Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 34

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co.
Number of Pages: 1190

USA > Minnesota > Hennepin County > Minneapolis > Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota > Part 34

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BANKING CONDITIONS.

Perhaps the best single index to the business con- ditions of the decade from 1880 to 1890, and of the years just before and during the business depression, is to be found in the banking business. During the ten years mentioned, men were just as enthusiastic about founding new banks as they were about launch- ing other concerns. But that deflation followed infla- tion is shown by this notable fact: Of all the banks established in that decade, only one remains, retain- ing its identity, the German American bank. To be sure, all the principal banks in Minneapolis were in existence then. but they had been established prior to that time. and some of them represent. through ah- sorption, several other banks which then existed or were founded during that period.

Another index is to be found in the bank clearings. In 1881 the total bank clearings of Minneapolis were $19,487.650. By 1890 they had mounted to $303,913,- 022. and in 1892 they were $438.053.526. Then came the business slump, and nothing is more significant of this fact than the bank clearings for the year 1893- they totaled $332.243.860. And it was not until 1898 when the bank clearings passed those for 1892, and indicated, by their total of $460,222,572, that business had recovered.

DURING THE WAR WITH SPAIN.

It is no reproach to Minneapolis to declare that the years that followed the first break in business ad- vancement were singularly barren years. as regards large events. Business was fighting merely to hold its own from 1893 to 1898, and it was not to be ex- pected that any achievement that went beyond the normal for the times would be recorded. It was perhaps fortunate that the middle of this period of depression was enlivened by the political upheavals of the national campaign of 1896, when the two great parties made a political issue of the proper road to be taken to get back to prosperity. All Minneapolis. like most cities, became a great forum of political discussion, and the outcome of the campaign and elec- tion, carrying reassurance of the business world as its psychological effect, helped to put Minneapolis back on its feet.

Thus the year of the war with Spain saw Minne- apolis rejuvenated-sobered, perhaps, by the adversi- ties of depression years, but better grounded than ever before in city building. It was from Minneapolis. largely, that the Thirtenth Regiment went, which, of all four Minnesota regiments of infantry that the State sent, saw most service in the war; and not only to the Thirteenth. but to the Twelfth, the Fourteenth, and the Fifteenth Regiments the city gave numbers of its best young men. To the Thirteenth Regiment,

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on its return from the Philippines in 1899, Minne- apolis gave glorious welcome with a great parade,- perhaps the most stirring in the city's history,- which was reviewed by President MeKinley.

EFFORTS AT CHARTER CHANGING.

The sobering years of the middle '90s led up to another phase of development. They prompted the first recognition of civic duty as it bore upon municipal government-that is, the first in a decade which perforce had been given over to booming. And in 1898 came the first effort toward change in the charter since its adoption in the early '80s. There had been amendments galore-but no attempt at complete change to the extent of adopting a "home- rule" charter. The attempt failed-and it is per- haps legitimate to insert at this point in a chronology recognition of the fact that similar attempts made in 1900. 1904, 1906, and 1913 were likewise failures, the eharter remaining in 1914 amended, if at all, by an act of the State Legislature.

Efforts in 1898 toward eharter changes by vote of the whole people did not necessarily indicate that eivie consciousness and eivic conscience were synony- mous terms. For shortly after the city entered upon the Twentieth Century, it passed through the experi- ence of a municipal scandal, involving its government in disgrace. It was a scandal preceded by two or three lesser ones a few years previously, involving officials lower in the governmental scale than those caught in the meshes of the larger scandal. There is no little measure of satisfaction to Minneapolis peo- ple to know that this was not the only city disturbed and disgraced for the moment in such a manner, and to feel that the years since have for the most part, softened consideration of the man in whose adminis- tration, during 1900 and 1901, the municipal shame centered.

It is a notable fact that for the most part the muni- eipal government has run along with little change all through the first years of the present century. The mayors in the six two-year terms beginning in 1900 have been, in the order named, Dr. A. A. Ames, James C. Haynes, David P. Jones, then James C. Haynes for three terms ending in 1911, and then Wal- laee G. Nye. Generally speaking, improvement that was continuous and sueeessive and began to char- acterize the government, in executive offices and in the council itself, dates from the last few years of the Nineteenth Century.

