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OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

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HEADING A STEER ON THE FOOTHILLS

OUR GREAT WEST

A Study of the Present Conditions

and Future Possibilities of

the New Commonwealths

and Capitals of the

United States

ULIAN RALPH

AUTHOR OF " HARPER'S CHICAGO AND THE WORLD'S FAIR
"ON CANADA'S FRONTIER" ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

XEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1 893

PEEFACE

IF the territory described in the following pages was part of
any other region than our West, it might be said of this book
that it is a description of certain new States at the close of the
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 fix 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

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, beautiful 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 of the sources of their great-
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
seems to have been expected that an eastern writer would 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-

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

I. THE CITY OF CHICAGO 1

II. CHICAGO'S GENTLE SIDE 30

III. "BROTHER TO THE SEA" t>4

IV. CAPITALS OF THE NORTHWEST 107

V. THE DAKOTAS 139

VI. MONTANA: THE TREASURE STATE 173

VII. GLIMPSES OF PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE .... 212

VIII. WASHINGTON : THE EVERGREEN STATE 276

IX. COLORADO AND ITS CAPITAL 312

X. WYOMING — ANOTHER PENNSYLVANIA 345

XL A WEEK WITH THE MORMONS 391

XII. SAN FRANCISCO 417

XIII. WAYS OF CITY GOVERNMENT OUT WEST . . 445

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
HEADING A STEER ON THE FOOTHILLS Frontispiece

GRAND ARCH, PICTURED ROCKS, LAKE SUPERIOR 65

THUNDER CAPE, NORTH SHORE 67

TRAP -ROCK CLIFFS, NORTH SHORE 69

THE NORTH SHORE. LAKE SUPERIOR . 71

NAKED INDIANS IN MONTREAL 75

IN THE HARBOR AT DULUTH . . 79

THE MISSIONARY 85

THE LOCK AT "THE SOO " 89

TROUT - FISHLNG 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 OF NORTH 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

CANON OF THE MISSOURI RIVER, BELOW GREAT FALLS .... 249
MANITOBA BAILROAD BRIDGE, GREAT FALLS 253

PAGK

MAP OF WASHINGTON 279

MAP OF COLORADO 317

MAP OF WYOMING 351

OLD-STYLE HOUSE AT LOGAN, UTAH . 407

SAN FRANCISCO BAY . 419

SEAL ROCKS . 423

JEFFERSON SQUARE 427

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 them 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 them. 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 them to look for.
Those wllo 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 management 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 some of its lead-
ing men. I came 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
supervoluminous 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 war of the rebellion. Its adoption by half a million
men as their watchword means the forcing of trade and
manufactures and wealth ; the getting of the World's
Fair, if you please. In order to comprehend 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

New York Stock Exchange when trading is active.
European visitors have written that there are no such
crowds anywhere as gather on Broadway, and this is
true most of the time ; 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 seems 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.

AVe shall see these crowds simply and satisfactorily
accounted for presently ; but they exhibit only one
phase of the high-pressure existence ; they form only
one feature among the many that distinguish the town.
In the tall buildings are the most modern and rapid
elevators, machines that fly up through the towers like
glass balls from a trap at a shooting contest. The
slow-going stranger, who is conscious of having been
" kneaded" along the streets, like a lump of dough
among 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

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 some 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 move 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 make 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 and 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 completely 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 Minneapolis. It is a great mis-
take to think that we in Xew York possess all the ele-
gant, rich, and ornamental outgrowths of taste, or that
we know better than the West what are the luxuries

and comforts of the age. With their floors of deftly-
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 mere 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 cement, 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
clay 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 small 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

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 cor-
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 humbler 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-

shops, restaurants, cigar and news-stands, elevators, and
a half-dozen other conveniences not found in smaller
houses. It would seem, also, that since not all the peo-
ple of Chicago spend their time in offices, there must
soon come 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 wTill
accompany the demand. The only trouble he foresees
will be in the solution of the problem what to do with
the people who wTill 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 181J square miles. It has been
said of the many 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 Fern wood, 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 from 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 same 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 become 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 time.

Now on what substance does Chicago feed that she
should foresee herself so great ? What manner 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,

heading very large mercantile establishments, were
young fellows. Those who came to Chicago from
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 from the Atlantic coast as Nebraska is strange to
most Philadelphians or Xew- Yorkers. But the well-
informed and " hustling " Chicagoan is familiar 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 men talking not of one section or of
Europe, as is largely the case in Xew 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.

Without either avowing or contesting any part of the
process by which Chicago men 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 diameter. 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 made by other railroads
raise the number 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 common centre, to which every-
thing they produce can be brought, and from which all
that contributes to the material 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

RSIl

produce more, and have more to sell and less to buy.
Xot 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 former 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,
Xebraska, 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 mortgages, and are absorb-
ing money and investing it in local improvements.
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

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 more 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 million 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. Farming there has been
haphazard, rude, and wasteful ; but as it begins to pay
well, the methods begin to improve. Drainage will add
new lands, and better methods will swell the crops, so
that, for instance, where 60 bushels of corn to the acre
are now grown, at least 100 hushels 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

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 economically 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
making the coarser grades, and to such an extent as to
give a touch of New England color to the towns and
villages around Chicago.

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 development
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 men, it points an
old moral. It demonstrates anew the active truth that
energy is a greater force than money. It commands
money. The young founders of Chicago were backed
in the East by capitalists who discounted the energy

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 say 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 business hours ! — a most
surprising thing, and only possible at the Chicago Club,
which is the old club of the uold 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 members 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 ^ew 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-
is 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 flocks, to work hard, live temperately, save
thriftily, and to pronounce every j as if it were a y. But
the dominating class is of that pure and broad American
type which is not controlled by JS"ew 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 Ghicagoan 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 remedy." 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
worse 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 homes. 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-

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
makes pins. There are more 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 that 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 peculiarity of
the buildings of Chicago is in the great variety of build-
ing-stones that are employed in their construction.
Where 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 beau-
tiful homes that the people, 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 home that the Chicagoan recreates and
loafs.

It is said, and I have no reason to doubt it, that the

clerks and small tradesmen 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 completely, the people bring out rugs and car-
pets, always of gay colors, and fling 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
arm-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 Yan Twiller, Petrus Stuyvesant,
and the rest of our original Knickerbockers will be sadly
disappointed angels when they come to, and find that
we have abandoned these practices in New York, after
the good example 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:

u For pleasure driving. No traffic wagons allowed ;" or,
ki Traffic teams are not allowed on this boulevard." Any
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 may sleep of nights, and
hide from 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
forming of hills and knolls. The people go to some of

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 Lincoln 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

in length. All these beauties form part of the main
exhibit at the Columbian Exposition. Kealizing 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 most interest the visitors to Chicago.

I have an idea that all this is very American; 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 Xew 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 against Chicago restaurants. A city which pos-

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 bona
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 same motto — " Liberty, equality, frater-
nity."

There is another notable thing in Chicago which, I
am certain, is a national rather than a merely 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 alike
in this respect, and until some dying patriot bequeathes
the money 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 compara-
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 problems are of national interest, and one is a

subject of study throughout Christendom. They deal
with the disciplining of the railroads, which run through
the city at a level with the streets, and with the estab-
lishment 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 made 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 commerce with the Mississippi
River. It is said that this will cost Chicago twenty
millions of dollars. Honestly done, it will certainly be
worth Avhatever 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

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 city, they will but repeat the experience
of that fabled inventor whose monstrous 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 men, looking from their stand-point,
assert that it will 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, I
shall be surprised if the railroads do not have to bear a
large share of the cost, whatever it may prove to be,

because I take it that Chicago will not fail to profit by
the experiences of other cities where this problem 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 way. The sum
of present human judgment seems 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
manner 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 them among points easily accessible from 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 from 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

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 most roads that they must 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
performance 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 estimates 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
workmen'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 uncommon desire to witness the great ex-
hibition.

Whatever these visitors have heard or thought of
Chicago, they will find it not only an impressive 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

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 impress them with a solidity and a degree of
enterprise and prosperity that are only 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 imbibed the theory that streets
are iirst mapped out by cows ; its alley system between
streets will Avin 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 important 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 many 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 triumphs of man and of civili-
zation without recalling Chicago's contribution to the
suin.

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 more valuable in its way than a similar
work from the pen of one who is dulled to the place by
familiarity. 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 men 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 seems
to jog them, to keep them rushing along, like a sort of

AVestern 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 — more 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 wonien 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
make only one trip before it vanished like a bubble.
The office girls were as badly stricken with this St.
Vit'/s hustle as the men, which must account for my not
noticing that the main 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

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 wromen 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 women. 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 women 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 men clung to one another
like caterpillars. Thus the crowded business district
was emptied and the homes 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

atmosphere of music and gentle voices — all so sooth-
ing and so highly esteemed that it is there the custom
for the men 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. James Dredge, the editor of
London Engineering, and one of the British commis-
sioners to our Columbian Exposition. " Its commence-
ment will dawn when her inhabitants give themselves
time 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 more than
this, for, from the polish of travel and trained minds
their leaders reflect those charms which find expression
in good taste and manners, 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 copy, and the result
is such that I do not believe that in any older American
city we shall find fashionable women 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 modish 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 am 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 im-
properly likened, in his relation to that city, to one of
our Astors in New York. Yet she is at the head of the
Woman's Department or Commission of our Exposition,
and is active in perhaps a score of women'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 Kussian ; indeed, I was again
and again reminded of what I have read of the peculi-

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 men 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
Xew 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 seem
very much less extravagant in Chicago than anywhere
else. Their husbands and brothers tell me that there is
a keen rivalry among the women 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 way," I was told, " but they are not mercenary ;

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. Women from the female colleges, and who have
lived abroad or in the Eastern cities, have displaced the
earlier leaders, have married and become 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 mistake 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 women. 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 some of
the attributes of their newness. They are more genu-

ine and natural and frank. They are more truly Amer-
ican, and if I like them, and have let that liking appear
in what I have written of them, 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
camaraderie 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 wrife 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
Xoted 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

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
reformer, 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 movement 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 mannerisms 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.

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, I saw a young woman seated in
a high -chair and having her tresses brushed, next to
a man who wras 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. I 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 ; " no\v you will go
back and write in a book that the Avomen 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 Xew 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-women closely fol-
low the prevailing modes. Chicago leads New York in
the employment 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,

saleswomen, or clerks. It has been explained to me that
women who want to do for themselves are more favored
there than 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 men who have the native spirit.
"We shall see that great results have sprung from this
necessity of one sex and encouragement 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 ARE AGAINST THE
SPITTING HABIT IN THE STREET CARS.
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 name those barracks may be
called).

One of the famous towering oflice 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-

ing in Broad Street, New York. It is thirteen stories
high, it cost more than a million of dollars, and the
scheme 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
8250,000 a year in rentals. The income is to be divided,
one-half to the National organization, and the rest^pro
rata to the various State organizations, according to the
amount 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 Willard, the
several other leaders of the Union, and the good women
everywhere who have faith in them.

Mrs. Carse is the woman to whom the members of
the Chicago Woman'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

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-way,
being served at all the committee meetings.

The membership is made up of almost every kind of
women, from 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 member, 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

widely known for her energetic pursuit of philosophical
studies, is active in the Science and Philosophy classes.
Mrs. George E. Adams, wife of the member of Congress
of that name 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 time 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 meetings, 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 work has progressed. It
began when the Kef orm ' Committee undertook earnest
work, and ceased merely to hear essays and discuss

prison reform, to go " slumming," and to pursue all the
fads that were going. This committee began its earnest
work with the County Insane Asylum, where it was
found that hundreds of women were herded without
proper attention, three in a bed, sometimes; with in-
sufficient food, with only a counterpane between them
and the freezing winter air at night, 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 commissioners to appoint a woman physician to
the asylum. Dr. Florence Hunt was so appointed, and
went there at $25 a month. She found that the nurses
made 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 who
followed her there suffered much petty persecution, but
a complete reform was in time accomplished, and the
woman physician became a recognized necessity there.
To-day, as a consequence, the asylums at Kankakee,
Jackson, and Elgin — all Illinois institutions — have wom-
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, which is still going on.

She next led the Keform Committee into the Poor-
house, where they went, as they always do, with the
plea " There are women there ; we want a share in the
charge of that place for the sake of our sex." They

have adopted the motto, " What are you doing with the
women 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 women.
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
we shall see, on behalf of humanity ; especially fem-
inine humanity. " You are using great sums of money
for the care of the poor, the sick, the insane, and the
vicious," they say. " One-half of these are women, and
we, as women, insist upon knowing how you are per-
forming your task. We do not believe you bring the
motherly or the sisterly element to your aid ; we know
that you do not understand women's requirements."
That line of argument has always proved irresistible.

While I was in Chicago in August some of the women
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 women appointed by the Chief of
Police, and in charge of the quarters of all women and
children prisoners, and of the station - house matrons,
two of which are appointed to each station where
women are taken. Through the work of her women,
Chicago led in this reform, which is now extending
to the chief cities of the country. Xow, all women and
juveniles are separated from the men in nine of the
Chicago precinct stations, to one of which every such
prisoner must be taken, no matter at what time or on
what charge such a person is arrested. The chief
matron is Mrs. Jane Logan, a woman who 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

mayor appointed her chief matron. She has an office
in a down-town station, where the worst prisoners are
taken as well as the friendless girls and waifs who drift
in at the railway stations. The waifs are all taken to
her, and she never leaves them until they are on the
way back to their homes, or to better guardianship.
She maintains an " annex," kept clean and sweet, with
homelike beds and pictures, and to this place are taken
any first offenders and others, of saving whom she
thinks there is a chance. Female witnesses are also
kept there instead of in the prisoners' cells, and all who
go to the annex are entirely secluded from reporters as
well 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
women being washed and dressed and made to look
respectable. Mrs. Logan always goes herself with 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. Formerly, every woman who
was arrested was searched by men and thrown in a cell
in the same jail -room with the male prisoners. Lost
children, homeless girls, and abandoned women were all
huddled together. The women of the city "couldn't
stand it," they say. They worked eight years, led by
Miss Sweet, to bring about the now accomplished re-
form.

In all cases in which women complain of abuse or
mistreatment by the police or others, Mrs. Logan sits
on the Police Trial Board " to show the unfortunate
woman 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 whenever a
woman is involved in any case that comes before it.

3ITY

The police do not oppose the work of the women. 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-five years of age, and as having humanity for her
propelling force — almost for her religion. Just now she
wants 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 work is a prolonged effort of patience,
kindness, and justice. Last Christmas-time seventy-five
girls were arrested for shoplifting. She found one,
eighteen years of age, flat on her face on a cell floor.
She took her to the annex, away from the sight of
prison bars, and got her story from her. It was that
she was of a respectable family, and had come to town
to work 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 were 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 would sell them. She was 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 with friends." Xext day, to
oblige the chief matron, the court released the girl, and
then Mrs. Logan told the police reporters the whole
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

returned five dollars " for the next girl who needed it."
She is nicely situated now, through the efforts of the
women. 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 word
for them.

Mrs. E. 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 Woman's Commis-
sion of the World's Fair and is a musical composer of
some 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. Howe is also president of the Protective Agency,
one of the most remarkable humanitarian organizations
in the city. Its founder, Mrs. J. D. Harvey, is the
daughter of Judge Plato, who was distinguished among
the early settlers of the town ; but one of the greatest
workers in it, and the person who has done the most
towards developing it, is Mrs. Charlotte Gushing Holt.
She is tenderly described by her friends as "a very
small, short, pretty, doll-like woman, in a quakerish
reform dress;" and it is added that "the amount of
work she can do is astounding." She is studying law
just now, because she needs that branch of knowledge
in order to advise the poor. Her husband, Granville
Holt, is well known in the city. They have no chil-
dren, but very many of these women have families.
The majority are very happily married, I am assured.
The Protective Agency protects women and children in

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 who
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 seldom committed. In a matter akin to this, the
women of this society perform what seems to me a most
extraordinary work. It is a part 6f the belief of these •
ladies that all women 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 women 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. woman 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 wanted them saved. The girls were 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 came up for trial, the Agency sent for fourteen or
sixteen married women of fine social position to come to
court and sit through the trial to see fair play. When
the bagnio-keeper, who was 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 was
to have supper. Undeceived, she was greatly fright-
ened, and the woman took charge of her. Then the
D 49

counsel for the defence began to draw out the story of
the woman's evil life and habits. He was rebuked from
the Bench, and was told that the woman's character for
chastity could not affect her testimony, and that when
counsel asked such questions of women witnesses the
Court would insist that similar questions be put to all
male witnesses in each case, with the same intent to de-
stroy the force of their depositions. Thus was 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 jewels 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. £Tot far removed
from this work has been the successful effort of the
women to raise what 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, where it found
a shocking state of affairs. There was only one woman
official in the jail, and at four o'clock every afternoon
she locked up the women and went 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 were nominally in charge.
This they obtained, and then they were 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 was ap-

pointed, the work of reform was begun, and it was as if
a fresh lake breeze had blown through the unwholesome
place. The men cannot intrude upon the women now,
and little vagrant girls of ten to fourteen years of
are no longer locked up with hardened criminals. The
children have a separate department, where toys and
books and a kindly matron brighten their lives while
they are awaiting trial. Still another department in the
jail is a school for the boys, who are sometimes kept
there three or four months before being tried. It was
after this work in the jail that the Philanthropy Com-
mittee took up the police-station reforms. The first
matrons who were put in charge of the stations were
political appointees, except a few who were nominally
recommended by the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union. The whole system was a sham ; the women
had to have political backing ; they were not in sympa-
thy with the movement, and were not competent. They
were "just poor," and had large families, and merely
wanted 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, which endeavors to secure those who
have not large families or absorbing cares at home,
but who have time to spare, and character, nerve, and
tact.

A few years ago there was a movement among Chi-
cago men for the foundation of an Industrial School for
Homeless Boys who were not criminals. The idea was
to train the boys and put them out for adoption. The
plan languished and was about to be abandoned, when
the Woman's Club took hold of it. A Mr. George, a
farmer, had promised to give three hundred acres of
land worth §±0,000 if any one would raise $40,000 for
the buildings. The Woman's Club rose "as one man,"

got the money in three months, and turned it over to
the men, who then founded the Illinois Manual Training-
school at Glen wood, near the city. An advisory board
of women in the club attends to the raising of money,
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 compulsory education was not enforced. The
ladies got up a tremendous agitation, and many leading
men, as well as women, 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 law was strictly carried out. It is
found that it works well to employ women in this ca-
pacity. They are invited into the houses by the mothers,
who tell them, as they would not tell men, the true
reasons for keeping their children from school, as, for
instance, that they have but one pair of shoes for six
children. A beautiful charity resulted from this work.
There was established in the club an aid society. Mrs.
Murray F. Tuley, the wife of Judge Tuley, a woman
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 workers from the Church societies, the Wom-
an's Club, and from almost everywhere else, to sew for
the children. She got the merchants to send great rolls
of flannels, and shoes and stockings by the hundreds of
pairs. These are stored in the room in the City Hall,
and when the truant officers discover a case of need

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. Julia 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. Eose S. Wright
Bryan, and Dr. Leila G. Bedell. There are between 200
and 250 women doctors in Chicago, by-the-way, and in
the club are two women preachers. While I am paus-
ing to mention these distinctive features I will add an-
other which interested me, and that is the manner in
which the members' names are printed in the annual
book of the club. This is it :

Signature. Address.

AGNES POTTER HUTCHINS, Mrs. JAMES C. HUTCHINS,

231 Forty-seventh St.
ELLEN BULLARD JENNY, Mrs. H. W. JENNY,

530 Orchard St.
ANNIE W. JOHNSON, Mrs. FRANCIS A. JOHNSON,

3807 Langley Av.
TRYPHENA 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 me into this excursion: Mrs. Dr. Julia Ross Low
came to the club one day with a solemn tale of the need
of a hospital for sufferers from contagious diseases.
There was none in the city. Ko hospital would take
such cases, and they were kept at home to endanger
whole neighborhoods. She told of the fearful results
of contagion in places where whole families occupied

one 'room, 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 was 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 movement
enthusiastically. The women say that the Chicago
newspapers always co-operate with them gallantly and
ardently. The county commissioners then appropriated
thirty thousand dollars and put up a building, the plan-,
ning of which was supervised by the women.

In this case, as whenever a committee has more than
it can do, the whole club took hold. " Now, everybody
pull for the contagious hospital," was the signal, and
every woman in the club dropped 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 same advantages
as men, the same examinations, the same classes, the
same professors, and that they would be eligible to the
same professorships. Considering the great endow-
ment of the institution, this was seen to be the fullest
and richest opportunity that American women enjoy for

the pursuit of learning ; but it also came out that, al-
though there had been five hundred applications from
the graduates of other female schools and colleges, there
were to be no accommodations whatever for them. The
donations to the university had come in such a way
that no money could be set apart for the construc-
tion of dormitories. The chairman of the Education
Committee (all the heads of committees in the club are
called " chairmen ") proposed that the club pledge itself
to raise 8150,000 for a Woman's Building for the uni-
versity. The motion was carried unanimously, a com-
mittee was appointed, and in sixty days (on July 10,
1892) it had collected 8168,000. Three different wom-
en gave §50,000 each, so that when the committee
had time to count what it had, there were $18,000
more than were needed. Of course, dollars never go
Legging for a use to which to be put, and these will be
used for interior appointments. Another committee was
appointed to insure the planning of a building satisfac-
tory to women, and to furnish the apartments, w^hich are
not to be merely bedrooms, but are to include a large
assembly-room, dining-rooms and parlors, a gymnasium,
library, baths, and whatever ; the parlors being common
to every two or three bedrooms, and all the appoint-
ments being homelike and inviting.

Mrs. Dr. Stevenson was in the chair when this great
movement was set on foot, and she has since interested
Chicago anew by demanding 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 wromen and naked boys in
bathing. She asked Mayor AVashburne 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 swarms of little shavers, and some big

boys and men," fringing the water's edge with 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
went on — in no way offensively, it seemed 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 swim, and a door admitting to the lake those
who could. This is but the beginning of what promises
great results, for the women 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 remarkable member of the Woman's Club is
Jane Addams, 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, but, after do-
ing more than ten men would 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 own and very many other lives. It is that
" the rich need the poor as much as the poor need the
rich ;" that there is a vast number of girls coming out of
the colleges for whom there is not enough to do to inter-
est them in life, and who grow ennuied when they might
be active and happy. It is her idea that when 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 went to live in one of the worst
quarters of Chicago, taking with her Miss Ellen Starr,
a teacher, and a niece of Eliza Allen Starr, the writer.

She found an old-time mansion with a wide 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
Addams 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-room,
which is used every morning for a kindergarten. A
beautiful young girl, Miss Jennie Dow, gave the money
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 many of the best known young men and la-
dies in Xorth 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 wrood-
carving, and another in American history. Every even-
ing in the week some club meets in Hull House — a
political economy club, a German club, or what not.
Miss Addams's idea is that the poor have no social life,
and few if any of the refinements which gild the inter-
course that accompanies it. Therefore, on one night in
each week, a girls' club meets in Hull House. The
girls invite their beaus and men friends, and play games
and talk and dance, refreshing themselves with lemon-
ade and cake. The young persons who devote their
spare time to the work go right in with the girls and

boys, and help to make the evenings jolly ; one who is
spoken of as " very swejl " 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 scheme, and public school-teachers
attend the classes with college graduates, who enlist for
the purpose of teaching them.

One of the new undertakings of the Chicago women
is the task set for itself by the Municipal Eeform
League. It was organized in March, 1892, by the ladies
who were connected with the World's Fair Congresses,
a comprehensive work, for the description of which I
have no space. A large committee 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 crammed. Among the
speakers were the mayor, the commissioner of public
works, and the health commissioners. A clergyman
arraigned them as responsible for the sorry state of the
streets, and was followed by Miss Ada C. Sweet and Dr.
Stevenson. A public meeting was held next day in the
Woman's Club to organize the new society. Ada C.
Sweet was elected president, and the other offices were
filled by women. A constitution was adopted, after one
had been framed, to admit everybody to membership
who would express a desire to assist in the work and to
keep their own premises in order. Six hundred mem-
bers are on the rolls, and these include one hundred men,

among whom are millionaires and working-men. Money
has been contributed liberally, but only the secretary re-
ceives compensation. The work performed is all in the
direction of forcing the public officials to do their duty.
The Health Department is in charge of the alleys and
the Street Department of the streets. To keep these
departments up to their work, all the members of Miss
Sweet's society are constituted volunteer inspectors,
pledged to report once a week whatever remissness
they discover. Thus the society has the eyes of argus
to scan the entire city. Where these eyes are kept
wide open the greatest improvement was already ap-
parent (August 1892). Miss Sweet knows what every
contractor is doing as well 'as who is negligent and who
is faithful, and she says she knows that there is not a
single contractor whose contract could not be annulled
to-morrow. She insists that the plan adopted by her
society, if pursued, will transform Chicago into the
model city of the world 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
byways ; and so do many influential men, for the pur-
pose of detecting negligence and reporting it. The com-
plaints are forwarded, in the society's formal manner, to
the responsible commissioners, and they do all they can,
Miss Sweet admits, yet are rendered measurably impo-
tent because they cannot appoint proper inspectors.
The reformers will not stop until they have destroyed
the entire contract system, and have made 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 was being dumped in a circle of hillocks

around the outskirts of the town. A plan for disposing
of it by fire had failed, and the officials sat helplessly
down and gave up the job. The women took up the
task, and now (July, 1892) three methods are undergo-
ing trial, and 180 tons a day are being burned. That
mere incident in the history of this movement 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 almost super-
human tasks of awakening a great community to a per-
ception of its rights 'and its requirements. Three years
ago she found that the police-patrol wagons were the
only vehicles in Chicago for the transporting of the sick
and injured. Men and women, falling ill or meeting
with disabling accidents, were picked up by the police
and carted home or to the hospitals in heavy open
patrol wagons built 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 "made and fitted with necessary appliances for the
sick and desperately injured. She presented it to the
city, requesting that it be put into immediate use in the
Central District. The Police Department at once, in
the spring of 1890, began using the ambulance instead
of the patrol wagon, and when this was written the
vehicle had travelled 18,000 miles and carried 2,000
patients. Slowly the city took up the idea, and now
the Police Department has six of these ambulances in
use, each one carrying a medical man. It also main-
tains a corps of men trained to the care of the sick and
the injured. More of the wagons are promised, and a
perfect ambulance system extending over the whole city
is not a far distant consummation. "This," Miss Sweet

tells me, " is the only piece of work I have yet done of
which I am really proud, but my pride is tempered by
keen realization of how far short of my hopes the en-
terprise still remains.*' She is no blue-stocking, but a
wholesome, genial, robust woman of an old maid^s age,
if thirty-five be that, but with a young girl's spirits and
delights.

Mrs. James M. Flower, a member of the School Board
and of a family 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 Committee 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 shows the most artistic talent.

These unusual activities and undertakings are but a part
of what the women are doing, and are in addition to the
kindly and humane efforts which the reader had doubt-
less expected to hear about, and which but parallel those
which interest and occupy American ladies everywhere.
There are proportionately as many workers in the hospi-
tals, schools, and asylums, as many noble founders and
supporters of refuges and hospitals, as many laborers in
Church and mission work in Chicago as in New 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 will
be appreciated.

There are in Chicago, as elsewhere, Browning and
Ibsen and Shakespearian circles and clubs, and if the city
boasts few 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 Rowswell Grant,

is the most ambitious literary club, and has a large
and distinguished membership. It meets in the houses
of wealthy ladies, and is at times addressed by distin-
guished visitors whom it invites to the city. The Chi-
cago Literary Club is another such organization, and of
both these men as well as women 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 Woman's Club rooms. Eugene Field, of whose
verse and of whose delightful personality Chicago can-
not be too proud ; George W. Cable, General and Mrs.
Miles, Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer, Dr. Sarah Hackett
Stevenson, Charles W. Deering, Mr. and Mrs. C. Hen-
rotin, and Mr. and Mrs. Franklin MacVeagh are among
the members. The motto of this society illumines its
field of work. It is, " Whence these legends and tradi-
tions ?" It has started a museum of Indian and other
relics and curios, and may make an exhibition during
the World's Fair. It will 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 women : Mrs. S. S. Black-
welder, Mrs. Fletcher S. Bassett, and Mrs. Potter Palmer;
and the treasurer is Helen G. Fairbank.

I had a most interesting talk with one of the women
active in certain of the public works I have described,
and she told me that one reason why the women suc-
ceeded so well with 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 women ; but she said she would have -to
let it stand, whatever it sounded like. She said that the
Chicago men not only spring to the help of a woman

who 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 wom-
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 women have not had to fight their way. The
men have helped them. She gloried in the strides the
women have made towards independence in Chicago.
" A fundamental principle with 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 must be
independent in order to wisely make a choice of her
career — whether she will be a wife and mother, and,
if so, whose wife and mother she will be."

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
wonders" 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, whose irregularities pro-
vide a wide diversity of scenery, in woods, among rocks,
and every few minutes close beside the closed ends of
the great bays which spread out into an ocean-like end-
lessness of water. Each time that I have made the jour-
ney it has been my good-fortune to see the lake clear,
smooth, and brilliant, as if it were a vast mirror 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, ramparts, castellated heaps, and frowning
walls, now green, now red, now purple, and anon dull
brown or ashen.

Lake Superior is almost 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, with his marvellous faculty for aptly nick-

GRAND ARCH, PICTURED ROCKS, LAKE SUPERIOR

naming whatever new thing he saw, was never happier
than when he tried to express in a phrase the impres-
sion Superior made upon his mind. The Canadian offi-
cials were bringing him 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

K 65

saw the greatest of all 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 world, and the largest
body of fresh water. It is 380 miles in length and 160
miles across in its widest part. Its wTatery area of 32,000
square miles proves it to be the size of the State of In-
diana, or four times as big as Massachusetts.* It is
about 600 feet above the sea-level ; but the Government
charts show that in its deepest part the water has a
depth of 231 fathoms, or 1386 feet, so that there, at
least, the lake is more than TOO feet below the surface
of the sea as well as 600 feet above it. North of Ke-
weenaw 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 navigation in the world,"
a system which, if taken to embrace the water route
from the source of the St. Louis, emptying into the
head of the lake, to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, is
2100 miles 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
Eed Eiver of the North. But Lake Superior owes little
to the St. Louis. It receives the waters 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

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

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 from our possession of the coal supply of

THUNDER CAPE, NORTH SHORE

the continent, which gives to American vessels the car-
goes with which to return westward after having float-
ed grain and ore eastward.

Lake Superior is a capricious monster, demanding
skilled seamanship and the use of powerful and stanch
boats, the majority of which are comparable with the
vessels in our Atlantic coasting trade. The lake is a
veritable womb of storms. They develop quickly there,
and even 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 summer. 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 who sail upon it cannot
swim. The lake offers no inducement to learn the art,
and, alas! those who are expert swimmers could not

keep alive for any great length of time in the icy water.
When I was making inquiries upon this point, I found,
as one almost always does, some who disputed what the
majority agreed upon. I even found an old gentleman,
a professional man of beyond seventy years of age, who
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 waters nearly every day. It was chilly, he
admitted, and he did not stay in very long. But many
sailors, among them some ship and steamship captains,
confirmed my belief that few Lake Superior seamen
have learned to swim, and that the coldness of the wa-
ter quickly numbs those who fall into it. I asked one
captain how long he supposed a man might battle for
life, or cling to a spar in the lake. He answered, 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 saw fall over-
board went down like a shot before we could get to
him. I always supposed he took a cramp."

The bodies of the drowned are said not to rise to the
surface. They are refrigerated, and the decomposition
which 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 which 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 remain, lifelike and natural,
under the darkening veil of those emerald depths.

The great, fresh, crystal sea never freezes over, and
yet its season for navigation is very short. This is due
to the ice that makes out from 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

light -house on Thunder Cape, and that is an island in
deep water. 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 December.

But there are two obstructions for which Lake Su-
perior is notorious, and they rank next to the ice, and
still further limit navigation for some lines of ships.
These evils are the fogs and the snow-storms, and of

TRAP-ROCK CLIFFS, NORTH SHORE

the two the fogs are the more numerous and the snow
is the more dreaded. In the summer Dame Superior
wears her fogs almost as a Turkish wife wears her veils.
There is a time, in August, when the only fogs are those
which 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 which curtails their season. It
snows on the great lake just as it does on the plains, in
terrible flurries, during the course of which it is impossi-
ble to see a foot ahead, or to see at all. Mark Twain
did not exaggerate the character of these storms when
he described the fate of men who were lost and frozen
to death within pistol-shot of their cabins. It has a way
of snowing on Superior, by-the-way, 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 who sail
the warmer lakes, and I have had a captain tell me that
he has made seven voyages in succession without seeing
any lights on his route from Port Arthur to " the Soo."
But its charms outweigh all its caprices and atone for
its worst 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 two bodies, and the view within the speeding circle
of the horizon was that of the same deep blue field of
veined and ruffled water. By day the patent log kept
up its angry whistle, and the clumsy gulls, with their
broken -looking wings, beat the air and sounded their
baby treble in a soft shattered cloud over the vessel's
wake. 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 sunlight
lent an active living tone like that of flame diluted or
transformed. On no visit did I ever see the sky free of
clouds, and I cannot imagine it so, but Lake Superior

THE NORTH SHORE, LAKE SUPERIOR

fair-weather clouds, always 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 summer resorts when the people visit it
and succumb to its spell. Think what it is ! A volume
of crystalline water in which all Scotland's surface could
be sunk like a stone — of water so clear and translucent
that one may see the entire outlines of the vessels that
cleave its surface, so pure that objects may be distin-
guished on the bottom at a depth of 20 feet ; -15 feet
they call it who have to do with the lake, but I was un-
able to see through more 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, which extend
backward from the lake to distances 'that overreach
States and provinces. Travellers accustomed to fre-
quent transcontinental journeys look longingly forward
in the summer to the time when they shall be passing
the great lake, either to the northward or southward,
certain that tha daylight hours will be pleasant and
that the night-time will be cool. Cleanliness — perhaps
I should say tidiness — is everywhere the characteristic
of Superior. Its famed and stately Avails of rock delve
straight downward into it and rise sheer above it with-
out giving nature the slightest chance to make a litter
of rocks or dirt at their feet. While other rocky shores
of other waters stand apart or merely wet their toes in
the fluid, these monsters wade in neck- deep, and only
expose their heads in the sunlight, fathoms — sometimes
•200 fathoms — from the bottom. Terrible prison walls
these become to shipwrecked drowning mariners, for

they extend in reaches sometimes 25 miles long without
offering a finger -hold for self -rescue. Tourists who
have seen the Pictured Rocks will understand this feat-
ure of the lake's boundaries.

Again, Superior's waters lend themselves to the most
exquisite effects, to the most opulent coloring, by their
surroundings and in themselves. Those extravagant
chromatic surprises in nature which cause the Western
people to rave over the charms of their most beautiful
resort, Mackinac, are at the command of all who visit
Lake Superior at any point around the spectacular sea.
A thousand lovelier Mackinacs are there. The same
charms, the same mysterious colorings, the same gor-
geous effects, illuminate the view from the coal-docks
of Duluth, the cottages at Marquette, the wharves of
Port Arthur, the decks of the steamers that cruise
among the Apostle Islands, or the canoes of tourists or
half-breeds who fling 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 where it is com-
paratively shallow. If you are observant, you will
notice that it is green in your pitcher, green in your
washbowl, and green in your shaving-mug wrherever
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 wrater is of this
beautiful emerald hue, showing 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
from that to the deeper hues. With every change in

the atmosphere the views change. A strong sun will
lave great fields of the water with a flood of salmon-
colored light ; and a brilliant moon, which at times
silvers a wide swath upon the surface, will yet, under
other conditions, tinge the water 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
whatever of religion is felt by the Indians upon its
borders — and those of all the Algonquin family, whose
tribes reach from the Rocky Mountains to the coast of
Maine. Every here and there, upon the rocks which
the Chippewas treat as altars, or in the swift currents
that race between -them, the red men offer gifts to the
spirits which they fancy are domiciled there. As far
as I have been able to comprehend their favorite legend
of J|j|£ Minnebajou (or Xana-bejou) who seems to have
been the creator and yet subordinate to God, it was in
Superior that he sought his yet enduring rest after he
had constructed the present earth in the waters that
swallowed a former one. There are several of his
homes in various parts of the lake. And well may
Superior breed mysticism in the minds of savages, 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 have told
me that they have seen Duluth when they were 185
miles away from it — upside down and in the sky, but
distinctly Duluth. One sailor said that at one broad
noonday he suddenly saw a beautiful pasture, replete
with an apple-tree and a five-rail fence, shining green
and cool before him, apparently close at hand. The

effect the clear air produces by apparently magnifying
objects seen upon the lake is most astonishing. To il-
lustrate what I mean, let me tell what 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 me
a tremendous white passenger steamship. The boats
were 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 companion, familiar with the lake,
replied,

" I wonder what boat it is; she's a whopping big one,
isn't she ?"

Something distracted my attention, and five minutes
afterwards, when I looked at the approaching vessel
again, she had passed the mysterious point at which she
was most 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,
growing smaller and smaller in size, until the phenom-
enon became ridiculous. In time the elastic boat had
become a very small passenger propeller, and I found
myself wondering whether she would be discernible at
all by the time we were abreast of her. But at that
the optical frolic ceased. A small screw steamer of the
third class was what she proved to be.

Lake Superior was once a great deal deeper lake
than it is now. All along the Canadian shore any one
may see the former coast levels that now form pebbly
terraces hundreds of feet above the present water. At
Duluth the beautiful Terrace Drive above the city lies
along a former coast line that was 470 feet higher than
the present level of the lake. Perhaps the most com-
pact picture of the first dawn of Lake Superior upon

the ken of white men, indirectly through their relations
with the Indians, is drawn by Washington Irving in his
Astoria.

" It was the fur trade," he says, " which gave early
sustenance and vitality to the great Canadian prov-
inces.'' As the valuable furs became more and more
scarce near the settlements, the capital among which
was Montreal, the Indians went farther west upon their
hunting expeditions. "Every now and then a large
body of Ottavras, Hurons, and other tribes who hunted
the countries bordering on the Great Lakes would come
down in a squadron of light canoes laden with beaver-
skins and other spoils of their year's hunting. . . . Mont-
real would be alive with 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, says an old French writer, the
merchants were sure to clear at least 200 per cent."
Thus came into existence a new class, called coureurs des
~bois, or rangers of the woods. They were men who had
originally gone abroad with the red men on hunting ex-
peditions, but who saw 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 well-stocked canoes in
exchange for peltries. In their track went out the
missionaries ; for none but an Indian ever went farther
than the traders in those days, and eventually the Hud-
son Bay men — a still later growth— 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 lois came to
live with the red men, and created a body of half-
breeds who were destined to be both white and red in
their affiliations and their neutral influence, we may im-

F 81

agine that we can see the vanguard of the host that in
time reached Lake Superior.

The first white men to see the lake were coureurs des
fiois, 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 what is
left of the wilderness, now. shrinking closer and closer
to the arctic regions. " The Soo " was 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-
quered the rapids with his canoe, and found himself out
upon the great waters of Superior. That was in 1660,
and what they then called the lake I have not learned ;
but in 1771, in a map published by the Jesuits, it is in-
scribed " Lac Tracy, ou Superieur" In that map the
neighboring lakes are named Lac des Ilinois and Lac
des Hurons. In 1668 there arrived Pere Marquette,
that saintly man whose name lives anew in that of a
progressive lake port, and whose memory is honored by
every intelligent man in all that vast region. He was
accompanied by Claude Dablou when, 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 which 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 western end of
the lake in 1661, six years before Pere Allouez and a
company of traders reached there, and eighteen years
before Du Lhut arrived with a band of coureurs des bois
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, we come to find the great Hudson Bay

Company, and its rival the Northwest Company of
fur-traders, conducting a systematized business on the
north shore of the lake ; while in time the American
Fur Company, 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, two hundred years after
its discovery, Lake Superior stood still for many years
— for nearly forty years — so that its present history,
solid and certain in its promises as it is, resembles the
record of a mushroom.

The "date of the last enlargement of the lock of the
Sault Ste. Marie Canal is the date upon which to base
all computations of the age of the present lake traffic
and its consequences. That lock was enlarged and
newly opened in 1881. Marquette, " the Queen City of
Lake Superior," is an old place of former industry, but
it is a mere baby in its present enterprise. Superior
dates from 1852 "on paper," but from 1881 in fact,
while Duluth is only a few years older. Port Arthur,
the principal Canadian port, owes itself to the Canadian
Pacific Kail way, now about seven or eight years of age,
and many of the cities of the future are not yet discov-
ered, while of great resorts that are to be, like Munising
and Kepigon, only those two are known, and they are
known only to the most enterprising sportsmen.

The men of the Lake Superior region will in time
form a new conglomerate, if I may use a geologist's
term. The sailors of the great unsalted sea are a very
nautical-looking lot of men — as spare of flesh, as bronzed
and leather-skinned, as if they were from Maine ; but
the surprising thing about them, so far as I may trust
my observation, is that they all obtained their training
on the lakes. I did not find one who had ever seen the

ocean, and I thought I detected among them a tone of
contempt whenever they spoke of the genuine sea, as if
they were of the opinion that the Atlantic is a sort of
juvenile campus for playing at sailoring, whereas it re-
quires grown men to battle with the lakes.

Along-shore one meets with a queer hodgepodge of
men. On the United States side the Scandinavians are
very numerous. They are highly spoken of by the
Americans. They are bankers and merchants there, as
well as laborers and household servants. They have
spread themselves over all parts of the new field with
wonderful assimilative capacity. They are a sturdy,
shrewd, thrifty, and ambitious people, as a rule. They
make the strangest mess of speaking English at first,
and we may expect a new touch in dialect literature
when waiters who understand them begin to treat of
them. Yet they are sufficiently important to render a
knowledge of their native tongue very advantageous to
Americans, and I found the general passenger agent of
a great railroad in the lake region assiduously studying
Swedish. There are many Welshmen in that country,
but I only heard of them in the mining regions. For
the rest, the people are American, with all which that
implies; 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 Chippewayan servants of the Hud-
son Bay Company still patrol the streams in canoes and
traverse the winter snow fields with sledges dragged by
" huskies," those ill-used Eskimo dogs whose fare is said
to be " one part fish and nine parts clubbing." Gaunt

and tireless prospectors, axe in hand and pack on back,
walk northward among 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 sportsman's
paradise, and a treasury of wealth for those who deal in
the products of the wilderness — furs, fish, and lumber.
At little Port Arthur alone the figures of the fishing in-
dustry for the market are astonishing. In 1888 the fish-
ermen 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
more than a million pounds in all. They did this with
an investment of 83800 in boats and $10,000 in gill and
pound nets. This yield nearly all went to a Chicago
packing company, and it is in the main Chicago and
Cleveland capital that is controlling the lake's fisheries.
The white-fish is, in the opinion of most gourmets, the
most delicious fish known to Americans. The lake trout
are mere food. I am told that they are rather related
to the char than to the salmon. They are peculiar to
our inland waters. They average five to ten pounds in
weight, and yet grow to weigh 120 pounds ; but what-
ever their weight be, it is a mere pressure of hard dry
flesh, calculated only to appease hunger.

But I find that on both shores of the lake there is a
growing feeling that, in spite of the millions of " fry "
the Fish Commission dumps into that and the other
lakes, the vast reservoirs of delicious food are being
ruined by the same policy and the same methods that
make our lumbermen the chief criminals of the conti-
nent. Men who have spent years on the lakes solemnly
assert that not only are the annual yields growing

smaller 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
which are too small to market. I do not believe that
any man of leisure could find a more benevolent or
worthy cause in which to enlist than in that of a cru-
sade against the use of small-meshed nets in Lake Supe-
rior. I will not, on my present knowledge, say that the
planting of fish fry is a waste of time* 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-plenty in the streams that
flow into the great lake through the beautiful forests
which clothe that enormous tract, in which, south of
Superior alone, there are said to be between 500 and
600 little lakes. Exactly like it, from the sportsman's
point of view, is the region north of the lake, where the
land looks, upon a detailed map, like a great sponge, all
glistening with water, so crowded is its surface with
lakes and streams. In the north are caribou, and all the
animals that the fur-traders of the Hudson Bay Com-
pany value. South of the lake there are no animals
larger than deer, but deer are abundant, and bear are
still numerous. In the fishing season a man may feast
on trout, black bass, pickerel, muskallonge, partridge,
venison, and rabbit ; and he may, if he has the soul of a
true sportsman, revel in the magnetic, wholesome quali-
ties of the air, and in the opulent and exquisite beauties
of the woods. For good sport, however, let him avoid
the famous 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

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

the most picturesque part of the south shore, gets im-
portance as a shipping port for ore and lumber, but it
occupies the most beautiful site and is the most beauti-
ful town, as seen from the water, of all those that have
grown 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 which 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 among its appointments some 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 would naturally rank as a summer
resort, but the addition of Presque Isle Park will, when
the park is developed, raise it to the first rank among
the idling-places in the West. This park covers a bold
promontory formed of enormous piles of stone like the
Pictured Rocks, which are themselves not far away.
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 form a famous fishing-field.

The greatest commercial activity around the lake is
due to the mining. 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 systematic mining.
Silver has been very profitably and extensively mined,
the famous Silver Islet Mine having yielded $3,250,000
worth of the metal. There are very many other mines
in the district, many of which have proved failures, and
a few of which are prosperous, while still others give
promise of good futures.

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 Hecla," "Gogebic," and " Marquette,"
distinguishing great mines or districts, are doubtless of
world- 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-
tween Ishpeming and Xegaunee are a few gold mines.
The richest of these is stopped by litigation, but One
profitable mine is being worked. The great copper re-
gion of Keweenaw peninsula— a broad, long area of land
thrust out of Michigan into the middle of the lake —
abounds with 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
amount of rock crushed was 2,137,653 tons, and this
yielded 86,604,283 pounds of ingot copper. Silver is
said to be found in the copper region. The famous Go-
gebic iron region, or range, marks the western limit of
Michigan's 150-mile-wide mineral section, from which,
exclusive of gold, copper, and silver, between five mill-
ions and eight millions of tons of ore is annually sent
away. 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 my ability to summa-
rize its extent with figures.

All the commerce of Lake Superior that is sent to or
from it must pass through the Sault Ste. Marie Canal,
until the Canadians finish the parallel waterway, which
they are building in order to be in all respects independ-

ent of us. Nature made the waters of Superior to flow
into Huron by means of the St. Marie Kiver, but in
doing so they drop to Huron's level, which is somewhat
lower than that of the king of lakes. They make eigh-
teen feet of the descent suddenly by the rapids which
give to the artificial waterway 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 words take. Commercially speak-
ing, this canal added Superior to the great lake system
or route, connected it directly with the Atlantic and the
world at large, and shortened very greatly the railroad
carriage of ore and grain to the East, and of coal and
general merchandise to the far West. The canal accom-
modates an amount of traffic which 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 mistaken; while the tonnage that passed
"the Soo" in 1890 was 9,041,313. It is interesting to
note that of this sum the proportion of freight carried
by Canadian vessels was only 6 per cent, in 1888, and
4 per cent, in 1889. It is also worth while to note
that of the 9,000,000 tons floated through the canal in
1890, about 4,500,000 were east-bound, and 2,600,000
were west-bound.

But the canal is inefficient ; wof 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 water in the canal
in 1890 ran from fourteen feet and nine inches to fifteen
feet three inches, and during the first half of 1891 it
varied between thirteen feet and ten inches and four-
teen feet five inches. Such vessels as are now being

OF THB

UNIVERSITY

added to the lake service draw sixteen and a half feet,
and in view of the present depth of water in the canal
it will be seen that they lose several hundreds of tons
a trip by carrying only partial loads. The Government
is awake to the situation, and the new lock which it is
now building, at a cost of more than four millions of
dollars, will be 100 feet in width, 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 tem-
porarily, but it cost the men and companies who use
the canal a loss of about one million dollars. There
were at that time 183 vessels waiting to pass out of
Superior, and nearly as many going in the other di-
rection.

The worst brake on the wheels of the great commerce
that strains towards 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
with Europe will continue to be greatly limited. It is
true that the whaleback steamer Wetmore went to Europe
from Superior with 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. Lawrence canals by shooting the rapids of that
river. Were she to return to Superior she would have
to be unriveted and pulled through the canal in two
parts. Thus it was that the steamships of the Cana-
G 97

dian Pacific Company plying on the larger lakes were
brought from the Clyde.

It was a valuable experiment, that with the Wetmore.
It demonstrated the pluck of the far Western naviga-
tors and merchants, and it accentuated the demand of
the people of the entire Northwest for a practicable
water route to the Atlantic. The people of the region
around the Great Lakes are chafing and fretting under
the chains that bind and hinder them. They demand

LIGHT - HOUSE AT MARQUETTE

the means of reaching the Atlantic either by the St.
Lawrence or the Hudson, and they will not be satisfied
with less than u twenty feet of water from Duluth to
the sea.'' That is the battle-cry of a people with the
will and persistence to achieve whatever they determine
upon. They will not long be put off. They are full of
the spirit of the present revolution by which we Ameri-
cans are to recover our prestige on the sea. Thus added
force is found in a vast reach of new water-front, which
will send upon the oceans of the world not merely men,
but ships that hail from the heart of the continent.

