from the same States. As a general rule, the people of the southern States have not migrated north in large numbers. The State which is exceptional in this respect is Montana with its large contingent of natives of Missouri. reasons for this have been explained.

As we proceed beyond the Old Northwest and come to newer territory there is a change in the proportion of those Americans who have come from some other States. Minnesota has twenty-seven and seven-tenths per cent; North Dakota, forty-six and five-tenths per cent; South Dakota, forty-eight and two-tenths per cent; Iowa, thirty-one and one-tenth per cent; Nebraska, forty-seven and eight-tenths per cent; Montana, sixty-three and three-tenths per cent. In other words, in the Dakotas and Nebraska nearly half of their inhabitants who were born in this country were born outside the limits of the States, and in Montana, this number has risen to more than one-half.

The growth of the West was rapid when there were only the people of the East to take up the new lands, but it increased greatly as soon as the immigration from Europe began. This influx was so important that some of our great north-central States would lose more than half their population if the foreigners and the children of foreigners should be taken out. The Northwest has been the objective point of the greater number of the better class of emigrants from Europe. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. Coming from the peasant class in Europe, they desired to go where they could get good land for little money, and the Northwest exactly fulfilled these conditions. Lands in the East, which were worth cultivating, were already taken up and held at a high price. The abundance of cheap, unoccupied land enabled a family to settle near people who had been their neighbors in the mother country, and thus the inevitable pangs of homesickness were somewhat dulled. This is an important feature in the development of the West. One family which had taken up new land became successful and kindred or neighbor families

Bell from Fort St. Pierre, used when it was a trading post in the thirties; and brass cannon carried on boats of the American Fur Company. In possession of the Missouri Historical Society.

Often a con

were induced to come to try their fortune. siderable part of a village in one of the northern European countries came in a body, all the people settling together in Minnesota or Dakota.

The reason for the migration into the West both of the native-born Americans and of the foreigners has, as we have pointed out, been economic. We miss the religious motive so prominent in the beginnings of New England. The Scandinavians and Germans have gone into Minnesota and Dakota for the same reason as that which separated Abraham and Lot on the plains of Sodom, "the land became too narrow for them." Sometimes the fact that there is not room for all in the home country has been made evident by a famine or a crop failure. The great Irish immigration to America began with the famine in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Political agitation and disappointment in central Europe gave an impulse to emigration which has never ceased, and, coming at a time when the Northwest was being opened up to settlement, a German influence was impressed upon some of these States.

Railroad companies have not been slow to see the advantages which would come to them with the rapid settlement of the lands through which their roads passed. The railroads in the Northwest had large holdings of land, given them as an inducement to build, and they were anxious to dispose of these. More than that they wished to gain the money which would come from transporting emigrants. They desired to have their roads pass through sections of prosperous farms that they might haul the products to market. They offered inducements in the way of cheap transportation and cheap lands to invite a desirable emigration. They have their agents in Europe who are ready to give advice and encouragement to possible emigrants.

Land companies have used the same methods, and the States, realizing that their prosperity would depend upon the coming of desirable emigrants, have established bureaus

of immigration and appointed commissioners of immigration to assist in this work. Wisconsin may be taken as an illustration of this. In 1878, a State Board of Immigration was established, whose duty it was "to enhance and encourage immigration to this State from other States and from the Dominion of Canada and from Europe. This board shall have authority to provide for the collection of statistics and useful information concerning the climate, products, population, and agricultural, mineral, and other resources and advantages of this State, and for the printing and dissemination of the same in such languages as it may deem necessary."

In the pamphlets issued by this board were set forth the advantages of the social and educational privileges, and the religious and political freedom to be obtained in the New World and particularly in the States of the Northwest. Just the points were emphasized which would appeal to the best class of immigrants: citizenship at the end of a year's residence; right and justice for all; freedom and equality before the law; the right to hold any office in the State except those of governor and lieutenant-governor after a year's residence in the State; and the promise that "men coming here and entering into the active duties of life identify themselves with the State and her interests and are to all intents and purposes Americans."

By

The commissioners sent these publications to England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, or caused them to be given to the emigrants on their arrival in New York. Advertisements were inserted in European newspapers. these means, as well as by personal conversation, the tide of emigration from northern Continental Europe was turned toward the Northwest, especially toward Wisconsin.

The nationality which is the most important, numerically, in the Northwest is the German, and Germans have had more influence on its development than have any other immigrants. In the early part of the nineteenth century there was a considerable German migration from Pennsylvania