CONFIDENCE AND DETERMINATION CAME IN 1898.

It was the year 1898 that really signalized return of confidence in the future. on the part of all the peo- ple. The faithful city builders who had passed through similar periods of depression before-some of them as early as 1857-were for the most part still foremost in public affairs, and they had been hanging on through thick and thin. The rest of the people became inspired by their example. Everyone by the time the War with Spain closed had his shoul-

der to the wheel again. Building activity revived, and the spread of the population began to justify improvement of the traction system.

THE STREET RAILWAY BUILDS NEW LINES.

In 1898 the Street Railway Company constructed a second Interurban Line, the Como-Harriet, between the two eities. By 1900 the company had twiee in- proved its power sources. And by 1905 it had re- sumed extension of its lines in several important par- ticulars. It built its Lake Street Cross-Town Line and eonneeted it with a St. Paul line for a third In- terurban Line. It built its line to Fort Snelling, extending it from Minnehaha Falls. And it built its double-track line to Lake Minnetonka, where it took over at the same time, or soon afterwards, most of the water transportation system.

SOME CENSUS FIGURES OF 1900.

Minneapolis swung into the Twentieth Century with a population, aeeording to the Federal census of 1900, of 202,718, an increase of nearly 40,000 in ten years. Its business stability was re-established ; its bank clearings had mounted to $580,000,000, and its flour production passed 15,000,000 barrels. Its lumber eut had begun to fall off; the turning point in output of the sawmills of the city in 1901 reached 559,000,000 feet, but the big lumbermen were already moving westward with their mills, and Minneapolis was becoming headquarters for the financial end of the business, instead of the manufacturing end.

Aeeording to United States eensus figures, Minne- apolis in 1899 had 789 industrial establishments, whose total output was valued at $95,000,000 and whose employes numbered 20,000. The next manufac- turing eensus, taken five years later, showed 21,000 em- ployes, and an output of more than $121,000.000.

PROGRESS IN CULTURE AND REFINEMENT.

The several periods of commercial progress in Min- neapolis have had their simultaneous periods of growth of the eity's soul, of its civic consciousness. of its culture and refinement. There are more and more tokens of this city sense, in consideration of in- stitutions that have come into being. And one of these is the Minneapolis Symphony Orehestra. founded in 1903 as an outgrowth of efforts by the Philharmonics and their supporters. It was in 1901 that Emil J. Oberhoffer became leader of that organ- ization, and musical development in two years led to the establishing of the Orchestra, and to its incor- poration as an enterprise underwritten by some of the public-spirited men and women. In a few years it ventured forth to other cities, gradually making the name of Minneapolis known for culture and art, as well as for flour and lumber and hustle. And by 1914 it had earned a place among the first three such organizations in America, and had appeared before large audiences in the largest cities of the country. It has become the largest single factor in the musical

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HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

education of the public and has attracted to its con- certs weekly during the season great numbers of dis- criminating people whose musical taste has con- stantly grown and as constantly demanded and ap- preciated better music.

Simultaneous with the establishment of the orches- tra in 1901 was the creation of a municipal art com- mission, in response to a recognition of the need for competent direction as it came to be possible to acquire works of art and to build for artistic excellence.

Within a few years, also, far-seeing business men established a civic commission, which sought by ar- tistic planning to lay out the streets and avenues and to select sites so as to build intelligently, after the manner of the nation's capital, under the guiding hand of a competent architect for the whole city, in- stead of under the hit-or-miss direction of a multi- tude of builders without a city sense.

