the purposes to which it was to be put. A
piano was put in the large parlor or assembly-roora,
which is used every raorning for a kindergarten. A
beautiful young girl. Miss Jennie Dow, gave the raoney
for the kindergarten, and taught it for a .year. Miss
Fanny Garry, a daughter of Judge Garry, organized a
cooking-school, and, with her young friends to assist her,
teaches the art of cooking to poor girls.
A great raany of the best known young men and la
dies in North Side circles contribute what they can to
the success of this charity, now known as Hull House,
and the subject of general local pride. These young-
persons teach Latin classes, maintain a boy's club, and in
struct the lads of the neighborhood in the methods of
boyish games; support a modelling class, a class in Avood-
carving, and another in Araerican history. Every even
ing in the week sorae club meets in Hull House — a
political econoray club, a Gerraan club, or what not.
Miss Addaras's idea is that the poor have no social life,
and few if any of the refineraents Avhich gild the inter
course that accompanies it. Therefore, on one night in
each week, a girls' club raeets in Hull House. The
girls invite their beaus and men friends, and play games
and talk and dance, refreshing themseh'es Avith leraon-
ade and cake. The young persons Avho devote their
spare tirae to the Avork go right in with the girls and
57

boys, and help to make the evenings jolly ; one who is
spoken of as " very swell " bringing his violin to furnish
the dance music. The boys' club has one of the best
gymnasiums in the city. The boys prepare and read
essays and stories, and engage in improving tasks.
There is a creche in the Hull House system, and the sick
of the district all go there for relief. College extension
classes are also in the scherae, and public school-teachers
attend the classes with college graduates, who enlist for
the purpose of teaching thera.
One of the ncAV undertakings of the Chicago women
is the task set for itself by the Municipal Reform
League. It was organized in March, 1892, by the ladies
Avho were connected Avith the World's Fair Congresses,
a comprehensive work, for the description of which I
have no space. A large coraraittee was studying munic
ipal reform when they decided to found an independ
ent society, to endure long after the World's Fair, and
to devote itself to local municipal reform, and especially
to the promotion of cleanliness in the streets. A mass-
meeting was held in Music Hall, and Judge Gresham
presided. Many of the city officials and the local
judges came and the hall was crararaed. Araong the
speakers were the mayor, the commissioner of public
Avorks, and the health commissioners. A clergyman
arraigned thera as responsible for the sorry state of the
streets, and was followed by Miss Ada C. Sweet and Dr.
Stevenson. A public raeeting was held next da.y in the
Woman's Club to organize the new society. Ada 'C.
Sweet Avas elected president, and the other offices were
filled by woraen. A constitution was adopted, after one
had been framed, to adrait everybody to raerabership
Avho would express a desire to assist in the work and to
keep their own preraises in order. Six hundred mem
bers are on the rolls, and these include one hundred men,
58

among whora are raillionaires and workingraen. Money
has been contributed liberally, but onl}' the secretary re
ceives corapensation. The work perforraed is all in the
direction of forcing the public officials to do their duty.
The Health Departraent is in charge of the alleys and
the Street Departraent of the streets. To keep these
departraents up to their Avork, all the raerabers of Miss
Sweet's society are constituted volunteer inspectors,
pledged to report once a Aveek Avhatever reraissness
they discover. Thus the society has the eyes of argus
to scan the entire city. Where these eyes are kept
Avide open the greatest improvement was already ap
parent (August 1892). Miss Sweet knows Avhat every
contractor is doing as well as Avho is negligent and Avho
is faithful, and she says she knoAvs that there is not a
single contractor whose contract could not be annulled
to-raorroAV. She insists that the plan adopted by her
society, if pursued, Avill transform Chicago into the
model city of the Avorld so far as public tidiness is con
cerned. Already many wealthy ladies drive down the
alleys instead of the streets, and even walk through the
bywaj'S ; and so do many influential men, for the pur
pose of detecting neghgence and reporting it. The com
plaints are forwarded, in the society's formal manner, to
the responsible coraraissioners, and they do all they can.
Miss SAveet adraits, yet are rendered raeasurably impo
tent because they cannot appoint proper inspectors.
The reformers Avill not stop until they have destroyed
the entire contract systera, and have raade the police do
the work of inspection. Already ten policemen are de
tailed to this work, and eighteen more are to extend the
system. An amazing and disheartening discovery at
tended the beginning of this undertaking. The garbage
of the city was supposed to be burned as it accumulated ;
instead, it Avas being dumped in a circle of hillocks
59

around the outskirts of the toAvn. A plan for disposing
of it by fire had failed, and the officials sat helplessly
doAvn and gave up the job. The woraen took up the
task, and now (July, 1892) three raethods are undergo
ing trial, and 180 tons a day are being- burned. That
raere incident in the history of this moveraent for clean
streets is a grand return for the investment of interest in
the project which the public has made.
Miss Sweet is no beginner at these alraost super
human tasks of awakening a great coramunity to a per
ception of its rights and its requireraents. Three years
ago she found that the police-patrol wagons Avere the
only vehicles in Chicago for the transporting of the sick
and injured. Men and women, falling ill or meeting
Avith disabling accidents, were picked up by the police
and carted home or to the hospitals in heaA'^y open
patrol wagons buUt with springs fitted to bear a load of
two dozen patrolmen. She first tried to get the officials
to buy and equip ambulances and organize an ambu
lance corps in the Police Department. Failing in this,
she raised money among her friends, and had an ambu
lance raade and fitted with necessary appliances for the
sick and desperately injured. She presented it to the
city, requesting that it be put into imraediate use in the
Central District. The Police Departraent at once, in
the spring of 1890, began using the ambulance instead
of the patrol wagon, and when this Avas written the
vehicle had travelled 18,000 miles and carried 2,000
patients. Slowly the city took up the idea, and uoav
the Police Department has six of these ambulances in
use, each one carrying a medical raan. It also main
tains a corps of raen trained to the care of the sick and
the injured. More of the wagons are proraised, and a
perfect arabulance systera extending over the whole city
is not a far distant consuramation. "This," Miss Sweet
60

tells me, " is the only piece of work I have yet done of
which I am really proud, but ray pride is tempered by
keen realization of how far short of ray hopes the en
terprise still reraains." She is no blue-stocking, but a
wholesome, genial, robust woman of an old maid's age,
if thirty-five be that, but Avith a young girl's spirits and
delights. Mrs. James M. Flower, a meraber of the School Board
and of a faraily of great social distinction, should be men
tioned here as having, with other noble dames, organ
ized and pushed to success a training-school for nurses.
The Art and Literature Comraittee of the Woman's
Club also deserves credit and mention for raising money
for a scholarship at the Chicago Art Institute, the prize
being given each year to the girl or boy graduate of the
public schools who shoAvs the most artistic talent.
These unusual activities and undertakings are but a part
of what the Avomen are doing, and are in addition to the
kindly and huraane efforts Avhich the reader had doubt
less expected to hear about, and which but parallel those
Avhich interest and occupy Araerican ladies everywhere.
There are proportionately as many workers in the hospi
tals, schools, and asyluras, as raany noble founders and
supporters of refuges and hospitals, as many laborers in
Church and mission work in Chicago as in Ncav York or
Boston. If the readers understand that those of which
I have told are all added, like jewels upon a crown, to
all the usual benefactions, the force of this chapter Avill
be appreciated.
There are in Chicago, as elsewhere, Browning and
Ibsen and Shakespearian circles and clubs, and if the city
boasts feAV litterateurs or artists of celebrity, there is no
lack of lovers and students of the work of those who
live elsewhere. The Twentieth Century Club, founded,
I believe, by the brilliant Mrs. George RowsAvell Grant,
61

is the most ambitious literary club, and has a large
and distinguished raerabership. It meets in the houses
of wealthy ladies, and is at times addressed by distin
guished visitors Avhom it invites to the city. The Chi
cago Literary Club is another such organization, and of
both these men as Avell as AVomen are members. The
Chicago Folk-lore Society, a new aspirant to such dis
tinction, was organized in December, 1891 ; the first
meeting being called by Mrs. Fletcher S. Bassett at the
Chicago Woraan's Club rooras. Eugene Field, of whose
verse and of Avhose delightful personality Chicago can
not be too proud ; George W. Cable, General and Mrs.
Miles, Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palraer, Dr. Sarah Hackett
Stevenson, Charles W. Deering, Mr. and Mrs. 0. Hen
rotin, and Mr. and Mrs. Franklin MacVeagh are araong
the raembers. The motto of this society illumines its
field of Avork. It is, " Whence these legends and tradi
tions ?" It has started a museura of Indian and other
relics and curios, and may make an exhibition during
the World's Fair. It Avill certainly distinguish itself dur
ing the congress of folk-lore scholars to be held in Chi
cago in 1893. The president of the society is Dr. S. H.
Peabody. The directors are all Avomen : Mrs. S. S. Black-
Av elder, Mrs. Fletcher S. Bassett, and Mrs. Potter Palmer;
and the treasurer is Helen G. Fairbank.
I had a most interesting talk Avith one of the Avomen
active in certain of the public Avorks I have described,
and she told rae that one reason Avhy the Avomen suc
ceeded so Avell Avith the officials and politicians is that
they are not voters, are not in politics, and ask favors
(or rights) not for themselves but for the public. That,
she thought, sounded like an argument against granting
the suffrage to Avomen ; but she said she would have to
let it stand, Avhatever it sounded like. She said that the
Chicago men not only spring to the help of a woman
62

Avho tries to get along " but they hate to see her fail,
and they won't allow her to fail if they can help it."
She remarked that the reason that active Chicago wora
en do not show the aggressive, harsh spirit and lack of
graceful femininity which is often associated with wom
en who step out of the domestic sphere, is because the
Chicago woraen have not had to fight their way. The
men have helped them. She gloried in the strides the
Avomen have made toAvards independence in Chicago.
" A fundamental principle Avith us," she said, " is that a
girl may be dependent, but a woman must be independ
ent in order to perform her all functions. She raust be
independent in order to wisely raake a choice of her
career — Avhether she will be a Avife and mother, and,
if so, Avhose wife and mother she will be."
63

Ill
"BROTHER TO THE SEA"
You -see Lake Superior best, as an incident in cross
ing the continent, when travelling over the Canadian
transcontinental railroad, and of all the various " scenic
Avonders" that the different crosscontinental railroads
advertise, not one seems to me more grand or more
grandly beautiful than this. For more than half a day
the cars glide along the shore, Avhose irregularities pro
vide a Avide diversity of scenery, in woods, among rocks,
and every few rainutes close beside the closed ends of
the great bays which spread out into an ocean-like end
lessness of water. Each tirae that I have made the jour
ney it has been my good-fortune to see the lake clear,
smooth, and brilliant, as if it Avere a vast rairror that
Dame Nature might have been holding up to herself.
And the lake, like a huge bowl of quicksilver, has each
time caught and held the brilliant scene around it — the
cloud-littered shining skies, the quiet stately forests, and
the towering rocks, which rise in all the forms of tur
rets, pinnacles, raraparts, castellated heaps, and frowning
Avails, now green, now red, noAv purple, and anon duU
brown or ashen.
Lake Superior is alraost everywhere noble, grand, im
pressive, majestic. Its surroundings are, for the most
part, far more suggestive of what one fancies the ocean
should be than are those of the oceans themselves. Old
Crowfoot, Avith his raarvellous faculty for aptly nick-
64

ORAND ARCH, PICTCRED ROCKS, LAKE SUPERIOR

naming Avhatever new thing he saw, was never happier
than Avhen he tried to express in a phrase the impres
sion Superior made upon his raind. The Canadian offi
cials were bringing hira on a sight-seeing tour to Mont
real from the Blackfoot territory on the plains, where
he ruled the wildest Indians of Canada ; and when he
E 65

saw the greatest of ali lakes, and saw it again and then
again, until he comprehended its majesty, he said, "It is
the Brother to the Sea."
It is the largest lake in the A\'orld, and the largest
body of fresh Avater. It is 380 railes in length and 160
miles across in its widest part. Its watery area of 32,000
square miles proves it to be the size of the State of In
diana, or four tiraes as big as Massachusetts.* It is
about 600 feet above the sea-level ; but the Governraent
charts show that in its deepest part the water has a
depth of 231 fathoras, or 1386 feet, so that there, at
least, the lake is more than 700 feet below the surface
of the sea as well as 600 feet above it. North of Ke-
AveenaAv Point, on the south side, there is a depth of
1008 feet, and great depths, above 500 feet, are scat
tered all about the lake. Its shore line is 1500 miles in
length. One very dignified English authority terms Lake Su
perior "the head of and chief reservoir for the most
magnificent system of inland naA'igation in the Avorld,"
a system which, if taken to embrace the Avater route
frora the source of the St. Louis, emptying into the
head of the lake, to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, is
2100 railes in length. Curiously enough, the same pla
teau in Minnesota wherein the St. Louis has its begin
ning is also the starting-point of the Mississippi and the
Red River of the North. But Lake Superior owes little
to the St. Louis. It receives the AA'aters of 200 rivers,
and drains a territory of 53,000 square miles exclusive
of its own area.
The lake is practically the property of the United

* Tlie United States Geological Survey makes its area 31,200 square
miles, its length 412 miles, its maximum brendth 167 miles, its maximum
depth 1008 feet, and ifs height above the sea-level 602 feet.
66

States. The Canadians own the beautiful north shore,
but very little of the lake itself. The main body of the
traffic on the lake is ours by a right that cannot be
questioned, for it proceeds from our vastly greater pop
ulation, and frora our possession of the coal supply of

THUNDER CAPE, NORTH SHORE

the continent, Avhich gives to American vessels the car
goes Avith Avhich to return westward after having float
ed grain and ore eastward.
Lake Superior is a capricious monster, deraanding
skilled searaanship and the use of poAverful and stanch
boats, the raajority of Avhich are coraparable with the
vessels in our Atlantic coasting trade. The lake is a
veritable womb of storms. They develop quickly there,
and CA'en more speedily the water takes on a furious
character. It is always cold, and the atmosphere above
and far around it is kept cool all sumraer. I have been
told, but cannot verify the statement, that the tempera
ture of the water in the open lake never rises above 46°
Fahrenheit. As a rule, the men Avho sail upon it cannot
swim. The lake offers no inducement to learn the art,
and, alas! those Avho are expert swimmers could not
67

keep alive for any great length of tirae in the icy water.
When I Avas making inquiries upon this point, I found,
as one almost always does, some Avho disputed what the
raajority agreed upon. I even found an old gentleraan,
a professional man of beyond seventy years of age, Avho
said that for several years he had visited the lake each
summer - time, and that he had made it a practice to
bathe in its Avaters nearly every day. It was chilly, he
admitted, and he did not stay in very long. But many
sailors, among them some ship and stearaship captains,
confirmed my belief that few. Lake Superior seamen
have learned to SAvim, and that the coldness of the wa
ter quickl}' nurabs those Avho fall into it. I asked one
captain hoAv long he supposed a man might battle for
life, or cling to a spar in the lake. He ansAvered, very
sensibly, it seemed to me, that some men could endure
the cold longer than others, and that the more flesh and
fat a man possessed, the longer he could keep alive.
" But," he added, " the only man I ever sa^' fall over
board Avent down like a shot before Ave could get to
him. I always supposed he took a cramp."
The bodies of the droAvned are said not to rise to the
surface. They are refrigerated, and the decoraposition
Avhich causes the ascent of human bodies in other waters
does not take place. If one interesting contribution to
my notes is true, and there be depths to Avhich fishes do
not descend, it is possible that many a hapless sailor-
man and voyager lies as he died, a century back per
haps, and will ever thus reraain, lifelike and natural,
under the darkening veil of those eraerald depths.
The great, fresh, crystal sea never freezes oyer, and
yet its season for navigation is very short. This is due
to the ice that raakes out frora the shores, the points,
and the islands, and closes some of the harbors. One
captain told me he had seen ice five miles out from the
68

light -house on Thunder Cape, and that is an island in
deep Avater. In 1880 the season opened on April 5th ;
in 1888 it began on May 21st. In 1880 it closed on
December 3d, and in 1883 there was navigation until
December 30th. But those are extreme dates. As a
rule, navigation opens in the middle of April and closes
in the middle of Deceraber.
But there are two obstructions for AA'hich Lake Su
perior is notorious, and they rank next to the ice, and
still further lirait navigation for sorae lines of ships.
These evils are the fogs and the snow-storms, and of

^|lj||^|#l4l•^''llf^<ft%l

¦}

TRAP-ROCK CLIFFS, NORTH SHORE

the tAVO the fogs are the more nuraerous and the snow
is the more dreaded. In the sumraer Darae Superior
wears her fogs alraost as a Turkish Avife wears her veils.
There is a time, in August, Avhen the only fogs are those
Avhich follow rain ; but the snow begins in September,
so that the reader may judge of the sort of navigation
the lake affords. The Canadian Pacific steamships
(Clyde-built ships that are like our Havana and Savan-

nah boats) are in service only between May and Octo
ber, and it is the snow A\'hicli curtails their season. It
snows on the great lake just as it does on the plains, in
terriljle flurries, during the course of Avhich it is irapossi
ble to see a foot ahead, or to see at all. Mark Twain
did not exaggerate the character of these storras Avhen
he described the fate of raen Avho Avere lost and frozen
to death Avithin pistol-shot of their cabins. It has a way
of snoAving on Superior, by-the-Avay, as late as June and
as early as September ; in a light and frolicsome way,
to be sure, but it snows, nevertheless. As for the fogs,
though they are light and often fleeting after midsum
mer, they are sufficiently^ frequent during the rest of the
season of navigation to have given the lake a distin
guished bad character in the minds of those Avho sail
the Avarnier lakes, and I have had a captain tell rae that
he has made seven voyages in succession Avithout seeing
any lights on his route frora Port Arthur to " the Soo."
But its charras outAveigh all its caprices and atone for
its Avorst faults. It is supremely charming, a vast nurse
ry for exquisite effects, and a play-ground of beauty.
Out on its broad bosom it imitates the sea exactly.
There was no apparent difference in the immensities of
the tAVO bodies, and the view Avithin the speeding circle
of the horizon was that of the sarae deep blue field of
A'eined and ruffled water. By day the patent log kept
up its angry Avhistle, and the clumsy gulls, Avith their
broken -looking wings, beat the air and sounded their
baby treble in a soft shattered cloud over the vessel's
Avake. The sky was never to be forgotten — not soft like
that over southern Europe, but of the clearest, purest
blue imaginable, and yet a blue to which the sunliglit
lent an active living tone like that of flame diluted or
transforraed. On no visit did I ever see the sky free of
clouds, and I cannot imagine it so, but Lake Superior
70

THE NORTH SHORE, LAKE SUPERIOR

fair -Aveather clouds, ahvays cumuli, of course, are the
softest, roundest, most feather -like vagrants that ever
loafed like lazy swans in heaven's ethereal sea.
One peculiarity of Lake Superior cannot be too strong
ly dwelt upon or exaggerated. That is its purity, the
wonderful cleanness and freshness of it, and of its at
mosphere and of its borders. It must become the seat
of a hundred sumraer resorts when the people visit it
and succurab to its spell. Think Avhat it is ! A volurae
of crji^stalline water in Avhich all Scotland's surface could
be sunk like a stone — of Avater so clear and translucent
that one raay see the entire outlines of the vessels that
cleave its surface, so pure that objects raay be distin
guished on the bottora at a depth of 20 feet ; -15 feet
they call it who have to do Avith the lake, but I was un
able to see through raore of it than 21 feet. Fancy such
an expanse of water so clear, and then picture it bor
dered by 1500 miles of balsamic forests, Avhich extend
backward from the lake to distances that overreach
States and provinces. Travellers accustomed to fre
quent transcontinental journeys look longingly forward
in the sumraer to the tirae Avhen they shall be passing
the great lake, either to the northward or southward,
certain that the daylight hours will be pleasant and
that the night-time Avill be cool. Cleanliness — perhaps
I should say tidiness — is everyAvhere the characteristic
of Superior. Its faraed and stately walls of rock delve
straight doAvnward. into it and rise sheer above it Avith
out giving nature the slightest chance to raake a litter
of rocks or dirt at their feet. While other rocky shores
of other waters stand apart or merely Avet their toes in
the fluid, these monsters Avade in neck -deep, and only
expose their heads in the sunhght, fathoms— soraetiraes
200 fathoms — from the bottom. Terrible prison walls
these become to shipwrecked drowning mariners, for
73

they extend in reaches soraetiraes 25 miles long Avithout
offering a finger -hold for self -rescue. Tourists Avho
have seen the Pictured Rocks will understand this feat
ure of the lake's boundaries.
Again, Superior's Avaters lend theraselves to the most
exquisite effects, to the most opulent coloring, by their
surroundings and in themselves. Those extravagant
chromatic surprises in nature Avhich cause the Western
people to rave over the charms of their most beautiful
resort, Mackinac, are at the command of all Avho visit
Lake Superior at any point around the spectacular sea.
A thousand lovelier Mackinacs are there. The same
charms, the same raysterious colorings, the same gor
geous efl'ects, illuminate the view frora the coal-docks
of Duluth, the cottages at Marquette, the Avharves of
Port Arthur, the decks of the steamers that cruise
among the Apostle Islands, or the canoes of tourists or
half-breeds who fiing their fly-lines or haul their nets in
the lonesome caves and neglected harbors where nat
ure's is the only other presence. To begin with, the
Lake Superior water is always green Avhere it is com
paratively shallow. If you are observant, you will
notice that it is green in your pitcher, green in your
Avashbowl, and green in your shaving-mug wherever
you put up on the shores. It is not a repellent green ;
it is the green of the pea-vine, of thinned chartreuse —
the lively, beautiful green of a thick cake of pure ice.
Everywhere, then, the edge of the Avater is of this
beautiful emerald hue, shoAving its color against the
pink sand, against the brown and red rocks, against the
dark green forests. At a distance it insensibly deepens
and changes into blue, but by such degrees that the in
digo of the greatest depth is approached through slight
changes beyond the first sky-color to the turquoise, and
frora that to the deeper hues. With every change in
74

the atmosphere the views change. A strong sun will
lave great fields of the water Avith a flood of salmon-
colored light ; and a brilliant moon, Avhich at times
silvers a wide SAvath upon the surface, will yet, under
other conditions, tinge the Avater with a blush of pink.
Fit and true it was for Longfellow to fix in Lake
Superior the mysterious climax of his legend of Hia
watha. The lake has impressed itself deeply upon
Avhatever of religion is felt bj' the Indians upon its
borders — and those of all the Algonquin family, Avhose
tribes reach frora the Rocky Mountains to the coast of
Maine. Every here and there, upon the rocks Avhich
the Chippewas treat as altars, or in the swift currents
that race between them, the red raen offer gifts to the
spirits which they fancy are domiciled there. As far
as I have been able to comprehend their favorite legend
of that Minnebajou (or Nana-bejou) Avho seems to have
been the creator and yet subordinate to God, it Avas in
Superior that he sought his yet enduring rest after he
had constructed the present earth in the Avaters that
swallowed a former one. There are several of his
homes in various parts of the lake. And Avell may
Superior breed mysticisra in the minds of saA^ages, for it
is given to startling tricks. The mirages that are seen
upon it have bestowed upon it a peculiar and distinct
fame. They are known to the people of the lake only
as "reflections." I have heard many sailors describe
the wonderful ones they have witnessed ; I would give
another journey out there to see one. Men ha\'e told
me that they have seen Duluth when tbey Avere 185
miles away from it — upside down and in the sky, but
distinctly Duluth. One sailor said that at one broad
noonday he suddenly saAV a beautiful pasture, replete
Avith an apple-tree and a five-rail fence, shining green
and cool before him, apparently close at hand. The
77

effect the clear air produces by apparently magnifying
objects seen upon the lake is most astonishing. To il
lustrate Avhat I mean, let rae tell Avhat happened the
very last time I saw the lake. I was on a tug-boat,
and upon coming out of the cabin I saw ahead of rae
a tremendous Avhite passenger steamship. The boats
Avere approaching one another at right angles, and
this new-comer loomed up like a leviathan among ves
sels, bigger than one of our new naval cruisers, high
above the water as a house would look. I called at
tention to it, and a corapanion, familiar with the lake,
replied, " I Avonder what boat it is; she's a Avhopping big one,
isn't she V
Something distracted my attention, and five rainutes
afterAvards, Avhen I looked at the approaching vessel
again, she had passed the raysterious point at Avhich she
Avas raost exaggerated in apparent size, and had become
an ordinarily large lake steamer. But that was not the
end of the trick. She began to dwindle and shrink,
groAving smaller and sraaller in size, until the phenora
enon became ridiculous. In time the elastic boat had
become a very small passenger propeller, and I found
rayself Avondering Avhether she would be discernible at
all by the time Ave were abreast of her. But at that
the optical frolic ceased. A small screw steamer of the
third class Avas Avhat she proved to be.
Lake Superior was once a great deal deeper lake
than it is noAV. All along the Canadian shore any one
may see the forraer coast levels that now forra pebbly
terraces hundreds of feet above the present water. At
Duluth the beautiful Terrace Drive above the city lies
along a forraer coast line that Avas 470 feet higher than
the present level of the lake. Perhaps the raost com
pact picture of the first dawn of Lake Superior upon
78

the ken of Avhite men, indirectly through their relations
Avith the Indians, is drawn by Washington Irving in his
A.sioria. " It Avas the fur trade," he says, " which gaA'e early
sustenance and vitality to the great Canadian prov
inces." As the valuable furs becarae more and raore
scarce near the settleraents, the capital araong which
Avas Montreal, the Indians went farther Avest upon their
hunting expeditions. "EA'ery now and then a large
body of Ottawas, Hurons, and other tribes who hunted
the countries bordering on the Great Lakes would corae
doAvn in a squadron of light canoes laden with beaver-
skins and other spoils of their year's hunting. . . . Mont
real would be alive Avith naked Indians running from
shop to shop, bargaining for arms, kettles, knives, blank
ets, bright-colored cloths, and other articles of use or
fancy, upon all which, saj's an old French writer, the
raerchants Avere sure to clear at least 200 per cent."
Thus came into existence a ucav class, called coureurs des
hois, or rangers of the Avoods. They Avere raen Avho had
originally gone abroad Avith the red men on hunting ex
peditions, but who saAV how a point could be gained
upon the merchants at home by going out among the
Indians or meeting them in the forests, there to peddle
necessaries and ornaments from Avell-stocked canoes in
exchange for ])eltries. In their track Avent out the
missionaries ; for none but an Indian ever went farther
than the traders in those days, and eventually the Hud
son Bay raen — a still later groAvth— crossed the conti
nent in advance of the solitary and devout clergy.
When we have considered these actors upon the scene,
and have understood that the coureurs des bois came to
live Avith the red men, and created a body of half-
breeds Avho Avere destined to be both white and red in
their afflliations and their neutral infiuence, we raay im-
F 81

agine that Ave can see the vanguard of the host that in
tirae reached Lake Superior.
The first Avhite men to see the lake were coureurs des
hois, it is safe to say, but the first recorded visits are
mainly those of missionaries of the same stock that are
to-day living adventurous and solitary lives in Avhat is
left of the Avilderness, noAV shrinking closer and closer
to the arctic regions. " The Soo " Avas first visited by
the missionaries in 1641, and they honored the brother
of their king by calling the rapids the " Sault de Gas
ton." Nineteen years afterwards Pere Mesnard con-
cjuered the rapids Avith his canoe, and found hiraself out
upon the great Avaters of Superior. That Avas in 1660,
and Avhat they then called the lake I haA'e not learned ;
but in 1771, in a map pubhshed by the Jesuits, it is in
scribed '¦'¦Lac Tracy, ou Sujx'rieur." In that map the
neighboring lakes are naraed £ac des Ilinois and Lac
des Ihirons. In 1668 there arriA'ed Pere Marquette,
that saintly raan Avhose name lives anew in that of a
progressive lake port, and whose meraory is honored by
every intelligent man in all that vast region. He Avas
accompanied by Claude Dablou Avhen, having brought
his wasted body there to end his days, as he thought, in
a brief attempt to spread the gospel, he landed at the
place Avhich he renamed Sault Ste. Marie, and founded
there the first settlement in Michigan. Messrs. Chanart
and d'Esprit (sieurs des Radison and des Groselliers)
have left a record of their visit to the Avestern end of
the lake in 1661, six years before Pere AUouez and a
company of traders reached there, and eighteen years
before Du Lhut arrived Avith a band of coureurs des hois
to make the neighborhood of the city that bears his
altered name his place of residence for several years.
After these, by a great stride over the slow-making
pages of history, Ave come to find the great Hudson Bay
83

(Company, and its rival the Northwest Company of
fur-traders, conducting a systematized business on the
north shore of the lake; Avhile in time the Araerican
Fur Corapany, under John Jacob Astor's management,
copied the methods of those corporations on the south
side. Trading-posts grew into fortified places, trails
spread into roads, and settlements around mission houses
developed into villages. Then, tAvo hundred years after
its discovery. Lake Superior stood still for many years
— for nearly forty j'ears — so that its present history,
solid and certain in its promises as it is, resembles tne
record of a mushroom.
The date of the last enlargement of the lock of the
Sault Ste. Marie Canal is the date upon Avhich to base
all computations of the age of the present lake traffic
and its consequences. That lock was enlarged and
ncAvly opened in 1881. Marquette, " the Queen City of
Lake Superior," is an old place of former industry, but
it is a mere bab}' in its present enterprise. Superior
dates frora 1852 " on paper," but frora 1881 in fact,
Avhile Duluth is only a few years older. Port Arthur,
the principal Canadian port, owes itself to the Canadian
Pacific Raihvay, noAv about seven or eight years of age,
and many of the cities of the future are not yet discoA'-
ered, Avhile of great resorts that are to be, like Munising
and Nepigon, only those tAvo are knoAvn, and they are
knoAvn only to the most enterprising sportsmen.
The raen of the Lake Superior region Avill in time
form a neAV conglomerate, if I may use a geologist's
terra. The sailors of the great unsalted sea are a very
nautical-looking lot of men — as spare of fiesh, as bronzed
and leather-skinned, as if they Avere from Maine ; but
the surprising thing about them, so far as I raay trust
my observation, is that they all obtained their training
on the lakes. I did not find one Avho had ever seen the
83

ocean, and I thought I detected among thera a tone of
conterapt whenever they spoke of the genuine sea, as if
they were of the opinion that the Atlantic is a sort of
juvenile carapus for playing at sailoring, whereas it re
quires grown men to battle Avith the lakes.
Along-shore one meets Avith a queer hodgepodge of
men. On the United States side the Scandinavians are
very numerous. Thej' are highly spoken of by the
Araericans. They are bankers and merchants there, as
Avell as laborers and household serA'ants. They have
spread themselves over all parts of the new field with
wonderful assimilative capacity. They are a sturdy,
shrewd, thrifty, and arabitious people, as a rule. They
raake the strangest raess of speaking English at first,
and Ave raay expect a new touch in dialect literature
when writers who understand thera begin to treat of
them. Yet they are sufficiently iraportant to render a
knowledge of their native tongue very advantageous to
Araericans, and I found the general passenger agent of
a great railroad in the lake region assiduously studying
Swedish. There are raany Welshraen in that country,
but I only heard of thera in the raining regions. For
the rest, the people are Araerican, with all which that
imphes; that is to say, some have an American tree
with roots two centuries old, and some carry naturaliza
tion papers.
Over on the half-deserted Canadian side the rulers of
Canada — who are the Scotch first and the English sec
ond—are conspicuous in the towns, settlements, and
heavier industries. But the hunting and fishing are still
so good that the red ChippeAvayan servants of the Hud
son Bay Corapany still patrol the strearas in canoes and
traverse the Avinter snow fields Avith sledges dragged by
" huskies," those ill-used Eskirao dogs whose fare is said
to be " one part fish and nine parts clubbing." Gaunt
84

— p^^

and tireless prospectors, axe in hand and pack on back,
Avalk northAvard araong the rocks, far ahead of civiliza
tion. Hudson Bay factories are yet the stations, as the,
waterways are yet the only roads, once you get beyond
the rails of the transcontinental road skirting the very
edge of the lake.
The lake and a vast region around it is a sportsraan's
paradise, and a treasury of Avealth for those who deal in
the products of the Avilderness — furs, fish, and lumber.
At little Port Arthur alone the figures of the fishing in
dustry for the raarket are astonishing. In 1888 the fish
erraen there caught 500,000 pounds of white-fish, 360,000
pounds of lake trout, 48,000 pounds of sturgeon, 90,000
pounds of pickerel, and 30,000 pounds of other fish, or
raore than a million pounds in all. They did this with
an investment of $3800 in boats and $10,000 in gill and
pound nets. This yield nearly all Avent to a Chicago
packing company, and it is in the main Chicago and
Cleveland capital that is controlling the lake's fisheries.
The Avhite-fish is, in the opinion of raost gourmets, the
raost delicious fish known to Araericans. The lake trout
are raere food. I ara told that they are rather related
to the char than to the salraon. They are peculiar to
our inland Avaters. Thej'' average five to ten pounds in
Aveight, and yet grow to weigh 120 pounds ; but what
eA'er their weight be, it is a raere pressure of hard dry
flesh, calculated only to appease hunger.
But I find that on both shores of the lake there is a
groAving feeling that, in spite of the milhons of " fry "
the Fish Coramission duraps into that and the other
lakes, the vast reservoirs of delicious food are being
ruined by the sarae policy and the same methods that
make our luraberraen the chief crirainals of the conti
nent. Men who have spent years on the lakes soleranly
assert that not only are the annual yields growing
87

sraaller and smaller, but that the sizes of the fish caught
are growing less and less. Worse yet, they assert that
illicit practices, or those which should be made illicit,
result in the catching and destruction of millions of fish
Avhich are too small to market. I do not believe that
any man of leisure could find a raore benevolent or
worthy cause in Avhich to enlist than in that of a cru
sade against the use of sraall-raeshed nets in Lake Supe
rior. I will not, on ray present knowledge, say that the
planting of fish fry is a waste of tirae and energy, but
it certainly is regarded by many as ineffectual in the
present crisis. Government had better direct its energy
to that ounce of net-cutting that is better than a ton of
fry. At present there are trout a-plentj' in the streams that
flow into the great lake through the beautiful forests
Avhich clothe that enorraous tract, in Avhich, south of
Superior alone, there are said to be between 500 and
600 little lakes. Exactly like it, frora the sportsraan's
point of A'iew, is the region north of the lake, where the
land looks, upon a detailed map, like a great sponge, all
glistening with Avater, so crowded is its surface with
lakes and strearas. In the north are caribou, and all the
aniraals that the fur-traders of the Hudson Bay Com
pany value. South of the lake there are no aniraals
larger than deer, but deer are abundant, and bear are
still nuraerous. In the fishing season a man may feast
on trout, black bass, pickerel, muskallonge, partridge,
A-enison, and rabbit ; and he may, if he has the soul of a
true sportsman, revel in the raagnetic, wholesorae quali
ties of the air, and in the opulent and exquisite beauties
of the Avoods. For good sport, however, let hira avoid
the faraous places. There are half a dozen streams near
the celebrated Nepigon that are better than they have
been for years, while on the south side it is better to go
88

to quiet regions, like Munising or the streams near the
Ontonagon, than to whip the more noted waterways.
There is a railroad, the Duluth, South Shore, and Atlan
tic, which dissects this entire region from point to point

THE LOCK AT "THE SOO "

of the lake along its southern coast. The best sport is
found south of the railroad rather than between it and
the lake. For deer and fowl and fish one can scarcely
go amiss along that railway.
Duluth in Minnesota, and Superior in Wisconsin, the
two leading ports and lake-side cities of the " great un
salted sea," lie side by side at the western end or head
of Lake Superior.
The city of Marquette, on Iron Bay, in the centre of
89

the most picturesque part of the south shore, gets im
portance as a shipping port for ore and lumber, but it
occupies the raost beautiful site and is the raost beauti
ful town, as seen frora the water, of all those that have
groAvn up on the lake. It has a large and busy trading
district on the sandy shore of the lake, but the finer resi
dence districts surmount a high bluff vvhich half encir
cles the town. Ridge Street, 200 feet above the lake,
may easily become one of the finest avenues in America,
and already it numbers araong its appointraents sorae of
the most artistic and costly houses in the Lake Superior
region. With its drives and neighboring forests, its fish-
ing-streams, and the beauties and pleasures offered by
the lake, Marquette Avould naturally rank as a suraraer
resort, but the addition of Presque Isle Park will, Avhen
the park is developed, raise it to the first rank araong
the idling-places in the West. This park covers a bold
promontory formed of enorraous piles of stone like the
Pictured Rocks, which are themselves not far aAvay.
The water has eaten several caves into the foot of the
sheer wall of forest-capped rock, and into one of these a
boat may be rowed. The park is best seen when ap
proached from the lake. The deep pellucid waters in
the shadow of its walls forra a famous fishing-field.
The greatest commercial activity around the lake is
due to the raining. On the north shore gold has been
found in the Port Arthur district. The quartz-bearing
rock has been followed and the land pre-empted along
several veins, but there has been no systeraatic raining.
Silver has been very profitably and extensively mined,
the famous Silver Islet Mine having yielded $3,250,000
Avorth of the metal. There are very many other mines
in the district, many of Avhich have proved failures, and
a few of which are prosperous, while still others give
proraise of good futures. 90

But, either owing to the greater enterprise and capi
tal of the Americans or to the more valuable and wide
ly diffused metalliferous deposits, it is on the south side
that most of the notable mining is found. The names
" Calumet and Heda," " Gogebic," and " Marquette,"
distinguishing great mines or districts, are doubtless of
Avorld-wide fame. There are seventy-three iron mines
on the Marquette range, and their output for 1890 was
more than four millions of tons. Open -pit mining
is largely followed in this district. In the region be
tAveen Ishpeming and Negaunee are a few gold raines.
The richest of these is stopped by litigation, but one
profitable raine is being Avorked. The great copper re
gion of KeweenaAv peninsula — a broad, long area of land
thrust out of Michigan into the raiddle of the lake —
abounds Avith copper in the form of conglomerates, or
mineral mixed with rock. The census report upon the
district declares that 117,800,000 pounds of this mineral
yielded 87,445,000 pounds of ingot, showing the percent
age of copper to be 74.24. In the census year, 1890, the
araount of rook crushed Avas 2,137,653 tons, and this
yielded 86,604,2S3 pounds of ingot copper. Silver is
said to be found in the copper region. The famous Go
gebic iron region, or range, raarks the Avestern lirait of
Michigan's ^50-mile-Avide raineral section, from Avhich,
exclusive of gold, copper, and silver, between fiA'e mill
ions and eight millions of tons of ore is annually sent
aAvay. The logging or lumbering industry, especially
on the southern and western ends of the lake, is a gi
gantic calling, but it is not within ray ability to summa
rize its extent with figures.
All the coraraerce of Lake Superior that is sent to or
from \t raust pass through the Sault Sts. Marie Canal,
until the Canadians finish the parallel waterway, Avhich
they are building in order to be in all respects, independ-
93

ent of us. Nature raade the waters of Superior to flow
into Huron by raeans of the St. Marie River, but in
doing so they drop to Huron's level, Avhich is somewhat
lower than that of the king of lakes. They make eigh
teen feet of the descent suddenly by the rapids Avhich
give to the artificial Avaterway built to avoid them the
name of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal. " Soo'' and " Soo
Saint Mary," or " Susan Mary," as it is often called, are
Western forms the Avords take. Commercially speak
ing, this canal added Superior to the great lake sj'stera
or route, connected it directlj'- with the Atlantic and the
Avorld at large, and shortened very greatly the railroad
carriage of ore and grain to the East, and of coal and
general raerchandise to the far West. The canal acoom-
inodates an amount of traffic Avhich for years has been
greater than that of the Suez Canal. In 1886 the
freighting through the great African canal amounted to
a gross tonnage of 8,183,313 tons ; but it has decreased,
if I am not raistaken ; while the tonnage that passed
"the Soo" in 1890 Avas 9,041,313. It is interesting to
note that of this sura the proportion of freight carried
by Canadian vessels was onlji- 6 per cent, in 1888, and
4 per cent, in 1889. It is also Avorth Avhile to note
that of the 9,000,000 tons floated through the canal in
1890, about 4,500,000 Avere east-bound, and 2,600,000
Avere west-bound.
But the canal is inefflcient ; Avof ully so in the opinion
of the extra-energetic shippers at the Lake Superior
ports, who assert that its inability to pass the largest
vessels fully laden operates to the advantage of their
great rival, Chicago. The depth of Avater in the, canal
in 1890 ran from fourteen feet and nine inches to fifteen
feet three inches, and during the first half of 1^91 it
varied between thirteen feet and ten inches and four
teen feet five inches. Such vessels as are now being
94

ORE DOCKS AT MARQUETTE, THE LARGEST IN THE WORLD

added to the lake service draw sixteen and a half feet,
and in view of the present depth of Avater in the canal
it Avill be seen that they lose several hundreds of tons
a trip by carrj'ing only partial loads. The Government
is aWake to the situation, and the new lock Avhich it is
now building, at a cost of more than four millions of
dollars, will be 100 feet in Avidth, 21 feet deep, and 1200
feet long.
The fact that the canal does more business in seven
months than the Suez Canal effects in a year does not
give so clear an idea of its importance as is gained from
the consequences of a slight accident to the lock year
before last. This necessitated closing the canal tera
porarily, but it cost the raen and companies who use
the canal a loss of about one raillion dollars. There
Avere at that tirae 183 vessels Avaiting to pass out of
Superior, and nearlj' as raany going in the other di
rection. The worst brake on the Avheels of the great commerce
that strains toAvards development on the lake is not the
" Soo" canal. That will soon be as large as it needs to
be. The trouble lies in the inadequacy of the canals
far to the eastward — the Welland and Lachine canals.
Instead of furthering the ambition of the West, they
hold it at the throat and choke it. Until they are en
larged, or belittled by larger canals, the lake commerce
Avith Europe Avill continue to be greatly limited. It is
true that the whaleback steamer Wetmore Avent to Europe
from Superior Avith a load of grain, but had she been the
least bit longer she could not have gone through the
Welland Canal, around Niagara, and she had to dodge
the St. LaAvrence canals by shooting the rapids of that
river. Were she to return to Superior she Avould have
to be unriveted and pulled through the canal in tAvo
parts. Thus it Avas that the steamships of the Cana-
G 97

dian Pacific Corapanj' plying on the larger lakes were
brought frora the Clyde.
It Avas a A'aluable experiment, that Avith the Wetmore.
It demonstrated the pluck of the far Western naviga
tors and merchants, and it accentuated the deraand of
the people of the entire Northwest for a practicable
Avater route to the Atlantic. The people of the region
around the Great Lakes are chafing and fretting under
the chains that bind and hinder thera. They deraand

LIGHT - HOUSE AT MARQUETTE
the raeans of reaching the Atlantic either bj' the St.
LaAvrence or the Hudson, and they Avill not be satisfied
Avith less than " twenty feet of Avater frora Duluth to
the sea.'' That is the battle-cry of a people Avith the
will and persistence to achieve Avhatever they deterraine
upon. They will not long be put off. They are full of
the spirit of the present revolution bj' Avhich Ave Ameri
cans are to recover our prestige on the sea. Thus added
force is found in a vast reach of new water-front, Avhich
Avill send upon the oceans of the world not merely men,
but ships that hail from the heart of the continent.
98

The aira of the students of the situation is not only to
keep beyond the constant reduction of railroad rates,
but also to secure the carrying of the products of Asia.
They argue that the Pacific Ocean currents naturallj'
set toAvards Puget Sound, and put San Francisco out of
the natural course of shipping, and also that the Puget
Sound coast is six hundred railes nearer the north At
lantic ports than is San Francisco.
There are two sides to the contention for improA'ed
internal Avaterways, and I propose to present both sides,
because both together reflect the influences that are
building up the new West, and show the strides that
have been made towards the perfection of transportation
facilities. There is a conspicuous railroad raan in the West Avho
argues that Avater rates Avill cease to influence rail trans
portation when the dcA'elopraent of railroading reaches
the near point towards Avhich it is hastening. For a tirae
in 1891 the freight rate frora Chicago to New York was
scA'enteen cents a hundred pounds, and he says that this
forced the lake rate down to one and a quarter cents.
He argues that when the railroads make a twelve-cent
rate, as they must in time, the boats on the lakes will
not be able to eai-n their operating expenses.
The form of railroad progress Avhich attracts every
one's attention is that Avhich is marked by the improve
ment of the palace cars through the introduction of
baths, barber -shops, and libraries. But the progress
which affects earning capacity, and which is constantly
lessening the cost of railroad service to the public, is
that Avhich comes of the improvement of the road-beds
of the trunk lines by the creation of direct lines from
point to point, the reduction or abolition of grades, the
easing of curves, the increase in the Aveight of the rails,
and the enlargement of locomotive poAver and car capac-
99

ity. The outgo and the incorae of the railwaj' busi
ness are found by considering the train raile and the
ton mile as the units or bases of calculation. The cost
of running a train a mile is the unit of expense. The
araount obtained per ton per raile is the unit of incorae.
The difference between the two is the profit. The re
sistance, which raust be reduced to a rainiraura, is the
law of gravity. But for that a child raight draAv a train
of cars Avith a piece of twine. But, as the Western rail
road man remarked, " the laAv of gravity is like the poor,
whom we have always with us, and the railroad men
must see that it is not further weighted by steep grades,
weak rails, sharp curves, and indirect routes. Originally
railroads were laid on the surface of the ground ; now
they must find a level, and keep to it, as Avater does."
The modern railroad must also avoid all possibility of
obstruction that can be avoided ; and we see in the
sunken track of the Ncav York Central Railroad in New
York city an exaraple of the lengths to which the best
railroads must go to obtain guaranteed freedora frora
obstruction. With the sarae aim, this railroad is to pass
through Rochester upon an elevated structure, and
through Buffalo on a sunken track. Yet, in spite of
these strides towards the perfection of railroading, with
a consequent lessening of rates, President Depew does
not predict the destruction of lake trafflc. On the con-
trarj', he says that it Avill always be carried on. The
railroads theraselves find it of service; and all those
trunk lines Avhich have lake ports on their routes now
either own steamers or ha\'e raade contracts Avith steara
ship lines. President Depew says that although his rail
road corapany once opposed the canals, he lives at peace
with thera, his argument being that the lake boa,ts bring
to Buffalo more business than the canals can handle,
and the surplus goes to the railroads. Moreover, the
100

'-m:Mm~.

'^>--

canals form highways
through the State, and,
by contributing- to the
prosperity of the canal
towns, add to the pros
peritj' of the railroads.
Mr. Depew adds, nevertheless, that the canals are no
longer forraidable competitors with the railroads, as
they once were. In the old daj's a canal-boat carried as
rauch grain as a train of twenty 10-ton cars ; but now
a train may consist of fifty cars, each one carrying 25
tons. The locomotives have groAvn frora a Aveight of
30 tons to a Aveight of 90 or 100 tons, the cars have
tripled their capacity, the rails that vA'eighed 56 pounds
per yard have been replaced bj' 80 or 90 pound tracks ;
and with all these improvements has come a reduction
of 50 per cent, in freight rates in the tirae that he has
been interested in railroads. 101

The leading men of the lake ports admit all this ; in
fact, they make out a strong case for the railroads in
order to emphasize the need of facilities by Avhich those
great regulators of transportation rates, the freight-
boats, may meet the new conditions. Those who have
made the arguments for the various lake ports shoAv
that Avhereas in 1868 the rail rate on grain from Chi
cago to New York Avas 42.6 cents a bushel, it was 14
cents in 1885. The AA'ater rate in that period fell from
25 cents a bushel to 4.55 cents. It has kept between 25
per cent, and 67 per cent, lower than the rail rate. The
A-alue of the Avaterways to the public is illustrated in a
startling Avay by making use of the Government records
of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal traffic for 1889. There
passed through that canal 7,516,022 tons, carried an
averao-e distance of 790.4 miles, at 0.145 cents a ton a
mile. The railroads would have charged 0.976 cents,
and the business would have cost the public fifty mill
ions of dollars more if the railroads had transacted it
than Avas charged by the boatraen.
In pressing upon the attention of the country the
value of a twenty-foot waterwaj' to the sea, the lake-
port business men assert that not only did the Lake Su
perior traffic through the Sault Ste. Marie Canal amount
to three-quarters of a million tons more in 1889 than
passed the Suez Canal, but the lake business Avhich AA'as
transacted in the Detroit River Avas more than 36,000,-
000 tons of freight, or 10,000,000 tons more than the
total tonnage of all ocean and gulf ports of the en
tire coast line of the United States. In view of that
fact thej' ask Avhat aa-ouM be the growth of this business
if, instead of taking this freight out of 3000-ton ships to
put it into 200-ton canal-boats, it could go directly and
Avithout change of vessels to the sea. As to the expense
of the iraproveraents that are asked for, IVlr. S. A.
102

Thompson, of the Chamber of Commerce of Duluth,
asserts that in all time the Federal government has ex
pended upon all the lakes above Niagara Falls only
$28,038,590, so that the saving at the Sault Ste. Marie
Canal, on the business of one lake, araounted to a return
of $1 85 to the people for every dollar the governraent
spent upon the lakes.
Frora the stand-point of the people of the lake ports
Ave have not been either as liberal or as long-sighted as
the Canadians, who have a well-defined systera of Ava
terways, corapleted by canals Avherever navigation is
hindered by nature. Thej' are building a canal around
the St. Mary's Falls, and when it is finished their sys
tem will be complete. It Avill only need enlargement to
raake it serve the requireraents of the near future, but,
even as it is, it Avill serve, in case of war, for the intro-

LOAWNG A WHALEBACK BARGE

duction of gunboats and torpedo-boats by Avay of the St.
Lawrence into those lakes on Avhich we are prevented
by treaty from maintaining a squadron. We have upon
the lakes onlj' the old wooden sloop of w&v Michigan,
103

and can put no other Avar vessels there in case of dan
ger, unless Ave have the time to build them at some lake
port. England, on the other hand, has fifty gunboats
and other Avar vessels of sufflciently light draught to
pass through the canals into the lakes.
It is not necessary to Aveigh the various plans Avhicli
are offered for a national highAvay frora Duluth to the
sea. One looks toAvards the deepening of the canal be
tAveen OsAvego and Syracuse, Ncav York, and of the
canal betAveen Syracuse and the Hudson River. An
other plan leaves New York City out of consideration,
and proposes direct communication between Duluth and
the ocean, or the Avorld at large, bj' raeans of a duplica
tion of the Canadian canal system on the American bor
der. Both these plans necessitate the building of an
American canal around Niagara Falls.
The provision of twenty feet of water in the new
Sault Ste. Marie lock, noAV undergoing construction,
Avill make possible the employment of vessels canying
6000 to 8000 tons, in place of the present largest-sized
lake boats, Avhich cannot carry their compleraent of 3000
tons. Such carriers, it is said, can cut doAvn the pres
ent cost of Avater transportation fully 50 per cent, and
leave a profit for the ship-owners. In vieAV of the enor
raous field aAvaiting development in the Northwest, and
in view of the steady loAvering of railway rates, the
ardor with Avhich the people of the lake ports urge the
creation of an Araerican twenty-foot water system, at
least as far east as OsAvego, does not seera unreason
able. Upon the 1500 miles of the lake's shore there are IIa--
ing now less than 150,000 persons, and these are mainly
in bustUng cities hke Duluth, Superior, and Marquette,
in industrial colonies like Calumet and Red Jacket, or
in struggling little ports like Fort William and Port
104

Arthur. Even there the wilderness and primeA'al condi
tions are face to face Avith the robust civilization Avhich is
shouldering its way as capital is accustomed to do rather
than as natural growth usually asserts itself. Not that

i^-„^

A WHALEBACK DESCENDING THK RAPIDS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE

it is not a wholly natural growth which we find at all
points on the lake shore, for it is all in response to the
inexorable laws of supply and demand. Yet the cora
raunities there have sprung into being far apart frora
Avell-settled regions in ansAver to these laws.
Thus it happens that to-day one may ride in an elec
tric street car to the starting-point for a short walk to a
trout stream, or one may take the steam railroad, and in
an hour alight at a forest station, breakfasting there,
but enjoying for luncheon a cut of the deer or a dish of
the trout or the partridge Avhich he has killed for the
purpose. It is, so to say, a region Avherein the Avhole
sale fisherman Avith his steamboat disturbs the red man
who is spearing a fish for supper, Avhere the Avolf blinks
in the glare of the electric lamp, and Avhere the patent
stump-puller and the beaver work side by side.
The strange condition is most startlingly illustrated
105

by a recent occurrence in Michigan, in the sarae region.
Close to a Avatering resort which is crowded in summer
by persons frora all over the West, sorae men Avere cut
ting timber in the Avinter. Two brothers were among
them. One hit hiraself with an axe, cutting open an
artery in his leg. The other hurried away for surgical
help. When the messenger returned, nothmg but the
bones of his brother Avere left. Wolves, attracted by the
scent of his blood, had eaten him up.
It is thus that there is forced upon the comprehension
the practical ncAvness of this giant fresh-Avater sea, Avhicli
geologists would haA'e us believe is millions of years old,
and Avhich even history mentions in detailing the ex
ploits of men Avho died in the seventeenth century. But
Avith the youth of this ncAV civilization haA'e come the
vigor and enterprise needed to develop industries and to
rear cities of Avhich all the people of all the States, new
and old, maj' well feel proud. 106

IV
CAPITALS OF THE NORTHWEST
Just as the Atlantic cities were surprised when Chi
cago distanced all but tAVO of them in population, and
challenged all of them by her enterprise, so Avill they be
astonished again and from another quarter, if they re
fuse to study the forces that are operating to build up
ncAV capitals in the West. In another ten j'ears there
will be another claira of a raillion population, and the
counting of heads Avill not make nonsense of it. The
new and Avonderful assumption of metropolitan impor
tance will be that of the twin cities of the wheat region
— Minneapolis and St. Paul. They may not be joined
under one narae and governraent — opinions differ about
that — but all agree that thej' will jointly possess a
million of population. The last census credited Min
neapolis Avith 164,700 population, and St. Paul with
133,00(1, or, jointly, 297,000. At the tirae of the pre
ceding census (1880) the two cities included about
88,000 souls. At that rate of increase they Avill boast
in 1900 a population of 976,000 and more. But they
insisted in the summer of 1891 that they possessed
more than 350,000 joint population, and that the raillion
raark Avill be reached before the next census is taken.
Whv should men make such a prophecy ; or rather,
Avhy haA'e these two towns already gathered 350,000
inhabitants Avithin their limits? We must repeat the
study that we made at Chicago. That city Ave found
107

to be the metropolis of the entire interior between the
Rockies and the Alleghanies, but an analysis of its
sources of supply and field of distribution showed it to
be more particularly the capital of the corn lands. We
saw how rich were the returns from agriculture in a
countrj' by no means fully developed, and of such vast
extent as to be roughly spoken of as a territory one
thousand miles square. Chicago is its trading centre,
and, from a beginning upon borrowed capital, that citj-
has ceased to borrow, and has begun to amass wealth,
to lend money, and to suppl v its tributary country Avitli
manufactured goods in such quantities that it already
ranks third in the list of manufacturing centres. In the
great amount of rich land that is yet to be redeemed,
and in the Avide leeway that exists for iniproA'ed and
economical farming, we are able to clearly see a noble,
a splendid future for Chicago.
But in St. Paul and Minneapolis Ave reach the pulse
of another region — the Avheat lands of America. I
understand that in a sense these cities are tributary to
Chicago, and that in the sarae sense their tributary
region has in some measure been included in that of
Chicago, but the line that is being draAvn between the
two centres is growing heavier and broader every year.
In the possession of home manufactures lies the abilitv
to trade economically and to save a profit, and just as
Ave have seen Chicago emancipate herself from the
bondage of Eastern capital through manufactures, so
Ave shall find that the twin cities of Minnesota are set
ting up for themselves as independent traders. The
country they aira to raonopolize in trade is far sraaller
than the corn region, but it is extraordinarily raore
fertile and profitable to the farmer.
Close to their doors lies the faraous Red River Valley,
which is by sorae students of such comparative values
108

declared to be the third agricultural region, in point of
fertility, in the Avorld, there being one Asiatic and one
African valley in the foreground bej'ond it. This Red
River Valley takes in many counties of Minnesota and
the most easterly counties of the two »Dakotas. It is
prairie land of black soil that once formed the bed or
deposit of an ancient sea. It reaches up into Canada,
beyond Winnipeg, and is a great deal richer at its
southern end in the United States than in Canada.
This region pours its vA'ealth of grain (or a great part
of it) into Minnesota's twin cities, there to exchange it
for merchandise. Other cereals and cattle are produced
bej'ond this valley in the ucav States, and the valley
itself returns the same coraraodities along with its
Avonderful output of Avheat. In the extra fruitful j'ear
just closed — wonderful for its crops and for the Avorld-
Avide demand for breadstuffs from this country — the
predictions that were based upon the results of the sale
of the crops seeraed fabulous. For instance, it was
boasted that the farmers of the Northwest Avould make
sufficient profits to pay off all their mortgages this year.
This boast Avas not disputed by any of the leaders in
trade and transportation with AA'hom I talked, but I
gathered frora Avhat they said that though the farmers
are as well off as this stateraent iraplies, the majoritj'
will not remove the raortgages, but Avill be more likelj- to
expend their profits in betterments, in extending their
farms, and in redeeming unworkable tracts in their
present holdings. This roseate vicAV ends at the vallej',
so far as the Dakotas are concerned. The Dakotan
farmers have suffered some bad seasons, and are not so
near the end of their debts.
It is in the Red River Valley that one mav hear of a
farmer Avhose profits last season were close to $30,000 ;
it is there that men bought farms of great extent, ex
109

pecting to pay for thera in an indefinite nuraber of
years, and then paid for thera out of the first crop
raised upon the land, the Avonderful yield of last year.
Such is the region at the very doors of the twin cities of
the NorthAvest. If Ceres left the Old World when the
worship of her went out of fashion, it must have been
to the valley of the Red River that she came. But if
mythology is suggested at all by a study of this mar-
A'ellous region, it is in the recollection of the fabled
river Pactolus, wherein King Midas washed off his
power to turn into gold all that he touched. That
may Avell have been the stream that once SAvelled from
side to side of this valley, for, truly, its sediment retains
little less than Midas's power.
We realize the majesty of agriculture as we never
did before when Ave learn that in Minnesota and the
two Dakotas the Avheat crop alone was Avorth one
hundred and twenty raillions of dollars last year.
Figure for yourself the estimated yield of one hundred
and fifty millions of bushels selling at frora 75 cents to
82 cents a bushel. In what story of fairyland is there
an account of a literal field of gold to equal that ?
There are 8,832,000 acres in the valley, and less than
a quarter of it was in crop last year. If every acre
were put into Avheat, there Avould be no market for the
Avheat ; it would becorae a drug. As it is, of the por
tion that is under cultivation, only about three-quarters
Avere in Avheat, and the yield of last year A\'as estimated
at from 30,000,000 to 37,000,000 bushels, grown at the
aA'erage proportion of 20 bushels to the acre. The
Avheat crop of the valley, therefore, fetched about
$27,000,000. At 80 cents a bushel, each acre returned
$16, at a cost of from $6 to $8. Good land has pro
duced 31 bushels to the acre, and good land farmed
scientifically has yielded as high as 47 bushels to the acre,
110

but 20 bushels is the aA'erage product, and the farmer
is entitled to a profit of $10 an acre, Avith prices as they
Avere last year. Matured farming will raise the jield
to an average of 25 bushels an acre.
The Dakotas, which are also tributary to the tAvin
cities of Minnesota, do not offer opportunities for theat
rical or bonanza farming. Three-quarters of their terri-
tory is not Avheat land. More Avheat can be raised
upon the six counties in the Red River Valley than in
all the rest of both Dakotas. The Dakotas will pro
duce grain, cattle, horses, sheep, and, in ten or fifteen
counties, corn. These States offer a good reward for
honest toil, and that Avould be very high praise of them
Avere it not that the opulent valley on their eastern
edge forces a comparison between itself and them.
The end of one great source of revenue to the region
is in sight. That is the luraber production. The trees
are all counted ; the nuraber of feet in each forest is
entered in the lumbermen's books. In Michigan, all
that is of value in the forests Avill have disappeared in
five years, it is said ; in Wisconsin, 15 years Avill end
the industry ; in Minnesota the supply Avill last 15 to
20 J'ears — a pin point in the dial of tirae. Already
capitalists are turning their raercenary gaze toAvards
the raajestic and virgin forests of the new State of
Washington. Montana is believed to be another and a
greater Pennsylvania, rich in coals, in oil, and in varied
metalliferous ores. These resources and the timber and
farra products of the Washington of a later day are all
Avaited for to swell the importance of the tAvin cities,
for it is not now seen that there is a likelihood that
any other very great cities Avill be developed in the
Northwest except upon the Pacific coast. There will
be populous district centres, of course, and already
three such places are robust, liA'elj' towns, but the raen
111

Avho noAv seera possessed of the most shrewdness and
foresight in the Northwest do not believe that the
shifting horizon of time is hiding anj' competitor for
the position noAv occupied by the Minnesotan capitals
of trade.
Having noted the resources of the Northwest, pos
sible as well as present, if the reader Avill turn to his
map he will see that the great raihvay lines of that
upper corner of our country present the appearance of
a rude diagrara of a human hand with the fingers out
spread. St. Paul and Minneapolis are at the wrist, and
control the fingers that reach out and grasp the trade
of the entire NorthAvest. This double metropolis and
this trade have their own ports at Duluth and Superior,
while at the twin cities of Minnesota the navigation of
the Mississippi begins or ends.
Minnesota's twin capitals in the wheat region are not
yet one corporate body, and there are raany shrewd
citizens of one and the other who assert that they will
not unite Avhile the present generation of leading men
remains dominant. There has been too keen a riA'alry,
and each town is too jealous of the other, for union to
be possible, they say, until the boys of to-day becorae
the successors of their fathers. Therefore, if for no
other reason than that, the cities must be studied sep
arately in this article. They are ten miles apart, but
the statement of that fact is very misleading, because
they lie side by side like Iavo globules of quicksilver,
Avith a few little drops of the liquid between them.
Whoever journeys frora one to the other fails to per
ceive why they raay not at any moment shake together
into one great glittering mass, Avith no other di\'ision
than is created by their separate charters, and no joint
border line except that which Avill require a surA'evor's
kit to determine. 113

To begin with Minneapolis, the larger of the two
cities, let me introduce the town as that one Avhich
seems to me the pleasantest and raost nearlj' perfect
place for residence of all the cities I have seen in my
country. St. Paul is in the main so nearly like Minne
apolis that a slight sense of injustice coraes Avith the
Avriting of these words ; j'et St. Paul lacks sorae of the
qualities Avhich Minneapolis possesses, and the words
must stand. Both cities have arisen amid park-like sur
roundings, both rejoice in the possession of the lovelj'^
Mississippi (for it is a most beautiful riA'er up there), and
both are largely made up of dwelling districts which
fascinate the very soul of a man from the solid, pent-up
cities of the East. But in one rainor respect Minne
apolis triuraphs in being thoroughly consistent Avith her
ruling trait, and at that particular point St. Paul fails.
That is to say, Minneapolis is ample and broad and
roomy in her business district, Avhile St. Paul is in that
quarter narrow, compact, huddled, and old-fashioned.
I cannot force Minneapolis to challenge the world to
produce her equal, but it seems to me that it Avill be
difficult to find another influential trading and manu
facturing city that is so peculiarlj' a city of horaes. It
Avas after riding over mile after mile of her streets and
boulevards, and noting the thousands of separated cot
tages, each in its little garden, that I came to a localitj'
Avherein there Avere a few — a very few — apartraent-
houses. They Avere not what Ave in New York call
" teneraent-houses," for the poor seemed superior to the
evil, and lived in their own tiny boxes ; they were flat-
houses for families few in merabers and indolent by
nature. These Avere so very fcAv that the array of dwell
ings took on an extraordinary importance. Try, then,
to fancy the pleasure and surprise Avitli which I read in
the city directory, afterwards, a stateraent that the city's
H 118

164,738 inhabitants occupy 32,026 dwelUngs. If there
were 921 raore dwellings there would be one to every
five persons, which is to say one to each faraily.
As these houses are in the main owned by their ten
ants, the city presents a spectacle of coraraunal dignity,
self-respect, and corafort that distinguishes it even in a
greater degree than Philadelphia is distinguished araong
our Atlantic seaboard cities. It was pleasing to hear in
the neighboring city of St. Paul, where nearly the same
conditions prevail, that Avhen the citizens go to the City
Hall to ask for places in the public service, or to de
raand their rights, they often draw theraselves up to
their full height and say, " I ara a tax-payer," by way of
preface to a stateraent of their wishes. The man Avho
carries that pride in his breast, and who goes home to a
house whose every side offers windows to the light and
air, should be as nearly a coraplete and perfect individ
ual as it is possible for the more or less artificial con
ditions of life in a city to produce. Of such individuals
is the great bulk of the population of Minneapolis com
posed. It is interesting to know that the raotive poAver of
the city has always been pure Yankee. The settlers
were in a large degree from Maine, and it is Avittily
said that they followed the pine westward, until at this
point its final appearance east of the Rockies was noted.
Here the Maine raen rested and set up their saw-mills,
using St. Anthony's Falls to move their saws. It was a
lumber town during most of its history. The great
wheat-handling industry is a new thing by comparison.
In 1871 only two car loads of wheat were receiA'ed here;
in 1SS7 the Great Western Railroad brought thirty-
three raillion bushels to the flouring - miUs. It is
thought that the surarait of fifty miUions of bushels
will be reached in the tweh'e months Avhich include the
114

period of receipt of the enormous crop of last j'ear.
But if newness is to be considered, what shall be
thought of the city itself? Its first settler marched
in a procession through the streets last sumraer. He
raarked out his claim, in Avhat is now the thick of the
city, on June 10, 1849.
A bird's-eye view of the city is like such a view of
one of those parks in the East Avhich rich men dot with
villas. It is a plain of luxuriant foliage, broken here
and there by house roofs. Trees border the streets and
avenues, and deck even the most ordinary building
plots. The houses are siraply little frame cottages, with
here and there a street of pretentious and large resi
dences, also of Avood, and Avith a few noble mansions
built of raasonry for the leading capitalists of the place.
But the same admirable features distinguish all classes
of homes : nearly all stand apart one frora another ; the
great majority exhibit that variety which is begotten of
individual and independent taste ; and all are found in
districts sacred to domesticity and peace, where a taboo
has been put against liquor-selling, and where traders
of every sort seem loath to jar the homelike tone by in
truding their storehouses. It is such a town as the av
erage American housewife Avould plan, and nowhere do
the women, both matrons and maids, seem better placed
or more thoroughly the mistresses of their position in
modern citj' life than as one sees them upon those
bowery streets, passing the rows of pretty cottage
homes, beneath trees, amid floAvers, and beside the rosy
children Avho play fearlessly in the Avell-ordered streets.
We shall see in another article that Minneapolis enjoys
a peculiar and admirable liquor license law. Suffice it
here to say that the dram shops are confined to what
raay be called the business districts, where the stores
and factories are clustered together — a fit arrangeraent
115

for a woman's capital, an earthly paradise of homes, a
settleraent of landlords and landladies.
The people of the city have little knowledge of the
irapression that it raakes upon those who compare it
with other towns, but they are aware of one eft'ect,
whUe ignorant of the cause ; that is, they know theirs
is Avhat is called an eminently " healthy " town. The
death rate is lower and the sum of the general health is
greater (or Avas in 1890) than in any one of the twenty-
six largest cities in the United States.
We have seen in the past, and shall see again and
again, that the Western people have not only an ex
traordinary fondness for public parks, but a positive
genius in arranging thera. Minneapolis found half a
dozen pellucid lakes within her borders, and these she
has converted, or is converting, into exceedingly pretty
little parks. They are not grand, like the pleasure-
grounds which border the raajestic lake at Chicago, but
they are dainty and bewitching. To go by way of
Hennepin Boulevard, for instance, where the electric
cars run upon a central strip of grass between parallel
driveways, and to see the use that three of these jewel
like lakes have been put to, is to enjoy a treat that will
not be easily obliterated frora the memory by any
crowding of lovelier scenes. First, along the short
route is Loring Park, so called in honor of the designer
of the city's park systera. It is a reproduction in
rainiature of the most lovely features of New York's
Central Park. Then is seen a parkway of woodland
beside a great sheet of crystal called Lake Calhoun. In
another five minutes Lake Harriet is reached, and there
bursts into view a great bowl of mirror-like Avater, em
bowered in trees and surrounded by the grove Avhicli
nature planted there. At one point on the edge of the
lake is a graceful casino building, and anchored out in
116

the lake is a floating band-stand, hooded by a sounding-
board, under which, on sumraer afternoons, a band is
stationed to play for the people. Light, graceful row-
boats are plentiful, and for hire at a Ioav price ; the
strand is fallowed, and fringed with roAvs of settees;
the scene is distant less than half an hour's journey
frora the heart of the citj', at a passage rate of five
cents, and there is no warning or rule against trespass
anywhere in the beautiful grounds, which the people
raaintain, own, and are Avisely permitted to enjoy. The
parks I have raentioned form but so raany Unks in a
glorious chain Avhich corapasses tAvo sides of the city,
that includes five parks and ten parkAvays, and that
ends "Where the Falls of Minnehaha
Laugh and leap into the valley,"
at what is called Minnehaha Park. The winding ver
dant route from park to park is a continuous, Avell-or-
dered, and beautiful series of parkways, eighteen miles
in length.
Many Western cities and towns are interested specta
tors of the Avork of removing the railroad grade cross
ings in Minneapolis, for, although the city has groAvn to
its present size Avith the railroads entering and crossing
it on a level Avith its streets, the people have not hesi
tated to force a solution of the problem that confronts
Chicago, and, indeed, raost of the great cities out West.
It was five years ago that the City Council of Minne
apolis ordered the City Engineer to prepare plans for
the execution of the AVork. This done, the City At
torney began proceedings in court to determine why
the railroads should not lower their tracks. It was fort
unate for Minneapolis that the head of one great rail
road system was Mr. James J. Hill, whose consideration
117

for the public and erainent shrewdness led hira to fall in
Avith the city's project; indeed, he did more — he aided
the effort with suggestions that were calculated to
lighten and improA'e the Avork. Another corporation,
using tracks parallel Avith those of Mr. Hill's Great
Northern and Manitoba railroads, fought the authori
ties ; but in tirae its receiver, who was an officer of the
courts, was ordered to accept a compromise betAveen its
own and the city's demands, and the great and notable
Avork that is called " The Fourth Avenue Iraprove
raent " was agreed upon and begun.
The New York reader will understand the situation
clearly if he understands that the case is precisely as if
trains were running upon our own Fourth Avenue
across all the numbered streets and on a level Avith
them. The danger, slaughter, and discomfort of the
citizens of Minneapolis raay be imagined ; the obstacles
against the free and fast handling of the trains need
not be described. It is safe to say that if our own New
York Central Railroad could return to the old streetr
level service, and could have back the cost of its sunken
track with interest, it Avould not make the change. It
could not if it would ; it Avould not be able to transact
its present volurae of business under the old conditions.
Yet everywhere the railroads fight the efforts towards
self-protection that are made by our municipal govern
ments, and out West no subject is now being studied
Avith deeper interest and earnestness than that of the
methods by which the railroads can be forced to raise
or lower their tracks within the boundaries of cities.
Minneapolis's mode of handling the problem is an espe
cially valuable study, because, unlike her twin sister St.
Paul, but Uke most other Western towns, the act of
self-defence and self-preserA'ation was postponed untd
the city had grown great, and the task had become for-
118

midable. Along this Fourth Avenue in Minneapolis
run not merely the trains of tAvo trunk Unes, but on
that narroAV avenue in the heart of the city is handled
the enormous traffic between the twin cities and their
chief summer resort, Lake Minnetonka.
The arrangeraent that Minneapolis raade was a sim
ple one — for the city. It decided that the railroads
Avere to build the entire viaduct, approaches, bridges,
masonry Avails, excavations, and all, and that the city
Avas to stand between the railroads and those property-
holders Avho raight claira daraages for injuries groAving
out of the improvement. It happens that most of the
buildings whose owners claira daraages were old rat
tletraps, and the highest claim for injury is one for
$12,0(10. In most cases abutting property was benefited.
The cit\' therefore comes out of the affair at very slight
cost, while the railroads have been put to an enormous
outlay. The city establishes all lines and levels arbitra
rily, giving the railroads a clear space of twenty feet
above the tracks. The railroads must keep the bridges
and approaches in perpetual repair. One notable con
cession by the city is the surrender of a street crossing.
At Sixth Street, Avhere the work of lowering the tracks
begins, and where there are manj'^ rails and switches,
the crossing is closed, and the city gives up its rights in
the street at that point. Beyond this street, as the city
continues to grow, the people will pay for and build the
bridges that may be needed.
The passenger tracks are sunk ten feet at the lowest
point ; the freight tracks four or five feet. There are
six bridges. Thej- vary in length between 100 feet and
500 feet, as the tracks spread out beyond the starting-
point. One bridge is 100 feet in Avidth, but the others
permit of only a thirty-six-foot roadway and a twenty-
eight-foot sidewalk. The bridges are approached by a
119

gradual raising of the street levels, and the effort has
been to keep the incline of these approaches and bridges
Avithin four feet in the hundred, but in one case the
grade is a foot greater. The railroads haA'e done excel
lent work, and the viaduct, Avith its stone walls and fine
freight-houses and passenger station, presents an appear
ance that is almost ornamental. It will be of interest
to those officials of other cities who are meditating Avork
of this kind to know that the railroads Avhich use the
new viaduct are greatly pleased Avith the reform, and
Avould not go back to the old conditions. Moreover, a
railroad whose tracks run upon the street level on the
other side of the river, in Minneapolis, has made an- in
formal proposition to sink its tracks, if the city Avill bear
a moderate share of the cost. When I was in Minne
apolis, in Septeraber, the City Engineer had been sent
for to testify in behalf of Colurabus, Ohio, in a suit
groAving out of a similar progressive movement in that
city ; and it is certain that Avhen the whole countrj'
knows what Minneapolis has done, her people Avill be
fiattered by the attention their enterprise Avill attract.
To give an idea of the extent of the principal indus
tries of the Flour City, let me say, roughly, that her
saAV-mills cut 343,000,000 feet of luraber, 162,000,000
shingles, and half as raany laths in 1890 ; that in the
upper Mississippi region four billion feet of forest trees
were cut down, and that the city received 45,000,000
bushels of Avheat, and shipped 12,000,000 bushels aAvay.
The city has an assessed valuation of $138,000,000, and
nine mUlions of dollars of banking capital. It boasts a
public-school system that is everywhere held to be un-
exceUed, and a function of the government is the main
tenance of a library of 47,000 volumes, housed in a noble
building, and having tAvo circulating branches connected
with it. In the extent of its circulation of books this
130

library is the seA'enth in the country. The city is 53
square miles in extent, possesses many miles of granite
and cedar block paving, 1500 acres of parks, 49 public
schools, and a sufficient number of churches to render
the town conspicuous on their account. It carries a
bonded debt of seven raillions of dollars. Its hotels and
theatres are very good, and araong its notable office
buildings one is the best that I have seen anywhere in
the country ; that is the Northwestern Guaranty Loan
Corapany's building, an office building that towers above
the town, and is peculiar in the fact that its owners sur
render more valuable space for the admission of Ught
and air than is given up in any other building of the
sort that I have ever seen. At least half the interior is
open and roofed with glass, while the offices, Avhich have
store fronts of plate-glass, are reached by glass-paved
galleries. The building cost a million and a half of dol
lars, and contains, besides the offices, a Turkish bath, roof
promenade and concert garden, a restaurant in the top
story, private dining-rooms, ladies' rooms, a billiard-
room, a barber's shop, a law library — free to the tenants
¦ — locked boxes in fire-proof vaults for all the tenants,
cigar and ncAvs stands, and a battery of six or eight ele
vators. The population of the building is 1500 souls.
But the groAvth of the manufacturing interests is the
most important feature of the development of this city.
It is rapidly fitting itself to become the raain source of
supplies for the most opulent farming region in Araer
ica, and among recent additions to the list of her indus
tries may be noted a knitting-mill ; a piano factory ; a
linen mill; tub and pail, carriage, and macaroni facto
ries ; a manufactory for Avood - carving machinery, in
connection with a street -car construction corapany; a
smelter for reducing Montana silver ore ; a sto a'c- works ;
and additions to the faciUties for raaking boots and
121

shoes, woollens, lumber, and flour. The difference in
freight rates enables the manufacturers of the twin
cities to hold their oavu against Chicago in the trade
with the Northwest, and they have their drummers in
all the cities and A'illages of the region.
The street-car service in Minneapohs is as nearly per
fect as that of any city. Within a year, when the ex
tensions noAv planned are corapleted, it Avill be Avithout
a rival in this respect. The electrical systera which de
pends on overhead trolleys is in use there. The cars are
elegant and spacious, and run upon 70 miles of tracks.
Thej' are propelled at a speed of 8 miles an hour in the
city, and at 12 to 14 miles outside. They have run to
Lake Harriet in 20 minutes, which is at the rate of 15
miles an hour, and they have made the journey to St.
Paul (10^ railes), including ordinary stops, in 32 min
utes. At the end of this year the system will embrace
130 miles of tracks.
To the raind that is accustoraed to judge of Eastern
toAvns, St. Paul is raore city-like than Minneapolis. Its
business portion, originally laid out by French Canadi
ans Avith narrow ideas, is such a compact mass of solid
blocks and little streets that it might almost have been
a Avard of Boston transplanted in the West. One sees
the same conditions in Portland, Oregon, but they are
rare in the West, where the fashion is to plan for plenty
of elbow-room. If Ave were to iraagine the twin cities
personified, Ave would liken Minneapolis to a vigorous
rustic beauty in short skirts ; while St. Paul Ave Avould
describe as a fashionable marriageable urban miss, a tri
fle stunted and lacking color and plumpness, but with
more style and Avorldly grace than her sister. As to
Avhich should haA'e the preference, there will be views
as differing as the tAvo towns. There are those who pre
fer hard-paved, bustUng streets, faced by ranks of city
122

stores, pressed shoulder against shoulder, with here and
there huge, massive office towers breathing crowds in
and out to choke the narrow sidewalks ; and there are
others who like better the big, roomy avenues of Min
neapolis, even though they hang like too loose clothes
against uneven, shrinking lines of fashionless houses.
They said to me in Minneapolis that they realized the
fact that their city was only growing. If I would call
around in a foAv years, they said, I would find all the
walls up and plastered, and the furniture in, and the
place cose.y. In St. Paul it is just the other way ; it looks
finished. Its motto is, " While we journej' through life,
let us live by the Avay ;" but the Minneapolis spirit is
that of the man Avho, to celebrate his marriage, built a
four-story hous6, and Uved in the front and back base
ment, saying to his wife, " We will lath and plaster the
rest, one room at a time, as the family increases." For
my part, I find it so hard to decide between them that
1 am not going to try. Eveiy man to his taste, say I.
Minneapolis has done wondrous work for the future ;
St. Paul has done more for present improvement than
any other city in the West that I have seen.
The twins are very like or very unlike in other re
spects, according as you look at them. Minneapolis is
very American and St. Paul is very mixed in popula
tion. She has 65 per cent, of foreigners in her make-up,
and the Teutons predominate — in the form of Norwe
gians, Swedes, Danes, and Gerraans. There are Irish
and Poles, French Canadians and Boheraians, there also,
and the Irish and Irish Araericans are conspicuous in
the government. St. Paul is usually Democratic ; Min
neapolis is generally Republican.
In eight years St. Paul has made tremendous strides
away from the habits and methods of civic childhood.
Its officials say that more has been done to establish its
123

character as a finished city^ than will ever need to be
done in the future. Its expenditures of energy and
raoney have been remarkable. It has levelled its hills,
filled its marshes, and modernized all its conveniences.
The Avater-works, Avhich were the propertj' of individu
als, noAv belong to the people, and serve two hundred
miles of mains with pure wholesorae Avater brought
from a group of lakes ten railes north of the city. A
noted firm of water- Avorks builders has declared that it
would willingly assume the city debt in return for the
profits of this branch of the public service. No city in
the country is better drained than it is by its new sewer
system. It had a raile and a half of improved streets
and three stone sidcAvalks eight j'ears ago, and to-day it
possesses forty -jive railes of finished streets and fifty
railes of stone sidewalks. Two costly bridges have been
put across the Mississippi, and an important bridge has
been rebuilt. In no city in the West is the railroad
grade-crossing bugaboo raore nearly exorcised. Only
one notable crossing of that sort endangers the people's
lives and lirabs. The public buildings of the city are
adrairable, and Avere built at moderate cost, and without
sixpence Avorth of scandal. The restricted saloon sys
tem is enforced there, and the residence districts are
kept sacred to home influences and surroundings. The
streets are thoroughly policed, and the fire department
is practically new, and appointed with the raost raodern
appliances. The street-car service consists of nearly one
hundred miles of electric railway, and fifteen miles of
cable road. There are no horse-cars in use in the city ;
they would be too slow for such a tOAvn. St. Paul is
rich in costly and great offlce buildings. There are a
dozen such, any and all of Avhich would ornament any
city in the country.
The population in 1890 was 133,000, to which sura
134

