Wisconsin Magazine of History

Rtminisunccs of Life Among the Chi^^cwa: Part One BENJAMIN G. ARMSTRONG Gentlemen Farmers in the Gilded Age GERALD PRESCOTT The Wisconsin Life Insurance Reform of 1907 ALBERT ERLEBACHER The South Old and Hew: A Review Essay MORTON SOSNA

Published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin / Vol. 55, No. 3 / Spring, 1972 THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN

JAMES MORTON SMITH, Director

Officers E. DAVID CRONON, President GEORGE BANTA, JR., Honorary Vice-President JOHN C. GEILFUSS, First Vice-President E. E. HOMSTAD, Treasurer HOWARD W. MEAD, Second Vice-President JAMES MORTON SMITH, Secretary

Board of Curators Ex Officio PATRICK J. LUCEY, Governor of the State CHARLES P. SMITH, State Treasurer ROBERT C. ZIMMERMAN, Secretary of State JOHN C. WEAVER, President of the University MRS. GORDON R. WALKER, President of the Women's Auxiliary

Term Expires, 1972 E. DAVID CRONON ROBERT A. GEHRKE BEN GUTHRIE FRANCIS PAUL PRUCHA, S.J. Madison Ripon Lac du Flambeau Milwaukee SCOTT M. CUTLIP JOHN C. GEILFUSS MRS. R. L. HARTZELL J. WARD RECTOR Madison Milwaukee Grantsburg Milwaukee MRS. ROBERT E. FRIEND MRS. HOWARD T. GREENE ROBERT H. IRRMANN CLIFFORD D. SWANSON Hartland Milwaukee Beloit Stevens Point

Term Expires, 1973 THOMAS H. B.\RLAND MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES FREDERICK I. OLSON DONALD C. SLIGHTER Eau Claire Madison Wauwatosa Milwaukee E. E. HOMSTAD CHARLES R. MCCALLUM F. HARWOOD ORBISON DR. LOUIS C. SMITH Black River Falls Hubertus Appleton Lancaster MRS. EDWARD C. JONES HOWARD W. MEAD NATHAN S. HEFFERNAN ROBERT S. ZIGMAN Fort Atkinson Madison Madison Milwaukee

Term Expires, 1974 ROGER E. AXTELL REED COLEMAN ROBERT B. L. MURPHY MILO K. SWANTON Janesville Madison Madison Madison HORACE M. BENSTEAD PAUL E. HASSETT MRS. WM. H. L. SMYTHE CEDRIC A. Vic Racine Madison Milwaukee Rhinelander THOMAS M. CHEEKS WILLIAM HUFFMAN WILLIAM F. STARK CLARK WILKINSON Milwaukee Wisconsin Rapids Nashotah Baraboo

Honorary Honorary Life Members EDWARD D. CARPENTER, Cassville MRS. ESTHER NELSON, Madison RUTH H. DAVIS, Madison DOROTHY L. PARK, Madison MRS. MARGARET HAFSTAD, Rockdale MONICA STAEDTLER, Madison PRESTON E. MCNALL, Clearwater, Florida BENTON H. WILCOX, Madison WILLIAM ASHBY MCCLOY, New London, Connecticut PAUL VANDERBILT, Madison

Fellows VERNON CARSTENSEN MERLE CURTI ALICE E. SMITH

The Women's Auxiliary Officers MRS. GORDON R. WALKER, Racine, President MRS. DAVID S. FRANK, Madison, Vice-President MRS. JAMES S. VAUGHN, Milwaukee, Secretary MRS. HUGH HIGHSMITH, Fort Atkinson, Treasurer MRS. GEORGE SWART, Fort Atkinson, Ex Officio VOLUME 55, NUMBER 3 / SPRING, 1972 Wisconsin Magazine of History

WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD, Editor WILLIAM C. MARTEN, Associate Editor

Reminiscences of Life Among the Chippewa (Part I) 175 BENJAMIN G. ARMSTRONG

Gentlemen Farmers in the Gilded Age 197 GERALD PRESCOTT

The Wisconsin Life Insurance Reform of 1907 213 ALBERT ERLEBACHER

The South Old and New: A Review Essay 231 MORTON SOSNA

Communications 236 Book Reviews 237 Book Review Index 257 Accessions 258 Contributors 260

Published Quarterly by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin

THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published Microfilms, 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan; quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, reprinted volumes available from Kraus Reprint Company, 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. Distributed 16 East 46th Street, New York, New York. Communica­ to members as part of their dues (Annual membership, tions should be addressed to the editor. The Society does $7.50, or $5 for those 65 or over or members of affiliated not assume responsibility for statements made by contribu­ societies; Family membership, $10.00, or $7 for those 65 tors. Second-class postage paid at Madison and Stevens or over or members of affiliated societies; Contributing, $25; Point, Wis. Copyright © 1972 by the State Historical Business and Professional, $50; Sustaining, $100 or more Society^ of Wisconsin. Paid for in part by the Maria L. annually; Patron, $500 or more annually). Single numbers, and Simeon Mills Editorial Fund and by the George B. $1,75. Microfilmed copies available through University Burrows Fund. EIRLOOMS, a selection of glass, ceramics, and textiles from the H Society's permanent collection, opened April 27 in the Elvehjem Art Center's Mayer Gallery and continued until June 5. Organized by students enrolled in the Center's Museum Training and Connois­ seurship class, under the guidance of the Center's Director, Millard F. Rogers, Jr., and its Curator, Arthur R. Blumenthal, the exhibition included more than seventy objects, most of which had never been displayed before owing to the Society's lack of exhibition space. Artifacts on display included eighteenth-century Spanish barber bowls, nineteenth-century English lustreware, and shawls of the 1920's. This exhibit is representative of the many joint Society-Univer­ sity projects of a cultural and educational nature made possible by the Society's location on the Madison campus. (Photos courtesy Lance M. Neckar and the Elvehjem Art Center.)

174 REMINISCENCES OF LIFE AMONG

THE CHIPPEWA (PART I)

By BENJAMIN G. ARMSTRONG

Introduction regained his health, learned the Chippewa N HIS SEVENTY-FIRST YEAR, Benjamin language, married the niece of Buffalo, head I Green Armstrong of Ashland dictated his chief of the Lake Superior Chippewa, and memoirs to Thomas Wentworth. The follow­ was adopted by Buffalo as his son. There­ ing year, 1892, Arthur W. Bowron, later edi­ after, Armstrong served the tribe as interpret­ tor of the Ashland Weekly Leader, issued the er, confidant, sturdy defender, trusted ad­ memoirs under the title. Early Life Among visor, and finally as historian. His deep in­ the Indians: Reminiscences of Benj. G. Arm­ terest in the aboriginal culture, even then strong: Treaties of 1835, 1837, 1842, and doomed by the shadow of the encroaching 1854: Habits and Customs of the Red Men of whites, is abundantly reflected in his sym­ the Forest: Incidents, Biographical Sketches, pathetic observations concerning the Indians' Battles, &. Not only, in conformity with psychology, social and religious philosophy, contemporary taste, was the title sesquipeda­ helplessness in the face of the whites' ofttimes lian, it was also slightly inaccurate, inasmuch casual ruthlessness, and the vulnerability of as Armstrong's Indian experiences had been the Indians' ancient oneness with their en­ limited almost solely to one tribe—^the Chippe­ vironment when faced with a superior tech­ wa (Ojibway) of northern Wisconsin. nology. To be sure, his was a privileged posi­ How Ben Armstrong, a native of Alabama, tion enjoyed by few white men; but he made came to spend most of his adult life in com­ the most of it, and admiration for the In­ panionship with Indians makes for a rousing dians' way of life, as well compassion for tale. After only three weeks of formal school­ their inevitable fate, permeates his story. ing he became a precocious and apparently Armstrong's narrative is replete with inci­ successful racing jockey in the South. Injured dents illustrative of the historic enmity exist­ in his early teens by a fall from his horse, ing between the Chippewa and the Sioux, dat­ he developed a fever which may or may not ing back to the sixteenth century when the have been tuberculosis. In any event, a Mis­ Chippewa were driven west by the more pow­ souri doctor advised him to seek a different erful Iroquois of the New York state area. climate, which accounts for his arrival in Possessed of white men's knives and muskets, Wisconsin in territorial days. Here he led an the Chippewa easily occupied the territory in­ active outdoor life among his Indian friends. habited by the more primitive Sioux, thus

175 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 precipitating continual wars, forays, and am­ bushes which ended only with the forcible re­ moval of the Sioux (by then concentrated largely in Minnesota) following the Indian scare of 1862. Armstrong himself witnessed and vividly describes a singularly bloody en­ counter between the Chippewa and Sioux on the Brule River. This battle, like many of the events in the memoirs, can only be dated approximately. Indeed, even the title of Armstrong's book contains an error, since no treaty between the Chippewa and the United States occurred in 1835. He appears to have been well aware of the normal inability of an aged man to re­ call names and dates with precision. In his preface he disarms the reader with his candor in this respect, at that same time maintaining that the events he describes are correct in their essential details. Careful consultation of the appropriate sources proves the validity of his contention, although for the sake of the record Society's Iconographic Collections such slips of memory as could be corrob­ orated have been amended in the footnotes. Benjamin G. Armstrong Printed on cheap newsprint, Armstrong's book was not designed to withstand the rav­ ages of time. In fact, the Society's copy, kept in the relative immunity of its library's rare T WAS BORN in the State of Alabama in book room, crumbled while being xeroxed for -•• the year 1820, and at the age of ten years, editing. Its fragility, together with the prob­ having had less than three weeks' schooling, able scarcity and utility of such copies as may I was decoyed away from home by a man remain in home or other libraries, played a named Thomas, who was engaged in horse- major role in the decision to republish at racing, traveling all over the Southern states. least a portion of the memoirs before they In the summer of 1833 we went to New become irretrievably lost. Orleans, La., where I was injured by a fall What follows represents a selection of epi­ from a horse, and just after this and before sodes dealing with Armstrong's relations with I had recovered from that injury, I was taken the Chippewa. Because the original version, sick with a fever which lasted for a number of weeks. Mr. Thomas and his party left me as is common to many "as-told-to" books, was there with directions to follow as soon as I often rambling and lacking in chronological was able. They went on to Holly Springs, order, liberties have been taken with the text Miss. I started in about four weeks and in the interest of narrative coherence. Fur­ reached Holly Springs, but had left my bed thermore, whole passages and chapters deal­ too soon and there had a relapse, and from ing with purely local history or with Arm­ that time until spring was not able to do any strong's personal and financial difficulties— work. and he seems to have been particularly sus­ ceptible to the latter—have been eliminated as I was then moved to Decatur, Ala., and a irrelevant or of limited value. What remains, short time afterward to Athens, where I met it is hoped, will serve as a historically useful Mr. Thomas, who said: "Perhaps you had addition to the growing literature on the better go home, for probably you will never be able to ride in a race again." He also American Indian past. stated that he had written to my oldest brother W.C.H. about a month before and told him that my

176 ARMSTRONG: LIFE AMONG THE CHIPPEWA

health was bad and that I would have to lay that my mother would not find out where I by and have good care for some time to come, was. but said he had received no reply to his letter Mr. Thomas and I walked out upon the and would not be surprised to see my brother porch of the hotel just as the stage coach at any time, and hoped he would come, for he was driving in from Huntsville. Three pas­ did not like to see me start alone to make the sengers alighted, one of whom was my oldest journey in the condition I was. "Besides," brother. He did not recognize me, on account he says, "you have been with me three years of being so reduced by bad health, but he rec­ and over, and your salary for this time is all ognized Mr. Thomas immediately, and soon due, which I will pay you at any time," but was aware that I was in his presence. The ex­ said he did not think it would be safe for me citement incident to this meeting with my to carry it, and would pay me enough for brother, and the good treatment I had re­ present expenses and put the remainder in the ceived from Mr. Thomas, quite unbalanced bank subject to my order if my brother did me and caused a backset that confined me to not come to meet me. I told him I would like my bed three or four days, and during this to go to Huntsville, as I had a friend there confinement physicians told me I had better whom I would like to see. He paid my stage leave that climate and go either west or north. fare to Huntsville and return and told me to It was decided to do this as soon as I was come back to Athens, as he would be there able to travel, and we set out for the west two or three weeks. After the visit I came instead of going home. I rode a horse and back to Athens. my brother walked as far as Florence, Ala., where we took a steamboat down the Ten­ I owned a horse at this time which was in nessee river for Paducah, Ky. There we were the possession of Mr. Thomas. He asked me obliged to halt for a few days for me to re­ one day shortly after my return from Hunts­ cuperate and receive medical treatment. When ville: "How much do you suppose I owe we left here it was by steamboat for St. Louis, you?" I told him what the agreement was— Mo. to pay me $50 per month and the extras that were allowed to riders in the races they won, We spent the winter of 1834 and most of and besides this there was the difference be­ the year 1835 in that city. My health im­ tween the value of the horse I had brought proved but little. During the season of 1835 with me and the one I now had. we learned that a boat was going up the river to Prairie du Chien, and thinking it might ben­ "That is correct," says he. "I owe you efit my health, my brother and I took pas­ now just $2,600. I have deposited it in the sage. . . . bank." He handed me the certificate of de­ posit for it, then took me to the bank and "jl/TY EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS in told the cashier I was the party to whom the -^'-^ Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota ter­ money was to be paid. He next took me to ritories date back to 1835, at which time Gen. a clothing store and made me a present of Cass and others on the part of the Government, two suits of clothes, and also of a watch to with different tribes of Indians, viz: Pota- remember him by, and remarked: "I am watomies, Winnebagos, Chippewas, Saux very sorry you can ride no more, for you are [sic] and Foxes and the Sioux, at Prairie du the most successful rider that ever lived, and if you are ever able to ride again come to me Chien, met in open council, to define and and you shall have a place as long as I have agree upon boundary lines between the Saux a place to give anybody." and Foxes and the Chippewas. The boundary or division of territory as agreed upon and We returned to the hotel where we were established by this council was the Mississippi stopping when he told me he had arranged River from Prairie du Chien north to the with the landlord to pay my bill until I was mouth of Crow Wing River, thence to its ready to go home, and that he had reserved source. The Saux and Foxes and the Sioux money enough from my salary to pay my fare. were recognized to be the owners of all terri­ During all the time I had been with Mr. tory lying west of the Mississippi and south Thomas I was known by an assumed name, so of the Crow Wing River. The Chippewas, by

177 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 this treaty, were recognized as the owners of was to be one of the parties on the part of all lands east of the Mississippi in the terri­ the government to make a treaty at St. Peter, tory of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and north Minn. I took this trip up the river, but re­ of the Crow Wing River on both sides of the mained on the boat, not being able to go Mississippi to the British Possessions, also through with Mr. Walker and returned to Lake Superior country on both sides of the Hannibal. lake to Sault Ste. Marie and beyond. The In 1837 the Government entered into a other tribes mentioned in this council had no treaty with the Chippewas of the Mississippi interest in the above divided territory from and St. Croix Rivers at St. Peter, Minnesota, the fact that their possessions were east and Col. [Josiah] Snelling, of the army, and Maj. south of the Chippewa Country, and over their Walker, of Missouri, being the commissioners title there was no dispute. The division lines on the part of the Government, and it appears were agreed to as described and a treaty that at the commencement of this council signed. When all shook hands and covenanted the anxiety on the part of the commissioners with each other to live in peace for all time to perfect a treaty was so great that statements to come.^ were made by them favorable to the Indians, We returned on the boat to St. Louis, and and understood perfectly by them, that were the same fall went to Hannibal, Mo., where not afterwards incorporated in the treaty^ we stayed until 1837. During this time I The Indians were told by these commission­ made the acquaintance of Maj. Walker, who ers that the great father had sent them to buy their pine timber and their minerals that were hidden in the earth, and that the great father was very anxious to dig the mineral, for of ^ This reference is puzzling, since it obviously re­ such material he made guns and knives for fers to the "grand conference" of August, 1825, held at Prairie du Chien with Governor Lewis Cass of the Indians, and copper kettles in which to Michigan Territory and Governor William Clark of boil their sugar sap. "The timber you make Missouri—both agents of Indian affairs—acting as commissioners. One of the results of this council, but little use of is the pine your great father which foreshadowed but did not involve cession of wants to build many steamboats, to bring your land, was the establishment of a boundary line be­ goods to you and to take you to Washington tween the immemorially warring Sioux and Chippe­ wa. While Armstrong and his brother could have bye-and-bye to see your great father and meet conceivably visited Prairie du Chien in 1835, as he him face to face. He does not want your previously states, he could not possibly have wit­ lands, it is too cold up here for farming. He nessed the council of 1825, for at the time he would have been but five years old and residing in wants just enough of it to build little towns Alabama. He and his brother may have witnessed a where soldiers stop, mining camps for miners, minor, unrecorded council during their 1835 visit, saw mill sites and logging camps. The timber and the many accounts Armstrong undoubtedly heard later of the 1825 council may have led him to get that is best for you the great father does not the two confused in his memory. At any rate, the care about. The maple tree that you make sole important recorded event in Indian affairs in Wisconsin in 1835 was the survey made by Major your sugar from, the birch tree that you Jonathan L. Bean to make official the boundary get bark from for your canoes and from which agreed upon ten years earlier by the Chippewa and you make pails for your sugar sap, the cedar Sioux. William Watts Folwell, A History of Minne­ sota (revised edition, Minnesota Historical Society, from which you get material for making ca­ 1956), 1:146-147, 147n; Charles C. Royce (comp.), noes, oars and paddles, your great father cares Indian Land Cessions in the United States (18th nothing for. It is the pine and minerals that Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnol­ ogy, 1896-1897), pt. II: 711; Peter L. Scanlan, Prairie du Chien: French-British-American (1937), 158-159; Charles J. Kappler (comp. and ed.), In­ dian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Senate Doc. 319, 58 Cong., 2 Sess. (Washington, 1904), H: 250-254, 1078-1079; Philip Mason (ed.), Schoolcraft's Ex­ ^ Henry Dodge, first territorial governor of Wis­ pedition to Lake Itasca: The Discovery of the consin, was commissioner at the 1837 treaty held at Source of the Mississippi (Lansing, 1958), xxi. The the confluence of the Minnesota (then the St. Pe­ original of Major Bean's survey of 1835 is in the ter's) and Mississippi rivers, the site of Fort Snell­ National Archives, Records of the Department of the ing. Under this treaty the Chippewa made impor­ Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, No. 201, tube 204. tant cessions to the U.S. government. Neither Major A photostat copy is in the Society's Archives- Manu­ Walker nor Colonel Josiah Snelling appear as sig­ scripts Division. natories to the treaty. Kappler (ed.), Indian Af­ fairs: Laws and Treaties, II: 492-493.

178 ARMSTRONG: LIFE AMONG THE CHIPPEWA he wants and he has sent us here to make a lived on wild meat, with no tea or coffee, and bargain with you for it," the commissioners but little bread, seeing nobody except my man said. and one hunter whose name was Peter Bushu, And further, the Indians were told and a Canadian half-breed. distinctly understood that they were not to be By the first of January I was able to run disturbed in the possession of their lands so through the woods every day to hunt, and long as their men behaved themselves. They my health was gaining rapidly. I gave up were told also that the Chippewas had always my shanty about the middle of January and been good Indians and the great father spent the remainder of the winter in the camp thought very much of them on that account, of Mr. Page. My man was teaching me the and with these promises fairly and distinctly Chippewa language, and by spring I was able understood they signed the treaty that ceded to converse quite freely.^ During this time I to the government all their territory lying had kept up constant communication with my east of the Mississippi, embracing the St. brother, and when navigation opened I made Croix district and east to the Chippewa River, a flying trip to Missouri, my brother having but to my certain knowledge the Indians never written me that he was going to California. I knew that they had ceded their lands until returned immediately to the Northwest, which 1849, when they were asked to remove there­ has been my home since that time. from. In the spring of 1841 my first real good in­ troduction to the bear family took place. It \ T TIMES [between 1835 and 1840] I felt was in the logging camp of Mr. Page. . . . The -^^ better, and always best during the trips camp had been pretty well cleared out of its up the river. I had a constant cough both supplies, they having been moved down to the day and night, and this, with chills and fever, place where the drive would begin. Only a prevented me from gaining strength. Doctors few papers, scalers rule and time book and a pronounced me in the last stages of consump­ keg part full of molasses were left behind. tion. Fortunately for me I visited Dr. Peek, One afternoon after the landings had been then residing in Hannibal, an old physician broken and booming about completed, Mr. who had about retired from practice. He made Page requested me to take a man and go to an examination of my case and told me he the camp and return in the morning, bringing thought my lungs were all right and believed the rule and papers and have the man bring a change of climate would benefit me, and if along the keg of molasses. I took a young In­ that would not, medicine would do me no dian about twenty years of age, named Wa- good. Upon his recommendation I went again sa-je-zik, and started for the camp. It was up the Mississippi to the St. Croix pineries, nearly dark when we started and we had a taking a man with me to help get back into mile to walk over a muddy trail. The boy the woods to rough it and to live or die there. stripped some birch bark from an old wig­ When I parted with my friends at Hannibal wam near the road and made a torch to use none expected to see me again alive. as a light when we reached the shanty. When At Prairie du Chien I engaged a half breed near he handed me the torch and picked up by the name of Ben Young, who had been some wood to make a fire. I lit the torch at raised with the Chippewas and spoke English the cabin and found the door partly open but tolerably well. I landed at Lake St. Croix, where the city of Hudson, Wis., now stands, on the second day of June, 1840. The place was then called ' A missionary testified to the complexity of the Chippewa language when he counted over 150 forms Page's Landing. Mr. Page was on board the of the irregular verb in the indicative mood, present boat I came up on, having been below to tense, first person, singular number, allowing the purchase supplies for his camp. He assisted expression in a single word of shades of thought and meaning possible in English only through lengthy me in getting ashore and also in having my and awkward circumlocution. It is doubtful that cabin built in the woods, back of the present Armstrong ever fully mastered so involved a tongue. city of Hudson. I remained in that camp un­ See Julius T. Clark, "Reminiscences of Hole-in-the- Day," State Historical Society of Wisconsin Collec­ til about the middle of January, 1841, and tions (Madison, 1907), \: S80.

179 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 went in followed by the boy who closed the door as he came through and dashed his arm­ ful of wood down at the fire place. At this we heard a rush along side the camp at our left that nearly scared the life out of us and raising the torch we beheld two bears, who had doubtless been attracted to the cabin by the scent of molasses. They made a rush for the door where they entered but it was closed and wheeling about they faced us. '^^^Si: i^'' , "^ i.. their eyes shining with a lustre that we would much rather have seen in a painting. -„,..-,," -•». But we were there; no door but the one the bears were guarding and no window where we could escape. We stood like statues for a while, eyeing our companions, while the torch was fast burning away. The roof was made of shakes and the eaves were about four feet from the ground. Escape we must or we would Armstrong, Lite Among the Indians soon be in the dark with our black com­ Wasajezik and the two bears panions. We expected every moment to be pounced upon, for every spring bears, as a usual thing, are very hungry. It occurred to occasional growl. I picked up my gun and me that perhaps I could move the shakes finished loading it and I soon had his hide enough to crawl through and handing the as a trophy. now shortened torch to the boy and at the I did not meet Wa-sa-je-zik again until same time instructing him to keep it waving two or three years ago when I met him at to hold bruin at bay, I made a dash for the Granite Falls, [Minnesota] on the Mississip­ shakes and soon had a hole through which I pi. He recognized me at once and began to could crawl and did crawl and shouted to Wa- relate the story and it seemed like meeting a sa-je-zik to come. The lad went through that long lost brother, when our encounter with hole like an arrow, and he was none too quick, the bears had been revived. for the bear espied the light of Heaven through the hole I had made and dashed for it, but •pvURING THE WINTER of 1841, an uncle missed his footing and fell back. By this ^-^ of mine, who was then a resident of St. time we had the shakes kicked back to place Louis, made a proposition to start me in the and Messrs. Bruin were our prisoners. We trading business, provided I could locate a camped outside that night and in the morning place outside of the Hudson Bay and Ameri­ got a rifle and killed them both. We took can Fur Company's territory, to which there the hides and the best of the meat to the boys would be some means of getting supplies to, on the drive and had a regular pow-wow and and also of shipping furs from, and for this feast to celebrate our adventure. purpose I made a trip up the Mississippi. I I had several experiences with bear after picked two of the best guides I could find to this but never again was caught in their den. accompany me during the trip. A black bear is harmless except when wound­ Our little party, which consisted solely of ed or cornered and then they are a wicked myself and guides left Pocagemah [Pokega- foe. 1 once wounded one and before I could ma] Lake, Minn.,* about the first of May in reload my gun he was almost upon me and the spring of 1841, taking very little provi- we had a lively promenade around an old pine stub until I got my hunting hatchet from my belt and dealt him several blows when he * There are two Pokegama Lakes in Minnesota, one gave up the fight and we had no quarrel over in Itasca County near Grand Rapids, and the other in Pine County near Pine City. It seems obvious gate receipts. He started away uttering an that Armstrong was journeying toward the former.

180 'i^^'i

•-••• -•'"'' --1^

';iT.J'-.::i=jS-Wit!.'J'.--,;VL' Eastman, Portfolio Engraving of Seth Eastman's celebrated depiction of Henry R. Schoolcraft'i arrival at Lake Itasca on his 1832 expedition.

sions of any kind. When we started we only The whole country was then inhabited by In­ had enough to last two or three days, with dians, whom we met frequently on the route, the exception of salt, and pepper, which I who were then dressed in their native ways. took for my own meats and had a sufficient The guides I took from Pocagemah Lake quantity for the trip. We depended wholly led me somewhat astray, taking me consid­ on our guns, with which I had provided the erably to the northeast of my destination, and Indians, they carrying shotguns and myself we arrived at the Lake of the Woods about a rifle, each carrying his own ammunition, twenty-eight days after starting. Here we of which we had plenty. We were continual­ found that we were out of our course and ly on the look-out for game, for we were not, as I supposed, anywhere near the Mis­ careful to keep our larder supplied with at sissippi.® At this information I determined to least one day's provisions, which was an easy procure a new guide, which I did, who went matter as game was plentiful and one need go through with me to Lake Itasca, and told me but a short distance for want of a shot at a that this was as far up as any white man had deer or any smaller game, while traces of the ever been.'^ This guide was a man about elk, moose, carriboo [sic]^ and bear were thirty-five or forty years of age, and was frequently met with. bom and brought up between Lake of the The route we traversed going up I cannot Woods and the head of the Mississippi, and describe, there being no surveys of any kind, had trapped and hunted over the entire coun­ but we went up on the east side of the Mis­ try. sissippi the whole distance only seeing the river twice on the trip, keeping into the woods for several miles, my guides telling me it was far the best part of the country to travel "According to present atlases, Armstrong and his through to avoid lakes, rivers, marshes, etc., party had strayed about 123 miles north of the near­ est course of the Mississippi. which we would otherwise be obliged to cross. ' Called Omushkos by the Indians and Lac La Biche by the French (both terms meaning elk), Itasca was given its present name by Henry R. Schoolcraft on his 1832 expedition, one purpose of ° The last caribou seen in Wisconsin was in 1842. which was to discover the source of the Mississippi. Wisconsin Blue Book, 1964, 92. Desiring to give the lake what he considered to be

181 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

Just before arriving at Lake Itasca we came Soon after leaving camp with the old gen­ upon an Indian camp, of five or six lodges tleman he told me he could take me to the or families, and stopped there with them over head waters of the Mississippi if I cared to night. Here I found another Indian pretty go there. This was not my object in making well along in years, who must have been up­ the trip, but when I found it would be im­ wards of fifty, and who was more familiar practicable to start a trading post, there be­ with the country around the head of the Mis­ ing no means of transportation, I determined sissippi than the former guide claimed to be. to get acquainted with the whole country, In listening to the conversation in the lodges hence my visit to the head waters of the Mis­ that night, between the guide who brought sissippi. me through from Lake of the Woods and our After exploring the river thoroughly as we host, who was the old gentleman spoken of proceeded up stream, which took considerable before, I found him giving my former guide time, we at last launched our canoes on the many directions, and concluded he was thor­ waters of Lake Itasca, which had for more oughly acquainted with the country. He de­ than a century been considered the head wa­ scribed a river as coming into and another ters of the Mississippi River. The Indians small lake just above Itasca, the source of from that country disputed the long standing which was the dividing ridge between the supposition that Itasca was its head waters, waters flowing east and west, the outcome of and said that there was another lake and which was that I employed the old man to go another stream farther up, the stream being along with me, and also to furnish a canoe, fed entirely by springs, of crystal-like ap­ leaving the first two guides behind to remain pearance, and that they were positive that the and hunt for the folks in camp till we should stream at the head of this little lake was the have returned. head waters of the Mississippi, to confirm which I explored the whole country thorough­ ly. After going through Lake Itasca we were compelled to abandon our canoes, and proceed on foot. This we were obliged to do, the a more meaningful and appropriate name, School­ craft inquired of one of liis traveling companions, stream being so filled up with drift-wood as Reverend William T. Boutwell, the Latin word for to make it slow work to get a canoe ahead. "true source". Told that it was Veritas caput, School­ craft combined the last four letters of Veritas with In going up this stream we made it a point the first two of caput to form Itasca. In later years to explore on both sides. The distance trav­ Schoolcraft invented a poetic myth concerning an eled after leaving Lake Itasca I cannot give Indian maiden, Itasca, who, spurning the amorous advances of Chebiabo, the Keeper of the Souls of the accurately, it being so long ago, but it must Dead, drove her frustrated lover to bring about have been considerable, it having occupied storms, floods, and an earthquake in which she was quite a time, and can only estimate it. It buried beneath the resultant sand hills. Her tears, flowing from these hills, became a series of rills was probably between twenty and twenty-five which fed the springs supplying the lake. Jacob V. miles. Brower, "The Mississippi and Its Source," in Min­ nesota Historical Society Collections (Minneapolis, Just after leaving Lake Itasca we came to 1893), VII: 144, 145; Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a widening of the river which my guide told Summary Narrative of an Exporatory Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi River in 1820: Re­ me was sometimes called a lake. This was not sumed and Completed by the Discovery of Its Origin more than three or four miles above Itasca. in Itasca Lake in 1832 (New York, 1855), passim; Warren Upham, Minnesota Geographic Names: About twenty miles beyond this we beheld Their Origin and Significance (Reprint edition, one of the most beautiful little lakes in the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, 1969), 252, whole country, it being surrounded by hun­ 253; Mary Eastman, American Aboriginal Portfolio (Philadelphia, 1853), 17-18. The Indian was wrong dreds of small springs, in fact it is almost in assuming that Armstrong was the first white man entirely fed by springs, having a stream at to explore the headwaters of Lake Itasca, since Joseph the further end which has its source in these Nicollet in 1836 made the first scientific explora­ tion of the region. His renowned map, Hydrographic crystal-like springs. Some of these springs are Basin of the Mississippi River from Astronomical up far on the sides of the divide or ridge. and Barometric Surveys and Information, was pub­ These lay at the foot of an immense hill, the lished in 1842 and 1843 and was republished from the original plates by the Minnesota Historical So­ highest, it appeared of any on the whole ciety in 1965. ridge, as far as the eye could see. We ascended

182 Society's Map Collection Detail of the first scientifically drawn map of the Lake Itasca region, made by the French mathematician-astronomer Joseph Nicollet in 1836 and first published in 1843. Observable at lower center are a series of lakelets, as well as five small creeks flowing into Itasca. The largest creek Nicollet described as the "infant Mississippi." this hill, and from its summit could view the " Nicollet's map, referred to in the previous note, confirms Armstrong's contention that Lake Itasca was surrounding country for many miles. After not the ultimate source of the Mississippi. The map reaching the summit of this hill, the Indian clearly shows one small lake from the southeast and with me from that part of the cotmtry told three small lakes from the southwest flowing into Itasca. A detailed hydrographic and topographic me we had reached the head waters of the map, authorized by the Minnesota legislature on Mississippi, where no white man had been to April 20, 1891, and made by J. V. Brower, com­ missioner of the Itasca State Park, gives the three his knowledge, and since that time I cannot small lakes the names of Upper, Middle, and Lower content myself with history which makes Ita­ Nicollet Lake. It also shows seven other lakes, sca the source of the Mississippi. From the which in addition to the Nicollet ones, are denom­ inated "The Greater Ultimate Reservoir at the Source summit of this hill the land could be seen of the Mississippi." A United States Geological Sur­ dropping off to the east and south, but seemed vey Map published in 1968 shows the present status of the cluster of small lakes described on Brewer's to be lowest lying south, and from the fact earlier map. See Schoolcraft, Summary Narrative, that this stream had its source in these crystal­ passim; Edward D. Neill, "Inaccurate Knowledge like springs at the foot of and up the sides of of the Sources of the Mississippi at the Close of the Last Century," in Macalester College Contribu­ the hill, I concluded that the Indians were tions, Third Series (St. Paul, n.d.), 1-8; Upham, right in saying that this was the true source Minnesota Geographic Names, 252-253; J. V. Brow­ of the Mississippi.^ All of these small lakes er, "The Mississippi River and its Source . . ." in Minnesota Historical Society Collections (Minneap­ were filled with the finest speckled trout I olis, 1893), VII, and Brower, "Itasca State Park: ever had the good fortune to see. An Illustrated History," in Minnesota Historical Society Collections (St. Paul, 1904), XI; John An­ From the top of the hill to which the In­ thony Caruso, The Mississippi Valley Frontier: The dians took me at the head of the small stream Age of French Exploration and Settlement (New which runs into this little lake above Itasca, York, 1966) ; Timothy Severin, Explorers of the Mis­ sissippi (London, 1967) ; Willard Price, "The Up­ the sight was the most grand of anything per Mississippi," in National Geographic, CXIV: I ever witnessed. The surface of the earth 651-^52 (November, 1958) ; E. L. Oakes and L. E. Bidwell, Water Resources of the Mississippi Head­ seemed descending as far as the eye could waters Watershed, North-Central Minnesota (Hydro- reach and the landscape was beautiful. logic Investigations Atlas HA-278, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, 1968). For some time afterward I intended making

183 DET.AILRD HYDROGK.\fHJG CHART '^•T"-W'^!

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"•^'Ir«.. Minnesota Historical Society Collections /. V. Brower's 1891 map (greatly reduced) of the source of the Mississippi. The arrow indicates the cluster of small lakes lying south of Itasca which Brower collectively terms the "greater ultimate reservoir bowl."

