Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada

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.

Of this almost unknown country, pierced by the road west from Larimore, I can only make the briefest notes. I need not say that this open, unobstructed highway of arable land and habitable country, from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains, was an astonishment to me; but it is more to the purpose to say that the fertile region was a surprise to railway men who are perfectly familiar with the West.

We had passed some snow in the night, which had been very cold, but there was very little at Larimore, a considerable town; there was a high, raw wind during the day, and a temperature of about 10° above, which heavily frosted the car windows. At Devil’s Lake (a body of brackish water twenty-eight miles long) is a settlement three years old, and from this and two insignificant stations beyond were shipped, in 1887, 1,500,000 bushels of wheat. The country beyond is slightly rolling, fine land, has much wheat, little houses scattered about, some stock, very promising altogether. Minot, where we crossed the Mouse River the second time, is a village of 700 people, with several brick houses and plenty of saloons. Thence we ran up to a plateau some three hundred feet higher than the Mouse River Valley, and found a land more broken, and interspersed with rocky land and bowlders—the only touch of “bad lands” I recall on the route. We crossed several small streams, White Earth, Sandy, Little Muddy, and Muddy, and before reaching Williston descended into the valley of the Missouri, reached Fort Buford, where the Yellowstone comes in, entered what is called Paradise Valley, and continued parallel with the Missouri as far as the mouth of Milk River. Before reaching this we crossed the Big Muddy and the Poplar rivers, both rising in Canada. At Poplar Station is a large Indian agency, and hundreds of Teton Sioux Indians (I was told 1800) camped there in their conical tepees. I climbed the plateau above the station where the Indians bury their dead, wrapping the bodies in blankets and buffalo-robes, and suspending them aloft on crossbars supported by stakes, to keep them from the wolves. Beyond Assiniboin I saw a platform in a cottonwood-tree on which reposed the remains of a chief and his family. This country is all good, so far as I could see and learn.

It gave me a sense of geographical deficiency in my education to travel three hundred miles on a river I had never heard of before. But it happened on the Milk River, a considerable but not navigable stream, although some six hundred miles long. The broad Milk River Valley is in itself an empire of excellent land, ready for the plough and the wheat-sower. Judging by the grass (which cures into the most nutritious feed as it stands), there had been no lack of rain during the summer; but if there is lack of water, all the land can be irrigated by the Milk River, and it may also be said of the country beyond to Great Falls that frequent streams make irrigation easy, if there is scant rainfall. I should say that this would be the only question about water.

Leaving the Milk River Valley, we began to curve southward, passing Fort Assiniboin on our right. In this region and beyond at Fort Benton great herds of cattle are grazed by Government contractors, who supply the posts with beef. At the Big Sandy Station they were shipping cattle eastward. We crossed the Marias River (originally named Maria’s River), a stream that had the respectful attention of Lewis and Clarke, and the Teton, a wilfully erratic watercourse in a narrow valley, which caused the railway constructors a good deal of trouble. We looked down, in passing, on Fort Benton, nestled in a bend of the Missouri; a smart town, with a daily newspaper, an old trading station. Shortly after leaving Assiniboin we saw on our left the Bear Paw Mountains and the noble Highwood Mountains, fine peaks, snow-dusted, about thirty miles from us, and adjoining them the Belt Mountains. Between them is a shapely little pyramid called the Wolf Butte. Far to our right were the Sweet Grass Hills, on the Canada line, where gold-miners are at work. I have noted of all this country that it is agriculturally fine. After Fort Benton we had glimpses of the Rockies, off to the right (we had seen before the Little Rockies in the south, towards Yellowstone Park); then the Bird-tail Divide came in sight, and the mathematically Square Butte, sometimes called Fort Montana.

At noon, November 20th, we reached Great Falls, where the Sun River, coming in from the west, joins the Missouri. The railway crosses the Sun River, and runs on up the left bank of the Missouri. Great Falls, which lies in a bend of the Missouri on the cast side, was not then, but soon will be, connected with the line by a railway bridge. I wish I could convey to the reader some idea of the beauty of the view as we came out upon the Sun River Valley, or the feeling of exhilaration and elevation we experienced. I had come to no place before that did not seem remote, far from home, lonesome. Here the aspect was friendly, livable, almost home-like. We seemed to have come out, after a long journey, to a place where one might be content to stay for some time—to a far but fair country, on top of the world, as it were. Not that the elevation is great—only about 3000 feet above the sea—nor the horizon illimitable, as on the great plains; its spaciousness is brought within human sympathy by guardian hills and distant mountain ranges.

