Chapter VII: Introduction: By Reuben G. Thwaites (5)

The employment of large adjectives in the recital of the city's history is not without warrant. "The trouble with you people in Chicago," remarked a visitor, "is that you exaggerate too much." "We have to," retorted a citizen, proudly, "in fact we have to lie to tell the truth." Even when we speak of the fire of 1871, we must call it the "great Chicago fire," for never before perhaps in the history of the world were so many of the piled-up monuments of man's hands consumed so rapidly. Such awful moments, happily, seldom come in the history of communities. It was as if the fires of Dante's Inferno had been permitted for a night and day to devastate a great city of this planet. One thousand four hundred and seventy acres of buildings were utterly consumed. The entire business portion of the city vanished in smoke and flame. One hundred thousand persons were left homeless and in many cases penniless. Seventeen thousand four hundred and fifty buildings were destroyed, the total valuation of the loss by fire being $186,000,000.

In the presence of a catastrophe, so vast that the imagination reeled as the eye wandered over the mighty paths where the cyclones of fire had swept, social inequalities and race prejudices were ignored. All right-minded men stood together in a common bond of fellowship. Doubtless much of the present spirit of amalgamation of the people of the city is an outgrowth of the calamity which thirty years ago brought the representatives of those divers races elbow to elbow in the common cause of rebuilding their homes and reconstructing their lines of industry. The riots at the Haymarket did not indicate bad blood between the races of the city, but merely an incidental if not accidental social unrest not uncommon in all our greater cities.

The city staggered, but did not fall, under the woful wreck the great fire wrought. Through a grim schooling of disaster in the past the city had developed a force of character that fire could not consume. "Nothing," exclaimed the great French Cardinal and Premier of the seventeenth century, when he was temporarily overthrown, "nothing remains but the indomitable spirit of Richelieu." Chicago had similar faith in her own inherent power. There were some broken spirits who, gazing on the melancholy ruin, caught no glimpse of the magnificent city that was to rise, as if by command of a magician's wand, upon the smoking desolation. But the majority did not permit the calamity to crush. The faithful were exhorted to rebuild the city. It was predicted then that Chicago would live, and live to be so mighty and so vast that the great fire would be but an incident in its history. The city was to live because beyond it were the giant forces, the teeming millions, the imperial area of the mighty West, which, having made Chicago the gateway to the East, would recreate it under the same natural necessities.

The city's optimistic faith and determination enlisted the sympathy of the world, and $5,000,000 in relief contributions poured in and thousands of telegrams offering credit to merchants supplemented this hearty and timely exhibition of Good Samaritanism. The deeds of valor displayed by firemen and citizens in fighting an unequal combat with the fire were equalled only by the heroism which appeared in the rebuilding of the city. The first structure to rise over the ruins was a board shanty, twelve by sixteen feet in dimensions. It was on Washington Street, between Dearborn and Clark, near the site of a former flourishing block, where W.D. Kerfoot had conducted a large business in real estate. The tiny structure was built hastily on the morning of October 10th, while the surrounding ashes and heaps of twisted iron were so hot that the little building had to be set in the middle of the street. The comical cabin bore the legend, "Kerfoot's Block. Everything gone but wife, children, and energy." Small as the shanty was, it was an inspiration. It marked the beginning of a city now so vast that the municipality existing before the fire seems but a shadow. Through the city run paved streets whose aggregate length would reach from Chicago to New York, and start the traveller some distance on his way to Boston. More than 100,000 street lights, kept "trimmed and burning" by the municipality at an annual cost of over $1,000,000, twinkle in the city by night.

Over a quarter of a billion of gallons of water are consumed daily by a city now protected by an efficient fire department against a repetition of the disaster of 1871. Nearly 1500 miles of sewers preserve the sanitation, while the superb ingenuity of engineers has changed the courses and reversed the currents of rivers, and with connecting canals turned the city's sewage toward the Gulf of Mexico.

The ambition of this characteristically American city is to excel in everything. When she undertook to hold a World's Fair, she determined to eclipse any previous exposition, and to secure a phenomenal attendance. When she held a Parliament of Religions she arranged that the faiths of every clime should be represented by their most learned and pious men, and that the teachings there set forth should constitute a memorable contribution to the best thought of the world. It has been said of Chicago that when she decides to be the home of the greatest poet among mankind, she will go out and get him, or, better still, produce him.

Cities affecting a more advanced culture sniff at the stock-yard atmosphere which they pretend to believe permeates the literary life of Chicago, and Eugene Field, in playful mood, accepting the jibes of distant critics, printed as the frontispiece of his _Culture's Garland_ a wreath of sausage links; but William D. Howells has acknowledged that out of Chicago is coming a literary virility destined to leave classic record in the annals of letters. Field himself occupies an honored place in the American Pantheon, and his "Little Boy Blue," though dead, forever sings his way to our firesides.

