Читать книгу The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier - Charles E. Flandrau - Страница 17

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An act organizing a territory simply creates a government for its inhabitants, limiting and regulating its powers, executive, legislative and judicial, and in our country they generally resemble each other in all essential features. But the organic act of Minnesota contained one provision never before found in any that preceded it. It had been customary to donate to the territory and future state, one section of land in each surveyed township for school purposes, and section 16 had been selected as the one, but in the Minnesota act, the donation was doubled, and sections 16 and 36 in each township were reserved for the schools, which amounted to one-eighteenth of all the lands in the territory; and when it is understood that the state as now constituted contains 84,287 square miles, or about 53,943,379 acres of land, it will be seen that the grant was princely in extent and incalculable in value. No other state in the Union has been endowed with such a magnificent educational foundation. I may except Texas, which came into the Union, not as a part of the United States' public domain, but as an independent republic, owning all its lands, amounting to 237,504 square miles, or 152,002,560 acres, a vast empire in itself. I remember hearing a distinguished senator, in the course of the debate on its admission into the Union, describe its immensity by saying, "A pigeon could not fly across it in a week."

It affords every citizen of Minnesota great pride to know that, under all phases and conditions of our territory and state, whether in prosperity or adversity, the school fund has always been held sacred, and neither extravagance, neglect nor peculation has ever assailed it, but it has been husbanded with jealous care from time to time since the first dollar was realized from it until the present, and has accumulated until the principal is estimated at $20,000,000. The state auditor, in his last report of it, says: