History of Government
The executive branch of our government consists of a
governor, secretary and marshal, all appointed by the president, for four years;
the auditor, treasurer and superintendent of public instruction are appointed
for two years by the governor and council. The legislature consists of a council
of twenty-four members and a house of forty-eight representatives. The district
system of schools prevailed until 1883, when the township system was introduced.
A county superintendent governs the school affairs of each county and issues
four grades of certificates; 1st good for two years, 2nd eighteen months, 3d one
year, and the probation certificate good for six months, and can be issued only
once to the same individual. All candidates must be over eighteen years old.
The following extract was taken from the Monthly
Bulletin of the Commissioner of Immigration of January, 1886:
School Statistics
The Superintendent of Public Instruction, Hon. A. Sheridan Jones, has kindly
placed at the disposal of this office, the following statistics, taken from his
forthcoming annual report for 1885:
Number of children enumerated in Territory between 7 and 20 years of age 87,563
Number school children enrolled 69,075
Percentage of children of school age attending school 80
Number of male teachers employed 1,284
Number of female teachers employed 2,861
Total number off teachers 4,145
Average monthly pay to teachers $34.76
Whole number of school houses 2,729
Whole number of schools 3,279
Yearly receipts for school purposed, to June 30, 1885 $2,141,756.79
Expenditures for common and higher schools, year ending June 30, 1885
$1,814,212.40
Cash, balance on hand 327,544.39
Total to balance receipts $2,141,756.79
The foregoing shows how the great cause of popular
education goes marching on in Dakota.
The census for 1885 shows a population of 415,278, an
increase of 207 per cent. in five years.
The Statehood movement, inaugurated in 1885, so far is
a-dead letter. Congress has failed to recognize us as a State, for no valid
reason known to us. The Democratic administration seems determined, in spite of
our, half million inhabitants, to keep us out of the Union.
Soil and Climate
The productive soil and healthful climate of Dakota are
now so well known that it would be superfluous to make remarks concerning them;
but will let Col. Donan tell the story. The reader may modify it to suit
himself.
Col. Donan's Speech
The following characteristic speech was delivered by
Col. Donan at a dinner given by the Clover Club of Philadelphia, Pa., on the
evening of the 15th inst., and will be pursued with pleasure by all Dakotaians:
[Philadelphia News.]
The man sitting next to Col. Burr was called upon, and
after standing the chaff for ten minutes, struck out boldly and made an address
so brimful of sense, nonsense, aptness and keen appreciation that everybody
listened:
"Why, in such an assemblage of brilliant and famous men
in every department of intellectual life," said he, "I should be called upon to
speak passes my comprehension. It can only be because you only wish to use my
homeliness and clumsiness as a black velvet background on which the gems of your
wit and grace and eloquence shall; by contrast, sparkle the more dazzling. I am
a plain, horny-handed son of toil, a simple oat raiser on Devil's Lake, Dakota,
and I know of no better theme on which to talk, in my rustic, frontier fashion,
than the great region of the far northwest, that sends through me, its unworthy
representative, its greeting to your famous Clover Club." (Cheers.)
Dakota's wildest blizzards, as unenlightened down-easters,
including some Philadelphia newspaper men, who should know better-sometimes term
them, are used by gentle mothers to lull their babes to sleep. The sun shines
ever with a mellow splendor that calls to mind the far-famed Happy Valley of
Rasselas, and there is just enough frost in our winters to turn the elm leaves
golden. No summer droughts or winter floods spread devastation over the fields
and the hopes of our husbandmen. No army worms or grasshoppers sweep those
fertile plains and valleys with nibbling desolation. No hailstorms rattle their
'destroying musketry upon the (grains and fruits and plate-glass window-panes of
that Elysium, except now and then just enough to furnish business to our
ambitious young home Hail Insurance Companies. Bananas bloom in November, and
young oranges are dug the day before Christmas. ' Raisins, striped stick-candy,
tin horses and gunjun-rubber dolls ripen just in time for Santa Claus' peddler
wagon, with his reindeer team, and little round stomach that shakes when he
laughs like a bowl full of jelly.
"Spring roses blooming on the plain, gentle Annie for
New Year's posies, and potatoes grow as big as beer kegs-I suppose most of the
members of the Clover' Club have some idea of that standard of measurement-at
the roots of every tuft of prairie grass. Cabbage-heads, of full Congressional
and Senatorial size, give forth the fragrance of the Jessamine and honeysuckle
to humming birds as large as canvas-back ducks, and clad in all the prismatic
glories of the aurora borealis. We hatch our own wild geese-and I think I have
occasionally seen some of their descendants as far away from home as
Philadelphia- of such dimensions that tenderfeet are liable to mistake them for'
winged hippopotami, on lakes of never-freezing rosewater and cologne. We wall up
for wells the holes from which we pull, with steam derricks and Corlis engines,
our radishes and beets, and make cowsheds and circus tents of our turnip-rind.
Blizzards, tempests, tornadoes, hurricanes and rascally political breezes come
to that modern Eden only as dimly-understood wailings from distant regions and
people who do not know enough to find their way to the sole remaining
quarter-section of Paradise in all the western world.
"This glorious Dakota land, through me, invites the
Clover Club to come and see her. If you should make her a summer visit, we will
turn her whole 153,000 square miles of domain into vast clover-patch in your
honor. Every stalk shall be ten feet high, every blade "four-leafed " for luck,
and every head shall be heavy laden with the sweet honey and fragrance of
welcome, and a royal western hospitality only surpassed on earth by that of our
own deservedly famed Clover Club. |
Marshall County lies just south of the 46th parallel of north
latitude, the proposed line of division between North and South Dakota, and west
of the Sisseton and Wahpeton Indian Reservation; is bounded on the south by Day
County and on the west .by Brown County, and is included in the Watertown U. S.
Land District.
Marshall County is twenty-four miles long from north to
south, and twenty-four miles on its north boundary line, and thirty miles wide
on its south boundary line, making an average width of twenty-seven miles. This
area gives us 648 square miles or 414,720 acres of land. Although a small
county, it is about one-half the size of Rhode Island.
The above estimate includes the military reservation.
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