The city takes high rank as a centre for advanced education. In addition to technical schools like the Armour Institute, it has two famous Universities; the Chicago, and the Northwestern. The Chicago University began its career ten years ago. The old denominational University of the same name having been sold at auction under foreclosure, John D. Rockefeller decided to reorganize it and found a great institution of learning, and to that end pledged a portion of his fortune and secured as President, Dr. William R. Harper, of Yale. The University opened in 1892 with 702 students. To-day it has nearly 4000. It began with no less than 135 instructors; it now has 205. The University made its start with grounds, buildings, and equipments valued at $1,600,000, and invested funds amounting to $1,500,000. To-day its productive funds aggregate over $15,000,000. Women have been prominent among the University's donors, and in all the departments women students enjoy equal status with men. A student may enter at the beginning of any quarter and receive his degree at the end of any term. The colleges continue throughout the year. Recently the Chicago Institute, founded by Mrs. Emmons Blaine for training school teachers, was absorbed by the University. In fact, Dr. Harper has succeeded in merging so many professional schools that he has been amiably accused of attempting to form an educational trust. The Northwestern University, located partly in the city and partly in Evanston, a suburb, was founded in 1851. It has 296 instructors and over 3000 students. Its productive funds amount to over $3,000,000. Although conducted under denominational auspices, its charter provides that no particular religious faith shall be required of students. It has a campus of 45 acres on the Lake Michigan shore. The University includes a college of Liberal Arts, and schools of medicine, law, pharmacy, dentistry, music, and theology. Many of the departments are coeducational.

The public schools of Chicago are crowded with three quarters of a million children of parents for few of whom "Plato and the swing of Pleiades and the tall reaches of the peaks of song" had a meaning. And these children of every kindred and tongue are not herded into classes and indifferently taught. Modern science assists them from the start with anthropometric examinations, and scientific methods are in use in every school. There could be no more hopeful "sign and portent" of the city's future than is furnished by its public schools.

Voluntarily, by popular vote of the people, civil service was established in all branches of the city administration, and the principle laid down that industrious merit rather than political influence should fill the thousands of positions in the school department and city branches in general, a graphic illustration that the spoils system is not a Chicago ideal. Benevolent institutions thrive under the munificent endowment of its men of wealth. Seers like Professor David Swing have preached the Gospel to an eager people, thousands on Sunday being turned away, unable to press to the pews through the multitude of churchgoers. All these phenomena present the interesting psychological truth that with Chicago's liberty and cosmopolitan make-up has been developed a reassuring force "making for righteousness." The city is not yet prepared for canonization, but in many ways it is, in its largeness of life and tolerance, an example to the cities of the world. She is still apt, perhaps, in speaking, for example, of her art galleries to dwell overmuch upon the cost of the buildings and paintings and the number of acres.

The unprejudiced critic or historian knows that not all Chicago is pork and pig-iron, though why these industries are not as honorable as poetry and prose, perhaps they who sit in the seat of the scornful will explain. Booker T. Washington well says that a people cannot be truly great until they recognize that it is as dignified to till the soil as it is to pen an epic, and in the same line of thought it might be said that a people who "live laborious days" packing meat and handling lumber, particularly by the thousand carloads, are not necessarily belated travellers on the highway that leads to national integrity and renown.

In wealth, in population, in the high character and eager attendance in her great schools, in libraries, art, and architecture, as evidenced by institutes, buildings, and academies of design, in her letters, as displayed by the literary output, in her spiritual conquests, as shown in the teachings of her poets and preachers, and even in the periodical reforms that purify the political atmosphere, Chicago's future will undoubtedly be, like her past, phenomenal.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] Among the Sacs, "Checagau" was the name of one of their valiant warriors and colonizers, and meant "He that stands by the tree." Among the several tribes of the Algonquin group "Chekago," "Chicagong," etc., was pronounced in a variety of ways and had as many meanings.

MADISON

THE CITY OF THE FOUR LAKES

BY REUBEN G. THWAITES

In 1836, that portion of Michigan Territory which lay west of Lake Michigan, was erected into the Territory of Wisconsin. Within the borders of the nascent commonwealth there lived at that time about twelve thousand whites and nine thousand Indians. Many of the sites of future cities of Wisconsin were already occupied by agricultural settlers, isolated or in tiny groups.

Green Bay, a straggling French-Canadian settlement, had come down from the seventeenth century, maintaining a sickly existence upon the fur trade and the coasting traffic of the upper Great Lakes; Forts Winnebago (at Portage) and Crawford (at Prairie du Chien) were surrounded by meagre hamlets, chiefly of French creoles; the lead-mining region in the southwest, although sparsely settled, contained the bulk of the white population, with Mineral Point as its centre--a village having at the time an apparently brighter prospect than the new settlement at the mouth of Milwaukee River; there were also a few notches carved, at wide intervals, from the gloomy forest bordering the western shore of Lake Michigan. Outside of the settlements just enumerated, Wisconsin was practically uninhabited by whites. Here and there was to be found an Indian trader, the Yankee successor of the _coureur de bois_ of the old French _régime_, or some exceptionally adventurous farmer; but their far-separated cabins only emphasized the density of the wilderness, through which roamed untrammelled the shiftless, gipsy-like aborigines,--the comparatively harmless Chippewas, Menomonies, Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes.

