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The livestock, except sheep and pigs, was still by 1840 prevailingly of no breed. Nevertheless, Durhams and Devons were coming into use. The Patroon stock of shorthorns, introduced in 1824 from England by Stephen Van Rensellaer, of Albany, gained its first customers apparently among the English farmers of western New York, but gradually made its way among the Yankees as well. Other importations were soon made, so that by 1840 there were several prominent herds of purebreds in that section of the state. In 1842 it was said of the Genesee County Fair that "with the exception of some working oxen and one cow not a single animal of native cattle was in the yard. All were either pure or grade Durhams or Devons.... Bulls were shown by some six or seven competitors. Among them were four thoroughbred ones and one of those imported." It is clear that by the time emigration to Wisconsin began to take place, actual progress had been made and the entire body of Yankee farmers had been indoctrinated with the idea of better livestock. Sheep and pigs were already largely improved, the former prevailingly through the cross with the merinos, the latter with Berkshires and other English breeds. The Morgan horse, a Vermont product, was gaining wide popularity.

From what has been said of the care of livestock, it follows that the possibilities of the farm for the manufacture of fertilizer were generally neglected. English travelers were apt to insist that this neglect was universal, but there were, of course, numerous exceptions. Farming was extensive, not intensive. Lands were cleared by chopping or "slashing" the timber, burning brush and logs, then harrowing among the stumps to cover the first-sown wheat seed. In a few years, with the rotting of the smaller stumps and the roots, the plow could be used, though always with embarrassment on account of the large stumps which thickly studded the fields. These disappeared gradually, being allowed to stand till so fully decayed that a few strokes with ax or mattock would dislodge them. As late as 1830 many fields in western New York were stump infested.

Wheat was the great, almost the sole, market crop, and it was grown year after year till the soil ceased to respond. From bumper yields of twenty-five or thirty bushels per acre the returns fell off to twenty, fifteen, and then twelve, ten, or even eight. The process of decline was well under way when the immigration to Wisconsin set in, and already the turn had come toward a more definite livestock economy, which in large portions of New York soon gave rise to a system of factory cheese making. A main reason for the removal to the West, on the part of farmers whose holdings were too small to make successful stock farms, or who refused to abandon wheat raising as a business, was that lands in the West could be had already cleared by nature. Many half-cleared farms, with customary buildings and fences, could in the forties be purchased in western New York for from four to eight dollars per acre. Instead of buying these farms, the young men preferred going to Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, or Wisconsin, those having such farms for sale doing likewise after selling out to neighbors, usually the larger farmers, who elected to remain and change their system of farming. In Vermont we have a similar story, in Ohio the same. The Yankee farmers who came to Wisconsin were generally at home either small farmers or the sons of farmers large or small; while a certain proportion of the larger farmers, by reason of debt or desire to extend their business, also sold out and came west to buy cheap lands on the prairies or in the openings.

An agriculture which dates from before the time of Tacitus, and which acquired permanent characteristics from the influence of Roman merchants, monastics, and feudatories in Roman and medieval times, was bound to differ widely and even fundamentally from the agriculture of a far flung American frontier. The Germans who met the Yankee immigrants in primitive Wisconsin brought an inheritance of habit and training analogous to that of the English Puritan emigrants to New England, but with the difference that the Germans' training had continued two hundred years longer, on similar lines. They were old-world cultivators, the Yankees new-world cultivators.

Tacitus says in one place: "The Germans live scattered and apart, as a spring, a hill, or a wood entices them." Nineteenth century German economists complained that German farmsteads were seated often most inconveniently with reference to the management of the farm lands pertaining to them. They had been established, in the days of long ago, by lakeside, brook, or river under conditions in which access to water was the most important single consideration. They had never been moved, although gradually the arable stretched far back from the dwelling, and the pasture perhaps was located in a wholly detached area. This description applies to portions of northern Germany where farms were large and farming had the status of a regular and dignified business.