The aim 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 naturally
set towards Puget Sound, and put San Francisco out of
the natural course of shipping, and also that the Puget
Sound coast is six hundred miles nearer the north At-
lantic ports than is San Francisco.

There are two sides to the contention for improved
internal waterways, 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 man in the West who
argues that water rates will cease to influence rail trans-
portation when the development of railroading reaches
the near point towards which it is hastening. For a time
in 1891 the freight rate from Chicago to New York was
seventeen 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 earn their operating expenses.

The form of railroad progress which attracts every
one's attention is that which 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 which 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 weight of the rails,
and the enlargement of locomotive power and car capac-

ity. The outgo and the income of the railway busi-
ness are found by considering the tram mile 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
amount obtained per ton per mile is the unit of income.
The difference between the two is the profit. The re-
sistance, which must be reduced to a minimum, is the
law of gravity. But for that a child might draw a train
of cars with a piece of twine. But, as the Western rail-
road man remarked, " the law 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 water does."

The modern railroad must also avoid all possibility of
obstruction that can be avoided ; and we see in the
sunken track of the New York Central Kailroad in New
York city an example of the lengths to which the best
railroads must go to obtain guaranteed freedom from
obstruction. With the same 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 traffic. On the con-
trary, he says that it will always be carried on. The
railroads themselves find it of service ; and all those
trunk lines which have lake ports on their routes now
either own steamers or have made contracts with steam-
ship lines. President Depew says that although his rail-
road company once opposed the canals, he lives at peace
with them, his argument being that the lake boats bring
to Buffalo more business than the canals can handle,
and the surplus goes to the railroads. Moreover, the

100

~-s ^ -.^-_-

ELEVATORS AT DULUTH, WEST SU-
PERIOR IS THE DISTANCE

canals form highways
through the State, and,
by contributing to the
prosperity of the canal
towns, add to the pros-
perity of the railroads.
Mr. Depew adds, nevertheless, that the canals are no
longer formidable competitors with the railroads, as
they once were. In the old days a canal-boat carried as
much 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 grown from a weight of
30 tons to a weight of 90 or 100 tons, the cars have
tripled their capacity, the rails that weighed 56 pounds
per yard have been replaced by 80 or 90 pound tracks ;
and with all these improvements has come a reduction
of 50 per cent, in freight rates in the time 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 which 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 show
that whereas in 1868 the rail rate on grain from Chi-
cago to New York was 42.6 cents a bushel, it was 14
cents in 1885. The water 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
Value of the waterways to the public is illustrated in a
startling way 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
average 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 was charged by the boatmen.

In pressing upon the attention of the country the
value of a twenty-foot waterway 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 which was
transacted in the Detroit Eiver was 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 they ask what \vould 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
without change of vessels to the sea. As to the expense
of the improvements that are asked for, Mr. 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, amounted to a return
of $1 85 to the people for every dollar the government
spent upon the lakes.

From the stand-point of the people of the lake ports
we have not been either as liberal or as long-sighted as
the Canadians, who have a well-defined system of wa-
terways, completed by canals wherever navigation is
hindered by nature. They are building a canal around
the St. Mary's Falls, and when it is finished their sys-
tem will be complete. It will only need enlargement to
make it serve the requirements of the near future, but,
even as it is, it will serve, in case of war, for the intro-

LOADING A AVHALEBACK BARGE

duction of gunboats and torpedo-boats by way of the St.
Lawrence into those lakes on which we are prevented
by treaty from maintaining a squadron. We have upon
the lakes only the old wooden sloop of war Michigan.

103

and can put no other war vessels there in case of dan-
ger, unless we have the time to build them at some lake
port. England, on the other hand, has fifty gunboats
and other war vessels of sufficiently light draught to
pass through the canals into the lakes.

It is not necessary to weigh the various plans which
are offered for a national highway from Duluth to the
sea. One looks towards the deepening of the canal be-
tween Oswego and Syracuse, New York, and of the
canal between 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 world at large, by means 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, now undergoing construction,
will make possible the employment of vessels carrying
6000 to 8000 tons, in place of the present largest-sized
lake boats, which cannot carry their complement of 3000
tons. Such carriers, it is said, can cut down the pres-
ent cost of water transportation fully 50 per cent, and
leave a profit for the ship-owners. In view of the enor-
mous field awaiting development in the Northwest, and
in view of the steady lowering of railway rates, the
ardor with which the people of the lake ports urge the
creation of an American twenty-foot water system, at
least as far east as Oswego, does not seem unreason-
able.

Upon the 1500 miles of the lake's shore there are liv-
ing now less than 150,000 persons, and these are mainly
in bustling cities like Duluth, Superior, and Marquette,
in industrial colonies like Calumet and Eed Jacket, or
in struggling little ports like Fort William and Port

104

Arthur. Even there the wilderness and primeval condi-
tions are face to face with the robust civilization which is
shouldering its way as capital is accustomed to do rather
than as natural growth usually asserts itself. Not that

A AVHALEBACK 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 com-
munities there have sprung into being far apart from
well-settled regions in answer 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 which he has killed for the
purpose. It is, so to say, a region wherein the whole-
sale fisherman with his steamboat disturbs the red man
who is spearing a fish for supper, where the wolf blinks
in the glare of the electric lamp, and where 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 same region.
Close to a watering resort which is crowded in summer
by persons from all over the West, some men were cut-
ting timber in the winter. Two brothers were among
them. One hit himself with an axe, cutting open an
artery in his leg. The other hurried away for surgical
help. When the messenger returned, nothing but the
bones of his brother were 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 newness of this giant fresh- water sea, which
geologists would have us believe is millions of years old,
and which even history mentions in detailing the ex-
ploits of men who died in the seventeenth century. But
with the youth of this new civilization have come the
vigor and enterprise needed to develop industries and to
rear cities of which all the people of all the States, new
and old, may well feel proud.

106

CAPITALS OF THE NORTHWEST

JUST as the Atlantic cities were surprised when Chi-
cago distanced all but two of them in population, and
challenged all of them by her enterprise, so will they be
astonished again and from another quarter, if they re-
fuse to study the forces that are operating to build up
new capitals in the West. In another ten years there
will be another claim of a million population, and the
counting of heads will not make nonsense of it. The
new and wonderful 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 name and government — opinions differ about
that — but all agree that they will jointly possess a
million of population. The last census credited Min-
neapolis with 164,700 population, and St. Paul with
133,000, or, jointly, 297,000. At the time of the pre-
ceding census (1880) the two cities included about
88,000 souls. At that rate of increase they will 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 million
mark will be reached before the next census is taken.

Why should men make such a prophecy : or rather,
why have these two towns already gathered 350,000
inhabitants within their limits? Wre must repeat the
study that we made at Chicago. That city we 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
country 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 city
has ceased to borrow, and has begun to amass wealth,
to lend money, and to supply its tributary country with
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 wide leeway that exists for improved and
economical farming, we are able to clearly see a noble,
a splendid future for Chicago.

But in St. Paul and Minneapolis we reach the pulse
of another region — the wheat lands of America. I
understand that in a sense these cities are tributary to
Chicago, and that in the same sense their tributary
region has in some measure been included in that of
Chicago, but the line that is being drawn between the
two centres is growing heavier and broader every year.
In the possession of home manufactures lies the ability
to trade economically and to save a profit, and just as
we have seen Chicago emancipate herself from the
bondage of Eastern capital through manufactures, so
we shall find that the twin cities of Minnesota are set-
ting up for themselves as independent traders. The
country they aim to monopolize in trade is far smaller
than the corn region, but it is extraordinarily more
fertile and profitable to the farmer.

Close to their doors lies the famous Red River Valley,
which is by some students of such comparative values

108

declared to be the third agricultural region, in point of
fertility, in the world, there being one Asiatic and one
African valley in the foreground beyond 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 wealth 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
beyond this valley in the new States, and the valley
itself returns the same commodities along with its
wonderful output of wheat. In the extra fruitful year
just closed — wonderful for its crops and for the world-
wide demand for breadstuff s from this country — the
predictions that were based upon the results of the sale
of the crops seemed fabulous. For instance, it was
boasted that the farmers of the Northwest would make
sufficient profits to pay off all their mortgages this year.

This boast was not disputed by any of the leaders in
trade and transportation with whom I talked, but I
gathered from what the}' said that though the farmers
are as well off as this statement implies, the majority
will not remove the mortgages, but will be more likely to
expend their profits in betterments, in extending their
farms, and in redeeming unworkable tracts in thei'r
present holdings. This roseate view ends at the valley,
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 may hear of a
farmer whose profits last season were close to §30,000 ;
it is there that men bought farms of great extent, ex-

109

pecting to pay for them in an indefinite number of
years, and then paid for them out of the first crop
raised upon the land, the wonderful yield of last year.
Such is the region at the very doors of the twin cities of
the Northwest. If Ceres left the Old World when the
worship of her went out of fashion, it must have been
to the valley of the Eed Eiver that she came. But if
mythology is suggested at all by a study of this mar-
vellous 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 well have been the stream that once swelled 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 we learn that in Minnesota and the
two Dakotas the wheat crop alone was worth one
hundred and twenty millions of dollars last year.
Figure for yourself the estimated yield of one hundred
and fifty millions of bushels selling at from 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 vatley, and less than
a quarter of it was in crop last year. If every acre
were put into wheat, there would be no market for the
wheat ; it would become a drug. As it is, of the por-
tion that is under cultivation, only about three-quarters
were in wheat, and the yield of last year was estimated
at from 30,000,000 to 37,000,000 bushels, grown at the
average proportion of 20 bushels to the acre. The
wheat 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 average product, and the farmer
is entitled to a profit of 810 an acre, with prices as they
were last year. Matured farming will raise the yield
to an average of 25 bushels an acre.

The Dakotas, which are also tributary to the twin
cities of Minnesota, do not offer opportunities for theat-
rical or bonanza farming. Three-quarters of their terri-
tory is not wheat land. More wheat can be raised
upon the six counties in the Red Eiver 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 would be very high praise of them
were 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 lumber production. The trees
are all counted ; the number of feet in each forest is
entered in the lumbermen's books. In Michigan, all
that is of value in the forests will have disappeared in
five years, it is said ; in Wisconsin, 15 years will end
the industry ; in Minnesota the supply will last 15 to
20 years — a pin point in the dial of time. Already
capitalists are turning their mercenary gaze towards
the majestic 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
farm products of the Washington of a later day are all
waited for to swell the importance of the twin cities,
for it is not now seen that there is a likelihood that
any other very great cities will be developed in the
Xorthwest except upon the Pacific coast. There will
be populous district centres, of course, and already
three such places are robust, lively towns, but the men

ill

who now seem possessed of the most shrewdness and
foresight in the Northwest do not believe that the
shifting horizon of time is hiding any competitor for
the position now occupied by the Minnesotan capitals
of trade.

Having noted the resources of the Northwest, pos-
sible as well as present, if the reader will turn to his
map he will see that the great railway lines of that
upper corner of our country present the appearance of
a rude diagram 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 Northwest. 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 many shrewd
citizens of one and the other who assert that they will
not unite while the present generation of leading men
remains dominant. There has been too keen a rivalry,
and each town is too jealous of the other, for union to
be possible, they say, until the boys of to-day become
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 two globules of quicksilver,
with a few little drops of the liquid between them.
Whoever journeys from one to the other fails to per-
ceive why they may not at any moment shake together
into one great glittering mass, with no other division
than is created by their separate charters, and no joint
border line except that which will require a surveyor's
kit to determine.

112

To begin with Minneapolis, the larger of the two
cities, let me introduce the town as that one which
seems to me the pleasantest and most nearly 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 comes with the
writing of these words ; yet St. Paul lacks some of the
qualities which Minneapolis possesses, and the words
must stand. Both cities have arisen amid park-like sur-
roundings, both rejoice in the possession of the lovely
Mississippi (for it is a most beautiful river 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 minor respect Minne-
apolis triumphs in being thoroughly consistent with 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, while 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 will be
difficult to find another influential trading and manu-
facturing city that is so peculiarly a city of homes. It
was 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 locality
wherein there were a few — a very few — apartment-
houses. They were not what we in New York call
•• tenement-houses," for the poor seemed superior to the
evil, and lived in their own tiny boxes ; they were flat-
houses for families few in members and indolent by
nature. These were so very few that the array of dwell-
ings took on an extraordinary importance. Try, then,
to fancy the pleasure and surprise with which I read in
the city directory, afterwards, a statement that the city's
H 113

164,738 inhabitants occupy 32,026 dwellings. If there
were 921 more dwellings there would be one to every
five persons, which is to say one to each family.

As these houses are in the main owned by their ten-
ants, the city presents a spectacle of communal dignity,
self-respect, and comfort that distinguishes it even in a
greater degree than Philadelphia is distinguished among
our Atlantic seaboard cities. It was pleasing to hear in
the neighboring city of St. Paul, where nearly the same
conditions prevail, that when the citizens go to the City
Hall to ask for places in the public service, or to de-
mand their rights, they often draw themselves up to
their full height and say, " I am a tax-payer," by way of
preface to a statement of their wishes. The man who
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 complete 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 motive power of
the city has always been pure Yankee. The settlers
were in a large degree from Maine, and it is wittily
said that they followed the pine westward, until at this
point its final appearance east of the Rockies was noted.
Here the Maine men 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 received here;
in 1887 the Great Western Railroad brought thirty-
three million bushels to the flouring - mills. It is
thought that the summit of fifty millions of bushels
will be reached in the twelve months which include the

114

period of receipt of the enormous crop of last year.
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 summer. He
marked out his claim, in what 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 which 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 simply little frame cottages, with
here and there a street of pretentious and large resi-
dences, also of wood, and with a few noble mansions
built of masonry for the leading capitalists of the place.
But the same admirable features distinguish all classes
of homes : nearly all stand apart one from 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 would plan, and nowhere do
the women, both matrons and maids, seem better placed
or more thoroughly the mistresses of their position in
modern city life than as one sees them upon those
bowery streets, passing the rows of pretty cottage
homes, beneath trees, amid flowers, and beside the rosy
children who play fearlessly in the well-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
may be called the business districts, where the stores
and factories are clustered together — a fit arrangement

115

for a woman's capital, an earthly paradise of homes, a
settlement of landlords and landladies.

The people of the city have little knowledge of the
impression that it makes upon those who compare it
with other towns, but they are aware of one effect,
while ignorant of the cause ; that is, they know theirs
is what is called an eminently "healthy" town. The
death rate is lower and the sum of the general health is
greater (or was 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 them. 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 majestic 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 from 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 system. It is a reproduction in
miniature 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 water, em-
bowered in trees and surrounded by the grove which
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 summer afternoons, a band is
stationed to play for the people. Light, graceful row-
boats are plentiful, and for hire at a low price; the
strand is fallowed, and fringed with rows of settees;
the scene is distant less than half an hour's journey
from the heart of the city, at a passage rate of five
cents, and there is no warning or rule against trespass
anywhere in the beautiful grounds, which the people
maintain, own, and are wisely permitted to enjoy. The
parks I have mentioned form but so many links in a
glorious chain which compasses two sides of the city,
that includes five parks and ten parkways, 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, well-or-
dered, and beautiful series of parkways, eighteen miles
in length.

Many Western cities and towns are interested specta-
tors of the work of removing the railroad grade cross-
ings in Minneapolis, for, although the city has grown to
its present size with the railroads entering and crossing
it on a level with its streets, the people have not hesi-
tated to force a solution of the problem that confronts
Chicago, and, indeed, most 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 work. 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 eminent shrewdness led him to fall in
with the city's project; indeed, he did more — he aided
the effort with suggestions that were calculated to
lighten and improve the work. Another corporation,
using tracks parallel with those of Mr. Hill's Great
Northern and Manitoba railroads, fought the authori-
ties ; but in time its receiver, who was an officer of the
courts, was ordered to accept a compromise between its
own and the city's demands, and the great and notable
work that is called " The Fourth Avenue Improve-
ment " 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 with
them. The danger, slaughter, and discomfort of the
citizens of Minneapolis may 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 street-
level service, and could have back the cost of its sunken
track with interest, it would not make the change. It
could not if it would ; it would not be able to transact
its present volume 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
with 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 like most other Western towns, the act of
self-defence and self-preservation was postponed until
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 two trunk lines, but on
that narrow avenue in the heart of the city is handled
the enormous traffic between the twin cities and their
chief summer resort, Lake Minnetonka.

The arrangement that Minneapolis made was a sim-
ple one— for the city. It decided that the railroads
were to build the entire viaduct, approaches, bridges,
masonry walls, excavations, and all, and that the city
was to stand between the railroads and those property-
holders who might claim damages for injuries growing
out of the improvement. It happens that most of the
buildings whose owners claim damages were old rat-
tletraps, and the highest claim for injury is one for
$12,000. In most cases abutting property was benefited.
The city 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, where the work of lowering the tracks
begins, and where there are many 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. They vary in length between 100 feet and
500 feet, as the tracks spread out beyond the starting-
point. One bridge is 100 feet in width, 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
within four feet in the hundred, but in one case the
grade is a foot greater. The railroads have done excel-
lent work, and the viaduct, with its stone walls and line
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 work
of this kind to know that the railroads which use the
new viaduct are greatly pleased with the reform, and
would 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 will bear
a moderate share of the cost. When I was in Minne-
apolis, in September, the City Engineer had been sent
for to testify in behalf of Columbus, Ohio, in a suit
growing out of a similar progressive movement in that
city ; and it is certain that when the whole country
knows what Minneapolis has done, her people will be
flattered by the attention their enterprise will attract.

To give an idea of the extent of the principal indus-
tries of the Flour City, let -me say, roughly, that her
saw-mills cut 343,000,000 feet of lumber, 162,000,000
shingles, and half as many 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 wheat, and shipped 12,000,000 bushels away.
The city has an assessed valuation of $138,000,000, and
nine millions of dollars of banking capital. It boasts a
public-school system that is everywhere held to be un-
excelled, and a function of the government is the main-
tenance of a library of 47,000 volumes, housed in a noble
building, and having two circulating branches connected
with it. In the extent of its circulation of books this

120

library is the seventh 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 millions of dollars. Its hotels and
theatres are very good, and among its notable office
buildings one is the best that I have seen anywhere in
the country ; that is the Northwestern Guaranty Loan
Company'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 light
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, which 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 news stands, and a battery of six or eight ele-
vators. The population of the building is 1500 souls.

But the growth of the manufacturing interests is the
most important feature of the development of this city.
It is rapidly fitting itself to become the main source of
supplies for the most opulent farming region in Amer-
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 wood - carving machinery, in
connection with a street -car construction company; a
smelter for reducing Montana silver ore ; a stove-works;
and additions to the facilities for making boots and

121

shoes, woollens, lumber, and flour. The difference in
freight rates enables the manufacturers of the twin
cities to hold their own against Chicago in the trade
with the Northwest, and they have their drummers in
all the cities and villages of the region.

The street-car service in Minneapolis is as nearly per-
fect as that of any city. Within a year, when the ex-
tensions now planned are completed, it will be without
a rival in this respect. The electrical system which de-
pends on overhead trolleys is in use there. The cars are
elegant and spacious, and run upon 70 miles of tracks.
They 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^ miles), including ordinary stops, in 32 min-
utes. At the end of this year the system will embrace
130 miles of tracks.

To the mind that is accustomed to judge of Eastern
towns, St. Paul is more city -like than Minneapolis. Its
business portion, originally laid out by French Canadi-
ans with narrow ideas, is such a compact mass of solid
blocks and little streets that it might almost have been
a ward 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 we were to imagine the twin cities
personified, we would liken Minneapolis to a vigorous
rustic beauty in short skirts ; while St. Paul we would
describe as a fashionable marriageable urban miss, a tri-
fle stunted and lacking color and plumpness, but with
more style and worldly grace than her sister. As to
which should have the preference, there will be views
as differing as the two towns. There are those who pre-
fer hard-paved, bustling 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 few years, they said, I would find all the
walls up and plastered, and the furniture in, and the
place cosey. In St. Paul it is just the other way ; it looks
finished. Its motto is, " While we journey through life,
let us live by the way ;" but the Minneapolis spirit is
that of the man who, to celebrate his marriage, built a
four-story house, and lived 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
I am not going to try. Every man to his taste, say I.
Minneapolis has done wondrous work for the future ;
St. Paul has clone 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 Germans. There are Irish
and Poles, French Canadians and Bohemians, there also,
and the Irish and Irish Americans 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

138

character as a finished city than will ever need to be
done in the future. Its expenditures of energy and
money have been remarkable. It has levelled its hills,
filled its marshes, and modernized all its conveniences.
The water- works, which were the property of individu-
als, now belong to the people, and serve two hundred
miles of mains with pure wholesome water brought
from a group of lakes ten miles north of the city. A
noted firm of water-works 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 mile and a half of improved streets
and three stone sidewalks eight years ago, and to-day it
possesses forty -.five miles of finished streets and fifty
miles 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 more nearly exorcised. Only
one notable crossing of that sort endangers the people's
lives and limbs. The public buildings of the city are
admirable, and were built at moderate cost, and without
sixpence worth 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 most modern
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 town. St. Paul is
rich in costly and great office buildings. There are a
dozen such, any and all of which would ornament any
city in the country.

The population in 1890 was 133,000, to which sum

124

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 slightly
modified degree that comes from its having a stronger
admixture of foreigners among its citizens and a larger
number of houses squeezed close together in its older
business district. Once away from that region, trees,
grass, and flowers greet the visitor's eyes wherever he
rides and walks. On both sides of the river the phalanxes
of pretty little homes rise among the trees. There are
villas for the well-to-do and tiny frame dwellings for
the poor, but the latter are not mere boxes ; they are
distinguished by prettiness of designing and individu-
ality of taste, and they stand apart from one another so
that the people who live in them may get the light and
air that are as needful to men and women as to plants
and trees. The well-to-do cottagers have gathered in
two or three very pretty clusters that were once suburb-
an villages. A notable peculiarity of their houses is
their possession of extra large double plate windows.
Sometimes a house will have only one such extra large
sheet of glass ; others will have several. "Whether these
are backed by drapings of snow-white lace or are filled
with plants and flowers, the effect is very beautiful. I
was told that in Minneapolis any man may buy himself
a home for from §1800 to $2000, selecting a site within
easy walking distance of the City Hall. I am sure the
same rule applies to St. Paul, which maintains forty-two
building and loan societies, with an invested capital of
83,064,310. 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
growth of the city by the addition of new buildings has

125

long kept up to a remarkable standard. For two years
—1888 and 1889— St. Paul was fourth in the list of
American cities in this respect. Last year (1890) the
permits issued were for 3174 buildings, planned to cost
nine and a half millions of dollars. But the wonder
ceases after the relation of the twin 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 million
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 work upon such a system. They admit that
they possess thirty-two 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
know of ordinary humanity in our comparatively torpid
Eastern cities to find them weak in one respect. But
St. Paul does not lack all elegance and ornament of the
highest and most modern 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 county.
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 New York since Kiverside Avenue has
begun to build up. None of these has the beauty which
the Hudson Kiver and its Palisades lend to Kiverside 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 may be necessary to say to the untravelled Eastern
reader that the appointments — and the tenants — of these
mansions reflect the best modern attainments of civiliza-
tion as it has been studied in the capitals of the world.
One, at least, among 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 will be found that the elegances and art tri-
umphs of far more than Christendom have been levied
upon to testify to a taste that at no point oversteps the
limits cultivation has established. On the walls a num-
ber of the masterpieces of the Barbizon school hang side
by side with the best efforts of Munkacsy, Diaz, Tadema,
Detaille, 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 saying that such is the home of Mr. James
J. Hill, the president of the Great Northern Kailroad,
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 Western 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 homes of those communities.

Once again we come to the heart of any such study of
a city's capacity for growth in importance and wealth.
St. Paul in 1881 manufactured $15,466,000 worth of
goods with which to trade with 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 implements, lager- beer, cigars,

127

fur garments, 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-work, 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 in the same year. It has fine hotels and opera-
houses, a typically elaborate Western school system, and
is in all respects a healthy, vigorous, well-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 baby
twins — Duluth in Minnesota, and Superior in Wisconsin.
Though they are in different States, they are closer to
one another than the cities from which we have just
taken -our leave. 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 radical changes that are taking place in the outlets
for the produce of the Northwestern States. Not many
years ago the grain trade centred at Chicago and Mil-
waukee, but the demands for economy that led to the
development of the present railway systems in Minne-
sota and the Dakotas have altered the course of the
wheat movement, and have led to the building up of
the twin ports at the head of Lake Superior. These
two ports now receive a large proportion of this busi-
ness, and have already distanced Chicago in the compe-
tition. It is easy to understand why this should be the
case. Duluth and Superior are nearer to a large section
of the Northwest than either Chicago or Milwaukee,
and yet they are not any farther from the Eastern lake
ports at the other end of the water route for freight. A

128

glance at the map will reveal the fact that the distance
to Buffalo is no greater from the head of Lake Superior
than from the head of Lake Michigan, where Chicago is
situated. This advantage in position is evident ^o any
one, but the men of Duluth and Superior claim a greater
advantage. By drawing circles ten miles apart, with
themselves as a centre, they demonstrate the possession
of a larger tributary territory than can be shown for
Chicago by the same means.

It is humorously said to be as much as one's life is
worth to describe or to weigh the comparative merits of
these rival inland ports. This wras the case not long
ago with regard to St. Paul and Minneapolis, but last
autumn one of those cities joined in an effort to secure
the holding of a convention in the rival town. It will
be long before any such amiable and generous self-sacri-
fice will be shown at the head of Lake Superior. The
situation there is intensified by the fact that Duluth
was for a long while practically alone in the glorious
possession of the advantages that a seat at the head of
the great lake brings with it. Suddenly, within five
years, a little village a stone's-throw off, on the other
side of the St. Louis Elver, which separates Wisconsin
and Minnesota, sprung from the stagnation of a chrysa-
lis condition into a stirring town that began to estab-
lish town limits calculated to leave Duluth a very small
second fiddle to make music with 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
numbers, the impudent baby next door had grown
nearly half as big as itself. Worse yet, the ambition of
Superior is seen to expand with ten times the ratio of
its increasing growth, and if the student of the situation
reads the official literature of the younger lake port, he
will discover that the records of its achievements are ar-

i 129

ranged to show how it is gaining upon Chicago — upon
Chicago, mark you, as if it considered its nearest neigh-
bor, twice its size, too unimportant for consideration !
From the point of view of Duluth, fancy such a situation !

There are those who 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 policy,
which, while it was maintained, gave an opportunity for
the development of the rival port. It is not worth while
here to discuss these moot points. In considering the
relation of the head of internal water navigation to the
country beyond it, both -cities have a common value.
Whether both keep pace in growth with the develop-
ment of the vast and opulent territory behind them, or
whether one becomes ten times greater than its neigh-
bor, the point of interest will 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 from their location, which, it seems clear, must
become the seat of a great population and of extraordi-
nary activity.

Since this will not be gainsaid, it will be the simplest
course to state the arguments and claims of both these
rival ports at once. Their leaders assert that whatever
of wealth and importance has come to Buffalo, Cleve-
land, Detroit, and Chicago is due to their advantages as
distributing and receiving points for the tonnage of the
lake commerce. This it is which has drawn the rail-
ways to these cities, and the result of the reciprocal in-
fluence of the railway and harbor transactions has been
a degree of importance dependent upon the extent and
productiveness of the territory tributary to each of these
lake ports.

180

The reader can scarcely 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 permits, 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 Commerce of one of these
twin lake ports — "if a straight line be drawn uniting
Chicago with these ports, and this line be bisected by
another beginning near the eastern end of Lake Superior
and extending south west wardly to the Gulf of Califor-
nia, near the 27th parallel, this latter line will represent
with geometrical exactness all points that are equidis-
tant from 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 more than half of the United
States, are now pointing towards the newer ports as
their ultimate objective, it is said, because they aim to
secure the shortest route to deep-water navigation. For
an example of the point sought to be made, 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
almost completed to the Pacific coast; and the Canadian
Pacific Railroad, which has leased a railway from Du-
luth to the other end of Lake Superior, is about to dip
down from a point in Manitoba to join its new property
at Duluth.

These cities have already been sought by eight rail-
ways, operating 17,514 miles of roadways. They 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 lumber 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 other
railway lines which will lead into Iowa and the corn
belt, and up into the wheat fields of Manitoba and the
Canadian Northwest.

These lake-side twins themselves realize some of the
benefits of that cheap water transportation which is
reached through them. For instance, the coal they use
comes to them at the same 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 months
in the year the jobbers in the twin lake ports get East-
ern goods at the same cost for transportation that is
paid by the Chicago jobbers. Thus they have another
advantage over Minneapolis and St. Paul. The flour-
milling 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
summer. It has another and smaller mill in operation,
and three others are projected. Duluth may yet become
a very considerable milling point. The reason is that to
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 miller saves. The big Minneapolis mills
are eking out their insufficient water-power with steam,
and in the cost of fuel the lake port mills again have the
advantage.

At the extreme western end of Lake Superior, where
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 narrow beach of the modern
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 men have built upon it at
Quebec, at Bar Harbor, and at minor places in Corn-
wall and Devonshire, England ; but the habit in nature
and in man is rare. Naturally Duluth has grown most
in length along the foot of the bluff, and the distance
from one sparsely built end to the other broken and
scattering termination is about six miles. A large frac-
tion of this length is compactly 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 away as if it were so
much dirt, and the main street runs by the spot as if the
rocks never had been. To get teams and people up the
steepest part of the hill -side — and perhaps to demon-
strate anew the inability of nature to daunt the Duluth
man — an inclined plane, like a massive slanting elevated
railroad, is now building, and will soon be ready for the
hauling of every sort of load, whether of wagons, cars,
men, or beasts, up to the top of the hill. Out there,
among those indomitable people, it is impossible to re-
sist the feeling that if the moon were to take a fixed po-
sition permanently just over the city, they would annex
it, and find a way 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 parkway or boulevard twelve
miles long, 200 feet wide, and half encircling the city.
Unfortunately the larger trees of the one-time forest up
there had been all cut down when this was 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 would 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 admire
the city. In the thickly built heart of it are many cost-
ly 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 railway depot are among these. Be-
yond them and the town lies the harbor made by nature
in a way 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 wharves, 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, typifying 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' low flat of
which I have spoken, you see Superior, Wisconsin, the
rival of Duluth, made up of old Superior, West Su-
perior, and South Superior. It is remarkable only for
its enterprise. It is not almost unique in the character
of its site, as is Duluth, nor is it pretty or picturesque.
It has elbow-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 growth of population by some years." Then
the historian goes on to speak highly of its sewage
system, its electric street motors, 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 establish-
ment of a number of important manufacturing estab-
lishments in the younger city, and with each such ad-
dition the spirits and hopes of the community have
risen higher and higher. From the Evening Telegram's
hand-book upon the subject I gather the following notes
of the possessions and achievements of the city : It
has an area of 37 square miles, an assessed valuation of
$23,000,000, a bonded indebtedness of about 8900,000,
and a tax list of half a million dollars. It has ten banks,
with a million of capital for all, and surpluses and undi-
vided profits amounting to £216,286. its coal receipts
by boat in 1890 were 1,045,000 tons ; its oil receipts,
115,000 barrels. Its wheat 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 bushfils of
barley, 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-
way, the American Steel Barge Works (where the
famous "whaleback" lake steamers are made), the
West Superior Iron and Steel Works, a carriage fac-
tory, a number of saw -mills, a furniture factory, and
many other smaller works of various kinds. The pop-
ulation of what there was of Superior in 1884 was 2000 ;
in 1889 it was 10,000 ; in 1890 it was 11,983. Now it is
variously estimated at from 15,000 to 20,000.

135

Duluth is said to owe its foundation to the grasping
demands of those who held the land on the Wisconsin
side of the bay when Jay Cooke sought a terminal
point there for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Now
Superior has arisen simultaneously with the nearing
completion of the Great Northern Railroad, which
transfers its grain and other east-bound freight from its
cars to its great steamers 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.

1391.

Flour bbls •

2 589 384

3 220 273

Wheat bush

14090826

34492438

Corn

1,453,089

302,503

Oats

1 616 635

365 872

Barlev . . . .

130931

156497

Flaxseed

51,440

308,363

Rye. .

20,472

Duluth has extensive iron-works, iron and steel and
steel and tin works, a wood-turning mill, lumber 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 consumers of the
supply, and receives far more than it ships away. The
place is well paved, drained, and lighted, and has a good
Avater supply system. As it would 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 the East, but
we 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 most 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 two
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 others Lizzie and Fan-
nie and their respective little 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 }^ou. I'm going out to hustle."

The word always jars upon the ear of an Eastern man
when it is seriously spoken, but it is preferable to that
other expression once dominant in the West, but now
all but abandoned. That was the word " rustle." The
noun a " rustler " and the verb " to rustle " meant pre-
cisely what is conveyed by the newer terms a hustler
and to hustle. At the first blush, as they say out West,
rustle seems the better word. 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 was 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 word
of evil intent, for the cowboys invented it, and applied
it to cattle-thieves, rustlers being the swift raiders who
stole upon grazing cattle on the plains, and rustled off
with as many head, or beasts, as they could get away
with. Therefore rustle is the worse word of the two.

137

Hut to one who lives where neither word is in familiar
use there is little 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, who are elbowed 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 growth, and resist
the growing demands of the shippers of the Northwest.
In another article, upon Lake Superior, the situation in
which these cities find themselves, and the need of
prompt action by the Government, will receive atten-
tion.

138

THE DAKOTAS

Ix entering upon a study of the newly admitted States,
and beginning with those of the Northwest, we are con-
fronted by new scenes, new peoples, and new condi-
tions, in which we shall find far fewer reminders of our
•era life than greet us in some regions which we re-
1 as quite foreign, as in old Canada, for instance.
A\V are putting a new slide into the American magic-
lantern. We are opening a new volume added to our
own history, and we are to read of new characters mov-
ing amid surroundings quite as new ; to them almost as
new as to us.

Beginning with the Dakotas, we 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 wrin-
kled in the finishing — at the top edge and down in the
southwest corner. On its surface the houses and the
villages stand out in silhouette against a sky that bends
down to touch the level sward. Here we find the west-
ern edge of the lands which the Scandinavians who have
come among us prefer to their own countries. Here we
come upon the yellow wheat -fields that turned their
kernels into millions of golden dollars last year. Here,
also, we see the more than half savage cattle whose
every part and possession, except their breath, is con-
verted into merchandise in Chicago. The hard-riding

139

OF THE

nr KT T TT-T- T-. ,-,.

cowboys are here " turned loose," and the not less do-
mesticated Indians in their blankets are cribbed in the
national corrals. A great thirst would seem to over-
spread the Dakotas, for the lands are arid, while the
people possess prohibitory liquor laws, and water that
is poisoned with alkali.

In the Black Hills we prepare ourselves for Montana
by a first glimpse of mining. In Montana, where the
very first merchant's sign-board announced " pies, coffee,
and pistols for sale," we now see the legend " licensed
gambling saloon " staring at the tourists, who may walk
into the hells more easily than they can into the stock
exchanges of the East. In Montana we feel an atmos-
phere of speculation. Every store clerk hoards some
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 millionaire heroes of each tale. Moreover,
the very air of Montana is a stimulant, like champagne.
Perhaps it gathers its magic from the earth, where the
precious metals are strewn over the mountains, where
sapphires, rubies, and garnets are spaded out of the earth
like goober nuts in the South, and where men hunt for
the diamonds which scientists say must be there.

Montana is a land of ready cash and high wages.
Lumbermen and miners get as high as seven dollars a
day, and the very street-sweepers get twice as much as
politicians pay to broom-handlers in New York to keep
in favor with the poor. Here we find wealth, polish,
and refinement, noble dwellings, 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 mining camps and California-colored character-
istics of the mountainous 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 semi-tropic and in-
cessant freshness and abundance. Here flowers bloom
in the gardens at Christmas, small fruits threaten Cali-
fornia's prestige, and the aborigines are bow-legged, boat-
ing Indians who work 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 we find the New England leadership
missing. Here is a great corner of America where 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, among a
new race of pioneers, to have New England recalled to
us again only in Spokane and Tacoma — and but faintly
there. The new Northwest is peopled by men who
followed the Missouri and its tributaries from Kentucky,
Indiana, Iowa, Arkansas, and Missouri. Others who are
among them speak of themselves as from California and
Utah, but they are of the same stock. Broadly speak-
ing, they founded these new countries between the out-
break of the rebellion and the end of the reconstruction
period in the Southern States. They are not like the
thrifty, argumentative, and earnest Xew-Englander, or
the phlegmatic Dutch and hard-headed English of the
Middle States. These new Americans are tall, big-boned,
stalwart folks, very self-assertive, very nervous, very
quick in action, and quicker still in forming resolutions.

141

If it would be fair to treat of them in a sentence, it could
be said that they act before they think, and when they
think, it is mainly of themselves. Their European ori-
gin is so far behind them that they know 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 American.

Because it is impossible to picture the novelty — to an
Eastern reader — of life in the Northwest, and because
it nevertheless must 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 come into the stock ranges of Montana
shearers by the hundreds, in bands of ten or twenty,
each led by a captain, who finds employment and makes
contracts for the rest. These sheep-barbers are mainly
Californians and New-Yorkers, and the California men
are said to be the more skilful workers. To a lay-
man, all seem marvellously dexterous, and at ten cents
a head, many are able to earn $6 to $8 a day. They
lose many days in travel, however, and may not aver-
age more than $5 on that account. Their season begins
in California in February, and they work through Ore-
gon, Washington, and Montana, to return to a second
shearing on the Pacific coast in August. Some come
mounted and some afoot, and some are shiftless and dis-
sipated, but 'many are saving, and ambitious to earn
herds of their own.

They come upon the Montanan hills ahead of another
and far stranger procession — that of the cattle that are
being driven across the country from Texas. This is a
string of herds of Texas two-year-olds coming north at

142

middle age to spend the remaining 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-niay-care cowboys, led by
a foreman, and followed by a horse- wrangler in charge
of the relays of broncos. A cook, with a four- horse
wagon-load of provisions, brings up each rear. Only a
few miles are covered in a day, and the journey con-
sumes many weeks. These are enlivened by storms, by
panics among the cattle, by quarrels with settlers on
guard at the streams and on their lands, by meals missed
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 the 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
from as far north as British Columbia and Alaska.1,
When all have made the journey, their canoes fret the
strand, and the smoke of their camp fires touches the
air with blue. Women and children accompany the
men, all alike illuminating the green background of the
hop-fields with their gay blankets and calicoes, them-
selves lending still other touches of color by means of
their leather skins and jet hair. They leave a trail of
silver behind them when they depart, but the hops they

143

have picked represent still more of gold — a million last
year ; two millions the year before.

Again, a fourth set of invaders appears ; this time in
Dakota. These are not picturesque. They come not in
boats or astride horses, but straggling or skulking along
the highways, as the demoralized peasantry made their
way to Paris during the French Eevolution. These are
the wheat-harvesters, who follow the golden grain all
the way up from Texas, finding themselves in time for
each more and more belated ripening in each more and
more northerly State, until, in late autumn, they reach
the Red River Yalley, and at last end their strange pil-
grimage in Manitoba. The hands and skill they bring
to the dense wheat-fields of eastern North Dakota are
most welcome there, and these harvest folk might easily
occupy a high niche in sentimental 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 work 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 now 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 many
persons in the Dakotas who now realize that a foolish
mistake was made in the choice of the names North
Dakota and South Dakota. Both fancied there was
magic in the word Dakota, and wanted to possess it.
By succeeding in that purpose they ridiculed the noble
word, which means leagued or united.

To the traveller who crosses North Dakota in the
thoroughly modern and luxurious easy-rolling trains of
the Northern Pacific Railroad, the region east of the
Missouri seems one dead-level reach of grass. It ap-
pears to be so level that one fancies if his eyesight were
better he might 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 meet in a monotonous repetition of unbroken
circles. As a matter of fact, there is a slight slope up-
ward from the Red River of the North at the eastern
edge of the State, there is a decided valley south of
Jamestown, and for fifty miles before the Missouri
River is reached the land begins to slope slightly tow-
ards that stream. There are hills, too, called by the
French the " Coteau du Missouri," and never yet re-
christened, to mark 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, with all its billows fixed
immutably. It is partly a mass of softly rounded,
grassy breasts ; and beyond them, in the Bad Lands,
the hills change to the form of waves that are ready to
break upon a strand. Farther on, the change is into
buttes, into peaked, columnar, detached hills. On the
light snow that merely frosted this broken country last
winter, when I crossed it twice, there seemed not a yard
of the earth's surface that was not tracked with the
K 145

foot-writing of wild animals and birds — that kitchen
literature which the red men 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-mile trip to cross
it from 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 Eed Eiver Valley. In the
rest of the State the crops have failed year after year,
and even the grazing of stock, for which alone the
critics of the State say it is fit, has been attended with
some serious reverses. The most extravagant lying
indulged in to boom the State has failed to alter nature
—just as it failed in Canada, where it was followed by
even greater hardship and disappointment. The lying
on behalf of North Dakota took the form of applying
the phenomenal figures of the rich Eed Eiver Valley to
the whole State, quoting the earnings of Eed Eiver
farms and the experiences of Eed Eiver settlers as
applicable to all Dakota.

Having gone to Dakota because of the marvellous
yield of wheat in the Eed Eiver Valley, the unfortunate
settlers put all their holdings in wheat. It is customary
in Dakota for people to say that these poor fellows
bought their experience dearly, but they did not pay
as much 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 moisture to grow the grain. In one year there
was not enough to sprout it. There were five years
of dire misfortune, and they brought absolute ruin to
all who had no means laid by. Many were ruined who
had money, and thousands left the Territory, for it

146

was a Territory when the wholesale lying was at its
height.

The soil in the Ked River Valley is a thick vegetable .
deposit, while 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 Ked Kiver country
would be no better than all the rest. And there is the
rub. With irrigation, North Dakota will become a rich
farming 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 now on the
surface of the State ; it must be by means of wells, or
by " bombs bursting in air," or by Australian alchemy.
And yet it is not fair to the State to say that it can do
nothing without irrigation. We shall see that the be-
lief is that its worst misfortunes have come from its
dependence upon a single crop, and that by diversified
farming the wolves can be kept from the doors when
the wheat crop fails.

Last year came a change of luck and a year such as
North Dakota has not enjoyed in a long while. 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 must
be credited with from 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 of bush-
els. Of corn, 300,000 bushels were raised; of oats,
10,000,000 bushels ; of cattle, a million dollars' worth :
and of hay and potatoes, a very great deal. This was
good work for a population of 200,000 souls. It is
estimated that the money product of the entire harvest
was sufficient to pay off the indebtedness of the farmers,
and leave an average of $250 to each farming family.
At the beginning of 1892 it was prophesied that the
farmers would free themselves of only those debts upon

147

which they had been paying a high rate of interest, so
as to be in a position to borrow at lower rates and to
improve their farm buildings. They have been paying
all the way from 12 to 24 per cent, a year for loans.
They have also been obliged to give bonuses to the
loaning agents at renewal times, getting $180, say,
when they were charged with $200. These agents are
terrible sharks, and there are crowds of them in the
State, calling themselves real -estate and loan agents,
getting money 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 money could be obtained by them.

How the poor victims lived through these exactions
is a mystery. Many did not. They abandoned their
farms and the State. A great many came back last
year on hearing of the likelihood of a good season.
But the best news is that last year nearly all the farm-
ers began to turn their attention to diversified farming
and to stock-raising in conjunction with agriculture.
North Dakota was always a good cattle State at least
three years in five, and the manner in which the farmers
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 winter,
when the beeves need attention, the farmers will have
nothing else to attend to. They calculate that they can
raise a three-year-old beef at an expense of from $12 to
$15, and market it at from $30 to $40. At the least,
they figure on a profit of $5 a head each year. It would
appear that cattle thus looked after, with hay in corrals

148

for the winter, may some day be rated between stall-fed
and range cattle. In the summer these farmers are ad-
vised to put into wheat only that acreage which they
can handle without hired help, for help is hard to get in
the western part of the State. The mysterious nomads
of the wheat belt do not go there.

On the Missouri slope, where most of the corn was
raised last year, that crop never was a failure. It has
been cultivated there for twenty years. In fact in some
Indian mounds above Bismarck corn-cobs are found
along with the pottery and trinkets for which the
mounds are constantly ravaged. Potatoes also grow
well on the Missouri slope. Starch is being made from
them at a factory started by a New England man at
Hankinson. in Richland County. From eight to ten
tons of starch is being made daily at that place.

The range land for cattle is in that district which may
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 northwestern counties. By the time this is
published, the change will, in all probability, have been
accomplished. There are thirteen counties west of the
Missouri on the present maps, and only four of these
have county governments. The new arrangement will
complete the political machinery for assessment and tax-
ation in the grazing lands. The cattle-men are supposed
to l>e 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 small holdings with winter corrals. There are five

149

horse ranches west of the Missouri. At one point Bos-
ton capitalists are raising thoroughbreds from imported
stallions. The rest of the stock is of the common order,
herded loose on the ranges.

But there is some farming even west of the Missouri. \
Corn, wheat, and oats are successfully raised in Morton
County. Mercer County produced a splendid quality of
wheat 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 come 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 wholesale in Bismarck at $2 40 a ton, and in Pierre,
South Dakota, for $3 50 a ton. In Bismarck soft coal
now sells for $8 and $8 50, and anthracite for $11 a ton.
The Dakota coal is a lignite — an immature coal — but it
serves well for ordinary uses, making a hot lire, a white
ash, and no soot. Its worst fault is that it crumbles
when it is exposed to the air. Dakota coal from Mor-
ton County is already marketed. There seems to be an
inexhaustible supply of it in that county. The veins
that are now being worked 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-mills, 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 west of the river is almost as great.
The veins vary in thickness from 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 most extraordinary

150

'•find'' — a bountiful provision of nature. It greatly al-
ters the former view of the future of North Dakota —
and of South Dakota also, since there is enough for both
States. It adds to the comfort of life there, it provides
a coal at least half as good as anthracite at one-quarter
the cost, and it would seem that it must become the
basis of manufacturing industries in the near future. A
good terra-cot ta 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 omitted to mention the fact that many capi-
talists who had loaned money to farmers west 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 summer in
herds of from 50 to 100 head. The plan generally
adopted is for the farmer to take care of the sheep for
five 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 them, increase and all. I do not find
it to be the general opinion that this will turn out well
in most cases. Sheep require constant attention, and
the raising of them is a business by itself, not to be
taken up at hap-hazard by men 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 whole State
is one-third. The western grazing counties form a third
of the State, but much of their land is taken up by
farmers — along the streams and the railroads. In all
probability one-quarter of it that is not taken up is ara-
ble laud, but until railroads reach it there will be no
profit in tilling it. The land yet obtainable is part rail-

151

road and part government land. It fetches from $1 25
to $4 an acre. Two railroads cross the State from east
to west, and two new ones are in process of construc-
tion across the State from 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 law
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
more earnestly by the Scandinavian element than by any
others, and their votes, especially in the Red River Val-
ley, greatly assisted in making it the law ; but intelligent
men, who 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 promised to vote for it, or who voted for it because
they thought nothing would come of their action. The
Scandinavians are alcohol-drinkers, and many who serve
as spokesmen for them frankly declare that their coun-
trymen need prohibitory laws because they are not mild
and phlegmatic beer-drinkers like 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
law or repeal it, the process will consume five years. It
is impossible to say what the temper 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 damaging 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 which it has been included in the stat-

152

utes would seem to make a mockery of the principle
that underlies it.

The local geologists say that the Ked Kiver Valley is
the bed of a former sea. Enormous rivers poured into
it, and washed a great depth of alluvial deposit there, to
make the extraordinarily rich soil that now supports the
most 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 between 50 and 100 miles
wide. It ' extends from a point 100 miles above the
Canadian border down to the southern edge of North
Dakota. The western 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 western edge is inclined
to be sandy.

The soil is a rich black loam. In the old days the
hieroglyphs of the buffalo, written in their trails, seemed
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 towards 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 matter how rich and productive it is. In sum-
mer this is a wilderness of grain ; in winter, a waste of
stubble. But we shall see further on that this cannot
long be the case.

The certainty of the wheat crop is the best gift the
good fairies gave it at its christening. Any farmer who
attends to his business can make $6 to $8 an acre on
wheat at its present price, and, considering that he buys

153

his land at about $25 an acre, that is an uncommonly
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 me on the ground, where
they said, " There's no use lying when the truth is so
good." There are higher yields. One large farm 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 with 6000 acres cleared $40,000 ; one
with 3500 acres made a profit of $25,000. Many paid
for their farms ; scores could have done so, but wisely
preferred to put some of their money in farm better-
ments.

There has never been a failure of crops in the valley.
It sometimes happens that men put in their wheat too
late, and it gets nipped by frost, but there is no excuse
for that. Barley is what the prudent men put in when
they are belated. They raise good barley, and a great
deal of it, in the valley, the main products being wheat,
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 without a failure.
Irrigation is not needed or employed in the valley, but
artesian wells are very numerous there, as well they
may be, since the water is reached at a depth of 20 feet
and a cost of $100.