A more sweet, smiling picture than the Sun River Valley the traveller may go far to see. With an average breadth of not over two and a half to five miles, level, richly grassed, flanked by elevations that swell up to plateaus, through the valley the Sun River, clear, full to the grassy banks, comes down like a ribbon of silver, perhaps 800 feet broad before its junction. Across the far end of it, seventy-five miles distant, but seemingly not more than twenty, run the silver serrated peaks of the Rocky Mountains, snow-clad and sparkling in the sun. At distances of twelve and fifty miles up the valley have been for years prosperous settlements, with school-houses and churches, hitherto cut off from the world.

The whole rolling, arable, though treeless country in view is beautiful, and the far prospects are magnificent. I suppose that something of the homelikeness of the region is due to the presence of the great Missouri River (a connection with the world we know), which is here a rapid, clear stream, in permanent rock-laid banks. At the town a dam has been thrown across it, and the width above the dam, where we crossed it, is about 1800 feet. The day was fair and not cold, but a gale of wind from the south-west blew with such violence that the ferry-boat was unmanageable, and we went over in little skiffs, much tossed about by the white-capped waves.

In June, 1886, there was not a house within twelve miles of this place. The country is now taken up and dotted with claim shanties, and Great Falls is a town of over 1000 inhabitants, regularly laid out, with streets indeed extending far on to the prairie, a handsome and commodious hotel, several brick buildings, and new houses going up in all directions. Central lots, fifty feet by two hundred and fifty, are said to sell for $5000, and I was offered a corner lot on Tenth Street, away out on the prairie, for $1500, including the corner stake.

It is difficult to write of this country without seeming exaggeration, and the habitual frontier boastfulness makes the acquisition of bottom facts difficult. It is plain to be seen that it is a good grazing country, and the experimental fields of wheat near the town show that it is equally well adapted to wheatraising. The vegetables grown there are enormous and solid, especially potatoes and turnips; I have the outline of a turnip which measured seventeen inches across, seven inches deep, and weighed twenty-four pounds. The region is underlaid by bituminous coal, good coking quality, and extensive mines are opening in the neighborhood. I have no doubt from what I saw and heard that iron of good quality (hematite) is abundant. It goes without saying that the Montana mountains are full of other minerals. The present advantage of Great Falls is in the possession of unlimited water-power in the Missouri River.

As to rainfall and climate? The grass shows no lack of rain, and the wheat was raised in 1887 without irrigation. But irrigation from the Missouri and Sun rivers is easy, if needed. The thermometer shows a more temperate and less rigorous climate than Minnesota and north Dakota. Unless everybody fibs, the winters are less severe, and stock ranges and fattens all winter. Less snow falls here than farther east and south, and that which falls does not usually remain long. The truth seems to be that the mercury occasionally goes very low, but that every few days a warm Pacific wind from the south-west, the “Chinook,” blows a gale, which instantly raises the temperature, and sweeps off the snow in twenty-four hours. I was told that ice rarely gets more than ten inches thick, and that ploughing can be done as late as the 20th of December, and recommenced from the 1st to the 15th of March. I did not stay long enough to verify these statements. There had been a slight fall of snow in October, which speedily disappeared. November 20th was pleasant, with a strong Chinook wind. November 21st there was a driving snow-storm.

The region is attractive to the sight-seer. I can speak of only two things, the Springs and the Falls.

There is a series of rapids and falls, for twelve miles below the town; and the river drops down rapidly into a canyon which is in some places nearly 200 feet deep. The first fall is twenty-six feet high. The most beautiful is the Rainbow Fall, six miles from town. This cataract, in a wild, deep gorge, has a width of 1400 feet, nearly as straight across as an artificial dam, with a perpendicular plunge of fifty feet. What makes it impressive is the immense volume of water. Dashed upon the rocks below, it sends up clouds of spray, which the sun tinges with prismatic colors the whole breadth of the magnificent fall. Standing half-way down the precipice another considerable and regular fall is seen above, while below are rapids and falls again at the bend, and beyond, great reaches of tumultuous river in the canon. It is altogether a wild and splendid spectacle. Six miles below, the river takes a continuous though not perpendicular plunge of ninety-six feet.

One of the most exquisitely beautiful natural objects I know is the Spring, a mile above Rainbow Fall. Out of a rocky ledge, sloping up some ten feet above the river, burst several springs of absolutely crystal water, powerfully bubbling up like small geysers, and together forming instantly a splendid stream, which falls into the Missouri. So perfectly transparent is the water that the springs seem to have a depth of only fifteen inches; they are fifteen feet deep. In them grow flat-leaved plants of vivid green, shades from lightest to deepest emerald, and when the sunlight strikes into their depths the effect is exquisitely beautiful. Mingled with the emerald are maroon colors that heighten the effect. The vigor of the outburst, the volume of water, the transparency, the play of sunlight on the lovely colors, give one a positively new sensation.