Many individuals and families came to Wisconsin from districts like Mecklenburg, Prussia, Pomerania, though in the emigrations of the 1840's and fifties the great majority were from southern and central German states. It will be one of the interesting inquiries in connection with our study of local influences in Wisconsin towns , how far the special regional inheritances of foreign born settlers manifested themselves in Wisconsin communities. The presumption, about the north German, would be that his farming operations would tend to be on a large scale, under a business system which--in this new land--would slough off such anachronisms as the dislocated farmstead, and present the features of an ideal establishment. But it may be that the forest was such a powerful leveler as to obliterate most of the regional distinctions among immigrants. Our chief concern, at all events, is with that great body of German farmers, and intending farmers, who came from the southwestern states of the recent Empire, especially Alsace, Baden, W?rttemberg, Rhine Palatinate, Rhenish Prussia, Hesse, Nassau, Westphalia--to some extent Bavaria and Saxony.

The fundamental facts about the home conditions of these people, so far as they were farmers at home, were the smallness of their holdings, their intensive cultivation, and the almost universal village type of life. Travelers of about 1840 describe the typical middle Rhine country as a highly cultivated plain without division hedges or fences other than the tree-bordered roads, with no separate farm dwellings and with no livestock in sight. The crops of several kinds being arranged in various shaped fields, patches, and strips, the plain looked like the proverbial "crazy-quilt." Villages were huddled at the edges of woods, and occasionally in the midst of the cultivated area. Their houses, which were not arranged on a regular plan, were usually large stone structures, the farm yard, with tools, implements, manure and compost heaps, occupying a kind of court at the rear.

As a rule, all animals were housed winter and summer. Here was an important difference to the farming of the north, where large herds of cattle could be seen pasturing ample meadows, or ruminating in the shade of buildings or of woods. The soiling system was universally practiced in summer. Grass land being scarce and precious, feed for the cows was laboriously gathered along the brookside, in the open spaces of the forest, along all the roads, in the cemeteries, and the greens before the houses. The weeds and thinnings from the growing crops went to the same object. Vegetable tops were a great resource in late summer and fall, and patches of clover, while insuring green feed, furnished hay as well. In places the growing of sugar beets for the market was a leading agricultural enterprise, and the tops of the beets were carefully cured for winter feed.

The cultivation was intensive both in that it aimed at the maximum produce from given areas, and in that the crops raised included some which called for very special care. Some sections grew tobacco, in connection with which much hand work was indispensable. This crop also called for care in seed selection, in germinating, and in preparing the ground for the reception of the young plants. Beet culture for sugar making involved perhaps not less care, and doubtless more hand labor. Of similar but less particularity was the growing of root crops for stock feed, the orcharding, which was general, and the vine dressing, incident to the business of special districts.

There were, of course, many farmers and farms in the region indicated and in other contributory regions, which were not so widely different from the average of those in America. Yet, on the whole, it can be said that the German husbandman, in training and habit, was analogous to our modern truck farmer or orchardist, rather than to our general farmer. He was a specialist in soils, in fertilizing and preparing them for different crops, in planting, stirring, weeding, irrigating; in defending plants against insect pests, seasonal irregularities, and soil peculiarities; he throve by hoeing, dragging, trimming, pruning, sprouting; by curing and conserving plants, roots, grasses, grains, and fruits. His livestock economy was incidental, yet very important. It supplied the necessary fertilizer to maintain soil productivity; it afforded milk, beef, pork, butter, cheese, wool. It gave him his draft animals, often cows instead of oxen, and economized every bit of grass and forage which his situation produced.

Improvement of livestock appears to have affected southwestern Germany prior to 1850 very little as compared with the pastoral countries of England, Holland, Friesland, and north Germany. The animals kept by the village farmers were therefore not remarkable for quality. But they were usually well housed, and the feed and care they received made up in considerable measure for the absence of superior blood.