To go to the valley is not to visit the border. It is a
well-settled, well-ordered, tidy farming region, of a piece
with our Eastern farm districts, with 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

'esign Wells, High Pressure and Bore Indicated....
esian Wells, Low Pressure and Springs Indicated

MAP OF NORTH AND SOUTH DAKOTA

each, or at the most whole sections. Therefore that
end is the most 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
when the railroad needed money, an opportunity for big
holdings was created and embraced. These so-called
bonanza properties do not pay proportionately, and are
being diminished by frequent sales. In one year (1888)
no less than twenty -four thousand acres on one of these
farms were sown in wheat.

The present population of the Ked Kiver Valley is of
Norwegians, Swedes, Irish, English, and Canadians, all
being now Americanized by law. It is strange — to
them it must be bewildering — to think that in that
valley are women who were once harnessed with dogs
to swill- wagons in their native cities, and yet are now
the partners of very comfortable, prosperous farmers.
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 never 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 never prosperous until they raised their
own bacon. So, latterly, these Ked Eiver people have
been venturing upon the cultivation of mutton, pork,
wool, horses, vegetables, and small fruits. But the first
efforts at saving are as hard as learning to swim, and so
as soon as these farmers learned that Europe was clam-
oring for wheat, they lost their heads. It is said that
they abandoned 50 per cent, of the dairy farming that
had grown to be a great source of income there, and in

156

all the towns where the farmers' daughters were at
work as domestic servants, the kitchen industries were
crippled by a general homeward flight of the girls.
" Our fathers are rich now, and we won't have to work
any more," they said.

A leading railroad man in the Northwest, who is
noted for his luminous and picturesque way of talking,
is fond of calling the Ked Kiver farmers "the leisure
class of the West." He says : " They only attend to
their business for a few weeks in the spring and fall,
and that they do sitting down, with splendid horses to
drag the farming implements on which they ride
around. When their grain is ripe, they hire laborers to
cut and harvest It, and then they cash it in for money,
fill the banks of the valley with money to the bursting-
point, and settle down for a long loaf, or go to Europe
or Xew York." Yet they must find a continuance of
their strength and prosperity in diversified farming and
in hard work, and this is being taught to the rest by
the shrewder ones among them. Such men are mak-
ing the breeding of fine draught-horses a side reliance,
and very many farms now maintain from 1500 to 2000
Percheron, Norman, 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 ; moreover, the
soil clogs in their hoofs, and subjects them to hoof rot,
and other diseases prey upon them there.

There are nearly 9,000,000 acres in the valley, and
one-sixth of it is under the plough. One hundred and
fifty million bushels of wheat could be raised there if
every acre was 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 while this is being written (in the
holidays of '91-2), a great many farmers are holding
their grain in the firm belief that Russia's needs will
determine a rise of 20 cents in the price. Those who
sold got 80 cents ; those who are holding back want a
dollar a bushel.

The climate is, of course, perfect for farming. Some
very lively tornadoes go with it, and in the winter 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 imagination,
and the cold of the winter 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 with it. There
are plentiful rains in the spring and the autumn, with
intensely hot weather at midsummer. The moisture is
held in the soil by the clay underneath, and in hot sum-
mer weather the surface cakes into a crust, still leaving
the moisture in the earth.

I am so explicit about this great "bread-basket of
America," as it is called, because it is by far the best
part of North Dakota — so very much the best that in
the valley the people are heard to say that they wish
they were not tied to the rest of the State. " What a
marvellous State it would have made to have taken the
eastern half of the valley from 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 remained a Ter-
ritory. But even in view of the excellence of this Red
River region there would be little use in exploiting it
were it all farmed and populated. On the contrary,
there is room for thousands there — for many thousands.

158

The land now obtainable cannot be purchased for less
than $25 an acre, but not more than $30 need be paid.
Money down is not needed. The system called " paying
with half crops" obtains there. The farmer pays half
of what the land produces each year until the sum 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 farm it. He will need to house
himself and buy horses and tools. However, one owner
of 910 acres came 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
valley applies particularly to the six valley counties of
North Dakota. The Minnesota land is not so good.

Here, then, is a region that must feel the greatest in-
crease in population that will come to any part of North
Dakota. The river that curves and twists its way be-
tween the farms has beea rightly nicknamed the Nile of
America. In the twelve counties that border upon it
in Minnesota and Dakota are 61 banks, with deposits
amounting, in last December, to $6,428,000, or $65 for
every man, woman, and child in the region. The farm-
ers are the principal depositors, and they had this
amount to their credit when a very large fraction of
their grain crop had not been sold. The valley has two
thrifty towns — Fargo, with 7000 population, and Grand
Forks, with 6000.

I have spoken of the custom in the valley of relying
upon a swarm of nomad harvesters to fall upon the
wheat and garner it in the autumn. They make a pict-
uresque army of invaders, led by the men from the Min-
nesota forests and Wisconsin pineries, in their peculiar
coats of checked blanket stuff, but far too many of them
form 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 employ
when they are in the fields, their idea being that the
fewer the laborers the more work for those who are em-
ployed. They will abandon a farm on half a day's no-
tice, and between the laziness and drunkenness of num-
bers of them there is little chance for either good or
hard work. 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 which relies
on these harvesters is a bad one, and in time, with small-
er holdings, the farmers will mainly harvest their crops
with their own hands and neighborhood help.

North Dakota has many attractive towns, those that
I have mentioned in the Ked Kiver country being the
largest. Bismarck, 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 families
of a number and character to form 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 was admitted. As these lands cannot be
sold for less than $10 an acre, the schools would appear

160

to be certain eventually to have the support of a fund
of 830,000,000.

South Dakota is 360 miles long and 225 miles wide.
It contains 76,620 square miles, and is therefore larger
than North Dakota by 2308 square miles. The popula-
tion is estimated at 325,000, or more than half as much
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 triumphing over all the rest of the State in
its wealth, so South Dakota has its treasure land, the
Black Hills mineral 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 s2 7,000,000 last year, whereas South Dakota's
precious metals are worth but 83,000,000 or $3,500,000
a year. Right through the middle of the State runs the
Missouri River, with its attendant hills of gumbo clay
and its slender groves of cottonwood to relieve the
dreadful monotony of the plains, and to give a beauty
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-growing,
leaving themselves nothing to carry them along if the
crops failed; and fail they did in 1887, '88, '89, and
'90. Then came 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 was never, perhaps, better de-
served. Estimates made before the threshing showed a
wheat 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 follows:
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 was achieved in 50 counties, nearly all east of the
Missouri River. Some farming in the western or cattle-
grazing half of the State was done in what may be
loosely called the Black Hills region in the southwest,
where there are railroads and local government and nu-
merous 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 more than in 1890. Not-
withstanding the flight of so many farmers, there were
only 400 acres less under the plough than during the
preceding years. In the middle of the agricultural or
eastern half of the State is a fertile, great, and well- wa-
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 Devil's Lake
in northern North Dakota to the Nebraska border of
southern South Dakota. It is watered by artesian wells,
of which there is much to be said later on. There are
many little streams 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 farmers who had grown flax to rot the sod
and to harvest the seed are now growing 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.

162

too, are being raised clown in that part of the State, and
a packing concern is under way. Pierre also has a
packing establishment.

Hundreds of thousands of sheep are being taken into
central South Dakota. It is called a common thing to
keep 95 per cent, of the lambs, 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 have a friend, a lawyer, who, whenever he visits the
farm on which he was born, vexes his father by assert-
ing that there is a higher percentage of profit in fann-
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 lamb costs §2 50, yields wool worth 12
shillings a year, sells for $5, and creates several other
sheep of equal value. Unfortunately there is another
side to the story — but this is not the place for telling it.
It is devoutly to be hoped, however, that sheep-raising
may be a success in the Dakotas, as, indeed, it has al-
ready proved with some extra intelligent and careful
men there.

The Black Hills are cut off from the rest of the State.
I could not find any one to tell me 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. Between the Missouri and the Black
Hills was, until lately, the great Sioux reservation of

163

twenty -three millions of acres, or practically one-third
of the State. That was cut in two a little more than a
year ago, and eleven millions of acres were thrown open
for settlement. But no railroad yet bisects the tract;
no governments administer 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. Some white
men actually were making use of it ; but the greater
number of men who had cows in there were squaw men,
remnants of a band of French Canadians who came
thither in the fur-trading era, married squaws, and grew
to be more Indian than the Indians. One rich old squaw
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 have
50,000 cattle there.

It is a superb range cattle country where it is watered,
and the stock keeps seal fat all the time. Shipments
from 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 summer. The
bother of it is, so far as the cattle-men are concerned, that
settlers are taking up the land by the streams, and event-
ually wells must be sunk in the arid country or the stock-
men must retire from it. The farms 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 selling this reclaimed reservation
land at $1 25 an acre for first choice during the first
three years, for 75 cents during the next two years, and
for 50 cents for all lands not taken after five years. Af-

164

ter that the Government will pay the Indians for what
remains. The money obtained by the sales goes to the
Indian fund, and the plan is designed to help to make
the Indians self-supporting. What it means to the
white men is that the people who have been the most
distressed and unfortunate class in the Northwest are
practically subjected to an especial and additional tax
for the support of Indians who are not their wards, but
the wards of the nation. One small 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 attempt to reply in broken
English as follows :

" All same old story," said he. " White men come,
build chu-chu [railroad] through reservation. White
men yawpy-yawpy [talk]. Say: 'Good Indian, good
Indian ; we want land. We give muz-es-kow [money] ;
liliota muz-es-kow [plenty money].' Indian say, 'Yes.'
What Indian get? Wah-nee-che [nothing]. Some day
white man want move Indian. White men yawpy-yaw-
py : ' Good Indian, good Indian ; give good Indian liliota
muz-es-kow.' What Indian get? Wah-nee-che. Some
day white man want half big reservation. He come
Indian. Yawpy-yawpy : ' Good Indian ; we give Ind-
ian liliota muz-es-kow.' Indian heap fool. He say,
' Yes.' What Indian get ? Wah-nee-che. All same old
story. ' Good Indian, good Indian.' Get nothing."

What the white men of South Dakota want now is to
have the Government of the United States spend a little
of the muz-es-kow it is getting from the sale of these
lands in driving wells in the newly opened lands for ir-

165

rigation and the support of stock. It is not positively
known that there is an artesian basin under the land
in question, but wells have been successful at both sides
of it, in the east and the west, and many 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 all 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 which cannot otherwise be sold. It is be-
lieved that wells will work there, and it is certain that
once the fact is proved, the whole great tract will be
settled and made to blossom like a garden.

The story of the artesian basin under part of South
Dakota seems fabulous. It is even more astonishing
than the wealth of coal that underlies the farms of
North Dakota. God does, indeed, move in mysterious
ways His wonders to perform when to the poor farmer,
amid the cold blasts 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 some would
have us believe, a vast sea.

On a foregoing page I have given the location and
dimensions of that basin which the Dakotans affection-
ately speak of as the Jim Eiver Valley. Under it all,
in both States, there is said to lie a vast lake of crystal
water. The fact is amply proven in South Dakota,
where, between the northern and southern boundaries,
there are already more than fifty high-pressure wells, or
" gushers," as they call them there. A hundred, or per-

166

haps more, low-pressure wells, 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 own low-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 pounds to the square inch. One at Woon-
socket supplies 5000 gallons a minute. One at Huron
serves for the town's water system and fire protection.
One at Springfield has force enough for more than the
power used in a sixty-barrel flour-mill. One at Tyndall
is expected to irrigate 800 acres. It is calculated that
a two-inch well will water 160 acres ; a three-inch well,
640 acres ; and a four-inch well, 1280 acres or more.
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. Some who profess to know say that the
great basin is inexhaustible, and that the opening of one
well 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
water, and no well, even among those that are five years
old, shows 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 make the mysterious basin the property of the people.
For farming, the flow of water is not needed during half
of each year. It is said that if the subsoil is wet, the
crops will need no more 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 where there were eight
wells a year ago, there will be one hundred this summer.

167

The James River Basin is 400 miles long and 40 to 50
miles wide. Well-boring has been a failure to the east-
ward of it, but to the westward there are several splen-
did wells, some even as far away as Hughes County,
near the Missouri. The boring is very costly, some
wells having cost $5000, and even more. At first a soft
shale rock of white sand is pierced, and then there is
reached a sticky clay like gumbo. Minnows of brilliant
colors and ' with bright and perfect eyes have been
thrown out of these wells, as if to prove that the water
comes from surface streams somewhere. The theory is
that its course is from the west, and an official of the
Department of Agriculture holds that several rivers to
the westward lose all or part of their volumes of water
at certain places where they meet the outcropping of
this same sandstone which is found by boring. The
Missouri, for instance, is said to lose two-thirds of its
bulk after its flight over the cascades at Great Falls.
The Yellowstone diminishes mysteriously in bulk.
Three or four streams 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 Government. I was
told, however, that several streams which seem to be
heading towards the Missouri in that neighborhood
suddenly disappear in the earth without effecting the
junction.

With water thus apparently plenteous ; with cattle-
raising, flouring - mills', linen manufacture, wool, and
diversified farming, all newly started ; with the coal of
North Dakota brought cheaply down the Missouri, and
with better coal in the Black Hills, to be brought east-

168

ward when railroads are built across the State — the
prospect is that South Dakota will stride onward to a
degree of prosperity that her people cannot have ex-
pected, and yet richly deserve.

It is said that there is more mineral wealth 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 83,300,000 a year, and of silver
from 8100,000 to 8500,000. The Black Hills are so
called because the pine-trees which cover them look
black from the plains. The numerous villages of the
region are agricultural settlements or mining towns,
and are connected by two trunk lines among the foot-
hills and by three narrow-gauge roads in the hills.
These smaller railways turn and curve through the
valleys amid very beautiful and often grand scenery.
It is wonderful to see the enormous machines at the
greater mines, and to know that they, and nearly all
the principal appointments of the buildings of every
sort, were packed across the plains in ox carts ; for the
first railroad — the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri
Valley Railroad, of the Chicago and Northwestern
system — reached the hills less than two years ago. It
was in February of last year that the Burlington road
came there.

The great gold-mining company, the Homestake, is
said to have taken fifty millions of dollars' worth of
gold out of the hills. The Homestake Company is the
name 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 California, are the
principal owners. They have the largest gold-reduction
works in the world. For labor alone they pav out

169

$125,000 a month. Their mills contain 700 stamps.
The last year was the first one of notable activity out-
side the Homestake plants, and one or two very much
smaller ones, because the railroads have only just made
it possible to get the ore to the smeltery, or to effect
the construction of such works. The ores are all low
grade, and will not pay the heavy tolls for wagon
transportation. The profits in the free milling Home-
stake ores have been found in their quantity and the
cheapness with which they have been reduced. Five
smelteries have been put in within a year, others are
projected, and others are being enlarged. It is said
that within two or three years no ore will be sent out
of the hills, but it will all be reduced there by fifteen or
twenty smelteries that will then be operated. It is
further predicted that when both reduction works and
means 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 almost as much a bone
of contention there as it is in the columns of the political
organs throughout the country. But in the hills all
question of the existence of the metal is lifted from out
of the controversy, 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
mark a tin deposit along two great belts. More than
7000 locations have been made, and " development
work" (required by law from those who would hold
their claims) has been done to the extent of nine miles
of drifts, shafts, cuts, and tunnels. The famous Harney
Peak Company works as if it had great faith in its
future, its work being in the construction of an exten-
sive plant in readiness for the prospective mining. 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 by the merchants 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 own 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 almost 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 money has been in-
vested in the mines of the Black Hills. Why it is
that American capitalists refuse to invest in or to in-
vestigate the tin mines is a question that yet remains
unanswered."

The Black Hills smelteries are closely connected with
the coal of the hills, one mine 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 mines. 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 Dead wood, a very picturesque, active,
orderly, and modern city of 3500 souls, caught in a
gulch, and obliged to climb steep mountain walls for
elbow-room. 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 implied by
its name. 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 divrersif}Ting her farm industries, and
insuring them by utilizing nature's great gift, artesian
water. It is said that central South Dakota has the
climatic 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 showed 19£ per cent, of sugar. In 100 samples
the sugar averaged above 15 per cent. ; in Germany the
average is less.

But the best news about both the Dakotas is that the
moisture in the soil last New-year's day was said to be
such as to warrant firm faith in another splendid year
like the last. With that to put the people and their
industries upon their feet, and with all the new lines
of development and maintenance that are being tried
or established, the outlook for both States is very en-
couraging.

172

MONTANA: THE TREASURE STATE

Two anecdotes told in Montana as characteristic
home-made jokes illustrate the spirit of its people.
The first one is about ex-Governor Hauser. It is said
that, like many another true Montanian, he begins to
feel a ne\v and strange regard for small change once he
gets east of the Mississippi, a consideration unknown to
any man 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
when the boy gave him 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 him. " Oh no," he replied ;
•• you don't want no change ; you're a Montana man."
The other story is to the effect that a party of well-
known Butte and Helena millionaires were enjoying a
quiet and friendly game at poker, when a commercial
traveller — a stranger to all in the party —manifested a
considerable interest in the game, as an outsider. The
gentlemen were "chipping in" white chips to admit
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 game 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 him 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 them 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 with 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 similar band of human beings in the world has
approached them in the amount of wealth per 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 was con-
sumed at home, the ore, cattle, horses, and sheep sent
out of the State brought a sum of money equal to $400
for every man, woman, and child it supported.

It is mainly a mining and a stock-raising State, and
these industries have so amply rewarded those who are
engaged in them that agricultural and manufacturing
development 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 arid
there with mining camps, and when we come to under-
stand what rich farming lands the State contains, and
of what vast extent are these parks and valleys, it takes
no uncommonly prophetic eye to see the State in the
near future checkered with the green and yellow of
well-worked farms to a greater extent than it is now

174

ribbed with mountains. The frequent 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 make the
valleys laugh with the bloom and verdure of small fruits
and vegetables, and the fact that Chinamen were thus
employed has tended to make such labor seem so much
the less worthy of the white inhabitant. But now the
white man has begun to take note of the wonderful re-
sults which have followed even this petty farming, and
his eyes have been opened to the wide and varied capa-
bilities of the soil, and to the fortunes that lie in it await-
ing the great agriculturists who are to come — who, in-
deed, are beginning work. They earned a million and
a half from wheat last year, and nearly two millions of
dollars from oats.

But the conditions that have caused mining and stock-
raising to monopolize the energy of the original people
there have resulted in making Montana a very forward
State, a very progressive and interesting fraction of the
nation. It will not do for the reader to jump 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 wealthiest one
of its size in the world. And scattered all over the
State are other fine towns, in which will be found a
very cultivated and cosmopolitan people, fond of and
accustomed to travel, holding memberships in the clubs
of Xew York and London, living splendidly at home,
well informed, polite, fashionable, and intimately re-
lated, socially or in business, with the leading circles in
the financial centres of the country. It was not long
ago in point of actual time that our children were taught

175

to regard the region of the Missouri as peopled by red-
skins and enlivened 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 now alive, so utterly are all traces of the
old condition obliterated. As far as such a traveller
will be able to judge by what he sees, the Indian will
appear to have gone with the buffalo. As a matter 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 modern cities, appointed with fine
and showy storehouses, the most modern means of street
travel, excellent newspapers, luxuriously appointed clubs,
good hotels, and all the conveniences of latter-day life.
In Helena he will meet something more nearly ap-
proaching a leisure class than I saw anywhere else in
the Northwest — a circle made up of men who have re-
tired upon their incomes, or who thrive by the shrewd
use of capital obtained from industries that do not
monopolize their attention. In this respect little Helena
is more forward even than great Chicago.

But over and through all of this progress and accom-
plishment there shines the mysterious and romantic light
of a rude era that was so recent as to have involved even
the middle-aged men 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 his inspiration. You may meet some of the
men who 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 with them you may see

176

the best Indian " sign -talker ?' who 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 more
than once or twice in his whole constabulary career.
They represent the days of the founding of Montana.
And yet in the same city where I met such men I en-
countered others from London, Kew York, Sitka, San
Francisco, and many other capitals ; for, as I have said,
the new Montana is in close contact with all the world.
Montana is the largest of the newly admitted States ;
in fact, it is as large as Washington and Xorth 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 miles, and is therefore
the size of the States of Xew York, Xew Jersey, Penn-
sylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia all
rolled together. It is about 5-iO miles in length, and
half as wide. As it is approached from the east, it
seems to be a continuation of the bunch-grass plajns
land which makes up all of Xorth Dakota. But almost
all at once upon entering Montana the monotony of the
great plateau is relieved by its disturbance into hills,
which grow more and more numerous, and take on
greater and greater bulk and height, until, when one-
third of the State has been passed, the earth is all dis-
torted with mountains and mountain spurs. These are
the forerunners of the Rockies, which, speaking rough-
ly, make up the final or western 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 Eocky Mountain region. This is difficult for the
majority of readers to account for. They think of the
M 177

Rocky 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 themselves are in-
numerable valleys coated with the richest, most nutri-
tious pasturage to be found anywhere in the world. In
or beside such valleys are the cities of which I speak,
built there to be close to the mines that are being
worked in the mountains.

Helena's history shows how such conditions came
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 washing the dirt at the
foot of the gulch, and the saloon-keepers, gamblers, and
traders built their places of business close to where the
miners were at work. When the whole 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 remained. It did not
shrivel and languish like Virginia City, the town that
had grown 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 new lease of life as a trading, political, and money
capital.

Let me begin a detailed description of Montana by
saying that its future as an agricultural State will be
dependent upon the extent and number 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
mountains, it is nowhere more than fourteen inches, I
believe. West of the mountains there is a very differ-

178

ent country, one that is locally described as "green;"
that is to say, the verdure has its natural term of life,
and the rainfall is greater there. But that is a small
part of the State by comparison with the rest. Yet all
over the State, on the great eastern plateau as well as
in the valleys among the mountains, 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
map will show the reader the great lines of the Missouri
and Yellowstone rivers, and the fine lines of their
branches and feeders, which literally vein the chart. It-
is, of course, by means 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 message, says that
" there was a time when it seemed not improbable that
the general government would take hold of this propo-
sition, and under its supervision control and manage the
water 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 destroy-
ing whatever hope we may have had in that direction.
Eastern communities, which have set this opposition in
motion, appear to be mindful only of local interests, and
tnot of the prosperity of the whole country. Their pro-
test is based upon the claim that the reclamation of
these arid lands would subject the settler in the Eastern
and Middle States to undue competition, retarding relief
from agricultural depression. . . . The homes which we
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 we are to receive
any substantial or speedy benefits from our arid lands, I
believe the State must first acquire a title to them, and
then undertake by appropriate legislation to reclaim

179

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 ditche's. If it were not that I fear being
credited with a desire to criticise, I would say that the
rush and mania for water rights in Montana closely re-
semble in their impetuosity and greed the scramble for
rich lands wherever they are newly opened in the far
West, and the not altogether patriotic desire to build
new cities in the State of "Washington. In Montana ir-
rigation schemes are expected to pay even better than
mining; hence the scramble. I ventured to speak of
this to a man who was planning to control certain val-
leys, which he described as being of the size of duke-
doms, by " corralling " the waterways in them, by which
alone they could be made fit for farming.

" Well," he replied, " we who are on the ground are
going to get whatever there is lying round. You don't
suppose we are going to let a parcel of strangers
preempt the water rights so that we must pay taxes to
them ? No ; we 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 how they please that vast and
general industry which 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 kingdoms whose irrigating systems belonged to
the governments, and yet I fancy this repugnance to a

180

monopoly of water will prove a new and controlling
fashion when the monopolists begin to fatten on their
rents.

As it is, water 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 must improve such rights within a reasonable time.
These rights are given in perpetuity to the owners,
their heirs, assigns, etc., forever. They tap a stream of
any part or all of its water if they want to, and run
their ditch through what land they please, having the
right to go through the land of a non-purchaser to
reach that of a purchaser. Then they sell the water at
so much per acre per year. The rentals vary between
50 cents and $1 50 an acre. Each farmer taps the ditch
with lateral canals, gates being put in to divert the
water into the side ditches. A farmer may also lay
pipe from the ditch and carry water to his house and
farm buildings, arranging an adequate and townlike
system of water- works for domestic and stable uses ;
thus, at what should be a trifling expense, the farmers
on irrigated lands may obtain this modern convenience.
An important recent decision of the courts is that a
man cannot buy water and allow it to run to waste 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 water 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
streams are apt to run in the bottoms of deep-water
channels. It is a tempting business, because, since the

182

rights are eternal, a company can afford to start even
where the first outlay is large ; indeed, the more exten-
sive the system and the larger the ditches, the better the
profits. The country is certain to grow to meet such
improvements, and to pay a handsome revenue as the
years go on ; and in the mean time the ditches con-
stantly cement themselves and diminish their waste.

The result has been that when a call was 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 found that there were already
somewhere near 3500 irrigating ditches, the property of
500 owners. Some of these schemes are gigantic. In
some instances the project has been to secure not only
the water, 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 which their great-great-great-
grandchiklren may fatten upon. In other cases, only
the \vater is got by the men or companies, 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 may be induced
to come in and spoil the stock or grazing business ; yet
I am told that one company of cattle-men has secured
miles of land and the adjacent water rights along the
Missouri against the inevitable day when — But the
cattle business shall have 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 fills 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 flocks of wild 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 become 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 will 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 name.
Here is a valley containing half a million acres, a sixth
part of which may 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, Simms, Auchard, and Flat creeks — in them-
selves incompetent 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, thirty-eight feet
wide, and only four and a half miles long, this natural
system of watercourses is connected with a supply of
water fed by eternal springs and frequent mountain
snowfalls. The scheme embraces a hundred miles 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 water and land. Let
me explain it with an illustration. One of the most
lofty and ambitious grabbers in the State was not long
ago observed to * be engaging in a most mysterious

184

business. He was taking women out into the wilder-
ness, a stage-load or two at a time. They were very
reputable women — school-teachers, type-writers, married
women, and their friends. They were taken to a large
and pleasantly situated house, upon the pretext that
they were 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
way, 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 very
best of " fixings," and that at the ball a number of stal-
wart and dashing cowboys had become their partners,
tripping their light fantastic measures with an enthu-
siasm 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 very much enjoyment
the more mischievous wedded ones among them got by
pretending that they were maidens, heart-whole and
free of fancy ! But while those women were 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 will then be made over to the ingenious in-
ventors and backers of the scheme, and the land will be
theirs. "Thus," in the language of a picturesque son
of Montana, "a fellow can get a dukedom 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 will find much else that is akin to it, and that
will make an interesting chapter in his records.

Governor Toole, in his message for 1891, abandons
all hope of Federal supervision of this potentiality of
wealth, and concludes his remarks with the statement

185

that he assumes it to be the province of the Legislature
to provide " against excessive and extortionate charges
by individuals and companies engaged in the sale,
rental, or distribution of water, and to prevent unjust
discrimination in the disposal of the same to the public."
He thinks the right of the State to regulate this matter
should be asserted and maintained. He does not discuss
the project of having the State develop and maintain
the ditches, nor does he touch upon the next best alter-
native— of insisting that the farmers who own the
land shall inherit the water plants after a fixed term 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 many well-ordered
parlors awaiting their guests. These parklike grassy
bowls needed only the utilization of the water 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 empty of dangerous animals, wait-
ing for the hodgepodge of new Americanism, to be
made up of Swedes and Hollanders, Germans, English-
men, and whoever else may happen along. What the
State particularly needs is men of the Teutonic races,
whose blood will not be stirred by the El Dorado-like
traditions of vast and sudden wealth made in mining.
It wants communities that w^ill not be swept off the
farm 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 inflammable 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 way ; the new
people of a new and greater Pennsylvania are coming

186

in. as we shall see. Five years from this, the politicians
of Montana will be kowtowing to the farmer vote.

The northeastern corner of Montana is all Dawson
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 watered by tributaries
of the Missouri, and abounds with little valleys, which
will yet be very profitably farmed. Custer County,
which takes up the remainder of the eastern end of
Montana, is the same sort of land, and is a stock-raising
country, but is yielding to the inroads of the farming
element. It surprised the people of the State by the
exhibit sent from there to the State fair last August.
Wheat, oats, tomatoes, cabbages, potatoes, pumpkins,
and squashes were in the yield, which was wellnigh
complete, and of a high quality and size. All the lands
that are watered are taken up, and this is true of the
greater part of the State. The bench lands form the
bulk of what remains. It has been demonstrated that
they are very productive if water can be got to them,
and since the streams are tapped on the mountain
slopes, it is certain that they will, to a large extent, be
irrigated.

Choteau County, in the north, and the next one west
of Dawson, is a little empire in itself. It is slightly
larger than Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Xew Hamp-
shire. It is 100 miles wide and 225 miles long, and, to
borrow a Western expression, the entire population of
the Northwest could be " turned loose in it." It is like
Dawson County in character — a high rolling plateau
given over to cattle, sheep, and the growing of the
hardier grains. Rich " finds " of magnetic and hematite
iron are reported from there. Park County is a very
mountainous, crumpled-up, and rocky area, and is the
northern extension and neighbor of the Yellowstone

o
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 little 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
mining 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 camp is through a corner of the Na-
tional Park, and the miners 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 world, 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 amid every sort of danger,
hammer in hand, and dining on hope more often than
food, and who, after discovering a u lead," gives an in-
terest in it to capital, and then is very fortunate if he is
not frozen out. The metals that have been found in
Park County are silver and lead. There is very little
gold, but coal has long been very profitably mined 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
Gallatin Yalley, which, to the agriculturist, is just now
one of the most interesting districts in the United States.
This great valley has more snowfall than any county in
the State — at least the snow lies there longer than any-
where else. The result of the moisture, in conjunction
with 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 Xew York, the brewers there
refused to believe that any such barley was or could be
grown anywhere in the world. They thought that what
was shown to them was a lot of carefully selected sam-
ples. They deputized a committee to visit the valley,
and found that the barley which had so astonished them
was the common 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 making-houses at two points, have estab-
lished some twenty miles of irrigating ditches already,
and by furnishing the seed and buying the yields are
encouraging the farmers of the valley to grow barley.
They cultivated 2500 bushels in 1890, and raised sixty
bushels to the acre. Last year they had 10,000 acres
under cultivation. They expect in a few years to be
selling barley to all the brewers of the country who
value what the Xew Yorkers think is the best grain ob-
tainable. This is the nearest approach to what is called
bonanza or big-scale farming in the State of Montana.

All that central district of the State, including
Meagher and Fergus counties, and more besides, has
been slow in the development of its mining resources.
Mines have been held for years since they were discov-
ered, because it has been hard to make capitalists and
railroad men see what was in the country. It is almost
always the case in such a wealthy mining region as Mon-

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 been
surveyed into Meagher County by the Northern Pacific
Company, and the Great Northern and Burlington and
Missouri roads are expected to go in. All will head for
Castle, the great mining camp of the country, where
two smelteries are already turning out lead and silver,
and freighting bullion 150 miles to the nearest railway.

Thus we reach the county of which Great Falls is
the seat of government and of many interesting indus-
tries and operations. This is Cascade County. It is
here that the noted and majestic falls of the Missouri
occur in a succession of splendid cascades. Here a com-
pany, controlled by wealthy men of New York, Helena,
and Great Falls, have taken up something like twelve
miles on either side of the river at these falls, and have
thus possessed themselves of what is undoubtedly the
finest and greatest water-power in the West, comprising
in all at least 250,000 horse-power, and more easily han-
dled than that of Niagara. An auxiliary company owns
a large town site there, and a very promising and con-
siderable town has already grown up to handle the
wheat and wool and beef of the region, and to be al-
ready the site of smelting- works, factories, and other es-
tablishments which have been attracted by the cheap
and abundant water-power. In the shrewdness and rea-
sonableness of the management 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 now contains several blocks of really
notable stone and brick buildings along its main 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 small proportion of the land is all that is yet taken,
but experiments with 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 country, but it is seen that as civilization
pushes into it, the cattle business is being hurt. The
difficulty in obtaining cowboy assistance is noticeable
wherever farms and well-governed towns spring up, and
this difficulty is increasing in this region. The cowboy
and civilization are neighbors, but not friends. But it is
a good grass country, and the grass is vastly better than
that in Dakota, which becomes frozen and loses its nu-
triment. Here the Chinook winds from the Pacific come
in at all times in the winter, never failing to blow upon
all except twenty or twenty-five days in each winter.
They clear off the snow 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 from any other point in the United States
—were shipped from 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 everywhere within 150 to 200 miles of
the east slope of the Rockies. Sheep in this country
have none of the destructive diseases which assail them
elsewhere. The sheep and wool industries are going to
be enormous in Montana on that account, whether the
herding be upon the ranges, as at present, or in small
herds managed by farmers, and raised upon the benches
and side-hills that will not be brought under the ditch.

But in view of the future of the State, the experiments
in agriculture are even more interesting than the har-
nessing of the cascades of the Missouri to the wheels of
manufacture. The sugar-beet grows finely, in answer

191

to the generally discussed project in most of these new
States to render that form of sugar -making a leading
industry when the lands are well settled. Fine, luscious
strawberries 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
have 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 five pounds apiece. Eighteen such
potatoes make a bushel. To the taste they are like a
new 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 must very soon
become the pride of every steward in the first-grade ho-
tels, restaurants, and clubs of the cities here — and even
in Europe — to prepare these most delicious vegetables
for those who enjoy good living. As these potatoes of
the choicest quality can be cultivated in all the valleys
east of the Eocky Mountains, there will 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 New
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 farm lands is relied upon, because the
great mining camps of the State will consume nearly all
the products of the farms as fast as the farms increase

192

in number. There is no danger that the mining camps
will not grow and multiply to keep the demand strong.
The miners are the best people in the world to farm for,
because they produce money 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 Drum Lummon, an English property
that has paid dividends for many years. And here are
the famous ruby and sapphire fields, on the bed-rock of
former benches or bottoms of the Missouri. Strawber-
ries of a large and luscious variety will yield 10,000 bas-
kets to the acre, and have sold in the past at a fixed rate
of twenty cents a basket for home consumption. Apples,
plums, crab-apples, grapes, currants, and all berries grow
in wonderful abundance, and find an eager and high-
priced market close at hand. Oats weigh forty and fifty
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 small fruits. The China-
men are harvesting this money 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 growth
of blue-joint grass that is like timothy, and that is very
high, heavy, and nutritious. The same result follows
irrigation wherever it is permitted.
N 193

Jefferson, Madison, Silver Bow, 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 mountains
are full of minerals ; the valleys will produce anything,
apparently, that grows in the temperate 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 from the Japan
current blow there with frequency and strength, and
are almost uninterrupted. Verdure remains green there
all summer, and the abundance of timber, 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 many
years, largely by thrifty French Canadians, and it con-
tains as fine farms as will be seen almost anywhere.
Here are orchards, and small fruits grow in abundance
for shipment to the Coeur d'Alene mining camps in Ida-
ho. Here is a milling company that produced seventy-
five millions of feet of lumber last year. In the north
is a new country wrested from the Flathead reservation.
The Flathead Valley is forty miles long and one-half as
wide, possessing a deep soil and a clay subsoil. It is
farmed without irrigation. Several tributary valleys of
the same quality open out of the main valley. Large
crops of grain, hay, vegetables, and fruit have been har-
vested there, but the farmers have heretofore been with-
out a market, and have subsisted by raising horses and
cattle, and driving them abroad for purchasers. The
entrance of the Great Northern Railroad, now accom-

194

plished, will open up this rich territory, and will develop
the timber resources as well as the deposits of coal, oil,
and natural gas, which seem to be very extensive there.
The mountains 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 work. Indications of quartz are
seen on every hand in the mountains. Taking the coun-
ty as a whole, two years ago not a mining prospect was
continuously worked, while now four mines are shipping
and paying profits of $40,000 a month. The " leads" in
the county are continuations of those in the Cceur
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,
which has 318 square miles 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 salmon 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. They are self-
sustaining, and at least a dozen can be named who have
accumulated between $20,000 and $50,000. They are a
fine, stalwart people. They are not in reality Flatheads ;
they have no knowledge that the tribe ever followed
the practice of compressing the heads of the children,
as was done by the tribes at the mouth of the Columbia
River.

It is in this county that Marcus Daly, the mining mill-
ionaire, has invested a million dollars in horses and land,
and maintains 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 imported Percheron horses and Holstein

195

cattle. Other farmers are in the same 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
small 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 mining.

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 when the owner is
interested in the railroad which carries it from the
mines. In all probability, 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 mines.
The coal of the State is semi-bituminous. Only a mere
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 western
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 seems strange that cruelty should dis-
tinguish this branch of food-raising wherever it is seen
and in whatever branch one studies it. From the
bloody fields of Texas, where the ingenious fiends in
the cattle business snip off the horns of the animals
below the quick, to the stock-yards in Chicago, where
men are found who will prod the beeves into pens,
there to crush their skulls with hammers, it is every-

196

where 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 with the people there, and he will
shudder at what he hears. The cattle-owners, or cow-
men, are in Wall Street and the south of France, or in
Florida, in the winter, but their cattle are on the wintry
fields, where every now 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 snow. A horse or a mule
can dig down to the grass. Those animals have a joint
in their legs which the horned cattle do not possess, and
which enables those animals which possess it to " paw."
Sheep are taken to especial winter 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 when 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 some of the ranges, the " cow-men "
(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 every
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
small herds of cows and sheep, properly attended and
provided with corrals and hay, against the times when
the beasts must be fed. The farmers will undoubtedly
go into cattle-raising, and dairy-farming is certain to be
a great item in the State's resources, since the hills are
beside every future farm, and the most provision that
will be needed will be that of a little hay for stocking
the winter corrals. Last year the cattle business in
Montana was worth ten millions of dollars to the
owners of the herds. " Providence was on deck," as the
cowboys would say.

But the sheep there brought twelve millions of pounds
of wool on their backs in the same 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 employers if he remains a sane man
any great length of time. In the summer these herders
sleep in tents, and the ranch foremen start out with
fresh provisions at infrequent intervals, and hunt up
their men as they follow the herds. In the winter the
grazing is done in sheltered places especially chosen.
On the winter grounds a corral is built, and thirty to
forty tons of hay are stored there for emergencies when
the snow lies thick on the ground. It is a prime country
for sheep. They get heavy coats, and are subject to no
epidemic diseases. The grass is rich and plenty, and
the warm Pacific winds soon melt what snows occasion-
ally cover the ground. The wool ranks next to that
from Australia. The tendency of the sheep-herders to
become insane is the most unpleasant accompaniment of
the business, except the various forms of mutilation of
the sheep for business reasons. The constant bleating
of the sheep and the herders loneliness, spending weeks

198

and months without any companionship except that of
a dog and the herd, are the causes that are commonly
accepted to account for the fact that so many herders
go insane. Since I found insanity terribly common
among the pioneers on the plains in Canada, where no
sheep were raised, I prefer to leave the incessant bleat-
ing of the sheep out of the calculation, and to call it
loneliness — and yet, in my opinion, that is not the sole
reason.

The horse market has been very poor for some time,
and mules are being raised for the market with 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 implements. There has
been an over-supply of horses as well. But the Mon-
tana men find horses a good investment. It costs noth-
ing to raise them, and all breeds seem to improve 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 wealth of the State is in its mines. Butte,
in Silver Bow County, is the greatest mining centre not
only in Montana, but, with the possible and doubtful
exception of one town in Australia, in all the world.
The Butte output is of lead, silver, and copper. The
total dividends paid by all the mines in the United
States which make public their affairs was $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 owned by
private corporations which do not make known their
profits. The Granite Mountain mine, in Deer Lodge
County, yielding silver, lead, and some little gold, paid
its owners, 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 th^t mine was 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 wash dirt for five years, but they washed
out eight millions of dollars. Then they found the
quartz, and went down on it, only to find a great deal
more silver than gold. As they went down farther,
they came upon the copper, and started a " boom " that
shows no sign of diminution at this date. Butte has
added to the world's wealth $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 com-
panies operate forty mines, and all have their own
works for the reduction of ores. They are all high-
grade ores, but some are high-grade in copper and
some in silver. 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 them 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, who is known in the East as the foremost
patron of the turf, came to Montana first on his feet,
and worked at washing with a pan. That was less than
twenty 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 farm in the world, the greatest employer of labor
in Montana, maintains a metropolitan hotel in a little

200

town in the mountains, disregarding the loss it incurs
in order that he may have a place in which to enter-
tain his friends, and finally he maintains a first-class
newspaper in the same town or village of Anaconda
—a newspaper as good as is published in any city of
the second class. The town of Anaconda is where the
company reduces its ores. The profits of the company
are never made public.

The camp next in importance after Butte is Castle, in
Meagher County, sixty miles from a railroad. Barker
and Xeihart are camps in the same country. The min-
ing is for silver and lead. The biggest mine in the Cas-
tle district is the Cumberland, which 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 mining is
all on a small 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
County, as against seventy in Jefferson. The richest of
the thirty is Unionville, five miles from Helena. The
ore is free milling 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 work there. The future in mining is
not yet 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 mountain
country have not even been explored. Of copper Mon-

201

tana produced 50,000 tons in 1890 ; of gold, $3,500,000 ;
of silver, $19,350,000.

A few of the many stories that are told of miners'
luck will enable the reader to understand how and why
the heads of whole communities may be turned in min-
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
went to New York " to make as much money as Yan-
derbilt." He was a rare treat to Wall Street, which
fattened on him, and in one year let him go with 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 went to Chicago to rival
Mr. Potter Palmer in wealth, and returned just as he
did from New York — " flat- strapped," as he would have
expressed it. He made still another fortune, and went
to San Francisco, where he died a poor man. Another
Lewis and Clarke County mine — the Drum Lummon —
provides another such story. It was discovered by an
Irish immigrant named Thomas 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 remains one of the wealthy men of Helena.

There is an ex-State Senator in Beaver Head County
who owns a very rich mine, the ore yielding $700 to the
ton net. He is a California " Forty-niner," who came
as a prospector to Montana, and since discovering his
mine has lived upon it in a peculiar way. He has no
faith in banks. He says his money is safest in the
ground. When he has spent what 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 wagon-load.

202

There is a queer story concerning the Spotted Horse
Mine, in Fergus County. It was found by P. A.
McAdow, who sold it to Governor Hauser and A. M.
Holder for $500,000 three years ago. They paid a large
sum down in cash, and the other payments were to
come out of the ground. The ore was in pockets, each
of which was easily exhausted. Whatever was taken
out went 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 which 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 came to Helena with
money, picked out a wife, who was 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 ?±9, was transplant-
ed to the Treasure State during the war of the rebel-
lion, and it still leaves strong traces everywhere in
Montana. The smallest 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-stamp will either get no change out of a ten-
cent piece, or will have the stamp given to him. Do-
mestic servants are paid no less than $25 a month;

203

waiter -boys in the hotels get $10 a week and their
keep ; the lowest wages paid to labor are paid to street-
sweepers, and they receive $2 50 a day. This is all an
inheritance from 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
e"ach city are of a type 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 from the era of the California gold
fever. The outcast women, who were originally the
only women in each camp, have a ward or district to
themselves, and there the variety theatre (which is de-
scended from the original Bella Union) and the "hurdy-
gurdy houses," or dance halls, and the gambling hells
are all clustered. The women have streets to them-
selves in Butte, Helena, Great Falls — and, for that
matter, 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 taboo.

Butte has more than 30,000 inhabitants, and 5000 of
its men work in the mines to produce a mineral output
which is within five millions of dollars of the value of
the total yield of Colorado. The laborers who repair
the streets get $3 50 a day, and the miners earn from
$4 to $7. When the shifts or gangs of men change at
night — for the work never ceases — the main street of
Butte is as crowded as Broadway at Fulton Street at
noon. At two or three o'clock in the morning the city
is still lively. There is no pretence about the town.
It has few notable or expensive buildings, and it is

204

without a good hotel. Deadwood and Butte are the
only considerable towns 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 main street
was won 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 almost side by side on the principal street.
They are as busy as so many exchanges. They are
large, bare rooms, with 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 time except from Satur-
day midnight to Sunday midnight. In summer the
doors stand open, and the gambling may be seen
from the pavement. 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 more saloons than Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, and
Indian Territory, Maine, Mississippi, South Carolina,
West Virginia, Yermont, or the District of Columbia.
- One thing I have noticed," said a liquor- dealer of
Butte, " is that if a man quits drinking here, he will be
dead in a month." This peculiarly businesslike observa-
tion veiled a reference to the sulphur fumes, which are the
consequence of the presence of many smelteries. The
city is at the bottom of a well, the walls of which are
tall mountains. High up above the town, around one
side of the well, 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-

205

mosphere. The people rose in anger and stopped the
nuisance.

There are fine schools there, attended by 5000 chil-
dren. The Catholic parish includes 10,000 souls, and
is the largest west of the Mississippi. Butte is the only
Montana town that maintains a club of university grad-
uates. Its other club, the Silver Bow, is one of whose
club-house appointments and membership any city might
be proud. The people there maintain such elevating
societies and chapters as those of the Ep worth League,
the "Woman's Christian Temperance 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 German athletic society.
They have some notable displays in those stores which
are the head depots of great trading companies that
operate far and wide. Whatever is best in London,
Paris, or New York can be duplicated in Butte, and it
is said that when strawberries are a dollar a basket in
New York, this strange city is one of the purchasers of
them. Butte has six banks, with a capital of a million
dollars, and a million of dollars are paid out there in
wages every month.

It is impossible to make room for that which should
be told of the cities of Montana generally. 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 will be a large city, judging from present
appearances. Great Falls should, in the logic of its
merits, become an important city. Miles City cannot
be threatened by any changes in its vicinage except such
as will cause it to grow. Missoula will in all likelihood
be the capital of a great and rich farming district, and
perhaps of a mining section as well. The Great North-
ern Eailway, now completing its highway through the

206

northern counties, must develop at least one sizable town
on either side of the Kockies, 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 build
cities.

Though Helena is the capital, it must still fight to
retain that honor, the permanent seat of government
not yet having been chosen. But it seems almost a
foregone conclusion that Helena will remain as it is,
for as Butte is the industrial centre, so Helena is the
social and financial headquarters. It has most of the
concomitants of a chief city — all, hi fact, except a first-
class theatre. It is commonly credited with being the
wealthiest city of its size in the world, and it does boast
more than a dozen citizens each worth more than a
million of dollars. But it gains that reputation most
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 them know the
luxuries and refinements of cultivation and wisely man-
aged wealth. Helena has three daily newspapers, which
receive the despatches of the chief news associations of
the country. A very commendable spirit in Montana
finds expression in a State historical society, whose 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-
forming a work which will swell in value faster than
compound interest enhances the value of money.

All the principal religious bodies are well represented
in Helena in church buildings and membership ; the
schools and other public buildings are the subjects of
popular pride; the stores are fine and well stocked.

207

The Montana Club, now building a palatial stone club-
house, is very much more like an Eastern than a Western
club in all that makes a club attractive. There are other
clubs — Scotch, German, literary, musical, mercantile,
and athletic ; there are military organizations and the
lodges of half a dozen secret fraternities, and there is a
State Fair Association which maintains a fine race-track.
Helena has many manufactures, and eight banks, with a
joint capital of twTo and one -third millions of dollars.
Already three transcontinental railways meet 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-
water, in the suburbs, gives to Montana the finest hotel
and watering-place in the Northwest. It is the property
and venture of Colonel C. A. Broad water, a pioneer and
millionaire, and comprises a park, a hotel of the most
modern and elegant character, and the largest nata-
torium in the world — a bath 300 feet long and 100 feet
wide, of natural hot water, medicated and curative, yet
as clear as crystal, and without offence to taste or smell.
The beautiful Moorish bath-house, with its daily con-
course of health and pleasure seekers, its band of music
and atmosphere of indolence, is the pleasantest holiday
spot in the new States. But, in my 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 from the stand -point of physical human
pleasure, none of the new States has a climate to com-
pare with that of Montana. There the air is always
tonic, even magnetic. It rains on 65 days in the year,
but the sun manages to shine more or less even on those
days — which come in April, May, and June. The val-

leys are 4000 to 6000 feet above sea-level. Upon them
the soft warm winds of the Pacific slope blow after
they have emptied their moisture upon the mountain
ranges of Washington. These winds temper the climate
of Montana so that it seems not to belong in the cold
belt of our most northerly States. It is nothing like so
cold as the Dakotas ; indeed, there are only a few cold
days at a time, mainly in January, with little skating
or sleighing, and an assurance that the Chinook breezes
are always close at hand. Montana is a sanitarium.
Xo account can be given of the attractions of the State
without putting the climate high in the list. It has a
magic power to breed enthusiastic love in the hearts of
all who live there, even if their stay is of but a few
months' duration. The inhabitants all went there to
make money, and now they remain to praise the coun-
try. A spell, a mania, seizes all alike, and each vies
with the other in overestimating the vast number of ox
teams that would be required to pull him back whence
he came.

