Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada

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

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

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

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

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

Duluth, though as yet with only about twenty-five to thirty thousand inhabitants, feels itself, by its position, a rival of the cities on the Mississippi. A few figures show the basis of this feeling. In 1880 the population was 3740; in 1886, 25,000. In 1880 the receipts of wheat were 1,347,679 bushels; in 1886, 22,425,730 bushels; in 1860 the shipments of wheat 1,453,647 bushels; in 1886,17,981,965 bushels. In 1880 the shipments of flour were 551,800 bushels; in 1886, 1,500,000 bushels. In 1886 there were grain elevators with a capacity of 18,000,000 bushels. The tax valuation had increased from 8669,012 in 1880 to 811,773,729 in 1886. The following comparisons are made: The receipt of wheat in Chicago in 1885 was 19,266,000 bushels; in Duluth, 14,880,000 bushels. The receipt of wheat in 1886 was at Duluth 22,425,730 bushels; at Minneapolis, 33,394,450; at Chicago, 15,982,524; at Milwaukee, 7,930,102. This shows that an increasing amount of the great volume of wheat raised in north Dakota and north-west Minnesota (that is, largely in the Red River Valley) is seeking market by way of Duluth and water transportation. In 1869 Minnesota raised about 18,000,000 bushels of wheat; in 1886, about 50,000,000. In 1869 Dakota grew no grain at all; in 1886 it produced about 50,000,000 bushels of wheat. To understand the amount of transportation the reader has only to look on the map and see the railway lines—the Northern Pacific, the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, and other lines, running to Duluth, and sending out spurs, like the roots of an elm-tree, into the wheat lands of the North-west.

Most of the route from St. Paul to Duluth is uninteresting; there is nothing picturesque except the Dalles of the St. Louis River, and a good deal of the country passed through seems agriculturally of no value. The approaches to Duluth, both from the Wisconsin and the Minnesota side, are rough and vexatious by reason of broken, low, hummocky, and swamp land. Duluth itself, with good harbor facilities, has only a strip of level ground for a street, and inadequate room for railway tracks and transfers. The town itself climbs up the hill, whence there is a good view of the lake and the Wisconsin shore, and a fair chance for both summer and winter breezes. The residence portion of the town, mainly small wooden houses, has many highly ornamental dwellings, and the long street below, following the shore, has many noble buildings of stone and brick, which would be a credit to any city. Grading and sewer-making render a large number of the streets impassable, and add to the signs of push, growth, and business excitement.

For the purposes of trade, Duluth, and the towns of Superior and West Superior, in Wisconsin, may be considered one port; and while Duluth may continue to be the money and business centre, the expansion for railway terminal facilities, elevators, and manufactures is likely to be in the Wisconsin towns on the south side of the harbor. From the Great Northern Elevator in West Superior the view of the other elevators, of the immense dock room, of the harbor and lake, of a net-work of miles and miles of terminal tracks of the various roads, gives one an idea of gigantic commerce; and the long freight trains laden with wheat, glutting all the roads and sidings approaching Duluth, speak of the bursting abundance of the tributary country. This Great Northern Elevator, belonging to the Manitoba system, is the largest In the world; its dimensions are 360 feet long, 95 in width, 115 in height, with a capacity of 1,800,000 bushels, and with facilities for handling 40 car-loads an hour, or 400 cars in a day of 10 hours. As I am merely illustrating the amount of the present great staple of the North-west, I say nothing here of the mineral, stone, and lumber business of this region. Duluth has a cool, salubrious summer and a snug winter climate. I ought to add that the enterprising inhabitants attend to education as well as the elevation of grain; the city has eight commodious school buildings.

To return to the Mississippi. To understand what feeds Minneapolis and St. Paul, and what country their great wholesale houses supply, one must take the rail and penetrate the vast North-west. The famous Park or Lake district, between St. Cloud (75 miles north-west of St. Paul) and Fergus Falls, is too well known to need description. A rolling prairie, with hundreds of small lakes, tree fringed, it is a region of surpassing loveliness, and already dotted, as at Alexandria, with summer resorts. The whole region, up as far as Moorhead (240 miles from St. Paul), on the Red River, opposite Fargo, Dakota, is well settled, and full of prosperous towns. At Fargo, crossing the Northern Pacific, we ran parallel with the Red River, through a line of bursting elevators and wheat farms, clown to Grand Forks, where we turned westward, and passed out of the Red River Valley, rising to the plateau at Larimore, some three hundred feet above it.