It was natural then that the people's ambitions would turn toward an art museum. Fostered by the spirit that had established the Society of Fine Arts, and building around that body, the nucleus of an art institute became a tangible reality through the gener- osity of a few wealthy men. The Morrison residence property-oddly enough part of a tract of land which more than a quarter of a century before had vainly been offered as a park-was presented to the city as a site for a museum, and big men, who either knew the art impulse or appreciated its worth, set about raising an endowment to support a great museum. To this the city added more land by acquisition of Fair Oaks, the residence property of W. D. Wash- burn, and in 1911 the corner stone of the museum was laid with appropriate ceremony. Here was the creation of an institution figured in dollars at half a million, and even before its completion it was to have a bequest of twice that value from one of the men who had been chief among its original pro- moters.

Linked with such activities as the establishing of the Orchestra and promoting the cause of art came the building of the Auditorium, a structure which could house the Orchestra and serve. until something better could be erected. as the meeting place for large gatherings and for conventions. The city had taken on ways increasingly metropolitan as one after an- other the theater facilities had been increased. first with the building of the Metropolitan Opera House -at first known as the People's-in 1894. Ten years later the Auditorium was opened, and in the same year vaudeville came to town, to have its first lodg- ment in the Orpheum Theater. Within five years four other vaudeville houses were added.

THE NEWSPAPERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

When Minneapolis entered the Twentieth Century. its chief exponents in the way of publicity consisted of four daily newspapers: The Tribune, established in 1867; the Journal, founded in 1878: the Times, founded in 1889; and the Tidende, a Scandinavian newspaper. The city had seen many a newspaper enterprise flourish, then languish. It had passed

through a bitter combat with St. Paul, in which pos- session of a daily newspaper figured largely, and in which an attempt to carry on a newspaper as a Twin City enterprise had failed. By 1903 another daily paper. the News, was founded; and by another year the Times, a morning paper, had gone out of exist- ence. The Tribune, with which had been connected such men as "Bill" and "Tom" King, Gen. A. B. Nettleton, Albert Shaw, Alden J. Blethen, had been acquired by W. J. Murphy. The Times had been the means by which W. E. Haskell had identified himself with Minneapolis. The Journal had been published for more than twenty years by Lucian Swift, J. S. McLain, and their associates when it came, in 1908, under the control of H. V. Jones, a former reporter on the same paper. The News had introduced a new form of newspaper, as well as the chain system of newspaper ownership.

In class or trade journalism Minneapolis was by this time the home of the principal flour-milling pub- lication in America, the Northwestern Miller, and of an aspiring literary publication, the Bellman. It had seen other weckly and monthly publications, but most of them had passed on.

These newspapers had played their part all through the advancement of the city. They had fought its battles, had chronicled its achievements and its scan- dals. And in most of the events-brought about through the efforts of the leaders in politics. industry and the finer things of life-the daily newspapers had figured as important factors. They themselves had been subject to many changes, both as regards their own existence and as hinged upon their relation to the public. As institutions they endured side by side with the variously named but always principal com- mercial organization, which had its beginning in 1855 under the name of the Union Board of Trade, and was succeeded from time to time by this or that other similar association with the same object in view, and now represented by the Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association.

COMMERCIAL AND OTHER CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS.

The story of organized effort in behalf of the whole city is interesting, especially as it is a chronicle of changes, of fluctuations in the civic and commercial spirit as a unit. Thus the business men's organiza- tion in the late '60s was the Union Board of Trade, just then incorporated. By 1881 the Chamber of Commerce had been established and represented for the time the leading commercial body, although it was primarily and essentially a grain and flour ex- change. In 1884 the Jobbers' Association took its place, though its interests were centered in the whole- sale trade. Six years later the Business Union took . up the burden of promoting the city's interests as a whole. And in 1892 the Commercial Club was formed, uniting most of the other business elements. For nearly twenty years the Commercial Club was behind nearly every big movement, although at times a specialized organization, like the Jobbers' and Manufacturers' Association, went about things pecu-

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HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

liar to its membership. In 1901 the Club occupied fine club-rooms in the Andrus Building, then new; by 1909 it had outgrown these quarters and had, in promoting the building of a fine big hotel, arranged for quarters for itself in the Hotel Radisson. Two years later the Club's commercial and eivie interests were taken over by a new organization, formed on broader lines to meet the needs of the time, known as the Civic and Commerce Association. Two years more, and the Minneapolis Athletic Club, with a new building under way, merged with the Commercial Club, the older name being dropped.