Close to Helena, on ledges which mark two former
levels of the Missouri River, are the world-famous sap-
phire and ruby beds, 8000 acres of which, with 2000
other acres under water, have recently been acquired by
an English company of noblemen, bankers, jewellers,
and others for $2,000,000, the mere value of the gold
which it is thought will be taken from the dirt. That
sapphires and rubies were there has been known for
twenty years or more, some miners having kept the
finer specimens, 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 from experts, is
that these stones are true rubies and sapphires, and the
only opportunity they afford for criticism lies in the fact
that very nearly all of them are much lighter in color
o 209

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 gems that fashion has approved ; indeed, they
are often like diamonds, and as their hardness is next to
that of the diamond, their lustre must prove enduring.
The gems are found on the bedrock under eight or ten
feet of soil, along with crystals, nuggets of gold, gold-
dust, garnets, and pebbles. The land was bought by
two Michigan lumbermen, brothers, who now treasure
a million in cash and a million in shares of the new
English company — reVards 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 warrant its existence there. What a State
Montana is! Gold, silver, copper, lead, asbestos, tin,
iron, oil, gas, rubies, sapphires, and a possibility of dia-
monds— all locked up in her ribs and pockets !

I see a vision of Montana in the future, yet in the
lifetime of the young men of to-day. I see half a dozen
such mining centres as Butte, and they are all noble
cities, set with grand buildings, boulevards, and parks.
I see at least two great manufacturing towns besides.
I see scores of great valleys, and other scores of little
ones, all gay with the blossoms 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 who seized the streams when
no one was there to protest. I see the brown hills and

210

mountain - sides of the eastern part of Montana dotted
with cattle and sheep in small herds. The woollen in-
dustry has become a great source of wealth, and Mon-
tana has robbed lS"ew England of some of her factories.
I see in western Montana great saw -mills -and mines
that were not dreamt of in 1892. I see car-loads of fruit
and vegetables and barley malt rolling into the cities,
and out to other States. I see no Indians except those
who work or who serve in the army, and where there
were reservations I see the soil laughing with verdure or
tracked with 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 most populous
and opulent members of our sisterhood of States.

211

YII
GLIMPSES OF PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

SHOPPING IN THE ROCKIES

I AM going to the Rocky Mountains to do my shop-
ping ! If any one in the East heard a lady say that he
would certainty take a second look at her. But he
would scarcely be more surprised than I was, to be in
the thick of the Rockies, with 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 westward slope, among the
foot-hills, to step from the cars to a store like Whiteley's
Necessary Store in London, or one of our "shopping
stores" on the Sixth Avenue, New York. That was
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 become the capital
of the new State of Montana — if the rivalry between
Butte and Helena and Great Falls necessitates a diplo-
matic tendency towards the choice of some 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.

212

When I left the cars at this place I found it a typical
Western town, with one street of shops, with a fine
hotel, some businesslike banking-houses, a club, and a
great scattering of dwellings, sufficient for a population
of about 4000 or 5000 souls, if my memory serves me
right. I noticed one block of stores in particular. They
were distinctly "cityfied" in appearance. They had
great plate-glass fronts, and the windows were shrewdly
and attractively used for displaying the goods within.
One was a dry-goods store, the next was a boot and
shoe store, the next was a grocery, and the last was a
hardware and agricultural implement emporium. All
were brilliantly illuminated by electric lamps. Recov-
ering from the first surprise at finding such modern shops
in such 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 merchants over the windows.

They were, in fact, but a few of the many depart-
ments of the Missoula Mercantile Company's stores, and
before I tell more about that, I will intrude a note with
regard to such places in general. The first of these
great trading companies1 stores that I saw in the West
were in Butte, the great mining town of Montana, and
the liveliest, " wide-openest" town it has yet been my
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
establishments 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 more of the atmos-
phere of Sixth Avenue than one feels in any stores in
the generality of Eastern cities that deem themselves
quasi-metropolitan.

213

Those who have done me the honor to follow the
reports of my wanderings will recall that I found great
general stores of the kind in Winnipeg and Victoria,
British Columbia, and that they marked the develop-
ment 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 emporiums are not the outgrowth or feature of
any fur-trading operations, but they are the result of
the same necessity that has developed the fur-trading
posts. Here in Montana have come big lumbering
companies, mining camps, army posts, Indian reserva-
tions, railway divisional headquarters, and one form or
another of settlements by or collections of men to be
supplied with food, clothing, implements, and whatever.
The more enterprising traders have extended their busi-
ness, until such a bulk of trade has come to them that
they can buy in enormous quantities at large discount,
and have no competitors except one another.

This Missoula Mercantile Company is capitalized at a
million 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 Kail way, the last
transcontinental trunk-line that is being pushed to the
Pacific Ocean. The Missoula company does a large
•jobbing business with storekeepers and lumbering and
mining camps. It is a country A. T. Stewart concern,
wholesaling and retailing all necessaries and luxuries to
the people of what may be called Montana-west-of-the-
Rockies. This whole territory is in one county of

214

imperial size— about 300 miles wide and 600 miles long,
with a population of 20,000 souls. Not satisfied with
reigning supreme in that field, the Missoula company
does business in the Coeur d'Alene mining region in
Idaho.

Mr. A. B. Hammond, the president of the company,
was born on the St. John's River in Xew Brunswick.
He went West as a young man, and worked as a wood-
chopper for a time. He reached Missoula in 1868 as
poor as he was ambitious; but to-day, at forty-four
years of age, he is a wealthy man, with spare time
enough to have become a student and a lover of litera-
ture. Indeed, it is said of him that when he had his
fortune to make " he used to work all day and read all
night." He is more than just to his employes ; has
made presents of stock to those who have displayed
the most enthusiasm and enterprise, and now numbers
among the stockholders twenty-one who are employes.
Each of the many departments of the big concern is
managed by its own headman, 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 departments are nearly all together in
one long two-story block, and as all are thrown together
by communicating passageways, the reader will under-
stand that the effect upon a visitor is that of one gen-
eral shopping store. The various stores or departments
are these : a gentleman's furnishing and clothing store ;
a wine and spirit, tobacco and cigar, department ; a
dress -making and tailoring department; a dry -goods
and carpet store ; a boot and shoe store ; a grocery
store; and an extensive department for the sale of hard-
ware, cutlery, agricultural, mining, and lumbermen's
implements, harness, saddlery, wagons, carriages, and
blacksmiths' supplies. I noticed that there were dis-

215

played large assortments of crockery, upholstery, fur-
niture,'and made-up gowns, wraps, 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 meat. And I fancy
the business must include a trade in drugs, since they
would be demanded in the mining 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 New York's trade to know that all that
the Missoula Company buys here are carpets, dry-goods,
gentlemen's furnishings, clothing, hats and caps, and
some cigars. Its imported wines 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, salesmen, work-
men, and department 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 Milling 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 Northwestern States than that which
a company of Englishmen has just bought in Montana

216

for two millions of dollars. Yet it is a question whether
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 more
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 Xorth-
western 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 worn down or eaten through.
Just where the gems 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 from the river, either there or over a
territory of imperial size to the eastward and southward.
Down in the river -gulch there are two former levels of
the river, a low terrace forming the present banks of the
stream, and a higher one rising above and beyond it. It
is on these former levels, under the sod and the soil that
time has heaped upon the old river -bottoms, that the
jewels 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 miles
along the stream, that the Englishmen have purchased.

They did not discover the gems, nor were they the
first owners of the land after the Government. They
purchased it from two brothers Spratt, lumbermen from
Michigan, who managed to get nearly all of it before
they permitted the fame of the gigantic scheme they
had for selling out to a company to be widely noised
abroad. But the Spratts were not the discoverers either.

217

It seems that the discovery dates back twenty -seven
years, and was almost simultaneous with the first prac-
tical movement towards a settlement of Montana. At
about the time of the outbreak of the Civil War there
was a rush to Alder Gulch in Montana, and placer-
mining or dirt -washing for nuggets and gold-dust led
to the establishment of a camp called Virginia City.
Millions of dollars were taken from those diggings, and
then the next big find led to a stampede to Last Chance
Gulch, which was what is now called Helena. While
all the miners were running the pebbles, dirt, and rocks
of this new field under their water- jets or through their
pans, the men who got no foothold there roamed about
the neighborhood — and probably almost all over the
State — and some began placer-mining on the banks of
the big river close by. Among those who washed the
edges of the river -banks was an Irishman, who soon
came to be dubbed "Sapphire" Collins, because of a
monomania that seized him. This was nothing less
than the collecting of the sapphires, rubies, and garnets
which he found in his pan every time he washed there.
He carried the best specimens 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 gems in the rough. At all
events, he insisted that he had found a bed of sapphires
and rubies. He bothered everybody with news of his
" find," and with his efforts to secure capital for pre-
empting the river -banks, until he came to be dubbed
" Sapphire " Collins, and was laughed at by every one.

Eventually, as the matter is remembered, he became
really deranged, and his talk showed that disappoint-
ment in failing to 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 was that Last Chance
Gulch was proving one of the richest placer-grounds ever
known. Men were at work reaping the harvest that was
to reach a grand total of twenty-five millions of dollars.
These were not the men nor was that the place to bring
to market a handful of dirty-looking and dubious peb-
bles, when gold was so certain and so plentiful. Thus
all that came of the discovery of the greatest gem field
in America 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 Englishmen have just bought. The major-
ity of the miners, remembering the fate of Collins, and
supposing the peculiar pebbles to have no value, dumped
them 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 many who noticed that the stones were
translucent carried the prettiest and largest ones as
pocket-pieces, while still others sent their best collec-
tions to Xew 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 were 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. Some of the
pretty stones that were saved were chrysolites, which
are technically described as being " a silicate of magne-

219

sia and iron ;" and others were corundums, hard stones
of nearly pure alumina, used for polishing steel and cut-
ting gems. Both are found in the Montana beds.

There next appears in the history of this fascinating
discovery another man with a faith in the gems that was
as strong as that of "Sapphire" Collins, but this new
character was a man whose intelligence could not be
questioned. His name is George B. Foote, and he not
only collected the gems and talked about their value, he
wrote about them in the local newspapers, and, later
still, published an article about them 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, wrote for HARPER'S MAGAZINE an
article on "Precious Stones in the United States." He
knew what Foote had written, and had been investigat-
ing the matter; and when 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 few 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
public." Mr. Kunz is considered to be the highest au-
thority upon the subject of gems in America, and his
verdict attracted a great deal of attention, and brought
the first honor to the memory of poor Collins.

It was at about the time of the publication in HAR-
PER'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

220

bench on which the first discoveries were made, the one
which 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 gems
from those he found on the bar, and sent them to va-
rious places to be cut and classified. A few were of the
darker tints, but most of them were light. However,
the reports upon all of them were that they were true
sapphires. From the Helena Independent I quote the
following account of the next steps towards the intro-
duction of these jewels in the world's markets :

"Satisfied that there was a future for the Montana gems, Mr.
Spratt began to buy up all the gem -bearing land that he could get
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 thousand 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 had the son of the most noted English
gem 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. They were subjected to eveiy test, and then pronounced
genuine. Then it was determined to organize a company in England
for the purpose of developing the fields and placing their product on
the European market. News of this reached Montana, and ground
on the Missouri River w?hich 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 time that the English com-
missioners were making their final examination of the
grounds and closing their purchases, and I was told that
river - side lands for as far as forty miles up the river

221

were 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
were offered for sale at the rate of $50 a carat, and even
higher, that is to say, at almost the prices of diamonds.
All this was a natural result of the unexpected discovery
of the value of the gem beds, but it was none the less
interesting. We shall see that the Englishmen may ex-
pect to realize such prices in the future, but in buying
the treasure they valued it in a widely different way.

The caution with which the Englishmen advanced into
the work of organizing their company and making their
purchase was, to the Americans at least, a notable feat-
ure of the affair. Perhaps they Were afraid that the so-
called gem lands were "salted" — that is to say, sprinkled
with genuine jewels brought in the rough from some-
where else — or perhaps they but exercised their custom-
ary caution. At any rate, they first obtained a report
from a well-known engineer. He made a voluminous
and exhaustive statement, in which he said that the
sapphires are found to be numerous over a large area
for nearly three miles on both branches, and from the
river -bank to the foot-hills wherever openings were
made. Then two experts from England went all over
the ground and made their reports, which, as it turned
out, confirmed that of the American. Then the Eng-
lishmen proceeded to obtain views upon the character,
quality, and value of the jewels from English gem ex-
perts. Professor A. H. Church, Professor of Chemistry
at the Eoyal Academy, S. P. Thompson, professor in
the London Technical College, and F. W. Kudder, cura-
tor of the Museum of Practical Geology in London,
were all asked to examine stones that were brought to
them from Montana. They all, happily for the own-

ers of the river benches, pronounced the gems sapphires
and rubies. They said they found them to be pure alu-
mina, with very slight traces of iron. Their crystalline
form, hardness (which is next to that of the diamond),
and specific gravity were all proofs of their genuineness.
As one expert phrased it, " some of them exhibit shades
of pink and red, and may be scientifically designated
rubies." Then the Englishmen got a report from Ed-
win 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,
twenty-five carats would be cuttable gems, and the re-
maining 75 per cent, only valuable for mechanical uses
and watch-work. Of the cuttable gems there would be
returned from the lapidary, say, eight and three-fourths
carats of cut gems."

Thus equipped with these expert opinions, the promot-
ers undertook to get subscribers to the stock of the
company. This is done in England through the work
of a person called an underwriter, who receives a com-
mission for the services he contributes. The under-
writer begins his task with an effort to secure as officers
and founders of the company men of title, high social
position, distinction in commercial life, or fame in the
professions. With these names, and the merits of the
scheme set forth in prospectuses and circulars, he begins
to advertise the company and take subscriptions to the
stock. In the case of the "Sapphire and Kuby Com-
pany of Montana " such names as that of the Duke of
Portland, the millionaire Marquis of Tweeddale, Sir
Francis Knoliys, secretary to the Prince of Wales, Sir
Arthur Sullivan, the operatic composer, Frank C. Bur-
nand, editor of Punch, and a great many lords, earls,
baronets, secretaries to dukes and duchesses, railway
officials, brokers, and well-known business men were put

223

down among the officers, founders, or early subscribers
to the company.

The subscription-books were closed in London on No-
vember 2, 1891, and that is when the deal for the land
in Montana was practically closed. The property pur-
chased by a preliminary payment in cash some 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 all the water
rights in the district. It is said that not all the gem-
bearing lands nor all the water 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 fully 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 gems would be considered a second source of
income 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 windfall.
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 was not to be paid until
an examination of all the titles to the land had been
made by a firm of reputable lawyers.

The mining that was being done when I was in
Helena was of the most primitive sort. The gems lie
on or close to the bed-rock, which is covered with ten
feet of soil on the lower benches, and perhaps twenty
feet on the upper benches, or second terrace. The
workmen dig down through the soil and sand, which

234

they throw away until they are within a few inches of
the rock. That rock is practically smooth, and is like a
shelf, upon which the gold arud 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
washings quartz pebbles, slate, alluvial gold, and nodules
of iron. Between 2000 and 3000 carats in sapphires and
rubies have been taken out in this way daily without
machinery. According to the figures of Mr. Streeter,
the London jeweller, who is now a stockholder in the
company, this rate of mining would produce SJ 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 will be introduced.
There is not likely to be any very rapid work upon the
mines. The owners know enough not to flood the
market with the stones, either all at once or in any
manner.

I have seen a great many of these gems; indeed, I
have seen pints of them at a time in the company of ex-
perts or in my wanderings among those who had them
to sell. They are very disappointing to look at in the
rough. Were any person who is accustomed to spend
his summers upon the sea-coast to see a hatful of them,
his first impression would be that they were very like
the chromatic and translucent pebbles that are mixed
with the sand on the ocean beach, the pretty stones
which children pick up and carry to the hotel verandas
to play with. A closer look at the gems would reveal

p 225

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 were worn smooth by the action of the
water in rolling them along upon and among the rocks.
An expert would point out a singular mark upon nearly
all of them — 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, when the stones were held up to
the light and looked through, interest in them would in-
crease, for unexpected colors would be found in them,
and there would be seen a nameless 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 many pink and violet hues. The shapes they take
are those of bits of pipe stem, perfect crystal, and a queer
flat form like the body of a flat-iron, though not as large
as an ordinary masculine thumb 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 memory 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? They are very beau-
tiful when they are cut. They sparkle and almost flame
as the original or fashionable Asiatic sapphires do not be-
gin to do. In fact, the Asiatic sapphires, when put beside
them, appear like highly polished colored glass beside a
flaming jewel. I am assured that this fiery quality of
the Montana stones will endure forever, because of their
very great hardness. The diamond, being classed as 10

226

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
them. I have not the least doubt in the world that
rubies are found there, though they are very uncommon.
A peculiar thing about some of the sapphires is that
they look red from one point of view 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-
amples, of the color of the true sapphire. Therefore
they are at a disadvantage. If they were all sapphire
blues, they would still have the diamond to fight against
— that brilliant plague of all owners of other stones,
since it persists in remaining fashionable year after
year in spite of every effort to dethrone it. But in ad-
dition to the supremacy of the diamond, these home
gems are of many colors, and yet not of the right colors,
I think they are, next to the diamond, the most orna-
mental stones I ever saw. But what will others think ?
What will fashion decree with regard to them? There
is their situation in a nutshell. To it there can only be
added a glance at the titles of the noblemen interested
in the company. If they can induce royalty to don
Montana gems, and if their own duchesses and count-
esses and grand dames all put them on, Dame Fashion
will certainly deign to cast an eye upon our offering.
Then we shall have to wait 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 world as it does in the new
Northwestern States of this country. To very much

227

OF THJ

the majority 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 wilderness of plains-land in what might
be with poetic license described as the shadow of the
Eocky 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 which had been the subject of the Louis-
iana purchase. Montana was thus part of Louisiana in
their time. Then it became part of Missouri Territory ;
next it was part of Nebraska Territory ; and after that
it was part of Dakota. That, however, was 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 was accomplished any too quickly.

Later events of a minor character have been much
more rapid in that region. That is markedly illustrated
by two little pamphlets that lie on my desk as I write.
In one the author, Mr. William F. Wheeler, now secre-
tary of the Montana Historical Society, says, under date
of 1882, that the Falls of the Missouri are in Choteau
County, 100 miles from the Northern Pacific Kailroad
at Helena. There was then no railroad to them. In
the other pamphlet, 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 winter, and am both free and

228

SiSs-^-si* ' •

<:->.

frank to confess that in thinking of them the thrilling
and fascinating experiences of their discoverers, Lewis
and Clarke, were uppermost in ray mind. On the way
there, it happened that I met an energetic and valiant
successor to those military officers in the person of
Lieutenant Ahern, who has of late years done much
valuable work 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 almost to have returned
to the virgin territory in which they risked and often
nearly lost their lives. Lieutenant Ahern had cut out
from a copy of their printed journal those leaves where-
in they describe their journey over and through the
Rocky Mountains. The lieutenant was in a part of the
mountains with which he was unfamiliar, and, happen-
ing to meet a hunter, he talked with him about the
forward route to be taken. The hunter professed
intimate familiarity with the trail, but speedily acknowl-
edged himself lost. As night was falling, a camp was
made, and Lieutenant Ahern whiled the time away by
rereading his pages of Lewis and Clarke's journal. He
found in them an accurate description of the country
around him, and in the morning enjoyed the satisfaction
of becoming 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 was
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
them accurately to-day.

I did not have the journal of the explorers with me,
but I recollected how they separated, and Captain Lewis
took one water route while his companion followed
another stream, each being most anxious to come upon

231

the falls in order to distinguish the main current from
its feeders. I remembered Captain Lewis's hearing the
noise of the great fall from a distance of seven miles.
I recalled his description of numerous great but aban-
doned Indian camps, and the notes he made of the scene
near the falls, where the vast grassy plain was dotted
with great herds of buffalo. I remembered how a bear
chased him into the river, how three buffalo bulls
charged upon him, how a rattlesnake came near to
making his acquaintance in a most unpleasant manner,
and how the hardy explorer wrote that at the end of all
these adventures he felt his mind crowded with a host
of memories of the uncommon and astonishing scenes
and occurrences he had witnessed and experienced.

Leaving out the buffalo, or perhaps exchanging for
them the Texan steers of to-day in far fewer numbers,
and excepting the big-horned sheep and the wolves
and eagles and deserted Indian camps, the scene near
the Great or Lower Falls cannot be so different from
what it was in their day as Messrs. Lewis and Clarke
might expect. To-day, as then, the everlasting, rolling
blanket of brown bunch-grass reaches incessantly away
in every direction except where the Belt Mountains and
other spurs of the Rockies raise their blue and some-
times snow-capped masses. To one who has seen the
Missouri elsewhere, in Montana, the Dakotas, or Ne-
braska, the falls, where they occur, impress the spectator
as being entirely outside of the staid and dignified
character of the noble stream. But scarcely anywhere
along the whole course of the river could they create
greater surprise in one who was not on the lookout for
them than where they are found. It is true that there
the plains are very hilly and contorted, but this very
irregularity of the earth's surface helps to hide the river,
and one may often ride close beside it, and look over it

232

at the hills beyond, without getting a glimpse of the
lordly stream. The Missouri, before it comes to the first
falls, is only about 300 yards wide, enormous enough in
itself, but, as seen by an eagle, a mere thread of silver
and suds bisecting the plains.

The best way to see all the falls and the rapids is
from below. It must be remembered that for a distance
of more than a dozen miles the river battles with 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 level of the sea at the end of
that run than it was at the beginning. Approaching
the river from below the lower falls, it is found to be
compressed into a third of its former and after width
by towering walls of sandstone, which form a magnifi-
cent cafion. In the bottom of that it races along, now
smoothly and now in myriads of fretful wrinkles, white-
capped here and there, as it passes over the rocks that
it has hurled along and formed into semi-blockades
against its own headway. It is not here a muddy river.
It is a mighty course of crystal when you sample it ; of
emerald where it is shallow ; of molten sapphire where
it has great depth. The sheer and mighty walls 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 with an outcropping
of rough or jagged rock.

It seems at first as though the river must once have
filled up the great gutter along the bed of which it runs,
and must there have been many 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 more 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 accompany its
course press close upon its sides. It is everywhere a noble
stream, but to the eastward and southward of the falls,
in other States, it has an indolent, patient, stolid char-
acter. To understand its might and mastery, it must be
seen not only where it carves a roadway through the
bed-stone of the plains but higher up still, 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
open and sunshine of the plains. It has always seemed
to me a gigantic theft and outrage that we committed
when we gave to the more famous part of this royal river
the name of one of. its tributaries ; for it is -the mighty
Missouri that begins in the Rockies, that divides the
southern part of our country, and that discharges its
waters into the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans. That
to which we give the name of the Missouri is 2900 miles
in length. At the point at which the Mississippi joins
it the Mississippi has run 1300 miles, and has 1300 more to
go ; but the Missouri, everywhere possessed of the same
characteristics, is 4200 miles long between its birthplace
in the mountains and its ending in the Gulf.

I was not so fortunate as the first Americans who
visited the Falls of the Missouri, and saw the greatest
of the cascades sending up clouds of fog-like spray 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 was last winter just as they had described it.
The great fall is somewhat disappointing as seen from
above, and most majestic 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 down about 90 feet to the lower

236

level ; the other and major part plunges interruptedly,
at a lesser angle, down upon other rocks, there to lash
and pound itself into a fury.

There are four distinct falls above this, at some of
which the walls of the river canon slope towards the
water, at others where the walls are precipitous. Every-
where the grass and the dead and lifeless-looking rocks
edge the chasm. Everywhere the walls show either
ledges and terraces or lines of stratification. Small
cottonwoods and bushes cling to what shelves they can
find, islands of rock or small timber divide the swift
current, rapids almost innumerable break the intervals
with veritable stairs, and the thunder of cascades or the
low roar of swirling waters fills the air. But wonderful
as the aggregation of water-washed 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 from which
one may view both the Crooked Falls and the Rainbow
Falls. The Crooked Falls are most peculiar. To im-
agine them, not having seen them, the reader must
fancy a deep and rugged canon bedded with troubled,
racing water, and in the middle a great water- fall
shaped like the blade of a hatchet, whose hammer end
points up stream, while the extreme corners of the blade
touch either shore. It is not a high fall. It is not 20
feet high at the deepest part, I think, but it presents the
spectacle of waters falling towards each other sidewise,
and at right angles and obtuse angles and in curves; for
the hatchet form, the reader must recollect, is the shape
of the placid water, and the water-falls are around its
edges, playing their majestic streams upon it.

There may be other such falls in the world, but I never
saw one. That part at right angles to the course of the
stream, which I have represented as the blunt end of the

230

hammer, is that which would naturally be the main
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 where 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 times,
for in the distance are the chimneys 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 above the
plains in acknowledgment that man's conquest of the
wilderness is a thing of so distant a past that 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 more surprising and unique than
the combination of other wonders 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 what 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 Fountain. Over a great
space the water of these springs forms 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 which it has risen
and is leaping ; but a second, longer glance shows that

240

the middle of the surface of the pool is very much
higher than the water around it; a still closer look
makes it clear that the water is bubbling up not only
there, but in many places, in many aqueous mounds made
by many streams of water that spring with force and
volume from under the pool they create. Piers or
bridges have been built out over this extraordinary
fountain, and one may walk far out upon them, and see
not only the powerful disturbances of the water and
the majestic body of it that pours over the rocks to add
another and nameless river to the Missouri's bulk, but
something besides, and far more beautiful. That is the
vegetable life under the water. The water is as clear
as any that was ever seen, as colorless as that in Lake
Superior's bays, and far down on the rough rocky
bottom are weeds and plants that lift their slender
many-shaped leaves to be swayed ceaselessly to and fro
by the commotion of the water. All the vegetation is
green, but none is so vividly and brightly green as the
water-cress plants. There are millions of these, fields of
them. They are the largest, tenderest, most succulent
cresses I ever tasted, and are always as cold as the
water, which is the next thing to ice, whether it be
tasted in midwinter or in July. Like everything else
pertaining to this playground of nature, the spring was
discovered by the first white men who visited it. They
said of it that " the water #f 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 mile." 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 body
of water equal to that of a river, is the fact that I was
told that in the country adjacent to the Missouri more
than one river, after advancing for miles towards the

243

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 mention, 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 jump
of nearly 27 feet, are great and roaring and beautiful.
At these falls 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 railway and lighting plant in the
city of Great Falls, and the other a huge smelting- works
for the reduction of copper ore. This dam and these
industries are but the beginnings of the projected utili-
zation of all the vast water-power which the falling river
creates, and which in other lands and eras would have
squandered itself upon the incompetent air, as Lewis and
Clarke described the charms of the great fall that
" since the creation had been lavishing its magnificence
upon the desert."

Above the Black Eagle Falls and the dam is the city
of Great Falls, a place not yet five years old, but boast-
ing 7000 population, two newspapers, an opera-house, a
club, good hotels, electrical service, several railroads —
and a desire to become the capital of Montana when
the votes of the people of that State determine the per-
manent seat of the State government. We will return
to another view of this ambitious little city after a
further sweep of the eye along the Missouri. It daw-
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

or THE
UNIVERSITY

contest with the Kockies, that press upon it, and even
squeeze and try to barricade it before it breaks away
from them. The distance from the mountains to the
first falls is thirty miles or more, and instead of savages
and buffaloes and wolves, the country is inhabited by
farmers, sheep-herders, cattle-men, horse-ranchers, and
the station -men and track - tenders of the railroads.
Strawberries, potatoes, barley, wheat, oats, apples, and
butter are some of the products of the region ; three
million pounds of wool were shipped from Great Falls
last year, brownstone is quarried there, and coal is
mined there. The transformation from the conditions
that Lewis and Clarke found is complete and tremen-
dous. Since I have come back from there, I remember
that the discoverers of that region said that strange
noises, as of explosions, frequently rolled over the plains
from the mountains, and a foot-note in the Journal of
Lewis and Clarke, published in 18^2 by Harper &
Brothers, declares that the Indians of Brazil accounted
for such noises in the mountains of that country by
saying that nature has a way of enclosing colored
stones " like jewelry " in cases or shells the size of a
man's head, and then exploding them, when they came
to maturity, "to scatter about abundance of beautiful
stones." However this may be, one must go in precisely
the opposite direction, to where the Missouri has left
its rocky canon and begun to earn its reputation as a
muddy river, before its beds of sapphires and garnets,
are come upon, near Helena.

Just as Xiagara Falls is being harnessed to manufact-
ures by those who have estimated the force that it
has been wasting, 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

250,000 horse-power of the cheapest and most reliable
sort, and a company that is largely made up of New
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 have been the first man to think of utilizing this
wasted power. He interested James J. Hill, the great
railroad operator of the Northwest, and then the steps
• necessary for securing the land and the water rights were
taken, and four years ago a company with $5,000,000
capital was organized. Messrs. D. Willis James, J.
Kennedy Tod, J. g. Kennedy, Smith Weed, John G.
Moore, and General Samuel Thomas are mentioned
there as among the New-Yorkers who are interested in
the venture. The Montana Silver-Lead Smelting-works,
in which other New-Yorkers have an interest, was the
first company to put up Avorks on this tract, and coinci-
dent with the building of the first dam at Black Eagle
Falls was the construction of the works of the Boston
and Montana Smelting-works for the reduction of ores
brought from Butte. About 20,000 horse -power is
obtained at this dam, and as the demand for more power
necessitates it, the work of building other dams will be
pushed farther and farther along the river. It is more
than the ordinary mind can conceive to estimate the
surprise of Messrs. Lewis 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 workmen, the falls and rapids each
seconded by dams, and all the water-power, which they
regarded only as productive of scenic effects, trained to
turn the modern spinning-wheels, the turbines of to-day.
And who shall say whether they would envy the owners
of the power, or mourn the practical tendency of the
age?

248

CAXOS OF THE MISSOURI RIVER, BELOW GREAT FALLS

OF TUJt

•CTNIVERSITY

A MAX FROM ANOTHER WORLD

At about Christmas-time last year there was an ob-
vious and palpable stir among the older men of the city
of Helena, the capital of Montana. It was not seen in
any movement or gathering of these people ; indeed, it
would be difficult to say in what way it Avas made man-
ifest, and yet there was plainly a strong influence at work
that disquieted and monopolized the leading men. These
citizens when they met asked one another, " Have you
seen him yet ?" or, " How does he look 2" or they ex-
pressed a wish to shake the hand or to get a glimpse of
some one — always the same person, evidently, and al-
ways referred to as " he " or " him." It was plain that
some one of extraordinary importance, and whose pres-
ence was a novelty, was in the city and in every one's
thoughts. I, who did not especially deserve such good-
fortune, was among the first to see him. Mr. Hugh
McQuaid, one of the pioneers of Montana civilization,
though still a young man, was impelled by his former
training as a journalist to take me to see this pervasive
personality regarding whom he said, " I wish to make
you acquainted with a man from another world. I
wouldn't on any account have you miss talking with
him."

"A man from another world?" I repeated; "miss
talking to him ? I should say not. But who is he ?"

"Why, it's Johnny Healey, one of the finest and
bravest men who ever lived, and a pioneer and pillar of
the old days ; ex-sheriff of Choteau County when that
county was the size of Xew England — an old Indian

251

fighter and trader and hunter. He has been in Alaska
six years, 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 man. 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 man who has died. But
come along. I've told him you are here, and made a
date with him to see you, now, at the club."

"But why do you call him 'a man from another
world ?' "

"Because it was another world that we had here in
his days, when Montana contained only a few raw min-
ing camps, miners, traders, women of only one kind;
stage - coaches and no railways, shootings, hangings,
highwaymen, Indians. When mining was about the
only business, and the onty law that amounted to any-
thing was miner's law."

On the way to the attractive and almost metropolitan
headquarters of the Montana Club man after man
stopped us to ask Mr. McQuaid whether he had seen
Mr. Healey, or " Johnnie." It was 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
rooms where the card-tables and the newspaper files and
the " loaded " tumblers were in busy use. He seemed
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 weight and slightly Celtic in facial features, with
brown hair and mustache and a grizzled goatee. He
was dressed distinctly like a man of the present world

252

in what we 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 jaw, to betoken great firmness. He
showed 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 time to enter an Indian tepee. That scar made
a great impression on my mind, so often have I stooped
down to enter tepees, and so abundant and vicious are
the dogs wherever there are tepees.

Mr. Healey would not talk about " the other world "
from which he had come. He said it would look like
boasting, " and," he added, " what's the use ?" He was
willing to tell me 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
room called out, "Whose voice is that I hear? Can I
come in { Why, bless me, if -I didn't know you by your
voice, Johnnie. How are you, old fellow? You look
first-rate."

-Why, hello, Tom?"

The new-comer was United States Senator Power,
another old comrade and old-timer with Mr. Healey.
The two men sat down, and I could not help contrast-
ing the appearance of my companions. Mr. McQuaid
and the senator were both men of full habit, soft-
faced, fat -handed, with 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 man of yesterday — the wirv.

browned, nervous, muscular, out-of-door semblance of
what they had been. It was the scene of the famous
painting of "The Eeturn of the Missionary" repeated.
As the missionary looks, surrounded by the cardinal,
his retinue and the magnificent 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 which he looked Mr. Healey over from
head to foot, he asked him a question that seemed 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 mean to '
say you are still at it, with your hand on your gun and
the border life around you ?"

" That's what I am," said Healey ; and then he hastily
added, "but it ain't what it used to be, Tom; 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 would be proud to have earned, and such as
it never was my fortune to hear spoken of any man be-
fore.

" Healey was the best man we ever had here in the
early days," said he. " He was afraid of nothing and no
one. You could not scare him with a gun. He was as
quick as a cat, and as scientific as Sullivan. If you
pulled a gun on him he would grab it with one hand
and knock you down with another. The rough element
wanted no trouble with him, I can tell you. If he was
out of reach of a gun that was pulled on him he would
simply laugh, and wait his chance at the man who
threatened him. 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 time was that ?"

" Dutch Bill's gang."

"Oh."

I got Mr. Healey to tell me that story, but it was by
no means the equal in old-time flavor of others that I
heard and heard of. He and a companion were out
after thieving Indians near Fort Benton, and they were
tired and hungry. They saw some horses and two
mounted men and rode up to them. Mr. Healey rode
close to the men, and they slipped off the beasts they
were riding and rested their rifles on the saddles in a
decidedly threatening manner. " Who are you," one
cried. " We're white men," Healey shouted, riding
closer. " But who in are you ?" the stranger in-
sisted. By this time Mr. Healey was so close to the
men that he could see what sort of rifles they were
" heeled r with. « Quick ! who are you ?" " Healey,"
said the hero of the story. " Then throw up your
hands, - you," was the answer. Instantly Mr.
Healey threw himself sidewise over his horse so as to
expose but one foot, and dashed away for his life. His
companion followed 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 them away.
Come on."

"You'll get killed— and that's aU you'll get," the
other replied. But Mr. Healey on his superb horse was
dashing back as if the grass was on fire behind him.
Both men rode right up to the bunch of stolen horses
and began firing at the men, who were still behind the
barricades they had formed of their horses. Mr. Healey
shot both their saddle horses and stampeded the stolen
R 257

steeds, getting them away with him. Next day one of
the thieves was captured and brought into Fort Benton
by some one else, and on the day after that Mr. Healey
rode out for the other scamp. He rode up to a shack, or
rude house, where he suspected the other desperado
would hide, and learned that the man he wanted would
soon return ; that he had gone away for water. When
the man did return, Healey, standing in the doorway of
the shack, covered the man with his gun and remarked :

" It is my turn, now ; hold up your hands."

That was the only time 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 mining-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
knew, and that this book had been declared by no less a
person than Charles Dickens to be " the most interest-
ing volume he ever read." It was on his second visit to
this country that the famous English novelist had ob-
tained and read the work; at least that is what the
most reputable men 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 lit-
tle else to look for by one who wished a clear reflection
of the mining-camp scenes in the early " sixties," when
Alder Qulch and then Last Chance Gulch (Helena) sent
the fame of their gold yields broadcast and attracted a
host of miners, prospectors, traders, and adventurers
from California, Utah, Nevada, Missouri, Arkansas,
Kentucky, and many other States, into the new region
of diggings.

It is called

258

THE VIGILANTES OF MONTANA

POPULAR JUSTICE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

BEING A CORRECT AND IMPARTIAL NARRATIVE OF THE CHASE,
TRIAL, CAPTURE, AND EXECUTION OF

HENRY PLUMMER'S ROAD AGENT BAND

TOGETHER WITH ACCOUNTS OF THE LIVES AND CRIMES OF MANY OF THE ROB-
BERS AND DESPERADOES, THE WHOLE BEING INTERSPERSED WITH
SKETCHES OF LIFE IN THE

MINING CAMPS OF THE "FAR WEST"

PROF. THOMAS J. DIMSDALE

SECOND EDITION

VIRGINIA CITY, M. T.

D. W. TILTON, PUBLISHER

1882

I had intended to quote liberally from the professors
book.* I wrote to his publisher at his printed address
in Virginia City and at another address to which it
was said he had removed, but I got no reply. Then I
interested some friends in Montana in the task and they
failed. It is a pity, for no substitute can be made 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 impartial
account of the scenes and contentions it records, but

* A more modern and comprehensive work upon the times and characters
of the Vigilantes has been written by Nathaniel P. Langford, of St. Paul,
Minn., and is called Vigilante Days and Ways.

259

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 wholesale 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 when 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 movements are yet alive, and because some among
those who took part in them were little better than or
different from 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 them — 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 me that the Vigilantes
were not all of them better than the outlaws. Am I
right about that ? Were all the Yigilantes 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 came 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 must make note of that
is not put down in the records," said another, " and that
is that in these mining communities there were many
weak and shifty characters who were not bad at heart,

260

and did not want to be bad in deed, but who found them-
selves siding with the outlaws and did not know how to
break away. Sometimes these were men who were
asked or forced to give some little assistance to the
desperadoes — to shelter them, or outfit them, 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 between them and the out-
laws. Then there was one notable but unique case of a
man who trailed with the bad men when he was drunk
and with the decent ones when he was sober. But the
majority of men who became Vigilantes after having
more or less dealings with the desperadoes were the
store-keepers and tavern-keepers and others who had
trade relations with every class in each community, and
'who knew their bread was buttered by sticking to the
stronger side. Until the Vigilantes were 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 climbing up on top the}r
came over to us. The cases of actual ' state's evidence,'
where outlaws joined us, were very few indeed, for the
reason that if they had been notorious we were after
them to hang them, not to associate with them.

" Our mining communities all go through the same
processes between the first stage of ' the stampede ' to
the new finds and the last stage when the yield of
metal and the interests that grow up around the mines
become so important that lawlessness and tomfoolery
cease to be possible, and then the men of will and worth
get together and enforce good order. It will surprise
many persons to know that one kind of law — and it is a
very strict kind — obtains from the very outset at every
new camp that is started. That is the law governing
the interests of miners to one another in their pure

261

character as mine-holders and mine-workers. This law
or set of laws originated in California, and has become
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 lawyer
who is famous for his knowledge of mining law soon
becomes 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 lawyers
do not pretend to understand this peculiar system of
legislation. It is as different from the common law as
is the Code Napoleon. It grew up out of the common-
sense, every-day rules that every camp established at
the beginning when the men first began to stake out
their claims. By common agreement they were to
make claims of a certain size, announce and protect
them in certain ways, and retain possession of them by
the performance of certain obligations. As time went
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 claims by the ears as to whose rights controlled
the situation. There are hundreds and hundreds of
possibilities for contention, and new ones arise all the
time. As mining claims were all the property that
most of the men in a camp possessed, equitable rules
had to be established and enforced. This was done,
even though the civil law was left hundreds of miles
behind and forgotten.

"~No one who is given to reflection will wonder at
the lawlessness of the mining camps. The stampedes
to such scenes were always by motley crews of men
among whom the bad ones formed a greater proportion

than they do in civilized and settled places. Men who
had failed at everything else, deserters from the army,
gamblers, outlaws, tramps, and men who had forever
forsworn the fetters of organized society, were in the
crowds along with the earnest and reputable men whose
sole hope was that of bettering their poor or perverse
fortunes. The desperadoes in all new camps are free to
carry weapons, are equipped with money, 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 which civilization
imposes upon mankind. Terrible indeed would be the
consequences of such conditions if it were not for the
character of the men whose reasons for going into such
regions are not such as make them sympathize with 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 laws of their own making into
their hands. Men who go to the mining regions have
to draw a fine line as to the character they propose to
exhibit there. They must be good or bad, and must de-
clare themselves quickly, there being no loose line or
latitude between the two sorts of men. Where every
sense is keen, and judgment of character is unerring,
the mass of the people quickly place a new-comer where
he belongs, if he is slow about making up his own mind.
" Long after a mining camp has purged itself of ruf-
fian rule, and has set up the civil law, there still remains
a tendency towards prodigious drinking among the peo-
ple of nearly every class. What must have been the
amount of drinking when there was neither law nor or-
der you can perhaps imagine. Men without the re-

263

straint of law, indifferent to public opinion, and unbur-
dened by families, drink whenever, they feel like it,
whenever they have the money to pay for it, and when-
ever there is nothing else to do. Gin-mills of the vilest
sort, in great numbers, spring up in such regions, and do
a thriving business. Bad manners follow, profanity be-
comes a matter of course, and with that goes the ten-
dency to let speech become too free and personal. Ex-
citability and nervousness brought on by rum help these
tendencies along, and then to correct this state of
things the pistol comes into play, and it is understood
that if certain words are uttered blood is likely to be
shed. To call a man a liar, a thief, or a coward, or to
apply a too common expression that reflects upon a
man's ancestry, is to court a bullet from his pistol.
' Thief ' is a particularly criminal word according to
the miner's code, because actual thieving is a capital
crime. No one is punished for killing like a dog any
man who is caught stealing.

"Where there is some 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 some so-called civil-
ized communities no jury will find a verdict against men
for duelling or for killing the destroyers of their homes,
here in the mountains men 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, < flush ' gambler, whose friends applaud him be-
cause he runs a fair game, befriends the poor, has killed
a man for insulting an unprotected fast woman, and
who, in various ways, has made himself a local hero able
to defy the mockery called law. It is not necessary to

264

add that in such communities another class of men who
do as they please are the rich men, who may not be pop-
ular, but are able to discover means for escaping punish-
ment when they earn it. In a word, all the law there
is finds itself enforced only against the poor, the shift-
less, and the unpopular. I am speaking of the new
camps, before the orderly citizens take control."

" In the settlement of New England,'' said another of
these graduates from ruder conditions, " it is said that
the first thought of a new community was towards the
establishment of a school-house and a church. In the
mining regions the first institutions of a public charac-
ter were a piano and a billiard-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, while a
roulette -wheel or a simple lay-out for faro or craps
served instead of the billiard-table. The billiard-table
represented the gambling-house, and also served, in some
places, for a theatrical stage, if a strolling company of
actors or minstrels happened along. The musical in-
strument was the mainstay and advertisement of such
a house as harbored the first women who came to the
camp. With gambling saloons run wide open, and out-
cast women the only females (or almost the only ones)
in the camp, one can perceive how such men as once
possessed refinement were almost certain to lose it,
while such as were hardened became all the more cal-
lous and reckless. The women are, and always used to
be, among the first-comers after the noise of the start-
ing of a new camp got abroad. It is their habit to
leave a place as soon as it begins to grow dull, and they
jump for the next new camp about which they hear talk
among the men. They are by no means tramps. Even

265

in the wildest days of early mining they spent large
sums of money to get transportation from place to
place, and to have houses built for them as soon as they
arrived. Then they would make a great display of
feathers, silks, gay colors, and frescoed faces on the
streets. So long as they continued free they were treated
with rude deference and respect, and the dust (gold) was
showered upon them. They kept good accounts at the
bankers — sometimes mounting up to the thousands—
and had costly jewelry and clothing that the rough
miners thought the Queen of France would give one of
her fingers to own. It really was costly finery, though
I wouldn't vouch for its strict compliance with the Pa-
risian fashion in make-up.

" Since all that was softening and gentleizing in the
camps proceeded from these women, it is worth while
to halt a moment at a public dance-hall in an old-fash-
ioned camp. In these days such places are far fewer
than they used to be. The variety theatres, where the
female performers visit with the audience between their
appearances on the stage, have taken the place of the
old-time resorts where the miners used to dance with
the ' hurdy-gurdies,' as the girls were called. There
might not have been a church or a reputable resort of
any kind in one of these camps, and the dance-hall was
really the most orderly and the least harmful place in
the outfit. To be sure, rum, jealousy, old feuds, and any
one of a dozen causes might start a row in such a place.
And rows were not infrequent. Pistols, dirks, fists, and
bottles were used ; frightened men hid behind women ;
the women screamed or laid down on the ball-room
floor, and there was much excitement whether any harm
was done or not. But fights took place, as the wind
blows, wherever they happened, so that this feature was
not the fault of the dance-house. There the dancing-

floor was beyond the bar, and it cost a dollar to go upon
it and to pick out a partner from among the women who
sat around the sides of the room. In some places they
wore decollete dresses, in some their skirts were abbre-
viated ; in some all were dressed alike, and in some they
were simply clad as any other women might 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-manager
called out what sort of dance he pleased : a polka, a
schottische, a Virginia real, or a quadrille. The waltz
was not danced out here in those days.

"The men would have impressed a tenderfoot as a
very queer lot. Some wore 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. Gamblers, mine -owners, miners,
store-keepers, clerks — all the sorts of men there were 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 champagne, at from ten to fifteen dollars
a bottle, if she wanted it, and if her partner was ' flush.'
Drinks came high, but the prices varied according to
how far from a railroad the place was and how well the
camp was panning out. It did not cost less than a dol-
lar in most places for two drinks, no matter what they
were or how cheap the proprietor bought them. The
hired dancers were paid according to the number of
times they were invited out upon the floor. The pret-
tiest and most popular ones made the most money, of
course, but in those rough places where the women were
so few, I never saw one so ugly or unshapely or ill-man-

26?

nered that there were not plenty of men eager to pay for
the right to enjoy her company for the few minutes that
a dance lasted. Coming 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-browed, ruffianly fel-
low call out, 6 Here, gal, let's you and I have a spin,' in
a voice like that of a fog-horn. Nevertheless, every man
was as polite as he knew how to be, and the women had
little to complain of, all things considered. It was only
when they linked their fortunes with some gambler or
bully, 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 healthy to notoriously
abuse anybody Aveaker than yourself — man or woman
—and it ought not to be safe to do so anywhere in the
world."

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 were treated with
the greatest deference and liberality, and that there was
an unwritten law that gave such women a power for good
that they could never hope to attain elsewhere. But
while I was in Montana I heard of an era earlier than
that which he wrote about, when there were practically
no such women in the camps, and when the only women
who were there were treated as only good women should
be treated. The men even took their hats off to them
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 number
of men received dreadful injuries. The only women
then in the place tore up their linen for lint and band-
ages, and applied themselves to the care of the wounded.
They took the injured into their houses and nursed

them. Soon afterwards the house of one of these hu-
mane creatures was burned to the ground, and, in re-
membrance of her good conduct, the men made up a
purse, built her a new house, and sent to San Francisco
for a piano that cost twelve hundred dollars by the time
it got to her.

From a historian who has not yet published his col-
lected notes I got some queer memoranda respecting
the dancers above referred to, and to many others who
sought the new camps, both men and women. They
made their slow and uncomfortable way to Virginia
City, in Southern Montana, by stage-coach, and the
journey cost sometimes as high as fifteen hundred dol-
lars from Omaha. The fare by way of Denver and Salt
Lake was 8575, and all baggage was carried at $1 50
a pound. Ornaments, dresses, everything, had to be
brought; for practically nothing except food, powder,
pistols, guns, mining implements, and men's clothing
could be bought in the camps. When a woman reached
a camp she was obliged to order the building of a log-
house or cabin. These were very rude buildings, in the
walls of which mud was used to fill up the chinks be-
tween the logs. It was a woman's work to put these
finishing touches to a home ; it mattered not what her
character or standing. The women made 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 with
wooden pegs. They made a fine carpet except while
they were " curing," then it was not pleasant to be in
such a house. Cow-skins were put on the roof and cov-
ered with mud to keep out the cold, the heat, and the
rain ; but when it rained the women went out of doors
and stood in the rain to save their dresses from the mud
that leaked through and fell in the houses. Beds were

269

made by building a framework of wood and fitting the
ends of one side of the frame into auger-holes in the
logs of one wall. Ticking was bought and filled with
straw and a buffalo robe was laid over the mattress.
Candles were the only lights at first, but by-and-by, in
Virginia City, oil-lamps were introduced.

Professor Dimsdale speaks of the certainty of a shoot-
ing scrape in the dance-halls. The women were not un-
used to such occurrences, and one who has added her
recollections to the notes I have read, declares that,
when men 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 man who admired
a woman's dancing or beauty or amiability would take
out his chamois 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 flow of dust. So, I fancy,
would 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 !" while
the nobles were flinging jewels and roubles at her feet
upon the stage.

Gold-dust was the money of the era in which "The
Man from Another World " figured in the Montana min-
ing camps. "Weigh out," was what the bar-tenders used
to say at such times, as men of to-day would say " pay
up," or " settle." Wherever business was done, a pair
of light jewellers' scales was at hand, and, as ever}7 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
gambling, made it a practice to give the treasure to a

270

woman to keep. The women did not steal ; not because
they were 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 yet to
be seen. They are very much smaller than the reader
would imagine, not very much higher than the crown
of the head of a man of ordinary stature. They contain
only one room as a rule ; and, if my recollection serves
me, are often without windows.