184 ARMSTRONG: LIFE AMONG THE CHIPPEWA

another visit there for the purpose of taking Buffalo received the news that they were com­ notes and getting maps to present to my uncle ing to give him battle and learned how near for writing it up, but before another opportu­ they were, and knowing the necessity for nity offered my uncle died and I was blinded him to start at once in order to intercept and the trip I had intended for the interest of them and choose his position for a battle, he myself and others had to be abandoned. only had time to gather a portion of his war­ riors. rriHE WHOLE COUNTRY from [St. Croix When he started he knew that the force of -*- Falls] to Lake Superior was an unbroken the enemy far outnumbered his own; that forest, inhabited exclusively by the Chippe­ they were coming with the intention of catch­ was, but their right to the country was strong­ ing the Chippewas in disconnected parties and ly contested by the Dakotas (Sioux), leading thereby be able to annihilate them in detail, to many bloody battles, one of which I wit­ as the warlike portion of the Chippewas were nessed at Stillwater, on the west side of the over near the Mississippi under Hole-in-the- lake. Many were slain on both sides, but it day.'^ Act quickly he must. He collected resulted in a victory for the Chippewas. This, I think, was in 1841.® I also witnessed a bat­ chief. Born on Madeline Island, as had been his tle on the Brule River about October 1st of father before him, he attained a reputation among the following year, a true version of which I the whites for wisdom, oratorical ability, and his disinclination for war, although when faced with will give you: conflict he behaved with skill and bravery and was magnanimous towards his foes. See Richard F. The Sioux were headed by Old Crow and Morse, "The Chippewas of Lake Superior, Part VI: the Chippewas by Buffalo, each having a num­ The Obituary of Ke-che-waish-ke," in State Histori­ ber of sub-chiefs to assist them.^" The battle cal Society of Wisconsin Collections, III: 365-369 (Madison, 1904) ; Alfred Brunson, "Early History of ground was about midway from the source of Wisconsin," ibid., IV: 428 (1906) ; Warren, History Brule River to its mouth and about fifteen of the Ojibways, 464; Schoolcraft, Summary Narra­ miles from Lake Superior. Buffalo's people tive, 271. The chief called "Old Crow" in Arm­ strong's account was probably Chief Little Crow. In at this time were settled over quite an ex­ the Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography (Madison, tensive territory, consisting of the Apostle 1960) Buffalo is listed as Great Buffalo. Islands and the whole country surrounding " Hole-in-the-Day, whose Indian name, Pug-o-na- ghe-zhisk, means "a puncture in the sky through Chequamegon (Cha-ga-wa-muk) bay. When which the light streams down," was one of the most powerful and influential of the Chippewa chiefs. An implacable foe of the Sioux, he led many skirmishes ' In this reference Armstrong may be confusing and battles against them. Among his five wives was two separate encounters between the Sioux and a white woman, an employee of the National Hotel, Chippewa. Following a council at Fort Snelling in whom he met during an 1864 trip to Washington and the summer of 1839, which was attended by 500 who returned with him to Wisconsin. After his Chippewa and 1,200 Sioux and which degenerated death, the son of this union was adopted by a into a drunken brawl, two Chippewa, who remained Minneapolis family and was educated in the public behind after their tribesmen had departed for home, schools. Accounts of Hole-in-the-Day's later career killed a Sioux named Badger. Infuriated, the Sioux differ widely: in his 1858 annual report to the Com­ sent out war parties to pursue the homeward-bound missioner of Indian Affairs, the Chippewa Indian Chippewa. On July 3, 1839, the Sioux, finding a agent, D. B. Harriman, was lavish in his praise of band of St. Croix Chippewa in an intoxicated condi­ the chief as a model of the government's assimila­ tion in a ravine near Stillwater, fell upon them, tion program. However, Julius Clark claimed that slaying twenty-one and wounding twenty-nine. The Hole-in-tbe-Day succumbed to whiskey in his later only recorded clash between the two hereditary foes years and that his death in the summer of 1868 in 1841 was in May of that year when a party of was caused by a drunken fall from his horse. Other Sioux, headed by Little Crow (called Big Thunder accounts of his death vary sharply, stating that he by the whites) was surprised while advancing on was murdered by a group of Pillager Indians. In the Chippewa. In the ensuing fracas, the Chippewa any event, Hole-in-the-Day's career seems to have killed two of Little Crow's sons and lost one of been more fully documented than that of most Wis­ their braves to the Sioux. Seeking revenge, the consin Indians of the period. See Warren, History Sioux subsequently attacked a party of Indians and of the Ojibways, 505-507; James H. Lockwood, "Ear­ whites returning from Sunday services at the Lake ly Times and Events in Wisconsin," State Historical Pokegama mission and killed two little girls before Society of Wisconsin Collections, II: 156 (Madison, retreating. William W. Warren, "History of the 1903) ; Julius T. Clark, "Reminiscences of Hole-in- Ojibways, Based upon Traditions and Oral State­ the-Day," in ibid., (1907), 378-386; Alfred Brun­ ments," in Minnesota Historical Society Collections son, "Sketch of Hole-in-the-Day," in ibid., (1907), (St. Paul, 1885), V: 488-489, 492-493. V: 387-401; "Death of Hole-in-the-Day," quoted from St. Paul Press, June 30, 1868, in ibid., V: ^^ Buffalo (also known as Kechewaishke, Besh- 402-406; "Murder of Hole-in-the-Day," quoted from kike, and Le Boeuf) was a distinguished Chippewa

185 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 about two hundred warriors and leaving his complete before daylight and at early dawn the women and children he hurried away and fight was begun by a few gun shots from met the Sioux the first evening just before Buffalo's center, which was to be the signal sunset at the Brule, the Sioux on the west side for his flanking forces to close in. As soon and the Chippewas on the east, their pickets as these shots had been fired, some of his eyeing each other until dark, knowing that center men, by a pre-arrangement, began run­ the daylight would find them in mortal com­ ning toward the bluff to show weakness, and bat. The west bank of this river running back the Sioux, quick to discover their apparent quite a distance is level and swampy, while fear, dashed into the river in great numbers, the east side slopes down from the river and expecting to have an easy victory and be able it is only about 150 feet to an almost perpen­ to take what scalps there were between the dicular rocky bluff rising from fifty to eighty river and the bluff with the utmost ease and feet in height, and the slope from the river dispatch. The water in the Brule at the east back to the bluff gave Buffalo's men a hidden bank was about three feet deep and the bank position from the Sioux on the west side. It two or three feet above the water. Whether was not until after dark that Buffalo made or not the Sioux had taken this fact into con­ any show of strength in numbers, for he sideration I cannot say, but that the Chippe­ well knew he was overmatched, but as soon was depended upon this condition of things as it was dark he had fires built along the for their victory was certain. The Brule was river bank for nearly an eighth of a mile, to now filled with a howling, surging mass of give the Sioux the impression that his strength Sioux warriors, each trying to gain the lead was ample to cope with them. These fires for the distinction he proposed to get by the were kept briskly burning all night. addition of numerous scalps to his belt. Just after dark Buffalo came to me in my On they came, clubs and knives aloft, yell­ hidden retreat in the rocks on the bluff where ing like mad and with a dozen or more imag­ I had gone by his direction, and laid his plans inary Chippewa scalps already in their belt, before me, which plans were to divide his began to climb the bank. All this time the force into three parts and at midnight to braves of Buffalo lay hidden and with hur­ send a third of them up the river a safe dis­ ried breath awaited the appearance of a scalp- tance and cross and come down as near the lock above the bank. They were now in sight Sioux as they dared without being observed, and if never the Sioux before had met a foe and there await the opening of the fight in the that was worthy the name they faced them morning, which he would begin with his cen­ now, for of all the Sioux that were in the ter men. The other third were to go down river then not one set his foot on the east the river and cross over, and like the band up bank. Being in the water they were compelled the river, move up to a striking distance and to scale the bank before their clubs and knives then keep quiet until the battle should begin. were of any use, and the Chippewas brained In those days fire arms were not plenty with them as fast as they came in reach. Of all the Indians and ammunition scarce and they the thrilling stories I ever read of slaughter did not like to use it in battle but kept it and carnage, I now witnessed a greater one for hunting, and the war club and knife were than all. The river ran red with blood and the instruments of death relied upon for this the Sioux warrior that had not reached the fight. The center portion of his men were shore eagerly pressed forward but as fast as concealed near the river bank at a point where they approached their doom was sealed. The the Sioux must cross, and as the ground re­ flanking forces of Buffalo were now and had ceded back from the river bank to the bluff been, since the signal gun was fired, cutting their position and numbers could not be de­ their way into the Sioux right and left wing, tected by the enemy. and the war-whoops of the victorious Chip­ pewas could be heard on their right and left All the maneuvers of Buffalo's men were and in their rear. The case in front of them was a hopeless one and they did the only thing St. Cloud Journal, July 9, 1868, in ibid., V: 406^ 409; "Gen. Cass at St. Marie 1820," in ibid., V: 410- that remained for them, to get away and save 416; Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian as many of their scalps as they could and let Affairs for the Year 1857 (Washington, 1858).

186 Armstrong, Life Among the Indians Sioux warriors fording the river to attack the impregnably positioned Chippewa in the bloody battle of the Brule. the Chippewas have the scalps of their dead, present, and all that were missing were count­ which were floating down or lying at the bot­ ed as slain in the battle. Their loss being tom of the Brule. thus accounted for, the scalps that were taken I witnessed this masterpiece of Indian war­ from the Sioux were counted and their loss fare from the afternoon previous to the end­ thus ascertained. The count in this case was ing of the fight, and from my safe position, very satisfactory to the Chippewas as it having nothing to fear whichever way the bat­ showed their loss thirteen and the loss of the tle went, the impression made upon my mind Sioux one hundred and one. This mode of was lasting, and is as vivid to-day as it was counting up the results of battle has been upon that bright October morning, nearly their custom for hundreds of years, according fifty years ago, and I would go one thousand to their tradition. The scalping practice has miles to see it repeated if another massacre been in vogue by all tribes of Indians as far was pending and could not be avoided.'^ back as tradition goes, and the object of Those of the Sioux that got away made the scalping was for a two-fold purpose. First for best time possible to reach their own country counting the results of battle, and next to show beyond the Mississippi and were followed by the personal bravery of individual warriors, the victors to their boundary line. Only a few as each brave kept his scalps as a record of were overtaken who were wounded, and they his valor until such time as he delivered them were dispatched and scalped as soon as found. up to his superior in tribal rank, in return for After the pursuers had returned the In­ which he received eagle feathers, one for dians were all called together to count up the each scalp he turned in, and these he wore in dead and ascertain the result of the battle. his cap or turban as a mark of distinction.'^ This was done by counting the men that were ^^ Scalping was by no means confined to the ^ Because of his privileged position among the American continent but was a practice described by Chippewa (he married Buffalo's niece and was the Herodotus and was prevalent among the Scythians, chief's adopted son) Armstrong appears to have Gauls, and other semi-civilized peoples of Europe been the sole white witness to this battle and his and Asia. While it was a custom among Indians re­ account the only one to have been printed. While siding in small areas of the eastern United States he may be uncertain of the exact date, his narrative and the lower St. Lawrence region, its spread was has the ring of authenticity. encouraged by the French and English colonists, al-

187 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

The battle of the Brule was the last great the chiefs that when he came next time they battle fought between the Chippewas and the should be added to their goods for another Sioux in this part of the country, though there year. The packages were opened and the In­ were others afterward of less importance, one dians were satisfied that all were there before at the St. Croix River in 1846, where but few anything further was done. The Indians were were killed, though many hundred were en­ then enrolled and the goods were divided gaged.'* among them. First the goods were put in pack­ ages, dividing them equally—the packages T WISH NOW to say something of the con- for families and packages for single persons -•- duct of Indian agents and the manner in were all put up and labeled with the name of which they have dealt with the Indians and to the owner. Then the Indians were notified state facts that have come under my personal that the annuities were ready to be distributed, observation, and I wish to say in beginning and would be on a certain day. One man this subject that but one agent, whose distribu­ at a time was let into the payment house, and tion I attended, dealt fairly with and used he came as his name was called by the inter­ no deception in his transactions with the In­ preter. When he entered he was asked to dians, and that was Agent Hayes, who was touch the pen and his goods and money were appointed by President Tyler.'' handed to him.'^ This payment was con­ When he arrived with the annuities and ducted throughout without a jar or any trou­ after they had been placed in the warehouse, ble, and after the distribution was completed he sent for the chiefs and asked them to take the chiefs were sent for and all the boxes, their interpreter and the way bills and go burlaps, and even the cordage was given to through the warehouse and satisfy themselves them, and quite a handful of money which that all packages called for by the bills were was left over, for where even change could not there, and all boxes, barrels, bales and bun­ be made in all cases was given to the chiefs dles were checked before they were opened. A also, and they were told to divide it as they few packages were short and Mr. Hayes told saw fit. The acts of Mr. Hayes all through the distribution were praiseworthy. He would explain, through the interpreter, the amount though it appears to have been unknown on the that was due, and count the Indian's money Great Plains until relatively recent times. In the before him. eighteenth century both the French and English of­ fered bounties for scalps, and during the French The custom practiced before Mr. Hayes and and Indian War the French set bounties on English after him was to allow the traders places by scalps and the British on those of Indians. In 1755 the pay table, especially the American Fur forty pounds sterling (about S200) was offered by the English of Massachusetts for the scalps of male Co., with an open sack in which to take the Indians over twelve years of age, twenty pounds money claimed to be due them from the In­ sterling (about $100) for those of women and chil­ dians and as soon as an Indian had touched dren. See Frederick Webb Hodge (ed.). Handbook of American Indians (Washington, Smithsonian In­ the pen the bill against this Indian was handed stitution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin to the agent and the money poured into the 30, 1912), II: 482-483; and Georg Friederici, "Scalping in America," originally a Ph.D. thesis traders' sack, and the bill was generally published in Braunschweig, Germany, in 1906 and enough to cover the Indian's dues. But at republished in translation in Smithsonian Institu­ this payment the scheme did not work, the tion, Annual Report, 1906 (Washington, 1907), 423- 438. agent told the traders beforehand that he was " Here again Armstrong seems to have his dates not there to pay traders, but to pay Indians, confused. No Sioux-Chippewa encounter is recorded and if they had bills to collect they must do for 1846, and it is likely that the reference is to the skirmish of 1841 at St. Croix Falls, described in so outside the payment house door, as he note 9. would not be a party to a division of the " James P. Hayes was the Indian subagent at La Indians' money. He also had the interpreter Pointe, which was designated a subagency. An­ nual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1847-1848, Report No. 4 (Washington, 1848), 92- 96. Despite his evident sense of fair play for the '" Although original copies of most treaties show Indians, Hayes' reports consistently advocated their that Indians made an x after their names, references removal from Wisconsin or their segregation in to the custom of having them merely touch the pen reservations. as a sign of acquiescence abound in the literature.

188 ARMSTRONG: LIFE AMONG THE CHIPPEWA

explain to the Indians that the great father Before concluding this chapter I wish to had sent him to pay them and he hoped if they relate a piece of treachery on the part of the owed these traders any honest debts they Sioux Indians toward their Chippewa brothers would pay them, but he should not allow the which well shows the deceptive character of traders to impose upon them and take money the Sioux. I think it was in 1844 that the that was not their due. Sioux sent messengers to the Chippewas in­ Had the manner of doing business that viting them to a peace council, to be held in was adopted by Mr. Hayes been commenced the Sioux country, west of the Mississippi. As and carried out in making payments a great was the custom they brought tobacco to pre­ deal of trouble would have been avoided and sent to the party, who were to smoke with the strongest point of Indian objection to the them in case the invitation was accepted, but traders would not have existed. But Mr. Hayes in case the proposition to consider is not en­ never came back to make another payment and tertained the tobacco is not received. In this the old ways were again adopted. His way case they accepted the tobacco and smoked of doing business did not suit the traders and with their visitors. charges were preferred against him, one of The messengers stated their proposition to which was that he drank too much. The the Chippewas by saying: "All the trouble charges were made so strong, whether truth­ between us in the past has grown out of a fully or not the public can conjecture, that difference of opinion as to our respective ter­ he was removed from the position and Doc­ ritory, and now, as we can see the white peo­ tor Livermore appointed in his place, who ple will soon be the owners of all the country seemed to satisfy the American Fur Co. much and we will have nothing to fight over, there­ better, although the Indians were much dis­ fore let us meet as brothers and friends and pleased. Following Livermore came John S. smoke the pipe of peace, and bury the war Waters, . . . then H. C. Gilbert was appointed hatchet and scalping knife forever. Our chiefs and still no improvement. The next to follow request you to meet our people just west of was Silas [Cyrus] Drew, of Indiana, then L. Sauk Rapids, near the Mississippi river. As E. Webb, of La Crosse; after him came Asaph your country is better to hunt in during the Whittlesey, who took charge of the office a winter on account of your forests, and ours few months but who was not confirmed by the better in the summer on account of our Senate. Col. John H. Knight superceded him prairies, we will try and agree that we may but his appointment was not confirmed and hunt here in winter and you hunt there in the he too served only a few months. After him came Maj. Clark, of the army; then came summer, and we are instructed to say to you Doctor Mahan, and it was during his admin­ that we will allow you one moon to consider istration that the treaty of 1854 expired and the matter and at the expiration of that time since that time I do not care to say what agents or before you can send a messenger to us have or have not done, as it is of recent date with your decision." and within reach of any who care to look it This arrangement was agreed to. The Chip­ up.i^ pewas held councils from time to time and finally agreed that they would meet the Sioux as proposed. A messenger was sent to notify them of the decision. The Chippewa messen­ ger was told upon arrival there that they " Among the identifiable Indian agents were C. K. Drew of Indiana, who served as agent for the would be ready to meet them after ten days. Lake Superior Chippewa from 1859 to 1860; Luther E. Webb, a native of Meriden, Connecticut, who settled in La Crosse in 1856, was appointed agent at Bayfield by President Lincoln in 1861 and served until 1867 when he was appointed Indian agent for I. L. Mahan, who had been in the area since 1873 New Mexico, a position he declined; Asaph Whittle­ and served as agent from 1876 to 1880. See Annual sey, a member of the 1860 legislature responsible Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for for the establishment of Ashland County, who served the appropriate years; for information on Webb and from 1868 to 1869; Brevet Lt.-Col. John H. Knight, Whittlesey see State Historical Society of Wisconsin agent from 1868 to 1870; Major Sheldon S. Clark, Collections (Madison, 1909), IX: 452, and Guy M. who took office in 1871 and whose report of that Burnham, The Lake Superior Country in History and year is particularly informative and interesting; and in Story (Boston, 1930), facing p. 97.

189 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

and that the first hunt would be in the Sioux TN THE WINTER OF 1846 I was trading country for buffalo. In accordance with this -*- at a place between Snake River and Po­ arrangement, to hunt first in the Sioux terri­ cagemah Lake, in Minnesota, and on the bank tory, the delegation to the peace council was of Snake River, near its entry into Cross Lake, made up of from fifty to sixty of the choicest I built my trading house. hunters and braves among the Chippewas, and The name of this lake was derived from with two or three chiefs they met the Sioux the name the Indians gave it, which was Pem- at the appointed time and were received with ma-che-go-ming, and means to cross or go every mark of attention and the utmost cor­ through. In the Potawatomie language the diality. All joined in a feast and dance that word would be Kosh-ko-ming [Koshkonong], lasted two nights and a day, when it was pro­ a name they gave to a lake through which posed that the Chippewas return to their coun­ Rock River runs in Jefferson County, Wiscon­ try and get more hunters with the understand­ sin. ing that they were to be back in five days, After the treaty of 1837 lumbermen were in when the march to the hunting grounds would the habit of cutting choice pine timber where- be commenced. As a mark of friendship and ever it was handy to get a market, without good faith toward each other exchanges were owning the land or getting permission to cut made of clothing, pipes, locks of hair and the timber. In other words they were stealing other things, cementing the good faith of the it from the government. Snake River was truce that had been concluded and the next the outlet for much of this timber, or so much morning the Chippewas started for home, of it as was cut as far up as Knife Lake, highly pleased with the settlement of all for­ on Knife River, Rice and Tamarack Rivers, mer troubles and happy in the belief that and Colonel Sims, of New Orleans, Louisiana, thereafter nothing but peace and good will was the man whom the government sent to would enter the two tribes. look after the trespassing. He had been in the But alas for the confiding Chippewas. The Mexican war and had lost one arm. He ar­ battle of two years before at the Brule had rived at my trading post in the spring of 1847. not been forgotten by the Sioux, and never After informing me of his mission he asked having been able to best the Chippewas in an to make his home with me for a while, as it open fight, they had drawn them into a trap was central in the country in which he wished to get a revenge that they could not other­ to make his investigations and would also wise obtain, for the Chippewas had only pro­ like to have my assistance in locating points ceeded about four miles when they were sur­ where the trespassing was being done. I took prised by a large body of Sioux in ambush, the colonel in and made him as comfortable and volley after volley of rifle shots poured as circumstances would permit. I found him a into them. Before they could recover them­ pleasant companion. He would relate his ad­ selves for resistance the major portion of ventures in Mexico, in turn for which I would them lay dead upon the trail. The few who recite matters about this country that were escaped returned to their homes but the fire interesting to him. As he was an army officer of hatred kindled in the hearts of the Chippe­ I told him of the Indian soldiers, how they was by that act of treachery on the part of had their war dances, drills and parades, as Sioux will never be quenched, and it would well as white soldiers. This interested him be quite as easy to mix oil and water as to very much and he was quite anxious to wit­ patch up any kind of truce between them. ness one of them where he could see a genu­ This was the first and only time the Sioux ever ine medicine dance and feast and listen to got the best of the Chippewas in combat. The the speeches of the braves, telling of their Sioux call it revenge but the Chippewas can­ miraculous adventures and many hair-breath not see it in that light.'* [sic] escapes. At this time there lived a missionary near " No mention is made in the literature of any Pocagemah Lake, by the name of Boutwell, such incidence of Sioux treachery occurring near which lake was about four miles from my Sauk Rapids in the 1830's or 1840's. It is possible, place by trail. Boutwell's wife was a half- however, that many such incidents never found their way into the printed sources. caste Chippewa, and a daughter of a member

190 ARMSTRONG: LIFE AMONG THE CHIPPEWA

of the American Fur Co. She had been east effect and caused her to appear at her best on and was educated and spoke both languages all occasions, and especially when white peo­ quite fluently.'^ There also lived on the bank ple were present, consequently she became of this lake an Indian chieftain by the name faultless in her attire. of Bi-a-jek, who had a band numbering The colonel was telling me one day of the about 150 souls. His own family consisted of beautiful Creole women in New Orleans, and a wife, one son and a daughter. This daugh­ I told him there was an Indian beauty in the ter had lived close to the mission some time neighborhood, who, in feature and form, and became quite a favorite of Mrs. Boutwell could not be beaten in the whole south. Just on account of her naturally good manners and then it happened that the chief and his wife her Indian beauty. She had, with the assis­ and daughter were in sight coming to my tance of Mrs. Boutwell, taken up the white place to trade. I told the colonel that they women's mode of dress and was as neat and were coming and he rushed for his uniform, tasty as could be. She was the idol of the old which he always did when parties came, to chief and her brother, and for my part I whom he wished to show his rank. When the must say she was the prettiest Indian maiden chief and party arrived at the post he was at I ever met. She was pretty in feature, and in his best in military attire and awaited an in­ manners she was feminine to a degree not troduction, which I interpreted between them. often overmatched by her white sisters. Mrs. The chief said he was glad to meet a white Boutwell often told her she was pronounced officer as he was an officer among soldiers handsome and that she must set her cap for himself. The colonel related his late experi­ a white husband. These teachings had their ence in war, the hard times he had seen, and how he had lost an arm in the bargain, to which the old chief replied: "He who strikes must expect to get struck," which was equiva­ "William Thurston Boutwell, while a student at lent to saying, in the Indian understanding, Andover Theological Seminary, offered himself as a "That's all right, don't grumble." missionary to the Lake Superior Chippewa and in 1831 arrived at Mackinac Island. The following The colonel, turning to me said: "Your year he accompanied Schoolcraft on his historic jour­ description of the daughter is correct. She ney to Lake Itasca, at the conclusion of which he joined two missionary colleagues at La Pointe. In is as pretty as a pink." He told me to cut the summer of 1833 he left Madeline Island to take her off a couple of calico dresses and to give up missionary work at Leech Lake, Minnesota, and the chief some tobacco also on his account, the next year married Hester Crooks, the mixed- blood daughter of Ramsay Crooks. Born in Scot­ and urged me to arrange with the chief to land in 1787, Crooks emigrated to America and at the have us present at their next war or medicine age of sixteen entered the fur trade, eventually dance, and to tell the old chief that he should becoming a partner of John Jacob Astor and head of the American Fur Company's Western Department be much pleased to see it, and perhaps he with headquarters in St. Louis. Hester, born in could give them some pointers in military mat­ 1817, was presumably the child of an unidentified Indian woman. Unlike most of his contemporaries, ters that they would like to know. I inter­ Crooks seems to have openly acknowledged the rela­ preted the request to the chief, who said he tionship, sent Hester to Father Ferry's Mackinaw was not then prepared for such an entertain­ mission school (she was not educated in the East as Armstrong says), and wrote her affectionate, ment, but would have one as soon as the nec­ fatherly letters. Her career as a mission teacher essary arrangements could be made. I knew and her marriage to Boutwell seem to have been a what that meant, for they never have one of source of satisfaction and pride to him. In 1825 Crooks married Marianne Pelagic Pratte, a member these dances until they have a surplus of of the powerful Chouteau family of St. Louis, a meats ahead to last from two to six days, so move which enhanced his standing in the fur trade. they can be spared from the chase, and these See Edward D. Neill, "Memoir of William T. Bout­ well, the First Christian Minister Resident Among councils always last while the stock of meat the Indians of Minnesota," in Macalester College holds out. Contributions, Second Series (St. Paul, 1892), 1-59; Hamilton Nelson Ross, La Pointe, Village Outpost It was only a few days after that I heard (North Central Publishing Company, St. Paul, 1960), 76-77, 83; Folwell, History of Minnesota, I: 175; that the hunters had been very successful, State Historical Society of Wisconsin Collections having killed a couple of bear and several (Madison, 1892), XII: 445n; Dictionary of Ameri­ deer, and knew the council would soon be can Biography. called. The colonel was in high glee. The

191 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 next morning, and but a little after sunrise, I three times, then repeat and once again, which saw two Indians hurrying up the river in a ca­ agrees with the white man's three cheers. The noe, and guessed they were messengers to emergency one is given in the same way but invite us to the feast. I told the colonel of only one yell and signifies that there is no their coming and he was soon inside his uni­ time to lose, but hasten quickly, and cor­ form, and with the eagles upon his shoulders, responds with the long roll in white military he looked the veteran that he really was. service. Along came the braves, and taking positions Dinner was now cooked and ready, the on either side of the doorway, said the chief chief's daughter being the leader in that de­ had sent them to invite us to a drill and partment. She brought and spread upon the feast, and pointing to the sky where the sun ground in the long wigwam which had been would be at about ten o'clock, said that was prepared for the occasion, new rugs and the time for us to be there. One of them told mats made of rushes woven together with me that the chief's daughter had told them to bark. She placed the nicest one where she bring some salt and pepper for the meats of intended her white visitors to be seated. She visitors, which I gave them with a plug of appeared more neat than ever; with a nice tobacco to be smoked at the dance, and they fitting dress and sailor collar of white with hurried away. The colonel was delighted, beads in braids in great profusion about her and said he could tell by the warlike looks of neck and of many colors, her collar lapping the chief and the beauty of the daughter at the throat in an artistic manner and fas­ that we would have a good time. tened with the claw of an eagle; her fine When we arrived at the Indian camp we black hair braided and coiled at the back of were met at the shore by about twenty braves her head in finest style, her beau-catcher locks in war paint, clubs and knives in hand and at the temple in shape, she was a perfect pic­ scalp-locks up, all ready to commence their ture of health and beauty combined, and she drills and exercises. The war-whoop was giv­ was chief waiter at the table on the ground. en and a circle formed with the chief and She first brought to each a piece of roasted drummer-boy inside, the chief acting the part meat that had been done at the fire on a of drum major and drill master. The dancing stick. It was served on a plate made in tray began; 'round and 'round went the circle, shape of birch bark. This comprised the first the chief going through the manual of arms course. The colonel having but one arm, I and being imitated by all the braves in the had provided myself with a sharpened stick circle. This opened the colonel's eyes as he to use as a fork in cutting his meat with my saw the braves were no novices in handling pocket knife, which I did after excusing my­ the club and knife. The changing of club to self to the chief and his daughter for this knife hand and vice versa were gone through lack of ettiquette at an Indian dinner, where with for quite a time and was most beautiful­ knives and forks, cups and saucers are con­ ly done, when one luckless brave made a mis­ sidered unnecessary. take. At a signal from the chief the drum was The colonel spoke in the highest terms of sounded and everything was stopped, when his cut of meat and the good taste in which the unlucky man was taken aside by the chief it had been served and inquired of me what and drilled in an awkward squad of one un­ kind of game it was, but 1 could not tell him til he became perfect, when the dance went as I only knew of their killing bear and deer. on by giving the emergency war-whoop. This course being over the daughter proceeded It was continued some time longer when the take orders for the next, inquiring of speeches by the braves were in order, telling each their preference for boiled or roasted of their experiences since the last council, meat. The colonel ordered both kinds, re­ with varying effects. The feast came next in marking that bear meat was a choice meat to order, but first I will tell you how a war- him, but venison rather beat them all. Dur­ whoop is given. There are two kinds, the gen­ ing this course the colonel said that it was eral and the emergency whoop. The first is nice, but could not compare it favorably with given by a yell loud and long enough to allow the first dish, and said that he must have the the maker to slap his hand over his mouth hide of that animal to take home with him

192 ARMSTRONG: LIFE AMONG THE CHIPPEWA to show to his people and tell them that it was from that animal that he had feasted at an Indian dinner, upon the choicest morsel he had ever eaten, not excepting that pre­ pared by the French cooks of New Orleans. Taking from his pocket a five dollar gold coin [he] wished me to tell the daughter it was for that particular skin. The old chief smiled at the sight of the "shiner," and more so as it was aimed at the hand of his idolized daugh­ ter, though he knew not for what it was being given, for I had not yet told him. The daugh­ ter was not at first inclined to take the gold, fearing it might be a breach of good behavior, but I assured her it was all right, and the coin was dropped into the hand of the dusky maiden, who, by the way, the colonel had named "Queen of Pocagemah." The meal having been finished and the braves were pre­ paring to continue their dance and festivities, Colonel Sims discovers with dismay the identity of the colonel requested that I call the maiden his recent feast. and go with them to see the skin of the animal that he might give orders to have it properly tanned and ready for him when he should week or so sent for the hide, which had been start for home. I called the girl and we pro­ neatly tanned, and took it home with him, ceeded to the place where the hides were kept. as he said, a reminder of the war dance and The Queen of Pocagemah pointed it out, and his display of foolish anger.^" He returned there, stretched between two poles, hung the to New Orleans after a few weeks and I hide of a very large black dog. heard from him several times in relation to At the sight of it the colonel's anger got the trespassing matters, and in all his communica­ best of him, notwithstanding the presence of tions would mention the medicine dance, and his charmer, and he arraigned me before the was particular to enquire after the health of bar of his judgment in terms much more forci­ his "Queen of Pocagemah." About this time ble than complimentary, and had he been Mrs. Boutwell left Pocagemah and joined a provided with a gun he would no doubt have mission up the Mississippi, but the chief's slain me, so great was his anger. But with daughter continued her pursuit of a white only one arm he was convinced that he would husband, in which she was successful before be obliged to wait till another time to get the summer had passed. even with me. The Indians became alarmed, In August, 1847, a man by the name of thinking the man was crazy, as they knew not John Drake came to Pocagemah. He was a a word he was saying, and it was some time fine looking man and although his business before I could get in a word of explanation. was a whiskey peddler, he won the smiles of I quieted the Indians' fears by telling them it Colonel Sim's queen and married her. He was a way he had, but that it was nothing started a whiskey shop near Knife Lake where against their treatment of him. he traded in steel traps and trinkets with the But nothing would do the colonel but to Indians. A man named Henry Rusk, who take to our canoe and go home. On the way he became cooler and finally declared he had made an unnecessary show of himself, with­ ^ Colonel Sims was not alone in his revulsion to­ ward the eating of dog meat. Mrs. Sherman Hall, out cause, and after my explanation that I wife of the missionary at La Pointe, writing to her knew nothing of what kind of meat we were sister, expressed her horror that at the feasts the eating, and that it was no joke played by Indians customarily held to honor one of their dead, boiled dog was a favorite dish. Ross, La me, he became perfectly cool, and after a Pointe, 106-107.

193 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 could talk some Chippewa, went into partner­ the woods just then, where he had been hunt­ ship with him so they would be able to trade. ing, saw what Drake had done, hunted him Quarrels and fights became frequent at their up and shot him. A sort of an investigation place and one or two shooting affairs. was had over the affair which resulted in When Chief Bi-a-jek heard how matters sending to the authorities at St. Croix Falls were going on at Drake's place, he took his a report of justifiable homicide, but nothing wife and went there to make them a visit. As more was done about it. is the Indian custom in such cases they took along their wigwam and pitched it a short NE FALL WHEN I was trading at Nima- distance from Drake's house. They then went o kagon^' a messenger came to me from St. and called on the daughter and invited her to Croix Falls and said I was wanted to interpret call upon them at their lodge. At this he and ferret out a murder that had taken place [Drake] objected and said she should never on the trail between St. Croix Falls and Bal­ put her foot in their wigwam. He also said, sam Lake. When I arrived there I was told that through Rusk, that if the chief was not away Sailor Jack and his partner, two traders, had from there before morning he would shoot been murdered but whether by white men or him, for he did not propose to have any inter­ Indians was the question to be solved. Blood ference in his family affairs. The girl was of­ had been found in their yard and upon their fended at this remark and watching an op­ door step and the bodies subsequently found portunity, she stole away and went to the in a lake not far from their cabin. These two lodge of her parents. Drake soon discovered men were known by the names here given her absence and found out where she had and no other and had established themselves gone and became so angry that he took his as traders. rifle and fired a shot through the wigwam. It The man who was acting as justice of the was now dark and Rusk prevailed upon peace at St. Croix Falls at this time, whose Drake to desist as he had threatened to kill name I cannot recall, desired me to look up the whole family. Rusk now had the gun and told Drake if he would be quiet and stay in the Indian side of the question as I could talk the house he would go to the wigwam and their language. I told him I would try it as fix up matters with the chief. far as the Indians might be concerned in the matter, but if it should appear that white men When the shot was fired by Drake the three had done the deed it belonged to the white of­ occupants of the lodge had skulked away to ficers to look it up. The justice directed me the brush and the chief had taken a position to a trader who had some dealings with these behind a tree with his rifle to defend himself two men and I found there that he had sold to from any further attack, and as Rusk came Sailor Jack a pair of pants with his own name out of the door gun in hand, so that Drake on the waist band; that these men used a could not use it during his absence, the chief gun quite different from any other then known espied him by the light in the house and be­ in that vicinity. lieving it to be Drake he fired at him, in­ I began my search in the Indian camp flicting a mortal wound. As Drake now saw near by and worked back without any suc­ trouble ahead he quietly slipped away from cess until I had reached Balsam Lake. Here the house, leaving everything behind him and was located about twenty wigwams around the reached my place just at daylight. He told trading house of Fred Miller. I pretended to me what had happened and wanted me to go be buying furs and skins and thus got easy ac­ and see to Rusk. I did so, taking with me cess to the lodges. My first discovery was three men. We found him just breathing his the breech of a gun sticking out from under last. Drake took to the woods and I heard some bedding, which, upon examination, from him a month or so afterwards at Wood proved to be the one I was looking for, and Lake where he had a quarrel over some steel traps. He afterward went to a wigwam of the party with whom he had the quarrel, and not finding them drove the family from it ^ The Namakagon River, which originates in Wash­ and set it on fire. The Indian comine from burn County and flows through Burnett County to join the St. Croix.

194 ARMSTRONG: LIFE AMONG THE CHIPPEWA

I had the good luck to find the pants, with the trader's name still on the waist band, in the same lodge. This was evidence enough and I went to the chief and inquired if he knew who had killed Sailor Jack and his partner. He hesitated but finally said the man who did it did not properly belong to his band. If he did he would give him up; that he had come to him from the Hudson Bay country. I told him I was there in the interest of the Indians and as their custom had always been to give up murderers I thought it was best for his people to give this man up also. All this he acknowl­ edged, knowing who the man was, and said I had better get help before trying to take him as he was a desperate man. His name was Belcore. He said the Indians should not interfere in either way, although this man's squaw was one of their people. I went back to St. Croix Falls and got as­ sistance. Geo. Aikens and Walter Carrier went Armstrong, Life Among the Indians back to Balsam Lake, and that night we walked into Belcore's lodge and found our man rolled The hanging of Belcore. up in his blanket. I pounced upon him, tell­ ing the two other men to look out for the squaw, as she was likely to use her club or further objection. When the culprit found knife upon us. She fought hard for her man that he must hang he made a full confession but we succeeded in tying him with cords and and said he had shot the men, one in the yard stayed in camp until daylight. We charged and the other on the doorstep, and said that him with the murder and told him what we Fred Miller had offered him ten gallons of were going to do with him, and asked him whiskey to do the job. Fred Miller was then what he had to say. He denied it all. I then brought before the mob and sentenced to re­ asked him where he got the gun and pants and ceive thirty-nine lashes on the bare back. he said he had bought them. He frequently Twelve black birch sprouts were brought for told his wife to get the Indians to come and the whipping and Pat Collins was appointed liberate him but no Indians came. We would to do the business and was told by the party not allow the squaw to leave the lodge during that any blow to which he failed to give full the night, not for fear she would get help, force would be given to himself by the mob, but for fear she might arm herself and make and you can judge what a whipping the man an attempt to liberate the man. We started got. with the prisoner at daylight for the falls, fol­ After the whipping he was cut loose and lowed by the Indians. At times he would re­ given twelve hours in which to put as much fuse to walk and we would drag him until territory as he could between himself and St. he was glad to walk. Croix Falls, and he made good use of time, By the time we reached the spot where the you can rest assured. The Indian was given execution was to take place, full three hun­ five minutes to speak after witnessing the dred Indians were on hand, but all remained whipping from the barrel on which he had peaceable until the rope was put around his been placed. He gave his people some good neck, then they objected to his being hung; advice, after which the barrel was kicked from they wanted him shot as he had shot the men. under him and he was soon strangled to But the headstrong leader of our party, a death. The Indians quietly dispersed and man named Anson Northrop, declared that never made any complaint except as to the Belcore should hang and the Indians made no mode of execution.