The various states of Germany, by 1840, were maintaining schools of agriculture, a species of experiment stations for the dissemination of such scientific agricultural information as was then available. To some extent, therefore, farming was beginning to be scientific. But, prevailingly it was intensely practical, the appropriate art connected with the growing of every distinct crop being handed on from father to son, from farmer to laborer.

One could almost predict how farmers thus trained would react to the new environment of the Wisconsin wilderness. Taking up a tract of forested land or buying a farm with a small clearing upon it, their impulse would be, with the least possible delay, to get a few acres thoroughly cleared, subdued to the plow, and in a high state of tilth. Exceptions there were, to be sure, but on the whole the German pioneers were not content to slash and burn their timber. After the timber was off, the stumps must come out, forthwith, to make the tract fit for decent cultivation. Was it the Germans who introduced in land clearing the custom of "grubbing" instead of "slashing"? This meant felling the tree by undermining it, chopping off roots underground at a safe depth, taking out grub and all, instead of cutting it off above ground. In timber of moderate growth this practice proved fairly expeditious and highly successful, for once a tract was grubbed, the breaking plow encountered no serious obstruction. A good "grubber" among later immigrants could always count on getting jobs from established German farmers.

To the American, who was content to plow around his stumps every year for a decade, to cultivate around them, cradle or reap around them, it seemed that his German neighbor was using some kind of magic to exorcise his stumps. The magic was merely human muscle, motivated by a psychology which inhibited rest so long as a single stump remained in the field.

The German not only used the heaps of farm yard fertilizer which, on buying out the original entryman, he commonly found on the premises, but he conserved all that his livestock produced, and frequently, if not too distant from town or village, became a purchaser of the commodity of which liverymen, stock yard keepers, and private owners of cow or horse were anxious to be relieved. The manufacture of fertilizer was a prime reason for stabling his livestock. The other was his fixed habit of affording animals such care. Not all Germans built barns at once, but the majority always tried to provide warm sheds, at least, whereas Yankee and Southwesterner alike were very prone to allow their animals to huddle, humped and shivering, all winter on the leeward side of house or granary, or in clumps of sheltering brush or trees. The German was willing to occupy his log house longer, if necessary, in order to gain the means for constructing adequate barns and sheds.

Germans were not one-crop farmers. The lands they occupied, usually forested, could not be cleared fast enough at best to enable them to raise wheat on a grand scale, as the Yankees did in the open lands of the southeast and west. Their arable was extended only a few acres per year, and while that was being done the German farmers grew a little of everything--wheat, rye, corn, oats, barley, potatoes, roots. Clover was to them a favorite forage, hay, and green manure crop. In growing it, they used gypsum freely. This policy of clover growing, adopted gradually by all farmers, was one of the means finally relied on by the wheat farmers to restore the productivity of their abused soils.

In ways such as the above, German farmers helped to save Wisconsin agriculture in the period of stress when wheat growing failed and before co?perative dairying entered. They were not the chief influence in popularizing improved livestock. Credit for that innovation must be awarded to the Yankees. They had resumed in the eastern states the English tradition of breeding, and brought it into Wisconsin where, by means of state and county fairs and an active agricultural press, it was ultimately borne in upon the minds of all farmers, Germans among the rest.

Neither did the Germans lead in developing the new agriculture, of which co?perative dairying was the keystone. Yankee leadership therein, too, was the dominant influence. Yet, it was the Germans, Scandinavians, and other foreigners--and numerically Germans were in the majority--who, by virtue of their agricultural morale, their steadiness in carrying out plans, their patience and perseverance, have made the dairy business of Wisconsin the great industry it has become.