12,000 should, in fairness, have been added. By actual
count the city contains 26,942 houses. For its districts
of dwellings it deserves the same praise that has been
bestowed upon Minneapolis, and only in that sUghtly
modified degree that comes from its having a stronger
adraixture of foreigners araong its citizens and a larger
nuraber of houses squeezed close together in its older
business district. Once aAvay frora that region, trees,
grass, and fiowers greet the visitor's eyes wherever he
rides and Avalks. On both sides of the river the phalanxes
of prettj' little horaes rise among the trees. There are
villas for the Avell-to-do and tiny frarae dwellings for
the poor, but the latter are not raere boxes ; they are
distinguished by prettiness of designing and individu
aUty of taste, and they stand apart frora one another so
that the people who live in them may get the light and
air that are as needful to raen and Avoraen as to plants
and trees. The well-to-do cottagers have gathered in
tAVO or three very pretty clusters that Avere once suburb
an villages. A notable pecuharity of their houses is
their possession of extra large double plate Avindows.
Soraetiraes a house Avill have only one such extra large
sheet of glass ; others will have several. Whether these
are backed by drapings of snoAV-white lace or are filled
Avith plants and flowers, the effect is very beautiful. I
was told that in Minneapolis any man raay buy hiraself
a horae for frora $1800 to $2000, selecting a site Avithin
easy Avalking distance of the City Hall. I am sure the
same rule apphes to St. Paul, which raaintains forty-two
building and loan societies, Avith an invested capital of
$3,064,310. The stock in these societies used to mature
in eight or eight and a half years, but the term has
lengthened to nine and a half or ten years, owing to
the competition in the loaning of money. The annual
groAvth of the city bj' the addition of neAv buildings has
125

long kept up to a remarkable standard. For two years
—1888 and 1889— St. Paul was fourth in the Ust of
American cities in this respect. Last year (1890) the
perraits issued Avere for 3174 buildings, planned to cost
nine and a half milUons of dollars. But the Avonder
ceases after the relation of the tAvin cities to the rich
Northwest is understood. St. Paul is the meeting-point
of twenty-eight railroads that crisscross that region.
That city will contribute its full share to the milUon
population nine years hence.
With uncalled-for modesty St. Paul's leading men
apologize for the absence of a royal series of great
parks, and assert that they have now designed and
begun Avork upon such a system. They admit that
they possess thirty-tAvo little squares for children and
adult pleasure-seekers, and say that the city and its en
virons are so park-like that the need of great public
lungs has not been pressing. The apology should be
graciously accepted. It reconciles us with what we
knoAV of ordinary huraanity in our comparatively torpid
Eastern cities to find thera Aveak in one respect. But
St. Paul does not lack all elegance and ornaraent of the
highest and raost raodern order. In one boulevard,
called Summit Avenue, it possesses one of the noblest
thoroughfares, and the nucleus of one of the most im
pressive collections of great mansions, in the country.
Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, has long ceased to lead the
rich residence streets of the nation, for Chicago has more
than one finer street of the same character, and so has
Buffalo, and so has Ncav York since Riverside AA'enue has
begun to build up. None of these has the beauty which
the Hudson River and its Palisades lend to Riverside Av
enue, but a good second to it is Summit Avenue, St. Paul.
From its mansions, rising upon a tall bluff, the panorama
of a great and beautiful country-side is commanded.
126

It raay be necessary to say to the untravelled Eastern
reader that the appointraents — and the tenants — of these
mansions reflect the best modern attainraents of civiliza
tion as it has been studied in the capitals of the world.
One, at least, araong these houses has not its superior in
New York, so far as its size, its beauty, and the charac
ter of its surroundings are concerned. In its appoint
ments it Avill be found that the elegances and art tri
umphs of far raore than Christendora have been levied
upon to testify to a taste that at no point oversteps the
liraits cultivation has established. On the Avails a nura
ber of the masterpieces of the Barbizon school hang side
by side Avith the best efforts of Munkacsy, Diaz, Tadema,
DetaiUe, Meissonier, and many other masters. Barye
bronzes have their places in various rooms, and the
literature of two continents, freshened by the constant
arrival of the best periodicals, is ready at hand and well
marked by use. I betray no secret of the Northwestern
country in saj'ing that such is the home of Mr. Jaraes
J. Hill, the president of the Great Northern Railroad,
and, despite its ornaments, it is maintained quite as a
home, and solely for comfort. It is but one of several
mansions in these two far AVestern cities. They are as
representative as the palaces of Fifth Avenue, eviden
cing nothing of taste that is not shared and reflected in
the other horaes of those communities.
Once again we corae to the heart of any such study of
a city's capacity for groAvth in iraportance and wealth.
St. Paul in 1881 raanufactured $15,466,000 Avorth of
goods Avith which to trade Avith the Northwest; in 1890
the sum had grown to $61,270,000, an increase of 300
per cent, in nine years. The city is the dairy centre of
the Northwest. It has made great investments in the
manufacture of clothing, boots and shoes, fine furniture,
wagons, carriages, farm irapleraents, lager- beer, cigars,
127

fur garraents, portable houses for settlers, dressed stone,
boilers, bridges, and the products of large stock-yards.
To a less yet considerable extent it manufactures crack
ers, candy, flour, bedding, foundry-Avork, sashes and
blinds, harness, brass goods, barrels, brooms, and brushes.
Its banks have a capital of $10,000,000; its jobbing
trade amounted to $122,000,000 in 1890 ; it did a busi
ness in cattle of every sort to the extent of a million
head m the same year. It has fine hotels and opera-
houses, a tj'pically elaborate Western school systera, and
is in all respects a healthy, vigorous, Avell-governed city.
These are the trading centres of the Northwest. But
there is another pair of twins, which are the lake ports
and shipping-points for that region. They are the babj'
twins — Duluth in Minnesota, and Superior in Wisconsin.
Though they are in different States, they are closer to
one another than the cities frora Avhich we have just
taken our leaA'e. Though babies, these cities feel the
impulses of giants. Their growth in so short a time and
to such proportions as they possess calls attention to
the i-adical changes that are taking place in the outlets
for the produce of the Northwestern States. Not manj'
J'ears ago the grain trade centred at Chicago and Mil
waukee, but the demands for econoray that led to the
developraent of the present railway systeras in Minne
sota and the Dakotas have altered the course of the
Avheat raoveraent, and have led to the building up of
the twin ports at the head of Lake Superior. These
tAVO ports now receive a large proportion of this busi
ness, and have already distanced Chicago in the corape
tition. It is easA' to understand why this should be the
case. Duluth and Superior are nearer to a large section
of the NorthAvest than either Chicago or Mihvaukee,
and yet they are not any farther from the Eastern lake
ports at the other end of the Avater route for freight. A
138

glance at the map will reveal the fact that the distance
to Buffalo is no greater from the head of Lake Superior
than frora the head of Lake Michigan, Avhere Chicago is
situated. This advantage in position is evident to any
one, but the men of Duluth and Superior claira a greater
advantage. By draAving circles ten railes apart, with
themselves as a centre, they deraonstrate the possession
of a larger tributary territory than. can be shoAvn for
Chicago by the same raeans.
It is huraorously said to be as much as one's life is
Avorth to describe or to weigh the comparative merits of
these rival inland ports. This was the case not long
ago Avith regard to St. Paul and Minneapolis, but last
auturan one of those cities joined in an effort to secure
the holding of a couA'ention in the rival toAvn. It will
be long before any such araiable and generous self-sacri
fice will be shoAvn at the head of Lake Superior. The
situation there is intensified by the fact that Duluth
Avas for a long Avhile practically alone in the glorious
possession of the advantages that a seat at the head of
the great lake brings Avith it. Suddenly, within fiA'e
years, a little village a stone's-throw off, on the other
side of the St. Louis River, AA'hich separates Wisconsin
and Minnesota, sprung frora the stagnation of a chrysa
lis condition into a stirring toAvn that began to estab
lish town limits calculated to leave Duluth a very small
second fiddle to raake rausic Avith if the plans were car
ried out. And when the census -taker came along in
1890, Duluth's 35,000 inhabitants read that, in round
nurabers, the irapudent baby next door had grown
nearlj' half as big as itself. Worse yet, the ambition of
Superior is seen to expand with ten times the ratio of
its increasing groAvth, and if the student of the situation
reads the official literature of the younger lake port, he
Avill discover that the records of its achieA'ements are ar-
I 129

ranged to shoAv how it is gaining upon Chicago — upon
Chicago, raark you, as if it considered its nearest neigh
bor, twice its size, too unimportant for consideration !
Frora the point of viewof Duluth, fancy such a situation I
There are those Avho hold that geographical and topo
graphical advantages account for the sudden rise of
Superior alongside of Duluth. There are others who
account for it on the ground that Duluth was too confi
dent of her position, and adopted a short-sighted policj',
which, while it was raaintained, gave an opportunity for
the developraent of the rival port. It is not Avorth while
here to discuss these raoot points. In considering the
relation of the head of internal Avater navigation to the
country bej'ond it, both cities have a coraraon value.
Whether both keep pace in growth Avith the develop
raent of the vast and opulent territory behind thera, or
Avhether one becoraes ten tiraes greater than its neigh
bor, the point of interest Avill still be the head of the
lake— the point of contact of lake and rail transporta
tion. Both must gain all that will belong to either
solely frora their location, which, it seeras clear, raust
becorae the seat of a great population and of extraordi
nary activity.
Since this will not be gainsaid, it Avill be the siraplest
course to state the arguments and clairas of both these
rival ports at once. Their leaders assert that Avhatever
of wealth and iraportance has corae to Buffalo, Cleve
land, Detroit, and Chicago is due to their advantages as
distributing and receiving points for the tonnage of the
lake coramerce. This it is Avhich has draAvn the rail-
Avays to these cities, and the result of the reciprocal in
fiuence of the raUway and harbor transactions has been
a degree of iraportance dependent upon the extent and
productiveness of the territory tributary to each of these
lake ports. 130

The reader can scarcelj' be expected, in so rapid a
study and upon so brief a trial of results as the history
of the head cities of Lake Superior perraits, to accept
the utmost that has been urged for the future of these
cities. Yet the argument is interesting. " If," says the
secretary of the Chamber of Comraerce of one of these
twin lake ports — "if a straight line be drawn uniting
Chicago Avith these ports, and this line be bisected by
another beginning near the eastern end of Lake Superior
and extending southwest wardly to the Gulf of Califor
nia, near the 27th parallel, this latter line Aviil represent
Avith geometrical exactness all points that are equidis
tant frora Chicago and the Superior ports." All places
north of the line will be in the legitimately tributary
territory of the newer ports; and all the railroads in this
vast region, which is raore than half of the United
States, are now pointing towards the newer ports as
their ultiraate objective, it is said, because they aira to
secure the shortest route to deep-Avater navigation. For
an example of the point sought to be raade, it is stated
that Denver, Colorado, is 125 miles nearer the head of
Lake Superior than Chicago. A connection between the
new ports and the Union Pacific Railroad at that point
is an early probability. The Great Northern System is
alraost corapleted to the Pacific coast ; and the Canadian
Pacific Railroad, which has leased a raihvay frora Du
luth to the other end of Lake Superior, is about to dip
down frora a point in Manitoba to join its ucav property
at Duluth.
These cities have already been sought by eight rail-
Avaj's, operating 17,514 raUes of roadAvays. Thej' con
nect with St. Paul and Minneapolis and their feeders ;
they bring in the produce of the Dakotas, Montana,
Idaho, and Washington ; they connect the twin ports
with the luraber and mineral regions of Minnesota and
131

along both the north and south shores of Lake Superior
Either projected or in course of construction are othei
railway lines Avhich will lead into Iowa and the corr
belt, and up into the wheat fields of Manitoba and th(
Canadian Northwest.
These lake-side twins theraselves realize sorae of th(
benefits of that cheap water transportation Avhich is
reached through thera. For instance, the coal they use
comes to thera at the sarae rate that Chicago gets its
coal, and twenty-five cents a ton cheaper than it can be
supplied to Minneapolis and St. Paul. And seven raonths
in the year the jobbers in the twin lake ports get East
ern goods at the sarae cost for transportation that is
paid by the Chicago jobbers. Thus they have anothei
advantage over Minneapolis and St. Paul. The flour
mining industry is one that is rapidly growing in the
twin lake ports. Duluth has one mill that turns out
2500 barrels a day, and will double its capacity next
suraraer. It has another and smaller mill in operation,
and three others are projected. Duluth may yet becorae
a very considerable railUng point. The reason is that tc
ship the flour east from Minneapolis via, the twin ports
(250 miles nearer than Chicago) costs the millers of the
Flour City ten cents a barrel — the price of the barrel
This the Duluth railler saves. The big Minneapolis raillg
are eking out their insufficient Avater-power with steara,
and in the cost of fuel the lake port raills again haA'e the
advantage. At the extreme Avestern end of Lake Superior, Avhere
it terminates in a bay called St. Louis, the ancient ter
race that marks a prehistoric coast line of the lake rises
500 feet in air beside the narroAv beach of the raoderr
level. A river breaks this terrace, and flows into the
bay, and across that river and bay is a flat reach of once
swampy lowland. The bluff is on the north side of the
132

sharp end of the lake, and the houses of Duluth are
perched upon this highland as if they might be a flock
of goats grazing upon the face of a steep hill. Thus the
land meets the water, and raen haA'e built upon it at
Quebec, at Bar Harbor, and at rainor places in Corn
wall and Devonshire, England ; but the habit in nature
and in raan is rare. Naturally Duluth has grown raost
in length along the foot of the bluff, and the distance
from one sparsely built end to the other broken and
scattering terraination is about six railes. A large frac
tion of this length is corapactly built along streets that
climb the hill-side. To prevent a division of the town
by a rocky tongue that once ran out into the lake, the
formidable barrier has been cut aAvay as if it Avere so
much dirt, and the raain street runs by the spot as if the
rocks never had been. To get tearas and people up the
steepest part of the hill -side — and perhaps to deraon
strate anew the inability of nature to daunt the Duluth
man — an inclined plane, like a massive slanting elevated
railroad, is now building, and Avill soon be ready for the
hauling of every sort of load, Avhether of wagons, cars,
men, or beasts, up to the top of the hill. Out there,
araong those indoraitable people, it is impossible to re
sist the feeling that if the moon were to take a fixed, po
sition perraanently just over the city, they Avould annex
it, and find a Avay to travel quickly to and from it.
In this little place, that is only ten years beyond its
village condition, if you ascend the hill you will find
that a sort of terrace, an ancient beach on top of it, has
been laid out as a grand parlcAvay or boulevard tAvelve
miles long, 200 feet Avide, and half encircling the city.
Unfortunately the larger trees of the one-time forest up
there had been all cut down when this Avas laid out, but
there is plenty of slender timber there for future adorn
ment, and, better yet, there are several madcap streams
133

that break upon the edge of the bluff, and Avould splatter
down upon the town had they not been controlled and
covered. However, up on the beautiful Terrace Drive
they are novel and beautiful ornaments, and ingenious
taste and skill have made the most of them. From that
terrace one can comprehend and cannot help but adraire
the city. In the thickly built heart of it are many cost-
Iv modern buildings of great size, and some of exceeding
beauty. The Spalding Hotel, the Lyceum Theatre, the
Masonic Temple, the Chamber of Commerce, a great
school-house, and a raUway depot are araong these. Be
yond thera and the town Ues the harbor made by nature
in a Avay man could hardly improve upon, except as he
has cut channels to it. A great barrier juts out from
Minnesota opposite another from Wisconsin, so that
both form a great and perfect breakwater. There are
two harbors behind this bar, first Superior and then St.
Louis bays. Each city has cut a shipway through the
barrier, and each has built upon its side of both harbors
an impressive array of Avharves, elevators, and coal,
grain, and ore bins and dumps. The smoke of the en
terprise of both places comes together in one cloud over
both, typifj'ing either the united purpose to achieve suc
cess in both towns, or the sure result of all efforts to
bring about any sort of union there, according as you
are poetic or practical.
Across the narrow end of the lake, on the Ioav flat of
Avhich I have spoken, you see Superior, Wisconsin, the
riA'al of Duluth, made up of old Superior, West Su
perior, and South Superior. It is remarkable only for
its enterprise. It is not alraost unique in the character
of its site, as is Duluth, nor is it pretty or picturesque.
It has elboAv-room on a great level plateau, and it may
spread and wax great without the let or hinderance of
rocks or bluffs. Its plans, as its chief historian re-
134

marks, " are on a magnificent scale. Many miles of
streets and broad avenues have been paved for present
needs, and a grand boulevard and park system antici
pate the groAvth of population by sorae years." Then
the historian goes on to speak highly of its sewage
systera, its electric street raotors, the fact that it is one
of the best-lighted cities in the land ; all of which the
facts justify. A liberal policy has led to the estabUsh
ment of a number of important manufacturing estab
lishraents in the younger city, and with each such ad
dition the spirits and hopes of the community have
risen higher and higher. Frora the Evening Telegram's
hand-book upon the subject I gather the following notes
of the possessions and achieveraents of the city : It
has an area of 37 square miles, an assessed valuation of
S2o,0(f0,(i00, a bonded indebtedness of about $1H»0,000,
and a tax list of half a million dollars. It has ten banks,
Avith a million of capital for all, and surpluses and undi
vided profits araounting to $216,286. Its coal receipts
bj' boat in 1890 were 1,045,000 tons ; its oil receipts,
115,000 barrels. Its Avheat shipments the same year
amounted to 9,318,336 bushels ; and in round figures it
shipped 1,100,000 bushels of corn, 1,300,000 bushels of
barlej', and the same number of barrels of flour. It
has a coal-dock capacity of 1,500,000 tons, a grain-eleva
tor capacity of eight and a half million bushels, five
hotels, twenty churches, seven railways, a street rail-
Avay, the Anierican Steel Barge Works (where the
famous "Avhaleback" lake steamers are raade), the
West Superior Iron and Steel Works, a carriage fac
tory, a nuraber of saw -raills, a furniture factory, and
many other sraaller works of various kinds. The pop
ulation of Avhat there Avas of Superior in 1SS4 was 2000;
in 1889 it Avas 10,000 ; in 1890 it was 11,983. Now it is
variously estimated at frora 15,000 to 20,000.
135

Duluth is said to owe its foundation to the grasping
demands of those Avho held the land on the Wisconsin
side of the bay Avhen Jay Cooke sought a terminal
point there for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Noav
Superior has arisen simultaneously Avith the nearing
completion of the Great Northern Railroad, Avhich
transfers its grain and other east-bound freight from its
cars to its great stearaers at Superior.
Duluth had 3500 population in 1880, and 33,115
in 1890, according to the census. This is now called
40,000. Duluth receives less coal than Superior, but ships
more grain. Her grain shipments in 1890, and from
January 1, 1891, to December 15, 1891, were as fol
lows :

1890.

1S91.

Flour  bbls.
Wheat  buslj.
Corn  "
0:its  "

2,589,384
14,090,826 1,453,0891,616,635 130,931 51,440

3,220,273
34,492,438 302,503 365,872 156,497
308,363 20,472

Barley  "
Flaxseed  *'

Rye  "

Duluth has extensive iron-Avorks, iron and steel and
steel and tin Avorks, a Avood-turning raill, luraber mills,
a furniture factory, and a woollen mill. The city's
grain-elevators have a combined capacity of 21,250,000
bushels. The lumber interest in Duluth is enormous,
but the city itself is one of the great consuraers of the
supply, and receives far raore than it ships aAvay. The
place is Avell paved, drained, and lighted, and has a good
Avater supply system. As it Avould say of itself, it is " a
hustler "—but so, also, is Superior.
The key-note and countersign of life in these cities is
the word " hustle." We have caught it in tlie East, but
Ave use it humorously, just as we once used the Southern
136

word " skedaddle," but out West the word hustle is not
only a serious term, it is the raost serious in the lan
guage. One day, as I sat in the lobby of one of the
great hotels in the older pair of twin cities, I heard tAvo
old friends greeting one another with ardent expressions
of friendship and delight. They had not met for a long
while, and each asked about the other's Lizzie and Fan
nie and their respective Uttle ones. All of a sudden I
heard one say :
" Well, see you to-night, I suppose. I have got to go."
" Where have you got to go to ?" the other inquired,
plainly disappointed that the pleasant interview was
not to be prolonged.
" Where ?" the other echoed. " Why, to hustle, of
course. I have lost ten minutes standing here talking
to you. I'm going out to hustle."
The Avord always jars upon the ear of an Eastern man
Avhen it is seriously spoken, but it is preferable to that
other expression once dominant in the West, but uoav
all but abandoned. That was the Avord " rustle." The
noun a " rustler " and the verb " to rustle " meant pre
cisely what is conveyed by the ncAver terms a hustler
and to hustle. At the first blush, as they say out West,
rustle seeras the better Avord. There is a hint of poetry
in the suggestion of the sound of moving leaves upon
the ground or of the silken dress of a lady moving
rapidly. Moreover, that Avas what the word was in
tended to convey, the idea being that of a man who
moves so rapidly that the dead leaves upon the earth
rustled as he swept along. But in its origin it is a Avord
of cA'il intent, for the coAvboys invented it, and applied
it to cattle-thieves, rustlers being the swift raiders who
stole upon grazing cattle on the plains, and rustled off
Avith as many head, or beasts, as they could get aAvay
Avith. Therefore rustle is the worse Avord of the two.
137

But to one Avho lives Avhere neither Avord is in familiar
use there is Uttle choice, since the actual meaning of
hustle is not far different from that of jostle. Both
imply a serious and even brutal lack of consideration
for other persons, Avho are elboAved and pushed out of
the way by the hustler as rowdies are hustled along by
the police.
Both Duluth and Superior are mainly dependent upon
the lake system of navigation, and both complain that
its limitations greatly retard their groAvth, and resist
the growing demands of the shippers of the Northwest.
In another article, upon Lake Superior, the situation in
Avhich these cities find themselves, and the need of
prompt action by the Government, Avill receive atten
tion. 138

THE DAKOTAS
In entering upon a study of the newly admitted States,
and beginning Avith those of the North\A'est, we are con
fronted by ncAV scenes, new peoples, and ncAv condi
tions, in which we shall find far fewer reminders of our
Eastern life than greet us in sorae regions Avhich we re
gard as quite foreign, as in old Canada, for instance.
We are putting a new slide into the American magic-
lantern. We are opening a ucav volume added to our
own historv, and we are to read of new characters moA'-
ing araid surroundings quite as new ; to thera alraost as
new as to us.
Beginning with the Dakotas, Ave enter the vast plains
country — monotonous, all but treeless, a blanket of
brown grass almost as level as the mats of grass that
the Pacific coast Indians plait. It is only a little Avrin-
kled in the finishing — at the top edge and down in the
soutliAvest corner. On its surface the houses and the
villages stand out in silhouette against a sky that bends
down to touch the level SAvard. Here we find the Avest
ern edffe of the lands which the Scandinavians who haA'e
come among us prefer to their own countries. Here we
come upon the j-ellow wheat- fields that turned their
kernels into millions of golden dollars last year. Here,
also, Ave see the more than half savage cattle Avhose
every part and possession, except their breath, is con
verted iuto merchandise in Chicago. The hard-riding
139

cowboys are here " turned loose," and the not less do
mesticated Indians in their blankets are cribbed in the
national corrals. A great thirst Avould seera to over
spread the Dakotas, for the lands are arid, Avhile the
people possess prohibitory liquor laws, and vi'ater that
is poisoned Avith alkali.
In the Black Hills Ave prepare ourselves for Montana
by a first glirapse of raining. In Montana, Avhere the
very first raerchant's sign-board announced " pies, coffee,
and pistols for sale," Ave uoav see the legend " licensed
garabling saloon " staring at the tourists, Avho may walk
into the hells more easily than they can into the stock
exchanges of the East. In Montana we feel an atraos
phere of speculation. Every store clerk hoards sorae
shares in undeveloped mines for his nest-egg. It is nat
ural that this should be. The stories of quick and great
fortunes that daze the mind are supported by the pres
ence of the raillionaire heroes of each tale. Moreover,
the very air of Montana is a stimulant, like champagne.
Perhaps it gathers its magic frora the earth, Avhere the
precious raetals are strewn over the mountains, where
sapphires, rubies, and garnets are spaded out of the earth
like goober nuts in the South, and Avhere men hunt for
the diamonds which scientists saj' must be there.
Montana is a land of ready cash and high Avages.
Luraberraen and rainers get as high as seven dollars a
day, and the A'ery street-sweepers get twice as much as
politicians pay to broom-handlers in New York to keep
in favor with the poor. Here Ave find Avealth, polish,
and refinement, nOble dwelUngs, palatial hotels, and nu
merous circles of charming, cultivated folk. Their mis
take has been to despise agriculture. They know this,
and with them, to see an error is to repair it.
The raining caraps and California-colored character
istics of the raountainous half of Montana spread over
140

into Idaho, a baby giant born with a golden spoon.
The cattle ranges and cowboy capitals of Montana's
grass-clad hills are repeated upon the gigantic but vir
gin savannas of Wyoming. In Washington all is differ
ent again. The forests of Maine and of the region of
the Great Lakes are here exaggerated, the verdure of
the East reappears, and passes into serai-tropic and in
cessant freshness and abundance. Here flowers bloora
in the gardens at Christraas, small fruits threaten Cali
fornia's prestige, and the aborigines are bow-legged, boat
ing Indians who Avork like 'longshoremen. Cities with
dozen-storied buildings start up like sudden thoughts,
and everywhere is note of promise to make us belittle
our Eastern growths that startled the older world.
With surprise Ave find the New England leadership
missing. Here is a great corner of America AA'here the
list of the Mayflower s passengers is not folded into the
family Bibles ! The capitals of the older Northwest are
dominated by the offspring of Puritans, but we must
journey all across the Dakotas and Montana, araong a
hew race of pioneers, to have New England recalled to
us again only in Spokane and Tacoraa — and but faintly
there. The new NorthAvest is peopled by raen who
foUoAved the Missouri and its tributaries frora Kentucky,
Indiana, Iowa, Arkansas, and Missouri. Others who are
araong them speak of themselves as from California and
Utah, but they are of the sarae stock. Broadly speak
ing, they founded these new countries between the out-
lireak of the rebellion and the end of the reconstruction
period in the Southern States. They are not like the
thrifty, arguraentative, and earnest New-Englander, or
the phlegmatic Dutch and hard-headed English of the
Middle States. These ucav Americans are tall, big-boned,
stalwart folks, very self-assertive, very nervous, very
quick in action, and quicker still in forraing resolutions.
141

If it would be fair to treat of thera in a sentence, it could
be said that they act before they think, and when they
think, it is raainly of theraselves. Their European ori
gin is so far behind thera that they knoAV nothing of it.
Their grandfathers had forgotten it. They talk of Uter,
Coloraydo, Illinoise, Missourer, Nevadder, loway, Ar-
kansaw, and Wyoming. The last two names are by
them pronounced more correctly than by us. In a
word, they are distinctly, decidedly, pugnaciously, and
absolutely Araerican.
Because it is irapossible to picture the novelty — to an
Eastern reader — of life in the Northwest, and because
it nevertheless raust be suggested, let me tell only of
four peculiar visitations that the new States experience
— of four invasions which take place there every year.
In May there corae into the stock ranges of Montana
shearers by the hundreds, in bands of ten or tAventy,
each led by a captain, who finds employment and raakes
contracts for the rest. These sheep-barbers are raainly
Californians and New-Yorkers, and the California men
are said to be the more skilful workers. To a lay
man, all seera marvellously dexterous, and at ten cents
a head, many are able to earn $6 to $8 a day. They
lose raany days in travel, however, and may not aver
age raore than $5 on that account. Their season begins
in California in February, and they Avork through Ore
gon, Washington, and Montana, to return to a second
shearing on the Pacific coast in August. Sorae corae
raounted and some afoot, and some are shiftless and dis
sipated, but many are saving, and arabitious to earn
herds of their OAvn.
They corae upon the Montanan hills ahead of another
and far stranger procession — that of the cattle that are
being driven across the country frora Texas. This is a
string of herds of Texas two-year-olds coming north at
143

middle age to spend the reraaining half of their lives
fattening on the Montana bunch-grass, and then to end
their careers in Chicago. The bands are called " trails,"
and follow one another about a day apart. With each
trail ride the hardy and devil-may-care coAvboys, led by
a foreman, and followed by a horse-wrangler in charge
of the relays of broncos. A cook, with a four- horse
Avagon-load of provisions, brings up each rear. Only a
feAV railes are covered in a day, and the journey con-
suraes raany weeks. These are enlivened by storras, by
panics araong the cattle, by quarrels Avith settlers on
guard at the streams and on their lands, by meals raissed
and nights spent amid mud and rain. That is as queer
and picturesque a procession as one can easily imagine.
Then there is the early autumn hop-picking in the
luxuriant fields of tha Pacific coast in Washington.
Down Puget Sound and along the rivers come the in
dustrious canoe Indians of that region in their motley
garb, and bent on making enough money in the hop-
fields to see them through the rainy and idle winter.
They are not like the Indians of story and of song, but
are a squat-figured people, whose chests and arms are
over-developed by exercise in the canoes, which take the
place of the Indian ponies of the plains, as their rivers
are substituted for the blazed or foot-worn trails of the
East. To the hop-fields they come in their dugouts
frora as far north as British Colurabia and Alaska.l
When all have raade the journey, their canoes fret the
strand, and the sraoke of their carap fires touches the
air Avith blue. Woraen and children accorapany the
raen, all alike illurainating the green background of the
hop-fields with their gay blankets and calicoes, thera
selves lending still other touches of color by raeans of
their leather skins and jet hair. They leave a trail of
silver behind thera when they depart, but the hops they
143

have picked represent still more of gold — a million last
J'ear ; two raillions the year before.
Again, a fourth set of invaders appears ; this tirae in
Dakota. These are not picturesque. They corae not in
boats or astride horses, but straggling or skulking along
the highAvays, as the deraoralized peasantry made their
Avaj' to Paris during the French Revolution. These are
the wheat-harvesters, who foUoAV the golden grain all
the way up from Texas, finding theraselves in tirae for
each raore and raore belated ripening in each raore and
raore northerly State, until, in late auturan, they reach
the Red River Valley, and at last end their strange pil
griraage in Manitoba. The hands and skill they bring
to the dense wheat-fields of eastern North Dakota are
raost Avelcome there, and these harvest folk raight easily
occupy a high niche in sentiraental and poetic literature,
yet they don't. As a rule, they are not at all the sort
of folk that the ladies of the wheat lands invite to their
tea parties and sewing bees. On the contrary, far too
many of them are vagabonds and fond of drink, in the
Red River country the harvesters from the South are
joined by lumbermen from Wisconsin and Minnesota,
who find that great natural granary a fine field for
turning honest pennies at lighter Avork than felling for
ests. In area, the half-dozen new States in the Northwest
are about the size of Alaska, and they are larger than
France, Germany, Italy, and Holland combined. One
of the States is greater than Great Britain and Ireland,
and one county in that State is larger than New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. The popu
lation of those six States is about like that of little
New Jersey, yet it is thought that at least half as many
persons as are uoav in the entire country could maintain
life in that corner of the nation. Three of the names
144

the new States took are criticised. There are raany
persons in the Dakotas Avho now realize that a foolish
raistake was raade in the choice of the naraes North
Dakota and South Dakota. Both fancied there Avas
raagic in the word Dakota, and Avanted to possess it.
By succeeding in that purpose thej' ridiculed the noble
Avord, Avhich raeans leagued or united.
To the traveller Avho crosses North Dakota in the
thoroughly raodern and luxurious easy-rolling trains of
the Northern Pacific Railroad, the region east of the
Missouri seeras one dead-level reach of grass. It ap
pears to be so level that one fancies if his eyesight were
better he raight stand anywhere in that greater part of
the State and see Mexico in one direction and the north
pole in the other. Everywhere the horizon and the
grass raeet in a raonotonous repetition of unbroken
circles. As a matter of fact, there is a slight slope up
ward frora the Red River of the Nortli at the eastern
edge of the State, there is a decided valley south of
Jaraestown, and for fifty railes before the Missouri
River is reached the land begins to slope sUghtlj' tow
ards that stream. There are hiUs, too, called by the
French the " Coteau du Missouri," and never yet re-
christened, to raark the approach to the river. The
country west of the Missouri is more attractive to the
sight-seer, though far less so to the farmer. It looks
like a sea arrested in a storm, Avith all its billows fixed
irarautably. It is partly a raass of softly rounded,
grassy breasts ; and beyond thera, in the Bad Lands,
the hills change to the form of Avaves that are ready to
break upon a strand. Farther on, the change is into
buttes, into peaked, columnar, detached hills. On the
light snoAv that raerely frosted this broken country last
Avinter, Avhen I crossed it twice, there seemed not a yard
of the earth's surface that Avas not tracked Avith the
K 145

foot-writing of wild aniraals and birds — that kitchen
literature which the red raen knew by heart — the signs
of coyotes, jack-rabbits, prairie-chickens, deer, and I
know not what else besides. It is a 350-mile journey to
cross the State from east to west, a 210-raile trip to cross
it frora the north to the south.
It has been a one-crop State, and the figures that are
given of its yield of that crop are not what they pre
tend to be, for four-fifths of the wheat is usually grown
on the eastern edge, in the Red River Valle.y. In the
rest of the State the crops have failed year after year,
and even the grazing of stock, for Avhich alone the
critics of the State say it is fit, has been attended with
sorae serious reverses. The raost extravagant lying
indulged in to boora the State has failed to alter nature
—just as it failed- in Canada, Avhere it was followed by
even greater hardship and disappointraent. The lying
on behalf of North Dakota took the form of applying
the phenomenal figures of the rich Red River Valley to
the whole State, quoting the earnings of Red River
farms and the experiences of Red River settlers as
applicable to all Dakota.
Having gone to Dakota because of the marvellous
yield of wheat in the Red River Valley, the unfortunate
settlers put aU their holdings in wheat. It is custoraary
in Dakota for people to say that these poor fellows
bought their experience dearly, but they did not pay
as rauch for it as the two Dakotas have paid for the
carnival of lying that began the business. A succession
of extraordinarily bad seasons followed, owing to lack of
sufficient raoisture to grow the grain. In one year there
Avas not enough to sprout it. There Avere five years
of dire raisfortune, and they brought absolute ruin to
all who had no raeans laid by. Many were ruined who
had money, and thousands left the Territory, for it
146

Avas a Territory when the wholesale lying was at its
height. The soil in the Red River Valley is a thick vegetable
deposit, Avhile that of the remaining nine-tenths of the
State is of a mineral character, lime being a notable
factor in the composition. It is very productive if water
can be got to it. In that case the Red River country
would be no better than all the rest. And there is the
rub. With irrigation. North Dakota will becorae a rich
farraing State. Without it, the State has enjoyed one
rich harvest in six years. The irrigation cannot be ac
complished by means of any waters that are uoav on the
surface of the State ; it must be by means of wells, or
by " borabs bursting in air," or by Australian alcheray.
And yet it is not fair to the State to say that it can do
nothing Avithout irrigation. We shall see that the be
lief is that its worst raisfortunes have corae from its
dependence upon a single crop< and that by diversified
farming the wolves can be kept from the doors when
the Avheat crop fails.
Last year came a change of luck and a year such as
North Dakota has not enjoyed in a long Avhile. Be
tween 50,000,000 and 55,000,000 bushels of wheat were
harvested ; and if the Red River Valley's yield was
35,000,000, it is apparent that the rest of the State raust
be credited with frora 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 of bush
els. Of corn, 300,000 bushels Avere raised; of oats,
10,000,000 bushels ; of cattle, a mUUon doUars' worth ;
and of hay and potatoes, a very great deal. This was
good work for a population of 200,000 souls. It is
estiraated that the raoney product of the entire harvest
Avas sufficient to pay off the indebtedness of the farraers,
and leave an average of $250 to each farraing faraily.
At the beginning of 1892 it was prophesied that the
farraers would free theraselves of only those debts upon
147

Avhich they had been paying a high rate of interest, so
as to be in a position to borroAv at loAver rates and to
iraprove their farra buildings. They have been paj'ing
all the way frora 12 to 24 per cent, a year for loans.
They have also been obliged to give bonuses to the
loaning agents at reneAval tiraes, getting $180, say,
Avhen they were charged with $200. These agents are
terrible sharks, and there are croAvds of thera in the
State, calling theraselves real -estate and loan agents,
getting raoney from the East, paying the capitalists 6
and 8 per cent, for it, and then exacting as high as 24
per cent., and these stiff bonuses besides. They have
made a fine living upon the misery and distress and
upon the bare necessities of those around them. An
organization of capitalists to loan money at reasonable
rates would be a godsend there, and full security for
their raoney could be obtained by thera.
How the poor victiras lived through these exactions
is a raystery. Many did not. They abandoned their
farms and the State. A great raany carae back last
year on hearing of the likelihood of a good season.
But the best news is that last year nearly all the farra
ers began to turn their attention to diversified farraing
and to stock-raising in conjunction with agriculture.
North Dakota was ahvays a good cattle State at least
three years in five, and the raanner in which the farraers
are going into the business ought to make the industry
successful every year. Those who can afford it are ac
quiring herds of from 50 to 300 head. In the Avinter,
Avhen the beeves need attention, the farmers Avill have
nothing else to attend to. They calculate that they can
raise a three-year-old beef at an expense of from $12 to
sl5, and market it at from $30 to $40. At the least,
they figure on a profit of $5 a head each year. It Avould
appear that cattle thus looked after, Avith hay in corrals
148

for the Avinter, may some day be rated between stall-fed
and range cattle. In the suraraer these farraers are ad
vised to put into wheat only that acreage Avhich they
can handle without hired help, for help is hard to get in
the Avestern part of the State. The raysterious nomads
of the Avheat belt do not go there.
On the Missouri slope, where raost of the corn was
raised last year, that crop never was a failure. It has
been cultivated there for twenty years. In fact in sorae
Indian raounds above Bismarck corn-cobs are found
along with the pottery and trinkets for Avhich the
mounds are constantly ravaged. Potatoes also groAv
Avell on the Missouri slope. Starch is being made frora
thera at a factory started by a Ncav England raan at
Hankinson, in Richland County. Frora eight to ten
tons of starch is being raade daily at that place.
The range land for cattle is in that district which raay
be roughly described as the last three rows of counties
in the western end of the State. Dickinson, on the
Northern Pacific Railroad, is the shipping-point for the
stock. In order to exact a revenue from the cow-men,
the people have agreed to reconstruct into five organized
counties the whole country west of the Missouri and the
extreme northAvestern counties. By the tirae this is
published, the change will, in all probability, have been
accoraplished. There are thirteen counties Avest of the
Missouri on the present raaps, and onlj' four of these
have county governments. The new arrangeraent will
coraplete the political raachinery for assessment and tax
ation in the grazing lands. The cattle-men are supposed
to be taxed for their cattle as upon personal property,
but they have hitherto evaded the impost. The cattle
business in these counties is rapidly being revolutionized.
All the stockmen agree that the most return is gotten
from sraall holdings Avith Avinter corrals. There are five
149

horse ranches west of the Missouri. At one point Bos
ton capitalists are raising thoroughbreds frora imported
staUions. The rest of the stock is of the coraraon order,
herded loose on the ranges.
But there is sorae farraing even west of the Missouri.
Corn, wheat, and oats are successfully raised in Morton
County. Mercer County produced a splendid qualitj' of
Avheat at 25 bushels to the acre, and across the river, in
McLean County, a farmer succeeded in getting 31 bush
els to the acre. In these two counties we corae upon
that vast bed of coal which underlies parts of eleven
counties in North Dakota. In Mercer County this coal
crops out on the river-bank, and a company backed by
Chicago capital has been organized to build barges and
ship the coal to points down the river. It can be sold
at Avholesale in Bismarck at $2 40 a ton, and in Pierre,
South Dakota, for $3 50 a ton. In Bisraarck soft coal
npw sells for $8 and $8 50, and anthracite for $11 a ton.
The Dakota coal is a lignite — an immature coal — but it
serves Avell for ordinary uses, raaking a hot fire, a Avhite
ash, and no soot. Its Avorst fault is that it crumbles
when it is exposed to the air. Dakota coal from Mor
ton County is already marketed. There seeras to be an
inexhaustible supply of it in that county. The veins
that are uoav being Avorked are between eight feet and
fourteen feet in thickness, and they crop up near the
surface. It is in use in the public buildings of the State,
in the flouring-raills, and in many hotels and residences.
It sells in Mandan for $2 50 a ton. It is said that there
are 150,000 acres of these coal beds east of the Missouri,
and the coal area Avest of the river is almost as great.
The veins vary in thickness frora half a dozen to thirty
feet. Farmers find it on their lands close under the sur
face, and with a pick and shovel dig in one day suffi
cient to last them all winter. It is a raost extraordinary
150

" find " — a bountiful provision of nature. It greatly al
ters the forraer view of the future of North Dakota —
and of South Dakota also, since there is enough for both
States. It adds to the corafort of life there, it provides
a coal at least half as good as anthracite at one-quarter
the cost, and it Avould seera that it raust become the
basis of manufacturing industries in the near future. A
good terra-cotta clay in great quantities is found near
the coal in many localities.
In showing that the future of the State depends upon
diversified industries, and in calling attention to the
newly exerted efforts of the people to meet this condi
tion, I have oraitted to raention the fact that raany capi
talists who had loaned money to farmers Avest of the
Red River country are now supplying sheep to their
debtors. Between 75,000 and 100,000 sheep were put
upon farms in the State in that way last sumraer in
herds of frora 50 to 100 head. The plan generallj'
adopted is for the farmer to take care of the sheep for
Ua'c years, taking the wool for his pains, and at the end
of that term for the farmer and the capitalist to divide
the herd between thera, increase and all. I do not find
it to be the general opinion that this Avill turn out Avell
in most cases. Sheep require constant attention, and
the raising of thera is a business by itself, not to be
taken up at hap-hazard by raen who are not experienced.
Moreover, the land east of the Missouri is said not to be
the best sort for that use.
The proportion of unoccupied land in the Avhole State
is one-third. The Avestern grazing counties forra a third
of the State, but much of their land is taken up bj'^
farmers — along the streams and the railroads. In all
probabilitj' one-quarter of it that is not taken up is ara
ble land, but until railroads reach it there Avill be no
profit in tilling it. The land yet obtainable is part rail-
151

road and part governraent land. It fetches from $1 25
to $4 an acre. Two railroads cross the State frora east
to west, and two new ones are in process of construc
tion across the State frora the southern border over to
Canada. North Dakota is a prohibition State ; that is to say,
the making and selling of alcoholic stimulants are for
bidden there. One effect of the operation of this laAv
was the driving of thirty-six saloons out of Fargo across
the Red River into Morehead, Minnesota. Another effect
was the transformation of a brewery in the Red River
Valley into a flouring-mill. The reform was asked for
raore earnestly by the Scandinavian eleraent than by any
others, and their votes, especially in the Red River Val
ley, greatly assisted in raaking it the law ; but intelligent
raen, Avho are in a position to know whereof they speak,
assert that hundreds of votes were cast for the reform by
men who had no idea that it would become a law — men
who proraised to vote for it, or who voted for it because
they thought nothing Avould corae of their action. The
Scandinavians are alcohol-drinkers, and many Avho serve
as spokesmen for them frankly declare that their coun
trymen need prohibitory laws because they are not mild
and phlegmatic beer-drinkers Uke the Teutonic people,
but are fond of high-wines, and are terribly affected by
the use of them. If an attempt be made to alter the
laAV or repeal it, the process will consume five years. It
is irapossible to say what the teraper of the majority
of persons in the State now is, but the exodus that has
taken place from the Dakotas, as it is recorded in the
archives of Western general passenger agents, tells of
one daraaging effect of such a law ; the disinclination of
Europeans to take up land in prohibition States tells of
another ; and the failure of mankind to enforce the law
in any State in Avhich it has been included in the stat-
153

utes would seem to make a mockery of the principle
that underlies it.
The local geologists say that the Red River Valley is
the bed of a forraer sea. Enormous rivers poured into
it, and washed a great depth of alluvial deposit there, to
raake the extraordinarily rich soil that now supports the
raost prosperous farming population of the West. The
valley forms the eastern face of North Dakota, half of
its width being in that State and half in Minnesota.
The outlines of the valley are traced over a region
nearly 300 miles long, and betAveen 50 and 100 miles
Avide. It extends frora a point 100 railes above the
Canadian border down to the southern edge of North
Dakota. The Avestern or Dakota half of it takes in the
six easterly counties of the new State ; but it is not all
typical Red River soil, for the Avestern edge is inclined
to be sandy.
The soil is a rich black loara. In the old days the
hieroglyphs of the buffalo, written in their trails, seeraed
to be lines of black ink upon the brown grass. This
black soil is 15 to 25 inches thick, and under that is a
thick clay, which, when turned up by the spade or plough,
is as productive as the soil itself. To the eye the valley
appears to be level as a billiard table, but in reality it
dips a little toAvards the unpretentious river that cleaves
it in twain. It is not beautiful. No one-crop country
can be either beautiful or continuously active in life and
trade, no raatter hoAv rich and productive it is. In sura
raer this is a Avilderness of grain ; in winter, a waste of
stubble. But Ave shall see further on that this cannot
long be the case.
The certainty of the Avheat crop is the best gift the
good fairies gave it at its christening. Any farraer who
attends to his business can make $6 to $8 an acre on
AA'heat at its present price, and, considering that he buys
153

his land at about $25 an acre, that is an uncoraraonly
good business proposition, in view of the intellectual
ability that is invested in it. I use these figures be
cause the average crop of the valley is 19 or 20 bushels
to the acre. That they told rae on the ground, where
they said, •' There's no use lying when the truth is so
good." There are higher yields. One large farra near
Fargo returned above 30 bushels, and others have done
better in the past year, but the average is as I have
stated. And this brought a profit of $9 to the acre last
year. One man Avith 6000 acres cleared $40,000 ; one
Avith 3500 acres made a profit of $25,000. Many paid
for their farras ; scores could have done so, but Avisely
preferred to put some of their money in farra better
ments. There has never been a failure of crops in the valley.
It soraetiraes happens that raen put in their wheat too
late, and it gets nipped by frost, but there is no excuse
for that. Barley is AA'hat the prudent men put in Avhen
they are belated. They raise good barley, and a great
deal of it, in the valley, the main products being Avheat,
oats, barley, some flax, and some corn, the latter being
the New England flint corn. Such corn has been raised
near Fargo seven years in succession Avithout a failure.
Irrigation is not needed or employed in the A'alley, but
artesian Avells are very numerous there, as Avell they
raay be, since the water is reached at a depth of 20 feet
and a cost of $100.
To go to the vallej' is not to visit the border. It is a
Avell-settled, well-ordered, tidy farming region, of a piece
Avith our Eastern farm districts, Avith good roads, neat
houses, schools, churches, bridges, and well - appearing
wooden villages. The upper or northern end of the
valley is the finer part, because there the land was
taken up in small plots — quarter sections of 160 acres
154

^W J S I^EMP

MAP OF NORTH AND SOUTH DAKOTA

each, or at the most whole sections. Therefore that
end is the raost populous and prosperous, for it is the
small farms that pay best. The southern end of the
valley was railroad land, and as much of it was sold
Avhen the railroad needed money, an opportunity for big
holdings Avas created and embraced. These so-called
bonanza properties do not pay proportionately, and are
being diminished by frequent sales. In one j'ear (1888)
no less than tAventy-four thousand acres on one of these
farms were sown in wheat.
The present population of the Red River Valley is of
NorAvegians, Swedes, Irish, English, and Canadians, all
being now Americanized by law. It is strange — to
thera it raust be bewildering — to think that in that
valley are woraen who Avere once harnessed with dogs
to swill-wagons in their native cities, and yet are noAv
the partners of very corafortable, prosperous farraers.
The Scandinavians are spoken of in the valley as being
good, steady, reliable, industrious folk, but eminently
selfish and lacking in public spirit, and yet they and all
the other residents of the valley have been in one re
spect both prodigal and profligate, for it has been a rule
there ncA-er to cultivate or make anything that can be
bought. In this respect the people are mending their
ways. They are learning the lesson taught in the
Southern States, where, to put the case in a sentence,
the people were noA'er prosperous until they raised their
OAvn bacon. So, latterly, these Red River people have
been venturing upon the cultivation of rautton, pork,
Avool, horses, vegetables, and small fruits. But the first
efforts at saving are as hard as learning to swim, and so
as soon as these farraers learned that Europe Avas clara
oring for Avheat, they lost their heads. It is said that
they abandoned 50 per cent, of the dairy farraing that
had groAvn to be a great source of incorae there, and in
156

ull the towns where the farraers' daughters Avere at
work as domestic servants, the kitchen industries were
crippled by a general horaeAvard flight of the girls.
" Our fathers are rich noAV, and we won't have to work
any raore," they said.
A leading railroad raan in the NorthAvest, Avho is
noted for his luminous and picturesque way of talking,
is fond of calling the Red River farmers " the leisure
class of the West." He says : " They only attend to
their business for a fcAV Aveeks in the spring and fall,
and that they do sitting down, Avith splendid horses to
drag the farming impleraents on Avhich they ride
around. When their grain is ripe, they hire laborers to
cut and harvest it, and then they cash it in for raoney,
fill the banks of the valley Avith money to the bursting-
point, and settle down for a long loaf, or go to Europe
or New York." Yet they must find a continuance of
their strength and prosperity in diversified farming and
in hard Avork, and this is being taught to the rest by
the shreAvder ones among them. Such men are raak
ing the breeding of fine draught-horses a side reliance,
and very many farras now raaintain from 1500 to 2000
Percheron, Norraan, and Clydesdale horses, as well as
pigs, sheep, and poultry. The country is too level for
the profitable raising of sheep, however. They need
uneven land and a variety of picking ; raoreover, the
soil clogs in their hoofs, and subjects them to hoof rot,
and other diseases prey upon thera there.
There are nearly 9,000,000 acres in the valley, and
one-sixth of it is under the plough. One hundred and
fifty raillion bushels of Avheat could be raised there if
every acre Avas sown with seed, but there is no such de
mand for wheat as that would require to be profitable.
As it is, less than a quarter of the valley is cultivated,
and only three-quarters of that fraction are given up to
157

wheat, so that last year's yield was about 30 to 37 mill
ions of bushels. That would have brought $27,000,000
had it been sold, but Avhile this is being Avritten (in the
holidays of '91-2), a great many farmers are holding
their grain in the firm belief that Russia's needs will
deterraine a rise of 20 cents in the price. Those who
sold got 80 cents ; those Avho are holding back Avant a
dollar a bushel.
The cUraate is, of course, perfect for farraing. Sorae
very lively tornadoes go Avith it, and in the Avinter it is
sufficiently cold to freeze the fingers off a bronze statue.
But these are trifles. The wind -storms do' their worst
damage in the newspapers and the public iraagination,
and the cold of the Avinter is not as intense or disagree
able as the cold of more southerly States. It is a dry
cold, and plenty of glorious sunshine goes Avith it. There
are plentiful rains in the spring and the auturan, Avith
intenselj' hot Aveather at raidsuraraer. The raoisture is
held in the soil by the clay underneath, and in hot sum
mer Aveather the surface cakes into a crust, still leaving
the raoisture in the earth.
I ara so explicit about this great "bread-basket of
Araerica," as it is called, because it is by far the best
part of North Dakota — so A'ery much the best that in
the valley the people are heard to say that they wish
they Avere not tied to the rest of the State. " What a
marvellous State it Avould have made to have taken the
eastern half of the valley frora Minnesota, and put it all
under one government !" they cry. And others say that
the whole valley should have been given to Minnesota,
and North Dakota should have forever reraained a Ter
ritory. But even in vieAv of the excellence of this Red
River region there would be little use in exploiting it
were it all farraed and populated. On the contrary,
there is room for thousands there — for raany thousands.
158

The land noAv obtainable cannot be purchased for less
than $25 an acre, but not raore than $30 need be paid.
Money down is not needed. The systera called " paying
Avith half crops" obtains there. The farraer pays half
of Avhat the land produces each year until the sura of
the purchase price is met, with interest, of course. Un
der this system the land cannot be taken away from
him unless he fails to farra it. He Avill need to house
hiraself and buy horses and tools. However, one owner
of 910 acres carae to the valley with nothing but an
Indian pony and a jack-knife. A great many others
brought only their debts.
All that I have said about the productiveness of the
A'alley applies particularly to the six valley counties of
North Dakota. The Minnesota land is not so good.
Here, then, is a region that raust feel the greatest in
crease in population that will corae to any part of North
Dakota. The river that curves and tAvists its waj' be
tween the farras has been rightly nicknaraed the Nile of
Araerica. In the tAvelve counties that border upon it
in Minnesota and Dakota are 61 banks, Avith deposits
araounting, in last Deceraber, to $6,428,000, or $65 for
every raan, woraan, and child in the region. The farra
ers are the principal depositors, and they had this
araount to their credit when a very large fraction of
their grain crop had not been sold. The valley has two
thrifty towns — Fargo, Avith 7000 population, and Grand
Forks, with 6000.
I have spoken of the custora in the valley of relying
upon a swarra of noraad harvesters to faU upon the
wheat and garner it in the auturan. They raake a pict
uresque array of invaders, led by the raen frora the Min
nesota forests and Wisconsin pineries, in their peculiar
coats of checked blanket stuff, but far too many of thera
forra a hardened lot of vagabonds — " a tough outfit," in
159

the language of the country. They have been in the
habit of dictating how much help a farmer shall eraploy
Avhen they are in the fields, their idea being that the
fewer the laborers the more work for those Avho are em
ploj'ed. They Avill abandon a farm on half a day's no
tice, and betAveen the laziness and drunkenness of num
bers of them there is little chance for either good or
hard Avork. Prohibition gets more praise here than in
other parts of the State, because, even with bottles hid
in the fields, the harvesters only get a thimbleful where
they once got a quart of rum. Another thing that eases
the strain of prohibition is the plenteousness of rum just
across the river in Minnesota. The system Avhich relies
ori these harvesters is a bad one, and in time, with sraall
er holdings, the farraers Avill mainly harvest their crops
AA'ith their own hands and neighborhood help.
North Dakota has many attractive towns, those that
I have raentioned in the Red River country being the
largest. Bisraarck, the capital, on the Missouri River,
has 2500 population. It has more than its share of brick
buildings, and in its numerous pretty villas are farailies
of a nuraber and character to forra an attractive social
circle. By great enterprise it secured the position of
capital of the Territory in '83, raising $100,000 for a
capitol building, and adding a gift of 160 acres for a
park around the edifice, as well as 160 acres elsewhere
" wholly for good measure." Mandan is a flourishing
railroad town across the river, with about 2000 popu
lation ; Jamestown, near the eastern end of the State,
is as big as Bismarck ; and Devil's Lake, in the north
ern part of the State, is the same size. North Dakota
has 1500 free schools, supported by a gift of 3,000,000
acres of public lands, set apart for the purpose when
the State Avas adraitted. As these lands cannot be
sold for less than $10 an acre, the schools would appear
160

to be certain eventuallj' to have the support of a fund
of $30,000,000.
South Dakota is 360 railes long and 225 railes wide.
It contains 76,620 square railes, and is therefore larger
than North Dakota by 2308 square railes. The popula
tion is estiraated at 325,000, or raore than half as rauch
again as the other half of the old Territory. It is an
other blanket of grass like North Dakota, a little tat
tered and rocky in the northeast, and slightly wooded
there and in the southeasterly corner. Just as North
Dakota has a vastly wealthy strip called the Red River
Valley, and triuraphing over all the rest of the State in
its wealth, so South Dakota has its treasure land, the
Black Hills raineral region, a mountainous tract in the
southwestern corner of the State, 120 miles long and 35
or 40 miles wide. But North Dakota's bread - basket
netted $27,000,000 last year, whereas South Dakota's
precious raetals are Avorth but $3,000,000 or $3,500,000
a year. Right through the raiddle of the State runs the
Missouri River, with its attendant hills of gurabo clay
and its slender groves of cottouAvood to relieve the
dreadful raonotony of the plains, and to give a beautj'
that no other settlements in the State possess to such
towns as lie along it.
Both States have the same story to tell. The people
of South Dakota rushed into exclusive wheat-groAving,
leaving themselves nothing to carry them along if the
crops failed ; and fail they did in 1887, '88, '89, and
'90. Then carae a prohibitory liquor law, which is al
ready set at naught in the cities, and settlers left the
State by the thousands. But last year brought great
crops, and good-fortune Avas never, perhaps, better de
served. Estiraates made before the threshing showed a
Avheat yield of 31,178,327 bushels, but the editor of the
Dakota Farmer at Huron, a first-rate authority, told me
L 161

he believed time would prove that 40,000,000 bushels
had been reaped. The other yields were as foUoAvs:
oats, 33,000,000 bushels ; corn, 30,000,000 bushels ; bar
ley, 6,000,000 bushels ; potatoes, nearly 5,000,000 bush
els; flax, nearly 4,000,000 bushels; and rye, 750,000
bushels. This astonishing agricultural success in an arid
State Avas achieved in 50 counties, nearly all east of the
Missouri River. Sorae farming in the western or cattle-
grazing half of the State Avas done in what may be
loosely called the Black Hills region in the southwest,
Avhere there are railroads and local government and nu
raerous settlements.
But little new sod had been broken to produce these
crops. The wheat acreage had decreased by 70,000
acres. The acreage in flax also decreased, but in all the
other cereals the acreage was raore than in 1890. Not
Avithstanding the flight of so many farmers, there were
only 400 acres less under the plough than during the
preceding years. In the raiddle of the agricultural or
eastern half of the State is a fertile, great, and Avell-Ava-
tered valley. It is the valley of the James, but is sel
dom spoken of otherwise than as " the Jim River Val
ley." It passes through both Dakotas from DevU's Lake
in northern North Dakota to the Nebraska border of
southern South Dakota. It is Avatered by artesian wells,
of which there is much to be said later on. There are
raany little strearas in the rocky northeastern corner of
the State, and here is the best sheep-raising district in
South Dakota. Around Sioux Falls, in the southeastern
corner, the farraers Avho had grown flax to rot the sod
and to harvest the seed are now groAving it for its fibre,
and a company proposes to put up a linen-mill in that
little metropolis. There is a notable industry in granite
there, the stone being pink, red, and flesh -colored, and
susceptible of as high a polish as Scotch granite. Hogs.
163

too, are being raised doAvn in that part of the State, and
a packing concern is under way. Pierre also has a
packing establishraent.
Hundreds of thousands of sheep are being taken into
central South Dakota. It is called a coraraon thing to
keep 95 per cent, of the larabs, because there are no cold
rains there to kill them. There are few diseases, and
foot rot is unknown. The farmers hope to be able to
make from $2 to $3 50 a head in the sheep business. I
have their figures, but I will spare those readers who
know what a complex, delicate, and precarious business
sheep-raising is, except where the conditions are exactly
right as to climate, ground, and skilled ability on the
part of the herders.
I haA'e a friend, a lawyer, Avho, whenever he visits the
farra on Avhich he was born, vexes his father by assert
ing that there is a higher percentage of profit in farm
ing than in mining or banking. He cites the enormous
profit that attends the birth of a colt or a calf, or the
sale of a bushel of corn gained from planting a few ker
nels. It is far easier to figure big profits in the sheep
business. A larab costs $2 50, yields avooI worth 12
shillings a j'ear, sells for $5, and creates several other
sheep of equal value. Unfortunately there is another
side to the storj^ — but this is not the place for telling it.
It is devoutly to be hoped, however, that sheep-raising
raay be a success in the Dakotas, as, indeed, it has al
ready proved Avith some extra intelligent and careful
raen there.
The Black Hills are cut off frora the rest of the State.
I could not find any one to tell rae anything about them
until I went to them. The Black Hills business is min
ing, while that of the rest of the State is all transacted
on the surface. BetAveen the Missouri and the Black
Hills Avas, until lately, the great Sioux reservation of
163

twenty-three raillions of acres, or practically one-third
of the State. That was cut in two a little raore than a
year ago, and eleven raillions of acres were thrown open
for settleraent. But no railroad yet bisects the tract;
no govemraents adrainister the affairs of the counties ;
there are no schools or post-offices there.
The newly opened land lies between the White and
Big Cheyenne rivers. The land had offered such rich
pasturage that the Interior Department found it next
to impossible to keep the cattle-men out. Sorae white
raen actually were making use of it; but the greater
number of raen Avho had cows in there were squaw raen,
remnants of a band of French Canadians Avho came
thither in the fur-trading era, married squaws, and greAV
to be more Indian than the Indians. One rich old squaAV
man in that region, who caches his wealth rather than
risk it in a bank, lives close to Pierre, the capital, but
has only once visited the town. To-day white men haA'e
50,000 cattle there.
It is a superb range cattle country where it is Avatered,
and the stock keeps seal fat all the time. Shipments
frora there have gone straight to Liverpool on the hoof.
But, on the other hand, other parts are too dry for use ;
the springs that are there dry up in early suramer. The
bother of it is, so far as the cattle-men are concerned, that
settlers are taking up the land by the strearas, and e\'ent-
ually Avells raust be sunk in the arid country or the stock
men raust retire frora it. The farras there are fenced,
as the law requires, while east of the Missouri there
are no fences, and what cattle or sheep are there must
be herded and guarded by day and corralled at night.
The Government is selUng this reclaimed reservation
land at $1 25 an acre for first choice during the first
three years, for 75 cents durihg the next two years, and
for 50 cents for all lands not taken after five years. Af-
164

ter that the Governraent Avill pay the Indians for what
reraains. The raoney obtained by the sales goes to the
Indian fund, and the plan is designed to help to raake
the Indians self-supporting. What it means to the
Avhite men is that the people who have been the most
distressed and unfortunate class in the NorthAvest are
practicaUy subjected to an especial and additional tax
for the support of Indians who are not their wards, but
the wards of the nation. One sraall and poor county
has already paid the red men $570,000.
What the Indians think of it and of the entire be
havior of the white men is illustrated by the best Indian
story I have heard in a long while. An old grizzled
Sioux dropped into a bank in Pierre, and upon being
asked what he thought of the Government purchase of
half his reservation, made an atterapt to reply in broken
English as follows :
" All sarae old story," said he. " White raen come,
build chu-chu [railroad] through reservation. White
men yawpy-yaAvpy [talk]. Saj': 'Good Indian, good
Indian ; Ave want land. We give rauz-es-kow [raoney] ;
liliota rauz-es-kow [plenty raoney].' Indian say, 'Yes.'
What Indian get? Wah-nee-che [nothing]. Sorae day
white man Avant raove Indian. White men yawpy-yaAv-
py : ' Good Indian, good Indian ; give good Indian liliota
rauz-es-kow.' What Indian get? Wah-nee-che. Sorae
day Avhite raan want half big reservation. He corae
Indian. YaAvpy-yaAvpy : ' Good Indian ; Ave give Ind
ian liUota muz-es-kow.' Indian heap fool. He say,
' Yes.' What Indian get ? Wah-nee-che. All sarae old
story. ' Good Indian, good Indian.' Get nothing."
What the white men of South Dakota Avant uoav is to
have the Governraent of the United States spend a little
of the rauz-es-kow it is getting from the sale of these
lands in driving wells in the ncAvly opened lands for ir-
165

rigation and the support of stock. It is not positively
knoAvn that there is an artesian basin under the land
in question, but weUs have been successful at both sides
of it, in the east and the west, and raany students and
experts have declared that water will be found there.
As the wells will cost $5000 each, no one is going to
risk the experiment of driving them, unless it be the
Government. The only arguments that reconcile those
who dislike aU approaches to Federal paternalism are
that the Government is charging for what should be
public land, and that since it seeks to sell the land, it
will be a good business proposition to improve those
parts of it Avhich cannot otherAvise be sold. It is be
lieved that Avells will work there, and it is certain that
once the fact is proved, the whole great tract will be
settled and raade to blossom like a garden.
The story of the artesian basin under part of South
Dakota seeras fabulous. It is even more astonishing
than the wealth of coal that underlies the farms of
North Dakota. God does, indeed, raove in raysterious
Avaj's His wonders to perforra Avhen to the poor farraer,
araid the cold l:)lasts of the Northern winters, He dis
tributes coal that is to be had for the taking of it, and
when under the South Dakotan soil, that would be as
rich as any in the world were it but moistened. He
seems to have placed a great lake or, as sorae would
have us believe, a vast sea.
On a foregoing page I have given the location and
diraensions of that basin which the Dakotans affection
ately speak of as the Jira River Valley. Under it all,
in both States, there is said to lie a vast lake of crystal
Avater. The fact is amply proven in South Dakota,
where, between the northern and southern boundaries,
there are already raore than fifty high-pressure wells, or
" gushers," as they call thera there. A hundred, or per-
166

haps more, loAv-pressure weUs, reaching a flow closer to
the surface, are at the foot of the same basin. In San
born, Miner, and McCook counties almost every farmer
has his OAvn loAv-pressure well. But the wonderful wells
are the high-pressure, deep ones, wherein water is struck
at from 600 to 1200 feet. The pressure in some of these
wells is 200 jiounds to the square inch. One at Woon-
socket supplies 5000 gallons a minute. One at Huron
serves for the toAvn's Avater system and fire protection.
One at Springfield has force enough for more than the
power used in a sixty-barrel flour-raill. One at Tyndall
is expected to irrigate 800 acres. It is calculated that
a two-inch Avell will Avater 160 acres ; a three-inch well,
640 acres ; and a four-inch well, 1280 acres or raore.
Eight miles above Huron a well is used on a farm that
produced 53 bushels and 20 pounds in wheat to the acre,
as against 15 bushels in the unirrigated land of the
neighborhood. Sorae who profess to know say that the
great basin is inexhaustible, and that the opening of one
Avell near another does not affect the first one. Then,
again, I read that this is not wholly true. But, at all
events, no one doubts the presence of a vast body of
Avater, and no well, even araong those that are five years
old, shoAvs any sign of giving out. A law called the
Melville Township Irrigation Law, approved on March
9, 1891, authorizes townships to sink wells for public
use, and to issue bonds to defray the cost. This aims
to raake the raysterious basin the property of the people.
For farraing, the fiow of Avater is not needed during half
of each year. It is said that if the subsoil is wet, the
crops will need no raore water. The water should be
turned on to the land after the harvest, and kept soaking
into it for four or five months. The drilling of wells
goes on apace. In one county Avhere there were eight
wells a year ago, there avUI be one hundred this sumraer.
167

