Citizen Solution: How You Can Make A Difference

4. A History of Adventurous Experiment

4 A History of Adventurous Experiment The civic heritage of Minnesota, and of each community, is full of lessons to inform and to inspire today’s citizen action. The biggest lesson of all is that there is, in fact, a civic heritage. It can help to ground us, give us confidence, and challenge us to the kind of civic greatness that returning veterans call for. It can also provide stories, both good and bad, that we can learn from. “Perhaps the most attractive feature of the state, after its rare natural beauty, is its refreshing attitude toward adventurous experiment.” 1       ,  C     ,  to fight global warming at Macalester, the Warrior to Citizen campaign, and Balance4Success build on the state’s rich civic heritage. This heritage has combined the efforts of the rich and famous with populist energies. It has also reflected a diverse cultural mix. Minnesota’s history, called by Rhoda Gilman a story of “complicated and conflicting truths,” has always involved tensions among diffuse , even contradictory impulses. These differing impulses have been held together by the work of building communities.2 C H A P T E R T I T L E • 61 A Civic-Minded Establishment Establishment figures and business elites helped to create a fertile civic context, and perhaps the nation’s strongest tradition of corporate citizenship and civic philanthropy. Minnesota’s population grew extraordinarily rapidly following its statehood in —from , in  to , three decades later, almost three-quarters of whom were firstand second-generation European immigrants. Early economic leaders were exuberant. Speaking of Twin Cities’ giants of railroads, lumber, and mining who made their mark, Charles Walker wrote in the classic  book American City on the  Minneapolis truckers’ strike: “In the decades [after statehood] an unparalleled economic expansion, explosive energy, and an unconquerable optimism had laid the physical foundations” for the mansions that lined Summit Avenue in St. Paul. “That this miraculous expansion would ever cease . . . would have seemed to contemporaries a blasphemy.” As a St. Paul newspaper editor put it, “Enclose St. Paul, indeed! Fence in a prairie fire! Bail out Lake Superior! Attempt any other practical thing; but not to set metes and bounds to the progress of St. Paul!”3 Business lured immigrants by “high-pressure salesmanship,” as the  guide put it. Rail and lumber interests often paid them dirt wages and dominated labor camps like a fiefdom. Land grants to the railroads alone in Minnesota—much of it essentially stolen from the Indians— equaled the acreage of two states the size of Massachusetts.4 In Minnesota, the rich, however avidly they pursued wealth, often also had a civic side. Many of the state’s early European American pioneers came from old Yankee stock in New England, for whom ideas such as the commonwealth, civic responsibility, and educational uplift were crucially important. In the Twin Cities, the “refinements of civilization ” were second to none, said observer Julian Ralph. Railroad tycoon James J. Hill’s mansion walls were lined with paintings by European masters, while “the literature of two continents, freshened by the 62 • T H E C I T I Z E N S O L U T I O N constant arrival of the best periodicals, is ready at hand and well marked for use.”5 The state’s leaders created a set of expectations for public and civic contributions. “Second Generation Devoted to Pursuits of Culture,” wrote Bertha Heilbron of the Minnesota Historical Society in the special seventy-fifth-year issue of the St. Paul Pioneer Press commemorating statehood. “Those who grew up in Minnesota during the period immediately after the Civil War saw Minnesota emerge from a frontier state and grow into a modern commonwealth.” She profiled, as an example , Charles M. Loring, president of the Minneapolis park board from  to . Loring laid the foundations for the city’s system of parks. “He published articles, gave illustrated lectures, and in various other ways made clear to the people of the state the advantages of parks and civic improvement.” Civic efforts spearheaded by leading citizens built libraries and schools, colleges and universities, orchestras, art galleries , theaters and symphonies that complemented the growth of business and industry.6 Civic commitments among influential local leaders continued and expanded after World War II. Such leaders created what has been called a “large-system architecture” of civic and public organizations, famous across the country...