On the 4th of July the territorial officers of Wisconsin qualified at Mineral Point, with Henry Dodge, a Black Hawk War hero, as Governor. In October following, the first Legislature assembled within a two-story battlement-fronted house in the little lead-region hamlet of Belmont. The highway which it faced bristled with stumps, while miners' shafts and prospectors' holes thickly dimpled the shanty neighborhood. A month was spent in selecting a capital for the infant Territory. There were seventeen applicants. Some of them were actual settlements, like Green Bay, Fond du Lac, Milwaukee, Racine, Portage, Belmont, Mineral Point, and Platteville; but others were "paper towns," existing only on maps made by real-estate speculators. Of such shadowy substance was Madison, the victor.

James Duane Doty, who had been United States Circuit Judge for the country west of Lake Michigan, had formed a town-site partnership with Stevens T. Mason, then Governor of Michigan Territory. These gentlemen preempted several tracts of government land at presumably desirable spots in the wilderness. Doty advanced the respective claims of these tracts, giving them maps and attractive names. His favorite was an undulating isthmus between Lakes Monona and Mendota,[11] in the heart of Southern Wisconsin, midway between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. This claimant he named "Madison," after the third President of the United States.

It was freely alleged at the time that Doty presented choice lots in Madison to his legislative friends. However this may be, the ostensible arguments produced were: that the chief centres of settlement in the northeast (Green Bay), the southeast (Milwaukee), and the southwest (the lead region) were so widely separated and had such divergent interests that to select one would alienate the others and make it impossible to harmoniously conduct the territorial government; again, that to build up one corner of the Territory at the expense of the others would unequally distribute the population; it was also urged that the unsettled central portion of the Territory needed the incentive to growth which the capital would give it; and lastly, Doty, the only man in Belmont that winter who seems to have known Madison, declared the site to be the most beautiful spot in the Wisconsin forest. And thus Madison won.

Beyond the understanding that the centre of the Capitol Park was to be the common corner of four sections of land which met near the middle of the isthmus, there had as yet been no thought of how this projected town in the woods should be laid out. A French half-breed, Olivier Armel, who had a temporary trading shanty on the tract, half brush and half canvas, was the only man whom the surveyor found when he arrived in a blinding snowstorm in February (1837) to set the stakes in this virgin wilderness for the future State House of Wisconsin. The streets of the town were laid out, so far as possible, upon the lines of the national capital: wide avenues radiating from the Capitol Park upon the points of the compass were bisected by other highways paralleling the shores of the two principal lakes. For names of the thoroughfares, the patriotic surveyor had recourse to the list of signatures to the federal Constitution, probably the only instance of a city's streets being exclusively named from this venerable body of lawgivers.

The first dwelling in Madison was a log house built in April by one Eben Peck, for the entertainment of the mechanics who were expected out from Milwaukee to construct the State House. It was June 10th before the building commissioner and his thirty-six workmen put in an appearance, after a toilsome overland journey of ten days through rain and mud, with no roads, and unbridged rivers which had either to be forded or swam. On the 4th of July the conerstone was laid "with appropriate toasts and speeches" by a small knot of territorial officials.

It was January, 1839, before the territorial Legislature could be accommodated at Madison; and even then the situation brought little comfort. Says a pioneer of those days: "With the session came crowds of people. The public houses were literally crammed--shakedowns were looked upon as a luxury, and lucky was the guest whose fortune it was to rest his weary limbs on a straw or hay mattress."

The little village was charmingly situated in the primeval forest. One of Madison's early teachers thus wrote of the hamlet of his young manhood:

"Those who only know of Madison now, have but a feeble
conception of its wonderful and fascinating beauty at the
beginning. In 1839 it had the look of a well-kept lawn, shaded
by fine white-oak and burr-oak trees, with a fragrant fringe of
red cedar all about the lake shores. There was then no
underbrush and thicket such as sprung up soon, when the
semi-annual fires ceased to do the duty of the rake and mower;
but the eye had a stretch quite uninterrupted, except as the
surface rose in beautiful green knolls on either lake. The
lakes then lay in natural silver beauty, prettily framed in
pebbly beach. For simple, quiet beauty, Madison in 1839 was
unequalled by anything I remember."

Despite its natural attractiveness, and its presumably favorable location, Madison was a plant of slow growth. In the summer of 1838 the census revealed the presence here of only sixty-two people, and it is recorded that there were at that time "not more than a dozen houses, built and in process of erection, counting every cabin and shanty within three miles of the Capitol," while Indian wigwams were frequently set up within sight of the doors. Four years later there were but 172 people, and in 1846 but 632. By the close of 1850, however, the population had, largely as the result of a mild "boom" in that year, grown to 1672. Five years later Horace Greeley and Bayard Taylor paid the place a visit, and in letters to the New York _Tribune_ highly extolled its beauties. As a result there was an almost immediate increase of population and a considerable advance in the price of real estate; so that at the outbreak of the Civil War there were 7000 Madisonians.

