Joseph Schafer

“ To follow Senator Cashman's outline of American history into the recent period to the all-engrossing event of the World War and America's participation therein would be fruitless. Not one of us can conscientiously claim to be an impartial investigator with respect to things which have wrenched our souls. We cannot abdicate our own personalities. In treating the war, all that any historian at present could hope to do would be to state his views with becoming restraint and concede that those views may ultimately prove to be quite wrong. ”

“ 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! ”

“ But once in possession of a tract of land, the German tended to hold on, through good years and bad years, as if his farm were the one piece of land in the world for him and his. The Yankee, already given to change in the East, tended in the West, under the stimulus of machine-aided wheat culture, to regard land lightly, and to abandon one tract for another on the principle that the supply was inexhaustible and that one social environment was apt to be as satisfactory as another. ”

“ Persistent rather than brilliant, more industrious than inventive, the German toiled on, content if he always had something to show for his labor. The contrast, in that generation, between the German at work and the German at play is the contrast between a man governed by an intense purpose to accomplish a given task, whether interesting or not, and the same man intent on accomplishing nothing with every physical, intellectual, and emotional evidence of enjoying the process. Some men carry into their play the morale which governs them in their work ”

“ Hence it was that Germans who at that period went to the new world, while acknowledging by their flight the political, economic, and social obstacles to a successful life in Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, Westphalia, or Luxemburg, were always able to maintain a self-respecting attitude when confronted with the pretensions of those Americans who were unsympathetic, jingoistic, or boastful. German immigrants might grant much to superior cleverness, to the stupendous achievements of a liberty loving race, domiciled in a peaceful continent and dowered with free lands and boundless opportunity ”

“ Yet, there is no reason to assume that the German, any more than the Yankee, courted the grilling labor of clearing heavily forested land—a labor to him the more formidable for the want of the Yankee's training in axmanship and his almost unbroken tradition of winning fields from forests. Some German pioneers who were self-helpful struck for the openings and the prairies, and like the Yankee chose for their farms the ideal combination of wood, marsh, and open land whenever such a combination could be found within easy reach of the market. ”

“ If the law shall permit such a handling of the borderline cases, does it not seem that in a time when we are at peace with all nations, we could act with equal calmness, equal justice to authors or publishers, and equal regard for the interests of the people who have to buy school books? ”

“ Would Europe always have the wherewithal to purchase American foodstuffs at prices which would compensate our people for growing them and delivering them to the market? During the continuance of the long revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Europe managed to make good Paine’s prophecy, and prices at the close of the wars ruled high. There followed the great expansion era which spread American farmers over the New West, both south and north, into which Yankees entered to a large extent. ”

“ Then they wrote and the states adopted the supreme law of the land, the American constitution, the most sublime public document that ever came forth from the mind and soul of man, establishing a system of government based upon the consent of the governed, with religious liberty protected, inherent rights guaranteed, to be written in indestructible letters into the pages of the nation's laws. ”

“ The Germans, like the Irish and, in fact, all immigrants, were strongly attracted by the principles professed in Democratic platforms. The very word “democracy,” had its winning appeal. “Democracy,” wrote the editor of the Banner in 1850, “is a glorious word. There are few other words, in any language, which can be compared to it. To the poor man it is peculiarly precious since he is aware that he owes to it his escape from the serfdom in which his oppressors held him, and can now look up into heaven and thank his God that he has ceased to be a serf. ”

“ The appearance of Germans with capital which sought investment in lines of business already pursued by Americans was no doubt less welcome, and to some it may have seemed like an intrusion. Generally, however, Germans began their business enterprises on so modest a scale, and built them up so gradually, that no serious economic dislocations could have been felt in consequence. In some cases the German business men merely undertook to meet demands created by the presence of their own people, which demands were not fully cared for by existing American enterprise. ”

“ On the face of the census returns that seems to be the case, and if our evidence were limited to the census such a conclusion would be well nigh inescapable. Fortunately, he who deals with culture history problems of the American West has this advantage over the Greenes and the Lamprechts of Europe, that on such matters his evidence is minutely particular, while theirs is general to the point of vagueness. No one will doubt that the Yankee staked his claim in the open lands because he preferred those lands on account of the ease with which a farm could be made. ”

“ We must therefore regard the generation of the German exodus from which Wisconsin profited so largely in the later 1840’s and the 1850’s, as almost universally literate and usually well grounded in the rudiments of an education. The intelligent, reading, writing, and slow but careful figuring German peasant immigrants constituted the best testimonial to the efficacy of German systems of instruction for the common people. ”