The Jaraes River Basin is 400 mUes long and 40 to 50
railes Avide. Well-boring has been a failure to the east
ward of it, but to the westward there are several splen
did wells, sorae even as far away as Hughes County,
near the Missouri. The boring is very costly, sorae
Avells having cost $5000, and even raore. At first a soft
shale rock of white sand is pierced, and then there is
reached a sticky clay like gurabo. Minnows of brilliant
colors and with bright and perfect eyes have been
thrown out of these wells, as if to prove that the water
coraes frora surface strearas somewhere. The theory is
that its course is from the west, and an official of the
Departraent of Agriculture holds that several rivers to
the westward lose all or part of their voluraes of Avater
at certain places where thej' meet the outcropping of
this same sandstone Avhich is found by boring. The
Missouri, for instance, is said to lose two-thirds of its
bulk after its fiight over the cascades at Great Falls.
The YelloAvstone dirainishes mj'steriously in bulk.
Three or four strearas in the Black Hills run their
courses and then disappear in the neighborhood of this
outcropping of sandstone. When I was at Great Falls
in Montana, I was not able to prove that the Missouri
loses the greater part of its bulk below there, but it
was said that engineers have investigated the subject,
and are to report upon it to the Governraent. I was
told, hoAvever, that several strearas which seem to be
heading towards the Missouri in that neighborhood
suddenly disappear in the earth Avithout effecting the
junction. With water thus apparently plenteous ; with cattle-
raising, flouring-raills, linen raanufacture, wool, and
diversified farming, all newly started ; with the coal of
North Dakota brought cheaplj- down the Missouri, and
with better coal in the Black Hills, to be brought east-
168

ward Avhen railroads are built across the State — the
prospect is that South Dakota will stride onAvard to a
degree of prosperity that her people cannot have ex
pected, and yet richly deserve.
It is said that there is raore mineral Avealth in the
Black Hills than in any other territory of the same
scope in the world. Gold is the principal product, but
silver, nickel, lead, tin, copper, mica, coal, and many
other valuable sorts of deposits are there. The output
of gold has been about $3,300,000 a year, and of silver
from $100,000 to $500,000. The Black Hills are so
called because the pine-trees Avhich cover them look
black frora the plains. The nuraerous villages of the
region are agricultural settleraents or mining towns,
and are connected by two trunk lines among the foot
hills and by three narroAv- gauge roads in the hills.
These smaller railways turn and curve through the
valleys araid very beautiful and often grand scenery.
It is wonderful to see the enorraous raachines at the
greater mines, and to know that they, and nearly all
the principal appointments of the buildings of every
sort, Avere packed across the plains in ox carts ; for the
first railroad — the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri
Valley Railroad, of the Chicago and NorthAvestern
system — reached the hills less than two years ago. It
was in February of last year that the Burlington road
carae there.
The great gold-mining company, the Horaestake, is
said to have taken fifty raillions of dollars' Avorth of
gold out of the hills. The Horaestake Company is the
narae of a group of five or six corporations, all under
the same ownership. Messrs. J. B. Haggin, Lloyd
Tevis, and the Hearst estate, all of CaUfornia, are the
principal owners. They have the largest gold-reduction
works in the world. For labor alone they pay out
169

$125,000 a month. Their miUs contain 700 stamps.
The last year Avas the first one of notable activity out
side the Horaestake plants, and one or tAVO very much
smaUer ones, because the railroads have only just made
it possible to get the ore to the sraeltery, or to effect
the construction of such works. The ores are all low
grade, and Avill not pay the heavy tolls for Avagon
transportation. The profits in the free railUng Horae
stake ores have been found in their quantity and the
cheapness Avith which they haA'e been reduced. Five
smelteries have been put in within a year, others are
projected, and others are being enlarged. It is said
that within Iavo or three years no ore Avill be sent out
of the hills, but it Avill all be reduced there by fifteen or
twenty smelteries that Avill then be operated. It is
further predicted that Avhen both reduction Avorks and
raeans of transportation encourage activity in all the
districts, the yield of the hills will amount to twenty or
twenty-five millions of dollars a year.
The tin in the Black Hills is alraost as rauch a bone
of contention there as it is in the colurans of the political
organs throughout the country. But in the hills aU
question of the existence of the raetal is lifted from out
of the controversj', and the only subjects of discussion
are the quantity of tin and the reasons why the market
ing of it has so long been delayed. There is no doubt
that there are surface indications, to say the least, to
raark a tin deposit along two great belts. More than
7000 locations have been made, and " developraent
work" (required by laAv frora those Avho would hold
their clairas) has been done to the extent of nine railes
of drifts, shafts, cuts, and tunnels. The famous Harney
Peak Corapany works as if it had great faith in its
future, its Avork being in the construction of an exten
sive plant in readiness for the prospective raining. The
170

railroads also, by a rivalry in building spurs to the
mines, give signs of perfect faith in the new industry.
The local criticism on the situation is best expressed in
the pamphlet issued bj' the raerchants of Rapid City :
" The reason why tin has not been produced for market
is that those who can produce it do not seem disposed
to do anything except development work. The men
who OAvn 90 per cent, of the valuable claims are poor
prospectors, who are unable to erect mills and reduc
tion works. So far, it has been alraost impossible to
enlist capital in the purchase or development of Black
Hills tin mines. With the exception of the Harney
Peak and Glendale companies, no monej' has been in
vested in the mines of the Black Hills. Why it is
that Araerican capitalists refuse to invest in or to in
vestigate the tin raines is a question that yet reraains
unanswered." The Black Hills smelteries are closely connected Avith
the coal of the hills, one raine at Newcastle (in Wyo
ming) being worked to the extent of 1500 tons a day. It
is a soft coal, and makes a high-grade coke. It is coked
at the raines. A great field of coal, estimated at 4000
acres in extent has been opened at Hay Creek, in
the north. It is said to burn with only 7 per cent, of
ash. It awaits the railroads, whose lines are already
surveyed to the fields. The financial and mining cap
ital of the hills is Deadwood, a very picturesque, active,
orderly, and modern city of 3500 souls, caught in a
gulch, and obliged to climb steep mountain walls for
elboAV-roora. It has a lively rival in Rapid City, in the
foot-hills. Lead City is another place of importance,
and Hot Springs is a resort of the character iraplied by
its narae. Pierre, the capital, on the Missouri River, is
very enterprising and modern, and has a fine district of
stores, and a still finer one of residences. Huron is a
171

lesser place, and Sioux Falls is the industrial capital, a
lively and promising town of more than 12,000 persons.
South Dakota is diversifj'ing her farm industries, and
insuring thera by utilizing nature's great gift, artesian
water. It is said that central South Dakota has the
cliraatic conditions for the successful cultivation of the
sugar-beet, for ripening it while it contains the greatest
proportion of sugar. One sample grown in this region
last year shoAved 19^ per cent, of sugar. In 100 samples
the sugar averaged above 15 per cent. ; in Germany the
average is less.
But the best ncAvs about both the Dakotas is that the
raoisture in the soil last New-year's day was said to be
such as to Avarrant firra faith in another splendid year
like the last. With that to put the people and their
industries upon their feet, and with all the neAV lines
of development and maintenance that are being tried
or established, the outlook for both States is very en
couraging. 173

VI
MONTANA: THE TREASURE STATE
Two anecdotes told in Montana as characteristic
horae -raade jokes illustrate the spirit of its people.
The first one is about ex-Governor Hauser. It is said
that, Uke many another true Montanian, he begins to
feel a new and strange regard for small change once he
gets east of the Mississippi, a consideration unknown to
any raan in the Treasure State. It happened, therefore,
that when on one occasion he handed two bits — which
is to say, a silver quarter — to a Chicago newsboy, and
Avhen the boy gave hira a newspaper and moved away
without making any change, the Montanian called out :
" I say, stop ! Give me my change." At that the boy
looked wonderingly at hira. " Oh no," he replied ;
" you don't Avant no change ; you're a Montana raan."
The other story is to the effect that a party of well-
known Butte and Helena raillionaires were enjoying a
quiet and friendly garae at poker, when a coraraercial
traveller — a stranger to all in the party —raanifested a
consideral)le interest in the garae, as an outsider. The
gentleraen were "chipping in" white chips to adrait
them to the betting on each hand of cards, and then
they were stacking up red and blue chips in great pro
fusion to attest their faith in what cards they held.
The drummer found the garae irresistible, and taking
out a one-hundred-dollar bill, he flung it on the table
and said : " Gentlemen, I would like to join you.
173

There's the money for some chips." At that one of
the millionaires looked over at the banker and said,
" Sam, take the gentleman's money, and give hira a
white chip."
These are characteristic Montana stories, and they re
flect the spirit of the dominant handful of leaders in the
State. If these men are not all too used to the making
of big fortunes, they are at least bent upon making
them, and very familiar with seeing thera made. Years
and years ago there was just such a condition of affairs
in California ; now it is peculiar to Montana.
Think of it ! Montana, speaking very roughly, is so
large a State and Avith so small a population that it may
be said to contain one inhabitant for each square mile of
its surface, and yet it has been the boast of those people
that no sirailar band of huraan beings in the world has
approached thera in the araount of wealth jper capita
that they have produced. As long ago as 1889 Montana
contained less than 150,000 souls, and produced $60,000,-
000 — that is to say that, exclusive of what Avas con
suraed at horae, the ore, cattle, horses, and sheep sent
out of the State brought a sura of money equal to $400
for every man, woman, and child it supported.
It is raainly a raining and a stock-raising State, and
these industries have so araply rewarded those who are
engaged in thera that agricultural and manufacturing
developraent have been unduly retarded. This cannot
long continue. So great a State cannot be long given
over to grazing herds of cattle, and dotted here and
there with raining caraps, and when we corae to under
stand what rich farraing lands the State contains, and
of what vast extent are these parks and valleys, it takes
no uncoraraonly prophetic eye to see the State in the
near future checkered with the green and yellow of
well-worked farras to a greater extent than it is now
174

ribbed with mountains. The frequen\^and often easy
making of great fortunes has had its natural conse
quence in causing the postponement of the cultivation
of the soil. It has been left for Chinamen to raake the
valleys laugh with the bloom and verdure of small fruits
and vegetables, and the fact that Chinamen Avere thus
employed has tended to raake such labor seem so much
the less Avorthy of the Avhite inhabitant. But uoav the
white man has begun to take note of the Avonderful re
sults which have followed even this petty farming, and
his eyes have been opened to the Avide and varied capa
bilities of the soil, and to the fortunes that lie in it await
ing the great agriculturists who are to come — Avho, in
deed, are beginning work. They earned a million and
a half from wheat last year, and nearly two raillions of
dollars frora oats.
But the conditions that have caused raining and stock-
raising to raonopolize the energy of the original people
there have resulted in raaking Montana a very forward
State, a very progressive and interesting fraction of the
nation. It will not do for the reader to jurap to the
conclusion that because mining camps and cattle ranges
have been the chief fields of industry, that the popula
tion is one of cowboys and shovel-men. On the con
trary, Helena, the capital, is one of the most attractive
cities in America, and is perhaps the Avealthiest one
of its size in the world. And scattered all over the
State are other fine towns, in Avhich Avill be found a
very cultivated and cosmopolitan people, fond of and
accustoraed to travel, holding meraberships in the clubs
of New York and London, living splendidly at home,
well inforraed, polite, fashionable, and intimately re
lated, socially or in business, Avith the leading circles in
the financial centres of the country. It Avas not long
ago in point of actual tirae that our children Avere taught
175

to regard the region of the Missouri as peopled by red
skins and enllA'ened by the presence of the buffalo. But
it will seem to the tourist of to-morrow that such a char
acterization of the country cannot have been true in the
time of men noAV alive, so utterly are all traces of the
old condition obliterated. As far as such a traveller
Avill be able to judge by what he sees, the Indian will
appear to have gone with the buffalo. As a raatter of
fact, the savage is there still, but he is corralled on res
ervations as deer are in our parks.
The tourist in Montana will find along his route a
chain of thoroughly raodern cities, appointed with fine
and shoAvy storehouses, the raost raodern means of street
travel, excellent ncAvspapers, luxuriously appointed clubs,
good hotels, and all the conveniences of latter-day life.
In Helena he will meet soraething more nearly ap
proaching a leisure class than I saw anywhere else in
the Northwest — a circle made up of raen who have re
tired upon their incoraes, or who thrive by the shrcAvd
use of capital obtained frora industries that do not
raonopolize their attention. In this respect little Helena
is raore forward even than great Chicago.
But over and through all of this progress and accora
plishraent there shines the raysterious and romantic light
of a rude era that Avas so recent as to have involved even
the middle-aged raen of to-day. It was of the type of that
of '49 in California. It was an era of new mining camps,
of swarming tides of men thirsty for nuggets, of pistol-
bristling sheriffs, of vigilantes, road-agents, Indian fights,
stage-coaches, and all the motley characters that gave
Bret Harte liis inspiration. You may meet some of the
men Avho helped to rid the State of outlaws by the hold
ing of what they gayly spoke of as "necktie parties,"
and the application of hemp. They are apt to lounge
into the clubs on any night, and Avith them you may see
176

the best Indian " sign-talker " Avho ever lived, or that
quick-handed, " scientific " ex-constable who proudly as
serts that in the worst days he arrested hundreds of
desperadoes bare-handed, without pulling his gun raore
than once or twice in his Avhole constabulary career.
They represent the days of the founding of Montana.
And yet in the same city Avhere I met such raen I en
countered others frora London, New York, Sitka, San
Francisco, and many other capitals ; for, as I have said,
the new Montana is in close contact with all the AA'orld.
Montana is the largest of the newly admitted States ;
in fact, it is as large as Washington and North Dakota
combined. It is one-sixth larger than the United King
dom of Great Britain and Ireland. It is the third State
in the sisterhood, ranking next after Texas and Califor
nia. It contains 143,776 square railes, and is therefore
the size of the States of New York, New Jersey, Penn-
sj'lvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia all
rolled together. It is about 540 railes in length, and
half as wide. As it is approached frora the east, it
seeras to be a continuation of the bunch-grass plains
land Avhich makes up all of North Dakota. But alraost
all at once upon entering Montana the raonotony of the
great plateau is relieved by its disturbance into hills,
Avhich grow raore and raore nuraerous, and take on
greater and greater bulk and height, until, Avhen one-
third of the State has been passed, the earth is aU dis
torted Avith raountains and mountain spurs. These are
the forerunners of the Rockies, which, speaking rough
ly, make up the final or Avestern third of this grand and
imperial new State. A glance at the map will call to
the attention the apparently contradictory fact that the
principal seats of population in the State are directly in
the Rocky Mountain region. This is difficult for the
majoritj' of readers to account for. They think of the
M 177

Rockj' Mountains as great bastions of bare stone — and
such, indeed, the main range is ; but the spurs and lesser
or side ranges are grass-clad or wooded elevations, and
even amid the veritable Rockies theraselves are in
nuraerable valleys coated Avith the richest, most nutri
tious pasturage to be found anywhere in the Avorld. In
or beside such vaUeys are the cities of Avhich I speak,
built there to be close to the mines that are being
Avorked in the mountains.
Helena's history shows how such conditions carae
about. In 1864, after the discovery of placer gold in
Alder Gulch had caused a stampede of fortune-seekers
to Montana, the second scene of mining activity was
Last Chance Gulch. That gulch is now the main street
of Helena. The miners began Avashing the dirt at the
foot of the gulch, and the saloon-keepers, garablers, and
traders built their places of business close to Avhere the
miners were at work. When the Avhole surface of the
gold-bearing runways had been passed through the pans,
and $25,000,000 had been taken out in nuggets and dust,
the mining ceased, but the town reraained. It did not
shrivel and languish like Virginia City, the town that
had groAvn up in Alder Gulch, but being at the crossing
of all the old Indian trails of the Northwest, and a
natural centre of the region, it waxed big, and began
a neAV lease of life as a trading, political, and raoney
capital. Let rae begin a detailed description of Montana by
saying that its future as an agricultural State Avill be
dependent upon the extent and nurabei of irrigation
ditches that shall be cut in it. The average rainfall
upon the eastern end of the State is only about nine
inches a year; in the central part, still east of the
raountains, it is nowhere more than fourteen inches, I
believe. West of the raountains there is a very differ-
178

ent country, one that is locally described as " green ;''
that is to say, the verdure has its natural terra of life.
and the rainfall is greater there. But that is a small
part of the State by coraparison Avith the rest. Yet all
over the State, on the great eastern plateau as well as
in the valleys araong the raountains, the soil is of ex
traordinary fertility, and it is said that at least three-
fifths of it can be laid under the ditch. A glance at the
raap will show the reader the great lines of the Missouri
and YelloAvstone rivers, and the fine lines of their
branches and feeders, Avhich literally vein the chart. It
is, of course, by raeans of the supply in these waterways
that it is hoped the future farms of Montana will be
founded and maintained.
Governor Toole, in his last annual raessage, says that
" there was a tirae when it seeraed not improbable that
the general government Avould take hold of this propo
sition, and under its supervision control and manage the
Avater supply to the advantage of all. It is perfectly ap
parent, however, at this time (January, 1891) that influ
ences are co-operating which will eventuate in destroj'-
ing Avhatever hope we raay haA'e had in that direction.
Eastern communities, Avhich have set this opposition in
raotion, appear to be mindful only of local interests, and
not of the prosperity of the Avhole country. Their pro
test is based upon the claim that the reclamation of
these arid lands Avould subject the settler in the Eastern
and Middle States to undue corapetition, retarding relief
from agricultural depression. . . . The homes which Ave
propose to make," he continues, " are not for us alone,
but for every citizen of the United States who has the
courage to come and take one. If Ave are to receive
any substantial or speedy benefits frora our arid lands, I
believe the State raust first acquire a title to thera, and
then undertake by appropriate legislation to reclaim

and dispose of them. The Government should select,
survey, and convey these lands to the State upon such
conditions as would secure their occupation and rec
lamation." Independent of any such Federal action as is sug
gested by the Governor, individual enterprise has made
itself greatly felt in the provision of irrigation canals,
reservoirs, and ditches. If it were not that I fear being
credited Avith a desire to criticise, I would say that the
rush and raania for water rights in Montana closely re-
serable in their impetuosity and greed the scramble for
rich lands wherever they are ncAA'ly opened in the far
West, and the not altogether patriotic desire to build
new cities in the State of Washington. In Montana ir
rigation scheraes are expected to pay even better than
raining ; hence the scrarable. I ventured to speak of
this to a raan who was planning to control certain val
leys, which he described as being of the size of duke-
doras, by " corralling " the waterways in thera, by which
alone they could be raade fit for farraing.
" Well," he replied, " we who are on the ground are
going to get whatever there is lying round. You don't
suppose Ave are going to let a parcel of strangers
preerapt the water rights so that we must pay taxes to
thera ? No ; Ave prefer to let them pay the taxes to us."
That was eminently logical, and thoroughly human
as well. But it still seems to me that either the State
or the general government should own and control the
water rather than that a few corporations should seize
it, and thereby tax hoAv they please that vast and
general industry Avhicli will be the chief dependence of
and source of wealth to the State. I am old-fashioned
in this, since I but borrow the ideas of those central
Asian kingdoras whose irrigating systeras belonged to
the goA'ernraents, and yet I fancy this repugnance to" a
180

raonopolj' of Avater Avill prove a new and controlUng
fashion Avhen the raonopoUsts begin to fatten on their
rents. As it is, Avater rights can be taken only by those in
dividuals who mean to and do utilize them for the pub
lic. Such a person, or such persons, can file a claim for
a water right at the. district United States Land-office,
but raust iraprove such rights within a reasonable time.
These rights are given in perpetuitj' to the OAvners,
their heirs, assigns, etc., forever. They tap a streara of
any part or all of its water if they want to, and run
their ditch through Avhat land they please, haA'ing the
right to go through the land of a non-purchaser to
reach that of a purchaser. Then they sell the Avater at
so rauch per acre per year. The rentals varj' between
50 cents and $1 50 an acre. Each farraer taps the ditch
Avith lateral canals, gates being put in to divert the
water into the side ditches. A farmer maj^ also lay
pipe from the ditch and carry Avater to his house and
farm buildings, arranging an adequate and toAvnlike
system of water-works for doraestic and stable uses ;
thus, at Avhat should be a trifiing expense, the farmers
on irrigated lands may obtain this modern convenience.
An important recent decision of the courts is that a
man cannot buy Avater and alloAV it to run to Avaste in
order to deprive a neighbor of it.
A company preempting a water right takes it on a
mountain slope, tapping the stream high above the
land to be irrigated. As a rule, the Avater is not
brought to a reservoir. In most instances on the east
slope of the Rockies this cannot be done, but the ditches
start above the basin land, not only to get a "head" or
impetus for the water, but because in Montana the
strearas are apt to run in the bottoras of deep-water
channels. It is a terapting business, because, since the
183

rights are eternal, a corapany can afford to start even
Avhere the first outlay is large ; indeed, the raore exten
sive the sj'stein and the larger the ditches, the better the
profits. The country is certain to groAv to raeet such
improA'ements, and to pay a handsome revenue as the
years go on ; and in the raean time the ditches con
stantly cement theraselves and diminish their waste.
The result has been that when a call Avas issued for
data concerning irrigation in Montana, preliminary to
a convention for the study of the subject at the open
ing of this year, it was fouiid that there Avere already
someAvhere near 3500 irrigating ditches, the property of
500 owners. Some of these scheraes are gigantic. In
some instances the project has been to secure not onlj-
the Avater, but the land it is to irrigate, and the water
lords expect to reap fancy prices for the land from set
tlers, in addition to rents Avhich their great-great-great
grandchildren raay fatten upon. In other cases, only
the water is got by the men or corapanies, and they are
content to confine themselves to the taxes they will im
pose on the land as fast as it is taken up. The cattle
men of Montana decry these schemes, and beg the offi
cials and editors of the State not to discuss irrigation
and small farming, as, they say, settlers raay be induced
to come in and spoil the stock or grazing business ; yet
1 am told that one corapany of cattle-men has secured
miles of land and the adjacent Avater rights along the
Missouri against the inevitable day Avhen — But the
cattle business shall haA'e another chapter.
The largest irrigation scheme that is reported is that
engineered by Zachary Taylor Burton, a notable figure
in Montana. It is in Choteau County, and taps the
Teton River. The main ditch is forty miles long, four
teen feet wide at the bottom, and eighteen feet at the
top. The ditch connects and fiUs two dead lake basins,
183

which now serve as reservoirs, and are fully restored to
their ancient condition, not only beautifying a now
blooming country, but having their surfaces blackened
with fiocks of Avild swan, geese, ducks, gulls, and other
fowl in the season when those birds reach that country.
Drives are to be laid around the lakes, and their
neighborhoods are likely either to becorae pleasure re
sorts or the seats of well-to-do communities. This
scheme looks forward to putting 30,000 acres under the
ditch. Thus far the cost of preparing the land for
cultivation has been five dollars an acre, and the charge
for maintenance of the ditches Avill be about fifty cents
an acre a year.
A very peculiar and interesting scheme is that of the
Dearborn Company, in the valley of the same narae.
Here is a valley containing half a raillion acres, a sixth
part of which raay be cultivated. The rest is hilly, and
will always be grazing land. The valley is between
Great Falls and Helena, alongside the main divide of
the Rockies. Here are a number of little watercourses
— the Dry, Siraras, Auchard, and Flat creeks — in thera
selves incorapetent to water their little valleys. These
are all to be utilized as ditches. By tapping the Dear
born River with a six-foot-deep canal, thirtj^-eight feet
Avide, and only four and a half railes long, this natural
system of Avatercourses is connected Avith a supply of
Avater fed by eternal springs and frequent raountain
snowfalls. The scheme erabraces a hundred railes of
main waterways and hundreds of miles of laterals. The
greater part of the land benefited is obtainable by home
steaders. I have spoken of the rush for Avater and land. Let
rae explain it with an illustration. One of the most
lofty and arabitious grabbers in the State was not long
ago observed to be engaging in a raost raysterious
184

business. He was taking women out into the wilder
ness, a stage-load or tAvo at a tirae. They were very
reputable woraen — school-teachers, type-Avriters, raarried
Avoraen, and their friends. They were taken to a large
and pleasantly situated house, upon the pretext that
they Avere to attend a ball and a dinner, and get a
hundred dollars as a present. It all proved true. Ex
cursion party after excursion party went out in this
Avay, and when the ladies returned to the town that had
thus been pillaged of its beauty, they reported that they
had fared upon venison and wild-fowl, with the A'erj'
best of " fixings," and that at the ball a nuraber of stal
wart and dashing cowboys had become their partners,
tripping their light fantastic nieasures with an enthu
siasra which made up for any lack of grace that may
have been noticed. The reader may fancy what a lark
it was to the women, and how \'ery much enjoyraent
the raore raischievous Avedded ones araong them got by
pretending that they were maidens, heart-whole and
free of fancy ! But Avhile those Avomen Avere in the
thick of this pleasure, they each signed a formal claim
to a homesteader's rights in the lands thereabout. And
as they " prove up" those claims in the fulness of time,
each will get her one hundred dollars. The titles to
the land Avill then be made over to the ingenious in
ventors and backers of the scherae, and the land avUI be
theirs. " Thus," in the language of a picturesque son
of Montana, "a fellow can get a dukedora if he wants
it." This is an absolutely true account of the conquest
of a valley in Montana, and the future historian of our
country Avill find rauch else that is akin to it, and that
will make an interesting chapter in his records.
Governor Toole, in his raessage for 1891, abandons
all hope of Federal supervision of this potentiality of
wealth, and concludes his reraarks Avith the stateraent
185

that he assuraes it to be the province of the Legislature
to provide " against excessive and extortionate charges
by individuals and corapanies engaged in the sale,
rental, or distribution of Avater, and to prevent unjust
discrimination in the disposal of the same to the public."
He thinks the right of the State to regulate this raatter
should be asserted and raaintained. He does not discuss
the project of having the State develop and raaintain
the ditches, nor does he touch upon the next best alter
native — of insisting that the farraers Avho OAvn the
land shall inherit the Avater plants after a fixed terra of
years. But in considering Montana as it is, the main point is
that there are thousands of ditches laid, and to-day a
bird's-eye view of the State reveals valley after valley
lying ready for the settler, like so manj' well-ordered
parlors awaiting their guests. These parklike grassj'
bowls needed only the utilization of the Avater that is in
or close to each one. There they lie, under sunny skies,
carpeted with grass, bordered by rounding hills, rid of
Indians, and all but erapty of dangerous animals, Avait
ing for the hodgepodge of new Americanisra, to be
raade up of Swedes and Hollanders, Gerraans, English
raen, and whoever else raay happen along. What the
State particularly needs is raen of the Teutonic races,
whose blood Avill not be stirred by the El Dorado-like
traditions of vast and sudden Avealth raade in raining.
It wants communities that will not be swept off the
farra lands as by a cyclone at the first news that a new
" lead " of gold or a new deposit of sapphires has been
found in the mountains. Of such inflararaable material,
sent there in search of gold, and prone not to surrender
the hope of finding more of it, has the State thus far
been made up. The change is under Avaj'; the new
people of a ucav and greater Pennsylvania are coming
186

in, as Ave shall see. Five years frora this, the politicians
of Montana avUI be kowtoAving to the farraer vote.
The northeastern corner of Montana is all DaAvson
County — a tract as big as Maryland, Vermont, and
Connecticut. It is all high rolling plains land, now in
use for stock-raising. It is well Avatered by tributaries
of the Missouri, and abounds Avith little vallej's, Avhich
Avill yet be very profitably farmed. Custer County,
which takes up the remainder of the eastern end of
Montana, is the sarae sort of land, and is a stock-raising
countrj', but is yielding to the inroads of the farraing
element. It surprised the people of the State by the
exhibit sent from there to the State fair last August.
AVheat, oats, tomatoes, cabbages, potatoes, pumpkins,
and squashes Avere in the J'ield, Avhich was Avellnigh
complete, and of a high quality and size. All the lands
that are Avatered are taken up, and this is true of the
greater part of the State. The bench lands form the
bulk of Avhat reraains. It has been demonstrated that
they are very productive if water can be got to them,
and since the streams are tapped on the raountain
slopes, it is certain that they will, to a large extent, be
irrigated. Choteau County, in the north, and the next one Avest
of Dawson, is a little empire in itself. It is slightly
larger than Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hamp
shire. It is 100 miles Avide and 225 miles long, and, to
borrow a Western expression, the entire population of
the NorthAvest could be " turned loose in it." It is like
DaAvson County in character — a high rolling plateau
given over to cattle, sheep, and the groAving of the
hardier grains. Rich " finds " of magnetic and hematite
iron are reported from there. Park County is a verv
raountainous, crurapled-up, and rocky area, and is the
northern extension and neighbor of the YelloAvstone
187

National Park. Sheep and cattle raising and mining
are its principal industries, and, on account of the won
derful mining " finds " that have recently been made
there, the Uttle county is knocking at the doors of Con
gress for a favor. Cook City, down on the southern
edge of the county, is the beginning of a wonderful
raining camp — that is to say, it is wonderful in the
amount of ore there that could be profitably worked if
coke and coal and transportation facilities could be had
at reasonable cost. But, apparently, the only practi
cable route to the carap is through a corner of the Na
tional Park, and the rainers are asking Congress to
allow the rails to be laid there. They have had a dis
couraging experience thus far. The mines are prin
cipally in the hands of the discoverers, and since a
prospector is usually the poorest man in the Avorld, they
cannot afford to spend much to make their needs known
to the public. The prospector, the reader should under
stand, is the indefatigable Wandering Jew of the mount
ains, who prowls about araid everj' sort of danger,
hamraer in hand, and dining on hope raore often than
food, and Avho, after disco\'ering a " lead," gives an in
terest in it to capital, and then is very fortunate if he is
not frozen out. The raetals that have been found in
Park County are silver and lead. There is very little
gold, but coal has long been very profitably rained at
several points in the county.
Gallatin County, next to the westward of Park, is a
mountainous and mineral region also, but it contains the
GaUatin Valley, Avhich, to the agriculturist, is just noAv
one of the most interesting districts in the United States.
This great vallej' has more snowfall than any county in
the State — at least the snow lies there longer than any
where else. The result of the raoisture, in conjunction
Avith the character of the soil, is that the valley is one
188

of the richest grain-producing regions in the State. For
years barley has been raised there for the use of the
brewers of Montana. When some samples of this Galla
tin Valley barley reached New York, the brcAvers there
refused to believe that any such barley was or could be
groAvn anyAvhere in the Avorld. They thought that what
was shoAvn to thera was a lot of carefully selected sam
ples. They deputized a coraraittee to visit the valley,
and found that the barley Avhich had so astonished them
was the coraraon barley of the country. The grain is
very clear, almost to the point of being translucent, and
is in color a golden yellow. The brewers declare that
no better grain for their use is grown in the world.
They have organized a company, taken the water right,
bought various tracts of land, amounting to 10,000 acres,
and are going to try to make the valley the great malt
ing centre of the continent, if not of the world. They
have put up raalting-houses at two points, haA'e estab
lished sorae twenty railes of irrigating ditches already,
and by furnishing the seed and buying the yields are
encouraging the farmers of the valley to groAv barlej'.
They cultivated 2500 bushels in 1890, and raised sixty
bushels to the acre. Last j'ear they had 10,000 acres
under cultivation. They expect in a fcAV years to be
selling barley to all the broAvers of the country Avho
A'alue what the New Yorkers think is the best grain ob
tainable. This is the nearest approach to Avhat is called
bonanza or big-scale farraing in the State of Montana.
All that central district of the State, including
Meagher and Fergus counties, and raore besides, has
been sloAV in the developraent of its mining resources.
Mines have been held for years since they were discoA'-
ered, because it has been hard to raake capitalists and
railroad men see what Avas in the country. It is almost
always the case in such a wealthy mining region as Mon-
189

tana that news of rich finds is published every day, and
capitalists hear the tales of prospectors with fatigued
and half -closed ears. But now two routes have beeu
surveyed into Meagher County by the Northern Pacific
Companv, and the Great Northern and Burlington and
Missouri roads are expected to go in. All Avill head for
Castle, the great raining carap of the country, Avhere
two smelteries are already turning out lead and silver,
and freighting bulUon 150 raUes to the nearest railway.
Thus Ave reach the county of which Great Falls is
the seat of governraent and of many interesting indus
tries and operations. This is Cascade CountJ^ It is
here that the noted and majestic falls of the Missouri
occur in a succession of splendid cascades. Here a com
pany, controlled bj' wealthy men of New York, Helena,
and Great Falls, haA'e taken up soraething like twelve
miles on either side of the river at these falls, and have
thus possessed theraseh'es of what is undoubtedly the
finest and greatest water-power in the West, coraprising
in all at least 250,000 horse-power, and raore easily han
dled than that of Niagara. An auxiUary corapany owns
a large toAvn site there, and a very proraising and con
siderable town has already grown up to handle the
Avheat and wool and beef of the region, and to be al
ready the site of sraelting-works, factories, and other es
tablishraents Avhich have been attracted by the cheap
and abundant water-power. In the shrcAvdness and rea
sonableness of the raanageraent of Great Falls lie much
of the hope for its future. The town has never been
"boomed." It is planned with broad avenues and
streets, and even noAV contains several blocks of really
notable stone and brick buildings along its raain street.
It has a fine opera-house, club, hotel, and strong banks.
Its population is above 7000.
This Cascade County is a very new part of Montana.
190

A smaU proportion of the land is all that is yet taken,
but experiraents Avith this have led the people there to
believe that there is no richer land in the State. Thus
far the settlers are chiefly Americans. It has been and
is yet a grazing countrj', but it is seen that as civilization,,
pushes into it, the cattle business is being hurt. The
difficulty in obtaining cowboj' assistance is noticeable
wherever farms and well-governed toAvns sjiring up, and
this difficulty is increasing in this region. The coAvboy
and civilization are neighbors, but not friends. But it is
a good grass country, and the grass is A'astly better than
that in Dakota, Avhich becomes frozen and loses its nu
triment. Here the Chinook vi'inds frora the Pacific corae
in at all times in the Avinter, never failing to blow upon
all except twenty or twenty-five days in each Avinter.
They clear off the suoav like magic'. Twelve thousand
cattle were shipped from Great Falls during 1891. But
the wool business exceeded that. From the same point
last year nearly three millions of pounds of wool — more
than were sent frora any other point in the United States
— Avere shipped frora the backs of the sheep. Because
of the rich soil and good grass, very little sand blows
about to load down and damage the fibre of the wool.
That is the case everj'where within 150 to 200 railes of
the east slope of the Rockies. Sheep in this countrj'
have none of the destructlA'e diseases which assail thera
elsewhere. The sheep and avooI industries are going to
be enormous in Montana on that account, Avhether the
herding be upon the ranges, as at present, or in small
herds raanaged by farmers, and raised upon the benches
and side-hills that Avill not be brought under the ditch.
But in view of the future of the State, the experiraents
in agriculture are CA-en raore interesting than the har
nessing of the cascades of the Missouri to the Avheels of
raanufacture. The sugar - beet groAvs finelj', in answer
191

to the generally discussed project in most of these neAV
States to render that form of sugar -making a leading
industry when the lands are well settled. Fine, luscious
straAV berries grow right out on the plains wherever they
have been planted, and one man on Belt Creek sold $170
worth of currants, raspberries, and strawberries from
one acre of ground last year. Barley thrives in the soil,
and has no dews or rains to bleach or " must " it when
it is ripening. Wheat that is graded "No. 1 Northern''
in Minneapolis grows thirty to fifty bushels to the acre.
There is an orchard there already, producing fine apples ;
and here we get the first news of the astonishing pota
toes of Montana — " the terrapin of the State," as they
haA'e been wittily called.
There are no such potatoes in the world as are grown
in Montana. They attain prodigious size, and often
weigh three, four, or fiA'e pounds apiece. Eighteen such
potatoes make a bushel. To the taste they are like a
neAV vegetable. The larger ones are mealy, but the
smaller ones are like sacks of meal ; when the skin is
broken the meat falls out like flour. It raust very soon
become the pride of every stcAvard in the first-grade ho
tels, restaurants, and clubs of the cities here — and OA'en
in Europe— to prepare these most delicious vegetables
for those Avho enjoy good living. As these potatoes of
the choicest quality can be cultivated in all the valleys
east of the Rocky Mountains, there avUI soon be no lack
of them. To-day the only ones that have left the State
have been the few bushels sent to gourmets in Ncav
York, Washington, and San Francisco.
All this country east of the mountains must be. irri
gated to insure good crops. An early and general de
velopment of the farra lands is relied upon, because the
great raining camps of the State wiU consume nearly all
the products of the farms as fast as the farms increase
193

in nuraber. There is no danger that the mining caraps
will not grow and raultiply to keep the deraand strong.
The miners are the best people in the world to farm for,
because they produce raoney and they pay cash. The
southern end of Lewis and Clarke County is a succession
of fine valleys. Here is Helena, the capital of the State.
Six miles away a cluster of gold mines is being reopened,
after having produced millions. In this county the
largest mine is the Drura Luramon, an English property
that has paid dividends for many years. And here are
the famous rubj' and sapphire fields, on the bed-rock of
forraer benches or bottoms of the Missouri. Strawber
ries of a large and luscious variety will j'ield 10,000 bas
kets to the acre, and have sold in the past at a fixed rate
of tAventy cents a basket for horae consumption. Applies,
plums, crab-apples, grapes, currants, and all berries grow
in wonderful abundance, and find an eager and high-
priced market close at hand. Oats Aveigh forty and fiftj'
pounds a bushel, as against thirty-two pounds in the
East, and a yield of sixty bushels to the acre can be
obtained. All wheat that is brought out here for seed
ing produces a soft grain. It has been sent to Minne
apolis to be ground into flour for pastry and cracker
bakers. The Cracker Trust is building a big bakery in
Helena, to be near this product. It is not a bread-mak
ing grain. But a new population is needed to reap the
wealth that is offered from sraall fruits. The China
raen are harvesting this raoney now, but they do not
meet the home demand. It is a rich country, and will
some day dry and can large crops of fruits and berries.
The side-hills will graze small bands of cattle. If the
bunch-grass sod is ploughed up, there follows a groAvth
of blue-joint grass that is like timothj', and that is very
high, heavy, auf nutritious. The sarae result follows
irrigation wherf /er it is perraitted.
K 193

Jefferson, Madison, Silver Boav, Beaver Head, and
Deer Lodge counties, in the mountains, are all very
nearly like what has just been described. Mining is the
principal source of revenue, and wheat, oats, potatoes,
and stock are the other products.
West of the Rockies is quite a different country. It
is all practically in Missoula County. The raountains
are fuU of rainerals ; the valleys Avill produce anything,
apparently, that grows in the teraperate zone — even
corn. Irrigation is not so absolutely necessary, and is
not necessary at all in a great part of it. The land is
lower ; the rains are heavier ; the winds frora the Japan
current blow there with frequency and strength, and
are alraost uninterrupted. Verdure reraains green there
all sumraer, and the abundance of tiraber, the many
streams, and the verdant hills render the scenery more
like what the Eastern man is accustomed to than that
which he sees east of the Rockies in Montana. The
southern part of Missoula County has been settled raany
years, largely by thrifty French Canadians, and it con
tains as fine farms as will be seen almost anyAvhere.
Here are orchards, and sraall fruits grow in abundance
for shipraent to the Coeur d'Alene mining camps in Ida
ho. Here is a milling corapany that produced seventy-
five miUions of feet of lumber last year. In the north
is a new country Avrested from the Flathead reservation.
The Flathead Valley is fortj' miles long and one-half as
Avide, possessing a deep soil and a clay subsoil. It is
farmed without irrigation. Several tributary valleys of
the sarae quality open out of the raain vallej'. Large
crops of grain, hay, vegetables, and fruit have been har
vested there, but the farraers have heretofore been with
out a raarket, and have subsisted by raising horses and
cattle, and driving thera abroad for purchasers. The
entrance of the Great Northern Railroad, now accom-
194

plished, Avill open up this rich territory, and Avill devel&p
the tiraber resources as Avell as the deposits of coal, oil,
and natural gas, which seera to be very extensive there.
The raountains are practically unprospected, and have
only just been mapped by Lieutenant Ahern, U.S.A.,
who has philanthropically devoted his summers to that
arduous and dangerous Avork. Indications of quartz are
seen on every hand in the mountains. Taking the coun
ty as a whole, two years ago not a raining prospect Avas
continuously Avorked, while now four mines are shipping
and paying profits of $40,000 a raonth. The " leads " in
the county are continuations of those in the Coeur
d'Alene country in Idaho. Coal as good as the Leth
bridge product of Canada is found there in vast quanti
ties. It is a fine sporting region. The Flathead Lake,
Avhich has 318 square railes of surface, is cold and clear,
and so deep that it has been sounded to a depth of 1000
feet. It is full of landlocked salraon and big trout, and
harbors millions of ducks and geese in their season,
while deer and winged game are plenty in the country
around it. The Flathead Indians, south of the lake,
have nice farms, and raise cattle besides. Thej' are self-
sustaining, and at least a dozen can be named who haA'e
accumulated between $20,000 and $50,000. They are a
fine, stalwart people. They are not in reality Flatheads ;
they have no knoAvledge that the tribe CA'er followed
the practice of compressing the heads of the children,
as was done by the tribes at the mouth of the Columbia
Ri\'er. It is in this county that Marcus Daly, the raining mill
ionaire, has invested a million dollars in horses and land,
and raaintains a horse farm that ranks next to Senator
Stanford's Palo Alto farm in California. Here also
Daniel E. Bandmann, the actor, has 1000 acres of land,
and is raising iraported Percheron horses and Holstein
195

cattle. Other farraers are in the sarae business. It is
an enormous county, and is so well populated that its
people cast 4000 votes at elections. With its ore, tim
ber, horses, cattle, coal, petroleum, grain, and diversified
smaU crops, it is unquestionably the finest county in the
State. It would be the richest were it not for Silver
Bow, with its one industry of raining.
There is plenty of coal in Montana. It crops out in
all the northern counties and in several of the southern
ones. It is most profitably worked Avhen the OAvner is
interested in the railroad which carries it from the
mines. In all probabiUty, the best coal is found in the
Sand Coulee fields, in Cascade County. The Rocky
Fork mines, in Custer County, are part of a vast deposit
which has all been secured by Eastern capitalists. One
hundred coke ovens near Livingston, in Park County,
provide coke for use in the smelteries at Butte. Also
in Park County are the Timber Line and Horr raines.
The coal of the State is serai-biturainous. Only a raere
speck of what the State contains is being mined.
We have seen that cattle-raising is a conspicuous in
dustry — if industry it can be called — and is carried on
in, I think, every county of the State. Large cattle
herds are already things of the past in the Avestern
end of the State, and it is evident that farming and
settlement will soon drive them out of Gallatin and
Cascade counties. It is cause for jubilation that this is
the case. It seeras strange that crueltj' should dis
tinguish this branch of food-raising wherever it is seen
and in whatever branch one studies it. Frora the
bloody fields of Texas, Avhere the ingenious fiends in
the cattle business snip off the horns of the aniraals
beloAv the quick, to the stock-yards in Chicago, where
raen are found who will prod the beeves into pens,
there to crush their skulls with hammers,' it is every-
196

vvhere the same — everywhere the cattle business has its
concomitants of cruelty and savagery.
The reader would not suppose there was cruelty in
the mere feeding of cattle on the plains, but let him go
to Montana, and talk Avith the people there, and he will
shudder at Avhat he hears. The cattle-owners, or coav-
raen, are in Wall Street and the south of France, or in
Horida, in the winter, but their cattle are on the Avintry
fields, where every noAv and then, say once in four
years, half of them, or 80 per cent., or one in three (as
it happens) starve to death because of their inability
to get at the grass under the snoAv. A horse or a mule
can dig down to the grass. Those animals haA'e a joint
in their legs which the horned cattle do not possess, and
which enables those animals Avhich possess it to " paw."
Sheep are taken to especial Avinter grounds and watched
over. But the cow-men do business on the principle
that the gains in good years far more than offset the
losses in bad years, and so Avhen the bad years come,
the poor beasts die by the thousands — totter along until
they fall down, the living always trying to reach the
body of a dead one to fall upon, and then they freeze to
death, a fate that never befalls a steer or cow when it
can get food.
Already, on sorae of the ranges, the " coAV-raen "
(cattle-owners) are growing tired of relying upon Provi
dence to superintend their business, and they are send
ing men to look after the herds once a month, and to
pick out the calves and weaker cattle and drive them to
where hay is stored. By spring-time one in CA'ery
fifteen or twenty in large herds will have been cared
for in this way. In far eastern Montana range-feeding
in large herds will long continue, but in at least five-
sevenths of the State, irrigation and the cultivation of
the soil will soon end it. The hills and upper benches,
197

all covered with self-curing bunch-grass, will still re
main, and will forever be used for the maintenance of
sraall herds of cows and sheep, properly attended and
provided with corrals and hay, against the times when
the beasts raust be fed. The farraers Avill undoubtedly
go into cattle-raising, and dairy-farming is certain to be
a great itera in the State's resources, since the hills are
beside CA'ery future farm, and the raost provision that
will be needed will be that of a Uttle hay for stocking
the winter corrals. Last year the cattle business in
Montana Avas worth ten railUons of dollars to the
OAvners of the herds. " Providence Avas on deck," as the
cowboj's Avould say.
But the sheep there brought twelve raillions of pounds
of wool on their backs in the sarae year. They are
banded in herds of about 2000 head, and each band is
in charge of one solitary, lonely, forsaken herder, who
will surprise his eraployers if he reraains a sane raan
any great length of tirae. In the sumraer these herders
sleep in tents, and the ranch foreraen start out with
fresh provisions at infrequent intervals, and hunt up
their men as they foUoAV the herds. In the winter the
grazing is done in sheltered places especially chosen.
On the Avinter grounds a corral is built, and thirty to
forty tons of hay are stored there for eraergencies when
the snow lies thick on the ground. It is a prime country
for sheep. Thej' get heavy coats, and are subject to no
epidemic diseases. The grass is rich and plenty, and
the Avarra Pacific winds soon' melt what snows occasion
ally cover the ground. The avooI ranks next to that
from Australia. The tendency of the sheep-herders to
becorae insane is the raost unpleasant accorapaniment of
the business, except the various forras of rautilation of
the sheep for business reasons. The constant bleating
of the sheep and the herder's loneliness, spending weeks
198

and months Avithout any corapanionship except that of
a dog and the herd, are the causes that are coraraonly
accepted to account for the fact that so raany herders
go insane. Since I found insanity terribly coraraon
araong the pioneers on the plains in Canada, where no
sheep Avere raised, I prefer to leave the incessant bleat
ing of the sheep out of the calculation, and to call it
loneliness — and yet, in ray opinion, that is not the sole
reason. The horse raarket has been very poor for sorae tirae,
and mules are being raised for the market Avith better
results. The substitution of electric for horse power on
street railways has lessened the demand for horses, and
so has the use of steam farming irapleraents. There has
been an over-supply of horses as well. But the Mon
tana raen find horses a good investment. It costs noth
ing to raise thera, and all breeds seem to improA'e there.
They get great lung development, and acquire no dis
eases. When they cannot be sold for from $50 to $100
apiece, the owners keep them until they do fetch those
prices. The great Avealth of the State is in its mines. Butte,
in Silver Bow County, is the greatest raining centre not
only in Montana, but, Avith the possible and doubtful
exception of one town in Australia, in all the Avorld.
The Butte output is of lead, silver, and copper. The
total dividends paid by all the mines in the United
States Avhich make public their affairs Avas $16,024,842,
and of that sum Montana's mines paid one-quarter, or
$4,059,700. That amount was paid in 1891, up to the
end of November. Yet the richest mines are OAvned by
private corporations Avhich do not raake known their
profits. The Granite Mountain raine, in Deer Lodge
County, yielding silver, lead, and sorae little gold, paid
its OAvners, who are mainly in St. Louis, $1,300,000 in
199

the same eleven months, and has sent to St. Louis about
ten millions in dividends since it began to pay. Eight
years ago the stock in that mine Avas held at 25 cents
a share, and men played pool for it in Helena and
Butte. Butte first attracted the miners in 1864. They did
nothing except Avash dirt for five years, but they Avashed
out eight mUlions of dollars. Then they found the
quartz, and Avent down on it, only to find a great deal
more silver than gold. As they Avent down farther,
they carae upon the copper, and started a " boora " that
shows no sign of dirainution at this date. Butte has
added to the world's Avealth $140,000,000 in gold, silver,
copper, and lead. The largest producers are the Ana
conda, Boston and Montana, Colorado and Montana,
Butte and Boston, Parrott, Lexington, Alice, Butte Re
duction Works, Moulton, and Blue Bird. Those cora
panies operate forty raines, and all have their own
works for the reduction of ores. They are all high-
grade ores, but sorae are high-grade in copper and
sorae in sih'er. The Anaconda people, for instance, get
enough silver and gold to render their vast output of
copper all profit. As their capacity in copper is the
greatest in the world, and as it does not cost thera a
cent a ton, they control the copper market of the earth.
The principal owners of this property are the estate of
Senator Hearst, J. B. Haggin, and Marcus Daly. Mar
cus Daly, Avho is knoAvn in the East as the foreraost
patron of the turf, carae to Montana first on his feet,
and Avorked at Avashing Avith a pan. That Avas less than
tAventy years ago, and now he is called " The White
Czar" in Montana. He is an influential and shrewd
politician, the owner of the second largest horse-breed
ing farra in the Avorld, the greatest eraployer of labor
in Montana, raaintains a metropolitan hotel in a little
200

town in the mountains, disreKardinff the loss it incurs
in order that he may have a place in which to enter
tain his friends, and finallj' he maintains a first-class
newspaper in the same town or village of Anaconda
— a newspajier as good as is published in any city of
the second class. The town of Anaconda is where the
corapany reduces its ores. The profits of the corapany
are never made public.
The carap next in iraportance after Butte is Castle, in
Meagher County, sixty railes frora a railroad. Barker
and Neihart are caraps in the same countj'. The min
ing is for silver and lead. The biggest mine in the Cas
tle district is the Curaberland, Avhich is known to be a
heavy shipper of bullion, but is a close corporation.
The mines in the district and in the county need rail
roads to open them up. Jefferson County is next to
Silver Bow in, richness, but though it has more paying
- mines than any other county in the State, the raining is
all on a sraall scale. The Holder Mine, owned in Eng
land, is in this county. .It paid $400,000 in 1891.
There are about thirty districts in Lewis and Clarke
Countj', as against seventy in Jefferson. The richest of
the thirty is Unionville, five miles frora Helena. The
ore is free railUng gold. The Whitlatch Union Com
pany has produced $20,000,000 there.
As I have said elsewhere. Deer Lodge, Madison, Bea
ver Head, and Missoula counties are rich in mine " pros
pects," but the need of railroads in all except Missoula
County hinders Avork there. The future in raining is
not J'et in sight in Montana. The mineral veins have
been but scratched. For every developed mining dis
trict in the State there are ten that are not developed,
and that promise as well as any that are now being
operated. Moreover, vast reaches of the raountain
country have not even been explored. Of copper Mon-
301

tana produced 50,000 tons in 1890 ; of gold, $3,500,000 ;
of silver, $19,350,000.
A few of the raany stories that are told of rainers'
luck Avill enable the reader to understand how and why
the heads of whole coraraunities raay be turned in rain
ing regions. Jim Whitlatch, the discoverer of the Whit-
latch-Union mine, near Helena, led a typical Western
miner's life. The mine in question is now owned in
England, and has produced $20,000,000 in gold. After
Jim Whitlatch had sold the property for $1,500,000 he
Avent to Ncav York " to raake as rauch money as Van
derbilt." He was a rare treat to Wall Street, Avhich
fattened on hira, and in one year let him go Avith only
the clothes on his back. He returned to Montana, be
gan " prospecting " again, and discovered a mine for
which he got $250,000. He Avent to Chicago to riA-al
Mr. Potter Palmer in Avealth, and returned just as he
did from New York — " flat-strapped," as he Avould have
expressed it. He made still another fortune, and Avent
to San Francisco, where he (Jied a poor raan. Another
Lewis and Clarke County raine — the Drura Lummon —
provides another such story. It Avas discovered by an
Irish imraigrant naraed Thoraas Cruse. Although he
owned it, he could not get a sack of flour on credit.
He sold it to an English syndicate for $1,500,000. But
he reraains one of the Avealthy raen of Helena.
There is an ex-State Senator in Beaver Head County
Avho OAvns a very rich raine, the ore yielding $700 to the
ton net. He is a California " Forty-niner," vvho carae
as a prospector to Montana, and since discovering his
raine has lived upon it in a pecuUar Avay. He has no
faith in banks. He says his money is safest in the
ground. When he has spent Avhat money he has, he takes
out a wagon-load of ore, ships it to Omaha, sells it, and
lives on the return until he needs another Avagon-load.
303

There is a queer story concerning the Spotted Horse
Mine, in Fergus County. It was found by P. A.
McAdoAV, who sold it to Governor Hauser and A. M.
Holder for $50(»,000 three years ago. They paid a large
sum down in cash, and the other payments were to
come out of the ground. The ore Avas in pockets, each
of Avhich was easily exhausted. Whatever was taken
out Avent to McAdow, who got about $100,000. Then
the purchasers abandoned it, on the advice of experts,
and Mr. McAdow took hold of it. He found the vein,
over Avhich rails had been laid for a mining car. He
has taken out $500,000, and it is still a good mine.
One of these children of luck carae to Helena with
raoney, picked out a wife, who Avas then a poor seam
stress, hired a hotel, and invited the town to the wed
ding. The amount of champagne that flowed at that
wedding was fabulous, and it is said that the whole
town reeled to bed that night.
Butte is the principal seat of the mining work. It is
what they call in Montana " a wide-open town," and he
who thinks he knows the United States because he can
name the buildings which face the City Hall Park in
New York would open his eyes and confess his astonish
ment were he to visit Butte. The old California mining
spirit, the savor of the flush times of '49, was transplant
ed to the Treasure State during the war of the rebel
lion, and it still leaves strong traces everyAvhere in
Montana. The sraallest coin in circulation there is the
nickel, or five-cent piece, but the shilling or " bit " is the
unit of calculation. Shoeblacks and barbers charge
two bits for their work; a drink at a bar costs a bit,
and drinks go in pairs at two bits. Whoever wants a
postage-starap will either get no change out of a ten-
cent piece, or Avill have the stamp given to him. Do
mestic servants are paid no less than $25 a month;
203

Avaiter-boys in the hotels get $10 a week and their
keep ; the lowest Avages paid to labor are paid to street-
sweepers, and they receive $2 50 a day. This is all an
inheritance frora California and the precedents set in
Virginia City, Nevada, long ago. The little one-story
and two-story square cottages that dot the suburbs of
each city are of a tj'pe otherwise peculiar to the Pacific
coast — a type that is seen at its best in San Francisco,
San Jose, and Oakland.
The disproportionate size of the vicious quarters in
each Montana city, and the fashions in these quarters,
are inheritances frora the era of the California gold
fever. The outcast Avoraen, who were originally the
onlj' Avoraen in each camp, have a Avard or district to
themseh'es, and there the variety theatre (Avhich is de
scended from the original Bella Union) and the "hurdy-
gurdj' houses," or dance halls, and the gambling hells
are all clustered. The Avomen have streets to thera
selves in Butte, Helena, Great Falls — and, for that
raatter, in Seattle also — just as they do in San Fran
cisco. And, as is the case in California, each house in
such a quarter is a one-room or two-room shanty, har
boring one occupant. For the true women and the
children of each city that end of town is tahoo.
Butte has more than 30,000 inhabitants, and 5000 of
its men work in the mines to produce a mineral output
Avhich is Avithin five mUlions of dollars of the value of
the total yield of Colorado. The laborers Avho repair
the streets get $3 50 a day, and the rainers earn from
$4 to $7. When the shifts or gangs of men change at
night — for the work never ceases — the raain street of
Butte is as crowded as Broadway at Fulton Street at
noon. At tAvo or three o'clock in the raorning the city
is StiU lively. There is no pretence about the town.
It has feAV notable or expensive buildings, and it is
204

without a good hotel. Deadwood and Butte are the
only considerable to avus I saw out West of which
that could be said. It gives the reader a hint of the
" beginnings " of Butte to be told that the site of the
best brick and granite building on the raain street
was Avon by a man who happened to hold only two
" Jacks " at the time he was " called." There are six
teen licensed gambling hells in Butte, and the largest
ones are alraost side by side on the principal street.
They are as busy as so many exchanges. They are
large, bare rooms, Avith lay-outs for faro, craps, stud
poker, and other games on tables at every few feet
along the walls, each table faced by a knot of men,
and backed by a "dealer" and " watcher." The gam
bling hells keep open all the tirae except frora Satur-
daj' raidnight to Sunday raidnight. In summer the
doors stand open, and the garabling raay be seen
frora the paveraent. The liquor stores never close,
neither do the barber-shops, nor — I fancy — the concert
halls. Montana has a saloon to every eighty inhabitants. It
has raore saloons than Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, and
Indian Territory, Maine, Mississippi, South Carolina,
West Virginia, Vermont, or the District of Colurabia.
" One thing I have noticed," said a liquor- dealer of
Butte, " is that if a raan quits drinking here, he Avill be
dead in a raonth." This pecuUarly businesslike observa
tion veiled a reference to the sulphur furaes, Avhich are the
consequence of the presence of many smelteries. The
city is at the bottora of a well, the walls of which are
tall mountains. High up above the toAvn, around one
side of the Avell, are these smelteries, whose pipes emit
smoke and sulphur. In addition to this, they were
"heap -roasting" the ore in the open air when I was
there, and the sulphur weighted and jaundiced the at-
305

mosphere. The people rose in anger and stopped tbe
nuisance. There are fine schools there, attended by 5000 chil
dren. The CathoUc parish includes 10,000 souls, and
is the largest Avest of the Mississippi. Butte is the only
Montana toAvn that maintains a club of university grad
uates. Its other club, the Silver Bow, is one of whose
club-house appointraents and raerabership any city raight
be proud. The people there maintain such elevating
societies and chapters as those of the Epworth League,
the Woraan's Christian Teraperance Union, the King's
Daughters, and the Society of Christian Endeavor.
There is a cricket club there, and a rod-and-gun club,
and a strong Turnverein, or Gerraan athletic societj'.
Thej' have sorae notable displays in those stores which
are the head depots of great trading corapanies that
operate far and Avide. WhateA'er is best in London,
Paris, or New York can be duplicated in Butte, and it
is said that when straAvberries are a dollar a basket in
NeAV York, this strange city is one of the purchasers of
them. Butte has six banks, with a capital of a mUlion
dollars, and a million of dollars are paid out there in
Avages every raonth.
It is irapossible to raake roora for that Avhich should
be told of the cities of Montana generaUy. It is my
opinion that Butte will grow steadily as long as the
present mines pay and new ones continue to be devel
oped. It AvUl be a large city, judging frora present
appearances. Great Falls should, in the logic of its
merits, becorae an iraportant city. Miles City cannot
be threatened by any changes in its vicinage except such
as AviU cause it to grow. Missoula will in aU likelihood
be the capital of a great and rich farraing district, and
perhaps of a raining section as well. The Great North
ern Railway, now corapleting its highAvay through the
206

northern counties, must develop at least one sizable town
on either side of the Rockies, but the names of those
towns are not in my ken. There are going to be many
more inhabitants in the State than there are in Penn
sylvania — possibly twice as many — and they will buUd
cities. Though Helena is the capital, it must still fight to
retain that honor, the perraanent seat of government
not yet having been chosen. But it seeras alraost a
foregone conclusion that Helena Avill reraain as it is,
for as Butte is the industrial centre, so Helena is the
social and financial headquarters. It has raost of the
concoraitants of a chief city — all, in fact, except a first-
class theatre. It is commonly credited Avith being the
wealthiest city of its size in the world, and it does boast
more than a dozen citizens each worth raore than a
raillion of dollars. But it gains that reputation raost
creditably as the backer of the principal enterprises in
the State. In its best residence quarters are many fine
and costly houses, and the people in thera know the
luxuries and refinements of cultivation and Avisely raan
aged Avealth. Helena has three daily newspapers, Avhich
recei\'e the despatches of the chief news associations of
the countrj'. A very commendable spirit in Montana
finds expression in a State historical society, Avhose al
ready imposing collections are housed in one of the
public buildings in Helena. President Stuart and Secre
tary Wheeler, in gathering the early newspapers, diaries,
photographs, and biographies of the pioneers, are per
forraing a Avork Avhich will swell in value faster than
corapound interest enhances the value of raoney.
All the principal religious bodies are well represented
in Helena in church buildings and merabership; the
schools and other public buildings are the subjects of
popular pride; the stores are fine and well stocked.
207

The Montana Club, noAv building a palatial stone club
house, is very rauch raore like an Eastern than a Western
club in all that raakes a club attractive. There are other
clubs — Scotch, German, literary, musical, mercantUe,
and athletic ; there are railitary organizations and the
lodges of half a dozen secret fraternities, and there is a
State Fair Association Avhich maintains a fine race-track.
Helena has many raanufactures, and eight banks, with a
joint capital of two and one -third raillions of dollars.
Already three transcontinental raihvays raeet there —
the Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, and the Great
Northern. Among its hotels, the Helena is a most cozy
and metropolitan house, and in summer the Hotel Broad-
Avater, in the suburbs, giA'cs to Montana the finest hotel
and watering-place in the Northwest. It is the property
and venture of Colonel C. A. Broadwater, a pioneer and
millionaire, and comprises a park, a hotel of the raost
raodern and elegant character, and the largest nata-
toriura in the Avorld — a bath 300 feet long and 100 feet
wide, of natural hot Avater, raedicated and curative, j'et
as clear as crj'stal, and Avithout offence to taste or sraell.
The beautiful Moorish bath-house, with its daily con
course of health and pleasure seekers, its band of music
and atraosphere of indolence, is the pleasantest holiday
spot in the new States. But, in ray opinion, still stronger
attractions to Helena are its surroundings and its cli
mate, its 300 bright, sunny, golden days in every year,
its crisp, clear, healthful atmosphere, and its picturesque
belt of soft, rolling mountain breasts encircling it.
Speaking frora the stand -point of physical human
pleasure, none of the neAv States has a cUmate to cora
pare with that of Montana. There the air is always
tonic, e\'en raagnetic. It rains on 65 days in the year,
but the sun manages to shine more or less even on those
days — which corae in April, May, and June. The val-
208

leys are 4000 to 6000 feet above sea-level. Upon thera
the soft warra Avinds of the Pacific slope blow after
they have emptied their moisture upon the raountain
ranges of Washington. These winds temper the climate
of Montana so that it seeras not to belong in the cold
belt of our raost northerly States. It is nothing like so
cold as the Dakotas ; indeed, there are only a few cold
days at a tirae, raainly in January, with little skating
or sleighing, and an assurance that the Chinook breezes
are always close at hand. Montana is a sanitarium.
No account can be given of the attractions of the State
without putting the cUmate high in the list. It has a
magic power to breed enthusiastic love in the hearts of
all Avho live there, even if their stay is of but a foAv
raonths' duration. The inhabitants all went there to
raake raoney, and now they remain to praise the coun
try. A spell, a raania, seizes all alike, and each vies
with the other in overestiraating the vast nuraber of ox
teams that would be required to pull him back whence
he carae.
Close to Helena, on ledges Avhich raark two former
levels of the Missouri River, are the world-famous sap
phire aud ruby beds, 8000 acres of which, with 2000
other acres under water, have recently been acquired by
an English company of nobleraen, bankers, jewellers,
ai»d others for $2,000,000, the raere value of the gold
which it is thought Avill be taken frora the dirt. That
sapphires and rubies were there has been known for
twenty years or raore, sorae rainers having kept the
finer speciraens, and others having thrown them out of
their pans into the river by the hundredweight as peb
bles of no value. The truth, as I get it frora experts, is
that these stones are true rubies and sapphires, and the
only opportunity they afford for criticisra lies in the fact
that very nearly all of thera are rauch Ughter in color
309

than the Asiatic gems of the same sort. In other words,
pigeon's- blood rubies and sapphire -blue sapphires are
found there, but not often. And yet these stones of the
lighter shades are of far greater brilliancy than the
Asiatic geras that fashion has approved ; indeed, they
are often like diaraonds, and as their hardness is next to
that of the diaraond, their lustre must prove enduring.
The gems are found on the bedrock under eight or ten
feet of soil, along Avith crystals, nuggets of gold, gold-
dust, garnets, and pebbles. The land Avas bought by
two Michigan lumbermen, brothers, Avho now treasure
a million in cash and a million in shares of the new
English company — rewards for their foresight.
One of the English experts who examined the gem
fields announced it to be his opinion that the diamond
must sooner or later be found in Montana. All the
conditions Avarrant its existence there. What a State
Montana is! Gold, sUver, copper, lead, asbestos, tin,
iron, oil, gas, rubies, sapphires, and a possibility of dia
raonds — all locked up in her ribs and pockets !
I see a vision of Montana in the future, yet in the
lifetirae of the young raen of to-day. I see half a dozen
such raining centres as Butte, and they are all noble
cities, set with grand buildings, boulevards, and parks.
I see at least two great raanufacturing towns besides.
I see scores of great valleys, and other scores of little
ones, all gay Avith the blossoras of fruits and grain, sup
porting a great army of prosperous farmers. I see tens
of thousands of rills of water embroidering the green
valleys, and I dream that the men who need that water
to make the earth give up its other treasures are not
obliged to pay more than the conduits cost, merely to
enrich a set of water lords Avho seized the strearas Avhen
no one was there to protest. I see the broAvn hills and
310

mountain - sides of the eastern part of Montana dotted
Avith cattle and sheep in small herds. The AvooUen in
dustry has becorae a great source of wealth, and Mon
tana has robbed New England of sorae of her factories.
I see in western Montana great saAV- mills and raines
that Avere not drearat of in 1892. I see car-loads of fruit
and vegetables and barley raalt rolling into the cities,
and out to other States. I see no Indians except those
Avho work or who serve in the array, and where there
were reservations I see the soil laughing Avith verdure or
tracked Avith cattle. I see statisticians calculating the
value of the annual product of the State ; the figures
are too stupendous for repetition here. Montana is ful
filling her destiny. She is one of the raost populous
and opulent members of our sisterhood of States.
211

VII
GLIMPSES OF PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

SHOPPING IN THE ROCKIES
I AM going to the Rocky Mountains to do ray shop
ping ! If any one in the East heard a lady say that he
would certainlj' take a second look at her. But he
would scarcely be raore surprised than I Avas, to be in
the thick of the Rockies, Avith Lieutenant Ahern,U.S.A.,
for a companion, hearing his modest recountal of ad
ventures in the most magnificent wilderness in our
country ; and then on the westAvard slope, araong the
foot-hills, to step frora the cars to a store like Whitelej''s
Necessary Store in London, or one of our "shopping
stores" on the Sixth Avenue, New York. That Avas
one of the surprises of my experiences in the far West.
It was in Missoula, Montana, that I found the unex
pected great bazar. It is only fair to say that Missoula
has had sly hopes that she might becorae the capital
of the new State of Montana — if the rivalry betAveen
Butte and Helena and Great Falls necessitates a diplo
raatic tendency towards the choice of sorae place apart
from those. But Missoula, though beautiful and kept
almost evergreen by the soft winds from the Pacific, is
rather the capital of the thoroughly un-Eastern strip of
Montana on the other .side of the Rockies than of the
imperial eastern half of the State.
313

When I left the cars at this place I found it a typical
Western town, with one street of shops, with a fine
hotel, sorae businesslike banking-houses, a club, and a
great scattering of dwellings, sufficient for a population
of about 4000 or 5000 souls, if ray raemory serves rae
right. I noticed one block of stores in particular. They
Avere distinctly "cityfied" in appearance. They had
great plate-glass fronts, and the windoAvs were shrewdly
and attractively used for displaying the goods within.
One was a dry-goods store, the next Avas a boot and
shoe store, the next Avas a grocery, and the last was a
hardware and agricultural irapleraent eraporiura. All
Avere brilliantly iUurainated by electric laraps. Recov
ering frora the first surprise at finding such modern shops
in suoh a place, I next noticed that all of them were alike
and of a piece, and then I saw that they lacked the usual
sign-boards of different raerchants over the Avindows.
They Avere, in fact, but a few of the many depart
ments of the Missoula Mercantile Corapany's stores, and
before I tell raore about that, I will intrude a note with
regard to such places in general. The first of these
great trading companies' stores that I saw in the West
Avere in Butte, the great mining toAvn of Montana, and
the liveliest, " wide - openest " town it has yet been ray
lot to run across — one in which the barber-shops never
closed, and sixteen licensed gambling saloons flared
open on the main street. Two of these great trading
establishraents have their headquarters in that city, and
a tour of either one reveals an enormous stock and
great variety of goods, " cash railways," lines of young
men and girls behind the counters, crowds of elbowing
and goods-handling shoppers, and raore of the atraos
phere of Sixth Avenue than one feels in any stores in
the generality of Eastern cities that deera theraselves
quasi-metropolitan. 313

Those who have done rae the honor to follow the
reports of ray wanderings will recall that I found great
general stores of the kind in Winnipeg and Victoria,
British Colurabia, and that they raarked the develop
raent of the original trading-posts of the Hudson Bay
Company, wherever great towns have grown up around
the little original forts of the corporation. These Mon
tana eraporiuras are not the outgrowth or feature of
any fur-trading operations, but they are the result of
the sarae necessity that has developed the fur-trading
posts. Here in Montana have corae big lumbering
companies, mining caraps, array posts, Indian reserva
tions, railway divisional headquarters, and one form or
another of settleraents by or collections of raen to be
supplied with food, clothing, irapleraents, and whatever.
The raore enterprising traders have extended their busi
ness, until such a bulk of trade has corae to them that
they can buy in enorraous quantities at large discount,
and have no competitors except one another.
This Missoula Mercantile Corapany is capitalized at a
raillion and two hundred thousand dollars. It trans
acted a business of more than two millions of dollars
last year. It has four branch stores in addition to the
great central one at Missoula ; one being at Corvallis,
one at Stevensville, one at Victor, and one at Demers-
ville, at the head of navigation on Flathead Lake, in
northwestern Montana, near Kalispel, a divisional point
on the route of the Great Northern Railway, the last
transcontinental trunk-line that is being pushed to the
Pacific Ocean. The Missoula corapany does a large
jobbing business with storekeepers and lumbering and
raining caraps. It is a country A. T. Stewart concern,
wholesaling and retailing all necessaries and luxuries to
the people of Avhat raay be called Montana-west-of-the-
Rockies. This whole territory is in one county of
314

imperial size— about 300 railes Avide and 600 miles long,
Avith a population of 20,000 souls. Not satisfied Avith
reigning suprerae in that field, the Missoula company
does business in the Coeur d'Alene mining region in
Idaho. Mr. A. B. Hamraond, the president of the corapany,
was born on the St. John's River in New Brunswick.
He Avent West as a young raan, and worked as a wood-
chopper for a tirae. He reached Missoula in 1868 as
poor as he Avas arabitious ; but to-day, at forty-four
years of age, he is a Avealthy man, Avith spare tirae
enough to have becorae a student and a lover of litera
ture. Indeed, it is said of him that when he had his
fortune to raake " he used to work all daj' and read all
night." He is raore than just to his employes ; has
made presents of stock to those who have displayed
the most enthusiasra and enterprise, and now numbers
among the stockholders twenty-one who are employes.
Each of the many departraents of the big concern is
raanaged by its oavu headraan,who has sole charge of it,
buys all the goods sold in it, and reports upon its condi
tion once a year.
The stores or departraents are nearly all together in
one long two-story block, and as all are thrown together
by coraraunicating passageways, the reader will under
stand that the effect upon a visitor is that of one gen
eral shopping store. The various stores or departraents
are these : a gentleraan's furnishing and clothing store ;
a wine and spirit, tobacco and cigar, departraent ; a
dress-raaking and tailoring departraent; a dry-goods
and carpet store ; a boot and shoe store ; a grocery
store; and an extensiA'e departraent for the sale of hard
ware, cutlery, agricultural, mining, and luraberraen's
irapleraents, harness, saddlery, wagons, carriages, and
blacksmiths' supplies. I noticed that there were dis-
215

played large assortraents of crockery, upholsterj'-, fur
niture, and made-up gowns, Avraps, and cloaks for the
women, so that, speaking widely, and at this distance
in space and memory, I do not recollect that these
traders left unoccupied any field of barter in Missoula
except jewelry, drugs, and fresh raeat. And I fancy
the business raust include a trade in drugs, since they
would be deraanded in the raining and lumber camps
and by the retail dealers at a distance. The purchases
of the company are upon such a scale, and it buys so
shrewdly, that its profits must be very considerable.
It is an indication of how the new Western cities are
cutting into NeAV York's trade to knoAv that all that
the Missoula Company buys here are carpets, dry-goods,
gentlemen's furnishings, clothing, hats and caps, and
some cigars. Its iraported Avines and liquors and its
groceries are bought in Chicago, its sugar and canned
fruits in California, and its teas in Japan.
One hundred and twenty-five clerks, salesraen, work
raen, and departraent heads comprise the force of at
tendants and managers of this astonishing country store,
and the capital it " swings," to use a Western phrase,
finds outside chances for multiplication by investments
in the Blackfoot MiUing Company, a land company or
two, and in a national bank. I have mentioned this
concern by name and described it, but it must be re
membered that it is but one of many such trading vent
ures where one would least expect to find them.

