On this day in 1970, a Forum staff writer assessed North Dakota’s promise and challenges entering the new decade, highlighting opportunities in resources, industry, modernization, and recreation while warning that population decline, outdated government, and deep inequities—especially on reservations—would shape whether the 1970s became a boom or a setback.

Here is the complete story as it appeared in the paper that day:

By PIIL MATTHEWS
Staff Writer

North Dakota enters the 1970s with footings solidly built for the future:

Lots of wide open spaces when many parts of the nation are hurting for room. The promise of abundant water from Garrison diversion for irrigation and municipal and industrial use. A tax climate favorable for new industry and for the diversification of the state’s economic base. And its major resource — an intelligent and dependable people.

But how North Dakotans respond to their opportunity will determine whether the next ten years will be the heavenly seventies or a decade of decline.

Faced with a decreasing population, low farm prices, disappearing farms and small towns, North Dakotans may well be forced to take vigorous action if the trends are to be reversed.

The blueprint for tomorrow already is off the drawing boards. The roads, schools and colleges, the productive land and the natural resources of oil and lignite are already here.

“Our environmental setting is good for industrial development,” said a prominent Republican. “The depopulated Midwest states will find reversal of the trends of large-scale movements from the rural to urban centers. People want to get away from the smog and the crush of the cities and find someplace where there is clean air.”

A group of Eastern delegates arriving in Fargo for a convention were amazed because they could not see the air. Air, to them, was the smog of the cities. All they could see here was blue sky.

“There is tremendous disillusionment of life in the cities,” the Republican spokesman continued. “They are not nice places to live in. People want to get away. And to go someplace where there is clean air.”

But the overriding question is whether the opportunities will be seized. Do we want to trade our clean skies and wide-open spaces for the pollution and smog and congestion of industrial progress? Or is there an alternative?

North Dakota enters the new decade with some disturbing features marring its potential. Population which reached about 650,000 in the mid-60s, is on the decline. On July 1, 1969, the United States Census Bureau estimated the state’s population at 615,000.

The trend toward fewer and larger farms continues and is expected to continue in the years ahead. While there were 84,000 farms in the state in the 1930s, there are 43,000 today. Increased mechanization and reduced farm population spell a continued decline in the small towns.

Political Pains

In government and politics the state continues to struggle along with an outdated Constitution and laws that hamper instead of enhance its steps toward progress.

Grave concern is expressed across the state about the survival of a two-party system in North Dakota as the result of flounderings in the Democratic party both at the national and state level.

And when North Dakotans boast, “We have no ghettos,” someone can aptly point out, “Your ghettos are on the Indian reservations.”

The plight of the Indian is unquestionably the gravest problem confronting the state as it enters the decade. And the people are responding with a frenzy of activity to find new ways to cure old ills.

An Indian tribal leader observed, “With all the various governmental programs under way, you would think that life on the reservation is a utopia. But it isn’t. The people are confused. They are being pulled in many different ways by the various agencies working in different directions. This fragmentation of services is not good. It leaves the Indian confused.”

One glimmer of hope in this proliferation of proposed remedies is the United Tribes Employment Training Center that opened at Bismarck in 1969. By enrolling whole Indian families in the program, the Center aims to provide the breadwinner with job skills while at the same time instructing the parents and children in school subjects and personal living — a wholesale attack on the total problem.

“We’ve put all our eggs in one basket,” said the Indian leader. “This is a new concept — Indians training Indians. When Indian trainees walk in here and see a non-Indian, they feel resentment. They’ll respond to you when they won’t respond to me.”

He is enthusiastic about the Center and predicts it will flourish in the years ahead.

“It’s not what the people can do for the Indians,” he remarked. “It’s what the Indians can do for themselves. They have sat on their haunches, their arms folded and listened long enough to what the other people are going to do for them. It’s about time they start doing their own thinking and stop being a political football.”

He said the Center program is aimed directly at the root of the interrelated problems of unemployment, family disintegration and despair.

As new directions are being charted for the Indian, there are movements elsewhere in the state that augur well for the future.

A legislative leader said there is a mood across the state for government reorganization aimed at more streamlined and efficient services.

“The 1970s will see strides taken to reorganize government by making the executive branch stronger,” he said. “Instead of 14 elected state officials, we will be electing only five or six.”

North Dakotans will vote this year on the question of whether a constitutional convention should be held to redraft the Constitution. The legislative expert said the convention would present an opportunity to make a basic set of laws more suitable to the times than a document enacted in 1889.

He foresaw more interstate cooperation for providing costly services for the woman prisoner, the psychotic child, the hardened juvenile, the tubercular patient, the criminally
insane.

