USA > Wisconsin > Milwaukee County > Milwaukee > History of Milwaukee, city and county, Volume I > Part 18
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Racial Complexion .- It would be difficult to establish with any degree of accuracy the racial origin of the population. That is, it would be practically impossible to deal in exact figures, separating the native from the foreign born and at the same time trace the ancestry of the native born. Yet we may venture appropriate figures based upon the various sources of information that have been at our command.
Before doing so, it may be well to ascertain the probable order and the periods in which the different nationalities made the'r appearance. The Indian, the primitive man, was first joined by the French Canadian. Then came the Anglo-American from the New England states and the so-called Knickerbockers, Dutch descendants from New York State. The "New England Society" and the "Sons of New York" Honrished for several years as social and patriotic bodies.
The Easterners were followed in large numbers by the Irish and Germans, with a sprinkling of Scandinavians, Hollanders, Bohemians and Austrians In the period from 1844 to 1878 the German immigration outnumbered all other nationalities. During the latter part of this period the Polish immigra- tion began to seeure momentum. continuing for some years. While the emigra- tion from Central Europe declined, the peoples from eastern and southern Europe began to turn towards the United States and Milwaukee received a goodly mumber of them.
Those coming from castern and southern Austria-Hungary included Sla- vonians, Croatians and Hungarians. The Slovaks and Serbs came somewhat later. During the past thirty years there has also been a steady but some- what meager influx of Italians, Greeks and Russians.
Composition of the Population .- Prof. Lawrence M. Larson, in his review, remarks that " Milwaukee is a cosmopolitan city. She has drawn her citizen- ship from all parts of the civilized world. In the old Third ward, once the heart of the city, the Italian now (1908) reigns supreme; while in Kilbourn- town the African and the Russian Jew have inherited the earth. On the South side of the city the Poles are the strongest, numbering more than 90,000 and controlling two or three wards. The Scandinavian elements are located principally on the south side. Greeks and Hungarians have their rep- resentatives in the city, and occasional Asiaties may also be found. The more distinctly American population is found in greatest mbers on the East side and in the southern part of the West side. But most numerous of all is the German element. It is estimated that at least 200,000 Germans, native born or of German parentage, live in Milwaukee.
"It is therefore inevitable," continues Professor Larson, "that the city should display certain prominent foreign characteristics. On the religions side these are particularly evident. Stronger than all the Protestant churches combined is the Catholic church with its large German, Polish, Trish and
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Italian parishes. Of the Protestants more than hall' belong to the Lutheran churches, mainly Germans and Scandinavians. The presence of these two powerful organizations has freated an interesting situation in the system of elementary schools. About forty per cent of the total school attendance is found in the parochial schools. Alongside of the public school system has grown up therefore, a group of rival systems entirely independent of the former."
Language Difficulties of the Immigrants .- The first obstarle met with by the newly arriving immigrants was the diversity of languages among them The acquisition of the English language by foreigners was of course a neces- sity. but it often proved a very difficult task for the older men and women. The children, however, quickly learned to speak and write it, and families gradually dropped the use of their native forms of speech, and thus could co- operate with their neighbors in affairs of business and government. The estab- lishment of schools for the young was the chief ageney in this amalgamating process, and lew neighborhoods were without a schoolhouse and teachers, even in the earliest stages of settlement.
This was developed a community spirit of vital importance in the main- tenance of onr American form of government and its institutions. Americans indeed have made language a more powerful nationalizing instrument, says a recent writer, than even the English people themselves have been able to do in their own country. The same writer goes on to say that the old stock of native born Americans have been largely replaced by the newly arriving elements from foreign countries, now represented in our population: and that the nationalizing processes have been of such a thoroughgoing character as to produce a new type spoken in a purer language than that in use in the country of its birth.
"Political and social institutions in the United States," continues the writer above mentioned, "have a quality which speedily transintes various types into one type. the public school probably being the most powerful of them."