195 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

While I lived near Pocagemah Lake, Pat ant at the time of what had taken place and Collins, whose name appears as the whipper did not know what they had come for imtil at the execution of Belcore, established a they asked for the boy. I then faced about whiskey shop in a lumber camp once occu­ 100 drunken Indians, yelling and whooping pied by Elam Greeley. It was situated about with all the vigor of their nature. I put on two miles above Pocagemah Lake, on Snake a bold front and demanded to know what the River. At this particular time he had on hand row was about. "I never sold any whiskey to three full barrels of whiskey besides the one any of you, nor will I harbor anyone who he had on tap, which had been made from will, and I know nothing of the boy." Never­ alcohol. This supply he expected to sell dur­ theless they asked, yes, demanded, the right ing the coming winter. About the first of to search, when I selected two whom I told November Collins left the shanty in charge might look around as much as they liked. of his Indian wife and a boy about fifteen They did so and reported to the mob that the years old, named Ira Slayton. He had only boy could not be found. They then searched been gone from the place a few hours when the barn where I kept horses for lumbermen three Indians appeared and demanded whiskey and concluded they were on the wrong track, of the boy, which he refused to give them. and gradually went back to the whiskey shop, They went away saying they would get their where they remained until all the runners they guns and kill him if he did not comply. As had sent out for the boy had returned. That soon as they were gone the boy closed the night they had a number of ugly fights among door and pulled in the latch string. The In­ themselves and animosities engendered there dians returned shortly and began firing resulted in many fights and killings years af­ through the door, one bullet clipping a lock terward. of hair from the head of Mrs. Collins. The When they received the news that the boy woman and the boy now got close to the log had escaped by way of St. Croix Falls they walls to escape the balls, the boy getting close gave up the hunt for him, but always claimed to the side of the door, and, provided with the whites ought to surrender the boy to them. the gun belonging to Collins, stood ready, This was the first and only time while should the door come open, to sell himself among the Indians that I was frightened and as dearly as possible. Soon a bullet struck had they been sober I should have had no fear the latch and knocked it off and as the door on this occasion. The Indian that the boy kill­ came open the boy fired, sending the top of ed was a nephew of Chief Bi-a-jek, and after one Indian's head to the happy hunting the excitement had cooled down somewhat the grounds. The other two ran for assistance and old chief came to me in person and asked if the boy skipped and got safely to St. Croix I would make a rude coffin and go with him Falls. to bury the boy, which I did. The funeral The Indians went back to the shanty in was held between Pocagemah and Cross Lake. large numbers. Surrounding it they broke in Gun, pipe, and all trinkets were buried with the heads of the barrels and soon were beastly him, not because he would want them in the drunk. They came to my place about mid­ happy hunting grounds but because they were night and demanded the boy, supposing he his own and no one had a right to use them would come to me for protection. I was ignor­ after him.

[This is the first installment of a four-part series.)

196 GENTLEMEN FARMERS IN THE GILDED AGE

By GERALD PRESCOTT

O RURAL HISTORIANS Wisconsin's cousin's gentlemen farmers in the post-Civil T agrarian movement in the 1870's is a War decades. As historians discovered long familiar tale. Angry Grangers, frightened by ago (but generally have de-emphasized) the farm depression, by "hostile" business com­ national farm community in the Gilded Age bines, and by the flight of farm youth to included men of means alongside the ubiquit­ cities, waged a furious battle to save family, ous yeoman farmer, and the Wisconsin farm farm, and face. Twenty-thousand strong by population was no exception. By the seven­ 1875, the rural militants made a considerable ties a fair number of husbandmen in the Bad­ impact. As partners in a broad political co­ ger State held sizable investments in land, alition they achieved (for better or for worse) farm equipment, and corporate stocks. Better controls on railroads; they tried various equipped temperamentally and financially to business schemes, most of which eventually confront change, they interpreted the trends failed; and Grange social activities cheered of their age differently than did militant many an isolated farm household. This grass­ agrarians, and they pursued projects quite roots movement for rural reform peaked in unlike "agrarian" reform schemes. Although the mid-seventies, sputtered for several years, source materials for these agricultural gentry and then declined rapidly—not to be revived are slim, some useful data have survived. during the Populist paroxysms in the 1890's. Many prominent Wisconsin farmers belonged But while it lasted Wisconsin's agrarian cru­ to the State Agricultural Society, the oldest sade operated full tilt.' and most prestigious farm group in the state. Less familiar are the experiences of Wis- The records of this Society and its members shed considerable light on the behavior of gen­ tlemen farmers in the Gilded Age—an impor­ ^ For a more detailed discussion of Wisconsin's tant but neglected theme in agricultural his­ Granger movement, see Ralph E. Russell, "The tory.^ Grange In Wisconsin" (masters' thesis. University of Wisconsin, 1929) ; Solon J. Buck, The Granger Move­ The roots of the State Agricultural Society ment (Cambridge, 1913), passim; and Robert Mc- go back to 1851 when prominent husbandmen. Cluggage, "Joseph Osborn, Grange Leader," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 35: 178-184 (Spring, 1952). Useful but conflicting data on Grange polit­ ical activity may be found in Graham A. Cosmas, " Members of the State Dairymen's Association "The Democracy in Search of Issues: The Wiscon­ constitute a second group of "nonagrarian" farm sin Reform Party, 1873-1877," in the Wisconsin leaders in Gilded Age Wisconsin. Dairy leaders and Magazine of History, 46: 93-108 (Winter, 1962- gentlemen farmers, however, differed significantly in 1963) ; Robert T. Daland, "Enactment of the Potter terms of socioeconomic traits and reform schemes. Law," in ibid., 33: 45-54 (September, 1949) ; Her­ Only one Wisconsin farm leader held office in the man J. Deutsch, "Disintegrating Forces in Wisconsin State Agricultural Society and State Dairymen's Politics in the Early Seventies," in ibid., 15: 168- Association between 1873 and 1900. For a discus­ 181 (December, 1931), 282-296 (March, 1932); and sion of dairy leadership in this period, see Eric George H. Miller, Railroads and the Granger Laws Lampard, The Rise of the Dairy Industry in Wiscon­ (Madison, 1971). sin (Madison, 1963).

197 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 alarmed by repeated crop failures and low attended or graduated from college, a strik­ wheat prices, organized to improve Wisconsin ingly high percentage for the times. Society agriculture. Members drummed the virtues leaders, moreover, usually joined the higher- of diversified farming, crop rotation, and status religious sects and were more apt to be modern husbandry techniques. Annual proj­ elected to the state legislature than were per­ ects included a state fair, the publication of sons from other Wisconsin farm organiza­ a yearly report, and by 1873 a midwinter con­ tions.^ And numerous gentlemen farmers vention where members traded ideas on crops made their living elsewhere than on the farm and cattle, analyzed new farming methods, and (over half of the Society members, 46 per heard papers on various husbandry topics.^ cent of the officers). Most persons in this On the eve of the Gilded Age, Society mem­ category lived in large towns or cities and bers had achieved several notable results. Two held urban-oriented, high-status jobs.^ Bank­ decades of experimentation had uncovered ers, manufacturers, academicians, merchants, the best way to grow various kinds of crops brewers, and prominent politicos appeared on Wisconsin soils—although most farmers regularly on membership rosters in the 1870's were still raising wheat. Most important. Soci­ and 1880's. During the eighties, for exam­ ety members had conditioned many persons ple, the Society included J. I. Case, the wealthy to equate quality production with farm suc­ farm implement manufacturer; Professor T. cess; "scientific" agriculturists were both nu­ C. Chamberlain, president of the Wisconsin merous and vocal in post-Civil War Wiscon­ Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters; sev­ sin. And Society members by 1870 had eral members of the Pabst brewery dynasty; emerged as the leaders of the Wisconsin farm Isaac Stevenson, a wealthy lumberman; John community, the men to whom rural success- L. Mitchell, a prominent Milwaukee banker; seekers looked for inspiration, aid, and advice. and numerous state legislators. Practically all Gentlemen farmers of the State Agricultural "nonfarmer" members of the Society were in­ Society, to be sure, were a very special breed. volved in at least one agricultural venture. Manuscript census data for 1870 and 1880, Most operated a stock farm on the side, bought and county tax roll data for the post-1885 pe­ and bred horses for a hobby, or had extensive riod reveal that Society members reigned su­ investments in agricultural enterprises. And preme among Wisconsin farmers vis-a-vis urban gentlemen farmers had the leisure time farm size, farm production value, and proper­ and money to try new husbandry techniques; ty values (real and personal). For example, they were among the most innovative of the the "typical" Society officer in 1880 owned Society's "scientific" farmers.'^ a 244-acre farm (state average, 114 acres) val­ ued at $15,000 and produced $4,000 worth of goods—a substantial operation by any stand­ ard. Many owned farms of far greater size * Socioeconomic data were collected for all Soci­ and value. Society members, in short, con­ ety officers (69) in the 1873-1900 period; similar stituted the economic elite of the farm pop­ data were collected for 10 per cent of the rank-and- ulation.* file Society membership in 1874 and 1880 (total 137 persons). Members of the Society ranked slightly Wisconsin's gentlemen farmers in the Gild­ lower than officers in each economic index men­ ed Age were different from the average farm­ tioned above. er in other ways as well. Over half of the ^ Social data for officers were drawn from legis­ lative blue books, county histories, and newspapers. Society's officers in the 1873-1900 period had For a discussion of religious sects vis-a-vis socio­ economic status, see Seymour M. Lipset, "Religion and Politics in the American Past and Present," in Robert Lee and Martin E. Marty (eds.), Religion " Transactions of the Wisconsin State Agricultural and Social Conflict (New York, 1964), 73, 76, 78, 99. Society, 1851, pp. 1-3 (hereafter cited as WSAS " Of the 693 members in the State Agricultural So­ Transactions) ; Laws of Wisconsin, 1852, Chapter ciety in 1880, 174 lived in Milwaukee, 128 in Madi­ 402, pp. 607-608. The Wisconsin State Agricultural son, and 73 in Janesville—54 per cent of the total. Society existed from 1851 to 1896, at which time ' For a more detailed discussion of socioeconomic it was replaced by a State Board of Agriculture. traits of various types of Wisconsin farm leaders in Chartered by the state legislature, the State Soci­ the 1870's and I880's, see the author's "Wisconsin ety received a small annual appropriation to con­ Farm Leaders in the Gilded Age," in Agricultural duct experiments and fairs. History, 44: 183-199 (April, 1970).

198 PRESCOTT: GENTLEMEN FARMERS

TVTHEN AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION ' ' ripped through the state in the seventies, Society members' pre-eminence in the farm community came to an end.^ Financial hard­ ship provoked tensions between large- and small-scale producers, and, as the depression deepened, criticism of the State Agricultural Society increased. Gentlemen farmers, it was charged, were not really interested in helping the average hubandman, and their obsession with scientific farming, critics complained, encouraged a caste system which divided ra­ ther than united the farm population.^ A more serious threat to the agricultural elite was the meteoric rise of the Grange organiza­ tion and the strong surge of political militan­ cy among hard-pressed wheat farmers. Throughout the Mississippi Valley during the seventies irate agrarians rejected the message of genteel agricultural societies and flocked to the more politically oriented Granges.'" Gentlemen farmers for the first time encoun­ tered serious competition to their doctrine of Society's Iconographic Collections agricultural excellence as the panacea to farm William W. Field, secretary of the State Agricultural ills. Society.

Disturbed by the turn of events, Wiscon­ of views on currency and political themes.'^ sin's farm elite split momentarily over coun­ Whether Society "militants" were sincere con­ ter strategy." A small but vocal minority verts to "agrarian activism," or were merely urged Society members to support the Grange- trying to recapture lost constituencies is un­ agrarians—to encourage anti-monopoly candi­ clear. For a brief time in the mid-1870's they dates, farmer co-operatives, and inflationist did manage to portray the State Agricultural monetary schemes. Led by Society secretary Society as a group sympathetic to "agrarian" William W. Field, they introduced economic problems. and political issues into the 1875 and 1876 Most gentlemen farmers, however, rejected conventions and encouraged prominent Grang­ a political role for the Society and for huband- ers to attend their sessions. The 1876 conven­ men generally. For years they had proclaimed tion in particular included a lively exchange scientific farming the shortest route to pros­ perity, and now, confronted with adversity, they defended the faith. The current hard times, they argued, stemmed from overproduc­ '' Wisconsin's agricultural depression in the 1870's tion of corn and wheat, faulty farm manage­ is described in John G. Thompson, The Rise and ment, and neglect of elementary farming prin­ Decline of the Wheat Growing Industry in Wiscon­ sin (Madison, 1909) ; and Joseph Schafer, A History ciples.'^ Wisconsin farmers were advised to of Agriculture in Wisconsin (Madison, 1922), 81- alternate their crops, to update their planting 96. methods, and to work for a quality product. ' Wisconsin Grange Bulletin, May, 1875; WSAS Transactions, 1875-1876, p. 428. "The straight road to relief lies . . . not [in] ^° For statistics on the growth of the Grange in blindly sewing wheat after wheat, until the Wisconsin, see Proceedings of the State Grange of Wisconsin, 1875, p. 17; Chicago Tribune, April 25, earth is tired of us," declared one of the faith- 1874. ^ In this article the terms gentlemen farmers, ag­ ricultural gentry, scientific agriculturists, agricul­ "WSAS Transactions, 1875-1876, pp. 28-29, 148, tural elite, farm elite, and farm brahmins are used 235-239. interchangeably to denote members of the State "^Ibid., 1878-1879, p. 290; ibid., 1874^-1875, pp. Agricultural Society. 336-338.

199 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

ful, "but [in] diversifying our crops, and work habits at home. Such persons, it was above all things . . . [to] be sure our land charged, knew well the advantages of new is in a fit condition to produce the crop which farming methods, proper care of machinery, we ask it to yield."'* Similar sentiments were and cost-accounting procedures, but were too uttered often at Society conventions in the lazy to adopt such practices. Lamented one late seventies. Farm gentry, in short, were un­ farm brahmin, "[Too] many farmers, like impressed by "agrarian" political nostrums. driftwood cast high upon the bank, lie rest­ As one participant at the 1876 convention re­ ing. Nothing but a deluge can get them marked facetiously, "I have said of politics for afloat. . . . The infection of indolence is uni­ the last forty years, the less a person knows versal."'^ Wisconsin farm elite, like many about it, the sweeter he sleeps."'^ successful men in the Gilded Age, vigorously The farm elite not only clung to progres­ espoused "self-help" and "survival of the fit­ sive farming as the best antidote to depression test" beliefs, and counseled a rigorous regi­ in the seventies, they took issue with those men of severe, exacting labor, study, and ex­ who did not. When small wheat producers perimentation. Those who ignored this spar­ blamed "outsiders" for farm woes, and de­ tan routine, they maintained, had no more fined reform in terms of regulatory laws, cur­ reason to expect success "than the quack in rency conversions, and co-operative crusades. medicine." Perfectionist-minded agriculturists Society leaders disagreed. Farmers, they in­ accordingly went out of their way to criticize sisted, must look closer to home for causes "shirks" and "sluggards." When wandering and cures. "The fault. Dear Brutus, is not in "tramps"—living testimony to economic mal­ our stars, but in ourselves . . . ," cautioned adjustment—appeared in rural Wisconsin dur­ one conventioneer.'^ The best antidote to ing the late seventies, gentlemen farmers char­ farm distress affirmed another, voicing an acteristically took a hard line. "The bulk of opinion common among agriculturists, "is to them are just what they seem to be—thieving augment the man, and not the circumstances vagabonds," charged one Dane County brah­ that surround him.""^ Gentlemen farmers min. When asked what should be done with were particularly distressed by the "violent them he replied, "[T]hey must go to work and bitter attacks" on bankers, railroad mag­ like the rest of us. . . . Sternness is human- nates, and businessmen during hard times in ity."20 the seventies. Capitalists, they declared, were no more likely to be socially objectionable OOCIETY LEADERS aimed some of their than other persons; on the contrary, wealthy ^ sharpest barbs at the Wisconsin Grange. financiers and industrialists contributed much They heatedly denounced the new "rival" at to the material well-being of all. "We need Society gatherings in the 1870's, and censured . . . more rich men, and more well-to-do men, those who spoke in its favor. Granger bomb­ not fewer . . . ," announced University presi­ ast, they declared, arrayed class against class dent John Bascom to an appreciative Society and escalated social conflicts. The farm elite audience in 1877.'^ deplored such tactics. "If the time should ever Scientific agriculturists were especially crit­ come that the grange power could unite . . . ical of husbandmen who, while they criticized farming people ... I say woe to that day," others, practiced "careless" and "slovenly" warned a Sauk County agriculturist. "Think of the numbers and the wealth that would be

^Ibid., 1876-1877, p. 240. ^nbid., 1875-1876, p. 185. Declared another con­ ventioneer, "Let politics go to the dogs; let the cur­ " WSAS Transactions, 1883-1884, p. 230. rency go to the dogs. As far as that is concerned, it ""Ibid., 1878-1879, pp. 416^17. Spoke gentleman will regulate itself." WSAS Transactions, 1875-1876, farmer-politician Elisha W. Keyes to the Green Coun­ p. 166. ty agricultural society, "Labor, severe, exacting la­ ^"Ibid., 1876-1877, p. 110. bor, either voluntary or forced, is the remedy for "/6irf., 1872-1873, p. 83. this intolerable nuisance. Let the tramp know that ^"Ibid., 1876-1877, p. 117. For the same view in he must obey the first great command, and earn a later depression, see the Wisconsin Farmer, Sep­ his bread by the sweat of his brow. . . ." WSAS tember 8, 1893. Transactions, 1878-1879, p. 417.

200 PRESCOTT: GENTLEMEN FARMERS at their disposal. It would be . . . terrible rades stemmed in part from genuine disagree­ despotism."^' Grangers were criticized, more­ ment with Grange tactics. But their sarcastic over, for wasting valuable time on political broadsides betrayed keen resentment, too, and business escapades. During depression over Grange popularity in rural Wisconsin. times, farm brahmins cautioned, husbandmen Gentlemen farmers expressed "antiagrari- needed to tend their farms with special care. an" views on other Gilded Age issues as well. Energies squandered in Grange intrigues de­ While most yeoman farmers greeted the tracted from this crucial task. And gentlemen emerging urban-business culture with testi­ farmers condemned the mystery surrounding monials to the superiority of agriculture as a Grange meetings. There were already, they as­ profession and husbandmen as individuals, serted, too many secret organizations that pur­ not so with the farm gentry. Agriculture, they sued special interests, spreading suspicion and argued, although an important and honorable fear. "It is an eternal principle," grumbled occupation, had no monopoly on virtuousness; one critic of the Grange, "that all combined numerous professions made constructive con­ action for evil requires secrecy, and no com­ tributions to society and produced men of bination for good does require it." The same merit and integrity. The farm elite were person described his own initiation into the especially critical of blanket tributes to yeo­ Grange: "We had to commence by paying man farmers. They rejected the premise that fifteen dollars . . . and after that came a box residence on a farm automatically endowed of something which was represented as grange one with divine qualities. "When the farmer secrets, which we . . . all pledge[d] our sacred becomes a leader in society because of his honor to keep, and, by the way, they were not intelligence . . . then, and only then, we may secrets, they were artificial toys. They were boast ourselves," spoke Alex Arnold, president to be kept like a little girl's doll baby."^^ of the State Agricultural Society in the mid- The farm elite found additional reasons to 1880's. "[U]ntil then," he warned, "let us fault the Grange. Burdensome rituals and reg­ not humbug ourselves, or be humbugged by ulations, they argued, prevented free debate others, into the belief that we are the salt of and "mental growth" at Grange meetings— the earth."^^ On the other hand. Society lead­ hallmarks, of course, of Society deliberations. ers did praise farming as a noble calling and, And the Grange, critics alleged, leaned heavi­ like agrarians, they often eulogized husband­ ly on its members. Remarked one disgruntled men. They drew a sharp distinction however ex-Patron, "I never got into any organization between the scientific farmer and the care­ that could skin so much money out of me as less cultivator. Skilled craftsmen only, they the grange."^^ Conveniently forgotten were insisted, deserved the plaudits and respect of the annual legislative appropriations which society.^^ Obeisance to self-help principles helped to sustain the State Society. When counted more with the farm elite than did Grangers, irked by repeated criticisms, de­ a man's profession. fended their order at Society conventions, the Anti-city bombast, a sure barometer of farm elite responded with additional jibes. "agrarianism," was noticeably absent from "We are happy to know that in our county Society gatherings in the 1870's. Several fac­ the grange has fallen greatly into disrepute," tors explain this omission. Gentlemen farmers boasted a conventioneer in 1878. "If it had were financial and social winners and had succeeded . . . ," he prophesied, "I believe it would have been the most terrible trades union that has ever been started in this world."^* No doubt gentlemen farmers' ti- ^ Ibid., p. 97. Grangers, conversely, criticized the farm elite from time to time. See for example Wis­ consin Grange Bulletin, May, 1875; Proceedings of the State Grange of Wisconsin, 1884, p. 36; ibid., 1890, p. 18. ^WSAS Transactions, 1877-1878, p. 152. See also '^Ibid., 1883-1884, p. 396. See also Wisconsin Wisconsin Farmers' Institute Bulletin, No. 4, 1890, Grange Bulletin, September, 1878. p. 186. "^WSAS Transactions, 1877-1878, pp. 96-97. ^WSAS Transactions, 1872-1873, p. 161; ibid., ''Ibid., 1877-1878, p. 98. 1878-1879, p. 23.

201 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 little need to create scapegoats for frustrations and failures. They felt less fearful than did yeomen farmers of status changes spawned ^'- by urban growth. Society membership, more­ over, was centered in the heavily populated southeastern quarter of the state, bordered by Madison, Janesville, and Milwaukee. Mem­ bers, consequently, had frequent contact with cityfolk and urban ways. Well-to-do members mixed often with business and civic leaders at social affairs. As a result they perceived the city differently than did the isolated Granger who often believed the worst about urban evils. Then too, anti-city rhetoric promoted social discord—a prospect much feared by the farm elite. When occasional anti-city barbs did surface at Society conventions in the mid-1880's (as a result of changing member­ ship patterns, not ideological conversions), several Society leaders actually defended Ba­ Society's Iconographic Collections bylon. "If it is true that the country nourishes Alexander Ahab Arnold, Galesville livestock breeder, the city, it is as profoundly true that the city banker, and railroad promoter. nourishes the country," responded one in­ dividual to the charge that cities contributed their allegiance to a competitive economic sys­ nothing to agriculturists. "That high intelli­ tem—a system guided by natural laws, accord­ gence, that refined social life, that poetic and ing to one brahmin, "scarcely less immutable spiritual inspiration which give light to us all than those which govern the stars." "Laissez- . . . ," he observed, "come chiefly from the faire," "open market place," "supply and de­ city."^''' Other Society leaders from time to mand," "hard money," and other similar time expressed similar if not so majestically terms studded their public oratory and sum­ phrased sentiments. The agricultural elites' marized in capsule form their economic phi­ tolerant attitude toward the city stands out in losophy.^* Predictably, the farm elite had lit­ bold relief to the stereotyped "agrarian" posi­ tle time for the agrarians' inflationist fiscal tion on the subject. schemes. "Cheap money," they argued, would trigger financial storms that would in turn A LTHOUGH Wisconsin's agricultural elite hurt all husbandmen indiscriminately.^^ -^*- opposed political talk at Society gather­ Calls for government strictures on business ings, enough was said to indicate their politi­ fared little better in their view. Like true cal leanings. Gentlemen farmers generally free-market theorists. Society brahmins coun­ were economic conservatives. Prosperous tered the rhetoric of antimonopolism with odes farms and healthy bank accounts strengthened to the sanctity of unfettered economic war­ fare. "Let us not try to sustain ourselves as farmers by law ... to push somebody's elses hand out only that we may put our own hand ""Ibid., 1883-1884, p. 231. Although few farm in," proclaimed one rugged individualist. elite criticized city life, those who did remonstrated "[L]eave us with God and nature and give with oratorical flourishes. Declared one Green Coun­ ty baron in 1886, "Babylon was a rapacious and powerful master, and stood ready to seize what the shepherds round about the city possessed. ... So with Rome, so with Paris, so with London, so with '-'•Ibid., 1874^1875, pp. 141, 178, 343; ibid., 1878- New York, ... so with Chicago, also even this 1879, pp. 23, 25, 90, 413; ibid., 1879-1880, pp. 65-66. beautiful city of Madison, is like the horse-leech, 314; ibid., 1880-1881, p. 112; ibid., 1885-1886, p. 22; crying, 'Give, Give,' and judging of the nature of Wisconsin Farmers' Institute Bulletin, No. 4, 1890, such things . . . never will be satisfied." WSAS p. 186; Wisconsin Farmer, July 21, 1893. Transactions, 1885-1886, p. 131. ^WSAS Transactions, 1877-1878, p. 493.

202 PRESCOTT: GENTLEMEN FARMERS

US [only] a fair opportunity. . . ."^^ In re­ 1874, for example, most gentlemen farmers sponse to Grangers who predicted disaster boycotted the crusade for state controls, and without governmental restraints, the farm elite the State Agricultural Society as a body lent promised better times if "natural" laws held no official support to the regulationists, adopt­ sway. And anyway, they argued, financial ing instead a neutral posture.^* Railroad legis­ conditions were never as grim as agrarian lation in 1874 caused little change in their alarmists portrayed them to be. During the attitude; most Society members maintained seventies, they observed, prices on all prod­ a discreet silence, preferring to wait and see ucts—farm and nonfarm—fell in like pro­ what impact the new law might have. portion ; husbandmen, consequently, were hurt Convinced by 1876 that minimal restraints less than depressed farm prices might indi­ on railroads were inevitable, Society members cate.^' Indeed, spoke Society president Nicho­ passed a resolution opposing repeal of the las D. Fratt to a state fair audience in 1878, controversial "Potter Law."^^ This action farmers as a group had been "comparatively seemingly united the farm elite with the . . . little affected" during the recent hard "agrarians" on the antimonopoly issue, but times.^^ Most scientific agriculturists retained significant differences between the two groups their faith in economic individualism through­ remained. For example. Grangers were de­ out the late nineteenth century. Only slowly manding tougher state controls on railroads and grudgingly did they accept the need for and stricter enforcement of existing rules; government controls on giant corporations. Society leaders, conversely, sought legislative Illustrative of the farm elites' political changes beneficial to railroads. Grangers con­ tastes were their reactions to the rail­ sidered defense of the Potter Law a crusade road imbroglio in the Gilded Age. By the for the principle of public controls on semi- early seventies many small Wisconsin farmers, private corporations; Society spokesmen con­ once avid boosters of the "iron horse," were sidered restoration of "healthy competition" demanding reform of "corrupt" railway prac­ to be the main goal. And Grangers laced their tices. Excessive freight rates, unpredictable arguments with highly volatile "class" rhe­ passenger schedules, free passes to favored toric; Society leaders expressed their views politicians, and disproportionately small tax in more gentle terms.^^ Put another way. So­ payments led the list of improprieties charged ciety members would accept controls on rail­ to railway magnates. Widespread discontent roads when those controls were complemen­ with railroads, not restricted solely to hus­ tary to the competitive system, and "just" bandmen, prompted passage of the Potter Law to both railroad companies and the public. in 1874, but few persons pro or con on the They stressed repeatedly that railroads must matter were satisfied and the railroad issue be extended "fair-play." In no way were the continued to bubble well into the next deca- Wisconsin farm elite antirailroad zealots. Hos­ ade.33 tility towards railways and business corpora- The Wisconsin farm elite, often linked with the antirailroad contingent, were in actuality more sympathetic than not toward the rail­ ways. During the initial tempest in 1873- ^^ For details surrounding passage of the 1874 "Pot­ ter" Law and its later repeal, see Robert T. Daland, "Enactment of the Potter Law," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 33: 45-54 (September, 1949) ; Cosmas, "The Democracy in Search of Issues," in '"Ibid., 1874-1875, p. 180. See also ibid., p. 178. ibid., 46: 93-108; and Dale E. Treleven, "Railroads, ^ Ibid., 1878-1879, p. 266. Some recent historians Elevators, and Grain Dealers: The Genesis of Anti- have agreed with this position. See, for example, monopolism in Wisconsin," in ibid., 52: 205-222 Douglass C. North, Growth and Welfare In The (Spring, 1969). American Past: A New Economic History (Engle­ "* Although the issue was discussed at the Society's wood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966), 139; and Norman 1873 and 1874 winter conventions, no resolution in J. Simler, "The Safety-Valve Doctrine Re-evaluated," support of railroad regulation was passed in either in Agricultural History, 32: 250-257 (October, session. 1958). But "agrarian" leaders, of course, believed '=WSAS Transactions, 1875-1876, p. 363. the reverse and acted upon that belief. '^Ibid., 1875-1876, pp. 362-370; ibid., 1880-1881, ''"WSAS Transactions, 1878-1879, p. 24. p. 309.

203 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 tions per se were anathema to their way of thinking. Gentlemen farmers retained their "conser­ vative" views on the regulation issue into the .^^'~ eighties. While antirailroad partisans esca­ lated their demands to include sweeping 1 r 1 iiiiiiflT1ii1r ^ESS^^ freight-rate cuts, jail sentences for recalcitrant railroad barons, and, in many instances, gov­ ernment ownership of transportation facili­ ,^Hri- ties, Wisconsin's farm elite balked at such stringent measures. Many gentlemen farmers conceded the need for federal controls on in­ €^ terstate traffic but would amend only the free- pass system and "unfair" tax assessment prac­ tices.^^ The farm elite, in short, sought peri­ j^HH^^^^^Hv '^^rai^^^H pheral administrative reforms; they stood far to the right on the main issue of rate controls. ^^^^^^^^^^^i J^SKUt^^^^^^^A Indeed, in the midst of the proregulationist din, a few Society brahmins pointedly praised ^^^MRIHHHHH the railroad industry. Nicholas D. Fratt, Society's Iconographic Collections prominent Racine County agriculturist and N. D. Fratt, State Agricultural Society president. president of the State Society, told a state fair crowd in 1881: elite? Certainly economic factors explain We know that as the farmer chiefly sup­ much of the answer. Gentlemen farmers en­ ports the railroads, so the railroads are joyed a level of financial security unknown to absolutely essential to the success of the most agrarians, and many small businessmen farmer. . . . Each has made possible and for that matter; transportation charges, while necessary the growth of the other. . . . The farmer has had the chief advantage in this important, did not spell the difference for increased facility of transportation. In pro­ them between solvency and indebtedness. Wis­ portion to this increase of mileage has been consin's farm elite, moreover, had the advan­ the decrease of cost of transportation. The tage of proximity to major markets—most re­ farmer certainly has not been the loser. sided within 100 miles of Milwaukee and Chi­ The fact is that agriculture, the railroads, cago. Grangers frequently lived in more iso­ and all other great interests of the country, lated areas; freight rates consequently repre­ are essential parts of a great organic whole. sented a greater percentage of their production All dependent, and in the prosperity of each costs. And Society members to a much greater is involved the prosperity of all.^* extent than Grangers diversified their farming Another Society member hailed the railway operations during the 1870's and 1880's, there­ system as "the most marvelous invention of by diminishing their vulnerability to the va­ modern times. . . . The railroad, rightly used," garies of the wheat trade.''" More than a few he proclaimed, "is the friend of the farmer owned railroad stock or had a vested interest and the whole people."^^ in a particular line. Alex A. Arnold, the suc­ In an era noted for growing government pa­ cessful agriculturist from Galesville, for ex­ ternalism, why this continued restraint to­ ample, sat on the board of directors of the wards railway regulation by Wisconsin's farm Mineral Point Railroad Company concurrent with his term as Society president in the 1880's. At least one county agricultural soci-

"Ibid., 1880-1881, pp. 129-153, 375; ibid., 1883- 1884, p. 235; ibid., 1886-1887, p. 413, 416-417; ibid., 1888-1889, p. 331. "^Ibid., 1881-1882, pp. 49-50. *" Prescott, "Wisconsin Farm Leaders in the Gilded "^ Ibid., 386-387. Age," in Agricultural History, 44: 192-198.

204 PRESCOTT: GENTLEMEN FARMERS

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1 'EAST SIDi OFHON.AA.ARNOLD.GALtSVltLE TREMPEALEAU CO.WiS iPEOlCRrEO STOCK ASPECIAUl <• , i

Wisconsin Historical Atlas Farm animals strike improbable military poses in this romanticized picture of A. A. Arnold's country home, "East Side," near Galesville.

ety continued to donate land to railroads in while they taught them that railroad managers the eighties, demonstrating greater interest also had problems. In addition, to be an "an- in railway construction than in rate con­ timonopolist" in these circles was to be linked trols.*! with the Grange, and no self-respecting gentle­ Social factors, too, tempered scientific agri­ man farmer could tolerate that sort of associa­ culturists on the regulationist issue. Numer­ tion. ous civic duties, local and state, exposed them to the arguments of community leaders in A LTHOUGH FARM BRAHMINS avoided politics, the professions, and business—men -^*- political activism and boycotted "agrari­ who articulated persistently and persuasively an" schemes at every turn, they exerted more the myriad contributions of railroads to the than a purely negative influence in Gilded state's growth.*^ These contacts reinforced the Age Wisconsin. As devotees of scientific agriculturists' belief in economic freedoms farming they perpetuated the standards of ag­ ricultural excellence begun in the pre-Civil War era. And the numerous projects of the State Society, i.e., state fairs and conventions, *^ Wisconsin Farmer, November 17, 1893; Laws of laid the foundation for a more sophisticated Wisconsin, 1895, Chapter 113, p. 77. " For the busy schedule and numerous commit­ system of agricultural education in the twen­ ments of a prominent Agricultural Society leader, tieth century. Most significantly, the Wiscon­ see Arnold Diaries, 1856-1913, in the Alexander A. sin farm elite continued to perform a vital Arnold Papers, La Crossse Area Research Center, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. educational function amidst the late-nine-

205 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 teenth-century agrarian whirlwind. If Wis­ ing the county extension service, the Society's consin grangerism constitutes an important Transactions, along with farm journals and chapter in the history of American agrarian­ rural newspapers, formed a shelf of reference ism, Wisconsin's farm elite deserve equal no­ works for progressive-minded farmers in the tice for their attention to agricultural re­ Gilded Age. While, again, comparatively few search and instruction. They and Gilded Age husbandmen bothered to read the Transac­ agriculturists elsewhere form a link between tions or works of a similar nature, it is sig­ the scientific farmers of early Virginia and our nificant that a growing body of professional present-day agricultural schools and colleges. literature on Wisconsin agriculture did exist Central to the gentlemen farmers' education­ for those farmers who sought it. al role were the annual conventions of the The Wisconsin State Fair, the most popu­ State Agricultural Society. Each February, lar, and enduring, educational project of the leading Wisconsin agriculturists traveled to State Society, reached far more farmers and Madison (to Milwaukee some years) for a did more to popularize scientific farming than busy three days of lectures, discussions, and did the annual conventions. Each September informal banter. Society officers worked hard throughout the post-Civil War era thousands to make these midwinter retreats attractive by of eager fairgoers viewed exhibits, observed scheduling a diverse slate of lectures and by plowing contests, inspected new farm ma­ screening and editing papers prior to deliv­ chinery, and traded information about crops ery.'*^ The results were usually impressive. A and cattle.*^ For many, the autumnal state typical convention program included presen­ and county extravaganzas formed their only tations on such diverse topics as tobacco cul­ contact with improved, up-to-date farming ture, dairying, bee keeping, industrial educa­ methods—the agricultural fairs consequently tion, ensilage, ambercane, trotting stock, hor­ shouldered a heavy educational burden. Of­ ticulture, and cattle breeding.'''* While some ficials tried to insure quality exhibits at the papers were technical to the extreme, most Fair by offering cash premiums for the best contained a good deal of useful data, and the entries and by printing the winners' names in discussions following the formal presenta­ the annual Transactions. Fair promoters' suc­ tions were usually lively and informative. cess in this endeavor is reflected partially by Prominent farmers were anxious to describe the proliferation of displays and premiums their own successful farming techniques and during the late nineteenth century. Exhibit did not hesitate to comment about those of entries at the State Fair numbered 1,329 in others. The result was a valuable interchange 1852, premium payments $876; by 1886 the of ideas. Most conventioneers returned home numbers had jumped to 2,952 and $5,281 re­ satisfied with their new fund of "useful" data. spectively.'"' Society members not only staged While comparatively few Wisconsin farm­ the displays, they competed for the prizes, and ers attended the midwinter conventions. Soci­ as skilled agriculturists they often won. Pre­ ety leaders maximized the educational bene­ mium recipients included some of Wisconsin's fits of this event by reprinting all papers and most successful and well-to-do farmers. By discussions in the Society's annual Transac­ word and by example farm brahmins heralded tions. Published at state expense, these thick the productive possibilities of Wisconsin ag­ volumes were distributed gratis to the numer­ riculture. Fair exhibits, the agricultural gen- ous county agricultural societies and sold to interested parties across the nation.*^ Predat- '" Exhibit categories at the 1886 Fair included horses, cattle, swine, poultry, sheep, field products, "WSAS Transactions, 1885-1886, p. 208. The garden and vegetable produce, fruits and flowers, Society began holding an annual convention in 1873. manufactures, household products, and fine arts "/6iU, 1882-1883, pp. iii-iv. projects. WSAS Transactions, 1887, pp. 52-78; Cir­ ""Ibid., 1872-1873, p. 81; ibid., 1887, pp. 7-8, 12, cular Letter to Factorymen and Dairymen, August 169. See also the Report of the Brown County 27, 1887, in the Henry CuUen Adams Papers, Ar­ Horticultural and Agricultural Society, in the An­ chives-Manuscripts Division, State Historical Society nual Reports of Agricultural Societies, Secretary of of Wisconsin. State, series 2/3/4/13-6, box 3, Wisconsin State "'WSAS Transactions, 1851, pp. 28, 96; ibid., 1887, Archives, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. pp. 52-78.