Notwithstanding the general prevalence of financial stringency, Madison prospered during the war. The State's troops were largely mobilized here, and constantly enlivened the streets; a great deal of money was necessarily spent by the State and nation for supplies and salaries, as well as by the soldiers themselves, so that throughout it all the town grew substantially. In 1870 there were 10,000 citizens, but the next decade only slightly advanced this census. About 1882, however, a variety of causes led to the commencement of a stronger growth--chiefly the rapid development of the State University, the expansion of the State's administrative affairs, the bettering of railroad facilities, and an enlargement of local manufacturing interests. During the past eighteen years there has been a steady gain, with every indication of permanency; the census of 1900 revealed the presence at the Wisconsin capital of 20,000 residents, while an additional 5000 dwell in closely abutting suburbs.

Frequent attempts to remove the capital to Milwaukee were long a potent factor in retarding the development of Madison. In 1870 the effort was nearly successful. The fact, however, that the State had by this time invested large sums of money in public buildings in and around Madison, particularly in the State University,--which institution must, by the terms of the constitution, be situated "at or near the seat of State government,"--has of late years cooled the ardor of advocates of removal, so that no fear of renewed agitation is now entertained.

In the early annals of this peaceful little city in the undulating oak grove between Monona and Mendota,--surrounded on every hand by far-stretching lakes and marshes, and thus in a measure isolated from her rural neighbors,--the historian finds little of stirring interest; and that little almost always the reflex of the Legislature, which annually until 1882, when the sessions were made biennial, came and went with much bustle and sometimes brawl. The legislative sessions were, in ante-bellum days, the events of the year, and attracted prominent men from all quarters of Wisconsin. The crude hotels were filled each winter with legislators, lobbyists and visiting politicians. The humors of the time were often uncouth. There was a deal of horse-play, hard drinking, and profanity, and occasionally a personal encounter during the heat of discussion: as in 1842, when Charles C.P. Arndt, of Brown, was killed on the floor of the council chamber by his fellow-member, James R. Vineyard, of Grant, an event to which Dickens alluded in his _American Notes_, and which gained for Wisconsin an unenviable notoriety the country over. But an undercurrent of good nature was generally observable, and strong attachments were more frequently noticeable than feuds.

Dancing and miscellaneous merry-making were the order of the times, and society at the capital was, from the first, thought to be fashionable. Even when the Legislature was not in session, Madison long remained the social as well as the political centre of Wisconsin, and overland travellers between the outlying settlements on the shores of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan or Green Bay were wont to tarry here upon their way. Several of them have left us, in journals and in letters, pleasing descriptions of their reception by the good-natured inhabitants, and the impressions made on them by the natural attractions of this beauty-spot.

In 1856, Madison was the scene of political excitement of a serious character. William Barstow (Democrat) claimed to have been reelected Governor over Coles Bashford (Republican), by 157 majority. The Democrats controlled the State board of canvassers, and the Republicans claimed that this board had tampered with the returns. Upon January 27th both Barstow and Bashford took the oath of office, but the former and his friends continued to hold the State House. The State Supreme Court was called upon by Bashford, in a _quo warranto_ suit, to oust the incumbent and give the office of Governor to the relator. Thus commenced the most celebrated case ever tried by this bench. This was the first time in the history of the United States that a State court had been called upon to decide as to the right of a Governor to hold his seat. Its jurisdiction was questioned by Barstow's attorneys. The contest waged fiercely for some weeks, with eminent counsel on both sides, the court at last holding that it had jurisdiction. The court then proceeded with its inquiry, and March 24th declared that Bashford had received a majority of 1009. A few days before this Barstow had resigned, and Lieutenant-Governor McArthur was holding the office by virtue of the constitution. McArthur was defiant, and announced his determination to hold the post at all hazards. But the court promptly ruled that Barstow's title being worthless, McArthur could not, of course, succeed to it.

Throughout this long contest, it may well be imagined that popular excitement in and around Madison ran high. The respective bands of partisans were armed and drilling, in anticipation of a desperate encounter. It would have taken small provocation to ignite this tinder-box, but the management on both sides was judicious; and although the opposing forces had frequent quarrels, and made numerous and vigorous threats of violence, no blows were struck. Upon the day after the court's decision Bashford and a bodyguard advanced through corridors crowded with his followers, to McArthur's office, and, showing his writ, quietly announced that he would henceforth take charge of State affairs. McArthur hesitated, but a glance at the threatening crowd induced him to retire hurriedly through the door. The friends of Bashford cheered in triumph, and then poured into the office to congratulate the new Governor.

As has been previously stated, the corner-stone of the old territorial State House was laid July 4, 1837. The building cost about $60,000. An old engraving of the structure, which we herewith reproduce, shows that it was of the then prevalent Americanized-Greek style of which there are still remaining a few examples, chiefly in the Southern States; contemporary accounts agree that it was rather superior in character to most of the Western capitols of sixty years ago. In 1857, the Legislature authorized the enlargement of the capitol. This "enlargement" was but nominal; the plans developed into a new building on the site of the old, to cost somewhat over half a million dollars. Lack of funds because of the Civil War caused the work to proceed slowly, so that it was 1870 before the dome of the new State House was completed. In 1882, two new transverse wings were provided for. Thus the total cost of the present capitol and the development of the surrounding park has been about $900,000. The building is, however, now sadly behind the times in respect of light, ventilation and sanitary conveniences, and there is some thought of a new State House which shall be more nearly worthy of a rich and fast-growing commonwealth of over two millions of people.