The German Immigration .- " When Milwaukee was but a small cluster of houses in the early thirties," writes II. E. Legler in his vohune. "Leading Events of Wisconsin History, " "Germans had made their home in the village. but it was not until a decade later that colonists began to arrive in consider- able numbers from the fatherland. Political disturbances at home sent many of them over the ocean, and the low price of land and liberal laws of Wiscon-
sin attracted many of them to this territory. * * Between 1840 and 1848 pamphlets and books describing the resources and favorable climatic condi- tions of Wisconsin were circulated in great numbers in some parts of Germany. and undoubtedly greatly influenced intending settlers to seek the golden Northwest. In the Rhine region. in the Wupper valley and in the duchy of Brunswick these guides for immigrants found especially eager readers.
" Milwaukee soon became known as the German Athens of America, but the German population of Wisconsin was not confined to the chief city of the territory. The wooded sections along the lake shore and in the interior attracted large numbers of homeseekers. The early German settlers Were mostly of the Catholic faith, but in the early forties Pomerania and Branden-
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burg, as the result of religious contentions, lost many of their people, and their leaders directed many of them to Wisconsin."
Prominent among the citizens of Wisconsin who were born in Germany was Carl Sehurz whose political career opened in this state when he was yet a young man of twenty-seven. He settled at Watertown, Wis., in 1856, and became prominent in the republican party of the state. He had received a good education in his nat.ve country, and after his arrival began the study of law. Ile was admitted to the Wisconsin bar in 1858, and began the prae- tice of law in Milwaukee. In the Republican National Convention of 1860, he was chairman of the Wisconsin delegation which voted for William I. Seward for the presidential nomination. Ile was a member of the committee appointed to notify Mr. Lincoln of his nomination. In 1861, he was sent as minister to Spain, but he returned to the United States in the following year and was commissioned brigadier general. As a commander of division he took part in the second battle of Bull Run. He was promoted to the rank of major general and was present at the battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and at Chattanooga.
After the close of hostilities he resigned his commission and thereafter became identified with Missouri affairs. From 1869 to 1875, he was United States senator from Missouri, and in 1877 he was secretary of the interior in President Hayes' cabinet. In 1881, he removed to New York City where he became engaged in editorial work, and died there in 1906.
A most interesting study of Wisconsin's German element, by Kate A. Everest, is printed in Volume XI of the Wisconsin Historical Collections. "In the Western States many large German settlements were formed," she says, "especially in Ohio, but they did not become centers of attraction, nor of any political importance. The masses of colonists had German sentiments, but not the German ideals. They would not suffer themselves to be directed by their countrymen, especially since the leaders, who were often idealists and free-thinkers, were men far removed from the general German sentiment ; but the immigrants settled rather where business interests were most favorable.
"The general sentiment of later years is well expressed by Friedrich Kapp and Carl Schurz. 'The well-being of the Germans,' says Kapp, 'does not lie in separation from the American educational interests nor in fantastie dreams of founding a German state in America-a German Utopia. * # A German ** nation within the American they cannot be, but they can throw the rich treasures of their life and thought into the struggle for political and human interests, and their influence will penetrate the more deeply and create for them a wider field of activity, the less peenliar they make it.' "
In a speech by Carl Sehurz in New York he expressed himself as follows :. "Let us never forget that we as Germans are not called upon here to form a separate nationality, but rather to contribute to the American nationality the strongest there is in us, and in place of our weakness to substitute the strength wherein our fellow Americans excel us, and to blend it with our wisdom. We should never forget that in the political life of this republic. we as Germans have no peculiar interests, but that the universal well-being is ours also."
These sentiments were held and expressed by eminent writers and pub-
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OLD CREAM CITY BASEBALL CLUB-1869
Archie McFadden. M. Linkin, E. C. Wells, W. H. Dodsworth, W. C. Smith, George Redding, J. IL. Wood, F. A. Smith, C. S. Norris.
OLD RUFUS KING RESIDENCE Northeast corner Mason and Van Buren streets. Built by Henry Williams, 153>
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lieists many years ago and are still held by the elear-thinking men of our later time. We honor the German element in our population, and that element in turn forms a most valuable ingredient in the development of the "one hundred per eent Americanism" of Wisconsin people.