206 PRESCOTT: GENTLEMEN FARMERS

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••«««*• ^^^^^^ ^ H^fefe^ssis^^^ ^^• Society's Iconographic Collections Bird's-eye view of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Fair in Milwaukee in 1859, from a lithograph by L. Lipman. try argued, served an additional purpose. Ex­ State Fair orations contained few practical plained the Society president in 1883: farming tips. Speakers flattered the audi­ ences by praising the achievements of hus­ In other avocations men compete with each bandmen, by forecasting a prosperous fu­ other, day by day, sharply and briskly; ture for farmers, and by extolling the virtues every one is trying to be the best man in his business. ... It is different in farming; of rural life. If gentlemen farmers did not the tendency there is to settle down quietly, exactly agree with these rites of self-glorifica­ and not try to excel one's neighbors, even tion, they said nothing to dampen the spirits by friendly rivalry. Now fairs are competi­ of the crowd. Political odes to the farmer tive, and those who bring the products of after all were a tradition at the Fair, being as their farms to these exhibitions, will as one individual put it, "a source of much gen­ a consequence become better produc- eral culture and inspiration."^" "48 ers. ... Persons who attended the State Fair were AIR DIRECTORS offered fairgoers other treated to more than mere farm exhibits. Pol­ F entertainments as well. Horse racing, al­ iticos in the midst of campaigns hawked ways a crowd pleaser, moved center stage at their wares to the huge Fair crowds, at times Gilded Age fairs. With thousands of dollars in excess of 40,000 people. The presence of in premiums at stake by the mid-1880's, the prominent public officials lent much excite­ "speed contests" generated keen competition ment to the autumn event. At one time or among horsemen and high excitement among another governors. United States Senators, the crowds. The farm elite, many of whom Congressmen, and Cabinet members renewed raised horses themselves, promoted the eques­ their farm credentials at the Wisconsin State trian events by staging a busy schedule of Fair, as did Presidents Abraham Lincoln, races, by publicizing individual contests, and Rutherford B. Hayes, and Ulysses S. Grant.'*^ by channeling Society funds into winners' purses. Fair directors, of course, saw educa­ tional value in these "horse trots." Speed contests, they argued, acquainted Fair audi- «Ibid., 1883-1884, p. 130. *" Einar O. Hammer, "One Hundred Years of Wis­ consin State Fairs," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, 34:13 (Autumn, 1950) ; WSAS Transac­ tions, 1858-1859, pp. 287-299; ibid., 1872-1873, p. 157; ibid., 1878-1879, pp. 28-36; ibid., 1880-1881, "' Earle D. Ross, "The Evolution of the Agricul­ pp. 95-96; ibid., 1881-1882, pp. 390-392; ibid., 1882- tural Fair in the Northwest," in the Iowa Journal 1883, p. 32; ibid., 1891-1892, p. 325. of History and Politics, 24:455 (1926).

207 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

Society's Iconogr.aphic Collections The annual cattle parade at the Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee, about 1900. ences with the best thoroughbreds in the re­ to Milwaukee in 1891, the protestations pre­ gion, and, more important, advertised the dictably were noisy and numerous. Critics best standard lines of horse flesh. Horse rac­ lamented the "unequal edge" extended to Mil­ ing, moreover, lured large crowds to the waukee farmers, as well as the growing urban State Fair exhibits. "There is not enough of orientation of the State Society. A "special exhiliration in a basket of raw potatoes . . . class of people," it was charged, would now to tempt many people to pay ... a half-a-dol- dominate the State Fair.^^ lar to see them," declared the editor of the Horse racing, gambling devices, and the sale Wisconsin Farmer in 1891. "They will pay of alcoholic beverages, while helpful to gate [however] to see a smart trial of speed, and receipts, proved in the long run to be a source stay to see the potatoes besides."^'^ The farm brahmins' strenuous promotional efforts failed to insulate the State Fair from serious problems in the eighties and nineties. Inclement weather reduced gate receipts peri­ ^^ Hammer, "One Hundred Years of Wisconsin State Fairs," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, odically in the 1880's and destroyed an exhibit 34:13; WSAS Transactions, 1887, pp. 176-183; ibid., hall in 1887, depleting already meager finan­ 1887-1888, p. iii. Fair directors were showered with cial reserves. Rifts appeared, moreover, requests to host the State Fair from various com­ munities in the 1870's as well. See, for example. among farm elite in the mid-1880's as they Minutes of Meetings of the Dane County Agricul­ squabbled over a site for the Fair. Agricul­ tural Society, February 5, 1878, p. 76, Archives- Manuscripts Division, State Historical Society of turists from northwestern Wisconsin preferred Wisconsin. a rotation system, a new location each year; "^ Western Farmer, September 18, 1886 and Octo­ Society leaders from central and eastern Wis­ ber 30, 1886; WSAS Transactions, 1891-1892, p. 325; Wisconsin Farmer, May 13, 1891. Although the consin favored acquisition of a permanent State Fair moved to Milwaukee in 1886, the move Fair site, preferably in their own county seat.^^ was not final until a permanent site was acquired When the State Fair was moved permanently by the State Society in 1891. Prior to 1886 the State Fair had no permanent home, although Milwaukee and Madison frequently hosted the gala event dur­ ing the 1870's. The Society paid $136,000 for the Milwaukee Fair grounds, of which $90,666 was ob­ tained as a loan from the state legislature. The '^Wisconsin Farmer, August 26, 1891; WSAS Fair grounds were officially dedicated on Septem­ Transactions, 1887, pp. 55, 178-179. ber 4, 1892.

208 t'.'.

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.Ji5.^i.Z'!%ti,S Society's Iconographic Collections Prize horses on display at the State Fair, about 1903 of embarrassment for Fair directors. Many operate to deprive the Society of a large ele­ farmers resented the increased attention to ment of support . . . ," predicted one spokes­ these "peripheral" entertainments and im­ man. "It is therefore the part of practical plored Fair officials to reorder their priorities. wisdom," he reasoned, "for the officers of Grumbled one antiequestrian: the Agricultural Society to take society as they find it, endeavor to promote the aims for Nothing is so thoroughly agricultural, so which they have formed the Society, and not distinctively rural, as the trotting race. It attempt to conduct it on the high-moral but should be encouraged by all means. . . . altogether impracticable views of Mrs. Bas­ It serves to get the idea out of their [farm­ ers'] heads that they should raise potatoes com."^' Society secretary Clinton Babbitt re­ and corn and such produce to the exclusion ferred to the issue in less diplomatic terms as of that well-known product, the sixty-four "this annual clamor from the women of the rib trotting horse. Theres [sic] nothing W.C.T.U.," while he decried their demand like the agricultural fair to educate the as "useless sentiment."^^ Fair managers' ver­ farmer. When he sees the crowd tramp his bal jousts failed to untrack the antialcohol big cucumbers and overgrown spring chick­ crusaders. Prohibitionists, including some of ens into the ground to pay twenty-five cents Wisconsin's leading Grangers, won passage of to get in the amphitheatre to see a horse a law in 1885 that provided for termination of race that was sold out the night before he state aid to the Agricultural Society if in­ realizes the grandeur of his profession and toxicating liquors were sold at the Fair. Addi­ takes his diploma and goes home so en­ tional legislation in the same year excluded thusiastic that he feels just like buying all "all gambling and gambling devices whatso­ the farms in the neighborhood and going ever" from Fair grounds.^'' While this action into the exclusive business of raising things to snatch diplomas from the grasp of fair did not destroy gate receipts as predicted, committees.^'' mounting deficits increasingly plagued the State Fair in the 1890's. As a result the Wis­ Although officials preserved the "speed con­ consin legislature transferred control of the tests," horse racing at the Fair remained a sen­ Fair to a State Board of Agriculture in 1897.^^ sitive issue well into the 1890's. Prohibitionist critics of the Fair raised a greater stir. Led by Mrs. John Bascom of the Madison W.C.T.U., teetotalers made de­ "'WSAS Transactions, 1883-1884, p. 52. •^Ibid., p. 47. mands in the mid-eighties that alcohol be '"''Laws of Wisconsin, 1885, Chapter 194, pp. 169- barred from the Fall event. Fair officials, 170; ibid.. Chapter 399, pp. 384-385; ibid.. Chapter confronted with a delicate issue, chose to de­ 437, pp. 430-431. ^ Hammer, "One Hundred Years of Wisconsin fend their policy on "practical" grounds. "If State Fairs," in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, the ideas of Mrs. Bascom are adopted it will 34:13; WSAS Transactions, 1895-1896, p. 45; Laws of Wisconsin, 1897, Chapter 301, pp. 643-645. For a description of county fairs in the same period, see Charles B. Elston, "A History of County Fairs in Nineteenth Century Wisconsin," (masters' thesis. Western Farmer, July 10, 1886. University of Wisconsin, 1966).

209 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

A LTHOUGH THE FARM ELITE in the -^*- Gilded Age focused their energies on conventions and fairs, they had much to say about the development of tax-supported agri­ cultural education in Wisconsin. Gentlemen farmers observed closely the activities of the state University's infant agriculture depart­ ment and offered suggestions and advice dur­ ing the department's crucial formative years.'*' Their advice, to be sure, was neither uniform nor gentle. A few skeptics flatly rejected the premise that farming methods could be taught in the classroom, while others scoffed at the attempt to treat agriculture as a formal science. Even those farm elite (a majority) who accepted in principle the "ag school" idea disagreed sharply over course curricula and management of the department's experi­ mental farm. Some persons considered agri­ cultural education to be vocational training; others would stress the "general principles" of agriculture; still others preferred that farm Society s Iconographic Collections youth receive a liberal exposure to the classics. Clinton Babbitt, farmer. Congressman, and Beloit Controversy over the University experimen­ postmaster. tal farm was also intense. One group favored a self-supporting enterprise, while others The farm elite were involved, too, in the viewed the farm as a laboratory for basic re­ battle to separate the "ag college" from the search.^" On balance, Wisconsin farm brah­ Madison campus. Hardly a convention of the mins weighted "useful knowledge" over the­ Agricultural Society passed between 1875 and ory, vocational training over the liberal arts, 1885 without a heated exchange on the sub­ and preferred a University farm that would ject. "Separationists" asserted that the Madi­ deal with the immediate problems of Wiscon­ son location hindered development of a "prac­ sin farmers. The decision of College officials tical" curriculum, prevented autonomous op­ to establish agricultural "short courses" in the eration of the "ag college," facilitated the late 1880's, and to emphasize "practical" train­ diversion of Morrill Act funds to other Uni­ ing in farm methods was based in part upon versity departments, weaned students away the wishes of prominent Society leaders, as from "rural values," and subjected farm were the appointments of several "practical youth to painful social pressures. Declared farmers" to the University's Board of Re­ one socially sensitive parent, "I would not gents.^' send one of my boys there [the ag school] if I expected him to go on to a farm. Why? A farmer's boy cannot coast with the girls there; "'" In 1866 the state legislature provided the legis­ he cannot do a thing; he is ostracized. He lative foundation for agricultural education in Wis­ consin, and two years later a school of agriculture cannot dress as well. He cannot spend as was established. Land for the University's experi­ much money, and that is no place for him. mental farm was purchased in 1866. The "ag school" had only one professor until 1883, when ap­ propriations for a new Experiment Station permitted an enlargement of the staff to three. As late as "WSAS Transactions, 1884-1885, pp. 279, 317; 1884 only nine students were enrolled in the agricul­ ibid., 1883-1884, pp. 189-193, 316; ibid., 1874-1875, ture department. The famous "short course" system p. 27; ibid., 1875-1876, pp. 29, 370: ibid., 1882- was adopted in 1886, and the dairy short course was 1883, pp. 154, 160-166; ibid., 1883-1884, pp. 187- launched in 1889. See Merle Curti and Vernon Car­ 189, 198-199; ibid., 1887, p. 413. stensen, The University of Wisconsin: A History, ^Ibid., 1877-1878, p. 171; ibid., 1881-1882, pp. 1848-1925 (2 vols., Madison, 1949), I: 459-462, 335-337; ibid., 1883-1884, p. 187; Curti and Car­ 469-470; 11: 375, 396. stensen, The University of Wisconsin, I: 467.

210 PRESCOTT: GENTLEMEN FARMERS

He had better stay on the farm if he calcu­ This co-operative attitude was not entirely lated to be a farmer. . . .""^ logical. Competition between the State Soci­ Defenders of the united campus were just ety and the traveling institutes could have de­ as adamant. They stressed the financial costs veloped quite naturally—both performed a of division, the premium quality instruction similar educational role. And Society leaders at the Madison school, and the benefits of a might easily have resented the dairymen's "university education" to farm youth. Sepa­ domination of institute meetings; indeed, ration, they argued, would insure educational Grangers became so exasperated with dairy mediocrity."^ Although the farm elites' di­ zealots that they tried, unsuccessfully, to es­ verse views on the question precluded united tablish their own Grange-sponsored insti­ action by the State Agricultural Society, their tutes."" discussion did help to shape attitudes pro The farm elite befriended the institutes for and con in the farm community. When the several reasons. Society leaders enjoyed con­ separationist movement fizzled in the mid- siderable say in institute planning sessions; 1880's, farmers across the state were at least superintendent William Morrison wisely aware of the controversy. Generally, Society sought the advice of Wisconsin's leading ag­ separationists (the Society was evenly bal­ riculturists on various institute details. More­ anced on the issue) were less vehement than over, both groups pursued similar goals. were other rural proponents for a separate "[T]he Society and the 'farmers' institutes' campus. Socioeconomic patterns help account work in harmony," affirmed Society president for this phenomenon. As community leaders John Mitchell. "[They] move hand in hand with above-average educational credentials, towards . . . the instruction and elevation of Society members were more attuned than most the farmer.""'^ The farm elite could feel spe­ farmers to the benefits of an integrated edu­ cial affinity for a "rival" group dedicated to cational program. agricultural excellence. And scientific agri­ culturists saw an opportunity in the frequency ENTLEMEN FARMERS were most enthu­ of institute sessions. The State Society met G siastic about the Wisconsin farmers' in­ only twice per year, at the February conven­ stitute program established by the state legis­ tion and during the State Fair in September. lature in 1885. Conceived originally by dairy Agriculturists, on the other hand, could "in­ leaders to promote dairying, these "two-day struct" almost year-round on the institute cir- schools on wheels" were an instant success. Information-starved farmers flocked to the •"WSAS Transactions, 1883-1884, pp. 214-215, winter institutes to receive useful farming tips 216, 219; ibid., 1877-1878, p. 44; ibid., 1879-1880, from "practical" agriculturists and to hear pp. 69-70, 109. and see the results of experimental work at •^Ibid., 1883-1884, pp. 197, 194, 210, 211, 213, 217, 208; ibid., 1894-1895, p. 184. the University farm. Under the direction of '" Curti and Carstensen, The University of Wiscon­ William H. Morrison, president of the Wis­ sin, I: 473^75, 713; WSAS Transactions, 1895- 1896, pp. 213-215. The farmers institute program consin Dairymen's Association, an average of was, in part, a well-conceived scheme to sidetrack forty-four institutes were held the first two the "separationist" movement. In 1885 when sep­ arationist sentiment was at peak strength, the Board years, 1885 through 1887, serving thousands of Regents devised the short course, while the legis­ of Wisconsin farmers."'' The farm elite strong­ lature funded the farmers institutes, both projects ly supported the project and, when invited by being a concession to the advocates of "practical" farm training. The institutes almost immediately Morrison to participate, they responded enthu­ claimed much of the time and energy of the Univer­ siastically. They usually spoke on the care sity "ag school" staff. See Curti and Carstensen, The University of Wisconsin, I: 473-474, 713; ibid., and breeding of livestock, reflecting their II: 395. trend of interest in the 1880's and 1890's; "" Arnold Diaries, 1885-1888, passim; Wisconsin but true to their traditions, they offered advice Farmers Institute Bulletin, No. 1, 1887, pp. 69-71, 129-131, 149-154, 158-161. on all aspects of agriculture. Early volumes ^ Western Farmer, December 19, 1885, Annual of the farmers institute Bulletin reveal exten­ Report of the Wisconsin Dairymen's Association, sive participation by Society members on the 1889, pp. 9-10; Proceedings of the State Grange of Wisconsin, 1888, p. 24. institute circuit."^ "'WSAS Transactions, 1889-1890, p. 28.

211 Society's Iconographic Collections The University of Wisconsin agricultural campus looking southeast, about 1899. cuit. They considered the institutes to be an had continued to apply new agricultural adjunct to the Society, an on-going stimulant knowledge to local conditions and to demon­ to wise farm management. strate the results to Wisconsin farmers. State By the mid-1890's the farm elite had accom­ Fair exhibits inspired farmers to greater ef­ plished much. Guardians of the tradition of forts and set high standards of achievement. "scientific agriculture," they had successful­ The farm elite, of course, eventually modi­ ly preserved that tradition during Wisconsin's fied their individualistic, self-help philosophy agrarian crusade. When new farm organiza­ when confronted with new economic reali­ tions appeared to promote specialized farming, ties in the Gilded Age. They conceded, for the State Society had provided encourage­ example, the need for limited governmental ment, advice, and, often, financial aid."* And controls on railroad corporations. And when tax-supported agricultural education bene­ dairymen encountered "unfair" competition fited greatly from Society support; fortunate­ in the form of dairy "counterfeits," the farm ly for the University "ag school" and farm­ elite supported the legislative counterattack."^ er institutes, Society leaders valued husband­ But gentlemen farmers remained steadfastly ry improvements over organizational hegemo­ loyal to agricultural excellence as the solution ny. Perhaps most important, the farm elite to farm ills. Specifically, they offered thou­ sands of Wisconsin farmers in the Gilded Age '^Wisconsin Farmer, July 1, 1891; WSAS Trans­ a viable alternative to "agrarian" reform actions, 1885-1886, p. 101; ibid., 1889-1890, p. 28, schemes. Although eventually overshadowed ibid., 1890-1891, p. 390; ibid., 1895-1896, p. 215. Several times during the 1870's the State Agricul­ by the University "ag school" and experimen­ tural Society appropriated funds to the State Horti­ tal farm, and by Wisconsin's aggressive dairy cultural Society to cover premium payments on hor­ leaders, gentlemen farmers could claim credit ticultural exhiliits at the State Fair. WSAS Trans­ actions, 1874-1875, p. 43; ibid., 1875-1876, p. 43; for laying the foundations of scientific agri­ ibid., 1876-1877, p. 47. In 1875 the State Society culture in Wisconsin. Their quest for quality aided the State Dairymen's Association by planning a "Dairy Fair" to be held in conjunction with the would pay handsome dividends in the twenti­ State Fair in Milwaukee. Premiums for butter and eth century. cheese exhibits were offered, and arrangements made for the exhibition of dairy equipment. Annual Re­ port of the Wisconsin's Dairymen's Association. •^WSAS Transactions, 1894-1895, p. 264; ibid., 1875, p. 35; Jefferson County Union, September 17, 1888-1889, p. 294; ibid., 1890-1891, p. 390; ibid., 1875. '• ' " ' 1895-1896, p. 255; Wisconsin Farmer, June 24, 1891.

212 THE WISCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM OF 1907

By ALBERT ERLEBACHER

TN THEIR ATTENTION to the various types of the insurance commissioners, and legisla­ •'- of economic reform that took place dur­ tive records. Even a brief glance at the con­ ing the Progressive Era, historians have con­ temporary record convinces the historian that centrated on state and federal legislation af­ life insurance furnished an important source fecting the regulation of railroads, the crea­ of capital formation.'^ tion of a centralized banking system, lower Since the mid-nineteenth century, life in­ and more flexible tariff rates, new credit for surance had expanded rapidly as a financial farmers and agricultural co-operatives, and institution. It provided the economy with the problem of trusts. Among the topics given two useful functions—protecting widows and least consideration by the general historian orphans and furnishing a steadily increasing has been reform in life insurance. Yet be­ source of investment capital to finance agri­ tween 1905 and 1911 several important cultural and industrial expansion. By the changes in the relationship of the state to 1860's much of the early instability in the this mammoth industry were considered, de­ life insurance industry had disappeared. The bated, and implemented. Even the more spe­ more scientific the mortuary tables became, cialized economic historians and chroniclers the more accurately the industry was able to of the period have given only passing atten­ predict its risks and estimate its costs. The tion to this subject. A few mention the Arm­ increasing longevity of the population pro­ strong investigation in New York, and those vided an extra margin for the companies, accounts which seek a human interest angle which increased their surplus funds. The de­ manage to recall the bizarre antics of young velopment of the tontine and the semi-tontine James Hazen Hyde, the under-thirty vice-pres­ contracts as popular forms of life insurance ident of the Equitable Life Assurance Society in the 1870's quickly multiplied the sums of of the United States. surplus funds available to management for This neglect has not resulted from any lack investment. Between 1870 and 1905 there of evidence. Insurance companies have been was a large increase in the number of insur- faithful preservers of their records, and most major American life insurance firms have had their story told on the occasion of one of ^ Walter Lord, The Good Years From 1900 to the their anniversaries. In addition to this, gov­ First World War (New York, 1965), 97-100. For ernmental archives and official records con­ example see the Annual Report of the Commissioner tain a wealth of material such as the records of Insurance of the State of Wisconsin (Madison) or Armstrong Committee Report (10 vols., Albany, of various investigations, the annual reports 1906).

213 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

link between the New York insurance com­ panies and the Wall Street trust companies. The second was the publicity resulting from the in-fighting among the officers and direc­ tors of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America, one of the nation's largest firms. Its vice-president, James Hazen Hyde, had thrown a fancy ball costing upwards of $100,000 of company funds in honor of the French ambassador. The firm's troubles be­ came front page news in the sensation-seeking New York press. The newspaper expose was followed by a number of investigations, one sponsored by the company and a second by the New York Insurance Department. Before the year ended, the New York legislature had authorized a full-scale investigation into the affairs of the major life insurance companies. By the end of 1905 the investigating body, known as the Armstrong Committee, had pre­ pared its recommendations, a number of which were enacted into law in 1906. These reforms dealt with four major areas of the insurance business. Directors of the companies were given greater responsibilities in overseeing Society's Iconographic Collections the decisions of management. Investments in Young James Hazen Hyde, whose social extravan- common stock and in investment bank opera­ gances precipitated insurance reforms. tions were severely constrained. Some limita­ tion was put upon the expenses of the com­ ance companies, the number of people carry­ panies, especially in the field of legislative ing policies, and the total amount of life in­ lobbying. Finally, the committee recom­ surance outstanding. The managers made mended the abolition of the tontine and semi- significant adjustments in their investment tontine contracts and the payment of annual policies by turning from almost complete reli­ dividends. Since New York was the home of ance on high grade real estate, bonds of gov­ ernmental bodies, and premium notes to more speculative investment fields such as railroad bonds, corporate bonds, investment in banks ^ Shepard B. Clough, A Century of American Life Insurance: A History of the Mutual Life Insurance and trust companies, and even common stocks. Company of New York, 1843-1943 (New York, 1946), The firms reoriented their sales efforts and 39-40, 88, 91. An excellent contemporary account of the growth of life insurance in this period by built strong general agencies which employed one of its leading exponents is John A. McCall, A an army of salesmen who spread the virtues Review of Life Insurance From the Date of the of life insurance in general and of their own First National Convention of Insurance Officials, 1871-1897 (Milwaukee, 1897). Under the tontine firms' policies in particular. The use of gen­ contract all those who purchased policies in a given eral agencies, salesmen, and heavy advertising year agreed to place all the dividends and surplus accruing to them into a single fund. If a member increased the companies' expenses, and this of the group died prior to the expiration of his was passed on to the consumers in higher contract, his beneficiary received the face value of premiums.^ the policy but none of the dividends or surplus. The total of the dividends and surplus in the fund was Two closely related events in 1904 and divided among those who survived to the expiration 1905 provided a catalyst for the reform that of the policies. A semi-tontine modified this some­ what by breaking up the entire term into five-year was to come to the life insurance enterprise. segments. Those who survived at the end of each First, Thomas W. Lawson published a series segment then shared the amount of the dividends and of articles in Everybody's which exposed the surplus in the fund at that point.

214 ERLEBACHER: WISCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM

the three largest life insurance companies in its recommendations to the 1907 legislative the nation, the effect of the Armstrong Com­ session. James A. Frear, a state senator from mittee's recommendations extended far beyond Hudson, was appointed chairman. Along with the environs of the Empire State. By 1906 Frear, Jacob Rummel, a Milwaukee Socialist, and 1907 there were calls for investigations in and Julius E. Roehr, a Milwaukee Stalwart many states, and the industry itself responded Republican, represented the upper house. The to President Theodore Roosevelt's call for a assembly was represented by George E. Beedle nationwide study which might result in model of Waupaca, W. S. Braddock of Jackson, codes for the states to follow.^ Barnabas S. Potter of Washington County, and Herman L. Ekern of Trempealeau Coun­ POLITICAL LEADERSHIP in Wisconsin ty. Braddock was a Stalwart Republican; -•- did not wait for the conclusion of the Potter was the lone Democrat on the group; Armstrong Committee's work to begin its own Beedle and Ekern were considered strong La life insurance investigation. Governor Robert Follette supporters. After the special session Marion La Follette had already been elected concluded, Frear and Ekern, the committee's to the United States Senate by the fall of secretary, went to New York to confer with 1905, but he had not yet surrendered the gov­ the Armstrong Committee and its counsel, ernor's chair. Just prior to his departure he Charles Evans Hughes. While in the East the addressed a special session of the legislature two also conferred with muckraker Thomas and called its attention to the work of the Lawson and with Thomas W. Drake, the Dis­ Armstrong Committee. The governor sug­ trict of Columbia insurance commissioner, gested a similar investigation of the activities who had taken a leading role among those and policies of Wisconsin's life insurance com­ insurance commissioners who were trying panies. Whether La Follette was merely tak­ to standardize the insurance codes of the vari­ ing advantage of the muckraking spirit and ous states."* contemplated an investigation that would un­ Prior to 1877 insurance regulation in Wis­ cover wrongs and "evils" of the industry, or consin had been under the control of the whether he had a genuine interest in bringing secretary of state, but in that year the legis­ about permanent reforms in the field, remains lature created an elective office of insurance unsettled. He kept the contents of the mes­ commissioner. Throughout the intervening sage secret from even his closest supporters years various insurance commissioners had in the legislature until just prior to its de­ observed some of the problems of the industry livery. La Follette had expressed an interest and of the life insurance consumers. The in Thomas Lawson's findings and suggested function of regulation until the twentieth cen­ that there was much in the Armstrong hear­ tury meant essentially two things—auditing ings that could serve as a basis for reform and taxation. The audits were simple ones legislation. In the month prior to the message which merely certified that the firms had the governor had received abundant advice the securities and the cash they claimed to from journalists and politicians on the issue. hold, and that they paid the taxes they had On the recommendation of Governor La been assessed. There was little information Follette the Wisconsin legislature authorized a joint legislative committee to investigate life insurance in the state. The committee was given a year to conduct its study and report * Carroll Lahman, "Robert M. La Follette as Speak­ er and Political Leader, 1855-1905" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1939), 1009; Robert M. La Follette to Edward DeBower, October 4, 1905, A. M. Hopkins to La Follette, November 6, 1905, Irvine Lenroot to La Follette, " The story of the Armstrong investigation is re­ November 23, 1905, all in the Robert M. La Fol­ lated in many places. See Robert I. Mehr and Rob­ lette Papers, Archives-Manuscripts Division, State ert W. Osier, Modern Life Insurance: A Textbook of Historical Society of Wisconsin; Resolution 14A, Income Insurance (3d ed., New York, 1961), 680- Laws of Wisconsin, Special Session of 1905, p. 14; 682, and Robert F. Wesser, Charles Evans Hughes: James A. Frear, Forty Years of Progressive Public Politics and Reform in New York, 1905-1910 (Itha­ Service Reasonably Filled with Thorns and Flowers ca, 1967), 33-48. (Washington, 1937), 46-47.

215 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

were punished, the public's faith might be restored. Spooner urged Badger State citizens not to purchase policies from firms unlicensed in Wisconsin, since his office could not give any assistance in case of litigation.^ Twenty years later another commissioner, William A. Fricke, claimed credit for keeping bankrupt companies from doing business in Wisconsin. Already thinking about reform of an ever more complicated insurance code, Fricke rec­ ommended a short uniform code with strin­ gent provisions that would apply a single standard of solvency to all insurance compa­ nies, but would not inhibit management from devising new contract provisions which would improve the benefits for the insuring public. Fricke also suggested removing the office from politics by making it appointive. Rely­ ing on the necessity for a minimum of regu­ lation, Fricke stood for a maximum of pub­ licity to correct any of the industry's shady practices. Life insurance was a vital cog in the economy of Wisconsin for by 1905 Wis­ consin citizens owned 484,335 policies having a total maturation value of $494,047,947. Society's Iconographic Collections The premiums paid that year amounted to al­ James A. Frear, state senator from Hudson. most $26,755,000, more than four times the size of the entire state budget!" At the very moment of the Armstrong in­ furnished or sought by which an intelligent vestigation in New York, Wisconsin's Com­ consumer could make himself aware of the missioner Zeno M. Host, a La Follette man, costs and values of any policy which he was analyzed the source of the life insurance in­ considering purchasing. The statutes provided dustry's problems. They were the large sur­ for the inspection of the company's books, pluses created by the overpriced premiums limited the kinds of investments the firms and by the lapse of funds in the tontine and could make, and gave the commissioner the semi-tontine policies. These huge surpluses right to valuate life insurance policies. The had tempted the managers into some of the reports dealt with the amount of business financial machinations and imprudent invest­ done, but they did not measure the quality of ment policies that had taken place. He sug­ the performance. gested that the bulk of the surplus be dis­ Even though the commissioners were pol­ tributed annually among the policyholders. iticians rather than insurance experts and despite the fact that they often followed their political career with lucrative employment among the companies they had regulated, their ^Annual Report \_1879} of the Commissioner of reports furnish a running account of many of Insurance of the State of Wisconsin (Madison, 1879), 10, 41-45. the complaints that arose against life insur­ 'Annual Report [1897] of the Commissioner of ance companies in the later years of the cen­ Insurance of the State of Wisconsin: Part II, Life and Casualty (Madison, 1897), x-xiv, xxx, xxiii- tury. After the collapse of many firms in the xxiv; Ibid. [1905], 5-6. Hereafter cited as Wiscon­ Depression of 1873, Commissioner Philip L. sin Report. Of the 484,000 policies in force in 1905, Spooner noted that the public had lost con­ 121,000 were ordinary life policies; 152,000 were industrial insurance policies; 181,000 were issued fidence in those firms which had been unable by fraternal organizations; the remaining 30,000 to honor their claims. If the guilty officers were issued by commercial assessment associations.

216 ERLEBACHER: WISCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM

This would encourage greater economy by ing the emotions of a political gathering. management, lessen the excessive salaries of Frear chose Ekern as secretary, and Ekern officers, and lower the commissions paid to spent more time on the committee's work than agents. Host also suggested that all stock any other member. After the committee's re­ companies be converted into mutual compa­ port had been written, for the most part by nies, thus ending the raids on company treas­ Ekern, but before it had been acted upon by uries for dividends by small numbers of stock­ the legislature, Ekern was elected speaker of holders. Host cited the Northwestern Mutual the assembly in 1907. Thus his leadership role Life Insurance Company of Wisconsin, lo­ accorded him greater influence in the consid­ cated in Milwaukee, as one which had been eration of the appropriate legislation. Ekern's able to grow steadily over the years without role during the year-long sessions of the com­ over-reliance on the tontine and semi-tontine mittee revealed that he was more interested in contracts. In addition. Host sued the Pruden­ the complexities of the insurance situations tial Life Insurance Company to prevent it than in headline gathering, and that he pur­ from merging with the Fidelty Mutual Trust sued a line of questioning until he was satis­ Company, and he issued a complaint against fied that he had the answers or until he had the Equitable Life Assurance Society, charg­ drained the witness of all his knowledge. ing that it had attempted to prevent litiga­ Ekern definitely had some positive ideas about tion against it by offering to make a political life insurance companies and the public. Each contribution to the La Follette campaign in policyholder, he felt, had a right to know 1904.^ how much of his premium went for actual protection and how much was siphoned off T^HUS, by early 1906, the Wisconsin in- for expenses. Companies who misused their -*- surance investigation was prepared to funds should be held accountable and be pun­ launch its work. The topic of life insurance ished. The mere vastness of the enterprise in reform was being discussed nationally by the Wisconsin demanded strict public regulation industry, by legislators, and in the daily press. which could best be accomplished through Although Senator Frear took an active role in legislation and effective enforcement.' leading the committee's work, its leading mem­ The committee met in about sixty public ber was Herman L. Ekern, a second-term as­ sessions between April and September, 1906 semblyman from Trempealeau County. Born and after the autumn elections. Most of the in 1872, Ekern had attended the University public sessions were spent examining the top of Wisconsin Law School and had served two executives of the Northwestern Mutual Life terms as district attorney of Trempealeau Insurance Company, with lesser attention paid County. Of Norwegian descent, he had been to the smaller Wisconsin-based firms. Only one of La Follette's most active supporters and one out-of-state firm, the Union Central Life a rising figure among La Follette's proteges. Insurance Company of Cincinnati, was ex­ Ekern was a quiet man whose talents ran amined to any considerable degree. The in­ along technical lines. He understood the intri­ vestigators also held an open forum with cacies of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, and representatives of the various fraternal or­ he had the ability to get to the heart of a com­ ganizations which sold life insurance and plex subject such as insurance. On the other one with insurance agents. The records of the hand, he was not particularly adept at arous­ committee consisted of more than 2,000 pages of typed testimony and 200 pages of recom-

' Wisconsin Report, 1905, Life and Casualty, 14- 16; Zeno M. Host, "An Address on the Life In­ ''Albert Erlebacher, "Herman L. Ekern: The Qui­ surance Situation," delivered before the Six O'Clock et Progressive," (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Club at Madison, Wisconsin, January 9, 1905, pp. University of Wisconsin, 1965), 20-22, 28-34, 56-57, 4-19; Robert Maxwell, Robert M. La Follette and 71-74; James A. Frear to Herman Ekern, December the Progressive Movement in Wisconsin (Madison, 26, 1905, Ekern to E. Bratberg, May 21, 1906, Ekern 1954), 108-109; Morton Keller, The Life Insurance to Ole Myhre, August 20, 1906, all in the Herman Enterprise, 1885-1910: A Study in the Limits of L. Ekern Papers, Archives-Manuscripts Division, Corporate Power (Cambridge, 1963), 212-213. State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

217 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING. 1972

.Society's Iconographic Collections Robert M. La Follette, Sr., James J. Blaine, and Herman L. Ekern. mendations. Out of this came twenty-four company might spend more on expenses than legislative recommendations for the 1907 ses­ provided for in the contract. Another bill de­ sion of the legislature. signed to lower expenses would have limited While some of these measures dealt with the salary of any insurance company officer such technical matters as the definition of to a maximum of $25,000 per year unless a terms in the insurance contract and the pro­ higher salary were approved by a vote of the vision of a minimum standard of mortality, policyholders. As far as the semi-tontine con­ there were others which affected the relation­ tracts were concerned, the reform measures ship of the insurance companies with the pub­ proposed that the companies clearly and an­ lic. One measure proposed to give the gover­ nually state how the dividend and surplus were nor the right to appoint a single director for to be divided. Strict reporting of all lobby­ each Wisconsin-based mutual life insurance ing activities by the firms was the objective of company. Another provided that each policy­ still another bill.^ holder would have one vote for each director's The conclusions contained in these legisla­ position regardless of how many policies he tive recommendations had resulted from the owned. A third prohibited the employees or weeks of testimony before the committee. agents of a company from directly or in­ The recommendation concerning the election directly assisting in the election of trustees of trustees had followed the revelations that or expending any company funds in such elec­ the Northwestern had devised a system by tions. A fourth would have prevented a com­ which the trustees were nominated by the of­ pany from issuing both participating and non- ficers who in turn were appointed by the participating policies. Most vital for the con­ trustees. The list of trustees had been prepared sumers' interests were measures which would have forced the companies to indicate clearly " Report of a Joint Committee of Senate and As­ on the face of each insurance policy the sembly on the Affairs of Life Insurance Companies amount of the premium devoted to expenses, (Madison, 1907). The Report is in two volumes en­ to mortality, and to the reserve. It was fur­ titled Testimony and Exhibits and Recommenda­ tions and will be so cited hereafter; Recommenda­ ther provided, in another proposal, that no tions, 236-283.