I have left no room to speak of the road of ninety-eight miles through the canon of the Missouri and the canon of the Prickly-Pear to Helena—about 1400 feet higher than Great Falls. It is a marvellously picturesque road, following the mighty river, winding through crags and precipices of trap-rock set on end in fantastic array, and wild mountain scenery. On the route are many pleasant places, openings of fine valleys, thriving ranches, considerable stock and oats, much laud ploughed and cultivated. The valley broadens out before we reach Helena and enter Last Chance Gulch, now the main street of the city, out of which millions of gold have been taken.

At Helena we reach familiar ground. The 21st was a jubilee day for the city and the whole Territory. Cannon, bells, whistles, welcomed the train and the man, and fifteen thousand people hurrahed; the town was gayly decorated; there was a long procession, speeches and music in the Opera-house in the afternoon, and fireworks, illumination, and banquet in the evening. The reason of the boundless enthusiasm of Helena was in the fact that the day gave it a new competing line to the East, and opened up the coal, iron, and wheat fields of north Montana.

VIII.—ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL TOPICS. MINNESOTA AND WISCONSIN

A visitor at a club in Chicago was pointed out a table at which usually lunched a hundred and fifty millions of dollars! This impressive statement was as significant in its way as the list of the men, in the days of Emerson, Agassiz, and Longfellow, who dined together as the Saturday Club in Boston. We cannot, however, generalize from this that the only thing considered in the North-west is money, and that the only thing held in esteem in Boston is intellect.

The chief concerns in the North-west are material, and the making of money, sometimes termed the “development of resources,” is of the first importance. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, social position is more determined by money than it is in most Eastern cities, and this makes social life more democratic, so far as traditions and family are concerned. I desire not to overstate this, for money is potent everywhere; but I should say that a person not devoted to business, or not succeeding in it, but interested rather in intellectual pursuits—study, research, art (not decorative), education, and the like—would find less sympathy there than in Eastern cities of the same size and less consideration. Indeed, I was told, more than once, that the spirit of plutocracy is so strong in these cities as to make a very disagreeable atmosphere for people who value the higher things in life more than money and what money only will procure, and display which is always more or less vulgar. But it is necessary to get closer to the facts than this statement.

The materialistic spirit is very strong in the West; of necessity it is, in the struggle for existence and position going on there, and in the unprecedented opportunities for making fortunes. And hence arises a prevailing notion that any education is of little value that does not bear directly upon material success. I should say that the professions, including divinity and the work of the scholar and the man of letters, do not have the weight there that they do in some other places. The professional man, either in the college or the pulpit, is expected to look alive and keep up with the procession. Tradition is weak; it is no objection to a thing that it is new, and in the general strain “sensations” are welcome. The general motto is, “Be alive; be practical.” Naturally, also, wealth recently come by desires to assert itself a little in display, in ostentatious houses, luxurious living, dress, jewellery, even to the frank delight in the diamond shirt-stud.

But we are writing of Americans, and the Americans are the quickest people in the world to adapt themselves to new situations. The Western people travel much, at home and abroad, and they do not require a very long experience to know what is in bad taste. They are as quick as anybody—I believe they gave us the phrase—to “catch on” to quietness and a low tone. Indeed, I don’t know but they would boast that if it is a question of subdued style, they can beat the world. The revolution which has gone all over the country since the Exposition of 1876 in house-furnishing and decoration is quite as apparent in the West as in the East. The West has not suffered more than the East from eccentricities of architecture in the past twenty years. Violations of good taste are pretty well distributed, but of new houses the proportion of handsome, solid, good structures is as large in the West as in the East, and in the cities I think the West has the advantage in variety. It must be frankly said that if the Easterner is surprised at the size, cost, and palatial character of many of their residences, he is not less surprised by the refinement and good taste of their interiors. There are cases where money is too evident, where the splendor has been ordered, but there are plenty of other cases where individual taste is apparent, and love of harmony and beauty. What I am trying to say is that the East undervalues the real refinement of living going along with the admitted cost and luxury in the West. The art of dining is said to be a test of civilization—on a certain plane. Well, dining, in good houses (I believe that is the phrase), is much the same East and West as to appointments, service, cuisine, and talk, with a trifle more freedom and sense of newness in the West. No doubt there is a difference in tone, appreciable but not easy to define. It relates less to the things than the way the things are considered. Where a family has had “things” for two or three generations they are less an object than an unregarded matter of course; where things and a manner of living are newly acquired, they have more importance in themselves. An old community, if it is really civilized (I mean a state in which intellectual concerns are paramount), values less and less, as an end, merely material refinement. The tendency all over the United States is for wealth to run into vulgarity.