THE SAPPHIRE BEDS
There is not a more uninteresting - looking patch of
ground in all our NorthAvestern States than that which
a corapany of Englishraen has just bought in Montana
316

for tAVO millions of dollars. Yet it is a question Avhether
there is a space of equal size that arouses a keener in
terest when the truth about it is known, for it is a mine
of rubies and sapphires. It is eight thousand acres in
extent, and would look, to a stranger, like nothing raore
than a bit of pasture-land.
The tract in question is formed of the river-bank in
the elbows of several bends in the Missouri River near
Helena, the capital of Montana. All through that North
Avestern country, after the great river once has broken
its bonds and gushed out from the stony hills at what is
called the Gate of the Rocky Mountains, it meanders
along a curving route through the plains, always in a
deep gutter that it has Avorn doAvn or eaten through.
Just where the geras are found there are hills and lesser
mountains in sight, but they also are covered with the
bunch - grass of the plains, and grass is all that any one
sees in any view frora the riA'er, either there or over a
territory of iraperial size to the eastward and southward.
Down in the river -gulch there are tAVO forraer leA'els of
the river, a Ioav terrace forraing the present banks of the
streara, and a higher one rising above and beyond it. It
is on these forraer levels, under the sod and the soil that
tirae has heaped upon the old river- bottoras, that the
jcAvels are found. The benches or terraces are most pro
nounced at the bends of the river, and it is the land in
a series of these elbows or curves, extending fifteen railes
along the streara, that the EngUshraen have purchased.
They did not discover the geras, nor were they the
first owners of the land after the Governraent. They
purchased it frora two brothers Spratt, lumbermen frora
Michigan, who raanaged to get nearly all of it before
they permitted the fame of the gigantic scherae they
had for selling out to a corapany to be Avidely noised
abroad. But the Spratts Avere not the discoverers either.
317

It seeras that the discovery dates back tAventy- seven
years, and Avas alraost siraultaneous Avith the first prac
tical movement towards a settlement of Montana. At
about the tirae of the outbreak of the Civil War there
was a rush to Alder Gulch in Montana, and placer-
raining or dirt -washing for nuggets and gold-dust led
to the establishraent of a carap called Virginia City.
Millions of dollars Avere taken from those diggings, and
then the next big find led to a stampede to Last Chance
Gulch, which was what is uoav called Helena. While
all the rainers were running the pebbles, dirt, and rocks
of this new field under their Avater-jets or through their
pans, the men Avho got no foothold there roamed about
the neighborhood — and probably alraost all over the
State — and sorae began placer-raining on the banks of
the big river close by. Araong those who washed the
edges of the river -banks Avas an Irishman, who soon
carae to be dubbed "Sapphire" Collins, because of a
raonoraania that seized him. This was nothing less
than the collecting of the sapphires, rubies, and garnets
which he found in his pan every tirae he washed there.
He carried the best speciraens out of each lot around in
his pockets, and came frequently to Last Chance Gulch
to show his treasures: It is said that he had more than
an ordinary knowledge of geras in the rough. At all
events, he insisted that he had found a bed of sapphires
and rubies. He bothered everybody Avith news of his
" find," and with his efforts to secure capital for pre-
erapting the river -banks, until he carae to lie dubbed
" Sapphire " Collins, and was laughed at by every one.
Eventually, as the raatter is reraerabered, he becarae
really deranged, and his talk shoAved that disappoint
ment in failing lo find any purchasers for his claim was
what had turned his brain. But in the mean time he
had seen all the financiers and successful miners, and all
218

had enjoyed an opportunity to make the money which
the English have within eight weeks poured into the
purses of his successors. The truth Avas that Last Chance
Gulch was proving one of the richest placer-grounds CA'er
known. Men were at work reaping the harvest that Avas
to reach a grand total of twenty-five millions of dollars.
These were not the men nor Avas that the place to bring
to raarket a handful of dirty-looking and dubious peb
bles, when gold Avas so certain and so plentiful. Thus
all that carae of the discovery of the greatest gera field
in Araerica was the nicknaming of a miner and the
wrecking of his intellect.
Although "Sapphire" Collins was the discoverer, oth
er prospectors found the stones at other places, for a
great deal of washing was done along the edges of the
land that the Enghshmen have just bought. The major
ity of the miners, reraerabering the fate of CoUins, and
supposing the pecuUar pebbles to have no value, dumped
thera out of their pans by the bushel and the barrel into
the river, along with all the dirt and stones that were
left when the gold was picked out.
But a great raany Avho noticed that the stones were
translucent carried the prettiest and largest ones as
pocket-pieces, while still others sent their best collec
tions to Ncav York to be cut. It is a peculiar fact that
most of the stones that were treasured in this way, and
nearly all that were sent to lapidaries to be cut, were
the white and colorless crystals which are plentiful in
the beds, but are of no value. The only colored stones
that Avere thought to be worth keeping were the garnets.
It is to this strange chance that is ascribed the fact that
the lapidaries of the East continued in ignorance of the
existence of the true sapphires and rubies. Sorae of the
pretty stones that Avere saved were chrysolites, which
are technically described as being " a silicate of raagne-
219

sia and iron ;" and others were corunduras, hard stones
of nearly pure aluraina, used for polishing steel and cut
ting geras. Both are found in the Montana beds.
There next appears in the history of this fascinating
discovery another raan Avith a faith in the geras that was
as strong as that of "Sapphire" Collins, but this new
character was a man whose intelligence could not be
questioned. His narae is George B. Foote, and he not
only collected the geras and talked about their value, he
Avrote about thera in the local newspapers, and, later
still, pubUshed an article about thera in a conspicuous
Eastern periodical. Then seven years passed, and Mr.
George F. Kunz, of the house of Tiffany & Co., jewel
lers, of New York, Avrote for Haepee's Magazine an
article on " Precious Stones in the United States." He
knew what Foote had Avritten, and had been investigat
ing the raatter ; and Avhen he came to speak of the
Montana fields, he said that the sapphire was found
there of a lighter color than the Asiatic variety, but
that a feAV small gems of the true ruby and sapphire
colors had been found there. In the Engineering and
Mining Journal for January 2, 1892, he reviews his
later knowledge of the subject, and says, " The colors of
the gems obtained, although beautiful and interesting,
are not the standard blue or red shades popular with the
pubhc." Mr. Kunz is considered to be the highest au
thority upon the subject of geras in Araerica, and his
verdict attracted a great deal of attention, and brought
the first honor to the raemory of poor ColUns.
It Avas at about the time of the publication in Hae
pee's Magazine that the brothers Spratt appeared in
this slow -moving history. F. D. Spratt, of Michigan,
bought a placer claim on Trout Creek, near "Eldorado
Bar." This so-called Eldorado Bar is the last of the
benches in the London syndicate's purchase, but it is the
230

bench on which the first discoveries were made, the one
Avhich has been concerned in all the talk and writing
upon the subject, and is to be the scene of the beginning
of the prospective mining. This is all because it has
happened so. As I understand it, the Eldorado is no
richer than the other bars. Mr. Spratt became interest
ed in the discussion, and at once selected a lot of geras
frora those he found on the bar, and sent thera to va
rious places to be cut and classified. A few Avere of the
darker tints, but most of them were light. However,
the reports upon all of thera Avere that they were true
sapphires. Frora the Helena Independent I quote the
following account of the next steps towards the intro
duction of these jewels in the world's raarkets :
"Satisfied tliat there was a future for tlie Montana gems, Mr.
Spratt began to buy up all the gem- bearing land that he could gel
hold of. The placer- miners and ranchmen thought it another case
of Collins, ran up their prices, and sold to the man from Michigan.
Besides buying, Mr. Spratt entered land under the mineral laws, and
finally he controlled, with his associates, about four tliousand acres
of gem -bearing ground. For about one-half of this he obtained a
government patent. The miners were glad to unload, though they
pitied Spratt. But Mr. Spratt liad the son of the most noted English
gera expert come all the way over from the African diamond fields to
look over his ground. This gentleman, G. K. Streeter, satisfied him
self that the gems were in Montana, and took numerous samples back
with him. Tliey were subjected to every test, and then pronounced
genuine. Then it was deterrained to organize a company in England
for the puipose of developing the fields and placing their product on
the European market. News of this reached Montana, and ground
on the Missouri Kiver which was thought to contain gems was taken
up and held at thousands of dollars where previously it had been con
sidered worthless."
I was in Helena at the tirae that the English cora
raissioners Avere making their final examination of the
grounds and closing their purchases, and I Avas told that
river - side lands for as far as forty miles up the river
331

Avere held at extravagant prices. Moreover, stones
brought to town by prospectors, such as had been sell
ing for two bits apiece, were now held at $5, and even
$25. And cut stones on exhibition in the jewelry stores
Avere offered for sale at the rate of $50 a carat, and even
higher, that is to say, at alraost the prices of diaraonds.
All this AA'as a natural result of the unexpected discoverj'
of the value of the gera beds, but it was none the less
interesting. We shall see that the Englishraen raay ex
pect to realize such prices in the future, but in buying
the treasure they valued it in a Avidely different Avay.
The caution AA'ith which the Englishraen advanced into
the Avork of organizing their corapany and making their
purchase Avas, to the Araericans at least, a notable feat
ure of the affair. Perhaps they Avere afraid that the so-
called gera lands were "salted" — that isto say, sprinkled
Avith genuine jewels brought in the rough frora sorae
where else — or perhaps they but exercised their custora
ary caution. At anj' rate, they first obtained a report
from a well-known engineer. He made a voluminous
and exhaustive statement, in Avhich he said that the
sapphires are found to be nuraerous over a large area
for nearly three railes on both branches, and frora the
river -bank to the foot-hills wherever openings were
raade. Then two experts frora England went all OA'er
the ground and made their reports, Avhich, as it turned
out, confirmed that of the Araerican. Then the Euff-
lishraen proceeded to obtain views upon the character,
qualitj', and value of the jewels frora English gem ex
perts. Professor A. H. Church, Professor of Chemistrj'
at the Royal Acaderay, S. P. Thorapson, professor in
the London Technical College, and F. W. Rudder, cura
tor of the Museum of Practical Geology in London,
were all asked to examine stones that were brought to
thera from Montana. They all, happily for the own-
333

ers of the river benches, pronounced the gems sapphires
and rubies. They said they found thera to be pure alu
mina, Avith very slight traces of iron. Their crystalline
form, hardness (Avhich is next to that of the diaraond),
and specific gravity were all proofs of their genuineness.
As one expert phrased it, " sorae of thera exhibit shades
of pink and red, and may be scientifically designated
rubies." Then the Englishmen got a report from Ed-
Avin W. Streeter, the well-known jeweller of London.
He found the Montana stones admirable in every way.
He found that, " taking a hundred carats in the rough,
tAventj'-five carats would be cuttable gems, and the re
raaining 75 per cent, only valuable for mechanical uses
and watch-Avork. Of the cuttable geras there would be
returned from the lapidary, say, eight and three-fourths
carats of cut geras."
Thus equipped with these expert opinions, the promot
ers undertook to get subscribers to the stock of the
corapany. This is done in England through the work
of a person called an underwriter, who receives a cora
raission for the services he contributes. The under-
Avriter begins his task with an effort to secure as officers
and founders of the company raen of title, high social
position, distinction in coraraercial life, or farae in the
professions. With these names, and the merits of the
scherae set forth in prospectuses and circulars, he begins
to advertise the corapany and take subscriptions to the
stock. In the case of the " Sapphire and Ruby Cora-
jmny of Montana " such names as that of the Duke of
Portland, the raillionaire Marquis of TAveeddale, Sir
¦ Francis KnoUj's, secretary to the Prince of Wales, Sir
Arthur Sullivan, the operatic coraposer, Frank C. Bur
nand, editor of Punch, and a great many lords, earls,
baronets, secretaries to dukes and duchesses, railway
officials, brokers, and well-knoAvn business raen were put
333

down among the officers, founders, or early subscribers
to the corapany.
The subscription-books Avere closed in London on No
veraber 2, 1891, and that is when the deal for the land
in Montana Avas practically closed. The property pur
chased by a prelirainarj' paj'raent in cash sorae weeks
later was bench land to the extent of about 8000 acres
on both sides of the Missouri River for a distance of
twelve or fifteen miles, together with aU the Avater
rights in the district. It is said that not all the gem-
bearing lands nor all the Avater rights have been pur
chased outright, but all that have not been bought have
been leased for a long term. The company is stocked
for £450,400 in £1 shares, and is understood to have
paid £400,000 (or $2,000,000) to the brothers Spratt, one-
half in cash, and one-half in fuUj' paid-up shares. I was
told by one of the gentlemen in the English party that
in appraising the land the basis of calculation was the
amount of placer gold that would be found upon or in it,
so that the geras would be considered a second source of
incorae or by-product. It is said that although the
brothers Spratt receive a million of dollars for the land,
this is by no means to be considered as a Avindfall.
They spent a very great deal of money in securing. the
bulk of the land, and held options on a lot more, which
they paid for, or will pay for when they receive the
English money. The money AA'as not to be paid until
an examination of all the titles to the land had been
made by a firra of reputable laAvyers.
The raining that was being done Avhen I was in
Helena Avas of the raost primitive sort. The gems lie
on or close to the bed-rock, which is covered with ten
feet of soil on the loAver benches, and perhaps twenty
feet on the upper benches, or second terrace. The
workraen dig down through the soil and sand, Avhich
334

they throAV aAvay until they are within a few inches of
the rock. That rock is practically sraooth, and is like a
shelf, upon which the gold and gems are found. The
gravel or dirt close to the rock is passed through a
coarse sieve, and then through a fine one. What the
coarse sieve holds is thrown away. The second sieve
lets the dirt through it, and the stones rattle down the
screen into a box. The contents of the box are put into
a sack and carried to the river, where the stones are
washed and sorted. Besides the gems, they find in the
Avashings quartz pebbles, slate, alluvial gold, and nodules
of iron. Between 2000 and 3000 carats in sapphires and
rubies have been taken out in this Avay daily without
raachinery. According to the figures of Mr. Streeter,
the London jeAveller, who is noAv a stockholder in the
companj', this rate of mining Avould produce 8J carats
of marketable gems in every 100, or about 250 carats a
day. It is understood that the mining on Eldorado Bar
will continue in this primitive way all winter, but that
next spring (1892) hydraulic washing Avill be introduced.
There is not likely to be any very rapid Avork upon the
raines. The owners knoAv enough not to flood the
raarket Avith the stones, either all at once or in any
manner. I haA'e seen a great many of these gems ; indeed, I
have seen pints of thera at a time in the corapany of ex
perts or in my Avanderings among those who had them
to sell. They are A'erj' disappointing to look at in the
rough. Were anj' person Avho is accustoraed to spend
his suraraers upon the sea-coast to see a hatful of thera,
his first impression Avould be that they were A'erj- like
the chromatic and translucent pebbles that are mixed
Avith the sand on the ocean beach, the pretty stones
which children pick up and carry to the hotel verandas
to play Avith. A closer look at the gems Avould reveal
p 335

the fact that nearly all except the garnets look green or
pale blue, and are of many-sided crystalline shape, or at
least have evidently been of that shape before some or
all of their sides Avere Avorn smooth by the action of the
Avater in rolling thera along upon and araong the rocks.
An expert would point out a singular raark upon nearly
all of thera — a raised triangular piece upon their ends,
the outlines of the triangle being very clearly defined.
This, I believe, is what is called the signature of the
sapphire. After that, Avhen the stones Avere held up to
the light and looked through, interest in thera Avould in
crease, for unexpected colors Avould be found in thera,
and there would be seen a naraeless quality about them
which is due to the subdued luminousness which cutting
will reveal in all its force. The colors they are seen to
possess are all shades of green, all shades of blue except
the indigo shade, all shades of yellow and red, and a
great manj' pink and violet hues. The shapes they take
are those of bits of pipe stera, perfect crystal, and a queer
flat form like the body of a flat-iron, though not as large
as an ordinary masculine thurab nail. The flat ones are
thin ; the cylindrical and hexagonal ones are thick. As
a rule, I should say they vary between the size of half
a carat and less than four carats. This attempt at a
description is an effort of an untrained raeraory and an
absence of technical knowledge, and must be taken, as it
is intended, as a general suggestion.
And what do I think of them 'i They are very beau
tiful Avhen they are cut. They sparkle and alraost flame
as the original or fashionable Asiatic sapphires do not be
gin to do. In fact, the Asiatic sapphires, Avhen put beside
thera, appear like highly polished colored glass beside a
flaraing jeAvel. I am assured that this fiery quality of
the Montana stones will endure forever, because of their
very great hardness. The diaraond, being classed as 10
236

in point of hardness, is only one-tenth harder than these
Montana stones. I have not been so fortunate as to see
any Montana rubies, and therefore will not speak of
thera. I have not the least doubt in the Avorld that
rubies are found there, though they are very uncoraraon.
A peculiar thing about sorae of the sapphires is that
they look red frora one point of A'iew and blue from
another. But now as to the sapphires. They are genuine and
very beautiful, but they are not, except in very rare ex
araples, of the color of the true sapphire. Therefore
they are at a disadvantage. If they Avere all sapphire
blues, they Avould still have the diamond to fight against
— that brilliant plague of all owners of other stones,
since it persists in reraaining fashionable year after
year in spite of every effort to dethrone it. But in ad
dition to the supreraacy of the diamond, these home
gems are of raany colors, and yet not of the right colors.
I think they are, next to the diamond, the raost orna
mental stones I OA'er saw. But Avhat will others think ?
What Avill fashion decree with regard to thera ? There
is their situation in a nutshell. To it there can only be
added a glance at the titles of the nobleraen interested
in the corapanj'. If they can induce royalty to don
Montana gems, and if their own duchesses and count
esses and grand dames all put thera on, Darae Fashion
Avill certainly deign to cast an eye upon our offering.
Then Ave shall have to Avait and see whether she frowns
or smiles. THE GREAT FALLS OF THE MISSOURI
It can scarcely be possible that time adds to history
so fast anywhere else in the Avorld as it does in the new
Northwestern States of this country. To very rauch
227

the raajority of Americans the marvellous Falls of the
Missouri are thought of as Captains Lewis and Clarke
so graphically described their discovery, ornamenting
a vast rolling Avilderness of plains-land in what might
be Avith poetic license described as the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains. Those gallant explorers made their
famous excursion across the continent in 1804-6. When
they mapped the country they traversed, they thought
of the lands through which the Missouri runs only as
the territory Avhich had been the subject of the Louis
iana purchase. Montana was thus part of Louisiana in
their time. Then it becarae part of Missouri Territory ;
next it Avas part of Nebraska Territory ; and after that
it was part of Dakota. That, howcA-er, Avas slow-paced
history, and in that region the people do not think that
the recent organization of Montana as one of the sister
hood of States Avas accorapUshed any too quicklj'.
Later events of a rainor character ha\'e been rauch
raore rapid in that region. That is markedlj' illustrated
by two little pamphlets that lie on my desk as I Avrite.
In one the author, Mr. Williara F. Wheeler, noAv secre
tary of the Montana Historical Societj', says, under date
of 1882, that the Falls of the Missouri are in Choteau
County, 100 miles frora the Northern Pacific Railroad
at Helena. There was then no railroad to thera. In
the other paraphlet, issued by the business men of " that
prosperous centre of industrial activity" called Great
Falls, the rapids and cataracts in the Louisiana purchase
are described as being near the county- seat of Cascade
County, on three railroads — the Great Northern, the
Montana Central, and the Great Falls and Canada. In
so short a time a new county, a prosperous industrial
centre, and three railroads altered the local conditions
out there.
I visited the falls last Avinter, and am both free and
228

'Mi.

- ¦ '¦¦¦ K'':'.'Vim!..''^.-\'i

!:,.¦¦'¦:.¦"'. awM

.*v

a --~~-

frank to confess that in thinking of thera the thriUing
and fascinating experiences of their discoverers, LeAvis
and Clarke, Avere uppermost in my mind. On the Avaj'
there, it happened that I met an energetic and valiant
successor to those military officers in the person of
Lieutenant Ahern, Avho has of late years done much
valuable Avork in exploring and mapping the Rocky
Mountains in Montana. It fell out, most appropriately,
that he told me of an adventure during this work where
in Lewis and Clarke may be said alraost to have returned
to the virgin territory in Avhich they risked and often
nearly lost their lives. Lieutenant Ahern had cut out
frora a copy of their printed journal those leaves where
in they describe their journey oA'er and through the
Rockj' Mountains. The lieutenant was in a part of the
mountains Avith Avliich he was unfamiliar, and, happen
ing to raeet a hunter, he talked Avith hira about the
forward route to be taken. The hunter professed
intiraate familiarity Avith the trail, but speedilj' acknoAA'l-
edged himself lost. As night was falling, a camp was
made, and Lieutenant Ahern whiled the tirae aAvay by
rereading his pages of Lewis and Clarke's journal, lie
found in thera an accurate description of the country
around hira, and in the raorning enjoyed the satisfaction
of becoraing guide to the hunter, and leading him to a
landmark which both were seeking. Later still, when I
stood beside one of the falls of the majestic river, I Avas
informed that though it is nearly ninety years since the
explorers visited and described the cascades and rapids,
their descriptions and even their measurements apply to
thera accuratelj^ to-day.
I did not haA'e the journal of the explorers with ine,
but I recollected Uoav they separated, and Captain Lewis
took one Avater route Avhile his corapanion followed
another stream, each being most anxious to come upon
231

the falls in order to distinguish the raain current frora
its feeders. I remerabered Captain Lewis's hearing the
noise of the great fall frora a distance of seven raUes.
I recalled his description of nuraerous great but aban
doned Indian caraps, and the notes he raade of the scene
near the falls, Avhere the vast grassy plain Avas dotted
Avith great herds of buffalo. I reraembered how a bear
chased him into the river, hoAv three buffalo bulls
charged upon him, how a rattlesnake came near to
making his acquaintance in a raost unpleasant manner,
and how the hardy explorer wrote that at the end of all
these adventures he felt his mind crowded Avith a host
of memories of the uncoraraon and astonishing scenes
and occurrences he had Avitnessed and experienced.
Leaving out the buffalo, or perhaps exchanging for
them the Texan steers of to-day in far foAver nurabers,
and excepting the big-horned sheep and the Avolves
and eagles and deserted Indian camps, the scene near
the Great or Lower Falls cannot be so different from
what it Avas in their day as Messrs. LoAvis and Clarke
raight expect. To-dav, as then, the CA'erlasting, rolling
blanket of broAvn bunch-grass reaches incessantly aAvay
in every direction except where the Belt Mountains and
other spurs of the Rockies raise their blue and sorae
tiraes snow-capped masses. To one who has seen the
Missouri elsewhere, in Montana, the Dakotas, or Ne
braska, the falls, Avhere they occur, irapress the spectator
as being entirely outside of the staid and dignified
character of the noble streara. But scarcely anywhere
along the Avhole course of the river could they create
greater surprise in one Avho AA'as not on the lookout for
thera than Avhere they are found. It is true that there
the plains are very hilly and contorted, but this verv
irregularityof the earth's surface helps to hide the river,
and one raay often ride close beside it, and look over it
232

at the hills beyond, Avithout getting a glirapse of the
lordly streara. The Missouri, before it coraes to the first
falls, is only about 300 yards Avide, enormous enough in
itself, but, as seen by an eagle, a raere thread of sih-er
and suds bisecting the plains.
The best Avay to see all the falls and the rapids is
from below. It must be remerabered that for a distance
of more than a dozen railes the river battles Avith its
slanting bed, or, if it be not battling it, is racing and
frolicking down a steep hill. There are five falls and a
score of rapids in that madcap descent. It is five
hundred feet nearer to the IcA'el of the sea at the end of
that run than it was at the beginning. Approaching
the river frora below the lower falls, it is found to be
corapressed into a third of its forraer and after Avidth
by toAvering Avails of sandstone, Avhich forra a magnifi
cent cafion. In the bottom of that it races along, uoav
smoothly and now in myriads of fretful Avrinkles, Avhite-
capped here and there, as it passes over the rocks that
it has hurled along and formed into serai-blockades
against its own headway. It is not here a rauddy river.
It is a mighty course of crystal Avhen you sample it ; of
eraerald where it is shallow ; of raolten sapphire Avhere
it has great depth. The sheer and raightj' Avails suggest
the Palisades of the Hudson in places ; but in other
parts they are broken, and terraces of bunch-grass rise
one above the other, each toothed Avith an outcropping
of rough or jagged rock.
It seeras at first as though the riA'er raust once haA'e
filled up the great gutter along the bed of Avhich it runs,
and raust there have been raany times as deep as it is
now ; but the farther up the ascent is made, as fall and
rapid, rapid and fall, are passed, the raore evident it
becomes that the river descends at a greater angle than
the land slopes, and that the effect this produces is height-
235

ened very greatly where the hills that accorapany its
course press close upon its sides. It is everywhere a noble
streara, but to the eastAvard and southward of the faUs,
in other States, it has an indolent, patient, stolid char
acter. To understand its raight and raastery, it raust be
seen not only Avhere it carves a roadway through the
bed-stone of the plains but higher up stUl, where it
bursts the Rockies asunder, and scattering the solid
masses like a Hercules fretted by granite bonds, leaps
out from the gloom and shadows of the hills into the
ojien and sunshine of the plains. It has always seemed
to rae a gigantic theft and outrage that we coraraitted
Avhen we gave to the raore famous part of this royal river
the narae of one of its tributaries ; for it is the raighty
Missouri that begins in the Rockies, that divides the
southern part of our country, and that discharges its
AA'aters into the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans. That
to which we give the narae of the Missouri is 2900 miles
in length. At the point at Avhich the Mississippi joins
it the Mississippi has run 1300 railes, and has 1300 raore to
go ; but the Missouri, everywhere possessed of the same
characteristics, is 4200 miles long betAveen its birthplace
in the mountains and its ending in the Gulf.
I was not so fortunate as the first Araericans who
visited the Falls of the Missouri, and saw the greatest
of the cascades sending up clouds of fog like spraj' to
catch a golden sunburst and turn it to a rainbow. They
came upon the falls in June, when the river had been
swollen by heavy rains. Yet, but for that and the sun
shine, it AA'as last Avinter just as they had described it.
The great fall is somcAvhat disappointing as seen frora
above, and raost raajestic when viewed from below. It
may be said to have two parts, one of which is a sheer
leap of a third of the river's bulk from over the edge of
a flat sharp-edged rock doAvn about 90 feet to the loAver
236

TART OF LOWER FALLS FROM BOTTOM OF CaSoN, LOOKI.NG KORTH

le\'el ; the other and raajor part plunges interruptedly,
at a lesser angle, doAvn upon other rocks, there to lash
and pound itself into a fury.
There are four distinct faUs above this, at sorae of
Avhich the walls of the river canon slope towards the
Avater, at others Avhere the Avails are precipitous. Everj'-
Avhere the grass and the dead and lifeless-looking rocks
edge the chasm. Everywhere the walls shoAv either
ledges and terraces or lines of stratification. Small
cottonwoods and bushes cling to Avhat shelves they can
find, islands of rock or small timber divide the SAvift
current, rapids almost innuraerable break the intervals
with veritable stairs, and the thunder of cascades or the
Ioav roar of swirUng Avaters fills the air. But wonderful
as the aggregation of water-Avashed declivities is, there
is one spot in the river which I would eagerly select
were I to know that I could visit but one of its many
points of interest again. That is the point frora whicii
one raaj' view both the Crooked Falls and the Rainbow
Falls. The Crooked Falls are most peculiar. To im
agine thera, not haA'ing seen them, the reader raust
fancy a deep and rugged caiion bedded Avith troubled,
racing water, and in the raiddle a great av ater- fall
shaped like the blade of a hatchet, Avhose hammer end
points up streara, Avhile the extreme corners of the blade
touch either shore. It is not a high fall. It is not 2o
feet high at the deepest part, I think, but it presents the
spectacle of AA'aters falling towards each other sidewise,
and at right angles and obtuse angles and in curves ; for
the hatchet forra, the reader raust recollect, is the shape
of the placid water, and the water-falls are around its
edges, playing their raajestic streams upon it.
There raay be other such falls in the world, but I never
saAV one. That part at right angles to the course of the
stream, which I have represented as the blunt end of the
239

hamraer, is that Avhich Avould naturally be the raain
cascade ; but in the Crooked Falls it is the least part — it
is a tiny fraction of the cascade. One bank of the river
is rocky and precipitous ; the other is low and sloping.
From the high bank across a slight curve the spectator
sees the Rainbow Falls— only 48 feet high, but the most
perfect and beautiful of all the leaps the great river
takes. All the falls are straight and sheer to the left of
the middle of the river, and are more or less broken and
terraced on the other side ; but Avhere the Rainbow Falls
are thus interrupted by projecting rocks the disturbance
is slight, and enhances the splendor of the effect.
From the Rainbow Falls the visitor sees the first sign
that Lewis and Clarke's diary is far behind the tiraes,
for in the distance are the chiraneys of the smelters and
other works that belong within the confines of that
new disturber of the maps of our school days called
Great Falls, a town which has grown up aboA'e the
plains in acknoAvledgment that man's conquest of the
wilderness is a thing of so distant a past tha't cities now
are growing up in his honor. Almost among these
evidences of man's complete domination of the land is a
freak of nature even raore surprising and unique than
the corabination of other Avonders in the neighborhood.
It is, apparently, a river bursting up through the earth
alongside of the Missouri. The spot is called the Giant
Springs, but one wishes he could know Avhat the Indians
used to call it, for they were the happiest of all folk at
such christenings. It is a Devil's Caldron, if you please,
or a Spouting River, or a Big Fo-antain. Over a great
space the water of these springs forras a pocket at one
side and close to the river. It looks, at the first glance,
as if it were a big pool that has been held apart from
the river by a chain of rocks, over Avhich it has risen
and is leaping ; but a second, longer glance shoAvs that
240

the middle of the surface of the pool is very much
higher than the Avater around it; a still closer look
makes it clear that the water is bubbling up not only
there, but in raany places, in raany aqueous raounds raade
liy raany strearas of water that spring with force and
volurae frora under the pool they create. Piers or
bridges have been built out over this extraordinarj'
fountain, and one raay walk far out upon them, and see
not onlj' the powerful disturbances of the Avater and
the raajestic body of it that pours over the rocks to add
another and nameless river to the Missouri's bulk, but
something besides, and far raore beautiful. That is the
vegetable life under the Avater. The Avater is as clear
as anj' that Avas ever seen, as colorless as that in Lake
Superior's bays, and far down on the rough rocky
bottom are Aveeds and' plants that lift their slender
many-shaped leaves to be swayed ceaselessly to and fro
by the commotion of the Avater. All the vegetation is
green, but none is so vividly and brightly green as the
Avater-cress plants. There are millions of these, fields of
thera. They are the largest, tenderest, most succulent
cresses I ever tasted, and are ahvays as cold as the
Avater, which is the next thing to ice, Avhether it be
tasted in midwinter or in July. Like everything else
pertaining to this playground of nature, the spring was
discovered bj' the first Avhite men who visited it. They
said of it that " the water of this fountain is of the most
perfect clearness and of rather a bluish cast, and even
after falling into the Missouri, it preserves its color for
half a raile." I did not notice this peculiarity, and
cannot say whether it continues to-day or not. But,
quite appropriate to this sudden upspringing of a bodj'
of Avater equal to that of a riA'er, is the fact that I was
told that in the country adjacent to the Missouri raore
than one river, after advancing for railes towards the
343

Missouri, suddenly ceases to exist, ending in a bed of
stones, as if the water sank through the earth's crust or
dried up.
Colter's Falls and Black Eagle Falls complete the
chain of great cascades. It would be tedious to write
or to read a list of the rapids. Colter's Falls are formed
by a combination of rapids and cascades, and are
scarcely worthy of separate raention, but the Black
Eagle Falls, by which the great river leaps down a dis
tance of nearly 32 feet, in a skip of five feet and a jurap
of nearly 27 feet, are great and roaring and beautiful.
At these faUs is now to be seen a great dam with build
ings on either side of the fall, one a power-house for
running an electric raihvay and lighting plant in the
city of Great Falls, and the other a huge sraelting-Avorks
for the reduction of copper ore. This dam and these
industries are but the beginnings of the projected utili
zation of all the va.st water-power Avhich the falling river
creates, and Avhich in other lands and eras would haA'e
squandered itself upon the incorapetent air, as Lewis and
Clarke described the charras of the great fall that
" since the creation had been lavishing its raagnificence
upon the desert."
Above the Black Eagle Falls and the dam is the city
of Great Falls, a place not j'et five j'ears old, but boast
ing 7000 population, two noAvspapers, an opera-house, a
club, good hotels, electrical service, several railroads —
and a desire to becorae the capital of Montana Avhen
the votes of the people of that State deterraine the per
manent seat of the State government. We avUI return
to another view of this ambitious little city after a
further sweep of the eye along the Missouri. It daAv-
dles along above the first falls all the way to the gate
of the mountains, as if unconscious of the tumbling it
has to go through, or as if tired after its hard-fought
244

contest Avith the Rockies, that press upon it, and even
squeeze and try to barricade it before it breaks awaj'
from thera. The distance from the mountains to the
first falls is thirtj' miles or more, and instead of saA'ages
and buffaloes and Avolves, the country is inhabited by
farraers, sheep-herders, cattle-raen, horse-ranchers, and
the station -raen and track - tenders of the railroads.
StraAvberries, potatoes, barlej', wheat, oats, apples, and
butter are sorae of the products of the region ; three
railUon pounds of avooI were shipped frora Great Falls
last year, broAvnstone is quarried there, and coal is
mined there. The transformation from the conditions
that LcAvis and Clarke found is coraplete and treraen
dous. Since I haA'e corae back frora there, I reraeraber
that the discoverers of that region said that strange
noises, as of explosions, frequently rolled oA'er the plains
from the mountains, and a foot-note in the Journal of
Lewis and Clarhe, published in 1842 bv Harper &
Brothers, declares that the Indians of Brazil accounted
for such noises in the raountains of that country by
saying that nature has a Avaj' of enclosing colored
stones " like jewelry " in cases or shells the size of a
raan's head, and then exploding them, Avhen they came
to maturitj', "to scatter about abundance of beautiful
stones." HoAvever this raaj' be, one raust go in precisely
the opposite direction, to where the Missouri has left
its rocky canon and begun to earn its reputation as a
rauddy river, before its beds of sapphires and garnets
are corae upon, near Helena.
Just as Niagara Falls is being harnessed to raanufact
ures by those who have estiraated the force that it
has been Avasting, so is this series of cascades and rapids
along the Missouri River beginning to be manacled to
the car of industrial progress. It is estimated that the
descent of the Missouri affords an opportunity to secure
347

250,000 horse-power of the cheapest and most reliable
sort, and a company that is largely made up of Noaa'
Yorkers has secured the land on either side of the river
for a distance of twelve miles beside the falls and rapids.
Mr. Paris Gibson, then a resident of Fort Benton, is
said to ha\'e been the first raan to think of utilizing this
Avasted power. He interested James J. Hill, the great
railroad operator of the NorthAvest, and then the steps
necessary for securing the land and the Avater rights Avere
taken, and four years ago. a companj' Avith $5,000,000
capital Avas organized. Messrs. D. WilUs James, J.
Kennedy Tod, J. S. Kennedy, Sraith Weed, John G.
Moore, and General Sarauel Thomas are mentioned
there as among the New-Yorkers who are interested in
the venture. The Montana Silver-Lead Sraelting-works,
in AA'hich other Ncav- Yorkers have an interest, Avas the
first company to put up Avorks on this tract, and coinci
dent Avith the building of the first dam at Black Eagle
Falls Avas the construction of the works of the Boston
and Montana Smelting-Avorks for the reduction of ores
brought frora Butte. About 20,000 horse -poAver is
obtained at this dam, and as the demand for more poAver
necessitates it, the Avork of building other dams Avill be
pushed farther and farther along the river. It is more
than the ordinary mind can conceive to estimate the
surprise of Messrs. LoAvis and Clarke, could they return
to earth and see, a few years from now, the banks of
that canon lined with factories backed by clusters of
the homes of Avorkmen, the falls and rapids each
seconded by daras, and all the water-poAver, Avhich thej'
regarded only as productive of scenic effects, trained to
turn the modern spinning-wheels, the turbines of to-daj'.
And who shall say Avhether they would envy the owners
of the power, or mourn the practical tendency of the
age? 248

CaSoN of the MISSOURI RITER, BELOW GREAT FALLS

A M.4.N FROM ANOTHER WORLD
At about Christraas-time last year there Avas an ob
vious and palpable stir among the older raen of the city
of Helena, the capital of Montana. It was not seen in
any raovement or gathering of these people ; indeed, it
Avould be difficult to say in what Avay it Avas made man
ifest, and yet there was plainly a strong influence at Avork
that disquieted and monopolized the leading raen. These
citizens Avhen they raet asked one another, " Have you
seen hira yet ?" or, " How does he look ?" or they ex
pressed a Avish to shake the hand or to get a glirapse of
sorae one — always the sarae person, evidently, and al
Avays referred to as " he " or " him." It was plain that
some one of extraordinary iraportance, and Avhose pres
ence was a novelty, Avas in the city and in e\'ery one's
thoughts. I, Avho did not especially deserve such good-
fortune, was araong the first to see hira. Mr. Hugh
McQuaid, one of the pioneers of Montana civilization,
though still a young man, was irapelled by his forraer
training as a journalist to take rae to see this pervasive
personaUty regarding whora he said, '• I Avish to raake
J'OU acquainted Avith a man frora another Avorld. I
Avouldn't on any account have you raiss talking Avith
hira." " A man from another Avorld f I repeated ; " miss
talking to hira ? I should say not. But Avho is he ?"
" Why, it's Johnny Healey, one of the finest and
bravest men Avho ever lived, and a pioneer and pillar of
the old days ; ex-sheriff of Choteau Countj' Avhen that
county Avas the size of New England — an old Indian
351

fighter and trader and hunter. He has been in Alaska
six J'ears, and has just come back to see the folks he
used to know and the places where he made his mark.
Everybody is crazy to see him ; I tell you he is a very
remarkable raan. He used to be a terror to road agents
and Injuns, and he is back again. To us of Montana it
is like the reappearance of a raan Avho has died. But
corae along. I've told hira you are here, and inade a
date with hira to see you, now, at the club."
" But why do you call hira ' a man from another
world V "
" Because it was another Avorld that Ave had here in
his days, when Montana contained only a few raw min
ing caraps, rainers, traders, woraen of only one kind ;
stage-coaches and no railways, shootings, hangings,
highwayraen, Indians. When raining Avas about the
only business, and the only law that amounted to any
thing Avas miner's law."
On the way to the attractive and alraost raetropolitan
headquarters of the Montana Club raan after man
stopped us to ask Mr. McQuaid whether he had seen
Mr. Healey, or " Johnnie.'' It Avas evident that the ex
citement would not abate until all had seen the hero of
the life that had departed.
I found Mr. Healey in the office of the secretary of
the club, stowed away behind a closed door, as if he
were too precious to be allowed to move around the
rooras where the card-tables and the ncAvspaper files and
the " loaded " turablers were in busy use. He seeraed
to me to be about fifty or perhaps fifty-five years of
age, a plain citizen who might have been taken for a
soldier in civil dress ; very spare and hard of flesh, light
in Aveight and slightly Celtic in facial features, AA'ith
brown hair and mustache and a grizzled goatee. He
Avas dressed distinctly like a man of the present Avorld
253

in what Ave call a " business suit." As I studied him
more and more closely I saw that he had very steady
and intense blue eyes, a sun-browned complexion, and a
strong chin and jaAv, to betoken great firmness. He
shoAved but one scar, a little one on one side of his nose,
where a cur had bitten him as he stooped down once
upon a tirae to enter an Indian tepee. That scar made
a great irapression on my mind, so often have I stooped
down to enter tepees, and so abundant and vicious are
the dogs Avherever there are tepees.
Mr. Healey would not talk about "the other world"
from Avhich he had come. He said it Avould look like
boasting, " and," he added, " Avhat's the use ?" He Avas
Avilling to tell rae all about the people and resources of
Alaska. He has a trading station at Chilcat, in that
territory, and for six years he has studied the less poetic
people of that region precisely as he once studied the
Sioux, Crows, Bloods, Blackfeet, Piegans, Crees, and
Stonies of our plains. But a lucky accident or inter
vention sent his thoughts and talk back to early Mon
tana. Some one passing along the hall outside the
roora called out, " Whose voice is that I hear ? Can I
corae in ? Why, bless rae, if I didn't know you by your
voice, Johnnie. How are you, old felloAv? You look
first-rate." " Why, hello, Tom ?"
The new-comer was United States Senator PoAver,
another old corarade and old-timer with Mr. Healej'.
The two men sat down, and I could not help contrast
ing the appearance of ray companions. Mr. McQuaid
and the senator Avere both men of full habit, soft-
faced, fat -handed, Avith every appearance of leading
easy, placid, in-door lives, accompanied by rich meals
regularly obtained. They were the men of to-day,
and they sat facing the raan of yesterday— the wiry,
355

browned, nervous, muscular, out-of-door serablance of
Avhat they had been. It was the scene of the famous
painting of "The Return of the Missionary" repeated.
As the missionary looks, surrounded by the cardinal,
his retinue and the raagnificent trappings of his pal
ace, so looked Mr. Healey for the next hour in the
Montana Club. Senator Power felt this, for after a
pause, during Avhich he looked Mr. Healey over frora
head to foot, he asked him a question that seeraed in
spired by the situation — the one question that could
fetch an answer to epitomize the entire gamut of con
trasted conditions.
"Johnny," the senator inquired, "you don't raean to
sav you are still at it, Avith your hand on your gun and
the border life around you ?"
" That's what I ara," said Healey ; and then he hastily
added, "but it ain't Avhat it used to be, Tora; not
near." A flood of recollections — pleasant, exciting, tragic, and
fierce — must have surged over the senator's mind, for
he sought relief and expression by turning to me with
a testimonial to Mr. Healey 's virtues such as any old
Montanian Avould be proud to haA'e earned, and such as
it ncA'er was my fortune to hear spoken of any man be
fore. " Healey was the best raan Ave ever had here in the
early days," said he. " He Avas afraid of nothing and no
one. You could not scare hira Avith a gun. He Avas as
quick as a cat, and as scientific as Sullivan. If you
pulled a gun on hira he Avould grab it Avith one hand
and knock j'ou down Avith another. The rough eleraent
Avanted no trouble Avith hira, I can tell you. If he was
out of reach of a gun that was pulled on hira he Avould
siraplj' laugh, and wait his chance at the raan Avho
threatened hira. He has made hundreds of arrests, and
256

never used a pistol once in taking a man. Is not that
so, Johnny ?"
" No," said the hero ; " I pulled a gun once."
" What tirae was that ?"
" Dutch Bill's gang."
"Oh."
I got Mr. Healey to tell me that story, but it Avas by
no means the equal in old-time fiavor of others that I
heard and heard of. He and a corapanion Avere out
after thieving Indians near Fort Benton, and they were
tired and hungry. They saw sorae horses and two
mounted men and rode up to thera. Mr. Healey rode
close to the raen, and they slipped off the beasts they
Avere riding and rested their rifies on the saddles in a
decidedly threatening manner. " Who are you," one
cried. "We're Avhite men," Healey shouted, riding
closer. " But Avho in  are you ?" the stranger in
sisted. By this tirae Mr. Healey was so close to the
raen that he could see what sort of rifles they Avere
" heeled " with. " Quick ! who are you ?" " Healey,"
said the hero of the story. " Then throw up your
hands,  you," was the answer. Instantly Mr.
Healey thrcAV himself sidewise over his horse so as to
expose but one foot, and dashed away for his life. His
companion foUoAved suit. As they rode away Mr.
Healey said, " They've been stealing horses, and I'm go
ing back to stampede the horses and get thera aAvay.
Come on."
"You'U get killed— and that's aU you'U get," the
other replied. But Mr. Healey on his superb horse Avas
dashing back as if the grass was on fire behind hira.
Both raen rode right up to the bunch of stolen horses
and began firing at the raen, who Avere still behind the
barricades they had formed of their horses. Mr. Healey
shot both their saddle horses and stampeded the stolen
R 357

steeds, getting them away Avith him. Next day one of
the thieves Avas captured and brought into Fort Benton
by sorae one else, and on the day after that Mr. Healey
rode out for the other scarap. He rode up to a shack, or
rude house, Avhere he suspected the other desperado
would hide, and learned that the raan he wanted would
soon return ; that he had gone aAvay for Avater. When
the raan did return, Healey, standing in the doorway of
the shack, covered the raan with his gun and remarked :
" It is my turn, now ; hold up your hands."
That was the only tirae that, as constable or sheriff,
he had occasion to threaten a man's life in order to
make an arrest.
I talked with Mr. Healey then and afterwards, and
found my appetite for stories of the old raining-camp
life keenly whetted. In the course of my quest for the
recollections of the pioneers, I learned that one who
had a knack at writing had made a book of what he
kneAV, and that this book had been declared by no less a
person than Charles Dickens to be " the most interest
ing volurae he ever read." It was on his second visit to
this country that the faraous English novelist had ob
tained and read the Avork; at least that is Avhat the
raost reputable raen out there believe and declare.
Very eagerly I sought the book, and after but little
trouble obtained a copy. As I had suspected, it left Ut
tle else to look for by one Avho Avished a clear reflection
of the mining-camp scenes in the early " sixties," when
Alder Gulch and then Last Chance Gulch (Helena) sent
the farae of their gold yields broadcast and attracted a
host of rainers, prospectors, traders, and adventurers
frora California, Utah, Nevada, Missouri, Arkansas,
Kentucky, and raany other States, into the new region
of diggings.
It is called 358

THE YIGILANTES OF MONTANA
OR
POPULAR JUSTICE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

BEING A CORRECT AND IMPARTIAL NARRATIVE OF THE CHASE,
TRIAL, CAPTURE, AND EXF,CDTION OF
HENRY PLUMMER'S ROAD AGENT BAND
TOGETHER WITH ACCOUNTS OP THE LIVES AND CRIMES OF MANT OF THE ROB
BERS AND DESPERADOES, THE WHOLF, BEING INTERSPERSED WITH
SKETCHES OF LIFE IN THE
/ MINING CAMPS OF THE "FAR WEST"

BY
Prof. THOMAS J. DIMSDALE

SECOlfS EDITION

VIRGINIA CITY, M. T.
D. W. TILTON, PUBHSHEH
1882
I had intended to quote liberally from the professor's
book.* I wrote to his publisher at his printed address
in Virginia City and at another address to Avhich it
was said he had reraoved, but I got no reply. Then I
interested sorae friends in Montana in the task and they
failed. It is a pity, for no substitute can be raade for
the charms of the plain and direct tale which thrilled
the great novelist.
It is indeed an interesting and a very peculiar book.
It is not true, as its title indicates, that it is an irapartial
account of the scenes and contentions it records, but
* A more modein and comprehensive work upon the times and characters
of the Vigilantes has been wiitten by Nathaniel P. Langford, of St. Paul,
Minn., and is called 'Vigilante Days and Ways.
359

perhaps it is as nearly fair and frank as it would be
possible to find a history written by a spectator of, if
not an actor in, a drama of such heated and desperate
action as that which began with Avholesale murder,
robbery, and arrogant vagabondism, and ended by tassel-
ing the trees with the swinging bodies of desperadoes
executed by an excited populace. The time has scarcely
yet arrived Avhen a history of the vigilance committees
of either California or Montana can be absolutely im
partially set down, because many of the participants in
those moveraents are yet alive, and because sorae araong
those Avho took part in thera were little better than or
different frora the men they chased and shot and hung.
In the presence of a company of these heroes of that
other and boisterous era, I explained the conditions
that render such a work unlikely by an interrogation
that I put to thera — though not without some hesitation
and timidity.
"Gentlemen," said I, "in reading about these nec
essary and righteously conceived uprisings in the far
West, it has several times struck rae that the Vigilantes
Avere not all of thera better than the outlaws. Ara I
right about that ? Were all the Vigilantes wholly de
serving of the admiration the people bestow upon
them?" "Well," one old settler replied, "I guess you are
right. You see, things were red-hot when they carae to
the pass where vigilance bands were organized, and
some men who saw that right was going to triumph
over wrong were induced by their shrewdness to take
sides with law and order."
" There is one thing that you raust raake note of that
is not put down in the records," said another, " and that
is that in these raining coraraunities there Avere raany
Aveak and shifty characters who. were not bad at heart
360

and did not want to be bad in deed, but who found thera
selves siding with the outlaws and did not know how to
break away. Soraetiraes these Avere raen Avho Avere
asked or forced to give sorae little assistance to the
desperadoes — to shelter thera, or outfit thera, or perform
some other act that they did not dare to refuse. After
having done it they never had the courage to shake off
the relationship that grew up betAveen thera and the out
laws. Then there was one notable but unique case of a
man who trailed with the bad raen Avhen he was drunk
and Avith the decent ones when he was sober. But the
niajority of men who becarae Vigilantes after having
raore or less dealings with the desperadoes Avere the
store-keepers and tavern-keepers and others avIio had
trade relations with every class in each community, and
Avho knew their bread Avas buttered by sticking to the
stronger side. Until the Vigilantes Avere organized and
set in action the thugs ruled the roost, and these politic
persons kept in their good graces. As soon as they
saw that order and justice were cUrabing up on top thej'
carae over to us. The cases of actual ' state's evidence,'
where outlaws joined us, were A'ery few indeed, for the
reason that if they had been notorious Ave were after
thera to hang them, not to associate with thera.
" Our raining coramunities all go through the sarae
processes betAveen the first stage of ' the stampede ' to
the neAV finds and the last stage when the yield of
metal and the interests that groAV up around the raines
becorae so iraportant that lawlessness and torafoolerv
* cease to be possible, and then the raen of avUI and Avortli
get together and enforce good order. It will surprise
raany persons to knoAv that one kind of laAv — and it is a
very strict kind — obtains frora the very outset at everj'
new carap that is started. That is the law governing
the interests of rainers to one another in their pure
361

character as mine-holders and mine-workers. This law
or set of laws originated in California, and has becorae
the basis of justice as regards mining property all over
the West. It is the law in California, Montana, Idaho,
Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado, and a separate class of
lawyers has been developed in consequence. A laAvyer
who is famous for his knowledge of raining laAv soon
becoraes a rich and important character in these States.
Such specialists are the only ones who are retained in
suits over mining property, because the ordinary laAvj'ers
do not pretend to understand this peculiar system of
legislation. It is as different from the coraraon law as
is the Code Napoleon. It grew up out of the coraraon-
sense, everj'-day rules that every carap established at
the beginning Avhen the men first began to stake out
their claims. By common agreeraent thej' were to
raake claims of a certain size, announce and protect
them in certain ways, and retain possession of them by
the performance of certain obligations. As tirae Avent
on numerous complications arose, and these had to be
adjudicated by local arbiters or referees, there being no
courts to try the suits. For instance, a lead of ore run
ning through several claims would set all the owners of
those clairas by the ears as to whose rights controlled
the situation. There are hundreds and hundreds of
possibiUties for contention, and new ones arise all the
tirae. As raining claims were all the property that
most of the men in a carap possessed, equitable rules
had to be established and enforced. This was done,
even though the civU law w&s left hundreds of miles '
behind and forgotten.
"No one who is given to reflection wiU wonder at
the lawlessness of the raining caraps. The starapedes
to such scenes Avere always bj' motley crews of men
among whom the bad ones formed a greater proportion
263

than they do in civilized and settled places. Men Avho
had failed at everything else, deserters frora the array,
garablers, outlaAvs, traraps, and raen Avho had forever
forsworn the fetters of organized society, Avere in the
croAA'ds along with the earnest and reputable raen Avliose
sole hope was that of bettering their poor or perverse
fortunes. The desperadoes in all new caraps are free to
carry weapons, are equipped with monej', and have re
sorted to such a region solely because of the opportuni
ties it affords them to live and do as they please without
let or hinderance by the restrictions Avhich civiUzation
iraposes upon raankind. Terrible indeed would be the
consequences of such conditions if it Avere not for the
character of the raen Avhose reasons for going into such
regions are not such as raake them sympathize Avith out
lawry. Rough and rude the law-abiding men may ap
pear, but their instincts are right, and they are as fear
less, to say the least, as the desperadoes. They soon
learn that their power and safety lie in acting justly but
sternly and quickly Avhenever, in the absence of other
law, they need to take laAvs of their own making into
their hands. Men who go to the mining regions have
to draAV a fine line as to the character they propose to
exhibit there. They must be good or bad, and must de
clare theraselves quicklj^ there being no loose Une or
latitude between the two sorts of men. Where every
sense is keen, and judgment of character is unerring,
the raass of the people quickly place a new-comer where
he belongs, if he is slow about raaking up his own raind.
" Long after a raining carap has purged itself of ruf
fian rule, and has set up the civil laAv, there still remains
a tendency towards prodigious drinking araong the peo
ple of nearly every class. What raust have been the
amount of drinking when there was neither law nor or
der you can perhaps imagine. Men without the re-
363

straint of law, indifferent to public opinion, and unbur
dened by farailies, drink whenever they feel like it,
whenever they have the raoney to pay for it, and when
ever there is nothing else to do. Gin-raills of the vilest
sort, in great nurabers, spring up in such regions, and do
a thriving business. Bad raanners follow, profanity be
coraes a raatter of course, and with that goes the ten
dency to let speech becorae too free and personal. Ex
citability and nervousness brought on by rura help these
tendencies along, and then to correct this state of
things the pistol coraes into play, and it is understood
that if certain words are uttered blood is likely to be
shed. To call a raan a liar, a thief, or a coward, or to
apply a too coraraon expression that refiects upon a
raan's ancestrj', is to court a bullet frora his pistol.
' Thief ' is a particularly crirainal word according to
the rainer's code, because actual thieving is a capital
crirae. No one is punished for killing like a dog any
raan who is caught stealing.
"Where there is sorae pretence of the existence of
law it is usually ridiculous in its injustice. Part of what
is called ' law ' in a wide-open mining camp is the rec
ognized rule that shootings are justified for the causes
here mentioned, so that, just as in sorae so-called civil
ized coraraunities no jury avUI find a verdict against men
for dueUing or for killing the destroyers of their homes,
here in the raountains raen are discharged from custody
if they have murdered those who questioned their ve
racity. Under such conditions the bully of a camp goes
scot-free, no matter what he does, and so does the swag
gering, ' fiush ' garabler, whose friends applaud hira be
cause he runs a fair garae, befriends the poor, has killed
a raan for insulting an unprotected fast woraan, and
who, in various ways, has raade hiraself a local hero able
to defy the raockery called law. It is not necessary to
364

add that in such coraraunities another class of raen who
do as they please are the rich men, who raay not be pop
ular, but are able to discover means for escaping punish
ment when they earn it. In a Avord, all the law there
is finds itself enforced only against the poor, the shift
less, and the unpopular. I am speaking of the new
caraps, before the orderly citizens take control."
'• In the settleraent of New England," said another of
these graduates frora ruder conditions, " it is said that
the first thought of a new community was toAvards the
establishment of a school-house and a church. In the
mining regions the first institutions of a public charac
ter Avere a piano and a bUUard-table. Of course, in the
mountains (and especially before the railroads began to
run all over them as they do in Colorado and other
States) such bulky things were not hauled in, and a hur
dy-gurdy or a banjo took the place of the piano, Avhile a
roulette -wheel or a siraple lay-out for faro or craps
served instead of the billiard-table. The billiard-table
represented the garabling-house, and also served, in sorae
places, for a theatrical stage, if a strolling company of
actors or minstrels happened along. The musical in
struraent Avas the mainstay and ad\'ertisement of such
a house as harbored the first woraen who carae to the
camp. With gambUng saloons run wide open, and out
cast Avoraen the only feraales (or alraost the only ones)
in the carap, one can perceive hoAv such raen as once
possessed refineraent were almost certain to lose it,
while such as were hardened becaine all the raore cal
lous and reckless. The Avoraen are, and always used to
be, araong the first-comers after the noise of the start
ing of a new camp got abroad. It is their habit to
leaA'e a place as soon as it begins to groAv dull, and they
jurap for the next new camp about which they hear talk
among the men. They are by no means tramps. Even
365

in the. wildest days of early mining they spent large
suras of raoney to get transportation frora place to
place, and to have houses built for thera as soon as they
arrived. Then they would raake a great display of
feathers, silks, gay colors, and frescoed faces on the
streets. So long as they continued free they were treated
Avith rude deference and respect, and the dust (gold) was
shoAvered upon them. Thej' kept good accounts at the
bankers — soraetimes mounting up to the thousands —
and had costly jeAvelry and clothing that the rough
miners thought the Queen of France would give one of
her fingers to own. It really Avas costly finery, though
I Avouldn't vouch for its strict corapliance with the Pa
risian fashion in make-up.
" Since all that was softening and gentleizing in the
camps proceeded from these women, it is Avorth while
to halt a raoraent at a public dance-hall in an old-fash
ioned carap. In these days such places are far fcAver
than they used to be. The variety theatres, where the
feraale performers visit Avith the audience between their
appearances on the stage, have taken the place of the
old-time resorts where the miners used to dance Avith
the 'hurdy-gurdies,' as the girls were called. There
raight not have been a church or a reputable resort of
any kind in one of these caraps, and the dance-hall Avas
really the raost orderly and the least harraful place in
the outfit. To be sure, rura, jealousy, old feuds, and any
one of a dozen causes raight start a row in such a place.
And rows were not infrequent. Pistols, dirks, fists, and
bottles were used ; frightened raen hid behind Avoraen ;
the woraen screaraed or laid doAvn on the ball-roora
floor, and there was much excitement whether any harra
Avas done or not. But fights took place, as the Avind
blows, wherever they happened, so that this feature Avas
not the fault of the dance-house. There the dancing-
366

floor was beyond the bar, and it cost a dollar to go upon
it and to pick out a partner frora araong the women Avho
sat around the sides of the room. In some places they
wore decollete dresses, in sorae their skirts Avere abbre
viated ; in sorae all were dressed alike, and in sorae they
Avere siraply clad as any other woraen raight have been,
according to their varying tastes. There was a band of
music in the corner or at the end of the room, and
when each man had selected a partner the floor-raanager
called out Avhat sort of dance he pleased : a polka, a
schottische, a Virginia real, or a quadrille. The Avaltz
Avas not danced out here in those daj's.
" The men would have impressed a tenderfoot as a
very queer lot. Some Avore buckskin coats and cloth
trousers and others wore cloth coats and leather trou
sers. Trousers, a flannel shirt, boots, a bowie-knife,
revolver, and leather belt, satisfied others. As a rule,
all were bearded, wore their hair long, and carried both
knives and pistols. Garablers, raine -owners, rainers,
store-keepers, clerks — all the sorts of raen there Avere in
the camp were in the place. At the close of each dance
every man led his fair partner up to the bar for a drink,
and she took ' soft stuff,' or hard liquor, or what she
pleased — even charapagne, at frora ten to fifteen dollars
a bottle, if she wanted it, and if her partner was ' flush.'
Drinks carae high, but the prices varied according to
how far from a railroad the place Avas and how Avell the
carap was panning out. It did not cost less than a dol
lar in most places for tAvo drinks, no matter what they
were or hoAv cheap the proprietor bought them. The
hired dancers Avere paid according to the number of
tiraes they were invited out upon the floor. The pret
tiest and raost popular ones raade the raost monej', of
course, but in those rough places where the woraen Avere
so feAV, I never saw one so ugly or unshapely or ill-man-
367

nered that there were not plenty of raen eager to pay for
the right to enjoy her company for the few minutes that
a dance lasted. Coining right from the effete East, you
might not have thought all the men polite to them, es
pecially if you chanced to hear a low-broAved, ruffianlj' f el-
loAv call out, ' Here, gal, let's j'ou and I have a spin,' in
a voice like that of a fog-horn. Nevertheless, every raan
Avas as polite as he knew hoAv to be, and the Avomen had
little to coraplain of, all things considered. It was only
Avhen thej' linked their fortunes Avith some garabler or
bullj', who then thought he had the right to abate his
tenderness, that they were abused — and not then, in
most cases. It was not safe or healthj' to notoriously
abuse anybody Aveaker than yourself — man or woman
— and it ought not to be safe to do so anywhere in the
Avorld." Professor Dimsdale wrote that what he called "the
mountains," by which he meant the mining camps, " cir
cumscribe and bound the paradise of amiable and ener
getic women." He asserted that they Avere treated with
the greatest deference and liberality, and that there was
an unAvritten law that gave such Avomen a power for good
that they could never hope to attain elsewhere. But
Avhile I was in Montana I heard of an era earlier than
that Avhich he Avrotc about, when there were practicallj'
no such women in the camps, and when the only woraen
Avho were there Avere treated as only good woraen should
be treated. The raen even took their hats off to thera
in the streets. A tale is told of a happening in a place
called Pioche — I think that was the town. A powder-
barrel exploded in a cellar under a store and a nuraber
of men received dreadful injuries. The only Avoraen
then in the place tore up their linen for lint and band
ages, and applied theraselves to the care of the wounded.
They took the injured into their houses and nursed
268

thera. Soon afterwards the house of one of these hu
raane creatures Avas burned to the ground, and, in re
merabrance of her good conduct, the men made up a
purse, built her a noAv house, and sent to San Francisco
for a piano that cost twelve hundred doUars by the time
it got to her.
From a historian who has not yet published his col
lected notes I got some queer raeraoranda respecting
the dancers above referred to, and to raany others who
sought the new caraps, both raen and Avoraen. They
raade their slow and uncorafortable Avay to Virginia
City, in Southern Montana, by stage-coach, and the
journey cost soraetiraes as high as fifteen hundred dol
lars from Omaha. The fare by way of Denver and Salt
Lake vvas $575, and all baggage Avas carried at $1 50
a pound. Ornaraents, dresses, everything, had to be
brought ; for practically nothing except food, powder,
pistols, guns, raining irapleraents, and men's clothing
could be bought in the camps. When a Avoraan reached
a carap she Avas obliged to order the building of a log-
house or cabin. These Avere very rude buildings, in the
Avails of which raud was used to fill up the chinks be
tween the logs. It was a woraan's work to put these
finishing touches to a horae ; it raattered not Avhat her
character or standing. The women raade the mud
and patted it in place with their hands.
When the house was ready for use the floor was cov
ered with green cow -skins staked to the earth Avith
wooden pegs. They made a fine carpet except Avhile
they Avere " curing," then it was not pleasant to be in
such a house. Cow-skins Avere put on the roof and cov
ered Avith raud to keep out the cold, the heat, and the
rain ; but when it rained the woraen went out of doors
and stood in the rain to save their dresses frora the raud
that leaked through and fell in the houses. Beds Avere
369

raade by building a fraraework of wood and fitting the
ends of one side of the frarae into auger-holes in the
logs of one Avail. Ticking was bought and filled with
straw and a buffalo robe Avas laid over the raattress.
Candles were the only Ughts at first, but by-and-by, in
Virginia City, oil-laraps were introduced.
Professor Dirasdale speaks of the certainty of a shoot
ing scrape in the dance-halls. The woraen were not un
used to such occurrences, and one who has added her
recollections to the notes I have read, declares that,
when raen began to shoot, she made it a rule to throw
herself flat on the floor and scream. Women were not
shot at, struck, or maltreated ; no man dared to misbe
have in that way. On the contrary, a raan Avho admired
a woraan's dancing or beauty or araiabiUty would take
out his charaois bag of gold-dust and say, " Hold out
your hands and tell me when to stop pouring." Over
come by such a tribute, they found it impossible to
speak in order to interrupt the floAV of dust. So, I fancy,
Avould a prima -donna in the merry old days in St.
Petersburg have found her voice choked if it were com
manded of her that she should cry " Enough !" Avhile
the nobles were flinging jewels and roubles at her feet
upon the stage.
Gold-dust Avas the money of the era in which " The
Man frora Another World " figured in the Montana rain
ing caraps. " Weigh out," was Avhat the bar-tenders used
to say at such times, as men of to-day would say " pay
up," or " settle." WhereA'er business Avas done, a pair
of light jewellers' scales was at hand, and, as every man
carried his dust in a bag, the gold was weighed out
to close each transaction. The price of admission to
the theatres was a pinch of dust. Many men, fearing
robbery or the loss of all their dust through drink or
garabling, raade it a practice to give the treasure to a
370

Avoman to keep. The woraen did not steal ; not because
they Avere honest, but because it did not pay to do so.
The " shacks " or cabins of which I have spoken are still
plentiful in Montana. Even in Helena several are j'et to
be seen. They are very rauch sraaller than the reader
would imagine, not very much higher than the croAvn
of the head of a man of ordinary stature. They contain
only one room as a rule ; and, if ray recollection serves
me, are often without windoAvs.
Mr. John Maguire, the famous Western actor and
manager, now at Butte, Montana, told me some of his
early theatrical experiences. He went from Salt Lake
to Pioche in Nevada by stage under an engageraent for
a Aveek's perforraances. Instead of a theatre — this Avas
in the " sixties " — he found a big shack of logs, chinked
up the sides and roofed over with canvas. There Avas a
rude stage, and the benches were doAvn in a graded pit
with mother-earth for the fioor. He was to have $100,
and two women in the company engaged for $60 and
$40. The stock company of the place gathered around
a big stove in the middle of the theatre, shivering in
their overcoats. They had been sleeping under the
stage and on the benches. They did not earn enough
money to live at the hotel. Lodging at the hotel cost
$12 a Aveek ; cocktails cost four bits (50 cents), and so
did a shave. A week's bill at the hotel averaged about
$30. The local actors Avere Avofully incompetent — in
deed, one of them told Mr. Maguire that " the only thing
he could play was a cornet." The actors of ability, like
Mr. Maguire, Avere treated Avith respect ; the actresses
received chivalric attentions, but, alas ! in this particular
toAvn the raanager every night gambled away the money
taken in at the door.
Sometiraes, during and at the close of the War of the
RebelUon, theatrical folk played upon billiard-tables, or
371

in dining-rooras where the tables Avere massed together
to make a stage ; or in any empty building there hap
pened to be. Each traveUing company carried curtains
and a fcAV roUed-up, painted scenes, representing a
kitchen, a parlor, and a street or forest. They hung
these scenes frora copper Avires stretched frora wall to
wall and fastened Avith screw -eyes. For an actor's
dressing-roora, or a dressing-roora for the ladies, they
strung up blankets before or behind the curtain, in a
corner. They got light by massing candles in many
parts of such an auditoriura.
The good corapanies raade alraost as rauch raoney as
they do noAV because the price of admission was high.
It Avas a pinch of gold-dust, and that Avas worth $2 or
$2 50. The miners offered their bags at the door, and
the ticket-takers pinched the dust. A room might hold
150 to 300 persons, and there was sufficient raoney in
the business to terapt the best talent. Mr. Barrett and
Mr. Jefferson, Miss Eytinge and Lotta have all played
in such caraps. If a perforraer, particularly a lady,
pleased the crowds, they threw slugs and nuggets of
gold and coins upon the stage. Singers Avho could
" touch the heart " Avere in great deraand, and a certain
Maggie Moore coined money on this account.
The mention of Miss Moore brought to the memory
of Mr. Maguire the fact that the music of the orchestras
was atrocious.
" The orchestras were usually coraposed of a fiddler
and a pianist," said Mr. Maguire, "and while one
played in the key of G the other played in the key
of K."
This Maggie Moore Avas heartly encored on one oc
casion but would not respond. An old actress Avho Avas
dressing behind the blankets that separated the retiring
room from the auditoriura said, " Go on, Maggie." " Oh,
272

1 can't," said the younger actress, bursting into tears ; " I
can't sing to such horrid music." Every Avord Avas heard
by the audience, and one man arose and called out : " Go
ahead, raiss ; if he don't play better I'll fill hira full of
bullets." In tirae, when the terrible reign of the outlaAvs of the
Montana camps had begun to prove unendurable, the
line draAvn between the lawless and the reputable raen in
the camps became so tight that the tension was frightful.
It Avas felt that neither life nor property Avere safe; that
the " bad " raen Avere not AvilUng to stop at anything,
and that, if only from self-interest, the decent folk
must band together and make relentless war upon the
evil-doers until the latter should see that the countrj'
had become too hot to hold them. Nine men, some in
Virginia City and some in Bannock, led all the rest in
the Vigilante movement. The word " vigilante " is
used because the same sort of bodies that Avere called
Vigilance Comraittees in California Avere never spoken
of in Montana otherwise than as Vigilantes. Just as
there had been too raany weak and irapassive raen
Avhen the evil-doers Avere having all things their own
way, so there instantly Avas forraed a general and com
raon courage and unity for the reform Avhen it was
felt that punishment and protection Avere about to be
extended to all Avho needed either. Professor Dimsdale
says that in the swift, stern Avork of the Vigilantes
twenty-four Avicked lives were sacrificed ; but he adds
that before the outlaws Avere thus brought to terras
they had caused the loss of at least one hundred Ua'cs in
that sparsely settled country.
The Avays of the outlaAvs and the methods by which
justice Avas adrainistered to thera Avere both peculiar.
The chief of the road agents was Henry Plummer, " a
perfect gentleman," after the manner of the heroes in
3 273

California's records of a sirailar period in that State.
We can iraagine him perfectly Avithout asking for anj'
raan's recollection of his appearance: a slight, Avell-
forraed, dapper raan, modestly and Avell attired, careful
to be barbered whenever it Avas possible, and always
armed to the teeth. As a raatter of recorded fact, he
could empty a revolver in an incredibly short tirae.
When he or any of his friends Avere in need of money,
the practice was to intercept a stage or an express load
of bullion, or to lurk beside a highAvay for the purpose
of robbing the first person Avho carae along. They very
frequently added murder to the lesser crirae. One of
Pluraraer's forraer corapanions had robbed and raur
dered a man, and, riding into toAvn with his booty, was
killed by Plumraer, who had broken friendship with him
sorae time previously. The murderer brought on his
own death by too rauch boasting, and Pluramer, after
remarking that he was tired of hearing the man's self-
praise, emptied his revolver into his head and body.
The murderer begged for his life, but got no mercy. It
Avas bad enough to have such acts coraraitted in a set
tleraent where innocent folk ran raany chances of being
shot, and where others Avere frightened half out of their
Avits, but it was worse to think that these ruffians Avere
raore apt to find victiras araong the honest folk than to
kill one another.
These raen of the Pluramer stripe Avould shoot or mal
treat a raan Avhora they had never seen before, siraply
because they did not like his looks, or his dress, or be
cause he AA'ould not drink Avith him. They sought
quarrels where they dared, on any pretext, and literally
terrorized all but the men of undaunted courage. They
took part in politics, and managed to get publio offlces
that gave them the greater power and opportunity for
evU. Plumraer, the leader, Avas actually elected sheriff,
274

and it is easy to imagine Avhat sort of aides he drew
around hira, and Avhat use he raade of his office. So
long as he was unopposed by any corabination of up
right raen the people Avhora he terrorized aided hira in
his arabitions, and suffered frora his criraes in silence.
He proved a Avretched poltroon Avhen the Vigilantes
caught hira and put him to death on the gallows. He
had been a marked raan frora the raoraent the reforra
ers began their Avork. He Avas caught Avith difficulty,
and then there seemed nothing that he Avas not willing
to proraise rather than die. He said his praj'ers — an
act which to his ruffianly corarades must have seemed
both annoying and ignoble — and he confessed all his
criraes. Others cried " like woraen," as the saying
goes, Avhen thej' Avere confronted with violent deaths
that Avere raore humane than they had meted out to
their unoffending victiras. Short, sharp work, by no
means unattended with danger to the Vigilantes, Avas
made Avith the Avretched lives of all Avho were captured,
and the reign of order that has since prevailed in Mon
tana Avas thus inaugurated.
Such were some of the cdnditions in that "other
Avorld" frora Avhich it seeraed to the people of Helena
that Johnny Healey returned the other daj'. He raixed
with that strange Ufe the still more strange career of a
trader Avith the wild Indians of those days, but, as Mr.
Kipling would say, " that is another story."
375

VIII
WASHINGTON: THE EVERGREEN STATE
I HAVE called Montana the Treasure State, and have
shoAvn that it is vastly larger than Pennsylvania, Avith
prospectively raany tinies its wealth in minerals and in
the variety of its resources. But rauch that we find
proraised in Montana is amplified within the territory
of Washington. The hopeful inhabitants of the former
boldly adopt the raotto, " The last shall be first," as if
to say that amid the riches of Avhich they find suggest
ion and proraise all around thera, they see for them
selves a greater wealth-producing future than is boasted
at present by any of the older States. I cannot folloAv
them so far. There is a certainty that Washington has
more varied resources than Montana, and I think that,
with or Avithout irrigation, Washington Avill support a
larger population ; but with both States it is too early
for closer comparisons. The vast treasures of precious
raetals in Montana are sufficiently Avorked to give as
definite a basis for hope as is found in the raarvellous
soil and forests of Washington, but in both States there
are great areas of thirsty soil whose future is a raoot
point in Washington, and of which in Montana it is
only certain that they yield a good return frora their
present use as grazing-grounds for cattle.
The Evergreen State is a huge block of land. It is
as large as New England and Delaware, as Pennsyl
vania and West Virginia. It contains 69,994 square
276

miles. It is 360 railes Avide between the Pacific coast
and the Idaho border, and to journey over it from
British Colurabia southAvard is to travel 245 railes. It
is the raost populous of the new States, and its inhab
itants outnumber those of Oregon. In 1890, according
to the last census, it contained 349,390 souls, but its
people now assert that they number 360,000. They
have suffered some losses in certain cities, or the in
crease would be from 15,000 to 20,000 greater.
The State shows to poor advantage for those who
cross it upon the Northern Pacific Railroad, because the
route taken by that great and Avell-equipped line lies
across an extensive desert of sage-brush, and then cross
es a vast reach of usually broAvn bunch-grass before it
plunges into the mazes of the Cascade Mountains and
rushes out frora thera upon the perennially green Pa
cific slope into the Puget Sound country. But the ne
cessities of railway construction corapel a disregard for
such choice of territory as Avould be raade bj' an agri
culturist or a scenery-hunting tourist, and, in this case,
even the land granted to the raihvay, along its route, is
in great part very valuable, though its richer parts are
not always close beside the rails. Washington is in
every material way a grand addition to the sisterhood
of States. With the easy and rich fancy of the West,
her people say that if you build a Chinese wall around
Washington the State will yield all that her inhabit
ants need Avithout contributions from the outer Avorld.
Nevertheless, the Chinese Avail they think of oftenest is
the true one, and that thej' wish to break down, for a
trade Avith Asia is a thing dear to their hopes.
" If I could onlj' have half an hour Avith the Emperor
of China," said a talented son of Washington, in whose
veins the blood of one of our most gifted orators is
fiowing, " I Avould raake this the richest State west of
277

the Mississippi. I would teU hiin we Avanted the trade
of Asia as New York has that of Europe. I would ex
plain to hira that we entertain no prejudice against his
people, and raean no insult in shutting thera out of our
territory. I Avould make it clear to him that our dislike
is only for his coolies, but that as for his merchants
and scientists and scholars— Ave welcorae thera, we want
thera, especially the raerchants."
Now let us look at this great State in detail, keeping
in raind that it is by nature divided into tAvo parts bj'
the Cascade Mountains, Avhich bisect it along a line to
the AA'estward of the middle of the State. West of the
mountains is the seat of the great timber industry of
the future. There the land is all heavily timbered ex
cept in the bottom-lands and at the deltas of the
strearas, and agriculture, though a future source of
great Avealth, is yet but a sraall factor. East of the
Cascade Range there is sraaller, inferior tiraber, but it
cuts a rainor figure in the Avealth or character of the
State, for in the raain Ave have returned to land sorae
thing like that of the other new States — we are at the
end of the plains that have crossed the Rocky Mount
ains, and we are again in a bunch-grass country. But
in crossing the Rockies the plains ha\'e partaken of their
character, or rather of the disturbance that produced
thera. A large area of eastern Washington has been
several tiraes overflowed by lava, and it crops out in a
disorder that is soraetiraes abundant in the Big Bend
country and in the sage - brush lands. The powder or
decay of this lava makes rich land, and Avhere it is driest
and most forbidding, the addition of Avater will turn it
into a blooming garden. The Columbia River floAvs
through this country in a deep gorge far below the
level of the adjacent land ; and there are other great
gorges, like cracks in the earth, where you may see
278

marked in the side Avails eight or ten distinct strata or
flows of lava. At the bottom of these " coulees" there
is generally good land underlaid by lava. It is used for
range land for cattle. For the rest, a great part of east
ern Washington is in hills and mountains with valleys
between thera, Avith grassy or wooded slopes, profltable
always to the fruit-grower, the farmer, or the cattle
man. Gold, silver, copper, lead, and small coal basins
are found all over the northern tier of counties. This
is part of that extraordinary treasure belt that reaches
from the Cascade Mountains across Washington, across
the Rockies and Idaho, and far into Montana. It is a
vast tract of once -convulsed nature, a sweeping ocean
of timbered billows of rock and soil. Where man has
scratched the Avestern end of it — and he has nowhere
done raore than that — is in the Kootenay country, but
everyAvhere its productiveness is thought to be fabulous.
Its western end, at the Cascades, is a raarvellous scenic
region. For grand desolation, ruggedness, vastness, and
priraitive wildness, it is unparalleled in our country.
Below the ever snow-clad peaks that raise their white
heads above the black solitudes of the forests are un
numbered glaciers, sorae of thera even ten or twelve
railes long, and raany of thera a quarter that length.
The forests on the west slope of the Cascades are be-
Avildering, stultifying to the mind, in their magnitude
and denseness and stupendous individual growths. The
entire western slope of the main range is a solid belt of
cedar and Douglas fir. There is spruce among the fir,
and in the bottoms a Uttle cotton- Avood and maple, but
these lesser woods are unconsidered. The Douglas firs
attain a size of frora eighteen inches to eight feet in
diaraeter. They shoot 100 feet in air without putting
out a lirab, and then, above the first Urabs, they tower
100 feet higher, and often more than that. The cedars
280

vary between a foot and a half to fifteen feet in thick
ness. The larger trees are hollow at the butt for many
feet above the ground, but this still leaves frora one to
three feet of solid tiraber around each hollow core.
Over thousands of square railes upon the forest bed
lies the debris of another forest prone upon the ground,
as if a tangle of toothpicks frora 200 to 300 feet in
length had been strcAvn upon the earth, and through
and over this giant lace- work grows the forest of to-day.
The roots of the new trees straddle and ride the
trunks of the old ones. The fallen firs are rotten, but
the cedars are as stout and sound as when they reared
their topmost branches beneath the eagle's path. Amid
the dense moist undergrowth the dampness has forced
coats of moss upon the prostrate giants. It is a soleran
and an aAvful forest. It raight be likened to a grave
yard in Avhich every upright coluran is the head-stone
for a fallen fellow. Absolute silence reigns there, and
daylight becomes twilight over the earth. It is a task
to see the sky. Far above his head the prospector in
those pathless woods sees the wind swaying the tree-
tops, and half hears their gentle murrauring, Avithout
being sure of the sound. There is no bird life in that
oppressive soUtude, no aniraal life, except that now and
then a bear is seen. He Avho would penetrate the forest
raust be content to raake two railes a day in a straight
line, and then only by seesawing raany railes to and fro,
clambering from tree jtrunk to tree trunk, and patrol
ling the lengths of Avhat fallen trees lead nearest to
the course he would pursue. The forest has only been
penetrated by the waterways. The Indians, the most
expert canoe -men in the Avorld, know nothing of it.
Travel there is only where water takes it. The strearas
are the roadways, and canoes the red raen's horses.
Hunters and prospectors upon the eastern, raore light-
281

ly timbered, slopes of the mountains report that great
herds of mountain-goats raay be seen feeding close to
the glaciers. The avooI of these aniraals is used by the
Indians. The skin is clipped close, and the wool is
given to the squaws, who card it roughly, and then roll
it on their bare thighs with their bare hands. They
weaA'e it Avith rude looras into blankets, and out of the
finer j'arn they knit stockings and raittens.
And noAv for the pastoral regions of eastern Wash
ington. This table of the production of Avheat in the
State in 1891, prepared for the Governraent, wiU, if
the reader consults the map Avhile he studies it, reveal
what farming lands are uoav in use and where they are
situated :

Couulies

Acreyge.