Other elubs had meanwhile been organized. to repre- sent various interests in the city's life. The chief social body, the Minneapolis Club, was established in 1886, occupying at first a rented house at Sixth Street and First Avenue North. Later it built its own home two blocks down Sixth Street, and in 1908 moved again to a handsome club-house at Eighth Street and Second Avenue South. Other social clubs, formed later, include the Minikahda Club, in 1898; the Odin Club, in 1899; and the University Club in 1909. About this time district commercial clubs be- gan to be organized.

In the early years of the Twentieth Century, also, came organized efforts at city betterment in another form-the establishment of settlement houses. These. by 1910, came to number several which have become important factors, among them being Wells Memo- rial and Pillsbury Settlement Houses, Unity House, and, though different in form and not at all a settle- ment house in its plan of operation, the Citizens' Club, on Riverside Avenue, a work made possible among the people of the club by the generosity of George H. Christian, builder of the club-house.

IMPORTANT INCIDENTS IN THE CITY'S RECENT HISTORY.

Achievements in the public's behalf took on other forms in the first years of the century. In 1911, for instance, a celebration of the city's growth in beauty covered an entire week and included pageantry and parades as well as a ceremony of linking Lake Cal- houn and Lake of the Istes by canal. In 1913 the construction of a high dam in the Mississippi River near the Soldiers' Home was begun, by the Federal Government, to make Minneapolis the head of navi- gation and at the same time to provide power for use by the municipality and the State University. The same year marked the completion of the filtra- tion plant and the pumping of pure water into the homes. Civil service regulations were introduced into the city offices the same year. In 1913, also, citizens who appreciated "Tom" Lowry's deeds for the pub- lic good united in erecting a memorial statue to him at the junction of Lyndale and Hennepin Avenues, near his late home.

Simultaneously the city was becoming more beau- tiful, by the efforts of the Park Board. The parkway system was being worked out, to girdle Minneapolis. The public school facilities were being increased, a notable addition being the new Central High School, at Thirty-fourth Street and Fourth Avenue South.

Similarly the same year saw the establishment of the Blake School for Boys, a private educational institu- tion, newly located now on ample grounds west of Lake Harriet, near the Lake Minnetonka car line.

It was about 1905 that another phase in develop- ment opened, in the construction of the Dan Patch Electric Railway southward from Minneapolis, tap- ping a rich country theretofore tributary largely to St. Paul because of railroad operation and influence. And by 1911 construction of another similar line, the Luce Line westward to Lake Minnetonka and beyond, gave the city another suburban line such as had for some years figured largely in railway development in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Such a railway was also built to Anoka, on the east side of the river.

The city continued to grow. Larger and more mod- ern business structures were crected, among them the Plymouth Building, in its first year the largest re-en- forced concrete building in America ; the McKnight, the Security Bank Building, the Donaldson office building, the huge structures in the district given over chiefly to wholesale trade, the Dyckman Hotel, the handsome retail structures .on Upper Nicollet. Beautiful houses of worship, like Plymouth Congre- gational Church, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, and the Catholic Pro-Cathedral were built. The business men in the Commercial Club-which became the Civic and Commerce Association-had exerted strenuous efforts toward obtaining a Union Passenger Station, had failed, and while seeking authorization for con- struction of a municipal terminal had seen James J. Hill construct a handsome station to serve the same roads formerly running into the old Union Station. Business interests, working through the Civic and Commerce Association, had attracted new industries. Interest in better living conditions led to the making of a health survey. Recognition of recreational needs led to the creation of extensive public baths at Lake Calhoun, as well as lesser such facilities in a munici- pal bath house on Riverside Avenue, and public baths at Camden and on Hall's Island, and in the Mississippi in North Minneapolis. Playground facili- ties likewise were largely augmented in the five years after 1909.