In St. Paul and Minneapolis one thing notable is the cordial hospitality, another is the public spirit, and another is the intense devotion to business, the forecast and alertness in new enterprises. Where society is fluid and on the move, it seems comparatively easy to interest the citizens in any scheme for the public good. The public spirit of those cities is admirable. One notices also an uncommon power of organization, of devices for saving time. An illustration of this is the immense railway transfer ground here. Midway between the cities is a mile square of land where all the great railway lines meet, and by means of communicating tracks easily and cheaply exchange freight cars, immensely increasing the facility and lessening the cost of transportation. Another illustration of system is the State office of Public Examiner, an office peculiar to Minnesota, an office supervising banks, public institutions, and county treasuries, by means of which a uniform system of accounting is enforced for all public funds, and safety is insured.

There is a large furniture and furnishing store in Minneapolis, well sustained by the public, which gives one a new idea of the taste of the North-west. A community that buys furniture so elegant and chaste in design, and stuffs and decorations so aesthetically good, as this shop offers it, is certainly not deficient either in material refinement or the means to gratify the love of it.

What is there besides this tremendous energy, very material prosperity, and undeniable refinement in living? I do not know that the excellently managed public-school system offers anything peculiar for comment. But the High-school in St. Paul is worth a visit. So far as I could judge, the method of teaching is admirable, and produces good results. It has no rules, nor any espionage. Scholars are put upon their honor. One object of education being character, it is well to have good behavior consist, not in conformity to artificial laws existing only in school, but to principles of good conduct that should prevail everywhere. There is system here, but the conduct expected is that of well-bred boys and girls anywhere. The plan works well, and there are very few cases of discipline. A manual training school is attached—a notion growing in favor in the West, and practised in a scientific and truly educational spirit. Attendance is not compulsory, but a considerable proportion of the pupils, boys and girls, spend a certain number of hours each week in the workshops, learning the use of tools, and making simple objects to an accurate scale from drawings on the blackboard. The design is not at all to teach a trade. The object is strictly educational, not simply to give manual facility and knowledge in the use of tools, but to teach accuracy, the mental training that there is in working out a definite, specific purpose.

The State University is still in a formative condition, and has attached to it a preparatory school. Its first class graduated only in 1872. It sends out on an average about twenty graduates a year in the various departments, science, literature, mechanic arts, and agriculture. The bane of a State university is politics, and in the West the hand of the Granger is on the college, endeavoring to make it “practical.” Probably this modern idea of education will have to run its course, and so long as it is running its course the Eastern colleges which adhere to the idea of intellectual discipline will attract the young men who value a liberal rather than a material education. The State University of Minnesota is thriving in the enlargement of its facilities. About one-third of its scholars are women, but I notice that in the last catalogue, in the Senior Class of twenty-six there is only one woman. There are two independent institutions also that should be mentioned, both within the limits of St. Paul, the Hamline University, under Methodist auspices, and the McAllister College, under Presbyterian. I did not visit the former, but the latter, at least, though just beginning, has the idea of a classical education foremost, and does not adopt co-education. Its library is well begun by the gift of a miscellaneous collection, containing many rare and old books, by the Rev. E. D. Neill, the well-known antiquarian, who has done so much to illuminate the colonial history of Virginia and Maryland. In the State Historical Society, which has rooms in the Capitol in St. Paul, a vigorous and well-managed society, is a valuable collection of books illustrating the history of the North-west. The visitor will notice in St. Paul quite as much taste for reading among business men as exists elsewhere, a growing fancy for rare books, and find some private collections of interest. Though music and art cannot be said to be generally cultivated, there are in private circles musical enthusiasm and musical ability, and many of the best examples of modern painting are to be found in private houses. Indeed, there is one gallery in which is a collection of pictures by foreign artists that would be notable in any city. These things are mentioned as indications of a liberalizing use of wealth.

Wisconsin is not only one of the most progressive, but one of the most enlightened, States in the Union. Physically it is an agreeable and beautiful State, agriculturally it is rich, in the southern and central portions at least, and it is overlaid with a perfect network of railways. All this is well known. I wish to speak of certain other things which give it distinction. I mean the prevailing spirit in education and in social-economic problems. In some respects it leads all the other States.

