In the north-western corner of the city, adjoining the fair grounds, is the farm campus (4.19 ac.) of the State university, where the schools of agriculture and the main agricultural experiment station are located. Saint Paul is the seat also of Macalester college (Presbyterian; founded in 1853 as Baldwin Institute) ; Hamline university (Methodist Episcopal, chartered 1854) ; the College of St. Thomas (Roman Catholic, 1885) ; the College of St. Catherine (Roman Catholic, 1909) ; Bethel Theological Seminary (Baptist), Luther Theological Sem inary, Phalen Luther Seminary, and St. Paul Theological Sem inary (Roman Catholic) ; the St. Paul College of Law ; and a num ber of secondary and special training schools under various auspices, including one for the training of laboratory technicians. The public schools are housed in 82 buildings, most of them mod ern in construction, and the amount paid in teachers' salaries is about $2,500,000 a year. The public library occupies an entire block. In one wing is the valuable Hill Reference library, main tained by the heirs of James J. Hill, and part of his famous gallery of paintings, which included the best collection of the Barbizon school in America. The Law Library of the State (75,000 volumes) is housed in the capitol and the collection of the Minnesota His torical Society (115,00o volumes) has a fine building of its own. Five daily newspapers are published, one of them in German. The Pioneer-Press, established in 1853, is one of the oldest news papers in the North-west. Saint Paul is the see of a Roman Cath olic archdiocese. The Cathedral of Saint Paul is one of the notable ecclesiastical structures of the country. There are 225 churches, representing all the principal faiths and denominations. The charitable agencies which depend for support on voluntary con tributions are financed through a joint annual campaign which raises about $600,000. The Community Chest and several of the larger philanthropic agencies are housed in a central administra tion building provided by the Amherst H. Wilder Charity, a trust fund of about $3,800,000, established in 1910 for the benefit of the poor of the city.
Saint Paul operates under a charter adopted in 1912 and effective Jan. 1, 1914, establishing a commis sion form of government. Elections are held biennially. The voters elect a mayor, a comptroller, and six councilmen or com missioners; three justices of the peace, two municipal judges, and four constables. The mayor assigns each commissioner to one of the six departments of government (public safety, public works, public utilities, parks and public buildings, finance and education) as its administrative head. The mayor is ex
president of the council, and has the veto power over its acts, but they may be passed over his veto by four votes. The comptroller is also the Civil Service Commissioner. In 1921 a proposal to change back to the Federal form of Government was defeated at the polls. A City Planning Board was created in 1918. In 1922 it submitted a general city plan, and in 1924 a zoning ordinance was adopted. In comparison with other large American cities, Saint Paul, like its neighbour Minneapolis, has a low general death rate, a low infant mortality, little illiteracy, a small number of children employed for wages, a high percentage in school, a high percentage of home ownership, and an index figure for cost of living which is below the average. The assessed valuation of property for 1927 was $268,016,536.
Saint Paul has always been a natural distributing centre for the North-west. Its wholesale and jobbing trade amounts to $750,000,000 annually. Imports for the customs district in 1927 were valued at $7,274,060. It is the
third largest millinery jobbing centre of the country, and has for many years been the leading wholesale centre in the North-west for furs, shoes, drugs, groceries, cigars and hardware. The stock yards at South Saint Paul (adjoining the city limits of Saint Paul), where the meat-packing industry is concentrated, rank third among the livestock markets of the country. Since 1910 the im portance of Saint Paul as a manufacturing city has increased rapidly, until in 1927 its aggregate factory output was valued at $160,330,540. The largest single industry is the great assembling plant of the Ford Motor Company, its largest manufacturing unit outside of Detroit, occupying 200 ac. on the river, at the govern ment high dam, and costing altogether some $16,000,000 to con struct. The first unit was opened on May 8, 1925, and $40,000,000 worth of finished products were turned out by the end of 1926. In 1928 it had a force of 2,50o employees, and was producing an aver age of 5,500 cars a month. Among the other leading industries are railway car building and repair of rolling stock, foundries and machine shops, and the manufacture of fur goods, shoes, clothing, hats and caps, grass carpets, refrigerators, machinery, soft drinks, law books and farm publications, paper products, paints and varnishes, sandpaper, butter, candy and coke. Flour-milling has increased rapidly in recent years. One of the bakeries, with a capacity of 6,000 pound-loaves of bread per hour, is equipped with automatic machinery which takes the dough from the mixing machine and carries it, untouched by a human hand, through all the processes until the baked loaf is wrapped for shipping. The city has an important agricultural industry in the production of mushrooms, which are raised in large quantities in the caves in the sandstone bluffs on the west side of the river. Saint Paul has 32 banks, with total resources of $185,084,125. Debits to individual accounts in 1927 amounted to $2,054,516,413. The Federal Land Bank and the Federal Intermediate Credit Bank for the North west, both located in Saint Paul, made agricultural loans in 1927 aggregating $138,000,000.
The site of Saint Paul was known to the Indians as Innijiska, the White Rock. It was occasionally used as a camping place, but it was not until about 1800 that an Indian village was established here. The first white visitor of record was the Jesuit missionary, Father Louis Hennepin, in 168o, but probably the traders Radisson and Groseilliers were here in 1658. La Salle mentions the locality in a letter written in 1682. In 1766 Jona than Carver (q.v.) of Connecticut made an adventurous journey by way of Mackinac across Wisconsin and into Minnesota, and his heirs claimed the entire site of Saint Paul and much adjacent territory on the ground of an alleged grant made to him by the Indians. In 1805 Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike, sent by Jefferson to take possession of the region, bought most of the ground now occupied by the city, as well as the Ft. Snelling reservation, from the Sioux for 6o gal. of whiskey and a few presents, to which Congress later added $2,000 in cash. In 1823 the first steamboat made its way up the river. In 1837 the site was opened to settle ment. By 1840 there were about 200 settlers, mainly French, living by hunting, fishing and trading. To them came Father Lucien Gaultier, and under his guidance they built a church of logs in 1841 on the crest of the bluff and dedicated it to Saint Paul. The place came to be known as Saint Paul's Landing, later shortened to Saint Paul. On the organization of the Territory of Minnesota in 1849, the village of 32 houses was designated as the capital. It was incorporated as a city in