The University of Wisconsin was incorporated under an act of Legislature approved the 26th day of July, 1848; but it was the 16th of January, 1850, before the first chancellor was inaugurated, and the 5th of February before the doors were opened for the reception of pupils. During the first twenty years of its existence, the institution was beset with vicissitudes, and obliged to battle against popular indifference and even opposition. The congressional land grants which were designed to create a fund for its endowment were recklessly disposed of by the legislatures of the 50's, avowedly to encourage speedy settlement of the State, under the plea that when the commonwealth became well populated it would be rich enough to support the University by taxation; it was also maintained that pioneers had little need for or patience with higher education. Gradually, the University gained recognition as the logical head of the educational system of the State; and at last, after a half-century of growth, it has developed from a rustic academy of twenty students into an institution of national reputation, with a talented faculty giving instruction to nearly 3000 students, assembled from many States and countries.

The University is admirably situated, chiefly upon two hills lying a mile to the west of the State House and commanding wide views of the surrounding country. The grounds comprise about 350 acres of hill and plain, the western half of which is occupied by the buildings and experimental farm of the College of Agriculture. Mendota, the largest and most beautiful of the chain of lakes, lies directly to the north, its attractive shores often rising into steep bluffs, surmounted by summer cottages, or swelling into distant hills besprinkled with prosperous farmsteads, while the towers and chimneys of the State Hospital for the Insane fret the sky-line beyond the farthest bay. A broad straight avenue leads directly eastward to the ridge crowned by the white dome of the State House; while to the south the view ordinarily ends with the silvery expanse of Lake Monona, glistening through the trees, but when the foliage has thinned, the southern horizon is sufficiently extended, both from town and university vantage-points, to comprise the far-off waters of Lake Waubesa. The outlook from University Hill, over-topping the tree-embowered town, which spreads gracefully, with up-thrust tower and dome and steeple, over Monona Ridge, is, particularly upon a moonlit night in summer, one of the most charming in America; while from Observatory Hill, just westward, one obtains a widely extended view of lakes and forest and purple hills which, especially under the glow of sunset, has won the unstinted plaudits of competent critics, some of whom have likened it to Old World scenes far-famed in song and story.

Few of the buildings of the State University are architecturally worthy of mention here. The original structures were North and South Halls, mere four-story stone boxes. The Doric University Hall, surmounting University Hill, and one of the early buildings, has of recent years been greatly improved and extended, and now has some dignity of outline as well as historic association. The new Engineering Building, in gray brick, is pleasing in form and color; Science Hall and the Gymnasium, great piles of staring red brick, are conspicuous examples of the average college buildings of our day; while the best one can say of the old Library Hall, Chemical Building, Machine Shop, and Chadbourne Hall (the women's dormitory) is that they will continue to serve a useful purpose until the day when the State feels inclined to replace them with creditable structures. Upon Observatory Hill is the dignified Washburn Observatory, and upon the western slope the growing mass of buildings appertaining to the State Experimental Farm maintained by the College of Agriculture.

At the eastern (townward) front of University Hill, and occupying land once a part of the campus, a building has of late been reared by the commonwealth which not only is far better than any of the University structures, but quite outranks in dignity and thoroughness of modern construction and equipment all other buildings owned by the State of Wisconsin. This is the home of the library and museum of the State Historical Society. The University library and its accompanying seminary rooms for advanced study, each with its special library, occupy quarters here, but the building itself is administered by the society, which serves as the trustee of the State. Built in the Italian Doric order, of Bedford sandstone, the State Historical Library Building is massive, dignified, and graceful, a worthy housing for one of the most important reference libraries in America. The Wisconsin Historical Society[12] has long ceased to be merely a feature of Madison or of Wisconsin; it is to-day regarded as one of the foremost institutions of this character in the country--its splendid library of 235,000 volumes being one of the finest collections of Americana extant, rich in maps and manuscripts as well as books; and its publications rank with those of the similar societies of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Madison is fortunate in her elementary and secondary public schools as well as in possessing the State University; while several admirable private and denominational schools have found it desirable to settle here, under the wing of the great group of State colleges. As is becoming in an educational centre, much attention is here paid to church life. The large congregations have been careful to select for their pulpits men of prominence and ability, fitted to attract the student mind; and the Christian associations connected with the State University are conducted upon a high plane of usefulness.

In Madison there dwell three well-accentuated classes of inhabitants: those relying upon trade and industry, the State and federal officials, and the university element, each of them growing in numbers and importance. There is, however, far less differentiation of interests and aspirations than is commonly seen in college towns. It has for many years been the continual aim of several influential clubs, notably the Woman's, the Literary, the Contemporary, the Six O'clock, and the Town and Gown,--in which both "townfolk" and "gown folk" freely commingle,--to break down the usual class barriers. The result is that college men coming to Madison from other institutions find here few of the sharp social distinctions to which they have elsewhere become accustomed.

