CHAPTER XV. 



THE SITUATION IN THE NORTHWEST. 

 Bv ALONZO WARDALL, MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 



THIS article will deal more particularly with the situation in the 

 States of Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, as the writer has 

 been intimately and personally connected with those States for the past 

 forty years ; although the conditions that obtain there are very similar 

 to what we find in Kansas and Nebraska, each of those States being 

 engaged principally in agriculture, and with comparatively little manu- 

 factures. True, Minnesota has vast lumber interests, and mining for 

 coal and the precious metals is being carried on to some extent in the 

 other States ; yet they are and must, in the nature of things, ever remain 

 great storehouses for the food products of the world, and I shall con- 

 fine myself to a view of the situation as related to agriculture and 

 agriculturists. 



The four States named are among the largest, most fertile, and most 

 favorably situated in the Union, comprising some 290,000 square miles 

 of the choicest farming land in the world, nearly every acre of which 

 will produce abundant crops without the use of artificial fertilizers ; 

 favorably located, with healthful climate, a desirable class of citizens, 

 and unequalled railroad and water transportation facilities. In area, 

 they constitute one- ninth of the United States, exclusive of the Terri- 

 tories, and they raise over one-fifth the breadstuffs and one- eighth the 

 meats produced, not to mention their contributions of butter, cheese, 

 poultry, eggs, flax, and a multitude of other things that go to supply the 

 necessities and comforts of life, which mount up collectively to a vast 

 aggregate. And yet these States are in their infancy as regards material 

 development ; great tracts of fertile soil are as yet unvexed by the 

 plow ; millions of acres of choice wheat, corn, and grazing land are still 

 unimproved. 



Of Iowa's 36,000,000 acres, but 27,000,000 are in cultivation. Min- 

 nesota has but 16,000,000 acres reclaimed of her 53,500,000; of North 

 Dakota's 47,500,000 but 3,000,000 are utilized ; and South Dakota's 

 49,000,000 remain as nature left them, save a paltry 4,000,000, hardly 

 a scar on her broad bosom. 



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