“ The prosperity of the city, providing usually full employment and adequate returns to all who wanted to work, made the bond between capitalist and employees satisfactory, and this solved one important aspect of the class problem. The absence of any decided public interest in the immigrant problem as affecting the city—other than politically—is a fact which obtrudes itself upon one who canvasses the Milwaukee papers, English and German, during the fourteen years which intervened between the first constitutional convention and the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. ”

“ History students can have no quarrel with the motive assigned by Senator Cashman for the passage of this law. He says: "The history of a nation is its proudest asset. It includes the record of its great men, their ideals, sacrifices, and achievements. To preserve that history in all its original purity and teach it to the rising generations is a nation's first duty." With every word in that stirring exordium the historically minded man or woman will cordially agree. ”

“ In fact, farming in the New England states hardly attained the status of a business until the nineteenth century, though in some portions it gave the farmer and his family a generous living and afforded a few luxuries. It made thousands of persons independent proprietors who could not have reached that station at home; it gave the farmers as a class a commanding influence in politics and society ”

“ Many craftsmen, indeed, came with the set purpose of doing that immediately upon their arrival; others contemplated a farming career after a period devoted to their specialty. In some or all of these ways Germans trained as craftsmen came to be widely distributed over the farming areas of Wisconsin as well as among the cities, towns, and villages.
The possession of special skill in any line, like the possession of special scientific knowledge, raises a man in social estimation, and every trained worker properly regards himself with satisfaction as being not quite “as other men are.” ”

“ It is no slight help to our charity to recollect that, in disputable matters, every man sees according to his prejudices, and is stone blind to whatever he did not expect or did not mean to see. Even where no personal bias can be suspected, contemporary and popular evidence is to be taken with great caution, so exceedingly careless are men as to exact truth, and such poor observers, for the most part of what goes on under their eyes. ”

“ Yankeedom was a good social soil for these journals. The all but universal literacy of the people, their curiosity, their love of argument and disputation, their habit of experimentation, all tended both to give currency to the new ideas presented and to sift the practical and valuable from the merely theoretic and futile. ”

“ By the year 1853 it had been determined to follow the Wisconsin Valley route to the Mississippi, and during that summer the line was surveyed from the mouth of Black Earth Creek to Prairie du Chien.
It can easily be imagined how the clangor of railway construction echoed in the minds and hearts of intending settlers. That they should have watched, with greedy eye, the reports of progress of the location of the road and hurried away to the land office as soon as it was definitely located, to buy the good lands adjacent to the right-of-way, is a perfectly normal phenomenon. ”

“ On all questions affecting public education, social morality, health, and recreation, as well as business or industry, the American portion of the community was very apt to mass behind Yankee leadership; and the English speaking section of the foreign population was not averse to doing the same, at least under ordinary circumstances. Often, indeed, such was the prestige of the Yankees, their initiative was followed unquestioningly by American and foreigner alike. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Natural gifts, industry, the social opportunities which yield to the key of economic success availed much. Sometimes the presence of a good school, a wise and helpful pastor or some other worthy friend gave the necessary impulse. The process, in fact, does not differ essentially from that which, throughout American pioneer history, has enabled the deserving to press forward and permitted the weak, indolent, or vicious to fall behind in the social competition. It is impossible to say how many German families made a step, or several steps, upward, and how many others slipped back. ”

“ Thoughtful persons, whether historians or not, will also sympathize with Senator Cashman when he undertakes to rebuke anything approaching levity in characterizing the fathers of the Republic or captiousness in criticizing their policies, motives, and achievements. Unfortunately, there always have been among writers some who display a certain air of "smartness" or superciliousness which hardly comports with the inherent dignity of the historian's office, or with the aim of doing equal and exact justice to all persons and to all causes discussed. ”

“ Rather than take treeless lands near the lake shore, these settlers preferred to go farther inland where inviting combinations of groves, meadows, and dry prairie lands, or openings, could still be found in the public domain. Only gradually did American settlers overcome their natural repugnance to a shelterless, timberless farm home—a repugnance justified by common sense, but springing from the habit of generations. When, for economic reasons, they began to settle on the open prairies, the planting of quick-growing trees about the farmsteads was always esteemed a work of fundamental utility. ”

“ The church, loyal to its traditions, was much more democratic, men of every class being found in each of its official grades. The newly developed educational system gave to the common man another significant opportunity, since teaching candidates were drawn in large numbers from the middle and lower classes, and were given at public expense the training necessary to fit them for permanent positions in the various types of schools. On the whole, however, life beyond the school, which among Americans of that day commonly yielded the major part of education, was in Prussia far less fruitful. ”