But while town and gown are practically one in Madison, the official class has not until of late been conspicuous in her social life. The brevity of political tenure, rendering the permanent inhabitants in a measure indifferent to the "come-and-goes," has doubtless had much to do with this; while a contributory element has been the fact that many State officials, finding the cost of living at the capital somewhat higher than in the small interior towns, have heretofore left their families at home. With the new statute prohibiting public employés from using railroad passes, transportation to and from home now forms an important item of expense to the office holder, and a large proportion of them are moving their families to the seat of government. It is fair to predict that, through the influence of the clubs, which have recently taken upon themselves the payment of social courtesies to the official class, these barriers may in turn be removed, as they have between town and gown.

The native American element in Madison is chiefly from New York State, with a large sprinkling of New Englanders, especially from Vermont. Perhaps one third of the 25,000 people in this community are of German parentage, and there is a considerable and influential Scandinavian element, mostly Norwegian; numerous other nationalities there are, but these are the most conspicuous. Despite this large foreign contingent, however, and the cosmopolitan tone of university society, the strong flavor of Vermont and New York, originally given to this community in the days before the Civil War, is still the dominant characteristic in the social life of Madison. Many discriminating visitors frequently in their hours of first impressions, liken her to a staid New England college town; while others revert to some demure hill-town of Western New York for the type which best describes the social side of this city of the Wisconsin lakes.

The railroad facilities of Madison are undoubtedly remarkable for a town of its size; these are attracting wholesale houses and warehousemen, and new factories are talked of. The existing industries employ some fifteen hundred men. The schools, the university, the unusual library facilities and the beauty and healthfulness of the town bring to it an ever-increasing accession of cultured people with moderate fixed incomes. Summer visitors from St. Louis, New Orleans, and other southern cities of the Mississippi Valley are encouraged to come to the Four Lakes. The comfort of the inhabitants is greatly enhanced by a system of macadamized streets which is relatively the best in Wisconsin; and there is also maintained, by popular subscription, a labyrinth of twenty-five miles of suburban drives, enriched by the art of the landscape gardener, and leading to favorite view-points. A "Forty Thousand Club" is strenuously seeking to exploit and double the material interests of the town, within the present decade. But when all is said, Madison's distinguishing characteristics, as well as her neighborhood gossip, will probably long remain such as properly pertain to the political and educational centre of a rapidly developing commonwealth.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] The Indian names now given to the lakes of this region are modern appellations; originally they were numbered First, Second, Third, and Fourth as they progressed towards the source--the order in which they were encountered by the federal surveyors in ascending the Catfish, a branch of Rock River, and the outlet of the lakes. Their present names, adopted in 1856, are Kegonsa, Waubesa, Monona, and Mendota, respectively.

[12] The author has, of course, omitted to say what many of his readers understand, that as secretary he has had a large share in giving the Wisconsin Historical Society its conspicuous position in the public mind.--EDITOR.

MINNEAPOLIS--ST. PAUL

THE TWIN CITIES

BY CHARLES B. ELLIOTT

"We are citizens of two fair cities," said a Genoese gentleman
to a Florentine artist, "and if I were not a Genoese I should
wish to be a Florentine." "And I," replied the artist, "if I
were not Florentine--" "You would wish to be a Genoese," said
the other. "No," replied the artist, "I should wish to be
Florentine."

Within a circle with a radius of ten miles, enclosing the Falls of St. Anthony, are two modern cities with a population of almost four hundred thousand. The pioneer settler died a few months ago and the first child born there is now but passing middle life. And yet a little more than half a century after the landing of the Pilgrims the cross of Christ and the arms of France were carved on an oak tree which stood on the site of the present city of Minneapolis.

In the summer of 1680 Louis Hennepin, a Recollet monk, in company with Michael Accault and a Picard named Du Gay first explored the Upper Mississippi. Hennepin wrote a famous description of his travels, and gave the name to the falls he had discovered. But La Salle, Hennepin's fellow-voyager across the Atlantic, was the first to write a description of the Falls of St. Anthony, from information which must have been furnished by one of Hennepin's party.

For almost a century after Hennepin no white man visited the Falls of St. Anthony. In 1776, Captain Jonathan Carver, of Connecticut, started on an exploring expedition, to the Northwest and reached the falls about the middle of November. Carver made the first picture of the falls and gives an accurate description, from which it appears that the island which is now many feet below the waterfall was then in its midst. Carver greatly appreciated the beauty of the country, but, like Hennepin, passed away leaving only his description and his picture. The War of the Revolution came and left no trace on the Northwest. At its close the sovereignty of France and of the new nation which had been born into the world faced each other on the banks of the Mississippi. In 1803 the west as well as the east bank became part of the domain of the United States. But the inhabitants knew nothing of the change until Captain Zebulon M. Pike, of the army, came to put an end to alleged improper transactions on the part of certain British traders. On an island a few miles below the falls Pike held a council with the Sioux and signed a treaty which extinguished the Indian title to a tract of land extending nine miles on each side of the river north from the mouth of the Minnesota River, and including the Falls of St. Anthony. Twelve years later Major Long, with two grandsons of Carver, ascended the river from St. Louis in a six-oared skiff, and wrote that "the murmuring of the cascade, the roaring of the river and the thunder of the cataract all contribute to render the scene the most interesting and magnificent of any I ever before witnessed."