Native versus Foreign Born .- The attitude which obtained among the Germans, and the reciprocal prejudice which the native and foreign born entertained for each other, were some years later well expressed by llugo Miinsterberg, who said :
"The German immigrant can justly claim to be a respectable and very desirable element of the American population ; he has stood always on the side of solid work and honesty; he has brought skill and energy over the ocean, and he has not forgotten his music and his joyfulness ; he is not second to any one in his devotion to the duties of a citizen in peace and in war, and without his aid many of America's industrial, commercial, and technical triumphs would be unknown.
"But all that does not disprove the fact that he is often somewhat unfit to judge fairly the life which surrounds him. First, he belongs almost always to a social strati in which the attention is fully absorbed by the external life of a country, and which is without feeling for the achievements of its mental life: he was poor in his fatherland, and lives comfortably here, and thus he is enthusiastic over the material life, praises the railroads and the hotels, the bridges and mills, but does not even try to judge of the libraries and universities, the museums and the hospitals.
"On the other hand, he feels socially in the background ; he is the Dutch- man,' who, through his bad English, through his habits and manners, through his tastes and pleasures, is different from the majority, and therefore set apart as a citizen of second rank, if not slighted, at least kept in social isolation. On the side of the German, the result of this situation is often an entire ignorance of the Anglo-American life.
"But there were more important factors-industry and civie virtues. which, brought from Germany, helped to build up the land and the nation, and it is unfair to stamp the German-American as a citizen of second rank and thus to isolate him socially."
In placing an estimate upon the American the same writer says: "What most quickly misleads is, doubtless, his consuming interest in money-making. together with the sharp struggle for existence, the gigantie seale of his undertakings, his hasty, impulsive movements, his taste for strong sensational stimuli, his spoils polities, and the influence of corporations upon his legis- lation. But is not all that merely the surface view? The American is not greedy for money ; if he were, he would not give away his wealth with such a liberal hand, and would not put aside all the unidealistie European schemes of money-making which exclude individual initiative, as, for instance, the pursuit of dowries, or, on a lower level, the tipping system.
"The American runs after money primarily for the pleasure of the chase : it is the spirit of enterprise that spurs him on, the desire to make use of his energies, to realize his personality. And there is one other factor : in a country where political conditions have excluded titles and orders and social distinc- tions in general, money is in the end the only means of sociat discrimination, Vol. 1-12
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and financial success becomes thus the measurement of the ability of the in- dividual and of his power to realize himself in action. That the struggle for existence is sharper here than in Europe is simply a fairy tale. In a country where the greatest enterprises are undertaken in the service of charity, and where the natural resources of the land are inexhaustible, even the lowest classes do not struggle for existence, but, seen from the Continental stand- point, merely for comfort; of this the lyrical character of the discussions of social problems here compared with their dramatic character in Germany gives the fullest evidence.
"But the most amusing misunderstanding arises when the American hin- self thinks that he proves the purely practical character of his life by the eagerness with which he saves his time, on the ground that 'time is money.' It strikes me that, next to the public funds, nothing is so much wasted here as time. Whether it is wasted in reading the endless newspaper reports of murder trials or in sitting on the base-ball grounds, in watching a variety show or in lying in bed, in waiting for the elevator or in being shaved after the American fashion, in attending receptions or in enjoying committee meet- ings, is quite unessential.
"The whole scheme of American education is only possible in a country which is rich enough not to need any economy of time, and which can there- fore allow itself the luxury of not asking at what age a young man begins to earn his own living. The American shopkeeper opens his store daily one hour later than the German tradesman, and the American physician opens his office three years later than his German colleague of equal education. This may be very good, but it is a prodigality of time which the Germans would be unable to imitate.
