came in the early eighties. Germans and Scandinavians were rushed by
emigrant trains out to the prairies, to fill the remaining spaces in the
older States of the Middle West. The census of 1890 showed in Minnesota
373,000 persons of Scandinavian parentage, and out of the total million
and one-half persons of Scandinavian parentage in the United States, the
Middle West received all but about three hundred thousand. The persons
of German parentage in the Middle West numbered over four millions out
of a total of less than seven millions in the whole country. The
province had, in 1890, a smaller proportion of persons of foreign
parentage than had the North Atlantic division, but the proportions
varied greatly in the different States. Indiana had the lowest
percentage, 20.38; and, rising in the scale, Missouri had 24.94; Kansas
26.75; Ohio 33.93; Nebraska 42.45; Iowa 43.57; Illinois 49.01; Michigan
54.58; Wisconsin 73.65; Minnesota 75.37; and North Dakota 78.87.

What these statistics of settlement mean when translated into the
pioneer life of the prairie, cannot be told here. There were sharp
contrasts with the pioneer life of the Old Northwest; for the forest
shade, there was substituted the boundless prairie; the sod house for
the log hut; the continental railway for the old National Turnpike and
the Erie Canal. Life moved faster, in larger masses, and with greater
momentum in this pioneer movement. The horizon line was more remote.
Things were done in the gross. The transcontinental railroad, the
bonanza farm, the steam plow, harvester, and thresher, the "league-long
furrow," and the vast cattle ranches, all suggested spacious combination
and systematization of industry. The largest hopes were excited by these
conquests of the prairie. The occupation of western Kansas may
illustrate the movement which went on also in the west of Nebraska and
the Dakotas. The pioneer farmer tried to push into the region with the
old methods of settlement. Deceived by rainy seasons and the railroad
advertisements, and recklessly optimistic, hosts of settlers poured out
into the plains beyond the region of sufficient rainfall for successful
agriculture without irrigation. Dry seasons starved them back; but a
repetition of good rainfalls again aroused the determination to occupy
the western plains. Boom towns flourished like prairie weeds; Eastern
capital struggled for a chance to share in the venture, and the Kansas
farmers eagerly mortgag