The next time you look at the skyline, consider this: You’re beholding a handmade object. Someone’s hands guided the girders into place, riveted the bolts, laid the bricks, smoothed the mortar. On the highest point on the tallest tower, someone’s hands hoisted the flag to celebrate its finish.

Same thing in the grocery store: Someone’s hands turned the key to the tractor, dropped the plow into the earth, picked up a bale of hay to feed the stock. Same thing with everything in your house that came by train: Hands on the throttle, hands on a lever to pour on the steam.

Minnesota doesn’t have an image as an industrial state, but if these pictures show anything, it’s proof that Minnesota is an industrious state. From the farmers in the plains to the construction workers in the sky; from the hands that work the assembly lines to the workers who extracted the resources, there’s hardly an acre of the state that hasn’t labored long, and labored hard.

Automation can only do so much. There will always be a need for the hands with skill and strength, and as long as there’s a need, Minnesota will provide them.