There seem to be two elements in the State contending for the mastery, one the New England, but emancipated from tradition, the other the foreign, with ideas of liberty not of New England origin. Neither is afraid of new ideas nor of trying social experiments. Co-education seems to be everywhere accepted without question, as if it were already demonstrated that the mingling of the sexes in the higher education will produce the sort of men and women most desirable in the highest civilization. The success of women in the higher schools, the capacity shown by women in the management of public institutions and in reforms and charities, have perhaps something to do with the favor to woman suffrage. It may be that, if women vote there in general elections as well as school matters, on the ground that every public office “relates to education,” Prohibition will be agitated as it is in most other States, but at present the lager-bier interest is too strong to give Prohibition much chance. The capital invested in the manufacture of beer makes this interest a political element of great importance.

Milwaukee and Madison may be taken to represent fairly the civilization of Wisconsin. Milwaukee, having a population of about 175,000, is a beautiful city, with some characteristics peculiar to itself, having the settled air of being much older than it is, a place accustomed to money and considerable elegance of living. The situation on the lake is fine, the high curving bluffs offering most attractive sites for residences, and the rolling country about having a quiet beauty. Grand avenue, an extension of the main business thoroughfare of the city, runs out into the country some two miles, broad, with a solid road, a stately avenue, lined with fine dwellings, many of them palaces in size and elegant in design. Fashion seems to hesitate between the east side and the west side, but the east or lake side seems to have the advantage in situation, certainly in views, and contains a greater proportion of the American population than the other. Indeed, it is not easy to recall a quarter of any busy city which combines more comfort, evidences of wealth and taste and refinement, and a certain domestic character, than this portion of the town on the bluffs, Prospect avenue and the adjacent streets. With the many costly and elegant houses there is here and there one rather fantastic, but the whole effect is pleasing, and the traveller feels no hesitation in deciding that this would be an agreeable place to live. From the avenue the lake prospect is wonderfully attractive—the beauty of Lake Michigan in changing color and variety of lights in sun and storm cannot be too much insisted on—and this is especially true of the noble Esplanade, where stands the bronze statue (a gift of two citizens) of Solomon Juneau, the first settler of Milwaukee in 1818. It is a very satisfactory figure, and placed where it is, it gives a sort of foreign distinction to the open place which the city has wisely left for public use. In this part of the town is the house of the Milwaukee Club, a good building, one of the most tasteful internally, and one of the best appointed, best arranged, and comfortable club-houses In the country. Near this is the new Art Museum (also the gift of a private citizen), a building greatly to be commended for its excellent proportions, simplicity, and chasteness of style, and adaptability to its purpose. It is a style that will last, to please the eye, and be more and more appreciated as the taste of the community becomes more and more refined.

In this quarter are many of the churches, of the average sort, but none calling for special mention except St. Paul’s, which is noble in proportions and rich in color, and contains several notable windows of stained glass, one of them occupying the entire end of one transept, the largest, I believe, in the country. It is a copy of Doré’. painting of Christ on the way to the Crucifixion, an illuminated street scene, with superb architecture of marble and porphyry, and crowded with hundreds of figures in colors of Oriental splendor. The colors are rich and harmonious, but it is very brilliant, flashing in the sunlight with magnificent effect, and I am not sure but it would attract the humble sinners of Milwaukee from a contemplation of their little faults which they go to church to confess.

The city does not neglect education, as the many thriving public schools testify. It has a public circulating library of 42,000 volumes, sustained at an expense of $22,000 a year by a tax; is free, and well patronized. There are good private collections of books also, one that I saw large and worthy to be called a library, especially strong in classic English literature.

Perhaps the greatest industry of the city, certainly the most conspicuous, is brewing. I do not say that the city is in the hands of the brewers, but with their vast establishments they wield great power. One of them, about the largest in the country, and said to equal in its capacity any in Europe, has in one group seven enormous buildings, and is impressive by its extent and orderly management, as well as by the rivers of amber fluid which it pours out for this thirsty country. Milwaukee, with its large German element—two-thirds of the population, most of whom are freethinkers—has no Sunday except in a holiday sense; the theatres are all open, and the pleasure-gardens, which are extensive, are crowded with merrymakers in the season. It is, in short, the Continental fashion, and while the churches and church-goers are like churches and church-goers everywhere, there is an air of general Continental freedom.

The general impression of Milwaukee is that it is a city of much wealth and a great deal of comfort, with a settled, almost conservative feeling, like an Eastern city, and charming, cultivated social life, with the grace and beauty that are common in American society anywhere. I think the men generally would be called well-looking, robust, of the quiet, assured manner of an old community. The women seen on the street and In the shops are of good physique and good color and average good looks, without anything startling in the way of beauty or elegance. I speak of the general aspect of the town, and I mention the well-to-do physical condition because it contradicts the English prophecy of a physical decadence in the West, owing to the stimulating climate and the restless pursuit of wealth. On the train to Madison (the line runs through a beautiful country) one might have fancied that he was on a local New England train: the same plain, good sort of people, and in abundance the well-looking, domestic sort of young women.