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 Xevada by stage under an engagement for
a week's performances. Instead of a theatre — this was
in the " sixties " — he found a big shack of logs, chinked
up the sides and roofed over with canvas. There was a
rude stage, and the benches were down in a graded pit
with mother-earth for the floor. He was to have $100,
and two women in the company engaged for $60 and
s-iu. 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 week ; cocktails cost four bits (50 cents), and so
did a shave. A week's bill at the hotel averaged about
s3'». The local actors were wofully 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, were treated with respect ; the actresses
received chivalric attentions, but, alas ! in this particular
town the manager every night gambled away the money
taken in at the door.

Sometimes, during and at the close of the War of the
Rebellion, theatrical folk played upon billiard -tables, or

271

in dining-rooms where the tables were massed together
to make a stage ; or in any empty building there hap-
pened to be. Each travelling company carried curtains
and a few rolled -up, painted scenes, representing a
kitchen, a parlor, and a street or forest. They hung
these scenes from copper wires stretched from wall to
wall and fastened with screw -eyes. For an actor's
dressing-room, or a dressing-room 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 auditorium.

The good companies made almost as much money as
they do now because the price of admission was high.
It was a pinch of gold-dust, and that was 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 money in
the business to tempt the best talent. Mr. Barrett and
Mr. Jefferson, Miss Eytinge and Lotta have all played
in such camps. If a performer, particularly a lady,
pleased the crowds, they threw slugs and nuggets of
gold and coins upon the stage. Singers who could
" touch the heart " were in great demand, 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 composed 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 was heartly encored on one oc-
casion but would not respond. An old actress who was
dressing behind the blankets that separated the retiring
room from the auditorium said, " Go on, Maggie." " Oh,

272

I can't," said the younger actress, bursting into tears ; " I
can't sing to such horrid music." Every word was heard
by the audience, and one man arose and called out : " Go
ahead, miss ; if he don't play better I'll fill him full of
bullets."

In time, when the terrible reign of the outlaws of the
Montana camps had begun to prove unendurable, the
line drawn between the lawless and the reputable men in
the camps became so tight that the tension was frightful.
It was felt that neither life nor property were safe; that
the " bad " men were not willing 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 country
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 were called
Vigilance Committees in California were never spoken
of in Montana otherwise than as Vigilantes. Just as
there had been too many weak and impassive men
when the evil-doers were having all things their own
way, so there instantly was formed a general and com-
mon courage and unity for the reform when it was
felt that punishment and protection were about to be
extended to all who needed either. Professor Dimsdale
says that in the swift, stern work of the Vigilantes
twenty-four wicked lives were sacrificed ; but he adds
that before the outlaws were thus brought to terms
they had caused the loss of at least one hundred lives in
that sparsely settled country.

The ways of the outlaws and the methods by which

justice was administered to them were both peculiar.

The chief of the road agents was Henry Plummer, " a

perfect gentleman," after the manner of the heroes in

s 273

California's records of a similar period in that State.
We can imagine him perfectly without asking for any
man's recollection of his appearance: a slight, well-
formed, dapper man, modestly and well attired, careful
to be barbered whenever it was possible, and always
armed to the teeth. As a matter of recorded fact, he
could empty a revolver in an incredibly short time.
When he or any of his friends were in need of money,
the practice was to intercept a stage or an express load
of bullion, or to lurk beside a highway for the purpose
of robbing the first person who came along. They very
frequently added murder to the lesser crime. One of
Plummer's former companions had robbed and mur-
dered a man, and, riding into town ^ith his booty, was
killed by Plummer,who had broken friendship with him
some time previously. The murderer brought on his
own death by too much boasting, and Plummer, 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
was bad enough to have such acts committed in a set-
tlement where innocent folk ran many chances of being
shot, and where others were frightened half out of their
wits, but it was worse to think that these ruffians were
more apt to find victims among the honest folk than to
kill one another.

These men of the Plummer stripe would shoot or mal-
treat a man whom they had never seen before, simply
because they did not like his looks, or his dress, or be-
cause he would not drink with 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 public offices
that gave them the greater power and opportunity for
evil. Plummer, the leader, was actually elected sheriff,

274

and it is easy to imagine what sort of aides he drew
around him, and what use he made of his office. So
long as he was unopposed by any combination of up-
right men the people whom he terrorized aided him in
his ambitions, and suffered from his crimes in silence.
He proved a wretched poltroon when the Vigilantes
caught him and put him to death on the gallows. He
had been a marked man from the moment the reform-
ers began their work. He was caught with difficulty,
and then there seemed nothing that he was not willing
to promise rather than die. He said his prayers — an
act which to his ruffianly comrades must have seemed
both annoying and ignoble — and he confessed all his
crimes. Others cried " like women," as the saying
goes, when they were confronted with violent deaths
that were more humane than they had meted out to
their unoffending victims. Short, sharp work, by no
means unattended with danger to the Vigilantes, was
made with the wretched lives of all who were captured,
and the reign of order that has since prevailed in Mon-
tana was thus inaugurated.

Such were some of the conditions in that " other .
world" from which it seemed to the people of Helena
that Johnny Healey returned the other day. He mixed
with that strange life the still more strange career of a
trader with the wild Indians of those days, but, as Mr.
Kipling would say, " that is another story."

275

YIII
WASHINGTON: THE EVERGREEN STATE

I HAVE called Montana the Treasure State, and have
shown that it is vastly larger than Pennsylvania, with
prospectively many times its wealth in minerals and in
the variety of its resources. But much that we find
promised in Montana is amplified within the territory
of Washington. The hopeful inhabitants of the former
boldly adopt the motto, " The last shall be first," as if
to say that amid the riches of which they find suggest-
ion and promise all around them, they see for them-
selves a greater wealth-producing future than is boasted
at present by any of the older States. I cannot follow
them so far. There is a certainty that Washington has
more varied resources than Montana, and I think that,
with or without irrigation, Washington will support a
larger population ; but with both States it is too early
for closer comparisons. The vast treasures of precious
metals in Montana are sufficiently worked to give as
definite a basis for hope as is found in the marvellous
soil and forests of Washington, but in both States there
are great areas of thirsty soil whose future is a moot
point in Washington, and of which in Montana it is
only certain that they yield a good return from 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 miles wide between the Pacific coast
and the Idaho border, and to journey over it from
British Columbia southward is to travel 2-t5 miles. It
is the most 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 well-equipped line lies
across an extensive desert of sage-brush, and then cross-
es a vast reach of usually brown bunch-grass before it
plunges into the mazes of the Cascade Mountains and
rushes out from them upon the perennially green Pa-
cific slope into the Puget Sound country. But the ne-
cessities of railway construction compel a disregard for
such choice of territory as would be made by an agri-
culturist or a scenery-hunting tourist, and, in this case,
even the land granted to the railway, 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 without contributions from the outer world.
Nevertheless, the Chinese wall they think of oftenest is
the true one, and that they wish to break down, for a
trade with Asia is a thing dear to their hopes.

" If I could only have half an hour with the Emperor
of China," said a talented son of Washington, in whose
veins the blood of one of our most gifted orators is
flowing, " I would make this the richest State west of

277

the Mississippi. I would tell him we wanted the trade
of Asia as New York has that of Europe. I would ex-
plain to him that we entertain no prejudice against his
people, and mean no insult in shutting them out of our
territory. I would make it clear to him that our dislike
is only for his coolies, but that as for his merchants
and scientists and scholars — we welcome them, we want
them, especially the merchants."

Now let us look at this great State in detail, keeping
in mind that it is by nature divided into two parts by
the Cascade Mountains, which bisect it along a line to
the westward 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
streams, and agriculture, though a future source of
great wealth, is yet but a small factor. East of the
Cascade Kange there is smaller, inferior timber, but it
cuts a minor figure in the wealth or character of the
State, for in the main we have returned to land some-
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 have partaken of their
character, or rather of the disturbance that produced
them. A large area of eastern Washington has been
several times overflowed by lava, and it crops out in a
disorder that is sometimes abundant in the Big Berid
country and in the sage - brush lands. The powder or
decay of this lava makes rich land, and where it is driest
and most forbidding, the addition of water will turn it
into a blooming garden. The Columbia River flows
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

378

marked in the side walls 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 them, with grassy or wooded slopes, profitable
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 western end of it — and he has nowhere
done more than that — is in the Kootenay country, but
everywhere its productiveness is thought to be fabulous.
Its western end, at the Cascades, is a marvellous scenic
region. For grand desolation, ruggedness, vastness, and
primitive 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, some of them even ten or twelve
miles long, and many of them a quarter that length.
The forests on the west slope of the Cascades are be-
wildering, 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 little cotton- wood and maple, but
these lesser woods are unconsidered. The Douglas firs
attain a size of from eighteen inches to eight feet in
diameter. They shoot 100 feet in air without putting
out a limb, and then, above the first limbs, they tower
100 feet higher, and often more than that. The cedars

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 from one to
three feet of solid timber around each hollow core.
Over thousands of square miles upon the forest bed
lies the debris of another forest prone upon the ground,
as if a tangle of toothpicks from 200 to 300 feet in
length had been strewn 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 solemn
and an awful forest. It might be likened to a grave-
yard in which every upright column 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 murmuring, without
being 'sure of the sound. There is no bird life in that
oppressive solitude, no animal life, except that now and
then a bear is seen. He who would penetrate the forest
must be content to make two miles a day in a straight
line, and then only by seesawing many miles to and fro,
clambering from tree trunk to tree trunk, and patrol-
ling the lengths of what 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 world, know nothing of it.
Travel there is only where water takes it. The streams
are the roadways, and canoes the red men's horses.

Hunters and prospectors upon the eastern, more light-

281

ly timbered, slopes of the mountains report that great
herds of mountain-goats may be seen feeding close to
the glaciers. The wool of these animals 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
weave it with rude looms into blankets, and out of the
finer yarn they knit stockings and mitte'ns.

And now for the pastoral regions of eastern Wash-
ington. This table of the production of wheat in the
State in 1891, prepared for the Government, will, if
the reader consults the map while he studies it, reveal
what farming lands are now in use and where they are
situated :

Counties.

Acreage.

Average bush,
per acre.

Total.

Whitman.

320,000

7,360,000

Walla Walla

150000

3 000 000

Garfield . .

100 000

2 700 000

Columbia . . .

80,000

2 1 60 000

Asotin

20000

500 000

Lincoln

20000

300 000

Douglas

1 6,000

240 000

Spokane

25 000

450 000

Klickitat
Kittitas

20,000
12,500

400,000
250 000

All other counties, in-
cluding those west of
the mountains.

V 6,000

100,000

Totals

768,500

2271

17460000

These figures tell the whole story of last year's wheat
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 twelve
and a half million dollars. The same authority from
whom the above figures were obtained is of the opinion
that without irrigation — that is to say, outside the lands

that must be watered — the State will eventually pro-
duce between forty millions and fifty millions of bushels
of wheat. In a pamphlet issued by the State Board of
Trade, and written 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-
tary deposit of volcanic origin, made up of a sandy loam,
disintegrated basalt, and ash. It is porous, readily takes
in and yields moisture, and allows the salts to rise to
feed the growing crops. From year to year the climate
varies but slightly, and where the rains are sufficient,
they bring up and mature the grain without its being
scorched. This writer has known wheat to be sowed in
every month of the year. In the summer the ground is
covered with dust thick enough to keep the moisture in
the soil underneath. Wheat sowed in the dust between
the months of June and September will spring up only
after the autumn rains have set in. From September
1 5th to December 1st is the best time for seeding. There
is no necessity for haste in harvesting. The wheat 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 more land
than he could in many other States where wheat 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 averaged thirty -two
bushels to the acre. He found that the labor made it
cost nineteen cents a bushel. To this he added interest
on t£e value of the land for two 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 statements, which accord closely with my own
deductions from all 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
new States, that a study of Washington would be in-
complete without them.

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 rally ing -point, but the people dropped the
word "Falls" 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
seemed to mark it as a natural distributing centre.
Eight railroads meet there now. It is a dozen years
old as a settlement, and now extends its broad streets
and battalions of brick and stone buildings over a con-
siderable part of the bowllike, level-bottomed 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 lumber trade, and jobbing in all the neces-
saries of life are its mainstays, and possibly by the time
this is published it will have started up its smeltery to
lead the new industry which many think must become
its main one when, amid the development of the in-
numerable mines of eastern Washington, it shall have
become a great mining town. Its jobbing trade in 1890
amounted to $21,565,000.

284

Spokane is very enterprising. It has an opera house
that is the finest theatre west of the Mississippi .River,
and its Board of Trade, under the tireless energy of Mr.
John R. Reavis, is incessantly at work 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 monetary 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 with 60 over its telephone wires. Its
water-power — having a minimum power of 32,000
horses — runs its electric cars, electric lights, cable-cars,
printing-presses, elevators, and all its small machinery.
It is not rampant in its vices as most Northwestern
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 mastery over public vice to the unique
and high-toned character of the leading citizens, who
embrace a large proportion of Eastern blood, and good
Eastern blood at that. Such an explanation is highly
necessary here, for in the new Northwest public moral-
ity is sometimes regarded as a concomitant of failing
business powers. Happily I can vouch for the fact that
Spokane society is leavened by a considerable class of
proud and cultivated men and women, who live in
charming homes, and maintain a delightful intercourse
with one another. They make it a very gay city — they
and the fine climate — and are fond of high-bred horses,
good dogs, and bright living, with dancing and amateur
theatricals, good literature and fun. San Francisco is
no longer peculiar in this respect, for Spokane shares
her brilliancy among our Western cities.

Close to Spokane is the famous Palouse country. The

285

1,300,000 acres of Whitman County, and 1,000,000 acres
of Spokane County form this rich region, which bears
various names in its minor extensions, but is all alike in
its extraordinary fertility. It was settled early by a
class of immigrants known in the West as " Pikes,'"' who
came in 1844-54 from Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas,
Tennessee, and as far east as the Piedmont region.
They were poor whites, and were a tall, angular, drawl-
ing band of blond men, lazy and shiftless, but of daunt-
less courage. They took up the bottom-lands between
the rolling, timber-topped hills, beside the streams. In
time they were driven to the hills, and then they dis-
covered that more and better wheat could be raised
there, without irrigation, than on the bottoms. This
Palouse country is about 150 miles long, and averages
30 miles in width. It is said that in summer the soil is
covered with a thick dust, and that in place of rain they
have heavy dews. It is reputed to grow an extraor-
dinary amount of wheat, and its yield really did reach
30 bushels in 1890. Wheat, barley, and flax 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 quality. Land
fetches $36 an acre, and will soon sell for $50. Eight
hundred thousand acres of it is the rich land of which I
speak, and of this 389,000 acres are in cultivation, 320,-
000 acres being in wheat. The land is all taken up.
Farming has been done with small holdings, but mon-
eyed men are now buying large tracts. In Colfax, the
main 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 same corner of the

State, ranks next after the Palouse country. Its
saltic soil has been cultivated for forty years, and one
farm of that age produced forty bushels of wheat to the
acre last year without fertilizers, of which, by-the-way,
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 wheat.
Prunes, pears, enormous yields of strawberries, black-
berries, and the finest (because the oldest) orchards are
their most important products after the wheat. Walla
Walla, the principal town, bears a name familiar 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
mines 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 simply
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 problems 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 we 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 twenty 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 streams, and but few springs. It embraces

287

the two large counties of Lincoln and Douglas. There
are in it a million acres of land that can be cultivated.
Only a small 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 autumn (1891) this sum of cultivated acres was
doubled. There is some government land there, offer-
ing what is perhaps the best chance left in eastern
Washington for "the homesteader," 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 was not over
15 bushels, dryness being the cause. An effort to get
artesian water is being made near Waterville in Doug-
las County. If they find water, and it is abundant and
not too far underground, the result will promise redemp-
tion to a great belt of soil that is second to none when it
has moisture.

The problem what 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 from end to end — nothing but
sage and cactus and basalt rock, except that in Adams
County there is some good land. The region has a rain-
fall of only nine inches. It too is all good land if water
can be got to it. Vegetables and fruits grow well in it.

The great Yakima tract across the Columbia is very
promising. Small farmers are rapidly putting it under
settlement 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
whole Yakima country was divided between railroad

and government lands. The latter have been thrown
open, and are all taken. The railroad lands were offered
for very little before the Northern Pacific company
experimented with its admirable schemes for irrigating
the soil. Now the farms command high prices, and
fetch them so easily that it is predicted that within 25
years Yakima Valley and County will 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 Kailroad is building a
ditch sixty miles long, to be fed by water taken from
the Yakima River at a point below that at which the
river issues from the mountains. The ditch is an enor-
mous one, and was built at great expense across ravines
and all the irregularities of the country. Seventeen
miles of it was ready for water in December, 1891. It
will moisten thousands of acres that once were purchas-
able at §1 50 each, but now are held at §45 an acre or
more, because no lands in the State will be more pro-
ductive, if the best judges reason correctly. With the
sale of the irrigated lands, stock in the irrigation corn-
pa ay is offered, and the scheme is so planned that when
the land is all sold, the stock will all be in the hands of
the farmers. It is likely that the farmers will then
continue to pay water rents, and will divide the profits
after the expense of maintaining the ditch and its
laterals is def rayed each year. A second canal, 250 feet
higher than the present one, is said to be contemplated,
and an added supply of water is expected from three
large lakes on the eastern slope of the Cascades. Thus
the highland district of the Yakima country will also be
brought under the ditch. This is the most extensive
irrigation-work that I know of in the new States. It
may not make the Yakima the richest section of eastern
Washington, for it may not excel the Palouse or Walla
T 289

Walla tracts, but it will be highly productive, and un-
certainty about crops will be reduced to a minimum.
Perhaps time will show the richest land to be in the
future clearings of the big timber on the Pacific slope.

I have spoken of the prospect of a great yield of hops
in Yakima County in the future. The cultivation of
hops is a source of large income to the State. The hop
was first cultivated in the Puyallup region in 1866, and
with such results that in 1890 the crop was 50,000 bales,
about half of which was grown in the Puyallup fields.
That crop was marketed for two millions of dollars.
The industry has spread into the valleys of the White,
Stuck, Snohomish, and Skagit rivers, all to the west-
ward of the Cascades, at the feet of which rich valleys
of alluvial soil of great depth have been formed. 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,
Germany, 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 what had
been expected last year, and since the price was low,
it was thought that the revenue from hops would not
be above one million dollars. Hops have fetched more
than a dollar a pound in the past; of late the prices
have run from twenty cents to thirty cents. To pro-
duce them costs less than ten cents a pound in Wash-
ington.

North of Yakima is the Wenatchee Valley, reaching
from the mountains to the Columbia. It is prophesied

290

that this will prove an extremely rich fruit country.
And this is measurably true of all the very numerous
valleys that seam the mountains west and north of the
Columbia, 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 time must 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 mining
camps of Idaho and British Columbia, and fruit is an
important factor in these supplies. For a time, as the
mining lands are extended, there will be this market for
Washington fruits, but the outlook is that the produc-
tion of fruits will eventually far exceed this so-called
home demand. The Wenatchee lands, owned by the
Government and the Northern Pacific Eailroad, are just
beginning to be settled. As the Great Northern Eail-
road, which is to give a tremendous impetus to the de-
velopment of northern Washington, is to pass along
that valley, its lands will soon reach their full value.

Xorth of the Wenatchee Valley is the great Okana-
gon country, and east of that is Stevens County, or "the
Colville district," as the miners call it. It is mainly
viewed as the scene of future mining activity, and of
that we will tell further on ; but it is all guttered with
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 from half a mile to
three miles in width. It starts at its Columbia Kiver
end from a noble bunch-grass valley, already fairly set-
tled, and farmed for fruit, wheat, and vegetables. Mr.
Frank Wilkeson, who is familiar with the country, de-

291

scribes the lake as practically landlocked. Soundings
to the length of 700 feet have not touched its bed. Its
waters teem with 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 empty into the lake, and almost all show the dis-
tinct marks 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 when it will be worked.

In the rugged, wooded mountains that rise precipi-
tously from the lake and wall it in, the mountain-goats
are so numerous that they will long provide sport for
the hunters. Black-tail deer are plenty, 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
weighted his table, said that venison and bear meat
only cost a cartridge now and then, and for trout he
used the same fish-line that he brought into the country
years 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 Columbia River,
and this ground is still worked, by Chinamen now, with
trifling results. Recent discoveries have been, first, in
the Colville district, Stevens County. It is a mountain-
ous region, an extension of the rich Kootenay country
of British Columbia. Silver and lead are found there,
but not yet in such large or promising leads as those
north of the boundary. Development- work is being
clone 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 smelting ore, and
cheap transportation facilities are needed for the de-
velopment of the mines. One railroad operator is ready
to build from Marcus on the Columbia, north of Col-
ville, along the Kettle River, to the Boundary Creek
mines of silver and gold, which show splendid prospects.
The Colville Indian Reservation hinders him from tap-
ping the Okanagon country, and, as we have seen
wherever there are similar conditions in other States,
there is a strong movement to have the reservation re-
duced, and the upper part thrown 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 may
not come nor towns spring up. It is apparent that the
reservation must be reduced in response to this pressure,
because it is a vast tract, bigger than some large coun-
ties in the State, and yet it contains but a thousand red
men, remnants of several tribes. The notorious Chief
Joseph, who harried several of our generals, is there,
and so is Chief Moses, whose 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 miles of our frontier
unprotected. The Spokane Chamber of Commerce is
bending all its energy to the redemption of this border
land, and what that body sets out for it generally ob-
tains.

The Lake Chelan prospects, so called, are of argen-
tiferous galena. At least TOO claims have been taken,
and this summer's work 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, where 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 world
can use. It is proposed to build a railroad to Lake
Chelan, whereon the ore can be boated seventy miles,
and then carried by short rail to the Columbia, and thus
to the Great Northern Railroad at Wenatchee.

Western Washington is another proposition, as its
people would themselves say. All over the Evergreen
State inanimate nature would appear to be divided in
two parts, so that whatever is not a " proposition " must
be an " outfit." One word or the other applies to and
describes whatever you may speak about. A new town
is either a good proposition — that is to say, it has good
chances to grow — or it is not. The Nicaragua Canal is
a good proposition, and so is the prospective million-
dollar hotel in Tacoma. I several times heard the word
" outfit " applied to men, particularly when they seemed
to deserve to be called " queer outfits," but I never
heard the word proposition applied to anything animate.
I did hear a waterfall called a " proposition," however.

294

Up to that time, I confess, I had regarded it as an " out-
fit."

The chief city in western Washington is Seattle. It
has a population of about 40,000. It is a remarkable
city, perhaps the most 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 made against railroad opposition, in-
stead of with the aid of that usually powerful influence, '
its progress, size, and accomplishments seem marvellous,
and its leading men deserve to be called the most in-
domitable and plucky organizers that any city, even in
the West, can boast.

Seattle is metropolitan. It has that indefinable tone
that marks the city from the town, and that when am-
plified belongs only to the chief city in a State or indus-
trial district. It has the crowds of hurrying men and
women, the lounging, staring groups of yokels, the daily
battalions of tourists and drummers and strangers gen-
erally, 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 impressive 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 themselves up steep hill-sides ; and though Seattle is
not the city in which I saw cleats on some sidewalks, to
make the pavements even more like ladders, its streets
are so steep that one feels sorry for the horses of its cab

295 *

system — which, by-the-way, is the best I know of on
this continent outside of Montreal. Towering buildings
do not make a city. London has not one steeple of of-
fices within her limits, while Seattle, on the other hand,
has many and to spare. But it is the districts of whole-
sale stores, whose merchandise and customers crowd one
another on the sidewalks, 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, which disturbed the cities of
Washington more than it might had it not been that in
them an effort was making to reverse the natural order
of things by which territorial development creates city
extension. Seattle's jobbing trade in 1890 was in goods
of the value of $35,000,000. The town 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 among the Japan-
ese in Seattle. The slaves are the women in the singu-
lar rows of one-story cottages by the water-side in what
is locally known as Whitechapel — the vicious quarter.
In that strange district and still stranger community
are women from Mexico, China, Japan, and France, as
well as American blacks and white women. The police
say that of them all the Japanese are the least trouble-
some, since they alone refrain from adding theft to their
other outlawry. It is more than likely, as the news de-
spatches relate, that they are owned by men Avho pur-
chased them of their parents in Japan, and brought
them to this country for the purpose to which they ap-
pear to lend themselves. The " tough end " of Seattle,
as the Western vernacular would have it called, is very

296

much like the pestilential parts of Butte and Helena,
and all the other Northwestern towns of considerable
size of which mention 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 well under po-
lice control, and I was told that the gambling there is
above-stairs, and not too public.

Tacoma, an hour and a half away by water, and also
on the sound, seems a substantial town. It has great
wealth, 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 Tacoma.
Separate dwellings of tasteful design, and costing from
s3uOO to s20,000, are to be seen there in great numbers,
and I am told that the proportion of still less costly cot-
tages owned by the families which occupy them is also
considerable. Any Eastern city — any city anywhere—
might well be proud to show a club-house like that in
Tacoma, wherein the most perfect taste prevails through-
out. The city is the seat of a large circle of wealthy
and cultivated 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 325x100 feet in dimen-
sions, and to be extended by smaller docks of the same
sort, so that almost any vessel on the Pacific can be
handled upon it. Tacoma has hopes of being at the
eastern end of a transpacific line of steamers at an early
day, and of being the seat of the iron industry which
must certainly spring up somewhere on the coast. What
Tacoma is most 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 country,part of w^hich —
the Puyallup region — is already forward in development.

297

I have not mentioned the electric lights, electric cars,
water systems, and such modern conveniences in speak-
ing of either of these chief cities. It would be an omis-
sion due to familiarity with the entire new West if I
failed to say explicitly that almost wherever one may
travel in that country the same conveniences are at
hand that one is accustomed to finding in New 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 who steps from the newest Pullman
car on the Northern Pacific Railroad suffers no jar
when he is in such hotels as the Tacoma, the Rainier or
Denny in Seattle, or the Fairhaven in the hopeful little
city of that name, near the head of the sound. Ap-
pointed w^ith that most artistic furniture in the world
which is turned out of Michigan factories as pins are
produced in Birmingham, provided with elevators, elec-
tric lights and calls, offering great public rooms richly
decorated and draped, with French cooks, with the best
food in the markets of the world (refrigerated and
whirled from 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 same 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 steamboats that ply between Seattle and Tacoma
and up and down the sound are also unexcelled. One
called The Flyer is the most admirable vessel of its
kind that I have ever seen. It is of the build of a fish,
and is almost as swift. Its two saloons, one above the
other, are carpeted, and provided with soft plush-covered
reclining-chairs. The walls are, to all intents and pur-

298

poses, plate - glass. The machinery is exhibited like
jewelry, in a glass case. By day the panorama of nature
is uninterrupted in the view of the passengers ; by night
the little Flyer is all aflame with electric light, like a
glass boat or a lantern shot over the water from a
cannon.

These boats are not the prettiest products of the
Pacific slope, because nothing animate or inanimate can
be more beautiful than the women there. I will not
commit myself to a decision whether it rains there six
months in the }rear, as I think, or all the year around,
as the critics of that country insist ; but the effect of
that warm, soft, moist climate upon the complexions of
the women is magical — is worth going to see. The
effect upon the ladies' gowns of one of the concomitants
of the rainy season, as the wearers climb and descend
the muddy hills of those cities, is not nearly so admira-
ble. If ever Mistress Fashion will permit dress reform
to be undertaken by women, it will be hailed with joy
on the shores of Puget Sound. But with regard to
the beauty of the women of the coast, all that need
be told is that the women 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
may judge from that how captivating the coast women
must be.

Western Washington comprises nearly one -third of
the State. It contains 25,000 square miles west of the
Cascades, as against eastern Washington's 45,000 square
miles. Through a part of this western end of the State,
tearing a great mouth 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

299

fathoms, and, lying north and south 90 miles back from
the ocean, it is all within the State. Its first surveyor,
in 1841, reported to the Government : " I venture nothing
in saying that no country in the world possesses waters
equal to these. From the mouth of the strait to the
head of navigation, 200 miles inland, not a shoal nor
reef nor hidden danger exists. At times it narrows to
a river's width, and again widens into the majesty of a
sea, bat 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 words that can be chosen.
Yet it but helps to distinguish an equally wonderful
country — a country with the climate of England, and
better than the best qualities of California and Florida.
I have described its amazing forests of giant timber.
They cover the greater part of it. It is said that they
contain two hundred billion feet of marketable wood.
It is very valuable wood. It will continue to supply
the country when all other timber is gone. For a long
while the great stringers used in the flooring of the
Pullman and Wagner cars have come from these forests,
and a shrewd railroad man is quoted as saying that out
of the wood in the cedar stumps that the lumbermen
have left standing in the present clearings he can build
the walls and roofs of freight cars that will pay for
themselves in three years in the saving of weight. The
"Washington timber competes with Georgia pine and
Eastern oak in the uses to which those woods are put.
Lumbering is the chief industry in western Washington,
but it is small to what it must be when reduced rates
are brought about by competing transcontinental rail-
road companies and by the Nicaragua Canal, This
lumber has already found good markets in South Amer-
ica, China, France, Australia, and the Sandwich Islands.

300

The coal measures of the Puget Sound basin come
next in importance. The coal and the iron, which is
also abundant, lie side by side. Limestone is also found,
and although practically nothing has been done with
the iron, some most excellent coking coals have been
found, and the happy combination must soon prove
alluring to capital and enterprise. The coal supply seems
inexhaustible, and already its development is a great
source of income 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 Xanaimo, on Yancouver
Island, may 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 bituminous. The Seattle coals
do not make coke or gas, but are excellent for general
domestic use and steam-making. Large mines are being
opened in the Skagit country west of the mountains.
The coal lies in the cretaceous measures, and is in dip-
ping seams of from four to eighteen feet of clean coal.
Farther down the river are the Fairhaven mines, opened
by the Great Xorthern Railroad Company and by Mon-
tana capitalists. All this Skagit coal makes a coke that
is held to be only second to the Connellsville (Pennsyl-
vania) coke, if it is not fully as good. Coking ovens
are being erected, and a large market in California,
Mexico, and South America is looked for. Other coal
in this region, now used on the sound steamboats, is
superior to the Xanaimo product. The South Prairie
coal, near Tacoma, 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 was nearly a million tons, worth at the mines
*2. 203, 755. "When it is known 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-

301

abundant coal measures of Washington will be under-
stood. Then again, the Washington coke will displace
the Eastern and English material on the coast. At San
Diego these other cokes are received for distribution
among the smelteries of northern Mexico, New Mexico,
and Arizona at $13 a ton ; indeed, they are sold in Vic-
toria, British Columbia, 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 men ; and in Tacoma an effort is making to
found a business in the making of steel bars, plates, and
rods from imported blooms, as is done in San Francisco.
In time, whether these projects rise or fall, fortunes will
be made 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. Sewer -pipe is already made in Seattle.
The reader sees that all these resources are practically
in embryo. In spite of the fact that the first settle-
ments in the east and west were in the forties, the State
is nearly as new, so far as all except its farming is con-
cerned, as if the date of its admission to Statehood-
November 11, 1889 — were the date of its first settle-
ment.

Whoever passes along the main retail street of Seattle
and happens to notice the counters in the principal fish
store will be astonished. In the chromatic display of
the captive creatures of the sea is the text for another
chapter on future wealth for Washington. They have
the salmon, though that catch is credited to Oregon and
Alaska. There are in the northern waters 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

302

enclosed the Great Lakes. Candor compels 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 muddy
oysters, the size of a dime or a quarter, are the meanest
product of that sea, but they find a ready sale and are
admired. Since that is so, hope for all the rest should
be rampant. Their crabs, on the contrary, are not mere
samples; they are wholesale products, regular marine
monsters ; and all the better for that, since they make
good food. The fishing that must in a few years fleck
the \vaters of the Pacific with sails is scarcely begun.
There is only a million invested in it, and only a million
a year is produced by it.

The new 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 wonders. They will find many present industries
controlled by the older companies. They will encourage
the development of new industries and the extension of
others. Mr. Hill's road, the Great Northern, is to be
pushed through the mountains in what is described as
"a scenic wonderland." It is thought that Fairhaven
will be its terminus ; but whether that prove true or
not, a feeder all along the sound, at right angles to the
main road, will tap all the country between the Cas-
cades and the great harbor.

And what of the land which these railroads will open
up ? What of it, apart from its minerals and tim-
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 climate

equable. The mercury seldom rises above 90° in the
summer, and to see it at zero in the winter is to see an
extraordinary thing. The rains produce semi-tropical
abundance .of vegetation. Agriculture cuts a small fig-
ure yet, but where it is carried on, in the valleys and
reclaimed marshes, 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 make
more than $800 from an acre of strawberries. If good
land is chosen, and a market is handy, five acres will
support a family well. Raspberries, currants, gooseber-
ries, orchard fruity, all do well. There are some who
think the sound country may yet supply the whole
United States with prunes, so fine and abundant are
those that are but just beginning to be grown there.
Tobacco does well ; and, by-the-way, it is being grown
and made into cigars in the Yakima country, in East
Washington. Wherever the big timber is cleared — and
many of the farms are abandoned logging camps— there
is found the richest soil imaginable. It raises hay, pota-
toes, oats, barley, wheat, hops, cherries, apples, berries,
and all which 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 west of the sound is the great
Olympic Peninsula, until lately almost uninhabited, and
even now 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 many waters wild-fowl abound. Frost is said not to
know the country. On the Pacific coast side are many

304

valleys, and some small prairies. In this absolutely new
country the homesteaders are appearing in such num-
bers that it is said that between 700 and 800 settlers
went in there last year to pre-empt the lands along the
streams and on the prairies. There, entirely cut off
from the world, they will wait until the lands are sur-
veyed, and they can file their claims. They believe
that a railroad from Gray's Harbor or Shoalwater Bay
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, " The}7 have more rain than we 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 minds of many persons
in western Washington is whether it is possible for
both Seattle and Tacoma — lying so near one another
as they do — to become great cities ; and if not, which
will eventually become the chief and gigantic seaport
whose development is so confidently looked for. I wish
I could say. Indeed, since everywhere that I travel I
find these rivalries between neighboring cities (Bis-
marck and Mandan, Eapid 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 term of ten or a dozen years,
so as to avoid this series of conundrums. In this case,
in western Washington, there is a little speck upon the
horizon. It calls to mind the small black cloud that
shows itself in all well-regulated nautical tales as the
herald of frightful disaster. It may be a hurricane or
only a teacupful of wind. It is called South Bend, and
it now pretends to threaten great mischief to Seattle,
u 305

Tacoma, and Fairhaven, along with all the other points
on Puget Sound.

It is on the Pacific coast, on the front of the Olympia
peninsula, only four hours from Portland by rail, and
very much nearer to Asia, Nicaragua, and Europe by
water than the sound ports. South Bend is a yearling,
and where it rubs its juvenile eyes the map shows only
the words Shoalwater Bay, but that, being a libellous
name, is now changed to Willapa Harbor. It is 57
miles 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 Columbia Kiver and the Strait of
Juan de Fuca. South Bend is about to be connected
with the Northern Pacific Railroad system. 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
compete with it, since vessels from Puget Sound ports
must double the Olympia peninsula before they reach
the point at which South Bend shipments begin. South
Bend is several hundreds of miles nearer to San Fran-
cisco, Nicaragua, and Cape Horn than any Puget Sound
port. But it is too early to say more. The best posses-
sion of the new little seaport thus far is that essence
which was deserted by all its companions in Pandora's
box.

With a mention of those considerable islands in the
Northwest which are, from a military point of view, the
key to the British possessions in the North, we must end
this view of the forty-second State in the Union. Of
the islands, be it known that they are thinly wooded,
but rich for agriculture. Sheep are raised there in great
numbers, and more wool than they grow is shipped to

80G

the main-land, smuggled over from Vancouver Island.
Smuggling wool, opium, and Chinamen 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
marketed all along the coast.

There is a peculiar feature of the affairs of Washing-
ton upon which I have not dwelt. The critics of the
State think it an important element, but I cannot see
that it cuts any figure in the future of the great com-
monwealth. It seems to some critics as if several regi-
ments of our nomads, who keep moving West in the be-
lief that they " must succeed there because they failed
in the East." are gathered in this last of the States,
principally at its jumping- off edge, in the cities on
Puget Sound. Town -site gambling is what attracted
these persons. The booming of new towns, that vice
which 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
what they up in Washington call "the sound country,"
felt the strain and the final catastrophe in some degree.

" You could not expect us to develop our soil or our
mines," said a leading spirit in one city, " when we
could buy a town lot on one day, and four days after-
wards could sell it for fifty dollars more a front foot
than we gave for it," And that is true. Wiser be-
havior was not to be expected where, after all, a great
many persons went at first rather to make money than
to establish homes and found families. The fever for
town-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 was
not peculiar to Washington ; it was the case from Van-
couver, in British Columbia, all the way down to south-

307

ern California. A cruel but useful reaction came, and
now one hears little more 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 from 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
epidemic — and I heard of only one boom in progress ;
that was in the " city " of Everett ; but I passed many
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 stumps, and
dotted at long and irregular intervals with cabins, frame
saloons, and perhaps a brick building or two — all ren-
dering the scene the more confused and unkempt.

Everett is regarded as a place rich in promise. It is
the seat of the Pacific Steel Barge Company, a branch
of the company 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-
ment over Everett was the belief that it might become
the west coast terminus of the new transcontinental
Great Northern Eailroad. 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
men who now expect them to bear golden fruit.

We have seen something of the scramble for public
lands in the other States; the companion picture in
Washington was this mania for town sites — or rather
for city sites, since a settlement 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. Sometimes it was a railroad
which, as a corporation, essayed to " boom " a tract of
land on its route — a terminal station, a divisional point,
or a junction. Sometimes one of these corporations
would strain not only to " boom " a city of its own
creation, but to crush or cripple a near-by town which
had grown up without leave.

It is as interesting a chapter as any in our new 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 may be called the ordinary and customary method,
such as obtained before the thing became a craze, and
such as will obtain as long as there are virgin districts
for men 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 Northwest the
speculator is up earlier than nature. Men have to
nudge the slow old dame along out there. They note
where 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 below
the mountains, or it is where two streams join. The
capitalist " locates " the spot, and goes home for friends,
relatives, and employes to claim homestead or timber
lands where he wants the town to be. They make
their claims. He sets up a store and post-office; a
hotel also, if he has the means. He employs some of
the squatters ; the others go away, and only come back
to " prove up." He pays them a hundred dollars each
or two hundred dollars for their trouble, and they turn
over their land to him. In one case that I know of two
such land-grabbers thought better of their opportunity,

309

and determined to hold on to the land they had pre-
empted. That is considered the next worse thing to
horse-stealing out West. Fancy, if you can, how society
could exist were such men common ! The theory and
policy are to this effect, that a man shall accept for such
services what sum will repay him for the trouble he has
been put to, without computing the value of his services
or of his claim to the land baron who employs him.

But suppose that all works smoothly, as it usually
does. The capitalist establishes his store, has one of his
clerks empowered as recorder and notary, and opens a
hotel. The miners come the second year to do that
''improvement-work" which the law requires that they
shall perform each year in order to keep their titles to
their claims. They need giant- powder for blasting;
they need picks and shovels and barrows; they need
food, tobacco, and rum. They gravitate to the only
place at which these commodities 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 women order shanties
put up, and a " hurdy-gurdy " (dance-house) or variety
show 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 mint. His
customers stop at the hotel and gamble with the build-
ing lots they have bought. The revised maps 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 development of a region and
bring together a great many unscrupulous and irrespon-
sible men ; but in the State of Washington, in the
presence of the vast and varied resources of the soil, the

810

mountains, and the waters, the epidemic that brought
communal tragedy elsewhere can here be called only an
incident.

So much, then, for Washington. It would seem to
share with all the others many of their greatest re-
sources, as if it were the -essence and epitome of them
all. If it is not " the last which shall be first," it is the
one in which we see the summing up of all the rest. A
sweeping glance over it, in the mind's eye of one who
knows it well, is like the transformation scene at the
end of a Christmas pantomime, wherein we see glorious-
ly some hint of all that went before — of all the climates,
forests, metals, fruits, cereals, and vegetables of our
entire country ; of the men of all the world, the fishes
of both oceans. But the scenes that are hurried along
the grooves were never hung before a paint bridge.
They are real.

311

COLORADO AND ITS CAPITAL

IF its people had not already called it " the Centennial
State " and " the Scenic State," I might have done bet-
ter by it. I would 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, while nature provides an endless gallery and muse-
um of gorgeous scenery and magnificent curios that
would seem extravagant anywhere else, yet are in keep-
ing there.

Colorado is sufficiently settled and developed to form
a valuable object-lesson for the study of the early results
of the forces we see at work in the brand-new common-
wealths near by. They are seizing the water rights in
Montana, Wyoming, and Washington, but in Colorado
the water is being sold and used. In the newer States
wiseacres are prophesying what will be done with 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. Xot all the fast railway
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 who enjoy fast riding. On a palace-
car train of the Union Pacific Railroad between Omaha
and Denver the regular time is nearly fifty miles an
hour, and the long run is made in one night, between
supper and breakfast. Denver is only fifty-three hours
of riding-time from New York as I write — twenty-five
hours from Xew York to Chicago, and twenty-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, we will see it for ourselves. I
had supposed it to be a mountain city, so much does an
Eastern man hear of its elevation, its mountain resorts,
and its mountain air. It surprised me to discover that it
was 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-
mous 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 when they are viewed. There are
200 miles or more 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 we can forget that it is a city
of the plains, and ever associate it with the mountains
hereafter. I plighted my troth to the sea near which I
was born, but in Denver and Salt Lake City, loveliest of
all our inland cities, I felt a straining at my loyalty ;

313

and when I saw in the dining-room of Mr. W. N". Byers
the great square window that his charming wife ordered
made so that she might frame 200 miles of the Rockies
as in a picture, I admitted to myself 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
where 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 west of the Mis-
sissippi. It shows the States east of that river without
a single railroad, while 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, u If those Dutchmen and Puritans
and things who settled the East could have landed out
here on the plains, the thirteen original colonies would
have been a howling wilderness filled with savages to-
day." And that in turn reminds me of the remark of a
man in Utah, a Mormon, who was a member of a colony
that pre-empted an alkali lake, washed out the salt with
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 farming." The
moral of both these tales is that we may have our own
opinion of the West, but we can't prevent the West's
having its own opinion of us.

In all other respects the patent Denver map is relia-
ble. It shows that this city of 135,000 souls stands all
alone, without a real rival, in a vast rich region. It is
1000 miles from Chicago, 400 from Salt Lake City, 600

314

from Kansas City, and the same distance from the Mis-
souri Eiver. If you drew a circle of 1000 miles diame-
ter, with Denver in its centre, you would discover no
real competitor ; but the people have adopted what they
call their " thousand-mile theory," which is that Chi-
cago is 1000 miles from 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 with cabinet
finish — and it is so new that it looks as if it had been
made to order, and was just ready for delivery. How
the people lived five years ago, or what they have done
with the houses of that period, does not appear, but at
present everything — 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 city. We have no use for old
folks here." So, then, the people also are new. It is
very wonderful and peculiar. Only a year ago Mr.
Eichard Harding Davis was there, and commented on
the lack of pavements in the streets, and I hear that at
that time pedestrians wore rubber boots, and the mud
was frightful. But now every street in the thick of
town is paved with concrete or Belgian blocks as well
as if it were New York or Paris. The first things that
impress you in the city are the neatness and width of
the streets, and the number of young trees that orna-
ment them most invitingly. The next thing is the re-
markable character of the big business buildings. It is
not that they are bigger and better than those of New
York and Chicago — comparisons of that sort are non-
sensical— but they are massive and beautiful, and they

315

possess an elegance without and a roominess and light-
ness within that distinguish them as superior to the
show buildings of most of the cities of the country.
The hotels are even more remarkable, from the one
down by the impressive big depot, which is the best-
equipped third-class hotel in the country, to the Brown's
Palace and the Metropole, both of steel and stone,
which are just as good as men know how to make
hotels.

The residence districts are of a piece with the rest.
Along the tree-lined streets are some of the very pret-
tiest villas it is any man's lot to see at this time. They
are not palaces, but they are very tasteful, stylish, cosey,
and pretty homes, all built of brick or stone, in a great
variety of pleasing colors and materials, and with a
proud showing of towers, turrets, conservatories, bay-
windows, gables, and all else that goes to mark this
period, when men build after widely differing plans to
compliment their own taste and the skill of originating
draughtsmen. The town spreads over an enormous terri-
tory, as compared with the space a city of its size should
take up, but we must learn that modern 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
whiz along so fast that men do not hesitate to build their
homes five or six miles from their stores and offices,
where they can get garden and elbow room. We are
going to see all our cities shoot out in this way. It pro-
motes beauty in residence districts, and pride in the
hearts of those who own the pretty homes. It carries
the good health that comes with fresh air. But it en-
tails a great new expense upon modern city government,
for the streets and the mains and sewers and police and

316

lire 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 were crowded into smaller spaces. In
Denver the government has spared itself and the people
one source of anxiety by ordering that, no matter \vhere
the houses reach to, it shall be a fire-proof city. The
tire lines follow the extension, and every house must be
of brick or stone.

As we walk about the town, noting the theatres that
are absolutely gorgeous, observing that the Methodist
church is a quarter-of-a-million-dollar pile of granite, see-
ing the crowded shopping stores that are almost like our
own in Xew York, heeding the bustle of people and
vehicles, stopping to look at the precious Colorado
stones that are heaped in the jewellers' windows, and
the museums of Indian curios that are peculiar to the
town, a marked and distinctive 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 waste-
ful ostentation (except in that saloon that has silver
dollars sunk in the floor, and that other one where the
mosaic floor slabs are set with double eagles). There is
upon the show-places of the town that restraint which
we call " taste.'' To be sure, the bar-rooms- cost the
price of a prince's ransom, and the walls and bars are
made 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 from Madison Square to Xob

318

Hill, there is the same extraordinary good taste. The
walls of all the rooms, both public and private, rely on
the harmonious blending of soft tints, and on mere lines
of fine beading on the hard-wood fittings. Why that
taste which makes the apartments of the Japanese our
marvel and delight should reappear in Denver, and no-
where else out West, is certainly remarkable.

" There is in Denver," says a man who meets me in
the Hotel Metropole, " what is shockingly called 4 the
one-lunged army.' I am a member of it, and may re-
peat the nickname without shame, for we are proud of
ourselves. This army comprises 30,000 invalids, or more
than one-fifth of the population of Denver. Not by any
means is this a host of persons with pulmonary ailments,
but of men in physical straits of many sorts, who find
the rare air of a place a mile on the road to heaven bet-
ter than medicine. These are men of wealth, as a rule,
and of cultivation and of taste. They have been more im-
portant factors in the making of this unique city than
most persons, even in Denver, imagine. The stock and
oil and gold and silver millionaires point to their opera-
tions as the cause of Denver's importance ; and they are
right. But importance is one thing, and good taste,
good society, and progressiveness are quite different
things. It was not mining that begot the taste which
crowds our residence quarter with elegant dwellings, or
that created a demand for clubs like the Denver Club.
It was not oil that gave us college-bred men to form a
'Varsity Club of 120 members, or that insisted upon the
decoration of the town with such hotels as ours. The in-
fluence of the invalids is seen in all this. They are New-
Yorkers, Bostonians, Philadelphians, New Orleans men,
Englishmen — the well-to-do and well-brought up men
from all over the country — architects, doctors, lawyers,
and every sort of professional men being among them."

319

After that we caught ourselves constantly looking for
invalids, but without success. Even those who told us
that they were members of the strange army of debili-
tated aesthetes did not look so. But we came upon
many queer facts regarding them, and the air, and the
customs of the place. One very noticeable peculiarity
of the people was their habit of speaking of the East as
" home." " At home in the East we 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 homes, but when we get there the climate does
not agree with us, and we hurry back to Colorado."
Thus was revealed the peculiar tenure the place has
upon thousands of its citizens. But among them are
very many who say that it is customary for Eastern
folks to let their regard for the East keep warm until
the mornent comes when they seriously consider the
idea of leaving Colorado. At that juncture they realize
for the first time the magic of the mountain air and the
hold it has upon them. Few indeed ever seriously think
of leaving it after one such consultation with themselves.
But I must 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 man said, " it is strange to fancy what the
literature of Colorado will be when it develops its own
romancers and poets, so strong is the nervous strain and
mental exaltation of the people." One would suppose
alcohol unnecessary there; but, on the contrary, there
is much drinking. It is a dangerous indulgence. Among
the dissolutes suicides are frequent. " If you stay here
a week you will read of two," said a citizen. And I did.
It was found that when 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 remarkable decrease of these
crimes followed.