The Red River, a narrow but deep and navigable stream, has from its source to Lake Winnipeg a tortuous course of about 600 miles, while the valley itself is about 285 miles long, of which 180 miles Is in the United States. This valley, which has astonished the world by its wheat production, is about 160 miles in breadth, and level as a floor, except that it has a northward slope of, I believe, about five feet to the mile. The river forms the boundary between Minnesota and Dakota; the width of valley on the Dakota side varies from 50 to 100 miles. The rich soil is from two to three feet deep, underlaid with clay. Fargo, the centre of this valley, is 940 feet above the sea. The climate is one of extremes between winter and summer, but of much constancy of cold or heat according to the season. Although it is undeniable that one does not feel the severe cold there as much as in more humid atmospheres, it cannot be doubted that the long continuance of extreme cold is trying to the system. And it may be said of all the North-west, including Minnesota, that while it is more favorable to the lungs than many regions where the thermometer has less sinking power, it is not free from catarrh (the curse of New England), nor from rheumatism. The climate seems to me specially stimulating, and I should say there is less excuse here for the use of stimulants (on account of “lowness” or lassitude) than in almost any other portion of the United States with which I am acquainted.

But whatever attractions or drawbacks this territory has as a place of residence, its grain and stock growing capacity is inexhaustible, and having seen it, we begin to comprehend the vigorous activity and growth of the twin cities. And yet this is the beginning of resources; there lies Dakota, with its 149,100 square miles (96,596,480 acres of land), larger than all the New England States and New York combined, and Montana beyond, together making a belt of hard spring-wheat land sufficient, one would think, to feed the world. When one travels over 1200 miles of it, doubt ceases.

I cannot better illustrate the resources and enterprise of the North-west than by speaking in some detail of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railway (known as the Manitoba system), and by telling briefly the story of one season’s work, not because this system is bigger or more enterprising or of more importance in the West than some others I might name, but because it has lately pierced a comparatively unknown region, and opened to settlement a fertile empire.

The Manitoba system gridirons north Minnesota, runs to Duluth, puts two tracks down the Red River Valley (one on each side of the river) to the Canada line, sends out various spurs into Dakota, and operates a main line from Grand Forks westward through the whole of Dakota, and through Montana as far as the Great Falls of the Missouri, and thence through the canon of the Missouri and the canon of the Prickly-Pear to Helena—in all about 3000 miles of track. Its president is Mr. James J. Hill, a Canadian by birth, whose rapid career from that of a clerk on the St. Paul levee to his present position of influence, opportunity, and wealth is a romance in itself, and whose character, integrity, tastes, and accomplishments, and domestic life, were it proper to speak of them, would satisfactorily answer many of the questions that are asked about the materialistic West.

The Manitoba line west had reached Minot, 530 miles from St. Paul, in 1886. I shall speak of its extension in 1887, which was intrusted to Mr. D. C. Shepard, a veteran engineer and railway builder of St. Paul, and his firm, Messrs. Shepard, Winston & Co. Credit should be given by name to the men who conducted this Napoleonic enterprise; for it required not only the advance of millions of money, but the foresight, energy, vigilance, and capacity that insure success in a distant military campaign.

It needs to be noted that the continuation of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba road from Great Falls to Helena, 98 miles, is called the Montana Central. The work to be accomplished in 1887 was to grade 500 miles of railroad to reach Great Falls, to put in the bridging and mechanical structures (by hauling all material brought up by rail ahead of the track by teams, so as not to delay the progress of the track) on 530 miles of continuous railway, and to lay and put in good running condition 643 miles of rails continuously and from one end only.

In the winter of 1886-87 the road was completed to a point five miles west of Minot, and work was done beyond which if consolidated would amount to about fifty miles of completed grading, and the mechanical structures were done for twenty miles west from Minot. On the Montana Central the grading and mechanical structures were made from Helena as a base, and completed before the track reached Great Falls. St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth were the primary bases of operations, and generally speaking all materials, labor, fuel, and supplies originated at these three points; Minot was the secondary base, and here in the winter of 1886-87 large depots of supplies and materials for construction were formed.