Above all, the Germans persisted as farmers. They prospered not dramatically, like some of the more successful of the Yankee farmers, but by little and little they saved money, bought more land, better stock, and built better homes. When Yankee farmers, discouraged or impoverished by the failure of wheat, offered their farms for sale preparatory to "going west," Germans who had managed their smaller farms more carefully stood ready to buy; when Yankees who were tired of being "tied to a cow" wanted to go to Montana, Oregon, or Wyoming to raise steers by wholesale, on the ranching plan, they sold out to Germans who made the dairy farms pay larger dividends year by year. When Yankee farmers retired to the city, or went into business, which in recent decades they have done by thousands, Germans were among those who were the keenest bidders for their farm properties. In a word, the German has succeeded agriculturally through the more and more perfect functioning, in this new land, of qualities imparted by the training and inheritance which he brought with him from the old world. On the whole, Germans have kept clear of speculation, preferring to invest their savings in neighboring lands with which they were intimately familiar, or to lend to neighboring farmers on farm mortgage security. In the aggregate, German farmers in Wisconsin have long had vast sums at interest. The Institute for Research in Land Economics has completed investigations which show that the nation's area of lowest farm mortgage interest rates coincides very closely with the great maple forest of eastern Wisconsin, which has been held, from the first, predominantly by German farmers.

We have no desire to minimize the factor contributed to Wisconsin's agriculture by the Yankees. They were the prophets and the organizers of the farmers' movement. Their inherent optimism, their speculative bent, their genius for organization were indispensable to its success. "Anything is possible to the American people," shouted the mid-century American orator from a thousand Fourth of July rostrums, therein merely reflecting what the mass of his hearers religiously believed. When agriculture had to be remade in Wisconsin, the Yankee's intelligence told him in what ways it must be improved, and his tact, courage, and address enabled him to enlist and organize the means for remaking it. When the Yankee was convinced, by his farm paper or by the exhibitions, that a purebred animal was a good investment, his speculative spirit sent him to his banker to borrow a thousand dollars, and to a distant breeder to make what his more timid German neighbor would call a "mighty risky investment"--for the animal might die! Finally, when local organization was required to secure a cheese factory, a creamery, or a dairy board of trade, the Yankee by virtue of his community leadership was usually able to effect the desired result.

Wisconsin's almost unique success in agriculture is due to no single or even dual factor. But among the human elements which have been most potent in producing the result, none is of more significance than the fortunate blend in her population of the Yankee and the Teuton.

THE YANKEE AND THE TEUTON IN WISCONSIN

JOSEPH SCHAFER

The nation was young in 1804. Parts of it were new and for that reason had made but meager educational progress; other parts were backward for different reasons. But in the older states of New England popular education had flourished for one hundred and fifty years. This point, stressed by a score of writers, illustrated by legal enactments, court decrees, town records, and anniversary sermons, cannot be over-emphasized in a summary of the social contributions which the Yankees made to the new western societies they helped to build. Notwithstanding all that has been written to prove the priority, in this or that feature of American educational progress, of other social strains or geographical areas, history may confidently assign to the Yankee priority in the attainment of universal literacy on an extensive scale.

Once the Puritan had convinced himself that the temptation to ignorance came from "ye old deluder Satan," whose fell purpose was to keep men from a knowledge of the Scriptures and thus the more readily win them for his own, he hesitated not to require the maintenance of schools in all towns and neighborhoods under his jurisdiction. He was also concerned to recruit an "able and orthodox ministry" to take the places of the aging pastors who had come from England and to supply the needs of new settlements. Harvard College could turn out the ministers, if it had properly prepared young men to work upon. So the larger towns were required to maintain grammar schools in addition to the common schools. Thus we have, as early as 1647, provision for schooling from the lowest rudiments up through the college course.

The original religious motive for maintaining these schools persisted. But other motives were added as the Puritans perceived how notably secular interests, as well as religious, were served by schooling. For one thing, young persons who could read, write, and cipher had a distinct advantage in worldly matters over those who could not. Cheats and "humbugs," of whom every community had its share, made victims of the ignorant, while they fled from the instructed even as their master, Satan, was supposed to flee from them. Many New England stories were designed to carry the lesson, especially to parents, that the best legacy children could receive was good schooling, without which wealth and property would quickly melt away.

