In spite of many signs of a drift toward social democracy, individualism is still the dominant “note” in these Middle Western States, apart from the industrial centres where socialism has indisputably made great headway. It may be that American political and social phenomena are best observed in States whose earliest settlement is so recent as to form a background for contrast. We have still markedly in the Mississippi valley the individualistic point of view of the pioneer who thought out his problems alone and was restrained by pride from confessing his needs to his neighbors. In a region where capital has been most bitterly assaulted it has been more particularly in the pursuit of redress for local grievances. The agrarian attacks upon railroads are an instance of this. The farmer wants quick and cheap access to markets, and he favors co-operative elevators because he has felt for years that the middleman poured too many grains out of the bushel for his services. In so far as the farmer’s relations with the State are concerned, he has received from the government a great many things for which, broadly speaking, he has not asked, notably in the development of a greater efficiency of method and a widening of social horizons. III When the New Englander, the Southeasterner, and the Pennsylvanian met in the Ohio valley they spoke a common language and were animated by common aims. Their differences were readily reconcilable; Southern sentiment caused tension in the Civil War period and was recognizable in politics through reconstruction and later, but it was possible for one to be classed as a Southern sympathizer or even to bear the opprobrious epithet of copperhead without having his fundamental Americanism questioned. Counties through this belt of States were named for American heroes and statesmen--Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Marion, Clark, Perry--varied by French and Indian names that tinkle musically along lakes and rivers. There was never any doubt in the early days that all who came were quickly assimilated into the body of the republic, and certainly there was no fear that any conceivable situation could ever cause the loyalty of the newly adopted citizen to be questioned. The soil was too young in the days of Knownothingism and the body of the population too soundly American for the West to be greatly roused by that movement. Nevertheless we have had in the West as elsewhere the political recognition of the race group--a particular consideration for the Irish vote or the German vote, and in the Northwestern States for the Scandinavian. The political “bosses” were not slow to throw their lines around the increasing race groups with a view to control and manipulation. Our political platforms frequently expressed “sympathy with the Irish people in their struggle for home rule,” and it had always been considered “good politics” to recognize the Irish and the Germans in party nominations.