The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1859-10-21
al and productive capacity would be null

munity would be CORRESPONDENCE reduced
transportation, government, education, reli-
gious establishments, might be brought up
to the standard of the highest social status,
and not cost fiftieth of the vast aggregate
consumed in the diffusion of far less benefits
over the present sparse settlements of the
State. That is the established theory of
social growth everywhere. The Western
States are built up by partial reversal of
this theory. With soil of twice and thrice
the productive capacity of the States from
which they invite emigration, the Age has
undertaken to overcome the disadvantage of
distance from markets, by building railroads
upon scale witnessed in no other part of
the world. With these instruments of COL
onization, it has dared to plant the germs
of settlements in the remotest depths of the
wilderness, and to promise the struggling
pioneer, that, in the savage solitudes about
him, his children shall grow up with church
es and colleges, and the humane influences
of a populous neighborhood- dared to pledge
the rough emigrant moving by slow and
weary journeys of weeks and months to the
desert borders of the farthest west, that in
five years or ten he shall not be three DAYS
from New York, and shall have a weekly
mail to console him meanwhile-that rail-
roads shall follow him everywhere and pack
the intervening country, and the world about
him, full of people.
All the plans and speculations and values
of the Western States are founded, not in the
least degree upon the present status of the
country, but entirely upon the faith of its
filling up with people. All the speculatious
in town-sites and wild lands, proceeded upon
the full confidence that every acre and every
lot would be needed and absorbed by the
impending rush of emigration. And ali the
settlements of the interior have been formed
upon the same expectation. And, in fact,
immigration at the period of the incipient
settlement of the country, is its life-blood.
The country must keep on growing to
point of characterization, or die The an
nual influx Of population supplies profta-
| bic market when the means Of reaching the
| great external markets are denied. Every
one recognizes and acts to a certain extent
upon this intimate relation between the fill
ing up of the country and its general pros.
perity-that times have always been best
and money plentiest at the periods of great
est immigration, and worst, as now, when
the tide of men is at its ebb. But in trying
to patch up some other remedy for hard
times--in relying upon crops, upon banks
and railroads, the large proportion of the
people of Minnesota do not seem to realize
the fact that in Minnesota there is positively
no other hope for renewal of prosperity,
no hope of saving the country from posi-.
tive decline, except in the rapid, immediate
increase Of population-which means immi-
grafton. That is the paramount function
of Railroads in the west-to remove the OBJ
stacles, and multiply the inducements, to
immigration. We build railroads, not to
pay stockholders but to fill up the country.
We have no hope that our Railroads will be
built for years to come. We must rely,
then, upon other agencies to supply the in.
terval, till railroad bonds fall on better
times. immigration is, then, the first inter-
est of the State, and the State should pro-
vide for it. We may have something to
suggest upon this at another time. Mean
while, all the newspaper power, and the
efforts of individuals in Minnesota, should
be organized for this result-not to puff
localities, nor to revive the obsolete traffic in
town lots, but to gill up the vacant lands
upon the great water-courses of the country
and nearest the centres of business.
We cannot induce the emigration which
flows suggishly into Wisconsin or Illinois,
by exaggerated description or sanguine
calculations. We must offer substantial
inducements, ahead of our neighbors. We
can compare soil with them; our climate is
immeasurably superior to theirs. We have
an abundance of wood and water; of
schools churches, and all that. We have
told them that, and they won't come for
these. Go further, then. Pass a private
Homestead law among yourselves--you
large proprietors of lands that you cannot
sell, and that produce nothing for you but
an annual harvest of taxes. If you have
six hundred and forty acres of land close to
st. Paul or Winona, give half the useless
wilderness away to men that will make it
productive. Give away, or sell at nominal
prices alternate tracts of twenty or forty
acres, to actual cultivators OF the SOIL
Think of the effect of selling small farms at
Sl,25 per acre or So per acre, on three or
four years credit, within three or four miles
of st. Paul. The reserved tracts would
double in value, and find sure sale in the
future; and the desolate and tenantless
waste which now spreads around the city,
and over large portion of the State, shut
up under the seal of absentee ownership,
would be converted into a garden. The
suggestion is capable of expansion into
system, When we have thought il over