AVe shall see that on its worst side the city is West-
ern, and that its moral side is Eastern. It will be inter-
esting to see how one side dominates the other, and
both keep along together. But in the mean time what
is most peculiar is the indifference with Avhich the popu-
lace regards murder among those gamblers and despera-
does who are a feature of every new country, and who
are found in Denver, though, I suspect, the ladies and
children never see them, so well separated are the de-
cent and the vicious quarters. It is said that not very
long ago it was the tacit agreement of the people that
it was not worth while to put the county to the cost or
bother of seriously pursuing, prosecuting, and hanging
or imprisoning a thug who murdered another thug. It
was argued that there was one bad man less, and that if
the murderer was at large another one would kill him.
The axiom that " only bad men are the victims of bad
men '' obtained there, as it did in Cheyenne and Dead-
wood, and does in Butte. To-day a murder in a dive or
gambling-hell excites little comment and no sensation in
Denver, and I could distinctly see a trace of the old
spirit in the speech of the reputable men when I talked
to them of the one crime of the sort that took place
while I was there.

The night side of the town is principally corralled, as
they say ; that is, its disorderly houses are all on one
street. There is another mining-town characteristic-
wide-open gambling. The " hells " are mainly above-
stairs, over saloons. The vice is not flaunted as it is in
certain other cities ; but once in the gaming-places, the
visitor sees them to be like those my readers became

x 321

acquainted with in Butte, Montana — great open places,
like the board-rooms in our stock exchanges, lined with
gambling lay-outs. They are crowded on this Saturday
night with rough men in careless dress or in the apparel
of laborers. These are railroad employes, workers from
the nearest mines, laborers, clerks — every sort of men
who 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 — sometimes a rough cow boyish-look-
ing young man, who has left off his necktie so as to
show his diamond stud ; sometimes a man 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 gambling. 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 them everywhere. There is very little 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 small sea-beds of expectoration, and over
each table is enough tobacco smoke to beget the fancy
that each lay-out is a mouth 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,"
while in the hells they seem never to be in luck when
you happen on them. They were flush yesterday, and
will be to-morrow — if you will "stake" them with some-
thing to gamble with. The man who once had a bank
of his own and the one who broke the biggest bank in

322

Leadville were mere ordinary dramatis persona, when I
looked in, but the towering giant of the place was the
man 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, wealth, 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 consummation in so new
a State. It was a sight of the dawn of the fruit indus-
try where the best orchards were not five years old.
Indeed, some of the finest fruit was plucked where Ind-
ians were guarded not long before. There were apples,
pears, peaches, plums, quinces, grapes, and ground-cher-
ries. It was too late in the year (October) for berries,
but they are grown in Colorado in great abundance, and
the strawberries are said to be big and most delicious.
The fruits I saw displayed at the fair were of large
though not Calif or nian size. Their most remarkable
quality to the eye was their gorgeous coloring — the rich-
est and deepest I ever saw except in paintings. I found
afterwards that all the fruit grown in the valleys of the
Rockies is equally gorgeous. But of more practical im-
port is the fact that this Colorado fruit is of delicious
flavor. In Denver 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 west-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 more than most of that which I ate in
Colorado. The only melons at the show were musk-
melons, 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, when 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 clams—
for the multitude, without 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 wild flowers at this show were very interesting.
No account of Colorado would be complete if it omitted
at least some mention of these gorgeous ornaments
which Nature litters with 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,
where even man's importation, the alfalfa, turns the
ranches into great blue beds of thickly clustered blos-
soms. 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 name it bears, but whichever it
was, the flowers alone were sufficient to justify the chris-
tening, so multitudinous, lovely, varied, and gay are
they. Fortunately for the fame of the flowers, certain
Colorado ladies are skilled in pressing them so as to re-
produce and preserve the natural poses of all the flower-
ing plants, as well 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 was interesting to read the progress of Denver in
the remarks of those who were presented to me during
that visit to the fruit show. One gentleman 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 was 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 world, 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 without telephones.

A public official volunteered the information that
since 1870 the percentage of increase of population has
been greater in Denver than in any other city of the
land, it being something more than 2000 per cent. A
bevy of smiling young women was pointed out as repre-
sentative art students ; for there is a Denver Art League
which has sixty members, and aims to maintain classes
in oil and water-color work and sculpture. Two of the
classes, one for each sex, pursue the practice of drawing
and painting from the nude. This institution is the
pride and care of the leading business and professional
men of the city, who give it ample funds, and are en-
couraged by the eagerness of the youth of the State, as
well as of the city, to enjoy its advantages. A merchant
spoke of the Chamber of Commerce, to the enterprise
and kindness of which, and especially of the secretary,
I was afterwards indebted. I learned that this watch-
ful organization of promoters of the commercial welfare
of the city maintains a fine free library, containing a
collection of books that now numbers 20,000 volumes,
and is constantly increasing. No less than 77,000 vol-
umes were read in the homes of its patrons last year.
The reading-room is kept open on all the days of the
year, and the city government has passed an ordinance

325

appropriating $500 a month, from the fines imposed 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 costly 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 sum. I could not then nor there further in-
sist upon the opinions that have engendered the only
criticisms that have passed between myself in these pa-
pers and the new West which I am describing. The re-
port of the Denver Board of Education is before me,
and if I read it aright, it declares that the common-
school system embraces a course of twelve years of
study, eight in the common schools and four in the high-
school. Drawing, music, physical culture, and German
are mentioned as among the studies in the grammar
grades, while the wide gamut between algebra and
Greek, with military training for the boys, comprises
the high-school course. The TOO high-school pupils are
said to be of the average age of seventeen years. I re-
iterate that this is education for the well-to-do at the
expense of the poor. If Denver is like 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
sum of 9500 in the common schools and the sum of 700
in the high-school makes it appear that Denver is no ex-
ception to the rule. I will not dwell upon my belief
that the wide range of studies in these latter-day schools
gives children a mere but dangerous smattering of many
things and no thorough grounding in any study, and
that the result is to produce a distaste for honest labor
and an unfit ness for anything above it. It is unpleasant
to criticise at all where a community is so enthusiastic

326

as this, but I believe the whole system, whether we find
it in ]Xrew York and Boston, as we do, or in Denver,
is undemocratic, unjust, and unwise. The " little red
school-house on the hill," which has been glorified as
the chief pride of Puritan New England, is the seed
that has grown into the 8-300,000 palace of learning for
TOO children, at the expense of the parents of more 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 more, 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 work was the portion of all but the rich, who paid
for their children's higher schooling. However, the
spirit in which Denver maintains and elaborates her
school system is beyond all criticism ; it is, indeed, cred-
itable and wonderful. If we do not agree about the re-
sult, I can at least testify to the impression I received
—that the whole people are honestly and enthusiasti-
cally proud of their schools, and that of their elaborate
kind they are among the best in the country.

Denver has other than her public schools — the (Meth-
odist) University of Denver, the (Catholic) St. Mary's
Academy, the (Episcopal) St. John's College for boys ;
an Episcopal school for girls, called Wolfe Hall ; the
Woman's College, and the Westminster University, the
first a Baptist and the second a Presbyterian institution.
I should have mentioned the fact that a second fine
public library is maintained in connection with the
public-school system. It goes without saying, in a study
of a city like Denver, that musical, dramatic, literary,
and kindred coteries are numerous.

Away from the fruit display, out in the brightly lit
streets, were the crowds of Saturday- night shoppers.
Of these many more were persons employed in manu-

327

facturing industries than those would imagine who
know no more of Denver than I have told. The fine
and varied building stones that will yet become a
great asset in Colorado's inventory of wealth are cut
and dressed in more than one establishment. The
notable buildings of Denver are built of Colorado red
sandstone, granite, and other beautiful materials found
in the mountains. The main or parent range of the
Rockies loses its striking configuration soon after leav-
ing Colorado in the south. Then it becomes a broken,
ragged chain. They have some good stones in the ter-
ritories to the southward, but not the assortment found
in Colorado. Already Colorado stones are shipped to
Chicago, the Nebraska and Kansas towns, and Texas.
These are brownstones, granite, a so-called lava or
metamorphic stone of great durability and beauty, and
a variety of sandstones. Some red sandstone that I
saw being quarried in the Dolores Valley, where it is
abundant beyond calculation, is said to be well adapted
for fine interior decorative uses. Others in the crowds
were workers in the cotton factory ; in a knitting-mill
that has been removed there from the East ; in the three
large establishments where 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 machinery in the
world, whole outfits of which have been shipped to
China and South Africa, to say nothing of Mexico and
our own mining regions, which are all supplied from
Denver. Other operatives work upon the hoisting
machinery and pumping machines, of which the Denver
patterns are celebrated. Still others in the streets work
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 mill for the manu-

328

facture of newspaper has been in operation for a year,
and now (October, '92) three other paper-mills are about
to be erected, the aim being to make book and letter
paper, Manilas, coarse wrapping-paper, and flooring and
roofing papers, as well as to produce the pulp used in
these manufactures.

The three smelting -works employ nearly 400 men,
and handled 400,000 tons of ore, producing $24,500,000
in gold, silver, lead, and copper, last year. In addition
to the twenty foundries and machine shops of whose
work I have spoken, there are thirty other iron-work-
ing establishments, making tin and sheet -iron work
and wire-work. In another year a barbed-wire factory
and a wire and nail making plant will be in opera-
tion. There are sixty brick -making firms. Leather-
workers are numerous, but all the leather is imported;
there is no tannery there. Paint and white-lead making
are large industries ; there are six breweries ; and eight
firms engage in wood - working and the making of
building material. In a sentence, this busy metrop-
olis is manufacturing for the vast territory around
it, with 339 manufacturing establishments, employing
9000 operatives, and producing $46,000,000 worth of •
goods.

The Chamber of Commerce advertises the need of
woollen mills, stocking factories, tanneries, boot and
shoe factories, glue factories, and potteries, but declares
that Denver will give no subsidies to get them. " The
natural advantages of the centre of a region as large as
the German Empire, without a rival for 600 miles in any
direction, combined with cheap fuel, fine climate, abun-
dant supply of intelligent labor at reasonable prices,
unutilized local raw materials, a good and ever-growing
local market, protected against Eastern competition by
from 1000 to 2000 miles of railroad haul— these are the

329

inducements that Denver offers to new manufacturing-
plants."

And now we will fancy it is Sunday in Denver. The
worshippers are coming out of the churches. But in the
streets rush the cable cars with their week-day clanging
of bells. On the car roofs are the signs, u To Elitch's
Gardens," where, according to the papers next day,
there are "music and dancing and bangle -bedizened
women." 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 American Sunday, with the gin-mills and the
gambling-places all wide open." Not so. So far as I
could see, not a bar-room was open. The shades were
up, and the desolate interiors were in plain view 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 was upon the town. Just as we see
them in New York, country couples, strangers there,
walked arm in arm in the business quarter, looking in
the shop windows ; German families, children and all,
in stiff Sunday best, streamed along in queues behind
the fathers ; idle young men 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 town. 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

the grand dinners it had borne. In the pretty homes
were many circles wherein the West was discussed
just as it is in New York, with sharp words for its
gambling, its pistol-carrying, and its generally noisy
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 worship. Yet
in the same homes, in the same circles, was heard the
most fulsome lauding of Denver and Colorado — praise
that seemed to lift those altitudinous places even nearer
to the clouds. With only the happiest memories and
kindest wishes, then, adieu to Denver.

I made a journey of more than two thousand miles in
Colorado without seeing half of it, for it is as large
as Xew England and Xew York. Upon the famous
" Scenic Route " (the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad)
I rode from Denver to the Xew Mexican border, through
southern Colorado, and back through the middle of the
State, over the famous Marshall Pass. I took in, on the
wav. the full lengths of the Silverton and the Rio

« O

Grande Southern railways, which, in quest of mining
towns and agricultural settlements, are laid amid some
of the most gorgeous, stupendous, and varied scenery in
the State. It will surprise the reader to hear that on
these mountain railroads rock ballast, heavy steel rails,
and gas-lighted palace-cars are provided. Yet the great-
est surprise comes with seeing how the railroad-builders
have flung their steel in loops upon the mountain 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 uncommon thing to see three and even
four lengths of the same railway above or below your
car, as the rails " tack " to and fro towards the top of
a steep mountain. " Yachting round the Rockies " was
what the party on the trip with me resolved to call our

331

journeying. 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 anything 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 warm and full of color and variety,
as the mountain scenes in Colorado. The railway tour-
ist in British Columbia merely crosses the mountains,
whereas in Colorado it is possible to start from Denver
and, riding only by daylight, to spend a week of nearly
continuous mountaineering. At the end it will be dif-
ficult to determine which is the prettiest scene that
memory retains for the mind's eye to return to. Per-
haps it will seem that, taken altogether, the wondrous
canons were most worth seeing ; those of the Rio de las
Animas Perdidas, of the Grand, of the Dolores, of the
Eio Grande, and that at Toltec, in New Mexico. Per-
haps the surprising views of innumerable far-reaching,
snow-clad mountain peaks — seen at many points when
the cars cross a divide — will be most delightfully re-
membered. Or it may 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 mining
towns, built in blind 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 from the added
novelty of mining paraphernalia 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 — all these lend added value to the

scenes. Each day is crowded with views of fearful
gorges, of mountain-sides stained red and blue and
green, of valleys cultivated to the degree of an Illinois
prairie, of vast irrigation-works gridironing the plains
with silver 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 scenery
or for unfamiliar peoples and conditions.

I shall say even less about the mining than about the
scenery. Colorado is generally known to possess both
in abundance. Let it be my part to show that already
the surer, more lasting resource of agriculture is the
heaviest asset of the State. The Denver smelteries
treated four and a quarter millions of pounds of Colo-
rado copper, 100,000 tons of Colorado lead, twelve mill-
ion ounces of silver, and 120,000 ounces of gold. The
total value of all this was fifteen and three-quarter mill-
ions of dollars ; but much of the Colorado ore is of the
free-milling variety not treated at the smelteries; and
besides, there are other smelteries at Pueblo, Rico, Lead-
ville, and Durango. The total revenue from mining in
1891 was thirty-three and a half millions of dollars.
And yet the Denver Chamber of Commerce estimates
the income from agriculture at forty millions, derived
from the cultivation of two millions of acres of land.
If the value of the live-stock were added as a farm prod-
uct, the sum would be increased by at least 815,000,000.
A wonderful showing 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 miner-
al paints, her cement, which is already classed as equal
to the best, her clays, found in tremendous banks, and
suitable for the production of fine china, as well as
pottery of all the coarse grades, her coal and iron, her

333

natural parks, scenic wonders, mineral waters, farm and
fruit and pasture lands, her vast stores of metals — all
these, and many resources that I have not mentioned,
will more than support a population of that magnitude.

The range cattle business and civilization, with its
fences and farms and towns, cannot exist together, and
as Colorado is civilized, this rude business is almost at
an end there. Cattle are being held in small bunches
and with winter corrals — an infinitely more practical
and humane industry. The present grade of cattle is
higher than before. Every farmer sells a few head each
year, and thus makes a little money where a few used
to make (or lose) large sums.

One-third of the State is plains land, and two-thirds
are cut up by mountains. These are separated by
valleys 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. Farming and orchard
culture are making 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 valley lands in the western part of the
State.

Colorado's 66,560,000 acres of land lie upon either
side of the continental divide and upon many secondary
ranges, forming mountains, parks, and valleys, of which
not 5 per cent, is bare of vegetation. Long ago the
Mexicans began, with petty irrigation- works, to borrow
from the eight principal rivers and their tributaries the
water that came down from the mountains in those
channels. The mean yearly precipitation west of the
mountains is but 25 inches ; east of them it is only 18.7

334

inches. At Denver the highest rainfall was in 1891,
and amounted to 21^- inches. The lowest was in 1890,
and was 9^ inches. All over the State irrigation com-
panies have been formed, or farmers 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 many,
and some very large ones, in use. Colorado is forward
in this respect. The importance 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 Qnly 2.6 per cent.

Artesian wells add comparatively little to the wealth
of the State, although this source of supply has been so
successfully tried in the San Luis Valley 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 which four millions of acres are " under
the ditch," and only a million and a half are actually
cultivated. Of what remains unditched it is difficult to
say how much 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

" 335

spring- freshets in reservoirs that are usually formed out
of natural depressions at the base of the mountains.
The custom is to use the stored water on the near-by
land, while the stream carries its own quota, undimin-
ished, to distant fields. Thus the area of irrigable terri-
tory is greatly increased. Moreover, time has demon-
strated the strange but important fact that, after three
or four years, water used in irrigation goes twice as far
as it did when the work was begun. The ground under
the ditches becomes a vast reservoir, from which the
water that sinks into it " seeps " or drains back into the
natural waterways. Mr. Maxwell, the State Engineer
of Colorado, finds that at the eastern line of the State,
far beyond the ranches and farms which drain the river,
the Platte carries 600 cubic feet of water per second as
against the 200 cubic feet it brings out of the mountains.
There is, therefore, a far better supply in the eastern
plains country than formerly, . and this will increase as
reservoirs catch the spring floods, for it is certain that
however much water 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 wells
have not succeeded there.

West of the Rocky Mountains there are more and
larger streams, but there is less rainfall than on the east-
ern slope. It is estimated that there is a drainage area
of twenty-five millions of acres in western Colorado, but
that only nine millions are arable. These nine millions
are mainly irrigated, the country being the field of rapid
development. The principal streams flow through well-
cultivated farming districts, and these form the region
already noted for choice fruit-raising.

In the celebrated Greeley colony, north of Denver, the

ditches are owned by the men who own the land. They
bought and pre-empted a large tract (now as rich as a
typical Illinois district, by-the-way), took the water
rights, constructed a large canal, and distributed the
water proportionately with the various holdings of the
land. Thus the water has become part and parcel of
the land, and costs only the trifling sum each owner is
assessed for repairs and superintendence. This is as
near to the perfect and ideal method of irrigation as
mankind has come in this country. It is the method
of the Mormons also. But, alas ! practically the whole
water treasure and irrigation-work is in the hands of
speculative corporations. All the newer schemes are of
that sort. In the San Luis Valley, the Arkansas Valley,
and along the Platte River corporations have built the
ditches, appropriated and diverted the water, and are
selling the liquid to farmers with a superimposed annual
tax for repairs — a tax of such proportions that the plan
may be justly described as making the farmers pay down
at the outset for the privilege of having water after-
wards by paying for it over again every year. Like
cows who come home to be milked at nightfall, the set-
tlers of Colorado must ''give down" each year 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 '4 maintenance," as this
Colorado method of producing water -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-
sary (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 men to
predict excessive irritation and trouble in the future. An
eminent lawyer in Denver has reached the same conclu-
sion that I announced in one of my papers on the new

Y 337

States in the Northwest. "Eventually and surely,"
said he, " the States must control the water supply
within their borders. They svill have to take the water
by right of eminent domain, and pay the present owners
for it. They must pay a great deal, for the owners
count on becoming wealthy and on bequeathing Fortu-
natus purses to their descendants. Once in the posses-
sion of the Government, the water must be distributed
for the benefit of the greatest possible number. It will
not be in our time, but it will be done, and it will result
from the very great discontent, and perhaps even violent
disorder, that are certain to breed out of the present un-
just, selfish, and primitive methods."

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 west of the mountains, and is worked in
Utah, Wyoming, and elsewhere. It is by no means un-
interrupted or continuous. Glaciers and floods have
worn away great reaches of it, and other lengths are
overlaid by 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 bituminous or lignite, and
varies in quality, but even that which shows the lowest
of these stages of development is valuable. The southern
coal area is the better. There the coal is firm, does not
slack, or slacks but slightly, breaks up into large blocks,
is freer from impurities, 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 remarkable and indubitable
*• find " of anthracite coal is the gem of this vast double
field of fuel. It is mined at Crested Butte, in Gunnison
County, in the Elk Mountains By the fossil remains
found with 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 well 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 Xew 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 Canon City. The supply of oil is reported
to be practically unlimited, and the wells are called
more prolific than any others of the same number and
size in the United States, yet the production of the
whole field is kept down to the requirements of a very
limited 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 Xew Mexico.

Along the entire foot-hills 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 will prove a factor in the State's
assets some day. AVith varying success, nearly ninety
wells have been drilled in the Florence oil-field. Fifty-
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 was

refined into oil, and 5000 barrels of lubricating oil were
made, both products being excellent, for the oil is rich
in illuminant and lubricating qualities.

There is among Colorado capitalists a project for
operating a four-million-dollar iron and steel producing
company, 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 proximity to one another as to warrant the
establishment of furnaces for the making of pig to blend
into the Bessemer product afterwards. I went to the
chief personage in this great prospective industry and
asked him as to the quantity and kinds of iron that were
supposed to exist in the State. AVith rare tact, and a
quality of courtesy not often met with in the West, he
said that exactly what I wished to know was precisely
what I should not find out. What was vouchsafed to
me by this custodian of the bad manners and the knowl-
edge of the iron deposit in Colorado was as valuable as
it was churlishly given.

There is, it seems, but little development- work in iron
in the State, though the iron is found scattered in large
fields on both sides of the mountains, some being mag-
netic and some hematite, not to speak of the more or
less worthless ores. For twelve years iron has been made
at Pueblo of ore from the San Luis Yalley, Leadville,
and other points. There is in the State a great deal of
ore free from phosphorus and sulphur to make Bessemer
steel, ore of good quality being found in many places,
the only question about any of it being with regard to
its quantity and availability. " But," said the gruff sage
who told me this, " there is not a pound of fuel east of
the Ilockies 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 dollars 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 would do, on a basis of thir-
teen dollars cost, leaving a margin for profit and interest
on the plant. There is required a combination of the
right ore, the right fuel, and satisfactory transportation
facilities, and that combination is yet to be made. An
exhaustive, energetic investigation is going forward, and
the men interested hope to work at many points to pro-
duce mixtures for Bessemer. They believe that there*
is a good prospect of success at an early day. They are
looking into the fuel question in Wyoming, where the
iron supply is no longer debatable.

Second to Denver among Colorado's cities is Pueblo,
in the county of that name. It claims 40,000 popula-
tion, and is a substantially built and very busy town,
with a banking capital of a million, 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 works, oil-refin-
eries, thirty miles of electric street railway, and a solid,
orderly, and prosperous appearance. It is 4700 feet up
in the air, and surrounded by a delightful country,
either cultivated or naturally picturesque. The mineral
palace for the display of the mineral resources of the
State, the artesian magnetic mineral baths, the near-by
lake-side summer resort, and the really fine hotels of
the city have attracted tourists and invalids in great
numbers.

Colorado Springs is another important 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 winter and summer resort,
6000 feet above sea-level. Residence there is advertised
as a " sure cure " for consumption, which explains the
mystery of its size and character. The town 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 have been widely advertised.
• Pike's Peak, Manitou (another resort famed for its
springs), the latest sensational mining camp, called
Cripple Creek, and many other noted places are all
close to Colorado Springs, which is perhaps the most
finished and elegant health resort west of the Missis-
sippi.

Colorado is dotted with springs of medicated water
of various kinds — hot, cold, sulphur, soda, iron, mag-
netic— a great variety, and existing in almost every
county. At Glen wood Springs, an especially beautiful
resort, hot springs are utilized to fill an open-air bath
600 feet long, in which men and women may bathe in
midwinter without being chilled while in or beside the
bath. A hotel to cost $400,000 is building there.

The southwestern part of the State, called the San
Juan country, has for its capital a place named Du-
rango, which is sufficiently far from any competitor, is
in a sufficiently rich country, and has a sufficient rep-
utation for "hustling" to make it a very promising
place. It is 6000 feet above the sea-level, in the Animas
Valley, and includes some fine buildings, good hotels,
several banks and churches, a free-and-easy, electric
lights, gambling kyouts in all the saloons, and, indeed,
everything that goes with a high-spirited Western town.
The United States land -office there has sold 102,000

342

acres of land, at 81 25 an acre, and has given away
50,000 acres to homesteaders. It has issued receipts for
about 3000 gold and silver mining claims, and has sold
7000 acres of coal land. Here is the San Juan Smelt-
ery, which cokes its own coal, and a smeltery that
treats ore from Ked Mountain and Kico. The Porter
Coal Company, whose mines are near by, turned out
7' H)00 tons last year. The San Juan Company mines
ir.n tons a day ; the Ute Coal Company 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, two flour-
mills, saw - mills, a brick - yard, a lime company, a
stone-quarrying company, and the inevitable brewery.
Timber for charcoal, gypsum for plaster of Paris, fire-
clay, and fine building stones are found near by. The
farm land yields, in the local parlance, " everything from
peanuts to persimmons," viz., wheat, oats, apples, pears,
cherries, plums, melons, grapes, and many sorts of ber-
ries. Over in New Mexico peaches are said to do well,
and they raise thirty -five varieties of grapes. There
are many streams, and irrigation-works are numerous.
Montrose is the likely town at the northern end of the
San Juan country. 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 community are to be found.
It would 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 what is true of the whole State.

Aspen and Leadville are no longer bold, bad min-
ing camps. 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.

344

WYOMING— ANOTHER PENNSYLVANIA

YOUNG AMERICA builds bigger than his forefathers.
Wyoming is not an exceptionally large State, yet it is
as big as the six States of New England and Indiana
combined. Indiana itself is the size of Portugal, and is
larger than Ireland. It is with more than ordinary
curiosity that one approaches Wyoming during a course
of study of the new Western States. From 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 width are many mountain 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 who 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 year,
marked by a peculiar disorder that necessitated the
calling out of troops — but that was a flash in a pan,
much exaggerated at a distance and easily quieted at
the time. For the rest, most well-informed citizens out-

345

side the State know nothing more than the misnaming
of the State implies, for the pretty Indian word Wyo-
ming, copying the name of a historic locality in the
East, is said to mean "plains land."

Excepting Idaho, it is the newest of the States in
point of development. It waits upon the railroads to
open it up. The Union Pacific Company have done
this for the southern part, but until three years ago no
other railway entered the State. Even now the other
roads merely tap its eastern and northern edges. The
Burlington and Missouri Railroad, of the Chicago, Bur-
lington, and Quincy system, is pushing its rails into the
northeastern part, having come up from Nebraska. It
is finished to the Powder River in Sheridan County, and
is graded to Sheridan, which is in a region of rich agri-
cultural promise. This railroad must soon, one would
think, push on to the Big Horn country, as we 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 made. But the old-fashioned stage lines are far
more numerous than the railroads, and are the sole links
between the railways and many interior communities.
The State has a population of only about 65,000, and
only one town that is well known all over the country.
That, of course, is Cheyenne, long the headquarters of
the stockmen of the West, and once a very wild and
" wide-open " city. It is not easy now to see where it
stowed its wickedness as one walks its tree-lined streets
bordered by pretty homes and trod by a sober and self-
respecting population. Cheyenne has 12,000 population,
strong banks, good schools, notable churches, some large
and enterprising mercantile establishments, a fine park,
and a great State capital. The town languishes. Not
that the people regret the loss of the dance-houses and

gambling layouts, but because the vim has gone out of
business. The range cattle industry is failing, and the
railroads have opened up other centres where mining
and agriculture are the chief interests. But Cheyenne
is like Wyoming itself, in a transition state, and its
future is far more 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 among many another sort of natural
wealth. They are right in asserting that coal and iron
such as theirs have been the bases of great wealth for
many powerful commonwealths and nations, but we
shall see, in making a hasty tour of the State, that a
still surer and greater asset is Wyoming's soil. Agri-
culture and stock-raising combined will surely give
birth and impetus to a degree of development that will
produce many a thickly settled, prosperous district,
where now there is little else than the magic soil itself.

It must not be thought that its conditions are more
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 two dozen weekly newspapers ; 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 system is a thorough
one capped by a free university, and representing a
million dollars' worth of school property. Free public
libraries are also maintained there. But it is the future
of such a State that is most interesting, and it is the fut-
ure that we have looked towards throughout this series.

The best maps of Wyoming, issued by the Depart-
ment of the Interior at Washington, are almost as use-
less as no maps at all. Because what is called " mount-

347

ain work " in surveying pays better than mapping the
plains, this map was heaped with mountains, like the
surface of a potful of boiling water, and where there
should be a few well-defined chains and parallel valleys,
there are more mountains, scattered higgledy-piggledy,
all over the map, than there are in British Columbia or
in Switzerland. To make 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 mountains that are here form the Bear Lodge
Range — broken spurs and isolated mountains not higher
than timber grows, and not sufficient in number, extent,
or height to produce much water. This is now a great
range cattle country, of course. Around the bases of
the mountains, where there is an appearance of more
moisture than elsewhere, there are great reaches of fine
grass land, on the benches and elevated plateaus where
the soil seems formed of decomposed gypsum. Big beds
of gypsum are exposed in this region. Here, on these
inviting benches, farming to a considerable extent has
crept in, pushed by a population that is thought to be
an overflow from Nebraska. There is no market, so the
farmers farm only for food for themselves and cattle.
Note, however, that they fence in their cultivated land
and keep cattle of their own to ba fed in the winter.
Thus the character of Wyoming and of the stock busi-
ness both change — quietly, steadily, surely. The agri-
culture centres around Sundance just now. The stock-
men do not consider it a serious invasion of the ranges
yet. Cow companies as large as any in the State head-
quarter to the west of this farming country on the head-
waters of the Belle Fourche. The historian of the next
decade will, almost surely, write the reverse of this,
that agriculture is the mainstay, and cattle deserve a
passing notice.

348

Passing along to the middle of the northern part of
the State, in Sheridan and Johnson counties — famed as
the seat of last year's " war " between the rustlers and
the cowmen — -we find the Big Horn Mountains domi-
nating the region. The east slope of these mountains
almost duplicates the rich plains country around Denver
or Cheyenne. It is more broken, and the ridges between
the mountain streams are higher, yet the narrower
benches and smaller mesas are of the same fruitful
character, well watered by just such sparkling, crystal-
like streams as one sees leaping from the sides of the
Rockies in Colorado. The Big Horn is a noble range of
the Rocky Mountain system. 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 form 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 county, because there are still im-
mense herds of cattle on the Johnson County ranges.
There is a larger percentage of farmers among the peo-
ple in these counties than anywhere else in Wyoming.
It is not that the land is the best. It is very good, in-
deed, but it owes its advancement in value to the fact
that whereas in other parts of the State the big cow
companies pre-empted the water, here it was the farmers
who took the first claims of land, and water with it.
The Burlington and Missouri Railroad, now being
pushed to the heart of this region from the Xebraska
border, will, before this is printed, connect these farms"
with Christendom, but up to this time the farming has
been only sufficient to satisfy the home demands of an

349

army 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 wheat, 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
small 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, walled in on the
east by the Big Horns, on the south by the Wind River
Mountains, and on the west by the Snake or Shoshone
range of the national park. The Big Horn River, a splen-
did stream, runs northward through this region, on its
way to pour its waters into the Yellowstone in Montana.
Two large streams — the Gray Bull and the Shoshone
—enter it from the west, and the No Wood, also a large
stream, runs into it from 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 by great mountain ranges.
It is not a corn country, of course, yet good corn ma-
tured there last summer, proving an unlooked-for length
of the warm season. Surveys have resulted in determin-
ing that there are 172,000 acres of irrigable land on Gray
Bull River, that south of this strip is a piece comprising
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 small
streams, 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 uncommon prize for future comers. Not
above 500 persons now live in this entire basin. There
is a little town, 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 would say
out there-) on the foot-hills in the shadow of the mount-
ains. The basin is, therefore, practically unoccupied.
The land is Government 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 market, there is no railroad, and
there are no wagon ways. The good land of which I
have spoken is that near the streams ; the rest of the
region is a wilderness of deep gulches, high broken
plateaus, sage-brush country, and " bad lands."

I have dwelt thus at length upon this brand-new bit
of America so desolate now, so inviting to speculation,
because it is plain that its future must be grand. How
strange a thing it is to be able, after reading the signs
of development everywhere in the far West, to point
to a vast bowl, unpeopled except by half-wild cattle, and
to say, with more confidence than one may prophesy of
his own life to-morrow: "Here will come thousands
upon thousands of men and women. 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

352

tangle of wagon roads. Kailroads will thread the scene,
and somewhere '? (ah ! that would be great prophesying
to say just where) u in this same basin there is certain
to arise a city of wealth, size, and importance, with fac-
tories and wholesale and retail shops, high-schools, stone
churches, parks, and mansions." Yet it must be so, and
the clays that are near at hand will 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.

Wyoming is so very new a State that there are many
regions very similar to the Big Horn basin in present
status and future likelihood. Look on the map. Be-
low this basin is the great Wind Kiver Indian Reserva-
tion. This great reserve is practically the same sort of
country. Below it, where 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 reservation, is a market that
has developed a comparatively settled region. The
town of Lander is the capital of this small but thrifty
section, which is made valuable by reason of the rich
but narrow little valleys of the tributaries of the main
river — there called the Wind River, though it is the Big
Horn none the less. The farms support two flour-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 valleys and an abundance of water. Its defect is
that the arable land is very elevated. The value of the
land has not been determined, but it is superior to its
present limited task of growing hay for small holders
of cattle who are feeding their stock in corrals in the
winter.

z 353

South of this is the Salt Eiver Valley, at one time an
ancient lake-bed, but now a level plain at the bottom of
a bowl — a little isolated world among the mountains,
and a place of exceeding great beauty. The Mormons,
1500 strong, have pre-empted it all. Originally they
began taking quarter sections of 160 acres under the
Homestead Law, but later they filed claims for 6±0 acres
at a time under the Desert Land Act. Many of the
holders of large tracts are the sons of rich men, but they
will 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 which 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
meat, 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 instrument for wholesale land-grabbing. Alto-
gether one person could take up 1120 acres, and it was
easy for cowmen to employ their cowboys to file claims
upon great tracts. The employers provide the nominal
land-office fees and the Government 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 which a claim can be
filed has been reduced to 340 acres, but the principle is
very mischievous, because the only hope for a land
where soil is plenty and water is scarce is to limit the
individual settlers to small holdings, that there may be
as many of each as the land will support. Of course
these large holdings will in time be broken up, and the
region will be thrown open to the multitude. This will
happen when the grabbers can make more money by sell-
ing the land than by holding it for stock-raising. This
is fine farm land in a narrow valley fifty or sixty miles
long. Behind this good land, on either side of the
valley, is broken land that is no use for farming, but
which with the farm land forms the happy combination
so frequent in Colorado, Montana, AYyoming, and Idaho,
by means of which agriculture and stock-raising can be
easily and profitably coupled. In the southwestern part
of the State is the Green River, a large stream 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 times 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-mill, and that (at Laramie City)
had failed. As I write, three mills are building ; one at
Evanston, one at Douglas in Converse County, and one
at Saratoga on the Xorth Platte River. There were four
flour-mills in Wyoming in 1890, but when this is pub-
lished there will be nine. Moreover, the new mills are
of a character and capacity far superior to the first ones.

The story of the transformation of Saratoga from a

355

cow outfit to a farming settlement is, in great measure,
the same as the story of the transformation of the entire
State from a stockman's paradise to a nineteenth-century
commonwealth. And one such story is worth ten pages
of argument and explanation. In the valley of the North
Platte River, seven or eight years ago, there were twenty-
live herds of cattle, large and small, owned by men 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 matter a thought. It was an axiom that
Wyoming was only fit for grazing; even to-day there
are plenty of stock owners and store clerks who say that
potatoes and hay are the only forms of vegetation that
can be cultivated in the State. The first man in the
valley who 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 way, beginning with potatoes, following with turnips
and beets, and so going on through all the grades of
general garden truck. At last came experiments with
grain, until to-day single fields of wheat and oats com-
prise 200 or 300 acres, and, as I have said, a thirty-
barrel flour-mill is now going up there. So rich is the
soil that oats have been grown there to weigh 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 already it yields two crops in a summer,

356

The agricultural development is closely associated
with the changing of the stockmen's methods. The
Eastern men who had gone into the valley to grow cat-
tle on the open range had supposed the conditions would
for an indefinite period remain as they were, based upon
plenty of pasture and water. During the first four years
they came gradually to admit that the range business
was not profitable. They saw that the first prices they
got for their stock were " boom " 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 m land also fenced in
water, and made it difficult for cattle in the open to get
to water Then settlers began to arrive in numbers, al-
ways to locate on water, to fence it in, and to cut off more
of the open range. The stock no longer wintered as it
had done ; wanting water and food, the animals died to
an extent that piled up losses to the owners. At last it
was necessary for each cowman to maintain an outfit of
riders through the winters to look after the stock. That
was expensive, but it was still more 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 stockmen that they
had better have one hundred head of cattle, and care for
them well, than keep a thousand, with 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 men who took
up land and stayed there with smaller herds, farming as
well as beef-raising. The result is peculiar and unex-
pected. There are as many cattle in the valley as there
ever were, but they are owned 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 still 300,000 cattle, but they are
in 150 herds of 200 heads.

There is only one large cow company 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 autumn, to make a cow 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 winter 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 winds that rage there. This valley, or rather the
range which goes beyond the valley, is sixty by sixty
miles in area. The cow company herds 3500 to 4000
head. It has to hire a ranch for growing 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 knows about the range stock industry, as if the com-
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 will answer for all Wyo-
ming, since, in every other part of the State, the same
things have happened, are happening, or must happen.

The middle southern part of Wyoming is just what it
seems from the cars of the Union Pacific Company — of
problematical value except for grazing and for its min-
eral resources. We shall see, further along, that the
mineral resources of most 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

358

with it. Over all the State timber 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
surveyed, only 5,000,000 of acres are owned by indi-
viduals and corporations, the rest being public land.
With so small an amount yielding a revenue, the State
has no money with which 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 waters within
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 water among the greatest number of
landholders, then all that I have urged in other chapters
upon the other States in the arid belt would here find
its consummation. 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 away, and to men who want
to make money out of it, saying through its officers,
" We are only too glad to give it away in order to invite
settlers." Still Wyoming is in advance of its neighbors
in even this respect, and too much praise cannot be
given to its State Engineer, Professor Elwood Mead,
whose views are large and practical, who does all that
the laws permit towards the conservation of the water
supply, and who would make Wyoming's the best
system 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 water-grabbers
nearly twenty-one years, but has only enjoyed its own
government two }Tears. Under the Territorial system

359

there were no restrictions, and there was no supervision
in respect of the distribution of water. Any one who
wanted it took it, not as the Mormons have always done,
for the greatest good of the greatest number, but like
ordinary white men, solely for individual gain. The
grabber filed a claim and stated what he had done and
for what purpose he did it, but that was a mere for-
mality. The claims were mainly taken by stockmen
who wished to get water on land so that they might
utilize great tracts taken under the Desert Land Act.
There was a tremendous building of ditches, and some
of it was crazy work, as where one company built a
$70,000 ditch and only watered 340 acres. Around
Lander and a few other places farmers took water for
the legitimate uses of farming. Three thousand and
eighty-six ditches were run out of 631 streams, and were
applicable to 2,172,781 acres under the Territorial sys-
tem. And that is about how the case stands to-day.

Now, Wyoming is divided into four grand water dis-
tricts, to meet as many natural systems of surface drain-
age. In charge of each district is a superintendent,
and these superintendents with the State Engineer as
president, ex officio, constitute a Board of Control, which
meets 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 owner may have. This is
the next but one most important step that the States in
that region must }^et take. In the Territorial days men
built ditches as they pleased, and then thought that they
owned all the water such ditches could take. They were
obliged to go before the district courts to get decrees
validating their claims, and the courts were supposed to
see that each claimant took only what water he needed.
As a matter of fact, the courts did as they do elsewhere ;

360

took an affidavit by the owners as to the capacity of
the ditches, without regard to whether such quantities
of water had been, were, or could be utilized, and then
issued the decrees. Though the machinery of law
courts was 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 water of six of the streams in the State.

The new Board of Control has decided that the mere
diversion of water from its natural channels shall not
constitute appropriation thereof. The water 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 allotments to actual acreage re-
claimed— already watered 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 water for that 1000 acres, crediting the owners
with water for the other 9000 acres only when such
land is cultivated. Where new ditches are built an ex-
tension of time for development is made; in the cases
of old ditches, no attention is paid to their future pos-
sibilities. In Wyoming, then, the land is reclaimed
before the water is parted with by the State. The
reader will understand how important and wise this
course is when he comprehends the evils that result
from 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 same or another valley or locality.
Farming is carried on along both sets of ditches, but
when there exists a scarcity of water, A appeals for his
priority rights, and gets all the water his ditches will
carry. B has his ditches closed, and the orchards and
gardens and grain fields along his ditches must die of

361

drought, even though A's territory may not be all under
cultivation, or though he may have twice the water he
needs. Under the Wyoming system priority rights
prevail, but only water that is actually benefiting land
is at any man's disposal.

It has been determined in Wyoming that a stream of
a cubic foot per second shall serve to irrigate seventy
acres, but this estimate is considered non-essential there,
because every acre which has water can keep it, there
being plenty for all who now use it. The law declares
that the first comer must have all that he needs, and
the second and third comers must follow in their order ;
but it is said that priority rights have occasioned little
trouble so far, owing to the quantity of water, and the
fact that the distribution keeps pace with the actual
improvement of the soil. The old hap-hazard water-
grabbing freedom of the Territorial days has left its
evils, nevertheless. I saw on a map of part of "the
Little Laramie Country " a place where 150 ditches par-
alleled and duplicated one another in land which two
ditches would have served thoroughly well. Eventu-
ally, when water is not so plentiful, there will 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 which must eventually be abandoned.

The surest way 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 Wyoming whenever pro-
posed ditches are palpably unnecessary, permits 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.

362

It is estimated that between six millions and seven
millions of acres of land in Wyoming are irrigable from
the streams. Of the five millions of acres now held in
the State only a little above two millions are under
ditches. The great majority of the ditches are small
ones, and most of these are owned by stockmen, al-
though a few farming communities operate their own.
The stockmen's ditches will eventually be applied to
agriculture. In all, in this baby State, ten millions of
dollars or more have been invested in these artificial
waterways. When the Board of Control came, with its
new rulings, the stockmen as well as the farmers saw
that the only way to hold their water rights was 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 two years have caused the State to take an
extraordinary stride forward in agricultural develop-
ment. Thus have come the four flouring mills where
there had been none before. Between January, 1891,
and November, 1892, there were 352 applications for the
right to build new 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
more eloquently of the new forces of civilization and
improvement that are at work in the State.

These new ditch companies have 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
water. 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 owned the public lands
and surveyed them, and encouraged the building of

ditches, it could sell the land for its value as improved
land, and could reimburse the local ditch company by
buying the shares and joining them with the land thus
sold until the water 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 must come under the grab system 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 owner, told me
that not a cow company there made a dollar of profit
in 1892. He afterwards corrected himself by saying that
he believed a little money had been gained from a new
form of the business by men in the northern part of the
State who had gone out of the breeding business and
were grazing steers exclusively. This safer method,
which 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
tempt even the rich. At one time men paid 2 per
cent, a month for money, and made 100 per cent,
profits. That was w-hen cows came up from Texas at a
cost of $7 each, sold in two years for $22, and in three
years for $40 'and more, when the ranges were not over-
stocked, the pasturage was good, and all the conditions,
including " boom " prices at the stock-yards, were favor-
able. The men who did the best pushed into new terri-
tory as fast as the Indians were crowded off, and kept

364

finding new grass and plenty of it. But the risks soon
came and multiplied. If one man was careful not to
overstock a range, be could not be sure that another
cow outfit would not do so precisely where he had put
his cattle. Prices fell, fences cut up the ranges and
shut off the water, winter losses became heavier and
heavier, and the "good old days" of this inhuman,
devil-may-care, primitive, and clumsy business came to
an end. The cowboys of picture and story existed in
the brilliant days. At first they had come from Texas,
but in the zenith of their romantic glory they came
from everywhere and from every class. They included
young Englishmen, college graduates from the East,
well-born Americans — all sorts who did not "strike
luck" at anything else, and who were full of vim and
love of adventure. They got $±0 a month and good
keep during the greater part of each year. They rode
good horses, that had as much of the devil in them as
the "boys" themselves. They bought hand -stamped
Cheyenne saddles and California bits that were as
ornate as jewelry, and stuck their feet in grand tapa-
<lero$, 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,
were selected with more care than a circus tight-rope,
and their big broad felt sombreros cost more than the
Prince of Wales ever 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 cowboys, who had not become owners or fore-
men, saloon-keepers or gamblers, or had not been shot,
drifted away. Some of the smartest among them be-
came " rustlers" — those cattle thieves whose depredations
resulted in what almost came to be a war in Wyoming
last year. They insisted that they had to do it to live.

365

From the cowboy stand-point it was time for the
business to languish. Towns were springing up every
here and there, each with its ordinance that cowboys
must take off their side-arms before they entered the
villages ; wages were low down ; men had to cart hay
and dump it around for winter food ; settlers fenced in
the streams, and others stood guard over them with
guns; it was time such a business languished. From
the stand -point of nineteenth -century civilization the
same 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 new and
wild country. And now I am assured that there is not
an intelligent cowman who does not know that the
business is doomed in Wyoming, and that the last free-
roving herds must move on. There is not one who does
not know that small bunches of cattle, held in connec-
tion with agriculture, must take the places of the range
cattle, because better grades of cattle can be bred, better
meat can be produced, all risks will nearly disappear,
and the expenses of the care of the cattle will not be a
tithe of those of the old plan.

And so we come to the much-discussed plan for hav-
ing Wyoming intrusted with the public domain 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 the upper or range land,
always combining the irrigable bottoms 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), while
with the other they look after their cattle. With thor-
oughbred bulls, sheltered winter pasture and feed, and an
income from 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 towards a land-grabbing
monopoly or steal of some sort. Nevertheless, the plan
is peculiarly well suited to the natural conditions in
Wyoming, 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 might and often would
pass over the hills and leave them 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 num-
ber actually within her borders. However, in 1886 the
number reported was 898,121 head, or more than twice
as many as now, and then cows wrere considered worth
816 31 apiece as against $10 50 now. But this falling
off argues no such ill to the State as it would have been
to have the range-cattle industry thrive. The auditor's
figures show 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 Wyoming 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 computed to be worth
§2.681,000 ; but this is also an untrustworthy item. In

367

truth, there are no less than 100,000 head of horses, and
many of them are of excellent stock. Sheep exceed all
other animals in numbers. The auditor reports 639,205,
and there are really close to 900,000 of these animals
on the ranges. They are worth, at graded values,
$1,750,000.

Wherever the cow business is carried on there exists
the most fanatical prejudice against sheep and sheep-
herders. The English language fails every cowman
who tries to express his opinion about this sister in-
dustry. This is worth recording here, because it is true
in all the States where cattle are fattened from British
Columbia to Texas, and because it is a prejudice without
warrant or base, and it is bound to die out. We shall
see why, after telling what a cowman said of it when I
brought up the topic in Wyoming :

"The sheep-herder is the worst blot on the State,"
said he. " He is no good, and much harm. He may
have his office in New York, Chicago, or London. He
fits out a wagon, with a Mexican and a dog and several
thousand sheep, and away they go, like an Egyptian
scourge, eating the grass down to the ground, and, in
sandy soils, trampling it down so that there are great
regions where once the bunch-grass grew knee high, but
where the country is now bare as a desert. You might
search acres in such a place with a microscope 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 settlement and development of
the State."

But new men are constantly drifting into the sheep
business, and mutton, which always hung back in the
meat markets of America, is coming to be a favorite
meat, as it is in England. There is no more remarkable
change in our country than this general turning towards

mutton after it had been so long and generally disliked.
Men who harbored the same ill-will towards the business
of sheep-herding are now rushing into it because of the
money there is in it. He who was always 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 fpreigners 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 number divides into two herds convenient
to handle. The owner of such a bunch will employ three
men— two herders and a foreman who is also the " camp-
mover." Each herd will have a wagon, a man, and a
dog, or usually two dogs. The wagon in use on the
ranges is the typical " schooner" of olden time — a heavy
box on wheels, covered with a canvas top, and appoint-
ed with a bed in the back, a locker, and a stove. The
camp-mover divides his time between the two herds.
He has a team of horses, and after he has moved one
wagon and herd to new pasture, he leaves that outfit
and goes off, perhaps fifteen or twenty miles, 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 willows, and they do well on what is called
•• browse," which is the short white sage-brush of that
region. It is estimated 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 ewes
to feeders in Nebraska and elsewhere to fatten for

market, getting $3 50 to $4 a head for such stock. Oc-
casionally, if they think the herds are increasing in
numbers too fast, they sell off a bunch of young lambs,
and yearlings fetch as high as $2 75 a head. The prof-
its lie in the increase of the animals by multiplication.
This amounts 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 animals, with sales at $2 75 to $4, and with
an additional margin 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 "Wyoming form a wonderful
treasure. Unlike nearly all the other far Western States,
"Wyoming's settlement was not connected with mining.
The first actual settlements were around forts Laramie
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
lignite of low grade, which crumbles when 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

370

said to be seventy feet thick. The nearer this deposit
approaches the mountains, where it has been subjected
to more pressure, the more commercial value it has.
The coal burned in the settlements around Bonanza, in
the western part of Johnson County, is so free from 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
"Wyoming. In the eastern part of the State, where the
Black Hills enter from South Dakota, is Newcastle, a
busy coal -mining town, whose neighborhood is richly
veined with a bituminous coal that makes high-grade
coke. Coking ovens supply that material for the Black
Hills smelters. This is the only coal of the kind in the
State. It is of such quality that the Burlington and
Missouri Railroad Company uses it for locomotive fuel,
mining 800 tons a day for that use and for sale along
the line in other localities.