"Add to it the American's gratefulness and generosity, his elasticity and his frankness, his cleanliness and his chastity, his humor and his fairness; consider the vividness of his religious emotion, his interest in religious and metaphysical speculation, his eagerness always to realize the best results of science-in short, look around everywhere without prejudice, and you cannot doubt that behind the terrifying mask of the selfish realist breathes the idealist, who is controlled by a belief in ethical vales.
"Undeniably, every one of these characteristics may develop into an ab- surdity; gratitude may transform the capture of a merchant vessel into a naval triumph, speculative desire may run into the blind alleys of spiritualism, fairness may lead to the defense of the most cranky schemes, and the wish for steady improvements may chase the reformer from one fad to another; and yet it is all at bottom the purest idealism.
"Whenever I have written about America for my German countrymen, I have said: 'You are right to hate that selfish, brutal, corrupt, vulgar American who lives in your imagination: but the true American is at least as much an idealist as yourself, and Emerson comes nearer to representing his spirit than do the editorial writers of the New York Journal.' If I had to draw the American. with a few lines, I should emphasize three mental elements.
"' ' All the essential features of his publie life spring from the spirit of self-
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determination, which was developed by his separation from his mother country ; the features of his economic life, from the spirit of self-activity which was developed by his pioneer life; and the features of his intellectual life from the spirit of self-perfection, which has partly a utilitarian and partly Puritan origin.' Every one of these three strong tendencies involves dangers, but essentially they are forces of purely idealistie power."
The Story of an Old Neighborhood .- The older section of the city known as the Lower East Side was described in a paper before the Old Settlers' Club some years ago by William George Bruce as follows:
"The section of the city now known as the lower Seventh and First wards is not only one of the oldest but also one of the most interesting as far as its earlier history is concerned. It possessed a community life seventy years ago that was peenliarly its own, and was in its time the very heart of the small city. While the upper and eastern part of the ward, known as Yankee Hill, was the residence district of the better conditioned, the lower part was the industrial and commercial centre.
"It was the home of the mechanic, the laborer, the small shop keeper, and the small manufacturer. Everybody knew everybody else. The policeman wore no uniform but he was known by everybody in town. Every physician, preacher and lawyer was known by everybody. The names and location of streets were as familiar to everyone as the alphabet.
"To tell the story of this section means after all only to say something in a fragmentary way of some of the people who resided there and who were a part and parcel of its activities; to recall names that later figured in the life and traffic of the city. Again, such a story must be told from the stand- point of recollections and the vision and views of a child-a condition of life as seen by a small boy and remembered as a man.
"My carliest recollections take me back as a four year old boy peering out of the windows of my grandfather's old home on East Water Street near the corner of Johnson Street, a two storied wooden structure with a moss covered roof, slanting towards the street. Large locust trees shaded the cottage which sat back a respectable distance from the street and gave the immediate neighborhood a village air.
"This section of the city was distinguished from the others in point of nationality in that its residents were in the main German-born. The people residing on the hill and who were known as Yankees, came from New York and the New England states. That portion lying to the south of the hill and known as the Third Ward was almost wholly settled by the Irish as they landed here.
"The Know-nothing movement which had its inception in the East and which swept across the country in early '50s found some expression here. The Germans of this neighborhood were obliged to hear the ery 'Damn the Dutch,' and the constant influx of both Germans and Irish gave the Yankee element some concern. But, when these foreigners began to manifest their thrift and industry, adding to the growth and development of the city, and incidentally adding to the wealth of so-called Yankee element, the motto 'America for Americans' became more faint and finally died out.
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JOHN POLLWORTH'S HOME RESTAURANT Located at No. 2 Grand Avenue and established in 1846
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WISCONSIN STREET The dwellings to the right gave way as a site for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company Building.
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"The larger industries which clustered in the valley at that time were Mabbett's lumber yard, Elmore's coal yard, Iligby's elevator, Bertehy's mill, the old Davidson ship yard and the Pierron Pottery. It was the small indus- tries, however, that thrived more actively. The machine had not yet come into use as a potent factor in manufacturing products. Shoes were made by the shoemaker who took the measurements of the foot, the tinsmith made the pots and kettles, the cooper made washtubs, ete.
