Education.— Minneapolis has 50,000 pupils in her public schools. There are 75 buildings worth $8,200,000. Six of these are high schools and three junior high schools. The high school enrolment is 7,000. Parallel to the work for girls in the Girls' Vocational High School is that for boys in the Dunwoody Institute, a privately endowed institution, co-operating with the public school system. There are 1,700 teachers in the public schools subject to auto matic salary increase and retirement on pen sion. Stanley Hall and Northrup Collegiate School, for girls, and Blake School for boys prepare for college. Saint Margaret's Acad emy, De La Salle Institute (Catholic), Minne haha Academy and Minnesota College (Lu theran) are prominent in the educational life of the Northwest. The city is the seat of the University of Minnesota and of Augsburg Seminary. Besides these institutions the Min neapolis School of Music and Dramatic Art, the Northwestern Conservatory of Music, the McPhail School of Music, the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts and the Handicraft Guild (affiliated with the University of Minnesota), together with several business colleges and other technical schools, provide instruction for several thousands of students. The Public Library, its 17 branches, 20 stations and 437 distributing points, circulated 1,566,000 volumes in 1917 in addition to over 125,000 pictures, lantern slides, pieces of music and other mate rial. It owns 334,763 books. Minneapolis has made great progress in the arts, especially during the past 15 years. The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonic and Apollo clubs and the Thursday Musical with the various conservatories, and 400 music teachers whom the advantages of the city as a musical centre attract to Minneapolis are chiefly responsible for giving the city its leader ship. The choral work in the public schools is of a high quality. The Institute of Art, one unit of which was completed in 1913 at a cost of $500,000, with the art schools and the art departments of the public schools exerts a great influence in the building and decorating of the Northwest. The Walker Art Gallery is well known for its collection of originals.
Government.— Minneapolis is governed by a mayor, who appoints a chief of police, and by a council of 26 aldermen, two from each ward, elected alternately for a term of four years at the time of the State elections. The council chooses an engineer, attorney, fire chief and health officer. The schools are under the charge of a board of seven, each elected from the city at large, for a term of four years. The board elects a superintendent and business superintendent, appoints teachers and other em ployees, not under civil service provisions, and administers affairs in general. The park and library boards are similarly independent of council control, but the mayor is ex officio a member of both. The board of corrections and charities controls the poor department, munici pal lodging-house, city workhouse and four hospitals. The civil service commission ex amines candidates for clerkships and other positions. The board of tax levy, consisting of the mayor, president of the council, chairman of the council ways and means committee, city comptroller, the presidents of the school, library and park boards, the chairman of the board of commissioners of Hennepin County and the county auditor, at a meeting held on the second Monday in September fixes the rate to be levied in the city and county. The city treasurer and comptroller are elected by the people as are also municipal judges. All candidates for office run on a non-partisan ticket, at a primary election held in June, the two candidates for each office receiving the highest number of votes being declared nomi nees to contest at the general election on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in Novem ber of lit even-numbered years. The city has a patrol limit system that confines saloons to a restricted district in the centre of the city and within certain other boundaries.
History.— Minneapolis is built about Saint Anthony Falls which Father Hennepin, the first white man to view them, so far as is known, named in 1680. No settlement was made until the establishment of Fort Snelling, first called Fort Saint Anthony. Then in 1823 the government built a mill to saw lumber on the west bank of the river just below the falls. Later this mill also ground flour. Settlers, however, were rigorously excluded from the Fort Snelling reservation until after the Indian lands east of the Mississippi had been relin quished. This was in 1837. The following year squatters from the fort built log cabins on the east bank of the river in attempting to claim the water-power rights as soon as the government should permit settlement. It was not until 1848 that Franklin Steele and William Cheever laid out the village of Saint Anthony. The former also built a sawmill to cut the pine that Daniel Stanchfield and other Maine woodsmen, whom news of the inex haustible supply had attracted to the settlement, sent down the river; and the village grew rap idly to importance, becoming a city in 1855. The pioneers were interested in education and general upliftment as well as in material things; and it was one of their first moves to found a university, which, after a period of hardships became the University of Minnesota, and to establish lecture courses and lyceums. In 1851 Col. John Stevens, acting for Steele, crossed to the west bank and laid claim to a quarter section of land, upon which the business por tion of Minneapolis was later built. He gave lots to those who would build; and in con sequence many settlers were attracted. A ferry, first, and then a suspension bridge, served as the connecting link between the two villages. In 1855 the plot of the western set dement was validated by the government; and from then on it began to lead, taking the name, Minneapolis, a compound of the Indian Minne haha (Curling Water), and the Greek, polis (city), upon a suggestion of Charles Hoag, a schoolmaster and public-spirited citizen. In 1867 it became a city. In 1872 the two cities became one under the name Minneapolis.
With the advent of the railroad and the period of prosperity that followed the Civil War, the city grew rapidly. It was stimulated by the installation of the Swiss Roller System in place of the buhr stone with which the first flour-nulls were equipped and by the introduc tion of a bolter process that purified middlings, thus making it possible to save as flour that which had formerly been wasted. These two inventions, the construction of an apron to prevent the wearing away of the limestone ledge of the falls, and the completion of sluice ways, made it possible to produce flour swiftly and cheaply so that Minneapolis became known as the Flour City. At the same time the cut ting of lumber kept increasing until 1890 when 500,000,000 feet were produced. At the Repub lican National Convention in 1892 Minneapolis was justly advertised as the chief lumber and flour city in the world. After a brief period of comparative inactivity caused by thepanic of 1893 and the depression that followed, the city began to attract new ventures of various kinds and to reflect their influence on the Northwest as suggested in the discussion of her trade. The growth in population has been as follows: (1860) 5,000; (1870) 18,079; (1880) 46,887; (1890) 164,739; (1900) 202,718; (1910) 303,000; (1918) 385,000.
Bibliography.— Hudson, H. B., Half Century of Minneapolis) (Minneapolis 1905); id., (Dictionary of Minneapolis) (ib 1917); Parsons, E. D., The Story of Minneapolis) (ib. 1913) ; Reports of the city departments; pamphlets of Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Associations. E. DUDLEY PARSONS, Instructor in English, West High School, Min neapolis.