Track-laying began April 2,1887, but was greatly retarded by snow and ice in the completed cuts, and by the grading, which was heavy. The cuts were frozen more or less up to May 15th. The forwarding of grading forces to Minot began April 6th, but it was a labor of considerable magnitude to outfit them at Minot and get them forward to the work; so that it was as late as May 10th before the entire force was under employment.

The average force on the grading was 3300 teams and about 8000 men. Upon the track-laving, surfacing, piling, and timber-work there were 225 teams and about 650 men. The heaviest work was encountered on the eastern end, so that the track was close upon the grading up to the 10th of June. Some of the cuttings and embankments were heavy. After the 10th of June progress upon the grading was very rapid. From the mouth of Milk River to Great Falls (a distance of 200 miles) grading was done at an average rate of seven miles a day. Those who saw this army of men and teams stretching over the prairie and casting up this continental highway think they beheld one of the most striking achievements of civilization.

I may mention that the track is all cast up (even where the grading is easy) to such a height as to relieve it of drifting snow; and to give some idea of the character of the work, it is noted that in preparing it there were moved 9,700,000 cubic yards of earth, 15,000 cubic yards of loose rock, and 17,500 cubic yards of solid rock, and that there were hauled ahead of the track and put in the work to such distance as would not obstruct the track-laying (in some instances 30 miles), 9,000,000 feet (board measure) of timber and 390,000 lineal feet of piling.

On the 5th of August the grading of the entire line to Great Falls was either finished or properly manned for its completion the first day of September, and on the 10th of August it became necessary to remove outfits to the east as they completed their work, and about 2500 teams and their quota of men were withdrawn between the 10th and 20th of August, and placed upon work elsewhere.

The record of track laid is as follows: April 2d to 30th, 30 miles; May, 82 miles; June, 79.8 miles; July, 100.8 miles; August, 115.4 miles; September, 102.4 miles; up to October 15th to Great Falls, 34.0 miles—a total to Great Falls of 545 miles. October 10th being Sunday, no track was laid. The track started from Great Falls Monday, October 17th, and reached Helena on Friday, November 18th, a distance of 98 miles, making a grand total of 043 miles, and an average rate for every working-day of three and one-quarter miles. It will thus be seen that laying a good road was a much more expeditious method of reaching the Great Falls of the Missouri than that adopted by Lewis and Clarke.

Some of the details of this construction and tracklaying will interest railroad men. On the 16th of July 7 miles and 1040 feet of track were laid, and on the 8th of August 8 miles and 60 feet were laid, in each instance by daylight, and by the regular gang of track-layers, without any increase of their numbers whatever. The entire work was done by handling the iron on low iron cars, and depositing it on the track from the car at the front end. The method pursued was the same as when one mile of track is laid per day in the ordinary manner. The force of track-layers was maintained at the proper number for the ordinary daily work, and was never increased to obtain any special result. The result on the 11th of August was probably decreased by a quarter to a half mile by the breaking of an axle of an iron car while going to the front with its load at about 4 p.m. From six to eight iron cars were employed in doing this day’s work. The number ordinarily used was four to five.

Sidings were graded at intervals of seven to eight miles, and spur tracks, laid on the natural surface, put in at convenient points, sixteen miles apart, for storage of materials and supplies at or near the front. As the work went on, the spur tracks in the rear were taken up. The construction train contained box cars two and three stories high, in which workmen were boarded and lodged. Supplies, as a rule, were taken by wagon-trains from the spur tracks near the front to their destination, an average distance of one hundred miles and an extreme one of two hundred miles. Steamboats were employed to a limited extent on the Missouri River in supplying such remote points as Fort Benton and the Coal Banks, but not more than fifteen per cent, of the transportation was done by steamers. A single item illustrating the magnitude of the supply transportation is that there were shipped to Minot and forwarded and consumed on the work 590,000 bushels of oats.