He envisioned more inter-governmental cooperation in the sharing of services:
“I think county government will remain close to the local level much as it is today, but economies will be realized by having one county official serve more than a single county — as is already being done by some county school superintendents.

The computer center in the Capitol, he explained, will be utilized in many ways to do a lot of jobs more efficiently and more accurately. A central data bank of common information needed by several departments of government will become a reality, he said, in place of many duplicating sets of files in various offices containing the same information.

The North Dakota Century Code of laws, comprised of 14 volumes, probably will be placed on tape, he said, for easy access via the computer. This will speed up code searches, drafting and enrolling of the bills.

“North Dakota will become one of the leaders in using computer for its state government operations,” he predicted.

Other changes in governmental affairs are in the wind, in the opinion of other state leaders. Both the Republican and Democratic spokesmen saw the implementation of revenue sharing from the federal government which would become a source of tax relief for North Dakota.

The state sales tax was raised to 4 per cent this year to provide replacement revenue for the abolition of the personal property tax.

“I would be opposed to increasing the sales tax any more,” said the Republican. “If there were any consideration of an increase I would be absolutely in favor of exempting all food and lower-cost clothing.”

A labor leader saw the government taking a more vigorous role in providing jobs for the young people and in providing vital services.

“The railroads want to discontinue certain trains and branch lines because they aren’t making any money in that particular operation,” he said. “But the railroads are a service. It would be like the post office saying they aren’t going to deliver mail to a certain part of town because it doesn’t make a profit there.”

The labor leader contended that the government would have to socialize distribution and transportation functions where the problems of private ownership have become burdensome.

“Either the government will have to subsidize or take over these operations — so what’s the difference? If a private organization serving the public fails to do the job because it can’t make a profit, then the government will have to take over and run it as a service.”

He said the state could halt the exodus of young people by establishing some industries that free enterprise does not see fit to do.

“If we can operate a state mill and a state bank, it would seem to me that we would be able to operate other state industries — such as the processing of our farm products,” he said.

Another proposal he raised would serve to maintain a more uniform cycle in the construction industry. Because of weather and climate there is high unemployment at certain times of the year. “By some general planning promoted by organized labor and the contractors with the state government participating, it could spread out the work throughout the seasons of the year. It would be a benefit to the worker and to the economy as a whole,” he said.

State government is assuming a more active role in providing employment and business opportunities. The Municipal Industrial Development Act contains provisions for property and income tax exemptions for up to five years for certain new ventures.

A business economist pointed out that new manufacturing plants are being added in North Dakota at the rate of about one a week. There are about 600 manufacturing plants in the state and he expected the growing trend to continue during the decade.

The diversion of water from Lake Sakakawea will not only see the beginning of irrigation farming but will also provide abundant supplies of water for municipal and industrial uses, which will prove beneficial to the economy.

North Dakota has the largest lignite coal reserves in the nation and three large plants have tapped this resource for producing electric power. More plants will be established.

Recreation is due to have a growing economic impact in the years ahead, in the opinion of many state leaders. The age of the snowmobile is making winter sports the “in” thing and states with four seasons will offer a variety of leisure activities the year around.

But even with opportunities glittering on the horizon, there is the question of whether the people will exploit them. Some prefer the state as it is. Some like to make their money here but choose to spend it elsewhere.

A North Dakota historian observed, “We live in a small state and therefore we feel defensive, even inferior. There is an attitude of fatalism. With the present declining population, we tend to think that this trend is bound to continue.”

He said there is a need for larger and less governmental and geographical units in the state, but that, too, can reach a point of diminishing returns. School district reorganization, he noted, often faces a great deal of resistance from people who want their small towns to survive: “They want to have a sense of community, a sense of belonging.”

But as the life in the big cities becomes more unbearable, he said, the life in the small towns and rural areas will become more desirable.

A Fargo housewife saw great hope for North Dakota because of the quality of life it can offer its people.

“In North Dakota we still have time to preserve and improve our surroundings,” she said. “The flower beds along the Red River — that’s the best thing that has happened here for years. We’re so busy pulling down trees and putting up architectural monstrosities and allowing these horrible strip developments along the highways.”

“There is every opportunity to attract and hold the young people by offering a good place to live rather than the lure of big money,” she contended.

Because North Dakota does not have the problems of the industrial and metropolitan centers, she advocated strong control to preserve and protect the environment as it is.

“We still have a clear sky, the wide open spaces and a lot of do-it-yourself opportunities. It’s that quality of life that will attract,” she said.