een East and West. The significance of this position
is manifest when it is recalled that this section is the child of the
East and the mother of the Populistic West.

The occupation of the Western prairies was determined by forces similar
to those which settled the Old Northwest. In the decade before the war,
Minnesota succeeded to the place held by Wisconsin as the Mecca of
settlers in the prior decade. To Wisconsin and New York she owes the
largest proportion of her native settlers born outside of the State.
Kansas and Nebraska were settled most rapidly in the decade following
the war, and had a large proportion of soldiers in their American
immigrants. Illinois and Ohio together furnished about one-third of the
native settlers of these States, but the element coming from Southern
States was stronger in Kansas than in Nebraska. Both these States have
an exceptionally large proportion of native whites as compared with
their neighbors among the prairie States. Kansas, for example, has about
twenty-six per cent of persons of foreign parentage, while Nebraska has
about forty-two, Iowa forty-three, South Dakota sixty, Wisconsin
seventy-three, Minnesota seventy-five, and North Dakota seventy-nine.
North Dakota's development was greatest in the decade prior to 1890. Her
native stock came in largest numbers from Wisconsin, with New York,
Minnesota, and Iowa next in order. The growth of South Dakota occupied
the two decades prior to the census of 1890, and she has recruited her
native element from Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and New York.

In consequence of the large migration from the States of the Old
Northwest to the virgin soils of these prairie States many counties in
the parent States show a considerable decline in growth in the decade
before 1890. There is significance in the fact that, with the exception
of Iowa, these prairie States, the colonies of the Old Northwest, gave
Bryan votes in the election of 1896 in the ratio of their proportion of
persons of native parentage. North Dakota, with the heaviest foreign
element, was carried for McKinley, while South Dakota, with a much
smaller foreign vote, went for Bryan. Kansas and Nebraska rank with Ohio
in their native percentage, and they were the center of prairie
Populism. Of course, there were other important local economic and
political explanations for this ratio, but it seems to have a basis of
real meaning. Certain it is that the leaders of the silver movement came