Madison is a great contrast to Milwaukee. Although it is the political and educational centre, has the Capitol and the State University, and a population of about 15,000, it is like a large village, with the village habits and friendliness. On elevated, hilly ground, between two charming lakes, it has an almost unrivalled situation, and is likely to possess, in the progress of years and the accumulation of wealth, the picturesqueness and beauty that travellers ascribe to Stockholm. With the hills of the town, the gracefully curving shores of the lakes and their pointed bays, the gentle elevations beyond the lakes, and the capacity of these two bodies of water as pleasure resorts, with elegant music pavilions and fleets of boats for the sail and the oar—why do we not take a hint from the painted Venetian sail?—there is no limit to what may be expected in the way of refined beauty of Madison in the summer, if it remains a city of education and of laws, and does not get up a “boom,” and set up factories, and blacken all the landscape with coal smoke!

The centre of the town is a big square, pleasantly tree-planted, so large that the facing rows of shops and houses have a remote and dwarfed appearance, and in the middle of it is the great pillared State-house, American style. The town itself is one of unpretentious, comfortable houses, some of them with elegant interiors, having plenty of books and the spoils of foreign travel. In one of them, the old-fashioned but entirely charming mansion of Governor Fairchild, I cannot refrain from saying, is a collection which, so far as I know, is unique in the world—a collection to which the helmet of Don Quixote gives a certain flavor; it is of barbers’ basins, of all ages and countries.

Wisconsin is working out its educational ideas on an intelligent system, and one that may be expected to demonstrate the full value of the popular method—I mean a more intimate connection of the university with the life of the people than exists elsewhere. What effect this will have upon the higher education in the ultimate civilization of the State is a question of serious and curious interest. Unless the experience of the ages is misleading, the tendency of the “practical” in all education is a downward and material one, and the highest civilization must continue to depend upon a pure scholarship, and upon what are called abstract ideas. Even so practical a man as Socrates found the natural sciences inadequate to the inner needs of the soul. “I thought,” he says, “as I have failed in the contemplation of true existence (by means of the sciences), I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of the soul, as people may injure their bodily eye by gazing on the sun during an eclipse.... That occurred to me, and I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether if I looked at things with my eyes, or tried by the help of the senses to apprehend them. And I thought I had better have recourse to ideas, and seek in them the truth of existence.” The intimate union of the university with the life of the people is a most desirable object, if the university does not descend and lose its high character in the process.

The graded school system of the State is vigorous, all working up to the University. This is a State institution, and the State is fairly liberal to it, so far as practical education is concerned. It has a magnificent new Science building, and will have excellent shops and machinery for the sciences (especially the applied) and the mechanic arts. The system is elective. A small per cent, of the students take Greek, a larger number Latin, French, and German, but the University is largely devoted to science. In all the departments, including law, there are about six hundred students, of whom above one hundred are girls. There seems to be no doubt about co-education as a practical matter in the conduct of the college, and as a desirable thing for women. The girls are good students, and usually take more than half the highest honors on the marking scale. Notwithstanding the testimony of the marks, however, the boys say that the girls don’t “know” as much as they do about things generally, and they (the boys) have no doubt of their ability to pass the girls either in scholarship or practical affairs in the struggle of life. The idea seems to be that the girls are serious in education only up to a certain point, and that marriage will practically end the rivalry.

The distinguishing thing, however, about the State University is its vital connection with the farmers and the agricultural interests. I do not refer to the agricultural department, which it has in common with many colleges, nor to the special short agricultural course of three months in the winter, intended to give farmers’ boys, who enter it without examination or other connection with the University, the most available agricultural information in the briefest time, the intention being not to educate boys away from a taste for farming but to make them better farmers. The students must be not less than sixteen years old, and have a common-school education. During the term of twelve weeks they have lectures by the professors and recitations on practical and theoretical agriculture, on elementary and agricultural chemistry, on elemental botany, with laboratory practice, and on the anatomy of our domestic animals and the treatment of their common diseases. But what I wish to call special attention to is the connection of the University with the farmers’ institutes.

