F & M has grown with Minneapolis. It is a pioneer in many ways — it pioneered the mutual savings idea which prospered in the North Star State. Its leaders were from pioneer families who helped to lay the foundations of Minneapolis —and many of whose descendants have occupied and continue to occupy leadership positions in the bank. Its founders had broad interests in business and in civic affairs. That tradition continues to thrive and enrich the civic and cultural life of Minneapolis.
Minneapolis, a flat prairie town, got her start at the Falls of St. Anthony as the milling center for the wheat off the Great Plains. As the largest population center in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, it has led the way in transforming a predominantly rural state and region into one that has urbanized and industrialized within a generation. The economy of the Upper Midwest, once built upon agriculture, agri-business and extractive industries tied to natural resources (lumbering and milling) has diversified into finance, “brain” industries, high-value manufacturing and a multitude of service industries. These vast changes, painful and traumatic in terms of population shifts and urban problems, have come about within a generation. The Twin Cities is the metropolitan center of a vast multi-state region, a region stretching from the copper mines and timberlands of Northern Michigan westward for 1500 miles through woods and prairies and high plains to the copper mines and timberlands of western Montana. Minneapolis was designated a Federal Reserve city for this area in 1914. Minnesota increasingly is receiving accolades as a state “that works”, one that is as “good a model as one can find in these United States of the successful society” — a state whose leaders play an increasingly prominent role in the life of our nation — a state whose political structure is open, issue-oriented, clean and responsive — a state that is a leader in services to its people as well as in levying high taxes to pay for those services — and a state that excels in quality of education, health care, economic growth, industries that remain home-owned, and cultural leadership.
excerpted from the article, A City and A Savings Bank by Russel W. Fridley
Hennepin History Magazine, Fall 1974, Vol. 33, No. 4
