14. 1904, an amendment authorizing the investment of the permanent school and university funds in the bonds of counties, towns, cities, villages, and school districts under prescribed conditions.
What place the tornado, the hailstorm, the locust, and such like destroyers have in the mundane economy; whether they are providential dispositions for the punishment of particular communities, or freaks of sheer diabolism, or resultants of powers imparted to nature playing under determining conditions, is a question which must be left to casuists, reverend and other. Minnesota can claim no exemption from such visitations. On April 14, 1886, a furious tornado struck the city of St. Cloud and its suburb, Sauk Rapids, cutting a swath of desolation and destroying some seventy persons. In 1891, on June 15, a series of tornadoes traversed the counties of Martin, Faribault, Freeborn, Mower, and Fillmore, on a line nearly parallel with the Southern Minnesota division of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. Many farm buildings were wrecked and about fifty people killed. In previous years disastrous tornadoes had wrought havoc in New Ulm and Rochester.
In the fall of 1886 there was a descent of what were supposed to be ordinary grasshoppers in Otter Tail County. When in the following spring “hoppers” were appearing dangerously numerous, Governor McGill sent out the state entomologist, Dr. Otto Lugger of the university agricultural college, to investigate. He saw at once that the genuine Rocky Mountain locust was to be dealt with, and proceeded to organize the farmers for warfare on them. So effective was the campaign that thirty-five thousand bushels of the insects were caught and destroyed, and half the crops on about one hundred square miles saved.
On September 1, 1894, a fire broke out in the cut-over pine woods near Hinckley, in Pine County. A high wind prevailing, it spread and raged for many days. Eight villages, including Hinckley and Sandstone, and scores of farmsteads were completely destroyed. Not less than three hundred and fifty square miles were devastated. Four hundred and eighteen persons lost their lives, and more than two thousand were left homeless. The property loss was not less than a million dollars. Governor Nelson appointed a relief committee of citizens, with Charles A. Pillsbury at its head. The estimated amount of relief furnished through this and the local committees was $185,000. In the same year the chinch bug did much damage to growing crops in several southwestern counties.