The City of Minneapolis, which turned the 300,000 mark ten years ago, has climbed to 380,000 in the new census. It is a fine increase in one of the youngest large cities in the world. There was no Minneapolis until after the civil war. The war had been over ten years when what is now the largest city in Minnesota was incorporated. Now it is more than twice as large as Cincinnati or St. Louis were in 1860. The Mississippi River and its chief falls runs picturesquely through Minneapolis.
The city has the advantage of starting with an intelligent plan. Streets are wide and shaded with a double row of trees. Not many towns have a cataract with in their boundaries. Minneapolis is thus favored, and has not been satisfied with merely a view of its moving pictures. Without destroying the beauties engineers powerfully harnessed the water power, and the city at once became noted for large industries like fiour mills and saw mills.
Extensive manufacturing is the business basis of the city, with an intelligent farming population as tributary.It might be supposed that with the famous Mississippi River as a connecting link, Minneapolis and St. Louis would be intimately associated in transportation.
But who is eager to build steamboats for a channel that may dwindle to less than 3 feet and is never deep enough unless at flood-tide? The cost of improving the Upper Mississippi for large boats would be moderate, but the achievement is not in sight. St. Paul is not as large as Minneapolis by perhaps a third, but it is a live and growing city, too. The two are so close together that they are one.
This editorial, from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in May of 1920 has been lavishly illustrated with night scenes of Minneapolis as depicted in a series of postcards created by the V.O. Hammon Publishing Company of Chicago.