Average bush.
pel' acre.

Total.

320,000 150,000
100,000 80,000 20,000 20,00016,00025,000
20,000 12,500
i 6,000

23 20
272725 1515 18
202020

7,360,0003,000,0002,700,000 2,160,000 500,000300 000

Walla Walla 

Garfield 

Columbia  ..
Asotin ...

Dougl.is 

240 000 j

450,000 400,000 250,000 100,000

KlicUitat 
Kittitas 

All other counties, in
cluding those west of
the monntains.

Totals 

768,500

22.71

17,460,000

These figures tell the whole story of last year's Avheat
crop in Washington. They are the best that could be
obtained as early as last Christmas. The Washington
wheat fetched seventy cents a bushel, or about tAveh'e
and a half railUon dollars. The same authoritv from
Avhom the above figures were obtained is of the opinion
that without irrigation — that is to say, outside the lands
282
that must be Avatered — the State will eventually pro
duce between forty milUons and fifty miUions of bushels
of Avheat. In a pamphlet issued by the State Board of
Trade, and Avritten by President N. G. Blalock, of the
Washington World's Fair Commission, the advantages
of the soil and climate for the cultivation of cereals are
clearly set forth. The soil is very deep, and is a sedimen-
tarj' deposit of volcanic origin, raade up of a sandy loara,
distintegrated basalt, and ash. It is porous, readily takes
in and yields raoisture, and allows the salts to rise to
feed the growing crops. From year to year the cUmate
varies but slightly, and where the rains are sufficient,
they bring up and mature the grain Avithout its being
scorched. This writer has known Avheat to be sowed in
every month of the year. In the summer the ground is
covered Avith dust thick enough to keep the moisture in
the soil underneath. Wheat soAved in the dust between
the raonths of June and Septeraber will spring up only
after the auturan rains have set in. Frora Septeraber
] Sth to December 1st is the best time for seeding. There
is no necessity for haste in harvesting. The Avheat need
not even be stacked. If left standing it does not suffer.
Though the harvesting begins in early July, " the ma
chines are in the field until December, and occasionally
the crop is left standing until the following spring."
Thus a man in Washington can cultivate raore land
than he could in raany other States where Avheat is
grown. The Federal statistics for 1890 showed that
Washington's average yield per acre (23.5 bushels) was
the highest in the United States. Mr. Blalock made a
calculation of the cost and profit of wheat-raising, tak
ing three successive crops that aA'eraged thirty -two
bushels to the acre. He found that the labor made it
cost nineteen cents a bushel. To this he added interest
on the value of the land for tAvo years, and thus brought
283

the cost to twenty-nine cents a bushel. As the crops
sold for an average of fifty-five cents a bushel, he found
a profit of eight dollars and twenty-eight cents an acre.
These stateraents, Avhich accord closely Avith my oAvn
deductions from aU that I heard on the subject, are so
remarkable, and reveal conditions and results so dif
ferent from any that obtain in most parts of the other
neAV States, that a study of Washington Avould be in
complete without thera.
Spokane is the principal city of eastern Washington,
and a good point from which to view the agricultural
and mineral resources of the lands east of the Cascade
Range. It used to be called Spokane Falls, after the
falls in the Spokane River, which attracted the first set
tlers as a rallying-point, but the people dropped the
AA'ord "FaUs" in June, 1891, and Spokane is the city's
full name. Long before its settlement the trails and
roads from every point of the compass met there, and
seeraed to raark it as a natural distributing centre.
Eight railroads raeet there now. It is a dozen years
old as a settleraent, and noAv extends its broad streets
and battalions of brick and stone buildings over a con
siderable part qf the bowllike, level-bottoraed basin in
which it has been built. There are evergreen hills all
around it, and upon one slope overlooking the town the
well-to-do citizens have massed a considerable number
of villas, many of which are both costly and handsome.
Milling, the luraber trade, and jobbing in all the neces
saries of life are its mainstays, and possibly by the tirae
this is published it Avill have started up its sraeltery to
lead the noAv industry which raany think must becorae
its main one when, araid the developraent of the in
nuraerable mines of eastern Washington, it shall have
become a great raining town. Its jobbing trade in 1890
araounted to $21,565,000. 284

Spokane is verj' enterprising. It has an opera house
that is the finest theatre Avest of the Mississippi River,
and its Board of Trade, under the tireless energy of Mr.
John R. Reavis, is incessantly at Avork to strengthen
and enlarge the industries of the city. The place has
25,000 population. It lost 3000 last year as a result of
the general raonetary depression, but its gains continue,
and the agricultural country tributary to it has grown
steadily and suffered no set-backs. It trades with 200
towns, and talks Avith 60 over its telephone Avires. Its
Avater- power — having a rainiraura power of 32,000
horses — runs its electric cars, electric lights, cable-cars,
printing-presses, elevators, and all its small raachinerj'.
It is not rampant in its vices as most NorthAvestern
cities are. Gambling is done under cover, the variety
theatres are closed on Sundays, and there is even
broached a proposition to close the saloons on Sunday.
In justice to Spokane, I should explain that the leading
men ascribe this raastery over public vice to the unique
and high-toned character of the leading citizens, Avho
erabrace a large proportion of Eastern blood, and good
Eastern blood at that. Such an explanation is highly
necessary here, for in the new NorthAvest public moral
ity is sometiraes regarded as a concoraitant of failing
business poAvers. Happily I can vouch for the fact that
Spokane society is leavened by a considerable class of
proud and culti\'ated raen and woraen, who live in
charraing horaes, and raaintain a delightful intercourse
Avith one another. They raake it a very gay city — they
and the fine cliraate — and are fond of high-bred horses,
good dogs, and bright living, with dancing and araateur
theatricals, good literature and fun. San Francisco is
no longer peculiar in this respect, for Spokane shares
her briUiancy araong our Western cities.
Close to Spokane is the faraous Palouse country. The
285

1,300,000 acres of Whitraan County, and 1,000,000 acres
of Spokane County forra this rich region, which bears
various naraes in its rainor extensions, but is all alike in
its extraordinary fertility. It was settled early by a
class of iraraigrants known in the West as " Pikes,'' Avho
carae in 1844-54 frora Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas,
Tennessee, and as far east as the Piedraont region.
They were poor Avhites, and were a tall, angular, drawl
ing band of blond men, lazy and shiftless, but of daunt
less courage. They took up the bottora-lands betAveen
the rolling, tiraber-topped hills, beside the streams. In
time they were driven to the hills, and then they dis
covered that raore and better wheat could be raised
there, without irrigation, than on the bottoras. This
Palouse country is about 150 miles long, and averages
30 miles in width. It is said that in sumraer the soil is
covered with a thick dust, and that in place of rain they
have heavy dcAvs. It is reputed to groAv an extraor
dinary araount of wheat, and its yield really did reach
30 bushels in 1890. Wheat, barley, and fiax are the
great crops, but melons, all vegetables and fruits, both
large and small, grow there as profusely, perhaps, as
anywhere in our country. Berries of every kind,
peaches, plums, apricots, apples, pears, and grapes all
grow in abundance and of superfine quaUty. Land
fetches $36 an acre, and wiU soon sell for $50. Eight
hundred thousand acres of it is the rich land of Avhich I
speak, and of this 389,000 acres are in cultivation, 320,-
000 acres being in wheat. The land is all taken up.
Farraing has been done with sraall holdings, but raon
eyed men are now buying large tracts. In Colfax, the
raain town, the principal loaning brokers report that
they know of no single failure there in the payment of
interest upon loans last year.
Walla Walla County, down in the sarae corner of the
286

State, ranks next after the Palouse country. Its ba
saltic soil has been cultivated for forty years, and one
farm of that age produced fortj' bushels of wheat to the
acre last year without fertilizers, of which, by-the-Avaj',
not any have ever been used. They irrigate there for
small fruit, but not for wheat. They have 200,000 acres
under cultivation, all but 50,000 acres being in Avheat.
Prunes, pears, enormous yields of strawberries, black
berries, and the finest (because the oldest) orchards are
their most important products after the Avheat. Walla
Walla, the principal town, bears a name faraihar even
to the school-boys of thirty years ago. It is the seat of
an old army post, is a beautiful town, and boasts a cul
tivated society. It has 5000 population, and though at
one side of the main tide of travel, is growing slow
ly. It was once the great outfitting point for the
raines of Idaho and Montana, and pack trains left there
daily. A heap of nonsense is spoken and written about the
Big Bend country in order to dispose of it. It is siraply
a fairly good wheat country, difficult to irrigate, and
bound to be uncertain in its products until it is irrigated.
How this shall be done is one of the great probleras be
fore the people of Washington — the greatest that con
fronts the people of the eastern part of the State. Else
where I have spoken of the strata or flows of lava that
underlie it. The trouble is that this crops out in fields
and bunches all over the region, as Ave see ice-floes in a
harbor at the time of a thaw in the spring. There are
pieces of good land between the outcroppings of vol
canic rock, and some of these bits of good ground con
tain as much as tAventy square miles of land all covered
with grass. It is a high plateau, rolling far above the
Columbia, which cuts a canon through it. It has scarce
ly any other strearas, and but few springs. It erabraces
287

the two large counties of Lincoln and Douglas. There
are in it a raillion acres of land that can be cultivated.
Only a sraall part is yet so utilized. In 1890 about
80,000 acres in Douglas County and 7000 acres in Lin
coln County were under the plough, but it is believed
that last auturan (1891) this sura of cultivated acres was
doubled. There is sorae governraent land there, offer
ing what is perhaps the best chance left in eastern
Washington for "the horaesteader," but he must irri
gate or be prepared for great uncertainty in his crops.
In 1890 the Big Bend wheat lands produced nearly 30
bushels to the acre ; but in 1891 the yield Avas not over
15 bushels, dryness being the cause. An effort to get
artesian water is being made near Waterville in Doug
las Countv. If thej' find Avater, and it is abundant and
not too far underground, the result Avill promise rederap
tion to a great belt of soil that is second to none when it
has raoisture.
The problera Avhat to do with the sage-brush country
is a greater one. It embraces Adams and Franklin
counties, and lies between the Big Bend and the Palouse
regions. It is sage-brush frora end to end — nothing but
sage and cactus and basalt rock, except that in Adaras
County there is sorae good land. The region has a rain
fall of only nine inches. It too is all good land if Avater
can be got to it. Vegetables and fruits groAv Avell in it.
The great Yakiraa tract across the Colurabia is very
proraising. Sraall farraers are rapidly putting it under
settleraent and cultivation. They are growing fruits,
vegetables, and alfalfa, the last to be marketed as hay.
Hops also are grown in great abundance, and since this
part of the country has not known the hop-louse, and is
not damp enough to invite that pest, the outlook for a
great hop industry there is most encouraging. The
Avhole Yakima country Avas divided between railroad
288

and governraent lands. The latter have been thrown
open, and are all taken. The railroad lands were offered
for very little before the Northern Pacific corapanj'
experimented with its admirable schemes for irrigating
the soil. Noav the farms command high prices, and
fetch them so easily that it is predicted that Avithin 25
years Yakiraa Valley and County avUI be in as high
state of cultivation as any part of the State. The rain
fall is only about ten inches a year, and irrigation is
necessary. The Northern Pacific Railroad is building a
ditch sixty miles long, to be fed by water taken from
the Yakiraa River at a point below that at which the
river issues frora the raountains. The ditch is an enor
mous one, and was built at great expense across ravines
und all the irregularities of the country. Seventeen
inUes of it was ready for water in Deceraber, 1891. It
Avill raoisten thousands of acres that once Avere purchas
able at $1 50 each, but now are held at $45 an acre or
more, because no lands in the State avUI be more pro
ductive, if the best judges reason correctly. With the
sale of the irrigated lands, stock in the irrigation com
pany is offered, and the scheme is so planned that Avhen
the land is all sold, the stock will all be in the hands of
the farraers. It is Ukely that the farraers Avill then
continue to pay water rents, and will divide the profits
after the expense of maintaining the ditch and its
laterals is defrayed each year. A second canal, 250 feet
higher than the present one, is said to be contemplated,
and an added supply of Avater is expected from three
large lakes on the eastern slope of the Cascades. Thus
the highland district of the Yakiraa country will also be
brought under the ditch. This is the raost extensive
irrigation-Avork that I know of in the ncAv States. It
maj' not make the Yakiraa the richest section of eastern
Washington, for it raay not excel the Palouse or Walla

Walla tracts, but it will be highly productive, and un
certainty about crops will be reduced to a rainiraura.
Perhaps tirae will show the richest land to be in the
future clearings of the big tiraber on the Pacific slope.
I have spoken of the prospect of a great yield of hops
in Yakiraa County in the future. The cultivation of
hops is a source of large incorae to the State. The hop
was first cultivated in the Puyallup region in 1866, and
Avith such results that in 1890 the crop A\'as 50,000 bales,
about half of which was grown in the Puyallup fields.
That crop was raarketed for tAvo millions of dollars.
The industry has spread into the vallej'S of the White,
Stuck, Snohomish, and Skagit rivers, all to the west
ward of the Cascades, at the feet of Avhich rich valleys
of alluvial soil of great depth have been forraed. Since
it is known that one hop-yard in England has been
uninterruptedly cultivated for 300 years, there is no rea
son to look for a wearing out of the rich soil of West
Washington. The Washington hops are of a high
grade, and the yield, averaging 1600 pounds to the
acre, is almost threefold that of the fields of England,
Gerraany, and New York State. The hop -louse has
now made its devasting presence felt in western Wash
ington, and must be fought there as it has long been
fought elsewhere. On account of this pest the Puyal
lup yield was reduced to 50 per cent, of Avhat had
been expected last year, and since the price was low,
it was thought that the revenue from hops Avould not
be above one raillion dollars. Hops have fetched raore
than a dollar a pound in the past; of late the prices
have run frora tAventy cents to thirty cents. To pro
duce them costs less than ten cents a pound in Wash
ington. North of Yakiraa is the Wenatchee Vallej'. reaching
frora the mountains to the Colurabia. It is prophesied
290

that this Avill prove an extreraely rich fruit country.
And this is raeasurably true of all the very numerous
vallej'S that seara the raountains west and north of the
Colurabia, all the way around to Kettle Falls in the
northeast part of the State. Washington is going to be
a great fruit State, and the tirae raust soon come when
she will do with her fruits as California does with hers —
export a great deal, dry a great deal, and can and bot
tle more. Perhaps the best business done in Spokane
to-day is that of handling provisions for the raining
camps of Idaho and British Columbia, and fruit is an
important factor in these supplies. For a time, as the
raining lands are extended, there Avill be this market for
Washington fruits, but the outlook is that the produc
tion of fruits Avill eventually far exceed this so-called
horae deraand. The Wenatchee lands, owned by the
Governraent and the Northern Pacific Railroad, are just
beginning to be settled. As the Great Northern Rail
road, Avhich is to give a treraendous irapetus to the de
velopraent of northern Washington, is to pass along
that vallev, its lands Avill soon reach their full value.
North of the Wenatchee A^ alley is the great Okana-
gon country, and east of that is Stevens County, or " the
Colville district,'" as the rainers call it. It is mainly
A'ieAved as the scene of future raining activity, and of
that we Avill tell further on ; but it is all guttered Avith
rich valleys for fruit and vegetable raising, and it is to
day as fine a sporting region as there is in the United
States. In the Okanagon country, west of the Colum
bia, is Lake Chelan. It is a beautiful sheet of blue-
black water 70 miles in length and frora half a raile to
three railes in width. It starts at its Colurabia River
end from a noble bunch-grass valley, already fairly set
tled, and farmed for fruit, wheat, and vegetables. Mr.
Frank Wilkeson, who is famiUar with the country, de-
291

scribes the lake as practically landlocked. Soundings
to the length of 700 feet have not touched its bed. Its
Avaters teera Avith trout of from half a pound to six
pounds weight, and of several varieties. Suckers and
chubs, and an unclassified fish that attains a weight of
14 pounds, are also plentiful. The lake terminates with
an eight-foot water-fall, up which no salmon seem to
have swum, for none has been found in the lake. Many
creeks erapty into the lake, and alraost all show the dis
tinct raarks of old glacier basins at their heads. In the
Stehegan belt these departed glaciers have left their
former rocky confines bare, and prospecting is done
with a glass, the prospectors scanning the rocks, and
easily perceiving the metalliferous ledges. In the trails
or ridges of bowlders left by the melted glaciers are
seen masses of galena ore that have been torn from the
leads. It is the sight of these that directs the prospect
ors to follow up the glacier beds. There is a wealth of
ore in these glacial deposits, and doubtless the day will
come Avhen it will be worked.
In the rugged, wooded mountains that rise precipi
tously frora the lake and wall it in, the raountain-goats
are so numerous that they will long provide sport for
the hunters. Black-tail deer are plentv, and so are
black and cinnamon bear. A packer in that country re
ports having seen twenty-seven bears in one day last
autumn. The grouse there are without number, and in
clude the blue, the gray, and the ruffed varieties. Smaller
birds are equally numerous. A hotel -keeper near the
lake, wishing to explain why he only charged seven dol
lars a week for lodging and the luscious fare that
Aveighted his table, said that venison and bear raeat
only cost a cartridge noAV and then, and for trout he
used the same fish-line that he brought into the country
J'ears ago. 292

Mining in Washington, though its promises are vast,
is in its veriest infancy. The production of metals is
insignificant. The first discovery of the precious metals
was made by placer miners along the Colurabia River,
and this ground is still Avorked, by Chinaraen now, with
trifling results. Recent discoveries have been, first, in
the Colville district, Stevens Countj'. It is a raountain
ous region, an extension of the rich Kootenay country
of British Colurabia. Silver and lead are found there,
but not yet in such large or proraising leads as those
north of the boundary. Developraent-work is being
done there, the ores are being sent out, and concentra
tors are building. In the Okanagon country, east of
the Cascades and west of Stevens County, silver and
gold without lead are found. It is sraelting ore, and
cheap transportation facilities are needed for the de
velopraent of the raines. One railroad operator is ready
to build from Marcus on the Colurabia, north of Col
ville, along the Kettle River, to the Boundary Creek
raines of silver and gold, Avhich show splendid prospects.
The Colville Indian Reservation hinders hira from tap
ping the Okanagon country, and, as we have seen
wherever there are similar conditions in other States,
there is a strong raovement to have the reservation re
duced, and the upper part throAvn open. The railroad
could be built across it as it is, but there is no money
in a railroad on a reservation land where settlers raay
not corae nor towns spring up. It is apparent that the
reservation raust be reduce<.l in response to this pressure,
because it is a vast tract, bigger than sorae large coun
ties in the State, and j'et it contains but a thousand red
raen, remnants of several tribes. The notorious Chief
Joseph, Avho harried several of our generals, is there,
and so is Chief Moses, Avhose people once inhabited
the Okanagon country before it was " bought," and
293

President Grant set aside the Colville Reservation for
them. An argument used to help to open this land is
that the reservation leaves sixty railes of our frontier
unprotected. The Spokane Chamber of Commerce is
bending all its energy to the rederaption of this border
land, and Avhat that body sets out for it generally ob
tains. The Lake Chelan prospects, so called, are of argen
tiferous galena. At least 700 clairas have been taken,
and this suraraer's Avork will prove the value of the dis
trict, though all miners qualified to judge of it express
confidence in its great richness. The Stehegan belt of
hills, Avhere the ore is found, runs northeast beyond the
British border. In addition to the galena, other ores
are found, though not yet in sufficient quantities to ex
cite the cupidity of the prospectors. But the belt con
tains more limestone and white marble than the w^orld
can use. It is proposed to build a railroad to Lake
Chelan, whereon the ore can be boated seventy railes,
and then carried by short rail to the Colurabia, and thus
to the Great Northern Railroad at Wenatchee.
Western Washington is another proposition, as its
people Avould theraselves say. All over the Evergreen
State inaniraate nature would appear to be divided in
tAVO jjarts, so that Avhatever is not a " proposition " must
be an "outfit." One Avord or the other applies to and
describes AA'hatever you raay speak about. A new town
is either a good proposition — that is to say, it has good
chances to groAv — or it is not. The Nicaragua Canal is
a good proposition, and so is the prospective raillion-
dollar hotel in Tacoraa. I several times heard the word
"outfit" applied to raen, particularly when they seemed
to deserve to be called " queer outfits," but I never
heard the Avord proposition applied to anything animate.
I did hear a waterfall called a " proposition," hoAvever.
394

Up to that time, I confess, I had regarded it as an " out
fit." The chief city in Avestern Washington is Seattle. It
has a population of about 40,000. It is a reraarkable
city, perhaps the raost enterprising one in this country.
When the odds against which it has fought are taken
into consideration, and when it is understood that its
progress has been raade against railroad opposition, in
stead of with the aid of that usually powerful influence,
its progress, size, and accoraplishraents seera raarvellous,
and its leading raen deserve to be called the most in
domitable and plucky organizers that anj' city, even in
the West, can boast.
Seattle is metropolitan. It has that indefinable tone
that marks the city from the town, and that Avhen am
plified belongs only to the chief city in a State or indus
trial district. It has the crowds of hurrying raen and
AA'oraen, the lounging, staring groups of yokels, the daily
battalions of tourists and drumraers and strangers gen
erallj', bent on selling or buying, and driving about with
heavy baggage piled on their cabs; it has large and fine
hotels, theatres of several grades, beer-gardens, and an
unduly large vicious quarter on the Pacific coast plan
of a myriad little cabins each with one frescoed occu
pant. It makes the visitor feel that it is a bustling cap
ital town, and that is a character and influence that can
not be simulated or made to order. From the harbor
Seattle makes an irapressive appearance, because it is
built on the side of a steep hill, and is uplifted and
spread out in a manner peculiar to itself. In a lesser
degree all the chief cities of Washington send portions
of theraselves up steep hill-sides ; and though Seattle is
not the city in which I saAV cleats on some sidewalks, to
make the paveraents CA'en raore like ladders, its streets
are so steep that one feels sorry for the horses of its cab
295

system — which, by-the-Avaj', is the best I knoAv of on
this continent outside of Montreal. Towering buildings
do not raake a city. London has not one steeple of of
fices within her liraits, while Seattle, on the other hand,
has many and to spare. But it is the districts of Avhole
sale stores, Avhose raerchandise and customers crowd one
another on the sidcAvalks, it is the bustle at the depots
and wharves, the activity in the harbor — if it is a sea
port — the flurry of people in the retail quarter ; such are
the telltales of a city of importance, and Seattle has
them, and has kept them in a great degree after the
financial crash in London, Avhich disturbed the cities of
Washington more than it might had it not been that in
them an effort Avas making to reverse the natural order
of things bj' Avhich territorial development creates city
extension. Seattle's jobbing trade in 1890 was in goods
of the value of $35,000,000. The toAvn is strengthened
by neighboring coal mines, has built up a large shipping
trade, and boasts several manufacturing industries.
Since the above was written news despatches from
there tell of the discovery of slavery araong the Japan
ese in Seattle. The slaves are the woraen in the singu-
lar rows of one-story cottages by the water-side in Avhat
is locally known as Whitechapel — the vicious quarter.
In that strange district and still stranger coramunity
are woraen frora Mexico, China, Japan, and France, as
Avell as Araerican blacks and white women. The police
say that of them all the Japanese are the least trouble
some, since they alone refrain frora adding theft to their
other outlawry. It is raore than likely, as the news de
spatches relate, that they are owned by men Avho pur
chased thera of their parents in Japan, and brought
thera to this country for the purpose to which they ap
pear to lend theraselves. The " tough end " of Seattle,
as the Western vernacular would have it called, is very

much like the pestilential parts of Butte and Helena,
and all the other Northwestern toAvns of considerable
size of which raention has been made in this series, but
it is livelier than most others, in addition to having the
most motley population. It is said to be Avell under po
lice control, and I was told that the gambling there is
above-stairs, and not too public.
Tacoraa, an hour and a half away by water, and also
on the sound, seeras a substantial town. It has great
Avealth, and is the financial, though not the trading or
popular centre. It has about 35,000 population. Its
homes seem to me the proudest possessions of Tacoraa.
Separate dwellings of tasteful design, and costing from
$3000 to $20,000, are to be seen there in great numbers,
and I ara told that the proportion of still less costly cot
tages owned by the farailies which occupy thera is also
considerable. Any Eastern city — any citj' anywhere —
raight Avell be proud to shoAV a club-house like that in
Tacoraa, Avherein the most perfect taste prevails through
out. The city is the seat of a large circle of wealthy
and cultiA'ated folk. Though the place is nothing like
so showy as Seattle, it has shown great enterprise — a
force which there has always felt the backing of a great
transcontinental railway. Some of the capitalists are
building a floating dry -dock 325 x 100 feet in diraen
sions, and to be extended by smaller docks of the sarae
sort, so that alraost any vessel on the Pacific can be
handled upon it. Tacoraa has hopes of being at the
eastern end of a transpacific line of stearaers at an early
day, and of being the seat of the iron industry Avhich
must certainly spring up somcAvhere on the coast. What
Tacoraa is raost sure of is that she is at the end of a
great railway line, and that she is at the gate of, and in
deed is surrounded by, a very rich countrj', part of which —
the Puyallup region — is already forward in developraent.
297

I have not raentioned the electric lights, electric cars,
Avater systeras, and such modern conveniences in speak
ing of either of these chief cities. It would be an omis
sion due to faraUiarity with the entire new West if I
failed to say expUcitly that almost AA'herever one may
travel in that country the same conveniences are at
hand that one is accustomed to finding in Noav York.
If there is a difference, it is that the West is the more
progressive, and the more quickly takes up whatever is
good as well as new. Seattle has cable as well as elec
tric cars, but all the cities have the latter sort of vehi
cles. The traveller Avho steps from the newest Pullman
car on the Northern Pacific Railroad suffers no jar
Avhen he is in such hotels as the Tacoraa, the Rainier or
Denny in Seattle, or the Fairhaven in the hopeful little
citj' of that narae, near the head of the sound. Ap
pointed with that most artistio furniture in the world
Avhich is turned out of Michigan factories as pins are
produced in Birrainghara, provided Avith elevators,. elec
tric lights and calls, offering great public rooras richly
decorated and draped, with French cooks, with the best
food in the raarkets of the world (refrigerated and
Avhirled frora place to place), the hotels of Washington
are in the same list with the leading hotels of London
and New York. Need I say that the sarae is true of
the public schools? That also goes without saying in
any study of the West. The State of Washington ex
pended $932,000 for its free schools last year.
The stearaboats that ply between Seattle and Tacoraa
and up and dov^^n the sound are also unexcelled. One
called The Flyer is the raost adrairable vessel of its
kind that I have ever seeu. It is of the build of a fish,
and is alraost as swift. Its two saloons, one above the
other, are carpeted, and provided Avith soft plush-covered
reclining-chairs. The walls are, to all intents and pur-
298

poses, plate -glass. The raachinery is exhibited like
jewelry, in a glass case. By day the panoraraa of nature
is uninterrupted in the view of the passengers ; by night
the little Flyer is all aflarae with electric light, like a
glass boat or a lantern shot over the Avater frora a
cannon. These boats are not the prettiest products of the
Pacific slope, because nothing aniraate or inanimate can
be more beautiful than the Avoraen there. I will not
commit myself to a decision Avhether it rains there six
months in the year, as I think, or all the year around,
as the critics of that country insist ; but the effect of
that Avarra, soft, raoist cliraate upon the complexions of
the Avoraen is raagical — is Avorth going to see. The
effect upon the ladies' gowns of one of the concoraitants
of the rainy season, as the wearers climb and descend
the muddy hills of those cities, is not nearly so adraira
ble. If ever Mistress Fashion Avill permit dress reform
to be undertaken bj' Avomen, it will be hailed Avith joy
on the shores of Puget Sound. But Avith regard to
the beauty of the woraen of the coast, all that need
be told is that the Avoraen of the interior insist that
the Puget Sound belles all have web-feet, the result of
the frequent wet Aveather on the coast. The reader
raay judge frora that how captivating the coast woraen
raust be.
Western Washington coraprises nearly one- third of
the State. It contains 25,000 square railes west of the
Cascades, as against eastern Washington's 45,000 square
railes. Through a part of this western end of the State,
tearing a great raouth in it, is Puget Sound. It is a
majestic harbor, and no one who sees it can criticise its
human neighbors for the store of hope they rest upon
its future. It has a superficial area of 2000 square
miles, a shore line of 1600 miles, an average depth of 70

fathoms, and, lying north and south 90 railes back frora
the ocean, it is all within the State. Its first surveyor,
in 1841, reported to the Governraent : " I venture nothing
in saying that no country in the world possesses waters
equal to these. Frora the mouth of the strait to the
head of navigation, 200 raUes inland, not a shoal nor
reef nor hidden danger exists. At tiraes it' narrows to
a river's width, and again widens into the majesty of a
sea, but is everywhere free to navigation, the home of
all craft, blue, deep, and fathomless." The quotation is
hackneyed, but it describes this wonderful body of
water better than any other AVords that can be chosen.
Yet it but helps to distinguish an equally Avonderful
country— a country Avith the cliraate of England, and
better than the best qualities of CaUfornia and Florida.
I have described its araazing forests of giant timber.
They cover the greater part of it. It is said that they
contain two hundred billion feet of marketable Avood.
It is verj' A'aluable wood. It will continue to supply
the country when all other timber is gone. For a long
Avhile the great stringers used in the flooring of the
Pullman and Wagner cars have come from these forests,
and a shrewd railroad raan is quoted as saying that out
of the wood in the cedar sturaps that the lumbermen
have left standing in the present clearings he can build
the Avails and roofs of freight cars that Avill pay for
themselves in three years in the saving of Aveight. The
Washington tiraber corapete^ Avith Georgia pine and
Eastern oak in the uses to Avhich those woods are put.
Lumbering is the chief industry in Avestern Washington,
but it is small to Avhat it must be when reduced rates
are brought about by corapeting transcontinental rail
road corapanies and by the Nicaragua Canal. This
luraber has already found good raarkets in South Araer
ica, China, France, Australia, and the Sandwich Islands.
300

The coal raeasures of the Puget Sound basin corae
next in iraportance. The coal and the iron, Avhich is
also abundant, lie side by side. Liraestone is also found,
and although practically nothing has been done with
the iron, sorae raost excellent coking coals have been
found, and the happy corabination raust soon prove
aUuring to capital and enterprise. The coal supply seeras
inexhaustible, and already its developraent is a great
source of incorae to Seattle, as it will soon be to Fair
haven and other ports near the coal beds. All the coal
of the coast, including that at Nanaimo, on Vancouver
Island, raay be classed as lignite, but it is often of so
high a grade that the operators do not greatly strain
the truth in classing it as biturainous. The Seattle coals
do not raake coke or gas, but are excellent for general
doraestic use and steara-raaking. Large raines are being
opened in the Skagit country Avest of the raountains.
The coal lies in the cretaceous raeasures, and is in dip
ping searas of frora four to eighteen feet of clean coal.
Farther down the river are the Fairhaven raines, opened
by the Great Northern Railroad Corapany and by Mon
tana capitalists. All this Skagit coal raakes a coke that
is held to be only second to the Connellsville (Pennsyl
vania) coke, if it is not fullj' as good. Coking ovens
are being erected, and a large raarket in California,
Mexico, and South Araerica is looked for. Other coal
in this region, now used on the sound stearaboats, is
superior to the Nanaimo product. The South Prairie
coal, near Tacoraa, makes a fine coke that is used in a
smeltery at the latter place. There are mines and coke
ovens at Wilkeson also. The coal product of the State
in 1890 Avas nearly a million tons, worth at the mines
$2,203,755. When it is knoAvn that California has but
little coal, and only of an inferior quality, and that
Oregon is but slightly better off, the value of the super-
801

abundant coal raeasures of Washington will be under
stood. Then again, the Washington coke avUI displace
the Eastern and English raaterial on the coast. At San
Diego these other cokes are received for distribution
araong the smelteries of northern Mexico, New Mexico,
and Arizona at $13 a ton ; indeed, they are sold in Vic
toria, British Colurabia, at $20 a ton.
Capital is needed to take hold of the iron. There is
talk of iron and steel works near Seattle, the enterprise
of Eastern raen ; and in Tacoraa an effort is making to
found a business in the raaking of steel bars, plates, and
rods from iraported blooras, as is done in San Francisco.
In tirae, whether these projects rise or fall, fortunes will
be raade from the iron industry in that new country.
Asbestos is plenty ; and there are clays that must yet
be the foundation not only for rude wares, but for good
white ware. ScAver-pipe is already raade in Seattle.
The reader sees that all these resources are practically
in erabryo. In spite of the fact that the first setfle-
raents in the east and west were in the forties, the State
is nearly as new, so far as all except its farraing is con
cerned, as if the date of its adraission to Statehood —
NoA'ember 11, 1889 — were the date of its first settle
raent. Whoever passes along the raain retail street of Seattle
and happens to notice the counters in the principal fish
store will be astonished. In the chroraatic display of
the captive creatures of the sea is the text for another
chapter on future Avealth for Washington. They have
the salmon, though that catch is credited to Oregon and
Alaska. There are in the northern Avaters cod banks
thousands of miles in extent ; halibut, codfish, rock-cod,
sole, sea-bass, smelts, shrimps, herrings, and oysters are
all abundant. Apparently the fisheries outweigh those
of the East as the timber belt excels that which once
802

enclosed the Great Lakes. Candor corapels me to say
that the Pacific fish, with one exception, are inferior to
the same kinds of fish in the East, yet they are not
wanting in fine qualities. The halibut of Washington
and the North is, I believe, the finest sea fish for the
table that is known in America. The tiny rauddj'
oysters, the size of a dime or a quarter, are the raeanest
product of that sea, but they find a ready sale and are
adraired. Since that is so, hope for all the rest should
be rarapant. Their crabs, on the contrary, are not raere
saraples ; they are wholesale products, regular marine
monsters ; and all the better for that, since they make
good food. The fishing that raust in a few years fieck
the waters of the Pacific with sails is scarcely begun.
There is only a raillion invested in it, and only a raillion
a year is produced by it.
The neAV transcontinental railroads that are expected
to cross to Puget Sound — the Great Northern and a
spur of the Union Pacific — are thought to be going to
work AVonders. They will find raany present industries
controlled by the older corapanies. They Avill encourage
the developraent of ucav industries and the extension of
others. Mr. Hill's road, the Great Northern, is to be
pushed through the raountains in AA'hat is described as
"a scenic wonderland." It is thought that FairhaA'en
Avill be its terrainus; but whether that prove true or
not, a feeder all along the sound, at right angles to the
main road, AviU tap all the country betAveen the Cas
cades and the great harbor.
And Avhat of the land which these railroads will open
up ? What of it, apart frora its rainerals and tira
ber? It gives a name to the State — it is evergreen.
Roses, nasturtiums, and chrysanthemums may be seen
blooming in the gardens the year around. The ocean,
and especially the Japan current, keep the cUmate
303

equable. The mercury seldom rises above 90° in the
sumraer, and to see it at zero in the winter is to see an
extraordinary thing. The rains produce serai-tropical
abundance of vegetation. Agriculture cuts a small fig
ure yet, but where it is carried on, in the valleys and
reclairaed raarshes, oats grow higher than a man's head,
and so does timothy. Oats will run from 60 to 100
bushels to the acre. Men have been known to raake
more than $800 frora an acre of straAvberries. If good
land is chosen, and a market is handy, five acres Avill
support a faraily well. Raspberries, currants, gooseber
ries, orchard fruits, all do Avell. There are sorae who
think the sound country may yet supply the whole
United States Avith prunes, so fine and abundant are
those that are but just beginning to be groAvn there.
Tobacco does aa'cU ; and, by-the- AA'ay, it is being grown
and made into cigars in the Yakima country, in East
Washington. Wherever the big timber is cleared — and
raany of the farras are abandoned logging caraps — there
is found the richest soil iraaginable. It raises hay, pota
toes, oats, barley, Avheat, hops, cherries, apples, berries,
and all Avhich that list implies. It is a natural grazing
land. The grass is forever green, and cattle and sheep
keep " hog-fat all the year."
East of the sound the land that can be farmed is
practically all taken, but Avest of the sound is the great
Olympic Peninsula, until lately alraost uninhabited, and
even uoav but little known. It has not been surveyed.
Out of the heart of it rise the eternally snow-clad
Olympic Mountains. On their sides roam the elk, black
bear, cougar, and other more or less noble beasts. Over
the earth is a mass of timber, and at its feet a jungle.
Fir, spruce, and white cedar are in the woods, and in
the raany waters Avild-fowl abound. Frost is said not to
know the country. On the Pacific coast side are many
304 '

valleys, and some sraall prairies. In this absolutely new
country the horaesteaders are appearing in such num
bers that it is said that between 700 and 800 settlers
Avent in there last year to pre-empt the lands along the
streams and on the prairies. There, entirely cut off
from the Avorld, they Avill wait until the lands are sur
veyed, and they can file their clairas. They believe
that a railroad frora Gray's Harbor or Shoahvater Baj'
to the Strait of Juan de Fuca will soon be built past all
their holdings. It is likely, for, in addition to the tim
ber, that is the best dairy country in the State. As one
citizen put it, " They have raore rain than Ave on the
east of the sound, but the presence of water has
never yet been considered an objection in the dairy
trade." A question which agitates the rainds of raany persons
in western Washington is whether it is possible for
both Seattle and Tacoraa — Ij'ing so near one another
as they do — to becorae great cities ; and if not, which
Avill eventually becorae the chief and gigantic seaport
Avhose developraent is so confidently looked for. I wish
I could say. Indeed, since everyAvhere that I travel I
find these rivalries between neighboring cities (Bis
marck and Mandan, Rapid City and Deadwood, Helena
and Butte, and so on through the list, which rightly be
gins with St. Paul and Minneapolis), I find myself con
stantly wishing that I could postpone the publication of
these articles for a trifling terra of ten or a dozen years,
so as to avoid this series of conundruras. In this case,
in Avestern Washington, there is a little speck upon the
horizon. It calls to raind the sraall black cloud that
shows itself in all well-regulated nautical tales as the
herald of frightful disaster. It raay be a hurricane or
only a teacupful of Avind. It is called South Bend, and
it noAv pretends to threaten great raischief to Seattle,
u 305

Tacoraa, and Fairhaven, along Avith aU the other points
on Puget Sound.
It is on the Pacific coast, on the front of the Olympia
peninsula, only four hours frora Portland by rail, and
very much nearer to Asia, Nicaragua, and Europe by
Avater than the sound ports. South Bend is a yearling,
and where it rubs its juvenile eyes the map shows onlj'
the words Shoalwater Bay, but that, being a libellous
narae, is now changed to Willapa Harbor. It is 57
railes north of Astoria, and is said to be a harbor of
the first grade, variously credited with offering 29 to 32
feet of water at its bar. It is the only generally useful
harbor between the Colurabia River and the Strait of
Juan de Fuca. South Bend is about to be connected
Avith the Northern Pacific Railroad systera. In the re
gion tributary to it is an extraordinary wealth of tim
ber and of agricultural lands. The founders of the
town insist that if there is to be an export trade in
Washington products, no other port in the State can
corapete with it, since vessels frora Puget Sound ports
raust double the Olympia peninsula before they reach
the point at which South Bend shipments begin. South
Bend is several hundreds of railes nearer to San Fran
cisco, Nicaragua, and Cape Horn than any Puget Sound
port. But it is too early to say raore. The best posses
sion of the new little seaport thus far is that essence
which was deserted by all its corapanions in Pandora's
box. With a raention of those considerable islands in the
Northwest which are, frora a railitary point of vioAv, the
key to the British possessions in the North,Ave raust end
this view of the 'forty-second State in the Union. Of
the islands, be it known that they are thinly Avooded,
but rich for agriculture. Sheep are raised there in great
nurabers, and more avooI than thej' grow is shipped to
• 300

the raain-land, srauggled over frora Vancouver Island.
Smuggling avooI, opiura, and Chinaraen are profitable
callings up in the extreme northwestern corner of our
country. San Juan Island is the seat of a great lime
deposit that is of considerable value, and is already
raarketed all along the coast.
There is a peculiar feature of the affairs of Washing
ton upon Avhich I have not dwelt. The critics of the
State think it an iraportant element, but I cannot see
that it cuts any figure in the future of the great cora
raonwealth. It seeras to sorae critics as if several regi
raents of our nomads, Avho keep moving West in the be
lief that thej' '¦ raust succeed there because they failed
in the East," are gathered in this last of the States,
principally at its juraping-off edge, in the cities on
Puget Sound. Town-site garabling is what attracted
these persons. The booraing of ncAV towns, that vice
Avhich swept the Northwest like an epidemic, ran all
along the Pacific coast. The snap of the whip took
place at its end in southern California, but the whole of
Avhat they up in Washington call " the sound country,"
felt the strain and the final catastrophe in some degree.
" You could not expect us to dcA'elop our soil or our
mines," said a leading spirit in one city, "Avhen aa'c
could buy a toAvn lot on one day, and four days after
Avards could sell it for fiftj' dollars more a front foot
than Ave gaA'e for it." And that is true. Wiser be
havior was not to be expected Avhere, after all, a great
raany persons went at first rather to make raoney than
to establish horaes and found farailies. The fcA'er for
toAvn-lot gambling has abated, and we can look back on
it as an episode. It must have raged marvellously, for
before it ended some cities were far overbuilt. This Avas
not pecuUar to Washington ; it was the case frora Van
couver, in British Colurabia, all the Avay down to south-
307

ern California. A cruel but useful reaction carae, and
now one hears little raore about the matter. The talk
now is of smelteries and furnaces, of the possibilities of
the trade with Asia, of the blessed prospects of new
railroads frora the East.
I rode up to Fairhaven; near the head of the sound —
a very likely town, now that it too has lived down the
epideraic — and I heard of only one boora in progress ;
that was in the " city " of Everett ; but I passed raany
dead boom towns, extinct volcanoes, so to speak, and
they were often wonderful to look at. They were, for
the most part, mere acres of stumps, clearings hastily
made in the forest, with suggestions of streets and av
enues laid out at right angles among the sturaps, and
dotted at long and irregular intervals with cabins, frarae
saloons, and perhaps a brick building or two — all ren
dering the scene the raore confused and unkempt.
Everett is regarded as a place rich in proraise. It is
the seat of the Pacific Steel Barge Corapany, a branch
of the corapany that builds the " whalebacks " at West
Superior, Wis. Everett also boasts a milling company,
heavily capitalized, for the manufacture of paper from
wood-pulp. That which gave occasion for the excite
raent over Everett was the belief that it might become
the west coast terminus of the new transcontinental
Great Northern Railroad. This belief proves to have
been well founded, for at Everett the new route reaches
tide- water. The millions invested there on this account
were not sunk, therefore, but were " planted " by shrewd
raen Avho noAv expect thera to bear golden fruit.
We have seen soraething of the scrarable for public
lands in the other States; the corapanion picture in
Washington Avas this mania for town sites— or rather
for city sites, since a settleraent in Washington is either
a city or it is nothing at all. Some of the greatest cor-
308

porations in the State — the railroads — were not above
setting the example. Soraetiraes it was a railroad
Avliich, as a corporation, essayed to " boora " a tract of
land on its route — a terrainal station, a divisional point,
or a junction. Soraetiraes one of these corporations
would strain not only to "boora" a citj' of its own
creation, but to crush or cripple a near-by town whicii
had grown up without leave.
It is as interesting a chapter as any in our ncAV his
tory, that which tells of how the planning and sale of
new towns goes on in these new States ; I now refer to
what raay be called the ordinary and customary method,
such as obtained before the thing became a craze, and
such as Avill obtain as long as there are virgin districts
for raen to rush in upon. Suppose a number of fine
" leads " of ore are struck in any new neighborhood, the
town-site man is soon on the ground. Something akin
to nature used to build towns in the older States, wher
ever towns were needed, but in the new NortliAvest the
speculator is up earlier than nature. Men have to
nudge the slow old dame along out there. They note
Avhere the new mining prospects are, and then they look
up the most likely town site. Often its natural posi
tion is self-evident ; it is at the head of the valley beloAv
the mountains, or it is where two strearas join. The
capitalist " locates " the spot, and goes horae for friends,
relatives, and eraployes to claim homestead or timber
lands where he wants the town to be. They make
their clairas. He sets up a store and post-office; a
hotel also, if he has the raeans. He eraploys sorae of
the squatters ; the others go away, and only corae back
to " prove up." He pays thera a hundred dollars each
or two hundred dollars for their trouble, and they turn
over their land to hira. In one case that I knoAv of two
such land-grabbers thought better of their opportunity,
309

and deterrained to hold on to the land they had pre-
erapted. That is considered the next worse thing to
horse-stealing out West. Fancy, if you can, how society
could exist were such raen coraraon ! The theory and
policy are to this effect, that a man shall accept for such
services Avhat sura Avill repay hira for the trouble he has
been put to, Avithout coraputing the value of his services
or of his claira to the land baron who eraploys hira.
But suppose, that all works sraoothly, as it usually
does. The capitalist establishes his store, has one of his
clerks erapowered as recorder and notary, and opens a
hotel. The miners come the second year to do that
"improvement-work" which the law requires that thej'
shall perform each year in order to keep their titles to
their claims. Thej' need giant- poAvder for blasting;
they need picks and shovels and barrows ; they need
food, tobacco, and rura. They gravitate to the only
place at Avhich these coraraodities are obtainable — the
new town site. A blacksmith sets up a shop, perhaps a
saddle-maker comes, several saloon-keepers equip their
establishments, a few painted woraen order shanties
put up, and a " hurdy-gurdy " (dance-house) or variety
shoAv is started. The transition from wilderness to
town is rapid and wonderful. The founder asks all he
can get for his lots, and coins money like a raint. His
customers stop at the hotel and gamble with the build
ing lots they have bought. The revised raaps contain
the name of another city, usually called "So-and-so
City," or "Such-and-such City," in order that there
shall be no mistake about its really being a city.
When it is carried to an excess, town-lot and town-
site gambling hinder the developraent of a region and
bring together a great raany unscrupulous and irrespon
sible raen ; but in the State of Washington, in the
presence of the vast and varied resources of the soil, the
310

mountains, and the waters, the epideraic that brought
coraraunal tragedy elsewhere can here be called only an
incident. So rauch, then, for Washington. It would seera to
share Avith all the others raany of their greatest re
sources, as if it Avere the essence and epitorae of thein
all. If it is not " the last which shall be first," it is the
one in which Ave see the suraming up of all the rest. A
sweeping glance over it, in the mind's eye of one Avho
knoAvs it well, is like the transformation scene at the
end of a Christmas pantomirae, wherein v\ e see glorious
ly sorae hint of all that went before — of all the cUraates,
forests, raetals, fruits, cereals, and vegetables of our
entire country ; of the men of all the Avorld, the fishes
of both oceans. But the scenes that are hurried along
the grooves Avere never hung before a paint bridge.
They are real. 311

IX
COLORADO AND ITS CAPITAL
If its people had not already called it " the Centennial
State " and " the Scenic State," I raight have done bet
ter by it. I Avould have called it the Palace-car State,
because it is the only one in the West where palace-cars
are run all over the tallest mountain ranges, and to the
gold and silver mines as fast as they are discovered, and
because the general style and finish of the cities and
pleasure resorts are of palace-car luxury and thorough
ness, whUe nature provides an endless gallery and muse
ura of gorgeous scenery and raagnificent curios that
would seera extravagant anywhere else, yet are in keep
ing there.
Colorado is sufficiently settled and developed to forra
a valuable object-lesson for the study of the early results
of the forces Ave see at Avork in the brand-new common
wealths near by. They are seizing the water rights in
Montana, Wyoraing, and Washington, but in Colorado
the Avater is being sold and used. In the newer States
wiseacres are prophesying Avhat Avill be done Avith imper
ial reaches of bunch-grass and sage-brush land, but in Col
orado county fairs are being held upon such lands. In
Montana the leaders are wishing for an agricultural bat
talion of neighbors to the miners, but in Colorado agri
culture has already distanced mining as a wealth-produ
cing factor.
Denver's peculiarity and strength lie in its being all
312

alone in the heart of a vast region between the Cana
dian border and the Gulf of Mexico ; but it has been
brought suddenly near to us. Not all the fast railwaj'
riding is done in the East in these days. The far West
ern steeds of steel are picking up their heels in grand
fashion for those Avho enjoy fast riding. On a palace-
car train of the Union Pacific Railroad between Oraaha
and Denver the regular tirae is nearly fifty railes an
hour, and the long run is raade in one night, between
supper and breakfast. Denver is only fifty-three hours
of riding-tirae frora Noav York as 1 Avrite — twenty-five
hours frora New York to Chicago, and tAventy-eight
hours from Chicago to Denver.
I am going to ask the reader to spend Saturday and
Sunday in Denver with me. Instead of dryly cata
loguing what is there, Ave avUI see it for ourselves. I
had supposed it to be a raountain city, so rauch does an
Eastern raan hear of its elevation, its mountain resorts,
and its mountain air. It surprised me to discover that it
Avas a city of the plains. There is nothing in the ap
pearance of the plains to lead one to suppose that they
tilt up like a toboggan slide, as they do, or that Denver
is a mile above sea-level, as it is. But a part of its enor
raous good fortune is that although it is a plains city, it
has the mountains for near neighbors — a long peaked
and scalloped line of purple or pink or blue or snow-clad
green, according to Avhen they are vicAved. There are
200 railes or raore of the Rockies in sight in clear
weather. As there are but fifty-six cloudy days in the
year, and as these mountains elevate and inspire even
the dullest souls, I think Ave can forget that it is a city
of the plains, and ever associate it Avith the mountains
hereafter. I plighted my troth to the sea near Avhich I
was born, but in Denver and Salt Lake City, loveliest of
all our inland cities, I felt a straining at ray loyaltj' ;
313

and when I saAv in the dining-room of Mr. W. N. Byers
the great square AvindoAV that his charming wife ordered
made so that she raight frarae 200 miles of the Rockies
as in a picture, I adraitted to rayself that there was
much to be said for " t'other dear charmer," and that, in
the language of Denver's poet, Cy Warman, " God was
good to make the mountains."
We have looked on Denver's patent map, and know
Avhere we are. Every Western city has its own patent
map, usually designed to show that it is in the centre of
creation, but Denver's map is more truthful, and merely
locates it in the middle of the country Avest of the Mis
sissippi. It shows the States east of that river without
a single railroad, Avhile a perfect labyrinth of railroads
crisscross the West in frantic efforts to get to Denver.
Gravely a Denver man says to us afterwards, as he holds
the map in his hand, " If those Dutchmen and Puritans
and things who settled the East could have landed out
here on the plains, the thirteen original colonies would
ha\'e been a hoAvUng wilderness filled with savages to
day." And that in turn rerainds me of the remark of a
man in Utah, a Mormon, who Avas a raember of a colony
that pre-empted an alkali lake, Avashed out the salt Avith
a system of ditches, and succeeded in growing crops.
" Eastern people make a great mouth about irrigation
and farming in the arid belt," said he, " but we folks 'd
rather scoop out a ditch than have to clear out forest
stumps and blast rocks to get room for farraing." The
raoral of both these tales is that Ave may have our own
opinion of the West, but Ave can't prevent the West's
having its OAvn opinion of us.
In all other respects the patent Denver raap is relia
ble. It shows that this city of 135,000 souls stands aU
alone, without a real rival, in a vast rich region. It is
1000 miles frora Chicago, 400 from Salt Lake City, 600
314

from Kansas City, and the same distance from the Mis
souri River. If you droAv a circle of 1000 miles diarae
ter, with Denver in its centre, you would .discover no
real corapetitor ; but the people have adopted Avhat they
call their " thousand-mile theory," Avhich is that Chi
cago is 1000 miles frora New York, and Denver is 1000
miles from Chicago, and San Francisco is 1000 miles
from Denver, so that, as any one can see, if great cities
are put at that distance apart, as it seems, then these
are to be the four great ones of America.
Denver is a beautiful city — a parlor city Avith cabinet
finish — and it is so new that it looks as if it had been
raade to order, and Avas just ready for delivery. How
the people lived five years ago, or Avhat they have done
with the houses of that period, does not appear, but at
present everj'thing — business blocks, churches, clubs,
dwellings, street cars, the park — all look brand-new,
like the young trees. The first citizen you talk to says :
" You notice there are no old people on the streets here.
There aren't any in the citj'. We have no use for old
folks here." So, then, the people also are ucav. It is
very Avonderful and peculiar. Only a year ago Mr.
Richard Harding Davis Avas there, and coraraented on
the lack of paveraents in the streets, and I hear that at
that tirae pedestrians Avore rubber boots, and the mud
was frightful. But now every street in the thick of
town is paved with concrete or Belgian blocks as Avell
as if it were New York or Paris. The first things that
impress you in the city are the neatness and Avidth of
the streets, and the number of j'oung trees that orna
raent thera raost invitingly. The next thing is the re
raarkable character of the big business buildings. It is
not that they are bigger and better than those of New
York and Chicago — coraparisons of that sort are non
sensical — but they are raassive and beautiful, and they
315

possess art elegance without and a roorainess and light
ness within that distinguish thera as superior to the
show buildings of raost of the cities of the country.
The hotels are even raore remarkable, from the one
down by the irapressive big depot, Avhich is the best-
equipped third-class hotel in the country, to the Brown's
Palace and the Metropole, both of steel and stone,
Avhich are just as good as raen know hoAV to raake
hotels. The residence districts are of a piece with the rest.
Along the tree-lined streets are sorae of the very pret
tiest villas it is any raan's lot to see at this tirae. They
are not palaces, but they are very tasteful, stylish, cosej',
and pretty horaes, all built of brick or stone, in a great
variety of pleasing colors and raaterials, and Avith a
proud showing of towers, turrets, conservatories, bay-
windows, gables, and all else that goes to raark this
period, Avhen men build after Avidely differing plans to
compliraent their own taste and the skill of originating
draughtsmen. The toAvn spreads over an enormous terri
toiy, as compared with the space a city of its size should
take up, but we must learn that raodern methods of
quick transit are so cheap that they are being adopted
everywhere, and wherever they are used the cities are
spreading out. Denver has cable and electric cars, but
it is the electric roads that are the city -spreaders. They
Avhiz along so fast that raen do not hesitate to build their
horaes five or six railes frora their stores and offices,
Avhere they can get garden and elbow roora. We are
going to see all our cities shoot out in this way. It pro-
raotes beauty in residence districts, and pride in the
hearts of those who oavu the pretty horaes. It carries
the good health that coraes Avith fresh air. But it en
tails a great new expense upon raodern city governraent,
for the streets and the mains and sewers and police and
316

fire systems all have to be extended to keep pace with
the electric flight of the people, who, in turn, must
stand the taxes. Not that they are high in Denver, or
in those other electric-car-peppered capitals, Minneapolis
and St. Paul, but they are higher than they would be
if the people Avere crowded into smaller spaces. In
Denver the governraent has spared itself and the people
one source of anxiety by ordering that, no matter Avhere
the houses reach to, it shall be a fire-proof city. The
fire lines follow the extension, and every house raifst be
of brick or stone.
As we Avalk about the town, noting the theatres that
are absolutely gorgeous, observing that the Methodist
church is a quarter-of-a-raillion-dollar pile of granite, see
ing the crowded shopping stores that are alraost like our
own in Noav York, heeding the bustle of people and
vehicles, stopping to look at the precious Colorado
stones that are heaped in the jewellers' Avindows, and
the rauseuras of Indian curios that are peculiar to the
toAA'n, a raarked and distinctiA'e secret of the place is
forced upon our attention. It is that though the signs
of great wealth and liberal outlay are in every view,
there is no over-decoration, no vulgar display, no Avaste
ful ostentation (except in that saloon that has sih'er
dollars sunk in the floor, and that other one Avhere the
mosaic floor slabs are set Avith double eagles). There is
upon the shoAV-places of the town that restraint Avhich
Ave call " taste." To be sure, the bar-rooms cost the
price of a prince's ransora, and the walls and bars are
raade of onyx. But there they stop. A little spray of
silver arabesquerie, necessary to save such a room from
bareness, is all the ornament one sees. In the high-class
hotels, for some reason that appears inscrutable to an
American who has been surfeited with bold paintings
and dubious bric-a-brac frora Madison Square to Nob
318

Hill, there is the sarae extraordinary good taste. The
Avails of all the rooras, both public and private, rely on
the harmonious blending of soft tints, and on mere lines
of fine beading on the hard-Avood fittings. Why that
taste which makes the apartments of the Japanese our
raarvel and delight should reappear in Denver, and no
Avhere else out West, is certainly reraarkable.
" There is in Denver," says a raan Avho meets me in
the Hotel Metropole, " what is shockinglj' called ' the
one-lunged array.' I ara a raeraber of it, and raay re
peat the nicknarae Avithout sharae, for Ave are proud of
ourselves. This army comprises 30,000 invalids, or raore
than one-fifth of the population of Denver. Not b\' any
means is this a host of persons with pulmonary ailments,
but of men in physical straits of raany sorts, who find
the rare air of a place a mile on the road to heaven bet
ter than raedicine. These are men of wealth, as a rule,
and of cultivation and of taste. They have been more ira
portant factors in the raaking of this unique city than
most persons, e\'en in Denver, imagine. The stock and
oil and gold and silver millionaires point to their opera
tions as the cause of Denver's iraportance ; and they are
right. But iraportance is one thing, and good taste,
good societv, and progressiveness are quite different
things. It was not raining that begot the taste which
croAvds our residence quarter with elegant dwellings, or
that created a deraand for clubs like the Denver Club.
It Avas not oil that gave us college-bred raen to forra a
'Varsity Club of 120 raembers, or that insisted upon the
decoration of the toAvn Avith such hotels as ours. The in
fluence of the iuA'alids is seen in all this. They are New-
Yorkers, Bostonians, Philadelphians, New Orleans men,
EngUshraen — the well-to-do and well-brought up men
frora all over the countrj' — architects, doctors, laAvyers,
and everj' sort of professional men being araong thera."
319

After that we caught ourselves constantly looking for
invalids, but without success. Even those Avho told us
that they were members of the strange army of debili
tated aesthetes did not look so. But we came upon
raany queer facts regarding thera, and the air, and the
custoras of the place. One very noticeable peculiarity
of the people was their habit of speaking of the East as
" horae." " At horae in the East Ave call that Virginia-
creeper," said one. " I go home to New York every
few months," said another. " We long to go back East
to our horaes, but Avhen we get there the cUraate does
not agree with us, and we hurry back to Colorado."
Thus Avas revealed the peculiar tenure the place has
upon thousands of its citizens. But araong thera are
very raany who say that it is customary for Eastern
folks to let their regard for the East keep Avarm until
the moraent coraes when they seriously consider the
idea of leaving Colorado. At that juncture they realize
for the first time the magic of the raountain air and the
hold it has upon them. Few indeed ever seriously think
of leaving it after one such consultation with theraselves.
But I raust say it is a very queer air. It keeps every
one keyed up to the trembling-point, inciting the popu
lation to tireless, incessant effort, like a ceaseless breath-
ing-in of alcohol. It creates a highly nervous people,
and, as one raan said, " it is strange to fancy what the
literature of Colorado will be Avhen it develops its oavu
roraancers and poets, so strong is the nervous strain and
raental exaltation of the people." One would suppose
alcohol unnecessary there; but, on the contrary, there
is rauch drinking. It is a dangerous indulgence. Araong
the dissolutes suicides are frequent. " If you stay here
a Aveek you will read of two," said a citizen. And I did.
It was found that Avhen the saloons were allowed to re
main open all night, violent crimes were of frequent
320

occurrence. Drinking too deep and too long was the
cause. The saloons were therefore ordered shut at
twelve o'clock, and a reraarkable decrease of these
criraes followed.
We shall see that on its Avorst side the city is West
ern, and that its raoral side is Eastern. It will be inter
esting to see how one side dominates the other, and
both keep along together. But in the raean time what
is most peculiar is the indifference with Avhich the popu
lace regards murder among those garablers and despera
does Avho are a feature of CA-erj' neAv country, and Avho
are found in Denver, though, I suspect, the ladies and
children never see thera, so well separated are the de
cent and the vicious quarters. It is said that not very
long ago it Avas the tacit agreeraent of the people that
it Avas not worth Avhile to put the county to the cost or
bother of seriously pursuing, prosecuting, and hanging
or iraprisoning a thug Avho murdered another thug. It
Avas argued that there Avas one bad man less, and that if
the raurderer Avas at large another one Avould kill him.
The axiora that " only bad men are the victiras of bad
men" obtained there, as it did in Cheyenne and Dead-
Avood, and does in Butte. To-day a raurder in a dive or
gambling-hell excites little comment and no sensation in
Denver, and 1 could distinctly see a trace of the old
spirit in the speech of the reputable men Avhen I talked
to thera of the one crirae of the sort that took place
while I was there.
The night side of the toAvn is principaUy corralled, as
they say ; that is, its disorderly houses are all on one
street. There is another raining-town characteristic —
Avide-open garabling. The " hells " are raainly above-
stairs, over saloons. The vice is not flaunted as it is in
certain other cities ; but once in the garaing-places, the
visitor sees thera to be like those ray readers becarae
X 821

acquainted with in Butte, Montana — great open places,
like the board-rooras in our stock exchanges, lined with
gambling lay-outs. They are crowded on this Saturday
night Avith rough men in careless dress or in the apparel
of laborers. These are railroad employes, workers from
the nearest raines, laborers, clerks — every sort of men
Avho earn their money hard, and think to make more
out of it by letting it go easily. Roulette, red and black,
and faro are the games. Behind each table sits the im
perturbable dealer — soraetiraes a rough cow boyish-look
ing young man, who has left off his necktie so as to
show his diaraond stud ; sometiraes a raan who would
pass for a gray-bearded deacon in a village church. By
each dealer's side sits the " lookout," chewing a cigar,
and lazily looking on in the interests of such fair play
as is consistent with professional garabling. All around
each table, except on the dealer's side, crowd the idiots,
straining and pushing to put their chips where luck will
perch. These places are orderly, of course. It is the
rule with thera everywhere. There is very Uttle con
versation. Except for the musical clink-link-link of the
ivory chips, the shuffling of feet, and the rattle of the
roulette marbles, there is little noise. But the floor
boards hold sraall sea-beds of expectoration, and over
each table is enough tobacco sraoke to beget the fancy
that each lay-out is a raouth of the pit of hell.
Queer characters illustrate queer stories in these
places, just as they do in the mining regions, but with
the difference that all the stories of luck in the mines
are cast with characters who are either rich or " broke,"
Avhile in the hells they seem never to be in luck when
you happen on thera. They were flush yesterday, and
will be to-raorrow — if you will "stake" thera with some
thing to gamble Avith. The raan who once had a bank
of his own and the one who broke the biggest bank in
322