The great majority were satisfied with the elementary training afforded by the district schools, kept for a few months in winter. But the presence of learned men in every community and the existence of secondary schools and colleges tolled a good many on the way to advanced instruction who had no plans for professional careers. From farm, factory, and counting-room, even from among those before the mast, went boys to academy and college, while female seminaries springing up here and there took care of the educational interests of selected groups of girls. Such schools were not free, but their benefits were easy to attain, the principal requisite being pluck and a willingness to work both at earning money and at the studies. Girls and boys alike could usually earn their way by teaching in the common schools. Thus the educational system propagated itself, with the result that men and women of intelligence, culture, and refinement became widely dispersed through Yankeedom, and learning was recognized as an aid to the good life as well as a guarantee of the successful life. This was a fundamental condition of that literary flowering which marked the middle decades of the nineteenth century. It insured the poets, historians, orators, and novelists an audience which waxed ever larger as province after province in the West was added to New England's spiritual empire.

When all necessary deductions have been made, however, the church remained equally with the school a dominant note in the Yankee's social landscape. His "meeting house," not infrequently in New England a gem of ecclesiastical architecture, fulfilled his artistic ideal; the congregation was the "household of faith" which claimed his undeviating loyalty; the pastor was "guest and philosopher" in his home whenever he chose to honor it with his presence. To men and women alike, attendance upon the church services was the principal Sabbath day duty and the chief physical and mental diversion of the whole week. It was an old custom to linger after the morning sermon for a social chat either in the church yard, when the weather permitted, or else at a near-by tavern; and while the talk was ostensibly about the sermon, gossip, bits of practical information, and even a shy kind of love making were often interwoven, tending to make this a genuine community social hour.

The tradition that the minister must be a man of learning was of incalculable social importance. His advice was called for under every conceivable circumstance of individual and community need. He assisted about the employment of schoolmasters and was the unofficial supervisor of the school. He enjoined upon negligent parents the duty of sending their children, and he had an eye for the promising boys--lads o'pairts, as the Scotch say--whom he encouraged to prepare for professional life. He fitted boys to enter the academy and sometimes tutored college students. In the rural parish the minister occupied the church glebe, which made him a farmer with the rest. He was apt to read more widely and closely in the agricultural press, or in books on husbandry, than his neighbors, thereby gaining the right to offer practical suggestions about many everyday matters. Some ministers were writers for agricultural journals. Many contributed to local newspapers items of news or discussions of public questions in which their parishioners were interested with themselves.

The home missionary idea was inherent in the New England system both as respects religion and education. Older, better established communities always felt some responsibility for the newer. Since settlement proceeded largely by the method of planting new townships of which the raw land was purchased by companies from the colonial and state governments, it was possible for the larger community to give an impetus to religion and education under the terms of township grants. This was accomplished by reserving in each grant three shares of the land--"one for the first settled minister, one for the ministry forever, and one for the school." Other grants of raw land were made for the support of academies. Here we have the origin of the system of land grants in aid both of the common schools and of state universities, in the western states. The grants for religion necessarily were discontinued after the adoption of the national constitution.

The religious unity established by the Puritans, and maintained for a time by the simple method of rigorously excluding those holding peculiar doctrines, gave way to considerable diversity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Episcopalianism made some progress in the older settlements, and Unitarianism created a great upheaval, while toward the frontiers the Methodists and Baptists flourished more and more. These several elements, by 1820, were powerful enough politically to secure the abolition of the ancient tax for the support of the established church--a tax which had long caused ill feeling between West and East, and no doubt had contributed to the growth of dissenting churches. These frontier churches had the characteristics of the frontier populations. Their ministers were less learned, their morale less exacting, their religion less formal and ritualistic, their ordinances less regularly and habitually enforced. But there was an emotionalism which in a measure compensated for defects of training, for looseness of habit and negligence in the practice of religion. In a word, the camp meeting type of Christianity prevailed widely along the frontier, and that type entered Wisconsin Territory with the numerous Methodist and Baptist settlers from New York and New England. As early as August, 1838, such a camp meeting was held under Methodist leadership in the woods near Racine; it was attended by hundreds of pioneer families drawn from the sparsely settled neighborhoods for many miles around. Its appointments were of the typical frontier kind, though one would expect less boisterousness in the manifestations of emotion among those people than seems to have accompanied similar gatherings in the Southwest.