About 1811 the philanthropic Earl of Selkirk attempted to establish a colony in the Red River Valley. Six years later it was threatened by starvation. The noble Earl then visited the country, and his presence caused so much disquietude in the breasts of the Indian agents that, fearing improper foreign influence over the Indians, they induced the Government to establish a military post in the country. In August, 1819, Colonel Leavenworth, with ninety-eight soldiers of the Fifth Infantry, pitched their tents near the mouth of the Minnesota River, about eight miles below the falls. A year later, Colonel Snelling, who had succeeded to the command, built the fort on the bluff where it now stands, and gave it the name of Fort St. Anthony. In 1824 General Scott suggested to the War Department the propriety of changing the name of the fort to that of one whose services to the country had been more conspicuous than those of Father Hennepin's patron saint.

In 1821 the soldiers built a mill on the west side of the river, near where now stands one of the greatest flouring mills in the world. The fort was, of course, the centre of what life there was in the country, and its people occasionally came into contact with the great world beyond. In 1826 the Indian agent, Major Taliafero, officiated at the marriage of the slave, Dred Scott, who was destined to play a part in history doubtless out of all proportion to his expectations. Colonel Snelling's son Joseph was something of a _littérateur_, and, after fighting a duel with a young officer, he became involved in a more savage, although less bloody, contest with N.P. Willis.

The land about the falls was a military reservation and therefore not open to settlement. As early as 1837 a Swiss watchmaker by the name of Perry attempted to settle there, but was driven off by the soldiers. Going a few miles down the river, he became in 1838, the first settler upon the present site of the city of St. Paul. His only competitor for this honor is a certain one-eyed personage of evil disposition and unattractive appearance whose true name was Parrant, but who became known to fame as Pig's Eye. With an eye to the advantages of the liquor business, Parrant located his claim beyond the limits of the reservation and near the river, where it became a flourishing resort for soldiers, Indians, and other frontier characters. It was the head of navigation on the river and entered into competition with the neighboring village of Stillwater for the proud position of the metropolis of the Territory. A town near by was surveyed in 1847 and during the following two years, as we are credibly informed by a local historian, "maturative and creative influence, slowly but surely tended towards civilization." From the same source we learn that in 1848 "the _nuclei_ of civilization" consisted of a church, a school, and a hotel,--surely not a bad beginning. The history of the modern city properly begins in 1848, when Minnesota was organized as a territory with St. Paul as the provisional capital. The territorial government was organized with Alexander Ramsey (afterwards Governor of the State, Senator, and Secretary of War) as Governor, and duly proclaimed on June 1, 1848. The enabling act named St. Paul as the temporary capital, but left the people free to choose at the first general election a permanent place of government.

In the meantime, a rival town had grown up at the east end of the Falls of St. Anthony, and the long struggle for supremacy began with the selection of a permanent capital. The Indian title to the lands was extinguished in 1838, but two years earlier the commandant at the fort, Major Plympton, availed himself of his superior facilities and staked out a claim and built a cabin near the east end of the falls. Other claims were located soon after, all of which ultimately became the property of Franklin Steele and Pierre Bottineau, names famous in the early history of the locality. Early in 1847 there were about fifty people in the village, but in that year the van of "that great army which is moving yet but never stopping" began to arrive.

In 1848 three hundred people were on the ground, and the two towns of St. Anthony City and St. Anthony were duly surveyed and launched upon the market. In the same year it is interesting to find the names of Robert Rantoul and Caleb Cushing, famous statesmen of the day, among the purchasers of a nine-tenths interest in the east-side water power. During this year both the villages of St. Anthony and St. Paul were thriving under the impulse given by the organization of a regular government. St. Anthony now obtained a post-office, established a library association with two hundred books on its shelves, and indulged in a lecture course by local talent. St. Paul became the capital, but the controversy was not finally settled until 1872, when a compromise was effected by the permanent location of the State University at Minneapolis. The growth of the two villages during the next decade was very rapid. In 1855 Laurence Oliphant, diplomat and traveller, came down the river in a canoe and wrote interesting descriptions of St. Anthony and St. Paul and uncomplimentary notices of the people to _Blackwood's Magazine_. He was charmed with the falls and the "comfortable, civilized aspect of the town," which was then becoming known as a "watering place." Hotel manners in the capital city were not satisfactory, but the opinions of England and the Crimean War expressed by prominent citizens in the free and easy vernacular of the frontier made good reading.

In the meantime another village had grown up on the west side of the falls. In 1849 the old government mill, the little house a few yards back and two cabins built by missionaries on the banks of Lake Calhoun were the only buildings on the west side of the river. In that year Robert Smith, a member of Congress from Illinois, through some means best known to himself, obtained from the War Department the privilege of purchasing the mill and the house and of making a claim to 160 acres of land. This tract was carefully selected for the purpose of including the valuable waterpower rights on the west side. In the same year John H. Stevens, then postmaster at the fort, also obtained a permit and entered a claim to the land now covered by the heart of the city. While Smith and Stevens were favored others were driven from the reservation by the soldiers. Stevens built the first frame house in Minneapolis, and it now stands in one of the beautiful parks of the city as an evidence of the antiquity of things. Legal titles could not be obtained on the west side until 1855, although by that time more than two hundred houses had been built. In the following year the city was incorporated, but in 1862 this form of government was abandoned, and the people lived under a simple township organization until 1867. Five years later, in 1872, the two cities of St. Anthony and Minneapolis were consolidated under the name of the City of Minneapolis, which then entered upon a period of phenomenal growth.