218 ERLEBACHER: WISCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM: by a voluntary organization of the company's general agents who were gathered annually in Milwaukee, the company's headquarters, on a paid vacation to perform this task. The legislative committee concluded that this was self-perpetuating, although the president of the Northwestern, Henry Palmer, contended the system served the best interests of the policyholders.^" The committee also discov­ ered that the proxies and ballots were pre­ pared by the officers and distributed by the general agents only to a select list of policy­ holders. In 1905 this system resulted in the election of the administration list of trustees by a near-unanimous vote.^^ One of the major concerns of the Armstrong investigation in New York had been the ex­ posure of the insurance companies' lobbying activities in Albany. Witnesses had testified to large donations to the Republican party in 1896, 1900, and 1904, as well as the main­ tenance of a "House of Mirth" whose legisla­ Society's Iconographic Collections tive guests represented a broad bipartisan Henry L. Palmer, president of the Northwestern Life cross section. Such overt and indiscreet acts Insurance Company of Milwaukee. were not discovered by the Wisconsin in­ vestigation, although one witness revealed the steps he had taken in 1901 as the North- which Northwestern had allegedly practiced western's lobbyist when that firm tried to se­ among its policyholders. Not only did the pro­ cure legislative repeal of the law which taxed posal prohibit the practice of rebates, but it out-of-state insurance companies in such a also would have revoked the license of any manner that the Northwestern could be re­ company or agent who had discriminated taliated against in other states. The lobbyist, among policyholders in matters of rates, pol­ Thomas W. Spence, offered detailed accounts icy loans, and cancellations. One of the things of how he and two assistants secured its ap­ the investigation had revealed was that the proval. He recalled that when one legislator officers of the Northwestern had used their demanded a bribe, he threatened to reveal positions as officers to channel prospective the note if the lawmaker prevented the bill borrowers to their relatives who would make from coming to a vote. Beyond this, the firm's the desired loans at rates higher than those officers were hesitant about revealing any in­ prevailing in the contract. The company had terest in state politics, but they did agree to also made loans on some types of policies submit a list of the men they had employed as while arbitrarily refusing to make them on lobbyists and reveal the amount paid to each.^^ others. Another practice disclosed by the committee was that the company would for­ \ MEASURE in which Ekern had taken a feit policies when loans upon them were de- -^^ special interest during the hearings was faidted, even though the amount of the de­ that which dealt with the discriminations fault was less than the cash value of the pol- icy.^^ Another area of discrimination, in the com­ mittee's judgment, was the lack of loans made ^"Testimony and Exhibits, 10, 14-15, 23-24, 74- by Northwestern to Wisconsin farmers. The 87. " Ibid., 723-731; Ekern to Stener Hanson, May 12, 1907, in the Ekern Papers. ^^ Testimony and Exhibits, 704-711. 'Ibid., 27, 29-32, 45, 50-51, 107-112, 153-175.

219 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 committee discovered that Northwestern made went so far as to claim that standardized far fewer agricultural loans in Wisconsin forms were "an abridgement of a natural than in neighboring Iowa. When pressed on individual right," and he argued that such this matter the president of the company proposals emanated from state legislators who claimed that there was a lack of loan applica­ felt that they knew more about the appli­ tions from Badger State farmers, but the com­ cant's needs than the insurance company mittee had come well-prepared with a stack of did.-*^ Yet the trend was clear. The Armstrong rejected application blanks from potential Wis­ investigation had recommended standardized consin farmer-borrowers. The president then forms; so did the Ames bill which set up a admitted that the person in charge of making new insurance code for the District of Colum­ such loans, who happened to be the son of bia and the Committee of Fifteen which one of the firm's vice-presidents, did not un­ tried to write a model life insurance code for derstand the value of farm lands in many all states. parts of Wisconsin. The discussion on this Possibly the most controversial of the Wis­ subject had more than just provincial interest. consin Committee's proposals were those Many western and southern states were at­ which sought to reduce the cost of life in­ tempting to put strong pressure on insurance surance for the public. They would have firms to commit a specified percentage of their forced companies to limit their expenses on premium income to investments within a policies to the amount actually provided for state. The companies strongly resisted on the and covered in the contract. This would have grounds that such regulations limited the been especially difficult for most firms since right of the management to invest funds the single largest item of expense, the agent's wherever they were safest and most profitable. commission, often consumed the entire first Texas, in 1907, enacted its famous Robert­ premium. Previously most companies had son Law, which required a certain percentage been able to cover such high initial costs be­ of in-state investment, and many eastern in­ cause the subsequent commissions on a policy surance concerns withdrew from the state in were much smaller and because a high rate of retaliation.'* lapses provided the companies with an extra Among the reforms proposed by the Arm­ margin of safety. The practice of giving strong Committee in New York was the in­ agents high initial commissions in order to sertion of certain standard provisions and gain a large volume of new business had been forms in all life insurance contracts. This one of the characteristics of the immense topic was the subject of considerable debate increase of life insurance purchased and sold in popular magazines, as well as among vari­ in the United States during the last third of ous insurance spokesmen. During the Wis­ the nineteenth century. But what appalled the consin hearings, one witness for Northwestern critics of the system was that the amount of had opposed such proposals, claiming that life insurance that lapsed each year was so they would halt the evolutionary process of huge that they seriously challenged the mo­ more liberalized contract provisions, would tives of the firms in their drive for bigness.-'" interfere with policyholders who moved from Most of the reforms proposed by the Wis­ one state to another and would require an consin Committee repeated those already immense amount of printing, since each com­ made in New York after the Armstrong in­ pany would be forced to frame a separate set vestigation. Yet there were differences in the of contracts for each state. He also admitted character of some proposals. The New York a fear that standardized forms would lessen firms had been most harshly criticized for the competition which would in turn harm the insuring public. One insurance executive "Testimony and Exhibits, 1117-1119; Transac­ tions of the Actuarial Society of America, Vol. X(37) * 131—135 »/6JW., 188-195, 471^84, 713-720; R. Cariyle » See Assembly Bills 683, 686, 687 for 1907. The Buley, The American Life Convention, 1906-1952: purpose of these bills is described in James Frear A Study in the History of Life Insurance (2 vols., to Ekern, December 29, 1906, in the Ekern Papers. New York, 1953), 1:301-302. Numbers 686 and 687 were eventually passed.

220 ERLEBACHER: WISCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM the immense proportion of their business in TTNLIKE THE EASTERN COMPANIES the tontine and semi-tontine contracts. The ^ which had opposed all the reforms sug­ abuse of these types of contracts had given gested by the Armstrong Committee rather the insurance managers sums of money far than accept those which dealt with the abuses beyond what was necessary as a reserve and fight those which dealt with manage­ against the face value of outstanding policies. ment's true prerogatives, the industry in Wis­ These surpluses led to the clumsy investment consin decided to fight the recommendations policies indicted by the New York investiga­ selectively. Prior to the investigation North­ tors. Insurance managers had placed large western had loudly maintained that it did not sums of money in the railroad stocks and pay its officers any commissions on the securi­ bonds peddled by Wall Street trust bankers ties they bought for the firm and that it did such as E. H. Harriman and J. P. Morgan. not allow them to participate in investing This had led to alliances in which the bankers syndicates nor to purchase any common stock. became dominant within the insurance com­ During the course of the investigation the panies while the insurance executives became company continued to inform its agents, and junior partners in the banking business. This, through them hopefully to reassure the pub­ in turn, had led to such abuses as insurance lic, of the testimony of its officers. The Mil­ executives accepting commissions on bonds waukee Sentinel, a leading spokesman for the sold to their own companies and insurance business interests of Milwaukee, declared that companies which deposited their large cash the Northwestern had come through the in­ balances in banks which gave them only a vestigation unscathed and without revelation minimal interest payment. All in all, it was of any "lax trusteeship."'^ evident that the insurance managers had been The legislative road of the bills proposed acting for their own good with much greater by the Wisconsin investigation was a long and finesse and skill than they had been perform­ difficult one and the result was at best only a ing the trusteeship function for their policy­ partial victory. Yet the reformers had several holders. advantages at the outset. By 1907 the nation These gross violations of the fiduciary re­ had been aroused for nearly two years about lationship had not been discovered in Wiscon­ the abuses in life insurance. The charges, sin. The Northwestern had been far more countercharges, and investigations had made conservative in its investment practices than headline news in the daily press, in the pop­ the eastern firms, as witnessed by its lower ular magazines, and even in the more scholar­ ratio of expenses and its higher rate of in­ ly journals. Few states other than New York terest earned.'^ Yet in other instances, such had had legislative sessions in 1906 which as mistreatment and discrimination against had considered specific proposals of reform. policyholders and an attitude of paternalistic The industry itself was in a ferment with the leadership to its customers, the Northwestern establishment of the Association of Life In­ reflected the same traits as the eastern com­ surance Presidents, a public voice for the panies. The committee's philosophy of cor­ big companies domiciled in New York, New rection was based on a maximum of publicity Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, and and consumer knowledge. Insurance was not the founding of the American Life Conven­ "an eleemosynary institution," but it could be tion, an association of much smaller compa­ based on cold, hard, determinable facts rather nies, most of them operating in the western than on subterfuge. No person should need and southern states. Herman L. Ekern, the to purchase insurance blindly.'^ leading legislative antagonist on the Wiscon­ sin investigating committee, had been re­ elected to the assembly and capped this by " Harold F. Williamson and Orange W. Smalley, Northwestern Mutual Life: A Century of Trustee­ ship (Evanston, 1957), 134-141; Recommendations, 62-70. ^'^ Annual Report of the Northwestern Mutual Life " Recommendations, 142-148. The Recommenda­ Insurance Company, 1905, pp. 7-11; Field Notes, tions include samples of the printed forms which Vol. V:9 (May, 1906), and Vol. VI (January, 1907) ; the committee was suggesting. Milwaukee Sentinel, December 11, 1906.

221 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 being named speaker of the assembly in Jan­ per diem pay than in writing any useful leg­ uary, 1907. Thus, the insurance bills, his pet islation.^' project, were sure to get adequate considera­ Yet below the veneer of the public carping tion. A new governor, James 0. Davidson, and criticism it was clear that the insurance was determined to make a strong record as industry was prepared to accept some of the a Progressive Republican, especially because changes sought by the Wisconsin group. On his credentials as a Progressive had come un­ March 31 the Northwestern offered to agree to der suspicion when La Follette had supported the more technical of the measures if the his opponent, Irvine Lenroot, in the 1906 others were rejected and if its own actuaries Republican primary. could help rewrite the bills. A week later rep­ In the early months of the session the in­ resentatives of ten firms met with Ekern, surance bills recommended by the investiga­ Frear, Beedle, and two of the committee's ex­ tion remained in the Joint Committee on In­ perts, James Glover and Lewis A. Anderson, surance and Banking. While the bills were in private discussion. The Northwestern re­ still in committee, the insurance industry be­ vealed that it was not so afraid of the con­ gan an attack which aimed to restructure sequences of the legislation on its operations those bills it thought acceptable and defeat in Wisconsin as it was of the retaliatory effect those it considered totally injurious. The at­ it would have on the firm's operations in tack was lead by William Fricke, former Wis­ other states.^^ As a result of these private consin insurance commissioner, and George meetings, the actuaries were able to announce H. Noyes, the counselor of the Northwestern. by mid-April that they remained opposed only E. M. Rhodes, the actuary of the Mutual Ben­ to bills which defined the basic terms of the efit Insurance Company of New Jersey, rep­ contract; required a separate valuation of resented his own firm and, by implication, assets for companies operating in Wisconsin; the interests of the other eastern companies required the insertion of standard provisions as well. Their first complaint was that the in the policy; limited the maximum premium investigation had ignored the matter of ex­ which could be charged; and limited the ex­ cessive taxes levied on insurance companies. pense factor which could be written into the Rhodes also warned against the proposed net loading.^^ valuation measure proposed by the commit­ Not desiring to close the door to further tee. Other lobbyists rejected the proposals negotiations, the companies offered to accept limiting expenses on new business. Almost anything which would not fundamentally al­ every representative charged the measure was ter the principles of life insurance. At this unconstitutional (although never specifying point their spokesman, Robert Lynn Cox, why) and would constitute unwarranted in­ secretary of the Association of Life Insurance terference with the right of management.^" Presidents, initially voiced the threat that Joining in the criticism was the insurance the insurance companies might leave the state industry press. One eastern paper called the if the legislature insisted on enacting any investigation "outrageous," and Ekern a stub­ dangerous laws.^* This threat was to be re­ born man who would insist on getting the peated frequently between mid-April and the bills passed without question and without final passage of the bills in early July. modification. The same editor referred to another member of the committee as an "up- "PKERN AND HIS COLLEAGUES had country store keeper who probably never ^-^ never expected to fight for reform to be knew the meaning of the word insurance until an easy one nor did they underestimate the he was given a place on the investigating com­ resources of the industry in fighting the leg­ mittee." The entire committee, the critic con­ islation. In April a close associate of Ekern's cluded, was more interested in collectine its

"^ Eastern Underwriter, March 21, 1907. "'Milwaukee Sentinel, April 7, 1907. '"Madison Democrat, March 14, 1907; Milwaukee "^ Ibid., April 14, 1907. Sentinel, March 17, 1907. - ' ''Ibid.; Eastern Underwriter, April 18, 19G7.-

222 ERLEBACHER: W SCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM

• s • 1

Society's Iconographic Collections Governor James 0. Davidson (in bowler) ivith unidentified companions, about 1907. noted that the companies were attacking the By June 1, the 1907 legislature had already details of the bills but were not arguing the set a record for longevity and the insurance principles behind them. A well-known news­ bills had not yet been sent to the floor by paper reporter. Winter Everett, testified in the Joint Committee. Perhaps the insurance public hearings that the management of in­ companies were hoping that the increasing surance companies had taken arbitrary at­ impatience of legislators to adjourn would titudes towards their policyholders. No doubt serve to kill the bills. Both sides were prepar­ encouraged by Ekern, Everett accused North- ing to place themselves in the most advantage­ western's president of becoming a kind of ous position for the floor fight in each house. "sacred cow," answerable only to himself. This took place during the last week of June Supporting the committee's plans for change and the first ten days of July. The bitter in the election machinery of insurance com­ tone of the debate was reflected early in the panies, Everett claimed that the policyholders discussion when assemblyman Duncan Mc­ could do as good a job of selecting trustees as Gregor, a supporter of the reforms, offered the management. Ekern used such instances a resolution demanding that all lobbyists be of discrimination as had been exposed by removed from the assembly floor. The motion the investigation to justify his demand that was adopted after a bitter fight, and Speaker proxy voting be abolished in all mutual in­ Ekern enforced it and ordered the sergeant-at- surance companies.^^ arms to carry it out.^" Each of the bills which the Joint Committee

^ James L. O'Connor to Ekern, March 22, April 20, 1907, in the Ekern Papers; Milwaukee Sentinel, April 21, 1907; Milwaukee Daily. News, Kpril 21, 1907; Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), April 26, ^Wisconsin State Journal, June 24, 1907; -Wiscon­ 1907; Milwaukee Sentinel, April-IX \9(S7,' sin Assembly Journal, 1907, p. 1186.

223 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 on Insurance had recommended for passage was brought to the floor, briefly debated, and then voted pro or con. The reformers lost the proposal to abolish the proxy system of voting and to permit the governor to appoint one director for each mutual insurance company. But the assembly accepted a substitute which permitted each policyholder to cast one vote for each director or to cast all his votes cumu­ latively for one director. The measure also forced companies to provide lists of policy­ holders to any slate wishing to run persons for trustees. Before assembly consideration was concluded, Ekern had succeeded in get­ ting through measures preventing misrepre­ sentation on life insurance policies; requiring the reporting of all lobbying activities, in­ cluding an accounting of funds spent; limiting the salaries of officers; requiring the annual apportionment of surplus; limiting the over­ head (referred to as loading in insurance); placing a maximum on the expense charge Societ> aphic Collections levied against the first year's premium and William A. Fricke, former state insurance commis­ setting up penalties for violation of the in­ sioner. surance code which involved fines, revocation of licenses, and possible prison terms.^'^ Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. The first duty of Since some of the bills which passed the as­ the state was to protect the public, not "to sembly were among those tbe industry had swell the pockets of the insurance magnates." most strenuously opposed, it shifted its defense Fricke and Olin denied Ekern's assertions to the smaller, more conservative, and more that the legislation would have the long-term easily controllable senate. On June 28, the effect of lowering the cost of insurance. These final day of the assembly's voting on the bills, industry spokesmen pleaded that the North­ the senate resolved itself into a committee western should not be judged as harshly as the of the whole and listened to an extended de­ eastern companies had been, but rather by the bate which featured Ekern, speaking for the criteria that it had been solvent for its entire legislation, and John M. Olin and William existence and was recognized in every state Fricke, against it. The format was a five- of the Union. Fricke claimed that if the hour, formal debate in which the protagonists limitation on surplus were enacted the com­ went over every point of importance in the panies might be placed in a position where entire set of bills. Ekern insisted on the pas­ they would not be able to provide for some sage of the entire package, charging that the unforeseen circumstances. In the end Fricke companies wished to keep the status quo in came back to the argument that the enactment order to maintain the policyholders in a state of the reforms by Wisconsin would place of ignorance concerning their policies. He the Northwestern, one of the state's most im­ argued that Wisconsin's proposals were no portant economic institutions, in an unfavor­ more stringent than those recently enacted in able competitive position in other states.-^ Olin assured the senate that the companies

^ Wisconsin State Journal, June 27, 1907; Wiscon­ "^ Milwaukee Free Press, June 29, 1907; William sin Assembly Journal, 1907, pp. 1289-1290; Chapters A. Fricke, "Brief on Life Insurance Bills No. 686A, 126, 313, 150, 389, 504, 584, 621, 636, 657, 667, and 685A, 684A, 687A, 678A, Submitted on Behalf of 668 of Laws of Wisconsin, 1907, pp. 416, 509-510, the Northwestern Life Insurance Company" ([n.p.], 520-533, 536-548. 1907), 10-17, 19-22.

224 ERLEBACHER: WISCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM

would accept legislation which would make In a Fourth of July address at Paddock Lake management completely accountable for the in Kenosha County, the speaker placed the surplus accumulations and for a reasonable proposed insurance laws into the context of limitation on new business. Olin concluded his entire political philosophy. It was a part by accusing Ekern of unduly influencing the of the struggle that had symbolized the very Joint Committee and of arranging the schedule foundation of America. In 1776 it was a of legislation so as to block all other bills un­ fight for political independence from Great til the insurance reforms were passed. The Britain, but in 1907 the battle was against shift in his defense from the substance of the the "dominance of corporate wealth," typi­ measures to Ekern's tactics probably indicated fied by the insurance companies. Citing Wis­ both a lack of further argument on behalf of consin's frontier heritage as his precedent, his client and an attempt to involve personal­ Ekern recalled that the issue was once again ity.^^ For Ekern the battle now became one who should govern—the minority who wished of timing. He had the votes to bring the bills to use government as a tool to win their own up for a decision by the senate, but he feared monopolistic privilege or the majority who be­ the outcome. Since the lobbyists also thought lieved that government could be operated to that time was on their side, Ekern's allies in win social ends. Wisconsin was fortunate, the the upper house agreed to a ten-day recess speaker went on, to be guided by the spirit of of the senate together with a promise to vote Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette, on the bills without further debate when that which would give the people the chance to body reconvened.^" recapture the government that the interests During the interval neither side rested. had controlled. His listeners, Ekern warned, One of the Northwestern's lobbyists warned a did not realize the extent of financial control prominent politician that Ekern had written which the insurance industry had over the "revolutionary change" into the statutes and entire nation.'^ would drive the firm out of the state. Gov­ ernor Davidson began to receive a large vol­ /~\N July 8 the legislature reconvened. The ume of mail from persons associated with ^^ weather was hot, the legislators grew insurance companies both in Wisconsin and tired of the long session, and its farmer-mem­ from other states. All in essence said the same ber majority was eager to get back home and thing—sign the legislation and the companies into the fields. According to the agreement would quit the state, leaving thousands of made earlier, the senate immediately began Wisconsinites with no further opportunity to voting and approved of all but two of the protect their families. One correspondent sug­ measures which had previously passed the as­ gested that Davidson should simply suggest sembly. Having lost in the legislature, the in­ to the legislature that it enact the exact same surance companies increased the tempo of the statutes that had been enacted in New York the previous year. This was a surprising ad­ mission of the necessity of accomodation by the insurance industry, since it had openly and strongly opposed many of the New York ^ John M. Olin to James A. Stone, July 3, 1907, in the James A. Stone Papers, Archives-Manuscripts reforms when they were first proposed.^' Division, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Miles M. Dawson to James 0. Davidson, July 5, 1907, Ekern was not idle in the meanwhile either. in the James 0. Davidson Papers, Archives-Manu­ scripts Division, State Historical Society of Wiscon­ sin. Dawson had been an important figure in both the Armstrong and Wisconsin investigations since he was one of the nation's leading actuaries and '^ Fricke, "Brief on Life Insurance Bills," 24-26; an important proponent of reform within the indus­ Wisconsin State Journal, June 28, 1907; Milwaukee try. At first he seemed to agree with most of the Journal, June 29, 1907; Daily Northwestern (Osh­ reommendations of the Wisconsin investigation, but kosh), June 28, 1907; Evening Wisconsin (Milwau­ he later changed his mind and opposed several of kee, June 28, 1907; Milwaukee Sentinel, June 29, the measures while they were in the legislative proc­ 1907; Milwaukee Free Press, June 29, 1907. ess. He frequently served as an expert for insurance ^ Milwaukee Sentinel, June 30, 1907; Ekern to companies in their dealings with state legislatures. Edward E. Browne, July 1, 1907, Ekern to Irvine ""Herman L. Ekern, "Notes for a Speech at Pad­ Lenroot, July 1, 1907, both in the Ekern Papers. dock's Lake," July 4, 1907, in the Ekern Papers.

225 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 pressure on Governor Davidson in order to influence him to veto the measures. Davidson had remained out of the legisla­ tive battle throughout the hectic weeks and months. In January he had favored the rec­ ommendations of the Wisconsin insurance in­ vestigation, calling them so thorough that the subject did not require additional comment. Since many of the men on the investigation committee had supported his recent Republi­ can rival, insurance spokesmen might have hoped that Davidson would oppose their bills. The governor was flooded with letters, tele­ grams, and petitions during the next few days urging him to veto the bills. One citizen re­ ferred to the legislation as "arbitrary [and] unscientific." Others insisted the objectives of the laws were harmful to the state and the public. The Northwestern informed the gover­ nor that the bills, if signed, would lead to Society's Iconographic Collections endless litigation.^^ On July 16, without any John Myers Olin, Madison lawyer and civic planner comment on the matter, the governor signed who opposed insurance reform. all the bills into law. The rest was anticlimatic and a political Following the governor's signature of the postmortem. Editors divided much as they bills, the Northwestern quietly announced its had during the battle. Both the Stalwart Re­ intention, despite previous threats to the con­ publican paper in Milwaukee and the indepen­ trary, to remain in Wisconsin. Two other dent Milwaukee Journal opposed the insurance firms also announced they were staying, and reforms while the Wisconsin State Journal in­ the big New York firms bided their time un­ terpreted the passage as the beginning of a til they had had a chance to review the laws new era in the relationship of the insurance and get legal opinions about them. In an ad­ industry and the state. Victor Berger, the dress to the agents of the firm. Northwestern editor of the socialist paper in Milwaukee, President Palmer claimed that the legislation stated that the bills were unsatisfactory but would hurt the company's opportunities to would eventually lead to state insurance. He sell insurance. Lobbyist Olin concluded that accused the antireform faction of acting like the legislation had been passed for purely mules, animals that were a "cross of the cap­ political reasons, and he castigated Ekern's italist grafter and the ideological reformer." role in the process as being partial and un- The Stalwarts had little to show for their fair.^^ negative efforts, and the reformers had little During the autumn of 1907 a rumor began reason to be proud of the past or hopeful for to circulate among politicians and insurance the future according to Berger.^'' men that Governor Davidson would call a special session of the legislature to repeal or revise some of the provisions of the laws which were most obnoxious to the companies. ^" Wisconsin Assembly Journal, 1907, pp. 45^7; One insurance journal had claimed that the John Olin to James O. Davidson, July, 1907, H. J. Messenger to Davidson, W. A. Day to Davidson, Lin­ coln K. Passmore to Davidson, July 10, 1907, all in the Davidson Papers. Almost every insurance com­ pany sent telegrams to the governor urging him to "^ Milwaukee Journal, July 16, 1907. The Robert­ veto the legislation. son Law required companies doing business in Texas "* Wisconsin State Journal, July 10, 1907; Evening to invest a fixed percentage of their policy reserves Wisconsin, July 10 ,1907; Social Democratic Herald on Texas policies in that state. Bitterly opposed by (Milwaukee), July 13, 27, 1907; Milwaukee Sentinel, all insurance companies, this provision was not in­ July 19, 1907. corporated into the Wisconsin legislation.

226 ERLEBACHER: WISCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM laws were so complicated that neither the Beedle and Ekern had the opportunity to governor nor the insurance commissioner reply to this hostile audience. Beedle merely could understand them, and that this was the explained the statutes, concentrating on the real root of the problem.^" one dealing with the determination of ex­ The little drama reached a climax in De­ penses. Ekern engaged in a long, frank dis­ cember, since the new laws were set to become cussion. Conceding that the industry was sin­ effective on January 1, 1908. After giving the cere in its opposition, Ekern reviewed the matter some consideration. Governor David­ long history of wrong-doing exposed by the son decided not to recall the legislature. The various legislative inquiries. He strongly de­ mayor of Milwaukee, Sherburn Becker, ex­ nied that the Wisconsin legislators had acted pressed alarm that hundreds of men would in ignorance. He defended the provision lim­ be driven out of work and millions of dollars iting expenses as arbitrary, but justified it of capital would flee Milwaukee when the as the only recourse left when the companies eastern firms pulled out. Becker's comments had opposed any other reform which might may well have been colored by the universal have accomplished the same goal. He returned knowledge that he was already being touted to the principle of publicity. If the companies as the Democratic gubernatorial candidate for truly believed in this, as their statements had 1908.3^ long disclosed, he claimed the Wisconsin law In early December, Insurance Commission­ would achieve this in a manner fair to both er Beedle, Speaker Ekern and his consultant. the companies and the consumers. So self- Professor James Glover of the University of assured was Ekern of the justice of the Wis­ Michigan, traveled to New York to attend consin reforms that he guaranteed the audi­ the Association of Life Insurance Presidents' ence that if any company suffered excessive convention. They were to explain and defend costs due to this provision there would be the new laws to the industry's leaders. Led "no trouble about correcting that."^' Follow­ by the ex-President of the United States, Grov­ ing his formal presentation, Ekern responded er Cleveland, the association presumed to act to questions from the floor. To one man who as the voice of life insurance in the United expressed a fear that insurance officials would States. Cleveland scathingly attacked the Wis­ be jailed for unintentional violation of the consin legislation as being the product of of­ statutes, Ekern responded that any new law ficials who had the "political ambition of required judicial interpretation and only in­ petty demagogues." Following Cleveland, Ed­ tentional violation would lead to penal terms. ward Rhodes, the actuary of a leading eastern Ekern continued to defend against every ob­ firm, analyzed in detail those parts of the jection made and concluded by reminding the Wisconsin statutes that were most objection­ assembly that many of the provisions they able. First among these was the section deal­ now most heartily opposed were the very ones ing with expense charges. Why should Wis­ placed into the bills at the behest of the com­ consin be allowed to determine a method of panies who had objected to the earlier recom­ valuation forbidden elsewhere? Why should mendations of the investigation committee.*" the companies be forced to make annual state­ The fear of penal terms expressed at this meet­ ments to policyholders breaking down the ing was not altogether an imagined one as dividends as to their source? Another indus­ several insurance company officials were fac­ try spokesman accused the Wisconsin legis­ ing criminal charges in New York and others lature of acting in ignorance and predicted had fled the country to avoid prosecution.'*' that Wisconsin citizens would pay dearly for The question of withdrawing from Wiscon- these reforms.®^

^Milwaukee Journal, November 30, 1907; Milwau­ kee Sentinel, December 7, 1907; Proceedings of As­ ^° Eastern Underwriter, November 14, 1907; Eve­ sociation of Life Insurance Presidents, 1907, 1:25- ning Wisconsin, November 30, 1907; Milwaukee Sen­ 30. Hereafter referred to as ALIP. tinel, December 1, 1907. " ALIP, 1907, 1:102-108, 110-111, 122-123. "' Milwaukee Sentinel, December 2, 1907; Evening '"Ibid., 112-121. Wisconsin, November 30, 1907. "/6id., 125-127.

227 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

sin was still unresolved by many of the big eastern firms. Some had hoped to the last moment that Governor Davidson would call a special session of the legislature, or that Commissioner Beedle would offer some leni­ ent interpretations of the strictest provisions before the laws went into effect. When it be­ came clear that neither of these actions would occur, the companies made their move. Dur­ ing December, several middle-sized firms with­ drew, including Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati and Phoenix Mutual. The Equitable Life Assurance Society of America, the largest in the nation prior to the Armstrong hearings, also announced its departure. By the time the laws took effect twenty-three firms had left. This constituted about two-thirds of the companies that had previously done business in Wisconsin.'*^ The absence of such a large number of in­ surance companies did not cause the sudden unemployment that one Milwaukee paper had feared. Within a few months the Northwest­ ern was taking a much more studied and quiet approach to the reforms. Late in January, 1908, George Noyes told the Life Underwriters Society's Iconographic Collections of Chicago that the Wisconsin laws were work­ George H. Noyes, Northwestern Life Insurance Com­ able, and he credited the influence of his pany counselor. company upon the legislature for that. In April the Northwestern denied benefiting as its authors had hoped nor as harmful as from increased sales which otherwise might the industry spokesmen had feared. That some have gone to some of the departed companies. improvement took place as far as the policy­ That September, the Northwestern seemed al­ holder was concerned is clear. Expenses of most pleased to announce that several new writing the life insurance policy fell from 23 companies had entered Wisconsin to take up per cent of total premiums collected in 1904 the slack. Even though the Northwestern did to 17 per cent in 1909. The percentage of not announce any changes in its operations first year expenses to first year's premiums, a directly resulting from the investigation, matter of deep concern to the investigation, changes slowly took place, many of them made dropped from 61 per cent in 1904 to 51 per possible by the retirement of ocotogenarian cent in 1909. The number of lapsed policies President Palmer in the summer of 1908.*^ dropped sharply in the decade following the The Northwestern viewed the Wisconsin in­ insurance investigations. No doubt this was vestigation as a "distinct anti-climax" to the partially owing to the liberalized policy pro­ Armstrong investigation since the former did visions issued by the companies themselves. not result in any suits against the company or its officials. But it was candid enough to ad­ mit that there had been "some substance" to "Milwaukee Sentinel, December 20, 1907; ALIP, 1907, 1:128-130: R. Carlyle Buley, The Equitable the complaints of discrimination by policy­ Life Assurance Society of the United States (New holders.*'' York, 1959), 140-141. ^Milwaukee Sentinel, December 29, 1907; Field Notes, VII:6 (February, 1908), VII:8 (April, 1908), rriHE LONG-TERM EFFECTS of the Wis- VIII:1 (September, 1908) ; Williamson and Smalley, The Northwestern, 143. -*- consin reforms were neither as beneficial " Williamson and Smalley, The Northwestern, 143.

228 ERLEBACHER: WISCONSIN LIFE INSURANCE REFORM but the investigations conducted in Wiscon­ the industry was best evidenced when by 1915 sin and other states could claim some credit most of the companies that had withdrawn in for motivating the companies to make such 1908 had returned to do business in the Bad­ concessions somewhat earlier than they might ger State. have if left entirely to themselves. The great­ Insurance Commissioner Beedle was deter­ est fear of the companies, that the quantity of mined to let the new code operate for a while life insurance sold would sharply decrease, and to observe the experience of the state and did not occur. In 1900 the total amount of life the companies with it. The commissioner in­ insurance outstanding in the United States sisted that all companies which had carried on amounted to $7,573,000,000; by 1910 it had business in Wisconsin, whether or not they increased to $14,908,000,000; and by 1920 it had withdrawn, continue to report to his of­ had almost tripled to $40,540,000,000. The fice. He defended the laws as giving the in­ rate of increase between 1900 and 1920 was surance consumers, actual or prospective, real 500 per cent while the population had risen knowledge for the first time about the cost of only 40 per cent. The per capita amount of a policy. After three years of operation. Com­ life insurance had increased from $100 in missioner Beedle declared the laws successful. 1900 to $400 in 1920. The very fact that the He claimed that some policies had been re­ companies knew that they were being more duced in cost by as much as $5.57 per $1,000 closely watched by legislative bodies and by of insurance and that this reduction was due more alert insurance departments may have solely to the reduction of expenses brought had some effect on reducing their expense about by the limitation placed upon them in ratio. In 1904, prior to the national outcry, the new laws. The companies now had to the companies reporting to the Wisconsin De­ compete for the customer's business on the partment of Insurance were expending 107 basis of greater efficiency. Beedle hoped per cent of their projected expenses. By 1907 that the "lessons taught by the investigation this figure had been reduced to 86 per cent, will not be soon forgotten." He complained the difference becoming a credit to the policy­ holder's dividends. Even the complaint that continuously that the companies were pressur­ the Wisconsin investigation undermined sales ing his office for more liberal constructions of was unsupported. In 1906 insurance compa­ the law. Such influences had to be watched nies carried $518,000,000 worth of life in­ carefully so that consumers would "keep the surance on Wisconsin's citizens; in 1907, des­ advantages that have been attained." One of pite the investigations and the long debate, the strongest weapons given the department by this figure jumped to $542,000,000.*^ the 1907 legislature was the power to suspend the license of any company which discrim­ One of the results of the departure of the inated against its policyholders. The power twenty-three companies from Wisconsin in to use such authority was a threat, but its 1908 was the establishment of new companies use was not widespread.''" and increased business for those which re­ mained. Between 1908 and 1912 four new life insurance firms were founded in Wiscon­ sin—Great Northern Life Insurance Company '" Proceedings of the National Convention of In­ surance Commissioners, 1910, pp. 115-116; By 1915 (Wausau), Guardian Life Insurance Compa­ the thirty-four firms reporting to Wisconsin lapsed ny (Madison), Old Line Life Insurance Com­ 259,033 policies out of a total of 665,216 terminations for all causes. This was a substantial improvement pany (Milwaukee), and Wisconsin National over the period 1890-1906. See Wisconsin Insurance Life Insurance Company (Oshkosh). All of Report, 1916, pp. 286-287; Statistical Abstract of them carried a small volume of business, es­ the United States for 1968 (Washington, 1968), 461; Wisconsin Insurance Report, 1908, Life and Casual­ pecially when compared with the Northwest­ ty, 6-7, 11. ern Mutual of Milwaukee. But they repre­ •^ Wisconsin Insurance Report, 1912, Life and sented a trend common throughout the coun­ Casualty, 112-115; Wisconsin Insurance Report, 1908, try in the dozen years following 1905 as new Life and Casualty, 19-27; Wisconsin Insurance Re­ port, 1910, Life and Casualty, 14-15; Spencer Kim­ companies, small in comparison to the eastern ball, Insurance and Public Policy: A Study in the giants, were established. The fact that the Legal Implementation of Social and Economic Pub­ lic Policy Based on Wisconsin Records, 1835-1939 insurance code of 1907 was not too harsh for (Madison, 1960), 125.