The stated religious services in early Wisconsin, as in every frontier region, were apt to be less frequent than in older communities. Ministers were too few in number and neighborhoods too impecunious to justify each locality in supporting a minister. The circuit riding custom prevailed generally among all denominations. One preacher traveled, on foot, six hundred miles, making the round in six weeks. Each group of churches also had its conferences, which were occasions for planning missionary effort, for unitedly attacking special religious or social abuses, and for promoting constructive community effort. The ablest speakers addressed such gatherings; the membership of the churches concerned and others attended, in addition to the delegates; and important religious, social, or moral results sometimes flowed from them.

Another peculiar Yankee institution allied at once to the school and the church, was the lyceum or local co?perative organization for bringing lecturers to the community. The settlements in southeastern Wisconsin had their lyceums at an early date, and many distinguished public men from the East had occasion to visit this new Yankeeland in the capacity of lecturer. Among them were Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, and James Russell Lowell.

Reform movements, however, though usually receiving valuable aid from churches, lyceums, mechanics' institutes, and other permanent organizations of men for public discussion, had a way of creating special organizations to propagate themselves. That was true of the temperance movement, which by the time of the Yankee immigration into Wisconsin was under vigorous headway. Beginning, in serious form, about 1820, the intervening years witnessed the creation of hundreds of local temperance societies in New England and New York, and the federation of these societies into state societies. These central organizations stimulated the movement by sending out lecturers, conducting a newspaper propaganda, and issuing special publications. Some of their tracts are said to have been scattered "like the leaves of autumn," all over New England and New York.

One of these tracts affected the social history of Wisconsin very directly. It is known, traditionally, as "The Ox Discourse," because it was based on Exodus 21:28-29: "If an ox gore a man or woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death." The sermon on this text produced a great sensation and gained many new adherents to the temperance cause. Among these were two brothers, Samuel F. and Henry Phoenix, who were storekeepers in a New York village and sold much whisky. They publicly destroyed all the liquor they had on hand and became crusaders in the temperance cause. In the spring of 1836 Colonel Samuel F. Phoenix selected in Wisconsin a "Temperance Colony claim," on which he settled that summer. Then he rode to Belmont and induced the first territorial legislature to set off from Milwaukee County a county to be known as Walworth, in honor of the chancellor of the state of New York, who was a noted temperance leader. He named the village begun by him Delavan, in honor of E. C. Delavan, pioneer temperance editor and at that time chairman of the executive committee of the New York State Temperance Society. Colonel Phoenix lectured on temperance, helped to organize early temperance societies, rebuked his neighbors--especially the New Yorkers--for employing whisky at raisings, and, before his death in 1840, had succeeded in giving a powerful impulse to the movement in southeastern Wisconsin.

Another dramatic figure in early temperance annals was Charles M. Goodsell, who in 1838 settled at Lake Geneva and built the first mill operated in Walworth County. He was of Connecticut birth, and his father owned and managed, among other properties, a whisky distillery. Goodsell, however, when he came west from New York State, was a most determined opponent of the traffic in intoxicants. Soon after opening his mill a local company erected in Lake Geneva a distillery for making corn whisky. Goodsell warned them, he says, not to expect him to grind their grain and they installed a grinding apparatus of their own. But, their machinery proving inadequate, they finally sent a grist of corn to Goodsell's mill, demanding, as under the law they had a right to do, that it be "ground in turn." Goodsell refused, thereby producing a tense situation, for the pioneer farmers looked to the distillery as a cash market for their grain. Finally, the distillers brought suit, won a verdict, and Goodsell appealed. But meantime, he rode to Madison, where the legislature was sitting, and procured the adoption of an amendment to the law regulating milling, to the effect: "Nothing in this section contained shall be construed to compel the owners or occupiers of mills to grind for distilling, or for sale or merchant work." This proviso, adopted in 1841, remained a feature of the statute for many years.

