"As the immigrant mother leads her sons and daughters into the undeveloped paths of wealth—as civilization elevates a race out of the sloughs of semi-barbarism—as national prosperity exalts a land—or as science raises the human intellect from darkness into dazzling light—thus Iowa, with rapid strides, ascends the precipitious sides of prosperity's mountain range, bearing her sons and daughters to loftier, and still loftier peaks, and revealing to their gaze still wider and richer vistas. And the summit of this range she will never reach; for her onward progress cannot be stayed, until her arterial streams are dry—until the agricultural life-blood in her veins has ceased to flow, until her great metallic heart has been emptied. Upon the topmost summit, then, Iowa will never stand, for through countless ages yet to come, her progress—that must be forever onward—must be upward also."[E]

"In the few minutes allotted to this toast scant justice may be awarded so worthy a theme. We love you, O Iowa, lusty child, resting in the mighty arms of the Missouri and the Father of Waters, laughing beneath the warm kisses and the love tears of gentle May; crying aloud to all the world: 'See how I grow! How strong I am! How happy and healthy and beautiful!'

"Iowa is glorious now. The great, green carpets, fresh from the springtime cleaning, shimmer in the glorious sun. The broad, black belts of loam await with open pockets the hiding of the golden grain. Living, glowing mines of gold stud the prairies' endless velvet folds. The countless castles of the farm are bound into great bundles by the sounding wire. Above every door that opens upon honest toil is inscribed in letters of gold the motto, 'Rich, rich, rich.'

"Such is Iowa today in its wealth of land and stock. Each year the unfailing field fills the bins to bursting and grows the meat for millions.

"Material Iowa, with great leaps, has gone forward in the world's race. Manifest destiny was misread by even the wisest of our grandfathers. Even thirty years ago no prophet dared choose the gorgeous hues necessary to a true picture of the Iowa of to-day.

"Yet not alone in industrial lines has Iowa set the pace for the states. In politics she has crowded New England off the stage, and bold Ohio sits quietly at her feet. In literature and in arts she stands unashamed. Comfort and culture walk hand in hand, and happiness is a perennial contagion.

"Some fifty years ago there came to Iowa a sturdy boy. Today he calls his own one thousand billowy acres which have risen in value in steps of ten until one hundred thousand dollars would not tempt him to yield his title. One June afternoon he sat on his piazza in sweet reverie. He reviewed the wonderful development of the grand old state, and sent his imagination in search of greater possibilities. From the hedge the thrush poured forth a song of love. The humming bees thrust their honeyed tongues into the flowers on the trellis at his side. The south wind was heavy with fragrance brushed from the blooming bushes. All nature conspired to steal the old man's senses and soon reverie gave way to sleep and dreams, and this, they say, was the dream: He dreamed that it was the year nineteen hundred and forty-one, and he was celebrating his hundredth birthday. He had seen comfort and culture become as common as the summer sun. Literature and art had countless country devotees. People had ceased to hurry, and worry was unknown: and then he dreamed that he died, and sought admission at the golden gate. To his amazement he was halted and informed that he was at the wrong place. Greatly grieved, he parleyed with the guard: 'I never wittingly did a human soul a wrong. I was rich, but it was not my fault. Why must I, who have always tried to do my duty, go to hell?' 'No one said anything about hell,' was the reply. 'To the annex—the second gate to the right. You Iowa people complain so much about celestial conditions and make so many comparisons with Iowa that we have concluded to colonize you a few thousand years and send you all back to Iowa.'

"That the future of Iowa shall be such that if you shall not wish to come back, you shall at least wish to stay as long as possible, is my sincere desire."[F]

"The character of this population is such as is rarely to be found in our newly acquired territories. With very few exceptions, there is not a more orderly, industrious, active, pains-taking population west of the Alleghenies, than is this of the Iowa District. Those who have been accustomed to associate the name of Squatter with the idea of idleness and recklessness, would be quite surprised to see the systematic manner in which every thing is here conducted. For intelligence, I boldly assert that they are not surpassed, as a body, by an equal number of citizens of any country in the world.

"It is a matter of surprise that, about the Mining Region, there should be so little of the recklessness that is usual in that sort of life.... This regularity and propriety is to be attributed to the preponderance of well informed and well-intentioned gentlemen among them, as well as to the disposition of the mass of the people."[G]

"I have asked five of the ablest and most noted Americans what they regard as the chief thing or leading feature of the Trans-Mississippi region and they have invariably answered, 'Its men and women.' The other day I met one of the oldest settlers of eastern Iowa—one of those original, rugged characters whose wit and wisdom have lightened the settlers' hearts and homes for many a toilsome year—one of those interesting characters who never bores you and whom one always likes to meet—a man whose head is silvered and whose countenance is kind—and I asked him what he regarded as the principal feature of our Trans-Mississippi country, and he replied: 'Well, I'm no scholar, but I've been round here nigh onto sixty years and I reckon 'bout the most important thing is the folks and the farms.'