LeadviUe were raere ordinary dramatis personm when I
looked in, but the towering giant of the place Avas the
raan who at twenty-six years of age had killed twenty-
six men, all so justly, however, that he never stood trial
for one episode. This is part of the " local color " in any
picture of Denver; but, on the other hand, the best of
that color is, as I have hinted, of the tone of lovely fire
sides, elegance, Avealth, and refinement.
From the gaming to the fruit fair, that happens to be
in progress, we are eager to go. The fruit or orchard
exhibition was an unlooked-for consumraation in so neAv
a State. It was a sight of the dawn of the fruit indus
try Avhere the best orchards Avere not five years old.
Indeed, sorae of the finest fruit Avas plucked where Ind
ians Avere guarded not long before. There Avere apples,
pears, peaches, pluras, quinces, grapes, and ground-cher
ries. It Avas too late in thg year (October) for berries,
but they are grown in Colorado in great abundance, and
the straAvberries are said to be big and raost delicious.
The fruits I saAv displaj'ed at the fair were of large
though not Californian size. Their raost reraarkable
quality to the eye was their gorgeous coloring — the rich
est and deepest I ever saAV except in paintings. I found
afterwards that all the fruit grown in the valleys of the
Rockies is equally gorgeous. But of more practical ira
port is the fact that this Colorado fruit is of delicious
flavor. In DeuA'er and in other parts of the State I
tasted every product of the orchards. I cannot recall
my experience in California clearly enough to say more
than that they pick their fruit green to ship it away,
and so they miss the credit they deserve abroad as grow
ers of luscious fruit. I would like to encourage the Col-
oradans in their boast that theirs has higher flavor than
the Avest-coast product (if it were true, and I had both
kinds to prove it by), and I will say that I think I never
323

enjoyed any fruit raore than raost of that Avhich I ate in
Colorado. The only raelons at the show Avere musk-
raelons, but it is a great State for melons, particularly
for watermelons. One place. Rocky Ford, in Otero
County, is celebrated for its observance of what is called
"melon day" every year, Avhen the idle people, tour
ists, and pleasure-seekers gather there to eat free melons
in a great amphitheatre built for that purpose. This
affair is not altogether unique. At Monument, in Doug
las County, the exuberant villagers dig a great trench
and cook potatoes — as the Rhode-Islanders do claras —
for the raultitude, Avithout charge. The fruit at the
Denver show was grown in the following counties : Arap
ahoe, Boulder, Delta, Grand, Jefferson, Larimer, Mesa,
Montrose, Otero, and Weld.
The Avild flowers at this shoAV were very interesting.
No account of Colorado Avould be complete if it omitted
at least sorae mention of these gorgeous ornaments
which Nature litters Avith lavish hands all over the State
— far up the mountain-sides, where the very rocks are
stained with rich colors, and up and down the valleys,
Avhere even man's iraportation, the alfalfa, turns the
ranches into great blue beds of thickly clustered blos
soras. It may have been the flowers, or it may have
been the beautifully stained rocks, or, as some say, the
color of the water in the Colorado River, that gained
the State the Spanish narae it bears, but Avhichever it
Avas, the flowers alone VA'ere sufficient to justify the chris
tening, so raultitudinous, lovely, varied, and gay are
they. Fortunately for the farae of the flowers, certain
Colorado ladies are skilled in pressing thera so as to re
produce and preserve the natural poses of all the flower
ing plants, as AveU as to make them retain their colors
unimpaired. The work of these women is now known
in every part of the civilized world.
324

It Avas interesting to read the progress of Denver in
the remarks of those who were presented to me during
that visit to the fruit shoAV. One gentleraan was inter
ested in the electric-light plant, and said that it is so
powerful that during a recent decoration of the streets
in honor of a convention that AA'as held there, no less
than 22,000 incandescent and four 5000 candle-power
search-lights were used in the display. In few cities in
the Avorld, he said, is this light so generally and so lav
ishly used. He added that few of the dwellings, except
in the poorest quarter, are Avithout telephones.
A pubUc official volunteered the inforraation that
since 1870 the percentage of increase of population has
been greater in Denver than in any other city of the
land, it being soraething raore than 2000 per cent. A
bevy of srailing young woraen Avas pointed out as repre
sentative art students ; for there is a Denver Art League
Avhich has sixty members, and aims to maintain classes
in oil and Avater-color work and sculpture. Two of the
classes, one for each sex, pursue the practice of drawing
and painting frora the nude. This institution is the
pride and care of the leading business and professional
men of the city, who give it araple funds, and are en
couraged by the eagerness of the youth of the State, as
Avell as of the city, to enjoy its advantages. A merchant
spoke of the Chamber of Comraerce, to the enterprise
and kindness of which, and especially of the secretary,
I Avas afterAvards indebted. I learned that this Avatch
ful organization of promoters of the comraercial Avelfare
of the city maintains a fine free library, containing a
collection of books that now numbers 20,000 voluraes,
and is constantly increasing. No less than 77,000 vol
uraes were read in the horaes of its patrons last year.
The reading-roora is kept open on all the days of the
year, and the city governraent has passed an ordinance
825

appropriating $500 a raonth, frora the fines iraposed by
the police magistrates, for the benefit of this valuable
institution. Another new acquaintance urged me to see
the public schools of the city. The high-school building
cost $325,000, and is the second most costlj' and com
plete one in existence. Many of the ward or district
schools cost a fifth, and some cost more than a fifth, of
that large sura. I could not then nor there further in
sist upon the opinions that have engendered the only
criticisras that have passed between rayself in these pa
pers and the new West which I ara describing. The re
port of the Denver Board of Education is before me,
and if I read it aright, it declares that the comraon-
school systera erabraces a course of twelve years of
study, eight in the common schools and four in the high-
school. DraAving, music, phj^sical culture, and German
are mentioned as among the studies in the grararaar
grades, while the Avide garaut between algebra and
Greek, with military training for the boys, comprises
the high-school course. The 700 high-school pupils are
said to be of the average age of seventeen years. I re
iterate that this is education for the Avell-to-do at the
expense of the poor. If Denver is Uke any other town
of my acquaintance, the poor cannot release their chil
dren from toil during twelve years after they are of an
age to be sent to school. The disparity between the
sura of 9500 in the coraraon schools and the sura of 700
in the high-school makes it appear that Denver is no ex
ception to the rule. I Avill not dwell upon my belief
that the Avide range of studies in these latter-day schools
gives children a raere but dangerous sraattering of many
things and no thorough grounding in any study, and
that the result is to produce a distaste for honest labor
and an unfitness for anything above it. It is unpleasant
to criticise at all Avhere a coraraunity is so enthusiastic
336

as this, but I believe the Avhole systera, whether we find
it in New York and Boston, as we do, or in Denver,
is underaocratic, unjust, and unwise. The " little red
school-house on the hill," Avhich has been glorified as
the chief pride of Puritan New England, is the seed
that has grown into the $300,000 palace of learning for
700 children, at the expense of the parents of raore than
9000 other children. The little red school-house was
grand indeed. It taught the " three R's " thoroughly,
and when a boy or girl wanted raore, he or she man
aged to get it, at such pains and in such a way as to
cause him or her to value all that was acquired. Hon
est Avork Avas the portion of all but the rich, who paid
for their children's higher schooling. However, the
spirit in Avhich Denver maintains and elaborates her
school systera is beyond all criticism ; it is, indeed, cred
itable and Avonderful. If Ave do not agree about the re
sult, I can at least testify to the irapression I received
— that the whole people are honestly and enthusiasti
cally proud of their schools, and that of their elaborate
kind thej' are araong the best in the countrj'.
Denver has other than her public schools — the (Meth
odist) University of Denver, the (Catholic) St. Mary's
Acaderay, the (Episcopal) St. John's College for boys ;
an Episcopal school for girls, called Wolfe Hall ; the
Woraan's College, and the Westrainster University, the
first a Baptist and the second a Presbyterian institution.
I should have raentioned the fact that a second fine
public Ubrary is raaintained in connection with the
pubUc-school systera. It goes without saying, in a study
of a city like Denv^er, that rausical, draraatic, literary,
and kindred coteries are nuraerous.
Away frora the fruit display, out in the brightly lit
streets, were the crowds of Saturday- night shoppers.
Of these many more were persons eraployed in raanu-
337

facturing industries than those Avould iraagine who
know no raore of Denver than I have told. The fine
and A'aried building stones that Avill yet becorae a
great asset in Colorado's inventory of Avealth are cut
and dressed in raore than one establishraent. The
notable buildings of Denver are built of Colorado red
sandstone, granite, and other beautiful raaterials found
in the raountains. The raain or parent range of the
Rockies loses its striking configuration soon after leav
ing Colorado in the south. Then it becoraes a broken,
ragged chain. They have sorae good stones in the ter
ritories to the southward, but not the assortment found
in Colorado. Alreadj' Colorado stones are shipped to
Chicago, the Nebraska and Kansas towns, and Texas.
These are brownstones, granite, a so-called la\'a or
metaraorphic stone of great durability and beauty, and
a variety of sandstones. Sorae red sandstone that I
saw being quarried in the Dolores ^^alley, where it is
abundant beyond calculation, is said to be Avell adapted
for fine interior decorative uses. Others in the crowds
Avere workers in the cotton factory; in a knitting-raill
that has been reraoved there frora the East ; in the three
large establishraents Avhere preserves, fruit pickles, and
sauces are made; in the making of fire-brick, drain
pipe, jugs, jars, churns, and other coarse pottery; in
the manufacture of the best mining raachinery in the
world, whole outfits of Avhich have been shipped to
China and South Africa, to say nothing of Mexico and
our own raining regions, Avhich are all supplied frora
Denver. Other operatives work upon the hoisting
machinery and pumping machines, of which the Denver
patterns are celebrated. Still others in the streets Avork
at the stock-yards, where there are two large packing
companies, and where nearly 200,000 hogs, cattle, and
sheep were slaughtered last year. A raill for the raanu-
838

facture of newspaper has been in operation for a year,
and now (October, '92) three other paper-raills are about
to be erected, the aira being to raake book and letter
paper, Manilas, coarse Avrapping-paper, and flooring and
roofing papers, as well as to produce the pulp used in
frhese manufactures.
The three sraelting-works eraploy nearly 400 raen,
and handled 400,000 tons of ore, producing $24,500,000
in gold, silver, lead, and copper, last year. In addition
to the tAventy foundries and raachine shops of whose
Avork I have spoken, there are thirty other iron-work
ing estabhshments, raaking tin and sheet -iron work
and Avire-Avork. In another year a barbed-wire factory
and a Avire . and nail raaking plant will be in opera
tion. There are sixty brick -raaking firras. Leather-
Avorkers are nuraerous, but all the leather is iraported ;
there is no tannery there. Paint and Avhite-lead raaking
are large industries ; there are six breweries ; and eight
firras engage in Avood - working and the raaking of
building material. In a sentence, this busy metrop
olis is raanufacturing for the vast territory around
it, with 339 raanufacturing establishraents, eraploying
9000 operatives, and producing $46,000,000 Avorth of
goods. The Charaber of Coraraerce adA'ertises the need of
AvooUen mills, stocking factories, tanneries, boot and
shoe factories, glue factories, and potteries, but declares
that Denver AvUl give no subsidies to get thera. " The
natural advantages of the centre of a region as large as
the German Erapire, without a rival for 600 railes in any
direction, corabined Avith cheap fuel, fine cliraate, abun
dant supply of intelligent labor at reasonable prices,
unutilized local raw raaterials, a good and ever-growing
local market, protected against Eastern competition by
from 1000 to 2000 miles of railroad haul^these are the
329

induceraents that DeuA'er offers to new raanufacturing
plants." And now we will fancy it is Sunday in Denver. The
worshippers are coraing out of the churches. But in the
streets rush the cable cars with their Aveek-day clanging
of bells. On the car roofs are the signs, " To EUtch's
Gardens," where, according to the papers next day,
there are "rausic and dancing and bangle -bedizened
Avomen." Other cars rush towards the City Park, where
the State Capital Band is to play. "Oho!" thought
the critical Eastern visitors ; " we are in the presence of
the usual Araerican Sunday, with the gin-raills and the
garabling-places all Avide open." Not so. So far as I
could see, not a bar-roora Avas open. The shades were
up, and the desolate interiors were in plain vioAV from
the streets. The gambling-saloons were tight shut. No
one loitered near them. Here, then, had reappeared
the Sunday of the Atlantic coast, for the local ordi
nances are enforced, and require the closing of the
saloons and " hells " from Saturday midnight until
Monday morning.
Except for the cling-clang of the street cars, an East
ern-Sunday hush Avas upon the town. Just as we see
them in New York, country couples, strangers there,
walked arra in arra in the business quarter, looking in
the shop AvindoAvs ; German families, children and all,
in stiff Sunday best, streamed along in queues behind
the fathers ; idle young raen with large cigars leaned
against the corners and the corner lamp-posts, and the
business streets were nine-tenths dead. Thousands gath
ered in the park, just as they do on such a Sunday in
New York. Beyond that the silence and stagnation of
Sunday were on the toAvn. In the Denver Club the
prosperous men loafed about, and looked in at the great
round table in the private dining-room with thoughts of
330

the grand dinners it had borne. In the pretty homes
Avere many circles Avherein the West was discussed
just as it is in Noav York, Avith sharp Avords for its
garabling, its pistol-carrying, and its generally noisj'
Sundays. It was strange to hear in the West such talk
of the West. It was easy to see the source of the influ
ence that brought about that quiet day of Avorship. Yet
in the same homes, in the same circles, was heard the
raost fulsome lauding of Denver and Colorado — praise
that seemed to lift those altitudinous places even nearer
to the clouds. With only the happiest raeraories and
kindest wishes, then, adieu to Denver.
I raade a journey of raore than two thousand railes in
Colorado Avithout seeing half of if, for it is as large
as New England and Ncav York. Upon the faraous
" Scenic Route " (the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad)
I rode from Denver to the New Jlexican border, through
southern Colorado, and back through the raiddle of the
State, OA'er the faraous Marshall Pass. I took in, on the
way, the full lengths of the Silverton and the Rio
Grande Southern raihvaj's, which, in quest of raining
towns and agricultural settleraents, are laid araid some
of the raost gorgeous, stupendous, and varied scenery in
the State. It will surprise the reader to hear that on
these raountain railroads rock ballast, heavy steel rails,
and gas-lighted palace-cars are provided. Yet the great
est surprise comes Avith seeing hoAv the railroad-builders
have flung their steel in loops upon the raountain sides
and tops, where one would suppose no engines could
ever haul a train, or trains could ever yield a profit, and
where it is no uncoraraon thing to see three and even
four lengths of the sarae railway above or below your
car, as the rails " tack " to and fro toAvards the top of
a steep raountain. " Yachting round the Rockies " Avas
Avhat the party on the trip Avith rae resolved to call our
831

journej'ing. There is not sufficient room in a chap
ter for a description of the scenery of Colorado. I
had not supposed that, after enjoying the mountain
scenery of British Columbia, I would find anj'thing to
delight me as much in any other part of the Rocky
Mountain chain. Even now I think there are grander
views in the North, but they are not as numerous, nor
as beautiful and Avarm and full of color and variety,
as the inountain scenes in Colorado. The raihvay tour
ist in British Colurabia raerelj' crosses the raountains,
\jhereas in Colorado it is possible to start frora Denver
and, riding only bj' daylight, to spend a week of nearly
continuous mountaineering. At the end it will be dif
ficult to deterraine which is the prettiest scene that
raeraory retains for the mind's ej'e to return to. Per
haps it Avill seera that, taken altogether, the Avondrous
canons Avere most Avorth seeing ; those of the Rio de las
Animas Perdidas, of the Grand, of the Dolores, of the
Rio Grande, and that at Toltec, in New Mexico. Per
haps the surprising views of innuraerable far-reaching,
snow-clad raountain peaks — seen at raany points Avhen
the cars cross a divide — will be raost delightfully re
raerabered. Or it raay be that the choicest recollec
tion will be of the superb region between Trout Lake
and the Cathedral Peaks, followed by a valley view of
great beauty beyond. Then strangely beautiful raining
towns, built in bUnd valleys between towering mount-
•ains, will come to mind, and Telluride, Pandora, Ouray,
and other villages will seem the most enchanting bits of
the grand experience. Their neat houses, shaded streets,
and glorious surroundings gain much frora the added
novelty of raining paraphernaha in action. The pack-
trains of long-eared burros, which the people call " Colo
rado canaries," the trolley railways, the heaps of ore,
the Welsh miners— aU these lend added value to the
333

scenes. Each day is crowded Avith views of fearful
gorges, of mountain-sides stained red and blue and
green, of A'alleys cultivated to the degree of an Illinois
prairie, of vast irrigation-Avorks gridironing the plains
Avith sUver threads, of Mexicans and their huts and
villages of adobe, of myriads of sheep on southern
ranges. It is not necessary to go to Europe for scenerj^
or for unfamiUar peoples and conditions.
I shall say even less about the raining than about the
scenery. Colorado is generally known to possess both
in abundance. Let it be ray part to shoAv that alreadj'
the surer, raore lasting resource of agriculture is the
heaviest asset of the State. The Denver smelteries
treated four and a quarter raillions of pounds of Colo
rado copper, 100,000 tons of Colorado lead, tweh'e miU
ion ounces of sih'er, and 120,000 ounces of gold. The
total value of all this was fifteen and three-quarter mill
ions of dollars ; but rauch of the Colorado ore is of the
free-railling variety not treated at the sraelteries; and
besides, there are other sraelteries at Pueblo, Rico, Lead
viUe, and Durango. The total revenue frora mining in
1891 was thirty-three and a half railUons of dollars.
And yet the Denver Charaber of Comraerce estiraates
the incorae frora agriculture at forty raillions, derived
frora the cultiA'ation of two raillions of acres of land.
If the value of the live-stock Avere added as a farm prod
uct, the sum would be increased by kit least $15,000,000.
A wonderful shoAving for so new a State.
It is estimated that at the end of another hundred
years Colorado will boast a population of four millions
of souls. Her stone quarries, her petroleum, her rainer
al paints, her ceraent, which is already classed as equal
to the best, her clays, found in treraendous banks, and
suitable for the production of fine china, as well as
pottery of all the coarse grades, her coal and iron, her
833

natural parks, scenic wonders, mineral Avaters, farra and
fruit and pasture lands, her vast stores of metals — all
these, and many resources that I have not raentioned,
Avill raore than support a population of that raagnitude.
The range cattle business and civilization, Avith its
fences and farras and towns, cannot exist together, and
as Colorado is civilized, this rude business is alraost at
an end there. Cattle are being held in sraall bunches
and Avith winter corrals — an infinitely raore practical
and huraane industry. The present grade of cattle is
higher than before. Every farraer sells a few head each
J'ear, and thus raakes a little raoney vi'here a few used
to raake (or lose) large sums.
One-third of the State is plains land, and two-thirds
are cut up by mountains. These are separated by
vaUeys of varying degrees of value for farm land, and
the mountains are not so rocky as to be to any great
extent unavailable for pasturage. Farraing and orchard
culture are raaking great headway in Larimer, Arapa
hoe, Boulder, Jefferson, and Weld counties, in eastern
Colorado. Farmers are pushing into the valleys of
southern Colorado, especially those in the southwest,
that were once thickly peopled and well cultivated by
the cliff-dwellers. The Mormons and other thrifty folk
are taking up A'alley lands in the western part of the
State. Colorado's 66,560,000 acres of land Ue upon either
side of the continental divide and upon raany secondary
ranges, forraing raountains, parks, and vaUeys, of which
not 5 per cent, is bare of vegetation. Long ago the
Mexicans began, Avith petty irrigation-works, to borroAv
frora the eight principal rivers and their tributaries the
water that carae down frora the mountains in those
channels. The mean yearly precipitation west of the
raountains is but 25 inches ; east of thera it is only 18.7
334

inches. At Denver the highest rainfall Avas in 1891,
and araounted to 21^%- inches. The lowest was in 1890,
and Avas 9| inches. All over the State irrigation cora
panies have been forraed, or farraers have banded
together as ditch-owners, and, as we shall see, a vast
acreage is under irrigation or ready for it. The destruc
tion of the forests, and consequent loss of water,
through its unequal distribution, have hurried the neces
sary building of reservoirs, of which there are raanj',
and sorae very large ones, in use. Colorado is forward
in this respect. The iraportance of reservoirs where
water is scarce will be seen when the reader under
stands that the winter's stores of snow, and even the
heavy rainfalls, are apt to rush away in one great flood,
robbing the State of a large fraction of the too little
water that comes upon it. The gauge records of the
Cache la Poudre River show that 82 per cent, of the
total annual discharge passes down the river in May,
June, and July, whereas in August the discharge is only
6.6 per cent., and in September it is only 2.6 per cent.
Artesian wells add coraparatively little to the Avealth
of the State, although this source of supply has been so
successfully tried in the San Luis Vallej' that there are
now more than 2000 wells there.
On the eastern slope, out to the eastern boundary of
Colorado, there are nearly thirty millions of acres of
arable land, of Avhich four millions of acres are " under
the ditch," and only a raillion and a half are actually
cultivated. Of Avhat remains unditched it is difficult to
say how rauch may be redeemed. It depends upon the
situation of the land and the extent of the water supply,
and the latter factor is dependent on future develop
ments. For one thing, the irrigable land is constantly being
extended and increased by the storage of the water of
885

spring- freshets in reservoirs that are usually forraed out
of natural depressions at the base of the mountains.
The custora is to use the stored water on the near-bj'
land, while the streara carries its oavu quota, undirain-
ished, to distant fields. Thus the area of irrigable terri
tory is greatly increased. Moreover, tirae has deraon
strated the strange but iraportant fact that, after three
or four years, water used in irrigation goes tAvice as far
as it did Avhen the Avork was begun. The ground under
the ditches becoraes a vast reservoir, frora Avhich the
Avater that sinks into it " seeps " or drains back into the
natural waterways. Mr. MaxAvell, the State Engineer
of Colorado, finds that at the eastern line of the State,
far beyond the ranches and farras Avhich drain the river,
the Platte carries 600 cubic feet of water per second as
against the 200 cubic feet it brings out of the raountains.
There is, therefore, a far better supply in the eastern
plains country than forraerly, and this will increase as
reservoirs catch the spring floods, for it is certain that
howcA'^er rauch Avater be spread on the land, none is lost
except by evaporation. The least hopeful outlook in
eastern Colorado is for the land on the divide between
the Platte and the Arkansas. There is no water there ;
the land is higher than the distant rivers, and Avells
haA'e not succeeded there.
West of the Rocky Mountains there are more and
larger strearas, but there is less rainfall than on the east
ern slope. It is estiraated that there is a drainage area
of twenty-five raillions of acres in western Colorado, but
that only nine railUons are arable. These nine raillions
are raainly irrigated, the country being the field of rapid
developraent. The principal strearas flow through well-
cultivated farraing districts, and these forra the region
already noted for choice fruit-raising.
In the celebrated Greeley colony, north of Denver, the
386

ditches are owned by the raen who own the land. They
bought and pre-erapted a large tract (uoav as rich as a
typical Illinois district, by-the-Avay), took the water
rights, constructed a large canal, and distributed the
Avater proportionately with the various holdings of the
land. Thus the water has becorae part and parcel of
the land, and costs only the trifling sura each owner is
assessed for repairs and superintendence. This is as
near to the perfect and ideal raethod of irrigation as
mankind has corae in this country. It is the raethod
of the Mormons also. But, alas! practically the Avhole
water treasure and irrigation-work is in the hands of
speculative corporations. All tlie newer schemes are of
that sort. In the San Luis Vallej', the Arkansas Vallej',
and along the Platte River corporations have built the
ditches, appropriated and diverted the Avater, and are
selling the liquid to farmers Avith a superiraposed annual
tax for repairs — a tax of such proportions that the plan
may be justly described as raaking the farraers pay down
at the outset for the privilege of having Avater after
wards by paying for it over again every year. Like
coAvs who corae horae to be railked at nightfall, the set
tlers of Colorado must " give doAvn " each j'ear or go
dry. The first payments vary between five, eight, and
ten dollars an acre for the land — usually eight to ten
dollars — and the annual dues (for " raaintenance," as this
Colorado method of producing Avater - barons is called)
are from a dollar to two dollars and a half an acre.
In each State I have visited where irrigation is neces-
sarj' (and this is the case in something like one-fifth of
the land of the United States) the conditions are about
the same, and their unjustness causes thinking raen to
predict excessive irritation and trouble in the future. An
eminent laAvj'er in Denver has reached the same conclu
sion that I announced in one of my papers on the neAV
Y 337

states in the Northwest. "Eventually and surely,"
said he, " the States must control the water supply
within their borders. They will have to take the water
by right of erainent doraain, and pay the present owners
for it. They raust pay a great deal, for the owners
count on becoraing Avealthy and on bequeathing Fortu
natus purses to their descendants. Once in the posses
sion of the Governraent, the water must be distributed
for the benefit of the greatest possible number. It Avill
not be in our time, but it Avill be done, and it will result
frora the very great discontent, and perhaps even violent
disorder, that are certain to breed out of the present un
just, selfish, and priraitive raethods."
The coal of eastern Colorado extends the whole width
of the State in a belt that reaches an average distance
of twenty miles out into the plains. It is an accompani
ment of the Rocky Mountains, and has been thought to
extend from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska. An equal
field lies to the Avest of the raountains, and is worked in
Utah, Wyoraing, and elsewhere. It is bj' no means un
interrupted or continuous. Glaciers and floods have
Avorn away great reaches of it, and other lengths are
overlaid bj' such thicknesses of rock that they are un
workable. But there are vast fields of it in Colorado —
thirty thousand to forty thousand square miles, one offi
cial report declares. It is biturainous or Ugnite, and
varies in quality, but even that Avliich shoAvs the lowest
of these stages of developraent is valuable. The southern
coal area is the better. There the coal is firra, does not
slack, or slacks but slightly, breaks up into large blocks,
is freer frora irapurities, and is found in thicker veins
than elsewhere, as a rule. It is to get this coal and
supply it to Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and other
States and Territories that several railways have ex
tended their lines into Colorado, to the incalculable
338

benefit of the State. A reraarkable and indubitable
" find " of anthracite coal is the gera of this vast double
field of fuel. It is rained at Crested Butte, in Gunnison
County, in the Elk Mountains By the fossil remains
found Avith it geologists determine it to be of the same
origin as the lignite of the foot-hills and plains, altered
by heat into anthracite. It is now known to occur
in more than one large bed, and close to it are beds
of semi-anthracite, as Avell as much bituminous coal.
There is a great deal of coking- coal here, and other
coking-coal in large quantities is found in the Trinidad
region —a plateau of 750 square miles in southern Colo
rado and New Mexico. It is also found in lesser quanti
ties near Durango, in the San Juan district.
The field of petroleum oil in the State is in Fremont
County, near Cafion City. The supply of oil is reported
to be practically unlimited, and the Avells are called
raore prolific than any others of the sarae nuraber and
size in the United States, yet the production of the
Avhole field is kept down to the requireraents of a verj'
liraited market. I found but one opinion in Denver,
and that was that the Colorado output of oil is limited
to the demands of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah,
and Ncav Mexico.
Along the entire foot-hUls are geological conditions
more or less similar to those at Florence, and it is not at
all certain that the present wells are in the best place.
That is the general opinion in Colorado, and it is also be
lieved that natural gas Avill prove a factor in the State's
assets some day. With varying success, nearly ninety
wells have been drilled in the Florence oil-field. Fiftj'-
two and a half per cent, have proved productive in
greater or lesser degree, and some have produced con
stantly for five years. Out of the 30,000 barrels pro
duced up to October, 1891, one-third of the amount Avas
889

refined into oil, and 5000 barrels of lubricating oil Avere
raade, both products being excellent, for the oil is rich
in illurainant and lubricating qualities.
There is araong Colorado capitalists a project for
operating a four-raillion-doUar iron and steel producing
corapany, and this company has for a long time kept ex
perts in the field in an endeavor to find suitable coal and
iron in such proxiraity to one another as to warrant the
establishraent of furnaces for the raaking of pig to blend
into the Bessemer product afterwards. I went to the
chief personage in this great prospective industrj' and
asked hira as to the quantitj' and kinds of iron that Avere
supposed to exist in the State. With rare tact, and a
quality of courtesy not often raet with in the West, he
said that exactly Avhat I Avished to know Avas precisely
what I should not find out. What was vouchsafed to
rae by this custodian of the bad manners and the kno\A'l-
edge of the iron deposit in Colorado was as A'aluable as
it Avas churlishly given.
There is, it seeras, but little developraent-work in iron
in the State, though the iron is found scattered in large
fields on both sides of the raountains, sorae being raag
netic and sorae heraatite, not to speak of the more or
less worthless ores. For twelve years iron has been made
at Pueblo of ore frora the San Luis Valley, LeadviUe,
and other points. There is in the State a great deal of
ore free frora phosphorus and sulphur to raake Besseraer
steel, ore of good quality being found in many places,
the only question about any of it being with regard to
its quantity and availabiUty. " But," said the gruff sage
who told rae this, " there is not a pound of fuel east of
the Rockies that is fit to use in making iron, and to use
what there is would bankrupt whoever did it." Iron is
going into Colorado from Alabama at seventeen dollars
a ton, ten doUars being the market price and seven dol-
340

lars the freight charge. In another year Lake Superior
pig-iron will enter the Colorado market. The problem
in Colorado, then, is to find iron to market at a less
price. Fifteen-dollar iron Avould do, on a basis of thir
teen dollars cost, leaving a margin for profit and interest
on the plant. There is required a corabination of the
right ore, the right fuel, and satisfactory transportation
facilities, and that corabination is yet to be raade. An
exhaustive, energetic investigation is going forward, and
the men interested hope to work at many points to pro
duce mixtures for Besseraer. They believe that there
is a good prospect of success at an early day. Thej' are
looking into the fuel question in Wyoraing, Avhere the
iron supply is no longer debatable.
Second to Denver araong Colorado's cities is Pueblo,
in the county of that narae. It clairas 40,000 popula
tion, and is a substantiaUy built and very busy toAvn,
Avith a banking capital of a raillion, and mercantile op
erations that amount to $35,000,000 a year. Its three
smelteries produce $14,000,000 a year. It has five rail
roads running through it, a $400,000 opera-house, a
public library, immense iron and steel Avorks, oil-refin
eries, thirty railes of electric street railway, and a solid,
orderly, and prosperous appearance. It is 4700 feet up
in the air, and surrounded by a delightful countrj',
either cultivated or naturally picturesque. The raineral
palace for the display of the mineral resources of the
State, the artesian magnetic mineral baths, the near-by
lake-side sumraer resort, and the really fine hotels of
the city have attracted tourists and invalids in great
nurabers. Colorado Springs is another iraportant place, of
which it has been said that it presents the anomaly
of a bustling town of fine buildings, banks, clubs, pala
tial hotels, and yet manufactures nothing at all, and
341

does no business except with itself. The place has
12,000 inhabitants, and is a Avinter and suraraer resort,
6000 feet above sea-loA'el. Residence there is advertised
as a " sure cure " for consuraption, which explains the
mj'stery of its size and character. The tOAvn has elec
tric cars, a college, the Childs-Drexel Printers' Home,
hospitals, churches, schools, banks, clubs, an opera-
house, and a casino, which includes a fine restaurant
and an orchestra. The place is surrounded by resorts
and scenic points that haA'e been widely advertised.
Pike's Peak, Manitou (another resort faraed for its
springs), the latest sensational raining carap, called
Cripple Creek, and raany other noted places are all
close to Colorado Springs, which is perhaps the raost
finished and elegant health resort Avest of the Missis
sippi. Colorado is dotted Avith springs of raedicated Avater
of various kinds — hot, cold, sulphur, soda, iron, mag
netic — a great variety, and existing in almost everj'
county. At Glenwood Springs, an especially beautiful
resort, hot springs are utilized to fill an open-air bath
600 feet long, in which men and woraen raay bathe in
midwinter Avithout being chilled while in or beside the
bath. A hotel to cost $400,000 is building there.
The southAvestern part of the State, called the San
Juan country, has for its capital a place named Du
rango, which is sufficiently far frora any corapetitor, is
in a sufficiently rich countrj', and has a sufficient rep
utation for "hustling" to raake it a very proraising
place. It is 6000 feet above the sea-level, in the Aniraas
Valley, and includes some fine buildings, good hotels,
several banks and churches, a free-and-easy, electric
lights, gambUng layouts in all the saloons, and, indeed,
everything that goes Avith a high-spirited Western toAvn.
The United States land -office there has sold 102,000
342

acres of land, at $1 25 an acre, and has given away
50,000 acres to horaesteaders. It has issued receipts for
about 3000 gold and silver raining clairas, and has sold
7000 acres of coal land. Here is the San Juan Sraelt
ery, which cokes its own coal, and a smeltery that
treats ore frora Red Mountain and Rico. The Porter
Coal Corapanj', Avhose raines are near bj', turned out
70,000 tons last year. The San Juan Company raines
150 tons a day ; the Ute Coal Corapany mines twice as
much ; and there are still other companies in the busi
ness. The place supports three banks and a savings-
bank, an iron foundry and machine shop, tAvo fiour-
inills, saAV -mills, a brick -yard, a Ume company, a
stone-quarrying company, and the inevitable brewery.
Timber for charcoal, gypsura for plaster of Paris, fire-
claj', and fine buUding stones are found near by. The
farra land yields, in the local parlance, "everything frora
peanuts to persiramons," viz., Avheat, oats, apples, pears,
cherries, pluras, raelons, grapes, and many sorts of ber
ries. Over in New Mexico peaches are said to do Avell,
and they raise thirty -five varieties of grapes. There
are many strearas, and irrigation-works are numerous.
Montrose is the likely town at the northern end of the
San Juan countrj'. Montrose County has 500 miles of
ditches, and is rich in the production of wheat, corn, po
tatoes, hay, and very fine fruit. Here again flour-mills,
lumber-mills, banks, an opera-house, a club, and the other
monuments of a prosperous coramunity are to be found.
It Avould be interesting to glance all over the State in
this way, but since I must choose, I have told of this
region — distant and backward until very lately-=-to il
lustrate Avhat is true of the whole State.
Aspen and LeadviUe are no longer bold, bad min
ing caraps. Both are solid, sober places. Creede has
moved out of the original gulch to what was " Jim-
343

town," and is also an earnest, orderly town. Greeley
is a thrifty, prosperous, and beautiful farming centre ;
and Grand Junction, in western Colorado, is an ambi
tious and inviting place. 844

X
WYOMING— ANOTHER PENNSYLVANIA
Young America builds bigger than his forefathers.
Wyoraing is not an exceptionally large State, yet it is
as big as the six States of New England and Indiana
corabined. Indiana itself is the size of Portugal, and is
larger than Ireland. It is with raore than ordinary
curiosity that one approaches Wyoraing during a course
of study of the new Western States. Frora the palace
cars of the Union Pacific Railroad, that carries a tide
of transcontinental travel across its full length, there is
little to see but brown bunch-grass, and yet we know
that on its surface of 365 miles of length and 275 miles
of Avidth are raany raountain ranges and noble river-
threaded valleys of such beauty that a great block of
the land is to be forever preserved in its present condi
tion as the Yellowstone National Park. We know that
for years this had been a stockman's paradise, the great
est seat of the cattle industry north of Texas — the
stamping-ground of the picturesque cowboys who had
taken the place of the hunters Avho came from the most
distant points in Europe to kill big game there. We
know that in the mysterious depths of this huge State
the decline of its first great activity was, last j'ear,
raarked by a peculiar disorder that necessitated the
calling out of troops — but that Avas a fiash in a pan,
rauch exaggerated at a distance and easily quieted at
the time. For the rest, raost Avell-informed citizens out-
345

side the State know nothing raore than the raisnaraing
of the State iraplies, for the pretty Indian word Wyo
ming, copj'ing the name of a historic locality in the
East, is said to raean "plains land."
Excepting Idaho, it is the newest of the States in
point of developraent. It Avaits upon the railroads to
open it up. The Union Pacific Corapany have done
this for the southern part, but until three years ago no
other railway entered the State. Even uoav the other
roads raerely tap its eastern and northern edges. The
Burlington and Missouri Railroad, of the Chicago, Bur
lington, and Quincy systera, is pushing its rails into the
northeastern part, having corae up from Nebraska. It
is finished to the Powder River in Sheridan Countj', and
is graded to Sheridan, which is in a region of rich agri
cultural promise. This railroad must soon, one Avould
think, push on to the Big Horn country, as Ave shall see.
The Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley Railroad,
of the Chicago and Northwestern system, is also build
ing into the eastern part of the State, and so a begin
ning is raade. But the old-fashioned stage lines are far
more numerous than the railroads, and are the sole links
between the railways and many interior coraraunities.
The State has a population of only about 65,000, and
onlj' one town that is well known all over the country.
That, of course, is Cheyenne, long the headquarters of
the stockraen of the West, and once a very wild and
" wide-open " city. It is not easy now to see Avhere it
stowed its wickedness as one Avalks its tree-lined streets
bordered by pretty horaes and trod by a sober and self-
respecting population. Cheyenne has 12,000 population,
strong banks, good schools, notable churches, sorae large
and enterprising mercantile establishraents, a fine park,
and a great State capital. The town languishes. Not
that the people regret the loss of the dance-houses and
846

garabling layouts, but because the vim has gone out of
business. The range cattle industry is failing, and the
railroads have opened up other centres Avhere raining
and agriculture are the chief interests. But Cheyenne
is like Wyoraing itself, in a transition state, and its
future is far raore glorious than the noisy, profligate,
and unnatural past.
The people call their State a second and Western
Pennsylvania, because it contains such great stores of
coal and iron araong many another sort of natural
Avealth. They are right in asserting that coal and iron
such as theirs have been the bases of great wealth for
many powerful comraonwealths and nations, but we
shall see, in raaking a hasty tour of the State, that a
still surer and greater asset is Wyoraing's soil. Agri
culture and stock-raising corabined will surely give
birth and impetus to a degree of developraent that will
produce raany a thickly settled, prosperous district,
Avhere now there is little else than the raagic soil itself.
It raust not be thought that its conditions are raore
primitive than they are, merely because I have called it
next to the newest State. There are twenty banks in
the State, and nine or ten are national banks ; there are
five daily and tAvo dozen weekly noAvspapers ; there are
several scores of settlements, and seven of these are of
the grade of cities, and provided with water-works and
lighted by electricity. The school systera is a thorough
one capped by a free university, and representing a
million dollars' worth of school property. Free public
libraries are also raaintained there. But it is the future
of such a State that is raost interesting, and it is the fut
ure that we have looked towards throughout this series.
The best raaps of Wyoraing, issued by the Depart
ment of the Interior at Washington, are almost as' use
less as no raaps at all. Because what is called " mount-
347

ain Avork " in surveying pays better than mapping the
plains, this map Avas heaped Avith mountains, like the
surface of a potful of boiling water, and where there
should be a few Avell-defined chains and parallel A'alleys,
there are raore raountains, scattered higgledy-piggledj',
all over the raap, than there are in British Colurabia or
in Switzerland. To raake a tour of the State and see it
as it is, let us begin with the northeastern part, that
corner which is bounded by South Dakota and Montana.
The raountains that are here forra the Bear Lodge
Range — broken spurs and isolated mountains not higher
than tiraber grows, and not sufficient in nuraber, extent,
or height to produce much water. This is uoav a great
range cattle country, of course. Around the bases of
the raountains, Avhere there is an appearance of more
moisture than elscAvhere, there are great reaches of fine
grass land, on the benches and elevated plateaus Avhere
the soil seeras forraed of decomposed gypsum. Big beds
of gypsura are exposed in this region. Here, on these
inviting benches, farraing to a considerable extent has
crept in, pushed by a population that is thought to be
an overflow frora Nebraska. There is no raarlcet, so the
farraers farm only for food for theraselves and cattle.
Note, howeA'er, that they fence in their cultiA'ated land
and keep cattle of their own to be fed in the winter.
Thus the character of Wyoraing and of the stock busi
ness both change — ^quietlj', steadily, surely. The agri
culture centres around Sundance just now. The stock
men do not consider it a serious invasion of the ranofes
yet. Cow companies as large as any in the State head
quarter to the west of this farming country on the head-
Avaters of the Belle Fourche. The historian of the next
decade Avill, alraost surely, Avrite the reverse of this,
thaf agriculture is the raainstay, and cattle .deserve a
passing notice. 848

Passing along to the raiddle of the northern part of
the State, in Sheridan and Johnson counties — faraed as
the seat of last year's " Avar " between the rustlers and
the cowraen^we find the Big- Horn Mountains domi
nating the region. The east slope of these mountains
alraost duplicates the rich plains countrj' around Denver
or Cheyenne. It is more broken, and the ridges between
the mountain streams are higher, yet the narrower
benches and sraaller raesas are of the sarae fruitful
character, well watered by just such sparkling, crystal
like strearas as one sees leaping from the sides of the
Rockies in Colorado. The Big Horn is a noble range of
O O
the Rocky Mountain systera. From its tallest point at
Cloud Peak, 13,400 feet in air, in the heart of Johnson
County, it sinks, in one distinct chain, into nothingness
in Montana. Its bold granite knobs and points tower far
above timber-line, maintaining a direct northwesterly
course with few spurs and side ranges, and with the
eastern foot-hills taking the forra of an inclined reach of
plains land. Already on this slope, in both counties, ag
riculture is the principal reliance. This is most true of
Sheridan, the border countj', because there are still im
mense herds of cattle on the Johnson County ranges.
There is a larger percentage of farmers araong the peo
ple in these counties than anywhere else in Wyoraing.
It is not that the land is the best. It is very good, in
deed, but it owes its advanceraent in value to the fact
that Avhereas in other parts of the State the big cow
companies pre-empted the water, here it Avas the farmers
Avho took the first clairas of land, and Avater with it.
The Burlington and Missouri Railroad, now being
]iushed to the heart of this region frora the Nebraska
border, Avill, before this is printed, connect these farras
with Christendora, but up to this tirae the farraing has
been onlv sufficient to satisfy the horae deraands of an
849

array post, a few villages, and an Indian reservation in
Montana. Yet it has been enough to prove that the
land is sure of a great future. Barley that is said to be
as rich as any grown in Canada ; very good Avheat, oats,
and rye ; luscious big strawberries, fine cherries, and
apples, and, in short, all the common fruits of that
zone, except peaches, grow well there. The farm land
is between 3800 and 5500 feet above sea-level, and but a
sraall portion of the best of it has been taken up.
Westward again, across the Big Horn Mountains, we
find a superb country between those mountains and the
Yellowstone Park. It is a great basin. Availed in on the
east by the Big Horns, on the south by the Wind River
Mountains, and on the west bj' the Snake or Shoshone
range of the national park. The Big Horn River, a splen
did streara, runs northward through this region, on its
Avay to pour its Avaters into the Yellowstone in Montana.
Two large strearas — the Gray Bull and the Shoshone
— enter it from the west, and the No Wood, also a large
stream, runs into it frora the east ; all these have their
own smaller tributaries. The Big Horn, at its best, is
12^ feet deep and 300 feet wide. The arable lands here
are at elevations between 3600 and 5500 feet above sea-
level, and they constitute the largest mass of unoccupied
arable land in the State. Much of it is comparatively
low, and it is all sheltered bj' great mountain ranges.
It is not a corn country, of course, yet good corn ma
tured there last suraraer, proving an unlooked-for length
of the warra season. Surveys haA'e resulted in deterrain
ing that there are 172,000 acres of irrigable land on Gray
Bull River, that south of this strip is a piece coraprising
100,000 acres on the Big Horn, and that on the Stinking
Water there are at least 100,000 acres that can be
watered. In addition, there are a dozen large and sraall
strearas, on all of which are valley lands capable of irri-
350

gation. They are in tracts of varying sizes, but they
are bottom lands and good. This Big Horn basin has
an apparent measurement on the maps of 7800 square
miles, which, considered as a field for the combined in
dustries of farming and cattle - raising, is one of the
largest in the mountainous States of the West. The
biggest bit of irrigable land along the Gray Bull is a
great and uncoraraon prize for future coraers. Not
above 500 persons now Uve in this entire basin. There
is a little toAvn, called Otto, near the junction of the
Gray Bull and the Big Horn, and there are solitary set
tlers here and there along the river, as well as a few
tiny settlements (" bunches of houses " they Avould say
out there) on the foot-hills in the shadoAv of the mount
ains. The basin is, therefore, practically unoccupied.
The land is Governraent land, obtainable by homestead
ers. One man, who grew forty acres of oats there, suc
ceeded in obtaining sixty-five bushels to the acre, it is
said. But there is no raarket, there is no railroad, and
there are no wagon waj's. The good land of which I
have spoken is that near the strearas ; the rest of the
region is a wilderness of deep gulches, high broken
plateaus, sage-brush country, and " bad lands."
I ha\'e dwelt thus at length upon this brand-new bit
of Araerica so desolate now, so inviting to speculation,
because it is plain that its future raust be grand. How
strange a thing it is to be able, after reading the signs
of developraent everywhere in the far West, to point
to a vast bowl, unpeopled except by half-wild cattle, and
to say, with raore confidence than one raay prophesy of
his own life to-raorrow: "Here wUl corae thousands
upon thousands of raen and Avomen. Here will soon be
seen vast areas of land fenced in, set with tidy farm
houses and out-buildings gay with green and yellow
grain, dotted with orchards, lively with teams upon a
353

tangle of wagon roads. Railroads will thread the scene,
and soraewhere " (ah ! that would be great prophesying
to say just where) "in this sarae basin there is certain
to arise a city of wealth, size, and iraportance, with fac
tories and wholesale and retail shops, high-schools, stone
churches, parks, and raansions." Yet it raust be so, and
the days that are near at hand Avill see this basin so
peopled that the force of this prediction will even then
be lost, for its force lies in the fact that there is nothing
of all this in the region to-day.
Wj'oraing is so very new a State that there are raany
regions very sirailar to the Big Horn basin in present
status and future likelihood. Look on the raap. Be
low this basin is the great Wind River Indian Reserva
tion. This great reserve is practically the same sort of
country. Below it, Avhere the Big Horn River is new
and slender, is another fine farming country, and one
that is already beginning to be settled. The army post
— Fort Washakie — on the reserA'ation, is a market that
has developed a comparatively settled region. The
toAvn of Lander is the capital of this sraall but thrifty
section, which is raade valuable by reason of the rich
but narrow little valleys of the tributaries of the raain
river — there called the Wind River, though it is the Big
Horn none the less. The farms support tAvo fiour-mills.
There is some land for new-comers, but not much.
West of the Indian Reservation and south of the
Yellowstone Park is what is called the Snake River
Country — a very mountainous territory, but with several
fine A'allej's and an abundance of water. Its defect is
that the arable land is very elevated. The value of the
land has not been deterrained, but it is superior to its
]iresent liraited task of groAving hay for sraall holders
of cattle who are feeding their stock in corrals in the
Avinter. z 353

South of this is the Salt River Valley, at one time an
ancient lake-bed, but noAV a level plain at the bottora of
a boAvl— a little isolated world araong the raountains,
and a place of exceeding great beauty. The Morraons,
1500 strong, have pre-erapted it all. Originally they
began taking quarter sections of 160 acres under the
Horaestead Law, but later they filed clairas for 640 acres
at a time under the Desert Land Act. Many of the
holders of large tracts are the sons of rich men, but they
AvUl find, what every one else has discovered, that the
greatest profit is not in large holdings, but in tracts that
a man can grasp, so to speak — twenty to forty acres —
on Avhich the owner works, and every inch of which he
studies. These thrifty saints have a vast amount of
stock in this valley, and produce cheese, butter, and
raeat, which they ship into the outer world. They raise
grain and make flour. Theirs is fine and very produc
tive land, and yet it is more than 6000 feet above sea-
level. All of this great belt that I have been describing,
south of the Yellowstone Park, is called Uintah County,
and at the bottom of it is the Bear River Country, which
is largely taken up by great cattle corporations. One
man in this region owns the river-side land for twenty
miles on either side of the Bear River. The main use
he makes of this is to grow hay for live-stock, the whole
region being principally taken up by great stockmen's
corporations. The Desert Land Act offered a very con
venient instruraent for wholesale land-grabbing. Alto
gether one person could take up 1120 acres, and it was
easy for cowraen to employ their cowboys to file claims
upon great tracts. The employers provide the norainal
land-office fees and the Governraent price of a dollar and
a quarter an acre. This act when it was in force oper
ated in the arid belt, and affected any land that had to
354

be irrigated. The amount upon Avhich a claim can be
filed has been reduced to 340 acres, but the principle is
very raischievous, because the only hope for a land
Avhere soil is plenty and water is scarce is to lirait the
individual settlers to small holdings, that there raay be
as raany of each as the land Avill support. Of course
these large holdings will in tirae be broken up, and the
region will be thrown open to the raultitude. This will
happen Avhen the grabbers can raake raore raoney by sell
ing the land than by holding it for stock-raising. This
is fine farra land in a narrow valley fifty or sixty miles
long. Behind this good land, on either side of the
vaUey, is broken land that is no use for farming, but
Avhich Avith the farm land forms the happy combination
so frequent in Colorado, Montana, Wyoraing, and Idaho,
by raeans of which agriculture and stock-raising can be
easily and profitablj' coupled. In the southwestern part
of the State is the Green River, a large streara that
drains a wide country. This is yet a great stock country,
and the farming along the tributary valleys is for hay
for the cattle.
But tiraes and conditions are changing. The Mor
mons, for instance, are pouring into the land around
Fort Bridger, where there are at least 50,000 acres of
irrigable land on half a dozen little streams. The
Mormons are single-minded. They want land only to
till it. Along the entire southern end of the State there
had been but one flour-raill, and that (at Lararaie Citv)
had failed. As I write, three mills are building ; one at
Evanston, one at Douglas in Converse County, and one
at Saratoga on the North Platte River. There were four
flour-miUs in Wyoming in 1890, but Avhen this is pub
lished there will be nine. MoreoA'er, the new mills are
of a character and capacity far superior to the first ones.
Tiie story of the transformation of Saratoga frora a
355

cow outfit to a farraing settleraent is, in great measure,
the same as the story of the transforraation of the entire
State frora a stockman's paradise to a nineteenth-century
comraonwealth. And one such storj' is worth ten pages
of arguraent and explanation. In the valley of the North
Platte River, seven or eight years ago, there Avere twenty-
five herds of cattle, large and sraall, owned by raen or
corporations. Fifteen bore the brands of large com
panies. Then the valley and the country around it were
open and unfenced. The soil was uncultivated. The
people who lived there bought even the potatoes — indeed,
they bought everything — that they used. Hay, how
ever, was wild, natural, plentiful. They did not know
that they could raise anything; in all probability they
never gave the raatter a thought. It Avas an axiora that
Wj'oraing Avas only fit for grazing ; even to-day there
are plenty of stock oAvners and store clerks who say that
potatoes and hay are the only forras of vegetation that
can be cultivated in the State. The first raan in the
valley Avho planted a garden was ridiculed by all the
others ; but ridicule will not affect the laws of nature,
and as the soil was excellent, his garden was a success.
Then others followed suit, all in an experimental, grop
ing AA-ay, beginning with potatoes, foUoAving with turnips
and beets, and so going on through all the grades of
general garden truck. At last came experiraents with
grain, until to-day single fields of wheat and oats cora
prise 200 or 300 acres, and, as I have said, a thirty-
barrel flour-raill is now going up there. So rich is the
soil that oats have been grown there to Aveigh forty-five
pounds to the bushel, though the number of bushels to
the acre has not been exceptional. The people have
learned to cultivate alfalfa (lucern), the rich and beauti
ful plant that serves for grass and hay in the arid region,
and alreadj' it yields two crops in a sumraer.
356

The agricultural development is closely associated
Avith the changing of the stockmen's methods. The
Eastern men Avho had gone into the valley to grow cat
tle on the open range had supposed the conditions would
for an indefinite period remain as thej' Avere, based upon
plenty of pasture and Avater. During the first four years
they carae gradually to adrait that the range business
Avas not profitable. They saAv that the first prices they
got for their stock were " boora " prices. These depreci
ated rapidly. Then came a reduction in the range area.
Men began to fence for pasture for horses and for winter
hay Each man as he fenced in land also fenced in
Avater, and made it difficult for cattle in the open to get
to Avater Then settlers began to arrive in nurabers, al-
Avaj'^s to locate on water, to fence it in, and to cut off raore
of the open range. The stock no longer wintered as it
had done ; wanting Avater and food, the aniraals died to
an extent that piled up losses to the owners. At last it
Avas necessary for each coAvraan to raaintain an outfit of
riders through the Avinters to look after the stock. That
Avas expensive, but it Avas still raore expensive to feed
the animals in winter, putting ten-dollar hay into fifteen-
dollar beasts, for the hay could be sold for ten dollars a
ton. It gradually dawned on the stockraen that they
had better have one hundred head of cattle, and care for
thera Avell, than keep a thousand, Avith the risks and cost
attendant upon large herds. The big herds were grad
ually driven out and sold off, and the places of most of
the early range operators were taken by raen Avho took
up land and stayed there with sraaller herds, farraing as
Avell as beef-raising. The result is pecuUar and unex
pected. There are as many cattle in the vallev as there
ever were, but they are OAvned by a great number of
persons, and these persons are cultivating the soil.
Against fifteen herds, say, of 2000 heads each, under the
357

range system, there are stiU 300,000 cattle, but they are
in 150 herds of 200 heads.
There is only one large coav corapany left in the
valley. It has to keep six or seven riders out in the
winter looking after the she-stock. It has to take the
precaution, early in each auturan, to raake a coav and
calf round-up, in order to gather the cows in one past
ure and the calves in another, so as to wean the calves.
The Avinter shelter that the cattle get is generally in
the natural brush, but it is sometimes necessary to drive
them into a long shed, which has had to be put up
against the severest storms — the cruelty of which is in
the Avinds that rage there. This valley, or rather the
range which goes beyond the valley, is sixty by sixty
miles in area. The cow corapanj' herds 3500 to 4000
head. It has to hire a ranch for groAving its hay, and
this it piles around the cow and calf pastures in the
winter. Thus is the business now managed by what is
spoken of as " the only company that has withstood the
revolution " in that valley. It will look to the reader, if
he knoAvs about the range stock industry, as if the cora
pany has its business yet, but the profits of old have
vanished. Thus is told the story of the range cattle
business in one valley, but it Avill answer for all Wyo
ming, since, in every other part of the State, the same
things have happened, are happening, or raust happen.
The raiddle southern part of Wyoraing is just what it
seeras frora the cars of the Union Pacific Corapany — of
probleraatical value except for grazing and for its rain
eral resources. We shall see, further along, that the
raineral resources of raost parts of the State are extraor
dinary. We have now gone over the State in all parts except
the eastern end. A study of the progress of the work of
irrigation will lead to a more complete acquaintance
858

with it. Over all the State tiraber is heavily distributed
in large areas, which altogether form about 16,000,000
acres. The State comprises about 63,000,000 of acres,
and, though more than two-thirds of the area has been
survej'ed, only 5,000,000 of acres are owned by indi
viduals and corporations, the rest being public land.
With so smaU an amount yielding a revenue, the State
has no raoney with Avhich to develop irrigation ; it is as
much as it can do to support a government. The State
is very forward in progressive legislation affecting irri
gation. Its Constitution declares that the Avaters Avithin
its boundaries are the property of the State. If this
principle were acted upon, and the State constructed its
own ditches and reservoirs, with a single eye to the dis
tribution of the Avater araong the greatest nuraber of
landholders, then all that I have urged in other chapters
upon the other States in the arid belt would here find
its consuramation. But, having announced the prime
fact that it owns the water, it proceeds to give it away.
This is not done in the reckless manner we noted in
other States, but it gives it aAvay, and to men Avho want
to make raoney out of it, saying through its officers,
" We are only too glad to give it away in order to invite
settlers." Still Wj'oraing is in advance of its neighbors
in even this respect, and too rauch praise cannot be
given to its State Engineer, Professor Elwood Mead,
whose vicAvs are large and practical, who does all that
the laAVS permit towards the conservation of the Avater
supply, and Avho Avould make Wyoming's the best
sj'stera in the country if he had his way, and if it were
not for the mischief that was done before Wyoming be
came a State.
The State has been at the mercy of Avater-grabbers
nearly twenty-one years, but has only enjoyed its own
government two j'ears. Under the Territorial systera
359

there Avere no restrictions, and there was no supervision
in respect of the distribution of water. Any one who
Avanted it took it, not as the Morraons have ahvays done,
for the greatest good of the greatest number, but like
ordinary Avhite raen, solely for individual gain. The
grabber filed a claira and stated what he had done and
for what purpose he did it, but that was a raere for-
raality. The clairas Avere raainly taken by stockraen
who Avished to get Avater on land so that they might
utilize great tracts taken under the Desert Land Act.
There Avas a tremendous building of ditches, and some
of it was crazy Avork, as Avhere one company built a
$70,000 ditch and only Avatered 340 acres. Around
Lander and a few other places farmers took Avater for
the legitiraate uses of farraing. Three thousand and
eighty -six ditches were run out of 631 strearas, and Avere
applicable to 2,172,781 acres under the Territorial sys
tera. And that is about how the case stands to-day.
Now, Wyoraing is divided into four grand Avater dis
tricts, to meet as raany natural systems of surface drain
age. In charge of each district is a superintendent,
and these superintendents with the State Engineer as
president, ea? officio, constitute a Board of Control, Avhich
raeets twice a year to try and determine causes growing
out of the distribution and use of the water. Wyoming
alone among all the States in the arid region aims to
limit the supply each Avater oAvner may have. This is
the next but one raost important step that the States in
that region must yet take. In the Territorial days raen
built ditches as they pleased, and then thought that they
oAvned all the water such ditches could take. They were
obliged to go before the district courts to get decrees
A'alidating their clairas, and the courts Avere supposed to
see that each clairaant took only Avhat water he needed.
As a raatter of fact, the courts did as they do elseAvhere ;
360

took an affidavit by the owners as to the capacity of
the ditches, without regard to whether such quantities
of Avater had been, Avere, or could be utilized, and then
issued the decrees. Though the machinery of law
courts Avas not calculated to settle those questions the
decrees stand, governing 200 of the 3000 ditches of the
State, or, to put it in another way, forever disposing of
the Avater of six of the strearas in the State.
The new Board of Control has decided that the raere
diversion of AA'ater frora its natural channels shall not
constitute appropriation thereof. The Avater must be
applied to some beneficial use, and if that use is irriga
tion, the water must be actually applied to the land.
The new decrees restrict allotraents to actual acreage re
clairaed — already Avatered and growing crops. If a
ditch is built to reclaim 10,000 acres, and yet is only
watering 1000 acres that are cultivated, the board allots
the Avater for that loOO acres, crediting the owners
with water for the other 9000 acres only Avhen such
land is cultivated. Where new ditches are built an ex
tension of time for development is raade; in the cases
of old ditches, no attention is paid to their future pos
sibiUties. In Wyoraing, then, the land is reclaimed
before the Avater is parted Avith by the State. The
reader will understand how important and Avise this
course is Avhen he comprehends the evOs that result
frora the absence of such a rule. In Colorado, for in
stance, A taps a stream, and runs his ditches as far as
he pleases Then B taps the stream above A, and runs
his ditches in the sarae or another valley or locality.
Farming is carried on along both sets of ditches, but
Avhen there exists a scarcity of Avater, A appeals for his
priority rights, and gets all the Avater his ditches Avill
carry. B has his ditches closed, and the oivhards and
gardens and grain fields along his ditches raust die of
361

drought, even though A's territory raay not be all under
cultiA'ation, or though he may have twice the water he
needs. Under the Wyoraing system priority rights
prevail, but only Avater that is actually benefiting land
is at any man's disposal.
It has been deterrained in Wyoming that a stream of
a cubic foot per second shall serve to irrigate seventy
acres, but this estiraate is considered non-essential there,
because every acre which has water can keep it, there
being plenty for all Avho now use it. The law declares
that the first coraer raust have all that he needs, and
the second and third coraers raust follow in their order ;
but it is said that priority rights have occasioned Uttle
trouble so far, owing to the quantity of water, and the
fact that the distribution keeps pace with the actual
iraproveraent of the soil. The old hap-hazard water-
grabbing freedom of the Territorial days has left its
CA'ils, nevertheless. I saAv on a map of part of " the
Little Laramie Country" a place Avhere 150 ditches par
alleled and duplicated one another in land which two
ditches Avould have served thoroughly Avell. Eventu
ally, Avhen water is not so plentiful, there Avill be great
trouble and expense in watching the head-gates in such
localities, to make sure of fair play with the water on
hand, and in the mean time there will be great loss from
the heating and evaporation of the fluid in so many ditch
es, nine in ten of Avhich must eventually be abandoned.
The surest Avay to prevent this would be for the
State to survey all its districts, and prescribe the route
of all ditches, but there is no law for such a course in
any State. Nevertheless, in Wyoraing whenever pro
posed ditches are palpably unnecessary, perraits are re
fused ; that is to say, if two applications describe one
set of lands, the second one is refused until the time set
for the completion of the first one has expired.
363

It is estiraated that between six millions and seven
millions of acres of land in Wyoming are irrigable frora
the strearas. Of the five raillions of acres now held in
the State only a little above tAvo raillions are under
ditches. The great raajority of the ditches are small
ones, and most of these are oAvned by stockmen, al
though a few farming coraraunities operate their own.
The stockmen's ditches avUI eventually be applied to
agriculture. In all, in this baby State, ten millions of
dollars or more have been invested in these artificial
Avaterways. When the Board of Control carae, with its
new rulings, the stockraen as Avell as the farmers saw
that the only Avay to hold their water rights Avas to
make use of their water, and so they have been plough
ing their land and seeding it (for hay at first), and thus
in the last tAvo years have caused the State to take an
extraordinary stride forward in agricultural develop
ment. Thus have come the four fiouring raills where
there had been none before. Between January, 1891,
and November, 1892, there Avere 352 applications for the
right to build noAV ditches, and the State Engineer has
been notified that at least one-third of the number have
been completed and are in use. Nothing could speak
raore eloquently of the new forces of civilization and
iraproveraent that are at work in the State.
These new ditch companies haA'e not been large ones.
The experience of the people of the State has been that
such corporations should control the settlement of the
land, or — as I believe, and the State Engineer adds as an
alternative — the State should own both the land and the
Avater. The rule is seen to be that when great ditches
are built squatters pre-empt the land to be benefited in
order to bother and blackmail the ditch-owners into
buying them out. If the State OAvned the public lands
and surveyed them, and encouraged the building of
363

ditches, it could sell the land for its value as iraproA'ed
land, and could reimburse the local ditch corapany by
buying the shares and joining thera with the land thus
sold until the Avater and the shares were at an end.
Thus even a State with a low and new treasury could
prevent the creation of water barons and avoid the
troubles that raust come under the grab systera of to
day. A bill has been introduced in Congress for the surren
der of the public lands to the State ; but before we can
consider this proposition clearly it is necessary to glance
at the past and present of the cattle business in this one
of its former strongholds. The range cattle business is
in a bad way there. One of the shrewdest capitalists in
the State, himself a former range-cattle OAvner, told me
that not a cow company there raade a dollar of profit
in 1892. He afterwards corrected himself by saj'ing that
he believed a little money had been gained frora a new
forra of the business by raen in the northern part of the
State Avho had gone out of the breeding business and
Avere grazing steers exclusively. This safer raethod,
Avhich discounts the risk to cows and calves, has been
widely adopted in Montana and the western end of the
Dakotas. The rapid decline of the range business began six
years ago. Before that it had been of a character to
terapt even the rich. At one tirae raen paid 2 per
cent, a raonth for raoney, and raade 100 per cent.
profits. That was when cows carae up frora Texas at a
cost of $7 each, sold in tAvo years for $22, and in three
years for $40 and raore, Avhen the ranges Avere not over
stocked, the pasturage was good, and all the conditions,
including " boora" prices at the stock-yards, Avere faA'or-
able. The men Avho did the best pushed into new terri
tory as fast as the Indians Avere crowded off, and kept
364

finding new grass and plenty of it. But the risks soon
carae and raultiplied. If one man was careful not to
overstock a range, he could not be sure that another
cow outfit Avould not do so precisely where he had put
his cattle. Prices fell, fences cut up the ranges and
shut off the Avater, Avinter losses became heavier and
heavier, and the "good old days" of this inhuinaii,
devil-raay-care, priraitive, and clurasy business came to
an end. The cowboys of picture and story existed in
the brilliant days. At first they had come frora Texas,
but in the zenith of their roraantic glory they came
from everywhere and from every class. They included
j'oung Englishraen, college graduates frora the East,
Avell-born Araericans — all sorts Avho did not "strike
luck " at anything else, and Avho Avere full of A'ini and
love of adventure. They got $40 a month and good
keep during the greater part of each year. They rode
good horses, that had as much of the devil in thera as
the "boys" theraselves. They bought hand -stamped
Chej'enne saddles and California bits that were as
ornate as jewelrj', and stuck their feet in grand tapa-
deros, or hooded stirrups, richly ornamented, padded
with lamb's-wool, and each as big as a fire-hat. Their
spurs were fit for grandees, their " ropes," or lariats,
Avere selected with raore care than a circus tight-rope,
and their big broad felt sorabreros cost raore than the
Prince of Wales CA'er paid for a pot-hat.
And then, alas ! the cowmen began to economize in
men, food, wages — everything. The best of the old
kind of coAvboys, who had not become oAvners or fore
raen, saloon-keepers or gamblers, or had not been shot,
drifted away. Sorae of the sraartest araong them be
came "rustlers" — those cattle thieves whose depredations
resulted in what alraost carae to be a Avar in Wyoming
last year. They insisted that they had to do it to live.
365

Frora the cowboy stand-point it was tirae for the
business to languish. Towns were springing up every
here and there, each with its ordinance that cowboys
raust take off their side-arras before they entered the
villages ; wages were low down ; raen had to cart hay
and durap it around for winter food ; settlers fenced in
the streams, and others stood guard over, them with
guns ; it was tirae such a business languished. Frora
the stand-point of nineteenth -century civilization the
sarae conclusion was reached — the range business was
an obstruction to civilization, a bar to the development
of the State, a thing only to be tolerated in a ucav and
Avild countrj'. And uoav I ara assured that" there is not
an inteUigent cowraan who does not knoAV that the
business is dooraed in Wyoraing, and that the last free-
roving herds raust raove on. There is not one Avho does
not know that small bunches of cattle, held in connec
tion with agriculture, raust take the places of the range
cattle, because better grades of cattle can be bred, better
meat can be produced, all risks Avill nearly disappear,
and the expenses of the care of the cattle Avill not be a
tithe of those of the old plan.
And so Ave come to the much-discussed plan for hav
ing Wyoraing intrusted with the public doraain within
her borders. This plan takes account of the fact that
she will ever be a great cattle-raising State. The plan
is to sell the agricultural or arable land in connection
with the water and with thc upper or range land,
always corabining the irrigable bottoras or mesas and
benches with the higher unirrigable territory. Then
farmers may grow hay with one hand, so to speak
(along with whatever else they choose to plant), Avhile
with the other they look after their cattle. With thor
oughbred bulls, sheltered winter pasture and feed, and an
income frora farming, the farmers will be rich and the
366

beef will be the finest that it is possible to produce.
There is an unexpected opposition to this project, and by
the men most certain to be benefited were it carried
out. They are ignorant and suspicious, and fear that
the plan cloaks some effort toAvards a land-grabbing
raonopoly or steal of some sort. Nevertheless, the plan
is peculiarly Avell suited to the natural conditions in
Wyoraing, and, for that matter, in Colorado and other
States in the arid belt. It turns to good account land of
a sort that is all too plentiful there that it is not easy to
employ otherwise, and that is not attractive or profit
able as pasture-land for cattle-owners other than such
as own farms in the neighborhood. For such it should
be held against wild cattle, and against the devouring
bands of sheep that otherwise raight and often would
pass over the hills and leave thera as bare as the back of
one's hand.
The number of cattle in the State in 1892 was esti
mated to be 428,823, and the value of the stock was
considered to be $4,654,379, but I was told that the State
never gets reports of more than six-tenths of the nura
ber actually within her borders. However, in 1886 the
nuraber reported Avas 898,121 head, or raore than twice
as raany as now, and then cows were considered worth
$16 31 apiece as against $10 50 now. But this falling
off argues no such ill to the State as it Avould have been
to have the range-cattle industry thrive. The auditor's
figures shoAV that while there has been a decrease of ten
millions of dollars in the valuation of the cattle in the
State within seven years, the total assessable value of
properties in Wyoraing has increased $1,236,713 during
that period.
The reports of horses indicate that there are 78,286 of
them on the ranges, and these are coraputed to be worth
$2,681,000 ; but this is also an untrustAVorthy itera. In
867

truth, there are no less than 100,000 head of horses, and
raanj' of them are of excellent stock. Sheep exceed all
other aniraals in nurabers. The auditor reports 639,205,
and there are really close to 900,000 of these aniraals
on the ranges. They are worth, at graded values,
$1,750,000. Wherever the coav business is carried on there exists
the most fanatical prejudice against sheep and sheep-
herders. The English language fails every cowman
Avho tries to express his opinion about this sister in
dustry. This is Avorth recording here, because it is true
in all the States where cattle are fattened frora British
Colurabia to Texas, and because it is a prejudice without
Avarrant or base, and it is bound to die out. We shall
see why, after telling what a cowraan said of it when I
brought up the topic in Wyoraing :
" The sheep-herder is the worst blot on the State,"
said he. " He is no good, and rauch harra. He raay
have his office in New York, Chicago, or London. He
fits out a wagon, with a Mexican and a dog and sev^eral
thousand sheep, and aAvay they go, like an Egyptian
scourge, eating the grass down to the ground, and, in
sandy soils, trarapUng it doAvn so that there are great
regions Avhere once the bunch-grass greAv knee high, but
Avhere the country is now bare as a desert. You raight
search acres in such a place Avith a raicroscope and not
discover an ounce of grass. These people pay no rent,
don't own an acre, send their profits abroad, and are
bitterly opposed to the settleraent and developraent of
the State."
But ncAV men are constantly drifting into the sheep
business, and mutton, which ahvays hung back in the
meat markets of America, is coraing to be a favorite
raeat, as it is in England. There is no raore remarkable
change in our countrj'^ than this general turning towards
368

mutton after it had been so long and generally disliked.
IVlen Avho harbored the same ill-will towards the business
of sheep-herding are noAV rushing into it because of the
raoney there is in it. He who was ahvays spoken of on
the ranges as " that — — sheep man " is now on top, the
subject of the- envy of his neighbors. It is not true that
the sheep are largely owned by foreigners or outsiders.
The three largest sheep-herders in Wyoming are resi
dents of the State. In Carbon County, the largest
sheep county in the State, 138,438 sheep are ranging,
and they are owned at home. The manner of conduct
ing the business, and the figures of the cost and profit
in it, are very interesting.
Five thousand sheep are considered a good holding,
because that nuraber divides into two herds convenient
to handle. The owner of such a bunch will employ three
men — Iavo herders and a foreraan who is also the " carap-
mover." Each herd will have a Avagon, a man, and a
dog, or usually two dogs. The wagon in use on the
ranges is the typical " schooner" of olden tirae — a heavy
box on Avheels, covered with a canvas top, and appoint
ed with a bed in the back, a locker, and a stove. The
camp-mover divides his tirae betAveen the two herds.
He has a team of horses, and after he has moved one
Avagon and herd to ncAV pasture, he leaves that outfit
and goes off, perhaps fifteen or twenty railes, to the
other herd, to find new pasture for that, and to leave it
till the grass is nipped close. The sheep are not exclu
sively grass eaters. They like to browse on brush and
the bark of Avillows, and they do well on what is called
" browse," Avhich is the short white sage-brush of that
region. It is estiraated that it costs seventy cents a
head to maintain a herd, but the wool greatly more
than meets this expense. The herders sell the old CAves
to feeders m Nebraska and elsewhere to fatten for
2 A 869

market, getting $3 50 to $4 a head for such stock. Oc
casionally, if they think the herds are increasing in
nurabers too fast, they sell off a bunch of young larabs,
and yearlings fetch as high as $2 75 a head. The prof
its lie in the increase of the aniraals by multiplication.
This araounts to almost a doubling of the herds in a
year, the percentage being between 75 and 100 per cent.
At an average cost of $3 50 for stock sheep, and a doub
ling of the aniraals, with sales at $2 75 to $4, and with
an additional raargin from the wool, after expenses are
met, it is plain that the business is not a bad one. Wool
has fetched from eleven to sixteen cents during the last
few years, and good sheep yield about nine pounds as
an average clip.
The coal and iron- of Wyoraing forra a wonderful
treasure. Unlike nearly all the other far Western States,
Wyoraing's settleraent was not connected with raining.
The first actual settlements were around forts Lararaie
and Bridger. Gold was discovered on the route of the
old trail in 1867, and there have been many mining
flurries in the State since then, but these were as noth
ing to those which built up the neighboring States or
to what must yet draw millions from this one. It was
the extension of the cattle business that lifted Wyo
ming into prominence, and yet It will not do to say that
this led to the State's settlement, since that was an in
dustry which rather obstructed than fostered the de
velopment of the Territory. Yet the rocks and the
earth bear treasures comparable with those of any State
in our West. Coal is found in every county. From the
northern centre to the eastern end of the State it is a
Ugnite of low grade, which crumbles Avhen exposed to
the air. It outcrops frequently and generally. It is in
use in the towns of Sheridan and Buffalo, and is found
to burn very well. Near Buffalo there is a vein that is
870

said to be seventy feet thick. The nearer this deposit
approaches the mountains, where it has been subjected
to more pressure, the more comraercial value it has.
The coal burned in the settleraents around Bonanza, in
the western part of Johnson County, is so free frora sul
phur and phosphorus that it can be used by blacksmiths.
Close to the Montana border the same good bituminous
coal that is found in that State extends its field into
Wyoraing. In the eastern part of the State, where the
Black Hills enter frora South Dakota, is NeAvcastle, a
busy coal -mining town, Avhose neighborhood is richly
veined Avith a biturainous coal that raakes high-grade
coke. Coking ovens supply that raaterial for the Black
HiUs sraelters. This is the only coal of the kind in the
State. It is of such quality that the Burlington and
Missouri Railroad Corapany uses it for locoraotive fuel,
raining 800 tons a day for that use and for sale along
the line in other localities.
The next best deposit yet rained is at Rock Springs, in
Sweetwater County, in the southwestern part of the
State, and on the Union Pacific Railroad. More than a
raillion tons were shipped frora this iraraense field last
year. It is the best soft coal in the Wyoraing raarkets,
and as good as any in the West. The Union Pacific
Railroad is heavily interested here, but there are sorae
smaU private mines. In order that the people of the
State raaj' have no rose without its thorn, and may not
grow too proud of their good-fortune, this coal is sold in
Cheyenne at $6 a ton. Frora RaAvlins, to the eastward,
coraes a good coal, and eastward again is the carbon
coal-field, Avhere the railroad again owns producing
mines. This coal is not so good as that from Rock
Springs, and sells at thirty -five cents less per ton.
Away down in the southwestern corner of the State are
other great coal-beds, from one of which the Southern
371

