AMERICAN SCENE: Minnesota: A State That Works

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admixture of Poles and Slavs and other groups. In many respects, the Scandinavians, long the largest single group in the state, have shaped Minnesota's character. They, together with its large Anglo-Saxon and German strain, account for a deep grain of sobriety and hard work, a near-worship for education and a high civic tradition in Minnesota life. Such qualities helped to produce the intelligent calm—and the stolidity—that characterize the efficient Minnesota atmosphere. It is telling that the University of Minnesota is probably the dominant and most prestigious institution in the state. Its president, Malcolm Moos, sees Minnesota as a felicitous mixture of the New England in fluence and the spirit of the frontier.

Arthur Naftalin, a brilliant mayor of Minneapolis during the '60s, points out that no single group—ethnic, religious or business—has ever been able to take control of the state. There were no Tammany machines to greet the immigrants. "With our great variety," says Naftalin, "we have always had to form coalitions."

The most notable was the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party that Hubert Humphrey helped nail together in 1944 just before he became mayor of Minneapolis. The Farmer-Labor Party was radical in its origins, with mostly rural, Scandinavian Protestant members and roots in the antimonopolist, Greenback and Populist movements. The Democrats were mostly urban and more conservative, with strong Irish, German and Catholic elements. Within a decade of the merger, the D.F.L. emerged as the dominant force in Minnesota politics, breeding a remarkable collection of national figures like Humphrey, Orville Freeman, Eugene McCarthy and Walter ("Fritz") Mondale.

The Minnesota Republicans, once intensely conservative, have supported the liberal wing of the G.O.P. for more than a generation. The shift started with Harold E. Stassen, who took over as Governor in 1938, when he was 31. He later became a figure of fun as a perennial presidential candidate, but one of Stassen's many state reforms accounts for much of the honesty of Minnesota politics today. Stassen pushed through a comprehensive civil service law that abolished patronage. "By taking politics out of the back room and engaging thousands in political activity, from women to college students," observes Author Neal R. Peirce in The Great Plains States of America, "Stassen made the governmental process in Minnesota a superior instrument of the people's will." Says David Lebedoff, a Minneapolis lawyer and author: "Politics is an honorable profession in this state. In other states, people don't gamble away their best years in politics. Here it's expected, because we feel it is important enough."

Among the state's young citizen-politicians:

>Martin Olav Sabo, 35, the son of Norwegian immigrants, worked his way through Augsburg College. In 1960, as he was preparing to go on to graduate school, a friend encouraged him to run for the state legislature. He did and won, several times. By 1969, at the age of 30, he was the youngest returning member of the house. But he had accumulated enough experience and respect from his colleagues to be elected minority leader. In 1972, he became speaker of the house. The job entitles him to a $700-a-year raise, but in order to support his wife and two