229 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

From another standpoint, the reforms of towards Wisconsin when it declared that the 1907 cannot be seen as a complete success. state had fallen "under the baleful influence of Had they been, it might have been unnecessary Governor La Follette's most radical views."** for Ekern to propose in 1911 that a state- In a sense, the life insurance industry was in operated life insurance fund be established. a "Jekyll and Hyde" situation. It was very The "measuring stick" approach of the Pro­ much national in nature, collecting premiums gressives would have been unnecessary had and distributing benefits in all states and the reforms of 1907 been more effective in investing its proceeds wherever it felt it could accomplishing their objectives. Ekern saw do so with the least risk and the most stable the state as a better instrument than private profit. Legally, though, life insurance was not industry to encourage a sense of thrift and interstate commerce; it was not even com­ savings on the part of the common people. By merce. Thus, despite its own desires, the entering the life insurance field directly, the industry remained under state regulation. If state could help accomplish its objective of the apologist for the national view of pro­ contributing to the happiness and well-being gressivism, Herbert Croly, could complain of a larger number of its citizens. The social that in an earlier day industries could dom­ goal of life insurance would never be solely inate the states, this situation was no longer fulfilled by the private life insurance compa­ so in the early years of the twentieth century. nies since they generally dealt with that por­ The citizenry was aroused to the tactics of tion of society that was both willing and able cheap blackmail, and the states began to to plan its own security.'"^ respond by attempting some measure of real The Wisconsin insurance legislation of 1907 regulation. For industry, the result was con­ illustrates that the states were potentially a fusion and inconsistency among the states, a far stricter regulator than the federal govern­ situation they considered intolerable. Croly ment might have been. Debate on whether felt that the cure, excessive regulation, was the federal or state government should regu­ worse than the "previous neglect," and even­ late insurance raged in Congress and through­ tually the result would be recognition of the out the industry from 1900 to 1908. Many necessity of federal regulation. If federal of the largest life insurance firms, especially regulation was less effective and more unfair those in the East, realizing that some form than that by the states, the result would be a of regulation was desirable and necessary, rise of strong anti-federal feeling throughout opted for federal regulation. The industry the nation.*" may have feared a widespread imitation of the tough Wisconsin legislation because it was associated by many with the La Follette •"" Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism brand of Progressivism which had already (New York, 1963), 89-98; Western Underwriter, gained nationwide renown. This, perhaps, ex­ December 12, 1907. La Follette himself never showed the degree of direct interest in life insurance reform plains the tone of bitterness in the industry that he had in railroad regulation or in the primary election. " Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York, 1909), 351-356. Croly's discussion is " Frederic C. Howe, Privilege and Democracy in directed towards the railroad situation, but the con­ America (New York, 1910), 121. ditions of the life insurance industry were similar.

230 THE SOUTH OLD AND NEW: A REVIEW ESSAY

By MORTON SOSNA fyHERE CAN BE no doubt that the dis- of the history of the Old South lying in the ••- tinguished writings of Eugene D. Geno- rise to power of the slaveholding class; the vese and C. Vann Woodward have respective­ influence of this class on the slaves, free ly raised the level of historical inquiry into blacks, and nonslaveholding whites as well the nature of the Old and New South. Both as the impact of these other groups upon men have brought breadth of research and them; and in the reasons why the slaveholders imagination into their scholarship which has fought and lost their "War for Southern In­ deservedly won for them foUowings outside dependence." It was not a civil war, Geno­ the historical profession—no easy task for vese points out time and again In Red and most academicians—and have also set many Black, but a death struggle between two fun­ standards of debate within the profession it­ damentally different kinds of societies. South­ self. Woodward's Tom Watson: Agrarian ern culture (both white and Afro-American), Rebel (1938), The Origins of the New South, Southern distinctiveness, racism, and oppres­ 1877-1913 (1951), and Reunion and Reaction sion of black people, must be understood in (1951) are first-rate works of historical analy­ this context and treated on their own terms. sis. Genovese's The Political Economy of Slav­ What Genovese has done—I think on the ery (1965) and The World the Slaveholders whole successfully—is to use Marxian in­ Made (1969) belong in the same category. sights and analysis as a vehicle for putting Publication of anthologies which contain their the South under greater historical scrutiny latest reflections on the American South, in­ than has ever been done before. This is no cluding some of their previously published small achievement. An admirer of Italian contributions to magazines and historical jour­ Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, Genovese nals, affords an opportunity to assess some employs Marxist analysis and terminology as aspects of their work. a take-off point for further investigation and While the writings of both Woodward and inquiry rather than as a bible which explains Genovese contain considerable nuances and all to the beholders and the faithful. He re­ complexities, those of Genovese are a bit jects out of hand both the vulgar economic easier to appraise. A Marxist, Genovese be­ determinism of historians in the mold of lieves that history can best be understood by Charles A. Beard and the romanticization of analyzing why certain social classes rise to the oppressed lower classes by historians like power, how they interact with and maintain Herbert Aptheker—"fairy tales" he calls them their dominance over other social classes, and, —as poor substitutes for genuine leftist his­ finally, the manner in which competing classes tory. No one is immune from his historical drive them from power. He sees the essence hatchet. In "Marxian Interpretations of the Slave South," a review of leftist scholarship on the Civil War, Genovese classifies Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels' own writings In Red and Black: Marxian Explorations in on the subject as, of all things, un-Marxist. Southern and Afro-American History. By Such hard-boiled criticism on the short­ EUGENE D. GENOVESE. (Pantheon Books, New comings of much "radical" history has re­ York, 1971. Pp. xii, 435. Notes and index. stored the dignity of leftist scholarship within $10.00.) the American historical profession. Though American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism Genovese is personally aghast at present Uni­ in the North-South Dialogue. By C. VANN ted States foreign and domestic policies, no WOODWARD. (Little, Brown and Company, one can dismiss his writings as the senti­ Boston, 1971. Pp. 301. Notes and index. mental wailings of someone outraged at cur­ $7.95.) rent political trends. Probably more than any

231 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

other leading American historian, Genovese ruling class of the South and dominated the refuses to allow his own political views to in­ region's economy, politics, and social life. terfere with his work. "Historians who do not One need not share Phillips' racial prejudices respect historical truth, who sneer at objec­ —which Genovese feels greatly inhibited the tivity and fear disorienting the masses by lay­ man's own insights and immeasurably detrac­ ing bare the complexity, contradiction, and ted from his work—to accept the validity of tragedy that define all human experience," much of what he had to say. Says Genovese he passionately insists, "can end only by rather tersely, "there is infinitely more to serving the ruling class they think they are learn from one smart son-of-a-bitch than from opposing or, at best, some new and exploi­ an army of well-meaning fools."^ tative elite waiting to ride the waves of revo­ To be sure, Genovese's own analysis of the lutionary change."^ Good historians in other old South is not without flaws. He is some­ words are not necessarily good radicals, and times vague about what he means by such con­ good radicals are not necessarily good his­ cepts as "class" and "culture." He has not torians. Neither professors nor students demonstrated that the slaveholders were as should confuse the simplicity of this mes­ consolidated and as consistent a group as he sage with simple-mindedness. During the past maintains, at times coming precariously close few years, when the history departments of to arguing that they were so loyal to their own our leading universities have been torn asun­ world-view that, unlike the rest of us, they der by the same forces which have frazzled were incapable of making ultimate decisions the entire nation, Genovese's has been a voice out of crass, selfish, and purely economic of sanity, honesty, and dignity. Those who motives. This is surely stretching things a need to take heart can do so from these bit. Also, Genovese is far more sensitive to the essays, particularly "On Being a Socialist and intricate dynamics involved in the relationship a Historian" and "Black Studies: Trouble between master and slave than he is to the Ahead." equally complex interaction between slave­ There is no doubt that Genovese is fas­ holder and nonslaveholding white. This is a cinated by the antebellum slaveholders of the particularly glaring fault in his case inasmuch South. He finds them a distinct social class as he rests much of his argument on what he with its own world-view, generally men of characterizes as the "hegemony" of the slave­ ability and devotion to principle, and in com­ holders over the remainder of the South. If parison with other slaveholders in the West­ the hegemony of the slaveholders was as great ern Hemisphere, masters who more often as he claims—certainly a possibility—just than not looked over the material welfare of how did they manage to maintain the loyalty their bondsmen. Though he does not ignore of the nonslaveholding whites who greatly or apologize for their overt, often brutal rac­ outnumbered them? Was their patriarchal ism, Genovese claims that they recognized vision of society compromised in the process? the humanity of black people in significant Did nonslaveowning whites influence them at ways with great consequences for both the least to the same degree which their own oppressors and the oppressed.^ On the other slaves did? If Genovese himself is correct the hand, the hostility of the slaveholders' critics, slaves had a tremendous impact on their mas­ both contemporary and historical, to the whole ters. While In Red and Black does not totally system of Negro bondage prevented them from ignore such problems, Genovese would have seeing the reality of the situation. Thus Geno­ the reader accept on faith what properly de­ vese argues that Ulrich B. Phillips' American serves detailed explanation. Negro Slavery (1918) remains better on the Though primarily concerned with the slave- subject than the works of Phillips' liberal critics, particularly Kenneth M. Stampp's The Peculiar Institution (1956). Though Phillips was a white Southerner, sympathized with the ' In Red and Black, 10. slaveholders, and was a racist to boot, Geno­ ' Most vigorously argued in The World the Slave­ vese contends that Phillips' concern with the holders Made (Pantheon Books, New York, 1969). Also ibid., 276-295. planters was justified in that they were the ° In Red and Black, 261.

232 SOSNA: THE SOUTH OLD AND NEW holding planters and neglectful of nonslave­ people who did not subscribe to the plantation holding whites, Genovese demonstrates con­ ethos or its heritage. The distinction is crucial. siderable awareness and incisiveness on the The main thrust of Woodward's writings problem of what it meant to be a black slave has been to show that the post-Reconstruction in the Old South. With his customary skill in South was not the monolithic, uniquely racist separating the wheat from the chaff in his­ place that its critics have said it was. This is torical controversies—the rebelliousness vers­ true of his biography of Tom Watson, his us the docility of the slave, the pathological monumental and brilliant Origins of the New effect of slavery upon Negro family life, and South, particularly his The Strange Career of the old question of whether people of African Jim Crow, and is strongly evident in this latest origin in other parts of the Western Hemis­ collection of his writings. This is not to say phere fared better than their counterparts in that Woodward is, as some have called him, the American South—Genovese emerges as a racist and a defender of the South. He is one of the relatively few historians of slavery neither. He is, however, a vindicator of the to give black people an active rather than a Southern experience in race relations in that passive role in Southern society. In "Ameri­ he sees Southerners as no more racist than can Slaves and Their History" he offers his Northerners, attempts to chronicle those white preliminary conclusions from a proposed Southerners who at one time or another in major study which promises to add much light their lives drifted toward some measure of ra­ on the subject. Genovese tells us that the ave­ cial equalitarianism, and finds it ironic that rage Negro slave had strong family ties; that racist currents in the South prevailed over he could be rebellious at one time and docile nonracist ones. He calls his book American at other times; that house servants cannot as Counterpoint because he feels that the South a group be called Uncle Toms as they often has served as a psychological scapegoat for aided rebels and runaways from the field the rest of the country. rather than turn them in to their masters; and In "The Strange Career of a Historical Con­ that the Negro slave driver provided an all troversy," Woodward is aware of the positive important link between the field hands and implications of such a view of Southern his­ the Big House. "If their actions were less tory on native white Southerners who have bombastic and heroic than romantic historians spent a great deal of time, effort, thought, and would like us to believe," he says of the black money in combating the worst features of slaves, "they were nonetheless impressive in their region's racial caste system—people just their assertion of resourcefulness, dignity, and like C. Vann Woodward. Born in Arkansas a strong sense of self and community."* Geno­ and educated at Emory University and the vese, in short, recognizes the essential human­ University of North Carolina (both bastions ity of black people, a point which even those of racial enlightenment in the South), Wood­ outraged at racial injustice are wont to forget. ward belongs to that much-maligned group of white Southern racial liberals. These men T^HIS IS ONE of the problems with C. Vann and women, comprised largely of newspaper -•- Woodward's American Counterpoint. editors, university people, and persons con­ Though concerned with slavery and racism. nected with Southern religious denominations Woodward's essays do not deal with black have endured the vilification of Northern people as active participants in the social whites, blacks, and their fellow Southern process. He rather treats Negroes as tangen­ whites. From the 1920's up to the present, tial to the racial consciousness of white South­ racial liberals in the South have worked erners and Northerners; Afro-Americans through such organizations as the Commission emerge, if at all, as passive objects among on Interracial Cooperation, Association of people deciding what to do with them. This Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynch­ flaw in Woodward's work is comparable to ing, Southern Conference for Human Welfare, Genovese's failure adequately to assess the impact of nonslaveholding whites on Southern society. Unlike Genovese, however. Woodward is very much concerned with Southern white 'Ibid., 127.

233 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 and Southern Regional Council. Their critics the minds of elites and special groups. The have accused them of going too slow, on the impact of his Proto-Dorians on the region was one hand, and of being nigger-lovers and probably greater than that of Woodward's mongrelizers on the other. dissenters and liberals. Woodward's love and affinity for the South Another problem in evaluating Woodward's of the Southern liberals, his commitment to work is the degree of commitment to racial racial justice, and, above all, his passionate justice on the part of people whom he classi­ involvement with his subject make his work fies as dissenters. Woodward broods over the difficult to judge. Unlike Genovese, he seems "irony" of the shift of some Southerners from unable to separate historical visions from per­ positions which recognized some measure of sonal feelings. Negro rights to postures of virulent racism. This is particularly the case with "The More and more scholars, however, are coming Elusive Mind of the South," Woodward's to question such a view. Recent works by criticism of W. J. Cash. At first glance it Lawrence J. Friedman' and Charles Crowe* would appear that Woodward should have strongly challenge Woodward's contention much in common with Cash's view of the that Tom Watson in his Populist party days South, since Cash was also a Southern liberal between 1892 and 1896 represented a signifi­ deeply involved with the question of where cant hope for black people in the South. They his native region went wrong. But Cash was insist that Watson was generally anti-Negro heavily influenced by the caustic H. L. Menck­ prior to becoming a Populist, that he told en, who in the 1920's described the South as black audiences one thing and white audiences the "Sahara of the BozarL" In a 1923 letter another during his 1892 congressional cam­ to Howard W. Odum of the University of paign, and that his venemous Negrophobia North Carolina, Mencken indicated that the after 1898 is really not all that ironic. main problem with the South was "the grad­ In "A Southern Brief for Racial Equality," ual solidification into custom and law of the Woodward tries to make a Watson-type case ignorance and prejudice of a very low grade for Lewis Harvie Blair, a well-to-do Virginian of Caucasians." He believed that the best way who in 1889 wrote Prosperity of the South to stifle these people and advance the South Dependent upon the Elevation of the Negro. would be to describe them realistically.^ In The title of the book reveals its central theme, The Mind of the South (1941), Cash did just though Blair did argue that black people that, holding these "Proto-Dorians" responsi­ should be given full political rights and not ble for the political, economic, and cultural be subjected to humiliating segregation—cer­ backwardness of the South. These are not the tainly a heretical position for a Southerner to kinds of Southerners Woodward likes to dwell adopt in 1889. Yet the whole crux of Blair's upon, or when he does, as in the case of Tom argument rested on a definition of white self- Watson, he sympathetically tries to understand interest and not morality. "Just as we would their burning hatreds and prejudices. It is urge the South to improve its animals, tools. not surprising, therefore, that Woodward takes Cash to task for disregarding the South's liberal traditions and positive contributions to American life. Cash, says Woodward, "ig­ nores a great deal of evidence and disunity '' Mencken to Odum, September 10, 1923 in the Howard W. Odum Papers, Southern Historical Col­ that does not fit his thesis."" While it is true lection, University of North Carolina. Cash's rela­ that Cash did overlook dissenters from his tionship with both Mencken and Odum is discussed Proto-Dorian consensus of mindlessness, in Joseph L. Morrison, W. J. Cash: Southern Prophet (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1967). Though not Woodward forgets that these Southern dissi­ published until 1941, The Mind of the South re­ dents—antislavery men, unionists, scalawags. flects much of the thinking about the South that Republicans, independents, readjusters, popu­ was current in the 1920's. " American Counterpoint, 273. lists, and racial liberals—were indeed dis­ ' The White Savage: Racial Fantasies in the Post- senters, often very persecuted ones, from the bellum South (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., mainstream of Southern life. Cash was trying 1970), 77-98. * "Tom Watson, Populists, and Blacks Reconsid­ to portray the mass mind of the South, not ered," in the Journal of Negro History, LV:99-116 (April, 1970).

234 SOSNA: THE SOUTH OLD AND NEW and methods of planting," he argued, "so we Southerners. Nevertheless their visions were urge the elevation of the negro, because the sufficiently shortsighted to make retreats into better men and citizens they are, the more we, racism not only possible, but likely. White the whites, can in the end make out of them.'"' racial liberalism in the South was the victim Woodward suggests that Blair used practical of its own internal shortcomings as well as of arguments to make his genuine moral outrage external forces. By emphasizing merely the at racial injustice more palatable to Southern­ latter, Woodward tells only half the story. ers. In view of Blair's subsequent repudiation All this is not to deny Woodward's brilliance of his earlier views and his adoption of a as a historian or his contribution to the study blatantly racist position by 1916, such an ex­ of Southern history. However, had he been planation is not convincing. Woodward able to examine the racial consciousness of glosses over the change in Blair's thinking, white Southern liberals as critically as he did arguing that it was an ironic shift comparable that of Northern antislaverymen ("The North­ to Tom Watson's. "Blair," he says, "only ern Crusade Against Slavery"), Republican proved it could happen in Virginia too, on politicians during Reconstruction ("Seeds of the other side of the railroad tracks and in Failure in Radical Race Policy"), and the one of the finer mansions."^" acceptance of the "separate but equal" doc­ There seems to be a dynamic at work here trine by the great majority of Northerners in which Woodward fails to touch upon. In his 1896 ("The National Decision Against Equal­ zeal to provide evidence of a racially liberal ity"), American Counterpoint would have had even more to tell us about our nation's tradition in the South, he abandons the critical racial tragedy. analysis of the historian and fails adequately to account for the darker sides of that very tradition. To be sure, both Watson and Blair were for a time willing to recognize the hu­ " Prosperity of the South Dependent upon the Ele­ vation of the Negro (Richmond, 1889), 11. manity of black people more than most white ^"American Counterpoint, 211.

Lois Elsener

Mrs. Lois Elsener of the Society's business office died in a Madison hospital April 11, 1972. Born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1915, Mrs. Elsener spent most of her life in Wisconsin and was a Madison resident at the time of her death. She joined the Society's staff in 1959 and served as payroll clerk, a position which increased in complexity as new accounting methods were adopted by the state. A warm­ hearted and generous woman, Mrs. Elsener will be greatly missed by staff members for whom she performed countless favors in help­ ing them with their payroll, insurance, pen­ sion, and employees benefit problems. She is survived by a son, Richard, police chief of Island Lake, Illinois, and three grandchildren. The Board of Curators has authorized a Lois Elsener Fund in her memory. photo by Justin M. Schmiedeke

235 Communications

To THE EDITOR: sources, he made critical comments on the ethnic Guard companies in Milwaukee. I read with interest Jerry M. Cooper's arti­ If the tribute from King did not come after cle, "The Wisconsin National Guard in the the riot, I presume it was given for public Milwaukee Riots of 1886," in the Autumn, consumption, for certainly in his private cor­ 1971, issue. The article itself was generally respondence and in his later writings King accurate, but I am at a loss to account for the displayed an attitude bordering on contempt statement in the caption under the photo of toward the immigrant military organizations Alderman Theodore Rudzinski on page 45. in Milwaukee. By no stretch of the imagination could his father, August, be termed the first Polish settler in Milwaukee. I think that the matter JERRY M. COOPER was pretty well settled that it was William University of Missouri-St. Louis Stupinski who was the first Polish settler (see "Foundations of Milwaukee's Polish Commu­ (Editor's note: The caption material identify­ nity" in our Historical Messenger, 26:3, Sep­ ing Alderman Rudzinski's father as Milwau­ tember, 1970, pp. 88 //.). However, even kee's first Polish settler was taken verbatim without the benefit of this recent scholarship from Andrew J. Aikens and Lewis A. Proctor the claim was not advanced in favor of Rud­ (eds.). Men of Progress, Wisconsin (Milwau­ zinski, as most historians had named An­ kee, 1897), pp. 427—428, obviously an unre­ thony Kochanck as the first settler. Stupinski liable source. The editors are grateful to Mr. at the latest was here in 1844, Kochanck at Carroon for his clarification.) the earliest 1848, and Rudzinski not until 1859 (see History of Company K 125th In­ To THE EDITOR: fantry 32nd Division, Wisconsin National Guard, 1874-1924, pp. 8-9). Incidentally, I Congratulations to Ronald Smith for his would like to know if Mr. Cooper cites this article, "Athletics in the Wisconsin State Uni­ history in his bibliography, not only because versity System, 1867-1913" (Autumn, 1971). of the information on the Poles but also be­ He did a magnificent job in researching, and cause of the "Tribute" to the Kosciusko I learned a great deal from his fine article. Guards by General Charles King, which pre­ I grew up in Platteville where my father, sents a slightly different picture of the general William James Sutherland, was president of than that in Mr. Cooper's article. Platteville Normal from 1909 to his death in 1915. I recall some of the presidents of other normal schools who were guests in our home. ROBERT G. CARROON I was only in grade school at the Normal, but Milwaukee County Historical Society I recall vividly the school's athletic teams, and Mr. Smith describes the coaching situation very accurately. My brother played on the TO THE EDITOR: Normal basketball team, and I learned to play In my notes or bibliography I can find no the game in the Normal gym. I believe my reference to the history of Company K re­ father introduced the idea of high school bas­ ferred to in Mr. Carroon's letter. I suspect ketball games, or rather tournaments, in Wis­ that the "tribute" he refers to came from consin, and I was interested to see if Mr. General King after the riot. Most of the refer­ Smith would mention this. High school bas­ ences to King's attitudes toward not only the ketball teams came to Platteville and other Kosciusko Guard but also to other immigrant state normal schools and participated in dis­ guard companies in Milwaukee in my paper trict tournaments. Later the tournament was came from letters he wrote to Adjutant General handled differently, but I played in one of Chandler P. Chapman, in the Chapman Pa­ the Platteville tournaments when I attended pers, Archives-Manuscripts Division, State Prairie du Chien high school and also played Historical Society of Wisconsin, and in a in two tournaments at Whitewater Normal and column on National Guard affairs King wrote when I was attending Madison High School. for the Milwaukee Sunday Telegraph in 1885 I also recall my father having "Cub" Buck, and early 1886. Later in his life King also one of the football greats at Wisconsin, visit wrote a series of memoirs for the Wisconsin the campus, possibly as a coaching candidate. Magazine of History ("Memories of a Busy Life," 5:215-243, 360-381, 1921-1922; 6: E. R. SUTHERLAND 3-313, 165-188, 1922-1923.) In both these Appleton

236 REVIEWS

STATE AND REGIONAL nomic effects of the depression of 1857. A vivid account of day-to-day life within the German community is also provided on mat­ German-American Pioneers in Wisconsin & ters such as weddings, holiday celebrations, Michigan: The Frank-Kerler Letters, 1849- births, educational experiences, travel, illness, 1864. Originally edited by Louis F. FRANK; and death. edited with introduction by HARRY H. AN­ One particularly relevant aspect of the cor­ DERSON, translated by MARGARET WOLFF. respondence is the apparent speed with which (Milwaukee County Historical Society, Mil­ the immigrants achieved local prominence. waukee, 1971. Pp. xxiv, 600. Illustrations, Three factors seemed to contribute to this maps, appendices, index. $12.50.) success in the Frank-Kerler experience. Un­ like many immigrants in America, initially In 1911, Dr. Louis F. Frank, a prominent these Germans had considerable economic Milwaukee physician with a considerable in­ means at their disposal. Hence, on his arrival terest in history, edited and published a col­ near Milwaukee in 1849, not only was John lection of family letters under the title Pio- Kerler able to purchase 200 acres of rich farm­ nierjahr der deutsch-amerikanishen familien land and a considerable amount of livestock, Frank-Kerler in Wisconsin und Michigan, but he also built a large barn and two-storey 1849-1864. The correspondence, recently house with a cellar. While lack of previous translated by the Milwaukee County Historical farm experience was a significant disadvan­ Society, concerned the American settlement tage faced by the Kerlers, their unusually fine and early years of two German immigrant education made possible the transition to a families, the Franks from Dietlingen in Ba­ new profession. The final advantage favoring den who located near Saginaw, Michigan, the Kerlers was their settlement in a German and the Kerlers from Memmingen in Bavaria community. Since large numbers of Germans who settled in the Milwaukee area of Wiscon­ were already settled near Milwaukee, they sin. did not undergo the problems incumbent The subject matter of the collection covers upon being part of a minority group. a variety of topics: the development of a suc­ These generalizations also can be applied cessful Milwaukee business; agricultural prac­ to the case of the Michigan settlement and tices of the time; attitudes of the German- August Frank, who eventually moved from Americans on subjects such as the Civil War, Saginaw to Milwaukee where he developed political parties, and the draft; and the eco­ a highly successful dry goods business. If the

237 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

Frank-Kerler experience is indicative of other German immigrants who settled in Wisconsin and Michigan, it becomes quite clear as to how and why they were able to establish themselves as such a strong political, social, and economic force. The Frank-Kerler letters certainly do, as is stated in the introduction, ^€..> "loom large as a primary historical source for the period 1850 to 1864." Notwithstanding the obvious importance of the collection, there are some disappointing aspects. Although the causes of the immigra­ tions are not totally ignored, much more de­ tail would have been welcomed. It is likely, too, that many readers will be confused by the large number of participants in the corre­ spondence and their interrelationships despite the biographical sketches, a very useable in­ dex, and Mr. Anderson's outstanding intro­ duction and numerous clarifying footnotes.

Also, some readers might have appreciated in­ •^^ clusion of the original German poetry. None of these criticisms is significant enough to detract from the importance of the corres­ pondence, and some of the problems obviously could not be avoided. Although translations can sometimes de­ stroy and pervert the original meaning of .•>-.> a:,, s K Ml li^" i^-Jiic Collections the writer, such is not the case in this work. Margaret Wolff's translation is readable and Charles Kenneth Leith photographed on a 1900 field trip. accurate. Mr. Anderson and the Milwaukee County Historical Society should be highly commended for undertaking this project in geological scholar-consultant. His personal the interest of making more useful and avail­ successes led him from a modest appointment able an historically important segment of in 1897 as an assistant geologist with the Milwaukee's German heritaee. United States Geological Survey to service as the nation's Chief of Metals and Minerals JACK DUKES during World War II. Carroll College This study represents a major effort in primary research. McGrath drew upon the voluminous Leith papers in Madison and Washington, D.C, which included personal Charles Kenneth Leith: Scientific Adviser. and official correspondence, class notes, un­ By SYLVIA WALLACE MCGRATH. (University published drafts of speeches, publications, and of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1971. Pp. xii, consulting records. She supplemented these 255. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. materials by interviews or correspondence $15.00.) with over 150 individuals who had known Leith well. The basically chronological ap­ Reading Sylvia Wallace McGrath's render­ proach adopted by McGrath provided for a ing of the noted geologist Charles Kenneth gradual unfolding of Leith's varied activities Leith produces both respect for her thorough­ and allowed her to focus on particularly im­ ness as a researcher and disappointment over portant phases of his career. The final product her limited critical perspective. Her subject is an informative biography which clarifies was one of the more fascinating academics to Leith's reputation as a geologist. have graced the halls of the University of Wis­ The relationship that Leith developed with consin. Enterprising, articulate, dogmatic, Charles R. Van Hise rightly occupies a large and, by the time of his death in 1956, a self- part of the early chapters. A pioneering geol­ made millionaire, Leith had a lone career as a ogist in the 1880's and 1890's and, from 1903

238 BOOK REVIEWS to 1918, president of the University of Wis­ tainer of $7,500. He also specialized in short- consin, Van Hise befriended Leith early in term projects with major industrial corpora­ his undergraduate days and later guided him tions like United States Steel. At other times, into geological studies. It was Van Hise who he formed his own iron and oil speculation got Leith a position with the Geological Sur­ firms. By his death, Leith had amassed an vey and his initial appointment on the Wis­ estate valued at about $1,700,000. consin faculty. In 1903, Van Hise persuaded For all her considerable research, McGrath Leith to remain at the university and success­ refrained from critically judging a man who fully pressed the Board of Regents to grant sought to advance his own personal interests his protege a full professorship. Under Van with information gained as a public servant. Hise's sympathetic eye, Leith quickly assumed She essentially ignores the conflict between leadership in the department and, after 1907, Leith as a disinterested scientist and as a was awarded the chairmanship. Following partisan businessman. Thus, McGrath sacri­ his mentor's earlier research, Leith estab­ fices an opportunity to explore an ethical lished himself as a major figure in Precam- dilemma experienced increasingly by many brian geology. He co-authored with Van Hise twentieth-century university professionals in the famous Monograph 52: The Geology of fields that include outside consulting work. the Lake Superior Region (1911) and wrote McGrath could have effectively utilized Leith's or co-authored three important texts in struc­ career as an early case study of how one tural geology. His reputation as an expert prominent individual resolved this question in in mineral deposits brought Leith key gov­ favor of private gain; that she chose not to ernmental appointments in both World War I do so is an unfortunate defect in an otherwise and II and made him an internationally rec­ notable accomplishment. ognized scientist, as seen in his work in the 1950's with the Combined Policy Committee RONALD M. JOHNSON on joint British-American efforts to develop Cleveland State University greater atomic energy resources. From 1903 to 1935, Leith controlled a de­ partment distinguished by such geologists as Alexander N. Winchell, William H. Twen- hofel, Warren J. Mead, and Fredrik T. True Tales of the Great Lakes. By DWIGHT Thwaites. As chairman, Leith never enjoyed BoYER. (Dodd, Mead and Company, New close relations with his colleagues, partly be­ York, 1971. Pp. ix, 340. Illustrations, maps, cause of his forceful manner in handling de­ bibliography, index. $6.95.) partmental affairs. He also spent great amounts of time away from the university on Dwight Boyer has been around ships and consulting or governmental work and these sailors plying the Great Lakes for most of absences irritated many members of the de­ his journalistic life. As a reporter in Toledo partment. McGrath suggested that another and, more recently, as a feature writer for the source of tension between Leith and his fellow Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday magazine, he associates stemmed from their resentment has covered the waterfronts from Duluth to over his tendency to "sell himself and to turn Buffalo. Inevitably his travels have seen him each situation to his own advantage." After "sharing messes" on the boats and quaffing 1935, Leith turned his attention to govern­ beer in waterfront dives as he picked up mental concerns and private business interests. good sailorman yarns about Great Lakes ship­ Nothing more clearly reveals Leith's op­ ping. With a reputation gained as a news­ portunistic nature than his private consulting paperman and by his authoring two previous and mineral speculation activities. Early in books about lake boats and men, he has also his career, and in collaboration with Van cracked the inner sanctums of that closely Hise, Leith applied the valuable knowledge knit fraternity—the lake shipping company acquired in surveying the Mesabi iron range offices. He has a good working knowledge of for the Geological Survey and in advising what the business of boats is about from the Minnesota and Michigan state mineral tax viewpoint of the common seaman to that of evaluations to develop a lucrative enterprise the company president. as a consultant on iron ore deposits. In the In his latest effort. True Tales of the Great late 1920's, for example, his relationship with Lakes, Boyer has shown considerable improve­ Pickands Mather netted him an annual re­ ment in moving away from the folklore and

239 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

closer to a valid coverage of events. Yet the carnival-type exhibition. Certainly if her hull small details included to tantalize the lake was made of teak, she would have been broken buff do not bore the armchair enthusiast. up in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1942, rather than This is attributed to many years of newspaper being permitted to suffer her ultimate ignomi­ experience and of knowing the basic outlooks nious fate. and attitudes of the participants involved in However, given the scattered available doc­ the yarns. The author writes in such a com­ umentation, it is impossible to write about the fortable style that picking up a Boyer book is history of lake shipping without making er­ like putting on a favorite pair of slippers. On­ rors. The last several chapters are devoted to ly a pipe, a roaring fire, with perhaps a the "Big Storm" of 1913. Though again repet­ howling blizzard outside, complete the ideal itive, these accounts make the entire book circumstances for being captured by this vol­ worthwhile. Boyer has captured the full flavor ume. and pathos of the storm which snuffed out so The romance of the lakes is found on every many lake vessels and lives. He has done page. The reader finds himself entranced with it in such a personal manner that all other ac­ accounts of the losses of such ancient vessels counts of the storm must fall by the wayside. as the Lady Elgin and G.P. Griffith. Present Boyer's research and writing style fill a generations can relate to more recent occur­ limbo between folklore and valid history. So rences as the halcyon rumrunning days of long as the reader expects no more than this, Prohibition and the tragic loss of life in the he can gain a full measure of enjoyment from fall of 1940. Yet Boyer, despite his jour­ the pipe, the fire, the howling wind, and this nalistic skills, falls into the same pattern that pleasurably contagious volume. has snared others before him. Many of the chapters, all of which are separate literary RICHARD J. WRIGHT packages, are a rehash of events already cov­ Northwest Ohio—Great Lakes Research ered by such lake authors as Dana Bowen, Center-BGSU Walter Havighurst, and William Ratigan. As such there is little new material or insight to be gained—only Beyer's superb use of adjec­ Portrait of the Past: A Photographic Journey tives and flare for the dramatic. It is dis­ Through Wisconsin. By HOWARD MEAD, JILL couraging to expect a new treatment of the DEAN, and SUSAN SMITH. Designed by WIL­ Eastland disaster, only to find the officers LIAM T. POPE. (Wisconsin Tales and Trails, and owners of the vessel again being casti­ Inc., Madison, 1971. Pp. 176. Illustrations. gated. Boyer apparently went to the Chicago $12.50.) newspapers as a source. Attributing the loss to an incorrectly filled ballast tank somehow Some excellent pictorial histories have been leaves the combination of events which published recently. Seldom has a better one caused the accident as nebulous and halftold been put together than this. It is gratifying to as before. One also wonders if the talent of find it an all-Wisconsin production about Wis­ Clarence Darrow in representing the officers consin. at their trial is much underplayed. This state has a diverse and colorful his­ Other insinuations and inaccuracies will tory. This book, mainly through pictures, tells make the true nautical fanatic suspicious of its story in concise and scholarly fashion. the author's research techniques. For exam­ With restraint and economy the editors have ple, the Eastland couldn't have competed with let the pictures themselves carry the narrative. the steamer Goodtime on the Cedar Point run The captions are just complete enough to give in 1914 since the latter vessel did not obtain the necessary clues. Then the old photographs that name for another ten years. It also is take over and tell what happened, how the difficult to imagine a marine engineer on people lived, dressed and ate, worked and the steamer Sevona having had any more of a played. difficult time in handling the oars of a life­ The story starts with high drama. Dozens of boat than did his deckhand counterpart inas­ books have recorded the almost sixty years of much as they both attended the same fire and logging the state's great white pine forests. lifeboat drills. One must also question an Tbe fifteen pages of photographs in the open­ entire chapter being devoted to the old Aus­ ing chapter on "The Days of the Lumberjack" tralian prison ship Success, when her sole report this saga better than many of the impact on lake shipping was that of a floating books.

240 BOOK REVIEWS

SHSW — Van Schaick Collection A tightly bodiced Wisconsin farm woman proudly displays her crown of thorns plant in this turn-of-the-century photograph. "A Rural Remembrance" tells of our heri­ rapher. Wisconsin was blessed with some tage from the Wisconsin farm. How did the good ones, men and women with technical farm family of the last century plow, build dexterity and imagination, people like Henry barns, trap the beaver, make soap, spin wool? H. Bennett, Charles Van Schaick, Effie Hew­ These ancient and largely lost techniques are lett, and W. R. Parks. Their talent, and that vividly recorded. of others like them, made this book possible. The book is divided into appropriate sec­ There's something in this book for almost tions. The titles of the chapter headings and everyone. Those above fifty will get a nostal­ the pictures that follow are a tribute to the gic thrill and many a laugh as they turn the judgment and skill of the editors. From the pages. Youngsters with a flair for history will thousands of prints at their disposal, they find the book an invaluable source. made admirable choices. The village, the Wisconsin already is in debt to Howard city, men in motion, the life of leisure, the Mead and his colleagues for their splendid fabric of life, each show a clear facet of quarterly magazine, Wisconsin Trails. The the gemstone that was early Wisconsin. debt grows with the publication of Portrait of the Past. It records the state's life from the Photography was a new art form, or craft, 1850's into the early 1920's. Now we urge when the state's modern history was begin­ volume two to bring us up to date. ning. We are reminded that "cameras were just beginning to capture the scene when Fort Sumter fell and President Lincoln called DON ANDERSON Madison for 75,000 volunteers." One reads of the development of the wet plate, successor to the (Mr. Anderson is emeritus pub­ daguerreotype, in 1850's, and the techni­ lisher of the Wisconsin State Jour­ cal difficulties facing the pioneer photog­ nal.)