A special Act of the Legislature, drawn by a lawyer, Mr. C. E. Estabrook, authorized the farmers’ institutes, and placed them under the control of the regents of the University, who have the power to select a State superintendent to control them. A committee of three of the regents has special charge of the institutes. Thus the farmers are brought into direct relation with the University, and while, as a prospectus says, they are not actually non-resident students of the University, they receive information and instruction directly from it. The State appropriates twelve thousand dollars a year to this work, which pays the salaries of Mr. W. H. Morrison, the superintendent, to whose tact and energy the success of the institutes is largely due, and his assistants, and enables him to pay the expenses of specialists and agriculturists who can instruct the farmers and wisely direct the discussions at the meetings. By reason of this complete organization, which penetrates every part of the State, subjects of most advantage are considered, and time is not wasted in merely amateur debates.

I know of no other State where a like system of popular instruction on a vital and universal interest of the State, directed by the highest educational authority, is so perfectly organized and carried on with such unity of purpose and detail of administration; no other in which the farmer is brought systematically into such direct relations to the university. In the current year there have been held eighty-two farmers’ institutes in forty-five counties. The list of practical topics discussed is 279, and in this service have been engaged one hundred and seven workers, thirty-one of whom are specialists from other States. This is an “agricultural college,” on a grand scale, brought to the homes of the people. The meetings are managed by local committees in such a way as to evoke local pride, interest, and talent. I will mention some of the topics that were thoroughly discussed at one of the institutes: clover as a fertilizer; recuperative agriculture; bee-keeping; taking care of the little things about the house and farm; the education for farmers’ daughters; the whole economy of sheep husbandry; egg production; poultry; the value of thought and application in farming; horses to breed for the farm and market; breeding and management of swine; mixed farming; grain-raising; assessment and collection of taxes; does knowledge pay? (with illustrations of money made by knowledge of the market); breeding and care of cattle, with expert testimony as to the best sorts of cows; points in corn culture; full discussion of small-fruit culture; butter-making as a line art; the daily; our country roads; agricultural education. So, during the winter, every topic that concerns the well-being of the home, the prolit of the farm, the moral welfare of the people and their prosperity, was intelligently discussed, with audiences fully awake to the value of this practical and applied education. Some of the best of these discussions are printed and widely distributed. Most of them are full of wise details in the way of thrift and money-making, but I am glad to see that the meetings also consider the truth that as much care should be given to the rearing of boys and girls as of calves and colts, and that brains are as necessary in farming as in any other occupation.

As these farmers’ institutes are conducted, I do not know any influence comparable to them in waking up the farmers to think, to inquire into new and improved methods, and to see in what real prosperity consists. With prosperity, as a rule, the farmer and his family are conservative, law-keeping, church-going, good citizens. The little appropriation of twelve thousand dollars has already returned to the State a hundred-fold financially and a thousand-fold in general intelligence.

I have spoken of the habit in Minnesota and Wisconsin of depending mostly upon one crop—that of spring wheat—and the disasters from this single reliance in bad years. Hard lessons are beginning to teach the advantage of mixed farming and stockraising. In this change the farmers’ institutes of Wisconsin have been potent. As one observer says, “They have produced a revolution in the mode of farming, raising crops, and caring for stock.” The farmers have been enabled to protect themselves against the effects of drought and other evils. Taking the advice of the institute in 1886, the farmers planted 50,000 acres of ensilage corn, which took the place of the short hay crop caused by the drought. This provision saved thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in several counties. From all over the State comes the testimony of farmers as to the good results of the institute work, like this: “Several thousand dollars’ worth of improved stock have been brought in. Creameries and cheese-factories have been established and well supported. Farmers are no longer raising grain exclusively as heretofore. Our hill-sides are covered with clover. Our farmers are encouraged to labor anew. A new era of prosperity in our State dates from the farmers’ institutes.”

There is abundant evidence that a revolution is going on in the farming of Wisconsin, greatly assisted, if not inaugurated, by this systematic popular instruction from the University as a centre. It may not greatly interest the reader that the result of this will be greater agricultural wealth in Wisconsin, but it does concern him that putting intelligence into farming must inevitably raise the level of the home life and the general civilization of Wisconsin. I have spoken of this centralized, systematic effort in some detail because it seems more efficient than the work of agricultural societies and sporadic institutes in other States.

In another matter Wisconsin has taken a step in advance of other States; that is, in the care of the insane. The State has about 2600 insane, increasing at the rate of about 167 a year. The provisions in the State for these are the State Hospital (capacity of 500), Northern Hospital (capacity of 600), the Milwaukee Asylum (capacity of 255), and fifteen county asylums for the chronic insane, including two nearly ready (capacity 1220). The improvement in the care of the insane consists in several particulars—the doing away of restraints, either by mechanical appliances or by narcotics, reasonable separation of the chronic cases from the others, increased liberty, and the substitution of wholesome labor for idleness. Many of these changes have been brought about by the establishment of county asylums, the feature of which I wish specially to speak. The State asylums were crowded beyond their proper capacity, classification was difficult in them, and a large number of the insane were miserably housed in county jails and poor-houses. The evils of great establishments were more and more apparent, and it was determined to try the experiment of county asylums. These have now been in operation for six years, and a word about their constitution and perfectly successful operation may be of public service.

