The great pioneer collector of historical material was Dr. Reuben Gold Thwaites, who made the Wisconsin Historical Society the most efficient local organization of its kind in the country. “He was the first,” writes Dr. Clarence W. Alvord, of the University of Illinois, “to unite the State historical agent and the university department of history so that they give each other mutual assistance--a union which some States have brought about only lately with great difficulty, while others are still limping along on two ill-mated crutches.” Dr. Thwaites was an indefatigable laborer in his chosen field, and an inspiring leader. He not only brought to light a prodigious amount of material and made it accessible to other scholars, but he communicated his enthusiasm to a noteworthy school of historians who have specialized in “sections” of the broad fertile field into which he set the first plough. Where the land is so new it is surprising and not a little amusing that there should be debatable points of history, and yet the existence of these adds zest to the labors of the younger school of historical students and writers. State historical societies have in recent years assumed a new dignity and importance, due in great measure to the fine example set by Wisconsin under Dr. Thwaites’s guidance. Frederick Jackson Turner is another historian whose interest in the West has borne fruit in works of value, and he has established new points of orientation for explorers in this field. He must always be remembered as one of the first to appreciate the significance of the Western frontier in American history, and by his writings and addresses he has done much to arouse respect for the branch in which he has specialized. Nor shall I omit Dr. John H. Finley’s “The French in the Heart of America” as among recent valuable additions to historical literature. There is a charming freshness and an infectious enthusiasm in Dr. Finley’s pages, attributable to his deep poetic feeling for the soil to which he was born. All writers of the history of the Northwest, of course, confess their indebtedness to Parkman, and it should not be forgotten that before Theodore Roosevelt became a distinguished figure in American public life he had written “The Winning of the West,” which established a place for him among American historians.