The next best deposit yet mined is at Rock Springs, in
Sweetwater County, in the southwestern part of the
State, and on the Union Pacific Railroad. More than a
million tons were shipped from this immense field last
year. It is the best soft coal in the Wyoming markets,
and as good as any in the West. The Union Pacific
Railroad is heavily interested here, but there are some
small private mines. In order that the people of the
State may 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. From Rawlins, to the eastward,
comes a good coal, and eastward again is the carbon
coal-field, where 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 Eailroad Company gets its supply. It is a lower
grade than the Kock Springs coal. The Fremont, Elk-
horn, and Missouri Valley Kailroad (Chicago and North-
western system) came 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 steam coal, but finds a ready market in Ne-
braska and elsewhere along this gigantic system. There
are at least half a dozen large coal-fields in the central
belt of counties of whose merits I find no mention 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 sufficiently
for the owners 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
railway connection with the Skull Creek (Newcastle)
coal-mines. Next in promise are the Seminoe, Carbon
County, mines to the northwestward of the carbon coal-
fields. Here is plenty of fine hematite, with fuel and
fluxes close by, and only transportation facilities needed.
There is a large soft deposit of mineral paint (oxide of
iron), which is being ground and readily marketed. It
has been found to be excellent for painting freight-cars,
iron and tin roofs, and buildings, is a valuable wood pre-
servative, and retains its color longer than most paints.
The Chugwater Eiver runs through an immense field
of iron ore, but it is impregnated with what is called
titanium. Iron carbonate ore is found in the Big Horn
Basin, and in the basin east of the South Powder Eiver.
This will be mined, in time, for use in Bessemer steel
making.

372

The tin of the Black Hills extends into Wyoming.
The State has some extraordinary soda deposits, some 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, mica, graphite, magnesia, plumbago,
and sulphur are more or less abundant. Gypsum is
found in almost every county, and plaster of Paris is
being made of it at Red Buttes on the Union Pacific
Railroad. Marbles — some of them 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 white marble is found in the Sibylee region,
where, by-the-way, is another undeveloped agricultural
section of great promise. The granites of the State are
very fine, and the sandstones, which are of unlimited
quantity, 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 flow is
stopped by the company, is a splendid illuminant. 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 have flowed, and all are now
cased, but there is a three -acre lake of leakage from
them. There are signs of oil elsewhere in the State.
The oil production and supply of this country is con-
trolled by one company. If any other company offers
to compete with this giant concern, it would be possible
for the master company to give oil away until the oppo-
sition was starved out. The money of the great com-
pany is in its by-products, and it would not suffer great-
ly by making a free gift of all the oil that is consumed

373

in Wyoming. It is generally believed that the control-
lers of the oil supply look to the wells of Colorado to
piece out the supply if the Pennsylvania wells fail.
After that, or at that time, perhaps, humanity will be
interested in the oil of Wyoming; but it is noticeable
now that this oil excites little human interest, and inter-
ests still less capital.

Gold is still being mined 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 working 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
Laramie Valley, in the Silver Crown district, and in the
Big Horn Country. The gold mining 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 development of her splendid agricultural lands first,
and next in her coal and iron fields.

In certain of the newer States the citizens are especial-
ly proud of the constitutions they have adopted as the
bases of their governments. In Montana, for instance,
the Constitutional Convention comprised an assemblage
of men who, it is said, would win distinction anywhere.
Wyoming's convention may not have been so notable
in its make-up, but its product, the Constitution, is cer-
tainly very remarkable. It is fin de siede, if I may
apply French to anything so extremely American ; it is
thoroughly " up to date."

Wyoming had progressed under Territorial govern-

374

ment for twenty years, when, in January, 1888, her
Legislature memorialized Congress for an enabling act,
in the belief that Territorial government retarded the
progress and development of the region. The Congress
committee to which the matter was referred reported it
favorably, as it also did a bill preparing for the admis-
sion of the other Territories which were so soon to be-
come full-fledged members 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 September.
Fifty -five delegates composed the convention, and
drafted the Constitution which was afterwards ratified
by a vote of five -sixths of the citizens. There were
many precedents for the adoption of a Constitution
prior to admission to Statehood. Wyoming's assessed
valuation was then §31,500,000, whereas California,
when admitted, showed only $13,000,000 of assessable
wealth. The population of the Territory was then
about what it is now. It was admitted in 1890.

It Avas generally believed that the party in power at
that time effected the admission of Wyoming, 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 will
not be disputed, I think ; but it seems to all the people
of Wyoming, and to me also, that the action has proven
very advantageous. It is true that the State govern-
ment is in some degree more expensive than that of
the Territory had been, but the expense is more than
offset by the good riddance of the former officials, who
were apt to be carpet-baggers — i. e., persons sent there
from 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 welfare of the whole people. Then
again, the county governments are equally improved,
and definite moderate salaries for the county officials
have taken the places of the wasteful fees by which they
formerly paid themselves.

And now for the Constitution itself. In its declara-
tion of rights it perpetuates the right of the women to
vote as they had been doing when Wyoming was a
Territory, and this was understood when the State was
admitted. " Since equality in the enjoyment of natural
and civil rights," it declares, " is made sure only through
political equality, the laws of this State affecting the
political rights and privileges of its citizens shall be
without distinction of race, color, sex, or any circum-
stance or condition whatsoever other than individual in-
competency 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 female 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 twenty-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
method of voting is what is generally called " the Au-
stralian system."

I was very anxious, when I found myself in Wyo-
ming, to ascertain what I could of the effect upon
women, men, and the politics of the State of this meas-
ure, so persistently labored for by the women's rights
agitators in all the States of our Union. I am and have

376

ever been in favor of woman's voting, but it has always
seemed to me that the women were themselves the ob-
stacles to the general introduction of the practice. I
have not lived so entirely in vain as not to see that the
women can and do have pretty nearly whatever they
want in America, and I know that whenever they con-
clude that they wish to do so they will vote. The
situation in Wyoming is especially interesting, because
women cut a small figure in a new State, and what they
have got there the men must have given them. Do
they vote — now that they may ? How many vote ? Do
they vote as their husbands do or tell them to ? Is the
voting of women mainly done by the respectable, the
intelligent, the ignorant, or the disorderly classes? To
what extent, if any, do the women study politics and
statecraft in order to vote intelligently ? I am drifting
to one side of a study of Wyoming's Constitution, but
these are interesting questions, and the Constitution is
responsible for them.

In the first place, when I put these queries, here and
there, I said " women " whenever I spoke of that sex,
for which I have the highest respect — the most senti-
mental, if you please. But I never heard any other
man in the State apply any other word to the better sex
except the much-abused and demoralized term " ladies."
That is a marked peculiarity of the language in the
West. It does not contain the noble word " woman."
It sickens the ear with the overuse of the word u lady."
For my part, I know a woman when 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 will free me from even a suspicion of rudeness or
lack of gallantry here and in what follows.

I found that the great majority of the women in Wyo-

377

ming are in the habit of voting. Not all of them vote
as their husbands do, and as one official expressed him-
self, "good men pride themselves upon not influencing
their wives." Yet it is true, I am told, that very many
women, of their own volition and unconsciously, copy
the politics of their husbands. . Occasionally the men of
the State hear of women who refuse to embrace the
privilege, who do not believe that women should meddle
in affairs which concern the homes, the prosperity, and
the self-respect and credit of the communities of which
they are a part ; Jbut such women are, of course, few.

On the other hand, other women are very active in
politics. There is a Ladies' Kepublican League among
the political 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
women who blindly vote as their husbands do, there are
yet others who fail to agree with the views of their life
companions upon public matters.

Among the women who show an intelligent interest
and take an active part in politics, a few resort to the
stump and speak for whichever cause they have adopted.
But there are many who serve side by side with the men
as delegates to conventions and voters in the party pri-
maries. In the last State convention of the Republicans
there were three women delegates ; in that party's last
county convention, in Laramie County, the secretary
was a woman, and three delegates were of her sex.
Women literally flock to the primaries — in the cities, at
all events. At the primary meeting in the Third Ward
of Cheyenne last autumn, out of 183 who were present
at least 80 were women. In the other wards the pro-
portion of women was as one is to three. On election
days the women go a-voting precisely as they go a shop-
ping elsewhere. On foot or in their carriages they go

378

to the polls, where, under the law, there are no crowds,
and where all is quiet and orderly. There is no doubt
that female suffrage has an improving effect upon poli-
ticians and their manners. All sorts and every sort of
women vote ; but it is to be remarked that this affords
no criterion for larger and Eastern States, since the pro-
portion of women of evil lives is very small in Wyoming,
even in the cities, and, so far as other women are con-
cerned, our new States are nearer like democracies 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 man,
it forbids imprisonment 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
Mormons who are already forming colonies there.) It
provides that " no money of the State shall ever be given
or appropriated to any sectarian or religious society or
institution." The old maxim, " the greater the truth the
greater the libel," receives its quietus, so far as Wyo-
ming is concerned, in this clause : " Every person may
freely 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 criminal, 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 modern clause : '• The
rights of labor shall have just protection through laws
calculated to secure to the laborer proper rewards for
his service and to promote the industrial welfare of the
State." i The italics are mine.)

379^

"No power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent
an untrammelled exercise of the right of suffrage.

" No distinction shall ever be made by law between resident aliens
and citizens as to the possession, taxation, enjoyment, and descent of
property.

" Perpetuities and monopolies are contrary to the genius of a free
State, and shall not 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, and the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law
of the land.

"No session of the Legislature after the first, which may be sixty
days, shall exceed forty days. . . . No Legislature shall fix its own
compensation." (The sessions are biennial.)

"No bill (before the Legislature), except general appropriation
bills, and bills for the codification and general revision of the laws,
shall be passed containing more than one subject, which shall be
clearly expressed in its title; but if any subject is embraced in any
act which is not expressed in the title, such act shall be void only 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-
munity not under the absolute control of the State " (nor to any sec-
tarian or denominational institution, as we have seen).

The provisions to prevent bribery and corruption in
the Legislature are intended to be especially finely
drawn. No legislator may give his vote or influence
for or against any measure in consideration of the
promise of another legislator's influence in favor of or
against any other measure 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 be guilty of bribery. Witnesses

380

may be compelled to testify in trials of such causes,
and shall not withhold testimony on the ground that it
may criminate them or subject them to disgrace, but
such testimony may not afterwards be used against such
witnesses, except upon a charge of perjury in giving
such testimony. " A member who has a personal or
private interest in any measure 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."

" All 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 given to the State
for purposes not otherwise specified, the proceeds of all
property that may come to the State by escheat, or for-
feiture, and in addition to all funds from unclaimed divi-
dends or distributive shares of the estates of deceased
persons.

" In none of the public schools shall distinction or discrimination
be made on account of sex, race, or color.

•• Xo sectarian instruction, qualifications, or tests shall be imparted,
exacted, applied, or in any manner tolerated in the schools, . . . nor
shall attendance be required at any religious service therein, nor
shall any sectarian tenets or doctrines be taught or favored in any
public school or institution that may be established uiider this Con-
stitution.

" Railroad and telegraph lines heretofore constructed, or that may
hereafter be constructed in this State, are hereby declared public
highways and common carriers, and as such must be made by law to
extend the same equality and impartiality to all who use them, ex-
cepting employe's and their families and ministers of the 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, and sub-
jecting them to public use the same as property of individuals. .

"No street passenger railway, telegraph, telephone, or electric-

381

light line, shall be coustructed within the limits of any municipal
organization without the consent of its local authorities.

" 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 employe's any contract or agreement whereby such em-
ployer shall be released from liability or -responsibility for personal
injuries to such employe's while in the service of such employer, by
reason of the negligence of the employer, or the agents or employe's
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 violeuce, except upon the application of the
Legislature, or -Executive, when the Legislature cannot be convened."

The laws governing taxation and revenue are equally
notable. Except for the support of educational and
charitable institutions, and the payment of the State
debt and interest thereon, the annual levy shall not
exceed four mills on the dollar of the assessed valuation
of the property in the State. Twelve mills on the dol-
lar is the maximum 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
them beforehand, many of the problems which 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 railways, with fifty

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

A TALK WITH A COWBOY

The first cowboys I ever saw greatly disappointed
me by their appearance. All that I have seen since that
time have disappointed me equally. If I were to write
a play in which there was 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
know 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 wore big flat-brimmed hats,
and because they had a long line of broncos fettered to
a hitching-rail near by. I would have been immeasur-
ably disappointed and disgusted had they not been re-
deemed by a story that was told concerning them as
soon as our train pulled away from the station where
they were loafing.

The story was that this same band of plainsmen had
long noticed a course of behavior on the part of a
Xorthern Pacific train conductor which they determined
not to tolerate. The conductor did the worst thing, in a
cowboy's opinion, that any man could do — he acted like
a dude ; he " put on style." He actually went so far as

to swing himself off the cars before they stopped, and,
with one arm extended and head offensively erect,
would shout : " Dingleville ! All out for Dingleville !"
His whole manner was artificial, affected, and unbear-
able. This being noticed — and no one is quicker to
notice the hollow trickery of an Eastern man than cow-
boys are — the boys decided to " take him down." So
one day they assembled on the station platform in a
semicircular line, into the curve of which he must run as
he leaped from the moving cars. The conductor did as
he was expected to, the cowboys surrounded him, and
he was bidden to dance.

" Dance, — - you !" they shouted ; " dance, or we'll
shoot the toes off you !"

At the words each cowboy pulled his pistol, and began
shooting down into the platform planks, not exactly at
the conductor's feet, but so as to narrowly miss them.
They blazed away and he danced, until, after he was all
but exhausted and they had no more shots to fire, they
bade him go on with the train, and never " show 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 by a globe trotting
Englishman, whose habit it was to amuse himself and
while away life by going wheresoever there was prom-
ise of novelty, danger, or excitement. He had been to
the African diamond fields, to the Mahdi's realms, to our
frontier mining camps, and now he was on his way to
Alaska. But one trip he made was to see the cowboys,
about whom he had read a great deal.

" They are a very rum sort of beggars," said he — " a
very rum 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 madmen. It happened that the
'otel was a very ram-shackle frame building, almost as
thin as card-board, and in five minutes the walls of my
bedroom were riddled with bullet holes in the most sur-
prising manner. Fancy my satisfaction — for I had
travelled five thousand miles to witness that very thing !

" But to show you that they are not as bad as they
have been painted — in fact, that they are opposed to
anything like law-breaking and violence — let me relate
an incident that took place the very next day. There
was a poor clark standing up over his books at a desk in
a shop on the main street, and there was a drunken
cowboy riding up and down the street. Well, the cow-
boy saw the clark, and his sense of humor was aroused
by the idea of shooting at him, d'you know. Those cow-
boys have a very remarkable sense of humor. So the
cowboy ups with his pistol, d'you know, and he shoots
the poor clark right through the head, killing him in-
stantly. Well, now, that sort of thing is very distinctly
frowned upon by cowboys, as a rule, and in this case the
cowboys held a meeting, and resolved that the fellow
with the lively but dangerous sense of humor should be
hanged at once. They put a rope around his neck, and
there being no tree anywhere in sight, they hung him to
the side of a Pullman as the train came rolling in. I've
seen a number of occurrences of that sort, which makes
me quite positive in stating that though they are a very
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
was boasted by this Englishman. I have not yet seen a
" round-up," or a " trail " coming up from Texas, or a
cowboy camp, or any part of their life that may be
called illustrative or typical. I have seen thousands of
them hanging about depots and saloons, riding like the

wind across the open, seated in railway cars, betting
their hard-earned money in gambling dens, and punch-
ing cattle into stock-pens and cattle-cars. I know them,
their horses, their saddles, their clothing, their careless
ways, their masterful riding, but I have yet to spend a
day with them on the ranges or a night with them in
camp.

I know that their unique position among Americans
is jeoparded in a thousand ways. Towns are growing
up on their pasture-lands ; irrigation schemes of a dozen
sorts threaten to turn bunch -grass scenery into farm-
land views; farmers are pre-empting valleys and the
sides of waterways ; and the day is not far distant when
stock-raising must be done mainly in small herds, with
winter corrals, and then the cowboy's day will end.
Even now his condition disappoints those who knew him
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 Jove of the free life
and bold companionship that once tempted men into
that calling. Splendid Cheyenne saddles are less and
less numerous in the outfits ; the distinctive hat that
made its way up from Mexico may or may not be worn ;
all the civil authorities in nearly all the towns 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 days 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 morning spent
with a cowboy of great ,fame in his business, of twelve
years' experience, and who has forced his way upward
to a position of prosperity and honor, although he still
keeps his seat in the saddle, and officiates at every
" round-up " of the cattle of a great cow company. It

seems to me that to repeat what he said, as nearly as
possible in his own words, will be to make 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 savages,
and eat grass," said he ; " but I find 'em about the best
men I ever knew; by that I mean that they are the
manliest and squarest men I ever saw. There's one
thing I will say, you put 'em in the best hotel there is,
and they'll order ham and eggs three times 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, smart 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-man came on from the East, and asked him to
saddle his horse : ' Saddle him 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 man's horse
as long as I can ride the way 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 woman is keeping
him. I saw him to-day, and he borrowed money of me,
which, when I gave it to him, I knew I was flinging it
into the gutter. Do you know why I gave it to him '.
It was because I know hundreds that would do the same
for me. They would whack their last dollar with me,
for standing by your friends is the cowboy's religion.

" Rum, cards, and women are the epitaphs in the cow-
boy's graveyard. Some bunches all three, and some cuts
one out of the herd, and rides after it till he drops ; but
however they take 'em, those are the things that rounds
up most of 'em. It's curious, but if they quit horseback,

387

and go into business, those are the three businesses they
choose from, or the two, I should say, for cards and
liquor go together.

" How do I dress when I'm with an outfit ? Well,
mostly in rags. Truth is, I don't care how 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 my 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 'em 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. Cowboys 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-brimmed hat '11 cost up to $20, and a plain Chey-
enne saddle and trimmings is worth $40, but the boys
like to get their saddles all stamped up with patterns,
and will pay $55 for one like that.

"Folks East think the Indians are such fine riders.
We cowboys may 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 ?
Well, then, there's no need o' my tellin' you that he
keeps his heels humping into the horse's ribs the whole
time he's riding him, or that he has a quirt, with which
he keeps a-whipping and lashing the horse the whole
time.

" Indians can't ride. Do you know what they do
when they get a horse that's got some spirit? They

388

put a stake in the ground, and tether the horse to it
with a long halter. Then all the squaws and children
and old men in the camp get around with 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 him
nearly dead, some buck will get on him and ride him.
whipping him and digging him with his heels. The
horse will go to get out of misery. That shows what
the Indians know about horses.

" Cavalrymen are fairly good riders — on a road. They
can move 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 wherever a horse can go —
down gullies, up bluffs, and just as it happens. A good
cowboy rider is unconscious that he is riding. A man
who is conscious that he is on horseback ain't a good
rider. You want to get on your horse and let your legs
flop around loose from 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 minutes after he strikes
a town. We used to ' shoot up ' the towns, but now they
disarm us. Was I ever in a fuss? Well, little ones,
once in a while. When a man raises a gun on me, I'm
going to do whatever he wants just as quick as I can.
I've heard men in to\vns say they wasn't afraid of a gun.
Well, I am; and so would they be if they had ridden
from Texas to Montana as often as I have. I've also
heard men say they'd like to see the Indian they'd be
afraid of. Well, I've seen a good many I've been afraid
of, no matter what bluff I made to show that I wasn't
scared. As I say, I like to oblige a man that drops a
gun on me, because the man is apt to be drunk, and
when he is drunk he is apt to be a little mite nervous.

" But there was a time lately when a man pulled a gun
on me, and I didn't like .to do what 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' known better than to ask me, and he was steam-
ing drunk, too. I thanked him, and told him I didn't
care to drink. I was unarmed, but he was 'fixed,' and
he whips out his gun — a 45-calibre six-shooter — and he
says, i Pour out a glass of rum and chuck it in yourself,
or I'll make 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 when the thing '11 go
off. A man doesn't get absent-minded under the circum-
stances ; he 'tends to whatever business is asked of him.
I replied 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, with a
' Here's looking at you, pard,' when a friend of mine
came in the door. He saw 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 time it had been a tableau and not a word
spoken, but when my friend said, 'Drop it!' the feller
let his gun fall as you would have done with a mouthful
of scalding hot coffee."

390

A WEEK WITH THE MORMONS

FINDING myself in Salt Lake City for the first time
the other day, I went directly to the heads of the Mor-
mon Church and put myself in their charge. In all
probability it was that indefinable tiling called "the
newspaper instinct " that made me do it — the same that
once told me that a man I was 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 was a minister of the gospel. I had
never seen him, but it was he.

That is the same instinct that once caused a friend
of mine, afterwards a distinguished editor, to bolt
down the yawning staircase of an underground oys-
ter-saloon on Broadway. " A news-current came 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 who really has a right to be so
called. Should I preface my story with any more illus-
trations of its magic, the reader would prepare himself
for a very different tale than the one I am now about
to write down.

391

Being landed in Salt Lake City at daybreak not long
before Election Day, 1892, I was surprised and affected
by the beauty of the city. Upon seeing Denver in the
crystal-clear light of its atmosphere, and with its beauti-
ful view of the Kockies always over my shoulder, I had
for the first time acknowledged that it would be possi-
ble for me to live away from the sea with at least some
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 sometimes have to be looked for round
a corner, whereas Salt Lake City is right against its
mountains, and they all but wall it in. Not only that,
but it is so broad and open and clear a town, and it
is so lavishly set with beautiful trees, that there is no
comparing it with any other city. It is a city with
country improvements. Of course it is not elegant and
rich and bustling and crowded. with all the latest ele-
gances like Denver, and I have not pretended that it
was, but it is first in its own class— a great tree-littered,
elbow-roomy, overgrown village, if you please, with all
its electric-light and car poles along the middle of its
streets, so that the trees and the wires 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- mill ion -dollar Temple lifting its many
towers of granite above all but the mountains, as if
conscious that it and they both elevate the soul and
eye alike.

Thinking thus pleasantly of the countrified capital of
the Latter-day Saints, I made my way — no cab or 'bus
interfering to help me — down 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 which the
AVest is so rich. I passed ever so many scores of tidy
little box-like dwellings, mostly frame ones as I recall
them, and thought, as I always do when I see many de-
tached homes of small size in a place, what a grand
good thing it is that there is no other place in America
like Xew York (where men and women and helpless lit-
tle children are herded in barracks), and that there are
so many cities in which whole families feel the pride and
joy of independence, of all that goes with true homes.
Why ! I believe that no one thing contributes more to
America's greatness than her unparalleled number of
citizens who are their own landlords.

Thus farther delighted, I reached the hotel and was
barbered, and got the morning paper and my breakfast.
Then it was that I determined to go to the officers of
the Church of Latter-day Saints and give myself over
to their care. Having so decided, the next thing was to
think what I should say to the Mormons.

" I first noticed your people," I made up my mind to
say. " when I first crossed the country years ago. I had
come from San Francisco, and was in a train that was
rolling over a particularly deserted and wretched desert,
when all at once the waste, brown, dead-looking land be-
came green with grain-fields and pastures and hay mead-
ows. Xeat houses, prosperous looking groups of out-
buildings, flower-beds, and happy-faced, well-clad persons
sprang up as if I was riding on a magic carpet and had
wished myself in Illinois. I was told that these were
Mormon wonder-workers who had brought about this
splendid transformation. Xow hereJ am again in Mor-
monland, and I would like to see something more than
an express-train view of you all."

Xext I thought I would say that I recollected reading
an account by one of Brigham Young's daughters of

her school-girl days, in which account she sought to
show how happy and human and gentle were the
pleasures and the training of Mormon children. What
she wrote did not affect the main question before the
people at that time — which was the question whether
polygamy should be practised in violation of our laws —
but, nevertheless, she drew a very pretty picture of a
very happy household of little folks, who might have ex-
isted in New England, except that they would have had
more fathers had they been so much farther East. I
promised myself I would tell the Mormons about that
echo of in-door life in Utah, and would ask to see some
of their homes — a good deal to ask if the reader loses
sight of the fact that " journalistic instinct " was at
work; but keeping that in mind, such a request will
seem 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 know ; but he is a brother of
George Q. Cannon, the wisest and most forceful man in
the Mormon Church, and a counsellor to the head of that
body. " I am not out here to open old sores," said I,
anor to stuff any controversial points with 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 now I want
to see the Mormons. 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 will be a new" story, perhaps, to tell what
sort of folks you are, and how you live and think and
talk. Therefore let me see some thoroughly Mormon
community, where Gentiles have nothing to do with the
public management, and introduce me so that I can see
the home life of the people there."

394

Any one might have supposed that Mr. Angus Can-
non had been approached in precisely that manner three
times a day for many years, so entirely at ease was he,
and so calmly and readily did he make answer,

"The only difficulty about that," said he, "is to hit
upon the best town for the purpose."

Afterwards, when I employed a photographer and
asked him if he was a Mormon, the man of the camera
said that he was, indeed, and why did I ask ? Was it
because I did not see his horns ? "Well, as to his horns,
he was sorry to say he had none. He supposed they
would begin to grow out when he got older.

" I told a man once," he added, " that I was a Mor-
mon, and he said, ' You don't say so ! I thought Mor-
mons were queer-looking people and had horns.' ':

Since my reader may wonder what 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 Ameri-
cans being very American indeed, the Germans being
more or less German, the Scandinavians being light-
haired and industrious as they are at home, 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 men to whom he made me known were
Kew- Yorkers or Virginians or Kentuckians or Xew
Jersey born, or perhaps from one or another of the orig-
inal thirteen colonies. I considered anew that such
blood as that is apt to be good, and that this was why
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 them, I think — and one of them was an Ann Arbor
graduate and a Democrat. The others were Kepublicans,
and so was he. He introduced me to a Captain Young,
a West Point graduate and son of Brigham Young, who

395

looked the American army officer all over, though he
has retired from the service. To each one of these per-
sons Mr. Cannon told my story, and of each he asked
where I had better go. Nearly every one said I had
better go to the Cache (pronounced " cash ") Valley,
'but one or two halted over a place called Provo.

Finally we met Bishop William B. Preston, and in
his hands Mr. Cannon left me and went his way. Bish-
op Preston is a Virginian, and of a fine type of sturdy
American manhood — a middle-aged, kindly man, gentle
but firm and strong in appearance, speech, and methods.
In Virginia he would be set down 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
material possessions of the great organization.

He also seemed to take me and my errand as a mat-
ter of course, just as he would have regarded a flurry of
snow or a request for the time of day. It is true that
I had now explained myself to half a dozen men, and
was going off with another who was also to hear me
and judge me. It might be said that I was passing in
review before all these persons, and yet that seemed to
me to be mere accident. At all events we went to look
at the Tabernacle, than which there is not, of all man'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 millions,
and in which — though that is for another chapter.

"We used to meet in a bowery here," said Bishop
Preston, "in the shade of foliage out-of-doors, but one
day Brigham Young said we needed a more serviceable

396

bowery, and he planned and built this Tabernacle. You
would 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 famil-
iar in pictures, with its long low walls cut by doors
between each buttress of supporting stone-work, and
upon its rounded dome-like roof shaped like half of an
egg that has been cwt lengthwise.

"There never was a building like it in the world,"
said the bishop. " It was Brigham Young's idea."

In we went and stood in the enormous interior in
which 6000 persons may 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 with a wide gallery around
three sides, with little wooden posts, which look like
marble, to support the gallery ; with battalions of pews
on the floors, and a gigantic organ at one end rising
above the greatest choir space I ever saw 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 when I
whisper you will hear me, so perfect are the acoustic
properties of the building." I walked the length of the
church. My footsteps were repeated so many times in
echoes that the reverberations sounded like a drummer's
roll-call — almost as if I was a regiment a:marching.
From where I stood at last the man who had spoken
looked like a boy. He held up his hand. " Answer me
in a natural tone when I speak to you. I am going to
whisper." (Then the whisper came, distinctly, " Can you
hear me whisper? I am going to drop a pin on this.

397

altar rail, 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 now," said the man, " see and hear what
I do now." 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 him go through the performance for others. The
only trick was in the building. I offered the man half
a dollar.

" Oh no," said he ; "we do not sell the attentions that
visitors get from us."

I said I would like to give something 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 :

; Series B 5. :

CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDING BISHOPRIC.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, Oct. 15, '92.

Received from Julian Ralph.

N.Y.City

50/100 Dollars, in Cash.

On Account Voluntary Offering W' B' PRESTOX>

to the Salt Lake Temple. By N. R.

Bishop Preston, seated with me in the echo-haunted
hall, then told me 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

398

would sit President Wilford Woodruff (the Brigham
Young of to-day), an aged man who knew the founders
of the Church, was long an Apostle, and now is " Pre-
siding High Priest." He has two counsellors, and all
three compose what is called the First Presidency of the
Church. Xext below — one step down — I would see
such of the Twelve Apostles as might be then in Salt
Lake City and their President. These, I was told, are
gifted eloquent preachers and theologians. Then would
be seen on lower tiers " the Seventies," who now num-
ber 100 quorums of seventy ministers 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 ministers, spreaders of the gospel. Their work
is that of the Apostles, who are too few in number to
do what is required, and therefore have this assistance.
Xext below would be seen, on a Sunday, the Presidents
of Stakes — a stake being what we call a county. These
diocesan rulers have spiritual control over all the bish-
ops, whom they instruct and direct. Next would come
the Eighties, or elders, of whom there is a host. They
are often called upon to preach, and are preparing to
become "Seventies,'- or full-fledged preachers. Xext
would be seen the Presiding Bishops in charge of the
temporal 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 was an enclos-
ure, railed off. One was for the Bishops of Wards, and
the other for High Councillors and High Priests. End-
ing the series of departments, between the leaders and
the plain saints, was the communion-table, on which the
bread and water rest every Sunday.
Bishop Preston went on to say that in addition to

these officers were many others. Every bishop has two
counsellors, for instance. Then there is an army of
priests, teachers,' and deacons. They are scattered in
every ward. The teachers go from house to house
among 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 women maintain their so-
cieties also.

" Why," said I, not irreverently, " it's like the Spanish
army. Nearly every one wears shoulder-straps."

"Yes," said the bishop. "In the Mormon Church
every man who is earnest and trustworthy 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 by some Gentiles that I would not be
allowed to enter the great Temple. I was therefore not
surprised or disappointed when Bishop Preston said that
the Temple was full of workmen, 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 my attention the fact that its name, " the
Temple," was another name for that " Endowment
House" of which scandalous things had been charged
by the Gentiles in times gone by. It is there that the
saints are sealed to their wives and the children are
baptized when they reach eight years of age. There,
also, the bishop told me, the saints pursue the trying
course of being baptized over and over again for their
ancestors, in order that the dead who had no oppor-
tunity to know the gospel may be saved after all. A
saint, I was told, will undergo the ordeal for every an-
cestor of whom he can learn the name. To be sure,
some of us are said not to know who were our grand-

400

parents ; but, on the other hand, some of us are de-
scended from Brian Boru. And in Utah there are men
who trace their line back to famous men of England and
Scotland, and must be baptized for scores of dead pro-
genitors, each repetition of the ceremony taking the
best part of a day, from eight o'clock in the morn-
ing until three o'clock in the afternoon. Perhaps
I was deceived as to this, but it will not be easy to
make me think that those who were so undeviatingly
kind to me for many days were deceivers at the same
time.

After being introduced to many Mormons it came to
be luncheon-time, and I was invited to join the family
circle of one of my new-made acquaintances. I must
draw the line at the door of a private house, and cannot
say a word to indicate whose it was. The husband, as
he approached his garden gate, called my attention to
the sparkling water 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 dammed the flow, and turned it instantly and
full head into his garden. The performance 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 mountain stream, 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 transformation of Utah from desert to garden.
There, too, was seen the only, yet confident, hope of the
people of the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Col-
orado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada — that
vast empire of arid land that looks to irrigation to du-
plicate in the "West the imperial wealth of the agricult-
ure of the East. How simple it was ! A stream tapped,
a rivulet running in the gutter, a block of wood to dam

2c 401

it, and — result, a laughing garden full of grass and
flowers and fruit.

Left alone, in -doors, in my first Mormon house, I
noticed only one thing, at the outset, that I had never
seen in any other house. It was a scroll of Mormon
texts hanging in the hall. It displayed on the outer
sheet a text from the book called The Doctrine and
Covenants. Perhaps 'twas this :

"21. Take upon you the name of Christ, and speak the truth in
soberness."

"22. And as many as repent and are baptized in my name, which
is Jesus Christ, and endure to the end, the same shall be saved."

"23. Behold, Jesus Christ is the name which is given of the Father,
and there is none other name given whereby man can be saved."

But presently being asked to amuse myself for a few
moments, I discovered that the burden of literature on
the centre-table in the sitting-room was nearly all Mor-
mon. Most interesting of all was a Mormon periodical
aiming to publish the early records of the pioneers who
came to Utah to escape annoyance and build a world
of their own. Strange heroic stories they were — of
caravans of Americans pushing out to a point half the
width of the continent beyond civilization, to an alkali
plain of which their leader said, " This is the place that
was revealed to me." Tales of thirst, of Indians, of
murder, of misadventure of every sort these were ; fol-
lowed by records of ship-loads of Europeans toiling along
over the wilderness. What must have been the sensa-
tion of the men 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 Gentiledom.

Called to follow the host to the dining-room, I con-

402

fronted the first wife and daughter of a Mormon that
I had ever met. The mother was an Eastern woman of
prim and matronly appearance, and with great strength
of character deep-lined in her face. I would have said
she was a reformer, or a principal of a school. The
daughter was very beautiful, of the type of which we
think in Xew 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 dreamy eyes. She was spirited and witty; her
mother was sober and practical. The daughter was
already a leader among the women of the Territory in
ways apart from the Church. Of the mother I learned
nothing. The meal began with an offer of thanks to
the Almighty, and was sufficiently 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.

i% And what do you suppose was the sign for ' trouble?' "
I inquired.

Xo one could guess.

" Two women in one house," said I.

" Ah," said the elderly lady, gravely, while the others
were still laughing, " our Mormon brethren have found
out the truth of that."

Then the conversation turned upon other themes, and
I learned that too many Mormon boys and girls were
allowed to go to Garfield Beach — the Coney Island of
Salt Lake — on Sundays, preferring music and gayety and
Sabbath-breaking crowds to the peace of home 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 same stories among all people everywhere."

403

Out-of-doors, I said to a Morman, "You've dropped
polygamy."

" Yes," said he; "we do not teach it any more. We
have no wish to prolong the conflict, or to have any con-
flict, with our Government."

" I have an idea it was not popular with your women.''

"The women 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 women in
our communities, it left no surplus women uncared for,
since men took wives according to their means, 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 weak, as in mo-
nogamy."

" Were you married more than once ?"

" No ; but I never had one wife. I was married to two
at once. I have been imprisoned for my course in that
regard. The law has separated me from one wife, but
it could not make me promise to abandon her to dis-
tress ; it could not prevent me from taking care of her,
and seeing that she never wants while she lives. You
will not be believed if you quote me," he went on ;
"perhaps you won't believe me yourself; but we are
as good Americans in our loyalty as any in the land.
Your flag is mine, 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
Government any more than you would. Among us here
are men whose ancestors helped to found this country.
Can you say any more ?"

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 say, of ten cows one is
given, of ten tons of hay a ton is given. The tithing-
place was enclosed by a stone-wall, originally built for
possible use as a haven from 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 was a sort of salesroom, and men and women were
buying provender.

" Notice the* money that they use," said the bishop.

I saw that it was 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
come here to buy what they need, they hold their heads
as high as any. If we gave them orders on the store,
they would be betrayed ; but as it is, no one is the
wiser."

Very pretty, I thought. The more I inquired, how-
ever, the more I was 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 limit 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 members to give up a tenth of
their capital or of their earnings. That it, like so very
much else of Mormonism, is based on Old Testament
writ, 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.

" Well, the average tithe among our people is not so
much. We find it to be thirty-five dollars. And as you
know what your money goes for, so do we trace ours.
As a rule, the bulk of it is spread around among
those who give it. It builds ward assembly -houses,
temples, tabernacles, and so on ; it buys land ; it gives
to the poor ; it employs mechanics, laborers, teamsters ;
it is all scattered again. To be sure, there are saints
whose tithes in a year may amount to a great deal. I
have in mind a merchant who paid $2000 this year.
But in the same way that he got rich he gets back his
tithes — in great part, at least. He contracts to do the
church work, to outfit a gang of laborers, to furnish or
paint a building. There is no mystery and no hardship
about it."

In the evening I went to Logan, in the Cache Valley,
by means of a railroad run of a few hours northward
from Salt Lake City, and near the Idaho line,

In all my Western travelling, Logan is the prettiest
country-place I have yet seen. It would be diificult for
me to picture to the reader's mind a more charming,
enchanting spot than this Mormon village, that dots a
lovely park or bit of prairie that is walled around by
chains of stately mountains, whose sides are all deeply
furrowed 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 by cutting
streets and building sites out from among the trees, has
not a tenth so many forest trunks, and not a thousandth
part such beautiful or such valuable ones. Trees which
no man 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 thickly

406

scattered that the pretty little cottages of the town are
more than half hid among leafage, and a view of the
town from the nearest mountain-side is a sight of clouds
of foliage, broken only by the towering granite spires
of the Mormon Temple and the massive bulk of the
granite tabernacle.

The sparkling water of the Logen Kiver, tapped upon
a mountain -side, is led so cleverly through the town
that each gutter on each side of every street is a rush-

OLD- STYLE HOUSE AT LOGAN, UTAH

ing, plashing mountain rill. Gates, which 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 mingling essence of a million flowers.
The great broad streets, with the electric wires on poles

407

in the middle of each roadway, the small and cosey dwell-
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 streaming through town at dusk, the
fierce glare of the sun in the clear sky, the purpling,
blushing, ever-changing mountains — these are but a few
of the details that memory sends leaping back to my eyes.
The busy trading street, the neatly -dressed, hardy men,
and plump and rather saucy - seeming Mormon lasses
come next in view ; and I think that if I had to describe
both men and women, I would say that they form just
such a population as one finds in out-of-the-way Eastern
places like Gettysburg or Whitehall.

Ah ! but to climb the near mountain and look down
is the best of the things to do. Then the valley is seen
to be checkered with villages and farms alternately—
now a town, and now great tracts of farm-land. There
are twenty -one villages in sight, and each is but the
huddling place of so many farmers. They live as their
kind do in Turkey and the Orient generally, building all
together, and going to the outlying farms to do each
day's work before returning to the houses, where the
women have had each other's company and that of the
old men and children. It was in 1859-60 that seventeen
young men, with younger wives, and a baby that came
at about the same time, moved into the valley, and built
close by one another on 'both sides of what is now the
depot street. Each took ten or twenty acres of farm-land
a mile or more up the valley, with five acres for pastur-
age in yet another locality. Some men wanted more
land, even sixty acres.

" How will you cultivate it ?" they Avere asked.

""Why, we are going to have sons," they said.

" Then wait till you get them, and there will be land
for them in their turn."

408

All together the settlers built an irrigating ditch, each
digging his part according to the land he held. They
washed the salt out of the earth, and it blossomed under
the same ditches thus led through the farms. And
every year these men, with pick and shovel, cleared out
each one his bit of the main ditch after the winter had
heaped and choked and torn it. To-day that water
goes with the land, and the hired men keep the ditch
in repair for the owners. How different from the usual
American plan, whereby one man seizes a water right,
and calls his " grab " a dukedom, and extorts so many
dollars a year from all the settlers— for himself and his
children, even unto the fourth and fifth generation !

The Indians — magnificent big Shoshones — came once
a week and demanded oxen, or flour, or whatever. They
were treated kindly, because Brigham Young always
taught that it was cheaper to feed an Indian than to
fight him.

"AYhat do they want? Cows?" he once inquired.
" Well, is it not better to give up all your cows than to
see a neighbor — or even a child — killed ?"

But he believed the Indians seldom 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 amount of gram. After that
the settlers had to loan their remaining oxen to one
another — one working a team consisting of his own
beast and his neighbor's one day, the other the next.
Thus, from 18i7 until now, and from 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 farm
in earnest.

It was Brigham Young's idea that the Mormons
should remain a pastoral people. He taught that the

409

surest wealth was in agriculture; and so it comes that
one sees the valleys peopled and cultivated, while the
mountains, that are full of metalliferous ores, are for the
most part neglected — to an extent unknown in the
neighboring States, each one of which, except Wyoming,
was first opened and settled by miners. It was Young's
idea to put the telegraph poles in the middle of the
streets, but then he believed in enormous streets. In
Logan the streets are six rods wide, and the blocks are
six times as long. But in Salt Lake City the blocks are
forty rods long. The effect is grand. The system has
more merits than disadvantages.

I went to the Tabernacle on a Sunday. The general
service is at two o'clock, and then at night the saints of
each neighborhood assemble in their ward 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 meet the elevated
choir space — which as yet contains no organ, by-the-way.
Instead there was a melodeon, and two violinists stood
beside the leader. There were thirty-five well-trained
voices in the choir, and the singing was good. The
service began with the song of " Home, Sweet Home,"
the words being altered. The President of the Stake sat
up on top, and a dozen dignitaries sat below him. Be-
low them, in a solemn row, were sixteen men behind a
table on which stood sixteen silver ewers and sixteen
plates of bread broken into coarse crumbs. The house
was filled, and with a truly good-looking congregation,
no whit different from an ordinary mixed Western Meth-
odist assemblage. An old man 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 went, 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 whoever is called
upon may talk as he feels best able to, and on what
topic he pleases. Another man — both sat among the
officials — spoke about a great conference at Salt Lake
City, and the earnest piety that moved it. Then up rose
an apostle — a banker named Thatcher — who was evi-
dently a popular speaker. He told how difficult it was
to be a good Mormon, and how Mormonism enters every
moment of life, and how a Gentile once said " he would
rather be damned and go to hell than try to live up to
the Mormon faith." Kext the apostle spoke of material
things ; of the home industries, the saw-mill, the boot
and shoe making, the necessity for more manufactures.
He said the young Mormon men would do anything
with their teams, but would not work with their hands,
and that he did not blame them. At last he took up
the topic of winter fun. He advised all the saints to
have 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 them merry and joyful. It was good, he said. After
the apostle came an old man who read a notice calling
upon the women to meet somewhere and vote upon a
choice of a flower that should be the favorite and em-
blematic blossom of the Territory. The choir sang, and
the meeting ended. Of course no collection was taken
up ; the tithes are enough. The service disappointed
rne. It was too practical for my old-fashioned ideas.
The one good speaker simply made a business man's ad-
dress ; the others had no fervor. Possibly the fervor
came at the ward-meetings that night.

In the houses where I was a guest I saw absolutely
nothing peculiar, unless it was that it seemed to me
there was a phenomenal number of excessively rosy and

411

robust children. The wives were hearty and healthy,
but it was very evident that motherhood brought an ob-
ligation heavier than usual upon their sex. Everywhere
I was asked to note the children, to see how healthy
and fine they were. Fifty times in one week in Utah
that was the topic. Not once in any other State was it
spoken of. And they may well be proud of their chil-
dren, for never was solicitude and pride more richly re-
warded.

"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 Mormon girls pretty ? Many are very pret-
t}r, mainly with rustic beauty, to be sure, and yet I saw
a number 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 was the first question I asked of
a young woman at the same hotel with me.

" You bet they are !" said she. " I'm one myself."

But she was not like one in that, for no other girl or
woman that I saw in Utah was so enthusiastic, or even
a particle slangy in my presence.

I asked what pleasures the girls and boys had, of
which the apostle had spoken. I was told that they
maintain literary societies " to discuss the poets, and en-
joy a light supper afterwards ;" that they not only give
parties and dances at their homes, but that general as-
semblies 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 communities 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 whole villages

412

dance as they pray — in harmony together. For the lit-
tle children are maintained just such party customs as
our own little ones enjoy.

There are three colleges in little Logan — the State
Agricultural College (officered by Gentiles), the Brig-
•ham Young College, and the New Jersey College (a
Presbyterian institution). Four-fifths of the tax-payers
are Mormons. They spent $5000 in lawyers' fees to
keep liquor -selling out of the town, but the Federal
courts ruled against them, and the best the Mormons
could do was to put the license fee at $1200 a year.
The next thing after that was to "taboo" whoever fre-
quented the saloons. While I speak of these virtues, let
me add that they are an honest people. They are
taught that they must 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 damnation to Mormondom. I
fancy I got only a partial answer. It was to this effect :
The Church aims to produce a perfect race of men, and
to make each generation more nearly perfect than the
last. The perfection that men can reach is of the phys-
ical sort; the morals God looks after. He puts good
souls only in fit bodies. Therefore Mormons may not
drink or smoke or use tobacco in any form. They
should not use tea or coffee. They should fast one day
in every thirty — at least until dinner-time — and give to
the poor what is thus saved. They should keep Sunday
holy, and go to church twice on that day. That was all
I heard. Alas ! it was admitted that not all the saints
are as strict as they should be.

••' One thing you have not seen," said a Mormon lady.
;{ At any moment a deacon may come to our door, and

413

join our family circle. He will ask us a number of ques-
tions as to our religious welfare if we are well to do ;
as to our worldly condition if we 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?' t Well, no,' I would say, 'we have ^company this
evening.' Then he would rise and bow himself out, say-
„ ing that he had fifteen houses to visit this month, that
he would go to another and come back to us at another
time."

Perhaps if some politician reads what I have told of
this Church the case will strike him as it does me. Never
was there a political organization so thoroughly man-
aged as is this Church. The socialist philosophers hold
that Tammany Hall is the most thorough, self -renewing,
and complete political machine known to man. But
Tammany Hall is clumsy and superficial compared to this
Church. Indiana, the State that is raked with a fine
tooth comb 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 compared to Brigham Young. What
politicians do for a month, 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 oflice, and all of the rest under con-
stant scrutiny, conceive the power and order of the
Church ! Yet remember that nothing that is done is felt
so as to be resented. All is as kindly as it is shrewdly
devised. The Church of Latter-day Saints is the most
complete and perfect human machine (if it is human,
which the leaders deny), and Tammany Hall has not
reached the primer of the science it illustrates.

I have said that there are 200,000 saints. They are

414

by no means all in Utah. Their towns and districts al-
most form a chain north and south of that Territory
from Canada into Mexico. They are in Wyoming, Ida-
ho, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, the Sandwich Isl-
ands, and the countries of Europe. They have four
palatial temples, the main one being at Salt Lake City,
the Kome of that Church. There is a $600,000 one at
Logan, and a more expensive one at St. George, in far
southern Utah, where the colonists in the southern Ter-
ritories and in Mexico must go to perform whatever
rites are celebrated in those beautiful but mysterious
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 grown there and coarse cotton goods are made
of it. It is said that no other people would have gone
there, yet the Mormons are all in comfortable circum-
stances. Out in the eastern desert end of Utah I heard
of Mormons living where a jackal would go mad before
starvation brought him an early death. They were hud-
dled on little streams in the sage-brush desert, growing
hay and raising sheep that must possess microscopic
eyes with which to see their food.

Utah contains nearly 85,000 square miles, and 52,601,-
600 acres of land and mountains. It is almost 300 miles
square, and is as large as New England and New York.
Mining is now the chief industry, and gold, silver, lead,
and copper are the chief metals 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 metals found in the Dakotas, Montana, and Col-
orado, only tin is lacking in Utah. Men who are famil-
iar with all the new States and the Territories predict
a golden and amazing future for Utah. There is water

415

to irrigate thousands of square miles of good land that
is embraced in three drainage systems. Wheat, oats,
and rye grow well in all the irrigable lands, and corn in
some. Orchard fruits and small 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 mules, and a million
and a half of sheep. Precious stones, mineral springs,
inexhaustible and vast beds of coal, natural gas, mar-
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

SAX FRANCISCO

WHETHER you drop down upon it after crossing the
desert and the Sierra Xevadas, or whether you come 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 most of which the future is a thou-
sandfold more 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 we 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 would remain
good cause for the San Franciscans to be extremely vain
of their work. And the more one considers the in-
fluences that have combined to make that city, the more
one thinks of the character and aims of the people who
drifted to that coast and clung there, of the discordant
extremes 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 seem, the greater grows
the meed of praise to the builders.

After a tourist has visited a few far Western " boom v
towns, he feels his footing grow unsteady, as if he
walked on thin and gaseous clouds. The man who can

2n 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 commonest things.
Fancy it ! In one place I found a great area all built up
with streets and dwellings, 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 which rentals bogus receipts were given for
vastly higher sums (the same to be shown to strangers).