241 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

Four in a Wild Place. By JOHN STALLARD. have been the only straight jack pine in Wis­ (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1971. consin, trimmed it with popcorn and paper Pp. 245. Illustrations. $6.95.) ornaments, and exchanged small handmade gifts. They saw scarlet tanagers and indigo On Tuesday, June 13, 1967, John and buntings, and caught a fine trout in Roche Sandra Stallard of Brookfield, Wisconsin, did a Cri Creek, and made maple syrup in the a crazy thing: they quit their jobs as news­ spring. After a month or two their son paperman and housewife, sold their Pontiac, Johnny stopped stuttering. Clearly they found rented their house, and went off with their great happiness, and John Stallard tells of it two small children to live in the past. with sensitivity and good humor. In distance they went about 180 miles, be­ But Stallard is a wiry, independent man, tween Brookfield and an abandoned 880-acre and he does not romanticize their life in a farm near Big Flats in Adams County; in wild place. When his horse runs away he reality they traveled backward at least seventy- swears grandly, and when a band of dull, vi­ five years, to a time and place where the basic cious deerhunters invades his posted land he acts of life—cooking a meal, drawing a cup confronts them, carbine leveled, in a scene of water, going to the toilet—required fore­ right out of Shane. thought and hardihood. At a time when all There is a fair amount of how-to-do-it in the hip people were going back to the land, this book, and some nice nature writing; but either to build domes or worship the dirt or it is neither a guide to homesteading nor a revive old communitarian dreams, the Stal- call for a new order of society. It is simply a lards went for simple and quite different rea­ memoir of a year spent in the last century. sons. The city was making them sick, and As such, it should be of interest to historians they wanted to see if they could go away and of the farming frontier, most of whom have make it on their own. They knew nothing never stuck a pig or hand-fashioned a buggy about gardening, animal husbandry, canning, shaft. haying, slaughtering, or woodchopping; their hogs suffocated before they even got to Big PAUL H. HASS Flats; their chickens wouldn't lay; and their State Historical Society of Wisconsin vegetables, planted with infinite love and hard work in the thin sand of Adams County, were wiped out by a cruel early frost. They stubbornly learned—if not how to How Shall They Hear Without a Preacher?: prosper, at least how to survive. What they The Life of Ernest Fremont Tittle. By ROBERT could not grow themselves they bought from MOATS MILLER. (University of North Caro­ their neighbors and canned on "the black mon­ lina Press, Chapel Hill, 1971. Pp. xii, 524. ster," Sandra's cookstove. They found a man Notes, index. $12.50.) to shoe their skittish mare, and they set a hundred posts to fence her in. They wrestled One could easily confront with skepticism hand-to-hoof with a 200-pound hog, butchered an expensive and long biography of a gen­ it as it had not been done in Big Flats since erally forgotten Methodist minister named the 1890's, and shelf-cured the meat in a back Ernest Fremont Tittle. In almost all respects, room of the house. They made their infre­ however, Robert Moats Miller's biography quent trips to town by bicycles or on horse­ of Tittle gives needed detail and sympathetic back, read and worked by the light of kero­ understanding to the Social Gospel movement sene lamps (greatly overrated, they felt), pre­ based on attention to the working minister of scribed most of their own medicines, and one of Methodism's richest and most success­ sawed, chopped, split, and stacked their own ful institutional churches. firewood. Their one concession to modernity Miller's biography covers Tittle's career —made during an emergency in the iron grip with the First Methodist Church in Evanston, of midwinter—was a gasoline-powered chain Illinois, from 1918 to 1949. The economic saw. security and almost complete support his con­ They knew endless hard work, and count­ gregation gave him freed Tittle for active less small pleasures. Lacking refrigeration, participation on Methodist official boards, so­ they chilled their occasional highballs with cial-service organizations, and pacifist organ­ well water and flavored them with choke- izations. Indeed, the most convincing parts of cherries. At Christmas they cut what may this biography, those where the reader feels

242 BOOK REVIEWS close contact with the subject, come with Tit­ Tittle's deeds and pronouncements and least tle's efforts to persuade denominational attracted to his theology. The theology groups to commit themselves to racial equality amounts to an optimistic position without and world peace. the evidence of much mental struggle or great Tittle had moments of rare courage. In change. Miller presents Tittle's theology but 1920, when super-patriotic fervor gripped does not give it much analysis. He recognizes, Evanston, he permitted in his church, and but does not fully admit, that Tittle's style then later defended, an address by Brent Dow of theology, in later years, came in for valid Allison, a conscientious objector during World criticism from thinkers like Karl Barth and War I and indeed a "slacker" according to Reinhold Niebuhr who could not agree that the Chicago Tribune. On the race issue. Tit­ God has stamped his image on decent men, or tle tried to acquaint his congregation with that the future of God's providence lies with the second-rate treatment their city gave to the co-operating hands of men. blacks. And, in 1936, he resisted the long- awaited reunification of the northern and HUGH H. KNAPP southern branches of Methodism because California State College—Hayward merger plans included the segregation of Ne­ gro Methodists into one Jurisdiction. Also, in (An illustrated article, "Method­ a congregation led by Chicago bankers, law­ ism, The Negro, and Ernest Fre­ yers, and railroad officials, he was an out­ mont Tittle," by Robert Moats spoken socialist in the 1920's and 1930's. Miller, can be found in the Winter And even after Pearl Harbor Tittle held to 1960-1961 (vol. 44) issue of the pacifism despite the charges of uninvolvement Magazine.) and utopianism. Professor Miller has researched his sub­ ject well using an impressive number of per­ A Study in Boss Politics: William Lorimer sonal letters, sermons, essays, interviews, and of Chicago. By JOEL ARTHUR TARR. (Uni­ the reports of Methodist bodies on which Tit­ versity of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1971. Pp. tle served. Chapters on the "First Church Fel­ xi, 376. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, lowship," "Worship in First Church under maps, index. $12.50.) Tittle," and "The Theory and Practice of Prophetic Preaching" seem overly long. Per­ English-born William Lorimer emerged haps Miller has devoted too much space to from Chicago's ethnic and Catholic West laudatory tribute and has given more than Side to become a boss in the Republican Cook necessary to convince us that Tittle tried to County and Chicago political organization in lead his congregation to integrity in worship the 1890's. He served seven terms in the and genuine human community. This tenden­ United States House of Representatives and cy, however, is redeemed by less parochial dis­ part of one in the United States Senate where cussion on the themes and movements which he reached the pinnacle of his power. Then he were the moral thrust of Methodism and much was tripped up by the free and easy ways of Il­ of Protestantism in the period Miller sees in­ linois politics. Charged with buying the votes fluenced by "The Passing of Protestant Amer­ of an Illinois legislature which gratefully sent ica." Indeed, the very thoughtful discussions him to the U.S. Senate, that national body ex­ of Prohibition and other movements would pelled Lorimer and from 1912 he went down­ help any student understand the hopes and hill politically until his death in 1934. His fears of Yankee Protestants and would re­ days as a Chicago boss were not especially move some of the blinds which H. L. Men­ marked with great success since the city had a cken's stereotypes have imposed. tendency to support Democrats at the local Professor Miller feels that Tittle rose above level. Lorimer's candidates for mayor, for some of the narrower concerns of his church example, lost three consecutive elections, all and background because of a solid grounding to the Democratic opponent. Carter Harrison in the ethical demands of the Bible, and be­ H. cause of an abiding faith in a transcendent Professor Tarr's sketch of Lorimer fits the God who seeks men to participate in his re­ generalized picture of the political boss: Lori­ demptive work and who gives men an eternal mer did not drink or smoke, seems to have hope beyond history. Perhaps, as with the So­ been a good family man, kept his word, and cial Gospel as a whole, one is most attracted to acted as a mediator between his foreign-born

243 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 and ethnic constituents and their new urban stead of precise percentages, thereby losing environment. He used the spoils of patron­ some of the richness that would have been age to reward his friends and build up his preserved had an alternate technique, the personal power. Tarr describes Lorimer in Pearson product-moment correlation coeffi­ Professor Edward C. Banfield's language as cient, been employed. No explanation is of­ a "private regarding" man opposed to "pub­ fered for this choice. lic regarding" reformers. Professor Tarr's Whether a "computer analysis of voting views of reformers and bosses are also in­ and demographic trends supports Tarr's inter­ formed by Robert K. Merton, Samuel P. pretations" (as the dust jacket claims) cannot Hays, and other theorists of that subject. be seen from the text or the appendixes since Tarr says in the preface that his study is the most vital correlation matrixes are not to intended "more as a study of political be­ be found anywhere in the book. This is an es­ havior and of a political system than as a pecially curious omission given the fact that traditional biography." Political behavior, Tarr has included some raw demographic da­ however, seems to be the author's main inter­ ta and some relatively low-level analytical ta­ est. The main line of interpretation is one bles such as intra- and inter-election correla­ which readers may be familiar with from the tions in the appendix. The key correlation studies of Paul Kleppner, Richard J. Jensen, matrixes that should have been included were Michael F. Holt, and others, and holds that those that paired and correlated the variables ethnocultural considerations such as religion, of ethnicity and religion with voting behavior. nationality, and the life-style inherent in It is upon these variables, after all, that an them, were more significant determinants of "ethnocultural" interpretation of politics rests, voting behavior than socio-economic or other and not intra- and inter-election correlations. factors. According to Tarr the "chief inter­ Why these analytical tables are missing is est" of the voters was in "protecting their perhaps answered in a closing remark in the cultural norms and lifestyle." Although Tarr appendix in which Tarr says: "Oftentimes does see in his Chicago data the political in­ correlation coefficients furnished a confusing fluence of economic forces, such as the de­ picture of relationships between political and pression of 1893, he credits more influence demographic variables, and interpretations to ethnocultural factors. The period under were therefore based upon a combination of study (roughly 1890 to 1912) was not suffi­ the correlation coefficients and empirical da­ ciently examined nor the size of the political ta." The inclusion of the relevant correla­ unit (one city) sufficiently large to enter any­ tion matrixes would have made a salutary ad­ thing like a definitive judgment on that ques­ dition to this book and would have enabled tion. Nevertheless, this work in its broad out­ readers to judge the strength of the relation­ lines tends to substantiate an ethnocultural ships between religion, ethnicity, and voting interpretation of turn-of-the-century politics. behavior in the elections examined in Boss Lorimer's Chicago. One can well appreciate the difficulties that Professor Tarr and students of urban politics MELVIN G. HOLLI face with shifting ward and precinct bounda­ University of Illinois at Chicago Circle ries, the difficulty of comparability over long periods of time, and the problem of dealing with economically, ethnically, and religiously heterogeneous voting units. Although there GENERAL HISTORY is no easy formula for dealing with such prob­ lems, John M. Allswang in his study of Chica­ Cold War and Counterrevolution: The For­ go displayed unusual ingenuity in improvising eign Policy of John F. Kennedy. By RICHARD ethnically comparable voting units. Tarr, fac­ J. WALTON. (The Viking Press, New York, ing similar problems, relied heavily upon Paul 1972. Pp. 250. Notes, bibliography, index. Kleppner's findings for the 1890's and in the $7.95.) period after 1900 used a combination of eth­ nic and religious indicators to establish the Cold War and Counterrevolution is a mixed character of his electoral districts. bag, trenchant in some aspects, superficial In his statistical analysis of voting data in others. Its basic thesis is boldly stated and Tarr opted for the use of the Spearman rank- repeatedly stressed: John F. Kennedy was order correlation coefficient, a measurement never a liberal, either as a Congressman or as of association that uses simple rankings in­ a Senator, and "as President he prosecuted

244 BOOK REVIEWS the Cold War more vigorously, and thus more does, that he would have done so because the dangerously, than did Eisenhower and same advisers who led Johnson towards a Dulles." Walton deserves praise for his lucid greater commitment in that conflict were and engaging style and for his judicious Kennedy men ignores what Walton acknowl­ choice of words to describe disapproval of edges in his accounts of other crises: that Kennedy's actions. The author seldom strikes Kennedy at times went against the counsel of for the jugular; rather, he gently but firmly his aides. Furthermore, the advisers were not condemns, while carefully giving Kennedy totally monolithic in their views. modest credit for deeds which suggested a A key fault of Kennedy's, and one that less rigid approach to American Cold War Walton substantially ignores, was his failure policy. But, Walton concludes, "Whatever his to use his prestige and popularity to educate achievements in less significant areas, what­ the public on the realities of a changing world. ever he might have done later," Kennedy's One of the most critical functions of leader­ real monuments were Cuba, Berlin, and Viet­ ship is education. Kennedy made a valiant nam. effort to destroy old myths about economics. He was much less diligent about doing the Current interest in reappraising the whole same thing regarding international relations. of America's Cold War ideology and policy makes a realistic assessment of Kennedy's Kennedy was no paragon of foreign policy diplomacy exceedingly timely. Since it is dif­ virtue, and Walton quite properly takes him ficult to deny that Kennedy was essentially to task for his faults and for the dangers a Cold Warrior, Walton's effort at demythify- they created. Yet Kennedy was no rigid ing the slain President and his New Frontier ideologue as the author suggests. Historians will likely win the applause of many lay read­ of the future will likely lower Kennedy's post- ers and scholars. But Walton, as far too assassination reputation as a President. But many critics of American foreign policy are they will likely also treat his conduct of for­ prone to do, tends to separate presidential eign affairs more favorably than Walton does. leadership from the mood of the people at the JIM F. HEATH time. He thus appraises actions between Portland State University 1961 and 1963 by the attitudes of the late sixties and early seventies. Presidents are politicians; to win elections they must not The First American: A Story of North Amer­ move too far from the mainstream of the ican Archaeology. By C. W. CERAM (Har­ voters. This may be an unpleasant fact, but court Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, 1971. it is a fact. John F. Kennedy barely defeated Pp. xxi, 357. Illustrations, notes, bibliogra­ Richard Nixon in 1960. It is inconceivable phy, maps, index. $9.95.) that he could have been elected had he moved substantially away from the position on for­ C. W. Ceram (Kurt W. Marek), best known eign policy that he expressed during the cam­ for his book Gods, Graves, and Scholars, has paign. Significantly, in a Gallup Poll of now turned his pen to popularizing New World April, 1960, only 18 per cent of the public archeology. While he does manage to con­ believed America was spending too much for vey some of the richness and variety of the defense. prehistoric North American cultures, the book As President, Kennedy took a hard line is marred by numerous errors of fact, and— against Communism, especially in 1961 and despite his disclaimer in the preface—un­ 1962. But he deserves more credit than Wal­ necessarily romantic interpretations. Ceram ton gives him for beginning to recognize in obviously foresaw many objections to his 1963 that the traditional Cold War policies treatment of the development of North Ameri­ were no longer viable. The Cuban missile can archeology by beginning the subtitle with crisis convinced him that a new approach, "A Story." To be fair, there is a lot of ma­ symbolized by the nuclear test ban agreement, terial to be covered and personalities to be was essential to prevent an atomic holocaust. plumbed. Nevertheless, his choice of sources To claim that Kennedy was more of a Cold is extremely suspect in several cases. Warrior than John Foster Dulles frankly con­ The book is generally organized following tradicts the evidence that the President was the chronological order in which archeological not frozen in his attitude and was willing to discoveries were made and theories set forth. change. He may or may not have escalated It begins by paying homage to Thomas Jef­ the war in Vietnam. To argue, as Walton ferson as the first scientific excavator in

245 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

American archeology and then proceeds with that the trees had any great antiquity. several chapters describing the first contacts Ceram also betrays his lack of familiarity between Europeans (Columbus, the Vikings, with the literature with a rather startling se­ and the Spaniards) and the aboriginal inhab­ ries of errors: the Moore who dug through itants of North America. A description of pio­ so many mounds in the Southeast was not neering archeological work in the Southwest Cyrus, but rather Clarence Bloomfield Moore; occupies the next three chapters. it is Monk's Mound at Cahokia not Monk The text then shifts to a discussion of the Mound; the large cache of pipes was found nature of archeology, with additional chap­ in the Tremper not Trapper Mound; the Eto­ ters on stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating, and wah Mounds are said by Ceram to have been tree-ring dating. These are all reasonably "almost leveled" when seen by the Spaniards, well handled, although I think few archeolo- yet in the next sentence he mentions the gists would agree with the statement, "With description by Cornelius who stated in 1819 pottery humanity's culture begins" (his em­ that one of the mounds was at least seventy- phasis). five feet high; it was John Cotter not John With his dates and techniques in hand, Cutter who worked at Clovis; and, finally, the Ceram returns the narrative to the Southwest man's name on page 280 is T. D. Stewart, for the next few chapters and then includes a not Steward. chapter on maize and its importance. While The most serious error occurs on page 218 Ceram's treatment of the Southwest is good where, in a direct quote that is even italicized to adequate, his attempts on the subject of for emphasis, Ceram says "Adena ranges from mounds in the eastern part of the country are about 500 to 900 A.D., and Hopewell, espe­ mediocre to atrocious. A sour taste begins to cially in the north, existed from about 900 develop in one's mouth when he reads the to 1150 A.D." The article from which he very first page in this section and encounters quotes actually gives the dates for Adena as the term "Mound Builders." Instead of phas­ 800 to 100 B.C. and for Hopewell, 100 to 500 ing this outdated and misleading "code-word" A.D. The dates Ceram uses do occur in an out of existence, he persists in using it even earlier paragraph of the article and apparently while admitting that modern archeologists do represent a transposition. In any case this is not like it and gives their reasons. Artificial an important error and represents a serious romance is found in the same sentence when scholarly lapse on the part of the author. he speaks of "Mound Builders" as a "postu­ The implicit cultural connection between lated people, of whom little is known." This the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio and the simply is not true. effigy mounds of Wisconsin which Ceram es­ He then attacks Caleb Atwater's pioneer­ tablishes is misleading and completely false. I ing work. Description of the Antiquities am also sure that the people who constructed Discovered in the State of Ohio, as being the effigy mounds knew exactly what they "full of errors" and "curiously wrong- had done and did not need a bird's-eye view to headed," while praising a book by Friedrich appraise adequately their creations. Further­ W. Assail, which is in large part an almost more, very large mounds are relatively rare. literal translation of Atwater, a fact which The shapes of most mounds can be made out Ceram does not note, but which was pointed quite adequately from ground level. out by the noted American bibliographer Other interpretations are equally fanciful. Joseph Sabin over a century ago. Apparently The copper breastplates found in a very few Ceram's quest for other copies of Assall's Hopewell graves were almost certainly not book which he claims he could find in no worn like armor nor did the antlered head­ archeological library in the United States dresses relate in any direct way to combat. did not include Wisconsin, where the library Near the end of the book Ceram presents of the State Historical Society possesses a his material on the Paleo-Indians, the earliest copy. Americans. While not shot through with er­ While justifiably angry about the looting of rors as the section on mounds was, it lacks the Spiro Mound, the author is somewhat wide the depth that broader reading in recent pub­ of the mark when he declares that by chop­ lications on the Paleo-Indians could have ping down the trees which grew on the mound given it. Since he brings up the topic of the looters were "thereby destroying any Neanderthal man, I feel it is only fair to chance for dating it" (emphasis mine). No point out that professional opinion on Nean­ evidence whatsoever is introduced to indicate derthal is anything but agreed that he was a

246 BOOK REVIEWS

blind alley in human evolution. And finally, traces many of his subject's prejudices—a few, if any, archeologists believe Ceram's word peculiarly Mencken's—to the German- last sentence on page 291 in which he de­ American community within the predominant­ clares the reasons why North America did not ly Southern culture of Baltimore in which develop a high civilization comparable to Mencken was born and to which he uncriti­ Mexico and South America "will probably cally adhered. Thus, we understand that remain a mystery forever." Certainly not all Mencken's contempt for what he styled "Puri­ the problems have been solved, but just as tan democracy" was but the inverse of a fan­ certainly they will not remain forever a mys­ cied teutonic elitism: against the moralistic tery. liberalism of the middle class or "booboisie" The First American is not a "great" book he upheld the polarities of a feudal Southern as touted on the dust jacket; in fact, it is at conservatism and an anarchic Darwinian in­ best only fair. Neither does it answer any dividualism. Stenerson notes that Mencken important questions as was promised in the "clung to the assumptions and doctrines of same place. The "new, puzzling problems of his youth with a fixity which inevitably im­ historical interpretation" he poses are simply paired the quality of his thought." Mencken not there. Much important work was ignored neither grew in his thinking nor made co­ and many individuals were unconscionably herent what he did think; in fact, to consider slighted. Certainly Cyrus Thomas, who prob­ Mencken a thinker is to be more honorific ably did more than anyone else to destroy than accurate. the idea of the "Mound Builders" as a single This point brings me to a second reason race, deserves more than one line in a chapter to commend Stenerson: he has not allowed entitled "Solving the Riddle of the Mounds." the celebrated flamboyance of Mencken's style The First American is not a "pioneering to color and corrupt his own, nor has he made work." Silverberg's Mound Builders of An­ himself a mere covert cipher for Mencken's cient America: The Archaeology of a Myth obtuse biases. Compare the carefully sus­ is a much better, if more restricted contribu­ tained equanimity of his treatment with Wil­ tion. While The First American does add liam Manchester's in Disturber of the Peace. something to an awareness of the past, the The latter is so frequently reckless and dis­ understanding of the past presented in this torting in puffing Mencken that it almost book is unfortunately quite imperfect. seems an attempt to parody him at his worst. JOHN R. HALSEY Those who, having read Mencken or flattering State Historical Society of Wisconsin accounts of him, prefer to see him either as a titillating satirist or as a profound man of letters—one biographer calls him an "Ameri­ can Voltaire"—will probably be disappointed H.L. Mencken: Iconoclast from Baltimore. with Stenerson's analysis. His dispassionate By DOUGLAS C. STENERSON. (University of approach to a polemic personality is as effec­ Chicago Press, Chicago, 1971. Pp. xv, 287. tive, if not more so, than one based on special Illustrations, notes, index. $7.95.) pleading. Mencken "demythologized" remains Within the past generation there have been a lively and engaging character. nearly a dozen biographies of Henry Louis There are a few points on which one might Mencken. The reader may want to know why disagree with Stenerson. He argues that Men­ the latest, by Professor Douglas Stenerson cken, coming to maturity during the moral and of Roosevelt University, Chicago, deserves as literary revolt of the 1890's against genteel much or more attention than some others. respectability, helped to transmit that spirit First, Stenerson's is a rounded estimate of to the 1920's and its revolt against Mencken's Mencken, an overview of his childhood and cerberean bugaboo, "hypocrisy, philistinism, the influences, personal and societal, upon it Puritanism." But it is not so easy to correlate as well as on his careers and the opinions he two periods a generation apart, especially used in building them. (There are other stu­ in consideration of the First World War as dies that concentrate upon Mencken as a lit­ an interim factor. It would be more plausible erary critic and journalist.) The particular to conceptualize a continuum of revolt between stress that distinguishes this latest treatment the 1890's and the 1920's as exemplified in is the repeated reference, in several contexts, novelists such as Frank Norris, Jack London, to the milieux in which Mencken remained and Upton Sinclair; and critics like Van throughout his life: Stenerson convincingly Wyck Brooks and Randolph Bourne.

247 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

I object to some of Stenerson's descriptive Lost America: From the Atlantic to the Mis­ phrases; they are provocative but ill-used. sissippi. Edited by CONSTANCE M. GREIFF. For example, he depicts Mencken as "an art­ Foreword by JAMES BIDDLE. (The Pyne Press, ist whose prejudices were the themes of his Princeton, New Jersey, 1971. Pp. 256. Illus­ art," who practised "an aesthetic of aggres­ trations, index. $17.95.) sion," yet he provides no conceptual basis on which Mencken might be characterized as This book is another volume about our na­ a satirist. As a literary reviewer Mencken tion's historical and cultural heritage and promoted literature that reflected what he how we, the American people, have permitted called "the meaninglessness of life"; he did it to be destroyed. While essentially a picture not have the true critic's capacity to weigh book, the brief but lucid text, the running a work upon its own merits, neither did he commentary, and the explanatory captions have any fundamental moral sense that makes accompanying each illustration are more than a satirist. In short, Mencken lacked—and this ample to put over the author's main point lack, too, "impaired the quality of his that we have been trading an irreplaceable thought"—the power to distinguish between legacy of landmark buildings and tree-lined the uses and abuses of language. (The reader avenues for ugly black-topped parking lots might compare Mencken's effusive, self-flat­ and almost endless stretches of concrete ex­ tering praise in The Philosophy of Friedrich pressways, generally complemented by equal­ Nietzsche with Paul Elmer More's incisive ly ugly, graceless highway bridges and inter­ and penetrating review of the same subject.) change structures. Urban renewal, so-called, Stenerson's subtitle is properly cautious, yet has also taken its toll, as have numerous pri­ fair: "iconoclast," surely; "artist," hardly. vate undertakings which only occasionally A related point is his citation of Mencken's have resulted in really fine architecture and "agnostic vision" and "Darwinian icono- a credit to the community or countryside. clasm." Against his own contention that But, even here, the price has been high—al­ Mencken was not a reasoning, orderly think­ ways financially—and much more often cul­ er, Stenerson suggests to the reader that there turally. It is easy, of course, to point the fin­ were philosophical mainstays to Mencken's ger of blame at someone or something when "thought," whereas there were merely props discussing the process of needless destruction, of jargon. but there is no getting around the fact that the American people, collectively, have gen­ Mencken emerges from Stenerson's review erally shown apathy and often downright anti­ as an elitist vulgarian. He inveighed against pathy toward the preservation of a building the philistinism of the middle class and cham­ or a neighborhood that might stand in the pioned what he termed a "middle minority" way of "progress" or where an "economic of educated and artistic people, but his real advantage" could be shown. Expressways no audience was not composed of disciplined or longer stress economic benefits as much as creative minds, rather of those commoners they used to for fairly obvious reasons, but who, like him, were uneasily self-conscious private projects that will yield higher taxes ac­ in not being of that fabled "middle minority" cording to cost-benefit analysts will almost yet could feel apart from their commonness without exception spell finis to the old, his­ by applauding and sharing a flaunted sense toric buildings which really would be worth of superiority. Stenerson comes close to this saving. point with the insight that Mencken would have been miserable in an America that con­ These attitudes are not particularly mystify­ formed to his notions of art, ethics, and poli­ ing as history clearly shows that not every tics. Mencken used his vivacious style jester­ society has been willing to pay a premium like to rise above a "booboisie" for which he for beauty, amenity, or cultural benefit. In­ actually had a deep need and affection; they dustrial and commercial societies such as ours were his audience. He once wrote that the —oriented toward the "biggest bang for the only responsibility of an American President buck" philosophy—have usually not distin­ was to "entertain and inflame the vulgar." guished themselves in creating great and time­ Mencken himself did just that. less architecture. And as long as we are will­ ing to settle for artlessness and even architec­ tural vulgarity, the current processes of de­ THOMAS R. NEVIN humanizing America will continue. University of Wisconsin—Madison All of this is not to say that all demoli-

248 BOOK REVIEWS tion—past, present, or future—is regrettable, the author recognizes that "aesthetically the and the author, as competent a historian as generation gap has been with us for a long she is a preservationist, has the prescience to time. We tend to denigrate the tastes of the know this and to say it. Unlike many sincere generation or two immediately preceding our but uninformed enthusiasts who want to save own at the same time that we are attracted everything and anything over fifty years old, to the life style of their predecessors, first, regardless of quality or collateral considera­ perhaps, as merely amusingly quaint, and tions, the author stresses that not all buildings then as the object of serious study and admira­ can, or even should, be saved. But, she also tion." For this reason the author has extend­ points out that "we are beginning to under­ ed her coverage to embrace even twentieth- stand that the frontier is closed and we are century classics which are gone today. going to have to live with what we've got." A second volume to be entitled Lost Amer­ Preservation does not mean an end to change ica: From the Mississippi to the Pacific is and progress, but it does mean the imposition in preparation. Both volumes may have to of certain conditions on the "process of be revised and enlarged. We agree with the change." Stated another way by John W. publisher: "We wish we didn't have to do Lawrence, dean of the School of Architecture it." at Tulane University: "The basic purpose of preservation is not to arrest time but to RICHARD W. E. PERRIN mediate sensitively with the forces of change. Milwaukee It is to understand the present as a product of the past and a modifier of the future." If Lost America has a fault it would be Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An In­ the absence of the distinguishing factors that dian History of the American West. By DEE have a bearing on whether a building is BROWN. (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New worth saving or not, with particular reference York, 1970. Pp. xvii, 487. Illustrations, notes, to the subjects the author has chosen to in­ bibliography, index. $10.95.) clude in her book. As a matter of fact, this void taken in broader context may be indica­ It is difficult to argue with success. And tive of the Achilles' heel in the whole pres­ according to the best-seller lists, Dee Brown's ervation movement, which is that there is no Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee has been close agreement, even among the experts, on a smashing success for many months. Brown exactly what is worthy and what is not. There is clearly one of a few authors who manage are, of course, accepted preservation stand­ to write the right book at the right time. ards and criteria, but by their interpretation Not since the closing of the frontier has there hangs the tale. The National Register of His­ been such a widespread interest in the Ameri­ toric Places maintained by the National Park can Indians. The activities of militant In­ Service is presumably the sine qua non of dian groups receive national press coverage. historic identification, but even here in good Museums across the nation have mounted American political tradition, elected repre­ shows in tribute to the arts, crafts, and cul­ sentatives of "the people" get into the act, ture of the various North American tribes. and competent professional opinion often very And even Hollywood, which has done so deferentially steps aside. much to shape the popular image of the In­ Lost America covers over 250 vanished dians, has reversed gears. Recent films such buildings or structures of all periods and as Soldier Blue and Little Big Man have at­ styles and is divided into seven sections de­ tempted to present the Indian's side of the voted to civic architecture; schools, churches historical ledger. and other cultural institutions; office build­ All this is well and good, for there is no ings, mills, stores, and banks; hotels, inns, question that the Indian's story has rarely and railroad stations; amusement parks and been told. Brown's book goes a long way to theaters; and other urban amenities including correct this situation. But in this reviewer's pleasurable townscapes. More than 150 areas opinion. Brown has gone too far and is guilty in the twenty-seven states and regions east of of some of the same faults as those who cre­ the Mississippi are covered, both large and ated the traditional image of the Indian as small. savage, alcoholic, and expendable. By not limiting herself chronologically to Library shelves are filled with biased and buildings of comparatively great antiquity. distorted interpretations of the American In-

249 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 dians. Brown is also biased, but he plays fair someone to undertake the type of massive and clearly labels his work an "Indian his­ work like Winthrop Jordan's White Over tory of the American West." Brown's admis­ Black to explain fully the Indians' and the sion of bias, however, does not absolve him whites' side of the clash of their cultures in of the charge of writing distorted history. the American West. Brown based much of his history on the spoken and written words of Indians. He has TOM PHILLIPS done a commendable job in uncovering and Chicago bringing to light pertinent Indian quotations. Unfortunately, there is some reason to ques­ tion the accuracy of these quotations. Brown The Age of Energy: Varieties of American acknowledges, in the introduction to his book, Experience, 1865-1915. By HOWARD MUM- that these quotations were often recorded by FORD JONES. (The Viking Press, New York, interpreters who were not totally familiar with 1971. Pp. xix, 545. Illustrations, notes, in­ Indian languages. Brown does note that much dex. $12.50.) may have been lost, or, in some cases, added during the process of translation. But once If it comes to a test of knowledge about having provided the reader with this warn­ the United States between the Civil and First ing. Brown proceeds to construct much of World wars, Howard Mumford Jones will his study around what may be highly dubious beat us all hands down. He is second to none sources. in his ability to assemble information and There is an additional problem regarding present it intelligently. It may therefore seem Brown's heavy reliance upon Indian quota­ presumptuous to criticize a Lowell Professor tions. Thorough scholars are trained to ques­ of the Humanities Emeritus at Harvard, form­ tion the statements of kings. Presidents, and er chairman of the American Council of common men. Brown, however, apparently be­ Learned Societies, and once president of the lieves that Indians only spoke or wrote the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, who truth. Perhaps Brown's judgment is right, but has been called a "calm and effective voice this reviewer finds it hard to believe that In­ for humane learning in America for more than dians were not as capable of lying or using four decades." But as the Bob Dylan song the subtlety of the half-truth as were whites. says, "Something's happening here and you Brown's failure to evaluate critically the quo­ don't know what is it, do you, Mr. Jones?" tations he has used is a serious flaw in the His hero is Theodore Roosevelt, he has em­ book. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee also pathy for the difficulties of being super-rich, suffers from what Brown apparently consid­ and he agrees with Augustus Saint-Gaudens ered a style of writing appropriate for an In­ that the 1893 Columbian Exposition utilized dian history of the West. The use of "blue the greatest collection of artists since the Re­ coats" to refer to white soldiers and "great naissance. If you liked George Bancroft you'll council" for Congress, however, smacks more love this book, but somehow the unrecon­ of television serial writing than professional structed WASP vision of America seems a bit history. Also, the inclusion of maps would tired these days. I wonder which Mr. Jones greatly assist the reader to follow the many Bob Dylan had in mind. twistings and turnings of Brown's history. Jones's objective was to discover a "leading Despite these criticisms. Brown's book is principle that might . . . make sense out of one of considerable merit. People who have American development . . . from the age of been exposed to only a highly prejudicial view Andrew Johnson to the presidency of Wood- of the Indians will find good reason to alter row Wilson." He proposes the concept of en­ their opinions drastically after reading this ergy: "the power by which anything or any­ book. At a time when many people are com­ body acts effectively to move or change other plaining of a lack of heroes on the American things or persons." These years produced scene, readers may find themselves in total some of the "most extraordinarily energetic agreement with Brown's declaration that the persons in American history," he says, and Indians are "perhaps the most heroic of all also an undreamed of number of "prime Americans." Although Brown's book is an ad­ movers available to American industry." mittedly one-sided history, it has done much Jones admits that Robber Barons and their to clear the air surrounding the story of the wives were a crude bunch of despoilers, but first Americans. Perhaps the time is right for he is careful to point out that "this magnifi-