"Iowa became a separate territory, with the capital at Burlington, in 1838, and was admitted into the Union in 1846, and has been in it ever since. It makes little difference whether it was first settled by the whites at Dubuque for mining purposes in 1788, or, for trading purposes, at Montrose, in 1799, or opposite Prairie du Chien, in 1804 or 5, or in Lee county at Sandusky in 1820, or on the lower rapids at what is now known as Nashville, in 1829; or whether the first settlements for general purposes were made at Burlington and Davenport in 1832. The main fact is that it was well settled—not by dyspeptic tourists nor by invalids who had come west out of curiosity and New Jersey, nor by climate seeking dilettanti with two servants and one lung—but by the best bone and sinew of the middle states, New England and the old world. I do not know that there were any dukes or lords or marquises or duchesses, but there were Dutch and Irish and Scotch and Scotch-Irish and English and Americans, and they had home rule right from the start—at least they had it in the first school which I attended. The men and women who settled the Hawkeye state were not those who expected to go back 'in the fall,' or as soon as they could prove up on their claims. They were stayers. They were not men to be discouraged by winter or by work. They were men who knew that nobody ever amounted to much in this world unless he had to. Most of them began simply with the capital of honesty, good health and their inherent qualities of character. They built their cabins in the clearings and, watching the smoke curl up in the great, wide sky, felt just as patriotic for their humble rustic homes as e'er did princes for their castles or millionaires for mansions grand.

"To build a home is a great thing. It doesn't matter so much about the dimensions. 'Kings have lived in cottages and pygmies dwelt in palaces,' but the walls of a home always add something to inherent character. In the formation of character there are always two elements, the inherent and the adventitious—that which we bring with us into the world and that which our surroundings give us. Somebody said 'there is only a small portion of the earth that produces splendid people.' Our pioneers got into a good place. They had left doubt sitting on a boulder in the east and packed their things and started for the west. Rivers had to be forded, trees to be felled, cabins had to be built—the rifle must be kept loaded—so much the better, there was self-reliance. Corn and coffee had to be ground, and on the same mill—so much the better, there was ingenuity. Teeth had to be filled, and there was no painless dentistry. Disease and injury must be dealt with, and the doctor fifty miles away. Life must be lightened, lonely hearts must be cheered, and the old friends and comrades far back in the states or maybe away in fatherland, and the cheering letter tarrying with the belated stage coach—hold fast, thou sturdy denizen and gentle helpmate of the rich and wondrous empire, infinite goodness guards thee and the fertile fields are ready to reward.

"Ah, pampered people of the later generations, when you imagine modern hardships, think of the courage and the trials and the ingenuity of pioneers when there were no conveniences but the forest and the axe, the wide rolling prairie and the ox team, the great blue sky, the unsolved future and the annual ague! Complain of markets in these modern times and then think of your grandmother when she was a blooming bride, listening through the toilsome days and anxious nights for the wagon bringing home the husband from a distant market with calico and jeans purchased with dressed pork sold at a dollar and a half a hundred, and maybe bringing home a little money, worth far less per yard than either calico or jeans. Maybe it is all for the best, human character was being formed for the development of a great and loyal and progressive state to shine forever among the stars of the federal union....

"Civil government in Iowa proceeded with its rapid settlement. The pioneer became a model citizen. He knew the necessity for the laws that were enacted. He did not feel oppressed by government. He had experienced the losses of robbery and larceny and knew something of the embarrassment and inconvenience of being scalped. There was no hysteria about trusts and combines because they had practiced combinations themselves for mutual protection. If any one would learn the true genius and exemplification and philosophy of self-government, government of and for and by the people, let him study the records of pioneer life, the institutional beginnings, and the evolution of their laws. It would be worth our while on some suitable occasion when time permitted to talk over the interesting incidents attending the administration of justice in the early days of Iowa, the incidents of its territorial legislatures, the birth and growth of its statehood and the character of its officials. But the greatness of our state is not contained in any name. Its official history is the exponent of its industrial life and character. Its greatness is the sum total of its citizenship. In order to be just, John Jones, the average citizen, must be mentioned along with our most illustrious officials. Somebody said that the history of a nation is the history of its great men, but there is an unwritten history which that averment overlooks. The growth of a state is the progress of its average citizen. The credit of a commonwealth is the thrift of its John Jones and its William Smith, and the character, prosperity and patriotism of the individual citizen is the history of Iowa.