Pacific Railroad Companj' gets its supplj'. It is a loAver
grade than the Rock Springs coal. The Fremont, Elk
horn, and Missouri Valley Railroad (Chicago and North
Avestern systera) carae into Wyoming for coal, among
other reasons, and has a large mine in the Platte River
field, near Fort Fetterman. This is not a good loco
motive or steara coal, but finds a ready market in Ne
braska and elseAvhere along this gigantic systera. There
are at least half a dozen large coal-fields in the central
belt of counties of whose raerits I find no raention in
my notes. Their development doubtless awaits that of
the country around them.
Iron is as plentiful. First in importance is the great
district around Hartville, north of Fort Laramie. It is
theoretically pure hematite — as nearly so as hematite is
found, and it has been developed or mined sufflciently
for the OAvners of the present mines to be confident of
its value. Duluth and Eastern capital has been invested
here, and active operations only await the building of a
raihvay connection Avith the Skull Creek (Newcastle)
coal-mines. Next in promise are the Seminoe, Carbon
County, raines to the northAvestward of the carbon coal
fields. Here is plenty of fine heraatite, Avith fuel and
fluxes close bj-, and only transportation facilities needed.
There is a large soft deposit of mineral paint (oxide of
iron), which is being ground and readily raarketed. It
has been found to be excellent for painting freight-cars,
iron and tin roofs, and buildings, is a valuable Avood pre
servative, and retains its color longer than raost paints.
The Chugwater River runs through an iraraense field
of iron ore, but it is impregnated Avith Avhat is called
titanium. Iron carbonate ore is found in the Big Horn
Basin, and in the basin east of the South PoAvder River.
This will be mined, in tirae, for use in Bessemer steel
making. 372

The tin of the Black Hills extends into Wyoming.
The State has sorae extraordinary soda deposits, sorae of
these being actual lake-beds of soda. Copper is found
all along the North Platte River. Lead appears at least
twice in large quantities in a survey of the State, and
kaolin, fire-clay, raica, graphite, magnesia, plumbago,
and sulphur are more or less abundant. Gypsura is
found in almost every county, and plaster of Paris is
being raade of it at Red Buttes on the Union Pacific
Railroad. Marbles — sorae of thera very fine and beauti
ful — are being gathered in every county for exhibition
at the World's Fair in Chicago. They are of all colors ;
but the only Avhite raarble is found in the Sibylee region,
where, by-the-Avay, is another undeveloped agricultural
section of great proraise. The granites of the State are
very fine, and the sandstones, which are of unlimited
quantitj', include beautiful varieties for building pur
poses and for interior decorative work.
Petroleum appears in several places in the State.
There are wells at Salt Creek in Johnson County. The
Omaha Company have flowing wells at Bonanza, in
another part of the county, and this oil, whose fiow is
stopped by the company, is a splendid Uluminant. A
mile away is a spring carrying oil on its surface. Near
Lander, south of the Indian reservation, are more than
two dozen borings. All haA'e flowed, and all are uoav
cased, but there is a threa-acre lake of leakage frora
thera. There are signs of oil elseAvhere in the State.
The oil production and supply of this country is con
trolled by one corapany. If any other corapany offers
to corapete with this giant concern, it would be possible
for the raaster company to giA'e oil away until the oppo
sition Avas starved out. The raoney of the great com
pany is in its by-products, and it would not suffer great
ly by raaking a free gift of all the oil that is consuraed
373

in Wyoming. It is generaUy believed that the control
lers of the oil supply look to the wells of Colorado to
piece out the supply if the Pennsj'lvania weUs fail.
After that, or at that time, perhaps, huraanity will be
interested in the oil of Wyoraing; but it is noticeable
npw that this oil excites little huraan interest, and inter
ests still less capital.
Gold is still being rained where it was first found, be
low the Indian reservation in the South Pass district.
Here is both lode and placer mining, but the principal
placer owner is Avorking the quartz. Within the past
year many new mines have been opened there, and one
shipper claims to be getting from $200 to $400 a ton out
of his ore. Another gold district is west of this on the
Seminoe Mountains. Others are on both sides of the
Medicine Bow range, southwest of Laramie City, and
near the Colorado line ; in the Black Hills, in the Little
Lararaie Valley, in the Silver Crown district, and in the
Big Horn Country. The gold raining in the State is
sufficiently promising to interest a great many miners,
and considerable capital ; but the best friends and best
judges of the new State see the richest future for her in
the developraent of her splendid agricultural lands first,
and next in her coal and iron fields.
In certain of the neAver States the citizens are especial
ly proud of the constitutions they have adopted as the
bases of their govemraents. In Montana, for instance,
the Constitutional Convention coraprised an asserablage
of raen Avho, it is said, Avould Avin distinction anyAvhere.
Wyoraing's couA'ention raay not have been so notable
in its raake-up, but its product, the Constitution, is cer
tainly very reraarkable. It is fin, de siecle, if I may
apply French to anything so extreraely Araerican ; it is
thoroughly " up to date."
Wyoraing had progressed under Territorial govern-
874

ment for twenty years, when, in January, 1888, her
Legislature meraorialized Congress for an enabling act,
in the belief that Territorial governraent retarded the
progress and developraent of the region. The Congress
coramittee to Avhich the raatter was referred reported it
favorably, as it also did a bill preparing for the admis
sion of the other Territories Avhich were so soon to be
come full-fiedged raerabers of the Union. In June, 1889,
the Governor, Chief Justice, and Secretary districted the
Territory, and apportioned the number of delegates for
the convention upon a just basis. Then the Governor
directed that an election be held in July to choose
delegates to a constitutional convention in Septeraber.
Fifty -five delegates coraposed the convention, and
drafted the Constitution which was afterwards ratified
bj- a vote of five -sixths of the citizens. There were
raany precedents for the adoption of a Constitution
prior to admission to Statehood. Wyoming's assessed
valuation was then $31,500,000, whereas California,
Avhen admitted, showed only $13,000,000 of assessable
Avealth. The population of the Territory was then
about what it is noAv. It was admitted in 1890.
It Avas generally believed that the party in power at
that tirae effected the adraission of Wyoraing, Idaho,
Montana, the Dakotas, and Washington for the purpose
of gaining votes in Congress, and of putting the people
of those States under a debt to that party. This Avill
not be disputed, I think ; but it seems to all the people
of Wyoraing, and to me also, that the action has proven
very advantageous. It is true that the State govern
ment is in sorae degree raore expensive than that of
the Territory had been, but the expense is more than
offset by the good riddance of the forraer officials, who
were apt to be carpet-baggers — i. e., persons sent there
frora other parts of the country, interested far more in
375

drawing salaries and enjoying ease than in developing
the resources of the soil and studying the needs of the
settlers and the Avelfare of the Avhole people. Then
again, the county govemraents are equally improved,
and definite raoderate salaries for the county officials
have taken the places of the. wasteful fees by Avhich they
forraerly paid theraselves.
And now for the Constitution itself. In its declara
tion of rights it perpetuates the right of the Avoraen to
A'ote as they had been doing Avhen Wj'oming was a
Territory, and this was understood when the State Avas
adraitted. " Since equality in the enjoyraent of natural
and civil rights," it declares, " is raade sure only through
political equality, the laws of this State affecting the
political rights and privileges of its citizens shall be
Avithout distinction of race, color, sex, or any circura
stance or condition AvhatsoeA'er other than individual in-
competencj' or unworthiness duly ascertained by a court
of competent jurisdiction. Article VL, entitled " Suf
frage," further declares that '' the right of citizens to
vote and hold office shall not be denied or abridged on
account of sex. Both male and feraale citizens of this
State shall equally enjoy all civil, political, and religious
rights and privileges." The age when a citizen may
vote is fixed at tAventy-one equally without regard to
sex, but " no person shall have the right to vote who
shall not be able to read the Constitution of the State "
(physical disability in this respect being no bar). The
raethod of voting is what is generally called " the Au
stralian systera."
I Avas very anxious, when I found myself in Wyo
ming, to ascertain what I could of the effect upon
women, raen, and the politics of the State of this meas
ure, so persistently labored for by the Avoraen's rio-hts
agitators in all the States of our Union. I am and have
876

ever been in favor of woraan's voting, but it has always
seemed to rae that the Avoraen were theraselves the ob
stacles to the general introduction of the practice. I
have not lived so entirely in vain as not to see that the
Avoraen can and do have pretty nearly whatever they
Avant in Araerica, and I know that whencA'er they con
clude that they Avish to do so they will vote. The
situation in Wyoraing is especially interesting, because
woraen cut a sraall figure in a new State, and what they
have got there the raen raust have given them. Do
they vote — noAv that they may ? How manj' vote ( Do
they vote as their husbands do or tell thera to? Is the
voting of woraen raainly done by the respectable, the
intelUgent, the ignorant, or the disorderly classes 'i To
Avhat extent, if anj', do the women studv politics and
statecraft in order to vote intelligently ? I ara drifting
to one side of a study of Wyoraing's Constitution, but
these are interesting questions, and the Constitution is
responsible for thera.
In the first place, Avhen I put these queries, here and
there, I said " woraen " Avhenever I spoke of that sex,
for Avhich I have the highest respect — the most senti
raental, if you please. But I never heard any other
man in the State apply any other Avord to the better sex
except the much-abused and demoralized term ¦ ladies."
That is a raarked pecuUarity of the language in the
West. It does not contain the noble word " Avoman."
It sickens the ear with the overuse of the Avord " lady."
For ray part, I know a woraan Avhen I see one, but I
find it difficult to determine ladyhood except upon hear
say or acquaintance. When I do find it I compliment it
with the dignified word " woman ;" a statement which I
hope Avill free me from even a suspicion of rudeness or
lack of gallantrj' here and in what foUoAvs.
I found that the great raajority of the Avoraen in Wyo-
377

raing are in the habit of voting. Not all of them vote
as their husbands do, and as one official expressed hira
self, "good men pride themselves upon not influencing
their Avives." Yet it is true, I am told, that very raany
Avoraen, of their own volition and unconsciously, copy
the politics of their husbands. Occasionallj' the raen of
the State hear of Avoraen who refuse to erabrace the
privilege, Avho do not believe that Avoraen should meddle
in affairs which concern the horaes, the prosperitj', and
the self-respect and credit of the coramunities of which
they are a part ; but such women are, of course, few.
On the other hand, other woraen are very active in
politics. There is a, Ladies' Republican League araong
the poUtical clubs of Cheyenne. It is seen that the
right to vote acts as an incentive to study the principles
and records of the opposing parties, and if there are
woraen who blindlj'' vote as their husbands do, there are
yet others who fail to agree with the views of their life
corapanions upon public raatters.
Among the Avoraen Avho show an intelligent interest
and take an active part in politics, a foAv resort to the
sturap and speak for whichever cause they have adopted.
But there are raany Avho serve side by side with the men
as delegates to couA'entions and voters in the party pri
maries. In the last State convention of the Republicans
there were three woraen delegates ; in that party's last
county convention, in Lararaie County, the secretary
Avas a woman, and three delegates were of her sex.
Women literally flock to the primaries — in the cities, at
all events. At the priraary meeting in the Third Ward
of Cheyenne last auturan, out of 183 who were present
at least 80 Avere women. In the other wards the pro
portion of women was as one is to three. On election
daj's the Avoraen go a-voting precisely as they go a shop
ping elseAvhere. On foot or in their carriages they go
878

to the polls, where, under the law, there are no crowds,
and where all is quiet and orderly. There is no doubt
that feraale suffrage has an iraproving effect upon poli
ticians and their raanners. AU sorts and every sort of
woraen vote ; but it is to be reraarked that this affords
no criterion for larger and Eastern States, since the pro
portion of woraen of evil lives is very small in Wyoraing,
even in the cities, and, so far as other woraen are con
cerned, our new States are nearer like deraocracies than
our old ones. The lines of caste are more apt to be
noticed by their absence than by their enforcement.
To return to the Constitution, so remarkable if only
because of this recognition of woman's equality to raan,
it forbids iraprisonraent for debt except in cases of
fraud ; it guarantees liberty of conscience, but declares
that such liberty " shall not be so construed as to excuse
acts of licentiousness or justify practices inconsistent
with the peace or safety of the State." (A notice to the
Morraons Avho are already forraing colonies there.) It
provides that " no raoney of the State shall ever be given
or appropriated to any sectarian or rehgious society or
institution." The old raaxira, " the greater the truth the
greater the libel," receives its quietus, so far as Wyo
raing is concerned, in this clause: " Every person may
freelj' speak, write, and publish on all subjects, being re
sponsible for the abuse of that right ; and in all trials
for libel, both civil and crirainal, the truth, when pub
lished with good intent and for justifiable ends, shall be
a sufficient defence, the jury having the right to de
termine the facts and the law under the direction of the
court." And here is a truly raodern clause : " The
I'ights of labor shall have just protection through laws
calculated to secure to the laborer proper rewards for
his service and to proraote the industrial welfare of the
State." (The italics are mine.) 379

"No power, civil or military, sball at any tirae interfere to prevent
an untrammelled exercise of tbe rigbt of suffrage.
" No distinction sball ever be made by law between resident aliens
and citizens as to the possession, taxation, enjoyment, aud descent of
property. " Perpetuities and monopolies are contrary to the genius of a free
State, aud shall uot be allowed. Corporations being creatures of the
State, endowed for the public good with a portion of its sovereign
powers, must be subject to its control.
" Water being essential to industrial prosperity, of limited amount,
and easy of diversion from its natural channels, its control must be
in the State, which, in providing for its use, shall equally guard all
the various interests involved.
"The State of Wyoming is an inseparable part of the Federal
Union, aud the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law
of the lai;;d.
"No session of the Legislature after the first, which may be sixty
days, shall exceed forty days. ... No Legislature shall fix its own
compensation." (Tlie sessions are biennial.)
"No bill (before the Legislature), except general appropriation
bills, and bills for the codification aud general revision of the laws,
shall be passed containing more than one subject, wliich shall be
clearly expressed in its title; but if any subject is embraced iu any
act whicii is uot expressed in the title, such act shall be void ouly as
to so much thereof as shall not be so expressed.
"No appropriation shall be made for charitable, industrial, educa
tional, or benevolent purposes to any person, corporation, or com
raunity not nnder the absolute control of the State " (nor to any sec
tarian or denominational institution, as we have seeu).
The provisions to prevent bribery and corruption in
the Legislature are intended to be especially finely
drawn. No legislator may give his vote or infiuence
for or against any raeasure in consideration of the
proraise of another legislator's influence in favor of or
against any other raeasure before, or to be brought be
fore the Legislature. To make such a proposition is
declared to be " solicitation of bribery ; " to carry out
such a bargain is to hs guilty of bribery. Witnesses
380

may be corapelled to testify in trials of such causes,
and shall not withhold testiraony on the ground that it
may criminate them or subject thera to disgrace, but
such testiraony raay not afterwards be used against such
witnesses, except upon a charge of perjury in giving
such testiraony. " A raeraber who has a personal or
private interest in any raeasure or bill proposed or pend
ing before the Legislature, shall disclose the fact to the
House of which he is a member, and shall not vote
thereon." " AU fines and penalties under general laws of the
State shall belong to the public-school fund of the re
spective counties." This is in addition to the usual two
sections in each township, to all lands giA'en to the State
for purposes not otherwise specified, the proceeds of all
propertv that may corae to the State by escheat, or for
feiture, and in addition to all funds frora unclairaed divi
dends or distributive shares of the estates of deceased
persons. " In none of tho public schools shall distinction or disorimiuation
be made on accouut of sex, race, or color.
" Nil sectarian instruction, qualifications, or tests shall be imparted,
i-xacted, applied, or in any manner tolerated in the schools, . . . nor
shall attendance be required at auy religious service therein, nor
shall any sectarian tenets or doctrines be taught or favored in any
public school or institution that may be established under this Con
stitution. " Railroad aud telegraph lines heretofore constructed, or that may
hereafter be constructed in this State, are hereby declared publio
highways aud common carriers, and as such must be made by law to
extend the same equality and impartiality to all who use them, ex
cepting employes aud their families and ministers ofthe Gospel.
"Exercise of the power and right of eminent domain shall never
be so construed or abridged as to prevent the taking by the Legis
lature of property and franchises of incorporated companies, aud sub
jecting them to public use the sarae as property of iudividuals.
"No street passenger railway, telegraph, telephone, or electric-
381

light line, shall be constructed within the limits of auy municipal
organization without the consent of its local anthorities.
"Eight hours' actual work shall constitute a lawful day's work in
all mines and on all State and municipal works.
" It shall be unlawful for any person, company, or corporation to
require of its employes any contract or agreement whereby such em
ployer shall be released from liability or responsibility for personal
injuries to snch employes while in the service of such employer, by
reasou of the negligence of the employer, or the agents or employes
thereof." (Condensed to give the mere substance of the clause.)
" No armed police force or detective agency, or armed body or un
armed body of men, shall ever be brought into this State for the sup
pression of domestic violence, except upon the application of the
Legislature, or Executive, when the Legislature cannot bo convened."
The laAVS governing taxation and revenue are equally
notable. Except for the support of educational and
charitable institutions, and the payraent of the State
debt and interest thereon, the annual levy shall not
exceed four raills on the dollar of the assessed A'aluation
of the property in the State. Twelve raills pn the dol
lar is the maxiraura levy in the counties for all purposes,
exclusive of the State tax and county debt. An annual
and additional tax of two dollars for each person in each
county is imposed for school purposes. No city or town
may levy a tax greater than eight mills on the dollar,
except to meet its public debt and the interest thereon.
It will be seen that in preparing this great estab
lishment for the reception of future millions, the furni
ture is as complete as the variety of attractions in the
soil, and the future millions will find, already settled for
thera beforehand, many of the probleras Avhich we in
older States are sorely troubled to decide — such as the
female suffrage question, the eight-hour law, the Pink-
erton problem, the question of religion or no religion in
the schools, the mischief of discrimination in freight
rates, and the evil of free passes on raihvays, Avith fifty
383

other greater or lesser matters that foment doubt and
contention far to the eastward of this forward and vig
orous comraonwealth, which thus has everything it
needs, except the trifle called population.

A TALK WITH A COAVBOY

The first cowboys I ever saAV greatlj' disappointed
me by their appearance. All that I have seen since that
time have disappointed me equally. If I Avere to Avrite
a play in which there Avas a cowboy character, I would
dress him up in fringed leather breeches and a buckskin
coat, a big drab Spanish hat as stiff as a board and as
big as the top of a wash-tub, in dainty boots, and bead-
worked gloves ; his pistols should be of mother-of-pearl,
and none but the best Cheyenne saddle should he sit on
— for of such is the cowboy of the flash literature which
has immortalized him ; and if the true cowboy does not
knoAV enough to live up to his own china, I would ignore
the fact. And yet these first cowboys I saw in Montana
were a very ordinary-looking lot of young depot-loungers,
peculiar only because they Avore big flat-brimmed hats,
and because they had a long line of broncos fettered to
a hitching-rail near by. I would have been iraraeasur-
ably disappointed and disgusted had they not been re
deeraed by a story that Avas told concerning thera as
soon as our train pulled aAvay frora the station where
they were loafing.
The story was that this sarae band of plainsmen had
long noticed a course of behavior on the part of a
Northern Pacific train conductor which they determined
not to tolerate. The conductor did the Avorst thing, in a
coAvboy's opinion, that any man could do — he acted like
a dude ; he " put on style." He actually Avent so far as
883

to SAving hiraself off the cars before they stopped, and,
with one arra extended and head offensively erect,
would shout : " Dingleville ! All out for Dingleville !"
His whole raanner was artificial, affected, and unbear
able. This being noticed — and no one is quicker to
notice the hoUoAv trickery of an Eastern raan than cow
boys are — the boys decided to "take hira down." So
one day they asserabled on the station platforra in a
semicircular line, into the curve of which he raust run as
he leaped frora the raoving cars. The conductor did as
he was expected to, the cowboys surrounded hira, and
he Avas bidden to dance.
" Dance,  you !" they shouted ; " dance, or we'U
shoot the toes off you !"
At the Avords each cowboy pulled his pistol, and began
shooting down into the platforra planks, not exactly at
the conductor's feet, but so as to narrowly miss thera.
They blazed awaj' and he danced, until, after he Avas all
but exhausted and they had no more shots to fire, they
bade him go on with the train, and never " shoAv up " at
Dingleville until he could behave like a man.
I heard other stories about cowboys on that trip.
One of the best of them was told bj' a globe trotting
EngUshman, whose habit it was to amuse hiraself and
while away Ufe by going wheresoever there Avas prom
ise of noA'elty, danger, or excitement. He had been to
the African diaraond fields, to the Mahdi's realms, to our
frontier mining caraps, and now he was on his way to
Alaska. But one trip he made Avas to see the cowboys,
about whora he had read a great deal.
" They are a very rura sort of beggars," said he — " a
very rura sort. But they're not half bad as a lot, d'you
know. The first cowboy town I got into was fortunately
chosen, for I had no sooner got into bed in the 'otel than
a band of the beggars came dashing up the street, firing
384

off their revolvers like raadraen. It happened that the
'otel Avas a very rara-shackle frarae building, alraost as
thin as card-board, and in five rainutes the Avails of ray
bedroom Avere riddled Avith bullet holes in the most sur
prising raanner. Fancy ray satisfaction — for I had
travelled five thousand railes to Avitness that very thing !
" But to show you that they are not as bad as thev
iiave been painted — in fact, that they are opposed to
anything like law-breaking and violence — let rae relate
an incident that took place the very next day. There
Avas a poor dark standing up over his books at a desk in
a shop on the main street, and there Avas a drunken
coAvboy riding up and down the street. Well, the cow
boy saw -the dark, and his sense of huraor was aroused
by the idea of shooting at hira, d'j'ou know. Those coav-
boys have a very reraarkable sense of huraor. So the
cowboy ups Avith his pistol, d'you know, and he shoots
the poor dark right through the head, killing hira in-
stantlj'. Well, now, that sort of thing is very distinctlj'
froAvned upon by cowboys, as a rule, and in this case the
cowboys held a raeeting, and resolved that the felloAv
Avith the lively but dangerous sense of huraor should be
hanged at once. They put a rope around his neck, and
there being no tree anj'where in sight, they hung hira to
the side of a Pullman as the train came rolling in. I've
seen a nuraber of occurrences of that sort, which raakes
rae quite positive in stating that though they are a verj'
rum sort of beggars, they are really not a bad lot."
Up to date, much as I have been in the Western coun
try, I have not the close acquaintance with them that
Avas boasted by this Englishman. I have not yet seen a
'• round-up," or a " trail " coming up from Texas, or a
coAvboy carap, or anj' part of their life that may be
caUed illustrative or typical. I have seen thousands of
thera hanging about depots and saloons, riding like the
2 I) 385

wind across the open, seated in railway cars, betting
their hard-earned raoney in garabling dens, and punch
ing cattle into stock-pens and cattle-cars. I knoAV them,
their horses, their saddles, their clothing, their careless
ways, their masterful riding, but I have yet to spend a
day with 'thera on the ranges or a night Avith them in
carap. I know that their unique position araong Americans
is jeoparded in a thousand Avays. Towns are growing
up on their pasture-lands ; irrigation scheraes of a dozen
sorts threaten to turn bunch -grass scenery into farra-
land vieAvs; farraers are pre-erapting vaUeys and the
sides of water waj's ; and the day is not far distant Avhen
stock-raising must be done mainly in sraall herds, with
winter corrals, and then the coAvboy's day avUI end.
Even noAV his condition disappoints those Avho knew hira
only half a dozen years ago. His breed seems to have
deteriorated, and his ranks are filling with men " who
work for wages " rather than for love of the free life
and bold corapanionship that once terapted raen into
that calling. Splendid Cheyenne saddles are less and
less nuraerous in the outfits; the distinctive hat that
raade its way up from Mexico raay or raay not be worn ;
all the civil authorities in nearly all the tOAvns in the
grazing country forbid the wearing of side-arms ; nobody
" shoots up " those towns any more. The fact is the old
simon-pure cowboy daj's are gone already ; and when
the barber Destiny again has a vacant chair and calls
out " next " the cowboy will himself disappear.
For that reason I greatly enjoyed a raorning spent
with a cowboy of great fame in his business, of tAvelve
years' experience, and who has forced his way upward
to a position of prosperity and honor, although he stiU
keeps his seat in the saddle, and officiates at every
" round-up." of the cattle of a great cow company. It
386

seeras to rae that to repeat Avhat he said, as nearly as
possible in his own Avords, Avill be to raake a contri
bution to history for some future writer. As to its
present interest, there can be no doubt.
'• Folks in the East think that cowboys are saA'ages,
and eat grass," said he ; " but I find 'em about the best
men I oA'er knew; by that I raean that they are the
manliest and squarest men I ever saw. There's one
thing I will say, you put 'era in the best hotel there is,
and they'll order hara and eggs three tiraes a day, the
reason being that you can't make 'em believe there's
any better food than that a-going. They work hard, and
they live hard, and when they smash, they go all to
pieces. I know one, as smart a cowboy as ever roped a
steer, sraart at every part of the business — one of your
true cowboys, he was, that's too proud to cut hay, and
the kind that says, as I heard one say once when a big
cattle-raan carae on frora the East, and asked him to
saddle his horse : ' Saddle hira yourself,' says he ; 'if
you don't know how, you 'ain't got no business out on a
range. Anyhow, I don't have to saddle no raan's horse
as long as I can ride the Avay I can now.' This fellow
that I speak of was one of the regular sort like that, and
yet he is sunk so low that a painted woraan is keeping
hira. I saAV him to-day, and he borrowed raoney of me,
which, when I gave it to hira, I knew I was fiinging. it
into the gutter. Do you know why I gave it to hira {
It was because I know hundreds that would do the sarae
for rae. They Avould whack their last dollar with rae,
for standing by your friends is the cowboy's religion.
" Rura, cards, and woraen are the epitaphs in the cow
boy's graveyard. Sorae bunches all three, and sorae cuts
one out of the herd, and rides after it till he drops ; but
however they take 'era, those are the things that rounds
up raost of 'era. It's curious, but if they quit horseback,
887

and go into business, those are the three businesses they
choose frora, or the two, I should say, for cards and
liquor go together.
" How do I dress when l'ra with an outfit ? Well,
mostly in rags. Truth is, I don't care hoAV I dress so
long as I've got a good hat and boots and saddle. I've
got shoes on now because I've quit ray horse, and am
hoofing it. You can't walk in a cowboy's shoes ; they
fit too much. You see, we wear high-heeled boots, and
get 'era as small as we can. When a cowboy goes into
a shoe store, if two men can get a pair of new boots on
him without a good deal of trouble, he won't buy 'em ;
he'll say he doesn't want a whole hide to slosh around
in, he just wants shoes to fit his feet. Cowboj's are very
particular about the look of their feet, and have a right
to be, because they pay $15 for a pair of boots. A good
broad-brimraed hat 'll cost up to $20, and a plain Chey
enne saddle and triraraings is worth $40, but the boys
like to get their saddles all staraped up with patterns,
and will pay $55 for one like that.
" Folks East think the Indians are such fine riders.
We cowboys raay be conceited, but we don't think an
Indian can ride for sour milk. It is true they are on
horseback all the time, but their horses are little played-
out old racks that you could mostly put in your pocket.
An Indian can ride a horse that I've rode down and
quit, but I always say the horse goes to git out of
misery. You see an Indian ride once. You often have ?
AYell, then, there's no need o' my tellin' you that he
keeps his heels humping into the horse's ribs the whole
tirae he's riding hira, or that he has a quirt, Avith which
he keeps a-whipping and lashing the horse the whole
tirae. "Indians can't ride. Do you knoAV what they do
Avhen they get a horse that's got sorae spirit ^ They

put a stake in the ground, and tether the horse to it
Avith a long halter. Then all the squaws and children
and old raen in the carap get around Avith whips and
sticks and stones, and they holler and chase and beat
the horse around and around that stake till he's wellnigh
dead. When they've broke his heart and got hira
nearly dead, sorae buck Avill get on hira and ride hira,
Avhipping hira and digging hira with his heels. The
horse will go to get out of raisery. That shows what
the Indians knoAv about horses.
" Cavalryraen are fairly good riders — on a road. They
can raove along a road, if it's in good condition, quite
fairly. But, great Scott ! what we call riding is to take
your horse across country Avherever a horse can go —
doAvn gullies, up bluffs, and just as it happens. A good
cowboy rider is unconscious that he is riding. A raan
who is conscious that he is on horseback ain't a good
rider. You Avant to get on your horse and let your legs
flop around loose frora the knees down ; and you must
let your body sit loose, except where it joins the horse
and is part of him.
" A cowboy is drunk twenty rainutes after he strikes
a town. We used to ' shoot up ' the towns, but now they
disarra us. Was I ever in a fuss ? Well, little ones,
once in a while. When a raan raises a gun on rae, l'ra
going to do whatever he wants just as quick as I can.
I've heard men in towns say they Avasn't afraid of a gun.
Well, I am ; and so Avould they be if they had ridden
frora Texas to Montana as often as I have. I've also
heard raen say they'd like to see the Indian thej''d be
afraid of. Well, I've seen a good raany I'a'c been afraid
of, no raatter what bluff I raade to show that I wasn't
scared. As I say, I like to oblige a man that drops a
gun on me, because the raan is apt to be drunk, and
when he is drunk he is apt to be a little raite nervous.
389

" But there was a time lately when a man pulled a gun
on rae, and I didn't like to do Avhat he wanted. You
see, I don't drink liquor, and I'd refuse $500 sooner than
corral a spoonful of it. I was in a bar-room, and a man
came in and asked me to drink. He was a stranger or
he'd 'a' knoAvn better than to ask me, and he was steam
ing drunk, too. I thanked hira, and told hira I didn't
care to drink. I was unarraed, but he Avas 'fixed,' and
he whips out his gun — a 45-calibre six-shooter — and he
says, ' Pour out a glass of rura and chuck it in yourself,
or I'll raake windows in your skull.' He had me, and I
want to tell you that a man doesn't feel first-rate look
ing along a gun-barrel when he knows the weapon's
cocked and the man is drunk, and has only got to press
hard enough to move two ounces Avhen the thing 'll go
off. A man doesn't get absent-minded under the circum
stances ; he 'tends to Avhatever business is asked of hira.
I repUed that certainly I would drink, and that I didn't
know he was so pressing. I grabbed the bottle, poured
out the poison, and was just raising the glass, Avith a
' Here's looking at j^ou, pard,' when a friend .'of raine
carae in the door. He saAv the lay of the land, and he
walked up and stuffed the muzzle of his six-shooter
right in the drunken man's ear, and he says, ' Drop it !'
Up to that tirae it had been a tableau and not a Avord
spoken, but when ray friend said, 'Drop it!' the feller'
let his gun fall as you Avould have done with a mouthful
of scalding hot coffee." 890

XI
A WEEK WITH THE MORMONS
Finding myself in Salt Lake City for the first time
the other daj', I went directly to the heads of the Mor
mon Church and put rayself in their charge. In all
probability it was that indefinable thing called " the
ncAvspaper instinct " that made rae do it — the sarae that
once told rae that a man I Avas hunting New York to
find was just disappearing from sight behind a door,
although the door was the entrance to an evil place
and the man Avas a minister of the gospel. 1 had
never seen hira, but it was he.
That is the sarae instinct that once caused a friend
of raine, afterwards a distinguished editor, to bolt
down the yawning staircase of an underground oys
ter-saloon on Broadway. "A news-current carae up
out of the cellar — a perceptible current of magnetism
— and pulled me down there," he afterwards said,
gravely ; " and just as I entered the restaurant one
man shot another dead."
For further particulars as to this remarkable but un
doubted mind current — the newspaper instinct — I refer
the reader to the various psychical research societies, or
to any newspaper-man Avho really has a right to be so
called. Should I preface my storjr with any more illus
trations of its magic, the reader Avould prepare hiraself
for a very different talo than the one I am now about
to write doAvn. 891

Being landed in Salt Lake City at daybreak not long
before Election Day, 1892, I Avas surprised and affected
by the beauty of the city. Upon seeing Denver in the
crystal-clear light of its atraosphere, and with its beauti
ful view of the Rockies always over my shoulder, I had
for the first time acknowledged that it Avould be possi
ble for me to live away from the sea Avith at least sorae
degree of happiness.
But Denver is only an appetizer to be taken before
seeing Salt Lake City — at least, so far as the beauty
of its surroundings is concerned. Denver's mountains
are distant, and sometiraes have to be looked for round
a corner, Avhereas Salt Lake City is right against its
mountains, and they all but Avail it in. Not only that,
but it is so broad and open and clear a toAvn, and it
is so lavishly set with beautiful trees, that there is no
coraparing it with any other city. It is a city with
country iraproveraents. Of course it is not elegant and
rich and bustling and croAvded Avith all the latest ele
gances like DeuA'er, and I have not pretended that it
Avas, but it is first in its oavu class — a great tree-littered,
elbow-roomy, overgrown village, if j'ou please, Avith all
its electric-light and car poles along the middle of its
streets, so that the trees and the Avires may not interfere
with one another; with its everlastingly queer Taber
nacle rounding up like a brown roe's egg, and its three-
and -a- quarter- raillion -dollar Temple lifting its manj'
towers of granite above iill but the raountains, as if
conscious that it and they both elevate the soul and
ej'e alike.
Thinking thus pleasantly of the countrified capital of
the Latter-day Saints, I made my Avay — no cab or 'bus
interfering to help me — doAvn a very long, very broad
street, under a splendid line of Lombardy poplars and
box-elders, to the new hotel which, by-the-way, is one of
392

the two thousand really first-class hotels in Avhich the
West is so rich. I passed ever so raany scores of tidy
little box-like dwellings, mostly frame ones as I recall
them, and thought, as I ahvaj's do Avhen I see many de
tached homes of small size in a place, Avhat a grand
good thing it is that there is no other place in America
like New York (where men and Avoraen and helpless lit
tle children are herded in barracks), and that there are
so many cities in Avhich Avhole farailies feel the pride and
jov of independence, of all that goes with true horaes.
Why ! I believe that no one thing contributes more to
America's greatness than her unparalleled nuraber of
citizens who are their own landlords.
Thus further delighted, I reached the hotel and Avas
barbered, and got the raorning paper and ray breakfast.
Then it Avas that I deterrained to go to the officers of
the Church of Latter- daj' Saints and give raj'self over
to their care. Having so decided, the next thing was to
think what I should say to the Mormons.
" 1 first noticed your people," I raade up mj' mind to
say, " when I first crossed the country years ago. I had
corae frora San Francisco, and was in a train that Avas
rolling over a particularly deserted and wretched desert,
Avhen all at once the waste, brown, dead-looking land be
carae green with grain-fields and pastures and hay mead-
OAVS. Neat houses, prosperous looking groups of out
buildings, flower-beds, and happy-faced, well-clad persons
sprang up as if I was riding on a raagic carpet and had
Avished rayself in Illinois. I Avas told that these Avere
Morraon Avonder-workers who had brought about this
splendid transforraation. Noav here I ara again in Mor-
inonland, and I would like to see soraething more than
an express-train view of you all."
Next I thought I Avould say that I recollected reading
an account by one of Brigham Young's daughters of
393

her school-girl days, in which account she sought to
show hoAv happy and human and gentle were the
pleasures and the training of Mormon children. What
she Avrote did not affect the main question before the
people at that time — which Avas the question whether
polygaraj' should be practised in violation of our laAvs—
but, nevertheless, she drew a very pretty picture of a
very happy household of little folks, Avho raight have ex
isted in NeAV England, except that they would have had
raore fathers had they been so rauch farther East. I
proraised raj'self I Avould tell the Morraons about that
echo of in-door life in Utah, and would ask to see soma
of their homes — a good deal to ask if the reader loses
sight of the fact that "journalistic instinct" Avas at
Avork ; but keeping that in mind, such a request will
seera quite moderate and in keeping.
I found Mr. Angus Cannon, and I said all that I had
planned to say. Whether he is an apostle or a bishop
or a plain saint, I do not knoAv ; but he is a brother of
George Q. Cannon, the Avisest and most forceful raan in
the Mormon Church, and a counsellor to the head of that
bodj'. " 1 am not out here to open old sores," said I,
" nor to stuff any controA'ersial points Avith straw, and
knock them about for the edification of either Gentiles
or Mormons. I have seen all the rest of the people be
tween the Mississippi and the Rockies, and uoav I want
to see the Morraons. It is an old story to say that the
results reached by your settlers and the changes brought
about on your desert land are among the wonders of the
West, but it Avill be a new story, perhaps, to tell Avhat
sort of folks you are, and how you live and think and
talk. Therefore let rae see some thoroughly Mormon
coramunity, where Gentiles have nothing to do Avith the
public management, and introduce rae so that I can see
the home life of the people there."
394

Anv one raight have supposed that Mr. Angus Can
non had been approached in precisely that raanner three
times a day for manj' years, so entirely at ease was he,
and so calmly and readily did he raake answer,
"The only difficulty about that," said he, "is to hit
upon the best town for the purpose."
Afterwards, when I eraployed a photographer and
asked him if he was a Morraon, the man of the camera
said that he was, indeed, and Avhj' did I ask ? Was it
because I did not see his horns ? Well, as to his horns,
he Avas sorry to say he had none. He supposed they
Avould begin to grow out Avhen he got older.
'"I told a raan once," he added, "that I Avas a Mor
raon, and he said, ' You don't say so ! I thought Mor
raons Avere queer-looking ])eople and had horns.' "
Since ray reader may Avonder Avhat sort of persons they
really are, suffice it if it is noted here that they are pre
cisely like the people of the West generally — the iVmeri
cans being very Araerican indeed, the Germans being
raore or less Gerraan, the Scandinavians being light-
haired and industrious as thej' are at horae, and so on
to the end. But it is of especial value to say that Mr.
Angus Cannon is of old Scotch stock, and that nearly
all the leading raen to whora he made me knoAvn Avere
New - Yorkers or Yirginians or Kentuckians or Ncav
Jersej' born, or perhaps frora one or another of the orig
inal thirteen colonies. I considered ancAV that such
blood as that is apt to be good, and that this was Avhy
they were on top in that Church. Mr. Cannon would
have passed for a Mississippi steamboat captain if he had
been in St. Louis. He introduced me to his sons — four
of thera, I jthink — and one of them was an Ann Arbor
graduate and a Democrat. The others were Republicans,
and so was he. He introduced rae to a Captain Young,
a West Point graduate and son of Brighara Young, Avho
395

looked the American array officer all over, though he
has retired frora the service. To each one of these per
sons Mr. Cannon told ray story, and of each he asked
Avhere I had better go. Nearly every one said I had
better go to the Cache (pronounced " cash ") Valley,
but one or tAvo halted over a place called Provo.
Finally Ave raet Bishop Williara B. Preston, and in
his hands Mr. Cannon left rae and Avent his way. Bish
op Preston is a Virginian, and of a fine type of sturdy
Araerican raanhood — a raiddle-aged, kindly raan, gentle
but firra and strong in appearance, speech, and raethods.
In Virginia he would be set doAvn for a well-to-do man
in a large country town — a country banker, for instance.
His place in the Church is called "the Presiding Bish
opric." He has two counsellors, sits in the counting-
room of the great tithing depot in Salt Lake City, and I
hazard the guess that he has charge of the property of
the Church, and is the man of affairs who cares for the
raaterial possessions of the great organization.
He also seeraed to take rae and my errand as a mat
ter of course, just as he would have regarded a flurry of
snoAv> or a request for the tirae of day. It is true that
I had now explained myself to half a dozen men, and
Avas going off with another Avho Avas also to hear me
and judge me. It might be said that I Avas passing in
review before all these persons, and yet that seemed to
rae to be raere accident. At all e\'ents we went to look
at the Tabernacle, than which there is not, of aU raan's
handiwork in America, anything more curious and
unique. It stands on a square block of grass behind the
mysterious but beautiful Temple which cost raiUions,
and in Avhich— though that is for another chapter.
"We used to raeet in a bowery here," said Bishop
Preston, " in the shade of foliage out-of-doors, but one
day Brighara Young said we needed a raore serviceable
396

bowerj', and he planned and built this Tabernacle. You
Avould call it a church, but we call our society the
Church, and our churches we call tabernacles."
I turned and looked at the strange building, so farail
iar in pictures, Avith its long Ioav Avails cut by doors
between each buttress of supporting stone-work, and
upon its rounded dorae-like roof shaped like half of an
egg that has been cut lengthwise.
" There never was a building like it in the world,"'
said the bishop. " It Avas Brighara Young's idea."
In Ave went and stood in the enorraous interior in
which 6000 persons raay sit on any day, and 10,000 can
be seated if stools are brought in. Not even Henry
Ward Beecher's old Plymouth Church is more plain and
bare. It is just a great hall Avith a Avide gallery around
three sides, Avith little Avooden posts, which look hke
marble, to support the gallery ; Avith battalions of pews
on the floors, and a gigantic organ at one end rising
above the greatest choir space I ever saAV in a church.
And that, in turn, is above a terraced series of platforms
leading down to the main floor, like a very broad but
short staircase.
A man stood at the end of the church. He said, " Go
up in the gallery and walk to the other end of the build
ing. It is 250 feet long and 140 feet wide, yet Avhen I
Avhisper you will hear me, so perfect are the acoustic
properties of the building." I walked the length of the
church. My footsteps Avere repeated so raany times in
echoes that the reverberations sounded like a drumraer's
roll-call — almost as if I was a regiraent a-raarching.
Frora where I stood at last the raan Avho had spoken
looked like a boy. He held up his hand. " Answer rae
in a natural tone when I speak to you. I ara going to
whisper." (Then the Avhisper carae, distinctly, " Can you
hear me whisper? I ara going to drop a pin on this
397

altar raU, see if you hear it.") He held the pin two
inches above the rail and dropped it. I heard it as if —
as I never supposed a pin could make itself heard a foot
away. " And uoav," said the man, " see and hear what
I do noAV." He rubbed his hands together, and a sound
like a loud rustle of silk floated through the hall. Af
terwards I sat by that amiable and ingenious man, and
saw hira go through the performance for others. The
only trick was in the buUding. I offered the man half
a dollar. " Oh no," said he ; " Ave do not seU the attentions that
visitors get frora us."
I said I would like to give soraething to the Church.
" We do not want it," said the man ; " but you can
pay it into the Temple Building Fund, and get a receipt
for it."
I did so, and got a receipt on a printed blank like
this :

foO/lOO

Series B 6.
No. 307.

CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.
OFriCB OF THE PRESIDING BiSHOPEIC.
Salt Lake Citt, Utah, Oct. 16, '92.
Received from  Julian Ralph 
 N.Y. Cily 
 50/100 Dollars, iu Cash.
On Account V.ilnntai-y Offering ^- ^- PK^'STON,
to the Salt Lake Temple. By N. R.

Bishop Preston, seated Avith rae in the echo-haunted
hall, then told rae what I would see were it Sunday.
In the choir space I would see 300 trained singers and
the organist. At the top of the terraces of benches
898

would sit President Wilford Woodruff (the Brighara
Young of to-day), an aged raan Avho knew the founders
of the Church, Avas long an Apostle, and now is " Pre
siding High Priest." He has two counsellors, and all
three corapose what is called the First Presidency of the
Church. Next beloAv — one step doAvn — I would see
such of the TAvelve Apostles as raight be then in Salt
Lake City and their President. These, I was told, are
gifted eloquent preachers and theologians. Then Avould
be seen on lower tiers " the Seventies," who now nura
ber 100 quoruras of seventj' rainisters each. Every
Seventy has seven Presidents, who are the directors of
the group. The seven First Presidents of the Seventies
are the directors of all the Seventies in the world.
They are rainisters, spreaders of the gospel. Their work
is that of the Apostles, who are too few in nuraber to
do what is required, and therefore have this assistance.
Next beloAV would be seen, on a Sunday, the Presidents
of Stakes — a stake being Avhat we call a county. These
diocesan rulers have spiritual control over all the bish
ops, whom they instruct and direct. Next Avould corae
the Eighties, or elders, of Avhora there is a host. They
are often called upon to preach, and are preparing to
becorae " Seventies," or full-fledged preachers. Next
Avould be seen the Presiding Bishops in charge of the
teraporal affairs of the Church. The Presiding High
Priest, his two counsellors, the Apostles, and the Pre
siding Bishops, are the general officers of the Church.
On each side of these terraced platforms Avas an enclos
ure, railed off. One was for the Bishops of Wards, and
the other for High CounciUors and High Priests. End
ing the series of departraents, between the leaders and
the plain saints, Avas the coraraunion-table, on which the
bread and water rest every Sunday.
Bishop Preston went on to say that in addition to
399

these officers were many others. Every bishop has two
counsellors, for instance. Then there is an array of
priests, teachers, and deacons. They are scattered in
every ward. The teachers go frora house to house
araong the saints, inquiring into the spiritual and world
ly needs of the people. The priests follow if spiritual
stirring is needed ; others follow if worldly help is
wanted. In every ward the Avoraen maintain their so
cieties also.
" Why," said I, not irreverently, " it's like the Spanish
army. Nearlj' every one wears shoulder-straps."
"Yes," said the bishop. "In the Morraon Church
every man Avho is earnest and trustAvorthy and is pos
sessed of ordinary sense is elevated to some office or
other. Therefore all such are doubly spurred and in
terested." I had been told bj' sorae Gentiles that I Avould not be
allowed to enter the great Teraple. I was therefore not
surprised or disappointed Avhen Bishop Preston said that
the Teraple was full of workraen, and could not then be
seen. It is the sanctum sanctorum, and I never dreamed
of entering it. But the bishop talked much about it,
calling to ray attention the fact that its name, " the
Temple," was another narae for that "Endowraent
House" of Avhich scandalous things had been charged
by the Gentiles in tiraes gone by. It is there that the
saints are sealed to their Avives and the children are
baptized when they reach eight years of age. There,
also, the bishop told rae, the saints, pursue the trying
course of being baptized over and over again for their
ancestors, in order that the dead Avho had no oppor
tunity to know the gospel may be saved after all. A
saint, I Avas told, avUI undergo the ordeal for every an
cestor of Avhom he can learn the narae. To be sure,
sorae of us are said not to know who were our grand-
400

parents ; but, on the other hand, some of us are de
scended frora Brian Born. And in Utah there are raen
who trace their line back to faraous raen of England and
Scotland, and must be baptized for scores of dead pro
genitors, each repetition of the cereraony taking the
best part of a day, frora eight o'clock in the morn
ing until three o'clock in the afternoon. Perhaps
1 Avas deceived as to this, but it will not be easy to
make rae think that those Avho Avere so undeviatingly
kind to rae for raany days were deceivers at the same
time. After being introduced to raany Mormons it carae to
be luncheon-tirae, and I was invited to join the faraily
circle of one of ray new-raade acquaintances. I raust
draw the line at the door of a private house, and cannot
say a word to indicate whose it Avas. The husband, as
he approached his garden gate, called raj' attention to
the sparkling Avater coursing down the street gutter, and
then to a bit of board beside it. He took up the board,
dropped it into a pair of slots in the side of the gutter,
and thus dararaed the flow, and turned it instantly and
full head into his garden. The perforraance was a
familiar one to me, but perhaps the reader does not un
derstand it. The street gutter was an irrigation ditch.
The water was that of a raountain streara, tapped high
up in the hills. There was the secret of the rich green
ery of Salt Lake City, and, for that matter, of the mar
vellous transforraation of Utah frora desert to garden.
There, too, was seen the onlj', yet confident, hope of the
people of the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Col
orado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada — that
vast erapire of arid land that looks to irrigation to du
plicate in the West the iraperial wealth of the agricult
ure of the East. Hoav siraple it Avas ! A streara tapped,
a rivulet running in the gutter, a block of AA'ood to dam
2o 401

it, and — result, a laughing garden full of grass and
flowers and fruit.
Left alone, in -doors, in ray first Morraon house, I
noticed only one thing, at the outset, that I had never
seen in any other house. It was a scroll of Morraon
texts hanging in the hall. It displayed on the outer
sheet a text frora the book called The Doctrine and
Covenants. Perhaps 'tAvas this :
"21. Take npon yon the name of Christ, and speak the truth in
soberness.'' "22. And as raany as repent and are baptized iu my name, which
is Jesus Christ, and endure to the end, the sarae shall be saved."
" 23. Behold, Jesus Christ is the name which is given of the Father,
and there is none other name given whereby mau cau be saved."
But presently being asked to arause raj'self for a few
raoraents, I discoA'ered that the burden of literature on
the centre-table in the sitting-room was nearly all Mor
raon. Most interesting of all was a Morraon periodical
airaing to publish the early records of the pioneers who
carae to Utah to escape annoyance and build a world
of their oavu. Strange heroic stories they were — of
caravans of Araericans pushing out to a point half the
Avidth of the continent beyond civilization, to an alkali
plain of which their leader said, " This is the place that
Avas revealed to me." Tales of thirst, of Indians, of
murder, of raisadventure of every sort these were ; fol
lowed by records of ship-loads of Europeans toiling along
over the wilderness. What raust have been the sensa
tion of the raen of Berlin and Edinburgh and London
in that country in those days ?
For the rest, the gay carpet, lace curtains, the piano,
the canary, the furniture, and the pictures, were all very
like the contents of an Eastern parlor in Gentiledora.
CaUed to follow the host to the dining-room, I con-
403

fronted the first wife and daughter of a Mormon that
I had ever met. The raother was an Eastern Avoraan of
prira and matronly appearance, and with great strength
of character deep-lined in her face. I would have said
she Avas a reformer, or a principal of a school. The
daughter was very beautiful, of the type of which we
think in New York that Miss Georgia Cayvan is the
best representative. She was about twenty years of
age, full but graceful of figure, with nut-brown hair and
great drearay ej'es. She Avas spirited and witty; her
raother Avas sober and practical. The daughter was
already a leader among the women of the Territory in
Avays apart from the Church. Of the mother I learned
nothing. The meal began with an offer of thanks to
the Almighty, and Avas sufflciently bounteous to have
warranted a longer and heartier grace. We talked of
the Japanese, and I told how I had learned that the
characters that stand for words with the Japanese were
originally pictures.
" And what do you suppose was the sign for ' trouble V"
I inquired. No one could guess.
" Two Avoraen in one house," said I.
" Ah," said the elderly lady, gravely, while the others
were still laughing, " our Morraon brethren have found
out the truth of that."
Then the conversation turned upon other theraes, and
I learned that too raany Morraon boys and girls Avere
allowed to go to Garfield Beach — the Coney Island of
Salt Lake— on Sundays, preferring rausic and gayety and
Sabbath-breaking crowds to the peace of horae and the
lasting benefits of church attendance.
" This frivolity of the young is a new thing to us,"
said the father, " and I suspect it is in the air, for I hear
the sarae stories araong all people everywhere."
403

Out-of-doors, I said to a Morman, " You've dropped
polygaray." " Yes," said he ; "we do not teach it any more. We
have no Avish to prolong the conflict, or to have any con
flict, with our Governraent."
" I have an idea it was not popular Avith your women."
" The Avoraen have never liked it or advocated it,"
said he ; " but they understand that it was sanctioned
by the Church, and that it was best for the race. It left
no excuse for or possibility of a class of evil AVoraen in
our coraraunities, it left no surplus woraen uncared for,
since men took wives according to their raeans, and
there were other points to be urged for it in the direc
tion of ensuing healthy offspring — the offspring of the
sturdy instead of the offspring of the Aveak, as in ino-
nogaray." " Were you married more than once ?"
" No ; but I never had one wife. I was raarried to tAvo
at once. I have been iraprisoned for ray course in that
regard. The law has separated rae frora one Avife, but
it could not make rae proraise to abandon her to dis
tress ; it could not prevent rae frora taking care of her,
and seeing that she never wants while she lives. You
Avill not bs beUeved if you quote me," he went on ;
'• perhaps you won't believe me yourself ; but we are
as good Araericans in our loyaltj' as any in the land.
Your flag is raine, and we are the only people in the
United States who call the Constitution an ' inspired
document.' I would not do a thing hostile to the
Governraent any more than you would. Araong us here
are raen whose ancestors helped to found this country.
Can you say any raore ?"
Back through the streets, under the poplars and el
ders, the locusts and the cotton-woods, I made my way
to the tithing-office and to Bishop Preston. The tithes
404

are paid in kind — that is to saj', of ten cows one is
given, of ten tons of hay a ton is given. The tithing-
place Avas enclosed by a stone-wall, originallj' built for
possible use as a haven frora the Indians. In the en
closure and in the buildings there were cows and horses,
kegs of honey, dressed meat, hay, bags of rag carpet,
flour, bacon — a thousand kinds of produce. In one
place Avas a sort of salesroom, and men and woraen Avere
buj'ing provender.
" Notice ther raoney that they use," said the bishop.
I saw that it Avas green paper money. I changed a
half-dollar for a shinplaster of it because of the fine pict
ure of the Temple upon it.
" When we give aid to our poor," said the bishop,
" it takes the form of that money. When the poor
corae here to buy what they need, they hold their heads
as high as any. If we gave thera orders on the store,
they would be betrayed ; but as it is, no one is the
Aviser." Very pretty, I thought. The raore I inquired, how
eA'er, the raore I Avas satisfied that these industrious,
practical church-folks have as little use for pauperism as
the West in general has for drones. The poor are as
sisted only to the near lirait of short patience. Then
they are made to understand that they will do better by
Avorking. The tithing system puzzled me. I could not — nor can
I yet — understand how any organization could succeed
in inducing its 200,000 raembers to give up a tenth of
their capital or of their earnings. That it, like so very
much else of Mormonisra, is based on Old Testament
Avrit, does not explain the latter-day application of the
case. I said so to one saint.
" What do you give for a pew in your church ?" he
asked. 405

" Forty dollars," said I.
" WeU, the average tithe among our people is not so
much. We find it to be thirty-five doUars. And as you
know what your raoney goes for, so do we trace ours.
As a rule, the bulk of it is spread around araong
those who giA'e it. It builds ward asserably -houses,
teraples, tabernacles, and so on ; it buys land ; it gives
to the poor ; it eraploys mechanics, laborers, teamsters ;
it is all scattered again. To be sure, there are saints
whose tithes in a year may araount to a great deal. I
have in raind a merchant Avho paid $2000 this year.
But in the same Avay that he got rich he gets back his
tithes— in great part, at least. He contracts to do the
chnrch work, to outfit a gang of laborers, to furnish or
paint a building. There is no raystery and no hardship
about it."
In the evening I Avent to Logan, in the Cache Vallej',
by raeans of a railroad run of a fcAv hours northAvard
frora Salt Lake City, and near the Idaho line.
In all my Western travelling, Logan is the prettiest
country-place I have yet seen. It Avould be difficult for
rae to picture to the reader's mind a raore charraing,
enchanting spot than this Mormon village, that dots a
lovely park or bit of prairie that is Availed around by
chains of stately mountains, whose sides are all deeply
furroAved and heavily ribbed. The valley was half sage
brush and half alkali forty years ago — an old lake bed,
no doubt — and yet to-day it is a glorious garden. As
bury Park, which has been built in a forest bj' cutting
streets and building sites out frora araong the trees, has
not a tenth so many forest trunks, and not a thousandth
part such beautiful or such valuable ones. Trees Avhich
no raan can reach around have been planted in lines along
each curb and within each dooryard. Behind these,
in every yard and garden, are still other trees, so thicklj'
406

scattered that the pretty little cottages of the town are
more than half hid araong leafage, and a view of the
town frora the nearest raountain-side is a sight of clouds
of f(jliage, broken only by the towering granite spires
of the Morraon Temple and the raassive bulk of the
granite tabernacle.
The sparkling Avater of the Logon River, tapped upon
a raountain-side, is led so cleverly through the town
that each gutter on each side of every street is a rush-

MM

r/K^^^V'

OLD-STYLE HOnSE AT LOGAN, UTAH

ing, plashing raountain rill. Gates, Avhich look to the lay
beholder like tiny cataracts, are opposite each garden,
and the melody of rippling, singing water fills the air —
that air already so freighted with the sweet breathings
of the trees and the raingling essence of a railUon floAvers.
The great broad streets, with the electric Avires on poles
407

in the raiddle of each roadway, the sraall and cosey dAvell-
ings, the thick orchards, the flower-beds, the shade trees,
the walled-in tithing-house, the rat-tat of frequent sad
dle-horses, the cows strearaing through town at dusk, the
fierce glare of the sun in the clear sky, the purpling,
blushing, ever-changing raountains — these are but a few
of the details that raeraory sends leaping back to ray eyes.
The busy trading street, the neatly-dressed, hardy raen,
and plurap and rather saucy - seeraing Mormon lasses
come next in view ; ahd I think that if I had to describe
both raen and Avoraen, I would saj'^ that they form just
such a population as one finds in out-of-the-Avay Eastern
places like Gettysburg or Whitehall.
Ah ! but to climb the near raountain and look down
is the best of the things to do. Then the valley is seen
to be checkered with villages and farras alternately —
now a toAvn, and now great tracts of farra-land. There
are twenty -one villages in sight, and each is but the
huddling place of so raany farmers. They live as their
kind do in Turkey and the Orient generallj', building all
together, and going to the outlying farms to do each
day's work before returning to' the houses, where the
woraen have had each other's corapany and that of the
old raen and children. It Avas in 1859-60 that seventeen
young raen, with younger wives, and a baby that carae
at about the sarae tirae, moved into the valley, and built
close by one another on both sides of what is noAV the
depot street. Each took ten or tAventy acres of farm-land
a mile or more up the valley, with five acres for pastur
age ill yet another locality. Sorae men wanted more
land, even sixty acres.
" How wiU you cultivate it ?" they Avere asked.
" Why, we are going to have sons," they said.
" Then wait till you get them, and there Avill be land
for thera in their turn." 408 •

All together the settlers built an irrigating ditch, each
digging his part according to the land he held. They
Avashed the salt out of the earth, and it blossomed under
the sarae ditches thus led through the farms. And
every year these men, with pick and shoA'd, cleared out
each one his bit of the main ditch after the Avinter had
heaped and choked and torn it. To-day that Avater
goes Avith the land, and the hired men keep the ditch
in repair for the owners. How difi'erent from the usual
Araerican plan, Avhereby one raan seizes a Avater right,
and calls his '¦ grab " a dukedora, and extorts so many
dollars a year frora all the settlers — for hiraself and his
children, even unto the fourth and fifth generation !
The Indians — raagnificent big Shoshones — carae once
a week and deraanded oxen, or fiour, or Avhatever. They
AA'ere treated kindly, because Brighara Young ahvays
taught that it was cheaper to feed an Indian than to
fight hira.
"What do thej' Avant? Coavs?" he once inquired.
"Well, is it not better to give up all your cows than to
see a neighbor — or even a child — killed V
But he believed the Indians seldora made exorbitant
demands, whereas they certainly did so in Logan on a
certain day, when 300 of them, in war-paint, demanded
10 oxen and an immense araount of grain. After that
the settlers had to loan their reraaining oxen to one
another — one Avorking a teara consisting of his own
beast and his neighbor's one day, the other the next.
Thus, frora 1847 until noAA', and frora Mexico to Canada,
these peculiar people have got along with the Indians,
and to-day they have tamed a half a thousand of them.
near this valley, and have actually taught them to farra
in earnest.
It Avas Brighara Young's idea that the Mormons
should remain a pastoral people. He taught that the
409

surest Avealth Avas in agriculture; and so it coraes that
one sees the valleys peopled and cultivated, while the
mountains, that are full of metalliferous ores, are for the
raost part neglected — to an extent unknown in the
neighboring States, each one of which, except Wyoraing,
was first opened and settled by rainers. It was Young's
idea to put the telegraph poles in the raiddle of the
streets, but then he believed in enormous streets. In
Logan the streets are six rods Avide, and the blocks are
six times as long. But in Salt Lake City the blocks are
forty rods long. The effect is grand. The systera has
raore raerits than disadvantages.
I went to the Tabernacle on a Sunday. The general
service is at tAvo o'clock, and then at night the saints of
each neighborhood asserable in their Avard meeting
houses. The service in the Tabernacle disappointed me.
The huge plain interior was peculiar in that the galler
ies were bent down at one end to raeet the elevated
choir space — Avhich as yet contains no organ, by-the- waj'.
Instead there was a raelodeon, and two violinists stood
beside the leader. There were thirty-five well-trained
A'oices in the choir, and the singing was good. The
service began with the song of " Horae, SAveet Home,"
the words being altered. The President of the Stake sat
up on top, and a dozen dignitaries sat beloAv hira. Be
low thera, in a soleran row, were sixteen raen behind a
table on which stood sixteen silver ewers and sixteen
plates of bread broken into coarse cruraiis. The house
AA'as filled, and Avith a truly good-looking congregation,
no Avhit different frora an ordinary raixed Western Meth
odist asserablage. An old raan prayed for a blessing on
the bread, and around it went, in the hands of the six
teen. Then a young man blessed the water that sym
bolized our Saviour's blood, and round that Avent, in
pitchers and goblets. The choir sang again, and then
410

an elderly man made a brief but pointless address, it
being a rule, as I understand it, that AvhoeA'er is called
upon may talk as he feels best able to, and on Avhat
topic he pleases. Another man — both sat among the
officials — spoke about a great conference at Salt Lake
Citj', and the earnest piety that moved it. Then up rose
an apostle — a banker naraed Thatcher — Avho was evi
dently a popular speaker. He told how difficult it Avas
to be a good Morraon, and how Morraonism enters every
raoment of Ufe, and how a Gentile once said " he would
rather be damned and go to hell than try to live up to
the Morraon faith." Next the apostle spoke of material
things ; of the home industries, the saw-raill, the boot
and shoe making, the necessity for more manufactures.
He said the young ^lormon men Avould do anything
Avith their teams, but would not work with their hands,
and that he did not blame them. At last he took up
the topic of Avinter fun. He advised all the saints to
ha\'e a good time, to hold parties and sociables, to gath
er the young together, and not to grudge them their
pleasure or misjudge them for loving it. He liked to
see thera raerry and joyful. It was good, he said. After
the apostle came an old man AA'ho read a notice calling
upon the Avoraen to meet somewhere and vote upon a
choice of a flower that should be the favorite and em-
bleraatic blossom of the Territory. The choir sang, and
the meeting ended. Of course no collection Avas taken
up ; the tithes are enough. The service disappointed
me. It Avas too practical for my old-fashioned ideas.
The one good speaker simply raade a business man's ad
dress ; the others had no fervor. Possibly the fervor
carae at the ward-meetings that night.
In the houses where I Avas a guest I saw absolutely
nothing peculiar, unless it Avas that it seemed to me
there Avas a phenomenal number of excessively rosy and
411

robust children. The Avives Avere hearty and healthy,
but it Avas very evident that motherhood brought an ob
ligation heavier than usual upon their sex. Everywhere
1 was asked to note the children, to see hoAV healthy
and fine they Avere. Fifty times in one Aveek in Utah
that was the topic. Not once in any other State Avas it
spoken of. And they raay well be proud of their chil
dren, for never was solicitude and pride raore richly re
Avard ed.
"Our sons are free to fall in love," said one saint,
" but they have no right to fall in love with flimsy, sick
ly girls. They know there is no excuse for that."
Are the Morraon girls pretty ? Many are very pret
tj', raainly Avith rustic beauty, to be sure, and yet I saAv
a nuraber who would be called belles in our largest
cities. They were the daughters of the well-to-do, and
had tasted travel and training in . fashionable schools.
Are they nice ? That Avas the flrst question I asked of
a j'oung woraan at the sarae hotel with rae.
" You bet they are !" said she. " I'm one myself."
But she was not like one in that, for no other girl or
woraan that I saAv in Utah Avas so enthusiastic, or even
a particle slangy in ray presence.
I asked what pleasures the girls and boys had, of
Avhich the apostle had spoken. I Avas told that thej'
raaintain literary societies " to discuss the poets, and en
joy a Ught supper afterwards ;" that they not only give
parties and dances at their horaes, but that general as
serablies are held in the tabernacles in the little towns
and villages. A fee is charged, a supper is served, danc
ing is the chief delight, and an official of the Church is
present to preserve order. These coraraunities are little
democracies. All work; all are landowners, and in
dependent in that respect. All are comfortable, and
few are rich. Caste is unknown, and Avhole villages
413

dance as they pray — in harmony together. For the lit
tle children are raaintained just such party custoras as
our OAvn little ones enjoy.
There are three colleges in little Logan — the State
Agricultural College (officered by Gentiles), the Brig
hara Young College, and the New Jersey College (a
Presbyterian institution). Four-fifths of the tax-payers
are Morraons. They spent $5000 in lawyers' fees to
keep liquor -selling out of the town, but the Federal
courts ruled against thera, and the best the Mormons
could do was to put the license fee at $1200 a year.
The next thing after that Avas to "taboo" whoever fre
quented the saloons. While I speak of these virtues, let
rae add that they are an honest people. They are
taught that they raust pay their debts. One of the
chief financiers of the far West told me that the losses
of his company had been less in Utah than anywhere
else. I asked what there was so trying in their tenets as to
lead a Gentile to prefer daranation to Mormondora. I
fancy I got only a partial ansAver. It Avas to this effect :
The Church aims to produce a perfect race of men, and
to raake each generation raore nearly perfect than the
last. The perfection that raen can reach is of the phys
ical sort ; the raorals God looks after. He puts good
souls only in fit bodies. Therefore Morraons may not
drink or smoke or use tobacco in any forra. They
should not use tea or coffee. Thej' should fast one day
in every thirty — at least until dinner-time — and give to
the poor what is thus saved. Thej'^ should keep Sunday
holy, and go to church twice on that day. That Avas all
I heard. Alas ! it Avas admitted that not all the saints
are as strict as they should be.
" One thing you haA'e not seen," said a Mormon lady.
" At any raoraent a deacon raay come to our door, and
418

join our familj' circle. He will ask us a nuraber of ques
tions as to our religious welfare if we are well to do ;
as to our Avorldly condition if Ave are struggling. Or
perhaps it will be a teacher who will call. ' I wish to
read the gospel to-night,' he will say ; ' is it agreeable to
you ?' ' Well, no,' I Avould say, ' Ave have company this
evening.' Then he Avould rise and bow himself out, say
ing that he had fifteen houses to visit this raonth, that
he would go to another and come back to us at another
tirae." Perhaps if sorae politician reads what I have told of
this Church the case will strike hira as it, does rae. Never
was there a political organization so thoroughly raan
aged as is this Church. The socialist philosophers hold
that Tararaany Hall is the raost thorough, self-renewing,
and coraplete political machine knoAvn to raan. But
Tararaany Hall is clurasy and superficial corapared to this
Church. Indiana, the State that is raked with a fine
tooth corab by two parties every year, is poorly looked
after beside Utah. Mr. Platt thinks he has reduced or
ganization and the supervision of voters to a science.
He is a bungler corapared to Brighara Young. What
politicians do for a raonth, once every four years, this
Church does all the time — endlessly. It never takes hand
or eye off its people. Not even their houses are castles
out of which the Church can be shut. With half the
saints dignified by office, and all of the rest under con
stant scrutiny, conceive the power and order of the
Church ! Yet reraeraber that nothing that is done is felt
so as to be resented. All is as kindlj' as it is shroAvdly
devised. The Church of Latter-day Saints is the most
complete and perfect human machine (if it is. human,
Avhich the leaders deny), and Taramany Hall has not
reached the primer of the science it Ulustrates.
I have said that there are 200,000 saints. They are
414

by no means all in Utah. Their towns and districts al
raost forra a chain north and south of that Territory
frora Canada into Mexico. They are in Wyoraing, Ida
ho, Colorado, Ncav Mexico, Arizona, the Sandwich Isl
ands, and the countries of Europe. They have four
palatial teraples, the raain one being at Salt Lake Citj',
the Rorae of that Church. There is a $600,000 one at
Logan, and a raore expensive one at St. George, in far
southern Utah, where the colonists in the southern Ter
ritories and in Mexico raust go to perform Avhatever
rites are celebrated in those beautiful but raysterious
buildings. Down in the bottom of Utah the soil is found in little
pocket-like valleys and small plateaus, just big enough
for orchards or vineyards, but not for grain -growing.
Cotton is groAvn there and coarse cotton goods are raade
of it. It is said that no other people would have gone
there, yet the Morraons are all in comfortable circura
stances. Out in the eastern desert end of Utah I heard
of Morraons living Avhere a jackal would go raad before
starvation brought hira an early death. They Avere hud
dled on little strearas in the sage-brush desert, growing
hay and raising sheep that raust possess microscopic
ej'es Avith which to see their food.
Utah contains nearly 85,000 square miles, and 52,601,-
600 acres of land and raountains. It is alraost 300 railes
square, and is as large as New England and Ncav York.
Mining is now the chief industry, and gold, silver, lead,
and copper are the chief raetals that are mined there,
the product in 1890 having been $14,346,783. It is the
third mining region in the West, and it is said that of
all the raetals found in the Dakotas, Montana, and Col
orado, only tin is lacking in Utah. Men Avho are farail
iar with all the new States and the Territories predict
a golden and araazing future for Utah. There is Avater
¦li.i

to irrigate thousands of square miles of good land that
is erabraced in three drainage systems. Wheat, oats,
and rye grow well in all the irrigable lands, and corn in
some. Orchard fruits and sraall fruits thrive there.
Three millions of acres are said to be irrigable and ara
ble. There is a vast store of timber, and the cattle in
dustry finds plenty of range land, now used for 300,000
horned stock, 100,000 horses and raules, and a million
and a half of sheep. Precious stones, raineral springs,
inexhaustible and vast beds of coal, natural gas, raar
bles and building stones of many sorts, health resorts,
new mining regions, and a certain-to-be-formidable agri
cultural product, are the assets of the future in this
majestic Territory which now holds but 200,000 pop
ulation. 416

XII
SAN FRANCISCO
Whether you drop down upon it after crossing the
desert and the Sierra Nevadas, or whether you corae to
it at close of a long voyage at sea, San Francisco sur
prises you. It is at the edge of an empire of magnifi
cent distances, over raost of Avhich the future is a thou
sandfold raore important than the present, and yet you
find it a great, bustling, parent city, surrounded by a
family of thriving and sizable suburban towns. Its iso
lation, the difficulties of communication between it and
the older civilizations of our country, as well as of those
which Ave copy, have been so tremendous and still are so
great that though I should criticise it in cold blood, and
should find a million faults in it, there still Avould remain
good cause for the San Franciscans to be extreraely vain
of their Avork. And the raore one considers the in
fluences that have corabined to make that city, the more
one thinks of the character and airas of the people Avho
drifted to that coast and clung there, of the discordant
extreraes of immense wealth and bitter ruin that befell
them, of how little suited or minded they were at the
outset to build a great city, the more criticism's point is
dulled, the smaller the faults seera, the greater grows
the meed of praise to the builders.
After a tourist has visited a few far Western " boom "
toAvns, he feels his footing grow unsteady, as if he
Avalked on thin and gaseous clouds. The man Avho can
2d 417

stop at six such places and boast a clear head in the last
one, is of superior stuff. For myself, I had by that time
become so confused that I lost all sense of proper values
and of the true means of judging the coraraonest things.
Fancy it ! In one place I found a great area all built up
with streets and dAvelUngs, with real estate at the out
skirts going readily at $4000 an acre, and with impress
ive brick and stone buildings in the business section
costing from $30,000 to $60,000 and renting for $100 a
year — for Avhich rentals bogus receipts Avere given for
vastly higher suras (the sarae to be shown to strangers).
After such a tour it is refreshing to flnd one's self in
San Francisco. Every phase of its life seeras genuine
and substantial. Elsewhere you cannot escape the
" price of lots ;" in San Francisco you raust go out of
your way to hear that staple talked of. The people are
engaged in a thousand businesses, and are attending to
thera, precisely as in New York or Boston or Chicago.
Genuine business raakes the air and the earth throb.
The streets in the business portion are crowded with
men intent upon their oavu affairs, the roadAvays thun
der beneath great drays of merchandise, the retail shops
display as Avide a variety and as fair a proportion of
high - class goods as those of any city in the country.
The wholesale houses are fine estabUshraents, Avith a
solid and prosperous air about thera. The cable -cars
that dash through the streets amid the clangor of their
oAvn gongs keep even a Noav- Yorker's every sense Avide
awake, and, in a word, San Francisco strikes the visitor
instantly as being instinct with the metropolitan spirit.
Like thousands of other New-Yorkers, I had con
structed my own idea of the place. I had heard that
San Francisco was more like Ncav York than any other
city on the continent, and as for the country and the
cliraate, I painted them in coideur de rose. Therefore I
418

