CHAPTER II 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF COUNTRY LIFE IN 

 THE WEST 



THE MIDDLE WEST THE FIBEE OF THE PEOPLE l 



EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS 



A HUNDRED years ago the Rev. Timothy Dwight commented 

 complacently on the benefit to Connecticut from the draining 

 away to the frontier then western New York of the restless 

 spirits who chafed under the rule of the old families and the 

 Congregational clergy. It never occurred to him that these 

 insurgent spirits were carrying with them to the wilderness a 

 precious energy and initiative. 



The unprosperous, the shiftless, and the migratory sought the 

 frontier, to be sure ; but the enterprising, too, were attracted by 

 it. The timorous and the cautious stayed and accepted the 

 cramping conditions of an old society ; but those who dared take 

 chances, to "place a bet on themselves," were likely to catch the 

 western fever. Among the sons and grandsons of such risk 

 takers, the venturesome tempers cropped out much oftener than 

 among the sons and grandsons of the stay-at-homes. Hence, 

 the strange fact that it was the roomy West that settled the 

 farther West. On each new frontier have swarmed men from 

 what was itself a frontier only a generation earlier. 



By the time some impression about the West has sunk deep 

 into the eastern mind, the West has swept onward and falsified 

 it. The Yankee thinks of the Middle West as a land of priva- 

 tion and hardship ; it is, in fact, a scene of comfort and plenty, 

 lie regards it as peopled by a hodge-podge of aliens, whereas the 

 hodge-podge is at his own door. He looks upon New England 

 as the refuge of the primal American spirit, when, in sooth, Iowa 

 and Kansas are more evenly American in tone than any like 



i Adapted from "Changing America," pp. 145-140 and 137-140. Century 

 Co., 1912. 



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