"The population of 97,000 which she had when admitted into the union had increased to 754,699 at the close of the Civil war. Of these about 70,000, almost one-tenth of the population, were in the war—a number equal to nearly one-half of the voters of the state. Who made the history of Iowa during that great struggle of our nation's life? John Jones, the average citizen, whether he carried a musket helping to put the scattered stars of state back into the constellation of the Union, or whether he toiled from early dawn to lingering twilight in the fields or in the shop. The best civilization is that which maintains the highest standard of life for its average citizen.

"Since the Civil war the state of Iowa has increased in population to almost 2,225,000 of people, and most of the time has had the least illiteracy of any state in the Union. Doubtless for that we are indebted to many of the older states, whose enterprising and courageous citizens constitute so large a portion of our population. With but a century of statehood and with an area of but 55,475 square miles, the state of Iowa produces the greatest quantity of cereals of any state in the Union. As long ago as the last federal census, taken in 1890, it produced more corn, more oats, more beef, more pork than any state in the Union. Not long since I was introduced to a gentleman from New York city. He said, 'Oh, from Iowa—ah—let me see, that's out—ah—you see, I'm not very well posted on the geography of the west.' 'Yes,' I said, 'it's out there just across the Mississippi river. You can leave New York about noon and get your supper in Iowa the next evening. It might be worth your while to look it up. It's the state which produces more of the things which people eat than any other state in the Union. It has more miles of railroads than your state of New York, more than Mexico, more than Brazil and more than all the New England states combined.'

"The value of Iowa's agricultural products and live stock in round numbers for the year 1892 was $407,000,000, to say nothing of her other great and various industries and enterprises. She produced that year 160,000,000 pounds of the best butter on earth of the value of $32,000,000. The Hawkeye butter ladle has achieved a cunning that challenges all Columbia. The Iowa cow has slowly and painfully yet gradually and grandly worked her way upward to a shining eminence in the eyes of the world. The state of Iowa has on her soil today, if nothing ill befalls it, ninety million dollars' worth of corn. The permanent value of land is estimated by its corn-producing qualities. Of all the products of the earth, corn is king and it reigns in Iowa.

"Industry and nature have made the state of Iowa a creditor. Her soil has always been solvent and her system of farming does not tend to pauperize. She is a constant seller and therefore wants the evidence of the transaction to be unimpeachable. She has more school teachers than any other state except the Empire state and only three and six-tenths per cent of her population are illiterates. The state of Iowa has yielded the greatest dividends on her educational investments. She has become illustrious on account of her enlightenment. She has progressed further from 'primitive indifferent tissue' than the land even of Darwin himself, and in her escape from protoplasm and prejudice she is practically out of danger. Marked out in the beginning by the hand of God, bounded on the east and west by the two great rivers of the continent, purified and stimulated by the snows of winter, blessed with copious rainfall in the growing season, with generous soil and stately forests interspersed, no wonder that the dusky aborigines exclaimed when they crossed the Father of Waters, 'Iowa, this is the place!' Not only did the red men give our state its beautiful and poetic name, but Indian nomenclature runs like a romance throughout the counties and communities. What infinite meaning, what tokens of joy and sadness, of triumph and of tears, of valor and of vanquishment, of life and love and song there may be in these weird, strange words that name to-day so many of our towns and streams and counties: Allamakee, Chickasaw, Dakota City, Sioux, Pocahontas, Winneshiek, Keosauqua, Sac, Winnebago, Tama, Nodawa, Competine, Chariton, Comanche, Cherokee, Waukon, Muchakinock, Washta, Monona, Waupeton, Onawa, Keota, Waudina, Ioka, Ottumwa, Oneska, Waukee, Waucoma, Nishnabotna, Keokuk, Decorah, Wapello, Muscatine, Maquoketa, Mahaska, Ocheyedan, Mississippi, Appanoose, Missouri, Quasqueton, Anamosa, Poweshiek, Pottawattamie, Osceola, Oskaloosa, Wapsipinicon.

"Ere long some westland genius, moved by the mystic inspiration of the rich and wondrous heritage of Iowa nativity, may sing the song of our legends and traditions, may voice in verse the wondrous story of his illustrious state. Maybe somewhere among the humble homes where blood and bone and brain grow pure and strong, where simple food with frugal ways feeds wondering minds and drives them craving into nature's secrets and her songs—somewhere along the settler's pathway or by the Indian trail where now the country churchyards grown with uncut grasses hide the forms of sturdy ancestors sleeping all in peaceful ignorance of wayward sons or wondrous progeny—somewhere where rising sun beholds the peasantry at early toil and leaves them in the mystic twilight ere their tasks are done, where odors of the corn and new-mown hay and vine-clad hedges by the shadowy roadside linger long into the night-time, as a sweet and sacred balm for tired hearts—somewhere, sometime the song of Iowa shall rise and live, and it will not omit the thought of that gifted son who said: 'Iowa, the affections of her people, like the rivers of her borders, flow to an inseparable union.'"