It must not be supposed that pioneer Yankee society, even in Walworth County, was prevailingly of the temperance variety. All testimony, both of the reformers and of others, tends to show that a large majority was at first in the opposition. Frontier history would indicate that excessive indulgence in whisky was apt to be more common during the primitive phase of settlement than later, due perhaps to the looser social and religious organization.

Wisconsin may be said to have been born to the temperance agitation which, in a few years' time, produced societies pledged to total abstinence all over the southeastern part of the state and in many other localities. In March, 1843, a legislative temperance society was organized with a list of twenty-four signers. The house of representatives at the time had twenty-six members, the council thirteen, or a total of thirty-nine. So a decided majority was aligned with the movement. Moses M. Strong was chosen president, which was considered a triumph for the cause, and much interest was aroused by the adherence of William S. Hamilton, who is reported to have addressed one of the society's meetings.

The temperance agitation everywhere received a notable impetus from the adoption in 1851 of the prohibition law by the state of Maine. Immediately other states moved for the same objective, and in Wisconsin a referendum vote was taken in 1853 which resulted favorably to prohibition, though no enactment followed. In that election the southeastern counties were overwhelmingly for the Maine law. Walworth gave 1906 votes for it and 733 against, Rock 2494-432, Racine 1456-927. Milwaukee at the same time voted against prohibition by 4381 to 1243. This shows where was to be found the powerful opposition to legislation of this nature, which was destined to increase rather than diminish with the strengthening of the German element already very numerous.

From the time of the Maine law agitation the communities dominated by Yankees were generally found arrayed in favor of any proposal for limiting or suppressing the liquor traffic, although, as we shall see in later articles, no large proportion of their voters ever joined the Prohibition party. They did not succeed in abolishing drunkenness, though it became very unfashionable to indulge heavily in spirituous liquors and the proportion of total abstainers among the younger generation steadily increased. Yankees furnished a very small per cent of those who gained their livelihood through occupations connected directly with intoxicating liquors, except as such traffic was carried on incidentally as a feature of the drug business. The disfavor with which saloon keeping, brewing, and distilling have long been regarded among that class of the population is explained by the fervor and thoroughness of the early temperance campaigns.

Because of their attitude on the liquor question, on Sunday laws, and other matters pertaining to the regulation of conduct, the Yankees have always been looked upon by other social strains as straight-laced and gloomy. In this judgment men have been influenced more than they are aware by the traditions of Puritanism which it was supposed the Yankees inherited. They recalled the story of how Bradford stopped Christmas revelers and sent them to work; they pictured Puritan children as forbidden to laugh and talk on the Sabbath day; and some may have heard the story of how Washington, while president, was once stopped by a Connecticut tithing man who must be informed why His Excellency fared forth on the Lord's Day instead of resting at his inn or attending public worship.

