WHEN the tourist from the eastern coast or from the South walks into the marble and bronze Memorial Hall of St. Paul's "functional" courthouse, when he listens with 4,000 others to the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, or suddenly comes upon a view of Duluth-Superior Harbor with its great freighters moving along the miles of ore docks and grain elevators, it is hard for him to believe that some Minnesotans clearly recall the terror of Indian massacres, the sight of browsing buffalo herds, and the creaking of thong-tied Red River carts. Yet if he is to understand the Minnesota of today, he must keep always in mind the fact that within the span of a single lifetime 54 million acres of forests, lakes, rivers, and untouched prairies have been converted into an organized area of industrial cities and rich farms, of colleges, art centers, golf clubs, and parks. The men and women who accomplished this were for the most part New Englanders, Germans, and Scandinavians--probably as hardy as the world has produced--and it is their children and their grandchildren who determine today the pattern of the contemporary scene.
To understand Minnesota it is necessary then that one respond to youth, forgiving its occasional awkwardness and egoism for the sake of its healthy vigor, its color, its alternating self-confidence and self-distrust, its eagerness for experiment. One will not expect to find here the mellowness of cities, villages, and countrysides in the older States. With the exception of a few villages, mostly in the southeastern section, the towns can claim little charm; the unbeautiful brick stores and banks of Main Street testify to grim physical work. Not many of the New England settlers had leisure to indulge their esthetic tastes, and the immigrants who poured into the State in the 1850's were only too glad to exchange the picturesqueness and discomfort of their Old World stone cottages and thatched barns for a plenitude of lumber. When prosperity came to the farmers, their children built larger models of their parents' boxlike frame houses, and it is not surprising that they should have been more preoccupied with a bathroom electric lights, or telephone, than with the line of a roof. But with greater economic security has come a new kind of pride, and today every town of any size boasts its park, playgrounds, and scenic drives. Fortunately, the builders of the large cities remembered early in their planning the elmlined streets of New England, and today the profusion of trees in these Cities is a joy to citizens and visitors alike
To rapidity of growth must be ascribed many of the incongruities one meets constantly in Minnesota. Its largest city boasts of one of the finest park systems in the world, yet endures philosophically the dangers and irritations imposed by many railroad grade crossings. While remaining Republican in theory, county, city, or State will cheerfully try almost any variety of politics, whether Populist, Non-Partisan League, Farmer-Labor or Socialist. At a single meeting the State may raise a fortune to build an art institute or found a great orchestra, yet it offers little support to local art talent, and discourages all attempts of conductors to introduce into their concert programs the works of modern American composers. It has built one of the great universities of the country, yet permits such inadequate legislative appropriations that many of its best teachers are lost to more generous States.
But in spite of these and other adolescent vestiges, the thoughtful observer will find many signs that the State is growing up. In cities this is perhaps most evident in the arts; in country districts the widespread interest in farm bureaus, 4-H Clubs, and co-operatives tells the same story in different terms. Today if Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach are still unvaryingly demanded by large musical audiences (as well they may be), yet in small groups in private houses, in little halls, the younger musicians gather freely to experiment with new forms and to try out their own compositions. Young painters hold their group exhibits and, although they may receive small financial support, at least they have demonstrated the excellence of their work and their creative impatience with conventional patterns. Others, interested in the drama, are bending all their efforts to a revival of that art, in the past decade almost lost to Minnesota. In politics, too, there are Signs of a changing order. Boys and girls no longer docilely accept the dicta of their fathers, but are found crowding the forums to weigh every theory of politics and economics before casting their first ballots.
The population of Minnesota is divided almost equally between the cities and country. This numerical balance prevents urban domination, while increased facilities of transportation and communication in one generation have diminished appreciably not only the physical but the spiritual, economic, and social distances between city dweller and farmer. The farmer of thirty years ago who went to town perhaps once a month may now go several times a week, and his family often goes with him--to shop, to attend church, the movies, parents' and teachers' meetings, farm bureau lectures, or even garden clubs. When he can afford it, his children go to the city to the State university; at home they make their "dates" for roadhouse and barn dances over the telephone, and, thanks to the radio, are fully as familiar with the latest swing music as their city contemporaries. Only in the remote and poorest sections of Minnesota is the dull and drudging farmwife of thirty years ago met today.
