There are no foreigners in the brotherhood of the nation. In no one direction has the state made more wonderful advances than in its agricultural population. Our State University and primary schools have proved an inestimable blessing. These country homes are surrounded by comforts, and no state in the Union has a more intelligent rural population, keenly alive to the state's interests. It is a fact full of promise, for this new blood from the country homes reinforces the life of the cities, and adds to the civil welfare. Nothing in our history, to my mind, gives greater hope for the future; for the strength and safety of the nation is in its Christian homes. In the past they have always been the best resource of the nation in the hours of her trials.

When I think of our beautiful halls of education, our thronged university, our hospitals and homes of mercy, our churches with heavenward-pointing spires, our teeming warehouses, our busy manufactories, our world-famed flour mills with their vast exportations, and that tremendous tide of living souls that comes to us year by year from other shores to become incorporated into our citizenship and to form the new race which God is raising up here to be in the forefront of great achievement, I can only say with a grateful heart: "What nation is there so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God in all things that we call upon Him for?"

In conclusion, to speak last of the missionary work for the Christianization of the Indians of this state and of all the country westward, there are those present, members of your society, and representatives of the press, who have always given me their sympathy in my efforts for these brown children of our Heavenly Father. And I am sure that they will rejoice with me that there are now over twenty-five thousand Indian communicants of Christian churches; over twenty-two thousand Indian children in schools; and thirty-eight thousand who speak English. As a people, they are fast learning the civilization which will make them our fellow-citizens.

PROGRESS OF MINNESOTA DURING THE HALF

CENTURY.

BY HON. CHARLES E. FLANDRAU.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I have been chosen to present to you, on this unusually interesting occasion, a subject which, if treated in the usual way, would be a dismal array of heavy statistics. Whether the selection was made with reference to my peculiar talent for dullness, I am unable to say; but, fortunately for you, I am limited to half an hour, in which to tell you all about the growth of Minnesota in the last fifty years. Think of it! I am expected to compress that vast subject into the space of thirty minutes. It looks to me a good deal like holding up a man and saying to him, "Write me the history of the world while I wait."

If I desired to let you down easily and shield you from dreary figures and calculations, I could say, go out into the state anywhere and look about you and whatever you see, or hear of, which represents the handiwork of man, may be taken as part of the growth of the state in the last half century. Fifty years ago it was almost in the exact condition in which it was left by its generous and bountiful Creator, and now it is one of the great and prosperous states of the American Union. Great cities have arisen where, at the beginning of the period, were empty and nameless spaces, only inhabited by the primitive savage. Distances have been annihilated; localities that were then thirty days apart are now within reach in a few hours' journey. The luxurious Pullman car has superseded the Red River cart and the Indian pony; the frontier camp has given way to the comfortably appointed hotel. The varicolored dress of the picturesque half-sayage voyageur has

yielded to the somber costume of the civilized citizen. The farmer has usurped the place of the hunter; the old frontier guide, whose unerring instinct would pilot you safely across the continent, is now lost in the bewildering intricacies of artificial civilization; and the original proprietor of the land is a miserable prisoner, corralled, dismounted, and disarmed.

It is not for me to decide upon the justice of all these vital changes. It is accepted by the nations in the progress of the world. The stronger despoils the weaker, on the plea of the necessities of the advance of civilization, to which has recently been added the elusive generality of manifest destiny. The Boer must yield to the Briton, the Spaniard and Filipino to the American; and no doubt, should the autocratic Russian outstrip them all in the race for power, which is by no means impossible, and, according to the recognized authorities, quite probable, they may all have to succumb to his brutal dictation under the very adaptable name of benevolent assimilation. To what ends the selfish passions of man may ultimately lead, and to what judgment his unrighteous deeds may subject him, the Great Spirit can be the only arbiter.

There has been more justice, and less arbitrary exertion of force, in the absorption of the country of the North American Indian, than in similar cases in other lands. We have made a show of purchasing his domains; but had he declined to part with them, he would have fallen under the wheels of the juggernaut of advancing civilization, as have all the weaker nations.

With these reflections, I will take up the subject that I have been asked to consider.