Two remarks may be made on this point. First, while Puritanism unquestionably had a somber discipline, there was not lacking even among Puritans the play instinct which persisted in cropping out despite all efforts of the authorities at repression. Second, the nineteenth century Yankees register a wide departure from early Puritanism in their social proclivities, and the difference was particularly marked in the West. Even church services were modified to fit the needs of the less resolute souls. Music became an important feature and it was adapted more or less to special occasions. Sunday Blue Laws were gradually relaxed, though never abandoned in principle. Well-to-do city people allowed themselves vacation trips, visits to watering places, and to scenic wonders like Niagara Falls. In town and country alike dancing became an amusement of almost universal vogue, though protested by some religionists, and rural neighborhoods found bowling such a fascinating game for men and boys that the almanac maker thought well to caution his readers against over-indulgence therein. Ball playing, picnicing, sleighing, coasting, skating were among the outdoor sports much indulged in by Yankees, while family and neighborhood visiting, the quilting bee, donation parties, church socials, and the like furnished indoor recreation. The circus and the "cattle show" were events in the western Yankeeland equal in social significance to Artillery Day in Boston.

Thus, while it is true that Yankees were a sober people, of prevailingly serious mien and purpose, they were not averse to the relaxations of play and recreation. The question whether or not the Yankees were fun loving cannot be answered by yes or no. If we mean by fun the rollicking joviality characteristic of irresponsible, carefree folk, the answer is no. Many Yankees found their best fun in work or business. To the David Harum type, which was fairly numerous, a horse trade was more fun than a picnic. Some Boston merchants were so immersed in their business that, though very pious, they nevertheless spent Sunday afternoon going over their books and writing business letters. Being serious minded, they tended to make their chief concern an obsession, and could hardly be happy away from it. But the majority were quite as ready to amuse themselves out of working hours, as are the Italians or other social stocks that have a reputation for fun and frolic.

About the time that Yankees began to emigrate to Wisconsin a talented French writer, Michel Chevalier, gave the world a brilliant and on the whole favorable characterization of them. "The Yankee," he says, "is reserved, cautious, distrustful; he is thoughtful and pensive, but equable; his manners are without grace, modest but dignified, cold, and often unprepossessing; he is narrow in his ideas, but practical, and possessing the idea of the proper, he never rises to the grand. He has nothing chivalric about him and yet he is adventurous, and he loves a roving life. His imagination is active and original, producing, however, not poetry but drollery. The Yankee is the laborious ant; he is industrious and sober and, on the sterile soil of New England, niggardly; transplanted to the promised land in the west he continues moderate in his habits, but less inclined to count the cents. In New England he has a large share of prudence, but once thrown into the midst of the treasures of the west he becomes a speculator, a gambler even, although he has a great horror of cards, dice, and all games of chance and even of skill except the innocent game of bowls." Chevalier also says: "The fusion of the European with the Yankee takes place but slowly, even on the new soil of the west; for the Yankee is not a man of promiscuous society; he believes that Adam's oldest son was a Yankee."

The Yankee was not more boastful than other types of Americans, though his talent for exaggerative description was marked. Yet he had a pronounced national obsession and was uncompromising in his patriotism: "This land o'ourn, I tell ye's got to be a better country than man ever see," was put into a Yankee's mouth by one of their own spokesmen and represents the Yankee type of mild jingoism. It is full cousin to that other sentiment which also this writer assigns to him:

Resolved, that other nations all, if set longside of us, For vartoo, larnin, chiverlry, aint noways wuth a cuss.

These are but cruder expressions of ideas dating from the Revolutionary War, and of which Timothy Dwight, who was not a poet by predestination, gave us in verse a noble example:

Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The queen of the world, and child of the skies! Thy genius commands thee; with rapture behold, While ages on ages thy splendors unfold. Thy reign is the last, and the noblest of time, Most fruitful thy soil, most inviting thy clime; Let the crimes of the east ne'er encrimson thy name, Be freedom, and science, and virtue, thy fame.

It need not be supposed that all Yankees who came to Wisconsin or other western states were familiar with these glowing lines. But it is almost certain that, in the common schools of Yankeedom, most of them had thrilled to the matchless cadences of Webster's reply to Hayne. What more was needed, by way of literary support, to a pride of country which, if a trifle ungenerous to others, was based on facts all had experienced.

THE YANKEE AND THE TEUTON IN WISCONSIN

JOSEPH SCHAFER

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