These asylums, which are only for the chronic insane, are managed by local authorities, but under constant and close State supervision; this last provision is absolutely essential, and no doubt accounts for the success of the undertaking. It is not necessary here to enter into details as to the construction of these buildings. They are of brick, solid, plain, comfortable, and of a size to accommodate not less than fifty nor more than one hundred inmates: an institution with less than fifty is not economical; one with a larger number than one hundred is unwieldy, and beyond the personal supervision of the superintendent. A farm is needed for economy in maintenance and to furnish occupation for the men; about four acres for each inmate is a fair allowance. The land should be fertile, and adapted to a variety of crops as well as to cattle, and it should have woodland to give occupation in the winter. The fact is recognized that idleness is no better for an insane than for a sane person. The house-work is all done by the women; the farm, garden, and general out-door work by the men. Experience shows that three-fourths of the chronic insane can be furnished occupation of some sort, and greatly to their physical and moral well-being. The nervousness incident always to restraint and idleness disappears with liberty and occupation. Hence greater happiness and comfort to the insane, and occasionally a complete or partial cure.

About one attendant to twenty insane persons is sufficient, but it is necessary that these should have intelligence and tact; the men capable of leading in farm-work, the women to instruct in house-work and dress-making, and it is well if they can play some musical instrument and direct in amusements. One of the most encouraging features of this experiment in small asylums has been the discovery of so many efficient superintendents and matrons among the intelligent farmers and business men of the rural districts, who have the practical sagacity and financial ability to carry on these institutions successfully.

These asylums are as open as a school; no locked doors (instead of window-bars, the glass-frames are of iron painted white), no pens made by high fences. The inmates are free to go and come at their work, with no other restraint than the watch of the attendants. The asylum is a home and not a prison. The great thing is to provide occupation. The insane, it is found, can be trained to regular industry, and it is remarkable how little restraint is needed if an earnest effort is made to do without it. In the county asylums of Wisconsin about one person in a thousand is in restraint or seclusion each day. The whole theory seems to be to treat the insane like persons in some way diseased, who need occupation, amusement, kindness. The practice of this theory in the Wisconsin county asylums is so successful that it must ultimately affect the treatment of the insane all over the country.

And the beauty of it is that it is as economical as it is enlightened and humane. The secret of providing occupation for this class is to buy as little material and hire as little labor as possible; let the women make the clothes, and the men do the farm-work without the aid of machinery. The surprising result of this is that some of these asylums approach the point of being self-supporting, and all of them save money to the counties, compared with the old method. The State has not lost by these asylums, and the counties have gained; nor has the economy been purchased at the expense of humanity to the insane; the insane in the county asylums have been as well clothed, lodged, and fed as in the State institutions, and have had more freedom, and consequently more personal comfort and a better chance of abating their mania. This is the result arrived at by an exhaustive report on these county asylums in the report of the State Board of Charities and Reforms, of which Mr. Albert O. Wright is secretary. The average cost per week per capita of patients in the asylums by the latest report was, in the State Hospital, $4.39; in the Northern Hospital, $4.33; in the county asylums, $1.89.

The new system considers the education of the chronic insane an important part of their treatment; not specially book-learning (though that may be included), but training of the mental, moral, and physical faculties in habits of order, propriety, and labor. By these means wonders have been worked for the insane. The danger, of course, is that the local asylums may fall into unproductive routine, and that politics will interfere with the intelligent State supervision. If Wisconsin is able to keep her State institutions out of the clutches of men with whom politics is a business simply for what they can make out of it (as it is with those who oppose a civil service not based upon partisan dexterity and subserviency), she will carry her enlightened ideas into the making of a model State. The working out of such a noble reform as this in the treatment of the insane can only be intrusted to men specially qualified by knowledge, sympathy, and enthusiasm, and would be impossible in the hands of changing political workers. The systematized enlightenment of the farmers in the farmers’ institutes by means of their vital connection with the University needs the steady direction of those who are devoted to it, and not to any party success. As to education generally, it may be said that while for the present the popular favor to the State University depends upon its being “practical” in this and other ways, the time will come when it will be seen that the highest service it can render the State is by upholding pure scholarship, without the least material object.