250 BOOK REVIEWS cent breed of men and women" also gave us May Alcott, but it is also crammed full of symphony orchestras, libraries, museums, and spongy generalizations which are impossible great universities—the social benefits of ruth­ to prove. "Energy" is such a vague concept less energy. Jones believes that corporations that it explains nothing, and even if it is an voluntarily became socially conscious public appropriate label for a period of industriali­ service organizations (has he tried swimming zation, it could as easily be affixed to the in the Charles River lately?) that happily Revolutionary generation of the 1770's or to survived the "ignorant struggles of individ­ today's electric-rock-drug society. Does not ualists, liberals, and labor unions"; that large a statement like "the characteristic quality of businesses no longer exploit the weak (shades the [Midwest] became energy and conflict of United Fruit!) because out of necessity rather than aestheticism and calm" apply they were "driven to efficiency" (and of Penn equally to the Lower East Side? Does this Central and Lockheed!) ; and that "our pres­ one, "a characteristic 'note' of Western life ent refusal to see 'imperialism' as anything . . . was restlessness and transience," mean but evil" distorts that Splendid Little War anything now that Stephan Thernstrom has which was "above all . . . an example of ded­ shown that "restlessness and transience" was icated American manhood rising in wrath of normal in Newburyport, Massachusetts? For its own free will to destroy tyranny, free the all its impressive writing and massive docu­ oppressed, and wave the Stars and Stripes at mentation, this book can well be summarized least for a time over the countries we had by reversing Mies van der Robe's famous liberated." (Did anyone tell this to Aguinal- dictum to read, "more is less." Brahmin his­ do in the Philippines?) torians who populate the landscape of the past with figures more suitable for Henry James What could be more energetic in this "age novels have had their day. The times they of energy" than United States overseas ex­ are a-changin' and that, Mr. Jones, is what's pansion? Here Jones reads the past like happening. Samuel Flagg Bemis, managing completely to ignore the important investigations into cor­ porate imperialism that William Appleman ROBERT C. TWOMBLY Williams and others in the "Wisconsin Cily College of New York School" of diplomatic history have been con­ ducting for the last two decades. Equally out­ moded is his use of the word "Jewess," not Paternalism and Protest: Southern Cotton entirely unexpected, however, in a book that Mill Workers and Organized Labor. By MEL­ limits varieties of American experience to TON ALONZA MCLAURIN. (Greenwood Pub­ WASP culture. Booker T. Washington and lishing Corporation, Westport, Connecticut, W. E. B. DuBois are the only blacks he men­ 1971. Pp. xviii, 265. Notes, tables, bibliogra­ tions—both in the same sentence. There is phy, index. $11.95.) very little about immigrants, urbanization, hunger, depressions, rural life, socialism, Paternalism and Protest is an excellent union agitation, labor violence, the develop­ monograph which tells the hitherto neglected ment of segregation, or other unpleasantries; story of attempts at labor organization in the and whatever happened to the Indians any­ South's nineteenth-century textile industry. As way ? Weren't all of these part of the "Ameri­ Professor McLaurin notes in his introduc­ can experience"? Defending the genteel tra­ tion, historians have ignored or underesti­ dition is one thing, but only an old-line Har- mated the scope of union activity in the South vardian would spend seven pages arguing during the three decades after 1875. For that Boston remained the nation's cultural cap­ obvious reasons. New South spokesmen and ital throughout the period, citing such lumin­ textile owners assiduously cultivated the im­ aries as Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, Horace E. age of the docile, unprotesting Southern op­ Scudder, and Octavius B. Frothingham to erative, and earlier writers—more often boost­ prove it. If there was such a thing as "ener­ ers than historians—endorsed this characteri­ gy," it had probably moved to New York zation. with William Dean Howells, that is, if it wasn't But even so careful a scholar as George centered in Chicago with Harriett Monroe, Sinclair Mitchell gave an incomplete and in­ Sullivan, Wright, Dreiser, and Sandburg. accurate account of nineteenth-century textile Not only is The Age of Energy excessively union activity when he wrote Textile Union­ parochial and about as up-to-date as Louisa ism and the South in 1931. In Mitchell's case

251 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 it was not a willingness to accept the mill ignored or betrayed by the agrarian political owners' version of labor history which led movements of the 1890's. The operative was him astray, but a combination of other fac­ confronted by other obstacles as well: a tors: his preoccupation with the labor dis­ pervasive ideology of untrammeled individ­ turbances of the 1920's, the lack of continuity ualism, illiteracy, the lack of a tradition in between these struggles and the earlier at­ labor organization, and, above all, the con­ tempts at organization, and the fugitive na­ stant fear that black labor might be used in the ture of many of the sources on the subject. mills. McLaurin's work is therefore a particularly When these factors are all taken into ac­ welcome addition to the growing historiog­ count, it is not surprising that the textile in­ raphy of the Southern labor movement. dustry remained relatively unorganized until the 1960's. What is surprising is the degree The author approaches his subject from a of union activity between 1875 and 1905. number of perspectives. After a brief discus­ In successive chapters on the Knights of La­ sion of the Southern textile industry before bor, the National Union of Textile Workers, 1875 and a descriptive chapter on the re­ and the United Textile Workers of America, gion's "industrial plantations" in the late nine­ McLaurin chronicles a tragic and unsuccess­ teenth century, McLaurin moves on to one ful series of strikes which took place, primar­ of the most thoughtful chapters in his study, ily in the two Carolinas and in Georgia. As "The Mind of the Owner and Operative." the author frankly acknowledges, most work­ Using the published sources as well as the ers had little conception of the meaning of private papers of many mill owners, he de­ unionism, let alone a sustained commitment to scribes the blend of Old South ideals and the construction of an industry-wide labor New South realities which helped shape their movement. Most strikes were spontaneous re­ thinking. Noblesse oblige and unabashed sponses to wage reductions or deteriorations greed, a ruthless form of conservative social in working conditions. Often the union was Darwinism and a genuine sense of paternalism called in as an afterthought. Nevertheless, all existed side by side without any sense of their action, observes McLaurin, "was hardly incongruity, observes McLaurin. Many of the the mark of a docile, submissive labor force." ideas in this chapter have been mentioned by other writers, but McLaurin sensitively shows Even though the Southern operatives failed how the contradictory facets of the Southern in their attempts to organize an industry-wide mill official were all "welded into one inter­ labor movement, they were the first group in locking complex by his conceptions of Recon­ Southern society to "question seriously the struction, the South's unifying myth." The heirs of the planter class. Southern cotton mill mill owner saw himself as an heroic leader management." In describing this confronta­ who had saved the South from poverty by tion McLaurin has illuminated a forgotten rising above the devastation of war and the corner of Southern history. chaos of Reconstruction. Such a self-image strengthened his resolve to resist any inter­ DAN T. CARTER ference from labor agitators and simultaneous­ University of Maryland ly assured him the broad support of the Southern community. In spite of the dearth of sources on the War for the West, 1790-1813. By HARRISON "mind of the operative," McLaurin has com­ BIRD. (Oxford University Press, New York, piled bits and pieces of information to form 1971. Pp. viii, 278. Illustrations, note on a mosaic of the Southern operative's outlook. sources, maps, index. $7.50.) As a group, says the author, they brought the "prejudices, customs and traditions of For well over a hundred years the history the Old South into the mills." They held on of the conquest of the Old Northwest has to the agrarian ideal—many saw mill work attracted the attention of historians. There are as a temporary expedient until they could few more familiar tales in the history of return to the farm—and they were far less American western expansion. The present successful than the mill owner in confront­ book is a routine retelling of the main out­ ing and adapting their lives to the tempo of lines of this story. Presumably, it is a book the new industrial era. Despised by the urban intended for a popular audience (there are middle class as "factory rats," "lint-heads," no footnotes and the note on sources mentions and "cotton mill trash," the mill workers were only six books by name), although one would

252 BOOK REVIEWS

expect such a book to be richer in color and role of the black American in the history of detail than the present volume. The title is the West. not accurate; the book does not include the The book is essentially a pictorial record of "West" from the Ohio River to the Gulf of black Westerners, and the text, which is in­ Mexico. formative but not comprehensive, is organ­ The author attempts to give unity and dra­ ized around the illustrations. Katz's West is ma to his volume by emphasizing the confron­ ill-defined chronologically and geographically, tation between William Henry Harrison and for while the emphasis is on the trans-Missis­ Tecumseh in these years. This device is of sippi West, there is coverage of Negro con­ course more effective for the years from 1808 tributions on earlier frontiers. The time span to 1813 than for those from 1790 to 1808, is from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. and this may partially account for the some­ Katz deals with the entire range of human what cursory treatment of the earlier period. activity in the West and describes all types of Tecumseh is depicted for the most part as a no­ people and occupations. Included are the well ble, tragic figure, in a manner somewhat rem­ known and the obscure, the famous and the iniscent of nineteenth-century writers on this infamous, heroes and villains, everyday citi­ theme, and unfortunately the author's treat­ zens and business and political leaders. There ment of Indian relations in general is, in a are photographs or illustrations of slaves different manner, reminiscent of the same cen­ and former slaves, explorers, fur traders, tury. Few, if any, historians of the American cowboys, sodbusters, soldiers, hotel owners, Indian could give unqualified support to his newspaper editors, miners, stage drivers, and statement that "in every possible way. Gov­ others. ernor Harrison protected the Indians who shared his territory." In recent years there Some of the better-known individuals in­ has been a marked increase of scholarly inter­ clude Jim Beckwourth, the famous mountain est in the plight of the Indian, and a deeper man, Bill Pickett, the great rodeo rider who analysis of the tragedy as well as the heroism is credited with creating the art of bulldog- of the frontier advance. These recent devel­ ging, and Barney Ford, Colorado business opments are not reflected in this book. man. Ford was an escaped slave who became a prosperous hotel and restaurant owner and This is a clear but oversimplified account the first black man to serve on a Colorado of these years. It is unlikely to prove of grand jury. George Bonga, William Leides- much interest to the professional historian. dorff, and Mifflin W. Gibbs are less well Perhaps more significantly, in view of the known despite their contributions to western wider audience which the book hopes to reach, development. Bonga was a fur trader in Min­ it does not appear to have the richness of nesota and was an interpreter for the govern­ description, the subtle character delineations, ment in negotiations with Indians in the Old or the freshness of theme to appeal to a wider Northwest. Leidesdorff went to California audience. before the Mexican War and eventually be­ came the United States subconsul there. He REGINALD HORSMAN owned a 35,000-acre estate in northern Cali­ University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee fornia, opened the first hotel in San Fran­ cisco, was a member of the city council and helped found the city's first public school. The Black West: A Documentary and Pic­ Gibbs began as a bootblack in San Francisco torial History. By WILLIAM LOREN KATZ. but established the first black newspaper in (Doubleday and Company, Inc., Garden City, California and is credited with becoming the 1971. Pp. xiii, 336. Illustrations, bibliogra­ first black judge in the United States. There phy, index. $12.95.) are also a host of other figures who have been largely ignored by historians. Some of In 1967 William L. Katz authored the at­ these individuals also had white or Indian tractive and well-received Eyewitness: The blood, but they were still considered Negroes. Negro in American History, which was bas­ With the aid of librarians and archivists ically an illustrated history. The Black West across the country, Katz has gathered a re­ follows the same format and should be equal­ markable collection of photographs, paintings, ly well received. It is interesting, readable, and illustrations. The photographic record is and is crammed with drawings, paintings, car­ outstanding and demonstrates the widespread toons, and photographs that document the activity of black Westerners. The text is a

253 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 general survey of black history in the West developed a better policy of corporate regu­ with emphasis on key individuals and with lation (although it is never clear whether they documentary exerpts interspersed throughout. favor trust-busting, public ownership, or com­ It is readable and attractive, and while it is mission), but they do not discuss problems in no way a synthesis of black history in the of workers or unions. Didn't workers have West, it is well done and extremely useful and needs? In a similar vein, they feel the Re­ deserves to be widely read. publican command was heartless toward blacks, but they don't tell us what blacks RICHARD N. ELLIS wanted or expected. Why were the tariff and University of New Mexico currency more important needs than, say, taxation, rural problems, or diplomacy? A second large problem concerns the rela­ The Republican Command, 1897-1913. By tionship of political leaders to public opinion. HORACE SAMUEL MERRILL and MARION GAL- Readers never learn why issues became pop­ BRAITH MERRILL. (University Press of Ken­ ular or unpopular. The Iowa Idea mysteri­ tucky, Lexington, 1971. Pp. xii, 360. Il­ ously rose to challenge the leaders (p. 8) and lustrations, notes, bibliography, index. then mysteriously became unpopular (p. 175), $12.50.) and finally its "spirit" was mysteriously res­ urrected (p. 276). Readers are left to specu­ The Merrills are appalled by "the unneces­ late about whether the Merrills' leaders cre­ sary suffering, waste, and danger which legis­ ated, amplified, reflected, or resisted public lative inadequacy perpetuates in our society." opinion on different issues. They assert that Examining three Presidents (William McKin­ voters were more interested in the Ballinger- ley. Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Pinchot controversy than the Mann-Elkins Taft), the "Senate Four" (Nelson Aldrich, Act, but the explanation and significance of William Allison, John Spooner, Thomas Platt) this statement are unexplored. and House Speaker Joseph G. Cannon, they A third problem concerns the authors' pref­ try to show that Congress also failed badly erence for older historiography over many of to meet the nation's needs between 1897 and the questions that have intrigued recent schol­ 1913. The eight Republican leaders had a ars of this period. They frequently cite works golden opportunity to remake the nation in with strong points of view on matters of con­ 1897, but their parochialism, cautiousness, siderable recent disagreement—the Spanish- and biases led them to adopt inadequate solu­ American War and federal railroad regula­ tions to the problems of corporations, tariff, tion, for example—and then render no judg­ and currency, and to abandon the party's his­ ment on the hotly debated issue. At times, for toric mission to aid black Americans. The example, they seem to be refuting Gabriel leaders' incompetence destroyed the unity that Kolko's interpretation of federal business pol­ had prevailed in 1897 between the party's icy, at other times they seem to support him, eastern business and midwestern small-town and at all times they seem to use his two constituencies, and that split allowed the Dem­ books only for facts or quotations. ocrats to return to power. To document this A fourth problem is that they do not ex­ story, the Merrills rely heavily on manuscript plore the sources of the leaders' power. They collections, and perhaps the freshest parts of cite approvingly David Rothman's point that the book are the evidences of disunity among the Senate leaders were the leading profession­ big businessmen, particularly in Roosevelt's als in an institution that was rapidly profes­ second term. sionalizing, but they also seem to agree with The book fails on several levels to define David Graham Phillips that the Senate lead­ and explain its purposes. One large problem ers were mainly traitors who betrayed the pub­ is the constant assumption that there are clear­ lic interest time and again. They are not ly defined "needs" and problems that any sane much concerned with patronage, committee as­ person should have been able to see and signments, caucuses, and other means of dis­ solve. Isn't it much more probable that differ­ cipline available to party legislative leaders. ent people and groups had different needs, Only their lack of interest in the tools of par­ and that, as a result, the book should have tisanship can explain their blast at Taft as begun with a discussion of the major pro­ an elitist because he preferred to get support grams advocated by those different groups? for his renomination from party groups than The Merrills believe that Cona;ress should have by appealing to the public. Has any incum-

254 BOOK REVIEWS

bent President in American history ever near estrangement. In fact, the desire to earn turned his back on his party's organizations? enough money to support Ellen's life-style The authors seems to lack criteria for ef­ drove Sherman from one unfortunate job to fectiveness of responses, a major flaw in a another after his retirement from the army book whose basic point is that those responses during the 1850's. were ineffective. "Reform" and "moderniza­ As a San Francisco banker, a St. Louis tion" are clearly good things, but it is never land speculator, a Kansas lawyer and railroad clear what a reform or modernizer response executive, and as a Louisiana military acade­ was or should have been. The book is studded my dean, William Sherman's desire for eco­ with such assertions as "many people took it nomic sufficiency consistently led to disap­ for granted that Taft would carry on Roose­ pointment. Hounded by the "Democratic velt's modernization work." What had been mob" which he detested and which he blamed his modernization work? His charisma? One for his own failures, Sherman's belief in a or all of his ideas? One or all of his legisla­ strong central government grew. Motivated tive programs? One or all of his administra­ by a fear of excessive democracy (which he tive innovations? At one point (p. 334) they equated with the Democratic party), his po­ charge that GOP leaders "gave no vitality" litical philosophy eventually bordered on roy- to the currency issue, while at another point alism. (pp. 267-268) they feel that the Aldrich- The outbreak of war in 1861 spelled great Vreeland Act was a "significant" currency opportunity to William Tecumseh Sherman, as measure. They assert that the House Insur­ it did to so many others. Sherman went back gents "merely" democraticized the Rules Com­ to the army as a general. After a psychologi­ mittee with no evaluation of the Insurgents' cal collapse during the early stages of the claim that the Rules Committee was the ma­ sectional conflict Sherman regained confi­ jor hurdle for successful reform. dence in himself and went on to become a skill­ Finally, they seem to run out of steam at ful leader. The Atlanta Campaign and the the end of the book. The 1904 election, nota­ famous March to the Sea, as seen through ble for harmony within the party, rates a Sherman's eyes, hardly appear as destructive thirty-two-page chapter, while the utter break­ as Southerners subsequently portrayed them. down of the party in the primaries and gen­ eral election of 1912 receives scant attention The description of Sherman's activities dur­ except for Taft's well-known problems with ing the Civil War, however, adds little to our Congress. Three men's names are misspelled. knowledge of that period, and herein lies the failure of Merrill's study. Although neces­ sary, the section of the volume dealing with DAVID P. THELEN the war is overemphasized and given entirely University of Missouri—Columbia too much space. Merrill's work is seriously marred as a result of this imbalance. Sher­ man's career as General of the Army during William T. Sherman. By JAMES M. MERRILL. Reconstruction and the postwar period is (Rand McNally Company, Chicago, 1971. Pp. glossed over, even though it is highly impor­ xiii, 445. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, in­ tant. It seems as if Merrill became anxious dex. $10.00.) to complete the study and failed to analyze his own information regarding post-1865 devel­ James M. Merrill's biography of General opments. William T. Sherman could have been a useful Sherman's role during the disputed election work adding to the understanding of nine­ of 1876, the national labor uprisings of 1877, teenth-century America. Instead, Merrill fails and the final confrontations between the to examine critically the material which he United States Army and the various tribes of has uncovered and, as a consequence, the re­ Plains Indians, to mention but a few instances, sults are flawed. Merrill, using new sources, all require more treatment than Merrill pro­ presents readers with an unrevealed side of vides. Throughout this period Sherman—al­ Sherman's life. Sherman the family man though he adamantly denied it—was also per­ emerges from the volume to balance the usual sonally involved in Republican politics. The treatment of him as a warrior. Sherman's at­ General's political life, again, is overlooked. tempts at both curbing his wife Ellen's Catho­ The fact that Sherman grew up in the home lic zealousness as well as her excessive spend­ of a prominent Whig and later Republican ing led to bitterness, familial breakdown, and party member—Thomas Ewing—and that his

255 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

own brother John served for many years in Transportation to the Seaboard is useful be­ the Senate and in the cabinets of various ad­ cause it makes clear the interrelating influ­ ministrations should have suggested to Mr. ences on agrarians, merchants, and railroad Merrill that the General might have a hand executives of foreign economic expansion, and in at least some of the politics of the era. Wil­ the problem of transportation to market. liam Sherman's ability to block the attempts In order to free themselves of the colonial of the Democratic party to reduce the size of grip of the metropolitan East, agrarians and the army, for instance, provide students of merchants in the Midwest and South used a civilian-military relations with an interesting combination of economic strategies. Agricul­ and necessary chapter from our past. tural diversification, creation of a home mar­ In short, Mr. Merrill's book is marred by ket, and development of secondary industries an inability to relate important factors of each had its devotees. Difficulties in imple­ General Sherman's life. The mere recounting menting these structural changes led Grangers of details is insufficient in communicating and farm merchants to try the more incre­ the highlights of mid-nineteenth-century his­ mental approach of railroad regulation. Learn­ tory to both historians specializing in the ing to their dismay that railroads could not field as well as to more general students. Mer­ easily be regulated, agriculturalists turned rill's humanistic approach to Sherman's life, to increased competition (both intra- and in conclusion, fails to separate what does have inter-industry) as a way to reduce freight an historical importance from what merely costs. Western and Southern farm interests serves to illuminate General Sherman's char­ succeeded in increasing competition when acter. they wrote some of their desired internal im­ provements into law. But the success this co­ RICHARD ZEITLIN alition had in making water transport a viable University of Wisconsin—Madison alternative to the railroad was dimmed by the failure of the Mississippi Valley Trading Company to redirect trade from a West-East Transportation to the Seaboard: The "Com­ to a North-South axis, and hence to shorten munication Revolution" and American For­ the lines between producer and overseas con­ eign Policy, 1860-1900. By HOWARD B. sumer. SCHONBERGER. (Greenwood Publishing Cor­ Until 1885 farmers and their spokesmen poration, Westport, Connecticut, 1971. Pp. combined with merchants and manufacturers xix, 265. Notes, bibliography, index. $9.50.) in calling for railroad regulation as one of the best means for providing cheap trans­ Howard Schonberger was a student of Wil­ portation to the sea. With increased effec­ liam Appleman Williams, and as could be tiveness of water transport and decreased rail­ expected, his primary historical interest is road rates, farmers no longer took this tack. marketplace expansion. In Transportation to Rather, they saw regulation as a way to pre­ the Seaboard he attempts to identify addition­ vent the railroads' abuses of organizational al groups subscribing to the late-nineteenth- and economic power. Reduced freight rates century consensus on foreign economic ex­ remained an objective, but to achieve their pansion in order to support the thesis that ultimate goal of higher prices, farmers in­ American imperialism resulted from intersec- creasingly focused on monetary policy and toral domestic economic pressures. Schonber­ the tariff. ger presents necessary but not sufficient Unlike farmers who avoided connecting rate conditions to prove his thesis. He offers in­ regulation with foreign trade, the antiregula- sufficient evidence to support his generaliza­ tion faction of shippers and railroadmen rec­ tions; however, this is not so much a case of ognized and exploited the issue. Economic bad conclusions as weak theoretical construc­ nationalism (concern that the United States tion. This problem is not as serious as it ap­ have its rightful place in world markets) was pears if the reader is familiar with Williams' used to stymie regulation. Agrarian desires The Roots of the Modern American Empire for economic expansion allowed the antiregu- and Walter La Feber's The New Empire. lation faction to use foreign-trade arguments What Transportation to the Seaboard gains in to acclaim support publicly for regulation theoretical soundness from Roots, it loses in while modifying it to their own needs. originality because Schonberger adds little to In the third, and weakest, section of the what Williams has already said. Nevertheless, book Schonberger examines the careers of

256 BOOK REVIEWS

three railroad executives. John Garrett of the tive. The reader also receives the erroneous Baltimore and Ohio knew that his railroad impression that some of Fish's associates pro­ depended on moving Midwestern agricultural vided Gulf ports with regular steamship ser­ surplus to foreign markets. In spite of at­ vice because Schonberger neglects to say their tempts to secure ocean transport and enlarge Pan-American Transportation Company fail­ the market, Garrett never advocated public ed. policies which would increase foreign trade. Schonberger's treatment of Hill is better Schonberger's only attempt to explain this than that of Fish. Hill not only had an ideolo­ is a one liner about Garrett being a free gy of transportation and economic expan­ trade Democrat. Stuyvesant Fish of the Il­ sion: he made them the working assumptions linois Central and James Hill of the Great of his railroad and never stopped proselytiz­ Northern regarded foreign trade as the key ing on their behalf. Hill articulated Ameri­ to their railroads' success and worked for ca's expansionist ideology of the 1890's: con­ public policies favoring economic expansion. trol of transportation was essential to control Fish all but single-handedly, in Schonberger's of commerce and thereby power and wealth. view, rebuilt New Orleans into a first-rate port. Fish's energy and endorsement of re­ ciprocity treaties with Latin America were im­ DONALD MARKS portant, but New Orleans was far from inac­ University of Wisconsin—Madison

BOOK REVIEW INDEX

Bird, War for the West, 1790-1813, reviewed by McLaurin, Paternalism and Protest: Southern Cotton Reginald Horsman 252 Mill Workers and Organized Labor, reviewed by Dan T. Carter 251 Boyer, True Tales of the Great Lakes, reviewed by Mead, et al.. Portrait of the Past: A Photographic Richard J. Wright 239 Journey Through Wisconsin, reviewed by Don Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian Anderson 240 History of the American West, reviewed by Tom Merrill, Horace and Marion, The Republican Com­ Phillips 249 mand, 1897-1913, reviewed by David P. Thelen 254 Ceram, The First American: A Story of North Merrill, James, William T. Sherman, reviewed by American Archaeology, reviewed by John R. Richard Zeitlin 255 Halsey 245 Miller, How Shall They Hear Without a Preacher?: Frank (ed.), German-American Pioneers in Wiscon­ The Life of Ernest Fremont Tittle, reviewed sin & Michigan: The Frank-Kerler Letters, by Hugh H. Knapp 242 1849-1864, reviewed by Jack Dukes 237 Schonberger, Transportation to the Seaboard: The "Communication Revolution" and American Greiff (ed.). Lost America: From the Atlantic to Foreign Policy, 1860-1900, reviewed by Donald the Mississippi, reviewed by Richard W. E. Marks 256 Perrin 248 Stallard, Four in a Wild Place, reviewed by Paul H. Jones, The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Hass 242 Experience, 1865-1915, reviewed by Robert C. Stenerson, H. L. Mencken: Iconoclast from Balti­ Twombly 250 more, reviewed by Thomas R. Nevin 247 Katz, The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial Tarr, A Study in Boss Politics: William Lorimer of Chicago, reviewed by Melvin G. Holli 243 History, reviewed by Richard N. Ellis 253 Walton, Cold War and Counterrevolution: The For­ McGrath, Charles Kenneth Leith: Scientific Adviser, eign Policy of John F. Kennedy, reviewed by reviewed by Ronald M. Johnson 238 Jim F. Heath 244

257 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972

ACCESSIONS General Rufus R. Dawes, mainly concerning his Civil War service as a Lieutenant Colonel Services for microfilming, xeroxing, and in the 6th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer photostating all but certain restricted items in Infantry, presented by Rufus Dawes Beach, its manuscript collections are provided by the Society. For details write Dr. Josephine L. Chicago, 111.; papers, 1929-1962, of Chester Harper, Manuscripts Curator. V. Easum, University of Wisconsin history professor and U.S. cultural attache to Germa­ ny, 1954—1956, including addresses and pub­ Manuscripts lications concerning modern Germany, scat­ tered correspondence, and a subject file con­ General Collections. Papers, 1964—1967, of cerning Wisconsin's contribution to World Robert Abramovitz concerning the New Ha­ War II and other events, presented by Mr. ven, Connecticut chapter of the Congress of Easum, Madison; papers, 1961-1969, of Racial Equality, with emphasis on an im­ Michael E. Eisenscher, a radical organizer, proved housing campaign, presented by Mr. including correspondence and printed and and Mrs. Abramovitz, New Haven, Conn.; near-print materials on the W.E.B. DuBois papers, 1831-1883, concerning the /. John Club, the Milwaukee Organizing Committee, Bechtel family, Milwaukee, including letters Vietnam War protests, the Wisconsin Student from relatives in Germany, genealogical in­ Employees Association, and a variety of left- formation, and report cards and other items wing activities and organizations, presented from St. Mary's Institute Day School, pre­ by Mr. Eisenscher, Milwaukee (Restricted) ; sented by Harry Lichter, Portland, Oregon; papers relating to the 1964^1965 Free Speech additions, 1942-1946, 1955, to aviator Rich­ Movement, Berkeley, Calif., including copies ard I. Bong's papers, including his letters to of a variety of materials concerning the con­ his mother, copies of his combat reports, and troversy over allowing advocacy of political an advertisement for articles written by his and social action by students on campus, the wife about their life together, presented by resulting sit-ins and mass arrests, and sub­ Mrs. Reynold Erickson, Poplar; two drafts sequent reactions by administration, faculty, of A Long Journey, an autobiography, 1968, and students, presented by Marston Schultz, by George B. Charney, a leader of the Com­ Lynwood, Calif., and Helen Schiff, Madison; munist Party of the United States, 1933- papers, 1861-1970, generated by three gen­ 1958, presented by Mr. Charney, New York; erations of Alfred Galpins, including Civil papers, 1965, of the Chicago Committee to War correspondence and diaries, letters, 1918- End the War in Vietnam, a group involved 1936, and writings of author H.P. Lovecraft, in picketing, distributing literature, and dem­ and music scores composed by Alfred Galpin onstrating against the war, including cor­ in 1970, purchased in part and presented in respondence, leaflets, and mailing lists, pre­ part by Gerald Galpin, Appleton, and by sented by Robert Speck, Chicago; papers, Alfred Galpin, Madison; papers, 1877-1897, 1953-1967, of the Berkeley, Calif., chapter of of George W. Goetz, metallurgist and inven­ the Congress of Racial Equality, including tor, Milwaukee, including professional cor­ correspondence, membership lists, and sub­ respondence, notes and reports, materials per­ ject files on education, employment, and taining to patents he obtained (mainly con­ housing, presented by the Western Regional cerning iron and copper refining processes), Office of the Congress of Racial Equality, diaries from a tour of European iron and Oakland, Calif.; papers, 1962-1965, of the steel works, and biographical materials, pre­ Oakland, Calif., chapter of the Congress of sented by Mrs. Howard Greene, Genessee De­ Racial Equality, including minutes and a sub­ pot; papers, 1929-1967, of Joseph F. Handlos, ject file on the Alameda Human Relations president of the U.S. Highway 45 Associa­ Commission, the chapter's Freedom House, tion, including correspondence, speeches. As­ education, and employment, presented by the sociation records, and an information file Western Regional Office of the Congress of on Wisconsin's highway program, presented Racial Equality, Oakland, Calif.; papers. by Mr. Handlos, Land o' Lakes; research files 1948-1967, of the Western Regional Office of of Professor Stanley N. Katz, historian of the the Congress of Racial Equality, Oakland, American Colonial period, consisting of notes Calif., consisting of correspondence, subject and bibliography for Newcastle's New York files on administration, education, employ­ and notes for A Brief Narrative of the Case ment, and housing, and reference materials, and Trial of J. P. Zenger, presented by Pro- presented by the Office; papers, 1860-1894, of

258 ACCESSIONS fessor Katz, Madison; papers, 1937—1970, of particular emphasis on the St. Lawrence Sea­ Liston Oak, left-wing editor for The New Lead­ way, the Chicago-Lake Michigan water diver­ er and Voice of America, including corres­ sion case, anti-Communism, and the marketing pondence, articles denouncing Communism, of dairy products, presented by Mr. Wiley, an address book, and biographical materials, Mrs. Wiley, and the Milwaukee Journal; presented by Mrs. Joan Oak Matheson, Long papers, 1956-1960, of the Wisconsin Humph­ Valley, N.J.; papers, 1911-1962, of Rhine­ rey for President Committee relating to the lander attorney Albert J. O'Melia, including 1960 Democratic primary campaign of Hu­ correspondence, speeches, miscellaneous cer­ bert H. Humphrey, including correspondence, tificates and clippings concerning Republican memoranda, press releases, campaign litera­ politics and Rhinelander civic affairs, and ture, and lists of supporters, presented by records of the Oneida County Patriotic Fund, Frank Wallick, Milwaukee; papers, 1945- presented by Mrs. O'Melia, Rhinelander; pa­ 1962, of the Wisconsin Society for the Equal pers, 1941-1962, of Panel of Americans, Inc., Rights Amendment, the Wisconsin branch of an organization designed to improve human the National Woman's Party, including cor­ relations through panel presentations by respondence, minutes and financial records members of various ethnic, racial, and reli­ concerning promotion of a Constitutional gious groups, including minutes and reports, amendment guaranteeing equal rights to wo­ correspondence, and other materials concern­ men, also including items concerning Frank ing their activities on campuses and in com­ Lloyd Wright and the First Unitarian Church, munities throughout the United States, pre­ Madison, presented by Mrs. Ray Wiggen and sented by Mrs. Gladys Harburger, Director, Miss Elsie M. Wood, Madison; additions, New York; papers, 1917-1924, of Carl Pen- 1955-1966, to the papers of the Madison ner, commanding officer of the U.S. Army branch of the Women's International League 120th Field Artillery Regiment in France for Peace and Freedom, consisting of cor­ during World War I, including military or­ respondence, reports, newsletters, and work­ ders, memoranda, and reports, records of the ing papers, presented by the League via Mrs. 120th Regimental Association, and diaries and Francis D. Hole. Madison. other documents used in a published history of the regiment, presented by Mr. Penner, Milwaukee; papers relating to Robert Ran- Mass Communications Collections. Papers, tala's service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1920-1968, concerning Frank Braucher, pres­ Brazil, 1962-1964, presented by Mr. Rantala, ident of Periodical Publishers Association and Maple; papers, 1957-1966, of Faith Rich con­ of the Magazine Advertising Bureau, consist­ cerning the Chicago, 111. chapter of the Con­ ing of testimonial letters on his retirement, gress of Racial Equality, including minutes, two speeches, and biographical articles, pre­ reports, correspondence, and files on employ­ sented by Miss Joan Braucher, New York; ment, housing and education, presented by papers, 1935-1967, of John Charles Daly, Ms. Rich, Chicago, 111.; papers, 1955-1962, of broadcasting executive, newsman, and panel the Student Peace Center, Madison, a Univer­ show moderator, including general corres­ sity of Wisconsin student group involved in pondence, a scrapbook, and a subject file discussion and protest against the draft and concerning his program appearances, speak­ against compulsory military training for stu­ ing engagements, publicity, and educational dents, presented by Ken Knudson, Madison; fund-raising, presented by Mr. Daly, New papers, 1904^1961, of John Saxton Sumner, York; additions to the Public Relations Soci­ agent for the New York Society for the Sup­ ety of America Papers consisting of Silver pression of Vice, including correspondence, a Anvil Award winners for 1969, presented by diary, writings, and records and reference files the Society, New York; typescript of Essen­ of the Society, presented by Mrs. Henry T. tials of the Promotional Mix, a marketing Powell, Jr.; papers, 1913-1967, of Alexander textbook by Professor H. D. Wolfe concerned Wiley, Republican Senator from Wisconsin, with the promotional methods used in per­ consisting of large correspondence files, sonal selling, media advertising, sales promo­ speeches, newsletters and press releases, tape tion, packaging and publicity, presented by and disc recordings, and other materials, with Professor Wolfe. Madison.

259 Contributors

y<«l^ ALBERT ERLEBACHER was He has published an article on Wisconsin il born in Ulm, Germany, in farm leaders in Agricultural History, has had r^^gjj^^M 1932 and was reared in Mil- book reviews in the Pacific Historical Review waukee. He attended Mar­ and the Wisconsin Magazine of History, and quette University where he re­ is currently at work on a book-length manu­ ceived his B.A. in 1954 and script on the Wisconsin farm community in • ri his M.A. two years later. His the Gilded Age. He and his wife and three doctorate is from the University of Wisconsin- children live in Northridge, California, where Madison (1965). Mr. Erlebacher has taught Mr. Prescott is an associate professor of his­ high school in Independence, Sheboygan, and tory at San Fernando Valley State College. Lone Rock, and was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Currently he is associate professor of history at DePaul For a biography and photograph of MORTON University. His field of interest includes the SOSNA see the Autumn, 1970 (vol. 54) issue. Progressive Period and twentieth-century eco­ nomic history, with special emphasis on the Clio: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Litera­ history of the life insurance industry. ture, History, & the Philosophy of History, sponsored by the University of Wisconsin- *•»%. GERALD L. PRESCOTT was born Parkside, will begin publication in the fall. in Minneapolis in 1933. He at­ Aimed primarily at scholars, its major pur­ tended Hamline University in pose will be to bring together materials on St. Paul, and after three years the interplay of literary criticism and the of active duty in the Marine philosophy of history, and to present critiques Corps, received his B.S. and involving the literary qualities of historical M.A. from the University of narratives and "historical" qualities of literary Minnesota in 1959 and 1962. From 1960 to works. Besides articles, the journal will also 1963 he taught United States history at Janes­ print working drafts of books or monographs ville high school and from 1962 to 1964 was a in progress, reviews, abstracts, and critical member of the summer school staff of the old bibliographies. Although Clio will become a Madison Central high school. He was also an full-fledged journal, the first several copies instructor in the Curriculum and Instruction will be issued in newsletter form and can be department of the University of Wisconsin- obtained gratis by writing the editors, Robert Madison before receiving his Ph.D. from that H. Canary and Henry Kozicki, The University institution in 1968. His dissertation, done of Wisconsin-Parkside, Kenosha, Wisconsin under the supervision of Professor Allan 53140. The editors will welcome manuscript Bogue, was a comparative study of Wisconsin contributions, as well as offers of reviews and farm organizations in the 1870's and 1880's. abstractina; services.

Your Legacy History is a continuing process of leaving something behind. A gift or bequest to the Wisconsin History Foundation for the State Historical Society of Wisconsin does indeed leave something behind—something of intrinsic value, something viable, something which will help the future to remember you and your time. By gift or bequest you may establish a fund in your name or in the memory of your loved ones to further an awareness of the past. Your bequest will be a double legacy—to the Society for its work and to the future as a reminder of the past. Information about the Society and the advantages of a bequest will be sent to you on request. Write to Wisconsin History Foundation, c/o The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. Attention W. H. Applegate. Gifts and bequests to the Wisconsin History Foundation are tax de­ ductible.

260 Enjoy a soda on a nice summer day at the confectionery at Stonefield, where you can see a whole village of STONEFIELD 1890's stores, shops, and offices. Nearby are the recently completed State Farm Museum and the home of Nelson Dewey, Wisconsin's first governor. Stonefield, one of the State Historical Society's six historic sites, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through October. Admission is $1.50 for adults and 50 cents for children. Society members are admitted for half price. To promote a wider appreciation of the American heritage The Purpose with particular emphasis on the collection, advancement, of this and dissemination of knowledge of the history of Wisconsin Society shall be and of the Middle West.

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 816 State Street Second-class postage paid at Madison, Wisconsin 53706 Madison, Wisconsin, and at Return Requested additional mailing offices.