We now find two cities in the stress of a rivalry which continued for many years. The west line of St. Paul soon became the east line of Minneapolis. The existence of two cities so near together was, as we have seen, due not to deliberate choice but to circumstances. In early days the fall, with its abundant waterpower and attractive scenery, was the point about which the minds of people revolved; it was, however, on the military reservation acquired by Pike, and settlers were driven to find a foothold farther down the river but within reach of the fort. There were some difficulties in the way of navigation to the falls, but these would soon have been removed. St. Paul was the capital of the State, and thus became the political and professional centre. In the contest for political honors this supremacy is still maintained. Its leaders control the politics of the State. Governors and senators are created in St. Paul and not in Minneapolis. The business enterprise of St. Paul found vent in building up great wholesale houses and in the development of railway and general transportation enterprises. Minneapolis, by reason of its location, became a great manufacturing centre. The vast pine forests of the north sent millions of logs to its mills. Around the falls were built the greatest flouring mills in the world, and its location upon the eastern edge of the great prairies of Minnesota and Dakota soon made it the primary wheat market of the world. The commercial and business interests of the two cities thus for a number of years developed along different and clearly defined lines. The increase of population is shown by the following table:

Year. St. Paul. Minneapolis. St. Anthony.

1850 1,083 .... 538
1860 10,401 2,564 3,285
1870 20,030 13,066 5,013
1880 41,473 46,887 ....
1890 133,156 164,738 ....
1900 163,632 202,781 ....

The falls was the point at which the early thought and life of Minneapolis centred, and the foundation of its early business prosperity. Paul Bourget, in his _Outre Mer_, speaking of the reasons for the location of American cities, says, "If any feature such as a waterfall permitted factories, industries were established. Minneapolis had no other origin. The falls of the Mississippi lent themselves to a series of incomparable mills and this was the starting-point of one of the future capitals of the world." When the Government established a fort it took the name of the falls, and the first town-sites were only distinguishable from each other by the difference between St. Anthony and St. Anthony City.

When it was rumored that the waterpower was about to be destroyed, consternation rested upon the little community. In 1868 the historian Parkman had written:

"Great changes, however, have taken place here and are still in
progress. The rock is a very soft and friable sandstone,
overlaid by a stratum of limestone; and it is crumbling with
such rapidity under the action of the water that the cataract
will soon be little more than a rapid.[13] Other changes
equally disastrous in the artistic point of view are going on
even more quickly. Beside the falls stands a city which by an
ingenious combination of Greek and Sioux languages received
the name of Minneapolis, the City of the Water, and which in
1867 contained ten thousand inhabitants, two national banks,
and an opera house, while its rival city of St. Anthony,
immediately opposite, boasts a gigantic water cure and the
State University. In short, the great natural beauty of the
place is utterly spoiled."

Minneapolis is essentially a manufacturing city. For many years the principal industry was the manufacture of lumber, which in its various forms has now reached great magnitude. The annual output for the five years prior to 1850 was 1,500,000 feet a year. In 1870 it reached 118,500,000 feet a year; in 1880 it was 195,500,000; in 1890, 300,000,000; in 1900 more than 500,000,000, and in addition 57,000,000 shingles and 94,000,000 laths. An army of men is engaged in the work of cutting the logs on the timber lands of the north. These are driven or floated down the river to the booms near the mills which line the river in the northern part of the city.

The prominence of the city in flour-milling is due to its location and to the skill and ingenuity of the men who have been engaged in the business. Minneapolis has passed through three well-defined milling periods. Prior to 1870 the ancient process of grinding wheat between the upper and nether millstones was in use, which turned into middlings much of the precious gluten. In 1872 an emigrant French miller named Legroux devised an apparatus for purifying middlings, and as a result the product became famous as "Minnesota Patent Flour," and brought pre-eminence and wealth to the Minnesota millers. A practical monopoly existed until the Eastern millers discovered that the process could be as well applied to the winter wheat of Minnesota as to the spring. Then began a new struggle for pre-eminence. After searching through the world, the Minneapolis millers discovered in Hungary a process of milling hard wheat which finally disposed of the ancient millstone and carried the wheat between rolls of smooth and corrugated surface until, by a process of gradual reduction, the desired fineness was secured. Foremost in the work of developing this great industry was the late Charles A. Pillsbury, to whose enterprise the city is greatly indebted.

At the present time the Minneapolis mills can produce 76,366 barrels of flour a day, which is the largest daily capacity of any group of mills in the world. The flour export for 1900 was 4,702,485 barrels. Thus the mills of Minneapolis, if grinding steadily, could give a loaf of bread every day to every man, woman, and child in the States of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.