Three Classic Articles Tuesday: North Dakotiana

Over the last month or so, I’ve been working on a paper on the history of North Dakota Quarterly (née the Quarterly Journal of the University of North Dakota). This has sent me into the bowels of the archive and induced me to read some early 20th century articles that are as interesting as historical artifacts as they are exciting for their ideas.

Here are three articles that I read this week that got me excited.

First, the last article published by the Quarterly Journal of the University of North Dakota was by George Abbott. Abbott was a student of A.A. Noyes at MIT before being hired at UND in 1910 after a brief stint at NDSU (then the Agricultural College). He had a 40+ year career at UND and continued to be active in the field until 1970 (!!). 

In the final issue of the Quarterly in 1933, he published an article titled “Can Science Save the Civilization it has Created?” He argues that it can, but in order to do so, scientists need to be allowed to participate in public policy debates. This is particularly crucial as science — in his estimation — provides us with more leisure time and this leisure may well erode the very discipline that science requires. In particular Abbott speculated that the excess of leisure might lead to moral corruption. For Abbott, the moral corruption instigated by excessive leisure and the power unleashed by early 20th century science would create a perfect storm where greed would override our rationality. The solution to this is for those trained in science and capable of applying “its spirit and its powerful methods to the serious business of human living.”

For an article written in the depths of the depression and when “medieval politicians and statesmen are now splitting up the political world into feudal castles barricaded with high tariff walls and trade barriers, fostering extreme nationalism and traditional hatreds which if unchecked may lead to world strife that may spell the doom of civilization,” there is a kind of guarded optimism that a better future is possible. I remain skeptical whether this better future is guarded (or guided) by science or by the more humanistic forms of mutual understanding. It is no little irony that after this issue of the magazine, it lost its funding and only reappears in 1956.

The second article appears in the first issue of Minnesota History in 1915: The Relation of the State to Historical Work” by C.W. Alvord of the University of Illinois. He argues that the state needs to support professional historians. First, states west of the Mississippi (or even the Appalachians) need well-organized public archives. Second, “most of us now prefer to call a physician when we are sick, to employ a lawyer when we go to court, and to hire a stenographer when we wish to dictate a letter. Unfortunately the public is not yet awakened to the need of seeking out a well-trained historian when there is demand that history be written.” Alvord makes clear that well-trained historians — with knowledge of the social and natural sciences, law and government, as well as French and German — produce work not for popular consumption, but for future historians (whether these individuals write for the public or the profession). Such historians served to collect, prepare, and publish the raw materials for future scholars. 

The paper goes on to call on the US Congress to appropriate funds for an archive building for the national archives of the US and for states to follow suit. This is to protect the precious documents collected and prepared by historians from the risk of loss and fire (as historians and citizens in North Dakota would come to appreciate 15 years later). It is interesting that the editor of Minnesota History is none other than Solon J. Buck, would would go on to become the archivist of the US after WWII. 

Finally, I want to dedicate some space on the ole blog to the centennial of North Dakota History (née North Dakota Historical Quarterly). The first issue included an article near and dear to my hear: “A Short Account of A Rowboat Journey from Medora to Bismarck” by Clell Gannon. As readers of my blog know, we reprinted this article (now in the public domain) in our republication of Gannon’s Songs of the Bunch Grass Acres last year. It is a wonderful blend of storytelling and extensive survey archaeology. 

Equally intriguing is an article by Elmer Ellis who at the time this article was published had just finished his M.A. under O.G. Libby at UND and was teaching at Mayville State (then North Dakota State Teachers College) when this article appeared. The article, “Recollections of a Bad Lands’ Rancher” was based on an account written by Arthur Clarke Huidekoper who bought up railroad land near Medora in Billings County in the late 19th century. He raised cattle on the land and then horses which became his mainstay until the Department of the Interior forced him to remove fenced in areas of federal land that he had been using as rangeland. He then sold his ranch and horses and returned east. 

Huidekoper was a bit less famous than Elmer Ellis who went on to take a PhD from the University of Iowa and then to become president of the University of Missouri (and after whom the library is named). He was easily the most prominent early alumnus from the UND History Department and arguably O.G. Libby’s most successful student.