Automobiles and good roads, the wide use of improved machinery and motor power on the farm, have not only raised the material standards of living for the rural family, but they have changed markedly the economic characteristics of agriculture in Minnesota. Once agriculture was self-sufficing, but within recent years there has occurred a rapid change in the amount of buying and selling carried on by the average farm family. This tendency has resulted in the increasing importance of trade centers, in a rapid rise in the number of chain stores and specialized shops, and in the gradual disappearance of the crossroads or general store. With the mounting significance of trade centers as a factor in agriculture, there has come also a declining population in the smaller villages, the collapse of a large number of country newspapers when advertisers shifted their accounts to the trade centers, and a steady weakening of the village church. But despite the increase in town merchandising, the trade catalogs of the mail-order houses are still read diligently and are coming to be used for a kind of window shopping. In some localities they are spoken of as "wish books."
The farm bureau and other agricultural societies are, in most communities, the hub about which rural social life revolves. All members of the family attend their lectures, dinners, picnics, and entertainments. Women take an active part, and indeed often hold office in such organizations as the grange, or the co-operatives. Every organization is likely to have its annual picnic, a jolly affair in which contests play a leading part. Hog calling, husband calling, nail driving, rolling-pin throwing, cow milking wood chopping, as well as the usual three-legged, potato, and other races all have their champions and their boobies.
Parent-Teacher Associations have generally proved of practical assistance to the rural school and its teacher. If the community is too small to support such an organization, women often join P.T.A. groups in the nearest town and bring back suggestions of use to their own schools. Rural women often not only arrange hot luncheons for the children during the winter months but even go to the school and help serve them. To raise money for the purchase of books and equipment, they sponsor special programs and "box socials." The latter constitute a popular money-raising expedient in many parts of the State. To these gatherings, girls and women bring boxed luncheons, carefully prepared and elaborately wrapped, which an auctioneer sells to the highest bidders. They usually bring from fifty cents to a dollar or two, but occasions have been known when a single box brought as much as ten dollars.
With the depression, the barn dance came into general popularity. Farmers with large barns hang a few lanterns about, wax the floor, secure a dance band from a neighboring town, and for a small fee (ladies free) open their doors for dancing. These dances, however, bear little relation to the old-time barn dance. They are often patronized largely by motoring townfolk, and are acquiring more and more a night club atmosphere
After the farm bureaus and the co-operatives, the 4-H clubs have unquestionably the strongest influence on rural life. In Minnesota, 43,000 boys and girls are enrolled in 2,600 of these clubs. They have not only developed a clean and friendly rivalry in the raising of cattle, hogs, sheep and chickens, but through their annual parades and fair exhibits they have also demonstrated to even the more conservative of their parents the value of scientific farming and animal husbandry. Their work in home economics and manual arts has raised the standard of taste and attractiveness in farm homes.
Social life in Minnesota cities, large and small, is for the most part less formal than in most eastern centers, as might be expected from the nearness to pioneer days. "Western hospitality" is by no means an outgrown term. Country clubs flourish, women's clubs regard their civic and cultural intentions with solemn conscience, while the great number of men's clubs proves that the average male Minnesotan is a "joiner" indeed. Churches still play an active part in social life--particularly those of the Scandinavians.
As prosperity came to the early settlers it became more and more the custom of the wealthy to send their children away to school or college, yet many continue to educate their children in their own public schools, retaining an active faith in the democracy of these institutions. The University of Minnesota is second largest in full-time enrollment among State universities The campus of the university is separated from the main section of Minneapolis by the river, and it fairly encompasses the social life of students. Lectures and entertainments attract large numbers outside the school circles
Industrially, Minnesota was having a hard time long before the depression. The Northwest never shared fully in the prosperity of the 1920's. The opening of the Panama Canal, adverse rulings by the Interstate Commerce Commission, repeated crop failures all through the twenties, caused Minnesota to lag far behind States less dependent on agriculture and nearer to the great distributing centers. An important section of the milling industry moved to Buffalo. Chain stores cut great swaths in the jobbing business. Nevertheless, statistics show that wholesale business in the Twin Cities has survived the depression far better than in most communities of their size; and today that faith in its own destiny which has played so large a part in the State's precocious growth is again everywhere manifest.
Perhaps the most attractive feature of the State, after its rare natural beauty, is its refreshing attitude toward adventurous experiment. In groups and in individuals alike, the inhibiting forces of tradition have little place here. One sees this spirit operating in the State's co-operatives, the largest in number in America, in its lively political contests in both State and city government, in its schisms within political parties. Years ago, when medical schools were rife in the American scene, Minnesota decided that one medical school alone, and that a department of the State university, should be permitted to train its doctors; and then proceeded to require standards for students and teachers alike so far beyond the powers of the lesser schools that the latter were obliged to close. The university's department of medicine leapt almost at one stride to a place among the best, and made of the Twin Cities a great medical center for the entire Northwest.