After such a tour it is refreshing to find one's self in
San Francisco. Every phase of its life seems genuine
and substantial. Elsewhere you cannot escape the
" price of lots ;" in San Francisco you must go out of
your way to hear that staple talked of. The people are
engaged in a thousand businesses, and are attending to
them, precisely as in New York or Boston or Chicago.
Genuine business makes the air and the earth throb.
The streets in the business portion are crowded with
men intent upon their own affairs, the roadways thun-
der beneath great drays of merchandise, the retail shops
display as wide a variety and as fair a proportion -of
high - class goods as those of any city in the country.
The wholesale houses are fine establishments, with a
solid and prosperous air about them. The cable -cars
that dash through the streets amid the clangor of their
own gongs keep even a New-Yorker's every sense wide
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 New York than any other
city on the continent, and as for the country and the
climate, I painted them in couleur de rose. Therefore I

418

was unprepared for what I was to see, and it hurt me like
a knife-thrust — I mean the first sight of the city, not
the impressions I got in a month's stay afterwards. The
steamship Walla-Walla, beautifully fitted within by San
Franciscan taste and skill, entered the Golden Gate
under a moonlit sky on a calm August night, disclosing
a view as beautiful as ever could be formed by a combi-
nation of headlands, hills, water, 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 gemmed the horizon as with a myriad of
brilliants. It was hard to shut a state-room door against
so beautiful a scene. But it was harder to open it in the
morning and behold the revelation that the sunlight had
to make ! It was only the hills that wrere at fault, after
all ; everything else was as the moonlight had shown it.
But such hills !

They were of dirt — reddish, yellowish, bare dirt hills.
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 myself invited by picturing home
scenery 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, which, mingling presently
with a bank of fog, grimed itself into my clothing, while
the cold wind searched out my very marrow. I regis-
tered at the Palace Hotel — which I like better than any
other, except one in Europe, of all the hundreds I am
familiar with— and in a short time was on my way to
Oakland. A countrified Brooklyn I had pictured Oak-
land to my mind, and lo ! the stuffy, ill-kept cars carried
me through a city of which the most that could be seen
was a dust - covered, shabby avenue of cheap houses,

2D* 421

drinking - saloons, little neglected dwellings, and low-
grade shops. I had a surfeit of disappointment.

When I look back now and recollect how difficult I
found it to leave that picturesque and fascinating coast,
how many happy days and glorious pleasures I experi-
enced there, I realize as never before the enormity of
the crime men and women commit in writing locomotive
literature — of the kind that produces the fruit and blos-
som of positive statement out of the soil of inference,
conjecture, hasty opinion, and instant prejudice.

Those hills are just as bare to my mind to-day as when
I first saw them, but the thought of them calls up such
a flood of remembrance of rich colors and opulent vistas
as I have seldom witnessed in any other travel. They
were always glorious in color, and were never twice
alike, though a rosy blush was ever the dominant tone
in their appearance. At sunset every view of the har-
bor, every scene from the hill-tops, was positively gor-
geous. In each house I visited, whether in city or
suburbs, we came to count upon the last hour of each
day as the vehicle that should bring a glorious spectacle
to the view ; a more and more glorious one, it seemed,
as the conditions of nature varied with clouds or fog, or
that supernal clearness which is seen on that coast at
times, and which all but forces a doubt of the existence
of any atmosphere whatsoever. At such times Italy can
boast no bluer sky, and nature lavishes upon the hills
and water an extravagance of color. One would expect
San Francisco to develop a considerable artistic element,
led by a coterie of great painters. And exceptional
water -color work might be expected to go out from
there in the travelling effects of most well-to-do visitors,
for the dominant tones in nature lend themselves exqui-
sitely to water-color reproduction. In fact, the city is
already the home of some notable painters. I saw fine

422

work by half a dozen at least, and the city has just
loaned to London a portrait-painter who is making 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 community. Those citizens who deal in
high-class pictures say that while the very wealthiest
men and women of the city have bought very few world-
famous paintings, they have none the less expended a
large sum in foreign works of art of lesser grades, and
almost nothing at all in the products of home talent.
There is among San Franciscans, however, a considera-
ble number of cultivated folk, living upon incomes of
s:» i n)0 a year and upwards, who give the local painters
what support they get. One intelligent dealer of wide
experience said that these patrons of the local progress
turn instinctively to the best work, that they maintain
homes as beautifully and elegantly appointed as any
persons of their means enjoy in this country, and that
they form a very large class in the city and suburbs.
This cream of San Francisco society can do little for the
public and general adornment of the city except through
the moral influence it can exert.

To their presence I ascribe the fine clubs, the really
notable retail shops, and the beautiful homes on such
streets as Pacific Avenue, and scattered about Saucelito,
Alameda, and Oakland. And to their powerlessness
must be due the fact that, more than any city of its size
I ever saw, San Francisco lacks those evidences of cult-
ure and local pride which are exhibited in the forms of
statues, monuments, free galleries, fountains, libraries,
elegant parks, well-kept streets, and noble boulevards.

The early motive that we call the Puritan spirit, and
which showed itself in the foundation of cities over the

425

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 settlement. This action was
only indicative of a larger public concern, which con-
tinued to be exhibited not alone in more and better
school-houses and in elegant churches, but in all the
other concomitants of .civic pride and polish which, for
want of another term, we might call communal better-
ments — the public " plant." In neither her shabby
churches nor her flimsy school-houses do we detect that
unselfish, affectionate, and almost tender regard for
those institutions which most of our other cities exhibit.
I can easily invent possible reasons for this — in the
Spanish origin of the place, in the climate, in the large
admixture of Southerners, with their habit of lavishing
every luxury upon their homes, in the long period of
speculative temper and unrest among the settlers, in the
sequestration of the city, in a score of influences — but
let that be ; I state only the condition of what I saw.
As for the purely public works of San Francisco — which
include the school-houses and the streets — it ill becomes
a stranger to take part in the local controversy in which
one side boasts of an exceedingly small 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 who tried to train his dog to live without eat-
ing, and who said, " I had almost succeeded when the
dog died." Among the public papers that lie on my
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 may be said to cry out for themselves.

426

Against these the small debt of the corporation makes
an impression such as others may characterize.

But there are strong signs that the city is undergoing
a revolution from which it will enter upon a very differ-
ent career. In a short article upon the Golden Gate
Park in HARPER'S WEEKLY, I spoke of one hint of this
new spirit. The rapid development of a stately avenue
in Market Street is another and a proud sign of this
awakening of the west coast metropolis. Those who
planned this splendid commercial boulevard conceived
an avenue of such proportions as only the most progres-
sive city could be expected to appoint with buildings of
commensurate height and dignity, yet already the noble
thoroughfare commands a place among the finest streets
in Christendom, 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 growing apace
and sharing the increasing commerce. It is plain that
the metropolis does not intend that any one of them
shall lessen the distance she has ever maintained be-
tween her own proud position and that of her foremost
follower.

Comparable in width 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 almost level way
for three miles, despite the hills that so strangely dis-
tinguish that city. In a short time it is to be doubled
in length, and will connect the harbor wharves 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

429

fine private equipages create what our grandfathers
would have called a brave showing or " a fine confusion"
on the roadway. Here also the people gather in the
greatest numbers, 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 summer to
get warm — and this leads the very nice ladies to shop in
the morning and leave the street to " the crowd " in the
afternoon. .But knowing this, at one time or other we
may see them all. It is while viewing the Market
Street parade that we realize that we are looking upon
a decidedly cosmopolitan community, and one that is
stamped as foreign in a great degree. We have heard
that not more than half the people are American, and
oh Market Street we get ocular confirmation of the
news.

Since the best of the street is the shopping part, and
most of the shoppers are women, we may pause to look
at the fairer moiety of the town. They are almost
Parisian in the fulness of their development, the grace-
ful outlines of their forms, and the stylishness of their
dress. The crowds are full of pretty women, and there
is among them a greater abundance of that great con-
comitant and source of beauty, good health, than I re-
member ever to have noticed elsewhere. Yery curiously,
you see the two extremes, the blond and brunette, side
by side, and numerously represented. Of flaxen-haired,
blue-eyed women, with complexions of rose-tint on wax,
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

races that constitute that which we call the American.
And ever and again, as we view the daily parade, there
patters by a Chinese woman, bareheaded, with plastered
hair and almost ghastly face, wearing a long-sleeved
coat and glazed trousers. Japanese and darkies, Greeks,
Sandwich-Islanders, and Chinamen a-plenty — all are in
the crowds.

The spectacle is a particularly gay one, because the
women wear more pronounced colors than you see even
in Paris. I mean the women 6f the masses. The goods
they wear are not different from those we see on our
streets, but bright colors find a readier sale there than
here. Whether it is due to the climate, 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 nowhere else. Nevertheless, it is
my opinion that there is no more orderly concourse in
any city I ever visited than in San Francisco. There,
even that form of vice whose control puzzles so many
municipalities hides itself in alleys, and no more vaunts
itself on the highways than if it did not exist.

It is unnecessary for me to say that the names in the
city directory of San Francisco include some of those of
the finest families in the Middle and Southern States
and (perhaps to a less extent) in New England, or that
I enjoyed more or less acquaintance with some 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 miles. I fancy a great many

2 E 433

persons, there and here, believe that the revelations of
Chinatown are appalling, even to a professional travel-
ler, yet in making 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 palm for wickedness. I did
not go to " the Barbary Coast," but unless that purlieu
is worse than I was told it is, I shall continue to think
San Francisco a particularly well-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 closing of the wholesale shops,
and the hint conveyed in certain street signs which an-
nounce, " Boot-blacking, five cents ; Sundays 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 seemed to me,
for the masses, 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 former one giv-
ing them the means to ennoble their city to whatsoever
degree they please, the latter making it unique in the
enjoyment of a most interesting exhibition. They will
have a third grand possession when they have pushed
their great park to completion, if they finish it as they
have finished the first 180 acres. Not even the near
presence of Sutro Heights, decked as might become a
gigantic factory of plaster casts, can lessen the charms
of the entrancing view from the Cliff House over the
ocean and down upon the rocky islets, where the accom-
modating 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 — who lent his nxme to the
famous tunnel — has laid out some very pretty grounds
upon an eminence above the Cliff House, and philan-
thropically permits the public to enjoy the garden and
accompanying conservatory. But, in my humble judg-
ment, he more than offsets this by literally peppering
the entire grounds and walls and face of the hill with
plaster statues, statuettes, heads, busts, and figures.
The effect is — but I leave that for the imagination.

Would you know how San Francisco looks? It is a
strangely foreign-looking place. Its site is broken bv
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 Uncle Remus would declare, and
they reach their height of hundreds of feet by very steep
inclines. The business part of the city lies at the feet
of several of these eminences, on a partly natural, part-
ly artificial plateau along the water's edge. There the
stores and houses are largely of stone, iron, or brick, and
are very little different from those of any other sucli
district in the East. But the dwellings of the city are
so generally of wood that you may count upon the
fingers of your two hands all that are of other materials.
Whether the great Palace Hotel set the fashion by giv-
ing every outer room a bay-window, or why it is, I don't
know, but seven in ten of the residences are adorned
with these projecting windows wherever they can be
put. This \vas the fashion of the town until Van Ness
Avenue ceased to be the finest street, and it grows tire-
some to the eye ; but the last two or three years have
seen erected a great many fine dwellings, planned bv
architects of taste for persons who exercise individual
judgment. And now, as I write, the danger from earth-
quakes seems wholly 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 very small and low, and built in
rows to the tops of many of the hills. As each house is
seen with photographic distinctness in that clear air, the
whole is as like a great painting of some place in a for-
eign land as if you viewed it from within the enclosure
of a cyclorama.

But now of the joys I speak of having experienced
during my stay. They were too many for more than
mere mention. In the first place, in thirty days I only
saw half a dozen that were foggy ; and as for the wind,
when I found that San Francisco dresses, as we would
say, "for winter" all the year round, I put on my
heavy under-clothes, 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 means of inter-transit. The cable-
cars were invented and first put to use in San Francisco.
They usually run as a train, composed of a little open
" dummy," 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 " dummy." He goes fly-
ing up the hills and coasting down them as if he were a
tobogganer, having all the fun and none of the work.
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 with an abundance past
belief, and attain a size and glory of color we wot not of.
You may buy your armful of cut flowers for " two 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 them green for shipment, and only
a Bartlett pear undergoes that course with advantage-
but 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 flgs sliced and served
in cream? Apricotes are more common there than
with us ; persimmons are cultivated, but not common.
Strawberries, finer than any grown west of England,
are to be had during half the year, and for half what
we are charged when we think them cheap. Peaches,
pears, and grapes are very plenty, and I am told that
cherries are so at one season. Limes are plenty, and
lemons scarce. Artichokes are a staple, and California
is the land of salads. Those made of shrimps and alli-
gator-pears are two delicacies worth going to San Fran-
cisco to enjoy.

But San Francisco is a gourmet's sixth heaven. It
has a wondrous market, with fishes with which we are
unfamiliar, with no refrigerated factory meats, and with
an eclectic school of cookery to which China, Japan.
Spain, Mexico, and Hawaii are contributors. There is
no better restaurant in America than the "Poodle Dog,''
and business men in New York know no better lunch-
eon place than "Ned's." The Palace Hotel restaurant
would rank high here, and out there they have four or
five as good.

The trees are a study in themselves. 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 bay tree
and live-oak are all beautiful. The palms are always
interesting to strangers to them. The scrub oak of
Oakland and the suburbs generally is picturesque far
beyond the wolf-willow 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 was a never-to-be-forgotten experi-
ence to see miles of French chestnuts, English walnuts,
prune plums, figs, pears, apples, almonds, apricots, and
peaches growing as they grow there, often weighing 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 watering-pot or a hose could turn what looked
like Spain into what might have been our Mohawk Val-
ley. And Oakland is crowded with pretty homes where
the magic of the hose is understood, and where the lawns
and flower plots are as fine as any under the sun. But
I like Alameda 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 from it is of the glorious harbor,
blue as indigo, with great " square-riggers" riding on it,
and gulls and porpoises enlivening the scene, while, 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, while good string bands
feast their ears with melody.

442

XIII
WAYS OF CITY GOVERNMENT OUT WEST

OXE has a feeling that the young Lochinvar of per-
fected city government may yet come out of the West.
That is where 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 most of the affairs of man. There are signs
of the advent, though they are small and weak thus far.
A study of the subject inf)hicago, Minneapolis, and St.
Paul is a revelation of jpBbvement like that of a band-
master's baton 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 wonder grows that those communities 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 municipal fields.

In the unrest and striving of the Western people is
found the hope that the mark will yet be reached by
them. When we consider how very sharp the struggle
has been to meet the business demands of a rapid na-
tional development ; when we realize how nearly com-
pletely that struggle has monopolized every individual's
attention ; when we remember the poor and mortgaged
beginnings of all the Western districts, and realize that

445

where the debts have disappeared, the recollection of
them is yet vivid — then the story of Western experi-
ments in city government will find very lenient and
charitable readers.

I see in Chicago two communities, we will say — one
composed of twelve hundred thousand persons in the
city at large, and one of four thousand men and women
in the office building called " the Eookery." One body
of persons has its wants attended to by officers they
elect for the purpose ; the other body relies on a syndi-
cate of speculators to manage the building in which
they pay rent, and in which they spend as many hours
as they give to their life in their homes. Why should
there be any difference in the temper and spirit in which
these two 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 forms 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 we put it there
before we go to search for it. The syndicate of business
men who manage the Rookery bend every effort to
make money. And how ? By providing every improve-
ment and attraction which, when economically obtained,
will leave a fair and legitimate 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 Eookery were a city ; the profits
would take the form of a surplus in the treasury — at
least until they were wisely spent. The analogy never
falters, however far we pursue it. The Rookery man-
agers gladden the eye with onyx, marble, and bronze,
as the city fathers treat their tenants with parks and

446

lakes and fountains. The Kookery managers give to
their tenants the best elevator service ever yet devised
in the world, batteries of the swiftest cars, some of which
run as express trains, while others stop at every floor.
They control these, and see that they are the best, as
the city fathers should control their street railways, 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 offices as neat as the
domain of a Dutch housewife. The air is not tainted ;
the litter and rubbish are whisked out of sight with due
regard for decency ; the corridors are never torn up
with pits and trenches at times when they are in use.
Alterations in the building are made at night, when the
work will annoy and inconvenience the fewest tenants.
The Eookery 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 much in another. In both instances the people of
those cities were scandalously wronged, of course. To
return to the Eookery, the building is policed efficiently
without the creation of a uniformed class of bullies. In
short, it is a pleasure to visit 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 might as well 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 yet to hear of one in the

447

management of which politics plays the slightest part.
The owners do not throw away money to pay salaries
to men who do not earn them ; they do not make rules
to please the German tenants, and then wink at the
violation of them to tickle the Irish or any other per-
sons ; they do not permit their servants to steal a little
of every sum of money 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 with the ne'er-do-well or disreputable friends of
men who send tenants to their buildings ; they do not
discharge all their trained help and drill in a new force
biennially ; in fact, they never discharge a good servant
or keep an incompetent one. Since the management of
a lot of daytime tenements is a business by itself, and
has no connection with the Bering Sea question or the
policy of trade relations with Australia, they do not feel
obliged to buy Democratic brooms, or Republican coal,
or Tammany soap, unless those happen to be the best
and most economical wares. In one respect they enjoy an
immense advantage over every city government in this
country — they are permitted to manage their own busi-
nesses. No State Legislatures are continually changing
their modes of conducting their affairs.

Chicago does not yet manage its district of homes 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 may be substituted the desire for honor
and public approbation — powerful forces which have

448

wrought wonders in the governments of Glasgow, Bir-
mingham, Sheffield, and other Old World cities.

The city government of Chicago recalls that garment
of which a humble poet has written,

"His coat so large dat he couldn't pay de tailor,
And it won't go half-way round."

It is a Josephian coat of many colors, made up of patches
of county methods on top of city rule. And the patches
are, some of them, far from neatly joined. Like the im-
mortal Topsy, it has " just growed." It discloses at once
the worst and the best examples of management, the
one being so very bad as to seem like a caricature on
the most vicious systems elsewhere, while the other ex-
treme copies that which is the essence of the good work
in the best-governed city in the world. Chicago there-
fore offers an extremely valuable opportunity for the
study and comparison of municipal methods in general.

The worst feature, that which seems almost 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 almost as diffi-
cult to see him 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 which he seeks his desk.
The charm 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 away, in
order that he may eat in peace.* The reason for this ex-
traordinary and undemocratic condition of affairs is that
the Mayor of Chicago is the worst victim of the spoils
system that has yet been created in America. The chase

* This was the state of affairs in 1891-92.
2F 449

for patronage fetches up at his door, and all the avenues
employed in it end at his person. He is almost the sole
source and dispenser of public place of every grade

The system was established a great many years ago,
and they say in Chicago that it " worked well enough "
under Carter Harrison, because after he got his munici-
pal organization complete he was elected and re-elected
several times, and had little difficulty in keeping the ma-
chinery of government in smooth running order. It was
a city of only 400,000 population in those days, but the
conditions were the same. The experience of a succeed-
ing and very recent Mayor was 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-
ments that were not approved by him. The present
Mayor is of the opposite mind. He has found that if he
manages the patronage he cannot perform the other du-
ties of his office. He has inaugurated a new departure,
and seeks to make the heads of the subordinate depart-
ments 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 them
back again to the deputies, and so the game goes on.
By setting apart one day in the week for the scramble,
and by locking himself up like a watchman in a safe-de-
posit vault, he manages to serve as Mayor. But he finds
the nuisance very great, and says so. "When told that it
seemed singular to find a Mayor behind bolts and locks,
and accessible only to those who "get the combination,"
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, who 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 becoming
Democratic. There are no "bosses" or "machines"
there. Western soil does not seem suitable for those
growths. The Democrats have been trying to effect an
organization like that of Tammany Hall, but they are
divided into two factions, and the plan has fallen be-
tween the two. The Republicans have recently recov-
ered from a mild 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 employes are assessed for
the same purpose, but these outrageous taxes seem to be
laid on lightly. It's your machine that always 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
with power to remove the others. The City Attorney
is in charge of the litigations into which the corporation
is drawn ; but the more important legal officer is the
Corporation Counsel, who acts as adviser to the govern-
ment, and is appointed by the Mayor. The manner in
which this office came to be created is peculiar. It is
said that a score or more years ago there was elected to
the City Attorney's place a man who knew no law, and
proved worse than no attorney at all. A competent ad-
viser was needed, and so the new office was created, and
has ever since remained a feature of the government.

451

We still find justices of the peace in Chicago, and in
great force of numbers. They are county officers. They
have jurisdiction everywhere, as they please to exercise
it, and live upon their fees — a plan that works no better
there than elsewhere, that causes rivalry and confusion
where there should be only the dignity of law, and that
creates courts which are inclined to rule against the de-
fendants, and to extort money from all from 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. From the lot the
police magistrates are selected by the Mayor. There
are ten police courts and twelve magistrates, and the
reason there are two more judges than courts lets in a
flood of light upon the situation. There are two very
busy courts, and in order to share their business it be-
came the custom for other judges than those appointed
by the Mayor to hire apartments next door to these
courts, and in them to hold courts of their own. These
piratical justices inspired the lawyers and prisoners ap-
pearing before the regular courts to demand a change
of venue and bring their causes next door, the incentive
being a promise of more satisfactory treatment than the
regular courts would be likely to vouchsafe — lighter
fines, for instance, or other perversions of justice. It
became, and it remains to-day, a custom for these mo-
tions for a change of venue to be offered in the most
commonplace and perfunctory manner, the magistrates
administering the oath, and the others solemnly swear-
ing that they ask a change of venue because they are of
the opinion that they cannot get justice in the court in
question. To break this custom at its strongest points
the Mayor has appointed additional magistrates for the
principal police courts, and they hold court in rooms 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 same quality of justice which they would have
obtained in the first court. The justices, who may be
calJed the Mayor's magistrates, are salaried. The busy
ones get $5000 a year, the others less.

The saloon license system is another village develop-
ment. The regular fee is $500, and there are only 5000
licenses, but any man of what is called "good character"
may get a license on his own application, 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 closed 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 who be-
lieve that all evils which seem either necessary or in-
eradicable should be regulated, and his idea was to en-
force the law for closing the saloons, and to issue licenses
to sell liquor in the restaurants which keep open all
night, the drinks to be sold only with food. He found,
what was no new discovery, that the reform was loudly
opposed by the worst element in the business, who said
that they could and did sell liquor in their restaurants,
anyway, and that there was no need for licenses. He
also found that the ultra-temperance folk took sides with
these defiers of order by opposing the reform on the
usual ground that licensing liquor-selling was recognizing
and authorizing the evil. As late as the end of last au-
tumn the Mayor was manfully holding to his determina-
tion to enforce the midnight closing law, and it was said
by all with whom I spoke that it was extremely 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 perform this
function of his office for a reason that points a moral

453

for every student of the subject to remember. He holds
the power to dismiss those who disobey him. He prom- .
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, from the Chief down,
and they all knew it. It will be remembered that al-
most similar authority is vested in the police-magistrates
in the most progressive English cities. The result is
wholesome everywhere.

Some past work of the Chicago police has made the
force famous. The World's Fair commissioners who
went abroad to urge foreign participation in the expo-
sition found their way paved before them by the good
opinion of Chicago that had been aroused by her treat-
ment 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 members an esprit de corps. The almost all-powerful
Mayor recognizes this, and has appointed Major R. W.
McClaughry to the chieftaincy on account of that gen-
tleman's reputation for administrative ability and for
disciplinary force. As warden of Joliet (Illinois) Peni-
tentiary, and later of a reformatory at Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania, he caused these qualities to attract atten-
tion. The Chicago police force had become a hospital
for the political toughs of the city, and any man could
join it provided only that he had " infiooence." He
might be a man just out of State-prison, or only thirty
days in America, but if he was the protege of a politi-
cian he was made 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 methods. 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 comprehend the true nature of a
policeman'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
man is admitted to be examined 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
when twelve candidates have passed the examination, 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 which we in Xew
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
middle of last October, I saw a policeman 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 policeman would 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. Einging a club on a
pavement is better than springing a rattle, as our police
did a century ago — but that is not saying much in its
favor. However, this was 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 policemen dashed up to the spot, the men

455

leaped out, the rum - crazed offender was bundled into
the wagon, and it was driven back to the station. A
neater, cleaner, more admirable bit of police work I
never saw ; but the frequent sight of these wagons fly-
ing through the streets assured me that such work, in
such cases, is the rule with that force.

It is not the purpose here to describe other than what
may be called the peculiarities of these city govern-
ments, and of the general plan of Chicago's manage-
ment there is little more to say. After the Mayor has
appointed his heads of departments (and all the 8000 or
9000 "feet," if he chooses), he divides his further powers
with the Common Council, which has been but little
shorn of its inherited functions. Its committees follow
the more important divisions of the government, and
one of them, the finance committee, acting like New
York's Board of Estimate and Apportionment, deter-
mines the cost of each year's undertakings. The Coun-
cil is a very large body, and contains two members from
each of the thirty-four wards of the city, one being
elected from each ward 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 Common Council. It has now had for years what
is popularly known as " one -man power." It is often
said that this is whatever the one man proves himself,
but the experience of the present time 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 two-year term.

But there are other municipal corporations in Chicago
with which the Mayor has nothing to do. They are the

456

park boards. It is a strange thing about Chicago that
those monuments of her public spirit, enterprise, and
taste which are at once her glory and her pride are out
of the control of her city government. It is to the man-
agement of them that I have referred as exemplifying
the very best method of the administration 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-
ernment, whereas to be as they should they must be the
products of popular and home rule. But in the methods
and work of the boards is seen that which produces the
best government. There seem to be no "politics"
about them. They appear to be doing business on busi-
ness principles. They have produced one of the notable
park systems of the world by methods so wise and eco-
nomical that the people have witnessed the spectacle of
a wondrous and beautiful park development without
feeling the tax by which the cost has been met. The
park commissioners serve without pay and in the belief
that their duties bring honor with them. They are in-
spired to give the public their best service by the con-
sciousness that when the plans for the pleasure-grounds
have been executed, it will be worth as much as a mon-
ument to any man to have been concerned in the work.

Even in the City Hall and among the politicians stu-
dents of the city government are referred to the parks
as examples of the best public work that has been per-
formed in Chicago. And in the City Hall I was told
that the reason for this is that the Park Commissioners
are unhampered by political obligations.

There are three of these corporations — the South
Park, the Lincoln Park, and the West Park commis-
sioners, and they not only are independent of the city
government, but they have jurisdiction over all 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 themselves. Each commission is
maintained by a direct tax upon the district or division
of the city which it benefits.

It will not be profitable to study all the commissions :
one does not differ materially from, another. The South
Side Commission, headed by President William Best,
consists of five members, who are appointed for five-
year terms by the judges of the Circuit Court. When
the majority of the judges are Democrats, they appoint
Democrats; and Republican majorities appoint Repub-
lican commissioners ; but beyond that point I am as-
sured that politics cut no figure in the case. At present
there are three Democrats and two Republicans on the
board. One member 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 twelve 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 commission performed its functions for three
towns originally — South Chicago, Hyde Park, and Lake.
They now comprise a part of the city. They are as-
sessed for $300,000 annually, South Chicago paying 80
per cent., and the other towns 10 per cent. each. In
addition, a tax of one mill is levied on the taxable 'valu-
ation of the district, because the fixed sum of $300,000
proved insufficient. The additional tax is to be imposed
as long as the commission has any bonds outstanding.

458

The weight of the total tax upon the community is
2f mills, and is presumably an unfelt burden. For this
the commission 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, which 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, sprinkling- carts,
police, laborers, a nursery for trees, and a score of other
sources of expense or attractions are thus provided for.
The commission employs a force that is mainly com-
posed of Swedes and Germans. The same men are re-
tained year after year. They are skilled in their several
lines of work ; they own their little homes, and feel se-
cure in their places ; they are not told how to vote, nor
are they watched at the polls. The work of the com-
mission embraces several sources of income, but no effort
is made 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 advised 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 waited
only forty years. Already statues, fountains, and a con-
servatory are ornaments piled on ornament in Lincoln
Park. A lake a mile 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-
wall, and is to connect with the drive to Fort Sheridan,

459

distant twenty-five miles northward on the lake front.
There are five 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 Demo-
crats and two are Republicans, but their employes are
chosen for fitness as workmen, and the trust is managed
practically and economically.

William C. Goudy, the president, was counsel to the
commission for fifteen years before he was chosen presi-
dent. General Joseph Stockton has been a commissioner
twenty-two years, and E. S. Taylor has been the secre-
tary since the organization of the board in 1869. The
commission bought its land for only $900,000, and in
five years will have extinguished that debt. Now it is
borroAving half a million to meet the cost of reclaiming
from the lake land that will be worth millions as soon
as it is made. The tax rate last year was eight mills
on the low assessed valuation that prevails in Chicago.
During the twenty-two years of existence of the com-
mission there never has been the slightest taint or sus-
picion of jobbery or impropriety of any sort in its rela-
tion to its work, its employes, or the people.

It is true that these park boards are the products of
the organization of Cook County, which 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 city, the Cook County Board of Com-
missioners exercises an authority that is perfectly inde-
pendent of the City Council. The parks are therefore
managed by the State, and not the city, and this is
cause for offence to all who hold that perfected city
government must be complete self-government. The
argument is too solid to be broken down by any excep-

460

tion, and yet these commissions 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 with partisan allegiance and spoils - grabbing.
But bevond that is the renewed proof that local gov-
ernment succeeds best when administered by non- poli-
ticians working in no interest but that of the public.

That is what the Chicago park managers newly dem-
onstrate. Call them county officers, as they are, yet
they are of and for Chicago. They are Chicago busi-
ness men, and they have been induced to give up what
time they can spare from private business because they
feel it a distinction and an honor to be intrusted with
the execution of what every man in Chicago thinks is
to become the greatest and most beautiful park system
in the world. They are anxious to prove that no mis-
take was made in choosing them as men of business
ability. The instant politicians are chosen they begin
to pay off their debts to the party with which they have
bargained for a living. They pay their debts with 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 government 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 among the politicians. Here the
Mayor becomes a figure-head, and the Chicago plan is
diametrically reversed. A recent Mayor made this pub-
lic comment on the case : " The Mayor has but little au-
thority ; he has hardly more than an advisory power in

461

any department." The government is by the Common
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 Police, and may appoint the
policemen. He also appoints his own secretary. The
other officials, high and lo\v, are the appointees of the
Council. This consists of two Aldermen from each of
thirteen wards, who also order all public improvements
and repairs and grant all licenses. Politically the pres-
ent Council consists of sixteen Republicans and ten
Democrats, and the membership is principally Ameri-
can, something like twenty of the twenty-six having .
been born in this country. That important bureau the
Board of Tax Levy consists of the City Auditor, the
Comptroller, the chairman of the Board of County Com-
missioners, the president of the Board of Education, and
the chairman of the committee of ways and means of
the City Council. It fixes the maximum limit of city
expenditures ; and the Council, in consultation with the
various local boards, may determine upon any sum of
outlay within but not above the levy. The assessed val-
uation on which the levy is based is thought to be a lib-
eral one (50 to 66| per cent, of the actual value), and
the tax is 21.4 mills, but nine wards pay an added tax
of two mills for street extension and improvements, or
23.4 mills in all.

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 town,
and is confined to the business and manufacturing 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
miles of territory. The entire city area is very park-like

462

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 influence
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 named, after it, " the pa-
trol limit system." It is not easy to understand why it
is so called, since the whole city is patrolled, but a study
of the map shows that the territory in which the licenses
are granted is mainly in two narrow belts along the
river, in the more thickly built, older parts of the two
towns that have since become one city. As it is a city
of superb area, most of the dwellings are at a distance
from the outer edges of the saloon districts. The elec-
tric-car lines are numerous, and the cars are swift, but
those who feel that peculiar thirst which can only be
quenched while the sufferer leans against a bar must
make a long journey and pay ten cents car fare to ob-
tain relief.

Minnesota is a high -license State, and the fee for a
permit to maintain a saloon or hotel bar in cities of
more than 100,000 population is $1000. To obtain a
permit in Minneapolis the applicant must be twenty-one
years of age, and must 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 must manage his place
himself and for himself. He may not have more than
one license. He may not sell liquor in or next door to
any theatre, or within 400 feet of a public school, or
within 200 feet of a park or parkway. All this he must
swear to, and agree that if he has sworn falsely in any
particular in his affidavit his license may be revoked.
He must, together with his application and affidavit,

463

also file a bond in $4000, with two sureties, who shall
not be on any other similar bond.

The license is for a fixed place as well as for a person,
and carries further conditions against Sunday selling,
gambling, and disorderly conduct on the premises, as
well as against selling 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 comes within
the requirements, 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
license, 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 make
it necessary for the city to grant a permit 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,'1 then the liquor-seller shall have refunded to
him "a sum proportional to one-half the sum paid for
such license for the unexpired term thereof." But if the
courts order the license revoked, the dealer loses all that
he has paid. The courts may order a license revoked
on the first conviction for a breach of the law. On a
second conviction they must 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 makes the liquor-dealers pay into the Minneapolis
treasury $274,000, or about $52,000 more 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 Xew York, where the population is squeezed into a
narrow space, and there is no broad division of the city
into a residence and a business part. But it will be seen
that it could be applied to most of the cities of the coun-
try, especially 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 worldly-
wise the reader is, the more likely he will be to ask at
once whether the law is enforced, and whether the drug-
gists (who are everywhere the "silent partners" in the
liquor trade) are not, as usual, violating it wherever the
people have sought to make it prohibitory. The an-
s \vers to these questions are that the appearances and
general testimony go to show that the law is absolutely
enforced as to the liquor saloons, but that there is some
illicit drinking in many of the apothecary shops. These
are popularly known as "blind pigs" in Minneapolis, a
term that is not so happily chosen as that adopted by
the good citizens of Asbury Park, "New Jersey, who call
such illicit groggeries their '; speak-easies." It is said
that it would be impossible 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 81000
is paid for the right to sell liquor, the licensed traders
would take measures against drug-store abuses. The
fact that the saloon-keepers are not complaining in Min-
neapolis seems proof to me that the abuse is not consid-
erable or general.

In an earlier chapter I dwelt on the beauty and orig-
inal character of the Minneapolis parks, and only need
to say further that the city finds within its limits a
number of pretty little lakes, incidents in that natural
arrangement which renders all the surroundings of

2a 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 made the central
feature of a park or the ornament of a parkway. But
while there are half a dozen such bodies of water, there
are thirty-four parks under the control of the Park
Board, and those which are joined by the eighteen miles
of boulevards that have been laid out now form a beau-
tiful cordon around two sides of the town. The city's
parks comprise 1469 acres, and are valued at $3,918,000,
yet so wisely was 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 governmental
work.

It was in St. Paul that a leading official confided to
me his observation that " the better a municipal com-
mission is, the worse for the tax-payers." He argued
that in howsoever great a degree the head of a depart-
ment evinces a desire to distinguish himself by his work,
in just that degree he will increase the cost of his de-
partment. That is true ; but whether that will prove
the worse for the tax-payers depends entirely upon
whether the money spent is wisely put out. A very
thoughtful friend of mine is in the habit of saying that
fc4 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 communities feel the benefits more than
they feel the taxes. It is in the out-of-the-way and back-
ward rural districts, where very inferior roads and
schools are the only visible returns, that the people com-
plain aloud against having to pay taxes whose sum to-
tals seem to others ridiculously small. What might
seem a great deal of money has been spent in Minneap-
olis in developing the tracts that have been set aside for

466

parks (something like a million and a half of dollars
since 1883). The method of raising the money for new
work is to issue bonds for ten years, payable one-tenth
annually by assessment on adjacent property. Yet a
tax-payer there, in speaking of park improvements that
had been made 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 mem-
bers, who are elected by the people, and of three ??
offic'to members — the Mayor, the chairman of the Coun-
cil Committee on Roads and Bridges, and the chairman
of the Council Committee on Public Grounds and Build-
ings. It is politically partisan, and much of the lesser
patronage changes with changes of political complex-
ion. The board gets authority from the Legislature to
issue bonds when it wishes 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
assessment is less than one mill. Cnder the circum-
stances the good work of the board must be credited to
the enthusiastic and watchful interest the people have
taken in the work. In Mr. Charles M. Loring, a wealthy
miller and extra public -spirited citizen, they found a
practical business man to direct their enterprises. He
was able and willing to travel abroad for the purpose
of studying the notable park systems elsewhere. It is
only fair to say that other excellent men were found to
work with him.

In making the short journey to St. Paul we pass to
still another experiment in city government. There
they enjoy the same very excellent system of liquor-
licensing. In confining the saloons to the business and

467

manufacturing precincts, whole wards where the dwell-
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 me 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 premises in those drug stores which
violate the law. But while, in the main, the same ex-
cellent method of liquor-licensing obtains in both towns,
I was permitted to gather the notion that in St. Paul
there is a looseness about minor details of the superin-
tendence which does not exist in Minneapolis. For in-
stance, it is found impossible to close the saloons at
eleven o'clock at night or on Sundays, as the law com-
mands. They keep open until midnight, or even later,
and on Sunday follow the New York device of closing
the front doors and opening those side or rear doors
which for some hidden reason are in New York called
" family entrances."

When I was first told that the law could not be en-
forced, it occurred to me that perhaps the impossibility
was like that which defeated the better impulses of a
little child of my acquaintance when he ate an apple
which he was carrying to his sister. He explained that
he " truly could not help eating it ; it really would be
eaten, and he could not stop it." But I found after-
wards that the law was 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 law therefore empha-
sized two well-established points : first, that cities should
govern themselves; and second, that laws which reflect

468

the prejudices or peculiar tenets of a class or race are
extremely difficult to enforce in a mixed community.
Yet it is always a pity when they are loosely adminis-
tered and disobeyed. Such a condition is a grave mis-
fortune, for nothing but harm can come of permitting
any community to witness the contemptuous treatment
of any law. Would that all officials charged with car-
rying out the statutes were of General Grant's mind, to
insist upon the enforcement of mistaken as well as wise
laws, 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 governmental revolu-
tion, owing to a gift of a new charter from the Legisla-
ture. Again the Mayor here rose to importance, and
divided honors and work with the Common Council —
he making half the appointments, and they administer-
ing the more important trusts. But it is a dual Council
— a double-barrelled board of supervisors — called Alder-
men and Assemblymen. Each ward elects one Alder-
man, and there are eleven in all, while the nine Assem-
blymen are elected at large from all over the city. Both
serve two years and receive $100 a year, presumably for
car fares. They meet on alternate Tuesdays. The ma-
jority of the members of the two houses are Irish or
Irish Americans. The city is Democratic. The Mayor
appoints the Chief of Police and the policemen under
him, and has the power to remove as well 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 former charter.
The Mayor's salary has been raised from $1000 to $2500.
The judges of the municipal court are elected ; they re-
ceive $4000 a year, and have civil jurisdiction where the

469

sum at issue is under $500. A feature that would seem
to be the outcome of sage reflection is the Conference
Committee. It is composed of the Mayor, president of
the Assembly, chairman of the Ways and Means Com-
mittee of the Aldermen, the Comptroller, Treasurer,
Engineer, and the heads of nearly all the bureaus of the
city government. They come together once a month to
confer upon the work each has in hand.

I asked a high official of the city government, who is
a " practical " Democratic politician, why the new char-
ter had established a return to the old plan of a double
legislative body. He said that it was a Kepublican 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, which I will set down
without any further comment than that it appears to
possess the quality of frankness in a marked degree.

¥ Among politicians," said he, " all legislation is trad-
ing. You know that as well 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 ward, 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 same persons
for their election."

If the goverment of St. Paul has been slow in provid-
ing parks, it remains 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
government has been so far from idle as to have pro-
duced by prodigious energy within the past few years
public works which have raised its conditions from those
of a village to those which entitle it to rank with the

470

most progressive cities of its size in the country. Its
streets, sewers, railroad crossings, lire - defence, public
buildings, water-supply plant, and half a dozen other im-
portant features of the public 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 government by which this was ef-
fected has been changed, but we know that there was
nothing novel about it, and that the change has brought
nothing novel to it. The credit lies with the public-
spirited, enterprising people behind the government, and
it is a pity that they cannot be left alone to work out
their own administrative methods with 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 management of the public business in this
group of cities, I come to a subject which 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 management. It seems to me
that nothing in the West — not even the strides she is
making in population, wealth, and power — is so remark-
able as the footing upon which the common schools are
maintained.

The last Mayor of Chicago uses these words in his
second annual message : u It is gratifying that the pub-
lic-school system of our city receives that generous sup-
port and attention to which its magnitude and impor-
tance entitle it. In 1887 the amount appropriated and
otherwise available for educational purposes was nearly
82,250,000 ; in 1888, nearly $2,500,000 ; in 1889, about
the same amount ; in 1890, nearly si, 750,000 ; and the

471

present year, over $5,500,000. Thus it will 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 from tax-
ation ; the balance, the revenue from school property.
. . . The total enrolment of pupils for the school year
reaches nearly 139,000. . . . Night schools cost the city
nearly $77,000 during the year ; the compulsory 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 estimated that the average
pupil leaves the public schools about the age of twelve
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 work 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 work throughout the country.
The Mayor, 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 number
of pupils in the high schools. This discovery of a means
for lessening the disproportion usually noticeable be-
tween the number of high-school pupils and the num-
bers in the lower schools will doubtless be hailed with
joy by those who find the system generally and greatly
underbalanced all over the country.

The 17,227 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.)

472

The Superintendent of Schools reports that the city
maintains a carefully graded course of tuition, covering
a period of eight years ! It includes tuition in civil gov-
ernment, physics, hygiene, manual training, Greek, Latin,
French, German, political economy, common law, zool-
ogy, astronomy, chemistry, and English literature.

Here I note the first attempt to curb these expenses.
The St. Paul School Board possessed almost complete
legislative powers to raise and to spend what money it
pleased. The Council was obliged to grant its demands;
in addition the Board issued bonds and certificates of
indebtedness. " It was like sacrilege to complain," an
official told me. Now the new charter subordinates the
school inspectors. Their pay-rolls and bills must be ap-
proved by the Council, which may 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 will not remain the most costly branch of
government. There are two ways to look at such a
condition, but, in my opinion, the two ways are not
what they are commonly supposed to be. One way
should be to look with envy on the rich, who thus may
send their children to school for eight years, while the
poor, who must put their little ones to work at tender
ages, foot the greater part of the cost. The other way
might well be to commiserate the poor who are deceived
by sentimental clap -trap into inflating the common-
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 all the far Western towns and cities. Neither
is a branch of government, yet both affect it. The first
is the stand-point from which vice is regarded as a fac-
tor in public affairs, especially in the smaller cities. It

473

is a trick of the popular mind where I have been (be-
tween Chicago and the Pacific coast) to gauge the vital-
ity and prosperity of a town by the showing it makes
in what 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 would wish to be enter-
tained. These cities are far apart, and are the centres
of great regions. It is understood that those who 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 town ministers 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
backward in other respects. In discussing this subject,
a very pushing Western man of national and honorable
reputation said : " There is wisdom and experience be-
hind all that. If I am 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 would be no need to tell me
about the geographical position of the town or its jobbing
trade or banking capital ; 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 Chamber of Com-
merce, or a Commercial Club. It is the burning-glass
which focusses the public spirit of the community. Its
most competent officer is usually the highly salaried
secretary. He does for his town what a railroad passen-
ger agent or a commercial 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 land, or of land and money, or of exemption from

474

taxation for a term of years. The merchants, and per-
haps the city officials also, support his promises. In a
South Dakota city I have known a fine brick warehouse
to be built and given, with the land under it, to a whole-
sale grocery firm for doing business there. In a far Xorth-
Avestern city there was talk during the winter of 1891-92
of sending a man East on salary to stay away until he
could bring back capital to found a smelter. These
boards of trade often organize local companies to give a
city what it needs. They urge the people to subscribe
for stock in associations that are to build electric rail-
ways, opera-houses, hotels, convention halls, water sup-
ply, and illuminating companies, often dividing an ac-
knowledged financial loss for the sake of a public gain.
Thus these boards provide the machinery by which the
most ambitious, forward, and enterprising communities
in the world expend and utilize their energy.

The student of the many experiments in municipal
management in the West will find Denver's progress in-
teresting. That city recently experienced a revolution
in government. A ring had fastened upon the offices.
The elections were dishonest. The police aided in keep-
ing the ring in power. In the mean time the city was
growing like a weed, and was about to make large ex-
penditures in needed improvements. In 1889 a move-
ment led by the Chamber of Commerce resulted in the
drafting of charter amendments to create new boards to
be appointed by the Governor. The new rule was insti-
tuted, but, for various reasons, the change was not felt
until after 1891. Then came a political revolution, over-
turning the ring, and putting the Democrats in charge.
It was 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 were Re-

475

publicans, and all were Denver business men. They had
authority to expend three millions of dollars for speci-
fied public works, which, in what seems a magically
short time, have advanced Denver to a high place among
our Western cities. The paving of the principal streets
alone transformed the city. All the work was well,
promptly, and honestly done. As in Omaha, the Fire
and Police departments were put under one board, with
absolute control of all the moneys set apart for it by the
Common Council, as well as the appointing power over
both departments. The Police and Fire Board consists of
three resident land-owners and tax-payers appointed by
the Governor with the consent of the Senate. One must
be of a different political faith from the Governor, who
may revoke any appointment for cause. The appointees,
who serve two years and go out together, were a real-
estate agent, who has been postmaster, the proprietor of
an extensive " transfer " system, and a veteran Colora-
doan, who was " the father of the bill."

If these were not the best possible appointments, the}7
yet served the people in rescuing the city from the ele-
ment that had misgoverned it. The fire and police
forces have been recruited from both political parties.
It was easily possible to reform the Fire Department,
which is winning its way to the pride and affection of
the citizens. The Chief recommends only those who
show fitness for the work, and the board follows 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 lively,
loud, and far -Western in its character. Even now
(1893) there are gambling "hells" that are as busy,
crowded, and public as mercantile exchanges, and the

476

quarter inhabited by abandoned women is notorious in
the AVest. Before the local revolution the saloons
never closed, and the "games" were open all the time
except on Sundays. Most of the shooting affrays and
murders which disgraced the city took place after mid-
night. Xo\v. drinking and gaming cease at midnight,
under a new law, which is exceptionally well enforced.
Mondays had been " field-days " for the trials of ar-
rested drunkards, but the number 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 policemen to
keep order in the gambling •• hells " at the expense of
the proprietors. As one official expressed it, " The gov-
ernment has been considering the advisability of raiding
the disorderly houses twice a year 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 law set apart the police-court fines to
benefit the public library. Xow 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 more other money, and aim to abolish street
mendicancy and to aid the needy. The county com-
missioners should attend to this, but do not. Former
Health Boards had been criminally careless. The new
commissioner and his assistants are Kepublicans. The
Chief Inspector, a Democrat, has chosen aides regardless
of politics. Mayor Platt Rogers determined to have
this board do more than collect vital statistics. On his
motion the leading physicians formed a voluntary advi-
sory board, and induced a retired practitioner, Dr. Steele,
to be Health Commissioner, with t\vo young expert
medical assistants, between whom his salary is divided
that they may give their whole time to the public. An

47?

earnest Chief Inspector has closed 800 Avells, cleaned
up the alleys, enforced house to house inspection, in-
vestigated the sources of contagious diseases, and insti-
tuted the inspection of meat, fruit, and milk. Thus the
death rate was brought down from about 25 to 13.30 in
October last. During the ten months ending with Sep-
tember 30. 1890, there were 131 deaths from typhoid
fever, but for the ten months preceding September 30,
1892, the number was reduced to 39.

Mayor Rogers insists that in national politics he is
an " offensive partisan" (Democrat), but he considers
municipal affairs "pure matters of business into which
the introduction of politics can serve but to impair the
efficiency of the government." 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 Common Council, which struggled to retain its
powers. 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 seems unlikely
that those who abused their power will ever force the
city back into their control. Denver's progress was not
in the line of home-rule. Popular education in self-gov-
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 im-
provement they are to be congratulated.

THE END

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Illustrated. Post Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 75.

A Flying Trip Around the World.

By ELIZABETH BISLAND. With Portrait. 16mo, Cloth,
Ornamental, $1 25.

Boots and Saddles ;

Or, Life in Dakota with General Ouster. By ELIZA-
BETH B. OUSTER. With Portrait. Post 8vo, Cloth,
Ornamental, $1 50.

Following the Guidon.

By ELIZABETH B. CUSTER. Illustrated. Post 8vo,
Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50.

Mrs. Wallace's Travel Sketches.

The Storied Sea. By SUSAN E. WALLACE. 18mo,
Cloth, $1 00.

Campaigning with Crook,

And Stories of Army Life. By Captain CHARLES
KING, U.S.A. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 25.

A Tramp Trip.

How to See Europe on Fifty Cents a Day. By LEE
MERIWETHER. With Portrait. 12mo, Cloth, Orna-
mental, $1 25.

Nordhoff's California.

Peninsular California. Some Account of the Climate,
Soil, Productions, and Present Condition chiefly of
the Northern Half of Lower California. By CHARLES
NORDHOFF. Maps and Illustrations. Square Svo,
Cloth, $1 00 ; Paper, 75 cents.

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

HARPER & BROTHERS will send any of the above works by
mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Can-
ada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price.

RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT

TO—* 202 Main Library

LOAN PERIOD 1
HOME USE

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS

1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 64?-3405

1-year loans may be rscharged by cringing the books to the Circulation Desk

Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

ffTD FEB 2 ? 1£ M

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 1/83 BERKELEY, CA 94720

28183

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Full text of "Our great west : a study of the present conditions and future possibilities of the new commonwealths and capitals if the United States"

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