It is believed that the work of grading 500 miles of railroad in five months, and the transportation into the country of everything consumed, grass and water excepted, and of every rail, tie, bit of timber, pile, tool, machine, man, or team employed, and laying 643 miles of track in seven and a half months, from one end, far exceeds in magnitude and rapidity of execution any similar undertaking in this or any other country. It reflects also the greatest credit on the managers of the railway transportation (it is not invidious to mention the names of Mr. A. Manvel, general manager, and Mr. J. M. Egan, general superintendent, upon whom the working details devolved) when it is stated that the delays for material or supplies on the entire work did not retard it in the aggregate one hour. And every hour counted in this masterly campaign.

The Western people apparently think no more of throwing down a railroad, if they want to go anywhere, than a conservative Easterner does of taking an unaccustomed walk across country; and the railway constructors and managers are a little amused at the Eastern slowness and want of facility in construction and management. One hears that the East is antiquated, and does not know anything about railroad building. Shovels, carts, and wheelbarrows are of a past age; the big wheel-scraper does the business. It is a common remark that a contractor accustomed to Eastern work is not desired on a Western job.

On Friday afternoon, November 18th, the news was flashed that the last rail was laid, and at 6 p.m. a special train was on the way from St. Paul with a double complement of engineers and train-men. For the first 500 miles there was more or less delay in avoiding the long and frequent freight trains, but after that not much except the necessary stops for cleaning the engine. Great Falls, about 1100 miles, was reached Sunday noon, in thirty-six hours, an average of over thirty miles an hour. A part of the time the speed was as much as fifty miles an hour. The track was solid, evenly graded, heavily tied, well aligned, and the cars ran over it with no more swing and bounce than on an old road. The only exception to this is the piece from Great Falls to Helena, which had not been surfaced all the way. It is excellent railway construction, and it is necessary to emphasize this when we consider the rapidity with which it was built.

The company has built this road without land grant or subsidy of any kind. The Montana extension, from Minot, Dakota, to Great Falls, runs mostly through Indian and military reservations, permission to pass through being given by special Act of Congress, and the company buying 200 feet road-way. Little of it, therefore, is open to settlement.

These reservations, naming them in order westward, are as follows: The Fort Berthold Indian reservation, Dakota, the eastern boundary of which is twenty-seven miles west of Minot, has an area of 4550 square miles (about as large as Connecticut), or 2,912,000 acres. The Fort Buford military reservation, lying in Dakota and Montana, has an area of 900 square miles, or 576,000 acres. The Blackfeet Indian reserve has an area of 34,000 square miles (the State of New York has 46,000), or 21,760,000 acres. The Fort Assiniboin military reserve has an area of 869.82 square miles, or 556,684 acres.

It is a liberal estimate that there are 6000 Indians on the Blackfeet and Fort Berth old reservations. As nearly as I could ascertain, there are not over 3500 Indians (some of those I saw were Créés on a long visit from Canada) on the Blackfeet reservation of about 22,000,000 acres. Some judges put the number as low as 2500 to all this territory, and estimate that there was about one Indian to ten square miles, or one Indian family to fifty square miles. We rode through 300 miles of this territory along the Milk River, nearly every acre of it good soil, with thick, abundant grass, splendid wheat land.

I have no space to take up the Indian problem. But the present condition of affairs is neither fair to white settlers nor just or humane to the Indians. These big reservations are of no use to them, nor they to the reservations. The buffaloes have disappeared; they do not live by hunting; they cultivate very little ground; they use little even to pasture their ponies. They are fed and clothed by the Government, and they camp about the agencies in idleness, under conditions that pauperize them, destroy their manhood, degrade them into dependent, vicious lives. The reservations ought to be sold, and the proceeds devoted to educating the Indians and setting them up in a self-sustaining existence. They should be allotted an abundance of good land, in the region to which they are acclimated, in severalty, and under such restrictions that they cannot alienate it at least for a generation or two. As the Indian is now, he will neither work, nor keep clean, nor live decently. Close to, the Indian is not a romantic object, and certainly no better now morally than Lewis and Clarke depicted him in 1804. But he is a man; he has been barbarously treated; and it is certainly not beyond honest administration and Christian effort to better his condition. And his condition will not be improved simply by keeping from settlement and civilization the magnificent agricultural territory that is reserved to him.