It should be added that the West, speaking of it generally, is defiantly “American.” It wants a more vigorous and assertive foreign policy. Conscious of its power, the growing pains in the limbs of the young giant will not let it rest. That this is the most magnificent country, that we have the only government beyond criticism, that our civilization is far and away the best, does not admit of doubt. It is refreshing to see men who believe in something heartily and with-out reserve, even if it is only in themselves. There is a tonic in this challenge of all time and history. A certain attitude of American assertion towards other powers is desired. For want of this our late representatives to Great Britain are said to be un-American; “political dudes” is what the Governor of Iowa calls them. It is his indictment against the present Minister to St. James that “he is numerous in his visits to the castles of English noblemen, and profuse in his obsequiousness to British aristocrats.” And perhaps the Governor speaks for a majority of Western voters and fighters when he says that “timidity has characterized our State Department for the last twenty years.” By chance I begin these Western studies with the North-west. Passing by for the present the intelligent and progressive State of Wisconsin, we will consider Minnesota and the vast region at present more or less tributary to it. It is necessary to remember that the State was admitted to the Union in 1858, and that its extraordinary industrial development dates from the building of the first railway in its limits—ten miles from St. Paul to St. Anthony—in 1862. For this road the first stake was driven and the first shovelful of earth lifted by a citizen of St. Paul who has lived to see his State gridironed with railways, and whose firm constructed in 1887 over eleven hundred miles of railroad.