"The German market at the corner of East Water and Division streets, now known as Juneau Avenue, was a bee hive in small trade. It was more popularly known as the 'Green Market,' a designation which had its origin from the green vegetables which formed the principal commodity. The good housewives from all sections of the city came here to get the provisions, their vegetables and dairy products.
"The hills now forming the handsomest residence distriets in the First and Sixth wards then were the choice grazing grounds for the cattle that fur- nished the butter and cheese that was sold by the market women. The little back yard gardens on the northside provided the cabbages, onions and lettuce which was brought in wagon loads to the market before sunrise each morning.
"The market life, aside from its congenial comercialism, had its interest- ing phases. The market men and women were not devoid of that human interest which embraces the liveliest gossip and which concerns itself with everything from the merry wedding bells to the solemn strains of a requiem. It was the clearing house for the news of the day and when the good house- wife carried home the day's provender in her basket she took with her also the town gossip of the day.
"Many of the small vendors and hueksters of the Green Market later became well to do business men and in course of time retired with a hand- some competency. Their sons in many instances are now among the important merchants and manufacturers of the city. Their daughters are the wives of some of the most prosperous men in the community.
The Main Street .- East Water Street From Wisconsin Street to Juneau Avenue was like the main street of a country town. There was the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker; the small dry goods merchant, the druggist and the hotel keeper.
At the corner of Biddle Street was Hoffmann's buteher shop. The owner of this small shop was none other than John Hoffmann, later the head of John Iloffmann Sons & Co., the wholesale grocery house. Across the street was the. small retail grocery store of John Wellauer, who later with lohn Hoffmann founded the great grocery house above mentioned.
"Further down the street were John Poss, the butcher; Krauthoefer, the shoemaker; Boeshaar and Manschot, the cobblers; Stephen Hoff, the grocer, the father of Stephen Il. Hoff, later of Hackett, Iloff & Thiermann ; Higler, the second hand man, father of James A. Higler, manager of the Alhambra Theater ; Koch's barber shop, owned by the father of William Koch, a promi- nent musician; Chaintron, the dyer; Gebhardt and Hubmann, the bakers; Memminger's restaurant conducted by the father of the late Fire Chief Mem- minger; Wiese's drug store ; Grosch's horse shoeing shop; Friedberg's notion
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store, conducted by the father of Joseph Friedberg, later manager of the Friend Bros. Clothing Co .: Mittendorf's milliner shop, etc.
"At the German market a modest booth in Yankee notions was conducted by the mother of Bishop A. F. Sehinner; Oscar F. Miller the late manager of the Alhambra Theater was born and raised on Market Street : a curly headed handsome lad raised in the same neighborhood, later Judge John C. Ludwig ; Ilans J. and Max Greve the show printers saw their boyhood days here : the immediate relatives of Solomon Juneau resided here; the Geilfuss family from which A. B. and Frank Geilfuss sprang, lived in this vicinity, ete.
The Old Pierron Pottery .- There was a time when Milwaukee promised to be a great pottery center. Clay was brought in vessel loads across the lake from Ohio and eastern points and loaded on the doeks at the foot of Johnson Street. Here it was taken to the Pierron Pottery, for a time known as the Hermann Pottery, and turned into jars and jugs. These were set out on the streets and back yards to dry and were then placed into large kilns to be burned into solid earthenware.
"At night the heavens would blaze in scarlet red from the heat which shot forth from the great kilns as an emblem of useful industry. These kilns were for years fed with the choicest maple wood brought in by the farmers from the neighboring country distriets.
"The interior life and activities of the pottery was intensely German in character. The men who were gathered here had come from different portions of Germany, but principally from South Germany. They possessed all the . prejudiees of a divided Germany. The Bavarian who came from South Ger- many had no partienlar love for the Mecklenburger who came from Northern Germany. They differed in religion, in polities, and in their social views. They were known to each other as Hans, Fritz or Michel, or else as the Prus- sian, the Bavarian, the Hannoverian, the Pommeranian, etc.
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