Avas unprepared for Avhat I was to see, and it hurt rae like
a knife-thrust — I mean the first sight of the citj', not
the impressions I got in a month's stay afterAvards. The
steamship Walla-Walla, beautifuUy fitted within by San
Franciscan taste and skill, entered the Golden Gate
under a moonlit sky on a calra August night, disclosing
a view as beautiful as ever could be forraed by a combi
nation of headlands, hills, Avater, and town. The shad
owy hills rose majestically on every hand, the superb
harbor was rendered doubly picturesque by reason of its
bold islands, and the lights of the city and of Saucelito
and Oakland gemraed the horizon as with a rayriad of
brilliants. It Avas hard to shut a state-roora door against
so beautiful a scene. But it was harder to open it in the
raorning and behold the revelation that the sunlight had
to make ! It was onlj' the hills that Avere at fault, after
all ; everything else was as the moonUght had shown it.
But such hills !
Thej' Avere of dirt — reddish, yellowish, bare dirt hUls.
They hemmed in the glorious harbor ; they composed the
islands ; they rose above and among the city's houses.
And when I plunged into the city, and tried to forget
the blow that I had mj'self invited by picturing home
scenerj' where no one had ever said it existed, it seemed
that the hills pursued me and hurled their surplusage
upon me in clouds of dust, Avhich, mingling presently
Avith a bank of fog, grimed itself into my clothing, while
the cold wind searched out mj' very marrow. I regis
tered at the Palace Hotel — which I Uke better than any
other, except one in Europe, of all the hundreds I am
familiar Avith — and in a short tirae was on my Avay to
Oakland. A countrified Brooklyn I had pictured Oak
land to ray raind, and lo ! the stuffy, ill-kept cars carried
rae through a citj' of which the most that could be seen
Avas a dust - covered, shabbj^ avenue of cheap houses,
•>D* 431

drinking -saloons, Uttle neglected dwelUngs, and low-
grade shops. I had a surfeit of disappointment.
When I look back now and recoUect how difficult I
found it to leave that picturesque and fascinating coast,
hoAv many happy days and glorious pleasures I experi
enced there, I realize as never before the enormity of
the crime raen and women corarait in writing locomotive
literature — of the kind that produces the fruit and blos
som of positive stateraent out of the soil of inference,
conjecture, hasty opinion, and instant prejudice.
Those hills are just as bare to ray raind to-day as when
I first saw thera, but the thought of thera calls up such
a fiood of reraerabrance of rich colors and opulent vistas
as I have seldora witnessed in any other travel. They
Avere ahvays glorious in color, and were never tAvice
alike, though a rosy blush Avas ever the dorainant tone
in their appearance. At sunset every vicAv of the har
bor, every scene frora the hill-tops, Avas positively gor
geous. In each house I visited, whether in city or
suburbs, Ave carae to count upon the last hour of each
day as the vehicle that should bring a glorious spectacle
to the view ; a raore and raore glorious one, it seeraed,
as the conditions of nature varied Avith clouds or fos:, or
that supernal clearness Avhich is seen on that coast at
tiraes, and which all but forces a doubt of the existence
of any atraosphere Avhatsoever. At such tiraes Italy can
boast no bluer sky, and nature lavishes upon the hills
and Avater an extravagance of color. One would expect
San Francisco to develop a considerable artistic eleraent,
led by a coterie of great painters. And exceptional
Avater- color Avork raight be expected to go out frora
there in the traveUing effects of raost Avell-to-do visitors,
for the dorainant tones in nature lend theraselves exqui
sitely to water-color reproduction. In fact, the city is
already the horae of some notable painters. I saw fine
4^3

Avork by half a dozen at least, and the city has just
loaned to London a portrait-painter Avho is raaking a stir
there. But it is to San Francisco's discredit that her
artists are not handsomely supported or encouraged. In
the reason for this we shall see one phase of the defect
that is the most striking and important failing of that
people as a comraunity. Those citizens Avho deal in
high-class pictures say that Avhile the very Avealthiest
raen and woraen of the city have bought veiy few Avorld-
famous paintings, they have none the less expended a
large sum in foreign Avorks of art of lesser grades, and
almost nothing at aU in the products of home talent.
There is among San Franciscans, hoAvever, a considera
ble nuraber of cultivated folk, living upon incomes of
.$5000 a year and upwards, who give the local painters
what support they get. One intelligent dealer of Avide
experience said that these patrons of the local progress
turn instinctively to the best Avork, that they raaintain
horaes as beautifully and elegantly appointed as any
persons of their raeans enjoj' in this countrj', and that
they forra a very large dass in the city and suburbs.
This creara of San Francisco society can do little for the
public and general adornraent of the city except through
the raoral infiuence it can exert.
To their presence I ascribe the fine clubs, the reallj'
notable retail shops, and the beautiful homes on such
streets as Pacific Avenue, and scattered about Saucelito,
Alameda, and Oakland. And to their poAverlessness
raust be due the fact that, more than any citj' of its size
I ever saw, San Francisco lacks those evidences of cult
ure and local pride Avhich are exhibited in the forms of
statues, raonuraents, free galleries, fountains, libraries,
elegant parks, AveU-kept streets, and noble boulevards.
The early raotive that we call the Puritan spirit, and
which showed itself in the foundation of cities over the
435

o

greater part of our country, took note at the outset of
the communal needs. It supplied first a school-house,
and next, a church in each settleraent. This action Avas
onlj' indicative of a larger public concern, Avhich con
tinued to be exhibited not alone in raore and better
school-houses and in elegant churches, but in all the
other concomitants of civic pride and polish Avhich, for
Avant of another terra, Ave raight call coraraunal better
ments — the public " plant." In neither her shabby
churches nor her fiimsj' school-houses do Ave detect that
unselfish, affectionate, and alraost tender regard for
those institutions which raost of our other cities exhibit.
I can easily invent possible reasons for this — in the
Spanish origin of the place, in the cliraate, in the large
adraixture of Southerners, with their habit of la\'ishing
every luxury upon their horaes, in the long period of
speculative teraper and unrest araong the settlers, in the
sequestration of the city, in a score of infiuences — but
let that be ; I state only the condition of what I saw.
As for the purely public works of San Francisco — which
include tbe school-houses and the streets — it ill becoraes
a stranger to take part in the local controversy in which
one side boasts of an exceedingly sraall city tax (popu
larly called the " dollar limit "), and the other side groans
because of a lack of money for every public need. Cred
itable as is the financial standing of San Francisco so far
as her debt is concerned, the case reminds me of that of
the man Avho tried to train his dog to live Avithout eat
ing, and Avho said, "I had almost succeeded Avhen the
dog died." Araong the public papers that lie on ray
desk are the pathetic appeal of the chief of the only par
tially paid fire department for more hydrants and en
gines, and the reports of other officials complaining of
lack of means for their work. As for the streets of
the city, they maj' be said to cry out for theraselves.
436

Against these the sraall debt of the corporation raakes
an irapression such as others raay characterize.
But there are strong signs that the citj- is undergoing
a revolution from which it Avill enter upon a very differ
ent career. In a short article upon the Golden Gate
Park in Haepee's Weekly, I spoke of one hint of this
neAV spirit. The rapid developraent of a stately avenue
in Market Street is another and a proud sign of this
aAvakening of the Avest coast raetropolis. Those Avho
planned this splendid coraraercial boulevard conceived
an avenue of such proportions as only the raost progres
sive city could be expected to appoint Avith buildings of
coramensurate height and dignitj', yet already the noble
thoroughfare coraraands a place araong the finest streets
in Christendora, and plans have been filed for several
structures of a cost and size exceeding those of any
which now grace the street. Until recently San Fran
cisco stood alone as the great settlement upon that coast.
She has no rival now, but other towns are groAving apace
and sharing the increasing coramerce. It is plain that
the raetropolis does not intend that any one of thera
shall lessen the distance she has ever raaintained be
tween her oAvn proud position and that of her foreraost
follower. Coraparable in Avidth with no streets in our part of
the country except Broad Street, in Newark (New Jer
sey), and the Bowery, in New York, this great new
thoroughfare in San Francisco finds an alraost level Avaj'
for three railes, despite the hills that so strangely dis
tinguish that city. In a short tirae it is to be doubled
in length, and will connect the harbor Avharves with the
ocean beach. On either side of it rise such huge latter-
day structures as the Palace Hotel, the new Chronicle
building, and several others. Here the fine retail stores
are centring, and the street cars, business wagons, and
439

fine private equipages create what our grandfathers
Avould have called a brave showing or " a fine confusion"
on the roadway. Here also the people gather in the
greatest nurabers, and, however it may grieve a New-
Yorker to hear it, the scene in parts of the street recalls
the crowds upon Broadway. The San-Franciscans have
their own etiquette — in nothing, I think, more peculiar
to us than their habit of leaving the city in sumraer to
get wa/rm — and this leads the very nice ladies to shop in
the raorning and leave the street to " the crowd " in the.
afternoon. But knoAving this, at one tirae or other Ave
may see them all. It is while viewing the Market
Street parade that we realize that Ave are looking upon
a decidedly cosraopolitan coraraunity, and one that is
staraped as foreign in a great degree. We have heard
that not raore than half the people are Araerican, and
on Market Street Ave get ocular confirmation of the
news. Since the best of the street is the shopping part, and
most of the shoppers are woraen, we raay pause to look
at the fairer moiety of the town. They are almost
Parisian in the fulness of their developraent, the grace
ful outlines of their forras, and the stylishness of their
dress. The croAvds are full of pretty Avoraen, and there
is among them a greater abundance of that great con
coraitant and source of beauty, good health, than I re
raember ever to have noticed elsewhere. Very curiouslj',
you see the tAvo extreraes, the blond and brunette, side
by side, and nuraerously represented. Of flaxen-haired,
blue-eyed women, with complexions of rose-tint on Avax,
you see scores; of olive-faced, jet-haired, black-orbed
daughters of the South, you meet hundreds. There is a
Spanish foundation to the population and a Spanish
colony in the city ; there are many Portuguese, some
French, and for the rest, they are of the hodge-podge of
430

MAEKET STREET

races that constitute that which Ave call the American.
And ever and again, as Ave view the daily parade, there
patters by a Chinese Avoman, bareheaded, with plastered
hair and alraost ghastlj' face, Avearing a long-sleeved
coat and glazed trousers. Japanese and darkies, Greeks,
SandAvich-lslanders, and Chinaraen a-plenty — all are in
the crowds.
The spectacle is a particularlj- gay one, because the
women wear raore pronounced colors than you see even
in Paris. I raean the Avoinen of the raasses. The goods
they Avear are not different from those Ave see on our
streets, but bright colors find a readier sale there than
here. Whether it is due to the cliraate, or to the na
tionalities of so large a part of the populace, I don't
know ; in all probability it is due to both. But the
effect is enlivening and picturesque to a degree, and it
has to be taken largely into account in considering the
attractions of this noble street. It has pleased many
San-Franciscans, there and here, to assert that an East
ern man quickly discovers a freedom of behavior on the
part of the women on the streets, a fondness for flirting,
such as is witnessable noAvhere else. Nevertheless, it is
iiij' opinion that there is no more orderly concourse in
any city I ever visited than in San Francisco. There,
even that forra of vice whose control puzzles so raany
raunicipalities hides itself in alleys, and no more vaunts
itself on the higliAvaj's than if it did not exist.
It is unnecessary for rae to say that the naraes in the
city directory of San Francisco include sorae of those of
the finest families in the Middle and Southern States
and (perhaps to a less extent) in Ncav England, or that
I enjoyed more or less acquaintance with sorae of the
most lovely homes I ever found anywhere. A heap of
cruel and wicked nonsense can be generated in a dis
tance of three thousand railes. I fancy a great raany
•2 E 483

persons, there and here, believe that the revelations of
ChinatoAvn are appalling, even to a professional travel
ler, yet in raaking the tour of that peculiar region twice,
with the ablest guides the local and Federal govern
ments could provide, I failed to see any reason why the
Caucasian should lose the palra for wickedness. I did
not go to " the Barbary Coast," but unless that purlieu
is Avorse than I was told it is, I shall continue to think
San Francisco a particularly Avell-governed and virtuous
city. The city is scarcely what a strict Sabbatarian would
order it. It is said that California is the only State
with no Sunday law, and certainly there is little general
notice taken of Sunday, so far as the appearance of the
city goes, beyond the dosing of the wholesale shops,
and the hint convej'ed in certain street signs which an
nounce, " Boot-blacking, five cents ; Sundaj's and holi
days, ten cents." • The drinking-places are not shut up,
and in the residence portions the shops are nearly all
wide open. The day is a happy one, it seeraed to rae,
for the raasses, but it is not at all our Sunday.
In Market Street and in the Seal Rocks the San-Fran
ciscans have two grand possessions, the forraer one giv
ing thera the means to ennoble their city to Avhatsoever
degree they please, the latter making it unique in the
enjoyraent of a raost interesting exhibition. They will
have a third grand possession Avhen they have pushed
their great park to corapletion, if they finish it as thej'
have finished the first 180 acres. Not even the near
presence of Sutro Heights, decked as raight becorae a
gigantic factory of plaster casts, can lessen the charras
of the entrancing vicAv frora the Cliff House over the
ocean and down upon the rocky islets, Avhere the accora
raodating seals are ever present and ever at their gam
bols. For the edification of the public at large, it needs
434

to be said that Mr. Sutro — Avho lent his name to the
faraous tunnel— has laid out sorae very pretty grounds
upon an erainence above the Cliff House, and philan
thropically perraits the public to enjoy the garden and
accompanying conservatory. But, in my hurable judg
ment, he raore than offsets this by literally peppering
the entire grounds and Avails and face of the hill with
plaster statues, statuettes, heads, busts, and figures.
The effect is — but I leave that for the iraagination.
Would you know how San Francisco looks? It is a
strangely foreign-looking place. Its site is broken by
half a score of hills, and other hills frame it all around.
They are not of the sort that our Murray Hill is, but
" sure enough" hills, as Unde Remus Avould declare, and
they reach their height of hundreds of feet by very steej)
inclines. The business part of the city lies at the feet
of several of these erainences, on a partly natural, part-
Ij' artificial plateau along the water's edge. There the
stores and houses are largely of stone, iron, or brick, and
are very little different frora those of any other such
district in the East. But the dwellings of the city are
so generally of Avood that you may count upon the
fingers of your two hands all that are of other raaterials.
Whether the great Palace Hotel set the fashion by giA--
ing everj' outer roora a bay-Avindow, or Avhy it is, I don't
know, but seven in ten of the residences are adorned
Avith these projecting windows wherever thej' can be
put. This was the fashion of the town until Van Ness
Avenue ceased to be the finest street, and it grows tire
sorae to the eve ; but the last two or three years have
seen erected a great raany fine dwellings, planned b\-
architects of taste for persons Avho exercise individual
judgraent. And now, as I write, the danger frora earth
quakes seeras AvhoUy discounted, and I saw several fine
brick houses and stones ones going up. It is evident in
2k* 437

many such ways that San Francisco is putting her best
foot forward ; and a very showy, fine foot it will prove
to be. But, as it stands, you can scarcely imagine the
foreignness of the effect of looking down on the city
from one of its hills. Over a very great district the
entire hill-studded view is covered with brown-painted
wooden houses, mainly A^ery small and low, and built in
roAvs to the tops of raany of the hills. As each house is
seen Avith photographic distinctness in that clear air, the
Avhole is as like a great painting of some place in a for
eign land as if you viewed it frora within the enclosure
of a cydoraraa.
But noAv of the joys I speak of having experienced
during ray stay. They were too raany for more than
raere raention. In the first place, in thirty daj's I only
saAV half a dozen that were foggy ; and as for the Avind,
Avhen I found that San Francisco dresses, as we would
say, "for winter" all the year round, I put on my
heavy under-dothes, and the cool breezes at once be
came delightful. Then there were the joys of the cable-
cars — a solution of the problem of surmounting hills
that is so perfect that I believe no city in the world is
better served with raeans of inter-transit. The cable-
cars Avere invented and first put to use in San Francisco.
They usually run as a train, coraposed of a little open
" dumray," or grip-car, and a closed car, like one of our
horse-cars. A man who loves fresh air and open-air rid
ing fancies that no king rides more gloriously than a
San Franciscan clerk may in a "dumray." He goes fly
ing up the hUls and coasting doAvn thera as if he Avere a
tobogganer, having all the fun and none of the Avork.
The cables run at seven miles an hour, which is faster
than our " elevated," in my opinion, and nearly as fast
as our Bridge cars.
Then there are the flowers. They need a chapter as
438

long as this article. They grow Avith an abundance past
belief, and attain a size and glory of color we wot not of.
You raay buy your armful of cut flowers for " tAvo bits,"
which is to say a quarter. And if the flowers demanded
a chapter, the fruits would require a book. Say what
any one will, they are quite as luscious as ours ; not here
— because they pick thera green for shipraent, and only
a Bartlett pear undergoes that course with advantage —
iiut out there, fresh off the trees. And they have fruits
we know not of— green figs, for instance. Was there
ever a greater delicacy than green figs sliced and served
in cream? Apricotes are more coraraon there than
Avith us ; persiraraons are cultivated, but not coraraon.
Strawberries, finer than any grown west of England,
are to be had during half the year, and for half what
Ave are charged when we think thera cheap. Peaches,
pears, and grapes are very plenty, and I ara told that
cherries are so at one season. Liraes are plenty, and
leraons scarce. Artichokes are a staple, and California
is the land of salads. Those made of shrimps and alli
gator-pears are tAvo delicacies worth going to San Fran
cisco to enjoy.
But San Francisco is a gourmet's sixth heaven. It
has a wondrous market, Avith fishes with which we are
unfamiUar, with no refrigerated factory meats, and with
an eclectic school of cookery to Avhich China, Japan,
Spain, Mexico, and HaAvaii are contributors. There is
no better restaurant in Araerica than the " Poodle Dog,"
and business raen in New York know no better lunch
eon place than " Ned's." The Palace Hotel restaurant
Avould rank high here, and out there they have four or
five as good.
The trees are a study in theraselves. The eucalyptus
from Australia is useful in disciplining the sand hills,
but it is a beast of a tree, skimpy and ragged. The
441

pepper-tree is one of the prettiest lawn and street orna
ments I ever saw, and the acacia and fig and baj' tree
and live-oak are all beautiful. The palms are ahvays
interesting to strangers to them. The scrub oak of
Oakland and the suburbs generally is picturesque far
beyond the wolf-Avillow and the alder that European
painters never tire of celebrating. The redwoods are
stately and noble fellows. As for the orchard trees, my
rides through the fruit plantations near San Francisco
were revelations. It Avas a never-to-be-forgotten experi
ence to see miles of French chestnuts, English Avalnuts,
prune pluras, figs, pears, apples, alraonds, apricots, and
peaches groAving as they grow there, often Aveighing the
trees down until the branches had to be tied up and
supported on poles.
My opinion of Oakland changed when I discovered
that a Avatering-pot or a hose could turn Avhat looked
like Spain into Avhat raight have been our Mohawk Val
ley. And Oakland is crowded Avith pretty horaes where
the raagic of the hose is understood, and where the laAvns
and floAver plots are as fine as any under the sun. But
I like Alaraeda better than Oakland, and Saucelito bet
ter yet. Saucelito is very Swiss, perched upon terraces,
one above another, up a steep hill beside the Golden
Gate. Every view frora it is of the glorious harbor,
blue as indigo, with great " square-riggers" riding on it,
and gulls and porpoises enlivening the scene,, Avhile, bet
ter than all, the most comfortable great ferry-boats in
America ply to and fro between Oakland and San Fran
cisco, with their fortunate passengers drinking- in the
wondrous colors of the harbor, Avhile good string bands
feast their ears with raelody. 442

ll

if 1 .;fes''V 1*^

XIII
WAYS OF CITY GOVERNMENT OUT WEST
One has a feeling that the young Lochinvar of per
fected city governraent may yet come out of the West.
That is Avhere the loves of men for the cities they live in
pass the understanding of us Easterners. That is where
old traditions count for the least, and enterprise and prog
ress mark raost of the affairs of man. There are signs
of the advent, though they are small and weak thus far.
A study of the subject in Chicago, Minneapolis, and St.
Paul is a revelation of a raoveraent like that of a band
master's bdton along the sides of a triangle, from
mayoral supremacy to diluted control by commissions,
and from these to vicarious government by State Legis
latures. But the more their cases are pondered, the
more the Avonder grows that those coraraunities should
be governed as well as they are. We shall see that they
offer rich ground for the good seed that is to come ; that
the weeds there are fewer and less vicious than those
that beset our own raunicipal fields.
In the unrest and striving of the Western people is
found the hope that the raark will yet be reached by
them. When Ave consider how very sharp the struggle
has been to raeet the business demands of a rapid na
tional developraent ; Avhen Ave realize how nearly cora
pletely that struggle has raonopoUzed every individual's
attention ; Avhen Ave reraeraber the poor and mortgaged
beginnings of all the Western districts, and realize that
445

where the debts have disappeared, the recollection of
thera is yet vivid — then the story of Western experi
ments in city governraent Avill find very lenient and
charitable readers.
I see in Chicago two coraraunities, we avUI say — one
composed of tweh'e hundred thousand persons in the
city at large, and one of four thousand men and Avomen
in the office building called " the Rookery." One body
of persons has its wants attended to bj' officers they
elect for the purpose ; the other body relies on a syndi
cate of speculators to raanage the building in which
they paj' rent, and in Avhich they spend as many hours
as they give to their life in their horaes. Why should
there be anj' difference in the teraper and spirit in which
these tAVO communities are managed ? Each set of gov
ernors has the same duties to perform. Each must pro
vide protection, drainage, cleaning, lighting, and vary
ing conveniences and forras of attendance. We say that
there is a difference — that one is a city, and the other is
a business. The very devil must have invented the dif
ference, or put the notion of it in our heads, for it has
no substance ; it does not appear unless Ave put it there
before we go to search for it. The syndicate of business
men Avho raanage the Rookery bend every effort to
make raonej'. And how? By providing every improA'e-
inent and attraction which, Avhen econoraically obtained,
will leave a fair and legitiraate margin of profit out of
receipts that are governed by the charges for like serv
ice in other buildings. These receipts are what would
be the taxes if the Rookery were a city ; the profits
would take the form of a surplus in the treasury — at
least until they Avere wisely spent. The analogy never
falters, hoA\'ever far we pursue it. The Rookery man
agers gladden the eye with onyx, marble, and bronze,
as the city fathers treat their tenants Avith parks and
446

lakes and fountains. The Rookery managers give to
their tenants the best elevator service ever yet devised
in the world, batteries of the swiftest cars, sorae of which
run as express trains, Avhile others stop at every fioor.
They control these, and see that they are the best, as
the city fathers should control their street raihvays, if
they should not own them. The street-cleaning depart
ment of the Rookery is composed of a corps of orderly,
respectful, hard-working, faithful men, who keep the
dozen corridors and storiesful of olfices as neat as the
domain of a Dutch housewife. The air is not tainted ;
the litter and rubbish are Avhisked out of sight Avith due
regard for decency ; the corridors are never torn up
Avith ])its and trenches at tinies when they are in use.
Alterations in the building are made at night, when the
Avork will annoy and inconvenience the fewest tenants.
The Rookery water supply and that which corresponds
to its sewage system are the best that can be provided ;
in some cities out West I found office buildings where
the landlords had sunk artesian wells for pure water —
because they believed the water provided for the people
generally was unfit to drink in one case ; because it cost
too rauch in another. In both instances the people of
those cities Avere scandalously wronged, of course. To
return to the Rookery, the building is policed efficientlj'
without the creation of a uniformed class of bullies. In
short, it is a pleasure to A'isit such a building, where
every official and servant constantly exhibits a desire to
do his duty and to give satisfaction.
I instance the Rookery building merely for conven
ience. I raight as Avell have spoken of any of the great
office buildings of any of the great cities. They are all
subject to the same rivalry towards providing the most
modern conveniences and the most attractive and well-
managed interiors. I have j'et to hear of one in the

o 447

raanageraent of which politics plays the slightest part.
The owners do not throw away money to pay salaries
to raen who do not earn them ; they do not raake rules
to please the Gerraan tenants, and then Avink at the
violation of them to tickle the Irish or any other per
sons ; they do not perrait their servants to steal a little
of every sura of raoney that passes 'through their hands ;
they do not allow rubbish and filth to collect in the
thoroughfares ; they do not recruit their forces of serv
ants Avlth the ne'er-do-Avell or disreputable friends of
men Avho send tenants to their buildings ; they do not
discharge all their trained help and drill in a new force
biennially ; in fact, they ne\'er discharge a good servant
or keep an incompetent one. Since the manageraent of
a lot of daytime tenements is a business by itself, and
has no connection Avith the Bering Sea question or the
policy of trade relations Avith Australia, they do not feel
obliged to buy Democratic brooms, or Republican coal,
or Tamraany soap, unless those happen to be the best
and raost economical Avares. In one respect they enjoj' an
immense advantage oA'er every city government in this
country — they are permitted to manage their oAvn busi
nesses. No State Legislatures are continually changing
their raodes of conducting their affairs.
Chicago does not yet manage its district of horaes as
the landlords manage their districts of offices, but I do
not believe that any good reason can be given why it
should not try to do so, or be permitted to try to. Nor
do I believe there is an intelligent man who honestly
thinks the business plan cannot be adopted with as close
an approach to business results as is possible where the
selfish and personal incentive to success is lacking.
And for that raay be substituted the desire for honor
and public approbation — poAverful forces which have
448

wrought Avonders in the govemraents of Glasgow, Bir
rainghara, Sheffield, and other Old World cities.
The city governraent of Chicago recaUs that garraent
of which a humble poet has Avritten,
"His coat SO large dat he couldn't pay de tailor,
And it won't go ball -way round."
It is a Joseph ian coat of raany colors, raade up of patches
of county raethods on top of city rule. And the patches
are, sorae of thera, far frora neatly joined. Like the ira
raortal Topsy, it has " just growed." It discloses at once
the worst and the best exaraples of management, the
one being so very bad as to seera like a caricature on
the most vicious systems elseAvhere, while the other ex
treme copies that Avhich is the essence of the good Avork
in the best-go\'erned city in the world. Chicago there
fore offers an extreraely valuable opportunity for the
study and comparison of municipal methods in general.
The Avorst feature, that which seems alraost to carica
ture the worst products of partisan politics, is seen in
the Mayor's office. The Mayor of Chicago has to hide
behind a series of locked doors, and it is alraost as diffi
cult to see hira as it would be to visit the Prefect of
Police in Paris. When he leaves his office he slips out
of a side door — the same by Avhicli he seeks his desk.
The charra that the door possesses for his eyes is that it
is at a distance from the public antechamber of his suite
of offices. When he goes to luncheon he takes a closed
cab, and is driven to some place a mile or more aAvay, in
order that he may eat in peace.* The reason for this ex
traordinary and underaocratic condition of affairs is that
the Mayor of Chicago is the worst victira of the spoUs
systera that has yet been created in Araerica. The chase
* This was the state of affairs in 1891-92.
2f 449

for patronage fetches up at his door, and all the avenues
eraployed in it end at his person. He is alraost the sole
source and dispenser of public place of every grade
The systera was established a great raany years ago,
and they say in Chicago that it " Avorked well enough "
under Carter Harrison, because after he got his munici
pal organization complete he Avas elected and re-elected
several tiraes, and had Uttle difficulty in keeping the ma
chinery of government in sraooth running order. It was
a city of only 400,000 population in those days, but the
conditions were the sarae. The experience of a succeed
ing and very recent Mayor Avas needed to demonstrate
the possibilities of an office so constituted. He spent
the first year at his desk in handling patronage. He
could do nothing else because he undertook to do that.
He made it his rule that there should be no appoint
raents that were not approved by him. The present
Mayor is of the opposite mind. He has found that if he
raanages the patronage he cannot perforra the other du
ties of his office. He has inaugurated a new departure,
and seeks to raake the heads of the subordinate depart
raents responsible for their own appointments. This
works only partially, because the place-hunters are not
to be deceived. They know what his powers are as well
as he does, and if they do not get what they want from
his deputies, they fall back upon him. He orders thera
back again to the deputies, and so the game goes on.
By setting apart one day in the Aveek for the scramble,
and by locking himself up like a watchman in a safe-de
posit vault, he raanages to serve as Mayor. But he finds
the nuisance very great, and says so. When told that it
seeraed singular to find a Mayor behind bolts and locks,
and accessible only to those who "get the corabination,"
as the safe -makers would say, he replied that only by
such a plan was he able to do any work. Mr. Wash-
450

burne, the present Mayor, is a square - headed, strong-
jawed, forcible - looking man, Avho gives his visitors the
impression that he will leave as good a record as the
system can be forced to afford.
Chicago is a Republican city, but is rapidly becoraing
Deraocratic. There are no "bosses" or "machines"
there. Western soil does not seera suitable for those
growths. The Deraocrats have been trying to effect an
organization like that of Tamraany Hall, but they are
divided into two factions, and the plan has fallen be
tween the two. The Republicans have recently recoA'-
ered from a raild attempt at bossism. They are also
divided, and only unite under favorable circumstances.
The assessment evil is said not to be very great. Can
didates or their friends contribute towards the cost of
election contests, and public eraployes are assessed for
the sarae purpose, but these outrageous taxes seera to be
laid on lightly. It's your machine that alwaj's calls for
excessive oiling, and it is noticeable that the chief en
gineers nearly always grow mysteriously rich.
In the city government there are four charter officers
who are elected by the people — the Mayor, the City
Treasurer, the City Attorney, and the City Clerk. Each
is independent of the other, and the Mayor is not vested
Avith power to remove the others. The City Attorney
is in charge of the litigations into which the corporation
is draAvn ; but the more important legal officer is- the
Corporation Counsel, who acts as adviser to the govern
raent, and is appointed by the Mayor. The raanner in
Avhich this office carae to be created is peculiar. It is
said that a score or raore years ago there was elected to
the City Attorney's place a raan who knew no law, and
proved worse than no attorney at all. A competent ad
viser was needed, and so the ucav office was created, and
has ever since remained a feature of the governraent.
451

We still find justices of the peace in Chicago, and in
great force of nurabers. They a,re county officers. They
have jurisdiction everywhere, as they please to exercise
it, and live upon their fees— a plan that Avorks no better
there than elseAvhere, that causes rivalry and confusion
where there should be only the dignity of laAV, and that
creates courts Avhich are inclined to rule against the de
fendants, and to extort raoney frora all frora whom it
can be got. These justices are named by the judges of
record of the county, and the list is sent to the Legislat
ure for approval and appointment. Frora the lot the
police magistrates are selected by the Mayor. There
are ten police courts and tAvelve magistrates, and the
reason there are Iavo more judges than courts lets in a
flood of light upon the situation. There are two very
busj' courts, and in order to share their business it be
came the custora for other judges than those appointed
by the Mayor to hire apartraents next door to these
courts, and in thera to hold courts of their own. These
piratical justices inspired the lawyers and prisoners ap
pearing before the regular courts to deraand a change
of venue and bring their causes next door, the incentlA'e
being a proraise of raore satisfactory treatraent than the
regular courts Avould be likely to vouchsafe — lighter
fines, for instance, or other perversions of justice. It
becarae, and it reraains to-day, a custora for these rao
tions for a change of venue to be offered in the raost
commonplace and perfunctory manner, the magistrates
adrainistering the oath, and the others soleranly swear
ing that they ask a change of venue because they are of
the opinion that thej' cannot get justice in the court in
question. To break this custora at its strongest points
the Mayor has appointed additional raagistrates for the
principal police courts, and they hold court in rooras ad
joining those of their associates, so that those who insist
452

upon a change of venue are taken one door away to ob
tain the sarae quality of justice Avhich they would have
obtained in the first court. The justices, who may be
called the -Mayor's magistrates, are salaried. The busy
ones get $5000 a year, the others less.
The saloon license systera is another viUage develop
ment. The regular fee is $500, and there are only 5000
licenses, but any raan of what is called "good character'"
raay get a license on his oAvn applica,tion, and the license
is then issued to the person. He may sell his liquors any
where that he pleases within the city limits. The law
declares that the drinking-saloons shall be dosed at mid
night. It has proved extremely difficult to enforce this
ordinance, but the present Mayor has been making a
brave battle towards that end. He is of those Avho be
lieve that jail evils which seem either necessary or in
eradicable should be regulated, and his idea Avas to en
force the law for closing the saloons, and to issue licenses
to seU liquor in the restaurants Avhich keep open all
night, the drinks to be sold only with food. He found,
what was no new discovery, that the reforra Avas loudly
opposed by the Avorst eleraent in the business, Avho said
that they could and did sell Uquor in their restaurants,
anywav, and that there Avas no need for licenses. He
also found that the ultra-teraperance folk took sides with
these defiers of order bj' opposing the reforra on the
usual ground that licensing Uquor-selUng was recognizing
and authorizing: the evil. As late as the end of last au-
turan the Maj'or was manfully holding to his deterraina
tion to enforce the midnight closing law, and it was said
by all Avith whora I spoke that it Avas extreraely difficult
to obtain even a glass of beer after twelve o'clock, and
that no saloons displayed lights or open doors after hours.
He was able to enforce his orders and perforra this
function of his office for a reason that points a raoral
453

for every student of the subject to remember. He holds
the power to dismiss those who disobey hira. He prora
ised to discharge any policeman upon whose post a drink
was sold or a saloon was kept open after hours. He
could discharge every policeman, frora the Chief down,
and they all knoAv it. It will be remembered that al
most sirailar authority is vested in the police-magistrates
in the most progressive English cities. The result is
wholesome everywhere.
Sorae past work of the Chicago police has raade the
force faraous. The World's Fair coraraissioners Avho
went abroad to urge foreign participation in the expo
sition found their way paved before thera by the good
opinion of Chicago that had been aroused by her treat
raent of the anarchists. But the force has deteriorated.
It looks as if it had run down at the heels and needed
a soldier in command to discipline it and develop among
its merabers an esprit de corps. The alraost all-powerful
Mayor recognizes this, and has appointed Major R. W.
McClaughry to the chieftaincy on account of that gen
tleraan's reputation for adrainistrative ability and for
disciplinary force. As warden of Joliet (Illinois) Peni
tentiary, and later of a reforraatory at Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania, he caused these qualities to attract atten
tion. The Chicago police force had becorae a hospital
for the political toughs of the city, and any man could
join it provided only that he had " inflooence." He
might be a man just out of State-prison, or only thirty
days in America, but if he Avas the protege of a politi
cian he was raade a policeman. There were regulations
as to fitness, both mental, moral, and physical, but they
were disregarded. The plan for rehabilitating the force
is an adaptation of civil service raethods. The men are
cross-questioned like school-boys at a quarterly examina
tion. Their moral character is looked into less sharply
454

than their ability to coraprehend the true nature of a
policeraan's duties and relation to the people. Politics
are not shown the door. The wards and '' heelers " of
the politicians are the candidates as before, but after a
raan is adraitted to be exarained it is asserted that his
political backing ceases to affect his fate. He must ob
tain a grade of seventy in a possible one hundred, and
Avhen twelve candidates have passed the exaraination, if
only six are needed, the best six are taken.
But even before this reform began, the Western habit
of experimenting with new ideas had led to the intro
duction of features of police service Avhich we in New
York could have copied with advantage, and must copy
sooner or later. On that corner of Clark Street where
the Grand Pacific Hotel stands, one day towards the
raiddle of last October, I saw a policeraan try to arrest
a maniacal victim of delirium tremens. It was at six
o'clock, and the streets were crowded. Had the case
occurred in New York, our public would have witnessed
a brutal and sickening "clubbing match," for in no other
way than by stunning the man could one of our officers
have handled him. If the policeraan Avould have pre
ferred help, he would have beaten the sidewalk with his
club and waited, while the maniac fought like a tiger,
until another policeman arrived. Ringing a club on a
paveraent is better than springing a rattle, as our police
did a century ago — but that is not saying rauch in its
favor. However, this Avas in Chicago.
There they have discovered the advantages of a per
fected electrical system of communication between the
police-stations and the patrolmen on duty. In this case
the policeman stepped to one of those patrol boxes that
are so numerous as to seem always at hand, and flashed
a signal to the nearest station for help. In a jiffy a
wagon-load of policeraen dashed up to the spot, the raen
455

leaped out, the rura - crazed offender was bundled into
the wagon, and it was driven back to the station. A
neater, cleaner, raore adrairable bit of police work I
never saAV ; but the frequent sight of these wagons fly
ing through the streets assured rae that such work, in
such cases, is the rule Avith that force.
It is not the purpose here to describe other than what
raay be called the peculiarities of these city govem
raents, and of the general plan of Chicago's raanage
raent there is little raore to say. After the Mayor has
appointed his heads of departraents (and all the 8000 or
9000 "feet," if he chooses), he divides his further powers
with the Coraraon Council, which has been but little
shorn of its inherited functions. Its coraraittees follow
the raore iraportant divisions of the governraent, and
one of thera, the finance coraraittee, acting like New
York's Board of Estiraate and Apportionraent, deter
mines the cost of each year's undertakings. The Coun
cil is a very large body, and contains two raembers from
each of the thirty-four wards of the city, one being
elected frora each Avard every year. They are paid on
the per diem plan for actual service, and, like almost all
the officers of the government, are moderately recom
pensed. The city has experimented with bureaus head
ed by commissions and with intrusting the patronage to
the Coraraon Council. It has now had for years what
is popularly known as "one -raan power." It is often
said that this is whatever the one raan proves hiraself,
but the experience of the present tirae in Chicago is that
if the Mayor was a saint, so long as the spoils system
obtains, he would find it difficult to succeed in dispensing
the patronage and attending to his duties — at least, dur
ing the first year of his tAvo-j'ear term.
But there are other raunicipal corporations in Chicago
with which the Mayor has nothing to do. Thej' are the
456

park boards. It is a strange thing about Chicago that
those raonuraents of her public spirit, enterprise, and
taste Avhich are at once her glory and her pride are out
of the control of her city governraent. It is to the man
ageraent of thera that I have referred as exemplifying
the very best raethod of the adrainistration of local af
fairs. They do not do this in their origin because they
are the creatures of either the courts or the State gov
ernraent, whereas to be as thej' should they must be the
products of popular and horae rule. But in the methods
and work of the boards is seen that Avhich produces the
best government. There seem to be no "politics"
about thera. They appear to be doing business on busi
ness principles. They have produced one of the notable
park systeras of the world l)j' methods so Avise and eco
nomical that the people have Avitnessed the spectacle of
a Avondrous and beautiful park developraent Avithout
feeling the tax by which the cost has been raet. The
park coraraissioners serA'e Avithout pay and in the belief
that their duties bring honor with thera. They are in
spired to give the public their best service by the con
sciousness that Avhen the plans for the pleasure-grounds
have been executed, it Avill be worth as much as a mon
ument to any man to have been concerned in the Avork.
Even in the City Hall and araong the politicians stu
dents of the city governraent are referred to the parks
as examples of the best public Avork that has been per
formed in Chicago. And in the City Hall I AA'as told
that the reason for this is that the Park Commissioners
are unhampered by poUtical obligations.
There are three of these corporations — the South
Park, the Lincoln Park, and the West Park corarais
sioners, and they not only are independent of the city
governraent, but they have jurisdiction over aU the
parkways and boulevards, at least one of which reaches
457

to the very heart of the business quarter in the thick of
the town. They enact their own ordinances, and main
tain police to enforce them. They build, repair, clean,
and police the parks and boulevards in their charge ;
and have been, by the courts, declared to be quasi-mu
nicipal corporations in theraselves. Each comraission is
maintained by a direct tax upon the district or division
of the city Avhich it benefits.
It will not be profitable to study all the coraraissions :
one does not differ raaterially frora another. The South
Side Commission, headed by President Williara Best,
consists of five merabers, who are appointed for five-
year terras by the judges of the Circuit Court. When
the raajority of the judges are Deraocrats, they appoint
Deraocrats ; and Republican raajorities appoint Repub
lican coraraissioners ; but beyond that point I am as
sured that politics cut no figure in the case. At present
there are three Democrats and tAvo Republicans on the
board. One meinber is a real-estate dealer, one is vice-
president of the stock-yards, one is a tobacco merchant,
one is a coal-dealer, and one is an editor. All are well-
to-do and middle-aged men. One has served fifteen
years, another tAvelve years, and another, ten years.
Mr. H. W. Harmon, the secretary, has held that place
nineteen years ; and Mr. Foster, the Superintendent,
has filled that position seventeen years.
This coraraission performed its functions for three
towns originally — South Chicago, Hyde Park, and Lake.
They now cohiprise a part of the city. They are as
sessed for $300,000 annually, Sputh Chicago paying 80
per cent., and the other toAvns 10 per cent. each. In
addition, a tax of one mill is levied on the taxable valu
ation of the district, because the fixed sura of $300,000
proved insufficient. The additional tax is to be iraposed
as long as the commission has any bonds outstanding.
458

The weight of the total tax upon the coraraunity is
2f mills, and is presumably an unfelt burden. For this
the comraission maintains Michigan Avenue, the boule
vard that leads into the heart of the city ; Drexel Boule
vard, modelled after one of the noblest avenues in Paris ;
the Grand Boulevard, a splendid thoroughfare; Wash
ington Park, Avhich is one of the most grand and beau
tiful breathing- spots in the city; Jackson Park, where
the Columbian Exposition is to be held ; and many other
boulevards and park extensions. Lakes, notable floral
collections, boats, restaurants, picnic and play grounds,
park phaetons, a zoological collection, sprinkUng- carts,
police, laborers, a nursery for trees, and a score of other
sources of expense or attractions are thus provided for.
The coramission employs a force that is raainly com
posed of SAvedes and Germans. The same men are re
tained year after year. They are skilled in their several
lines of Avork ; they own their little homes, and feel se
cure in their places ; thej' are not told how to vote, nor
are they watched at the polls. The Avork of the com
mission erabraces several sources of incorae, but no effort
is raade to force profits out of the conveniences and
playthings provided for the people.
Lincoln Park is the one that all visitors to Chicago
are certain to be adA'ised to see. It is only 250 acres in
extent, but it lies along the curving shore of Lake Mich
igan, a fringe of sward and shade beside a sheet of tur
quoise. We in New York waited until we were 200
years old before we built such parks. Chicago Avaited
only forty years. Already statues, fountains, and a con
servatory are ornaraents piled on ornament in Lincoln
Park. A lake a mUe long is being added for aquatic
sports, and the noble Lake Shore Drive, which is a part
of the park, is to be faced with a paved beach and a sea-
waU, and is to connect with the drive to Fort Sheridan,
459

distant twenty-five miles northAvard on the lake front.
There are tive commissioners in charge of this park and
the boulevarded streets that approach it. They are ap
pointed by the Governor of Illinois, with the approval
of the Senate, and serve five years. Three are Derao
crats and two are Republicans, but their eraployes are
chosen for fitness as workraen, and the trust is managed
practically and economically.
William C. Goudy, the president, was counsel to the
coraraission for fifteen years before he was chosen presi
dent. General Joseph Stockton has been a coraraissioner
twenty-two years, and E. S. Taylor has been the secre
tary since the organization of the board in 1869. The
coraraission bought its land for only $900,000, and in
five years will have extinguished that debt. Now it is
borroAving half a raillion to raeet the cost of reclairaing
frora the lake land that avUI be Avorth raillions as soon
as it is raade. The tax rate last year Avas eight raills
on the Ioav assessed valuation that prevails in Chicago.
During the twenty-two years of existence of the cora
raission there never has been the slightest taint or sus
picion of jobbery or irapropriety of any sort in its rela
tion to its work, its eraployes, or the people.
It is true that these park boards are the products of
the organization of Cook County, Avhich extends around
and beyond Chicago. The absurd justices of the peace
are the old village squires of the county system also.
Though there are only about 100,000 persons in the
county outside the citj^, the Cook County Board of Com
missioners exercises an authority that is perfectly inde
pendent of the City Council. The parks are therefore
raanaged by the State, and not the city, and this is
cause for offence to all who hold that perfected city
governraent must be complete self - goA'ernment. The
argument is too solid to be broken down by any excep-
460

tion, and yet these coramissions are singular in present
ing the spectacle of State organizations freed from poli
tics in a city where the local organization is poisoned to
the core Avith partisan allegiance and spoils - grabbing.
But beyond that is the renewed proof that local gov
ernraent succeeds best Avhen adrainistered by non -poli
ticians working in no interest but that of the public.
That is what the Chicago park raanagers newly dera
onstrate. Call thera county officers, as they are, yet
they are of and for Chicago. They are Chicago busi
ness men, and thej' have been induced to give up what
tirae they can spare frora private business because they
feel it a distinction and an honor to be intrusted with
the execution of Avhat every raan in Chicago thinks is
to become the greatest and most beautiful park systera
in the Avorld. They are anxious to prove that no rais
take Avas raade in choosing them as men of business
ability. The instant politicians are chosen they begin
to pay off their debts to the party Avith which they have
bargained for a living. They paj' their debts Avith the
valuables that belong to the people. Their constant
thoughts and best efforts are put forth to strengthen
their party and to please its managers. The non-poli
tician in office has no one to please but the public.
In Minneapolis, a city of 164,000 population, the strik
ing feature of the city government is the system of li
censing saloons. Of the governraent in general there
is little more to be said than that it appears to be rea
sonably satisfactory to the people, and business-like in its
general plan and results. There are no bosses, "halls,"
or other organizations araong the politicians. Here the
Maj'or becoraes a figure-head, and the Chicago plan is
diametrically reversed. A recent Mayor made this pub
lic corament on the case : " The Maj'or has but little au
thority ; he has hardly raore than an advisory poAver in
461

any department." The governraent is by the Comraon
Council, and the most important official is the City En
gineer. His salary is $4500; the Mayor's is $2000. The
Mayor appoints his Chief of PoUce, and may appoint the
policemen. He also appoints his oavu secretary. The
other officials, high and low, are the appointees of the
Council. This consists of two Alderraen from each of
thirteen wards, who also order all public iraproveraents
and repairs and grant all Ucenses. Politically the pres
ent Council consists of ' sixteen Republicans and ten
Democrats, and the merabership is principally Araeri
can, soraething like twenty of the twenty-six having
been born in this country. That iniportant bureau the
Board of Tax Levy consists of the City Auditor, the
Comptroller, the chairman of the Board of County Cora
raissioners, the president of the Board of Education, and
the chairman of the coraraittee of Avays and raeans of
the City CouncU. It fixes the raaxiraura lirait of city
expenditures ; and the Council, in consultation with the
various local boards, raay deterraine upon any sura of
outlay Avithin but not above the levj'. The assessed val
uation on which the levy is based is thought to be a lib
eral one (50 to 66f per cent, of the actual value), and
the tax is 21.4 raills, but nine wards pay an added tax
of two raills for street extension and iraproveraents, or
23.4 raills in aU.
But the noticeable and most admirable single feature
of the government is the licensing plan. Dram -selling
is kept away from the residence portions of the toAvn,
and is confined to the business and raanufacturing dis
tricts. As we have seen in a previous paper on the
cities of the Northwest, Minneapolis is distinctively and
peculiarly a city of homes. It spreads itself, with elbow-
room for nearly every dwelling, over fifty-three square
railes of territory. The entire city area is very park-like
463

in its appearance and surroundings, and up and down
its beautiful residence avenues and along its scores of
semi - rural streets the home atmosphere and infiuence
are unbroken by the presence of saloons. They are rel
egated and confined to a comparatively small fraction
of the space covered by the town. This is called " the
patrol district," and the plan is naraed, after it, " the pa
trol lirait systera." It is not easy to understand why it
is so called, since the Avhole city is patrolled, but a study
of the map shows that the territory in Avhich the licenses
are granted is mainly in two narroAV belts along the
river, in the raore thickly built, older parts of the two
toAvns that have since become one city. As it is a city
of superb area, raost of the dwellings are at a distance
frora the outer edges of the saloon districts. The elec
tric-car lines are nuraerous, and the cars are SAvift, but
those who feel that peculiar thirst Avhich can only be
quenched while the sufferer leans against a bar raust
raake a long journey and paj' ten cents car fare to ob
tain relief.
Minnesota is a high -license State, and the fee for a
perrait to raaintain a saloon or hotel bar in cities of
raore than 100,000 population is $1000. To obtain a
perrait in Minneapolis the applicant raust be twenty-one
years of age, and raust not have had a previous license
revoked, or been convicted of an offence against the
liquor laws or ordinances within a year of the date of
his application. The applicant raust manage his place
hiraself and for himself. He may not have raore than
one license. He may not sell liquor in or next door to
any theatre, or within 400 feet of a public school, or
Avithin 200 feet of a park or parkAvay. All this he must
swear to, and agree that if he has sworn falsely in any
particular in his affidavit his license raay be revoked.
He raust, together Avith his application and affidavit,
403

also file a bond in $4000, with two sureties, who shall
not be on any other sirailar bond.
The license is for a fixed place as well as for a person,
and carries further conditions against Sunday selling,
garabling, and disorderly conduct on the preraises, as
Avell as against selUng to minors or to public - school pu
pils or drunkards. The applicant goes before the City
Clerk, pays a fee of one dollar, and registers his applica
tion and bond. If it appears that his case coraes Avithin
the requireraents, and his proposed saloon is to be within
the patrol district, the application is published once a
week for two weeks in the official newspaper of the city.
If any citizen then protests against the granting of the
Ucense, a hearing is had before the City Council. If the
license is granted, it is not assignable to any other per
son, though the executor or administrator of a deceased
licensee may carry on the business under the license. It
is not transferable to any other place, though the alter
ation of the neighborhood around the saloon may raake
it necessary for the city to grant a perrait for removal.
In case a license is revoked by the Mayor or City Coun
cil " for reasons authorized or required by the laws of
the State," then the liquor-seller shall have refunded to
hira "a sura proportional to one-half the sum paid for
such license for the unexpired terra thereof." But if the
courts order the license revoked, the dealer loses all that
he has paid. The courts raay order a license revoked
on the first conviction for a breach of the law. On a
second conviction they raust revoke it.
Last year 274 persons took out licenses, and there is a
liquor-seller to every 675 inhabitants, as against one to
every 177 persons in New York city. But the fee of
$1000 raakes the Uquor-dealers pay into the Minneapolis
treasury $274,000, or about $52,000 raore than the cost
of the police force of the city. This Minneapolis plan
464

speaks for itself. It does not easily lend itself to a city
like New York, Avhere the population is squeezed into a
nurroAV space, and there is no broad division of the city
into a residence and a business part. But it Avill be seen
that it could be applied to most of the cities of the coun
try, especiallj' when it is noted that even in Minneapolis
there are irregularities in the patrol district to meet each
eccentricity of the city's growth. The more Avorldly-
Avise the reader is, the more likely he Avill be to ask at
once whether the laAv is enforced, and Avhether the drug
gists (Avho are everywhere the " silent partners " in the
Uquor trade) are not, as usual, violating it Avherever the
people have sought to make it prohibitory. The an
swers to these questions are that the appearances and
general testimony go to shoAv that the law is absolutely
enforced as to the liquor saloons, but that there is sorae
illicit drinking in raanj' of the apothecarj' shops. These
are popularly known as "blind pigs" in Minneapolis, a
terra that is not so happily chosen as that adopted by
the good citizens of Asbury Park, New Jersey, Avho call
such illicit groggeries their " speak-easies." It is said
that it would be irapossible for a stranger in Minneap
olis to get a drink in a drug store. Even if the authori
ties do not wage war on such druggists as violate the
law, one would think that where such a high fee as $1000
is paid for the right to sell Uquor, the licensed traders
Avould take raeasures against drug-store abuses. The
fact that the saloon-keepers are not coraplaining in ilin-
neapolis seeras proof to me that the abuse is not consid
erable or general.
In an earUer chapter I dwelt on the beauty and orig
inal character of the Minneapolis parks, and only need
to say further that the city finds Avithin its limits a
number of pretty little lakes, incidents in that natural
arrangeraent Avhich renders all the surroundings of
2g 465

Lake Superior a great sponge-like territory, and which
gives to Minnesota alone no less than 7000 lakes. Each
little body of water in Minneapolis is raade the central
feature of a park or the ornaraent of a parkway. But
Avhilp there are half a dozen such bodies of water, there
are thirty-four parks under the control of the Park
Board, and those Avhich are joined by the eighteen railes
of boulevards that have been laid out now forra a beau
tiful cordon around two sides of the town. The city's
parks coraprise 1469 acres, and are valued at $3,918,000,
yet so wisely Avas the land purchased that it cost the
city only $80,000 to acquire it. That certainly appears
to have been a bit of honest, business-like governraental
work. It was in St. Paul that a leading official confided to
me his observation that " the better a raunicipal cora
mission is, the worse for the tax-payers." He argued
that in hoAvsoever great a degree the head of a depart
raent evinces a desire to distinguish hiraself by his Avork,
in just that degree he will increase the cost of his de
partraent. That is true; but Avhether that will prove
the worse for the tax-payers depends entirely upon
whether the raoney spent is wisely put out. A very
thoughtful friend of raine is in the habit of saying that
" the greater the tax is, the less will be the burden." He
finds property values and the general comfort so in
creased by wise public expenditures that the people in
progressive coraraunities feel the benefits more than
they feel the taxes. It is in the out-of-the-way and back
ward rural districts, where verjj- inferior roads and
schools are the only visible returns, that the people cora
plain aloud against having to pay taxes whose sum to
tals seem to others ridiculously small. What raight
seera a great deal of money has been spent in Minneap
ohs in developing the tracts that have been set aside for
466

parks (something like a raillion and a half of dollars
since 1883). The raethod of raising the raoney for noAv
work is to issue bonds for ten years, payable one-tenth
annually by assessraent on adjacent property. Yet a
tax-payer there, in speaking of park iraproveraents that
had been raade near various plots of his real estate, de
clared that the increase in values had been so great in
each case that he never felt like complaining of the
heightened taxes he had been called upon to pay.
The Minneapolis Park Board consists of twelve mera
bers, who are elected by the people, and of three ea:
officio raerabers — the Mayor, the chairraan of the Coun
cil Comraittee on Roads and Bridges, and the chairraan
of the Council Coraraittee on Pul^lic Grounds and Build
ings. It is politically partisan, and much of the lesser
patronage changes Avith changes of political complex
ion. The board gets authority from the Legislature to
issue bonds Avhen it Avishes to purchase land, but all
such issues are subject to a charter limitation of the
bonded indebtedness of the city to 5 per cent, of the as
sessed valuation of the taxable property. The regular
assessraent is less than one raill. Under the circura
stances the good work of the board raust be credited to
the enthusiastic and Avatchful interest the people have
taken in the Avork. In Mr. Charles M. Loring, a wealthy
raUler and extra public -spirited citizen, thej' found a
practical business raan to direct their enterprises. He
was able and willing to travel abroad for the purpose
of studying the notable park systeras elsewhere. It is
onlv fair to saj?- that other excellent raen were found to
work with hira.
In raaking the short journey to St. Paul we pass to
StiU another experiraent in city governraent. There
they enjoy the sarae very excellent systera of liquor-
licensing. In confining the saloons to the business and
467

raanufacturing precincts, Avhole Avards where the dweU
ings are found are under the taboo. They issue about
390 licenses a year in St. Paul, at $1000 each, and keep
a license-inspector at $1500 a year and the cost of a
horse and buggy, to protect the licensees and the city.
The officials boasted to rae that there is not one un
licensed saloon in St. Paul. As was the case in Minne
apolis, they said that strangers could not procure liquor
to be drunk on the preraises in those drug stores which
violate the laAV. But while, in the main, the same ex
cellent raethod of liquor-licensing obtains in both towns,
I was perraitted to gather the notion that in St. Paul
there is a looseness about rainor details of the superin
tendence Avhich does not exist in Minneapolis. For in
stance, it is found irapossible to close the saloons at
eleven o'clock at night or on Sundays, as the law cora
raands. They keep open until raidnight, or even later,
and on Sunday foUoAv the New York device of closing
the front doors and opening those side or rear doors
Avhich for sorae hidden reason are in New York called
" faraily entrances."
When I Avas first told that the law could not be en
forced, it occurred to me that perhaps the irapossibility
Avas like that Avhich defeated the better irapulses of a
little child of ray acquaintance Avhen he ate an apple
Avhich he was carrying to his sister. He explained that
he " truly could not help eating it ; it really Avould be
eaten, and he could not stop it." But I found after
Avards that the law Avas an enactment of the State Leg
islature and not of the local authorities, and that the
city is different from Minneapolis in that it possesses a
very much more mixed population of transplanted Euro
peans. The failure to enforce the laAv therefore erapha
sized two Avell-established points : first, that cities should
govern theraselves ; and second, that laws Avhich reflect
468

the prejudices or peculiar tenets of a class or race are
extreraely difficult to enforce in a raixed coraraunity.
Yet it is ahA'ays a pity Avhen they are loosely adrainis
tered and disobeyed. Such a condition is a grave mis
fortune, for nothing but harm can come of perraitting
any coramunity to Avitness the conteraptuous treatraent
of any law. Would that aU officials charged Avith car
rying out the statutes Avere of General Grant's raind, to
insist upon the enforcement of mistaken as well as Avise
laAVS, that the first sort might the sooner be repealed !
The city of St. Paul is said to contain fully 65 persons
of foreign birth in every 100 of its population. It has
one saloon to every 370 inhabitants.
I found St. Paul undergoing a governraental revolu
tion, oAving to a gift of a new charter frora the Legisla
ture. Again the Mayor here rose to importance, and
divided honors and work Avith the Comraon Council —
he making half the appointments, and they adrainister
ing the raore important trusts. But it is a dual Council
— a double-barrelled board of supervisors — called Alder
raen and Asserably raen. Each ward elects one Alder
raan, and there are eleven in all, Avhile the nine Assem-
blvraen are elected at large frora all over the citj'. Both
serve two j'ears and receive $100 a j'ear, presumablj' for
car fares. They raeet on alternate Tuesdays. The raa
jority of the merabers of the tAvo houses are Irish or
Irish Araericans. The city is Deraocratic. The Mayor
appoints the Chief of Police and the policeraen under
hira, and has the power to reraoA'e as Avell as to appoint.
He does so with the advice and consent of the Council ;
but it is said that no conflicts have arisen in the matter
of removals, either under this or the forraer charter.
The Mayor's salary has been raised frora $1000 to $2500.
The judges of the municipal court are elected ; they re
ceive $4000 a year, and have civU jurisdiction Avhere the
469

sum at issue is under $500. A feature that would seem
to be the outcorae of sage reflection is the Conference
Coraraittee. It is coraposed of the Mayor, president of
the Asserably, chairraan of the Ways and Means Cora
mittee of the Aldermen, the Comptroller, Treasurer,
Engineer, and the heads of nearly all the bureaus of the
city governinent. They come together once a month to
confer upon the AVork each has in hand.
I asked a high official of the city government, Avho is
a " practical " Democratic politician, why the noAV char
ter had established a return to the old plan of a double
legislative body. He said that it was a Republican ef
fort to put a check to Democratic expenditure. When
I asked if it would have that effect, he dropped in my
ear this astonishing reflection, Avhich I will set doAvn
Avithout any further coraraent than that it appears to
possess the quality of frankness in a raarked degree.
" Araong politicians," said he, " all legislation is trad
ing. You knoAV that as Avell as I do. We all use our
opportunities and influence to help those who have been
of service to us. That is the main consideration in pol
itics. Every Alderman who is elected is indebted to
certain influential men in his Avard, and he expects to
legislate to pay his debts. It cannot be so easy to do
this if the legislation must afterward pass a body of men
elected at large, and not indebted to the sarae persons
for their election."
If the goverraent of St. Paul has been slow in provid
ing parks, it reraains to be said that the lack has been
little felt amid environs that offer many of the best ad
vantages of cultivated pleasure-grounds. And the city
governraent has been so far frora idle as to have pro
duced by prodigious energy within the past foAv years
public Avorks Avhich have raised its conditions frora those
of a village to those which entitle it to rank Avith the
470

most progressive cities of its size in the country. Its
streets, sewers, railroad crossings, fire -defence, public
buildings, Avater-supply plant, and half a dozen other im
portant features of the pubhc service have taken on a
first-class character, and in some of these developments
no city of the first grade surpasses it. A quicker, longer
leap from hap-hazard to perfected conditions is not re
corded anywhere in the West.
The machinery of governraent by Avhich this was ef
fected has been changed, but Ave knoAv that there AA'as
nothing novel about it, and that the change has brought
nothing novel to it. The credit lies Avith the public-
spirited, enterprising people behind the government, and
it is a pity that they cannot be left alone to Avork out
their own administrative methods Avith the same fore
handedness they exhibit despite the interference of the
State Legislature.
And now, to end this glance at the more stiking feat
ures of the raanageraent of the public business in this
group of cities, I corae to a subject Avhich has been taken
up with hesitation because I know that it is fashionable
and popular to hold but one opinion with regard to it —
that is, the public-school raanageraent. It seeras to me
that nothing in the West — not CA'en the strides she is
making in population, wealth, and power — is so remark
able as the footing upon Avhich the comraon schools are
maintained. The last Mayor of Chicago uses these Avords in his
second annual message : " It is gratifying that the pub
lic-school systera of our city receiA'es that generous sup
port and attention to which its raagnitude and irapor
tance entitle it. In 1887 the amount appropriated and
otherwise available for educational purposes was nearly
$2,250,000 ; in 1888, nearly $2,500,000 ; in 1889, about
the same amount ; in 1890, nearly $4,750,000 ; and the
471

present year, over $5,500,000. Thus it AviU be seen that
over $17,250,000 have been appropriated during the past
five years for the construction and maintenance of our
schools. About 86 per cent, of this amount is frora tax
ation ; the balance, the revenue frora school property.
. . . The total enrolraent of pupils for the school year
reaches nearly 139,000. . . . Night schools cost the city
nearly $77,000 during the year ; the corapulsory feature,
about $15,000; deaf-and-dumb tuition, $5000; manual
training, $10,000; music, nearly $13,000; drawing, over
$17,500; physical culture, about $15,500; foreign lan
guages, over $115,000. It is estiraated that the average
pupil leaves the public schools about the age of tAvelve
to fourteen years."
The Comptroller of the City of Minneapolis in his last
report places the disbursements for schools at $923,619.
The secretary of the Board of Education of that city re
ports the supervision of the studies of 20,000 children.
All allusions to the city's school Avork in the official re
ports are enthusiastic, and it appears that a high rank
has been accorded the Minneapolis schools by those en
gaged in public educational Avork throughout the country.
The ]\Iayor, in his reference to the schools in a recent
message, notes the fact that the manual-training branch
of the teaching operates to retain an increased nuraber
of pupils in the high schools. This discovery of a raeans
for lessening the disproportion usually noticeable be
tween the number of high-school pupils and the nura
bers in the lower schools will doubtless be hailed with
joy by those Avho find the systera generaUy and greatly
underbalanced aU over the country.
The 17j227 pupils in the schools of St. Paul enjoyed
the benefits of an expenditure of $1,205,000 last year.
(The total cost is as above in the Comptroller's report ;
the Treasurer places the disbursement at $1,310,000.)
473

The Superintendent of Schools reports that the city
raaintains a carefully graded course of tuition, covering
a pjeriod qf eight years! It includes tuition in civil gov
ernraent, physics, hygiene, raanual training, Greek, Latin,
French, Gerraan, political econoray, coraraon laAv, zool
ogy, astronomy, chemistry, and English literature.
Here I note the first atterapt to curb these expenses.
The St. Paul School Board possessed almost complete
legislative powers to raise and to spend Avhat money it
pleased. The Council Avas obliged to grant its demands ;
in addition the Board issued bonds and certificates of
indebtedness. " It Avas like sacrilege to coraplain," an
official told rae. Now the ucav charter subordinates the
school inspectors. Their pay-rolls and bills raust be ap
proved by the Council, Avhich raay reduce salaries.
Moreover, another board of city officials buys all the
supplies for the schools.
But in no city in the West is there a sign that public
education Avill not reraain the most costly branch of
government. There are two Avays to look at such a
condition, but, in my opinion, the Iavo Avays are not
Avhat they are coraraonly supposed to be. One vvay
should be to look with envy on the rich, Avho thus raay
send their children to school for eight years, Avhile the
poor, Avho raust put their little ones to Avork at tender
ages, foot the greater part of the cost. The other Avay
might Avell be to coraraiserate the poor AA'ho are deceived
by sentiraental clap -trap into inflating the comraon-
school system in such a manner that at last their share
in its benefits becomes microscopic.
Two things that are novel to a visitor attract atten
tion in aU the far Western tOAvns and cities. Neither
is a branch of governraent, yet both affect it. The first
is the stand-point frora Avhich vice is regarded as a fac
tor in public affairs, especially in the sraaller cities. It
473

is a trick of the popular mind where I have been (be
tAveen Chicago and the Pacific coast) to gauge the vital
ity and prosperity of a town bj' the showing it makes
in Avhat may be called its " night side." It is part of
the quality of hospitality, and is born of the desire to
entertain all comers as they Avould Avish to be enter
tained. These cities are far apart, and are the centres
of great regions. It is understood that those Avho visit
them come to spend money not only upon necessaries
and luxuries, but at drinking and gaming, in concert-
halls, dance-houses, and the like. If a large and lively
section of a toAvn rainisters to these appetites, visitors
are taken to see it. If such a quarter languishes, good
citizens apologize, and seek to show that the city is not
backAvard in other respects. In discussing this subject,
a very pushing Westem man of national and honorable
reputation said : " There is Avisdom and experience be
hind all that. If I ara asked to buy lots or to locate in
a city, I would visit the place, and if I didn't see a good
lively ' after-dark quarter,' and didn't hear chips rattling
and corks popping, there Avould be no need to tell rae
about the geographical position of the town or its jobbing
trade or banking capita! ; I would have none of it."
The other novelty in Western town life is the inevi
table combination of leading citizens pledged to pro
mote the best interests of their town. Such a body is
variously called a Board of Trade, a Charaber of Com
merce, or a Coraraercial Club. It is the burning-glass
which focusses the public spirit of the community. Its
most corapetent officer is usually the highly salaried
secretarj'. He does for his town Avhat a raUroad passen
ger agent or a coraraercial traveller does for his employ
ers, that is to say, he secures business. He invites man
ufacturers to set up workshops in his city, offering a gift
of laud, or of land and raoney, or of exeraption from
474

taxation for a term of years. The raerchants, and per
haps the city officials also, support his promises. In a
South Dakota city I have known a fine brick Avarehouse
to be built and given, with the land under it, to a whole
sale grocery firm for doing business there. In a far North
Avestern city there was talk during the winter of 1891-92
of sending a raan East on salary to stay away until he
could bring back capital to found a smelter. These
boards of trade often organize local corapanies to give a
city Avhat it needs. They urge the people to subscribe
for stock in associations that are to build electric rail-
Avavs, opera-houses, hotels, convention halls, Avater sup
ply, and illurainating companies, often dividing an ac
knoAvledged financial loss for the sake of a public gain.
Thus these boards provide the machinery by Avhich the
most arabitious, forward, and enterprising communities
in the world expend and utiUze their energy.
The student of the many experiments in raunicipal
management in the West will find Denver's progress in
teresting. That city recently -experienced a revolution
in govemraent. A ring had fastened upon the offices.
The elections Avere dishonest. The police aided in keep
ing the ring in power. In the raean tirae the city Avas
groAving like a weed, and Avas about to make large ex
penditures in needed improvements.. In ls89 a move
ment led by the Chamber of Coramerce resulted in the
drafting of charter amendments to create new boards to
be appointed by the Governor. The new rule Avas insti
tuted, but, for A'arious reasons, the change Avas not felt
until after 1891. Then came a poUtical revolution, over
turning the ring, and putting the Democrats in charge.
It Avas a non-partisan uprising.
The succeeding Board of Public Works consisted of
three resident land-owners and tax-payers, appointed by
the Governor, to hold office two years. Two Avere Re-
475

pubUcans, and all were Denver business raen. They had
authority to expend three railUons of dollars for speci
fied public works, Avhich, in what seeras a raagically
short time, have advanced Denver to a high place araong
our Western cities. The paving of the principal streets
alone transforraed the city. All the work Avas Avell,
proraptly, and honestly done. As in Oraaha, the Fire
and Police departraents Avere put under one board, Avith
absolute control of all the moneys set apart for it by the
Comraon Council, as Avell as the appointing power o\'er
both departments. The Police and Fire Board consists of
three resident land-OAvners and tax-payers appointed by
the Governor Avith the consent of the Senate. One raust
be of a different political faith frora the Governor, Avho
raaj' revoke anj' appointment for cause. The appointees,
who serve two years and go out together, Avere a real-
estate agent, Avho has been postraaster, the proprietor of
an extensive " transfer " systera, and a veteran Colora-
doan, w ho AA'as " the father of the bill."
If these Avere not the best possible appointments, thej'
yet served the people in rescuing the city from the ele
ment that had misgoverned it. The fire and police
forces have been recruited frora both political parties.
It Avas easily possible to reforra the Fire Departraent,
which is Avinning its Avay to the pride and affection of
the citizens. The Chief recommends only those Avho
show fitness for the Avork, and the board foUoAvs his de
sires. The police force has been fully reformed by the
heads of its divisions. It is not yet properly disciplined
or instructed, but the worst of the old offenders are out
of it.
The "night side" of Denver had been very Uvely,
loud, and far -Western in its character. Even uoav
(180.3) there are gambling "hells" that are as busy,
crowded, and public as mercantile exchanges, and the
476

quarter inhabited by abandoned Avoraen is notorious in
the AVest. Before the local revolution the saloons
never closed, and the "games" Avere open aU the time
except on Sundays. Most of the shooting affrays and
murders Avhich disgraced the city took place after raid
night. Now, drinking and gaming cease at midnight,
under a new laAv, Avhich is exceptionally AveU enforced.
Mondays had been "field-days" for the trials of ar
rested drunkards, but the nuraber decreased remarkably.
A similar decrease of the cases of destitution was no
ticed. About 400 saloons pay $240,000 into the city
treasury each year. The city appoints pohcemen to
keep order in the garabling " heUs " at the expense of
the proprietors. As one official expressed it, " The goA'-
ernment has been considering the advisability of raiding
the disorderly houses twice a j'ear to obtain the equiva
lent of a license fee from each one. The reason it has not
been done is that the inmates are too poor."
A neglected laAV set apart the police-court fines to
benefit the pubhc library. Now a fixed sum of $500 a
month is given to the library. The city gives $12,000 a
year to an organization of philanthropic citizens, who
raise far raore other raoney, and aira to aboUsh street
raendicancy and to aid the needv. The county cora
raissioners should attend to this, but do not. Former
Health Boards had been criminally careless. The new
coraraissioner and his assistants are Republicans. The
Chief Inspector, a Deraocrat, has chosen aides regardless
of politics. Mayor Platt Rogers deterrained to have
this board do raore than collect vital statistics. On his
motion the leading phj'^sicians forraed a A'oluntary advi
sory board, and induced a retired practitioner. Dr. Steele,
to be Health Coraraissioner, Avith two young expert
raedical assistants, between whora his salary is divided
that they raay give their Avhole time to the public. An
477

earnest Chief Inspector has closed 800 wells, cleaned
up the alleys, enforced house to house . inspection, in
vestigated the sources of contagious diseases, and insti
tuted the inspection of raeat, fruit, and railk. Thus the
death rate Avas brought down from about 25 to 13.30 in
October last. During the ten months ending with Sep
teraber 30, 1890, there Avere 131 deaths frora typhoid
fever, but for the ten raonths preceding September 30,
1892, the nuraber Avas reduced to 39.
Mayor Rogers insists that in national politics he is
an " offensive partisan " (Deraocrat), but he considers
municipal affairs " pure matters of business into which
the introduction of politics can serve but to impair the
efficiency of the governraent." He has been violently
opposed, despite his high standing as a citizen, and the
work of the new boards also aroused the opposition of
the Comraon Council, which struggled to retain its
poAvers. Indeed, Denver still feels the shock that ac
companied its elevation to a place among the well-gov
erned cities of our land. When the character of the
dominant element there is considered, it seeras unlikely
that those Avho abused their power Avill ever force the
city back into their control. Denver's progress was not
in the line of horae-rule. Popular education in self-goA'-
ernment has been only slightly furthered. The responsi
bility was shouldered on the Governor instead. Yet the
people dictated the change, and in so far as it is an ira
proveraent they are to be congratulated.

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4

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

3 9002 00754 0256

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