When what is now Minnesota came from the hands of its Creator, I can say, without exaggeration, it was about the best equipped country, of equal size, to be found in North America. It is located on the summit of the continent, where the waters flow in three directions, the Mississippi due south to the Gulf of Mexico, the Red river of the North due north to mingle with the waters of the Arctic sea, the St. Louis river east to the waters of lake Superior and thence to the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. On its fair bosom were ten thousand beautiful lakes, great and small, filled with delicious fish. A large portion of its surface was covered with a mighty forest of pine

and hardwood trees, giving a home to myriads of wild animals, moose, deer, cariboo, elk, bear, wolf, and others. Its streams. were the home of the beaver and the otter; and its vast prairies swarmed with the buffalo and the antelope. Sugar maple groves and wild rice fields abounded. Nothing that contributes to the well-being of man seemed wanting.

Its climate was salubrious beyond comparison with any other portion of the earth's surface. There were no indigenous diseases, and in fact no excuse for sickness or death. So thoroughly was this idea impressed upon the mind and belief of the old settler that there was a universally accepted saying, that no one had ever died in Minnesota but two men, one of whom was hanged for killing the other. I can well remember that the first natural death that I heard of, after my settlement in the Territory, caused me a greater shock than the thousands that have since occurred.

The soil was phenomenally rich and fertile. It was especially adapted to the production of the greatest of all staple grains, wheat; and it was unexcelled in the growth of all other cereals.

The first inhabitants were the Indians, and the commerce which arose from their hunting of fur animals soon attracted the white men. The first white occupants were the fur companies and the missionaries, the first for gain, and the missionaries to introduce among the savages the teachings of Christianity. The fur trade may be said to have been the first business transacted in Minnesota. The men controlling it were of a higher type than generally appear on the border in the first instance, Henry H. Sibley, Henry M. Rice, Norman W. Kittson, William H. Forbes, and others. The business expanded to great proportions and made St. Paul one of the largest fur markets in America.

Very little was known of Minnesota outside of its fur trade, until its organization as a Territory in 1849; although the attractions presented by its pine forests had drawn within its borders a few lumbermen before that event, who were settled about the Falls of St. Anthony, and in the valley of the St. Croix. They soon increased in number, built sawmills, and in these fifty years have pushed the lumber business from a very small beginning to such immense proportions that there were cut in the last season 1,629,110,000 feet. Preparatory to the

census of 1880, the United States government had an estimate made of all the standing pine in the state, and called it 10,000,000,000 feet, which was far below the truth, as the amount cut annually since proves. But the encroachments made on the pine forests have been sufficient to create fear that they will soon become exhausted if measures of preservation are not speedily taken, and earnest work is being done to preserve them through government reserves and parks. This effort may succeed, but it is so complicated by private ownership that it looks improbable. Many large fortunes have been made in lumber in Minnesota.

The first Territorial Legislature convened in St. Paul, in the dining room of the old Central House, on the third day of September, 1849. The councillors numbered nine; and the members of the house, eighteen. The governor,-now the hon. ored president of this society,-delivered a message that was admirably adapted to the situation, and was intended to attract attention to the Territory and invite immigration. It succeeded to the fullest extent, and the Territory began to grow in population rapidly.

The census that had been taken in 1849, under the organic act, gave the whole Territory, which then extended to the Missouri river and included the greater part of what is now North and South Dakota, four thousand seven hundred and eighty inhabitants, of which St. Paul had eight hundred and forty. The immigration was moderate until the year 1855, when it began to develop enormously. It came from all directions, by wagon trains from Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and other states, and by steamboats from everywhere. Its magnitude can best be understood, when I tell you that the packet company running boats on the Mississippi brought into St. Paul that year thirty thousand immigrants. These people generally sought farms, and spread themselves over the country; but no agriculture worth mentioning, except such as was necessary for home consumption, was developed until after 1857. The census of 1895, taken by the state, gives us a population of 1,574,619. The growth since will undoubtedly swell the present total to nearly 2,000,000.

The newcomers naturally located along the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, and gradually extended into the interior; but so many of them remained in the cities and engaged