Commercially the city forged steadily forward. There was an interval of depression in 1907, reflected from the East, but the city soon got back on its fect again. Municipal government controversies arose occasionally in these early Twentieth Century years. to give zest to everyday life. Bitter rivalry over the selection of a site for a new postoffice building that was to be inadequate to its purpose even before it was completed, brought out heated advocacy of a building place on Bridge Square or on Third Avenue South facing the Milwaukee Railway Station, the latter win- ning out. Similarly hot discussion preceded the de- cision of the Council to creet a new bridge across the river at Third Avenue South, as well as Nineteenth Avenue South.

In consideration of govermental affairs connected with regulation and control of public utilities, issues arose between the public and the Gas. the Electric. and the Street Railway Companies, involving the

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HISTORY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA

'right to regulate rates or to fix the price of trans- portation. Each controversy led into court review of the situation, and even as late as 1914 no settle- ment has been reached in some of the suits. Fran- chise duration and terms were also in controversy. The Street Railway Company's dispute was over the right of the City Council to require it to sell six rides for 25 cents, and the courts decided in favor of the Company. The Electric Company and the city fell out over rates, and their dispute has not come to any definite decision, although rates have since been reduced by the Company to points below the schedule fixed by the City Council. The Gas Company's first difference with the municipality had to do with the terms of a renewal of its franchise, and five years later, with the effort of the City Council to reduce the price of gas-an effort which opened a long road of litigation hinging largely upon the proper valua- tion of the company property as a basis for fixing rates so as to give the company just returns on its investments.

It was in the first decade of the new century, also, that the city took in hand the problem of grade cross- ings on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway's tracks. Twenty years or more before, there had been a separation of grades on the Great Northern and the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway's tracks westward from the river on Fourth Avenue North, and a drag on the development of the North Side had been re- moved. Council action, tested in the courts, led in 1911 to the commencement of track depression on the Hastings & Dakota tracks of the Milwaukee road, across the city from Cedar Avenue. And in 1913 efforts toward lowering or elevating the main line tracks of the same company began. Late in the same year residents of the East Side began similar efforts for a separation of grades on railroads, particularly those in Southeast Minneapolis and through the Uni- versity campus.

THE CONDITIONS OF TO-DAY.

The sixty-seventh year of Minneapolis-counting time from the first permanent settlement of St. An- thony -- saw a city with a population of at least 325,- 000; with its flour mills, the milling capital of the world; with its Art Museum, the art center of the nation west of Chicago; with its parks and boule- vards, the beauty center of Western municipalities; with its new Government high dam almost completed, the potential head of navigation of the Mississippi River; with its wholesale houses and manufactories, the supply base for the great empire of the North-

west; with its steam and electric railways, the trans- portation center of that same empire of wheat and corn and the products of diversified farming; with its linseed plants, the chief center of industries which are linked with that form of enterprise; with its huge volume of trade peculiar to the products of the soil of the Northwest, the banking capital of this trade empire. More than most other American cities Min- neapolis has grown in culture at a rate at least equal to the rapidity of its commercial progress.

So it is possible to point to commercial progress as an index to growth in the finer things of the brain and the spirit and the temperament. It is a measure of advancement to show that in this city of more than 325,000, the bank deposits at the end of 1913 amounted to more than $101,000,000; that in that year the flour production of Minneapolis mills was more than 19,000,000 barrels, the greatest in the his- tory of the milling industry ; that the bank clearings were $1,312,000,000; that Minneapolis daily loaded and shipped 1,001 cars of freight, and received 1,159 cars; that nearly $13,000,000 worth of buildings were erected; that the corporate property of the city of Minneapolis was valued at $48,000,000, against less than $23,000,000 in 1900; that these items of corpo- rate property included 185 miles of paved streets, 325 miles of sewers, nearly $15,000,000 invested in schools, parks, and parkways: that the public school popula- tion was 48,000 pupils; and that the conveniences and privileges of urban life through avaliability of edu- cational, recreational, transportation, and other ad- vantages were unsurpassed by those of any other city in America.

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Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota, Part 34

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co. Number of Pages: 1190

Author: Holcombe, R. I. (Return Ira), 1845-1916; Bingham, William H
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago : H. Taylor & Co.
Number of Pages: 1190